The intrepid investigators of “Finding Bigfoot” return Sunday night on Animal Planet with 16 heart-pounding episodes of unexplained thermal images, wood knocks and ear-piercing screams.
First up: getting boggy with the most famous Bigfoot movie of all time.
Matt Moneymaker, James “Bobo” Fay, Cliff Barackman and Ranae Holland take a trip to the past as they travel to Fouke, Ark., which inspired the 1972 cult docudrama “The Legend of Boggy Creek,” featuring interviews with local residents who claimed to have seen Bigfoot. The movie also mixed in reenactments.
The investigators were inspired by “Boggy Creek” as kids — so for them it’s like traveling to a sacred place.
The little town of Fouke, about 20 miles south of Texarkana, hasn’t changed much in the 40 years since “Boggy Creek” — and the “Fouke Monster” sightings keep on coming.
In Sunday’s season opener, the team has a bucket-list moment screening the movie in the Fouke town hall — and then talking to witnesses both old and new.
Moneymaker, Fay, Barackman and Holland pull out all the stops, camping out on the banks of the creek where a lot of the movie was shot and even canoeing down the water, hoping to find evidence of Bigfoot.
They even showed the movie on a huge outdoor screen in the woods, hoping to inspire the local Bigfoots to emerge. You’ll have to watch the episode to see if the Mercer Bayou gave up its secrets.
The rest of this season of “Finding Bigfoot” will see the team travel across the US investigating Bigfoot sightings to determine their authenticity.
When the chance to break new ground presents itself, they even travel to China and Nepal in search of Bigfoot’s distant cousins — Nepal’s Yeti and the Chinese Yeren, better known as the Abominable Snowman.
“Finding Bigfoot” premieres Sunday night at 10 on Animal Planet.