If you'd like to be able to listen to the show without ads and have full access to bonus content, that's an option. To find out how, please go to Bigfootyewitness dot com Forward Slash Podcast. My name is David Aldridge. I'm fifty four. I grew up in Venice, Florida, Nicomas, Florida. I'm a contractor living in Naples currently. I have married, I have three daughters. I had two encounters back in fall of ninety two in winter of ninety three, and I'll tell you a little bit about that to
set this up a little bit. Why I was traveling. This happened to night in night. I was headed to Miami. I was a divemaster, and I did a lot of diving back then in between college and grad school. And I was heading to Miami, and I did a lot of night driving on the interstate, and that is where these sightings took place. So I had two sightings, both within a mile of each other, and up as I said in Venice, Florida, this took place in Sarasota County.
I'm going to date myself here a little bit. So back in the day, the interstate used to be different wasn't the mileage. It's just straight digits for the exits. So the first encounter took place at Exit thirty five, which was the Venice on ramp at the time, and the Interstate was much different than than it is now. There was only two lanes in a half of the lane when you had a bad tire or something to be able to sit in the grass. So it wasn't as why the mediums were huge and
the on ramps were very short back then. They've changed that. So I'm just trying to set this up so you have an understanding of what I experienced, because doing it today you would not have the same feeling. Exit thirty five is about one mile west of the Mayaka River on the Interstate outside of Venice in Sarasota County. So I was getting on the Interstate at around ten o'clock at night, headed to Miami to go diving, and it was very
very late. It was a Thursday night that I remember because I I just started grad school, and when I was getting on the Interstate it I was getting on to go southbound and I looked over to my left and there was a car in the left outer lane and it was a very short on ramp and I went back to look forward, and that's where I hit something. And my hitting this at the time, I thought it was a person until I really analyzed what I had hit. It was a flash. It happened
very fast. But when I looked back to look forward across my hood, I had something almost leaping across the front of my car with its right hand on my hood. I was probably going about forty five fifty miles prior at the time. Whenever I hit I'm assuming it was a Flota skunk cape and I'll go into the description of it. It hit my bumper as well, and there was a big growl at the impact. So as I was accelerating to get on the Interstate and I looked back, I saw this big It
was hair. It was to describe it. The hair moved in one in a very methodical pattern. It was red, more of a khaki and red color. And the hand. I was in a four THUNDERB super Cooper, so I was very low to the ground, so I could see the hand come through the light onto the front of my car, which was black. The hand was completely black, the hair was completely khaki with it as it swirled. It had a red hint to it, so I'll never forget that
that was the swirl was what something was very distinct. But what was really distinct was the muscular definition of the forearm. You could see part of the back a little bit, and the right leg I'm sorry, the right leg was leaping over, so you could see the right capital an upper leg muscle on the right leg. The left leg hit the bumper, And when I got to where I was in Miami, I used a flashlight on my bumper
and my front bumper had an indentation. It was an old plastic that some thunderbirds had the plastic bumper, and I had a dent in my hood from where the hand was. I wish I would have gotten foot prints of it at the time, but at the time I wasn't thinking that. So let me finish with how this transpired. So I pulled my car off the side of the road. As I said, I was going on a dive trip.
Behind my seat, I always carried a five hundred thousand candlelight Pelican dive leg and it lit everything up, and I pulled my car over lit it up, thinking I hit a person. I really, I'm still. You know, I knew what I saw, I saw the hair, I saw everything, but I still would my gut was I thought I had a person, and I immediately stopped. I lit up the side of the interstate with my light. It was about forty feet to the fence. After that,
about fifty feet into the pasture. It was a horse pasture and actually had a history here. I used to trail ride in that when I was a kid, so I knew this property. And there was a big what we call Brazilian pepper tree, which is invasive to Florida, and that was about fifty feet in there. So there was nothing. There was no body. There was nothing. So when I lit that up, I couldn't believe it. I thought, you know, I went back, I looked, thinking
maybe someone was in the grass. Because when I made impact, the growl was just deep. It was one of the deepest growls I've ever heard. And it wasn't human. It wasn't like you know, if you hit a person they screamed. This was a deep, deep growl and you could almost feel it. It was on the impact. So when I pulled off, I had a cell phone in my car at the time. Remember this was
nineteen ninety two, so this is a brick. My father was a surgeon that he let me use his phone when I traveled across the state at night, just for safety. So this was one of the old bell bricks. So I powered it up and the old star at HP. It was probably that when it first started in Florida. Got a hold of Fluorida Highway Patrol, introduced myself and there was a lady that took the call and she told me to calm down and explain exactly what happened. And I told her exactly
what happened. I said, I think I hit somebody, but I can't find any person. I said. It was very hairy. It leaped across my car. It wasn't a deer, it wasn't a bear, it was nothing like that. And I told her, I said this was not a person. I said, I've never seen anything like this before. So the lady dispatcher from Fota Highway Patrol said, I'm going to tell you something.
