Speaker 1: Back in the summer of two thousand and two, Ted,
Speaker 1: his wife Jenny, and their daughter Lauren were camping with
Speaker 1: Ted's younger brother Mike in the forests near Sisters, Oregon.
Speaker 1: They both had deer tags for the Metolius unit and
Speaker 1: were scouting the area for deer. On the second day,
Speaker 1: while planning the next day's excursions, Ted remembered a great
Speaker 1: location where he had camped previously, where there were major
Speaker 1: game trails going all over the ridge. Mike decided to
Speaker 1: check out the area the next morning with his wife.
Speaker 1: The next afternoon, they all met back at camp, and
Speaker 1: Mike reported that they had something strange happened while they
Speaker 1: were up there exploring the game trail. He told Ted
Speaker 1: that as they were walking, suddenly, about fifty yards or
Speaker 1: so up the trail, they noticed that a twenty five
Speaker 1: foot tree was being shaken violently, but they didn't see
Speaker 1: anything that could have caused the tree to shake. They
Speaker 1: both agreed that it must have been a bear, as
Speaker 1: they were not sure what else it could have been.
Speaker 1: The next morning, Mike and his wife decided to go
Speaker 1: back to check it out, while Ted and his family
Speaker 1: decided to go explore some nearby caves. When they returned
Speaker 1: to camp, Mike's tent and all their belongings were gone.
Speaker 1: All that was left was a note saying that they
Speaker 1: had run into a bigfoot and they were heading home.
Speaker 1: Mike explained to Ted what happened the next day on
Speaker 1: the phone after everyone had returned home. He said that
Speaker 1: they made it up to the tree that was being shaken,
Speaker 1: and they were looking for tracks when he heard some
Speaker 1: brush rustle towards the top of the hill. When he
Speaker 1: looked up, a boulder of the size of a basketball
Speaker 1: was flying through the air towards them and landed on
Speaker 1: the trail right in front of them, shaking the ground
Speaker 1: as it hit. At this moment, he said that every
Speaker 1: hair on the back of his neck was standing on end.
Speaker 1: Before he could say anything to his wife, here comes
Speaker 1: another rock, similar in size, and this time the boulder
Speaker 1: landed to their right. He explained that when this happened,
Speaker 1: fear had taken over and he could fear his back
Speaker 1: tents up. And then here comes the third rock, landing
Speaker 1: right there as well. He raised his twenty two rifle
Speaker 1: and shot three times over the area where the rocks
Speaker 1: were coming from, and then he shouted as anybody up there.
Speaker 1: After waiting with no response, Mike had an eerie feeling
Speaker 1: and he yelled to his wife, let's get out of
Speaker 1: here before we die. After talking with his brothers about
Speaker 1: this experience, a plan was put together to go back
Speaker 1: to the area soon and find out what the heck
Speaker 1: was going on. The following Saturday, they loaded for bear.
Speaker 1: Ted had a twenty two mag pistol and a two
Speaker 1: seventy rifle and an Arkansas toothpick, which is actually a
Speaker 1: big knife. Mike had a three hundred Weatherby mag and
Speaker 1: a twenty two mag pistol as well as a knife,
Speaker 1: and both of them had pockets full of bullets. They
Speaker 1: loaded up the suburban with all their gear, plus their
Speaker 1: wives and all the kids, and they headed out early
Speaker 1: Saturday morning, arriving around seven am. Everything seemed normal, very calm,
Speaker 1: no winds, birds were chirping, squirrels were playing, and the
Speaker 1: sun was coming up in the east. Ted and Mike
Speaker 1: grabbed their guns and headed to the spot where the
Speaker 1: tree was. They had made it to the tree and
Speaker 1: were looking for the rocks, keeping one eye on the
Speaker 1: ridge where the rocks had come from, and out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: a violent crash sounded from the exact spot where the
Speaker 1: rocks had come from last week. It sounded like a
Speaker 1: tree was being picked up and slam against another tree.
Speaker 1: Holy crap. Immediately they were each down on one knee
Speaker 1: looking through their scopes trying to find whatever had just
Speaker 1: made that noise. Then they noticed that the woods had
Speaker 1: shut down with no noise whatsoever. Mike was also scanning
Speaker 1: the hillside with his rifle as Ted walked over to him,
Speaker 1: whispering what in the world was that. They stood for
Speaker 1: a few moments in silence, and Ted said to Mike,
Speaker 1: if it charges, I'm gonna kill it. About that time,
Speaker 1: a second thunderous crash happened again in the same spot.
Speaker 1: Ted's heart was in his throat and beating like a drunk.
Speaker 1: As they both stood scanning the trees with their rifles.
Speaker 1: Ted looked at Mike and said, let's walk up there
Speaker 1: and let's flush it out in the open. Mike must
Speaker 1: have thought to himself, good grief, this guy's got a set.
Speaker 1: Holy crap. As they started up a hill, the third
Speaker 1: crash happened, Guns loaded and safeties off. They slowly started
Speaker 1: walking up the hill toward where they heard the last crash.
Speaker 1: They got halfway up the hill and suddenly heard a
Speaker 1: suburban start up. Fearing the worst, they turned and took
Speaker 1: off on a dead run to the rig. They arrived
Speaker 1: in a panic, only to find that their wives and
Speaker 1: kids had become cold sitting in the rig and needed
Speaker 1: to run the heater. Ted looked at Mike and asked,
Speaker 1: do you want to go back up there, and Mike replied,
Speaker 1: heck no, my heart cannot take it. They never saw anything,
Speaker 1: but concluded that their experience was typical Bigfoot behavior, shaking
Speaker 1: of trees, throwing rocks, whacking sticks, and that's our story.
