It was a hot, salty night August in north central Mississippi, nineteen sixty
six. The reason I know the date is because my father had just left
my mother, and I'd always known that he left when my baby sister was
six weeks old. I know that my baby sister was born the end of
June, So if you had at the weeks and I was told that when
my baby sister was six weeks old, it had to be occurring in the
middle of June, I mean in the middle. We lived in a home
that he had built six years earlier when he met my mom. It was
on my grandfather's property. That's the only acre of land off my granddaddy's place
to this day that I currently do not own because my mom had to sell
it after Dad and Mom divorced. She couldn't make the house payments, not
on on one salary. But anyhow, I figure roughly now it's been maybe
a week, maybe ten days, two weeks after my dad had vacated the
premises. We did not have an air conditioner, so what we would do.
It was a two bedroom house, and we would put a box fan
in the dining room at the north end of the house with the flow of
air blowing outward, and we would open up our windows in our bedroom,
which the bedroom with me and my brother slept was on the south off east
corner of the house, and my mother's room, which had my baby sister's
basinet and everything was just across the hallway from us on the southwest side of
the house. We had the windows open and the curtains open to of course,
we had screens on the windows keeped insects from coming inside. And I
know it was at night. I have no clue what time at night,
and I didn't care about time. As a child six years old, you
don't think about that. Me and my four year old brother was sleeping in
the same bedroom together, in the same bed, with the bed up against
the west wall. The foot of the bed was the window looking back on
the back side of the property. When my dad and them pushed off the
land to build the house, they pushed all the extra dirt because they was
kind of cutting into a bluff to level off the house place, and it
made sort of a heel which led up to a bigger hill behind the house.
Of course, my grandfather had to fence it off with barb wire fence
I know he had five strand barbed ware fences because when I got older,
I helped him replace every fence posting wear on the whole dang blaze. Even
at six years old, I knew that it was at least a five strand
barb wire fence, which stands anywhere from about four to four and a half
foot tall. Sometime during that night, and it may have been early,
it could have been late, who knows, something woke me up outside that
window, and of course when I raised up off the pillow that I was
lying upon, my eyes were already adjusted or adapted to the outside light.
It may I don't know at that stage in August whether or what moon phase
it was, but it was pretty clear. You could see basically pretty much
out in the back up to the top of that hill where the fence line
was. Of course, behind the fence line, the hill and the trees
blended in a little bit, but there was a break between the fence line
and a whole fire break that my granddaddy always would put around the perimeter of
his fence. Something on that hill was making a cooing, clicking, tight
noise. The cooing was like a dove basically, only a lot deeper in
volume it was going. Then they had start going like you click in your
tongue when you're trying to call a horse in or a dog, and then
it would go back to Well, that was the noise that woke me up,
and so I just looked out the window at the foot of the bed
towards the east of the house, and I seen something on that bob wire
fence, and it really blew my mind. What I was looking at.
Whatever it was was draped over the top of that fence. It looked like,
and this is the only way I could describe it, the biggest damn
monkey I ever seen in my life. Were you just seeing a silhouette?
No, you could see facial details. No, I couldn't see facial details.
The fence from the window was probably twelve fifteen yards away. But what
I could see was it was slowly while it was making this swaying its head
and its shoulders to its right and back to its left in a slow motion.
That's what caught my attention. So if it hadn't been moving, you
may not have seen it, right, I don't know, it's hard to
say. I just knew that what I was looking at I was looking towards
what woke me up, which was the sound, and then I noticed this
thing slowly swaying on this fence line. Then I noticed that both of its
arms were draped over the bob wire fence and almost dragging the ground on the
other side. Now, figure of that out. If the fence, and
I know, the barbed wire fence on an average was a five strand fence,
probably four and a half foot, possibly even up to five foot tall,
and its arms were draped over that fence, almost the knuckle part of
it was almost dragging the ground on this side. The side that I was,
well, I'm six years old. As I said earlier, the first
thing that popped into my head was what's a large monkey? Because see,
I remember Mama taking us to the zoo in Memphis and we seen apes.
