Ep:139 Bigfoot Face To Face

<v Speaker 1>And my mind is just I can't even put into words.
<v Speaker 1>I couldn't respond, you know, I couldn't even yell at
<v Speaker 1>my buddy, Hey, Dave, there's a big foot up to
<v Speaker 1>your right. I didn't do anything. I just stood there
<v Speaker 1>and I grabbed him by both shoulders when he came
<v Speaker 1>to the door and tried to explain to him what
<v Speaker 1>I'd seen that we needed to get out of there.
<v Speaker 1>First off, it was the most frightening experience I've ever
<v Speaker 1>had in my life. And I've had a few, you know,
<v Speaker 1>just being outdoors. I've had some things happen that scared me,
<v Speaker 1>most animals coming into camp or whatever. But this is
<v Speaker 1>the most frightening thing that I've ever experienced.
<v Speaker 2>This is Bigfoot Crossroads. My name is Matt and I
<v Speaker 2>am joined by Joey. Joey, thanks for joining me.
<v Speaker 1>Man right on, Thanks for having me.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah for sure. I just was skimming through the old
<v Speaker 2>Facebook feed and saw a post you made, and it
<v Speaker 2>really caught my attention because you actually posted a photo
<v Speaker 2>of where your encounter happened. I noticed that it was
<v Speaker 2>in a camping area.
<v Speaker 1>Correct.
<v Speaker 2>I've had my own experiences that took place in campgrounds
<v Speaker 2>and took place at a fairly close distance, and then
<v Speaker 2>I saw your photo, so I really wanted to talk
<v Speaker 2>to you. Mand So just a little bit about yourself
<v Speaker 2>and just you know, take us through how it all
<v Speaker 2>went down.
<v Speaker 1>I'm sixty four years old, retired. I worked all my
<v Speaker 1>life in a production plant, frozen food production plant. I
<v Speaker 1>retired in twenty fourteen fifty four and went into business
<v Speaker 1>with a buddy of mine Little he'd already established an
<v Speaker 1>outdoor company teaching kids survival skills, and later on I
<v Speaker 1>opened a camp just for fishing, exclusively for kids to
<v Speaker 1>learn how to fish. So any rate, that's what I've
<v Speaker 1>been doing up until a couple of years ago, and
<v Speaker 1>then I decided I liked being home and doing stuff
<v Speaker 1>on my own, you know, not getting any younger kind
<v Speaker 1>of thing. So I have That's what I've been doing
<v Speaker 1>since I turned oh maybe sixty sixty one. I've been
<v Speaker 1>just doing my own things. So to get right into
<v Speaker 1>White called today. So I've seen a bigfoot two different occasions,
<v Speaker 1>nineteen seventy nine and nineteen ninety five. I will try
<v Speaker 1>to give as much detail as I can without lingering
<v Speaker 1>on each one individually. It was Labor Day weekend on
<v Speaker 1>the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, my friend David and I.
<v Speaker 1>David I was nineteen, David two years younger than me.
<v Speaker 1>We had joined my church at a family camp at
<v Speaker 1>the YMCA Family Camp Complex at Silver Creek Falls here
<v Speaker 1>in Oregon. Make that clear. On in Oregon. I had
<v Speaker 1>to work on Friday, so we went up on Saturday
<v Speaker 1>and joined everyone, and when we arrived, we found that
<v Speaker 1>all the cabs in the immediate complex below the community
<v Speaker 1>hall had been taken. So my pastor invited us to
<v Speaker 1>go and grab a cabin in the hillside unit or complex,
<v Speaker 1>which was back in the woods a little ways off
<v Speaker 1>the main area about maybe, oh, I don't know, a
<v Speaker 1>couple hundred yards tucked into the woods, and no one
<v Speaker 1>was actually occupying any of those cabins when we arrived,
<v Speaker 1>So Dave and I drove around and picked out a cabin.
<v Speaker 1>We were the only ones there on the hillside, which
<v Speaker 1>we thought was kind of neat too. And I'll send
<v Speaker 1>you a picture of the cabin. I found a couple
<v Speaker 1>of shots on the Internet of what they look like.
<v Speaker 1>And these cabins we had built in bunk beds on
<v Speaker 1>the inside of the cabins. No mattresses or anything on them,
<v Speaker 1>just plywood. We'd taken sleeping pads, so any rate, we
<v Speaker 1>each chose a top bunk across from each other and
<v Speaker 1>rolled out our bags and went back down to join
<v Speaker 1>everybody for dinner and music and all that. And I
<v Speaker 1>think it was probably, you know, it's been a long time.
<v Speaker 1>I think we returned the cabin. It was after dark,
<v Speaker 1>maybe about ten pm, and Dave and I liked to
<v Speaker 1>play cards together, so we did a played some cards
<v Speaker 1>on the floor there, and then we got into our
<v Speaker 1>bunks and we were visiting and just talking back and forth,
<v Speaker 1>and fell asleep probably about midnight. I wake up at
<v Speaker 1>first light. These cabins had screen windowing all the way around,
<v Speaker 1>so they were a solid wall type cabin. You could
<v Speaker 1>see out three hundred and sixty from the top bunk
<v Speaker 1>through these screens, screens that were on the windows. I
<v Speaker 1>wake up, read it first light, and land there. I
<v Speaker 1>wonder why I'm awake for one thing, and then I
<v Speaker 1>hear what I thought first was pine cone. A pine
<v Speaker 1>cone dropping onto the tin roof of the cabin, and
<v Speaker 1>it rolls down and off, and I thought, well, you know,
<v Speaker 1>there's blue jays or whatever. Busy or a score or whatever.
<v Speaker 1>It didn't really bother me. So the next thing I hear,
<v Speaker 1>I realize it's I hear another one, but I realize
<v Speaker 1>it's not a pine cone. It's a rock, you know,
<v Speaker 1>a gravel sized piece of rock. By the way it
<v Speaker 1>sounded when it hit the tin rock, And it hits
<v Speaker 1>the rock and bounces a couple of times and rolls
<v Speaker 1>off down the side of the roof word across from
<v Speaker 1>me where Dave's in his book and he's asleep still.
<v Speaker 1>I thought that was peculiar. It definitely didn't sound like
<v Speaker 1>a pine cone. And I don't really remember how much
<v Speaker 1>longer it was. I laid there, and another one hits
<v Speaker 1>the roof, and then another one right after it. So
<v Speaker 1>there's like the next two rocks are rolling down the
<v Speaker 1>roof together and you hear them pop onto the ground
<v Speaker 1>outside Dave's side of the cabin, PLoP PLoP.
<v Speaker 2>Are they coming from the same direction.
<v Speaker 1>I couldn't tell where they were coming from. All I
<v Speaker 1>know is that they were both land All the rocks
<v Speaker 1>landed on Dave's side of the roof, and out my
<v Speaker 1>side of my cabin was pretty much bush it rhododendrons
<v Speaker 1>right outside the cabin and Dave's side was an open
<v Speaker 1>area that had been cleared out. There were still old
<v Speaker 1>growth poue trees in the outside the cabin, but they
<v Speaker 1>were spaced out and it was just clear ground all
<v Speaker 1>the way across the area to where there were another
<v Speaker 1>couple of cabins, maybe seventy five to one hundred feet
<v Speaker 1>of clear area out that side. So I get out
<v Speaker 1>of my bunk and I'm standing there with my arms
<v Speaker 1>up on Dave's bunk bed, peering out the screen and
<v Speaker 1>it's still hardly light enough to see that you could
<v Speaker 1>make out shape and you know definition by now. I
<v Speaker 1>don't know what time it was exactly, and I haven't
<v Speaker 1>woke up date yet, and I'm looking out and a
<v Speaker 1>rock rolls down the hill about maybe the size of
<v Speaker 1>a basketball, A pretty good sized rock just comes tumbling
<v Speaker 1>down from from right to left looking at my cabin.
