Speaker 1: Here's a story from Matt, and this is really, really
Speaker 1: a good story, he writes. I'm sixty one years old.
Speaker 1: I'm a retired twenty seven year law enforcement officer. I
Speaker 1: served ten years in the United States Army Reserves, ending
Speaker 1: with the rank of staff sergeant. I've only told one
Speaker 1: other person this story, and that was my younger brother.
Speaker 1: I live in West Virginia and I have most of
Speaker 1: my life. In nineteen seventy three, my brother, my cousin,
Speaker 1: my uncle, and a guy my uncle worked with at
Speaker 1: the time and I went on a camping fishing trip
Speaker 1: to Cranberry Glades, located in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. This
Speaker 1: area is vast and heavily forested. No motorized vehicles are
Speaker 1: allowed into the camp area, so we hiked about a
Speaker 1: mile into the camping area to set up our camp.
Speaker 1: At the time, I was fourteen years old, and like
Speaker 1: most teenage boys, I was adventurous and not afraid to explore.
Speaker 1: On the third day of our trip, after breakfast, I
Speaker 1: decided I wanted to hike one of the many trails
Speaker 1: that ran throughout the area instead of going fishing with
Speaker 1: the others. The trails are marked, and some go on
Speaker 1: for miles. My uncle told me to stay on the
Speaker 1: trail and don't go so far, so I headed out.
Speaker 1: I walked the trail for at least two hours, taking
Speaker 1: in the sights and sounds of nature. I came upon
Speaker 1: a meadow that I think was about a half acre
Speaker 1: in size, and out of the corner of my eye,
Speaker 1: I saw something big move across the meadow near the
Speaker 1: tree line. I stopped and I tried to identify what
Speaker 1: I saw moving. I walked a little further into the meadow,
Speaker 1: gazing at a group of pine trees where I saw
Speaker 1: the movement. I stood silently staring, and then I saw
Speaker 1: something move again about twenty yards from me to my left.
Speaker 1: I peered into the group of trees and behind a
Speaker 1: large pine, I saw a reddish brown hairy coat and
Speaker 1: it was barely visible through the brush. My first thought was,
Speaker 1: oh God, it's a black bear. My heart jumped. I
Speaker 1: thought of turning and running back to camp, but I
Speaker 1: stayed there looking. I was too curious. I heard a
Speaker 1: deep vocal ooh, and then I saw it turn behind
Speaker 1: the trees and I saw this huge, long, hairy arm
Speaker 1: making a tossing motion in my direction, and a tree
Speaker 1: limb came hurtling towards me. It landed about ten feet
Speaker 1: to my left. I began to shake. This limb was
Speaker 1: about five feet long and about eight inches around, and
Speaker 1: then I heard that sound again. Ooh. I bolted back
Speaker 1: towards the camp site, running faster than I ever have
Speaker 1: run in my life. I was crying and I was praying.
Speaker 1: I ran to the point where I collapsed from exhaust fust.
Speaker 1: I was on my hands and knees, gasping heavily for air,
Speaker 1: and my inner voice kept telling me to keep running.
Speaker 1: So I gathered as much strength as I could, and
Speaker 1: I got back on my feet and I ran back
Speaker 1: to the camp. When I arrived, the others had not
Speaker 1: made it back from fishing yet. I sat at the
Speaker 1: picnic table, panting hard, and I was still crying. A
Speaker 1: few hours later, the rest of the guys returned. My
Speaker 1: uncle looked at me and said, are you sick. You're
Speaker 1: pale as a ghost boy. I said yes, just to
Speaker 1: avoid talking about what I had countered on the trail,
Speaker 1: and then I went to my tent and I laid down.
Speaker 1: That evening, I laid in my sleeping bag as my
Speaker 1: mind replayed the event over and over. My brother slept
Speaker 1: next to me. Finally I had to relieve myself, but
Speaker 1: I was too afraid to get out of the tent. Later,
Speaker 1: with great hesitation, I got up and slowly and as
Speaker 1: quietly as possible, exited my tent. I didn't go far,
Speaker 1: just a short distance behind my tent, and just as
Speaker 1: I finished and started to get back in the tent,
Speaker 1: I heard off in the distance that sound again. Ooh wow.
