Speaker 1: I was a fifteen year old boy scout when our
Speaker 1: troop was taken to Carter Caves State Park in eastern
Speaker 1: Kentucky for a week of primitive camping. One evening, after
Speaker 1: a day of carousing around, swimming, hiking, cave exploring, and
Speaker 1: loving to be while young teenage boys, we finally had
Speaker 1: a very late supper. Afterward, we drove the chilly night
Speaker 1: away around our campfires, a large one for the troops
Speaker 1: and a second for the scout master and his assistant
Speaker 1: some twenty feet away. Upon this scene, about ten PM
Speaker 1: or so arrived a park ranger on his nightly visit
Speaker 1: to our camp. He usually just looked us over, asked
Speaker 1: if we had any needs, and then he left, but
Speaker 1: this evening he apparently had a couple of things on
Speaker 1: his mind. Upon gathering up the scouts, the ranger said
Speaker 1: he was looking in to an incident concerning one enterprising scout.
Speaker 1: He said that he was told that this scout was
Speaker 1: going down to the trading post at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the mountain, buying up all the nickel candy bars during
Speaker 1: the day, coming back to camp, and selling them after
Speaker 1: dark for a dime. After being informed that doing such
Speaker 1: a dastardly thing to fellow scouts was wrong. The culprit
Speaker 1: who was me was admonished for practicing my first try
Speaker 1: it for a enterprise. I thought it was fair. I
Speaker 1: spent two hours trudging up and down the mountain every day,
Speaker 1: and for the past four days they bought every candy
Speaker 1: bar I had. But a snitch tried to blackmail me
Speaker 1: into giving him a share of my profits. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: do so, so he reported me to the ranger. The
Speaker 1: guys really gave it to me good, rising me and
Speaker 1: shoving me around in the circle. The ranger, on his part,
Speaker 1: put his hand on his hips and smiled at me
Speaker 1: and shook his head and walked over and sat down
Speaker 1: at the scout master's fire across the campsite. Wondering if
Speaker 1: they'd talked more about me. I made a small circle
Speaker 1: around the tents and I crept nearer. I sat down
Speaker 1: outside the fire circles, listening in on the adult conversation.
Speaker 1: But what I heard had nothing to do with me.
Speaker 1: The ranger was cautioning the scout masters that in the
Speaker 1: general area around the park there had been a tax
Speaker 1: on area farm stock. They put the blame on dog
Speaker 1: packs codies, coy dogs, cougars, bears, and maybe black panthers,
Speaker 1: which we had and still having this part of the country.
Speaker 1: The attacks were particularly prevalent in one area about eight
Speaker 1: miles away from the park. He said that recently, thinking
Speaker 1: that they had the animal cornered, about one hundred volunteers
Speaker 1: formed a line with twenty five feet or so between
Speaker 1: each one, with some extra men at the closing end.
Speaker 1: When it began to get dark, every man lit up
Speaker 1: some kind of lantern or flashlight. As they pushed through
Speaker 1: the stifling, hot and dusty tall brush. It was a
Speaker 1: bit hard to breathe because there was a dry spell
Speaker 1: one and the shaking the parched weeds dusted the air
Speaker 1: with an artificial yellow fog of pollen, which grew about
Speaker 1: eight feet high or more this time of year. At
Speaker 1: one point, as they fought their way among the entangling brush,
Speaker 1: they heard a scream and a shotgun blast, and they
Speaker 1: rushed to the point in the line they found one
Speaker 1: of the younger men, he was about twenty years old,
Speaker 1: groaning in amongst some crushed vegetation. His gun was found
Speaker 1: with the stock smashed in the barrel bent at the
Speaker 1: base of a nearby tree. He was out of his
Speaker 1: head with fright, so he was transported to the hospital
Speaker 1: where he was kept overnight for chest bruising and shock.
Speaker 1: He was sedated, so nothing could be learned the incident
Speaker 1: until the next morning. After a day or so, According
Speaker 1: to what I overheard the ranger say, the boy had
Speaker 1: calmed down enough to relay his story. He said that
Speaker 1: he was walking through the dusty growth with his lantern
Speaker 1: raised in one hand and a shotgun in the other.
Speaker 1: He said he heard and saw a rush of movement
Speaker 1: from directly ahead that something was coming directly for him.
Speaker 1: When a huge white wall came crashing down on him,
Speaker 1: He awkwardly lifted his shotgun in one hand and fired,
Speaker 1: but was immediately struck in the chest and launched through
Speaker 1: the air. The crush of vegetation gave little clue as
Speaker 1: to the type of an animal that had attacked the boy.
