Speaker 1: Here's a Bigfoot story. I went to visit my friend
Speaker 1: Travis in the little town of Rosefield in Catahula Parish, Louisiana.
Speaker 1: It was nineteen seventy, the summer before our senior year
Speaker 1: in high school. Travis's family used wood burning stoves and
Speaker 1: had an outdoor pit toilet, and there were no other
Speaker 1: houses anywhere near their property. There wasn't much to this
Speaker 1: little town. You can find it on Google Maps, and
Speaker 1: it seems to me much like it was back fifty
Speaker 1: years ago, mostly pine forests, and it will probably look
Speaker 1: the same in another fifty years. There were no jobs,
Speaker 1: but some old geezer down the road would pay five
Speaker 1: dollars for raccoon pelts. One day on my visit, we
Speaker 1: decided to give it a try and harvest a raccoon.
Speaker 1: Travis and I each had a single shot twenty two
Speaker 1: rifle and probably no more than a handful of bullets
Speaker 1: between us. At four o'clock that afternoon, we loaded up
Speaker 1: and walked across the big field beside the house. The
Speaker 1: other side of the field was bordered by a heavy
Speaker 1: pine forest. Many years before it had been logged, so
Speaker 1: there was an old hall road that we followed deeper
Speaker 1: into the woods. We had a small fis dog with us,
Speaker 1: not much more than an oversized chihuahua, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: long before the dog treed a raccoon. Travis killed it
Speaker 1: without any problem. It was a big one, and we
Speaker 1: took turns carrying it. It was so heavy that we
Speaker 1: decided to hang it on the fork of a small
Speaker 1: sapling and then pick it up on our way back.
Speaker 1: We walked another half an hour or so deeper into
Speaker 1: the woods, but it was getting too dark to see much,
Speaker 1: so we decided to go back home. We only had
Speaker 1: one flashlight and it was taped to the barrel of
Speaker 1: my rifle with electrical tape. My rifle had a small
Speaker 1: scope on it, but it was almost worthless as it
Speaker 1: was getting too dark to see anything through the eyepiece.
Speaker 1: About that time we got back to the sapling and
Speaker 1: the dog started acting strange, and it circled around us,
Speaker 1: and it was looking back, and it was howling. I
Speaker 1: shined the light around and I saw two red eyes
Speaker 1: high off the ground, but only for a second before
Speaker 1: they vanished. There had always been stories about panthers in Louisiana,
Speaker 1: but Travis said the eyes were much too high off
Speaker 1: the ground, and there weren't any thick enough trees nearby
Speaker 1: for a panther to have been perched over us, Plus
Speaker 1: a panther's eyes shine would have been green, not red.
Speaker 1: We continued walking and occasionally shine the light behind us.
Speaker 1: The dog went nuts the whole time, howling and looking
Speaker 1: back into the darkness. The eyes were not always visible,
Speaker 1: but we could feel that we were being fallen, and
Speaker 1: at one point we were so scared that Travis dropped
Speaker 1: a cartridge into his rifle, But in his haste, he
Speaker 1: tried to slam the bolt shut before the cartridge was
Speaker 1: properly aligned, and it mangled the cartridge, and it's a
Speaker 1: miracle that it didn't explode. After we left the woods
Speaker 1: and walked into the field, we could see the lights
Speaker 1: of the house ahead. We checked our rifles to make
Speaker 1: sure that we both had a cartridge ready to fire,
Speaker 1: and then we looked back at the trees, expecting to
Speaker 1: finally see what had been following us. We could tell
Speaker 1: it was there, but it wouldn't come out of the woods,
Speaker 1: stayed just inside the tree line. We even saw its
Speaker 1: eyes a couple of times. We decided to drop the
Speaker 1: raccoon after about one hundred yards, and then continued walking
Speaker 1: a short distance, and we waited, thinking that it would
Speaker 1: come after it, But still it wouldn't leave the woods,
Speaker 1: and when the light of Travis's mom's car turned into
Speaker 1: the driveway, we left the raccoon in the field and
Speaker 1: we ran back to the house. The next morning, we
Speaker 1: went back for the raccoon, but it was gone, and
Speaker 1: so was our five dollars. I have told this story
Speaker 1: a few times when people have asked me if I
Speaker 1: thought it might have been a bigfoot in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: I had never heard the term bigfoot. I don't remember
Speaker 1: hearing anything or smelling anything. I've heard people say they
Speaker 1: often hear knocks and screams or bad smells, but none
Speaker 1: of that happened to us. Still, the presence of this
Speaker 1: thing was uncanny. We didn't have to see it to
Speaker 1: know that it was there with us. Travis and I
Speaker 1: drifted apart after that, and I never did figure out
Speaker 1: what was in the woods that night. Baby Travis is
Speaker 1: a Dixie Cryptid fan too, and will remember the good
Speaker 1: times that we had and that night that those red
Speaker 1: eyes followed us all the way through the woods. Okay,
Speaker 1: that is the perfect To me, that's the perfect Bigfoot story.
