Tonight's guest is Will Will. Welcome to the show. Thank you happy to
be here. Well, it's great having you. Thank you for your time.
Will please give us a brief bio one yourself. Well, my name
is Will. I live here in South Carolina, originally from southern California.
I am fifty years old and I'm an avid outdoorsman, adventurous kind of person
who likes to enjoy things that are outside and grew up just enjoying life everything
life has to deal with. That must have been one heck of a culture
shock moving from southern cal all the way over to South Carolina. Wow,
it was. It was a quick adjustment, but it was different from the
hustle and bustle of LA that's for sure. Oh, I'm sure it was
an adjustment. Yeah, I can only imagine. Will. You grew up
in a family that believed in cryptics. Please tell us more about that.
Well, yeah, I grew up in the seventies early seventies. I was
a young kid and we always watch TV as a family. That was back
before remote controls were popular. That the kids were the remote controls. So
we'd watch stuff like In Search of and my mom would always bring up certain
comics about Bigfoot, for example, or Lockness Monster or something like that,
and she would go into detail about certain things that she was a little girl
living out in Indiana and Arizona and things like that, where she would say,
yeah, I believe in these things. I don't think my mom's ever
seen one. She's not with us no more. But I'm not sure if
she ever actually saw ad cryptid, but she she was a believer in encryptids.
And my dad, I think he was to an extent, but I
think he mostly tolerated my mom's stories and whatnot. Well, how neat is
that, though, Still to have your mom being into cryptids like that,
that's great. It was interesting. I mean, it's scared the scared the
garbage out of us as kids. You know. It was kind of those
things like if you don't do this, then something's gonna get you. And
then she'd go into a story, you know, But it was she kept
us on her toes. Let's just spit that way. We're avid camping family,
so we'd be out in the woods a lot, and sometimes she'd bring
up Bigfoot and whatnot, and it was interesting, interesting to say the least.
So I kind of started my culture with cryptids. I didn't know what
the word crypt was back then, but you know, I knew what the
elusive Bigfoot was because of you know, in search of and my mom talking
about it, then campsite stories and whatnot, So it was a big deal.
It was always in the back of my mind as a kid growing up.
Well, like I said, how cool is that? That's great?
How much trouble did you have finding out what it was that you saw the
night of your encounter? Not too much, to be honest with you,
It wasn't something that was ever on my radar. I really never heard of
dog man before growing up, especially on the West Coast. I mean,
I don't think it was something that people talked about, you know, werewolf
style cryptids. For me, it was always bigfoot. So to hear about
it when I came out here in my saw, which we'll talk about a
little bit, it was just an eye opening experience. It was like a
floodgate opened up and I just started learning more and more about certain things that
I didn't know really existed and possibilities of existing. So it was intriguing to
stay the least, Oh, I'm sure it was. Yeah, there's life
before you find out about dog men and definitely life after. Yeah. I
mean I always thought it was just Bigfoot and lockness monster and things like that.
I didn't really think of like other dimension stuff that could be out there,
you know, and find out there's even Mothman and all those kind of
things in West Virginia. And I've been up there many times and heard the
stories now that I lived on this side of the country, and it just
it was an eye opening experience. Well, if you don't know, you
don't know, but I'm glad you know now. Yeah, were you able
to tell your mom about your encounter before she passed? I did, Actually,
it was I think it took me a couple of days to get the
courage to do it. I remember calling her and mentioning it to her,
and she was I don't think she knew about this particular cryptid, at least
not the way I saw it, but she's like, yeah, that's that's
interesting. And then the fact that I live out here in an area that's
Indian related, it started making her think about it more and more, and
we talked about it for a little while about the experience, and she believed
me, which was really nice to have someone in my family actually, you
know, give me the satisfaction of actually listening and believing in what I was
saying. And I think I was crazy about it. So it was pretty
cool. It was nice to have my mom on my side. Oh,
I'm sure it was. Did you get the impression when you told her about
your encounter that she almost got a little excited because instead of being in books
and on TV, now my son has actually had an encounter with a cryptid.
Yeah, I would say she was pretty excited. I think it got
her Jesus swelling, so to speak, where she was really thinking about it
more and more about what was going on and the experience that I had,
and then that it was actually something like you said, it wasn't in a
book. It was physically something you can almost touch, you know. So
it was kind of like I think, maybe a validation maybe for because now
it's like, like I said, I don't know if she actually ever had
an experience with a big foot or encryptids, but now she can actually say,
yeah, it's my son's had it, and mean she didn't even shared
it. She can actually say yeah, and now I know that this is
true because my son doesn't lie to me, which I never lied to my
mom. Good Man. And also I'm sure she wore that like a bedge
of honor. Yeah, she's a good woman. Well, considering how nice
you are, I'm sure she was. Thank you, You're welcome. Would
you say your encounter was the most frightening experience you've had in your life?
