A listener writes “I just recently started listening to your podcasts. They help me get through the work day.
Why I’m emailing you is because I would like to discuss my “encounters”, I say it like because I’ve never really saw a Bigfoot before. So let’s cut to the chase. Around July 2012, I was freshly out of high school. My cousin and I went canoeing, with the intentions of camping. The place we camped was only accessible by water that I know of. I do not know the exact location but we were in the Jackson canal fulton area. The section of the river had a strong current to it.
So strong when I got out of the canoe it carried me down stream a mile. Anyways when I got out of the canoe the water-was chest deep on me. When I finally got to back to the canoe. We carried it up hill I wanna say 45 yards. We set up all our stuff put the canoe behind the tent. Built a fire because I was soaked and the sun was going down and we still hadn’t ate, we sat around the fire talked and then went to bed. I don’t know why but 4:36 am flashed in my head and it still does to this day. What happened next I can’t really come to grips with on how it happened. It was like i was in a twilight zone, and I heard something cross the river in three steps, and it went silent for a minute.
It was a creepy silent, like when a predator is near by. This sense of fear came over me like I’ve never felt before. I saw this massive shadow outside my side of the tent in what moonlight we had. I was like okay someone is messing with us. Then it let out this gut wrenching scream. It rattled me good. I tried waking my cousin up but he was out cold. I thought for sure I was going to die, I made peace with god, and closed my eyes and started to pray, because I was like this is it. All of a sudden it went silent. I stayed up shaking the rest of the night when my cousin finally woke up, he asked what happened and I tried to tell him, but I couldn’t speak because I was still so rattled. He opened the tent up all of our camping gear was thrown everywhere and the canoe was in a tree. It still bothers me to this day.
December 30th 2017 my cousin and I went to salt fork to see hosacks cave. We got the cave and the same feeling of fear came over me. I didn’t see anything or hear anything but I felt as if we were being watched. My cousin turned to me and asked me do you smell that? I replied we gotta go now, and we ran down that hill like the devil himself was nipping at our heels. We got in the truck and tore out of there as fast as he could shift gears. No one believes us when we tell them that story. I’m afraid to go back but at the same time I want too.”
Avis B
Oh wow … I am so sorry this happen to you.. I hope Wes can talk to you and help you in some way.. Time will help.. but I know that me saying it will not.. Take one day at a time.. I believe you..
Barbara W
I believe you. Interesting how many times there are caves nearby.
Wolf
“I smell smoke… forest fire?… seems to be coming from acrost the creek… what the hell is that? A tent!? … damn… its more of dem little bald guys… leavin their messy stuff everywhere… so much crap, gotta watch where i step… AAAAAAAAARRRRGHH! … them coals is still hot, me poor toe… whoops woke One up, he’s mutterin to hisself, I hears him… what’ll I do? Mebbe toss their crap aroun… that’ll learn em… damn humans, why can’t they stay in the city?”
Shirley S
Barbara, Bigfoots do seem to like karst areas, but contrary to popular belief, they aren’t using the caves. Most people assume the underground is largely unknown and unexplored. Not true! There are active groups of cavers in every state who as well as visiting known caves, work hard to find new ones (which these days often means find a hole blowing air and start digging to see if it opens out, so you can squeeze in because , alas, most of the caves with comfortably sized entrances have been found already!). We explore and often survey and map the caves. Locations are kept in databases. If a bigfoot can get in, it’s likely we’ve been there, too. When we survey, we crawl into everywhere we can fit, so there aren’t hiding places we would miss. Cave also typically have a lot of mud, squishy, sticky deep mud. There’s no weathering, so unless they’re in an area that floods, foot prints literally can last, have lasted, thousands of years. I’ve been in over 500 caves in the southeast alone. I always looked for signs of Bigfoots in them. Nothing. I only two if two Bigfoot cave visits. A caver in Arkansas ran into a BF in the entrance area of a cave, and a really angry BF followed a friend and me into a cave one but he stopped when the daylight from the entrance didn’t reach any further (and just threw rocks down the passage). That’s it. I know of no other encounters with BFs in caves, nor do any other cavers I know. Also telling, I think, we would often be paced by wood-knocking and the sound of trees being pushed over(the latter just over the ridge line), but they always stopped when we reached the cave, they never messed with the packs and stuff we left outside the cave, and they never paced us as we left the cave, even if we continued down the cove to another cave. I think once they knew what we were up to, they didn’t worry about us anymore. I won’t say never, but if they do, it’s likely an entrance area with a floor they can sweep free of footprints. They may use rock shelters or boulder-filled crevices (those aren’t true caves). By the way, that dreadful stench and those horrible noises coming from a cave or crevice that sometimes scares the bejeebers out of people? Turkey buzzards! Carrion projectile vomiting buzzards!
