Speaker 1: I have had reservations about telling anyone the events that
Speaker 1: have happened, but I figure if I get this off
Speaker 1: my chest, it'll help me. I was driving back from
Speaker 1: a family thing in Kansas, just past the border into
Speaker 1: Missouri where the highway curves after a turn off around
Speaker 1: Cleveland going to Freeman. It was past midnight, and as
Speaker 1: I picked up speed, my attention was drawn to the
Speaker 1: right side of the road. With my own eyes, I
Speaker 1: saw the biggest figure I had ever seen, standing in
Speaker 1: a ditch. I drive a Hommer and it has great headlights,
Speaker 1: but what I saw shook me to the core. It
Speaker 1: was no less than four solid feet across at the shoulders,
Speaker 1: and the head was covered in long hair, not a cone,
Speaker 1: but it was round. As my headlights hit the figure
Speaker 1: dropped down to its belly in the ditch, like it
Speaker 1: was dropping for cover. The mass of this thing was unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I drove past, never thinking about stopping, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: believe my eyes. And for the next hour driving home,
Speaker 1: I replated in my head, well, this weight on me
Speaker 1: because I was never a believer in the momo booger squatch,
Speaker 1: or whatever the kids call it these days. A week later,
Speaker 1: I went back to the spot where I had seen
Speaker 1: this thing, and when I pulled off the highway to
Speaker 1: look where it stood, I was shocked to see that
Speaker 1: based on where it had been standing in the ditch,
Speaker 1: which was at least four feet deep, this thing was
Speaker 1: at least eight feet tall. Now, if you skip forward
Speaker 1: to the winter, the kids and I went for a
Speaker 1: nature hike outside of Clinton, Missouri. It was the first
Speaker 1: nice day that winter, and we walked a good three miles.
Speaker 1: That day, I took the camera for kid picks, and
Speaker 1: we got a little more than we anticipated. In the
Speaker 1: frozen ground. We found some deep, barefoot tracks crossing the trail,
Speaker 1: and for the life of me, I could barely make
Speaker 1: a dentt in that ground with my own boots. The
Speaker 1: tracks were eighteen inches long with a stride of around
Speaker 1: six feet. My daughter is a complete doubter and made
Speaker 1: fun of my excitement. But as we moved on down
Speaker 1: the trail, we came across a second set of prints.
Speaker 1: They were not the same size, but they must have
Speaker 1: been heavier because they were stamped a lot deeper into
Speaker 1: the frozen ground. As I was taking pictures, my daughter
Speaker 1: got scared and demanded that we go home. Not long
Speaker 1: after that hike, I asked the newspaper editor if he
Speaker 1: would put my pictures in the paper, and to my amazement,
Speaker 1: he said it wasn't the first time he had seen
Speaker 1: tracks like this, but he could not print the pictures
Speaker 1: because it would draw the wrong kind of attention to
Speaker 1: our area. I was caught up by the fact that
Speaker 1: this type of thing is already known, but nothing has
Speaker 1: been said or done to bring the truth out, and
Speaker 1: that just kills me. I work out in the country
Speaker 1: on a large piece of property for some good people.
Speaker 1: I worked pretty much by myself, and I've had some
Speaker 1: unsettling things happened to me out there. Last summer. As
Speaker 1: I was clearing trees and gardening, I would occasionally get
Speaker 1: a gut feeling that someone was watching me. This time
Speaker 1: went by. The feeling intensified. One day I was talking
Speaker 1: to one of the owners. It was around noon and
Speaker 1: we were standing by the lake when we heard owls hooting,
Speaker 1: one right after another. It wasn't like anything I had
Speaker 1: ever heard before, and the intensity of it was alarming,
Speaker 1: one from one side of the lake and the other
Speaker 1: from the other side, and I commented that it was
Speaker 1: the strangest sounding owl I had ever heard, but the
Speaker 1: owners quickly changed the subject. Days later, I was out
Speaker 1: again clearing brush, and it was the dog days of summer,
Speaker 1: and at the end of the day, and I told
Speaker 1: myself I was going to fish in the backbond and
Speaker 1: then go for AHM afterward. The end of the day
Speaker 1: came and I jumped in a john boat and rowed out,
Speaker 1: And as I fished, I had another gut feeling, this
Speaker 1: time a little different than usual. It was almost a
Speaker 1: nauseating hunch that I was in for it, like I
Speaker 1: was a kid and you knew your parents were just
Speaker 1: about to notice that you did something wrong, and you're
Speaker 1: just waiting for the whooping. I'm talking toolshit whooping, if
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I threw my bait out
Speaker 1: and caught a catfish and reeled it in, and then
Speaker 1: I heard something in the woods by the lake crashing
Speaker 1: and breaking branches. It scared me to all ends, but
Speaker 1: I had it in my head that I worked this
Speaker 1: damn land and I earned my R and R time.
