Ozarks Horror: Something Towered Over Us!

0:00 You're listening to Big for Society, and I'm Jeremiah Byron. In this show, we go beyond the campfire stories to bring you first hand encounters from people who say they've seen something impossible. From backwoods trails and remote mountain haulers to quiet farms and crowded highways. The stories come from everywhere, and each one leaves us with more questions than answers. These are the voices of the people who've lived it. To settle in, because today you'll hear another account that just might change the way you see the woods forever. So stay with us, all right, Big for Society. You've got the privilege of talking to Joe today. Joe is a listener of the show, has experienced some really interesting things in different states among the years. But thank you for coming on to the show today.

0:47 Joe. How's it going, sir? Oh, you're welcome. Man. It's going great. It's a very nice day here in Missouri. Absolutely. You know. I'm excited to hear more about what you've experienced. I know we'll be talking about some different states that usually have some really interesting things happen in those states. So feel free Joe to take us back as far as you need to when you started to have some of these interactions with Bigfoot. Okay, so we'll start with Arkansas because that was pretty much the very first state. I was born on the Gulf Coast in Mississippi, but I've lived most of my life in central Arkansas. So we had a bunch of us were truck drivers at the time. So there's like seven of us that decided to lease some property from a paper company in north central Arkansas, op the neo's arts and we leave. It was right at five hundred acres of land, and I don't really want to say where that's at because we still have that lease, and I don't want anybody trying to go in there and

2:17 then get hurt and then try to see this kind of legal thing. You can understand that. But so north central Arkansas, we hunted there for years, and I was what they called a rescue driver, so I would sit at home with my truck for weeks on in if somebody's truck broke down, I might run all the way to California and pick up their trailer and deliver their load from them. So I only work, you know, maybe one or two weeks a month, So I would go up to this property and I would stay there for weeks at a time by my a boat, hunted. I was an avid bow hunter, gear hunter. Everything was great.

3:08 This property we had was a pine forest on top of a mountain in the Ozarks. We had two very nice creeks at the bottom of the mountains, just beautiful. They were full of little streamed by us and brim and stuff like that. You could go fish. We would go camp in the summertime. Never had any issues. I would love to be up there by myself and just camp out. Well, then they started putting in natural gas pipelines and that's kind of when things got started. So right outside of our main gate there's a natural firebreak a trail that I went up there one weekend in October.

4:05 This was in twenty fourteen, and I'm going up there to make sure everybody's ready for dear season. I'm off there on the road that are all over the country, so I go put corn in their feeders and make sure their stands are good. And I'm up there by myself with a boat, and I go down this one fire break that borders are property, and I noticed there's like these three really large rocks stacked on top of each other, right in the middle of the path, and I thought that was odd. I was like, somebody's trying to sneak in on our property and they're using this as a marker on where they need to turn and go into their stand, but as a lecture. The right there's an old oak tree that had been falling down, probably for ten or twelve years, just laying on the ground.

5:15 I'm like, why would somebody need a marker when all they have to do is walk down the trail and see the old oak tree so they knew where to turn. It didn't make any sense. So I just I kind of took my foot and I pushed over those stacked rocks, and I went on and checked everybody's stands, and I went to where we had a camp site on the very top of the mountain. And I didn't even bring a tint. I was just going to sleep in my truck for the night. But I made a small campfire, made me a sandwich, pulled out a bag of chips, eat my dinner, and I was just about ready to go to bed, and the most god awful screw you ever heard come from, Like I think it comes from where those pipelines peed together, because it made like like an interstate through the mountains, through the woods, and every hair on my body raised up. I've never heard of anything like that before, especially not out there. I put my campfire out, I got in my truck, and I left because I'm thinking, I'm out here all by myself

6:49 with a bow and arrow. Nobody knows where I'm at. I'm way out in the middle of these mountains, so I leave. I go find a hotel at one of the closest towns too, and I stay in my hotel all night, and I say I'm not going back there until daylight. So at daylight I got up. I drove back to camp. Someone one of our friends, just for just so we won't get his name away, I'll call him Bob, one of the guys that came in during the middle of the night with his camper trailer. And he usually brings the camper trailer in around October and then doesn't take it out until December. Well, on my way in to hunt, I noticed that his camper trailer was there, so he must be on a stand. I went and hunted that morning unsuccessfully. I didn't see anything as I'm coming back out, I know to sees as camper.

