Speaker 1: My father owned a green Ford Aerostar van. It was
a piece of jump. The power steering wined when he
made turns, the engine ticked and it was slow, but
he was able to keep it running. And this was
our main mode of transportation in Manitoba, and in Manitoba
it takes hours to get anywhere. I was a kid then,
and I remember that we did a lot of traveling
in that van. I don't know where we went or
while we traveled that much. I guess it was my
father's business. I just remember driving down long highways for
hours during the day and late at night. It had
to have been two or three in the morning on
one of these trips, while we went as fast as
the van would take us down a dark highway lined
with dead pines on both sides. The area is referred
to as the Sticks here in Manitoba. It's a spooky
place to be in the daylight, much less in the dark.
My head rested on the passenger door as we listened
to loud music. My father always had the volume loud.
He loved good music. I was used to it. So
I sat there in a numb state, watching the dead
pines fly by in the glow of the headlights. My
ear was close to the window, and I could faintly
hear footsteps crunching in the gravel. I figured it was
part of the music, but the noise continued between the songs.
Whatever this noise was, it was running and keeping pace
with the car. We were about to enter and drive
through Riding Mountain State Park, where the speed limit was reduced.
So my father, who obviously had not heard the noise
I was hearing, slowed to the speed limit. I reached
to the radio and I switched it off. Do you
hear that, Dad, I asked, I do what is that?
He said, looking over his right shoulder through the back windshield. Abruptly,
he pulled the car over on the gravel median, and
he opened the door. With one leg still in the car,
he stood up and he looked over the roof. He
immediately dropped back into the driver's seat, through the car
in gear and floored it. Gravel sprayed behind us. I
got real worried, but I don't know what he saw.
The dead pines blew past us, now faster than before,
and with his high beams on. Now the road was
lit well enough for me to see far ahead. We
traveled a short distance and the footfalls were back on
my side of the car again. My father pushed the
gas pedal harder and that clunky old van picked up
not much speed, but whatever was running beside the car
was having no trouble keeping up. Turned in my seat
to look, and what I saw is hard to describe
because it was so big that I could only see
the legs in my field of view. I leaned over
in this seat to tilt my head up, and although
I could not make out any details, I did see
how big this very fast thing was. At my age
then I would have said it was two stories tall.
I think that's about seven meters or twenty feet. I
don't know, but it was enormous and it was powerful.
Watching the black, hairy, muscular legs run beside the car
scared me to death. My father was freaking out as well,
but he held it together and he kept driving. There
was no place to go but straight ahead, and then
the footstomps began to fade in the distance. I began
to breathe again, and Dad slowed down some. We never
said a word. I wanted to get back to the
city lights, and I think he did too. We were
coming off riding Mountain Pass and a large green sign
was in the distance ahead. Our headlights made that sign
reflect like a ship coming to save us on a
stormy sea. I watched the sign get closer and I
saw a huge, shadowy figure cross in front of it.
It had run fast enough to get ahead of us,
maybe through the pines, maybe on the other side of
the road, and we had just missed it. Dad pointed
ahead and he said something that I never heard. He
pressed me back into the seat. This night was not
over yet. The sign was coming up fast, and I
guess my father decided turning around was an exercise in futility.
So while we were going downhill, he gave that tin
can as much gas as it would take. I felt
like we were driving one hundred miles per hour, and
my eyes were fixed on that sign. I saw the
creature move behind the sign and lower itself as if
it were hiding. Huge dark hands were visible where he
held on to the top of the sign, blocking the
reflective glow. If this is it, then this is it,
I heard my dad say under his breath, and I
knew something bad was about to happen. We were almost
even with that sign. I pushed my feet against the
floorboard and I gripped the arm rest. But at that moment,
a calm peace came over me. I was just a kid,
but somehow I was able to prepare myself for whatever
was about to happen. In some strange way, I was ready.
