Bigfoot: 75,000 Sightings — 4 People Got Too Close

Hello, are you ready to improve your English through stories of a legendary animal, maybe spirit — Bigfoot?

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Hello James. Hello again. There are thousands of eyewitness accounts. There are so many crazy stories about this monkey man all over the world. There must be some grain of truth hidden in the story.

Many Native American tribes consider him just as real as you or me. A spirit that lives and protects the forests.

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Some of the earliest famous incidents in 1924, five gold miners that were working near Mount St. Helens in Washington, they were attacked by a group of ape men.

And through the night, one of them shot at this creature with glowing eyes, was watching them from the trees.

And then in the night, lots of rocks were being thrown at their roof. Creatures were smashing against the walls and they tried to break down the door.

So the miners were just shooting wildly, cowboy style, wildly shooting through the door at these ape men. Bigfoot, what is it, nine or 10 feet or something?

It's supposed to be a huge creature. I don't know if that's the first, I think there are earlier ones. The story I am going to express today is reported by Theodore Roosevelt, who was an American president.

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In an extremely early book from 1893 called The Wilderness Hunter, he reports an incident by a fellow hunter called Bauman.

Now Bauman and his companion went to an area more or less near Wisconsin, which is the remote western mountains of the United States. And Roosevelt believes this story in its totality.

These two huntsmen, Bauman and his partner, they went to a valley which had been, well, had been really abandoned, had been left alone, been isolated because the other native tribes were scared of going there. They said that there were devils, devils in the mountain.

The native tribes, tribes means a group of a native people, a community of native people. So the tribes called them the devils mountains and they were scared of this area. Absolutely. They were terrified and they would refuse to go. But this did not stop these two individuals.

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So the first night they set up camp and they hear heavy footsteps walking around.

The creature stays out of sight but clearly moves on two legs.

The next morning they wake up with the sunlight and they discover that the camp has been disturbed. Things have been moved. There's something has definitely been inside the camp and something which has been moving on two legs.

The second night there are more footsteps around the camp and the creature becomes bolder it seems.

And becomes what? Bolder.

Bolder, bolder, more... Braver. Uh, braver. That's right, more confident. And absolutely starts approaching closer to the to the tents where they are sleeping.

They wake up in the morning and the creature has been rummaging through their bags looking in their equipment trying to find something.

Probably just curious.

And they start feeling that they're being watched. They have an unsettling feeling that something is stalking them. Something is giving them attention.

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The final night, night three.

The creature returns and behaves aggressively.

So aggressively that Bauman and his partner are frightened to sleep and they take turns one being awake and one sleeping.

At dawn Bauman leaves the camp briefly to check the traps which they had set. Remember they are on the hunting expedition. They are there hunting for animals. When he returns he finds his partner dead and the camp destroyed.

His neck being broken in the night, well in the morning, his neck being broken in the morning and on seeing this Bauman flees the camp as quickly as he can and of course reports the story to the relevant authorities. So he flees the camp meaning he runs away from the camp as quick as possible.

And Roosevelt in his report when he relays this information to us, he does not claim it was Bigfoot. He does not claim it is some mythical creature but he does say that the creature walked upright. It behaved with intelligence and Bauman was a reliable person. He was not the type to invent mystical supernatural stories purely for entertainment.

And as we mentioned before the native tribes avoided this particular valley because of mountain devils.

Wow that's a good one. So that's one story pretty good!

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So here's a story. This is in Tennessee which is in the south of the USA in the 1970s. This was a family, the Carter family. They lived on the same property, the same house for three generations.

They had been there a long time. It was a farm.

The farm wasn't large but they had everything they needed. They had chickens, they had goats, they grew vegetables, they had a few cows for some milk. The nearest town was 30 minutes drive away and their closest neighbors were two kilometers away so they're kind of alone out there.

In spring their quiet life encountered something quite extraordinary.

First they saw footprints.

Footprints that were large, human shaped, pressed deep into the mud on the ground but they were far too big to be a human. Each one was like three times bigger than a human's foot.

And so he thought, well this is a prank, maybe a joke, some local kids, some teenagers.

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The family saw the footprints and had a laugh but a week later they started to hear some strange sounds, calls, howls.

So loud sounds made with the mouth. How do you think a Bigfoot sounds now?

Do you think so?

Like, something that... Well, I've heard sometimes they do very loud shrieks like, anyway.

So they started to hear these weird calls from the forest near their property and it was deeper than any wolf and you know, longer than any owl.

And every time the dogs would go crazy, the family's dogs barking and growling and they always stood guard every night.

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The calls continued and animals started to disappear.

