Speaker 1: When I was fourteen, I had my first face to
face encounter with a big foot. A good buddy of
mine was staying over at my house, and like dumb
teenagers we were, we decided to sneak out of the
house around three in the morning to walk two miles
down to the truck stop for some waffles. On our
way back, I wanted to show my friend the place
my cousin and I had seen a bigfoot while driving earlier.
I figured that we wouldn't see anything, since they're supposed
to be so rare and elusive. All I was trying
to do was use that story in location to scare
my buddy. But as soon as we got about forty
yards into this field, we noticed a deer was acting funny.
We could see that it was hunkered down but still
on its legs, and as soon as we noticed it,
the deer sprang up and bolted away. No sooner than
seeing that deer run, was taken to the edge of
the trees, where we saw something else pop up on
two legs and seemingly turned towards us. When we saw
that bigfoot turn towards us, we both asked each other
for confirmation, and as we were doing that, the thing
stomped off into the woods and made a powerful hissing
sound similar to the sound of an air hose on
a truck, but it was much louder than that. After that,
the two of us turned around and left, well, at
least we did for a bit. Our curiosity got the
better of us, or our own stupidity did, but we
walked right back into the field, and we hurried right
back out as that angry bigfoot stomped his way towards
us in the woodline. We repeated this a couple of times,
and on the final time we heard nothing, so we
went in further and we stood there for a bit.
At this point, I think we just wanted confirmation that
we saw something down there, so, out of desperation for
that confirmation that we decided to try and make that
thing prove it was really there by chunking a rock
into the trees. My buddy threw the rock as hard
as he could, and he hit a tree not seven
yards from us, And as soon as that rock collided
with the tree, a bigfoot stepped out where we could
get a good look at it and let out a deep,
raspy exhale. I didn't get a good look at its face,
I don't think, since I only get brief and indistinct
flashes of it in my memory. But from the chest
down I got a really good look. It was a
male bigfoot with reddish hair about the color of the dirt.
Its forearms were thick as my thigh, and its hands
were as white as my chest. Right after we saw
it good, my buddy turned to me and asked, can
we run now? I told him no, because I was
taught my whole life to never turn your back or run,
since that just triggers the chase response in most predatory animals.
So we got low and backed out, trying to seem
non threatening while keeping this thing in view. I'm not
sure why, but once we got back to the house,
it was like nothing had happened. The two of us
never spoke of that again, and that was back in
the late summer of two thousand and eleven. It took
me about a week or two. Then I was right
back in the woods now looking for bigfoot. That encounter
led me down a path I'm so happy to be on.
I told my story to a bigfoot group in Virginia
and ended up a member. To this day, I still
go looking for sign of Bigfoot. I hope one day
we all get some sort of validation for what we've
seen in the form of the public at large, excepting
that these things are out here. Our house is on
the edge of a semi rural area known as Orchard Mesa.
On its western side, it extends into canyons into the
Colorado National Monument, which is similar to a small Grand Canyon.
These canyons extend south into the LaSalle Mountain Range by
the border of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. On the
eastern side, there are fields, farms, vineyards, pastures, and small
hills which all connect to the bottom of the Grand Mesa,
a ten thousand foot high mountain range, the largest mesa
platform in the country, having alpine fields and hundreds of lakes.
The Colorado River threads through the Orchard Mesa, coming from
the same direction of the Grand Mesa. The river in
this section is heavily wooded on both sides, with a
wide variety of wildlife. The lakes and the streams have
healthy fish populations as well. Mountain goats and lions are
also in the area. Our house is on a half
acre of land and is in closed with a high
wooden fence. In the back section of the yard, there
is a sectioned off old garden. Our neighbors only have
a wire fence that our dogs would get through, so
we kept it blocked off. There's a bigger, older shed
the size of a garage, closer to the house. It
is connected to a smaller metal shed by a wooden gate.
This eight foot high shed has nothing next to it
on all sides. These sheds block off the section with
the old garden, and no one has been back there
in two years. Monday night, December second, twenty nineteen, one
of my dogs went running out of the door barking.
The other dog followed. They were barking like when people
are walking behind the house by the canal and the
small road there, but the barking was frantic and was
focused on one area. I jumped out of bed, worried
the dogs would be bitten by a rabid coon, and
grabbed a flashlight, which I keep in a cupboard close by.
I got to the door and down the three short
cement stairs while shining the flashlight towards the dogs. They
were all barking at the bottom right side of the
small shed where it is attached to a fence with
the sectioned off garden area. Something was behind the shd
and I called for the dogs. They immediately turned and
ran towards me. I'm grateful that I didn't have to
drag them back to the house. I know it couldn't
have been a bear, since they were starting to hibernate
in mid November, and if it was a bear, it
would most likely have run off or roared at them.