Speaker 1: Chapter two, The Midnight Visitor. Six years later, in the
Speaker 1: fall of two thousand and eight, Ted, his wife Jenny,
Speaker 1: and their daughter Lauren, as well as Ted's older brother Traps,
Speaker 1: had drawn deer tags for the Metolius unit and were
Speaker 1: excited for opening day. They arrived Friday evening and set
Speaker 1: up camp near where they had camped with Ted's older
Speaker 1: brother a few years earlier. They put their two tents
Speaker 1: up about eight feet apart, with a giant tarp that
Speaker 1: was thirty by twenty five feet in the trees about
Speaker 1: ten feet up to keep the rain and the dew
Speaker 1: off of them and their supplies. They had plans to
Speaker 1: stay Friday night until the following weekend, nine days in total.
Speaker 1: Everything was going great. They were seeing lots of deer
Speaker 1: passing on some smaller bucks and hoping for bigger ones
Speaker 1: to appear. On Wednesday evening, after dinner, they decided to
Speaker 1: play a game of Bolder Dash. It had been a
Speaker 1: long day as they had risen early, and everyone seemed
Speaker 1: to have giggles, especially Ted and Travis when it came
Speaker 1: to weird words on the playing cards. Let's just say
Speaker 1: they were all having a great time at hunting camp
Speaker 1: without a care in the world, and then they finally
Speaker 1: decided to go to bed around ten o'clock. Around two am,
Speaker 1: Ted was awakened to heavy footsteps coming toward the camp
Speaker 1: from his brother's truck that was parked about one hundred
Speaker 1: feet from the camp. It was dead calm out in
Speaker 1: about fifteen degrees fahrenheit. The ground was crunchy because of
Speaker 1: the freezing weather. Ted had been sleeping with his two
Speaker 1: seventy savage by his right side, loaded and ready, with
Speaker 1: his wife and daughter sleeping to his left. His first
Speaker 1: thought was Travis went to his truck for something and
Speaker 1: I'm only hearing him coming back to camp. As it
Speaker 1: was walking toward camp, Ted could distinctly hear that it
Speaker 1: was walking on two legs, and as it was getting closer,
Speaker 1: he started to hear it breathe. He thought that his
Speaker 1: brother might have had an upset stomach and must have
Speaker 1: gone to the truck to get some pills. But as
Speaker 1: he heard it walking towards camp, it sounded like it
Speaker 1: stopped at the fire pit. The sound was like Darth
Speaker 1: Vader breathing, low and deep. Unbeknownst to Ted, his brother
Speaker 1: was now awaking his own tent, and he was thinking
Speaker 1: that it was Ted gathering firewood in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night, and that he was out of breath. As
Speaker 1: both men were lying there in their separate tents, they
Speaker 1: realized about the same time what they were dealing with.
Speaker 1: This heavy breathing went on for ten to fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: Ted was thinking that it was spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time there because of all the odors, as that is
Speaker 1: where he had been doing all the cooking. He could
Speaker 1: not get himself out of bed to peek, but remained motionless,
Speaker 1: listening so intently that he was not thinking of anything else.
Speaker 1: Then it walked over to Travis's tent and stood right
Speaker 1: in front of the doorway and remained there for several
Speaker 1: minutes and still breathing like Darth Vader. It seemed as
Speaker 1: if he was contemplating what to do next or wondering
Speaker 1: what he was smelling. Later, Travis remarked that the sound
Speaker 1: of his breathing seemed to be coming from the top
Speaker 1: part of the tent, about seven and a half to
Speaker 1: eight feet high. Travis never moved a muscle, controlling his
Speaker 1: breathing and thinking, I left my gun in my truck.
Speaker 1: Oh crap. And then they both heard it walk off
Speaker 1: into the woods about fifty feet and then it stopped.
Speaker 1: It was there for quite a while and then started
Speaker 1: walking again up the hill, and then everything went silent,
Speaker 1: and then suddenly they both heard two long, clear calls
Speaker 1: that sounded like a whoop up the hill in the distance.
Speaker 1: Soon the brothers both got up and built a huge
Speaker 1: fire and started talking about the encounter, each telling the other,
Speaker 1: I thought that was you. When daylight came, they I
Speaker 1: told the girls what had happened and began looking around
Speaker 1: the area for tracks. They didn't find anything, but they
Speaker 1: realized that they were not leaving tracks either because of
Speaker 1: the frozen ground, which was littered with pine needles and
Speaker 1: small rocks. As they were recalling the experiences the previous night,
Speaker 1: they both agreed that they heard it leave camp and
Speaker 1: stop about fifty feet out. They all then began to
Speaker 1: scan the woods to find out what it may have
Speaker 1: been doing, and then Travis yelled out, I found something.
Speaker 1: That something ended up being a giant tird that the
Speaker 1: bigfoot had left. Travis looked at it and exclaimed, I
Speaker 1: have hunted my entire life and I've never seen a
Speaker 1: tird like this. Lauren joked that it was probably hers.
Speaker 1: These people have a sense of humor. I love it.
Speaker 1: It was about twelve inches long and three to four
Speaker 1: inches around and had pieces of bark and leaves in it.
