Speaker 1: I was seventeen years old in nineteen sixty nine when
my brother asked me if I'd like to join him
on a three day hike up in the back country
of Yosemite National Park. He had just come home from Vietnam.
Even though I had camped out many times with my family,
I had never been on a hike for that long before,
so I said yes. The first day, we followed a
steep path that dropped a thousand feet to the river.
It was about the end of April, which is early
spring in the high country, and Yosemite is a big place.
We didn't see anyone else throughout the entire trip as
we traveled over hill and dale in the beautiful Sierra
Nevada Mountains. The first night, we camped near a babbling stream.
After lunch the next day, we walked through a sunny
alpine meadow covered in light green, knee high spring grasses
and flowers. The meadow was situated in a valley surrounded
by tall wooded hills, and it was a spectacular sight.
And then we entered an aspen forest dappled with sunlight.
There we noticed the faint smell of a skump. It
was weak enough that We figured the skump must have
left some time ago, so we kept on walking further
into the grove, we came across a newly built windowless
ranger shed constructed of thick corrugated steel. All the necessary
tools and equipment to repair trails in the back country
were kept there so the forest rangers wouldn't have to
haul them back and forth. We knew this because the
front and one side were torn off, with the heavy
metal corrugated panels scattered all over the nearby woods. We
stood there gawking at it for several minutes, trying to
figure out how this could have happened. My brother said
it must have been a big bear, freshly awake from
its winter hibernation that did it. But on closer inspection,
there were neither claw marks nor teeth marks on any
of the eight foot long panels. Some of them were
curled into themselves like a sea, and others were thrown
up to thirty feet away. It was as if someone
tall had peeled the sheets off like peeling a banana
and tossed them aside. Nothing inside the shed was disturbed.
Whatever peeled away the panels had no interest in the
contents The bears in California are mostly small brown bears
like on our state flag. A doubt a bear like
that could have reached high enough on the shed to
grab the top of a panel and rip it away.
It was unnerving to consider what might have been able
to do that kind of damage. Let's get out of
here and put a few miles between us and this
place before we stopped for the night. My brother said,
I was more than happy to comply. Neither of us
had ever heard the word sasquatch or bigfoot at the time.
My brother was carrying a small hunting knife, but that
was it. We had no guns and no bear spray.
A small, steady breeze kicked up in the late afternoon
that stayed with us all night. When we got there,
we were too tired from our long hike to build
a fire, so we had supper of salami and cheese
on bread with a sigh of fruit, and then we
hung our food pack up in the tree and went
to bed, and the wind gently swayed our tent for
the whole night. The sun had not quite set behind
the tall trees when we fell asleep. Sometime later, something
woke me up. I had been dreaming that I was
having a conversation with someone who reminded me of Little Abner.
I know I'm dating myself now, so I should explain
that Little Abner was a comic strip character in the
Sunday Comics when I was growing up. He was a big,
dark haired man with muscles like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I'm not
entirely sure the person in my dream was human, or
that it was even a dream. In any case, we
talked for a short time, and then something completely woke
me up. Instantly, I realized something heavy just outside the
tent was hitting the ground next to my head, and
I could feel the vibration of the impacts. I laid there,
frozen in fear as it, whatever it was, took a
long inhaling sniff only twelve inches from my head. There
was no doubt that it had taken in my scent
right through the thin material of our pup tent. Too
afraid to move, I listened intently to see if it
would move to my brother's side of the tent and
sniff there. Instead, he grabbed the tent pole by our
heads and started shaking violently. Wake up, Wake up, I screamed,
and as soon as I began to speak, the shaking stopped,
so my brother didn't see it. He accused me of
having a nightmare induced by the sight of that shit,
and told me to go back to sleep, and then
he rolled over with his back to both me and
the tent pole. Again, something grabbed the pole and shook
it violently for three seconds. There's something outside shaking the tent,
I said, It's just the wind. He answered angrily, Please
go back to sleep. My brother is more than just
a brother. He and I are great friends. Never before
nor since had he ever spoken so gruffly to me.
That was as much a shock as the tent shaking.
I was between a rock and a hard place, and
I was sweating bullets from the fear of what was outside,
and thoroughly crushed by my brother's reaction. Well, I laid
there and fought back the panic and frustration, and listened
for anything that might be moving around outside the tent.
The gentle breeze covered all the subtle noises, and finally,
either from shock or exhaustion, I fell asleep. At daybreak.
