Speaker 1: I had an experience two years ago that really warped
my brain, and I think that the time has finally
come where I can talk about it. I'm so thankful
that you provide a safe place where I and others
like me can feel comfortable telling our stories. Thank you
for that. I live in northern Ontario, in Canada. I
heard you joking recently that we here in the Great
White North should choose names of places that are easy
to say. Well, not to worry, my friend, I will
not burden you with any difficult words today. Anyway. As
I said, two years ago, I decided to do a
little late season camping. It was the end of October
and the rain and the wind were wreaking havoc. I
don't know what the temperature was, but it was cold,
and I know that I could see my breath When
I go out, I like to be as far away
from people as I can get. I have a habit
of following remote roads until I can't go any further,
and then I look for a suitable camp site nearby.
On this day, I had followed an old logging road
about thirty five kilometers until I came across a very
deep and wide wash out across the road. On the
other side of the wash out was a bridge that
passed over the river, and it fed an adjoining lake.
I remember thinking that it was odd that the road
would wash out next to the bridge, where the water
could travel freely under. But nature will do what she wants.
I guess. It was impossible for me to proceed any further,
and as luck would have it, I had stopped next
to a really nice camping area right on the shoreline
of that beautiful lake. I wheeled into that spot and
proceeded to set up camp. The wind and the rain
were still blowing, but I knew that the weather was
expected to let up late in the afternoon. A few
hours let the weather did not let up as promised,
and the sun started to set. I decided to turn
in early that night, as the weather made it impossible
to take my canoe out for an evening of fishing.
Being alone in a canoe and strong winds as a
losing battle, so I conceded to simply retire to my
tent and try to get an early start the next morning.
The cold and the noise of the wind, however, did
their best to ruin that plan and kept me from
falling into anything more than a half sleep. Laying in
my tent for a few hours. In that half day's slumber,
I could hear the blustering winds slowly easing up, and
after a while it had slipped into a complete utter silence.
There was not a sound to be heard. The silence,
as they say, was deafening. It was almost surreal. I
had awakened enough at this point to pay attention to
the silence. It was so odd that I was on
guard and was a little nervous because I had never
experienced such perfect silence while camping. That did, however, change
in a big hurry. That silence that was so disturbing
a second ago, was dramatically broken by a near deafening
crack and directly followed by a deep, resonating splash. The
very loud crack was at first interrupted by my brain
as a rifle shot, but I quickly realized it was
a large stone striking a rock face behind my tent
and then bouncing into the lake. The rock face was
a mere ten or fifteen meters behind me. I was
on high alert now. I listened for any other sounds
that would help me identify what was going on, but
I heard nothing in that perfect silence, no footfalls, no grunts,
no sounds at all. I was racing through scenarios. Was
in an animal that knocked the stone off the overhead?
Was it a bear overturning rocks looking for food along
the shoreline. As my brain was trying to interpret this situation,
a second large stone fell directly into the water. It was,
by my estimate, a larger stone than the first one,
because it created a much deeper thud as it broke
the surface of the water. I was up on my
feet now in my tent, deciding if I should investigate
or at least be at the ready if things took
a turn for the worst. And then another large stone
fell directly into the water with a resounding thump splash.
That was it for me. I had no intention to
be going head to head with any forest critter that
could throw boulders. The last thing I wanted at that
point was to be inside that tent in the dark
and having boulders falling on me. Whatever it was it
was trying to send me a message, and I received
that memo loud and clear. I promptly unzipped the tent
flap and made a dash for my truck, started it up,
and I removed myself from that place as quickly as
that old beat up logging road would allow. I spent
the night in my truck some distance from there, and
everything was uneventful. When the sun came up the next morning,
I returned to the camp site so that I could
retrieve my canoe and camping gear. I looked around the
area and I took some photos with my phone for reference.
The rear of the camp site had a row of
scrub brush and trees about three meters deep, and directly
behind that was the rock face from where the rocks
were being thrown, and yes, they were being thrown. I
paddled out onto the lake to check out that rock
face with my canoe, and there was no way those
rocks could have rolled down on their own. It was
just too shallow of an angle for that to happen,
and there were ledges with brush on them. Even if
the rocks had found their way rolling down, the ledges
would have made their journey very difficult. Gravity alone could
not drag them through those brush filled ledges. Not to mention,
I would have heard them crashing down that rock face
to the water, I packed my gear up and I left.
