Speaker 1: Here's a short story from Chris. My story begins in
nineteen eighty two, or somewhere close to that year. My
husband and I lived in the middle of seventeen hundred
acres in northwestern Sonoma County, California. We managed a horse
boarding operation with one hundred head of horses and a
few head of cattle. The driveway was about a mile
and a half long from the pavement to the gate
of the ranch. There were locks on all outer gates
and some inner gates as well. One night, I had
gone into town for something and I arrived back at
the main gate. I got out of the truck to
unlock and open the gate. I drove through, and then
exited the truck to close the gate and relock it.
As I approached the gate to close it, I heard
the most god awful scream I've ever heard. It sounded
like a woman being terrorized by something. You have to
remember this is out in the middle of nowhere. It
was also really dark out and the only lights were
from my truck. I thought about this event for a
long time, looking for an answer as to what that
scream was made by. I had no clue, but the
hair on the back of my neck stood at attention,
and I ran closing and locking the gate, and I
sprinted to the open door of the truck and I
tailed it out of there. I continued to think about
that sound, and I could not find an answer. I
knew just about every sound by critters in the area,
but this one stumped me for sure. In twenty and sixteen,
my oldest son and I were in an apartment living
room watching shows that were all about Bigfoot. I was
at my desk multitasking when I heard a scream from
the television. The hair on the back of my neck
stood up all over again, and major goosebumps popped up
all over my body. There was a soundtrack playing on
the program of Bigfoot Sounds, and what gave me this
reaction was exactly what I heard thirty four years ago.
There was absolutely no doubt about it. It had to
have been Bigfoot on the hill above the gate. I
was totally amazed to learn of this, and oh, yes,
I do believe in Bigfoot. While I was in elementary
school in nineteen seventy one, I saw the legend of
Boggy Creek, and I later read Peter Burns's little paperback
book on Bigfoot. The North Georgia Mountains, especially the Apple Acchians,
are rich with legends and strange stories about buggers. Parents
and adults would say, don't go out at night, that's
where the booger bears come out, or don't go there,
the boogers will get you. The problem was is that
nobody would ever tell you what a booger was or
how it looked, so we thought it was only a
scary story. In the spring of nineteen seventy three, a
game warden went missing overnight and was found on a
rural road walking the next morning by a passing car.
He was exhausted and confused, with his clothes torn, and
he couldn't remember what had happened. It was later said
that he claimed to have seen a tall, hairy creature
with a big head and a face like a bull.
This story was buzzing around for about two weeks, and
suddenly all talk of it went quiet. We think he
either quit or the state relocated him. In March of
nineteen seventy four, I was fifteen years old. I didn't
drink or smoke or anything like that. I was a
straight arrow football player and not the type to tell stories.
About eight thirty PM. I was riding in a car
with three other guys and the driver was about two
years older than us. We were spotlighting deer illegally, but
not for the purpose of shooting one. We were just
checking them out. We were going down the main road
and it was barely paved and it was full of potholes.
As we rolled along about ten to fifteen miles an hour,
we spotted a buck and two doughs up on a
chest high red clay bank with bushes and overgrowth partially
blocking our view. This was at a four way crossroads
where the very narrow, dirt right hand road led off
into a completely deserted forest with no houses. On the
left was another dirt gravel road with an old church
on the corner. Further down that road were a couple
of farms. A river runs down one side that is
fed by the Amicalola Falls, which is located at the
head of the Appalachian Trail. Ironically, there is an area
of the river known as the Devil's Elbow where moonshiners,
car thieves, pot growers, and hunters were alleged to have
gone missing over the years. This is the same area
where the game warden went missing in nineteen seventy three.
I was a passenger in the rear seat and I
couldn't really see the deer. We stopped and the guy
in front of me got out with a spotlight. It
was an old Deeese cell, and he shined the deer.
Apparently the deer had been running and were tired because
they did in the haul, but when we lit them up.
About three or four seconds after exiting the back seat,
I heard a crack or a pop forty five degrees
to my right in the forest. My friend, who was
sitting next to me heard it and said, oh, man,
I bet that's a game warden. I said, that's one
noisy game warden. He then began urging the driver to
get us ode of there. About that time came some
more noises, like something large moving through the woods. I
instantly thought it was a bear because a five hundred
pounder was killed in our area, but bears are known
to be very quiet when walking, so I started saying
let's go, and the hare started standing up on my
arms and neck, and I began to feel sick with fear.
About that time, about seventy five or eighty feet to
my right, at a fifteen to twenty degree angle, I
watched a huge hooking figure cross that road from bank
to bank in three forward leading large steps while swinging
its arms. From the sound it was making, it appeared
to be approaching the deer, and at the moment they
bolted out of there. Now let's pause for a moment,
as I'm frozen with fear and it seems like time
has slowed down. My friend to the left says, what
the hell was that? And now we're both saying let's go.
Let's go and have one foot in the car. And
then as I look up on the top of the embankment,
I see the outline of a figure move slowly to
get behind a tree where its face was obscured. My friend,
with a spotlight starts slowly getting in the car while
me and the other dude dive in the back seat.
