Speaker 1: In the summer of two thousand and two, I was
Speaker 1: dating a girl from a small town in Missouri whose
Speaker 1: family owned a well known apple orchard. She lived in
Speaker 1: a house that overlooked the Missouri River on top of
Speaker 1: a hill on the Missouri River bluffs. I deer hunted
Speaker 1: this area for many years. I always wondered why the
Speaker 1: woods were so dead quiet, with no sounds of life
Speaker 1: coming from any type of animal. There were a few
Speaker 1: times I remember hearing large limbs snapping or sounds of
Speaker 1: trees falling over, but I didn't pay much attention to that.
Speaker 1: In many years of hunting this property, it was strange
Speaker 1: to me that I never killed many deer, especially since
Speaker 1: I was hunting on the edge of an apple orchard.
Speaker 1: The apple orchard sat directly on top of the Missouri
Speaker 1: River bluffs, and there were over one hundred acres of
Speaker 1: apple trees and hundreds of acres of woods. There was
Speaker 1: an unlimited food supply, a great water source from the river,
Speaker 1: high elevated hills, and deep thick woods. You could literally
Speaker 1: get lost in if you weren't familiar with the surrounding area.
Speaker 1: The next doorland owner, Jesse, who owned the cattle farm,
Speaker 1: directly across from the orchard asked me if I had
Speaker 1: seen any of his baby calves, because there were several
Speaker 1: of them missing, and at the time I thought a
Speaker 1: big cat, maybe a mountain lion or something related had
Speaker 1: killed them and dragged them into the steep embankments of
Speaker 1: the bluffs. I never thought much about it until now.
Speaker 1: What happened changed my life forever. It has riddled me
Speaker 1: with so much fear that my eyes won't stop tearing
Speaker 1: up as I write this story. I have seen more
Speaker 1: violent killings working as a Kansas City police officer than
Speaker 1: many will see in a lifetime. Many times I have
Speaker 1: caught myself tearing up at the sadness I've experienced on
Speaker 1: this job. But never in my life have I ever
Speaker 1: experienced tears caused by extreme fear again. The year was
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, and it still haunts me to
Speaker 1: this day. It was a hot summer night with clear skies,
Speaker 1: and the orchard was in the midst of its apple season.
Speaker 1: I left my girlfriend's house late at night and got
Speaker 1: into my vehicle and headed back home to Lexington. I
Speaker 1: drove slowly down a gravel road and approached an s
Speaker 1: curve the left side of the road was all apple
Speaker 1: trees and the right side was cattle. As I began
Speaker 1: to round the first part of the S curve, I
Speaker 1: saw a large black creature down on all fours facing
Speaker 1: the farm. At first, I thought it was a black bear,
Speaker 1: even though black bears are uncommon in this area. I
Speaker 1: slowed down, and as I got closer, my headlights lit
Speaker 1: up the creature fifteen yards away. Its hair reflected off
Speaker 1: my headlights and had a sort of a shimmering sparkling
Speaker 1: of fact. It stared at me with two large, piercing
Speaker 1: green eyes, and then turned and scurried off the gravel
Speaker 1: road toward the orchard. As I went into the S curve,
Speaker 1: I looked out my driver's side window, and I'll never
Speaker 1: forget what I saw till the day I die. It
Speaker 1: forever haunts my mind. While looking out my window, the
Speaker 1: creature stood upright on two legs, just ten feet from
Speaker 1: my vehicle. I was shocked. It was a giant, ape
Speaker 1: like creature that towered above my vehicle. He was eight
Speaker 1: feet tall and must have weighed eight hundred pounds of
Speaker 1: solid muscle. He had black, gray matted hair, long arms
Speaker 1: that went to his knees and a face completely covered
Speaker 1: with thick, straight hair. I slowly drove by and he
Speaker 1: stared right at me, unmoving, like he didn't know I
Speaker 1: could see him or didn't care. The entire encounter only
Speaker 1: lasted ten seconds, but it was the longest ten seconds
Speaker 1: of my life. It scared me so bad that once
Speaker 1: I drove past the creature, I downshifted my truck into
Speaker 1: second gear and almost killed the clutch. Thank god that
Speaker 1: didn't happen, because I would have probably had a heart attack.
