Speaker 1: I've been deliberating about sending my story for quite a while,
and I finally got up the nerve to go ahead
and send it. I guess my story really starts when
I was a little boy. My dad took my brother
and I on multiple fishing trips and camping trips. We
were never hunters because my mom didn't feel comfortable with
the guns and my dad always was sensitive to her request,
but we were always outside and enjoyed the outdoors. When
we were kids, he would take us out to the
Mississippi River Valley area, which is close to Bellevue, Iowa.
I think it was Pool Number eleven. We would spend
weekends there in our pop up camper across the river.
There was an army depot and trespassing was forbidden, but
when the water was high, we could get a rented
boat in there and fish that area. As long as
we were not standing on ground, we were legal. We
would always hear strange noises, things that we couldn't explain,
and big splashes that my dad would say were beavers.
As I got older, I started camping and going fishing
out there on my own, and of course, you get
smarter and used to the wildlife when you're not a
little kid and you realize that beavers don't make that
loud of a splash. While camping there as a kid
back in the mid seventies, we would have things thrown
into camp, and we also heard strange noises coming from
the woods that surrounded us. I remember a few nights
when we were awakened to buy those noises. We never
knew what they were. In later years, I became more
interested in bass fishing. I competed in several tournaments. This
is where my story begins, as far as my encounter goes.
I was fishing a bass tournament on the Mississippi River
around the Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois area. It was late spring
and we were fishing a qualifying tournament. I was considered
a boater and I had drawn a partner that was
a non boater, and we were heading out on the
second day of a three day tournament. I had the
basic equipment in a nineteen foot bass boat with one
hundred and seventy five horse Johnson on the back, and
I had all the gear. This was in the early
two thousands and GPS was not standard equipment at that time.
We decided to run down the river to find cleaner water.
We were after large mouth because they're bigger fish and
they weigh more, and the small mouth bite was nonexistent
at this time. The Mississippi River is a vast system
and the backwaters and tributaries that run along the river
are immense. We had decided to make a run south
on the river and lock down to another pool. We
finally got to the area that we decided to fish.
We had to navigate very carefully. Maps were unreliable due
to the water level, and again we didn't have GPS.
To get to the area we wanted to fish, we
had to go underneath a railroad trestle or bridge if
you will. But because the river was up at the time,
we had to actually take the boat, plug out and
fill the boat with water so that our bass boat
would sit low enough to fit under this bridge. Once
we were past the bridge, we would build the water out.
I know that sounds crazy, but when you're after fish
and you're that driven, sometimes you do stupid things. In hindsight,
maybe it wasn't the brightest thing to do, but I
had actually learned the trick watching bass Master TV. After
we made our way around through the back area, we
found a great spot with clear water that we wanted
to fish. My partner had fished it before and he
said it was for sure a good spot and that
we should catch a limit. The lily pads were just
coming up and the vegetation was reaching the surface. It
was a little bit late in the spring, so there
was still some spawning going on, but mostly post spawned,
and the bass started hitting top water through the pads.
The bank was mainly rock and sand, and behind that
was a dense forest. We were setting in a nice
little stretch all to ourselves, and we had a lot
of water to fish. It was going to take us
hours to cover this area. We were stoked and we
started fishing, trolling at a steady pace with top water baits.
Fifteen minutes later, my partner put a seventeen inch fish
in the boat, and by eight thirty am we both
had our limits. After that we started culing fish. It
was a perfect day. At around nine thirty I was
pulling us up to a bank that we hadn't fished
and we heard some clapp acking, like rocks being clapped together.
We assumed it was someone working on a project out
of our view. But as we came around a slight
ben we saw a dark figure standing on the bank.
We thought it was a bear. It was hard to
make out. It really didn't look like a bear, but
nothing else made sense, even though they are rare in
this area. It was frolicking on the bank. It was weird.
It looked like it was gathering mussels or crawfish and
having a great time at it. We just sat in
the boat and watched it. As we approached this animal,
we really couldn't make out what it was still because
we couldn't see its head. Soon we were close enough
that it hurt us and it stood up. This thing
was huge, standing there with water dripping from its black hair.
I couldn't believe how big this thing was. We now
knew it was not a bear. My partner and I
looked at each other and basically, without even saying a word,
we understood the look of what in the hell is
this thing. I was on the front deck, high above
the water, working the trolling motor, and we stopped fishing.
