Before Lena Crain, only a few pairs of wide eyes had caught a glimpse of the elusive Bardin Booger, the half-ape, half-man rumored to roam deep in the backwoods of northeast Florida.

Before Lena Crain, encounters with this hairy creature made grown men squeal while stories of “Big Foot’s southern cousin” buzzed throughout the community of Bardin.

The Booger certainly wasn’t someone you invited to your neighborhood Christmas party or town fair. But that was before Crain, now 66, became Palatka County’s unofficial mascot, “Booger Junior.”

Crain has been dressing up as the Bardin Booger in the North Florida community for more than 25 years. To her, the legend of the Booger is more than just a campfire tale or ghost story; it is the inspiration for a life spent making people smile.

Standing barely taller than 5 feet, Crain doesn’t make the most convincing Booger. The edges of her mouth are creased from decades of smiling, and beneath her reading glasses, powder-blue eyes do anything but startle. But when she climbs into her Booger suit, a gorilla costume she stitched pointy ears onto, the legendary creature comes alive.

Crain first heard of the Booger when she moved from West Virginia and married her late husband, Billy, a local country music singer who lived on 7.5 acres of land near the Bardin woods. Her husband’s fascination with the Booger sparked her own interest in the creature’s mystery.

She has never seen the Booger herself but relies on friends’ accounts as evidence. In her home, she keeps a file cabinet stuffed with news clippings and other documented encounters.

Her friend Sally says she saw the Booger while driving down Bardin Road.

“It was at least 8 feet tall and could step right over a fence without touching it,” Lena says, stretching an arm above her head to explain its size. “She was too scared to check for foot prints so she took right off.”

Crain’s daughter, Darlene Kistler, 47, had her first and only brush with the Booger long before her mother started performing. Kistler, then 17, was riding Grubby, a stubborn old horse known for taking his time, down a dirt road that disappears into the Bardin woods. She and her best friend had moseyed “way out in the sticks,” when a thrashing thump broke the stillness of the afternoon.

“Whatever was in the woods was very large, stalking us and didn't want to be seen,” Kistler says about that day.

The thumps grew louder with every slow step Grubby took, but when Kistler was brave enough to look over her shoulder, the trees were too tall and tangled to reveal the source of the noise. When the steps sounded like they finally caught up, Grubby took off in a full gallop—perhaps the first gallop of his long life.

“Shoot, I never even knew he could run,” Kistler says.

She never saw what it was that startled her horse, but she likes to think that it was the Bardin Booger.

According to most accounts, the Booger doesn’t attack humans. However, throughout the years, it has been blamed for the disappearance of an unlucky dog or two. It never growls or makes a sound except, of course, for the thud of its footsteps. He is most notorious for snatching sheets from drying lines and pies from kitchen windowsills.

In Crain’s Palatka home, among wooden panel walls covered in sepia family portraits and shelves crowded with Booger memorabilia, a hand-sewn Booger doll her sister made represents the elusive creature with red beads for eyes, a pug nose and tall pointy ears.

“It’s real big, real tall and real hairy,” Crain says.

Local farmers, fox hunters and motorists reported similar encounters with the creature throughout the early ‘80s. Rick Cheshire, former area editor of the Palatka Daily News, was one of the first to cover the story that most folks only told in hushed voices.

In his news story, “The Legends of Bardin’s Booger,” published in February of 1981, he describes the many versions of the creature, which range from the wild man Crain speaks of to a “Bardin Light” that follows your car at night. In a story published two months later, Cheshire describes one of the most famous Booger sightings.

On a typical Thursday night, Bardin local Doodle Feagin was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck chatting with a handful of friends. His buddy Doug Crews spotted the Booger walking quickly toward them. It was about 30 feet away from the truck pug nose and tall pointy ears.

“It’s real big, real tall and real hairy,” Crain says.

Local farmers, fox hunters and motorists reported similar encounters with the creature throughout the early ‘80s. Rick Cheshire, former area editor of the Palatka Daily News, was one of the first to cover the story that most folks only told in hushed voices.

