In the summer of nineteen sixty eight, when I was nine, we took
our annual summer holiday at a small holiday camp at Romney Marsh near Rye in
Sussex, located in the south of England. As always, we stayed in
a static caravan that was typical of the era. It was basic and small,
with seats that converted into beds and a curtain that could be drawn between
them for privacy. Lighting came from a gas powered mantle around the walls that
my father would light in the evenings. They made a comforting noise as they
burned, somehow, much homier than the modern electric lighting systems of today.
My parents were not wealthy, so we always catered our own meals and our
entertainment was simple. After tea in the evening we would always go for a
walk and usually end up in the camp Amusement and entertainment clubhouse. Dad would
have a pint of beer and Mom a sherry, and we kids enjoyed a
coke with a straw and a pack of ready salted crisps. I think you
call them potato chips in America. We would never be out late, generally
heading back to our caravan around nine thirty or ten. Our holidays usually took
place around late August, meaning it would already be dark by that time.
By the late nineteen sixties, the eyes of the world were focused on the
sky, commonly referred to as the space race. It was a time of
astronauts and satellites. Unlike today's geostationary satellites, those early versions moved in such
a way that live broadcasts on TV and radio between different countries had to wait
until the relevant satellite came on stream, usually meaning a limited broadcast of maybe
fifteen or twenty minutes. As irritating as it was, these satellites were easily
visible as they passed overhead, shining as either red or green lights in the
night sky. As we walked back to our caravan from the clubhouse. My
mother always found great fun in getting us kids to stare at the nighttime sky
searching for those beautiful green and red lights or any stars really. Sussex in
the south of England was especially conducive to this activity due to the lack of
light pollution in the area. There were a few lights dotted around the walkways
for safety reasons, but these had little effect on the darkness of the night
sky. One evening, on our way back to our caravan, Mom had
us all looking up as usual. It was not a cloudless night, but
there were very large patches of open sky, so we could see the stars.
As we stood there looking for satellites, we suddenly saw a bright white
light moving across the sky. It was very high up and looking no bigger
than one of the stars around it. We watched it as it came overhead,
and then it stopped. After a short time, it moved off in
another direction and disappeared behind a cloud. A short time later, we saw
it reappear, but from a different direction. Yet again, it suddenly stood
still before moving off and yet another direction. We must have watched it do
this at least a few more times over perhaps five minutes, before it eventually
sped away, and then we never saw it again. We were puzzled about
what we had been watching, and my mother proclaimed that it must have been
a UFO. Whenever I have recounted this story over the years, I have
always referred to it as a UFO, simply because that's what it was.
It was unidentified. It was too high for an airplane. Besides, its
course was too erratic and there were no red and green navigation lights, showing
just a bright white light. A helicopter might be flown like that, but
again it was too high and there were no additional navigation lights. I later
discovered that area of Britain is considered and might still be a hotbed for UFO
phenomena. I'm not suggesting that what we saw was an alien spacecraft, just
that it was unidentifiable. In the nineteen fifties and sixties was also the height
of the Cold War, with a lot of classified experimental aircraft around. So
who knows what we saw. All I know is what we all saw and
watched for around five minutes was real and did not behave in a conventional way.
Was it an alien craft or was it something man made? Who knows,
but it will puzzle me for the rest of my life, as it
is done for the last fifty one years. It was early November nineteen eighty
four. The place was William Atte National Forest, thirty miles east of Eugene,
Oregon. Our story starts with a man named Renee Dupree. Renee was
of Cajun descent, born and raised around Lake Charles, Louisiana, his father,
Bill was a fisherman and a trapper by trade. From the time they
could walk, Renee and his brother Bill Junior, everyone called him Bill Junior,
except as Mama, who called him little Bill. We're out in the
swamp fishing, crabbing, catching crawfish and turtles. If it was in the
swamp and they can make a living on it or put it on the table.
They knew how to hunt it, catch it, skin it, cook
it, and eat it. By the time the boys were grown, they
had their own boats and traps. They were happily entrenched and running the family
business. Renee would ping a few muskrats and ducks for dinner, but hunting
never really appealed to him. He wasn't against it. He was a Cajun,
after all. Each year he would buy gator tags, and if someone
wanted him to get rid of a pesky gator, he would do it.
But that was about it. Back when Renee was eight years old, his
grandfather, Boudreau, the boys called him Pappy, took the boy's deer hunting
and placa mine's perish. Bill got his deer right away. When it was
Renee's turn to shoot, he couldn't pull the trigger. Boudreau asked him,
why didn't you shoot? Boy, Renee teared up, handing the gun to
the old man. Pappy, it was just too alive to kill, he
said. The old man placed his hand on Rene's shoulder and comforted him.
