Speaker 1: In the late nineteen sixties, my dad purchased twenty acres
Speaker 1: of land along the southern coast of Maine, several miles
Speaker 1: from any town or our closest neighbors. It was near
Speaker 1: a small state park along the Kennebec River, and that
Speaker 1: is where I grew up. From the age of three,
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time wandering the deer trails
Speaker 1: and jeep trails, and the paths that cut through the
Speaker 1: woods surrounding our property, and the houses down the road
Speaker 1: that were closer to the state park. Sometimes we would
Speaker 1: see as many as twenty deer in our backyard. One
Speaker 1: late autumn afternoon in nineteen seventy eight, I went out
Speaker 1: back and followed a long jeep trail to a huge
Speaker 1: tree that was so tall we could see it from
Speaker 1: our backyard. Winter was closing in and I knew it
Speaker 1: would soon be too cold to be out climbing trees,
Speaker 1: but I wanted one more chance to climb my favorite tree.
Speaker 1: I made my way up the jeep trail behind our house,
Speaker 1: through a densely forested woods to a deer trail I
Speaker 1: knew would take me to the spot, and as I
Speaker 1: walked along, I became aware of the sound of my
Speaker 1: own breathing. The woods had become unusually quiet and still
Speaker 1: in the late afternoon. I approached the tree and began
Speaker 1: to climb. I was about halfway up when an uncomfortable
Speaker 1: feeling came over me. I felt exposed and vulnerable. It
Speaker 1: was a big tree, and even halfway I was pretty
Speaker 1: high up, so I looked around from one side to
Speaker 1: the other. I couldn't see anything in the light of
Speaker 1: the approaching dust, but I could not shake the feeling
Speaker 1: that I was being watched. No one lived close enough
Speaker 1: to be trespassing on our property, nor had I ever
Speaker 1: seen strangers in our woods before. Even so I felt
Speaker 1: so uncomfortable that I abandoned my climb and I started
Speaker 1: to walk back to the jeep trail. Not far down
Speaker 1: the trail, I began to hear something rustling in the
Speaker 1: leaves and the dense tree cover beside me. I stopped
Speaker 1: to listen, but as soon as I did, it stopped too.
Speaker 1: It started walking again, and this time a little faster,
Speaker 1: and the leaves began to rustle again. I stopped three
Speaker 1: or four times, and each time the sound stopped when
Speaker 1: I did, and started again when I started. By now
Speaker 1: I was completely unnerved at the time. My only thought was,
Speaker 1: what is someone doing up here? I got so scared
Speaker 1: that once I got halfway down the trail and I ran.
Speaker 1: I ran as fast as I could until I hit
Speaker 1: the opening into our back lawn where our garden was planted,
Speaker 1: and I was within sight of the house. It didn't
Speaker 1: occur to me at the time that the eerie silence,
Speaker 1: the spooky feeling of being watched, and the sound of
Speaker 1: some unseen something escorting me out of the woods might
Speaker 1: be something other than my overactive imagination. Two or three
Speaker 1: years later, I discovered a tepee type structure on the
Speaker 1: edge of the woods near that same big tree. I
Speaker 1: assumed my brothers had built it, but when I asked
Speaker 1: them about it, they had no idea what it was.
Speaker 1: They thought it looked cool, but figured it was the
Speaker 1: work of someone else. Since the woods and brush were
Speaker 1: too dense to walk through in that spot, no one
Speaker 1: ever pursued it. I never told anyone about the first incident,
Speaker 1: and before long I was too busy climbing trees and
Speaker 1: exploring the woods again. Now I grew up, and I
Speaker 1: eventually moved away. Only recently has it occurred to me
Speaker 1: that it might have been something else, that there might
Speaker 1: really be something out there. Now I think I might
Speaker 1: have interrupted something while it was honeting and they were
Speaker 1: letting me know they wanted me out of the way.
Speaker 1: I never actually saw anything, but I certainly felt it
Speaker 1: and I heard it. That was enough for me, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad I trusted my instincts and promptly left the area.
Speaker 1: I wish we still own the property. Knowing what I
Speaker 1: know now, I'd love to go back and explore a little.