We got up. There were no signs of anything having
been around the tent, so we took down the pack
and had some water. We decided we walk a couple
of miles of then stop and eat breakfast. My brother
was like a mountain goat, and I had twisted my
ankle on the first day, so I was constantly lagging
seventy five feet behind him. But as we walked along,
I began to have a dialogue in my head, as
if someone were interviewing me in a sort of a
get acquainted, friendly talking manner. It was as if someone
else was asking the questions and I was answering them.
We were still in that high valley, so there were
no trees on either side of our trail. Clearly there
was no one around me, but the conversation continued in
my head for a mile or so. I felt a presence,
so I kept glancing around to see if anyone was there,
but no one was there, and still the questions kept
popping into my head and I kept answering them, and
then suddenly it stopped. It was as if the interview
was over, and when it was over, I felt a
little silly for having thought about myself and my life
as if someone were there listening to me. It was
a bright, sunlit day, but I was alone, Why would
I go on and on about my life and my
family like that. I've only recently learned about mine to speak,
and knew nothing of it at the time, and it
was a very strange feeling. Well, at that point I
decided to enjoy the walk, and eventually we were back
at the Big Trees again. There we came across a
log jam around a deep pool blocking our way. The
trees were about three feet in diameter. My brother went
around to the riot, where it was real swampy, and
I chose to go to the left and jump from
log to log while keeping my feet as dry as possible. Well,
one log turned out to be a bad choice. The
far end was anchored on the bank, but the end
closest to me was under the log that I had
been standing on, and I soon learned it was just
floating in the water, and as soon as I jumped
down on it, it began to sink. The crystal clear
pool was about eight to ten feet deep, and as
I jumped, I heard run in my mind. With a
burst of speed, I made it to the other end
of the twenty five foot log before it sank too
deep and dumped me in the icy snow melt. It
was the easiest run I had ever experienced. It felt
like I was feather light, even with a pack. It
was almost like someone was pushing me while lifting up
the pack to take the weight off me. The log
was sinking fast, but I seemed to be flying over it.
I managed to get across with only one wet foot.
Even as I was running, though, I couldn't help but think,
what is happening to me? At the other end, my
brother was blanched white as he fumbled to get his
pack off. He thought he was going to have to
dive in and help me out. At seventeen, it hadn't
occurred to me just how dangerous the route I had
taken was, and that maneuver in particular was very dangerous.
If I had fallen in with the backpack, the water
absorbed by the sleeping bag alone could have been enough
to drag me under. This probably all sounds ridiculous to
anyone listening, but it is how I remember it. Something
weird happened on that log. There's no way anyone could
have been behind me. No one was there but my brother.
He was in front of me. Even if someone had
been there, their weight would have caused the log to
sink even more. The explanation I have come up with
is absurd, to say the least. Many thoughts have run
through my mind. Was an invisible, hovering sisquatch pushing me
along and holding up my backpack? Or was something helping
a human to save a life. It's definitely one for
the book of the Weird. Now I know I'm probably
making a mountain out of a mole hill. I wouldn't
blame you if you laughed at my story. I'm laughing
right along with you. The only reason I think sisquatch
is because of the destroyed ranger shed and the smell
of the skunk just before we found it. And I
suppose it could have been any benevolent spirit who saved me.
But something did. As unbelievable as it sounds, it is
exactly what happened. Nothing else of any significance happened on
that trip. We never spoke of it again, and I
forgot all about it. In recent years, I've listened to
a lot of bigfoot stories on YouTube. It wasn't until recently, though,
when another person mentioned being sniffed through their tent, that
all that came back to me. Having something large sniff
you through a tent is incredibly unsettling. Perhaps that's what
caused me to repress the memory until now. I never
saw a side squatch, nor do I know what the
interviewing thing was. I'm just glad that whatever or whoever
it was was there to save my life when I
needed it on that log, God blessed them for that. Okay,
here's a story about a dog, and you guys are
going to have to decide whether this is a Bigfoot
event or something else. But it's a great story. It's
really a good, real mystery kind of story. This is
a true story about my dog and our farm near
North Ogden, Utah. Crystal Blue is my dog's name, but
everyone calls her Mama. She's a Blue Healer mix and
in twenty nineteen, she was a year old. She loves
to run all over the property and she roams the
neighbor's property too. Around midnight on a cold night in February,
I led her outside to do her business. It was
snowy and a fresh blanket of snow covered the ground.
After letting her walk outside, I walked back to my
room to get a cigarette. It was a few minutes
before I got back to the porch and I lit
up and finished my cigarette, and then I called for her. Typically,
she comes back to me right away, but she didn't
on this night, so I yelled louder. Still she didn't come.
