• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Hello, & a recounting of my most memorable Fortean exper

Patrick30

Devoted Cultist
Joined
Apr 1, 2011
Messages
248
Been lurking a while and thought I'd make a post. This is copy/pasted from my report on a Bigfoot website.
Report Received From: The GCBRO Online Report Submission Form.
Report Posted To GCBRO Web Site On: September 1, 2006
DATE: September 1, 1982
TIME: 8:00 PM
LOCATION: Morgan County, Alabama
TERRAIN: Wooded Creek Bottom bordered by small farms/scattered houses/small fields
OBSERVED: This was vocalization encounter. Exact date and time are approx. It was early fall in the early 1980s. Approximately 2 hr. after sunset. I and a friend was accompanying another friend and his 2 hounds. We were in a pickup truck. We had come down to the site to turn the dogs loose and listen to them run and possibly tree something. We turned the dogs out of the pickup, cracked open a beer, our first, not intoxicated. We started small talk. Within 5 min we heard strange grunting sound off in the distance, from up the creek. Sounded pretty far away, at least over 100 yd., loud enough for us to notice, but fairly soft. We made comments about it as we had never heard anything quite like it and was unsure what it was. The sounds repeated several times approximately 30 sec apart, then stopped. We went on conversing for approximately another couple of min. and all of a sudden, we heard the same sound coming directly from the bushes beside the truck, except extremely loud. No one said anything, just kinda looked at each other with drooped jaws. Then here came the dogs running up and they jumped in the back of the pickup! Without saying a word, we were in that truck and out of there in 2 shakes. We got back to my friends house, discussed what we heard, but we could never convince ourselves what it was. We were all country boys, spent a lotta time in the woods. We'd heard bobcats, coyotes, and all kinds of critters but nothing like that. Bears are very uncommon in those parts. Maybe a stray juvenile wanders through every 5-10 yr. or so by reports. The weirdest thing, other than the quality of the grunts, was the fact that whatever it was covered so much ground through thick bottoms so quickly and noislessly.
Activities of Witness: Just letting the dogs run and idling away an early fall night.
Description of Creature: The sound was unlike anything I've ever heard before or since. I guess best described as rhythmic grunts. We thought it might be someone w/a bullroarer device, but no one knew we were there and how did they get so close w/o a sound? A few years afterward, I brought up the experience w/o of the guys and he said "dang, you remember that too? I thought I dreamed it. Then we went to the guy with the dogs and he denied any memory of it. But me an the other guy absolutely remembered, and our recollections matched exactly.
Other Notes: Hunted, fished, camped, and hiked all my life. This is the only thing I've ever experienced I can't explain.
Other (Informational or Encounter History in the General Area) Notes: One acquaintance who lived in the area cl aims to have seen a "monkey" type creature in the area, approximately 3-4 ft tall foraging along the creek bank. He said he was 11 or 12 yr. old at the time, this would have been several years prior to my experience. I was told of this 2-3 yr. after my experience.
 
Did you return to the area to look for tracks ?
1982 was pre-digital, now there are trailcams/deercams : your acquaintance might have seen a young bigfoot, the sounds you heard could have been a young one inexperienced in encountering humans. Might it be worth rigging up some cameras or sound recorders?
 
Did you return to the area to look for tracks ?
No. Its strange that we kind of self hypnotized ourselves to forget the experience. I only recalled it a year or so later, and asked my friend if he remembered it. He did, but thought he dreamed it. We then went to the guy who owned the pickup and dogs and asked him, and he denied any memory of it whatsoever.

Nowadays the spot is pretty much inaccessible except possibly by canoe. And if you tried that, you'd probably be in for a hard time due to the creek being blocked in several places by numerous tree falls. The small farm on which it is located has been sold, subdivided, and there are 20 houses on the place where their used to be only one. The field road down to the spot (where a small tributary enters the main creek) no longer exists.

In about 1985, I moved away from the area and have only moved back about 4 yrs ago.
My house now is only about a mile from the place as the crow flies.
 
Is there sufficient wilderness close by for a Bigfoot/family to survive in? Extensive woods, hills?
 
Shouldn't this be in the Bigfoot in America thread?

Sounds like there's plenty of water so that creek might be the best bet, due of course to the inaccessibility that makes a trailcam operation unfeasible.
 
My first thought was that it might be a wild boar.
They're sufficiently rare for the sound to be unfamiliar, and they can grow to a huge size - hence the reason why the dogs were scared.
 
