Is Bigfoot real? That's a question I found myself asking a lot, especially after the series Finding Bigfoot started on an Animal Planet. The eyewitness accounts on that show were compelling, but the lack of irrefutable evidence was frustrating. I figured I would have to see one for myself before I could believe, but it didn't stop me from asking myself that question whenever I had a spare minute
to think about it. I was surprised by the answer I got. It was November twelfth, twenty fifteen, the day before Friday the thirteenth, and two days before my niece's wedding on the fourteenth. I wasn't going to the wedding. I was out of town and I couldn't get the time off from work, so I decided to take a day trip to a semi abandoned a farm outside of Stellville, Missouri, where I had my camper part It was the time of year to winterrize it, and I brought my buddy along with
me. Mike is mentally challenged, but he was a good helper and generally a no nonsense kind of guy. The farm was up the hill from a Christian summer camp that we had built. The camp was closed for the season, but I used the camper when it was in session. The farmer who on the land allowed me to park there year round. Aside from my camper, there were several sheds and lean tos for animals and stalls for horses,
and I used to feed them back there when they were occupied. Back then, I could plug into the electricity and draw water from a pump in the yard, but now that was vacant and I could do neither. For that reason, I brought a small generator with me so I could power the lights in the RV run the air compressor that I would use to blow out the water line so that they wouldn't freeze over. The grass had grown up quite a bit since I was there last. It was five feet high in places,
and behind the camper was a barberire fence. Beyond that it dropped off to a wooded ravine. We got to work right away now, blue affel lines and added RV anti freeze where needed. The last thing I needed to do before it got too dark and we had to go home was to put the covering tart back on the camper and tie it down. A severe storm had come through the area of the night before and had blown it off. While I was up on the six foot ladder and Mike held it steady for
me. I could hear something walking in the steep wood hills of the ravine, and as soon as I finished tying down the tarp, I turned around and swept the ravine with a small flashlight. I immediately hit eyeshine and it was six feet off the ground. I also thought I detected movement. I looked down at Mike and I said, Mike, I think I see bigfoot. Well Mike laughed and he said, Dan quit joking around. Well, something big is walking up there, I told, and I'm not joking.
Mike had reason not to believe me. I had a tendency to tease him from time to time. Once, while we were building the camp, we took turns going out at night to another building to use the bathroom facilities. When we went outside in the dark, we would howl, and then we came running back inside and we'd be breathing heavily, and we'd tell Mike that
we'd been chased by wolves. Mike held as blighter as long as he could before finally venturing out with his flashlight and a stick in his hand, and when he got outside, someone howled from around the corner of the building, and then when the door shut, we'd all howl with laughter. It was good natured fun, and I'm only slightly ashamed of all that now, But it was that kind of stuff that made Mike look at me now as if
I were the boy who cried wolf. It wasn't until I repeated myself that he finally said, in his quiet, no nonsense way, Hey, let's get go grab my toolbox out of the camper, I said, and let's get loaded up. I had my own doubts as to what it was, but that lingering question in the back of my head started whispering, is Bigfoot real? It was still pretty far away, so I asked myself what the people on finding Bigfoot would do to bring it in, and I remembered that
they would do tree knocks. But I was six feet up a lader in the middle of a hayfield. Even if I had something to knock with, I didn't have a tree. So I decided to slam my hand three times on the top of the camper. That made a loud racket, But I forgot about Mike being inside, He stuck his head out the door and he yelled, Dan, what are you doing. I'm doing knocks to try to get the bigfoot to come closer. I said, for once, I wasn't trying to scare him or pull his leg, but the tremmor in his voice
told me that I'd done a pretty good job of it anyway. Don't do that, he demanded, Now, let's get o. I couldn't tell if Mike believed it or not. I wasn't sure if I believed it yet. The knocks failed to draw the eye shined in closer, but they did get its attention. Now there was a second set of eyes low to the ground, in closer to us. I trained the light on them as they slowly
stood up and became a tall creature. The hill was too steep to accurately judge how tall, but I knew the eyes were set too far apart to belong to a man. I decided that the other must have been curious and was trying to sneak up on me to get a better look. Maybe it thought I was another bigfoot. With the lighter mostly hidden in the tall grass, and from his angle down the hill, he probably saw me as being as tall as the camper. Unfortunately, both set of eyes were still too
far away to make out any real detail with my tiny flashlight. Again, I thought about finding bigfoot and what they would have done to draw these creatures in, and I thought they would have made whooping calls. Whoop, whoop, I yelled. Mike was back outside, now standing at the bottom of the ladder, and he yelled up to me, Dan, what are you doing now? I'm trying to get him in closer, I explained, Man, don't do that, he said, more agitated than before. Let's go.
