I'm writing this because I'm still waking up at 3.17 in the morning, like my body thinks
it's supposed to be bracing for something to happen, and I'm not talking about bad weather.
I'm talking about the moment my plow lights cut through the white out, and there was a
shape standing in the road, dead center, like it was standing there ready to flag me down,
and the shape was very clear to me. I knew what it was the moment I saw it. It was a
person-shaped thing that was not a person. You guessed it, a big foot.
I remembered the exact time this happened because the truck's dash-clock glowed right under
my line of sight, and it read 3.17 AM. Christmas Eve morning.
I work for my county here in eastern Ohio. When needed, I run a plow to clear the roads.
I prefer to plow the back roads and the farm lanes that feed onto the main roads. Main
roads really are a pain in the you-know-what. But even back then, I had enough seniority
that I usually got sent any way I wanted, unless it was desperate out there, and the main
roads needed more plows, and there weren't enough drivers.
So let's flip the calendar back to December 2004.
The Ohio Valley had a wopper of a snowstorm. Some areas had more than two feet of snow dumped
on it in less than 24 hours. We literally couldn't keep up keeping the roads clear.
The snow started heavy, I think it was on the 21st of December, and it didn't stop until
sometime on Christmas Eve.
Now I had been out since the storm started a few days before. I would go home just long
enough for a hot shower, some food, a couple hours sleep, then I was back out the door again
with a fresh thermos of hot coffee made by my wife. I was racking up the overtime too.
I wouldn't get that fat paycheck till mid-January, about the way our years go. That would
be when we would need it the most to recover from all of our Christmas spending.
The storm was dumping snow so fast we were having trouble keeping up.
I volunteered for extra shifts, but I had promised my wife that I would do Christmas Eve
morning and Christmas no matter what with them. That was the deal. I could take all the
overnight shifts and day shifts I wanted, and if I got home late, that's fine. But I had
to be there for Christmas Eve and for the kids to open gifts.
So on the night of December 23rd, I was in the county garage pulling on my insulated
coveralls and doing the same routine I do every time. I checked the chains, checked the lights,
checked the hydraulic lines, checked the salt levels, checked the radio, you know, all
the important things. Then I climbed into truck 12, the big one, the one that vibrates
like a living animal when you turn the key. Of all the trucks, 12 is my favorite. Now they're
all the same make, model, and year for the most part. But truck 12, well, it's a different
beast. Something about it, stronger engine it feels like. It's more aggressive in the
low. It's really hard to put into words. But truck 12 always feels like it's a couple not
as above all the other trucks, even though they were all bought at the same time and are
supposed to be exactly the same. I know that sounds odd, but all of us have agreed there
is something different about truck 12. Someone must have tweaked something a little different
when it was being built. So I get in to 12. I flipped the radio on, and of course it's filled
with Christmas music. Some station was playing Silent Night. I had to laugh to myself because
if you've ever plowed during a real storm, you know the only Silent Night is the one before
the snow started. My route that night was the same one I ran for secondary roads, a loop
of rural roads that arced out past a couple small towns and then looped back in. The state
route gets priority, but the county roads matter too. The buses run them, nurses drive them,
and the folks who have to get to work on third shift at the plant also drive them. And out
there, especially at night, it can be like you're the only one moving in the whole world.
The first couple of hours were perfectly normal, snow falling, but manageable. The plow
bled, scraping with that harsh, steady sound, salt chinking down on the road behind me. The
truck lights painting the road in a flat, white glow. Every now and then I'd pass a farmhouse
with a wreath on the door, maybe some lights blinking on a porch rail, a warm square of
a window where you could just see that people were inside enjoying the season. And every
time I saw that, I would think about my own house. About the way my oldest still tries
to stay up on Christmas Eve, even though he can barely keep his eyes open. I thought about
the way my wife handled everything by herself while I was out there plowing. I do have regrets
about a lot of that, but she has always told me to get out there and pull in that over
time. She's got everything handled, she would say. And it mattered that I was there when it
really mattered. Those were her words. My kids are grown now, and they have pretty much told
me the same that I was there when it counted, but I do still feel like I miss some things.
