Speaker 1: This story took place in nineteen seventy eight, when I
was fourteen years old. I grew up in the deep
woods of the Catskill Mountains, about thirty miles north of
Hunter Mountain ski Resort. My grandfather's five hundred acre farm
bordered many square miles of the state forest. It was
a dense wilderness, crisscrossed with dirt roads and logging roads,
and dotted with a few old, abandoned farms. It was
a remote and desolate area. I've spent my whole life hunting, trapping,
and fishing those woods. This encounter happened in late October
on a clear, moonlit night. I was raccoon hunting with
my uncle. He had some very well trained raccoon dogs
that always managed to tree at least three or four
coons every time we went out. It was quite cold
out that night, and two hours in they were uncharacteristically unsuccessful.
Finally they started bark hot on a trail. We were
maybe a mile from my grandfather's farm when we started
in the direction of their barking. The dogs were across
the gully up on the next ridge, and my uncle
and I were walking up an old dirt road that
would eventually take us up to an old abandoned farmhouse.
From there, it would be a straight walk down across
the gully and up to the ridge where the dogs
had by now treed the raccoon. It was two am
and we were about two hundred yards from the farmhouse
when I noticed loud footsteps one hundred yards off to
my right in the woods. I didn't think much of
it at first, because I figured it was a big
deer or a bear, but as we continued up the road,
I noticed it getting closer. What's more, I could tell
it was walking on two feet. My first thought was
that it was another hunter, but that made no sense.
Only raccoon hunters hunt at night, and there were no
other dogs in those woods. Then I noticed how heavy
the steps sounded, crunching branches, and being quite obvious, I
asked my uncle if he was hearing what I was hearing,
but he said no. He had served two tours in Vietnam,
so his hearing was bad from all the concussion blasts
during combat. He had a hard time hearing low frequency
noises like footsteps in the leaves. He was a real badass,
with many confirmed kills and multiple gun wounds and hand
to hand combat knife wounds, so he wasn't afraid of much.
He'd also grown up in these mountains, as did three
generations of our family. He told me it was my
imagination getting away from me, so I just said, well, okay,
and I kept walking. I was starting to get nervous, though.
All we had were our twenty two rifles and a
twenty two caliber pistol. Whatever was coming towards us sounded big,
and they weren't going to be much protection against whatever
this thing was. It started walking parallel to us, while
edging closer to the road, until it was obviously really close,
and my uncle finally put his hand on my chest
and whispered for me to stop. We stopped, and it
continued about two more steps, and then it stopped too.
Now my uncle knew there was definitely something out there,
maybe thirty feet to our right. We started walking again,
and so did it again. My uncle put his arm
up to stop us, and just like before, it took
a couple of more steps and it stopped as well.
I could feel the apprehension from my uncle. The full
moon was bright enough to light the road, but we
could not see into the dense forest. My uncle shined
his flashlight into the woods, but they were just so
thick he couldn't see anything. Let's keep moving, he said.
It continued to follow us. Now I could tell my
uncle was getting real nervous. This thing was bipedal and
it was large. By the time when we reached the farmhouse,
it was only a few yards away. We quickly got
up on the broken down porch and turned to face
our stalker. The beast kept coming. Just when it was
about to break into the clearing in front of the house,
it stopped. We stood there, not knowing what was going
to happen. Next, he shined the flashlight into the woods
and could vaguely see a large figure just inside the
tree line. It was impossible to make out any detail
other than it was very dark in color and at
least three feet taller than my uncle, who was about
six foot two. This thing was massive. It filled the
air with a musky stench, and for the first time
in my life, I could tell that my uncle was
actually afraid. Suddenly, it started to walk to the right,
down through the woods, away from the house. We could
hear it leaving as it stomped down the hill. Until
we could not hear it anymore. We waited ten minutes,
listening for any more movement. It was silent, so we
started down the gully up to the ridge where the
dogs were still barking. We got there without further incident,
shot the coon, bagged it, and in decided to call
it a night. Although we didn't see or hear anything again,
we noticed the woods were unnaturally quiet, like they were
devoid of wildlife. The dogs were acting strange, too, They
kept sniffing the air and whining all the way back
to the truck. We'd never seen the mac like this before.
