Speaker 1: When I was seventeen, I came home from school one
day to find my mother anxiously waiting for me. I've
always been a laid back guy, so when she told
me that she and my dad had decided to take
a break for a while, I took it pretty well.
In fact, it was me who ended up comforting her
for the next couple of days. It seemed a bit weird.
My dad wasn't around much even when we were together.
He was an interstate truck driver. We were lucky if
we saw him for a couple of hours one or
two nights a week before he was off again, so
his absence wasn't really unusual. That's why seeing his truck
on a Monday when he was never home with such
a surprise. I walked out the front as he was
swinging the door open, and out jumped a huge black puppy.
It was a massive Dane cross that I named Thor.
My dad knew i'd wanted a dog for ages. I'd
been shooting since I could hold a gun, but I
never hunted with dogs. With Thor, I was going to
get my chance to contribute to the pig chasing stories
at school. Over the next four years, Thor grew to
be very protective of me. At a wapping one hundred
and ninety six pounds, that was a lot of protection.
He did have a few anger issues. No one could
pet him, and he wouldn't eat unless I gave him
the food. He scared my mother a lot too. She'd
always say, we need to get rid of that dog.
He's going to bite someone. I always shrugged it off.
One weekend, a mate I went to school with rang
me and said that we were going pigging. He said
to get my stuff together and he'd be at my
place in an hour. I went and got Thor's pigging collar,
a drink bottle, and my long range rifle. About nine am,
my mate turned up in his white dual cave ute.
His dog was already in the back and thora was
nearly snapping the chain I had him on to get
to the ute. He knew what we were doing and
he was getting excited. After I loaded my stuff and
we got on our way, I asked my mate where
we were going the Poliga. He said, Now, for anyone
who doesn't know or has not heard of the Paligue
of forests, it's just outside of Narrowbrie, New South Wales.
There have been so many Bigfoot stories about that place,
even a movie made about it. There's a highway that
runs through the middle of it. Big semi trailer trucks
can blow tires and the drivers won't even pull up
to fix them. Everybody knows about the stories and the
sightings down there. I didn't know it, but we were
about to add to the tally. It was about a
two hour drive from my home down to the Palagua Forest.
You can tell when the forest starts because the red
soil on the side of the road turns to an
almost sand or fine gravel. We continued until we saw
an opening in a rarely used car track, and we
turned in there and continued on for about fifteen minutes.
My mate slowly pulled the ute up to a five
wire fence at a tee intersection and said, this is it.
Let's go. I asked him who owned the property. He
just shrugged and giggled as he unchained his dog. He
reached over to unchained Thor, but Thor's lips came up
and his teeth came out. Go on, he's only playing,
I said, Stop being a flossy and unclip it. I laughed,
but he uttered an expletive and walked away. Defeated. I
unclipped Thor's chain, slung my rifle over my shoulder, and
off we went through the fence. We found a goat
track and followed it for about ten minutes. It was
pretty easy to walk through. The dogs were leading the
way with their noses in the air, trying to scent
some pigs. My mate's dog had a better nose than Thor's.
It spun to the left, sniffed a few times, and
then took off. My mate and I were doing our
best to follow. Thor hadn't picked up any sent yet,
so he stayed by my side, watching the other dog
and waiting for the barking and pig squealing to begin.
I crouched down next to him and put my arm
around him, giving him encouragement. Where's the pigs? Boy? You listening?
Where are they? He was getting psyched up. Both of
his ears were standing straight up, and he was ready
to go. My mate and his dog were gone for
about two or three minutes. At this point, I couldn't
see or hear either of them, just the grasshoppers and
a few birds chirping. I was still crouched down next
to my dog and watching in the direction my mate
and his dog went. When I got an overwhelming feeling
that we were being watched. I looked up and down
the track, but a I didn't see anything. I spun
on the balls of my feet to look behind me
into the scrub, but I didn't see anything there. The
bush was so thick to see more than thirty meters anyway.
I spun Thor around to look in that direction. He
was hesitant, still trying to watch the way my mate
and his dog went, and I said, what's up here?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: Something finally got his attention. He stared out into the
scrub as the hairs on his back stood up and
he started to growl jackpot. I thought, we're on again.
