Speaker 1: In November of nineteen eighty three, my dad and his
Speaker 1: friend John decided they wanted both our families to spend
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving together in the mountains. I was fifteen years old
Speaker 1: that year. My two brothers were thirteen and eleven, and
Speaker 1: my sister was only three. The other family, i'll call
Speaker 1: them the Smiths, had four boys, ages fifteen, fourteen, thirteen,
Speaker 1: and eleven. We had rented two cabins, one for each
Speaker 1: family in Mentone, Alabama, and we all drove up from
Speaker 1: Birmingham the evening before Thanksgiving Day. I think we're in
Speaker 1: a state park, but I don't really know for sure.
Speaker 1: The next day we all gathered at the family's cabin
Speaker 1: to cook and hang out together. I remember the sound
Speaker 1: of football games, so somebody must have had a radio.
Speaker 1: The cabins didn't have TV. The dads were smoking a
Speaker 1: turkey and a goose and some other stuff outside and
Speaker 1: a smoker they'd brought with them. We ate our Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: meal around four thirty as the sun was beginning to set.
Speaker 1: The meal lasted a few hours, followed by a few
Speaker 1: more hours of conversation. I think there might have been
Speaker 1: more football on the radio. Eight o'clock we began hearing
Speaker 1: a very loud howl or scream combination just outside the
Speaker 1: back of the cabin. It had simultaneous high and low
Speaker 1: pitches and tones within the same screen. It's not a
Speaker 1: sound of human vocal core could recreate. Not that any
Speaker 1: of us thought this could be a human, and the
Speaker 1: boys all concluded that it was a bear. I knew
Speaker 1: what bear sounded like from my elementary school days of
Speaker 1: watching after school specials and TV shows like Shazam Shazam.
Speaker 1: That guy ran into a bearer mountain lion almost every episode,
Speaker 1: soll I also knew what mountain lions sounded like. It
Speaker 1: must be hurt, I said, that's not what bears usually
Speaker 1: sound like. Well, what else could it be, one of
Speaker 1: the Smith boys asked. We all discussed that it didn't
Speaker 1: sound feline or canine. There were no cougars in Alabama
Speaker 1: at that time, and since then the Florida panther has
Speaker 1: migrated north into Alabama, but probably not that far north.
Speaker 1: So the only possible feline might have been a bobcat,
Speaker 1: and their mating calls are pretty loud, but not as
Speaker 1: loud as this thing was. Codies can also make loud sounds,
Speaker 1: but this didn't sound like a codey at all. There
Speaker 1: are no wolves in Alabama. Alabama black bears are really small,
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds, and this
Speaker 1: sound was massive. Bears in the Florida Panhandle are much
Speaker 1: bigger five to six hundred pounds than Alabama bears, so
Speaker 1: I would guess bears and South Alabama may be bigger
Speaker 1: than bears in North Alabama, but at least back then,
Speaker 1: North Alabama bears as far as I know, or small.
Speaker 1: I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure even the
Speaker 1: largest grizzly couldn't have sounded as big as this thing did.
Speaker 1: It definitely sounded masculine, even during the high pitched parts
Speaker 1: of the scream. It never sounded feminine at all. Some
Speaker 1: people have described bigfoot screams as sounded like a woman
Speaker 1: being murdered. This one never sounded like a woman. It
Speaker 1: was extremely powerful, and I think I remember feeling of vibration,
Speaker 1: but my memory could be faulty since this was so
Speaker 1: long ago, and also I'm just now realizing what this
Speaker 1: thing most likely was thirty seven years after the fact,
Speaker 1: and it's all coming back to me in bits and pieces.
Speaker 1: The howl growl screams continued for an hour, with only
Speaker 1: seconds between each out burst. It sounded like the animal
Speaker 1: must be just outside the back of the cabin, up
Speaker 1: under the back deck, which was about a story and
Speaker 1: a half off the ground. The cabin sat on a
Speaker 1: slope so that the front door was almost leveled with
Speaker 1: the road, but the back of the cabin was high
Speaker 1: off the ground, with terrains sloping down toward a creek
Speaker 1: that ran behind it. The area was densely wooded, with
Speaker 1: total privacy between the cabins, which were positioned ten yards
Speaker 1: from each other, and at the end of the road
Speaker 1: a city blocked Down the hill from our cabin was
Speaker 1: a camping area where there were a few tents set up.