Will? And if not, what was? I would say it was weird?
It was it was unexpected. So I don't know if frightening is a
good word for it, but it was unexpected. I've had other situations where
and I had to think about this more and more after we talked the first
time, But I've had situations where I think they were more frightening to me
than this. This was just unexpected in it, something that came at me
that I had no control over. Is what kind of threw me for a
loop more than anything, So I wasn't. It didn't frighten me as much.
It just made me put me on my toes more, maybe more aware
of my surroundings more than I ever have been. I had a situation back
in California that I was out on a ride at night with some friends of
mine. We were on a group patrol, and I swear I thought something
like we were riding in the dark with our lights, so you're on a
single track trail, so you're probably bought a little over a foot and a
half to two feet size trail were riding their bikes. I was in the
back of this three person group on these mountain bikes. It was probably around
twelve o'clock at night, and we were climbing this ridge and once I was
complete, drop off about thirty feet into some rocks and you didn't really you
couldn't see it because it was dark. On the other side, on the
right side of me, there was just like these trees, and I remember
this limb was pulled back and then thrown at me like on a tree,
a sapling type tree, and it hit me in the face and I flew
off my bike. My bike and me went off the edge of the cliff
into the dark. And I was more afraid of that than this dogman encountered
that I just had a couple of years ago. Because I had no control
of I had no idea what's happening. I thought maybe it was vertigo.
I don't know what it could have been, but I was in an area
that wasn't It was populated, but it wasn't populated at night, and I
was out of control and there's no reason for me. I was a great
bike handler. I should never have fallen off my bike the way I did.
And that freaked me out. Well bet it did. That branch was
definitely pulled back and then let go. I believe it was because it was
no wind that night that we were riding. I couldn't tell you what time
of the year it was. It is probably summertime. And there's no reason
why that that limb was. My buddies didn't hit it. They were in
front of me. I was only like a bike lank behind them. We
were doing a mountain patrol for a group called the Mountain Bike in the Santa
Monica Mountains for the National Park System and I was carrying medical which is pretty
funny because I wasn't want the medical pack and the radio and here I am
flying thirty feet into a ditch in the rocks like a cliff in the middle
of the night, and my buddies had to pull me out of this thing.
And I've never been so scared in my life because I don't know how
that tree hit like it just like swung back and slapped me in the face.
Knocked me right off my mountain bike. Wow, that is rough.
Were you hurt? Yeah, I was pretty banged up. We were about
an hour intour our tour our ride and I think I hurt the the left
side of my ribs got hit pretty bad. I kind of rolled onto my
back where my medical pack was so that cushioned a lot of the fall of
but my mountain bike fell on top of me, and then my buddies had
to try to climb down and pull me. You get me out of that
little canyon, and I didn't want them to call him, for anybody to
like medical to come get me, because we were kind of the medical out
there. I'm like, no, this would be too embarrassing. Just keep
me out of here. And they got me back up there, got back
on the bike. We finished our tour a couple hours later and that was
it. But to this day, I don't know why that branch was flung
back at me and smacked me in the face. But I remember that like
it was yesterday. It was crazy. Sure, it does make you wonder
what did that then? I don't know. I know that there was mountain
lions in the area. We had coyotes, no bear that I know of
in that area. I don't know it was. I was just a weird,
weird thing that happened. Yeah, that's a good way to sum it
up. It kind of reminds me that Unseen from the movie Watchers. You
ever seen that movie with Corey Haim. No, I've never seen that movie.
I've heard of it, but I've never seen it. There is a
lab that has this experimental combat mammal. It's kind of like a werewolf in
a way, and in some ways it's not, but when it gets loose,
it's basically trying to track down this dog that it's genetically tied to,
and it'll kill anyone or anything who is or that has come into contact with
that golden retriever. Well, Corey Haim winds up taken in the dog,
and since he has a dog with him and his family, then the X
com comes after him. And there's a scene in the movie where one of
his buddies is out in the woods riding with his friends. Well, the
boys are riding and all of a sudden, that X Calm comes after them
because Corey had been with them, and this branch just gets pulled back and
flung right into this kid's face and knocks him off the bike. It jumps
on the kid and it kills him. But when you talked about what happened,
it kind of took me back to that one scene in the movie and
I thought, Wow, that's rough. Well, I'm glad nothing tried to
kill me. Just the rocks. Yeah, me too, Me too.
