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[Music]

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Hi there.

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You're listening to Buck-I-Bigfoot,

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where we shared two stories from the American woods and back roads.

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Told just the way they were sent in.

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Now, if you like what you hear, please like and subscribe.

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Now, let's get into tonight's story.

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One that still makes me shiver whenever I hear a baby cry.

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My name is Clay.

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I'm 52 now, but this happened when I was about 24.

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Now, back then, I was working for a small timber outfit based out of Mina, Arkansas.

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We were doing a clear cut job way out past the last paved road in the Washtaw Mountains.

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You couldn't even get a cell signal up there, not that we had them at that time.

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All we had was a CB radio, a cooler with some drinks and some food,

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and thermoses to keep our coffee hot.

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We were five guys on an expected to be two week long job.

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It was me, a guy named Bo who could sharpen a chainsaw blindfolded,

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and three green horns just there trying to make a buck.

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I had worked with Bo before, but not the other three.

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We were going to haul in the pop-up campers and sleep on site to save fuel and daylight.

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The nights there were very quiet.

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Sometimes a little too quiet.

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On the second night of the first week, we heard something that none of us could explain.

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It was after a supper of beans and some canned ham over the fire.

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We were all smoking our after supper cigarettes and talking when it started.

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A cry.

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Not just any cry, but a baby's cry.

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It was the sound of a newborn baby that thin and breathy kind of cry.

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I knew that sound, having just watched my first child come into the world,

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take its first breath and let out its first thin cries just the year before.

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It's a sound that every parent knows and never forgets,

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and it's one that will make you react.

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That sound shut us all up very quick.

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We just sat there, ears cocked toward the sound in the dark.

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Then one of the green horns broke the silence with a chuckle and said,

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"Some bobcat must have just had kittens."

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Now the cries went on a little longer, and we let it go.

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I had never heard bobcat kittens before, but I had heard big cat screams at sound like a woman.

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So I figured he must be right. That's all it was.

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But then we heard it again the next night.

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Same sound. Coming from the same spot, just out of sight passed the edge of our work zone.

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Where the trees still stood thick.

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It was more talk about what it was and what it wasn't.

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Bowe said it was probably a fox kit, but he didn't sound convinced.

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Some of the new guys didn't look convinced either.

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One of them, his name was Reese. He said it gave him the creeps,

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when he was going to sleep in his truck from then on.

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We laughed and poked fun and called him a baby.

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But I did notice that the rest of us stayed very close to the campers that night,

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myself included.

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Then on the fourth night things changed.

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The crying, it came again, but this time it moved.

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It started northeast of our camp and moved in a slow circle around us, staying just out of our line

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of sight. And it was moving much too fast for a child of any age, and what we heard as it walked.

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It was much too fast and sounded too big for the animals that we were thinking it could have been.

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It would let loose several long, whining cries, then it would stop for a few minutes.

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We could hear it move. We could almost track it in the dark by the sound.

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Then it would stop, and then it would start again.

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Always that awful baby crying sound.

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If you're a parent, you know it grates on your nerves, especially when you can't stop it.

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Reese would not come out of his truck at all that night. He locked the doors and pulled his sleeping

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bag over his head. That was an unsettling night. Once or twice we said we should go out there and

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find out what it was once and for all. We talked a big game, but none of us moved.

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It finally stopped that night around 2am. We tried to sleep, but I can't speak for the others.

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I only know I didn't get much sleep.

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In the morning we found we had quite the surprise. One of our coolers, the big blue Coleman with

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the locking lid was gone, just gone. Now the eyes for this cooler had just been replenished the

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afternoon before by Reese when we sent him into town for more drinks. So it was full and heavy.

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It was also so big that we couldn't keep it in the campers at night. You couldn't walk around.

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So this cooler was just gone. There were no drag marks, no raccoon mess left behind.

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It had vanished as if it had never been there.

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That cooler weighed probably 40 or 50 pounds, maybe more. It was full of our food and drinks,

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and it was big. Reese had just been to town, as I said, and he replenished all the food, drinks,

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and packed it high with ice. So it was very full and very heavy.

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If it had been something like a bear, we probably would have heard it. This cooler was on the

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back of the lead truck, which was parked by the larger of the two pop-up campers, as in me and

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bow slept in that one. That meant that whatever ticket had walked right into our camp,

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right up close to our campers as we slept, lifted the cooler out of the truck without making a sound,

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and walked off with it. After some searching, both found it about 70 yards out from our camp.

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The lid had been ripped off. It was completely separated from the rest of the cooler.

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The first thing I noticed, there were no claw marks or prints of any kind on the cooler,

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but most of our food was missing. They left the drinks, however.

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Now there were no marks or prints of any kind on the cooler, but we also noticed something else.

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There was no food mess scattered about. No packages chewed or ripped open.

