Navy Veteran’s 9-Foot Encounter in Colorado & Catskills Activity
92 min
•Feb 25, 2026about 2 months agoSummary
Navy veteran Dave shares two detailed Bigfoot encounters: a 1-on-1 sighting in Colorado's Maroon Bells Wilderness in 2000 with a 9-foot creature and smaller companion, and an extended 14-month period of activity at his Catskills property in New York (2004-2005) involving footprints, wood knocking, vocalizations, and a possible shooting incident with the neighboring hunter.
Insights
- Eyewitness accounts with corroborating physical evidence (footprints, shed displacement, fecal matter) and multiple witnesses strengthen credibility of Bigfoot encounters
- Sasquatch activity patterns suggest territorial behavior and communication between individuals using rhythmic wood knocking and vocalizations
- Geographic corridor from Poconos through Hudson Valley to Western Massachusetts shows consistent Bigfoot sighting reports across Appalachian region
- Witness documentation immediately after encounters and return visits for measurement/verification provide more reliable data than memory-based reports
- Local knowledge holders (hunters, rangers, property owners) often have unreported encounters but remain silent due to social stigma or official discouragement
Trends
Increased documentation of Bigfoot encounters through personal journals and BFRO reporting creating searchable database of sighting patternsCorrelation between UFO and Bigfoot sightings in specific geographic regions suggesting possible environmental or ecological factorsGrowing interest in Bigfoot research from urban professionals relocating to rural areas with weekend properties in wilderness zonesUse of technology (drones, cameras, recording devices) by private property owners to monitor and document potential Sasquatch activityEmergence of Bigfoot tourism and festival culture (Sasquatch Summerfest) creating commercial opportunities around cryptid researchAnecdotal evidence suggesting Sasquatch may be attracted to human food sources and residential areas, indicating behavioral adaptationLocal law enforcement and government officials treating Bigfoot reports as low-priority despite consistent community reportsDocumentary filmmaking (Searching for Sasquatch series) legitimizing cryptid research and creating platforms for witness testimony
Topics
Bigfoot sightings and encountersCryptozoology research methodologyWildlife tracking and footprint analysisSasquatch vocalizations and communication patternsWood knocking behavior documentationAppalachian mountain ecosystem and habitatEyewitness testimony credibility assessmentBFRO (Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization) reportingProperty owner wildlife encountersCatskills and Colorado wilderness areasHuman-Sasquatch interaction patternsCryptid tourism and festival eventsDocumentary filmmaking about cryptidsLocal folklore and oral historyWildlife behavior and animal identification
Companies
Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO)
Organization where Dave filed his Colorado encounter report in 2000; maintains database of Bigfoot sightings
Sam's Club
Retail store in Middletown, New York where Dave purchased grapple apples that may have attracted Sasquatch to his pro...
People
Dave (Navy Veteran)
Primary guest; Navy veteran and outdoorsman sharing two detailed Bigfoot encounters from Colorado and New York
Greg (Medical Doctor)
Dave's partner on Colorado trip and co-resident at Catskills property; kept detailed journal documenting 14-month act...
Jeremiah Byron
Host of Bigfoot Society podcast conducting interview with Dave about his encounters
Jason Kenzie
Documentary filmmaker behind 'Searching for Sasquatch' series; organizing Sasquatch Summerfest treks in Oak Ridge, Or...
Stan Gordon
Researcher who documented correlation between Bigfoot and UFO sightings in Southwest Pennsylvania during 1970s-1980s
Quotes
"These eyes, they looked like little headlights from a car, except it was a green light and it was... solid green, and they were huge."
Dave•Colorado encounter description
"I have a lot of experience outdoors and I've seen eyeshine from mountain lions, from bobcats, from bears, deer, everything, right? These eyes... nothing's ever even come close."
Dave•Colorado encounter analysis
"It was like you're rolling a barrel down when we're walking through it but this thing had no drag like it had to be big and have a huge step"
Dave•Catskills footprint analysis
"I think he shot it and hit it and it was it ran off screaming because it was hit"
Dave•Analysis of December 2005 gunshot incident
"Immediately write it down everything that happened if you can, because your memory will sometimes play tricks on you"
Dave•Advice on documenting encounters
Full Transcript
Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. you're listening to Bigfoot Society and I'm Jeremiah Byron in this show we go beyond the campfire stories to bring you first-hand encounters from people who say they've seen something impossible from backwoods trails and remote mountain haulers to quiet farms and crowded highways the stories come from everywhere and each one leaves us with more questions than answers these are the voices of the people who've lived it so settle in because today you'll hear another account that just might change the way you see the woods forever. So stay with us. All right, Bigfoot Society, I've got the privilege of talking to Dave today. Dave is an individual, his background is he's an outdoorsman and also a Navy veteran. Thank you for your service there, sir. And he is going to be sharing two different encounters. He's had one in the state of Colorado, and then also an extended experience that happened in upstate New York. So welcome to the show today, Dave. How are you doing today, sir? I'm doing well, thank you. Dave, it sounds like we have some really interesting ground to cover today. I believe the first encounter you'll be sharing is during a backpacking hiking expedition. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. So I let me back up for a second. I grew up in Ohio, in central Ohio, close to Coshocton in Licking County, right? Basically right on the line of Licking and Coshocton County. So I've always had an interest in Bigfoot because it was always talked about, you know, when I was a kid. Um, I, after college, um, I moved to New York city, um, where I lived for about 20 years in demand in Manhattan. And, um, during that time I got into hiking and backpacking because you live in the city and you're from, uh, the Midwest, you, you want to get out as much as possible. So I got into the habit, good habit of doing a lot of backpacking and camping. Never in New York, always out West, specifically in Colorado. So before this happened, I'd been going out there a few times and continued to go out. I'd go packing in the summer for a couple of weeks and then I would go skiing in the winter. Did that religiously until I got older. There was only one incident I had in Colorado. That was in August of 2000. So my partner and I, this particular trip, we started in the Maroon Bells Wilderness. And you go up this pass over a mountain. We camped. We got off to a late start. So we camped right over the first mountain in the Maroon Bells. and woke up the next day and nothing happened. Everything was fine. Woke up the next day and it was a heck of a hike through the Bell's wilderness. It was our first time doing it and I just wasn't prepared at all. And the plan that day was to go to this lake at the end of the wilderness, that area called Crater Lake. and it was a really dry summer that summer. We got there and we were running out of water. We got there and there was no lake. It was, there were like puddles. It was like sludge. And we panicked because we were running out of water. We didn't see any, there was one stream at the beginning of the Bells Wilderness, but nothing that we found, at least the trail that we had taken, no water at all. So, um, but I recall, um, passing a trail going up the next pass to get to Snowmass Lake, which is where we were headed. Um, I recall there being a stream there. So we backtracked, it was getting late. We backtracked, went up this trail. So we didn't want to go all the way up the mountain because elevation is always a problem. You know, we were still kind of adapting to the altitude. Um, and it was exhausting. So, and anybody who's been on this trail knows exactly where I'm talking about, but you, you, um, um, you go through the Bells wilderness and then you go up this trail to go over another mountain pass that will take you down into snowmass, uh, to snowmass lake and the snowmass wilderness. Um, so we hiked up now and it had not rained for weeks, But just so happens we saw storm clouds coming in because that's just how it works usually. And we, I want to say it wasn't that far up that pass. Memory, if memory serves, we probably hiked for 45 minutes or something up this pass. and the first place that we found to camp, because we were just looking for a place to camp that was near the water. And this creek, it had been so dry. It was just a small stream. It was probably two feet across and pretty shallow, but it was still running water. So we knew that we could filter it and drink it. So the first place that we found was a ledge going up the pass to our left. and there had been a campfire there. So we knew the people had camped there before. So we pitched our tent, got water, ate a little bit, and I was so tired. It just started getting dark and I passed out, fell asleep. Now, I don't know. I was asleep for maybe when I fell asleep, it