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Scariest Sasquatch Encounters You've Read/heard


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Posted

*snip for space*

Pop waited a short while and dismounted the stand to return home. He was white as a sheet and crying when he got there, and it was the first time in 32 years his wife had seen him cry, or even noticeably scared. Since then he will not hunt, will not penetrate the treeline around the house, and will not even leave the patio after sunset.

Here's the kicker - a couple of weeks ago Pop's truck broke down on the thickly wooded private dirt road leading from the FM to the house. He was stranded in the middle of a sunny afternoon about 700 feet from the house. Instead of walking home, he shut himself in the truck and kept calling people on his cell phone until he found someone to come and get him for the 20 second car ride to the house!

His son in law received a hysterical voice mail message of Pop, sobbing, begging for him to come help, so the guy had to drive all the way from Nacadoches to give a hardened combat veteran and lifelong adventurous outdoorsman a very short ride from the front yard to the front door. And Pop had a .44 magnum Colt Python on him, which he now always has with him.

It's this extreme psychological reaction that makes this report so convincing to me. I believe it was first posted on the TBRC board.

Admin
Posted (edited)
I believe it was first posted on the TBRC board.

Not sure about TBRC, but it can be found here:

http://www.falfiles....921&perpage=122

and here:

http://www.ar15.com/...21_.html&page=2

and here:

http://www.ak47.net/mobile/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=762310&page=6

From the first link, there is this story, which to me is downright terrifying. I had seen it before and had forgotten about it....

Back in the winter of 2001 my youngest son and I were on our way from Boise,Idaho to Medford,Oregon.We had taken a car trailer to his old place in Boise in order to haul his non-running Jeep to his new place in Medford.We hit an area of heavy snow in the southern Cascades around 2:00 a.m.It took 45 minutes or so to get down the mountain.We had,of course been drinking coffee to stay alert.

About 25 miles west of the pass it became obvious that the last few quarts of coffee had to be drained.We stopped at a wide spot in the road near a summer tourist haunt,deserted in winter.There is a gas station and ice cream joint on the west side of the road,closed this time of year,and no town or settlement within 30 miles.This is tall timber country,and unsettled.Across the road is a small parking area for the ice cream joint.It is paved and about 200 ft.wide and 80 ft.deep.I pulled in and as I stepped out with .45 on hip,it occurred to me in a flash that grabbing the 590 Mossy would be good.

As we walked to the far end of the area to be well off the road,the hair on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end.The area directly to our front was open with a depth of 50 yards and a width of 100 yards.The night was clear and cold,8-10 inches of snow on the ground,and with a moon almost full,so we could see quite well.While standing and taking a leak,with son about 15 ft.to my right I saw,as if springing from the earth in front of us across the open area 10 or 12 creatures moving RAPIDLY back and forth in sort of a Thatch weave pattern.These things,not human men,were close to 7 ft.tall,thin,bipedal with long arms,medium length gray fur, and damned fast on their feet.I brought the shotgun up and slid the safety off,as son was drawing his .45.

I don't know if I can adequately explain the overwhelming feeling of menace,but here goes.I had been operating on pure instinct since I had stepped from the pickup,the rotten feeling hit me a split second before the things arrived,the feeling?,instinct?, was that we were prey,and subject to a very bad death,and to be slaughtered and eaten,not a logical process,gut feeling and massively overwhelming.

As they were moving about in front of us,more appeared and mixed among them,all the while running about fast in front of us.Son and I were backing toward the truck,I WOULD NOT present my back to them,and some of them peeled off right and left in an encirclement movement.They were rolling in fast from the sides now,I could smell and feel their presence.We got to the truck loaded on adrenaline and ready to kill,as we both knew we were in grave danger.We piled into the truck,locked doors.I had keys out and ready,as my butt neared the seat, I had the engine lit and trans.in gear and gas pedal mashed in one motion.Adrenaline is great stuff!As we fled,yes fled,something VERY close by let out a ululating scream of rage,and pain.I believe one or more of the group had gotten really close to us in their pursuit and I ran over the foot of one of them,yeah they were that close.We rolled onto the highway and I told son to watch the bed of the pickup as well as the trailer,he already was indexed to the rear with the shotgun.We hauled ass for at least 20 miles before the feeling of grave danger started to abate. The feeling that nailed both of us,as we discussed soon afterward,was one of being prey,and soon to be slaughtered and eaten.I am not easily led,and neither believe or disbelieve all the bigfoot,ghost and werewolf stuff,in fact I am skeptical. Son was speaking with a coworker about 6 months later who had grown up in Prospect,Oregon,about 30 moles south of Union Creek where the incident took place.He asked Jake if he had ever heard of any strange goings-on in the area.Jake went ashy white and pretty much retold the above tale.He says to avoid the place at night.A family friend,a 25 yr.retired cop not given to flights of fancy and an excellent observer, had a tale very similar from a year before.I told my wife of this event of course,she looked at me at the beginning as though I had developed a 3rd eyeball in the center of my forehead.That was from shock,she did believe me,but did not wish to hear any details.She said the tale gave her chills.Me too,as I write this,hair on back of neck and forearms is sticking up.

I have NOT gone back to explore,and would not without a large group of shotgun and flamethrower equipped men with me. Son and I are both sane,sober persons,and not taken to hysteria.We were wide,VERY wide awake as things transpired.We saw and smelled what was there.As a sidebar neither of us heard footfalls from the creatures.They were silent until i hurt one as we were getting the Hell out of there.

To my knowledge,and I have researched,there is nothing that matches these creatures,unless one considers old legends and folk tales of were creatures. To conclude,I have to fall back on Elmer Keiths famous line,"Hell,I was there"

best regards, Mike M.

The prelude to link #1 is pretty chilling as well. All the links have some pretty creepy stuff. Enjoy!!!!!!

Edited by VAfooter
Posted

It's interesting that some people think it's paranormal (refering to the end of the story on Jodie's link).

Admin
Posted (edited)

Here is another good one. Got it from the first link I posted above, but from a different page. This is one of my alltime favorites. I am posting it in its entirety since it is hard to find on the web anymore and this is supposed to be a true incident. Funny thing is, I drove past this location once before I had heard the story. At that time it had been shut down, which only added to the creepyness of the place. Jan has some other good stories as well concerning werewolves, all of which supposedly really occurred.

Through the Fog

Back in the early 80’s I worked at an all night gas station close to the Kentucky Dam. You may have guessed already, that yes, this story takes place during the midnight shift, and it was the same business I worked at when first hearing about what the Beast of LBL had supposedly done to a unsuspecting family while camping between the lake area. (Scary stories always sound better when they take place at night, but this was not my choice mind you, it just happened this way.)

These incidents happened before and after the knowledge of the Beast, but keep in mind that knowing of a creature that could possibly exist in the surrounding area did not perk my imagination, nor spark hallucinations. Whether they merely happened by coincidence or by chance, they happened nonetheless. The following events added to my already established genuine, abiding regard concerning those mysteries that are left undiscovered and unapproachable, out in the dark of night. To this day I carry a healthy respect for things that go ‘bump’ in the forests, and treat other’s similar stories with the same consideration.

Several times during the midnight hours of my first summer working there I would hear what seemed to be a woman screaming. This echoing sound would come from the marshes that surrounded the gas station and would continue into a slow rolling roar that would have sent chills up the spine of even a deaf man. Many people told me it was just a bobcat, which had been spotted in the area before and to be cautious when crossing the parking lot to use the restroom, pick up litter or do some general cleaning outside at night.

I never got used to that lonesome curdling shriek that would erupt the silence of the early mornings. Sometimes it would come from way off in the distance, out of a line of trees that ran along the borders of a large creek. Other times it was closer, coming from the blackened swamp areas, and sometimes it was too intimate; like it was just behind the building I was working in at the time. There was never any warning to its beginnings; the shrillness of the volume would fill the humid air in the summer time and hang on like an eerie floating adhesive, sticking to everything it could adhere too and continue reverberating like the rasps of a beached whale. When the bellowing outcry was within the boundaries of the parking area it would make my legs shudder and grow weak. There was no getting use to this animal’s selfish display of needed attention.

