Speaker 1: This is a bigfoot story from Alabama. The writer says
that he grew up deer hunting with his dad in
Barbara County, Alabama. He says, deer season was a religion
for us. We hunted a five hundred acre family property
that was all woods and fields and ponds and swamps.
Things have changed, but in nineteen ninety eight it was
some of the most inaccessible land around the south Side
was all swamp except for one nice little patch of
land planted for deer. The does would move into that
field thirty minutes before dark, but the bucks would stay
in the woods until well after dark. Dad had the
idea to go fifty yards into the woods toward the
swamp and put a ladder stand there. He had a
lot of luck hunting from that stand, but I wasn't
so fortunate. Finally, I decided to take a portable climbing
stand and go deeper toward that swamp than Dad's stand,
and I found a great spot that was close enough
to the swamp to hear anything moving through the water,
and a good view of the clearings near the swamp
where I could get a clean shot. One afternoon in
early January, I snuck into the stand at one thirty
in the afternoon. I hunted my way in like Dad
always taught me, typical of Alabama weather. It was in
the fifties when I went in, but I knew it
would drop into the thirties once the sun went down.
There was no wind. Plus being up twenty feet, I
didn't have to worry about my scent. I saw birds
and squirrels, and other than that, everything was quiet. There
was a tension in the air that seemed to deepen
as the day went on. The closer it got to dark,
the fewer animal noise as I heard, and the more
my emotions began to turn melancholy, and it was as
if nature itself was sad. At dusk, I heard something
coming through the swamp. It was forty yards behind and
to the east of my stand. It was the unmistakable
sound of walking, or should I say, wading and crying,
waiting and crying. Was someone lost? Well? I turned to look.
I didn't see a beam of light of a flashlight.
A hunter would have had a flashlight right. I was
certain that I was the only person anywhere near that
swamp on either side of the property, and who in
their right mind would be this far out in the woods,
swishing through the swamp without a flashlight and crying. If
not a person, what was it. It wasn't a beaver.
They don't make noise unless they're scared, and they certainly
don't cry. It wasn't weasels, and it wasn't a deer,
so it had to be a person. And when a
human walks through water, our steps make an alternating swishing sound,
and that's the sound I was hearing. And again it
was crying. It was very still and quiet that day,
and there was nothing else to distort the sound. The
cry I heard was anguish, and it was mixed with
some kind of unintelligible words. It was like someone who
could not hear properly, to form their words correctly, but
who had experienced a great loss. And I felt its
loss as I heard it, and I didn't want to
yell out and intrude. I just wanted to shrink away. Finally,
it was night, and with it an overwhelming sense of dread,
and except for the creature, all was silent and still,
and I sat there frozeness, tears of compassion round down
my face. It passed behind me into my left and
its steps swished slowly through the water as it continued
to cry and express its grief in some guttural language
that I could not understand. It was the funeral procession
of a single soul. Eventually it moved out of hearing range,
but I continue to sit there for over an hour.
I was overwhelmed by my own grief, and slowly fear
of having been heard began to set in, and I
wondered what it was, or if I'd actually heard it.
Could I have been mistaken? How could I turn on
my flashlight and climb down into that horrible, mournful silence.
As the sounds of the night began to return, I
realized it was time for me to go, and I
somehow made my way back to the truck. I don't
remember much about the walk back. My mind was on
what happened. I've been back there to hunt many times,
although I've never seen a buck of a lifetime that
I was sure existed back there. And now I'm in
my late forties and age has brought home to me
how much grief this creature was truly expressing. I've been
with family and friends who have lost loved ones, and
their experience was no greater than what the creature was
feeling that day. I've often wondered why I've never spoken
of this to anyone before, and I realized now that
it is a matter of honor. I shared its grief
for a few minutes. I felt it disrespectful to talk
about it. Even now, as I remember and re embrace
that day, the tears come to my eyes at the memory.
