Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:28 I shot a Skunk Ape!
Episode Date: April 21, 2014A listener contacted the show and said he never believed in these creatures until he came face to face with one in the Florida swamp. After the creature "Screamed and Roared" at him he became terrifie...d and shot it twice in the chest and ran for his life. The listener said he wasn't sure what kind of a creature he was looking at but the beast was massive and appeared to be half ape and half man like. We will also be having a few other guest including a Native American who will be sharing his Sasquatch encounters with us.
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When I had come down this hill, I had seen this creature cross the road.
They would have ripped my locked door from my truck, extracted me from my vehicle,
and there wouldn't have been a damn thing I could have done about it.
Look, this thing I got to notice in its eyes.
his eyes. His eyes was real, real evil, real sinister looking. You know, the look it was given me.
And what are you reporting? What on now, sir?
That's sort of a bitch is about six foot. Yes, I'm looking right here. Uh-oh.
Welcome to Bigfoot Hot Spot Radio, Sasquatch Chronicles. I'm your host, Wes, along with my brother
Woody, and researcher, author, and friend, William Jeffey. Let's start the show.
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Not a whole lot in the big foot world that we're interested in anyway right now,
just getting our own stuff together and plugging away as usual.
Yeah, we got some big things coming up in the works,
hoping one of these frying pans overboils, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
I know a lot of people on Facebook were saying that.
They're interested in the show, been waiting for us to do a show like this.
And these guests are hard to come by, you know, the ones that actually have shot one.
A lot of times it's tough to get those guys to talk about it.
Yeah, most people won't.
You know, they're very reluctant thinking they may have shot something that would get them in trouble,
not necessarily human, but, you know, because of different game laws and things.
Should we mention the...
I still like to do our expedition in July and take a few of our listeners.
And, again, if you want to donate to that, $10.
always get your name in the hat.
You can send money to Bigfoot Hotspot Radio at gmail.com through PayPal,
and then the amount you'd like to send.
So, yeah, as far as the drawing goes, we'd like to do the drawing
and take some of our listeners out on an expedition here in the Pacific Northwest
to a lot of these different areas and also possible burial sites.
If you want to send, we're going to do it through a drawing,
and we're doing it for $10, get your name in the hat.
The way to send money is through PayPal,
and from that transaction,
we can actually pull up your information
and use it in the drawing.
If you'd rather just send a donation
to want to be a part of the expedition,
that's okay too.
Money's always welcome.
I'm looking forward to it.
I'm looking forward to doing the expedition.
Yeah, I think it'd be a lot of fun to get to see
if you get interesting things.
Yeah, it'd be a blast.
But who do we have coming up on the show?
Will. We have Dave.
Let's bring Dave on.
Hey, how you doing, Wes? I feel like I know you already, so you have to get to know me,
but I've listened to everything you've done.
I think what we should do is just have you, you know, tell us a little bit about your background
and then we'll just go from me.
I am a military brat. My father was a chief foreign officer in the military in charge of
missiles. Let's just put it that. I've been.
to every state in the United States except for three.
I've been to Alaska, Canada, and I've been overseas.
I was in California when I was six years old, five and six years old.
From there, we moved to Alaska, which I stayed in Alaska for three and a half years.
I believe I was just turning 10 when we left.
From there, we moved to El Paso, Texas for six months, which was New Mexico.
my father was on McGregor Range and White Sands Missile Range.
We stayed there for six months, left back to, we actually went back down to Homestead,
I'm originally from Homestead, Florida.
My first encounter with anything close to a Bigfoot was probably in California with the fact
that there was a guy that used to take me on his motorcycle.
besides the MPs picking me up.
At five and six years old, I was always gone.
My parents couldn't, you know, back then you were allowed to play outside.
And as soon as I got outside, I was in the woods somewhere, you know.
And the mountains, basically, I would guess you would say.
Not a lot of trees, big trees, but where we were at,
You could climb to the top of the southern hill behind the basin.
You could see the bridge, the San Francisco bridge.
But on the other end, that's where it was a little more mountainous and trees over there, the bigger trees,
which I believe they were some kind of pines.
