Archive 209 Bigfoot

not burden you with any difficult words today. Anyway. As I said, two years ago, I decided to do a little late season camping. It was the end of October and the rain and the wind were wreaking havoc. I don't know what the temperature was, but it was cold, and I know that I could see my breath When I go out, I like to be as far away from people as I can get. I have a habit of following remote roads until I can't go any further, and then I look for a suitable camp site nearby.

On this day, I had followed an old logging road about thirty five kilometers until I came across a very deep and wide wash out across the road. On the other side of the wash out was a bridge that passed over the river, and it fed an adjoining lake. I remember thinking that it was odd that the road would wash out next to the bridge, where the water could travel freely under. But nature will do what she wants.

I guess. It was impossible for me to proceed any further, and as luck would have it, I had stopped next to a really nice camping area right on the shoreline of that beautiful lake. I wheeled into that spot and proceeded to set up camp. The wind and the rain were still blowing, but I knew that the weather was expected to let up late in the afternoon. A few hours let the weather did not let up as promised,

and the sun started to set. I decided to turn in early that night, as the weather made it impossible to take my canoe out for an evening of fishing. Being alone in a canoe and strong winds as a losing battle, so I conceded to simply retire to my tent and try to get an early start the next morning. The cold and the noise of the wind, however, did their best to ruin that plan and kept me from falling into anything more than a half sleep. Laying in

my tent for a few hours. In that half day's slumber, I could hear the blustering winds slowly easing up, and after a while it had slipped into a complete utter silence. There was not a sound to be heard. The silence, as they say, was deafening. It was almost surreal. I had awakened enough at this point to pay attention to the silence. It was so odd that I was on guard and was a little nervous because I had never experienced such perfect silence while camping. That did, however, change

in a big hurry. That silence that was so disturbing a second ago, was dramatically broken by a near deafening crack and directly followed by a deep, resonating splash. The very loud crack was at first interrupted by my brain as a rifle shot, but I quickly realized it was a large stone striking a rock face behind my tent and then bouncing into the lake. The rock face was a mere ten or fifteen meters behind me. I was

on high alert now. I listened for any other sounds that would help me identify what was going on, but I heard nothing in that perfect silence, no footfalls, no grunts, no sounds at all. I was racing through scenarios. Was in an animal that knocked the stone off the overhead? Was it a bear overturning rocks looking for food along the shoreline. As my brain was trying to interpret this situation,

a second large stone fell directly into the water. It was, by my estimate, a larger stone than the first one, because it created a much deeper thud as it broke the surface of the water. I was up on my feet now in my tent, deciding if I should investigate or at least be at the ready if things took a turn for the worst. And then another large stone fell directly into the water with a resounding thump splash.

That was it for me. I had no intention to be going head to head with any forest critter that could throw boulders. The last thing I wanted at that point was to be inside that tent in the dark and having boulders falling on me. Whatever it was it was trying to send me a message, and I received that memo loud and clear. I promptly unzipped the tent flap and made a dash for my truck, started it up, and I removed myself from that place as quickly as

that old beat up logging road would allow. I spent the night in my truck some distance from there, and everything was uneventful. When the sun came up the next morning, I returned to the camp site so that I could retrieve my canoe and camping gear. I looked around the area and I took some photos with my phone for reference. The rear of the camp site had a row of scrub brush and trees about three meters deep, and directly behind that was the rock face from where the rocks

were being thrown, and yes, they were being thrown. I paddled out onto the lake to check out that rock face with my canoe, and there was no way those rocks could have rolled down on their own. It was just too shallow of an angle for that to happen, and there were ledges with brush on them. Even if the rocks had found their way rolling down, the ledges would have made their journey very difficult. Gravity alone could

not drag them through those brush filled ledges. Not to mention, I would have heard them crashing down that rock face to the water, I packed my gear up and I left. I mentioned my experience to a few friends and learned that talking about such things is most definitely the wrong thing to do, unless you like a ridicule in being the butt of never ending sisquatch jokes. Yes, I do believe that it was a sasquatch throwing those rocks. There's nothing that I know of in these parts that can

throw a stone except a human being. I'm convinced it was not a person up on that bluff that night, as they would have had to approach my campsite on foot in the wind and rain earlier in the day through many kilometers of brush, can wait there until night fall, in perfect silence, just a few stones into the water

to scare me. I know that no one came up the road before or after me, because I looked for fresh tired tracks when I left that day, and my tires were the only ones that passed over that road for quite a while. Now here's where my story gets weird, and I come to the part that messes with my brain in a way that I could never have expected.

