Speaker 1: In December of nineteen sixty nine, my buddies and I
Speaker 1: were walking back to the house after a day of hunting.
Speaker 1: We were crossing a holler when a large animal came
Speaker 1: out of the bush and began chasing us. Shocked and
Speaker 1: fear and adrenaline hit us all at the same time,
Speaker 1: and we turned and started running for our lives. Behind us,
Speaker 1: we could hear the monster crashing through the woods on
Speaker 1: what sounded like two feet We were a group of
Speaker 1: twelve year old boys, scared out of our minds by
Speaker 1: visions of that creature catching up with us and then
Speaker 1: tearing us to pieces. We were moving as fast as
Speaker 1: we could, but it was gaining on us. It was
Speaker 1: fifteen yards behind us when one of my friends lost
Speaker 1: his footing and fell, and he sliced his leg open
Speaker 1: in the process. I had to do something. There was
Speaker 1: no time to think or make a plan, so instinctively
Speaker 1: I turned and fired my shotgun straight into it. That
Speaker 1: was enough to knock it backwards, and then it turned
Speaker 1: and ran away, and we managed to get my friend
Speaker 1: on his feet and back to the house. We didn't
Speaker 1: talk much about what happened, we were too shaken up.
Speaker 1: It was the last time that any of my friends
Speaker 1: would ever come to my house. It took a couple
Speaker 1: of days, but my love of hunting overshadowed my fear
Speaker 1: of monsters, and I went back out into the woods again.
Speaker 1: When I got to the spot where I had shot
Speaker 1: that animal, I found a blood trail, so I decided
Speaker 1: to follow it. The thing had made it two hundred
Speaker 1: yards and then it had died. It was lying their
Speaker 1: face up on the ground, all seven feet of it.
Speaker 1: I guess it weighed around five hundred pounds. It was
Speaker 1: clearly a male, and it had a face that looked
Speaker 1: more human than gorilla. I tried to turn it over,
Speaker 1: but it was way too heavy, so I decided to
Speaker 1: go back and get a camera so I could get
Speaker 1: some pictures of it. But by the time I got there,
Speaker 1: I thought it would be better if I didn't go
Speaker 1: back alone, so I had to talk my brother into
Speaker 1: going with me. That took two days, and by the
Speaker 1: time we got back, that creature was gone. We spent
Speaker 1: that winter tracking and trying to find more of them.
Speaker 1: We thought there might have been a family of them
Speaker 1: living in the area. We tracked them for nine miles,
Speaker 1: but we never got close enough to gather any real evidence. Personally,
Speaker 1: I think they ate the body of the dead one.
Speaker 1: I think they always eat their dead, and that's why
Speaker 1: we never find any bigfoot remains lying around. Growing up
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies in the small town of Monroe, Louisiana,
Speaker 1: you heard all kinds of stories about the history of
Speaker 1: the town in that region of northeast Louisiana. For sleepy
Speaker 1: little town nestled in the curves of the Wahtaw River,
Speaker 1: bayous and swamps, you would never guess that it had
Speaker 1: been a place of habitation for several cultures going back
Speaker 1: nearly six thousand years. My grandfather and his uncles would
Speaker 1: tell stories of things they encountered on hunting trips or
Speaker 1: working around the family farm, or that other relatives had
Speaker 1: experienced in the bayou and swamp country around Monroe. As
Speaker 1: a kid, I enjoyed all their stories, even if I
Speaker 1: didn't quite believe them, or I thought there might have
Speaker 1: been a bit of leg pulling going on. Some of
Speaker 1: the stories told to me growing up were from the
Speaker 1: Spanish and later American settlers, and also from the earlier
Speaker 1: Native American people. There were stories of giant, hairy manlike
Speaker 1: creatures that lived in the deepest parts of the swamps
Speaker 1: who did not tolerate trespassers, and they were beings who
Speaker 1: could change their shapes to look like other animals. Other
Speaker 1: stories were about people who would disappear out in those
Speaker 1: swamps with never a trace to be found. Of course,
Speaker 1: there were plenty of ghost stories around the Old Garden district,
Speaker 1: and Monroe had more than its share of haunted houses.
