Speaker 1: I'm from Central Texas, and they'll have somehow always believed
in bigfoot. I've never had any experiences here that I
was aware of. However, as I get older, I think
there were times when I may have had experiences and
didn't realize it. I want to share with you what
happened north of Nashville a few years ago when I
was working there. I went up one summer for a
big job and was fortunate to have friends from my
hometown who lived about thirty miles from where I was working.
They live on a big hill way out in the
country near the Kentucky border. The driveway leading to their
house ran along the creek that ran through the holler,
with a ridge line on both sides. It was absolutely beautiful,
surrounded by lush, green trees and the sight and sound
of the babbling creek over its rocky bed. I often
went for walks or a jog in the evenings when
I wasn't too tired. I had done so many times
when one evening, about an hour before sunset, as I
was walking on the far ridge, I heard a whoop.
I thought I was hearing things, and shortly after that,
on the hillside next to me, only a few hundred
yards away, I heard a clear and loud tree knock.
I really started to think, now was I hearing things?
Was it some locals or meth heads messing with me?
I kept walking, my friend's dog at my side as
I tried to reason out what I had heard. I'd
gone another one hundred yards when I heard another woop.
What the hell, I thought, and it was followed shortly
by another wood knock, this time on the fore hill.
The dog had disappeared so much for Man's best friend,
I decided then it was time to head back. I
heard a few more knocks and woops before I got
back to the house, but none of them were closer
than the others. I don't know if they knew I
was there. I don't think so. It was an extremely secluded,
rough terrain covered in thick woods. The one thing I'm
absolutely certain of is that it was not people I
was hearing. I was staying in my RV at my
friend's place. From that night forward, I always used my
spot like to check before I went outside. I never
saw anything, but I did occasionally feel like something was
watching me or was close by. I know this wasn't
an actual sighting, but it was enough to change me
from being just a believer to a knower. Ray. Look
I've said this, and look I'm no authority on this.
I don't know, but I do know this. You said
you felt like that something was watching you. You didn't,
And I think in a way, you're saying you didn't
feel like you were alone alone when you should have
been alone. There shouldn't have been anything around you. I
always kind of encourage people to, you know, kind of
go with your sixth sense there, that feeling that you get,
you know, when something is around is kind of more
times than not. I kind of It's like I read
a thing one time that said if you have a
hunch about something like this doesn't apply to bigfoot at all.
But like I just kind of stumbled on this article.
I think I was actually in a dentist office and
I was reading this article. You know how you just
pick up a magazine, you just read whatever's there. It
was a women's magazine, of course, and I was reading
Thought and it was advice to women and it said
if you if you think your spouse is being unfaithful
to you, you're probably right. Now. I don't know that
I agree with that at all at all. I mean,
I think you need just a little bit of evidence.
I mean, you know, I could go through all the
things that I don't know much about any of that,
but the point is is, like you have a hunch,
there are little things that clue you in that something
is there, and most of us we try to get
back to normal just as fast as we can. If
there's something strange going on, we try to get back
to normal as quickly as we can. And in these situations,
what you'll do is you'll kind of brush it off. Well,
maybe that was a tree knock, but maybe it was
just a piece of wood falling out of a tree
and that hit another tree. You know, you'll explain it away.
But if you get that feeling, you're probably right. Now.
Should you run and hide and be terribly scared and
all that stuff. Probably not, But trust your instincts, you know,
and I think you did on this one. I didn't
mean to ramble on so long about this, but it
was kind of interesting to me because I think these anecdotal,
weird kind of events, sounds and noises and smells and
feelings that people have, I think there's merit to those
and I love hearing these, and I really appreciate the
man sending this. This was great. I really really appreciated Ray.
All right, let's move on to one more. I'm sure
to be nearing the end of my days on earth
and surely soon to meet my maker. I will not
lie about that, and lying was never my habit. I
can shoot the bull, but I'm well known to be
an overly serious type person. I'm just a bit strange.
