Speaker 1: Wow, I have one for you that happened to me
in the backwoods of Arkansas back in the early nineties.
I don't mind if you use my first name, but
let's keep my last name between you and I. My
name is Eli, and this is my story. In nineteen
ninety four, I was thirteen years old. I used to
stay at my grandparents' house, a lot out in the
very rural area in southeastern Arkansas. It was a series
of networked dirt roads to get to their house. The
closest neighbor lived a mile and a half away, and
the closest town was ten miles down the road. It's
in the middle of farmland and it's mostly woods. They
had lived in this house since my mother was a child.
A general store served the people in the area. It
was a two mile walk from my grandmother's place. An
old lady ran the store. Her and her husband had
the store on the front of their house. They lived
in the back. My grandmother asked me if I wanted
to walk to the general store and get her a
few things. She gave me some money and I headed
that way. It was early in the day and I
had plenty of time to get back before dark, which
I always made sure to do when I was out
roaming about. Things can get creepy out in the backwoods
of Arkansas after nightfall. It's a darkness unlike most people
who have lived primarily in the cities or towns have
ever experienced. I was easily distracted at that age, and
I stopped at a creek on the way, and I
stayed too long, catching crawdads and throwing rocks in the water,
and then I piddled all the way to the store.
It was getting late and I picked up my pace.
By the time I left the store, it was getting dark.
I didn't want to be walking those lonely secluded roads
through the woods alone in the dark, so I heard
as fast as I could. I would jog a while,
and then I would sprint. I was doing anything in
my power to get back as quickly as possible, but
it wasn't enough. By the time I made it back
to the bottom of the hill near the bridge where
I had wasted all that time earlier, it was dark.
I could see the road in the woods all around
me because of a glowing moon that was coming over
the horizon. It shined an eerie glow across the land
and one way, I was glad that I could see,
but in another the moonlight made it all very creepy.
At the top of the hill, the road was perfectly
straight and flat, with woods on the left side and
a large field on the right. Another half mile and
I would be home. I could see the porch lights
way off in the distance, and I felt relieved. My
eyes were fully adjusted to the dark at this point,
and the light from the moon allowed me to see
all the way across the field on my right. I
was getting closer and had actually slowed down a bit.
I was tired from the run. I heard something in
the woods on my left. Leaves were crunching. Something was
walking in there. Keeping my eyes on the woods, I
kept moving. There was no way for me to see
anything clearly inside the woods, even though the moonlight was shining.
But in the ditch closest to the trees, I could
make out a dark figure. I stopped and focused on
that spot for a few seconds, and it was something,
and now it was moving towards me. I thought it
was a dog, but then I realized it was much
too large to be a dog, and then I realized
it wasn't really actually walking on four legs. It was
crawling or creeping like a person wood. I couldn't take
my eyes off this thing. A jolt of fear shot
through me when I realized this thing was trying to
sneak up on me. It was stalking me. I started
walking again and I kept my eyes on it only
a few yards behind me. Now. A few steps into
my walk, the thing stood upright. It was big. I'm
guessing it was seven feet tall, and it looked like
it was covered in dark hair. But it wasn't a bear.
Bears aren't that tall. I had never seen anything like this.
I dropped the bag of stuff that I had been carrying,
and I ran as fast as my legs could take
me towards my grandparents' house. I heard a heavy breathing
and a growling sound behind me. It was up on
the road with me now, and I could hear its
feet crunching the gravel. I never turned around. It was
going to catch me at any second. I couldn't make
my legs go fast enough. It was so close to
me that I closed my eyes in anticipation of it
grabbing me. But at that moment I heard it crash
off into the woods to my left. For whatever reason,
it had let me go. It was right on me,
and it could have taken me down if it wanted to,
but it let me go. It was a short distance
away into the woods. I heard a scream. I don't
think I could replicate that scream now, but I'm telling you,
I'm never going to forget that scream. By the time
I reached the house, my heart felt like it would
explode from the run and the adrenaline pumping through my body.