was light. when I woke up, it was dark. But I had to go to the bathroom. Now, my partner was next to me, and he was reading a book. He had his head lantern on. So I said I have to go to the bathroom, but I couldn't be near the tent. So I had to walk far away. So I got out of the tent. And as soon as I, so there was a small trail going off the main path to the tent. And as I looked up that little trail, I hadn't had my lantern on yet. So this was back in 2000. So they didn't have, at least not that I was aware of, LED. It was all just battery operated. And I had like a AA battery operated headlamp. But it wasn't on yet. Um, there was just, and it was very, so it had actually rained before. So it was very wet and, um, uh, super quiet. And, um, there was a little bit of light coming from, um, my partner's headlamp in the tent because he was still reading. And as I looked up the trail, um, there was, there were two of the biggest eyes. So I have a lot of experience outdoors and I've seen eyeshine from mountain lions, from bobcats, from bears, deer, everything, right? These eyes, they looked like little headlights from a car, except it was a green light and it was, there was no, I can't explain it. But, you know, if you see a deer at night, the reflection, the refraction from light when it hits it, it has different, like, it illuminates differently. Like, it's not a solid color, right? These things were solid green, and they were huge. My first thought was, we have a bear, because there are black bears out there. But so I freaked out a little bit. Now, mind you, I, you know, later on, something that my partner pointed out was it was it was so quiet. It had rained and you could still hear the rain dripping off the trees. It had stopped raining by the time I got out. But it seems like very quiet. You could. I could hear the rain dropping off the trees when I got out of the tent. But as I'm staring at this thing, I think it was fear. Everything just went super quiet. And I'm staring at this thing and I reached up and I turned on my headlamp. And when I did, the eyes really lit up. And so much so that you could see the sides of the thing illuminated like lights, like headlights. It illuminated the size of its face. Now, I saw skin. I saw a little bit of hair on the sides, but I saw skin, you know, the cheekbones basically, and the eyes. And it just stood there and stared at me. Now, I filed a report on BFRO. This was back in 2000, and I was very bad with distance back then. And again, anybody who's been in this area and probably knows where this ledge is, but it's only about 35 feet from where we were to where the tree was, to where the trail was, if this thing was standing next to a tree. I'm going to fast forward a bit. We went back the next year, and I actually was able to gauge better on the distance. It was closer than I had originally thought. But I was stuck staring at this thing, and I couldn't move. It didn't move. It didn't blink. It didn't do anything. It just stood there. And then I noticed behind it another set of eyes that were smaller that was it was doing like a figure eight thing behind it. It was like bobbing back and forth behind this bigger one. And every once in a while it would get between its legs. Right. So you could see this thing moving behind it. And I just about crapped my pants because I had to go to the bathroom and I didn't know what I was going to do. But I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. It's like I was frozen staring at this thing. And again, it didn't move. And this went on for quite a while. At some point, I want to say not quite a minute, but close to a minute. it's always hard to gauge time when you know it stands still like that but it was there a while because I started sputtering trying to say my partner's name to get him to come out but I just couldn't I was like but but but but you know like that I just couldn't speak and finally he's he talks he's like what's wrong and I'm like you have to come out here You have to look at this thing. So he went to open the tent. And when he did, this thing blinked. So at this point, my eyes had adjusted enough that I could see more of it. But I could just see an outline. And it was big. It was really big, really tall. And it blinked. and it turned and walked down the trail. And the little one behind it, I'm assuming that's what it was, I don't know what else it could have been, was right on its legs. And it looked at me and it seemed to be moving with it in its stride. I don't know if it was holding onto its legs or what, but it walked down the trail. I freaked my partner didn't see it he said it was a bear or something I jumped back in the tent I decided not to go to the bathroom I was just going to hold it and I got back in the tent and I was in a panic because I knew whatever it was was big enough to harm us that little tent was not going to protect me in any way or us in any way. So I got back in the tent and I'm shaking, trying to process what I'd seen. And my partner said, you know, when you were sleeping and it was raining, I heard something coming down the trail and it sounded like it was making deliberately, you know, heavy footsteps. at first he thought it was campers coming down but trust me there's nobody up there and then this is towards the end of august i believe and there's not many campers up there you can get really cold at night um and even snow that time of year um uh in the in the rockies in the colorado rockies so so um there just weren't that many people out we didn't see anybody hiking in um and only saw people when we got to snowmass and there was only like one other couple there it was that late in season. So I thought that was weird. Like, how could you hear something? Like if you walk down a trail, you don't hear, but he said it was still light when he heard them coming down. And it, they stopped by our, our, by that place where we had, had, had, had put our tent. It has stopped on the trail near our tent. He didn't think anything of it as to why I had no idea. Um, but I, I'm, I have to assume that it was standing there and staring at us for quite a while. Um, and, but never smelled anything, never heard anything at that point. Um, so I got in the tent, I was in a panic. He told me about the footsteps he heard. Um, and then I'm trying to process that. Like how, how could that be? Um, and I didn't get much sleep that night. Um, I was anything anything at all that I heard I would wake up um and at one point that's when the knocking started and um there were so where we were so on this ledge um our tent was close to the to the to the edge where you could just walk down this little ravine and get to the water Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Um, and, but there was a nature trail there that went down. So obviously something was using this, that walkway to get down, um, past the ravine onto the other side where there were a bunch of, of, of woods, a bunch of trees. Um, so this thing was on the side nearest our tent, um, in the woods directly over to the side of the tent and just knocking. And it was, it was two knocks, um, and it would stop and then it would knock again and it would stop. And this went on all night. This went on, um, several times enough to keep me awake. Every time I would kind of doze off, it would wake me right up. Um, and my partner, he passed out. He just was out. Um, and at one point, this is another thing, it went quiet again. Like you could hear the rain. It rained really hard. Not the rest of the night after that, like we had a torrential rain and then it stopped, but you could still hear the rain drops, you know, hitting the leaves and stuff. There was a little bit of wind, but not much. But you could hear rain hitting leaves all night. and for whatever reason at one point I couldn't hear anything like there's nothing it was like you're in a vacuum almost and the something approached the tent but I didn't hear it until it was right outside the tent it was like a like that and right like feet away from my head from our heads and I just about lost it again. I couldn't move. I think it was fear. I couldn't move. We had bear spray and I had a big hunting knife that I always, I still have it. I always carry it with me. I just couldn't move. And I was trying to get my partner to wake up and he was out. So I slowly moved my hand. So my sleeping bag, whenever you moved your hand or something, and it made a little bit of noise. I was trying to be quiet. Apparently, I wasn't because when it heard me go for my knife, it turned and walked down that ravine onto the other side of the woods. A very quick move so fast. It happened just like that. The thing was standing there. I didn't smell anything, but something was definitely there. and then it started beating on trees down the ravine on the other side immediately like like within a minute it started beating on trees and that woke my partner up so as soon as the sun came up you usually when we wake up in the morning you you know you you want to dry your tent you know you want to lay everything out and get it dry and stuff there was none of that we packed everything up wet and got out of there. Didn't really say much to each other, actually, just like we have to go. And walking up the, so we made it up super early, made it to snowmass in record time, I can tell you that. And going up the trail, there were footprints. And that, you know, clinched it for my partner. It's like, you know, like that really is amazing. And I got a picture of one of them. So there were two sets. There was a big one