My first encounter occurred when I was a child on a cross country trip with my father. My father was a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force and was being reassigned from a Base here in Maine to a Base in California.
My mom and sister took a flight while my father and I drove. On the way there, we camped instead of paying for a hotel room. I was about 5 years old and this was one of my only memories of that age. One night we made it to a camp site in an unpopulated area of the Country. I can’t specifically tell you what state it was in. My father made a fire as it was already dark. We were the only people camping in the area as far as I could tell. Almost immediately after the fire was started, we heard rustling in the woods next to us. My father kept looking into the woods as he made us dinner. He seemed genuinely alarmed as the noises clearly came from something large.
I went to bed and was awoken by an intense guttural growl by our tent. My father pulled his service pistol out and unzipped the tent. He told me to stay put but I was curious. I sat in the opening of the tent and saw my father standing there stunned. Beyond him was a hairy beast standing feet taller than my father who is about 5’10”. The eyes is what I remember the most. They were huge. My father held the pistol in his hand, but looking back at it, we would have needed a bigger gun. That is why my father lowered his pistol. As soon as that happened, the creature turned around slowly and vanished. My father told me it was a bear initially. Later in life I asked him about that incident. My father was involved in military intelligence and it was clear he knew something but could not tell me. He just told me to “question everything”. I have since been estranged from my parents.