♪♪
[ animal growling ]
[ crow caws ]
♪♪
[ distant scream ]
♪♪
[ animal shrieks ]
♪♪
[ wings flutter ]
[ dog growls ]
♪♪
almost every fiber in my being wanted to go over there,
and I just go, "holy ****"
reed: We're either gonna have to kill it,
or it's gonna kill us.
[ creature growls ]
hardsell: It was astonishing.
I just couldn't believe it.
It scared us to death.
♪♪
no, I never heard nothing like that before.
I feel like I'm in danger.
[ creature growling ]
♪♪
what is this creature?
Stay close. Do you hear me?
♪♪
[ roars ]
♪♪
my name is hank hardsell.
♪♪
my dad had me outside when I was way young.
♪♪
so I've been basically outside my entire life.
♪♪
my property goes from the road to the creek.
It's about an acre wide,
and then runs 2 1/2 acres down to the creek.
[ grunts ]
but all the backwoods,
it goes from the main road as far as you want.
We're talking miles.
♪♪
living on the property for 35 years,
I didn't notice anything abnormal,
at least that I have noticed.
It would be about four to five years ago,
things started to change, things got different.
♪♪
late spring, early summer,
me and my wife were sitting on the front of my house,
and off the front porch we have a nice fire pit.
And we'll sit out and, you know, talk, listen to the radio
and what not, and breeze through our phones,
see what's going on.
♪♪
then we heard this... This noise.
♪♪
[ creature screeching ]
♪♪
[ screeching continues ]
my wife, she goes, "what the hell was that?"
point blank and I couldn't give her an answer.
What the hell is that?
I don't know.
The noise, it just was not something
that I have seriously ever heard in my entire life.
It would be like dragging a four-legged chair
across a floor, but it was so much louder.
[ screeching continues ]
my wife at that point,
you can see the hair on her arms stand up.
That's it, I'm going in.
Okay.
This thing went on, but it wasn't mechanical,
it wasn't a metallic sound.
It wasn't a man-made sound.
[ screeching continues ]
this thing went on for, like, 10, 15 solid seconds.
[ screeching continues ]
♪♪
then it stopped.
You're caught in this,
"oh, my god" moment, you know, the "holy crap" moment.
♪♪
it kind of hits you in the chest.
It's like, "that is not normal."
♪♪
whatever that was, that was not normal
to hear that, and then after that,
I mean, I get curious about anything and everything.
If I don't know what something is, I go and investigate,
I don't -- I'm not a sidelines player,
I want to go and look.
So I grabbed my rifle and I went up around the backside,
because it's a field up there to a certain extent,
and then it goes into a woods line.
♪♪
I go sit in the brush, just to see
if I could see something come out of that brush.
♪♪
maybe thinking it was a coyote, hoping it was a coyote,
but nothing ever came.
Everything was as silent as this room,
I mean, just dead silent.
No crickets, no nothing.
I mean, just everything just buttoned up and left.
I mean, it was -- it was very ghostly sounding.
♪♪
[ creature growling softly ]
when the woods go quiet, there is something in the woods
that doesn't belong, that's what it means.
I stayed up there for like 10, 15 minutes like that,
and that uneasy feeling you get that, you know, that hit.
I was like, "uh, uh, uh, um, I'm done here."
♪♪
[ creature growling softly ]
and I got back home.
It was still dead silent that entire night.
♪♪
did you see anything?
No.
I said, "I didn't see nothing."
I said, "I don't know what that was."
it scared the hell out of me.
Yeah, me too.
She says, "I don't think I liked going out there
like that anymore, sitting out there like that."
you kind of -- it was very off-putting.
Come on.
♪♪
[ creature growling softly ]
♪♪
[ growling ]
[ loud bang ]
[ gasps ]
I hear something hit the side of my barn.
♪♪
like something was pissed off.
♪♪
like you slam your hand on a desk, boom!
[ bang! ] [ gasps ]
the most terrifying thing I have ever had happen.
♪♪
[ bang! ] [ gasps ]
[ creature growling softly ]
♪♪
hardsell: It wasn't 5 or 10 seconds later,
I hear a snap.
