[Cell phone ringing]
My name is Kevin, and I won't name the exit or the town where this happened, because
well, it might hurt their little motel business, and it's a small, family-run place, and
they were genuinely nice folks, and none of what happened had anything to do with them.
I'm going to give you a quick version of what happened, then I'll give you the not-so-quick
version. You can take your pick of what you want to use if any of it or all of it.
This happened on Christmas night a few years back. We were stranded at this tiny motel
along I-90 because of snow. It was already shaping up to be a downright, not so great Christmas
as it was, but then I went out to have a cigarette, and I felt like I stepped into the twilight
zone. Let me put you into the scene. We were somewhere in Wyoming on I-90, tiny,
momma-pop-style motel. It's around 11 o'clock on Christmas night. The snow was supposed
to hold off, but it had dumped on us earlier that day, and so we stopped. We had spent
a long day just sitting inside the motel. My wife was in the room, and I decided to step
outside for a smoke. I was also going to call my brother because I wasn't getting much
soft-own reception in the room. I go out. I'm standing in the corner of the motel's
L shape. It blocks the wind and the snow off of me, and I'm not right outside anyone's
room seeming like I'm creepy. It's also where the opening is to get ice, and there are
some snack machines in there. But it's really cold, and it's a damp out there, which, as
you know, makes the cold feel much worse. I finished one cigarette quickly, then I lit
another, and dialed up my brother. While I'm talking to my brother, I'm looking across
the recently plowed parking lot, not looking at anything in particular. At the end of the
parking lot, there are these big mounds of snow where the plow pushed them up. Beyond
that, there were some dumpsters and some dark fields with a few trees. I'm just standing
there, staring at nothing out there. Then all of a sudden something big steps over one
of the plowed snowmounds. It stepped over it the way we would step over a cement curb. One
leg came over, then the other. It crossed to the far side of the lot, went behind a row
a parked pickup truck, then it walked straight under the tall pole light that holds up the
motel sign as well. In that light, I see it from head to about mid-thigh, broad shoulders,
long arms. There was nothing there that said, "This is not real." There was no zipper line
front or back. No flapping loose suit pieces. There was nothing. What I saw was solid. It
takes maybe five or six steps across that lane, and it never looks at me. Then it slides
behind the dumpster enclosure, and it kept going toward the dark tree line. This whole thing
took maybe ten seconds. My brother is still talking in my ear about the next day. My brother
is talking to me, and then he asks me suddenly if I'm still there. All I say to him is, "Yeah,
I am, but it's really something out here tonight." Finally, I hang up with him, put my cigarette
out in the snow, pick it in the first cigarette butt up, and I head back to the room. But inside,
I was shaking. Now that's the whole incident in just a couple paragraphs. You can use that
as is or use the next part with it as well, which tells some of the other parts of the story
which may or may not be interesting. It's up to you.
Now that year Christmas plans got sideways on us. My wife and I live in eastern South Dakota.
Her folks are over in western Montana. Most years we do the long drive in two days. We split
it up somewhere in Wyoming and spend the night, and we show up at their house the next day,
usually, by noon. But that Christmas, a big plain storm came in sooner than the weatherman
promised. We made it into Wyoming just fine late on the 24th, and we figured we'd be
able to beat the worst of it into Montana on the 25th. That was the plan. Mother Nature,
however, had other ideas. We got up and we started traveling, but then things were getting
really bad on the road. By noon, on Christmas Day, the wind kicked up. Snow went from pretty
to—you can't see the semi in front of you in about twenty minutes. They shut down the
interstate at the next big town west. Big marquee signs started flashing. Road closed,
returned to town. There were state troopers that were parked across the on-ramps, lights
going. Our kids were grown at this time, so they didn't make the trip with us that year.