Speaker 1: My thought was that when I was done on the boat,
Speaker 1: i'd go confront whoever was making their presence known. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of poachers that come on the land,
Speaker 1: and it's nothing to have to run off a crackhead
Speaker 1: with shotguns on a weekly basis. When I threw the
Speaker 1: fil back in the water, the woods sounded like a
Speaker 1: tornado was crashing through. It was more intense than any
Speaker 1: poacher could have been, and that gut feeling I had
Speaker 1: only intensified. Of course, I didn't listen to it. I
Speaker 1: threw my bait out again, and the same thing happened,
Speaker 1: even louder than before, until finally a feeling of pure
Speaker 1: terror hit me. I finally listened to my gut and
Speaker 1: rowed back to the shore and got out of there.
Speaker 1: The next day, I knew I had work to do
Speaker 1: on the dock of that same pond. I had shaken
Speaker 1: a man's hand and it would be done. And that
Speaker 1: kind of thing means something in these parts. I loaded
Speaker 1: up my tools and went out early the next day.
Speaker 1: I replaced the boards on the dock, keeping one eye
Speaker 1: behind me the whole time. I hammered in the two
Speaker 1: by sixes and I hit the nails with five solid hits.
Speaker 1: Directly after the hits, I heard five knocks way off
Speaker 1: in the distance. I wrote it off as an echo,
Speaker 1: because trees do that sometimes. But the next time I
Speaker 1: hammered five solid times, the five knocks that answered back
Speaker 1: were a lot closer. It sounded like something thick and
Speaker 1: dense pounding on the hardwood, and after hearing it, I
Speaker 1: stood up and listened to the sound of something running
Speaker 1: through the timber. The distance they covered was draw dropping.
Speaker 1: It just didn't make sense. They crossed that hilly brush
Speaker 1: covered woods like a cheetah on an open plane. And
Speaker 1: the time it took me to start walking the twenty
Speaker 1: feet off the dock, I heard the sound of someone
Speaker 1: with two feet jump and then along silence. Only when
Speaker 1: I made it off the dock did I hear the
Speaker 1: thud of the landing, and it hit the dead foliage
Speaker 1: with its feet and slid to a stop not thirty
Speaker 1: feet from me on the hill above. But what came
Speaker 1: next scared the hell out of me. I couldn't see
Speaker 1: past the trees in the brush, but I was frozen
Speaker 1: in fear because I knew it was right above me,
Speaker 1: and I could hear it breathing in and out in long,
Speaker 1: deep breaths, like it was sniffing me or smelling me.
Speaker 1: Longer than any human can hold air, and then the
Speaker 1: EXHL came. It was long and gurgled. I've never been
Speaker 1: so scared in my life, and it shook me to
Speaker 1: my core. I left my tools and backed away a
Speaker 1: few steps to get into my ride, and as I
Speaker 1: backed up, I saw the outline of what looked like
Speaker 1: the thing I saw the year before in the ditch.
Speaker 1: I got in my vehicle and drove off like a
Speaker 1: bat out of hell, heading back into town. I called
Speaker 1: the owner and told him exactly what happened, and the
Speaker 1: most alarming part of the entire ordeal was his response, Well,
Speaker 1: don't go back in there again unarmed, he told me.
Speaker 1: I told him that I had a twenty two long
Speaker 1: rifle with me, but he just snickered and told me
Speaker 1: it wasn't big enough. He must have sensed the fear
Speaker 1: in my tone, because he tried to calm me by
Speaker 1: playing the experience off as being another poacher. After that,
Speaker 1: I sort of got used to the idea that there
Speaker 1: were strange creatures in the land, and I have gotten
Speaker 1: used to the feeling of them watching me. The area
Speaker 1: where I work is surrounded by caves, and after I
Speaker 1: told him what happened, the owner told me about one
Speaker 1: cave in particular, that I should absolutely stay completely away
Speaker 1: from Hey after what I saw, you don't have to
Speaker 1: tell me twice. When I got home, my wife told
Speaker 1: me that I was white as a ghost. I tried
Speaker 1: to tell her what had happened, and she encouraged me
Speaker 1: to share my experience. I sent my story to a
Speaker 1: man who works for the government, and a day later
Speaker 1: I happened to check my email and found out the
Speaker 1: message hadn't been sent at all. It was still in
Speaker 1: my drafts, not sent yet, like I hadn't written the
Speaker 1: email in the first place. So I wrote the email
Speaker 1: and I sent it a second time, and the same
Speaker 1: thing happened. Well, I was starting to think somebody didn't
Speaker 1: want me talking about my experience. Well here I am
Speaker 1: attempting this one last time. If my story gets to you,
Speaker 1: I will be amazed.