Speaker 1: I'm not going to disclose our names because it's not important,
but I have a story to tell from nineteen seventy eight.
I was fourteen years old at the time, and I
grew up in the deep woods of the Catskill Mountains.
My grandfather's five hundred acre farm bordered many square miles
of state forest. It was very dense wilderness, and it
was dotted with old farms that were abandoned years ago.
These details are important to give you an idea of
how remote and desolate these woods are. 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 coon hunting with my uncle, who had well trained coonhounds,
and it was quite cold out that night, and so
far the dogs were unusually unsuccessful. After two hours of hunting,
finally they started barking and they were hot on a trail.
We were a mile from my grandfather's farm. When we
started in the direction of the dog's barking. They were
across the gully in up on the next ridge. My
uncle and I were walking up a dirt road that
would take us to an old abandoned farmhouse. It was
a straight walk down across the gully and up to
the ridge where the dogs got that raccoon in a tree,
judging by their barks, and they were steady and in
one location. By now it was two am and we
were two hundred yards from the farmhouse. I noticed loud
footsteps one hundred yards 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 and I could tell that it was on two feet.
I thought it was another hunter, but that made no
sense because no one hunts late at night in the
woods unless they're both raccoon hunting like us. There were
no other dogs in the woods, and that's when I
noticed the steps were heavy with the crunch of branches.
Now I asked my uncle if he heard what I did,
and he said no, he didn't. Keep in mind, my
uncle spent two tours in Vietnam. His hearing was bad
from all the concussion blasts during the combat. He was
a real badass, with many confirmed kills and multiple gun wounds,
including hand to hand combat, knife wounds, so he wasn't
afraid of anything. He grew up in these mountains, as
did three generations of my family. He had a hard
time hearing the low frequency noises like footsteps in the leaves,
and he told me it was my imagination getting away
from me. I was getting nervous because all we had
were twenty two rifles and two pistol, which were not
powerful enough to put down whatever it was coming toward us.
And then I noticed it started to parallel our direction
and continued to edge closer to the road. Obviously, it
was very close, maybe thirty feet off to our right,
when suddenly my uncle put his hand on my chest
and he whispered to stop. The steps to our right
continued for two more steps, and then they stopped. My
uncle now knew something was definitely there. We took a
few more steps and it started following again, and again
my uncle put his arm out to stop us, and
it took a few more steps before it stopped. I
could feel the apprehension from my uncle. It was reasonably
lit on the dirt road because of the full moon,
but you couldn't see into the woods. My uncle took
out his flashlight and shined into the woods, but they
were too dest to see anything. He told me to
keep moving, and the thing continued to follow us. By
now I knew my uncle was nervous because it was
obvious this thing was by petal and large. It was
now only a few yards away at this point when
we reached the old farmhouse and we quickly got up
on the broken down porch, turned around and confront our stalker.
The beast kept coming, and 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, my uncle shined the flashlight and could
vaguely see a large figure just inside the tree line,
but we couldn't see any real detail other than it
was very dark in color and it was at least
nine feet tall. It was massive, and there was a
musky stench in the air I could feel for the
first time my uncle was actually scared. Then suddenly it
started to walk right down through the woods away from
the house. We could hear it leaving as it stomped
down the hill until we couldn't hear it anymore, and
we waited ten minutes to listen for any other movement,
but it remained silent, so we started down the gully
to where the dogs were still barking. We made it
there with no further sign of that thing that stalked us.
We harvested that raccoon and we bagged it and decided
to call it a night. I remember those woods were
so quiet, like it was devoid of wildlife. The dogs
were also acting strange and kept sniffing the air and
whining the entire way back to the truck, and I
never seen the mac like that before that night. My
uncle sold all of his raccoon dogs shortly after that
and didn't hunt at night anymore. When friends and family
would ask why, he wouldn't say, only that he wasn't
making enough money on the pelts to make it worth
his wild which was blowney because pelts back then on
a big raccoon so for forty five dollars each more
than enough to pursue that hobby. If I asked my
uncle what he thought that was that night, he won't
talk about it, not even to me, and he rarely
hunts even during the daytime now neither do I for
that matter. I've seen large footprints in the snow when
I was trapping for muskrat a few years earlier, twice
the length of my snowboot. So I'm pretty sure what
it was that stalked us that night. If that wasn't
a bigfoot, then what else could it be. I've had
other encounters, I've smelled him and since this presence, but
I've never actually seen one. Clearly, my account of these
events are exactly as they happen, and they are completely true.
