Speaker 1: I never dreamt in a million years that I would
ever have an experience, let alone speak of it. But
I feel comfortable to tell it. The only ones who
know about it are my mother, my son, my daughter,
and myself and now you. I am a believer of
many things. I believe in the paranormal. I believe that
dreams come true. I believe people may have seen something,
but a bigfoot. I wasn't sure what to think of this.
I wasn't sure until twenty fifteen. That is. We moved
from Houston to Central Texas, and the way best to
describe it was it was a neighborhood, but it was
a country version of a neighborhood, where each property was
at least an acre, give or take. We had wildlife
out there, and I was quite excited to see wild
deer in our front yard. And of course we would
hear a bobcat and hear codes occasionally. I am a
single mom of two beautiful adult children. My youngest girl
has a disability. It's like dealing with a giant four
year old. I'm very close to my mother, and we
all decided that we wanted to live together. We moved
into a huge four bedroom manufactured home, and let's just
say that we could meet in the kitchen and would
be halfway through the house, and basically each side of
the home had the privacy of a two bedroom apartment.
One night, I was outside with my son walking one
of our German shepherds. I adore German shepherds, and we
have three of them and a pit bull puppy, and
they're all rescues. We spend a lot of time outside.
One of the gentlemen that used to live around the
neighborhood stopped in the road and he told us that
we shouldn't be out there in the night. In his words,
there's a big animal that roams around here. We assumed
that he was either messing with us or he was
talking about a big coyote or even a mountain lion
that had been seen in the town next to us.
My son and I said, thank you, but I think
we'll be okay. He said, trust me, you won't be
if this thing comes out. At that point we knew
he was being over dramatic. Maybe he was even drunk.
One night, my son was out and I was in
the kitchen having a cup of coffee with my mother
and talking about some plans we had. The following day,
my daughter came in and announced that she saw a
big man looking in her window. We assumed that she
had been dreaming, and we treated it like that. She said, no, Mom,
it was a big man outside he was looking in.
It's a monster man. My mother mentioned that my son
had been allowing her to watch scary mo movies while
he was supposed to be watching her, and now she
was having nightmares. So I asked what did the monster
look like, and she said that he had red eyes
that glowed in long hair on his face, that he
looked really scary. Well, none of that made sense, but
she slept with her grandmother that night and all was quiet.
My daughter attends the school for adults with disabilities. My
mother had taken her there the next morning, and I
asked my son if he had allowed his sister to
watch a scary movie. He said, no, Mom, I would
never do that. I told him what she said, and
my son became concerned and looked around the house and
under the window, but we found no evidence of anything
being there. Four nights later, while my son was out
walking our shepherd, he caught a horrible odor in the area.
We assumed it was a septic tank, but my son
said the odor was much worse than that. Suddenly, the
dogs began to growl and pace around at the front door.
They wanted out. They did this when they knew deer
were in the yard, and I was afraid they were
going to start barking and annoy us for the next hour.
But they never did bark. They acted different than when
a deer was close. Their hackles were raised and they
were all growling, a really strange growl. I had never
heard them do this. I pushed past the dogs to
look out the window, fully expecting to see deer in
the yard, but instead I saw what looked like a
giant man. It took a step forward, and it triggered
the motion lights on the front of the house, and
there it was fully illuminated in the glow of the
security light. I could not speak or move. I think
my mouth was hanging open trying to speak, but I
couldn't form the words. My son was beside me, looking
out the adjacent window. He immediately reached for me and
pulled me away from the door and closed everything up,
and then he checked all the locks. My mom yelled
and said to call the police. And my response was, so,
what are we gonna say? What do I say, mom?
That a monster was in my front yard. My son
had left the room, and soon he returned loading his
grandfather's deer rifle, and then we heard a gunshot in
the distance and everything got quiet. We never went out
to investigate, and that night was a fitful night of sleep.
