Report Received From: The GCBRO Online Report Submission Form.
 

Report Posted To GCBRO Web Site On:  May 3, 2005
 

DATE:    June 2001
 

TIME:     mid afternoon to evening
 

LOCATION:   Ocean County, New Jersey
 

TERRAIN:    Wooded
 

OBSERVED:    A friend and I used to frequent these woods, hanging out at a place  we called the "old railroad bridge". It is a wooden tressel-type thing that stands over a small creek. On this particular day we were shooting bottles with a paintball gun, his gun got jammed and we stopped, sat down on a root, and  were both focused on trying to figure out what was wrong with it. I would say we were working on it for maybe 2-3 minutes, in mostly silence.  
We heard a splashing in the creek, coming from what I believe is the west, heading eastwardly (left to right from our vantage). We both kind of looked at each other and knew not to make any noise, figuring it would be a deer or something we could get a look at as it passed. The splashing suddenly stopped  just short of us being able to see what it was, so we both got up and slowly walked towards the creek to get a better view. My friend was ahead of me by maybe 3-4 feet. He stepped on to an old piece of wood and leaned forward to get  a look, his eyes got kind of wide and he let out a rather loud "holy XXXX". The moment he said it I heard a sort of startled-grunt, and he hollered out "there's a god XXXX bear in the
water" and jumped back off the wood towards me. I ran back away from the tressel and the creek for two reasons, one, I had no intention of face-to-facing a bear, and two, it was higher ground and the entire creek was at least partially visible from it. I swung around a tree and looked towards the direction of where it was, my friend catching up with me at about the same time. Through the reeds, which I must say obstructed our vision quite a bit, we could see a brown-ish gray, almost ash  colored....thing...running much higher than a bear would be. To be honest it looked bipedal. We don't even have bears around here, we have black bears further north, but this wasn't a black bear.
 
Seeing it between the reeds, and not having the courage to go down in the creek and look, I would say it had to be at least 5 feet at the shoulder. At least. It could be anywhere above that, but I'm saying it was at least that tall. And it wasn't moving that fast, but you could tell it was booking it the hell out of  there, making a ton of noise as it went. Sort of grunts.

There was no smell, but I think we were up wind. The way the area is layed out  it likely wouldn't have smelled us behind the reeds and pussy willows.
 
I'm a super super skeptic, and I'm not saying this was bigfoot. From the look I got of it it could have been a guy in a monkey suit or a brown bear running on its hind legs. I really don't know and I'm not about to make any assumptions.
 

Activities of Witness:   We were paintballing glass bottles off a tressel
 

Description of Creature:  Brownish gray, ashy, from the look i got of it, it looked bipedal, sounded so in the water too.
 

Other Notes of Possible Interest: We've heard typical strange woods noises, nothing like this though.
 

Additional Notes and or Follow up Comments:  Upon contact the witness had no additional information to add to this report other than to confirm it was a legitimate report.

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