Speaker 1: I'm sixty five years old and I live in the
stycks of northeast Texas, down in the Soffer River Bottoms area. Yeah,
I'm a Redneck, she says. I'm very proud of my heritage.
But I'm also a college educated business analyst, so by
both training and nature, I deal in facts. As you
probably know, there have been too many sightings here to
count over the years since nineteen seventy five, when I
was eighteen, I have joked that I had my own
bigfoot encounter. While I was with my fiance one late
summer night. We had turned off the farm to market
road onto a blacktop that led to a dirt road.
Then we went through the gate into a cow pasture
to discuss our upcoming wedding. It was a warm summer night,
so we had the windows down to catch the breeze
while we sat in the back seat and talked among others.
That's what I was about to say, Dottie, I don't
think you just get in the back seat and a
cow pasture to just have a talk. Come on, in
the middle of our discussion, I heard something circling the car. Well.
It took a moment to get my fiance to focus
on the sound, and his response wasn't what I'd hoped for.
That's just a cow walking around, he assured me. And
then he sat up and announced, that's not a cow. Now.
We've had the rare black bear come down out of
the ozarks, and cougars and large black cats have been
seen on occasion, but what I was hearing was not
walking on four feet. We both jumped up and put
ourselves together and climbed into the front seat. My fiance
put the car into drive and spun his tires in
the wet grass for a minute, and then headed for
the gate. I tried to tell him just drive through it,
but he insisted on opening it. While I drove through,
he got out of the car and I slid into
the driver's seat. I was watching my fiance through the
rearview mirror when I saw something large coming at us
really fast. I started screaming for my fiancee to get
in the car. He looked up and saw what I saw,
threw down the gate, jumped in the car as fast
as he could. I didn't waste any time getting us
out of there. It came through the gate after us,
but that's as far as it went and we never
saw it again. In the moonlight, I could see it
sillo wet, but not much in detail. What I did
see was a big and covered in black hair, not fur.
It was long, stringy hair. It stood head and shoulders
above my five foot eleven fiance. He took me home
and we did what everyone does. We never talked about
it again. It wasn't for the lack of trying on
my part. Every time I mentioned it during our twenty
two year marriage, he would play it off as me
being two and hebriated, and that he couldn't be held
responsible for what I saw, and then everyone would have
a good laugh. Well, eventually I started laughing at it too,
and I began telling the story as a joke. It
was easy to do when all the shows on TV
reinforced the idea that Bigfoot really is a joke. And
then I started listening to your show. When I heard
other people's encounters, I realized then that it probably wasn't
a joke. The stories I was hearing began triggering childhood memories,
and I realized that I'd been having encounters since I
was a kid. I realized this is turning into a
long story. But I hope others will hear it and
it will trigger their memories and make them rethink a
few ideas as well. We often visited my paternal grandparents,
who lived deeper in the river bottoms than we did.
Whenever we'd stay the night, Granny would always tell us
not to go outside alone at night, or the boogerman
would get us. They owned dogs that wouldn't let anybody
in the yard unless Granny called them off. But there
were a lot of nights when I'd wake up to
the sound of heavy footsteps outside. I always assumed it
was Granny because I could hear Granddaddy snoring in the
room and the dogs weren't barking. Granny was not quite
five feet tall, and she weighed less than one hundred pounds.
Looking back, those couldn't have been her footsteps I heard.
And when I'd ask about it the next morning and
wondered where the dogs were, she'd always say the boogers
must have got them. After daylight, the dogs would come
back and everything would be forgotten. There was a pond
off an old dirt road that ran to the river
bottom where we used to like to fish and camp out.
On occasion, it was called Booger Pond. There were five
of us kids, my older sister who was seventeen, my
two brothers fifteen and twelve. I was nine, and my
younger sister was seven. Our parents would drop us off
and tell us to be careful and remind us that
granny lived just a couple of miles across the woods.
If anything happened. My three older siblings all had guns,
a twenty two single shot, a single shot four ten,
and a twelve gage. Sometimes we'd hear heavy splashes in
the pond that were explained away as fist jumping or
pigs rooting around. A Few times we woke up the
next morning to find piles of rocks in the door
of the tent. Look what the pigs dug up, someone
would say with a shrug. About this same time, I
remember camping in our back pasture. We grew up on
a fifty acre farm, the back pasture of which had
a woodline that stretched between the fence and a creek bed.
