Speaker 1: My name is Randy Ritchie. I'm fifty eight years old.
I'm an ordained minister and had been ministering for twenty
four years. I'm a logger, farmer, and I'm a strong man,
you know, the kind that tears phone books into flips
cars by hand, and bends steel bars, etc. While preaching
the gospel along with it. I have lived on the
same farm all my life, and what I'm about to
tell you is the God's honest truth. I live in
south central Kentucky, and all of these encounters except two,
were within three miles of each other. My first encounter
was in nineteen seventy two, when I was ten years old.
My parents and I were coming home one night. We
lived on a large farm, as I have all my life.
We were driving down the little country gravel road that
goes through our farm. I was in the back seat
and my parents were up front in our car. My
mother called out to my dad, you didn't see that
big black thing step across the road. She said. It
cleared the road in two steps. My father turned around
at our shop and drove back, but it was already gone.
He told my mother that she was crazy. Some years later,
she told me that my grandmother had told her for
years that they had seen something. From time to time
she referred to it as the old Man. Several years
went by, and I grew into a teenager and then
a young man. But years before that there was more
to tell. My second encounter, a mile and a half
behind our farm, was in an abandoned old rock quarry
from the nineteen forties. My friend Mark and I one
day hiked down to the old quarry with Daisy BB's
guns in hand. The old quarry was grown up with
trees and bushes, pretty much what we would called the
thicket here in south central Kentucky. The old quarry was
one hundred and twenty five feet long, seventy to eighty
feet wide, and sixty five feet deep. My friend and
I were on the left side, about a third of
the way down from the top, admiring the beauty of
the wilderness, and then it happened. We heard the most
god awfulous roar which turned into a blood curdling yell
that would stand the hair up on your head. Mark said,
what was that? I don't know, I replied, And then
whatever made that awful sound did so again. Let's get
out of here, Mark exclaimed, I wanted to see what
it was. Me, being a twelve year old boy, said
we can shoot it in the eye with our baby guns. Well,
how stupid was that? And then it yelled again and
started throwing rocks from the bottom of the old quarry.
It hit the side that we were on from some
distance away with rocks the size of soft balls or larger.
It roared one more time, and my friend said to
hell with this and took off in a flash down
the side of the hill back to the holler. I
took off right behind him, and we ran for three
quarters of a mile before we just collapsed in a
pasture field. But a large bull came down off the
grassy hill right for us, so we pulled ourselves up
and climbed a large tree, wondering if that would get
us past the bull and the thing that ran us
off from the old quarry. We finally got down and
got home. No one would believe us, except my mother
because she'd seen something a few years prior. We went
to school the next week and told our close friend
about our encounter. He would be the man who would
later be the best man in my wedding, and his
name was Wendell. I said, I wanted to go back
down to see if I could see what it was,
but I wanted someone to stay with me. Wendell said
if I'd let him go, he would take his twenty
gage shotgun and that he would not run. Well, of course,
I agreed. Wendow Len and I took a hike down
the old quarry, and I decided that we would go
in towards the top of the old quarry, this time
about thirty feet above the opening. As we were hiking
towards it, we were stopped in our tracks by the
same roar that again turned into a blood curdling scream
that you could feel hit you in the chest like
a brick. I turned back to see Wendell's reaction. He
with a shotgun, was now in a crowd's position, and
he was trembling. I turned back towards the sound, and
here it came again. I turned back to see Wendell
tearing through the briers with a shotgun in hand, obviously
not wanting anything to do with whatever was roaring. And
so there I was alone with my rifle in my hand,
and I took out right behind him. And when we
got home. He said, what in the world was that.
All I could say was, I don't know. So we
told our neighbors. They were some of our running buddies,
one Scotty, who was like a little older, and then
there was me and one a little younger, Tracy. Scotty
was bold and said, by God, I'll stay as long
as I have a gun. So he was all in
for us to take the hike back down, and my
fourth encounter was about to begin. Two weeks after Wendell
and I had gone in, with all three of us
having guns in hand, we went back and I took
the lead. I took the same path that Wendell and
I took. As we closed in on the top, I
was standing less than two feet from where I was
standing the previous time, the same roar, yell, scream all
over again, and I turned to see Tracy and Scotty
and they were already retreating fast. In less than six
weeks time, I had personally experienced something life changing. I
didn't go back for years, but what I experienced in
those weeks is why there is a smith in Western
forty four magnum pistol in my bedside nightstand to this day,
Tyler and Justin's stories. Tyler said his brother Justin had
an encounter. As he was taking the garbage to the
end of the road on a dark night, something very
large spooked him. He caught a glimpse across the road
of something very large standing between two ponds. As he
got back in the vehicle to turn the headlights on,
it stood up and ran. It left the fence in
two steps, and it was in the road and then
it left the fence on the other side. It startled
him pretty good, so he retreated back to the house
very quickly. In another encounter, Justin and another man were
out scouting for deer because the season would open soon.
