Speaker 1: I was born in southern Ohio in the mid nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and my parents moved to northern Indiana before I quit
Speaker 1: wearing diapers. But my dad was from central Kentucky, just
Speaker 1: north of the Daniel Boone National Forest. When I was
Speaker 1: nine years old, my dad was injured on his job,
Speaker 1: and for reasons that I'm still not clear about, he
Speaker 1: went to his parents' house in Kentucky, where he would
Speaker 1: soon die. He took five of us kids with him,
Speaker 1: and my baby's sister and my mother would follow very soon.
Speaker 1: My grandparents' home was out in the sticks, and many
Speaker 1: sounds could be heard there. While sitting on the porch
Speaker 1: in the evenings, we often heard what was described as
Speaker 1: wildcats bobcats, screaming just like the sound of a woman.
Speaker 1: But several times we would hear unusual sounds from the
Speaker 1: mountains surrounding their home. These were just described as boogers
Speaker 1: by my uncles who lived with my grandparents. When we
Speaker 1: heard these screams or sounds, it meant it was time
Speaker 1: to go inside the house and stay there. If a
Speaker 1: privy trip was kneaded out back, it was done by
Speaker 1: several at a time, but it was done really quickly.
Speaker 1: A few times they would speak with quiet reverence about
Speaker 1: bookers and how they had, and still at times would
Speaker 1: enter the home and eat whatever the leftovers were in
Speaker 1: the bean pot or the slot bucket for the hogs.
Speaker 1: The next day. I once heard them say that you
Speaker 1: could hear a booger scraping the bottom of a bucket
Speaker 1: with a spoon or its nails. We were told to
Speaker 1: lay still and keep quiet if we heard anything entering
Speaker 1: the house late at night, and on a couple of
Speaker 1: nights I could hear the adults talking in whispers about
Speaker 1: seeing something outside near the window. One night, as my
Speaker 1: brother and I were laying on a couch in a
Speaker 1: sitting room just off the kitchen, I heard a no,
Speaker 1: he's at the kitchen door, and my brother said he
Speaker 1: saw something looking in the window. I could not see
Speaker 1: the window, but I heard whatever it was slam the
Speaker 1: door open, and we could hear the heavy breathing and
Speaker 1: the smell, Oh, what a terrible smell, like all the
Speaker 1: privy had just been brought in with this thing. We
Speaker 1: heard what was later discovered as a slot bucket being scraped, slurped,
Speaker 1: and even thrown firmly against the cast iron wood stove
Speaker 1: and then subtle on the floor. After a little snooping
Speaker 1: around the kitchen, we finally heard this thing leave and
Speaker 1: most of the smell went with it. Soon after, my
Speaker 1: grandmother came out of her in Grandpa's curtain covered bedroom doorway,
Speaker 1: and she gently closed the kitchen door. Nothing was ever said,
Speaker 1: but I could hear her praying under her breath. The
Speaker 1: next morning, I got up early and went out to
Speaker 1: the privy, passing a small shed where the big black
Speaker 1: angus bull spent his nights. I noticed the bull was
Speaker 1: lying down and he wasn't breathing. I ran back to
Speaker 1: tell Grandpa, and when he finally believed me, he came
Speaker 1: out and discovered the big bulls and neck had been
Speaker 1: broken by being twisted three hundred and sixty degrees, which
Speaker 1: was a devastating blow to my grandfather, as his bull
Speaker 1: supplied an extra income in breeding fees. Grandpa and my
Speaker 1: uncles had to quarter the bull just to get it
Speaker 1: loaded for burying. My father died a few days later
Speaker 1: at almost forty years of age, and we left soon after,
Speaker 1: heading back to Indiana and away from what was a
Speaker 1: strange world to us kids. Later in life, in the
Speaker 1: mid nineties, I went to Kentucky to go deer hunting
Speaker 1: with my cousin on some property adjacent to the Daniel
Speaker 1: Boone National Forest. We scattered out a good ridge that
Speaker 1: even had a couple of caves to access in bad weather.
Speaker 1: I chose to hunt in a creek bottom while my
Speaker 1: cousin hunted the ridge, and just as day was breaking,
Speaker 1: I heard a noise that sounded like something crashing down
Speaker 1: from the ridge in my direction. I mean trees being
Speaker 1: broken repeatedly, and like a dozer without an engine was
Speaker 1: putting in a new road. When whatever it was got
Speaker 1: to the bottom near a trail, it stopped and gave
Speaker 1: a loud growl that nearly made me wet my pants.