It was one of our favorite getaways after a long
day in the hayfields or running cattle. One night, we
were out there sleeping under the stars around the fire
when we started hearing the coyotes getting a lot close
than they normally do, except they didn't quite sound like coyotes,
and there was an occasional scream that sounded somewhat like
a panther. My older siblings said it was time to
get home. They had their guns, and they told my
baby sister and me to each grab a good stick
of wood ei of the fire to use as a torch.
Don't look back, they told us, keep the torches pointing
toward the house. Growing up, we would often hear stories
of boogers going on to one neighbor or another's back
porch and making a mess. And occasionally there were the
cows that were found in the pasture, ripped to shreds
and half eaten. Both of my brothers have passed on,
so I can't ask them about it. Whenever I asked
my older sister, she says I was too young to
have any of those memories, and she's too old to
think about that nonsense. Now. She and my older sister
lived two miles from our grandparents' old farm, and it's
interesting that they'll go outside at night to see what
the dog is barking at, but if they hear something
in the dog is solid. They stay inside. There's one
more thing. It's not a memory, more like glimpses of
a memory. When I was about five, I remember being
afraid of red eyes in the window. To this day,
I have a panic attack if I see an animal
with red eyes in real life or in a movie.
For most of my life, I've had a recurring dream
about animals circling my house at night. I see red
eyes in the window watching me when I find myself
outside and this dog face animal is standing up right
in front of me. The dream is so vivid, and
I always wake up panicked and crying. What frightens me
the most is that I started having the dream about
the same time. My dad came home one night from
his second shift job and found me standing in the yard.
As far as I I know, I had never before,
nor have I ever since, walked in my sleep. Yet
on that night, my father found me outside with the dogs.
One of them was a half wolf, half German shepherd,
and the other was an English shepher clearly in protection mode.
As soon as my dad got out of the car,
the dogs ran off chasing something. The next day he
told me he'd found the dogs. They'd been in a
fight with something, and he thought it might have been
a wolf, and it tore them up so bad he
had to put them both down. A couple of years ago,
I mentioned my dream to my younger sister and she
turned to white as a ghost and said she had
the same dream. We went to our older sister, who
confirmed that she has the dream too, and then we
did what we always do. We didn't never talk about
it again. I served twenty two years in the Army
as a military policeman and spent loads of time in
the woods, which I loved as I grew up in
the city. I've never told anyone about what I'm about
to tell you. My unit was conducting pre deployment training
at Fort Polpe, Louisiana in the far reaches of the base,
in an area called Peace and Ridge. I love this
area of remoteness. I was stationed there in the late eighties.
We had finished training for the day in eighth chow,
completed all the meetings and were settling down for the evening.
Always chose to sleep outside to get away from all
the snoring and farting of the twelve man's sleep tent.
I slept on the ground a few yards away, But
this time I strung up a portable hammock, the kind
that you can roll up and fit in a pocket
of your field pack, so I could get off the ground.
A snake had crawled into my sleeping bag with me
the last time I slept on the ground. There would
be no more of that for me. I was settling
in and I remembered I had some orange I took
from chow, so I decided to have a snack. That's
when I smelled a nasty skunk. It was horrible, and
I thank god that I was off the ground. It
was a bright night, even though the moon was not
quite full, and the sky was clear. It was a
perfect night to sleep under the stars. Out of the
corner of my eye, I saw someone walking, and I
assumed it was another sergeant checking the perimeter, or someone
hitting the woodline to relieve himself. Well, I didn't look
up from the orange I was peeling, and I said,
watch out, there's a nasty skunk out that way. And
at the sound of my voice, the figure stopped and
headed towards me, stopping about four feet from me, and
then squatted down next to me in my hammock. I
turned my head to ask what he wanted, and to
my shock, in horror, I was looking at a guy
in a camouflaged Gilly's suit. It was really weird. And
then I realized that was not what I was looking at,
and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I focused
in a little better in the dark. It was a bigfoot,
not a giant bigfoot, but a little bigfoot. And in
my shock, I must have jumped about, causing my hammock
to swing, and that caused him to jump back. He
stood there, focused on the hammock, swinging slightly. As scared
as I was. I got the sense that he wasn't threatening,
but more curious, judging by the expression on his face.