We blew past that sign, and this creature did something
I never expected. Just as we were even with the beast,
it poked its head out from behind the sign. In
the headlights, I could see its face, orange eyes reflected
back at us. At the last minute, it extended its head,
almost touching the passenger side window. For a split second,
we were face to face, with a thin sheet of
glass between us. At that moment, I saw eyes as
big as golf balls, two slits in its face for
a nose, and two rows of white teeth. As it
smiled at me. It was more of a sinister grin,
but it was a smile all the same. Suddenly I
got the feeling that it was messing with us. After
seeing its speed and obvious strength, I think it could
have swiped our car right off into those spooky dead
pines at any minute if it had wanted to. We
were now a good distance down the pass, and the
car filled with an odor that I cannot describe. We
didn't want to roll the windows down for fear of
this thing still being close. But the further we drove,
the less offensive of the oder became. I am an
adult now. All the years since I assumed that this
was a sisquatch, but now I don't think it was.
I don't know what it was. Maybe it was a
demon or a troll, but I'm pretty sure it was
not a sisquatch. It was something worse. I still deal
with bad dreams over that night. Now they are less
frequent as the years go by. I doubt I will
ever forget that night. And my father has never said
a word about it since. My niece came home and
told my sister that she thought she had seen a
bigfoot in the sam Houston National Forest. They live in
a small town called cut and Shoot on Highway one
oh five between Cleveland and Conroe, which borders the sam
Houston National Forest and the Big Thicket. The Big Thicket
has called that because it's a merger of the southern
pine forests to go coastal plains and the Louisiana Swamps.
They come together to create a jungle type environment. It
was said in my youth that you couldn't go into
the thicket for more than one hundred yards before you
would step on a water moccasin. With the expansion of
civilization and the encroachment of urban style neighborhoods, I would
dare say that now you can venture as far as
two hundred yards before stepping on a water moccasin. Oh,
that's a great improvement. Running wolf at any rate. My
sister told my niece that she probably saw a deer.
My niece replied that it was big and brown, and
it was walking on two legs. My sister has always
had a crush on Bobo Fay from the TV show
Finding Bigfoot, so she immediately started thinking that if they
found some tracks, they might be on the Bigfoot Show
with Bobo Fay. My sister grabbed her small gun, a
double barrel twelve gage shotgun loaded with double lot buckshot,
and said let's go. My niece said, Mama, don't you
think it's going to be dangerous for the two of us?
And my sister replied, yes, but maybe the sasquatch will
survive anyway. They returned to the area where my niece
saw the bigfoot. No tracks were found because the thick
layer of pine straw covering the ground, but they did
find fresh limbs broken off about eight feet high, and
they were all pointing in the same direction. My sister
made this observation and said, you know, I think that
this creature is pointing out a direction for others of
his kind to follow him. It was late in November
of twenty twenty. And here's the interesting part of the story.
The following day, on the very front page of the
Cold Springs Gazette was the story titled Bigfoot spotted on
San Juacento and Liberty County Lines. My sister told my
niece he must have traveled fast, because when we were
looking for him in the Sam Houston Forest, he was
already east of us. All hopes of being on the
Bobo fet show were diminishing rapidly, but my sister was
convinced that my niece saw a bigfoot. And this is
my story submitted by Running Wolf. Well. I would say
Running Wolf, your knees had great aspirations. She was really
really ready to get on that show and talk about
the bigfoot that she saw. And I'm sad that that
didn't work out, but I'm sure they had fun anyway.
It sounds like both of the women have a great
sense of humor. In her high spirited and really aren't
afraid of anything. But I thought it was an interesting
story and I wanted to share it with you, guys.
Running Wolf. Thanks for writing it, man, it was really nice. Thanks.
I had no idea it was a bigfoot at the time.
I believe it was one. Now I live in the
most populated state of the United States, and you would
think that there's no place for a bigfoot to roam
freely in New Jersey, but evidently they do. We lived
in South Jersey, not far from the pine barrens the
summer of the bi centennial. I was seventeen years old.