Speaker 1: At the same time, this thing stopped about forty or
Speaker 1: fifty yards away, and several deer were trying to step
Speaker 1: gingerly over my head while I remained in position on
Speaker 1: a tree route in a creek bank. After maybe fifteen
Speaker 1: seconds and it felt like twenty minutes, I could clearly
Speaker 1: smell the stench of this beast, and my mind went
Speaker 1: back to the mid sixties and what had happened at
Speaker 1: my grandparents' house, which was only about twenty minutes away
Speaker 1: by the curvy country road. Then the beast chose a
Speaker 1: path leaning away from me, in a different direction from
Speaker 1: the deer that it was possibly chasing, but between my
Speaker 1: cousin and myself. I waited about twenty minutes and left
Speaker 1: to find my cousin, and I found him examining a
Speaker 1: newly built path coming down the mountain. I ask if
Speaker 1: he heard all the commotion, and he simply replied, it's
Speaker 1: time for us to leave now. And we spoke nothing
Speaker 1: about that hunt to each other or anyone else since,
Speaker 1: perhaps not as much concerned with anyone not believing us
Speaker 1: as to worry about having the beash return to us
Speaker 1: in greater anger. Later, on a cold winter night in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, my friends and I gathered our ice
Speaker 1: skates and headed for the pond. It had recently frozen,
Speaker 1: and we wanted to be the first to skate it
Speaker 1: with our thermoses full of hot chocolate and our snacks.
Speaker 1: We walked a river track that would take us to
Speaker 1: the pond. It was a little over a mile away.
Speaker 1: The railroad was a line that ran back and forth
Speaker 1: to the coal mines. They delivered coal to the Pittsburgh
Speaker 1: Steel mills. The tracks were surrounded by forests, and after
Speaker 1: dark it was a bit creepy, but even so we
Speaker 1: enjoyed the walk. When we arrived at the pond, our
Speaker 1: group was excited to be the first to arrive. Others
Speaker 1: would arrive later, but for now, we have the whole
Speaker 1: pond to ourselves. My friend Larry carried an old tire
Speaker 1: with us, and he used that to start a fire,
Speaker 1: adding wood to it. After it was burning, we were
Speaker 1: having a wonderful time, and then my friend Joyce yelled
Speaker 1: that something was wrong. She had seen a yellow light
Speaker 1: glowing under the ice where she skated. Everyone stopped to
Speaker 1: hear better. We looked like mannekins frozen on the ice
Speaker 1: for a minute. I skated toward the fire. I had
Speaker 1: an uneasy feeling about this. I could see the light
Speaker 1: getting brighter until half of the pond turned from blue
Speaker 1: and white to a glowing orange. It wasn't long until
Speaker 1: everyone was near me by the fire, and we watched
Speaker 1: as the disk that I would estimate to be twenty
Speaker 1: feet around and a few feet thick, broke upward through
Speaker 1: the ice and hovered for a few seconds. The ice
Speaker 1: and water blew all over us. Thank goodness, everyone had
Speaker 1: gotten off the ice or someone could have been drowned.
Speaker 1: The disk covered above the ice for a minute and
Speaker 1: then accelerated up into the sky until we couldn't see
Speaker 1: it well after that, we talked about it every day
Speaker 1: on the bus going to school for a long time,
Speaker 1: and then this subject grew distant until we stopped talking
Speaker 1: about it. There is no way to know what we observed,
Speaker 1: who would ever be able to explain it. But I
Speaker 1: remember it well. It feels fresh in my memory, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad no one was hurt. In July of twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: my son was on a seven day, fifty mile backpacking
Speaker 1: trip with his Boy Scout troop between Yosemite National Park
Speaker 1: and Mammoth Lakes, California. He has since achieved Eagle Scout
Speaker 1: and graduated high school. He was honor rolling First Lieutenant ROTC.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I had to brag. I'm a real proud dad.
Speaker 1: Well you should be proud. That's those are great achievements.