I'm not sure I was very young.
The guy that took me on the motorcycle all the time, we found deer hanging in a tree.
I don't know exactly how many there were, but I was.
would say five were hanging in the trees.
They weren't hanging from the trees.
Something had set them up in there, and they were laying over branches,
and possibly, you know, maybe a cougar, maybe a squar.
Maybe a squatch.
Don't know.
That would be my first.
Next would be we moved to Alaska.
Again, my father, you can take the country boy out of the country,
but you can't take the country out of the country boy.
he was in the woods every minute he wasn't working.
We were in the woods either hunting or fishing.
He was hunting at snares or rabbits.
You know, you have the snowshoe rabbit up there, which is a good-sized rabbit.
The first thing that I would say happened to us, there was two kids with me, and I don't remember their names at the time,
but we were probably eight years old, and we were in these three foxholes.
They had made where they were in the ground.
And the only thing you could see sticking out of the ground basically was, like, I would say it was a round, almost cylinder type of foxhole, almost a bunker, but no concrete.
Right.
And at the top, you would see, guesstimating, because I was young, there was probably a six-to-eight-eight-eight-inch, o-year-old.
all the way around except for there was a couple little spots where the dirt was on top.
I believe there was plywood with dirt on top of it because the door going into these was plywood.
And it was probably a mile behind the elementary school, which those woods went all the way to the mountains from behind the school.
You could go all the way to the mountains if you wanted to, which were probably,
70 miles away. If I had to guess, I don't know I'd have to look on a map, but nothing but
woods behind our schools. And that's where I stayed all the time. We were in these foxholes,
playing war or whatever it was. We had BB guns. And I seen something outside in one of the
openings put what looked like to me a black, furry, hairy hand that was clinging. That was clinging.
like a fist, down, and I seen something black.
But by the time I had seen the fish go down, I thought it was a bear.
But, you know, bears have claws.
This looked like a fist.
It's off of it, like a bear has hair coming off of its leg, similar to that.
But it all happened so fast that I never saw the face itself.
I'd just seen something black look like it was looking in.
We were already trying to scatter and get out of there.
Never saw it.
It never bothered us.
I'm not sure what it was, but that would be my next encounter.
After that would be we set snare lines.
You would set snares on the rabbit's trails.
You could see it in the snow.
I'm probably 20 to 30 feet apart in a line.
And you might have 30 or 40 snares in this line, and you would walk that line the next day.
after you set them, pick your rabbits out.
Well, occasionally we had these little weasels up there that called ermine that were white in the winter and they were weasel color in the summer.
Occasionally they would take your rabbit, you know, chew it up, two it and a half or something, maybe lynx or if the wolves found them or the bear found them, everything was gone.
You couldn't.
Something had, you have to understand a snare is a wire that hangs down with a small loop.
Basically, very thin wire, and as it gets tight, it won't come back loose, and it tightens around their neck and strangles them.
They strangle themselves.
It's pretty quick and main actually.
Something had pulled exactly how many rabbits there was.
The rabbit's heads, by grabbing the wire and pulling on the rabbit, it would pinch the head off of the rabbit.
Now, only a human or something with hand.
could do this.
So there were no human tracks.
There was actually
recently or what
really no disturbance
around them. You know, you have eagles
will come in and they'll grab them once in a while,
but then you might find a feather,
but they scatter everything right there. They eat it
right where they fly down on it,
you know?
Right. So something had plucked
rabbits by holding
the wire and pulling on them
and pop. I know it's your
years ago, but do you remember what your dad's comments were when he saw the rabbit's heads
popped off?
I don't remember.
My dad was the kind of person that I was taught to not be afraid of anything.
The only story my father ever told me was about he had seen the creature from the Black
Lagoon when he was young, and him and a couple buddies had this little John boat with this
one horsepower shears and rowboat motor on it.
and they had a camp in North Carolina, and he was from Plymouth, North Carolina,
and they were driving to their camp, and they were probably 14 years old,
and a log, every time he gunned it, it felt like something, it would start to go
and then pull back on them.
You know, one horsepower motor isn't going to pull you.