What ever it was it could not be seen as the outside light poles only illuminated the four corners of the lot. The land up to the concrete curbs that squared off the property was lost in the darkness of nature. From down the road or from the nearby interstate the service station looked like a small four sided box with lights in the corners and a tiny building in the center of the lot.

The closer the outcries were, the more distinguished the tones and I couldn’t help but compare the sound to what an old biology teacher of mine would do to get the class’s focus at times. He would take these fist-sized geode rocks that had been busted in half, revealing large protruding crystals from the inside, and scrape them across the blackboard, one in each of his hands. The ear piercing screeching did not cease until he had run the length of the 8-foot slate. It was a hideous torture to the senses; enough to make your teeth hurt, put Goosebumps on top of Goosebumps and make you squeeze your bladder in while a trembling of microscopic marbles shot up your spine. The effect left everyone in a quivering state on the verge of momentary lunacy. Besides being quite deafening, it produced separate tones of raucous discord; some crystals formed a variety of high-pitched abrasive sounds while the larger ones created cantankerous, lower, gravely vibrations. All of them mixed together in some insane symphony. This was the sound that the unseen animal in the marshes would broadcast through the stifling heat of the summer nights.

Its secret invisible visits happened with great frequency at first and then the events would die down and then disappear all together, not revealing its intolerable cries for months at a time. The next spring it started up again, but further away this time in another section of fields that lay beyond the marshlands and closer to a government tree farm. It wasn’t long after it made its presence known again that the two officers came into the station with the tale of the campers found torn to pieces in LBL.

Myself, having been born and bred in a large city up north, did not want to fancy the notion of the alleged ‘beast’ being a Bigfoot or a werewolf, but fashioned my opinion around more logical explanations; bobcat, bear or wolves. Blaming an unknown hairy creature in the forests for being the culprit was not a fathomable answer to someone who grew up in the concrete and steel jungles around ‘real monsters’ called murderers and rapists. Even though several years prior while visiting one summer in Kentucky, not far from the Kentucky Dam at my aunts house, there was an encounter with a very unexplainable life form that knocked my ‘logical thinking’ into the ground. This particular event left me more confused then afraid and I had to change my way of perceiving certain ‘hairy beast legends’ in a new light. But that is another story.

Nonetheless, the idea of a bobcat, beast or a stereotype movie monster, doing that amount of damage to a human being sparked my uneasiness over hearing a possible relative lurking in the shadows around me where I worked. Besides, I knew that the typical murderer or rapist usually didn’t give out a war cry quite as unnerving as this one did, so I knew it had to be in the animal category of the food chain. (Speaking of the food chain…isn’t it ironic that even though we as humans think of ourselves as at the top of the chain, we still fear that which is below us? Not much to brag about is there? Hmm…)

Summer passed with the occasional screeching howls in the background of the quagmires. They would still send me into an instance of cowardice and anxiety but knowing the being was so far away gave me a hollow sense of security. It wasn’t until the late autumn, when the thick fogs began rolling in off the boggy mires, that a foreboding panic would invade me to the very marrow of my bones and create within me a lasting impression of authentic terror.

I had somehow made my way through the dense mist, mostly by memory alone, to the restrooms that were on the back of the lot to replenish the supplies and do some regular cleaning. Because the weather made it impossible for travelers to drive and see at the same time more then a few feet in front of them, I saw it as a great opportunity to get some work done knowing I would have very few customers if any.

It was well into the early morning, around three AM, and I was inside the women’s restroom slinging a mop when I heard a new sound, very different from the one of the bobcats. This one was like someone was riding a bike outside that had playing cards attached to the wheel spokes with clothespins along with balloons rubbing along the same turning tires; riding slowing, methodically, creating a sort of rough clicking growl. ‘Maybe it’s a car with a really bad muffler’, I thought to myself, wondering how it had found it’s way through the lot, or even found the drive way for that matter.

Just as I was putting the mop into the bucket to squeeze it through the wringer that old familiar scream was heard once more. Right outside the small building I was presently in at the time. The bucket turned over from the jerk I gave the mop after being startled over hearing the animal at such a close range. The bleach from the spilled water climbed through the air and stung my eyes but I couldn’t blink, couldn’t move any part of my body at the time; I just stood there staring at the door, waiting, listening.

The beating of my heart seemed so loud I thought that the animal outside might hear it. I really wasn’t aware of how much time had passed as I kept that paralyzed stance, trembling as if freezing from a wintry breeze. After awhile of listening to it’s grumbling low stifled growls outside the door I heard a police siren in the background, coming from the road. I could tell the vehicle was going at a slow pace, and I could just imagine it trying to creep through the cloudy atmosphere towards an accident no doubt. The animal’s commotion ceased from the other side of the door and all went quiet except for the wailing of the sirens that seemed to be coming directly from across the station out on the road.

A few more moments later I heard another scream from the same animal but this time it was further away, like it had retreated back into the wet bogs. This was my queue to get the ‘hell out of Dodge’ and back inside the safety of the front office building. Hastily I mopped up the mess on the floor, grabbed all the cleaning stuff and made my way back through the thickened clouds using my internal compass to the main building, locking the door behind me. The police car was still going down the road but it’s sirens seemed further away by now.

About thirty minutes later, after calming down a bit from the encounter and while taking some inventory I saw a shadow from the corner of my eye run past one of the windows. It shook me up a bit and I turned to concentrate on any more movement from outside. Again the shadow ran past but this time in front of another window. The building I was in was surrounded by three sides of glass windows, and was actually quite small compared to other gas stations. It was all self-serve and there were no garages attached. There was room inside for a few candy racks and a couple of large coolers to keep sodas and sandwiches in. There was also a back storage room but it was more of a walk in closet size, and then there was the cubicle up front surrounded by bullet proof glass where we conducted all the money transactions and stored cigarettes.

The shadow was very tall, way taller then the average man and was rather large in stature and moved in a bouncing motion as a man of sizeable bulk would move when trying to jog, and it appeared to have a coat on or at least something bulky. I heard a trash can turn over, heard the debris scatter across the concrete, (empty glass soda bottles, used oil cans and the rattling of other things) then heard the same can crash into one of the gas pumps outside as if something had picked it up and hurled it. This was no bobcat. This was someone having some fun outside at my expense.

Anger began growing within me as I was thinking that this was not a very humorous practical joke and I actually yelled out loud my dislike of the whole scenario, “This isn’t funny you @$$#&*%!!” Laying my clipboard down on the counter I began looking out the windows straining to see the mischief-maker again, all the while double-checking to make sure the doors were locked. (It was standard procedure to lock the doors after 10 PM and serve the customers through a sliding drawer, much like a bank tellers at a drive through service lane, inside the bulletproof cubicle.) While peering through the middle window, that same methodic grumbly growl introduced itself once more from outside. I was momentarily confused, ‘Was the bobcat back? Could the idiot outside hear it? Was there danger in store for the stranger who was trying to tease and terrorize me?’

The grumbling sound traveled around the corner to the back end and then the building shook from a massive hit to a wall. I could hear some stored items fall off their shelves and deposit themselves all over the floor in the storage room. There were no windows in the storage area, thank goodness, but there was a back door. I raced back there and started stacking cases of soda and boxes of oil against it to secure it even more. There was a low mumbling on the other side of the door and the sound came from up high; what seemed like around the top of the doorframe. A low and deep toned breathing could be heard also as I just stood dumbfounded staring at the grayish brown steel door. Two deliberate solid ‘thumps’ met with the door from the other side like someone who had just pounded on it with their fists and along with it came that unceremonious squall.

‘This was no bobcat! Nor was it some intimidating prankster!’ my mind screamed. In those few seconds a parade of memories sped through my brain, each of them crashing into one another as they raced to the finish line to see who would win, sanity or insanity. The image of an upright wolf like creature that I had seen years before at my aunt’s house, howling on top of the hill, was fighting for position with an overly large bobcat, and then the vision of a Bigfoot was lumbering along side of them. All the words from the two officers stories from a few months before echoed inside my head as these pictures within me created a macabre movie. Dizziness overtook me and I fell backwards onto some other cases of stacked sodas.

