When I was fourteen, I had my first face to face encounter with a big foot. A good buddy of mine was staying over at my house, and like dumb teenagers we were, we decided to sneak out of the house around three in the morning to walk two miles down to the truck stop for some waffles. On our way back, I wanted to show my friend the place my cousin and I had seen a bigfoot while driving earlier. I figured that we wouldn't see anything, since they're supposed
to be so rare and elusive. All I was trying to do was use that story in location to scare my buddy. But as soon as we got about forty yards into this field, we noticed a deer was acting funny. We could see that it was hunkered down but still on its legs, and as soon as we noticed it, the deer sprang up and bolted away. No sooner than seeing that deer run, was taken to the edge of the trees, where we saw something else pop up on
two legs and seemingly turned towards us. When we saw that bigfoot turn towards us, we both asked each other for confirmation, and as we were doing that, the thing stomped off into the woods and made a powerful hissing sound similar to the sound of an air hose on a truck, but it was much louder than that. After that, the two of us turned around and left, well, at
least we did for a bit. Our curiosity got the better of us, or our own stupidity did, but we walked right back into the field, and we hurried right back out as that angry bigfoot stomped his way towards us in the woodline. We repeated this a couple of times, and on the final time we heard nothing, so we went in further and we stood there for a bit.
At this point, I think we just wanted confirmation that we saw something down there, so, out of desperation for that confirmation that we decided to try and make that thing prove it was really there by chunking a rock into the trees. My buddy threw the rock as hard as he could, and he hit a tree not seven yards from us, And as soon as that rock collided with the tree, a bigfoot stepped out where we could get a good look at it and let out a deep,
raspy exhale. I didn't get a good look at its face, I don't think, since I only get brief and indistinct flashes of it in my memory. But from the chest down I got a really good look. It was a male bigfoot with reddish hair about the color of the dirt. Its forearms were thick as my thigh, and its hands were as white as my chest. Right after we saw it good, my buddy turned to me and asked, can
we run now? I told him no, because I was taught my whole life to never turn your back or run, since that just triggers the chase response in most predatory animals. So we got low and backed out, trying to seem non threatening while keeping this thing in view. I'm not sure why, but once we got back to the house, it was like nothing had happened. The two of us never spoke of that again, and that was back in the late summer of two thousand and eleven. It took
me about a week or two. Then I was right back in the woods now looking for bigfoot. That encounter led me down a path I'm so happy to be on. I told my story to a bigfoot group in Virginia and ended up a member. To this day, I still go looking for sign of Bigfoot. I hope one day we all get some sort of validation for what we've seen in the form of the public at large, excepting that these things are out here. Our house is on the edge of a semi rural area known as Orchard Mesa.
On its western side, it extends into canyons into the Colorado National Monument, which is similar to a small Grand Canyon. These canyons extend south into the LaSalle Mountain Range by the border of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. On the eastern side, there are fields, farms, vineyards, pastures, and small hills which all connect to the bottom of the Grand Mesa, a ten thousand foot high mountain range, the largest mesa platform in the country, having alpine fields and hundreds of lakes.