Speaker 1: Travis said that they should wrap it in fall and
Speaker 1: put it in the cooler, to which Jenny replied, oh,
Speaker 1: hell no. As they stood there that morning, they were
Speaker 1: in disbelief that they experienced another bigfoot encounter close to
Speaker 1: the spot where they had come across him a few
Speaker 1: years before. Ted remembered reading once that bigfoot is attracted
Speaker 1: to laughter and noise. Now he knows they are coincidentally
Speaker 1: Travis decided to go home later that day. Chapter three,
Speaker 1: I finally got a glimpse of one. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: Ted and his wife Jenny had purchased elk tags for
Speaker 1: the Cascade Range in Oregon. They got up early on
Speaker 1: opening morning, threw all the gear in the truck, and
Speaker 1: headed out in hopes to bag a couple of bull elk.
Speaker 1: They decided to begin their day in the woods around
Speaker 1: the Marion Forks on Highway twenty two and then travel
Speaker 1: Sheep Creek to Highway twenty. This would provide a full
Speaker 1: day of hunting and driving. That afternoon, they arrived at
Speaker 1: Highway twenty and Ted said to Jenny, well, we have
Speaker 1: at least one hour of daylight left. If we head
Speaker 1: to our old deer camp area where we have all
Speaker 1: the bigfoot activity, we could hunt the last half hour
Speaker 1: of daylight. Jenny agreed, and as they arrived at the area,
Speaker 1: the sun was going down and the woods were getting dark.
Speaker 1: Ted made a turn down a gravel road and as
Speaker 1: he was coming out of a corner, he looked down
Speaker 1: the road. About three hundred yards on the left side,
Speaker 1: he could see something dark, black standing just off the
Speaker 1: side of the road. Next to the pines. It looked
Speaker 1: out of place. It was the only thing black that
Speaker 1: was close to the edge. He slammed on the brakes
Speaker 1: and he yelled for Jenny to get the binoculars. As
Speaker 1: he focused the binoculars, he could see the shoulders and
Speaker 1: the head, but no facial features. It had a cone head.
Speaker 1: As he was looking at it through the binoculars, it
Speaker 1: just stepped off the road and he clearly saw that
Speaker 1: it walked on two legs. Then he yelled, hang on
Speaker 1: and punched it to get a little closer. They got
Speaker 1: to where it had been standing, got out to look
Speaker 1: and listen for a while, but did not hear or
Speaker 1: see anything. The next morning he put out two game
Speaker 1: cameras on that trail, but he captured nothing. The area
Speaker 1: where he spotted this bigfoot was about a mile and
Speaker 1: a half from where they had the midnight visitor in
Speaker 1: about three quarters of a mile from where the bigfoot says,
Speaker 1: get the hell out. All these incidents happened in the
Speaker 1: late summer early fall of the year. The crazy thing
Speaker 1: about this is the brothers had all heard of bigfoot
Speaker 1: while growing up, but did not really give it much
Speaker 1: of thought until these experiences. It serves to change one's
Speaker 1: minds about what is out there. Ted's opinion is it
Speaker 1: is an ape that walks upright like a human and
Speaker 1: that it is not eternal. It still will move during
Speaker 1: daylight hours if it needs to. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: our stories and happy Honting. My first encounter happened when
Speaker 1: I was nine years old. I was fishing with my
Speaker 1: brother and my stepdad on a remote part of the
Speaker 1: river in Edwards, New York. We were about two miles
Speaker 1: back in the woods from any main road or house.
Speaker 1: I was fishing by myself in a section of the
Speaker 1: river when all of a sudden, I had a sense
Speaker 1: of fear come over me. I was scared like any
Speaker 1: nine year old boy would be, when all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: on the other side of the river, a forty foot
Speaker 1: tall dead pine was pushed over thirty yards inside of
Speaker 1: the woodline, right in front of me. There was no
Speaker 1: breeze this day, and no black bear was going to
Speaker 1: knock over such a huge tree. It scared me to
Speaker 1: my core, and being a clueless kid, I ran to
Speaker 1: find my stepdad at the time, just for a sense
Speaker 1: of safety. My second encounter happened in a small town
Speaker 1: in western Vermont, where I have lived my entire life,
Speaker 1: and I was heading to a job site early that morning.
Speaker 1: When driving down a two lane country road which I
Speaker 1: had traveled a thousand times, I came around the corner
Speaker 1: in the road and a figure stepped out from behind
Speaker 1: a tree for a few seconds. As I caught it
Speaker 1: in the high beams of my lifted Chevy pickup truck,
Speaker 1: I was at a loss for words when my brother
Speaker 1: said from the passenger's seat, did you see that too?
Speaker 1: Judging by the hood of my truck, this thing was
Speaker 1: all of seven feet tall that had yellow eyes shine.
Speaker 1: Although the sighting was one of only a few seconds,
Speaker 1: but I knew what I had seen, and my brother
Speaker 1: was there too to witness it with me for verification.