I don't think you hit a person. You're in between exit thirty four and thirty five on seventy five, and I said that's correct, and she said I get calls like this all the time in this area, and she said anything around that. I said, to the river there, and she said anything around this river. I get these type of calls all the time. And she said, I can't tell you what you hit, but I'm willing to bet what you hit was not a person. So she said, you
did the right thing. Thank you for calling us. I have your name, I have your address, I have all your information and in case anything gets reported of an injured animal or a person. But she said you did the right thing. And she then came back and said where are you And I said, I'm in my car, the doors locked, and she said, good, are you armed? I said no, I'm not armed.
I said, I just have the cell phone here. And she said, I want you to proceed down the interstate and don't stay there without having anything to protect yourself. She said, I can't tell you what you hit, but if you had, you already looked for it, and it's not there. It's well moved on, but I don't want it to come back to your car. And that was the end of that first encounter. A few months later, I had a second encounter in the same strip of road.
This was closer to the River and I was southbound. I'd already gotten on the interstate. This would have been around March of ninety three, so it was late winter, early spring. Florida has this time of year. We have low rolling fog along the grass on the interstate, and sometimes it's heavy sometimes this night it wasn't too heavy, but it's kind of in the median
where you'll see it. So I was going down the road in my car, same car, and there was a car to the right of me that was an American white station wagon that was probably a late eighties model, and I had my windows down, and the gentleman next to me had his windows down too, which I found out in a moment. So I was going down the road and we're coming across this one section where it was it was a very large median and there was an overpass that you go under, and
the cars were coming. Obviously I was going north southbound, so the northbound cars were coming and you could see them. One car started to break and the lights were coming and the cars were slowing down, and I looked over and it looked like something was running in front of the cars in the median across the median, which would eventually come across my lanes. So I slowed down. The car next to me slowed down. He saw it too, and I had an experienced years ago with a deer and going across my car.
So it's something you never don't want to ever go through if you get a deer going across your hood. So I was breaking and then I saw what was running and it wasn't a deer. It was very human like and it was sprinting. And this is what's so distinct about this. This time I had a chance to really see the movement and the legs were almost horizontal. The sprinting was the legs were the one foot was out and the other one was all the way back. It was like a sprinter and I've never
seen it like it before. The hair, when in the headlights you could see the hair, it was the same color hair. It was a khaki, real deep khaki color. And as it moved, the swirl of the hair was very methodical. If you remember the movie Monsters, Inc. Scully, that one character when it was they were all walking and they when they tell you how they did the scene with there's a computer program, I guess code for each hair that's kind of what I looked at. It was very
and remember this is back in ninety three, ninety two. The hair moved in a swirling pattern as it moved. It wasn't all knotted or anything like that. There was there was a distinct movement to the hair when this thing was running. What was really unique about it. You could see the muscular definition again. And the head never moved. It didn't move up and down at all. And I can't tell you about the neck. I was scared kind of watching the whole thing. But the hair on the head was a
little more okay red than khaki. The arms were swinging, but not as fast as the legs were moving. When it crossed the road. It crossed the road in two the one foot second foot, and it cleared it. I've never seen anything clear a road like that in a sprint. And when I saw it, two legs running, the arms swaying. The arms were a little bit longer, but the arms weren't moving as fast. When it went off to the right side of the road my lights. At this point
it was beyond my lights the car to my right. It was in midstead lights and it turned a little bit to the left and you could see the definition of the back. I guess it was a trap psia. It was just the definition and the back as it moved was so distinct. And I go back to where I saw the first encounter with the arms and the legs, the muscular distinction through the hair. I'll never forget that. It's something that I can't figure out on this whole matter. I've never seen anything like
it. It was. It was no way anyone could ever do a costume like that or anything like that. So the car next to me, we both had our windows down, and he looked over at me and he said, that wasn't a freaking gear. It wasn't a freaking bear. That was a freaking big foot. And he's yelling at me, and I'm yelling back at him, and I said, what did we just see? And he and he we both shook our heads and he said, he said we saw, yells back at me. And remember we're going at this point about forty
five miles per hour. He yells back at me and says, we just experienced something that we'll never see again in our lives. It gives me a thumb up, And I gave him a thumb up. And we proceeded on and put our windows up. But that was kind of a confirmation to me that I had seen something that I was trying to get my head around. And to this day, I still see this as vividly as it did back
at ninety two and ninety three. It's life changing when you experienced something like that because you can't put reason to it, and it was you saw something that you couldn't really understand what you saw at the time. And to this day, here I am, all these years later, and I never I've only told a few people about this. Very few people know about it. I never wanted to tell this story because I was always just a little uncomfortable