Speaker 1: It's almost like, you know how they say girls these
Speaker 1: days dressed too revealing and they don't leave anything to
Speaker 1: the imagination. That's what this story is. It's a story
Speaker 1: that's not showing us too much, but it's making us
Speaker 1: wonder what in the world followed these guys out of
Speaker 1: the woods. And there's some drama to it. I know
Speaker 1: that sounds corny, but there's some drama to it. As
Speaker 1: I was reading it, I kept I think ahead while
Speaker 1: I'm reading. Sometimes I'm not even thinking about what I'm reading.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking what's going to happen next, What's going to
Speaker 1: happen next? And I kept thinking that in this story,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't resolved in the end, which is almost
Speaker 1: great because we get to figure, we get to imagine
Speaker 1: what in the world was following this guys. Now, I
Speaker 1: know people who follow the Bigfoot topic and all that
Speaker 1: stuff are going to say, well, hell, that was a bigfoot.
Speaker 1: Why would you think it was anything else? But it
Speaker 1: could have been something else. It could have been it
Speaker 1: could have been a mountain lion, it could have been
Speaker 1: I don't know what has red eyes, Does anything have
Speaker 1: red eyes in the woods. People always have an opinion
Speaker 1: on that. Anyway, The point is it was a great story.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. And I hope Travis is a
Speaker 1: Dixie Cryptid fan and he hears this, and you two
Speaker 1: guys can connect again. Wouldn't that be cool? So Travis,
Speaker 1: send me an email if you want to reconnect with
Speaker 1: your buddy, and I'll pass the email address on to him,
Speaker 1: and you guys can reconnect. Talk about old times and
Speaker 1: talk about that time that thing followed, y'all, raccoon hunting
Speaker 1: all the way out of the woods down in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: Lose Aarner as my grandparents, you say, down to lose Arner.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go to another story. Thanks brother. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's Rebecca says. This is a bigfoot and a grizzly
Speaker 1: bear story. You know, I never talk about Rebecca Weston,
Speaker 1: the woman who actually cleans up every single e I
Speaker 1: don't even read them anymore. I just go through my list,
Speaker 1: I copy them and paste them in a word file,
Speaker 1: and I'll send her anywhere from ten to thirty at
Speaker 1: a time. And she's always so fast, and she says
Speaker 1: she loves doing this. I'm going to have her on
Speaker 1: a live stream pretty soon. I would have done it
Speaker 1: by now, but I have a computer. My computer used
Speaker 1: to do live streams, but now I can't get it
Speaker 1: to do anything. It's a computer I've had for about
Speaker 1: six or seven years. I have a brand new computer,
Speaker 1: but I haven't. I've got all my work software on
Speaker 1: this one right here, and I kind of hate as
Speaker 1: long as it's working. I hate to change it, you know,
Speaker 1: because then I have to go through two days of
Speaker 1: loading up software and blah blah blah. But as soon
Speaker 1: as I get my new computer installed this spring, we're
Speaker 1: gonna She's agreed to come on for a live you know.
Speaker 1: Rebecca is an author. She's written a great book called
Speaker 1: No Good Man. If you want to read it, do
Speaker 1: a cir on Amazon for No good Man by Rebecca
Speaker 1: Lee Wesson. I actually read the first chapter of that
Speaker 1: book as a promo several months ago. And she's written
Speaker 1: a couple of She's written one really good short story
Speaker 1: for this channel called The hat Man. I thought it
Speaker 1: was a great story. But I think she's a really
Speaker 1: talented writer and man, she can smoke out these edits
Speaker 1: for these emails like you wouldn't believe. And I really
Speaker 1: appreciate her so much, so I never say much about Rebecca.
Speaker 1: If it wasn't for her, I wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: do hardly any of these stories because it takes forever
Speaker 1: to kind of weed through them and make sure they're
Speaker 1: written right, or at least make sure that they're written
Speaker 1: so that I can just jump in and read them.
Speaker 1: And that's the whole point of it. So, Rebecca, if
Speaker 1: you're listening to this podcast, I appreciate you. I love you,
Speaker 1: love your family, and I hope you guys are doing good.
Speaker 1: All right, let's get on with this Bigfoot and Grizzly
Speaker 1: Bear story. I am a seventy one year old female
Speaker 1: born in Scott County, Arkansas. We lived in the backsticks.