Speaker 1: There was no blood at the scene, and I don't
Speaker 1: know if anyone tried to backtrail it through the weeds
Speaker 1: to see where it came from, but they didn't get
Speaker 1: even another glimpse of it, and no one would volunteer
Speaker 1: to follow out after it. The boy didn't know if
Speaker 1: he'd even shot it and had no idea what it was.
Speaker 1: He was sure that it struck him with more powerful
Speaker 1: of a push than a hit, but it was able
Speaker 1: to propel him through the air in what he perceived
Speaker 1: to be a very little effort on the thing's part.
Speaker 1: But the thing was never caught after apparently getting through
Speaker 1: the line. Needless to say, that was the end of
Speaker 1: any more skirmish lines and for this thing could withstand
Speaker 1: a shotgun blast than all bets were off. It has
Speaker 1: still been seen throughout the following decades as something like
Speaker 1: a white shadow going through the woods, and has remained
Speaker 1: around the southeastern portion of Carter County, about twenty miles
Speaker 1: south of the park even to this day. But more
Speaker 1: on this particular thing later. As I squatted shaking in
Speaker 1: the night, the forest noise around me seemed to go quiet.
Speaker 1: I realized I was alone in the dark. I made
Speaker 1: it safely back to my tent and my sleeping bag.
Speaker 1: At that time, the mention of it being a sasquatch
Speaker 1: was never discussed or even considered. Bigfoot was alive and
Speaker 1: well at this time, supposedly in the Pacific Northwest, or
Speaker 1: so we thought. Back some fifty five years ago, not
Speaker 1: as it would be in the later sixties and early seventies,
Speaker 1: and so was lost in my mind for all these years.
Speaker 1: And now Incident number two occurred in August of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, and this gentleman was seventeen years old. Here's
Speaker 1: a little note, he writes to me before he starts
Speaker 1: the story. I finished writing this incident four months after incident.
Speaker 1: I I've never told anyone ever, not even my wife,
Speaker 1: until now, about this occurrence. I thought the event of
Speaker 1: over fifty three years ago would be easy to put
Speaker 1: down on paper and ready to send to you in
Speaker 1: a couple of hours. I found, to my surprise that
Speaker 1: I hardly remembered any details at all. But in starting
Speaker 1: to piece it all back together, I was shocked by
Speaker 1: what I remembered concerning the terror I had buried regarding
Speaker 1: this incident so many years ago. Over the last four months,
Speaker 1: things that I hadn't thought about in any detail over
Speaker 1: the last half century fell back into place. Having been
Speaker 1: a counselor, I'm aware that I blocked much of it
Speaker 1: due to trauma, but unplugging the memories started it flooding
Speaker 1: back so fast I could hardly keep up with my faults.
Speaker 1: Worst of all was that I felt like weeping for
Speaker 1: that boy, and the horror, and especially the loneliness of
Speaker 1: this singular night. But be that as it may. Let's
Speaker 1: go forward with a little over two years after the
Speaker 1: first incident to when I was seventeen. A few weeks
Speaker 1: before my senior year began, a couple of my friends
Speaker 1: and I were invited by a very close family member, Billy,
Speaker 1: to go hiking through areas of eastern Kentucky from north
Speaker 1: to southeast, in places where we'd never tramped before. At
Speaker 1: that time, there were hardly any inhabited areas in this
Speaker 1: part of the states, and roads were few and far between.
Speaker 1: It was to be a two day trek off trail
Speaker 1: and through the dense woods and steep ravines, not far
Speaker 1: from where the white Thing had been roaming some years earlier,
Speaker 1: but we didn't give it any mind. Only Billy had
Speaker 1: a firearm, the rest of us had hunting knives and hatchets.
Speaker 1: The temperature was over one hundred with near one hundred
Speaker 1: percent humidity, a typical southern hot and dusty August day
Speaker 1: with a miserable time for such a hike. All the
Speaker 1: creeks we passed were dry. Only the largest creek, Tigert Creek,
Speaker 1: had a good amount of water, whose course constantly doubles
Speaker 1: back on itself. Our ungs were clinging to the roofs
Speaker 1: of our mouths, and we were inhaling hot air and
Speaker 1: exhaling hot air back out using our canteens cause a
Speaker 1: problem as we were going to fill up as we
Speaker 1: went with clear creek water, but as I said, they
Speaker 1: were all dry. We started out in jackets in the
Speaker 1: cool of the early morning, but as the heat quickly rose,
Speaker 1: we soon were shedding down from jackets to shirts to
Speaker 1: T shirts. On we went, snagging our way through heavy
Speaker 1: brier patches, ankle catching vines, tripping over hidden rocks, insects
Speaker 1: die bombing our faces, and gnats doing their best to
Speaker 1: land on our open eyeballs. Finally, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, Billy decided that we would set up camp
Speaker 1: in a limestone cave set in the side of a
Speaker 1: steep cliff with a clear but small stream of cold
Speaker 1: water running through it. The gurgling brook echoed over and
Speaker 1: over in the small cave. A wide flat stone porch
Speaker 1: in front of the cave overlooked a sixty foot drop
Speaker 1: The cave was in the side of a limestone cliff,
Speaker 1: and I shined my light and checked the drop of
Speaker 1: the cliff from above the cave's position. It was about
Speaker 1: forty feet down from the trail that we had been following.