The Colorado River threads through the Orchard Mesa, coming from the same direction of the Grand Mesa. The river in this section is heavily wooded on both sides, with a wide variety of wildlife. The lakes and the streams have healthy fish populations as well. Mountain goats and lions are also in the area. Our house is on a half acre of land and is in closed with a high wooden fence. In the back section of the yard, there
is a sectioned off old garden. Our neighbors only have a wire fence that our dogs would get through, so we kept it blocked off. There's a bigger, older shed the size of a garage, closer to the house. It is connected to a smaller metal shed by a wooden gate. This eight foot high shed has nothing next to it on all sides. These sheds block off the section with the old garden, and no one has been back there
in two years. Monday night, December second, twenty nineteen, one of my dogs went running out of the door barking. The other dog followed. They were barking like when people are walking behind the house by the canal and the small road there, but the barking was frantic and was focused on one area. I jumped out of bed, worried the dogs would be bitten by a rabid coon, and grabbed a flashlight, which I keep in a cupboard close by. I got to the door and down the three short
cement stairs while shining the flashlight towards the dogs. They were all barking at the bottom right side of the small shed where it is attached to a fence with the sectioned off garden area. Something was behind the shd and I called for the dogs. They immediately turned and ran towards me. I'm grateful that I didn't have to
drag them back to the house. I know it couldn't have been a bear, since they were starting to hibernate in mid November, and if it was a bear, it would most likely have run off or roared at them. A big cat would have run off too, and if it were the loose pit bulls that we've heard or jumping fences and getting cats, it would have fought back. The dogs ran up to me and I opened the door to hustle them in. I kept shining the light towards the area. This flashlight is so strong it literally
lights up the entire backyard. It's fifteen hundred lumens and it is light like daylight when you shine it, so you don't have to swing it around. You only need to hold it in one area, and the entire area, for many feet on all sides, is lit up like daylight. I stepped over a little closer in the direction of the small shed, being cautious not to go all the way over to where they were barking at something. I saw someone moving behind the shed towards the back on
the left, which was my neighbor's wire fence. I thought, crap, someone is back there. Who is it now? Why could I see them moving behind the shed so high up there was nothing to stand on. Did my crazy neighbors build a platform back there that they're standing on? There are people who break into houses in this area. It looked like they had a tannish looking coat on and they were sort of hunched over. What were they doing? This person was moving really slow, like they were shuffling
while looking down at the ground. I wondered why they were not reacting to the light. This all happened in a matter of seconds, and now they were moving from the left corner towards the right corner of the shed. I stepped back towards the door and into the house as fast as I could, and I was thinking frantically, should I wake John? What do I do? Oh? My god, I don't know what to do. He won't believe me. I mean, he knows these things exist, but he won't
believe me that it's here. In our yard. It's just too much of a coincidence. The next day I went out to take pictures behind the shed. There are parts on the grass that resemble giant footprints, but too much grass to be certain. It was evident that something was walking around out there, but it couldn't have been a bear or a raccoon. As for the bigfoot, the night before, it was behind the eight foot high shed and its
head was at least a foot above it. I took some more pictures to show measurements of the shed and the footprint type marks, as well as the tamp down areas of grass, but they really don't show much at all. And then she writes, I don't care anymore if my full name is used. I'm just really disturbed about the timing of this encounter. Scott Carpenter is right. I think I'm now thinking these things can track us like bloodhounds.
It's too much of a coincidence. In the fall of twenty eighteen, while teasing my wife about the size of my shoes, I said something about bigfoot to get her laughing. I had never mentioned bigfoot before, and I was just joking around when I blurted out bigfoot in relation to my shoe size. The comment got my wife to laughing, which was the whole point of the conversation. The very next day, an article popped up onto my phone about
some dude having an encounter with Bigfoot. Was my phone listening in on my conversation at home the previous evening. I had never done a search on my phone or anywhere else for subjects related to Bigfoot. Twilight Zone music began playing in my head. I clicked on the bigfoot article, and I became totally intrigued with what I learned. The subject of Bigfoot had me hooked, and I spent many hours over the next two months researching and gathering as
much knowledge as I could about this fascinating creature. There came a point in my study where I concluded that one Bigfoot does exist, and two I hope I never meet a Bigfoot close up and personal. I was born in Gardena, California, in nineteen fifty two, and I lived pretty much in southern California until nineteen sixty eight, when
my mom and dad moved the family to Arizona. Mom was born and raised in Arizona and Dad was just ready for a change, ready to move out of the hustle and bustle of metropolitan Los Angeles into a more laid back lifestyle. We moved to Prescott and a year later ended up in the Phoenix area. My mom's brother lived in Arizona his whole life, and by the time our family arrived from California, he was having good success
in residential construction. He enjoyed getting away from the crowds, and he built a cabin in a remote area called Bonita Creek. The cabin is nestled in tall pine trees, scrub pine, and manzanita just a short hike from Bonita Creek. Artesian spring water gushes from the base of the Mogulon Rim feeding Bonita Creek, and it flows year round with fresh, clean water. The banks of the creek are lined with tall grass, pine trees, flowers, sticker bushes, and wild berries.
It's beautiful and it's peaceful and it's quiet. Arizona, north of Payson is thick with wildlife. On one drive to the cabin, I had to stop for an entire herd of elk crossing the road. That was a surprise for a city guy. Elk, deer, bird, squirrel, cattle, wild horses and even bald eagles are things I've seen on the trek to the cabin. Little did I know there's an even larger animal out there in the forests of Arizona.
