Welcome back to The Bigfoot Project.
Tonight's collection of eyewitness encounters takes us
across some of the wildest parts of North America, from the
swamps of Georgia and Florida to the forests of Washington,
Michigan, Connecticut and North Carolina, the mountains of
Wyoming and West Virginia, and the Backcountry of Missouri, the
towering redwoods of Northern California.
You'll hear first hand accounts from campers, hunters, hikers,
homeowners and travelers who all describe have unexpected
encounters with massive, mysterious creatures.
So get comfortable, dim the lights, and let's get into
tonight's stories. This encounter occurred in
Charlton County, Georgia October 2025.
Myself and another adult friend and two teenagers were invited
to an event in Waycross, GA on Saturday, October 18th, 2025.
We made reservations to stay in Folkston, Georgia starting on
Thursday through Sunday to get some rail fanning train spawning
in while we were up there. We got there around 2:00 PM and
unloaded our vehicle and got the tripods out to film the trains
going by. There were 4 tripods in total.
Two of the tripods had LED light panels for videos at night.
The other two tripods had cell phone holders on them so we
could click a cell phone into the holder and get steady videos
of the trains. At around 8:00 PM we started the
charcoal grill up and grilled some filet mignon steaks and hot
dogs. The gentleman that lives next
door has four to five cats that run around and play there.
At around 9:00 PM my friend and I started hearing something in
the brush on the North East side of the cabin across the four
railroad tracks from us. We went down by the tracks on
our side to see if we could see anything.
The other gentleman had his flashlight and shined it right
into the bushes where the noise was coming from and we noticed
green eyes reflecting back and what looked like to be a massive
silhouette of something squatting down.
I was going to start a video when I realized I didn't have my
cell phone on me. I would later find it on the
fold up chair next to the campfire we had.
The silhouette was moving left and right in a swaying motion
which caused the noise in the brush.
Then we noticed that crickets were no longer chirping anymore.
An eerie quietness started as we were standing there.
One of the worst smells I've ever smelled came across the
tracks to our area. All of us smelled it.
I then noticed the cats that were playing took off not to be
seen any more for that night. Within a minute a rock was
thrown across the tracks toward us and landed next to us.
It came from the general direction of the silhouette
swaying in the bushes. We all looked at each other and
turned the flashlight back on and could still see the
silhouette swaying behind the trees next to the tree limb.
Then another rock was thrown hard enough to spark when it hit
the tracks by US1 Teenager got so scared he said he wanted to
go home now. He went back to the cabin and
went inside. His dad then went up to the
cabin to talk to him. Then myself and the other
teenager heard a weird chatter coming from where the silhouette
was swaying in the bushes. And all of a sudden, a branch
snapped 40 to 50 feet South of where that silhouette was at.
That's when I realized that we were dealing with two of these
things. I yelled out, hey.
And right after I did that, another rock came across and hit
the tracks again, really sparking thrown from the bushes.
The other young man asked me if I did that and I said no, these
rocks were probably being thrown 120 plus feet from where he was
to where they landed with force. I then grabbed one of the LED
lights I have on the tripod to help light up the trains and I
aimed it at the bushes. When I did that, that's when I
saw the huge silhouette stand up with the reflecting eye shine
being 7 feet off the ground in an amber greenish colour.
It had been around 7 1/2 feet tall.
The shoulder width was about 10 to 12 inches wider than me.
If I had to guess, it was bipedal on 2 legs.
It then disappeared behind the brush and I could not see it
after that. There was no further activity
that night. We stayed two more nights and
had no more activity. This sighting occurred in Mason
County, Washington, August 2001. August 15th, 2001 I was living
on a boat moored at Jarrell's Cove Marina on Horstein Island,
Washington. At about 4:00 in the morning my
puppy woke me up needing to go potty.
I took her to the back deck of her 77 foot 1940s Coast Guard
cutter where we had a potty area set up for her.
She kept barking and didn't pee. Finally, I looked where she was
looking across the small body of water to Gerald's Cove State
Park. There, under the lights that lit
up the marine park floating dock and stairway, was a large black
Sasquatch walking up the stairs. He was about 8 feet tall and was
methodically, kind of slowly walking up the stairs.
His back was to me. I'm sure he heard the puppy
barking, but he did not turn around or pay any attention to
it. I couldn't distinguish a neck.
Maybe hair was preventing me from seeing that his arms were
too long proportionately not the same proportions as a human's
arms to body height. I could clearly see glistening
muscles on his right thigh in the light over the stairs.
The hair was a bit sparse there. I got the impression he had
probably shed some and had this light summer coat on.
The skin was black on his thigh as well as on his hands, and his
hair was black. I watched him walk up the stairs
and along the walkway until he came to the land.
Then he took three casual strides and disappeared into the
forest. I watched him for about 15
seconds. I didn't say anything about what
I saw. I knew my husband would laugh at
me. Three days later, my 10 year old
son told me that his friend told him that since his family was
going to be leaving Sunday morning, the day I saw the
Sasquatch, he got up really early to do some fishing before
he had to go. He told my son he saw something
black swimming in the water. He thought it was a seal, but
then it went to the other side of the water and walked out of
the water and then proceeded to walk up the stairs, down the
long walkway and disappear into the woods.
My son's friend saw the same thing I did.
I just came out at the part when the Sasquatch was walking up the
stairs. This encounter occurred in Park
County, Wyoming in July 2000. I'm an outdoor enthusiast who
was visiting the Cody, WY area this summer.
During the second week of July, while travelling the highway to
Yellowstone National Park, about 30 or 40 miles West of Cody, I
encountered heavy tourist traffic late in the day.
I decided, rather than fight it, to pull off the highway for a
while and go for a walk. I hiked up an unmarked path
north of the highway through intermittent timber.
I was travelling at a leisurely pace, exploring rocky outcrops
and looking for Native American artifacts.
About a half a mile down the road, I could still hear the
traffic. I heard some rocks rolling
downhill ahead and above me. It was maybe 50 to 100 yards
away. Mule deer and other game animals
are plentiful in the area and I didn't think much of it.
I had bear spray with me as it is well known grizzly country.
Maybe another half an hour went past and I was taking a break,
sitting on a rock ledge with a good view of the valley to the
South. I heard underbrush breaking not
far away on a steep tree covered slope that led down to a dry
stream bed. I was able to distinguish the
pattern of an animal walking through the trees.
Again, I didn't think much of it.
I'm used to hearing game in the woods and I don't spook at stuff
like that. I guess that it was probably a
deer feeding along the slope, a little awed considering the time
of day. Its behaviour was highly
inconsistent with bears, which don't hang around when people
show up. I started hiking again and
almost immediately heard something move through the brush
just below me in the same spot. This was a little strange I
thought, like it was staying with me or something.
I tried to see down the hill, but when I stopped I couldn't
hear it. It seemed to stop moving when I
did, and I couldn't get a fix on its location.
I began to get a somewhat uneasy feeling about things at this
point. There's no good way to describe
it other than something seemed to be intentionally staying with
me. I started walking again, and
shortly after, not having heard anything for a little while, I
heard something run across the rocks not far up in front of me.
It was up out of the drainage at this point.
I was getting a little apprehensive by this time and
decided to start back toward the road, which was maybe a mile
away. I walked pretty quickly and for
most of the day I heard nothing, but about 1/4 mile or so from
the highway and maybe 15 minutes since I turned back, I heard
rocks and debris falling down slope again.
It seemed awfully close and I instinctively whirled around
thinking I might see something, which I did.
I will do my best to describe it, but as I got only a short
glimpse, I can't be too sure of what it was.
It was about 60 or 70 yards away on a rocky slope immediately
adjacent to the same heavily timbered slope I had been hiking
along. As soon as I turned and looked
at it, it jumped right away into the cover and completely out of
sight. There's one thing I'm absolutely
certain of. Whatever it was, it was upright.