All winter, I was bothered by this experience. I desperately wanted to go back there and look up on that bluff and check out the area and look for some kind of proof either for or against my experience as being authentic. I was obsessed with just knowing one way or the other whether that was a Sasquatch experience or not. Spring finally came and around the end of March I was finally able to venture into that spot again and investigate. Remember earlier that I said I was there at the

end of October on the previous fall. That time of the year is very close to the time when snow starts rolling in, and when the snow starts around here, it's relentless. The weather coming off Lake Superior ensures that the snow accumulates fast early in November, and it is not uncommon to have a meter of snow on the ground in this area by Christmas. When I did arrive at the bridge, I was astounded to see that the wash shout that was their last fall was now gone.

The road was completely normal and intact. My first reaction was that it must have been repaired, but when and how There was no logging in the area, so a logging company could not have done it without good reason. There were no properties or cottages in the area. I look for a spot where a large amount of material would have been taken for PHIL, but there was none. I looked up and down the road and saw no

evidence that any heavy equipment had been in there. In fact, the road ended the place was so bad for a five hundred meters stretch just before the lake that I had a difficult time getting in there with my four wheel drive. I inspected the road where the washout was located, and it had grass and shrubs that were there from the previous years. It was as if there was never any wash out at all. The ground had not been

disturbed in any way that I could see. In addition to that between November and when I was there in the spring would have made it impossible to repair the road. Because of the snow, there would have been no access to that location. I parked in the campsite and I looked around. There were elements of that spot that were different. Also, the line of shrub brush and trees that bordered the rear of the campsite were all gone the previous fall.

While I packed up camp and left check that line of scrub it was thick enough that I had a moderate amount of difficulty to get through it to see the bluff behind it. Now it was all gone trees and all no stumps, no debris, nothing but mud where a substantial amount of trees and shrubbery had previously stood. The photos that I had taken were unfortunately gone. Also, the phone on which I had taken the pictures had been stolen during the winter. I don't have any explanation

for any of this. I just know that this event fundamentally changed my view of the world around me. The roight throwing was one thing, but the change landscape made no sense to me at all. And my poor brain just did not know how to process this information. And I still don't know what to do with it. I think about this often, I think about it daily, but I'm not able to reconcile what I know was there in the fall and what I saw in the spring. Well that's my story. I'm no longer looking for answers

because I'm afraid this will just get more weird. I'm smart enough to know when i'm beat, and the Maasthma just does not want me to know the answer to this one right now. And I'm okay with that. My story isn't about a specific encounter, but more where my fascination for the creature comes from. My father was a man's man. He was a World War II veteran and an avid outdoorsman. He worked in the old Fields of America and drove a truck, and he was generally a

tough guy. He taught me and my brothers, all six of us, about hunting and fishing, among other life lessons. He grew up in great Depression America and knew how to make the most out of very little. He was all in all a good man. In the nineteen eighties, he was working for an oil company checking wells in southwest Oklahoma. This region isn't known for bigfoot sidings or encounters. It was just becoming knowledgeable that eastern Oklahoma may have

bigfoot type creatures. Dad had come home one afternoon excited and began telling us about what he found. He had had extra time on his hands and was going to check out a pond near one of the oil leases he had been given permission to fish there. While walking the bank of the pond, he found a log that had been ravaged by something. Dad said the log was hollow and it looked like a rabbit or a critter had made the log its home. But what excited Dad

was the log being destroyed the way it was. He said, the log was completely torn apart and inside was a pile of fur from what he could only assume was a rabbit. Investigating the log, he also found a few strands of coarse, long hair. My father was a rational man, and he knew a code. He would not have destroyed a log like that. There were no significant tracks around the log, even in the soft dirt. He told us and most anyone who would listen about this. The story

never changed each time he told it. He was known to tell a tall tailor too usually for a life, and you could always tell when my father was joking. When he told this story. He never varied or changed his tone. It was always exactly the same. A few months later, he took me out to the pond to look at the site of the log and to look at the pond again for the best fishing spots. It was February or March. I was fourteen years old. Dad pointed out where the log had been, and he told

me to go check it out look for Prince. While he finished checking the level on the tank battery or whatever he did on those wells. It was two hundred yards from the truck, and I held no fear of woodland creatures. Especially in the middle of the day. While I was down by the pond near the spot, I kept getting the feeling that I was being watched. It wasn't a foreboding sense of danger, just a feeling that

