In my recent correspondence with Wayne Ford, the journalist at the Athens Banner-Herald about which I wrote in my Bigfoot in Georgia book, I learned that there was a mysterious story about a Bigfoot in Georgia that was shot and killed. This story appears in John Green's book, Sasquatch: The Apes Among Us, published in 1978.
According to the story, which appears on page 370-371 of the book, the story of this killing was told to a man named Rich Grumley, who was with a bigfoot research group based in California. This was not the BFRO, as the BFRO was not founded until the 1990s. A man told this story to Grumley. Rich Grumley has since passed away, according to an article in The Bigfoot Times from July 2009. Nevertheless, the story goes that in 1943, a county in Georgia experienced the mysterious slaughtering of sheep and calves. The animals had been attacked by something that was pulling their legs off. The county must have been in the North Georgia Mountains, for it was said that local men chased the perpetrator onto a small mountain where they shot it 60 times, one slug hitting it in the eye and piercing the brain. The men collected the dead carcass, loading it on back of a pickup truck and bringing it back in to a nearby town. The man who reported this story to Grumley said that the animal was so large that its torso was wider than the back of the pickup and its feet dragged the ground due to it being so long. The animal was covered with reddish-brown hair, but the palms of the hand, face, and soles of its feet were bare. There was minimal hair on its head and chest, and like so many Bigfoot sightings, there was a terrible stench associated with the creature. The report goes on to mention that the animal was buried under a pile of rocks.
Like Wayne Ford, I speculate that the story may be more legend than fact. Granted, as Ford stated in a letter to me, a small mountain town newspaper might not have had access to a national wire service to report such an event, but most surely this incident would have been plastered all over the front page of the local paper. The problem here is that noone associated with this report knows in what town this took place, or supposedly took place. Nothing comes up in a news search. It would have been the talk of the area had it happened. However, as I cannot confirm this report, I cannot in good conscience totally deny that it happened. Afterall, 1943 was smack dab in the middle of World War II. The biggest "boogers" out there to most people, especially in the South, were the Nazis, Facists, and Japanese. Many boys were fighting overseas, and reports from the war front would more than likely have dominated the news at that time-local and state, not to mention national. Perhaps this was an isolated rural incident that took place in a town with NO local paper, so the residents of the community had to rely on a paper from another place. With so much going on-war, depression, Communist scare-perhaps there was not much attention paid to this by news reporters at the time.
If anyone has ever heard this story in their locality, please email me. I would love to find out more about it. John Green was contacted by Wayne Ford, and Green knew no more than what was printed in his book. Grumley has died, and noone knows the name of the man who reported to Grumley. Stumped, I am!!!
