Speaker 1: This took place in late twenty and eighteen. It started
in deep fall and continued into late December. I live
in northeastern Ohio and my dogs were going ballistic every
night for over two months in late twenty and eighteen.
I had seen signs of the presence of something, but
was unsure of what it was, and to be honest,
I really wasn't paying attention and it didn't occur to
me at the time what I was seeing. I was
mowing the grass in the very late fall of twenty
eighteen when I passed a large, matted down spot in
the tall grass. It was probably about fifteen feet in diameter.
I didn't see any tracks or trails leading into or
out of it, so I brushed it off as deer habitat.
Every single night, within five minutes of the lights getting
turned off, my German shepherds would go to the door
and peer out and growl and start barking. That went
on for what seemed like it was going to be
an eternity, and I didn't think I was ever going
to get any sleep. I never heard any sounds, and
I don't have a sense of smell. It's a hereditary thing.
My grandfather couldn't smell, and my brother's daughter can't either,
so I didn't smell anything. And winter was kicking in.
It was getting cold. The dogs still weren't letting up,
and during the daytime I kept a pretty good eye
on them because we have had a bunch of missing
cats and dogs in this area recently. The same thing
happened back in the eighties and a couple of guys
were caught stealing people's pets and selling them on the
market for animal food and all kinds of nasty stuff.
So that's what I figured was going on. I was
very watchful, and I would call them in several times
throughout the day and in the evening, just to keep
an eye on them. Then I saw a video where
a man's dog became the target of a sisquatch because
the dog was constantly giving away its position, and something
inside me clicked and I just knew there was more
to this than just a small herd of deer sleeping
there and traversing back and forth. So I decided to
load up a rifle and leave it by my bed
until I managed to get rid of whatever was coming around.
My wife insisted that it was a coyote, because the
year before we had a rather large one come into
the area in broad daylight and it wasn't at all
afraid of us. The rifle I was using had a
red laser sight on the end of it and a
dot site up top for quick tactics and a pinch.
Then on December second, twenty eighteen, around two am, I
turned out the lights and I laid down in bed
to wait, And sure enough, within minutes, my dogs rushed
to the door and started barking like crazy. But this
time they were growling like I've never heard them growl before,
so I knew something was out there. I sat up
part way in bed with the rifle in hand, and
I waited and watched, and sure enough, in the midst
of that cold wind and rainstorm, I saw an almost
man shaped, very dark outline figure step quietly and smoothly
up to the kennel fence and stand there for a moment.
Our kennel is six feet tall, and this creature was
a good two and a half feet taller and was
about four feet wide at the shoulders. I couldn't make
out any details, just its basic shape. I think we
call those blob squatches I moved to put the rifle
up to my shoulder, and it obviously saw me because
it backed off into the darkness again right away, but
still silently and really smoothly, almost like it was floating.
It rained like the days of Noah for a couple
of days, and I never thought to even look for
prints in the mud, but I'm pretty sure there weren't
any after the heavy rains. Anyway. Well, it's not much
of an encounter, but still enough to make me sleep
with a rifle within arm's reach. Not much puts fear
into me, and this squatch didn't either, but it probably
would have if things would have gotten ugly, and I
would be reporting a dead sasquatch because I won't miss
when it comes to protecting my family, and my dogs
are like my kids. I love them that much, so
they get the same protection from me as my son
and wife would. It was not quite daylight on an
early summer morning in the mouth of the I'm never
gonna pronounce this right. It's Coquahaala, Coquahala and Fraser Rivers
in Hope, British Columbia. The tributary was taking on water
because the Fraser was high and the salmon were running.
The river had quite a few dying salmon that were spawning.
I was there to take pictures of the wildlife, so
I pulled out my small director's chair and sat quietly
at the mouth. You have a director's chair. I want
a director's chair. How do you get one of those?
Across the river was a game trail where I have
seen mule deer, white tail coyodies, and even the odd
bobcat in the past, and I was sure I'd have
luck that day. The sun was just beginning to creep
over Mount ogle Ogilvy Ogilvy when two coyotes seventy five
yards away from me began yipping. It's not unusual to
hear coyotes up there, but they sounded frantic, like dogs
when a stranger has come into your yard. Curious, I
looked over in the direction where they were yipping. Squatting
down in the long grass at the water's edge. Another
fifty yards beyond them was a huge figure. At first
I thought it was a bear, and then it turned
its attention on me and it stood up on two left.