Not much of us got any sleep at all. And
I don't know what got into the dogs, but for
the rest of the night they stayed away from the
front door. Maybe they recognized the odor, or maybe they
knew what this thing was, but they were not interested
in going out. Still today they will not go out
into the front yard, only out back, where they are
inside a fence. The following day we ran into that
strange neighbor. My son and I had seen that one
night and had stopped by and he said, I told
you that thing was big, didn't I? And I asked,
what was that thing? And he said, you saw it,
didn't you? You know what it was? And then he
drove away. It was really weird. After that night, we
never saw it again. There are times when I think
it was near, though. The dogs always let us know
when something was not right. News reports were on TV
about bigfoot sightings in central Texas soon after this happened,
and they continued sporadically for a year. Even after seeing
the creature that night and then backed up by the
strange man and the news reports, I still had a
hard time believing that it was a bigfoot. I rationalized
that it was a prank. We live in a college town,
and maybe I thought some local kids were just playing
a joe. But I remember how big this thing was,
every bit of eight to nine feet tall, and it
was very broad in the shoulders, and there were those
red eyes. They were not fake, they were real. I
don't know any college kids that are eight or nine
feet tall, so I rule that out. The reports I
saw on the local news and on the internet began
to concern me, and I began to believe that it
was a bigfoot. We have become believers since then. We
didn't stay there much longer. Within a year, we moved away,
not because of the bigfoot. We made the decision to
get closer to the city for my daughter and my mother.
I have not discussed this with anyone outside the family.
This is the first time that I have made the
event known. It feels good to get it off my chest,
but I will admit that as I type this, the
memories and panic of that night are flooding back. My
hands are shaking here on the keyboard. It was all
so shocking, and then when I saw my son walking
in the room loading that rifle, I knew things were serious.
After careful thoult though I do not think the creature
meant us any harm. It made no aggressive gestures towards us.
I think it may have been passing through or just wandering,
and our yard provoked its curiosity. Thanks for allowing me
to share my story, Signed Angela. I spent my teenage
years growing up in the nineteen seventies outside of New
York City and the cement covered suburbs. As teenagers, me
and my buddies were fascinated with anything to do with Bigfoot.
The legend of Boggy Creek and the Leonard Knemoy Bigfoot
documentaries with Patterson. Film was about all we had to
learn about these creatures, and most of the time we
had to go to Saturday Nay's to see a re
release of these films. We didn't have YouTube in those days.
From everything we knew Bigfoots inhabited the woods, mountains and
forests that stretched from northern California to British Columbia, and
that was their territory. Even Boggy Creek, a story from
the swamps of Texas Counta, Arkansas, was told as a
weird folk tale of a three toed creature, and it
was never identified as a bigfoot. It was only when
I started college that I would learn this was incorrect.
Bigfoots live a lot closer to my New York home,
something that haunts me to this day. My encounter took
place in nineteen eighty and I need to provide some
background to the encounter. The group of us that grew
up together were what you would call city slicker, good
old boys. We lived in the city, but were all
born with a longing for the the country in the woods.
We were commuter and community college brethren. We all had
CBE radios in our cars with handles and everything. This
was during the Burt Reynolds phase of male bonding, and
it kept the group of four of us pretty much
tight together during our college years. One of our group, NICKI,
was a seasoned deer hunter and had been hunting his
family's upstate property since he was twelve. His parents owned
a two bedroom hunter's cabin set on thirty five acres
in the Catskill Mountains, one hundred and twenty miles north
of New York City. We would visit Nicky's cabin on
occasion when deer season had ended and get away from civilization.
We had fun initiating other New York friends to nature
by taking tough talking city folk up there and seeing
if we could scare them enough so the tough guys
would wet their pants. One easy way that we would
scare the tough guys and see what they were made of.