I remained there for the longest time, not knowing what to expect next, not really wanting to know actually and definitely not wanting to go back into the other part of the building where I or ‘IT’ could possibly get a better look at each other through one of the many windows. That terrifying thought was brewing when through the open door facing one of the candy racks I could see a shadow moving along the right side of the building, slowly through the fog. It was like not having your glasses on and trying to make out what something looked like through the entire blur of an unfocused silhouette.

Then briefly, ever so quickly a considerably large hand materialized and reached out from its secret form in the mist and touched the window. My first thought was ‘gorilla’, as in just that glimpse I saw the darkened nails, the blackish brown leathery skin, along with long dark hair hanging from behind the knuckles, spreading up the wrist, and up part of the arm that seemed to be floating in the whiteness of the fog. Then it was gone, replacing the horrifying scene with silence for the remainder of the morning.

I dared not move, or maybe I didn’t think I was actually capable of motion, either way, I remained on the stack of sodas for the few hours I had left on my shift. About an hour before the next crewmember was due to arrive the newly dawned sun began burning off the fog, making it retreat back into the marshes, back into the pores of the earth, like the ghosts of the undead. It was only then that I cautiously made my way outside and cleaned up the mess from the thrown trash receptacle. My mind was still trying to rationally explain the hours before but unconsciously I had already decided that the events would remain hidden within my memory, never to be discussed, only to stay buried under the clouds of my own inscrutable mystical fog.

That decision did not last very long as within a few weeks I had transferred to the afternoon shift, with a new guy taking the midnight shift. (Thank goodness for seniority…smile.) It wasn’t a few days later after this change that the new guy started telling me about the ‘sounds and howling’ he would hear from the night before. I re-assured him it was probably just a bobcat, and his reply was, “Yeah, right. I’ve lived around here all my life and I never heard no bobcat ever sound like that!” It was then we struck up a conversation about local Bigfoot stories and I then confessed as to what I had experienced a month prior. Needless to say, it totally freaked him out and he started having a friend come up and keep him company during the midnight hours. He never actually saw anything but the squalls would continue every so often about once a week and then it died out all together by the time winter rolled around.

I believe that in these days and times of the world, that the ridicule endured for these types of witnessing tales is not as straining as it use to be. It is acceptable now for people to come forward and tell of things they have seen or heard that are completely foreign to a logical explanation. The truth is out there, and most of us know it or have witnessed something to help substantiate the basis for the truth to be honestly believed.

-Jan Thompson.

Edited by VAfooter
Posted (edited)

I have to say the Ostman report by Albert Ostman, been kidnaped by Bigfoot with no radsom wanted for freedom.

Edited by Jeff Albertson
Posted

Here is another good one. Got it from the first link I posted above, but from a different page. This is one of my alltime favorites. I am posting it in its entirety since it is hard to find on the web anymore and this is supposed to be a true incident. Funny thing is, I drove past this location once before I had heard the story. At that time it had been shut down, which only added to the creepyness of the place. Jan has some other good stories as well concerning werewolves, all of which supposedly really occurred.

*snip

Wow, that's pretty intense. A little searching came up with the other stories mentioned above. Very scary to say the least.

The Beast of LBL

http://www.searchingforbigfoot.com/The_Beast_Of_LBL

There is a national recreation area in Western Kentucky (that also runs down to Tennessee) called 'Land Between the Lakes', or LBL for short. It is situated between the Kentucky and Barklay Lakes, consisting of more then 300 miles of shoreline, 170,000 acres of forest and over 200 miles of walking trails. It is currently a focal point for over $600 million in the tourism industry. Prior to 1959, before the Kentucky and Lake Barklay Dams were constructed, and before it was officially called LBL (in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy), and before TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority, the federal government used it's powers of eminent domain to buy and tear down all the houses, businesses and community buildings thru out the entire area, forcing over 700 families to give up their homes.) took over the land, the area was called 'Between the Rivers'.

There are over 228 small family cemeteries, many forgotten about and lost, dotted thru out the acres of forests as it was once used as homes to early Kentucky settlers. Some of the earliest graves date back to the early 1700's, which include graves of white settlers, veterans from nearly every war, including the Revolutionary War, and also those of black slaves and Chinese immigrants who worked in the iron furnaces that were in the area. There was also a very high infant mortality rate and many of these children were buried right outside the cabins from where they were born so that their mother could peer out the window and see the grave. There are also numerous Native American graves scattered thru out the acres, much older then even the earliest of settler graves, some discovered, others lay in secret beneath the layers of leaves and forest ferns.

Back before the 1950's it always had been a very rural area to live in, with farmsteads far and few between, and with no real town to speak of except up at the north end in Grand Rivers. It was in this town, back in the mid 70's that I first heard of 'The Beast Between the Rivers' or known now as 'The Beast of LBL'. Some old timers would sit on this long wooden bench outside the old IGA store, that use to be the old 'country store' for decades before the grocery conglomerate came to town. I used to hang around there on the weekends during the day and listen to the stories they each would tell. These old men, most of whom used to live in LBL before they were forced to move, had some very interesting stories to tell about that part of the country.

There was talk of hauntings, Indian curses, mysterious lights over gravestones at night, old hag witches that lived deep in the woods, and more importantly, several tales of a wolf like creature that stood on two legs that would come out of the thickets and attack their cattle and live stock. Day or night. A creature that was taller then an average man by well over a foot, nearly 7 foot tall, with thick long hair covering it's body, and a stench that matched that of some of the freshly open graves that were discovered now and then. This 'wolf man' left tracks like a barefoot man but where the toes should have been, instead were paw prints. The head was huge and wolf like in appearance, with an extra long snout, and uncanny long sharp incisors that glistened from the moon light with saliva, along with eyes that, "Radiated red, like one of the hottest fires in Hell', they'd say. It had long arms that ended with huge hands and long spindly fingers with long, pointed, dirt caked claws. At night they would hear it howl; un-natural guttural sounds of painful hungry agony, and at that warning, all would go out and tie up their livestock and even bring their most prized selections inside their homes with them.

The legend of the beast went back at least a hundred years, and was passed along through time from family to family and updated as new sightings occurred. One old man said that his great great grand pappy told him that the creature use to be a man, a Native American that had the ability to shape shift, a powerful shaman that had been outcast from his tribe because he used his magic for evil. The Shaman had been tracked and killed while in his wolf state by a few warriors and a couple of settlers in the area. In his dying breath he cursed them and vowed to return from the dead to haunt the forests and seek revenge on their families and all who lived there. Another man on the bench with a leathery, weathered face, said he heard from his grandma that the beast was once a settler that came over from Europe back in the early 1800's, with a disease that made him turn into a mad man at night. The disease was eventually passed along to his children, which never went to school, but stayed hidden away from the population. Many thought the family had died off because for years they never seen or heard from them and after investigations by some brave men they discovered the homestead vacant and abandoned in the early 1900's.

The sightings of the monster where still frequent thru out the beginning of the twentieth century, and the elderly group on the bench each told some unsettling encounters they or members of their own families had had with it. Each one told stories of finding livestock slaughtered, ripped to pieces and ate upon. Cows and pigs with their legs dismembered from the sockets. Even a few horses had met their end with savage attacks upon their bodies. A few of them described what they saw at different times when they caught glimpses of the figure by peeking out of the curtains of the windows into the night. One man said it jumped out of one of the horse stalls one evening while he was putting up some animals. It stopped in front of him, arms spread out like it was getting ready to grab him, let out a howl and then sprang past him and into the dusky shadows of the sunset. This particular man said he 'wet his overalls' during the episode. Another man said he never seen it, but would always hear it's baleful wails frequently at night, not like a regular wolf or a coyote, "No," he said, "It was more deeper, longer, stronger sounding then what would come out of any animal I ever heard." Another old timer said his wife had seen it trying to get into the chicken coup but gave up after getting tangled in the chicken wire. They all had tales of 'someone's hound dog' getting killed, ripped apart limb from limb, 'someone's pig or cow or chicken' getting eaten, the mysterious footprints left in the mud, and the stench it left behind where ever it appeared. And more then one had the same story of listening to it walk across their front porches at night and scratching on the doors and walls which would leave deep gouges in the wood they would find in the morning. All of them agreed that this was not a Bigfoot or Sasquatch. It would be only another year or two after hearing about this mysterious beast that I myself would encounter it at the home of a family member that lived in the same area.

