Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:441 My Grandfather's Property

Episode Date: June 8, 2018

Matt writes "I am a retired combat veteran of the Marine Corps. I saw combat in both the First Gulf War and Bosnia-Herzegovina/Kosovo.As a kid, I grew up in Kentucky. I had several encounters there. Then later I had one in Tennessee and another in East Texas. In Kentucky I lived with my grandfather. He was a Baptist minister and a man of good Scottish stock. We lived in central Kentucky in the Green River bottoms. I was used to seeing bobcats and panthers. From an early age I knew their screams and had a healthy respect for their space, especially at night. In about 1972 I was 7 years old. One summer evening my grandfather and I were walking just a few yards from our house at the edge of a 7 acre field. It sloped a bit up and ended in a tree line which had an old barn at its center. A small trail circumvented the entire field. As we looked east and up at the field's edge, we saw something standing upright and much taller than the corn which was about 7 feet tall as it was late June. It was brown in color and looked directly at us. My grandfather turned me around and towards the house and said "You'll not be going outside tonight." I sensed a bit of fear but knew better than to ask why. That night was warm. Our house was built up about six feet to avoid the backwaters of spring. My grandfather and I slept in the same bedroom in two beds separated by a window which was open that night. It faced the field where we had seen the creature. As I drifted off to sleep I smelled a horrible smell. I awoke and looked out the window. Standing squarely in the majority of the window was a dark figure looking in and looking side to side. I could feel the warmth of its breath and see the eyes which were somewhat yellow and red. I looked across at my grandfather who had moved to lying prone with a pistol in his right hand. The only light was provided by the moon. After a few moments I heard the creature walk away towards the front of our house and step up on the wooden porch. At this point my grandfather bolted from the bed and grabbed a double barreled shotgun and yelled to me to stay put. I heard one shot which he had to have fired through the screen door then a growl/scream that shook the house. My grandfather yelled for it to "Fek off" and fired a second shot. By then I was next to him with my own 12 gauge. He reloaded as it jumped off the porch and ran back towards where we had seen it earlier. It yelled the rest of the night and we heard it for several days. I don't remember if it ever yelled much after that week."

Black thing go from left to right, and I thought, I'm going to die out here and no one's ever going to know. I couldn't believe what my eyeballs were showing me. I'll never forget how evil the eyes were. It was a horrible. I mean, I've never seen nothing that evil. It ran towards me at a rate that I can't even explain, turned and stared at me. And this look of, I just want to kill you. I want to say it was human, but it wasn't.

He was yelling at me to grab a gun, grab a gun. I was like, for what? He said, just grab a gun. And there's footprints all the way to the door of my house. It had went inside my garage all the way to the door. 911, what are you reporting? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about six foot, nine, I don't know.

Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-oh. You're listening to Sasquatch Chronicles. Check us out online at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you've had an encounter, email me. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Welcome to the show, everyone.

Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show planned for you tonight. I'm going to be talking to Matt. And Matt actually comes from Kentucky. He grew up on a property with his grandfather. I let him go into the encounter. But he's run into this creature a couple of times. And Matt's actually a veteran, a military veteran.

He works in the medical profession. I know he's here in the Pacific Northwest. And a great guy. I really enjoyed talking to him and hearing his experiences. I hope you guys have the same listening experience as I did talking to Matt and hearing his encounters. A lot of information in his encounters. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquot.

Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out the website, Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member, get additional shows. Doing a little celebration this week, I moved over to Revolver Radio. And if you get a chance, check out their website, Revolverpodcast.com. Great people, and I'm so happy that they're hosting me now, hosting Sasquatch Chronicles. So if you notice on the website, you'll notice their player embedded. And I want to thank everyone again for, listening tonight. Let's actually jump into it. I want to bring Matt on. Matt, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for being here. Oh, you're very welcome. Yeah, and I'm really excited to have you on. Thank you again. And I wanted to ask you, what part of Kentucky did this happen in, in kind of vague terms? That was in central Kentucky. That was kind of near, well, I'd say about 28 miles from Bowling Green. Okay. Well, if you would, would you kind of start from the beginning. I know it was your grandfather's property, but just kind of start from the beginning and walk us into your encounter. Sure. I was, it was about, I think it was in 1972. I was about seven years old. I lived with my grandfather and the rest of my family kind of lived several miles away in another town. And it's probably just simply because of the finances. We had four kids in the family. And my parents just pretty well. struggled all the time. But my grandfather pretty much grew everything he ate and hunted for meat and that sort of thing. We had a few chickens and stuff. So it was very rural area. In fact, at that time, we did not have running water. We did not have electricity. The R.A. had not brought out the

power lines all the way out to our house. And we had a well on the back porch. And my grandfather had built this house with another man who was a good friend. of his and the man had a sawmill. This was during the Depression, and of course, people just didn't build houses during the Depression, so they had to go on to my grandfather's land and go into the haulers there in Kentucky and pull out the logs with mules. They sawed them down themselves with cross-cut saws and buck saws and such. Then they hewed them and took them on into the to the sawmill. But this house for having been built like that was pretty amazing. It It was built in the bottom lands of the Green River.