The two hundred year celebration of our wonderful nation was
just around the corner. Many towns were planning big parades
and even bigger fireworks. I was looking forward to partaking
in these celebrations. I had a reputation as a goody
two shoes and actually had been called this name by
many of my friends. I had a problem, though, that
could change all of that. I was smitten with a
guy who was known as a bad boy. Although we
were the same age. He had street smarts and I
had none. He rode dirt bikes and was a rough
and tumble type of fellow. He already sported a few tattoos,
and in those days, tattoos were not as popular as
they are today. One of us tattoos was a skull
with a knife through it, with blood dripping from the knife.
This tattoo kind of frightened me, but he was nice
to me and that intrigued me. He would ride his
dirt bike to my house on occasion to visit and
to hang out. My mom would say, don't you ever
get on that motorbike with him. You'll be in big
trouble if I catch you doing that. I knew this
tattoo would not go over well with my parents, so
he did what I asked, and he would wear long
sleeves when he came to visit me. I was the
fifth of seven children, raised with the rules that were
set forth by the bad behavior of my older siblings.
I had to behave or else. Plus I really didn't
want to upset my dad, as I had already witnessed
the punishment my older brothers had received from him. I
wanted to remain the good girl. The Pine Bearings is
a very large forested area over one million acres that
stretches across more than seven counties in New Jersey. The
name Pine Barrens refers to the area's sandy, acidic nutrient
poor soul. This area was also known as the Pinelands.
This vast area supports rare plant life, including orchids and
carnivorous plants, as well as the pygmy pitch pines that
depend on the frequent fires of the Pine Barrens to reproduce.
This area was largely undisturbed despite its proximity to Philadelphia
and New York City. My bad boy guy friend wanted
to take me on the Fourth of July to one
of the fire towers located in the pine Lands. We
would climb up to the top and watch the small
town's fireworks from eighty feet above the ground, and it
is off limits to the public. I knew my parents
would never give me permission to go, and this meant
that I would have to lie. I told my mother
that we would be attending a friend's barbecue. Lying to
them made me uncomfortable. These were the days before cell
phones and tracking, so I said yes to this crazy,
exciting idea. We actually did go to the barbecue, but
we left around eight pm to head out to the
location of the fire tower. We both jumped in his
truck with dirt bike in the back. The events that
were about to happen are seared into my memory forever.
We drove for twenty five minutes while the sun set
slowly and the sound of firecrackers and pops could be
heard in the distance. Once we left the paved road,
the woods grew thicker and darker. This dirt road was
a firebreak that the Forest Service made to slow the
spread of wildfires. We drove on this road for a
few miles and then bad Boy pulled off the road
and grabbed a small flashlight from the glo love compartment
of the truck and said, let's go. It's getting dark fast.
I was gitterally and nervous for disobeying my mother. I
could hear her saying, you'll be in big trouble if
I catch you riding that motorbike. As I walked to
the rear of the truck to help get the dirt
bike out, I was rethinking my attire. I had on
my new four inch high cork heeled sandals and my
fraid cut off jeans. I think I was more concerned
about looking cute than practical. And then bad boy ask,
are those the only shoes you have with you? Yes?
I said. He told me he would go slow and
showed me where to place my feet on the bike.
We would have to ride about fifteen minutes through the
forest before getting to the fire tower. I held on
with my arms around his waist. He kick started his
bike and we were off. He was evidently familiar with
these trails. As we went deeper into the woods, I
was thinking, if this is slow, I don't want to
know what it feels like to go fast. But I
was actually starting to enjoy the ride. When we arrived
at our destination, he shut off the dirt bike and
we both climbed off. He shined the flashlight on the
menacing fire tower. It was taller than I imagined. He
said he thought it was eighty feet tall and couldn't
wait for me to see the view. The fireworks were
going to start soon and we needed to get up there.