Now, there's a kind of loneliness in this job that doesn't hit you until the holidays,
because it's one thing to miss a normal two-state evening. But it's another thing to be
out there in the dark while everyone else is inside doing all the things that make beautiful
holiday memories. I was thinking about that in the early morning hours of Christmas Eve
2004. Now, somewhere around midnight on the 23rd, not long after my shift started, the
snow started coming in harder and faster. It came down so fast it seemed to erase my tire
tracks behind me, just as fast as I made them. By 1am, visibility was down to almost nothing
but what my headlights could light up right in front of my truck. Everything else was a
wall of white. The radio kept chirping out with updates. Other trucks were getting on the
radio reporting where slick spots were. There were a couple of minor slides, but nothing serious
yet. Our dispatcher sounded very tired. She had been working 16-hour days for about four
days straight. Everybody sounded tired. I kept my speed low. A plow truck can handle a lot
that's true, but physics don't ignore plow trucks, and we are just as liable to slide off
the road as anyone else. I had just cleared a long straight stretch that we call the "creak
stretch." That's a county road that runs beside a standard woods with a long creek in it
on one side and open fields on the other. I made my first pass through that stretch roughly
around 2.45am. Nothing unusual, just snow, wind, and the steady sound of the plow blade doing
its work. Then I looped back, hit a couple of side roads, turned around near the old grain
elevator, and came back toward that same stretch. That's when it happened. 317am. The snow
had thickened into that swirling curtain of thick, fluffy white. My wipers were working
over time, thumping back and forth, but the snowflakes were hitting the windshield hard
and fast. And then my plow lights caught something right in the middle of the road, almost
dead center. I squinted through the wall of white out in front of my truck. I didn't want
to hit an animal out there, but the momentum of those big trucks is something else when they're
rolling. You need to triple your stopping distance in that kind of weather. At that time
of the morning, in that kind of weather, I thought it had to be a deer that I was seeing.
What else would be out in this weather? But then I thought about it. I hadn't seen a deer
since this snow started on the 21st. They were probably bedded down somewhere for good.
And this thing didn't look or move like a deer. It was standing straight up. It wasn't
down low on the road looking into the truck's lights the way most animals do, and I knew
from the outline this wasn't some bear. I started tapping the brakes gentle at first, then
the truck's weight shifted, and I felt the rear tires bite as the big truck came to a slow
stop, maybe ten yards from the shape in the middle of the road. It didn't bolt, or even
flinch as my truck came to a stop. It had stayed steady from the first second I saw it, until
I came to a stop. It watched the truck the entire time. The only movement I saw as I got closer
to it was the head turned just a bit as it was tracking the truck coming closer. I squeezed
my steering wheel so hard I heard my leather gloves creak. The light hit it full now, and
I couldn't deny what I was seeing. Tall, broad, shoulders wide and boxing like a refrigerator,
dark, stringy, matted, snow catching in it like powdered sugar on a coat. And the face,
well, I didn't get a perfect look at the face. It wasn't like looking at a photograph,
but I saw enough to know that was no man there. I saw it enough to know that was a big
foot. The eyes reflected the light, kind of an animal shine. They weren't glowing like
some cheap flashlight trick of a costume, but they were catching the beam bright and they
were amber red. The nose I saw was flat and wide. I'm sure there was a mouth there, but
the snow was sticking to the fur on the face, which really was most of the lower half
of the face, so I didn't see the lips. You drive a truck like that enough dark nights.
You get to know what animals look like in the dark all lit up by headlights. You know
what makes it usual rounds in that area at night, and you will also know what you almost
never see. And in all the years that I had been plowing before that, and all the years
from then until I retired, I never once saw a human out there in several feet of snow
without a car nearby. Never. I don't know how large Bigfoot's run, but this one was pretty
big. I'm used to looking down on everything from inside that big cab of the truck, but
I didn't look down to see that Bigfoot, not far. We were close to being almost eye level
with each other. I might have been a foot higher, but even that was unsettling for me. And
that Bigfoot was looking at me in a steady way I really didn't like. But I knew that if
push came to shove, and I hoped it didn't, I was pretty sure my truck could flatten that
Bigfoot. Bigfoot versus Plow Truck? No question who was going to win, so I wasn't very scared.
But it wasn't moving. Maybe three or five more seconds passed, but it still wasn't moving.
It stood there in the road, looking at my truck, though it was now angered a bit sideways,
so it wasn't getting the truck lights head on. After a while I really didn't know what
else to do, so I hit the horn. I mean I let go of a full blast of the horn. It did flinch
only slightly, but it didn't move. It was now more broadside to me, but the upper body
was turned at the waist, and if it was possible, it had a meaner look on its face than it
had before. Then it took one slow step, then another. Not toward me, but toward the side
of the road, like it finally realized that it had better move, because it wasn't going
to win this fight. It reached the side of the road, piled high with snow from my earlier
pass. It stepped up to the top of the snow pile, and instead of stumbling like a normal
person would in the snow, it stepped up onto it, like it was climbing a single stair step.