It was the only piece of land he probably could afford at that time in his life. He was a minister, didn't make a whole lot of money. And he basically built it where it was known to flood quite a bit. So the front part of the house faced due south. It was probably six feet off the ground with a cinder block porch covered in very well-worn. We spent a lot of time out there because without. air conditioning, you kind of need to keep cool some way. And then the back porch was full length of the house and was about eight foot off the ground. So that gives you an idea of the slope. The house

was built with four bedrooms down, two bedrooms up, and the attics were on the side. So this is a pretty good-sized place. The rooms downstairs were, but it wasn't four bedrooms, excuse me, There's two bedrooms and living room in the kitchen. They were built where all the doors, if you opened them all, the air would circulate. There were two back doors, one in the bedroom that I slept in and one in the kitchen. There were two front doors, one in the living room, one in my parents' bedroom when they were there. So my grandfather and I, we slept in the same room. He slept in a full-size bed on one side of the window, and I slept on a full-size bed on the other side.

my feet basically were about where the well was to be on my right if I were laying on my back and there was a window that was in between us was about I would say um well I would say this night the particular room was interesting because of how how high off the ground it was so about a week before all this happened I had been up uh north of my family and and my grandfather met me on the Greyhound coming back. And I noticed the one interesting thing he had done was he had, let's say, reinforced that window. And the way he reinforced it was to put chicken wire over the outside and then nail boards around that. And I, just being seven years old, I looked at him, I said, Pat, why did you do that? Nobody's going to break in there. I said, no way can even get up there without

a ladder. And he said, well, let's just safe for security. And I kind of looked for. And I kind of looked from there to the window that it was at the foot of my bed. And I said, if they wanted to come in, they'd come in on the back porch right there by the well. And he said, don't worry about it. That was kind of him. He shut us up really quick. He got a stock. Every now and again, when he gets stressed, he'd, you know, come off with a few gallic terms.

I never knew what he said. But anyway, he didn't get scared of much. He was a small guy. But he had pretty well faced down a lot of things in his life and wasn't too scared of much. So on this particular night, as the sun started going down, of course, you know, I knew bedtime was coming up because quite frankly, we didn't have electricity to flip on a light switch, and we certainly weren't going to watch TV. And so we were walking along on the side of the house where that bedroom was, and this house, our property was surrounded, not surrounded, shall I say, it was quite a bit of woods, but there was a huge field that was in a giant L-shaped. that ran parallel to our house and then the L kind of went around behind our house. And that lower bar of the L would have run parallel to the Green River.

And it's across that field there at that point, it was River Road and then Slight Woods and you were in the middle of the Green River by that point. But up on the top of the property there is if you were looking out my bedroom window, there was an old barn that had fallen down pretty much, but there was screechows up there, and we'd hear them every now and again. I mean, we definitely were not strangers to being outdoors, as I said, we hunted and fished and everything else.

So, Pat was, he was just, I guess, I think we'd cut some corn and we were hauling it back from the front yard to the back porch to fix it for the evening. And as we made our trip back towards the front, I was on the outside. And the field that went towards the barn, the corn, it was June, the corn was in. And I'd say the corn was six, maybe seven foot tall. I'm not really sure. I'd say close to six, but it was in tassel.

So it was about ready to be harvested at that time. It was typical huge field industrial type of planning, you know. And we were always told, don't go up there. If you mess with one stock of corn, you get fined $15 per stock. It might have been $15 per cob, I don't know. But anyway, we knew better to do that. Yeah. And, yeah, so we looked up there, kind of something just caught our movement of some sort out of our left.

As I said, I was on the outside of him closest to the field. And we looked through the woodlot and up across the field where the corn was in. and he saw it first and just stopped in his tracks. And I thought, what the heck is going on here? And I just looked up at him. I was, even though he was short, I was much shorter at 7. And I looked up at him. He was looking straight out across that field.

And I looked over and I would say 100 meters, perhaps. I would say that this, there was something standing there. Let's just say that. And from nipple line up, this thing was that high above the corn. So we're talking the top of his head was probably eight foot. Shoulders look like, I dare to say the shoulders were five feet across if they were an inch, at least. They were huge. He was a big fella.

And got the sense it was a guy, and he was kind of checking us out. just standing there just looking right at us. And the grandfather grabbed me by the hand, and I'll never forget. There were a couple of times when you knew he meant business, and one was when he reverted to Gallic. And he said to me, Toerdalov, which means give me your hand. And he picked up his pace, and he said,

you'll not be going outside tonight. Well, I mean, we weren't strangers to animals. There were panthers that would roam through our yard every now and again. We saw bobcats up on the front. porch and on the back, they try to get into the chicken coops. And so we went to bed. I was to the, if you were facing looking in the window, I would have been to the right. If you're facing, looking out, of course, left.

My grandfather was in the other bed on the opposite side, small. There was basically a runner rug in between us, so that's how wide it was in between us. And there was a small nightstand in between us as well. My grandfather slept. It was nothing to see him with a pistol under his pillow. And there was a shotgun in almost every corner of our house. The double-barrel shotgun, which we knew pretty much for home defense, was in the bedroom in a corner.

So I was beginning to drift off. The sun had gone down. I can't remember how much of a moon there was, but there was some. Mind you, we did not have electricity. There were no outside lights. We couldn't flip on a porch light. And there was certainly no security lights around us.

Our nearest neighbor was, I'd say, at least a mile and a half away. So the gravel road in front of our house came down a big hill and then went straight for a long time, went in front of our house, and then immediately at the end of our property took a turn and went up a slight hill. and that ran parallel to that field I was just talking about, so that was the upper part of that field. So as I drift off to sleep, I didn't hear anything, but I smelled something, and it smelled like a mixture between a wet dog and maybe a fresh wood fire, but not burning anything that would be enjoyable. and pig manure, shall I say. So it was an interesting mix, and it woke me up. I mean, I was almost out.

When I woke up, my grandfather didn't say anything, but I could tell he wanted me to just be quiet to this lay still. And I rode slightly, and he darted his eyes over, and I noticed the strangest thing, my grandfather slept on his back. He was on his stomach supporting himself with his arms underneath, and in his right hand, he was right-handed, was a 22 pistol revolver. And I followed his eyes, and he didn't hardly move at all, but he did motion with his eyes.

And I looked out the window, and standing more than halfway up this window was something. It filled the window, pretty much. With the exception, there was moonlight coming in around its head. Now, it had, it wasn't fur, it was hair. I couldn't tell what color it was. It was looking at me. So when I rolled over, we were lock and eyes. I would say its face that I saw, the part that I did see,

which would have been towards the front of the house. So I guess the moon was kind of out that way. Black leathery type of very wide nose, very, very short brow, as far as like from eyebrows down to the top of the nose. its head sloped backwards, but its head was not conical. It looked more rounded and covered the hair. The head was covered with fur, or hair, or hair, rather.

