Finding Bigfoot & Other Cryptid Creatures

Craig Woolheater joins Dr. Rita Louise where he delves into the mystery of Bigfoot, sasquatch and other mysterious humanoid creatures.

When I was a child I was always interested in strange and unusual subjects. I was extremely interested in dinosaurs as I’m sure most kids are. When I was 9 years old the story of the Lake Worth Monster hit the front page of the Ft. Worth Star Telegram. My grandparents had a cabin cruiser boat on Eagle Mountain Lake which was separated by a dam from Lake Worth. I had spent many a night on that boat anchored out in the middle of Eagle Mountain Lake. As you can guess, the many scenarios involving the creature ran through my head. The story died down in November of 1969. The next year I obtained a copy of John A. Keel’s book Strange Creatures from Time & Space. It was very influential to me. Of course, like most people interested in Bigfoot, I saw the movie The Legend of Boggy Creek. I saw it in the theater and it made me think about the possibility that Bigfoot was closer to me than I had previously thought.

After seeing that movie, Bigfoot was something I thought about when I was in the out of doors. On Boy Scout campouts, walking through the woods at night and just being in wooded areas, I thought about encountering Bigfoot. Then I became an adult and had to go to work. Bigfoot slipped from my thoughts. Working, getting married, regular adult activities took priority. Unbeknownst to me, one of the more popular nicknames I picked up along the way, Wooly Booger, is a fairly popular name for Bigfoot here in the South.

Then one night in May of 1994, my reality came crashing down. I had a sighting of what I believe was a Bigfoot creature. It occurred while driving back to Dallas from New Orleans on May 30, 1994. We were about 175 miles Northwest of New Orleans on an unlit 2 lane highway approaching Alexandria, LA. There wasn’t a moon out and it was very dark. We were traveling at approximately 75 mph and it was approximately midnight. There was no shoulder to the road and it dipped down into a small ditch on either side of the road. It was about 25 to 30 feet to the wood line from the road. About halfway to the wood line, a figure was visible in the illumination of my headlights. It appeared to be about 7 foot tall, hairy and looked to be gray. Its back was towards us and it was walking in the direction we were traveling, parallel to the road. My wife, then girlfriend, and I looked at each other and simultaneously said “Did you just see what I saw?”. I wanted to stop and go back, but she did not. I was driving an Isuzu Amigo with the soft top rolled up, so I could see why she wasn’t in favor of this. It did become a topic of long discussion for the remainder of the trip. It was something that we talked amongst ourselves, but not with others.

Like I said, I was curious about these kinds of things since childhood. I made a point to watch any documentaries about anything that was unexplained like UFOs and Cryptozoology in general. When I got on the Internet in 1997, I started looking up websites that dealt with this subject matter. I started buying books on eBay about Bigfoot & Cryptozoology. I searched long and hard to find a copy of John Keel’s book that had such an impact on me in my youth. In early 1999, I came across a post on a message board asking if there was anyone in North Texas that was interested in researching Bigfoot. I jumped at the opportunity. We formed the Texas Bigfoot Research Center in June of 1999. The rest as they say is history.

In January, 2007, the TBRC reorganized as a 501(c)(3), non-profit, scientific research organization. The organization’s name was the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy. In March 2013, the organization has adopted the name North American Wood Ape Conservancy (NAWAC).

I resigned from the organization on July 10, 2010 to focus my attention on other endeavors, such as Cryptomundo.

As of December 24, 2013, I have resurrected the original TBRC, the Texas Bigfoot Research Center.

I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films:

OLN’s Mysterious Encounters: “Caddo Critter”
Southern Fried Bigfoot
Travel Channel’s Weird Travels: “Bigfoot”
History Channel’s MonsterQuest: “Swamp Stalker”
The Wild Man of the Navidad
Bigfoot Wars
Destination America’s Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror, Lake Worth Monster
Animal Planet’s Finding Bigfoot

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