They thought the creature from the Black Lagoon had them.
That's the only story my dad really ever told me as far as,
as anything, he might have said something to the effect of, you know, it could have been,
I don't remember exactly what it was.
My dad was probably just cussing.
So I don't know exactly.
And remember, I'm still in the eight, eight, nine years old.
Yeah.
But in the same breath, like I said, he was very military, very, uh, uh,
Army man, 100%, you know, spit shot in my boots at 5 o'clock in the morning before I go to work, son, polish your belt buckle, you know, make sure everything is spiffy.
That's the kind of guy he was.
He never, I never heard him say anything really to the effect of anything while I was young until I got older.
He did say one time, and I never knew what boogers were, but being from North Carolina, you know,
They call them boogers there.
Probably the whole South called them boogers until somebody invented Bigfoot.
And then, you know, more educated people, probably, core southerners.
I'm saying one time because they have military bases outside the military bases.
It's an alpha, beta, Charlie, Delta, and then an E was something.
I don't remember exactly what it was.
And we would either drive or fly in.
into them. My dad would take me in helicopters
with them. You got to understand
in the military, everybody
is, it's very
camaraderie kind of
everybody, you know,
they would stick me on a cargo plane
and fly me somewhere to visit a
friend, you know what I mean? It was
very
buddy system.
Yeah. Anyways, he never really said anything
except for, I asked him one time why there was
such a tall fence
with the dogs. They had two fence.
and the fence was probably 16 foot high around each one of these sites.
I asked him, you know, why it's such a high fence and he told me to keep the bears and boogers out.
You know, that's probably the only thing I remember him saying until I was older.
Jump ahead to, we went to Greece and we came back.
I was 14 when we got back.
We lived in Enterprise, Alabama, which is outside of Fort.
Woods there are, you can drive forever and you're on.
and you're on military land again.
14 years old, I'm very seasoned in the woods.
My encounter there, 1, 2 o'clock in the morning,
whenever they close, they drive home.
And I'd play games, you know, out there and shoot pool.
And my dad wants to take a deer on the way home for me.
I think we killed just about,
with the exception of what he did for the taxidermy from his friend's son.
My dad, being country, he was very into the side of the road.
on the way home. We're on military
land where probably maybe
my dad tells me to get out and wait
for him to come back and go ahead and gut the deer.
I always carried a 45
pistol whenever I would go into the woods.
We had military rounds, and I practiced with
a 45 until I was flew in the face.
Pulled the deer into the woods and gutted it and waited
for my father to come back.
Probably an hour. And I hear
cracking and when something
steps on branches or something
snaps a branch, it's kind of a different.
sound. You know what I mean? It snaps a branch on the ground. You hear everything with it being
snapped. When they snap something in the air, it's just a queen crisp. It's coming within maybe 20 yards.
Couldn't see. I had no light. It was snapping branches and imitate the noises.
Things sounds, I want to say, maybe some kind of wolfing. I don't remember if I thought that they had
bears in Alabama or not. I don't remember thinking about that. But I've been in.
I was used to bears, and I never had bears come in and huff.
I never charged by any bears in Alaska.
I'm sitting here, and my dad is still not back, and this thing is, I want to say circling, but not quite circling,
just hovering outside of where I could see anything because it's dark, but you can see in the dark fairly well.
You know what I mean?
But it was thick where he was at, so I could not see anything.
Apparently my dad had forgotten where I was and had been driving the wrong road looking for me.
And when he came back by, you can bet that I was running out to that truck when I realized it was him because he passed by me real slow.
And I'm screaming, Dad, Dad, Dad, because I had no idea what this is.
So, mind you, that was my last encounter in Alabama.
My mom and dad were getting a divorce.
I was 15 turning six.
My mom and dad were getting a divorce.
So I went to live with my friend in Florida, who happened to be one of my dads because it was getting pretty hot and heavy with the divorce and all.
I didn't want to be a burden, and it was easier for me to do that.
My mother, you know, thought it came down in the Everglades, but on the east side of the Everglades.
And back then it was snake hunting because we would snake hunt at night.
