I was nineteen and in the Navy when this incident occurred. Some of my friends and I from the ship like to hang out at a bar where we were close friends with the night manager. If you gave us a free drink, we could be very useful. We would man the entrance to the place, discouraging the troublemakers and checking IDs, weeding out all the underage drinkers.
After closing time, we would escort the lady employees to their vehicles. There were always a few customers who got a little wasted and tried to push themselves on the female staff. Our job was to make sure that these women got out of the bar safely, unmolested. One night, the manager asked me to take home a woman named Heaven because her car was in the shop. Isn't that a great name? Yes, that is a great name. I never thought about naming a girl Heaven, or even a boy Heaven. That's
a great name. Anyway, back to the story. It was after eleven PM, and Heaven lived twenty miles west of Jacksonville in a small town. I asked my friend Terry to go with me so that I could have someone to talk to on the drive back. After Heaven got out of my vehicle and safely into her house, Terry moved up to the front passenger seat and we headed back to Jacksonville. As soon as you get past the city limit of Heaven's small town, there's nothing but a small two lane highway with woods
on both sides. Ten minutes into the drive with the radio one, Terry dozed off. What an entertaining travel companion, I thought to myself. Well, while Terry snoozed, I zoned out to some good tunes in my own company. A thick fog began moving in and I flipped on my high beams and I saw something dart across the left side of the road. This thing was huge, is about eight feet tall, and it was the width of a kitchen table. It was covered in fur, and it looked like Chewbacca
with two steps that swept across the highway and disappeared into the woods. I slammed on my brakes and Terry nearly collided with the dash. Dude, I yelled at him, did you see that huge, hairy creature walk across the highway just now? I had my eyes closed. He muttered, I think I just saw a bigfoot. I said, if you want me to drive, why didn't you just say so? Was Terry's disinterested response. He didn't
believe me. We went back to the bar, where the manager proceeded to serve me the first of several Long Island ice teas, with only a hint of the cola he uses for color. As the alcohol loosened me up, I couldn't tell if anyone else believed me either. I hadn't had a drop to drink that day. Now, I guess with Bigfoot encounters, your reputation proceeds right or wrong. Terry drove me home from the bar. I know firsthand from serving in the military that there are certain things that blur the line
between fact and fiction. It's what separates the believers from the skeptics. I saw what I saw long before Bigfoot, or what is also known as Sasquats in the northwestern United States and Canada, was North America's most popular legendary monster. My late father, Lewis would tell of an experience he had with a similar creature when he was a young boy living on Bayou Lafouche. I think
that's how you pronounce that in southern Louisiana. My father was ten years old at the time, and his younger brother, Lloyd, was approximately seven. My father was born in nineteen thirty two, so this would have occurred in the early nineteen forties, a quarter of a century before the Patterson Gimlin film that made Bigfoot a common phenomenon. My father would vividly recall this day in
great detail. He said he could remember how it was a beautiful sunny morning and my grandmother had sent him and his brother to pick snap beans along the levee near the bayou for dinner. He and his brother both quickly gathered their buckets from off the back porch, glad to be able to get away from home and enjoy a beautiful sunny morning away from their mother's watchful eye. While they picked snap beans along the rows of the levee, they began to smell
a horrible stench. My father remembered it to be similar to the smell of rotten eggs, only worse. My father and uncle Lloyd decided that the horrible smell was more than likely the decaying remains of an animal, Because unpleasant odors were commonplace on the farm. This did not initially set off any alarms of what would soon become on one of the most terrifying moments of their young lives.
They knew their mother wanted them to fill their buckets with snap beans and return home in sufficient time for her to prepare them to cook for dinner. They decided they would pick more than enough so there would be no need for them to return to the levee. They were enjoying their time together, but that awful stench was becoming unbearable. When they decided they had picked enough snap beans to sufficiently satisfy my grandmother's needs for dinner and possibly supper, they picked
up their overflowing buckets and headed home. All of a sudden, they heard a frightening guttural growl. My father said it sounded like someone who was heavily congested clearing their throat, but much deeper. The rotten egg stench was now even thicker in the air. Suddenly, a manlike creature covered in long, stringy, dark brown, matted wet hair walked out of the wooded area near
the by you and stood right in front of my father and uncle. My father said he could distinctly remember that this creature was only about thirty to fifty feet away. And he could clearly see that it had a face that looked human, but with huge, jagged teeth. The creature then let out a terrifying, piercing scream and turned and jumped into the bayou, and it swam away. My father said it was as if everything from that point was in
slow motion. He remembered dropping his full bucket of snapbeans and grabbing his brother by the arm, as if all in one movement. Uncle Lloyd then dropped his full bucket, spilling all the contents on the ground. The two of them started running as fast as they could back towards the house. My grandmother's version of the events of that faithful mourning made it all the more credible because
my grandmother was never one to embellish a story. She said she looked out the window and saw my father and uncle running towards the house that she knew instantly they were not playing a game, but that something terrible had happened. She initially believed that they had been threatened by white men, as this was southern Louisiana and lynching of blacks were not uncommon at that time. She ran out of the house to meet them. They were both shaking and crying uncontrollably.
