Speaker 1: I grew up in Colorado and I'm a proud member
Speaker 1: of the Muscalero Apache tribe. I grew up hunting elk, deer,
Speaker 1: and bear in the mountains, but I've had the privilege
Speaker 1: of hunting all over the United States. I served eight
Speaker 1: years as an infantryman in the US Army, and I
Speaker 1: have three tours in the box. I've seen all sorts
Speaker 1: of things that would be hard to explain for anyone,
Speaker 1: but I'd like to focus this letter on the events
Speaker 1: that happened right here in my home state. Growing up
Speaker 1: as a backcountry hunter and fishermen, I always strive to
Speaker 1: get off the beaten path. Our elk camp is a
Speaker 1: six mile walk, and we hunt even further than that.
Speaker 1: My father and grandfather had a lot of stories that
Speaker 1: we would talk about around the woodstove in our outfitter tent,
Speaker 1: and I would hang on to every word of the
Speaker 1: stories because I thought that's just what they were stories
Speaker 1: until I got older. One story that sticks out was
Speaker 1: one about a cow elk my grandfather shot in a snowstorm.
Speaker 1: Grandpa hid her a little further back in the body
Speaker 1: than he would have liked, and she ran aways before
Speaker 1: they even picked up a blood trail, so they gave
Speaker 1: her some time to die. It was easy to track
Speaker 1: in the fresh powder, though. They followed the tracks four
Speaker 1: hundred yards through the scrub oaks into the back of
Speaker 1: a drainage, where they found the end print in the
Speaker 1: shape of an elk, and the tracks stopped. What they
Speaker 1: saw there scared the hell out of my grandfather. There
Speaker 1: were big tracks with long strides that looked like something
Speaker 1: walking in bare feet, coming down the ridge and onto
Speaker 1: the shelf, and then they went back up the ridge.
Speaker 1: Whatever this thing was, it had taken the elk and
Speaker 1: carried it back up the ridge. And that's one of
Speaker 1: my grandfather's stories. But here's mine. I was hunting with
Speaker 1: my father five miles from where the last story took place.
Speaker 1: My father was a retired recon marine scout sniper. He
Speaker 1: was a Vietnam vet as well as a veteran of
Speaker 1: desert storm and other conflicts. The third day of the hunt,
Speaker 1: we walked into a large draw. The dad went up
Speaker 1: into the black timber and then eventually broke out into
Speaker 1: a large boulder field on top. I went up the
Speaker 1: other side that overlooked a large meadow surrounded by aspen
Speaker 1: and I could see my father one hundred yards from
Speaker 1: the top of the ridge and a thousand yards from me.
Speaker 1: As the crow flies, he was three hundred feet above
Speaker 1: my elevation. Later in the day, I was daydreaming, not
Speaker 1: really paying attention to my surroundings, when I heard a
Speaker 1: thump to my left, and then I heard the report
Speaker 1: of a rifle. Well. I instantly came out of the
Speaker 1: days that I was in and I started looking around frantically.
Speaker 1: I thought someone was shooting at me. And then there
Speaker 1: was another thump. This time I saw the round hit
Speaker 1: the ground in the same spot. I looked through my
Speaker 1: rifle scope at my dad, who was still in the
Speaker 1: same spot, and he was pointing to my left. I
Speaker 1: looked over that way and I froze. Fifty yards away
Speaker 1: and up that endcline stood a sasquatch. Dad watched it
Speaker 1: come in on me. I never noticed it. It was
Speaker 1: covered in black and reddish hair, and it looked at
Speaker 1: me with a young and curious face with beautiful amber
Speaker 1: colored eyes. It was most certainly a female, standing seven
Speaker 1: feet tall. She was staring right at me, not in
Speaker 1: a threatening way. Maybe she had never seen a person.