It is a massive primate predator. It's Bigfoot. My first encounter with Bigfoot happened on a weekend camp out in the high country of Arizona. I was with friends near the mogulon Rim. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. If I'm not, just forgive me. We picked out a spot, not a designated camping area, and circle the wagon, so
to speak. We had campers, trucks, tent, starps, ice chests, and plenty of grub to cook over an open fire, and we built a huge one that first evening, as the sun was slipping behind the mountains in the west, one guy enjoying the sunset with me, decided to call out for Bigfoot. Seriously, I had never heard of such a thing. He cupped his hands to his face and he let out the loudest, longest whoop that he could. I was thinking to myself, oh my, surely this will
yield nothing. Is bigfoot even real. Nonetheless, the guy let out one or two more whoops. The valley before us and the mountains in the distance remained quiet. He got no response. I didn't really think there would be a response. After dark, we sat around in portable camp chairs, enjoying
a crisp mountain temperature and a star sparkled sky. Partway through the evening, two of the gals suddenly reported seeing eyeshine at the west edge of the camp site, between a vehicle and the tree that it was park next to. They said the eye shine was a neutral color, like silver, and close enough to the ground that it could have been a coyote or a deer or something similar. Light from our campfire must have been enough to get a reflection.
Since the gall seemed concerned about what they had seen, we kept a vigil for a while, but there was no investigation. After all, we were in the forest and one would expect to encounter some wildlife. A while later, there was a loud, blood curdling scream maybe two hundred yards off to the woods to the northwest, something that sounded like a woman under attack that got my attention. I really wasn't sure what to make of it, and I waited to see if the scream would happen again.
No one went into the dark to investigate, and the scream was not repeated. The evening wound to a close around midnight, and everyone turned in. After drifting off to sleep, there was a disturbance at our capsite that woke up some of the lady campers, but I slept through it. The ladies weren't sure what it was that caused them to wake up. The next morning, I got up with the sunrise and walked to the edge of the overlook, just soaking in the view and inhaling the fresh pine
scented air. As I turned a walk back to camp, I noticed a structure near the edge of the overlook. It was rather primitive in appearance, an uprooted pine tree leaning at an angle, with one end resting in the fork of a second tree. Along both sides of the pine angling to the ground, there were broken off branches leaning against the trunk. It was sort of a crude, lean to shelter with an interior that would be shielded from the elements, especially if the exterior was covered with snow.
As I considered the structure, I thought maybe some boy scouts had built this thing, but it was odd that they had not used the saw to cut the branches. Everything was just busted off and add it on. It looked as though it had been there quite a while. After contemplating its construction, I headed back to the camp, having no idea of this type of structure was sometimes seen in Bigfoot habitat. I didn't even know Bigfoot existed.
The fuzzy clips from the Patterson film were intriguing, but I wasn't sure if Bigfoot was the real deal or not. All this happened about twelve years ago. It wasn't until studying Bigfoot in the fall of twenty eighteen that I realized Bigfoot was perhaps responsible for some of what I had experienced on that camp out. My second encounter with Bigfoot happened on a forest road not far from the cabin at Bernita Creek. It was a quiet Saturday afternoon
in the fall of twenty fourteen. The sun was slipping down in the west and there was no one around, no neighbors, no one. The cabins close by were vacant and it was just three of us, my friend, her daughter, and me. It was very quiet and peaceful. We were
meandering towards the driveway leading to our cabin. The gals were selectively collecting rocks to use back home for decorating the edge of planters, walkways, etc. While engaged in this process, suddenly a rock flew in from somewhere behind us and bounced to a stop at the feet of the ladies. It wasn't very large, maybe smaller than the size of a baseball, and it didn't really hurt anyone. It just
flew in and landed near their feet. We stopped immediately and turned around, looking to see who might have thrown this rock at us, but there was no one out there. The whole area was dead quiet, no neighbors, no one. It was just us at that point. There was nothing that we could do. There wasn't even anyone out there to yell at, but somehow a rock had just been thrown. After looking around a while and seeing nothing, we turned and continued the short distance to the cabin to settle
in for the night. For whatever reason, I never felt comfortable about leaving the security screen and front door unlocked when staying overnight at this cabin, Although my mind's normal reasoning said there was nothing to fear, no danger, no undesirables anywhere close to this remote location of Arizona, I still felt uneasy about omitting precautions. I never left any
