Wednesday night, one of my neighbors called.
“Sorry to call so late man, but did you hear that noise outside?”
Sound asleep in my recliner, I can sleep through small wars, whatever Elaine’s got on TV, and probably a fair-sized meteor strike. “No, what’d you hear?” I was instantly awake and on point.
“Well, it was kind of strange. I was outside when I heard it. Sort of like the noise a creaking door would make, except it was way louder than that and went on for the longest time. Thought surely you would have heard it…”
Sleepy, or not, Ure’s “news nose knows news.” I’d already moved to the studio door at the north end of the house. It’s the closest door to the neighbor’s place up the side of what passes for a “mountain” (the Concord Mountains” of East Texas.
As I opened it, I noticed there was just the barest bit of daylight dying out west of us. A few of our 80-foot pines could still be faintly outlined in the approaching night sky. The temp was in the low 80’s since the heat of the day hadn’t passed, yet. No wind. More to the point, though: No sound. Nothing. No even insects, which this time of year is unusual.
“Which direction did it sound like it was coming from?”
“Sounded like if you were on a line between my place and Ure’s it would be just east of there. Maybe somewhere up by my mailbox or driveway. Went on for a good five minutes…maybe lon gter. Thought sure you would have heard it.”
“Something like a deer, or a hog, maybe?”
“Shoot, bull, you know I’ve been outdoors my whole life and grew up here. Never have heard anything like this before. I know what a coyote sounds like, what hogs sound like, and even when a fawn’s born and the momma deer is in pain. Wasn’t any of ’em. Nothing like this though…”
“Something REAL unusual, huh?”
“Damn-sure nothing I’ve ever heard. I know the noises rabbits make when they caught. All the bird noises..owls and all that….but this was just, you know…freaky, dude.”
“I remember when we moved here we’d heard there were sasquatch here in the upper regions of Mound Prairie Creek. In fact, we got a number stories from a late artist friend of ours – the woman who painted that mural in the conversation room.
She’d lived around here forever and heard tales from oilfield workers about all kinds of strange things between her place – about halfway to town on (county road) 404 – and ours.
In fact, one night, on the way back from here, she said there were some “orbs” that were flying over a field almost down to (county road) 321…north side of that, might have been where the dairy farm is, off to the left.
Anyway, when she was telling us about the orbs, and she mentioned there have been sasquatch sightings, too. In the l area of east of highway 155 on over here to the upper headwaters of the creek….you ever hear anything like that? I mean, maybe that’s what you were hearing…” I said it half-jokingly, but the answer I got was anything but funny.
“No, but I’ll tell you what, two of my friends swear they’ve seen ’em.”
“When was this?”
“Shoot, mid nineties…Just after I got out of high school.”
“Tell me about ’em?”
“Well, this one fellow I know…has the worst luck of anyone you’d ever meet. He was in a couple of accidents including one in the oil field that busted him up pretty good. He was laid up for six months, or longer recovering. Pretty well “medicated” most of the time. Drank a fair amount, too. Thing is, he swears he’s seen a sasquatch. Claims it was around the time he saw the alien space ship land near his place…I figured the dude was crazy”
This got me to thinking. Is there a relationship between sasquatch sighting and UFO’s? There’s a great book by George Knapp, a highly respected research into the very strange who is a news director at a Las Vegas radio station.
The book “Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah” goes into anomalous sightings at this remote ranch…and it came flooding back into my memory as my neighbor had been talking. Sure, there are some people who will pass this kind of story off as “rural lore” and “tall tales.” In Texas, maybe, but such events – well documented and in remote Utah? Leaves an open mental bookmark, if you know what I mean.
“Guy just strung out on his pain meds?”
“I dunno…I could go either way on it. I mean if he was the ONLY one, I wouldn’t believe him. But, we know others, too…”
WHAT? Suddenly, I was on the trail of something. One thing I’d learned from interviewing Louis L’ Amour 400-years ago is that many of the “legends” of rural lands often has some basis in fact. But, the only way to track them down is to “walk the countryside” and talk to people. Get ’em to open up. Tell their stories. Been some of the best writing advice ever. Phenomenal writer.
