♪♪
[ animal growling ]
[ crow caws ]
♪♪
[ distant scream ]
♪♪
[ animal shrieks ]
♪♪
[ wings flutter ]
[ dog growls ]
♪♪
this is an original battlefield.
[ explosion ]
[ thud ]
this is something or someone...
Is anybody there?
...That don't want us here.
Get down here. I'll fight ya!
It's not humanly possible
to do what all took place there that night.
♪♪
you don't hear the thing coming. It's just all of a sudden.
Aah!
We can't fight something we can't see.
It was like having a nightmare.
♪♪
jesse: You could just feel, like,
the hair on the back of your neck standing up.
You just knew that you weren't completely alone.
[ creature growls ]
I remember thinking, "we should not be doing this,
and we don't know what we're gonna run into."
we're definitely not alone out here.
There was intent in these eyes,
and there was aggression in these eyes.
Seth, where are you?
Seth!
[ creature growling ]
and I'm standing there just in blank confusion.
"what am I seeing?"
help!
♪♪
bill: Jonesville, virginia, is in the southwest part of virginia.
[ grunting ] all right, let's get this stuff unloaded here.
My name is bill white,
and for 20 years, I've done hundreds of reenactments,
both union and confederate civil war,
living-history reenactments.
♪♪
my name is frank white.
What a beaut.
It's sort of a good way to spend the weekend with my son
and for us to do things together.
♪♪
bill: That day, we set up away from everyone else.
♪♪
it was part of the original battlefield.
♪♪
we're completely surrounded by woods.
♪♪
I know that a lot of relics have been found in that area.
♪♪
and we know that there was a union battery
that was placed where we were camped that night.
♪♪
[ stick snaps ]
steve, great to see you!
- Hey, great to see you, too. - You're with us this time.
They always have a certain date that they have
a civil war reenactment.
Lot of people, that's the only time we ever see them.
Frank: Should be good and quiet up here.
Bill: So, this is where the actual artillery camped
the night before the battle?
Yeah, right here in this patch.
- Wow. - It'll be fun, eh?
♪♪
bill: Cheers to the battle tomorrow.
♪♪
[ glass clinks ]
♪♪
it was a very calm night, no wind blowing.
I got a little something here for johnny reb.
We're sitting around talking in our camp.
♪♪
I got to clean the beaut.
You're gonna shine the chrome off of that. [ chuckles ]
[ thud ]
what was that?
♪♪
probably just a branch or something.
I don't think so.
Ah, it just fell.
Maybe.
♪♪
thinking back, whether that was a sign or what, I don't know.
♪♪
[ marching band music plays ]
♪♪
then on Saturday, we had the battle.
[ explosion ]
[ indistinct shouting ]
[ gunshot ]
these are like a wrestling match.
We already know who's gonna win before it starts.
[ explosion ]
we plan these battles out to make it look
as historically accurate as we can get it.
♪♪
jonesville, virginia, was a small skirmish
in the eyes of the history books for civil war battles.
But there were several on either side that lost their life.
After the battle, we go back to camp.
♪♪
we were gathered together playing some music
just down from the battlefield.
♪♪
it got getting late, so steven said,
"I'm going to camp."
you guys have a great night.
Good night.
♪♪
nobody thought nothing about it.
♪♪
is there anybody there?
♪♪
hello?
♪♪
[ distant scream ]
♪♪
after awhile, I heard steven hollering.
Steven: Bill!
"bill!"
"bill, get up here!"
and we take off up there.
♪♪
steven: Hey, bill!
Bill white, come here!
I hear steven yelling.
Steven: Bill!
[ breathing heavily ]
and when I got up there, there was steven,
and he was scared to death.
[ grunts ]
what happened?
♪♪
bill: Steven told us as he went up from the music,
he sees the white of our tents, and he sees this silhouette...
♪♪
which is odd because nobody messes around
with each other's tents.
And he couldn't make out what it was.
It's just this dark object.
♪♪
so he gets closer...
Closer and closer.
As he gets close to the tent...
♪♪
there's nothing there.
♪♪
[ ghostly whispering ]
♪♪
aah!
