Old Man Haunted by Bigfoot

We don't have vast tracks of wilderness down here, but this place is about two miles from any road, though the railroad tracks do run through it. At the time this happened, logging had just started, so most of this area was still covered in big hardwood timber that's all gone now. Me and the old boys went to get the dogs, and in the process I got us turned around. It was summertime and most of the slews were almost dry.

They were just heavy and thick mud. I found one that was heading in the directions that I wanted to go, so I took it. Almost immediately. I noticed a set of large barefoot tracks that had been made not too long ago. Sunk deep into the ground. I can't say one hundred percent for sure that Bigfoot made them, but who would be walking barefoot in a cottonmouth infested river bottom. After a little while, I knew where I was, and

I stayed in the old slow bed. We followed the tracks right up to the gas line that ran through the bottoms, which is about seventy five yards wide. The tracks didn't lead into the gas line, which told me that whatever had made them had left the slow bed and stayed in the woods. When we made it back to the truck, I asked one of the old boys what he thought of the tracks. He said, it was just some dope d during around. I said the hell it was, They replied, now, don't you go start bogger

hunting on me. Well, I never mentioned it again. I still hunt and trap in that area, and I haven't seen anything else. But I've been hunting a few times when what I'll describe is a feeling of dread would come over me. Both times I tailed it out of there and I left. So I don't know if it was my imagination or what. I have some friends who used to hunt some hardwood over by the river. One day one of them asked me if I'd ever heard crows call after dark. I said I hadn't ever heard that.

He said every time they turned their dogs loose, when they would strike and start working in a track, the crows would start calling back and forth, pitch black dark. Here in Arkansas, timber is a big deal. I can tell you lots of coon hunters have had encounters, but none of them would ever admit to it. I've known guys who refuse to go coon hunting alone. They'll never say why, but I have a good idea why they don't go. This is a horned house story, and it's

pretty good. My mother's family has had a farm for over two hundred years. In the original will, it states that the property can be added to, but it cannot be sold. It has passed from family member to family member and can only go to those in my mother's bloodline. The house was built in eighteen sixty. It's a brick structure and it has three stories. Through the front door is a large entry way in an oak stairway, and past that as a long haul with rooms on each

side and a kitchen at the end. The second floor is full of bedrooms and The third floor used to be an old ballroom. Every room has a fireplace, though over the years, as electricity and farnesses and plumbing were installed, they'd been blocked off with decorative iron plates. There's a wrap around porch and a large summer kitchen on the back of the house. Six spirits still call this beautiful historical house home, and with the exception of two of them,

they are all relatives. Of the two that are not. One was a wagon accident survivor and brought to the house where he died, and the other was a visitor who had suddenly dropped dead from what was suspected to be a heart attack. One of the spirits in this house is my maternal grandfather, and although Grandpa chewed tobacco, he did not like smoking. He especially disliked it when

women smoked. He was old fashioned that way. My mother, who used to smoke even as an adult, would never smoke in front of him, and never did until the day he died in this house. After he passed away, she decided to keep the place rather than pass a along to another relative. Since she and my dad did not have any sons, it was mostly me and my mother, My dad and a couple of hired hands who worked it and kept it in shape. My sisters were not interested in staying at the house and could not wait

until they could leave and move to town. Two thousand and five, my dad passed away. My oldest sister decided to take mom to her house for a few days, and my two younger sisters were all staying with friends, so that left me alone. Now, I've never been afraid to stay there by myself, even to this day, but I decided to call some friends to come and maybe play cards and watch movies with me. That night, four of us were sitting around the kitchen table, and at

that time we all smoked. We were playing cards, talking and smoking when suddenly the cigarette was slapped out of my hand by something unseen. Not a second later, across the table, my friend's cigarette went flying from her hand too, and an ashtray flew off the table. My friends were completely stunned, and the look on their faces was one of horror. I jumped up, picked up cigarettes, and I put them in the sink, while my friend screamed and ran out the door. My friend, who had her cigarette

