You can call me Tom from Kentucky. Lots of folks in my small town know our place by
the front yard nativity we put out every year under the big Elm Tree. My sighting of a big
foot happened because of that nativity. We live at the last proper block on the east side
of town before the lots start getting bigger and bigger and you find yourself in the real
country. Beyond us is a large yard, then a ribbon of a creek, then a line of second-growth
woods. On our side it's a line of small houses, mostly ranches and Cape Cods. Everyone
on our end is a bit older. There are no kids or teenagers running about.
The nativity is really my wife's thing. My job is to make sure it's something she stays
proud of. We built the stable years ago from fence boards and a sheet of plywood with
a slot cut at the peak so it sheds water. The figures are very old plastic. The kind
you hose off every spring and repaint or touch up every couple of years. We wedge an extra
straw bale behind the manger and there are two more straw bales stacked behind the stable
to give it more balance. We stake and zip tie everything down. The figures, the manger,
the stable, all of it. But I have learned through the years. Those straw bales add more stability
and a fierce Kentucky winter wind than just zip ties alone. There's also two spotlights
out there on sticks to give it that Christmas pageant glow. It was the week before Christmas
about 9 p.m. The forecast had freezing rain moving in just around midnight and around
here. That means your car doors and anything else that moves will be eye shut. I told my
wife, "I'm going to go bring the wise men and the camel in so they don't blow and break."
I was worried about them because the wise men and the camel are outside the stable itself.
They catch all the wind, rain, snow and ice. They get no protection. And I worry because
they're old. And they have little tiny cracks in the plastic that might expand if ice gets
deep into them. And I was worried they would split apart.
My wife said she'd finished loading the dishwasher and she'd meet me out there to help. Our dog,
he's a 70 pound nut with more bark than bite, stood at the back door and wagged exactly
once, like he wanted to go outside. Then he suddenly decided that he was urgently needed
by the wood stove. That should have told me something.
Everything outside already had a thin, silvery, crusty frost to it. It was the kind that you
hear when your boots hit a tiny, crackle crunching sound. I stepped out the kitchen side door
and down the one step to the car port that was attached to the side of the house. Other
than the spotlights on the nativity, the night was a dark outside.
I walked between the side of the house and my park truck coming to the front of the
car port. From here I had a perfect view of the back side of the manger and the lit
nativity pieces on the front lawn. I saw the manger and I stopped dead of my tracks. There
was something dark behind the manger. It wasn't there just a couple minutes ago when I looked
out the kitchen window over the sink as I was talking to my wife. That was right before
I came out. My first instinct was to back up. We do have bear that come out of the Daniel
Boone National Forest every now and then. It's not often, but it's enough you know to stay
alert. And that was the first thought that I had. But that was thrown out as soon as my eyes
took in what I was looking at. This wasn't some dark, shapeless blob. It had a shape and
it wasn't shaped anything like a bear. There was a clear head, shoulders with arms and
hands, and after a half second I made out legs that had the body down low like it was in
a crouched or kneeling position. There were no ears sticking out from the head that I saw
and no snout like a bear. And the size of everything I was seeing was more than just wrong.
It didn't seem possible. I saw the mass of hands feeling and digging around through
the straw bale. It was intent on doing whatever it was doing and it hadn't noticed me yet.
I knew this wasn't some casual animal like a bear, but I wasn't convinced that it wasn't
a person even if the size was impossible. I was thinking, hope in the world would come
out on a night like this to fiddle around with some straw. I remember blinking my eyes,
thinking I had to be seeing this wrong. There had to be two people out there. Maybe they
were both wearing big coats. They were crouched down together. And somehow to me they looked
like one big thing, not two individuals. I also wanted a little bit of a better look. I
took one step forward, causing a small patch of ice that had crept under the edge of the
carport to crackle and crunch. The crouched figure cocked its head toward me quickly. It
wasn't a full turn, but it did hear me, no doubt. While the head cocked, the entire body
began to rise up to a standing straight position. It was like watching someone with a marionette
pull all the strings upward. It was a fluid motion as this creature rose to a standing position.