Then it turned slightly, presenting its full side to me. And for half a second I saw the
line of its back, the thickness of its arms, and the way the hair clung to it in wet ropes.
Then it slipped into the trees, and was gone in the darkness. I let the truck idle past
where it had been. And my whole body felt like it was buzzing. Adrenaline, fear, disbelief,
shock, everything came at me all at once. Then I told myself, "It's late. It's snowing.
You saw something weird. Your brain is filling in blanks with all the things you've seen
recently on television. That's all that's happening."
"That was I?" I hadn't seen anything about Bigfoot probably. Well, since I was a kid, all
the same. My hands were shaking on the wheel in a way that they don't shake even when I
almost lit into a ditch one time. That's how I knew this was different. That's how I knew.
It was real. I radio dispatched. I almost didn't because, "Well, what could I say? Hey, I think
I just saw Bigfoot out here?" No, but I did keep it simple. Dispatched. This is 12. Just had,
I just had a large animal in the roadway near the creek stretch on 33. Heads up. Dispatched
came back, bored, and half asleep sounding. Copy that, 12. Dear. And there was my chance to
let it all go, to say yes, and just keep moving to bury it under the category that makes sense.
But I couldn't. Negative, I said, and my voice cracked a little bit in my own ears. Not a
deer. There was a pause on the radio. Just static and wind in the faint murmur of other trucks.
Then Dispatched said. Copy. Not a deer. Use caution. And that was it. No questions. No pushback.
Maybe Dispatched thought I was messing around. Maybe Dispatched thought I was tired. Maybe Dispatched
thought I had seen a cow that got loose, or I just didn't know what I saw. But the thing is,
I did know what I saw. I went on plowing because, well, that's what you do. You don't get to stop
your route just because you saw something you can't quite explain. But I'll tell you something.
Once you've seen something like that, the dark out there changes. Every tree line looks deeper.
Every shadow feels like there's something hiding in it. I came around my doop again about 40 minutes
later. The snow had eased slightly, just enough that my lights reached a little farther than they
did before. And that's when I saw it again. Not in the road this time, but up on the snow berm,
the one I had made from plowing. He was walking along that ridge of piled snow parallel to the road,
like it was on a sidewalk. It moved with this steady, purposeful stride that was unbothered by all
of the snow and the hailing winds. I slowed the truck without meaning to. The truck's engine dropped
into a low growl, and I was now pulled alongside the big foot on the side of the road.
The figure kept pace with me for maybe five seconds, ten at most. And that's plenty,
though, when you're staring at something like that. It was closer now. Close enough that I could see
the hair on its shoulders plastered flat with wet snow. Close enough that I could see its arms
swing low, the hands hanging near its knees. Close enough that if I had rolled down my window and
leaned out, I could have smacked its shoulder. If I'd had any doubts about it not being real before,
those ideas were shot out of the water. It was as real as the truck I was riding in.
After a couple seconds of me riding beside it, it turned its head toward the truck,
not in a frantic or worried way, just curious, like, "Why are you following me?"
Kind of curious. And that's the word I keep coming back to. And I hate it because curiosity feels harmless.
And I tell you, this thing was not harmless. Not with that size, not with the intent and the
expressions that I had seen on it already. I don't know what I was expecting, but for some reason
I wanted a reaction from it. So I hit the horn again. And it did react this time, but not like I expected.
It suddenly stopped walking, looked over at me in the truck, and I mean it looked at me.
Not the truck. Then it turned the other way and stepped down off the piled ridges snow and
walked into the trees slowly and deliberately. And then it was gone. I kept driving, but my mind was
racing. I had seen it in the space of maybe an hour. It was walking my route, but it had learned
to stay off the road. Was it learning? Or was I reading too much into it? Around 4.30 am, the storm
surged again. When picked up and snow started to blow in hard sheets that made the road disappear
under my blade, even as I cleaned it. I got a call from dispatch. Stringed vehicle reported on one
of my side roads, small sedan, often a ditch, hazard lights on. Can you check on it when you swing
by? Dispatch asked? "Copy," I said. I really didn't want to. Not with what I'd already seen.
Not with my shift nearing its end, and then I could go home. But you don't leave somebody
stranded out there. Not in weather like that, for sure. The side road in question cut through a
wooded section before opening into a little cluster of homes. I turned on to it, blade down, pushing
snow, tires crunching all the way. The sedan was exactly where dispatch said, "nose down in a shallow
ditch, hazards blinking weak orange through the falling snow." I pulled up behind it, and I put my
own flashers on. The world outside my truck cab was a spinning tunnel of white and dark. I grabbed
my flashlight and stepped down. The cold hit me like a slap. It smelled sharp, metallic. It was all
salt and diesel and snow. I trudged up to the car's driver window. The glass was fogged. I knocked.
