Speaker 1: My name is Jim and I live in Devon in
the UK. The story is one hundred percent true. I
feel like I have to say that because if I
wasn't there and been the one to experience this encounter,
I would not have believed it myself. When I first
moved to Devon about five years ago, I had a
seriously strange encounter. For the record, I'm a no bull
craf spit on the floor kind of guy. I'm from London,
where we say it as we see it. I've never
told anyone about this. You think you guys over the
water get ripped for seeing stuff. Try being over here
where most will just call you a looney tune. We
are a nation that prides itself on our rationality, the
old stuff, upper lip and all that malarky. It may
sound stereotypical, but that's just us across the pond. This
this is the odd thing. I know. We have our
fair share of weirdness in the United Kingdom, but this
really took the biscuit, so to speak. I was camping
out on Dartmoor National Park. We have a couple of
cryptids around here, like alien big cats, hell hounds, sea
monsters and some really spooky, ghostly stuff, as well as
a guy who's loved this stuff from a year dot.
I want to say I'm not one of those gung
ho types, but I thought I'm going to see if
what they say is true. It was a quite pleasant
end of a September day when I went out over there.
I'm a curious little fella who is also an ex
Special Forces so I kind of know what I'm doing,
so if I can, why not. Dartmore is a funny
place to go hiking in. You need two sets of
clothes even in the summer. The terrain changes rapidly and
so does the temperature. That is to say, if you
go to the top of the tours in summer, you'll
be wearing winter clothing. But I digress. I wound up
in Whitman's Forest. This is one weird place. The trees
grow at angles and rocks have moss on them. It's
a real Lord of the Rings kind of place. Some
of the locals claims it was a Druid holy site.
I thought, if I wanted to see an ABC, that
would be the place to tuck myself out of sight.
So I found a lovely spot where all this stuff's about.
I felt my camp, and then I went and put
some trail cams about. After that came the long wait.
I sat there by a roaring fire and watched a
really beautiful sunset. If only it had stayed that mellow
the rest of the night. By midnight, I was ready
to go hunting. As it were, I was hoping at
least to get a cast of a footprint, But as
you know in our game, it can be a long
wait even for that much. I ventured for to dart More.
It's quite a big force for England, but it opens
up to more lands. I was over there for about
an hour. Suddenly I couldn't shake this feeling that I
was being watched. The hackles on my back of my
neck started to prick up. Now every instinct I had
learned or have naturally well sufficed it to say that
my spider senses were tingling. Straight Away, I went to
the relative safety of my camp, knowing there were other
indigenous animals in that place already set up my alerts.
I sat down and was having a couple of beers,
trying to chill out. But I couldn't shake that feeling
of being watched, tracked or stalk. It had to be
one of those, because I was at least two miles
from my camp when the feeling started and I still
had it back at I was at least two miles
from my camp when that feeling started, and when I
got back to camp the feeling was still there. I
was getting pretty freaked down by now. My mind was
going twenty directions at once. Was it kids on wind up? Now?
Why would they be here? A ranger? Again? No, they
don't go there full stop. Then I thought, it's a
serial killer. They could dump your body over there and
you'd never be found. Or it could be Satanists maybe
or Pagans. At some point in its history, Dartmoor Forest
was a sacred grove. That's when I heard the first
twig snap. I immediately picked up my bill hook. A
bill hook is a machete with a curve at the top.
Also had my pocket knife in my other hand. And
then I saw a set of glittering eyes in the
light of the night. I announced my presence and I said,
I can see you there, Come out where I can
see you. All I got in reply was a low
kind of whistle. I gathered that whatever was looking at
me was definitely not a human. The eyes alone told
me that I've lived with a few different indigenous peoples
around the world. I felt this relative to my experience.
In a stern voice, I said, I'm not here to
do anyone or anything any harm. I'm merely passing through.
You're welcome to come share my fire if you come
in peace. And this is something I learned in the
Congo in Africa. In other words, if you want what
I've got, come to me and get it. I still
had my blades drawn. I sat down by my fire,
my blades on my lap, and that's when it stood
to its full height. I uttered a pretty nasty expletive
as I thought, you're a big one, ain't you. My
training kicked in and I was working out his size
and how long he could go. And then this thing
strode across my campsite. I saw it with my own eyes.
He or she was seven feet tall and built like
a brick, blank blank, well, you get the idea, mate.
It was covered in long, shaggy hair like an orangutan,
except it didn't walk on its knuckles like most apes do.
And that was an intense smell to it as well.