slapped away, had a red mark on her cheek. She said that she felt the hand slap her. She was in hysterics. I got her to calm down and told her that we could play cards in the summer kitchen, but they wanted nothing to do with that, and they got in their cars and left. I walked back into the house and said, loudie, thanks like grandpa. I swear I heard him laughing. And to this day, no one

has smoked in this house since. And when those same friends stopped by, it's only during the daytime, and they refused to come inside. My wife and I started spending the weekends with her father after her mother passed away. My wife had told me in the past that she had experiences with bigfoot on her parents' property, but I

told her that she was full of it. But the more time we spent there, the more I started talking to the locals, and it was apparently common knowledge that a family of bigfoot was living in the woods, and it was a hush hush subject. At night, I sit outside on the back porch and listened to the sounds of the woods. Between the frogs and the toads and

crickets and other wildlife, it's pretty noisy. I noticed that every night around nine thirty, I hear what sounds like a drum roll on the trees, followed by a series of tree knockings that comes in threes. As soon as the knocking comes, the wildlife goes quiet. It's too quiet. I've heard howling and screaming, and one night, right on the other side of the tree line, I heard a whooping sound and multiple other strains vocalizations. I became curious

about this because I always listened to your stories. I wanted to see a bigfoot. So one weekend, my friend Richie and I decided to go camping and see what we could find. And as soon as we got into the woods, we noticed tree brakes wooden structures, which excited us. We set up our camp and decided to explore. We followed the directions that the tree breaks pointed to, and it led us deep into the woods, farther than I

had ever been. Eventually we came across the fallen tree with a bundle of jagged stems that were about two foot long. They were all equal in length, and they were lying neatly pointing to the left. There were no people out there, so who would put the stems there? We went in the direction they pointed, and we ended up in a ravine with a stream running through it. The next sign we found was a big X. Now I don't know what this means, but that's where we

found the tracks. They were almost human, measuring thirteen inches. And as soon as we found the tracks, we started hearing crunching in the earth and the branches breaking. We didn't see what was making the sound, but it sounded big. We picked up our pace, chopping through the thick vegetation with our machetes, and eventually we found our camp and everything was good, but we felt like we were being watched.

Forty yards away, we noticed something crouched down in the bushes and it was watching us, and we pretended not to notice it. Nighttime came and we heard walking in the woods around the perimeter of our camp from four different positions, and then we heard a loud whoop followed by a tree knock. It was too close for comfort. I turned on my night vision binoculars and I scanned the area and I noticed something was peaking around a tree at me. It would look and hide, and then

look and hide. This went on for an hour and then it was gone all night. We heard by Peter footsteps all around our camp. As you can guess, we didn't sleep that night, and when the sun came up, everything was normal again, and we got even more curious. We went to the tree where the thing had been watching us and found footprints just like the ones we saw the day before. There was a little hole where it looked like it was digging for some reason, but

we didn't know why. We jumped into our hammocks when it got dark, and we waited, and once again, footsteps were all around our camp. And then I heard a rabbit scream. I thought maybe an owl had gotten it, so I shrugged it off. And then around three thirty am, I heard footsteps in the camp and then I heard the sound of someone urinating. It was the longest pea I'd ever heard. Richie, is that you? I whispered no reply, so I asked a little louder, and I heard him

move into his sleeping bag. He was silent and frozen in fear. I turned my night vision on to see what scared him, and I couldn't believe my eyes. There were five of them right there in our camp, less than twenty feet away from us. A female was lying on the ground eating the giant millipedes that infested the woods there, and the smaller one was crouched down next to her, And on the hill were three big males, one of whom was holding a rabbit by its head.