It was just me and my wife. We got off the exit with everybody else, and we limped into
town on heavily packed snow roads. Every chain hotel out by the interstate was already filled
up. One of the locals directed us to an older motel that was farther down into town, actually,
just on the other side of town heading out. It was one of those motels that actually still
have keys and mismatched curtains. Half the sign out front was burnt out. There was no
"oh" in motel. It just said "im tell." We didn't care as long as it was clean, and we
had been assured it was a very clean establishment. And for what it's worth, it really was, if a
bit shabby. Inside the motel office they had a little fake tree on the counter, and there
was a pot of coffee that I'm pretty sure had been there since before Christ was born. You
could smell the coffee scorch all the way across the office. The lady at the desk looked
very tired, but she was incredibly kind to us. Before I could even say a word, she said,
"Don't worry, we're offering a lower-stranded rate tonight for everyone." Now I could have
afforded the standard rate just fine, and I said that to her, but she shook her head and
said, "No, you get the stranded rate." I have to say it was nice to meet someone with
some kindness on Christmas. I had to wonder, too, if those chain motels out there by the interstate,
do you think they were being so kind and offering stranded people lower rates? I bet
not. The place there wasn't empty exactly, but it wasn't full either. There were a couple
of work trucks, a mini van with Florida plates, and there was a U-Haul out in the parking lot,
too. Everyone I saw looked very tired inside the lobby. My wife and I got checked in, and
we hauled up our bags to the second floor. Microwave the leftovers that we had in the cooler,
and we called our families just to say, "Mary Christmas, folks, but we're stuck in Wyoming."
By about ten that night my wife was out cold. The TV was on low. The little heater in the
wall was rattling loudly. Me? That was restless. I'd been sitting in that motel all day watching
TV. There was nothing to do. Plus, I never sleep well in motels or hotels. And I had a lot
of other things unrelated to all of this going through my mind that night. And I was afraid
that my tossing and turning would wake up my wife. So I went out for a cigarette, and I was
going to make a phone call to my brother. I do not smoke around my wife anymore, so I
keep my smoking to these little outdoor exiled trips. I grabbed my jacket, my lighter, and
my phone to call my brother. He and his wife were already there at my parents back home,
and I figured I'd at least hear some familiar noise.
The motel was an L-shape around the parking lot. Two stories, that was all. I was at the inside
corner of the L, down by the ice machine room in the stairs. The parking lot had been plowed
into several lanes. There was a big pile of snow pushed up all along the far edge of the
lot, maybe two and a half, three feet high. It was running in a line in front of a scrubby
field. Beyond that, there was a short drop. Then there were some cottonwood trees, and
some were past them. There was supposedly a creek, though I never saw it.
Right outside my door was one of those yellow wall lights. It buzzed and threw a blast of
dim light out onto the concrete walkway, and into the first two parking spaces. Out in
the middle of the parking lot was a tall, pole light that shared space with the broken motel
sign. That one was bright and white light. It lit up the whole far lane where the pickups
were parked, and a little of the snow-broom far beyond. I leaned against the block wall,
cupped my lighter up against the wind, lit my cigarette, then called my brother. He answered
on the second ring.
"Well," he said, "how's Christmason? Whatever cow town does her family live in?"
I said, "Well, we're not there, but where we are, it's pretty windy." And I proceeded
to tell him how we were stranded. After that we did the usual talk, "House-mom,
house-dad, what did all the kids get? What did you get?" He had the game on mute in the
background. I could hear the commentators when he unmuted to check a replay, and the muffled
clink of dishes came from my parents' kitchen under all of it. It all sounded very warm,
very far away, and I had a pang of regret.
While we were talking, I'm looking around without really seeing anything. I was watching
the exhaust drift off the trucks. Noticing the way the snowflakes seemed to glitter as
they crossed that pole light. Just those kinds of things, nothing in particular. I'd been
out there maybe three, four minutes. My hand was just starting to ache from the cold, holding
the cigarette, and that's when I heard a heavy sounding noise like crunching in the snow.
It wasn't loud. It was just a big thunk in the snow with a crunch. I knew what I was hearing
wasn't snow falling off a roof or something falling off of a sign. This was a heavy-weighted
sound, like a footsteps. It came from my left, over by the end of the building in that snow
berm. I turned my head that way out of habit more than fear. And I saw movement right at
the top of that snow berm. At first I thought it was somebody climbing over from the field side,
like maybe some guy had been out walking his dog and he cut through there. But then
the somebody straightened up and kept straightening up.
What I saw was one leg come over the snow berm, then the rest of it came.
