I've been interested in bigfoot for a long time, but it wasn't until the last few years that I had the free time to be able to travel and see some good locations myself. I'm from the Midwest. We can't match Oregon, Washington, or Ohio, but there are a few spots that are known to have activity. One such place was in the state Forest, about four hours from me, and so late in September I decided to spend a few days checking it out. On arriving, I set up
in the main campground. This is a relatively isolated area and mostly draws trout fishermen to fish the local streams. There were a couple of fishermen camping with RVs, but otherwise I had the place to myself. At mid afternoon, I set out driving some of the forest roads in my truck, just getting the feel of the area. When I came to a parking spot for a couple of mile long hiking tree trail, I decided to get out and stretch my legs and check out the walk in
campground that was supposed to be back in there. It was cool in the woods and I walked along quietly, just watching for animals and enjoying being out, not really expecting anything. But as I got close to the campground off in the woods a few hundred yards to the south, that was a loud wood knock. I couldn't believe it. I actually heard a wood knock, and on my first hike, it was very loud and clear. I would describe it as ringing almost. It sounded like hard, hard dead wood,
no bark, very clear. I stopped dead in my tracks and listened for a good fifteen minutes, but there was nothing more. I didn't have my little baseball battle long and I wasn't about to start screaming like I was on TV. So after a while I just continued into the campground and looked around a little. I waited a while more. Still there was nothing, and then I got to thinking again I actually heard a wood knock. It's impossible to describe how exciting it was to actually hear
one for myself. I knew I had to come back. That night. At dusk, I came walking down the trail again. This time I had my little baseball bat and of course some flashlights. It was a lot spookier this time, but I got all the way to the campground without hearing anything, and I sat down on a bench and I listened for a while. It was all very quiet. Finally I got up off the bench and went to a nearby tree and gave it a good wat. It kind of echoed for a second. I dropped the bat
and cut my hands around my ears to listen. After about fifteen to twenty seconds, there was a quiet, single I'm not sure how to describe it, a soft crunch, like a single careful footstep on a soft rotten log. Just that one soft, deliberate sound, like something saying quietly, Hey, you don't have to shout. I'm right over here. The hairs on my neck stood up. Wasn't very far away at all. I waited a few minutes and made another knock,
more quietly this time, but there was no response. After listening a while more, I headed back to my truck. I'm sure you'll understand that I spent a lot of time shouting my flashlight around into the woods and back behind me on the way out. This was all that happened on that first visit, but it was enough to get me fired up to come back again the next spring. It was just amazing to go to a place reputed
to have activity and then actually experience it myself. I have no proof of what might have made the wood knock, but I will say I did not see any other people in this back area for the entire three days that I was there, and my thinking was, when did a human ever make just one single knock? So the next June I was raring to goeh. I packed up my camping gear and headed back, hoping that I would have some more excitement. But little did I know what was coming this time. I drove right to the trail
parking lot. It was only late morning, and I figured i'd go set up camp after walking the trail once first. I tried to drive quietly the last half a mile and made as little noise as I could, shutting the door when I got out. Hopefully I could surprise something and maybe hear another would not. I sat out, and before I was even one hundred yards down the trail, there was a huge loud crack. It was a sound to my left up on the ridge. I almost jumped out of my skin. It was so loud. It sounded
like a whole tree being snapped like a pencil. My hair stood up and my stomach jumped up into my throat. I felt like I needed to be running, like right now. And there up on the ridge, I caught just a glimpse of something, something behind me the bushes. I could see the sun glinting off the shiny black fur through the holes between the leaves, and it was moving off into heavier cover. I only saw it for a second, no identifiable shape, but roughly three to four feet high
and a little less in width. It took me a couple of minutes to calm down, But wow, did I just get bluff charged. I heard nothing before or after the tree crack. There were no sticks falling, no thuds or other noises. But what had I seen? I was absolutely elated. Whatever that was, it wasn't a human, and it wasn't a deer, and that is the only bigger animal that should be around the DNR. Information online was clear there were no bears in this whole corner of
the state. And if it wasn't a bear, black shiny fur, you know, if I had to say from my gut what I saw any animal in the world, I would say from its color, size and the way it moved that it was something like a big chimpanzee and talk about classic bigfoot behavior breaking a tree and warning me and slinking off into the heavy brush. After I recovered, I continued down the trail. When I got to the campground, I was surprised to see a man and his young
son setting up camp. I walked over to talk, and I found out they had parked at the other end of the trail and walked in, and they arrived about a half an hour before me. They hadn't seen anything strange on their way here. Let me give you the lay of the land here, because it's relevant. There's this long trail with parking at both ends and a campground in the middle. To the south, where last year's would
not came from, is nothing, no trails know anything. And to the north from the campground there's a draw or a ravine that runs up the ridge and twists to the west. So the head of that ravine is up in the woods there behind the ridgetop on the west and the end I came in from. I'm thinking, what if the man and his son came walking down the trail and there's a young bigfoot near the campground who
sees them coming, so not to be seen himself. He has to run into the woods to the north, even though where he really wants to go is to the south, where there are thick woods and where my wood knock came from. So he works his way up the draw to get away from the campground and then turns south, intending to cross over the top of the ridge and come down the hill across the trail and then make his way into the woods to the south. Only when he is coming down from the ridge top, dang, there's
another human in the way. So he's ticked off and instinctively cracks the tree at me and SLINKs back into cover. It made a lot of sense, I thought, And that's all that happened on that trip. But let me tell you that was enough. I have never been I'm so startled or scared as I was when that loud noise made me think I was about to be attacked or
squashed by something. My next visit was great too. I tried some gifting and had interesting results, but it's not directly relevant to the story, so I'll pass over that. One last spring, I again returned ready to try a few new things. But I did have a new piece of information I had found online. The DNR now said a few isolated black bears had been seen in this quarter of the state, presumably just passing through. I went
to have a talk with the local ranger. After telling my story, we narrowed down the exact time I had been there, and he said that that month, the month when I experienced the tree cracking incident, a couple other hiking parties had reported seeing a black bear right along that specific trail. Furthermore, the very next month, mister bear wandered out into the highway and got himself killed by a car. He had then been stuffed and was on display at the county museum. I could even go see him.
