My father was a trucker and a veteran of the Vietnam War. He wasn't
a weak person, and he wasn't one to tell crazy stories. Once back
in the nineteen seventies, he had to drop off an empty trailer to a
private home in northern Minnesota. He decided after he dropped it off to stop
in and visit with a former service buddy, Logan. Dad's friend got a
little messed up by his time in Vietnam, and it turned him into a
hermit who never left his property. He owned a good sized piece of land
with a home on it that had inner walls made of m o boxes filled
with sand. Well, they spent a happy afternoon drinking beer and reminiscing about
their time in Vietnam and catching up on all that they had done since coming
back to the States. At the end the end of the day, my
father decided to sleep in the cab of his truck so that he could leave
early without waking Logan. It was eleven PM when he walked out to the
tractor, crawled inside, and fell asleep. At one am, he was
rocked out of his bed by something hitting the side of the cab really hard.
He was stunned and unsure of what was happening, and so he looked
around him and he tried to get his bearings. Before he had time to
fully register what had happened, the truck was hit again by another loud slam
that had him thinking Logan was having flashbacks to the war. Rather than confront
his troubled friend, he jumped into the driver's seat and he drove to the
nearest truck stop, and there he went inside to use the facilities and get
a grip on his thoughts. Now, Logan was his friend, but Vietnam
and all that surrounded had played havoc on a lot of soldiers' minds, and
Dad didn't want to become another casualty of war. So, armed with a
hot cup of coffee, he headed back out to his rig, still unsure
about whether to go back or move on, And as he rounded the cab,
he noticed a huge handprint on it that was nine feet off the ground,
and whatever left the hand print left a dent in the side of the
truck. To go with that, that was all he needed to make up
his mind. He climbed in the truck and he headed home. It was
another month before my father called Logan to tell him what had happened that night.
Oh, that was probably just Zeus, Logan answered nonchalantly. Apparently he
neglected to mention to my father that there was a family of Bigfoot living on
his property. He assured Dad that he was never in any danger, and
Zeus was just letting him know that he was there. Judging by the size
of the hand print, my dad was glad he didn't actually go see Zeus.
The message he left was enough. My dad kept in touch with Logan.
They've remained friends for all these years, but Dad never went to visit
him again. Phone calls were enough from him. From then on out,
we don't speak about our encounters much outside of our family. I've never told
anyone about the things that we've seen and heard. It would be useless to
do so anyway. Most of the population doesn't believe that Bigfoot exists. Speak
about it and people will think you're crazy or self medicating. And for those
people, ignorance is bliss, and for us, their existence is accepted.
From childhood, knowing they exist and having one or more of them scream at
you though or two different levels of reality. We're a family of avid outdoorsmen.
I spent more time in a tent in the wilderness growing up than I
did in our house. I love being out in the mountains. My husband
also grew up spending a lot of time in the mountains. In his twenties,
he was a wild and firefighter. That doesn't mean we go out looking
for these creatures. We believe they have a right to be left alone like
any other being. But for us, it was a matter of being in
the right place at the right time. My life was changed forever when we
had our first encounter during the summer of twenty twelve, I wouldn't go back
into the woods for several months afterward. We had been up in the mountains
practicing our archery skills and the surroundings and conditions where we would be using them.
In September, it was two pm, and despite the cloud cover,
it was starting to get hot. I think it was time to pack it
in and call it a day. I had moved over to the back of
our suv to put my bow away. My husband took his last shots and
had started to walk over to set his bow down so he could retrieve his
arrows and the target bag. When allowed screaming roar erupted from the tree line
behind where we were parked. We've spent ample time in the woods, We've
heard our share of animal noises, but this scream was nothing like we had
ever heard before. We barely had time to register the first scream when another
one came from our other side. A few seconds later, we heard a
third scream off to our left. I know what you're probably thinking, it
was echo, but I assure you that this was not an echo. Each
scream was slightly different. I was momentarily frozen in fear, and as soon
as the third stream stopped, however, I was ready to leave. Not
much scarce me, but that day I was terrified. Two years later,
in twenty fourteen, my husband and I had another encounter. He and my
eleven year old daughter were walking down into what is known as beaver Ponds to
retrieve our trail cam. I was supposed to go with them that day,
but I wasn't feeling well, and by the time we parked, I was
feeling bad enough that I decided to just stay in the vehicle. They had
a mile to a mile and a half to hike to where we had set
up the trail camera. They almost gotten there when my husband heard that scream
fifty yards off to their right. Did you hear that? He asked my
daughter? Yeah, what was it? Was that a bear? Dad?
She replied, that wasn't a bear. We need to hurry up and get
the trail cam and get out of here, he told her. When they
got back to the vehicle, they asked if I'd heard the screams. I'd
been lying in the back seat of a locked running vehicle with the air conditioner
on. I never heard anything, but judging by the urgency in my husband's
voice, I knew what he had heard, and I knew it was time
to get the hell out of there. We never explained to my daughter what
the screams were, and shortly after that she went back to live with her
dad. I think the way my husband and I reacted to the screams freaked
her out. She didn't like going into the woods after that. My husband
had one more encounter in twenty nineteen. He was traveling back home from working
out of state. He was already tired from working all day, and the
seven hours of driving in addition to that, prompted him to pull over and
get some rest. He picked a small junction off of I eighty. It
was late winter night and wyoming, with very few vehicles on the road.
He only needed an hour or two of rest. Then he planned to finish
the drive home to see our little boys and get some real sleep in his
own bed. At two thirty am, he woke up and was getting ready
to leave again. He was reaching to turn on the lights when he saw
an extremely tall, dark figure across the road. At first he thought it
was a person out there walking, but reason told him it was too tall
to be a man. The road was icy, but it didn't walk like
a person wood on ice. It had an assurance in its gate that humans
like My husband's instincts told him it was time to leave. He told me
about the encounter as soon as he got home. We try not to talk
about Bigfoot around our two little boys, but we do tell them that they're
out there and that we need to give them a healthy amount of distance and
respect. We want them to understand and respect what they cannot necessarily see,
but what they may someday encounter when they get old enough to venture into the
wilderness themselves.