Speaker 1: Billy chose the cave for its natural cool air conditioning
Speaker 1: due to the damp limestone walls and the running stream
Speaker 1: for a water supply. The old man was a hunter
Speaker 1: and seasoned hiker that knew what he was doing. I
Speaker 1: was sure glad to unload my backpack and sleeping bag
Speaker 1: and quickly lay down before I threw up. I was
Speaker 1: suffering from a pounding headache. I had all the signs
Speaker 1: of heat exhaustion. There was nothing to do but try
Speaker 1: to sleep the horrible pounding headache away. We were whipped,
Speaker 1: so there wasn't much talking around the campfire. We ate
Speaker 1: a late meal, gorged our sh in cold water, and
Speaker 1: then turned in as soon as darkness fell about nine
Speaker 1: thirty PM. I tossed in turn for hours in a
Speaker 1: fitful sleep, but about one am I felt the result
Speaker 1: of all that water. Groggily pulled on my socks and
Speaker 1: gem shoes, buckled my jeans, and went out to water
Speaker 1: the grass. This is the downside of sleeping in a cave.
Speaker 1: We had to walk back up the trail to take
Speaker 1: a leak, and Billy didn't want us to go out
Speaker 1: to the porch edge for fear that we'd be so
Speaker 1: sleepy that we'd likely fall over. It was chilly in
Speaker 1: the cave, much cooler as I stepped up on the
Speaker 1: ground above the cave aways in just my t shirt.
Speaker 1: I would be back in my warm bag in just
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes, though. I had my rail backed
Speaker 1: flashlight and my bowie knife tied on my right leg
Speaker 1: in a low quick draw sheath, both of which my
Speaker 1: dad had made for me. I turned several times and
Speaker 1: finally chose a direction that wouldn't spray in the direction
Speaker 1: I would have to use and the return to the cave.
Speaker 1: Aiming is important. As I was doing my business, the
Speaker 1: great chattering noise brought on the night air suddenly ceased.
Speaker 1: I felt creepy, so I finished as quick as I could.
Speaker 1: The night was clear and the air was cold and damp,
Speaker 1: and I was shivering, so I headed back to my
Speaker 1: sleeping bag where it would be warm. I was still
Speaker 1: in the throes of heat exhaustion, and I stumbled away
Speaker 1: in the wrong direction. After not coming back to the
Speaker 1: trail to the cave for five or ten minutes, I
Speaker 1: knew I had lost my way. I grew a bit
Speaker 1: frantic as I went each way along the cliff and
Speaker 1: I couldn't find the small trail over the edge and
Speaker 1: down to the cave. I let out desperate shouts, but
Speaker 1: I got no reply. The loud babbling brook that echoed
Speaker 1: in the cave must have drowned out my Pleas I
Speaker 1: was in heavy brush, to the cave did not stand out.
Speaker 1: I'd been a scout and an explorer for six years,
Speaker 1: and I had hunted since I was eight, so I
Speaker 1: was filled with the false overconfidence of youth. I believe
Speaker 1: that even lost, I'd be able to walk out in
Speaker 1: a few hours. I had a strong flashlight and a
Speaker 1: twelve inch blade bowie knife, but the heat, exhaustion, and
Speaker 1: the lower temperatures were now causing me to sometimes shape violently.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was in an ice house. But
Speaker 1: I knew that when I found Tigert Creek that I'd
Speaker 1: find my way out. If I walked against the current,
Speaker 1: so to speak, I was bound to eventually run into
Speaker 1: an east West Highway a few hundred yards further. The
Speaker 1: bank gave way under my right foot and I was
Speaker 1: launched out in space on an elevator ride to Hell.
Speaker 1: The fall seemed to take forever. I had crashed through
Speaker 1: flimsy branches, falling about forty feet to a point where
Speaker 1: the limestone wall met the incline. When I hit a heavier,
Speaker 1: forked branch covered with tangles of vines and briars, my
Speaker 1: back landing on the limb, knocking the wind out of me.
