_{A Recreation of Frame 352 of the Patterson-Gimlin Film, Trokon V, 2023}

Since childhood I have always been fascinated by the outlandish. Particularly, the notion of the mundane coexisting with the not-mundane- the possibility that somewhere below the surface, or hidden deep in a cave, “magic” and monsters were waiting to be found. I read with wonder others’ accounts of encounters with things that to me, were only characters in my fantasy books: mermaids, aliens, skin walkers, the Mothman, the Loch Ness Monster, the Chupacabra, Bigfoot- what were these things? Were they really real? What if I ran into one? The question always made my hair stand on end.

Of all the creatures I read about, Bigfoot loomed largest in my imagination. In a strange way I felt I could relate to the hairy, hulking, stinky mass with gigantic feet. Maybe ape, maybe something else entirely. Seemed relatively harmless (at least, the ones known to exist in the Pacific Northwest anyways), and wanted to be left alone. I knew what it was like to not want to be seen but considered a spectacle by others.

I kept living, and through my own experiences as a Black person, but specifically as a Black girl living in the West, learned that anyone—anything— can be a monster if enough people agree that it is. And after growing up, I understood the unique adult impulse to reject things not understood; and even worse, to assign it whatever attributes necessary (usually negative, focusing on and enlarging any differences) to soothe their own consciences. I considered this when thinking of Bigfoot stomping around underneath the redwoods that formed the forests further up north. Then, I read the interdimensional Bigfoot theory, the expansiveness of which was almost as equally thrilling and absurd as the potential existence of Bigfoot itself. Was it even really a monster?

The interdimensional Bigfoot theory speculates that, instead of being some distant ape cousin currently unstudied by Homo sapiens, Bigfoot is in fact a being with the ability to travel between dimensions. Although dismissed by skeptics as a ridiculous, flailing attempt to argue Bigfoot’s alleged existence, it would explain why there has been little physical evidence of the thing beyond footprint and buttprint casts and a hotly disputed video recording. Further, the lack of a dead Bigfoot is often cited as the most obvious proof that Bigfoot does not exist; but, if it is simply an interdimensional traveler on whatever business it has on this plane and goes elsewhere to do whatever else Bigfoot does and (presumably) die… it’s possible. And certainly, who could blame the creatures for escaping elsewhere, if they have the means and opportunities to do so, after being observers of human behavior for millennia (or even longer than that!). It would be no secret to them that if one were ever to be caught, it would be killed or worse. Here too, I could relate to wanting to flee the travails of this dimension.

The more and more I thought on this, the more familiar the theory felt.

_{Frame 352 of the Patterson-Gimlin Film, 1967}

The Great Dismal Swamp sits in the Atlantic Coastal Plain in both North Carolina and Virginia. Developed by the layering of peat over thousands of years, at one point it covered over two-thousand square miles and was home to both prehistoric and ancient indigenous groups prior to white colonial settlement. The majority of these groups (like the Nansemond) stayed on the periphery of the Swamp, with some of them retreating further inward to escape white encroachment. And, as chattel slavery proliferated in the region, the Swamp, well-known for and well-avoided due to its virtual impenetrability and general wildness, soon became a haven for enslaved Black people seeking freedom and refuge in its depths: the maroons.

Thousands of maroons created sanctuary and society in the unforgiving forested wetlands, building communities that were a direct contrast to the colonial state that so often furiously attempted and bitterly failed to pursue them. Up until the Civil War, the liminal space of the Swamp provided them an alternative existence, with some maroons living their entire lives there without ever having seen a white person. Their existence there was also precarious. Their secrets had to be jealously guarded; and as a result, there is very little known about their lives in the Swamp. Like Bigfoot, they left scant physical evidence (the Great Dismal Swamp Landscape Study has produced artifacts to support the existence of these communities, but there are still very few primary resources) and the remaining evidence comes from second-or even third-hand sources. In some instances, the existence of these communities has been minimized or dismissed altogether.

And with good reason. The Swamp, inhospitable to paranoid colonists, was a paradise for those who rejected the established order and posed a grave threat to it. It was rebellion incarnate, and some insurrection-minded guerilla maroons did utilize the Swamp as a base for armed confrontations with whites (Pompey Little is one notorious example). A second coming of Nat Turner was always a worst-case possibility, and the Swamp was the perfect place to birth and nurture such a horror. Of course, these fears were ultimately unfounded: it was actually a white-led conflict that ended the way of life for slave owners in the region and drew the maroons from the Swamp’s protective bosom.

To the maroons, life in the Swamp must have felt like another dimension compared to what they had faced outside it. The courage and grit necessary to choose isolation— to accept the mantle of monster thrust on them by the outsiders who sought to not only deprive them of their right to simply be left alone, but to exploit them for their own gain… my hair stood on end again, this time in awe.

Unlike the maroons who left the Swamp as Reconstruction began, Bigfoot appears to have chosen to remain in the liminal space between dimensions. Whether it will ever venture out again remains to be seen, as modern-day technology has improved a hundredfold since the camera Patterson used in Bluff Creek over fifty-five years ago. Maybe some things are better hidden. ◆

Works Consulted
Coleman, Loren. Bigfoot: The True Story of Apes in America. Paraview Pocket Books, 2003.

Morris, J. Brent. Dismal Freedom: A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp. The University of North Carolina Press, 2022.