Speaker 1: At two am, every dog of the neighborhood was going crazy.
My community is small and surrounded by woods, and we
have coyotes, so I wasn't overly concerned. However, I was
awake now and I wanted a cigarette. Plus I wanted
to check my own dog. He's a big boy and
he can definitely take care of himself, but he's my baby,
so I just wanted to make sure he was okay.
I stepped outside and I lit my cigarette. I took
a look around. He was definitely out of the gate.
All the other dogs in the area were still losing
their minds. As I walked down the street to look
for mine. I found him at the end of the
main road and I called him over to me and
I hooked him to the lease i'd brought with. When
we turned around and started heading back to my place,
I noticed a figure on the other side of the street.
It would have explained why the animals were all barking
like crazy, but it was odd that this figure was
about the size of a child. Sure, we have people
walking up and down our streets all the time, even
late at night, but we don't have any kids around,
and if we did, it would have been strange to
see one out this late. My dog lunged at the
figure and I had to hold tight to keep him
from breaking loose. I realized just how angry the other
dogs in the neighborhood were acting at this point. They
were all leaping at their fences or pulling at their
chains and snarling and barking like they wanted to fight.
I had grabbed my spotlight so I could see everything
clearly as this figure came within six feet of me.
It wasn't paying me any mind as it walked, but
I got a good view of it. This was no child.
This was a sisquatch. It may have been a small one,
but fear well up inside me as I thought to myself,
there's probably bigger ones nearby. Well, it ignored me, and
I was awkwardly trying to ignore it. As it passed,
I couldn't stop myself from turning around to get one
more look at it, though, and to my utter shock
and amazement, it slowly disappeared right in front of me.
It was like it dissolved. There was no way it
didn't see me, but it acted like I was never there.
I didn't smell anything, and it never made any noise.
All I really want to know now is if anyone
else has a story of a bigfoot disappearing right in
front of them, I'd like to know that I'm not
the only one. I live by State Park in eastern Illinois.
One day I decided to saddle up my old donkey
and take a nice long ride along some of the
many trails the park has to offer. Darling is a
pretty good old girl. Nothing really bothers her except water.
I can urge her through it, but she lets me
know that she ain't happy about it. We were heading
down the trail and I was enjoying the changing colors
of the leaves. Fall was extra pretty that year. It
felt like the trees had an extra batch of leaves,
and every one of them was a different shade of red, brown, green,
or yellow. I was paying more attention to the brilliant
colors than I was to Darling when she started acting skittish.
I don't know what was making her so jumpy. She
never acted that way before. But I got her attention
and we headed on down the trail. We hadn't gone
much further when I heard something coming up behind us
through the mass of fallen leaves. I twisted around to
see what it was, but there was nothing there. It
gave me an uneasy feeling, so I urged the old
girl into a trot. Whatever was back there picked up
its pace to match ours, so I stopped her, and
whatever was back there stopped too, and then started again
as soon as we did. Well. This went on for
a quarter of a mile until I finally stopped and dismounted.
Darling had her ears pointed straight forward and was snorting
like she wasn't happy. Well, this prompted me to look
a little harder at our surroundings. That's when I saw it.
Lurking behind a tree was a really big brown something
that kept poking its head out for a quick glance
at us before pulling back behind the tree. On this
part of Illinois, we don't have anything like bears. I've
seen a couple of mountain lions, but this was way
bigger than that. I guess he got tired of playing
peekaboo with me, because he finally walked out into the open.
He was about the biggest animal I had ever seen
in my life. He was eight feet tall, he had
no neck, and his shoulders were twice as broad as
a football player's. His arms were long, going all the
way down to his knees. Well, he just stood there,
sort of swaying back and forth while I stood there
staring at him, until I got nervous and moved up
toward Darling's head. I didn't know what to do, and
I know Darling didn't know, So I put my foot
in the stirrup and I climbed back up on her,
with every intention of beating a hasty retreat. Before I
queued Darling to run, though, this thing caught my eye
with a wave of its hand. It looked like it
was motioning for me to come over to it. Well,
I'm sorry, but I wasn't about to walk toward that thing.
And then it started walking toward me and grunting. I
didn't wait for it to get to us. I kicked
Darling into a dead run. I thought we were going
at a pretty good pace until I looked back and
I saw that this bigfoot thing wasn't forty feet behind us.
We were coming up on a fork in the trail, so,
thinking quickly, I turned Darling down the side trail, and
I was hoping we might throw it off a bit
at the very least game and some ground. It wasn't
until it was too late to take the first path
that I remembered that this one was going to lead
us straight to a stream. With Darling's aversion to water,
I figured this wasn't going to be good, but it
was too late to turn back now. Taking that quick
turn did seem to cross our pursuer up a bit.