Speaker 1: Thank God for the outstretched limb. Without it, I would
Speaker 1: have hit the rock strown basin far below. The entangling
Speaker 1: limb and vines slowly tipped sideways with my weight, and
Speaker 1: I saw by the waning moonlight that I might be
Speaker 1: able to use the vines as a sort of lighter
Speaker 1: and climb down to within ten feet of the steep
Speaker 1: bank under me. When I got free enough to drop down,
Speaker 1: I knew that my best bet would be to dig
Speaker 1: my heels into the earth upon impact and ease down
Speaker 1: the rest of the way to the bottom. I let go,
Speaker 1: and my heels hit and jammed in the loose earth.
Speaker 1: I was in for a fast, hard tumble and slide.
Speaker 1: To the rocky bottom of the draw. When I stopped tumbling,
Speaker 1: I lay there, surveying any damage done to my body.
Speaker 1: I was happy to find that, aside from many thorn
Speaker 1: scratches and some probable bruising, I was whole. I slowly
Speaker 1: got up on very shaky legs, and I turned around,
Speaker 1: and as soon as I could think, I saw that
Speaker 1: I was standing beside a tiny creek. A person would
Speaker 1: think you could look up and see the fireplace light
Speaker 1: in our cave, but it would have died down by now,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know in which direction to look. I
Speaker 1: tried anyway, but upon searching the cave, I could not
Speaker 1: see anything but the leaves and the brush and the
Speaker 1: walls effectively made this a prison hole. I did try
Speaker 1: to find either or both my flashlight and knife, but
Speaker 1: those two were lost causes needles in a black hay stack.
Speaker 1: I stood there alone in the dark in a steep wedge.
Speaker 1: I struggled over the bottom of the draw in each
Speaker 1: direction for at least an hour. When I heard the
Speaker 1: sound of that of a bear, quieting the forest chatter
Speaker 1: once again. I looked around into the darkness of the
Speaker 1: narrow pit of the mountain. I saw nothing, but felt
Speaker 1: once again that I was being watched by something, and
Speaker 1: I prayed it wouldn't be a cougar or a black
Speaker 1: panther or a bear aside from wolves, or worse, a
Speaker 1: dog pack. I tried to climb the side of the hill,
Speaker 1: but each time I slid back down on my belly.
Speaker 1: I tried to choose the right way back along the
Speaker 1: dimly lit cliff, but I couldn't discern from which side
Speaker 1: I had fallen. Logically, I chose to go down the
Speaker 1: draw following the dried up creek bed, which is all
Speaker 1: I had since it was away from the growl. After
Speaker 1: a long stumbling journey of constantly having to climb over, under,
Speaker 1: and around obstacles without a light or knife in the
Speaker 1: near darkness, I finally came to a break in the
Speaker 1: limestone wall on one side. I stopped and laid my sweaty,
Speaker 1: filthy body over yet another tree, Falling from a bank
Speaker 1: to bank, Gasping for breath with much effort, I used
Speaker 1: small trees to drag myself out of my limestone prison,
Speaker 1: sliding two steps down the bank while advancing just three,
Speaker 1: getting filthier and sweatier by the minute. I finally made
Speaker 1: the top edge of the flat on the mountain side,
Speaker 1: and I flopped over above the cliff, and I drew
Speaker 1: in a heavy, damp breath of air. After resting on
Speaker 1: the grimy flat in order to stop wheezing out my lungs,
Speaker 1: I got up and continued to crash through the thorn
Speaker 1: rods and stumble over rocks and depressions covered by dirt,
Speaker 1: gasping for air, sweating in the cold night. When I
Speaker 1: made out a larger game trail, Imagine the fear of
Speaker 1: a skinny one hundred and forty five pound kid, three
Speaker 1: months into his seventeenth birthday, shivering in a filthy, wet
Speaker 1: T shirt, groping through the darkness, almost legally blind and
Speaker 1: not knowing what direction to go. The moon was going down,
Speaker 1: and once again the noise of the forest stopped, but
Speaker 1: this time it stopped around me. My heart was pounding
Speaker 1: through my ribs as I struggled onward. So again all
Speaker 1: I could see were silhouettes of trees and bushes. And
Speaker 1: there in a right hand curve in the trail, looking
Speaker 1: through and over the brush. Standing on each side of
Speaker 1: the game trail were two large back lit figures, one
Speaker 1: slightly taller than the other. They were massive and the
Speaker 1: last thing I wanted to run into. Suddenly, the thought
Speaker 1: of a bear or a cougar was more preferable than
Speaker 1: the pair of things I was looking at now. At first,
Speaker 1: coming up slightly from the side, I thought there were
Speaker 1: two massive black panthers sitting on large boulders because they
Speaker 1: seemed to have cat's ears pulled back to a point
Speaker 1: my knees got weak. The worst possible meeting was about
Speaker 1: to take my life. But as I turned to view
Speaker 1: them straight on, I realized they were not on boulders,
Speaker 1: but things that stood eight to nine feet tall. They
Speaker 1: didn't move but for a small sway. Their heads appeared
Speaker 1: to be directly attached to their three to four feet
Speaker 1: wide shoulders. Whatever they were, if they were looking at
Speaker 1: me at all, I could not tell, and looking back
Speaker 1: on it now, I probably misconstrued their sloping heads for
Speaker 1: possible ears. Them being a pair of sasquatch again never
Speaker 1: even occurred to me until decades later, when sightings became
Speaker 1: more common outside the Northwest. I stood there, shaking as
Speaker 1: my sweat soak body trembled with cold and just plain
Speaker 1: near panic. I then leaned over and put my hands
Speaker 1: on my trim knees to steady myself. I was as
Speaker 1: wet as I could be, covered with a filth of
Speaker 1: many stumble and falls, and I already had had blood
Speaker 1: running down my arms from the briars that had torn
Speaker 1: at them. I had been lost so long, so many hours.
