Believers get together to talk about Sasquatch at conference

By Leslie Bailey

Jefferson — When Bigfoot enthusiasts have lunch in East Texas, they still talk about football.

But they also swap stories of sightings, compare notes on vocalizations and strange stenches and discuss primate anatomy. In fact, sometimes they're so busy eating up the conversation, their food goes untouched.

Friday at Licea's Mexican Restaurant in Jefferson, Daryl Colyer's lunch got cold while he talked about Sasquatch. His wife, Dalinda, watched with fond amusement.

"He gets so animated when he tells his stories," she said.

Colyer is a field investigator with Dallas-based Texas Bigfoot Research Center. The center's fifth annual Texas Bigfoot Conference began Friday with a catered dinner and video presentation. The organizers and many of the speakers met up at Licea's before things got under way.

The three-day conference has steadily grown since its inception, and this year Colyer said organizers are hoping for 450 attendees, up from 340 last year.

The event has started to attract state and national media attention, with recent coverage by the Associated Press, CNN, Texas Monthly and Texas Highways, to name a few.

"It's been good," said Craig Woolheater, TBRC director. "We've gotten a lot of good activity to our Web site, and I think we'll get a lot of people here (at the conference) because of it."

Jefferson, perched on the banks of Big Cypress Bayou and home to the legend of the Boggy Creek Monster, seems the ideal location. The city has welcomed the researchers with open arms.

Today, Woolheater will be awarded a proclamation declaring the third weekend in October "Texas Bigfoot Weekend" in Jefferson. He'll also be given the key to the city.

"We love Bigfoot!" said Juanita Chitwood, the city's director of tourism development. Her husband, Charlie, wore a pair of hairy rubber prosthetics over his sneakers Friday.

Colyer is emphatic about his belief that Bigfoot is not a monster, but simply an undocumented primate.

Woolheater says the Piney Woods offer Bigfoot an ideal habitat, with ample food and water. That's why there have been so many sightings here, he said.

Crytozoologist Loren Coleman disagrees, however. Coleman has been researching Bigfoot for 45 years.

He believes Woolheater's work in East Texas has simply uncovered reports that were already here.

In 1965, Dwaine Dennis, then editor and owner of the Jefferson Jimplecute, wrote about a sighting by a 13-year-old Marion County boy. A story about the incident also was published in the Marshall News Messenger.

Dennis' wife, Virginia, said the boy had been chased home by something "big and hairy and tall." "They say he ran the soles off his shoes," she said.

Ms. Dennis helped her husband investigate the report. They found unusually large footprints at the old foundry cemetery and a pear tree with half-eaten fruit dangling from it at least seven feet off the ground.

"I don't know what it was," Ms. Dennis said. "I assume it was something like a Bigfoot, but we didn't see it."

Ms. Colyer was with her husband when he had his own close encounter in May 2004 along the bank of the Trinity River. If she hadn't been wearing sandals, she might have seen Sasquatch, too.

The couple were on their way home from a baseball game when Colyer decided, on a whim, to investigate a sighting report. Ms. Colyer said her husband was a little ahead of her on a path when something crawled across her foot. She bent down, and just then, Bigfoot jumped across the trail.

"I could tell he'd seen something," she said. "He looked excited, panicky."

Unable to share the moment, she was disappointed, to say the least. "Of all the timing ... , " she said.

Colyer says he's always been interested in Bigfoot, but the credit union manager didn't join the TBRC until 2003.

"It would be nice if he got funding," Ms. Colyer said. The cost of gas and supplies add up, but "he enjoys it a lot. He puts in so much work and doesn't get paid for it."

Colyer will teach a seminar on Bigfoot basics this weekend. Other speakers will talk about subjects ranging from footprint casts to field research techniques.

General admission to the event, which will be on the campus of Jefferson High School, is $10.

From: The Longview News-Journal, 15 October 2005.