[ branch snapping ]
literally like a large branch snap.
♪♪
I found a branch that was every bit of 3 inches round,
snapped off,
snapped off and thrown across my yard.
♪♪
a green, live walnut branch.
♪♪
now you tell me how unnerving that is in my own house
at 30 yards.
If you want terrifying, there it is.
[ creature growls softly ]
♪♪
the next day, I did have kirk come over.
I told him about what had happened.
My name is kirk reed.
I grew up rabbit hunting, deer hunting,
you know, pretty much normal kid stuff in a rural community.
♪♪
I've been in the woods thousands of times over my lifetime.
Actually met hank off facebook
and found he just lived a couple of miles away.
We had all the same things in common, interest-wise,
so we just became friends and now he works with me.
Hardsell: We decided to cut up through the woods,
we're zigzagging the woods,
you know, doing an "s" pattern-type deal
or a "z" pattern.
♪♪
geez, it's wet out here.
♪♪
hey, look at this.
Reed: The ground is disturbed.
You can see it's a partial track.
It appeared to be dog toes,
but dogs don't have prints that big of round.
Look, there's another.
This thing is massive.
♪♪
about this big, is the prints that we found.
You could see the toes and -- but never a complete track.
But yet, enough each time that you knew it was a track.
You knew it was a dog/wolf something.
You know, something that makes a canine-style track,
only large, much larger than it should have been.
I used to have a 270-pound tibetan mastiff.
Huge dog.
These prints were almost three times
the size of my tibetan mastiff's prints.
And it's on two feet.
♪♪
hardsell: When we investigated further about these prints,
we realized it wasn't like a 4-legged track,
it was a straight line, one in front of the other,
roughly about 3 to 4 foot apart.
Reed: Whatever made these prints had to be on two feet,
about 52, 53 inches was the average
that we were measuring between stride.
[ creature growling softly ]
♪♪
[ creature growling ]
♪♪
hardsell: Whoa.
♪♪
[ creature screeches ]
♪♪
what the hell is that?
I don't know.
Hardsell: I was definitely feeling nervous in those woods.
I mean, everything is just really thick...
Really tight underbrush.
♪♪
that's when the smell hits us.
That really bad rancid smell,
like a deer on the side of an interstate smell.
♪♪
do you smell that?
Yeah. That stinks.
Reed: Very, very pungent,
kind of like cross between roadkill
and a skunk or maybe a wet dog.
♪♪
[ rustling ]
we're kind of looking around,
and you can hear something grunting.
[ creature grunting ]
♪♪
it's an odd sound, not like a deer grunting,
not like a pig, not like --
just not like anything you've ever really heard before.
[ grunting continues ]
hardsell: Everybody knows what a deer grunt sounds like,
but this was chesty, this had girth, this had mass.
[ grunting continues ]
this was moving a lot of air doing this.
Reed: Well, this thing, whatever it is,
it was very, very angry.
[ grunting continues ]
so maybe we better leave.
And hank, of course, being hank,
"I'm not gonna let anything run me out."
hardsell: And I start walking towards it,
and I'm looking and looking and looking and looking.
[ grunting continues ]
and I'm trying to see through everything
and I can't see anything.
It's too thick.
♪♪
reed: Whatever it was,
it just stayed hidden in the brush there.
It was almost as if whatever was making the sound
was trying to get us to come investigate it.
Where are you going?
Hardsell: You just get that real crappy feeling,
that little off-putting feeling.
I want to go closer, but I'm looking at my rifle,
and I'm like, "this is not doing me any good."
♪♪
it's almost like it was trying to call me over there,
and I'm like, "I can't."
I'm like, "man, I really want to."
[ grunting continues ]
♪♪
[ leaves rustling, branches snapping ]
every fiber in my being wanted to go over there.
I wanted to know what that was.
It was crashing through the brush, through the trees.
It was big, it was black,
and it was running faster than I've ever seen anything move.
We're either gonna have to kill it,
or it's gonna kill us.
Astonishing.
I-I just couldn't believe it.
You only get a couple seconds' glimpse.