Speaker 1: I experienced a few things in some of those two
Speaker 1: hundred year old homes that I can't explain, but those
Speaker 1: stories are for another time. In late nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: I had my own close encounter with a big foot
Speaker 1: out along the Wachitaw River among those ancient Spanish moss
Speaker 1: draped trees and waterways. My mom and I had gone
Speaker 1: on one of the periodic camping trips that our Baptist
Speaker 1: Church put together for our congregation in the late summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventy five. This particular camping trip was to
Speaker 1: Moon Lake, just north of Monroe. This area is adjacent
Speaker 1: to the Black Vayou National Wildlife Refuge, and that area
Speaker 1: has a long history of strange things happening and sightings
Speaker 1: of strange creatures. Our church used to camp at the
Speaker 1: lake for family weekend getaways and for some retreats. It
Speaker 1: was an old camp but was well maintained, so the
Speaker 1: main camp was clear and level, but surrounded by old
Speaker 1: trees and bushes. Y'all, I'm sorry if my chickens are
Speaker 1: being loud. I've got my door open and they're out
Speaker 1: there raising sand I don't know. I guess they're enjoying
Speaker 1: this warm weather. But let's carry on with the story.
Speaker 1: On this weekend, families had starting arriving late Friday afternoon,
Speaker 1: with the rest coming in early Saturday morning to set
Speaker 1: up their tents and personal camp sites within the larger
Speaker 1: camping area. As each family arrived, more of the kids
Speaker 1: I knew would be running around and playing tiger chase
Speaker 1: or hide and seek. As Saturday progressed, we moved to
Speaker 1: exploring the area outside of the campgrounds, which included skipping
Speaker 1: rocks across the slow moving river looking for arrowheads. We
Speaker 1: didn't find anything, but we had a grand time poking
Speaker 1: around in the soft soil, and we made a full
Speaker 1: day of it. At dusk, everyone was called in for
Speaker 1: dinner and visiting. While we were eating, we noticed the
Speaker 1: dogs some families had brought for the weekend. Were tracking
Speaker 1: around the campgrounds and occasionally whining. Since we were among
Speaker 1: the trees more to the north and west, the setting
Speaker 1: sun made long and broken shadows between the trunks and
Speaker 1: hanging moss, which made it difficult to see what the
Speaker 1: dogs were reacting to. It did not make much impression
Speaker 1: at the time, and as soon as we finished eating,
Speaker 1: we ran back into the woods for an evening of
Speaker 1: hide and seek. As it got darker. After about an hour,
Speaker 1: we went back and picked up some flashlights to continue
Speaker 1: our game, knowing our parents would eventually call us in
Speaker 1: for the night. And as we gathered back together and
Speaker 1: were talking at the edge of the clearing, a small
Speaker 1: stick was thrown into our group from the area just
Speaker 1: outside the lantern light. We thought it was one of
Speaker 1: the other kids, so we started trying to find them,
Speaker 1: and we didn't see anyone, but every couple of minutes
Speaker 1: another stick would be thrown from the trees. Eventually, we
Speaker 1: started concentrating our flashlights in one beam and swinging them
Speaker 1: back and forth, and we tried throwing sticks and small
Speaker 1: rocks back into the trees to see if we could
Speaker 1: flush whoever it was out, but we had no success.
Speaker 1: After about ten minutes, we didn't see anything, and another
Speaker 1: stick came flying out of the trees, but this time
Speaker 1: it came from higher up, so we swung the flashlight
Speaker 1: beams up about ten feet. At first we didn't see
Speaker 1: anything but a curtain of Spanish moss hanging from a
Speaker 1: branch close to the tree trunk, and then a face
Speaker 1: pushed out of the moss. Our first thought was one
Speaker 1: of the kids had climbed up the trunk, but as
Speaker 1: we looked more close lee the face was not entirely human.