Speaker 1: I was tired and weary. It seemed so unfair to
Speaker 1: be stopped, injured, or even killed. Now I tried so hard.
Speaker 1: Was it for nothing? I raised my head and gazed
Speaker 1: up at these beasts. I was only about twenty five
Speaker 1: feet from them at this point, but as I stood there,
Speaker 1: I could make out hair and a shadowy face, but
Speaker 1: again no details. It would be four decades later before
Speaker 1: I read about such encounters, and how the creatures almost
Speaker 1: become as still as statues while observing humans, and how
Speaker 1: many people went through exactly what I did. But for now,
Speaker 1: I realized that I was halfway up the mountain. To
Speaker 1: my left were briar patches and wildly tangled brush. To
Speaker 1: my right was empty darkness that meant a cliff's edge.
Speaker 1: I could not go back because I didn't know where
Speaker 1: back was. My strength was not up to it, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know what would happen if I turned my
Speaker 1: back on them. Why they stood in the brush on
Speaker 1: each side of the trail instead of blocking it. I'll
Speaker 1: never really know. They still swayed slightly in the dead air,
Speaker 1: But as with any predators, I knew that if I
Speaker 1: kept my head about and made no eye contact, perhaps
Speaker 1: they would just look at me as a harmless curiosity.
Speaker 1: As I slowly lowered my head, I got the impression
Speaker 1: that they too might have lowered their heads to better
Speaker 1: watch me. I'm not sure. The path was a good
Speaker 1: three feet wide, so I very slowly made my way
Speaker 1: towards these two things. I wanted to look up and
Speaker 1: see what kind of beasts they were, but I think
Speaker 1: my first thought was correct, and I kept looking down.
Speaker 1: As I stepped closer. I wanted to scream and run
Speaker 1: for it. All either of them had to do was
Speaker 1: crush my head like a grape. The forest was dead still,
Speaker 1: and it came to me that they could have been
Speaker 1: stalking me all through the night as of now, though
Speaker 1: it seemed as eternity was marked in slow inches. But
Speaker 1: in the end I was permitted to pass unharmed. I
Speaker 1: looked neither right or left or back and neither did
Speaker 1: I raise my head. I didn't realize that their feet
Speaker 1: were partially on the trail, but I couldn't make them
Speaker 1: out in the gloom. After passing by them, I quickened
Speaker 1: my pace until the beautiful night's noises began again. I
Speaker 1: must state that even passing by within a foot of
Speaker 1: these things, I smelled nothing beyond my own sweaty stink.
Speaker 1: I walked on for an hour or so and finally
Speaker 1: hit Tigert's. I collapsed forward on all fours into the creek,
Speaker 1: putting my mouth under and slurping up water through my
Speaker 1: parched lips like there was no tomorrow. I didn't have
Speaker 1: a canteen, but this time I followed the creek opposite
Speaker 1: its flow to keep my thirst quenched. And within a
Speaker 1: few hours I heard a lone truck's moan just south
Speaker 1: of the creek. I stumbled about five hundred feet in
Speaker 1: that direction upon an east west highway. I tried to
Speaker 1: flag down the four or five passing cars and trucks
Speaker 1: at that early hour, but looking at myself, I hardly
Speaker 1: looked human in my totally filthy condition. I then walked
Speaker 1: what turned out to be over five or six miles
Speaker 1: until I flagged down a cruiser and told the deputy
Speaker 1: of my plight. He drove me clear back to the
Speaker 1: farm where we'd started out from the day before. Several
Speaker 1: hours later, a car pulled up outside and out the
Speaker 1: rest of the team jumped out and shouted with relief.
