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Hi there. You're listening to Buck-I-Bigfoot, where we shared two stories from the American woods and back roads. Told just the way they were sent in. Now, if you like what you hear, please like and subscribe. Now, let's get into tonight's story. One that still makes me shiver whenever I hear a baby cry. My name is Clay. I'm 52 now, but this happened when I was about 24. Now, back then, I was working for a small timber outfit based out of Mina, Arkansas.
We were doing a clear cut job way out past the last paved road in the Washtaw Mountains. You couldn't even get a cell signal up there, not that we had them at that time. All we had was a CB radio, a cooler with some drinks and some food, and thermoses to keep our coffee hot. We were five guys on an expected to be two week long job. It was me, a guy named Bo who could sharpen a chainsaw blindfolded, and three green horns just there trying to make a buck.
I had worked with Bo before, but not the other three. We were going to haul in the pop-up campers and sleep on site to save fuel and daylight. The nights there were very quiet. Sometimes a little too quiet. On the second night of the first week, we heard something that none of us could explain. It was after a supper of beans and some canned ham over the fire. We were all smoking our after supper cigarettes and talking when it started. A cry. Not just any cry, but a baby's cry.
It was the sound of a newborn baby that thin and breathy kind of cry. I knew that sound, having just watched my first child come into the world, take its first breath and let out its first thin cries just the year before. It's a sound that every parent knows and never forgets, and it's one that will make you react. That sound shut us all up very quick. We just sat there, ears cocked toward the sound in the dark.
Then one of the green horns broke the silence with a chuckle and said, "Some bobcat must have just had kittens." Now the cries went on a little longer, and we let it go. I had never heard bobcat kittens before, but I had heard big cat screams at sound like a woman. So I figured he must be right. That's all it was. But then we heard it again the next night. Same sound. Coming from the same spot, just out of sight passed the edge of our work zone. Where the trees still stood thick.
It was more talk about what it was and what it wasn't. Bowe said it was probably a fox kit, but he didn't sound convinced. Some of the new guys didn't look convinced either. One of them, his name was Reese. He said it gave him the creeps, when he was going to sleep in his truck from then on. We laughed and poked fun and called him a baby. But I did notice that the rest of us stayed very close to the campers that night, myself included. Then on the fourth night things changed.
The crying, it came again, but this time it moved. It started northeast of our camp and moved in a slow circle around us, staying just out of our line of sight. And it was moving much too fast for a child of any age, and what we heard as it walked. It was much too fast and sounded too big for the animals that we were thinking it could have been. It would let loose several long, whining cries, then it would stop for a few minutes.
We could hear it move. We could almost track it in the dark by the sound. Then it would stop, and then it would start again. Always that awful baby crying sound. If you're a parent, you know it grates on your nerves, especially when you can't stop it. Reese would not come out of his truck at all that night. He locked the doors and pulled his sleeping bag over his head. That was an unsettling night. Once or twice we said we should go out there and
find out what it was once and for all. We talked a big game, but none of us moved. It finally stopped that night around 2am. We tried to sleep, but I can't speak for the others. I only know I didn't get much sleep. In the morning we found we had quite the surprise. One of our coolers, the big blue Coleman with the locking lid was gone, just gone. Now the eyes for this cooler had just been replenished the
afternoon before by Reese when we sent him into town for more drinks. So it was full and heavy. It was also so big that we couldn't keep it in the campers at night. You couldn't walk around. So this cooler was just gone. There were no drag marks, no raccoon mess left behind. It had vanished as if it had never been there. That cooler weighed probably 40 or 50 pounds, maybe more. It was full of our food and drinks,
and it was big. Reese had just been to town, as I said, and he replenished all the food, drinks, and packed it high with ice. So it was very full and very heavy. If it had been something like a bear, we probably would have heard it. This cooler was on the back of the lead truck, which was parked by the larger of the two pop-up campers, as in me and
bow slept in that one. That meant that whatever ticket had walked right into our camp, right up close to our campers as we slept, lifted the cooler out of the truck without making a sound, and walked off with it. After some searching, both found it about 70 yards out from our camp. The lid had been ripped off. It was completely separated from the rest of the cooler. The first thing I noticed, there were no claw marks or prints of any kind on the cooler,
but most of our food was missing. They left the drinks, however. Now there were no marks or prints of any kind on the cooler, but we also noticed something else. There was no food mess scattered about. No packages chewed or ripped open. The times I've seen an animal get into coolers, they always leave a mess of packages half-tuned through, and bits of food around everywhere. But not here. This was a clean area. Only the cooler was
damaged. We all looked around, but none of us said much, but I know we were all thinking there was something very wrong with this. Now this was Friday morning, and technically we could have knocked off for Saturday and Sunday and pick up working on Monday again as they didn't expect us to work through the weekend. But we had a quick huddle that afternoon, and we all agreed that with good weather, we were going to work through the weekend, and hopefully get out of there a few days early.
