On April twenty fifth, nineteen seventy eight, I was scheduled to appear on the Jc's Talk show on CJCS Radio at six thirty pm. I was busy that afternoon compiling information that I wanted to touch upon during the show. The time was between two thirty and three PM when there was a knock on my front door. I opened it and immediately stepped back and shot. A classic man in black stood before me. He was shorter than I was, around five foot six, and he was slightly bent over, which made him seem even smaller. His complexion was darker than my own, closer to an olive hugh. His cheeks were so sunken in that they looked like they were pinned together on the interior of his mouth. He had high cheek bones and a very sharp, angular face. His eyes were the most prominent feature, being in lower than normal and slanted though more outward, almost a wraparound effect. The man's face had a sinister expression, and his eyes enhanced it. His complexion was not smooth, It appeared to be pitted and rough. His mouth was thin and drawn. His nose appeared small and straight. His hair was black and extremely short. As if it had just grown back from a shave. He wore a black turtleneck in black slacks, although his pants seemed to have a faint sheen to them, making them appear lighter than the turtleneck in color. His shoes looked like dark brown and were highly shined. He was a very thin man, and his clothes hung oddly on his body. He was holding a picture album in his left hand, and after a moment of standing there staring at me, he reached over with his right hand and opened the book. I glanced down and saw a picture of a young boy posed attractively, another photo of a woman and child at the same time. The man started to speak, and his manner of speech shocked me as well. His words were mispronounced and formed difficultly, his mouth moving very slowly and carefully working out each word. Even with his great effort to speak, the quality of his speech was poor. He spoke softly, and I didn't catch all that he said. But what I did here was do you want a picture taken of yourself or your children? We have a mobile unit in the area. It took me a few seconds to decode his sentences. When a person speaks there are natural pauses and inflections in the words that help the listener understand the message. This was missing in his speech. The words all ran together, and many were broken up. My mind had to uns scramble it in my head and put in the missing pauses and reconnect the words. It was a strange feeling to reconstruct his sentences. Only when I accomplished this did the message make sense to me. No, I have enough pictures, I told the man in front of me. He stoically stared at me, and in a flash, he turned and he ran away. Stunned by his quick exit, I closed the door. The thought came to me that I should watch where he goes. Only thirty seconds had elapsed. When I look down the street in both directions, he was gone. He could not have made it in either direction had been out of sight in that short span of time. I thought back to the point that he was standing in front of me, and there was no vehicle in my drive or parked on the street. He had just vanished. I am a UFO researcher, and he never threatened or warned me to stop my research. That evening, I went to the radio station and I was the guest on the talk show. All the calls we received were clear, except for one from my friend Anne, an investigator in my group. Her call was filled with static on the line, badly broken up and barely audible. The calls proceeding and following hers were fine audibly. After I got home, I called Anne and told her about the breaking up of her call on air, and also about the strange man who had come to my door that day. I never mentioned that I thought it was a man in black and there was a long silence on her end of the line, and then she blurted out, he was here too. It was just a week ago. He asked me if I would like some pictures taking up my family. I thought for a minute and I decided no. But I asked him if he would take a picture of my dog. I thought it would be a nice birthday gift or my husband. Anne continued her recollection of the event, telling me that arrangements were made, and two days later, an unmarked black van pulled into her yard. Two men came to the door, both dressed in black suits. She invited them inside, but they refused, saying that she needed to bring her dog to the van. She noticed one of the men appeared to be having trouble breathing. Anne assumed the man was asthmatic because he was panting instead of breathing normally. The other man, who was the taller of the two and by description was the same man who visited me, asked her for the time. They seemed agitated and in a hurry. She had the distinct sense that she was holding them up. She exited the house with her dog and headed towards the van, but the dog immediately began to cower and whine. It did not want to go, But after some coaxing and pulling, she finally got the dog to the van. Neither of the men offered to help. Once inside, the two men set up their equipment and apparently took the dog's picture. Anne didn't elaborate on what was inside of the van or what it looked like, and she made no mention of the equipment she saw. She stated simply that they took her dog's picture and then they left. She was vague and resistant to my further inquiries. Soon after that, Anne quit my UFO research group without any explanation, and I haven't heard from her again. Cufoor n the Canadian UFO Research Network investigated this incident as a possible men in black event. Anne was never available to them for questioning. She avoided me and them completely. The studio the men claimed to work for was called, and the investigators found out that the studio had stopped taking pictures by mobile vans and no one fitting my description worked for them. They had no knowledge at all that someone was going around posing as photographers for their studio, and the manager was very upset at the thought. It was discovered during the investigation that my next door neighbor had also had this man in black come to her door on the same day that he came to Mind. He was wearing dark sunglasses and