[Cow mooing]
You can call me Cowl.
I live in Northwest Arkansas and spend most of my free time wandering short sections
of the Ozark Highlands Trail, plus a mess of side tracks that the locals know in the
maps don't.
I'm not a hunter, I'm not a researcher, and I'm not out here chasing anything except
some piece in quiet.
I've always been the "it's probably a raccoon" kind of guy.
After the night, though, that I'm about to describe for you, I do still think a raccoon
is a raccoon, but I no longer say "probably" about every sound I hear in the dark.
This happened last fall, last weekend of October.
We'd had a warm snap, and a big win came two days earlier that brought down a carpet
of leaves.
My hiking partner was my cousin, Dean.
He and I grew up fishing the buffalo and dragging beater canoes across gravel bars that would
skin your shins if you slipped.
We both sleep just fine on rocks, and we don't mind playing oatmeal for our breakfast.
We set out late morning from a county road pull-off, aiming at one of those bluff spring
shelters at the locals call under rocks.
It's an overhang with a little seap that drips year-round down the back wall, and then
runs in a down cut to a narrow creek.
If you hit it at the right time, the sand under the drip line will show you all the prints
of raccoons, possums, deer, bobcats, anything else, just as clear as can be.
You can see who's been in the neighborhood, or at least who's been ticking a stroll through
there.
By the time we hit the site, the light was a soft yellow, and the air smelled of wet leaves.
Oak and hickory, mixed with a scratch of cedar.
The overhang runs maybe 30 feet left to right, with a floor of hard-packed dirt, coarse sand
along the drip edge, and a ledge at the back where the water collects into a shallow bowl
before wicking down through a seam.
You can put three tents under that rock if you set them right, but we don't bring tents
for there.
We string a tarp to keep the drips off of us, and we sleep fine under that.
There wasn't a soul around, just one irritating gray squirrel with a big, chattery mouth who
kept yelling at me, just like my ex-wife did.
I walked the site the way my dad taught me.
Scan for Widowmakers.
Check the wind.
Find what might trip you in the darkness, and move it, and always check for broken glass.
I did my usual toast scuff through the damp sand at the drip line, and I saw deer hooves.
A coyote pad was some nail prints, and a raccoon's handprints all over, like a crazy little
toddler had been at it.
But there was nothing odd.
We set up on the right side of the overhang where the floor is flat.
Dean hung the bear bag line high off a tulip popular in front, even though you don't normally
see a lot of bear through there.
It was just habit.
We keep a tidy camp.
Fire was made at the edge of the overhang floor.
This would reflect light and heat back to the wall behind us.
Suppor was cheap and easy.
Ramen noodles dressed up with some summer sausage coins that we browned in our small skillet.
I know some folks hate cooking smells in the back country, but we were a good mile and a half,
maybe two miles from anything you might call a trailhead.
When we figured the raccoons already had our number and location, as soon as we clink
the spoon on the side of the skillet.
So we ate, and we kept the small fire going for quite a while after we were done cooking.
Putting on dry oak sticks, but no big logs.
And we let our socks steam out while the last of daylight faded.
Night comes in the woods in stages, and you can not only see them, but hear them.
First, you hear the birds trailing off, and then they go silent.
The breeze will die down, and the last squirrel will stop chattering.
Suddenly, your little fire crackling sounds as loud as the creek.
Overhead the rock will keep the dew off, but the bluff catches and holds the sound like
an echo canyon through there.
You can whisper to each other from twenty feet away, and if you're basing that rock, it
sounds like you're just across the kitchen table from each other.
We weren't in the dark more than ten minutes when we heard the first thing that wasn't supposed
to be part of the normal night sounds.
It was a whistle.
I don't mean the kind you blow, and this wasn't a bird, and it wasn't a person whistling
with their lips either.
It was two distinct notes, space between them, but soft like someone calling a dog late
at night, and they didn't want to do it too loudly.
It came from the left of the overhang, from the slope where the laurel and the young beaches
crowed a heavily used game trail.
Just two notes, then nothing.
Dean and I did the same thing.
We stopped mid-sentence, looked at each other, and listened.
Then we shrugged it off like it must have been some strange bird.
We went on talking about a coworker of deans.
I do remember that conversation.
