The West Wing and Parks and Recreation star made the startling claim in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, as part of a discussion about his new paranormal reality series The Lowe Files (think The X-Files meets Keeping Up With The Kardashians).
Filming the show, Lowe says he had a scarily close encounter with a “wood ape” in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.
“We had an incredible encounter with what locals call the wood ape … I’m fully aware that I sound like a crazy, Hollywood kook right now.”
Lowe says he was “genuinely terrified” by the encounter: “I was lying on the ground thinking I was going to be killed.”
A “wood ape” is local Arkansas terminology for what’s more commonly known as a Sasquatch or Bigfoot: A large, humanoid ape said to roam remote forest areas in the US. Despite occasional unverifiable sightings over the years, the existence of such a creature has never been proven.
Lowe describes what happened when the animal approached his camp during filming:
“We’re 100 miles from the nearest town. We spent 45 minutes on the most rugged, brutal mountain trails. It’s one in the morning. There are a lot of serious former military men with loaded weapons, then something starts approaching our camps that is defying their orders to stop and their warnings that [they were] armed.”
Asked if viewers will actually get to see the mythical ape on screen, Lowe was coy.
“I don’t want to oversell as a results-oriented show, although we have incredible results,” he teased. He also said making the show had turned him into a staunch believer of ghosts: “Our first episode is about poltergeists in one of the most notoriously haunted structures in America. Nothing is staged, nothing is trick-cut — no B.S.”
The truth, as they say, is out there.