I mentioned my experience to a few friends and learned
that talking about such things is most definitely the wrong
thing to do, unless you like a ridicule in being
the butt of never ending sisquatch jokes. Yes, I do
believe that it was a sasquatch throwing those rocks. There's
nothing that I know of in these parts that can
throw a stone except a human being. I'm convinced it
was not a person up on that bluff that night,
as they would have had to approach my campsite on
foot in the wind and rain earlier in the day
through many kilometers of brush, can wait there until night fall,
in perfect silence, just a few stones into the water
to scare me. I know that no one came up
the road before or after me, because I looked for
fresh tired tracks when I left that day, and my
tires were the only ones that passed over that road
for quite a while. Now here's where my story gets weird,
and I come to the part that messes with my
brain in a way that I could never have expected.
All winter, I was bothered by this experience. I desperately
wanted to go back there and look up on that
bluff and check out the area and look for some
kind of proof either for or against my experience as
being authentic. I was obsessed with just knowing one way
or the other whether that was a Sasquatch experience or not.
Spring finally came and around the end of March I
was finally able to venture into that spot again and investigate.
Remember earlier that I said I was there at the
end of October on the previous fall. That time of
the year is very close to the time when snow
starts rolling in, and when the snow starts around here,
it's relentless. The weather coming off Lake Superior ensures that
the snow accumulates fast early in November, and it is
not uncommon to have a meter of snow on the
ground in this area by Christmas. When I did arrive
at the bridge, I was astounded to see that the
wash shout that was their last fall was now gone.
The road was completely normal and intact. My first reaction
was that it must have been repaired, but when and
how There was no logging in the area, so a
logging company could not have done it without good reason.
There were no properties or cottages in the area. I
look for a spot where a large amount of material
would have been taken for PHIL, but there was none.
I looked up and down the road and saw no
evidence that any heavy equipment had been in there. In fact,
the road ended the place was so bad for a
five hundred meters stretch just before the lake that I
had a difficult time getting in there with my four
wheel drive. I inspected the road where the washout was located,
and it had grass and shrubs that were there from
the previous years. It was as if there was never
any wash out at all. The ground had not been
disturbed in any way that I could see. In addition
to that between November and when I was there in
the spring would have made it impossible to repair the road.
Because of the snow, there would have been no access
to that location. I parked in the campsite and I
looked around. There were elements of that spot that were different. Also,
the line of shrub brush and trees that bordered the
rear of the campsite were all gone the previous fall.
While I packed up camp and left check that line
of scrub it was thick enough that I had a
moderate amount of difficulty to get through it to see
the bluff behind it. Now it was all gone trees
and all no stumps, no debris, nothing but mud where
a substantial amount of trees and shrubbery had previously stood.
The photos that I had taken were unfortunately gone. Also,
the phone on which I had taken the pictures had
been stolen during the winter. I don't have any explanation
for any of this. I just know that this event
fundamentally changed my view of the world around me. The
roight throwing was one thing, but the change landscape made
no sense to me at all. And my poor brain
just did not know how to process this information. And
I still don't know what to do with it. I
think about this often, I think about it daily, but
I'm not able to reconcile what I know was there
in the fall and what I saw in the spring.
Well that's my story. I'm no longer looking for answers
because I'm afraid this will just get more weird. I'm
smart enough to know when i'm beat, and the Maasthma
just does not want me to know the answer to
this one right now. And I'm okay with that. My
story isn't about a specific encounter, but more where my
fascination for the creature comes from. My father was a
man's man. He was a World War II veteran and
an avid outdoorsman. He worked in the old Fields of
America and drove a truck, and he was generally a
tough guy. He taught me and my brothers, all six
of us, about hunting and fishing, among other life lessons.
He grew up in great Depression America and knew how
to make the most out of very little. He was
all in all a good man. In the nineteen eighties,
he was working for an oil company checking wells in
southwest Oklahoma. This region isn't known for bigfoot sidings or encounters.
It was just becoming knowledgeable that eastern Oklahoma may have
bigfoot type creatures. Dad had come home one afternoon excited
and began telling us about what he found. He had
had extra time on his hands and was going to
check out a pond near one of the oil leases
he had been given permission to fish there. While walking
the bank of the pond, he found a log that
had been ravaged by something. Dad said the log was
hollow and it looked like a rabbit or a critter
had made the log its home. But what excited Dad
was the log being destroyed the way it was. He said,
the log was completely torn apart and inside was a
pile of fur from what he could only assume was
a rabbit. Investigating the log, he also found a few
strands of coarse, long hair. My father was a rational man,
and he knew a code. He would not have destroyed
a log like that. There were no significant tracks around
the log, even in the soft dirt. He told us
and most anyone who would listen about this. The story
never changed each time he told it. He was known
to tell a tall tailor too usually for a life,
and you could always tell when my father was joking.