Sometimes we carried whiskey with us in a small flask, but we didn't have any that night,
and I wish we had.
It just helps to calm you and to ignore all the weird sounds out there.
But instead we made tea in our mugs like a couple of old grandmaws and watched the steam
from our mugs while we talked.
Maybe ten minutes later there was a single plaque of stone on stone from the same direction.
Now this sound was very deliberate.
This wasn't some loud, cracking, furious sound.
Dean looked at me and matter of factly said, "River rock, cooling in the creek.
They crack sometimes."
"On a ridge?" I said.
He looked at me and said, "Okay, Mr. Science.
Maybe it was an acorn that fell down and hit a rock."
Anyway, we let that one go.
The wind came in for just a few seconds, light and easy, just stirring through the oak
leaves.
I said our little pot back on the edge of the coals to warm a second cup.
That's when the tapping started.
Two tapping sounds.
Then they would stop, then two more sounds, and stop again.
The tapping was measured and slow, not frantic, angry, or any kind of a loud, cracking
sound.
It sounded like rock on rock.
The taps were one thing, but the other thing was how close they were, and they were very
close.
We looked around to the dark edges that surrounded us, but we couldn't see anything
through there.
In between taps the firecrackles sounded louder than they were.
After a few rounds of taps, it went eerily silent again.
I looked at me and whispered, "Raccoon."
And just as softly I replied, "Raccoon doesn't tap like your mom did before she opened your
door."
We sat frozen and listened.
I strained to listen in the dark, and I heard something then, soft breathing, not heavy
and not like a panting sound, just easy, normal breathing.
I heard that, and I looked at Dean, because I saw he heard it too, like a tell by his face.
Then the tapping came again.
Two taps, a pause, then two more.
Again, rocks on rocks.
This time I pinpointed the sound direction better.
I lifted my eyes without moving my head, focusing and looked beyond the pot to the edge of
the firelight where the dark goes out beyond to more darkness.
Something stood there.
I was sure of it.
I had strained to pick out a dark shape there in the darkness, but it was there.
My skin felt as if a thousand ants were marching just under the surface as every hair on me stood
straight up, or felt like it did.
I'd say it was about thirty feet out.
All into the darkness, safely away from any light from our fire.
There was no eye shine, but we hadn't turned our headlamps on yet.
But I saw it was there.
Looking in that direction I should have seen the lighter night, showing through behind the
branches of trees.
But instead, there was an inky blackness that was taking shape right in front of me.
If you've ever seen a dark shape in the darkness, you will know exactly what I'm trying
to describe.
I blinked several times just to make sure my eyes were seeing what I thought I was seeing.
But yes, there was a shape there.
I very tall and very large shape.
It came a step closer, and it became one-shade lighter in the darkness.
We didn't move, and it came closer yet again.
I saw the outline taking shape, and it was not a comforting sight.
It came within just a few feet of the fire, then came down to a type of a squat near the
fire.
I sat frozen in my spot.
I kept blinking my eyes.
Was this for real?
Am I really seeing a big foot?
Oh, but it was real, all right.
I glanced over at Dean.
He was staring at the shape too, realization of what it was on his face.
Just outside the small fire, I had set the lid from the pot upside down to rest the spoon
on.
I saw one arm come forward.
It was long and muscular.
The large hand reached out and touched the lid tentatively, like it was checking the
temperature first.
Then it rubbed its fingers on the metal rim.
The lid wobbled, making a light metallic echoing noise on the stone.
It was close enough to the firelight that I could now make out features of the face as
it was just a few feet from me.
The face was broad and wide.
The eyes set farther apart than seen natural.
The eyes looked dark, solid black marbles with the fire light on them.
The eyes were deep set under a thick brow line.
Seeing that the lips was covered in dark, short hair.
The further out from the center of the face, the longer the fur got.
But the face was short, tight fur, think of a dog's muzzle.
The eyes in the face had no expression that I could make out.
It was like looking into nothingness, or maybe a statue, but at the same time I knew I was
looking at an intelligent being.
It was too cautious and careful not to be.
Its fingers were still touching the metal pot lid, but it was still looking directly at me.
Dean though thought it was looking at him.
It pulled its hand back.
It continued to look at us with a blank expression.
It was a very unsettling feeling.