We would hike up the mountain just behind the cabin,
and on the way down, one of us at the
end of the line would tossh rock sideways into the
woods adjacent to the trail, giving the impression that we
were being stalked by a mountain lion. We lost a
lot of city slickers that way. Most would never make
a return trip, and we had many lives over this.
Imagine Rocky Balboa in a leather jacket walking the woods,
imagining he's about to be attacked by a mountain lion,
and then asking to go home. You get the picture.
In nineteen eighty, right after college midterms, it was just
Nicky and I. We made the rounds of the local
convenience stores and stocked the snow bank with some beer,
coal cuts, and provisions. We lit up the Franklin stove
and then had more than a few adult beverages before
turning in. We each took a bedroom. I had the
bedroom with the window facing the stream. I loved this
room In the summer when I was lucky enough to
get it. The sounds of the stream flowing came through
the open window and would put me to sleep, like
watching golf on TV. But April was still too chilly
for open windows in the Catskulls. In the middle of
the night, I felt myself being woken up by NICKI.
He was saying that he was hearing some noise rustling
on the cabin's porch. I didn't pay it any mine.
I thought he was messing with me, which made him
get a bit angry. When he finally had my attention,
I listened, and I thought it was just raccoons. It
wasn't unusual for raccoons to overlook the mothball snow bank
and smell the food inside the cabin and look for
a way to get in. So we clang two cast
iron pots together and everything quieted down, and that was that.
The next day we woke up together and found some
raccoon tracks on the porch, proving my point. We ate
breakfast and practiced our shooting skills in the pasture, knocking
cans and bottles off the fence, and then joking how
a raccoon didn't have a chance against us, But in
reality I must say that the raccoon did have a
great chance. And though we were familiar with firearms, where
we lived didn't provide much opportunity for practice, and it
showed because at the beginning of each gun outing I
could not hit the side of a barn with a
dead cat, and only improved to nicking a bottle at
twenty yards with a twenty two after a few hours
of practice. However, a twelve gage shotgun on improved cylinder
choked could make anyone feel like Sergeant Yorke. The rest
of the day was more of the same, and we
settled in for a good meal, a pan of seer
chicken and pasta and wine and one too many wild
turkey shots for dessert. One thing Italian guys can do,
even in the Sahara desert, is find a way to
make some good pasta. That evening, in the middle of
the night, Nikki woke me again to say the raccoon
had returned. I was a bit tick, this time him
being the deer hunter, suggesting he scared the raccoon off
by himself. Forget the twenty two. He knows the drill.
I didn't hear the pots, and then, thinking about it,
the rifle option would lead to an unwanted cleaning of
a raccoon drill. Thankfully, I didn't hear the twenty two
or the port sounds, and I went back to sleep
on my wild turkey. The next morning, I woke early
and decided I would do one of my rituals. I
would hike the trail behind the mountain alone, which I
would often do in the summer to work off the
pasta in the wild turkey, and then I would come
back and make a mean ham and egg breakfast. This
would be an apology for not helping with the raccoons.
After all, that was his cabin and I wanted to
come back to this play. I grabbed my walking stick
and I told half sleeping Nikki that I was going
to do my hike and that i'd be back in
a while and he could make coffee, but leave the
breakfast to me. I headed out to the porch and
I found it covered not in raccoon prints, but lumps
of sandy dirt. It was like someone squashed a few
ant mounds on the porch. In retrospect, there weren't any
signs of footprints or anything that would give me pauls
to investigate. There were no bear tracks, though I knew
enough that any black bear mama probably would not drag
her cubs onto a porch with humans. Maybe a New
Jersey black bear, but not one of the catskills. Still,
I didn't see any bear or mountain lion tracks, and
I had seen both in my travels to the cabin,
So off I went on my height thirty minutes up
the trail. Just over a mile up the mountain behind
the cabin, I noticed a pile of wood occupying the trail.