But it, like I say, it wasn't moving very quickly, but it had turned its head to look right at me. So my grandfather, I think, cocked the hammer, the pistol. I'm not sure what sound I heard, but I know that it turned to its left, the creature did, and began walking out towards the front of the house. I think my grandfather perceived it was going to jump up on the porch. I don't know what led him to believe this,

but he jumped up in his nightshirt, and he went tearing through the house with that double barrel. And I knew immediately just instinctive when he grabbed that, that was home defense if something was seriously wrong. And so I grabbed a little 4-10 that I could carry, and I thought, you know, I don't know what my seven-year-old mind thought. I really wasn't thinking much. I thought I was going to back him up, I guess.

And I heard the first round fire. And I knew that had to have, where it came from, had to have fired through the screen door. Now, we did not have the doors closed because it was summer. So the front two screen doors were closed, and they had typical latch, one at the top one at the bottom, just the old, what do you call it, old eye bolt and a small eye bolt and little hook.

And there was one at the top, one at the bottom, I guess, to confound people who try to themselves. And I heard what I, the reason I knew it went through the screen door is because the cross piece on the center of a screen door, I heard it crack. And I didn't know if whatever was looking in the window had grabbed it and was trying to open it or if my grandfather just perceived he was and shot right through it. So with that, I did hear something running up the gravel road going up the hill. By that time, I was beside my grandfather and he threw his left arm out and just stopped me if you would put the brakes on a car

and, you know, reach over and stop whoever's in the pasture seat or rather it was the opposite direction because he was. So he, he, I'm not sure if he, I'm not sure if he, he, I'm not sure if he fired off a second round. It seems like he did, but I don't think so. I'm just trying to remember it. I mean, I'm 53 years old now, so. Oh, you're doing fine. Yeah. Yeah, I'll say forgive my memory. But anyway, so that was the first time that I ever saw anything like that. As it, as it ran on up the hill, it must have crossed back into that field way up there at the top of the road,

and then it vocalized. And it made the sound that in the past, my grandfather had said, oh, that's a panther. And suddenly I'm... What was the noise? What did it sound like? Was it just a scream? It was a scream that tapered off to a growl

that you could literally feel in your chest. You knew it was aimed back towards the house. It went on a couple more times. I think there was three times that it did this, and each time it seemed to be getting further away. And then that night, I mean, we sure as heck didn't sleep. And we did hear a series of whoops, but they were much, much further. And they seemed to be coming from the river bottoms, which would have been, well, it would have been behind our house. So that was the first time I ever encountered something like that.

And the grandfather, the next morning, just plainer wouldn't talk about it. So it must have been the next year. Easter came around, and my grandfather being a minister was going to preach a sunrise service somewhere. But Kentucky weather never favored the Baptist. He seemed to always be preaching in the rain, sunrise service out in a cemetery somewhere. So typical rain was coming down and he was up way before the, way before the sun came up and getting ready, I could hear him through the door. He would close the door between the bedroom and the kitchen so he could light a lantern and be able to see what he was doing as he was making breakfast.

And all of a sudden he kind of shook me awake. And the whole family was there. The family had come in because, of course, it's Easter. I mean, we're all there. It was Easter Sunday morning. And my parents were asleep in the front room, and my sister's asleep upstairs in one of the bedrooms. And my brother was asleep in my bed, and I had slept with Pap. And he came in, kind of shook me awake.

He didn't bother my brother, but my brother woke up. And he didn't bother anybody else, and he just kind of told us to be quiet, just shush, as he would say. And so we got up and kind of rubbed our eyes, and he went out on the back porch. and I thought, why am I following him? What is he motioning for me to follow him? And he's very, very quiet. We got out back and right where that window was, it was very, very muddy. I've been raining for a couple of days of thinking.

There were some pretty deep and pretty large footprints, pretty deep, I mean, about four or five inches. And they were huge. And those footprints, we followed them, being careful. not to step in them. We followed them and they went to my mom and dad's window and stopped there. Then we followed them and they went around the front of the house. Now the front of the house had a lot of gravel in the yard so we couldn't track very well, but it was clear where they went. He went up on the front porch and he was looking in. That's a little unnerving, isn't it, having it stop at the windows? Yeah, my brother looked at me and he had not been present when

the first incident happened. So he's just a little unnerving, isn't it? looking at me and I mean I could tell he wanted to say something. My grandfather put his finger up in front of his mouth. Just looked at us and he motioned me to, he said, quietly. He said, go around back and get some water from the well. So I went back there and, you know, creaky old well and I tried to be as quiet as I could, drawing a bucket and putting it into another bucket and bringing around there, I didn't know what the heck he was up to. The next thing I know he's got the broom and he motioned from me to pour water on these tracks, the mud, and brush them off. And I said, what are you doing, Pat? And I thought he might call the sheriff.

You know, the sheriff come out there. You know, this is my little mind at work. And he said, I don't want your mom to see those. She won't let you come back. So. Very interesting. My brother. Yeah.

Yeah. So he knew something. I mean, the reinforced window, when he looked up there, he didn't, I mean, he got unnerved the first time we saw something. But he didn't get, like, he didn't say, what is that, which would have been a, what I would have expected. his first time he ever saw it. And he had always told us those vocalizations were panthers, as if he was protecting us from something, I guess. So my brother was a brat, and he decided he was going to go up there and see what was up there

because I told him the story. I told him where it had been standing. He said, I'm going to go up there. Well, the corn was, it wasn't planted at this point of the year, but it was some of the corn that had not matured very well, that they didn't bother combining that end or picking that end of the field. So there was still some up there, and I had the belief that if you touched any of that,

you're $15 fine for each one. So I kept telling Keith, I said, number one, Pat doesn't want you to go up there. Number two, if you touch any of that corn, you know, they're going to take it out of your allowance. And he looked at me and said, I don't get an allowance. So he went up there. like an idiot, I followed him.