I could clearly see two limbs off the ground that appeared
more like arms than legs. They were definitely hanging
down the side and not to the front as one would expect of A4
legged animal standing on 2 legs.
That doesn't mean it wasn't a bear, but I've never heard of a
bear acting like this thing was. That is, if I'm right and it was
the same animal that I feel was following me all along.
At any rate, the animal was brown with very long hair.
I noticed that when it leapt into the woods, the hair swayed
to one side. From the sudden motion, it
seemed longer than bear hair, and to notice this swaying
effect at this distance, I would guess that maybe the hair was a
foot long or more. Also, for just that initial
instant before its flight, I got a pretty good look at its face,
which was long and somewhat flat.
It was too far away to clearly make out individual features,
but I've seen several bears at greater distances and it doesn't
strike me that that's what it was.
You don't just think right off. Hey, there's Bigfoot.
I was probably almost at my vehicle before I even let that
thought enter my mind. I can't say for sure that what I
saw is what I had been hearing in the woods throughout the
hike. One tends to make these
connections afterward, but I really have no way of knowing.
I will say, however, that I think it might have been.
This is based on more than a feeling than anything else.
I realise that breaking branches and rock slides don't exactly
constitute scientific certainty. It really was like something was
checking me out, though. These events occurred in
Montcalm County, Michigan, in October 2017.
The Witness lives in a wooded and hilly area surrounded by
mixed farmland about 30 miles east of the Huron Manistee
National Forest. There's a small Creek going
through the backyard with swamps and a small lake nearby.
About 2:00 AM, the witness heard whoops on a wooded hill across
the road from the house. He went out on the porch and
heard something large moving on the hill going to his left,
which is West. It stayed in the wood line until
it reached a driveway 140 yards from the witness.
It crossed the road and came back toward the witness to the
tree line at the edge of the witness's property, where it
crouched behind a tree with a stump next to it.
When the creature was moving away from the witness, he got
off the porch and crouched next to the tree about 14 yards from
the tree line. When the creature was crouching
behind the stump, the witness stood up and turned his
flashlight on. The animal stood up and started
walking to the witnesses left S away from the road toward the
Creek in their backyard, staying in the trees.
When the creature stood up, the witness started backing up
toward his porch. The witness only saw the
creature in silhouette when it crossed the road.
When he saw it with the flashlight at 15 yards, he got a
good look at its body and face from the waist up.
He said it was about 7 feet tall and muscular with wide
shoulders. It was dark brown or black, and
the hair was about four or five inches long, with the hair being
longer toward the neck. The eyes were set wide and it
had a flat nose with the face being covered with short hair.
The arms reached past the waist. The witness lives with his
grandparents. They all had stories about
hearing whoops, yells and knocks.
Once something hit the house and they all described it sounding
like a truck had hit the house. The witness said there is year
round activity with August through November being much more
active than the rest of the year.
This sighting occurred in Pendleton County, West Virginia
in July 2007. I didn't actually see the
creature, but I was riding in the car with my boyfriend when
this all occurred. We were coming back from a trip
to Ohio with a detour to see some friends in West Virginia.
Instead of taking interstates home to Virginia, we took US 33,
a very twisty mountain Rd. heading east.
I was dozing in the passenger seat when I was startled by my
boyfriend yelling. What the hell was that?
I sat straight up and noticed that whoever was in the car
behind us suddenly hit the brakes and flashed up the high
beams. We're all going about 30 anyway
because we were rounding a curve, so he got a pretty good
view of whatever it was. His first description was some
guy was walking on the road in a tree costume.
After he told me a few more details, I yelled Sasquatch,
that's what you saw. I immediately took some notes.
This is what he says he saw a human like figure, at least 6
feet tall and very bulky with very long hair.
The hairiest thing I've ever seen.
It was mossy greyish green colour.
It was walking along the side of the road, upright like a man but
slightly hunched over with knees bent and elbow sticking out.
An ape like walk, Definitely not human.
It had no distinguishable facial features because it was so
hairy, he says. The arms were 6 to 8 inches wide
and the legs were wider, at least 8 inches.
The creature also didn't react to the sound and light from our
car or the one behind us, he says.
It was absolutely not a bear, deer or large dog.
Without our headlights, it was completely dark with just a
little moonlight. The creature had no light
source, and if it was a man in a pretty elaborate costume, it was
on a heck of a walk because there was not anything within
reasonable walking distance, especially with no light.
It was around 11:30 PM on a Sunday night and as I said
before, not very much moonlight, but a clear night and very warm.
This occurred in Burlington County, New Jersey in June 2019.
On June 20th at approximately 640 PMI was travelling on Route
563 S of Chatsworth near the Franklin Parker Preserve
Speedwell entrance. I was looking to see what the
parking situation was for a future hike so my eyes were on
the right side of the road when out of the periphery I saw what
I thought was a Groundhog on the left.
It was very large and I realized that it would have to be a huge
Groundhog. So I looked fully to the left
and saw an approximate 3 to 3 1/2 foot tall creature stand up
on 2 legs as I pass by. I did not get a good look at the
face and I almost continued but I decided to turn around about
150 yards up a dirt Rd. that's on the left.
I pulled in and turned around and headed back to the location.
There's a bend in the road there.
It bends around to the right on the way back and as I made it
past the bend, approximately 30 yards in front of me, the
creature was still there. It was now truly turned toward
me and I could see that it looked like a cross between
Curious George and the character Chaka from the Land of the Lost.
Its face and hands, as well as the tops of its feet were
hairless and a light tan colour. The fur it was covered with was
a little darker than a golden retriever, very much like the
colour of a Groundhog. I could not see the nose when I
locked eyes with it. I could not see whites, just big
dark brown eyes. It stood there for a second or
two when I rounded the bend and then took off running back into
the swampy area. It ducked behind a short Bush
and when I drove past it I could no longer see it.
I turned the car around again and when I went by again, it was
gone. I waited there a bit to see if I
could see anything moving in the field.
I couldn't, so I took off. It was a couple of days before I
shared the experience with my family and friends, and in that
period of time I thought for sure someone was going to report
a missing kid in a Halloween costume.
When the thing took off running, it was fast.
We had really bad storms that night and my commute was a
disaster. It poured all through that area
and I thought it was odd that this thing I saw appeared to be
dry. These encounters occurred in
Liberty County, Texas, November 1978 or 1979.
As a teenager from the early 70s up until 1980, I haunted this
area numerous times. I had mentioned a smell to a
friend, which I described as somewhere between a skunk and a
wet dog. My friend acknowledged that he
had smelled it several times himself.
We blew it off as being some type of plant or weed, but as I
began smelling it more often, I could tell it was some type of
animal. I began thinking that it was
probably feral hogs. As I continued to get older and
continue to squirrel hunt these same areas, I began to notice
that every time I smelled this odor, there were no squirrels
moving or any other wildlife for that matter.
I don't know the exact dates or even the year in which these
incidents occurred, but it was in the mid to late 70s.
I've been reluctant to tell anyone about these incidents.
The first visual experience that I had came deep in the woods
from the road. I'd walked about a mile down
into the woods where I came upon a pin oak flat.
I could see all the way through the flat to the other side,
which was about 150 to 175 yards.
On the other side of the flat was a stand of reset pine, all
about 15 feet tall with high dead grass underneath.
Immediately I noticed something laying under the pine tree
across the flat. At first it looked like the area
below the tree and the tree trunk had been burned out.
As I eased closer it began to look like a gorilla lying under
the tree. I'm a pretty stealthy person in
the woods and I told myself I'm seeing things, but I'm going to
try and get closer to this thing just to prove to myself I'm not
seeing things. As I moved within 100 yards or
so, I could see that I was not crazy.
Its head was moving and at this time I could tell its collar was
grey with a black gorilla face. The adrenaline kicked in.
I checked my gun and put some trees between myself and this
thing and proceeded to try and get closer, peering around the
trees every few feet to see if it was still there.