Speaker 1: My third encounter happened in November of twenty twenty. I
Speaker 1: was hunting with my brother on an eleven thousand acre
Speaker 1: parcel of state land around ten in the morning, and
Speaker 1: I had not seen a thing, when all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I had an overwhelming sense of fearing something was watching
Speaker 1: me in the woods, and everything went quiet, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't help but fixate on a strange looking stump one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty yards out through the hard woods, and
Speaker 1: it didn't look right. Many people have the experience of
Speaker 1: mind speak from these creatures. I knew what was in
Speaker 1: the area, and I simply said in my mind that
Speaker 1: I was only here for one deer, and I meant
Speaker 1: him no harm. Would he please leave me alone? Although
Speaker 1: I didn't get a response, after five minutes or so,
Speaker 1: the feelings went away and the stump I was fixated
Speaker 1: on was gone. I've had many odd things happen to
Speaker 1: me in the woods in my twenty one years of hunting.
Speaker 1: These times are definitely the weirdest, so I've been reluctant
Speaker 1: to send this to you. I'm a private person, and
Speaker 1: the less people know about my private life, the better.
Speaker 1: I have nothing to hide. I just prefer the peaceful
Speaker 1: forest over the business of crowds and town life. My brother,
Speaker 1: who sent you his recollection of the event I'm about
Speaker 1: to relate, is the exact opposite. If there's a crowd
Speaker 1: gathering in Times Square, you can bet he'll be in
Speaker 1: the middle of it, telling a story and entertaining the masses.
Speaker 1: I think our different personalities and outlooks on life will
Speaker 1: become evident to anyone who compares the two versions of
Speaker 1: the story. As for me, I would rather remain anonymous.
Speaker 1: I will leave identifying details a bit blurred for anonymity's sake.
Speaker 1: And when my brother sent me his account for review,
Speaker 1: having already sent it to you, I was pretty upset
Speaker 1: to see how many identifying details he had included. He
Speaker 1: feels the details make the story. I'm too private for that.
Speaker 1: When I was five, my family moved from Long Island,
Speaker 1: New York, to a small town in Maine. It was
Speaker 1: there that I discovered my love for hunting and being
Speaker 1: in the woods. My dad was not a hunter nor
Speaker 1: an outdoorsman, but that is all I ever wanted to be.
Speaker 1: At age seven, I packed a knapsack with canned goods,
Speaker 1: a sleeping bag, and a hunting knife and a tent,
Speaker 1: and I sat on my bike with a fishing pole
Speaker 1: in a tackle box, and I headed off for a
Speaker 1: few days of camping on top of a local mountain
Speaker 1: located a few miles outside of my town. My wife
Speaker 1: never believed that story until my mother confirmed it, saying
Speaker 1: it was who he was and we couldn't stop him.
Speaker 1: I loved being in the woods. I think that's why
Speaker 1: I joined the Army after high school, I wanted to
Speaker 1: be out in nature, even if it was wet, muddy,
Speaker 1: and labor intensive and mandatory fun, as my sergeant would
Speaker 1: call it. As an adult, I still love hunting season,
Speaker 1: from both seasoned to black power to rifle season, and
Speaker 1: if the deer season is in, I'm in the woods.
Speaker 1: But nothing I have ever seen or heard would have
Speaker 1: prepared me for what I saw that night. It was
Speaker 1: a cold but clear January night, and my brother and
Speaker 1: I were traveling back from Florida to college in Ohio.
Speaker 1: We are two years apart, but I had spent two
Speaker 1: years in the Army after high school, so we were
Speaker 1: now classmates in college together. I'd had to cut my
Speaker 1: Christmas break short to get back for Army reserve duty.
Speaker 1: The following weekend. We packed my small car with all
Speaker 1: the clothes and care packages we could fit, and we
Speaker 1: headed off on the long drive. We switched off driving
Speaker 1: whenever one of us would get tired, but neither of
Speaker 1: us truly slept while the other was driving. And during
Speaker 1: this particular leg, it was in the early morning hours
Speaker 1: and I was driving I seventy seven through West Virginia.
Speaker 1: I was tired, but I had played tent of a mountain,
Speaker 1: dew coursing through my veins, and combined with the experience
Speaker 1: of plenty of long nights pulling guard duty, so I
Speaker 1: knew some techniques to stay awake and alert. Interstate seventy
Speaker 1: seven northbound was quiet at one am, and there was
Speaker 1: not much traffic either way. The moon was full or
Speaker 1: close to it, as I recall, the moonlight lit up
Speaker 1: a fresh blanket of snow that covered the median and
Speaker 1: long sloping shoulders on either side of the highway. I
Speaker 1: could see ahead for several hundred yards. The air was
Speaker 1: clear and cold, and there was nothing to obstruct or
Speaker 1: obscure my field of view. The Army taught me several
Speaker 1: things that I still used today, target location and ranging,
Speaker 1: defensive and offensive driving. I never used either skill in combat.
Speaker 1: I left active duty just prior to our first Gulf War,
Speaker 1: but I definitely used those skills at night. Ahead of me,
Speaker 1: on the shoulder of the southbound lanes, I saw what
Speaker 1: appeared to be too deer. They were high on the
Speaker 1: shoulder at the tree line, four to five hundred yards ahead.