“Like who?” I was fishing.
“Well, people don’t like to talk about it much, but we know this one dude – comes from a well-to-do family – big farm, too, almost two thousand acres – there’s places on his own family land he won’t even go out on. He swears he’s had a sasquatch throw rocks at him…”
“You’re kidding. What happened?”
“Well, late nineties now, he was out on some of his families property late at night…you know, search-lighting hogs and stuff…and he was down in a small ravine and this big THING up at the top started to throw things at him. He shot at it and it ran off…but to this day, he won’t go back to that part of the family property…which is odd, too, since he’s probably going to inherit it some day. Rest of my friends? Hell. We’ll go anywhere day or night in these woods. We all hunt deer and know ’em like the back of our hands.”
When I’dI opened to door to listen outside, Elaine had some up alongside me. I turned on the speaker phone…she was entranced by the conversation. Perhaps, remembering the UFO/orb/sasquatch reports of our late friend.
“Anything else besides sasquatch out in these woods?”
“I don’t know about sasquatch, but tell you what: I got a picture on one of my game cameras of a part of a big cat…like nothing been seen in these parts before.”
“Bobcat, or maybe a wandering mountain lion? You know they come through here once in a while according to the Texas Game people…”
“This weren’t no mountain lion. It had a tail a good four-foot long…that was all of him that fit in the camera…he was close-in. I’ll see if I can find it…”
Elaine joined in the conversation.
“When George and I were coming back from Tulsa…maybe it was on the way up…I saw this place called Catfish Creek. And there was something about it…I had this really dark feeling like I really, really, shouldn’t ever go anywhere near that area. Almost like I had a “sixth sense” alarm going off…”
“Probably the alligators in there…Only time I ever saw a big cat was when I was turning a wrench up in Dallas. I was coming down highway 19…not too late…but there was a really BIG cat at the side of the road. Big, wide-spaced golden eyes just watching me go by…3-foot tallo, or so – sitting”
Pieces were falling into place. Some years back, when we’d first moved to the East Texas Outback, my bother in law, Panama, reported seeing a big black cat. Jokingly, I later suggested it was a relative of of our domestic black Zeus the Cat – the a-mousing, bird-chasing, porch-potato of a cat who owns us.
“No,” explained Bates, “Iit wasn’t Zeus or any other house cat. Too big.” The cat he’d seen was probably on the order of 40 pounds and domestic cat’s just don’t get that big. Maybe it wasn’t quite big enough to fit the neighbor’s report of a “four foot cat’s tail. That’d be more mountain lion size.
Bates reminded me, a hundred years ago there were all kinds of big wildlife in this area. Big cats – mountain lions and even panthers – would move through the area. In came man…there went the big animals. No telling how many shell casings there are in East Texas.
“Tell me about the alligators up at Catfish Creek…”
“They ain’t no big deal…maybe 4-4/12 foot. But they have a good number of ’em still on the Trinity River. Been around forever. I caught a really small one once out fishing….”
“How big to they get?”
“Down by the Gulf, 8-10 feet. Haven’t seen one that big around here….All over the Trinity, though..”
Following up Thursday, neither of us had any idea what the sound was. Unlikely a tree would make the noise, but it was like that. But, with no wind?
Made a note to myself to do more research – and maybe put in some game cameras to see what we can find here at the ranch. Maybe an occasional eagle? We know the red tail hawk family is doing well…by the noise of the young.
The data on Bigfoot in these parts is impressive, if you take the time for look for it.
The Bigfoot Field Research Organization is the major resource for people online who are looking for details. A map of Texas (here) shows more than 200 sightings in Texas.
BFRO reported a good “live sighting” about 25 miles south of us in the Elkhart, Texas area back in 2001 with three witnesses.
