The witness last night and he does a great job describing the sheer size of the creature and how it just stood there looking at them. The creature then walked into the water and started swimming towards the boat. The witness describes the creature as a tall, hairy like man about 7 feet tall.
The witness writes “My father and I were night fishing for bass on Cherokee Lake on a bluff behind Panther Creek State Park. There are deer all in that park and we heard something walking in the woods and initially we thought it was a deer, but as it was getting closer we could tell it wasn’t a 4 legged animal walking, it was bipedal.
We made eye contact because where this area was no person would be walking at night without a light so this began to capture more and more of our attention. This area was very steep, hence the “bluff” name of this area so it wouldn’t be safe to be walking there at night without a light. At one point it what ever it was fell and it sounded like someone fell and landed on their back and made a noise like getting your breath knocked out of you.
We were using a black light for fishing which provides very little light but the black light I had also had a “white light” on it to light up structure on the shore so we could see outlines but no detail. This “thing” walked out to the edge of the water and we were both on extremely high alert at this point and it starts wading out towards us and since it was so steep there it was in deep water very quickly and I started to dig out the spot light and hook it up and my dad yanked the trolling motor up and said to get out of here!!
All I can say is that it was walking on 2 legs, very big frame, and a good swimmer. I cranked the motor and gave it all of the gas it had, (I had a 19 ft bass boat with a 150 hp motor), so we were out of there quickly. We rode about a mile or so down the lake and we just stopped and sat there, didn’t talk, but we were shook up. We couldn’t fish or didn’t want to fish anymore that night so we left. That was in the early 80’s and to this day when I ask my dad what he thought that was and he will say I don’t want to know.”