Night on these roads, we would wash out cinnamon sinkholes.
And when you get stuck in these, there's no bottom.
So whatever, whatever, if you don't have a full-wheel drive, and we actually were not in a full-wheel drive at the time,
the side of the truck fell into one of these sinkholes, which is like a sludge and limited slipper.
And so we said, what the heck, let's dump the dogs here.
We'll sit here, you know, and wait, and we'll go there.
So we're sitting on the tailgate.
We've led, we had four of them with us.
We let them out.
They take off.
They bail.
They're probably gone.
I'd say 10 minutes.
And again, and remember, I'm going.
on a coral walk, drive at night without headlights on these things, with no moon.
They glow in the dark, basically.
So you see things pretty well, especially any, as long as there's not trees hanging over.
There was smaller vegetation.
It wasn't the tall.
And I hear the pitter-patter of feet sounded like many horses coming at us.
And I thought, oh, my gosh, what's wrong?
You know, what happened?
I ever seen them run in my life.
Coming down this Coral Rock Road, I thought they were racing against each other.
At first, I didn't know what the heck the dogs were doing.
I thought they were playing.
But they never stopped until they hit that dog box in the back of the truck,
and we could not get them out.
They would not come out of the box.
These are dogs that, you know, if they ran into a bear, they would, you know, chase the bear.
They ran into cats, the Panthers.
They would chase a panther.
No problems.
They're not going to run from any animals that I know of.
We could not get these dogs out of the box.
Wimpering in the back of the box, I got mad trying to snatch them out to get them to go do something
because we're going to have to sit there anyways, you know.
Could not get those dogs to hunt the rest of the night.
Could not get them out of the dog box.
Anyways, fast forward, we're out.
It's probably 2.30 at night.
We're driving out of there.
in the headlights.
I'm telling my friend's dad
that these eyes
are looking like they're up high and
wide apart.
The only thing that would have
eyeshine of red
in that particular area
was whippoorwilled
and they're not very big
and the eyes are close together
and we called them bull bats
but it's a wipper wheel
as most everybody else knows them.
That would have been the only thing
that had red.
I shine.
Well, as we got closer, my eyes are trained on this, and I'm watching it, and I'm starting
to see a slight outline.
Basically, it looked like, have you ever seen how a kid will put their feet together
at the bottom of a swing set and lean off of it with their arm holding it?
That's what it looked like to me when all of a sudden it looked like it made one leap,
touch the edge of the road and then gone.
So I'm telling my friend, you know, to my friend's dad, I'm saying, you know,
there had to be a bear.
What else, you know, would be that high?
When we pulled up to the tree where it was, I couldn't, I'm 5-11 and I'm pretty athletic.
I couldn't jump up and touch the branch.
That's how tall up the branch was.
And I would say this thing's eyes were maybe a foot under it.
So you're talking probably eight foot at the time, maybe a little higher.
But I would say a good eight foot.
Now, I don't know if it was up the tree just a smidget or not.
The only thing that I could barely make out was the outline of something looked like it was kind of hanging off the tree.
It jumped.
It didn't run.
It didn't look like a shadow hit the road and gone.
I've gotten out with a shotgun in my hand, and my best friend's dad kind of whisper and kind of
saying, you know, was it a bear or whatever, you know, trying to figure out exactly what was going on.
I've seen something moving as we were moving, but I couldn't hear anything.
And I was trying to get my friend's dad's attention, and I stopped walking, and they kept on walking.
And he looked back at me, and I just kind of told him.
them, you know, hold on.
And I've seen this shape start to basically move kind of.
It looked like it was low to the ground.
It was moving at the edge of these Brazilian peppers, but on our side.
So my friend started walking again, and I had given the old, you know, signal to stop them.
Bringing the gun at this shape already, and I hollered, hey, is there anybody in there, you know?
First thing I'm thinking, you know, maybe somebody's playing around with us or something.
It's 2.30 in the morning, and where we are, people didn't go, you know.
This is out in the South Everglades and the swamps.
You know, back then, there wasn't people out there in the night very often,
unless they were hunting with dogs for cats.