Charles R
Dang Shirley S, that is some great and useful information. I never suspected they used caves much for the simple reason it would be an easy place to get trapped in by humans with guns. Maybe short stays during storms.
This Dec. 30 at Salt Fork was one cold day. I doubt anyone else was out there. It is amazing this area, it gets a lot of traffic once warmer weather hits, but the encounters still keep coming.
Ben H
Oh my goodness, Shirley S!!(that was my grandmother’s name by way)
I was digging some test holes for artifacts in the openings of two side by side caves once. In the second I started hearing what sounded like wind blowing through the cave somewhere. It got louder and I finally started to get a little nervous since it was beginning to sound like heavy laboured breathing.
I stood and pulled out my pistol thinking big cat, when all of a sudden an almost fully grown young buzzard came charging out of the darkness, wings spread and making the most good awful vomiting sound!
I took one too many steps backwards trying to get away and slid, rolled, fell, and tumbled 30 feet down into a small creek.
Scared the bejeebus out of me!!
Cynthia S
I believe you too. Sorry this happened to you, very scary. I have only camped once in the wilderness, Boundary Waters, MN, and after reading all the camping horror stories on this site, I have no desire to go back. Take care my friend. ?
Shirley S
To the listener who shared his story, I’m sorry you went through that! What a terrifying night! The scream alone, that close,would have been bad enough without having to hear the thing trashing your camp!
Ben, ouch! It’s never a good thing to hear something charging out of the darkness at you! I know more than one caver who has wriggled into a tiny entrance passage of a cave, and with only room in the passage to belly crawl, come face to face with a couple of panicked Turkey buzzards, flapping and vomiting and trying to get out!
I had to laugh about your grandmother also being a Shirley. I’ve heard that so many times! And my ex-husband’s grandmother was a Shirley, too! I seriously don’t know what my parents were thinking. My Dad started a family later in life than is typical, though, and I suspect I owe my name to his childhood crush on Shirley Temple.
Charles, you make a good point about the potential to get cornered in a cave. There are a lot of reasons limesone caves don’t make great Bigfoot homes. Besides absolute darkness, deep pits, unstable rocks, small passages and so on, caves are humid and damp. Organic material grows thick mold over it very quickly. Breathing in the spores of the aspergillus fungus that lives in damp decaying organic matter or histoplasma fungus that sometimes lives in bat guano or bird droppings (birds sometimes live on the bluffs some cave entrances are found in) can result in serious, potentially life threatening, respiratory infections. Overall, limestone caves just don’t make a great home. Once you get beyond the daylight/entrance zone, very few insects or animals make their homes there. It’s mostly bats,cave crickets, salamanders, crayfish, and the occasional cave spider.
Sandstone shelters would offer fewer obstacles, are often less accessible to humans, and tend to have multiple entrances. It’s possible Bigfoots use some of that type of shelter out west. I don’t know much about them.
Shirley S
Charles, I just realized you’re the one who shared your experience above…after I addressed you twice in my post! Lol! Sorry about the confusion.
I’ve heard so much about Salt Fork and its often cranky Bigfoots. It sounds like a pretty area, though! Stay safe!
Stephanie G
This entire conversation was scary and enlightening too. Thanks to all involved. Vomiting vultures?! I had NO idea!
Shirley S
Turkey vultures (the type with the red heads) regurgitate at the slightest stress. Black vultures (the buzzards with the black heads, of course) don’t have quite such a hair-trigger response, but they do it pretty readily, too. I just thought I’d mention it since I’ve seen so many websites and YouTube videos linking the stench and sounds coming out of some caves to Bigfoots when it’s more likely buzzards.