My Own Encounter With A Texas Bigfoot

The blog author's own account of an encounter with a creature of legend, folklore and possible reality.

The evening of June 26, 2008- I was living at my father-in-law's farm in a very woodsy area of Southwestern Eastland County, Texas.

The house was near a main highway but less than 100 feet to the SW of the house, was an area of dense woods and an old, overgrown dune-buggy trail.

There were just the usual wildlife, such as deer, rabbits, armadillos, foxes, squirrels, cats, feral hogs, birds of all kinds, etc. Or so I thought.

It was late in the evening and I had taken my little dogs out to do their business. There was a strange faint odor in the air, much like a dead skunk, along with rotted meat.

Just after I noticed this smell, there was a distant wailing scream that caught my attention and some noise in the oak brush, just a short ways from the house.

This was not a scream I had heard before. I am familiar with all types of wildlife sounds, including domestic livestock. This scream and the two after, were sounds I had never heard before and it gave me a shiver up my spine.

I rushed my dogs into the house and came back outside with a flashlight. The yard guard light afforded little light past a 15 foot area, so I shown the light around in the yard and saw nothing.

Then suddenly I heard a banging sound, like a large tree limb hitting a stump with a resounding 'thud'. This was followed by 2 more whacks of the tree limb, then silence.

Stupid me, I picked up an old oak branch that had fallen from a large post oak in the yard and gave the oak tree a good solid 'whack'. I got a response from the woods but it was closer now and I could hear what appeared to be 'grunting', coming from the brush.

I remember thinking that here I was, standing in the yard at night, armed with only a flashlight and possibly a boar hog about to bear down on me from the treeline. Just great.

I could hear branches breaking, twigs snapping and dead oak leaves being crushed and the sound was not receding, it was coming closer!

I noticed that no other animals were stirring, no sounds of crickets, no red birds afflicted with insomnia (as usual), and no yipping foxes or the yapping howls of coyotes. Not even the distant neighbor's dairy cows, bawling for their calves.

Sudden silence.

I took about 20 paces forward, closer to the gate at the entrance to the woods and the dune-buggy trail. I shown the light up and into the dark brush.

Movement!

A tall, dark shadow seemed to hunch over, as if to avoid the flashlight beam but the beam held true and in that beam of light, I saw what appeared to be a gorilla on 2 legs but the legs were longer, like a man's legs. The arms were long and down at it's sides, reaching almost to the creature's knees.

The creature was at least 7 feet tall, judging by the nearby trees and distance from the gate post. Broad, hair-covered shoulders lead to an almost non-existent neck, attached to a cone shaped head... but it was the face and the amber colored eyes staring back at me, that startled me most. It looked intelligent, calculating, like it was deciding whether to charge at me, or turn and run into the woods.

I gave it an out. I lowered the flashlight and after a brief flurry of receding noises, I raised the light and the creature was gone.

The next morning I set about looking for tracks. All I found were a few large depressions in the slightly damp blow sand near the dune-buggy trail.

The leaf litter was so thick, that the impressions were barely perceptible but I commited the image of that face to my memory and am able to see it still.

I have created a depiction of what I saw, using an actual photo of the exact spot where I saw what I can only describe as Bigfoot.

I reported the encounter to Texas Bigfoot researchers, who evidently dismissed my sighting without even an email to confirm it's authenticity.

No matter, we sold the farm and someone new resides there now. Maybe someday the new owners will have their own strange encounter to relate. That would be interesting.

-SW


Click image to enlarge.