Speaker 1: Here's a story that I've had quite a while, and
I'm just getting to it. The man is in his sixties,
says he's battling MS, multiple sclerosis. I assume that's what
MS means now to say, he writes, I've decided to
share my experiences before it's too late. Perhaps my encounters
will benefit someone, and if so, then my time writing
this has not been wasted. I was raised on a
farm in cattle operation in Utah in the nineteen sixties
and seventies. Our land was adjacent to foothills that led
up into a range of the Rocky Mountains, where I
spent every possible hour on horseback or hiking or backpacking.
I log several hundred nights camping out during my teens
and in twenties and my thirties and into my early forties.
It came with the territory of my outdoor life. Being
out of doors every day from my childhood onward gave
me a tremendous education about the natural world, and I
was intimately familiar with every species of tree, plant, wildflower,
every type of bird that inhabited our region, and of
course every mammal that lived in these valleys and mountains.
I grew up fly fishing and hunting waterfowl, upland birds
and big game, which took me into some of the
most beautiful and remote country imaginable. I mentioned these things
so you'll understand my familiar rity. That's a hard word
for me to say. I mentioned these things so you'll
understand my familiarity with every living thing, from the western
deserts to Utah's Red Rock Country and the alpine peaks
of the highest mountains. And all that time spent out doors,
I never had any calls for fear, nor did I
see or experience anything unusual. And then one August evening
in two thousand and four, my fly fishing partner and
I decided to stay out late to watch the I
can't pronounce this word. I think it's per Sade meteor
shower at Strawberry Reservoir, pe r seid per side or
per se meteor shower at Strawberry Reservoir. We were excited
to see the spectacle because of clear skies, there was
no moonlight and no light pollution. We launched our float
tubes into the water shortly before dark to enjoy some
fishing and stargazing. Perhaps an hour into the meteor shower,
we both suddenly noticed something massive walking along the shoreline
on all fours. Its silhouette instantly reminded me of a
polar bear with a huge hindquarters taller than its front shoulders,
and its head was small for its body size, and
that body was gargantuan. We were way too close to
the shore for comfort, and we paddled into the safety
of deeper water as quickly as possible. We both experienced
a sense of dread and terror. What was that giant thing?
It was several times larger than the black bears that
we have in Utah, and we don't have grizzly bears
in Utah, but they're not that big either. We observed
the creature for a couple of minutes until it walked
into the darkness and left us alone on the lake. Yes,
we were both terrified, knowing that eventually we'd have to
get out of the water and run up the hill
to the car. We had no explanation for what we saw.
Back then, I'd never heard of bigfoot walking on all fours.
Since that time, I've read numerous accounts of people seeing
these things down on all fours. It's the only answer
I can come up with to account for the massive
size of the animal we saw. The experience we had
on Strawberry that August night was the precursor for the
year two thousand and five, where everything changed and life
has never been the same since a door was opened
somehow to extraordinary strangeness that I never asked for, I
didn't seek, and I can't seem to escape. This is
the one and only time that I will record and
recount these experiences. Now I will do my best to
give you a detailed account of what happened in our
lives during two thousand and five and is subsequent to
that time. It all began innocently enough on a late
winter day when my wife and I decided to go
for a drive to town to get a taco for lunch.
On the return trip, we were two blocks south of
main street in our small town when suddenly a dog
of some kind with short, dark gray hair walked out
into the street in front of us on two legs,
and I slammed on the brakes as we watched this
thing cross the road in displa It ran into someone's yard,
still on two legs, and went into the shrubbery and disappeared. Well,
we were speechless. What the hell was that, we both
said to each other. We went home and I got online,
and it didn't take long to find the numerous images
and videos of these same dogs walking upright all over
the southwest of the United States and down into Mexico.
Some people refer to them as chupacabras, and all I
know is we were both very upset by what we saw.
A few weeks later, it was time for another friend
and I to go on our first jeep expedition of
the season, and we headed south toward Utah's San Rafael Swells,
some of the most remote country in the lower forty
eight States. On the way, we passed through San Pete Valley,
where the second strange encounter took place. At the north
end of the valley, there's a small town called Melbourne,
and just as we turned off the highway to head
towards Melbourne, there was a huge black figure standing in
sagebrush at perhaps sixty yards away. I brought the jeep
to a halt and we both stared at this thing
with very broad shoulders and legs like tree trunks. We
weren't close enough to make out any facial features, but
we could see the glistening black hair that covered this being.
