Speaker 1: I was in the Marine Corps for eight years, and
I spent my professional career in law enforcement. I had
my first encounter with sasquatch when I was twelve. I
didn't know anything about sasquatch. Then. I came from a
family of outdoorsmen and hunters and loggers, but no one
ever talked about bigfoot. It was February of nineteen eighty one,
and I had been running traplines and hunting the Canyon
Creek area for muskrats, red foxes, bobcats, and the like.
In the winters, I would make upward of one thousand dollars.
That was great money for a kid my age, but
it did take a lot of work. When my friends
were playing U sports and watching cartoons and going to movies,
I was building up for the grueling cold and heading
out to run my line. It gets brutally cold in Montana,
twenty to thirty degrees below zero without the wind chill.
But every morning, while the rest of the kids I
knew were still fast asleep, I would start the coffee
on the stove and pack my bag full of food,
and I would insulate my entire body layer over layer
until I looked like the Staypuff marshmallow Man, and that
was before I even put the parka on. When I
was all geared up, I tied my dad's Coleman lantern
around my wrist with a length of rope in case
it fell in the creek, and then I'd grab my gun.
The creek was only a few miles away. It was
so cold, and the air sparkle with the frost, and
the moon light bounced off the snow, providing relatively good
lighting for old dark thirty in the morning. I used
my knotted rope that I tied to the bridge, and
I started the thirty foot climb down to the bottom
of the draw through the knee deep snow. Down the
steep slope, let go of the rope, fired up the lantern,
and trudged my first trap two hundred feet downstream from
the bridge. The creek was frozen a good twelve inches
stick except for where I set my muskrat traps. I
ran my land traps in a zigzag pattern with no
set spacing each trap about five hundred feet from the next.
I finally made my way to my first trap, only
to find it had been ripped out of the ground
and torn to pieces. It was pure steel, and all
of it bent and pulled apart like tinfoil. It had
been set off to the side of the game trail
midway up the draw. It wasn't a large trap, but
it was strong enough to hold a large bobcat or
a coyote. For something to tear it apart was impressive
and disturbing unless they used a sledge hammer. I was
stumped about the whole thing, and I was angry. Those
traps were expensive, especially for a kid. I threw the
trap in my bag and hoisted it over my shoulder,
and I headed to the second trap, and I noticed
immediately how the snow had been trampled around it and
packed so hard it was impossible to tell what the
tracks were. It wasn't normal. Not only that my trap
was gone. All that was left was a hole in
the frozen dirt scattered around where my two foot long
rebar steak had been ripped from deep out of the ground.
I was more than pissed someone had been messing with
my traps. I knew it wasn't an animal, It couldn't
have been an animal, and now I was on a mission.
I headed to my next trap, this time following the
trail that had been plowed through the snow. Like the
last two, it had been ripped out of the ground.
I kept going my pace, picking up and dreading what
I'd find at the fourth trap, one that i'd sit
in the ice. That's when my life changed forever. At
the sight, I saw bigfoot prints with long strides freezing
over in the ice and heading toward and leading away
from my trap hole. The trap was trashed, and the
hole it had been set in and was broken around
the edges. Something didn't sit right with me. As I
looked around, the ice was four inches thick. It would
have taken brute force or something enormous to bust through it.
I knew a black bear couldn't do that. They weren't
heavy enough to break through the ice that thick. I
had seen cattle walk across thinner ice than this, and
they weighed a lot more. We didn't have grizzly bear
or moose in the area, and I started wrecking my
brain trying to understand it. It was still an hour
or so from dawn. Something had torn up my traps.
My skin was crawling, and I knew something was very wrong.
I turned off the lantern so my eyes could adjust
to the darkness. I wrapped my scarf around me mouth
so that the steaming air wouldn't block my vision. I
started to turn in a slow circle, trying to catch
any movement, listening for sounds that didn't belong. After a
few minutes, I heard it, the distinct sound of ice
breaking and something dunking into the water. It was coming
down the creek toward my next trap. I heard it again,
ice cracking and water splashing, and over and over. Something
was walking over the ice, breaking through with each step,
and it was getting louder. It was getting closer. That's
when the smell hit me. Smell like rotten flesh and
moldy onion and curdled milk and trap bait. The foulest
thing I had ever smelled, and it was so intense
I vomited, loud and unbridled. When I recovered, the crashing stopped,
I looked down the creek and I saw a shadow,
lit by the moonlight, moving from around a bit and
in the creek and disappearing into the sand cherry bushes.
It was taller than anything around it. It had the
outline of a human, but it couldn't be It was
the biggest damn thing I'd ever seen, standing at least
two feet over those six foot tall bushes. I knew
it wasn't a bear, and unless Andre the Giant had
been hanging around my town and stealing my traps, I
knew that I was in trouble. I heard it huffing
heavy and deep from its diaphragm as it glided around
the bushes and kept coming toward me. I was stunned
by its movements, feline and graceful despite its impossible size.
I dropped the lantern and dropped my gun into my hands.
I couldn't make out what it was other than it
had two legs and two arms and shaggy hair covering
all over it. There was no way I would get
up the steep side of the draw through all of
that snow. I was a mile and a half from
the bridge and my rope. I needed to do something,
so I yelled at it, Hey stop right there, hey,
hey stop. To my surprise, it stopped. It didn't growl
or below, it just stopped. It probably didn't know what
to make of me. Here was a kid wrapped in
eighteen layers of clothes standing in the middle of the
creek making a fuss. I was a fearless kid raised
by hardened men. It made perfect sense to me to
stand my ground and make myself big and try to
scare the thread away, just like I'd been taught. So
that's what I did. Hey, go on and get get now.