At this time, my older and more stubborn friend pulls
out a twenty two pistol and says, who are you
talk to me or I'm going to shoot. Now we're
screaming let's go, as he again says tell me who
you are. I'm gonna shoot. I think my friend in
front of me still has the light pointed at it
over the door, even though he is now back in
the car. At that instant, we hear a bang bang
as the driver shoots up in the air. He immediately
throws the pistol down and jumps in the car as
we spin out of their sideways. Now I'm shaking all
over so bad that my feet are actually tapping, and
everybody but the driver is talking at once. I don't
remember who asks first. I think the guy in front,
but he said, what did you see? The driver is
silent as we drove until we found a closed gas
station and we pulled over. He got out and went
to the drink machine and down to coke, but he
still wouldn't talk. Now my friend is driving us all home,
and it's about ten pm, and we're planning to go
back the next day to look around in the daylight.
We also agreed to tell our families, minus the part
about the gunfire. Of course. After we drop off my
friend in the back, we're headed to my house. My
friend in front says to the driver, hey, man, what
did you see? Nothing but silence until we got to
my house, where my friend in the front says, you
saw its face, didn't you, he very quietly said. I
sat there for a minute waiting for more, but it
was obvious he wasn't talking, and it was getting late
on that school night. I then had to get out
and walk up the long path to the dark backside
of a house which sat at the foot of the mountain.
When I got inside, my mom noticed that there was
something wrong and her first question was has somebody been drinking? Now?
That was all I needed, so as I finally managed
to tell my story, my mom replied, huh, it's probably
the devil. But my dad, who grew up on a
farm only a few miles from this incident, sat silent
looking at the TV. It was his older generation on
both sides of the family who used the term booger.
Growing up on a farm, he knew all too well
about booger stories and later said that he used to
hear the strange screaming sounds in the woods. They always
blamed it on the panthers, but they were all hunted
and killed by the nineteen hundreds. The few other people
that I shared this story with laughed and ridiculed me,
so I shut my mouth until nineteen eighty. The following day,
We all headed back, and our driver still wasn't going
to talk. We got to the location and we couldn't
find footprints, but we did. We'd find broken branches and
impressions in the ground. Then we got to the tree
where its face was hidden. A prominent, crooked limb stuck
out and bent upward. I could stand flat footed and
reach the limb with my arm almost extended, and that
put the creature at about seven foot ten inches or
possibly more. We went back two times at night to
look stupid and heavily armed, but found nothing, thank God.
About two months later, I was in church and I
saw a girl that lived on that same road, but
closer to the main highway. I told her what had happened,
and a very serious expression overtook her face. She informed
me that it had run across the road in front
of her one night while coming home from a football game.
She also said that her uncle saw it coming out
of his chicken house about a year ago. I sat
there silently, thinking, Oh God, why have you allowed such
things to exist. In nineteen eighty, a new subdivision was
being built near our encounter. A story started circulating that
the first resident of the subdivision came home one night
to find his back door broken down and his kitchen ransacked.
Nothing was stolen, everything was just destroyed. I didn't know
the man, but of all things, he was related to
my friend who drove the night of iron encounter before
church one morning. I again asked him, six years later
if he had seen its face that night, and he
nodded yes, and then he looked away. My opinion is
that the sight of it really scrambled his eggs and
he didn't want to deal with it. As far as
I know, nothing ever came of the vandalized house incident,
as that story died quickly, just like the game warden story.
For some reason, I told my dad a story that
a very peculiar aunt told me at the age of
five or six. She and my uncle lived in a
house on top of a big hill at the foot
of a mountain about seven miles from this incident. She
claimed that while rocking on her front porch one night,
a large, hairy man with a very ugly face came
around the corner and stood motionless looking at her about
eight feet away. She said that she felt paralyzed with
fear and could only cut her eyes to look at it,
she was unable to call out to my uncle sitting
in the living room behind only a foot away. She
claimed that she closed her eyes very tight and began praying,
and in a few seconds she opened her eyes and
the creature was gone. I remember her saying his face
looked like it was hit by a hammer. I asked
my dad if she was crazy, to which he replied,
folks thought so well, being able to share this as therapeutic. Thankfully,
we now have a bigfit museum about an hour north
of me. I correspond regularly with the owner and the staff,
and they say every week at least one person comes
in to share a story. I was honored to have
met both Scott Carpenter and David Polattis there. I hope
my story wasn't too boring. I just wonder how many
people from my area have even better stories to tell,
but they fear the ridicule. Back in nineteen eighty, I
worked second shift at one of those factories where they
work you like a dog, treat you like dirt, and
they pay you very little for it. We had two bosses.
One was a drunk and the other was a jerk.
I hadn't worked there long when they hired Gary. We
were about the same age, and we both had a
wife and child to care for. Many nights after work
we'd sit out in the parking lot and talk about
our wives and complain about work. And when Gary talked
about his wife, his eyes lit up and a smile
came over his face. I never met his wife, but
she must have been really something special. Most Friday nights
into Saturday mornings, someone would bring a cooler of beer.