It had a conical shaped head and a barrel chest,
and long arms and massive legs. Time stopped as we
watched this thing for a few minutes, and then it
turned its body to the south, took two and a
half steps, and it vanished. There was nowhere for it
to hide. It didn't dash to a tree for cover
or drop to the ground. It was midway into its
third step, with one leg raised and its foot up
off the ground when it completely disappeared. It wasn't as
though we watched did step into some unseen doorway where
you'd observe the front part of the creature disappear, followed
by its backside. No, it totally vanished in one instant
of time in mid stride. You can imagine the fear
that swallowed us, knowing we had to drive down the
road where this thing was headed when it vanished. At
that time, I had never researched anything about bigfoot. Though
I was certainly familiar with the claims of those who
had seen these things, I did not know there was
a rich collection of encounters with these things vanishing from sight,
but we both saw it one moment and the next
it was gone. After the event concluded, we compared notes
and both felt like it was nine feet tall and
weighed perhaps as much as six hundred pounds or more.
It didn't make any aggressive movements towards us, However, we
both felt a deep, foreboding sense of evil. I didn't
shake that horrible feeling, and we decided to postpone our
jeep adventure for another time. The next in our series
of life changing events occurred during the spring when we
were doing some landscaping work in our yard. We lived
a couple of miles outside of town and didn't have
any close neighbors at the time. I hesitate to record
this incredibly strange event because no one will believe me,
but still, it was the most disturbing of events of
two thousand and five, and to leave a full and
honest account, I'll tell you this part of my story.
It still turns me inside out when I think about it.
I'm shaking right now as I right. My oldest son
was seventeen at the time, and he was helping me
with some landscaping work. We stopped for lunch, and while
I was eating a sandwich in the house. I was
looking into the backyard at our project and decided what
we'd work on next when I saw a male American
kestrel hawk fly toward a river birch tree in the
back corner. Well, something was wrong with this bird, and
I thought it was perhaps injured due to its erratic flight.
But rather than landing in the tree, the small and
colorful hawk landed on the ground where we had been
planting some barberry bushes, and it started moving its wings
in a strange, unnatural way. And the next thing I knew,
this bird pushed its wings up and away from its
body in a manner that would be impossible for any
bird to do, and then I was looking at something
other than the hawk. More than sixteen years have passed
since this event occurred, and I no longer remember the
exact order of what I've witnessed. But over the next
several minutes, I observed this thing chained shapes into a
rabbit with badly deformed ears, a squirrel that was incorrectly formed,
a weasel, a marmot, and a each of which was
anatomically incorrect. At the same time as I witnessed this event,
I was suddenly sick to my stomach and filled with
nausea and a violent headache. The badger jumped down from
the retaining wall and went over to a hole in
the field. My son came upstairs at that point, and
I asked him to keep watch on the hole while
I went over there. I went over through the garage
and I picked up a stout club. When I got
to the hole, nothing was there, and I retreated to
the couch, where I needed to rest for a few
hours to recover. Later research uncovered a material known as
black goo or programmable matter, that might account for what
I saw. Perhaps it was something from the military or
the deep state. I don't know. Debilitating nausea continued for
the next couple of weeks anytime I went outside and
near where I'd seen that thing. Perhaps it was some
kind of radioactivity. The next two events occurred on the
same day. I was fly fishing with my partner at
a still water known as Schofield Reservoir. It was a
gorgeous late spring day and the fishing was good. The
sky was a stunning azure blue, with white, fluffy clouds
hanging low in the sky. At one point I looked
almost straight above me and gasped at seeing a very
large silver sphere in the sky that appeared to be
covered in radio towers. It was not very high above me,
as it was hovering between two of the low hanging clouds,
and as soon as I saw it, the thing rapidly
ascended and was gone from sight in mere moments. Then,
on the way home, as we left the mountains and
reached Highway six, we both saw a glowing orange orb
coming toward us in the opposite lane of traffic. My
friend commented that it was about the size of a basketball.