Of course, our odd noise report isn’t a bigfoot sighting. BUT, what is interesting – speaking of odd things out in the woods around the country – is that report out of Montana, just in the past week: “Odd animal shot in Montana could be a wolf-dog hybrid – ABC7 News.” Could there be a leftover strain of Neanderthal-humans still living in the wilds? There are books suggesting that unsolved disappearances from National Parks around the US may be Bigfoot collecting breeding stock human to keep their numbers alive. The disappearances around national parks? That’s where population pressures would press them due to human land use.
What did my neighbor hear? We don’t know. But when an experienced woodman, bow-hunter, and outdoorsman who’s lived here his whole life can’t tell the sound…our interest is piqued.
One possibility is it was a “tree squeak.”
Or, is there that missing branch of near-humans. Videos make for interesting speculation. YT Bigfoot sometime when you have lots of time to spend.
As always, we don’t operate on speculation. Like my neighbor, I’m going to put in some new-generation no-flash (IR) game cameras. Ure’s cameras will be placed discretely along game trails. And a few apples spread around, too…
A topic like Bigfoot may seem an odd area of interest; especially for someone who spends as much time in the harder nominal world of business models, spreadsheets, “the greeks,” and trading, as I do.
But, as will become clear in my next book Psychocartography, there is an emerging weave of a continuous cloth that connects many seemingly unrelated woo-woo type events, such that a new – expanded – view of Reality does fit neatly into a pattern. Another example is Digital Mob Rule – also a possible chapter for the new book. That one that we will cover in Peoplenomics Saturday.
“Ure saying there is a link between mapping your dreams, Bigfoot, and Digital Mob Rule?”
Hell yeah. But, it’s complicated. More in the book (with segments in advance for PN subscribers).
We promise to pass on any interesting pictures from the new “no flash, no glow” game cams that will arrive here tomorrow. Got a few spare apples for us to “seed” the property?
Write when you get rich,
George@ure.net
Scariest noise I’ve heard out in the country near Weathersford, TX was that of a fox at night.
I would have picked up the ol 308 and checked the end of the driveway for prints. LOL
Clearly Sasquatch is living on 404, because he’s “not found”
(A curious rimshot is heard, but only by programmers, lol)
Ha!
Ba dop dop…
Matt Moneymaker of BFRO has spent over 25 years searching for Bigfoot (there’s a Squash in the area) & over a 100 Animal Planet episodes & has discovered no evidence of Bigfoot. If your cameras grab a Bigfoot picture, you can replace MM on Animal Planet.
Gravity Falls had an episode where they brought 32 cameras with them for quick access to the camera so the monster picture would not be blurry.
Has Matt Moneymaker seen a Bigfoot in real life? NOT YETI!
Even with the lack of success, I record all Bigfoot shows on Direct TV. It is an interesting topic.
Bobcats fighting, the screaming makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Sounds like a woman being torn apart.
OK, everyone can call me crazy; but I have seen Sasquatch in full daylight about two years ago. My wife and I had returned home (west Tennessee) from a day trip to what qualifies as our closest small city at about 3 PM. I was standing in our dining room looking out across the farm from the hill where our house sits. It looks out across a branch creek bottom that is all in farmland. Along the creek there are the usual small saplings, but for the most part I have an unobstructed view across the farm for about a half a mile. Then I see this big hairy thing walking upright from northeast to southwest along the far side of the creek. Long strides and exceptionally long arms. At first, I thought it might be someone hunting turkey in a full ghillie suit; so I went to investigate. Watched this thing for about 30 seconds as it walked along the creek bank with purpose, as if it had a definite destination.