Nothing in those woods could wade through the swamp water
like a person. No person could move through that swamp
without a flashlight, and nothing in those woods would cry
like a person. Nothing could bring me to the depths
of sympathy I felt that day except a person. Well,
I think something did the House in the woods. It
was the summer of nineteen eighty five when we found
the house in the woods. My friend and I decided
to backpack in near his house in the Missouri countryside.
We were both armed twelve gate shotgun and rich with
a Ruger ten twenty two semi auto rifle. We figured
on shooting a squirrel or two while we were hiking.
We must have walked a couple of miles when we
cut across this old, overgrown trail in the woods. It
was still early in the day and we hadn't had
any luck with the squirrels, so we thought we might
explore the trail that was the entire point of the
expedition anyway, to check out the land in the area.
Neither of us had ever gone into the woods in
that chunk of land, since it was pretty tangled up,
not an easy place to hike, but we figured that
deer and squirrel would be plentiful. We weren't sure who
the land belonged to, but everyone that lived in the
area thought it was government land. There were no conservation
signs and no signs to warn off trespassers or anything,
just a four strand barbed wire fence that had seen
better days. So that was all the invitation that a
couple of curious country kids needed. We both had backpacks
with a couple of baloney sandwiches apiece, two canteens of water,
our army surplus ponchos in case it rained, and a
first aid kit. Richie's mom insisted on the first aid kit.
We both had our deer hunting camouflage on and we
wore booney style military hats. When we first cut the trail,
I asked rich if he had ever seen a gate
or road on the land anywhere. He said that he
couldn't remember seeing anything like that, so we figured it
might be an old logging trail from the fifties or so.
We noticed that the trail to the left kind of
went uphill, so we figured we'd start that way. I
remember noticing that the place was quiet, but I just
assumed that rich and I made so much noise that
we scared the animals off. We'd gone about a half
a mile on this road when we found an old plow.
We decided to check it out. It was old. It
was completely rusted, with wooden handles mostly rided away. The
left side handle looked like it had been broken off
about a foot from the end. It was a kind
of plow you pulled behind a mule or a horse,
not the kind you pull with a tractor. Other than
being old, it looked like it was in fairly good
shape when it was abandoned. Richie said that we should
come back with his dad's pick up and drag it
to the house. It wasn't antique and probably worth a
pretty penny. While we munched down a beloney sandwich and
drank some water, I noticed that it was still extremely quiet.
Richie noticed it too, and when we kind of started
to look around a bit, the woods were thick, with
a lot of brambles and undergrowth, but the only sound
besides us was the wind. It was kind of spooky.
We started on up the trail again when we heard
sound up ahead in the trees. It was a sort
of a grunt or a snort. I looked at rich
and he smiled, that's a buck, he whispered. We weren't
loaded for deer, so we decided to just look and
see if it was big enough to come back for
when the season came around, maybe locate a place to
put in a couple of deer stands or a blind.
If this land hadn't been hunted since the nineteen fifties,
then there should be more deer than we could take
in a lifetime. We walked another half mile or so
without seeing the buck when we saw something in the
tall grass ahead. It looked like a car, and when
we got closer you could tell that it was an
old junk car. It was completely rusted, no paint left
on the thing. The interior was all gone, and there
wasn't any glass left in it at all. Looks like
Grandpa's old Chevy. I said, yeah, but older, replied Rich.
Grandpa's Chevy was a fifth ffty three and was still
in really good shape. Rich was right, though this one
did look older. The doors were still in place and
the engine was still in it. When we lifted the
old hood, all the old hoses and stuff were long
since gone, though it was just an old rust heap.
We heard that grunt or snort again, only this time
it was behind us and closer. I grabbed up the
shotgun and turned around to look, but we couldn't see
a dang thing. The tangles were so thick it could
have been fifty feet away and we would have never
seen it gone get Rich yelled. We figured we'd hear
a deer running off through the woods, but we only
heard the wind. This place is starting to give me
the creeps, Rich, I said, this place is really quiet. Ah,
come on, he replied, let's just go on a little
further and see what we find. We found the ply on,
now the car. Maybe there's an old homestead around here.