I got to within 50 to 75 yards and peered around the tree and
it was gone. The floor of the pin oak flat
was dry with a lot of crunchy leaves and twigs.
I knew I was going to scare it off before I could get a close
look at it. After I noticed that it was
gone, I sat down in the flat for about an hour and did not see
any wildlife at all. I got up and went over to the
area where I had seen it and was hit with that smell and the
grass was mashed down under the pine.
At first I didn't think it knew that I was there because it was
moving its head and acting unconcerned.
As I tried to sneak up on it, though, it definitely sensed my
presence or heard me crunch a twig.
I know it never visually made me out because I kept trees between
myself and it the whole time. The following year was my next
sighting. It had rained sometime between
3:00 AM and when I set out to go squirrel hunting.
It was very foggy and misty on this morning and the woods were
damp and very quiet. I came upon a large thicket and
sat down against a tree at the edge of the thicket.
I instantly started to smell something as it got lighter,
light enough to shoot. I could hear something in the
thicket. Also I noticed there were no
squirrels moving. I thought that there were some
hogs in the thicket. I sat in the spot longer than I
normally would sit anywhere without seeing anything because
of the sounds I heard coming from the thicket.
About mid morning I was hearing something sniffing the air and
making low deep grunting sounds. That was no hog.
I decided to play a trick that I've used before on game and
thickets and threw a 2 foot long dead limb over and beyond the
sounds hoping to flush it out to my side.
When I did this it made a deeper and louder primate type grunt at
me. The sniffing of the air also
became more pronounced and no hog breathes like this.
I then threw another stick into the thicket and received the
same grunts and sniffing, only louder. 20 minutes later I heard
it moving through the thicket and then heard a huge 2 legged
splash into a body of water on the other side of the thicket
followed by grunts and heavy breathing.
There's no doubt in my mind what I had encountered was a Bigfoot
in the thicket, although I never saw him.
This was something I've never experienced in the woods before.
After the splash and the exit, I made my own hasty exit back to
the road. The witness described the animal
that he encountered in 1978 as having black weathered skin.
From what he could see, the face and head appeared to him to be
very similar to a gorilla. In fact, during the encounter,
for much of the time, he actually thought he was watching
a gorilla that had been let loose or escaped into the East
Texas woods. He said the prospect of
encountering a gorilla in the wild actually frightened him
quite a bit. It wasn't until several minutes
of somewhat distant observation had occurred did it occur to him
that it wasn't a gorilla. The witness said the animal was
lying under the tree and propping itself up on its arm.
It was moving its head around a little and appeared to be
looking around at its surroundings.
He could not see the eyes or mouth or nose, but he said that
from what he could tell, the face appeared to be similar to a
gorilla. The animal's colour was grey or
charcoal, but the skin was decidedly black.
Another. Possible visual had occurred in
1979, again while squirrel hunting.
That witness saw what it first appeared to be Spanish Moss
blowing in the breeze at about 8:00 or 9 feet up a tree trunk.
He saw the movement in his peripheral vision before turning
to look directly. At that time, the witness
believed that he was looking at a head peering from around the
tree at a distance of perhaps 50 to 60 yards.
The witness thought that Spanish Moss was the hare.
After a few seconds, the head and hair or Spanish Moss was
gone. This sighting.
Occurred in Litchfield County, Connecticut in May 2014.
It was early. Evening and our golden retriever
was barking loudly. This was not unusual as there
are many deer behind her home. Our backyard consists of a large
20 acre field leading into a wooded area.
When I went outside to call the dog in and I saw 6 or 7 deer
running like heck like they were being chased.
I looked behind them and in the tall grass a large hairy animal
was chasing after them running on 2 legs towering above the
grass which was about four feet tall at the time.
We see occasional black bears but this was no bear I had seen
before. I am convinced it was a
Sasquatch. Then later in the season I was
outside around 9:00 with a friend.
We had a small fire going. The coyotes were yipping in the
far corner and in the opposite back corner there were three
screech like sounds and the coyotes went dead silent.
About a month. After that sighting, as me and
my friend were hitting golf balls into the field, I saw some
activity lower in the field. After about two minutes we
realized it was a Sasquatch. It stood up and towered over the
grass which was about 5 feet tall at that time.
We stood there watching it for about 5 minutes until it
retreated to the woods. The hairy creature was clearly
walking on 2 feet. I have no doubt in my mind we
saw a Sasquatch after talking to my dad who has lived on our
property for years. He too had seen a Sasquatch
years ago as a boy. This terrifying incident
occurred in Orange County, Florida in the spring of 1980.
A few years back I lived in Plymouth, Florida.
We lived in a wooded area. In front of the house there was
an orange Grove. Beside us was a swamp.
Around that was a wooded area. I used to walk through the woods
with my rifle just to feel safe. There was an old couple there
that had a farm across from the woods.
I got to know them pretty well. I would go there for coffee and
the old man and his wife would tell me stories about this
Bigfoot. The farmer said that the Bigfoot
comes into his garden and takes his crops.
I said oh really? I didn't believe em.
And that was that. Until one night I was home alone
with my puppy dog. We were sitting on the porch and
you couldn't see 3 feet in front of you.
Then I heard this noise breaking through the brush.
I got so scared I ran into the house, grabbed my rifle and
stood behind the front door. I could barely move.
Then I heard whatever it was go round the back of the house.
It tried to get into the door. I ran out the front door into
the orange Grove and I kept running.
My foot got caught on a root of a tree and I fell.
I rolled into the swamp and I lost my rifle.
I looked back and I saw a Bigfoot.
I got up and I ran to the road. There was a truck that stopped
to help. I called my friends and they
came over and the whole back door was ripped off, the farmer
said to me. I told you so.
This occurred in. Seminole County, Florida in July
of 1972. This happened in the.
Late summer of 1972. The exact date is not known but
believed to have happened in July.
The area at that time was countryside.
It was mostly Cypress trees, orange Groves, sparsely
populated and undeveloped. The friends spent a lot of time
fishing and swimming in Lake Mills.
The boys were 16 that summer and decided to camp near the lake on
that summer night. One of the boy's father drove
the camping gear to the site along with his friend and
dropped them off while he rode his dirt bike.
The boys set up their camp. They noticed that someone had
cut down 6 Cypress trees and had placed a board over the stumps.
It had been used as a table, but the boys decided to put their
sleeping bags under it as it gave them a feeling of being in
a Fort. They spent the entire day riding
the bike through the dirt trails around the lake.
When it got dark, they set up a camp fire, cooked hot dogs, and
went to sleep. Around 2, the fire was between
the sleeping bags and the motorcycle.
They built it up before they turned in.
Around 3 or 4, one of the boys was awakened by a loud snapping
and cracking of something heavy. Walking toward the camp, he
noticed the flames of the fire were still a foot or more high.
He looked toward the sound, waiting to see what animal could
possibly be making that noise. From the E 30 feet away in
Palmetto scrub, he watched a tall, hairy biped effortlessly
part the branches and walk into camp.
It was on the other side of the fire near the motorcycle.
It never looked his way and walked right up to the bike.
He propped himself. Up to see better, he remembers
the creature's chest was 2 feet taller than the seat of the
motorcycle. It stood stooped over, examining
the bike, and began to smoothly touch the handlebars, the tank,
and the seat with both hands, as if trying to figure out what
that bike was. The witness then.
Quietly woke up his friend and whispered for him to look.
The Bigfoot continued to ignore them.
It seemed to be about 8 feet tall, mostly brown in colour
with red highlights. It had a heavy build and was
broad shouldered. After a few minutes of gently
touching the bike all over, the Sasquatch walked away, parting
the Palm Meadows just as it had earlier, this time heading West.
It made just as much noise walking away as it had coming
into camp. The boys think they waited a few
minutes and bolted for the bike and left, leaving all the
camping gear in place. When they got home in the
morning and explained why they had left, one of the boy's
father was livid. He made them go back in his car
and get their things. They drove back with the high
beams on. One of the boys made the other
boy go pack up while he stayed in the car with the engine
running and made a lot of noise. More description.