Speaker 1: Our farm bordered and was isolated by the Watchtaw National
Speaker 1: Forest to the north and the foul lethe River to
Speaker 1: the south. My two sisters and I had to be
Speaker 1: up and out of bed at four thirty am. We
Speaker 1: had to walk out of the river bottoms and cross
Speaker 1: the river in an old wooden boat and then walked
Speaker 1: two miles to catch the school bus. And if we
Speaker 1: hadn't left the house by five thirty am, we would
Speaker 1: miss the bus. I was nine years old and my
Speaker 1: sister was twelve. Mama usually milked the cows, but this
Speaker 1: morning she was sick, so my dad sent me and
Speaker 1: my sister to do it instead. I was holding a
Speaker 1: lnern so my sister could see, and we were almost
Speaker 1: finished with the chore when something began to push on
Speaker 1: the back of the barn. We thought it was our
Speaker 1: old horse that had run outside. I held up the
Speaker 1: lantern so I could see what was going on, and boy,
Speaker 1: did we get the scare of our lives. There was
Speaker 1: a giant, hairy man at least six feet tall at
Speaker 1: the armpit, reaching and swatting at the thin air, trying
Speaker 1: to grab onto something. From where it reached its arm end,
Speaker 1: the creature would have been over seven feet tall, and
Speaker 1: if it had pushed any harder on that door, it
Speaker 1: would have been in the barn with us. We ran
Speaker 1: back to the house and got ready and walked our
Speaker 1: way to the bus stop. That thing must have followed us,
Speaker 1: because a giant, barefoot track was freshly made in some
Speaker 1: mud in the middle of the road. It was so
Speaker 1: fresh that the water was still running into the track.
Speaker 1: The track looked like a large man's foot track. But
Speaker 1: this was in the middle of the winter, so no
Speaker 1: one goes barefoot in the winter in Arkansas. Not even then. Then,
Speaker 1: in the summer of twenty twenty, my husband and I
Speaker 1: would often go down to the general area to fish
Speaker 1: and just get out of the house. It was a
Speaker 1: good escape from people. Exciting times with our cryptid friends
Speaker 1: over the course of about four weeks. The first time
Speaker 1: was quite exciting because the river was full and had
Speaker 1: been flooded frequently, and finding bigfoots in the area really
Speaker 1: took me by surprise. We had been fishing and we
Speaker 1: were waiting for darkness, hoping that we could catch a
Speaker 1: fish or two. I had seen some movement in the
Speaker 1: wooded area across the river from us, and just as
Speaker 1: it was getting dark, we heard a whooping yell. It
Speaker 1: came loud and clear, just fifty yards straight across the
Speaker 1: river from us, and not a moment later, a second
Speaker 1: one did the same thing. Now this was the sound
Speaker 1: that no human could have imitated. The second one came
Speaker 1: fifty yards from us to our left. Altogether there were
Speaker 1: about eight different whoops done within two minutes. Now, these
Speaker 1: whoops sounded female to me, and there was a group
Speaker 1: of whoops about one hundred yards that sounded really young.
Speaker 1: I let out a whoop as loud and clear as
Speaker 1: I could, and that's when all hell broke out. The
Speaker 1: adult sounding critters got really excited and the young one
Speaker 1: started screaming. I think my husband got scared, because he said,
Speaker 1: let's get out of here. On another night, we went
Speaker 1: back to the same spot the same exact time, and
Speaker 1: the creature started whooping again, only this time they began
Speaker 1: trying to yelp like coyotes, and they weren't doing a
Speaker 1: very good job of it. We got our stuff and
Speaker 1: got out of there. I have multiple scle Excuse me,
Speaker 1: I can't pronounce that I have multiple sclerosis, and I
Speaker 1: can't move very fast. Anyway, A week later we went back.
Speaker 1: This time there was a handprint on the edge of
Speaker 1: the river bank and there was a track next to
Speaker 1: my chair. I looked at the handprint and the footprint
Speaker 1: and determined they were not human. That footprint was tend
Speaker 1: to fifteen inches long, and the handprint was what I
Speaker 1: assumed a gorilla would have made. That evening, we didn't
Speaker 1: try to disturb the sasquatches. After fishing for a while,
Speaker 1: we called it today and we went home, and then
Speaker 1: a week later we went back again. We always kept
Speaker 1: a baseball bat in the truck to make woodknocks with,
Speaker 1: so this time we decided to make some knocks before
Speaker 1: we left. My husband sounded off with three loud knocks,
Speaker 1: and we got a surprise when just five seconds later,
Speaker 1: woodknocks began sounding off on the other side of the river.