Speaker 1: They had been searching for me, and we simply had
Speaker 1: a tremendous emotional release from the worst night of my
Speaker 1: life thus far. But the really bad part was that Billy,
Speaker 1: who led us in whom I hunted with several times,
Speaker 1: never allowed me to go out in the woods with
Speaker 1: him again. Until now, I hardly remembered any of this incident,
Speaker 1: having just told one of my friends at the time
Speaker 1: about spotting the creatures, but he just told me I
Speaker 1: was hallucinating from the terrified time that I had had.
Speaker 1: But it's very clear that God and God alone spared me.
Speaker 1: This friend, even though it was fifty four years ago,
Speaker 1: still refers to it as the night that you went crazy.
Speaker 1: But those of us who were there know better, and
Speaker 1: I never ever mentioned it again, not even to my
Speaker 1: wife until we were listening to many of your people's tales.
Speaker 1: Be it as it may, until now, I hadn't realized that,
Speaker 1: aside from mentioning, I had gotten lost in the woods
Speaker 1: and fell from a cliff. I never ever had thought
Speaker 1: about this in such minute detail until the last few
Speaker 1: months of piecing it all back together using twenty twenty hindsight.
Speaker 1: Having studied everything about Bigfoot for over fifty years and
Speaker 1: listening to others' run ends with Bigfoot, I wonder there
Speaker 1: were all of those sudden silences as I fought my
Speaker 1: way out of the untangled forest, forcing me to flee
Speaker 1: in the opposite direction of the growls. Could it be
Speaker 1: that the creatures were just hurting me, making sure that
Speaker 1: I would take the right path out of the woods.
Speaker 1: Once I hit Tiger Creek, there were no more silences
Speaker 1: or growls. I just don't know. And now incident number
Speaker 1: three November two thousand and fourteen, and the Gentleman was
Speaker 1: sixty five years old. I was speaking with a local
Speaker 1: author who had a popular bestseller, whom I had asked
Speaker 1: to sign a copy of his book for my daughter
Speaker 1: in law. While passing the usual small talk, we got
Speaker 1: on the subject of strange tales, and I told him
Speaker 1: of the talk I had overheard the ranger tell when
Speaker 1: I was in the Scouts back an incident number one.
Speaker 1: When he finished listening to my tale, he asked if
Speaker 1: I would like to come to a meeting of the
Speaker 1: Carter County Bigfoot Research Group in Grand Kentucky and listen
Speaker 1: to others encounter stories and retell my story of the
Speaker 1: white thing for the group. I was glad to go,
Speaker 1: but why that minor tale seemed important to him? I
Speaker 1: didn't know. That evening I heard a lot of great
Speaker 1: stories from farmers, a doctor, and other professional people. The
Speaker 1: author then told the group that they should listen to
Speaker 1: my story as it would be of great interest to
Speaker 1: them all. After completing the story, there was some silence,
Speaker 1: and then the group's leader explained that there had been
Speaker 1: a white bigfoot around eastern Carter for decades, but that
Speaker 1: this was the oldest confirmed story with dates and details
Speaker 1: they had heard about from so long ago. I reiterated
Speaker 1: that I didn't know if it was a bigfoot, since
Speaker 1: at the time it was just described as some kind
Speaker 1: of large white thing. They went on to tell many
Speaker 1: more stories of this old white bigfoot, two of which
Speaker 1: a woman also recounted some five years later for a
Speaker 1: local newspaper. I've included two quotes from that newspaper, and
Speaker 1: here's quote number one. The title of the article is
Speaker 1: Carter County Bigfoot Regional Sightings prompt Questions. The author of
Speaker 1: the article is Jeremy Wells. The publication is the Grayson
Speaker 1: Journal Times, dated February six, twenty nineteen, and here's the quote.
Speaker 1: Other sites online, including Kentucky hunting dot Net, also record
Speaker 1: sightings from the area around Carter Caves, including a supposedly
Speaker 1: all white bigfoot that the person reporting the sighting was
Speaker 1: nicknamed Big John, who reportedly liked to eat from the
Speaker 1: lodge's dumpsters, but naturalists at the park have stated that
Speaker 1: they are not familiar with any reported sightings from the
Speaker 1: park or the lodge. The next article is also by
Speaker 1: the same writer's same publication, and that the title of
Speaker 1: the article is Grand Squatching Bigfoot meet Up draws witnesses
Speaker 1: and the curious, and the article reads like this. Once
Speaker 1: she Tabitha Siegel, started investigating, she found out that there
Speaker 1: are sightings dating back to the nineteen sixties and earlier,
Speaker 1: and one hair raising tail a young man riding a
Speaker 1: mopad after dark had a bike stall on him as
Speaker 1: he was trying to get it started he glanced at
Speaker 1: his side mirror and saw a tall creature covered in
Speaker 1: white hair coming up the road behind him. With this
Speaker 1: this extra motivation to get moving, the young man was
Speaker 1: able to get his bike to turn over and fled
Speaker 1: the area without looking back. So at last, after fifty
Speaker 1: four years, I finally was able to put a face
Speaker 1: on the creature from back in my scouting days. And
Speaker 1: here is incident for the last incident. It's dated February
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, and he is sixty six years old. At
Speaker 1: this time, I had purchased a farm on fifty five
Speaker 1: acres of mostly forest in nineteen ninety three. The property
Speaker 1: was twenty five hundred feet deep and sixty eight hundred
Speaker 1: feet wide and locked into all of my other family's properties.
