DATE:       01/12/02

TIME:        5:45 P.M. -until-  Daybreak the next morning

LOCATION: Great State of Texas

TERRAIN:    Wooded
 

OBSERVED: There is a very hot area that has been under current GCBRO
investigations for a couple of years now.  We have had a lot of good action
in this one particular area.  On the weekend of this event, I was
accompanied by Chester Moore Jr. and Chester Moore Sr. and Patrick Trumble
for an overnight stay in the bottoms of this area.  We got there around
3:30 P.M. and got our camp set up, and gathered up firewood.  We were
approximately 50 yards into the bottom and on one side of us was a grown
up clear cut area, that had weeds over our heads.

It was around 5:30 P.M. by this time and was just starting to get dusk, and
we heard the first sound of a limb breaking from the North and deeper in
the bottoms.  Then we heard another one and it was getting closer from the same direction.  I had to take a private break before nightfall set fully in, so I headed to the
clear cut area I had picked which was NW of our camp, and about 150 or so
yards away.  While I was taking care of my business you could hear the breaks
still coming toward camp from the North, yet directly behind me, I could hear
more breaks circling where I was positioned (for the lack of a better word.  LOL!).  Anyway the whole time I was handling my business, there was this breaking of
dead fall limbs continuing back and forth behind me.  There was still enough light to see, but I could not see anything breaking the limbs.

The whole time, the breaks towards camp still continued which indicated that
there was at least two different guilty culprits that were making the limb breaking sounds.   Anyway, after completing my business, I returned to camp and by
this time, it had gotten fairly dark.  We settled in next to the fire and listened to the continuos breaking of dead fall limbs from the North as well as NW, and then the
sounds from the NW moved to our South, making a circular sweep around our
camp.  Then approximately 30 minutes after dark had settled in, the thing
that had been making the breaks from the North moved more NE.

Then all of a sudden this creature broke and ran around the camp to the South
position.  At no time did it try to hide its movement.  When it took off to make the
big move from one location to the other it crashed through the underbrush
and joined whatever was South of us, and they continued to break dead fall.
This was no deer or any other normal known creature of the woods.  These
things were deliberately wanting us to hear them breaking these dead fall limbs.
My guess was they did this to let us know that we were in their territory, and they did not appreciate it.  This whole series of events continued for a few hours, but it got to the point that it sounded as if only one was moving around breaking things after a while and the breaks became less frequent.

Around 9:30 P.M. from back deeper in the bottoms to our NE, we heard a loud aggressive primate sound.  It put me in the mind of the sounds you hear when
a chimp gets aggravated about something and is shaking its hands up and down
and jumping up and down at the same time.  Except this sound was much deeper
and louder.  A chimp has a much higher pitched sound than this thing did.  It was
from something much larger than a normal chimpanzee.  This was a totally new
sound to me, and I have heard a lot of weird sounds while researching Bigfoot.

Anyway, the night wore on, and the events were off and on from there, with
a few howls here and a few other weird sounds there.  Chester
Jr. was tired and wanted to go take a short nap, so he went into the tent
and stayed in there for about an hour and a half.  He come out shaking,
because it was extremely cold by this time.  Frost was already settling  in on us.
I was getting pretty tired, and after he had been out of the tent for a bit,
I decided I was going to hike back out to my truck and pack the tent heater back in.
We had alot of gear to pack in earlier that day and I did not have the time to get it in when we got the rest of our gear into the area.

Chester Jr. said he would go with me, so we hit the trail and worked our way out.
Way down the path we had setup a night vision video camera set up with a motion sensor to turn it off and on.  We had to go right past it to get to our pick-ups.  After
reviewing the tape the next day, you could see where we tripped the sensor
as we went by and then it went off, then it was tripped again very shortly
after we passed it, but whatever followed us out, did not get into the view of the camera.  Then you could see us coming back and tripping it again on our return trip to camp.  Almost had something on video.  ?;o)

Anyway, we got back to camp and set the heater in the tent and got it started to warming the tent up.  It was around 3:45 A.M. when we decided to turn in.  We had let the fire continue to die down to a small glow in hopes that something might pay us a closer visit after we retired into the tent.  I was laying with my head to the front of the tent which was facing the West and my side of the tent was facing the South.  Patrick
was next to me, then Chester Sr., then Chester Jr., all their heads were to the East.  Chester Jr, had the other side of  the tent which was the North side.

