What was that?
It stopped us dead in our tracks.
I'm panicking. I'm frantic and terrified.
It felt like this is it, for sure.
We're goners. It's got us.
I think we all instantly thought monster.
all of a sudden, I smelled, like, rotting flesh.
no hands, no feet. It didn't have a face.
what's wrong?
I saw something. It was levitating.
She's frightened. She's scared.
stephen?
Aah!
My stomach dropped.
never seen her in this bad of shape before.
aah!
Kayla!
my name is jimmie bar.
It was a normal day, just like any other day,
and I'd come across a show about a bigfoot
and how the native americans called the bigfoot "hairy man."
when sighting the huge, hairy, manlike...
And as soon as he said the words "hairy man,"
it unlocked a floodgate of memories and emotions
and feelings that overwhelmed me.
And I was just -- I was unable to control all that emotion.
And when it came back, it consumed me for about a week
of what I had went through.
I haven't told too many people at all about my encounter.
I don't share it with too many people.
we're from illinois.
You know, we're surrounded by corns and beans
and so couldn't be happier.
But we moved to north carolina because my stepfather is from
that area, and his family is from that area.
As a native american, that's where he's from.
So we went back to his home.
When we left illinois, we were in a truck.
I have a middle brother, an older brother,
and we're all two years apart.
Most of the time, we just laid down in the back of the truck
and just stared up at the sky.
Long, long, long drive.
It was just my brothers and us and some belongings in the back.
after a long ride, we pull up to our new trailer,
new mobile home, just looking around.
Before we even got out, we noticed that it was
a lot different landscape than what we're used to.
There was lots of trees. It was a nice change.
we were pretty numb from the drive.
took a long time to get there, but once we got there,
we were relieved just to get out and stretch.
You like it?
Awesome.
Trust me, you're gonna learn to love it.
around the trailer, the woods weren't as thick,
but as farther away you got from the trailer,
the woods got thicker.
boys, come here.
My stepfather, who's cherokee indian --
he said to all of us, "stay out of the woods."
listen.
You respect these woods, you understand?
The woods is where the hairy man lives,
and he don't want you going in there.
this ain't a joke.
Remember what I told you.
Stay out of there.
Of course, we laughed and giggled.
We'd never heard the words "hairy man"
put together side-by-side in a sentence.
As we laughed, he looked at us and said, "I warned you."
I'm the hairy man.
mostly, what we did was just being normal kids,
exploring our surroundings, turning over logs,
looking for snakes, bugs, sticks,
throwing sticks at each other, throwing dirt at each other,
just playing tag.
But we never really went too far.
We stayed close.
It was probably three weeks after we were there.
And I remember us running around,
chasing each other, running around the trailer.
I don't think we should leave them.
Nancy, they'll be fine.
Listen, boys. We've got to go in town.
Our parents were gone that day running some errands.
Robert, come here.
we'll be back later tonight.
Robert, please keep an eye on your brothers.
Okay, mom.
and it was just us three boys alone,
playing around the trailer.
as we were running around from the trailer,
chasing, sticks in our hands,
we were on the backside of the trailer.
what was that?
and the scream sounded like...
It sounded like a woman being murdered or ripped apart.
let's go check it out.
It was extremely loud and terrifying.
But herman said we can't go into the woods.
Come on, let's go check it out.
but there really was not much of a group discussion.
It was more like we were drawn to what had screamed,
and we just had to go see what it was.
"that was kind of creepy, but let's go check it out."
I'm not sure if it was just the adrenaline and the fear
that we had from hearing what we had heard.
But we made our way towards the woods.
I'm not sure we should be doing this.
Don't be scared. Come on.
It's fine. Let's keep going.
the one thing I do remember is, you know, there were no birds.
There were no crickets. There were no noises.
robert, I want to go back.
You go back if you want to.
the farther back you went, the more thick the trees were.
that's when we heard the sound.
stay close.
we need to go home.
just keep together.
as we're walking, we heard a crack.
stop.
look.
We looked up, and about 15 feet up,
we saw what -- at the time, only thing I could compare it to
was something from the "planet of the apes."
it was the hairy man.
I mean, that's all we knew what to call it,
'cause I had nothing else to compare it to before.
I had never heard of bigfoot. I'd never heard of sasquatch.
It was something that was never introduced to us.
be still.
