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