Feral hogs are not rare in rural Alabama, Myth; also, they are noisy as all get out. You don't just hear vocalizations; you hear crashing through the underbrush as the herd of porkers devastates the environment all around them.

Grunting isn't a sound I associate with bigfoot, though.

And - sorry - too many people say "I've been doing X forever and never heard/saw anything like this before" and then somebody else with just as much experience comes along and is certain it's something mundane, or the DNA evidence comes back "coyote," for me to take that statement as proving much. Animals exhibit wide ranges of behavior and lots of individual variation. Plus a lot of animals have been changing their ranges during the last 30 years. If you haven't happened to hear an animal making, for instance, courting noises, or contentment noises, or with an abnormal vocal apparatus before then no, it won't be like anything you've ever heard before, even if it's a critter you've heard many times.

In any case, there's no reason to leap to the conclusion it was a single bigfoot rather than a bear (no rarer than bigfoot in the area, surely!), a bunch of different individuals of the same species making similar noises to communicate with each other, or a catawampus for that matter.

The business about hypnotizing yourself into forgetting is very Fortean, however.
 
PeniG said:
Feral hogs are not rare in rural Alabama, Myth; also, they are noisy as all get out. You don't just hear vocalizations; you hear crashing through the underbrush as the herd of porkers devastates the environment all around them.

I had read somewhere that there was no natural wild boar population in Alabama - that they'd been introduced primarily for the purposes of hunting - so I had made the assumption that they were relatively rare.
I guess you are more familiar than me with Alabama, so I bow to your superior local knowledge.
 
Sorry to pt this here instead of the BF area, but it just happened to be about the strangest thing Ive ever experienced.
But to answer a few Qs-
I called it grunts for lack of a better word. Ever heard someone pulling on a lawn mower to start it, but the engine dosnt turn over and run? Or remebmber when motorcycles had kick starters? It was kinda like that too, except the last time up close a lot louder.
Are there any large birds who can make gutteral sounds? Not to my knowledge, but that would explain the silent approach maybe.
There is a good sized Nat forest aprox 20 miles away, with creeks and bottom land corridors that an animal could surely travel undetected.
But really, its more densely populated than most parts of the state, not where you'd really expect to find the big guy.
Feral hogs exist, but not in any large population. Same with bears.
Cyotes are abundant now, but back then were rare and were just beginning to move into the area.

What's more strange was-
How the unfamiliar noise covered so much ground so quickly, it's effect on the dogs and us, and the weird thing that happened to our recollection.
 
Sorry to pt this here instead of the BF area, but it just happened to be about the strangest thing Ive ever experienced.

I wouldn't worry about that, after all there's nothing to suggest that it was a bigfoot.

One thought though is could it have been two separate animals in two locations calling to one another rather than a single individual moving silently.

As for birds while I've got no idea what species you have there in Alabama, but relatively small birds can make loud noises, add to that the chance of there being one or more birds completely out of their normal range.
 
One thought though is could it have been two separate animals in two locations calling to one another rather than a single individual moving silently.

That could be a very real possibility.
 
Hello Patrick30.

Thank you for posting your encounter. I'm a big fan of tales of old sasquatch. Can I ask a question, though?

You say that you're familiar with the fauna of the woods and spent a lot of time outdoors, so what was it that made you high-tail it out of there when you heard this grunting? And if you thought it might be someone with a bullhorn, wouldn't you be more curious than scared? I'm certainly not suggesting you aren't a brave individual, just that on that day you went from hearing a noise to racing away without even pausing and watching to see if anything appeared from the safety of the pickup.
 
maxley said:
Hello Patrick30.

Thank you for posting your encounter. I'm a big fan of tales of old sasquatch. Can I ask a question, though?

You say that you're familiar with the fauna of the woods and spent a lot of time outdoors, so what was it that made you high-tail it out of there when you heard this grunting? And if you thought it might be someone with a bullhorn, wouldn't you be more curious than scared? I'm certainly not suggesting you aren't a brave individual, just that on that day you went from hearing a noise to racing away without even pausing and watching to see if anything appeared from the safety of the pickup.

I think it must have been the reaction of the dogs. No words were spoken, we just GTFO. Why? I have often asked myself the same question. I do remember the look on my friend's face when the dogs jumped whimpering into the back of the truck. Pure fear. The WTF speculation came a few min later after we had left. Then the mysterious "forgetting". Prob the strangest aspect.
 
Back
Top