Lake Worth Monster Photo

June, 1969

 

In an 2006 Fort Worth Star-Telegram article, Bud Kennedy, reported that the man who took this photo, Allen Plaster, stated, "'Looking back, I realize that when we drove by, it stood up...Whatever it was, it wanted to be seen. That was a prank. That was somebody out there waiting for people to drive by. I don’t think an animal would have acted that way." However, the article goes on to note that he gave the only copy of the photo to "to Sallie Ann Clarke of Benbrook, who not only saw the monster but wrote a homespun book, The Lake Worth Monster of Greer Island, Ft. Worth, Texas." Clarke states in the article that "she thinks she has Plaster’s original photo somewhere. She also stuck by her story and said that Plaster now laughs it off out of embarrassment. 'We all saw that thing at the lake that summer,' she said. 'A lot of people saw it.'"

In his book Bigfoot: Encounters Past & Present veteran Bigfoot investigator, Daniel Perez, of BigfootTimes.net states that this is what he "was able to learn talking with the late Sallie Ann Clarke by telephone."

Allen Plaster, then about 34, was out "monster hunting," and Sallie had met him "numerous times." The monster was in a ditch when the picture was taken. It was shot from the driver's side from a car on a dirt road. Two witnesses were present. Because it was in a ditch with weeds and grass noted in the picture it is seen from the waist up. It is a Polaroid picture, so there is no negative. It was stated based on a tree to the right of the subject, the animal was about 7 feet 2 inches tall and white in color. Could it have been an albino Bigfoot?

On cryptomundo.com, New York investigator Brian Gaugler, had this to say in response to Bud Kennedy's article:

As usual for the skeptical side, Mr. Kennedy fails to think his arguments through very carefully. First, the Lake Worth Monster was witnessed by many people, and you’re telling me none of them could tell that this was a supposed gorilla suit? (not to mention that the description sounds nothing like a gorilla suit) What about the goat hooves and other unusual details, how did the alleged pranksters even walk around much less run as fast as the monster did? If the technology didn’t exist in 1967 to make as convincing a creature as appeared in the Patterson-Gimlin film, then I highly doubt some teenagers in 1969 would have been able to make a suit so convincing that it fooled dozens of people. Secondly, and maybe this is my own ignorance, but I’m unsure how someone in a gorilla suit would have been able to toss a tire 500 feet, and on a separate occasion, swim to Greer Island, since suits like that usually tend to limit mobility, not make them into an Olympic athlete. Third, I have to agree with Clarke and say that Plaster may be downplaying his sighting and photo out of embarrassment, after all there is still a certain stigma in our society to look down our noses at anyone who has had an unusual experience. To explain away the entire Lake Worth Monster event as just sightings of a bobcat and stupid teens in a gorilla suit is as insulting to those who genuinely reported something they couldn’t explain, as the government’s “explanation” that a witness who reported observing a fast-moving, disc-shaped craft in reality actually just saw the planet Venus!