I flew into the house and in an incoherent mess
of hyperactive gibberish, trying to explain to my grandparents what
had just happened. My grandmother didn't really seem to believe me,
but she knew something had scared me. She acted weird
about the whole thing the rest of that night. She
said it must have been a dog, but that wasn't
a dog I saw on the road. The next morning,
I woke up and I found my grandpa sitting outside
whittling wood underneath the shade tree in the front yard,
as he often liked to do. I went and sat
down beside him in one of the old metal lawn chairs.
He was a rational man down to earth and had
grown up and hunted that area his entire life. He
knew every square inch of that place. It was mapped
into his mind. He knew every type of critterian creature
that lived in those woods, what noises they made, where
to find them, and how to catch them, etc. I
had only been hunting with him for a couple of years,
but I'd been going out into those woods with him
since pretty young age on walks. He had passed a
lot of his knowledge down to me during those adventures.
I spoke to him about what had happened to me
the night before, and I told him that I knew
what I saw. It wasn't my overactive imagination. I wasn't
making it up, and it definitely was not a dog.
He knew that I wasn't just some dumb thirteen year
old kid, and he knew that I knew the things
he'd taught me. He stopped whittling, looked at me right
in the eye, and he said, I know what you saw.
I've seen it before too. There's things in the woods
that people don't understand stand, and they ought not be
fooled with. Ever. I'll remember those words clearly to this
day because it gave me affirmation, but at the time
it made me realize that whatever I had seen was
real and it was beyond my understanding. My grandpa then
went on to tell me that far back in the
woods there are some cliffs, and at the bottom of
those cliffs is a cave. He told me that the
cave is where the creature lived. He had once stumbled
upon it a long time ago when he was hunting.
He was standing on the top of the cliff looking
at it when the creature fitting the same description emerged
and began screaming wildly at him and throwing rocks. He
took a shot at it, he missed, and then this
thing gave chase. But my grandpa was on the top,
so in order to get to him, this thing had
to go a long distance and then climb up, which
he said it quickly began to do, so he high
tailed it out of there in a hurry. The whole
way back home, he felt as if he were being watched,
and he kept hearing twigs snap behind him, and he
was certain that it was following him, stalking him. He
made it home, and as he reached his front porch,
he turned and looked back at the woods from where
he'd come from, and he saw it peeking out at
him from behind a tree. Later that night, he said
that he and my grandmother awoke in the early morning
hours to large rocks being thrown at the house and
howling noises from outside. It walked around on the front porch,
rattling the doorknobs, banging on windows, and it sounded like
it was muttering to itself in a low, garbled voice,
but it didn't sound like a language, just a bunch
of gibberish. After a while, the thing went back to
throwing some more rocks and howling, So my grandpa grabbed
a shotgun and fired it out the front door a
few times into the darkness. He heard it run back
into the woods. That was the last he'd see or
heard of it, but over the years he heard of
other farmers cows being mutilated, or someone's haunting dog going missing,
or someone would have a story about some strange creature
they had seen in the woods. He also said it
scared my grandmother beyond words, and she absolutely has refused
to ever talk about it or even acknowledged that it happened,
which explains her acting weird about it when I told
her about what happened to me. I know the story
is pretty far fetched, and you can believe it or not.
It makes no difference to me. I know what I saw,
and my grandpa knew what he saw, and neither of
us had ever felt the need to convince anyone else.
I've never spoken of it to anyone other than a
few close to me and my grandfather, and he passed
away over ten years ago, and now I'm sharing it
with you. These things are just as real as you
and I, and just like people, they come in all
manner of personality and temperament. These aren't just stories. These
are people's memories of a creature that lives in our woods.
I'm an oil truck driver in the state of Connecticut.