A big cat would have run off too, and if
it were the loose pit bulls that we've heard or
jumping fences and getting cats, it would have fought back.
The dogs ran up to me and I opened the
door to hustle them in. I kept shining the light
towards the area. This flashlight is so strong it literally
lights up the entire backyard. It's fifteen hundred lumens and
it is light like daylight when you shine it, so
you don't have to swing it around. You only need
to hold it in one area, and the entire area,
for many feet on all sides, is lit up like daylight.
I stepped over a little closer in the direction of
the small shed, being cautious not to go all the
way over to where they were barking at something. I
saw someone moving behind the shed towards the back on
the left, which was my neighbor's wire fence. I thought, crap,
someone is back there. Who is it now? Why could
I see them moving behind the shed so high up
there was nothing to stand on. Did my crazy neighbors
build a platform back there that they're standing on? There
are people who break into houses in this area. It
looked like they had a tannish looking coat on and
they were sort of hunched over. What were they doing?
This person was moving really slow, like they were shuffling
while looking down at the ground. I wondered why they
were not reacting to the light. This all happened in
a matter of seconds, and now they were moving from
the left corner towards the right corner of the shed.
I stepped back towards the door and into the house
as fast as I could, and I was thinking frantically,
should I wake John? What do I do? Oh? My god,
I don't know what to do. He won't believe me.
I mean, he knows these things exist, but he won't
believe me that it's here. In our yard. It's just
too much of a coincidence. The next day I went
out to take pictures behind the shed. There are parts
on the grass that resemble giant footprints, but too much
grass to be certain. It was evident that something was
walking around out there, but it couldn't have been a
bear or a raccoon. As for the bigfoot, the night before,
it was behind the eight foot high shed and its
head was at least a foot above it. I took
some more pictures to show measurements of the shed and
the footprint type marks, as well as the tamp down
areas of grass, but they really don't show much at all.
And then she writes, I don't care anymore if my
full name is used. I'm just really disturbed about the
timing of this encounter. Scott Carpenter is right. I think
I'm now thinking these things can track us like bloodhounds.
It's too much of a coincidence. In the fall of
twenty eighteen, while teasing my wife about the size of
my shoes, I said something about bigfoot to get her laughing.
I had never mentioned bigfoot before, and I was just
joking around when I blurted out bigfoot in relation to
my shoe size. The comment got my wife to laughing,
which was the whole point of the conversation. The very
next day, an article popped up onto my phone about
some dude having an encounter with Bigfoot. Was my phone
listening in on my conversation at home the previous evening.
I had never done a search on my phone or
anywhere else for subjects related to Bigfoot. Twilight Zone music
began playing in my head. I clicked on the bigfoot article,
and I became totally intrigued with what I learned. The
subject of Bigfoot had me hooked, and I spent many
hours over the next two months researching and gathering as
much knowledge as I could about this fascinating creature. There
came a point in my study where I concluded that
one Bigfoot does exist, and two I hope I never
meet a Bigfoot close up and personal. I was born
in Gardena, California, in nineteen fifty two, and I lived
pretty much in southern California until nineteen sixty eight, when
my mom and dad moved the family to Arizona. Mom
was born and raised in Arizona and Dad was just
ready for a change, ready to move out of the
hustle and bustle of metropolitan Los Angeles into a more
laid back lifestyle. We moved to Prescott and a year
later ended up in the Phoenix area. My mom's brother
lived in Arizona his whole life, and by the time
our family arrived from California, he was having good success
in residential construction. He enjoyed getting away from the crowds,
and he built a cabin in a remote area called
Bonita Creek. The cabin is nestled in tall pine trees,
scrub pine, and manzanita just a short hike from Bonita Creek.
Artesian spring water gushes from the base of the Mogulon
Rim feeding Bonita Creek, and it flows year round with fresh,
clean water. The banks of the creek are lined with
tall grass, pine trees, flowers, sticker bushes, and wild berries.
It's beautiful and it's peaceful and it's quiet. Arizona, north
of Payson is thick with wildlife. On one drive to
the cabin, I had to stop for an entire herd
of elk crossing the road. That was a surprise for
a city guy. Elk, deer, bird, squirrel, cattle, wild horses
and even bald eagles are things I've seen on the
trek to the cabin. Little did I know there's an
even larger animal out there in the forests of Arizona.