to the story. And I was asked about it not too long ago, and I said, you know what, I'll go ahead and tell the story because it's something that really has impacted me in my life. It's you always, you can't go in the woods without thinking about this anymore, not in Florida, and the hair, the way the hair moved in the distinctive of the muscles. It's just something that I'd never been able to get out of my mind. So it's one of those sightings that hope helped someone figure out
what we're seeing in the swamps of Florida. It's truly life changing when you see something like that, and for me to have, you know, I always thought about, what are the odds for me to have two experiences like that, And I think it's a It's a nice reinforcement to have in the same stretch of road because it was either the same animal or it was probably related to the other. But I can't tell you if it was the same
or not. But the second time for me was just a life changing confirmation because now I know what I had seen go across the foot of my car, and I know I didn't hit a person after my second experience for that reason, right there, I'm glad you had that second sighting. Then that's great me too. And maybe he was running when he had that second sighting
because he saw you coming and thought, oh no, not again. I always thought, why would something like this move across And the only thing I can think of is lake with deer, no deer, they stop in the headlights, and maybe at night, whatever this is he could see well with
the headlights. I have no idea, but the first time it definitely missed the timing of going across with two cars coming that first time my car and there was a car to the Leftomy this should not have crossed the road even was a person, there was just no way to make the timing you get across the road. So I've always wondered if there's an issue with their eyes
at night to be able to figure this out crossing roads. They have incredible night vision, and it's a given that they don't like lighting at night, So maybe you just blinded it and compromised it to the point where that's why you hit it. How remote was that on ramp where you hit it, Dave. Back in the day, there wasn't much there that was before anything
was at that interchange. I mean there was to come from the main road up the road, and now you have McDonald's and blah blah and all that sort of stuff there, so you really don't get the feeling of what it was like back then. The lighting on the interstate was poor, so if they had put him into we didn't have the bright lights back then to light up that interchange at where this was, So it was pretty dark, just to say the least, and there was nothing around. There were new homes
there. Now there's all commercial, there's a lot of high rise or mid rises and stuff like that around multi family, and there wasn't anything. This was just horse pasture, cal pasture all the way down to East Venas Avenue. There was absolutely nothing there back then, perfect habitat for a sasquatch.
So though yeah, no one d is there. If you go back and look up the River Road sightings, there's a lot of sightings over the years on river Road and at my second sighting, but my second where I was further south by the river road is more than a thousand feet from there, So there were a lot of sightings over the years that have been recorded on
River Road in that area. And that's if you follow that up. And you know, there's researchers that go into the Mayaca State Park, which is I believe about twenty miles up the river, and back in the day it was just horse farms, cow far pastures all the way up, just very few homes on the river, so it would have been very easy for something to move, to migrate up and down that river bank at any time of the year. You told us about how it put his black hand on your
hood when you hit it. Yes, how big would you say its hand was? It was about the size of my hand. It wasn't anything I remember when I remember this was very fast. It was a flash, but the hand did not look abnormally large. The foot, I remember when I saw this. I could see the left foot which was dragging through the headlight and that's where it made impact on the knee or the calf, I can't
tell you. And that would have been on my if that would have been the passenger side of my car, on that side of the bumper, so I could see the foot as it came across and came down to my passenger side. The foot was black, black as night, just like the hand. They both looked black. No reddish or human coloration whatsoever. It's just black as night, almost like if you were to have shoe polish on the
hand and on the foot, that's all dark. The skin was, yeah, that is pretty dark, and it glistened to it had a had a had a sheen to it. On the hand and the foot, you could see that. But that remember, this was almost as simultaneous where there was an impact and there the growl that this thing emitted was so deep and loud, and I had my windows cracked. I didn't have him down all the way and there's just cracked. And I'll never forget. You could feel the
growl through the cars as when it happened. It was a true impact on the car. So I mean, you know, you know you hit something. And the first thing through my head was, oh my god, I hit a person. I hit a homeless guy going across the road. Back then, you had, you know, some people every now and then on the Interstate, but nothing like today. There was just nothing there. There was nothing at the exit. There was no reason for anything or anyone to
cross the Interstate. There is just there's nothing there back in the day. Now you have a couple of commercial parks right there, but back in the day that was just cows for as far as you could see. Yeah, like I said, perfect happened. Dat you said the windows were cracked. Did you ever spell anything? No, not this time. I didn't. There was no distinct smell or anything like that. I would have remembered that too, But it happened. You remember, I was going about forty five
