BEAST FEST: Estimates of 10,000 or more expected for Bladenboro’s annual bash

BLADENBORO — According to local lore, a goat lay dead, its nose chomped off.

The carcass of a hog was found, the entire front-end eaten and most of its bones broken. Six or seven or maybe even eight dogs were killed, their heads badly mangled and their bodies supposedly sucked dry of their blood with the zest of a fiendish vampire.

Following a year-long absence in the COVID-19 wild, the fabled Beast of Bladenboro will be making its return this weekend.

The 14th incarnation of Boost the ’Boro’s Beast Fest is expected to draw thousands of people to the downtown district. Due to COVID-19 mandates, last year’s festival was scratched.

A crowd estimated at between 9,000 and 10,000 people attended the 2019 celebration, and an even larger throng is anticipated for the event being held Friday and Saturday.

“The buzz is really going. We’re having a lot of people respond,” said Terry Nance, president of the sponsoring Boost the ’Boro. “We really are expecting a record turnout. Our support this year is outstanding, including the sponsorships.”

This time around, Nance, the board of directors and staff of Boost the ’Boro feel satisfied to resume the town’s main street fair and celebration.

“It’s completely an outdoor event, and there is plenty of room for people to move around in an open-air environment,” stated a news release to promote the event. “Safety and inclusion are the two guiding principles of Beast Fest, and we encourage people to use common sense and take the precautions they feel necessary.”

The festival serves as the organization’s primary source of fundraising as proceeds go “right back into the community to support a variety of community projects, including scholarships, donations for special causes, property improvements and renovations throughout the town, and other initiatives” aimed at making the area a better place to live.

“It’s by far the biggest community event we have,” Nance said. “People just love to come out and support us. They’ll see people they haven’t seen in years. A lot of people have class reunions during the weekend.”

Admission is free.

A pecan pie baking contest is one of the new vendor activities being held this year. Cash prizes will be awarded to the top three entries based on both taste and appearance, according to officials with the event.

Like the beast itself, the Beast Fest Collard Sandwich will be back this year.

In addition to sampling the food on hand, festival-goers can spend time browsing a hodgepodge of arts, crafts, jewelry, clothing and what-not from over a confirmed 50 vendors for Saturday.

Bladenboro Mayor Rufus Duckworth called the festival “very, very important” to his town of roughly 1,500 residents.

“It brings people into Bladenboro from outside the community. They get to see what we are in Bladenboro. How close we are,” he said. “We have a lot of vendor booths that are local people. Both the food and yard sale type stuff. Gives them an opportunity to showcase their stuff. It really brings the community together.

“You’ve got the Strawberry Festival. The Peanut Festival. The White Lake Water Festival. We wanted to have something in Bladenboro,” Duckworth continued. “So we put our heads together — ‘What were we ever famous for? Or, infamous, whatever way you want to look at it?’ It was the beast. We come up with having the Beast Fest.”

Origins

The year was 1954. January of 1954.

The woods around Bladenboro were full of hunters. Big catlike tracks had been found, and a doghouse door had been shredded to ribbons by what appeared to be talons. The late Roy Fores, who served as the police chief at the time, warned parents to keep a close eye on their children.

As the story goes, a large, catlike animal with a round face was sighted near town as it dragged a dog into the underbrush. A mill worker named Lloyd Clemmons claimed to have seen the beast, telling The Associated Press wire service that it was about 3 feet long, 20 inches high and had a tail about 14 inches long.

It was dark in color, Clemmons said.

One night, a mob of roughly 500 men, most of them armed, gathered near the cotton mill section of town once a woman reported that she almost had been attacked in her yard.

Some say it was all a hoax, one that blighted the reputation of the town 67 years ago. Whether fact or fable, the notorious beast put the town of Bladenboro on the map.

Weekend

The Beast Fest continues to make the town a destination.

The children’s Halloween costume contest, a real crowd pleaser, gets underway at 4 p.m. Saturday. Competition will be divided into four age categories for children. Parents can stop by the Boost the ’Boro tents and preregister their child by 3 p.m. Saturday.

Other activities during the festival include free face painting for the kids, free horse wagon rides, balloon art, carnival games and, for the first time, a cornhole tournament. That horseshoes-like competition will be staged Saturday afternoon with a $250 prize to the winners, according to the news release.

The featured entertainment — Gary Lowder & Smokin’ Hot, a soulful outfit complete with soaring brass section out of Myrtle Beach — is set to hit the festival stage at 7 p.m. Saturday.

The official grand opening ceremony takes place at 10 a.m. on Saturday, with Fayetteville radio WKML air personality Sarah Weaver handling the master-of-ceremonies duties.

The Beast of Bladenboro — or B.O.B, as some folks know it — will make an appearance during the ceremony.

“It’s a cross between a suited-up black panther and a mountain lion,” Nance said of the official festival mascot.

On Friday afternoon, the opening day, the carnival rides should be installed and ready to give visitors some seat-of-the-pants excitement. In previous years, the amusement Fun Time Carnival Rides offered a “one-pay” wrist band on Fridays from approximately 5 p.m. until the festival closes for the day at 10 p.m. The rides will be in operation on Saturday until closing time.

Come Friday evening, The North Tower Band will perform. The veteran group has established a reputation as one of the South’s go-to party bands, cranking out a gumbo of Top 40, beach, funk and oldies for young and old alike.

A classic car show — like the bloomin’ onion and funnel cake, always a street fair perennial in this neck of the woods — will be displayed Saturday from 8:30 a.m. until 3 p.m.

“We decided to just do it in the last weekend in October since you’ve got a beast and Halloween all together,” Duckworth said of the town celebration. “And that’s how we come up with having a Beast Fest.”