Friday, February 05, 2010

Book Review: Bigfoot In Georgia by Jeffery Wells


Really good book on reports from the Peach State

This book, written by the social sciences and education department chairman for Georgia Military College's Atlanta campus, is a really terrific treatise of reports from the southern state. It covers reports mainly from a logical area, the North Georgia Mountains, mainly the northern counties in the Peach State. There are also reports from the metro Atlanta area near the town of Newnan, the same area the movie Deliverance was filmed in. (Correction: the movie was NOT filmed in that area. My apologies.) Sightings from southern Georgia are also profiled, more particularly the Georgia/north Florida border. There is also an entire chapter devoted to the fairly famous Elkins Creek cast, which was examined by Jeff Meldrum and Jimmy Chilcutt and given the stamp of approval. Names such as the Belk/Belt Road Booger and the Happy Valley Horror are given to localized Sasquatch creatures, and frightening encounters are also recounted. Organizations such as the Georgia Bigfoot group are profiled, along with a reporter, Wayne Ford, who not only writes about Sasquatch, he investigates them as well. The recent infamous hoax is skimmed over very quickly and hardly mentioned, which is a good thing, because the book is really good and informative enough without it. I highly recommend this book, which from what I understand is the first in a series highlighting reports from all 50 states. **** out of *****

3 comments:

Captain Steve Monk said...

Henry,

I have read this book and I agree with you, it's a good read, and on a subject that is long overdue -- some reports on Bigfoot in the Peach State.

I beg to differ with you on one note that you mentioned, though. The movie Deliverance was not filmed in Newnan. I once lived for about 5 years in the Newnan area of Georgia and I can tell you for a fact that there is nothing in that area that even remotely resembles the scenery in the movie. If I remember correctly, the movie was filmed on a North Georgia river to the west of the Coosawatee, which is the supposed setting for the movie. By the way, the Coosawatee River has actually been dammed. It now forms the deepest lake in Georgia, Carters Lake. Depths near the dam in that lake go to around 400 feet. It's a good lake for striped bass fishing as well as other species. I once caught a 22-pound striped bass from Carters.

Henry May said...

Thanks for the correction, and great comment, Steven. Hopefully, folks will read your comment and see the correction of my goof-up.

Captain Steve Monk said...

Henry,

One more note about Newnan. Alan Jackson is from there. While I was working at a hospital in Newnan, I heard a story about him concerning the days when he worked at the K-mart store there. He clocked out one day and told everybody he was heading for Nashville to get into country music. They just laughed at him then. But I don't reckon they're doing to much laughing now.

Just another one of the things that keeps Georgia on my mind.

Steven