There was a couple of guys we knew that did that like us.
So I'm looking at this shape.
I realize that it's something crouched down, stomping my foot at it,
trying to get some kind of reaction out of it.
And I took another step forward.
started to come up and go and scream at us.
The chest would be.
I'll say this on your show before, so I know exactly what they're talking about.
Something's in there tearing the trees apart.
Couldn't see anything.
The tree branches were just going ballistic.
The next thing I know I've seen this shape, and it's still shaking and moving, and I've seen a shape, and I let all three.
I turned to tell my friend's dad and my buddy to run for the,
the truck. They were already in the truck. It started to scream. It was ear piercing like I was
having none of that because now I'm thinking something full on. Why is it there? Why hasn't it left?
I got in the truck. He was peeling out once I got in there. Never been back to the road about it.
I mentioned it. I don't think that night on the way home, if there were two words, probably be lying
because I don't believe we ever talked about it after that,
but we never went back to that road ever again.
Saw anything like that particular thing again.
The shape of it was, you know, a suit with extra long hair and extra big
was the outline of the shape crouched down.
See how I could explain the shape that I saw in there.
But when I let loose the first two rounds and it commenced to turn down on those trees,
I've never seen anything like that in my life ever
Since then never had alligators
I've hunted wild hogs
When you saw that one and you shot it
Did you get a good look at it?
I realized it sounds like it was in the older night
So you didn't get a great look at it
I only saw this shape
And I couldn't tell it was
Until when I shot I seen it come up
And I couldn't see it's black in there
You know
And the only thing I see is because there's light
On the other side of the trees
I kind of see an outline
I didn't really get a good look at any appendages, you know, his legs.
It looked like it was hairy, you know, just lots of hair.
And the only thing I've seen since then in a picture is a lady up here up the street from me in Sarasota sent a picture to two cops up there.
There's two pictures that she sent to the cops, said that this thing's stealing apples off of her porch at night.
Well, that's what it looked like, the shape of it, but that thing in that picture is crouched down.
It's not standing up.
It's behind palmettoes.
And you can look at the palmettoes aren't, you know, you could tell they're lower.
They're not the big.
When palmettoes get tall, they get thick.
Branches, even the stems of them get thicker.
And it was crouched down, whatever that.
I did not get a good look at it.
There.
I got to.
Mine do.
Now we go to Georgia.
I moved to Vidalia, Georgia.
I lived outside of Vidalia.
I worked up there, the guy that I worked for in Lyons, Georgia,
and I took care of the cattle for them out there.
And as everyday needs, at a farm needs,
I went there every day after work.
I was only 20 miles outside.
It's not even a city.
It's called Normandown.
Had one little convenience store.
I lived in a trailer way down in a creek box, probably,
maybe even at that time a little further day about this and work one afternoon.
And as I was walking into the trailer,
there was this pond about 200 yards from our trailer on,
and then when it dries up, the pond stays there.
But when the creek's high, you know, it's part of the creek.
There was a pond.
It was probably 200, 250 yards away from our trailer.
And there was this loud, moaning, crying.
wife, you know, hey, what the heck is that, you know?
And I had never heard it before.
You know, she didn't care nothing about it.
She went back in the show.
So I went and got a shotgun and I walked over.
And the whole time I'm listening to this.
And I can say that I've listened to some things on the Internet,
and it wasn't quite that loud to me at the time,
but it was a definite moaning, whining kind of sound.
But there's nobody that for miles on that side.
It's all a big, long creek bed, you know, for nobody lived on it.
And as I got over to the pond, there was nothing there.
And it quit making the noise.
And I scratched my head about it, and I went back, you know, to my wife.
I was like, there's nothing over there.
And I kind of shook it off, you know.
I had no clue, but it never dawned on me, Bigfoot.
You know, I never thought I was listening to some that just caught my attention.
And I asked my wife, and she, you know, kind of, yeah, I remember, you know,
kind of like she blows off the whole big foot thing because she's, you know, from New York.
So, mind you, I like to hunt.
You know, in Georgia, we get, all the blackberry bushes are on the railroad tracks and railroad tracks, you know.
