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