Of the creature, it was overall very furry.
The hair covered its entire body.
When asked to describe more facial details, the witness
claimed don't laugh, but it looked like Chewbacca more than
anything else. The head was not conical.
For most of the encounter, the Sasquatch was facing sideways.
The encounter has left both of them pretty scared.
One of them has only camped once since that night, one of the
witnesses confirms. The hairy biped they both saw,
however, refuses to say it was a Bigfoot.
He doesn't know what he saw. It just wasn't human or any
known animal. The place they had.
Camped is now a park. They believe the area they
camped is now the parking lot. This encounter.
Occurred in Del Norte County, California in September of 2003.
The witness pulled. Over at a wide spot off of A2
lane section of Highway One O 1. Of note, this was not a regular
pull off area of that highway and his right side wheels were
off the roadway next to some brush and grass.
He did this to allow faster moving vehicles to pass him.
As his vehicle came to a stop, a creature stood up between 5:00
and 10 feet from his open passenger window and screamed.
It was loud enough to be heard over a mile away.
He said the first thing he did was lie down across the front
seat and he also started to scream.
He then sat back up to observe the creature.
At that moment, he said that he was scared out of his mind and
thought he was going to have a heart attack.
According to the witness, the sound emanating from the
creature was like nothing that he'd ever heard before.
The volume was the loudest thing that he had ever heard.
He described the warbling screaming sound as a woman being
stabbed with a knife combined with a whistling parrot sound
with a high and low frequency that vibrated his body and soul.
The noises were all integrated and seemed to be taking place at
the same time. The vocalization lasted the
entirety of the five to six second encounter.
The creature took two large steps toward the large Redwood
trees located approximately 15 to 20 feet away from the road,
made a semicircle around the nearest tree, and then
disappeared. The witness only saw the upper
body because of the high brush and the vehicle door blocking
his view. It was facing away from him so
he could only see the right back area of it.
He did not see any facial features or its hands.
The witness described the creature as having very dirty or
matted dark brown dull hair. He described the head as having
a definite wedge on top and having no neck.
He further stated that the back of it had well defined muscles
like Mike Tyson. He thinks that the creature
stood about 6 1/2 to 7 feet tall and weighed over £300.
He could not ascertain its gender and he'd never made eye
contact with it. The witness never checked for
footprints and stated he never wants to use that highway again.
He stated his only thoughts after the incident was how he
was going to call 911 for his heart attack.
He. Said the sight of it.
Didn't bother him as much as the screaming vocalisation.
The witness has never ventured into the Wilds and now never
wants to. He stated that the creature
reminded him of a gorilla and if he saw one in a zoo, he would
just pass by it for something more interesting.
The witness is still shaken up over this encounter, especially
over the screaming sounds, and is having difficulty trying to
sleep at night. The one good thing that has come
out of this incident is that he's gone to church for the
first time in 37 years. This incident.
Occurred in Swain County, North Carolina in January 2020.
As my husband and. I often do.
We were taking a shortcut across the mountain here in western
North Carolina, heading home. As I was driving along the
river, there was a very strange looking, what I thought was an
odd looking man. As we passed it, I said to my
husband, that's a strange looking person and as I looked
into the rearview mirror, it stood up on the road and was
watching us driving away and that's when I realized what it
really was. I told my husband that it was a
Bigfoot. In a panic, I drove away and my
husband insisted that we turn around and go back.
I was in tears from fear, but we found an area to turn around and
I did. As we approached that area, I
saw it on the side of the road watching us.
It was huge. My husband got out of the car to
get a better look and he couldn't believe what we were
looking at. It had to be at least 8 to 9
feet tall, covered in long black hair all over its body.
It was massive. We were over 100 yards away and
nothing was obstructing our view.
I yelled at my husband to get back into the car and I managed
to turn it around and get the heck out of there.
My name is Eric. I live in Chautauqua County in
Western New York. Before my encounters, I spent a
lot of time in the woods by myself, metal detecting,
hunting, fishing and just exploring.
That was normal life for me. After what I saw, I do not go
into the woods alone anymore. If I'm not with someone, I stay
out. Those two sightings change that
part of my life completely. Over time, I.
Started looking into what I had seen and drifted into research.
I don't really care what label people put on me.
Some want to say researcher. I usually say I'm a knower.
I know they are real because I've seen them with my own eyes.
From there I tried to figure out how to do things the right way,
how to prove they exist through proper evidence.
I contacted. The Department of Environmental
Conservation main office in Albany to ask about collecting
samples from wildlife. I wanted to know what was legal,
if I got hair, scat, saliva, anything like that.
They sent a letter back telling me that in New York State, if
you want to collect any kind of sample from any wild animal for
testing or scientific use, you have to have a specific license.
You fill out paperwork, pay a fee, and they either approve or
deny you. Technically, if you pick up a
tuft of deer hair in the woods and plan to use it for research
or testing, you're supposed to have that license.
I have never heard of that being required in other states, but
that's how it works here. It surprised me, but it's
something anyone in this field has to deal with if they want to
involve science. My first sighting.
Happened in May of 2013. One of my main hobbies was metal
detecting. I used old maps from the 1800s
and tried to locate old home sites back in the woods.
I would hike out to those cellar holes and wells and search
around them for relics. I loved it.
On that day in. May I had done my usual routine.
I found a home site on the map, packed my gear, drove out and
hiked in. I brought my dog with me.
When I got set up. I tied my dog maybe 100 yards
behind me if he stayed down by my feet.
He got tangled in the coil all the time so I always tied him
off to the side but still close. I had been detecting.
For a while I started up a small embankment where there were
signs of old structures. I could see a big cellar hole in
an old well. I worked around that area and
then moved toward a small clearing.
To reach it, I had to duck under a low branch.
I bent down, stepped under the branch, and then straightened
up. The ground sloped slightly
uphill in front of me. As I came up, I caught something
in the corner of my left eye. I looked down again, almost on
reflex. For a second, my mind did not
register what I had just seen. I took another step and it hit
me. What?
I'd been there. I snapped my head back to look
again, and that's when I saw it clearly.
Something was standing there, halfway behind a tree up the
hill. I could see about half of its
body. At that exact moment, it turned
away from me and dropped down onto all fours.
Then it took off. It moved away at a speed that
did not make sense, covering roughly 200 yards in what felt
like 4 seconds. When it turned I got.
A clear look at one of its hands.
I saw the fingers. The hand was very long.
The skin was jet black. The arms were long too.
The overall build was what I would call lanky.
That's the best word I have for it.
Long limbs, lean frame, very agile.
I am a hunter. I know what a black bear looks
like when it moves. Bears waddle when they run off
and their gait is very different.
This was nothing like that. This moved in a way that
reminded me more of a human than any bear, but the face did not
look human. From the quick look.
I had the face looked more like a young chimp.
It looked younger overall, which is why I now believe it was a
juvenile. The head shape was round, not
the tall cone shape that people often talk about.
The lower half of the face was a lighter colour, but the rest of
the body and head were jet black.
It had a huge mouth. A lighter colour on the lower
face stood out against the dark hair.
When it spun and. Dropped the hand, swung out.
The thumb looked shorter compared to the long fingers.
I couldn't really tell the exact placement of the thumb because
everything happened so fast, but the digits looked long and the
thumb didn't seem to match them in length.
I also believed it was a male because there seemed to be
something obvious in the groin area when it turned.
The whole encounter. Was extremely brief.
The distance between us was about 30 feet.
One second I was ducking under a branch.
The next second I was watching this lanky, jet black juvenile
tear away from me like nothing I'd ever seen.
I went straight into shock. I didn't turn off the metal
detector or gather myself. I just took off running.
