Speaker 1: My grandfather was born in nineteen hundred. It was a
Speaker 1: sad day in nineteen seventy five when the underlying issues
Speaker 1: that had plagued him his entire life finally caught up
Speaker 1: with him and he passed away. He was truly a
Speaker 1: good man before he died. He told me a story
Speaker 1: about when he and a friend of his were nine
Speaker 1: years old, as little boys were inclined to do back then,
Speaker 1: they had taken up a game of cowboys and Indians
Speaker 1: out behind a field, armed with homemade sling shots that
Speaker 1: were taking pot shots at just about anything that could
Speaker 1: draw a bead on. There was a daisy. Pop, Now
Speaker 1: it was a dead daisy. Oh look at that milkweed.
Speaker 1: Bang splattered milk everywhere. They carried on in this fashion,
Speaker 1: shooting and conquering everything in sight. They even took aim
Speaker 1: at a rock and it just ricocheted, But they congratulated
Speaker 1: of themselves on the fine effort. And then my grandfather
Speaker 1: saw the bushy tail of a squirrel sticking out from
Speaker 1: behind a tree, with eyes filled with the glint of
Speaker 1: mischief only a nine year old can muster. He loaded
Speaker 1: his trusty slingshot and pow, he nailed that pesky squirrel
Speaker 1: right in the backside. But it wasn't a squirrel, roar
Speaker 1: cried the squirrel with a deafening thunder as it stood
Speaker 1: up to over eight feet tall and stepped from behind
Speaker 1: the tree. What was worse is right next to the
Speaker 1: giant two legged squirrel was an identical giant two legged
Speaker 1: squirrel who looked just as angry. It's not a squirrel,
Speaker 1: It's not a squirrel, stammered my grandfather's friend, as the
Speaker 1: boy slowly began to back away, Run, screamed my grandfather,
Speaker 1: and they both turned, grabbed hold of the wind and scattered.
Speaker 1: My grandfather chose a route that took him straight to
Speaker 1: an old rickety two seater outhouse that he knew was
Speaker 1: on the property. He got inside and did his best
Speaker 1: to both the door before the creatures caught up with
Speaker 1: him and began to shake and rock the little building
Speaker 1: with all their might. Inside, my grandfather held on to
Speaker 1: the two holes as dirt and debris of the ages
Speaker 1: rained down on his head. He could smell the pit
Speaker 1: directly below him, but his fear of the two beings
Speaker 1: trying to tear down his only shelter outweighed his disgust
Speaker 1: He rattled and bounced around, losing and then regaining his grasp,
Speaker 1: feeling like every joint in his body was being jarred loose,
Speaker 1: until with an awful, moaning crack, the little house began
Speaker 1: to split apart. The plank of wood with the two
Speaker 1: holes gave way, first cracking and splitting before falling into
Speaker 1: the pit below, taking my grandfather right with it to
Speaker 1: eight feet into that hole, landing with a great kerkplop
Speaker 1: into the muck below. Darkness surrounded him as he sat
Speaker 1: quietly listening to the two bigfoot above. Suddenly he heard
Speaker 1: a muffled call from somewhere in the woods, and then
Speaker 1: there was silence. It felt like an eternity before he
Speaker 1: began his long climb back to the world. He grabbed
Speaker 1: at the roots and kicked his feet into the cold
Speaker 1: earth to make footholes, until he was finally standing back
Speaker 1: on the surface, surrounded by the splintered pile that was
Speaker 1: once an old outhouse, and to his great relief, the
Speaker 1: epe boys were gone. That was the day that my grandfather,
Speaker 1: God rest his soul, learned a big lesson on respect
Speaker 1: for others in the woods. I still have his smell.
Speaker 1: He slink shi.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: I did pretty good. I got through that without but
Speaker 1: it was coming up. I could feel it coming up,
Speaker 1: and I just kept reading. I kept reading, and that
Speaker 1: was such a good story, and I actually believe it.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. There's just something about this story
Speaker 1: that makes me believe it. Seventy five year old man
Speaker 1: was telling his granddaughter of this story way before Bigfoot
Speaker 1: was a big thing, and I think that's probably the
Speaker 1: thing that makes me believe this story. But wasn't that great?