When you get off work at two in the morning,
you just can't go straight home and go right to sleep.
Most of the time, you'd have to unwine when you
got home, so kicking back in the parking lot for
a while help. On one of those nights, Gary said
he needed some help putting brakes on his truck. I said, yeah,
come on over Saturday afternoon be there about too. That way,
if we need something in town, we'll have time to
go get it. Saturday rolled around and Gary showed up
at my house and I took one look at him,
and I knew immediately that something was wrong. I didn't
push the issue, but I did let him know that
if there was anything I could do for him, all
he had to do was let me know, and then
I made sure he wasn't angry with me. I didn't
want to be working under his t if he was
pissed off at me. An hour and a half later,
with the brakes installed and the truck ready to go,
I asked Gary if he wanted a beer. We went
out to the backyard and we chugged down a few.
After a while, he told me that his wife was
leaving him. He was heartbroken. I really didn't know what
to say, but I kept talking, installing him as long
as I could. I didn't want him to leave and
drive drunk and then wind up in jail. He was
a cheap drunk, three beers in and he was seeing
two of me. Damn, that sounds like me. I decided
what better way to distract him than to do a
little target practice. It probably wasn't the best idea, but
it worked. I got my twenty two and I set
up some targets, and a couple hours later he seemed
to be okay. And that's when he went out to
his truck and he pulled out a pistol. I don't
remember if it was a thirty or three point fifty seven.
He unlocked the toolbox on the back and got out
a box of shells, and we shot half the box.
We were real crack shots. If we hit a target,
it was by accident. Another hour went by and he
said he wanted to get on home. He was still upset,
but in a lot better shape than he had been,
so I figured he'd be okay. As he drove away,
I sat a little prayer for him that he and
his wife would somehow work things out. And I was
cleaning up and I happened to notice that Gary had
left that half a box of shells on the table.
So I put him in the plastic bag and stuck
them in my truck so I could give him back
to him on Monday. And when Monday came around, there
was no Gary at work. At lunchtime, I called him,
but he didn't answer. Well. I was worried, so I
drove over to his house after work. His truck was there,
but it was so late I decided not to stop.
On Tuesday, Gary showed up for work and it was
apparent that things hadn't gotten any better if it wasn't
work related. He didn't speak. After work. We went out
to the parking lot and once everybody else left, he
opened up and he started talking. When Gary had gotten
home Saturday, the whole house was empty. His wife was gone,
he said. He went after her, but he realized there
was nothing he could do. He was full of rage
and hatred and just started driving around. Pretty soon he
found himself out on some old logging road. He didn't
really know where. He just kept driving, and then it
started raining and the road got slick. Well, he was
driving too fast and he wound up in a ditch.
There was no way that he was going to get
himself out of there without any help. He was looking
around and he noticed a pond down by an embankment.
He grabbed his pistol and he walked down and he
sat on a stump by the water. Then he started crying.
He decided to end his life right there. He let
out a loud, agonizing scream, and he put the pistol
in his mouth and he pulled the trigger. Click. He
realized he left the shells in the truck, so he
went back up, opened the toolbox and grabbed a box
of shells, and then he went back down to the
pond and sat back down on the stump and raised
the pistol up to his mouth. Just then a rock
about the size of a basketball splashed into the water
and it soaked him. He turned around, but no one
was there. There was no sound at all, just in
eerie silence. Suddenly something ripped through the silence with a
scream as loud as a freight train. That was followed
by rumbling in the bush. And at this point Gary
was halfway back to the truck and he could hear
something closing in on him. In a panic, he jumped
into the truck that was now sitting back on the
road and facing the direction from whence he came. He
got a glimpse of the creature before he tore off
down the road. He said, it was a bigfoot. I
walked over to my truck and I pulled out the
plastic bag with a half a box of shells in it,
the ones he'd left at my house, and I handed
them to him. The look on his face was priceless.
He went over and got the box of shells that
he'd had at the pond. The boxes looked the same,
but the shells he had were for a forty five,
No way they would fit in a thirty eight or
a three point fifty seven. Gary looked up at me
and he said, Bigfoot saved my life. Perhaps, I said,
or maybe he just didn't want you messing up as
water in hole. Gary said he'd never been so scared
in his life. He couldn't understand why the thing let
him go. It could have had him anytime it wanted.
He told me how he'd gone some ten miles before
it sank in, that his truck had been pulled out
of the ditch and was facing back the way he
had come. Well, I took a look at his truck.
It did have mud on it. There were smears of
mud on the bumper, but no real damage. Thinking back,
I realized that those mud smears were right where you'd
hook the chains if you were pulling it out of
a ditch. Maybe not chains, but maybe some massive hands.
Gary wasn't the kind of guy to make up stories.
I never remember us ever talking about Bigfoot or ghosts
or anything like that. Back then, Bigfoot was not a
big deal. We never really took that stuff seriously. But
now Gary is a believer and I'm a bit more
open minded. Two weeks before Christmas, there was a big
layoff and we both lost our jobs. I lost contact
with Gary, but I heard his wife went through with
a divorce and he moved back to Tennessee.