It is a massive primate predator. It's Bigfoot. My first
encounter with Bigfoot happened on a weekend camp out in
the high country of Arizona. I was with friends near
the mogulon Rim. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. If
I'm not, just forgive me. We picked out a spot,
not a designated camping area, and circle the wagon, so
to speak. We had campers, trucks, tent, starps, ice chests,
and plenty of grub to cook over an open fire,
and we built a huge one that first evening, as
the sun was slipping behind the mountains in the west,
one guy enjoying the sunset with me, decided to call
out for Bigfoot. Seriously, I had never heard of such
a thing. He cupped his hands to his face and
he let out the loudest, longest whoop that he could.
I was thinking to myself, oh my, surely this will
yield nothing. Is bigfoot even real. Nonetheless, the guy let
out one or two more whoops. The valley before us
and the mountains in the distance remained quiet. He got
no response. I didn't really think there would be a response.
After dark, we sat around in portable camp chairs, enjoying
a crisp mountain temperature and a star sparkled sky. Partway
through the evening, two of the gals suddenly reported seeing
eyeshine at the west edge of the camp site, between
a vehicle and the tree that it was park next to.
They said the eye shine was a neutral color, like silver,
and close enough to the ground that it could have
been a coyote or a deer or something similar. Light
from our campfire must have been enough to get a reflection.
Since the gall seemed concerned about what they had seen,
we kept a vigil for a while, but there was
no investigation. After all, we were in the forest and
one would expect to encounter some wildlife. A while later,
there was a loud, blood curdling scream maybe two hundred
yards off to the woods to the northwest, something that
sounded like a woman under attack that got my attention.
I really wasn't sure what to make of it, and
I waited to see if the scream would happen again.
No one went into the dark to investigate, and the
scream was not repeated. The evening wound to a close
around midnight, and everyone turned in. After drifting off to sleep,
there was a disturbance at our capsite that woke up
some of the lady campers, but I slept through it.
The ladies weren't sure what it was that caused them
to wake up. The next morning, I got up with
the sunrise and walked to the edge of the overlook,
just soaking in the view and inhaling the fresh pine
scented air. As I turned a walk back to camp,
I noticed a structure near the edge of the overlook.
It was rather primitive in appearance, an uprooted pine tree
leaning at an angle, with one end resting in the
fork of a second tree. Along both sides of the
pine angling to the ground, there were broken off branches
leaning against the trunk. It was sort of a crude,
lean to shelter with an interior that would be shielded
from the elements, especially if the exterior was covered with snow.
As I considered the structure, I thought maybe some boy
scouts had built this thing, but it was odd that
they had not used the saw to cut the branches.
Everything was just busted off and add it on. It
looked as though it had been there quite a while.
After contemplating its construction, I headed back to the camp,
having no idea of this type of structure was sometimes
seen in Bigfoot habitat. I didn't even know Bigfoot existed.
The fuzzy clips from the Patterson film were intriguing, but
I wasn't sure if Bigfoot was the real deal or not.
All this happened about twelve years ago. It wasn't until
studying Bigfoot in the fall of twenty eighteen that I
realized Bigfoot was perhaps responsible for some of what I
had experienced on that camp out. My second encounter with
Bigfoot happened on a forest road not far from the
cabin at Bernita Creek. It was a quiet Saturday afternoon
in the fall of twenty fourteen. The sun was slipping
down in the west and there was no one around,
no neighbors, no one. The cabins close by were vacant
and it was just three of us, my friend, her daughter,
and me. It was very quiet and peaceful. We were
meandering towards the driveway leading to our cabin. The gals
were selectively collecting rocks to use back home for decorating
the edge of planters, walkways, etc. While engaged in this process,
suddenly a rock flew in from somewhere behind us and
bounced to a stop at the feet of the ladies.
It wasn't very large, maybe smaller than the size of
a baseball, and it didn't really hurt anyone. It just
flew in and landed near their feet. We stopped immediately
and turned around, looking to see who might have thrown
this rock at us, but there was no one out there.
The whole area was dead quiet, no neighbors, no one.
It was just us at that point. There was nothing
that we could do. There wasn't even anyone out there
to yell at, but somehow a rock had just been thrown.
After looking around a while and seeing nothing, we turned
and continued the short distance to the cabin to settle
in for the night. For whatever reason, I never felt
comfortable about leaving the security screen and front door unlocked
when staying overnight at this cabin, Although my mind's normal
reasoning said there was nothing to fear, no danger, no
undesirables anywhere close to this remote location of Arizona, I
still felt uneasy about omitting precautions. I never left any
of the windows open at night. I never felt comfortable
about leaving the blinds open either, even though one of
the windows on the south side was about eight feet
off the ground at the bottom, that window in its
blinds could have been left open with no apparent danger,
but I closed them anyway. I know that sounds paranoid,
but for whatever reason, I felt uncomfortable until daylight in
the morning. Then I would open the doors, the blinds,
and push the windows open. Looking back at that overkilled
precaution and knowing what other people have experienced with bigfoot,
I'm glad I did lock those security screens and doors.