It's okay, not like a big old muskrat. Huh. They feel dressed
bills deer and slowly made their way back to the jeep, the old man
lumbering with one hundred pounds of venison packed on his back. On their way,
they came across the carcass of a large buck. It had been caped
out, with only the backstraps and tenderloins removed. The old man sat his
pack down and called the boys over, and, in his thick caging accent
tinged with anger, he spoke, you see this, This is wrong.
This is a crime against nature. God he put the animals here for us
to eat, not to sport. No, never for trophy. Never.
He leaned forward to the boys for effect. If you kiss something and take
that life to God gave, and you don't eat it, it'd be a
sin. Boys. Renee rarely carried a gun on his boat. He went
happily about his life in the world, marveling at nature and fishing in the
swamp. In the fall of nineteen seventy four, everything changed. Brene was
way up by you in a cypress swamp, checking his traps for crawfish.
He found two of them destroyed, thrown up on the bank with the wire
screen torn away. It made him angry. He could fix them well enough
when he got home, but it was the insult in. It must have
been them damn Yankees, he thought to a cage in. Anyone born outside
the swamp is a Yankee. Even a Florida native would be a Yankee.
To a Cajun, there's a code to the swamp. You know everyone in
the swamp, and you know their traps. If you happen to be fishing
next to one, you don't mess with it. If the trap is tangled
or in need of repair, you either call the owner or fix it yourself.
To do less is considered stealing. As warm as the Cajun folk are,
they do not cotton the thieves. Renee, suspicious now that the thief
was still in the area, cut his motor and polled around to the next
bin, hoping to catch him red handed. The thief was there, but
it wasn't a man. Renee heard the stories and believed in the swampsy squatch,
but he had never seen one. Now there was one standing several yards
down the bank, tearing up his trap. Renee was surprised. He could
not believe what he was seeing. He watched silently for a moment before whispering,
what you got, deaf fella. The squatch whirled around quickly, but
Renee continued speaking softly. So you liked him? Crawfishes? Huh. The
big animal held its gaze on Renee while gathering the ends of an old shirt
that it was using as a pouch to hold the stolen crawfish. Renee's boat
drifted closer. You know itms my crawfish, deaf fella, Renee continued soothingly,
But before he could finish the sentence, and quicker than his eyes could
follow, the squatch threw the trap at him, hitting him square in the
chest, knocking him backwards into the water. By the time he managed to
get back on his feet in the slick mud, the siequatch and his crawfish
were gone. He stared dumbfounded at the spot where the creature had been as
the muck and filth dripped from his body, but all he could do now
was laugh. After that, Renee spent a lot less time fishing and a
lot more time polling up and down those backwaters looking for the foots. He
asked all the folks he knew if they had ever seen one. He was
infatuated with the beast. Now. He heard about a Bigfoot meeting in Mobile,
and he drove one hundred miles to attend. He watched a film there
and listened to the lectures. During the question and answer periods, he asked,
if I wanted to see one, where would be the best place to
look. They conferred with each other before declaring that the Pacific Northwest was the
best place. If that's where they are, he told himself, then that's
where I'm going to be. He quickly sold his boat, traps and nets,
and other equipment, mostly to his brother, and headed for bigfoot country.
He ended up in Oregon, where he found a job working for the
Forestry Service at the william At National Forest. Here he was able to search
while on the job. It was nineteen eighty four and muzzle loading season,
and Renee was checking in a man named John Scope and his fourteen year old
son, Danny. They were there for Danny's first deer hunt. Certain they
were abiding by all of the stringent Oregon rules for youth hunters, Renee pulled
out a map and showed them which trails to take to reach the regulated hunting
area. Taking a hard look at the boy for the first time, he
noted his pale complexion in his trembling hands. Is he okay, he asked
the father. Oh, yeah, he's fine, just first hunt jitters.
Renee was taken immediately back to his first hunt. Mentally, he decided,
since he'd worked the night shift and the sun was breaking on the horizon,
that he would go up and check on the boy as soon as he got
off work. He'd seen too much of himself in the kid's eyes. As
Renee pulled into the gravel parking lot at the foot of the trail up to
the youth hunting area, three gunshots rang out in rapid succession. It was
a call for help. He jumped from his vehicle and ran up the steep
trail, finding John waving his arms at the entry gate. John, he
yelled, where's Danny. It got him? John answered, through sobs,
it got my boy, calm down, Renee told him what got him,
I don't know. It was as we saw a deer through the brush and
when Danny flanked to get the better shot at him. Show me now,
Renee demanded. John led Renee through the gate into the meadow, where the
thick line of small trees and brush mark the edge. Renee whispered to John,
you stay here. If you hear me holler, you come running.