I ran back to my dog, united him, got back to the truck,
started it, and left. When I got home, I booked the
dog away, sat down on the couch and tried to process what had
just happened. I told one family member that
reaction was flat and dismissive.
No one in my family really believes in this kind of thing.
After that, I decided to keep it to myself.
I didn't want to be laughed at or treated like I was crazy.
Without a second witness or a photo, it's hard to talk about
something like that. And that's when the self doubt
started. Over time, I.
Caught myself questioning my own memory.
Sitting there alone with it. I thought things like, did I
imagine that? Did that really happen?
Did I misunderstand what I saw? I tried to push it out of my
mind. That was my first encounter.
My second sighting. Happened in May of 2014, the
same month of the year, but a different day.
By then we had come out of another long winter up there.
We could get four or five feet of snow.
Roads in some of those areas are not plowed.
You can't even reach them by truck for a good part of the
year. Once the snow melts, you finally
get access again, and that's when we start metal detecting.
The second encounter was two or three miles to the spot of the
first sighting. It is all part of a larger tract
of land around 4000 acres, with more state land tied in behind
that. A friend was with me that day.
We drove up to a dead end road to a parking area at the edge of
the state forest. We're not thinking about
Sasquatch at all. We're just happy to be out after
winter, ready to hunt old home sites again.
We hiked into some old foundations and cellar holes.
It was about 2:30 in the afternoon.
We had driven around a bit before that and then settled on
that location. After a while, we.
Took a break somewhere between 4:00 and 4:30.
We stood there, smoked a cigarette and talked.
During that break I told my buddy I had a weird feeling,
like I was being watched. He said he knew the feeling I
was talking about but said he felt fine.
Right then two hikers came by on the trail, a man and a woman.
He had a yellow jacket and she had a pink one.
They waved and kept going up the trail.
That trail runs a long distance a few miles across that tract.
It used to be a horse and buggy Rd. in the 1800s and is kept
open as a trail now. It looks almost like a power
line cut because it's a wide open strip between two blocks of
forest, but there's no power line there.
Maybe 50 yards of open ground separates the woods on each
side. After the hikers passed, my
buddy went back toward that open trail and then cut into the
woods on the other side to work around some foundations over
there. We each worked our.
Section for what felt like a long time.
It was probably 2 to 2 1/2 hours.
Around 6:30 I decided the day was about done and I would start
working my way out. I came out of the trees into a
small field patch that connects to that old horse and buggy
trail. From there I could see the open
strip and the woods on the other side.
Out of the corner of my eye, down to my left, I saw my buddy
coming out of his section of woods on the trail.
I kept swinging the detector as I walked.
He made it to the trail. Before I did and as I was coming
out, I heard him say something. He raised his voice and said
look. I pulled my headphones down and
looked over at him. He was looking up the trail
ahead of us and said there was a person or something up there.
By then, he had walked. To where I was standing and we
ended up shoulder to shoulder at the edge of the little field,
both facing up the open trail. At first we couldn't make out
exactly what we were seeing. There was something big up
there, low to the ground. It looked like it was crouched
in a stalking position, creeping forward.
I call it a creeping posture. It was low, almost like it was
in a cautious, steady position, moving slowly along the trail.
We just stared at it, trying to figure out what we were looking
at. Then it realized we were
watching it and it stood up. It went from roughly 5 feet in
that crouched position to around 10 feet tall when it
straightened up. We later went back and measured
a branch it bumped its head on. That branch was about 10 feet, 6
inches. When I say 10 feet tall, that's
where that number comes from. There is some margin of error,
but it was in that range. The distance from.
Us to the creature was maybe 2 to 300 feet.
It was not far and there was nothing between US and it but
open ground, no brush or trees blocking the view.
We saw it perfectly clear. It was jet black.
And massive. The shoulders were around 4 feet
wide. The body was very muscular, but
not like a cartoon bodybuilder, just heavy solid muscle.
You could see muscle shape in the arms even through the hair.
The arms were extremely long, they hung down to the knee area.
There was hair on the face, but it stopped around the cheek
area. The skin of the face itself was
dark. The brow Ridge was very heavy
and the head sloped back from that Ridge.
Standing there, it looked huge in every way.
The eyes were large, but at that distance I couldn't judge the
exact size. We stared at each other.
For somewhere between 40 and 45 seconds.
It felt longer, but that's my best estimate.
My buddy and I were locked in. I went into what I call a
stupor. My body was shaking.
I had never seen anything that big that was not supposed to
exist. We muttered to each other under
our breath. I said that it's a Bigfoot.
My friend said no way and reacted with pure shock.
As soon as I said that, the creature turned to go.
When it turned. I could see how thick its legs
really were. It took two steps and was gone
into the woods. Each stride was around 6 feet,
and that was from a walk, not a run from a dead standstill.
It just turned and walked off, but each step ate up distance
like nothing. The sun was setting.
Behind it and the light was orange.
As it stepped. I could see that orange light
shining between its legs in the gap with each stride.
That's how clean the view was. No brush, no tricks of light,
just that creature moving in front of the setting sun.
On its. Way into the trees, its head hit
a pine branch. When it struck that branch, the
branch shook violently. Later, we walked up there and
used that same branch as a reference to measure its height.
That's how we came up with that 10 foot 6 point.
The whole interaction is burned into my mind.
The size of it, the width of the shoulders, the length of the
arms, that heavy brow, I cannot forget it.
People always ask. Why we didn't get a photo.
My phone was in my detecting pouch at my waist.
I never even thought about it. I was out metal detecting,
enjoying a hobby, not a photographer out trying to
document wildlife. When this thing stood up,
everything else dropped out of my mind.
I had tunnel vision and was focused only on examining what I
was seeing. Pulling out a phone didn't even
occur to me. After going through.
That I understand why so many witnesses don't get pictures
unless someone is out there specifically with a camera in
hand and ready to use it at any second.
Shock takes over. You get a type of trauma after
seeing something that big that you've been told your whole life
does not exist. At the same time.
In my head I was going back to the first sighting and realizing
it had been real. Now I had a friend standing next
to me seeing the same thing. Both of those thoughts were
crashing together with the shock.
Over time. As I paid closer attention, I
also noticed some odd things about that place.
There are long stretches where the woods go dead quiet.
No birds, no squirrels, no crickets.
I'm a hunter. I sit in tree stands for hours
and I'm used to normal forest sounds in that area.
There are times where it's just silent.
In four years, I've never seen a deer with my own eyes there,
even though we have a strong deer population in this county.
You see a few tracks, but not the animal numbers you would
expect for 12,000 acres of combined state land and
surrounding property. Later on, after I started going
back with research in mind, I began to hear odd sounds on some
trips. Knocks, strange noises, things
like that. Not during those two main
encounters, but in later seasons a pattern also started to show
up. Most of my activity in that area
comes in April, May, June and sometimes into July.
After that it goes very quiet. Because of that, I.
Believe they migrate not for food because there's food
everywhere. We have berries, apples, plenty
of deer and other animals that make it through harsh winters.
I do not think they need to move for food in this region.
I think they move for mating the same way some animals travel
long distances to breeding areas.
I suspect they head down toward the Allegheny region later in
the year. There are many sightings
reported out of Allegheny in August and September.
That lines up with how my area goes quiet after early summer.
Another thing I think about is whether I stumbled onto them or
they were already focusing on us.
Both of my sightings happened while metal detecting, the first
alone and the second with my friend.
A metal detector makes distinct sounds, especially in pinpoint
mode when you're narrowing down on a target.
I think that sound gets their attention.
In the first sighting, the juvenile seemed curious.
In the second, the big male looked more aggravated, like we
were in his way or in the direction he intended to go.
The juvenile stood. Upright behind a tree where he
could stay mostly hidden until he decided to leave, his
expression was curious. When he turned, the big male
crouched in the open strip looked like he was trying to
stay low and unseen, then realized we were looking at him
when he stood up. He didn't seem pleased.