I didn't know what an ape was. I knew it was a monkey.
It kind of reminded me of the arm length of a chimpanzee that hadn't seen
it the zoo, So I was automatically thinking it was a monkey. Couldn't
tell you what color it was. It was dark. It was making those
cooing and clicking noise. Of course, I had to wake my brother up.
So my brother slept. I slept on the outside opposite of the doorway
in the hallway, but he slept on the side was right there by the
door. So I woke my brother up and I said, hey, look,
look look at that look outside, look at that monkey outside. Well,
he woke up enough to register what I said, woke up enough to
register to listen, and he was hearing this cooing and this clicking noise too.
Then he looks out the window and sees this thing swaying back and forth.
But it didn't take no persuasion for him to haul ass. He was
a tight my brother. You'd have to know it. It wasn't that he
was scared of anything. He just never stuck around to figure out if he
should be. So once he got a gander or a good look at this
thing, he hauled ass right across the hall into my mama's room. Now
all this is reflection back over the years after thinking about it after the fact,
But I noticed when when he left the room. Fear is contagious.
There was no way hell I was gonna stay in that bed, especially with
him hauling ass. So I was right on his heels, and we both
dove into my mother's bed. Well, I remember when we hit the bed,
as I said, this is all after the fact. My mother had
been crying. Her eyes were swollen, she was wiping away tears and you
know, snop, but she hadn't gone to extreme. And I also noticed
too that my baby sister in the basinet over there, the six maybe seven
week old baby, was making fretful noises while she was laying on her stomach.
It was like, you know, we had never noticed that she cried,
but you know, you could hear the baby when she had cried night
because we had the doors open for the air to circuit leave through the house.
Anyhow, we both dove into bed, both not excited but wondering what
the hell and she is? What's going on in the way, you know,
y'all must have had a bad dream or whatever. I can't remember what
all she was saying, but I do remember that when we could coherently tell
her what we both had seen and the only thing we could describe it as
was a monkey outside of our bedroom. Wonda, my mother said, oh,
now, there's no such things as monkeys, you know around here.
You know that's in on TV or in magazines or at the Memphis Zoo.
But the only thing I could compare to what I'd seen was this was the
biggest monkey I'd ever seen. In the monkey I was thinking in my description
was a chimpanzee. It wasn't a gorilla because we'd seen gorillas at the Memphis
zoop or I would have said a gorilla. It wasn't orangutain because I seen
and then had to Meta zoo. The thing that I could come closer to
it relating to to a six year old at the time, was a big
monkey, and the monkey was a chimpanzee as far as I knew. Then.
She looked at me and my brother and said, well, y'all both
had to say, y'all both had a bad dream. Y'all just need to
going back to bed. But Mama went out going where y'all can sleep with
me tonight, And that's where we stayed that night, and uh, I
can remember it may have been we stayed sleeping the bed with her for two
or three nights after that too, But it wasn't long before we ended up
going back to our bedroom. But then again, it wasn't that much longer
where Mama had to give up the house anyway because she couldn't make the house
payment, so we ended up moving on the same property with my end with
my granddaddy and my grandmother. But looking back on it in a sun memory
and the things I know now and thinking about it over the years as many
reports that I've investigated or talked to people about. Once they realized that I
knew something about this thing that we call boogers in Mississippi, was that these
things are watching us all the time where they're entertainment. As long as there's
an alpha male in other words, a husband or the significant alpha in a
booger's primitive logic being the man of the house, they wouldn't do nothing but
watch. But they can recognize anywhere from ten days or up to two weeks
when the dominant male presence has left or vacated the premises. And that's when
it's not that they're getting bold towards trying to come and take thank you or
take up with the female of the house. It's just that they've been watching
us so long that they feel like that we're a part of their family in
a certain primitive sort of way. And when this type deal would occur.