Speaker 1: I dove back into the tent and I started shaking.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to wake my little brother because I
Speaker 1: didn't want him to be afraid. So I sat there
Speaker 1: shaking until daylight, listening and hoping I would not hear
Speaker 1: that sound again. I stayed at camp the last two days,
Speaker 1: never venturing out again. My uncle kept asking me why
Speaker 1: I didn't want to leave the camp site. I just
Speaker 1: told him that I wasn't feeling well. I was never
Speaker 1: so glad when we returned home, and it wasn't until
Speaker 1: about a year later that I told my brother what
Speaker 1: had happened. He said that he knew at the time
Speaker 1: of the camping trip that something had scared me. I
Speaker 1: had never heard of bigfoot until I was about eighteen
Speaker 1: years old. That's when I saw the famous film I'm
Speaker 1: Showing the Creature, and I started to shake as I watched.
Speaker 1: I had to leave the theater, and to this day,
Speaker 1: when I think back on it, I get chills. Well
Speaker 1: that's my one and only encounter. Thanks for letting me vent, Sincerely, Matt.
Speaker 1: A long time ago, when I was eleven, a friend
Speaker 1: and I were fishing down at the creek. It was
Speaker 1: getting late and about time to pack up and get home.
Speaker 1: I got a bite, so I threw my bait a
Speaker 1: few more times. My buddy was all packed up and
Speaker 1: said that he would wait for me on the trail
Speaker 1: up the hill. A few more casts and no bites,
Speaker 1: so I was ready to get out of there. Something
Speaker 1: picked me up. Its arm was covered in thick hair,
Speaker 1: like a shaggy dog. I thought it was someone in
Speaker 1: a gorilla suit playing a prank on me. He put
Speaker 1: me over his right shoulder your dad would when you
Speaker 1: were little, and he started walking into the woods. I
Speaker 1: wasn't scared. I wasn't going to let whoever this was
Speaker 1: get a kick out of me being afraid, holding onto
Speaker 1: his head with my left hand as he held my
Speaker 1: legs to his chest. I relaxed and enjoyed the ride.
Speaker 1: When the shock of the whole thing wore off, I
Speaker 1: looked to the ground and saw the hair covered its
Speaker 1: whole body. This wasn't a gorilla suit, and I was
Speaker 1: very high off the ground. After several minutes of walking
Speaker 1: in the woods, I started to wonder who was doing
Speaker 1: this and where we were going. It was getting dark
Speaker 1: and didn't look like we were headed towards my house.
Speaker 1: We rounded the corner of the hillside and I saw
Speaker 1: three more of these creatures. One looked like a mother,
Speaker 1: and there were two smaller ones about my size. He
Speaker 1: put me down on the ground in a small new
Speaker 1: or entrance into a pile of trees. It was open
Speaker 1: in the middle. It almost looked like the trees had
Speaker 1: fallen that way, but after being inside, I knew this
Speaker 1: structure had been built. It was a hideout. The ground
Speaker 1: was covered in long grass. It felt comfortable in there,
Speaker 1: almost a warm, welcoming feel to it. The thing that
Speaker 1: had taken me entered the structure and sat down looking
Speaker 1: back out the opening. The mother started feeding us all
Speaker 1: some berries and some kind of root. None of it
Speaker 1: was very good. It was dark now. The creatures began
Speaker 1: to settle in the middle of the hideout, and they
Speaker 1: all laid down and went to sleep. I was glad
Speaker 1: to see this. I waited a few more minutes, then
Speaker 1: climbed out of the tangle brush pile and started home
Speaker 1: in the pitch black. It took all night to find
Speaker 1: my way out of the woods woods, and when I
Speaker 1: finally made it home, it was just getting daylight. When
Speaker 1: I walked into our yard, I saw several men standing
Speaker 1: there talking to my father. The police were there too.
Speaker 1: They were relieved to see me and started asking questions.
