Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “A interesting encounter my grandfather had in Tunica Mississippi in the early 70s he never shared with any of us until his later years…

Forgive me, I may not have a lot about the encounter itself but when he slowed down due to age and injuries he sustained in the Korean War we began to talk a lot about his raising and the war he never spoke of before.

One day just chatting as we watched his westerns there was a scene in the particular show we were watching that had an incident where something was hunting the men in the woods. He mentioned softly “I know what it’s like to be stalked in the woods”.

Biting on another war tale I asked “is this a Korean thing” he said No! Cutting me off from ending my sentence. It was right here where I grew up. To understand a bit better about him he was stern and quiet. Although he picked on us from time to time he was not the type to tell stories or mention anything about him or the past.

He never spoke about the war until this period of time before he passed. He grew up on a farm and raised a farm his entire life. Always working until he wasn’t able. Their favorite past time was hunting and fishing in the Mississippi, Tunica Lake, and Flower lake which he called “The bend” on the Mississippi side. They’d leave a small boat in a small inlet incased by a large sand bar. He said him and a friend would camp and fish all through the 60s so he knew the area really well. He said it was cooling off from summertime going into fall and had been raining for several days.

They went just to move the boat up in the tree line further so the raising water wouldn’t take the boat. The parked and walked the riverside to access the area. They never had problems because people wouldn’t go through the trouble of walking that far into the marshy, nasty wood line to get there. They used a stink bait for cat fish made of chicken liver and a mix of other stuff including sugar. I use the same mix to this day. They would leave the bucket on the boat so the sun would cook the recipe so it would be more pungent the next time around. As they approached the boat he mentioned the boat was tipped over on its side and the contents were spread through the tree line.

As he got into this portion of the story he’d turn his head towards the tv and pause as if it bothered him. They made their way to the boat tipping it back over correctly to hear something move deeper in the tree line. He said he hollered thinking it was someone walking nearby and said “don’t come back around our stuff!” No reply.. It started to cloud up again and drizzle so they put everything back together and slid the boat into the trees. His friend realized and said Jr.” Where is our bucket” the bait bucket was gone and one of his fishing poles. They stepped in the woods a bit to look and see if they could maybe come across the items with no luck.

At this point they were within talking distance but couldn’t see each other real well. He heard a loud break as if someone tore a chunk of wood off a dead tree real close to them and they both stopped to listen. As papaw listened he heard a small twig break and jerked his head towards the sound and he saw something that was completely wrong. “Didn’t make sense to him” he said.

He said “slouching towards him not standing directly up was an animal he wasn’t aware of” he stood staring for a few seconds at its arms not putting together what was in front of him not even 30 yards away as he made contact with its eyes it rolled its head, curled its lips up and started “gator like hissing and growling” he said it would expand his chest still with the same expression, take a gargle like breath and hiss again. I smirked thinking it was another picking moment. I was at the time in my early twenties.

He didn’t make any kind of expression as he stared wide eyed at me. It hit me like a ton of bricks!

He used to tell us not to roam around his property late in the afternoon or never at night. He said the “diggers” will get us.

I also realized anytime we’d ride his pick up on the property he’d never drive close to the tree line. Sometimes I’d ask him let’s go in the woods and he’d shrug it off and say there was no need to go out there! It was because of this moment in his life!

He said he was so taken back. It was an animal! He said, he could see it’s genitalia. He didn’t realize he was moving backwards and fell over tree rooting that stuck out of the water and marsh directly on his back. His friend ran up behind him laughing before he seen the expression on my grandfather’s face. My grandfather jumped up pointing in its direction to see nothing there. That’s when they heard crashing through the woods in front of them moving away from them. My papaw carried a 22 revolver and began shooting in the direction of the noise scaring his friend thinking he was shooting at people. My grandfather “Jr.” told his friend “ let’s go, we have to go now”.

He explained to his buddy they were coming back with other people the next day with rifles. He had seen an absolute monster. Something no one has ever seen before. Being the serious type of person he was they didn’t question him.

When they came back the next day the water line had gone down and seemed as if nothing else was disturbed.

They moved into the woods as far as they could go never seeing the animal again but found mud prints on larger rioting that sat above the mud and marsh and found deep dig marks around trees that were dead or dying and bark peeled off of the trees and scattered all around them. It looked like something with bear like features pulled the bark away but with no signs of claw marks. He said a few of those particular trees had large limbs from fresh trees wedged in the holes dug around them as if they were marked. He told me if I ever saw those signs to immediately get away from there.

He swore in some areas it seemed as if there were more than one of those things was in the area. No signs of any other animal activity, no raccoon tracks, no deer tracks, nothing.

After that he said he left the area alone. He didn’t get a clear height judgment, all he said was it was well larger than him and seemed to think he was intruding on its property. He also said he didn’t understand why it moved away from them if it was standing its ground on him at first.

I still find it incredibly hard to imagine he may had actually seen a Bigfoot. He never used the term only because he probably had never heard about it. Other than westerns he never really watched tv or spent a lot of time hearing about things like that. They kept to themselves went to church and stayed on the farm. I had a friend look up several pictures and he described it to us the best he could so my buddy could draw a sketch of what he seen. It was obvious to us then what he ran into that day.

I’m no big time believer of the subject nor have I spent a lot of time on the subject but he was a honest man. Since then it sparked my interest and I came across your podcast. Seeing the amount of encounter episodes you have I dialed in and picked a few to listen to in the areas closer to his encounter and it’s extremely eye opening how close these people describe what he seen! I’m to find this area and look further into where he left off all those years ago. I live in south Alabama so I don’t have the means to really explore the area. I truly believe they happen to have crossed paths with each other as they were moving through. I’d love to see this thing in person but what it did to him personally I don’t think I’d want to. It’s incredibly interesting to know what they are and how they’ve made it this long not being discovered. Whatever he seen that day I engraved into his mind forever.

This is the sketch he described to us. When he seen the final product it was obvious he relived that experience that moment, almost tearing up. He said the only thing different was his arms were covered in mud and had flakes of dead tree bark all over his stomach and chest.”