So there was a creek, a little creek bridge down there that I like to sit down because the deer would come down the edge of that creek sometimes.
and, you know, I get some nice bucks coming through there.
So it's probably just turning light as I'm walking down these railroad tracks.
And my truck is probably maybe a half a mile from there parked up on the little dirt road that I drove to get to the tracks on.
And I see what I can only explain to you look to me like a giant chimpanzee on steroids.
come out of the edge of the bushes, you know, the vegetation, and it's about 250 yards from me,
picturing it right now to be exactly like a giant chimp with huge arms.
The legs, it reminded me of the way a golfer crouches on top of the tracks,
because as it was coming out, it was on, it was knuckle walking.
It was on all fours, basically.
And as it went up the little embankment, it kind of went up it,
And as it got to the top, it stood up and it stopped for a second.
And it never saw me, I don't believe, because it didn't even really look my way.
It just stopped for a second.
And as it started down, it got down on all fours, down the other embankment, and into the vegetation.
And I turned around and I went back to my truck, and I didn't hunt there anymore.
Stimp on steroids.
Like I said, it didn't get full.
Almost like it was three-quarters of the way standing up.
I couldn't tell you how tall it was because I had nothing to pit it against.
It was standing on the top of the railroad tracks.
I want to ask you, what did you think when he saw it?
When he saw it?
What was going through your head?
I realize that, you know, that is what people are talking about,
and what I had seen is it got into the vegetation.
I turned around and chucked it right back to my truck and left,
which my truck was half my...
I had no encounter with it.
It didn't change me.
come down there. I've never had, I've been deep in the woods because we hog hunt down here,
and we hog hunt at night, and we don't use lights, and I've done it for 10 years, and we used to do it
every night with dogs, and the dogs wouldn't bark until they found a hog, but we would go for
miles and miles. I've never had any of them come up and screw with me down here. I've never had
them really screwed me in Georgia that I could tell you.
Now, I've had tons of experiences where things, you know, made loud cracks.
I always write it off.
If nothing comes up, I always wrote it off as, you know, a branch fell out of a tree and
hit another branch.
You know what I mean?
Branch is breaking the woods all the time until I've seen that on the tracks and got the
full visual because what I shot in South Florida was a figure.
It wasn't, I never got to see anything except for it.
shape and seen what it did to the trees.
This was the figure I could see everything, you know.
No face up close.
Like I said, it was a good 200, 250 yards from me.
But I could see its arms, its legs, its back, you know.
And it looks like chimpanzee is what it looked like, full of hair.
Black is the ace of spades.
And I never had an encounter with one like your encounter where I could see them for
more than, you know, had to be by itself because nothing else messed with us.
But we were out of there instantly.
I'm talking, this all happened in as fast as I could pump those shells and realize it wasn't
coming after me.
I was in the truck and we were gone, you know?
Yeah, no.
So it could be laying there to this day, the bones could be hanging in the tree where it was.
I don't know.
I've never been back there.
Five years I've been looking at videos and listening to all these encounters.
and everything and until I heard you all show
I didn't, I thought all
these people were just doing it to make
money and hear themselves talk
but when I
heard you guys talking about it and the
seriousness of it these things are
animals I guarantee you they're not
the fairies
in the woods that run around
in tutus with tinkerbells, that's for
sure but I
do believe they know
what weapons are and I do believe
they avoid people at all
costs if they can.
I ran into Panthers down here within two foot of me.
They walked out on a trail while I was walking on it.
They run from you.
Chase one up a tree actually one time.
These things, you know, I could see them what you guys are saying, where they, if there
anything to do with primates, like I've seen that in Georgia, because it looks like a giant
chimpanzee.
I can't thank you enough for coming on.
I really enjoyed hearing you.
I mean, I get to listen to you for the next two hours.
Yeah, we're going to have to have you on again, Dave.
Yeah, I'd love to.
It's a great, a great subject for people to get into because things really do exist.
I'm not a believer.
I'm not a skeptic.