Speaker 1: After a stunned few seconds, a body that was fully
Speaker 1: ten to eleven feet tall and covered in shaggy brown
Speaker 1: hair stepped out from the tree trunk and moss less
Speaker 1: than twenty feet away. We started yelling and running back
Speaker 1: to the camp, while whatever this was disappeared at a
Speaker 1: loping run back to the north. The adults had come
Speaker 1: running at our yelling, and after a hurried description, they
Speaker 1: took off in pursuit. They caught a few glimpses as
Speaker 1: the bigfoot ran through the undergrowth and then dove into
Speaker 1: the river to make its escape, and when the adults
Speaker 1: came back to camp, every family packed up and left
Speaker 1: that night without another word being said about the events
Speaker 1: of that night, and for several years after that event,
Speaker 1: you would hear stories of strange happenings around Moon Lake area.
Speaker 1: When I was pregnant with my second child, my husband
Speaker 1: and I decided to buy a house. The lease came
Speaker 1: up on our apartment before our new house was ready,
Speaker 1: so rather than sign another lease, we decided to stay
Speaker 1: with my husband's family until it was done. It was
Speaker 1: December in Indiana and it was extremely cold. That cold
Speaker 1: slipped into the basement of my in law's house at
Speaker 1: night and made it very uncomfortable. One night, I decided
Speaker 1: to turn on the oven in the little kitchen down
Speaker 1: there to warm the place up. It didn't take long
Speaker 1: to get it cozy, and pretty soon I was sound asleep.
Speaker 1: Sometime in the night, I woke up to use the bathroom.
Speaker 1: When I passed by the stairs leading up to the
Speaker 1: main house, I looked up to see a little girl
Speaker 1: sitting on the top step. Well, I thought that was
Speaker 1: my sister in law, Carmen. She was about five at
Speaker 1: that time, and she was cute as a bug. Carmen
Speaker 1: had long brown hair and she was really soft spoken.
Speaker 1: She was just sitting there, long light colored gown, looking forlorn.
Speaker 1: I couldn't imagine how she'd come down to the basement
Speaker 1: in the dark, so I told her to go back
Speaker 1: to bed because her mother was going to be angry
Speaker 1: with her. She looked at me and said, Mommy, please
Speaker 1: turn off the oven or we will die. Well. I
Speaker 1: was confused by her statement, so I guess I didn't
Speaker 1: answer right away. She repeated herself, Mommy, please turn off
Speaker 1: the oven, or we're gonna die. She was so soft
Speaker 1: spoken and so gentle and very quiet, and she was
Speaker 1: unbelievably cute sitting there, but she was really beginning to
Speaker 1: freak me out. However, she was right, I needed to
Speaker 1: turn off the oven. I thought it was time to
Speaker 1: take her back to bed then, but when I went
Speaker 1: back to the stairs, she was gone. And to be honest,
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what had just happened. The next morning,
Speaker 1: I asked my mother in law why Carmen would have
Speaker 1: come downstairs in the middle of the night like that. Well,
Speaker 1: she gave me an odd look, and she assured me
Speaker 1: that Carmen had never left her bed. When I asked
Speaker 1: Carmen about it, she repeated what her mother said, and
Speaker 1: then my mother in law told me that Carmen was
Speaker 1: afraid of the dark and she would never come downstairs
Speaker 1: at night. It was a month later and I gave
Speaker 1: birth to a little girl who looks a lot like
Speaker 1: her aunt Carmen. My mother in law is fond of
Speaker 1: reminding me of my nocturnal visitor, so I have to ask,
Speaker 1: did my little girl visit me while she was still
Speaker 1: in the womb to save all of our lives? In
Speaker 1: the late nineteen eighties, I was a single mother living
Speaker 1: on three acres of wooded land in western Georgia with