If you've had a dog meant encounter, would like to speak with me about
it, whether I'm private or on the show, please go to dog Meant
Encounters dot com and submit a report. If you've had a bigfoot sighting and
we'd like to be a guest on one of my two bigfoot shows, please
go to my Bigfoot Sighting dot com. All right, well, please tell
us about your encounter. Now, give us every last detail that comes to
mind. All right, I will. Well, it was I thinking around
twenty and twenty, just before the pandemic area timeframe. I went over to
a buddy's house. It was probably October ish, late October, I believe.
I went to a friend's house who lived about six miles away from my
house. I lived on just the preferences. I lived on Lake Hartwell in
the Upstate. They call it the Golden Triangle area. It's right on the
border of Georgia. Solavonia is the next city next to where I lived,
and I lived in the town called Airplay, and so I lived right there
on the lake. So across the lake which I lived on, I could
see Georgia every day. It was just right across the lake. There was
a state line. Well, my buddy, he lived about six miles away,
and he wanted we were. I was going to his house to help
him work on some motorcycles because that's something we do. We r at Harley's.
And so I went to his house. It was probably around four o'clock,
five o'clock ish, and uh, we're working until pretty late. It
was probably about eleven o'clock. So I had dinner at his house with his
wife, and I just had a good time just relaxing and being guys working
on you know, car stuff and motorcycle stuff. And I got to the
point where I was like, Okay, I'm gonna go home. Well,
I didn't ride my motorcycle to this house, which is a good thing in
my opinion. I drove my little convertible, and I had a Fiat five
hundred a barth so the roof was completely cloth, and the car's not that
big. It's a pretty small car, but this particular version of the of
the five hundred was really loud. It had open mufflers, and it was
a little team Differently, it was faster than the regular five hundreds that were
out there from Fiat. Anyway, So I was driving home, probably around
eleven thirty at night, and I decided to take the long way, which
takes me down some scenic back country roads, because I didn't really want to
get home. I just kind of wanted to play around and just drive the
car and enjoy the night. It was a nice, cool evening. I
think it was kind of clear, so it was nice. But I didn't
put the top down. I left the top up in the car. And
I'm going down these farm areas in the back area with a lot of trees.
South Carolina's known for their trees and there their vegetation here. It's always
green year round. And as I'm driving, I'm heading out towards our interstate,
which is Interstate eighty five. And what I was gonna do is gonna
go all the way from his house to the interstate to the backway, get
on eighty five, and then get off the last exit, which is the
exit where I lived off of which is High eleven or Exit one in South
Carolina, and then head back to my house. So I was taking a
longer route home, so I was driving that way. I got on the
Interstate, I looked onto the Highway eleven, which is known as the Cherokee
Highway, and it goes past Hartwell State Park, which is a camping ground
slash boat landing right there across from Georgia state line, and so I was
just passing that As I got on Highway eleven driving my car. I'm going
probably seventy miles an hour. Visibility was it was dark, but it was
very clear, so you can see pretty far up. And I had all
my lights on my car, so I had five lights and all this other
stuff set up at night time so I can really see where I was going.
My biggest fear was a deer was going to run out in front of
me, so I wanted to make sure I could see anything in front of
me before I made that transition home, so I didn't hit anything. Because
a lot of people are known to hit deer and said this area, especially
around that time at night, they liked to cross the Highway eleven a lot.
So I'm driving, kind of mind my own business, listening to some
music and just kind of chilling thinking about what me and my buddy did,
you know, working on his bike so we can get ready for a run
this weekend. We were I think it was a Thursday night that this happened,
So we were getting ready for a run on Saturday. We're all going
to get together and ride our motorcycles. So as I'm driving, I kind
of noticed something on the right side of the road, on the side of
the road. It wasn't in the road, but it was like off the
shoulder, probably about one hundred yards in front of me, just barely where
my lights were hitting at the time, and there was a lot of movement,
and I couldn't really tell what it was. I thought maybe it was
a deer. I didn't think anything of it. I'm from California, so
I didn't really think about slowing down. I just kind of was metamerized by
what I was looking at. And as I'm driving closer and closer whatever it
was, noticed in my car and I think it hurt it, and my
car is just loud. It makes a nice rumble and back pops and all
this kind of stuff with a vehicle. It poked its head up, looked
at me, and then started coming towards me. And it started galloping,
and I thought, that's really odd. I've never seen an animal just kind
of come towards a moving vehicle. I've seen him go across the road and
disappear, but never charge something. And it started picking up at speed.
