Speaker 1: It was a Saturday morning in February twenty and fifteen.
My husband and I decided to take a day trip
to Lake Pleasant, which is northwest of Phoenix, Arizona. We
had purchased a very nice Ram power wagon not long before,
so we thought we would take it for a nice
ride and have a picnic. We arrived at the lake,
rode around and checked out a few different areas, and
at at about two pm, we found a nice area
and decided to have our lunch. As we were eating
and enjoying the view, we got to talk in about
a place called a Crown King that we thought wasn't
too far away. We had always wanted to visit, but
it never made it there. We had been members of
a four wheel drive group a few years back that
had planned a couple of trips to Crown King, but
seemed it wasn't meant to be. A brush fire had
stopped one of the trips, and I don't recall what
stopped the other. After we ate, we decided to do
a bit more exploring. As we were driving down a
not so good dirt road, we saw a sign that
red Crown King. We knew it was the back way
in and we agreed to check it out. We set
the GPS and headed into what was for us unknown territory.
This was around three point thirty in the afternoon. We
noticed that we were the only ones headed in the
direction that we were going. There were several off road
vehicles going the opposite direction, and we noticed that they
were traveling at a high rate of speed. It was
like they had to be out of the area before dark.
We thought that seemed rather bizarre. We crossed a small
muddy wash and at the time neither of us said anything.
Thinking back, it was very strange because both of us
had seemed some thing on each side of the truck,
while we didn't mention it or stop to take pictures.
We still can't figure out. There were huge footprints in
the mud. They were well over a foot long and
at least seven inches wide. The tracks were very clear,
even the toe prints were visible. By now, we had
traveled quite away. GPS was still telling us that we
were on track, but the not so good road was
getting much worse. We went through a narrow area with
dry brush on each side. My husband shed a few
tears as we heard that dry brush scraping down the
sides of that new power wagon. We had definitely given
it what we call the Arizona pin stripes. It was
starting to get dark, but there was no sign of
our destination. We had only brought enough food for our picnic,
and all that was gone. The original plan for the
day was to check out Lake Pleasant, have our picnic,
and after a bit or sight seeing, we'd planned to
stop at a restaurant somewhere on the way home. That
wasn't happening by now. All we had was a half
a bottle of water and about a half tank of
gas in the ram. We were watching the GPS closely.
Now it showed our destination was just a few more miles.
We were so happy. It was late and we were hungry,
and neither of us had been to the restroom in hours.
We hadn't seen anyone since before dark, and as I mentioned,
they weren't going our way. Finally, the GPS said, you've
reached your destination. It was the most lonely lost feeling
as we talked a hill to what we thought would
be Crowned King, only to find dead bushes and trees
and nothing else. GPS was worthless. We were for the
first time in our lives. Lost, we kept going, trying
to find our way out and back to civilization because
there was no turning back. We were getting low on
gas and had made so many turns we wouldn't know
which road would take us back to the lake. We
were counting on the way out if we could find it,
being closer than the route we'd taken, but where was it.
We took a different service road that looked promising, but
they either came to a dead end or they led
us to another road. We had entered into an area
where there were pine trees. Now we were not real
happy at this point, and we were still lost. We
had our half bottle of water, but not knowing how
long it would be before we got out of there,
we saved it. Plus we needed to use the restroom,
but it was so pitch dark out there we weren't
about to get out of the truck. We were driving
down the dirt road with our brights illuminating both the
road in front of us and some area into the
pines at our sides. We rounded a slight curve and
what we saw will be etched in our minds forever.
This took place in twenty fifteen, but the memory is
as vivid today as if it happened last night. It
was now, by the way that we decided to tell
each other about the large tracks that we had both
seen earlier, but it failed to mention. Sitting on the
ground kind of behind a tree, and not a small
pine tree, mind you, was an ape like figure. We
could see half of its back in its arm and
part of its right thigh. It seemed to have its
legs pulled up against its body. We could also see
the right side of its head. The part of its
shoulder that we could see stuck out from the tree
about two feet sitting on the ground. It seemed to
be from ground to the top of its head as
tall as me, and I'm five foot five inches tall.
I couldn't tell how muscular it might or might not
have been, but it was well filled out out and
very big. We got closer and it turned its head
more to the left, away from us. It had silver
gray hair that looked about the same length all over.
Because of the gray, we thought it might have been older.
There was no mistaking what it was. These lights were
bright and we were only about twenty five feet away.
