• iconNews
  • videos
  • entertainment
  • Home
  • News
    • UK News
    • US News
    • Australia
    • Ireland
    • World News
    • Weird News
    • Viral News
    • Sport
    • Technology
    • Science
    • True Crime
    • Travel
  • Entertainment
    • Celebrity
    • TV & Film
    • Netflix
    • Music
    • Gaming
    • TikTok
  • LAD Originals
    • Say Maaate to a Mate
    • Daily Ladness
    • Lad Files
    • UOKM8?
    • FreeToBe
    • Extinct
    • Citizen Reef
  • Advertise
  • Terms
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • LADbible Group
  • UNILAD
  • SPORTbible
  • GAMINGbible
  • Tyla
  • UNILAD Tech
  • FOODbible
  • License Our Content
  • About Us & Contact
  • Jobs
  • Latest
  • Topics A-Z
  • Authors
Facebook
Instagram
X
Threads
Snapchat
TikTok
YouTube

LAD Entertainment

YouTube

LAD Stories

Submit Your Content
Man spent 50 years tricking entire town into believing Bigfoot lived there

Home> News> US News

Published 17:10 3 Sep 2023 GMT+1

Man spent 50 years tricking entire town into believing Bigfoot lived there

Eugene Hendrick hatched a crafty plan to make it look like Bigfoot was visiting the US town

Jess Battison

Jess Battison

Featured Image Credit: WSFA/ Getty stock

Topics: Weird, US News, Bigfoot, Conspiracy Theory

Jess Battison
Jess Battison

Jess is a Senior Journalist with a love of all things pop culture. Her main interests include asking everyone in the office what they're having for tea, waiting for a new series of The Traitors and losing her voice at a Beyoncé concert. She graduated with a first in Journalism from City, University of London in 2021.

X

@jessbattison_

Advert

Advert

Advert

Sometimes you might prank your mates by telling them the wrong dress code for an event or you might wrap your uni flatmate’s room in foil.

Or perhaps your pranking days started off as a kid with simple games of knock-and-run.

But rarely is a prank so extravagant that it crosses decades and fools a whole town.

Advert

And one man in Alabama, US, spent 50 years tricking his entire town of Brantley into believing Bigfoot lived there.

Prankster-genius Eugene Hendrick’s plan hatched back in the 70’s, when locals spotted tracks by the river.

Hendrick told WFSA: “I got a wild hair one day. I wanted to do something about a Sasquatch.

Advert

“I cut some big ole feet and bolted some shoes to them and walked around by the river making tracks. I even made claw marks in the trees.”

However, speculation soon filled Brantley as they were convinced that something-out-of-the-ordinary was going on and it got so wild even the police and search dogs showed up.

Eugene Hendrick is the genius behind it all.
WFSA

Local Jimmy McGinty was just a child when the mysterious Bigfoot was supposedly wandering around their town.

He remembered: “I was just going out by the river and saw some unusual tracks on the sand bar. I went and looked and saw these big footprints, and I’m going, am I seeing this right or not?’”

Advert

But, with such fear in the community and the police involvement, Hendrick decided to abandon his antics.

He said: “I put the cut-out feet and shoes away and kept it a secret until 2017."

And for a long while, no one knew that he’d been behind it.

A lot of the town believe Bigfoot was walking their streets.
Douglas Sacha/Getty Images

But then Hunter Royal, who owns the Old Gin Greek County Store in Brantley, decided he’d start selling a 'monster' burger – ‘The Sasquatch Burger’.

Advert

And Hendrick decided it was time. He was going to come clean about his epic pranking.

McGinty couldn’t believe it was him behind it all, and said: “I knew I wasn’t crazy then. But, he got me.”

The store then went on to sell all kinds of Bigfoot merchandise, even picking up a 3,500-pound, solid concrete Sasquatch.

Hunter was pretty surprised when his father-in-law McGinty showed up with the huge creature, saying: “I was in shock. It has made a landmark for the community.”

And in almost sweet end to his operation, Hendrick was the one to paint the giant statue, using his professional artist skills to design the ‘landmark’.

Advert

Although, it seems that locals do still reckon some kind of creature exists in the town as Hunter said: “If you don’t believe in Sasquatch, you’re the problem.”

  • Couple hiking in notorious Bigfoot area notice eerie detail in one of their photos
  • 'Only man to sneak into Area 51' says what he witnessed will stay with him forever
  • Chilling theory behind 'world's loneliest house' that's hours from nearest town where people are banned
  • Book classified by CIA for more than 50 years explained how the world was going to end

Choose your content:

an hour ago
3 hours ago
  • an hour ago

    Simulation shows what it's like to have ADHD as woman reveals red flag question that could mean you have the condition

    A woman shared what it's like for her to process information with ADHD

    News
  • an hour ago

    New details in Air India plane crash investigation put focus on captain following black-box recording

    The crash killed 260 people on 12 June

    News
  • an hour ago

    British mother who starved herself to death to stop children seeing her die of ‘worst disease’ shared symptoms of illness

    The mum campaigned for dignity in dying

    News
  • 3 hours ago

    Woman arrested for allegedly seducing number of monks to sleep with her and get her pregnant

    Nine monks have been disrobed following the scandal

    News