If you'd like to be able to listen to the show without ads and have
full access to bonus content, that's an option. To find out how,
please go to Bigfootyewitness dot com Forward Slash Podcast. My name is David Aldridge.
I'm fifty four. I grew up in Venice, Florida, Nicomas,
Florida. I'm a contractor living in Naples currently. I have married, I
have three daughters. I had two encounters back in fall of ninety two in
winter of ninety three, and I'll tell you a little bit about that to
set this up a little bit. Why I was traveling. This happened to
night in night. I was headed to Miami. I was a divemaster,
and I did a lot of diving back then in between college and grad school.
And I was heading to Miami, and I did a lot of night
driving on the interstate, and that is where these sightings took place. So
I had two sightings, both within a mile of each other, and up
as I said in Venice, Florida, this took place in Sarasota County.
I'm going to date myself here a little bit. So back in the day,
the interstate used to be different wasn't the mileage. It's just straight digits
for the exits. So the first encounter took place at Exit thirty five,
which was the Venice on ramp at the time, and the Interstate was much
different than than it is now. There was only two lanes in a half
of the lane when you had a bad tire or something to be able to
sit in the grass. So it wasn't as why the mediums were huge and
the on ramps were very short back then. They've changed that. So I'm
just trying to set this up so you have an understanding of what I experienced,
because doing it today you would not have the same feeling. Exit thirty
five is about one mile west of the Mayaka River on the Interstate outside of
Venice in Sarasota County. So I was getting on the Interstate at around ten
o'clock at night, headed to Miami to go diving, and it was very
very late. It was a Thursday night that I remember because I I just
started grad school, and when I was getting on the Interstate it I was
getting on to go southbound and I looked over to my left and there was
a car in the left outer lane and it was a very short on ramp
and I went back to look forward, and that's where I hit something.
And my hitting this at the time, I thought it was a person until
I really analyzed what I had hit. It was a flash. It happened
very fast. But when I looked back to look forward across my hood,
I had something almost leaping across the front of my car with its right hand
on my hood. I was probably going about forty five fifty miles prior at
the time. Whenever I hit I'm assuming it was a Flota skunk cape and
I'll go into the description of it. It hit my bumper as well,
and there was a big growl at the impact. So as I was accelerating
to get on the Interstate and I looked back, I saw this big It
was hair. It was to describe it. The hair moved in one in
a very methodical pattern. It was red, more of a khaki and red
color. And the hand. I was in a four THUNDERB super Cooper,
so I was very low to the ground, so I could see the hand
come through the light onto the front of my car, which was black.
The hand was completely black, the hair was completely khaki with it as it
swirled. It had a red hint to it, so I'll never forget that
that was the swirl was what something was very distinct. But what was really
distinct was the muscular definition of the forearm. You could see part of the
back a little bit, and the right leg I'm sorry, the right leg
was leaping over, so you could see the right capital an upper leg muscle
on the right leg. The left leg hit the bumper, And when I
got to where I was in Miami, I used a flashlight on my bumper
and my front bumper had an indentation. It was an old plastic that some
thunderbirds had the plastic bumper, and I had a dent in my hood from
where the hand was. I wish I would have gotten foot prints of it
at the time, but at the time I wasn't thinking that. So let
me finish with how this transpired. So I pulled my car off the side
of the road. As I said, I was going on a dive trip.
Behind my seat, I always carried a five hundred thousand candlelight Pelican dive
leg and it lit everything up, and I pulled my car over lit it
up, thinking I hit a person. I really, I'm still. You
know, I knew what I saw, I saw the hair, I saw
everything, but I still would my gut was I thought I had a person,
and I immediately stopped. I lit up the side of the interstate with
my light. It was about forty feet to the fence. After that,
about fifty feet into the pasture. It was a horse pasture and actually had
a history here. I used to trail ride in that when I was a
kid, so I knew this property. And there was a big what we
call Brazilian pepper tree, which is invasive to Florida, and that was about
fifty feet in there. So there was nothing. There was no body.