Speaker 1: I easily picked up their movement target acquisition. Seeing deer
Speaker 1: was fairly common on this stretch of the highway. The
Speaker 1: lead deer started running toward the highway, with the second
Speaker 1: one following, but their git was wrong. Something was off
Speaker 1: about it. As I closed the distance, I saw that
Speaker 1: they weren't deer, but perhaps they were wolves. I had
Speaker 1: heard that West Virginia might have a wolf population, but
Speaker 1: had never seen a wolf outside of a National geographic
Speaker 1: special on the television. As I watched the road and
Speaker 1: the animals, it appeared that they were going to intercept
Speaker 1: my car. At seventy miles an hour, it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: long before they were on my side of the highway,
Speaker 1: and I did not want to hit anything of that
Speaker 1: size with the small car. As we sped toward each other,
Speaker 1: I could see that yes, they were wolf like, but
Speaker 1: they were not wolves. They were much larger, with downward
Speaker 1: sloping backs, much like a hyena. I had never seen
Speaker 1: or heard of anything like this. At one hundred yards
Speaker 1: or so before impact, the lead creature stood on its
Speaker 1: two hind legs and in two bounds, crossed the southbound
Speaker 1: lanes and was halfway across the center median. The second
Speaker 1: creature was now running and leaping like a human, but
Speaker 1: with enormous strides. I could see its wolf like face
Speaker 1: and teeth bared like an angry dog, and evil eyes.
Speaker 1: Its upper body was wiry, like a pro fighter. It
Speaker 1: was a muscular insinewy. I could see the muscle through
Speaker 1: its coarse hair. Yes it was hair, it was not fur.
Speaker 1: At the last second, I slammed the gas pedal and
Speaker 1: the end engine roared. The little sportstor came to life,
Speaker 1: and we jumped to eighty miles an hour. Almost instantly,
Speaker 1: the lead creature leaped at the car with its jaws
Speaker 1: wide and hate in its eyes. It barely missed the
Speaker 1: back quarter panel before continuing up the other shoulder into
Speaker 1: the woods, with its partner following just behind. This event
Speaker 1: happened over thirty years ago. I just turned fifty this month,
Speaker 1: and my life has been pretty uneventful since. I've lost
Speaker 1: the fine points of many of my memories, but I
Speaker 1: remembered this story clearly. With that said, I honestly didn't
Speaker 1: recall my brother being in the car with me, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't until I read his account that my memory
Speaker 1: was jogged. Perhaps it was because he was semi sleeping
Speaker 1: quietly in the passenger seat. I'm not sure, but I
Speaker 1: do know what I saw, and that I had never
Speaker 1: heard of a dog man prior to this. I grew
Speaker 1: up on bigfoot stories ever since we watched Colonel Steve
Speaker 1: Austin's run in with Sasquatch on The six Million Dollar Man.
Speaker 1: But this story has a twist. The next few days
Speaker 1: I spent getting settled back into my college routine. I
Speaker 1: got my apartments set up and went back to work
Speaker 1: at the university bookstore. But the event of that night
Speaker 1: on I seventy seven still haunted me. This was the
Speaker 1: early nineteen nineties, before the Internet. There weren't a lot
Speaker 1: of resources to look things up like we have today.
Speaker 1: The following weekend, I was at my Army reserve dre
Speaker 1: a weekend. Normally, I ate lunch outside the armory on
Speaker 1: a picnic table under a big oak tree with a
Speaker 1: few of my buddies. We would laugh and tell stories
Speaker 1: and lies and other things soldiers do to pass the time.
Speaker 1: But today it was cold and sleety in the Ohio
Speaker 1: Valley on a winter day, so we ate inside. As
Speaker 1: we ate, I told the story of my trip back
Speaker 1: to campus and the strange creatures I had seen a
Speaker 1: few of the guys were ribbing me pretty hard about it,
Speaker 1: but that was okay. That's army life. We teased the
Speaker 1: hell out of each other, but we'd lay our lives
Speaker 1: down for each other without a second thought. It is
Speaker 1: a strange existence, but those are some of the greatest
Speaker 1: men I've ever had the privilege of knowing. As I
Speaker 1: was finishing my story, one of the newer guys to
Speaker 1: the unit sat down and was listening. He turned a
Speaker 1: ghost white and I could see most every hair on
Speaker 1: his body standing on end. He had recently gotten married
Speaker 1: and moved from the other side of West Virginia to
Speaker 1: the Ohio Valley for work and to be closer to
Speaker 1: the unit. He and his father had packed their belongings
Speaker 1: into the pickup truck and a moving van. It was
Speaker 1: a little after midnight when using walkie talkies to communicate,
Speaker 1: they decided to get off the highway to answer to
Speaker 1: nature's call. Cell phones had not been in yet. My
Speaker 1: friend was in the moving van and his dad was
Speaker 1: in the truck. They pulled into a gravel parking lot
Speaker 1: of a small drive in hot dog and ice cream
Speaker 1: place a few miles off the highway. It was a
Speaker 1: cold and quiet night without another car in sight. My
Speaker 1: friend walked a few yards to the wooded edge of
Speaker 1: the parking lot to believe himself. He was a Gulf
Speaker 1: War combat vet and a police officer with a keen
Speaker 1: sense of situational awareness. As he stood there, his father
Speaker 1: was in the van fifteen yards or so behind him,
Speaker 1: making small talk. He could hear what sounded like a
Speaker 1: few dogs or coyote. He's about ten or so yards
Speaker 1: into the dark woods ahead of him that were darting
Speaker 1: back and forth from his left to his right, and
Speaker 1: he could hear the footfalls on leaves and thought coyotes
Speaker 1: are big dogs. They kept their distance as he finished,
Speaker 1: but then he heard a deep, low growl that went
Speaker 1: right through him. His dad yelled out, what the hell
Speaker 1: was that. He was buckling his belt as he started
Speaker 1: to turn back to the truck when the footfall sounds
Speaker 1: went from four doglike feet to two heavy footfalls. The
Speaker 1: yips became low growls and barks and blood curdling screams,
Speaker 1: and he began running to the truck, yelling for his
Speaker 1: dad to get the gun, he said. His dad grabbed
Speaker 1: his nineteen eleven from the holster next to him and
Speaker 1: fired off five rounds into the woodline. My friend never
Speaker 1: did see what it was, but he said it went
Speaker 1: from running on four legs to running on two, and
Speaker 1: it was big. He said he had never been so
Speaker 1: scared in all his life. They tore out of there
Speaker 1: and arrived at the new house about an hour later.
