Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

Sep 19

Sundays Show: The Chewbacca Man

“I have a story in my past that I have never told except to my Dad and best friend, either of whom ever believed me until this week.
My best childhood friend called me this week and said” Remember that weird story you told me about the Chewbacca Man? Well I believe you now buddy!” He had an encounter this past weekend in East Texas and for some reason he’s a believer now!  Let me explain. When I was about 11 years old. My Dad was a land developer in east Texas around Toledo Bend and Sam Rayburn Reservoir. He would buy lake side plots of land and get a surveyor to break it down and Dad would sell the lots. He developed a few campgrounds this way.

I can not disclose the exact location, my dads name or the surveyors name. I wish for the people involved and myself to remain anonymous.
I grew up in a small town in Deep east Texas around the Sabine and Angelina National Forest just above the Big Thicket.

Every so often my Dad would go see the surveyor to discuss business. Mr. W, the surveyor had his office in a small building beside his house.The surveyors house was way outside of town down a FM road in the Sabine National forest. Dad would ask me to come along sometimes because the surveyor had a son about my age. The boy’s name was Tommy James “TJ”. He was really a couple of years younger than me but Dad just thought I would like to come along for the ride. Mr. W and my dad would discuss land and I would go play with TJ. At this time I think I was 11 and TJ was 9. TJ had a dirt pile in his back yard we usually played in. We were playing and TJ suddenly said ” There’s a Chewbacca man that lives down that trail there”, pointing to a thin trail in the back left corner of his back yard. “Do you wanna see it?”, TJ said. I said “Chewbacca lives back there?” “Yes” TJ said, “He’s a Chewbacca man.”

I remember laughing saying, “Ok sure let’s see Chewbacca!” And we started down this little trail behind his house.  I was surprised how far TJ was taking me. It seemed like we walked for a good while when we came on this huge dead fall across the trail. I noticed empty cracker jack boxes and little debbie snack wrappers strewn on the ground in front of the dead fall. TJ said. “this is it, i’ll call him”. TJ let out a long WHOOOOOO howl. I was not even expecting to see anything. I thought we were just going to play make believe even though I had out grown that. TJ was younger and he was a real country kid. He didn’t go to my school. He was just a poor and simple kind of kid but I liked him because we would play with knives and shoot bb guns and bows. TJ let out another “WHOOOOOOO” and I began to hear cracking and foot falls back behind the dead fall. Now this got my attention.

The sound of walking and cracking grew louder. I said “TJ!” What is that? He looked back at me and said “it’s Chewbacca man.”
I took a step back and TJ, looking at the dead fall, in a soft voice said “come on…..come on”  like calling a little puppy.
The noise stopped and I heard heavy breathing…..like a horse…..I though he had called up a horse. A brief edge of relief came off of me. It was a horse. TJ sang “Chew-baaa- kaaaaaaa?” gently calling him again.

A few limbs began to shift and move in the dead fall. It uttered a faint deep word, “Owa” Is what I remember. My moment of relief slipped away and my stomach dropped. This is no horse…. It was then I noticed the silence. My ears were ringing it was so quiet in the woods. But there was something I will never forget. The feel of this thing…..the mass you could feel on the other side of this dead fall…breathing….. “Come on….” TJ sweetly beckoned to it again. I whispered, “Tommy, lets go”

And at that second this thing yelled – SSSSSHHHHHHAAAAAAATTTTTTT!!!!  The sound or word was so percussive it was so massively deep it penetrated my chest! A cold blood fear came over me and I was stunned in place. My eyes widened and I stopped breathing. TJ was still calling the thing……..I felt hot! I felt sick! My heart raced in my ears. TJ was unafraid. Limbs in the dead fall began to move and snap again. I though the thing was coming over the fall…….It hesitated and then  I heard big grunts of breath and the slamming of limbs….Frozen, I listened to the thing raise hell behind that dead fall. It was then flight came over me. As I turned to run. TJ turned and calmly said, ” he doesn’t like you”   I ran! TJ shouted “no wait!” I yelled, “RUN TOMMY!” He yelled “It’s ok….” as he ran behind me.