of the windows open at night. I never felt comfortable about leaving the blinds open either, even though one of the windows on the south side was about eight feet off the ground at the bottom, that window in its blinds could have been left open with no apparent danger, but I closed them anyway. I know that sounds paranoid, but for whatever reason, I felt uncomfortable until daylight in the morning. Then I would open the doors, the blinds,
and push the windows open. Looking back at that overkilled precaution and knowing what other people have experienced with bigfoot, I'm glad I did lock those security screens and doors. I've learned that bigfoot will grab and turn a doorknob, and sometimes they peer through screens and windows. Maybe my precautions weren't unfounded. After all, bigfoot have also been known to throw rocks, sticks, pine cones, and other objects. Thinking about that rock that was hurled at us, was that
thrown by a bigfoot? Maybe there wasn't anything else out there. Perhaps this bigfoot was curious and just wanted to see what we would do, or maybe it wanted to let us know that it was there, or perhaps it was just messing with us for fun. Whatever the case, I believe that rock was most likely thrown by a bigfoot because of my next encounter. In June of two twenty
and sixteen, I married a lovely woman. My bride is full of life and a great lover of the outdoors, hiking, biking, spring, wildflowers, fall, colors changing, and the wild blackberries growing along Bonita Creek. We decided to slip away for a weekend at the cabin for some time alone, well almost alone, we did have our two dogs with us. We arrived at the cabin on Saturday afternoon. We dumped our stuff inside the
front door and headed down to the creek. It was beautiful and serene, as always, We hiked a loop that ended up back at the cabin for a barbecue dinner on the deck. The table was set for two overlooking the forest with a gentle sound of Bonita Creek in the distance. It was perfect. The next morning, my wife was up and heading out with the dogs before I could get my shoes on. She and the boys reached the creek way ahead of me and turned east to
hike up stream. By the time I arrived, they had disappeared into the thick trees, the brush, and the tall grass. While hiking in their direction, I noticed an area across the creek where the tall grass had been pushed down somewhat like a nest. The depression was a circular and maybe fifteen foot in diameter. It was perplexing. I wondered what had made that flattened pattern, but I kept on moving.
A side note here, my logical mind is saying there's no danger, and my wife is okay taking off with the dogs on her own without me, but I still felt uneasy. After about fifteen minutes, I caught up with them, and as all the natural beauty was just too much to rush past, and my wife had stopped to pick blackberries. By noon, we were headed back down the creek towards the cabin. We emerged from a somewhat densely forested area into a more open, grassy location spread out on both
sides of the creek. It was lovely, but what was that nasty odor? It smells something like a skunk, but not quite like a skunk. I surveyed the grassy area, thinking maybe I would see a skunk or something out there, but I couldn't see anything. The grass was too tall. There was just that smell that had suddenly arrived. I asked my wife, do you smell that? What is that? She shrugged her shoulders and headed on towards the cabin. I decided I'd better move on before I met whatever
this was that smells so badly. I paused in the grassy area and turned to take a picture of that beautiful part of the creek we had just walked through. It was twelve forty seven pm on Sunday, September the twenty fourth, twenty and seventeen. I looked at the photo on the screen and it looked a bit washed out. There was too much light. I changed the camera setting while standing in the same spot, and I took a
second picture. It was twelve forty eight pm, and even though I did not know it at the time, I had just taken my first picture of a bigfoot. He was right there across the creek from the path I had just walked down, not more than twenty yards from where I had been. He never made a sound. I didn't even know he was there until fifteen months later, when I remembered the skunky smell that Sunday at Bonita Creek, and I began looking carefully at my photos. Sure enough,
there he was. He was not in the first photo, but he was in the second photo. Head and shoulders were visible peering across the top of the bushes to see what I was doing. That was my third encounter. I wonder how many other people have had similar experiences, having been in such close proximity to a bigfoot and not even know it. I'm going to jump ahead a bit to one more experience at Bonita Creek. Candy and I made another visit to Bonita Creek in July of
twenty nineteen. My intent was to check out the area more thoroughly for evidence of Bigfoot and see if they might respond to a gifting. Here's what happened. I tried putting out some apples, M and MS, peanuts, and a few other goodies for the bigfoot animals at Bonita Creek, and then proceeded to knock on a wooden bench with a stick. I did that twice and then went back up to sit on the deck at the cabin to
wait to see what would happen. It was late in the day, and I was hoping Bigfoot would get the goodies down at the creek, maybe come later to pick them up. No luck on that, but something strange did happen. About fifteen minutes after I got situated on the deck, Suddenly, just upstream from the place where I did the knock, I heard this very strange animal sound coming from down there by the creek. It was some repeated garble sound.