It's not a popular state for bigfoot sightings, at least
that's what I thought. This experience took place at a
campground along Route eighty, but I prefer not to say
the exact location. I drive a Trixole oil truck, which
is quite large, but it's not a tractor trailer. In
the fall, our workload increases, and on this day I
had twelve tickets for delivery at the same location. It
was a summer camp that was having a Halloween weekend
event for kids. I had to fuel the outside above
ground oil tanks that heated the cabins and the water heaters.
I arrived at six am on Thursday, before the weekend celebrations,
and I began fueling my first cabin. Without moving the truck,
I could drag the hose to three other cabins within reach.
In case you aren't familiar with old delivery, the oil
goes in and a vent alarm allows the pushed air
out with a whistling sound. Some of these vent alarms
were making piercing sounds, and some were clogged with the
bugs or other matter. The driver before me may have
overloaded the tanks and there's oil on top of the
vent alarm, and sometimes it makes it gurgle. It's hard
to explain, but sometimes it makes the whistle sound sick.
I parked the truck and dragged the hose to fuel
the farthest of the three cabins first. I always dragged
to the farthest first to make the next ones easier.
I feel the first tank and there was nothing unusual.
And then as I began feeling the next cabin's tank.
I noticed movement in the distance. There wasn't anything in
the background except woods in a lake, and after the
lake there was nothing but more woods. It was two
days before the weekend, and I thought it odd that
someone would be there so early. The second Kevin I
delivered the oil too, made a funny whistling sound. While
venting that gurgling sound again, I saw the movement of
these three people. I'm alone in the middle of nowhere
this early, and I'm thinking, who in the world is
fishing well? I finished, and I moved to the third
oil tank within reach before I went on to fill
the next nine tanks on the property. And then I
hooked the hose up and started my job again. But
I'm still looking toward the lake. The whistle on this
one was blaring, and as I was waiting for the
tank to fill, a figure moved. It was massive. It
was not a person. Holy cow, I thought now. I
stopped the delivery to quiet the vent alarm whistle. I
didn't move as I watched, and this thing was still
walking toward me. I'm telling you, it was enormous and
I was still and I was panicking. My old truck
is nine feet ten inches tall, and this thing was
just as tall. It was about forty yards from me
in the truck, but it was close enough for me.
And then the two others that were smaller moved, and
they were to the right of me. Their movement was slow,
and I think they were curious, but I wasn't curious.
I was terrified. The good part of this is they
were not aggressive. The vent alarms must have intrigued them.
But I moved slowly and then I reeled up the
hose and I got the heck out of there. At noon,
I went back with a helper to fuel the rest
of the cabins. I'm not a shame to admit that
I was scared. I have never seen anything on two
feet that huge. I can't describe their faces, but I
know three creatures on two legs. Isn't a coincidence. They
weren't bears, because bears are not that agile or that large.
Fuel the campground since then, but I don't go at
six am. I let others open the campground before I
get there. You would be interested in what happened to
me a year ago and twice more recently near the
Humboldt Mendocino County headwaters of the Matole River. After the
encounter with the inexplicable, I have become absolutely convinced that
some unknown animal exists here, and I began on the
Internet a search of similar accounts. While immersed, suddenly in
this mystery, it became clear to me that these experience
must be documented and conveyed to others. Last July in
twenty eighteen, I was staying in an isolated region which
had limited access behind three locked gates, and it was
twenty miles north of Whitethorne, California, on a primitive four
by four road. This place is at the end of
the road a lost world of primeval forest on the
northern border of a vast green belt spreading from Shelter
Cove on the Lost Coast east to Highway one oh
one and south to Fort Bragg, as can be seen
on Google Earth. At three am, I was awake and
there was a hot, dark, and completely silent July night.
Something above my tent location began knocking on wood. It
would be best described as loud wax on a tree
trunk by a big club or branch. It started with
one knock which got my attention with a brief hesitation,
and then several more knocks, but randomly timed, some in
succession and others after hesitation. The knocking was so loud
that it echoed down the canyon, and the event only
lasted a minute. My first thoughts were that there was
no one on the mountain in who could be out
here in the middle of a primitive and protected area.