Speaker 1: I counted nine separate individuals knocking. That was the last
Speaker 1: time we heard from them. After all that, I won't
Speaker 1: be happy until I get to see a sasquatch out
Speaker 1: in the open. Once when I was living in Wyoming,
Speaker 1: my husband and I, along with some friends, decided to
Speaker 1: go on a high altitude fishing trip in the wind
Speaker 1: River Mountains. The highest mountain in this area was thirty
Speaker 1: teen thousand feet. We were going to hike into some
Speaker 1: of the lakes and fish for brook trout and rainbows
Speaker 1: and grayling and anything else that would bite. We made
Speaker 1: camp on the first evening and we ate our supper.
Speaker 1: It was getting late and we were standing around the
Speaker 1: campfire when out of nowhere came a bull moose. Now
Speaker 1: that moose was running as if the devil himself was
Speaker 1: after him. It just about ran over the campfire and
Speaker 1: down the road about one hundred yards, and then he
Speaker 1: wheeled around, and here he came again. We couldn't see
Speaker 1: anything that could have spooked him so bad. My husband
Speaker 1: and I cautioned everybody to be sure and to put
Speaker 1: all their food away before turning in, so it was
Speaker 1: not to attract unwanted visitors. Thinking nothing more of it,
Speaker 1: we crawled in our tent and at five am, our
Speaker 1: labradoodle let out a blood curdling growl that woke us up,
Speaker 1: thinking codies were messing with her. I grabbed my flashlight
Speaker 1: and my pistol and an unzip the tent. I shined
Speaker 1: the light and I saw blonde hair on some kind
Speaker 1: of animal. I told my husband to shoot up in
Speaker 1: the air to scare it off. He shot twice, and
Speaker 1: when that thing stuck its head around the tree, we
Speaker 1: got the scare of our lives. It was a grizzly bear.
Speaker 1: It stood flat footed, a head taller than I was.
Speaker 1: I told my husband that that thing could have bitten
Speaker 1: my head off, and it was a wonder that it didn't.
Speaker 1: My husband shot up into the air twice, more like
Speaker 1: a bolt of lightning. The bear was gone. It was
Speaker 1: only a blur and it happened really fast. But knowing
Speaker 1: the bear was in the area, we gathered all our
Speaker 1: stuff and we got out of there. That was the
Speaker 1: last time we ever slept on the ground. We went
Speaker 1: the next weekend and got ourselves a topper for our truck.
Speaker 1: That bear was and still was the most frightening thing
Speaker 1: that has ever happened to me. But then again, I
Speaker 1: have yet to see a sasquatch in the open, and
Speaker 1: if that happens, I may stay and corrected. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed my short story. Yes, we enjoyed your short story.
Speaker 1: That was wonderful. Wow. She's had encounters with bigfoot since
Speaker 1: she was a kid, and then it just stopped. She's
Speaker 1: not seeing them everywhere or hearing them everywhere anymore. It
Speaker 1: just stopped, which is unusual for someone who has experiences
Speaker 1: with bigfoot because they normally have bigfoot experiences all their lives.
Speaker 1: And then so the bigfoot, the sysquatch experiences stop. And
Speaker 1: then came the grizzly bear experience, which I think would
Speaker 1: scare me more than anything. I don't know why, but
Speaker 1: being out west in the mountains and even seeing a
Speaker 1: grizzly bear that's close enough to run me down. It
Speaker 1: puts such a fear in me. It's hard to describe.
Speaker 1: And I'm reluctant to go out there and just do
Speaker 1: like solo hiking or even group hiking because of the bears.
Speaker 1: I've just heard too many stories. But it's almost like,
Speaker 1: you know, people tell bigfoot stories and so other people
Speaker 1: won't go in the woods, but I know bears that
Speaker 1: killed people, they'll eat you. And if they have cubs around.
Speaker 1: It's a female with cubs around, you're almost sure to
Speaker 1: get that bear's attention and that full attention on you.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's hard to describe it. It's a
Speaker 1: scary thing for me. And now we have black bears
Speaker 1: in Mississippi. And I ran up on a track not
Speaker 1: too long ago. That was the biggest track I've ever
Speaker 1: seen of some kind of critters back here behind my house,
Speaker 1: on my neighbor's property, and it's up on a levee
Speaker 1: where it's muddy, and it was a clear track. I
Speaker 1: couldn't tell exactly what it was. I took a picture
Speaker 1: of it, and I started, not right away, but a
Speaker 1: few days later I started looking for wildlife in this
Speaker 1: area and what kind of tracks they made, And I
Speaker 1: found out it was a beaver track. A beaver has
Speaker 1: the strangest track you've ever seen. But I thought for
Speaker 1: a minute it might be a bear. There's more to
Speaker 1: that story, but I'm not going to bore you with
Speaker 1: it anyway. I'm just rambling. This was a great story
Speaker 1: about Bigfoot and her encounter with a grizzly bear. I
Speaker 1: love this story. Seventy one years old. I think I
Speaker 1: got this story back in twenty twenty or twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: so this is an old one. I'm still reaching back
Speaker 1: that far to get stories, so I've still got thousands
Speaker 1: to do. So I appreciate the woman for sending it,
Speaker 1: and it makes me wonder if she's ever seen Sosquat
Speaker 1: since that time out in the open, if she still
Speaker 1: thinks the grizzly bear thing is the scariest thing she's
Speaker 1: ever seen. I don't know. Let's go on to another story.