And then I knew. It was something that I had heard people whisper about, joke about, and
talk about. It was something I'd never given any real thought to. Bigfoot, a wood booger.
Nothing else fit. It matched all the descriptions I've ever heard. I've spent my entire life
in the southern Kentucky area. I thought I had seen everything that roams these parts.
Well, I had seen enough to know this wasn't any of the other things I had ever seen. But
I somehow knew what it was. I cannot stress enough the size of this bigfoot that stood before
me. I built that stable, so I knew the dimensions, and this being dwarfed it. I put its hide at
just over seven feet, and over three feet wide at the shoulders. It didn't block out all
of the stable, but probably about 75 percent of it. And my stable's dimensions are roughly
five feet wide, and just over six feet tall. I saw the slope of the head, the short hair
looking thick on the skull. The pattern of it as it parted into a natural line down the
middle of the domed skull, all of it highlighted by the ambient glow of the spotlights.
The face was now turned, not just the head, but the shoulders and all of it. It was turned
to face me. In the spotlight wash, I caught texture, hair shorter around the cheeks, a heavy,
bony-looking brow that stuck out of the eyes. It knows it looked flatter across the bridge
than ours, but had large round nostrils in it. I really wasn't in any doubt before of
the thing that stood in front of me. But if I had been, this took care of that.
Not meaning to, I muttered something to myself like, "Oh boy," or something. But it heard
me. It didn't flinch, but it clearly heard me. It caught its head again, like it was
listening closely. Didn't it did something to me that, well, all I can say seemed very
human-like. It shifted a half-step to the left, using part of the stable wall and its shoulder
to cut the glare from the spotlights so it could look at me without squinting. I know that
sounds like I'm giving it too much credit, but I watched it lean that shoulder into the
shadow, and it made total sense. It was like a fisherman, easing away from the reflection
to see deeper into a pond or a lake. Then I did what my wife says I always do in an argument
when I realized I'm not going to win this one. I retreated to the kitchen. I stepped backwards,
retracing my steps along the house in the car-port, feeling my way in the darkness with my arms
behind me as I moved. When I felt the kitchen door, I opened it without ever taking my eyes
off the big foot that was still clearly visible in the lights out front. And I could see the
big foot was watching me, too. The screen door gave its little spring squeak as I opened it.
I backed inside to the kitchen and closed the door. I shut off the kitchen light. My wife,
Laurel, who was standing at the dishwasher, let out a little help. She was still trying
to load the dishwasher, and I made the kitchen dark. I quickly quieted her and went over
and turned her head with my hands to look at the scene outside, which was lit up and
clear to see from the window over the sink. She grew up here, too, but she's heard stories
just like I had. We stood there for maybe two or three seconds and stunned silence. The
big foot outside was watching us, and I had the idea that he could see us even with the
light inside the kitchen turned out. The big foot out there took three steps, clear and measured.
It came even with the front of the stable, and the spotlight took it full on for a second.
That's when I saw detail that I will never forget. The hair on the forearms laid down
in smooth lines. It wasn't mad at or dirty. The hands looked wide with the kind of thick
fingers that come from hard use, and the chest didn't have a single hard body line to it,
but it was square, dense, and solid. If you've ever seen an old man who spent his whole
life throwing hay-bales around like they were five pound bags of flour, you've seen a
chest like that before. Solid. Now people always ask me about the eyes. I don't know why,
but the spotlight was low and it was off to the side, not straight on. So I didn't have
a chance to see if I got any eye-shime reflection like people always ask me about. All I could see
was a set of eyes that were set deep under that bony ridge of a brown. Strangely, my eye
focused on a really weird detail. It's a straw that were clinging to pieces of hair on the
arm and a few pieces that were stuffed to the leg. Straw is the rural equivalent of a craft
room's glitter. It gets everywhere. Sticks to everything. You can clean it and clean it,
and every time you think you've got it all cleaned up, well, you have to think again because
there's more of it. It's a strange thing that I remember seeing, but I do. It continued
that steady gaze for another second or two. Then it turned, leaned down and looked it up
that straw bale with one hand. Then it looked right at us in the window again. And purposefully
walked off. Big as you please, it just walked right off. Now let me tell you something about
hay bails if you've never worked with them. They are heavy. Now they vary in weight. Now
the ones I buy are averaging 55 to 60 pounds and they're baled with a thick plastic strap
that will bite into your hands and fingers like razor blades if you aren't wearing thick
gloves. And even the stongest guys I know that doosling those bails around like they're
nothing, they use two hands to do it. But that big but just picked it up like it was picking
up a bag of groceries and walked off. It wasn't in any hurry either. It crossed the lawn,
crossed our drive. Then went down the side of our yard where there's that natural ditch that
runs in a diagonal from the woods all the way down to the creek. Now before it got to the
ditch it was lost in the darkness and I couldn't see it anymore. But I knew where it was going.