None of us wanted to stay any longer than necessary. That night, I decided to stay up. I sat in a folding chair with my dad's old pump shotgun across my lap. Bowl laughed when he looked at me before he went into the camper to sleep. He said, "You look like your son, dad, pissed off and wait for his daughter to come home after curfew." Well, maybe I did. I wasn't scared, but I was uneasy. Nothing about this felt right or normal.
By my figuring, if some cougar was out there prowling around, I could run it off before it got the pop-up campers, which their screened in walls were no defense against a cougar's claws. I had been sitting there for quite a while. I remember it was a bit chilly, and I had been keeping the fire stoked up high and kept it dead with a lot of wood. But at some point, the inevitable happened. I dozed off. I woke up, startled and panicked because I knew I had dozed off.
I saw that the fire was now all but gone. Just red coals covered with some ash. The night was dead quiet around me. But something had woke me up. And then I heard it. That baby cry. And it was closer than it had ever been. Sounded like it was at the trees just past our work zone and camp area. So that was about 50 feet behind our campers. We set up that way for the shelter of the trees from the winds, and we thought it would shelter our campers during the day from the sun.
We also knew we weren't going to work out that way, so we could just leave the campers set up right there. Seemed like a good decision at the time. It had always worked out for us before. But the trees, they were very close there, too close now that I think on it. The hair was standing up on the back of my neck. Visibility was low, but my eyes were adjusting to the low light after waking up. Something was there. I knew it. I stood up from the chair slowly.
As I did, that baby cry came again. And I swear to you, it was much closer now. I looked hard into the darkness all around, but I couldn't see anything. The thought to build up the fire came and went. I wasn't putting down my gun. I didn't want to be vulnerable. I didn't have the time. The baby cry was still going as I stood up. I flipped the safety off and pumped the shotgun. The cry cut off immediately, and there was nothing but silence.
Now you won't believe it, but that silence was worse to me than hearing the baby cry. Clay, we good out there? I heard Bose whisper from the camper behind me. I said one word back. No. I heard the soft click as the camper door opened and closed, and Bose stepped out and came to stand beside me. I told you that Boak sharpened a chainsaw blindfolded, and I mean that. So let me tell you some other things about Bo. He was older than me, more experienced, and if you've ever imagined
what a real lumberjack would look like, that's Bo. Just skipped the beard in the crazy knit hat. He was a big guy. He was solid, and I don't mean just physically. He was just confident and sure. He'd been doing this job a long time. So when he came to stand next to me with his rifle, my shirt felt better. I was still young, remember, probably 10 years younger than him. I wasn't as solid as Bo, but I was getting there. I whispered and brought Bo up to speed with what had happened.
I was relieved to see he had his rifle. Good. He was a heck of a shot with it. I'd seen him in action before. Bo quietly told me to keep watch. He was going to add wood to the fire and get it going again, and he did. As the fire came up, I could see farther out from where we stood. A couple of high flames in a row, and I thought I saw something. Or rather, I saw a silhouette, the hint of what was there in
the darkness of the shadow, just out of reach of the flame's light. Bo had finished by this time, and I whispered to him, "Get the flashlight." But Bo already had the flashlight brought it out with him. I heard the sound of a Velcro tabpool opening on one of his pockets. I heard a click, and the area lit up with bright white light. But it was pointing all in the wrong direction. I reached over and grabbed Bo's wrist and moved it so the light pointed where I had seen that silhouette.
And it was right there. It suddenly closed its eyes against the bright light and held up an arm to shield its face. I saw that it was squatting just at the edge of our camp area. It squat looked like a catcher at a ballgame. Knees drawn higher than a human's, though. One arm was still resting down around the legs. It's long fingers brushing the ground, while the other had been raised to protect its face, showing just the back of its arm to us.
It was covered in dark hair everywhere that I saw. I'll call the color brownish or brownish black, but it could have been either in the daylight. In that squatted position, I saw that its shoulders were the widest part of its body, sticking out much farther past its knees. And they were wider than any man I have ever seen. But what I really remember, what I remember was the flash that I caught of the eyes just before it brought its arm up to cover its face. Those eyes, they were reflective.