Imagine watching somebody step over a large guardrail, except the thing they're stepping
over is about three feet of plowed snow, and they don't use their hands to balance as they
go over. It just brought the leg up and over and planted the foot down on the far side
of the snow berm in the lane behind the trucks. Then the second leg followed. It was smooth
with no wobble or awkwardness. That was the point that my brain woke up.
This thing wasn't bundled up like a person would be out in that frigid cold. There was no
puppy coat outline, no hat, no swinging parka hem. From the side it looked like one continuous
dark shape. Shoulders were wide, elbows hanging low, and were placed oddly on the arm compared
to a human. The head wasn't perched square on top of the neck. It came slightly forward,
like the way you would see somebody lean when they're carrying a heavy pack on their back.
Only there was no pack. And the height. Well, I'm not going to sit here and give you a
number. I didn't walk over there with a tape measure. I will say this, when it walked
under that pole light, the top of its head came up into a part of the motel sign that
I've never seen a person reach before. It wasn't as tall as the whole fixture, but it was
high enough up that if somebody was going to replace the lights and the O that went dark
in motel. Well, that's about where the top of the ladder would be if you were going
to go up there and change that bulb. I saw a cross into the far lane behind the line
of trucks, walking parallel to the building. I lost sight of its legs a couple times
where the trucks blocked my view, but I could see the upper half the whole way. One truck
had a chrome toolbox in the bed, and the reflection in that metal jumped and slid as it went
by. It took long strides. Not herring, yet it was still covering a lot of ground. The arms
were swinging, but I wouldn't say they were flailing about. It seemed to be a natural part
of the balance walk. It never turned its head my way. Not that I ever saw. It just moved
like it had a route, and it had walked it before and knew right where it was going and paid
no mind to anything around it. I realized after a second that my brother was talking into
my ear, and I hadn't said anything in far too long. Maybe I made some kind of noise because
he asked, "Hey, are you still there?" I came back to where I was standing in my head and I
said, "Yeah?" Then my voice came out real thin. "Hey, hang on a sec." I stepped away from the
wall light just a little, maybe just a couple feet, like I was getting out of my own glare,
and that would help with the light out there. That pulled my line of sight more toward the
middle of the parking lot. Right then, the thing came into the clear again under the pole
light. For about three seconds I had the clearest view of it. The head, the shoulders, the
arms, the chest, all the way down to mid-thigh. The light hit from above and in front of it,
so the shadows ran down its backside, and there was texture I could see. I could see the
hair along the arms and over the shoulders. I knew that wasn't smooth fabric, and it didn't
have that shaggy fake look, like fake fabric fur does. This had a shine to it under the light.
I've never seen really nice fabric fur. This wasn't shaggy like a costume either. It laid
down in lines and patterns that seemed natural against the body. You could see where it
bunched up at the elbows as the arms swung. The shoulders were, "Well, I don't know. They
were big, but not like Jim weightlifter big." It was more like "heavy equipment build"
"big." Those shoulders were, I guess, meant to carry weight. That's the best I can tell
you. There were no jacket seams at the shoulders. No zipper line down the front or the back. No
bulge from a hood. There were no loose flapping costume pieces around the legs or the arms. All
I can say is everything was solid, and even more so against the heavy winds. I think a costume
would have looked pressed up against someone's body in those heavy winds. But not this. This
was perfectly solid. It took three more steps, past the light, and then headed for the dumpster
enclosure. The motel had one of those wooden fences around the dumpsters. Maybe about chest
tied to me. This thing walked behind it, and I saw the top of its back for a couple of
beats, then just the top of the head. Then nothing. It never came back into view on the other
side. Past that fence is that scrubby field in the trees. It melted into that like it had
never been in the light at all. A car went by out on the frontage road right then, tires
crunching on the packed snow that had not been cleared yet. That ordinary sound brought
me back to myself. My brother was still on the phone. Hey, what is it?
"Cab, are you okay? Did you fall?"
"No," I said. "No, I just... It's just really something out here tonight. That's all I can
say." I know how that sounds. I didn't know how to start that conversation, though. Not
over the phone with a cell phone delay and a house full of relatives that were probably
listening in. What was I going to say? "Hey, yeah, listen, man. I just watched something
huge walk past the motel under the lights, and man, it was close enough to see its arm swinging.