There was nothing. So when I lit that up, I couldn't believe it.
I thought, you know, I went back, I looked, thinking
maybe someone was in the grass. Because when I made impact, the growl
was just deep. It was one of the deepest growls I've ever heard.
And it wasn't human. It wasn't like you know, if you hit a
person they screamed. This was a deep, deep growl and you could almost
feel it. It was on the impact. So when I pulled off,
I had a cell phone in my car at the time. Remember this was
nineteen ninety two, so this is a brick. My father was a surgeon
that he let me use his phone when I traveled across the state at night,
just for safety. So this was one of the old bell bricks.
So I powered it up and the old star at HP. It was probably
that when it first started in Florida. Got a hold of Fluorida Highway Patrol,
introduced myself and there was a lady that took the call and she told
me to calm down and explain exactly what happened. And I told her exactly
what happened. I said, I think I hit somebody, but I can't
find any person. I said. It was very hairy. It leaped across
my car. It wasn't a deer, it wasn't a bear, it was
nothing like that. And I told her, I said this was not a
person. I said, I've never seen anything like this before. So the
lady dispatcher from Fota Highway Patrol said, I'm going to tell you something.
I don't think you hit a person. You're in between exit thirty four and
thirty five on seventy five, and I said that's correct, and she said
I get calls like this all the time in this area, and she said
anything around that. I said, to the river there, and she said
anything around this river. I get these type of calls all the time.
And she said, I can't tell you what you hit, but I'm willing
to bet what you hit was not a person. So she said, you
did the right thing. Thank you for calling us. I have your name,
I have your address, I have all your information and in case anything
gets reported of an injured animal or a person. But she said you did
the right thing. And she then came back and said where are you And
I said, I'm in my car, the doors locked, and she said,
good, are you armed? I said no, I'm not armed.
I said, I just have the cell phone here. And she said,
I want you to proceed down the interstate and don't stay there without having anything
to protect yourself. She said, I can't tell you what you hit,
but if you had, you already looked for it, and it's not there.
It's well moved on, but I don't want it to come back to
your car. And that was the end of that first encounter. A few
months later, I had a second encounter in the same strip of road.
This was closer to the River and I was southbound. I'd already gotten on
the interstate. This would have been around March of ninety three, so it
was late winter, early spring. Florida has this time of year. We
have low rolling fog along the grass on the interstate, and sometimes it's heavy
sometimes this night it wasn't too heavy, but it's kind of in the median
where you'll see it. So I was going down the road in my car,
same car, and there was a car to the right of me that
was an American white station wagon that was probably a late eighties model, and
I had my windows down, and the gentleman next to me had his windows
down too, which I found out in a moment. So I was going
down the road and we're coming across this one section where it was it was
a very large median and there was an overpass that you go under, and
the cars were coming. Obviously I was going north southbound, so the northbound
cars were coming and you could see them. One car started to break and
the lights were coming and the cars were slowing down, and I looked over
and it looked like something was running in front of the cars in the median
across the median, which would eventually come across my lanes. So I slowed
down. The car next to me slowed down. He saw it too,
and I had an experienced years ago with a deer and going across my car.
So it's something you never don't want to ever go through if you get
a deer going across your hood. So I was breaking and then I saw
what was running and it wasn't a deer. It was very human like and
it was sprinting. And this is what's so distinct about this. This time
I had a chance to really see the movement and the legs were almost horizontal.
The sprinting was the legs were the one foot was out and the other
one was all the way back. It was like a sprinter and I've never
seen it like it before. The hair, when in the headlights you could
see the hair, it was the same color hair. It was a khaki,
real deep khaki color. And as it moved, the swirl of the
hair was very methodical. If you remember the movie Monsters, Inc. Scully,
that one character when it was they were all walking and they when they
tell you how they did the scene with there's a computer program, I guess
code for each hair that's kind of what I looked at. It was very
and remember this is back in ninety three, ninety two. The hair moved
in a swirling pattern as it moved. It wasn't all knotted or anything like
that. There was there was a distinct movement to the hair when this thing
was running. What was really unique about it. You could see the muscular
definition again. And the head never moved. It didn't move up and down
at all. And I can't tell you about the neck. I was scared
kind of watching the whole thing. But the hair on the head was a
little more okay red than khaki. The arms were swinging, but not as
fast as the legs were moving. When it crossed the road. It crossed
the road in two the one foot second foot, and it cleared it.