The knocks were from something large, and no North American
animal could have made them. Listening, while my mind tried
to wrap around how the noise was made, I began
to wonder about bigfoot legends. The night fell silent again,
and afterward I told a few locals, and I learned
that there had been many bigfoot sightings near Piercy and
north to Willow Creek. And then two weeks ago, when
waiting at the first lock gate to the same conservation area,
I heard two distinct vocalizations which cannot be explained. As
I waited in the dusk for forty five minutes waiting
to meet a party at the gate who were running late,
I heard a loud wail that I've never heard before
in nature, the call of this thing I located at
my two o'clock facing east and up the heavily wooded
area above me two three three hundred meters. I instantly
knew where I had heard such an unfamiliar call. It
was three years ago when watching a Bigfoot reality show
where these Sasquatch hunters were making the strange and unique call.
At that time, I remember thinking how ridiculous it seemed
for people to be on television trekking at night and
making strange calls in the woods. There was a delay
from the first call, and then a few more, and
then silence for a minute, leaving me to wonder if
this whole experience was surreal, pondering what I know about
the wilderness, either that was an unknown animal or some
kind of implausible prank. It was loud and echoing down
the mountain, as though some huge creature could belt with
its lungs like pavariety, only much louder. The chance of
it being a prankster waiting in silence with me for
forty five minutes in that remote location just to hang
out in these impenetral woods to prank me was highly unlikely.
Having only a moment to ponder this oddity, there began
another call, out at three to four hundred meters to
the north of the first and at my eight o'clock
it was also just as loud, but it came only
three calls in succession. Well. This blew my mind because
the first call might be attributed to an elk on steroids,
but the response from what was clearly not an owl
brought chills down my spine. I moved closer to my
vehicle and I listened for another thirty minutes in the darkness.
I will never forget the second vocalization. It was so unique,
and this was obvious communication between two individuals, as well
as possibly a rudimentary language. I had a fourth experience,
which I must mention here in context, but it happened
the night before the duel of vocalizations. On Friday evening,
November one, twenty nineteen. I had moved into a cabin
that my brother and I rented, located along an extremely
rugged canyon area of the Macholi River. It was dusk
and it was dark already in the forest, and I
was outside looking at the stars, taking in the newness
of the rugged surroundings above. Again, three hundred meters up
into the east of the river, there was a scream
so loud and so foreboding that I could only listen
in amazement. It was the loudest scream I've ever heard,
So loud I thought it was produced by some kind
of banshee from a horror film. The screaming continued full
throttle for five minutes. I know mountain lions can scream,
but nothing like this. It sounded much louder, more guttural,
as if if someone had set up loud speakers and
played the bloodiest screen that Hollywood could produce at the time.
The night after Halloween, I wondered if someone was up
on the mountain pranking me as a newcomer to the neighborhood.
Now I listened for a bit, and then I went
inside and told my brother about it because it was
so unnerving. Bigfoot never entered my mind. But then at
dusk the very next evening, I witnessed these two calls
waiting at the gate. I've since been over and over
in my mind. Why have I been so lucky as
to hear or experience such a mystery, much less three
distinct vocalizations which cannot be explained in a twenty four
hour period. I began pouring over the USGS maps in
satellite imagery to ascertain what the link might be at
fifteen miles distance. Were there people or neighbors or access
for individuals in the ear areas I experience? Could this
explain this? I have since hiked all over these areas
searching for activity, but found only empty dense woods. Could
one creature in such obvious stress on one night have
triggered the coincidental travel of at least two more unknown
creatures the very next night. I've talked to the locals
about hearing strange noises, but no one claims anything or
they don't want to be ridiculed. I would like to
know if there have been recent experiences by others in
my area. I'm a sixty year old man with a
high degree of credibility, extensive wilderness experience in forests and jungles.