I've learned that bigfoot will grab and turn a doorknob,
and sometimes they peer through screens and windows. Maybe my
precautions weren't unfounded. After all, bigfoot have also been known
to throw rocks, sticks, pine cones, and other objects. Thinking
about that rock that was hurled at us, was that
thrown by a bigfoot? Maybe there wasn't anything else out there.
Perhaps this bigfoot was curious and just wanted to see
what we would do, or maybe it wanted to let
us know that it was there, or perhaps it was
just messing with us for fun. Whatever the case, I
believe that rock was most likely thrown by a bigfoot
because of my next encounter. In June of two twenty
and sixteen, I married a lovely woman. My bride is
full of life and a great lover of the outdoors, hiking, biking, spring, wildflowers, fall,
colors changing, and the wild blackberries growing along Bonita Creek.
We decided to slip away for a weekend at the
cabin for some time alone, well almost alone, we did
have our two dogs with us. We arrived at the
cabin on Saturday afternoon. We dumped our stuff inside the
front door and headed down to the creek. It was
beautiful and serene, as always, We hiked a loop that
ended up back at the cabin for a barbecue dinner
on the deck. The table was set for two overlooking
the forest with a gentle sound of Bonita Creek in
the distance. It was perfect. The next morning, my wife
was up and heading out with the dogs before I
could get my shoes on. She and the boys reached
the creek way ahead of me and turned east to
hike up stream. By the time I arrived, they had
disappeared into the thick trees, the brush, and the tall grass.
While hiking in their direction, I noticed an area across
the creek where the tall grass had been pushed down
somewhat like a nest. The depression was a circular and
maybe fifteen foot in diameter. It was perplexing. I wondered
what had made that flattened pattern, but I kept on moving.
A side note here, my logical mind is saying there's
no danger, and my wife is okay taking off with
the dogs on her own without me, but I still
felt uneasy. After about fifteen minutes, I caught up with them,
and as all the natural beauty was just too much
to rush past, and my wife had stopped to pick blackberries.
By noon, we were headed back down the creek towards
the cabin. We emerged from a somewhat densely forested area
into a more open, grassy location spread out on both
sides of the creek. It was lovely, but what was
that nasty odor? It smells something like a skunk, but
not quite like a skunk. I surveyed the grassy area,
thinking maybe I would see a skunk or something out there,
but I couldn't see anything. The grass was too tall.
There was just that smell that had suddenly arrived. I
asked my wife, do you smell that? What is that?
She shrugged her shoulders and headed on towards the cabin.
I decided I'd better move on before I met whatever
this was that smells so badly. I paused in the
grassy area and turned to take a picture of that
beautiful part of the creek we had just walked through.
It was twelve forty seven pm on Sunday, September the
twenty fourth, twenty and seventeen. I looked at the photo
on the screen and it looked a bit washed out.
There was too much light. I changed the camera setting
while standing in the same spot, and I took a
second picture. It was twelve forty eight pm, and even
though I did not know it at the time, I
had just taken my first picture of a bigfoot. He
was right there across the creek from the path I
had just walked down, not more than twenty yards from
where I had been. He never made a sound. I
didn't even know he was there until fifteen months later,
when I remembered the skunky smell that Sunday at Bonita Creek,
and I began looking carefully at my photos. Sure enough,
there he was. He was not in the first photo,
but he was in the second photo. Head and shoulders
were visible peering across the top of the bushes to
see what I was doing. That was my third encounter.
I wonder how many other people have had similar experiences,
having been in such close proximity to a bigfoot and
not even know it. I'm going to jump ahead a
bit to one more experience at Bonita Creek. Candy and
I made another visit to Bonita Creek in July of
twenty nineteen. My intent was to check out the area
more thoroughly for evidence of Bigfoot and see if they
might respond to a gifting. Here's what happened. I tried
putting out some apples, M and MS, peanuts, and a
few other goodies for the bigfoot animals at Bonita Creek,
and then proceeded to knock on a wooden bench with
a stick. I did that twice and then went back
up to sit on the deck at the cabin to
wait to see what would happen. It was late in
the day, and I was hoping Bigfoot would get the
goodies down at the creek, maybe come later to pick
them up. No luck on that, but something strange did happen.