<v Speaker 1>And we're on the hillside complex, and it's named that
<v Speaker 1>because it's pretty good, pretty good grade to the hill,
<v Speaker 1>and the cabins are situated. As you go up this
<v Speaker 1>hill one hundred to maybe two hundred feet above the cabin,
<v Speaker 1>it turns back into woods and there's big old growth
<v Speaker 1>fir trees and large rhododendron bushes that were pretty much
<v Speaker 1>very dense above the cabin area. There's a trail that
<v Speaker 1>went back up in there, but you could only see
<v Speaker 1>up that far clearly. So this rock comes wrong down
<v Speaker 1>and I'm immediately thinking, who is messing with us at
<v Speaker 1>this time of day? You know, even the friends that
<v Speaker 1>I had there at the family camp, it was unlikely
<v Speaker 1>that they would do anything like that anyway, but why
<v Speaker 1>would they be out here at this time of day?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 1>So my first response is to yell the one person
<v Speaker 1>that I think might be responsible, my friend Kelly, who
<v Speaker 1>was with his family and at the same camp. So
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, Kelly, you know, what are you doing? And
<v Speaker 1>no response, and that wakes up my friend Dave. Now
<v Speaker 1>he's like, what are you doing? What's going on? So
<v Speaker 1>I explained to him briefly what I've just seen, what's happening,
<v Speaker 1>and I don't know who's messing with this. He sits
<v Speaker 1>up in bed and he's looking at the screen with me,
<v Speaker 1>and the next thing we see or actually here, is
<v Speaker 1>something whizzing through the air and hitting one of the
<v Speaker 1>old growth fir trees outside the cabin. Maybe thirty feet
<v Speaker 1>out this screen window from us, and we later or
<v Speaker 1>discovered that it was a rock weighed sixteen pounds. My
<v Speaker 1>friend Dave took it home because that was his souvenir
<v Speaker 1>for the trip. Wow. Yeah, sixteen pounds, which is the
<v Speaker 1>same weight if you didn't know, as a shot put, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>I think the Olympic weight for a shotput is sixteenth.
<v Speaker 1>It was good sized rock weighed sixteen pounds. First thing
<v Speaker 1>that freaked us out to get was that we could
<v Speaker 1>hear it, you know, flying through the air. It's still
<v Speaker 1>too dark to see it. Actually we could hear it.
<v Speaker 1>And when it hit the tree, the bark on the
<v Speaker 1>tree exploded and it was loud, and then the rock
<v Speaker 1>fell to the ground and rolled downhill from there. Now
<v Speaker 1>we're both on alert, and I know it might sound
<v Speaker 1>stupid or whatever, but my thought was, Okay, somebody has
<v Speaker 1>got a catapult position on the hill. Now this is
<v Speaker 1>really is there some you know hillbilly I hear that
<v Speaker 1>we don't know about? Like, So that was my brain
<v Speaker 1>trying to make sense to justify how this thing was
<v Speaker 1>propelled at such velocity.
<v Speaker 2>All right, a sixteen pound rocket and something you just
<v Speaker 2>pick up and throw exactly.
<v Speaker 1>You know, we didn't know that at the time that
<v Speaker 1>it weighed out that. After we've gone out and investigated
<v Speaker 1>and found it, I realized even or so that this
<v Speaker 1>is really bizarre. So Dave jumps out of his bunk,
<v Speaker 1>and before I can even say anything, he's just got
<v Speaker 1>on shorts, no shirt, no shoes, no socks, and it's
<v Speaker 1>not warm yet here in Oregon at that time of day.
<v Speaker 1>He runs out of the cabin and heads up the
<v Speaker 1>hill to investigate. And as he's going up the hill,
<v Speaker 1>another large rock comes rolling down. Now this one's even
<v Speaker 1>closer to the cabin, maybe ten feet out the window
<v Speaker 1>from me. Dave didn't see it. He's already up past
<v Speaker 1>as he's going up the rocks coming down. I watched
<v Speaker 1>that one come to a come to rest outside our cabin,
<v Speaker 1>and Dave's yelling, hey, what you know, who is that?
<v Speaker 1>And whatever? And as he goes up almost to where
<v Speaker 1>the rhododendron in the old growth poetry start, I see
<v Speaker 1>my first big foot of my life stand up maybe
<v Speaker 1>twenty five thirty feet to the right of him, behind
<v Speaker 1>an old a big road to dinner bush. It stepped
<v Speaker 1>up over the bush next to it, heading away from Dave,
<v Speaker 1>and I didn't see it, but it looked like he
<v Speaker 1>put his arm down to put the bush down so
<v Speaker 1>he could step over it, and disappeared into the forest.
<v Speaker 1>And my mind is just I can't even put into words.
<v Speaker 1>I couldn't respond, you know, I couldn't even yell at
<v Speaker 1>my buddy, Hey, Dave, there's a big foot up to
<v Speaker 1>your right. I didn't do anything. I just stood there
<v Speaker 1>staring out the window where I'd just seen this thing,
<v Speaker 1>and Dave mieled around for a few seconds. He didn't
<v Speaker 1>actually go too far much further and came back, and
<v Speaker 1>I grabbed him by both shoulders when he came to
<v Speaker 1>the door and tried to explain to him what I'd
<v Speaker 1>seen that we needed to get out of there, so
<v Speaker 1>he didn't really have to gratty more explanation. He's like,
<v Speaker 1>what you know, are you crazy? You know? And he
<v Speaker 1>was making sense of it now too, realizing that what
<v Speaker 1>could have been doing this to us, Well, that would
<v Speaker 1>be one answer. So we grabbed our stuff as quickly
<v Speaker 1>as we could. And it's a little bit lighter now.
<v Speaker 1>I got in my suprou and I drove up to
<v Speaker 1>the community hall. Many people in the community hall were
<v Speaker 1>the cooks that were there to make the breakfast every
<v Speaker 1>day for everyone, And we just sat there in the
<v Speaker 1>empty dining hall waiting for my pastor or someone else
<v Speaker 1>to come in to help explain what we'd seen. So
<v Speaker 1>when we finally got a hold of my pastor and
<v Speaker 1>explained to him, yeah, he was skeptical. I was hoping
<v Speaker 1>he believed this, you know. So we all had breakfast
<v Speaker 1>and day realized that he had left his jacket there
<v Speaker 1>on the porch of the cabin. We had to go back,
<v Speaker 1>So we talked our pastor and returning to the cabin
<v Speaker 1>with us to get his jacket. And while we were
<v Speaker 1>back at the cabin, we got the rock and showed
<v Speaker 1>him this is the rock that was thrown, and he's
<v Speaker 1>holding onto it and looking at it, and we walk
<v Speaker 1>up the hill. He takes the rock with him and
<v Speaker 1>we walk up the hill and we're looking around in
<v Speaker 1>the bushes. It's hard to look for prints in that
<v Speaker 1>area because it's just pine needles, and you know, there
<v Speaker 1>wasn't any mud. This is late August, so there wasn't
<v Speaker 1>any anywhere we would really look for tracks. But we're
<v Speaker 1>not going to find any anywhere in that kind of woods,
<v Speaker 1>there's just mosston. So we're looking around and the pastor says, hey, guys,
<v Speaker 1>come over here, and just maybe twenty feet into the thicket,
<v Speaker 1>he's standing there. Dave and I join him, and he's
<v Speaker 1>standing over this hole in the ground and he's like,
<v Speaker 1>check this out. In the rock that had been thrown
<v Speaker 1>fit perfectly back into this hole.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. And what was really convincing was the water marks
<v Speaker 1>on the rock. You know how there's dirt, Yeah, a
<v Speaker 1>rock that's part in the explo They matched up perfectly.
<v Speaker 1>The other weird thing that pastor said is where would
<v Speaker 1>pull this out of the ground? Did it easily without
<v Speaker 1>disturbing the soil? The soil around the hole wasn't disturbed.
