It was supposed to be a great time hunting with my wife, but instead, we had an experience of a lifetime – a pretty scary one that we will never forget. Bigfoot, they’re real, and this one did not want us around. Or it was just annoyed with us, at least.
Nothing prepares you for the unknown. When I was in the military, we were always preparing for the unknown, but even then, the unknown is the unknown. So, when you have no reference for something like Bigfoot in your mind, then you are never truly prepared for it.
Here is our story…
Our first Thanksgiving.
I was twenty-four, and my wife was twenty-three when we were married. Gina was my high school sweetheart. We started dating when she was in the tenth grade. Both of us ended up going to a community college together as well. Farming was and is our life; it is what we studied and built our lives around, together.
We loved then, as we do now, to hunt, fish, hike, and sometimes surf the Oregon coast in Bandon, Oregon, a small town that is quiet and shrouded in fog during the fall and winter. But it was not there along the coast where we’d spend the scariest forty-eight hours of our lives.
It was our anniversary gift to each other that year. We had access to a small cabin owned by a friend for an entire weekend. It sat along the edge of a large meadow surrounded by thick forest. The Tiago Creek ran through the middle of the open meadow, and you could not find a more picture-perfect piece of God’s creation. We would hunt and fly fish the swollen creek a bit and enjoy the time together.
We loved hunting as much as surfing and fishing. So, being out in the middle of the coastal Cascade mountain range in a cabin surrounded by dark forests and a beautiful meadow was the perfect dream getaway for us. What we were not expecting, however, was a monster in the woods.
It would be our first Thanksgiving as a married couple that year. We planned to bag a couple of turkeys, and we had deer tags. My wife also had a doe tag, which made the odds even better for us. We would use the turkeys for Thanksgiving with the family at the end of the month.
The first of November came. We headed out early that morning. It would be a long drive, as the cabin was located up a long and very winding, pothole-filled country road. We would need to navigate carefully on that damp and foggy morning.
It was so serene and beautiful that my wife smiled from ear to ear upon seeing it for the first time. It was something that looked like a picture-perfect photo by some famous photographer. We pulled up as the fog settled over our heads, blending into the tops of the pine and fir trees, creating a truly peaceful and mysterious experience.
Mysterious…, this was the word for that first trip together, for sure.
Day one.
We unpacked and settled in. My wife put away the supplies and cookware while I gathered and split wood for the wood stove. It was a very chilly day, and up that high in the hills, it would get even colder as the sun routinely dove behind the mountains.
Instead of hunting that late afternoon, we would fish the creek and see if we could grab a couple of trout big enough to throw over the fire that night. We loved fly fishing more than angling, so we stood about twenty yards, give or take, from each other, but we could both hear it echoing faintly through the woods. It was an eerie, howling-like sound.
We looked at each other…
My wife swore it was a wolf, at least at first. But, after the third long and deep howl, it seemed to be coming from something much bigger with a set of lungs like Pavarotti. As it trailed off, you could tell it was not canine, not even close. We looked at each other again, shrugged our shoulders, and continued fishing. My wife caught two nice-sized trout. We cooked them up that evening, and they were delicious.
It was beautiful there. The fog seemed to have gotten thicker as the evening progressed, so thick you could barely make out the trees surrounding the small meadow we sat in. We opted to eat on the small porch and take in the picturesque scene before heading indoors for the night. It was cold, and by the time we headed inside, we noticed the mist whirling around in the breeze contained some snowflakes!
We got the fire roaring in the woodstove, played our favorite board game, Monopoly, and chatted about the hunting we were looking forward to in the morning. We finally headed to bed around ten o’clock, give or take a few. It was midnight when I would wake to more strange sounds.
Getting up late that night, I noticed I had left the window by the sink cracked open. I shut it. I swear, for a moment, something moved outside! Beyond the window, it seemed pitch black, but now there was a bit of ambient light coming through, and the sound of something moving outside.
I looked out the window but could see nothing. However, a very thick, musky, skunk-like smell filled the air. My first thought was that a black bear was looking in through the window, which did excite me a little. After a few minutes, I was tired again, so I headed back to bed. I did mention the incident to Gina, my wife, the very next morning. It was decided that it was most likely a bear on its hind legs looking in and smelling food from the kitchen area.
The hunt.
We woke before sunrise, ate some pumpkin pancakes, filled up on coffee, and then headed down an old trail to hunt. The trail itself was on the northwest side of the meadow. It started at the edge of the woods that, at that point, were still dark and thick with fog.
We headed in and were looking for what my friend said was a small open area where deer loved to feed on the wild flowers and elderberry that grew there. He told us there were two buckets painted black to sit on behind some hedges on the east side of the open area and to sit and wait for them to come in.
After walking for about fifteen minutes, we arrived at the area he shared with us. It took us a few more minutes to locate the two buckets. We took our packs off, sat down, and kept our conversations to a low whisper. We sat there for nearly an hour before the sun began to rise, and we could see our surroundings.
Of course, the fog was relentless. We watched as the cold wind made it twirl, swirl, and move through the trees. We drank our coffee out of our thermoses and whispered on and on about buying a new home come spring. No deer appeared, but there came some movement from the west side of the open area after about an hour.
We had our rifles by our sides, loaded and safeties on. We could not see into the trees on the other side; the fog was still as thick as soup. We heard something coming closer and closer, but before it reached the small meadow, whatever it was stopped just inside the tree line.