Speaker 1: The evening before, my buddy had gone back to find
Speaker 1: me when I had not shown up on the trail.
Speaker 1: He found my fishing gear lying on the bank. He
Speaker 1: rushed to get my father, and they returned to look
Speaker 1: for me in the woods. The men now standing in
Speaker 1: our yard were gathering at my house to go hunt
Speaker 1: for me again. Some of them had tracking dogs. I
Speaker 1: told my dad and the police what had happened. One
Speaker 1: of the policemen looked at my father and said that
Speaker 1: he believed me. The crowd dispersed and we went inside
Speaker 1: and my mother fed me. The rest of the day
Speaker 1: was hard to remember. After that, no one ever asked
Speaker 1: me about it again, not my dad, my mom, or
Speaker 1: the police. It was so long ago that it seems
Speaker 1: like a dream, but I know it happened. I don't
Speaker 1: think my dad ever believed me, and there is still
Speaker 1: this nagging feeling all these years later that it really
Speaker 1: was a prank. I also wonder if there was something
Speaker 1: they knew and were not telling me. But what I
Speaker 1: know for sure is that something picked me up that
Speaker 1: day and carried me through the woods for a long time.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was, but I think I do.
Speaker 1: Here's an email from a woman who goes by the
Speaker 1: handle of camping Turtle. She didn't want her real name revealed,
Speaker 1: but she got She said I could use the camping
Speaker 1: Turtle handle, which I think is really neat Here's what
Speaker 1: she writes, and this is a kind of a spooky story.
Speaker 1: I wanted to write to you after months of listening
Speaker 1: to your channel on YouTube and give you my own
Speaker 1: unsettling accounts of the two run ends I believe are Bigfoot.
Speaker 1: After talking to my younger sister, she agreed that I
Speaker 1: should tell you my stories. I grew up in a
Speaker 1: religious family and there were six of us kids We
Speaker 1: lived on a lake not even a half a mile
Speaker 1: from the state line of Michigan, just inside Indiana. The
Speaker 1: lake even then was fairly well developed, and since my
Speaker 1: father had grown up there, he wanted us to enjoy
Speaker 1: our childhood in much of the same manner that he had.
Speaker 1: The lake at that time was surrounded by farm fields
Speaker 1: and enough country to not feel too much like suburbia.
Speaker 1: There were plenty of dirt roads around those parts, and
Speaker 1: then houses on the outer roads were not boxed in
Speaker 1: one on top of the other. My father kept an
Speaker 1: old washing machine tub as a live well down along
Speaker 1: the edge of the lake near the shore we loved
Speaker 1: to fish. Out of all of us kids, I could
Speaker 1: spend the entire day on the water or the shoreline,
Speaker 1: drowning worms and keeping my line perpetually wet. When it
Speaker 1: got too hot, a simple quick dip would cool me
Speaker 1: off and I would go right back to fishing. Pretty
Speaker 1: funny for a girl, some would say. Back then, we
Speaker 1: hadn't gotten central air yet, and when summer came creeping
Speaker 1: with the humidity, there wasn't a spot I would rather
Speaker 1: be than in my parents' bedroom, playing a card or
Speaker 1: board game on their massive bed with either my dad
Speaker 1: or one of my sisters or brothers. The windows faced
Speaker 1: the lake, and by putting a box fan in one
Speaker 1: and opening the other, we had cool, fresh air running
Speaker 1: through the room. I was six and a half at
Speaker 1: the time, and my little sister was four. My younger
Speaker 1: sister and I were sitting on the bed playing checkers
Speaker 1: when I specifically remember a feeling of fear come over me.
Speaker 1: I glanced up toward the window and two huge red
Speaker 1: eyes were clearly staring at us. The eyes moved from
Speaker 1: my sister to me, and I heard and felt a
Speaker 1: very low growl. I urgently whispered to Nicky, there's a
Speaker 1: monster in the window. She looked over and screamed, and
Speaker 1: together in a tangle of arms and knees and legs,
Speaker 1: went running out of the bedroom door, screaming for my mother.
