Here's a short story from Chris. My story begins in nineteen eighty two, or somewhere close to that year. My husband and I lived in the middle of seventeen hundred acres in northwestern Sonoma County, California. We managed a horse boarding operation with one hundred head of horses and a few head of cattle. The driveway was about a mile and a half long from the pavement to the gate of the ranch. There were locks on all outer gates
and some inner gates as well. One night, I had gone into town for something and I arrived back at the main gate. I got out of the truck to unlock and open the gate. I drove through, and then exited the truck to close the gate and relock it. As I approached the gate to close it, I heard the most god awful scream I've ever heard. It sounded like a woman being terrorized by something. You have to remember this is out in the middle of nowhere. It was also really dark out and the only lights were
from my truck. I thought about this event for a long time, looking for an answer as to what that scream was made by. I had no clue, but the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention, and I ran closing and locking the gate, and I sprinted to the open door of the truck and I tailed it out of there. I continued to think about that sound, and I could not find an answer. I knew just about every sound by critters in the area,
but this one stumped me for sure. In twenty and sixteen, my oldest son and I were in an apartment living room watching shows that were all about Bigfoot. I was at my desk multitasking when I heard a scream from the television. The hair on the back of my neck stood up all over again, and major goosebumps popped up all over my body. There was a soundtrack playing on the program of Bigfoot Sounds, and what gave me this reaction was exactly what I heard thirty four years ago.
There was absolutely no doubt about it. It had to have been Bigfoot on the hill above the gate. I was totally amazed to learn of this, and oh, yes, I do believe in Bigfoot. While I was in elementary school in nineteen seventy one, I saw the legend of Boggy Creek, and I later read Peter Burns's little paperback book on Bigfoot. The North Georgia Mountains, especially the Apple Acchians,
are rich with legends and strange stories about buggers. Parents and adults would say, don't go out at night, that's where the booger bears come out, or don't go there, the boogers will get you. The problem was is that nobody would ever tell you what a booger was or how it looked, so we thought it was only a scary story. In the spring of nineteen seventy three, a game warden went missing overnight and was found on a rural road walking the next morning by a passing car.
He was exhausted and confused, with his clothes torn, and he couldn't remember what had happened. It was later said that he claimed to have seen a tall, hairy creature with a big head and a face like a bull. This story was buzzing around for about two weeks, and suddenly all talk of it went quiet. We think he either quit or the state relocated him. In March of nineteen seventy four, I was fifteen years old. I didn't
drink or smoke or anything like that. I was a straight arrow football player and not the type to tell stories. About eight thirty PM. I was riding in a car with three other guys and the driver was about two years older than us. We were spotlighting deer illegally, but not for the purpose of shooting one. We were just checking them out. We were going down the main road and it was barely paved and it was full of potholes.
As we rolled along about ten to fifteen miles an hour, we spotted a buck and two doughs up on a chest high red clay bank with bushes and overgrowth partially blocking our view. This was at a four way crossroads where the very narrow, dirt right hand road led off into a completely deserted forest with no houses. On the left was another dirt gravel road with an old church on the corner. Further down that road were a couple
of farms. A river runs down one side that is fed by the Amicalola Falls, which is located at the head of the Appalachian Trail. Ironically, there is an area of the river known as the Devil's Elbow where moonshiners, car thieves, pot growers, and hunters were alleged to have gone missing over the years. This is the same area where the game warden went missing in nineteen seventy three. I was a passenger in the rear seat and I couldn't really see the deer. We stopped and the guy
in front of me got out with a spotlight. It was an old Deeese cell, and he shined the deer. Apparently the deer had been running and were tired because they did in the haul, but when we lit them up. About three or four seconds after exiting the back seat, I heard a crack or a pop forty five degrees to my right in the forest. My friend, who was sitting next to me heard it and said, oh, man, I bet that's a game warden. I said, that's one noisy game warden. He then began urging the driver to
get us ode of there. About that time came some more noises, like something large moving through the woods. I instantly thought it was a bear because a five hundred pounder was killed in our area, but bears are known to be very quiet when walking, so I started saying let's go, and the hare started standing up on my arms and neck, and I began to feel sick with fear.