Speaker 1: Thank you, ma'am. This is a dog story. A few
Speaker 1: months ago I asked people if they had dog stories
Speaker 1: they'd like to share with the audience to send them in,
Speaker 1: and I got probably a dozen of those. I think
Speaker 1: I've done four or five of them, and so I've
Speaker 1: got several to do and I'll drop them in podcast
Speaker 1: as we go along. But here's one that I thought
Speaker 1: was pretty good. We have a dog named Dipstick, but
Speaker 1: we didn't name him that because he's stupid. Our daughter
Speaker 1: named him after one of the pups and the one
Speaker 1: hundred and one Dalmatians show, her favorite movie. We got
Speaker 1: him and his brother, Domino, in February of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 1: They were half Great Pyrenees and half Blue Healer. We
Speaker 1: lost Domino when he was four due to a mass
Speaker 1: in his abdomen. I held him all the way home
Speaker 1: after the bat put him down, and my husband buried
Speaker 1: him in the back of our property. He was sweet
Speaker 1: and loving and brave too, and always standing between me
Speaker 1: and any stranger who might have passed by our home.
Speaker 1: He never heard anyone, but I have no doubt he
Speaker 1: would have if someone had tried to harm me. We
Speaker 1: had a strange neighbor at the time who would often
Speaker 1: come to the fence and talk to me while I
Speaker 1: worked in the garden. Domino would stand by the fence
Speaker 1: and growl, low his eyes on him the entire time. Dipstick, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: would hide behind me. Is comforting to know that Domino
Speaker 1: picked up on my and Dipstick's discomfort around this person.
Speaker 1: Dipstick is still around and has matured into a good watchdog.
Speaker 1: He howls the most mournful howl you've ever heard anytime
Speaker 1: he hears a siren. He's also an unrelenting chicken killer,
Speaker 1: so we do keep an eye on him. Once, when
Speaker 1: our two dwarf Nigerian goats escaped their pen and got
Speaker 1: into the yard with Dipstick, we were amazed that he
Speaker 1: didn't hurt them. Instead, the three of them took up
Speaker 1: like buddies, and since that day they frolic around our
Speaker 1: property together. They're the best of friends. A stray dog
Speaker 1: recently climbed the fence and entered our yard, intent on
Speaker 1: reaching the goats. They ran away and climbed up on
Speaker 1: their table, while good old Dipstick stood in front of
Speaker 1: the intruding dog, barking and keeping him away. As soon
Speaker 1: as my husband got there, the stray took off, but
Speaker 1: I swear Dipsticks took his chest out and strutted around
Speaker 1: the proud protector. It makes me smile just thinking about it.
Speaker 1: I think the small female goat. Buttercup has been love
Speaker 1: struck ever since. Oh that's a great story. You know,
Speaker 1: dogs have different demeanors. Every dog I've had has got
Speaker 1: a drastically different personality than all the rest of the
Speaker 1: dogs I've never I've had one dog, my dog Roxy.
Speaker 1: She's dead now, but she's in some of my old videos.
Speaker 1: She's the brown brindled dog. And she was like our
Speaker 1: She's the smartest dog we ever had, and she was
Speaker 1: like Domino. If the grandkids were here and they were
Speaker 1: out wandering around in the woods or were around this property,
Speaker 1: she stayed right with them the whole way. She never
Speaker 1: let them out of her sight, and she would only
Speaker 1: see them maybe once every two months, but she remembered them,
Speaker 1: and she knew them, and she knew that they needed
Speaker 1: to have someone with them in the woods. And I'm
Speaker 1: sure if they got turned around, she'd have got them home.
Speaker 1: She's like Domino. She was kind of the pack leader.
Speaker 1: And then I have plenty of dogs. I've had plenty
Speaker 1: of dogs like Dipstick. They're kind of the followers, you know,
Speaker 1: they're part of the pack, but they're not a leader.
Speaker 1: And they'll do a lot of barking. They'll stand behind
Speaker 1: Ji in bark, but they won't really do anything serious.
Speaker 1: So anyway I could relate to this story exactly. I
Speaker 1: could see all my dogs' personalities in these in Domino
Speaker 1: and Dipstick. I thought it was great. If you've got
Speaker 1: dog stories and you'd like to hear it on this podcast,
Speaker 1: email it to me. I'm not promising i'll get to
Speaker 1: it next week or even next month, but I will
Speaker 1: get to them. I will do them all. They're so good.