They were at the end of a hollow in a
vast thicket when they came across a deer hanging from
its hindquarters in the middle of nowhere. If that wasn't
strange enough, its hindquarters were up to about twelve feet
in a tree, putting the deer's neck at six feet
above ground level, and that was too high for a
coyote or most dogs to reach. The deer's neck had
a large bike taken out of it. Justin and Tyler
also described another encounter involving their cousin James. So he
walked to his deer stand before daylight. This is the
same holler that separated our two farms. The hollow runs
by the springs from the old quarry, and James had
just climbed into his deer stand and heard the blood
curdling roar, yell, scream. He was so terrified that he
didn't move for about seven or eight hours. Tyler and
Justin had heard it also. Now he's gonna tell us
about Cody and Caitlin's encounters. Around that same time, my
good friend and neighbor and god son, Cody found a
structure made of cedar trees that had been bent and
broken to keep the wind and rain off of whatever
had been using it. Cody had also had an encounter
while frog gigging just up from the lake one night
in the holler that parallels the old quarry. Large rocks
were thrown at them as they made their way up
the holler. Cody's wife also had her encounter around the
same time, as she was driving one night. Her sightings
were very close to where my mother had her sighting
some forty years earlier. The location is less than two
hundred feet apart. Caitlin recalls what she saw as very
large and tall. It stepped over a fence in front
of her and crossed the road. It turned to look
at her in the headlights, its eyes reflecting red, as
it stepped across the other fence. She never took that
road home again. My fifth encounter, My next episode was
a few years later, when I was fourteen or fifteen.
I was with a friend of mine, Donovan, who had
lost his mother some years earlier and would come and
stay with us for a couple of weeks at a time.
He would later become our city's assistant chief of police.
We were on the backside of the farm where there
was a very steep hill in our woods. I was
climbing the hill in my Yamaha dirt bike, like a
lot of us here in Kentucky. Do Donovan was standing
at the top of the hill watching me climb over it,
and as I pulled up to start my third ascent
of the day, Donovan came running down the steep hill.
As he got to me, I saw that his eyes
were wide open and he was as white as a ghost.
We jumped on the back of the motorcycle, and he
says to me, go, go go. I said, what is it?
He said, please just go. So I tore out, and
when we got within sight of the house, I slowed
down and stopped. He said what are you doing and
encouraged me to keep going. And I said, no, what
is it? He said, I saw it? You saw what
I said? He said it had to be what we
had heard a few years earlier, so we had my attention.
And I said, well, what did it look like? He
said it was big and black, and it cleared the
border fence in just one step. And now his sixth encounter.
Fast forward a few years when we were nineteen years old,
myself and my friends Mark and Robin went back with
a solid agreement between all three of us that no
one would run. We all had high powered rifles in hand,
and this was the first time that Mark had returned
to the old quarry. We took the hike down and
braved our way all the way to the inside of
the old quarry and poised ourselves for a standoff that
we might encounter. We stood our ground for four hours
from two to six pm. When we retreated at dark,
we had seen or heard nothing and was the legend gone.
It would cross my mind from time to time, but
I saw and heard nothing for about thirty years until
I was in my late forties. Here's Tyler's encounter. My
neighbor Tyler, who had lived on the next farm over,
had at one point given me the honor of performing
his wedding ceremony. He was over helping me unload the
firewood one day when he mentioned doing some deer hunting
with his family. I casually said to him, well, don't
go down by the old Rock quarry without a gun.
And he looked at me with a funny look on
his face and said, Randy, why would you say that?
While look back and said why would you ask like that?
He said, I didn't think anybody else knew. Now on
to Paul's story. This encounter is from one of my
neighbors and Christian's Strength team members. This young man is
almost as big as a bigfoot. He's six feet seven
inches tall, weighs three hundred and eighty pounds, and wears
a size sixteen shoe. Paul was walking to his favorite
fishing hole one day when he heard a large stick
break off to his right. He glanced over to see
what he had made the noise and couldn't believe what
he was seeing. He was looking at a dark figure
that was crouched down, and he recalled its facial features,
including heavy eyebrows and dark eyes, and it was huge.