But it just kept coming. But it wasn't quick, not cautiously.
It was just interested. When it maneuvered within charging range,
I pointed my gun in the air above its head,
and I pulled the trigger. I have done brighter things
in my life, and pulling the trigger wasn't one of them. First,
the shots sort of had the desired effect. The monster
man let out a screen that really angry people make
when they're startled. I could handle that until the scream
mixed with a murderous roar that vibrated through my bones.
Some people say that when they had an encounter, they
were frozen in time. Well that's not what happened to me.
Everything I had been taught by the proud men in
my family went right out the window. Baby with the bathwater.
I knew at the moment that I had screwed up
very bad. I dropped the rifle and took off as
fast as my tightly packed legs could run. I flew
over that icy creek. Certain the devil and all this
hell hounds were on my tail. My lungs were on
fire and my legs were numb. But I could not stop,
because if I did, I would have been the monster's breakfast.
The sun was breaking the horizon. I could see glints
of pink light glowing on the silver painted iron bridge
ahead of me. Blood pounded in my ears, and my
head felt like it was splitting, and the coppery taste
of blood came with each breath, my lungs aching like
I'd torn something. Never ran so fast in my life.
I was almost there. I was almost safe. I hit
that rope and I flew up the draw and I
scrambled over the edge and I collapsed on the road.
There was nothing left in me. If the monster man
thing was behind me, I was done. Every breath was agonizing.
I was coughing and sobbing and throwing up, and I
lay there and waited to be murdered. I was sure
I wouldn't see my parents again. I was sure I'd
be the next kid on the side of a milk carton.
But I don't know why of the sasquatch didn't tear
me into pieces. It easily could have. Maybe it followed
me for a bit long enough to laugh at the
puny little human marshmallow chugging up the creek, slipping over
the ice and arms and legs felling screaming bloody murder,
with the stupid lantern bouncing all over the place behind me.
If I were that sasquatch, I would have been in
tears laughing. I like to think that that's what happened,
but in reality, it probably wasn't remotely interested in me
after it realized the minuscule threat I posed. I never
went back down that draw again. I never picked up
my traps. I didn't go back from my rifle or
my bag. I got in trouble for losing my rifle,
but I didn't care. Dad told me that we were
going back to get it, but I refused. He couldn't
drag me down there if he wanted to. I would
have fought him tooth and nail. And I never ran
a trap line again either. Instead of being the kid
who woke up hours before daylight, bumbling up for the
grilling cold and heading out to run my lines. I
became the one who played you sports and watch cartoons
in the morning, and I went to the movies, and
I became a normal teenage boy, A normal teenage boy
with a crippling fear of the dark. It's a shame, really,
that a wholesome, hard working kid had his life turned
inside out like that. The Montana I grew up in
has changed so much that I no longer recognize it.
The fields I used to hunter now housing subdivisions. The
creek I used to run my trap lines on now
runs through ten miles of drain culverts. Evidence of my
childhood was slowly paved over for the sake of progress,
not unlike the fear I carried from that life changing morning,
a terrible memory paving over my innocence. Over forty years
have passed since my encounter, Yet still I find myself
half tensing when I drive past a familiar bend in
the road from my youth, afraid of what I saw,
afraid of what may be out there. Sometimes I get
up in the middle of the night to close the
curtains over and the windows that look out into the
woods behind our house. I know there are monsters out there.
Lurking in the shadows. They're watching us, and they're waiting. Hey.
Before we get into this next story, I wanted to
tell you about a book i'm reading. I think it
came out a year or two ago. It's called hal Mary.
It's written by Andy Weir. It's a science fiction story.
I think they made a movie about it that should
be coming out this March or April or May, or
maybe this summer. I'm not sure. You know, I don't
often recommend books, but I've read the book, and my
son has listened to the audio books several times. He
says he never listens to audio books more than once,
but he said it is so good that he's listened
to it like three times. Driving to work and back
is a forty five minute drive to working back, So
I want to recommend that to y'all. My son said,
the audiobook is great. I haven't got the audiobook, but
I read the print book. It is exceptional. It moves
really fast. If you're not a committed reader, and you know,
like reading one thing after another kind of sort of
like I do. I don't read that much. My wife does,
but I don't. I probably read one book a month
that is a book to get. You cannot put it down,
even someone who doesn't read much. You will really enjoy
this book. So get it on Kendall or order the paperback,
or go to your local bookstore and pick it up.
It's called Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I think you'll
really love it. Okay, let's go to another Bigfoot story.
Years ago, in nineteen sixty four, my family went to
visit a friend of my father's. He had two kids
my age, and the three of us quickly set out
into the woods to check out a treehouse that they'd built.
We ran all over those woods, checking out the treehouse
and playing chase, and before I knew it, we became lost.
We couldn't find our tracks in and couldn't distinguish one
identical tree from the next, and brush mirrored itself everywhere.
We had no idea where to go. We started walking slowly,
packed tightly together, eyes alert, trying to stay calm as
we worked our way out. Somewhere in the trees, we
heard a grunt and then a long, slow exhale. We
didn't make a sound, we couldn't move. Something was out
there checking us out, but we couldn't see it. The
sound of it felt completely out of place. It was
deep and big and deliberate. We looked at each other,
all of us hoping the other had an idea. What
the hell this was? It was just out of you.
