Bigfoot Sightings

OBSERVED: This sighting happened many years ago when I was just a child probably around 6 to 7 years old and at the time I saw this creature, I had no idea what a Bigfoot or Sasquatch was because this was back before internet and before Satellite TV. It wasnt until many years later that I heard of bigfoot and was able to put 2 and 2 together and realize that that was the creature I had saw when I was a much younger child. My family and I lived on a road named Xxxxx Ave. We lived in a house my parents had built and it was a big wooded lot on Lake Xxxxxxx. Our yard was about an acre of cleared grassy area with a few select random trees and then when you reached the outer edge of the cleared acre, it was totally surrounded by thick woods and brush. It was a very secluded area and the only neighbors we had were way on down the road probably about 2 or 3 blocks away. I was a very active, outgoing child. I stayed outside a lot of the time from sun up to sun down. I was a tomboy and LOVED playing outside, climbing trees, collecting frogs, and exploring. I remember our dog had had some puppies and my dad had built a little wire fence kennel in our backyard, all the way down to where the edge of the yard met where the thick woods began. All I remember about that day was being down at the kennel by myself squatted down or maybe even sitting down on the ground playing and I was petting the new puppies through the fence. I remember as I sat there I heard something walking through the woods cause I could hear the dry leaves on the ground crunch the way they do when something moves around in the woods. I think I may have glanced up but didnt see anything and I wasn't really concerned with it because I saw squirrels, rabbits, lizards, and frogs almost every single day scurrying around in those woods making the leaves ruffle around like. I remember as I sat their totally consumed with the excitement of the puppies, I continued to hear the movement in the leaves but glanced up a couple more times and still didn't notice anything so I figured it was probably our German Shepard that roamed around freely in the yard so I continued to sit and play with the pups unconcerned but then I remember hearing the sounds again but they seemed to be getting louder and closer so this time I stood up and gave a much better look and straight ahead through the woods just a tad over to my right probably about Id say 1000-1500 ft away I saw a huge dark figure standing there facing a tree out in the woods. I remember it was standing sideways with its profile facing me and I could see its arm reach out about eye level in front of it and pick something off and it looked like it was eating it but I didn't see it but a couple seconds because my immediate thought as a child when I saw this was that it was a big gorilla in the woods and it scared me to death because I had never seen anything like that in our woods before. I immediately turned around and ran as fast as I could up to my house. I remember looking at the ground as I ran and then running up the steps on our deck to our sliding glass backdoor and trying to open it but my mom had locked it..I was only about 6 or 7 I believe and I was small but I just about beat that door down that day, lol..My beating on the door scared my mom to death because I had never done that before and she came running to the door.I ran inside soon as she opened it and I told her what I had saw in the woods. She immediately called the police.The police came out and they searched through the woods but they never found anything. I think they thought I was making things up because I was so adamant about it being a gorilla that I saw. They kept asking if I was sure it wasn't a person that I just mistaked as a gorilla I guess because they knew gorillas didn't live in our part of the country except for at zoos but I didn't and all I could do is tell them what it looked like from my point of view as 6 or 7 year old child and to me, it looked like a great big dark gorilla that was eating something off of a tree. My mom knew I had seen something because she knew I never acted that way or was ever a child to just make stories up, she just didn't no what I had seen, nor did I until many years later when they started showing things about bigfoot on TV...Even then, at first I didn't make the connection because I thought bigfoot was just something made up for tv but as I got older and realized there were people in real life claiming to have seen this bigfoot creature and then I started seeing sketches of what people described it to look like, that's when I realized that it wasn't a gorilla that I saw in the woods that day as I had thought it was for years...it was bigfoot...I was just too young to realize it. I only seen it that one time and I never saw it again. I did however have several nightmares about it afterwards. I kept dreaming that it would come into my house and pick me up out of my bed and then it would carry me out to the woods, and then I would wake up terrified but at that time I was having the nightmares, I was still thinking it was a gorilla. I still didn't know about bigfoot yet.

Additional Things: I'm sorry thats all I can remember about the incident..It wasn't very eventful or have alot of activity to talk about...Basically I saw it...and I ran and then didn't realize what it truly was until years later. I still felt I should share my simple story with you though because bigfoot is definitely as real creature or being that was in this area about 35 years ago. I know this for a fact because I have witnessed it with my own 2 eyes. I may have been young, but I know what I saw.

Activities of Witness: Just being a kid, sitting outside playing with our puppies.

Description of Creature: It was too far away for me to see any details of his face...It just looked big, very hairy with dark hair or fur...It looked like a big gorilla only with long hair covering its head kinda like a male Lions hair on its head.

Other (Informational or Encounter History in the General Area) Notes: Not that I am aware of

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