But this isn't the story I was wanting to tell you. This was just a brief introduction to the unwritten accounts of the darker side of LBL. A prelude actually to the real story I will begin to unfold. I just wanted to lay some ground work so you could get the big picture, and form some of your own opinions and theories. Walk with me now as I take you back about twenty two years, back to the early 1980's. Where I use to work midnights at a gas station a few miles from the Kentucky Dam, which was a few miles from the beginning of LBL in Grand Rivers. And it was on one of these midnight shifts I had two visitors that would change my outlook on the subject of 'werewolves'. (... and make me believe in what I had seen myself a few years back in the same area but had kept it between myself and two other family members that were with me at the time....but that's another story to be written.) This story was never in the paper, on the news, or had any media attention at all. It was kept hush hush, and a sacred silence was demanded on all those involved. It couldn't get out, ever. It was a few weeks before the beginning of tourist season, and tourists were what the locals survived on, they were the 'bread and butter'. A story like this would be like screaming 'Sharks!' at Daytona Beach, or 'Child Molester!' at Disneyland. The people would stop coming out of fear.

I wasn't a witness to the fact, just a third person, making observations and having conversations with two individuals who were a part of the incident, who were involved in the whole ordeal. They had just came from the crime scene down in the middle of LBL after being there for over 8 hours. It was around three in the morning and they were taking a much needed reality break.

Two officers of the law. Two grown men who both appeared shaken beyond description. A mixture of fear and confusion, shock and disbelief emanated from them both. One was paler then the other, a deathly pallor over his skin, and it was this one (I'll name him officer Adam, to protect their identities) that had to sit on the curb of the gas pumps, head between his legs and expel the last bit of his stomach contents. The other officer (I'll name him officer Bill) came in for some coffee for himself and a cup of water for his partner, then rejoined Adam outside. There were no other customers so I went outside with them to see if I could offer some assistance with the ill man. He gladly took the few Rolaids I had extended in my hand, with his own shaky fingers he struggled to get them into his mouth.

For quite a long while the only thing that was heard were the crickets in the near by fields, the sounds of bugs hitting the fluorescent lights above us hanging from the gas station canopy, and the distant sound of highway traffic that was far and few between as it was in the wee hours of the morning. My mind was buzzing with various scenarios of the cause of their distress....a tragic car accident....possibly a motorcycle wreck...a boating mishap with drown victims....a murder.....a dead body discovered. ('Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back...that's why the cat has nine lives.')

I don't remember sitting down but after about 15 minutes of this hushed stillness I found myself beside them both on the curb staring out at the darkness of the nearby corn pastures, letting my mind paint pictures of imaginary traumas. Adam spoke first, breaking the silence of obscurity, "I can't believe it...it's not possible...I just can't believe it...". In a hushed agreement, that was almost inaudible, Bill replied, "I know...it was....is....it is so unbelievable...I've never seen anything like this before...", a long pause, a deep breath, and he continued, "... or even heard of anything like this before." I looked at Bill and then at Adam, they were both gazing, open eyed, unblinking, out into the inky color of the night. Adam's bottom lip was trembling slightly, and it wasn't from the slight chill in the late spring air. Something, or some thing had filled them each with a congested fear.

After a few more moments of silent reserve, my patience was rewarded with some slow, fragmented descriptions of their past 8 hours. Bill turned his wide azure blue eyes towards me, they were glazed and blood shot, tired, frightened eyes. With a weary, shaken voice he began to unfold a tale that would forever be embedded within my spirit, like a nasty shadow that lingers around a corner waiting to pounce, to awaken your inner fears once again. Why he decided to tell me of all people was beyond my comprehension, maybe it was an avenue he felt safe to travel upon, to get it off his chest, off his mind. They were both frequent customers and we knew each other on first name basis, but to divulge such a torrid account of great magnitude, well, I can only say that the fear inside them both at that moment in time had to be released, eased, and extracted from their souls, or else they may have gone mad with unbalanced thoughts. Without interrupting, I sat entranced, listening to every word, absorbing them like an opiate, a spellbinding narcotic that hypnotized me into forgetting the world even existed for the next half hour or so.

They had gotten a call to help with an investigation at one of the many rural camp grounds down in LBL. The tourist season was about to start in a few weeks, so as usual there were some early arrivals that had come to claim prime camping spots before the areas were over run with tents, campers and travel trailers The sun was setting low in the sky when they arrived at the scene. Several other official vehicles were already there and there were many more to come as they would soon find out. Many coming from other counties, and a few coming all the way from another state. Several of these to come were coroners from different counties. One coroner vehicle was already present as well as an ambulance, which would prove useless, as there was no one to save. The victims were all dead. Quite dead. Completely, totally and thoroughly deceased. A young married couple that had come down to take it easy for a few days, were the first to discover the ghastly scene. Neither one of them wanted to stay behind while the other went for help, so they both nervously traveled to the nearest town, Grand Rivers, and called the authorities. They did not return to LBL, they merely gave the arriving officer directions to the area of discovery and rented a local hotel room.

With the sun going down, it got dark pretty fast, so there was a flurry of flood lights from the cruisers being pointed in all directions, along with the excited movements of fifty dollar flash lights being held by nervous, restless hands, searching the trees, the ground, the leaves, the shadows. There was a parked motor home at the site, it's frame being lit by a campfire close by, a fire that had almost went out on it's own, but had been rekindled by the new crowd of men in uniforms so that they could have more light. The front and back doors to the home were open, one of the doors hanging by one hinge in a crooked slant. Through the windows they could see zig zagged movements of luminosity as the beams from flashlights searched the interior. Bloody hand prints slid down the thin metal walls close to the front door and more bloody hand paintings could be seen along the length towards the back door. Their images dancing eerily in the fire light like some ancient tribal symbols .

Adam and Bill did not even want to imagine what was inside the motor home, but then again, they would soon find out, that it wasn't what was 'inside' but what was 'outside' that would change their lives forever. There was already crime scene tape placed in numerous, scattered parts of the area, and little white flags on metal stakes stuck into the ground marking evidence. Evidence of ripped clothing, bodies and body parts, separated limbs, a pile of bowels, pieces of loose flesh clinging to muscle tissue. What use to be three bodies, that just hours before had been a happy family, on a happy vacation, to create happy memories for years to come; a father, a mother and a young son.

The happiness was gone. Destroyed by a psychotic mad man, or was it 'men'? A murderous rage had taken place, one so abhorrently appalling that there were few witnesses to the scene that had kept their composure or held their recently eaten dinners down. At first sight, the victims appeared to be butchered by some un-nameable weapon, possibly an axe, or a chainsaw. Upon further inspection, by the first arriving coroner, the wounds on the bodies were determined not to have been caused by a sharp instrument, but rather by some piercing, well-defined claws, and other wounds by some keen, mordantly long incisors.

Wildcat, bear, wolves? The coroner shook his head in a baffled disagreement with each guess from the officers. The claw marks, for instance, on the back of the fathers corpse were distinctively made by 4 long claws with a smaller digit, like a thumb, on the side, it's span was wider then a man's print, wider and different then a bears mark, with deep deliberate gouges in the flesh. Rake marks from an angry unknown source trying to grab it's prey that was no doubt trying to escape. The wildcat and wolves theory was dismissed as the open wound marks were apparently made by a more grandiose animal source. The bite marks were much larger then any mountain lion, wolf or coyote. Whatever did it had a longer snout, and more sizable teeth. There was also indications in the larger areas of the cadavers, of bite marks where the flesh, meat and bone had been yanked away from the body. Like a human who bites into an apple and leaves the impressions of his bite and teeth marks, so were the open wounds on these individuals. Bears, well, they aren't native to the area, but who knows, maybe a grizzly did sneak in some way, but that was far fetched, he would have had to travel several states and cross several rivers to even get close to that part of Kentucky. Every one present was betting on the 'bear' hypothesis anyway, and no one even thought of anything else to be the cause of such a savage attack. A bear, it had to be a bear.