Speaker 1: Could y'all love that story?
Speaker 2: Man?
Speaker 1: I did too, And thank you so much for sending this.
Speaker 2: I am forty two now I'm a disabled VET. The
Speaker 2: area that I grew up in was a small town
Speaker 2: called cap Housen in Washington State, just outside of Eatonville.
Speaker 2: This area is heavily wooded and most of the industry
Speaker 2: is logging. There's a lake that I live close to
Speaker 2: called cap Housen Lake along an old railroad track them
Speaker 2: we would go about a mile down the tracks and
Speaker 2: the lake was on the left and there was a
Speaker 2: mud flat on the right where nothing grew. My best
Speaker 2: friend and myself decided we would go camping to go
Speaker 2: fishing early in the morning and the mud flat is
Speaker 2: where we set up our camp. I want you to
Speaker 2: understand that I knew these woods and the wildlife as
Speaker 2: I hunted and fished this area with my dad and
Speaker 2: my uncles since I was about six. I also hunted
Speaker 2: herbs and fruit with my mother when I was even younger.
Speaker 2: We were not rich people, so this was used to
Speaker 2: keep food on the table, so even at twelve, I
Speaker 2: was a fair to great woodsman, as most kids were
Speaker 2: that grew up in this town. Me and a friend
Speaker 2: set up our tent and built a rock circle for
Speaker 2: a fire and hung our cooler up in a tree.
Speaker 2: We went fishing until it got dark and came back
Speaker 2: to camp. We started a fire and cooked a few
Speaker 2: of the fish we had caught. As it was early
Speaker 2: spring mid April, just after my twelfth birthday, it got chilly,
Speaker 2: so we went to bed shortly after dark. Some time later,
Speaker 2: I woke up and had to get up and go pee.
Speaker 2: I got out of the tent and went over to
Speaker 2: a tree about twenty five feet from camp. As I
Speaker 2: was finishing up, I noticed someone looking at me across
Speaker 2: the mud flat about thirty feet away. It was light
Speaker 2: enough for me to see fairly well as the moon
Speaker 2: was up and the sky was clear, a rare thing
Speaker 2: in that area. And what was watching me was a
Speaker 2: female bigfoot. I know she saw me as she watched
Speaker 2: me move and followed me with her head. She had
Speaker 2: to be at least seven and a half foot tall.
Speaker 2: I could tell she was not looking to cause problems.
Speaker 2: She seemed to be interested in what I was or
Speaker 2: who I was. I was scared out of my skin,
Speaker 2: but my best friend was in the tent sound asleep,
Speaker 2: and the tent was only about ten feet from her.
Speaker 2: So I slowly went back to the tent and went
Speaker 2: in to wake up my friend as quietly as I could.
Speaker 2: I told him that bigfoot was outside, and he didn't
Speaker 2: believe me until he stuck his head out and was
Speaker 2: looking at her, and he froze. We put on our
Speaker 2: clothes as fast as we could and ran down to
Speaker 2: the tracks as fast as we could, leaving everything behind.
Speaker 2: We got to my house around three am. It takes
Speaker 2: about forty five minutes to walk there, and it was
Speaker 2: a lot less than that to get home, and ended
Speaker 2: up with my mom and dad away because we were
Speaker 2: both in a panic and made a lot of noise
Speaker 2: getting into the house. My Dad didn't believe me, but
Speaker 2: my mom said that many of my uncles said there
Speaker 2: were bigfoot out there, and she seemed to believe us.
Speaker 2: The next morning, Mom went with us boys, and we
Speaker 2: demanded that she bring a rifle just in case. We
Speaker 2: went back to the campsite and got our gearing was around,
Speaker 2: so we packed up fast, and then I brought Mom
Speaker 2: over to where the female bigfoot was and we found
Speaker 2: very clear tracks. I even tracked her a few feet
Speaker 2: into the woods. She had taken our fish on a
Speaker 2: liveline kept at the lake, and there were tracks there too.