And we got up there and right where that thing had been standing the first time we saw it was a set of tracks. And they were aimed right at our house. They were huge. They were as big as the ones that were down by the house. Mind you, this was later in the day after my grandfather was taking a nap, I think. And my brother had taken that same four-ten I had earlier in the story. and I think it was kind of like a junior 4-10 like, you know, my son's first shotgun or so. And he took that up there and he laid it down in one of those tracks,

and we didn't have any way of measuring. We didn't take a yardstick or anything. We didn't know what the heck we were going to encounter. I think I had a stick on me or something. And he laid it down from the butt of that shotgun to the four-stock, it was about halfway up to the four-stock. stock. So he remembered that, kind of marked it with a little bit of mud on his

fingertip, and then we started to turn around, and as we did, there was something, some vocalization occurred that I thought was an owl at first. I thought one of the barn owls was hooting, and then it tapered off to a

growl. So I think I didn't touch an ear of corn, but I think I got across the I think I got across that field I just beat cheeks over there, shall we and I don't ever remember touching the ground. Yeah. And I look back and Keith, Keith didn't, he wasn't the brave big brother.

He was right behind me. He was on my heels. Now, he was bigger than me, and he could definitely outrun me, but he did in that day, I assure you. Yeah. So that was, uh, no longer. The last that I recall. Yeah. No longer thinking $15, $15.

You're just out of there. No, no, no. I didn't think that. But we got back and he did get the yardstick. And he measured it. And I believe he said it was 19 inches as best he could measure it. It was a pretty good size, maybe 20 print. And, you know, I'm not so sure that Keith didn't have a BB gun that day, to be honest with you.

I'm not sure what he had. I just know he was always blusterous when he was young. He grew up to be a nice guy, but he was kind of a brat when he was younger. But so let me ask you, Matt, before we go on, later in life, did you ever get a chance? to talk to your grandfather, find out what he knew, or do you ever get a chance to really sit down with him? Yeah, I did, and it came up in a very odd time. We had a cousin. She was much older than us, and she was just, I mean, she was outdoors. She lived with my uncle down in the south, deep south, and she trained coon hunting dogs. And one day, I don't know from where,

university here in the Pacific Northwest. I now live in Seattle. Some people approached her and said, we'd like you to train dogs for a certain scent. And she said, I can train a dog for any scent. What do you want? Are you, you know, hunting a certain animal? And they said, you could say that. And they presented her with a bag. She said it was hair. And she tried to train these dogs. And she said it took her almost six months before they would finally even get near that hair and smell it. And now these are, are hunting dogs. And finally, apparently, she came up here, and I don't know where she was. I wish I could talk to her. Unfortunately, she too has passed on. And apparently they were tracking a

Sasquatch. Now, this is the story that was relayed by my grandfather, so later in life, I guess he didn't care if he talked about it or not, but it was not, he wasn't talking about anything close. He was talking about something way off in the Pacific Northwest. And apparently they got pretty close of finding a Sasquatch according to my cousin. And I never talked to her directly about this. This was related by my grandfather. And they had law enforcement show up

and basically say that thing could be a human and a suit, so you know, you guys need to pack up and leave. And I don't know that they ever tried again. I just know that she, that was her only trip to the Pacific Northwest. She wasn't coming back. And she wasn't really scared of anything.

I never saw her afraid of a thing. I saw her face down a bobcat in the front yard one day with no gun with no weapon whatsoever and um i just i thought man she's she's either brave or stupid and uh so yeah that's my grandfather spoke about that openly at the dinner table one night with all the family around and um i started to say something and then i just kind of remembered he told me if i ever told my mom that there was something around there that she wouldn't let me come back to see him. So, yeah, mom wasn't scared of much, but I think that would have probably put the fear of the Jesus in her. And so that was, that was central Kentucky.

Fast forward a few years, I was a teenager, and a bunch of us would go out on this dirt road, well, it was gravel road. And we just, there was corn fields on one side, and there was a kind of a ridge on the other side, and the whole area was riddled with mines. underground mines that had been dug way back in the 18 and 19 early 1900s. And there was a few roads and railroads and that sort of thing. Again, it was a river bottoms, but it was the Ohio River bottoms. And we would just sit out there because our buddies pretty well drank a lot and we didn't want to drink, but we also didn't want to seem cool.

So we'd separate ourselves and we'd say, oh, yeah, we went out and partied for the last night. Well, we didn't drink. So we just sit on the hood of our cars and talk and, you know, Dip Copenhagen and Smoke, which our parents, if they found out, would shoot us. And one night, we were out there and somebody said, what is that coming down the middle of the road? What is that thing? And I said, it's probably somebody, but I mean, out here, there were a couple of security lights, not many, a couple. And we could hear an oil Derek off to our right, and all of a sudden something let out a scream.

And it immediately took me back to that time when I was a kid. and it was it was close it was too close for comfort what was screamed at you the scream you're talking about it stopped in the middle of the of the gravel road and let out of screen

oh wow and um yeah I've never seen four boys jump in a car so quick I think I was the driver and I think somehow I ended up in the back seat and my friend luckily I left the keys in the ignition my friend turned that little I had a forward muscle

same to like 72 and I think somebody might have been hold on to the luggage rack on the back front I do know that I ended up in the back seat of my own car and my buddy took off in a thank God the road was wide enough he got it turned around and we went scooting boots right back to right back to town how far we tried to talk we tried to talk about it but we all had different things that we saw and the weirdest thing was that one of my buddies was looking to the right towards the sound of that oil Derek because he had seen something there. And he said, y'all were all looking at something down the road literally straight in front of us. It was a very straight road.