And then that rancid smell was all over us. We
couldn't get away from it. We were even more confused
than before. We were on the verge of gagging. And
then the trees erupted into noise. Branches were swinging and
leaves were rustling like a storm was passing through. Our
backs were pressed together. One of the other kids had
the courage to call out hello. The trees went still.
There was no answer. We stared at each other again,
baffled into silence and disoriented, and that stench was unrelenting.
And then the noise erupted again. Trees were rustling as
if something were shaking their bases. Limbs were nearly breaking off.
We backed away slowly until the noise shifted, and then
we backed the other direction, and it got closer, and
we backed up some more. That creature hurted us right
back to the trail where we entered the woods, and
not once were we able to lay eyes on this thing.
We made it back to the house in one piece,
more confused than we were, afraid something out there was
helping us, and miraculously my parents believed. To me, I
think the confusion on our faces must have said it all. Oh,
that's a good story. That's a good Bigfoot story. Where
you go in the woods, kids go in the woods,
they get lost. Apparently the Bigfoot doesn't want you in there,
and he kind of herds you back, and he actually
saved them from getting lost. Those kids could have been
out there wandering around for days with search parties and
all the things that go along with that. That was
a great story. I know that this person who wrote
this must have been terrified, but I really appreciate them
sharing it with us because it's kind of a lighter
side of Bigfoot. Sometimes they help you, sometimes they just
run you off. Great story. Thank you for to the writer.
I grew up in Australia's island state of Tasmania, east
of the capital city Hobart. I'm descended from Scottish free
settlers and Irish and English convicts who were transported to
what was then called Van Diamond's Island for petty crimes
in the eighteen thirties. Tasmania still has remnants of many
convict built historical buildings and other structures. An old friend
of mine from school had a holiday house on the
Tasman Peninsula, about ten miles as the crow flies from
the infamous penal station of Port Arthur. The station was
operational from the eighteen thirties to the eighteen eighties. Convicts
relegated to places like Port Arthur and the Tasman Peninsula
were repeat offenders or had committed worse crimes. In the
peninsula is hard to escape from due to the surrounding
shark and fested waters. My friend's holiday homes in the
former convict hospital at Saltwater River, which wound down around
eighteen eighty and then was sold off. In its heyday,
it would have primarily served the convicts who worked the
nearby infamous coal mines, but also harvested big timber from
the native forests or quarried sandstone by hand. Conditions for
the convicts at places like the Tasman Peninsula were harsh
and terrible accidents were not uncommon, so the convict hospital
at Saltwater River probably saw a lot of action back
in the day. In the early nineteen nineties, a year
or two after we had all finished school, my friend
held a party at her holiday house. A heap of
us friends attended, each of us either at the university
or starting out in the workforce as young adults. We
drove down for the weekend and camped out on the
floors and beds of the old convict hospital. We had
set a fire in the backyard in the ruins of
what had once been a large wooded firebrick oven. The
bricks made by the convicts and coveted by collectors even today,
since they bare the single thumbprint from the convict who
pressed the wet clay into the brick mold. At one
point on that Saturday evening, I found myself alone out
in the backyard. I was enjoying the warmth of the
fire with a cigarette, leaning on one of the high
tables set in a fan shape in front of it.
It was a cool night. The fire was big. I
was just close enough to feel the warmth. There was
probably three or four beers in and I was feeling
fine as I stared at the bush TV, which is
what we called a campfire in Australia. I watched the
flames climb the inside of the old chimney walls and
the occasional shoot into the dark night. I noticed what
looked like a person sitting at a table to my right.
I turned my head, thinking it was one of my friends,
but then the shape disappeared. As soon as I look
back at the fire, the person came back. By keeping
my head straight ahead, I realized I could use my
peripheral vision and the figure would stay in place. After
a while, I could make out the person's features, and
soon it was clear she was an older lady, maybe
in her late fifties or early sixties. She had long, flowing, curly,
sandy colored hair, and she was wearing a long, formal
summer dress. She was leaning forward on her elbows and
had her hands cupped under her chin supporting her head
as she smiled at the fire. She looked really happy
and content. Somehow I managed not to freak out, so
I didn't feel threatened in any way. I was more
fascinated than anything. But after several minutes of observation, I
realized we weren't alone. At my ten o'clock just to
the left of the fire was another visitor. This time
it was a taller man standing in the shadow of
the chimney. I instinctively turned my head and he disappeared.
I turned to the woman's table and she was gone too,
And when I turned back to the fire, they both
materialized in the same positions as before. The man looked angry,
and he wasn't looking at the fire either. He appeared
to be glaring at the woman. She was still happily
watching the fire, oblivious to him and his terrible stare.