Speaker 1: We all used the combined area for hunting and simply
Speaker 1: to enjoy the woods. A lot of people from out
Speaker 1: of state would come in just to get a big
Speaker 1: buck in its rack, and it was common knowledge that
Speaker 1: I wanted deer to butcher and didn't care about the rack.
Speaker 1: Since we have never been on a high side of income.
Speaker 1: We eat lots of game, rabbit, squirrel, and of course deer.
Speaker 1: The hunters would feel dress them so all the skinning
Speaker 1: and butchering was up to my wife and I. When
Speaker 1: we had to dispose of the rest of the head, hide, bones,
Speaker 1: and bits of meat. I had a certain place that
Speaker 1: I dumped the remains. It was about five to six
Speaker 1: hundred feet out back of our barn. It was at
Speaker 1: the base of a small ledge overlooking a creek bottom.
Speaker 1: There were tracks in the mud on both sides of
Speaker 1: My Creek, a tributary of Upper Tigert Creek. My home
Speaker 1: is about sixteen miles from my nineteen sixty six adventure.
Speaker 1: There are many prints of animals that I can identify,
Speaker 1: very large and small, from possum, squirrel, rabbit, raccoon, to
Speaker 1: mountain lion and an occasional bear. I've done this for decades,
Speaker 1: which lent to one mystery. I would come back to
Speaker 1: dump other carcasses and the ones before would be totally gone,
Speaker 1: usually within eighteen to twenty four hours. I've seen what
Speaker 1: happens when dogs, codies, lines, and black panthers get into them.
Speaker 1: The remains are strewn about and with only bones or
Speaker 1: bits of meat or left. But that is not the
Speaker 1: case now. There was nothing left of almost sixty carcasses.
Speaker 1: I dropped back there. So after twenty five years, I
Speaker 1: finally got curious enough to borrow my son's trail cam
Speaker 1: and change things around. I stacked the remains of the
Speaker 1: deer on the flat overlook of the creek, just above
Speaker 1: the area in which I tossed the remains. I then
Speaker 1: placed the trail cam about eight feet up a tree
Speaker 1: on the side of a bank, which placed it about
Speaker 1: four feet above the level of the flat rock. Here
Speaker 1: it couldn't be reached by anyone without a step ladder
Speaker 1: or be quickly noticed by any game. Then I came
Speaker 1: back the next day, all that load of remains was
Speaker 1: gone right down to the dirt. When I excitedly took
Speaker 1: the camera down and rushed it home, all I had
Speaker 1: was a photo of me putting the camera up, then
Speaker 1: a second from the next day when I took it down.
Speaker 1: What in the world happened to all the other photos
Speaker 1: that should have been taken. I checked the camera when
Speaker 1: I took it down, and it hadn't been disturbed. In fact,
Speaker 1: you really had to look for it. It was concealed
Speaker 1: very well. During this time, there seemed to be nightly
Speaker 1: noises and movements around our house. I've caught possums and
Speaker 1: coons around here, so I took the trail camera and
Speaker 1: placed it twenty feet behind the house in a tree
Speaker 1: on top of a six foot cutaway bank about five
Speaker 1: feet up the tree. That put the camera at twelve
Speaker 1: feet above my driveway looking at the back of the house,
Speaker 1: so there was no way to step around this tree.
Speaker 1: I wanted that so that no curious possum or coon
Speaker 1: could climb around the lens. And then set it up
Speaker 1: and I focused it on the back of the house,
Speaker 1: the parking area, and the edge of my garage. The
Speaker 1: tree had no limbs below or around the camera for
Speaker 1: a bird to light. The only toe hold was a
Speaker 1: five inch ledge that allowed me to reach up and
Speaker 1: hang the camera. These photos begin on the eleventh of
Speaker 1: February in twenty fifteen, at about eight pm. The days
Speaker 1: were in the thirties during the day and twenties at night,
Speaker 1: so that thin crust of ice froze on top of
Speaker 1: the snow. Understand that this camera was a low light
Speaker 1: there was no flash involved. In the first picture, you
Speaker 1: can see me jumping down the short ledge after I
Speaker 1: installed it. The next picture was taken about six pm
Speaker 1: on February thirteenth, twenty fifteen, of my wife's return from town.
