In an upstate area of South Carolina, which was named after the Tolkeena Band
of Cherokee, there exists a piece of land with a macabre history and a
giant guardian. I was born and raised in this same county, but hadn't
heard the story until my aunt and uncle began building a home there. The
area was surrounded by pasture land, but these small patches of wooded areas had
remained mostly undisturbed for decades. Native American blood runs in my family on my
mother's side. Looking at the faces of my mother and aunts, the facial
structure of the indigenous people as obvious. There were delays in construction, but
these were not the usual delays you would expect. A septic tank had to
be installed. The contractor they hired left ab uly before the job was complete,
abandoning his equipment and tools. Days passed and the owners finally contacted the
man to see why he had left the contract unfinished. His response was only
slightly apologetic. He left for a reason, and it was not that he
was a shoddy contractor. Human bones had been unearthed while digging, at least
that was his claim. The property owners hadn't noticed any bones around the dig
site, and they were perplexed. He then went on to say that strange
things had been happening there on his last day, and he left. He
refused to elaborate. Later that day, he returned to load's equipment and left
in a hurry while my aunt was trying to talk to him. This was
strange behavior for the hospitable nature of the people who lived in the community.
My aunt and uncle never saw an invoice from this contractor. A second contractor
was hired, and he too, unearthed human bones. The police were called,
and apparently everything was quickly settled. The septic tank was installed in that
location and that was the end of it. I moved back to the area
after a divorce and got to spend more time with my aunt's uncles and cousins
there. I had been away for years. My aunt began telling me about
strange things that would go on around there, one small piece at a time.
At first, I didn't think a lot about it. I figured it
was probably a shadow mistaken for a spirit, or a noisy appliance mistaken for
the sound of something more imaginative. It was a bit spooky in that area
at night, especially on the backside of the house. Coyotes howling were a
routine sound to hear on most any night when the weather was good. I
could see how someone could develop creepy feelings, and our imaginations do run a
way sometimes. Yet my family were down to earth people. There was no
tendency in any of them to tell tall tales. It was around that time
that I learned about the incidents with the contractors and the bones. When I
finally heard that story, I became interested. One of my cousins lived on
the property. He was a mechanic and he moonlighted from a shop located there.
Vehicles waiting to be repaired lying the lower end of the property, he
worked on them in his spare time. My cousin was a quiet man,
not prone to draw attention to himself with outrageous stories, which made what he
was about to tell me even more believable. He was under the hood of
a vehicle and out of nowhere. He said, I'm kind of glad you're
here. I don't feel right when I'm alone on this property. I asked
him to please tell me more. He came out from under the hood and
he said, things go on here. Last Sunday, I was standing in
front of the TV, flipping through the channels watching car shows, and I
saw something out of the corner of my eye and my bedroom. I looked
and it was a giant bird looking thing that moved in a jerking mechanical motion.
It looked like it was surrounded by fog. I saw it walk from
my closet to my bed, and then it was gone. I got in
my car and I left. I knew something was going on for him to
tell me something like that. After questioning him about the thing, the best
I could gather is that it resembled an emu or an ostrich, considering his
description. Later that month, my cousins and I were on their front porch
having a smoke. The porch faced a field which was fenced with barbed wire.
I noticed something moving in the field, and when it was close enough
for me to see it clearly, at the fence stood an adult mu.
I had to see this thing, so I walked out to the fence with
one of my other co He explained that the farmer next door kept these birds
as well as goats. It was a magnificent bird and it was quite tame.
