Fluorescent Freddie
By Cole Herrold
Some Sasquatch sightings are downright
strange. Some are connected with UFOs like the Uniontown UFO-Bigfoot Incident
or the Ohiopyle UFO-Bigfoot incident; some bigfoot seem to vanish or turn into
balls of light; in between these more surreal encounters and classic sasquatch
encounters, there are seemingly normal sasquatch encounters that are just one
degree into the weird. One such encounter of a sasquatch of a different color
was reported in French Lick, Indiana, and while it's not one of the most famous
cases out there, this case is so rare it seems to only get mentioned in
comparison to other cases even though there is more to the story.
At least a dozen teenagers and adults, while
out driving and wandering around the woods along a road three miles South of
French Lick near a municipal works, began to encounter something that they
never would have expected. The creature was an astounding 10ft tall, but this
was not the most bizarre feature of the creature as instead of the traditional
brown, red, black, or even white fur that was so common in other accounts but
instead a vivid green and its eyes glowed bright red. The first and only named
witness from what can be gleaned from newspaper and book sources was a
16-year-old official named Steve Dixon, who was a Springs Valley High School
Student at the time of the sighting, yet not much is known from this sighting.
The creature was investigated by Police Chief Oral Carnes, who searched the
area after the initial sightings and having heard that the high school youths
were entering the darkened woods with shotguns and other weapons but came up
empty-handed both in gun-toting teens and monsters and felt that the whole
green-furred monstrosity was nothing more than a hoax. One high school teenager
said in the March 17th edition of the Indianapolis News, "You
can't knock it if you don't go see Freddie yourself". The area where the
creature was seen soon became known as "the Valley of the Jolly Green
Giant". The road, over the course of several nights, turned into monster
hunter central as cars lined the side of the road for the entire length of the
"Valley of the Jolly Green Giant". Youths would enter the woods in
pairs of two and three, calling out to the creature in an effort to coax the
creature from hiding. One boy, a 16-year-old named David Noble, who had it
would seem seen the creature during this time, had even called out to the
creature saying, "We're your friends. Don't be afraid. We won't hurt
you". Yet the creature never seemed to respond. After a quiet night with
barely any interactions or sightings, most of the searchers left after 3 hrs. After
this initial wave of sightings, the creature seemed to of dropped off the
planet, and no one has since claimed to of seen the creature.
Now it is important to point out that
French Lick, as well as Pope Lick and Big Bone Lick, makes up one of the
corners of the Big Lick Triangle. This is an area of high strangeness similar
to the Coudersport Triangle, Bridgewater Triangle, and, more famously, the
Bermuda Triangle. So, it’s almost unsurprising that such a creature would be reported
in this geographical Fortean hotspot.
While this case is exceptionally
interesting, what are we to do with this creature in regard to an explanation.
This creature could obviously be a hoax or a prank perpetrated by the
unmotivated minds of high schoolers. The fact that there's only one officially
named witness and very few details on this case adds a patina seen with other
hoax cases or urban legends. Yet I must say that this case has a lot of other
details seen in other Sasquatch cases that seem to indicate a wider range of
phenomena.
One of the most comparable cases to this
one is the Bishopville Lizardman case. Now the Bishopville Lizardman case is a
mixture of two types of creatures reported the classic reptilian-type creature
which attacked Chris Davies and the large primate-like creature seen around the
same time. This primate-like creature also was reported to have grayish-green
fur or skin, and some researchers feel even the reptile-type encounters might
have simply been a Sasquatch-type creature covered in moss and with dried
muddied fur which gave the impression of scales. Perhaps this is what we are
seeing here as mud-covered sasquatch-type creatures have been reported before,
and in these accounts, leaves and other debris often are reported clinging to
the fur.
This case is one that I would love more
information on. It's quick and brief, but it has all the earmarks of cases that
are stone-cold classics like the Mill Race Monster, as it involves a strange
non-traditional creature and a monster hunt. It's amazing that this case was
not covered more intently, but perhaps at the time, the case was not treated as
seriously or that the witnesses simply were not interviewed. Either way, this
was a brief and obscure case that definitely needed to be brought to the
attention of more researchers.
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: Primate/
Hominid, Mammal
Location: French Lick, Indiana
Sighted: March 15, 1965
Works Cited:
Bigfoot Exposed: An Anthropologist
Examines America's Enduring Legend By David J. Daegling
Cryptozoology A-Z By Loren Coleman and
Jerome Clark
Mothman and Other Curious Encounters By
Loren Coleman
Sasquatch the Apes Among Us By John Green
Weird Indiana By Mark Marimen, James A.
Willis, and Troy Taylor
The Indianapolis News, Indiana, March 15,
1965
The Indianapolis News, Indiana, March 17,
1965
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