The man had dark set eyes and dark hair with
big Neil Young style lamb chops. He wore a flannel
at work shirt. After several more minutes, I decided to
make my move. This guy was looking pretty cranky and
his presence was starting to unsettle me. I got myself
up and went back inside the shack, where everyone was
having a good time. I eventually found my friend in
the hallway and I blurted out that I had just
seen two ghosts. She didn't instantly dismiss me as I'd
half expected, and asked me what had happened. I explained
the two people I had seen in as much detail
as I could remember. The more I described each of them,
the more interested and then concerned she grew, and when
I was finished, I asked if she'd ever seen a
ghost there. She paused and she said no, and then
she told me who she thought they were. Nearly a
decade earlier, a woman who lived in a nearby cottage
decided to return to her home in England to visit family. Unfortunately,
she passed away while she was there. My friend's description
of her was exactly the woman I'd seen watching the
fire and around I'm the same time of her passing,
another neighbor had sadly committed suicide. He had lived in
a small house one hundred yards away, which my family
friends had purchased from his estate. The way she described
him was exactly the man I saw. We decided not
to tell anyone about this. Years later, my friend and
I would occasionally talk about that night. Her family sold
the hospital house twenty years ago, but they kept the
small house next door, and she and her new family
still holiday there. That's it for now, cam Convict Heritage
and Convict Hospital, a bit of a convict history and
some contemporary ghost I've got another story to write and
send you one day about a UFO I experienced in
the Northern Territory desert in nineteen ninety six, and there
were zero bears consumed when I saw it. Keep up
the good work and all the best of you and
your listeners, parom mate aka see you later in Australia,
and he signs off. Tim. What a nice guy, What
a nice letter. What a great story about ghosts in Tasmania. Oh,
that was very intriguing. I'm not sure what to make
of these ghosts and these apparitions people see. I have
my opinions on what they are, but I could be wrong.
I could be terribly wrong, but I don't think I am,
but I don't know for sure. You know, until you
just know for sure, you have to say this is
what I think they are. But I don't really know.
So you got to say that. That would be the
same as Bigfoot. But many people don't do that. They're
pretty sure about everything about Bigfoot, the ghosts, or something else,
UFOs or something else. That's kind of why I like
him anyway, Tim, thanks for the email. It's a very
very well written story and I certainly do appreciate it.
Thank you. In I ninety nine, job had moved me
to Denver, Colorado, where my brother lived. I hadn't seen
him in seven years, so when I surprised him one
day at his door, we were both over the moon.
My brother suggested that we took a cruise up and
down berth Of paths so we could talk and catch up.
We were driving and laughing and having a good time
and enjoying the incredible mountains. As we came around to Ben,
I slowed down so I wouldn't slide over the edge.
I slowed down enough to notice something in my rear
view mirror. It was a big, black, furry thing. I
pointed it out to my brother, who said it was
just a bear. I pulled over twenty yards from the animal,
and I grabbed a bag of apples that we bought
before the drive. I tossed one at it, and I
accidentally hit it on the side of the head. It
stopped what it was doing and it looked at the apple,
and then my fight or flight kicked in. I watched
it reach out and grab that apple with the biggest
hand I'd ever seen. Heard my brother behind me whisper,
that's not a bear, it's a bigfoot. My brother and
I are Navajo. We grew up hearing stories about bigfoot
and we were told what to do and what not
to do if we were confronted by one. Well, I
stood my ground and I watched him stand up, and
he studied me, and I swear my soul tried to
leave my body. He was nine feet tall, his head
was massive, but he had no neck. His thick eyes
were alert, knowing and watching every move that I made.
And his chest looked like two fifty gallon drums stuck together,
and his skin was like hard leather. I turned to
my brother behind me. He started to shake his head,
eyes pleading, knowing full well what I was about to do.
I was gonna hand this thing the bag of apples.
He's going to kill you, My brother his you're crazy.
I told him to go sit in the car and
wait for me if something did happen. I wanted him
to be able to tell our family. Now. I know
the decision was reckless, but I couldn't pass up the
chance of a life altering interaction with a creature of
this type of lore. I wanted to show up my respect,
even if it meant risking my life. I finally got
the nerve to walk up to it, calmly and slowly,
as confidently as I could. When I was only several
feet away, I could smell him. It was so intense
that my eyes watered and my skin began to itch.
The smell must have been a defense mechanism, because he
lifted his arms and it intensified who To show him,
I meant no harm. I dropped on one knee and
I set the bag of apples in front of me,
and then I put my head down to show him
the back of my neck. I was staring at his big,
hairy toes, and I felt his hand to grab my neck.
I can still feel the oil from his palm. At
that point, I was sure my brother would watch my
head get popped off like a grape. And then suddenly
he let me go, and he took the apples and
he left. I stayed there, kneeling for longer than I
can remember. I was shocked and scared, but mostly honored
the sound of my brother backing up and stopping the
car beside me broke my days. I got in a
changed man and we drove off. Thank you for reading this,
and many blessings from my family to yours, and he
signs off night Wolf. I love getting these stories from
Native people. They seem to have a calmness. And I'm
reluctant to say connection, but for lack of a better term,
they seem to have some kind of connection with these
animals or with these creatures, and it really huminates my mind,
if that makes sense. It makes me think at a
higher level, speaking of having a connection with animals like
the Navajos, I wish I had a connection with animals.
You know, we have chickens around here. We've had probably
two hundred chickens. They we get them as chicks, we
raise them up, they die off, predators get them. We
keep about twenty or thirty on hand all the time.
We love the eggs, but mainly I just like having
them around the yard. I like watching them, and they're
just they're easy to keep. And anyway, all that time,
I've only had one hen, and that was our first
batch of hens, and it was a big orpington, one
of these big blonde or I think they call them
buff orpingtons. When I would sit out my wife would
sit out in the yard in a long chair, would
jump up on our legs and just sit there, let
us pet them and all that. Since then, two hundred
chickens later, not a single chick, and we'll let me
touch them. Now. They won't run off when I walk
up because they know I'm a source for food. Usually
they follow me around. I love dogs. I have away
with dogs. I know how to pet dogs and approach dogs.