About fifteen minutes after I got situated on the deck, Suddenly,
just upstream from the place where I did the knock,
I heard this very strange animal sound coming from down
there by the creek. It was some repeated garble sound.
The pattern repeated maybe three or four times, followed by
a quack, quack quack, and then the same sounds were
repeated again, followed by the same quacking. Mind you, these
sounds were not made by a duck, and there were
no ducks up there at Bonita Creek. I didn't hear
any sounds like that the rest of the four days
that we were there. I believe the garble sounds were
made by a bigfoot who came to check out the
origin of my double set of wooden knocks made by
whacking on that bench with a stick. At least that's
what I think. The next morning, Candy and I and
our dog Bobby decided to hike to the east along
Bonita Creek all the way to the headwaters where Bonita
creek bubbles up out of the ground. It's about a
two and a half mile heike. After we had hiked
about a mile, suddenly, from the north side of the canyon,
up in a wooded area with a dent cover, sounds
started coming from the hillside overlooking the creek. I turned
to check out the origin of the sounds, as did Candy.
Her immediate question was what was that. To her, it
sounded like a child making noises. To me, it sounded
like some sort of very large, loud bird. The sounds
were coming from three separate areas on the side of
the hill. We could see nothing up there. We just
heard the loud sounds. On the way back, Candy and
I got separated. She hikes a lot faster than me,
she said. When she got back to the same spot,
the sounds started up again, only this time they were
much louder than before. Strangely enough, when I hiked past there,
there was no noise at all. We had one other
strange noise incident as we left the headwaters of the creek.
This was while we were still together. Before she left
me in the dust with a fast hiking pace. On
the other side of the canyon, the south side. Up
on the crest of the mountain came another unusual sound.
Once again, I thought it sounded something like a big bird,
but Candy said that she thought it sounded like a
child screaming. We were in plain view of the mountain
at that point. I stared at the point of origin
for the sound, but I didn't see anything. My thinking
was that perhaps it was Bigfoot a century alerting the
rest of the Bigfoot animals as to our location. That's
only my thinking. One other point of interest. Bobby was
hiking with both of us on the way up, but
with Candy on the way back. Walking along quietly by myself,
I saw too deer on my track back. They were
on the north side of the creek in some tall,
dense ferns and grass. I only saw them briefly, but
it was fun to see them. There were plenty of
deer and elk tracks along the trail leading to the spring. However,
I did not see any bigfoot prints, even though I
made a conscious effort to find some. My analysis of
the whole habitat is that Bigfoot animals moved east away
from the populated area of Bonita Creek where our cabin
is the area inhabited by people. I wish they could
have received the goodies I had for them, but maybe
that will happen at some point in the future. Now
back to my fourth encounter with Bigfoot. In the fall,
my wife loves to collect colorful leaves for holiday decorations.
Her favorite place to find these little treasures is ten
miles north of Sedona, at the West Fork of Oak Creek.
This part of Arizona is stunningly beautiful. The West Fork
meanders through a narrow canyon with vertical walls of multicolored
layered stone, all capped by crystal clear blue sky. The
trees are evergreen, splattered among the maples with changing leaves
of yellow, red, gold, brown, and fading green. It's a
leaf hunter's paradise. When the time came for the twenty
eighteen Sedona leaf collecting expedition, there was a secondary purpose
for me. While my wife was finding just the right leaves,
I planned to critically survey the West Fork area for
Bigfoot evidence and snap photos of everything I found. As
soon as we hiked into the canyon, I had to
get the camera and start taking pictures of saplings bent
over forming arches, large limbs snapped off from tree trunks
and laying on the ground. Very large diameter trees pushed
over with their root balls ripped out of the ground.
Trees wedged and threaded horizontally between other trees, tree trunks
arranged to form giant xes, tree trunk rubble piled up
to prevent passage into the area. Large sized tree trunks
that had been snapped into like popsicle sticks, tree trunks
leaning upside down against canyon walls, and way off in
the distance, way up on the side of the canyon,
an indistinct, dark brown, motionless object. In addition to Bigfoot
on Bonita Creek, it looks like there might be Bigfoot
on the west fork of Oak Creek as well. Imagine
that Bigfoot in Arizona. Then from way upstream, around a
bend in the canyon and way off in the distance,
came the faint sound of a five whack wood knock.
Who do you think did that? Thank you for all
your diligent study on behalf of Bigfoot. Thanks for sharing
my story. Best wishes to all who have seen or
hope to see someday one of these giant miracles of
the forest. The creature we know is Bigfoot