Speaker 1: Listening to your channel has given me the courage to
get this off of my chest. It happened in two
thousand and three. I was living in a small town
in the central Piedmont of North Carolina. There was a
modest brick home and a somewhat secluded area and a
heavily wooded part of Iredale County. My nearest neighbor was
two hundred yards away through a small patch of pine trees.
Aside from two corn fields directly across the road, everywhere
else was a mess of older hardwood trees. White tailed
deer were abundant the most every evening they would come
and eat at the edge of the fields. I made
it a habit to sit on my porch and watch
the deer before dark whenever I could. Twice I remember
seeing them getting spooked and scramble across the field after
hearing an extremely loud sound that I can only describe
as part moan and part scream. At the time, I
wondered if the Mountain lions were in this part of
the country. My neighbor was a few years older than me.
He lived in a beautiful one hundred year old Victorian
style farmhouse that was situated on fifteen acres adjacent to
my land. His name was James. He was ex military,
having been discharged in nineteen ninety nine. We were pretty
good friends. When he was away, I'd take care of
his animals and property, and he'd return the favor. When
I had to leave town for work. One Saturday afternoon,
James called and asked if I wanted to do some
shooting with my new air rifle. Of course, I replied,
it was early October and the squirrel season was coming up.
It was five o'clock that Saturday evening when I walked
over to his house. James had an old barn that
sat across the road and approximately seventy yards from his porch.
He hung an old cast iron frying pan from a
tree that overhung a four wheeler trail beside the barn
that we normally used for twenty two rifles, but we
thought it might be fun to use it with the
air rifle. We dialed in the scope and took turns
shooting at the frying pan. It proved to be an
easy task to make it ring pretty loud with each shot.
I had just made it ding three times in a
row and had the rifle in my lap. When we
heard it ding again, well, James looked at me and
I looked back at him. We were at a loss.
It dinged two more times and stopped. James took the
rifle and fired twice, and made it ding twice and
sat it in his lap. The pan dinged two more times.
James looked over at the pan in the fading light
and said, someone's messing with us. He went inside came
back with a huge battery powered spotlight. He said, let's
go find out who it is. We crossed the road
and walked over to where the frying pan was hanging
at the start of the trail. He shined the light
into the edge of the woods, but we didn't see
anything at all. Who's there, he yelled into the darkness.
Limbs crunched twenty yards to the right of the trail.
James swung the light toward the sound, and we both
saw eyes shine that was impossibly large. They were a
good seven feet from the ground. It was then that
we heard no. We actually felt a low, menacing growl
that vibrated through my chest. It was like a jake
break on an eighteen wheeler, rattling my insides. We looked
at each other and decided we needed the safety of
his porch. The next day, James went over to the
frying pan and found several smooth rocks on the ground
beneath our target. They had to have come from the creek,
but the creek was a quarter mile into the woods.
I'm thinking sasquatch like to take target practice too. I
lived there until twenty and fourteen, and only once after
the frying pan incident do I remember hearing a strange,
laughing type howl one night. I'm sure I'm not the
only one in North Carolina who has heard these creatures.
After all these years, I thought I would have been
able to forget about it, but that bone shaking growl
is something I guess I'll never forget. I feel better
for having told it, and thanks for letting me get
it off my chest. I do a lot of driving
with my job, and I have two brothers that are
truck drivers. When I found your channels, I told my
brothers and we all subscribe. Well, thank you very much.
I really appreciate that the story I'm about to tell
you I have kept secret for thirty years. I've never
shared this with anyone. It's always troubled me, and you'll
see wine never told anyone. I'm in my mid fifties now,
But when I was nineteen years old, I lived in
the mountains of North Carolina. I hunted on public land,
and I had a place I liked to go that
was so hard to get to that I've never seen
anyone else up there. It was several miles from the
closest parking area, and you had to climb up the
side of a ridge to get there. The first time
I went there, the squirrels would hang down from the
tree limbs, just curious as to what I was. I
don't think they had ever seen a human before. Once
at the top, there's a leveled off place where a
huge oak tree grew and you could see clearly for
one hundred yards before it got thick with laurel bushes. Again,
I was up there on a Saturday and I found
where an old, hollowed out oak had broken off five
feet above the ground. One side had a huge crack
running down to the ground. And I got inside and
even hunkered down, and I could see the open area clearly.
It was a perfect blind and I was standing in
this blind watching for deer when I heard a commotion
coming from the other side of the ridge north of me.