I think I do. I've never been torn up by
a dog, even mean dogs. I just don't have. You know,
you see all these videos on YouTube and TikTok and
Instagram of these people who find a little fallen deer
and they raise it up and it lives in the
house with them. There's one I think it's a TikTok
I've been following, where this deer lives in the house
with the dogs and the people. It sleeps on the
dog beds with the dogs. It'll snuggle up with the dogs.
I've always wanted to have an interaction with a creature
like that, but I just never have. I never have.
I have found fahons where dose will leave them in
the grass in the summertime, and matter of fact, my
grandson ran over one. I don't think it was hurt.
We picked it up, it off to the woods. But
the I think the dose will get them to get
real low in the grass and they'll go to the
woods and just leave them there, and then they'll come
back and get them whenever the danger's gone. But I'm
hoping that that mama found that deer. But I just
can never develop that kind of relationship with an animal
other than a dog. We've had cats before that they're
kind of cool, but cats are independent. But anyway, so
we throw out corn right in front of our house.
The deer will come in the yard every two or
three days, late in the evening right now, you know,
maybe an hour or two before dark, and we'll my
wife and I all sit in the living room. We've
got a big window that looks out front, and we'll
just watch those deer and they're really close. They're, you know,
twenty or thirty forty feet away in our front yard
and they're just munching on corn. Well, the other day
I felt like I had a connection with an animal.
Now I didn't touch it, it didn't come up to
me or anything like that. But normally when those deer
out there, like I'll be in my office sometimes my
office is detached from my house. I'll look out and
I'll see those deer and I'll stay in here just
so I don't disturb them because I know my wife
is watching them. More than likely, I'll wait till it
gets a little darker and then I'll walk in. But
generally every time I walk out, they run off. But
this time there were four deer out there, two small
ones and two full adult does. And one of the
yearlings was munching on my wife's azalea, and one of
the does, the bigger deer, came over beside her and was,
I don't know, just kind of standing there beside her,
like maybe keeping watch over. Probably not. I don't know
the psychology of deer. But the other two when I
walked outside, they ran off in the woods like they
normally do, but this young deer would he just sat
there and she was about forty feet from me, and
I walked a little closer to it, to the edge
of the driveway and stood behind my truck, and both
of those deer just stood there and looked at me,
and I thought maybe I had a connection with a
wild animal. And those deers just stood there, and I
wasn't going to go any closer because I didn't want
to run them off, and I eventually just turned around,
walked in the back door, and went in the house.
And when I got the house, they were gone, so
they must have run off not long after I turned
around and headed out. But that's my animal connection story.
One of those young deer. If the deer are in
the front yard during the day, and again this is
maybe twice a week that we see them out there,
the dogs will see them and the dogs will go crazy.
I let the dogs out and they run them off,
just to let the dogs do what they do. And
I think it's the one that was munching on that asaille. Yeah,
Arnessalia is toxic to animals. I don't know. I could
be wrong about that. I saw that and I thought, man,
they must be hungry if they're munching on azalias. But
I could be totally wrong anyway. That one deer, and
I think it's this one deer, this one small one.
She will and I'm saying it's a she. I don't
know for sure, but all three or four of them
will run off in the woods, but that one will
stop and watch my dogs. Now, my dogs won't run
right up to the deer. They're small dogs. They're just
barking and carrying on, and it's almost like that little
deer wants to maybe and I'm imagining this in my head,
but it's almost like she wants to play with the dogs.
I get that sense. Anyway, it's like that little deer.
I have some kind of mild connection with it, and
it's probably just in my head, but I love it.
I love watching that little deer. That's my favorite deer
in our area. And I hope she comes around some
more way. That's my deer connection story. I'm not a Navajo.
I'm not a Native person. I'm a pure Scots Irish
European of European descent. I have no native blood running
in me at all. Never had my DNA test that
I might, so I'm not comparing myself to a Navajo.
But maybe I don't know. Maybe I had a connection
with a deer. Anyway, boring story. Just thought i'd tell
you all that. Thanks again to the writer. I appreciate
the Navajo man sending me that story. It was wonderful. Thanks. Okay,
after this, I'm gonna put an archive story behind this.
This story was written by my friend Randy. He lives
in eastern Kentucky. I've seen him at the Bigfoot conferences before.
He's one of these strong men, you know, the guys
that rip phone books in half, and they've been big
pieces of rebar and stuff. He's a very devout Christian
and a hard worker. This guy's a hard worker. I
think he still works his farm like a madman. But
I always loved these stories from him, and I thought
i'd shared again. It was posted probably three or four
years ago, and I hope you guys enjoy it. My
name is Randy Ritchie. I'm fifty eight years old. I'm
an ordained minister and had been ministering for twenty four years.
I'm a logger, farmer, and I'm a strong man, you
know the kind that tears phone books into flips cars
by hand and ben's steel bars, etc. While preaching the
gospel along with it. I have lived on the same
farm all my life, and what I'm about to tell
you is the God's honest truth. I live in south
central Kentucky, and all of these encounters except two were
within three miles of each other. My first encounter was
in nineteen seventy two when I was ten years old.
My parents and I were coming home one night. We
lived on a large farm, as I have all my life,
we were driving down the little country gravel road that
goes through our farm. I was in the back seat
and my parents were up front in our car. My
mother called out to my dad, you didn't see that
big black thing step across the road. She said. It
cleared the road in two steps. My father turned around
at our shop and drove back, but it was already gone.
