Bigfoot Stomp Weekend: Inside Indiana's Bigfoot-Themed Bluegrass Festival

From August 13 through 16, the Winding Creek Music Festival in western Howard County, Indiana — ten miles west of Kokomo — went full Sasquatch. Organizer Bob Auth rebranded the four-day bluegrass gathering as Bigfoot Stomp Weekend. There was a Bigfoot Stomp Dance contest, a Bigfoot 5K trail run with "sightings" planted along the route, chainsaw carvings by Chaz Chiafos auctioned off for charity, Jack Fivecoat talks on local research, and a Bigfoot scavenger hunt for the kids. The crowd was the biggest in the festival's history. And underneath the foam costumes and the banjo tunes, there's a real story: the central Indiana woods around Kokomo have been quietly going Sasquatch-crazy all summer, and Winding Creek is the first festival in the state to put the legend on the marquee.

What Was the Bigfoot Stomp?

According to the Clinton County Daily News announcement and the Kokomo Lantern feature on Bob Auth, the Bigfoot Stomp was a thematic overlay across the festival's existing bluegrass schedule. It wasn't a separate event — it was the festival itself, but with Bigfoot everywhere. From the Winding Creek festival site:

• Bigfoot Stomp Dance contest — Saturday night at 9 PM, all ages welcome, with a Bigfoot mascot playing banjo alongside Branded Bluegrass
• Bigfoot 5K Run/Walk — Sunday morning trail run with "Bigfoot sightings" hidden along the route, hand-carved Bigfoot trophies for every category winner (carved by Bob Auth himself)
• Bigfoot Talks with Jack Fivecoat — field-research presentations from a longtime Indiana Bigfoot researcher
• Live chainsaw carving by renowned artist Chaz Chiafos, producing a one-of-a-kind Bigfoot sculpture auctioned Sunday at 4 PM
• Bigfoot scavenger hunt for kids at 2 PM Sunday
• A "Jesus/Bigfoot" scavenger hunt combo — yes, really — woven into the festival's Sunday programming

Sunday was framed as the centerpiece. Half of all Sunday ticket proceeds went to the Turnabout Community Resource Center in nearby Russiaville — a community benefit baked into the festival's Bigfoot weekend.

"People who attend this year's festival are almost assured of seeing Bigfoot, a yeti, or even a gorilla roaming through the brush Aug. 13–16. And that famous Neanderthal will show up all over the festival grounds, from food and gifts to dances and the 5K run/walk."
— Bob Auth, Winding Creek festival organizer (Kokomo Lantern)

The Lineup — and Why a Bluegrass Festival Went Sasquatch

Winding Creek is, at heart, one of central Indiana's premier traditional bluegrass festivals. This year's headliners and featured acts included Dave Adkins & Mountain Soul, the Kody Norris Show, Branded Bluegrass, Brad & Lori's Mini Opry Show, Acoustic Collection, Booze Hounds Bluegrass, Blue Holler, Cornfields & Crossroads, and Bahler Golden Age. Add in jam sessions, adult and children's music workshops, food and craft vendors, free primitive RV and tent camping, walking trails, and a "Turnabout benefit day" with church service and family activities — and you have a four-day, family-friendly, deeply regional festival that just happens to be in the middle of central Indiana Sasquatch country.

The Bigfoot pivot wasn't random. As Auth explained to the Kokomo Lantern, the organizers had been planting Bigfoot-adjacent pranks at past festivals — gorilla suits popping out of the brush, surprise appearances — and the response was always enthusiastic. "That's what kind of kicked me into this Bigfoot thing," Auth said. "We're going to have Bigfoot, a yeti, and a gorilla. They'll be playing a banjo, even. It's going to be a big time!"

The 5K in particular became a small sensation. Last year's race drew 39 runners; this year Auth was hoping for 70+, driven by demand for the hand-carved Bigfoot trophies he makes himself. "I've already had people say they're coming because they want one of those trophies," he said. "I'd love to see 70 or more runners. I'd be tickled!"

So Why Kokomo? Why Howard County?

Here's where the festival stops being a sideshow and starts being a story. The Winding Creek grounds sit on the edge of one of the most quietly active Sasquatch corridors we've documented all year. The Kokomo Lantern piece — published by the Community Foundation Serving Howard, Clinton, and Carroll Counties — frames the festival in that light, and for good reason.