I squatted down and I watched through the big crack.
A small dough came over the ridge toward me, but
I knew immediately something was wrong with her because she
was dragging her back legs. My first thought was that
she'd been shot by another hunter and crippled. And then
I heard something else coming across the ridge, and it
was not being quiet at all, and I couldn't believe
what I was seeing. A reddish colored si squatch five
to six feet tall came across the ridge. I'd never
seen one of these, and although I was only nineteen
at the time, I had spent an amazing amount of
time in the woods. I'd even camped up here with
no fire or tent. Ever, I had friends who had sightings,
but I never believed them. I thought they had just
misinterpreted what they had seen. But here one was right
in front of me and only sixty yards away. The
deer was trying to drag herself away, but the squatch
would grab her and drag her away's back and then
let her go again. Every time it would grab her,
she let out. I guess you would call it a
sort of a scream. It was hard to watch. Then
the squatch put its foot right on the doe's head,
and then it looked up into the sky and started laughing.
Now I know this sounds crazy, but that's what it
was doing. It was laughing. And then it let go
of the dough and when she got so far away,
it dragged her back. And this went on for twenty minutes.
The more I watched this, the more angry I got.
This beast was torturing this deer, and he was enjoying it.
I decided that I'd had enough, and I decided to
shoot the deer, and if this thing came after me,
I would put it down as well. And I pulled
my rifle up and it put its foot on the
doe's head and it started laughing again. I don't know
what happened in my thought process, but when I pulled
the trigger, it was at the squatch, not the deer.
I put around in its left die and it dropped instantly.
My honest first thought was, damn, it was a good shot.
My second thought was I need to reload. I slid
another round in my seven bag and then I heard
a freight train coming from the same ridge that the
dough and squatch had come from. Topping the ridge was
a huge, nine foot tall monster. She was huge and
solid black. She stood only for a second before seeing
what had to be her child. She jumped over to
the younger one, and she knelt down, and she pushed
the smaller one and made a kind of cooing noise,
and then she made a blood curdling roar. Right then
the dough tried to get up again. She was on
it in a second, and she picked up the dough
and started beating her against a nearby tree, like someone
beating out a rug. I could barely breathe, and I
sunk lower and lower where I was. This thing was
throwing a tantrum like no other. She finished with a
doe who was in no way still alive, and started
ripping up three to six inch saplings and breaking them
like toothpicks. After twenty minutes of running back and forth,
she started to wear down, and she went back to
the smaller one and laid down beside it, and then
started what I can only describe is crying. And it's
one of the saddest things I've ever witnessed. Her moaning
will haunt me for the rest of my life. She
picked up her child and went back over the ridge,
howling with sadness, and as her wails of pain gradually
faded off in the distance, I got up and I
left the area. I've never been so scared in my
life since then, and I've never been back to that area,
but I do still hunt. I've never shared this because
I'm ashamed of what I did. I'm certainly not excusing
my actions, but anyone in my shoes could have done
the same thing. I'm not saying they would have, but
they could have. Well that's all I have to say.
Thanks for reading my story. Keep up the great work.
We really love the Steve Lilly stories. And he's saying
he signs the email. In nineteen seventy four, my family
had an experience with Bigfoot near Marango Caves in Indiana.
I was only four years old then. I don't remember
everything about the event, but the family has talked about
it for years. We lived on her road with all
our family, and there were several houses lying down this road,
and we were all kin. My aunt Chloe lived alone
across the road from us. Her husband had died years earlier,
and at almost ninety years old, she did pretty good
for herself. She was a tough old country girl who
was never afraid to work. She would put in a
nice garden every year all by herself. Sometimes she needed help,
and my family was always there when she needed us.
Late one night, we heard a gunshot from her yard.
My father ran across to see what was going on.
On the back porch was Aunt Chloe, with smoke rolling
out of the shotgun barrel. Aunt Chloe, what are you
shooting at It's a big hairy man was out here
eating mightamatis. I never saw so much hair on a man.
We lived a way out in the country, and with
our area being inhabited by family, we never saw anyone
out there who didn't belong or wasn't family. A stranger
in one of our yards required us to see who
it was, and people sure didn't walk around our gardens
at night picking and eating vegetables. My father looked around
and the garden had been trampled. Some of the tomato
plants looked bare of fruit. Aunt Chloe wasn't lying or
imagining this. Something had been there. My father and my
uncle Red told Aunt Chloe to get inside and lock
the door. Then they took off in the woods behind
the house looking for this man. They found a path
where the man had apparently traveled. It looked like an
elephant had torn a path behind Aunt Chloe's house. Limbs
were broken up as high as seven feet, but they
never found the man. The night finally settled down and
everyone went back to sleep, but they were on alert
for a few days. The topic of discussion was about
the hairy man Aunt Chloe had shot, but as far
as I know, an event like this never happened again.