Speaker 2: This spooked my mom too, so we got out of there.
Speaker 2: The rest of that year, I did not go into
Speaker 2: that area on the lake to go fishing, and did
Speaker 2: not go there actually for the next two years. This
Speaker 2: got me to looking this stuff up, and I learned
Speaker 2: how to make track casts, and I learned that the
Speaker 2: area was well known for this happening often, and even
Speaker 2: the natives talked about the big man that lived in
Speaker 2: the forest. If you fast forward a couple of years
Speaker 2: and going back to the lake, me and one of
Speaker 2: my cousins decided to spend the weekend on the island
Speaker 2: using a small canoe with fishing gear and a deer rifle.
Speaker 2: So we made camp and we were catching fish like
Speaker 2: crazy and made a fire and made up a few
Speaker 2: of the fish and some beans. Before we went to bed.
Speaker 2: We put our cooler in the canoe and tied it
Speaker 2: off and pushed it out into the water to keep
Speaker 2: the critters out of our food. We went to bed
Speaker 2: and in the middle of the night we heard a
Speaker 2: bunch of noise just outside of the tent and smelled
Speaker 2: this horrid smell, and we stuck our heads out with
Speaker 2: a thirty six leading the way. We didn't see anything,
Speaker 2: but something had moved our canoe. We pushed it back
Speaker 2: out into the water and went back to sleep. The
Speaker 2: next morning, we went looking for tracks and didn't find much,
Speaker 2: as it had rained hard just before daylight and the
Speaker 2: underbrush was very thick. We decided to look further out
Speaker 2: as there were better ground forty feet or so away
Speaker 2: from the camp, and that's when we saw him. He
Speaker 2: just stepped into the woods out of that clearing, so
Speaker 2: we tracked him, Having both a high powered rifle and
Speaker 2: my compound bow with us, we follow him to the
Speaker 2: log bridge, just an old growth tree that fell over,
Speaker 2: making a bridge to the mainland from the island, and
Speaker 2: that's when we got the best view. He was on
Speaker 2: a log just over midway past the middle heading to
Speaker 2: the land. He jumped off and ran through the clear
Speaker 2: cut area into the woods. My cousin just couldn't believe it,
Speaker 2: and we watched him leave in a fast manner. We
Speaker 2: had about fifty foot of clear area and we could
Speaker 2: see him very well. My cousin demanded that we leave.
Speaker 2: We were to spend the whole weekend there, and this
Speaker 2: was Saturday morning, but we went ahead and left early.
Speaker 2: We got home and told our parents. Mom knew I
Speaker 2: wouldn't make this stuff up, so she called my uncle.
Speaker 2: He was about as close to a mountain man as
Speaker 2: you could get in modern times, and I got him
Speaker 2: to help track this bigfoot. We were both on armed
Speaker 2: and we tracked it from our camp across the island
Speaker 2: to the clearcut and into the woods for about three miles.
Speaker 2: My uncle figured that it was long gone and we
Speaker 2: went home. After these sightings, I did not tell many people,
Speaker 2: as my dad thought I was full of it and
Speaker 2: I did not want to be ridiculed. My closest friends
Speaker 2: have been told this story and of course my family.
