I had my first bigfoot counter back in February of nineteen ninety eight in Golden
Dale, Washington. It happened on a trip with my father and my uncle.
A little bit about my family, and you need to understand, is
that they don't camp like everyone else. None of them own a tent or
a trailer. We prefer throwing a mattress in the bed of a truck or
sleeping up front along the bench seats of an F two fifty pickup truck.
I'm the youngest and I usually got the back seat. On this day,
there was enough daylight to make two walks through the woods. My uncle dropped
me and my father off at a place that we call the lake beds.
The plan was for my uncle to pick us up at the road down below
the Rock Bluff, which is twenty minutes away on foot, and I told
my father I'd be walking west down the slopes while he took off to the
east. I noticed the birds and the light breeze blowing through the trees.
There was a deer trail, and I was looking at fresh tracks, and
at one point I glanced behind me because I thought I heard my father,
but there was no one there. So I kept walking down toward the same
road where my uncle had picked me up on previous hikes. I heard a
deer close by. I figured it was a deer, judging by the light
weight sound of its hoofs hitting the ground. I didn't understand what had spooked
it. The wind was at my back, and then I realized the birds
and the chipmunks weren't flying around or singing or making any noise. My uncle
told me that if it ever got quiet to the point of seeming odd,
just head straight down the road and don't get distracted by anything. So I
focused, and I walked toward the edge of the bluff, where I could
look down and see my uncle in the distance, sitting on a tailgate,
nervously swinging his legs. He seemed agitated. Hurry up, my uncle yelled,
there's something out here besides us. Yeah, I yelled back the rocky
slope, causing my voice to echo, it's dead, silent, like you
said. I had no clue what was actually happening. I carefully made my
way down the hill, and as I closed the distance between my uncle and
I waiting in the truck, he suddenly commanded me to run well, I
reached the passenger door and I opened it, and I flung myself across the
seat, and my uncle hit the locks. Look behind you, up on
that bluff, he said. I looked out that window, and I scanned
the hillside, and I spotted the largest manlike being I'd ever seen in my
life. Its sheer size was jaw dropping. There was an animal carcass of
some kinds slung over its shoulder. We need to get to your dad,
my uncle said. He threw the truck into gear, and he sped away.
I noticed the way my uncle had phrased it as get to your dad,
as if somehow this thing might have already trapped my father. It was
walking down from the top of the bluff and was almost to the road,
and in less than a minute it must have closed a hundred yards, and
it stood there looking at us, before continuing down the slope. A few
minutes later, to our relief, we saw my dad standing just ahead of
us. My uncle slowed the truck down to a crawl, and my Dad
took a flying leap into the truck bed. Go go go, he said,
as my uncle mastic accelerator to the floor. Did you guys see that
thing, yelled my father through the back window, as the rush of air
blew off his prize baseball cap. There was no going back for it,
though. We pulled into the driveway of my uncle's place, and that night,
all of us there in the truck bed, staring up at the stars
and munching on snacks and sharing a six pack. I think I'm going to
invest in a camper, said my father to no one in particular. It
was my uncle who started laughing first. All right, all right, welcome
to another podcast. It's been a few days, and I'm glad to be
back reading these stories because I love doing this. Got four stories in this
podcast, and I hope you guys enjoy it. I just wanted to say
thanks for clicking on the video. Now let's jump into these stories. Let's
do this all right, here we go. My wife and I have been
hunting together for twenty years. It's tradition for us to leave our house in
Shelby County around one am on Sunday morning and dry three hours to her family's
property in Fayette County, Alabama, and then take a nap in the truck
until right before daylight, and then we walk out to our stands. That's
how we've always done it. Like I said, it's a tradition. On
January twenty seven, twenty nineteen, it was different. When we pulled up
to the gate at four am, it was noticeably silent. In the pre
dawn hours of winter. It's always quiet as part of the joy of honting.
The gentle piece of nature surrounds you and it seeps into your bones and
sort of fills your soul with something I can't quite explain. It's a knowledge
or a wisdom that you're walking the path of generations beyond memory. During that
time, you might hear the earliest bird chirp as it catches that proverbial worm.
A late hunting owl might hoot it's good night to the world. A
rabbit might shuffle under the protection of a briar patch, or a squirrel might
getter along a tree branch. That's to say that it's quiet, but it
is silent. That morning, it was silent. We pulled through the gate
and cracked the windows and turned off the truck. Within a few seconds,
the whole cab was filled with an odor that could have peeled the paint off
an outhouse. It was a kind of smell that made you ask yourself if
you wanted to breathe it through your nostrils and endure the smell, or open
your mouth and wrist tasting it. Oh, man, that's a good line.