It scared us to death.
♪♪
I've never seen anything like that.
♪♪
hardsell: We set up a group camping trip.
I wanted to show them where we go,
that we feel that we have cryptid action.
So, you think we might see something?
It's been a couple of months.
Do you think it will come back again?
Maybe. I don't know.
♪♪
we set up our camp, we're getting the fire going.
If we see something, we see something.
♪♪
we're setting around the fire.
We had eaten already,
just kind of talking back and forth
about different experiences.
[ creature growls softly ]
and it's like dead silence when this growl hits.
[ creature growls loudly ]
it scared the hell out of me.
[ growling continues ]
♪♪
[ creature growls softly ]
[ creature growls loudly ]
♪♪
hardsell: So, I grabbed my rifle.
It's got a tack light on it,
and I set a perimeter,
you know, just to make sure everybody's okay.
The idea is to make sure that there's nothing out there
that shouldn't be out there.
♪♪
I'm just basically using the rifle as a flashlight.
♪♪
and as I'm scanning, I see... Eye shine.
I got eyes! I got eyes!
Over there, about 80 yards.
Reed: He gets a set of eyes shining back
that are way too high for a human,
too high for a bear, a deer.
These eyes are like that big around,
these eyes are not small, these things are huge,
and they're spread like 3 inches apart.
♪♪
they got nothing on the side of these eyeballs, nothing.
And I just go, "holy ****"
I'm in disbelief of what I've just seen,
and as I said that, this thing just, you can see it,
turn its head and just whoo, gone.
I mean, this thing was moving.
And that was it, this thing was gone like a flash.
♪♪
you could just see the black, upright bipedal form crashing,
going through brush and trees, away from us.
You saw that creature running like a bat out of hell.
♪♪
hardsell: Upright walking canine,
that had to have been it.
I mean, there's no other --
something that big traveling that fast,
and that surely was the culprit.
Quite frankly, I was done, I couldn't move,
I just crapped my pants, quite frankly.
It absolutely scared us to death.
It's dark, so we had to stay there, up in the woods.
♪♪
we didn't go to bed till about 3:00 a.M.
Everybody had that uneasy feeling.
♪♪
[ animals howling ]
♪♪
[ grunting ]
♪♪
4:40, 4:45 in the morning,
I get awoken to something walking through our camp.
[ creature grunting ]
♪♪
[ roars ]
♪♪
[ growling ]
reed: The next morning, when I finally did get up,
I started talking with the others in the camp.
Nobody had been out of their tent.
That's when we decided to leave.
"hank, let's get the hell out of here."
♪♪
hank knew every bit as much as I did,
this is a bad situation,
almost like a killing zone.
Now this thing, whatever it is, is interested in us.
I mean, whatever is here has had chances to attack,
and, as big as it is, it would have killed us.
♪♪
without a doubt, there is many things out there
you cannot explain.
Hardsell: My experience more than likely will point
to an upright walking canine.
As much as I want to say no to that nightmare...
...I can't.
I think that that evidence points to that.
[ creature howls ]
reed: You never catch sight of it for more than,
you know, just a few seconds at a time.
It scares the hell out of you.
That is a nightmare that a lot of people don't want to believe.
♪♪
reed: After seeing the things that I have in those woods,
I have no doubt there are creatures out there,
the normal person would never believe are out there.
[ creature growls ]
and quite frankly, they'd be scared to death.
Hardsell: I want to prove that, if these things exist,
and I'm not crazy,
I want to prove that there's something more out there
that people aren't willing to come to terms with.
If the average person saw what we've seen down there,
they'd never go there again.
[ roars ]
♪♪
no, I've never heard nothing like that before.
[ creature growling ]
I feel like I'm in danger.
[ creature growling ]
♪♪
what is this creature?
Stay close. Do you hear me?
♪♪
[ roars ]
♪♪
my name is david walker.
♪♪
I grew up in ohio.
I was 11 years old, my friend was --
he was a little bit older, three or four months older than me,
so he was 12 years old at the time.
George and I was thinking about camping out.
And he said, "you know what?
I've seen some deer behind our barn.