From the back door of the motor home, an officer stepped down slowly, holding in his hands some type of garment. A dress. A small dress, that would have fit a small girl of around five years old. He informed the on lookers that there were more 'little girls' clothing packed inside the coach. This meant there was a missing person, or an absent body;a member of the family. They all prayed she was still alive somehow, hiding somewhere. A new search began.

As time went by, additional law enforcement employees arrived, as well as a few volunteer rescue squad members. Groups were spread out and assigned areas to examine and explore. Another coroner arrived to assist in the identification and causes of death, and much later a third one showed up, this one from a near by state. All types of samples were placed in plastic bags, marked as evidence, and carefully stowed away. As they were packaging up what appeared to be one of the fathers arms, one of the doctors noticed something wrapped between the dead fingers. Some tweezers slowly untangled a clump of long, grey and brown hairs. This too was placed in a bag, marked and put away to be analyzed at a lab later.

From somewhere in the nearby woods, about 50 yards from the campfire, a scream was heard. A mans shriek that turned into a long wail and then to whimpering. As others arrived they could see by the gleam of several flashlights that the cop was holding his hat in one hand and his light in the other. There was blood on his face, the front of his shirt and on the brim of his hat. More blood could be seen dripping on him. It was coming from above. High in the trees the flash lights swung, searching for the source of the mysterious bleeding. A very small hand could be seen dangling down from a tree limb way up high, as well as a slender lifeless leg that still had a white sock still on the foot. The missing child had been located. It had been Adam that the blood had trickled upon, hitting his hat first, making him look up, and then feeling the thick cold fluid sprinkling his face then sliding down to his neatly buttoned shirt. It had been Adam that had screamed. The little girl had apparently been carried up the tree and leisurely eaten upon while carefully laid across a large tree branch. More of the same long gray and brown hair was found sticking in the bark of the tree near her body.

After about 7 hours most of the officers were sent away as a new team of investigators arrived. They were told not to talk to anyone of the incident, especially not the media. I am sure that besides Adam and Bill, there were others who had to confess what they saw that night, if in fact this whole event ever really happened. Witness's that had to divulge the awful secret of that atrocious discovery at one of the campgrounds at LBL. About a month after sitting outside with Adam and Bill that night, they stopped in again during one of my midnight shifts. They were both rather quite, more serious in nature, not like before the incident where they would kid around while drinking their sodas and eating a snack or two. They had both aged in some odd way. Streaks of gray, that had not been there before, highlighted both of their heads of hair. Their faces had lines of worry and showed signs of stress. I would see them again many times after wards, but on this particular evening, they informed me that they got word about some of the lab tests that were taken that dreadful night. The tests, on the saliva taken from the bite marks, and from the hair found on the mans fingers and in the tree bark, came back with an unknown species origin. The closest animal that they could be compared to was that of a Canis Lupis, a wolf.

Whether Adam and Bill had played an elaborate hoax on me I'll never really know for sure but their sincerity and fear painted a picture of truth in their eyes and actions. There are several more stories that I have heard about this 'Werewolf' over in LBL that have been told to me over the years after this particular incident. There were several groups of boy scouts that had seen it. Several more campers, fishermen and boaters that had seen it from the safety of of their boats, floating in some of the many bays that touched upon the shoreline. Hikers and bikers have heard its howling and have seen 'something' stalking them while they were on rural trails, hiding amongst the trees and foliage. Hunters have run across deer carcasses that had been brutally torn apart.

There was even a pair of curious grave stone rubbers, (those that go out in search of century or more old tombstones then make rubbings by placing paper against the coarse stones and using a piece of charcoal to rub across it thus capturing the images and dates from the stones unto the paper....similar to when as a child you use to take a pencil and rub across a piece of paper on a penny or other coin to see the image of Lincoln or Jefferson.) that had a fearful encounter with it at one of the old cemeteries. It had actually came up to the car as they were leaving and shook the back end of the vehicle up and down and left terrible scratch marks in the trunk lid as it tried to hold on to the little Toyota while the tires were spinning in the wet grass to get away. These two individuals didn't stop driving until they were about 40 miles away, only then did they dare stop to investigate the damage done. I myself have seen those scratches. Much too wide for any man to have made them. They looked like a heavy metal garden rakes tracks.

But you will never read about it in the papers, or hear about it on the news, or get a confession from any law enforcement official or man of office. The media will say it's a bunch of 'Whoo Haa', or just pranks, silly stories, urban legends, lies, tall tales and such. This is tourism country and that means millions of dollars to the area, so you can't scare off business, can you?

But, as San says on her website, 'You can't tell me there's no such thing!', because I have my own tale to tell about this creature. That story will come soon, I promise, but this one had to be told first for it is far more scarier and full of detail than my own. And that bench, the long, sturdy, heavy oak bench, that sat in front of the old country store for decades? It is still in existence. In fact, I had the grand opportunity of acquiring it several years ago when an even newer version of an IGA store was being built upon the same grounds. The previous owners remembered my fondness for sitting with the old timers and having undying patience with their many stories and got a hold of one of my family members to ask if we would like to have it to keep in the family. The bench now sits in my front yard, by the driveway, where I sit to wave goodbye to all those who had come to visit for the day. I've learned to always wave goodbye, because you never know if you'll see them again. You never know what lies in store for you or them. What lies in the shadows. Waiting. Watching. With hungry eyes and a drooling snout.

From the Woods

The summer of '78 will always be a turn about in my beliefs of 'real monsters' versus the demonic or paranormal type. Ghosts and spirits had become a common event during my life growing up, until that particular summer when a new avenue of fear introduced itself and made a permanent pathway inside my mind. A path made of concrete that wanders thru the forests of my memories. A trail that will not be covered with weeds, or fade with time. A place where my daily thinking bypasses to avoid the beckoning desire of fear that calls from down that menacing road of remembrance. For this moment though, for the benefit of you, the reader, I will travel down that route once more and try to recapture the scene so that you too will lay awake wondering and asking the Universe, "Is there something else out there somewhere that is above us humans on the food chain?" It was on one of those hot July summer evenings in Grand Rivers, Kentucky, back in 1978, when this took place. (Grand Rivers is at the beginning of Land Between the Lakes entrance.) The sun was not completely down and the skies were streaked with violet-pinkish Posy colored clouds that outlined the curtain of darkness that was pushing the turquoise blue away. I was staying at my Aunts house with my cousins for a few weeks during summer vacation, a very welcome home at the end of a dead end road. Hundreds of acres of woods surrounded the home that that had been built down a hill and into the side of a large hill of dirt. There were several homemade trails through out the woods that led to several places; an old abandoned rail road track that went on for miles, another abandoned place- the old sawmill, and other paths led to parts of the shore line of the Kentucky lake. They all started out as walking trails, but with the new addition of a dirt bike that my cousin Joe had the trails became well outlined and defined. As with almost every day that I was visiting, Joe was out riding his bike through the woods, exploring, and just being with his own thoughts of a 13 year old. His younger sister, Ronda, was with me outside on the porch swing. She was 10, and I was 17 at the time. My uncle was working and my aunt was at the local IGA store down in town. Beside the driveway was a huge dog pen where their pet basset hounds lodged and was at the moment quite relaxed in the shade. The woods had been filled with only the sounds of birds and the chatter of squirrels for a few hours. Joe must have been way far off on a trail somewhere to not have heard that distinct sound of the dirt bike screaming through it's gears echoing around the trees. I knew he must be on his way home, because his dad forbid him to be out in the woods at dark, so Ronda and I was waiting to hear that familiar putt putting of the bike slowly coming down the drive as he reluctantly came home to park it for another night.

