Allen writes “I was born in 68 my father was a well know game warden and we were from northwest Alabama. In 1976 when I was 8 years old we attended the Bicentennial Celebration and Fireworks Show in Gatlinburg TN and we stayed in the mountains that first week in July.
Arriving I believe the 1st and enduring the rain, I played beside our cabin at the woodpile with my little 4×4 trucks. I did this daily around sunset. Before we ate. The 2nd and 3rd day I remembered smelling and reporting to dad this rotten smell and it was chalked to maybe previous campers had dumped food. Anyway the night of the 3rd I again played outside I again smelled the smell and after some time close to dusk I remembered observing a hair covered arm behind a tree then part of a head peeking around about 120-140 feet from me up the hill in the forest. I remember calmly going inside though my heart hammered – and telling my dad please come out and bring his gun that something was watching me. He kinda reluctantly did so and I positioned myself back where I was with him behind me, and soon noticed the arm still almost same spot.
I lined him up over me and told him look at the last big oak before the clearing and to keep watching. Soon he squinted, cleared his expression squinted again and then just turned almost white, eyes big taking in a breath. He brought his service revolver up straight out. It was then this thing BOLTED out of the wood line up through the clearing (a clearing of about 120 feet for the power lines to run up the mountain) and it headed away up the mountain. I remember it’s 2nd and 3rd stride maybe it was kicking up rocks and dirt and mud and showering our cabin even as far away as it was. This thing sprinted up a 30 – 40 degree slope faster and more effortlessly than can be imagined. It hit the next woodland, some smaller pines/trees and brush and you could see the stuff literally move and fall as it moved through. Dad am expert shot never fired though he trailed it all the way stride by stride until gone. He grabbed my arm and took me inside the cabin. His friend and partner Bill also from Alabama was at a cabin just down the trail from us and dad was on the phone and soon he and a ton of officers.
Some game and fish wildlife forestry and others I couldn’t identify were at the cabin. With many more guns. Through the nite into the 4th, laying castings collecting evidence I suppose, I wasn’t allowed back outside. That night after the fireworks we heard strange howls and noises And I’ll never forget dad telling me not to share what we had seen that we would talk more. When we arrived back him in Alabama he went to a filing cabinet and pulled a file that had black and white pics of deer legs hair tree structures and more plaster cast pictures. Also personal diary type entries. He explained there were things in this world that God put here had been here since bible days but most people didn’t believe that he did but I needed to keep all this our secret to escape ridicule. His file was from the Bankhead forest here in north Alabama. He told me he’d heard the calls, the vocals, seen the evidence, but until that day had never seen one. Anyway that’s about as brief as I can be.”