After this, my father watched and read anything in everything
to do with Bigfoot or other cryptids. I don't remember
a time when he was not interested in the subject.
That one event captured my father's imagination for the rest
of his life. And you know, that's how it goes.
I mean, we've got a couple of stories just in
this podcast where people are they see these things and
they're consumed. This man didn't even see it. He just
knew that his aunt had shot at one and it
still consumed him, and he read about it for the
rest of his life. It fascinates me how these experiences
really captivate people and set them on a road of
almost obsession to learn and read about these things. It's
amazing to me. That's one thing that I've really gathered
through the three years that I've put these stories together.
When that dog gets on this trail, it won't get
off of it, if you know what I mean. In
the nineteen sixties, the Texas county I was born and
raised in covered five hundred square miles. We had one
school for the entire county, and all twelve grades were
tached buildings connected by the cafeteria. At that time, all
of the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex had a population of
one point five million people. The same area now has
seven point six million people as of twenty eighteen, and
now I'm thinking it's probably over ten million. Fort Worth
was the closest large town to us, and it was
a full day trip. Only once or twice a year
would we make that trip. We didn't have indoor plumbing
or running water, and that's how it was for ranchers
in rural Texas. We lived on a section of land
that had been in my family since the Texas Revolutionary
War when it was deeded to my family for participation
in that war. We owned one square mile of land.
September of nineteen sixty five was unusually wet. Our property
bordered the Brazos River and there were several runs in
creeks that had been flooded for many weeks. It was
impossible for me to meet up with my closest friend
that lived nearly a mile away across the past in
the wooded creek ravines. So one day I finished my
chores when I got home from school, and I saddled
up my horse to meet up with Eric in an
open area between our properties. It was a lowland area
and it flooded with only modest runoff from the rain.
It was fenced off to keep our livestock from getting
into and sinking in the mud. Yes, cows are that stupid.
I saddled up and was headed to see Eric. When
I reached their usual meeting point and he wasn't there.
That was not altogether unusual, due to our chores taking
longer some days than others. Three gates and forty five
minutes later, I arrived at his house, where he was
finishing up work on a tractor with his father. It
was also about that time that his mother rang the
dinner bell for them to come and eat. I was
invited to join them, as was the custom, and we
washed up and took a seat at the table. While
we were eating, the rain started again, and I knew
my ride home would be a wet one. Yet it
was nothing I had not done. Before I finished eating,
and I thanked missus Emma for my dinner, and I
asked to be excused to make my way back home.
I was asked to spend the night or Eric's father
would give me a ride home. I could pick up
my horse from the barn the next day. They said, well,
I was pondering what I wanted to do, and I
remembered that I had not removed the saddle from Ivan,
my horse. Eric and his father walked with me out
to the barn, and the rain had quit and the
sky was clear and a full moon shone overhead. I
could cut my travel time in half if I went
straight through the ravines. It was a straight line from
where I was to our house. I told Eric's father
that I would take the north Pass and that would
take me two hours. And I told Eric that I
would see him at school the next day. Ivan and
I took off at a full gallop across the pasture
nearest the bar, and reached the first gate in no time.
After closing the gate, I turned south. I reached the
south end of the pasture, and I turned east where
I came to a fence line. There's a cut in
the fence that Eric and I used all the time.
The bright moonlight was blocked by the trees, but still
I knew my way, and my worry was how much
runoff there had been from the rain. I knew the
first creek crossing would be the hardest. The banks were
soft and usually hard for a horse to climb, but
the second crossing would be easier. The creek bottom was
rock and gravel there. When I got to the first
creek crossing, I was surprised it had not topped its banks.
It looked easier than I had anticipated. Ivan and I
made our way upstream to a point just below a
bend in the creek, where it got shallow, and Ivan
knew the route. He waded in without hesitation. On other
crossings in the past, the water was never up to
his girth strap, but this time it was now. I
pulled my feet from the stirrups and I gave him
his head. He knew where he was going, and after
crossing that creek, the barn was only a quarter mile away.
We arrived at the second creek crossing that was fifty
yards from the fence that would lead me to the barn.