We walked back to the porch, and my cousin, who had told
the bird story, sat in silence and watched the bird. The whole scene
was odd, and I silently pondered the whole situation. Unless he brought up
the subject, I was going to stay quiet. I didn't know who he
had told. Weeks later, I learned that my aunt had begun investigating the
history of the property they now owned. Most of the resources she used were
in the library and archives recorded in the county courthouse. She discovered there had
been once a Tolkeena or Cherokee village located exactly where they lived. She told
me the history that she had discovered. In the early days of the South
Carolina Colony, British Colonel Archibald of Montgomery was given the task of forcing the
Touqina people from the area. The Tokena were peaceful and were not part of
the Cherokee Uprising during the seventeen fifties. The village leaders had been informed that
they needed to leave the area. The Tokena refused they would not leave their
home. Their refusal was conveyed to Colonel Montgomery and Anderson. That night,
the colonel marched an entire regiment of infantry twenty miles to the outskirts of the
village. The soldiers took up positions around the village, and they waited for
daylight. At first light, they attacked That morning, every tokena man,
woman, and child were massacred, some in their sleep. The colonial regiment
took no casualties. It had all happened on the ground my family had purchased
that year. My aunt went on to tell me they had seen the spirits
of native people walking through the house and around the property. The nearest neighbors
would ask why so many people would walk around out there at night. Were
my aunt and uncle having parties until the early morning? Had something happened?
Was everything all right? Then she described something even more strange. After meals,
she would scrape the scraps off into a bucket on the back porch to
give to the animals the next day. She called it her slop bucket.
The food went missing for several nights, and once she saw that the whole
bucket had been taken, she stood at the door and screamed into the woods
that whoever took her bucket better bring it back. The next morning, the
bucket sat in its usual place, and it was clean as if it had
been washed or licked clean. I suggested there was a homeless person living in
the woods, and she agreed that that could be the case, but I
think she knew that it wasn't. At other times, my aunt and other
women would be run out of the kitchen at night. One of the women
would be standing at the sink and a person would slowly move across their field
of view outside the window. It was the shadow of a human, they
said. We could hear them scream something as out there. The men would
check on it, and they would never find anything. Prowling outside. My
aunt was becoming a nervous wreck. I did not live with the family,
but I would stay with them, sometimes for a week or more. On
one of these occasions, I was in the living area with my daughter watching
television. It was late and everyone had gone to bed. My daughter and
I were having a fun late night TV marathon, watching cartoons. She loved
them. I reached for the remote to change the channel when a translucent figure
of a female in ancient native clothing glided across the room, passing in front
of the TV and exiting right beside my daughter. I should have been terrified,
but Strangely, it was a peaceful experience for me. I felt no
alarm at all. Rubbing my eyes to make sure I wasn't catching a glare
through a sleepy film on my eyes, I opened them and everything looked exactly
the same. But I knew that wasn't what I saw. No glare moves
like that. I had now experienced my first paranormal event since returning to the
area. I may have questioned their experiences before, but I didn't now they
had been telling the truth the whole time. The next evening, I was
in the same spot, watching a ballgame. The kitchen window was in my
direct line of sight from where I sat. My attention was drawn to the
kitchen I don't know why, and I saw a shadow cross outside the window.
Then the back door opened and slowly shut on its cylinder. It wasn't
loud, but loud enough to wake my aunt. She was in the kitchen
in a second, and we both looked out on the porch. The scrap
bucket had vanished. I told you, I told you something was happening.
Do you still think it's a homeless person stealing my bucket? She said.
I went on to tell her about the image that floated through the living room
the night before. She had seen that figure several times in the house.
She had a hunch that the spirit that we saw was a good entity,
and that she kept the angry spirits calm. My daughter and I left the
next day, and we didn't return for about a month. I'd been busy
at work and with life, but I was happy to be back around my
family. They filled me in on the strangeness that was still happening. I
could not believe all the craziness in that house. A perfectly normal family,
not distinguishable from any other family, had been haunted since the day they moved
in. I think they were fortunate that nothing bad had actually happened, only
events that were not normal, and those are always scary anyway. On my
first night back, all the guys were in the living area watching TV again.
One of my younger cousins was on the back porch talking to his girlfriend.
Everything up until this point had been normal, almost as if nothing had
been happening there. This was one of the nights and none of us felt
like anything would happened. We all got to feel normal for a day,
but the normal was broken later by a cry from the kitchen. There it
is again. One of the girls screamed, it's back. That shadow is
back. Before any of us could get up to make it to the kitchen,
my cousin, who had been sitting on the back porch, burst through
the door and stumbled into the kitchen floor. Cigarette embers showered him. He
had crashed through the door with a cigarette still in his mouth. He ran
from the kitchen to the living room and flopped into a recliner. He sat
there silently with his hands over his face, and then he began to shake.