As I'm looking at it, I could tell that it was kind of like
a dog style animal, but it looked so much bigger than any dog I've
ever seen in my life. And I'm thinking back to like when I was
doing stuff in California in the woods, and I remember coyotes and how thin
and sickly they look, and I was looking at the structure of the ears,
I could sell that it was kind of like a coyote slash wolf.
We don't have wolves in this area South Carolina. So it really threw me
for a loop. I was kind of freaking out because I wasn't. For
one, I'm driving this little car and I'm driving convertible, and I didn't
want to hit it, so I kept the speed up around seventy miles an
hour, and it was kept getting closer and closer to me. I could
see the eyes glowing like a yellowish tent, so I knew it was looking
at me as it was coming towards me. I did notice that the hair
on this animal was like a silver white, so it was really brilliant with
the concrete background and the dark behind it. So I could really see a
good look at this thing. And I noticed that it was almost as wide,
if not as wide, as my car. My car is only about
a little over five feet wide. It's not very wide. It's a really
narrow car, and I could tell that this thing was probably bigger than my
car. And that's when I got freaked out a little bit or more concerned
at what was coming at me. This thing was coming quick, had a
big, wide like shoulders behind the head, it had pointy ears. I
didn't see any teeth, but I wasn't really paying attention to teeth, but
I was paying more attention to the size of this animal. And as it
was coming at me, and it was galloping towards me at a pretty fast
rate, and my only concern at this point was, Okay, it's going
to get off the road. It's going to ditch to the left of its
body and go back into the woods. And it never did it. Cape
It actually got more into the side of the road in line with my car
than I thought it was going to. I thought it was just going to
go across the road or was going to ditch back into the woods. This
is a heavily wooded area. On the driver's side, You've got Lake Hartwell,
which is a very big lake, a lot of openings for animals to
come through there. We got a lot of d and things like that.
We even have bear up in this area, a lot of coyote type animals,
a lot of foxes, armadillo's, things like that, but nothingness like
this. For a second, I questioned that it could be like a some
kind of wolfhwn type thing, a domesticated dog, but it just was so
big. Is There's just no way it was somebody's at And then it started
making me think as it was coming closer to me, could this animal be
rabbited? Could it have rabies? And that's it sees me as a threat
and wants to attack me. So the movie Kunjo came to my head thinking
of that movie Kunjo, how Kunjo was attacking that lady in her car,
and I'm like this, this isn't good. I thought it was freaking me
out. As I got closer and closer to this creature, I got to
a point where I said, Okay, it's not going to move. I
don't have much in my car to protect me. By my handgun that I
keep in there at all times, which is only a nine millimeter, I
don't think this thing have done anything to it. And I hear stories about
people talking about I had a gun on me and I was in the woods,
and you know, I don't think it would have done anything. I
just think that was silly to hear. I mean, it would do something,
But I got that impression that I looked at this creature coming towards me.
Even my car wouldn't have done much to it. It probably would have
dented the garbage out of my car, but then I'd be in trouble and
I'd be in the car with me, and I didn't want that, especially
with the roof that I had. It was just a you know, open
top roof. It just it would fall through and I'd be sitting there next
to this thing, or it'd be on top of me, So I felt
really insecure about that. So those the only option I had was to continue
to play chicken with this animal. And by the time I got to a
point where I knew I could swerve to the left on the oncoming traffic,
which there's no traffic at night on this road. It was just me and
this animal. That was my safest and best bet to do. So what
I did is once it got to about fifteen feet or so near me,
and I could see the massive size of it. It was tall. It
was big, tall, and just bulky. That's when I made the move
to swerve over to the left and then swerved directly back to the right right
away, so I got back in my lane. As I did that,
this animal came close to my right side of my car. I could tell
that it was taller than my window on my passenger side, and it was
a real fluffy, clean it wasn't dirty fur of white and silver, and
I couldn't see the head. After that, I could barely say I couldn't
see the back of this animal as it went past me. It was that
pall and as I got back into the other lane where I was originally going.
I could see in the tail lights that it was behind me, and
it stopped, slowed down, and then went into the woods. Now at
that point where I saw it, this was just after Hartwell State Park entrance
that all this took place. There's an open area on the right of the
open fields. Some people usually go out there and hunt, so there's a
lot of game animal out there. So it's possible that this thing was hunting
deer at the time, or it found road kill on the side of the
road and I just drove up because it was on the side of the road
when I first saw this thing, and maybe I just interrupted it and it
freaked out and wanted me out of its area for it to continue eating what
it was eating or hunting what it was hunting. But at that point I
was only about two miles from my house. My house was only about like
an second exit from that area that this happened. And I got back to
my house within like ten minutes or less. I roll up in my driveway.