And he said, I was looking at something that was a lot closer to us right there by that oil there. And that oil there couldn't have been 25 meters from us. I wanted to ask you, when you were looking down the road and he saw this thing, how far away from you was this creature? And what did you see? Was it just kind of a humanoid-looking thing? Well, I mean, exactly what I saw was the funniest thing was it was the thing that I'd seen when I was young, about as tall, but its head was shaped more conical. Now, mind you, I don't know if you've ever heard of the tale of Spotty, the Spotsville Monster in western Kentucky. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Okay, yeah. Well, this area is literally 22 miles.

from Spotsville. Yeah, I've actually done two shows on the Spotsville Monster. I had both Bart and his mother on, who were the main people that were involved with the Spotsville monster, 22 miles. Wow, that's pretty damn close. Yeah. Well, the other thing is, is the first person to spot that monster was a state police officer. Because the Kentucky State Police Post is at Henderson, and Spotsville and Henderson are just a few miles away from each other. That's really interesting.

I didn't know a cop had actually seen the Spotsville Monster first before anyone else. That was the first report on Channel 14 News when I was, I think I was in middle school when that happened, maybe. But that was the first report was that a Kentucky state police officer saw something cross the bridge, something was on the bridge. A person was walking on the bridge. And he went to tell them that there were no pedestrians allowed on the Spotsville Bridge. And by the time he got to it, it had reached the end of the bridge and turned around and just looked at him. And he realized that is the biggest human I think I've ever seen in my life. And it doesn't look like a human.

And so that was, that was, they didn't interview him, but they, but the newspaper, the Henderson newspaper had his, didn't have his name. they wouldn't put his name in there, but it said, you know, Kentucky State Police Officer from the KSP post right there at Henderson had been on patrol in Spotsville and that's what he saw. You know, the people had a heyday with it. One of the news, one of the three channels there in the Tri-State took a person, put him in a gorilla suit and kind of did a Benny Hill speed up thing with a song called Spotty, the Spotsville Monster. And so I think that that kind of even led that trooper to not ever talk to anybody and give an interview. But there were other people, like you said, there were other people who saw it. Yeah, a lot. Definitely a lot. Now, the encounter of the last one you were just talking about, so you were in high school when this happened?

Yes. I got my license. I was at least 15 or 16. And did it pretty much die down after this, or was there other encounters? Um, for me, um, I had, I had, um, one other encounter as far as, uh, when I moved, uh, I lived in Texas and I had gone to, to visit a campground in eastern Tennessee near Greenville. And, uh, my partner and I at the time, uh, were driving between the campground. And I think we were going somewhere to get some more camping stuff. And we were on a road. I'm an adult at that point, and it's only been about, I'd say, 12 years ago, 14 maybe. My partner, I worked together for 16 years. And so, long story longer, the roads there and that part of Tennessee are just really curvy.

It's kind of like the start of the Smoky Mountains. So there are a lot of small hills. You're not really in the Smokies directly, but you're right there. I'll say it was to the west of Greenville, Tennessee. I have never read of any happenings there in eastern Tennessee, but then again, I'm not that well read on Sasquatch. But this was a really unusual thing because for the first time, for me, it was as close as I was to the one in the window. only I saw it full body. There was a section of the road that went around a barn and old farmhouse.

And they were built what my grandfather or my father, either one would say the German style. And that was the German people used to build their barn very close because when it would snow, they could still get out and take care of the animals. So this barn was built unusually close to the house. I mean, most people in that part of the state didn't want to smell their animals. So this road went, you basically made a giant U around that piece of property. So we started and we're coming in and basically those two structures are towards the top of the U, where the opening would be on a U.

And then the road as it curves around, the rest of the land was just. just their front yard, but it was mowed. It was basically, you know, they saw it as their yard, I'm sure. There were no ditches other than very, very small ones on either side. It was not, nothing was paved except for the road itself. And on the, that was on our left as we began the curve. On our right was a slope pretty steep.

I'd say not a 90 degree, but probably about an 80 degree. typical eastern Tennessee red clay and rock with a few cedar trees on top of it. And then beyond that, it looked like there was a fence and maybe a field beyond that that sloped down the other way. But couldn't see that. Of course, I was below it. And I'm driving. Windows are open. I think we were there on the 4th of July weekend.

Hot, very warm. And as we were around that corner, I see somebody or some, I thought somebody. body walking towards the road from the front of the house and moving extremely quickly. And I suddenly realized that big person, that big farm boy is about to step right in front of this car. And I think I was taking that curve at probably 45, 50 miles an hour because it was a pretty gentle curve. There was a car behind us by about two car links. and now I've driven an ambulance for years. I was a paramedic.

I'm a nurse now. I've served in the core. So I'm, you know, all of this, all of this to this point can just serves to say, I've seen some things. And this is one of those that I classify at the top of. I've really seen some things. So anyway, we were making this curve. and I immediately locked eyes with this thing. I thought it was a person, like I said.

And I was hoping to, you know, with my eyes, looking right at it, basically give it a signal, hey, you're about to step out in front of a moving vehicle, buddy. And it was at that time, literally, I'm on the right side of the road. It's a two-lane road on a double yellow line. And I'm well within the bounds between lines, but I look full on to my left. and this thing is where I could have reached out and touched it. It was, I would, have you ever seen a roan-colored horse? No, I haven't.

Okay, a roan-colored horse is between, to me, this is the best way I can describe it, it's between pure brown and red. But it's belly that I could have literally reached out and touched the bottom of, more towards the, more towards the hip region, because the road was, a little bit up above where it was coming across, was white, kind of whitish gray. And its head was covered in hair and round,

and it looked right at me. And my partner, being on the pastor side, he leaned in and looked beyond me. And so he saw the exact same thing I did. Colors, before we could say anything, think smell hit me.

And like I said, it was summer, windows it down. I don't know which direction the wind was blowing, but at that point it didn't really matter because it hit us full on. And that, you know, the olfactory nerves, they tend to bring back memories really super quick. That is a source right directly to the brain. And all I could think of for a very split second was I know what this smell is. And I didn't change.

I didn't have time to react. I didn't have time to turn the wheel. I didn't have time to step on the gas or the brake. All I know is I thought it was going to hit me or at least run over the back of the car. And I thought, I'm in a rental. Please do not do that to me. For some weird reason, you think these strange things at times like this. And all of a sudden, it went between us and the car behind us.