I grab my rifle and cellphone, hopped on the side x side buggy, and rode over to investigate closer. When I got to the spot where I had seen this whatever, I got out and looked back at my house on the hill about 1/4 away. At this point I called my wife who was looking out in my direction. I was standing up (I am 6 feet tall) in the area where I had seen the thing walking. I asked my wife how much of me she could see above the bushes along the creek bank. She said that she could just see the top of my head. I moved to several locations in the field with the same answer, top of my head. The dark brown, hairy thing I saw was visible from about just about waist high above the bushes. That would make this thing somewhere in the neighborhood of 7′-6″ to 8′ tall. There where no tracks, because the crop I had planted the previous season left so much residue that even the buggy left no tracks even though it had been raining. The creek was running about 5′ deep due to recent rains.
Whatever it was it made a quick exit, when I headed over to the field. And I have kicked myself numerous times for not grabbing the camera with the telephoto lens and snapping a few pics, before heading for a closer look.
All I can say is there is one less thing on my “bucket list”. I have seen sasquatch.
Lloyd. Not that I don’t believe you, but without a non blurry photo or a DNA sample, Bigfoot still doesn’t exist, as much as we would like it to. It was probably a bear which is the most common DNA found when testing suspect Bigfoot DNA. Did you watch the YETI 2 month search in the Himalayas where they tested the water, at a point animals had access, for DNA & it showed 99% human, where there were no humans. What was the last 1%? Nobody knows.
Sorry ECS, but in our part of Tennessee (western Tennessee) there are no bears, maybe a occasional cougar passing through. Whatever this thing was it walked like a human, but longer strides and much longer arms; and hairy head to toe. It moved far too fast to be a bear walking upright, and with a stride like that of a very tall human. The only bear seen in our area in the last 60 years was two years ago when one passed through the area headed to east Tennessee. Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency tracked it the whole way. We do have sightings of cougars now and then. Wish I had taken photos, especially given that photography is one of my hobbies. Sometimes things surprise you and you overlook the obvious. Maybe Shaq was on my farm in a ghillie suit.
I totally believe you!
I personally have never seen one. But take the numerous accounts and sightings.. how many centuries have they been recorded. Not all of them are fake.
On the other note.. they are trying to not be found. There’s no reports of anyone being attacked by one. A few accounts of Rock’s being tossed to scare everyone away from them ( protecting family I am sure) so leave them alone!
As we expand out our homes into the wilderness the reports will increase as well.
I say let them live in piece!
I spent my teen years running the woods of northern Florida, day and night, and I’ll say if you haven’t seen “something you can’t explain”, you were not paying attention.
my dart toss on “that” noise would be the illusive ring tailed cat. as far as the dark cat, a small one like Bates described dined on 2 two of my best laying hens and a noisy banty rooster last august. all that was seen was the half “s” hooked tail as it jumped over the chain linked fence. there still is more land than shell casings here in the outback…most casings are prolly littering the neches river bottoms toward Rusk. good luck with the cameras, i never set foot at night “in the thick” without nvg and a crossbow.
Put on my head-on nvhg and take the AK with a couple of magazines. A newspaper, too, lol
Oh my god no.. the cats are just trying to survive like us.. instead make the chicken coup varment proof. The other thing is do what my father did. He hated varments .. had a gun ready to take them out. Yet away from where there would be issues he one planted a garden for them alone and set out food for them. Never did he have any issues. That gun wasn’t ever used to rid critters. The same goes for highways and accidents. Did anyone ever consider giving them a way to cross the road safely. Like an underpass .. they would use it.
Crows and Ravens roosting make sounds that are quite unearthly.
That sound is the sound of two lynx squaring off during mating season. Get it up here in Saskatchewan all the time up north.
My sister and I talked dad into letting us have a kitten we found in a coal car while he was getting coal for our house.. toodles.. we had a little terrier to tiger..toodles grew up to be a lynx ( my sister and I differ on that she thinks it was a bobcat ) almost as big as my lab.. nice cat one day I would get a tickle out of watching toodles and tiger playing in the yard.. and at night she’d sleep next to me in bed. Then one day toodles was in the tree just laying on a branch when tiger was yelping.. to very big dogs were attacking her..I was sitting in the swing and watching this wondering how I could save tiger.. toodles lifted her head.. got this odd look on her mug and leaped.. before I could get out of the swing it was over. Both of the big mean dogs were lying there dead.