I am by birth a Texas Native. I have two
role numbers in the Cherokee tribe and descended from a
Scottish blacksmith, indentured servant who came early to America and
later became wealthy. I was a mere weed, yet I
can truly claim great roots, but many burnt leaves. My
family fought our British brothers and on both sides of
our Civil War. And I am second cousin to the
man in Black, mister Johnny Cash. I'm grateful and proud
and unashamed Southerner and a proud American. I was also
a military brat and later a Navy veteran. Being a
military child, I was raised for eleven and a half
years in the shadow of sack the former Strategic Air Command.
I volunteered right out of high school and joined the Navy,
which should have been a career move but turned out
to be rather abbreviated as that US Air Force brat.
I have an interesting and true story of a sacked
Nouke base that was commandeered in nineteen fifty two by
the things that we call UFOs. It changed a lot
of people's minds and thinkings, but I will get to
that at the end of my letter. For nine years
I lived in the Pacific Northwest and certainly loved it.
Times were tough, but I was able to be employed
with the US Forestry Service during part of that sojourn.
I was young. I knew many government forestry personnel, landowners, loggers, hunters,
and fishermen, and a lot of them had personal tests
the moonies of Bigfoot. So does the US Air Force
Survival School in northeast Washington State. Personally, I spent every
free moment I could get in those forested mountains and
trudged up and down them carrying land surveying equipment and
personal gear for better or worse. While I certainly had
my own share of harrowing adventures, and scares. I not
once encountered a sasquatch, even though living actively right in
the middle of their habitat, and I didn't have a
clue as to them being any more than folklore. I
ended up back down south during the toughest of economic
times and in a sad and unfulfilled state of mind
and with very empty pockets. I had also just lost
everything that I had gained in the Northwest. Twice. Now
I've had the pleasure to return to Arkansas to live presently.
I live in northwest Arkansas. Decades ago, I had a
few acres of woods adjoining the Watchitaw National Forest in
Montgomery County, west of Hot Springs. It is right across
the highway from the lake of the same name that
would be Lake Watchitah. It didn't take long, though, to
discover the real reason why the former owner, a retired
of Social Security judge, gave me such a great deal
on this land. He even threw in a decent boat,
motor and trailer in trade for me doing the survey.
He and his wife just wanted to get it sold.
Perhaps the Misses couldn't tolerate the woods. Some city folk
are bothered by that they were not ever going to
live there again. They moved back to the city, and
I soon learned why. The judge and the missus had
a well on the property. But it was awful. It
was greasy water, almost unusable. Mobile homes are not such
bad choices for a dwelling, as long as you don't
stick it in a park with a and other such contraptions.
The electromagnetic attraction or the collection of weirdos in them
may be too much for a tornado to resist. I
suspect tornadoes are under some degree of control by normally
unseen forces. That is what makes me a bit of
a weirdo. Hey man, don't talk about the trailer parks.
You mess with me. You messing with the whole trailer park.
On the back of this house. The judge had had
a nice deck installed. He even planned to have a
rock garden. Rocks are about the only thing that will
grow in that bit of red clay and is continually
producing chunks of quartz that just works up out of
the ground despite gravity, and is surely the result of
the Earth's rotation. Maybe, or perhaps it was the aluminum
roof on the mobile home. It created a sort of
hell since he had located it hanging over a hill,
but under one gigantic old oak tree. That tree produced
the largest acorns I've ever seen, and a lot of
them acorns dropped from oak trees, this one in profusion.
Sleep was not easily obtained. Worse, the area has or
had an odd propensity to echo the slightest sounds. A
seasoned one pound acre falling on a metal roof from
near seventy feet produces a loud bang. A continuous barrage
produces a resounding den of racket. One could go insane
from that alone. Perhaps that was enough to make anyone
sell out fast, and to make such a sweet deal
to the unknowing buyer. They had that decent old bass
and ski boat, though they could at least go fishing
often across the highway in Lake watchitaw and there were
the deer and the squirrels. It was a hunting and
fishing heaven. But I heard they spent an inordinate amount
of time away from the property to be candid. After
I bought it, so did I. In order to make
the payments, and as there were few jobs that I
could take locally, I went into long haul trucking. I
got to be home for a couple of days every
three weeks. What a lonely occupation. Still, it paid the
bills and provided a home for my ailing and aged parents,
who at first thought it was a genuine God send.
We all thought so briefly, and we tried to make
it a home. Soon my only siblings showed up and
presumed to help out and keep an eye on them.