Speaker 1: By the time my mom went to look, the eyes
Speaker 1: were gone. It's probably just a raccoon, she said, no, Mom,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. They were too big to be a raccoon's eyes.
Speaker 1: We told her. She said it had probably been a
Speaker 1: boat out on the water, and it just looked like
Speaker 1: a pair of eyes. When we told her we saw
Speaker 1: it blink, she hushed us up gently put us to
Speaker 1: bed in the middle of the bedroom that we shared
Speaker 1: with a sister who was just a bit older than me.
Speaker 1: We had seen lots of wildlife by then, because we
Speaker 1: were always scouring the woods and fields bringing home this
Speaker 1: animal or that. Even one time I brought home a
Speaker 1: baby raccoon. Daddy made us put that one back, and
Speaker 1: our uncle cautioned us not to steal baby wildlife because
Speaker 1: oftentimes they would die if taken away from their mothers.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until I was in my mid twenties that
Speaker 1: I became familiar with what is known as bigfoot. When
Speaker 1: I did, that memory came flooding back. Now that I
Speaker 1: suspected what the eyes were, I measured the height of
Speaker 1: where we saw the eyes, and it was between eight
Speaker 1: and nine feet off the ground. When I was thirty one,
Speaker 1: I started bowl hunting, and I fell in love with
Speaker 1: the sport. By then I had been married for just
Speaker 1: a little over a decade and had three sons of
Speaker 1: my own. I'm not trying to toot my own, but
Speaker 1: I was damn good at it. I would practice the
Speaker 1: entire day after getting my chores done, and more than
Speaker 1: one arrogant man lost a twenty dollar bill when they
Speaker 1: would bet me that they could outshoot me. But I
Speaker 1: won't go into that right here. One afternoon during the season,
Speaker 1: my husband dropped me at my stand. I loved the solitude.
Speaker 1: The woods are a calming place for me, a place
Speaker 1: to unwind from the pressures of motherhood and my responsibilities
Speaker 1: on the farm. I sat there most of the afternoon
Speaker 1: watching fox kits playing as the sun went down, and
Speaker 1: even though I hadn't seen a deer, I felt like
Speaker 1: it had been a good day in the woods. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: the fox kits all looked in one direction at one time.
Speaker 1: They were looking past me as if they saw something
Speaker 1: behind my stand. I assumed it was a deer or
Speaker 1: maybe another fox. I never heard anything. The wind was
Speaker 1: in my face. At the edge of that corn field,
Speaker 1: just in the tree line. The kits bobbed their heads
Speaker 1: from side to side and then up and down, and
Speaker 1: then quickly moved in the direction of their den, which
Speaker 1: was only a few yards away. I waited, and in
Speaker 1: the last embers of light from the sun, I scanned
Speaker 1: the now darkened interior of the woods. Again. I saw
Speaker 1: and heard nothing. The lights from the exit point on
Speaker 1: the toll road came on and were now illuminating all
Speaker 1: the way down to where I would cross the short
Speaker 1: forty five yards to the cornfield from my stand. I
Speaker 1: had waited to come down until total dark so as
Speaker 1: not to have my stand blown and to give any
Speaker 1: deer that might be moving after legal shooting light a
Speaker 1: chance to recede back into the woods. So I moved quietly,
Speaker 1: making sure to take my steps carefully and roll my
Speaker 1: foot and not make any noise. I felt rushed all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like I should be moving quicker and
Speaker 1: get out of there. I can't tell you for sure
Speaker 1: what it was, just a sudden fear that I had
Speaker 1: not experienced before. While I was in the woods. I
Speaker 1: began making my way down the edge of the field,
Speaker 1: keeping myself closer to the corn than the actual woods.
Speaker 1: I suddenly heard something paralleling me in the woodline, and
Speaker 1: when I stopped, it would stop. This cornfield was huge.