A cold chill shot up my spine as the hair
on the back of my neck stood on end, and
I was frozen and shocked staring at a massive male sisquatch.
Behind him were some older saplings that were roughly eight
feet high. They came up to his chest, and he
was covered in dirty blonde colored hair, and he had
a dome shaped head and a very human looking face.
His nose was a bit whiter than a man's, and
it looked like he didn't have a neck. We stared
at each other for a good twenty seconds before he
let out an unbelievably loud scream that was strangely high
pitch for something that large. I'll never forget the look
of disgust he gave me before he did something totally unexpected.
He began talking, for lack of a better word, and
some sort of gibberish that was a mix of high
and low tones. And then he grunted and raised his
hand and flung it at me as if to say,
leave me alone. I noticed he had a salmon in
his other hand. His annoyance with me and his hand
gestures were so human that I relaxed a little bit.
He turned and started walking away, and from behind I
could see that he was wide in the shoulders and
he was lean in the waist. I guessed him to
be eleven hundred pounds. I've seen big bears, and he
dwarfed them. His strides were six feet each, and every
step as he casually walked away from me, he turned
and looked back over his shoulder. It reminded me so
much of the Patterson Gimlin film. He looked just like Patty,
but without the breasts. He looked back at me one
last time, and he stopped and flung his hand at
me in an annoyance again, and then he stepped into
the bush. Clearly he was angry that I interrupted his meal,
and he scolded me for it. But I was in
awe throughout the whole experience. Five. I was a fifteen
year old growing up in southwestern Virginia. I've spent most
of my life in the woods. I still love to
be in nature. It's where I believe I have a
stronger relationship with my creator. I was sitting under some
pines overlooking a deer trail on a cold morning. My
uncle had a deer stand in an old tree in
the same spot, and he'd killed a few deer from
there because of that. In the cold front that had
come through the night before. I had a feeling something
was going to happen. As I sat there with my
old side hammer muzzleloader loaded and ready for any deer
to walk by, I heard the distinct sound of something
crunching through the leaves. I put my rifle to my
shoulder in anticipation of the deer I knew was about
to pop up over the hill. What came over the
hill wasn't a deer. There was a man who looked
to be in his forties. I noticed he was wearing
clothes that weren't from this era. He had on a
flat brim leather hat with metal buttons on the front
for decoration. His coat was made with the fur turned
to the inside, and his pants were the same, with
worn leather on the outside. His shoes were harsh soul moccasins,
and he carried a leather possible's bag, the bag muzzleloader
hunters carry with everything they need inside. It was across
one shoulder with a powder horn on his opposite shoulder.
His rifle was longer than the hawking style rifle I had.
His hair was coarse and brown. His bright blue eyes
sized me up from a face covered in a full
graying beard. It was as if he had stepped through
the mists from a distant past. He had a look
of confusion on his face as he approached, but asked
in a congenial voice if I had seen anything yet.
Perplexed by the fact that someone was hunting the farm
that I knew I had sold permission to hunt, I
managed only a kurt no. He took another minute to
look me up and down, and I did the same
to him. Can I see your gun, he asked. I
handed it over, and he passed his to me. He
sat down and we each inspected each other's weapon with
all Although his gun was longer than mine, it was lighter.
More impressive to me than the gun was the man's appearance.
I was amazed that someone was hunting in full mountain
man apparel. Nothing he wore could have been as warm
as my modern day insulated clothing. It was a sight
I never would have expected to see here in the
Blue Ridge Mountains. But I thought he must be a
man who wished to live in a different time, and
this was his coming as close to that as possible. Still,
I couldn't help but wonder at his reaction to me.
Maybe he really was from a different time. He handed
back our guns and he smiled at me as he
stood up. I might have asked him a few questions,
but at that moment we both heard the sound of
a deer walking. He's coming, the man said, without another word.
The man got behind me and we both watched as
a buck came over the hill. The man put his
hand on my shoulder and he told me to take
a deep breath and squeeze the trigger. I did as
I was told. Pop. It wasn't the boom of the rifle,
just the pop of the percrussion cap and the powder igniting.
It was enough to send the buck running. The man's
hand was still on my shoulder. As I turned around
to say something, the words died on my lips. Though
as I looked around for him, he wasn't there. I
could still feel his hand on my shoulder, but he
just wasn't there. I jumped up, and as I did so,
the weight of his hand fell away. I decided it
was time for me to call it a day. I
was confused and frightened, but I didn't feel he meant
me any harm, so there was no need to run.
