Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “Wes, I truly enjoy your show very much. I am writing this email to let you know that I have been interested in the Bigfoot/Sasquatch phenomenon since I first saw the In Search Of episode when I was 4 or 5 years old. I am now a high school teacher with a Master’s Degree. In the summer of 1984 I had an encounter along with my female cousin near my childhood home. I was about 13 or 14 at the time. I had been swimming with my cousin and her brothers and sister for most of the evening (they had just installed an above ground pool). We played in the pool until dark when her mother had first called her and her brothers and sisters inside.

We stayed outside near my Uncle’s garage talking about school, etc. when all of a sudden we heard the loudest crash of a tree falling on the wooded hill just behind the pool and right next to the trailer they were living in at the time. That was scary enough, but immediately after the tree fell we heard the loudest huff!! or blowing noise, followed by a low gutteral growl that sounded angry and malicious.

She panicked and grabbed hold of me as we both looked off into the dark to try and see what it was. She then started crying and asked me what should we do as she had to run across the creek to her house and her path would take her closer to this thing (we were halfway between my house and hers and about 150ft from her front door). I convinced her that I would follow closely beside her (with some fairly large rocks in hand) and throw them if anything came out of the woods to distract it so she could run in the house.

I told her that once she was in the door (and safer if one could be safe in this situation) to tell her parents and call my mom and dad to let them know that I would be running home asap because of this “thing”. There wasn’t a single sound of anything in the woods it was as if the whole forest went silent. We made it across the bridge and I stood back at the bridge waiting for something to come out.

Once she ran through the door crying I immediately dropped the rocks, turned as quickly as possible and ran faster than I ever had in my life!! I just knew this thing would chase me but prayed it wouldn’t risk coming into the security light on my uncle’s garage and that would give me a little head start and more direct route home. My house was probably 500 feet or so away and trust me my feet were kicking my butt as I ran so desperately fast. We had a 4 foot fence at the edge of our yard and I distinctly remember leaping over it in one stride and just my left hand grazing the post to control my trajectory. I ran through my back door and as soon as I could catch my breath enough told my Dad what had happened and to get his gun and a gun for me so we could go help them. He insisted I couldn’t go and left without a gun and only a flashlight (he’s a Vietnam veteran). He and my uncle went up on the hill with flashlights and did find the tree but no tracks or “signs” except he could see where something had gone through some of the higher weeds but he couldn’t track it much further in the dark.

He decided it must have been a bear, my cousin and I knew it didn’t sound like a bear. I’ve grown up in the woods and I’ve been 50 feet or less from a black bear, the sound I heard that night was no bear! Growing up I’d heard several stories about bigfoot in my county (2 of which happened within 3-5 miles of where I lived) but were much earlier around 1950-55 (one was told to me by a Baptist preacher and I personally SAW the hair on his arms raise up as he told the story). I had another unexplained episode when I moved to another part of the county after I got married.

My stepson had a fairly large pup that was kept outside and one night in the summer of 1994 the dog started barking and I went outside to see what was the matter as he would not stop barking. I could hear an animal in the edge of the woods just outside of my flashlight’s beam. I yelled at it thinking it might have been a deer or some other animal and it didn’t move. As the dog continued to bark I could hear it rustle around in the leaves occasionally.

Finally I asked my ex-wife to get my Ruger 10/22 (I had a 30 round clip in it). She brought me the gun and once again I yelled at this thing to “get out of here!! or I was going to shoot). When I raised my rifle to fire, it let out a sound like an air brake being let off on an 18 wheeler! I fired off four or five rounds in the general area where I thought it was and I heard it take off toward the end of the house in the tree line still out of my view. It jumped down into the creek bottom and when it jumped it sounded HEAVY.

At some point it jumped on a tree in the creek evidently using it to cross to the other side of the creek and the road way on the other side, when it did this this deadfall tree must have broken because you could hear the loud noise of it breaking (my landlord had arrived by that time and heard it too).

I never once saw what it was nor did I ever have another episode while I lived there. We did however find my stepson’s dog dead two days later (not that next morning but the following day after). I inspected this dog and found NO MARKS on it!! Unless the dog was poisoned (and it was kept in an enclosure) I believe it was either choked or had its neck broken and he was probably a 60-80 lb. Elkhound mix.