[ grunts ]
he said, "something come out of my tent there,"
and said, "it knocked me down."
bill: And as he starts to look for whoever it is...
♪♪
he sees nobody.
♪♪
when he was telling us the story,
you could tell he was scared.
There was something that just wasn't right
about whatever it was that was in our tent.
And he said they must have had a hood on
because there was just, like, a silhouette that he could see.
Anything missing?
♪♪
after we got the story,
we start looking around in our tents.
♪♪
dad's wallet is laying in there.
♪♪
not messed with.
We had cellphones, lots of modern stuff.
Not touched.
♪♪
they took my old watch and pocketknife.
Steven found that a pocket watch and a pocketknife was missing.
The only thing that was touched was stuff
that would have been of the period.
♪♪
you got that way. I'll check over here.
All right.
We start searching,
go looking for someone who's been messing in camp
because re-enactors take care of each other.
♪♪
oh!
Hey. How --
uh, did you see anybody coming through here?
We start asking people,
"okay, did you see anybody come by here?"
"nope."
all right. Thanks.
♪♪
[ trees rustling ]
[ twig snaps ]
anything?
Nobody's seen anything.
♪♪
I usually go to bed early and get up early.
Well, I went on to bed.
Night, dad.
♪♪
bill: Me and steven sat at the fire.
At that point, it's confusion
because that stuff doesn't happen at a reenactment.
♪♪
me and steven are talking...
♪♪
and smack.
[ metal clangs ]
something hits my truck.
Bill: What was that?
It was just the start
of what would happen to us for the rest of the night.
♪♪
bill: Something hits my truck
that is sitting over beside the tents.
Bill: What the...?
♪♪
when I saw that horseshoe, I didn't know what to think.
How in the world did they get it from the tent
without us hearing anybody, without us seeing anybody?
We never left camp, never left it unguarded.
There's no way.
Dad!
I heard him hollering, "dad! Dad!"
dad!
"get up! Get up!"
come on!
It was the fear in his voice that scared me.
He hears that. "what's going on?"
I explained to him,
"well, there's stuff being thrown at us."
you see them at all?
Where are they?
And there's nothing. There's nobody.
♪♪
at that point, we pick up modern guns.
♪♪
dad stays with the camp.
Me and steven are spread out.
We start looking.
[ heartbeat ]
♪♪
[ ghostly whispering ]
♪♪
a stick about this long and about that big around
hits a tree about 6 foot in the air beside of me.
Now, at no time did you hear it coming through the trees.
You don't hear the thing coming.
It's just all of a sudden, there it is.
And just after the stick...
♪♪
a rock comes from a different direction.
And you start looking in those directions.
♪♪
no movement there. There's no...
There's nothing.
[ rock thuds ]
rocks the size of your fist starts flop, flop, flop.
[ rocks thudding ]
two or three -- it happens over here,
two or three happens over here,
and all from different directions.
I didn't know whether to hide behind a tree or what
'cause I didn't know where it was coming from.
But I could just feel a rock hit me upside the head any time,
you know.
How could they get from one place to the other?
That's creepy.
[ thudding stops ]
♪♪
and then for a few minutes, everything's calm.
♪♪
we're looking around trees.
We're looking in any nook and cranny
that someone could be hiding in.
♪♪
aah!
♪♪
he got hit in the shoulder.
Steven: [ echoing ] aah!
Bill: I knew it was dangerous before,
but now, all of a sudden, someone's hit.
It's scary, not only to the point
where we're trying to figure out what it is,
but it's scary-dangerous scary.
♪♪
[ ghostly whispering ]
♪♪
somewhere in the middle there, I did start thinking about,
"okay, I've heard one of the guys in our unit said
that he woke up in the middle of the night
and saw an image of a union soldier."
and then you start thinking,
"okay, this is an original battlefield.
This is something or someone that don't want us here."
♪♪
frank: It was like having a nightmare.
It was just like a dream.
♪♪
so I just throw up my hands and said, "we can't stay here."
"we can't fight something we can't see."
♪♪
and the moment when I started packing up...