I stood up and pushed Thor in that direction. Get him, boy,
I shouted, as he put his ears back, head down
and took off into the scrub. A million miles an
hour in five seconds, I couldn't see him. I was
chasing after him as fast as I could, listening for
a pig to squeal. I could still hear him barking,
but it was getting farther and farther away. He was
fifty meters ahead of me. I'd say, I was thinking, God,
I hope they aren't much further. I hate running. Thor's
barking stopped, and I stopped. I was waiting for a
noise to tell me which way to run through the
bush to get him. I waited, and I waited. Usually
this happens pretty quick, and I kept waiting, and then
I heard yelping. I had never in my life heard
Thor yelp, not even when he was a puppy. He
was yelping with every breath, and I could hear the
yelps getting closer. Whatever was making him yelp, he was
having no part of it and was heading back to me.
I could see him coming through the bush faster than
he went in, and he was still yelping. His tail
was between his legs and cowering. He got back to
my feet and pissed himself in fear. He was trying
to hide behind me, looking back in the direction he'd
just gone. This scared the absolute life out of me.
I pulled my rifle off my and pressed it into
my shoulder and waited for whatever was chasing my dog
to show itself. I couldn't hear a thing except for
Thor's whimpering. As I stood there staring into the scrub,
a smell hit me. I thought Thor had lost control
of his bowels and then rolled and burnt hair. I
could hear my mate's dog barking behind us as they
returned to the road that I was standing on. I
could hear them a fair bit behind us, but I
wasn't game to take my eyes off the scrub in
front of me. His dog picked up our scent and
they found us. My mate called out, did you get
one or what? I shushed him. Something ain't right, I said.
He didn't even acknowledge what I said, and started walking
back to the road. I yelled out, I'm going back
to the ute and I'm leaving. He yelled over to
me and said for me to stop being a baby. No, mate,
something's wrong. I'm leaving. I told him he knew I
wasn't joking, and he agreed. I walked backwards the entire
trip back to the ute. My mate climbed through the
fence and I passed him my gun so I could
climb through. I insisted on driving. I just wanted to
get out of there. We got packed up and started
down the trail that he'd driven us in on. After
about two minutes of driving in silence, both dogs on
the back started barking and looking out the left side
of the ute into the scrub. My mate said, hey,
pull up, we'll let the dogs off. I quickly turned
down his request, and he said pull over. Then he
pulled the handbrake, stalling the ute. He pulled his gun
up to his shoulder and looked through the scope into
the scrub. The dogs were going ballistic. Now. I looked
over and saw something about forty meters out. My mate
was trying to find this thing in his scope, waving
it back and forth. He pushed the bolt forward down
and he chambered a bullet, still looking for whatever it was,
and the scope he must have had the magnification turned
up a fair bit because he was struggling to find it,
and then he gasped. I stared at him for a minute,
waiting for an answer, before nearly yelling what is it.
He uncocked the gun and it said, mate, I think
it's a bloke. He took his eye away from the
scope and looked over the gun back to the scope.
And back over the gun. He cocked it again, aimed
down below the tree, and then boom. The warning shot
rang out as this thing spun around and ran off
on two legs, just like you or I. The sound
of this thing's feet hitting the ground and breaking off
the branches as it ran still scares me. My mate
turned to me and he said, yeah, fair call, let's go.
I have never been back to this place. I never
planned to go back by any means. Thanks for reading
my story. Sorry for the spelling mistakes. I know I
sound dyslexic. Brother, you aren't near as dyslexic as I am.
But this was a great story because he's got this dog,
this two hundred pound dog or ninety six kilogram dog
that is just fearless, and it's a vicious dog. And
this dog is scared to death of whatever that was.
I'm almost sure that that thing got after his dog.