I've never seen anything clear a road like that in a sprint. And when
I saw it, two legs running, the arms swaying. The arms were
a little bit longer, but the arms weren't moving as fast. When it
went off to the right side of the road my lights. At this point
it was beyond my lights the car to my right. It was in midstead
lights and it turned a little bit to the left and you could see the
definition of the back. I guess it was a trap psia. It was
just the definition and the back as it moved was so distinct. And I
go back to where I saw the first encounter with the arms and the legs,
the muscular distinction through the hair. I'll never forget that. It's something
that I can't figure out on this whole matter. I've never seen anything like
it. It was. It was no way anyone could ever do a costume
like that or anything like that. So the car next to me, we
both had our windows down, and he looked over at me and he said,
that wasn't a freaking gear. It wasn't a freaking bear. That was
a freaking big foot. And he's yelling at me, and I'm yelling back
at him, and I said, what did we just see? And he
and he we both shook our heads and he said, he said we saw,
yells back at me. And remember we're going at this point about forty
five miles per hour. He yells back at me and says, we just
experienced something that we'll never see again in our lives. It gives me a
thumb up, And I gave him a thumb up. And we proceeded on
and put our windows up. But that was kind of a confirmation to me
that I had seen something that I was trying to get my head around.
And to this day, I still see this as vividly as it did back
at ninety two and ninety three. It's life changing when you experienced something like
that because you can't put reason to it, and it was you saw something
that you couldn't really understand what you saw at the time. And to this
day, here I am, all these years later, and I never I've
only told a few people about this. Very few people know about it.
I never wanted to tell this story because I was always just a little uncomfortable
to the story. And I was asked about it not too long ago,
and I said, you know what, I'll go ahead and tell the story
because it's something that really has impacted me in my life. It's you always,
you can't go in the woods without thinking about this anymore, not in
Florida, and the hair, the way the hair moved in the distinctive of
the muscles. It's just something that I'd never been able to get out of
my mind. So it's one of those sightings that hope helped someone figure out
what we're seeing in the swamps of Florida. It's truly life changing when you
see something like that, and for me to have, you know, I
always thought about, what are the odds for me to have two experiences like
that, And I think it's a It's a nice reinforcement to have in the
same stretch of road because it was either the same animal or it was probably
related to the other. But I can't tell you if it was the same
or not. But the second time for me was just a life changing confirmation
because now I know what I had seen go across the foot of my car,
and I know I didn't hit a person after my second experience for that
reason, right there, I'm glad you had that second sighting. Then that's
great me too. And maybe he was running when he had that second sighting
because he saw you coming and thought, oh no, not again. I
always thought, why would something like this move across And the only thing I
can think of is lake with deer, no deer, they stop in the
headlights, and maybe at night, whatever this is he could see well with
the headlights. I have no idea, but the first time it definitely missed
the timing of going across with two cars coming that first time my car and
there was a car to the Leftomy this should not have crossed the road even
was a person, there was just no way to make the timing you get
across the road. So I've always wondered if there's an issue with their eyes
at night to be able to figure this out crossing roads. They have incredible
night vision, and it's a given that they don't like lighting at night,
So maybe you just blinded it and compromised it to the point where that's why
you hit it. How remote was that on ramp where you hit it,
Dave. Back in the day, there wasn't much there that was before anything
was at that interchange. I mean there was to come from the main road
up the road, and now you have McDonald's and blah blah and all that
sort of stuff there, so you really don't get the feeling of what it
was like back then. The lighting on the interstate was poor, so if
they had put him into we didn't have the bright lights back then to light
up that interchange at where this was, So it was pretty dark, just
to say the least, and there was nothing around. There were new homes
there. Now there's all commercial, there's a lot of high rise or mid
rises and stuff like that around multi family, and there wasn't anything. This
was just horse pasture, cal pasture all the way down to East Venas Avenue.