As we swung back and forth, singing silly songs, we heard something a bit strange in the distance, it was Joe's dirt bike screaming at almost a soprano type of gear, long, steady, and fast, with no shifting sounds, just a straight stream of one gear in motion with a full throttle, going at top speed. The sound accelerated as he drew closer at such a fast pace, and we watched from the swing up to the top of the driveway where he would appear from the other side out of the woods. I couldn't help but think that he had better slow down or he would come flying up over the top of the hill and downwards missing a wide stretch of pavement by being airborne. The noise didn't softened or slow. Steady and fixed was his speed. And just as I had thought, he emerged from the woods in such a tenacious movement, that he did indeed go airborne a few feet before pounding down the front tire on the driveway, continuing his descent now with a struggle of keeping the bike upright and straight. Ronda and I jumped from the porch swing and got out of the way as we didn't know where he was going to stop or in what position. The brakes hit hard and the bike slid sideways and as it came down to the edge and end of the drive, Joe tilted his body and let the bike slide out from under him before he went down the rest of the hill with it. Instead of the bike continuing to slide to the edge it was caught in a spin that variably died down as the engine sputtered, and then quit altogether. Everyone was wide eyed and full of adrenaline, all our mouths open in shock. But Joe's mouth was open in a strange fearful grimace, he was sweating profusely and his breaths were coming and going in great heaves. Tears were coming down his cheeks, mixing with the dusty dirt that the trail had left him powdered with. His eyes were at the top of the hill, at the top of the drive, unblinking, searching, waiting. We followed his gaze not understanding what this escapade was all about. In silence we watched with him for a about 30 seconds and then the dogs started barking. Growling. And then whining, trying to get out of the pen in a frantic panic of digging and gnawing at the fencing.

"IT GRABBED ME!! LOOK AT MY LEG!!", Joe screamed, making us jump with alarm at the sound of his voice. We looked down at his Levi's and saw scratch marks going across his right thigh, scratches that tore through the tough denim and left small bloody marks on his skin. The marks were like a bears-claw-rake, not those caused by branches or sticky bushes, but a definite wide pattern of a paw print. "IT WALKED ON TWO LEGS!", his voice startled us again, as he was trying to tell his story in between huge gulps of air. He was frightened beyond belief, and the bits and pieces of what he was striving with extreme effort to tell us was coming out in loud syllables that filled us both with the same dread. "It was following me through the woods....along the path....from the old sawmill....hairy...it was so hairy...and it's snout was so long...and it walked on two legs....it ran on two legs...", his voice was sputtering, slowing, his eyes were still wide, and I could see the pulse of his heartbeat throbbing under the skin of his temples.

A howling began. From the woods, not from the dog pen where now the dogs suddenly stopped their own complaining, standing deathly still, staring up at the top of the hill, the nape of the hair on their back standing up, ruffled, their noses up in the air breathing in a strange scent. A wolfs howl. It was close. It seemed it was just a few yards from the road up above. Just as the idiot in a horror movie stands and stares at something to appear, that was what I was doing then, with a mixture of anticipation and confusion. What the hell was he talking about? I thought to myself, mulling over the brief descriptions; torn blue jeans, walks and runs on two legs, stalking him, hairy with a long nose and calling the mysterious hunter an "IT". Joe's tears came quicker and he started to push us towards the front door of the house demanding that we go inside and lock the doors. He had a hand on each of our backs and was urging us onward when IT came out of the woods above. At first it appeared to be a very large wolf emerging from the dark outline of the trees, but as it approached the one lane road that connected to the driveway, it's height grew to a towering shadow that stood on two legs. Much taller then a man's height, maybe by a foot, and with the sun gone down behind the clouds, it only cast a silhouette of blackness, hairy blackness. My mouth dropped wide as well as my eyes. This was not happening, this was not what I was seeing. My mind was going back and forth from rationality to reality. 'I was from St. Louis, the most frightening thing back home in Missouri was MO MO the Monster, the Show Me States version of Big Foot. This was no Big Foot!'

It raised it's long snout up in the air and let out a gurgling, slow, deliberate howl, while stretching it's long arms to it's sides and upwards, like it was praising the coming of the night, praying to the unseen moon and stars. At that moment the security light that was at the top of the hill by the beginning of their driveway popped on. Slowly at first it began to glow and gathered it's energy to shine more brightly over the next few seconds. One of the creatures arms bent and shaded it's eyes from the glare. It wasn't an 'It' any longer, nor was it a big foot, this was a wolf like creature that, like Joe said, stood on two legs, was taller then a man, and was staring at the three of us down the hill. Those huge, black eyes, I will never get out of my mind. They were like two sockets of ebony oil shining under magnifying glass lenses. We ran into the house, tearing the screen door in the process, slamming the main door, locking it, pushing things, anything we could reach against the inside of the door. The kitchen was right behind us and so was the knife drawer which we raided and took several with us as we tried to decide where to hide. There was a house dog inside, another basset hound, Stubby, and he met us in the kitchen wondering what the racket was. Another howl from outside, coming from the driveway. Stubby's hair raised and he started backing up at first, then he went to the front door and was smelling around the edges. The three of us ran to my aunts room and was about to slam the door and lock it when the dog tucked tail and ran after us, beating us under the bed. All of us squeezed under the four poster, knives clutched in our hands, scared half to death.

We could hear the dogs in the pen outside going absolutely crazy with barking, and we could also hear other things being knocked around on the porch, then on the side of the house, then at the side door. We heard glass break. We could tell it was from one of the bedrooms, the windows were up high and they were very narrow so we knew that it would take some effort for anything to get thru them, but still we shivered from fright. My aunts horn on her Cadillac sounded several times as she drove down the road and approached the house. That meant for us to meet her outside and help with the groceries. We didn't budge. We couldn't move. We didn't answer her yells from outside for us to come unload the bags, we didn't crawl out and unlock the door for her, nor answer her knocking. She finally had to use her keys and then give some hefty push's against the pile of items we had up against the door;the trash can, 25 pound bags of dog food, water jugs, and a variety of other stuff. We stayed put. She discovered us only after all the groceries had been brought in and she noticed that her bedroom door was closed and locked.

It was amazing that we hadn't cut each other in some way or another with the immature use of the knives in our haste to hide, and we were chastised in more ways then one when it came down to my aunt observing us slowly emerging from her bedroom with the kitchen weapons in hand. We all started talking at once in a fervor, then we finally let Joe tell his story first, then we finished with it breaking a window just before we heard her horn on the car. She must have startled it. She didn't laugh, she didn't respond at all at first, in fact she never said a word until she came back from inspecting the windows in the bedrooms. My aunt said indeed there was a broken window, broken from the outside in. She made us clean up our barricade and put up all the groceries. Later that night, after we were all in bed and my uncle came home, she related that evenings events to him. The next morning, their dad warned us, "Stay out of the woods."

No problem.

He went on to say that he himself had went down in the woods earlier that morning and found several pits dug and filled with animal bones and parts of carcasses along the path that led to the old sawmill that couldn't be explained. There were also holes dug in the sides of the bluff along the hills that over-looked the old mill that looked like deep caves, big enough for a man to hide in. Then he told us that years before when the old boy scout camp use to be on the other side of Grand Rivers, that an unexplained creature with wolf features was seen along the waters edge close to the camp sites. He and his older son has witnessed it themselves one evening. I went back home a few weeks after this happened. And since then it has never ceased to be a moment of complete terror lodged inside my mind, along with the horror experienced at the Oakwood Home. It would only be a couple of years later, after moving from the city down to Kentucky that once more I would come into the legend of the wolf creature by means of some old timers that use to live in Land Between the Lakes (LBL for short.). Their tales told to me while sitting on an old bench in front of the IGA down in Grand Rivers would help me draw a bigger picture of what this thing actually was. Then, a few more years in passing, in the early '80's, two police officers would tell me their own tale of the events of a tragic scenario discovered in one of the campgrounds down in LBL. Events that were never published in the media.

