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