and a little one. And the little one, I wore a 13 and putting my foot next to it, this was probably like maybe a 16 inch footprint, but it was really wide. And I'll actually find that picture and send it to you so you can show it. But the big one, you can actually see where my foot is. I actually stepped in it. Now, what I found interesting about these prints is that it had been so dry up until that rain, it still seemed like, and the ground was saturated, but it wasn't, like, if you walked on it, you couldn't make an impression at all. But this thing made an impression and led me to believe it was super heavy. I can't gauge the weight of it, but even the small one was heavy. heavier than I am. And I'm at the time, I think I was 170. I'm closer to 190 now. But I just couldn't process what, what can make these prints. And so we made it up over the pass. Now, what I recall was, as we got up to the top of that pass, over to the right, I don't know if It's the east, west, north, I don't know. But over to my right on this path, there was almost like a flat area with a bunch of woods. And there were impressions coming. I don't know if they were footprints, but there were impressions coming from those woods onto the path. It led me to believe that whatever these things were, they were in that area. And so like they didn't come up over the path from Snowmass. they'd come from this area at the top of the pass i don't know why i thought that it just i just had a feeling those were footprints that weren't quite defined enough for me to say they were footprints but i i i was it made me want to get out of there i'll tell you that so um we made it over the pass into snowmass we were there by like i think 11 a.m if that maybe earlier but we We had the whole day at Snowmass Lake. Super cold water, went swimming in the lake, had a great time. That night, the knocking started again. And there was knocking all over. It wasn't just like, so you'd hear a knock. And this is right at Snowmass Lake. There's plenty of places to camp there. There was one other camping site. We wanted to keep away from them, but we were close enough that we could see them. but there was knocking beyond them and then there was knocking on the other side like they were they were communicating and but these were instead of two knocks they were three knocks sometimes two sometimes three but they were always the same um cadence like it wasn't just random like it wasn't it always kept the same cadence was i thought was really interesting um like it was you knock, knock, or knock, knock, knock, knock. And then on the other side, you'd hear knock, knock, knock, knock, the same cadence. The slow knocks would be answered with slow knocks, fast, fast. It was very strange. That kept me up all night. At this point, I was so exhausted. We did hear whoops. That was my first time hearing whoops. I didn't know if it was a cat. I didn't know what it was. And this is before I knew anything about whooping. But we did hear a lot of that. But nothing came near the campsite, but just enough to get on our nerves and keep me on my toes and exhaust me. We were supposed to stay at Snowmass for two days. We only stayed for one We left and so this is part of the loop so you go up another pass to this place called Geneva Lake And we get to Geneva Lake and I tired as anything I hadn slept in a couple of nights And as soon as we pitched our tent, I passed out. And I didn't hear anything. But my partner, all night long he was hearing knocks and whoops again in geneva lake and um i had no reason to disbelieve him i was just so exhausted i just slept through all that um so instead of spending an extra day at geneva so we just kept leaving every time we heard it i didn't want to stay we would just leave um so next morning we packed up we left and that's when we went all the way through this small town of Crystal that you go past to go up Crystal Canyon to get back to Crystal Butte. So that is the Colorado story. That's absolutely incredible stuff, Dave. My goodness. I have a few questions for you. Just to make sure that it's documented, because I don't think I heard it said, so the eyes on the larger one how wide across would you estimate that those eyes were like the space between the two eyes not not very it didn't that that that's not what struck me it wasn't the distance between the eyes i mean that didn't i don't know if i can answer that because I'm not good at, it seemed proportional to the head. Um, they weren't far apart. It's the size of them that got me, um, because they were just so big and bright. Um, and I, again, I've seen a lot of eye shine, especially after living up here in upstate New York. Um, I've seen every kind of animal and I shine and nothing's ever even. So growing up in Ohio, I grew up in the country in Ohio. So I'd seen it all, I thought. And I've seen eyes shine from everything, you know, from cats to bears, deer, everything. And I've never seen eyes like this. It was, it was like, like I said, like two headlights, but they were green, really, really green. Right. Another distance question. How, how far off the ground would you estimate that the two eyes were i initially thought so that first year we didn't really um hang we left we didn't we didn't stay to measure anything or we just got out of there the following year we went back same same trail and we actually spent more time there, not on this pass. But we camped there again. And that's when I, that same tree was there that this thing was standing next to. And I was able to go up and measure it. And it was probably about nine feet tall, nine feet off the ground. The small one was, honestly, it looked really agile. It was anywhere from three to five feet. It was just moving so fast in this weird elliptical figure eight way and up and down and seemed very agile. I couldn't tell the size of that, but anywhere from three to five feet tall that one was. But again, I don't know if it was climbing behind this thing in the back. I just don't know. But it was fast. It was moving very fast. Thank you. Can you explain what the difference between something that is wood knocking versus something that is beating on trees? How does that sound different? No, I'm sorry. Whenever I say beat on trees, I'm talking about knocking. Oh, okay. Good. Gotcha. Gotcha. Sorry. And I ask that because I've actually experienced waking up at 3 a.m. and something was beating on trees and so i was curious if you had the same experience but okay so that's good to know i don't know what they're i mean it sounded to me like so i i have a um where i live now i have a a teepee out in the woods and um i have these you know how they teepees have lodge poles that hold the thing together right so um i had some extra lodge poles and one of them broke. And this was years ago, but I banged them together. And when I did, that's exactly what it sounded like. Two heavy pieces of wood being hit together. Sounded exactly like these large poles that I beat together. Gotcha. Yeah, no beating. When I say beat on trees, I'm talking about wood knocks. Gotcha, gotcha. I would say, might not leave this in, But the other weird thing I noticed in my situation was there was definitely no pattern when it was just like, wham, wham, wham, wham, wham, wham. Like there was no pattern to it. Wood Knox, definitely there's a pattern, like you said, in your encounter. Yeah. Wow. So how long was it after that happened? How long did you wait to share your experience or did you share? I shared it immediately. I contacted BFRO as soon as I got, so I, well, not immediately. It was, we were in Crested Butte for almost two weeks. Well, in Colorado, I'm sorry, for two weeks. We were in Crested Butte for a week. But driving, we drove from Denver to Crested Butte, Gunnison and Crested Butte. Driving back, we stopped in Breckenridge. and that's when I reached out to and I think I filed the report well I'd written it out I wrote it out when I was in Crested Butte but I typed it and sent it to BFRO within a couple of weeks Gotcha, I would say if anyone is listening, they have an encounter immediately write it down Yeah. Immediately write down everything that happened if you can, because your memory will sometimes play tricks on you and just write it, write it down. Yeah. And when I went back, it was just funny how you can distort. So I had gone back to read that report I filed and I'd forgotten about a lot of it. I wish I could read it verbatim. I mean, but, you know, even then, it's always best to write it down when it happens because your mind can play tricks on you. Absolutely. Is it okay to link that report to this episode so people can read that? Yeah. Just note that in the report, I think I said I was like 70 feet away. It definitely was not 70 feet. was much closer. And I was a bad, I just, I didn't measure anything when I was there because we just got the heck out of there. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. So that's sort of a mistake on my part, but it was closer and anybody who's been there knows this ledge for sure, because it's the only one. There's actually, there's a ledge towards the base and then there's another one up at the top. The following year, when we went back, we actually stayed at the top and nothing didn't hear anything nothing happened but in the morning um i heard something outside the tent but it was this the sun was out up and everything i slowly unzipped the tent and there was a uh mountain goat a big white goat you know like right there within a couple feet just staring at me um and as soon as it saw me it booked up the it was cool to watch it actually climb the sheer mountain. It was amazing to me how, how agile those things are. Um, but, um, so yeah, there's, there's like two ledges that you can camp on if you go up this pass to get to Snowmass Lake from the Maroon Bales wilderness. That's really cool. And I mean, then there is a potential food source there as well. If you've got mountain goats and probably other things as well since it's Colorado, but yeah, Dave, those are, those are the questions I have for your first encounter, would you be able to proceed with sharing what happened in upstate New York? Sure. This is a bit longer. It went over the course of a year and some odd months. We did. I didn't have the sense to. My partner, the same guy that went to me to Colorado, he's an MD he's a doctor so he keeps really good you know records of everything he had the sense to keep a journal of all this from the time when we realized what was going on up until the time when it stopped and how it stopped so it's good that he did that because there's no way I would remember all this stuff so I'm going through it it's like 20 pages long I just want to highlight some of the stuff because a lot of it is just sort of boring, I guess. But so how I ended up here, it started back. So after this happened, I got in touch with a Sasquatch group and did some volunteer work, you know, some research work for a while. And one of the guys in this group had told me about, I'm sure you've seen it, you know, the baby Bigfoot, the swinging in the tree. You ever seen that? Yes. Yes, I know which one you're talking about. Yeah, I think it was on YouTube for a while or something. You can find it or I could find it. But he had reached out to me and said, this happened in the New Pulse area of New York. Now, I, having lived in Manhattan, never, ever went upstate. Never gave it any thought. So, you know, driving in New York City was enough to throw me into a panic. But, you know, he asked if I could go up to New Paltz, this area. It wasn't in New Paltz. It was right outside of New Paltz. Asked if I would go up and investigate. So I did. Got a friend's car, braved the streets in New York City and made it over the George Washington Bridge and up the Palisades and, you know, made it there at an hour, hour 20, I think it was, not far from the city. Um, but after investigating that area, I, I just fell in love with it. I had no idea this was up here. Um, and I, I don't know what year that was, but it was like a year later or two years later when, um, we ended up looking upstate for a home. Um, because, um, you know, if you're a Manhattanite, you tend to not want to be in Manhattan on weekends, especially in the summer. So you either go to the Hamptons or somewhere on Long Island or the Hudson or something. But people just tend to not be in the city. So we had a lot of friends who had homes everywhere. So we started looking up here. And I don't want to give an exact location, but it's about two hours, two and a half hours from New Paltz. In the mountains, in the Catskills, the foothills of the Catskills anyway. Our house is at about 1200 feet elevation on a mountain. Well, I call it a mountain, but they actually mined this area for when they were building New York City for stone and lumber. So we actually have huge quarries on our property of where they mined Bluestone for New York City, which is pretty cool. So ended up finding this place, moved here, closed on the house in November of 2004, and moved in that weekend and loved it. It's on 30 acres. There's no neighbors. There are neighbors down the road. It's on a dirt road, but there's really no neighbors here. There's a hunting preserve next door to the cabin we have that's a 750-acre preserve. And then there's another 35,000, 4,000 acres of just state land. So I have a drone now and I'll fly it around. It's pretty cool. there's nothing here. Down the mountain, about a mile and a half down is a river, where I do a lot of fly fishing now. That's sort of the layout. So the house is on a incline, about 20 degree incline. So the front of the house, you can tell it's a two-story cabin, but in the back, it's actually three floors. So the back half of the back of the house is underground. And it's about a 32 to 35 foot distance from the top of the roof to the ground in the back of the house. In the front, there's only like an eight foot. So it's pretty steep going down. It's a 2,500 square foot house. And there's a driveway. So when you pull in, There's a long drive and it goes around the back of the house to a garage in the back. And the driveway in the back, the driveway in the back is so hard to explain how this is situated, but the house is on an incline. So if you're in the back of the house and you go up to the screened-in porch and you look down, you see a lot of woods. So it's almost like you're in a canopy. So you're in the trees up here, but then when you look down, you just see woods. But you can see for a good – well, right now it's winter. So you can see for a good 200 yards down. And then it goes down. So there's an incline, then it goes flat for a while, and then there's another incline. It just goes all the way down the mountain like that. So if you go down into these woods, you can get lost very easily. But you just keep going downhill. You'll hit the river. You'll be fine. Um, but, um, so the first, it didn't think anything of Bigfoot up here, nothing. I mean, we just bought a house. It was beautiful. We're so happy to have it. Um, it was a lot of work. Um, but it was one of the first weekends. So what we would do, this was weekend home at first. Um, so we would come in on a Friday, Friday night. We would leave early Monday morning. And it takes about two and a half hours to get back to the city from here. So we would leave at about 3.30, 4 in the morning just to make it, you'd have to go over Bear Mountain and to the Palisades and then over the GWB, the Georgia Washington Bridge. And you'd want to be at the Georgia Washington Bridge before 6 a.m. because that's when the traffic really starts. So we just kind of figured that out fast. So maybe it was a third or fourth weekend. And it was cold. That fall was super cold. This was probably mid-December of 04. And I'm the one who packed up the car. So we had a Nissan X-Terra at the time. So I popped the hatch in the back and I was loading it up probably quarter to four in the morning. And there was a stench out there. It smelled like it was right there. It smelled like a rotting deer. That's what I thought was it was a deer cart. There was a deer that maybe had died in our front yard or something. And at the time now I've opened up a lot of this, but when they built the house, um, they, um, they ran out of money. So they didn't do any landscaping or anything. It was just a big log cabin on the side of a mountain, um, with no landscaping. It was just raw. So over the years I've cleaned it all up and stuff. But back then you had from the front of the house, you had the driveway that went straight across the front of the house. And then you had woods probably 10 feet from there. So you had a bunch of pine trees and oak trees and stuff right there. You could literally, I mean, it was just literally the house was set in the middle of the woods. And I was looking out. I couldn't see anything. It was dark. But I was looking out trying to figure out what the smell was coming from. It was so bad that, you know, if you smell a bad smell, you instinctively just stop breathing or breathe through your mouth. It was that bad. It was pungent. And it just suddenly. So when I went out and I was packing and I had the luggage and stuff, I didn't smell anything. I popped the hatch. And as I'm loading it, that's when the smell hit. And it was sudden. And it was harsh. And it just reeked. It smelled like deer and sewage, rotting carcass and sewage. and it was horrendous. So I stopped breathing. I closed the hatch of the truck and I went back in the house. I came in and I'm like, Greg, there's a dead deer in our front yard. It was so cold then. There's no way. He's like, you know, Dave, there's no way because it's too cold. You can't, nothing's going to be rotting in this temperature. So I'm like, well, come out here. So we both went out and the smell was gone. Nothing. I didn't think anything of it. That was it. Went back to the city. Following weekend, we came back to the cabin. So we were both smokers at that time. And I mean, heavy smokers. I'm not anymore, thankfully. But we both smoked cigarettes constantly. and we would always go into the back porch that looked down into the woods and we'd smoke, you know, drink beers, smoke, talk, whatever. So we spent a lot of time out there in the back and every time we'd go back at night, we would hear things and we would hear tree knocking and whooping. And that was probably, we were only there a month at that point. It was, you know, mid to late December and cold. And I remembered Colorado. And that's when I put it together. I'm like, oh God, they're here. You know, like, now I didn't believe that baby Bigfoot story. I mean, I went to investigate just because, and, you know, obviously in that area, I think they are around there. But I just didn't give it much thought. I just didn't think about it. But when they started whooping and knocking here, I was like, oh, no, they're here too. So back then, this went on for about a month. And there were no footprints. We didn't smell anything other than the whooping and knocking, which was pretty far. So it's a mile and a half from our house down to the river. So down in these woods, though, there's a bunch of ravines. There's a couple caves. There is a logging road from when they used to log in Millup here that goes down. Now, this logging road is overgrown, but it's still visible. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. I've gone down this road a couple of times and there's areas down there that you just can't get into. It's a bunch of briars and really thick, you know, forest and everything. so I can't tell the distance and the acoustics up here are strange. I couldn't tell the distance, but it was pretty far. And this went on for a while. We actually started recording it. Greg started recording all this stuff over the months. But so at one point, so this was in the winter. There's like I said, there's that hunting preserve next door. There's actually a little cabin on this preserve next door. And there was an old man that used to live there. He's since passed away. There's an old man that used to live there. And he and his son came over one afternoon, knocked on my door. and he's like, ah, you got the house. You know, I really wanted to buy this house to expand our property. Good on you and all this stuff that we were talking. He's like, are you a hunter? And I'm like, no, I like to fish. You know, I'll hunt if I have to. I used to when I was younger. And he goes well if you do hunt and this is what what stood out to me was very weird He goes if you do hunt you know be careful If you think you shooting at bear make sure you know what you shooting at And I'm like, what are you talking about? And I didn't say anything about Bigfoot to him. It was in the back of my mind. As soon as he said this, I knew what he was talking about. But I wanted, I'm like, what are you talking about? And he said, well, there's this bear up here. And I saw it a couple weeks ago. standing up against a tree and just staring at me. And I knew not to shoot at that one. And I'm like, what? And so, you know, I was trying to get something out of him. And his son didn't say a word, just sitting there and smiling, you know, looking around, looking at the house. He goes, yeah, just be careful. Just be careful. And I'm like, okay, you know, I'm not a bear hunter, but I'll heed your advice or something like that. So, That was that. You know, they left. They saw who bought this house and they were, you know, nice pleasure to meet you and all that. And they left and that was it. So, throughout, so from like November through probably mid-January, Um, it was just a bunch of knocking and, um, more knocking than whooping. We only heard whoops, um, occasionally, but we heard them and there's, it sounded exactly like the same whoops that we heard in Colorado. Exactly the same. The knocks sounded exactly the same. Um, if I didn't know any better, I think that these things followed us from Colorado, right? Um, but, um, so. So in January, this is probably the second week of January, because we had friends up for the first time from New York City. Three friends came up. And I had a ping pong table. So like I said, the acoustics are weird up here. You can hear everything. And we had a ping pong table at the time that was in the garage. There was nothing else in the garage except for a ping pong table. So all the guys would go down there and we'd play ping pong. we were drinking that night. Um, I went to bed, um, I want to say around 11 ish or so. I've never been able to stay up late. Um, but they stayed up and they were playing ping pong. You could hear the ping pong. So, so, and, and because we always, this, the way this cabin's designed, like it has a wood burning fireplace on the main floor that has a blower on it. And when you have that going, it'll heat the whole house and get super hot upstairs though. because it's an open floor plan. So the heat would come straight up into the bedroom upstairs where I slept. And I would always have the windows cracked to get that heat out. So no matter how cold it was, it was always warm in that room. And I would always have the windows cracked. And as they were playing ping pong, I was sort of falling asleep to the sound of the ping pong table when really, again, because of the acoustics, it's hard to say how close it was, but it was so close that I could feel it vibrating my head. This thing started knocking outside, probably within a couple hundred feet of the house, if not closer. I'm convinced that it could hear the ping pong table and had responded to that or something. But I shot up out of my bed. As soon as I shot up. Now, so I was listening to it. It knocked a few times. It was super close. I panicked and I sat straight up. And when I did, the knocking stopped. But it was dark in my room. Maybe it saw me. I don't know how. Because it was pitch black where I was. But it must have seen me. Because as soon as I got up, it stopped. I ran downstairs. and grabbed another beer. I'm like, I'm not going to bed now. Didn't say anything to the guys. Just, you know, let it go. So there was that. That, so that was a Friday night. Saturday night, normal night, they played ping pong for a while. We all went to bed. I fell asleep. and I had the windows closed. I didn't hear anything, but my friend Ed, who was downstairs, so his bedroom was directly below mine, but he had his windows cracked. And he said that he heard something knocking and screaming outside the next morning. This is Sunday morning. We wake up. He's like, there was something knocking and screaming outside, and it kept me up all night. And I look at Greg and we kind of smile and I'm like, Can you explain it? And he exactly the same kind of knocks, like two knocks. And then the screaming. And I didn't know. He said it sounded like a woman screaming. He thought it was our neighbors, but we don't have neighbors, right? He goes, do you have a neighbor next door who's some woman? Just really weird. I didn't hear anything, but I thought that was noteworthy because he did. And I was a little jealous because I had never heard of a scream before. But I didn't know what it was. it could have been a cat. You know, we do have bobcats and mountain lions up here. I mean, if you, if you ask the, um, the, um, park rangers around here, if there are mountain lions, they'll say no, but we've seen them. So I just had to think maybe it was a mountain lion, right? I didn't know what else it could have been. Um, and the thought of a, of a Sasquatch up here screaming just never, I couldn't process that one. So I just let it go. Um, so the weekend of, so that was the weekend before. So there was a movie that came out, um, called the village by, um, M night, shy M on or whatever his name is. Um, and I was really big into movies at that time. and always, as soon as the movie released on DVD, I'd buy a copy. So that movie released on January 11th of 2005. So this would have been on the 15th on a Saturday. So I bought, I don't know if I bought it in the city or if I bought it up here, but we did have the movie here on Saturday, the 15th. And it was just Greg and I, we watched The Village and we had gone downstairs for a smoke. We paused the movie, went downstairs onto this porch in the back. And when I walked out back, I was the first one out there. I just had a sense that I was being watched. And when Greg came out and this was a, there was a, a big snowstorm, um, big one, um, several feet of snow fell, um, in a matter of hours that the only other time that happened was just a few weeks ago. We, we, you know, the snow appears weird. Sometimes you get a lot and sometimes you get none. Um, this was our first big winter here and it was a massive snowstorm. Um, but even though the snow was falling, um, heavy, uh, you just, it didn't sit right with me. Like something's going on. Something was around. Um, I had said to Greg, um, you know, do you, do you feel that? Do you sense that? And he's like, yeah, I do. Um, and just as, so, so the, the, the front of the house, so there's a, there's a, a, a walk around deck, um, all the way in front of the house. So you can walk all the way around the front of the house to the back porch, or you can get to the back porch through the house, right? So we're looking over to the side of the house on the deck. Something was drawing me there. As soon as I looked, we heard this pop. And now it was loud. It was a board in the house. I thought maybe that it was so cold that one of the boards had snapped or, you know, I didn't understand how wood settled and all that kind of stuff. I thought it was just a settling sound. But it was loud enough that we put our cigarettes out and went back inside. It scared us. I didn't want to investigate it. Even though it was just feet away, I didn't want to investigate it. We went back in the house, went upstairs. Strangely enough, we didn't really talk about it. At the end of the movie, we went back downstairs. And it had stopped snowing for the most part at that point. We go back out and I turned on the light. We have a big light that shines in the back of the house and illuminates the whole backyard. And I turned on the porch lights as well just to feel a little safer. And I didn't notice it. Greg did. He's like, what's that? and I looked out and there were footprints in the snow coming from under the house down into the woods on the west side of the house. And I immediately thought somebody had been walking around the house, right? And I put on my boots, wasn't prepared for how deep the snow was, I'll tell you that. Put on my boots, ran outside to go investigate. Greg followed me. And the The footprints were, it was directly, so where we had heard