actually handed her the photo album. She opened it to look at all the pictures, but found only two photos in the whole book. During this time, the man just stood and stared at her, and when she handed him the book back in confusion, he asked her if she wanted any pictures taken. It's apparent that he must have gone to her house by mistake. He came to Mind next and had removed his sunglasses. I remember that My first thought when I saw him one of revulsion. He had a sinister appearance about him. I think my reaction to this appearance probably revealed that I felt a threat. I knew at the time this was a man in black event, but kept trying to dismiss this thought from my mind. Throughout the encounter. I was certain that he had come due to my scheduled appearance on a talk show that evening. It's usually about this time every year when I think about the event that I wish I could forget forever. We've told only two other people about what happened that damp week in the nineteen seventies. We were on spring break from the University of Washington and I wanted to get away from the whole rat race and spend some time out in the Boonies. I wanted to do some camping, but more importantly, I wanted to spend time alone with my new girlfriend Mary. She later said she would have been just as happy taking a nice long road trip down the Pacific Coast Highway and my Stingray convertible. I loved that car and I still miss it. However, camping is what we did, and camping is what led us to that unforgettable event. Corvettes are not meant for camping out in the woods, so I asked a few of my friends about doing a vehicle swap for the next week. I was looking for a four by four with a halfway decent camper shell in case the weather went south, and my friend Chuck came through for me. He had a seventy two Dodge power wagon with an almost new camper. He gladly handed over the keys in exchange for my keys to the Stingray. Mary and I were off to the woods in his truck, and as I would learn later, Chuck took the Pacific Coast Highway road trip in my Stingray, Mary and I were headed to a nice little campground with a boat landing on a small lazy river, where she had gone on a canoeing trip with her church youth group about eight to ten years earlier. It took longer than we expected to find the spot, but we finally arrived around three pm. It might have been a nice campground when Mary was a kid, but that's not the word I would have used to describe it. When we got there. The area was less than an acre in size, and time had not been kind to it. There were a couple of rusty trash cans, a large fire pit and an old picnic table, and desperate need of repair. I doubt anyone had camped there for some time. I was torn. There was still time to find a better place to camp, but if we stayed here, I had no doubt that we would be alone, making it the perfect place to get acquainted with Mary. I offered her the choice, and she was all smiles about option number two, so it was subtle. We parked the truck and started setting up camp. Mary was raised in the outdoor, so didn't take us long to get situated. She supervised and I followed orders. Soon we had a nice fire going, and before dinner we strolled around the campground hand in hand. We were surrounded by dark, thick woods full of old growth trees and heavy underbrush, clear signs of a campground that was never used. We made our way down to the river bank, where I looked over the rippling water at the craggy, twisted dead trees one hundred feet away. I felt a little chill run down my spine as I pictured J. R. Tolkien's Murk Wood. I was a city boy, unfamiliar with the many sights and sounds of nature, and I might not have emitted it then, but I was spooked. We headed back to our campsite, had our dinner in, settled in for the night in front of the open fire. We popped some popcorn, opened an ice coat bottle of spumante, and played some good music on Mary's radio. Swiftly moving dark clouds began to fill the indigo sky until it was completely overcast, and a veil of thin fog began to creep in. Mary snuggled closer to me. Oh God, the smell of her hair was intoxicating. Life was good. I was thinking that the closest human had to be miles away, and there were absolutely no sounds of civilization, nothing except marrying me and the sounds of nature from the surrounding woods and the river on the other side of the campground. At that moment, it felt good to know that we were alone. It wasn't until midnight that my feelings began to change. I noticed Mary had fixed her eyes on the darkness that was the misty woods across the river. I heard something and I can't make it out. What is it? She said? I immediately thought she was having fun with the poor city boy. Until we saw a few sets of yellow green eyes reflecting the light of our campfire. My chills turned to goose bumps as my mind accepted the fact that she was not kidding. I started to get up to stoke the fire, but Mary was one step ahead of me. The fire blazed, and before long these blinking eyes had disappeared. It was probably just a curious family of deer and raccoons or possums, she assured me. The silly city boy bought that if we make enough noise, that'll scare everything away. She added, it sounded logical to me. Mary's radio filled the woods with rock and roll while we stayed bombled up inside a warm blanket and watched the fire die away. Eventually we turned off the music so we could enjoy the quiet of the night. The fog was growing thicker, now broken only by the blurry patches of lightning as thunder rolled in the distance. It was all so romantic. Mary looked at me and likened us to the mortician in Gomez, dreamily enjoying a dreary thunderstorm. We burst into laughter at that, but our glee was short by an odd sound that came from the woods behind us. We jumped up and stared into the darkness, squinting as we searched desperately for the source of the sound that we could only describe as James Earl Jones chuckling through a mouthful of food. It couldn't have been more than fifty feet away, but we couldn't find it. Whatever it was, it was either laughing at us or with us, but we weren't sure which. It didn't repeat itself, so except for the sound