I got to use my bedroom, which overhung the hill,
only occasionally, but for several reasons, huge acorns and being
addicted to diesel vibrations, I slept often in my truck
sleeper even though I was home. I knew of the
large numbers of deer in the area, as well as
the usual small bear, cougar, bobcats, etc. Yet on the
two trails that ran the length of the property below
and on either side of the hill, I seldom found
deer tracks, or any other tracks for that matter, but
they showed what I thought was some kind of heavy
use hard clay and rock, not the best sort of
ground for detecting the sort of game that used it.
I passed it off as a minor mystery, unworthy of
much thought, which proved to be my mistake. My plot
of dirt and rocks was heavily wooded with pines, dogwood
and large oaks. Dead leaves were a problem in the
yard area. The trees certainly bothered my elderly mother, and
they bothered my dad for entirely different reasons. She and
my brother were persuaded by a local lumberman in my absence,
that the pine beetle had begun destroying my pines. She
was promised an undisclosed amount of money and the promise
to clean up all of the mess of slysh left behind.
I note that it was not her decision to make,
but I had no idea of the denuded property until
I drove in one weekend. Lots of oaks and dogwoods remained,
but the pines were gone. I was enraged, but what
could I do? Nothing and the slash from the logging
was later cleaned up by myself, my old father, and
my brother. The pines went into furniture frames. They were gone,
and I was sick about it. I had noticed every
warm night on the weekends that I was home and
I slept with my windows wide open, that I would
be awakened around eleven PM by a quiet giggling or
baby talk sound seeming to come from either side of
the hill, but moving from the US Forest Service area
down towards Lake Watchitaw across the highway. Strange enough, I thought,
but I had no idea what to think, and oddly
thought it was some unknown behavior of other wildlife, probably deer.
I don't know why I assumed that. I observed that
the unusual and mysterious sounds could be followed beyond my hearing,
tracing them by the barking and baying of distant neighbors dogs.
I knew the area well enough that those deer, It's
okay to laugh at my deer theory. We're going down
to the lake to drink and or bathe Sure enough,
the distant barking would resume around two am, and I
could trace their progress back towards my place, back up
the trails, and again toward it and into the Watchitaw
National Forest. My father liked to rise early and retire
around sunset with a glass of iced tea out on
the deck. Often we would sit and chat about nothing
and the work that we had all done that day.
Several times, however, he'd remarked about how he thought he
was being spied on by a big, hairy, camouflaged neighbor
hiding behind the trees out past our property lines. And
sure enough, one evening I thought too that I saw
the fellow. Sometimes he would sway left to right, but
usually he seemed to peer from behind the trees. Once
I walked out there with my rifle, hoping to have
a more friendly encounter with the shy, strange visitor, but
he would seem to melt into the forest before I
arrived to where he or it was. By then, I
was totally unsure of my old pop's vision and sanity,
but wrote it off as my father's imagination. This too
was a mistake. My brother, who occupied a sixteen foot
travel trailer out by the forest service line, was however, terrified.
He seldom spoke of it, but had begun to keep
his rifle at the ready and claimed that someone was
pounding on and jarring his trailer at night, sometimes scratching
on the walls. He later built a large fire pit
and began keeping a large fire off night almost every night.
He was a heavy drinker, though, and I chalked it
up to his being a drunk. This assumption was also
a mistake. One warm night with a full moon in
nineteen ninety one, I laid in my room with the
windows open. Sleep was difficult due to the bombardment of
acorns on the roof. We were exhausted from cleaning up
the logging slash left behind by the crooked logger. I
must have been leary about something, because I was sleeping
with my loaded three point fifty seven magnum under the
sheets on the pillow next to me, along with our
three legged, orphaned tomcat. Oh the things that can happen
on a full moonlit night. Unfortunately, until I recently learned
of nasal strips, I had a monstrous snoring problem. I
could rattle the windows. How anyone or anything could sleep
near me was a mystery in itself. But that night,
that strange cat had decided to sleep right next to me.
I don't remember the actual time, but it was late.