She quickly sent one of my aunts to the field to get my grandfather to let him know that something terrible had happened to the boys. By the time my grandfather reached the house, my father and uncle had calmed down sufficiently enough to talk. My grandmother was confident that whatever happened, they would not dare lie to their father. When my grandfather asked them to tell what had
happened, they recounted seeing a hairy manlike creature near the by you. They described how this by you beast had walked out of the trees and screamed at them with a high pitched scream, and jumped in the bayou and swam away. Because they had none of the snap beans they had spent all morning picking, and they both were still visibly shaken, my grandfather was confident they were
telling the truth. My father would often end this story by saying that he did not know what he feared the most, the hairy man like creature with a loud piercing scream, or my grandfather not believing him. My father said he was so relieved when my grandfather turned to my grandmother and said, these boys aren't lying they saw some type of creature. I'm certain of it. It is my father's vivid recounting of this encounter that made me know that sosquatch
is real. Oh, yes, he's real. I also recently missed having my very own daytime encounter. On January twenty eight, twenty nineteen, my sister and I both met up on a connecting flight of Armingham, Alabama for my son's wedding. We picked up our rental car at the airport and began our hour and a half trip to Huntsville, Alabama. This journey was one I have made many times by car, as I lived in Huntsville, Alabama
for over ten years. However, this particular day, I was turned around as to how to leave the airport and connect with the highway to take me to Huntsville. After driving for about thirty minutes, we decided to stop and get a bite to eat. My sister was bewildered as to how I could be so turned around and unable to get my bearings. I'd only been gone from this area for six years. She was growing impatient. Finally, we were on the correct exchange and headed to Huntsville. We even talked about what
possibility made me so scatterbrained and confused. We both had a good life and chalked it up to old age, not that we would be considered that old. Laughed it off and looked forward to the next few days at my son's wedding. Just as we made the exchange on to Interstate five sixty five leading into Huntsville, I decided to call my soon to be daughter in law to let her know that we would be at her house. Shortly. I was driving and talking to her via bluetooth, so I knew exactly what time it
was. It was three zho five pm. My sister then looked at me and said, with this really blank look on her face, I just saw a sisquatch. I looked at her and initially thought she was talking about a billboard or a sign for a business. I ended my phone call and turned to her and said, what did you say. She repeated, I just saw a sisquatch. I said, you're joking right. Strangely, my sister
and I have never discussed the topic of sasquatch or bigfoot. She then said, no, I was looking at this thing crouched down off the side of the road as if it were trying to conceal itself in the trees. You were driving slowly so you could enter the highway and I could clearly see it. First, I thought, what is an orangutane doing out there? And then I realized I was looking at a subsquatch. There are no words to explain how I, being a bigfoot enthusiast, felt realizing that I had missed
having my own daylight sighting in the safety of a car. I told my sister, apparently that is what all my confusion was about in trying to leave Birmingham, because had we not had all of that trouble leaving Birmingham, you would never have had your sighting. We had a quick visit with my son and his soon to be wife, and I told them about my sister's sighting. They found it to be extremely humorous, but I was a bag of
nerves because I knew she was telling the truth. I couldn't wait to check into the hotel so she could give me even more details of what she could remember in that brief moment. She did say the creature was pale skinned and had a face that looked more Neanderthal than ape, and it had long, stringy red hair. It had a thick brow ridge and a really huge face. The head was cone shape, but not really as pronounced as the Patterson Gimlin film. She said it looked more manlike than ape. Of course,
I reminded my sister of our father's encounter on the Bayou. She said she remembered it and that she had always believed my father was telling the truth, but now she was certain of it. I really hate that there appear to be so many encounters all over North America and other parts of the world,
and people have been made to keep their sightings and encounters to themselves. I do believe that more people that share their encounters, the more it will minimize the stigma around it, and mayxtreme scientists will have to take this subject more seriously. In nineteen sixty seven, when I was seven years old, my family moved to White Spring, Florida. Dad was a pipe fitter at a nearby chemical plant. He found us an old country house to live in that
sat about two hundred yards from the Sewanee River. We were surrounded by woods. It was a veritable paradise for a kid like me. I didn't see trees and bushes. I saw forts and treehouses. I walked through. The woods was never going to be a simple day hike for me. It was a safari, like a journey the likes of the travels of Marco Polo. Likewise, the river held endless possibilities there. I had visions of Huck Finn
and the Lewis and Clark expedition. One evening, while I was sitting on the back porch checking out the woods and planning my next adventure, when I heard a strange noise. It was coming from the backwoods that was my domain. I couldn't quite place the sound. I'd never heard it before, nor could I figure out quite where it was coming from. I looked all around, but I didn't see anything, And then I looked up sitting in a
tree was a monkey or a chimpanzee. That was the only way my seven year old mind could identify it. To a kid like me, all the primates were monkeys or chimps. I watched it for a few seconds while it sat up there watching me back. Then it started to climb down the tree. That was when I saw the dark brown figure at the base. It was much larger than the little one up in the tree and when the little one got low enough, it climbed onto the larger one's back. A minute
later, they had disappeared into the dense woods. Earlier this year, I saw the same thing in a video that's been going around the internet. When I saw that video, it sent a cold chill down my spine, and I said to myself, Oh my God, I've seen this before. Once the creatures were gone, I turned around and ran inside, and I asked my older brother and dad if there were any monkeys around there, and they said that there weren't. I was sure they were wrong, so I told
them I had just seen one that didn't go over very well. They teased me about it endlessly. They could be pretty cruel about it at times. I had put it in the back of my head and forced myself not to think about it. I probably wouldn't have thought about it again if not foreseeing that video. It brought it all back like a flood. I didn't play in those woods much after that. I guess even Lewis and Clark might have given a little extra thought to exploring this country if they had seen what I
saw. It wasn't all bad. Dad and I floated the Swanee on some pretty cool fishing trips. It was a fascinating and beautiful place back then, and it still is. It contributed to some pretty amazing memories from my childhood, But I can't help but wondering now if maybe we weren't always alone out there on that river.