Speaker 1: I mentioned that I was worried whatever was screaming could
Speaker 1: be a danger to the campers in the tents. All
Speaker 1: the boys were saying, oh, they'll be fine. It was
Speaker 1: like this, how a growl scream thing was a normal
Speaker 1: occurrence for campers, nothing to worry about. There was a
Speaker 1: lot of want to be testosterone in that cabin. I
Speaker 1: must admit the thought of it being a bigfoot would
Speaker 1: never have occurred to me or any of us at
Speaker 1: that time, I had only ever heard of Bigfoot living
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Northwest. I had seen the Patterson Gimlin film,
Speaker 1: but had never seen or heard of the Legend of
Speaker 1: Boggy Creek movie that came out in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: since I would have been only three years old at
Speaker 1: the time of its release, and nobody I knew ever
Speaker 1: talked about Bigfoot until just a few months ago. I
Speaker 1: had never heard any Bigfoot stories from Alabama, so the
Speaker 1: possibility of Bigfoot never crossed our minds. The only thing
Speaker 1: that came close to making any sense to us was
Speaker 1: that it must have been a bear. We also heard
Speaker 1: wood knocks throughout the hour of hal growl, screaming, but
Speaker 1: we didn't connect those sounds with the animal. Why would
Speaker 1: we and our repertoire of vast knowledge only and would
Speaker 1: hit two pieces of wood together. We assumed the campers
Speaker 1: were building a fire or something, but that didn't make
Speaker 1: sense either, because the wood knocks were far too loud
Speaker 1: and far too close to be anything any campers a
Speaker 1: block away could have been doing. Nothing was adding up,
Speaker 1: and my brain was all over the place trying to
Speaker 1: get a grasp of any of it. I don't recall
Speaker 1: any whoops or whistling. But who knows, maybe my brain
Speaker 1: just refused to calculate any more variables than it just
Speaker 1: couldn't process. At ten pm, the Smiths were ready to
Speaker 1: go back to their cabin. We hadn't heard the howl
Speaker 1: grouse scream for an hour, and no one seemed concerned
Speaker 1: about going outside, so I assumed it must be safe,
Speaker 1: or all the adults would be worried. We said goodnight
Speaker 1: and invited them to come back for leftovers tomorrow. My
Speaker 1: dad walked outside with them as they left, and I
Speaker 1: watched as they walked to their cabin. I guess whatever
Speaker 1: was out there was either gone or just didn't let
Speaker 1: his presence known, as the sixth of them walked back
Speaker 1: through the woods rather than along the road. The next morning,
Speaker 1: I slept in and when I woke, nobody was in
Speaker 1: the cabin, so I took that opportunity to enjoy being alone.
Speaker 1: I stayed in bed and I read for a while,
Speaker 1: and then I got up and I ate some leftovers.
Speaker 1: I figured i'd go for a walk after I ate,
Speaker 1: I left a note on the kitchen counter that I
Speaker 1: was going for a height, and I went out the
Speaker 1: back door and down the stairs off the deck, and
Speaker 1: then down the hill to a path along the creek.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about the screaming animal from the night before.
Speaker 1: I'm sure my mind was too blown to think. So
Speaker 1: off I went alone and unarmed, dody doo doody doo,
Speaker 1: walking along, not a care in the world, men, tone
Speaker 1: in the fall is beautiful. How could there be any
Speaker 1: danger here? I saw no wildlife of any kind, not
Speaker 1: even fish jumping or birds flying. I didn't hear any
Speaker 1: animal sounds or birds singing. It was weirdly quiet, but
Speaker 1: it didn't occur to me to be scared or weirded
Speaker 1: out by that. I was just glad I didn't run
Speaker 1: into any snakes. I walked along the creek for about
Speaker 1: an hour, thinking i'd run into members of my family
Speaker 1: or the Smith family, but I never did. I walked
Speaker 1: back and stopped by the Smith's cabin to see if
Speaker 1: they were all there, but I only found the four
Speaker 1: Smith boys sitting around the radio listening to a football game.