Speaker 1: my kids. It was a long four day weekend. I
Speaker 1: think it was the fourth July, and my kids would
Speaker 1: be spending it with their dad. I was off work
Speaker 1: till Monday, so I loaded up on library books and
Speaker 1: treats and I had at home. I kissed the kids
Speaker 1: goodbye and curled up on the sofa to write mind
Speaker 1: Gotta Get done Less, and then I fell asleep. I
Speaker 1: guess I was exhausted, but it was nine o'clock when
Speaker 1: I woke up. Well, I was starving, so I decided
Speaker 1: to fix myself some supper before heading out to close
Speaker 1: up the chickens for the night and check on the
Speaker 1: dog's food and water. It wasn't long before I was
Speaker 1: curled up in my antique bed with my books and
Speaker 1: snacks and having a high old time. Around midnight, I
Speaker 1: got up and made myself a cup of tea. Then
Speaker 1: I went around and turned off all the lights and
Speaker 1: headed back to bed. I had laid there an hour
Speaker 1: and I heard my dog under the house give a
Speaker 1: little growl, followed by a sort of a whimpering wine
Speaker 1: and I paused and I listened for a minute, but
Speaker 1: I didn't hear anything else, so I went back to reading.
Speaker 1: Forty five minutes later, I was beginning to drift off
Speaker 1: to sleep when a loud bang echoed through my bed
Speaker 1: bed and shook that into the trailer. I jumped up
Speaker 1: and looked out the front window toward the driveway, but
Speaker 1: I didn't see anything. And then I looked out the
Speaker 1: east side, toward the little wedge of trees that separated
Speaker 1: my property from my neighbors. There was nothing there either,
Speaker 1: and I grabbed a flashlight and my shotgun and I
Speaker 1: headed outside to see what the heck had happened. I
Speaker 1: wasn't seeing anything, but I did hear a shuffling in
Speaker 1: that little stand of trees to the east. I looked
Speaker 1: hard in that direction, but there just wasn't anything there
Speaker 1: that I could see. I figured it was the Jones Boys,
Speaker 1: a couple of neighborhood kids who liked scaring women and girls.
Speaker 1: So I swung my shotgun in that direction and I yelled,
Speaker 1: I ain't scared of y'all. You better get home before
Speaker 1: you have some serious trouble coming down on your backsides.
Speaker 1: And then I stomped back inside to wait out the
Speaker 1: adrenaline rush so I could get some sleep. The next morning,
Speaker 1: I went outside to have a look around. In the
Speaker 1: light of day. There were no footprints or scuff marks
Speaker 1: in thy hard packed Georgia clay, and I couldn't find
Speaker 1: anything beyond some kicked up pine straw in the woods.
Speaker 1: So I turned to head back inside, and that is
Speaker 1: when I saw it. Being on a slight rise, the
Speaker 1: woods gave me a bit of an elevated view of
Speaker 1: the back corner of my trailer. At the topmost edge
Speaker 1: of the metal overhang was a huge dent, and it
Speaker 1: looked like someone had thrown a bowling ball up there.
Speaker 1: I got a lighter and climbed up to get a
Speaker 1: closer look. The dent was rounded on one side, with
Speaker 1: a bit of a wedge on the right. I tried
Speaker 1: hitting it with my fist. That wasn't a good idea,
Speaker 1: and then I got a stick and tried hitting it,
Speaker 1: but still nothing. The metal was hard and apparently had
Speaker 1: a wooden frame under it well. I spoke with mister
Speaker 1: Jones about his son terrorizing me and damaging my trailer,
Speaker 1: and he said that they were both gone that weekend.
Speaker 1: One was locked up in juvenile attention and the other
Speaker 1: had gone to boot camp. My driveway was a deer
Speaker 1: trail from the woods to the swamp area that was
Speaker 1: on our side of a major county highway. Several hunters
Speaker 1: came and asked permission to hunt my land because of that.