No sooner than we zipped down the zippers on the tent, and got settled in,
we heard a loud break from the SE in the bottoms, and you could clearly hear something coming towards the tent through the woods.  It seemed to take a
little longer than I wanted, which was probably about 5-10 minutes or so,
because I dozed off and the next thing I know, Patrick was saying "Bobby,
did you hear that"?  Me being in a dreamy drowsy state at this time, because
I was give out from the packing in of the gear, said "Uh, yeah, what was
it"?  Patrick replied "It's right behind the tent".  I could not hear  anything at
that point, and laid there quietly listening.

Then from the front of the tent approximately 50 foot or so away you could
distinctly hear a deep low guttural growl start.  I eased myself up into a sitting
position and facing the front of the tent with my sidearm in my hand.  The
growling lasted for about 5 minutes or so then seemed to quit.  Talk about a
rush, man that was a good adrenaline rush.  Anyway, after about 5 more minutes
I decided to lay back down facing the wall of the tent on my side.  No sooner than
I laid down and got still, I could hear the dead fall outside the tent slowly crackling
as something was taking slow deliberate steps around my side of the tent and
trying to avoid making any noise, so it was placing its feet down very slowly in an
effort to not be heard.

I immediately eased my hand over and squeezed Patricks leg and told him
"Its right here by my side of the tent".  After a few seconds more I did not hear it anymore.  Then approximately 4 minutes later Patrick whispered in a shaky voice
"It's right here by my friggin head"!  At that point Chester Jr. and I busted out
laughing, because of the sound of his voice when he said it.  Things seemed to
settle down, and I dozed off to sleep.

I awoke a short time later and it was around 6:30 A.M.   I had to relieve myself
so I got up and exited the tent as well as everybody else did behind me.  We didn't see anything when we exited the tent, but after daybreak, as we were breaking down
camp, we did find directly behind where Patrick's head was, two foot
impressions that were right at 18 inches long and 8 inches wide.  These
impressions were 4 inches from the back of the tent.  So this thing stood
over the tent and was checking everything out, while we were laughing at
Patrick on the inside, and no telling how long afterwards?

Now before anybody says "Why didn't you shoot through the tent, or try to
come out and see what it was", let me give an explanation for this.  Number one, I
don't shoot at a sound, nor does anybody in my team.  We have to see and
identify the target before taking a shot.  Plus, if I or anybody would
have freaked and took a blind shot, we might have missed it, grazed it,
wounded it, made it extremely angry or a host of other things.  All of
this could result in not getting anymore chances to conduct our research
in this area with these creatures.   Or, possibly have one highly pi$$ed off ape
jumping on the tent, that was already wall to wall men, with firearms.  Somebody
would have been either shot or killed in that circumstance.  Safety is number one
with us, and it was just not a safe situation.

Now on coming out of the tent, I did entertain that thought, but the tent we were
using was a dome shaped tent that had an upside down T zipper setup that zipped
up the middle and out from the middle going to the left and then to the right to
open the tent part up.  Then on top of that was a dew storm cover that fits over the
tent and comes down to approximately 6 inches from the ground and it had a
zipper that zipped up from the bottom as well.  So it was not going to be
easy to try and just unzip a tent and walk out to see the culprit.  Then
again, we might spook it off and hence forth not get a future chance of
research with them.  So we opted to just not push them anymore than our
presence in their area for one night.  We also found another track along
the trail that we came in on, that we came back and cast two days later, when we
had planned to return to do some more looking around.
 