Speaker 1: The whole area has been built up quite a bit
Speaker 1: since then. I've heard of a few sightings a few
Speaker 1: miles west of where our house was, and it makes
Speaker 1: me wonder. I'm sixty five years old and I grew
Speaker 1: up on a large farm in the corner of northwest Georgia,
Speaker 1: which is within spitting distance of Chattanooga. I can see
Speaker 1: Lookout Mountain from my childhood bedroom, and I have two
Speaker 1: older brothers. One is thirteen years my senior and the
Speaker 1: next one is seven years older than me. I was
Speaker 1: very much a tomboy as a kid, running through the
Speaker 1: woods and fields of our three hundred acre farm. Our
Speaker 1: nearest neighbor was a mile away. Daddy raised beef, cattle
Speaker 1: and pigs, and we grew tomatoes and beans for sale
Speaker 1: at the farmers' markets and cheddingt in Atlna. Every Sunday
Speaker 1: afternoon we'd round up whichever cows we had pre selected
Speaker 1: to be taken to the sale the following day. This
Speaker 1: was one of my favorite memories because it meant time
Speaker 1: in the fields and woods, and it was searching for
Speaker 1: cows and calves, and they always seemed to know that
Speaker 1: they were on the market list, and therefore they would
Speaker 1: run away. I say all this just to give you
Speaker 1: a bit of context to my Bigfoot story. Growing up
Speaker 1: in the late sixties in the early seventies, I had
Speaker 1: never heard of bigfoot. I never heard anyone talk of
Speaker 1: any wood boogers or the likes in the area. We
Speaker 1: had deer and bobcats, and the occasional black bear and
Speaker 1: an escaped hog that had gone feral, but nothing more
Speaker 1: exotic than that. I had no fear at all of
Speaker 1: anything in our expanse of pine and oak forest around
Speaker 1: the farm. Our house sat in a small clearing next
Speaker 1: to five cleared acres behind our house and a few
Speaker 1: more cleared for pig pens and pig barns and cattle
Speaker 1: bars and feed lots. Just behind our house was a
Speaker 1: few acres of grazing, which was surrounded on three sides
Speaker 1: by piny woods. The barns were two hundred yards from
Speaker 1: the house. One night in late spring of nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 1: we had several hogs who were farrowing. It was always
Speaker 1: at night, it seems, so. My mom and dad and
Speaker 1: my brother were at the pig barn tending to the pigs.
Speaker 1: My older brother was already away at college. Most of
Speaker 1: the time, I'd be right in the midst of the pigs,
Speaker 1: because there's nothing cuter than a newborn piglet, in my opinion.
Speaker 1: For whatever reason, on this night, I'd been left to
Speaker 1: sleep in my bedroom while the others were at the
Speaker 1: pig barn. My room had one window which was fairly
Speaker 1: low to the ground and it went nearly to the ceiling.
Speaker 1: It also had a door to the front porch, which
Speaker 1: in warm weather I kept open along with the window
Speaker 1: to catch whatever breeze I could. Of course, we didn't
Speaker 1: have air conditioning, but on this night I was awakened
Speaker 1: by footsteps on the porch, and I looked out through
Speaker 1: the screen door, expecting to see one or more of
Speaker 1: my family coming back from the pig barns. But what
Speaker 1: I saw instead was a big shadow. It was a
Speaker 1: huge black shadow standing on the porch five feet or
Speaker 1: so from my screen door. It was facing me, but
Speaker 1: in the darkness, I couldn't make out any features or details,
Speaker 1: just the outline of a hulking body that was so
Speaker 1: tall it had to hunch over to fit on the porch.
Speaker 1: The ceilings were eight foot tall. There it stood there,
Speaker 1: silent except for its loud, moist breathing, which reminded me
Speaker 1: of a horse after a long run. I wasn't frightened.
Speaker 1: I was just confused. What was this thing? Am I
Speaker 1: seeing it? Or am I still asleep and dreaming. I
Speaker 1: could hear the squealing of pigs in the distance, so
Speaker 1: I knew I was awake. Just as I consider getting
Speaker 1: up out of bed to shut the lock on the
Speaker 1: wooden door, the shadow took a step off the porch
Speaker 1: and I saw it pass by my open window and
Speaker 1: head around to the back of the house well. I
Speaker 1: jumped up, and I shut and locked the door, and
Speaker 1: I pulled down the glass panes of the window. I
Speaker 1: thought about running to my parents, but what would I
Speaker 1: tell them. So I stayed in my room until they
Speaker 1: finally returned, trying to make sense of what I had seen.