Speaker 1: When I got back home to Lexington, I told my
Speaker 1: parents and my brother what had happened, and to this
Speaker 1: day they believed me. Six months ago, I reached out
Speaker 1: to Jesse, the owner of the cattle farm. I hadn't
Speaker 1: spoken to him in eighteen years, but I asked him
Speaker 1: about the missing baby calves again. He told me that
Speaker 1: his family had spent a week searching the property for
Speaker 1: any signs of them being attacked by big cats, but
Speaker 1: he never found evidence of them being killed or dragged away.
Speaker 1: They just disappeared and no bones were ever found. Everyone
Speaker 1: at the police department has heard my story, and two
Speaker 1: of my coworkers have had encounters with this same creature.
Speaker 1: One of them had a daytime encounter in the winter
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety four while he was bird hunting near Concordia.
Speaker 1: My cousin has had three encounters on a conservation ground
Speaker 1: called Baltimore Ben, which is only four miles east of
Speaker 1: my sighting on the bluffs. In one of his encounters,
Speaker 1: he had to fire a shot at the creature because
Speaker 1: it was stalking him while he was squirrel hunting. Thanks
Speaker 1: for letting me share my story. I hope whoever is
Speaker 1: listing from the Missouri area will come forward with their
Speaker 1: own stories. There have to be many more people who
Speaker 1: have had these encounters with the elusive creature, and I
Speaker 1: look forward to hearing about their experiences. I lived one
Speaker 1: mile from the school that I attended. I never had
Speaker 1: much fear of the woods, even after my first encounter
Speaker 1: with a bigfoot, and I knew my way through them
Speaker 1: from the house to the school. There were old logging
Speaker 1: roads through there, so they weren't hard to travel through. Well.
Speaker 1: One day, it was late in the fall and I
Speaker 1: didn't have to babysit my brother that day since he
Speaker 1: was at the doctor, so I took a long route
Speaker 1: home from school through the woods. I wasn't very far
Speaker 1: when I noticed something walking beside me one hundred yards away.
Speaker 1: At first I thought it was a bear, and my
Speaker 1: heart began to race, But then I realized it was
Speaker 1: walking on two legs and had slinked behind a tree.
Speaker 1: It was as big and black as the midnight sky,
Speaker 1: and it was a bigfoot, and it was much bigger
Speaker 1: than the first one I had seen. He was more
Speaker 1: powerful looking than the first one, and his hair was
Speaker 1: much shorter, kind of like a gorilla. He could not
Speaker 1: hide from me, though, and he didn't like that I
Speaker 1: noticed him, and he paced a few feet toward me,
Speaker 1: and I quickly realized he wasn't as friendly as the
Speaker 1: first one that I had encountered. The way he was moving,
Speaker 1: you'd have thought he was pissed off at me. My
Speaker 1: adrenaline was pumping at that point, and I bolted out
Speaker 1: of there. To my horror, he followed right after me.
Speaker 1: And I was a fast runner, and I was even
Speaker 1: on the track team. I was good, but he had
Speaker 1: no problem keeping up with my pace, and he could
Speaker 1: have easily overtaken me. So I sped up as fast
Speaker 1: as I could go, but this beast just kept right
Speaker 1: with me. At that point, I was terrified. I threw
Speaker 1: my books and I ran as fast as I could,
Speaker 1: not wasting the precious energy to look back at him.