That is a good line, good writing. My wife wrinkled up her
nose and looked at me in uttered disgust before asking, did you do that?
Oh my god, no, I exclaimed, horrified at the possibility that
my body, or any human body for that manner, could create a smell
that nauseating. After a short discussion on the possible origins of the odor,
we decided to head on out to our stands. Were looking forward to having
a good day, and the land that we were hunting was full of wildlife,
and we each usually harvested two deer there every year, so we were
both a bit surprised to learn that neither one of us had seen a thing.
When we met back at camp that night, while we were discussing our
lack of luck and enjoying a hot meal of my wife's homemade stew by the
camp fire, that same putrid smell washed over us again and hung around for
about ten minutes before it finally dissipated, and once it was gone, we
got our taste buds back into order, and we finished our stew and climbed
into the camper shelf for a good night sleep. The next morning, my
wife went straight to her stand, but I decided to wander the property to
see if I could figure out where that horrendous smell was coming from. The
first thing I noticed was that small trees were down across every walking trail I
went down. After by an hour of wandering through those paths and stepping over
trees, I happened to look up at a limb that was hanging seven feet
or so off the ground, and I saw a long clump of black horse
hair dangling from it. I believe in bigfoot. I think is real,
so it didn't take much for me to put two and two together and realize
the situation we were in. I texted my wife to meet me back at
the truck right away, and when she got there, I showed her the
hair and I told her what I thought. She's not a believer. She
laughed and poked fun at me, but I wasn't having that. But in
the end I won. We left that morning and we didn't go back there
for six months. Since then, I have sent that hair to Auburn University
to get it tested. Meanwhile, I leave offerings of fruit and vegetables when
we arrived to hunt, and again before we leave the property. We haven't
had anything than usual happen to us since that night. Now I'm hoping the
offerings will let whatever it is out there know that we mean it no harm.
On July first, two eleven, my life changed forever. I've been
an avid deer hunter my whole life. I've seen and heard strange things in
the woods before. When I was twelve, I came face to face with
a black panther. My only regret was that I didn't have a clear shot
at it. The first time I ever heard of fox mark. It scared
the hell out of me, and it was years before I knew what made
that awful sound. But like all the other strange things I've seen and heard
before that fateful day, it could be explained. But this day changed me.
At the time, I was in a loveless marriage. The only piece
I found was in the time I spent alone in the wood. During April
of that year, an E five tornado destroyed the town of Smithville, Mississippi,
along with almost all of my friends and neighbors. I volunteered to help
with the cleanup. While I was there, I ran into a girl i'd
known in high school. She was in an abusive marriage and we had a
common ground, so we began to meet and talk and about July first.
We had bonded over our mutual bad marriages. That day, I was driving
home from the bank in Tupelo, where I had taken out the money to
make my house payment, when I got a call from her. She told
me that she and her husband had gotten into another bad fight and that she
wanted to talk. It was a holiday weekend and I had plans to go
hang deer stands, but she begged me to go with her, so I
said, okay, I'll be there. Where I hunt is two miles deep
into the land that is owned by a timber company. It's a long,
slow drive down the logging road to it to my spot. I parked my
truck at an old logging camp and we sat there with the air conditioner running,
and we talked for a while. It was a hot day in July
and Tremont, Mississippi. We were parked in side of an old fire tower.
It's all hills and hollers, inhabited by rattlesnakes and ticks. And I
could tell that she really didn't want to follow me through that mess, so
I suggested that we sit on the tailgate and talk some more. I reached
in my cooler and I got us both a beer, and I turned on
the radio, and well, one thing led to another, and pretty soon
we were tangled up in each other's arms in the bed of my truck.
A little later we were lying there, back to back. She was talking
and I was listening, or maybe I was just staring. There wasn't much
to see the was there thick the leaves and underbrush made seeing past the perimeter
of the clearing impossible. And then it up down. It was seven feet
tall, and it didn't look anything like the sasquatch you see on TV.
It wasn't built like an NFL lineman. It was more like a basketball player.
And it was tall, and it was muscular, and it was covered
in long, black, shiny hair, with a white patch on its stomach
that I'll never forget. I couldn't tell you what its teeth were like because
it had its mouth closed but its eyes and face looked very human. It
stood there staring at me as if it were in deep thought. All I
could do was stare back, and I was thinking we needed a plan to
get out of there. About that time, the girl I was with poked
me in the back with her elbow and she said, are you listening to
me? She must have turned around then, because then she let out a
blood curdling scream that told me that she'd seen what I was seeing. We
have to go, I said, and we climbed out of the back of
the truck and into the cab as fast as we could. I don't think
I've ever taken that old logging road that fast before. I kept checking the
rear view mirror to make sure it wasn't following us out on the public road.