His brother had left the room when he came in the house, and
now returned with a shotgun. Running through the kitchen, he yelled at me
to come with him hysterically. His younger brother yelled at us, saying,
it's out there. I saw it. Stay inside and do not go out
there. That thing is huge. I was confused, and I waited to
see what everyone was going to do. As I waited, I looked at
the kitchen window, and I saw the big shadow walk past again. There
it is, I screamed, and with that my cousin burst outside with his
gun. He had had enough. We were all now out on the porch,
looking into the blackness of the night. My cousin was furious and paced
back and forth in front of the porch. Does anyone see anything, I
said, I'm fed up with whoever this is harassing us. I'm going to
end it tonight, said my gun toe cousin. He was ready for a
fight. My thoughts went back to my idea that possibly a homeless person was
coming to the porch to get those scraps. Ghosts don't do that. I
don't think they need food. I began to worry my cousin would find this
person and shoot them, so I spoke up, Look, we don't know
what this is. Obviously something or someone is walking around out here and taking
this food. You all have seen it walk past several times. If it's
a man, you don't want to shoot them. You'll bring all kinds of
trouble into your life. You could even be charged with murder. My cousin
was listening and appeared to be calming down and listening to a rational explanation,
but that last bit of anger bowled over and he raised the shotgun into the
air and fired off three quick blasts into the night. If anyone was still
around, I'm sure they got the message. We all went back inside,
and the rest of the night was uneventful. The next day I spoke with
my young cousin and I asked him about what he had seen. He told
me he had been sitting there, not paying attention to anything, just talking
to his girlfriend, when he caught movement to his left. When he looked
up, a giant creature stood just off the porch. I asked him to
describe it. He said the thing looked like a man, a giant man.
Its face appeared to have a powdery look to it, like it was
covered in white flower There were notable Native American features to the man's face.
The hair was long and white and hung around his face and past his shoulders,
but that the shoulders and arms were covered in thick, dark hair that
contrasted with the white hair on its head. I asked him to show me
exactly where the figure was standing. He wouldn't get off the porch, but
he pointed to the ground just left of where we stood. I went to
the end of the porch and I exited the steps and then walked to the
spot he had pointed to. I could not see over the floor. I'm
six feet tall, and the floor of the porch was several inches above my
head. They all looked over the rail at me, and I asked him,
where was this head? You obviously saw everything. How tall was this
thing? While standing on the porch. He raised his hand a foot above
his own head. That meant what he saw had to have been ten to
eleven feet tall unless it was hovering. But it wasn't hovering. I looked
down and I saw two enormous, human looking, barefooted tracks, perfectly pressed
into the soil, just a foot or so to my right. I later
measured the tracks and they were nineteen inches long and eight inches wide, And
then I told everyone, I think this is a sisquatch. I left with
my daughter the next day and didn't return for two weeks. When I arrived,
immediately I asked them about the activity while I had been gone. I
was a bit sad when I learned nothing had transpired since that night. They
even mentioned that it was nice to be living without all these events. They
felt normal for the first time since they had moved in. I had done
some reading in the interim, and my research revealed some possibilities. First,
I thought the creature my cousin saw was a sasquatch, But how did that
tie in with the paranormal events. I don't really know. The spirits even
the neighbors saw from a distance walking around the house were strange enough. My
only conclusion was that Bigfoot has always been connected in some way throughout Native folklore.
I felt it while I was there. I don't know if it's the
native blood in my family or if it's just a hunch, but it seems
to fit. I went on to tell my family family that I didn't think
any of the events were evil in nature. No one had been hurt,
and the spirits that they saw never paid much attention to the new people living
on the property. The sasquatch had been seen, but had not made an
aggressive move towards anyone. He was taking the food bucket, and he was
also returning the bucket to the porch. I was sure that none of these
events were intended to harm anyone. I don't claim to be a shaman or
a medicine man by any means, but someone needed to try to give this
peace of land some respectful acknowledgment, and even some love. I have begun
doing just that. Someone had to do it. I had to do it,