That's just the feeling I got from his body language, not just
a guess out of nowhere. Since those encounters, I've
tried to approach this as seriously as I can.
I want science involved. That's why I looked into the
license issue with the state. If we ever want conclusive proof
that will satisfy the scientific world, people are going to have
to collect proper samples and do things the right way.
That's hard when the species itself is still unrecognized.
But those are the steps I'm trying to take.
The second sighting with. My friend stopped the self doubt
that haunted me after the first one.
Having someone else next to me and see that 10 foot animal,
seeing the shock on his face too validated everything.
From that point on, I knew what I had seen and I knew I needed
to dig deeper. My great.
Grandparents in Mississippi used an old name for the creatures in
the woods. They called them catamounts,
long before the words Sasquatch or Bigfoot were common.
I grew up hearing stories about them but didn't understand what
they were talking about until much later after my first
encounter. When I was 6 or.
Seven, I used to ride with my great grandfather while he
worked around different gravel pits.
These places were surrounded by deep forest, and he was
strangely protective of me there.
He would tell me not to get out of the truck, not to wander, not
to go near the woods. As a kid, I thought he was just
being paranoid. I even told my grandmother about
it, and that's when she began explaining the creatures they
called catamounts. She said they would come to the
edge of the fields in the late afternoon and scream at people.
She told me you could hear them crying like women or like
children, and anyone who went into the woods searching for the
source of those sounds sometimes never came back.
She said people would disappear without a trace, and in their
region they quietly blamed those vanishings on these creatures.
She also said the Catamounts dug holes and screamed into them so
their voices would echo far away, making people think they
were much farther than they really were.
Those stories didn't. Make sense to me then, but later
in life I realized she was describing the same beings
people now call Bigfoot. I've learned since that.
These creatures don't all look the same.
Some resemble the classic Patterson creature.
Some have faces that look almost primate like, others look more
Neanderthal. Some have beards or longer hair
on their heads. Their appearances vary just as
much as their behaviour. People like to say the.
Ones in the South are more aggressive, but I don't believe
that aggression depends on the individual creature and how much
exposure it's had to people. There are stories of them
mutilating livestock and even throwing body parts on roofs.
That has happened in the South and in the Pacific Northwest.
I don't think they're all dangerous, but I think some are
just like people, they are diverse.
My own encounters began intensifying of November 2011.
A friend had just moved into a new brick house near a forested
area outside town. Encounters had been happening in
that region for years, always in the same general strip of woods.
One night, my friend stepped outside onto the second story
balcony to smoke. Something extremely heavy was
walking nearby. Clearly bipedal, the weight of
its steps was too much for a human.
They couldn't see it, but they felt a strange tension in the
air and went back inside. They called me the next.
Day and asked me to come check around the property.
When I arrived I walked around the back of the house.
As soon as I rounded the corner a strong skunk like odor hit me.
It wasn't an actual skunk, I knew that scent too well.
That smell, along with a wet dog scent, meant at least two
Sasquatches had been nearby. I went up onto the.
Balcony and looked toward the woods.
The trees were thin enough to see through.
A large Bush sat about 10 or 15 feet from the lower patio.
As I leaned over the balcony railing to scan the area, two
young Sasquatch suddenly popped up from behind the Bush.
They had been lying on their stomachs.
Both were under 7 feet tall. One was a younger female, the
other a young male. They had jet black hair, human
like faces, wide mouths and almond shaped eyes.
The skin on their faces was dark rather than grey.
Their noses were almost Caucasian looking.
They were lean and the female had early breast development.
Their faces looked similar enough that they could have been
siblings. They gasped when they saw me,
just like surprised people do. I panicked and ran back inside.
My friends locked themselves in the bathroom and left me
standing alone in the living room.
For the rest of that night, I stayed away from that balcony.
The next day I. Returned to look for sign.
There was a Creek behind the house with no clear footprints,
but along a game trail I found impressions in the grass. 2
smaller sets and one larger set where at least three individuals
had moved through tracks in grass.
Expand and lose definition, but the size difference was obvious.
Around that same time. Period.
Another witness in the area had an encounter with the same young
female he had been camping with, his tent flap partially unzipped
when a small hand reached inside and touched him gently, as if
out of curiosity. There was also incidents of
missing dogs. One home owner found their dog's
collar ripped apart and a pool of blood beside the patio.
The deer population in the nearby open field attracted the
creatures and the dogs were simply taken.
Years earlier in. The late 90s A 14 year old
friend of mine had seen a creature near a wood line while
walking between two homes. She said it looked like a huge
monkey watching her from the corner of its eye.
Another of the same type stood on a gravel Rd. growling at her.
These were reddish brown sasquatches with grizzled grey
hair. My own encounters.
On family Property began in 2003.
One day something screamed at my younger cousin through her
bedroom window and circled the house repeatedly for half an
hour. That set off a long series of
events that lasted years. One night, after dropping her
off, I was driving down the hill near the house when a massive
black Bigfoot ran across the road.
I knew exactly what it was. After that, I became more
curious and began trying to understand these creatures, what
they were, how they behaved, and what they responded to.
I had multiple. Roadside sightings and
occasional glimpses of faces in the brush.
One night I passed a creature crouched beside a barbed wire
fence. When I opened my car door to
stand up for a better look, the creature, a female around 8 1/2
feet tall, stood up and growled at me.
She was lean and powerful with runner like legs with two toned
brown hair. Her face had light grey skin and
her nose looked almost Southwestern Native American in
shape. I got back in the car and drove
off. The skunk smell lingered in my
vehicle for two days. On my family's.
Land. There were three regulars, a
huge male over 10 feet tall, the aggressive female I had seen,
and a small juvenile over 4 1/2 feet tall with ginger coloured
hair. I only saw the juvenile twice.
Once it was crouched beside a neighboring property pretending
to be a Bush. Its colour gave it away the
second time it was perched high in a tall tree.
When my mother moved. On to that property.
The female became extremely intrusive.
She would scream from far away and then slowly come closer.
After night, she circled the house, peered in windows and
walked with her body, brushing the side of the trailer so my
mother could hear her moving along the wall.
Sometimes she tapped the siding with her knuckles.
It was enough to terrify my mother.
She lived alone and the harassment continued regularly.
I was scared for her. Constantly.
There were times I wondered if I would need to protect her with a
firearm. The male never got aggressive.
All the trouble came from the female.
But fear was a constant feeling in that period.
Fear of not knowing what would happen next.
Over the years, I. Realized that these creatures
operate on their own rules. If they live near your property,
you adapt to them, not the other way around.
People often ask why I didn't take photos.
The truth is simple. When something screams at your
house, peeks in your windows and stands 8 to 10 feet tall, the
last thing you do is run outside, pointing a camera at
it. Most people who judge.
That have never been in that situation.
I've come to believe. You should never track them.
You don't know which individual you might come up on.
Some are calm, some are not, and there's a danger in making them
too comfortable with people. If they lose their natural fear
of humans, they may approach the wrong person and get killed.
I have never supported harming them in the name of science or
evidence. People ask why I've.
Had so many encounters when most spend their lives hoping for
one. I think it's partly the ecology
of the areas I spend time in, partly timing, and partly that
I've never approached them with weapons in my state.
Once you understand the terrain they prefer and when they tend
to be active, encounters become more likely.
They aren't as impossible to find as people think if they are
already living in the vicinity. I've seen adults.
Age in the face, just like humans with wrinkles and
expression lines. I've seen juveniles testing
boundaries. I've seen large dominant males
that remain silent for months. I've seen aggressive females
protecting territory. Their senses especially smell or
extraordinary. They can detect a person from
far away and they used wind direction deliberately.
Their daytime eyesight seems weaker, but their night vision
is exceptional. After everything I've.
Experienced. I don't think they're monsters.
I think they're highly intelligent forest beings with
their own society habits and personalities.
Some are calm, some are bold, some are dangerous.