It wasn’t long after that that toodles would wander off for days at a time. Then one day my father said she’d not be home a farmer shot her because he was afraid she’d kill his livestock.yes the sound she made when taking down tigers attackers was very unique..
I’ve had a few odd pets a raccoon.. cute till they grow up and into everything and stinky the skunk.. great watchdog lol a ferret
Grew up in Marshall. I can tell you for a fact that there are mountain lion in the quarries around Lake O the Pines. Wouldn’t be much of a stretch to find them in your part of the piney woods. There’s lots of empty space between them towns, and they will follow their prey.
Heck, we have a big black cat on photos here in a N Dallas suburb. Feeds on small dogs and house cats, according to reports. Better keep zeus in the house, lol!
WRT bigfoot: Daddy had a big hunter co-worker that swore he had seen one down in the Cypress River bottoms north and east of Marshall. He never would go hunting there again. For sure the deep woods are dark and scary places. Lots of creatures there that can ruin your day. I’ve been frightened a few times, lost and wondered if I was going to make it home once, but never seen sasquatch.
Personally, I believe that big animals leave behind big poops and big bones. If there were enough sasquatch to maintain a stable population near humans, someone would have found bones or scat by now. So I’m skeptical.
For some reason…. I need to remind you of the Martian chronicles…. Ray Bradbury.
phew.. Thank you for bringing them up… what great books.. Now I have to read them again.. just because..
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/esp_ciencia_cataclysmearth.htm
I keep this one sitting by the chair along with the Hab theory.. great books.. it was required reading for discussion in school years ago..
Never discount the possibility that there could be low class regular humans trespassing and possibly sneak thieving. Sadly, I’ve had experience with this. A random noise and nothing obvious may seem just odd, yet such people may case a place for a very long time before serious incursion. Cameras and motion detectors everywhere is helpful, and I agree on the game cameras. I’d be curious to hear a report on the make/model and quality of images from the cameras. I’d also hide them well and secure them against theft by animals or humans.
What Panama saw was probably a Bobcat. They exist around here … but are few and hard to spot. They look like an overgrown housecat, generally about 40 to 60 pounds. The few I have seen have been brown /dark yellow with stripes, natural camouflage I suppose – but I understand that they can come in multiple different fur colors (probably depends upon their localized fauna).
As for Bigfoot … doubt that such a creature really exists, particularly with all of the trail game cameras out there now and no pictures of one showing up.
As someone noted above, probably two wild animals confronting, or fighting, each other.
All I can say is thank goodness we do NOT have wild hogs around here!! Mean vicious things that is for sure.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r34Sqv-iblc
I don’t know that a bigfoot doesn’t make sounds similar to a squeaky door hinge, but I do know that a mountain lion makes sounds like a witch screaming, much like bobcats, having a set to, sound like as well.
Bigfoot sounds will impress you with the volume and the distance from which that volume emanates. It also can hackle out oneself along with the dogs cowering and frenetically barking from under the porch.
Hunting in the area from which such unique calling emanated, grown men with hefty weaponry, turned and fled when their previously baying and now desperately silent hunting hounds raced past them on their way back to the safety of home.
In this same area, a tight stretch of new cattle fencing was found with one post ripped up from the ground with several of the bottom strands of heavy wire snapped apart on either side of the staples that held it to the post — as if someone had placed a hand under the bottom wire on each side of the post and lifted it straight up.
In this same area, a not-quite-teenager male, was sitting on the fence, having just fed the pigs down at the barn. He came to the kitchen, grey-faced and wide-eyed and could barely speak to say he had seen a big foot come out of the trees down the road there (alongside the ripped up fence), walk across the main highway, down the ditch, step over the cattle fence and walk across the neighbors pasture into the forest (from whence the hunters had fled several years before). Upon questioning, the lad led us to the pasture where it had walked. We found a footprint in a bald patch of mud. A 6’2″, size 13, 300#+ male stood beside the print and his foot was small and made little impression by comparison. We made a cast–it never made it back from a school show and tell session.