When he told this story. He never varied or changed
his tone. It was always exactly the same. A few
months later, he took me out to the pond to
look at the site of the log and to look
at the pond again for the best fishing spots. It
was February or March. I was fourteen years old. Dad
pointed out where the log had been, and he told
me to go check it out look for Prince. While
he finished checking the level on the tank battery or
whatever he did on those wells. It was two hundred
yards from the truck, and I held no fear of
woodland creatures. Especially in the middle of the day. While
I was down by the pond near the spot, I
kept getting the feeling that I was being watched. It
wasn't a foreboding sense of danger, just a feeling that
I was being observed. There were no forest sounds except
for the wind, and now I chalk that up to
being late winter. Therefore, there wasn't a lot of creatures
about to make noise. Dad later found in search of
episodes and we watched them every time they came on.
There weren't a lot of documentaries about Bigfoot on television,
but when a story came on about the creature, he
would watch it, and that was much to the aggravation
of my mother. This is where my fascination about cryptid
creatures comes from. He believed they were real, and he
was riddy. Or people just thought old Allen was bsing
them again. But I never questioned my dad. He knew
that the creature passed through the area, and that was
good enough for me. Were he alive today, he would
be listening to every podcast he could find, every story
he could listen to about Bigfoot. He definitely would enjoy
Dixie Cryptid. I know this isn't much of a Bigfoot encounter,
but this was the beginning of my journey down the
Cryptid rabbit hole and one small bond I held with
my dad. I believe that Dad saw or hurt something
more than that log that day. He just never told
anyone about it. Back in the nineteen eighties and early nineties,
I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Like many
of the people who live up there, I was a hunter.
When I was seventeen, I built a deer blind on
the top of a ridge about a half mile from
my home. Also had a bait pile consisting of apples
and corn that the local wildlife always picked at. I
was up there a lot. Never once felt uncomfortable or afraid.
I never felt like anything was watching me or like
I should leave unless the season was opened. I was
generally up there armed only with my hunting knife, but
I never felt a reason to carry anything bigger or
more powerful. On the sixth day of the fourteen day season,
I quickly finished my after school chores and headed too
my blind. I'd been seeing a nice buck, but it
was always after legal shooting hours. I had hopes that
one day he would come in early and I'd get
a shot at him. That was my main thought as
I settled onto my stool inside the blind. After twenty minutes,
my thoughts were drawn away from that buck when it
occurred to me the woods were incredibly quiet. None of
the little critters who normally feasted on the bait pile
were around. There were no birds flying around trying to
get their share. Not even the wind was blowing. That
was when a feeling of utter terror came over me.
When the woods are abnormally quiet, it usually means there's
a predator close by. My head was turning on a swivel,
and I began looking all around me for whatever had
caused everything to go quiet, and for whatever had put
that awful fear in my gut. My dad and our
neighbor didn't get along. They had even come to blows
at a local grocery store, which got them both banned
for six months. Despite this, the neighbor had recently come
to our house, risking life and limb to let my
dad know he'd seen a lynx in the vicinity. Considering
their intense dislike for each other, it must have taken
quite a bit of courage for that man to come
up and warn my dad of possible danger to our livestock.
A few days later, one of our horses came in
with read deep, parallel slashes on her right shoulder. The
vat who came out to stitch her up said they
looked like they'd been done by a large cat. They
were each at least an inch to an inch and
a half deep. There was a fourth wound, but it
was just a bloody scratch. Knowing this when the fear
hit me, I was looking for a lynx. I couldn't
hear her, see anything, but I couldn't shake that feeling.
I was scared out of my mind, but I didn't
understand why. And all the time I'd spent up there
with nothing but my hunting knife, I had never felt afraid.
One day. I even found bear tracks around my bait
pile and bear scat near my blind and I never
felt as terrified as I did that moment. Suddenly it
was like someone was telling me to leave, as if
someone had put that fault in my head. I don't
believe I thought it because I was too busy looking
around and being unbelievably scared. A few minutes passed, and
my fear was only getting worse when I heard a
noise off to my left. Leaves rustled to the south
of my blind, followed by a tremendous crack that was
as loud as a rifle shot. I nearly unloaded my
bowels into my camouflage pants. Woo, good thing you didn't
Roy before I had time to react. To perfectly healthy,
eight inch in diameter tree fell and landed right next
to my blind. Some of the branches took out the
side of it and left scratches on my face and neck.
And all this happened with no wind. The tree was
broken off at about eight to nine feet above the ground.