<v Speaker 1>It was just like something that'd reached down in their hand,
<v Speaker 1>fit over this rock and just plucked it out of
<v Speaker 1>the ground like you and I would do a pebble,
<v Speaker 1>you know.
<v Speaker 2>So clearly not something that just happened on its own naturally, know.
<v Speaker 1>No, it was it was mechanically removed, you know, by
<v Speaker 1>by something the way just the way it fit back
<v Speaker 1>in there and pulled out like it was stuck in there.
<v Speaker 1>But whatever pulled it out, did it easily and uh,
<v Speaker 1>and through it our direction with purpose?
<v Speaker 2>What did your pastor say?
<v Speaker 3>Then?
<v Speaker 1>He? You know, he just never really elaborated on it.
<v Speaker 1>And that was a church that I attended all my life,
<v Speaker 1>and I can't remember really much having much of a
<v Speaker 1>conversation with him about it after that weekend, not that
<v Speaker 1>he was really avoiding it. But I'll tell you who
<v Speaker 1>really was really spooked about this talking about was my
<v Speaker 1>friend Dave. He he just did not like discussing it.
<v Speaker 1>You know, I bring it up to him now and
<v Speaker 1>then Hey, Dave, what do you think of that? He
<v Speaker 1>was like, I just don't want to know. And Dave
<v Speaker 1>was an outdoorsman all his life, also rock climber. A
<v Speaker 1>year prior to this sighting, Dave lost both his parents
<v Speaker 1>and a plane wreck on North Sister. The plane actually
<v Speaker 1>crashed into the mountain just shortly the summit of North
<v Speaker 1>Sister in in winter, and he went by himself solo
<v Speaker 1>and tried to climb up to the wreckage. Wow, not
<v Speaker 1>a smart thing to do, but you know, imagine the trauma.
<v Speaker 2>Oh yeah, for sure experiensed in that.
<v Speaker 1>So him and I and we were both on the
<v Speaker 1>gymnastics team together, so we were good friends, and yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that was one thing he just didn't want to really
<v Speaker 1>talk about. He acknowledged that he believed what I saw
<v Speaker 1>and that nothing could have propelled the rock. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>he didn't need to see he didn't need to see
<v Speaker 1>big put that day to conclude that that's how that
<v Speaker 1>rock was thrown, you know what through that rock?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 1>So, And I never saw any facial features. I just
<v Speaker 1>saw something huge stand up and then put its arm
<v Speaker 1>out to suppress the roto dinner next to and do
<v Speaker 1>step over it.
<v Speaker 2>And they have never heard anything or saw anything.
<v Speaker 1>No, no, never saw a thing.
<v Speaker 2>If you just had to guess, how big do you
<v Speaker 2>think it was? How tall?
<v Speaker 1>You know? And I don't want to exaggerate. I was
<v Speaker 1>looking up hill. I'd say at least eight pete. At
<v Speaker 1>least eight pete, which fails into comparison to this is
<v Speaker 1>my second sighting, that that that creature was was well
<v Speaker 1>over feet. Well, I said, the bigger of the two
<v Speaker 1>was my second sighting in nineteen ninety five.
<v Speaker 2>This first one that you saw, had Bigfoot been something
<v Speaker 2>that you had ever been interested in or anything like that.
<v Speaker 1>Well, I said, I camped and backpacked all my life,
<v Speaker 1>took my first solo backpack trip when I was just
<v Speaker 1>fifteen to an area I was low acquainted with up
<v Speaker 1>in Jefferson Jefferson Roman of here in Ergan, and I've
<v Speaker 1>always been bear weary and mountain lion weary, never carried
<v Speaker 1>a firearm, never cared bear spray. But in all those
<v Speaker 1>times I had been an outdoorseman, I've only seen a
<v Speaker 1>bear a couple of times here in Reagan, never seen
<v Speaker 1>a cougar. Never really thought about bigfoot outside of it
<v Speaker 1>just being something that we joked about when my buddies
<v Speaker 1>and I would go. But honestly, it was not a believer.
<v Speaker 2>Was it something that you like instantly recognized as bigfoot
<v Speaker 2>whenever you saw it?
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely? Yeah. I for one thing, I knew a bear
<v Speaker 1>wasn't capable of doing what had happened prior to seeing
<v Speaker 1>it and then seeing this thing stand up. It was
<v Speaker 1>crouched down apparently when Dave alerted it, and when it
<v Speaker 1>stood up, you know, I realized this is this. Like
<v Speaker 1>I said, I can't put in the woods what my
<v Speaker 1>mind was trying to to make sense of at that moment.
<v Speaker 1>Just something you'd never expect to see and something that
<v Speaker 1>very few I've ever seen so naturally it was trying
<v Speaker 1>to discount this as something else. But it was obvious
<v Speaker 1>that I, you know, had just witnessed.
<v Speaker 2>And that happened in nineteen seventy nine. You said seventy.
<v Speaker 1>Nine, and I'm sixty four, so forty five years ago.
<v Speaker 2>And then the second siding happened in ninety five. Yes, sir,
<v Speaker 2>between that time bigfoot on the brain, did you dwell
<v Speaker 2>on it? Did you let it go? What were your
<v Speaker 2>thoughts on it?
<v Speaker 1>No? Well, for one thing, it never kept me from
<v Speaker 1>wanting to go back out in the woods as I
<v Speaker 1>continued to fish and camp and backpack. After that, I
<v Speaker 1>was spending you know, every weekend in the forest up
<v Speaker 1>until I started having kids in my late thirties. So yeah,
<v Speaker 1>it was never concerned and I want not one to
<v Speaker 1>go out. I mean, this is before it became kind
<v Speaker 1>of a thing to go look for bigfoot. I was
<v Speaker 1>not out there knocking on trees or even thinking about
<v Speaker 1>it when I get up in the middle of the night,
<v Speaker 1>you know, use the bathroom or whatever. It wasn't really
<v Speaker 1>an issue. So when I've heard of people, you know,
<v Speaker 1>not wanting to even go back into the forest after
<v Speaker 1>seeing one, But that day I didn't feel threatened by it.
<v Speaker 1>I the more I thought about it, I keep wondering,
<v Speaker 1>was it standing outside this screened window looking at me,
<v Speaker 1>you know, And how cunning of it to throw pebbles
<v Speaker 1>on my tin roof. Yeah, you know, the intelligence of that,
<v Speaker 1>the premeditation of that, really really made me think. And
<v Speaker 1>then the placement of the large rocks that rolled down
<v Speaker 1>the hill, and any one of them could have probably
<v Speaker 1>crashed right through the wall of that cabin or you know,
<v Speaker 1>done damage. And then also the rock that was thrown.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, we're in a screen window cabin. If that
<v Speaker 1>sixteen pound rock had come through the screen window, you know,
<v Speaker 1>it really hurt.
<v Speaker 2>And it's interesting that I just threw smaller stones on
<v Speaker 2>the roof and didn't throw any of the bigger rocks
<v Speaker 2>up there, you.
<v Speaker 1>Know exactly, Yeah, yeah, exactly. That would have been terrifying, right,
<v Speaker 1>for a big rock to hit the roof.
<v Speaker 2>Pretty terrifying as it is, you know, in the right circumstances.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, a giant rock like that crashing onto a
<v Speaker 2>sheet metal roof, yeah, yeah, that would have got me
<v Speaker 2>for sure.
<v Speaker 1>I agree, you know. And these are all things that
<v Speaker 1>we thought about after, Like we're lucky to get out
<v Speaker 1>of there unscathed, so not a negative experience, more of like, wow, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you know, I just saw a big flat. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>now I'm in that class. So you immediately go from
<v Speaker 1>either being a skeptic or a non believer to a believer.
<v Speaker 1>I mean right, just like that, your whole world changes
<v Speaker 1>about your paradigm of what you know is creation and
<v Speaker 1>what these things. But the questions still remain. I mean
<v Speaker 1>even after you see when you start wondering, why haven't
<v Speaker 1>we been able to find more evidence, you know, and
<v Speaker 1>have more clarification about that. I mean, it just daggles
<v Speaker 1>my mind that today, in today's age, that we haven't
<v Speaker 1>you know, solidified the fact that these things exist.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, same, It's like crazy, Yeah, it was two thousand
<v Speaker 2>and two whenever I had my sighting that changed everything.