Speaker 1: Always said no, but thanks for asking. There was plenty
Speaker 1: of food and water there for deer, and they had
Speaker 1: open access to run the swamp and wild lands on
Speaker 1: my side of our road, with safe passage to pastures
Speaker 1: on the south side. I didn't want to ruin that
Speaker 1: for them. It wasn't until recently that it occurred to
Speaker 1: me that the dog wasn't growling at deer running past
Speaker 1: my bedroom window and down the driveway. It was always
Speaker 1: at the same time of night. It might be different
Speaker 1: weather conditions or moon faces or nights of the week,
Speaker 1: but it was always the same time. I never heard
Speaker 1: deer running by or on deer tracks, even in the mud.
Speaker 1: I noticed that I wasn't getting as many eggs from
Speaker 1: my hens as I should during certain times of the year,
Speaker 1: and produce would sometimes go missing from the garden. Then
Speaker 1: some of my chickens started going missing, and it finally
Speaker 1: got to the point that I figured I'd be money
Speaker 1: ahead if I got rid of the chickens and quit
Speaker 1: planting a garden. Before I went that far, I talked
Speaker 1: to the farmer down the road about my egg problem.
Speaker 1: His response was to give me a strange look and
Speaker 1: ask if I was missing produce from my garden too.
Speaker 1: When I said that I was, he scratched his head
Speaker 1: and he said, well, isn't that peculiar. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: my son came in one day with a deer skull.
Speaker 1: He found it sitting on the corner of our porch.
Speaker 1: It was an almost perfectly clean six point buck skull.
Speaker 1: At the time, we thought our dog had gone out
Speaker 1: and found a dead deer scavenge. But I ask you,
Speaker 1: would a dog clean a skull and knot you the
Speaker 1: bone to bits or the antlers? And why leave it
Speaker 1: on the corner of the porch. A dog would have
Speaker 1: left it in the middle of the yard or in
Speaker 1: front of the door. Now I'm thinking I had some
Speaker 1: wood boogers visiting my place, and that's why in the South,
Speaker 1: when it gets dark out and the kids aren't inside,
Speaker 1: grandparents will yell out the door. You better get in
Speaker 1: here before those boogers get you. They weren't making idle
Speaker 1: threats to scart kids. The boogers will come out of
Speaker 1: the woods, and sometimes their visits aren't quite so peaceful.
Speaker 1: I've never told anyone about any of this until about
Speaker 1: a month ago, and I finally told my husband about
Speaker 1: those long ago experiences, and thanks to you and everyone
Speaker 1: who has shared their stories, he believes me. He even
Speaker 1: encouraged me to share it with you through your channel
Speaker 1: and to share some of my other experiences on my chain.
Speaker 1: And like I said, this woman has her own YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: and I've watched a couple of videos. I watched a
Speaker 1: video of them burning a house. It was an old
Speaker 1: house on their property, and instead of demolishing it, they
Speaker 1: burn it to give the volunteer fire department some practice,
Speaker 1: I guess on fighting a fire. But the next video
Speaker 1: was the house was burned to the ground, so they
Speaker 1: didn't put the fire out. So I'd have to watch
Speaker 1: the videos closer to know what was going on there.
Speaker 1: But she has a nice little channel and it will
Speaker 1: be linked in the description, and I appreciate her sending
Speaker 1: this story. This is all evidence that some people call
Speaker 1: it anecdotal. It does make you wonder what's going on
Speaker 1: with some of these things. Big dents in the side
Speaker 1: of your house and deer skulls on your porch, and
Speaker 1: neighbors and you having produce and eggs and hens going missing.
Speaker 1: So that's you know, that's some evidence that could be
Speaker 1: to do with Bigfoot. Who knows, But ma'am, thank you
Speaker 1: for the for the story, and I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm