I was born and raised in what used to be rural Madison County and North Alabama. It was a kind of place where everyone knew everyone. That meant kids always had to be good, because misbehavior would always make it back to their parents. In nineteen seventy four, when I was eight, we had some of the worst tornadoes this area has ever seen. My grandfather, who lived in Mississippi, died during those from a heart attack. Afterwards, there were so many trees down it was hard to imagine it
was the same place. There was a family that lived about a half a mile away from ours who had girls close to my age. We would meet in the woods and play. We made up names for different stands of trees so we always knew where to meet. The big stand that was the farthest from any of our houses was called Big Pines. Little Pines was closer to their house. Tiny Pines was right behind my house. Our
imagination in naming them knew no bounds. It's pretty original. Oh, it just reminded me of a story about my son. But I'll tell you all that another time. She writes. The summer after the tornadoes changed the look of the woods a lot, especially the Big Pines area. There was one place where three trees had fallen together that we decided to make our clubhouse. The trees had fallen in sort of a triangle, with one on top and two
on the bottom. Once we got inside and started cutting out the inner branches to give us room, it was perfect. We started bringing in some stuff so that it was more homey and to make it our clubhouse. It was still a time when kids were giving free rein of their days, and I could tell my parents that I was going to meet Donna in Big Pines and they'd answer, okay, that was enough for them. There was no checking in, no specific time to be home, and no stranger danger.
Back then, I wish my daughter could have experienced that easy freedom that's gone forever now. On this particular day, Donna and I were going to meet at the clubhouse in Big Pines. I don't remember what time it was, but I got there before she did. I was playing around inside the clubhouse when I heard something. I figured it was Donna coming, so I didn't think much about it. After a few minutes, Donna didn't show up. Well, I got curious, so I peeked out through the branches in
the clubhouse, and I looked around. At first, I didn't see anything. Donna's older brother was fond of harassing us, and if it was him, I didn't want him to know that I was there. That guy gave me the creeps back to playing inside the clubhouse, but I kept hearing small sounds, so I would periodically look out in their direction. And I still didn't see anything, but I noticed that all the normal sounds coming to the woods
were gone. It was eerily quiet. Finally, I caught a glimpse of something that was large, black and tan and about the same size as my German shepherd's Sindbad. Even though he never followed me to Big Pines, I assume it was him. I didn't call out to him. Instead, I watched to see what he would do, or if he would find me hidden in our little clubhouse. A few minutes passed, I'm not sure how many. I was only eight at the time. It didn't move much, so
I didn't get a good look at it. I was considering just calling him to me so he could play in the clubhouse with me, when I suddenly felt very glad that I didn't. I was looking directly at it when with no warning, it jumped onto the trunk of a pine tree and climbed straight up. My dog could do a lot of things, but he could not climb a tree. Now froze and for a minute I just sat there, and whatever it was, I never saw or heard it climb back down. I didn't move for two hours.
Donna never came. I don't remember why. At that point, I'm not sure I would have wanted her to. I had heard of a mountain lion being caught in the area over thirty years earlier, but there had been no sign of one since. I've often wondered what it was that I saw that day, but I'm convinced it was not a mountain lion. I never went back to Big Pines alone again. I still live within a mile of
that area. I lived way back off the road at the edge of the woods and mountains, but I've never seen anything that terrified me a lot that we do have black bears and bobcats here, but it was neither of those. I can still shut my eyes and see it in my mind, and even as an adult, I have no answers. Oh Beca, Becca Beca. What a great story, And I'm sure it still haunts you today. And I absolutely understand what you said there at the end. It's like these images are cast in your mind forever. It's
like you never you never forget exactly. It's never hazy, it's never far off in your memory. Whenever that memory comes back, it is exactly the same and as exactly as you saw it the day you saw it. I have a few of those. They don't have to do with monsters. They may have to do with my father, or my mother, or you know, some event in my life.
I know exactly what you mean. And to see something like that as an eight year little, eight year old little girl, I'm sure that's something that scared you to death. But I'll make one suggestion. And I don't know that you know. I'm not always I never try to debunk these stories. I just read them and we go on. I remember when I was a kid, there weren't there were hardly any any any turkeys at all in the woods, and I saw this thing run up a tree, or
it looked like it ran up a tree. It was a big big to me, it was big, a big, dark object, and it made these weird noises when it flew up in the tree, and it was right in the evening. Like you, I remember that vision vividly, and I can run it through my mind. And the more I think about what I saw after years of hunting turkeys, I'm pretty sure that's what I saw. But I didn't even know turkeys were in the woods when I was a kid. I thought turkeys were something that people raised
on a farm. I'm not even sure I knew what a turkey. A turkey to me was a big, frozen, giant heavy ball that you pulled out of the freezer at the grocery store. Then I figured out what they were and we started hunting them. By the way, a wild turkey doesn't look like that when it's when it's cleaned out. They're they're quite a bit smaller, but they're but the meat is delicious. It is so good that when you breast them out, they're just oh man, it's some of the it's like the nectar of meat. To me.
