1
00:00:14,919 --> 00:00:17,719
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty five, my mother and I were in

2
00:00:17,800 --> 00:00:22,120
West Virginia spending time with our grandparents. I spent many

3
00:00:22,120 --> 00:00:27,239
summers throughout my childhood there. My grandmother and grandfather lived

4
00:00:27,359 --> 00:00:30,399
on the Cheap River before it was flooded, and they

5
00:00:30,399 --> 00:00:32,719
had a cabin there with a boat and a dot.

6
00:00:33,439 --> 00:00:36,439
It was a down in the boondocks kind of rural. Now.

7
00:00:36,439 --> 00:00:39,799
I loved that cabin. It was small and it slept

8
00:00:39,880 --> 00:00:43,520
up to eight people in bunk beds. One night, we

9
00:00:43,520 --> 00:00:46,000
were all sitting on the back porch. There was pitch

10
00:00:46,119 --> 00:00:49,399
black outside, not even the moon was shining at all

11
00:00:49,520 --> 00:00:52,799
that night. When the rest of us decided to turn in,

12
00:00:52,880 --> 00:00:55,320
Mom said she wanted to stay out a little longer

13
00:00:55,359 --> 00:00:58,880
and enjoy the quiet. A few minutes after we got

14
00:00:58,920 --> 00:01:02,439
to bed, my mom came running into my grandparents' room screaming,

15
00:01:02,679 --> 00:01:07,120
there's a bear out there. She said. The bear came

16
00:01:07,200 --> 00:01:11,040
up to her and put its paws right on her shoulders.

17
00:01:11,920 --> 00:01:15,840
My grandfather grabbed a shotgun by the bed and went outside,

18
00:01:15,959 --> 00:01:20,120
ready to defend, but there was nothing there. Now, I

19
00:01:20,120 --> 00:01:23,200
don't know what put its paws on my mother's shoulders,

20
00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:25,920
but I don't believe for a second it was a bear.

21
00:01:26,840 --> 00:01:29,959
If anything, it would have attacked or at least growled

22
00:01:30,040 --> 00:01:33,239
a her. It really never dawned on me then as

23
00:01:33,280 --> 00:01:36,319
a child, but now I have to wonder if it

24
00:01:36,439 --> 00:01:43,799
was not a bigfoot. My friend Bill used to live

25
00:01:43,840 --> 00:01:48,680
in Eureka on the northern California coast. He was studying

26
00:01:48,719 --> 00:01:51,760
to become a forest stranger at the local university, and

27
00:01:51,799 --> 00:01:55,359
he worked to pay his way there. His job was

28
00:01:55,400 --> 00:01:58,760
as a timber cruiser, which meant he walked miles and

29
00:01:58,840 --> 00:02:02,159
off in dense and dark forests, and he marked huge

30
00:02:02,239 --> 00:02:05,879
redwood trees that were to be cut for lumber. In

31
00:02:05,959 --> 00:02:09,879
each location, a landing was made near a tree falling area,

32
00:02:10,439 --> 00:02:13,360
and this is where the various types of equipment were stored,

33
00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:17,560
the huge tractors parked, and where fuel for diesel tractors

34
00:02:17,759 --> 00:02:22,039
were stored in fifty five gallon drums. A landing was

35
00:02:22,159 --> 00:02:25,879
usually several acres in size, which had been cut out

36
00:02:25,960 --> 00:02:28,960
of the thick forest and raised up and then leveled off.

37
00:02:30,280 --> 00:02:33,840
Everyone except the timber cruiser took the weekends off. Bell

38
00:02:33,919 --> 00:02:36,039
would work most of the weekends and then much of

39
00:02:36,080 --> 00:02:40,759
the weekdays according to his class schedule. One Monday, when

40
00:02:40,800 --> 00:02:43,159
he and the cutting crew showed up at their regular

41
00:02:43,280 --> 00:02:48,159
early hour. They were astonished to what they found. Three

42
00:02:48,159 --> 00:02:51,240
of the fifty five gallon metal cans of fuel had

43
00:02:51,280 --> 00:02:53,280
been picked up and carried to the edge of the

44
00:02:53,360 --> 00:02:57,199
landing and thrown down the hill. And whatever had thrown

45
00:02:57,240 --> 00:02:59,800
the metal drums had also managed to throw over the

46
00:02:59,879 --> 00:03:04,800
locked portable shed full of chainsaws and numerous other tools.