8:10 So I stopped and talked to him, and I tell him about what I heard the night before, and he's like, it's funny. You should mention that he goes last year when nobody was up here and I was here by myself, I was laying in my camper, and it sounded like a freight train came through the woods and it stopped right at the back of my camper, and I never heard another noise. He's the only one that doesn't laugh at me about believing at Bigfoot. But so to get back to my story, two weekends later, Arkansas has a special modern arms season. It's only like for one weekend and it's just to kill a dough It's kind of like a deprivation hunt. So me and a friend decide we're going to go up there and we're going to try to kill some meat for the freezer before the actual season opens. So this time we have his tint and it's like a Coleman pop up tent cabin tent.

9:31 So at the very center of it, it's like six foot tall, so you can stand up in it and get dressed, but it sets up really quick and tears down really quick. So we had set this tent up and we went out scouting around picked out where we wanted to hunt for the next morning. Well, we had rain moving in. It was very cloudy that night, and it was supposed to rain the next day, but we wanted to hunt the morning before the strong storms got there. So once again built a little campfire. We had a radio on, and then we got ready and we were like, okay, let's let's go to bed and get some rest. We got to get up early and go hunting. We put out the campfire. We both crawled into the tent and I'm right there on that edge of sleep, you know, you get to where that edge of sleep where you're like, you're not completely asleep, but you're not awake either, And I felt him tap my legs and I was like, what he goes, sh listen, And whenever I came awake, I could hear the guttural breathing. It wasn't growling. It

11:07 was like a really fat drunk guy snoring almost. I mean, I can't describe it the way this breathing was, but every time it breathed out, it rattled my chest. I could feel it in my chest, and it was maybe ten foot behind our tent. But you know how you can hear when someone is talking from the left or right or over there. This thing was above our tent. It was taller than our tent, and it must have had the biggest chest cavity of anything I've ever heard.

11:54 It was not a bear. If it had to have been a bear, it had to have been like one of those Yukon gold giant brown bears or something, and it had to have been standing up on its feet. Both of our weapons were stealing my truck in bags unloaded. Like I said it was, it was very cloudy, rain was coming in. It was a very dark. There was no name, there was no stars, and we're just laying there in pitch dark blackness. The only thing I could think was I had a pocket knife, and so I pulled my pocket knife out and I opened it up, and I had a death grip on that pocket knife, and I laid it on my chest. I said, well, if this thing's going to get us, it's not going to go down without a fight. I've never been so scared of anything in my entire life. At the time, I was forty three years old. I've never heard anything like that, and it's right there. It's right outside the tent.

13:16 So about fifteen or twenty minutes goes by. It never touches the tent, It never throws anything at us, It never makes any noise other than the breathing. And then you slowly start to hear the breathing going away, like it's walking away. And it's a pine forest, so there's pine needles are covered ground, so it's not like you have dry leaves or you can hear footprints walking away. It just kind of disappears and we end up falling sleep.

14:02 I'm somewhere around four or five am. I wake up. I had to go to the bathroom, so I just do what I normally do, throw my cover off of me, and I start crawling towards the edge of the tent and I just got to unzip the tent when I realized I still have the knocks in my hand, and that brings back, Okay, what just happened, And so I freeze and I just start listening to everything around me, and I can hear the breathing again, but it's not behind our tents. It sounds like it's across the logging road that we drove in on, and I know what's across that road. It's a bunch of its that's kind of like a small thicket, very sick, dense brush rowed up and it sounded like it was behind that. And so once again I told myself, I am not getting out of this tent until daylight, until I can see what is going on, especially without a gun. I am.

15:25 So somehow I managed to lay back down and go to sleep. The next thing I know, the sun was up, and I'll wake up and I look at my friend and he's waking up, and we just kind of look at each other. We crawl over unzipped the tent. The first thing we do is run to the truck, grab both of our rifles, load them up, and then we use the bathroom. We hunted that morning successfully did not see any deer whatsoever, again, which is unusual for that place.

