The Wilmer Bigfoot Photos Hoax

Big Creek Lake lies west of the city of Mobile, in Mobile County, Alabama. Also called the J. B. Converse Reservoir, it covers about 3,600 acres and supplies Mobile's drinking water. The post would place it in Wilmer, an unincorporated community. In 2022, a Wilmer resident named Kenny Walker and a friend called Taylor planned an April Fools' TikTok about Bigfoot. They were too busy to make it. The video never happened. About two weeks later, Walker posted the story anyway.

The post appeared around 14 or 15 April 2022. It credited a witness who "wishes to remain anonymous." Four photos reportedly showed something or someone walking upright on two feet along a lake. The figure, the post said, was "in the woods on the waters edge." The witness had hesitated at first. "At first I thought it was a grizzly bear, but once I got a better look at it I realized it was definitely a Sasquatch."

Then the claims grew. The Mobile County Sheriff's Office was aware, the post said, and "Big Foot Teams" had been sent to the area. An edit followed. "UPDATE: Mobile County Sheriff's Office just validated the photos." According to Wikipedia's summary, the Finding Bigfoot team had been sent to Big Creek Lake too.

The sheriff's office answered on Facebook. It "cannot confirm." It added a joke of its own. "Kenny….put the pipe down dude," under the hashtags #wecannotconfirm and #kennyfunny. There was no investigation, and no Finding Bigfoot deployment is documented anywhere. The story travelled regardless. NBC 15 ran it under the headline "First the leprechaun and now this?", a nod to the station's famous 2006 Crichton Leprechaun story. Walker said some outlets ran it even after he told them it was a joke.

On 15 April, Walker explained himself to NBC 15. "It's a friend of mine, Taylor. We decided to make a TikTok video for April fools but it didn't work out as planned." He said he "did not expect it do what it's done."

On 18 April he went on the air with 95.3 The Bear. "I want to apologize to my hometown police department (MCSO) and the citizens of Mobile County for wasting their time," he said. "There is no bigfoot on big creek lake." The photos were not his. "I posted the pictures that have been circling the internet for years." They only "resemble Big Creek Lake." According to Grunge, the department found the joke funny and did not pursue charges.

The Wilmer post was not entirely original. In July 2021, a post about Henry County, Virginia, said the sheriff's department had validated the photos and the Finding Bigfoot team had been deployed. That office said it had "not seen or validated any images." Around the same time, a post about Lake Cumberland, Kentucky, carried the identical grizzly bear line.

The pictures may be older still. A set first posted in 2013 claimed to show a figure walking along the bank of Table Rock Lake, Missouri. A Stilwell Democrat columnist called it someone in a gorilla costume, noting fake fur that "drapes down in places and does not adhere to any muscles." No source ties the Wilmer photos to that set. Walker's description fits it closely all the same.

Wikipedia's Bigfoot article now lists the episode among its hoaxes. Grunge counted it among the most unconvincing Bigfoot sightings in history. It stands apart from Alabama's other reports, such as a 2016 Clarke County report to the BFRO. At Big Creek Lake, there was no witness. There was no sighting. There was only a story, and how far it ran.