miles per hour and celebrating. So when I pulled onto the Interstate, it was you know, I was down a few hundred feet now. I hit my brakes very quickly and pulled off the road under the grass, and then I grabbed my Pelican light that I had always kept it behind my seat when I was traveling at night in case ever had any issues. And when I lit it up, there was just stuff in there, and I didn't smell anything either, and I would remember the smell. Yeah, it was probably
recovering in the ditch the best it could. That had hurt getting hit at forty five miles an hour had to My bumper had an indentation in it, and they end of ford ended up heating the bumper and it popped out. But it would have been right around our knee hype, maybe just a slightly above our knee hype because it was a it was a low car. Yeah, those supercups are not high. So that really had to hurt. I had to have had to have. But the growl, I'll never forget the
growl. The growl is what just sold it to me that I had made impact. Yeah, I think it would have done something worse than at He said it growled when you hit it, and also that you found that dent in the bumper when you got out and examined the car. But did you find blood anywhere on your car? No blood, no hair, no blood, just an indentation on the hood where the hand was and that popped right back out. But there was no I could I look for a handprint and
I didn't see any prints on it like that. I was hoping to see a handprint, and it was smudge. It was definitely smudge, but it was nothing that was there that the next day when the sunlight was out there to say, hey, I have proof, nothing like that. And I'll be honest with you. Back then, I wasn't looking for proof because the last thing I wanted to find out is I hit somebody, and I hit a person because I was so young, you know, at twenty two years
old, and I didn't want a record for a hit and run. And I'm sitting there, you know, and I was really, I'll be honest, I was very when this happened. I was so shaken. I was glad I called the photo Harward Patrol. I'm glad I had the ability to do that. That call, That probably three minute call to Porto Harward Patrol, you know, probably cost thirty dollars back then. But I'm glad I did that because I will tell you this emotionally really turned me up. I
was really scared. So when I was in Miami looking at my car the next day and I saw the dead on the hood, and I saw the dent on the front, and I saw that, but there was no blood. But whatever I hit it was, it had to have hurt. Oh that I'm sure it did. He told us that his hands looked to me about the same size as yours. Did you ever see anything that might have hinted towards the fact it could have been a female. No, I couldn't see the chest, and I saw the side of it that I didn't see
anything like that. And the one I saw running across the median, I didn't see breasts or anything like that. I saw hair swirl, and if there were breast, I think I would have noticed it. But I didn't see anything to distinct the sex of it. But I will tell you this, the size of it wasn't much more than a maybe a six foot person, maybe five eight. I mean, remember it was sprinting at the time, and it was solid muscle. But the one I saw running across the
interstate. Remember, I was in a car that was a little low. The head of it wasn't much higher than where my head was in my car, so it couldn't have been more than six foot tall from what I saw, So we're not talking about a really big creature here. So the hands on it, the hand, the feet, all I could see was the I can't tell you, I mean toes. All I saw was the top of the foot, and the top of the foot was black as night shiny. It was like having using black shoe polish to bring up a really big
shine. But you could see the skin to skin reput you know. And then in the hand when the hand went across my car on that I saw it break the headlights. So I saw the hand, and the hand did not look abnormally big, So I would say, this is pretty much close to the size of the human would be. Yeah, that had to be
a juvenile, had to have been, had to have been. Definitely before you call the FHP, did you have any fears about what the fallout might have been from hitting what you did, even if it wasn't a person. I did, actually, you know, and I thought it was the right thing to do. At the time, I felt safer calling the FHP,
not knowing if it was a person or not. I had had an experience a few years before, not far from there, going down the road and a drunk driver had veered off into a ditch and the driver had gotten out of the car and wandered seven hundred feet and passed out. And I remember the you know, getting interviewed by that for the Sheriff's department at the time, and they end up finding the person and they arrested him but ended up having to take him to the hospital. So I had that back up my
head too, So I just didn't know what I was dealing with. I wasn't worried about getting arrested or something like that for hitting some sort of dangered species or something like that. That never crossed my mind. I was more concerned if it was a human. But if it wasn't human, here's the
victor. There's no way it could have cleared about forty foot of grass a four foot fence that was for cattle, so probably I believe it had a piece of barbed wire across the top, and then to clear another fifty feet to get hide. There's just no way there's absolutely no way. So if it was anything other than a person, it was in full sprint, so it had to have cleared the fence in a sprint to get to where it
was going. And what I saw on the second time when that thing cleared the road and then I can't remember, I think it's one or two times it was in the grass and then it went up again and it cleared the fence, which was all over forty eight inches. It didn't even try, it just leaped over it. Once I saw that kind of clarified what I had happened to me, you know, four months before, and I was
able to let me reason with it. They can do amazing things. I can only imagine what it must have been like to watch all that play out. Holy gal, Yeah, it was interesting. It's It's one of those things that I still see in my at night. It was so distinctive on what I saw. I mean, you just when you see the hair squirrel and the distinction of the muscle. It's something I can't get out of my head. And it took me a long time to ever talk about this.
