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