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