We gained another ten feet on him. Darling was moving
faster now than I'd ever known her too, but that
stream was coming up fast. In Visions of her slamming
on her brakes and sending me over her head danced
through my mind. As I spurred her on to an
even faster pace. I thought, maybe if we approached the
water fast enough, she'd get through it without too much trouble.
But I could see the stream coming up and hear
the bigfoot closing in at the same time, and my
heart was racing with fear and anticipation of the worst.
We hit the water, and Darling ran through it like
she was half fish. The water turned white and sparkled
in the sunlight under her hoofs, and she acted like
it was nothing. As we reached the opposite bank, I
looked back, and the Bigfoot was gone. Maybe all that
water splashing startled him, Maybe he just gave up. I
don't know. What I do know is that I owe
that Bigfoot a debt of gratitude because after that day,
Darling never showed any fear of water again. Thanks for
what you do. It's a true joy to listen to
your shows. And as to your accent, I grew up
in a town called Cutting Shoot, and I now live
in a place called Nameless, Texas. It's a real place.
Look it up. So I don't think you have an accent.
Thanks brother. I appreciate that I understand me perfectly well,
so I don't know why anybody else would have any
trouble understanding me. Let's get to his story. They'd been
dating for a couple of months now. The discussion of
overnight backpacking had come up several times over the weeks,
and now that the weather was more agreeable, they packed
their gear and headed north from Houston to the Sam
Houston National Forest, just outside of Huntsville. Neither of them
had been there before, but the Internet was loaded with
the maps and camping suggestions, and the printer was loaded
with ink. They easily found the parking area and the
adjacent trailhead. It was lob lolly looped seventeen miles, read
the sign in a familiar brown and yellow pattern common
to all the national parks. Great, they thought, eight miles in,
we'll camp eight miles out. It's just the right length
without exhausting ourselves. Backpacks were donned and adjusted for the
perfect fit trekking poles were lengthened, and bandannas were made
into dew rags. Let's do this, they said to one another,
and down the trail they marched. He led the way,
with her close behind. They were young and in good shape,
and both of them had some steam to blow off
after a stressful week at their respective downtown Houston corporate jobs.
The pace was quick, and of course, here were two
twenty somethings still getting to know one another and hence
eager to impress the other with their physical prowess. Six
miles into the trek, they came upon a large curve
to the right, with thick undergrowth on the inside of
the curve and a more open stand of pines on
the outside, with most of the trees between the size
of the person's arm and thigh suddenly she stopped and
got his attention to do the same. Did you hear that?
She said, hear what? He replied, Ah, it's nothing, she said,
That's just it. It's nothing. No birds, no bugs, not
even gnats. They've all disappeared. And what does that smell?
He did indeed smell something, but he couldn't quite put
his finger on it. It kind of reminded him of
a roadkill left to bacon the Texas sun. But it
was faint, like an odor that could only be detected
when the wind was right. That's to be expected in
the woods, he thought. But the sudden silence, now that
was weird. And then it happened, and he saw it
before he heard it. Out of his peripheral vision. To
his right, from the undergrowth in the curve, a rock
flew in a lazy arc and landed with a soft
thud on the pine nettle covering the ground at his feet.
It was about the size of a golf ball, and
it was smooth, like a river rock worn by eons
of water. And she saw it too, What the hell?
And the rest of the world was swallowed by their
rapid succession of events that unfolded in front of her
Her hiking companion had bent down and picked up a
dead pine sapling about the size and length of a
base ball bat. She thought he was going to make
some macho threat to an unseen rock thrower, but she
couldn't have been more wrong. She was left speechless by
what transpired next. He had turned to face the inside
of the curve in the approximate location from where the
rock had been thrown. He dropped into what could only
be described as a batting dance, and he called out,
it's the top of the nine. With both teams playing
mostly defensive game, the pennant is riding on this matchup.
She recognized his weak attempt at sounding like a Howard
co Sell or a hairy Carey. She hated baseball. She
was forced to suffer through hours and hours of it
while sitting with her father when she was a little girl.
Her father was a wonderful man, and baseball was his
one fault. A second rock came from the brush, and
the same softball like arc as the first. Had to
adjustice position a couple of feet to get lined up
with the rock, but then made solid contact with the
projectile and sent it back into the bushes. Off to
his left base. Hit for the batter, but the runner
will be held up at second. She heard it in
the same Howard co cell voice. Then he took the
batter stance again, and this time the rock was right
on target in front of him, and he swung and
he missed. Swinging a miss strike one, said Harry. The
next pitch went foul. Right strike two, Harry called out.