Was I going to say that?" "No, no, I wasn't. No, thank you. Not while I'm three states
away, and my only right home is sleeping upstairs."
But we finished our call, and I don't remember what I said for the rest of that call. I know
I walked up and down that little stretch by the ice room, just to keep my legs moving,
to stay warm, and to think. I like to pace when I think. And as I did so, I smoked a couple
more cigarettes that I really didn't need.
For the record, I did not go over there with a flashlight and a camera hunting for footprints,
not then, not in the morning. I'm just not that kind of person. And honestly, I was tired.
That lot had been plowed pretty hard. The lane that it crossed was a mix of packed snow
and sand underneath, and it was all chopped up by tires and boots. "If there were prints,"
I had no interest in them. Plus the temperature was dropping, and fast. I had a warm bed upstairs
with a beautiful wife sleeping. "I got back to the room, and my wife woke up enough to
ask. Is it cold out?"
"Yeah," I said, "real cold."
I laid there in the darkness next to her for a long time, listening to the wall heater
click on and off, thinking about that head-to-thigh silhouette that I saw under the sign light.
I kept wanting to rewind it in my mind, pause it right in the middle, scrutinize it, think
about it. I mean, do you ever do that? Like your brain is some kind of a DVR, and if you
replace something enough, you're going to find the exact frame where you can look at it,
and suddenly everything will make sense.
The next morning, everything looked less dramatic. The sun was trying to burn through the
low clouds. Snow-plows had gone by through the night. The lot was messier, more rudded, and
looking a little worse for the wear with the melt-off. They were tire-tracks everywhere,
and a couple sets of boot prints leading to and from the dumpsters. If there was anything special
mixed in there into the melting snow, I couldn't pick it out, but I also wasn't trying very
hard.
The interstate reopened around noon. We settled up with the nice desk lady in the office, thanked
her for the stranded rate, and we got back on the road. From the outside, it was just one
more story we would have. Hey, remember that Christmas we got snowed in and had to stay
at that little motel?
But for me, it was something else. I didn't tell my wife the full story until we were back
home, maybe a week or so later. We were unloading the car in our driveway when I finally stopped
and said, "You know, I saw something that night behind the motel, I mean." She asked what
I meant. So I described it the same way I've described it here. No more, no less. She
listened. She didn't laugh or snicker, and all she said was, "I can't believe you're
just now telling me this." And really, that was the end of our discussions. I didn't go
online to tell my story. I wasn't calling all kinds of people about it either. I've been
sitting on this for a few years. It felt too plain to be worth all the drama of reporting.
It wasn't some campground being raided or stalked, and there was no creature screaming at
me in the night or threatening me. It was just a big, unknown something, using a parking lot
as a shortcut on a winter's night when the weather had conveniently kept most people
out of the area. Every Christmas we remember this motel stay. And I, I always remember the
big foot that I saw. In lots of ways, the sighting really doesn't make sense. I mean, for our location
at the time, but it is what I honestly saw, and it's where I saw it. I now have a small two-foot
tree that I put up every year. It's decorated with all kinds of little big-foot ornaments
that me and my wife have found over the years. It's in my home office, so no one sees it
when they come over. But I look at it every day during the Christmas season, and I remember.
My biggest regret is that I didn't have a better look at that big foot. So that's my sighting.
Nothing wild, but it's what I saw. So I go online looking around, and somehow I found you.
I got to listening to your channel, and I was hearing all kinds of folks tell their stories
that sounded kind of like mine. Not all of them were wild or scary. And I figured, well,
maybe this belongs with some of those other stories. Well, that's my Squatch Miss story,
Nancy. Nothing that's going to scare people to death. No screams or weird smells, and there
were no big tracks all over the place. It's just my honest moment. Me and Bigfoot on Christmas
night. Though only one of us knew there were two of us there. If you use this on your show,
just call me Kevin. And be sure to tell folks if they're ever stranded on Christmas in a
half-empty motel out in the middle of nowhere. Be sure to look up from their phones for just
a second every now and then, because when the lot goes quiet, you might be missing something
out there. You never know who else might be stretching their legs on a Christmas night.
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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