Speaker 1: I love to read about dogs, and I appreciate this
Speaker 1: person sending the story because I loved it. Thank you, ma'am.
Speaker 1: The story took place near the East Tennessee, North Carolina border,
Speaker 1: right in the Cherokee National Forest many years ago. When
Speaker 1: I was in college and had fewer responsibilities, a few
Speaker 1: friends and I used to drive around the back roads,
Speaker 1: listening to music and talking. We usually went at night,
Speaker 1: well after we'd gotten off work, and since we worked
Speaker 1: a restaurant and fast food jobs, that could be pretty
Speaker 1: late in the evening. One summer night, there was going
Speaker 1: to be a meteor shower, and I convinced my friend
Speaker 1: John to drive out and see it, so we took
Speaker 1: his car and another friend Jim tagged along. The road
Speaker 1: we were on was residential, but rural enough to only
Speaker 1: have houses every few hundred feet or so. And then
Speaker 1: suddenly the road took somewhat of a sharp turn. On
Speaker 1: the left hand side there was a bank about five
Speaker 1: feet high with the manicured bushes on top. I saw
Speaker 1: gray furry legs from the ankles to the hips, step
Speaker 1: twice up the bank and disappear into the bushes. Did
Speaker 1: you see that? Show? Got it? Neither of my friends
Speaker 1: had noticed it, but of course they took the opportunity
Speaker 1: to make fun of me. I was sure it had
Speaker 1: been by a pedal and large. I didn't think it
Speaker 1: was a bigfoot immediately. My first thought was that it
Speaker 1: had been the mythical wampus cat of the Cherokee, especially
Speaker 1: since what I saw reminded me of my sister's cat
Speaker 1: with silver, gray white tips that made it look like
Speaker 1: it was constantly covered in dust. But it was only
Speaker 1: later that I knew what I had seen. Twenty minutes
Speaker 1: after I saw these legs, we got to our destination,
Speaker 1: the man made dam of a Tva lake, right on
Speaker 1: the edge of the National Forest. It was a good
Speaker 1: spot to see the stars, because there were no lights
Speaker 1: around to interfere with a meteor shower. There was a
Speaker 1: gate that closed its sundown to prevent people from driving
Speaker 1: out onto the dam after dark, but there was a
Speaker 1: parking lot close by with a grass median in the middle.
Speaker 1: John drove around the median so that we'd be facing
Speaker 1: the exit once we got back to the car, and
Speaker 1: parked across several spots, since we were already the only
Speaker 1: ones crazy enough to come out to the middle of
Speaker 1: Nowhere to look at the stars. At one am in
Speaker 1: the morning, John hadn't even turned the key to shut
Speaker 1: off the car when there was a loud banging on
Speaker 1: the roof that startled and scared us. Four raccoons had
Speaker 1: jumped from their tree and landed on the roof of
Speaker 1: the car, and they were running as fast as they
Speaker 1: could down the windshield and across the hood. It scared us,
Speaker 1: to say the least. Jim gave a quick laugh, but
Speaker 1: I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck.
Speaker 1: There was something else out there. From the back seat,
Speaker 1: I caught a quick glance at John's expression in the
Speaker 1: rear view mirror. He was staring at something behind the vehicle.
Speaker 1: I've never seen fear that in anyone's eyes. Sense I
Speaker 1: turned and looked out the rear window at what he
Speaker 1: was seeing. It was at least ten feet tall, and
Speaker 1: it had a cone shaped head, had broad shoulders and
Speaker 1: long arms. I could only see the silhouette of this
Speaker 1: creature against the night sky. I couldn't see any color
Speaker 1: than black. I couldn't see a face, and no fur
Speaker 1: or any other details. It was barely ten feet behind us,
Speaker 1: and its legs were so long it could have reached
Speaker 1: us in two steps if it wanted. Before I could
Speaker 1: gasp or scream, John gunned the gas. One of the
Speaker 1: back tires hit the curb on our way out of
Speaker 1: the parking lot, but he never slowed down. I put
Speaker 1: my head down and I tried not to think about
Speaker 1: what would be scarier, wrecking and flipping the car on
Speaker 1: one of these scary curves, or having Bigfoot catch up
Speaker 1: to us. Jim kept yelling what are you doing? Where
Speaker 1: you going? But John never answered. He just drove back
Speaker 1: to the city lights as fast as he could. I
Speaker 1: don't remember most of the trip back home. I'm sure
Speaker 1: I was in shock. It wasn't until months later that
Speaker 1: I realized the first sighting I had that night was
Speaker 1: probably also a bigfoot. Based on the lay of the land.