ACTIVITIES OF WITNESS(ES):   Researching hot area/setting up camp/observing

DESCRIPTION OF CREATURE:

OTHER NOTES:  We have more stories of our adventures in this area, and they
all stem around the Fall and Winter months.  Some of those adventures will be
posted at a later date.

FOLLOW UPS:  Now in April 2002, we returned to the area and spent a couple of nights in the area.  Patrick did not make this trip, but Mike Brotherton made it
with us.  We heard a few howls and odd sounds right at dusk and right
after nightfall, but that was the highlight of that weekend.  We decided
that as with our area in NW Louisiana, that these creatures are more
aggressive during the Fall and Winter months and that we will spend more
time in there this Fall and Winter.

OTHER SIGHTINGS IN THIS AREA:  Yes several, and as stated, those will be written and posted at a later date.  Everything from us being screamed at, as well as the locals actually seeing these creatures.
 
 

It was a feeling I had felt before: something was watching us.

As part of a GCBRO research mission into a remote area in the Pineywoods of East Texas, I along with Bobby Hamilton, my father, Chester Moore, Sr. and Patrick Trumble camped along the edge of a dense pine plantation bordering a winding creek.

But something (or maybe I should some "things") was watching us and it did not hesitate to let us know it was there. Within an hour after nightfall, we heard heavy footsteps in the darkened woods from a couple of different positions and heard a noise that can best be described as a very gorilla-like noise.

As we sat around the campfire talking about bigfoot creatures and how many we thought might be in this particular area we kept hearing what we assumed were the creatures prowling around in the brush. The most interesting part of this for me was that every time we heard something and quit talking it would quit moving. After we resumed talking for a minute or so the movement would start again. A sign of intelligence on the noisemaker’s behalf?  Maybe.

I will spare the details of most of the night since Bobby Hamilton has already covered them, but I will explain what I call the "tent incident".

Late in the night we decided to retire to the tent and put out the fire. We assumed the creatures were probably afraid of the fire and might come in for a closer look if we were in the tents and the fire was out. We sat up for a few minutes and chatted, but it didn’t take long for all four of us to crash. We were all exhausted from carrying lots of heavy gear deep into the woods and from staying up well past our bedtime.

It couldn’t have been more than 30 minutes after I finally gave out that I heard a very loud branch snap in the woods behind the tent. Everyone else heard it too and waited to see if anything might come in and mess with us. Hamilton heard a similar noise out the side of his tent, so we waited for something to happen.

The sound of feet walking around the tent gave us a chill I don’t think any of us will ever forget. They weren’t loud steps, but they were steps and I could hear them coming from the direction of the snapped branch. The most chilling part was the growling though. The "noisemaker" as I will call whatever came into our campsite let out this low-pitched, low volume growl that sounded like something straight out of a horror movie. Actually I don’t know if it was a growl or just this thing breathing as it was so close to the tent.

A few minutes later Trumble said "It’s right behind my head" and said he could hear its footsteps outside his end of the tent and actually "felt" the thing pushing up the pinestraw and sticks under his side of the tent. My father, Chester Moore, Sr. later explained feeling the same thing.

Was this an adrenaline overload? Yes. Was it frightening? Yes. Was it the experience of a lifetime? Yes.

When we woke up the next morning we all looked around the campsite with amazement at what happened. I remembered Trumble saying the creature was right behind his head so I went to that side of the tent and found two, deep impressions in the shape of a foot in the pinestraw and barely touching down into the dirt a couple of inches below. Something had stood there and we all have an idea of what it was. The description is tall, hairy, ugly and not yet proven to exist.

In reality the most exciting part of this adventure is that this immediate area has a rich history of bigfoot sightings and vocalizations. In a story I wrote for The Anomalist, I detailed an incredible vocal encounter I had there along with Hamilton and my father. And in the last couple of years we have recorded sounds and made some impressive plaster casts from the creek bed that cuts through the dark, wooded landscape.

Are there monsters out there? I will just say if they are anywhere it is at this spot.