I don't know. I could elaborate on this story forever,
but it's real exciting. It's another story from Australia, from
our good friends in Australia. I've read a little bit
about the Peliga Forest. I understand they've got some issues
with fracking and gas extraction in that area. It's a beautiful,
pristine wilderness and I think the I think industry is
coming in and really giving the farmer's trouble. And so anyway,
if you're interested in that, look up the Poliga Forest
in Australia and learn about it. It's an interesting story
about that. Okay, I'll quit Ramblin. Appreciate the email, buddy,
thank you.
Speaker 2: I'm a reserve police officer and a private security officer
who contracts for state and the federal government, so I'd
like to keep my name and exactly where I'm from
is quiet as not. Everyone in my line of work
is so open minded. The thing about northern Illinois that
not a lot of people think about is there's a
lot of bigfoot activity. I never really believed it, as
I'm an avid hunter and outdoorsman who spent more of
my childhood outside rather than inside. Part of my security
job includes doing patient transports between various hospitals and mental
health facilities in the Midwest, and on one of these
I saw something that made me a believer in all
the stories I heard as a kid. We were on
the road for a few hours. When we finally got
to the Illinois Missouri border the Mississippi. That river marked
that we were close to the town we were going to,
about one hundred or so miles south of the Iowa border.
We dropped off the patient without an issue, and I
was glad as the amount of nicotine and caffeine in
my system wasn't quite enough to fuel me through a
physical confrontation. We stopped by a local diner and headed
out on our way. When we got back to the
bridge heading back into Illinois, I saw what I initially
took as a farmer out in his field, which I
thought was strange as it was one am, but I
shrugged it off as a sick animal. Then he went
into a pen and threw what looked like a sheep
over his shoulder. We kept driving and I noticed out
of the corner of my eye the same figure running
towards the river, which I thought was strange and made
me focus more on him. It was then that I
realized that this was too tall to be a man,
because the corn wasn't even up to his chest and
the sheep was absolutely puny over his shoulder. I initially
thought that it was a lamb, but now it became
clear it was a full grown adult that had to
be at least two hundred pounds, if not more. When
it got to the river, it walked in and started swimming,
going straight across the current, not even seeming to touch it.
Despite having one arm handicap by its cargo. He got
onto the Illinois side and crawled onto the bank with
ease despite what might have been a six foot incline,
and disappeared into the treeline. The surprise of seeing him
scale that incline made me swallow some of the dip
I had in my lip, and I was coughing when
my partner woke up and asked what happened. I explained
the situation to him, and he said I need to
cut down on the overtime and that the lack of
sleep was getting to my head. When we got back
to the office, I talked to my sergeant, who has
twenty years law enforcement experience on top of four years
active duty in the Marine Corps. He put a hand
on my shoulder and he said that there are things
out there that shouldn't be talked about and left it
at that. The whole experience has left me looking over
my shoulder every time I'm out hunting and has given
me a newfound respect for the woods. Many years ago,
I was invited to go hunting in southeast Oklahoma. I
worked with a guy that invited me, but did not
really know the others. The coworker remains my best friend
to this day. We all met at the same spot
for about three seasons. Then for different reasons, it was
just me. I didn't mind. I loved it, and it
was a good spot. This place is for public hunting
in the Watchataw Mountains. It's also famous for bigfoot sightings.
For all my years in the woods, I've gained a
lot of skills in experience. I was sure that if
anyone could find bigfoot, it would be me. Up until
this point, I never had any definite proof. I have, however,
seen and heard things that I could not explain, so
I keep an open mind. The first couple of solo
trips were uneventful. I never worried about anything. I was
always armed with a pistol, a rifle, and a shotgun.
The rifle was with me in the woods, the shotgun
rested on a chair while in camp, and the pistol
never left my side. My trips were well planned, so
I always had more than enough provisions to last the
whole time. Sometimes I'd stay as long as a month.
That's how much I loved it, now that I think
about it. Weird things started happening. The first time one
went alone. A chair or a tool or other small
things would be in a different spot when I returned
to camp, nothing missing. It was just move I just
put it down as absent mindedness on my part. And
then one day it started. First it was a small
rock that landed about ten feet away. I was sitting
in a chair, sharpening my knife and sipping on a beer.