Speaker 1: I never spoke to them about it, because it would
Speaker 1: seem foolish in my family, which tolerated little foolishness, so
Speaker 1: I kept the whole story to myself. The following summer,
Speaker 1: or maybe the summer after that, my brother got a
Speaker 1: copy of a magazine called Field and Stream in the mail,
Speaker 1: and on the cover was a still photo of the
Speaker 1: Bigfoot from the Patterson Gimlin film. Well. I was transfixed.
Speaker 1: There was the shadow that I had seen on my
Speaker 1: porch that spring night. This was a real thing, a
Speaker 1: true life monster. Heart raced as I tried to put
Speaker 1: the pieces together. Could this thing live in our own
Speaker 1: piney woods? Surely not? I thought this Bigfoot lived way
Speaker 1: out west, not here in Georgia. Over the next few weeks,
Speaker 1: I studied the dense pine forest just behind our house,
Speaker 1: which stretched for hundreds of acres. My eyes were always
Speaker 1: drawn to that tree line, wondering if I might catch
Speaker 1: a glimpse one day of what I had seen on
Speaker 1: the porch. I never heard it's called, I never smelled it,
Speaker 1: never had a rock thrown at me. I wasn't afraid.
Speaker 1: I was intrigued. I wondered if it was lonely like
Speaker 1: I was. Sometimes I even wondered if it had come
Speaker 1: looking for someone or something to relieve some of that loneliness.
Speaker 1: I know that sounds crazy. Two cowboys in California had
Speaker 1: just discovered a monster in the wilderness, and I was
Speaker 1: concerned it might be lonely. Well, I never saw it again,
Speaker 1: but I did become a psychologist, maybe out of that
Speaker 1: childhood connection to helping the lonely, or maybe not. In
Speaker 1: any case, I've always been fascinated with other people's experiences
Speaker 1: with Bigfoot, and I truly appreciate the form that you
Speaker 1: provide for them to share their stories with the rest
Speaker 1: of us. For several years, we lived out in the
Speaker 1: country where nothing much ever happened. My life was and
Speaker 1: is typical of most people. Our property begins at the
Speaker 1: bottom of a hill, with our house on the opposite
Speaker 1: end atop of bluff, and the driveway is very steep
Speaker 1: and difficult to get up in bad weather. I used
Speaker 1: to work with mentally and physically handicapped adults in a classroom.
Speaker 1: There was one individual that had several disabilities, and he
Speaker 1: took a liking to me. He had surgery that resulted
Speaker 1: in complications, and sadly, he passed away the following day.
Speaker 1: A few weeks after that, I started noticing some sounds
Speaker 1: late at night when I was in the office. I
Speaker 1: didn't think anything about it because we lived in the
Speaker 1: country and there are lots of sounds that make no sense.
Speaker 1: And one night, while I was surfing the net, I
Speaker 1: turned around and saw what looked like a see through,
Speaker 1: floating white mass with long eyes and a droopy mouth.
Speaker 1: It was completely transparent, but it floated right near the door,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't moving. Needless to say, it scared me
Speaker 1: a bunch. Actually, I thought I had fallen asleep and
Speaker 1: I was dreaming. These occurrences started happening more and more
Speaker 1: as the weeks went by, and I started talking to
Speaker 1: this ghost, but I never got any reply or outward response.
Speaker 1: After several weeks, I kept racking my brain trying to
Speaker 1: figure out why I was seeing this translucent image more
Speaker 1: and more, and then it finally hit me. It was
Speaker 1: the ethereal image of this man from my classroom who
Speaker 1: had passed away. There was a strange incident that involved
Speaker 1: him and me before he died. One day in the classroom,
Speaker 1: just weeks before his demise, he walked up behind me
Speaker 1: and patted my back. It was like some creepy ripples
Speaker 1: spread through my body, and it gave me goosebumps. I
Speaker 1: think he actually had physically passed something to me. I
Speaker 1: kept talking to this ghostly image that had first appeared
Speaker 1: in my office. I directed it to go home. Maybe
Speaker 1: this being was waiting for me to recognize it as
Speaker 1: my former student and that it was now okay to
Speaker 1: pass on to the other side. It never came back again,
Speaker 1: but things were soon becoming more interesting. Two weeks later,
Speaker 1: I started seeing a progression of images and ghosts going
Speaker 1: from my son's room on the north side of a
Speaker 1: house to my bedroom, where my now ex was sleeping.