Speaker 1: They were both tired and in a state of shock.
Speaker 1: The next morning, over coffee, they kind of stared at
Speaker 1: each other, neither one able to believe what they had heard.
Speaker 1: Thank you for protecting my privacy. I live in a
Speaker 1: small town in North Carolina now, and I'm fairly well known.
Speaker 1: I truly enjoy my privacy and would like to keep
Speaker 1: it that way.
Speaker 2: I don't really know how true this story is, but
Speaker 2: a friend of mine and I were sitting on this
Speaker 2: front porch one day a few years back when one
Speaker 2: of the kids from down the road stop by. The
Speaker 2: kid asked if my friend would tell the story about
Speaker 2: the bigfoot that took him. As you might imagine, this
Speaker 2: peaud my interest. So I turned to my friend and said, yeah, Bill,
Speaker 2: tell us that story. Bill seemed reluctant to do so,
Speaker 2: but with a little protting I managed to get him
Speaker 2: to tell us. This is what he said. I'm not
Speaker 2: saying it was a bigfoot. He said, I don't really
Speaker 2: know if it was. But a long time ago, when
Speaker 2: I was a kid, about eleven years old, me and
Speaker 2: a friend were fishing down on the creek. It was
Speaker 2: getting to be time to pack up and head home,
Speaker 2: but I had just gotten a bite, so I wanted
Speaker 2: to give it a few more casts. My friend wanted
Speaker 2: to get going, so he said he'd meet me up
Speaker 2: the trail by the road. I cast my line three
Speaker 2: more times before I decided it was time to go.
Speaker 2: From out of nowhere, I was picked up by what
Speaker 2: I took to be someone in a gorilla suit. He
Speaker 2: put me on his right shoulder like your dad would
Speaker 2: when you were little, and started walking into the woods.
Speaker 2: I was not scared because I thought someone might be
Speaker 2: pulling a prank on me. I was not going to
Speaker 2: let them get the best of me, so I just
Speaker 2: enjoyed the ride and held onto his head with my
Speaker 2: left hand while he held my legs to his chest.
Speaker 2: After about thirty minutes or so of walking in the woods,
Speaker 2: I started to wonder who was doing this and where
Speaker 2: we were going. After all, it was getting dark and
Speaker 2: it didn't look like we were headed home. We rounded
Speaker 2: the corner of a hillside, and suddenly there were three more,
Speaker 2: one who looked like a mom, and two smaller ones
Speaker 2: almost my size. He sat me down on the ground
Speaker 2: in a little nook formed by the hillside in some trees.
Speaker 2: It almost looked like the trees naturally fell that way,
Speaker 2: but if you really looked, you could tell that it
Speaker 2: was made to hide in. The ground was covered and
Speaker 2: the kind of grass found in a river bottom. It
Speaker 2: seemed like a nice, warm place. The one who'd brought
Speaker 2: me there, that I now saw as the dad, stepped
Speaker 2: into the opening of the nook and sat down looking out.
Speaker 2: The mom started feeding us all some berries and some
Speaker 2: kind of root. None of it was very good. After
Speaker 2: about an hour, everyone started to settle down and fall asleep. Relieved,
Speaker 2: I climbed out of the nook and started home. In
Speaker 2: the pitch black, It took all night to find my
Speaker 2: way out of the woods. By the time I made
Speaker 2: it home it was very late. My friend had gone
Speaker 2: and got my dad. They'd come back to look for
Speaker 2: me and found my fishing pole and tackle box. When
Speaker 2: I got home, Mom and Dad were talking with the police.
Speaker 2: There must have been about twenty men there. Some of
Speaker 2: them had dogs, and they were all getting ready to
Speaker 2: go out looking for me. When I told my dad
Speaker 2: and the policeman what had happened. The policeman looked at
Speaker 2: me and my dad and said, I believe him. No
Speaker 2: one ever asked me about it again, not my dad,
Speaker 2: not my mom, and not the police. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if my dad was as willing to believe me as
Speaker 2: the cop was. To this day, I'm still not sure
Speaker 2: if it was some kind of prank. I just know
Speaker 2: what happened. After my friend finished telling his story, I
Speaker 2: just looked at him and told him I believe him too.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it really is true, but he
Speaker 2: has never been one to tell lies or stretch the truth.
Speaker 2: And I've known him for twenty five years, and all
Speaker 2: that time, I've only heard him tell the story two times.
Speaker 2: There were ten years between each telling, but the story
Speaker 2: didn't change. Plus, he only told it because one of
Speaker 2: his children or the neighbor's kid asked him about it.
Speaker 1: A few years back, I was in Brunswick, Georgia, working
Speaker 1: on one of movie. I guess it's okay to tell
Speaker 1: you that it was X Men first Class. Hell, it's
Speaker 1: been out so long most of your listeners may have
Speaker 1: been kids. When it came out. I was a welding foreman.