Its overlooks the lake, and I just was shaking. I sat in
my car for a minute. I grabbed my gun and put it into my
holster that I carry, and I got out of my car, cautiously looking
around to make sure nothing was in my because I lived on a big acreage
property. Make sure there was nothing around me, because I wasn't sure if
that thing followed me home. I got into my house and my mother in
law, who lives with us, we're taking care of her, she saw
me and she can see that I was white as a ghost. I was
shaking. She's like, what's wrong. Did everything go okay at your buddy's
house, Brad's house? So everything was fine at Brad's house. Had a
situation. She's like, what happened? And I told it to her and
she totally didn't bat an eye, didn't say that I was crazy. She's
like, Okay, it's all right, you're safe, you're home. I'm
like, yeah, I'm home. But I just freaked me out. So
I sat there that night, couldn't sleep. I was on guard, thinking
something's going to be in our front yard or backyard, pacing around the house
the whole night. So I was on edge over that. The next morning
is when I started doing my research on this. I called a buddy of
mine at dr to see if there was any wild game out here that would
match that description, and he said, no, we don't have wolves in
this area, so that doesn't make any sense to me. So I was
probably a domesticated dog, like a New Ferland or something, a big dog,
and I'm like, I don't think it was a New Ferland. And
I'm like, I think it might have been rabbit because I talked to my
d and our friend like a week before that, because I had a raccoon
in my yard had rabies, so I was already ready to dispatch that if
I had to it got in our yard because we have dogs, and he
said, no, we don't have anything like that. So I started doing
my research online. It's about when I found your podcasts started listening to it,
and I heard an episode where a young lady had the same similar situation,
not in this area, but more Midwest, I believe, where she
drove up on a dog man doing the same thing, almost And when I
heard that story, it made me remember mine, and it made me kind
of back where I was before. My skin just went white. So I
was listening to it in my car and I'm like, oh my gosh,
I'm not the only one who's had the same experience. This is crazy.
And I remember calling my buddy who I was with the night before, and
his office wasn't too far where this situation happened, and he was telling me,
He's like, yeah, about a week before you saw this thing.
Me and my boss, we were driving in our big four f two fifty.
That's pretty jacked up. It's an off road vehicle. He said,
we saw something that matches the description, and it was something we could looked
at each other. And it was during the day and he couldn't They couldn't
figure it out. Made no sense to him. But he wasn't the kind
of guy who's going to go start talking about cryptids and big foot. And
he was my buddy that me and him went hunting all the time, and
he knew I was a big foot fan and I believe in bigfoot, and
so he'd always kind of make fun of me tongue in cheek about it,
like, hey, watch out for big fun. I'm gonna put you in
this tree stand, you know, keep your keep your wits with you.
But when he saw that, and after I mentioned it to him, he
broke down and told me about an experience that he saw with this animal,
and it was similar, but it didn't chase them. But they remember seeing
it on the side of the road going into the bushes, and it was
massive. He said he would fill the back of his truck it was so
big. Oh. That kind of validated how I felt like I wasn't imagining
this situation. I wasn't tired when I was driving home from his house that
night that we actually saw the same creature, the same color, same everything,
same build. His was just more towards dusk time was still light out.
Mine was just at night, and I saw it with my head lights
on my car. So, and to this day, I still drive that
route. I moved away for a while, and I just recently moved back
to this area. I don't live exactly in that same area, but I'm
only about six miles away from it, and I'll still go out there and
drive that same route looking for this creature to see if it's still out there.
What if you have another encounter of that doesn't go so well, Well,
I'm more prepared now than I was before. I just put that way.
I guess I don't know. I'm not. It doesn't frighten me.
It didn't trigues me. It makes me wonder this is really out there?
What else is out there? But this is the one thing that I've seen,
so is something I truly believe in. I'm not. You know,
they call you a believer if you believe in Bigfoot, but you're a knower
if you've seen it. Well, I've seen this creature and it's not doesn't
match any creature that's ever come across my path before. So I believe in
dog Man. I know it's there. And I've done a lot of research
in this area and some things have popped up in this area regarding dog Man,
and I've talked to a bunch of people in the area about it.
And there's some strange stuff that goes on here in this area in South Carolina
that I don't think really gets reported or talked about enough. That is interesting,
especially when it comes to cryptids. But I know that dog Man was
out there. I mean, I'm not the only one who seen this one.