I shrugged and started on up the trail. Neither of
us was talking. Now by unspoken agreement, I watched one
side of the road while he watched the other. We
hadn't gone more than a quarter of a mile when
we saw a house through the trees ahead. It was
an old two story place. The paint was gone and
there wasn't a piece of glass left in any of
the windows. The front porch was half collapsed and the
front door hung off at an angle. There was another old,
rusted out car in the tall grass near the house.
It was an old ford by the look of it.
The barn had fallen in on itself years ago. There
weren't any telephone poles anywhere around here, so the place
had to have been built back before there was electricity
in the area, and that was in the forties. According
to my dad, the place looked like it could have
been older than that. Though. Rich started towards the house
and I grabbed his arm. You aren't planning on goe
in there, are you sure? He replied, Lord only knows
what we might find in there. They left behind a
plow in two cars. There's no telling what else might
be in that house. Reluctantly I followed him. The porch
was rotten and we had to watch our footing to
get in the door. The place was a wreck. One
of those old wood fired cook stoves was in the kitchen.
There was a porcelain basin, but no faucet. There must
be an old well with a pump on it around
here somewhere, I said quietly. Rich nodded and kept poking around.
There were a few pieces of old furniture, but nothing
that was in any kind of shape. The old cook
stove was in surprisingly good shape, but I bet it
weighed four or five hundred pounds. It was cast iron.
We weren't going to be able to move it without
a truck and several strong men. In one room with
some animal scat, it was big and in piles. What
kind of animal dropped that, I asked. That's way too
big for a coon or a coyote. Must be a
cow or something. Rich said, maybe a horse. Well I
wasn't convinced, but I didn't argue. I couldn't think of
a thing that could do that and still fit in
the door of the house. It also smelled funny, not
like deer scatter horse apples. I took out my hunting
knife and poked into one of the piles, and in
the scat was some hair and what looked to be
a tooth. Rich, this was a meat eater. See this tooth,
and there's hair in it too. I heard there were
bears in the woods around here, He replied. That must
be it. Shotgun or no shotgun. A bear was not
something I wanted to run into. I only had squirrel shot,
not slugs. All I could do would be to make
one mad, and the twenty two wasn't much better. My
dad always said you couldn't out run a bear, and
that then I had to outrun Rich and he was fast.
Come on, Rich, let's get out of here. I think
we best head towards home. Not yet, he replied, let's
check upstairs first. I don't think that's a good idea,
I said, this place looks like it could collapse. We
might fall through the floor. Na, he insisted, this old
place is pretty solid. The porch is about shot, but
the floors feel solid enough. Besides, it'll only take a minute. Slowly,
I followed him up the old steps. Unfortunately, he was right,
they did feel solid. Once upstairs, we both started looking around.
The furniture up there was all gone. There was more
scat up here. It looked about the same as the
stuff downstairs. Hey, come check this out, called rich. In
The next room was what looked like a nest, only
it was bigger. It was made of long grass and
leaves woven together with tree branches. There was more scat
in this room, but none in the nest. There were
a few bones in the nest. It looked like a
rabbit or a squirrel. It was easy to see that
it was a small game. As I was kneeling to
look at the bones, we heard that grunt or snort again.
This time it was right outside the house and it
was very loud, sounded angry, and then something hit the
side of the house hard enough that we felt the
floor shape. What the hell was that, I yelled, I
don't know, but it don't sound friendly. I pointed the
shotgun out the window and let fly around. The loud
boom of the twelve gage was immediately followed by another
grunt and a growl, and we heard something crashing off
through the tall grass and into the trees. We both
took the stairs as fast as we could, and we
jumped out the window in the living room. We ran
down the road, passed the cars, and didn't stop until
we reached the old plow. When we reached the plow,
we stopped to catch our breath. What the hell was that,
I asked, gulping down air. God only knows, man rich replied,
but whatever it was, I'm sure it didn't take too
kindly to us being in that old house. I was
just about to open my mouth to reply when a
rock the size of a bowling ball came flying out
of the trees and slammed into the plow blade right
next to us. It bounced up knocked Richie off the
plow where he was sitting on the handle. Right then
came the most horrendous roar from the trees. It sounded
like a line or something, but it was just inside
the tree line. The roarer lasted for a good ten seconds.