We watched it pass us and turned to watch it
go behind us, but it disappeared. Later that summer, my
friend would fish at Indian Creek Bay on Strawberry Reservoir,
where we saw two orbs the same evening. Our lives
were becoming very weird. What in the world was happening
to us? Well, this story is becoming so long, so
I'll skip to the next orb story. It's not that critical.
We finally reached July fourth, and after all the activities
of the day, my wife and I were sitting on
the back patio and watching fireworks in towns east of
where we lived. We had an unobstructed view for many
miles in every direction. After the fireworks ceased, we sat there,
enjoying the cool of the evening until almost midnight, when
she grabbed my arm and said, what is that pointing
up the sky about halfway between our home and the
mountains to the east. Neither of us spoke for a
few minutes as we observed a huge, triangular shaped craft
moved silently across the sky. It had running lights along
the top and bottom edge of the side, and once
it passed we could see the back end, which also
had running lights. It continued moving north until we lost
sight of it. We were both two small town kids
that couldn't understand why these inexplicable things were happening to us.
That was not the last unidentifiable thing we saw flying
in the skies that year, but it was the most
remarkable one of all. Sometime in August of two thousand
and five, my fishing partner called me late one evening
and said to go outside and look above the prominent
mountain in our valley. I did so, and to my surprise,
there was a new bright star in the sky we'd
never seen before, and it was flashing colors at an
immense rate of change. My friend had the latest and
most powerful camera with a fantastic zoom lens, and he
filmed the star, which not only flashed colors that we
couldn't name, but changed shapes each time it flashed. We
watched it in slow motion, and we were astonished by
the revelation of what his camera brought into focus. Over
the years since two thousand and five, we've witnessed many
such anomalies. By late September, the heat of the summer
was behind us and it was time to attempt the
jeep expedition once again. We made plans to explore a
section of the San Rafael Swell we had never visited.
On the drive to the swell, we once again passed
through the Sand Pete Valley, and of course discussed the
bigfoot sighting from the spring. That was not my friend's
first cryptid encounter, as I learned. After we passed the
location of the sighting, we both gave an audible sigh
of relief and proceeded on our way. And part way
through the valley, we decided to explore a range of
hills we'd never visited before, and we pulled onto a
gravel road that led up into the hills. I stopped
the jeep on a bridge over a small irrigation canal
as we looked ahead, trying to decide which way we
wanted to go. It was eleven am, and that's when
I noticed a movement below me and to the left
in my peripheral vision. When I looked directly at whatever
had moved, I was instantly paralyzed with fear and incapable
of movement or speaking. Time stopped and I couldn't even breathe.
There below me, kneeling in the canal, was a monster
covered in grizzled hair and a mixture of gray and
light brown, with golden yellow colored eyes that were far apart,
and a wide mouth with narrow lips that were closed
tightly together. I could not look away, and I couldn't move,
and as time stood still, I had a long look
at this thing. The hair on its forehead began at
the brow ridge and grew upward on its forehead until
it reached the top of its head that was cone shape.
The hair was a uniform one inch in length. The
hair on its face gave it a perfect, full beard
that grew up close to its eyes, leaving only a
small patch of charcoal gray skin around the eyes. It
never blinked. The nose was wider and flatter than a
human nose, and hair grew across part of its nose.
The space between the bottom of its nose and its
upper lip was much wider than that of a human,
at least twice as wide and maybe more. The shoulders
on this beast were four feet wide and massive with muscle.
The hair was longer on its shoulders, perhaps four inches long.
There wasn't much neck to speak of, and it looked
like its head rested on its shoulders. The head was
too small to match the shoulders. Its chest was full
and rounded and covered in hair and a couple of
inches long. The shoulder muscles and biceps were incredibly huge.
Because of its position in the canal, I couldn't see
its elbows, lower arms, or hands. I also couldn't see
below its chest, and I never saw its legs at all.
I have assumed all these years that as I was
parked on the bridge and the motor was running, it
must have disturbed the creature that may have been sleeping
or resting under the bridge, and it came out to
investigate the source of the noise, but I'm just guessing.