I was being observed. There were no forest sounds except for the wind, and now I chalk that up to being late winter. Therefore, there wasn't a lot of creatures about to make noise. Dad later found in search of episodes and we watched them every time they came on. There weren't a lot of documentaries about Bigfoot on television, but when a story came on about the creature, he would watch it, and that was much to the aggravation of my mother. This is where my fascination about cryptid

creatures comes from. He believed they were real, and he was riddy. Or people just thought old Allen was bsing them again. But I never questioned my dad. He knew that the creature passed through the area, and that was good enough for me. Were he alive today, he would be listening to every podcast he could find, every story he could listen to about Bigfoot. He definitely would enjoy

Dixie Cryptid. I know this isn't much of a Bigfoot encounter, but this was the beginning of my journey down the Cryptid rabbit hole and one small bond I held with my dad. I believe that Dad saw or hurt something more than that log that day. He just never told anyone about it. Back in the nineteen eighties and early nineties, I lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Like many of the people who live up there, I was a hunter.

When I was seventeen, I built a deer blind on the top of a ridge about a half mile from my home. Also had a bait pile consisting of apples and corn that the local wildlife always picked at. I was up there a lot. Never once felt uncomfortable or afraid. I never felt like anything was watching me or like I should leave unless the season was opened. I was generally up there armed only with my hunting knife, but I never felt a reason to carry anything bigger or

more powerful. On the sixth day of the fourteen day season, I quickly finished my after school chores and headed too my blind. I'd been seeing a nice buck, but it was always after legal shooting hours. I had hopes that one day he would come in early and I'd get a shot at him. That was my main thought as I settled onto my stool inside the blind. After twenty minutes, my thoughts were drawn away from that buck when it

occurred to me the woods were incredibly quiet. None of the little critters who normally feasted on the bait pile were around. There were no birds flying around trying to get their share. Not even the wind was blowing. That was when a feeling of utter terror came over me. When the woods are abnormally quiet, it usually means there's a predator close by. My head was turning on a swivel, and I began looking all around me for whatever had caused everything to go quiet, and for whatever had put

that awful fear in my gut. My dad and our neighbor didn't get along. They had even come to blows at a local grocery store, which got them both banned for six months. Despite this, the neighbor had recently come to our house, risking life and limb to let my dad know he'd seen a lynx in the vicinity. Considering their intense dislike for each other, it must have taken quite a bit of courage for that man to come up and warn my dad of possible danger to our livestock.

A few days later, one of our horses came in with read deep, parallel slashes on her right shoulder. The vat who came out to stitch her up said they looked like they'd been done by a large cat. They were each at least an inch to an inch and a half deep. There was a fourth wound, but it was just a bloody scratch. Knowing this when the fear hit me, I was looking for a lynx. I couldn't hear her, see anything, but I couldn't shake that feeling. I was scared out of my mind, but I didn't

understand why. And all the time I'd spent up there with nothing but my hunting knife, I had never felt afraid. One day. I even found bear tracks around my bait pile and bear scat near my blind and I never felt as terrified as I did that moment. Suddenly it was like someone was telling me to leave, as if someone had put that fault in my head. I don't believe I thought it because I was too busy looking

around and being unbelievably scared. A few minutes passed, and my fear was only getting worse when I heard a noise off to my left. Leaves rustled to the south of my blind, followed by a tremendous crack that was as loud as a rifle shot. I nearly unloaded my bowels into my camouflage pants. Woo, good thing you didn't Roy before I had time to react. To perfectly healthy, eight inch in diameter tree fell and landed right next

to my blind. Some of the branches took out the side of it and left scratches on my face and neck. And all this happened with no wind. The tree was broken off at about eight to nine feet above the ground. It had been snapped in two. If whatever made that tree fall wanted to hurt me really bad, it could have dropped the tree on me instead of next to my blind. And if it wanted to kill me, there was nothing I could do about it. I know for a fact that no black bear could have broken that