I couldn’t see anything, but my wife put her hand on my shoulder as she pointed and said to look between a few trees with a large stump in front of them, straight across from us.
It took me a moment, but I saw movement, something leaning out from behind the trees. Neither of us could see well enough to tell what it was, but we knew whatever it was was alive, as it kept moving back and forth from behind the tree. It was weird, to be honest. Megan began to feel a little uncomfortable, so we decided to head back to the cabin.
As we moved away from the area, whatever that thing was, we could hear it as it moved off in the opposite direction. We made it back to the edge of the meadow the cabin sat in, and wouldn’t you know it, two deer were on the far side drinking from the creek. We decided to hunker down for a few minutes and see if we could get one of them or, better yet, a buck.
After about twenty minutes of waiting, a large six-point buck appeared from the edge of the woods. My wife dropped it in one shot. We spent the rest of the day field-dressing that thing and getting it packed on ice. Next were the turkeys, and I knew where to find them.
That night, we ate some of the venison. It was delicious.
Evening.
As we ate our dinner on the little porch, it was dusk. Our eyes opened wide when we saw them enter the meadow from the other side of the creek—a whole gang of turkeys—just what we were looking for. Talk about luck!
We watched a couple of Tom turkeys strut their stuff for the ladies and fight over them. We discussed waiting until morning to bag a couple, but my wife won the argument. We went inside, grabbed our guns, and then slowly, but surely, we circled the meadow to get behind them.
Two shots rang out, and two turkeys tumbled over. We took them back to the cabin and field-dressed them as well. We were excited knowing that on the last day at the cabin, all we would do was fish the creek and see if we could grab a few or more trout to take home with us.
The evening was almost upon us as we de-feathered the turkeys. I had to run inside to grab my knife. When I came out, my wife hushed me. She said, “Be quiet and look over there, Terry.” I looked, but the fog had settled in the meadow, making every shadow darker and visibility almost nil.
She then pointed just southeast of the cabin at the treeline on the opposite side of the creek. Still, I could see nothing. She said that there was something over there, standing between a group of older Douglas Firs. She said she’d seen it slide out from behind the trees, and now it just stood there. I kept looking and finally, after a minute of scanning the small area, I could see it.
It was a dark, human-like silhouette standing there as still as a statue in a museum. It was tall too. It had to be at least eight feet, give or take five or six inches. Neither of us could make out a face; just a silhouette was all.
I told her it was probably a large stump and that the fog swirling around made it seem to move. She thought that was a possibility, yet her eyes never moved from it until I started back on field-dressing my turkey.
The fog grew thicker, and it grew darker as we sat there.
We moved inside for the night. I stoked the fire, and Gina started making dessert. It was pie, pumpkin pie! We sat by the fire, eating away. I had seconds. It was so delicious! Then there was the sound of a small rock or something hitting the cabin. We both looked over to the area we heard it hit, then at each other.
I gave it up to a large pine cone, perhaps. Then, a minute later, another sound of a rock or something hitting the cabin, this time, however, it sounded a bit larger. This got our attention. I walked over and looked out the small window, but the darkness and fog made it impossible; all I could see was my reflection in the glass.
Next, we swear we heard something slap the opposite side of the cabin. Gina looked a bit nervous now, and I admit my heart was starting to pick up its pace too! I told her I wanted to step outside and see what was going on, but she seemed dead set against me doing so.
But, in the end, I had to go.
There was almost no ambient light. The fog was so thick that it cut my vision down to maybe, I guess, ten to fifteen yards from the porch at best. But what I could not see, my ears made up for in listening, and I heard movement! It came from around the side of the cabin.
It was insane. From my left, on the side of the cabin, the fog itself looked like it was being sucked up into a vacuum, and that is when it happened. A large, tall, and dark figure came running past me on the left side of the porch. The fog blew around like a hurricane, and this thing was so tall its head almost hit the eave of the roof.
Startled, I felt a hand touch me. It was Gina, and she was shaking and looking out towards the creek. The thing stopped this side of it, turned, looked at us, and let out the scariest shriek that made us turn whiter than we already were. Even I was shaking in my wool socks!
We could not believe our eyes. It was a Bigfoot. Tall, covered in solid black hair, massive shoulders, and while we could not make out any facial features, we could tell its skin color was the color of the gray fog that surrounded us.
Again, it screamed as it took one large stride over the creek and disappeared into the cover of night and fog that was now returning to its thick and wet self. It was amazing and scary, the way that thing looked and moved.
Back home.
There was a story to tell that Thanksgiving, that was for sure. While our friend, who owned the place, mentioned that he’d never had anything like that happen there before, he did recall seeing tracks once, a few miles down the road, while hunting as a kid with his dad.
Our families could not believe what had happened. Well, they listened but were not convinced whether what we’d seen was Bigfoot. However, Gina’s dad did, and he had a reason. He also found some curious tracks once while fishing the McKenzie River when he was a young man. He followed them and came across something he’d never forget.
We returned to the cabin the following year, and we bagged a turkey, a buck, and a few trout. Yes, we had felt very aware of what could show itself once again, but no Bigfoot was seen or heard, and to be honest, we were glad it did not return.
That is our story, thanks…
Terry and Gina.