Now, I think I may have tapped the brakes just instinctively because the car behind us was closer than two car links at this point. and all I saw was the front of this maroon car as this thing walked in between us and it took about two steps to get from one side of that two-lane road to the other. The front of that car behind us went to the right and into the ditch there. And so we started putting on our brakes

and Jason, my partner, looked out the window and on his side and he said that it scrambled up that steep that steep side of that hill there and it was about I would say about

14 foot off the ground to the top of that and he said there were two more and I said what and I looked beyond him the same way he had looked beyond me you know leaning forward and looking and sure enough

they had just turned it back and both were smaller one was very small I would say four or four and a half five feet maybe compared to the one that had just gone between us and the car behind us. And the other one was maybe a foot taller than the small one.

So I'm wondering if that was mom and kid waiting for dad to get across the road. It scrambled almost as if it didn't have to use its hands. It scrambled right up that thing and none of them looked back. They just kept on walking. We'd stop at this point. I wasn't so sure I wouldn't get out of the car, but well, having been a medic and being a nurse, I need to see if those people back there were okay. So we get out, my partner and I, and I go around to their driver's side door,

and it was a family, and the gentleman on the driving the car, he was asking if everybody was okay, and the kids were saying, yeah, yeah, we're okay, we're okay. And the mom said, what the heck was it? Was that a bear? Was that a bear? And one of the kids said, no, that's Bigfoot. They were from that part of the countryside, so I guess they maybe, I don't know, had heard things. I just, we didn't stick around to ask them. We checked to make sure that everybody was okay, which they were.

And we made sure we helped them get their car out. And just as we were trying to use our manpower, the farmer came up with a tractor and said, I can just pull you out of there. And we said, well, we're going to go on. So we went on. Yeah, that's really, really fascinating. I wanted to ask you when you were in the car and as you're coming around and you're talking about that smell, was it the same smell you smelled with your grandfather when it was at the window?

Or was it different? It was 100% triggered my same idea of the same smell. The one thing that to this day I still have a difference of was remember I said there was a wood smoke smell in the first one. This was more of a sulfur match. So there was that wet dog, the pig manure, and then instead of the wood smoke, like somebody had been set out by campfire all night, it smelled like somebody had just lit a wood and match. So there was a sulfur component to it. Yeah, I was wondering what you meant the first time you were describing it as kind of campfire, burned wood. But I guess, you know, a sulfur smell would kind of smell like that.

even a light, silver smell, you might think it's, you know, a campfire, burnt wood. I wanted to ask you, when you were looking at this thing, can you describe for the audience what the face look like from what you remember? Yeah, well, the face on this one was not black and leathery. It was more gray. If you've ever seen the face of a gibbon monkey, it had that same thing. type of completely, not completely circular. There's more oblong kind of oval,

very wide nose, upturned kind of flare nostrils. Chin, I couldn't describe if there was a chin or not, but I'm sure it was covered up by hair. Its mouth, strangely, was slightly open. It was like it wanted to say something to me. I wasn't going to stick around and find out the conversation it wanted to have, But the eyes were, again, very sloping brow, very jutted, I guess the ridge of the brow there. And very kind of eyes weren't super close together.

But as a human would go, its eyes were kind of small for its face. There was, I did see its hands. And I've heard people describe a bear paw looking thing. I've heard people say, oh, it's a human hand. Closest I can ask God come. And I'm not sure if I've ever heard this said before. I would love to have seen if it made any prints on that embankment. It was like a giant raccoon, kind of prehensile fingers and wide palm that narrowed at the bottom.

I can't remember if there were claws. I can't. I cannot, honestly, I don't think I focused on any one thing. honestly. I think and I didn't try to piece this together with with Jason later on. We talked about it, but we, this is the other weird thing, Wes, we went back to that campground that night, which was not far from where this had happened. And we, uh, we didn't talk about it. We didn't bring it up to anybody else. We didn't talk about it ourselves. We went to bed, um, after, you know, hanging out with everybody that was at the campground that we knew. and we went through the rest of the weekend.

We flew back to Texas, and it was almost a year later before I looked across the dinner table one night and said, what the hell did we see out there? Just tell me what you saw, and I'll keep my mouth shut until you finish, and then I'll tell you what I saw. So reluctantly, he let me know exactly what he saw, and it was exactly what I saw. colors, smell. The only thing that he saw

before I did was the two up on the ridge, but I did see them from behind. But he said their faces were similar and that

their hands were kind of blackish, leathery human hands, basically, he said, but, you know,

that's at a good distance. But when I saw, I honestly, I've seen raccoons up close. We had a pet when I was a kid. and it would grab things with its hand.

I remember two of the fingers being longer than the others on the raccoon, but I don't know if it was on this thing we encountered. I have no idea. Yeah, it's a fascinating account. I mean, I've heard several roadside crossings, even people who, you know, I had a guy on a couple weeks back where he hit one, and it was a smaller one, you know, it was about, I think, if I remember, I was like four feet tall or something like that, but he hit it.

And as it was going across, you know, know, they kind of impacted at the same time. It wasn't intentional on his part. And then he heard one off in the wood line, just roar at him. And so it reminded me of that because here's a big one trying to cross. And it's so weird. Don't you find it odd? If they would, if that one would have just sat there and waited, obviously can hear their cars coming. Just sit there and wait, wait till the cars go by, and then make your way across. It's almost like like a game for them or something and across in between two cars for an intelligent animal. I mean, he's, it's kind of a dumb, dumb move, you know what I mean? I'll tell you the sense I had, Wes, and I don't know if

this makes sense to you or not. I've encountered a lot of people growing up in the south of what we typically just termed a redneck or hillbilly, who basically are like, the road belongs to me. You need to get out of it. And that was the exact thing that I sensed. It was his property, his land, his terms, his game. And he had no fear. Zero fear. I mean, I'm in a two-ton bullet, you know, driving along. I could aim it at him if I wanted to, but he had zero fear. And, you know, I've heard some of your guests and I've heard other people talk about they felt powerless to have used a rifle or anything like that. And I got the same feeling. I got the same feeling that you just make him angry, you know? Yeah, like he was a bulletproof or something.