I was sure now that I had convinced him that there were bigfoot creeping around on the hillside. I flashed the light out into the increasing darkness, and I now counted three sets of eyes, and due to my call, they were coming closer, and Mike was scared. He was ready to leave, but I wasn't. They were still too far away to positively identify them, and that question in the back of my head was begging for an answer. This might be my one chance to prove to myself that bigfoot does exist.
Each time I flashed the light on a different set of eyes, they would freeze. Meanwhile, the other two sets would slowly come closer. They still weren't close enough to identify them with my pathetically insufficient little light. I had a bigger and better flashlight on my truck show. I showed Mike the different sets of eyes and I told him to keep them in sight while I
went to grab it. The batteries and the other light weren't very good, so it wasn't much better than the first light, but at least now we had two lights on two of them. Now only one creature at a time was slowly coming ever closer. We kept them at bay by rotating the lights from one set of eyes to another, but not close enough to fully identify what we were seeing. Despite this, they were getting too close for my
personal comfort. They'd already reached that point for Mike, and once again I asked myself what the people on finding Bigfoot would do, and the answer was that they would stay around and try to get a picture. I reached into my pocket to pull up my phone, but common sense was battling with my curiosity, and at one to heck with this, I said, and I told Mike what he'd been wanting to hear for several minutes. Let's get out of here. We couldn't just jump in the truck and go though. The
ladder and the compressor and the generator all had to be loaded. I told Mike to hold them off with the flashlight while I rounded up all that stuff and put it in the truck faster than I have ever loaded anything in my life. And by the time I got it done, Mike was already jumping in on the passenger side of the truck. Okay, great, I thought, without the flashlights to slow them down, they could be anywhere. The barber O fence wasn't likely to slow them down. They might even be in
the tall grass close to the truck. I hit to kill switch on the generator, which had been running the whole time in the back of mind truck. The little light inside the camper. Oh man, Sorry to interrupt the story there. I just had a stink bug crawling on me. I could feel it a few minutes ago, and I thought I was just itching, But then I smelled it and I had to I hate killing bugs. I don't even like to kill bugs, but man, these stink bugs are everywhere.
Okay where was I? Oh great? I thought, without the flashlights to slow them down. They could be anywhere the barb wire fence wasn't likely to slow them down. They might even be in the tall grass close to the truck. Well, I hit the kill switch on the generator, which had been running the whole time in the back of the truck. The little light inside the camper went out, and we were left in the dark. The silence, however, was deafening, with nothing but stars overhead. I
made my way up to the driver's side door. I reached in and I turned on the headlights. We still I couldn't see beyond the camper to our sides because of the tall grass all around us. And I stood there with the door open, trying not to make any noise, and I was listening intently for any sound, anything, And for the longest time, it was incredibly silent. And then I heard what sounded like a grunt or a snort over by the cedar trees beyond the barberar fence. In a moment of instant
and absolute clarity, I knew that this was it. This was my only chance to answer that question that was eating at my brain. If I ran now, I might never have this chance again. I had to know. I had to know if Bigfoot exists. With my last bit of courage, I told Mike to wait in the truck and I grabbed a flashlight and I said, I'll be right back, Dan. What are you doing, Mike cried, let's get out of here. He's gonna rush you. Bigfoot's gonna
rush you. I could hear the tears in his voice, I could feel the almost tangible panic that was taking over, and I knew that he was probably right. I should have listened to him, I should have got a side of there. But that question just kept eating at me. I had to know. Ignoring every ounce of common sense I had, I continued forward, keeping close to the camper, and with trembling hands, I pointed the
light toward the cedar trees and illuminated three horses behind a fence. Apparently they had been grazing on the hill and I call them up, probably expecting to receive apples for their efforts. Finally I had my proof, proof that people really do let their imaginations run away with them. And to your readers, although this was not an actual Bigfoot encounter, ninety nine point nine percent of
it is true. The only part that was ever so slightly embellished to make me look and to make it better reading was the part about the snort. I was pretty sure it was a horse when I heard it, and in my defense, I had never seen them on that side of the fence before and the form was deserted. But still I wasn't one hundred percent certain that they were horses until I actually saw them with my eyes. After all, the experts on finding bigfoot had taught me that bigfoot are known to be excellent
mimics. Little did I know that I had already encountered them when I was growing up. But I didn't realize that then. What I was seeing, smelling, and experiencing my early encounters you have already recounted in your episode entitled The Missouri Monster Revisited Bigfoot Encounters all over Missouri Marathon number eighty two