That and venison just the best meat in the world. It's clean and it's it. They don't they're not fed. All right, I'm going off on a tangent again. I don't mean to do that, but so maybe it was a turkey, I'm not saying it was, but think about that. You have the image in your mind, Maybe get on YouTube and look at things climbing trees and kind of zero in on a turkey and see if that's not
what you saw. But if that's not what you saw and it was bigger and more menacing, then it could have been a bigfoot, could have been a dog man or some other creature that wanders those woods. I don't know, but I love the story, Becca, and I really appreciate you sending it. Nioma liked it too. She was telling me that it's one of those stories it just kind of makes her skin crawl because I don't know, especially as it happens with little kids and stuff. It's you know,
it's kind of speaky. But Becca, thank you. I'll lave quit yack and hear.
My first encounter with what I believe was a bigfoot happened in nineteen eighty five or eighty six, when I was about three or four years old. My parents and I were living with my dad's mom on a little dirt road in western Georgia at the time, less than a quarter of a mile from my grandmother's house. Was a small graveyard. It seemed like people were always there fixing headstones. I would watch as they reset stones that had been pushed over and repair those that had been
broken in the process. Even in my late teens, I remember writing past and seeing the people working on the headstones, some for the third or fourth time. One evening, my dad decided to walk to his mom's brother's house about a mile down the road. I was a daddy's boy, so I went with him. There was a full, bright moon that night that hung in the sky like a giant lantern. It was so big I felt like I could reach out and touch it. Dad was walking in front of me, maybe ten or twelve feet. As I
passed the lock gate to the cemetery. I jumped when I heard what sounded like a wet rug being dropped onto a concrete floor, followed by a heavy chuffing sound like a bull when it coughs. I looked at my dad, unsure if he'd heard it, but then he turned a little to the right without quite turning, offered me his hand without quite lifting it from his side, and said, come on, son, and a soft voice that was not quite ominous from the house to the graveyard. The little
dirt road as straight. There are no curves or hills to obscure the view from the house where we stood. Just before I moved to take my dad's hand, I glanced over my shoulder, but I couldn't see our house or the street light in our yard. I couldn't see any of the neighbor's street lights either. I looked back several times, but I didn't see anything until maybe the fourth time I saw someone behind us. They were about thirty or forty feet back. Who's that following us, I
asked my dad. Nobody, he answered in that same quiet voice. Then, in an even softer voice laden with urgency, he added, come on. I started walking faster to keep up with my dad, but now I was suddenly aware of the sounds of footsteps. They were getting harder, louder, closer, faster with each step I took. I turned again to look back over my shoulder. The distant lights outlined someone big
in what I took to be a wooly sweater. Before I could fully turn back to my dad, I felt him lifting me off the ground and swinging me onto his shoulders. He began to run with me. I tried to look back at the wooly sweater, but it was all I could do to hang onto my dad's head as he ran as fast as he could. Like I said, I was only about three or four then. I wasn't in school yet. I don't remember much beyond that. Clearly we escaped our stalker, but my memory fails me beyond
my dad running with me on his shoulders. Years later, when I was in my early teens, I found what I thought and still believed to be a den in the side of a creek bank. The whole head of a cow was sticking out of the hole, half submerged in water. As I stood there looking at it, something snatched it from the other side of that hole and pulled it out of sight. I didn't wait around to see what had the ability to do that. I'm thirty
eight now, and I still have trouble sleeping. Sleeping meanstreaming about, wooly sweaters chasing me, and cowheads disappearing into holes and creek banks, and means remembering other things as well. I once spoke on the phone with my dead aunt. I've had two other bigfoot encounters too. I'd rather deal with bigfoot than talk to dead people, but both terrify me. The things I've told you here are the God's honest truth. I'll be writing to you about the other two encounters
I have to tell someone. Maybe once I tell them and get them out of my system, I'll be able to sleep.
Well.
I thought that was a fantastic story. Can you imagine being only three or four years old and your father's so frightened he sweeps you up on his shoulders and starts to run, and you don't even know what you're running from except for something in a big wooly sweater. It must have been terrifying. And then later when he saw the cow's head and the whole being just pulled in, Oh my gosh, no wonder you don't sleep, Wara. I
wouldn't sleep either. Thank you for sending in the story, and thank you Cam for letting me read it.