But the more you spend time around them, the more you
realize they've been here a long time, and people have been
encountering them far longer than anyone wants to admit.
I bought this. Place in the country In 1995.
It sat at the end of a private dirt Rd. in Michigan.
Across from my driveway was a big working farm, 300 acres of
corn and soybeans. To the east was a county park.
Behind my house to the north was about 1000 acres of University
of Michigan game land. My 10 acres were mostly woods
with a bit of swamp from the road.
My driveway ran 1000 feet back into the trees.
I cleared about an acre in the middle of that woods and built
my house there by hand. I went out there for quiet.
I played in a band and built a studio in the house so we could
rehearse without bothering anyone.
I haunted. I fished the creeks.
It was the kind of place where you'd expect deer, turkeys,
raccoons, maybe coyotes. Not what I ended up running
into. The first odd thing?
Happened before there was even a house.
In the summer of 95. I had set up a small camp next
to the acre I had cleared for the build.
I had a tent, a fire ring lined with rocks, a cooler, a cheap
radio, my guitar, and a bottle of water hung up in a tree to
warm in the sun for a shower. I was out there alone, cutting
trees all day and then sitting by the fire at night.
Around 11 one warm night I started hearing what sounded
like large people walking around the perimeter of my camp.
The ground actually trembled under some of the steps.
Branches snapped, limbs cracked. It circled me.
There were no bears in that part of the state, and the biggest
normal animals on that land were deer.
These footsteps were too heavy for that.
Then a smell rolled in. It hit like a wall.
It reminded me of a dead skunk mixed with a soaking wet dog and
human waste all at once. It hung in the air over the
camp. I assumed at first maybe some
old mossy firewood in the ring was burning weird.
I still tried to rationalize it. I thought maybe it was a friend
trying to mess with me. I picked up my flashlight, swept
it through the trees and called out, offering them a beer,
telling them they weren't scaring me.
Nobody answered. The Walking didn't stop.
I put the light down and acorn hit me in the back.
I brushed it off as just falling out of a tree.
Then a small Pebble hit me in the neck.
Then more things started coming in.
Bits of bark, nut shells, small rocks, little twigs.
It followed me as I moved. If I walked to one side of the
campsite, the pelting came from that direction.
If I crossed to the other side, it shifted and kept coming.
Out of frustration, I finally yelled.
What is this? From the darkness all around the
camp, I heard voices answering back in this high speed, squeaky
chattering way. It wasn't English, it sounded
like someone playing a recorder at double speed, almost like
cartoon chipmunk voices, and there repeated my words back at
me, mocking the tone. It came from multiple directions
at once, not just one spot. Nothing normal in those woods
does that. At that point.
I decided to scare off whoever or whatever it was.
I went to the tent, grabbed my shotgun and yelled that they
needed to leave. I fired around straight up into
the night. The response is something I will
never forget. Several enormous screams erupted
from the tree line, overlapping deep roaring bellows that were
so loud the hair stood up on my arms and neck.
I'm used to loud music, but this was beyond any amp or concert.
It felt like it hit me in the chest.
Right after the screams I heard heavy bipedal running in
multiple directions, like several very large things taking
off through the forest at once. Branches and Bush crashing as
they put distance between us. Then everything.
Went completely quiet. No crickets, no wind, no
nothing. I sat on a stump with my heart
pounding so hard I thought it might break my ribs.
I couldn't make any sense of it. I drank what was left of the
beer, crawled into the tent and somehow fell asleep.
At about 6:30. The next morning I woke up to
the sound of cans clanking together and that same rapid
chatter outside. I stayed where I was in my
sleeping bag and listened. Something heavy walked toward
the tent. I could hear and feel each step
in the ground. Then the zipper on the tent door
started to jiggle like a hand was feeling for it.
Something stood right there, breathing slow and heavy.
It sounded like a very big chest pulling air, wet and rough,
almost like a sick person breathing through their mouth.
The zipper started to. Move down.
I grabbed the shotgun and exploded, yelling at the top of
my lungs. The thing outside took off.
I heard it run, heavy thudding steps, pounding the earth,
trailing with that same chattering and mumbling through
the mesh roof window of the tent.
I caught a quick glimpse. A dark, massive creature
dropping behind an oak tree. That was all.
When I stepped out. The camp was wrecked.
The cooler was dumped, beer cans torn and scattered.
The rocks around the fire ring were kicked aside.
One of the big stones, easily 100 lbs, had been driven deep
into the ground like something huge had jumped on it.
The radio was smashed against a tree.
My campfire guitar was gone. Whatever had come in had
strength far beyond anything normal.
And it had fingers. I didn't find clear footprints
that day. I just knew something very large
and very intelligent had passed through my camp.
I left for a trip. Up north and didn't tell a soul.
That first experience got pushed into the back of my mind.
I told myself I was stressed, maybe overtired.
I wanted it just to be my imagination.
Shortly after. While the house was still under
construction, I had my first clear daytime sighting.
By then the frame and roof were up.
I was inside, running electrical wire, walking through the future
living room at the back of the house.
I had a big picture window and a sliding door facing the woods.
As I walked past that opening, something huge and dark moved
through the yard, big black shape in my peripheral vision.
I stopped, backed up, and looked out again.
The yard was empty. I chopped it up to maybe crows
lifting off together or something.
I stepped outside. For a smoke onto the small front
deck. As I was standing there staring
into the trees, a deep growl came from my right.
When I turned, I saw it, A towering upright creature about
9 feet tall, walking away into the woods diagonally but keeping
its eyes on me. It was built like an oversized
human linebacker crossed with an ape.
It had thick dark grey to black hair all over its entire body,
except around the eyes and parts of the face where bare dark skin
showed. Its forehead sloped back from
heavy brow ridges. The back of the skull rose into
a subtle peak like a cone. The nose wasn't like a gorilla's
exposed nostril holes. It had a broad hooded human like
nose. The mouth was wide, the lips
thin. Its teeth, which I could see
clearly because it was bearing them at me, were big and square,
white with the eye teeth longer than the others, but not full
fangs. The eyes were what really stuck
with me. They were almond shaped and
black. I couldn't see white sclera in
the daytime. They seemed to hold the light
almost like something reflective inside them.
The best I can say is they looked like they amplified light
the way a gemstone can seem to glow when sunlight hits it.
The body was a. Perfect V shape, massive
shoulders tapering down to a narrow waist, every muscle
visible under the hair when it moved.
The hair was long enough that I could see its way, but not so
thick that it hid the muscle definition.
The hands were large, with long fingers and a thumb set lower
than ours. More like a chimp's hand than a
human's. It was clearly male, there was
no doubt. While it walked.
It kept its mouth open in a kind of snarl, teeth bared, and it
never took its eyes off me. It looked angry that I was
there. I watched it cover 3 or 4 long
strides and slip into the game preserve behind my property.
I could see it in glimpses between the trees as it moved,
until the trees finally hit it completely.
Later I measured the branch it passed under about 9 1/2 feet
off the ground. That put the creature at just
under that height. As I stood there.
My mind finally clicked. That was what had been around my
campsite months earlier. That was what had been howling,
throwing things and leaving sign on my property.
This wasn't a dream or stress. It was real and it was on my
land. That realisation changed
everything. I went back inside, loaded every
gun I owned, and placed one near each exit.
I had no intention of leaving the property, I had worked too
hard on it. But from that day I knew I
wasn't alone out there. The land itself showed more
signs once I knew what to look for.
The main Deer Trail circling the swamp had strange archways over
it every 50 to 150 feet. A young tree, maybe 30 feet tall
and a couple of inches thick at the trunk, had been bent down
over the trail and pinned in an arch using a green branch torn
off another tree and driven into the soil like a stake.
I found at least one spot where I could see exactly where that
stake branch had been twisted and snapped off a living tree.
That takes a lot of strength. I didn't make those.
No storm did either. On one early.