What I have seen, while deer hunting in the woods, that made me feel like dropping the ought six and running in panic defies definition. I did manage to keep my wits, rifle and muster enough self control to work my way around the trees in an attempt to catch another sight. I failed.
A salt-of-the-earth man, hard-rock miner, ex-police officer tells of a mountainous road trip wherein he looked down upon a stream and saw 2 bigfoot that defecated into the stream and used the water to wash off afterward.
There is more to this topic, including all these areas having UFO phenomena as well…but this is supposed to be a comment, not a book. Bigfoot doesn’t exist for some people–so be it, for some of us, it is not a question, it is a fact we have proven to ourselves, and a caution.
Can you put up a link to your new game cams?
Didn’t do wireless…
Sorry meant make/model.
Bigfoot? Dunno, but I’ve lived long enough to know better than to have a closed mind regarding anything.
Maine Coon kitties can top 50 pounds, especially in the wild.
Rich lady lived in Michigan, had four pet panthers. She died in 1934 I believe (it’s been a long time since I read the article) and her kitties were freed. No one knows how many black panthers there are in Michigan (also sightings in Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, and Wisconsin) because they are rarely seen. I bought a vintage JD Dump Cart from a fellow outside Jackson, Michigan, a dozen years ago or so. He had a farm spread, and was always heeled after mid-afternoon. He said they look like cougars that have been spray-painted satin black. He often saw them on the hill above his yard, near dusk.
Want to see people suddenly look like walking corpses? Go to Henry County, Indiana, and say the word: Monkeyjack. I have no idea what it is, or why or how. I dated a girl I met in college, who was local, and took me there once. For perhaps 2000yds in any direction, there were no birds, bugs, or breeze — or sound or scent. We passed through (she told me people who stopped, sometimes disappeared.) When we got to her folks place, she told her mother where she’d taken me. Mom flashed briefly bright red, then turned ash gray and fell into her chair. After a minute or two, she spoke: “Are you crazy? What is wrong with you? Don’t ever go there again… The diatribe lasted a full ten minutes. I politely went outside…
That date prompted me to buy a copy of some obscure book on Indiana weird stuff (not “Weird Indiana.” It didn’t exist at that time) which BTW didn’t mention Monkeyjack, and many years later, consider putting a bug in Art Bell’s ear about it.
‘Point is: Every State, every region has its weirdness. Who am I to say there’s not an interdimensional portal, a colony of sasquatch, a river of gold, or an airport for flying saucers, stashed somewhere on this planet? Some of it is explainable, some not, and I’m old enough to know to just “accept” stuff, the truth or existence of which can’t have any bearing or effect on my, or my progeny’s lives…
Well there I was, the last Rider on a Harley run through a wild and beautiful scenic road outside of Johnson City. I was moving more cautiously so as to enjoy the scenery and this rock comes flying out horozontilly and hits the front of my motorcycle and bounces off. I just instinctively knew what it was and it was not a human. The road was too remote, and the land too steep and rugged and the weather too hot. I find it quite amusing to read they have a pattern and sense of humor. I kept going, being female, I wasn’t stopping that bike.
Davy Crockett and the Sasquatch in East Texas…..
Just ran across this article:
https://texascryptidhunter.blogspot.com/2018/05/sasquatch-classics-davy-crockett.html
Your neck of the woods: https://www.chron.com/news/strange-weird/article/Sasquatch-hunters-near-Houston-say-they-were-attac-6137289.php
Another website: http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/finding-bigfoot/lists/10-bigfoot-sightings-last-5-years/
George someday I will put pen to paper and tell the story of the power of the sasquatch. I have told this to a few but never written it. It goes over the head of most. The effects have been verified in news print. Involves $300 million. I am the only one who knows the complete story.
Damn – we’d LOVE to post that! Getcher ass to writin!