After several attempts, I became warmed. I rushed back inside
and found my roommate and asked if he would help
me to find my dog. I think he saw the
worry in my expression. Well, he agreed, and we went
back outside and we called some more. She was gone.
She never came back. Her tracks in the snow were obvious,
so we began to follow them, and from the tracks,
we saw that she left the porch and then made
two circles around the yard and then headed for a
fence that separated our property from our neighbors. The tracks
finally turned and it appeared that she had gone under
the fence. From there were three tracks and then nothing
but pristine's snow. This area is open, with no trees,
shrubbery or buildings close by. It was as if she
vanished into thin air, and to us it looked impossible.
Neither of us could wrap our head around this. But
here we were looking at it By this time, I
was beginning to panic and on the verge of losing it.
My roommate calmed to me a bit and said that
we would keep looking. And we spent an hour searching
everything and everywhere on our property and the neighbors. There
was no sign of the dog anywhere, not a sound,
not a track, zero evidence that she went anywhere after
the tracks ended under the fence. I wanted to keep looking,
so we split up and we searched everything again. This
took about an hour. It was still snowing, I was
bawling uncontrollably, and we were soaked and freezing. We needed
to get warm, but I wouldn't give up, so we
split up again to cover the same ground a third time.
Stumbling now in the snow, I started for the front
end of the property while my roommate went the other way,
and I suppose I walked less than a football field
when some my dog was right in front of me.
She acted like she had not seen me in a month,
and I immediately scooped her up in my arms when
I hugged her, and then I stood and yelled for
my roommate, I've got her. My roommate, Jim and I
had spent hours out looking for this dog, and we
were both soaked and cold. The weird thing was is
that Mama was dry, like she had never gone outside.
Even her paws were dry. How was this possible. I
don't know what happened to my girl that night, but
I know that several times that month, I saw lights
in the sky that I had never seen before. And
it wasn't just me, many people who lived in that
area saw them. I believe my dog had been abducted
that night the lights were there. I remember telling them,
thank you for sending my dog back in, to please
never take her again, and since then they have not.
She's almost four now, and I thank the Lord for
her every day. All Right, this last story is from Bruce,
and you're gonna think this story is totally nuts. You're
gonna think this guy's office rocker. I wouldn't say that,
because as weird as this story is, it actually jogged
a memory that I had that I had forgotten. And
I'm not gonna tell the story. I'm gonna tell his story,
not my story. But at some point I'll probably tell
my story, but I need to think on it so
that I can remember. Try to remember as many details
as I can. But let's get into Bruce's story, because
this is a doozy. I've decided to tell you about
my encounter I had back in the early nineteen seventies.
Something tells me that even the diehard bigfoot enthusiasts might
think I'm nuts. But after listening to one of your
tales about two duck hunters seeing a bigfoot and then
telling everybody they knew in spite of not being taken serious,
I knew that I would eventually tell this story to you.
Like the duck hunters, I too, tell the story as
often as I can, not because people believe it, but
just to tell the story. I have yet to have
anyone stop me in mid stream before the tale is over.
I'm in my sixty third year now, I don't much
care if people believe me. When I was fifteen, I
decided to hitchhike to Atlanta, Georgia, where my older brother
had moved a few years before. It was summer break
and I had nothing but time on my hands. I
remember the day was hot when I departed an arbor, Michigan.
Now remember the further south I went, the hotter it got.
The weird thing about this trip was the first guy
that picked me up was going all the way to Florida,
and he happened to be a real friendly guy. This
was when Interstate I seventy five was just being built
through the tallest mountains of Tennessee, and though the road
was perfect, the downside was that there were no rest
stops where one could stop to relieve himself, nor were
there gas stations or anything else. By the time we
got to the Kentucky Tennessee state line, I had to pee,
but for some reason I decided to pass up the offer.
When I had the chance, somewhere in the highest elevations
of Tennessee, I practically ordered the driver to stop as
soon as he could so that I could get rid
of what felt like several gallons ready to explode. He
told me that he would pull over at the next
lookout pull off, which was a paved area for equipment
and supplies used earlier before the crews headed further down
the road. It was like a sign from God when
we came upon one of these lookouts and the place
was full of cars. I bolted from the car and
hopped over the guardrail, and I made my way down
a paved ditch, I noticed that the older lady we
had parked next to was watching me the whole time.