Speaker 1: I walked up to the road to the general store
Speaker 1: at the top of the hill to see if I
Speaker 1: could find my mother and Missus Smith, but they weren't
Speaker 1: there either, and there were no other options for where
Speaker 1: they could be, so I bought a coke and I
Speaker 1: went back to my family's cabin to eat more leftovers.
Speaker 1: The two moms and my little sister came in while
Speaker 1: I was making a sandwich, and they joined me for
Speaker 1: a late lunch. For some reason, we didn't talk about
Speaker 1: the howl grouse screams. We had all just put it
Speaker 1: out of our minds. After we ate, the moms went
Speaker 1: to the smith's cabin and they left my sister with me.
Speaker 1: She and I decided to walk up to the store
Speaker 1: and get something sweet. It was after four o'clock at
Speaker 1: this point. Twilight was just beginning, but still light enough
Speaker 1: that I wasn't concerned about getting too dark before we
Speaker 1: could get back to the cabin. The general store was
Speaker 1: only half a city block up the road from the cabin,
Speaker 1: and I held my sister's hand as we walked slowly
Speaker 1: up to the store. The woods on either side of
Speaker 1: the dirt road were thick enough that it was really
Speaker 1: dark in the woods, but the road was not at
Speaker 1: all dark yet. About halfway to the store, I noticed
Speaker 1: on the side the road, just inside the woodline, there
Speaker 1: was a dark animal three feet high sitting very still
Speaker 1: and watching us. At the point I noticed it, we
Speaker 1: were almost parallel with it on the road and less
Speaker 1: than ten feet away. My brain processed what I saw
Speaker 1: as a bear sitting there in the dark, because that's
Speaker 1: what we all decided it had to be. After all
Speaker 1: that logical analysis the night before, I just went into
Speaker 1: full blown cognitive dissonance and had accepted that it was
Speaker 1: a bear. But recently it occurred to me that I
Speaker 1: didn't see a snout on its face or ears on
Speaker 1: the top of its head. I remember knees like a
Speaker 1: biped would have squatting down. A sitting bear would not
Speaker 1: have bent knees out front. Also, bears don't sit perfectly
Speaker 1: still for long periods of time. At the very least,
Speaker 1: his head would have moved. This thing had to have
Speaker 1: been watching us perfectly still for at least ten minutes
Speaker 1: before I saw it, because I had not seen or
Speaker 1: heard any movement at any time during our walk. And
Speaker 1: if you've ever walked with a three year old, you
Speaker 1: know we were walking very slow. Thinking it was a bear,
Speaker 1: I calmly and slowly picked up my sister and walked
Speaker 1: as fast as I could without running. I didn't want
Speaker 1: it to chase us, and it didn't, thank God. I
Speaker 1: don't remember a smell. That's the only thing that makes
Speaker 1: me question whether it was a bigfoot, But I don't
Speaker 1: know what else it could have been. I know the
Speaker 1: shape of what I saw was not a bear, and
Speaker 1: what I remember could only have been a hairy man
Speaker 1: squatting down by a tree. When we got to the store,
Speaker 1: I was winded and panicky, but I didn't want my
Speaker 1: sister to know there was anything wrong, so I carried
Speaker 1: on normally. I let her pick out what she wanted
Speaker 1: to eat, and I got us eat something to drink
Speaker 1: in a candy bar for myself, and after paying, I
Speaker 1: looked for a place to sit inside the store. I
Speaker 1: planned to just stay there forever. I was not walking
Speaker 1: back to that cabin, no way, after trying to entertain
Speaker 1: a three year old for a while. After we finished
Speaker 1: our snacks and drinks, I was thinking about buying us
Speaker 1: a second round. When the moms and one of my
Speaker 1: brothers walked into the store. I told them that I
Speaker 1: saw a bearl on the side of the road and
Speaker 1: that I was too scared to walk back. They said
Speaker 1: they hadn't seen anything, and there was nothing to worry about.