Speaker 1: This is partly why I had the experience that I had.
Speaker 1: We had been working twelve to fourteen hours on a
Speaker 1: spacecraft for the movie. I was the foreman of the
Speaker 1: Atlanta crew, and there was a huge crew from LA
Speaker 1: that rather looked down on us. My crew was young,
Speaker 1: but talented, and they were eager and wanted to learn
Speaker 1: new methods of fabrication. By the time I cut out
Speaker 1: the lights, it was past two am. Everyone hit their rack,
Speaker 1: and I was sitting there in my truck with the
Speaker 1: motor running, ready to drive the two blocks back to
Speaker 1: our rental house. And then it hit me. It was
Speaker 1: that deep, growling, angry instinct to turn right and hit
Speaker 1: the waffle house. If I was lucky, some of the
Speaker 1: strippers from the only club for two hundred miles might
Speaker 1: be snacking there. The idea forced my hands to make
Speaker 1: the right turn motion on the steering wheel, and off
Speaker 1: I went. The whole way there. I never even considered
Speaker 1: the fact that my underwear was older than the girls.
Speaker 1: This was not to be the harsh reality I was
Speaker 1: met with when I swung open the door to the
Speaker 1: waffle house. In fact, thinking back on it now, the
Speaker 1: smell was in the parking lot when I had pulled up.
Speaker 1: I used to live near a paper mill that was
Speaker 1: close to an inner coastal waterway. And if you took
Speaker 1: those two odors and mixed in some skump, a cat
Speaker 1: litter box, and some horse piss and opened it up
Speaker 1: at a garbage dump, well it was like that. Even so,
Speaker 1: my hanger was unaffected, and I walked in like I
Speaker 1: owned the place. And as usual, honey Pie was at
Speaker 1: her station while he was on the grill with his
Speaker 1: giant grin, and Maria was working the floor, and what
Speaker 1: should normally be a packed house was replaced by three
Speaker 1: of the scariest dudes I have ever seen. Honey Pie
Speaker 1: she had a nickname for every customer. Had my coffee.
Speaker 1: Sitting at my normal spot on the end of the counter,
Speaker 1: nearest the AC unit in the window, I found a
Speaker 1: great deal of relief from the odor, but I was
Speaker 1: also adjacent to these three scary looking dudes. There was
Speaker 1: no way to avoid making eye contact with them, and
Speaker 1: a chill ran down my spine as I tried to
Speaker 1: look away. The first thing I noticed was an air
Speaker 1: Gas Memphis logo on the loud guy's shirt, and I
Speaker 1: figured he was the boss because the other two were
Speaker 1: listening intently to his every word. The conversation abruptly ended
Speaker 1: as soon as I sat down. The guy on the
Speaker 1: right of him was a huge black man. He had
Speaker 1: a strange, powerful look. He looked like he would be
Speaker 1: the kind of guy you wanted on your side if
Speaker 1: the ship went down. He strangely reminded me of John
Speaker 1: Coffee from the movie The Green Mile. On the other
Speaker 1: end was a guy with a T shirt adorning skulls
Speaker 1: and electric guitars, and it was stained badly with what
Speaker 1: looked like dried blood. He had a huge gun hanging
Speaker 1: off his belt and a homemade, leathery looking fur back.
Speaker 1: That's the only way I know how to describe it.
Speaker 1: It was nasty looking. The gun, the bag, my bar mates,
Speaker 1: all of it filled me with a sense of dread.
Speaker 1: My hands trembled as I sipped my coffee, and I
Speaker 1: hoped they didn't see how nervous I was and skinned
Speaker 1: me alive right there. But just then the leader looked
Speaker 1: at me dead in the eyes. He seemed to scan
Speaker 1: me and it was like being analyzed and evaluated at
Speaker 1: the same time. Well, I felt naked and afraid. I
Speaker 1: had visions of the strippers coming in later and kicking
Speaker 1: small pieces of me out of the way so they
Speaker 1: could put down their purses. And just as I was
Speaker 1: trying to look away away from him, he smiled at
Speaker 1: me with a big, shittying grin and he said, are
Speaker 1: you a welder. Well, a huge sense of relief came
Speaker 1: over me, and I realized it was okay to breathe. Yes, sir,
Speaker 1: I replied. Looking for common ground, I asked, are you
Speaker 1: guys here working on the movie? Well? This brought a
Speaker 1: huge round of laughter from all three of them, which
Speaker 1: somehow made me feel uneasy. And he leaned over and
Speaker 1: stuck out his dirty, calloused hand and he said, I'm Steve,
Speaker 1: and this is Lewis and this is Hook. We're stopping
Speaker 1: in on a hunting trip. What's the movie you're working on? Well,
Speaker 1: from this point on we got along. Gray Lewis wasn't
Speaker 1: very talkative, but he had a great laugh that shook
Speaker 1: the cups on the wall. Hook and I talked about motorcycles,
Speaker 1: and I pulled out some pictures of my old sixty
Speaker 1: seven hardtail Bonnivale and my seventy two T one twenty
Speaker 1: V race bike. We laughed and told colorful stories about
Speaker 1: racetracks and bike rallies, and Steve kept quizzing me on
Speaker 1: welding techniques and plasma cutting. At times I felt like
Speaker 1: I was being interviewed for a job in Hell. But
Speaker 1: his good nature was reassuring, and the dread I experience
Speaker 1: turned into a fun experience with some obviously nefarious individuals.