Speaker 1: We stared at one another for a while, and she
Speaker 1: would watch my movements, turning and cocking her head. She
Speaker 1: was mimicking me. I finally backed away down the draw
Speaker 1: and I met my father at the trail. We didn't
Speaker 1: talk about it much, but when I asked him why
Speaker 1: he didn't shoot her, he said he wasn't sure his
Speaker 1: seven mag had the power that it would take to
Speaker 1: put her down in her tracks, that he wanted to
Speaker 1: draw my attention to the creature while he had her
Speaker 1: in his scope. If she had made an aggressive mood
Speaker 1: towards me, he had my back. But instead of shooting
Speaker 1: and seeing that she seemed none threatening, he just watched
Speaker 1: through the scope as we interacted. I grew up along
Speaker 1: the banks of the Wabash River, and even though I'm
Speaker 1: a female, I was a bit of a tomboy. I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of days by myself fishing and hunting
Speaker 1: in the woods across from my house that was about
Speaker 1: a block from the river. I'd wander all through the
Speaker 1: woods and along the deer trails, looking and listening for
Speaker 1: critters or animals. Sometimes I'd just sit on the banks
Speaker 1: and watch the waterflow by watching the cranes on the
Speaker 1: sandbars et cetera. And one day I saw a pair
Speaker 1: of beaver there floating on their backs like they were
Speaker 1: so happy with not a care in the world. Do
Speaker 1: beavers do that? Do beavers float on their backs? I
Speaker 1: guess they do. I've never seen one do it. I
Speaker 1: was very quiet so as not to scare them away,
Speaker 1: and they played there for ten minutes and then moved on.
Speaker 1: So to me, being in the woods or along the river, heck,
Speaker 1: even swimming in it almost daily was a common thing.
Speaker 1: I never did see or feel anything out of the
Speaker 1: way in all the years growing up down there, not
Speaker 1: until several years later. It was somewhere around nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: six or thereabout, when I lived in the same house,
Speaker 1: our old homestead, and I had a family of my
Speaker 1: own that I saw them. At the time that this
Speaker 1: encounter happened, my husband and three kids were inside watching
Speaker 1: TV after we'd eat and supper. I cleaned up the
Speaker 1: kitchen and then told my husband that I'd be back
Speaker 1: in to watch TV with them all, but that I
Speaker 1: had to get the laundry in off the clothesline first
Speaker 1: and fold it and put it away. That's how I
Speaker 1: did things back then, because even though we had a
Speaker 1: clothes dryer. I liked the fresh smell of clothes that
Speaker 1: had been hung on the clothesline. Back then, we used
Speaker 1: to burn our trash in an old fifty five gallon
Speaker 1: used barrel out back in the alley after supper, so
Speaker 1: as I started to go outside, I told the kids
Speaker 1: to get that chore done. As I was taking the
Speaker 1: clothes down from the clothesline, it was summertime and it
Speaker 1: was warm outside. As usual, the two oldest kids didn't
Speaker 1: want to burn the trash, so they told the youngest
Speaker 1: one to do it. He was seven years old and
Speaker 1: I was close by, so I wasn't worried about him
Speaker 1: lighting the trash. This kid was smart too. He was
Speaker 1: a great kid and very reliable. Even so I still
Speaker 1: watched him closely. I forgot to mention that the park
Speaker 1: was on the next block to the south of my house,
Speaker 1: and it had toys for kids to play on, a
Speaker 1: boat dock, and a baseball diamond in which many teams played.
Speaker 1: This baseball park was complete with a red block concession
Speaker 1: stand in which they had all kinds of goodies that
Speaker 1: they made and sold there, such as sodas and pizzas
Speaker 1: and hot dogs and such. Just all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: There were also two or three large metal barrels on
Speaker 1: the side of the concession stand for people to throw
Speaker 1: their trash and half eating food in. Let me say
Speaker 1: here that these barrels of trash and half eating goodies
Speaker 1: were facing my house to where I could see them
Speaker 1: clearly from my backyard. I was taking my laundry down
Speaker 1: off the clothes lines, and I had stripped the bedding
Speaker 1: and had two lines full of sheets and light blankets
Speaker 1: and pillowcases too, that were all moving and blowing in
Speaker 1: the light wind. I was grabbing at the clothes trying
Speaker 1: to take the clothes pins off and get them back
Speaker 1: into the bag, when my youngest son, Shane, who was
Speaker 1: supposed to be burning the trash by the road, came
Speaker 1: running up to me and he started yanking on my shirt.
Speaker 1: He was scared and his eyes were big, and when
Speaker 1: I looked at him, I said, what's the matter, and
Speaker 1: he whispered to me with his finger to his mouth, shush, mom,
Speaker 1: come here, come here with me. I want to show
Speaker 1: you something, but you have to be real quiet. He
Speaker 1: took my hand and he was shaking, and we walked
Speaker 1: back down the alley road where We had been going
Speaker 1: to light the trash when he stopped and whispered to
Speaker 1: me and pointed to the concession stand, saying, look at them, Mommy,
Speaker 1: what are those things? Well? I looked, and I froze
Speaker 1: for a second, and I told him, in a hushed voice,
Speaker 1: run in the house, hurry up, and tell your daddy
Speaker 1: that there are two bigfoot out here. He did like
Speaker 1: I told him, and I watched him for a second,
Speaker 1: and then I looked back for the bigfoot. I remembered
Speaker 1: my mother telling me about my grandfather seeing one of
Speaker 1: these things years ago in a holler getting water from
Speaker 1: his spring he had in the side of the hill.
