A listener writes “I wanted to relate to you a sighting I had as a child in Tahlequah Oklahoma. My mother originally from California was adopted by a couple who lived in this area.
It is a beautiful region with the Illinois river literally in there back yard. We live in the central part of the state and as a child we would go and visit my grandpa Pete and his wife. They lived a cabin that they had built because Grandpa Pete was a Cherokee elder so everyone in the area was of Cherokee decent. This place was a kids paradise. On the day I saw the Man at the river I was 11 and my brother 13 we had went to play in the old cabin they moved out of a few years back.
As I said you could see the river from the old cabin. We were just being kids and playing when my brother said look at the guy by the water. I finally figured out what he was looking at that’s when I noticed it was covered in hair it was about 100 yards away so detail is tough. My thought never went to bigfoot as I didn’t know what that was at the time Im now 48. Being a smart ass kid this guy was clearly on my grandpas property so I yelled HEY. This is where it all went south this man turned and screamed like the sounds I heard on the Jurrasic Park episode in east Texas.
Then it bolted running down the tree line eventually disappearing. I really just thought it was a person so we started back playing as kids do when out of no where the neighbor come running to us ordering to get to the cabin. Once we got inside Grandpa Pete and the guy went back outside. They were speaking Cherokee so I had no clue. When Grandpa Pete returned he asked what we saw so we both told him the same thing. We were not aloud past the first cabin for the whole weekend when asked who the guy was he said the river belongs to them right now so don’t go down there they are just passing through. We went back a few more times to visit but after grandma past we never saw grandpa Pete again I suspect my mom had issues with them. I have no idea what we saw but my brother and I both still talk about it.”
Ulrike H
Wow, thanks for sharing.
Denise F
Apparently Grandpa Pete and his neighbor knew alot about them. I wonder if the creature saw the kids but wasn’t bothered until they yelled ?
ROBERT M
My dad grew up in that part of Oklahoma on the farm in the 20’s thru the 40’s. He says they never saw anything cryptid and they hunted and fished all the time, day or nite. But he said whitetail were pretty much extinct in most of Oklahoma due to so much of the population was rural and everyone hunted regardless of game laws, so pressure on deer herd was extreme. Of course not the case since the demise of the small family farm in the post WW2 decades. Now a big buck in most of OK is considered a runt by most other states standards there are so many whitetail now. I do believe sasquatch need a fairly dense deer herd for them to stay in an area long. The loss of the whitetail herd in his growing-up years probably explains why he and his sibs didnt have any encounters. They have no qualms about telling stories of their moonshining and etc so I dont believe they would hesitate to relate a good sasquatch/booger story.