Of course, Bigfoot never entered my mind at this point.
I had only heard of Bigfoot from pieces on TV.
And then this creature started wading into the water towards us.
Apparently it had some rocks in its hands, and it
threw at us two times. One of those rocks landed
in the boat. It was now swimming towards us. It
was at least one hundred feet away, and we were
in five feet of water where this thing was. The
water had to have been about the same depth, so
I don't know why it started swimming. It could have
walked all the way to us and never had water
to its waste, but it was swimming. The noises it
made while swimming were so strange. It was a huffing
sound that I had never heard anything like before. It
sounded very deep and angry. It was time to go
because he was closing the distance on us fast. We
both dropped down into the seats and I fired the
outboard up. Thank god, it cranked on the first turn,
and I dropped it into gear. The sound of the
outboard apparently persuaded the creature to stop its advance, because
it turned and made its way back to the bank.
I wanted to slow down and watch this thing some more,
but I figured we better get moving, so we motored
out of the area. I got a bit concern when
we reached the railroad trestle, but we got back under
it the same way that we got in, and then
we kept moving. We still had a lot of daylight left,
and we should have wanted to keep fishing, but this
ordeal kept our minds occupied so that we couldn't concentrate
on what we were doing. We stopped in ate lunch
and we talked about the whole thing for an hour
before head back to the ramp. We both had our limits,
and we qualified for the next tournament. I was real
happy about that. For sure. I never ran into that
guy again in any of the tournaments I fished afterwards,
so we never kept in touch, and of course I
haven't talked to him since. I kept the whole thing
quiet for years, only to tell a couple of close
friends later on. I figured whoever I relayed this story
to would think I was nuts, and I don't know
if the partner that day ever told anyone or if
he even remembers it. I still fish every chance I get,
but I don't fish tournaments much. I'm in my fifties now,
and I will never forget that fishing trip as long
as I live. After that experience, I looked back at
my youth on the same river, and I wonder if
those things that we used to hear when we were
kids were these same creatures. I used to fish a
lot in southeastern part of Oklahoma and experienced other strange
things while fishing, but I never had a sighting or
can confirm anything but strange things or sounds. Bass fishing
is a serious sport, and I'm just curious if your
viewers out there have had similar events. I'm quite sure
that I'm not the only one that has experienced something
similar while fishing. I would be really curious to see
if anyone maybe would respond and tell their story too,
because I just find it hard to believe that I'm
the only one that this has happened to while fishing
the places we fish, especially in the southern reservoirs as
well as the Mississippi River where there is so much
shoreline in deep woods. I think these creatures use these
rivers in tributaries as pathways or roads in a way
to migrate. I don't really know. I'm no expert, but
it just makes sense to me. Now that my family
it has passed away, I can finally tell our story.
In nineteen hundred, my family came from Russia and Germany
to homestead up near the Canadian border. There, my great
grandfather cleared trees and started our farm. Back then, there
were no chainsaws to cut the trees, nor any heavy
equipment to move them. Once they were down. Fields were
plowed by the collaboration of man and animal, and then
planted and harvested by hand. It meant long hours of
hard work, but somehow my great grandparents pulled that farm
out of the sweat of their brow. In nineteen ten,
my great grandmother was staying in town caring for a
sick uncle. My great grandfather was working on a large
wagon when it started to roll. He tried to stop it,
but it was too big. He fell under it and
it rolled over his legs, pinning him to the ground.
He screamed with all his might, but Grandma was in
town and nobody else was around to hear him. The
sun began to slowly sink beyond the grassy fields, and
he heard a noise behind him in the trees. He
was in severe pain and unable to move, and he
was becoming sleepy. He thought the overwhelming need to close
his eyes, but he soon lost the fight, and he
drifted into unconsciousness. The next morning, he was awakened by
a hand behind his head, and drops of water were
hitting his dry, parched lips. He put his hand on
the unknown person's hands for more water. Then he drifted
between sleep and awareness, and he opened one eye to
see someone dark looking down at him. He couldn't figure
out who it was, and his eyes were blurry from sleep,
and he was severely dehydrated from lack of water, but
he knew there were no dark folks living anywhere near him.
A minute later, his vision began to focus and he
realized he was looking at something he had never seen before.
He tried to back away, but his legs weren't working,
and he was overwhelmed by fear, and he passed out.