Speaker 1: It's entirely possible that it was the same one, as
Speaker 1: it could have climbed the mountain much quicker than we
Speaker 1: did driving slowly along a curvy mountain road with only
Speaker 1: our headlights. Whether it was one or two of them
Speaker 1: that I saw that night, I'll never know. We all
Speaker 1: drifted apart. In college, we never told Jim what we'd seen,
Speaker 1: though based on John's reaction, Jim knew something frightening had happened.
Speaker 1: He never asked why we didn't get out of the
Speaker 1: car and see the meteor shower. Now. I've told this
Speaker 1: story maybe twice since then, always to other believers. It's
Speaker 1: not as exciting or in up as many of your
Speaker 1: other stories, but it was pretty scary at the time.
Speaker 1: A few years after college, I went back up to
Speaker 1: the dam during the daylight hours and with a family
Speaker 1: member to go fishing. I noticed that the gates were
Speaker 1: brand new, but the older ones nearby hadn't been removed.
Speaker 1: A ranger happened to be nearby, and he'd said that
Speaker 1: they'd been damaged by a car crashing into them, but
Speaker 1: the cagy way that he said it and the way
Speaker 1: that they had been twisted out of shape told me
Speaker 1: that he knew that wasn't what had happened. I just
Speaker 1: nodded and made a mental note to be gone long
Speaker 1: before sunset? Man, what are you talking about? That? This
Speaker 1: is not an in depth exciting story like the others
Speaker 1: that I read. This is just this is just exactly
Speaker 1: or more exciting than any of them. This is a
Speaker 1: typical Bigfoot encounter, at least the ones that I get.
Speaker 1: I thought it was too terribly exciting. And this podcast
Speaker 1: seems to be full of people recounting older episodes in
Speaker 1: their lives where they either see or hear. This one
Speaker 1: was an actual visual, but they see or hear or
Speaker 1: smell something that they just know they know what it was.
Speaker 1: I thought this was fantastic. I wish I could say
Speaker 1: more about it, because I'm just plumped after reading it.
Speaker 1: But that's about all I can say. What a great story.
Speaker 1: And he's revisited the place and the gates are all
Speaker 1: twisted up, and he knows what twisted those gates up.
Speaker 1: That's what's kind of creepy. Anyway, Thanks for the story.
Speaker 1: We loved it. Thank you so much. To you and
Speaker 1: all the writers who send me stories. This was fantastic.
Speaker 1: Listening to the stories you tell has brought back a
Speaker 1: lot of good memories. I grew up hunting and fishing
Speaker 1: and pulling gen seeing and exploring God's beautiful Appalachian Mountains.
Speaker 1: I had more exposure to Bigfoot than most people would
Speaker 1: have or even want. We lived beside a clan that was,
Speaker 1: for the most part, relatively passive. Not to say they
Speaker 1: didn't get an attitude every now and then, but we
Speaker 1: learned to deal with them. I remember the first time
Speaker 1: I ever saw one up close. Grandma used to bake
Speaker 1: pies in the late afternoon for dessert or for breakfast
Speaker 1: the next day. She had just finished putting one pecan
Speaker 1: and one apple pie on the shelf next to the
Speaker 1: window over the sink to cool well. I was finishing
Speaker 1: lunch at the table when I heard my Grandma start yelling.
Speaker 1: She came through the door of the living room with
Speaker 1: a switch in her hand and headed straight for the
Speaker 1: window where the pies were. There. In the window, I
Speaker 1: saw a furry hand grab a hold of the pie.
Speaker 1: Grandma wielded that hickory like a ninja sword, smacking that
Speaker 1: hairy hand on the knuckles. As it and the pie
Speaker 1: went out the window. I ran over to see who
Speaker 1: had done it, and what I saw would be the
Speaker 1: first of many times that I saw him and his family.
Speaker 1: This creature was six feet tall, and he was running
Speaker 1: with a pie in his hand, faster than any animal
Speaker 1: I'd ever seen. He made a beeline straight for the woods,
Speaker 1: making a grunting and laughing sound the whole way. A
Speaker 1: Grandma was hollering at it, as any good Christian woman
Speaker 1: would have done to any pie thief. Grandpa came running
Speaker 1: through the living room door just in time to see
Speaker 1: it disappear into the darkness of the tree line. He
Speaker 1: started to chuckle because of Grandma, but he clambed up
Speaker 1: real quick. With one look from her and her country's sword,
Speaker 1: he wiped that smile right off his face, and his
Speaker 1: hand fell on my shoulder. Said he needed my help,
Speaker 1: and I followed him out to the front porch, and
Speaker 1: he sat down in his rocking chair, and he bit
Speaker 1: off a chew at tobacco and offered me some. We
Speaker 1: sat there for a quiet minute until he said, I
Speaker 1: bet you want to know what that furry creator was,
Speaker 1: don't you? At twelve years old. I'd been exposed to
Speaker 1: a lot of things on the farm. I had killed
Speaker 1: and plucked chickens. I had prepped hogs and cattle for slaughter.
