A sudden decline in Bigfoot sightings across southern West Virginia has been traced to a temporary Facebook suspension issued to a man who owns a $79 gorilla suit and has what his wife describes as “too much time after work.”
For nearly six months, residents reported a large, hairy creature wandering creek banks, crossing logging roads, and occasionally doing what witnesses reluctantly identified as the Stanky Leg.
Local cryptid enthusiasts called the footage some of the most compelling evidence ever recorded in the region.
Then somebody recognized the cooler.
“That’s Ricky’s cooler,” said neighbor Donna Mullins, watching a video titled UNEXPLAINED CREATURE SPOTTED NEAR COAL RIVER!!! “I know because he borrowed it for a cookout in June and apparently Bigfoot ain’t brought it back either.”
The discovery led investigators to Ricky Toler, 43, who confirmed he had been making Facebook videos in a Bigfoot costume but disputed suggestions that he had orchestrated an elaborate hoax.
“I was dancing beside a creek holding a gas station hot dog,” Toler said. “The caption said, ‘Bigfoot on his lunch break.’ I don’t know what else I could’ve done.”
Within hours, the video had been shared into seven community groups, three hunting pages, and a private discussion titled WEST VIRGINIA SIGHTINGS THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO SEE.
By the following morning, an online investigator had enhanced the footage enough to identify what he called “a possible juvenile Sasquatch” in the background.
It was a bag of charcoal.
Toler said the videos began as something to do while waiting for his buddy to get ready to ride side-by-sides.
“I put the suit on and walked past his kitchen window,” he said. “He laughed so hard he spilled his coffee. That was pretty much the whole business plan.”
His audience grew after a clip showed the creature emerging from the woods, opening a cooler, and immediately retreating upon discovering there was no beer.
One cryptid page described the footage as evidence of “advanced problem-solving and an apparent understanding of human food storage.”
“My wife commented, ‘Ricky, bring my cooler home,’” Toler said. “They told her to quit muddying the waters.”
Witness descriptions have since undergone substantial revisions.
A creature initially estimated at nine feet tall is now believed to have been approximately six feet, including the part of the costume that won’t stay flattened down.
Reports of “terrifying, unearthly vocalizations” were traced to Toler catching the suit on a barbed-wire fence.
And tracks described as “too large to belong to any known man” were made by rubber costume feet worn over a pair of size-11 Skechers.
“I told them the thing had a limp,” said one witness. “Turns out Ricky’s knee’s been bothering him since he helped move that freezer.”
Not everyone accepts the explanation.
Area Bigfoot researcher Dennis Crum said Toler’s admission raises more questions than it answers.
“That explains Ricky,” Crum said. “It does not explain what my cousin saw in 2009.”
Asked whether his cousin’s sighting could also have involved a costume, Crum said the creature had been observed carrying a plastic grocery bag through a clearing shortly after midnight.
“Nobody knows what was in that bag,” he added.
Crum also pointed to a recent video in which the creature appears to notice the camera and deliberately conceal its face.
Toler said he had been trying to unzip the head so he could answer a call from his mother.
Facebook suspended Toler’s account for seven days after a video of Bigfoot falling out of a lawn chair was repeatedly reported as misleading content.
During the suspension, regional sightings fell by an estimated 94 percent.
The remaining six percent consisted of an old video being shared again and a man in Boone County who maintains he “knows what he seen.”
Toler’s wife, Angie, said the break had been good for the household.
“He fixed the porch step,” she said. “We’ve been asking him since April. Apparently all we needed was for Bigfoot to lose internet privileges.”
Toler expects to resume posting once his account is restored, though he said the attention has made filming more difficult.
“Used to be I could walk out in the woods and do something stupid,” he said. “Now Dennis is out there with a thermal camera asking about my habitat.”
At press time, Toler had ordered a Mothman costume.
Crum called the purchase “a troubling development.”