When I was a young man growing up in central New York, my uncle used to tell the family a story of what he called the swamp monsters. This was long before you could hear any talk about Bigfoot. He would tell a story whenever the cousins would gather. He and my aunt were working on a farm back in
the nineteen thirties. The family farm had big, open fields surrounded by rolling forested hills, and he would tell the story of two huge creatures covered with dark black hair that came from the forest and walked in front of he and my aunt across the farm fields. He estimated the distance at seventy five yards. When they reached every fence, they simply stepped over them, as if they were not there. I never made the connection with Bigfoot at the time.
When I was eight, my dad was reading the newspaper and he showed me an article of giant Bigfoot prints found in California. The tracks were the first that I had heard of Bigfoot. I can remember cutting out the article and running down the street to find my friends and show them the story. I remember us discussing that it was way out in California and that it would
never come to New York. Well, time went on, and when I was fifteen, my friend and I wanted to go to a party that was twenty miles from our house. The only way that we could get there would be to sneak our whole. Doca Road towed one hundred motorcycle out of the barn. We would take the back roads and ride double since we didn't have driver's licenses and
the motorcycle was also not licensed. We were cutting through a state forest about four miles from the nearest town, and as we started up a large hill, the motorcycle stalled out and was out of gas. We flipped the reserve tank lever and attempted to start the bike, and we could not get it to fire up. We began pushing the bike up the hill. It was really and very quiet, and as we pushed the motorcycle, we began to hear something walking in the woods paralleling us. It
was loud and it sounded by a peetle. Whenever we stopped, it would stop, and we could hear sticks breaking and clearly something walking like a man. We both said, what the hell is that? It started to move directly at us, this time not stopping when we did. I started yelling at my buddy to get that motorcycle started, and just as we thought the creature was about to reach us, the bike started and off we went. Every hair on
our body stood on end. We had no clue why we were so afraid, and we did not talk of this again. Time went on and I began to take remote fishing trips to Quebec, and on these trips I would always find topographical maps and try to reach an even more remote lake for fishing, always trying to get to where no one else had fished before. While fishing a lake about one hundred miles from Oh God, here's a here's a word, I'm gonna blow senataire s e n n e t e r r e Quebec sentiary
sentataire senatire. That's all I can do help meet Canadians. I found a lake that would take work to get to. We headed down a small river that connected the two lakes, and the path was blocked by many beaver dams. We would break a small hole in each dam and then turn and make a run at it and jump the dam. It was a great adventure and fill with excitement of virgin waters full of fish. I would have a chance
to pursue a trophy northern and incredible walleye fishing. When we finally reached the lake, the fishing was awesome walleye northerns. Cast after cast, there was a silence that I couldn't explain, though everything was deathly quiet. Also, there was a feeling of fear that I couldn't explain. I had reached one of the fishing spots that I had dreamed about, and all I wanted to do was leave. I didn't say anything about this to my fishing partner, and I convinced
him to head back. A year later, I returned to the same lake, and one evening we were jigging for walleye close to the mouth of the river. Something came over me and filled me with a sense of fear. All of a sudden, we heard a great roar or a scream louder than I can explain. I would estimated it came from three hundred yards away, and it shook my insides and every hair on my body stood on end. My fishing partner said the same thing, it was, what
the hell moment? We pulled up the anchor and we headed back to camp, and one of our guides liked to sleep in a tent, and after we informed him of what had happened, he moved inside and got out of that tent. I returned another year later to the same lil and was determined to face my fear and head up the river and fish that distant lake. And when I looked at the topographical maps. I noticed a lake.
Beyond the lake that had previously filled me with fear, there was a river that connected the two, and I decided that I would push it a step further and travel to that lake. We started before sunrising headed down that river. Just as the sun came up again. We broke beaver dams and turned and made runs and jumped the boat over each one. We crossed five or six dams in this manner. We reached the lake and followed them up to the small river or stream and started
pushing forward. We finally hit a shallow spot where the boat was dragging on the bottom and I would need to get out and pull it. My partner would stay in the boat with the motor tipped up. I knew why I was there to face my fear. As I pulled the boat forward, I noticed a set of tracks ahead in the water, mud lifted from the tracks. These tracks were fresh, maybe a few minutes old. I reluctantly pulled the boat forward to inspect the tracks, holding my
breath filled with fear. I reached the tracks and breathed a sigh of relief, and I yelled back to my fishing partner that it was only a bear. Imagine that it was just a bear. I should still have been afraid, but I was relieved. We finally got to the second lake to find very good fishing. We turned back and spent the remainder of the day fishing that lake that originally filled me with fear. The fishing was great. I had no feelings of fear, just caught a bunch of fish.