Speaker 1: Take note that by this time it was completely dark outside,
Speaker 1: and of course they didn't see anything. But I felt
Speaker 1: safety in numbers, so my sister and I walked back
Speaker 1: with them, and I just didn't think about it. The
Speaker 1: Smiths came over for dinner that night, and when we
Speaker 1: finished off our Thanksgiving leftovers again at eight pm, we
Speaker 1: heard the same screams for an hour, just like the
Speaker 1: night before, and again nobody seemed very concerned about it.
Speaker 1: I told the boys I'd seen a bear earlier and
Speaker 1: it was only three feet tall and it was sitting down.
Speaker 1: No big deal. But I stayed inside the cabin with
Speaker 1: my sister all the next day and until we left
Speaker 1: on Sunday morning. After that, we never went back to mentone.
Speaker 1: I take special interest in the stories here in Mississippi.
Speaker 1: I was born and raised down here on the coast
Speaker 1: near Pascagoula, and now I live on five acres here
Speaker 1: in Moss Pointe, Mississippi, in an area known as Helena,
Speaker 1: which is out in the country. I've been an outdoorsman
Speaker 1: all my life. I'm fifty seven years old and I've
Speaker 1: been in the woods since i was a child. My
Speaker 1: grandfather had a camp up at Creole Byu, deep in
Speaker 1: the Pasca Goula Swamp, just off the Pasca Goula River.
Speaker 1: It's only accessible by boat. After his retirement from the
Speaker 1: US Navy, we would spend many nights at his camp,
Speaker 1: hunting and fishing and just enjoying life. And there wasn't
Speaker 1: hardly a weekend that went by that I wasn't with him.
Speaker 1: I remember one Saturday morning getting up and going out
Speaker 1: of the cabin and setting down by Popaul by the
Speaker 1: fire that he already had going around five am, and
Speaker 1: he was drinking coffee. He was being unusually quiet. When
Speaker 1: I asked what our plans were for the day, he replied,
Speaker 1: sh listen. Boy. Off in the distance, I could hear
Speaker 1: what sounded like people talking in a foreign voice. It
Speaker 1: was pitch black, dark, and it was very still, and
Speaker 1: a light fog hung close to the ground. No other
Speaker 1: sounds or the usual owls, bugs or frogs could be
Speaker 1: heard at all. Only the faint chatter is the only
Speaker 1: way I know to explain it. Of voices down in
Speaker 1: the swamp behind his camp. We sat and listened for
Speaker 1: I guess about another five minutes when I whispered, what
Speaker 1: is that Papa, he whispered back to me, it's just
Speaker 1: them old harpies arguing over breakfast. The hair stood up
Speaker 1: on the back of my neck and I got instant
Speaker 1: chicken skin when he said that. But I thought me,
Speaker 1: being only twelve years old at the time, I had
Speaker 1: often heard him talking about the harpies that lived behind
Speaker 1: his camp, but I only thought that he was joking
Speaker 1: with me, as he always did. But this time, when
Speaker 1: he said that, he was very serious and didn't crack
Speaker 1: a smile, I knew he was serious. I can still
Speaker 1: see his face in the glow of that campfire, and
Speaker 1: hear those voices in my head to this day. I wish,
Speaker 1: to this day I would have asked him more about
Speaker 1: the things that lived behind the camp and if he
Speaker 1: had ever seen them. After he passed away, my father
Speaker 1: sould the camp, and since then many other people have
Speaker 1: purchased property up there and built more camps, so it's
Speaker 1: not nearly as secluded as it used to be. I
Speaker 1: still occasionally will ride by there in my boat, and
Speaker 1: the property has all grown over and the camp has
Speaker 1: fallen in. Apparently nobody ever used the camp or has
Speaker 1: rebuilt on the property. I have recently listened to recordings
Speaker 1: of what seems to be sisquatch conversations, and the recordings
Speaker 1: I have listened to sound very similar to what we
Speaker 1: were hearing that morning at my grandfather's camp years ago.
