Caddo Lake has a dark, moss-covered, swampy section, which made it perfect for on-location filming for the 1976 movie, 'Creature From Black Lake.' The setting is Oil City, which is near Caddo Lake.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY LOUISIANA PUBLIC BROADCASTING
In the 1976 movie "The Creature From Black Lake," sunlight barely seeps through the cypress canopy over Black Lake as trapper Joe Canton navigates his boat through its swampy waters. His hunting partner, Willie, sits on the opposite end of the boat, reaching for traps that not only turn up empty but broken.
That's when the duo hears a bone-chilling roar.
The hunters freeze. A hairy arm rises from the water and pulls Willie into the murky depths of the swamp, and Joe hightails it back to town.
So begins the 1976 horror flick, set on a fictional lake outside of the very real Oil City near Shreveport.
To clarify, there is a Black Lake in Louisiana, but it's near Campti, north of Natchitoches.
A movie poster for the 1976 horror film, 'The Creature From Black Lake.' The movie was filmed on Caddo Lake and Oil City, which also was its setting. Though the story is fictional, the Louisiana Bigfoot Hunters investigative group has investigated real sightings in and around Caddo Lake.
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Sightings at Caddo Lake
The film's creature is an aggressive version of a bipedal humanoid, commonly known as Bigfoot.
The Louisiana Bigfoot Hunters showed the film at their annual festival in Natchitoches in September. Phyllis Hall attended the festival, and after watching the film, she began wondering if there was any truth to the Bigfoot legend around Oil City.
Carl Chism, a member of the invetigative group Louisiana Bigfoot Hunters, discovered this footprint on one of his invesitgations in Natchitoches Parish. The group documented the finding through measurements and photographs.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY CARL CHISM
"I know the lake at Oil City is actually Caddo Lake, but I was interested in finding out if there were any Bigfoot sightings up there," the Catahoula reader in St. Martin Parish said.
Reports of Bigfoot have been sporadic through the years in northwest Louisiana, and Carl Chism has investigated lots of them.
Chism is a founding member of the Louisiana Bigfoot Hunters, along with Jeff Tarpley, Mark Jordan and Joe Serwatka. All live in the Natchitoches area, and all have investigated sasquatch sightings throughout the state. The group has been featured in the 2017 television miniseries "Killing Bigfoot" on Destination America.
"And yes, there have been sightings on Caddo Lake for years," Chism said.
A sign along La. 1 welcomes motorists to Oil City. The city not only was the film location but the setting for the 1976 horror movie, 'Creature From Black Lake,' about a violent bipedal humanoid, commonly known as Bigfoot.
STAFF PHOTO BY JILL PICKETT
Chism said the creature has been sighted at the real Black Lake too.
"But the movie was filmed on Caddo Lake," he said.
Caddo Lake is 43 miles south of Boggy Creek, home of the Fouke Monster.
“The Legend of Boggy Creek,” released in 1972, put the creature and Bigfoot in general on the pop culture map. The little Arkansas town even has a Fouke Monster Museum inside the Fouke Monster Mart on U.S. 71.
Jo Nield, an employee at the Fouke Monster Mart, said the museum receives visitors from throughout the world.
"They're fascinated by the legend," she said. "They watched the (Boggy Creek) movie a long time ago, and it scared them to death, and they want to know when the last Bigfoot sighting was in this area."
Nield added that no one has reported sighting the creature in recent years, but visitors sometimes search the area for big footprints.
About the movie
As for "The Creature From Black Lake," the movie stars Jack Elam as Joe the trapper and John David Carson and Dennis Fimple as University of Chicago students who travel to Oil City to do field work on the creature. The sasquatch in this story is aggressive and terrorizes anyone who strays into its path, which, Chism points out, isn't the usual nature of the creatures in reported sightings.
"If they're seen, they usually keep their distance from people," Chism said.
Still, the idea of a 7-to-8-foot, hairy creature that may or may not have human characteristics has fascinated people worldwide for decades. In the Himalayas, it's known as the Yeti, and it's called the Hibagon on Mount Hiba, Japan.