The pattern repeated maybe three or four times, followed by a quack, quack quack, and then the same sounds were repeated again, followed by the same quacking. Mind you, these sounds were not made by a duck, and there were no ducks up there at Bonita Creek. I didn't hear any sounds like that the rest of the four days that we were there. I believe the garble sounds were made by a bigfoot who came to check out the origin of my double set of wooden knocks made by
whacking on that bench with a stick. At least that's what I think. The next morning, Candy and I and our dog Bobby decided to hike to the east along Bonita Creek all the way to the headwaters where Bonita creek bubbles up out of the ground. It's about a two and a half mile heike. After we had hiked about a mile, suddenly, from the north side of the canyon, up in a wooded area with a dent cover, sounds
started coming from the hillside overlooking the creek. I turned to check out the origin of the sounds, as did Candy. Her immediate question was what was that. To her, it sounded like a child making noises. To me, it sounded like some sort of very large, loud bird. The sounds were coming from three separate areas on the side of the hill. We could see nothing up there. We just heard the loud sounds. On the way back, Candy and I got separated. She hikes a lot faster than me,
she said. When she got back to the same spot, the sounds started up again, only this time they were much louder than before. Strangely enough, when I hiked past there, there was no noise at all. We had one other strange noise incident as we left the headwaters of the creek. This was while we were still together. Before she left me in the dust with a fast hiking pace. On the other side of the canyon, the south side. Up on the crest of the mountain came another unusual sound.
Once again, I thought it sounded something like a big bird, but Candy said that she thought it sounded like a child screaming. We were in plain view of the mountain at that point. I stared at the point of origin for the sound, but I didn't see anything. My thinking was that perhaps it was Bigfoot a century alerting the rest of the Bigfoot animals as to our location. That's only my thinking. One other point of interest. Bobby was hiking with both of us on the way up, but
with Candy on the way back. Walking along quietly by myself, I saw too deer on my track back. They were on the north side of the creek in some tall, dense ferns and grass. I only saw them briefly, but it was fun to see them. There were plenty of deer and elk tracks along the trail leading to the spring. However, I did not see any bigfoot prints, even though I
made a conscious effort to find some. My analysis of the whole habitat is that Bigfoot animals moved east away from the populated area of Bonita Creek where our cabin is the area inhabited by people. I wish they could have received the goodies I had for them, but maybe that will happen at some point in the future. Now back to my fourth encounter with Bigfoot. In the fall, my wife loves to collect colorful leaves for holiday decorations.
Her favorite place to find these little treasures is ten miles north of Sedona, at the West Fork of Oak Creek. This part of Arizona is stunningly beautiful. The West Fork meanders through a narrow canyon with vertical walls of multicolored layered stone, all capped by crystal clear blue sky. The trees are evergreen, splattered among the maples with changing leaves of yellow, red, gold, brown, and fading green. It's a
leaf hunter's paradise. When the time came for the twenty eighteen Sedona leaf collecting expedition, there was a secondary purpose for me. While my wife was finding just the right leaves, I planned to critically survey the West Fork area for Bigfoot evidence and snap photos of everything I found. As soon as we hiked into the canyon, I had to get the camera and start taking pictures of saplings bent over forming arches, large limbs snapped off from tree trunks
and laying on the ground. Very large diameter trees pushed over with their root balls ripped out of the ground. Trees wedged and threaded horizontally between other trees, tree trunks arranged to form giant xes, tree trunk rubble piled up to prevent passage into the area. Large sized tree trunks that had been snapped into like popsicle sticks, tree trunks leaning upside down against canyon walls, and way off in the distance, way up on the side of the canyon,
an indistinct, dark brown, motionless object. In addition to Bigfoot on Bonita Creek, it looks like there might be Bigfoot on the west fork of Oak Creek as well. Imagine that Bigfoot in Arizona. Then from way upstream, around a bend in the canyon and way off in the distance, came the faint sound of a five whack wood knock. Who do you think did that? Thank you for all your diligent study on behalf of Bigfoot. Thanks for sharing
my story. Best wishes to all who have seen or hope to see someday one of these giant miracles of the forest. The creature we know is Bigfoot