The Bigfoot Paradox

By Rebecca Coyte

Onion Weed, Tennessee, population 839—or more if you count the bigfoots living in the woods, and all of the bigfoot hunters that have invaded the town searching for the creatures.

J.T. Meeks is a shy 12-year-old kid who has always been interested in finding a bigfoot. When he gets mixed up with Billy Matrix, the self-proclaimed authority on the "North American Bipedal Great Ape", things get interesting—and dangerous.

How will J.T. find his place in this world of bigfoot hunting—a world filled with telepathic psychics, vicious hunters, know-it-all anthropologists, spiritual hippie surfers, and self-promoting media personalities. J.T. soon discovers that there is more to the bigfoot legend than meets the eye, as he uncovers his true destiny and learns much about himself in the process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rebecca Coyte
• Release date: Mar 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310868634

Rebecca Coyte

Rebecca Coyte has been fascinated with mysterious creatures and tales of the paranormal since she was a child. After teaching fifth grade for 11 years, she decided to write her first middle grades novel, The Bigfoot Paradox, in the hopes of entertaining and inspiring both young readers and adults to always follow their hearts.

Book preview

Prologue

June 4, 1995

Dear Loved One,

If you are reading this letter, then it means that I am dead and gone. It has never been my intention to burden my family with secrets, which is why I have kept silent all of these long years. I could not however, in good conscience, meet my maker without telling the truth to someone. By default, that someone is you.

I fear that it will be your decision to choose what you shall do with this information. You may decide to tear this letter to bits and burn it, never speaking of it with anyone. Perhaps you may conclude that I am not quite right in the head, and what I have written here is nothing more than the ravings of an aging and demented mind. But if you honor my wishes, the secret will then become yours to do with as you choose. I can only hope that you would exercise caution and empathy in your dealings with the subjects of this letter.

As a boy, I spent a large portion of my time exploring the woods surrounding our small farm. I became a keen observer of all things natural and immersed myself in this world. I was a student of the forest, and learned by seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting all there was to experience. During these childhood years, I became acutely aware that I was not alone during my explorations. I was surrounded by all varieties of life and wild animals. Still, there remained one species that continually eluded me—yet I knew it was there, watching me and marveling at my existence as I marveled at its.

Oftentimes from the corner of my eye, a large shadow would pass through the thicket, quick and fleeting, one second there, the next gone. I heard sounds not made by any known creature, but that were too human to be coyote, bear, or wild boar, yet too animalistic to be a person. The howling, hooting, piercing screams often woke me from a dead sleep, my heart pounding with so much intensity that I would sometimes forget to breathe.

During those early years, my most concrete observations consisted of enormous footsteps that would sometimes appear in the muddy banks of the creek. The prints were of bare feet, much like a man’s, but of gigantic proportions. I would place my own foot inside the impressions for scale, and I knew that even as an adult my feet would never grow to be that length and girth; I was already a tall boy by the time of my discovery, with above average sized feet.

I asked myself over and over—what kind of man could be so wild and cunning as to exist undetected all of this time? I made it my life’s mission to discover the truth.

So I began to set traps, snares mostly. I was young and naive and I’m sure it amused the creatures to watch my feeble attempts to ensnare them. They would gladly take the bait that I had set out, and easily avoid all attempts at capture. We danced this dance for many years, until it became a friendship of sorts. I began to not so much want to capture the beasts as to befriend them.

This is only the beginning of my story, but I hesitate to divulge additional information should this letter fall into the wrong hands.

I am an old, arthritic man and don’t get to the woods much these days, but I still feel concern and fear for their survival. As people encroach upon the forest and begin to turn more of it into shopping centers and housing developments, the creatures are being forced into a smaller and smaller range. What will become of them?

My only hope now is that they remain undiscovered and unharmed by people who would see them murdered in order to have a trophy to hang on their wall, or acquire the fame and fortune that one might accrue when discovering a new species. The time I spent amongst these creatures has taught me that they are more human than animal, and they deserve to be treated as such.

So as a final request, I would like to know if you would become the new guardian of my friends in the woods. There may come a day when they will need you, as this ever-changing world evolves. If you are the right kind of person, they will make you aware of their presence when the time comes. I hope that one of you reading this letter will be the right kind of person.

I thank you kindly for honoring my request, if you choose to do so. If you choose to do nothing, do know that putting these words to paper and the knowledge that my loved ones will someday read them lifts a great burden from my shoulders—the secret that I have been harboring all of these long and lonely years. You, dear reader, have given an old man peace of mind and for that I am eternally grateful.

Affectionately yours,

Silas Meeks

Chapter 1

Things were getting weird in Onion Weed. Or maybe things had always been weird, but J.T. never realized it. When you live in a town with a name like Onion Weed, weird things seem pretty commonplace. The name apparently came from the Cherokee word Nun Yunu Wi which meant Stone Man, but somehow, due to years of mispronunciation and country slang, it morphed into its current version. J.T. didn’t worry too much about being from a town with a strange name, he was more concerned with the strange things happening in his town.

Onion Weed had become Bigfoot Central amidst the recent craze of bigfoot (popularly known as sasquatch) hunting happening throughout the country. There had been an inordinate amount of sightings in Onion Weed, enough to put what was once a sleepy town on the map, at least for cryptozoologists—those monster hunters that spent all of their time looking for the likes of El Chupacabra and the Mothman.

Lots of outsiders calling themselves Bigfooters or ‘Squatchers were all of the sudden poking around, riding into town on big campers equipped with the latest sasquatch hunting equipment such as thermal imaging cameras and floodlights. Some of the bigfoot hunters had silly sayings airbrushed onto the side of their buses, like Squatch Watch, Gone Bigfootin, and I Brake for Bigfoot!

The most prominent of these intruders called himself Billy Matrix. Most folks assumed that Matrix wasn’t his real name. J.T. figured that Billy gave himself this new moniker to sound cooler and more mysterious—or that he was just a huge Keanu Reeves fan. Billy Matrix had declared himself the leading expert on bigfoots and an authority on the North American Bipedal Great Ape, which according to most scientists didn’t actually exist.

Billy Matrix had set up a temporary home base at the local public radio station, WBIG, and had a nightly call-in talk show in which he spoke with locals about their experiences with the elusive creatures.

He would field all types of calls, from the bizarre—Bigfoot ran off with