<v Speaker 2>And okay, you know, people that listen to the podcast
<v Speaker 2>have heard this story. I won't bore them with it,
<v Speaker 2>but it's just like you're saying, I was actively going
<v Speaker 2>out there looking for them at the time with a
<v Speaker 2>group of people, and I had known people, became friends
<v Speaker 2>with people that told me that these things are out there.
<v Speaker 2>But still, you know, there's that little part of me
<v Speaker 2>that's like, well, yeah, they might be, but I'm by
<v Speaker 2>no means convinced or sure. Maybe that person saw something
<v Speaker 2>that they thought was a big foot, you know. And
<v Speaker 2>then in just that, like you're saying, in that instant,
<v Speaker 2>it's not you don't get the benefit of a gradual change.
<v Speaker 2>It's just all of a sudden, you're thrust into this
<v Speaker 2>world that didn't exist before, right, And it's hard to
<v Speaker 2>you know, make that transition a lot of times. And
<v Speaker 2>here we are, all these years later, and like you're saying,
<v Speaker 2>still no answers.
<v Speaker 1>I agree completely, A lot.
<v Speaker 2>More questions than we had before we knew they were
<v Speaker 2>out there, I.
<v Speaker 1>Mean, footprints and you know, hearing noises at night and
<v Speaker 1>howls or whatever or one thing, but actually witnessing, you know,
<v Speaker 1>and living color of this thing. It's just I mean,
<v Speaker 1>you can probably relate to what your brain is trying
<v Speaker 1>to make sense of at that moment, right, And it's
<v Speaker 1>like it's just flushing everything you used to believe out
<v Speaker 1>the window. And now you're left with dealing with this
<v Speaker 1>that you've actually witnessed that.
<v Speaker 2>So then we fast forward to nineteen ninety five, what
<v Speaker 2>happened in that situation?
<v Speaker 1>First off, it was the most frightening experience I've ever
<v Speaker 1>had in my life. And I've had a few, you know,
<v Speaker 1>just being outdoors. I've had some things happen that scared me,
<v Speaker 1>mostly animals coming into camp and or whatever. But this
<v Speaker 1>is the most frightening thing that I've ever experienced. And
<v Speaker 1>maybe after I explained, I you realize why. So it
<v Speaker 1>was nineteen ninety five, on July fourth weekend, I'd been
<v Speaker 1>going up to Detroit Lake, Detroit Reservoir, some people call
<v Speaker 1>it here in Oregon. It's up in the foothills and
<v Speaker 1>the Cascades, very popular area for camping and water skiing, fishing,
<v Speaker 1>large reservoir, and on Detroit Lake is an island called
<v Speaker 1>Piety Island. It's I was trying to figure out how
<v Speaker 1>big it is. It's maybe a mile long, half mile wide,
<v Speaker 1>pretty good sized island, and it rises a couple hundred
<v Speaker 1>feet above the above the lake at the peak. It's
<v Speaker 1>heavily forested. It was logged at one time, years and
<v Speaker 1>years ago. But there's old growth trees on the island,
<v Speaker 1>a lot of oat growth, dugrapher on the island, a
<v Speaker 1>lot of brush, but the east end of the island
<v Speaker 1>had then developed into a boat camping area. There was
<v Speaker 1>I think maybe eight or ten different camp sites on
<v Speaker 1>the island that had fire rings and technic tables. It
<v Speaker 1>was free to camp in these sites if you had
<v Speaker 1>a boat course, so it was very popular, you know,
<v Speaker 1>for those like the boat camp which is what I
<v Speaker 1>like to do. At that time. I had a jet
<v Speaker 1>ski and I carried my camping gear in a rubber
<v Speaker 1>boat that I would tow behind my boat from South
<v Speaker 1>Shore Campground, which was just a short ways across the
<v Speaker 1>channel from the island. So second of July, all my friends,
<v Speaker 1>maybe a dozen of us were camped on the island
<v Speaker 1>and I had chosen a site there was a little
<v Speaker 1>bit up the hill. My birthday is the fourth of July,
<v Speaker 1>so we're all there to kind of celebrate my birthday.
<v Speaker 1>And they do fireworks at Detroit Lake on the third
<v Speaker 1>of July, which is really cool right over the water.
<v Speaker 1>So we're all there for that. And on the second well,
<v Speaker 1>I had this campsite as I'd shown you in the picture.
<v Speaker 1>Along with me. It was my friend Steve and his
<v Speaker 1>girlfriend Nancy, and we had two tents set up in
<v Speaker 1>the campsite. One was for them and mine was a
<v Speaker 1>few yards away, all by myself there, so we had
<v Speaker 1>dinner and music and playing around down on the beach
<v Speaker 1>area in another campsite. All afternoon and evening we were
<v Speaker 1>jet skiing and swimming and anyway. I spent the evening
<v Speaker 1>down there by a fire, big fire we'd made on
<v Speaker 1>the beach, and had a great time. So it got
<v Speaker 1>to be about maybe ten or eleven, and we all
<v Speaker 1>returned to Steve and I Nancy returned to our campsite
<v Speaker 1>to retire, and they went to bed immediately. I wanted
<v Speaker 1>to stay up a little bit, so I built a
<v Speaker 1>fire in our own fire pit and rolled out my
<v Speaker 1>sleeping got my sleeping pads and rolled it out in
<v Speaker 1>front of the fire pit there, and I was just
<v Speaker 1>laying on the sleeping pad with my friend Steve's dog, Susha.
<v Speaker 1>She was a two or three year old chocolate lab,
<v Speaker 1>big dog and very friendly, lovely dog. So she's laying
<v Speaker 1>there with me, and I'm just watching the fire burn.
<v Speaker 1>I think I'm guessing it was maybe about one in
<v Speaker 1>the morning, when I was just getting ready to kind
<v Speaker 1>of go to bed, the fire was dying down. I
<v Speaker 1>hadn't planned on putting any more wood on it, and
<v Speaker 1>Susho had been with me all day and I was
<v Speaker 1>going to let her sleep in my with me. So
<v Speaker 1>land there on my side with my hand on the
<v Speaker 1>side of my head, my elbow on the ground, kind
<v Speaker 1>of sitting up on my elbow, and the fire is
<v Speaker 1>dying down. There's quite a bit of smoke now because
<v Speaker 1>there's not much flame in the fire. And I'm trying
<v Speaker 1>to remember the sequence of events, but I do believe
<v Speaker 1>that Susha started growling a little bit, and I was
<v Speaker 1>wondering about that because there are deer on the island
<v Speaker 1>during the winter. The island there's a land bridge from
<v Speaker 1>the west to east end of the island that goes
<v Speaker 1>over to mainland. You can actually walk out to the
<v Speaker 1>island in the winter when they dropped the reservoir down
<v Speaker 1>and deer swim, you know. So there's usually some deer
<v Speaker 1>on the island. And I'd heard people claim that they'd
<v Speaker 1>seen also seen elk on the island at different times,
<v Speaker 1>so I thought maybe she, you know, Derek was coming
<v Speaker 1>down into camp or whatever, so didn't bother me. And
<v Speaker 1>so I'm sitting there and I hear a big stick break,
<v Speaker 1>and you know, when you're breaking up wood for a
<v Speaker 1>fire you can figure out. I mean, I realized it
<v Speaker 1>was a big stick because little sticks didn't crack like
<v Speaker 1>this thing. So it sounded to me like it was
<v Speaker 1>a brass that had broken off, been broken off a tree,
<v Speaker 1>or picked up on purpose and broke like well you
<v Speaker 1>would over your knee, ye, not something we stepped on.