Speaker 1: Eagle Scout is a phenomenal achievement. I have a good
Speaker 1: friend of mine that was an Eagle Scout and he
Speaker 1: went on to be a doctor, and he was and
Speaker 1: he lives in Nashville, and I went and visited him
Speaker 1: about two months ago and stayed the night there. And
Speaker 1: he's a single guy. He's got this huge house. He's
Speaker 1: fifty nine, fifty nine or sixty years old, and he's
Speaker 1: already retired. He's done really well. So Eagle Scouts tend
Speaker 1: to be achievers. Okay, let's get moving here. His scout
Speaker 1: troop completed the fifty mile every year. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: eight boys and two adult leaders started the trip, and
Speaker 1: I was no longer able to go along because of
Speaker 1: issues with my knees. They quickly realized that one of
Speaker 1: the boys wasn't quite prepared for the journey, so they
Speaker 1: decided to alter the route to go through easier terrain.
Speaker 1: Their first day out, they ran into a group of
Speaker 1: free range goats and cattle. My son said that of
Speaker 1: the livestock had bells around their necks and it was
Speaker 1: annoying as hell listening to them bang and clank around.
Speaker 1: They decided to make camp under some small trees there.
Speaker 1: No open fires were allowed in California outside of designated campgrounds,
Speaker 1: so they went to bed shortly after dark, which would
Speaker 1: have been around nine pm. They hung their packs in
Speaker 1: the trees to keep the wildlife out. My son settled
Speaker 1: into as one man coffin tent. At two thirty am,
Speaker 1: he woke to the sounds of cat clanging in the livestock,
Speaker 1: mewing and bleeding as they were upset and moving quickly
Speaker 1: away from wherever they were. The sound was interrupted by
Speaker 1: what my son described as the strangest cry or scream
Speaker 1: he had ever heard. Even more disturbing, it was answered
Speaker 1: by by another strange howl from the opposite direction. He
Speaker 1: was now fully awakened, sitting up in his tiny tent
Speaker 1: with only a four inch survival knife, and he listened
Speaker 1: to the yells or perhaps communications, and they got closer
Speaker 1: and grew louder. Then there was a terrified ball from
Speaker 1: a cow, along with a loud clanging of its bell,
Speaker 1: as if it were running away from a predator. Then
Speaker 1: it cut off suddenly, like someone had turned off a switch. Well,
Speaker 1: that was followed by complete silence. My son spent the
Speaker 1: rest of the night holding that small knife and jumping
Speaker 1: at every sound, And the next morning he asked his
Speaker 1: friend and if he had heard anything, but he hadn't.
Speaker 1: We've listened to sasquatch cries and sounds on the web,
Speaker 1: and he says some are similar, but not exactly what
Speaker 1: he heard. I know we live in California, the land
Speaker 1: of fruits and nuts, but we have spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time outdoors, backpacking and camping. We know what most
Speaker 1: of the wildlife in the southwestern deserts in Sierra sound like.
Speaker 1: My son won't come right out and say that it
Speaker 1: was bigfoot, but he will say that it sounded like
Speaker 1: nothing he had ever heard before or since. I just
Speaker 1: thank God that he still loves the outdoors and refuses
Speaker 1: to get spooked by this experience. He has the right attitude.
Speaker 1: He believes these creatures do exist, and if they do,
Speaker 1: they have been out there for a long time and
Speaker 1: probably don't want anything more to do with us than
Speaker 1: we do with them. I was a college student in
Speaker 1: rural Tennessee in the mid nineteen eighties. The campus is
Speaker 1: on a plateau in the Blue Ridge Mountains and has
Speaker 1: been there since the Civil War. There are ten thousand
Speaker 1: acres of woods, with the buildings all clustered together, and
Speaker 1: we were thirty minutes from the nearest wal mart and
Speaker 1: hours from a big city. There are lakes and caves
Speaker 1: and waterfalls and I had grown up in a congested area,
Speaker 1: so this place was a dream come true. I attended
Speaker 1: one session of summer school in nineteen eighty five. Class
Speaker 1: was over at noon most days, and it was hot
Speaker 1: at lunch. On one of those days, my friend Jane
Speaker 1: and I decided to go swimming out at a lake
Speaker 1: where we didn't have to wear bathing suits. We did
Speaker 1: it partly to cool down because it was so hot,
Speaker 1: but mostly to be wild, free and brave in our
Speaker 1: own little way. No one ever went to this lake.