And yes, it was a hymn. I've heard they can
sense your intentions, so I don't know why, but I
handed him the orange that I had just peeled. I said,
if you'll go away, you can have my orange. The
creature cocked his head and took the orange from my hand,
and then stood up and reached out and pushed my hammock.
It caused me to start swinging again, and then it
began making cooing noises like a chimpanzee does when it's amused.
The tree line was a few yards away, and from
there came the scariest scream I've ever heard. The little
bigfoot looked in the direction of that scream, and then
it looked back at me. I said, your mama's calling.
He held up the orange as if thanking me, and
then it was gone in an instant without making any noise.
After a few minutes, I decided screw this, and I
almost kill myself trying to get out of my hammock,
and I slept on the ground in the middle of
the tent. The next morning, I went to collect my
hammock and field pack, only to find three shiny rocks
piled on top of my pack. Never in a million
years did I ever think I'd experience anything like this.
I never once felt threatened. I was scared, yes, but
not threatened. I never again slept out sideline that alone,
and I still have my three rocks. I traded for
an orange with a little bigfoot. So I was eighteen
years old when this happened. I lived in Connecticut. Now
I'm fifty years old. Now this is the first time
I've spoken of this. In fact, I had to explain
it all to my wife, because she wasn't interested in
hearing that I'm writing a long email about nothing. At
the age of sixteen, I moved out of my house
to live with my cousin and his wife. They lived
on a farm that my cousin's wife's family had owned
for years. They had over one hundred acres of property
that was backed up by water company property, So to
say that this was the most woods I'd ever seen
was an understatement. They had all the animals you would
expect to see on a farm, but the family's main
source of income were their cows. They raised both milk
and meat cows, and they they all roamed free in
separate fields. These people were adamant about not letting strangers
on their land, and they had no problem expressing their
no hospitality rules. Me Bringing friends onto the property was
also frowned upon. Their driveway was six tenths of a
mile long just over half a mile. It was an unpaved,
rocky stretch of driveway. If you didn't own a truck
or an suv and didn't know how to maneuver it,
you would definitely do damage to your vehicle. You'll understand
why I'm including the trivial description of the driveway later
in the story. I spent a lot of time in
those woods hunting and fishing. After a while, I noticed
that there were quite a few man made trails that
went all over the property. Some went straight to some
little pop up trailers that were always there. No one
ever stated them, but I saw them that they seemed
to be cashes for storing hunting rifles. There were four
of these little campers all over their property, and if
there were more, I never saw them. When I ask
about these campers, I was told that they used to
get a lot of poachers on the property, and it
was a way to scare people off if you fired
a weapon into the air well. That answer was a
good answer, but it still seemed weird that these people
held on to so many guns. There were even a
few nights that I was called upon to help scare
off trespassers, but I never actually saw any. There was
definitely a problem with animals going missing on this form,
so it all seemed normal to be woken in the
middle of the night to run out in the woods
with a shotgun and fire a few shells in the
air over the course of the two years I had
been there, I got to know the property well. I
also got used to walking in the middle of the night.
But I don't care who you are. If you spend
any time alone in the woods, especially at night, it
can be scary. I think back now, and I realized
there were things that happened and we never gave it
a second thought. Late one night, my cousin, his wife,
and myself were called because her parents said the pigs
had gotten loose. When we got to the pig pen,
we saw that the door had been ripped off. We
assumed that it was probably a coyote or a wolf.
I don't know if you've ever had to try to
catch baby pigs, but it isn't easy. It took us
hours to round up the baby pigs except for one,
and we assumed it got away and we forgot about it.
There were times I remember having to get out of
bed in the middle of the night for weird reasons.
On another night, we were told that there were raccoons
in the barn making a mess, and when we got
to the barn, we called her parents on the walkie
talkies to let them know that we were there, and
they said to stay out outside and fire a few
rounds into the air, and do not go in the barn.
They said, well, we shot a few times into the sky.
We heard noises inside the barn, and at this point
her parents were just arriving on a couple of ATVs.