Speaker 1: But I never believed in them before, so when I
Speaker 1: looked at these things, it was almost in disbelief. As
Speaker 1: soon as I looked at them the second time, after
Speaker 1: my son had left with the house, all sorts of
Speaker 1: things were running through my mind, thinking that this was
Speaker 1: not happening, that this was not real. And then I
Speaker 1: pinched myself and oh, yes, it was real. They were
Speaker 1: both huge, and they were covered in dark brown black hair,
Speaker 1: and the largest one was all bent over, digging in
Speaker 1: the metal barrels of trash of that concession stand. And
Speaker 1: he was handing stuff out to the other one, who
Speaker 1: I think was a female because she was smaller, I
Speaker 1: could tell the big one was a male. And she says, lol,
Speaker 1: and not from the obvious method, but rather from looking
Speaker 1: at his face and the build of his body. Okay,
Speaker 1: I thought she was gonna say something else. He was
Speaker 1: way bigger than she was, and the muscles rippled, and
Speaker 1: his arms and upper body were huge. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: When I looked at them both. This all happened in
Speaker 1: a minute or so because he was so intent on
Speaker 1: digging through those trash cans that they did not see
Speaker 1: me until I opened up my mouth as I was
Speaker 1: looking them, and I uttered, oh shit, they're real. Oh
Speaker 1: my god. When I said that, he stood up and
Speaker 1: locked eyes with me. I was looking him straight in
Speaker 1: the face, even though I was probably a half a
Speaker 1: block away, but my eyesight was sharp and very good,
Speaker 1: and I was in my twenties at the time, but
Speaker 1: I could see them both standing there now, And like
Speaker 1: I said, he looked right at me and we locked eyes,
Speaker 1: and my mind went wild, as I have stated, and
Speaker 1: a thousand thoughts were running through my head. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: he's real. They're real. Oh, look at the size of
Speaker 1: those things. How can this be? They really are real?
Speaker 1: And then as I was looking in his eyes, I
Speaker 1: thought to myself how much he looked like a human
Speaker 1: right in the face. He didn't have scary eyes like
Speaker 1: they say on TV, and he did not look like
Speaker 1: an ape either. To me, he looked so much of
Speaker 1: what I had heard of of the Neanderthal men. He
Speaker 1: had human eyes, a human nose, and yes, his nose
Speaker 1: was very large. His whole head and body was large.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying here is is that his nose
Speaker 1: did not look or resemble an ape or a monkey's
Speaker 1: now it looked like a human being's nose, although it
Speaker 1: was a pretty good sized honker. The only thing that
Speaker 1: was sort of out of place was his brow bone,
Speaker 1: and it was very large and pronounced. And when he
Speaker 1: looked at me, it was as though he had me
Speaker 1: in some sort of a mental trance to where I
Speaker 1: could not tear my eyes from his until he willed it.
Speaker 1: I couldn't leave, and I couldn't look away, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't run to the house, which is what I desperately
Speaker 1: wanted to do because I was so scared. Yet he
Speaker 1: held my gaze for what seemed like a minute, and
Speaker 1: it seemed to me that he was picking or scanning
Speaker 1: my mind to see what he wanted to see. And
Speaker 1: then all at once he motioned to the smaller one,
Speaker 1: and then he pointed to the river where the woods
Speaker 1: were by the boat dock, and he gave out a whistle,
Speaker 1: and she followed his direct command to her. She took
Speaker 1: off running, and I could see her from the corner
Speaker 1: of my eye. He still held my gaze, and she
Speaker 1: was out of sight in just a few steps, and
Speaker 1: her steps were huge too, by the way. As soon
Speaker 1: as she was out of sight, he let go of
Speaker 1: my gaze and he took off running in the same direction.