Speaker 1: At present, I go camping once every month rain or shines,
Speaker 1: lead or snow deep in the DeSoto National Forest, but
Speaker 1: I have yet to hear anything like that ever. Again,
Speaker 1: do you have any reports of sightings or sounds from
Speaker 1: DeSoto Forest? I camp all over the National Forest from
Speaker 1: south end up to the north end for the last
Speaker 1: two years, and I found no sounds of a big
Speaker 1: foot anywhere. I was a young boy when this encounter
Speaker 1: took place, but I still think about it. It was
Speaker 1: late spring, I was seven years old. My father decided
Speaker 1: to take me to our favorite camping area in an
Speaker 1: isolated spot deep in the mountains of Trinity County, California.
Speaker 1: The campground has since burned in a forest fire and
Speaker 1: is no longer in use. Deep in the backwoods forest,
Speaker 1: there was a small prairie. Grouse prairie, as it was called,
Speaker 1: was an enchanting place. You had to travel up an
Speaker 1: old service road and through logging roads to get there.
Speaker 1: A small creek came down the mountain and cut through
Speaker 1: the prairie, and we had camped there many times and
Speaker 1: we were familiar with it. We arrived a little after
Speaker 1: ten am and began to set up our camp. Our
Speaker 1: dog came along on these camping trips, was big, thick bodied,
Speaker 1: black lab and the dog began making his rounds and
Speaker 1: scouting the campground and sniffing everything in sight. He was
Speaker 1: doing what dogs do. Once camp was up and after lunch,
Speaker 1: we went on a quick trek through the woods. Everything
Speaker 1: was fine for the first couple of hours until something
Speaker 1: changed in the air. The birds went quiet, the dog
Speaker 1: became uneasy. We were still aways from the prairie area,
Speaker 1: but we trudged ahead, and a bit further down the trail,
Speaker 1: the air began to feel heavy and smoky. Our dog
Speaker 1: started growling. It wasn't until we made it into the
Speaker 1: prairie that the heavy feeling in the air became a
Speaker 1: feeling of being watched. And in the middle of that prairie,
Speaker 1: even though I felt creeped out, I stopped and I
Speaker 1: began taking it all in. It was beautiful. I scanned
Speaker 1: the edges of the woods and in one area I
Speaker 1: saw a shadow of a large person hiding behind a tree.
Speaker 1: Now yelled out to the person. That got my father's attention,
Speaker 1: and he turned to see who I was calling to,
Speaker 1: but by then the shadow was gone. Then we heard
Speaker 1: it running and tearing through the trees. I thought that
Speaker 1: was unusual that something would make that kind of noise
Speaker 1: going through the woods. The dog's hackles went up and
Speaker 1: he pranced around the area, sniffing and growling, but the
Speaker 1: rest of the afternoon was uneventful. The next day things
Speaker 1: were calm. My dad and I did some target practice
Speaker 1: in the morning, and then we went on another hike,
Speaker 1: sticking closer to camp this time. We returned around five
Speaker 1: pm and began making supper. While we ate, we could
Speaker 1: hear crickets and other critters in the distance. It was
Speaker 1: calm and it was pleasant. It was the perfect place
Speaker 1: to be in that moment. But like a lights which
Speaker 1: being flipped, the sounds of the woods went silent. I
Speaker 1: could hear the blood even flowing through my ear drums.
Speaker 1: It was so quiet. I watched Smoky Low crawl like
Speaker 1: a bird dog, creeping up on a covey of birds
Speaker 1: over to a thicket of brush by the creek. He
Speaker 1: looked like a razorback pig, with all that hair standing
Speaker 1: up on his back. He stopped just short of where
Speaker 1: the thicket began, and he remained motionless and growling and shaking.
Speaker 1: Something was in there. Dogs don't do that for the
Speaker 1: hell of it. There was an odor now present about
Speaker 1: the area that made me want a gag, and my
Speaker 1: father stood up and armed himself with a pistol he
Speaker 1: carried in his vest. Smokey burst off into the brush,
Speaker 1: growling and huffing. That scared me more than anything. It
Speaker 1: let me know there was something in there. Dad moved
Speaker 1: to the brush thicket with his pistol in position. He
Speaker 1: was almost when Smokey yelped and whimpered off in the brush,
Speaker 1: and then a weird roar I had never heard followed.