I think we all instantly thought monster.
aah!
look.
reliving and talking about my encounter,
it boggles my mind how it puts you back
to being there at that very second.
39 years later, but feeling like you're still there,
the trembling throughout my body,
my voice shaking when I talk.
when we looked up, it was squatted down with its left hand
holding on to the tree.
It didn't have any emotion on its face.
It was just a stone look on its face.
It just seemed like it was observing us.
What's it doing?
Shh. Be still.
We were terrified.
And then when we made eye contact with it,
it made eye contact with us.
That's when it made a move. It all came crashing down.
- Aah! - Run!
it's coming!
So, as kids, there's no fight or flight, you know?
It's just flight.
We were terrified.
We had to get out of the situation.
it was that day that I realized
in order to survive with my older brothers,
I needed to be a faster runner.
Hurry, jimmie! It's coming!
My oldest brother beat us back to the trailer.
open up!
- Open up! - I can't! It'll get in!
Go hide!
robert, open the door!
We tried to get in, pounded.
he locked the door.
Open it!
It felt like this is it, for sure.
we've -- we're goners.
It's got us.
I was too scared.
come here, quick!
Right outside our back door was an old freezer chest.
it had a plexi-top-type glass top to it.
so me and my brother, we had no other option.
We jumped in it.
shh.
We could see its silhouette through the top.
It was right there.
It felt like there was no way out,
that this wasn't gonna end good.
it sounded like a horse.
we did not know if it was getting ready
to tip the thing over and tear us apart.
It stood there for a second, paused briefly,
and then it walked away.
I think it's gone.
we burst out of there,
and as soon as we burst out of the freezer,
my older brother opened the door and said,
"get in here. It's gone. Get in here. It's gone."
when we first got into the trailer,
I think there was a lot of bickering about,
"how could you lock us out?"
how the hell could you have done that?!
"how could you leave us out there?
Why did you leave us out there?"
you just left us out there to die!
You're not dead now, are you?!
But there was a sense of relief, a sense of safety.
We aren't going back outside.
There's no way we're going back outside.
We're in that trailer.
I did not want to see what I saw ever again.
come on, guys. It's okay.
Mom and dad will be home soon, I promise.
We're in the back bedroom, our bedroom.
It's dark, and my brothers have this flashlight,
that flashes silhouettes on the wall.
They better get here quick.
ooga-booga. I'm a hairy man.
Ooh!
Stop it, alan.
Jeez. I'm just kidding.
It's just a joke, jimmie.
Basically, my brothers are playing
"how much can we scare our little brother?"
what are you looking at?
it's back.
It was huge.
It took up the whole entire window.
A man-shaped silhouette.
It would have to be upwards to 8 1/2 to 9 feet tall.
it was if you were looking at the incredible hulk with hair.
The only thing separating me was a piece of glass.
we were all petrified.
Aah!
What was that?
Something had smashed into the back of our back door,
outside of our bedroom door.
It was almost like it was its way of getting in.
We're terrified. We didn't really know what to do.
Aah!
what was that?
The bottom of it was busted in.
It almost looked like a truck hit it.
it appeared to be a cinder block,
had been thrown through our backdoor.
it had to be crazy-strong, supernatural-strong.
And I know that I was very, very scared to go past that door.
Is -- is it gone?
I don't know.
I think it's gone.
we just kind of hunkered down and waited for my mom
and stepdad to get home.
I'm scared.
It's a sense of that something's gonna reach in and grab me.
just waiting to hear the truck pull up.
what the hell?
Boys? Boys!
My stepfather and my my mother
had gotten home later that night and seen what had happened.
We tried to explain to them
that this was the hairy man he was talking about.
It wasn't us.
It was the hairy man, honest.
What are you talking about? Look at the door.
The hairy man? You saw him?
He tried to get in.
Everyone inside now.
Things got a little heated
between my mom and my stepfather,
because once we told them that the hairy man did it,
she had no idea what she was talking about,
because I don't believe my stepfather had ever mentioned
the words hairy man to my mother.
I'm not letting my kids stay here.
Come on, boys, let's pack your things.
"how could you tell my kids about this?
And how could you not tell me?"
I don't recall or remember who made the decision to leave.
boys!
Hurry up! Let's go!
and we left that night.
we went back to illinois, and we never came back.