While it was roaring. I couldn't do anything but stare
at the tree line where the sound was coming from,
and when it stopped, I grabbed rich and pulled him
to his feet. Can you walk? Ask hell, No, he replied,
I can run. Though About that time, there came a
noise in the trees like something was tearing up the brush.
Limbs were breaking and cracking. Rich leveled IS twenty two
at the area and fired off three rounds. The sharp
crack of the rounds going off must have scared it,
because the sound stopped and we could hear something tearing
off through the trees. We took off like rabbits, heading
for the spot where we could cut the trail. It
didn't take long to make it. We stopped there because
neither of us was in any hurry to go into
the trees. We were going to have to go through
the woods for a couple of miles to get back home.
We listened for any sounds or signs of whatever the
hell we'd heard back at the plow. After a couple
of minutes, when we hadn't heard anything, we decided to
go for it. Just as we were entering the trees,
we heard a sound from back towards the plow, like
someone banging on wood against wood, not three times. After
a couple of seconds, we heard it again, only from
the other side of us, deeper in the trees, and
by this point we were so scared out of our
minds that we couldn't even talk to each other. I've
been in and out of the woods of my entire life,
and I'd never experienced anything like this, and neither had Rich.
We kept up as quick a pace as we could
in the thick underbrush. We hadn't gone far when we
heard that roar again, and it was close appointing my
twelve gage in that direction, and I fired off around.
The boom of the shotgun was almost deafening in the
thick woods. Instead of it running off like before, it
roared again and started throwing tree branches at us. Rich
and I got a good look at it, but just
for a few seconds. It was about thirty yards away,
and it looked like a big man. He was covered
in black hair from head to foot. The face looked
more like a gorilla than a man. We had black
skin and not much of a neck to speak of.
The head looked kind of pointed, not like a cone
or anything, just like it sloped back towards the back
of the head, kind of like the hood on a poncho.
And it was big too. It had to have been
close to seven feet tall and had a huge chest
in arms, like a bodybuilder or something. Rich fired at
it with the twenty two, and we're sure he hit
it because it grunted and disappeared into the trees. But
there wasn't any sound of it running off, so we
knew it had just taken cover. About that time, we
started getting branches tossed at us from the other side.
Without even looking. I fired off the shotgun that way
and we heard whatever it was crashing into the thicker trees.
Rich and I decided that it would be a good
idea to move a little faster. This went on for
quite a bit, with one side tossing rocks or sticks,
until we fired off our guns, and then it would
come from the other side. They're trying to get us
to run out of ammo, Rich yelled. I knew he
was right, and it was working. I was down to
about five rounds left for the shotgun, and Rich had
two more magazines for the twenty two, and we were
close to panicking. We knew we had to be close
to the fence where we had come on to the
property in the first place, and we decided to make
a break for it. I fired one way and he
fired the other way, and we started running. Instead of
them running away, it sounded like they were running after us.
Looking back at it now, I think they knew we
were close to getting away. The undergrowth was thick, and
we knew that they could be right on top of
us before we could see them, so we just started
firing blind. He emptied the magazine of the twenty two
and I was pumping in my fourth round into the
chamber when we saw the fence. Rich dove over it
and came up to his feet. I wasn't much of
a jumper, so I got ready to climb through or over.
The crashing was right behind us. I tossed the shotgun
over the fence to Rich, and he shouldered it and
aimed behind me. I could see the look of terror
on his face. I grabbed the fence and started over,
and that's when I felt something tug at the back
of my shirt. It only tugged for a second, and
Rich fired the shotgun right over my shoulder. I planted
my foot and I flipped over the fence. I grabbed
the twenty two off the ground and got to my feet.