They would make theirself known, not on purpose, but there wasn't as they
was more bold about being around, in placing themselves into positions where you would
start seeing them more often than you would if there dominant alpha male of the
house wasn't around. Another thing that I figured out in summary that they're young.
I'm talking about bigfoot or boogers or whatever you want to call them.
When they emotionally cry, it sounds a lot like a human infant crime.
And I've noticed over the years that these things will respond to babies crying or
being hurting in pain through either a colic or whatever, and they cry light
at night being colicky or whatever. Plus the fact that a dominant mail was
not around probably caused this to happen, because you had to remember all the
windows in the house were open, and everything that was going on in that
house, including my mother being very emotional about my father leaving and there was
nothing she can do about it. I'm sure she was in there crying not
only for him just leaving, but her having a very young child and two
other young boys to raise in a house that she probably couldn't even afford the
payments towards I mean, I'm sitting there and I've thought about it a million
times over the years, So it made a very emotional situation that would lure
one in because I do know these things can pick up on emotions, especially
over a length of time. And then to hear a very fretful newborn infant
going through probably teething or being colicky or whatever in its infancy, I'm thinking
that that situation was too much for one not to feel like they could probably
in a way help calm the situation down, because you got to remember,
this thing was coohing, making a cooing type noise cooi g and then clicking
in a little rithmatic pattern like It's definitely not an aggressive no. It was
nothing aggressive about it. I think it really got caught up in the situation
for it to accidentally reveal itself as it was, especially with me and my
brother in the bedroom. That's basically the first time I've ever seen one didn't
have a clue what it was. And then I was told, as my
brother was, that we both had the same dream, which I believe more
in a big monkey than I would us both having the same dream at the
same time at the same moment. How did you did you ever tell you
dreamed? If I didn't dream, told him about it when we got older
experience, Yeah, I told him when we got older, because basically,
once it occurred, like I said, don't, I can't even tell you
the timeframe. But in a child's mind, it doesn't seem like we was
that long in the house wanting to sleep in my mom's bed, long before
we had to physically move in with my grandparents because my mother could not financially
pay the payments on that house. But you weren't over there eating supper.
Nope, sure no, sure one't. We never talked back to our mother
back in the sixties anyway, And as a child, you'd think of it
for two or three days and then you was told you dreamed of it.
And see, I understand that perfectly. Yeah, I mean kids don't they
don't think that. Oh I gotta tell I gotta counselbody, right, right,
something traumatic happens, they just kind of deal with it, right,
And see I remember all this being that time frame because look at it like
this August and when I remember starting to school at six years of age in
September. Back in those days, school always started the week after Labor Day,
you remember back them day? Oh yeah, well up now they start
to school that first week in August. But uh, my grandkids started getting
homework before they even started school. I'm with you, Yeah, Mom and
daddy instructions on what they need to read and write about. But see,
to even go with the time frame to more disclose when it happened, it
wasn't that long. If this occurred the second week in August. We was
living in my grandparents' house when I first stepped foot on a school bus the
second week in September. So we're talking three weeks difference. Yeah, almost
right over there. Well, you know, as a six year old,
you don't care about time, but there was You don't remember anything up until
that point. That was there. That was the first time. And I
can see that rascal, that big monkey draped over that fence to this date
because it Hell, if it had been Santa Claus, it had been the
same thing. If it had been the Easter Rabbit, it had been the
same thing. Yeah, but I'm looking at something that don't belong. I
knew what horses was, I knew what cows was, I knew what chickens.
I knew what dogs, we had dogs the whole nine yards. But
what I saw draped over that fence, the only thing I ever seen close
to it was behind the cage at the Memphis Zoo, which you're familiar with
Memphis. That was when time made house dunk as bad as the damn It's
line line. Lie. Well, yeah, well they never heard. They
didn't plan that out too well, but that led up till and see that's
how it's harder for me to try to remember when the lightning bug incident happened.