I know that what in the woods all my life, and I believe a lot of hog hunters out there, you know,
probably have some stories that they could tell.
in areas closer to where these things are thicker, you know,
where there's a lot of them apparently in Arkansas and East Texas and Oklahoma
and all those areas up in North Louisiana.
They seem to be pretty thick up there.
Some serious stories, I would imagine, because you hunt hogs at night.
Well, hopefully some of those guys will open up after hearing their stories.
Yeah.
Thank you again for coming on.
I really do appreciate it.
I know Will does too.
Yeah, my talk to Will was enlightening, shall I say.
And if I hadn't heard Tumbo on there, because here's a hypnotic engineer that's not afraid to tell, you know, what he sees and hears,
that made me figure, you know, what the heck, he's going to change my mind.
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Rustin is a longtime listener, and he wanted to come on the show to share his encounter.
Hi, Rustin, how are you this evening?
Okay.
So you tell us about...
Okay, well, actually there's two. It was both.
in the same school year.
Okay.
The first one was done hunting season.
The other one wasn't a hiking trip.
The first one, there was this, okay, this area is not very big at all that I was hunting in.
And there's this trail that I went up in on.
Everything went fine.
About 2.30-ish, I noticed that it was getting a little bit dark.
I decided to head out.
And so I'm walking out, and I found out.
and I tripped over a deer skull
and noticed that
it appeared that the neck was snapped.
And I started looking around
and I discovered like three or four others
decided to leave.
And on the way out,
I noticed something was pacing beside me.
Being 18, I didn't think much of it.
I knew I had a gun.
I wasn't worried about it.
Well, every time I had to stop,
it would stop.
So I stepped off into the woods where it was
and identified myself, told what I had on me,
and I looked over to my left and on my right,
and I literally noticed it should branch me and bent back,
and got nailed in the head with it and knocked out.
Well, my parents, I guess, are called Game Warnes and all that stuff.
When I come to, I was sitting next to Game Ward,
and I noticed over in the snow a little bit,
they were kind of taking their feet and, like, scrubbing the ground with it
and all that stuff, like they're trying to hide something.
couldn't figure all they were trying to hide.
Later on that night,
I kept on having these
like dreams of this space.
Hair covered,
brow ridges, the whole nine yards.
And I just didn't know.
I still haven't to this day.
I don't know if it's something I dreamed up
or I'd come to when I got knocked out
and the fear of it just
knocked me back out.
I don't know.
I literally didn't know what to make it that long.
Huh.
Interesting.
So you were walking towards it, and it swung the branch back at you and hit in the face?
Yeah.
I mean, it knocked me out.
By the time they found me, it was midnight.
I mean, this thing could have done anything to me.
Why it didn't?
I don't know.
What did you think?
I mean, looking back, what do you think?
I don't think that what I dreamed up that night was a dream.
I think that I actually had come to in either the pain or the fear of this thing knocked me back out.
I don't think that it was a dream.
The forestry workers, they were getting rid of tracks when you woke up?
That's what it appeared to be to me, because I had a female game one kind of sit in front of me,
like she's trying to block something, but I could still see them moving their feet around and all that shit in the snow,
like they were trying to get rid of something.
But, I mean, they erased all, I mean, they got rid of the report.
I went back in a couple of days later, spoke to really rude by what were supposedly game ones.
So basically that if I ever open my mouth again, that they're going to ruin my reputation on my fire department,
and they're going to ruin my reputation in my town.
when I asked my friend who they were, he didn't know.
Not a clue.
He checked them in their database, couldn't find him.
What happened on your second encounter?
Second encounter is a school function.
A little hiking club we had.
And we went up in Malkton, which is the beginning of the Appalachian Trail on me.
Coming down, I decided to take a rest.
Still had a group behind me, had a group up in front of me.
So I didn't think nothing of it.
I just went down.
Well, going down the mountain, you know you're going a lot faster than when you're going up.
And what happened is I misjudged it.
Walked off on a game trail, didn't make nothing of it.
And I found a cave.
And it was already getting dark, and I have no vision at night.
None.
So I decided I'm going to have to stay here in the cave.
My grandfather would always stop in that there's nothing in the main woods is going to hurt you.