47
00:03:06,159 --> 00:03:08,599
Bill and the others and the crew were baffled trying

48
00:03:08,599 --> 00:03:11,400
to comprehend the strength the number of people that it

49
00:03:11,439 --> 00:03:14,520
would take to pick up, carry and throw these things

50
00:03:14,599 --> 00:03:18,719
off the edge of the landing. But the most unbelievable

51
00:03:18,800 --> 00:03:22,280
site was what happened to the heavy equipment. There were

52
00:03:22,360 --> 00:03:26,240
three D nine cat tractors on the landing, each weighing

53
00:03:26,360 --> 00:03:30,479
fifty four tons. The D nine is a beast of

54
00:03:30,520 --> 00:03:34,879
a machine, Yet somehow all three of these huge tractors

55
00:03:34,919 --> 00:03:38,639
had been lifted and laid onto their side. It was

56
00:03:38,719 --> 00:03:44,560
absolutely impossible, and they never did get an explanation. What

57
00:03:44,639 --> 00:03:51,199
do you think did all that damage? In June of

58
00:03:51,240 --> 00:03:54,919
twenty eighteen, I was visiting my son in his family

59
00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:58,960
in Lewis County, Washington. At the time, they were living

60
00:03:58,960 --> 00:04:01,400
in a house on a mountain It was the last

61
00:04:01,439 --> 00:04:05,080
house on the road. There were several other homes, each

62
00:04:05,120 --> 00:04:09,599
of them separated by large distances. It was two days

63
00:04:09,680 --> 00:04:12,520
until I was going back home, and back then I

64
00:04:12,560 --> 00:04:16,160
lived in Nevada. An hour before sunset, my son and

65
00:04:16,199 --> 00:04:19,120
I went behind his home to a waterfall a quarter

66
00:04:19,199 --> 00:04:22,480
of a mile behind the property. We were close to

67
00:04:22,519 --> 00:04:26,839
our destination when a branch snapped behind us. We stopped

68
00:04:26,879 --> 00:04:31,040
and looked, but there was nothing there. One hundred feet away, though,

69
00:04:31,079 --> 00:04:36,040
something growded us from the trees. We got to the waterfall,

70
00:04:36,079 --> 00:04:38,560
and while we admired the view, I was standing next

71
00:04:38,560 --> 00:04:41,759
to a tree with a double trunk. We could still

72
00:04:41,879 --> 00:04:44,759
hear the grouse from the trees, so I looked between

73
00:04:44,800 --> 00:04:48,279
the trunks and I saw two black hair covered legs

74
00:04:48,480 --> 00:04:52,399
and tan colored feet walk past us, about twenty feet away.

75
00:04:53,439 --> 00:04:56,279
They disappeared quickly, and I thought maybe I was seeing

76
00:04:56,399 --> 00:05:01,519
things All the time. The forest was dead silent. When

77
00:05:01,519 --> 00:05:04,240
we started to head back, we heard growling coming from

78
00:05:04,319 --> 00:05:08,560
a pile of branches and stumps from some logging. When

79
00:05:08,600 --> 00:05:10,759
we arrived at my son's house, he got out his

80
00:05:10,839 --> 00:05:14,120
thermal viewer. The clear as day, we could see a

81
00:05:14,199 --> 00:05:18,079
large shape standing on two feet watching us from the trees.

82
00:05:19,360 --> 00:05:21,360
I went home, and I came back two weeks later

83
00:05:21,439 --> 00:05:24,319
to help him move as the owners had sold the house,

84
00:05:24,959 --> 00:05:28,079
and while we were moving his furniture out, I noticed

85
00:05:28,079 --> 00:05:31,720
a large figure sixty feet away. It was watching us

86
00:05:31,720 --> 00:05:35,360
from the tree line. I estimated it to be eight

87
00:05:35,399 --> 00:05:39,800
feet tall, probably four feet wide at the shoulders. It

88
00:05:39,879 --> 00:05:43,199
had no neck appearance and had arms hanging down to

89
00:05:43,319 --> 00:05:47,000
its sides. I could not see the hands. It was

90
00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:50,480
standing in an arch between the trees, which was twelve

91
00:05:50,480 --> 00:05:53,680
feet wide and had three foot high bushes in front

92
00:05:53,680 --> 00:05:57,000
of it. This thing left us alone, but it stayed

93
00:05:57,040 --> 00:06:16,680
there for twenty minutes and it just watched us