There was absolutely nothing there back then, perfect habitat for a sasquatch.
So though yeah, no one d is there. If you go back and
look up the River Road sightings, there's a lot of sightings over the years
on river Road and at my second sighting, but my second where I was
further south by the river road is more than a thousand feet from there,
So there were a lot of sightings over the years that have been recorded on
River Road in that area. And that's if you follow that up. And
you know, there's researchers that go into the Mayaca State Park, which is
I believe about twenty miles up the river, and back in the day it
was just horse farms, cow far pastures all the way up, just very
few homes on the river, so it would have been very easy for something
to move, to migrate up and down that river bank at any time of
the year. You told us about how it put his black hand on your
hood when you hit it. Yes, how big would you say its hand
was? It was about the size of my hand. It wasn't anything I
remember when I remember this was very fast. It was a flash, but
the hand did not look abnormally large. The foot, I remember when I
saw this. I could see the left foot which was dragging through the headlight
and that's where it made impact on the knee or the calf, I can't
tell you. And that would have been on my if that would have been
the passenger side of my car, on that side of the bumper, so
I could see the foot as it came across and came down to my passenger
side. The foot was black, black as night, just like the hand.
They both looked black. No reddish or human coloration whatsoever. It's just
black as night, almost like if you were to have shoe polish on the
hand and on the foot, that's all dark. The skin was, yeah,
that is pretty dark, and it glistened to it had a had a
had a sheen to it. On the hand and the foot, you could
see that. But that remember, this was almost as simultaneous where there was
an impact and there the growl that this thing emitted was so deep and loud,
and I had my windows cracked. I didn't have him down all the
way and there's just cracked. And I'll never forget. You could feel the
growl through the cars as when it happened. It was a true impact on
the car. So I mean, you know, you know you hit something.
And the first thing through my head was, oh my god, I
hit a person. I hit a homeless guy going across the road. Back
then, you had, you know, some people every now and then on
the Interstate, but nothing like today. There was just nothing there. There
was nothing at the exit. There was no reason for anything or anyone to
cross the Interstate. There is just there's nothing there back in the day.
Now you have a couple of commercial parks right there, but back in the
day that was just cows for as far as you could see. Yeah,
like I said, perfect happened. Dat you said the windows were cracked.
Did you ever spell anything? No, not this time. I didn't.
There was no distinct smell or anything like that. I would have remembered that
too, But it happened. You remember, I was going about forty five
miles per hour and celebrating. So when I pulled onto the Interstate, it
was you know, I was down a few hundred feet now. I hit
my brakes very quickly and pulled off the road under the grass, and then
I grabbed my Pelican light that I had always kept it behind my seat when
I was traveling at night in case ever had any issues. And when I
lit it up, there was just stuff in there, and I didn't smell
anything either, and I would remember the smell. Yeah, it was probably
recovering in the ditch the best it could. That had hurt getting hit at
forty five miles an hour had to My bumper had an indentation in it,
and they end of ford ended up heating the bumper and it popped out.