A woman's face appeared, wide eyed. She cracked the window down a couple inches.
"I'll thank God," she said, her voice shaking. "I slid, and I can't get any traction."
I nodded, noticing that one tire wasn't even touching the road as I walked up.
"Instead," I said. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," she said, just scared, and my phone's dying.
I told her to keep the car running if she could, to conserve her phone battery, and that a deputy
and a tow truck were on the way. I offered to let her sit in my cab, but she didn't want to leave her car.
Some people just won't. Call it pride or fear, whatever. I didn't blame her.
As I turned back toward my truck, my flashlight beams swept across the road and into the ditch line.
And it caught something. At first I thought it was a tree trunk, but the tree trunk shifted.
A very small movement, just enough though, to make my blood spike.
There was a shape down there, half hidden behind brush and snow.
Too tall to be a deer, too upright to be a bear, too big to be a human. I froze.
I told myself, "You're seeing what you want to see. You're seeing storm shadows,
branches. You're just on edge, and you're seeing bigfoot everywhere you look."
And it was kind of true. Since that bigfoot had stepped down off the snow mound along the road and
went off into the trees, I was sure I was seeing it again and again, at least a dozen times as I drove.
But each time what I saw turned out to be something that was definitely not a bigfoot.
But then it moved again. And then I saw the curve of a shoulder. The dark hair slipped down,
I saw the bulk of it. It was crouched low like it was trying to make it soft smaller suddenly.
And that made my fear rise, because it meant it understood hiding.
I backed up toward my truck without turning my back fully. My boot slipped on pack snow,
and the sound of my own breathing got loud inside my hood. The shape stayed very still.
But I felt it watching me. This wasn't some spooky sixth sense. It was just the simple fact that when
you're in the open and there's something out there in the darkness, well, you know the advantage is
not yours. I climbed in my cab and shut the door hard enough, the whole truck shook. I radio dispatched
with my voice low. Dispatched 12. I'm with the stranded vehicle. Toad and deputy still on route?
A firmative dispatched said, "ETA about 20." Oh God, 20 minutes felt like a year.
I glanced at the woman in the sedan. She was still in there. Car hazard's blinking.
I didn't want to scare her, and I didn't want her to bolt out into the storm from fear.
I was certain she didn't know that something was out there watching us.
So I did the only thing I could think of. I stayed put with my truck lights on.
Let the engine idle. I had the blade raised slightly, so I could pull out fast if I needed to,
to say, flatten a troublesome big foot. And I watched the ditch line.
Snow-kipped falling, soft and relentless. Minutes passed. Then out of the corner of my eye,
I saw a movement. It wasn't right next to me. It was farther back. Near the tree line,
just where my lights almost faded. There was a tall silhouette sliding between the trunks,
the way a person would walk carefully through a crowded room. It stopped at the edge of the light.
And for a moment, it stood there, looking between my truck and the sedan, like it was deciding something.
Then it took a step forward. The light caught it now, just enough to show a face full of intent,
and it didn't look good. It was focused on the sedan, and presumably, the woman inside.
The woman in the sedan was facing forward. She didn't see it. She had no idea anything was there,
but I did. And I knew then what it had been deciding. My mouth went dry. The thing leaned slightly
forward and began inching through the snow toward the sedan. I remember saying no, out loud in the truck.
I revved the truck engine, then let loose with the truck's horn again. I laid on it long and loud.
That horn blared, echoing through the woods and off the ditch in the empty fields.
It was an ugly noise out there in the quiet of a wintery snowy landscape, but I felt I had no choice.
The bigfoot looked right up at the truck, and it inched backwards a couple feet. I could tell it wasn't happy.
It was staring at me in the truck. Oh, it was angry for sure. I can't tell you exactly how I could tell it,
but there was something in the way it moved, its posture, but I could tell. Then it stood completely
straight up. It turned, and effortlessly glided through the deep snow and was lost in the trees.
I sat there shaking, staring at its retreat. I jumped when there was a knock at my driver's side door.
The woman from the sedan was standing there, looking worried. I rolled down my window.
"Is everything okay?" she asked.