One of the males saw me looking at them and made a come on motion with his arm, as if he was rushing the female to leave. I turned around in my hammock, and I hoped that they would not kill us. They hung around the camp until sun came up. I stayed in fear all night. Richie crapped on himself. I'm going to go back again and offer them some food to see if they're peace or not. I know I'm taking a chance in doing this, but I'm a thrill seeker. I served six years in the seventh Special Forces,

in three and a half years in Afghanistan. I've never felt the sensation I felt in those woods, not even in a firefight. I have to go back, oh man. I think it's a pretty good conclusion that they're not They're not aggressive or violent. They were right there besides you, and they didn't do anything to you. I hear you. If you want to go back, go back. If You're a thrill seeker and adrenaline junkie, and if that was more excitement than an actual firefight and combat, dude, you

have a high threshold for excitement. But I thought this was a great story. And I know it may sound strange, but there are you know, there's only about twenty percent of the stories I get where people actually see them have an encounter, a visual encounter. It's like they're within eyesight and they can see. So's It's very interesting. It's a unique story, and I appreciate the writer for sending it. This story was told to me in a smoky little

bar in Nashville, Tennessee, by an old man. His name was Samuel, and he appreciated the beer that I bought him. I could tell by his old, worn hat and tattered flannel shirt scuffed up shoes that he was barely getting by. I left him sitting at the bar and found a table in the back. I was hungry and I wanted to get something to eat, maybe a burger, since there weren't a lot of choices in that type of place.

The waitress soon came over to take my order. She was a portly but pleasant woman with a great smile. Before I ordered, I asked her what the story was on the old gent sitting at the bar. She told me that Samuel was a once a month regular, coming in a few days after he had gotten a Social Security check and had paid his bills. She explained that he lived in a rooming house up the road a

piece and didn't have a pot to piss in. When Samuel came in each month, he would only order one beer and snack on the free peanuts if they were out on the bar. Ill ordered some burgers and fries and another beer. Now she was turning to walk away, I asked her to get Samuel whatever he wanted to eat and another beer. She smiled and then turned and went to the bar, where she talked softly to the old man. After she left to go to the kitchen, Samuel got off his stool and walked back to my

table to thank me again. I told him it was no problem, and I asked him to join me. He nodded and smiled. I noticed that he had a sparkle in his eyes, unlike most his age. My guess was that he was as hungry as I was, because we both sat eating in silence. After whard. We sipped on our beers, and I told him that my name was Jim and that I was from Louisville. I had just returned from Florida after working six months on hurricane damaged houses.

Samuel told me that he was born and raised in the hills of North Carolina until he was twenty one. He said that he would love those mountains until his last breath. The most beautiful wild place on earth, he said. I had to ask him, if he loved it so much, why he left off to war. Maybe no work there. His posture changed. He bowed his head slightly and slowly shook it. No. I saw his new demeanor, and I knew I should have left the subject alone, but I

didn't ask him why. Samuel laid his hands down on the table to stop them from shaking. As he began to speak. He said he had not told anyone the reason he left, but since he was old now and I had been kind to him, he would share a story with me. His words came softly, well thought out. I could tell that there was something that weighed deeply on his mind, if not also in his heart. His family had a farm at the bottom of the hollow, about ten miles out of Greenville. There were three kids.

They were all boys who worked alongside mom and pop in the fields and gardens and with the livestock. They never had a lot, but they didn't know it. They hardly ever missed church or twice a month visit to their grandparents several ridges over. They hunted and fished and trapped to help put food on the table. Jobs were scarce back then, so when a neighbor boy from two hollows over told Samuel that an out of town logging

company was hiring, he was all for it. So he told his family of his plans, and he promised to send money if they hired him. He was hired on and jumped onto the old flatbed truck with a couple of other fellas. He was no experienced logger, but he was good with firearms. One day, the foreman was target practicing with his twelve gauge double barrel he had. Samuel tossed short sticks in the air as far as he could,