He didn't wake up again until the next morning. He
was laying there contemplating what he should do when he
realized his legs were free of the clutching wagon wheel.
There's no way I lifted that wagon off myself, he
said to himself aloud. But how did I get free?
Even now I can't move? He saw something dark peek
its head around a tree, and fear gripped him like
a vice. He tried to swallow, but his throat was
as dry as the sands in the desert. He was
trembling with dread as he thought, what kind of beast
is this? My grandfather began to pray for the Lord
to protect him as the creature began to move toward
him in small, uncertain steps. It moved slowly forward until
it was standing right over my grandfather. Then it held
out its hand and in it was a big chunk
of moss. The feeling of strangling fear vanished as my
grandfather realized this was the dark man he had seen before.
The beast knelt down and squeezed the moss while holding
my grandfather's head so he could drink the water dripping.
Then the beast disappeared into the trees, but it soon
returned with a skinned out squirrel. It tore off bits
of meat and fed it to my grandfather. After an hour,
the beast picked up my grandfather and headed toward the farmhouse,
and it laid him on the front porch with the
moisture soaked moss next to him. A couple hours after that,
the sound of a trotting horse and wagon came down
the road and it was my great grandmother and her nephew, Eugene.
They pulled up in Grandma rando Grandpa asking what had happened,
and he told her the whole story and of the
new friend they had made. This would be the first
of many interactions my family had with a family of
Si squats living nearby, all the way up until the
nineteen eighties. I am handicapped now, so I'm unable to type. Well,
it may take some time to tell them all. At
least now I can finally tell our story. And that's
the end. Can y'all see why I like that story? Oh? Man,
it was great. I mean, I love the old stories
that come from he said this happened in the early
nineteen hundreds. I thought it was fantastic. And now I'm
going to talk about I'm going to do my I
have to do this about three or four times a
year and explain to people because we get a lot
of new people listening and questions come. Most of the time,
questions are just pretty bland and vanilla. You know, hey,
are these true? How do you know if they're true?
Blah blah blah. Some of them are pretty nasty. I
got into it with some guy in the comments section.
I shouldn't do that, but they really pissed me off sometimes,
and I like to when they insult me, I like
to insult them back. This guy was just real adamant
about how we should be more diligent about making sure
that these stories are true. He's probably one of these
Bigfoot purists who you know, has this omniscient ability to
be able to tell what stories are true and which
ones aren't. I can't tell that. I don't know which
ones are true and which ones aren't. And so here's
my here's my quarterly announcement to the audience. I don't know.
I've got three hundred. I'm pushing four hundred videos up
right now. Out of four hundred, three hundred and ninety
of them or story videos. I have no idea if
any of these stories are true. There's no way for
me to check them, and there's no way to vet them.
And when people challenge me on that, I put it
back to them. If you can show me, if you
can show me one Bigfoot story that you can prove
without a doubt that's true, then we'll talk. We'll talk,
and you give maybe you can rub some of that
magic off on me so that I can figure out
how these are true. But I can't do it. And
so when people send me stories, I read them, you
have to decide if they're true. I don't consider it
my job to figure out which one of these are
true and which ones aren't. Because like this story we
just read, it is an outlandishly crazy story. But could
it have happened. Absolutely, it could have happened. If you
believe Bigfoot exists, then you have to believe that the
at least believe that this story could have happened. And
if it did happen or didn't happen, it does not
matter to me. What matters to me is was it
a good story? It was a fantastic story. And on
the off chance that this is true, and I'm not
saying it isn't I'm not saying it is. On the
off chance that this story is true, wouldn't it be
a waste if we If I just took this story
and put it in my trash folder, it would have
been a waste and a shame to leave the story
out of this podcast. So there you have it. There's
my I have to I can't. I have to do this.
Some people ask me if the Steve Lilly stories are true.
If I do a fictional story, I'm going to tell
you it's fiction. And if I don't tell you it's fiction,
I'm kind of assuming that you know it's fiction by
the way it's written, by stating who the author is
and telling you that he has two dozen books out
right now. I love to read stuff by other authors.
It's fun, it's ready to go. It helps them sell books,
it gives me material to include the podcast. And so
sometimes when people ask me are this Steve Lily stories true,
I'll come back with, really, are you really asking me
that question? And I think it insults some when I
do that, and that's not what I don't mean that
that way. I'm like flabbergasted that anybody would think one
of those Steve Lily stories is true. But to answer
your question, they're not true. They're fiction. They're made up
and my twisted imagination, and they're fun to write. Their
fun stories. They're fun stories. And look, guys, we can
have fun with this bigfoot topic every once in a while.