My uncle sold all his coon dogs shortly after that
and didn't hunt at night anymore. When people ask him
why he quit coon hunting, he tell them he wasn't
making enough money on the pelts to make it worth
his wild I knew that wasn't true. Back then, pelts
on a big coon so for forty five dollars more
than enough to make pursuing that hobby worthwild If I
asked my uncle what he thought it was that night,
he won't talk about that, not even to me. He
rarely hunts during the daytime anymore, neither do I. For
that matter. I had seen very large barefootprints in the
snow when I was trapping for muskrat a few years earlier,
so I'm pretty sure I know what was stalking us
on that cold October night. If it wasn't Bigfoot, what
could it have been. I've had other encounters. I've smelled
him and since his presence, but never really actually seen
one clearly. But those are stories for another time. My
account of this event is exactly as it happened. I
would swear on my children. They are a fact. I
appreciate having an outlet to share my experience and knowing
there are others who have had similar encounters. I don't
fill alone on this subject anymore. Bigfoot is alive and well.
My cousin from West Tennessee was visiting me this past weekend.
We got to talking about Bigfoot, and I shared some
of your videos with her. She didn't say much that night,
although I do think she enjoyed the videos. The next morning, however,
she shared the story with me. It was about something
that happened to her daddy way back in the nineteen forties.
Back in those days, people walked everywhere they went and
rural areas cars were rare and the roads were not
well maintained. Walking was the most natural method of transportation.
One night, as my uncle was walking past an old cemetery,
he glanced over and saw something. Couldn't quite make it out,
but he thought it might be a really tall person.
The person seemed to be leaning up against a tree
at the edge of a clearing, and it wasn't moving,
nor did he, and judging by his height, he thought
it must be a man, and it acknowledged my uncle's presence. Naturally,
he called out to the man, but again it didn't respond.
He thought, and maybe this was someone who was in
trouble and needed help. Maybe this was someone he knew,
and therefore he absolutely could not pass without offering his assistance.
So he walked over to whoever this was. He reached
out and put his hand on the man's arm. Immediately
he knew this was a long, muscular, hair covered arm,
too much hair to be human. Before he could recover
from his shock or react in any way, this creature
turned and ran away into the woods, leaving my uncle
standing there dumbfounded. My cousin had heard this story all
over life, but the term bigfoot and sasquatch had never
been used. No one had heard those words when her
daddy had the encounter. Later when people started using them,
it just never occurred to anyone to associate those words
with what he had seen. My cousin now thinks this
is exactly what her daddy encountered, though, based on the
descriptions I've give given her of what these things look
like and the stories she heard on your videos, she
is sure it had to be a bigfoot, and I'm
inclined to agree. This all took place in McNary County, Tennessee.
Some of your listeners might recognize that as being Beaufort
Pusser's Neck of the woods. Anyway, I thought you might
enjoy hearing this little story, and it is true. When
I was young, I spent most of my time in
the woods. I lived with my mom and dad out
in the country. My grandma and Grandpapy lived just over
in the next county as the crow flies. It wasn't
far at all, and I spent a lot of time
at their house as well. I remember my Grandma always
telling me to stay out of one particular holler that
had a creek running through it. She always said there
was wooly boogers over there, and they'd get me. My
Grandpappy always called them wood boogers, but he always said
the same thing thing, stay out or they would get me.
Since it was one place I was told to stay
away from, I just thought Grandpapy must have had a
still back there. I said, Okay, I won't go there,
and I never did. I didn't know until years later
that they were talking about Bigfoot at home. I ran
at will over one hundred plus acres that my uncle
owned next to us. He never went there, so it
was my own little piece of heaven. There were other
big farms around us, and the farm kids roamed anywhere
and everywhere on all of these farms. Nobody much cared.
We all knew who was who's and what we could
do and what we couldn't do. And trust me, my
neighbor would whip my butt and send me home for
doing stupid stuff I wasn't supposed to be doing. When
I'd get home, my dad would whip my butt again
because the neighbors had called him. That's just how it
was in those days. That was back around nineteen seventy
two or seventy three. On my uncle's land. I was
the king. I had treehouses everywhere, and I had underground
forts and tunnels all over. I made a big clearing
out of those woods and built me a lean to
to camp out in. I even had a fire pit
ringed with big rocks, and it was a cool setup.
In summer. I lived in those woods more than at home.