We drove on there was no way we were going
to stop for a better look or pictures. I'm pretty
sure we were both in shop. We just kept moving
on down the road. About a mile with the ac on,
the noise of the truck engine and the radio turned up.
All of a sudden, above all the noise we were making,
there was this indescribably loud, grunting roar. It was unforgettable.
It was the type of sound that makes the hairs
on the back of your neck stand up. We didn't
slow down, we just kept driving. But now it was
around midnight, yet to find our destination, and we really
weren't caring now. We just wanted to find the highway.
We wanted to find civilization. Finally, a bit after one am,
we saw a small settlement. It was just a few houses. Oddly,
at roughly one point twenty am, every house had what
appeared to be every light on. We remarked on how
peculiar that was. About ten minutes after that, we finally
found a highway, and a few miles later we found
a place to eat. We were in such a state
of shock that all we could do was sit there
and try to process what we had seen. It occurred
to us that we had been lost for almost ten hours.
The next day, I looked up bigfoot sightings around the
Prescott Crowned King area. I read several posts and stories.
One of the posts said, if there have been bigfoot
sightings near your home, leave all your lights on all
night and they won't come into your area. Could this
possibly be why the little settlement had all the lights on.
We have since wanted to go back in the daylight
to check out where we had seen it. We haven't
as of yet. We don't really tell this to very
many people. You know, all those weird you've lost it
looks you get. However, my husband and I know what
we saw. We have always been believers in Bigfoot, and now,
beyond a doubt, we know they exist. They are out
there and thank you for reading my story. For unclear reasons,
it appears that the thirty third year of a man's
life may be fraught with darkness and peril. After all,
Biblical accounts inferred that the itinerant preacher from Nazareth was
betrayed for a measly thirty pieces of silver during his
thirty third year of life. King Richard the second of
England and also King Charles the Fourth of France also
met an untimely demise at the age of thirty three,
as well as the late great soul singer Sam Cook
prior to his planned a military incursion into the Sauty Peninsula.
Alexander the Great died in Babylon on the threshold of
his thirty third year. As for me, I was thirty
three years old in nineteen ninety, and sadly my life
was upside down at that time, two years out from
my divorce, which was largely a consequence of my own misdeeds,
I was finding little if any pleasure in life. My
behavior had become reckless and irresponsible. I had dated many
women at the same time during that era, with complete
disregard for their own emotional needs. Frankly, I was a
cad and an apparent dangerous one. At that I would
press the bounies of my own health and well being
by taking out my nineteen sixty eight Big Blocks Shelby
on Interstate ten in the wee hours of the morning
near Pacacho Peak and hold down the accelerator pedal until
the speedometer was buried well above the one hundred and
forty mile per hour mark. Rest assured this car was
and still is powerful enough to transport me to another
realm of existence with utter disregard for earthly remains. At
the time, I just did not care about myself or
perhaps anything else for that matter. The only thing that
seemed to give me any meeting was my work, and
perhaps that is why I took on assignments and projects that,
in retrospect, were not particularly beneficial to my spiritual well being.
In nineteen ninety I elected to farm myself out to
offer expertise in medical legal malpractice matters. In the fall
of that year, I was scheduled to render medical opinion
concerning an unfortunate case of a man who had a
delay in diagnosis of cancer and this led to his
premature demise. His estate had sued the doctor who had
committed this alleged omission, but before the matter went to trial,
the defendant, who was only a few years older than me,
had subsequently died from cancer. Also, is there such a
thing as karma? What do I know? All I can
tell you is that God in his universe often works
in strange and mysterious ways. Frankly, as both the plaintive
and the defendant in the matter were now dead. I
should have resigned from the entire case, but I had
signed a contract, so I was obligated to hold up
my end of the deal as a medical expert witness.
The trial would be in northern New Mexico, not far
from the Colorado border. The plan to fly into Albuquerque,
rent a car, and drive up for the trial to
render my opinion concerning the case. As stated, I was
out of sorts and I did not want to be alone.
I took a girlfriend with me, who had spent her
entire life in the Southwest but had never been to
New Mexico. I promised her that if she went with me,
we would do some sight seeing. We arrived in Albuquerque
during the first week of October and subsequently rented a
car at the airport. I took my girlfriend on a
tram ride up the top of Sandea Peak, where we
made reservations to eat dinner at the restaurant at the
top of the mountain. The tram ride at Sandea Peak
has the second longest non supported cable run in the
entire world. Although it was late in the afternoon, we
still had two hours before our dinner reservation, and this
gave us some time to hike along the crest trail
at the top of the mountain. We hiked north towards
the Kowanas Stone House, which was a structure built by
the C. C. Sea Boys way back in nineteen thirty
at the beginning of the Great Depression. I'm not certain
if that stone house had ever been served in any
meaningful purpose during its nearly one hundred years of existence,
but it is a tremendous place to watch the sunset.