Which for the most part, I believe, is true.
I mean, the bears will run from you.
deal with him for me, moves run for me or whatever.
In this little cave up above
is like a hole, maybe the size
hide you can't ask me how, I mean it is a hole
you could look up through and all that stuff.
What had happened that night was I was sleeping.
I mean, I was sleeping pretty good
being out there in middle of nowhere.
Wasn't all that scared.
And I drifted off sleep.
Don't know what time it was.
But I kept on with the own something from up above, hitting me in the face.
Not hitting me, but slapping me.
At first I thought it was a branch or something like that.
But when I, all I had on me was a buck knife.
So I intended to know cutting the branch down, thinking it was a branch.
So I reached out to grab a hold of that, and I grabbed a hold of fur.
And it was like, I put my hand around it, and I just couldn't do it.
And I started to move my hand up and down.
down, but when I got down to what I thought was going to be a paw, it wasn't a paw.
It was a hand.
I started feeling all around it.
I backed up in the cave away from this hand, and it was like everything in my head wanted
to run out of that kid screaming.
It was like I had everything in my head just telling me if you go out, you're dead.
So was slapping you in the face then?
Yeah, it was slopping me in the face from this hole up above.
I think what it happened was when I was walking around just trying to get my burns
before I went in the cave to retire for the night.
When it started getting dark, I think it had figured out there was something wrong with me.
And it decided that it was going to use one of those tactics to try to scare the hell out of me
to get me outside the cave and then do what they wanted to do.
What did you think they wanted to do?
I think they wanted me to run out of the cave and I got the feeling that.
he wasn't along.
I mean, something just told me on each side of this cave,
there was something that went before me.
Did you get a sense?
Him hitting me in the face, it was almost like a,
I don't know really how to explain.
All I can think it was like, he was trying to test me
to see how I would react.
I mean, but then again, I also get a sense of,
like I said before, he wanted me to leave out of the cave,
whether that was his home or whether that he wanted me to go there
and that was a great big trap.
I don't know.
I wish I'd had a camera on both of them.
I really do.
But I just didn't think to bring them.
When you're finally able to leave the cave,
did you see anything?
Well, what had happened was I ended up
crawling up for the rest of night in the back of this cave.
National Guardsmen found me the next point
because they sent out a search party and all that stuff.
And they found me and I could hear them coming.
They did not identify themselves until they were.
basically on top of me.
So I could hear these things coming,
and I didn't know it was humans.
I'm freaking out, just do it, get it over with,
do it, end it.
And the National Guard.
And I got out, I looked around,
and the time of year it was,
I didn't see any evidence.
I got up on top of the cave,
looked around,
it was nothing but pure luck.
I looked all around,
I didn't see nothing.
And we had to get out,
Back on the trail, we have to go through probably about a half mile worth of thickets.
And going through those tickets, I was scared out of my mind.
Huh.
That's a crazy encounter.
Yeah.
How long was it left in the face for?
It did it probably about four or five times.
Like I said, the first time I did it, I just passed it off as a branch.
Maybe a tree fell down or something, whatever.
I mean, I wasn't thinking.
I mean, you know how it is when you're first getting up, you're not thinking.
Sure.
Right.
Right.
But when it kept on doing it, kept on doing it, I was getting fed up with it.
So I decided, like I said, I'm going to cut it down.
Yeah.
But when I grabbed a hold of that, it was like, well, what the hell?
When I got down to his hand, it was like, okay, this ain't no paw.
What the hell is this thing?
No, I don't like I'd want to be in it either.
Well, do you have any further questions for, uh,
Is it Rustin? Is that what you go by?
Rusty. Rusty.
Rusty.
Yeah, we sure appreciate it.
All right. Thanks all, guys.
Thank you. Thank you for sharing your encounter.
Right. We sure appreciate it.
All right, thanks a lot, guys.
Well, I want to thank everyone for listening tonight.
Another Sunday down.
Thanks, well. I appreciate being here.
It's a great show, great guests.
Hope everybody enjoyed themselves this evening.
We'll see everyone next week.
Have a good night, everyone.
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