Speaker 1: I had to go down to where the field was
Speaker 1: sliced in half with a track large enough to drive
Speaker 1: down and cross eastward the entire one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: five yards to get to where I knew my husband
Speaker 1: had parked. The second time I stopped, I had knocked
Speaker 1: an arrow. My hands were shaking, but at this point
Speaker 1: I knew not to run and stay as calm as possible,
Speaker 1: even though my body wanted to cook taters and get
Speaker 1: out of there. I got to the cutout area and
Speaker 1: turned to take a quick glance back. A silhouette stood
Speaker 1: on the path I had just come from, approximately thirty
Speaker 1: five yards behind me. I have never been in fear
Speaker 1: so bad that I could literally feel my blood turned
Speaker 1: to ice. My heartbeat felt very loud in my ears.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was the Holy Spirit or what,
Speaker 1: but for some reason I yelled, Guardian of the woods,
Speaker 1: descendant of Esau and Kane, leave this place in the
Speaker 1: name of Jesus Christ, and do not come back. I
Speaker 1: felt its grunt, long and drawn out in my chest,
Speaker 1: and it slipped with one step back into the woods.
Speaker 1: I ran all the way to the car and screamed
Speaker 1: at my husband, why didn't you come get me from
Speaker 1: my stand. He looked at me, perplexed and said he
Speaker 1: hadn't wanted to leave the boys alone in the car.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until weeks later he finally got me to
Speaker 1: tell him what happened. I refused to go back into
Speaker 1: those woods, and I didn't really want him to go either.
Speaker 1: I did, however, go the next next year and every
Speaker 1: year until about five years ago, when my health began
Speaker 1: to worsen. I now am too frail of health to
Speaker 1: do much camping or hunting, and I can't walk very
Speaker 1: well anymore. My sister once commented that a lot of
Speaker 1: people who have these encounters are in bad health. I
Speaker 1: was born with osteogenesis imperfecta. It's called the Brital bone disorder.
Speaker 1: We were called the children of Glass. At fourteen, I
Speaker 1: had surgery at the Shriner's Hospital to have installed two
Speaker 1: titanium steel rods to correct severe twisting and scoliosis of
Speaker 1: my spine. I have never let my health issues affect
Speaker 1: me much, and often relocate and dislocate joints and fix
Speaker 1: in secure splints for fractures that I don't deem doctor
Speaker 1: visit worthy. I'll tell you what, mister Crypton. If I
Speaker 1: get these old knees replaced before hunting season in the fall,
Speaker 1: I will be back in the woods. Here's a short
Speaker 1: email from April and Alabama. Here's what she writes. Hey,
Speaker 1: my name is April. I want to tell you about
Speaker 1: my encounter it's not much, but it left me wondering.
Speaker 1: My girlfriends and I had been to the movies and
Speaker 1: we were making our way back home. It was probably
Speaker 1: ten or eleven o'clock at night. We came up on
Speaker 1: a hill and then it dipped down into a curve,
Speaker 1: and as we approached the curve, my friend's headlights hit
Speaker 1: the figure of something crouched down like it was eating something,
Speaker 1: and then it turned and looked towards us. We could
Speaker 1: clearly see the eyes shine. It stood up on two
Speaker 1: legs and it walked into the woods like a human.
Speaker 1: Did you see that? We all said at the same time.
Speaker 1: It was not a bear. We don't have bears around here.
Speaker 1: And when we passed the point where the creature was standing,
Speaker 1: aw what he was interested in. A dead possum was
Speaker 1: laying in the road. It was eating roadkill. All the
Speaker 1: way home we were trying to figure out what we
Speaker 1: had just seen. It was scary but exciting all at
Speaker 1: the same time. We are convinced that we saw Bigfoot
Speaker 1: that night. I have been infatuated with Bigfoot ever since
Speaker 1: I was born in nineteen forty eight, and I grew
Speaker 1: up in Bapton, Rouge Louisiana, Louisiana, Louise Earner yep. I
Speaker 1: was a city kid, However, my dad was a country boy,
Speaker 1: raised in the woods in Pride, Louisiana. He was born
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty six, the oldest of seven kids. He
Speaker 1: plowed the family garden with an old mule. I remember
Speaker 1: that this mule liked to eat leftover rice and gravy.