Farm animals first, chickens disappeared. Then the dogs vanished, including their big German shepherd that they had had in the family for a very long time. They searched the property but they never found him. Then a goat, a goat disappeared.

And now of course the family was, the Carter family was, you know, freaked out, frightened. Like something was hunting on their land, something intelligent.

Because like your story, James, it was avoiding the traps. They had put traps out.

And the father of the Carter family started to sleep with a shotgun in his bed and the children were always kept inside.

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The summer passed and the calls continued.

The mother had taken the children to town for grocery shopping and the father was working in the fields.

Just the oldest daughter remained in the house. She was 17 years old.

She heard a noise from the barn, the barn, the big farmhouse.

So she quickly went outside and she went into the barn.

A smell of something that she had not ever smelled before, like a very thick, like unnatural smell and she saw it in the center of the barn was a creature, a big figure.

It was covered in fur and it was bent over something on the ground.

It was a goat and it was eating the goat, which was dead.

Her mind went blank.

She couldn't move, frozen, looking at the creature with blood all over its mouth.

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Then the creature turned around and looked at her.

The most terrifying moment of her life. The creature didn't snarl. It didn't make any sounds. It did not attack. It just looked at her.

Without stopping.

Without blinking.

The face was described as almost human, but slightly more ape-like. Flat nose, a heavy eyebrow area.

It looked at her curiously.

So she carefully moved backwards, not breaking eye contact.

She went back out the door of the farmhouse and then she ran back to the house. She locked every door and she didn't move until her family returned.

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And then she told her father what happened. The father grabbed his shotgun and he ran to the barn, but the creature was gone.

But the goat's body was still there, half eaten.

Again they saw these big footprints, three times bigger than any man.

And the footprints disappeared into the forest.

So they got the floodlights on.

They got flashlights. They got more dogs. They started to sleep where one member of the family was always awake and armed throughout the night. And for the next three years, the family lived in this hellish experience.

Hellish adjective meaning like hell, terrifying. Hellish experience for three years. Animals continued disappearing. Calls were probably deeper.

Finally the calls ended. The footprints disappeared and no more animals disappeared.

Sarah Carter, that woman, she lived on the farm until she was an old woman. She told people the story like a few times. It wasn't the size of the creature or how aggressive it was that frightened her. It was the way it looked at her with intelligence.

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Like what is Bigfoot? So what do you think it is Tristan? What do you think it is? Interestingly enough, I heard a story by a Canadian native boy and a friend of his was coming from another part of Canada. The friend wanted a blessing from the creature of the forest.

So these are Native Americans. Bigfoot is a spirit of the forest and he turns shifts into different shapes.

And the Native Americans have always, when you kill something, when you hunt something and kill something in the forest, you ask the permission of the presence of Bigfoot, the spirit of it. And you also give gifts in return. And apparently they were used to leave tobacco.

Tobacco and some candy, they'd leave it out.

This was recently. His friend came from a different part of Canada. They went together deep into the forest and they left tobacco out, left some candy out. And they said a kind of Native prayer.

And he said straight away he heard big trees and pieces of wood snapping and he just felt the presence right near him. And he says they got out of there quite quickly, but he looked and he saw like a mother Bigfoot like holding a young one just as they were like going out of the forest. Is this a real story?

Yeah, yeah, this is according to the Native American. And so for him, these creatures are like the protector and the voice of the forest somewhat. And they're usually kind. But he says when the white man came, the white man hunted in a disrespectful way and never like thanked the spirits of the forest.

So perhaps Bigfoot was a bit more aggressive towards the white man. I think that's fair to say. People who hunted. Yeah, there were people who hunted in a way that wasn't respectful to the forest.

Almost every culture has this idea of like the spirit which lives in the wilderness, the spirit which lives in the forest.

This native boy, his wife was pregnant and in his dream he saw Bigfoot and Bigfoot was just sitting there like peacefully and next to him was a little girl.

And Bigfoot said this girl's name is a lightning girl. It sounds like a superhero name.

Lightning girl. His daughter was born and his daughter was that girl and he named her lightning girl. And he says in the Native American tradition, you often name your children based on visions that you see in dreams.

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So essentially Bigfoot named his daughter. The idea of Bigfoot is deeply rooted in his tribe's culture. As I said, I mean, there's definitely something about the spirit of the forest, the spirit of nature.

I think also you can't rule out the idea that maybe there is a large primate. I don't think you can completely count that out. In the same way for a long time, Western explorers didn't believe in gorillas. They thought gorillas were artificial. They thought they were invented until you go to the deepest depths of the African mountain ranges and you find silverbacks and blackbacks and what have you.