Speaker 1: I had hunted and skinned deer, squirrels, and about anything
Speaker 1: else that ran or crawled but failed to get away
Speaker 1: from us. I was shocked by what I had seen,
Speaker 1: but more curious than anything else. Grandpa told me that
Speaker 1: this was a bugger, at least that's what us folks
Speaker 1: in the hills call them. He explained that there was
Speaker 1: a family of them that lived several miles over the ridge.
Speaker 1: Last he counted, there were six of them. But what
Speaker 1: I saw was a young male about my age. He
Speaker 1: said it wasn't the first time Grandma had had to
Speaker 1: get on that one. He never did any harm, but
Speaker 1: like Grandma's cooking, couldn't get mad at that. Everybody loved
Speaker 1: Grandma's cooking. He went on to tell me that the
Speaker 1: klan had lived in the area most of his life.
Speaker 1: Every now and then they would come in for a visit,
Speaker 1: but they never got real close. Only the younger male
Speaker 1: had the courage to test the speed of Grandma's hickory switch.
Speaker 1: They sometimes came around at night, but usually just to
Speaker 1: pass through or take a peek through the windows. He
Speaker 1: went on to say that they'd run into them in
Speaker 1: the woods on occasion, though you'd never get a clear
Speaker 1: view of them unless they wanted to be seen. The key,
Speaker 1: he said, was that if you feel like someone's got
Speaker 1: eyes on you, they probably do. And he warned me
Speaker 1: to never approach them, and if I did happen upon
Speaker 1: one accidentally, it was gunned down, hands up, big smile,
Speaker 1: and back away real slow. He said, they might growl
Speaker 1: or make a weird noise at me, but that would
Speaker 1: probably be the end of it. Well, sure's rain. I
Speaker 1: was blessed to have many encounters with them, and not
Speaker 1: all of them were pleasant. There were a few times
Speaker 1: when I was caught face to face with one, but
Speaker 1: I remembered what Grandpa taught me, gun down, hands up,
Speaker 1: big smile. I never had a problem. If I have time,
Speaker 1: I might write down some of my experiences and send
Speaker 1: them in to you. I think your audience would enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I'm fifty seven years old now and I don't really
Speaker 1: care what people think. Am I crazy? Well, hell, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm crazy, but delusional, not at all. I'm like you, Cam.
Speaker 1: I don't live to prove their existence or disprove their existence.
Speaker 1: I know they exist from my own experiences, and make
Speaker 1: no mistake. They can hurt you, but they will also
Speaker 1: live with you if you let them. You have to
Speaker 1: treat them as you would any other of God's predators.
Speaker 1: Give them respect, give them room, and everybody most of
Speaker 1: the time will get along. By the way, that young
Speaker 1: fellow who took grandma's pie, she found six fresh apples
Speaker 1: on her window seal the next morning. Oh man, hey, first,
Speaker 1: let me say I'm gonna apologize about that chicken outside
Speaker 1: my door. It keeps yapping. Listen to her, Listen to her.
Speaker 1: You know what, I think I got my side by
Speaker 1: side out there. I think she's just laid an egg
Speaker 1: in the seat. That's what they do when they they
Speaker 1: celebrate after they lay an egg. I bet I find
Speaker 1: an egg in the seat. Anyway, this story was great.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. I think bigfoot in Appalachia is
Speaker 1: quite common. And these people that claim that they live
Speaker 1: with them, I have no reason at all to doubt
Speaker 1: these people. They are so matter of fact about it,
Speaker 1: like this man was in his story. He's just a
Speaker 1: matter of fact about it. Well, there, we live with them.
Speaker 1: They steal my grandma's pies, they love her cooking. They're shy.
Speaker 1: Only one of them's brave. Everything he said in this
Speaker 1: really makes a lot of sense to me. So I
Speaker 1: appreciate the story. Thank you for taking the time to
Speaker 1: write it. I know the audience loved it. And if
Speaker 1: you do have time, I'd love to read some of
Speaker 1: your other experiences, so please send them in. Thank you
Speaker 1: for the story. Okay, that was a great set of stories.
Speaker 1: You know, I just randomly run my cursor through the
Speaker 1: folder and I just pick out random stories four or five,
Speaker 1: and I slide them over into this podcast file and
Speaker 1: I just start reading them. I'm just getting lucky and
Speaker 1: getting some really good ones. So with that, we'll go
Speaker 1: ahead and wind this one up. Thank you all for listening.
Speaker 1: I really appreciate you, and we'll see you on the
Speaker 1: next week. Thank you.