He told my mother that she was crazy. Some years later,
she told me that my grandmother had told her for
years that they had seen something. From time to time.
She referred to it as the old Man. Several years
went by, and I grew into a teenager and then
a young man. But years before that there was more
to tell. My second encounter, a mile and a half
behind our farm, was in an abandoned old rock quarry
from the nineteen forties. My friend Mark and I one
day hiked down to the old quarry with daisy bebie
guns in hand. The old quarry was grown up with
trees and bushes, pretty much what we would called the
thicket here in south central Kentucky. The old quarry was
one hundred and twenty five feet long, seventy to eighty
feet wide, and sixty five feet deep. My friend and
I were on the left side, about a third of
the way down from the top, admiring the beauty of
the wilderness, and then it happened. We heard the most
god awfullest roar, which turned into a blood curdling yell
that would stand the hair up on your head. And
Mark said, what was that? I don't know, I replied,
And then whatever made that awful sound did so again.
Let's get out of here, Mark exclaimed. I wanted to
see what it was. Me, being a twelve year old boy,
said we can shoot it in the eye with our
bb guns. Well, how stupid was that? And then it
yelled again and started throwing rocks from the bottom of
the old quarry. It hit the side that we were
on from some distance away with rocks the size of
soft balls or larger. It roared one more time, and
my friend said to hell with this and took off
in a flash down the side of the hill back
to the holler. I took off right behind him, and
we ran for three quarters of a mile before we
just collapsed in a pasture field. But a large bull
came down off the grassy hill right for us, so
we pulled ourselves up and climbed a large tree, wondering
if that would get us past the bull and the
thing that ran us off from the old quarry. We
finally got down and got home. No one would believe us,
except my mother because she'd seen something a few years prior.
We went to school the next week and told our
close friend about our encounter. He would be the man
who would later be the best man in my wedding,
and his name was Wendell. I said, I wanted to
go back down to see if I could see what
it was, but I wanted someone to stay with me.
Wendell said if I'd let him go, he would take
his twenty gage shotgun and that he would not run. Well.
Of course, I agreed. Wendell and I took a hike
down the old quarry, and I decided that we would
go in towards the top of the old quarry, this
time about thirty feet above the opening. As we were
hiking towards it, we were stopped in our tracks by
the same roar that again turned into a blood curdling
scream that you could feel hit you in the chest
like a brick. I turned back to see Wendall's reaction
he with a shotgun, was now in a crowd's position,
and he was trembling. I turned back towards the sound,
and here it came again. I turned back to see
Wendell tearing through the briers with a shotgun in hand,
obviously not wanting anything to do with whatever was roaring.
And so there I was alone with my rifle in
my hand, and I took out right behind him. And
when we got home, he said, what in the world
was that. All I could say was I don't know.
So we told our neighbors. They were some of our
running buddies, one Scotty, who was like a little older,
and then there was me and one a little younger, Tracy.
Scotty was bold and said, by God, I'll stay as
long as I have a gun. So he was all
in for us to take the hike back down, and
my fourth encounter was about to begin. Two weeks after
Wendell and I had gone in, with all three of
us having guns in hand, we went back and I
took the lead. I took the same path that Wendell
and I took. As we closed in on the top,
I was standing less than two feet from where I
was standing the previous the same roar, yell, scream all
over again, and I turned to see Tracy and Scottie
and they were already retreating fast. In less than six
weeks time, I had personally experienced something life changing. I
didn't go back for years, but what I experienced in
those weeks is why there is a Smith and Western
forty four magnum pistol in my bedside nightstand to this day.
Tyler and Justin's stories. Tyler said his brother Justin had
an encounter. As he was taking the garbage to the
end of the road on a dark night, something very
large spooked him. He caught a glimpse across the road
of something very large standing between two ponds. As he
got back in the vehicle to turn the headlights on,
it stood up and ran. It left the fence in
two steps, and it was in the road and then
it left the fence on the other side. It startled
him pretty good, so he retreated back to the house
very quickly. In another encounter, Justin and another man were
out scouting for deer because the season would open soon.
They were at the end of a hollow in a
vast thicket when they came across a deer hanging from
its hindquarters in the middle of nowhere. If that wasn't
strange enough, its hindquarters were up to about twelve feet
in a tree, putting the deer's neck at six feet
above ground level, and that was too high for a
coyote or most dogs to reach. The deer's neck had
a large bite taken out of it. Justin and Tyler
also described another encounter involving their cousin, James. So he
walked to his deer stand before daylight. This is the
same holler that separated our two farms. The hollow runs
by the springs from the old quarry. James had just
climbed into his deer stand and heard the blood curdling roar, yell, scream.
He was so terrified that he didn't move for about
seven or eight hours. Tyler and Justin had heard it also.
Around that same time, my good friend and neighbor and
god son, Cody, found a structure made of cedar trees
that had been bent and broken to keep the wind
and rain off of whatever had been using it. Cody
had also had an encounter while frog gigging and just
up from the lake one night in the holler that
parallels the old quarry. Large rocks were thrown at them
as they made their way up the holler. Cody's wife
also had her encounter around the same time, as she
was driving one night. Her sightings were very close to
where my mother had her sighting some forty years earlier.
The location is less than two hundred feet apart. Caitlin
recalls what she saw as very large and tall. It
stepped over a fence in front of her and crossed
the road. It turned to look at her in the headlights,
It's eyes reflecting red as it stepped across the other fence.