tree like that. My guess is that my stool is still up there on that ridge, and I've never been back. Many years later, I was out with a couple of buddies tipping a few at the local watering hole one night after closing time. We were on our way home in my nineteen seventy four Chevy Love pickup when I spilled my beer, which led to my truck being in

the ditch in the middle of nowhere. We stood on the road for several minutes, deciding whether to walk to a nearby house or call for help, or walk two miles to my friend's house and get his truck to pull it out. All the conversation came to a halt when we heard something that sounded like chattering teeth in the woods behind us. We thought maybe we woke up an angry squirrel who was telling us off. A big, really big, big, big angry squirrel. I don't know. That's

settled it. We decided to walk back to my friend's house. As soon as we started walking, we realized something was keeping pace with us just beyond the tree line and the woods on the north side of the road. When we walked, it walked with us. When we stopped to listen, it would maybe take another step and then stop too. We all three got sober really quick as it continued to keep pace with us, walking when we walked, and

stopping when we stopped. We came to the conclusion that it must be a big man walking in the woods. We even tried talking to him, but we never got a reply. As hunters, we knew it wasn't a deer or any other four legged animal. It was definitely by peedle, so we ran. It ran right along with us when we stop. It stopped within one or two steps after us. Then we walked back towards my truck, and it turned around and kept pace. Two of us had been in the military, so I quietly said, we're going to do

an about face. We put the non military friend in the middle and told him to follow our moods. The moon was just broad enough that we could see each other about face, I whispered. We performed the move perfectly. After three steps, we stopped over in the woods. We clearly heard it turn around and then stop and wait for our next move. This thing paralleled us inside the tree line until we finally came to a house with

a yard mowed up to the woods. I guess it didn't want to show itself because once we rounded the corner, we never heard it again. When we got back to my truck, there were rocks laying all over the flatbed that weren't there when we left. We yanked my truck out of that ditch in record time and got the hell out of there. There was one other time it happened before the night I put my truck in the ditch, but well after I had the incident with the deer blind.

I saved it for last because it's the experience that made me a knower. After that, I lost every doubt that these sasquatch really do exist. I had gone up to the up to get some poles to make a fork for my young sons. We didn't have any trees big enough, so I cut some sixteen foot cedar poles and strapped them to the top of my nineteen eighty eight Dodge caravan to bring home. I got up to my buddy's place on Friday night. Since he was in college and living in the dorm, he wasn't going to

arrive until Saturday morning. It was about ten PM when I got there, so I rolled out my sleeping bag in the back of the van and watched the stars through the sun roof until I fell asleep. I don't know what woke me, but around one point thirty I was suddenly wide awake. I could see out of most of the windows. The moon was bright, but I couldn't see the stars through the sun roof. My friend lived primitively.

He had no electricity on the place. The nearest street light, along with the nearest neighbor, was a good three miles away. Light pollution was not an issue. That's when I noticed the face. It was looking down at me through the sun roof. It looked like a giant human, but a lot harrier. It had dark hair all around its face. By three point fifty seven, magnum was under my pillow. I wanted to feel it in my hand, but it felt like something was holding me down. I couldn't move.

I thought immediately of an accident i'd had while I was in the Navy that left me temporarily paralyzed. My brain was telling my arms to get the gun, but my body would not obey. Finally, the face pulled back and disappeared from my view. I watched as a large, hairy torso past the side windows of the van. It walked across the driveway behind me and disappeared into the woods. As soon as it was gone, I could move again.

I unzipped my sleepy bag, grabbed my gun, opened the side door, and shine my spotlight all around, but I never saw anything. I figured it was safe to crawl out of the van and relieve myself. But I listened closely as I did so, I couldn't hear anything. The woods were completely silent. I don't even think the mosquitoes were buzzing. My hair was standing on in but there wasn't much else I could do, so I crawled back into my sleeping bag, and I started thinking about what

had just happened. For a long time, I tried to convince myself it was just a nightmare. But the next morning I could see where something had leaned up against my van and left an imprint in the dust. There were other places where the dust had been brushed off all down the side. It had also left a trail through the dew and the grass and the weeds leading to the woods. I can still see that face in my mind's eye like it was yesterday. I now know

there is something out there. It's big, it's Harry, and it'll scare the crap out of you if you ever get to see one.