Up to this point, she wasn't so much frightened as
she was dumbfounded. No one would believe this. You can't
make this crap up. And then she heard two things,
one curious and one terrifying. She could have sworn she
heard what sounded like giggling and growling in Japanese coming
from the undergrowth. Just as she was processing this, aloud
and commanding voice inside her head said leave now. She
peed in her hiking shorts and started to quiver. She
looked at her partner and his response was completely different.
He had dropped the stick and held both hands up
in front of him as if he was being held
at gunpoint. Hey, hey, we meant no harm, he said.
No need to be ugly about this. We're gonna go
camp A couple of miles up the trail, drop by
if you want to, And then, as if a switch
had been thrown, the birds started chirping, and a murder
of crows was making an awful racket in the trees
above them, and the gnats were once again finding annoying
ways to get into their noses. He turned and looked
at her, and then, without a word, proceeded up the trail.
For the next half hour, they said nothing to one another,
and the only sound from them was the muffled thump
of hiking boots on the pine needles and the rhythmic
click of trekking poles. The pea had almost completely dried
on her shorts when she finally spoke, Look, I need
you to stop and explain to me exactly what happened
back there. Are we in danger? If that was what
I think it was. Are they gonna kill us? I
feel like running all the way back to the car.
He turned and said, as smoothly as he could. You
know how I like to listen to that guy Steve
from up in Canada on YouTube and that fellow from
Mississippi who tells all those stories. If you hear enough
of those encounters, you'll notice a pattern. I'd never thought
i'd see a sasquatch, much less actually have an encounter.
Are we in danger? I seriously doubt it, and think
about it. They're the top tier predators, and if they
wanted us dead, you'd never see them coming. The whole
time we've been together. You thought I was enough for
believing in this stuff, haven't you? What do you think now? Yeah?
But baseball? She said lightly. That was spontaneous, and I'm
not sure why I did that. He once again started
up the trail over his shoulder. He said to her,
In all likelihood, they will pay us a visit tonight.
We should probably leave the pop tarts out for them.
I hope they like brown sugar cinnamon. November sixteen, twenty twelve,
I was in Lafayette County, Mississippi, raccoon hunting with my
dad on public land. It was a good spot with
a lot of logging roads, fire lanes in areas, a
big timber that we'd been hunting for the ten years prior.
It was especially good for my dad since he'd had
a stroke years before and the old logging roads allowed
him away to get to where the dog had The
raccoons treed if it weren't too deep in the woods.
This particular night, we had turned our dog Nikki loose twice,
and she'd treed raccoons both times. We were proud of
that dog. It was only about ten thirty, and my dad,
full of excitement and unwilling to call it a night,
said let's turn her loose one more time. We pulled
over to a spot we'd never stopped at before, and
just as I opened the truck door, a big old
hoota all cut loose. We sat there and listened for
a minute before I got Nicki out on a leash.
I walked her about thirty yards down the woods in
the direction I wanted her to hunt, and then I
turned her loose. She tried to ten or fifteen yards
in front of me and stopped and perked her ears up.
Three codies started barking somewhere close by to our left,
and two more answered to our right. I turned my
light down low, knowing Nicki normally waited for the codies
to settle down before taking off, and that's when it
began to howl. It was like flipping a switch. The
second it started howling, the code went dead silent. I
turned my light off. At this point, I couldn't identify
what was making the sound, but I knew I didn't
want to draw its attention. I'm guessing it, whatever it was,
was less than one hundred yards away. It howled a
total of three times, each one so loud I can't
even begin to describe it. When it finally stopped, I
realized the entire woods were completely silent. There were no animals,
no frogs, no crickets, no night birds, nothing but silence.
I turned my light back on and saw Nicki laying
flat on the ground with her head between her front legs.
She was shaking uncontrollably. Come here, Nicki, I called softly.
She gave me a pitiful look and then used her
front legs to drag herself over to me, like her
back legs were paralyzed. She was still trembling out of
control when I put her back on the leash. I
turned my light back up on bright, and we started
walking back to the truck. And that's when I heard
what sounded like tree limbs popping and shaking. It was
a long thirty yards getting back out of the woods.
What in the world was that, Dad asked when we
made it back I don't know, I answered, but according
to Nicky, it's time to go. Later, I found a
recording of the Ohio Howel on YouTube and played it
for my dad. He got all excited, thinking I'd recorded
what we heard that night. I told him this was
a different recording, but we both agreed it was identical
to the sound we heard that night.