I just walked home. Reliving those moments in my head,
wondering who he could have been or where he might
have come from. When I got home, I put another
percussion cap in the gun and fired. This time the
rifle operated properly. I cleaned my gun and put it away.
I never got the man's name, nor did I ever
figure out where or when he may have come from,
and I've never seen him again. I'm thirty now, and
I haven't hunted that area since. Sometimes I think about
going back, just to see if he might be there.
There's some old old rock walls in that area, said
to be from the eighteen hundreds, though no one knows
what they were for or who built them. I like
to think they were his. Once. My father was a
master sergeant in the Green Beret Special Forces. My parents
were friends with their captain and we would spend time
with their family. Their house was located in a community
in northwest Dade County called Palm Springs North. This area
was the last development northwest of Dade County. To the
west of there, there is nothing but woods and everglades.
While our parents played cards until late their son Doug
and I would ride our bikes all over the area.
Sometimes not getting home until after midnight. On July the second,
nineteen sixty six, Doug and I went to the neighborhood
convenience store for snack. It was much too late for
two twelve year old boys to be out, but times
were different then. We then rode back to a vacant
lot on the lake close to Doug's house to grub
out on the junk food. On the way there, I
had spotted a huge white owl in a tree with
large black, oval shaped eyes. It was so strange and
I had never seen anything like this. I could not
take my eyes off it. Doug was way ahead of me,
and he turned back to asking if I was coming.
I broke eye contact with the owl and I yelled
to Doug, Yeah, Yeah, I'm coming. And when I look
back for the owl, it was gone. We arrived at
the vacant lot on the lake. It was a beautiful night.
Stars carpeted the black sky. Not long after dropping our bikes,
we saw a cylinder shaped object glowing faintly across the lake.
It appeared cylinder shaped from our point of view, and
at the time, neither of us had ever heard of
or knew anything about UFOs. We had only seen them
in old, cheesy Martian movies. The object hovered over the
trees with what appeared to be an electrical charge to it,
and then it landed across the lake behind some trees
and the glowing stopped. It never made a sound. We
had to see what this was. It was about one am,
and two twelve year old boys made the long ride
around the lake to the area we thought the object landed.
We lined up his parents' house across the lake, and
we knew we were in the right spot. We only
needed to find a way to that forest. Well. I
knew this area. An old man in the neighborhood paid
me to cut his grass, and I was here every
week or so. Now I was thinking maybe this thing
landed close to him his house. The dirt road leading
to his house came into view on my right and
we took it. The wooded area was dark and I
had trouble seeing the road. I actually didn't want to
go further, but we peddled on and then I could
see the road clearly, like the sun had come up.
I was confused at the light. It didn't make sense
and it should not have been there, but I was
thankful to be able to finally see where I was peddling.
Something was off about this, though. My last memory of
the ride down the dusty road was a tingling sensation
all over my body. I became dizzy and I dropped
the bike in the middle of the road, so did Doug.
I remember standing straight up and looking ahead, and that's it.
Doug was shaking me and telling me to wake up.
I was laying on the ground. Sand was all over me,
like I had been rolling in It helped me up
and I saw it was almost daylight and we were
standing in the tall weeds of the vacant lot by
the lake, our bikes laying beside us, both of us
still groggy, dusted the sand off our clothes, and we
walked our bikes back to Doug's house, neither of us
could ride. Before we got there, we saw a police
car in the drive. Our parents noticed us walking in
the street and they came running. At first, they were
happy to see us. Our mother smothered us with hugs,
but they soon got hacked off at us. The usual
questions followed, and we couldn't answer any of them, making
our parents think that we were covering something up. Of
course we weren't, but how would we explain what had
really happened. It was early Saturday morning, and when we
got home, I went straight to bed and I slept
until Sunday morning. I never woke once, no dreams, no
trips to the bathroom, solid sleep for over twenty four hours.
That weekend, I was supposed to cut that old man's yard,
so I got up and I gassed up the mower.
I was about to get on my bike and drag
the mower over there, but I felt hungry. I went
back inside and I found a note on the kitchen
table in my mother's handwriting. It said that mister Shagg
had called and to forget about cutting his grass. I
was disappointed because I wanted to make some money that day.