We stopped, and we were both crying by then. I guess it
was an emotional letdown after being so scared. She noticed that she'd left her
shoes behind, and I was thinking about the summit dare stand that I'd left
on the ground by where we'd parked. No parashoes or even a drestand was
worth driving back into that spot, as far as I was concerned, so
I told her, no, we're not going back for your shoes. We
drove all the way back to Fulton, where we stopped to get a coke
before I realized I had also lost my wallet. It must have fallen out
of my pocket and it still had my house payment money in it. It
was two thousand dollars. We had to go back Navis. I had my
Taurus Judge Revolver with me, and I loaded it with forty five long code
m O. The ground was tore up where we had left so quick.
I looked around for my deer stand in my wallet, and she was searching
for her shoes. Now. I couldn't find my wallet anywhere, and when
I picked up the deer stand and tossed it into the back of my truck,
it landed with a big bang. For whatever reason, I glanced up
then and I saw one of her shoes stuck in the crook of a tree
ten feet off the ground, and I started tossing rocks and sticks at it
to try to knock it out. It was unnatural how quiet the woods were.
I noticed that about the time I managed to unwedge the shoe, the
loudest, most menacing growl I've ever heard in my life came from the holler
below us. I looked over and I saw a forty foot tall pine tree
swaying back and forth as if it were being pushed. It was time to
leave again. Now I'm no good at guessing wade, but I'd say that
thing must have weighed at least three hundred to five hundred pounds, and apart
from that white square patch on its stomach, it was as dark black as
a mink. I said its face looked human, but it was an ugly
human. I couldn't believe how well groomed its hair was. It didn't have
an odor, and it approached us in total silence. If I hadn't seen
it, I would have never believed in Bigfoot. I didn't until that day.
That e F five that hit smith Fille was a little south of where
we were that day. It cut a mile wide path that probably dislocated a
lot of animals. I guess that Bigfoot was one of them, and these
days I never go into the woods without my shotgun. Fortunately that day,
I found my wallet in the floorboard of my truck when we got back to
town. But we never did find her other ship. Something happened to me
that has always haunted me. I've never told anyone except my father and my
best friend. Neither one of them believed me. During the nineteen seventies and
eighties, my dad was a land developer in East Texas around Toledo ben and
sam Rayburn Reservoir. He would buy lakeside lots of land and get a surveyor
to break it down, and then he'd put in roads and eat sell the
lots. He developed several campgrounds and neighborhoods that way, and I grew up
in a small town in deep East Texas around the Sabine and Angelina National Forest
above the Big Thicket. Every now and then Dad would go see the surveyor
to discuss the business, and sometimes he would take me with him. I
thought I would enjoy the ride. And the surveyor had a son that I
could play with. His name was Tommy James, and we called him TJ.
For short. He was nine and I was eleven. He didn't go
to my school, but he was fun to play with because he was a
simple kind of country kid, and we would shoot bb guns and we'd whittle
sticks and get dirty playing in the dirt. Pile with his talk of trucks.
It was while we were playing in a dirt pile one day when TJ
slowly looked up at me and he said, there's a Chebacca man that lives
down that trail right there. He pointed to a thin trail in the back
left corner of his backyard. You want to go see it, he asked.
Chewbacca lives back there? I asked, yep, he's a Chewbacca man.
TJ assured me. I remember laughing and saying, okay, let's go
see Chebacca man. We started down the little path with me convinced that we
were playing make believe, and I was surprised how far TJ was taking.
It seemed like we walked for a long time before we came to a huge
dead fall across the trail. It looked like a tree had fallen down and
taken a lot of trees with it. There were empty cracker jack boxes with
Little Debbie snackcake rappers strown on the ground in front of it, and I
guess this is where TJ came to eat as snacks. TJ looked around and
he said, well this is it. I'll call him. He let out
a long howl. I was still convinced that this was just a game that
we were playing, so I didn't expect to see anything. I figured this
was his imagination and overdrive. But when he let out another long howl,
I began to hear the sound of walking and cracking that was coming in our
direction. TJ, what is that, I asked, as the fog of
make believe was beginning to clear. Well, it's the Chewbacca man, he
told me. I took a step back as TJ faced the dead fall and
him began to speak in a coaxing tone. Come, come on, come
on. He was beckoning it like a little puppy. The walking sound stopped
on the other side of the tree, and I could hear loud breathing like
a horse. A horse, Yes, I thought he's calling a horse.
I took a huge breath and I released it in a deep sigh of relief.
T J began to almost sing the word Chewbacca and a gentle voice.