And I'm telling you all this because you you've basically got that hall ready
but just right. But okay, but my deal with the lightning bug deal
was the best, and even at ten years old. And I'm saying ten
because I'm using my sister's age as the template again here. I know that
when we was chasing those lightning bugs, she hadn't started to school yet,
So that shows me that she was not even six years old. So if
she wasn't six years old, if she was five, and I'm six years
older than her, that would put me at ten or eleven years of age.
But the reason I know the time of the year was because lightning bugs
in the South. I don't know what to do in other places, but
I have learned by traveling over the years. It's different times. Lightning bugs
in the South, when they first start coming out is normally in the early
spring, which is May or April. And I do know that the reason
they shine their little butts up is to draw females so they can breathe.
And here we go. Each all three of us had a mason jar running
across the field catching and it was a competition to us. We'd catch as
mant who was gonna catch the most lightning boots, because we'd get my granddaddy
or my grandmama to punch holes in the top of a mason jar with an
ice pick. You remember the old ice pist yep, U mayonnaise jar yep.
Yeah. Well, we had the mason jars because we would always can
all of our vegetables out of the garden and stuff. We each had a
mason jar with poke holes on the top of it, and we was out
in the back pasture at my granddaddy's play. Well, we was doing all
this and it was steadily getting darker, and you got to envision here this
was the back pasture where we kept horses and cattle, and the cows and
the horses, and my granddaddy would always keep it cut down for hay and
keep it cut down for grazing purposes. And here's all these cow patties and
piles out there, and we was avoiding them. But that's conducive to a
lot more firefly or lightning bug activity. And the more we was running across
the grass, we was kicking them up. Because people don't realize that fireflies
or lightning boats stay under the blade of grass during the day. Their wings
cannot take the direct heat of the sun. It's like mosquitoes, you know.
That's why mosquitoes don't come out in the daytime. But getting back to
that, my grandfather had done his head out of the back door once and
said, hey, y'all, chaps. He'd always call us, chaps,
need to come on to the house, suppers ready, and it's getting dark.
Of course, he knew that time of the year too, even though
it was cooler at night and it was warm during the spring of the day.
That that was when snakes started crawling. They had just come out of
hibernation or what they go through. During the wintertime, and he knew that
these snakes could just come out from anywhere anytime. I mean we're in the
middle of Mississippi. I mean, you know sun during the day. Oh
yeah, well they more come out to feed at night. So he done
stuck his head out the back door several times. The second time and we
heard him when he called us in, but we was having too much fun.
But the third time, all of us occurred. He see something we're
looking if he's looking toward us at we're kind of at a eleven o'clock position.
He sees something further to his left our right that was slowly along the
fence line that was separating our property and the neighbor's property. Something over there
where between the fence line was a hedgerow of cedar trees and other trees that
had taken root from birds landing on the bob wire taking a crap with seeds
in the mouth, and these trees would grow. But something over there was
moving in this cedar thick along this fence line. So he caught his attention
and what it was doing was standing up, and he you got to remember
the this is dust dark, and this thing moving is blended in with these
cedar trees as its background. He didn't know what it was, but he
saw something moving. He determined later that it was slowly swaying back and forth.
I've noticed over the years when these things sway, that's their body language,
showing that they're nervous to a certain detree. Now remember the first incident.
It will swaying on the fence line. The monkey will swaying. Right
now, this thing sways. When he noticed it was all of a sudden,
this thing drops down on all fours from standing up on two legs,
and then it starts loping towards us on all fours, leading with its left
knuckles on the ground. A field coming end, the same field where me
and my brother and sister were yelling and squealing young youthful voices with the higher
pitch before maturity. Well, he knew that he did not. It was
one of those split second deals. He had to make a decision. There
wasn't no gun handy, They wasn't a axe, they wasn't nothing. So
he barrels out the back door and we was probably thirty five almost forty yards
away from it. This thing that was loping towards us, which me and
my brother and sister that was not aware of, was actually probably about twenty
yards from us. So my granddaddy already knew that this thing was going to
get to us before he was going to be able to get to us.
