In the winter of 1978, people around Carpenter’s Knob in Cleveland County, North Carolina, started reporting something extraordinary in their woods. A big, dark, hairy creature. Strange cries after nightfall. Tracks nobody could agree on. Before long, hundreds of people were gathering in this quiet corner of the foothills, hoping to catch a glimpse of a mystery they had already given a name: Knobby.

And this wasn’t an old legend pieced together generations later. Reporters were there while it was happening. They interviewed witnesses, followed the search parties, drew a map of the sightings, and eventually filmed a television special. You can still watch that broadcast today.

It started with Minnie Cook

One of the earliest widely reported witnesses was Minnie Cook, 88, who said she encountered an unfamiliar creature near her home on December 21, 1978. Later accounts described the figure as standing roughly 50 to 75 yards away. She was frightened enough that family members told the Gastonia Gazette she began carrying a rifle when she went outdoors.

Others around Toluca and Casar were reporting things, too. Neighbors talked about unsettling screams from the woods, animal tracks and glimpses of something black and hairy along paths and roadsides. The descriptions didn’t even agree on how the thing moved: some said upright, while another account had it on four legs.

By January 21, 1979, the Gastonia Gazette reported at least 16 alleged sightings around Carpenter’s Knob. Reporter Jennie Palmer described country stores full of people swapping Knobby news. Visitors arrived looking for directions to witnesses’ homes. An actual newspaper map marked the places where people said they had seen him.

Then the whole thing turned into a monster hunt

On January 18, Shelby radio station WOHS broadcast from the area as searchers gathered near the foot of the mountain. Around 200 people were reported to have shown up, although estimates varied. Some tramped through the woods. Others stayed by campfires, waiting for something to emerge. Two high school students even skipped class to watch for Knobby.

Meanwhile, a wildlife officer argued that a bear might explain the reports, and warned that the excitement could lead to somebody shooting at the wrong thing. Other theories ranged from a mountain lion to an escaped baboon. There were reports of tracks, hair and an animal den, but none was conclusively linked to any unknown creature.

You have to picture it: January, 1979, up in the foothills. Campfires burning, cars lining the roads, a radio crew broadcasting live, and people peering into the winter woods hoping that a creature nobody could identify would finally step into the light.

Watch the original 1979 Knobby television special

This is my favorite part of the whole story. The television program survived. On February 25, 1979, Charlotte’s WRET-TV aired Knobby: North Carolina’s Bigfoot? Gaston County Public Library includes the original program in its local-history archives. You can watch it right here.

WRET-TV broadcast, February 25, 1979. Video linked in Gaston County Public Library’s Digital Gaston County collection.

So what was Knobby?

Nobody proved there was a Bigfoot in Cleveland County. Nobody caught Knobby, and the reported tracks and hair never settled the question. A bear remains a plausible explanation for at least some of what people saw. Others may have been startled by ordinary wildlife, darkness and a story that grew bigger every time it was told.

But the people, the hunt and the newspaper coverage were real. Minnie Cook was real. The radio broadcast happened. The television special happened. For a little while, northern Cleveland County was the center of one of North Carolina’s best-documented monster mysteries.

And Knobby didn’t disappear from local memory. A new alleged encounter near Casar made headlines in 2010, decades after the original searches. Today Knobby is as much a piece of the region’s folklore as he is an unsolved question about what those first witnesses saw.

There are a thousand reasons we love collecting stories from the North Carolina foothills. An 88-year-old woman, a mysterious creature on a mountain, hundreds of curious neighbors, and a 1979 television special that somehow survived? This is one of them.

Explore the original reporting

• Gaston County Public Library’s Knobby collection, including the 1979 TV special and a contemporary Charlotte Post notice.
• Archival scan of the January 21, 1979 Gastonia Gazette article, “Knobby: Where Is He? What Is He?” by Jennie Palmer.
• WRAL’s Tar Heel Traveler: Knobby of Casar.

Featured artwork is an illustration created for Foothills Digest, not a historical photograph or evidence of an unidentified animal.