This struck me since the trail was maybe twenty or
twenty five yards wide and the wood debris pile looks
like it was deliberately placed there more In fact, they
looked inder woven, like a nest of the way you
would see a beaver dam. At this point, I looked
at the stream on my right and I found it
almost dry. I thought a beaver might have built a
dam on the stream, and this could be a problem.
If the dam were large enough and broke, it could
reroute the stream directly toward the cabin below. So I
slowly approached to investigate. I heard a water slapping sound
like a beaver's tail on the water before diving. I
was still walking uphill and where the beaver chose to
build this dam was one of the only flat areas
that the stream flows, but not typically wide enough for
a dam in a pond. As I climbed, I saw
a tough to fur over a mound, and then it disappeared.
I climbed to investigate the level area. It was a
modest dam and lodge. The pond could only have measured
one hundred feet long and maybe forty feet wide, pretty
small for a beaver. And even though I hadn't been
there since last summer and Nicky was there during deer season,
the dam could have been there a while, but it
looked like new construction. It was the only extended flat
spot on this trail until you reach the mountaintop. I
was excited about the prospect of seeing a beaver build
his dam and lodge, so I walked quietly and was
able to walk around it. I watched it for some
time while not disturbing anything, and suddenly, from deep off
the side of the lodge, I heard a loud branch snap.
I thought the beaver was at work and out of sight.
I should let him be. After hiking further up the mountain,
I visited an old abandoned cabin that I knew about,
and I looked at the larger hilltop pond. It looked
the same. It was two hundred feet wide, and I
wondered why the beaver didn't build his lodge there, And
then I decided to head back down. I approached the
part of the trail and stream that leads to where
the beaver pond was, and I began humming loudly, sounding
out song words to make myself heard. I didn't want
to mess with a beaver, even though they're slower on land.
I knew that their territorial and could have a mean
streak when you approach them or when they're surprised. When
I was fifty yards away. My jaw dropped when I
saw the outline of a black bear sniffing around the
beaver lodge. I stopped and was gripping my walking stick,
wishing I had the shotgun. I was worried. I stumbled
on a mama black bear with some cubs nearby, so
I looked around, but I didn't see any black bears.
And mountain lions are the most dangerous things in these parts,
and black bears are more violent with people than grizzlies
or brown bears. I did have the small pond separating
me and the bear, but the bear looked strange in
the shadows of the morning forest canopy. It acted uninterested
in me and my noise, and more interested in the
dam and pond. And then it stood up and it
wasn't a bear. My mind drew a blank. I was
looking at a seven foot broad shouldered monkey. I couldn't
believe what my eyes were seeing. I am six foot
one and the width of this thing was from my
toes to my chest about three feet plus. I admit
that I thought for one split second that Nicky had
pulled the greatest prank on me, but This was a
costume no one I knew could fit inside or mate.
And the way the skin and muscles moved under its
silky black fur, this was no costume. Whatever it was,
it was definitely a male and well over seven feet tall.
It probably weighed five hundred pounds. There was only two
hundred feet between me and this thing. Now I could
make out its face. It was a cross between a
gorilla and a man. Its skin was gray, like a gorilla,
protruding nostrils and mouth. There was a large brow ridge,
and the lips were more like that of a human
compared to a chimp. Well, I was half confused, since
I thought bigfoots only lived in the Pacific Northwest. They
weren't one hundred and twenty miles north of New York City.
Well I stared at it for an eternity, and the
creature raised its arm and grabbed a tree to its side,
and I watched how it wrapped its fingers around the
trunk of that tree. I didn't smell anything, and then
the creature began slowly swaying side to side, always gripping
the tree trunk and pulling himself closer to the tree
with its right hand and then pushing out. Its eyes
were on me the whole time. If it wanted to
come at me, it would either breach the pond or
move fast to get around it. So I never moved.
My only defense was my three foot walking stick that
I was clutching like the grim Reaper, and regretting that
I didn't have my forty five or even my twelve gage.