I made four more trips to these lakes and never had another feeling of fear or dead silence. I was talking to my cousin's husband, and he proceeded to tell me a story that spun out of control and caused him to hurt his father in law. My uncle that had seen the swamp monsters today, he recognized them for what they were. They were bigfoots or sasquatches. My cousin's husband made a set of bigfoot prints and strapped them on to his feet and ran through the woods in
the snow to my uncle's property. My uncle found the prince and ran inside and began to call all the neighbors. He told them to keep their children and pets inside because he had found bigfoot prints and there was one in the area. After he called all the neighbors, he called my cousin and told her what he had found. He explained that he had called all the neighbors and warned them. My cousin's husband heard the news and didn't know what to do. He said. My uncle never came
over to their house for an unannounced visit. My cousin's husband was in the garage and still had the bigfoot tracks hanging on the wall. My uncle walked in and looked at the wooden feet with boots attached hanging on the wall, and looked at his son in law and didn't say a word. He simply turned around and walked away with a sad, broken lad on his face. Since my experiences, I have known there is something that I
don't understand that is out there. In my younger days, I would travel deep into the woods to deer hunt, and I would stay well after dark. Sometimes I would make a kill at sunset and track and retrieve my kills after dark, with no fear, no feeling of uneasiness. But now I don't feel that way. I'm always uneasy after dark. I'm always looking over my shoulder if I make a kill at the end of the day. It is not pleasant to track and retrieve the kill after dark.
I'm always looking over my shoulder, and, come to think of it, I rarely hunt alone. One day, I was hunting on my brother in law's property and I found some stones up in the woods stacked in a formation. I had heard stories of bigfoot and rock formations. I decided I would change the formation and spread them out. And I didn't think much of it, and I moved on hunted the property again and I walked by that spot and the rocks were stacked again. I thought, Wow,
that's strange. Who would return the rocks to that formation? And I began to think if this could be a Sosquatch. I changed the formation, and I continued to hunt the property and change the formation every time I passed it, each time wondering what it could be. One night, after hunting with my daughter, we decided to stop and have a beer with my brother in law, and after a couple of beers, I told my brother in law, I'm starting to get a little freaked out about a rock
formation that I'm finding on this property. I changed the formation every time I passed, and it always returns to the same formation. When I come back, he broke out laughing and he said, damn, that was you doing that. We marked our dog's grave with those rocks, and we were starting to get a little freaked out ourselves because something kept unstacking the rocks. Boy, did I feel stupid. This year, I was camping in the Adirondez and my
son drove up to camp with us. He had made a plan to wake up about ten thirty pm and drive to White Face Mountain in the middle of the night. He planned to meet a couple of friends there and hike the mountain in the dark. The goal was to be at the top for sunrise. I thought this was a crazy idea. There was no cell phone reception there and no idea how to find the trailhead. Well, it took my GPS and I marked a route that I thought would take him to the trailhead, and off he
went in the middle of the night. He returned the next day at three pm to my campsite, and he proceeded to talk about his height. It was amazing to watch the sunrise from the tip of White Face Mountain, he said, and that about halfway up the mountain they ran into an intense smell. He said, it smell like garbage and mixed with body odor. Oh, my gosh, these oh never mind, it's the descriptions of these odors. They catch me off guard and I start laughing. He writes,
it was so strong that they imagine garbage and body odor. Oh, it's like some old bomb laying in a big pile of garbage. I don't know, laying in a garbage truck or something. Okay, I gotta get that out of my mind. It was so strong that they had to cover their face with a claw. The smell stayed with them the rest of the night, and when the sun rose, the smell went away. He said that on the return hike down the mountain, they found no trace of the smell. He asked me what I thought. I told him that
I thought they were followed by a sisquatch. That was his thought too, and he just wanted to hear someone else confirm his thoughts. Later that night, I sat by my campfire, thinking I was possibly changing the rock pattern again by telling him it was sisquatch. I know there is something out there, but it is not behind every tree. And he signs the regards Charles Charles I'm sorry I laughed at your story, but I think you got a minute.
I think you were probably laughing at the whole thing too. Now, this is a story I didn't edit. Normally, I get these stories in and I read through them and some lily hush, she's barking at a chicken. Sometimes it's like the order of things is a little out and I'll rearrange paragraphs. No, all you bigfoot purists, I don't change the stories. I don't write every story. I do make them where they sound good. I try to make them where they're easy to follow and good. But anyway, all
that said, I didn't do that on this one. And in the middle there's some and I couldn't quite understand what was going on with the guy with the wooden bigfoot feet walking around. I couldn't quite tell what was going on in that part. Maybe you guys want to go back and listen to it, but I just read his letters straight off. I thought this was a good story, and I thought it would include. It was a good story.
It was a really good story. So I hope you guys enjoyed it, and maybe all can figure out how his cousin or his cousin's husband. How that story went. Somebody saw bigfoot tracks, they went and warned all their neighbors. They found out that they were hoaxed, and they just hung their head and walked off. But I couldn't quite figure out how that fit in this whole story. But that doesn't matter. It's a real good story.