I cautiously proceeded in my four inch high courk hill sandals.
The open stairs were in a zigzag format and they
were steep. He put the flashlight on me so I
could see where I was going. As we climbed. I
asked if we were all allowed to be here. He
said no, but not to worry, because he and his
dirt bike friends had been there many times and no
one had ever said a word. A little more than
halfway up, we heard it, this terrible scream come from
the forest below. My first thought was that someone was
being murdered down there. We stopped at the sounds, and
bad Boy seemed concerned. He shined his flashlight below us.
It was a small flashlight and we couldn't see the ground.
We were really high up. We kept climbing, thinking that
we might be able to see better from the top.
A sound that came thundering through the woods below us.
I can't describe it any better than to say that
it sounded like something maybe a bulldozer, was crashing through
and running over trees, but there was no engine noise.
At first it was far off, but it was getting
closer to the tower. We froze in place. Bad Boy
yelled up to me, turn around and let's start climbing down.
We need to leave now. He was trying to hold
the flashlight on my feet so I could see, but
this process was causing us to go slower. I yelled
down at him, just go. The sound of the trees
cracking was like gunfire, and at one point I believed
it could have been gunfire. I was so horrified and shaking,
trying to clench my toes tight to keep my shoes
from falling off my feet that I almost fell twice.
Losing one shoe by accident and then kicking the other
off on purpose helped me to go faster. We were
close to the bottom and the noise stopped, complete silence.
This scared me as much as the noise. What was
making the noise and where was it now? Not knowing
where it was was worse to me than the noise itself.
It was so close, and then all of a sudden
it had stopped. I was so scared that I had
trouble standing up. We made it to the dirt bike.
I climbed on behind him while he was kickstarting the bike.
That scream came out of the woods again, in close
to us. It was louder, and whatever made the screen
was right on us. I don't know if that was
because we were at ground level or that it was
really closer to us, but it vibrated through my body.
I was about to pass out, and then the bike started.
I found out what fast was really like on a
dirt bike, and I didn't care. I was happy to
be going fast. I closed my eyes tight and held
on for dear life. We came to an abrupt stop.
I opened my eyes. Bad boy jumped off and hollered
to me to hold up the bike, so I grabbed
the handlebars and hurried to hold the bike up. He
ran up ahead of us and began to drag a
large branch out of the middle of the dirt trail.
He cleared it just enough for us to skirt by
racing all the way back to his truck. We both
jumped off the bike. He threw me the keys and
said start the truck. I jumped in and, without ha hesitation,
started the truck as he quickly got the dirt bike
in the truck bed. Within a few seconds, he was
driving us back to the paved road. I was trembling.
My legs would not stop shaking, my bare feet were
scratched and hurting. I kept looking back, half expecting something
or someone to be following us. But we got closer
to the paved road and bad Boys said, that has
never happened here before. What was going on back there?
Of course I had no answer. I asked him if
we had taken another route back to the truck from
the fire tower, because I didn't remember a tree branch
across the trail. He said that he had taken the
exact trail back to the truck and the limb had
not been there, and that it was not a dead limb.
It was green and had been placed in our way.
We both kept silent for the thirty minute ride home,
listening to the distant cracking pops of the various towns
fire works with glimpses of sparkles in the night sky.
This was the fourth of July that I would never forget.
And as an epilogue, here's what she writes, and I
love this. My bad boy turned out to be a
good guy. I guess my goody two shoes ways rubbed
off on him. Forty years married and two daughters later,
we are very happy that skull and knife tattoo is
now covered with a heart tattoo and our daughter's names
are in the heart. We have talked about this event
in our lives, but my good guy is not sure
it was a bigfoot. He really doesn't have an explanation
for what happened, but I think I do. My name
is Elle, and I live out in the country, about
ten miles from Atlanta, Texas, Northeast Texas. I live in
a wooded area, but my little house is just off
of a farm to mark road. Not much traffic, not
many people, not much of anything but trees. My husband's
family has had the land here since before the Civil War.