Speaker 1: Jane and I discovered why as we stepped in and
Speaker 1: sunk deep into the monkey bottle. We were standing there
Speaker 1: up to our knees in the murky water, swatting it flies,
Speaker 1: trying to pull our feet out of a suctioning mud,
Speaker 1: and laughing at the gigantic failure our swimming venture had become.
Speaker 1: When a silver craft appeared over the treeline across the lake.
Speaker 1: It looked like the classic nineteen fifties flying saucer. It
Speaker 1: moved from right to left, neither fast nor slow, and
Speaker 1: then stopped right in the middle of my field of view.
Speaker 1: It hovered in place for what was probably only a minute,
Speaker 1: but it felt much longer. I remember it seemed to vibrate.
Speaker 1: It's hard to describe. It was just almost imperceptible vibrations,
Speaker 1: but with absolutely no other noise. Well, Jane and I
Speaker 1: were dumbstruck. We were naked and afraid, but without the
Speaker 1: camera crew to film it. The bottom of the lake
Speaker 1: was the closest thing to quicksand I hoped to ever
Speaker 1: stand in. We snapped out of our shock and started
Speaker 1: clumsily trying to get back to the bank. I was
Speaker 1: trying to keep my eye on the saucer without falling down,
Speaker 1: while at the same time pulling each foot from the
Speaker 1: deep muck and then sinking it back in another step
Speaker 1: closer to the bank. As we tried to run away,
Speaker 1: the saucer zipped off in the direction it was already heading,
Speaker 1: and then it accelerated to an incredibly high speed and
Speaker 1: disappeared from sight. We were in such a hurry to escape.
Speaker 1: We jumped into Jane's car, still covered in mut from
Speaker 1: our knees down. She was and still is, such a
Speaker 1: tidy person. We kept saying how weird it was and
Speaker 1: that it was a UFO, and we agreed not to
Speaker 1: tell anyone because they wouldn't believe us, and worse, they
Speaker 1: would gossip about us being crazy or weird. I recently
Speaker 1: learned that Bigfoot has been spotted in that area. I've
Speaker 1: talked to Jane about that day. They both get white
Speaker 1: eyed thinking about it. The hovering maneuver, the silence, and
Speaker 1: the high speed at which it left convinced us that
Speaker 1: it was no normal technology. We both feel like it
Speaker 1: was going about its business when it spotted us and
Speaker 1: observed us in naked earthlings for a minute, and then
Speaker 1: made up for lost time getting out of there. It's
Speaker 1: funny because we picked that lake hoping no one on
Speaker 1: earth would spot us, and in a way, I guess
Speaker 1: we succeeded. Twice more in my life I have seen UFOs.
Speaker 1: Both were in northern California, and both times I was
Speaker 1: sober and with a friend. The sightings were three years apart. Sadly,
Speaker 1: it's been decades since I've seen one. One UFO chased
Speaker 1: my friend and me as we sped off in our
Speaker 1: rental car. There was no Bigfoot connection there, but if
Speaker 1: you're interested in the story, let me know. Of course, ma'am,
Speaker 1: of course we're interested. Please send him. Thanks for there
Speaker 1: were a great resource for all of us who are
Speaker 1: curious about and open to the strange possibilities of our galaxy.
Speaker 1: During the summer of nineteen seventy five, about a month
Speaker 1: before my seventeenth birthday, I was hanging out in front
Speaker 1: of my house with my friends Anne, Bob, and Wayne.
Speaker 1: They were all two or three years younger than me,
Speaker 1: so they were like my little brothers and sister. We're
Speaker 1: all still close to this day. Bob and Wayne had
Speaker 1: to be home by eight pm, so Anne and I
Speaker 1: walked them to their house. That was when kids played
Speaker 1: outside after dark without fear of strangers, and houses were
Speaker 1: left unlocked. As we walked back to my house, we
Speaker 1: were looking up, as we often did, trying to find
Speaker 1: the big and little Dippers and any other constellations we
Speaker 1: could identify. I looked over into the southeast and noticed
Speaker 1: something dark hovering over the park. Hey, look at that,
Speaker 1: I said to Anne, what is that thing? The object
Speaker 1: was a big dark mast that wasn't making any sound
Speaker 1: at all. It had a light under it. It was
Speaker 1: moving very slowly from side to side in a sweeping motion,
Speaker 1: and then it would go straight again before repeating the
Speaker 1: pattern over and over. We couldn't see any sky as
Speaker 1: it moved, but what freaked us out was the absence
Speaker 1: of sound. You can hear prop planes and helicopters coming
Speaker 1: even from a distance, and this object was completely silent.