To be looked at by something that clearly has intelligence of some kind, but shows no
expression.
It might be planning to kill you, or it might be planning to just walk away, kind of hard
to say.
I felt Dean's hand grip my jacket sleeve.
He's a big man, but he was shaking.
And I'm not saying that to make him small.
I'm saying it so you know, we weren't out there playing with some raccoon and making up
a big story.
Dean is usually as steady as they come.
I remember one time I was standing around and talking to him while he was up under his
truck, changing the oil, and all of a sudden a copper head slid right up under there with
him.
But Dean, he was cool as a cucumber, killed it like it was nothing, but not that night.
He was not cool as a cucumber at all.
And I really wasn't in much better shape if I'm honest with you.
And the quietest voice I have I said, "We see you."
The eyes didn't move, but they changed.
They hardened a little in their look.
The eyes changed and it was like a shotgun blast as it stood straight up and walked off
into the darkness.
When it stood up, I had the split second thought that we were about to be torn to bits.
But no, it just walked away.
I looked at Dean and he looked like he'd seen a ghost.
Later he said, "I looked exactly the same way."
I probably did.
Before we could say anything or process what we had just seen, there came that same two
note whistle from further left.
And this is the part that bothers me, even now.
There was another soft whistle that came from the right of the overhang, like a reply.
The second was higher and shorter in sound, like made by something with a smaller chest.
We still hadn't turned our headlamps on.
I know that sounds counter to reason, but turning those bright lights on up against the rock
turns it into a wall of light in a way we didn't need.
It was like turning your brights on in heavy fog.
It doesn't help you to see any better.
Now, after a few minutes it seemed that was the end of it.
We fed our little fire with a few more sticks that we had piled up, but we knew that wasn't
going to last all night.
We had not gathered enough for an all-night fire.
We didn't know.
We might need one.
Of course, during that time we were whispering back and forth about what had just happened,
what we had just seen.
Maybe ten or fifteen minutes went by.
Then from up on the slope we heard a single wood knock.
And from further down closer to the creek, another knock answered.
We fell silent and listened, both of our eyes searching in the darkness, understanding,
there was more than one of them out there.
When silence came again, we resumed talking as if we didn't just hear all those sounds
or see what we saw, but we were both listening to the night sounds all around us.
As we were talking, my eyes picked up on the darkening of another shape where the first
had just been.
It came straight on this time.
Not slower hesitatingly as the one had done the first time.
I say it like this because I'm not sure it was the same one.
But the shape came straight to the edge of the fire light right within arms reach.
Well, at least within its arms reach.
And then came the hand again.
It came out from the dark across the light and into it.
A long arm with hair that caught the ember light red-brown, with finger pads wide and pale
in the glow.
And I saw those fingers reach out to touch the pot lid again.
This movement was slow and deliberate.
To this day my only guess with why it kept touching the metal is maybe there was nothing
like it in the woods.
I mean there really isn't is there.
Metal is not normal or natural to find in the woods.
It touched that pot lid then it picked it up.
Both arm and pot lid disappeared into the darkness.
Okay, fine I thought.
I can deal with the loss of a pot lid as long as this is the end of things.
But of course it wasn't.
Now some will say we were crazy to not pack up and run right there or even forget packing
up just run.
And though doing that at dead night is a good way to break your leg or ankle.
And when you're running from something that makes the forest at home and presumably can
see better than you in the darkness it really is not a good idea.
So I watched the hand withdraw.
There was a soft clucking sound from the darkness.
Were those teeth clicking?
Tongue clicking?
I didn't know.
And then a dry stick sailed over the fire and landed into the sand between our boots.
This wasn't thrown to scare us or to hit us.
This kind of throw was soft with no force.
I have no idea what it was meant to be.
We heard more of the clucking sounds accompanied by other sounds that are difficult to describe.
So we knew for sure there was more than one of them out there.
And that was the main thing we picked up on.
Dean whispered again.
"I'm not sure we need to stay here tonight."
In truth I did feel the same, but I didn't think heading into the dark was a better idea
as I have just explained.
For all we knew there could be twenty of them out there.
And maybe the fire was the only thing that was stopping them from advancing.
The minutes after that stretched into weird patterns, teeth and tongue clicks from different
locations, hearing something moving and walking out there in the darkness, back and forth,
like a pattern, like a soldier on guard.