About that time, about seventy five or eighty feet to my right, at a fifteen to twenty degree angle, I watched a huge hooking figure cross that road from bank to bank in three forward leading large steps while swinging its arms. From the sound it was making, it appeared to be approaching the deer, and at the moment they bolted out of there. Now let's pause for a moment, as I'm frozen with fear and it seems like time has slowed down. My friend to the left says, what
the hell was that? And now we're both saying let's go. Let's go and have one foot in the car. And then as I look up on the top of the embankment, I see the outline of a figure move slowly to get behind a tree where its face was obscured. My friend, with a spotlight starts slowly getting in the car while me and the other dude dive in the back seat. At this time, my older and more stubborn friend pulls out a twenty two pistol and says, who are you
talk to me or I'm going to shoot. Now we're screaming let's go, as he again says tell me who you are. I'm gonna shoot. I think my friend in front of me still has the light pointed at it over the door, even though he is now back in the car. At that instant, we hear a bang bang as the driver shoots up in the air. He immediately throws the pistol down and jumps in the car as we spin out of their sideways. Now I'm shaking all over so bad that my feet are actually tapping, and
everybody but the driver is talking at once. I don't remember who asks first. I think the guy in front, but he said, what did you see? The driver is silent as we drove until we found a closed gas station and we pulled over. He got out and went to the drink machine and down to coke, but he still wouldn't talk. Now my friend is driving us all home, and it's about ten pm, and we're planning to go back the next day to look around in the daylight. We also agreed to tell our families, minus the part
about the gunfire. Of course. After we drop off my friend in the back, we're headed to my house. My friend in front says to the driver, hey, man, what did you see? Nothing but silence until we got to my house, where my friend in the front says, you saw its face, didn't you, he very quietly said. I sat there for a minute waiting for more, but it was obvious he wasn't talking, and it was getting late
on that school night. I then had to get out and walk up the long path to the dark backside of a house which sat at the foot of the mountain. When I got inside, my mom noticed that there was something wrong and her first question was has somebody been drinking? Now? That was all I needed, so as I finally managed to tell my story, my mom replied, huh, it's probably the devil. But my dad, who grew up on a farm only a few miles from this incident, sat silent
looking at the TV. It was his older generation on both sides of the family who used the term booger. Growing up on a farm, he knew all too well about booger stories and later said that he used to hear the strange screaming sounds in the woods. They always blamed it on the panthers, but they were all hunted and killed by the nineteen hundreds. The few other people that I shared this story with laughed and ridiculed me,
so I shut my mouth until nineteen eighty. The following day, We all headed back, and our driver still wasn't going to talk. We got to the location and we couldn't find footprints, but we did. We'd find broken branches and impressions in the ground. Then we got to the tree where its face was hidden. A prominent, crooked limb stuck out and bent upward. I could stand flat footed and reach the limb with my arm almost extended, and that put the creature at about seven foot ten inches or
possibly more. We went back two times at night to look stupid and heavily armed, but found nothing, thank God. About two months later, I was in church and I saw a girl that lived on that same road, but closer to the main highway. I told her what had happened, and a very serious expression overtook her face. She informed me that it had run across the road in front of her one night while coming home from a football game. She also said that her uncle saw it coming out
of his chicken house about a year ago. I sat there silently, thinking, Oh God, why have you allowed such things to exist. In nineteen eighty, a new subdivision was being built near our encounter. A story started circulating that the first resident of the subdivision came home one night to find his back door broken down and his kitchen ransacked.
Nothing was stolen, everything was just destroyed. I didn't know the man, but of all things, he was related to my friend who drove the night of iron encounter before church one morning. I again asked him, six years later if he had seen its face that night, and he nodded yes, and then he looked away. My opinion is that the sight of it really scrambled his eggs and
he didn't want to deal with it. As far as I know, nothing ever came of the vandalized house incident, as that story died quickly, just like the game warden story. For some reason, I told my dad a story that a very peculiar aunt told me at the age of five or six. She and my uncle lived in a house on top of a big hill at the foot
of a mountain about seven miles from this incident. She claimed that while rocking on her front porch one night, a large, hairy man with a very ugly face came around the corner and stood motionless looking at her about eight feet away. She said that she felt paralyzed with fear and could only cut her eyes to look at it, she was unable to call out to my uncle sitting
in the living room behind only a foot away. She claimed that she closed her eyes very tight and began praying, and in a few seconds she opened her eyes and the creature was gone. I remember her saying his face looked like it was hit by a hammer. I asked my dad if she was crazy, to which he replied, folks thought so well, being able to share this as therapeutic. Thankfully, we now have a bigfit museum about an hour north
of me. I correspond regularly with the owner and the staff, and they say every week at least one person comes in to share a story. I was honored to have met both Scott Carpenter and David Polattis there. I hope my story wasn't too boring. I just wonder how many people from my area have even better stories to tell, but they fear the ridicule. Back in nineteen eighty, I worked second shift at one of those factories where they work you like a dog, treat you like dirt, and
they pay you very little for it. We had two bosses. One was a drunk and the other was a jerk. I hadn't worked there long when they hired Gary. We were about the same age, and we both had a wife and child to care for. Many nights after work we'd sit out in the parking lot and talk about our wives and complain about work. And when Gary talked about his wife, his eyes lit up and a smile came over his face. I never met his wife, but
she must have been really something special. Most Friday nights into Saturday mornings, someone would bring a cooler of beer. When you get off work at two in the morning, you just can't go straight home and go right to sleep. Most of the time, you'd have to unwine when you got home, so kicking back in the parking lot for a while help. On one of those nights, Gary said he needed some help putting brakes on his truck. I said, yeah,
come on over Saturday afternoon be there about too. That way, if we need something in town, we'll have time to go get it. Saturday rolled around and Gary showed up at my house and I took one look at him, and I knew immediately that something was wrong. I didn't push the issue, but I did let him know that if there was anything I could do for him, all he had to do was let me know, and then I made sure he wasn't angry with me. I didn't want to be working under his t if he was
pissed off at me. An hour and a half later, with the brakes installed and the truck ready to go, I asked Gary if he wanted a beer. We went out to the backyard and we chugged down a few. After a while, he told me that his wife was leaving him. He was heartbroken. I really didn't know what to say, but I kept talking, installing him as long as I could. I didn't want him to leave and drive drunk and then wind up in jail. He was a cheap drunk, three beers in and he was seeing
two of me. Damn, that sounds like me. I decided what better way to distract him than to do a little target practice. It probably wasn't the best idea, but it worked. I got my twenty two and I set up some targets, and a couple hours later he seemed to be okay. And that's when he went out to his truck and he pulled out a pistol. I don't remember if it was a thirty or three point fifty seven. He unlocked the toolbox on the back and got out a box of shells, and we shot half the box.