I never wanted recognition around like that. Just that's not me. I just but I when I saw this. To this day, I've never seen another reporting in Florida with the details that I saw, And that's always kind of bothered me. Why I'm the only one I unless it's out there, I haven't seen those reports. I've seen hair, I've seen reddish hair, dark hair, gnarled hair, but nothing. I've never heard anyone described hair flow like what I saw. It was so distinct that I'm surprised, to be
honest with you. Yeah, I'm sure that's a site you never will get out of your head either. No, no, you can't reason with it. I'm glad I experienced it, and it may be an instant believer. On the second one, I knew exactly what I saw. I don't know exactly what it is, but I do know whatever it was, it was not a person. Ye. It's crazy to think it just might have been the same one you saw the second time. But when it comes down to it, it just might have been the same one. Hard to say.
Hard to say, but you know, when you go back and you look at you know, I've done a lot of research over the years, and you look at like the Patterson film and you see the distincts of the muscles. That's interesting because that was something that I did see, But the way the hair flowed there was much different than what I saw. But then again, what I saw was it in full sprint both times, so it was
a flow. It wasn't you know, if it was a fake hair, I wouldn't think it would flow like I saw flow and that changed the color as the light struck the hair. That was just I would even know how you back in the day, how you'd make a constant to do that. So once I started really putting this together in my mind, it solidified what I saw, and I'm still this day, I'm still as I said the moment ago, I'm surprised I haven't seen or heard of any other sightings with
that hair flow. I think I've heard about sightings with hair flow like that. Yeah, I don't think it's limited to just your sighting there, even in that area. I think it's a fairly commonly reported thing. I didn't know that. Well, that's good. That makes me feel a little better to be honest with you. Oh, definitely, Now I understand. Do you have any resentment towards the FHP for knowing that there was a problem on that stretch of highway and not doing anything about it. You know, I
never thought of it that way before what I saw. You know, I still thinks it's a one million sighting. I'm surprised they don't report more of this, and they probably don't do it because they don't want to be shunned or stereotyped as reporting a sasquatch or a skunk cape sighting or something like that. That angers me a little bit because that puts a little bit more on my soldiers here they come forward and report this. But I have to tell
you, the dispatcher was gracious. I appreciate her telling me that it put me at ease. I don't think she would have said something like that if it wasn't a thousand percent true. It made me feel better that I didn't hit a person, and that was my fear. I mean, I was vic I was sweating bullets when I was in the car. I was hyperventilating a little bit. I was really scared that I had hit a person, and I'm I don't drink at zero and so to this day it's always bothered
me of having that fear. And it was a huge fear. You know, I was a doctor's son too, And that's the last thing you need to find out is that you hit somebody you know on the interstate right next to where you live. And I didn't want that as well. So I am grateful, gracious, I guess to the Photo High Patrol for telling me that I haven't had any resentment. But you know, if there's other reports like this, I wish there was some sort of public disclosure on that because
it would help a lot of us understand what we saw. It would be nice if there's some sort of a public disclosure, But like you said, that's never going to happen. The government's never going to allow the secret out of the bag. So people like you who wind up hitting these things, seeing these things, you're always going to be left in the dark thinking it's
just you. For the most part, I think you're right. Unfortunately, Yeah, that's how it is. But having said that, Dave, I want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing the details of those experiences with us. I really appreciate it. Vick, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it. Oh you know, you're welcome. Thanks again so much. Great night. That's it for another episode of Bigfoot Eyewitness
Radio with Vic Candiff. If you've had a sasquatch encounter and would like to be a guest on the show, please go to Bigfoot eyewitness dot com and submit a report. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening, have a great night.