Speaker 1: I will never forget that sound. Smokey was hurt, and
Speaker 1: I doubted I would see him again. But what the
Speaker 1: hell was he fighting? Was it a bear? Maybe a
Speaker 1: big cat? Finally the dog burst from the brush in midair,
Speaker 1: and it sailed several feet before hitting the ground, and
Speaker 1: it rolled and tried to right itself, but Smokey couldn't
Speaker 1: get up. Dad snatched me up by the collar and
Speaker 1: he dragged me backwards to the truck. The tailgate was
Speaker 1: down and the topper lid was open, and he threw
Speaker 1: me in there, all the while calling to the dog
Speaker 1: that had finally gotten on its feet and was limping
Speaker 1: toward us. Dad stood between the truck and Smoky and
Speaker 1: began firing into the brush until his pistol was empty.
Speaker 1: Smokey had made it to Dad by then, and by
Speaker 1: the collar. Dad drug Smoky and threw him in the
Speaker 1: bed of the truck with me, and then he ran
Speaker 1: to the cab and came back with a shotgun, and
Speaker 1: he fired three more shots into the brush. He was
Speaker 1: now out of shells, and Dad slammed the truck bed
Speaker 1: shut and then sprinted to the cab. I heard the
Speaker 1: truck start, and then I felt the truck lurch forward
Speaker 1: and watch gravel slung out behind us, and we took
Speaker 1: off out of the campground, leaving all of our stuff there.
Speaker 1: There was a stretch of road we needed to traverse
Speaker 1: before climbing a hill that would take us out of
Speaker 1: the area, and it gave me time to watch out
Speaker 1: the back to see this thing step out into the clear.
Speaker 1: I could not believe it. There was a creature, taller
Speaker 1: than any man I know, and it stood motionless, arms
Speaker 1: to its sides, and it watched as we left. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was back then, but I do now.
Speaker 1: It was covered hair and had thick arms and legs.
Speaker 1: Now I think my jaw hung open for an hour.
Speaker 1: It was the strangest thing I had ever seen. Just
Speaker 1: when the truck was about to take me out of
Speaker 1: that field of view, I watched it turn and walk
Speaker 1: away from the camp and into the creek, and then
Speaker 1: there was nothing but dust swirling behind the truck. We
Speaker 1: drove for thirty minutes, and finally my father stopped and
Speaker 1: came back to check on us. Smoky lay there beside me, panting.
Speaker 1: He was hurt. There was no way to know how bad.
Speaker 1: To my surprise, Dad said that we would be staying
Speaker 1: right there for the night. He wasn't going to leave
Speaker 1: all that gear in the woods. It had value, he said,
Speaker 1: and we would sleep here and then go back and
Speaker 1: get our stuff the next day. We were five hours
Speaker 1: from home here, so I guess it made sense. And
Speaker 1: I spent that night curled up with my dog in
Speaker 1: the front seat of that truck. While Dad never slept.
Speaker 1: His pistol now reloaded in his lap and was ready
Speaker 1: for use if we had any further trouble. The next morning,
Speaker 1: I let Smoky out the door, and I was thrilled
Speaker 1: to see that he was walking and sniffing the area
Speaker 1: and peeing all over the place. It appeared that he
Speaker 1: would make it. Other than him moving a bit slower
Speaker 1: than usual, he was going to be okay. Thirty minutes
Speaker 1: later we arrived at the camp site. Once again, we
Speaker 1: sat in the truck and watched from a distance. Our
Speaker 1: gear was strown about and the site looked nothing like
Speaker 1: it had the day before, but Dad wanted to wait
Speaker 1: and watch and make sure the area was clear. Finally,
Speaker 1: he drove on down into the site and he got
Speaker 1: out and began gathering our stuff while Smoky and I
Speaker 1: stayed put. And while he dragged everything to the truck,
Speaker 1: I could see that it was all torn up. Even
Speaker 1: the cooler we had hung bear proof lay on the
Speaker 1: ground and was broken into several pieces. Once everything was loaded,
Speaker 1: we left and I was glad to get out of there.
