The supposed Fouke Monster entered a house and gently patted a boy and his siblings nightly while they were enduring horrible abuse in life, around 1949 to 1950.
The following account was forwarded to me:
"My father is a couple months out from turning 80 and has just had to go into a nursing home after being in my care since 2019. I've been thinking about him and his life and wanted to share this story that comes out of Fouke, Arkansas.
The Fouke Monster has a long history of sightings, if you want the full story aside from my father's, do a little search and you'll find a lot. The sightings began before the term "Bigfoot" was really coined and recognized, but it is essentially bigfoot. Since my father's story occurred in 1949-1950, it may be one of the earliest accounts of the Fouke Monster ever. Maybe even the first, though I haven't researched it enough to say that for sure. Living deep in the woods in Fouke, my father and his siblings experienced the Fouke Monster on more than one occasion, in a very strange way.
My father is a quiet, humble, honest man. Not an attention seeker, and a man of few words. If this is a "tall tale" it's the only one he ever told. If he's ever lied at all, I can't recall it. I remember a bit of debate between him and my mother before even allowing this story to be told to us, just due to it being unexplainable and frightening. My father also lived a horrible childhood that is part of this story, including physical/sexual abuse, starving, and never owning a pair of underwear or a toothbrush until he was 13, ran away, and started patching tires to buy those things for himself.
Once when the kids complained they were starving, their father fried a bar of soap and forced them all to take a bite while laughing. Their father (I do not call him grandfather because I never knew him-thank you dad) once killed a migrant farm worker in front of the family and forced the kids to clean the blood out of his car after dumping the body in the Red River. His father, in a drunken rage, once made the kids get out of the car and run in front of it at night, saying he would run them over if any of them stopped. And he would have. My father never returned home after age 13 and made a good life for himself and our family. We owe him a lot for completely breaking the cycle of abuse. He was a good, moral man. Just a month ago, ridden with dementia, he told me it still makes him cry to this day what his father put him through.
During the worst of the worst, the family became aware of "something" in the woods near their house. Dogs going wild, weird bumps in the night. Just eerie things, but eerie enough to make his mother occasionally sit at the window at night with a shotgun. Once, their bloodhound reared up in the window, and she mistakenly shot him believing that whatever was in the woods had finally come up to the house.
During this time, my father was about 6-7 years old and sharing a bed with his older siblings. They began having "night visits" of something none of them could explain. Keep in mind, that Bigfoot was not a term yet, and the Fouke Monster sightings were only documented many years after this. This is how my father describes it, I won't jazz it up.
They would hear the screen door to the house open (no AC, all windows and doors open with just screens) and heavy, heavy footsteps coming down the hall. The kids, frightened and knowing their parents were asleep, would pull the sheet over their heads and would only barely peek out. When my dad peeked out, he saw a huge hulking figure, taller than his father and taller than any man, just standing at the bedside. Then my father felt a huge hand, so big that the palm covered his entire chest with fingers extending over the side, patting him gently over the sheet. After patting him a couple of times, the hand slid over and patted his sister, and then brother the same way. As the hand moved over to his sister and brother, he described hair "as long as a woman's hair" dragging across him, dangling from the arm. The heavy footsteps would then retreat, back out of the house.
This repeated multiple nights throughout one summer before my terrible grandfather moved the family to New Mexico. That's where the encounter ends. My dad ran away at 13 from New Mexico, hitch-hiked to East Texas, and married my mom at 15. When they were in their 20s, stories of the Fouke Monster began to circulate in newspapers, and my mom and dad were shocked. Although I can't name the specific farm/property without potentially putting my family's identity, the family that lived on the property after they moved to New Mexico, reported that the Fouke Monster had come onto their front porch and ripped the screen door off. Make of that what you will.
My father never wanted his story to be told. Never contacted the papers, and never told anyone outside of a few trusted family members. He doesn't want to be called crazy, and he also doesn't want his abuse stories that coincide with the encounter to be widely known. Once we begged him to ask my Aunt about it, and he did when she visited. Her reaction was strange, to say the least, she instantly turned bright red, huffed and puffed, and said I don't think we should talk about that. He didn't push it, and it was never mentioned to her or by her again. I can't ask my dad's brother about it, because he turned out to be an abuser of his own children exactly like his father. I have never met him and never will. Thank you again Dad for protecting us from the things you went through.
When my mother deemed it was OK to tell us this story, my brother and I were teenagers. It scared us so bad that my mom had to sleep with me, and my dad with my brother. My dad, half asleep in the middle of the night, reached over to pat my brother and make sure he was still in bed. My brother, fresh from the Bigfoot story, woke up to being patted and screamed." C
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