Bigfoot Sightings

Report Received From: The GCBRO Online Report Submission Form.

Report Posted To GCBRO Web Site On: February 1, 2007

TERRAIN: Vast tracts of mostly pine forests, some hardwoods with farmland in between.

OBSERVED: The first encounter in the summer of 1968, my 10 year old cousin and I ( I was 11) were riding our ponies on a fire road back in the woods. We had gone about a 1/4 mile in when we found scratches etched in the dirt of the road. It was like three fingers (or claws) had raked the dirt in the road approximately four feet long in three different places, some of which overlapped each other. Each "scratch" was about 4 1/2" to 5" apart, so whatever did it had to be BIG. We didn't see any tracks or prints around to give us a clue what may have done it. We had never heard of Bigfoot before and we didn't have any bears or cougars or the like on the Eastern Shore. We were not strangers to exploring in the woods, because as far as we knew there was nothing to fear there. I did notice that the woods was very quiet that afternoon, there wasn't a sound to be heard at the time. The ponies were dancing around and nickering every once in a while which was very unusual for them, but we were so engrossed in the tracks that we had found that we didn't notice their odd behavior at the time. After we were there for about five minutes we heard this really low pitched loud growl from about thirty feet away in the brush. As soon as the growl died away the bushes (10 -12 feet high) started shaking like crazy. We never did see what did it, but we didn't wait around to find out either.

The second incident was in August of 1976, I had just come home from work about 10:00 o'clock in the morning from my parent's convenience store. As I got out of my car I heard this loud moaning howl coming from the woods about 1/2 mile from our house. The Maryland State Fair was going on at the time and all of our neighbors had taken livestock up there to show, so there was no one in our neighborhood at the time except me. The moaning howl that I heard sounds EXACTLY like the moaning howl that was recorded in Ohio (although I was not aware of BF sounds at the time) and is listed on several BF web sites. It went on for an hour and I finally decided to walk down the road towards the woods and see if I could see what was making the noise. As soon as I got to a point that was even with the sound in the woods, the moaning stopped and whatever it was let out this screaming roar and some maple trees about 50 yards into the woods (trees about 40 -45 feet tall) started shaking and swaying back and forth and it sounded like limbs breaking. There was no wind that day and those trees were swaying so hard that I could hear them going "whoosh, whoosh" through the air. I realized then that I was in the presence of some P.O.'d creature that I couldn't see but that obviously could see me. I was a half mile from home with no gun or help available. I took off running as fast as I could for home. As soon as I started back down the road, the aggressive behavior stopped and the moaning started again. It continued until my mom came home at 2:00 that afternoon. She heard it when she got out of the car and asked me what it was. I told her I didn't know but whatever it was was big and mad. I told her it had been going on for at least four hours because I heard it as soon as I got home, it quit about fifteen minutes after my mom got home.

The third incident was in the summer of 1981, I had gotten married and built a house next to my mom and dad's house. My wife and I were sitting out on our front porch one evening about 11:00 pm and we heard the most god awful screams coming from the woods 1/4 mile directly across the road from our house. It sounded like a woman being murdered. As near as we could tell, it seemed to be at least three different "something's" making vocalizations. I had lived in the area all my life and I had never heard anything like it before, it went on for about two hours. Two weeks later we heard it again about the same time of night, this time it was only for about a half hour. The next day I talked to my neighbor about it and he wondered if maybe it was the calls of mating birds or something. He was from the city and had only been living there for about two years and I told him that I had never encountered that before. Then he proceeded to tell me that he had found a deer kill back by his pond which was only about 20 feet from the woods by a farm pond that he had. He also used to run muskrat traps in the big watershed ditches on his property and used to make his last round checking his traps about 10:00 pm. He said that he was checking one of his traps back on the southeast corner of his property approximately 60 feet from the wood line. He was bent over adjusting the trap when he said that something let out this horrific scream about thirty feet away from him in the ditch. He looked in that direction and said he saw something large and black charging at him down the ditch bank. It knocked him over and continued down the ditch and disappeared into the woods. He said it happened so fast he didn't know what it was. Unfortunately it rained that night so when he went back to look for tracks nothing was visible. He used to carry a .22 pistol when he checked his traps. He said he started carrying his .44 and didn't check them at night anymore.

Activities of Witness: Pretty much minding my own business as were the witnesses that were with me at the time.

Other Notes: I realize that this happened a long time ago, but I thought you might find it interesting and maybe it will help in your research.

Other (Informational or Encounter History in the General Area) Notes: I was a police officer there in the 80's and one day during a recess of a court case, I was talking to the judge and we got talking about hunting. The judge said that he used to go coon hunting in those same woods in the 50's and 60's and said that on three different occasions the dogs got on something that was big, extremely fast and would "scream like a banshee from hell" he said that they also lost dogs on those occasions as well and some of the other ones looked like they had been in the fight of their lives. He said that his hunting partners named it the "Devil of Oaksville" Also there was supposed to be a BF sighting in the area in 1974, but I do not know the particulars of it.

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