Archive 250 Bigfoot

Cameron Buckner (0:06)

When I was in my 20s, we would drag on McHenry and J Street in Modesto, California. That's the town that American Graffiti is based on. I know, where were you in 1962, right? Well, I was 10 years old, so that story wasn't about me.

But even in my teens and early adulthood, my friends and I dragged McHenry and J Street to 9th Street, and then we turned around and go back up J Street to McHenry Boulevard, and then to Brighmore Road, and then back down. We'd race our friends and show off our cars, and then we'd sit somewhere on the Boulevard, and we'd drink and shoot the breeze. One night, my boyfriend Dan and I and his twin brother Donnie, along with Donnie's girlfriend, and my brother Jerry and his girlfriend, we were all crammed in Dan's 55 Chevy. Well, we were bored, so we decided to go for a ride, and we ended up going above Sonora into the heavily forested mountains. We stopped in Sonora to grab a burger, and then we got back on the road. We were talking and drinking and having a good time, and we weren't paying much attention to how far we were getting into the mountains. The men in the vehicle were drinking more than the women were, except the driver, Dan, had a drink, but he wasn't drunk. It wasn't long before we had to stop again so they could pay rent on their beer.

We found a dirt road to pull on to so they could get out and run in the woods and do their thing, and we weren't far off the highway, but we were far enough to allow some privacy. All three guys, they were over six feet tall, and they weighed between 180 and 200 pounds each, and they liked to brag that they weren't afraid of anything. They hadn't been in the woods for long when we heard the scariest scream I have ever heard in my life. We could hear it plain as day inside the car with the windows rolled up. All three of those brave men came running out of the forest like a bunch of frightened mice. They jumped into the car as everyone was asking, what was that? They told us that they felt that scream to their very core. They didn't see what made it, but we wasted no time getting back on the highway and back to the safety of Modesto. I think it was a Bigfoot, and it was mad at those men for marking its territory. Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. They hear a scream, scares them to death. All right, we got one more. And these are two short emails, but I'm gonna explain what's going on here in a minute. So y'all bear with me, but I hope you enjoy this story. This person, he gives his name, he doesn't say whether to use it or not, but he claims the story is absolutely true. My parents and my two brothers and sister and I lived on a small farm in North Alabama. We were surrounded by wooded areas and green pastures and ponds and creeks. We spent a lot of time camping and roaming outdoors as kids, and we would stay gone until dark. It was a typical summer day when we threw a blanket on one of our ponies, and we decided to go back to a wooded area where we liked to hang out. There was a creek that wound its way through the trees, and we cooled ourselves there when the southern heat waves blew through the countryside, like Satan's storm. Our ponies were very gentle and fun to ride. We usually headed through the first gap in the fence around our property and onward into a big pasture where we would stop at a pond and give our ponies a drink. And then we continued on for a while until we got near the entrance of the woods that led to the creek.

The place was so familiar to our animals that they always walked down to the edge of the water without much prodding from us. We were 50 yards from entering the woods, and the pony stopped. We shook his bridle, and we tapped to sides, but he was rooted in place. Then he snorted and pawed at the ground and began backing up. I thought maybe he sensed a snake, but the grass was too short to camouflage any such slithering reptiles. On the other side of the creek, there were some scattered trees with low-lying brush.

In the south, we have a vine called a trumpet. It has big red flowers, and it envelopes trees and buildings. They're all around our house and woods. I don't know if it was experiencing an optical illusion, but the pair of red flowers before me resembled eyes, and they seemed to be moving quickly through the foliage. The pony was getting seriously agitated. I was worried my sister might get thrown off, so we turned, and we headed home. I had my arm over the back of the pony running along beside him, and something I saw on TV shows about how Indians rode horses. We didn't look back until we had the house in view.