The thing followed us. By the sound of the crashing brush I realized it was running a wide circle beside the trail…. it seemed about 20 or 30 feet out I saw glimpses of blackness and its legs running and it was big. It was so fast. It sounded like it was getting ahead of me. I began to panic and cry. It was going to cut me off.  I yelled for my Dad! “DADDY!”  I could see the end of the trail into Tommy’s back yard! “DADDY!” I yelled again. And then the thing stopped. instantly. It had chased me all the way back to the house. I ran to the office building where my Dad and the surveyor were. TJ came running in behind me. Out of breath and wimpering, I began telling my dad something was chasing me. TJ said nothing. Mr. W said “Well our neighbor has goats that get out all the time. I bet one of those old nannies got out” Dad could see I was really scared. He laughed and told me to go wait in the truck. I ran to the truck and locked the doors. TJ came slowly walking up to the truck. “I told you there was a Chewbacca man” he said. I rolled down the window. “Tommy! what was that!?” I said. TJ looked at me, ” He’s the boogy man…he’s Chewbacca man”. I rolled the window up and my Dad got in. As we pulled away I saw Tommy walk towards the back of the house. “you ok? you got chased by a goat?” Dad said, petting me. “NO Dad it was not a Goat!” I told him the whole story on the way home but I could tell he did not believe me. He thought a cow or a bull chased me out of the woods.

About 6 months later Dad asked me if I wanted to go to the surveyors house with him and I said “No!”  He was like “ok, just askin” He knew how I felt about that place. I never went back again. That’s it. My Dad passed way in 1998. We never spoke of it again.  I told my best friend this story and he did not believe me either…..until this weekend I got a call. My best friend is a deputy sheriff for a county in East Texas. I now live in the Dallas area.

He was freaking out when he called. He told me to never say a word to any one because he could get fired if any one on his police force found out. We both have good jobs and good standing in our communities. We just can’t come out of the “bigfoot closet” and risk potential negative change to our livelihoods.  I have kept my childhood encounter secret for so long. It’s just been this strange unexpected thing that happened to me those many years ago.

My friend patrols the county at night. He sometimes goes to a stretch of road that is long and strait and very wooded and far from any residential areas. He said its a place guys like to go race and there had been complaints from motorist that these kids racing were driving on the wrong side of the road and were going to kill somebody. So, he has been patrolling that area on Friday and Saturday nights. He backs up into the woods along that road and shuts down and waits to try to catch the racers. He said last Friday night he had backed up in an old dirt road and shut off the lights. He closed his laptop cause it was too bright to see outside. His cruiser is a Tahoe. He said shamefully after about 20 minutes he started to dose off. Then he woke up when a call for another officer came across the radio. He sat up and took a drink of water and when he put the bottle back in the holder he was startled by a dark face staring in his passenger window. He said  there was fog on the window from it’s breath. He said ” Man, I thought I was staring at the face of a devil”. He said the face pulled back in disgust baring it’s teeth and then all he could see was a mass moving in the dark.
He hit the lights! He said ” I hit every light on that cruiser” Then through the window he saw the black mass moving towards the back of the cruiser. 

He looked in his rear view and saw its back as it walked calmly away from the lights. He said it was covered in hair and was well taller than the Tahoe. He thought about 7 feet but looked stooped.
He hit the gas and tore out out of the dirt road and onto the main road. He turned the tahoe around to face the dirt road again. He hit the siren a couple of times and started down the dirt road at about 10 miles an hour. He had is high beams, his spot light and his cherries on. He scan the area where he was and drove down the road for about a half mile. Nothing. He said he was so scared. He turned back around and headed back to the main road never seeing anything again.The thing was gone.
My friend told me he had never been so frightened in all his life. It creeped him out like nothing he has felt or seen before. The dark face had high cheek bones and its eyes were sunken in and he only saw black shiny marbles in the sockets. The mouth was wide but its lips parted and he saw teeth as it pulled away or stood upright from staring down into the window. It looked angry. He said what really got him was he had no idea how long the thing has been watching him. He couldn’t believe what he saw. He said it was incredible!  He went on and on about how amazed he was that this had happened to him and a thing like this was in Texas or even existed at all. He said unless it was a 7 foot man in a ghillie suit on a deserted road deep in the wood at 11:00PM on a Friday night, then it was a Bigfoot.

I just discovered your website and show this past week. I am not a member. I have never told this to anyone other than the above and my wife. My friend knows I am emailing you but wants no part in it and does not want to be contacted. I just thought you might appreciate the encounters. I’m not saying they were real Bigfoot encounters but then again they might just very well be…”

19 Responses to “Sundays Show: The Chewbacca Man”

  2. Frankie P

    Whoa! That’s a terrible thing to happen to a kid, but a great encounter for us! And his friend’s too! I’m so glad he told his story to you. That “Chewbacca man” is a great tag for bf! That’s the first thing I think of when see some of the pictures, myself.

  3. PATRICK

    Encounter appreciated. Enjoyed the recounting. Must have been so crazy seeing tjs buddy who he calls from the woods. Really makes me wonder. I would not want to have been you. Especially since ‘he’ doesn’t like you. Also sounds like tj was fattening-up the furry guy.

