Report Received From: The GCBRO Online Report Submission Form.
 

DATE:    July 19, 1996
 

TIME:     Approximately 10:30am
 

LOCATION:   Mississippi, Jasper County
 

TERRAIN:    Both swampy & heavily wooded with large clearing
 

OBSERVED:    I went to the "bottom" (as my family has always called this area of their land) that morning to frolic and get some sun.  I had waited until my relatives had returned home from feeding the cows, thinking to have enough privacy to sun in the buff by the creek bank.  Since I knew everyone would be at home until well after lunch, I shed my clothes while I was still in the large grass clearing on the way to the creek and began to dance, sing, enjoy the sun, and gradually make my way down to the creek, which is a very heavily wooded swamp area.  Thinking I was alone, I wasn't paying much attention to anything except enjoying the freedom of being bare in the sunlight.  Suddenly I had the creepiest feeling of being watched.  I stopped to listen and pick up my clothes.  As I stood up, my eyes were drawn to the darkest area of large trees about 100 yards or less from where I was standing.  I didn't see anything at first, so I thought I must be imagining the whole thing.  I took a couple more steps to continue to the creek, and when I did, directly in front of me a huge black thing strode from behind one of the largest trees and stood beside another tree just to the right of the one he(?) had been standing behind.  He/it stood there looking directly at me, in plain sight.  Because of the contrast of light/dark between the sunny clearing where I was and the darkness of the woods and swamp, I could not say for certain the exact color.  It just looked black to me, and the height must have been between 8' - 10'.  It was huge!  The hair on the back of my neck and head stood straight on end, and I felt a chill of fear that I have never felt before or after.  The thing meant for me to see it!  I turned abruptly and began to run, not even putting on my clothes.  I ran straight for my uncle's barn and house; he lived closest to where I was.  All I could think was that if the thing followed me, it would catch me because I am 5'4 with a much shorter stride than the creature that was watching me, and how in God's world would I get away?  When I made it to my uncle's barn, I put on my clothes and did the best I could to compose myself since I was crying and breathing very hard from the run.  I never told anyone except my children, but I told them that from then on, they could only go to that part of the land on a 4-wheeler and they should always take dogs with them.  About two weeks later, everyone was gone from the land (250 acres) except my middle daughter and me.  We were on the back porch of my mother's house, where there are three ponds.  My daughter suddenly stood up and said, "What the fXXX is that!"  I looked up and saw a huge, black hairy 2-legged being trying to jiggle the gate latch open, or that's what it looked like.  When it heard our voices, it looked up and turned to run from us.  That was the most fluid motion I have almost ever seen, and my daughter began chasing the thing.  (She is 5'1 and very brave.)  I couldn't let her go alone, so I ran right behind her.  By the time we made it to the gate, we couldn't see anything, so we stopped to listen.  There was absolutely no sound.  Dead silence.  We continued walking (together!) to see if we could see any tracks or signs of what we had just both witnessed.  There were dense leaves underfoot and we are not trackers.  Then we heard a huge splash in one of the ponds just a few feet from us, but down a hill where we could not see.  We ran as fast as we could get there, but we only saw ripples, many very large ripples that spread quickly all the way across the pond.  We knew no fish in that pond could have caused those ripples.  We stood there for a while to see if anything would surface, but nothing ever did.  We finally went back to the porch and just sat there stupefied.  Later we talked about it and wondered if the ponds could be connected to the creek underground.  I still think about it.  Now I know my mother was not making up what she saw when I was a very small child.  Mother had gone out to burn her trash one morning just at or before daylight, and when she was looking for her matches, a huge hairy creature stood up right in front of her.  It had been searching through the trash.  Right about the same time, several families that lived along the same road we lived on all saw the same thing.  There were tales of this the whole time I was growing up, and I had always made fun of my mother for telling me.  I thought she was just trying to scare me.  Maybe she was just trying to keep me safe.
 

Activities of Witness:   Walking to the creek bottoms to sunbathe on the bank.
 