My mom and dad work, so the woods were home
to me. I'd get up in the morning, eat a
bowl of cereal and make myself a pile of pbn
jy sandwiches and wrap them up and grab a couple
of apples or bananas and put it all in a
brown paper lunch sack, and I was set for the
day and out the door and gone. First I'd go
to the lean to and put my stashus sandwiches and
fruit in there where it was cooler. Then I became
Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett, not head off to build
a new tunnel or add on to a treehouse. One day,
I went back to the lean to to get my lunch,
but I couldn't. My lunch was gone. I had to
go back home and make more sandwiches. It really hacked
me off. Somebody stole my lunch and I don't remember
spending a lot of time in the woods. After that,
I spent more time with my grandpa and Grandpapy. Somewhere
around this time, I started having a bed wetting problem.
I've never had any problems before. I also started having
this very same nightmare over and over. In my dream,
I would run into our living room and the front
door would be wide open. Through the window, i'd see
our refrigerator out in the lawn. The door would be
open and the light was on inside it. Our food
was laying out in the snow, and I would hear
my dad yelling and fighting with someone or something. It
would scream back really loud, and Dad would holler at
whatever it was. Later, we moved just over up the
road from my grandma and Grandpa's place. There were woods
behind our new house, and one day while I was
out in them, I ran up on two boys about
my age. They lived about a mile or two back
on another road. We worked in Tobacco and hey in
the summer, so when I saw an old Harley, I
bought it for cheap, and my dad helped me fix
it up so I could ride it back and forth
to work on various farms. I used to ride it
to Grandma and Grandpa's house as well. A few years later,
when I was fifteen or sixteen, my mom and dad
went out of town. I called my band and said,
let's practice at my house. Before long, it was a
full out party, live band and all, and there were
girls everywhere. I was drinking some bourbon. Plus I'd been
playing for an hour or two. I needed a bathroom break.
There was a line at both of them, so I
walked out back through the garage into the dark. I
was relieving myself in front of the garage when my
brother must have had the same idea, but instead of
sneaking out into the dark, he came out loud and
flip on the lights and throwing the screen door open
and letting it slam. And there I stood like a burglar,
caught holding the evidence. At that moment, there was a
sound of limbs breaking in leaves rustling. I looked over
and froze. My brother saw it, and he frozeen midstep.
There was a massive beast standing there, and it raised
up from behind these bushes under a sugar maple tree
in the yard, ripping branches with its head as it
stood the sugar maple couldn't have been more than forty
five or fifty feet from us, and it turned and
ran across the open backyard over to a woven wire
cattle fence with two strands of bob wire over the top.
This thing was nine feet tall, It was dirty white,
and had a head as big as a bushel basket.
We stood there and watched it until it disappeared in
the woods over the fence. It stepped over the fence
in one stride. It wasn't a jump or a bounce,
It just stepped over there. I stood, my tackle still
in my hand and my mouth hanging open. My brother
was standing beside and a little behind me. Somebody started
out the door and laughed because all he saw was
me standing there, tucking myself back into my pants, and
my brother asking what the crap that thing was, and
me telling him that it was a bigfoot. I walked
over to my harley and I got on it. I
drove off in the opposite direction from where the monster
had just ran. I rode down the road and deeper
into the sticks. Eventually I had to pull over because
I got to shaking so bad. Memories came flooding back
to me from my childhood. I was back in the
woods when I was eight or nine and waking up
in my lean to a bigfoot stepped out of it,
eating my apples with my sack lunch in its massive hand.
It turned and screamed so loud, with so much force
that it hurt me, and it shook my insides. I
think I had blocked it out. It wasn't in my
memories until I saw this white one. It all came
back to me. It had screamed at me, and I
had wet my pants. This huge, hairy, black and brown
monster screamed at me, and I honestly had no memory
of it at all. I instantly knew what the meaning
of my dream was too. My father was a World
War Two vet. He walked up out of the water
onto the Omaha Beach on d Day and walked across Europe,
fighting all the way. My father was my hero, even
after he died, and to this day he still is.
My dream represented him fighting the bigfoot in our front
yard to get back the food that was taken from me.
So there I sat out on this little road, crying
and shaking like a dog, passing a peach seed. It
took me a while, but I finally got myself back together.
I rode to town, where I passed a pool room.
There were a few bikers I knew that playing a
game of pool with one of the boys I had
met in the woods behind my house years earlier. I
decided to tell him about the massive white bigfoot I
had just seen run across my yard. I told him
had disappeared into the woods heading back to this old
house that he grew up in. Well, he stood there
for a second, looked at me like I was nuts.
Then he laid his que on the table and said,
come on, motioning for me to follow him. He and
I walked outside, and he said, follow me up the road.