Speaker 2: I'm not a very good writer and English is not
Speaker 2: my first language, but I hope you can fully understand
Speaker 2: my email, and he signs off. A disabled US Army
Speaker 2: ranger and Jungle Warfare specialist RLC two, I'm fifty eight
Speaker 2: years old. I'm an Eagle Scout, a six year Army veteran,
Speaker 2: and former park ranger of thirteen years. I've had what
Speaker 2: I believe were several encounters with bigfoot. Some happened while
Speaker 2: I was camping with the Boys Scouts. One of those
Speaker 2: incidents I did not recognize as a sisquatch until last
Speaker 2: week when I heard about a bigfoot making a tree
Speaker 2: knock so loud it sounded like a shotgun. It brought
Speaker 2: back along forgotten memory. The times I spent with my
Speaker 2: former Boy Scout troop in central Florida are among the
Speaker 2: fondest memories of my youth. Most everyone in the troop
Speaker 2: had a nickname given by our peers. It was usually
Speaker 2: the result of some humorous or embarrassing incident. When I
Speaker 2: was fifteen, my nickname was sisquatch. I had gotten it
Speaker 2: when camping in the mountains of Northeast Georgia. We were
Speaker 2: chasing each.
Speaker 1: Other around, and I was appearing on a hillside one
Speaker 1: moment and then reappearing elsewhere the next. They were getting
Speaker 1: only fleeting views of me as I moved quickly and
Speaker 1: quietly around them. After that, they called me Sisquatch. I
Speaker 1: was always good at hiding, ambushing, and sneaking up on people,
Speaker 1: and when I joined the Army, the wargames during training
Speaker 1: were the same. Thirty years ago, my Scout troop went
Speaker 1: to summer camp in Virginia in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Speaker 1: I came along as an adult leader. I'd gotten out
Speaker 1: of the Army a few months before, so I was
Speaker 1: in great shape. There are a lot of Si Squat
Speaker 1: sightings in this part of the country, but I didn't
Speaker 1: know it at the time, and there was no internet
Speaker 1: to research sightings back then. Although this Scout camp was
Speaker 1: in the mountains, most of the hiking trails went through
Speaker 1: thick patches of bushes and rhododendrons that blocked the scenery.
Speaker 1: I caught a flu bug on the way up to camp.
Speaker 1: Although I thought I'd be okay on the trail, after
Speaker 1: the first day, I got so slow and dizzy on
Speaker 1: the trail that I had to return to base camp.
Speaker 1: We were two miles up a rocky road, so after
Speaker 1: working out our plans with the troop, I went back
Speaker 1: down alone with my backpack. They must have had great
Speaker 1: faith in my ability to make make it back. Once there,
Speaker 1: I spent the day resting in a typical big eight
Speaker 1: foot by eight foot green canvas tent. It was the
Speaker 1: middle of the week, so with most of the scouts
Speaker 1: out on the trail, most of the tents were vacant.
Speaker 1: One boy, who was too young to handle the heavy backpacking,
Speaker 1: had stayed behind to do other activities. His name was Bob.
Speaker 1: I was so sick that I didn't see much of Bob,
Speaker 1: even though he was only two tenths away from me.
Speaker 1: He was the last tint on the road, tucked into
Speaker 1: the corner by the edge of the woods. The bushes
Speaker 1: started at his back door. That evening, after resting, I
Speaker 1: was eating my freeze dried supper at a picnic table
Speaker 1: outside my tent. My fever felt like it had broken,
Speaker 1: and I felt nearly recovered. There was no moon that night.
Speaker 1: It was pitch blackout. A nearby deer gave a loud,
Speaker 1: huffing snort, and I jumped at the sound, but recognized
Speaker 1: it immediately, I just laughed at myself and I went
Speaker 1: back to eating. I was unaware of anything else that
Speaker 1: had happened that night until many years later, when I
Speaker 1: reconnected with Bob on Facebook. By now he was a
Speaker 1: full grown man and had a family of his own.
Speaker 1: He told me that night, while he was in his tent,
Speaker 1: someone had been walking around outside in the nearby bushes.
Speaker 1: He'd always thought it was me because of my reputation
Speaker 1: for sneaking up on people to scare them, but I
Speaker 1: assured him that I had been in my tent that night,
Speaker 1: sound asleep. Bob eventually concluded that it was a bigfoot
Speaker 1: he'd heard that night. The following night, I would have
Speaker 1: my own encounter, but it has taken me nearly thirty
Speaker 1: years to figure out what it was. The next morning,
Speaker 1: I was feeling well enough to rejoin the troop on
Speaker 1: the trail in the mountains. That night, the troop was
Speaker 1: camping on a hilltop with an obstructed view of the ridgeline.