Paul kept walking, but sped up his pace to get
out of the area fast. Coming back from his fishing hole,
he stumbled upon a very large footprint in the wet ground.
It was filled with water from the night before, but
he said it was huge, huge. It made his size
sixteen look small. Paul wasted no time on his route
to get back home. Now this is Richie's next encounter.
I think this would be encounter number seven in his forties.
When I was forty nine, I was coming home one
night from the gym about ten thirty pm. As my
boxer dog, Turbo and I walked up towards the house.
In the distance, I heard a distinctive, very familiar sound.
I got turbos still and leaned up against my home
and again heard the roar, yell scream that I'd heard
so many years ago into my childhood. The hair on
the back of my neck stood up, and I said
to myself, it's back. I told two of my neighbors
and my wife Carolyn what I heard. We all dismissed it.
But the next year I turned fifty and I was
diagnosed with a leaking aortic heart valve that could only
be taken care of by God or a heart urgent.
So I was in my backyard, in my hammock. We
live in a remote place, just a few farmhouses around.
It was on Tuesday night, around eleven PM. Carolyn was
already in bed. I was pouring my heart out in prayer,
trying to reach the throne room of Heaven. I'm praying
hard out loud, and as I'm wailing through the trees,
I hear something repeatedly using something to strike a tree.
I cried to remove it from my thoughts and my hearing,
and I kept praying. The louder and harder I prayed,
the louder and faster the wood knocking got. When I
would stop, it would stop. So I said to myself,
who in the world would be down in my holler
next to my house at this time of night and
on a Tuesday in the middle of July. So I
started putting it all together, the yelling, the rock throwing
and now the wood knocking, it can only be one thing.
I squatch a bigfoot or whatever you call it. I
still don't know what I and my friends and my
neighbors have experienced. But there's something out there now. I
personally have never seen it, but I know what I heard.
It's big and it's real. I don't think it means
us any harm, but I would not want to corner
it or provoke it. But there's actually more encounters here,
so so let's keep going. I'm on page six of
his book, and this is entitled Clay's Encounter. Clay's story
is in Halfway, Kentucky, which is in Allen County. Clay
is also one of the original team members of My
Christian Strongman Team. Clay is a big man. He's six
foot five and he weighs two hundred and sixty pounds.
He's no sissy or coward. Clay's an avid deer hunter
travels all over the United States hunting big game. I
would call him a professional big game hunter, and he
has all the trophies to prove it. He's been hunting
on one of the largest farms in Allen County. His
first encounter was a vocal while he was in his
deer stand overlooking a large bluff. The roar yell scream
was very loud and robust. Clay says the roar was
so loud that he said whatever made that sound was
really large. He was startled by the intense sound, and
he said to himself, what in the world is that? Clay,
being the sportsman he is, went back the next year
to hunt for the big trophy buck. While in his
stand with a bow and arrow in hand, he heard
animals scurrying out of the large woods below the bluff
he's hunting, and then the same thing he witnessed the
year before, the roar, yell scream happened again. The deer
came running out first, they were followed by livestock, and
then birds flew out. At this time, Big Clay decided
it was time to get his happy hind end down
and out of the tree stand. He hurried very quickly
to his truck and reached treated and Clay said, he
didn't see it, but it had to be very big
to make chest shaking sounds like that that he heard.
Clay said, Wow, what else could it be other than
a bigfoot? Here's another encounter Seth's father and David's encounter.
One day, David was out on the farm doing his
farm work and he heard a sound that was not
familiar with anything he had heard before, and he had
been on this farm forty plus years. Whatever it was,
David said, it was very loud and had to be
coming from something really big. Seth said to his dad,
what in the world is that? He said, I don't know,
but we're going to the house. And here's Seth's encounter.