Howard County is the home of the viral "NotKokomoScanner" Bigfoot sighting near a historic covered bridge — a reported encounter from earlier in 2026 that lit up local social media. The area sits between two corridors we've been tracking:

• The Mississinewa Triangle — the central Indiana corridor we named in August, stretching from Marion to Wabash to Peru along the Mississinewa River, with steady Bigfoot activity for years
• The Whitewater River corridor that runs west toward Connersville, where a July trail-cam caught a bipedal figure on camera

Howard, Clinton, and Carroll counties — the three counties the Kokomo Lantern piece explicitly highlights as the festival's audience — are all deeply forested, low-population, and threaded with creeks, river bottoms, and old farm woodlots. The exact kind of country Bigfoot researchers have flagged as Sasquatch habitat for decades. And central Indiana, in 2026, has been unusually active.

The Kokomo Corridor in 2026

We covered the Mississinewa Triangle two weeks ago. The Connersville trail-cam capture is in our July archive. The Brazil Public Library hosted a Bigfoot researcher in early August. The Indiana Bigfoot Center just opened in Brown County. And now, on August 13–16, a bluegrass festival in Howard County went full Bigfoot and pulled record crowds.

You don't have to believe in Sasquatch to see the pattern. Central Indiana in 2026 has had more Sasquatch-flavored activity — sightings, festivals, research talks, museum openings, news coverage — than at any point in the last fifteen years. The Bigfoot Stomp wasn't created out of nothing. It landed in soil that was already tilled.

"The 5K will be going on, and Bigfoot sightings will be on the trail. If people want an interesting 5K trail run or walk, this is it. And there's no telling what they're going to see on that trail!"
— Bob Auth (Kokomo Lantern)

Why This Matters for the Heartland Sasquatch Map

Most people still think of Sasquatch country as either the Pacific Northwest or the Appalachians. The Midwest — and especially the farmland-and-timber counties of central Indiana — has been written off as too settled, too flat, too populated to host Bigfoot. The Winding Creek Bigfoot Stomp is a useful counter-narrative. It says, plainly, that central Indiana already has a Bigfoot culture. It's just been under the radar.

Three things stand out about this festival compared to the bigger Ohio and Kentucky Bigfoot events we've covered:

1. It's community-organized, not regional-promoted. Winding Creek isn't a tourism-board Bigfoot festival. It's a working bluegrass festival run by a small team of organizers who decided to lean into the Bigfoot lore already in their backyard.
2. It's family-first. The scavenger hunt, the kids' music, the family Sunday pass, the Turnabout benefit — this is Bigfoot as small-town Americana, not Bigfoot as national-tour sideshow.
3. It ties directly to research. Jack Fivecoat — a long-time central Indiana Bigfoot researcher — gave scheduled talks. The festival put a local researcher on the same stage as the headliners. That's rare, and it's exactly what a healthy regional Sasquatch community looks like.

What's Next for Winding Creek — and for Indiana

If the Bigfoot Stomp pulls the numbers Bob Auth is hoping for, expect the theme to return in 2027 — bigger, louder, and with more researchers and carving artists on the bill. The Winding Creek site already promotes the festival as a multi-year annual tradition, and the Bigfoot layer slots cleanly into the format.

More broadly, the Indiana Sasquatch calendar keeps filling up. The Indiana Bigfoot Conference hits Brown County on September 25–26, 2026 — Marc DeWerth, M.K. Davis, LeRoy Nail, Adam Davies on stage. Charlie Raymond's Kentucky Bigfoot talk at the Taylor County Public Library is September 5. The Owensboro Blue Bridge Squatch Fest is September 26. And central Indiana now has its own community-driven Bigfoot weekend, run out of a barn with a banjo and a carved-wood trophy.

The woods are talking. Indiana's starting to listen out loud.

Watch the Promo

We cut a quick TikTok promo for the Stomp — moody, no creatures, just the feel of an Indiana festival field at the edge of dawn.

Sources:
• Clinton County Daily News — Winding Creek Music Festival Announces BigFoot Stomp Weekend for August 2026
• Kokomo Lantern — Something's stomping at Winding Creek (Community Foundation Serving Howard, Clinton, and Carroll Counties)
• Winding Creek Music Festival — official site
• Winding Creek Music Festival — Bands & Schedule
• Winding Creek Bluegrass Festival — Facebook (Aug 2026 updates)
• Indiana State Festivals Association — Winding Creek BigFoot Stomp announcement (Aug 4, 2026)
• NotKokomoScanner — Bigfoot sighting near historic covered bridge in Kokomo, IN (Mar 2026)