Speaker 1: It was an open area by a power line easement,
Speaker 1: with the electrical lines buzzing all night. I've since been
Speaker 1: told that sisquatch is known to travel along power line easements,
Speaker 1: but I was unaware of that. At the time. I
Speaker 1: was pretty sure we were at the edge of the
Speaker 1: Scout reservation property because I had seen a house earlier.
Speaker 1: I set up my tent at the edge of the
Speaker 1: power line field bordering the woods and settled in for
Speaker 1: the night. Well around midnight, I woke to the sounds
Speaker 1: of someone sneaking up to our campsite in the woods.
Speaker 1: Years of scouting in my military experience had taught me
Speaker 1: to tell the difference between four legged and two legged animals,
Speaker 1: and this was definitely on two legs. It sounded and
Speaker 1: behaved just like I would when I was sneaking up
Speaker 1: on someone. I remembered the house I had seen earlier
Speaker 1: and decided it must be a hillbilly wandering over to
Speaker 1: check us out. I really wasn't concerned. He may have
Speaker 1: been out night hunting and stumbled on our camp by mistake.
Speaker 1: Maybe he was trying to bag a raccoon. Regardless, I
Speaker 1: was impressed since he didn't seem to have a flashlight
Speaker 1: and I had to answer nature's call, so I figured
Speaker 1: i'd get out of the tent and I shined my
Speaker 1: flashlight around. And then he'd realized his mistake and he'd
Speaker 1: go away. It never occurred to me that it might
Speaker 1: not be a man. I was watering a nearby tree
Speaker 1: a few feet from my tent door when I heard
Speaker 1: a loud crack and the guy began running away a
Speaker 1: lot faster than I think I could have. The crack
Speaker 1: was so loud that it sounded just like a shotgun.
Speaker 1: It got my heart pounding, but the guy ran away
Speaker 1: and it was over as soon as it started. Mainly,
Speaker 1: I was impressed that the guy moved so quickly on
Speaker 1: a moonless night without running into a tree. He must
Speaker 1: have been familiar with the area, I thought, because I
Speaker 1: knew if I'd tried that, I'd have knocked myself out
Speaker 1: cold on the first tree that got in my way.
Speaker 1: The next morning, I asked the others if they'd heard
Speaker 1: the noises, but nobody had. It seemed odd, since I
Speaker 1: was sure it was a shotgun that should have woken
Speaker 1: up the whole camp. At that point, I still believed
Speaker 1: it was a hillbilly, but still no one else heard
Speaker 1: it nor seemed to believe me, and I dropped the
Speaker 1: subject and I forgot about it. Nearly thirty years passed
Speaker 1: before I heard the story from the guy who said
Speaker 1: the Sasquatch made a tree knock that sounded like a
Speaker 1: shotgun blast, and the memory came flooding back. Looking back,
Speaker 1: I find it pretty amazing that my troop had two
Speaker 1: bigfoot encounters in one trip and didn't recognize either one.
Speaker 1: I know of no other bigfoot encounters at this scout camp,
Speaker 1: and there have never been any reports of missing people
Speaker 1: there that I know of. My guess is the local
Speaker 1: Sasquatch are just curious about the scouts passing through the area,
Speaker 1: playing their games and chasing each other around and doing
Speaker 1: their usual goofy things. Probably makes for hours of entertainment
Speaker 1: for the Sosquatch. Back when I was fourteen or fifteen
Speaker 1: years old in the early seventies, we lived on State
Speaker 1: Route fifty two in what is called the Gap of
Speaker 1: the Ridge area in Macon County, Tennessee. Back then, I
Speaker 1: spent every free moment I could in the woods, especially
Speaker 1: in the summer when there was no school. It was
Speaker 1: on one of those summer days that I had been
Speaker 1: out hunting groundhogs and enjoying being in the woods more
Speaker 1: than I was joining the actual hunting. It was getting dark,
Speaker 1: so I decided to head for home. I walked to
Speaker 1: an old logging road that wound around and up the
Speaker 1: hill to the highway, and as I turned to start
Speaker 1: up the hill, I heard something running from behind me
Speaker 1: and to my left. I spun around to see what
Speaker 1: was coming. It was dark, solid color, human like thing
Speaker 1: ran from behind a wild rose bush and crossed an
Speaker 1: open area in a stooped or crouched position. The creature,
Speaker 1: I call it a creature because at the time I
Speaker 1: had not heard of bigfoot, ran all the way across
Speaker 1: the clearing, into the woods on the opposite side, and
Speaker 1: down into a draw where I lost sight of it.