She never took that road home again. My fifth encounter,
My next episode was a few years later, when I
was fourteen or fifteen. I was with a friend of mine, Donovan,
who had lost his mother some years earlier and would
come and stay with us for a couple of weeks
at a time. He would later become our city's assistant
chief of police. We were on the backside of the
farm where there was a very steep hill in our woods.
I was climbing the hill in my Yamaha dirt bike.
Like a lot of us here in Kentucky do Donovan
was standing at the top of the hill watching me
climb over it, and as I pulled up to start
my third ascent of the day, Donovan came running down
the steep hill. As he got to me, I saw
that his eyes were wide open and he was as
white as a ghost. We jumped on the back of
the motorcycle and he says to me, go, go go oh.
I said, what is it? He said, please just go?
So I tore out and when we got within sight
of the house, I slowed down and stopped. He said
what are you doing and encouraged me to keep going
and I said, no, what is it? He said, I
saw it? You saw what I said? He said it
had to be what we had heard a few years earlier,
so we had my attention and I said, well, what
did it look like? He said it was big and
black and it cleared the border fence in just one step.
Fast forward a few years when we were nineteen years old,
myself and my friends Mark and Robin went back with
a solid agreement between all three of us that no
one would run. We all had high powered rifles in hand.
This was the first time that Mark had returned to
the old quarry. We took the hike down and braved
our way all the way to the inside of the
old quarry and poised ourselves for a standoff that we
might encounter. We stood our ground for four hours from
two to six pm. When we retreated at dark, we
had seen or heard nothing, and was the legend gone.
It would cross my mind from time to time, but
I saw and heard nothing for about thirty years until
I was in my late forties. My neighbor, Tyler, who
had lived on the next farm over, had at one
point given me the honor of performing his wedding ceremony.
He was over helping me unload the firewood one day
when he mentioned doing some deer hunting with his family.
I casually said to him, well, don't go down by
the old Rock quarry without a gun. And he looked
at me with a funny look on his face and said, Randy,
why would you say that? While look back and said,
why would you ask like that? He said, I didn't
think anybody else knew. This encounter is from one of
my neighbors and Christian's Strength team members. This young man
is almost as big as a bigfoot He's six feet
seven inches tall, weighs three hundred and eighty pounds, and
wears a size sixteen shoe. Paul was walking to his
favorite fishing hole one day when he heard a large
stick break off to his right. He glanced over to
see what he had made the noise and couldn't believe what
he was seeing. He was looking at a dark figure
that was crouched down, and he recalled its facial features,
including heavy eyebrows and dark eyes, and it was huge.
Paul kept walking, but sped up his pace to get
out of the area fast. Coming back from his fishing hole,
he stumbled upon a very large footprint in the wet ground.
It was filled with water from the night before, but
he said it was huge. It made his size sixteen
look small. Paul wasted no time on his route to
get back home. When I was forty nine, I was
coming home one night from the gym about ten thirty.
As my boxer dog, Turbo and I walked up towards
the house. In the distance, I heard a distinctive, very
familiar sound. I got turbos still and leaned up against
my home and again heard the roar, yell scream that
I'd heard so many years ago into my childhood. The
hair on the back of my neck stood up, and
I said to myself, it's back. I told two of
my neighbors and my wife Carolyn what I heard. We
all dismissed it. But the next year I turned fifty
and I was diagnosed with a leaking aortic heart valve
that could only be taken care of by God or
a heart surgeon. So I was in my backyard, in
my hammock. We live in a remote place, just a
few farmhouses around. It was on Tuesday night, around eleven pm.
Carolyn was already in bed. I was pouring my heart
out in prayer, trying to reach the throne room of Heaven.
I'm praying herd out loud, and as I'm wailing through
the trees, I hear something repeatedly using something to strike
a tree. I cried to remove it from my thoughts
and my hearing, and I kept praying. The louder and
harder I prayed, the louder and faster the wood knocking got.
When I would stop, it would stop. So I said
to myself, who in the world would be down in
my holler next to my house? At this time of
night and on a Tuesday in the middle of July.
So I started putting it all together. The yelling, the
rock throwing, and now the wood knocking. It can only
be one thing, a si squatch of Bigfoot or whatever
you call it. I still don't know what I and
my friends and my neighbors have experienced, but there's something
out there now. I personally have never seen it, but
I know what I heard. It's big and it's real.
I don't think it means us any harm, but I
would not want to corner it or provoke it. Clay
Story is in Halfway, Kentucky, which is in Allen County.
Clay is also one of the original team members of
my Christian Strongman Team. Clay is a big man. He's
six foot five and he weighs two hundred and sixty pounds.
He's no sissy or coward. Clay's an avid deer hunter
travels all over the United States hunting big game. I
would call him a professional big game hunter, and he
has all the trophies to prove it. He's been hunting
on one of the largest farms in Allen County. His
first encounter was a vocal while he was in his
deer stand overlooking a large bluff. The roar yell scream
was very loud and robust. Clay says the roar was
so loud that he said whatever made that sound was
really large. He was startled by the intense sound, and
he said to himself, what in the world is that? Clay,
being the sportsman he is, went back the next year
to hunt for the big trophy buck. While in his
stand with a bow and an arrow in hand, he
heard animals scurrying out of the large woods below the
bluff he's hunting, and then the same thing he witnessed
the year before, the roar, yell scream happened again. The
deer came running out first, they were followed by livestock,
and then birds flew out. At this time, Big Clay
decided it was time to get his happy hind end
down and out of the tree stand. He hurried very
quickly to his truck and retreated. And Clay said, he
didn't see it, but it had to be very big
to make chest shaking sounds like that that he heard.