Speaker 1: My father had to wait until the mule finished eating
Speaker 1: and quickly grab the bowl. The mule would paw at
Speaker 1: it when it was empty. He learned to hunt and
Speaker 1: fish as a way to put food on the table
Speaker 1: because store bought meat was something they couldn't afford. They
Speaker 1: raised chickens and they had a milk cow, but that
Speaker 1: was it. Everything else came from the garden except for
Speaker 1: staple goods like seasonings and flour. His father would give
Speaker 1: him two shotgun shells and tell him to bring back
Speaker 1: two of something squirrels, doves, rabbits, and don't miss. Those
Speaker 1: shells aren't cheap. When he was seventeen, just after the
Speaker 1: bombing of Pearl Harbor, he dropped out of school and
Speaker 1: enlisted in the Navy to later become a radio operator
Speaker 1: on board the uss Coopahee, a tanker that had been
Speaker 1: converted into an aircraft carrier. As well as other training,
Speaker 1: he was taught the expert use of the M one rifle.
Speaker 1: That knowledge stayed with him all of his life, and
Speaker 1: he passed it on to meat. That is the way
Speaker 1: he taught me to handle a gun and hunt. When
Speaker 1: I was about ten years old, I had inherited my
Speaker 1: mother's four to ten bolt action Ranger brand shotgun, and
Speaker 1: I was an excellent shot. By the time I was eleven.
Speaker 1: He hunted with an L. C. Smith twelve gage double
Speaker 1: barrel shotgun. My oldest son now has both of them.
Speaker 1: Most of our hunting was small game on private or
Speaker 1: family property until he joined the Old miss Hunting Club
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty five, when I was about sixteen years old.
Speaker 1: He had gained a fondness for deer hunting. The club
Speaker 1: hunted the Raca Ro Sea Recourse Point area on the
Speaker 1: Mississippi River north of Morganza, Louisiana. There were twenty three
Speaker 1: thousand acres of land in that lease, mostly river bottom land,
Speaker 1: with several kinds of oaks, hickory trees, pecan, sweet gums,
Speaker 1: and almost no pines. It was prime deer hunting. I
Speaker 1: hunted with my four to ten, and I had strict
Speaker 1: rules that went with the use of that gun. No
Speaker 1: playing with it, clean it after I took it out,
Speaker 1: whether I had fired it or not, and if I
Speaker 1: wasn't hunting, it stayed put up. We spent many weekends
Speaker 1: at the least hunting squirrels, rabbits, and of course deer.
Speaker 1: The club had about two hundred and fifty members and
Speaker 1: there were five camps. Ours was the largest camp, built
Speaker 1: by expert carpenters who were members. Luckily, not all of
Speaker 1: the members liked the camp, so there was always room
Speaker 1: in the bunk house style bedroom. There were six sets
Speaker 1: of bunks along either wall and a walkway down the middle.
Speaker 1: The only other room was the kitchen that had one
Speaker 1: eating table that would seed about eight people. The rest
Speaker 1: of us would sit in folding chairs or wherever we
Speaker 1: could when the camp was full of hunters. There was
Speaker 1: no electricity, so the camp was lighted with coleman land
Speaker 1: and the stove was fuelled by propane. There were ice
Speaker 1: chests everywhere, mostly full of beer and lunch meat for sandwiches,
Speaker 1: and there was an outhouse. Nights were filled with the
Speaker 1: old men drinking beer and playing bou rat that's a
Speaker 1: Cajun card game. I wasn't interested in either, so I
Speaker 1: usually went to bed early, dreaming about the coming hunt
Speaker 1: the next morning. One weekend, one of the members went
Speaker 1: to another camp to play cards, leaving his son at
Speaker 1: our camp. His name was Poncho Roxy. His name, Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, his name was Poncho and that was his nickname,
Speaker 1: and he was about my age, and we struck up
Speaker 1: a friendship. Neither one of us was interested in watching
Speaker 1: a bunch of old men drink and play cards, so
Speaker 1: we decided to walk to the other camp just to
Speaker 1: pass the time. The other camp was five miles down
Speaker 1: a moonlit gravel road. I didn't feel the need to
Speaker 1: take a gun. There had never been any sightings of predators.
