Speaker 1: You can't choose your neighbors if you're moving to a
new home. You can, to a degree, while shopping for
a new place. If you will pay attention to the
area around the neighboring homes, you might know what sort
of neighbors you'll have for the foreseeable future. Unkept property,
along with various other signs, will clue you in to
what life will be like in the neighborhood. However, after
you buy the place and move in, you never know
who's going to move in next door a year later.
This is what happened to us after buying a home
in a rural area with a few acres in Mississippi
in two thousand and eight. My wife and I wanted
to get away from the city. The city we loved
all our lives had turned violent. The politics, the violent crime,
the traffic, and the devaluing of homes all over the
county left us with no choice, so we began to
look for a quiet place to live out our middle
age years in peace. My wife was a bit apprehensive
about moving away from good health care and family, but
the desire to get to a peaceful place overrode all
those concerns. We were in our early fifties. I was
not retired and my job allowed me to work from
anywhere as long as the internet was available. We settled
on an existing home on five acres of land. Our
nearest neighbor was within eyesight, but the distance was such
that we didn't feel like that they were close. The
place next to us was well taken care of, and
after meeting our neighbors, we knew we had chosen a
good place to live. Within six months, however, that property
went up for sale and it sold quickly. Within a
month of the for sale sene coming down, our new
neighbors moved in that weekend. Gave us a good idea
of how life would be for us for the next
three years. They threw a party in the backyard. Rap
music blared all night. Cars were in and out until
the early morning, and we didn't get much sleep, and
our two dogs barked at the noise all night. The
next day, I rode my ATV over to meet these
people and to let them know that my hope was
that these parties would be few. My first trip over
produced no interactions. I knew the hangovers would be bad
for these people, and I gave them some time. By
three o'clock that afternoon, there was life stirring around the house.
All went back over and there's no need to describe
the conversation that followed, but it was not pleasant. I
was told that this was their property and they would
do whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and that I
needed to f off. I didn't need a confrontation, so
I left. But it would have been my great pleasure
to put this punk in the hospital for a few days.
But I'm a grown man now, and I learned a
while back to avoid these conflicts unless I have no choice.
The new homeowner or tenant I would later discover, was
a twenty something white male who had an affection for
the urban gangland lifestyle, music, and wardrobe. It has amazed
me that some of the younger generation want to appear
as stupid looking as possible. The fact that this kid
was a redneck from a small town in Mississippi made
him look even more ignorant. My guess is that if
he had been transplanted immediately to an actual urban gangland environment,
he would have folded in a second. I figured that
he would soon find out that he was not as
bad as he thought he was, because there was no
doubt that he would soon be a convict at Parchment
before he was inmates. There have a way of sorting
out the misfits, but that was none of my business.
I just hope that we would have no more trouble
for them, and I will say now that we personally didn't.
There were a few times over the following months when
they deprived us of sleep, but it was not often
and the situation was bearable. Later, checking the records in
the courthouse, it appeared the property was owned by his father,
a wealthy North Mississippi businessman. I didn't know, and I
didn't care, who the actual property owner was. The records
for the property was down the hall from the tax
collector's office, so while buying tags from my car one day,
I walked down and I looked them up. This has
no relevance to this story other than to give you
a feel for the kind of person that we were
dealing with at the time. The new neighbors moved in
during December, and by May a new chain link fence
had been installed behind their house. Four large pit bull
dogs were now being kept inside the fence. The fence
was tall six feet tall, and we never worried that
the dogs would escape. That was not the problem. By July,
there were fifteen or twenty pit bulls inside this fence.
They were all staked to a short, heavy chain with
no shelter. The dogs appeared healthy. I saw the tenant
feeding and watering the dogs each morning, but it was
hot that summer and those dogs were roasted in the
sun during the hot months. My wife and I love dogs.
We have two. One is actually a pit bull rescue.
He's a big teddy bear, and we take great care
of our dogs. But my neighbor, on the other hand,
looked to be training these dogs for something else. On
the other side of their place, a privacy fence went up.
It was not a large area, and first I thought
they built it to conceal the trash cans. I noticed
my neighbor and two other men taking two dogs into
that fenced area, and soon I could hear dogs fighting.