Speaker 1: When my heart was thundering in my throat and I
Speaker 1: was depleted of oxygen, I couldn't run anymore, and I
Speaker 1: looked back and he was gone. Well. I didn't trust this, though,
Speaker 1: so I ran on until I got home. I remember
Speaker 1: my shaking fingers, rustling with my keys trying to get
Speaker 1: in the door. And when I got in, I slammed
Speaker 1: the door and I locked it, but I couldn't calm
Speaker 1: down because I knew he could still enter, just like
Speaker 1: the first one had done. I stayed freaked out all day,
Speaker 1: and I never went back through the woods again. I
Speaker 1: got in a lot of trouble for ditching those school books,
Speaker 1: and I had to pay for them, but I didn't
Speaker 1: care going back after them. Ever, that beast let me
Speaker 1: know that this was his territory, and in my mind,
Speaker 1: he could keep it. I'm a retired school teacher living
Speaker 1: in South Mississippi. About twenty years ago, I attended a
Speaker 1: teaching Writing to Children workshop taught by a lady from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: She was a professor at the USM at University of
Speaker 1: Southern Mississippi. All University of Southern Mississippi is where Brett
Speaker 1: Fahr played college football. By the way, but I digress,
Speaker 1: pardon me, She recounted this story to participants of the workshop.
Speaker 1: This happened in the mid nineteen seventies. She was sixteen
Speaker 1: years old. Her dad owned a country gas station and
Speaker 1: grocery store just north of Hattiesburg and lux near the river.
Speaker 1: I don't remember if it was the Leaf river of
Speaker 1: the Bowie Bowie Boie Bowie River, but she and a
Speaker 1: friend were hauling a load of trash and her dad's
Speaker 1: old standard shift pickup to a place near the river.
Speaker 1: They were unloading sacks of trash when they both heard
Speaker 1: something walking up the river. They listened as the splashing
Speaker 1: got closer, and then they noticed a nasty, putrid odor.
Speaker 1: And what they saw next terrified them. A huge, she said,
Speaker 1: between eight and nine feet tall, hairy, white creature came
Speaker 1: walking with purpose from the banks of the creek up
Speaker 1: a slight hill toward them. They jumped into the truck
Speaker 1: to leave, and the truck's ball tires were spinning in
Speaker 1: the sandy soil allowing the creature to almost reach the
Speaker 1: tailgate as her friend was screaming, go, go go, it's
Speaker 1: gonna get us. The old truck had no back window,
Speaker 1: and the odor from the creature was actually making them nauseated.
Speaker 1: The truck's wheels finally gained enough traction to spin out
Speaker 1: as she made it back to her dad's station. They
Speaker 1: ran inside, panicked and breathlessly telling what they I had seen.
Speaker 1: There were several local customers in the store that heard
Speaker 1: the girls share the story, and they commented that there
Speaker 1: had been several sightings of this creature. It had come
Speaker 1: to be called the White Gorilla. They also said that
Speaker 1: there had been a number of reports of missing dogs
Speaker 1: in the area. She actually wrote a short story recounting
Speaker 1: the event, which she entitled the White Gorilla. Oh, I'd
Speaker 1: love to read that story. Oh, I'd love to read
Speaker 1: that story. And there's a PostScript here. I must say
Speaker 1: that this is one of the best workshops I ever
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to attend. One of the most difficult
Speaker 1: problems children face when staring at a blank page after
Speaker 1: being instructed to write a story is what to write about.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you how many times I've heard I
Speaker 1: don't have anything to write about. Our instructor first had
Speaker 1: us think of an experience that left a lasting impression.
Speaker 1: She gave us construction paper in Elmer's glue and then
Speaker 1: had us tear page and illustrate the experience or memory.
Speaker 1: It was after we constructed our illustrations that we began
Speaker 1: to write our stories. It totally changed the way that
Speaker 1: I taught. I learned how important it was to model
Speaker 1: for students writings a process. She taught us how to
Speaker 1: teach the process. So I enjoy listening to Dixie Crypti it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for providing folks and opportunity to share their experiences.
Speaker 1: Yours truly, Robin, and you may use my name, Robin.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for that email. That White Gorilla story
Speaker 1: is so good, and again I would love to hear
Speaker 1: her short story the White Gorilla. Oh, I bet it's
Speaker 1: awesome and it's so cool that you. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you still teach anymore. This was twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: years ago, and I agree. Sometimes I have a lot
Speaker 1: of ideas for stories in my head. I'll sit here
Speaker 1: and look at the screen and just ready, quiet, ready
Speaker 1: to go, And now I cannot. It may take me
Speaker 1: an hour just to do the first sentence. But usually
Speaker 1: once you get started, the ideas just start going. They
Speaker 1: just start flowing. If there's anybody out there who has
Speaker 1: that problem like me and a lot of other people,
Speaker 1: just start writing, just start putting words on the paper,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it just comes to you. I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is about getting in that zone. If you
Speaker 1: can get in the zone that the words just come.