After taking a long look at this thing, I finally
gained my composure enough to put the jeep in reverse,
take my foot off the clutch, and speed back down
out of there. My friend said later he thought I
was going to roll the jeep, but he didn't know
what I had seen, but he did see me staring
out the window. I let out a scream as we
backed down the steep road until we reached the pavement
and drove away as fast as she would carry us.
A couple of miles down the road, I pulled over
and change places with my friend, as I was too
impacted by the encounter to drive safely. This time, we
did go to the Swell, but the trip was a
bus for me due to what I had seen. What
else did two thousand and five have in store for me?
As it turned out, that was not the final strange
experience of the year. But I won't recite the other
UFO experiences. My poor wife was seeing them often in
the mountains by our home, and it shook her to
the core. I'd like to share some observations prior to
these experiences. I had never seen anything unusual or out
of place in my outdoor life. Suddenly I knew the
truth about things that most people will never know. Regarding
the two clearly identifiable bigfoot creatures, I've already said that
the first black creature felt intensely evil, but I did
not have the same feeling with the second, grizzled one.
Its face was eight to nine feet from my face,
but it never grimaced at me or displayed any threatening behavior.
It could have easily opened its mouth to growl at
us and show its teeth, but its mouth remained close.
I was terrified and petrified with fear from simply seeing
this monstrup close. But I didn't feel any fear being
projected from this creature as many people report. If anything,
it seemed to purposefully not do anything to terrorize us whatsoever.
That being said, I've never been able to bring myself
to visit that bridge again or camp out since two
thousand and five. Now I still go fly fishing as
often as health permits, but I never go unarmed if
we're off the beaten path. And that's that's the end
of his email. But there's a PostScript, and here's what
he writes, in October of twenty nineteen, fourteen years after
the bridge siding, I had another bigfoot encounter at a
small lake in northern Utah called Mill Hollow, where I
was fishing by myself. No one else was at the
lake that day. I didn't have a visual this time,
but a mature white fur was pushed over nearby. In
the creatures made a sound I can only describe as
a symphony orchestra, with all the string and wind and
brass instruments striking a note together, accompanied by multiple car horns.
The loud noise lasted for a single quarter note. They
had my attention. I assumed that rather than scream at me,
they made this less threatening sound so not to alarm
the numerous bull elk that are bugling in the mountains
around me. And I suspect it was a hunting party
and they wanted me gone. I gathered my fly rides
in another gear, and I left the area. I've read
other people's accounts of these beings making all kinds of sounds,
but I've never heard anyone report them sounding like a
symphony orchestra. Last in February of this year, twenty twenty
one one night, at twelve thirty am, something slapped the
side of our home so hard that it felt like
the house would come off its foundation. The slap was
on the second floor, on the other side of the
wall from my head. It reverberated through the house, and
my youngest son in the basement called me wondering what
had just happened. I instantly knew what had happened. One
of the bigfoot creatures that I had encountered found where
I was living and must have climbed up the rock
chimney and let me know they knew where I was.
So many people have reported such events of being harassed
by these creatures that I wasn't surprised, but I took
measures to hopefully keep it from happening again. I hate
the feeling of being a marked man. Oh man, that's
the end. That's the end of the PostScript. That's that
last paragraph gives me the creeps. Whoo. What an amazing
set of events in this man's life. And this is
the one and only time he's going to record or
recount this and all. I can't add anything to this story,
but I can tell the man thank you for thinking
of me and sending the email to me to share
with this audience because we love these great stories. I
know they're unsettling to the people that they happen to,
but we love hearing them, and so I appreciate the gentleman.
He never said whether to use his name or not,
so I'm not going to. But it's just a wonderful story.
And I got this back in twenty twenty one and
I'm just now getting to it. So I hope the
man is still listening. I hope he's not dealing too
terribly bad with MS and was able to hear this story.
And I'm sure, I'm sure it's helping some other people. Okay,
thanks sir for the story. Here is a story written
up rather roughly. I tried to tell it as it
was told to me, though I had to add a
few points of context for it to make sense to
someone outside the family. My fiance's family has been in
North Carolina since the early seventeen hundreds, and since then
a few family legends have cropped up. The most interesting
of these is of the brother of the man she
is descending from. He fought in the French Indian War
against the Cherokees, then against the British under Nathaniel Greene.