Didn't he have to come around with hout. Yes, what happened was he
there was a fence line between my granddaddy and the pasture we was in.
My granddaddy had an inner pasture where he would bring his cattle on his horses
in every evening. We didn't understand that one, but he would bring them
in every evening. It was directly because of these things, but we didn't
know that then. But the other pasture we was in was connected to the
other side of the big hill from the first story. We had one hundred
and eighty six acres, and we on the huge hill behind the house,
same hill that was you know, in the first door. To get through
that pasture, though, there was a little bitty filled ditch that was running
kind of parallel with a fence. So it wouldn't have done my grandfather any
good to have jumped over the fence because then he had had to maneuver the
ditch. So he had to run more away from us to go around what
he called his tractor shed where he kept his tractor and then go through the
gate right there to get to us, which he would have He would have
got there quicker going that way than he would have if he had tried to
jump through a fence in the ditch. All the time he was running across
that pastor, he started cussing and raising hell and screaming and all kinds of
stuff. Well, that was behavior to me, my brother and my sister
that we wasn't used to seeing from my granddaddy. Very humorous, he was
funny, he loved people. Everybody loved my granddaddy, but he just would
never just actually, I thought, in my own personal opinion, it was
kind of like a cartoon when my grand when me and my brother my sister
first noticed him raising all this came. We stopped immediately what we're doing because
this was behavior that my grandfather never did. And I can just envision us
stopping doing what we're doing, and here we go turn all our heads and
looking directly at our granddaddy. Well, when we seen him running, and
that was the first time I ever seen my granddaddy running physically. This man
was ready at sixty years old. At I'm not saying sixty year old people
cannot run. I'm just saying my granddaddy, I'd never seen him run in
my life. He's never had a reason to us. But we noticed that
he's good, yeah, as getting it as fast as he could get it.
But we noticed he was still yelling and screaming and possibly even cussing anything
he could do. It was just like he. We thought he went plumb
crazy until we noticed that he wasn't looking at us. He was looking pas,
just us father this site. Well, when we noticed that here,
we're coming back to the cartoon again, I can envision all three of our
heads. Once we determined that he wasn't doing this screaming and hell raising for
us. He was looking at something to our right. So we all turned
our head and looked that away. Well, when we did, here we
see this big ass monkey again. And now he's more like a chimpanzee because
he's loping towards us, leading with his left hand. I noticed it was
a knuckle walker. It was on all fours and it was loping towards us.
It wasn't walking on two legs. Again, like I said about my
brother earlier, when my brother seen this, he hauled ass. I think
he almost knocked my grandfather down trying to get to me and my sister.
He didn't let my grandfather's presence to tear him or nothing. Fear is contagious,
and I wanted to haul ass with my brother. But my baby sister,
all of maybe four or five years old, just completely. Her legs
melt out from under her and she hits the ground, screaming bloody murder,
screaming hysterically. I've heard her cry, heard her picture fits, I've heard
her when she's strung by walst and everything else. She never reached that level
of screaming and up until that point in my lifetime that she did. When
she saw this thing loping towards us, she knew actually like I did,
because I done already looked at my granddad, and I noticed that this was
gonna get to me and my sister way before my granddaddy was gonna get to
us. And even though my granddaddy was raising ten times worth of hell,
it did not deter this thing. That's when I started looking towards it,
and I was not froze in the spot, but I did not want to
leave my baby sister either. How much light was left enough that I could
see it, I could see it real good, especially the closer it was
getting. I mean, this is dust dark. Now. I ain't saying
I was cavalier. I ain't saying I was a hero. I just was
not going to leave my baby sister. She was sitting there, just hysterically
screaming. I was scared to death the whole nine yards, but my Granddaddy
was coming. Everything was I was hoping, beyond hope was going to be
all right. But I also had enough sense to know that this thing was
going to get to us way before he was. Now, up until this
point in time, this durned thing was looking at us. And I got
the general idea, not from at the moment, but when I was thinking
about it later and then thinking about it over the years after it happened.