<v Speaker 1>It was a clear crack, loud crack. And as soon
<v Speaker 1>as the stick breaks, Susha's sitting up on alert and whining,
<v Speaker 1>and her hair is standing up, and she's in fau guard,
<v Speaker 1>and I'm really wondering, you know, what could have broke
<v Speaker 1>a stick like that. Now I'm thinking maybe black bear,
<v Speaker 1>because there's a lot quite a few black bears in
<v Speaker 1>that area. I'd never seen one at Detroit Lake. But
<v Speaker 1>now I'm not really thinking it's a deer or an elk.
<v Speaker 1>So yeah, you know. So I'm sitting up with my
<v Speaker 1>arm and in my pocket I had my keychain that
<v Speaker 1>it had my car keys on it, and this small
<v Speaker 1>like pen light the kind that you have to screw
<v Speaker 1>tight to get the light to come on and so,
<v Speaker 1>and the battery is not good in it. So I
<v Speaker 1>turned on that pen light and I'm shining it through
<v Speaker 1>the fire smoke, still like on my side a little bit.
<v Speaker 1>I'm not haven't stood up yet. I'm shining it through
<v Speaker 1>the fire smoke towards the area where I hear the
<v Speaker 1>stick break, and I'm not seeing anything. And then something
<v Speaker 1>catches my eye, Matt, and I raised my light up
<v Speaker 1>and from behind that the tree that I pictured in
<v Speaker 1>the photo, there I see one eye staring back at me.
<v Speaker 1>And I'm realizing, even though I don't have a clear
<v Speaker 1>picture of it through the fire smoke, that's too high
<v Speaker 1>for an elk or a deer to be, you know,
<v Speaker 1>to be standing. And if it's a bear the bears
<v Speaker 1>climbed the tree and peering up from me that I
<v Speaker 1>didn't hear anything, just the stick breaking, and it's blinking
<v Speaker 1>at me too. So now I'm starting to really kind
<v Speaker 1>of freak out. I still haven't I still haven't thought
<v Speaker 1>anything bigfoot. I'm not. I don't know what I'm standing.
<v Speaker 1>I remember thinking, not thinking anything about it being bigfoot.
<v Speaker 1>So the fight or flight response kicks in, and I
<v Speaker 1>got to see what I'm looking at. So I hold
<v Speaker 1>my arm out straight and I step over the fire ring.
<v Speaker 1>Why I didn't just go around, and I don't know
<v Speaker 1>but I stepped through the smoke with my light fixed
<v Speaker 1>on this thing, and as I'm doing that, it steps
<v Speaker 1>out from behind the tree to my right and is
<v Speaker 1>standing there in full of view. Now I see both
<v Speaker 1>eyes shining, and I can see the outline of him
<v Speaker 1>ten feet from me. Oh man, And Susha has taken off.
<v Speaker 1>She's builted down towards the beach.
<v Speaker 2>She's chosen.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, she didn't whine or bark or defend me. She
<v Speaker 1>just took off. It's just kind of odd, but that
<v Speaker 1>was her response. And I'm standing there looking at this
<v Speaker 1>Matt and neither of us are making a sound, and
<v Speaker 1>my knees are just weak. He's right there. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>I'm ten feet from it, but my arms extended, I'm
<v Speaker 1>you know, eight feet from it from it reaching out
<v Speaker 1>and grabbing me or whatever. And I my I'm melting,
<v Speaker 1>is what it felt like. I like in a dream
<v Speaker 1>where you can't move and my light's fixed on it.
<v Speaker 1>It wasn't going to stay there and have a conversation
<v Speaker 1>with me for very long. The next thing it does
<v Speaker 1>is it crouches all the way down to the ground
<v Speaker 1>and it's still just sitting there, and then immediately just
<v Speaker 1>starts moving down the hill to my right. The whole
<v Speaker 1>time it's got its eyes fixed on me, and I've
<v Speaker 1>got my light on it, and it's going from a
<v Speaker 1>standing position to a squatting position as it moves down
<v Speaker 1>the hill. It was creepy as hell, Matthew, it was
<v Speaker 1>creepy as hell the way it moved away from me.
<v Speaker 1>So it got down to where he's starting to blend
<v Speaker 1>back into the forest. The angle of the hill, you know,
<v Speaker 1>was making it harder for me to see him, and
<v Speaker 1>I still had my light on him, and as soon
<v Speaker 1>it seemed like he was going to come around the
<v Speaker 1>other side of me, and I bailed. I jumped from
<v Speaker 1>the fire pit to my tent door and inside my
<v Speaker 1>tent and grabbed my sleeping bag and covered my head,
<v Speaker 1>and I remember just the only thing I could hear
<v Speaker 1>at that point was my heart just racing, and the
<v Speaker 1>dog's gone, and I must have just been frozen like
<v Speaker 1>in that position for who knows how long, and I
<v Speaker 1>just went to sleep and woke up maybe I don't
<v Speaker 1>know how much later, and Susha has come back into
<v Speaker 1>camp and she's milling around, so I called her into
<v Speaker 1>my tent and zipped the door close and went back
<v Speaker 1>to sleep. There was no one to talk to about it,
<v Speaker 1>and I wasn't about to go looking for it. I
<v Speaker 1>remember laying there thinking one of the reasons I liked
<v Speaker 1>to camp on that island was to maybe be away
<v Speaker 1>from anything whiles like that. You know, islands seemed like
<v Speaker 1>a pretty safe place. And yeah, so I got up
<v Speaker 1>in the morning. I remember getting up early and making
<v Speaker 1>my coffee and my friend Sean came up the hill
<v Speaker 1>from another campsite. We're having coffee together, and I relayed
<v Speaker 1>to him what had happened, and he was amazed. We
<v Speaker 1>looked around, you know, behind the tree, and I never
<v Speaker 1>could find the stick that was broken. Again, no footprints
<v Speaker 1>in that kind of soil, no other evidence of it
<v Speaker 1>being there. Seawn even looked on the tree with possibly
<v Speaker 1>some hair and couldn't find anything like that. It was
<v Speaker 1>so frightening that recalling it, Recalling it this many years
<v Speaker 1>later still makes me give me a feeling of foreboding.
<v Speaker 2>This well, I'm sure the listeners, I know, I can can.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, there's been a definite change in your speaking,
<v Speaker 2>your delivery just since you started recalling this incident.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yeah, it was, it was. It was incredible. I
<v Speaker 1>don't I don't consider myself any type of macho type person.
<v Speaker 1>But I've never been afraid to be in the forest, you.
<v Speaker 3>Know, I've always managed my fear no matter where I've
<v Speaker 3>been at and I've been I've been to Alaska and Canada.
<v Speaker 1>I know, I've been in grizzly country and nothing, nothing
<v Speaker 1>shook me to my core like that. I don't remember thinking,
<v Speaker 1>you know, it's kill me. But what what was so
<v Speaker 1>alarming about it was not just the height of this
<v Speaker 1>thing when it came out from behind the tree, but
<v Speaker 1>just how broad it was. You know, it's just a messe,
<v Speaker 1>I mean a huge head and shoulders, and damn it.
<v Speaker 1>If I'd only had you know, I always say, I
<v Speaker 1>just had a really bright light, I would have loved
<v Speaker 1>this scene him better. Not that I would not have
<v Speaker 1>loved to get him on video. Right this is nineteen
<v Speaker 1>ninety five. There's not a lot of available.
<v Speaker 2>To whip out the gam quarder or something.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, but I would. I wish I could have had
<v Speaker 1>better batteries in my pen light at least so I
<v Speaker 1>could have got a clear picture or you know, vision
<v Speaker 1>of what coloring was exactly, and maybe better facial features,
<v Speaker 1>but I did actually was able to see, you know,
<v Speaker 1>the outline of him fairly well, which was just just insane,
<v Speaker 1>just insane.
<v Speaker 2>How big would you guess?