I really appreciate your channel to allow folks to tell
their experiences such as mine. I'm glad to know there
are many others who have had similar experience, so that
I don't fill alone on this subject anymore. And the
writer signs off, And that's another raccoon hunting story. You know,
you hunt raccoons at night. You can hunt them during
the day, and you can probably kill them during the day,
but raccoons are primarily nocturnal. They get out and look
for food at night. All you got to do is
put out a trail cam on a corn feeder, and
the raccoons are all over it all night. But I
think this story is quite typical for people who are
out at night, especially with dogs. Dogs seem to stir
these creatures up, and I thought it was interesting. It's
not much different than a lot of the raccoon hunting
episodes that I've read. However, this thing tracked them back
to the old farmhouse and they could actually see the
outline of it in the woods. That couldn't make out
any details, but there it was, standing right at the
edge of the woods, and they could see it nine
feet tall. Imagine looking out off an old porch and
seeing a creature on two legs standing upright like a
man that's nine frickin feet tall. Holy Moley. These are
true stories that actually happened to me as a child
and a teenager in Las Casas, Tennessee, fifteen miles outside
of Murphersburg in the nineteen eighties. Some of my earliest
memories are of sitting out on my grandfather's yard under
the trees around dusk and hearing wood knocks. Back in
the nineteen seventies, my grandfather would say that someone was
building a barn and hammering nails over in the woods.
It was almost dark and there was no electricity in
the thousands of acres across the little gravel road from us.
Besides that the banging sound came in twos and from
different areas. My grandfather would then warn us that if
we ever heard anything that sounded like a woman screaming
in the woods, to get out of the world woods,
because it was probably a bobcat. I think he made
the connection between the banging sound and the sound like
a woman screaming. My grandfather was my favorite person in
the world and my best friend. He didn't officially raise me,
but I spent each summer, school break and holiday break,
as well as every third weekend at his house. When
I was twelve, I knew every inch of his one
hundred acres, as well as much of the surrounding land.
His land was split up into two different parcels. One
was thirty nine acres, which he lived on, and the
other was sixty one acres at the end of the road,
and it was a mile from where his house was.
All of his land creeped me out for some reason,
but I normally chose to hunt the thirty nine acres
that he lived on because it was close to the house.
This experience took place in nineteen eighty one. I followed
a trail from the bottom of our yard through a
large open field and passed an old log barn and
into some thick woods with a logging trail as access.
The trail was two hundred yards long and it ended
at a field. The trail took me to the end
of the field, and then I would walk the entire
length of the field to my deer stand. In the
field was a pond my grandfather built because he liked
a fish. It was a quiet and surreal day. I
walked to the far end of the pond, closest to
my deer stand, and I noticed movement coming out of
the thick woods on the right side, and I thought
at first that it was a big man dressed in brown.
There was a shimmering appearance to this thing, so that
it looked like the figure was clouded in a heat mirage.
This guy was big, and he walked slow and methodical,
as if he wanted to be seen. His arms swung
in an exaggerated motion, and they seemed to be longer
than normal for its height. It had an unusual arch
in its back and the way it leaned forward, Although
he did not appear to have much of a neck.
His head arched forward from a couple of vertebras lower
than a man. He also never locked his rear legs straight,
like he was skating or scooting. He took three steps
out of the woods and then tilted his shoulders, and
he looked directly at me. When he looked at me,
I realized that this was not a man. I could
make out the broad nose, and although his face did
not appear to be completely covered in hair, there was
a circle from right over the eyebrows to the bottom
lip that appeared to be more exposed skin, but the
rest was hair. I could see his hair glistening in
the sun. He stared at me, looking in my direction,
but continued to walk straight ahead, and I felt an
overwhelming impression that said, don't mess with me, and I
won't mess with you. If you mess with me, you
will regret it. Whether it was my mind or common sense,
I don't know. I just know it was clear. At
twelve years old, I knew my gun was not enough
if this thing came at me. I watched the creature
slowly walk across the field, and at the point that
he went out of sight, I immediately broke free from
my frozen position and I ran as fast as I
could the half mile back to my grandfather's house. When
I told my grandfather what I had seen, he immediately
believed me. And when I told my grandmother, she said, Junior,
you just saw slew foot. That same year, I went
back in that field during deer season. My first encounter
happened in September, but this one was close to Thanksgiving.
I was thoroughly frightened every time I went back there,
and I would not go deer hunting in the dark.
I preferred the middle of the day. Even though I
never saw any deer at that time, I didn't want
to be in those woods in the dark. As I
approached that same field, I heard two men talking. I
could hear at one hundred yards before I made it
to the field, and as I got closer to the field,
I began to wonder why I couldn't understand what these
men were saying. It was obviously two large, loud males talking,
and I could tell by their booming voices that they
were just inside the tree line. I finally got to
where I could clearly hear them, but it wasn't English
they were speaking, or even a known language. It was
only grunts and gibberish. I walked further and three deer
took off from where the noise was, and I shot
one of the deer. When things were quiet again, the
voices had stopped. I never knew who or what was
making these sounds, and I never saw them. I feel
dressed the deer and I hauled it out without incident.
My last encounter have years later, when I was sixteen.
It happened on the banks of the East Fork of
the Stones River, three miles away from that field. This
one is crazy. I had sold my next door neighbor
my fourteen foot v bottom boat because I was now
more interested in cars and girls than I was fishing.