Yeah, like, yeah, like he was in charge. He was large and in charge, that's for sure. And like I say, we didn't talk about it for a year at least. It might have been more than that. And we've, we've only told one person. And they kind of began, oh, you guys are crazy stuff. And we immediately shut down. I've tried to talk with a couple of people up here that you'd think people living in the Pacific Northwest would have, you know, some friend that's raining to one of these darn things. I'm like, well, I just get ridicule, you know. And so I've just. shut up. I mean, the one thing I've learned is that I don't know of anybody who's taken this and spun it into a money-making deal. I really don't. I mean, I think, you know, some of the some of these finding Sasquatch and all this stuff on television, I think more people laugh at it and watch it just to watch people fall in their face. But, I mean, you provide a forum that is much needed because there are a lot of us who wouldn't talk about this stuff without the anonymity of you just saying our first name. and, you know, we're behind the, we're behind the screen of the computer and beyond that, the phone.

And because none of us are going to profit from this, I mean, all you're going to do is get people telling you you're crazy. I told the story in bootcap to a fellow, and he was from, he's from a part of Louisiana, I believe, growing up. And he said, oh, yeah, it's a skunk cape, only, only they're not the same. They're a different tribe. And he used an interesting term. And I looked at him and I said, are your people, Native American? He said, yeah, absolutely. He said, they believe very strongly that it's not of this world.

It's a dimensional character. It can come and go at will. That's why they tend to disappear and they tend to have no fear whatsoever. He said, they know that they can leave this earth at any time and go beyond. And so last night, actually, I happened to run into a gentleman who's Native American and a storyteller. Fantastic fellow. I ran into him many, many years ago at a nursing conference.

And I said, you know, I've recently, I've been reliving and remembering some of the things that happened. I said, now you're from the tribes up here. I said, what do they think of Bigfoot? And he went on to tell me what, I think, five different tribes, the names for them and the beliefs they had. he said, Cietco was one of the names for the one that was from this area. And everyone believed it was the protector of the forest. And if you were doing something wrong, you were in trouble.

Yeah, I have heard that before. I've heard that term before or that name being used. It's fascinating here in Washington State, you'll find it really depends on the tribe you talk to. Some of the tribes, they'll say they're the big brother of the forest, they're the protectors. And then there's other tribes that will talk about them. They have nothing good to say about them. You start getting up towards Mount St. Helens, and they have nothing good to say about them. They'll tell you, they'll eat you.

They will kidnap your women, I mean, on and on and on. So I guess it really depends on the tribe you talked to in their experience with these creatures. I would love to talk to that guy. Yeah, he was somebody I might put in touch with you because it would be an interesting thing to hear. he's pretty accomplished storyteller. And he told me about five, I think four or five different tribes and their opinions of the Sasquatch. And the last one he ended with was they steal children and they eat them. Yeah, and that's what I mean.

It depends on the tribe you talk to. The story you're going to get, you know, how they're going to speak about it based on their own personal interactions with the creature, like the rest of us. If you've had a terrible encounter, you're going to think they're monsters. If you've had a semi-friendly encounter, you might think differently of the creature. Going back to your encounters, O Matt, I wanted to ask you, the times that you got a good look at the face, would you say it looked more human-like? Would you say it looked more animal-like? Everyone I saw was on two legs.

Its knuckles did not drag the ground, but it had a very primate-like face. and like I said, the one vocalization, the one whoops that we heard, I've heard them on a primatologist talking about the vocalizations, and he said that a gibbon makes that noise. And I could, you know, when you watch some of these nature shows, you kind of look at it and you're like, well, that really does sound like only, you know, it's up close and what most of the recordings, thankfully, are at a distance. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. It didn't seem demonic. It seemed very, very of this world.

It just seemed like something that we have yet to discover. But you think of something that large. I mean, I'm a nurse. I've got a degree in nutrition as well. And I'm like, well, it would take a lot of protein for something that large to keep its brain going. Yeah, you would think so. You definitely would think so. I mean, with as many reports that I get, you think they'd wipe out deer populations and a lot of their protein sources, but for whatever reason, they don't, which I haven't been able to figure out yet.

But no one really knows. It'd be nice to know how many calories a day. It'd be nice to know what they are and just get more information on it. And I know you kind of alluded to it, and I think you pretty much already answered it, but I'll ask you again, if someone were to ask you, what do you think Sasquatch is? What would you say to them? I would say it's an undis-yet-uniscovered primate in North America or wherever else it is. And I believe that there are different types of them. I believe as much as you can look at breeds of dogs, there seems to be some that are very, very different from others. I mean, when I lived in Texas, I had friends that lived in East Texas in the big thicket in the Piney Woods out there and around Cattle Lake and on up towards. towards a boggy creek that runs through that part of Oklahoma, you know, just barely north of the Red River. They said they had things that were three-toed with a towed that jutted off laterally on the foot.

They said they had things, they had seen things that were very small and swung in the trees. You know, the ones I've seen, I have seen one with conical head, and I've seen the others didn't have conical heads. I mean, it sounds like you're dealing with different breeds or not different species, all probably the same, roughly the same species, but definitely different divisions of it. Yeah, I think there's different types of these things. But as far as, you know, being undiscovered primate, let's hope you're right. And I appreciate your answer on it. I wanted to ask you, going back to your grandfather's farm, God, I'd love to sit down with him and just talk to him.

I almost wonder if he had actually seen the creature multiple times when you weren't there. You know, his behavior of putting chicken wire across the window. It doesn't make sense at the time, but now hearing the full encounter kind of makes sense. I kind of understand what he was doing. Did you feel like, so you guys are out there. You guys see this thing in the field, and your grandfather's like, take my hand, we're going inside, and then it comes up to the home. Do you think it meant you guys harm, or do you think the creature was,

was just curious. Both incidents at my grandfather's house seemed it seemed it was curious. It was super curious

of you know just the people within the house. It didn't, I don't know that it ever tried the door.

