My Story
My Story
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A half of a century passed before I formally shared my first encounter with anyone. For most of my life I dismissed my personal experience and resigned giant hairy apes to product packaging and Hollywood movies until events in 2022 brought it all back.
Spring 2022
My mom was on a Sunday morning drive with a friend in southern Polk County, Florida, through an area of thousands of acres of reclaimed land from phosphate mining. They were rounding a slight curve when she noticed a dark shape at the top of a 25-foot-high berm. It was a redish-brown color, frozen mid-stride, and remained completely still. She stared at the figure as they passed, too startled by what she saw to request they stop. Mom knew that I watched Finding Bigfoot, so she called me and started asking questions: What did she see? Could it have been a bush? Why didn't it move? Was it a cutout?
To try to find answers I drove her back to the location, and we were at least able to confirm it wasn't a tree, bush, or silhouette cutout. She saw a large, muscular, bipedal figure standing as if paused mid-stride at the top of the berm that day. And she also now knows that I didn't just have a bad dream when I was four.
Background
I'll stop here to make a statement. I can recall events from quite early in life. I remember going to my grandparents' homes when I was less than two-years old. I have memories from when I was three and lived on the same street with my cousin and had a dog named Skippy and a tourquois blue recliner (who could forget that). So to be able to recall a memory from when I was four isn't much of a stretch.
I remember the recurring dreams with stark clarity. They were brutally persistent dreams that haunted me for 25 years. The rest I remember in bits and pieces.
My bedroom window was about six feet above the ground. I often looked out the window at night, slipping my feet along the headboard to push the mattress back just enough so I could stand on the boxspring and prop my chin on the window sill. Our yard was the last on the street that ended at the edge of a swampy area, which was connected to the larger Green Swamp wilderness area.
The encounter
One night I was looking out the window and saw something moving from behind our storage shed, but I was seeing the movement over the top of the shed, which was also about six-feet high at the apex. I watched the dark shape move from the far side of the shed around to the side and then it approached my window.
The animal was large and muscular; like a body builder. Seeing no indications of gender from the waist up, and based on the build, I took this animal to be male. His head remained level and he moved with very fast, fluid motions. The animal's arms swung back and forth and it moved its legs in an elliptical pattern similar to pedalling a bike. His posture was slightly forward but not in a simpy manner; this was a very powerful animal with a broad, barrel-shaped chest. His arms were long and muscular and his hands nearly reached the ground, even though it was walking upright.
He approached my window from the side, and rather than turn his head, he turned at the waist to look at me. His eyes locked with mine. They were very dark brown and the sclera was a brownish-grey color. His hair was dark brown to black, with hints of red.
When he reached my window the animal looked down on me, making him at least seven feet tall. His head sat very low on the shoulders, his forehead was flat and had a sagital crest. His jaw was large and square and the browridge was very prominant.
There was no hair around his eyes or on his nose, which was broad and flat, but I could see where the hair started thinly at the top of the check bone and then got thicker toward the jawline. The hair on his chin was slightly longer than the rest of the jaw line. The space between his nose and the top lip (philtrum) was very large and there was a slight upper and lower lip; not like humans, but similar to chimpanzees.
The animal locked eyes with me for several seconds and then bolted away. Although it was running bipedally, I could see how it could easily drop to all fours and run with even greater speed. The animal moved at such speed that it wasn't the animal locking eyes that gave me nightmares for 25 years; it was the speed at which the animal moved that gave me recurring nightmares. Nothing can escape these animals if they pursue it.
My mom remembers me coming into the living room and telling her and my dad that, "There's a monster in the yard. It's really big. I don't know what it is." As any parent would, she tucked me back into bed, reassuring me I'd had a bad dream. I learned two very hard lessons for a four-year-old that night: monsters are real, and my parents didn't know everything.
Afterward
Bigfoot wasn't a household word in Central Florida in 1971. I tried to tell my family what I'd seen, and tried to explain my recurring dreams. This was a challenge compounded by my stammer and a slight lisp, but also by my family discouraging me from talking about it because they felt that I was obsessing over it and making the nightmares worse. My grandmother even sat me down to tell me that "talking about 'wood boogers' only draw them to you," in an attempt to get me to let go of the bad dreams. I also developed a phobia of the dark, suffering with symptoms like suffocation and panic attacks in addition to the recurring nightmares.
In 1974, my second-grade teacher had a small library in her classroom, and on one of those bookshelves I finally found an answer. It was a small book with a black cover about cryptozoology. The book included drawings of sprites and angels, wood carvings of werewolves and vampires, and a photo of Patty in frame 352 from the Patterson-Gimlin film. I recognized that photo as an animal I'd already seen. Not the same, but similar. As a result of finally finding something to relate my experience to, I was completely obsessed over this book; I seriously considered how to sneak it out of the classroom.
Then in 1977, I was again introduced to Patty through the In Search Of... episode featuring the PG film and I still remember feeling shock at seeing another of these animals, this time walking across the TV screen. I asked my mom if the show was real or made up and she said she thought it was made up, but I knew I'd seen one of these animals before.
I continued to look for books in the library (it wasn't easy being the only kid at Kathleen Elementry asking questions about cryptozoology, much less being able to pronounce the word) and didn't find many resources. The Legend of Boggy Creek and similar movies added a new level of fear to my nightmares, but I still gravitated to TV shows, movies, books, anything I could find on the subject.
We spent a lot of vacations and holiday weekends camping; I've always loved being in the woods. I spent my days climbing trees and playing hide and seek in the woods next to our house. But when it got dark, whether at home or camping, I felt like I was being watched and went indoors or stayed next to the fire. Years pass as they do, I went to college, started a career and a family, and put giant hairy apes into the category of urban icons and jokes. Still, anytime I was driving through wooded areas, I was watching the treeline, power line cuts, fire breaks... I wouldn't admit it, but I was looking for apes.
Back to 2022
Mom's questions started me looking seriously for answers to this question that had haunted me for more than 50 years. TV shows, YouTube channels, podcasts all feature scientists like Dr. Jeff Meldrum and Dr. Kathy Strain, certainly there was a group somewhere doing scientifically-based research on this animal. Late in 2022, I came across the site, woodape.org and was amazed at the work being done by the North American Wood Ape Conservancy (NAWAC) and this term -- the North American wood ape. Without much to offer except enthusiasm and a willingness to learn, I applied to join and was accepted as an associate member in November. The following spring I attended training camp and was promoted to an investigator, which leads to the next part of this story and so that's there we'll leave off to save those adventures and encounters for other posts.
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