Twice we heard that two-note whistle, and it was always answered by a higher one from
downhill.
At some point we did turn on the headlamps, but we used our red filter mode and pointed
them low.
We really weren't trying to light up all the darkness out there.
Let's give us some areas that we knew were clear.
And that's when we noticed pebbles lined up over to the left of the fire.
Smooth river stones.
We hadn't seen a smooth stone anywhere near the overhang all afternoon, and we sure hadn't
seen or heard of them to be placed there.
Around midnight the behavior around us changed.
It wasn't coming close to the fire, but we heard heavy footfalls all around us.
We tried with the red light to find them, but we never did.
From above us on the overhang along the rim there was now the crunch of leaves and slow
steady footsteps.
It paralleled the lip of the rock as we sat under it, and twice it stopped directly right
over our heads.
We heard a small, snicking sound, like a toenail nudging a rock, in very low, open mouth,
exhale breathing from right above us.
After maybe a minute it finally moved on, and when it did the smaller whistle came from
the right very close.
Dean said under his breath, "Okay, I don't like this man.
This is officially weird.
I agreed, but I didn't say it out loud."
For several more minutes there were teeth and tongue clicks all around the shuffling and
crunching of leaves, and the sound of branches moving, and there were a few more small limbs
thrown into our space, which we were quite happy for.
We broke them up and added them to our fire.
We waited more than a half an hour, and together we carefully ventured just far enough outside
the area to grab some more fuel for the fire.
Normally we never cut from trees, but we were desperate, and we weren't going to go far
from the overhang, so we cut several branches nearby, and we got enough to keep us hopefully
till dawn if we were careful.
The fire wouldn't be big, but we didn't want to be without it.
Now, despite saying there's no way he could sleep that night, Dean was snoring soundly by
2 a.m.
I know I dozed lightly a couple of times, at least, but according to my watch they didn't
total an hour together.
Once the fire popped more loudly than the other times, and it woke me up fast.
I was thinking I heard someone step on something out there in the darkness.
Something coming close, but it was just the fire.
When morning did come, I was awake.
And here's the thing I discovered sitting there for hours like that.
I was thinking a lot, and I realized I wasn't terrified or scared out of my mind during
the night.
I think unsettled is a better word.
And before dawn, that unsettled feeling had turned to more of a dose of curiosity.
Now when Dean woke up, we didn't talk too much about him falling asleep.
I know from experience that was a grace that he would and has extended to me before, even
when I swore I would stay up and keep watch.
We stretched, we made coffee and oatmeal in the pot that now had no lid.
Down at the drip line I did my usual toast-cuff, and then I knelt with my headlamp to look
at the sand.
Four impressions in a row led from the left side of the overhang across the wet sand.
Then back into leaf litter.
Not a full foot, just four foot and toes pressed where the ground was softest.
It was wide.
The big toes stood off just a touch from the rest.
You could see where the water had pooled in the print overnight, and then wicked back.
The edges were crisp as cut from fresh clay.
I put my steel water bottle down beside just to eyeball the length.
The bottle is nine inches tall.
The impression was longer than the bottle by a hand width, so I'm calling that about 16
inches, maybe a tad more.
And it was wide.
Next to it my boot looked downright dainty, like my three-year-old daughter's boot, when
she would line it up next to mine.
I've seen human barefoot prints in sand my whole life.
You know how human toes lay, but these weren't like that.
The little toes there, they weren't curled, and they weren't narrow.
But I looked for a long time, and then I looked again.
Then I stood up and I knew what I thought all night was dead on correct, no doubt about
it.
We had been visited by Bigfoot.
Actually several of them, though I only saw clear prints of one here, but that was enough.
We broke camp slowly and carefully.
We didn't talk much, and we minimized our noise.
What was there really to say?
And that morning it felt wrong to talk with the force all around us so quiet, like we
were just calling attention to ourselves.
When we packed up, we left the smooth pebbles right where they had put them.
I didn't want to assume they were a gift for us to take.
Maybe there were symbols of boundaries that were telling us, "Don't cross these at night."
Who knows what's in the mind of a Bigfoot?
Wiking out we had the sense that somebody was following us at a distance.
Of course it could have just been some paranoia.