They had animal eye shine to them. Now raccoon eye shine is a bright yellow, and deers is greenish. The color I saw was a mix of those two, a pale, sickly greenish yellow color. I have never seen eye shine that color before, and I can tell you most animals eye shine colors, because in the last 30-odd years, I think I've seen most of them that roam the United States. But I've never seen this, not before then, and not since then. And the eyes were set
very wide apart. That's how I knew. This wasn't someone in a mask trying to play with us. It really didn't like the light. That much was clear. We were in a stalemate because it wasn't moving, and we weren't moving. "Would you look at that?" I heard Bose say. "Yeah, I was looking at it, but I couldn't even respond." Then it opened its mouth. I could see part of it that wasn't blocked by its arm, but it opened its mouth, and I heard softly that baby crying sound.
Like it was afraid to go full force right in front of us. But we saw it make the sound, so mystery solved in one way, I guess. That was no bobcat or fox kit, or anything else we'd tried to say it was over the last week. It was right there in front of us, a Sasquatch, a bona fide Sasquatch. I'd heard stories over the years, but I always ignored them, snickered and passed over them. What a bunch of hooey I always thought.
Well, I certainly don't think that anymore. Then it stood up and turned, and walked quickly toward the uncut zone of trees. Bose followed it with the flashlight, keeping it lit up as far as we could. When it was gone, we heard the baby cry several more times out in the darkness, but comfortingly, each time it sounded a little farther away. Then Bose says to me, "Clay, you know what that was, right? You saw what I saw, didn't you?"
"Of course I saw what he saw, but I got it. He needed to hear me say it, so I said, "Yeah, I did. I saw that Sasquatch." Me and Bose sat up for the rest of the night, neither of us sleeping. We worked the next day, and both of us were terribly exhausted. That morning, though, when the others got up, we did tell them what we had seen. Now remember, Ries had taken to sleeping in his truck long before that night, while the other two slept in the second pop-up camper.
Ries, though, was the only one who believed us. After breakfast, Ries quietly came and told me in Bo that he had seen the Sasquatch from his truck a couple nights prior. He woke up that night because something was bumping his truck. His story was pretty quick and disjointed, and it's basically just that, that he got woke up by the Sasquatch while he was sleeping in his truck.
Then it made sense because we had noticed earlier in the week that he was a lot more jumpy during the day and didn't seem to be sleeping well, but we passed it off. The thing is, all that mattered is that he believed us, and he told us why, and in return, we believed him. That night, me, Bo and Ries decided to sit up and take turns on watch. Ries said he'd take the first watch. He knew that we had been up all night the night before, and he wanted to let us sleep.
Lord, he did we appreciate that. Then I took watch and then Bo. We heard the baby cry a few times in the night, but there was nothing close. On Sunday night heading into Monday morning, we heard something very different. First, we heard those baby crying sounds. Then in another direction, we heard long, whooping kinds of noises. I didn't know them for what they were at the time. We cut our work done early on Monday. We wanted to be done with that job.
And we were, we had pushed ourselves hard Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. We were pushing 16 hour days. We were watching each other's backs, barely sleeping, doing whatever we had to do to get done as early as possible. We pulled out of there Tuesday afternoon, three and a half days early. Now, we didn't see this ass watch again, but once was enough. Our employers were absolutely thrilled with how fast we had gotten things done. The one foreman didn't believe it and went out to check for himself.
And don't you know, they offered us another stint in that area, with the promise of a big bonus if we got it done that fast again. No way, not one of us took it. Now, two of the green horns that didn't see this ass watch, they might not have seen it, but they knew and felt that something was very off about that area. Even they wouldn't go back no matter how much money was being offered, no matter how hungry
they were for it. I got out of that line of work later that year. I worked two more buzz cuts, and that was it. I don't think I slept a wink on either of them. I left, and I have never looked back. But to this day, I still can't stand hearing a baby cry, not because of the baby well, I think you know why. I say big-foot makes many different vocalizations and calls, and that each one means something, just as our own vocalizations do. But how can we ever know what they mean?
Well, thank you for listening in tonight. If you've enjoyed this story and have one of your own, please send it in. You can send it to contact@buckibigfoot.com. And if you'd like to access several years' worth of emails that have been narrated, you can find them for free on YouTube. Just look for the channel, "Bucki Bigfoot." I'm Nancy Warren, and until we meet up again, please always remember absence of proof is not proof of absence. Thanks for listening. [Music]