Just about ten years ago, in the early '90's, Joe and my dad who had come down from St. Louis to visit, decided to venture into those same woods in front of my aunts house. They took a couple of pistols and two rifles and were gone for several hours. These were two brave men, the bravest I know of, both of whom served in the military and fought in two separate wars, wars of their own time. These two men came back ashen faced and bewildered. They had walked all the way back to the old saw mill. The pits, fresh ones, were still around, filled with the bones of forest animals. The holes in the bluff still there also. They both experienced the feeling of being watched and felt an uneasiness that 'something' just wasn't right. The area where the sawmill was had no life stirring around it. No birds, no squirrels, no crickets, no bugs, even the small pond was still and lifeless. The birds that did fly made their way around the area and refused to fly over head. They couldn't shake the feeling of being observed by a secret watcher and both swore they saw a large black shadow lurking in the shade of one of the mysteriously dug caves. That had been the first time Joe had been down that far on that side of the woods since he was thirteen, and both of them agreed that it was to be the last. My dad said there are some things you just can't explain, that science doesn't know about it, and these things should be left alone, they are not a part of our modern world. He felt that what ever it was that had scared the crap out of us so many years ago, still existed in the same area. His intuition has never been wrong so far.

Urban legend? Maybe some of the stories passed along the years have been added too, stretched a bit, like all local folk lore, and first hand stories are over time. My story wasn't an urban tale though. It was a first hand account of something I really and truly do not want to believe in, and wish I could forget; erase from my memory, because the nightmares remain real even though the events are still unexplainable by the laws of science as we know it.

Posted

VA, I've read that one too...and still get thoroughly creeped out.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted (edited)

I always liked the one about the father who beat his wife and kids. I guess one of the kids talked to the "big hairy man", and told him everything drew pictures of him and everything. Their mother thought it was just an imaginary friend. Every night the child would wave out their window to the Big Hairy Man. One night the mother saw it and freaked out. She went to tell the husband about what she saw. The husband was drunk and smacked her around saying she was crazy. Well he went to the kitchen sink to splash water on his face and heard a tap tap on the window. He looked up. Bigfoot wasn't looking in at him. No a pair of hands came through the glass and pulled him out the window. Guess it beat him pretty bad, wife and kid watched the whole thing. Last thing the BF did was hold him an inch from his face and roar (as the story goes). Husband ran off and left the family. From what I read the family stayed in the home and leaves food for the Bigfoot for what it did. Seems that family is his.

Always thought that one was pretty cool.

Edited by Woodslore
Posted

There's nothing like a little "reaping as you sow." eh, Woodslore?

Cool story. Do you happen to know where you heard about that?

Posted

It was a few years ago. A friend of mine knew I liked monsters and "Reaping what you sow" stories, as you put it :), and sent me it. might be able to find it online.

Posted

One thing I noticed in two stories...the rolling.

In Bauman, the Bigfoot rolled around on/near/over the body. In Don Young, the Bigfoot rolled around on where he'd thrown the string. (Before going ape**** on his tree.)

What do you think is up with that? Why do they roll...?

Posted

Here's one from my neck of the woods and it's one of the best accounts I've ever read. The man it happened to is named Jim. He's also the one that told me about this place and showed me an artist sketch that a member here (Sassyfoot?) had displayed in a thread. Jim said it was a deadringer for what he saw that day. BTW, Chilhowie Va. is 5 miles from where I live, which is why it immediately caught my attention. Here's his account:

I debated with myself about sharing this. I know there will be those that will not believe me. That use to bother me but now that I am almost 60 yrs old, I really don't care if anyone believe me or not. It doesn't change a thing.

So here goes...

Time: Fall of 1976

Location: Outside of Chilhowie, Va. (Smyth County)

During that time, we live in a small house on a gravel road about 5 miles or so S or SW of Chilhowie. The house we lived in was directly across the road there was the foothill of the Jefferson’s National Forest. Behind the house were a field and a small stream. At that time, there were just a few houses in the area. The nearest neighbor was about 1 mile away in each direction. Unfortunately, I do not remember the name of the road. We only lived there for two months until a condominium was available in Marion, Va. I search Mapquest to see if could help me recall the name of the road but unfortunately it didn’t.

Weather: Warm 60 degrees and clear. No wind that I remember.

Time of year: Early Fall

A friend and I made plans to go hunting on a fall Saturday morning. We were going to hunt in the mountains across from where I lived at that time. Very early that Saturday morning, my friend called to cancel due to his wife being called in to work and he had to baby-sit. I was very dissappointed. I was excited about hunting and did not want to call off the trip so I decided to go hunting alone – against the advice of my friend. I had just move to Chilhowie from Columbus, Ohio just a month before and was looking forward to hunting in the area. We had nothing like this type of wilderness in central Ohio and I really wanted to go hunting and to walk the mountains so I went anyway. I now wished I didn't.

Since the slope in front of my house is very steep, I drove several miles down the road to an area where there is a gap that was easier to climb. I had a 12 gauge shotgun that held 5 shells (buckshot), a backpack with a thermos of coffee, sandwich and some extra ammunition. I also had binoculars and a .45 SW in the truck’s glove compartment. I did not take them with me. I didn’t think I would need more than a 12 guage.

I spent about an hour “zig zag climbing†the mountain gap when I came to a level clearing near the top of one of the small peaks where I stopped to catch my breath. As I looked around, I saw in the distance what appeared to be a “green teepee†just inside of the wood line next to a tree. I was curious what it was so I walked over to take a look at the structure. I was cautious since I knew that there were moonshine stills in the mountain and that moon-shiners did not like people anywhere near their stills. As I approached it, I saw that it was constructed with a bunch of branches stacked against several limbs of two small trees that were bent to the ground. The branches were obviously torn from trees or bushes very recently since the leaves were still fresh and green. The end of the branches was still sticky with tree sap. I could see an opening and more green leaves on the ground inside of the structure and it looked as though it has been slept in recently. It was apparent that someone made this thing and was using it as a shelter. I thought there just might be a moonshine still around nearby and that those taking care of the still might have used this to catch a nap or use for shelter. I thought that it would probably be wise to move to leave the area.

I walked another half hour through the woods on a path on an angle toward where I came from, when I came to another opening to a nearby meadow or grassy area. When I arrived at this opening, I decided to take a break and have some coffee. I sat down against a tree, leaned back and was enjoying my coffee when some strange things began to happen. As I was sitting there, something small hit me on top of the head. At first, I thought it was a nut from the tree but when it fell into my lap I saw it was a smooth round stone about the size of a quarter. As I was looking at the stone on my lap, another stone, a little larger hit me in the arm. The stones came from the left rear side of the tree from the grassy tree line at the edge of the woods about 20-25' away. This both puzzled me and frightened me. I jumped up and grabbed my shotgun. I yelled out very loudly that if someone was playing a joke, it wasn’t smart to throw stones at a guy with a 12 gauge shotgun. I have a hearing problem, but back then my hearing was better than it is today. I listened and looked around to see if anyone was out there. I did not hear or see anything. I then decided it was time to get the hell out of there. I picked up my backpack and started across the meadow when a flurry of about 3 or 4 egg sized rocks went flying by my head with one striking my backpack. I felt that someone was trying to hurt me now and I was pissed. I immediately turned and fired two shots in the air and yelled for the stone thrower to “grow some balls and come outâ€. I stood there for about 2 minutes looking into the woods and the tree line to try to see who in the hell was throwing those stones or if anyone would step out and apologize for a bad joke. I was angry as well as frightened. No one came out or said anything.

Just to my right was a small stream in the middle of a gully that curved around into the forest behind the tree that I was sitting under just a few minutes ago. I decided that I would walk up this gully to see if it would take me behind of whoever was throwing the stones hoping I could find this person. As I was walking in the gully, I came to an area where there was a very nasty foul odor. It was so strong that it stopped me in my tracks and made me cover my face with a glove to mask the smell. It smelled like a combination of really rancid feces combined with a “wet dog†smell. It was so strong that I look all over the ground around of me to see if I could find something that was responsible for making that smell. I walked forward very carefully looking both at the ground and the woods in front of me. If it was dead animal or dung on the ground I definitely did not want to step in it. The smell was nauseating. When I came to the area about 30 yards behind of the tree that I previously sat under, I slowly walked up the grade to see if I could sneak up and surprise whoever was throwing the rocks. As I walked up the grade toward the tall grass on the tree line, the horrible smell became even stronger. I then came to an area where the grass was matted down and found a pile of rocks, some being as big as a baseball, with two or three the size of a basketball that obviously came from the stream I just walked by. The stones were still wet.