Visit. Before I ever connected all of
this, I had seen what I thought was a man in the woods.
Midday, full sun overhead, I noticed a tall dark figure
moving through the trees, hunched slightly, studying the
ground, occasionally bending down to pick something up.
I waved, shouted that I was a potential buyer, thinking it was
the owner hunting mushrooms. The figure turned toward me and
just rocked from 1 foot to another, shifting its weight
side to side, staring. It didn't respond.
When I called out again, it spun and ran off.
At that time I filed it away as weird guy, but there was
something wrong. Even then, in full overhead sun,
it still read as a solid dark mass, not just a person in the
shade. Later after the.
Encounters. I understood that had been one
of them. Another time in the late 90s, I
was building a wooden tree stand in an Oak Grove near the swamp.
I was up in the tree hammering boards.
Every time I struck a nail, I heard the same number of loud
knocks answer from deeper in the woods.
I thought it was an echo at first, but it was too delayed
and too distinct. I tested it.
I hit once and listened one knock back.
I hit twice, then stopped. 2 knocks echoed from the same
direction. I finally turned on the platform
and scanned the woods. About 35 feet away, between 2
trees, I saw two small black upright shapes peeking out.
They were about 5 feet tall, built like stocky children, but
fully covered in dark hair with long arms.
One held the stick. When I turned back to my work
and swung the hammer again, I caught the one with the stick
striking a nearby tree with it, mimicking my swing.
Behind them, deeper. In a tangler brush a much larger
figure sat crouched with its knees pulled up.
I could see the head, shoulders and the tops of the knees.
It chattered at the two smaller ones in that same non human
speech I had heard before. The juveniles turned, chattered
back and one started jumping up and down like it was throwing a
tantrum. Then both dropped flat and
disappeared into the grass and brush as if they've been ordered
to hide. I decided to run.
Back to the house for a camera. I hung the hammer on a branch,
left a can of beer on the stand, and hiked out.
I was gone maybe 15 minutes. When I came back, the clearing
was empty. The hammer was gone.
The beer was gone. Leaning against the tree was a
strip stick the same size as the one I had seen the juvenile
holding. It was about 18 inches long, an
inch thick. All the bark chewed off the wood
was covered in teeth marks. It looked like they had traded
my hammer and beer for their favorite toy.
Over the years, I. Found other gifts after we had
dumped deer guts at the edge of the yard following successful
hunts. Neatly stacked piles of odd
coloured rocks, wild Turkey feathers stuck upright in the
ground, an empty beer can that wasn't one of ours in the snow.
I would find impressions where something Big and Harry had sat
while eating, along with large flat footprints.
Walking back into the preserve one morning in November 1998, I
shot a huge buck from inside the house with my crossbow.
It was feeding at a bait pile in the yard during the rut, with
smaller bucks and Dose hovering behind it.
I took the shot through an open window.
The buck bolted into the woods. I let it go overnight the way I
usually did in cold weather, planning to track it at first
light at sunrise. I followed the blood trail.
I went about 75 yards and ended in a large soaked patch where
the deer had clearly gone down and died, but the carcass was
gone. In the middle of that blood
pool, my crossbow bolt stood upright in the dirt as if
someone had pulled it out and planted it.
There. Dead centre around the area in
the snow were huge bare footprints about 17 to 18 inches
long, clearly from something walking on 2 feet.
The tracks LED off through the woods for 3/4 of a mile until
they hit a paved Rd. At that point they turned and
ran along the road for a distance before disappearing
into the woods on the far side. To me, it looked like whoever
took my dear walked the road on purpose to break the track
before going back into cover. I never got that.
Buck back. They stole the whole thing, and
they made sure I knew who took it by sticking that bolt in the
middle of the blood like a message.
The closest? Most.
Personal encounter was with a female.
It was a quiet morning in late summer of 99.
Normally at Daybreak, the birds in those woods were deafening.
That day there was nothing. No birdsong, no insects.
Just stillness and a familiar foul smell hanging in the air.
I stepped out onto the deck and instantly thought, they're here.
Off to my right. Something shouted, a loud call
in no language I recognized. I saw movement down the hill, a
large dark shape crashing through brush, heading toward
the swamp. I walked a little that way to
try to see more, but then the hair on the back of my neck
stood up. I felt eyes on me from behind.
When I turned back toward the house, I saw her.
An 8 foot tall female Sasquatch stood partially behind an oak
tree next to my deck, only a short distance from where I had
just been standing. She had one shoulder and half
her body behind the tree, but most of her was exposed.
She didn't run, she just looked at me with a kind of amused
expression, almost like a smirk, as if I was interesting but
harmless. Her build was different.
From the male I'd seen earlier, she was thick from shoulders to
feet with no real taper, More like a heavily built human woman
with all the curves buried under sheer bulk.
Her stomach had a bit of a paunch, but not an exaggerated
gut, more like someone who has had children and lives hard.
Her breasts were large and sagging, clearly visible through
the hair. Her arms and legs were massive
and solid. I would put her weight somewhere
between 7 and 900 lbs. Her face followed the same
pattern as the male. Sloping forehead, pronounced
brow Ridge, hooded wide nose, thin lips, black shining eyes
that seemed to hold light. Her skin where I could see it
was dark grey. Her hair was greyish black and
rough looking, not soft fur. On her face I could see scars
and scratches, signs of a hard life in the woods.
I had always told. Myself, that if I ever stood
face to face with one, I would try to show I was peaceful,
maybe raise my hands, wave or say something calm.
All of that went out the window. All I managed was a shocked
curse. Then I remembered where I was
standing and how close I was to something that could tear me
apart in seconds if it wanted to.
I forced myself. Not to run, I walked quickly
around the other side of the house toward my truck, keeping
her insight as long as I could. As I moved away, I heard that
fast chatter from her direction and from down by the swamp, plus
a breathy huffing sound that reminded me of a big dog
laughing when it's excited. It sounded like they were
genuinely amused by me. I got in my truck and drove to
work, shaking the whole way, half convinced I would come home
to a demolished home. But when I returned that
evening, everything was untouched.
Other people around. Me saw them too.
One Co worker from Ford, a very straight logical guy, came to
hunt at my place one evening. I pulled into the driveway after
work and saw him sprinting out of the woods with his rifle
pointed behind him. He blew past me and into the
house, white faced, shaking and out of breath.
When he could talk, he told me he'd been in one of my tree
stands when several doze came in under him, followed by three
enormous upright gorillas, each around 8 feet tall, moving from
tree to tree, shadowing the deer.
One of them stopped directly under his stand.
He was convinced it could have reached up, grabbed him and
broke him in half. He didn't believe in.
Sasquatch. So he tried to call them your
neighbors. When I told them plainly that he
had just seen Bigfoots, he rejected it immediately, said I
was crazy and left. Days later at work, he refused
to talk about it again. His twin brother later told me
the sighting had deeply shaken his religious beliefs and that
he had quit hunting for good. As more houses.
Went up around the old farm across the road.
I had a new neighbor pull up one day while I was mowing.
He asked if I had seen anything odd in the woods.
He danced around the details, clearly afraid I'd think he was
insane. I finally said do you mean
Bigfoot? He grabbed me in a hug and
thanked me over and over. His wife thought he needed a
psychiatrist. He just needed someone to tell
him he hadn't imagined what he saw.
Over the years. I saw these things roughly a
dozen times. I find prints, hair, massive
scat piles packed with bone and fur, structures on deer trails,
missing deer, strange vocalizations at night, and the
occasional gift. I never once managed to get a
picture when they show up unexpectedly.
All I could do was stand there and watch, mouth open, brain
trying to catch up with what my eyes were seeing.
Every time it happened, it was clear these weren't stories and
these weren't costumes. They are real flesh and blood
creatures living right alongside me on that Michigan property.
Thanks for listening. Everyone, don't forget my books
are all for sale, audio and written.
The links are in the description below.
Thanks again. Take care.