Virginia Bigfoot Hoax of 1978

Lonnie Trucks

Lonnie Trucks

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I just watched this documentary on the 1978 bigfoot hoax that took place in the town of Weyburn Virginia.
The town lost its lumbermill in a fire and was on the verge of going bankrupt so the mayor, sheriff, town attorney and local garage owner created
bigfoot tracks during a winter storm and throwing dead cow blood on the side of farm houses to get news attention and trick local farmers into thinking they had a bigfoot problem.
It worked until one of them got greedy and then the whole dang hoax came to light. The town eventually went bankrupt and got sold off. Any of ya'll remember this?
Here is the link to it. Watch The Town That Cried Bigfoot | Prime Video
 
I just watched the trailer. That part of the film about the new hotshot town mayor, Danny Shifflett, is footage robbed from a documentary film made by the University of Southwest Missouri and the National Park Service about Shannon County, Missouri. That bit of film is from the mid-late '70s and was filmed in Eminence, Missouri, at the Shannon County Courthouse. The person depicted as the town's mayor in the Bigfoot hoax is actually Danny Staples, a Missouri State Representative for the Shannon County area. Representative Staples was a long-serving member of state government here in the Ozarks. What a bogus bit of film work.

Edit: Spelling and for better clarity.
 
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GC said:
I just watched the trailer. That part of the film about the new hotshot town mayor Danny Shifflett is film footage robbed from a documentary film made by the University of Southwest Missouri and the National Park Service about Shannon County, Missouri. That bit of film is from the late '70s and was filmed in Eminence, Missouri, at the Shannon County Courthouse. The person depicted as the town's mayor is actually Danny Stapleton, a Missouri State Representative for the Shannon County area. Representative Stapleton was a long-serving member of state government here in the Ozarks. What a bogus bit of film work.
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Thanks for sharing that info! If that is in fact the case, then the guy who made it is one hell of a story teller because if you didn't know what you knew, you would swear it really happened.. The whole dang thing looks legit! All the footage looks like it came from the same small town. All the people in it have the same Virginia accent. I googled Weyburn Virginia and it was a real place just like the movie said until the bigfoot hoax wiped it off the map. Has it's own website as well. So maybe this is supposed to be a film like the Blair Witch was. Where it's supposed to make you think it was real but it wasn't. Without all the crappy hand held shaky camera stuff. Honestly this makes me wanna watch it all over again to try and pick it apart. KInda like FIGHT CLUB. It was better the second time around because you were in on it! Thanks man. Can't wait to watch it again tonight after work. Hey, maybe you should check it out and let us know more about what other footage he used. KInda like FINDING WALDO. That would make it very interesting. Thanks again for the info on this.
 
The film project I am referring to is available on YouTube and is called "A Portrait of the Ozarks: Shannon County." There are three segments with Representative Staples in them. In the first segment, he is in a vehicle and conversing with the filmmakers. I am not going to link that. Somewhere in these next two segments will be the fake footage from the Bigfoot hoax film. You can clearly identify the person and the footage in the Bigfoot hoax film as taken from this documentary film made by SW Missouri State University and the National Park Service here in the Ozarks.



 
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