♪♪
all of a sudden, everything stopped.
There was no more rocks.
There was no more sticks.
There was nothing.
♪♪
and it takes us 30-45 minutes
to get packed up and get out of there.
And during that whole time, I noticed nothing.
♪♪
[ engine starts ]
♪♪
[ creature shrieks ]
♪♪
I know that it was real.
And it's not just me. All of us experienced it.
There's no way for me to convey to you
the feelings that I had and the stuff that went on
and how strange it actually was.
It was something supernatural.
Couldn't have been nothing humanly
'cause it's not humanly possible...
♪♪
to do what all took place there that night.
Aah!
♪♪
bill: I believe in spirits.
There's things out there that we can't see.
Frank: I don't really know the answer,
but I do know one thing -- it did happen.
No matter what or how anybody else believes,
if they had been there and had seen it,
they'd be just like me.
They would be a believer, too.
That would make a believer out of anybody.
♪♪
jesse: And you could just feel, like,
the hair on the back of your neck standing up.
You just knew that you weren't completely alone.
[ creature growls ]
I remember thinking, "we should not be doing this,
and we don't know what we're gonna run into."
we're definitely not alone out here.
There was intent in these eyes,
and there was aggression in these eyes.
Seth, where are you?!
Seth!
[ creature growling ]
and I'm standing there just in blank confusion.
"what am I seeing?"
help!
♪♪
my name is jesse alne.
♪♪
I love the outdoors. I love to go camping.
I love to go hiking.
A number of years ago, my brother and I decided
that we were gonna go to an abandoned building
and explore and just adventure-seek.
My name is seth alne.
I've always very much enjoyed exploring,
from a young kid, I loved going into the woods.
[ rock music playing on radio ]
jesse: So, this happened in a chunk of woods
just about two hours northwest of des moines.
It was early fall.
Seth: We'd been in these woods before, and we knew
exactly the way we should take.
[ car doors close ]
you got the flashlight and the beers?
In the back.
We wanted to explore this old building
next to this area of woods.
It was something we liked to do as our pastime.
Let's go.
Jesse: There's so many trees in this specific area
that as you're walking, you can only see, you know,
I don't know, 20, 30, 40 feet.
[ crows cawing ]
nature, man.
Got to love it. [ chuckles ]
♪♪
walking through these trees and this woods,
you know, you're hearing a little bit of rolling leaves
with a light breeze.
You can hear a bubbling creek off in the distance.
♪♪
once we left the car to go to the building,
it took us only 15 minutes to get through those woods.
♪♪
here it is.
Let's go check it out.
♪♪
[ creature growling ]
♪♪
so, yeah, we just wanted to explore this building,
but it was weird.
This place is really cool, dude.
[ laughing ] yeah.
Let's explore.
Yeah, let's check it out. [ chuckles ]
felt like there was something else there with us.
Something was watching our every move.
It's a very uncomfortable feeling.
♪♪
[ can clangs ]
hey, you all right?
Yeah, I'm good. This place is wild, man.
♪♪
[ creature growls ]
♪♪
I remember thinking, "we should not be doing this,
and we don't know what we're gonna run into."
I don't feel comfortable here, man.
It's like there's someone watching us.
I'm getting really freaked out.
Let's split.
We decided to head back to the woods to head home.
♪♪
[ creature growls ]
there was something very weird back there.
Let's get back to the car.
It was only gonna be a 10-to-15-minute walk.
It wasn't anything that we hadn't done before.
We'd been in these woods before. We're familiar with them.
♪♪
seth: As we walked back into the forest,
I remember the forest being quiet.
I don't remember hearing other sounds.
No crickets, nothing. It was quiet.
♪♪
it was within probably 5 minutes of being back in these woods,
we were like, "where are we?"
look around. Where are we?
We're right by the, uh...
[ sighs ] oh.
As we got deeper into the woods,
we started to realize that we were getting confused.
Wait. We were on the path.
It was like it was a completely different area.
And we had made that walk about an hour before
with zero problem.
It's this way. Come on.
Wait.
We started taking the wrong paths.
It seemed like things had changed.