Description of Creature:  Approximately 8' - 10' in height, covered with black or very dark hair.  Long arms.  Long, long stride.  Very fluid, silent movement/running, even in leaves.  Seems very familiar with our land, even the fences and gates, as I believe it intended to come into our yard until it realized someone was at home the day my daughter and I saw it.  (All the cars were gone that day.)  I believe the thing is also familiar with us and has probably watched all of us, since thick trees grow right up to the back of my mother's house, as well as the houses of most others who live along that road.
 

Other Notes:    I have already described in incident when I was alone, or thought I was alone.  Before the other incident, my mother and everyone else had left her house, and all the cars were gone.  My middle daughter and I had stayed there to spend some quiet time together.  Both my uncles and my aunt, who live only short distances away, were also gone, as were their vehicles.  I had to consider that whatever we saw thought no one was there.

Several of the neighbors own cattle, and there have been numerous rumors of dead calves, etc.  At one time, people were carrying guns every time they went into the woods, even to feed their cattle.  Most of the people in that area are not much for talking.  They usually say something like, "It was wild dogs".  But they are really insistent about nobody going to the creek bottom alone.
 

Additional Notes and or Follow up Comments:  Upon contact by GCBRO Researcher Fay Easley, the witness had this to add:

"For many years I said nothing about this except on rare occasions to family members.  I'm still not certain why I chose to make a report at all, but maybe doing so will provide me with some sense of relief and closure.

As for the things I may have forgotten, there are some.  I have three daughters and two of them have seen either the same creature I saw or one that is similar.  Both live here in the area at this time.  Depending upon how it is presented to them, they may be willing to speak with you.  XXXX is my middle daughter; she is the one I already mentioned in the report.  XXXXX is my youngest daughter, and once when staying at my mother's house, she had the frightening experience of waking about 3:00 am one morning when she had some girlfriends there for a sleep over.  They were all in the back room by the TV and had fallen asleep on the floor.  XXXXX said she woke up because she heard something outside.  She walked to the double French doors to look out and standing between the porch and the swimming pool (which is only about 10' from the back porch) there was a very large hairy, dark thing standing on two feet and staring into the house.  She said she immediately dropped to the floor so it hopefully would not see her, then raised her head to see if it was still there.  It then walked to the pool and reached down to scoop something out of the water.  She crawled to make sure the doors were locked.  When she looked back outside, she saw nothing else.  She sat awake for the rest of the night.

About the dead calves: During the same summer and fall/winter that XXXXX and I saw what we did, my uncle lost several of his newborn calves as they were being born.  He was very tight-lipped about it.  He lost eight (8) if I remember correctly.  With one of them, the mother died as well.  He made a huge effort to burn, as he said, what was left of them.  He said they were all torn up.  That same year, someone he knew was killed when he went to help one of his own cows that was giving birth.  My uncle said he should not have gotten out of the truck.  The man apparently had a gun with him, but "wild dogs tore him up and he never got a shot off".  My uncle and aunt were very afraid and never went anywhere on the land without a gun.  My mother did the same.

My family are not prone to talk much, even to each other.  They just try to take things in stride and keep on going every day.  It is very doubtful that any of the elder ones, my mother and her brothers and sister, would ever talk to anyone.  My daughters may, or may not.

I am more than willing to talk with you and provide whatever information would be helpful in your research, because no matter what, I must always live with the fact that I saw what I saw.  I know someday, somehow, there will be proof that many of the bigfoot sightings are real.

I just want you to know that the land where these events occurred has been in our family since just after WW1, and my grandmother and her sister-in-law were the first to have seen a large hairy creature that frightened their horses and both women so much that they never forgot it.  That must have been about 1920 or so.  The next event with my mother burning trash happened around or just after 1950.  The sightings that involved me and two of my daughters were in 1996 and the calves my uncle lost were born following that up until almost summer of 1997.  It is okay if you don't believe me, but if you really want to find evidence, it would seem prudent to at least consider that there have been repeated sightings in that area and on that land for close to 85 years that my entire family are aware of."

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