I looked in the direction from which it came, and
I saw nothing. I didn't hear anything either, I mean nothing,
no birds or anything. It was unnerving, to say the least.
After a few minutes, I picked up the same rock
and I threw it back where it came from. It
took several minutes, but to my surprise, the same exact
rock came back almost in the same spot that it
landed the first time. I didn't sleep that night, but
I was on high alert. The next morning, I was
cold and went to the wood pop so I could
stoke the fire and get a pot of coffee going,
I grabbed a log, but on the chopping block I
saw it. It was a small figure, crudely fashioned out
of pine needles. I picked it up and studied it.
Two arms, two legs, and a head. That's when all
of my anxiety faded away. I held it up and
looking around, I said thank you. I was sure that
whatever had left it meant me no harm. Things like
this happened for the next three or four years. We
even started exchanging gifts. It left an arrowhead one time,
another time just a shiny rock from the river, which
was about a mile away. In exchange, I would leave
an apple or some cookies. The small rock throwing also continued,
like a game that we both enjoyed. I never saw it,
but I could since when it was there. We had
become friends. Always camped in the same spot, and this
year was the same. I was always pumped for deer season,
especially to visit my friend again. It always waited until
I was finished setting up camp and could sit down
for a little rest, then the rock tossing game would
start again. It had become our thing. About a half
hour before dark, we both heard it. It was an
old pickup with a bad exhaustedly screaming down the main
gravel road. Not really unusual, everyone knew about the meth
problems in that part of the state. What was unusual
It came straight into my camp. It slid to a
stop right in front of me. When the dust cleared,
I could see them, four mails between about sixteen and forty,
all sitting in an eighty model's Chevy single cab pickup truck.
I wasn't too worried. The shotgun was close by. When
they all got out at the same time, I knew
it was tweaker, and man were they on it. They
all acted like they had spiders on their clothes in
their hair. The driver I thought his eyeballs were going
to explode. And their agitated state and almost incoherent speech,
they said I was on their private property. I knew
they saw the shotgun that was within my reachs So
without getting up or raising my voice, I said, no,
this is public land. I've been hunting here for years.
That's when they got really wound up. They all started
yelling at the same time and started in my direction.
But before I got my hand on the shotgun, I
saw something big fly through the air from my right.
It was a basketball sized boulder. It crashed into the
driver's side bed of the truck. It was loud, and
it scared them more than me, only because I saw
it coming. One of them fell on the ground in
a stupor. The other three turned to look at the
giant dent in the side of the truck. That gave
me a couple of extra seconds to grab the shotgun
and stand up. When they turned back towards me, they
were looking at the business end of a Remington eight seventy.
We all stood staring each other for what seemed like
an hour, It was in fact only a second or two.
Then came the loudest, scariest noise I had ever heard
in my life, kind of a roar plus a scream,
and it hurt my ears. As they were staring at me,
I calmly said, you boys, get on. They picked the
one up from the ground, scrambled back in the pickup,
and slung rocks getting out of there. When we couldn't
hear the truck anymore, I sat back down in my
chair and had a shot of whiskey. By this time
it was dark. I sat there in the dark, trying
to figure out what I was going to do next.
Should I stay or should I go? That's when I
heard a familiar sound. My friend tossed a small rock
that landed near my feet. I laughed out loud and
threw the same rock back. I slept off and on
that night, with mister Remington in my lap, but unafraid.
The next morning, I had decided to go ahead and leave.
It wasn't safe for my friend and I, so I
got up. I made coffee and breakfast, and had one
last game of rock toss. I was packed up and
ready to leave about ten am. I knew he was
still there, although I never saw him. But right before
I left, I took everything I planned as gifts for
him and left it on the chopping block. In return,
I found the rock that we played our game with.
I said goodbye in a soft voice, and I left.
That was about fifteen years ago. I never went back
to that spot. Since then, I've camped and hunted in
a lot of different places, from Oklahoma to North Carolina.
Whenever I'm sure i'm alone, I'll pick up a small
rock and throw it towards the thick part of the woods,
but it never comes back. This is a true story,
believe it, or leave it alone.