The creek bank on the west side where I was
entering was low but a bit rocky, and Ivan would
sometimes place his hoof two or more times before he
was happy with his footing, and then he would take
the next step. We had a full creek in fifteen
yards to reach the other bank, and beyond that there
were mesquite trees that lined the banks, and it made
the last fifty yards completely dark. We made it to
the bank and I gave Ivan his head again and
he picked up speed to climb out of the river.
It was muscle memory for him because we had crossed
there many times. With my head down and leaning into
his climb, Ivan leveled out and trotted toward the trees.
We entered that last stretch under the darkness of the trees.
Ivan was only a horse length into the darkness, and
he stopped. Had I not been holding onto the saddle horn,
I would have launched over his head. Ivan snorted and
shook his head and started moving backwards. It was dark,
but I immediately saw what spoke to my horse. In
front of us and slightly to the right was something
I had never seen. In the saddle, my head was
over seven feet off the ground, and this head was
higher than mine. Fear is not something that comes natural
to those of us that grow up in the country,
and even at nine, I was doing my best to
evaluate my situation. I knew every inch of the ground
that I was traveling and every animal that was there,
and I had worked that land with my father from
the time I was big enough to sit on his lap.
Ivan backed up until he felt his left rear hoof
slip and he froze in place, still snorting and shaking
his head. I was trying to understand what I was seeing,
and then a lightning strike lit the area and I
could see the eight foot tall creature. The huge head
and the long arms are what imprinted in that fraction
of a second of light. I felt fear as the
thunder rumbled, and I rained Ivan to the left and
headed north along the west bank with no concern of
my own safety. My mind was still reeling and trying
to understand what I had seen. Ivan got us to
the fence line where it crossed the creek on his own,
and I turned Ivan's out down the fence line to
the gate, and I could feel my horse's urgency in
fear under me. I didn't go to the barn. I
rode right up to the back door that entered the mudroom,
and I didn't bother taking off my boots. I walked
into the house where my mother was cleaning up after dinner.
That moment she looked at me. She stopped what she
was doing, and she said, Dan, what's wrong. My father
was in earshot, and he came into the kitchen within
a few seconds. If you are a boy in the South,
there is a mistake that you will make only one time.
I do not recall my age when I made that mistake,
but I was no older than five years old, and
the only time I ever lied to my father. When
I told him the events that I just told you,
he asked me only two questions. One was to repeat
what exactly happened when Ivan stopped and started backing up.
I told her that he backed up until there was
no safe footing for him, and he continued to snort
and shake his head, even with my hands and the reins.
The second question was are you sure it was not
a man? And I told him that I was sure.
Dad walked towards me and he said, let's go in
the mudroom. He put on his boots and hat, he
strapped on his gun belt, and he grabbed a rifle.
He handed me the shotgun. Dad checked ivan over and
then he told me to meet him at the barn.
When I got there, my father had his horse, Dixie,
saddled and ready to go. And for the first time,
I asked, what is that? Dad? He lit a kerosene
lantern and he said, Dan, I don't know, but I've
heard stories about these things from grandpap Rod. Now grandpap
Rod was my grandfather. He lived till he was one
hundred and seven years old, and he died in nineteen
seventy two. We took a different route to the place.
We were heading through the north gate. I had no fear.
I was with my father. He had been a cowboy
all his life and had worked this land with his
father and his grandfather. Dad held the lantern over his
head from time to time. The floods early in the
month had left to breathe in the treetops and in
the light of the lantern, it was a surreal scene.
My father watched the ground in front of Dixie, and
then his hand raised and we stopped. My father quietly dismounted,
and when his colt in his right hand and a
lantern in the other, he made his way to where
I saw the creature. He was low and he was
following tracks on the ground. He turned the corner, going
into the woods where Ivan and I had been when
we saw it, and when he did, I lost sight
of him. I was in the dark alone again, and
it felt like an But finally I saw the lantern
light moving through the trees. Dad had it held high
over his head. Dan, come on back here, I heard
him say. I dismounted and I started walking. I could
see him just ten feet ahead of me, holding the
lantern up and looking at something in the tree. And
in the light I could see a deer had drowned
in the flood, and it was hung up in the
tree eight or ten feet up. Debris was hung in
its antlers, making its head look bigger than it was.
The body was bloated and rotting, and it smelled horrible.
We never found the creature I saw, but I think
this rotting deer is why it was there. I know
that is not the ending most people were hoping for,
but that is exactly how it happened.