The old tomcat awoke me with a terrified catterwall like
I had never heard. He was arched up like a
Halloween cat, and his tail was fully bushed out in
sheer terror. And as he was screaming at the door,
he was also hosing a horrible smelling stream of something
onto my pillow. The cat was in a state of fear,
unlike anything I had ever seen. I looked at the door,
which had a one foot square window, and simultaneously reached
for and cocked my revolver. Filling that window was the biggest,
hairiest man I had ever seen. I drew a bead
on his head. I was scared, and I was pulling
the trigger, about to send a hollow point bullet blasting
through that window, right into the face of that creature,
which by then I knew from its moonlit feature, was
merely holding a near human but huge hand to its
face in an attempt to see just what in the
hell was making that god awful noise inside that metal house.
Mere seconds passed as this encounter transpired, perhaps split seconds.
The creature surely realized it was in trouble. It threw
up its extra long arms as it turned and ran,
screaming very ape like, flailing its arms and running for
the forest service woods. I could see this creature quite
well in the light of the full moon. In retrospect,
I'm glad to not have shot it. It was as
terrified as me and the three legged cat, which had
continued squalling and bolted, screaming from the room, still hosing
down its full path with that ungodly smelling liquid. It
took days of hard cleaning to remove that odor. There
are a few things that I am certain of. The
creature was screaming in fear as he ran from danger. However,
I'm positive he was cursing me for all that he
was worth. The logging slash he had run through was
more than likely unpleasant and aggravated him even more. Before
the erroneous logging operations, they were familiar with the woods
of my newly acquired property. At that moment, he had
no time to be careful. He just had to go.
What I experienced that night was a huge humanoid, bipedal,
hairy ape man, one who was certainly capable of animal
and human like thinking. I finally realized why the old
social security judge was so eager to sell out. It
was all very clear at that point. The creature was
roughly nine to twelve feet tall, likely weighing in at
eight hundred pounds. Long, stringy, dark hair covered its body.
I could not detect any odor over the horrid stench
from that three legged tomcat. It had to be that
tall in order to bend over the railing on the
porch and have its face against my window. That end
of the mobile home was perched over the side of
a hill, right under that big oak tree. I'm a
very good observer, generally speaking. I was good at shooting
down aircraft and other military targets while in the Navy.
As a member of the US Government survey crew and
a Forest Service cartographer and a military recon photo analyst,
I know how to gather pertinent details. There are not
half a dozen folk anywhere in the nation with whom
I have told these things too, and in such a detail.
The usual response is total disbelief and all that anyone
could spend such a tale. But I have indeed had
a somewhat interesting life. Some have said I should write
a book. Others simply dread to get me started. So
I normally keep it all to myself and really have
few associates these days. I failed earlier to relate that
while I personally had no sasquatch of bigfoot experiences in
the Northwest, I personally knew reputable and sane, even highly
educated people who had experienced such encounters. Most were harmless,
but some encounters were malevolent in nature. From my acquaintances
in all the Pacific Northwest who have had such experiences,
I have concluded that said creature is family oriented and
indeed raise and populate the world in areas where they
find comfort and sustenance, much like us. But they choose
to generally observe us and avoid us at all costs
if possible, and by all means we should be aware
of them, but also avoid them if possible. I was
once an avid out doorsman. I love to camp, fish,
and hunt, but I will not go into the forest
to stay overnight now unless equipped with at least the
largest boar weapon available. Anything less, if used in defense,
were merely enraged. The wounded creature, the smallest creature ever reported,
is capable of ripping the largest and strongest human male
to shreds in seconds, and you just may become dinner.
I knew well a devout Christian family, all highly educated
in Washington State. They were not known to lie or embellish.
They had close regular exposure to families of these creatures
that was adjacent to the US Air Force Survival School
in the mountains of northeast Washington State above Cusick, Washington,
the Air Force made pilots parachute into those mountains to
survive or die, and were not allowed to have any
human contact until the course was terminated. There's no telling
the stories that those flyers could tell, or the instructors
who manned the school. My Arkansas experience, my small wooded
plot was adjacent to the Wachitaw National Forest, not so
much as a fence separated it. There are many natural
caves above my old property, also all throughout that region
or crystal minds, many not yet operative. Anyone or any
creature can definitely make any number of those home if needed,