In his news story, “The Legends of Bardin’s Booger,” published in February of 1981, he describes the many versions of the creature, which range from the wild man Crain speaks of to a “Bardin Light” that follows your car at night. In a story published two months later, Cheshire describes one of the most famous Booger sightings.

On a typical Thursday night, Bardin local Doodle Feagin was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup truck chatting with a handful of friends. His buddy Doug Crews spotted the Booger walking quickly toward them. It was about 30 feet away from the truck when it turned back around, leaving those who didn’t sprint away with their jaws on the floor.

“The stories all seem to melt into one. And they all lead to the same thing,” Cheshire wrote. “There’s something in those woods!”

During the height of the Booger buzz, Crain encouraged her husband, Billy, who loved Elvis and ’50s rock ‘n’ roll, to write a few songs about the Booger. His song aired on April 5, 1981, and the phone lines of WIYD FM in Palatka were with jammed with callers begging for copies of the “Ballad of the Bardin Booger.” It was an international hit played on radio stations in Belgium, New Zealand, France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Australia.

“People were out here climbing my fence to get a copy,” Crain says. As records, along with homemade Booger T-shirts and hats, flew off the shelves of Bud’s Grocery, Crain decided to order a gorilla costume and join her husband’s act.

“Mothers used to tell their children to behave or the Booger was gonna get you,” she says. But her version of the Booger wouldn’t harm a fly. For Lena, being the Booger is about making children laugh and smile. At local Halloween festivals, the Booger waits outside haunted houses comforting children who get too scared by ghosts and goblins.

From the early ’80s until the mid-’90s, the Booger rarely missed community events, and he could be found dancing to Billy Crain’s music at grand openings, festivals, flea markets and telethons.

The Crains’ act helped catapult the Booger into small-town stardom. In north-central Florida, the Booger may have more fans than that famous mouse in Orlando. Children would rather wait in line for a picture on the Booger’s lap than on Santa’s.

Crain’s daughter, Kistler, especially enjoys when “Booger Junior” performs at annual family reunions in West Virginia. Her son, Ethan, 16, grew up dressing as the “Baby Bardin Booger” whenever his grandmother visited.

When asked if she believes in the “real” Bardin Booger, Kistler answers without hesitation.

“Yes, of course I do,” she says. “You know, it’s like believing in Santa. Common sense tells you he is not real, but why destroy the dream? We all need a little mystery and excitement.”

University of Florida anthropologist David Daegling, who specializes in primate anatomy and biomechanics, first met Crain while investigating the legend of the Bardin Booger for his book “Bigfoot Exposed.”
“
Lena understands the value of what this legend does for the community,” Daegling explains. “Whether there is really something lurking in the Bardin woods or not, the legend of the Booger offers residents a sense of community identity and unity.
Lena has made the Booger a sort of goodwill ambassador and mascot of the area.”

Lena keeps dozens of crayon-colored fan letters and thank you notes that she has received during her 25-year reign as the Booger.

Several years ago, a little girl, “about knee high,” fell in love with the Booger in St. Augustine. “All day she was riding on the Booger’s heels,” Lena says. “She told me that if one day I retired, she would carry on the tradition.”

But Lena assures fans that there is plenty more Booger inside her. Since her husband passed in 1992, she has recorded new songs, including a compilation Christmas CD, “The Bardin Booger’s Christmas Wish,” which she sends all over the world.
In 2001, her Christmas song also topped radio charts by hitting number one on the Top 30 Independent Christmas songs. She continues to see it on radio play lists around the world.
The Booger costume, which she keeps in a worn, red leather suitcase in the corner of her living room, still comes out for events around town about two or three times a year.

“I had thought about retiring the Bardin Booger after my husband passed, but the public wouldn’t let me,” she says. “He kept coming up at different functions, and I kept getting calls about him.”

As for the “real” Bardin Booger, Lena guesses that he migrated to a more wooded part of Florida to avoid the limelight, and most townsfolk agree. But even if he never returns, Lena is sure that the legend will live on forever through songs and the generations of children she and her husband have entertained.

“Look what Walt Disney did with the little house mouse,” she says. “The mice were real, and he just took them further. That’s what we did with the Bardin Booger.”