Who wouldn't have been after the night we'd had?
But the feeling stayed right with us.
And then we heard things that reinforced the idea.
Once we heard some leaf crush off to our left.
And then the same on our right, like we had a flanking escort.
It stayed with us all the way to the point where the slope pinches down to the creek
and the trail there crosses a skinny log.
Right at that spot we heard a heavy footfall.
It's just one step.
And there was a single solid knock from way up slope.
That was it.
We crossed the log and the feeling of being watched and escorted completely left and the
woods returned to squirrels and birds making all the noise.
I've gone back there twice since then.
That's just two weeks later with a cheap trail camera that I strapped low to a sapling
that looks down the under rock.
I got 57 frames of my own rear end moving around and one blurred night time shot of something.
I don't know what.
The rest of the night?
Nothing.
In the morning I found the camera had been tilted to look straight down at the ground.
Now that could have been a raccoon.
Could have been me not tightening the strap enough.
The second time in January after a fresh snow I found big melt ovals under the drip line
where something had stood there a long time and warmed the ground up enough to melt snow.
There were no prints.
Just oval hollows and a single neat stick triangle leaned against a rock at the edge of the
site.
When I told my wife she said I was just making symbols up and reading things out of kids
and teenagers doing weird things in the wood.
Maybe I am.
But I did not move the triangle.
I'm going to finish it this way.
That night I saw the face in the fire light clear and defined well as much as anything
is in the fire light.
And I saw the body.
It's shaped.
It's outlined in its height which I guess to be in the eight-foot tall range.
I saw defined fingers with an opposable thumb take our pot lid.
Though why I really can't guess.
And those were some big fingers.
Big, meaty fingers.
Not little raccoon paws.
I heard sounds that I still struggle to describe.
And to this day I can find nothing like them anywhere on the internet.
And I had been looking and searching.
I knew that night that I smelled something that I can only call wild.
I know I found two impressions in wet sand under a drip line where deer and raccoon are
the more common visitors.
All the rest would be passed off by me if I hadn't seen the face and the arm and the hand
and the fingers.
It makes me think of dozens of other nights out in the woods where I've had all kinds
of weird things happen or I heard things that I didn't know what it was.
And what did I do?
I would always just shrug it all off.
I wonder how many more times has a big-foot crep close to my campsite.
And I shrugged it off.
Now if you don't believe me, I'm okay.
If you do believe me, I'm okay.
I'm not trying to sell a book or get on TV or any of that.
In fact, I would avoid either of those things if offered, but I do feel the need to tell
my story somehow.
This was the only way that I feel I can do so without drawing attention directly to me
or my family.
If you do read this on your channel, please tell folks to be mindful when they're out there.
You don't have to be terrified of these creatures necessarily, but don't be disrespectful
either.
Stop and behave as you would in heavy-bear territory.
Be smart about your food storage.
And don't shoot things blindly in the darkness.
And don't provoke anything that wanders near if you can help it.
There are a lot of people out there who claim to know everything there is to know about
these creatures, and they tell us all about their personality.
Well, I know we don't know anything.
Don't assume they are friendly.
Don't assume they are violent.
Don't assume anything because science has not proven anything.
If you do encounter one, watch them carefully.
Be aware if there are others.
Keep distance if you can and react accordingly.
The distance is the crucial thing.
I don't claim to know everything about these creatures either, but I've looked into a big
foot space.
I've seen his eyes and the cold intelligence that's there.
They could have been thinking of anything at all.
How to best pull me apart, chew on me like a big old chicken leg, or it might have been
thinking of nothing at all.
We don't know, and I'm not convinced that I do want to know.
You can call me Cal.
I won't say exactly where this bluff is.
The locals here already know, and the rest of you, well, maybe you'll figure it out from
a map, but I hope not.
I do still camp there.
I leave the place cleaner than we found it as we always do, and the cup is still there
at the seap.
And many, many times I've found lines or stacks of smooth stones along the trail there,
and definitely at the overhang.
I don't disturb them though.
If I see a pile and it looks like it's been knocked down, I do try to rebuild it.
Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but my heart is in the right place, I guess you could say.
And I always make sure to gather more wood for the fire than I think I'm going to need
that night.
I suggest you do the same.
Signed Cal from Arkansas.
[ Silence ]