Speaker 1: I could still hear it though, as it crashed through
Speaker 1: the wood, snapping branches and breaking saplings. As it ran,
Speaker 1: the hair stood up all over my body. As I
Speaker 1: watched and listened to the destructive power of that thing,
Speaker 1: I wasted no time getting up on the logging road
Speaker 1: to the top of the hill. There, I turned back
Speaker 1: one more time, fired my twenty two rifle into the
Speaker 1: air before yelling and running for home. Two hundred yards away.
Speaker 1: The next day, I went back to where I had
Speaker 1: seen the creature. The wild rose bush where it had
Speaker 1: emerged was six feet tall, stooped over like it was.
Speaker 1: The creature was the same height, so I estimated it
Speaker 1: to be seven and a half to eight feet all
Speaker 1: standing up. That was the only time I've ever seen it,
Speaker 1: but I've heard sounds at night that I am sure
Speaker 1: came from that creature. A few years after my sighting,
Speaker 1: I was walking in the same woods one night. All
Speaker 1: around me were the normal sounds of crickets, chirping, frogs, croaking,
Speaker 1: an occasional night bird, and suddenly I realized everything had
Speaker 1: gone quiet. I stopped in my tracks and I listened
Speaker 1: for a moment. I began to hear the crunching of
Speaker 1: dried leaves. As it got louder and closer, I recognized
Speaker 1: the distinct pattern of a bipedal footstep coming from the
Speaker 1: hill above me. It kept walking, and I kept listening
Speaker 1: until the sound got fainter and I eventually couldn't hear
Speaker 1: it at all. Immediately the night woods returned, and I
Speaker 1: decided it was time for me to go home. Years later,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties, I was visiting my mom and
Speaker 1: dad one evening with my wife and kids. I smoked
Speaker 1: at the time, so I stepped out on the back
Speaker 1: porch to have a cigarette. As I stood there, I
Speaker 1: heard a sound from across the haller that was like
Speaker 1: some sort of language. It was almost like a samurai
Speaker 1: warrior talking, with the grunts and growls thrown in to
Speaker 1: break up the sentences. At the time, I had no
Speaker 1: idea what I was hearing. Then one night a few
Speaker 1: months later, I was listening to Art Bell's show on
Speaker 1: the radio. He had a guest on who was talking
Speaker 1: about recording bigfoot languages. When he played the recording, it
Speaker 1: was the same thing I heard that night in my
Speaker 1: mom and dad's backyard. Most recently, though I didn't see
Speaker 1: or hear anything, I found evidence of them being in
Speaker 1: the area I currently live, about twelve miles from where
Speaker 1: I had my other experiences. I was walking on an
Speaker 1: old logging road that serves as a driveway to my
Speaker 1: neighbor's summerhouse when they're up from Florida, and while walking,
Speaker 1: I observed a fifteen foot tall seedar tree that had
Speaker 1: been twisted until it broke halfway up the trunk, with
Speaker 1: the twisted part hanging down. I assume a bigfoot did
Speaker 1: this to market its territory and to send a message
Speaker 1: to me or another Bigfoot to tread lightly. I got
Speaker 1: the message loud and clear. Well, those are my experiences.
Speaker 1: Feel free to use my name and thank you