He was calling it again. A few limbs shifted and moved in the dead
fall, and then I heard it utter, a single, deep but faint
word. Oh. All of my former relief slipped away in this place was
a hard nod of fear and anxiety. That the thought of whatever was on
the other side of those trees that was big enough to have a voice that
deep. I could almost feel its mass as it stood there, breathing the
air into its lungs. That must have been massive. Come on, TJ
sweetly beckoned again. Tommy, I whispered, let's get out of here.
At that second, the thing released a loud sound, and it shook the
world around me, and it shot through me, and it rattled in my
chest, and it left me stunned in my tracks. My eyes widened in
fear, and my own lungs ceased to function. T J was still calling
the thing. I felt hot and sick, and beads of sweat broke out
all over my body, while my heart was jumping up into my throat.
If I could have made my legs work, I would have run away.
In my mind, this wasn't happening, This couldn't be happening. But t
J wasn't afraid. Limbs and the dead fall began to move and snap again,
and I thought the thing was coming over it or through it, and
big grunts of breath mingled with the sounds of limbs slamming and cracking. I
was still frozen and could only stand there and listen to the thing raising hell
a few feet away. TJ turned to me and he said, he doesn't
like you. As he spoke, I saw arms coming up over the dead
fall. I didn't want to see more. Tommy, run, I screamed,
Now, wait, it's okay, he was calling to me. I
had already taken off, and I left TJ standing in the path with that
thing with the long arms and the deep growling voice and the loud scream was
chasing me. I could hear it coming up the path behind me. It
was exhaling great puffs of air with intense force. I barely felt the limbs
slapping my face as I raced up the narrow path. I had to get
to my dad behind me. That thing seemed to have left the trail all
together. All around me, branches were snapping and trees were cracking. And
then it was in the woods next to me, and from the sound of
the brush I could tell it was running a wide circle, and I guessed
it was about twenty five feet out. Glimpses of its enormous black body with
long arms swinging flashed through the leaves. It was so big and unbelievably fast.
It was pulling ahead of me, but the trail was endless, and
panic stricken tears began to blur my vision when I realized it was gonna cut
me off, and ahead of me, I could see into TJ's backyard.
Daddy, I screamed, Daddy. And then as I broke through the underbrush
into the yard, that thing came to a sudden, violent stop, and
everything went silent. The thrashing of the limbs stopped, and the sounds of
its breathing stopped, and the sounds of those impossibly footfalls stopped too, And
had chased me all the way back up the trail, and it almost caught
me. I ran into the office building where my dad and the surveyor were
talking, and TJ came running up behind me. Well, I was out
of breath and I was crying and whimpering. As I began to tell my
dad about the big thing that was chasing me, TJ stood behind me and
he never said anything. Well, our neighbor has a ghosts to get out
all the time, the surveyor offered, I'll bet one of those nannies got
out and got after you. Well, Dad could see that I was really
scared, and he laughed and he patted me on the head and he told
me to go wait in the truck. Well, I ran to the truck
and I got in and I locked all the doors. I watched TJ walked
slowly over to the truck, and I waited until he was standing beside it
before I had the nerve to roll down the window. I told you there
was a Chewbacca man. He said it. I saw it. I said,
what was that thing? He's the buggey Man. He's a Chewbacca man,
was TJ's only answer. Dad came out to the truck and I rolled
up my window as he got in, and we were pulling away, and
I looked back to see TJ walking towards the back of the house. He
turned around and gave me one last look before disappearing around the corner. Are
you okay? Dad asked, you got chased by a goat? Huh,
No, Dad, it was not a goat, I answered, and I
told him the whole story on the way home, but I could tell that
he didn't believe me. He thought maybe a cow or a bullet chased me
out of the woods. Well months later, Dad asked me if I wanted
to go to the surveyor's house with him again, and I gave him a
solid no. Okay, I just thought i'd ask, he said, holding
up his hands in surrender. He knew how I felt about that place.
I never went back there again. Many nights, I've laid in my bed
and I thought about what happened to me that day. I thought about TJ
and all those wrappers around the trees. I figured he must have been going
down there and feeding that thing. I guess he had kind of made a
friend of it. I've also thought about what would have happened if I hadn't
run. Some time after that incident, I overheard my dad telling my mom
that the surveyor had taken his family and moved out of the state. Neighbored
down the road. Said that they had moved back to where his wife was
from. Was Alabama or Mississippi, He couldn't remember which. It's funny.
Dad said that he didn't tell me he was leaving. He just up and
left, and I got him a lot of business. He didn't even call
to say goodbye. My father was disappointed. My father died several years ago
without us ever talking about the incident again. But I think I know what
made them move without warning. TJ called it that Chewbacca man. Thank you
for joining me on this podcast. If you thought it was pretty good,
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