I thought I had found a place to peace so
that I had some privacy, But when I looked up
over my shoulder, I could see her stretching her head
watching me, and I walked further down past a hill
that blocked her view. It was a long time emptying
my bladder, and while I stood there, I heard a
noise that sounded like a chipmunk, but it was a
lot bigger. It was coming nearer, and I expected to
see it cross the ditch any second. I don't know
if I was in shock or that I had to
pee so bad, but when this thing popped out of
the woods just fifteen feet below me, I didn't move
a muscle other than a steady flow from me. Relieving myself,
I didn't move at all and became part of the
landscape as best I could. I was thinking that if
I lived through this, no one will believe me if
I tell them. And as I was musing over the
fact that these creatures have been extinct for millions of years,
the creature turned its head my way and made squeaking
chirps as if from a giant chipmunk. But mind you,
this was no chipmunk. It was a five foot tall dinosaur.
I'll give you a moment to compose yourself. It was
standing broadside in front of me, facing to my left,
and he was fixed on my position. This thing had
huge muscular legs with a stretched out tail, just like
in the pictures, and it had little arms which were
bent up at the elbows with its hands closer to
its head. Its head was a dino typical, having a
large jaw filled with several razor sharp teeth. At least
that's what they look like to me. This whole encounter
lasted for no more than thirty seconds, but in my
vulnerable position, it seemed much longer. With a couple of
more squeaks, it turned and continued its journey to the
left of me, and it disappeared into the woods. After
I finished my business, I walked up the mountain, hoping
that the old woman had seen what had just taken place,
but she was no longer there. So of course I
had to tell someone about my strange encounter, and I
told the dude that I'd been traveling with for the
past few hours, and even though I felt better about
telling someone, this man didn't have a thing to say,
but I could tell by the look on his face
that he thought I was crazy, which after I had
finished telling my story, he didn't hesitate to confirm. I
saw what I saw, and it doesn't matter what people think.
I know it's true. Over time, people have suggested various
animals that it might have been, but nothing ever came close.
Years later, I happened to be in my home in
Michigan and a TV commercial came on advertising the new
King Tut exhibit, which would open the following weekend in Chicago, Illinois.
The commercial was from the view of a man holding
a camera as he walked past a giant dinosaur on
the main level of the museum and up a set
of stairs to the Tut exhibit, and then down the
hall to the left, where there was a closed door.
The camera came to that door and then slowly opened
the door, revealing my old friend from Tennessee, meaning I
could see the dinosaur there in the background. I instantly
blurted out to my wife, who, by the way, also
thinks my Dino's story is a figment of an overreaching imagination.
We're going to Chicago, I said. The following weekend, we
were in the car headed to the dinosaur exhibits, King
who I wasn't interested in, some old has been King. No,
I had unfinished business and I was about to have
the proof at my fingertips at any moment. We arrived
in Chicago and pulled into the museum, and it didn't
take long before I was viewing firsthand the same view
I'd seen days before in the commercial. We quickly passed
the giant dinosaur on the main floor, and I was
thankful that it wasn't the one that walked out on
the trail so many years ago, because it was a
big one. We flew past the King what's his name,
and as the door down the hallway was beckoning me
to come closer. Finally, after decades, I would soon be
standing face to face with the creature I had seen
in Tennessee. My hand turned the knob on the door,
and when it swung open, there it was on a
platform three feet off the ground behind the door. Honey,
that's the exact same one. This is the creature I saw,
I said to my wife. I wasn't aware of how
many people were in the room until it suddenly got quiet,
but now only in a whisper, I repeated myself, to
make sure my wife understands and what I had experienced
all those years ago. I still don't think she believes me. Well,
that's my story, and I'd be interested if anyone else
has had such an encounter other than that. Thank you
again for allowing these kinds of stories to be told.
Have a good day, Bruce. Oh, someone sees a dinosaur
in nineteen seventy, Okay, that sounds pretty crazy. However, like
I said before I started this story, I saw something
when I was a kid. I think I was maybe
ten years old. We were at a vacation property that
my parents owned, and I had been out hiking all
day with my brother and my sister and my cousins,
and we kind of got split up and I was
on my own and I saw something like this for
a brief second, and then it was gone. And I'm
gonna try to put my thoughts together and tell me
that story. I'm saying this all in response to the
writer who says he was wondering if anybody else had
had such an encounter. Those are his exact words. I
don't know what I saw, but I'm going to try
to think on it and try to recreate that image
in my mind and see if I can't tell you
all that story. So thanks to Bruce for sending this story.
It was great. I really appreciate it. I love stories
like this, and I actually believe him. I believe he
saw something strange that day. I don't know if it
was a dinosaur, but it's pretty interesting. Good stuff, good stuff,