Would you like to come out and camp out?"
hey, george. Hey, dave.
We got permission from our parents.
Cool camera, dude.
Thanks. I've got our supplies.
We're gonna be totally self-sufficient, davey.
Just bought a bunch of food, we had some magazines, books.
We had hot dogs, we had marshmallows.
You ready? Yeah.
And chocolates to make s'mores on the fire with,
so we had everything we needed camping-wise
to go out there and have a good time.
♪♪
so we went ahead and took out toward the barn.
So, we was all excited about the adventure.
♪♪
well, I had been in the woods several times.
I could identify the woods,
because there was a peace and a serenity about them,
and I really tapped into that.
The woods are --
there's some places where you can see a good ways,
then there's others you can only see for maybe 20-40 yards.
♪♪
keep up, dude.
Just admiring the view.
♪♪
let's go this way. Alright.
♪♪
as we begin to journey up the hill,
we're talking amongst ourselves and we said,
"if we want to have a chance to see any deer,
probably the next best probably will be up on top of that hill,
cause you can see for long ways."
good job, davey. Thanks.
Want to go start the fire? Sure.
We found a real good place to pitch our tent.
It was just the perfect spot.
♪♪
beautiful views up on top of that hill.
We got our fire going.
We got our stuff out, starting roasting our marshmallows.
After we had our bellies full,
and then we started getting a little tired.
"so let's get in the tent and lay down."
[ yawns ] I'm getting tired.
Shall we get in the tent?
I'll follow behind.
♪♪
[ creature grunting softly ]
♪♪
so around 1:30 in the morning, we started getting tired,
we just lays our head down and go to sleep,
and just, just started getting relaxed.
♪♪
[ leaves rustling ]
[ branches snapping ]
I heard snapping noises.
The snapping noises was louder than a raccoon
or a squirrel.
Wake up.
What?
I heard something. There's something out there.
Are you sure? Yeah.
I just thought it was somebody out there, obviously,
that had walked up upon us.
I did whisper to him, I said,
"what's -- who -- who could be out there?"
he said, "I don't know."
and after he said "I don't know,"
that's when we started hearing the breathing noises.
[ creature breathing heavily ]
no, I've never heard nothing like that before.
We're just looking at each other with questions in our eyes,
what -- what's going on?
Walker: What was that?
Boom, this thing had hit me on the head.
Probably my brother trying to scare us.
Maybe.
George said, "I don't know, unless it's my brother.
My brother ed might be trying to scare us."
how about this, on the count of three,
we ambush him? Okay.
George said, "hey, on the count of three,
let's run and scare him.
He thinks he's up here scaring us."
I goes, "okay." so he goes...
One, two, three.
[ both screaming ]
and then I see what's actually standing there,
it's not george's brother.
I see this thing, it's about this wide,
because I'm looking straight at it.
And I'm looking almost like at his chest
and shoulder area, and it's about 3 1/2,
4 feet wide, and it's all hairy.
My mind was going in a thousand different directions
at that point, thinking, "what in the world is this?"
and I had literally raised my head up, to see its head,
and that's when I caught its eyes.
The eyes pure black, pure black.
George figures, "oh, my god, dave, that's bigfoot."
[ creature growls softly ]
♪♪
[ creature growls softly ]
♪♪
and I started backing up, two or three steps back,
and my knees are hitting together.
I'm really freaked out at this point.
Never saw anything like this.
[ creature roaring ]
♪♪
we're running as fast as track stars, we're booking it.
♪♪
we got to george's house.
We're obviously banging on the door to try to get in.
Open up, please let us in!
What is wrong with you guys? Are you afraid of the dark?
George's sister finally came to the door,
because we were hammering on that thing.
I was scared.
♪♪
the next morning, we all sat down to breakfast,
and george's dad was there.
We said, "hey, we had an experience last night."
what do you mean?
He's back. Are you sure?
I said, "w--w-what do you mean, he's back"?
And george's dad said, "bigfoot, dave."
I said, "well, when did you guys see it?"
he said, "well, we seen it about six months ago,"
he said, "it was in the barn out there."