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The times I've seen an animal get into coolers, they always leave a mess of packages half-tuned

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through, and bits of food around everywhere. But not here. This was a clean area. Only the cooler was

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damaged. We all looked around, but none of us said much, but I know we were all thinking there was

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something very wrong with this. Now this was Friday morning, and technically we could have knocked

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off for Saturday and Sunday and pick up working on Monday again as they didn't expect us to work

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through the weekend. But we had a quick huddle that afternoon, and we all agreed that with good weather,

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we were going to work through the weekend, and hopefully get out of there a few days early.

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None of us wanted to stay any longer than necessary. That night, I decided to stay up.

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I sat in a folding chair with my dad's old pump shotgun across my lap.

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Bowl laughed when he looked at me before he went into the camper to sleep. He said,

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"You look like your son, dad, pissed off and wait for his daughter to come home after curfew."

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Well, maybe I did. I wasn't scared, but I was uneasy. Nothing about this felt right or normal.

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By my figuring, if some cougar was out there prowling around, I could run it off before it got the

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pop-up campers, which their screened in walls were no defense against a cougar's claws.

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I had been sitting there for quite a while. I remember it was a bit chilly,

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and I had been keeping the fire stoked up high and kept it dead with a lot of wood.

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But at some point, the inevitable happened. I dozed off.

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I woke up, startled and panicked because I knew I had dozed off.

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I saw that the fire was now all but gone. Just red coals covered with some ash.

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The night was dead quiet around me.

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But something had woke me up. And then I heard it. That baby cry.

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And it was closer than it had ever been. Sounded like it was at the trees just past our work zone

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and camp area. So that was about 50 feet behind our campers. We set up that way for the shelter

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of the trees from the winds, and we thought it would shelter our campers during the day from the sun.

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We also knew we weren't going to work out that way, so we could just leave the campers set up right there.

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Seemed like a good decision at the time. It had always worked out for us before.

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But the trees, they were very close there, too close now that I think on it.

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The hair was standing up on the back of my neck. Visibility was low, but my eyes were adjusting

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to the low light after waking up. Something was there. I knew it. I stood up from the chair slowly.

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As I did, that baby cry came again. And I swear to you, it was much closer now.

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I looked hard into the darkness all around, but I couldn't see anything.

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The thought to build up the fire came and went. I wasn't putting down my gun. I didn't want to be

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vulnerable. I didn't have the time. The baby cry was still going as I stood up. I flipped the safety off

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and pumped the shotgun. The cry cut off immediately, and there was nothing but silence.

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Now you won't believe it, but that silence was worse to me than hearing the baby cry.

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Clay, we good out there? I heard Bose whisper from the camper behind me. I said one word back.

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No. I heard the soft click as the camper door opened and closed, and Bose stepped out and came to stand

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beside me. I told you that Boak sharpened a chainsaw blindfolded, and I mean that. So let me tell you

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some other things about Bo. He was older than me, more experienced, and if you've ever imagined

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what a real lumberjack would look like, that's Bo. Just skipped the beard in the crazy knit hat.

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He was a big guy. He was solid, and I don't mean just physically. He was just confident and sure.

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He'd been doing this job a long time. So when he came to stand next to me with his rifle,

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my shirt felt better. I was still young, remember, probably 10 years younger than him. I wasn't as

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solid as Bo, but I was getting there. I whispered and brought Bo up to speed with what had happened.

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I was relieved to see he had his rifle. Good. He was a heck of a shot with it. I'd seen him in action

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before. Bo quietly told me to keep watch. He was going to add wood to the fire and get it going again,

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and he did. As the fire came up, I could see farther out from where we stood. A couple of high flames

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in a row, and I thought I saw something. Or rather, I saw a silhouette, the hint of what was there in

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the darkness of the shadow, just out of reach of the flame's light. Bo had finished by this time,

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and I whispered to him, "Get the flashlight." But Bo already had the flashlight brought it out with him.

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I heard the sound of a Velcro tabpool opening on one of his pockets. I heard a click,

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and the area lit up with bright white light. But it was pointing all in the wrong direction.

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I reached over and grabbed Bo's wrist and moved it so the light pointed where I had seen that silhouette.

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And it was right there. It suddenly closed its eyes against the bright light and held up an arm

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to shield its face. I saw that it was squatting just at the edge of our camp area.

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It squat looked like a catcher at a ballgame. Knees drawn higher than a human's, though.

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One arm was still resting down around the legs. It's long fingers brushing the ground,

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while the other had been raised to protect its face, showing just the back of its arm to us.

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It was covered in dark hair everywhere that I saw. I'll call the color brownish or brownish black,

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but it could have been either in the daylight. In that squatted position, I saw that its shoulders were

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the widest part of its body, sticking out much farther past its knees. And they were wider than any man

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I have ever seen. But what I really remember, what I remember was the flash that I caught

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of the eyes just before it brought its arm up to cover its face. Those eyes, they were reflective.

