A listener writes “I would like to tell you about a very unusual and scary occurrence in my life that occurred in the summer of 2004 or thereabouts.
My boyfriend and I traveled to a location near the Big Bend area named Devil’s River State Natural Area. We wanted to find an extremely remote area to camp so we could watch a meteor shower and just be away from people. My boyfriend is a geologist and I am an environmental scientist, so any chance we had to get out in the wilderness we did.
To make a long story short, we walked back into a very secluded area (no vehicles of any kind were allowed). He wanted to fish and I wandered up stream to take photos of the indigenous wildlife in the area. I was about a mile upstream from where my boyfriend was fishing. I was in the dry part of the riverbed bent over looking at a crawfish eating a plant under water and captured in awe. Never had I seen this before, so I was taking photos and just enjoying my amazement when I heard a very large grounded limb break. I squatted down as far as I could below the bank line of the river so whatever that was, would not be able to see me because I knew it was big.
I thought about a mountain lion first, because I knew there were no people out there. And then I remembered reading about bears being documented in the area around Del Rio, and this made more sense to me for several reasons. I knew I needed to leave the area quietly, but I did not know where the animal was. So I very slowly rose to peek over the edge of the embankment to see what and where this animal was. I am 5t. exactly and so was the edge of the embankment, so I had to stand on my tippy-toes to see over the edge. I scanned the bank and saw nothing and then began to scan the tree line at about the height I thought a bear would be. I saw a very large leg from the thigh down move from behind one tree to another in one step. That really freaked me out for several reasons. For one thing, the leg I saw was as tall as me gauging by the height of where the limbs on the trees started near the bottom of the trees.
I knew there was no way I could outrun this man/giant so I backed up as quietly as I could into the river where there were boulders and tried to hide in the water behind the boulders until I could get down river far enough that my boyfriend could hear me if I yelled. I was trying to keep my eyes out for what or who this was to see if it was following me on land or possibly heading toward me in the river. It was difficult to see behind the tree line with the angle of the sun making it pretty dark back there. I finally reached the area where my boyfriend was. He took one look at me and asked me what was wrong? I asked him if we were sure there were no other people around here and he said absolutely not according to the park ranger he spoke to the evening before. I told him, I saw a giant. I told him what I just relayed to you and he packed his stuff up and we walked the 2 miles back to our camp and did not go to that area anymore. The strangest thing about the whole episode was that the trees in that area were very small in diameter, maybe 8 – 10 inches. I often wondered why I could not see the whole “thing” behind the tree because it had to be much wider than the tree’s diameter.
After a few months I just put it away, because there was no answer I could ascertain. It was not until I started listening to your podcast that I even thought about it again. I still wonder if it was a giant or a bigfoot. It was definitely not a bear, large deer or puma! It was something giant sized.”