7 days ago
Festival honoring legendary cryptid held in Kentucky
STANTON, Ky. (FOX 56) — People from all over the country came to a small Kentucky town over the weekend to talk about a 'big' legend.
One of America's most famous cryptids now has a festival in its honor in Kentucky. Stanton held its first-ever Bigfoot Festival on Friday and Saturday.
Tourism leaders said the crowd was much larger than anticipated, with thousands of people coming to buy souvenirs and hear stories from cryptid investigators.
'You come with an open mind, and most people we talk to feel very safe here. If you talk about Bigfoot in certain circles, you're gonna get laughed at. Here, everybody's either here because they believe or they want to believe, so that makes it good,' said Steve Lindsey.
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Investigators claim there have been dozens of reported sightings of Bigfoot in the Red River Gorge area.
FOX 56 previously reported that there were just under 400 Bigfoot sightings, with the top five counties being:
Counties
Sightings
% of sightings
Anderson
27
6.78%
Bullitt
26
6.53%
Ohio
16
4.02%
Carter
15
3.77%
Adair
14
3.52%
Interest in Bigfoot became popularized in 1958 after Ray Wallace, a road contractor working in northern California, made plaster impressions of giant footprints that he found near his worksite.
The founder of the Kentucky Bigfoot Research Organization, Charlie Raymond, previously told FOX 56 that he had investigated more than 500 credible sightings.
'Well, I moved to Kentucky about 30 years ago, and I knew there had to be Bigfoots in Kentucky,' Raymond said.
Read more of the latest Kentucky news
Organizers of the event said they already have ideas of how to make the festival more legendary in 2026.
Matthew Duckworth contributed to this story.
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