DATE:   1979, November or December
 
 

LOCATION:  TN, Robertson County, The family farm
 
 

TERRAIN:   Heavily wooded, creek running through the property.
 
 

OBSERVED:  My brother and I were on our family farm playing in the woods as usual on the weekends.  I think I was 11 and he 10 at the time. We were in a heavily wooded area with thick underbrush in a valley behind our tobacco barn playing in the stream that ran along the back side of the barn. We were collecting rocks and making a dam for a swimming hole for the next summer's use. It was late in the afternoon- almost dusk on a cold, cloudy day not long after Thanksgiving.

I kept having one of those "gut feelings" that something wasn't "right" but I couldn't put my finger on it, so we kept working. I had mentioned my feeling to my brother, like we were being watched. I jumped across the creek
holding a large field rock and heard a stick break loudly. I looked under my feet to find nothing but leaves and mud, I looked back across at my brother who wasn't near any dead fall. I also had a severe wake up call in my gut to get out of there, the hair all over me, especially on the back of my neck and arms went rigid. I dumped my rock and told my brother we had to get out of there immediately, something wasn't right, my gut was screaming "DANGER."  He didn't protest as his hackles were also raised by that time.

I retrieved my rifle from the tree across the creek where we'd left our "weapons" (pump BB air rifles, we didn't get shotguns till the next Christmas) and walked to the 4 foot woven wire fence we had to cross. I set my BB gun down on the other side of the fence and grabbed some low hanging tree limbs to assist my getting across the fence. All the long johns and winter clothes I had on necessitated a little extra help.

Once I dropped down on the other side, I turned toward the barn (and the creek behind it, about 20-30 yards from me) to pick up my BB gun. I locked eyes with a... thing, like nothing I had ever seen before. A huge black,
hairy thing, sort of crouched down on one knee, slightly behind a large, old oak tree just across the creek. It was totally covered in long (4-6"), wavy, black/dark brown hair.  It's features were somewhere between an ape and a
man with a very broad chest and shoulders held erect. It had long arms with big hands, human-like hands not ape/gorilla-like. It had the most enormous black eyes (without whites) and, needless to say, scared the absolute
beegeesus out of me as we stared each other down for I guess 30 seconds to a minute and a half (although it felt like a couple of eons).

My first thought, after the initial shock, was my brother. I screamed his name at the top of my lungs and started pumping my BB gun for all it was worth. I intended to shoot the thing in the eyes if it moved, reasoning that
would be the only vunerable area and our only hope of slowing it down if it started toward either of us.  My brother was about 15 yards from me on the other side of the fence retrieving his BB gun with his back to the creek (maybe 15-20 yards from the thing). My next thought was to run for help and distract it's attention from my brother, so I took off for the field some 50 yards away through the woods.

My brother said he looked at me after I screamed (a truly bloodcurdling scream he claims) to see I was literally as white as a sheet and thought "what the hell's wrong with her?" He fired his BB air gun into the ground, it was a long pistol type model, and stuck it through his belt.  Then he said he looked up across the creek and saw the thing- only it was out from behind the tree, standing fully erect. My brother cleared a 4 foot fence in one bound with 2 pair of long underwear and a pair of jeans on when he wasn't much taller than the fence at the time.

Meanwhile I'd made it to the field and turned toward the woods with my gun ready, looking for any sign of my brother and debating about going back in after him. I was crying and screaming for him hysterically. I was never so glad in my life to see a hunter's orange sock cap bobbing my way out of those woods. He ran up to me and said he'd heard it chasing him, but it didn't follow him out of the woods, yet anyway.

We ran all out, looking over our shoulders every few seconds, back to the farm house which was about 1/4 mile across a main road. When we reached the house and "fell in the door" as my aunt says, we told her and my cousin about our encounter. They laughed it off nervously, then my aunt confessed to many sightings and strange occurrences through the years in the area. She told us a man had disappeared off a bridge on a tractor just below (less than 500 yards downstream) where we'd been when she was a child. Said the tractor was found overturned in the creek, but the man never was, the woods were full of "haints."

I had nightmares for years afterwards and slept on the edge (about a 12" section) of a double bed as far away from the window it was up against as I could get without sleeping in the floor (which I did fall onto a few times).
I didn't set foot in that area of the farm for years, not until TVA came through and logged it out for their towers to go across our farm, and not then unless I was carrying at least a 12 gauge with slugs or "00" in broad
daylight.

Even all these years later, every time I remember those eyes I stared into, the hair stands up all over, especially on the back of my neck and forearms.
That incident taught me to pay close attention to and obey, immediately, those kind of gut feelings. I'm gone when it hits me the first time now, I don't wait around till it gets worse.
 
 

Description of Creature:   Huge black, hairy thing,
 
 

Other Notes:   Yes, Several other sightings through the years.  (Posted separately)
One of the witnesses feels traumatized to the point of nightmares about seeing this bigfoot creature .