We rode our bikes to a driveway just out of town,
where we pulled up and stopped. What are we doing here,
I asked, This is where my little brother lives. Now,
he told me. Then he laid on the horn. The
porch light came on, and his little brother stepped out
on the porch and waited as we crossed the yard.
After we sat down, he said, tell him about what
you told me at the pool room. Now, I was
getting angry because I was beginning to think he just
brought me so he and his brother could get a
laugh at me. But when he said, no, really, just
tell him, I took a deep breath and repeated my
story about what I'd seen earlier that night. As I spoke,
the younger brother's eyes widened and his face paled. When
I was done, the older brother apologized to him for
not believing him believe him about what I asked. The
younger brother then told me his story. He reminded me
that the old house where they grew up had the
kind of big windows that go from just above the
floor and almost to the ceiling. Back in those days,
country folks put curtains on just the bottom half of
those windows. The top was left uncovered. My grandparents had
these kind of windows, too, and I remember how I
used to look out at the stars at night when
I stayed with them. The younger brother went on to
tell me how he had woken one night to see
this huge white haired thing looking down at him from
outside in the window. It was just a little taller
than the window, and it scared him so badly he
just laid there. He was too scared to move or
even to scream. When he tried to tell his parents
about it, they just laughed and told him he was dreaming.
His older brother didn't believe him either. On many occasions,
he even made fun of him about it. The younger
brother went on to say that the creature never showed
any aggression towards him. He never felt threatened in any way.
It was the sheer enormity of the thing that had
frightened him so much. After that, it showed up from
time to time until shortly after his dad passed away
and they had moved into town. The younger brother assured
me that he'd had many opportunities to get a good
view of it. He described the beast as dirty blonde
or beige when he first started showing up at the window,
but over time he began to get more gray. He
said the eyes were black with very little white around them,
and sat back under a heavy brow. His face looked
like an old catcher's mitt, but wrinkled. His teeth were
like big square blocks and kind of yellow. He never
opened his mouth much beyond a narrow opening that looked
sort of like a shy grin. There was this one time, though,
when he opened his mouth wide but he was looking
out across the yard. His eye teeth were long enough
to hang below the other teeth, so not so long
as to be construed as fans. He had thin lips
stretched across a wide mouth that seemed to go all
the way across his face. He said he never saw
where the nose started at the top, but it was
very wide and didn't stick out very far. He remembered
thinking when it first started coming to the window. He said,
if he had punched it in the nose, his fist
would only cover one nostril. He knew that sounded funny,
but it was true. The nose was that white and
had big, flared nostrils. He also admitted the nose might
have seemed exaggerated because he was looking straight up the
thing's nose from down on his bed. He told me
it had no neck, and the muscles seemed to run
from his shoulders straight up to the back of his head.
The chest was so wid that he thought he could
have stretched his arms out wide and he wouldn't ever
have reached them all the way across the front. Then,
he was quick to add that he was just a boy.
Then it would leave rocks and things on the window ledge.
There was a big hickory nut tree in the backyard,
and he thought that's why it was there. He played
under the tree and pile nuts in his old metal
Tonka dub truck. He wondered if the bigfoot thought he
was leaving them there for him. We talked about the
description he gave me that night many more times after that.
I joined the army not long after the first night
we talked. I think my sighting made me a better soldier.
Dark knights on guard even during firefights. I knew the
enemy or even our own forces were nowhere near the
baddest thing out walking around in the dark. When I
got out of the army, we talked about it again
on many occasions. His description never changed over the years.
The old house is gone now, and I drove by
there a few years ago. Even that old hickory tree
is long gone. Sadly, my old Harley caught fire and
burned up, so it's gone too. The brothers moved away
and I eventually lost track of them. All that's left
are the memories. But I will never forget my encounter
that night over forty years ago. If you ask me
that bigfoot in my backyard was just down south, ducing
and digging the sounds of the Lennard skinnerd songs that
we were playing that night, and probably just wishing he
could come in and party with us. Bigfoot. Oh, I
hate free I know that has nothing to do with
this story, but I'd rather hear anything but Freebird by
Leonyard Skinnyard in anything other than Let it Be by
the Beatles, Oh my God, or no, not let it be.
I don't like let it be either, but hate you.
That Haju song drives me up the wall. And Leonard's
Freebirdman played so much, I don't know, I just get
tired of it. But other than that, I like all
of Skinner's songs. It's just that one. But what am
I talking about? I don't even know what I'm talking about.
This is a great story, and this is a memory
this man has kept all of his life.