Speaker 1: Don't worry about the grammar, don't worry about the punctuation,
Speaker 1: don't worry about any of that stuff. Just start putting
Speaker 1: it on paper. You can go back and correct it.
Speaker 1: The most important thing is to get the idea, or
Speaker 1: if you're writing one of these stories, get the memories
Speaker 1: down on paper so they're in print. Look, people say
Speaker 1: videos are forever, they're not. These audio recordings are not forever.
Speaker 1: But if you put it in print, print it out
Speaker 1: on a piece of paper and start somewhere, that is
Speaker 1: more likely to be forever than some of these videos.
Speaker 1: All we need is one EMP pulse attack and all
Speaker 1: this stuff is wiped out. It's all gone, and that
Speaker 1: the chances of that happening in this culture are pretty good.
Speaker 1: So everything you've ever seen on video. H you know,
Speaker 1: it can disappear, but stuff printed on paper, written on paper,
Speaker 1: printed on paper has a better chance of surviving. So
Speaker 1: write your thoughts down, write them out. You can go
Speaker 1: back and edit them and make them good. Writing's not easy.
Speaker 1: She's right, it's it's a daunting task, especially to someone
Speaker 1: who doesn't do it. Anyway, that's my encouragement to people
Speaker 1: to write. I think you will enjoy it. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes you can look back on it and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad I wrote that. But anyway, that's Those
Speaker 1: are my ideas on writing. And thanks for listening to me,
Speaker 1: And thanks to Robin for sending this email so good.
Speaker 1: Didn't even have to send it to my editor because
Speaker 1: she's a writer, and it was written just perfectly. I
Speaker 1: had no trouble reading it, so thanks for that, Robin. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a short little pot I wanted to get
Speaker 1: something out on Sunday. I usually upload something on Sunday.
Speaker 1: I am just hammered with work right now. I've been
Speaker 1: working all weekend. I'm going to be busy for the
Speaker 1: next month or two with strict, tight deadlines, lots of changes,
Speaker 1: lots of extra work, blah blah, blah. It's just the
Speaker 1: nature of my business. But so some of these podcasts
Speaker 1: that I put out may be short, shorter like this
Speaker 1: because I can just knock them out real quick in
Speaker 1: the morning, but I appreciate you listening to it. I'll
Speaker 1: keep them cranking them out. And I'm also uploading these
Speaker 1: archive podcasts. You see a thumbnail that says archive. These
Speaker 1: are podcasts that I'm going back four or five six
Speaker 1: years and re editing and redoing the sound, taking all
Speaker 1: of my useless commentary out of it. It is only stories.
Speaker 1: There's no talking. There may be one or two where
Speaker 1: I left the talking in it because I think it
Speaker 1: was I think it was appropriate to do that. But
Speaker 1: on the podcast, if you look on Spotify or Apple,
Speaker 1: I've got over one hundred. I think there's like one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty up, but I'm just slowly bringing those
Speaker 1: over to YouTube. I think I'm up to twenty or
Speaker 1: twenty four. Some of them are shows so short that
Speaker 1: I'm putting them together and combining like three or four
Speaker 1: archives in one. But if you see those pop up
Speaker 1: on your YouTube screen, click on it. If you like
Speaker 1: these stories. These are older stories that the newer listeners
Speaker 1: probably haven't heard. You can click on them and you
Speaker 1: will be amazed at some of the stories I've gotten
Speaker 1: through the years. I think you'll be very much entertained
Speaker 1: and enjoy what you hear. So okay, thanks for listening
Speaker 1: and we'll see you guys on the next podcast. Appreciate
Speaker 1: you