<v Speaker 1>You know, he was four feet wide and an over
<v Speaker 1>eight feet tall, well over eight feet tall. With that
<v Speaker 1>tribe that he was behind. It was easy for me
<v Speaker 1>the next day to kind of remember how high I
<v Speaker 1>was shining that light. Just insane, how big this thing was.
<v Speaker 2>Were his eyes reflecting the light back?
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely? You know. The one thing about the whole thing
<v Speaker 1>is and never forgetting the first thing I see is
<v Speaker 1>that one eye peering out at me and blinking, which
<v Speaker 1>put me into that response I have to I have
<v Speaker 1>to see what this is, right, wasn't wasn't really thinking
<v Speaker 1>about any safety protocol, just that I wanted to step
<v Speaker 1>over this fire, so I wasn't shining the light through
<v Speaker 1>the smoke so I could see what it was.
<v Speaker 2>Here. We have a campsite set up, we've got a dog,
<v Speaker 2>and we've got a fire, and we've got a human
<v Speaker 2>with a light. Yeah, normal wildlife does not get that close.
<v Speaker 2>They might come into the area on accident or come
<v Speaker 2>to investigat and once they see all these things, especially
<v Speaker 2>a dog, and a fire and a human. They're leaving,
<v Speaker 2>They're not sitting there watching exactly. Whenever you saw that
<v Speaker 2>eyeball blinking at you, did it kind of click in
<v Speaker 2>your head that maybe this isn't a normal situation.
<v Speaker 1>Like I said, I don't remember thinking bigfoot. All I
<v Speaker 1>remember thinking is you know, my mind had reduced that
<v Speaker 1>this isn't an elk or a deer. This isn't where
<v Speaker 1>you're going to see an elk and a deer. It's
<v Speaker 1>up there, way too high, and these things don't climb trees.
<v Speaker 2>How long do you think you stood there before it
<v Speaker 2>started walking away?
<v Speaker 1>Just seconds? Just seconds? You know. It was as if
<v Speaker 1>as it moved away, it was as if it was
<v Speaker 1>trying to distract me from getting a clear clear view
<v Speaker 1>of it. It went from standing to squatting as it
<v Speaker 1>moved sideways with its arms like extended. Huge, just huge.
<v Speaker 1>And it didn't take long for me not to be
<v Speaker 1>able to see the outline of it because of the
<v Speaker 1>strength of my flashlight, but I could still see the
<v Speaker 1>eye shine and it never left, it never stopped staring
<v Speaker 1>at me until I decided I'd need to go to
<v Speaker 1>my tent, like that was going to protect me. You know.
<v Speaker 1>That was my response that I didn't want to be
<v Speaker 1>standing right there any longer.
<v Speaker 2>And it didn't make any noises or anything.
<v Speaker 1>No no noise, no noise, it was. It was surprisingly
<v Speaker 1>quiet for being that size to be able to move
<v Speaker 1>down that hill like that. I was making noise.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, I was in too.
<v Speaker 1>I was probably custom and asking God for some help
<v Speaker 1>to get me to my tent door. Like again, like
<v Speaker 1>I said, like like that was going to be the
<v Speaker 1>thing that protected me from it.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, it goes back to that instinct when of
<v Speaker 2>our little kids are pulling the blanket over our head.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, right, same kind of deal. Yeah, I want to
<v Speaker 1>add though, So after Sean came up and we discussed,
<v Speaker 1>you know, what I had seen, he went back to
<v Speaker 1>his camp. And I'm kind of dumb or brave, one
<v Speaker 1>of the two, but I decided I wanted to go.
<v Speaker 1>Right behind my camp was an abandoned forest road that
<v Speaker 1>led to the top of the mob on the island,
<v Speaker 1>maybe half mile long, and I walked that by myself
<v Speaker 1>to the top just to see if I could see
<v Speaker 1>anything else, maybe some plants or whatever. I got to
<v Speaker 1>the top and there was a large of old timber
<v Speaker 1>that had been left there from years ago, kind of
<v Speaker 1>a slash pile, that huge pile of timber, big dark
<v Speaker 1>holes into the interior of this pile. And as soon
<v Speaker 1>as I noticed that, I really got a creepy feeling
<v Speaker 1>and turned it around and returned back to camp.
<v Speaker 2>Do you think I might have been using that as
<v Speaker 2>like a den?
<v Speaker 1>You know, where are you going to hide on an
<v Speaker 1>island like that? I mean, it is a pret good
<v Speaker 1>sized island, but that would be a typical spot. I
<v Speaker 1>would think one The other area of that island that
<v Speaker 1>I was considering it maybe having a shot at hiding
<v Speaker 1>from people would be the north side of the island
<v Speaker 1>is fairly steep, cliff like with some exposed rock that
<v Speaker 1>I've never never investigated it. I just assumed from the
<v Speaker 1>topographical map of the island that I've seen that that
<v Speaker 1>would be the other area. Other than that, people are
<v Speaker 1>all over that island, especially in the camping area, and
<v Speaker 1>a lot of people come out there and use it
<v Speaker 1>as a day use area to waterski from and fish from.
<v Speaker 1>You know, it's not like a wilderness area. It's right
<v Speaker 1>right in the middle of and the town of Detroit
<v Speaker 1>is literally, you know, a quarter mile to the north there,
<v Speaker 1>get in your boat and go a quarter mile and
<v Speaker 1>you're on shore and into town of Detroit. So it's
<v Speaker 1>not like, you know, it's not like you've got to
<v Speaker 1>go deep into the wilderness to witness something like that. Apparently,
<v Speaker 1>both of my sidings were in populated areas. I think
<v Speaker 1>they're very curious about what we do.
<v Speaker 2>I agree, I agree totally. My first initial siding was
<v Speaker 2>in a parking lot. Now it was within a there
<v Speaker 2>you go, it was within a national forest and you know,
<v Speaker 2>campgrounds and everything, but I was actually standing on parking lot.
<v Speaker 1>I'd love to hear about that the account sometime.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, for sure.
<v Speaker 1>So along with on this trip in ninety five, my
<v Speaker 1>friend Sean had another friend named Chris. Him and his
<v Speaker 1>wife and two kids were there on island with us.
<v Speaker 1>They'd come out on a ski boat and camped with us.
<v Speaker 1>And after I shared my story with him, he'd had
<v Speaker 1>something happen to him when he was a kid on
<v Speaker 1>a boy scout trip above Marion Lay that he couldn't explain.
<v Speaker 1>And when I told him what I'd seen, they packed
<v Speaker 1>up and left.
<v Speaker 2>Oh wow.
<v Speaker 1>He was not a fan of having his kids there,
<v Speaker 1>you know, he felt that they were in danger, and
<v Speaker 1>I did not. You know, I was there two more nights.
<v Speaker 1>I didn't stake out anything. The next night, I just
<v Speaker 1>went about my business.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's interesting.
<v Speaker 3>You know.
<v Speaker 2>Somebody asked me fairly recently about, you know, people's reaction
<v Speaker 2>to them, and I told them, everybody's different, Every situation
<v Speaker 2>is different, and sometimes people are fascinated or kind of amazed,
<v Speaker 2>you know, that they got to see something super rare, sure,
<v Speaker 2>and others are just absolutely terrified. They don't want to
<v Speaker 2>have anything to do with it. They don't even want
<v Speaker 2>to talk about it. Obviously that that guy had an
<v Speaker 2>experience that stayed with him enough to the point that
<v Speaker 2>he wasn't doubting anything you were saying. He was getting
<v Speaker 2>his family out of there.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, he believed me for sure. And I've had
<v Speaker 1>to be careful about you know, I told you I
<v Speaker 1>after I retired, I started teaching survivor camps during lunch
<v Speaker 1>about Wednesday on each of these the weeks I taught
<v Speaker 1>these camps, I'd entertained the kids with this story, but
<v Speaker 1>I'd tell them beforehand. These are ten twelve year old kids.
<v Speaker 1>I told them I'd warn them before. You know, I'm
<v Speaker 1>not going to relate this to you to scare you.