[ cows mooing ]
"we heard the cows mooing and we heard a commotion,
so I grabbed the gun and george came out with me
and we went out to the barn."
♪♪
stay close. Do you hear?
[ mooing continues ]
♪♪
[ mooing continues ]
george, the light.
♪♪
what was that?
♪♪
there it was, right in front of us.
Take me to where it happened.
♪♪
walker: George's father, he said,
"let's go up on top of the hill and check for tracks."
but we all three walk up on top of the hill.
♪♪
george's father, you know, saw the tracks
and he kneeled down and looked at them,
and he shook his head.
We went over to it and were looking at it.
One is this long, and it's about this wide,
and at the end, instead of having like five toes
that you would think it would have, it had three toes.
Tell you one thing, tracks don't lie.
I've never, ever seen anything like this.
♪♪
we followed the track out across the ridge.
The last track which was inside the logging road,
and right there where there's nothing else except roadway,
the tracks stopped.
No more tracks.
Where did this thing go?
We looked over the hillside,
we could find some other place where it --
maybe it jumped and landed somewhere.
Nothing.
Made me think, "what is this thing? What is this creature?"
let's head back to the tent.
And george's father,
he measured the distance from the last track back to the tent.
♪♪
this thing must be massive.
Look... How far apart the prints are.
Come on, boys, let's get out of here, grab your bags.
He said, "you know what, boys? It's time to take this thing --
get your stuff, let's get out of here."
he said, "this place is giving me the creeps."
I have to tell you, I didn't argue with him
because it was giving me the creeps.
♪♪
1972, the same year, we're talking about 6 months
after I had the first experience, I went out to my --
I was gonna go out to my brother's house
in ohio.
So I was getting ready to go deer hunting for the first time,
and my brother had just bought a piece of property
and he said he had a lot of deer.
He'd been seeing some deers.
So I took out walking.
He had some pine trees up here in a little corner,
and he said he had saw a couple of bucks
up there as he was coming home from work.
So, I thought, "that's a good place to start looking."
♪♪
pretty soon, I saw something that really intrigued me,
I saw other tracks,
and these tracks had blood dripping on both sides of them.
Somebody had shot a deer.
♪♪
maybe if I follow these tracks, and he didn't get that deer,
I might be able to find the deer and shoot it myself.
♪♪
I get down to the bottom,
where there's a creek goes through there.
♪♪
I run across other tracks,
and these tracks weren't deer tracks.
♪♪
they were like 15-16 inches long,
but I'm looking for two different things here,
and I'm not seeing anything except these tracks.
I'm following these tracks.
And I'm like, "there has to be --
this thing has to be up ahead of me, just up ahead of me,"
because it was fresh, these tracks were fresh.
♪♪
I've never felt this overcome by fear before.
♪♪
and I followed for 60 more yards,
and when I come up onto this little rise,
there's this, like a cave, that's right down here.
♪♪
well, the tracks went right into the cave.
And then this feeling comes over me,
a foreboding feeling.
♪♪
I feel like I'm in danger.
Am I gonna be able to keep my composure,
you know, just stand there and shoot this thing?
Or am I gonna freak out, am I gonna fall --
trip or something and fall and drop the gun,
and my life's gonna be in grave danger?
♪♪
'cause I got to thinking, "why am I even here?"
I'm not dealing with an animal.
I'm dealing with a monster
that could have the potential of hurting
or maybe even killing me.
[ creature growling softly ]
♪♪
so I turned around and I begin to run.
And I ran back to my brother's house.
Something said, "don't turn around and look back,
because you just might see that thing following you."
I just ran as far as I could.
♪♪
[ branches snapping ]
♪♪
where did this thing go?
♪♪
and I couldn't see it no more.
♪♪
when I got home, after I saw that thing in the woods,
I was scared.
But you can't give up on the woods.
♪♪
I love the woods so much, I thought, "you know what?
I can handle this. I can handle this.
I'm just gonna try to put this at the back of my mind,
but if I ever see this thing again,
I don't think I'm ever gonna get back in the woods again."
[ branch snaps, creature growls ]