The men would be screaming at the dogs, provoking them
to attack each other. I never saw it happen, but
it was obvious what they were doing. And then during
the fall, I would see the tenant was out among
the fifteen or twenty chained dogs. He would pick a
few of them out and beat them with a limber
stick until they became aggressive with him. Some would cower
in fear, and those were taken to his car and removed.
I supposed they were given away or just dropped out somewhere.
I thought he just got a kick out of being
cruel to animals. But a friend visiting me one day
told me that the guy was raising fighting dogs and
he was probably selling them. Allow me to stop here
and qualify that at that time, there were no laws
in this county that made anything he was doing illegal.
I once saw the sheriff at a local restaurant and
I asked him about it. He straight up said there
was nothing he could do and suggested that I contact
one of the national groups that handled these things. I
did that, and I never heard from the organization again.
In addition, those were his dogs, they weren't mine. It
was not my place to tell him what to do
with his property. If there was something I could have done,
I would have done it. There were two instances where
dogs escaped and they found their way to the back
of my house. I armed myself and approached them slowly,
only to find that these dogs were just happy to
have some general human reaction. They were not well mannered,
meaning that they jumped all over my wife and I
and one got pretty rough with me, but at no
time did they seem aggressive. Both of those dogs were
taken to a shelter many miles away in another date.
I never returned them to the owner. Maybe that is
the best I could do, and I hoped more would
escape and make their way to my house, but none
ever did. Since that time frame, the city and county
have passed animal cruelty ordinances and officials strictly enforced them.
Dogs on chains are forbidden inside the city limits and
in the county. The dogs must be well cared for
with shelter, water, and food. The owners get one warning.
After that the dogs are removed and taken to an
adoption service, and I'm pleased that my county now sees
that these animals need protection. Now to the topic of bigfoot.
I have known that bigfoot exists since I was a child.
My grandfather showed them to me in Arkansas on his
land years ago, but that is an entirely different story.
As a child and a teenager, my grandfather showed me
how to draw the creatures near to me. It takes
a lot of time. So when we moved to the country,
my first thought was to see how many, if any
Bigfoot inhabited the forests around us. With the steps I took,
gifting and leaving subtle signs behind our home, finally I
confirmed that a clan did indeed live in our woods.
We never saw them, but we knew they were there.
They let us know they were there in no uncertain terms.
I know your stories are about Bigfoot, and in the
stories you share we get to hear about all the
typical behaviors that Bigfoot exhibits, but I will leave that
out of the story. My goal here is to tell
you how Bigfoot handles cruel animal owners. However, I will
mention that it is my experience that the big alpha males,
or the fathers of the clans usually stay in the background.
They do not reveal themselves unless they need to as
a show of dominance to other animals. We never saw
signs of a huge alpha, but we knew he was there,
lurking in the shadows, watching everything his clan did. The
stories you hear over and over regarding children and animals
being saved from critical situations that is typically the result
of a female bigfoot intervening in the natural course of things.
Males generally never do this, and it is my opinion
that the patriarchal males probably disapprove of the female's intervention
into human activities, but it happens anyway. I believe that
a female seeing a dire situation will pull on the
breeches in the family and take matters into her own hands,
no matter what the male thinks. Back on the farm,
the dog training and whipping seem to get more serious
as the fall months set in. The temperatures were cooling down,
and by Thanksgiving it was chili. My neighbor had begun
doing his beating and training at night. They had installed
two lights on each side of their fighting pin. I
supposed this was to conceal what they were doing from
neighbors like me. Maybe they just enjoyed the cooler nights.
I don't know. Whatever the reason, the training intensified on
moonlight nights. I would go to the edge of my
property after hearing noises from the creatures in the woods.
It was a regular thing I did. When I knew
the bigfoot were close. I would set in the yard
close to the trees and just talk to them. Even
though my wife believed in these creatures, she still thought
that I was nuts for doing this, But I knew
they were there. On some nights, there would be three,
maybe four creatures just beyond the light of my house.
I could see movement in trees moving, and I could
hear them breathing, especially when I would pitch a half
a pone of corn bread into the woods or other
table scraps that we didn't eat that night. I just
knew they were there, and I felt like the last
year had been productive in developing a relationship with our clan.