But it would have been right around our knee hype, maybe just a slightly
above our knee hype because it was a it was a low car. Yeah,
those supercups are not high. So that really had to hurt. I
had to have had to have. But the growl, I'll never forget the
growl. The growl is what just sold it to me that I had made
impact. Yeah, I think it would have done something worse than at He
said it growled when you hit it, and also that you found that dent
in the bumper when you got out and examined the car. But did you
find blood anywhere on your car? No blood, no hair, no blood,
just an indentation on the hood where the hand was and that popped right
back out. But there was no I could I look for a handprint and
I didn't see any prints on it like that. I was hoping to see
a handprint, and it was smudge. It was definitely smudge, but it
was nothing that was there that the next day when the sunlight was out there
to say, hey, I have proof, nothing like that. And I'll
be honest with you. Back then, I wasn't looking for proof because the
last thing I wanted to find out is I hit somebody, and I hit
a person because I was so young, you know, at twenty two years
old, and I didn't want a record for a hit and run. And
I'm sitting there, you know, and I was really, I'll be honest,
I was very when this happened. I was so shaken. I was
glad I called the photo Harward Patrol. I'm glad I had the ability to
do that. That call, That probably three minute call to Porto Harward Patrol,
you know, probably cost thirty dollars back then. But I'm glad I
did that because I will tell you this emotionally really turned me up. I
was really scared. So when I was in Miami looking at my car the
next day and I saw the dead on the hood, and I saw the
dent on the front, and I saw that, but there was no blood.
But whatever I hit it was, it had to have hurt. Oh
that I'm sure it did. He told us that his hands looked to me
about the same size as yours. Did you ever see anything that might have
hinted towards the fact it could have been a female. No, I couldn't
see the chest, and I saw the side of it that I didn't see
anything like that. And the one I saw running across the median, I
didn't see breasts or anything like that. I saw hair swirl, and if
there were breast, I think I would have noticed it. But I didn't
see anything to distinct the sex of it. But I will tell you this,
the size of it wasn't much more than a maybe a six foot person,
maybe five eight. I mean, remember it was sprinting at the time,
and it was solid muscle. But the one I saw running across the
interstate. Remember, I was in a car that was a little low.
The head of it wasn't much higher than where my head was in my car,
so it couldn't have been more than six foot tall from what I saw,
So we're not talking about a really big creature here. So the hands
on it, the hand, the feet, all I could see was the
I can't tell you, I mean toes. All I saw was the top
of the foot, and the top of the foot was black as night shiny.
It was like having using black shoe polish to bring up a really big
shine. But you could see the skin to skin reput you know. And
then in the hand when the hand went across my car on that I saw
it break the headlights. So I saw the hand, and the hand did
not look abnormally big, So I would say, this is pretty much close
to the size of the human would be. Yeah, that had to be
a juvenile, had to have been, had to have been. Definitely before
you call the FHP, did you have any fears about what the fallout might
have been from hitting what you did, even if it wasn't a person.
I did, actually, you know, and I thought it was the right
thing to do. At the time, I felt safer calling the FHP,
not knowing if it was a person or not. I had had an experience
a few years before, not far from there, going down the road and
a drunk driver had veered off into a ditch and the driver had gotten out
of the car and wandered seven hundred feet and passed out. And I remember
the you know, getting interviewed by that for the Sheriff's department at the time,
and they end up finding the person and they arrested him but ended up
having to take him to the hospital. So I had that back up my
head too, So I just didn't know what I was dealing with. I
wasn't worried about getting arrested or something like that for hitting some sort of dangered
species or something like that. That never crossed my mind. I was more
concerned if it was a human. But if it wasn't human, here's the
victor. There's no way it could have cleared about forty foot of grass a
four foot fence that was for cattle, so probably I believe it had a
piece of barbed wire across the top, and then to clear another fifty feet
to get hide. There's just no way there's absolutely no way. So if
it was anything other than a person, it was in full sprint, so
it had to have cleared the fence in a sprint to get to where it
was going. And what I saw on the second time when that thing cleared
the road and then I can't remember, I think it's one or two times
it was in the grass and then it went up again and it cleared the
fence, which was all over forty eight inches. It didn't even try,
it just leaped over it. Once I saw that kind of clarified what I
had happened to me, you know, four months before, and I was
able to let me reason with it. They can do amazing things. I
can only imagine what it must have been like to watch all that play out.