I have trecked and lived in remote areas of Africa, Australia,
Central and South America, many places of potential danger, and
never had an inkling of fear. I was born and
raised near Yellowstone Park, and I never had a bad
experience with a grizzly, a mountain lion, or wolves traveling
all these years with a firm understanding of ecosystems, I
never could have believed in such mysteries that anything new
would ever be discovered. What happened to me has completely
changed me on many levels. There is a mystery in
these woods, and I have a few ideas on how
to find answers to it. If anyone else has had
similar experiences who live near me, I'm eager to share
and explore this phenomenon further. The Bigfoot that wasn't. As
long as I can remember, I've been a hunting fanatic.
I've spent many days in the field with my buddies
in pursuit of the wild and wooly beasts, mostly deer
and elk, can occasionally bear. In the rocky mountains of Utah, Wyoming, Idaho,
and Montana, my friends and I would spend many fall
nights and we would sit around a crackling fire in
the high valleys of the mountains, weaving tales of hunts
gone by. Each story told would seem to top the
one previously recited. Some were new adventures, while others were
old ones revisited every year, but with new, slightly enhanced details.
As the night passed, and the stories progressed, they inevitably
morphed into tales of mysterious and unknown, like ghosts, goblins,
and bigfoot. None of us had actually seen a ghost,
a goblin, or a bigfoot. In fact, none of us
had ever even heard of anyone encountering any of them,
especially a bigfoot, anywhere near the areas where we hunted.
But for some unknown reason, each of us had experienced
strange happenings that we were sure could be directly attributed
to Bigfoot. I don't know how we knew they were
connected to Bigfoot. Nevertheless, we were darned sure, convincingly so
when telling our tales of intrigue that Bigfoot was the culprit.
I guess one could say that we were embellishing the
truth slightly, maybe even a little more than slightly. But
it was all in fun, and everyone had a great
time trying to outdo everyone else. Due to the convincing
manner by which some could relate their stories, the lines
between truth and fiction often blurred in the minds of
the recipients, making it difficult to decipher between the two.
This resulted in doubt and sometimes confusion in each of
our minds about what really lurked in the shadows of
the forests. We hunted one particular warm autumn day, when
the air was clean, fresh and filled with the fragrance
of sage, and the sky was clear blue, and the
golden aspen leaves shimmered as a slight breeze blue and
rattled them around. I leaned against the but thin, chalky
white aspen tree trunk, intently scanning the grove for movement,
hoping to spot a sly old moss back buck. As
my hunting buddies pushed from the opposite direction. Just when
boredom and daydreams started to creep into my mind, Larry,
my hunting buddy, came thundering down the hill from right
to left. His pants were partially down, one hand holding
them up and the other hanging onto a roll of
toilet paper that unraveled as he passed, trailing behind an
apparent white flag of surrender. Si squatch, He screamed. Larry
was the kind of young buck that fancied himself a tall,
tough cigar smoking beer, drinking four by four driving lumberjack
of a man that could fell a tree with one
swing of his axe. I started to laugh at the
sight of such a man, nearly streaking past as he
half mooned a mother nature, while I wondered what had
rattled him. At that exact moment, however, a heart stopping
roar erupted from just over the ridge top twenty yards
to my right and slightly behind me. I jolted to attention,
darn near snapping my neck while trying to orient my
head to see what could have made the startling noise,
all the while trying not to move my body and
reveal my stealthy position. In hindsight, I suppose Larry, having
just blown by me with all the stealth of a
fire truck on its way to a fore alarm fire,
probably negated that need. That roar was nothing like anything
I'd heard in the forest before, and it scared the
crap out of me. The top of a young aspen
tree about seven feet tall, rooted just on the other
side of the ridge top, shook like it had been
hit by a truck. A deep moan followed in a
second roar or agonizing growl erupted. Smokes. What the heck
is that? I thought, as I turned to face the
unidentified creature. Another sapling a six or seven foot or
just over the ridge for me, rocked and fell like
it had been run over by a bulldozer. Whatever the
heck this thing was, it was big and powerful, and
from the sound of it, it was upset. My mind raced,
trying to categorize the sound into something familiar, but nothing fit.