It doesn't have to be like the Bigfoot purists make it.
It can be fun. People can have fun with this
and if they don't like it, they don't have to listen.
I think I'm getting a little bit off topic, but I
just wanted to be clear. I don't do any of
these stories trying to pass off something that I know
is false it is true, I don't. I'm not being dishonest.
I would never try to do that. I'm straight up
with everybody, and I tell everybody I have no idea
if a single story I have ever read, even the
ones told to me by other people that I've written
stories around, I have no idea if they're true. But
they're damn good stories. They're damn good stories, and I
love doing them. So that's the deal with this channel.
And if you don't like that, don't comment. Don't don't
comment and give me your opinion on if we should
do vetted true stories or not. Don't because there's no
one can prove a story is true. Do it. If
you think you can do it, do it, show it
to me. So don't comment and give me that bull crap.
Let's just enjoy a good story, everybody, relax, Let's have
a good time. You can tell I'm a little aggravated
at some of these people, and it's ninety nine percent
of the comments on channel are fabulous. We have the
nicest people on the internet, but there's one out of
a thousand that'll pop up. And I don't know where
these people come from. I don't I got an email
the other day from some guy. He's all been out
of shape because I spend thirty seconds in two videos
per month and I talk about Yetie bar soaps and
he says he's gonna he's not gonna listen anymore because
he has to fast forward three or four minutes through
to get past it. Now, you think he's over overstating
that a little bit. So my response to him, I'd
love to tell you his name, because he's a real jackass,
but I'm not gonna do that. I don't want to
draw attention to him. And I'll bet you he's listening.
I bet you he's listening, because sometimes they just can't
go away. My response to him was, the only person
I really want to lose this week from my podcast
is you, brother. You're the only one I want to
want to lose. Do these Yetti bar ads for the
Yetti Brothers not because there's any money in it, because
there isn't there isn't any money in it. They pay
me a little stipend, a little bitty piece of a
sale if you use that DC ten code. That makes
me an affiliate with their company. But hey, if it
really hacks you guys off that I talk about my buddies,
the Yetti Brothers and their soaps. There are other podcasts
doing ads for them now, Nance at Buckeye, Bigfoot, Nioma
Finn with the Nioma Finn channel, Brian Brian with Sasquatch Odyssey,
he's doing ads for them. You guys, use their codes,
don't use my code. Use their codes. I do these
ads because I love these guys and I want to
see their business do well. Sometimes when I talk about
their soap, they get a big boost in sales. I
don't know why. I don't know why any but he
listens to me. But it's a great product. It really
is a great product, and it's the only soap I use. Now,
I'm not saying my wife does. She has her own
soaps that she uses. But as a dude, I love
the way those soaps smell and I use them. But
don't use the code DC ten. If it really gets
under your skin that I'm selling that I'm helping these
guys try to build their business. It just blows me
away that people can't take a thirty second little uh.
I guess it's an ad for two guys hustling trying
to make a soap company go so to show you
that it's not for the money. Use somebody else's code,
give it all to use Neoma Fenn's code, or Nance's
code or Brian at Sasquatch Odyssey, Lily, what are you
barking at? Use their code and let the commissions go
to them because I don't care about it. But I'm
going to continue to help those guys, and about every
I don't know, every third or fourth podcast, I'm gonna
talk about those soaps because they're just good people. And
I love good people, and if I can help good people,
I'm gonna do it. Oh man, that turned into a rant.
I don't know if these stories are true. I've never
claimed one is true or one isn't. Anybody else could
read the same story I read, and that's happened before,
and what I hear from them is, oh, he's an
old BS guy, blah blah blah. And I'll read the
same story and I get comments from people those same people.
I don't know. It just it is amazing how twisted
it is in this bigfoot world. And you know what,
it makes me want to quit doing Bigfoot stories. It
really does. I hate to say that, but the Bigfoot community,
I can't stand them. I cannot stand the Bigfoot purists.
They make they drive me insane. Okay, that's all I'm
gonna say. And I think you guys know what I'm
talking about. All you have to do is you'll find
them in the comments section. All right, you guys, have
a great weekend and we'll talk to you on the
next podcast. Love you guys, See you then.