♪♪
[ distant crash ]
♪♪
jesse: This confusion set in to where
we didn't necessarily know which direction we were walking.
♪♪
seth: Should we turn this way? Should we turn that way?
It's that way, right?
No, it's that way.
We're going that way.
♪♪
we were irritated. We were frustrated.
[ creature grunting ]
we're going that way.
♪♪
seth: It drove us nuts.
I mean, it's been almost 10 years.
I still can't explain to you why this was happening.
♪♪
come on. There's a trail up ahead.
I see ahead of us there's a path,
and we're gonna just walk down that.
And I suggest, "hey, let's see if we can just follow this path,
and maybe this will help us get out."
we've already been here.
We're walking around in circles, jesse.
[ twigs snap ] shh!
Did you hear that?
And in the midst of that,
I start to hear, like, twigs snapping.
[ twigs snapping ]
[ thudding ]
we started hearing these loud thuds behind us.
♪♪
it's probably just a deer.
And obviously, there's a lot of deer in iowa.
So immediately, I started to just assume
it's probably a deer.
[ thudding continues ]
and it sounded like footsteps,
but like heavy footsteps, not like a human.
There's no way that's a deer.
It was something very large.
[ distant growling ]
♪♪
jesse: It was probably between 10 o'clock and midnight.
I started to just, like, try to figure out
what could be following us.
We're in the middle of the woods at night. What could it be?
There was a tense feeling in the air.
You had that feeling where your hair is standing up
on the back of your neck.
I don't think we're alone here.
♪♪
seth: And we look up, and we find this very large branch
that had been twisted off 8 foot up, like, snapped.
It had been, like, literally just wound and just snapped off.
And there was this substance on it.
And this clear residue was dripping from the bite mark.
Something's been chewing on it?
Do you realize how big that thing would have to be
to get up there?
It looked like saliva dripping down the branch.
You're right. We're definitely not alone out here.
[ twigs snapping ]
[ crashing ]
I would say these sounds that were --
they were probably -- definitely 30-40 feet behind us.
Who's out there?
I'm looking, and I'm seeing nothing.
And that was what also added to the whole confusion.
Who's out there?!
[ creature growling ]
[ footsteps thudding ]
you're trying to rationalize what could be following you.
I don't think deer like to follow people.
[ growling, thudding continue ]
we started to hear what seemed like bodies
moving through the woods.
Do you hear that?
They seemed to be coming towards us.
Jesse: We're both basically frozen in fear.
I don't like this, man.
I have no idea what could be coming at us.
There's definitely something out there.
We just wanted out.
Bro, let's get out of here.
Yeah.
♪♪
[ creature growls ]
♪♪
[ thudding ]
it felt like there was two or three individual things
following us.
Seth, wait, wait.
Wait up!
Seth, we got to find a way out of here.
It seems like something is pushing us through the woods,
in a sense, in a specific direction.
I think we're almost there.
Stay here.
I remember being scared.
Like, "I don't know if we're gonna make it out tonight.
We're either gonna be stuck in here until daylight,
or we're just not gonna make it out."
so I go down to the left, ended up finding a track.
This way!
But we split up.
Seth!
Jesse!
Seth?
Jesse: I still couldn't see my brother seth.
Where are you?!
Seth!
And then that's when I started to hear this rustling
across the path.
Seth, where are you?!
Seth!
[ trees rustle ]
[ creature growling ]
I could see broad, square shoulders covered in hair,
a giant head, which was encased with these red eyes,
and long, flowing hair
that drooped down onto the shoulders, as well.
[ creature growling ]
the head was probably roughly the size of a good-size pumpkin.
And then the shoulders, my goodness,
probably 4 feet across.
I mean, the only thing I could compare it to
would be a giant gorilla.
So, directly in front of the creature is this fallen tree.
So that tree probably had to weigh at least
a couple hundred pounds, maybe 300-400 pounds.
And with one big hand, it just slammed it down onto the tree
and pushed that tree out of the way with zero effort.
[ tree crashes ]
that tree flew through the air, crashed through the woods.
Seth!
Jesse!
