Long before the word Bigfoot existed, long before the Patterson–Gimlin film, and long before modern cryptozoology, Tennessee had its own name for the creature that haunted the deep woods: The Wildman.

The stories were old, older than statehood, older than the Civil War, and they were kept alive not by scientists or organized investigators, but by frontier journalists, rural historians, and later folklorists who treated these accounts as part of the region’s living memory.

He was clearing a path he regularly used for target shooting when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed movement near the ravine. He stopped the mower and looked more closely. A large shape was walking away from him through the undergrowth. He saw only its back, no face.