I swallowed hard, and I leaned out the window, and I said, "Yeah, I just got my sleeve caught,
and it was stuck on the horn button." Now I totally made that up, of course, and what I said couldn't
have happened with the horn, not like that, but I was banking on her not knowing what a truck's horn
was like, and apparently she didn't. Then I asked her, "You doing all right?"
She nodded, "Yes, but I could tell she was rattled. She got back in her car, and I kept my mouth shut,
kept my lights on, and I watched the darkness all around us."
The deputy arrived first, lights flashing blue across the snow. The tow truck came just a few minutes
later. I told the deputy what I needed to tell him, conditions, location, safety, without saying a word
about what I had seen. Because what's the point? If you say, "I saw a big foot,"
well now you're the story. Now you're the guy people laugh about at the local diner.
The tow truck got the sedan out, and the woman thanked us all a dozen times over,
then she drove off, slow and careful. The deputy pulled up next to my truck afterwards, his window down.
"You doing all right tonight?" he asked. His voice was casual and friendly,
but there was something in his eyes, sharp, knowing. I hesitated, and I know he saw it. I could have
told him. I could have said, "There's something out here, and it's big." But I didn't. I just nodded
to him and said, "Yeah, it's just been a long night." He looked past me toward the trees for a second,
like he was thinking about something, or looking for something. Then he looked back at me and nodded,
"All right then. Be safe," he said, then he drove off into the night.
"After that, I wanted nothing more than to finish my route and get back to the garage and
get home to my family. It was now Christmas Eve morning, but the storm kept hammering us,
and I kept plowing, and twice more, twice. I saw that figure along that creek stretch as I made my
loops. It was always at the edge of the light along the road. It was always watching me.
Once it was standing behind a stand of saplings, and I saw just its head move as I passed,
tracking the truck, like it was studying it. The other time it was farther back, just a silhouette,
but unmistakable in its shape and height, and it was becoming very visible with the lightning
sky with the coming dawn. I got back to the garage a little after 7.30 a.m. Just as the eastern sky
started to lighten into that pale winter grey. I parked truck 12, shut it down, and for a second,
the silence in the cab was so complete, it felt like pressure in my ears. My supervisor was there,
nursing a cup of coffee, looking half dead. "Well, how's it doing out there?" he asked.
"It's bad," I said, probably a lot worse in the creek stretch than I've seen anywhere else.
He nodded like that all made perfect sense. "Any incidents?" he asked.
"I thought about the sedan, about the deputy, about that shape in the road."
"No," I said, "nothing worth reporting."
He clapped me on the shoulder and said, "Go on home, get some sleep." "Mary Christmas."
"Mary Christmas," I said back, and it sounded strange on my tongue after the night I had had.
At home, the house smelled like fresh pine mixed with cinnamon and ginger.
My wife had the treelit, fresh coffee made, and she was making pancakes for the kids.
I kissed my wife, hugged my kids, and we all sat down together and shoveled in some mickey-mouth-shaped
pancake as fast as we could. I tried hard to be present that morning, but I was exhausted from
several nights of long plowing, and every time I blinked, I saw that shape in the road, dead center,
not moving. At one point my wife touched my arm and asked me quietly, "Are you okay?"
I almost told her. I thought about it, but I didn't want to drag that darkness into our living room,
not on Christmas Eve morning, not with my kids happy and excited waiting for Santa to come that night.
So I just said, "Yeah, I'm good, just tired."
Later on, after the kids were busy, and my wife was in the kitchen, I stepped out onto the front porch.
The snow had east up. The world was still blanketed and clean.
But I was wiser now. I knew what walked around out there in the darkness, and I could never be the same.
I did go out many more times over the years on many snowy nights, right down that creek stretch, too,
but I never saw it again, though I always looked. I have many unanswered questions, like most people that
have a sighting. Mostly, what was it going to do to the woman in the sedan? I've often thought it
might have done nothing. That maybe it was just curious. That maybe not. For whatever reason,
it didn't think I was any kind of a threat to keep it from doing whatever it was going to do.
That also was another unsettling thought for me. I also have to wonder, I kept seeing it. Was it
following the flashing lights on my truck, maybe? You know what else? I still wake up on many winter
nights at exactly 3.17 am right on the dot. It's like my brain wants to keep reminding me of what I saw
all those years ago. I sure wish it wouldn't. If you share this, please keep my name in county out of it.
I am retired from the county now, that's true, but I am working full-time for another service here in town,
and I just assume not be known as that guy. And if anyone listening drives those rural stretches
during a winter storm, slow down. Keep your eyes up. Because sometimes the thing in the road is the
last thing you expect. Thank you again. Just call me a county plow driver.
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