Needless to say, by this time, I was more than
a little concerned for my safety, as my only defense
was a fifty pound recurved bow, not ideal for toe
to toe in your face confrontation with what was Larry
screaming a sisquatch? But there weren't any sasquatch in this
area of the country, I reasoned, was sasquatch even real?
By this time, the unidentified creature had just crested the
top of the ridge twenty yards from me, but I
still couldn't I see it through the younger tree growth.
Do I run or stand my ground? I asked myself.
My curiosity wrestled with my common sense, and I couldn't
quite decide until I knew what was confronting me. I
crouched and stretched, peering and peeking through the trees, just
catching glimpses, trying to get a better look at what
was coming at me A moan and a growl and
a roar in sequence. One part of me screamed run,
The other part said, find out what this is and
then run. Another tree bent over and then snapped back
into place. It was like in all the stories you
hear around the campfire at night. It looked huge. It
was black, It was covered in fur, and on all fours.
There was still not enough visible yet to make any
kind of identification. By this time, I had no time
to run this thing, this big, black, hairy thing was
almost on top of me. I had daley dollied too long,
and all I could do was thump it with an arrow.
As soon as I could get confirmation of identification and
a clear shot corridor, I drew my bow and I
took a deep breath, and I let it out halfway.
Tunnel vision was in full effect, and I could only
see what I was looking directly at in front of me.
A circus elephant could have walked right up beside me
and even sat on me. I wouldn't have noticed it
until I was as flat as a pancake. Sweat was
rolling down my brow and stinging my eyes. My arms
were shaking with fatigue. With my bow at full draw,
the seconds turned into hours. I needed to release my draw,
rest my arm for a moment and wipe the sweat
from my eyes, and quickly I did so, and just
as I again drew my bow, the creature emerged through
the thick underbrush into full view. I expected to see
a siequatch, and for just a second, I did, but
my mind was playing tricks on me. It was not
a sasquatch or a bear. It was a huge, one
thousand pound bull, as in bovine bull. I released the
tension on my bow slowly, and I took a deep breath.
The bull walked painfully past me, moaning and groaning and
growling as he took each step. His wide horns would
push saplings down as he passed by, and they would
either break off or snap back into place. I looked
for the source of his pain, and I quickly discovered
its calls. The bull's testicles were inflamed and swollen to
the size of a small watermelon. Every time he took
a step forward, his rear leg would contact the inflamed
portion of his mail anatomy and may hime grown and
roar with pain. The roar he made did not in
any way sound like a bovine, at least none that
I had ever heard. Of course, I was no expert
on the sounds such an animal made when in extreme pain.
He was such a massive bull that he had a
very deep, raspy, grown and roar that sounded like nothing
else I had ever heard. His hair was long, shaggy,
and tangled with sticks and tree leaves and mud. He
looked old and fatigued and almost lost. He could have
been blind. I was relieved it wasn't a sasquatch and
that I wasn't going to be torn limb from limb.
I began to laugh and almost cry at the same time.
When I emerged from the tree line, I met a
rancher in an old, run down GMC pickup truck making
his way up the dusty dirt road. He was looking
for his bull. He had not seen it for a
while and was concerned that it had been taken by
predators or had died of old age. I told him
if he just waited a few minutes right where we were,
and if it didn't deviate from its downhill course, they
would be reunited. Shortly. The rancher was relieved to hear
his bull was still alive and close. He used the
CBE radio to call his sons in another truck to
come and get the distressed animal. That night, back at camp,
Larry took a brutal onslaught of jeers and laughters. As
I recited the encounter, This ended up being one of
those stories told around the campfire every year. Larry didn't
laugh about it the first few years, but eventually he
found the humor in it and laughed right along with
the rest of us about the sasquatch that wasn't