I sat there with my blades on my lap, making
no movement at all. In fact, I pretended not to
be paying attention to it. I really couldn't tell what
sex it was, and in less than a minute he
or she walked through my camp. With that, I felt
the animosity from earlier disappear. The rest of the night
was perfect. I actually think it had come to work
out what my intentions were in the forest. I never
believed in the wood was that's what we called them
in medieval times. But when I hear stuff like your
wickedly awesome channel, I have to wonder. Besides, I know
what I saw. It seemed in action indeed, not so
aggressive or isolated as bigfoot are over in the States,
or as elusive as the Australia, although I think they
sent tagging area like most primates do other than us.
I only say this because the smell lingered. It was
still reeking when I left. Well that's my tale. Please,
if you could be so bold as to give your
opinion on this, I'm a bit stumped, mate, cheers Jim. Well, Jim,
I don't have an opinion, dude, that was your story.
I'm sorry I called you dude. Mate, I have to
learn to call people in other countries what they're accustomed
to being called to mate. Anyway, I don't have an opinion,
but it's an unbelievable story. I think you're asking my
opinion because maybe you have the idea that I know
a lot about these things and I don't. I don't
you know. Somebody asked me the other day, he said,
what all do you know about Bigfoot? And I said,
I don't know much about them. Never seen one, never
seen the track. I don't know anything at all about them.
And I'm not going to pretend like I do like
some people do, and to be honest, I'm a little curious,
but I'm not really eat up with knowing a lot
about Bigfoot. To answer your question, I don't think I
have an opinion, although I will say, based on the
stories that I have narrated up until now and read
so far, I think it's quite unusual for one of
these things to walk right through your camp. I don't
think I've narrated a story like that, but I have
heard two stories like that from people who are, let's
just say, big storytellers in the bigfoot world. Actually, they
told me the stories face to face. I was with them.
They were telling me and a whole bunch of people
around the campfire, and they're great stories, and I don't
really doubt them. I don't doubt them because other people
saw it too, so it does happen. I think it's
quite rare for one of these creatures to just walk
right through your camp. But what an experience. I mean,
my takeaway from that would be I got to see
something that very, very very few people see in this world.
That's what I think. When I'm standing in waste high
water in the middle of the winter in a swamp,
hunting over a spread of decoys, and I get to
see ducks. A lot of times when the ducks come in,
I won't even shoot because I'm seeing something that so
few people in the world ever get to see. And
it is an honor and a privilege to be able
to be healthy enough to get there, to be able
to own the equipment to get there, and to be
able to stay there on really cold, icy mornings and
watch that kind of thing happen. There are so many
things that go on in the woods that if you
just go and you be quiet and you just observe,
just kind of meld into the woods. You get to
see things that ninety nine percent I don't know. I'm
guessing ninety nine percent of the entire population never get
to see. They may get to see it on video.
You might get to see animals doing their mating ritual.
You might get to see animals fighting. You might get
to see, like I said a minute ago, ducks coming
in and opening in the middle of a swamp, in
the middle of a cypress swamp, watching them light on
the ground right in the middle of your decoys. Watching
wood ducks shoot past you in the morning when they're
leaving their roost. There's so many things you get to
see if you just go there and be quiet, with
no ill intention, sit back and watch, and you know,
ninety nine times out of one hundred, you may not
see anything. They know you're there, Everything knows you're there.
But to just sit there and observe, I mean, heck,
just watch the bugs, you know. I like to go
back and sit in a lawn chair by this pond
behind my house and just watch the bugs flitter on
top and watch the fish take them off the top
of the water. I mean, not many people really think
about that. Not many people get to see that. Like
this little bird. I hope this bird survives and I'm
going to get to see a bird go from just
a day old. This little bird is no more than
a day or two old. If it survives, I'll get
to watch it grow from just being hatched, hopefully to
a bird that'll fly off and go into the wild
and be wild. And it would just be awesome to
do that. Now. I don't hold out much hope of that,
but if I'm patient and I'm persistent with this bird,
it might happen. I'm a sixty year old man. I'm
pushing sixty, and this stuff still thrills me. This nature
thing thrills me. Okay, I know that I've talked longer
than the story was, but I'm really adamant about it.
A lot of people get to see videos. Go see
it for yourself. Go see the things in nature for yourself.