Looking at the size of this thing, I thought my
forty five would have been suicide. This thing would get
to me before the bullets did their final damage. I
was calm, though now I began to sense that this
thing didn't want to hurt me. It never growled or screamed.
It just rocked back and forth into that one tree
that it was grabbing. Suddenly, it pulled itself in one
swinging twirl motion to the other side of the tree
it was holding, turned its back to me, and it
walked off. I slowly moved down the side of the
pond opposite the side where I spotted the animal. I
couldn't see it, and I didn't hear it. I didn't
want to see it again, but I had to watch
for it. I know. The only thought I had in
my mind was to get the hell out of that
place as soon as possible. Not just that trail, I
had to get off that mountain and away from that cabin.
I practically ran to the cabin, aided by the downhill slope.
I nearly fell a few times, but I made it
down in record time. When I got back, Nikki was
still sleeping. I gathered my thoughts and I decided I
wasn't saying anything about this, but I needed an escape plan.
I cooked breakfast like nothing was wrong, but Nicky knew
something was up. After breakfast, instead of shooting, I suggested
we go into town and get something that I needed
for dinner. We buzzed off and I went off to
a payphone, and I came back with a story of
a sick relative in the hospital and that I needed
to head back. Well. He was bummed, but he understood.
We packed up and left right after lunch. I never
mentioned the pond or the beaver dam. I didn't want
to go back and investigate. I never said anything about
what I saw, and I never went back to that
cabin again. A few days after getting back, Nicki and
I talked and he apologized. He thought I wanted to
get home because he was bugging me about the raccoons.
A friend can always tell when a friend isn't right.
We were good after that. During dear season, I would
be asking Nicki for hunt stories, waiting to hopefully hear
a story of a bigfoot sighting from a hunter. There
were none. Instead, I was invited to get my license
and join their hunting party. No thanks. In hindsight, in
researching the creature, we've had an aggressive bigfoot living about
two hundred miles north of my sighting in Whitehall Mountain
near Lake George. Also, the one I saw, his side
to side moving gesture looks somewhat playful, but it's a
Semian act of agitation and aggression. So the bigfoot that
I saw was annoyed. He wasn't swinging back and forth
in playfulness. I think he was targeting and hunting the
beaver that built the dam, and I was interfering with
his hunt. I think the beaver chose that spot instead
of the larger pond to avoid what was stalking him.
I think the bigfoot I saw didn't growl or scream
at me because it's since it was close to a
meal of a beaver and its sounds might have signaled
other creatures. I really don't know about that. When I
heard the crack to the side on my hike up
the mountain and passing the down, I think that was
the bigfoot on the side woods trying to get rid
of me. Maybe he was on the cabin porch that night.
I'll never know, and we'll never tell. I will never
go back to the woods alone and unarmed with anything
less than a forty five. On at least three occasions
since being married, this sighting has impacted me with a
PTSD like night terror. I have had nightmares of a
bigfoot stalking either me or my wife and kids. And
this may sound insane, but it's true. I would make
a growling animal attack noise, screaming at the bigfoot like
an animal at the top of my lungs in a
defensive posture, letting it know that I'm not choosing to flight,
I'm choosing to fight, hoping that this will back the
creature off. All of this was happening in my dreams,
but my snarls and growls would increase in volume and
grow until I would scream like a wild man, eventually
scaring the crap out of my wife and She would
shake me to snap me out of the dream. She
thought I was turning into a wolfman in my growling antics.
The last time this happened, I woke up the entire house,
my wife and our six year old son and our
nine year old daughter. We gave the kids a funny
nightmare story, but my wife knows the real story. She
encouraged me to share this as a form of therapy
so she can sleep in peace without any wolfman dream visits.
And I still live in the suburbs of the city,
only now I'm the one who was scared by something
that was actually very real. Thank you for the channel,
and may God bless you for giving folks like me
an anonymous outlet to get something off our minds.