Speaker 1: What a creepy place that area turned out to be
Speaker 1: after all those times we had camped there. The next
Speaker 1: day was Monday, and Dad called in to the Fish
Speaker 1: and Gain people to report the incident. I heard him
Speaker 1: tell the person on the phone that a bear had
Speaker 1: attacked our camp site. Well, I knew it wasn't a bear,
Speaker 1: but I didn't say a word. Later that week, three
Speaker 1: men from the agency came to our house and I
Speaker 1: listened while they spoke in the living room. They had
Speaker 1: visited the site, and I heard them specifically say that
Speaker 1: it was not a bear that had torn up our
Speaker 1: camp and that they were sure My father knew that. Well,
Speaker 1: he didn't know it because he didn't see what I saw.
Speaker 1: He was driving. I was about to walk in the
Speaker 1: room and tell them what I had seen when I
Speaker 1: heard one of the men say, it doesn't matter at
Speaker 1: this point what you saw, sir. What matters is that
Speaker 1: this will be classified as a bear attack no matter what,
Speaker 1: and we would appreciate it if you would leave it
Speaker 1: that way and not talk about it to anyone. Well.
Speaker 1: I couldn't see my dad in the other room, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure he must have had a confused expression on
Speaker 1: his face as he told them that he would keep
Speaker 1: it quiet. The discussion he had with my mother later
Speaker 1: was quite animated. Dad just could not understand what the
Speaker 1: hell was going on. But in the end, I suppose
Speaker 1: it didn't have a huge impact on his life, not
Speaker 1: so much that he would pursue the truth as some
Speaker 1: sort of a crusade. Why would he do that if
Speaker 1: they didn't want him talking about a bear tearing up
Speaker 1: our camp? So what he went on with his life.
Speaker 1: For the next few days, I thought about that day
Speaker 1: in the woods and everything we had been through. The
Speaker 1: image of that creature is still as vivid today as
Speaker 1: it was the day had happened. And then there was
Speaker 1: the game and fish people and what I overheard them say,
Speaker 1: and it stayed on my mind for many days. I
Speaker 1: finally decided not to say anything to my father. There
Speaker 1: were a few other reasons I kept siling on this,
Speaker 1: but mainly what it would have been the point. It's
Speaker 1: now over thirty years later, and I'm finally revealing this
Speaker 1: thing that I have kept to myself all these years.
Speaker 1: It feels good to tell someone, well, to tell many
Speaker 1: thousands at one time. If you choose to share this
Speaker 1: story in a video, it's finally out. I was chased
Speaker 1: out of a campground by a bigfoot. Every word is
Speaker 1: the truth. I grew up oblivious to the existence of
Speaker 1: Bigfoot until about fifteen years ago. My grandparents live in
Speaker 1: a rural part of Mississippi. They live only a few
Speaker 1: minutes drive from our house, and I visited them a lot.
Speaker 1: On a warm summer morning, I was awakened by a
Speaker 1: strange sound coming from the woods that surrounded their house.
Speaker 1: It was almost like shotgun blasts from a long way off,
Speaker 1: but the sounds were not random. They were in a
Speaker 1: series of reports over and over. Even as a kid,
Speaker 1: those sounds were peculiar to me, and I listened to
Speaker 1: them while I laid in the guest bed where I
Speaker 1: always slept, and I noticed the cadence and the rhythm
Speaker 1: of the sounds. The knocking eventually stopped, and in just
Speaker 1: a few seconds, I heard a series of hair raising,
Speaker 1: bone chilling roars blast out of the woods that scared me.
Speaker 1: The knocks were one thing that interested me. The roar
Speaker 1: meant that it was a monster. The next day, I
Speaker 1: went home, but I didn't stop thinking about what I
Speaker 1: had heard. Two weeks later, I was back at my
Speaker 1: grandfather's house to stay awhile, and my nine year old
Speaker 1: mind got curious, so I picked up an aluminum baseball
Speaker 1: back from the I went out to the furthest tree
Speaker 1: to the creek, and I tore into that tree. I
Speaker 1: hit that tree several times so that the sound would carry,
Speaker 1: and I kept up a steady rhythm. I did this
Speaker 1: for four days, and I got no response from the woods.