All right, That's all I'm going to say. About A
year ago, in February, I decided to go on a
two night camping trip with three of my friends, John, Joe,
and Jim to a called Nutria Number four, a couple
of miles from Rama and Zuni, New Mexico, The lake
is well hiding behind the hog backs and mountains and
is a great for fishing. We set up camp at
a campground located about a half a mile on top
of a hill overlooking a small valley. It was a
cozy spot behind some pine and cedar trees that acted
as a wind break. At four point thirty, after we'd
set up the tent and gathered some firewood and done
everything else we needed to do, Joe suggested we go
down to the lake and throw some lines. So we
packed some light tackle, knowing we wouldn't get back until
after dark, grabbed our headlamps and headed out. It was
a slow, cold night, but we managed to catch six
trout before heading back to camp. Around eight thirty, we
were walking along in the dark in temperatures of around
thirty degrees fahrenheit with me in the back, when we
noticed everything had gone dead silent. We all stopped switched
our headlamps to the highest settings before continuing on, checking
every tree, scrutinizing every shadow, and repeatedly scanning the horizon
for any predator or anything else that may have caused
the quiet. I swung my headlamp around to my right
and caught eyes shine thirty yards away. They were close
to the ground, so my first thought was that it
must be just another stray dog that are so common
on the reservation. But as I began to turn away,
I saw out of the corner of my eye that
those eyes began to float upwards. I had a moment
of uneasiness, but I didn't want to scare my friends,
so I said, hey, let's go a little bit faster.
It's cold out. They picked up the pace and soon
we were back at camp. By now we were freezing
and hungry. Our main objective was to build a fire
and cook dinner. I thought about what I'd seen, and
I decided not to mention it. I wasn't sure what
it was, and I didn't want to get my friends
worked up over what could be nothing. There was no
use in all of us being on the edge. An
hour later, we had a decent fire burning in front
of us, and our bellies were full of trout and
we were listening to some good music. As we sat
there talking and having a good time. My concerns over
the rising eye shine passed once I was comfortable with
the thought that it hadn't followed us back to camp.
The sudden, unexpected sound of something that was too big
to be just a twig breaking in the trees to
our east sent that same fear running back through my body.
Someone jumped up and turned off the music, and we
all grabbed our headlamps. We scanned the area, but the
pine trees were too thick to see anything that might
be standing in their midst We listened for another sound,
not even daring to breathe, but we heard nothing. Jim
picked up a rock through it in that direction. It
was just our luck that he hit something. It released
the most terrifying scream I've ever heard. With our eyes
wide and our minds racing, we ran inside the tent
and grabbed whatever we could find to defend ourselves. We
really didn't have anything that we felt was sufficient enough
to ward off something that could roar like whatever that
thing in the trees was, but even our pocketknives were
better than nothing. Once we were armed, we stood still
and we listened. We could hear footsteps coming towards us,
like huge, thundering sledge hammers made by some monstrous beast.
The trees started rustling, and John began to panic. He
was praying and pleading with God to rescue us, while
the rest of us tried to calm him down. Outside.
The footsteps grew louder and heavier as they got closer Inside.
We exchanged silent glances, each of us us seeing the
fear in the other's eyes and hoping they couldn't see
the terror in ours. We caught our collective breath as
a shadow stepped between the blazing fire and the wall
of our tent and it stopped. It was enormous and muscular,
and it was walking on two legs. We watched in
horrified fascination as this thing bent down and seemed to
inspect our fish bones and leftovers. Seconds crawled by like
hours before it stood erect, and it grunted before walking away,
apparently taking our food scraps with it. Another forty five
minutes would pass in the tent before we were able
to talk, much less move around. We considered packing up
and leaving, but we were afraid to make any noises
that might bring the creature back. Nor were we willing
to leave the fire unattended, and we weren't about to
put it out. Our only option was to wait out
the night. It was ten but our adrenaline was still flowing.
I knew we'd need more firewood to make it through
the night, so I asked Jim to come with me
so we could gather some. Joe and John stayed back
to watch over the camp. We had it out, keeping
a constant look for any signs of the creature's return,
as we picked up every piece of dead wood we
could find. We reached the top of the hill and
looked out over the moonlit valley below. To our utter
shock and disbelief, running faster than anything I've ever seen,
was a bigfoot heading towards the other mountain, and what
seemed like only a few seconds had disappeared into the
pine trees, and it was gone. Jim and I looked
at each other, unable to process what we'd just seen.
We turned and ran quickly back to the camp to
tell John and Joe what we had seen, confirming that
it was a bigfoot that had come into our camp
that night. A few minutes later, a long, low howl
came from that other mountain to our west. I didn't
sleep that night. I doubt the others did either. It
was like we'd walked into a nightmare, and somehow managed
to survive, but my mind could not accept it. When
the dawn broke and the sky began to turn a
bluish pink, I got up and stirred up the last
burning coals of the fire. Then I packed up everything
outside the tent and was just finishing when everyone else
slowly crawled out of their bedrolls. We cleaned up and
finished loading up our gear without anyone saying a single word. Finally,
as we were pulling out, everyone spoke at once, asking
each other what had happened last night, and no one
had a real answer. That was the scariest night of
my life.