Speaker 1: We watched as it moved over the trees of the
Speaker 1: road to the east of my road, until it had
Speaker 1: traveled from the south to the north, always making that
Speaker 1: same side to side motion, followed by going straight again.
Speaker 1: I was having trouble making out the defining shape, but
Speaker 1: the size was as big as three or four baseball diamonds.
Speaker 1: The light underneath was not a spotlight, it just illuminated
Speaker 1: the underside well. We were flabbergasted the life of us.
Speaker 1: We couldn't figure out what it could be. We got
Speaker 1: to the end of my street and kept following it north,
Speaker 1: and at one point, when it was directly east of us,
Speaker 1: I was able to make out that it was round.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a blump bow. No blimp couldn't maneuver like that.
Speaker 1: We kept watching and following until we lost it in
Speaker 1: the trees to our north. We were frustrated and ran
Speaker 1: back to my house, and I immediately called the Jacksonville
Speaker 1: International Airport tower, nervously trying to hind the fear in
Speaker 1: my voice. I said, do you have any airplanes on
Speaker 1: your radar coming from Daytona or Orlando or maybe Saint Augustine. No,
Speaker 1: he answered, I have nothing on my radar. Why. I
Speaker 1: quickly explained everything we had seen and where, being careful
Speaker 1: to stress just how oddly silent it had been. And
Speaker 1: in turn, he asked me where I lived and if
Speaker 1: I had family or friends in the Arlington area. Him
Speaker 1: I had an elderly aunt and uncle there, but that
Speaker 1: was it. He then told me that he had already
Speaker 1: received twenty calls from people who describe the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: But I have nothing on my radar, and I can
Speaker 1: explain it, he said. Then he asked if I could
Speaker 1: give him my phone number in case he needed to
Speaker 1: contact me. I'm not going to have any men in
Speaker 1: spacesuits show up at my door, am I? I asked? Okay.
Speaker 1: I was a sixteen year old, dorky girl, I know,
Speaker 1: but I was genuinely afraid of what would happen. He laughed,
Speaker 1: and he said, no, sweetie, nobody in spacesuits is coming
Speaker 1: to your house. That was forty years ago, and I've
Speaker 1: never seen anything like that since. And and I still
Speaker 1: talk about it from time to time. It's just something
Speaker 1: we cannot explain. To add to this as a bonus,
Speaker 1: if you will. Back in nineteen seventy two, my grandparents
Speaker 1: were coming home from Tennessee driving down Ice seventy five
Speaker 1: to I. Their car was one of only a few
Speaker 1: on the road. As the dusk fell across the sky.
Speaker 1: My grandfather was driving when he saw what looked like
Speaker 1: a plane flying very low in the distance. They were
Speaker 1: flying so low he was sure they were going to
Speaker 1: crash land on the interstate, and that maybe they thought
Speaker 1: I ten was the runway. My grandparents pulled over and
Speaker 1: waited for the inevitable crash. Bebop as I called him,
Speaker 1: got out of the car, and the first thing that
Speaker 1: struck him was the absence of sound. As it got closer,
Speaker 1: he could tell it was triangular, but it never did
Speaker 1: make any noise. It passed over them at the tree
Speaker 1: top high and then took off straight up into the sky,
Speaker 1: and just like that, it was gone, no wind, no nothing,
Speaker 1: a shot straight up into the sky like a slingshot.
Speaker 1: He said. After that, whenever they went to Tennessee, they
Speaker 1: took a different route because my poor grandmother was afraid
Speaker 1: they would see it again. They took ten. Thanks for
Speaker 1: reading my story, Cam. It has stayed with me for
Speaker 1: a long time, and it still freaks me out a bit.
Speaker 1: I wish I knew who was piloting that aircraft. I
Speaker 1: really wish I knew why we couldn't hear it, and
Speaker 1: she signs off Anita, Nita, thank you for that story.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating. I really do appreciate it. I would love
Speaker 1: to see one of those myself.