that pop is where this thing had been. I'm assuming because of the heavy snow, it maybe was just resting under the house or hiding under the house or something. Um, uh, but it had left a trail, um, from under the house all the way into the woods, which is a pretty far distance, um, probably 50 to 70 yards. Um, but what I didn't, what didn't register with me at the time was, um, the gate, right? So Greg's like, holy crap, look at the gate on that thing. So when we're walking through the snow, you have drag, right? Like you have to really pick your feet up to walk in the snow without leaving a drag in the snow. Let's say the snow is probably two and a half, two feet deep. this thing there was no drag and it was about a five foot gate between each step and it was a straight line all the way like that like if you look at our prints next to the print this thing left you know it looked like you're rolling a barrel down when we're walking through it but this thing had no drag like it had to be big and have a huge step to make it into the woods without any kind of, what do you call it? In the snow trail between the steps, they were just perfect prints. Now, you couldn't see the prints because it was in snow, but they were big. And I ran down to the woods to look, and it went down the mountain. That's when I knew it couldn't have been a person. Because first of all, who's in the house going to be out here in the middle of nowhere, hiding under our house and then run into the woods. If anything, it would go out into the street, not down into the woods. So I turned around to talk to Greg, my partner, and he was gone. He ran back into the house. So I ran back in. I'm like, thanks, Benedict, for that. But he's like, I don't know what that is, but it's big and let's not mess with it. So not that I was going to follow it or anything because it was very dark and cold and snowy. But that really kind of just sealed the deal for me. Like I knew that we had Sasquatch up here. So I'm going to fast forward because there was a lot that happened, mostly just sounds, audio, wood knocking and whooping, pretty consistent. every weekend we'd come up here, we'd hear at least knocks. Sometimes you'd hear both. And sometimes it would just be a few times on a Friday night or Saturday night. Sometimes it would be Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night. But it was pretty consistent. I don't think there was a weekend when we didn't hear something. So I'm going to fast forward to May of 2005. I'd come up here alone for a weekend Friday night Saturday night were uneventful I heard knocks on a Saturday night but they were far away and at that point you know you get so used to it you just don't really give it any thought you're out but mind you I was still smoking a lot I didn't quit smoking until I think it was 2015. So I was always smoking a cigarette outside and then you would always hear stuff. But you get pretty used to it. But it was a Sunday in May, in early May. I was here alone. Sunday morning, it was early in the morning. I got up and I made coffee. I'm an early riser, I usually get up quite early. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. and the sun was just coming up. I was in the back drinking a coffee and having a cigarette. Now I get, I'm out of really good memory when it comes to like, so one of the, my, things that really bother me about when you're looking down the, into the woods from the back of the house, when they built the house, they just bulldozed all of the trees and debris into the back, like right at the tree line. So it's a huge pile of garbage and trees and rocks and everything. So I spent a lot of time kind of removing all that. And I went down into the woods and I cut down all the dead trees that were standing because I just wanted a beautiful view of the woods. So I was very aware of what was out there in the back within view of the back of the house. And as I'm staring down there, there's these two big pine trees, white pines, probably, you know, 70 yards down the mountain. And I'm looking at these two pine trees that I've seen, you know, hundreds of times before. and there was another tree I thought was a tree, a big stump, a big tall stump is what it looked like to me in between these two trees. And that stump had never been there before. So I'm looking at it because the first thing I thought was, how did I miss that one? Like, you know, to cut it down. And as I'm staring at it, it had a leg. It walked. It took one step behind. So there's there's a tree to the right, this thing in the middle, and then a tree to the left, almost equally spaced, right? This thing took one step and went behind the tree to the left. And I could see its form. I could see it standing there, but it wasn't moving. And I didn't blink. I was just staring at it like, what in that? And then I'm like, oh, it was a big foot. I saw this thing. Um, it didn't swing its arms at all. It just took a step almost like, like it didn't want to be seen. It saw me for sure. Um, so I was, I can't tell you how long I was staring at it. Um, um, at least two cigarettes long. I'll tell you. Cause I lit another cigarette. I'm just staring at this thing. Like it's just not moving. So I'm making noise. I'm yelling. I'm like, Hey, uh, this thing didn't move, didn't move an inch. Um, but it was still there. So, um, I went to open the, the, the, the back door to go down the steps, um, to the ground level and go down and investigate. I opened the door and then I, I don't know what stopped me from going down, but I just didn't, I just couldn't. I'm like, I'm alone. Um, I don't know what this thing is. And I just was processing and I'm like, I'm not going to do it. So I went back in the house, got a glass of water, and I decided I was going to go back to the city. I looked out back and it was gone at that point. But that for sure, I knew what it was. There was no doubt in my mind. It was, even though I only saw the legs, it was pitch black. It was black as pitch and very tall, probably about eight feet tall. I went down the following weekend and measured, and it looked to be about eight feet tall and just scared the heck out of me. I'm like, they're really close to the house. And I didn't like this thing was broad, thick and sneaky. So that was that. I told Greg about it when I got home. I actually called him on the way back. And I was very, I was terrified. I left. I didn't stay. I was supposed to be here all day. I didn't. I was going to stay till Monday morning and I didn't. I left Sunday. I left that morning, Sunday morning, drove back to the city. Like I'd rather be in Manhattan than here alone. I'll tell you that. And called Greg and told him. And we talked about it and he called me down and, you know, it is what it is. We're not going to sell the place. It's fine. They've not done anything to us yet. And that was that. So that was in May. in and so again every weekend we'd come up here we'd hear knocks or whoops or something and mind you I don't know if I said this earlier but it wasn't just one whoop there'd be a whoop and then there'd be a whoop somewhere else or there'd be a knock and then there'd be a knock somewhere else like they were communicating with each other but only ever two sets of knocks like not like multiple I've read and heard people saying they're all over the place knocking. No, this seems to be like two of them communicating. I don't know, but I just assumed. So this went off for a couple more months. Then in August of 2005, I had gone to Sam's Club. uh there's a sam's club in middletown new york that i went to and um i used to go there and buy bulk everything because living in the city uh you know it's expensive to buy stuff in the city so you just buy toilet paper and bulk stuff at sam's club and it was less expensive so but when i was in there buying stuff i saw these um they're called grapples they're apples that taste like grapes It sounds gross, but they're really good. I've not seen them since, by the way, but I bought way too many of them. So they had a woman there that was cutting them up and you could taste them. I'm like, holy cow, these are great. So I bought way too many. And we were eating them all weekend. We left them here. The following week when we came back, they were squishy. They were overripe. and so I didn't think anything of this I just threw them all over into the woods side of the house all of them I don't know maybe a dozen of them or so that was on a Friday night we'd just gotten up here these they were on the counter they they were squishy and I just pitched them right so we ate and we were getting ready to go upstairs to watch a movie and the doors were open. It was kind of warm. And so the property, so I said that we have 30 acres. Originally it was 15 acres. There's a lot next door that's 15 acres that we ended up buying because I didn't want anyone building on it. So, but on that lot next door is a hunter's shed. There, you'd walk into the, it's just a little shed, you know, you walk in, it was well built, but you'd walk in and then there'd be a window in the back that you could open up and you could, I guess, shoot in. I don't know, but I'm not a hunter, so I didn't, you know, really use it for anything other than just storing stuff in it. But I don't know the amount of time that went by, maybe half hour, 45 minutes after I threw those apples in the side yard, there was something on that shed for sure, beating the heck out of it, beating it. So how there was always a cadence and rhythm to the knocking in the past. There wasn't here. It was just going