Rich fired off my last round and the shotgun, and
we took off the gravel road as fast as we could.
We could still hear them crashing through the trees alongside
the road. Rich and Ice witch guns while we ran,
and he loaded his last magazine in the twenty two.
The things in the trees were getting closer. We were
still more than a mile from Rich's house, and we
knew that there was no way that we would make it.
We were already exhausted and almost out of AMMO, and
then we heard a horn. One of Rich's neighbors was
coming up the road in his pickup. The sounds in
the tree stopped as the truck caught up with us.
Mister Bridges leaned out his window and he smiled at us.
You boys want to ride? He asked, yes. We shouted
and jumped into the bed of his pickup. Mister Bridges
dropped us off in front of Rich's house, and we
thanked him profusely. He waved at us and drove off.
The woods stopped down the road from Riches's house, so
we were safe. We didn't hear or see anything. Both
of Rich's parents were gone to town, so we went
in and cleaned the guns. We were both still shaking.
I went to the refrigerator to get a coke and
Rich gasped. I spun around and I said, what is it, man,
Look at your back. I pulled off my shirt and
I looked across the back were four slashes, side by
side that had been the tug I felt before I
crossed the fence. My shirt was slashed, but it hadn't
reached my skin. We locked all the doors and reloaded
the guns. Rich went and got the Marland thirty thirty
and he loaded it. I loaded slugs into the twelve gage.
We spent the rest of the afternoon watching the tree
line through the windows. For the next two weeks, every
night you could hear strange screams coming from the woods.
Rich's dog went nuts one night, barking at something, and
then they heard it yelp. Rich's dad went out to
see what had happened, but there was nothing there and
they never found the dog. Two nights later, one of
their cows got attacked and killed. They found it the
next day, partially eaten and torn apart. Whatever had killed
it had broken one of its legs and its neck.
A couple of times. Something even tried to get into
the house, but ran off when Rich's dad turned on
the lights and grabbed his rifle. By the end of
two weeks, everything returned to normal and they didn't hear
the screams anymore. We told Rich's dad what happened in
the woods, and he just laughed at us. He thought
that our imaginations had run away with us, and since
he didn't believe us, we never told anyone else, at
least until I decided to write this. Rich and I
didn't talk about it much, and if I brought it up,
he would change the subject. Later, after both of us
joined the army, we drifted apart. Last I heard, Rich
was living out of state with his wife and kids,
and I'm not sure where I know. His mom and
dad sold their farm and they moved to New Mexico
in nineteen ninety six. As crazy as this all sounds,
it is all true. The only thing I changed was
the names of the people involved, because I don't want
to reveal their real names without permission. I have no
idea how to find them to ask. I never went
back into those woods again, not even with Rich and
with better weapons. I'm not sure that I would go
back there even now. It scared me that bad, and
I don't scare easily. Even though that was almost thirty
five years ago, I remember it like it was yesterday.
If I lived to be one hundred, I will never
forget it. Whatever those things were, they lived in that
old house, I honestly feel that they were trying to
kill us. Often wonder if they didn't kill the people
who lived in that all those years ago. One of
those old cast iron stoves wasn't something people in those
days just tossed aside. They were expensive to buy, and
that one was in good shape even in nineteen eighty five.
If we hadn't been armed, I think that neither of
us would have made it out of the woods alive.
That thing I saw that day was no bear. Bears
don't have hands and don't walk like that on two legs.
Whatever it was, it damn sure wasn't friendly. I've read
about the legends of Bigfoot, and that is the only
thing that fits the thing we saw. If it was
a Bigfoot, then it sure wasn't some gentle giant of
the woods like some people try to make it out
to be. This thing was dangerous. I think that the
only thing that kept it at bay was our guns.
And I still say that they were trying to make
us run out of Ammo that day. If mister Bridges
hadn't come along, we wouldn't have made it home, and
we were lucky. I guess that's why I don't want
to go back Why would I push my luck