This thing did not look like it had any malicious dispost. This thing give
me the impression it was caught up into me and my brother and my sister
chasing likening bugs, and it wanted to play too. That's the general idea
I got. That was exactly what I was thinking from what I could physically
see. But I, as I said, I've come to this conclusion after
thinking about it for over the years. Well, about this time here,
I am scared to death and put myself between me and my sister and it,
because I knew my granddaddy was coming right behind me. About this time,
my grandfather actually gets within this thing, sat line, and that sucker
hit the brakes and stopped when it saw my granddaddy, even after my granddaddy
was raising two hundred times the hell. It was like it had turned the
channel and said, oops, I unscrewed up. Because what it did it
stood up on two legs as straight as it could. It did not lock
its knees. That's when I learned something then that has not changed since I've
been seeing these things. It had a confused look on its face, and
actually it looked like not that it was pouting. But I got caught with
my hand in the cookie jar. Well, it never took its eyes off
my grandfather, but it stopped within probably eight yards of me and my sister.
That's how close it were. But it took it that long to capture
in its eyesight even though he was raising hell and see That's what blows my
mind. That's how focused that thing was on me and my brother and my
sister when we was chasing these fireflies lightning bulls, which I've always used lightning
bulls. It's all these Yankees that say, ladybody, it wasn't lighting by.
I said, firefly, motherfucker, you know. But uh, just
because you're ignorant, don't mean I'm ignorant. I know what I'm talking about,
you don't. But to make it where you'll know what I'm talking about,
I'll use fireflies. But anyhow, of course, my grandfather never stopped.
He was still coming toward us, and then he reached us, and
he first thing he did he reached down and he grabbed my sister and picked
her up and cradled her in his arms. Then he reaches over there and
he pulls me back kind of behind me, talking about my granddaddy. Well,
this thing, with this stumped look on his face like oh, I
screwed up, slowly turns to its left and starts walking bi peeddly to the
woods north of where we was, and my grand My sister was still crying
and all, but she wasn't screaming anymore. My Granddaddy hadn't the screaming was
over with, but you know, it was still there. And then all
the time it walked until it disappeared into that cedar breaks north of us.
It was looking over its right shoulder, but it couldn't turn its neck all
the way around. It kind of throwed its shoulders back to look thick at
us. That's when I realized that its neck did not work like I did,
which makes sense in the long run, and I'll get into that in
my summer. Of course, my granddaddy takes us back to the house.
I knew then when it got closer to us that it wasn't a chimpanzee.
It wasn't a gorilla, it wasn't a ring of tang. It was something
that didn't the compute. And that's when, of course, my mother,
my grandmother, was all trying to settle my baby sister down. She didn't
even want to discuss, didn't want to talk about it nothing. She had
problems with it the rest of her life. She slept with Mama the whole
nine yards. But my grandfather kind of pulled me and my brother off to
the side and told us what this thing was. As far as he knew
what it was and the only thing he could ever describe it as, that's
a booker. And that's where I learned from the second time I seen one,
and from anything that my grandfather already kind of knew of these things,
and he had a term for boogers, and not a booger up, you
knows, And I know that where I've been castrated and crucified for calling them
boogers ever since I mentioned the word. But in the South, that's what
we called them, and I've learned over the years that's what ninety percent of
the people back in the sixties, the seventies, the eighties, and even
before then the fifties, the forties and the thirties called them boogers b O
O G E R S. I think it's a pastized version off a boogieman.