Speaker 1: One thing I did notice was the hair on his
Speaker 1: arms hung from the bottom side of his arms, and
Speaker 1: they were five or six inches long the hair was
Speaker 1: and I thought that looked odd. And then I thought
Speaker 1: to myself, Oh my god, what if those things, as
Speaker 1: fast as they are, come up that river bank through
Speaker 1: the woods to my driveway where I'm standing. What if
Speaker 1: they came out of the woods and grabbed me. And
Speaker 1: I was so scared then that I ran quickly back
Speaker 1: into my yard. But I did have the senses to
Speaker 1: think about the laundry in which I had to have
Speaker 1: the sheets and betting for my kids back on them
Speaker 1: before bedtime. And I must have been so rattled in
Speaker 1: my thinking because I should have run right into the
Speaker 1: house instead. I grabbed and yanked the rest of the
Speaker 1: sheets off the clothesline, and I grabbed my laundry basket,
Speaker 1: and I ran as fast as I could into the house,
Speaker 1: and I threw down the basket and I locked the
Speaker 1: door even through the dead bowl. I was so shaken,
Speaker 1: and I ran into the living room where my husband
Speaker 1: and two oldest kids were still watching TV. The youngest
Speaker 1: one that had seen the Bigfoot too, was sitting there
Speaker 1: on the couch, crying his little eyes out because he
Speaker 1: said to me, Mommy, they wouldn't listen to me about
Speaker 1: the bigfoot and they told me to shut up. Well,
Speaker 1: I asked my husband why he had not come outside,
Speaker 1: and he told me that it was all just a
Speaker 1: bunch of bullshit because there was no such thing as
Speaker 1: a bigfoot. I told him what had happened, and then
Speaker 1: him and the other kids they just all laughed at
Speaker 1: me and my youngest son. They tease Shane so bad.
Speaker 1: Over the next few months that he completely blocked it
Speaker 1: out of his memory, and he does not even remember
Speaker 1: it now. But I'm a diehard, and they could not
Speaker 1: make me forget what I had seen and not what
Speaker 1: I had felt during this encounter. I know what I saw,
Speaker 1: and I have never doubted it in all these forty
Speaker 1: six years. My mind as clear as the bell still.
Speaker 1: And this may go against many who say Bigfoot looks
Speaker 1: like a gorilla, but the two that I saw didn't.
Speaker 1: They looked just like what they call a hairy man,
Speaker 1: and their hair was not around their eyes and nose,
Speaker 1: because his nose looked like w. C. Fields. We moved
Speaker 1: to the country even further out away from the river
Speaker 1: back in nineteen ninety eight. But we have a little
Speaker 1: creek in the woods behind our house now, and I
Speaker 1: have seen tracks back there, lots of deer back there,
Speaker 1: plenty of water, and my son Shane, has seen barefoot
Speaker 1: tracks back by the creek. I cast one of those
Speaker 1: footprints once with plaster of Paris, and the next morning
Speaker 1: I was going back to get it and take it
Speaker 1: up from the sand, and my grandson had already beaten
Speaker 1: me to it, even though I gave him orders the
Speaker 1: night before to leave it alone, that I would get
Speaker 1: it the next morning when I was good and set up.
Speaker 1: He got up early and went to get it anyway,
Speaker 1: because he was almost twenty years old and that he
Speaker 1: didn't have to listen to me any longer. So there
Speaker 1: he came with it in a plastic bag and he
Speaker 1: handed it to me, and it was all broken up
Speaker 1: in pieces. I had to throw it in the trash.
Speaker 1: I felt like throwing him in the trash, but you
Speaker 1: know how that goes, lol, she says, and then she
Speaker 1: winds up and says, thank you so much, Cam for
Speaker 1: taking your time to read this, and if you'd like
Speaker 1: to have and if you'd like, you have my permission
Speaker 1: to tell this story if it meets your specifications. I
Speaker 1: was introduced to the world of the paranormal when I
Speaker 1: was five years old. I didn't understand it other than
Speaker 1: I knew deep inside my gut that it was wrong
Speaker 1: and terrifying. In two thousand and four, I had my
Speaker 1: fifth daughter at the age of forty and so technically
Speaker 1: all her sisters were really old enough that they could
Speaker 1: pass as her mother. And when she was eight months old,
Speaker 1: Laura had her first epileptic seizure. They're not what folks
Speaker 1: think of when you say the word epilepsy. Laura will
Speaker 1: make a choking sound and her eyes will roll back,
Speaker 1: and she goes limp, becoming pale while her lips turned blue.
Speaker 1: That we panic the first time we experienced one of
Speaker 1: her seizures is a gross understatement. In twenty thirteen, we
Speaker 1: moved from California to Arkansas for a more peaceful life.
Speaker 1: We found a large, two story house built in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds that used to belong to the town doctor.