Speaker 1: They all laughed when I told them how the LA
Speaker 1: crew was struggling with the panels matching on the top
Speaker 1: of the spacecraft we were building, but they seemed to
Speaker 1: miss the detail on the plan that in the scene
Speaker 1: the spaceship was upside down on the beach. Well, after
Speaker 1: a couple of hours of laughing my ass off, we
Speaker 1: got up to leave at the same time, and Honey
Speaker 1: Pie brought the bill and Steve grabbed my ticket and
Speaker 1: he winked at me. I got this devil by here's
Speaker 1: my number. If you come to Memphis, you give me
Speaker 1: a call. Well, I've never been to Memphis since. Well,
Speaker 1: there's another story with people running into Steve Lily and
Speaker 1: his crew. What is going on. If you guys have
Speaker 1: run into Steve Lily, or if you know someone who's
Speaker 1: run into the Squatch Operator's crew, send me an email
Speaker 1: and tell me your experience and I will get it
Speaker 1: in a podcast. Write it clear and crisp. So I
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of editing to do, but I
Speaker 1: would love to share these stories of you guys running
Speaker 1: into the Steve Lily crew. I think they're awesome, all right.
Speaker 1: A few weeks ago I got a couple of emails
Speaker 1: from guys who had run into Steve Lily and his
Speaker 1: crew while doing various things. I've got several more, and
Speaker 1: I thought I would share this one with you and
Speaker 1: end this podcast up and with a happy note. So
Speaker 1: this gentleman writes his story, and he says, opened my
Speaker 1: eyes and I looked at the clock and it was
Speaker 1: four am. I rolled out of bed, and I had
Speaker 1: coffee in I got suited up and got my thermos
Speaker 1: of coffee and some sandwiches ready. It's the first day
Speaker 1: of rifle deer season in Vermont. I have my backpack
Speaker 1: and my rifle and a handful of AMMO, and I
Speaker 1: started from my deer stand that I set up two
Speaker 1: weeks ago. Well. I saw my breath and a wave
Speaker 1: of cold air hit me, making me want to go
Speaker 1: back into my warm bed, and I slung my backpack
Speaker 1: over my shoulder and I started to walk to my
Speaker 1: tree stand. I needed to cut through it. Thirty minutes later,
Speaker 1: I was in my tree stand and I looked at
Speaker 1: my watch and it was five thirty am. So I
Speaker 1: started to get comfortable. I saw headlights coming down the
Speaker 1: dirt road. It turned down the dirt driveway and stopped,
Speaker 1: and the lights went off and everything went silent, and
Speaker 1: I thought, probably hunting back on the old Stevenson's place.
Speaker 1: And I settled back in and I got comfortable. It
Speaker 1: was an hour later and the sun was up pretty good,
Speaker 1: but I didn't see any activity. The birds were quiet,
Speaker 1: and the flock of turkeys I heard this morning hadn't
Speaker 1: even made an appearance. Another thirty minutes and I don't
Speaker 1: hear anything in the woods. There were no squirrels, no
Speaker 1: footsteps in the leaves on the ground. And then I
Speaker 1: heard two car door slam and then I hear gunshots,
Speaker 1: and then a tall, hairy person started running at my
Speaker 1: tree stand. I could see four bullet wounds on him.
Speaker 1: There were three in the chest and one in its thigh,
Speaker 1: and it kept charging at me. And I chambered around
Speaker 1: and I aim for where I thought the heart would be,
Speaker 1: and I fired. It kept running for a few minutes,
Speaker 1: but it dropped like a rock. I slowly lowered my
Speaker 1: rifle and I took a deep breath. I thought, how
Speaker 1: am I going to explain this? What is this thing?
Speaker 1: A few minutes later, I heard someone in front of
Speaker 1: me say, well, that's nice shooting there, brother, Glad you
Speaker 1: didn't go for the head. I was so focused on
Speaker 1: the creature on the ground, I didn't notice the two
Speaker 1: men walking up. Well. I climbed down and I walked
Speaker 1: over and I introduced myself. Hey, y all, my name's Tater. Hey,
Speaker 1: my name's Steve. This is Huck the introductions, I noticed
Speaker 1: hook cutting off this thing's head. Why are you cutting
Speaker 1: off its head? I said, And what is this thing?
Speaker 1: You don't know what this is? This is a squatch,
Speaker 1: it's a bigfoot. We need it so we can get paid.
Speaker 1: There three more over that hill. Now, look, we're gonna
Speaker 1: share the money with you because you finished this one off.
Speaker 1: Steve said, you get paid for doing this. I asked, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know Imo and Gas ain't cheap. Hook said, well,
Speaker 1: originally we came up here to fish, but we got
Speaker 1: called to do this job. Man, that's a sweet gig,
Speaker 1: I said. We shook hands and they walked off with
Speaker 1: these heads, and I never saw them again. And on
Speaker 1: my way home, I thought to myself, how am I
Speaker 1: gonna explain the shots that we're fired up here and
Speaker 1: I'm not coming home with any deer. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: made fun of for that. Steve Lily is in Vermont?
Speaker 1: What what? I didn't even know that. Anyway, you guys
Speaker 1: keep sending these Steve Lilly encounter stories. He seems to
Speaker 1: be getting around quite a bit. Thanks to the writer
Speaker 1: for letting us know you run into old Steve Lilly.