I don't really care what people think about my encounter.
I have nothing to gain by telling it.
In fact, a lot of people have a lot to lose
when they tell their encounters.
But for me, you know, it's sparked an interest
in the subject more.
When I was a child, it was all about fear.
As an adult, now it's more about curiosity.
I'm a pretty fearless dude,
and there's not a whole lot I fear.
I've been in car accidents where I should have died.
Doesn't faze me a bit to talk about it.
Talking about this, there's a certain primal fear
or something inner that I just can't explain.
Sightings of a huge, hairy, manlike creature that...
hairy, manlike...
I don't spend a whole lot of time in the woods,
but I feel like the encounter that I had,
it's definitely made me more aware of my surroundings.
I listen and see nature in a different way.
I'm very in-tune with just random critters.
I can pick him out when most people
have no idea they're there.
it's amazing how it can impact a person.
The overwhelming emotion from that encounter.
there's nothing that I've ever encountered in my life
that has brought these kind of emotions,
these kind of feelings, this kind of fear, out.
It engulfs your entire body.
And that's just the best way I can describe the emotions
and the fear of the encounter that I had and talking about it.
they're real.
all of a sudden, I smelled, like, rotting flesh.
no hands, no feet. It didn't have a face.
what's wrong?
I saw something. It was levitating.
She's frightened. She's scared.
stephen?
Aah!
My stomach dropped.
I've never seen her in this bad of shape before.
aah!
Kayla!
my name is kayla blackburn.
I'm from lexington, right on the border of virginia.
Virgie is right in the middle of the appalachian mountains.
It is surrounded by woods --
very, very thick, lots of underbrush.
It's very difficult to, you know,
walk through these woods.
This is where I grew up.
We moved in a house next to my childhood home.
My parents can't get rid of me.
We've been here awhile.
my name is stephen blackburn.
We got married almost three years in February.
we have two dogs, zoe and oscar.
Zoe! Oscar!
There you are.
Zoe is very energetic.
She's right there in your face, wanting to jump on you.
There you are.
Oscar is a little bit more laid-back.
You were hungry.
The cemetery is about 500 feet from our house.
it's a cemetery that my great-grandfather had started.
there's a lot of graves up there.
Those graves that date back to the 1800s,
and there's unmarked graves.
I've lived next to that cemetery for my entire life.
hey.
I'm heading up to nana's grave.
Love you.
my grandma was the first person
that I had ever known personally that had died,
and I had went up to her grave to visit.
she passed away during the summer,
so it was still very warm out.
It was very nice out.
in the cemetery, there's always this sort of an energy
that you could feel, and I've spoke to, you know,
other people who have visited and I've had other people say,
"yeah, it's a little different."
I sat down next to her grave, next to the tree.
And I was crying because, you know, very recent.
hey, nana.
miss you.
In the cemetery, you can always hear birds chirping.
You can hear leaves rustling.
You can hear all these different things.
all of a sudden, it sort of went quiet.
it could be my eyes playing tricks on me.
It was like a shadow, very, very fluid,
and it's just disappearing.
A shadow wouldn't just disappear.
at this point, I was thinking, "that's not right."
the sun is shining.
You know, maybe it was a very large bird, a shadow.
this creature is probably, you know, 6 or 7 feet tall.
It looks like it has this black robe
that goes all the way down to the ground.
I was scared.
I just took off running as fast as I could.
hey, hey.
what's wrong?
I saw something, and I don't know what it was,
but it was this figure in a black cloak.
When she came back, she's frightened. She's scared.
It was really scary.
And she's shaking and acting like she can't breathe.
Calm down, calm down.
She's trying to cry, but she --
I feel like she can't cry 'cause she's so scared.
Never seen anything like that before.
Kayla, it's --
it's probably just the sun playing tricks on your eyes.
She said it was a robed figure. It was very dark.
And she could tell it wasn't a person because it was
levitating off the ground.
Whatever it was, it was -- it was levitating.
it was like it come out of a grave, floated up,
floated over to another grave, and then sunk back down into it.
That's impossible.
I can usually read her and tell what's going on,
but at that point, I don't know if something's after her
or she seen a person out there that scared her.
No, it was really scary.
I just kind of hugged her and told her it was okay.
She still seemed very afraid.