When the time came, he and I moved here from
the Texas Coast, planning to live here until well the end.
When we first moved up here, my husband was still
chasing turnarounds in the refineries. I'd often be alone for
weeks at a time. It was during one of those
times that I began to feel as though I was
being watched. At first, it scared me, so I'd get
my three fifty seven and march outside as bravely as
I could and pop off a few rounds in the air.
I'd go back in the house relieved, but never quite
sure I'd scared whatever it was away. The strange feeling
of being watched changed after a while. I began to
feel more like I was being observed. I could feel
that something was out there in the dark. Dogs knew
it too. One night, I was sitting on the couch
watching TV. My hubby was up north on another turnaround,
and it was just me and the dogs. Suddenly there
was a sound coming from the woods to the right
of the house. This time the dog started barking. I
muted the TV, grabbed my gun, and ran to the door.
I cracked it just a bit. The sound was incredibly loud,
and it sounded like a scream on top of a roar,
if that makes sense. It went on for at least
a minute, and then silence. I slammed the door and
got the dogs settled down. That night, I stayed up
sitting on the couch watching the door, my gun in hand.
I told my husband about it on the phone the
next day. He laughed it off, just like he did
when I tell him I thought something in the woods
was watching me. My husband died not long after that.
I was alone here full time. I frequently felt that
I was being observed. It wasn't a constant feeling, but
when it came on, it felt like there was a
heaviness in the air. I learned to live with it,
and that was that. A few months after my husband passed,
my youngest son, Jay and his fiance moved up. His
father had asked him to take care of me, and
that's what he did. One day, not long after he
got here, Jay went out to the back forty to
have some time alone, walking around in the woods he
used to hunt with his dad. Jay started walking the creek.
After a little bit, he came to a place in
the creek bottom and stopped dead in his tracks. He
told me something was there, but he didn't know what
it was. He was so overcome by fear that he
ran as fast as he could back to his truck
and got the hell out of there. He's been here
two years and has never gone back to that spot.
Fast forward about two months. It was a beautiful black
nw night. I went outside to soak up the peace
that permeates the air here. It just engulfs you. I
love that about this place. But suddenly, as I stood there,
I heard that scream coming from the same place I'd
heard it two years before. It wasn't as loud. It
didn't even wake my son in his fiance, but it
was the same. I ran back inside and locked the doors.
Two weeks passed. It was just after sunset, the kids
were gone, and I was getting something out of my car.
I hadn't been out there for more than a minute
when I heard the first scream. It had come from
the same place as before. I got my stuff out
of the car and headed to the house. When I
heard another scream coming from the woods behind the house,
I froze. A few seconds later, another scream came from
the first place I waited, but I didn't hear anything else.
A week or two later, my brother came up to
go hunting. The first morning he was there, he geared
up and headed to the back forty. He came back
a few hours later. He looked disturbed. He asked Jay
what the deal was with the creek bottom. He said
he could feel something there. Jay asked him where he
was specifically, and my brother told him it was the
same place Jay was when he took off running in
Terror two years ago. My brother is a survivalist and
a very experienced hunter who has spent half his life
in the woods. He said he'd never felt that presence
or that kind of fear ever before, and she writes,
I'm sorry for rambling on. You're not rambling on, ill.
This is great. I know none of us have seen anything,
but I am certain the Big Man is living here.
I've told a couple of people about the screams and
feeling something watching me and about the creek, and they
just laugh. But I bet that if they heard some
of the screams and felt some of the presents, it
would wipe the smirks right off their faces. I love
it when somebody says, you ought to hear what I hear.
That was really good. And I assume you're still out there.
Ell girl, be safe, stay alert. I'm sure you're fine,
and I hope Jay and his girlfriend are still there
with you and enjoy those peaceful nights. You're gonna be okay.
I'm just almost sure of it. And I just love
you for sending this in. Thank you