Southern Fried Sasquatch vs. West Coast Bigfoot: Cultural Conflict or Same Crypto Critter?

PRLog (Press Release) – Mar 20, 2008 – The new horror novel ANCIENT LAKE posits the Texas version of Bigfoot is similar albeit slightly different than the more infamous namesake reported to haunt the redwood forests of the American Pacific Northwest. Though a work of fiction, ANCIENT LAKE’s author David Coleman, a veteran screenplay writer with over 20 years of produced credits and experience in Hollywood, extensively researched the Southern version of the hairy bi-pedal beastie and uncovered many distinctive, regional differences in the folklore and sightings behind the cryptoid.

“Despite being lumped together, the Southern Bigfoot is actually often reported as being much more likely to be near waterways and backwater areas than the densely-forested cousin in Northern California and the Washington state and Oregon areas,” said Coleman, discussing the new novel available on March 31, 2008, from CryptoHaus Press. “I decided to highlight this distinction in my book because I found it much more believable in one sense. The swamps and shrub lands of East Texas where the story takes place, for example, seem to offer a more realistic setting for a large, unknown (or cryptoid) primate to exist without detection. In essence, the creature could utilize the rivers and tributaries like a super ‘aquatic highway,’ enabling it to travel undetected for hundreds of miles, whereas the redwoods of the West Coast would be much more difficult to sustain a population of such hominoids because of larger human population density and extensive highways and back road construction.”

The book, which chronicles the exploits of Anne Cheron, an unemployed school librarian who’s been recently ‘downsized’ as a result of No Child Left Behind budgetary cuts and her attempt to locate her missing half-brother Eddie who has vanished beneath the murky waters of the titular Ancient Lake, incorporates many actual sightings in the course of its plot. “I wanted to give credence to the many witnesses of East Texas who’ve sighted and reported encounters with this ‘swamp-squatch’ because of the risk and ridicule of friends and neighbors such witnesses are subject to after coming forward,” explained the author. “Even though I changed the names to protect the innocent, so to speak, many of the sequences in ANCIENT LAKE are almost verbatim from actual accounts.”

While serious cryptozoologists (that is, scientists and dedicated amateurs who study reported animals such as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Chupacabra that may or may not exist) consider the sightings probably slight variations of the same creature, there are many relevant differences between the various regional sightings, such as the aforementioned swamp preferences of the Southern variety, three-toed footprints left in the South versus five-toed ones in the Pacific Northwest, and girth, with the California sightings trending towards larger and the Southern variety less bulky. “That may be the only time the diet-conscious West Coast types are the losers in the weight department,” laughed Coleman. “Maybe the Southern Sasquatch isn’t getting enough chicken-fried steak in his diet?”

ANCIENT LAKE will be available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, through Ingram book distributors and the CryptoHaus Press web site on March 31, 2008. For more information, review copies and/or interviews with the author, please contact Mr. Coleman directly at the above-referenced contact address, or visit the CryptoHaus web site which contains photos, book cover scans, sample chapters and an in-depth interview with Coleman at http://www.cryptohaus.com.