and then he tried to blow them apart. The foreman caught Samuel with his head turned slightly snickering, and raised his voice and asked him if he thought he could do better. The foreman reloaded handed Samuel the gun after five blown apart sticks. He had had enough of Samuel not missing, and he told him to be at his office in the morning, that he had another job waiting for him, because he was definitely not a logger. It turned out that the new job was as deputy for

the company, essentially providing armed security when needed. Samuel was happy with the new position, but he was also gullible. He found himself, along with other armed deputies, assisting the bosses with the removal of folks from the mountains who refused to move, even though the company held the deeds to their land. Word had a way of soaring through the ridges and hollows like a swift winged sparrow, and people quit talking to Samuel. His own family asked him

to not return to the farm. If he saw someone he knew, they would cross to the other side of the road. It was shunning mountain style. Way up in the mountains. In a very secluded hollow about five miles from his parents lived the Praders. The clan was run by an elderly woman known as Mammy Prader. There were

no roads to their cabin only mule trails. People guessed that there were fourteen or more of them living in that one big cabin that hardly came down off the mountain except to get things that they could not make or hunt things like cloth and salt and snuff for old Mammy. The Praders had owned those eighteen hundred acres since before the Civil War, was uncut forest with trees so tall, some six or seven feet through the trunks.

It was the boss's third attempt to evict them. The last two attempts ended with deputies taking fire from all directions, but that day the Boss came with a big crew. They had an ace in the hole. Riding in front on the mule with the deputy was a six year old girl in a plain flower sack dress. Jenny Prater had been kidnapped from the ant that she was staying with for a few days, right out of the front yard,

and Jenny was Mammy's great grandchild. This bothered Samuel using a child as leverage, but the company was all that he had then and speaking up about it could cost him his job. He and his team rode their mules right up to the front porch of the cabin. The whole family was either sitting on the steps and wooden barrels or stumps. Samuel counted twelve people that he could see nodding, including Mammy, who sat in a big homemade

rocking chair on the front porch. The boss pulled up some papers and waved them in front of the old lady. He told her this was company land now and that they had to leave. He reached over and rubbed little Jenny's head. She began to cry. Piercing anger shot from the old lady's eyes. She told the boss that they would leave, but he had to let them pray together once more. He told her to have at it, but

don't be all damn day, he said. Before they prayed, he had the deputies collect the prader's guns and put them in a pile. The odd thing was there was no resistance. Some were even smiling. Some of them helped Mammy off the porch, and all of them stood in a half circle in unison. They tilted their heads back and the most god awful, strange cry came out of their mouths. It was a high pitched noise made using their tongue. It was almost a fast paced chant, and

as quickly as it started it ended. They all sat down, each of them smiling. Out of nowhere, a pumpkin sized boulder flew into the boss's mule, and then another crashed through the tree tops and hit the officer on the far right. Samuel couldn't shoot, couldn't see anything in the dark forest. A mule braid as two large hairy arms twisted its head and broke its neck. Shots rang out from the bosses and deputies, but to no effect. Huge

hairy beasts were everywhere, ripping apart men and mules. Samuel turned to look at his boss and watched as a hairy ape beast wrapped its hues hands around his neck, squeezing his head. Fell to the ground, and Samuel vomited onto the bloody earth. Samuel's turn came. He saw a beast reaching for him that stopped in its tracks, growl, and then there were clicking noises. It was coming from Old Mammy. The yard was soaked with blood. Everyone was dead,

man and mule. The family had moved to the porch, and Samuel counted eleven creatures as they started carrying or dragging body parts back into the deep woods. Mammy Praterer stood up and told Samuel that he was a token. They always had to leave a token. He was to leave that country and never return or speak of what had happened. Samuel had tears in his eyes by the time he finished his story. I sat there for a time, silent and nodding. I wasn't sure what to say, but

I didn't dare be respectful toward him. After a while, I thanked him for his company, and I stood up and shook his hand and left him fifty dollars. I couldn't drive fast enough to get back home to Louisville. I'm not sure if I believed a story or not, but that night, and for many nights after, I had nightmares about it.