Well, like you said, you're not a believer, now you're a
knower. You know they're out there. I do, And it to make
me think back in the past where I've been in different areas across this country
doing certain stuff that I've done in the past, you know, like the
mountain bike thing, and I've done a lot of wildlife photography in Idaho and
Utah in Montana. It makes me wonder what was around me when I was
out there doing these things, because I've been around a lot of situations where
I've heard things that didn't make any sense. I didn't see anything, but
I heard stuff that didn't sound like any animals that I've ever heard of before.
But now I've got this experience that I had here in South Carolina,
which I would never have thought i'd ever have. That now makes me kind
of wonder when I'm out in the woods, I'm out hunting or something like
that, or even ride my motorcycle, what's around me, what's watching me?
And it just keeps me more on my guard, more so than I
ever been before. It's not a comforting thought. But while you've been out
hunting and doing other things like that, they've probably been watching any more times
than you'd ever believe. I believe that, Yeah, animals are smarter than
we are sometimes when it comes to being in their territory. We're visitors,
oh no doubt. Yeah, we definitely are Were you upset with Brad for
not telling you about his encounter before you told him about having years. No,
I'm not at all. It was it was actually kind of it was
neat, It was nice. I actually was going through his texts before our
interview here. I went back to the very beginning of when I first met
him, and we've started texting each other, becoming friends and building that relationship
that we had. It was our bond was as strong as family. We
were brothers. If you knew Brad, you would know that he's the kind
of guy that if he saw something, and it was truly something he saw,
he probably wouldn't tell anybody unless it was somebody who was more interested in
in what he saw than just telling somebody on the street. Just the validation
of him filling in some of the blanks before I even mentioned them to him,
like the color of the side, the mannerism of this creature made me
feel so much more closer to him about it. I just wish he was
still with us today. Sorry. No, I totally understand, and I'm
so sorry to hear that he passed. Sounds like he was a great guy,
and I think you were lucky to have him as a friend, just
like he was lucky to have you. Yeah, it was just if you
knew Brad, he would know that he's not the kind of person and would
embellish or talk about something he never if he didn't see it, he didn't
see it, he wouldn't say a thing. Before I met him, this
is how he knew me. I came in and said, hey, you,
I hear you're an avid hunter. This is before we became really close.
I'm like, you're an avid hunter. Have you seen anything strange in
the woods. I mean, I know you're a patterned You're out there before
the sun comes up and hours after the sun goes down, and you're usually
in the middle of places that no one even goes out to have you had
to have seen something. And he's like, no, I have never seen
a nothing that freaks me out. I'm like, okay, and I believe
you. And then after just talking to him about the situation and hearing his
side of it, really validated that he did see this. It wasn't something
that I made up in my mind, and it's not something he embellished in
his It just made me feel closer to him. It was a good thing.
And we we've done a lot of hunting down in Santee State Park for
deer and things like that, and we as we're driving out there, we
would talk about it a little bit about the situation, and he mostly bring
up big foots. He knows how I would love to witness one, and
he would just you know, kind of like a brother, kind of chiding
me in the ribs, you know, hey, maybe you'll see your big
foot. So he was a good person. He was a great friend,
a great brother. He was always there for me, which was awesome.
So it was just neat that we actually have that expers together. Even though
that we weren't together, we had the same experience still, which was really
cool to know. Yeah that it is, yeah, something I'm sure you
never thought you two would share, But that wound up being the keys.
Yeah. Did Brad having his encounter then about a week later, you having
years, did that seem to affect his interest in going out and hunting alone
and heading into the woods or was the business as usual? That was business
as usual, that that man was a hunter. He had three him,
he had four things. It was his family, his wife and grandkids.
It was God motorcycles, and hunting. God was always first, but it
didn't always go in that order. So when hunting season came around, he
basically told his wife, when hunting seasons here, that's that's what I'm gonna
be doing. I'll be out hunting every day. And he would be out
on every day. Nothing would slow that man down. But he'd always be
at church on Sunday. He may come in in camouflage, but he was
always in church, so he always knew he was out hunting the morning before
he came to church. That was just the kind of man he was.
But he was a strong man. He was only forty nine. Unfortunately,
he passed away from cancer and hit him pretty fast. But even to like
the last last couple before he passed away, we ended up hunting season.
He died in February. Hunting season was over at the end of December,
so we were still hunting in December. The last week he was alive,
I took him out on the lake. He told me, I want to
go out fishing before I leave, and I got the opportunity to take him
out on the lake and fish with him. His last time, which was
only a couple of days before he passed and he insisted on driving that boat
back. He wanted to feel the wind in his hair, the freedom.