After the British withdrawal from the Carolinas, he took his
family further west into the Appalachians in search of a
life away from war. The story of what he and
his family found in those mountains starts here. To preserve privacy,
I have changed the family name to Smith. Upon receiving
his discharge from the North Carolina Rifle Corps, the militia
unit he served in during the War of Independence, Jacob
Smith returned home to his wife and two sons. His
third son, Arthur, who served with him, accompanied him to
their home in the New Hope Valley. Their homestead was.
Speaker 2: Humble, but the earth was fertile from the frequent floods
that often occurred in the area. Jacob, however, returned home
a changed man. He avoided his neighbors and would often
leave for days at a time with just his rifle,
coming back empty handed more often than not. Arthur eventually
took his place as the man of the house, and
with his brothers and mother, kept the farm in good order.
In seventeen eighty four, however, a terrible flood swept down
through the New Hope Valley, killing most of their livestock
and destroying their crops. Faced with debt accumulated during the war,
Arthur chose to sell their property and move elsewhere. Arthur
wanted to move east, closer to the coast, but Jacob
would not allow it. He wanted to be as far
from people as he could go, and that meant moving
to the edge of the Cherokee Territory into the Appalachians.
He convinced Arthur that they could purchase a much larger
track of land than they already owned and start fresh
in solitude. At the end of winter, they set out
for the edge of the Cherokee Territory. During the winter,
Arthur had married the daughter of a wealthy neighbor, and
she accompanied the family on the trying journey west. With
her father's help. They had purchased a large swathe of
land along the New River, and they intended to split
the land among Jacob's sons upon his passing, leaving each
with a respectable homestead. By May, they had built the
first house at the foot of a mountain, and after
much labor, had cleared and planted their first fields. Jacob's
skill at hunting had returned, and they ate well as
they waited for their crops to grow. They kept on
good terms with the Cherokee neighbors, who occasionally visited to
trade for gunpowder and metal tools. Their first harvest was
good that autumn, and they had good stocks to relan
for the coming winter. Arthur's young wife became pregnant during
this time, much to the amusement of his younger brothers
and the joy of his parents. Jacob seemed to be
somewhat returned to his old self, the war seeming to
have become a distant and unwelcome memory. The winter of
seventeen eighty five was bitter cold and came early. The
first snow fell in early November, and cold, old winds
blasted through the hills. As the days got darker and
the nights got longer, strange things began to happen around
the snowed in homestead. Early one morning, the family was
awoken by the sound of pounding and splintering on their barn.
Jacob loaded his Baker rifle and stepped to the window,
where through the gloom he saw a strange sight. A
large black bear was desperately clawing at the barn door.
It was clear the door was not going to give way,
but the bear seemed not to mind. Jacob did not shoot,
and intrigued by this strange behavior, he tried yelling at
the bear, which had often worked in the past. The
bear only looked quickly back at him with an expression
of a hunted animal in its eyes, and continued trying
to force its way into the barn. Jacob taken aback,
shot the terrified animal dead. Upon examining the carcass, it
was found that the bear had ripped out its own
claws and had left great bloody streaks on the door
in its attempt to get into the barn. Several of
its teeth had also been left embedded in the wood
of the door as a testament to the animal's madness.
The same day, Jacob ordered his sons to load their
rifles and pack for three days in the wilderness. Arthur
was left behind to guard the women and told to
report the incident to any Cherokee that might pass by.
Jacob and his boys made for Kiowe, the largest of
the Cherokee settlements and the home of an old warrior
whom Jacob knew from the French and Indian War. How
they knew each other is not known for sure, but
it is speculated that one had spared the other during
the fierce fighting and had since become friends. Upon reaching Kiwi,
they were welcomed by the old warrior and told him
of the incident with the bear. He was immediately concerned
and gathered his own sons from around the village. They
all questioned Jacob as to recent events, and upon hearing
that author's young wife was pregnant, an expression of horror
came to their faces. In a hurry, they gathered their
gear of war and painted their faces with large black
circles around their eyes, and outlined their mouths in black,
so they seemed to stretch wide across their faces. The
six Cherokee and three Whites set a fast pace back
towards the Smith homestead. Two days later, the party crossed
the French abroad and covered the short miles between the
ford and the house. By the early evening, thick boards
had been nailed into place over the windows on both doors,
though a gap had been left wide enough for the
muzzle of a rifle. They were welcomed home by Arthur,
and as they ate, he told them of what he
had experienced in the time of their absence. On the
second day, the smokehouse had been demolished during the night,
and the bear's meat and hide had been taken. Arthur
could not see what had done it, though he had
heard savage screams and hoots amidst the noise of the destruction.