Fast forward to 2005 my parents moved to a neighboring county in 1994 and bought a farm, I lived near them on the same 500 acre farm at the time. I had gone out on a date and my girlfriend at the time wanted to see the farm so I brought her to a secluded holler (hollow for everyone else and we were sitting on the tailgate of my truck as she smoked a cigarette it was a moonlit night and the stars were out, it was probably 12:30 a.m. or so and no one lives up this holler, the nearest home was probably a half mile away or more. As we are talking all of a sudden I hear a tree or very large branch break off and fall on the side of the hill about 100 yards from us. Immediately after this tree falls I heard an almost identical “Huff/growl” to the one I’d heard when I was 13 or 14. My girlfriend starts screaming at me to get in and start the truck (which I do) and we tear out of there in a hurry. She was in tears. Needless to say we didn’t go back that night. I came back the next day and located a dead tree branch in the general area that was about 8-10 inches in diameter but Wes it was probably 7-8 feet up on this old dead tree, no human could have reached it AND broken it off and unless a very heavy animal had walked out onto it and caused it to break off it would have taken quite a bit of strength to break something this size as it was dry and very hard, not very brittle or soft.

I saw no tracks but again could tell where something big had been through the area around the tree but then lost any “trail” it might have made within about 30 feet or so as it had rained earlier in the day. In the winter of 2010 (I still live on the same farm) I got home late one night and there are 4 roads which lead into my farm (3 of which are dirt and gravel) I check to see if the shortest route is free of snow and ice so that I know how much time to allow myself to get to work in the morning. It was probably 20 degrees outside so I put on coveralls, gloves, and my hood to protect my face from the wind and set out on this road which is about 2 miles long and there’s only one house located on it and my neighbor who lived there was in the hospital at the time so she wasn’t home. I drove my four wheeler up the road and it was “freezing” as I got to the top of the hill (about halfway to my destination)I heard what sounded like trees being shaken violently and branches breaking etc (over the sound of the ATV), I punched the throttle and rushed through by the noise to my left (about 25-50 feet from the noise as I passed). I got to the other side safely and was seriously worried about having to pass by there again alone. Luckily I passed a truck heading back in the direction toward my farm, I quickly turned around and followed as closely as I could behind that truck.

When I made it back to the top of the hill, I could still hear the trees and branches being shaken savagely as I passed, I did not look back and hurried back home and thankfully was behind the truck the whole way. This incident scared me so badly and made me so angry that I ran in the house and grabbed my mag light, my Taurus Judge and drove my truck back to the top of the hill and although I stayed IN the truck I pointed my headlights and the flashlight directly toward where I’d heard the sounds earlier. I heard nothing, even after turning off the truck for a few minutes. I finally restarted the truck and returned home.

Nothing of note has happened since then, for a year or so after this happened I would occasionally hear wood knocks and could sometimes get “answers” back when I made them, but haven’t done any in recent years. Especially since listening to your show, I don’t want to instigate an interaction in my home that I may regret later, lol. Since listening to your show, I have heard reports of how fast these things have been known to move. I’ve heard stories of 30-40 miles per hour. I thought about that and did some simple calculations to determine how quickly that a Sasquatch might be able to move over short distances, etc.

If their max speed is 30 miles per hour, that means they move at a rate of about 44 feet per second, that means if they are within 50 feet of you they could be on you in slightly more than a second.

It also explains why they are so hard to find after a sighting after just a minute they could be as much as a half mile away! After 5 mins, 2.4 miles, 15 minutes 7.5 miles, 30 minutes 15 miles and so on. No wonder that after a sighting no one can find them. It also explains why most if not all pictures look like a blur/blob. These things could do a 40 yard dash in 2.4 seconds or so!!! It might also help explain why they seem to just “disappear”. I have calculated their speed and I’m working from a physics/kinesiology standpoint at calculating how much force they would need to exert to propel 500 lbs. or more at those speeds. I would really like to get the chance to talk to you and maybe share my encounters with the audience.

Just let me know. Thanks for all that you do to help people deal with their encounters, I know I still have issues with what’s happened to me and I never actually saw the creature. I just hope that somehow someone can manage to prove their existence and somehow protect the general public from them. Anyway, sorry for rambling on, keep up the great work and hope to hear from you soon.”