We were real crack shots. If we hit a target, it was by accident. Another hour went by and he said he wanted to get on home. He was still upset, but in a lot better shape than he had been, so I figured he'd be okay. As he drove away, I sat a little prayer for him that he and his wife would somehow work things out. And I was cleaning up and I happened to notice that Gary had left that half a box of shells on the table.
So I put him in the plastic bag and stuck them in my truck so I could give him back to him on Monday. And when Monday came around, there was no Gary at work. At lunchtime, I called him, but he didn't answer. Well. I was worried, so I drove over to his house after work. His truck was there, but it was so late I decided not to stop. On Tuesday, Gary showed up for work and it was apparent that things hadn't gotten any better if it wasn't
work related. He didn't speak. After work. We went out to the parking lot and once everybody else left, he opened up and he started talking. When Gary had gotten home Saturday, the whole house was empty. His wife was gone, he said. He went after her, but he realized there was nothing he could do. He was full of rage and hatred and just started driving around. Pretty soon he found himself out on some old logging road. He didn't really know where. He just kept driving, and then it
started raining and the road got slick. Well, he was driving too fast and he wound up in a ditch. There was no way that he was going to get himself out of there without any help. He was looking around and he noticed a pond down by an embankment. He grabbed his pistol and he walked down and he sat on a stump by the water. Then he started crying. He decided to end his life right there. He let out a loud, agonizing scream, and he put the pistol
in his mouth and he pulled the trigger. Click. He realized he left the shells in the truck, so he went back up, opened the toolbox and grabbed a box of shells, and then he went back down to the pond and sat back down on the stump and raised the pistol up to his mouth. Just then a rock about the size of a basketball splashed into the water and it soaked him. He turned around, but no one was there. There was no sound at all, just in
eerie silence. Suddenly something ripped through the silence with a scream as loud as a freight train. That was followed by rumbling in the bush. And at this point Gary was halfway back to the truck and he could hear something closing in on him. In a panic, he jumped into the truck that was now sitting back on the road and facing the direction from whence he came. He got a glimpse of the creature before he tore off
down the road. He said, it was a bigfoot. I walked over to my truck and I pulled out the plastic bag with a half a box of shells in it, the ones he'd left at my house, and I handed them to him. The look on his face was priceless. He went over and got the box of shells that he'd had at the pond. The boxes looked the same, but the shells he had were for a forty five, No way they would fit in a thirty eight or a three point fifty seven. Gary looked up at me
and he said, Bigfoot saved my life. Perhaps, I said, or maybe he just didn't want you messing up as water in hole. Gary said he'd never been so scared in his life. He couldn't understand why the thing let him go. It could have had him anytime it wanted. He told me how he'd gone some ten miles before it sank in, that his truck had been pulled out of the ditch and was facing back the way he had come. Well, I took a look at his truck. It did have mud on it. There were smears of
mud on the bumper, but no real damage. Thinking back, I realized that those mud smears were right where you'd hook the chains if you were pulling it out of a ditch. Maybe not chains, but maybe some massive hands. Gary wasn't the kind of guy to make up stories. I never remember us ever talking about Bigfoot or ghosts or anything like that. Back then, Bigfoot was not a big deal. We never really took that stuff seriously. But now Gary is a believer and I'm a bit more
open minded. Two weeks before Christmas, there was a big layoff and we both lost our jobs. I lost contact with Gary, but I heard his wife went through with a divorce and he moved back to Tennessee.