It had been snapped in two. If whatever made that
tree fall wanted to hurt me really bad, it could
have dropped the tree on me instead of next to
my blind. And if it wanted to kill me, there
was nothing I could do about it. I know for
a fact that no black bear could have broken that
tree like that. My guess is that my stool is
still up there on that ridge, and I've never been back.
Many years later, I was out with a couple of
buddies tipping a few at the local watering hole one
night after closing time. We were on our way home
in my nineteen seventy four Chevy Love pickup when I
spilled my beer, which led to my truck being in
the ditch in the middle of nowhere. We stood on
the road for several minutes, deciding whether to walk to
a nearby house or call for help, or walk two
miles to my friend's house and get his truck to
pull it out. All the conversation came to a halt
when we heard something that sounded like chattering teeth in
the woods behind us. We thought maybe we woke up
an angry squirrel who was telling us off. A big,
really big, big, big angry squirrel. I don't know. That's
settled it. We decided to walk back to my friend's house.
As soon as we started walking, we realized something was
keeping pace with us just beyond the tree line and
the woods on the north side of the road. When
we walked, it walked with us. When we stopped to listen,
it would maybe take another step and then stop too.
We all three got sober really quick as it continued
to keep pace with us, walking when we walked, and
stopping when we stopped. We came to the conclusion that
it must be a big man walking in the woods.
We even tried talking to him, but we never got
a reply. As hunters, we knew it wasn't a deer
or any other four legged animal. It was definitely by peedle,
so we ran. It ran right along with us when
we stop. It stopped within one or two steps after us.
Then we walked back towards my truck, and it turned
around and kept pace. Two of us had been in
the military, so I quietly said, we're going to do
an about face. We put the non military friend in
the middle and told him to follow our moods. The
moon was just broad enough that we could see each
other about face, I whispered. We performed the move perfectly.
After three steps, we stopped over in the woods. We
clearly heard it turn around and then stop and wait
for our next move. This thing paralleled us inside the
tree line until we finally came to a house with
a yard mowed up to the woods. I guess it
didn't want to show itself because once we rounded the corner,
we never heard it again. When we got back to
my truck, there were rocks laying all over the flatbed
that weren't there when we left. We yanked my truck
out of that ditch in record time and got the
hell out of there. There was one other time it
happened before the night I put my truck in the ditch,
but well after I had the incident with the deer blind.
I saved it for last because it's the experience that
made me a knower. After that, I lost every doubt
that these sasquatch really do exist. I had gone up
to the up to get some poles to make a
fork for my young sons. We didn't have any trees
big enough, so I cut some sixteen foot cedar poles
and strapped them to the top of my nineteen eighty
eight Dodge caravan to bring home. I got up to
my buddy's place on Friday night. Since he was in
college and living in the dorm, he wasn't going to
arrive until Saturday morning. It was about ten PM when
I got there, so I rolled out my sleeping bag
in the back of the van and watched the stars
through the sun roof until I fell asleep. I don't
know what woke me, but around one point thirty I
was suddenly wide awake. I could see out of most
of the windows. The moon was bright, but I couldn't
see the stars through the sun roof. My friend lived primitively.
He had no electricity on the place. The nearest street light,
along with the nearest neighbor, was a good three miles away.
Light pollution was not an issue. That's when I noticed
the face. It was looking down at me through the
sun roof. It looked like a giant human, but a
lot harrier. It had dark hair all around its face.
By three point fifty seven, magnum was under my pillow.
I wanted to feel it in my hand, but it
felt like something was holding me down. I couldn't move.
I thought immediately of an accident i'd had while I
was in the Navy that left me temporarily paralyzed. My
brain was telling my arms to get the gun, but
my body would not obey. Finally, the face pulled back
and disappeared from my view. I watched as a large,
hairy torso past the side windows of the van. It
walked across the driveway behind me and disappeared into the woods.
As soon as it was gone, I could move again.
I unzipped my sleepy bag, grabbed my gun, opened the
side door, and shine my spotlight all around, but I
never saw anything. I figured it was safe to crawl
out of the van and relieve myself. But I listened
closely as I did so, I couldn't hear anything. The
woods were completely silent. I don't even think the mosquitoes
were buzzing. My hair was standing on in but there
wasn't much else I could do, so I crawled back
into my sleeping bag, and I started thinking about what
had just happened. For a long time, I tried to
convince myself it was just a nightmare. But the next
morning I could see where something had leaned up against
my van and left an imprint in the dust. There
were other places where the dust had been brushed off
all down the side. It had also left a trail
through the dew and the grass and the weeds leading
to the woods. I can still see that face in
my mind's eye like it was yesterday. I now know
there is something out there. It's big, it's Harry, and
it'll scare the crap out of you if you ever
get to see one.