<v Speaker 1>But I've seen bigfoot, and you know, in half of
<v Speaker 1>them immediately discounted that I was telling the truth or
<v Speaker 1>that I'd actually seen a bigfoot. The other half were like,
<v Speaker 1>really and they loved hearing it. And I would reenact
<v Speaker 1>the ninety five siding by finding a tree that was
<v Speaker 1>similar in size and hiding behind it and peering out,
<v Speaker 1>and their eyes were just glued on my story. But
<v Speaker 1>I always finished relating that to them by reminding them
<v Speaker 1>I wasn't hurt by this big foot that he either
<v Speaker 1>time was Did I feel like I was really in danger?
<v Speaker 1>I was just in awe what I would see. It's
<v Speaker 1>kind of like, you know, an a normal situation heading
<v Speaker 1>up into the mountains and just seeing a deer. What
<v Speaker 1>do we do? What do we call it a deer? Right?
<v Speaker 1>You know, there's not something that you see normally.
<v Speaker 2>And so so, since you're you know, educating these younger children,
<v Speaker 2>are you telling them this story as a form of
<v Speaker 2>entertainment and engaging with children or are you telling them
<v Speaker 2>because you feel like they should be aware that these
<v Speaker 2>things are out there?
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely that they should be aware. I'm a member of
<v Speaker 1>this fraternity of those that have actually witnessed one, you know,
<v Speaker 1>in the flesh two different times, I know they are
<v Speaker 1>real and being that skeptic or just non believered prior
<v Speaker 1>to that, you know, I've I've lived both paradigms, and
<v Speaker 1>before I saw it, I didn't believe it. Now that
<v Speaker 1>I've seen it, I can't change it. I felt that
<v Speaker 1>they needed to know about it and believe me. I
<v Speaker 1>warned them more about the dangers of you know, cooking
<v Speaker 1>fish and camp and bear country right and walking at
<v Speaker 1>night you know where cougars might be around.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you don't want any angry parents coming back. You know,
<v Speaker 2>the crazy guy that taught their kids bigfoots coming to
<v Speaker 2>get them.
<v Speaker 1>Well, you know, that was a risk I would take,
<v Speaker 1>and the parents would come and pick them up. And
<v Speaker 1>sometimes the kids would relate that, you know, Jolly told
<v Speaker 1>us about bigfoot today and they would be all like, well,
<v Speaker 1>that's great, I hope you can sleep tonight. I never
<v Speaker 1>heard any negative, you know, nothing negative about that.
<v Speaker 2>Well, that's good. I got to ask you a couple
<v Speaker 2>more questions. I've been as we've been talking, I've been
<v Speaker 2>going back through my rolodex of all the conversations I've
<v Speaker 2>had with people over the years. Sure, and I am
<v Speaker 2>not coming up with anyone that's ever said anything close
<v Speaker 2>to the crouching down, standing up, back and forth as
<v Speaker 2>it got away from you.
<v Speaker 1>Sure, okay, I know you.
<v Speaker 2>Said you felt like it was trying to keep you
<v Speaker 2>from focusing on it directly. Was it like a quick
<v Speaker 2>movement or a slower movement going between the two positions.
<v Speaker 1>It wasn't all that quick. It was more, you know, deliberate.
<v Speaker 1>And yeah, it wasn't quick at all. He just it
<v Speaker 1>was crouched down, and then when it started to move,
<v Speaker 1>it was standing completely erect and moving to the right
<v Speaker 1>of me all at the same time, and then crouching
<v Speaker 1>down again. But it never stopped moving. It was like
<v Speaker 1>just shuttling its feet side to side all the time
<v Speaker 1>facing me. And you know what, its vision locked on
<v Speaker 1>me while.
<v Speaker 2>I had this light arms outstretched to the sides.
<v Speaker 1>More like not not really extended, but you know, to
<v Speaker 1>its sides. Yeah, I said, like the tans out in
<v Speaker 1>front of it.
<v Speaker 2>So I've seen something the same general area that I
<v Speaker 2>was talking about. Once I had that siding, Like I said,
<v Speaker 2>I I was out there looking for them actively. I
<v Speaker 2>was a quote unquote bigfoot researcher, and so once I
<v Speaker 2>had that siding, I was like, Okay, well, I know
<v Speaker 2>they're in this area. I want to see another one. Sure,
<v Speaker 2>after you know, six months or so, calming down and
<v Speaker 2>realizing that they weren't going to kill me, So I
<v Speaker 2>spent probably the next seven years focusing all my efforts
<v Speaker 2>in this general area. And it's a place that you know,
<v Speaker 2>tourists report seeing them just about every year, and you know,
<v Speaker 2>the rangers that work the park talk about them like
<v Speaker 2>it's a known area.
<v Speaker 1>Sure.
<v Speaker 2>And I was standing out in an empty campsite by myself,
<v Speaker 2>a couple of campsites away from the group. I was
<v Speaker 2>smoker at the time, so I was standing over there
<v Speaker 2>smoking a cigarette in the dark, just kind of getting
<v Speaker 2>away from people for a second. And there's a public
<v Speaker 2>bathroom maybe fifty yards through the woods that's got an
<v Speaker 2>outside fluorescent light, and there's trails that lead from each
<v Speaker 2>campsite kind of going towards the bathrooms. And I'm just
<v Speaker 2>like standing there smoking a cigarette, staring at the bathrooms.
<v Speaker 2>All of a sudden, something appears from the bushes next
<v Speaker 2>to the bathroom. It's about maybe four feet tall at
<v Speaker 2>the most and basically it looks like the only way
<v Speaker 2>I could describe it from my position and my vantage
<v Speaker 2>point was it looked like a chimpanzee with long legs.
<v Speaker 1>Wow and then a juvenile yeah wow.
<v Speaker 2>And it was slightly crouched down with its arms kind
<v Speaker 2>of bent at the elbows but kind of stretched out
<v Speaker 2>to its side, and it was side stepping, and it
<v Speaker 2>was looking up at what if I this was my guess.
<v Speaker 2>It was looking at the bugs flying around underneath the light.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, I think I think it was hunting the bugs.
<v Speaker 2>And it reminded me of the old Westerns whenever, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the Native American scouts would be creeping up on the
<v Speaker 2>cowboys at night and kind of slashed down and kind
<v Speaker 2>of hunched down a little bit, crouched down with their
<v Speaker 2>arms out, you know, kind of holding their balance as
<v Speaker 2>they walked like that. I don't know if it just
<v Speaker 2>all of a sudden realized it exposed itself, or that
<v Speaker 2>it knew I was there, but just in just a heartbeat,
<v Speaker 2>complete spin onein eighty headfirst dive back into the underbrush.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. It doesn't take long, No.
<v Speaker 2>Not at all. And I mean I erupted.
<v Speaker 1>I see one.
<v Speaker 2>I'm yelling, I'm running down the trail towards the bathroom.
<v Speaker 2>Now everybody sees me from the other campsite. We all
<v Speaker 2>go down there. They've got like spotlights and stuff because
<v Speaker 2>we're all bigfoot researchers, that's why we're there. And I mean,
<v Speaker 2>there's nothing, there's no movement, there's no sound. I couldn't
<v Speaker 2>find anything. It was like it had just vanished. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>but the arms outstretched to the sides like that. It
<v Speaker 2>sounds very similar to what eyewitnessed.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, you know, I've never really thought about it too.
<v Speaker 1>You just mention it. So there's all sizes of the
<v Speaker 1>bigfoot in the forest because of course they're reproducing. Then
<v Speaker 1>there's infant, you know through you know, aged the one
<v Speaker 1>in seventy nine. I can't tell you how old it was,
<v Speaker 1>but ninety five. This dude, I'm pretty sure it was
<v Speaker 1>a dude looked like he was in his prime, you know,
<v Speaker 1>like huge, muscular, capable, very agile.
<v Speaker 2>Could you tell if it had like the conical shaped
<v Speaker 2>head and no neck.