The Honey Island Swamp Monster in St. Tammany Parish has bipedal humanoid characteristics, as does the Momo in Missouri and Wood Devil in New Hampshire.
Veteran actor Jack Elam stole the show as a back-swamps trapper in the 1976 horror movie, 'Creature From Black Lake,' which was set and filmed on Caddo Lake at Oil City.
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A Bigfoot festival
No such museum exists along Caddo Lake or anywhere in Louisiana, but the annual Louisiana Bigfoot Festival in Natchitoches, which originated in 2024, attracts sasquatch fans from across the country.
"The first year we had it, people were lined up around the Natchitoches Events Center waiting to get in," Chism said.
Many festival-goers share first-hand accounts of Bigfoot. Sometimes people will wait until later to share their stories with Chism one-on-one. After the inaugural festival, Chism was in line at Walmart when a man asked if he could share a story. Chism obliged.
A sign near an old house built among bald cypress trees in Caddo Lake near Uncertain, Texas. The 1976 horror movie, 'Creature From Black Lake,' was filmed on the Oil City side of Caddo Lake.
STAFF PHOTO BY JILL PICKETT
"The guy started telling me this story that happened when he was 12 years old. He looked like he was in his late 40s or early 50s," Chism said. "He said when he was 12, he was hunting in Hall's Brake, which is in northern Natchitoches Parish near the I-49 exit for Ajax."
Halls Brake is a swampy, wooded area with a creek running through it. The storyteller told Chism he was walking in the creek looking for squirrels.
"But he kept hearing something on his right-hand side," Chism said. "He'd walk, then stop. And whatever he was hearing would walk and stop with him. He thought maybe it was a rabbit or deer, so he decided to climb up on the left bank of the creek and and see what it was."
The storyteller gazed into the woods but saw nothing unusual. There were no squirrels or rabbits, and the only thing between him and the trees was a big stump.
"Then he said all of a sudden the stump stood up and walked back into the woods," Chism said. "He said he took off running and didn't stop until he got home. This was a real experience for him."
Carl Chism, a member of the invetigative group Louisiana Bigfoot Hunters, discovered this footprint on one of his invesitgations in Natchitoches Parish. The group documented the finding through measurements and photographs.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY CARL CHISM
Bigfoot Hunters investigate
Members of the Louisiana Bigfoot Hunters have since investigated the Hall's Brake area, where they say they found a large, three-toed footprint. They documented it with measurements and photographs and say they have recorded similar finds during other investigations.
One night in 2024, a group of students camping in Kisatchie National Forest called the Natchitoches Parish Sheriff's Department after seeing something that frightened them.
The students heard something, then say they saw something — a creature with red eyes that scared them so badly that they ran.
"It happened along Highway 117, but I won't tell the exact location," Chism said. "My friend works for the sheriff's department, and he told me about going out to get them. So we went back there and investigated."
Chism and his crew found the camping spot and started looking for any evidence of the creature. The camping spot had an elevated area, and Chism climbed to the top and started making a 360-degree sweep with his smartphone camera.
Carl Chism, a member of the Louisiana Bigfoot Hunters investigative group, placed a dollar bill next to this three-toe footprint to provide scale. The footprint was discovered in the Hall's Brake area in northern Natchitoches Parish.
PROVIDED PHOTO BY CARL CHISM
That's when Chism and his crew heard growly grunts coming from the forest.
"We thought it could be a wild hog, because we have those in the woods," he said. "But then we heard it again. It was circling us."
Chism examined his photos after returning to his vehicle.
"I could see a shape in one of the pictures," he said. "I could see the head and an eye peeking from behind the tree, and I could see an arm."
Chism said Bigfoot can blend into the background, which may explain why others don't see what he sees in the photograph.
So, they’ll keep investigating — in Kisatchie, at Black Lake and on the cypress-shaded waters of Caddo Lake, where Hollywood put its creature 50 years ago.