The entire trail loop was only about one point seven
miles long, and the hiking trail was not a particularly
arduous endeavor. On the hike towards the old stone structure,
we passed many people who were heading back to the
tram to depart the mountain. We were not particularly concerned,
as we were readily enjoying the aspen trees which were
now exhibiting their bright yellow fall foliage. Much to our surprise,
when we made it to the Kawanas House lookout, there
was no one there. We had the whole place to ourselves.
We stayed at the look out until the last ray
of sunlight peered over the top of the nine mile hill,
which was about twenty miles in the distance. Once the
sun had set, it was time for us to return
to the trail head and head for the restaurant. As
we walked back to our destination, it got dark rather quickly.
For all the world, we were most likely the very
last people hiking on the Crest Trail at that time.
In the middle of our return journey, we passed through
a heavily forested area. To our left, which was an
eastward slope of the mountain, there was a steep drop
off that rolled away at approximately a sixty degree angle.
That entire area was filled with thick brush and broken
limbs and fallen trees. That is when it happened. Forty
feet behind us and to the left on the downward slope,
something came crashing through the brush. We could hear the
snap of fallen tree trunks breaking. On a curious note,
whenever we stopped, whatever was following us beside the trail
would stop. Also, I was absolutely certain that we were
being stalked by a bear. I would still profess that
theory except for one unsettling fact. Periodically, large stones were
hurled at us. Most were the size of baseballs, but
one was as large as a loaf of bread. The
stone would land at a distance of five or perhaps
ten feet behind our steps. To this day, I'm not
certain if whoever or whatever was throwing those stones was
highly inaccurate and missed us by fair margin, or perhaps
more likely, it was only trying to encourage our departure
from the forest at an expedient pace. Whatever we were
dealing with, it was clearly not a bear, as these
creatures are incapable of throwing objects. As previously stated, I
was embedded in a rather reckless and impact ruous time
in my life. On several occasions, I would turn towards
the thicket to verbally challenge whatever was stalking us, utilizing
harsh threats and perhaps even professing unpleasant invectives that had
rudely questioned the paternal lineage of the lurking menace in question.
In retrospect, this was probably not a particularly good idea,
and I was admonished by my girlfriend from my feeble
attempts to provoke whatever it was that was trying to
usher us from the premises. Within a few hundred yards
of the restaurant and the tram left. The forest had receded,
and whatever had elected to rudely escort us off the
mountain never did reveal itself. My girlfriend and I decided
not to stay for dinner, and we hastily departed from
the top of the mountain. We headed back to Albuquerque proper,
as we had a long drive ahead of us in
the morning to get to the medical malpractice draw that
would take place in northern New Mexico. It is often
said that wisdom is acquired by the one learning from
his or her own mistakes. I dispute that adage. I
believe wisdom is garnished by learning from the mistakes of others. Now,
remember another event that had occurred in New Mexico on
January first in nineteen eighty six. The day before, on
December thirty first, nineteen eighty five, the nineteen fifties pop
singer Ricky Nelson had died in a plane crash west
of Texarcana. As I was a fan of the do
wop in nineteen fifties music in general, I was rather
distraught about his passing. On January first, the day after
Nelson had died, I decided to take a long drive
to Mount Taylor, which was fifty miles west of Albuquerque,
just to clear my mind. I was warned that the
road was under safe and unfit for two wheel drive vehicles,
but I failed to listen to this sage advice. The
person who had issued this warning to me had previously
broken down halfway up Mount Taylor. Has stated one should
learn from the mistakes of others. I had attempted to
drive up to the top of Mount Taylor on a
forest dirt road in a two wheel drive sedan, and
I promptly broke down about halfway up the mountain. I
waited four hours until someone else had come by and
was able to successfully contact a tow truck on my
behalf to get me out of there. I recalled that
it cost me a small fortune in towing fees. While
I was waiting for the tow truck, I saw what
I thought was a black bear standing behind a tree,
periodically peeking at me from about one hundred and fifty paces.
Looking back now on that more remote event, I'm wondering
if what I saw was not a bear after all.
Not bears hibernate in the winter. Mmm.