<v Speaker 1>No, no, no, I could I couldn't. All I could
<v Speaker 1>tell you for sure is what the outline of it
<v Speaker 1>was like after it stepped out from behind the tree,
<v Speaker 1>and when it squatted down, you know it it was
<v Speaker 1>just immense it, don't It doesn't seem like I was
<v Speaker 1>looking down on it too much, Like maybe I just
<v Speaker 1>had my arms held straight out to shine the light
<v Speaker 1>into its eyes when it was crouched down. Yeah, you know,
<v Speaker 1>it was still five feet tall when it's crouched down
<v Speaker 1>by the tree. And then when it stood up again
<v Speaker 1>and started moving to my right, I don't. I wish
<v Speaker 1>I had a recording of what I was saying out loud.
<v Speaker 1>You know, holy something, yea, the thing is insanely big,
<v Speaker 1>and like I said, the curvature of the hill it was,
<v Speaker 1>it was going to go out of sight in a minute,
<v Speaker 1>and I want I made the move to get to
<v Speaker 1>my tent before I lost vision of it. I could
<v Speaker 1>have looked at it longer. Probably for some reason, I
<v Speaker 1>felt like it was going to come back around me,
<v Speaker 1>because just below my campsite was where we pulled our
<v Speaker 1>jet skis and the boat up on the shore and
<v Speaker 1>pretty thick brush. But there was a trail back around
<v Speaker 1>down by the shoreline that came right up to my
<v Speaker 1>camp and I didn't want it to do that on me.
<v Speaker 1>I just you know, and I was out of there.
<v Speaker 2>What do you think it was doing? Just people watching?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean there's nothing on that island to sustain it.
<v Speaker 1>You know. That's the other thing I've thought to myself
<v Speaker 1>about is calorie intake. What it would take for something
<v Speaker 1>that size to you know, how many calendaries the date?
<v Speaker 1>Does this thing need or is its metabolism to the
<v Speaker 1>point where it doesn't need to eat that often? I
<v Speaker 1>don't think that's true. It seems are huge, you know,
<v Speaker 1>a human that big. I mean it's twice as big
<v Speaker 1>as our biggest football player and they're taking in ten
<v Speaker 1>thousand calories a day. So there's nothing out there. You know,
<v Speaker 1>it's not going to it's not catching fish out of
<v Speaker 1>the lake unless you know they they're out there harvesting deer.
<v Speaker 1>You'd think if that was the case, you'd find evidence
<v Speaker 1>of that. I have no idea. And the life is
<v Speaker 1>you know, the land bridge that you access the island
<v Speaker 1>on is only available till I don't know, February or March,
<v Speaker 1>and they start filling the lake back up. So they
<v Speaker 1>did it swim out there? Has it been out there?
<v Speaker 1>It couldn't have been out there the whole time. Up
<v Speaker 1>until July. Like I said, what is it? What would
<v Speaker 1>it eat? So that's even stranger to think that it
<v Speaker 1>possibly swam there and you know, was on living on
<v Speaker 1>the island temporarily, or just had come out that day
<v Speaker 1>to investigate. I have no idea those answers, you know,
<v Speaker 1>the questions can never be answered.
<v Speaker 2>How far of a swim would it have been?
<v Speaker 1>A couple of hundred yards at least from the boat
<v Speaker 1>ramp at south Shore. It's even further than that, maybe
<v Speaker 1>three or four hundred yards quite a ways. There was
<v Speaker 1>a couple of minutes full throttle, at least two or
<v Speaker 1>three minutes on the jet ski to get back to
<v Speaker 1>the dock on the main side of the campground.
<v Speaker 2>Pretty good ways.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And for whatever reason, I didn't camp again on
<v Speaker 1>that island until about twenty about two thousand and five,
<v Speaker 1>maybe ten years later, on the opposite on the west
<v Speaker 1>end of the island, I camped with a couple of
<v Speaker 1>friends of mine, just on a fishing trip. I don't
<v Speaker 1>even remember telling them about that story or relating it
<v Speaker 1>while we were on that camping trip.
<v Speaker 2>Huh.
<v Speaker 1>You know, you'd think it's odd, it's odd that I
<v Speaker 1>didn't relate that story while we were camped there. Maybe
<v Speaker 1>I had to them at another time, but I don't
<v Speaker 1>remember standing up thinking, yeah, it was just ten years
<v Speaker 1>ago I was on the other end of this island
<v Speaker 1>and saw Bigfoot. I don't think I know. I never
<v Speaker 1>said that. I've tried to reach out a couple of
<v Speaker 1>different times, unsuccessfully to organizations to relate my story. I
<v Speaker 1>did get it submitted to I don't remember what the
<v Speaker 1>site was years ago, Oregon Bigfoot was that the name
<v Speaker 1>of it? Maybe?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Bigfoot?
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And I think I found it again when I
<v Speaker 1>searched bigfoot sighting. I searched Bigfoot sighting at Silver Creek Falls,
<v Speaker 1>and there was a couple of them up there. But
<v Speaker 1>I did find my story that I related about the
<v Speaker 1>experience at the cabin there. But I haven't you know,
<v Speaker 1>until I soil you accepted my side of things. I
<v Speaker 1>haven't been able to share this with anyone. It kind
<v Speaker 1>of feels good to be able to know it you've
<v Speaker 1>seen one or had encounters before. I can't really recall
<v Speaker 1>until today talking with anyone who's actually witnessed one.
<v Speaker 2>Well, I mean, there's a lot of us out there
<v Speaker 2>for sure, and I'm sure if it's an avenue you
<v Speaker 2>want to follow of getting your story out there. You know,
<v Speaker 2>this will obviously help, but there are plenty of other
<v Speaker 2>podcasts and websites out there that would love to talk
<v Speaker 2>to you. I'm sure. Yeah, I know it helps personally,
<v Speaker 2>and I know it helps people to listen to these stories,
<v Speaker 2>especially if they're trying to come to terms with something
<v Speaker 2>they've experienced. So you know, I really do appreciate it,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm glad you made the decision to share your
<v Speaker 2>story because a lot of people don't.
<v Speaker 1>Absolutely, Yeah, it feels good. It seems to me like
<v Speaker 1>you know, like I said, I've been outdoors so many
<v Speaker 1>times in so many different areas. Back in high school,
<v Speaker 1>I took a trip right out of high school into
<v Speaker 1>Three Sisters Wilderness here and with two other friends, and
<v Speaker 1>as we were leaving the parking lot at the trailhead,
<v Speaker 1>these rough looking old guys come down the trail from
<v Speaker 1>Australia with deep Australian accents, and we stopped to talk
<v Speaker 1>to him for a minute, and they had been in
<v Speaker 1>the wilderness for thirty days looking for bigfoot.
<v Speaker 2>Wow.
<v Speaker 1>And I can remember after we left and went our ways,
<v Speaker 1>joking with my friends, Oh, you know, but we see
<v Speaker 1>Bigfoot this. I was deeply remembering not having any fear
<v Speaker 1>or even wanting to believe any part of that back then. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>live and learn.
<v Speaker 2>Right, Live and learn well. Joy, Thanks Man, I appreciate
<v Speaker 2>you coming on and like I said, sharing your encounter encounters.
<v Speaker 2>I've really enjoyed it.
<v Speaker 1>Man, me too, Matthew. I appreciate you, and I admire
<v Speaker 1>your what you're doing and your research and your commitment
<v Speaker 1>to educating everyone about what's really out there. Brother.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, same to you, Man, Same to you. Thanks a lot.
<v Speaker 2>And if you've had your own encounter with Bigfoot or
<v Speaker 2>something else, i'n explaining you'd like to share your story,
<v Speaker 2>email me at Bigfoot Crossroads at gmail dot com. Check
<v Speaker 2>out the website Bigfoot Crossroads dot com. You can find
<v Speaker 2>links to social media, past episodes, merchandise, everything you need
<v Speaker 2>all in one place. And until next time, remember there's
<v Speaker 2>something in the woods.