Holy gal, Yeah, it was interesting. It's It's one of those
things that I still see in my at night. It was so distinctive on
what I saw. I mean, you just when you see the hair squirrel
and the distinction of the muscle. It's something I can't get out of my
head. And it took me a long time to ever talk about this.
I never wanted recognition around like that. Just that's not me. I just
but I when I saw this. To this day, I've never seen another
reporting in Florida with the details that I saw, And that's always kind of
bothered me. Why I'm the only one I unless it's out there, I
haven't seen those reports. I've seen hair, I've seen reddish hair, dark
hair, gnarled hair, but nothing. I've never heard anyone described hair flow
like what I saw. It was so distinct that I'm surprised, to be
honest with you. Yeah, I'm sure that's a site you never will get
out of your head either. No, no, you can't reason with it.
I'm glad I experienced it, and it may be an instant believer.
On the second one, I knew exactly what I saw. I don't know
exactly what it is, but I do know whatever it was, it was
not a person. Ye. It's crazy to think it just might have been
the same one you saw the second time. But when it comes down to
it, it just might have been the same one. Hard to say.
Hard to say, but you know, when you go back and you look
at you know, I've done a lot of research over the years, and
you look at like the Patterson film and you see the distincts of the muscles.
That's interesting because that was something that I did see, But the way
the hair flowed there was much different than what I saw. But then again,
what I saw was it in full sprint both times, so it was
a flow. It wasn't you know, if it was a fake hair,
I wouldn't think it would flow like I saw flow and that changed the color
as the light struck the hair. That was just I would even know how
you back in the day, how you'd make a constant to do that.
So once I started really putting this together in my mind, it solidified what
I saw, and I'm still this day, I'm still as I said the
moment ago, I'm surprised I haven't seen or heard of any other sightings with
that hair flow. I think I've heard about sightings with hair flow like that.
Yeah, I don't think it's limited to just your sighting there, even
in that area. I think it's a fairly commonly reported thing. I didn't
know that. Well, that's good. That makes me feel a little better
to be honest with you. Oh, definitely, Now I understand. Do
you have any resentment towards the FHP for knowing that there was a problem on
that stretch of highway and not doing anything about it. You know, I
never thought of it that way before what I saw. You know, I
still thinks it's a one million sighting. I'm surprised they don't report more of
this, and they probably don't do it because they don't want to be shunned
or stereotyped as reporting a sasquatch or a skunk cape sighting or something like that.
That angers me a little bit because that puts a little bit more on
my soldiers here they come forward and report this. But I have to tell
you, the dispatcher was gracious. I appreciate her telling me that it put
me at ease. I don't think she would have said something like that if
it wasn't a thousand percent true. It made me feel better that I didn't
hit a person, and that was my fear. I mean, I was
vic I was sweating bullets when I was in the car. I was hyperventilating
a little bit. I was really scared that I had hit a person,
and I'm I don't drink at zero and so to this day it's always bothered
me of having that fear. And it was a huge fear. You know,
I was a doctor's son too, And that's the last thing you need
to find out is that you hit somebody you know on the interstate right next
to where you live. And I didn't want that as well. So I
am grateful, gracious, I guess to the Photo High Patrol for telling me
that I haven't had any resentment. But you know, if there's other reports
like this, I wish there was some sort of public disclosure on that because
it would help a lot of us understand what we saw. It would be
nice if there's some sort of a public disclosure, But like you said,
that's never going to happen. The government's never going to allow the secret out
of the bag. So people like you who wind up hitting these things,
seeing these things, you're always going to be left in the dark thinking it's
just you. For the most part, I think you're right. Unfortunately,
Yeah, that's how it is. But having said that, Dave, I
want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing the details of those
experiences with us. I really appreciate it. Vick, thank you for having
me on. I appreciate it. Oh you know, you're welcome. Thanks
again so much. Great night. That's it for another episode of Bigfoot Eyewitness
Radio with Vic Candiff. If you've had a sasquatch encounter and would like to
be a guest on the show, please go to Bigfoot eyewitness dot com and
submit a report. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening,
have a great night.