Speaker 1: See the ice reflecting off the lights. The next photo,
Speaker 1: also dated February thirteenth, is of just blackness. It's not included.
Speaker 1: The shutter went off, but something appears to be blocking
Speaker 1: the lens. But nothing could prepare me for the photo
Speaker 1: taken next. There's a tremendous white shine around it, and
Speaker 1: it doesn't appear to be anything blurry, and in truth,
Speaker 1: it seems that the mystery picture is in focus, displaying
Speaker 1: at least muscle, eyelids and blood veins, doesn't it or what? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at that photo right here, and I don't
Speaker 1: see anything. I just see an overexposed. It could be hair,
Speaker 1: and it looks like white hair if it is hair.
Speaker 1: But I really can't tell what this is, so he asked,
Speaker 1: what is it? I've had dozens of people view it
Speaker 1: in the last five years without luck. A white owl
Speaker 1: was kicked around by some people, but the owl would
Speaker 1: have to hover to get this image. The kicker here
Speaker 1: is there were and still are no white horses in
Speaker 1: this area. But the last photo also seems to have
Speaker 1: something to tell. The lens caught a really large flash
Speaker 1: and then it was gone, the next shot being another
Speaker 1: black streak. Again, there is no outside light other than
Speaker 1: the above back door. I say again, the camera has
Speaker 1: only a low light lens. The light had to be
Speaker 1: from an outside source, and no animal that I know
Speaker 1: of is internally lit. Although my wife thinks it might
Speaker 1: be an angel horse that floats above the ground. It's
Speaker 1: as good a guess as any. The last thing the
Speaker 1: camera caught was almost as mysterious as the shining animal.
Speaker 1: There was a tremendous flash, and the final photo is
Speaker 1: black and I'm looking at I'm looking at just a
Speaker 1: white over exposed photo here. Do you have any idea
Speaker 1: what this thing is? It's also been speculated that it
Speaker 1: could be a twelve foot tall bigfoot, face turned back
Speaker 1: toward the camera, perhaps looking over its left shoulder. It
Speaker 1: is of the eck andeers of sorts instead of an eye,
Speaker 1: but I just don't know. However, as I said before,
Speaker 1: there was a thin glaze of ice over an inch
Speaker 1: of snow, and nothing could have walked around that tree
Speaker 1: without leaving places where a foot would have crushed in
Speaker 1: its crust. This is the first thing that I thought
Speaker 1: of after this was to look for any prints because
Speaker 1: hoofs would have broken through and there weren't any. Again,
Speaker 1: I had mounted that camera over the edge of a
Speaker 1: little edge. If a horse had stood behind the tree
Speaker 1: and twisted its neck around the thin ice would have
Speaker 1: been broken. Aside from leaving dozens of other hoof prints,
Speaker 1: I have no further ideas. And then the gentleman goes
Speaker 1: on to ask for anonymity, and he gives me his
Speaker 1: name and phone number and all those things. So that
Speaker 1: was a long story, and I did not a lot
Speaker 1: of these stories. I do a little bit of editing
Speaker 1: to make them a little more I don't know, to
Speaker 1: follow a line of a story. You kind of getting
Speaker 1: all these pages back together here, But that's what I do.
Speaker 1: But I didn't on this one because this man had
Speaker 1: spent a lot of time putting this together and me
Speaker 1: not being able to see anything in these photos. I'm
Speaker 1: not making fun of him or you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: being ugly about it. I just don't see anything in
Speaker 1: the photos. It just looks like a house and some
Speaker 1: people and you know, some blurry things, and it could
Speaker 1: be anything. I mean, it could be anything to set
Speaker 1: off the lens of the camera, and if they're right
Speaker 1: in front of it. It's just going to pick up,
Speaker 1: you know, some blurry over exposed hair or fur or whatever.
Speaker 1: So I don't think they show anything, so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to show them. But I appreciated the story. I
Speaker 1: think his tale of getting lost was spectacular, and walking
Speaker 1: right walking right by to bigfoot is oh, that's unreal.
Speaker 1: And then the tale of the that the ranger told
Speaker 1: the scout masters was pretty good. So Carter k the
Speaker 1: Carter Caves area in eastern Kino, Luckie must be a
Speaker 1: big white bigfoot rider around there. Thank you to the
Speaker 1: writer for taking so much time in mailing me this,
Speaker 1: and I really appreciate it.