I rode over to mister Shagg's place down the same
dirt road where this incident happened, to see if he
had fired me or maybe found someone to cut the
yard cheaper. He was standing in the yard when I
rode up. His lawn was black. Something had caught it
on fire and burned that beautiful long down to nothing.
We walked around the back and his healthy garden looked
the same. Who burns your yard up, mister Shagg. I asked,
nothing burned it up? He said, I woke up yesterday.
I came out and this is what I found. There
was no fire. Reach down and grab a water of
that black grass and smell it. I did, and I
expected to catch a strong, charred odor, but it had
no odor at all. Something had just sucked the life
out of everything green on that property. His yard started
growing back that summer, but it was almost two months
before he needed it cut again, and by the time
I next cut his yard, I had forgotten about the
entire incident. Mister Shagg talked about black grass and how
long it had taken to grow back, and I had
no clue what he was talking about. That bugged me
for years after. I actually thought that he had become
senile and was dreaming things up. Eight or nine years ago,
I was surfing through YouTube videos. I was always drawn
to the UFO and alien videos. In one video, a
man stated that many abductees report seeing a large white
owl within hours before their abduction, and that clicked with me.
The memories didn't come flooding back, but I remembered the
owl that night, piece by piece that night's events came
back to me over the next year. Some of those
pieces fell into place in dreams. I finally remembered as
much as I have written in this email. But that
is all I can remember. I have been stuck here
ever since. There are four or five hours missing and
I cannot find them. I'm on a dirt road surrounded
by light. Five hours later, I wake up with my
buddy in an overgrown field of weeds and sand. It
doesn't make sense. Doug and I stayed friends for years.
It was not long after this incident that my family
moved closer to Doug's house. Life went on, and we
never spoke about it. It wasn't in either of our
memories at the time. After he and I graduated and
went off to school, I lost track of him, and
I haven't spoken to him since. Throughout my adult life,
I have suffered from anxiety neither. Can I be closed
in a room with no obvious exits That sends me
off the deep end. This all started in my thirties.
I was raised in a happy, two parent home. My
childhood and adolescent years were normal and a lot of fun.
I always had a great attitude, and I don't remember
being sad a day in my life. I spoke with
a therapist for a season, and he believes it is
the result of a traumatic experience or PTSD. At that time,
I had no memory of that night in nineteen sixty six.
I have recently tried to look Doug up, but I
have no way to know where life took that kid.
I'll keep looking. Maybe he has more answers than I do.
When I was a kid, I lived a mile from
my school. Sometimes, when I was in a hurry, I
walked the highway to get home faster. I like to
explore the woods back then. One day, on one of
my explorations, I wandered down a couple of different logging
roads that cut through the woods, and I discovered that
they took me to the school as well. They were
less travel than the highway, but still easily walked, and
it took a little longer to go that way, but
it gave me time for myself. One late fall day,
when I didn't have to be home right away to
babysit my brother, I decided to go that route instead.
It was kind of beautiful fall day when I could
let my mind wander and enjoy the peace and quiet
of the woods. I hadn't gone far and I noticed
something big and black was following me one hundred yards away.
I thought it was a bear, and my heart began
to race, and then I realized it had stopped walking
and it slinked behind a tree. I could tell it
was black as night, and it was really big. It
was muscular with short hair, like a gorilla. He couldn't
hide from me, though he obviously didn't like it. I
had had one encounter with a bigfoot before, it was
a friendly one. I was pretty sure this one wasn't
going to be friendly, though. He walked toward me a
few steps and then stopped, as if he were pondering
what to do. My adrenaline levels were already through the roof,
so I bolted. He proceeded to follow me, and I
was running with all my might, but he seemed to
be running with ease, as if he was just pacing me.
Fear was pushing me onward as fast as I could go,
and I threw my books aside and I ran until
my lungs felt like they were going to burst. I
wasn't looking anymore to see if it was behind me.
I just wanted to go home. Finally, when my heart
felt like it was thundering in my throat, I stopped
and looked around, and the creature was gone. I looked
all around me several times and I didn't see him anywhere.
But I didn't trust it, so I took off runting again,
and I didn't stop until I got home. I struggled
to get the key in the door, but somehow I managed,
and once I was inside, I slammed the door shut
and I locked it. I knew from my last experience
that this wouldn't keep him out. My last encounter taught
me that I spent the rest of the day freaked
out and scared. I never went back through those woods again.
I got into a lot of trouble at school for
losing my books, but I didn't care. I wasn't going
back in there. For him, that was his territory and
he could keep it. M