When I was nine years old some friends and I were playing down on a small creek riding our bikes, looking for a shallow swimming hole and just being boys. We got deep into the woods and one of my friends had a huge dog named Cowboy. He was so big you could ride him like a horse. He was a mixed breed Collie and Saint Bernard and was very protective of my friend. We played all day down on the creek beds and as the early evening was approaching with the sun starting to go down in the west we heard a very loud growl about 150 feet from us. It was normal to be in the woods and see critters, animals and deer that the dogs would chase and fight with at times. But this growl was different, it was very low and loud and came from something I had never seen nor heard.
The growl became a yell and that alarmed us all and we took off running. It was getting dark and we were a good mile in the woods running on a creek bed. As we all started running I turned around to catch a glimpse of what I can only describe as a big “hairy man”. Cowboy attacked the thing and started fighting with it. This is where it got hard to believe or understand because Cowboy was standing on his hind legs and at 150 pounds he stood at least four feet high on his hind legs. Whatever he was fighting was on two feet and stood a minimum of six feet tall. We all called for Cowboy to come but he was engaged in a heck of a fight with this “hairy thing” right there in the woods.
We were running away and I looked back and this thing raised its hand and hit Cowboy one time and knocked him about ten feet away like he was tossing a cat. The thing then turned it glare towards me as I had frozen at that point, stopped and was just staring at whatever this thing was. It yelled really loud with a snarling growl and turned and ran up the hill and into the trees. It disappeared and I began to run as fast as I could away. I didn’t realize that my friends had all been gone for at least a minute running ahead of me. They didn’t see or witness everything I did so when I told them of course they gave me a hard time about it.
Several years later while hunting for deer and other small game in the same area I always had a feeling that something was watching me but I could never see it. I heard it moving in the brush, but could not find it. I stopped thinking and talking about after my friends busted my chops about it and tucked that memory away. I thought about it from time to time and have been infatuated about it for the rest of my life. I watch movies, shows and specials about Big Foot now because I firmly believe what I saw was not a bear (no bear in that area of NC) and I know the other animals that were in the creek bed area. Fast forward to 1987 and I am in the woods in the mountains of NC and as my roommate and I are riding down a dirt road heading for our deer stands early in the morning as the sun was rising.
I glimpse over to my right and on top of the mountain in a clearing I see what looked like the same thing. It was big and hairy and no human could be that big and that high up on a mountain. I caught a quick glimpse of it maybe three to five seconds and it ran off into deep thick woods. This being my second time seeing a “hairy man” it just made my curiosity even higher than before. Fast forward to 2021 and I am on the phone with a friend of mine that is very gifted in seeing things and I am asked about the thing I saw when I was young. That blew my mind and It validated what I thought the whole time. Until you see something like a big foot, odd creature, lake monster, cryptid or other unexplainable things you may be a sceptic You may say I am crazy and try to tell me what I saw. But I can say without a doubt that 45 years later I still can picture both “hairy men” in my head and will never forget the yell and growl that thing made.