There was nowhere else nearby it could possibly have taken refuge.
Laurel and I looked at each other wide eyed in the semi-darkness of the kitchen. I recall
we mumbled to each other some things like holy cow. Can you believe it? Was that a big
foot? You saw it too, right? We were saying things like that. But here's the really funny
thing. We were whispering. We were whispering in our own kitchen like we were afraid it
was going to hear us. It's kind of funny but it's like we weren't supposed to speak out
in the darkness or something. After a couple of minutes, sanity returned to us and we shut
off the spotlights to the nativity from inside. I thought about going out there and at least
sticking down a tarp over the wise men in their camel, but I didn't. I tried to sleep, but
I had a very restless night. I confessed. I did get up a couple times and I went to the kitchen
and I looked back out that window. It wasn't there, of course, and I told myself I was checking
that the stable and the figurines were okay in the ice storm. But I knew that was a lie.
Now it's true, the ice was coming down hard and the winds were blowing something terrible,
but some plastic figures in the yard isn't really what got me out of my warm bed on a very
cold night several times. The next morning, everything outside was sparkling like it had
been dipped in glue and rolled in silver glitter. If you've never seen the aftermath of a
true heavy ice storm, well, you're missing something beautiful. True enough, those storms
are dangerous and deadly. But the next day, when the sun comes out, oh my goodness, it's
breath-taking. Everything shines in shimmers. I had my coffee, then suited up and I went out
to check for damage and to see if last night's visitor left any evidence. And he did. The
tracks were perfect. From the back of the stable where the kneeling had occurred, outpass
the drive and down into the ditch and then disappearing into the woods. You could follow
every step clean as a bookline. The ice had formed sometime after the bigfoot left, so the
depressions wore a thin glaze that made a low rim of light on each one when the sun hit
them. Here and there, small bits of straw marked the trail along the way under the ice,
like canceling Gretel had dropped their breadcrumbs. The kneeling marks behind the stable were
very clear. The right knee had sunk into the lawn through the thin layer of frost and made
a large rounded oval, longer than my open hand. Beside it, a towed foot angled under, like
it had tucked that foot while it leaned in when it was feeling around in the straw. From
there, the prints started. In the thin glaze of frost, you don't get toes like in wet
creek sand, but you get pressure shapes. These ran long. The heel-bowl distinct. The four-part
broad with a forward oval where toes would have been. I put a tape to the one in the shadow
of the stable, and I got a flat 14 inches heeled to the furthest forward pressure line. Across
the four-part, just over six inches. I measured the stride, 63 inches, then 64, then a longer
one at 73 inches across the drive where the slope added momentum, like it had done a half
jump. We did not follow those tracks. We saw what we could see as we stood near the stable
in our front yard, and what we could see as we walked in the open area across the yard,
but beyond the drainage ditch, under the leafless trees and into the thickness of the white
pines, it was dark and unwelcoming. What we could see from there was good enough for us.