He wanted to remember how it felt, that excitement that he always had,
and that was Brad. The one thing he didn't get a chance to do
is get back on his motorcycle, which was pretty sad. But this was
pretty close for him because you could have pictures of him and his head's back
and he's just driving that boat like he stole it. He was enjoying life
as much as he could. I know, it really hurts to think about
that last ride in the boat and him not being able to take that last
ride on his motorcycle. There will, but please don't lose sight of the
fact. Just to imagine what he's doing now. Boat rides, motorcycle rides,
no comparison at all. Please remember that everything's totally fine. Yeah,
he's a strong guy and he made a huge impact on the people around him.
I mean, I lived my life just like Brad lived his. I
think that's why we got along so well. He made fun of me from
being on the West coast, but we were basically inseparable. Yeah, it
sounds like you were. I'm so glad you got to meet him and Ice
versa, Yeah, thanks, you're welcome. When I was running towards you
will, did it look awkward or smooth? It was fluid, so I'd
say smooth and a cadence with it's gallop, I guess you could say it
almost remember of a thoroughbred. I have dogs here at the house on my
property. I've got a pretty good sized property, and I watched them run
around, and my dogs look awkward. Next to how this thing came at
me, it was just unnatural. It was an unnatural thought. When I
looked at this thing coming at me, it just didn't make any sense,
especially when it got closer and the size really came into you know, into
view. It was so big it filled basically my windshield. The size of
this thing. It was crazy. I'm just you know, they say things
like, you know, the first time you see something that's you know,
bigger than what you think it is in person, and you just go,
Okay, that doesn't make sense. But when you do see it, you're
like, oh my gosh, that was crazy. I just your brain doesn't
compute. I think that's what freaked me out, and that's probably why I
went white as a ghost. Just because my brain couldn't figure it out.
It couldn't translate what I was looking at. But it was smooth. It
was running very smooth. Did it seem to have a shoulders up posture,
like its arms were quite a bit longer than its back legs. It's possible.
I mean, I saw it coming at me. I didn't see it
really much of the side until I passed around it. But it did look
like it had longer legs in the front than say, like a regular If
you look at a regular dog, the doctor pretty much proportioned almost identical front
and back. Back legs are just a little smaller. But the legs on
the front they did seem massive. They seemed thick, and they did seem
a little longer than normal because it took some The stride coming towards me was
just it was effortless. Yeah, that's a site you're never going to forget.
No, did you notice a hump on its back as it was coming
right at you. There might have been a slight hump, but the shoulders.
Looking at it, it would just looked odd. It looked broader than
me, and it didn't make sense. It didn't really see a hump on
it, per se, But it could have been because its head was going
up and down as it was running towards me, So that's hard to really
say if it did or not. Well, Also, you had so many
things going through your mind. I mean, no one could fault you for
not picking up on that, just like this next question. It's a tall
water, but could you tell if it was running on its knuckles or on
its pads? M that's a good question. I would would have thought it
was this pads, but I wasn't paying close enough attention to its feet per
se. I just knew that it wasn't. It wasn't slipping when it was
running, so it had some pretty good grip. And if anybody knows South
Carolina roads, we've got a lot of potholes. It was fluid, but
I don't know if it was on its knuckles or if it was on its
pads. Well, like I said, no one could fault you for that.
You're doing good to know your own name. 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 dog Meant Encounters
dot com. Forward Slash podcast. If you would have had your top down
the top on your car, do you think that would have changed how this
encounter played out. It's possible, but I still would have done the same
thing I did, so I think I could have got around it. But
it made me think more about my decisions on what I wanted to do.
For a minute there, I thought, well, maybe I should just stop
and just see what it does. You know, I could stop continuing driving,
let us stay where it was at. And then when it started coming
towards me, I'm like, well, it made my decision for me.
I can't stop. I don't want to stop and have this thing circle the
car and then find out that I didn't have a hard top roof on it.
So if the top was down, which typically i'd almost have to say
when I had that car, which I don't have it anymore. When I
had that car, I drove with the top down eighty percent of the time
when it was a good night, just because I liked having the top down.
But for some reason I didn't put the top down that night. I
just left it up, And I don't think it would have changed anything,
just because of the way I had to move around it. But if I
did, all of a sudden hit it, I was more afraid it was
going to fall through the roof of that car and land in my lap and
then do whatever it was gonna do to me, and there would have been
no way I could have gotten it out of the car. I don't know
if I could have gotten out of the car being seatbelted in and have that
thing on top of me, that would have been a disaster. Yeah,
that wouldn't have been a good scene. No, you said that you're only
two miles from home at the time. It sounds to me like you didn't.