[ breathing heavily ] help! Seth!
♪♪
this way!
Jesse: Seth!
Seth! Jesse!
Seth, where are you?!
[ creature growling ]
♪♪
seth!
I'm coming!
And I'm instantly filled with adrenaline,
and I just turn 180, and I just start running to him.
♪♪
and I'm standing there just in blank confusion.
"what am I seeing?"
♪♪
jesse!
And then all of a sudden, I hear crashing.
Jesse!
It sounded like a tree just crashing into the ground.
You hear leaves, you hear sticks and water, everything crushing.
That's what I hear.
[ trees crashing ]
jesse?
Jesse! Jesse!
As I got closer, I could see the eyes.
They were so abnormally large.
There was intent in these eyes,
and there was aggression in these eyes.
In that moment, I'm scared
and never really realistically been like,
"oh, yeah, I might see a bigfoot someday."
but in that moment, I came to a point where I was like,
"there's nothing that this can be, other than a bigfoot."
seth! Help!
And it was in that moment that
that being, that bigfoot, took off running.
Seth!
[ creature growling ]
it was pitch black. I -- we had --
I didn't have my flashlight on.
Jesse, where are you?!
All I can remember is running in the dark.
Seth! Seth!
The sound that it made was like a semi-truck driving
through the woods.
It was insane -- I've never heard anything
just crashing through the trees before like that.
I'm hearing all these sounds, and I feel the ground vibrating
with every step that it's taking.
[ thudding ]
[ groans ]
[ thudding stops ]
[ distant grunting ]
jesse! Jesse! Jesse!
Jesse: I'm over here!
[ breathing heavily ]
where did you go, man?
I lost you. Can't leave me like that.
[ tree crashes ]
[ distant grunting ]
it's coming. We got to go! Run!
I cannot believe that that just happened.
♪♪
and then we finally find a path, and we're like,
"okay, this is it. Here's the van."
[ creature growling ]
♪♪
we get in the car, and it's just quiet.
We're exhausted mentally, physically, emotionally.
We need to get out of these woods.
We need to get home. We need to get some rest.
And we need to figure out what the heck just happened.
♪♪
seth: I remember having some struggle sleeping that night,
and we just -- we went home and called it a night,
and there was a lot to think about,
a lot of stuff running through our heads.
♪♪
the very next day, I decided we were gonna go out there
and look for evidence.
We got a camera, and we went trudging through these woods
looking for anything and everything.
♪♪
it's got to be around here somewhere, dude.
We went back out, probably, in the middle of the day
so we could have some daylight to find the stuff.
♪♪
that's the rock we passed last night.
♪♪
look around. Where are we going?
♪♪
dude.
♪♪
[ creature growling ]
♪♪
check that out.
And I notice imprints in the mud,
and I find -- I believe it was like six different prints.
And they were very large footprints
that were bigger than my foot.
I'm a size 12.
They were probably size 14 and much wider than most human feet.
♪♪
okay, so, this here is the photo that seth took the night
after our experience.
We have the base of the foot here,
which was heavily imprinted in the woods there,
or in the mud.
Then up here you can start to see some of the definition
of the toes as they wrap around and come back in
to the indention of the inside of the foot here.
This dark line here is, again,
the indention of the foot being compressed into the mud itself.
[ camera shutter clicks ]
but it's clear that it's a naked foot
imprinted in the ground.
♪♪
it had to have been at least 600-700 pounds,
at least, to leave these deep of imprints.
It's hard to think that it could be anything but bigfoot.
[ camera shutter clicks ]
I'll never forget that because I went from kind of skeptical
on the whole bigfoot thing to a full-blown believer
in literally seconds.
This experience, it made me a bigfoot hunter.
I don't like this, man. We got to get out of here.
Obviously, I delved way more into bigfoot research,
and I started to hear this common thing
about people being confused
during or before encounters with bigfoot.
Bigfoot's believed to be supernatural.
As sci-fi as that sounds, this is what I found.
Jesse: Just because there's not ample documentation
of a creature does not mean that it does not exist.
♪♪
I know what I saw, and I know it was a bigfoot.