Then, he added, reload your gun and be ready to shoot if need
be, before slowing making his way through the brush line the two hundred feet
or so to where the meadow opened. He'd wanted badly to see a si
squatch, but not like this. As he drew closer, he heard a
low, soft whistling sound like a flute being played ever so softly. Then,
as he rounded the brush pile, he saw something that his mind could
not accept standing there was a creature with the body of a goat or maybe
a deer or something, with long, straggly hair, not quite the color
of auburn, but not quite brown either. Most unbelievably, where the neck
should have been sprung a torso of a boy no more than eight years of
age. The human part was pale and freckled, with the long, thin
arms and the typical features of a child, except for a long red goateee
on his chin. Two small horns jutted out of the mass of red curls
on his head. This strange creature stood before Danny, cupping its hands to
its mouth, creating the soft, flutelike whistle. It seemed to be dancing
side to side and back and forth, all the while staring into Danny's eyes.
Danny never moved. He was frozen in place, mesmerized by the strangely
magical creature that seemed more like something out of a Disney movie or a fairy
tale than any kind of reality. It would have been comical if it weren't
for its obvious intent on Danny. Renee moved forwards, slowly, hands up
palm's fork to show that he was unarmed. In that same quiet voice he
had used on that swamp squat so many years before, he said, hey
fella. The beast looked towards Renee for a split second before returning his gaze
to Danny. Renee continued speaking softly, the boy, he didn't mean no
harm. The thing gestured with its chin towards Danny, and Renee continued to
walk forward the gun. Huh okay, I'll fix that. He walked slowly
over and tried to remove the gun from Danny's grasp, but Danny was frozen
in place. The gun wouldn't come free. Renee tried to lift Danny to
point him in the gun in the other direction. It was as if Danny
was rooted to the ground. Renee could not even begin to lift him,
so he stepped between Danny and the creature and then back deliberately into the gun
barrel until it pressed into his own flesh. If Danny tried to shoot,
the bullet would have to go through him to hit the creature. At this
realization, the creature quit his little dance. The tune he was playing grew
a bit louder. It bowed to Renee, It leapt, and then leapt
again. With a third leap, it bounded into a flash of light and
was gone. Renee dove to the ground in a split second before Danny pulled
the trigger. The melody of the flute was gone with the creature, replaced
by the fading, distant echo of a child's laugh. At the sound of
Danny's gunfire. John bolted onto the scene, frantically waving his gun. When
he saw Danny standing there with Renee lying on the ground, he slowed to
a stumbling walk and tried to reholster his gun, dropping it to the ground
instead. Renee stood up and pushed the barrel of Danny's gun towards the ground.
As the boy, relief from his trance, began to tremble and cry,
Renee put his hand on a shaking shoulder and said, not like shooting
a big old muskrat, is it. It's okay, son, It's okay,
John said comfortingly. Danny looked down at the gun, stealing his hand
and threw it to the ground. Through great wailing sobs, he told his
father, I don't want to hunt anymore. John led Danny back down the
path. Renee picked up the muzzle loader and the pistol, looked around one
last time for the creature. It was as if it had never been there,
and then he followed them back to their vehicle. John was sitting in
his truck staring out to space. Danny was busy crying himself to sleep next
to him. When Renee approached, John got out His demeanor had changed.
He shook Renee's hand and he hugged him. Thank you for saving my boy,
But we're not filling out any damn report, he said, tersely.
Okay, Renee said, I'll call you in a couple of days. Don't
bother. I won't answer. John told him, well, here, let
me get your guns, then keep them. We're done, was all John
said. With that, he was back in the truck and they drove away.
The pistol and the muzzleloader are still locked in a safe at the ranger
station. Renee is no longer there. He moved toward Washington State, in
the general area of Mount Hood. Someone told him he might find what he's
looking for there. I wish him well. Here's a note from the writer.
I tried to contact the people involved before I committed myself to writing it
down, but a lot of years and some bad storms have come and gone.
The story is just as I heard it. I changed the names to
protect their privacy. The sad truth is Renee was heart when that trap hit
him in the swamp. He almost drowned when he fell back into the water.
The part about him selling all of his stuff in a hurry is true
too. He wanted to get as far away from that swamp as possible.