Speaker 1: It was large and ramble, with pocket doors in the
Speaker 1: parlor and a wraparound porch, and it was situated in
Speaker 1: a beautiful, quaint old neighborhood. We knew it had recently
Speaker 1: become empty because this town is small and gossip is huge,
Speaker 1: and we had heard about a murder that had taken
Speaker 1: place in the home some eight months earlier. It was
Speaker 1: a sad story of an adopted son killing his mother,
Speaker 1: and as usual, illegal drugs were involved. Before we could
Speaker 1: move in, we needed to do a major cleanup. On
Speaker 1: the inside. It smelled of death and cat urine, among
Speaker 1: other things. We had to bring in a machine that
Speaker 1: removes all the odors out of the oxygen, but the
Speaker 1: process was so toxic and no one could enter the
Speaker 1: home immediately after the application. Well, I was a lover
Speaker 1: of history and antiques, and I didn't want to replace anything,
Speaker 1: so the floors were only sanded and re stained and
Speaker 1: fresh painted, and we loved it for a little while.
Speaker 1: My mother in law and my handicapped nephew lived with us,
Speaker 1: and they used both of the downstairs bedrooms. My mother
Speaker 1: in law would accuse me of being in her room,
Speaker 1: while my nephew would ask about the name of the
Speaker 1: cat the cat coming to his door at night. Though
Speaker 1: we didn't own a cat and I had no interest
Speaker 1: in violating my mother in law's privacy by sneaking into
Speaker 1: her bedroom, we considered the source. After a while, the
Speaker 1: arrangement started to grate on our nerves. My marriage became
Speaker 1: terribly strained. The household seemed to exist under a cloud
Speaker 1: of paranoia. I thought my mother in law and husband
Speaker 1: were conspiring against me behind my back, and after a
Speaker 1: few months of this, I was ready to take my
Speaker 1: daughter and leave the state. But unbeknownst to me, my
Speaker 1: mother in law got it in her head that my
Speaker 1: husband and I were doing the same to her and
Speaker 1: if that wasn't bad enough, my husband developed the drinking
Speaker 1: problem that began to escalate. One evening, while he was
Speaker 1: asleep and I was reading in bed, there was a terrible,
Speaker 1: loud crash in my daughter's room. We instantly thought that
Speaker 1: she was in the middle of a huge grandma seizure.
Speaker 1: I took one giant leap and two steps to throw
Speaker 1: open Laura's door, with my husband trailing behind me, and
Speaker 1: Laura was standing at her closet door across the room
Speaker 1: with a look of sheer terror on her face. And
Speaker 1: next to her bed was her wicker dressing table, the
Speaker 1: lamp swinging over the edge with a cord still plugged
Speaker 1: in behind the dresser. There was a stream of body
Speaker 1: powder leading from the dresser to the closet, and furniture
Speaker 1: had been cast about the room. We had a family
Speaker 1: meeting the next night, where all the rage and emotional
Speaker 1: venom that had been building for months finally exploded. We
Speaker 1: were realizing that before we had taken up residence in
Speaker 1: this house, we had all gotten along fine. Was there
Speaker 1: a curse on this place? Once all the adults in
Speaker 1: the room had aired their grievances, my husband excused himself
Speaker 1: to check on our nephew, and a minute later I
Speaker 1: heard him cry out, and by the time we reached
Speaker 1: my nephew's room, I was horrified to see my husband
Speaker 1: trying to hold upright a loaded down seven foot bookcase
Speaker 1: that was threatening to fall on top of my nephew
Speaker 1: in his wheelchair. I quickly wheeled my nephew from the room,
Speaker 1: and once clear, my husband let the massive bookcase go
Speaker 1: crashing to the floor. Well, this was the last straw
Speaker 1: the house was trying to kill us, if not literally
Speaker 1: by breaking bones, psychologically by turning all of us against
Speaker 1: each other. We got my mother in law and nephew
Speaker 1: out within a week, but finances kept my husband and
Speaker 1: I tethered to the place for another two months. Light
Speaker 1: switch is going off and on in apparitions of toddlers
Speaker 1: appearing in the hallways and around the doorframes. It's a
Speaker 1: long list of crazy things. Every image seemed guaranteed to
Speaker 1: play out our worst spheares. We slept a lot at
Speaker 1: my mother in laws for those last few weeks. When
Speaker 1: you tell a prospective home buyer that a place is haunted,
Speaker 1: they usually back away. Tell them there was a murder
Speaker 1: in the house, and they will delete your number from
Speaker 1: their cell phone. We were lucky enough to sell the
Speaker 1: place to a gentleman who didn't believe in ghosts and
Speaker 1: had no fear of older crime scenes. From time to
Speaker 1: time I check on the real estate listings, and I'm
Speaker 1: not surprised to see that our former home was on
Speaker 1: the market every few months. Thankfully, the house and all
Speaker 1: its secrets are no longer our concern.