Now what comes next is usually in the comments section about people that don't believe
the charity suggestions that they give, that it was a neighbor in a kid's suit, some bear,
or a trick of light. You go right on ahead and you tell me all the things you think it
was other than a big foot. But I know my neighbors. I know bears, and we don't have them real
heavy here. Even the ones we do get, black bears aren't all that big most of them. I know
the difference between cloth and hair and in yard light. If somebody wants to dress in
a hair suit and kneel in my lawn just to steal a straw bell, then fake some 16-inch
prints across a frosty yard on a frigid night with a severe ice storm due to start at any
minute. Well, all right then. I want to shake that man's hand, because he's one heck of
a man to not only think of it, but to do it and pull it off flawlessly. And all of that
for a bail of straw. Officially, we did not call anyone. Not because I'm worried or that
we wouldn't be taken seriously. Actually, it was sort of the opposite. Maybe the officials
might not take us very seriously. But I knew a few of my neighbors probably would. And
the last thing I needed was Cliff from a few houses down, stalking around at night with a rifle,
dead set on protecting baby Jesus. And he's the type that would, too. I did tell the
neighbor right across the road from us, Sharon, because she has one of those ring cameras
pointed right at her driveway. And it's right across from Mars. And I thought maybe we
could get a silhouette moving across the yard or something. I know that her ring camera
can see that far sometimes because sometimes she'll send us videos of deer standing in our
front yard. I was really hoping. But when she pulled up her ring account, she said the internet
went spotty exactly when the eye started. And her hub recorded nothing from 8.59 to 9.21
pm. I suppose the bulk of my story is done, but there are three small postscripts that
I want to add, and then I'll be done. First, my mother-in-law stopped by on Christmas Eve
with some thudge wrapped in wax paper for us. She stood there in the front yard, looked
at the nativity and she said, "Well, you sure didn't put out as much straw this year?" I shrugged
and said, "Well, we did, but some of it disappeared during the storm." And I left it at that. She shook
her head like well ain't that ashamed and let it go. Second, the other bail of straw disappeared
one night, not too long after, but it wasn't a night that showed any tracks for us. There
was no snow and the ground was just frozen solid. It was just a few days after Christmas
that time, so we just packed the stable up early that year and called it quits. Third, the
first week of January, a neighbor of mine stopped by and let us know that he'd be hunting those
woods behind us. We don't own those woods, but he had permission from the guy who does own
them, and he always stops by and let us know was a courtesy in case we hear gunshots or
anything out there. But the next time I saw him, he asked me if I knew who had taken all my
straw. I looked at him funny and I said, "No, I didn't. Why?" He just looked at me and said
that he found a large scooped-out area behind and under some of those pines with a lot of
straw. Looked like some animal had been bedding down in there. I had had suspicions all along
that using the straw as nesting material had been the goal all along for the big foot. Why
else take it? But that leaves another question to ponder. How did it know to go for the straw?
I mean, I reckon it's learned at some point that straw is good insulation, and it doesn't
hold moisture. And I guess it took that first veil and then came back for the second when
it decided it needed more. To my knowledge, there hasn't been any more big-foot activity
in this area. Now that doesn't mean that there's been some activity, and whoever witnessed
it, if they did, are like me, and they're just not spreading the information all around
town. But somehow I kind of think this big-foot was passing through, maybe got caught up in
this storm and bedded down for a while and then moved on when it could. But how did it know
the ice storm was coming that night? I mean, we knew, but the ice had not started right
then, not yet. The dramatic temperature drop that would come overnight with deep wind
chills that hadn't started yet either. Or would it have used the straw on any cold night?
Makes me wonder. Well, that's my whole story. I will be watching my
nativity carefully this year. I put some extra bales of straw out, and I put cameras on the
nativity from three different angles. If I get anything, I will be pounding down your email
box. If you do read this for Squatchmas, tell folks Mary Christmas from a Southern Kentucky
boy and that the wise men made it back out this year on Thanksgiving weekend, and Baby
Jesus is safe and sound out there, I promise. Mary Squatchmas to you all. Love, Tom, and
Laurel.
You've been listening to the "Buck Eye Bigfoot Podcast." Find more stories, hundreds
more, over on our YouTube channel. Just look for "Buck Eye Bigfoot."
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