A little more. Research taught me that bears do occasionally crack trees while engaging in scent related behavior, although my experience was not typical at all, and when I visited mister bear he proved to be a little on the small side, which would be about right, But he was more of a cinnamon brown, not really a shiny black unless they both looked the same glinting in the bright sun.
Apparently my bigfoot was the bigfoot that wasn't, Although to be fair, yes, what I saw was probably a bear, but where no bears were supposed to be doing something bears don't really do in exactly that way, and possibly changing color a bit in the process. There starting to be an awful lot of coincidences there. I want to share with you my brother's encounter with a sasquatch that happened around nineteen ninety near a town called Gary's Creek,
which is near Fayetteville, North Carolina. I've always been fascinated with Bigfoot ever since I was a kid of seven or eight. I even went with my friend one night to see Sasquatch The Legend of Bigfoot at a local theater, and that movie scared the heck out of both of us. I recently rewatched the movie and I had to laugh because I could hardly believe I was ever scared of this chunk of geese. Oh what a way to describe a movie, a chunk of cheese. My family also knew
of my fascination. I believe my dad was interested too, because every time there was a Bigfoot documentary on TV, he was right there watching it with my brother and I. My parents even gave me a copy of Peter Burns's Bigfoot Book for my day one year, and I must have read it a hundred times. The following incident happened around the year nineteen ninety. I was chatting with my mother on the phone, and she asked how I enjoyed a recent camping trip that I had taken with some friends.
I made a joke about how we didn't see bigfoot, but we did have a great time regardless, to which she replied, well, your brother would be happy to learn that. When I asked her what she meant, she seemed surprised that he'd never told me. When I pressed her, she informed me that Larry, my brother, had an extraordinary bigfoot encounter a few years back. I was rather pod that Larry hadn't told me about this. He knew of my
lifelong interest in this subject. I hung up with my mother and immediately called Larry, what's the big idea of being Harry hold out with the news of an encounter that you never told me about. He guessed correct that Mom had told me. He said he would go ahead and tell me, but to not ask any questions. Well, I thought that was strange, but I went along out
of love and respect for my brother. And then he told me this story Larry was working as a delivery man for a local branch of a nationwide pizza chain. He was tasked to deliver some pizzas to a college fraternity house. Larry's car was in the shop at the time, so he was driving his boss's pickup truck. He delivered the pizzas and was driving back through Gray's Creek, North Carolina, on a road with overhanging oak trees. Bocephus was playing on the radio, he said, and the windows were down
and he was enjoying the cool evening air. He heard a loud bang in the bed of the truck. He slammed on the brakes while looking in the rear view mirror and could see something black up against the rear window. When he got to a full stop, he saw something flailing around and it managed to work its way to the open tailgate and roll out of the truck bed. Larry sat there, stunned, looking in the rear view mirror,
trying to figure out what this thing was. He stood up on two feet and it grew to seven feet tall. He tilted the mirror to see its face. Larry focused on the thing's face to see it looking right back at him. The face was human like and had a murderous, hate filled expression, and then it roared. Larry ain't no dummy. He turned and stomped on the gas because he knew that if this thing got its hands on him, it
would absolutely tear him apart. Larry says he has no recollection of driving back to the pizza joint, just that the next thing he knew that he was getting out of the truck and his knees buckled and he would have fallen flat had he not managed to catch himself on the door's arm rest. He said he stayed squatted and gulping for air for several minutes, and then he went in trying to look like he was okay. Larry's boss looked at him and he knew something was wrong.
He was pale and his eyes were big and wide open. Apparently Larry looked so bad that his boss drove him home that minute. He has no memory of the ride home or talking with his boss on the ride. My mother walked to Larry back to his room so he could lay down while my dad and Larry's boss looked at the truck. The part of the bed sides near the rear window were crumpled downwards, and there was blood in the bed, as well as some tufts of hair. They both picked up on the bad odor as well.
Our father said it was a horrible smell. Mom and Dad sat up with Larry all night. He was obviously in a state of shock. They wanted to take him to the hospital, but Larry insisted that he was okay. He related his story to both my and dad a little while after, and they both believed him. My parents are not gullible people. They're well grounded and not prone to believe everything they hear. Trust me on that one.
A year later, Mom and Dad, my wife and I and Larry and his family were vacationing together and I was excited that I get to ask him about his experience face to face. I sat down with a notepad and a pen. I was even planning to record the conversation with a new app on my phone. He looked at both and said, no way, I don't want you submitting this to any bigfoot organization, and furthermore, this is going to be the last time we talk about this. You got it. I agreed and asked some questions that
help fill in the blanks in the account. I have a bit more to tell you about my brother. When he was relating what happened to me during our vacation, I saw both fear in his eyes and goosebumps rose on his arms more than once, and you can't fake that. What really hammered things home for me is the fact that my brother is a formal Special Forces operator and he served a tour over in the Sandbox. He just
does not get rattled. To speak for myself, I never heard of a sasquatch dropping from a tree into a truck before. From Larry's report, he had a hunch it just lost its grip and somehow fell into the bed of the truck. I'd be willing to bet the sasquatch trackways people find that abruptly end is because these things take to the trees