After seeing these rocks, I was very puzzled and was beginning to become frightened. I knew that someone was just there and I decided it was time to get the hell out of there. That’s when all hell broke loose.

As I started to walk away there was an EXTREMELY loud growl/howl that sounded like it was right behind of me. The sound was so loud that my eyeballs vibrated. I ducked and spun around and pointed my shotgun in the direction of the sound. As I spun around, about 30 feet away, in the high grass near the area I just left, I saw a very large “creature†or “person†standing near the area where I found the wet stones. I did not know what the hell I was looking at. Just so you know, back in 1976 I have never heard of or knew anything about “Big Footâ€. I had absolutely no frame of reference to identify what I was looking at. The first thing I thought was “bearâ€, but I immediately discarded that thought - it was not a bear. Then I thought it was a gorilla – but I thought what the hell is a gorilla doing in the mountains, but as I starred at it, I realized it looked far too human to be a gorilla. Then I thought it might be a "wild man" or a “hermitâ€. My mind was spinning. I had no idea what it was. My mind could not make any sense of what I saw. It was extremely tall and the “hair†on its head was rounded over as a “crestâ€. That is what made me first think it was a gorilla. But everything else looked to be mostly human but far, far larger. It was massive and very muscular. It was covered with dark brown coarse looking hair about 6†long with less hair on the face and somewhat less hair on the chest. The face is what looked to be more human or part human and part ape. Its eyes were dark (did not see any whites) and the nose was wide and flat, but still looked very human. The mouth was wide and the lips were somewhat thin but they still also looked very human in appearance. The skin on the face was dark brown with a wide jaw and chin. The eyebrow ridge stuck out more than a human. The head and shoulders looked like a bodybuilder's physique. Its arms were far longer than a man’s arm. It looked to extend down to just above its knees. You could see some dark brown on the chest and for that reason my impression is that it was a male, not a female creature. It sort of looked like the picture of a Neanderthal you see in the history books, except it had far more hair.

During that time, I was stunned and frozen in my tracks. This thing then snarled and growled a low pitch menacing growl. It lips pulled up when it snarled and I could see the teeth were also human in appearance, though much bigger. The look on its face left no doubt that it was angry - and when it took two quick steps toward me, I turned and ran faster than I ever had in my entire life. I could tell from the crashing and stomping behind of me that it was chasing me. I did not think that my shotgun had a chance in hell of dropping that thing otherwise I would have stopped and shot. I am not sure that the .45 I left in my truck would have stopped it. I just kept on running for what seems like forever. I could tell that it was getting closer but I did not want to turn and look though I did glance back a couple of times to see if it was gaining on me. I could hear what sounded like limbs breaking. As I was running down the mountain gap (the way I come up) a limb about as big as my arm came flying by my head. I didn't slow down. I then turned from the path down the gap that I was running on to a shortcut down a very steep side of the mountain toward the road. I ran/slid –mostly slid- down the side of the mountain. I twice took a quick glimpse over my shoulder and I could see that it was behind of me and getting closer. It appeared to be 2 or 3 steps behind of me. I had a feeling that he could easily catch up but was maintaining a distance from me.

It was a long way down to the road, but about half way down the mountain, I could see my pickup truck parked along the road about 200 yards away. I angled toward the truck. When I got to the bottom, I ran to the truck and tried to open the door when I realized that my keys were in the backpack, which was torn open during my descent down the side of the mountain. I almost panicked trying to find the keys. I could not bring myself to look to see where the “creature†was. I quickly found the keys, threw the pack on the road, and unlocked the truck door and glove box to get the .45. I turned expecting to see this thing beside of the truck or reaching in to grab me. However, this thing had stopped about 30 yards away under a tree that I just ran past toward the truck. It was standing there with it arm holding on the branch above its head in a way a person would while resting. It was amazing to see how big the arms were on this thing. I still could not see anything below mid thighs since it was standing in the tall grass by the tree. I could tell that it was easily 7’ tall or more base on the height of the limb, which was about 10-11’ about the ground. I was thoroughly winded and breathing very hard and sucking air but it did not look like it was breathing hard at all. It still had a very angry look on its face and the lips were still pulled back in a snarl - but it did not move past that tree. I got the feeling it did not want to come out onto the road. I debated taking a shot at it with the .45 but I was afraid of provoking it. I also think it was the fact that it looked too human and I just couldn’t do it. However, if it would have come toward the truck, I would have shot it and emptied my .45– no doubt in my mind. But while it was standing still, I couldn’t shoot. I felt safe in the truck with the .45. I sat there for a few more seconds looking at it when I took a pair of binoculars off of the seat to get a close up look at its face. When I looked through the binoculars, it had turned its head away from me looking upward toward the slope of the mountain. All I saw was the back of its head. I dropped the binoculars down to see what it was looking at. Up the mountain side, I could tell that something was coming down the side of the mountain really fast. The bushes and trees were shaking as though something big was coming through. The “thing†then turned and looked toward me again still snarling. I had a feeling that another one was coming and I was not going to stay around to see. I stepped on the gas and left as fast as I could.

Later at home, I was shaking like a leaf and it took a long time for me to calm down. I think I was in a state of shock. I couldn’t stop trembling. After I calmed down, I thought more about what happened. It was evident that this thing could have “caught†me easily. The few times I glanced back I saw that it could have easily grabbed me – but it didn’t. I now have the feeling that it wanted to make sure that “I was leavingâ€. The speed that 2nd one (the one I never saw) was coming down the mountain was incredible. It was almost like a boulder crashing down the mountainside. I now believe that it didn’t intend to harm me but it had every intention of scaring the hell out of me. Maybe I am attributing human attributes to this thing but it looked human enough to do so.

I called my friend (that I was supposed to go hunting with) later to try to talk with him about what I saw but I couldn’t tell him everything. I kind of glossed over some of the thing so he would not think that I was crazy. He could tell that I was really shaken up and he kept on asking what I saw. He asked if I saw a bear, bobcat, moon-shiners – or “something elseâ€. I replied that I was not sure what I saw. He then chewed me out for going hunting alone. He told me that in the past some hunters that were very familiar with the mountains have gone hunting and have never been returned. He made me promise that I would never again go hunting without a partner. That was an easy promise to keep. I have NEVER gone hunting again. I have NEVER been in the woods since then and I never will go into the woods again– not even in Ohio where I moved back to several years later.

For the rest of the time I lived in that house I was constantly on alert. I made sure that I was with my wife and my daughter every time they went outside to either work in the garden or to play. I kept the .45 with me at all times out of sight. I did not want to frighten them.

I was very happy when the condo was ready and we could move to Marion. I never told my wife what I saw. I did not want to frighten her. She knows something happened since I never went hunting again. She asked me several times why I quit hunting. I just told her it was too tiring to climb the mountains.

Since moving back to Ohio, I sold my guns (except for the .45). I have no intentions of ever going into the woods again, even with a group of people. I use to love the woods, but not anymore.

I have not told too many about what happened that day. I do know this – they are real and

someday there will be proof. I know I don’t need any proof.

Posted

Wes, that's a great story! Do I understand you correctly that you personally know the person in this story?

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Posted

It was a true pleasure reading this account. I appreciate your courage in sharing it with this board. I found it compelling, especially the pebble throwing. In retrospect, do you believe it had bad intentions when it first began lobbing the small pebbles?

Fascinating contact behaviors like these are why I read accounts on this board. It seems there are times, at their discretion of course, they initiate contact when they could otherwise remain concealed. This is yet another testimony of a Sasquatch employing non lethal tactics with purpose and skill. This behavior could only be construed as either territorial, altruistic, or social. The end result was an extremely aggressive and intimidating display on the part of the Sasquatch. What contributed to this? Do you think your reaction was interpreted as non-submissive in nature at first, so the message volume was increased? I'm truly dumbfounded by all the reports such as this demonstrating aggression right up to the threshold of physical injury. Almost without exception, witnesses describe Squatch's exhibiting restraint when overtaking/killing them would be well within their capability.

Thanks for posting your report. Have you considered filing an official report?

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