crazy, knocking and beating on this shed. And I think there were two of them because it was so much beating. Craig freaked out. Like, what the hell is that? And I'm looking out there. I got a flashlight and looked out there, but it's just so far, You couldn't see anything. But as soon as I got the flashlight out, it stopped beating. As soon as I turned the flashlight off, it was beating again. And this went on for a while. And I, Greg said something, Greg's like, you shouldn't have thrown those apples out there. I thinking that maybe they liked those apples and wanted more I don know But just beating the heck out of that shed And we were terrified It was no whooping or anything but just beating And it was loud And it was so loud at some points where you could feel it. And I thought they were going to break the shed. So I'm yelling and screaming and they just kept beating on the shed. So I don't know what to do. I have a feeling they're going to come to the house. And so Greg hit the alarm on the car and set the alarm off. And when the alarm went off, they stopped beating. And that was it. The next day we went out and looked at the shed. Now, so you had in the front of the shed was a door where you could walk in. The back was this window, like I said. Underneath the window, they had cinder blocks. Whoever had built this thing there, the previous owners of the lot, had put cinder blocks almost like steps going up to the back, right? I don't know why because, I don't know, but there were cinder blocks. They're still there actually. And the cinder blocks, I'd seen this before, the cinder blocks were flushed up against the shed. When I went out to investigate, the shed looked like it had been pushed about four feet away from the cinder blocks, which there's no, this shed was so heavy. There's no way we could have moved. It would take a crew of people to move this shed. Granted, it was flat on the ground. It didn't have a foundation or anything, but it was pushed or I don't know, it was moved from where it had been just a week prior. so I can't say for sure what it was but I just have a feeling that this thing these things like the apples that we pitched out there so maybe they're asking for more I don't know but that was the end of that summer and the fall was pretty uneventful there were some things that happened. Nothing really, just a bunch of knocking and whooping and all that kind of stuff. So in December of 2005, so this has been going on now for a year. In December of 2005, it was cold outside. Windows were cracked. It was about 3.30 in the morning. Greg was in the shower. I was in bed. Windows were cracked, like I said. I heard a gunshot and it sounded like a 30-06, like a powerful rifle. And it was loud. I knew it was coming from the preserve, from the guy, the old man next door. And I always knew when the old man was there because he had a generator that he would run, especially in the winter. So you always heard that generator going. And the generator it was going and I heard a gunshot. And then I heard this God awful scream. It sounded like, but it had, it sounded like, it sounded like a woman screaming, but as loud and it had a different tone to it. Like it was, the vocalization was really weird, like really high and then low. And then almost like there were two of them, but it wasn't two of them. It was just one. I can't explain it, but it was this dual tone scream thing that I'll never forget. And it ran from the east side of the house to the west side of the house in record time. So by the time I heard that gunshot and this scream, I was at my window and it was already halfway. The scream was directly behind my house. Like I was staring right into the darkness at this thing screaming and it went all the way to the other side. It happened so fast. And I'm yelling at Greg to listen, and he had just turned off the shower and popped the window in the bathroom to hear it fading off into the back. It moved so fast. I mean, Jeremiah, it moved faster than any... I don't know how... I don't know what. Now, my instinct was... My gut reaction was he shot someone. I wanted to jump in my truck and go over there and talk to him, but it was 3.30 in the morning and I didn't want him to shoot at me or anything. He was kind of crazy, this guy. And that was it, right? That was it. The following week, I went next door and his son was there. The old man wasn't there. His son was there. And I said, what happened last week? What happened on Monday? And he's like, I don't want to talk about it. I said, can you, can you, I mean, what did he shoot? He shot something. He goes, no, don't worry about it. There's nothing to talk about. And so I just didn't, you know, they weren't the friendliest guys. And I didn't, I didn't ask any more after that. I never saw him again. He died a couple of years later, but he never, you know, I never saw him. He lived off the land, you know. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify.nl. That's Shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. But it kind of didn't jive with me because if he shot at this thing, when he told me not to shoot, remember the same guy that said, the bear, don't shoot at the bear? Like, why did he shoot this thing? I mean, was it trying to get into his house? It was a little cabin that he had. It's still there. I don't know what they do with it anymore. But it just seemed really weird to me. But after that, nothing. And never was it. No more sounds, no more footprints, no more whooping, nothing was gone. And ever since then, there's been nothing. So this was a while ago. You know, this was back in 05, the end of 05. It was a while ago, and I'm surprised, but there have been some reports up here. So I was on the zoning board, planning board in this area for over a decade. And every town board meeting every month, the constable would get up and give a report of everything, like speeding tickets. And there were a couple of times over the course of 10 years when people would report a strange animal in their yard. There was a woman that lived not far from here. matter of fact I can walk there in probably 15 minutes next to a lake and she was convinced that so she always kept her front door open it had a screen door right in the summer I don't remember the exact time of year maybe it was August again but she walked out of her kitchen to her to her front, I guess the foyer where the front door was, and she saw what she described as a tall, hairy man standing at her door. She screamed, called the constable. And now this was years after my experience in the scream that I heard. She screamed, called the constable. The constable had to make a report on it. I asked, his name's, he's gone now. I asked what that report was about. He's like, you know, we get these sometimes, these crazy reports, you know, these old women, they, you know, blah, blah, blah, just kind of wrote it off as some crazy old lady thing. And I, that kind of stuck with me too, because I believe her, you know? So that's my story. Oh, my goodness. do you mean logically it sounds to me like that old guy probably killed the bigfoot or they got scared off i think he shot it i think he shot it and hit it and it was it ran off screaming because it was hit that's what i think yeah wow um because that gunshot was loud um you know um it definitely was a high caliber gun um a rifle and um yeah i think he i think he hit it i do you're like i had the visual yeah and then it's like it i was like oh it's really on yeah i mean it was just that one visual of all the things the footprints i mean there's other it would take me hours to go through um the journal but um this is just some highlights that i that i wrote down um there you know we have footprints all over um you know a huge massive pile of of um of uh dung you know of in in the woods in our back it was the biggest pile of poop i've ever seen in my life and i've seen bear poop before this thing was massive um and i'm not gonna keep it or anything but it you know, a lot of strange stuff, but it was that one sighting that sealed the deal for me. And the banging and the moving of the shed and the whoops and the knocks that we heard, it all just kind of came together slowly over time. You know, different times when we would smell stuff that I didn't, you know, I mean, just random, you'd smell something rotting. And it was always in winter. like you know there are a ton of animals up here and there's a lot of things that die up here and you smell them all the time um but you know i had friends up here that have shot deer and they've dressed them down in the woods in the backyard and you can smell that um but nothing like what you when you smelled it you knew what it was and that happened several times but the the most distinct was the first time that i smelled it out front like it had to be close it was so strong and the stench was horrible. So you can tell the difference between a rotting carcass and then whatever scent these things give off because it's putrid. Absolutely. I mean, the area you're talking about too, like the Catskills, just on my sighting map alone, like the stuff I have in there is really wild stuff. Even across the Hudson too over in the Red Hook, there's stuff over there. It's a perfect area because, yeah, you really have like corridor going up from the Poconos and then up through that Hudson area and then up into Western Mass, Northwest Connecticut. It's just, it's the whole thing. Yeah. It's pretty much Appalachians. Oh, there's another, this is hearsay, but I think it's pretty cool because I'll never forget this. I was