In addition, I always knew when the creatures were behind
my neighbor's house. The distance from my back porch was
a long way, but I could clearly see the dogs
in the moonlight. Every dog chain to the ground would
get up and stretch that chain to the limit, looking
into those woods. Every tail would be wagging, and all
barking would instantly stop. By this time, there were between
twenty and thirty dogs inside that fence. I wish you
could have seen it, because it would have given you
great joy seeing those happy tails wagging. Now I think
I know what they were looking at. The creatures knew
what was going on at that house, and it is
I feeling that, even though they did not like it,
that Big Alpha forbid his clan from intervening. This went
on for several weeks, and the tenants training method grew
more violent. The beatings became even more frequent. On a
chilly night in March, I was awakened by a gunshot.
It was not unusual for neighbors all around the area
to shoot guns on their property, but I had never
heard a gunshot. At two in the morning. I got
out of bed and I dressed quickly and was soon
out on our back porch under the canopy. Rain fell
in a steady shower. I tightened up the collar around
my neck and I walked towards my neighbor's house. The
whole backyard was lit up by lights attached to the house.
He had a dog by the chain and was beating
it unmercifully. I could hear the yelps and the squeals
from the poor animal. The closer I got, the more
clear the scene became visible. In the misty conditions. He
had a pistol in his hand and he would shoot
it in the air on occasion. It didn't make sense
to me. I think he wanted to shoot those dogs,
but he thought better and he would shoot around off
in the air. Then he would go to another dog
and start the process all over again. I had had
it with this guy, and against my best judgment, I
yelled to him to knock this crap off and leave
the dogs alone. It was not the smartest mood that
I ever made. He did have a firearm and was
probably under the influence of who knows what. He heard me,
but he kept beating the dog he had in his
hand until it began to fight back, at which point
he released the dog and he moved to another I
yelled at him again, and this time he heard me and
came to the fence and he yelled something back that
I did not understand, and then he went back inside.
I returned home. I dried off, and I discussed the
event with my wife. She wanted to do something, but
still there was nothing we could do. If we stole
the dogs or release them while he was away, we
would be the criminals. That's what we wanted to do.
It was frustrating for both of us. The nightlya beatings continued.
On a comfortable night in May, I sat on my
back porch and I watched him head out to the
large pen with his stick and opened the gate. It
was a few minutes past eleven PM. I knew his pattern.
He always started with the dogs closest to the gate.
But for some reason we will never know, he went
to the back of the enclosure, and I suppose he
was planning to work his way forward. Every dog cowered
and laid flat to the ground as he walked through
the area. There was no barking and no excitement. There
was not a sound. They knew he was coming. He
made it to the back of the enclosure, and instead
of starting on the dogs, he leaned his back against
the chain link fence and let a cigarette. I remember
seeing the orange glow on his face when he would
take a long draw. I just watched him. He was
bouncing against the fence, leaning back into the give of
the chain link, and letting it push him forward. Over
and over. He used the fence as a lateral trampoline,
bouncing a bit harder each time, until I could hear
the fence creaking. He was letting the dogs feel his
anger and getting them afraid of him even more. He
thumped the cigarette but at the closest dog, and I
saw sparks settle on the animal, burning its hide. While
it moved to relieve the pain. There was a short yelp.
He bounced himself off the fence one last time and
leaned forward to commence this night's beating. But before he
could take the first step, a massive black arm reached
over the fence, and the last thing I saw was
his legs being dragged over the top of the six
foot high top rail. No scream, no noise at all.
He just vanished into the woods. I stood there for
a minute in shock. What should I do? Should I
call the police? Should I go knock on their door
to see if anyone was home? I had never seen
anyone living there, even though he did have visitors all
the time. I reached for my cell phone and was
about to dial nine to one one, and I stopped
when the officer showed up. What was I going to
tell them a family a bigfoot took him. Hell, they
would put me in jail and probably consider me a suspect.
I put the phone in my pocket and I walked inside.
My wife was already in bed. I undressed and crawled
in beside her, kissed her neck, and I went to sleep.
It was a good night's sleep at that The next day,
I saw that nothing had changed at his house. The
dogs were still there, The overgrown grass still annoyed me,
and I wonder if I had dreamed all of this.