  5. Dawn O

    Both of those stories are so scary!! esp the part abt a bigfoot staring at him through the window….I can imagine how scared I’d be knowing that there’s a simple pane of glass between me and this creature that had fogged up the window and was staring at him. that’s creepy that he didn’t know how long he’d been staring…i can only imagine. I respect their wishes not to come on the show, but I know they’d feel better knowing their among friends. Just Wednesday night, I told 2 ppl in town of my encounter, the police chief whom i work with and a girl whose mom is a friend of mine. i’m not sure either of them believed me, but i felt that if i slowly tell my story to others, that perhaps that’ll give them the courage to tell their stories if they have any.

  6. Steven B

    Hi kids!!! If you have a little friend that asks if you want to “…go see Chewbacca man?”. The answer is “NO! My parents do not allow me to speak or play with damn dirty apes!”. If you see a Chewbacca man, kids, do not approach him. He may not like you. Well, except for lunch. Do not play with Chewbacca man – you don’t know where his hands have been. Dirty, dirty, dirty!

    This has been a Public Service Announcement from SOKS – Save Our Kids from Squatches – and was brought to you today by the letter “R” – RUN!!!

    😉

  7. Steven B

    That was one scary encounter on both counts – for the gentleman when he was a kid and for his friend, the Deputy Sheriff. Thank you for sharing them and I really hope that you both are able to cope with the memory.

    Sincerely
    Steve, RGV TX

  8. Tam C

    Note to self, …. never… ever… follow any kids down trails leading to anywhere secluded for the sake of showing me something that is alive. I think TJ really needs to take his dad down that trail and see what happens. Poor kid got the shock of his life. But I do note two things about that incident. 1 – This bigfoot has a serious sweet tooth. And 2 – when you are apprehensive, better yet scared out of your witts BF really doesn’t like it, and he senses it quickly.

    Second encounter, I really hate it when they sneak up on you and your sleeping. Worse yet, he’s already decided he doesn’t like you, and before you wake up. Really Bad night! And the feeling that you don’t know how long he has been there, sets you way back.

  11. diana m

    I guess Chewbacca Man did not like the surprise of a stranger danger with TJ, conveyed his (Chewbacca) annoyance, which Guest amazingly picked up the signals, mistook as his own fear & freaked out.

    If I was Guest, I would make an effort to contact TJ for an update on more stories.

    This is going to be a goody! Thanks, Wes.

  14. Tyler D

    I think goin to do research in East Texas would give me some anxiety. Not just because the sasquatch down there are so aggressive and unpredictable but because there’s just so many things out there that can do you harm or even kill you. A friend’s brother showed me a video of where he lived in East Texas and he was bringing his kids out on the porch n the second he steps outside he realizes there’s a massive rattle snake out there. He ended up getting a recording of him trying to shew this thing off with a broom n the thing was just huge. I’m not totally sure it wasn’t a python in disguise haha. That would scare the crap out of me not so much for my sake but because his kids play out there on a daily basis. Apparently that’s just the environment down there. So you kinda always have to be on your toes in the more rural areas of Texas. They’re not kidding when they say “Everything’s bigger in Texas”.

  17. Papa - Yeti

    Thanks for calling this encounter in and scaring the hell out of me…

    -I am sure that it was not the case, not the intention of the younger country kid ‘TJ’, the surveyor’s sun, (but if Stephen King got a hold of this for a book idea), the kid could have been bringing Chewbacca – man free lunches… -(In a Creative fictional horror kind of way: – He doesn’t like you! In fact I don’t like you either! And I am all out of cracker Jacks! Sidney!!!)…

    -Stay safe and if you have to shoot one, make it huge and make it count, Thanks for sharing these encounters and I am looking forward to you joining the Sasquatch Chronicles forum.

    -And if anyone’s car or rig breaks down upon a remote Texas highway: Then you best climb into the glove-box and wait for help to never arrive.

  18. Jason E

    Thank you. This was a thing that happened to me as a child. The humor you guys are bringing to it cracks me up. As an adult I have laughed at this too. But It was a very real thing.
    If circumstances are just right….on a quiet property, where a little country kid lives and plays in the woods everyday….and an unexpected playmate starts trying to gently communicate. And the only thing the child knows to communicate with is one of his favorite sweet snacks…. a relationship is born….
    I think I stumbled upon this… because TJ trusted me and wanted to show me his friend. He told me to ‘WAIT!” But I was so scared, I ran! I have always wondered if I would have waited……what would have happened…..what would I have seen….who would I have met?
    I know it sounds crazy but I believe what chased me out of the woods was a Sasquatch and it and TJ had been meeting there enjoying a box of cracker jacks….in the deep woods of East Texas….and nobody knew……..

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