Well, I mean, yeah, they probably just thought it was a person in a suit. Well, we didn't believe it. Honestly, early explorers just were like, nope. Halloween costume. You don't have massive chimpanzees living in your mountain until they discovered they were these massive chimpanzees living in their mountain.

Many people today, many people will hear the word Bigfoot and will instantly be like crazy. People instantly just turn off their mind and think that the story they're hearing is illogical or artificial or just invented.

Well dig this. Many people believe in ghosts, demons, even God. Anything that where there's not scientific proof.

A person can't really say, oh, I believe in ghosts and demons, but I definitely do not believe in Bigfoot.

You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, because they are both things of the spiritual realm. If you look at it from a more complete point of view, it is difficult to say 100% this does not exist. Because if you're willing to accept that there are many things in this world which are real, are not scientifically measurable, then you have to at least be open to the idea, even if you don't like it.

So the Yakama tribe, they have a famous story where a group of their children go missing in the forest only to be found weeks later being cared for by Bigfoot.

The creature had taken in the children into its cave and looked after them to protect them. But yeah, the general gist I get from the research is the native beliefs were that Bigfoot is a keeper of balance.

If you hunt too much or kind of hunt without, with no respect for the forest, the Bigfoot can become more aggressive.

The story I had in mind before about Santa Fe, one of the reasons is interesting is because it was taken very seriously. Because it's very interesting as the word Bigfoot was not used. This woman reported to the police that she had seen a big monkey in her back garden.

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The following morning, there was another report about this big monkey. And then dog walkers was complaining to animal services, to animal control, that there was something lurking in the woods, which made them feel uneasy as they're walking their dogs in the morning. And stray cats from local, kind of like, how can I put it, like local stray cats who people cared for went missing.

This is saying something was lurking in the woods. Absolutely. One lurking means kind of hiding in the shadows and looking out, looking, looking but remaining hidden. Absolutely. Yes. Lurking in the shadows. And so much so that they reported it in the news about this humanoid chimp creature, which was stealing cats.

Now, animal services told people not to go looking for the creature, identified it as being potentially hostile and not to approach the creature.

And nothing was ever discovered of this creature. They were looking for the animal and there was just no evidence. It disappeared.

And I think it's very interesting that because the word Bigfoot or Sasquatch was not used, people took it seriously because a big monkey in your back garden is a genuine problem.

If it escaped from a house or escaped from a zoo or escaped from a circus, you don't want a chimpanzee or any type of ape like killing, which kills cats in your facility.

Most people know what a monkey looks like. If they're saying it's like a monkey, but human size, that is not a chimpanzee. That is not a gorilla. That is something different.

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That is a person called James.

Yeah, chimpanzee that!

So there was this monkey, right?

Yeah, go on. I'll tell you this story. It's a monkey story. So there was a bank.

All day, everything's going as you would imagine. Then suddenly these bank robbers burst in the front door. They're waving guns about and they're throwing their empty bags, ready to be filled with sweet dollar bills. Put the money in the bag, put the money in the bag. Everybody's freaking out, throwing themselves to the floor. Panicking. Yeah, exactly. On the floor. Holding their heads, crying.

Holding their family. Just like, I love you. Expecting the worst, terrifying situation. The bank robbers are in the bank. And then.

Monkey. Monkey burst in the front door.

Monkey walks up to the counter, takes the gun, which has been resting on the counter. The bank robber obviously preoccupied with people, with police maybe. Don't touch that phone.

The monkey picks up the gun and then picks up a bag of money. The people shocked. Where's this monkey? He saved the day. This monkey's a hero.

He turns around, points the gun at everybody in the bank and backs out, stealing the money himself.

When the monkey got out the bank, he just takes his costume off and he's just a very athletic, smallish man and he just runs away in the car. Yeah, like when there was really small Chinese acrobats. With perfect muscle density. Yeah, just unbelievable. It's just like a freak of nature in the best possible way.

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So they have recordings of Bigfoot.

The most famous ones are called the Sierra Sounds, which were captured in the 1970s. It's audio recordings and it was two men. They were camping in the woods and they noticed big shapes.

Three shapes were circling around their camp, breaking branches and making sounds with their mouth vocalizing.

It sounded a bit like a language.

So they got their recording equipment out. Many linguists have listened to this audio and some say that it is like a language.

So, is it a bit creepy?

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Okay, so thank you, James. Well done everyone for improving your English today. According to Natural Conversation, wonderful, fascinating stories.

Thank you, James. Thank you very much. A pleasure as always. And have an amazing day, everyone. And catch you next time in the transcript.

Transcript is on the website. Link in the description. Ta-ta. Cheerio.