It was standing in front of the door according, you know, where we saw the footprints there, but it was standing in front of the window. The funny thing

about that I keep thinking about my grandfather was that he only reinforced one window. There were others that would have been much easier for the creature to have reached up and gotten into. But he only reinforced the one window in his bedroom. There were two windows and a screened

door. But he only reinforced one window. I just that just befuddles me a wee bit. I mean... Yeah, I was going to ask you, why do you think that? That is odd. I've thought about it over and over. I've talked to

talk to my brother, I've talked to my sisters, because we told them all about it later on. I wish my dad was here to talk to. He and my mom had both passed on, and he had a theory on it, but he never fully told me. He said, I think I know, and he would just say that and walk away.

He was a man, a few words. I honestly don't know. I don't know if he felt like, I don't know if he, to be honest, I don't know if he could have afforded to have done every single window, and I think he might have,

again, doing that to every single window. My mom rolls up, you know, to visit. And she goes, what in the world's going on? But that one window, she didn't go into his bedroom much. She hardly ever went in there. And she certainly didn't go below the house on that side. She didn't have any reason to.

And so I'm thinking, honestly, that that might be the reason. And you said there was two windows in that bedroom? Yes. Yes, there was the window that was between the beds. and then there was the other window that I said was at right if you if you went through it you'd be standing in front of the well on the back porch I got you so they were on two different walls two windows two different walls if I'm laying on my back one would have been to my left and I could have reached up and touched it and the other one I would had to kick it with my foot my right foot because it was to the right makes you wonder too if it had come up to that window before if he was mainly just focused in on Because, you know, your grandfather's reaction, when he's looking out at the field before that night happened, or it was the same night, when he's looking at you guys are both looking out to the field, and he basically tells you get inside and don't worry about it and basically we're going to bed.

And then doesn't talk about it. To me, that sounds like a man that's seen it before. Yeah, he lived there by himself. So if none of us were there, then that one window was the only window he could be able to. and, you know, sleeping. So that goes to fall, that that's why he reinforced that window. And the other, I think, is, again,

if my mom had rolled up out front and every one of the windows had been reinforced, yeah, I definitely wouldn't have ever gone back there again. The back porch also, the funny thing was the roof on the back porch was much lower than the roof on the front porch. So I think he may have measured this thing up and said, well, you know,

it couldn't stand upright on the back porch. So he didn't have a lot of fear of it coming up there. But I think he had a definite idea that it could stand almost upright on the front porch, almost. Yeah, and it makes me wonder, too, the interaction he maybe had in the past. Because, I mean, he went right for that gun, and he was going for it. And, you know, I don't know if the creature was trying to break in or I don't know what your opinion on that is. But, I mean, for him to go gung-ho on this thing, almost makes you wonder, maybe something else happened. You know, because you and I both know, I mean, even if I was in that situation, I don't know that I would grab the gun and start blasting unless I thought it was coming in.

If I thought it was coming in. I think he truly did. I think he truly thought it was coming in. But I think he thought it was coming around to the front porch because he could stand on the front porch and open the door. I got you. And that's the door he actually blew out. Yeah, that was an interesting story because he and I quickly repaired that the next day because my mom was coming. coming down that evening. And so we had to make an impromptu trip to into town and go to the hardware store and find screen wire and rebuild it. And then explain why the door was new. Yeah, your grandfather sounds like a lot of fun, man.

He sounds like someone I'd sit down and have a beer with. He said, you don't let your mom inspect this too well. Yeah, that's funny. She took over for my grandmother. My grandmother was definitely the matriarch of the family. And I think it was because he preached a lot. He was on the road a great deal. And he was not a greatly educated man.

I think the maximum grade he finished was the fifth. Well, had been kind of, I guess you'd say, refugees from Scotland. You know, he was, like I say, he was short as could be. And he wasn't afraid of hardly anything. He wasn't afraid of much. But, no, he, that one might again, what was interesting was I didn't sense fear, but I sensed urgency when he told me to give him my hand. And that he, you know, that he just led me straight around to the front of the house and through the front door. And, you know, it was summer he closed both screen and the front door.

And then later on after dinner, we, you know, opened up the front door again, so the air would circulate and stuff. So, you know, you just kind of wonder, what was his reasoning? has a thing come to the window more than once, and he figured, well, if it's going to reach in, it's going to reach in and let's give it some, you know, a hard time reaching in. Right. Yeah, smart. Yeah, I would have loved to admit your grandfather. He sounds like you're great, ma'am.

Yeah, he was definitely, I mean, he was more of an influence on me than anyone in my world, anyone. Yeah, it sounds like it. Well, I appreciate it, Matt. I appreciate you coming on the show and taking the time to, you know, share your own personal encounters. and then, you know, the memory of your grandfather. So thank you again for coming on. Well, that's, you know, I really appreciate you having this platform for people because, you know, it's kind of therapy.

I'll tell you, I feel a lot more relaxed now that I've finished and not because I'm afraid to talk on a radio or anybody to know my name or anything like that. But just recounting that, I think anytime you're, you've had an encounter that close, you know, all the hair stands up on your body, and by the time you're done, somebody. You're exhausted.

You listen to you. You're exhausted. I mean, I'm seriously, it's not time for bed, but I think I might go there. Yeah, no, I hear that. I'll tell you, now I live as far away from, I'm in the middle of the city. I don't think a Sasquatch is going to find me here. Yeah, no, I hear you. I've learned to run.

I've just grabbed the dog and run. That's all I can do. Yeah. Well, thank you again, Matt. I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate it. Thanks for listening. And that's it for tonight, everyone, remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email.

My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you get a chance, check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com. You can become a member, get additional shows. Until next time, everyone. Across the country, faster than the coronavirus and wait. I'm Tom Barton, and I'm a veteran sports analyst and respected sports handicapper who will help build ESPN's brand. I've been recognized and awarded by Pro Football Weekly. Gaming Today magazine as the honest handicapper.

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