down in Pennsylvania getting my tires changed. This was probably maybe 2015, 2016 around there. And I was there early and I was the only one there. I was sitting in the lobby of this tire place and a local tire place, not like a Mavis or anything, just a local tire place. And I knew the owner really well. So I used to go in there for all my car needs. And I was sitting there and this old man came in. And he looked really bad. He looked really pale. And I was just sitting there staring at my phone. I noticed him come in. He looked like death warmed over. So I thought maybe, you know, he was ill or something. But the guy who ran the shop said, hey, I don't remember his name, Bob or whatever. What's going on? And he's like, you're not going to believe me. You're not going to believe me. He's like, I think I'm going to get sick. And I was listening. I wasn't, you know, just listening to him. And he goes, he's like, well, tell me what's going on. He said, me and I guess his wife were having breakfast. And I'm assuming the way he described it is they have a breakfast nook or something that overlooks their front yard. And they were having breakfast in this little nook. And they looked out and they saw a Bigfoot standing there directly in their front yard, just staring at them. And, of course, as soon as he said that, I popped up and went over. And as soon as I came over, the guy wanted nothing to – he wouldn't talk about it anymore. So I waited until this guy left. and um that's when i started asking questions um of the owner of the shop owner about what you know so he told me you know everything the guy had said basically everything i heard um but he goes yeah we get those reports up here all the time like it's just matter of fact um and you know So this place is beautiful. And there's definitely plenty. I mean, just walk down the mountain that I live on, and there's places that you can't get into. There's some ravines with some caves. I've been in one of them before. They're kind of dangerous. But there's places to get lost down there. There's places where things can hide just a mile and a half from my house down to the river. You know, it's crazy. I have a drone that I take out and fly down. It's very dense. You can see some crazy rock formations and places these things could hide just in this general area. So, yeah, it's really interesting. It's an incredible account when you take a bird's eye view of the entire story. It is awesome. Do you ever wish that stuff would start happening again? I do sometimes. At that property? Yeah. Yeah. I do a lot of, I don't go out to Colorado much anymore. I'm older and have some back problems, but I do go up, you know, to Lake Placid a lot, Lake George area. Never had any experiences up there, but it sure is beautiful. but I've read a lot of reports up in those areas especially around Lake George. I wanted to go to Whitehall and check that out but you know I've got all this around here I don't you know it's kind of all looks the same after a while you can't but I would definitely if there were some some researchers in this area that wanted to go to Whitehall I'd love to go with them. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side. Yeah, and they have that great festival that happens, I believe, in September every year. That's a fun one. I've heard it's on the list to check out someday. Yeah, so this area also is big with UFOs. Oh, yeah. And I don't know how I feel about that, but I just think it's interesting because there's a lot of people that believe and they think they've seen UFOs up here. I don't know if there's a correlation, but I have read a lot about that. Yeah, I'd say, I mean, if you look at, you know, places like Southwest Pennsylvania, there's definitely a correlation between Bigfoot and UFO sightings, especially, I want to say, 70s, 80s, like Stan Gordon wrote a lot about that. Yep. Yeah, and you probably have heard that name before, but my goodness, what a wild, wild account. I mean, thank you for coming on, David, and for sharing what you've experienced over that year and a half there. It's really cool. I mean, I probably would make a solid book, to be honest, but I would read it at least. But thank you so much. I'll put this up, I'll try to make this journal more readable and send it to you. So you'll see everything. Oh, cool. Everything. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yep. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on, sir. I do appreciate it, David. It has been a pleasure. You too, Jeremiah. Thank you. Have you ever heard all the accounts of Bigfoot activity around Oak Ridge, Oregon, and you think to yourself, man, I would love to get out in those woods and experience it for myself. Well, guess what? This year, you can. If this is interesting to you, stay tuned because it's pretty cool. Sasquatch Summerfest is coming up July 10th through the 11th, 2026. It's going to be even better than the previous year's reason number one. I'll be one of the speakers. It's going to be wild. I'll probably, I'll say this, there may be stuff you haven't heard anywhere else because let's just say sometimes it's, well, you just got to be there. We'll leave it at that. More about looking for Bigfoot in the Oak Ridge woods. Now check this out. You may know Jason Kenzie from his documentary series, Searching for Sasquatch. Well, this year, you can not only go to the festival, but you can also sign up for a trek deep in the wild forest outside of Oak Ridge with Jason Kenzie to the Bigfoot spots to look for Bigfoot. There's only eight spots to sign up for this. And yes, this will also be filmed for the next chapter in his documentary series, which is Searching for Sasquatch. This is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. It's just, trust me, it's going to be a wild, wild experience. To get a ticket, head on over to SasquatchSummerFest.com and listeners can use the code B-S-P, like Bigfoot Society podcast in order to get a two-day pass for the price of a one-day pass. So thanks to Priscilla for giving me that code so that you guys can can get a little help with the cost there. Appreciate that, Priscilla. I hope to see you at the booth in Oak Ridge this year. We can talk about your encounter. I was able to talk to so many people last year and the year before. It is an incredible time. You're not going to want to miss it, and I'll see you there. Before we wrap this episode, I want to say something directly to a very specific group of listeners. If you're in the military, any branch or forces, and if you've seen something that no one can explain, or if you're a national park ranger or forestry worker who's been told to stay quiet, if you're a pilot who's seen something strange down on the ground, or if you're with the FBI, a federal agency, or working intelligence, and you've stumbled upon something you're not allowed to talk about, and if you're a firefighter, paramedic, or search and rescue responder who's heard screams or found tracks that didn't make sense, if you're in the logging industry on a remote oil field or a trucker with government contracts and you've had something happen that you've never told a soul, and if you're a biologist, a wildlife specialist, or a field researcher under contract who has found evidence you're not allowed to report, if you're a pastor, a missionary, or someone on a spiritual retreat and you saw something that shook your faith, or if you work in the shadows, CIA, NSA, or anything with clearance, and you've seen what the public hasn't, then I want to talk to you. Even if it's anonymous, you can reach me at bigfootsociety at gmail.com. The world needs to hear what you've been forced to carry alone and you're not alone. You've got the story. We've got the mic. See you in the woods. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Bigfoot Society podcast. Every encounter we share reminds us that the world is bigger and stranger than we think and that the truth is often hiding just beyond the tree line. if you enjoyed this episode please be sure to subscribe to the channel on youtube hit the bell so you don't miss the next episode and share this with a friend who's into mysteries monsters or the unexplained and if you're listening to us on spotify or apple podcast please follow the show there and leave us a five-star positive review because all that helps more people discover the show and remember if you or someone you know has had a bigfoot sighting please i'd love to hear from you. So email me at bigfootsociety at gmail.com and let's start the conversation. If you haven't gotten a chance yet, check out our membership community over at www.bigfootsocietypodcast.com and that's where you can hear tomorrow's episode today early and ad-free and members-only episodes every week. Also, it's a place to connect with other people that are into the Bigfoot subject as much as you are. Thanks again for following along with the Bigfoot Society. Until next time, keep your eyes open, trust your gut, and never stop asking what else might be out there and see you in the woods. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory, and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl that's shopify.nl it's time to see what you can accomplish with shopify by your side starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life shopify helps millions of business sell online build fast with templates and ai descriptions and photos inventory and shipping sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl that's shopify.nl it's time to see what you can accomplish with shopify by your side