of light sprinkling, there was a heavy, uneasy stillness as we stood there staring eastward. Something splashed across the river to our west and up the woods, where we could now hear limbs and branches crunching, but that side of the campground was completely obscured by the thick fog. It's probably a deer taking a detour around us, Mary said. The silly city boy was beginning to feel a bit of doubt. The rain let up for a and we were instantly smothered in silence, compounded by the feeling of being watched. I shouted some choice profanities into the night, but there was no reply. We need to pack up and leave now, I told Mary a second before the sky opened up and the rain poured. Let's just get inside the camper and go to bed, she said, through the dead luge. I reluctantly agreed. We hastily made sure that everything on the picnic table was covered with a big plastic sheet, and we retreated inside, shutting the door behind us. Felt good. We were soaked to the bone thoroughly in spoot, but being inside provided a measure of needed security that helped to calm my fears. Mary said she was ready for bed. That's all I needed to hear. We forgot about anything outside the door. The camper began to rock. As we sat at the table talking. Mary and I looked at each other and our eyes wide with fear. Something akin to shock overtook us, and we both began to shake. We ran to the windows to look out, fighting back that panic that was beginning to overshadow reason. But the windows were fogged over, and even after wiping them off, we couldn't see anything. Plus, it was raining so hard that it was making such a racket on the roof. We couldn't hear. We had no idea what was out there? Do you think that was an earthquake? Mary asked? It seemed reasonable. Before long, all of Chuck's lawn furniture was being slammed down hard on the top of the camper, so we were able to eliminate possums. That made us laugh a little, but we certainly knew we were being attacked by something huge and dangerous. Now. I had heard of bigfoot, but I had always dismissed it as a bunch of hooy. However, I was thinking sysquatch, just as Mary whispered, I think it's a bigfoot. There was nothing inside the camper that we could use as a weapon except an old cast iron skillet. All the other utensils were outside, tucked under the plastic sheet on the picnic table. I got another giggle out of Mary when I picked it up and pretended to use it as a two handed club. But with no other defense, we huddled in the center of the camper as far from the sides as possible and quietly waited for the walls or the roof to come crashing in on us. It felt like an eternity as we sat there, even after the attack seemed to end, waiting for daybreak. At four a m. The camper was violently shaken again, followed by several hard slams on the side and then strange crunching sounds outside. The sky began to lighten up, and the rain came to an end, allowing us a vague view of some large, dark shapes moving around the camp. We felt like our hearts were going to explode when we heard odds sounding voices that felt like they had surrounded us after the rain had stopped. That was followed by deep, ungodly howls as loud as a train horn that seemed to be directed right at the camper. It made the luvered windows rattle violently and left our ears ringing. We took that to be their message to us to get the hell out of their backyard. After that, we didn't hear anything. There was another hour of no activity. I finally opened the door with a trusty ten inch fraying pan, locked and loaded, and we emerged to be greeted by a dim, bloody sky trying to burn through the fog and trees behind us. We surveyed the campsite and it was a total mess. Mary and I had already mentally geared up to pack to get the hell out of there. At breakneck speed, I cleared chucks, mutilated long furniture off the roof of the camper and left it behind. My three coolers had vanished, and Mary's poor radio had been stumped flat into the mud. Some time later, when we were able to laugh again, Mary quipped, I guess old Bigfoot ain't no fan of rock and roll. Once we saw the extent of the damage, we jumped into the four by four and didn't stop until we reached civilization. I sure hope those Bigfoot were able to open those two cases of Boone's Farm and Spumante without getting smacked in the face by a plastic cork projectile. It seemed like we were allowed to leave without further drama. We made our way to a nice roadhouse in that had a beautiful swimming pool, and we thought once we were checked in that we'd sleep like the dead, But that didn't happen. Mary and I stayed there for five days to unwind and recover from our own living nightmare. Three months later, I asked her to marry me. We live in Wisconsin now, where Mary grew up. I've come to believe that she and Wisconsin are God's gift to an old city boy like me. Introspect, we believe they didn't intend to hurt us. They could have easily turned the truck over on its side and peeled the camper open like a Cadbury egg, not to mention the fact that a fourth grader could have broken through the camper's cheap windows without a problem. A good tap on the glass would have shattered it, allowing for one long, hairy arm to reach in and yank either one of us out. As for Chuck, when I took the truck back to him, I was worried about what he'd say about all the damage and the loss of his furniture. I had nothing to worry about. Chuck had been a major fender bender with my stingray while racing some kid in a Mustang while he was in San Jose. The insurance companies out did both me and the kid in the Mustang with a bunch of technicalities and yeah butts, So I ultimately ended up with Chuck's truck and camper. We can laugh about that now that I mention how much I missed that car. Mary and I have only told our worried to Chuck and Mary's mother. They both recommended that we not tell anyone else. Chuck once slipped and told me that he had had his own experience a couple of years before Mary and I had hours. Maybe someday I will get a whole story out of him. It might take a few beers. Meanwhile, Mary and I took her mother and Chuck's advice to heart, and we never told anyone else until now.