I decided that I had been fully awake when it
all happened, so I relaxed. I ate breakfast, and I
started on a project that I had been planning to
do for months. I was going to plant fast growing
trees at the edge of my property adjacent to his house,
so that I wouldn't have to look at the meanness
after the trees grew large enough. However long that took,
I finished late in the day, and soon it was dark.
No one had showed up at that house. No one
knew he was gone. I did see one car pull
in the drive that night, but they turned around and
left after seeing the tenant was not home. It was
the fourth day after the incident that things began to happen.
That morning, sometime before lunch, I saw two sheriffs cars
in the driveway from my office window. I saved my
work and I leaned out and watched. Two deputies walked
around the house several times and then stood by their cars.
Soon a civilian drove up. I assumed it was the father,
and the deputies talked to him for a while and
they all went inside the house. Not long after, there
was a knock on my front door, and when I answered,
one of the officers stood there with a pad and
a pen. He asked me the usual questions, and I
told them the last time I saw the tenant he
was in the backyard three nights ago beating his dogs,
and that I paid no attention, and that I went
to bed I had not seen him since. The officer
seemed perplexed about the dog beating statement and asked about
that further. I explained what I had seen the man
do for the last few months, and that I had
I told the sheriff about it. It seemed to ring
a bell with the deputy, and he mumbled something about
wishing they had the authority to stop the animal abuse
in our area. I actually believed him. He asked if
I had seen any activity at the house since, to
which I replied no, but that I had not really
been paying attention and that was the truth. I then
asked the deputy if I could go over and feed
the dogs. If this guy had been missing for three days,
I was sure the dogs were starving. He agreed that
that was a good idea, and I headed over. I
made my way into the garage to find the dog feed,
and I saw several large bags in a utility room.
Rats that chewed holes in all the bags and I
didn't know how old the dog food was, but it
would be something for the animals until something got figured out.
I found a two and a half gallon bucket, I
filled it with feed, and I walked into the fence.
None of the dogs were aggressive with me. Some cowered away,
but that was to be expected. Most were happy to
see me. A few trips later and I had all
twenty four dogs fed and water. As I walked through
the garage to leave, I heard the father saying something
about drug deals and gangs, etc. I didn't catch enough
to know what they were talking about, but I thought
to myself, if they get on that trail, they wouldn't
even investigate around the house. Maybe that would keep them
out of the woods and away from the Bigfoot clan.
That is exactly what happened. In the news, I read
that the man had been tied to a local drug
distribution ring and had been under surveillance by local authorities.
I didn't have any idea he was under surveillance while
I lived there, and of course that he was missing,
and if anyone had any information to please call the
number below. To my knowledge, no one ever recall that
number with anything of value to the investigation. Almost a
year later, I was walking through the woods behind our house.
I was looking for signs of the Bigfoot clan. I
had not seen or heard from them since the night
Tupac disappeared. I walked through the thick patch of briars,
a place I had never explored, and I saw something
that didn't belong. I approached the object, and I saw
a white Nike running shoe. It was dirty now, and
it looked as if it had not been moved since
it fell there. Small new plants grew through the laces
which were still tied. I saw nothing else of interest,
and so I walked back out the way that I
had come in. We sold that property a while back,
and I have moved to another larger town in a
neighboring state. I am retired now and enjoying my days
with my wife. Oh yes, about the dogs. I worked
with our local rescue organization, and every dog, all twenty four,
were eventually adopted out to families far away from Mississippi.
Some actually live in Manhattan in New York City. One
even lives with us now. She's an old dog now
in short on time, but she's very comfortable. We gave
her a good life after that ordeal. Believe me, she
earned it. It was six years before I began to
see evidence that the Bigfoot were back. Maybe it was
the same clan, maybe it was a new clan. Maybe
they never left and just kept a very low profile
around my house. I will never know. I never stopped
occasionally leaving them gifts through the years, but most of
the time when I would come check back the next day,
the gifts were still there, unless it was food, but
even then, any animal could have taken that food. During
the last years that we lived there, I knew the
young ones and the females were close. They were always
present when I had the dogs out in the back
playing with them. I think they liked that kind of thing.