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