The Small Towns That Bet Big on Monsters—and Won
Bigfoot, Mothman, and other unique local cryptids are fueling a mini tourism boom across America.
Every September, tens of thousands of tourists descend on Point Pleasant for its annual Mothman Festival, a three-day event that celebrates the town’s resident cryptid. They come for the costume contests and the chilling eyewitness panels; they stay to caress the statue’s formidable chrome buttocks, curving pert and precious beneath a pair of intricately carved moth wings. They also spend their hard-earned dollars up and down Point Pleasant’s quaint main drag.
Meanwhile, in Fouke, Arkansas, road trippers venture hours out of their way to visit the Fouke Monster Mart and roadside pizza joint. Burlington, Vermont, profits off of its apocryphal lake monster with extensive collegiate baseball merch. Churubusco, Indiana is the alleged birthplace of a monstrous turtle known as the Beast of Busco; lacking the infrastructure for a giant turtle museum, Churubusco celebrates its past via the annual Miss Turtle Days pageant. As population loss accelerates in rural America, these towns are all tapping into a lucrative truth: People love a good scare—especially one they can wear on a T-shirt.
Denny Bellamy, a lifelong Point Pleasant resident, is the longtime tourism director for Mason County, where Point Pleasant is located. He says the Mothman Festival costs the town up to $50,000 in overtime staffing, which is pocket change compared to the weekend’s profits. “It’s still a multi-million dollar event,” he says. “It’s like Christmas in Point Pleasant.”
Morrison’s social marketing strategy is simple. She doesn’t rely on a large budget or influencer endorsements; she just provides information about an undeniably fascinating figure. “Honestly, I think [our success] is a lucky mix of things, such as finding ways to relate to people who naturally flock to cryptids and connecting with them in ways that are both authentic and a little weird,” Morrison says. “And you can't go wrong with making and sharing a good meme or two.”
Venture south to the tiny town of Fouke, Arkansas, for another glimpse into the power of monster merch. With a population of just 826, Fouke has become an unlikely global tourist destination, all thanks to Monster Mart, a souvenir outpost and pizza joint dedicated to Fouke’s own cryptid: a Bigfoot-like creature that inspired Charles Pierce’s 1972 cult horror classic, The Legend of Boggy Creek. Today, fans of the film see Fouke as a pilgrimage site of sorts.
Ironside explains that monster tourism, or “legend tripping,” can also have a uniquely spiritual appeal, even for non-believers. “We've moved away from established traditional religions being the only sort of belief systems available to us,” she says.
Of course, monster tourism has its flaws. Every year, Point Pleasant deals with the same infrastructure issues that occur when a town’s population jumps from 4,000 to 45,000 overnight.
https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/...an-bigfoot
Bigfoot, Mothman, and other unique local cryptids are fueling a mini tourism boom across America.
Every September, tens of thousands of tourists descend on Point Pleasant for its annual Mothman Festival, a three-day event that celebrates the town’s resident cryptid. They come for the costume contests and the chilling eyewitness panels; they stay to caress the statue’s formidable chrome buttocks, curving pert and precious beneath a pair of intricately carved moth wings. They also spend their hard-earned dollars up and down Point Pleasant’s quaint main drag.
Meanwhile, in Fouke, Arkansas, road trippers venture hours out of their way to visit the Fouke Monster Mart and roadside pizza joint. Burlington, Vermont, profits off of its apocryphal lake monster with extensive collegiate baseball merch. Churubusco, Indiana is the alleged birthplace of a monstrous turtle known as the Beast of Busco; lacking the infrastructure for a giant turtle museum, Churubusco celebrates its past via the annual Miss Turtle Days pageant. As population loss accelerates in rural America, these towns are all tapping into a lucrative truth: People love a good scare—especially one they can wear on a T-shirt.
Denny Bellamy, a lifelong Point Pleasant resident, is the longtime tourism director for Mason County, where Point Pleasant is located. He says the Mothman Festival costs the town up to $50,000 in overtime staffing, which is pocket change compared to the weekend’s profits. “It’s still a multi-million dollar event,” he says. “It’s like Christmas in Point Pleasant.”
Morrison’s social marketing strategy is simple. She doesn’t rely on a large budget or influencer endorsements; she just provides information about an undeniably fascinating figure. “Honestly, I think [our success] is a lucky mix of things, such as finding ways to relate to people who naturally flock to cryptids and connecting with them in ways that are both authentic and a little weird,” Morrison says. “And you can't go wrong with making and sharing a good meme or two.”
Venture south to the tiny town of Fouke, Arkansas, for another glimpse into the power of monster merch. With a population of just 826, Fouke has become an unlikely global tourist destination, all thanks to Monster Mart, a souvenir outpost and pizza joint dedicated to Fouke’s own cryptid: a Bigfoot-like creature that inspired Charles Pierce’s 1972 cult horror classic, The Legend of Boggy Creek. Today, fans of the film see Fouke as a pilgrimage site of sorts.
Ironside explains that monster tourism, or “legend tripping,” can also have a uniquely spiritual appeal, even for non-believers. “We've moved away from established traditional religions being the only sort of belief systems available to us,” she says.
Of course, monster tourism has its flaws. Every year, Point Pleasant deals with the same infrastructure issues that occur when a town’s population jumps from 4,000 to 45,000 overnight.
https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/...an-bigfoot
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