Speaker 1: There were all kinds of visuals streaming past. One looked
Speaker 1: like a gypsy. The man short and had a typical
Speaker 1: hat of the nineteenth century and a heavy wool suit.
Speaker 1: And all these images were in gray tones with no
Speaker 1: color at all. One night, I got up to go
Speaker 1: to the bathroom, and afterward I walked into the living
Speaker 1: room to get a drink. There was a white cloud
Speaker 1: hovering above a chair. Maybe logic would determine that it
Speaker 1: was a reflection through the window, but we always closed
Speaker 1: all the curtains before we went to bed. I walked
Speaker 1: over and placed my hands around it, and the orb
Speaker 1: felt cold and clammy. I was able to press my
Speaker 1: hands into something that seemed to be the consistency of
Speaker 1: a dense fog. There was a distinct temperature difference around
Speaker 1: that chair. One evening, my son came out of his
Speaker 1: bedroom and walked down the hallway to the family room,
Speaker 1: and he stopped and stared at me for a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes. He asked how I got there. He claimed
Speaker 1: that he just saw me back in the office sitting
Speaker 1: at the well. I'd been in the family room for
Speaker 1: well over an hour. We kept hearing bells from somewhere
Speaker 1: in the house, and cans would fall off the shelf.
Speaker 1: Our little Yorkshire terrier would go into the kitchen and
Speaker 1: start growling and barking for no reason. And we coexisted
Speaker 1: for several years with these strange spirits. Not everyone was
Speaker 1: entertained by these so called phantoms. Some visitors to our house, well,
Speaker 1: they never came back. They always felt uneasy. The house
Speaker 1: was two years old when we bought it, and the
Speaker 1: previous owners were more than happy to move out. They
Speaker 1: chose to build another place rather than to tolerate all
Speaker 1: the unearthly occupants they never invited to share their living
Speaker 1: space in the first place. I think the bluff that
Speaker 1: we were living on top of was an Indian burial ground,
Speaker 1: and the spirits were coming through me because of a
Speaker 1: man who touched my back and sent chills through my body.
Speaker 1: He knew he was not long for this world, and
Speaker 1: he gave me a part of him to help him
Speaker 1: pass on to get to as much needed eternal rest.
Speaker 1: Robert A. Baker, a well known skeptic, an author, and
Speaker 1: investigator of paranormal events, was fond of saying there are
Speaker 1: no haunted places, only haunted people. Anyone who has ever
Speaker 1: had a paranormal experience would probably disagree with him, But
Speaker 1: I wonder if it's possible that his assertion contains a
Speaker 1: grain of truth. Why is it that some residents of
Speaker 1: a supposed haunted house can have dozens of paranormal experience
Speaker 1: while others living in the same home notice nothing unusual.
Speaker 1: It is as simple as varying levels of sensitivity to energy,
Speaker 1: which many people believe spirits to be and that same
Speaker 1: spiritual energy and intelligence are the actual souls of once
Speaker 1: living people. In recent years, electronic equipment can measure environmental
Speaker 1: changes such as abnormally high levels of electromagnetic energy, changes
Speaker 1: in temperature and barometric pressure, and other common signs of
Speaker 1: paranormal activity are becoming popular tools for investigators. Readings from
Speaker 1: these machines can help confirm and verify impressions of people
Speaker 1: who are experiencing unusual activity. We moved out of that
Speaker 1: house a few months later, and since that time, neither
Speaker 1: my son nor have I witnessed another ghost. A person
Speaker 1: sees things out of the corner of their eyes, but
Speaker 1: nothing as real as the experiences like we had. It
Speaker 1: was a house and not a home. It was a
Speaker 1: great location, but I knew there was something not right
Speaker 1: from the time we first saw it, and now we
Speaker 1: know what that was.