Speaker 1: There was nothing out there to fear, just deer, squirrels
Speaker 1: and rabbits, or so we thought. So off we went,
Speaker 1: without a flashlight, but carrying a six inch blade case
Speaker 1: skinning knife that stayed in my pocket all the time.
Speaker 1: Like most young boys, we cut up and laughed and
Speaker 1: talked about all sorts of things, girls, cars, hunting, and
Speaker 1: so on. The night was bright with moonlight and The
Speaker 1: road was easy to see, so we didn't have any worries.
Speaker 1: We walked about a mile when we heard footsteps off
Speaker 1: in the woods beside us. These were thick woods, not
Speaker 1: easy to walk through in broad daylight, much less in
Speaker 1: the dark. There were lots of briers and vines that
Speaker 1: would easily trip someone up. But someone or something was
Speaker 1: keeping up with our pace on the clear road. We
Speaker 1: stopped to listen, and so did whatever that was. We
Speaker 1: started walking again, and so did this person or animal.
Speaker 1: We talked and we walked and tried to decide what
Speaker 1: it was. A hunting dog that was lost, No, it
Speaker 1: would have come to us looking for food or friendship.
Speaker 1: Was it a deer, now they're not that noisy when
Speaker 1: they walked. Could have been a cow. There's lots of
Speaker 1: those free ranging out here, But it sounded like it
Speaker 1: was walking on two legs. Maybe one of the guys
Speaker 1: from the camp about to jump out and scare us.
Speaker 1: But if that was the case, they would have already
Speaker 1: done that. Once again, we stopped and it stopped. We walked,
Speaker 1: and it walked. We stopped, and it stopped, and on
Speaker 1: and on. Now I wished that I had brought my
Speaker 1: gun or at least a light. I needed a weapon.
Speaker 1: My skinning knife was not much of a weapon, but
Speaker 1: it's all I had. I decided to stop and cut
Speaker 1: down a sapling and sharpened the end. That way I
Speaker 1: could at least keep some distance between me and whatever
Speaker 1: this was. Pancho said, just what do you think you're
Speaker 1: going to do with this sharp stick? And I said,
Speaker 1: if it attacks, I'm going to stab it and run
Speaker 1: with the spear in my hand. So try to keep up.
Speaker 1: I don't know if whatever it was understood what I
Speaker 1: was planning, but it stopped following us. We continued walking
Speaker 1: the rest of the five miles to the other camp
Speaker 1: with no further problems, and when we got there, his
Speaker 1: dad was still playing cards and would be for a while.
Speaker 1: We didn't tell him what happened, and he said that
Speaker 1: we must have been nuts or really bored to walk
Speaker 1: that far in the dark, and that we should start
Speaker 1: our walk home and that he would pick us up
Speaker 1: when he drove back. We were mischievous boys, and as
Speaker 1: we heard him coming, we walked off into the road
Speaker 1: and he drove right by us. He was some kind
Speaker 1: of mad, having to wait for us to walk all
Speaker 1: the way back after that night. I never saw Poncho again.
Speaker 1: A month after this happened, I heard on a Loaan
Speaker 1: TV station that a towboat pilot was shining the Mississippi
Speaker 1: River bank at night and had seen a large, dark
Speaker 1: bipedal creature walking away from the river's edge in that
Speaker 1: same area. As a footnote, I now actively look for
Speaker 1: sasquatch and had a sighting about a year ago. It
Speaker 1: was in the Casatchee National Forest north of Alexandra, Louisiana.
Speaker 1: It was about seven feet tall, covered in four inch
Speaker 1: long black hair. It was slender built, so I believe
Speaker 1: that it was a juvenile. Unfortunately, it was only a
Speaker 1: three second profile sighting. I got to watch it cross
Speaker 1: the road I was on, about one hundred yards away.
Speaker 1: I immediately went to see where it had gone, but
Speaker 1: the ground was so hard that I couldn't find any tracks.
Speaker 1: My search will continue as long as I am able.