He fired his rifle in the direction of the smokehouse,
and as the report echoed in the hills, all noise ceased.
The third night was what caused him to board up
the windows. He awoke to a shriek from his mother,
whose bed was on the second floor of the house.
He hurried up to her, and she stood holding a
musket to her shoulder, the barrel pointed at the window.
She told him that she had seen a horrid beast
of a man peering down at her, and that she
had awakened to the sound of him trying to reach
into the window. As she was telling this to him,
he heard his wife scream from downstairs and heard the
shattering of glass. He took the musket from his mother
and made it down to find his wife cowering in
the corner, staring at the window. He ran to the
shattered window and fired his musket at a dark shape
retreating rapidly into the gloom of the night. She described
much the same face as had a mother, but it
had crashed its hand through the glass in an attempt
to grab her. He boarded the windows that morning. Since
then they had stayed in the house and heard great
screams coming from what seemed like all around them. Every
few hours a great impact would shake the house, always
opposite from the side or was guarding. The door had
been hit several times with great force, and cracks were
beginning to show in its timbers. Yona, the eldest of
the old warrior's son, spoke in a low voice. He
told them that the beast had come down from the
hills in search of food and had smelled the pregnant girl.
This had drawn it to the farm, which must have
angered it. He said that his people had long ago
come to an agreement with it, and that it no
longer rated their settlements, but that strayed into their territory,
especially with young children or pregnant women, was extremely dangerous.
He was reluctant to speak its name aloud, but eventually
told them its name, sul Keloo. He told them that
it was part of a race of people who lived
high up in the mountains and came to the valleys
at night to hunt. He said that they were quick
to anger and could not speak as men did, and
that they were terrible foes. When his people would see them,
they would bow their heads and walk backwards until they
heard it leave, and then would return home and not
hunt for seven days. If he returned to the hunt
too early, he would return to find his children or
his wife gone, never to be seen again. The Indians
went outside and built up a great pile of brush
and fallen timber in front of the house. As darkness
began to fall, they lit the fire and slowly walked
around it, singing a mournful song. Jacob and his wife
stood on the porch, watching in fascination, when suddenly, from
the darkness beyond the fire, a scream thundered out, long
and terrifying. The Indians instantly ceased their song and stepped
backwards towards the house. Their heads bowed. Then the great
beast stepped into the firelight and screamed again, staring directly
at Arthur's young wife. The girl collapsed and was quickly
pulled into the house by her mother in law. Now
only the men stood on the porch, and the beast
focused its gaze on Jacob, baring its teeth and emitting
a rumbling growl that seemed to shake the earth. Jacob
stood firm and returned the creature's gaze without fear, Having
many times before faced death on the battlefield, he quietly
told his sons to go inside and bar the door.
The old man was now alone face to face with
suel Koleu. In a flash, he raised his rifle and fired,
and the ball struck the creature in the center of
its chest. With a mighty roar, The creature lunged forward
through the fire, scattering sparks and flaming branches about him.
With one he seized Jacob by the head and smashed
his body against the house, killing him instantly. The creature,
in a violent rage, stomped around the house, beating it
over and over with the body of Jacob, as his
sons fired at it from the slits left in the
windows again and again, to no effect. The house, which
had been showered with embers, began to burn. The rest
of the family, faced with a choice between burning to
death and facing sul Kaloo, themselves, banded together As the
smoke thickened in the air, Arthur led them out and
they ran as fast as they could to the ford.
They were not followed and made it to Kiwi the
next day. They sheltered with the Indians for some time
and eventually traveled back east. As they passed their farms
did they found that it had burned to the ground.
The barn had been destroyed, and a foul smell came
from their well. As far as we know, they settled
in Greensboro and have been there ever since.