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