Clay said, Wow, what else could it be other than
a bigfoot? One day, David was out on the farm
doing his farm work, and he heard a sound that
was not familiar with anything he had heard before, and
he had been on this farm forty plus years. Whatever
it was, David said, it was very loud and had
to be coming from something really big. Sess said to
his dad, what in the world is that? He said,
I don't know, but we're going to the house. Seth
lives on a farm in Halifax, Kentucky, which is in
Allen County. His farm has been in his family for
three generation. The farm backs up to an even larger farm,
which is three hundred acres of wilderness. While deer hunting
one evening, Seth was sitting on the ground leaning against
the log when he heard something take a step to
his right. Seth looked over and raised his deer rifle
up and looked through the scope. He saw something that
was around seven feet tall. It had long arms, and
it was all brown in color. While looking through his
rifle scope, Seth whistled and it looked right dead at
him for a few seconds, and then it just kept
walking away from him. Seth said he was proud he
kept walking because he didn't think his deer rifle would
have taken it down. Seth and Cooper were out one
night coyote hunting, trying to call up some coyotes. Now,
after a while the calling, they laid down. Seth heard
something coming through the woods and it was crashing through
the woods and breaking down small trees and limbs. As
it was coming closer and closer, they were beginning to
wonder what it was. It was definitely not coyotes. It
started getting closer and then it was right on top
of them. Cooper said, shoot it, Seth. While laying down,
Seth spun over and pulled the trigger of his twelve
gay shotgun right at the sound, which was less than
twenty feet away. The minute Seth shot, Cooper flicked the
big light on and there was nothing there. They both said,
where did it go? It was just right there. It
was a very intense moment for both of them. This
story comes from my neighbor that lives about a mile
down the road from me, but as the crow flies
less than a mile from my farm. He's lived on
the farm all of his life. This is his encounter.
When I was young, me and my brother and a
friend that was staying the night got bored and went
to the pond, as we did many times. We would
gather rocks and try to sneak up on the frogs
that line the banks of the pond. As anybody that
grew up with a pond knows, the frogs would all
jump in as soon as they knew a predator was near.
The goal was to sneak up on the frogs and
see if we could hit one before they all jumped in.
After I'd thrown my stones, I heard something in the woods.
I turned to see a hairy beast running on two
legs through the forest, tearing saplings away side to side
to make its way through. The breath was taken from me,
and it's like everything else stood still when it was gone.
I yelled that I had seen something running through the woods.
No one saw it, no one believed me. I just
remember dark hair. I had nightmares of werewolves for years
after that. I had not been exposed to bigfoot at
that time. I was, however, exposed to the monster movies
of werewolves. To my young eyes and mine, that's what
it was. Let me just break in and say, that
could have been a dog man. If you're thinking werewolf subconsciously,
maybe that's what you saw Derek. I don't know. I'm
sorry to interrupt Randy's stories here. Let's go to the
last story, and it is called Matt Pettigo's experience. I'm
the editor and publisher of our local newspaper in Randy's
hometown in Kentucky. Randy is a good friend. He's a
fine man and as truthful a person as you will
ever know. I'm originally from northern California, and I still
have relatives in California and Oregon. In the summer of
two thousand and nine, I was visiting my now late
grandfather in Bend, Oregon, when I took a ride up
into the nearby Cascade Mountains. At an elevation of fifty
four hundred feet above sea level, between two peaks high
enough to host snow year round lies Scenic Sparks Lake.
It is a lake of snow melt between the peaks
and it fluctuates in size. Looking for that perfect postcard
landscape shot with my camera, I ventured far out onto
the dry lake bed until it began to get marshy.
I leapt over a small stream of clear, cold snow
water draining into the main body of the lake, and
I landed on a small island and into something unexpected.
I weighed two hundred and sixty pounds, and I estimate,
landing from a jump, that I hit the packed sandy
volcanic soil with the impact of over three hundred pounds.
My hiking boots sank in about an inch into the
dense soil, paling in comparison to the footprint I was
now seen for scale. I laid my six inch wide
Panama Jack sunglasses beside it, and I snapped this photo.
The print was two inches deep, at one point fourteen
inches long, and more than six inches wide. Based on
the soil condition and my jump, you can see my
print on the left side of the tuft of grass.
Whatever made this print had to weigh over five hundred pounds.
What's more, whatever made the print had dug its front
toes into the soil as it walked, ripping frontal soil
upward and scrunching the other soil towards the center of
the print as it pulled its foot upward. Thus, whatever
made the print seems to have had a hinged foot,
a trait often seen in gray apes. At the upper
left of the print is the impression of a very
large big toe. It doesn't show well in the photo,
but it had dermal ridges, the mark of natural skin.
I saw nothing else and I heard nothing strange, but
there it was a good reason for me to head
back to the car. I never knew what to make
of the bigfoot mystery. Is it fact or fiction? I
can say with certainty that something large, heavy, and barefoot
made this track in the wiles of central Oregon. Randy
and his family, friends and neighbors, and thousands of other
people around the world and through the ages are seeing, hearing,
and experiencing something that science can't always explain, And as
Randy said in his conclusion, something is out there. Okay,
just two stories in that podcast. I thought they were
both fantastic, and I really appreciate the writers and thank
you for listening. I really appreciate you, and we will
see you guys on the next podcast. Thanks