They said for us to stay put because the raccoons
would leave on their own. One morning, her parents told
us to go squirrel hunting because they were eating at
the electrical wires in the barn. We all had it
out there with our shotguns. After an hour, we split
up to cover more ground. I found myself in one
of the huge fields and started walking across, not thinking
about where I was exactly. The wind was blowing hard
and it was all I could hear. But even in
the wind, I heard my cousin screaming. And now I
turned to see where the sound was coming from, and
I saw my cousin standing on the other side of
the field, several hundred yards away. At that distance I
could not see him well, but it had to be him.
We were the only people out there. Well, he screamed
a second time, and when I looked over at him,
it occurred to me where I was. I had not
been paying attention. I was in the field where they
kept their stud bull. Now I could see the brute
coming at me, and as luck would have it, I
was close to the fence and was able to get
on the other side before the bull made it to me.
I started working my way around the field, and after
an hour I ran into my cousin and his wife.
I said, that was crazy. Thank you for the heads
up on that bull. I didn't realize I was in
the bull's field. Well, my cousin looked at me like
I was off my rocker. What the hell are you
talking about? And why were you in that field? We
didn't warn you about the bull? Well who screamed at me?
Then now we suspected a trespasser had warned me. But
why would he do that if he was trespassing. We
split up again and searched for this person for a while,
but we never found anyone. Not long after this event,
I came home from a date around three am. My
new girlfriend drove us that night. She let me off
at the end of the rough driveway because her car
wouldn't make it to the house. The last thing I
heard were her tires crunching gravel. And then fading to nothing.
It was freezing cold and it was silent that night,
no wind. I had walked this driveway hundreds of times,
and it was always creepy at night. Some nights when
the moon wasn't out, I had to be careful where
I stepped. However, on this night, the moon gave me
plenty of light to see. I was in a good
mood after spending the evening with this girl, and my
mind was there and not in the present. I heard
a sound and that stopped me. It almost sounded like
a deer huffing or blowing, but it was too loud
for that, tuning everything out of my mind, I listened closely.
Something was walking toward me in the woods next to
the drive Whatever it was, it was walking at a
normal pace, and it wasn't rushing me, and it was
clearly on two legs. I stepped backward twenty paces or
so my mind told me it was a poacher coming
down the game trail. Well, that seemed reasonable. In a
minute I would be face to face with this person
if they kept coming. So I crouched slow, almost flat
to the ground, with my legs still under me. It
would be better if This guy never saw me and
just kept on going, and once he was by me,
I would sprint to the house and get help. So
making myself small as possible, I waited. Finally this guy
stepped into the clear and onto the road. But it
wasn't a poacher. One more step and he was in
the middle of the drive, even closer to me. Maybe
I had made a noise, or maybe it was a
sense he had about things, But as he was about
to take another huge step, he stopped. He looked right
at me. No human could have seen me off in
that area that I was in, but he saw me.
Now terrified, I locked onto this thing and I never
took my eyes away. It was huge and covered in hair,
and steam rose from its wet shoulders, back and head.
Illuminated in the moonlight. It was the scariest image I
have ever seen. The only option left for me was
to run, and I was about to when a sense
of peace and calm came over me. It was instant,
like a switch had been turned on in my mind
and in my body. The way it looked at me
was strange, almost as if it had pity on me,
like it knew I was terrified and it didn't want
to scare me anymore. The giant creature took one step
back into the woods, only one step, and then it
was gone. I heard it walk up the hill, crunching
leaves and twigs as it walked, and then the night
faded into silence again. In the welcome silence, I stood
and gazed into the lit woods in front of me,
and I began to shake. I realized what I had encountered,
and I vomited and finally regained composure, and then I
casually walked the half mile to the house. Later that night,
after going to bed, I lay there thinking for hours.
The family I lived with knew about these things, or
this thing that was the reason that they were adamant
about keeping trespassers off their property. It wasn't people they
were worried about. It was this thing, but the trespassers
weren't people. And then explained the guns and the warning shots,
And now I knew why they kept us out of
the barn that night when we heard the noises of
the raccoons, and it was now clear to me who
had yelled at me on the edge of the bulfield
and saved my life that night