Seth lives on a farm in Halifax, Kentucky, which is
in Allen County. His farm has been in his family
for three generation. The farm backs up to an even
larger farm, which is three hundred acres of wilderness. While
deer hunting one evening, Seth was sitting on the ground
leaning against the log when he heard something take a
step to his right. Seth looked over and raised his
deer rifle up and looked through the scope. He saw
something that was around seven feet tall. It had long arms,
and it was all brown in color. While looking through
his rifle scope, Seth whistled and it looked right dead
at him for a few seconds, and then it just
kept walking away from him. Seth said he was proud
he kept walking because he didn't think his deer rifle
would have taken it down. And then here is Seth
and Cooper's encounter. Seth and Cooper were out one night
coyote hunting, trying to call up some coyotes. Now, after
a while of calling, they laid down. Seth heard something
coming through the woods and it was crashing through the
woods and breaking down small trees and limbs. As it
was coming closer and closer, they were beginning to wonder
what it was. It was definitely not coyotes. It started
getting closer and then it was right on top of them.
Cooper said, shoot it Seth. While laying down, Seth spun
over and pulled the trigger of his twelve gay shotgun
right at the sound, which was less than twenty feet away.
The minute Seth's shot, Cooper flicked the big light on
and there was nothing there. They both said, where did
it go? It was just right there. It was a
very intense moment for both of them. And here is
Derek's encounter. This story comes from my neighbor that lives
about a mile down the road from me. But as
the crow flies less than a mile from my farm.
He's lived on the farm all of his life. This
is his encounter. When I was young, me and my
brother and a friend that was staying the night got
bored and went to the pond. As we did many times,
we would gather rocks and try to snaw up on
the frogs that line the banks of the pond. As
anybody that grew up with a pawd knows, the frogs
would all jump in as soon as they knew a
predator was near. The goal was to sneak up on
the frogs and see if we could hit one before
they all jumped in. After I'd thrown my stones, I
heard something in the woods. I turned to see a
hairy beast running on two legs through the forest, tearing
saplings away side to side to make its way through.
The breath was taken from me, and it's like everything
else stood still when it was gone. I yelled that
I had seen something running through the woods. No one
saw it, no one believed me. I just remember dark hair.
I had nightmares of were wolves for years after that.
I had not been exposed to bigfoot at that time.
I was, however, exposed to the monster movies of were wolves.
To my young eyes and mine, that's what it was.
Let me just break in and say, that could have
been a dog man. If you're thinking werewolf subconsciously, maybe
that's what you saw, Derek, I don't know. I'm sorry
to interrupt Randy's stories here. Let's go to the last story,
and it is called Matt Pettigo's experience. I'm the editor
and publisher of our local newspaper in Randy's hometown in Kentucky.
Randy is a good friend. He's a fine man and
as truthful a person as you will ever know. I'm
originally from northern California, and I still have relatives in
California and Oregon. In the summer of two thousand and nine,
I was visiting my now late grandfather in Bend, Oregon,
when I took a ride up into the nearby Cascade Mountains.
At an elevation of fifty four hundred feet above sea level,
between two peaks high enough to host snow year round
lies Scenic Sparks Lake. It is a lake of snow
melt between the peaks and it fluctuates in size. Looking
for that perfect postcard landscape shot with my camera I
ventured far out onto the dry lake bed until it
began to get marshy. I leapt over a small stream
of clear, cold snow water draining into the main body
of the lake, and I landed on a small island
and into something unexpected. I weighed two hundred and sixty pounds,
and I estimate, landing from a jump that I hit
the packed sandy volcanic soil with the impact of over
three hundred pounds. My hiking boots sank in about an
inch into the dense soil, paling in comparison to the
footprint I was now seeing. For scale, I laid my
six inch wide Panama Jack sunglasses beside it, and I
snapped this photo. The print was two inches deep, at
one point fourteen inches long, and more than six inches wide.
Based on the soil condition and my jump, you can
see my print on the left side of the tuft
of grass. Whatever made this print had to weigh over
five hundred pounds. What's more, whatever made the print had
dug its front toes into the soul as it walked,
ripping frontal soil upward and scrunching the other soul towards
the center of the print as it pulled its foot upward. Thus,
whatever made the print seems to have had a hinged foot,
a trait often seen in gray apes. At the upper
left of the print is the impression of a very
large big toe. It doesn't show well in the photo,
but it had dermal ridges, the mark of natural skin.
I saw nothing else, and I heard nothing strange, But
there it was a good reason for me to head
back to the car. I never knew what to make
of the bigfoot mystery. Is it fact or fiction? I
can say with certainty that something large, heavy, and barefoot
made this track in the wills of central Oregon. Randy
and his family, friends and neighbors, and thousands of other
people around the world and through the ages are seeing, hearing,
and experiencing something that science can't always explain. And, as
Randy said in his conclusion, something is out there.