His name was Benny and he was thirty years old,
and he was a rugged Outdorseman. He was not afraid
of anything and would sometimes sneak up on my friends
and me when we were out frog gigging without using
a light. We put the boat in slightly below Guy
James Bridge in Las Casas, Tennessee. On a mid April
night in nineteen eighty five, it was still chilly at night.
We drifted down toward Brown's Mill Dam fishing for small
mouth bass. That night we camped on a gravel bar
two miles away from the road. I was familiar with
that area. That night, at ten o'clock we were catfishing
from the bank with no success. Benny mentioned how quiet
it was. I agreed with him, and as if on cue,
the biggest splash that I had ever heard in my
entire life hit the water just outside our view. It
was on the upstream end of the gravel bar. The
fire we had going wasn't enough to see what made
the splash, and we sprang up immediately and landed on
our feet, shaking in fear. Benny grabbed the flashlight and
now I followed him, and as we got to that
end of the gravel bar, we could see splash marks
on the gravel. His flashlight battery was weak, but it
was all we had. Benny leaned out as far as
he could over the water, pointing his light at a
massive object a short distance away. At first we could
see glowing red eyes. Benny turned back and began to
whisper to me, it's a monster, it's a monster. Well,
I was in denial, and I continued to tell Benny
that it was just a cow that had fallen in
the water, because cows milled around in that area a lot.
As our eyes focused better, it became obvious that this
was not a cow because of the size of its
head above the eyes was fourteen inches of head sticking up.
It was big in cone shaped, and it tilted its
head to the left and then straightened it back up,
as if it were trying to figure out what we were.
I remember seeing its eyes blink. Then it did the
same thing once again, but it tilted its head to
the right. Benny just kept saying, it's a monster, It's
a monster. This thing pushed out toward the middle of
the river and went downstream in a zigzag pattern, much
faster than the current was going. It didn't look like
it was swimming. Rather, the movement looked like a six
foot tall person in a waiting pool and was propelling
itself with its legs off the bottom. When it stopped,
it was directly in front of our campfire, just twenty
feet out in the river. The whole time that its
zigzagged downstream, both eyes were focused directly on us. It
never took its eyes off us as it swam by.
Now we knew it wasn't a cow, and our view
was vague except for those massive red eyes and the
silhouette of its big head. It tilted its head once
again to the left and then straightened its head back
up where the eyes were level in a few inches
above the water. Benny said, hand me the shotgun. Now
I grabbed it. He handed me the flashlight. Benny carried
a twelve gage with buckshot in his boat all the time. Well,
now I'm holding the flashlight and Benny puts the shotgun
up to his shoulder, and the moment he did that,
this thing went underwater, letting out mass of bubbles. It
had jumped in the water earlier when we said it
was quiet outside, and now it was diving under seeing Bennie,
A'm a shotgun at it. This thing was smart, like
it understood what we were saying and doing. Five minutes
clicked off, and finally Benny said, it's got to come
up for air. Even though I had seen a sisquatch
walk across the field in broad daylight a few years earlier,
it never dawned on me that this could be a
bigfoot until years later when I heard stories by tim
Coonbo Baker and others about siequatch in the water. I
just didn't know they got in the water like that.
Bennie then said, we're going to take turns standing guard
tonight because this thing could come up out of the
water and kill us. I told him that I was
going to sleep. I guess I was still in total denial,
which was probably a defense mechanism. The human brain doesn't
have a file for an experience like this. When I
woke up the next morning, Bennie was still setting up
with a shotgun and cooking breakfast over the fire, which
he had kept blazing all night. Next Benny said the
last words about the experience that I ever heard him
say as far as I know. He told me that
it never came up for air. Our relationship was never
the same after that, and he soon moved away. I
saw him once more after that night. Benny was a
good man, but he was dealing with other demons. A
year and a half later, he took his own life.
I'm not saying that this experience contributed to it, but
I know it's hard to process these sorts of things
from personal experience, although I have had experiences since this
that could potentially be crypted related. I'm now fifty three
years old and I have not had the drama your
face encounters like this since my childhood, in my teenage
years in Middle Tennessee. That's the end of his story.
And that's a man. This guy's from the time he
was twelve to he was sixteen, he was running into
these things quite regularly. I mean that's four years and
three three experiences, one quite drastic experience when he's sixteen.
This thing swimming out in the water. It doesn't appear.
This thing does not appear this thing was ever aggressive
with them. It just wanted to get away, and when
it saw the shotgun, it went underwater and it never
came back up. Probably swam down the river half a mile,
then popped up. If they've got lungs that big, they
can hold their breath for a long time. I'm guessing
to the writer who I lost your I've got your story,
but I lost your email information and I can't remember
your name. But I really appreciate this story. It's really good.
I don't think I've had this too long, but I
pulled it up. It was pretty well written. I wanted
to share it with you all. I hope you enjoyed it.