Speaker 1: I began to think that I had been dreaming the
Speaker 1: event that I described earlier. On the fifth day, I
Speaker 1: got a response. The shotgun blast sounds started from a
Speaker 1: long way off. The knocks matched my cadence, and they
Speaker 1: started getting closer each day. I had to go home
Speaker 1: that last day, and I wondered what those noises meant.
Speaker 1: They were obviously answering my knocks. After church the next week,
Speaker 1: we went over to my grandparents' house for dinner. I
Speaker 1: didn't even have time to get outside before the knox
Speaker 1: started up, not forty yards into the woods, and they
Speaker 1: were really loud. Fear washed over me, but I had
Speaker 1: to see where this was going. I chose a different
Speaker 1: tree closer to the house. I wasn't going closer to
Speaker 1: the loud knocks. I wanted to be close to the house,
Speaker 1: and I picked a tree at the edge of the yard,
Speaker 1: and I swung the bat at the tree attempting to
Speaker 1: create the rhythm I had been doing the previous week.
Speaker 1: I never finished the series of knocks. A menacing roar
Speaker 1: came from the woods, and I heard something big moving
Speaker 1: like it was intentionally letting me know that it was
Speaker 1: coming my way. It wasn't trying to be quiet. It
Speaker 1: sounded like heavy equipment pounding through the woods. And then
Speaker 1: it appeared right in front of me. I was nine
Speaker 1: years old then and about four foot three tall. The
Speaker 1: creature in front of me had to have been eight
Speaker 1: feet tall. It was covered in dark, matted hair, and
Speaker 1: it stood there, heaving and staring at me. I was
Speaker 1: frozen with terror. This caught the attention of some dogs
Speaker 1: that lived at my grandparents' neighbor's house. They must have
Speaker 1: seen this thing step out into the clear or heard it.
Speaker 1: I heard them barking at first, and when I turned
Speaker 1: to look, they were running full speed across the field
Speaker 1: towards the creature and I. The beast turned to look
Speaker 1: at the dogs and instantly started running straight at them
Speaker 1: in the field. I could not believe how fast this
Speaker 1: thing was running. It closed the distance on those dogs
Speaker 1: in a flash, and when the dogs realized what was happening.
Speaker 1: They stomped on the brakes and headed straight back to
Speaker 1: their house. I never moved. The beast turned back towards me,
Speaker 1: and just as fast as he left, he was back
Speaker 1: right in front of me. Rage was all I could
Speaker 1: see in his face. I don't know if it realized
Speaker 1: my fear or took into account that I was just
Speaker 1: a kid, and maybe it was confused, but in a
Speaker 1: remarkable time of events, its facial expression began to soften.
Speaker 1: Its brow raised, and I could see its eyes looking
Speaker 1: right at me, and with a slow movement of its
Speaker 1: arm in hand, it motioned for me to head back
Speaker 1: to the house. I walked slowly backwards the distance to
Speaker 1: the house, and I went inside. I stayed with my
Speaker 1: grandparents that whole week, but I never went outside, other
Speaker 1: than to try to get the house dog outside to
Speaker 1: use the restroom. The dog was always nervous and would
Speaker 1: not go outside. She would use the carpet next to
Speaker 1: the window. She knew something was out there. For the
Speaker 1: next three nights, I heard those knocks, and occasionally I
Speaker 1: would hear a distant roar, and I didn't sleep well
Speaker 1: for all those days. If I remember right, it was
Speaker 1: the fourth night that I didn't hear anything from the woods,
Speaker 1: no knocks, no screaming from the dark woods. I got
Speaker 1: a decent knight. I't sleep that night. As abruptly as
Speaker 1: the sounds and encounters had started, they stopped. Joy the
Speaker 1: dog started going outside again. I became more at ease
Speaker 1: just being out, and things seemed to settle down for
Speaker 1: the rest of the week that I was there. I
Speaker 1: went home with a memory that I would take with
Speaker 1: me the rest of my life. It is several years
Speaker 1: later at the time of this writing, and to my knowledge,
Speaker 1: nothing else has occurred on my grandfather's property.