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They had animal eye shine to them. Now raccoon eye shine is a bright yellow,

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and deers is greenish. The color I saw was a mix of those two, a pale, sickly greenish yellow color.

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I have never seen eye shine that color before, and I can tell you most animals eye shine colors,

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because in the last 30-odd years, I think I've seen most of them that roam the United States.

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But I've never seen this, not before then, and not since then. And the eyes were set

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very wide apart. That's how I knew. This wasn't someone in a mask trying to play with us.

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It really didn't like the light. That much was clear. We were in a stalemate because it wasn't moving,

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and we weren't moving. "Would you look at that?" I heard Bose say.

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"Yeah, I was looking at it, but I couldn't even respond."

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Then it opened its mouth. I could see part of it that wasn't blocked by its arm,

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but it opened its mouth, and I heard softly that baby crying sound.

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Like it was afraid to go full force right in front of us.

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But we saw it make the sound, so mystery solved in one way, I guess.

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That was no bobcat or fox kit, or anything else we'd tried to say it was over the last week.

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It was right there in front of us, a Sasquatch, a bona fide Sasquatch. I'd heard stories over the years,

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but I always ignored them, snickered and passed over them. What a bunch of hooey I always thought.

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Well, I certainly don't think that anymore. Then it stood up and turned, and walked quickly

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toward the uncut zone of trees. Bose followed it with the flashlight, keeping it lit up as far as we could.

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When it was gone, we heard the baby cry several more times out in the darkness,

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but comfortingly, each time it sounded a little farther away. Then Bose says to me,

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"Clay, you know what that was, right? You saw what I saw, didn't you?"

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"Of course I saw what he saw, but I got it. He needed to hear me say it, so I said,

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"Yeah, I did. I saw that Sasquatch."

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Me and Bose sat up for the rest of the night, neither of us sleeping. We worked the next day,

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and both of us were terribly exhausted. That morning, though, when the others got up,

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we did tell them what we had seen. Now remember, Ries had taken to sleeping in his truck

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long before that night, while the other two slept in the second pop-up camper.

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Ries, though, was the only one who believed us.

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After breakfast, Ries quietly came and told me in Bo that he had seen the Sasquatch from his truck

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a couple nights prior. He woke up that night because something was bumping his truck.

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His story was pretty quick and disjointed, and it's basically just that,

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that he got woke up by the Sasquatch while he was sleeping in his truck.

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Then it made sense because we had noticed earlier in the week that he was a lot more

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jumpy during the day and didn't seem to be sleeping well, but we passed it off.

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The thing is, all that mattered is that he believed us, and he told us why,

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and in return, we believed him. That night, me, Bo and Ries decided to sit up and take turns on watch.

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Ries said he'd take the first watch. He knew that we had been up all night the night before,

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and he wanted to let us sleep.

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Lord, he did we appreciate that. Then I took watch and then Bo.

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We heard the baby cry a few times in the night, but there was nothing close.

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On Sunday night heading into Monday morning, we heard something very different.

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First, we heard those baby crying sounds. Then in another direction, we heard long,

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whooping kinds of noises. I didn't know them for what they were at the time.

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We cut our work done early on Monday. We wanted to be done with that job.

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And we were, we had pushed ourselves hard Saturday, Sunday, and Monday.

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We were pushing 16 hour days. We were watching each other's backs, barely sleeping,

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doing whatever we had to do to get done as early as possible.

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We pulled out of there Tuesday afternoon, three and a half days early.

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Now, we didn't see this ass watch again, but once was enough.

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Our employers were absolutely thrilled with how fast we had gotten things done.

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The one foreman didn't believe it and went out to check for himself.

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And don't you know, they offered us another stint in that area,

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with the promise of a big bonus if we got it done that fast again.

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No way, not one of us took it. Now, two of the green horns that didn't see this ass watch,

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they might not have seen it, but they knew and felt that something was very off about that

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area. Even they wouldn't go back no matter how much money was being offered, no matter how hungry

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they were for it. I got out of that line of work later that year. I worked two more buzz cuts,

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and that was it. I don't think I slept a wink on either of them. I left, and I have never looked

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back. But to this day, I still can't stand hearing a baby cry, not because of the baby

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well, I think you know why.

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I say big-foot makes many different vocalizations and calls, and that each one

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means something, just as our own vocalizations do. But how can we ever know what they mean?

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Well, thank you for listening in tonight. If you've enjoyed this story and have one of your own,

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please send it in. You can send it to contact@buckibigfoot.com. And if you'd like to access

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several years' worth of emails that have been narrated, you can find them for free on YouTube.

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Just look for the channel, "Bucki Bigfoot." I'm Nancy Warren, and until we meet up again,

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please always remember absence of proof is not proof of absence. Thanks for listening.

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[Music]