But did you drive straight home or take a circuitous route? I actually
kind of drove straight home. There's a couple of entrants I could take to
get to my house at the time, but I took the first exit to
get there, which is more of a backcountry way to do it. But
I wanted to get home as quick as possible and get out of my car
and into the safety of my house, which sounds kind of funny, but
I didn't want to be outdoors at that point. I wanted to be in
where I can breathe and decompressed and trying to think of what just happened,
because it didn't make any sense. I'm just glad my family was there because
I would have been stuck there by myself thinking about it all night. But
it did help to have someone to talk to you right away about it.
Oh, I'm sure it did. Yeah, it normally does. Did anything
ever happen to you around your house and makes you think that it just might
have followed you home? Not really. I was more aware of what was
going on. I know. I have a dog at home that any time
anything would walk around the house, it would be on alert. We'd have
a deer come through our property twice a day, if not more, but
mostly twice a day. You'd notice some of the mornings and the evenings.
And then sometimes there's some trails behind the house that aren't too far from my
bedroom window. My dog slept with me on the bed, and he'd get
all excited and start growling and kind of wake me up, and I'd kind
of get up and make sure everything was secure at the house in the middle
of the night. But that was kind of an ongoing thing that always happened
because of wildlife that would walk around our house. We didn't have fences or
anything like that. It's an open area directly to the lake, and our
house overlooked the lake, so it was a perfect place for animals to go
through in all hours. So I was always kind of on guard. If
my dog started growling and started running around the house a little bit, then
I'd get more keyed up, and that's when I would pay more attention.
But that was an ongoing thing, so i'd have to say no. I
was always ready for whatever. We didn't really have neighbors in my neighborhood that
I lived at. It was kind of a secluded area, so it was
like our house and then the nearest neighbor was pretty far away. It was
mostly a vacation area, so people from out of state would go there and
vacation during the good times of the year. They'd be on the lake and
we'd be there year round, so we didn't really have neighbors all year round
all the time. So it was it was a quiet, very quiet place
which I could. I actually really liked a lot, so I was always
kind of something would drive around the neighborhood, I'd be paying attention, who's
this type attitude. Same with animals. We'd have foxes, running through our
yard and never seen red foxes before, and they'd be in our yard and
I'd be like taking notice a certain wildlife that Living in California near the beach,
I never saw things like that, So it was it was kind of
nice to be in nature. Sounds like a great place to live. I
can understand what you did like living there and it was awesome. My wife
hated it, but I loved it. Yeah, I can understand what you
did. You're a religious man, will did your encounter have an effect on
your religious beliefs? Not really. It just kind of made me know that
there are God's made a lot of different animals and creatures out there. We're
not the only ones. It maybe made me closer to God, I guess,
but I was already pretty close to him as it is. So it
just made me realize that if they're out there and He created them, we'll
run across them someday when it's the time's right. I guess. Is that
what you think? They are? Just a flesh and blood creature that is
out there trying to make a living. Yeah, I guess you could say
that. I don't believe in the supernatural stuff. I believe it more like
flesh and blood. I believe if that animal would have jumped on my car,
it would have fell through and landed on me. I don't think it
would have went through my car like an apparition, so to speak, or
a ghost. I think it was a real flesh eating, breathing animal.
That's what my eyes saw, That's what I felt when it went past me.
I don't believe it was something other than that. So yeah, I
think there was an animal. It was a flesh and blood creature that could
die. I figured, you know, just like I could if I got
hurt. Well, that makes two of us. I'm pretty sure if it
fell on your car that it would have fallen into the cabin of the car
and caused all sorts of problems for you. So yeah, thank goodness that
didn't happen. Yeah, let's spout time for us to get out, if
your will, But before we do, do you have any closing comments you'd
like to share? I would just say, you know, pay attention to
where you're at at all times, keep your eyes scanned, don't don't be
playing with your phones. I think that's where a lot of people miss things.
These days were so tied into our technology that when you're out in your
car, or on a motorcycle, or even walking through the woods, enjoy
your surround ownings, pay attention because you may see something you didn't know was
there. Yeah. Just imagine how many things people miss going down on the
road because they've got their noses tucked away in their cell phones, even on
motorcycles sometimes yeah exactly. Yeah, who knows how much they miss. But
having said that, I can't thank you enough for coming on sharing the details
of that experience with this will. I really appreciate it. Well, thank
you, I appreciate Let me tell the story what happened to me. Well,
you're welcome, Thanks again so much, and have a great night on