And what she's telling me made me scared not only for her,
but for all of us because we don't know what that is.
Just about the same time,
there was these little things that would happen.
I was home alone...
...When I heard a noise.
I didn't hear somebody come in,
so you go through to see what it is.
Stephen, are you home?
now, I know for a fact that I'm home alone.
There's nobody else here.
stephen?
I know nobody's in the bathroom.
Stephen?
is that you?
Aah!
I was just terrified.
I immediately started running.
Totally not normal.
later, we went ahead and went to bed
because we both have to get up early.
Everyone was in bed, asleep.
did you hear that?
I woke up, and I felt like, you know, I'm seeing shadows.
I can hear people talking.
I wanted to know where these noises were coming from.
aah!
Kayla!
What's going on?
Heard -- I heard, smashing.
Some, like, dishes were breaking.
There's nothing here.
She was hyperventilating.
she finally calms down and tells me what happened.
I --
I heard a big pile of dishes --
it sounded like they had absolutely just crashed.
But there was nothing broke.
Months passed, and one day, kayla came and told me
that the dogs were missing.
Where are the dogs? They should be back by now.
I haven't seen them.
we were wondering where they're at.
Because usually, they're right there in our face.
I was just, you know, sort of annoyed.
You know, "come home.
Stop being out doing what you're doing."
zoe!
Oscar!
I went out, and I was just yelling their names.
Zoe!
Oscar!
Hey, come back in. They always come back.
Even if they're in the woods,
they usually come on down back to the house.
Zoe!
oscar!
Usually, they listen to our calls.
I'm gonna go find them.
I said, you know, "hey, I'm gonna go, you know,
make a lap up around the property."
I won't be long.
Okay, I'll wait here.
I just stayed up at the house
and just kind of watched for them to come back.
Zoe!
Oscar!
I yelled for our dogs, and they didn't come.
That's out of character for my dogs.
I didn't hear them barking. I didn't hear them growling.
And, you know, generally, they're playing,
and they bark and they growl the entire time they play.
Oscar!
Zoe!
You know, when you have had...
You know, wild animals kill other animals,
I was thinking the worst.
Oscar!
Zoe!
oscar!
zoe!
all of a sudden I smelled, like, rotting flesh.
Smelled like there was something dead.
My stomach dropped.
Oscar!
Zoe!
It made me very, very nauseous.
Zoe!
Oscar!
I don't know why, but walking up onto the cemetery...
I was like, "this isn't normal again."
so I stopped.
and it was coming up out of the grave.
7 feet tall.
No hands, no feet, no face.
This thing is something that's not supposed to be here.
I'm just absolutely terrified.
I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get back up.
I can't get up.
I can't run.
I turn around and look.
and it was already there.
I got home. You know, I was hyperventilating.
she couldn't have been gone 5-10 minutes, if even that.
it's okay.
I've never seen her in this bad of shape before.
She's shaking. She's trying to cry.
You're safe. It's okay. It's okay.
It took me a few minutes to be able to calm down enough
to explain to him what happened.
I could not get words out. I could not breathe.
It's okay.
I saw it. I saw it again.
So, finally, the dogs come back,
very spooked and frightened.
And that's -- that's not like my dogs.
They're not scaredy-cats.
And it's when the thought crossed that, you know,
this thing had lured me out.
This thing had wanted me to come out.
It just absolutely terrified me.
All I could think about was death and nothing being okay.
It was very, very negative.
I very rarely go up on the cemetery anymore.
you know, I don't -- I don't know what it is.
it could be, you know, something that's been manifested
from all these different people's negative feelings
when they've buried their loved ones.
you okay, honey?
Yeah.
yeah.
I believe more in spirits now and that,
you know, there are people who can see them.
maybe it's something there that just kind of
watches over the cemetery, or it's something there
for other spirits that pass on, possibly.
There is so much more to this world
than people ever realize.
Just because you can't see something
doesn't mean that it's not there,
that it's not happening to someone else.
I think, you know, I've learned that kayla is more in-tune
to this kind of phenomenon and the paranormal.
Let's go home.
You know, it kind of scares me because,
you know, if it's something like the grim reaper,
or if it is the keeper of the cemetery,
does that mean, you know, my time is soon?
Is it trying to, you know,
tell me that I'm not going to be alive much longer,
or is it something else?