16:08 The rain started picking up and sums were moving in. So we went back and we broke down that camp site and left, and on our way out, the only thing I ever said to him was you know that wasn't a bear, right, And he said yeah, but he was still kind of in shock because I don't think he's ever been a believer in these things. So that was Arkansas, and we still have that property there, although the paper company has come in. They cut down the pine trees about three years ago and they plant as new ones. There is still deer there, but I have not camped there or been back since my incident. Well, I went back one time in the daylight to drive around and see where they cut everything down. But we moved to Idaho a couple of months after that, and I was lucky enough I got to go to I lived just north of Pocatello, Idaho, so I got to meet doctor jeffan Over him and Cliff Brockman at one of the Bigfoot conferences there in Pocatello. It was a great day and I talked with doctor jeffan Over him

17:42 about the stack rocks and things. And he is very, very smart, very scientific. He applies the scientific method to everything. And when I talked to him about the stack rocks, he was like, well, you prove that bigfoot stack those up? And I go, no, I cannot, and he goes, that's right, we can't prove that bigfoot stacks rocks. We can't prove that they make structures. We can't prove anything because we don't have somebody like Jane Goodall to go out there and you live with the family of them and watch them.

18:24 And the scientific mythic says that we have to witness this behavior of them to be able to know that they were the ones who did it, although I don't know anyone else who would do it, but that's just science. Just because you believe a man murdered somebody does not mean he did unless you actually seen there or have proof. So then the very next year after I got to meet with them and talk to them, a deer hunting trip I had in Idaho. Once again, I'm by myself out in the middle of the mountains, so I've always noticed these deer where I fish at up on the mountain.

19:16 So I decided, hey, I'll give that a try and see if there's anything there in the fall. So I parked at my fishing the spot on the Snake River, very beautiful, heavy trout river. I left my truck and just started walking up the mountain. I got up to a ridge that I could oversee that had a small now what would you call it? It was like a small creek coming out of the side of the mountain, just a little bit of water, and like deer had been in there, he's in natural water instead of going down to the river. And I looked up on the ridge and there's a whitetail buck up there. I was like, man, I got in here too late because I don't go into the woods at dark anymore. But the deer he cuts over into this heavy stuff, and I'm like, well, maybe there's a trail up there. So I walked up.

20:28 Sure enough, there's a big game trail up there, and I started following the game trail to the west. Walking right along the side of the mountain, I came upon the track that I sent you the picture of, and I wasn't even sure if it was a real track or not. And then I took about five more steps and I come out into this water in between two mountains where the snowmelt and all the rain runs down, and that's what you will see on the picture of the tree. And it's really hard packed, mostly rot, a lot of sage brush things like that. But then I've seen this tree and it has a limb ripped off of it. It's a completely green live tree. If you've ever built a campfire, you know you can break deadsticks they break right away. But I'm sorry, if you break a green one, the bark doesn't just break. You got to kind of like strip it off. And that's what I was seeing on this tree limb. And it wasn't I mean fifteen yards away from the print that I've seen.

22:00 And I walked up to the tree and curiosity had got the best of me. So I started doing the circles around the tree looking for that tree lamb, and I'm thinking, what could have broke it off? It could even if it was a storm, it would have just snatched off and it would still be hanging by some of that green bark. Or you know, maybe somebody walked up this way and broke it off and threw it down. But I walked circles around that tree up to about twenty yards out. I never found that tree lamb. And if you look at the picture taking a picture of it going up the mountain, which is that wash has turned into another main game trail. It's easier for the elk and the deer to move up and down the mountain through that and climbing over all the rock. It gets really dmp some dark up there, and I started thinking to myself, you know, I've heard of them building structures and bedding and stuff. Maybe it tore this limb off and took it up there. But here we go again.

23:20 I'm by myself in the middle of the mountains and no one knows where I'm at, so I did not pursue it any farther. I turned and walked down the wash back to the logging road coming in beside the river, and went back to my truck. Joe, real quick, I'm looking at the photo right now, But how how tall off the ground would you estimate that break to be? That break think was probably about six and a half foot.

24:04 I mean, it would be easy for me to reach up there and grab that limb, but it was about two inches in diameter. I don't think I could have snapped that off. Yeah, it is definitely a sizeable branch. I would agree with you on that estimate of how wide around it it is. And I mean you can see the trail pretty close to it too. Yeah, And the footprint was actually pointed in that direction where I came out onto that wash. It was like right on the side of it. It was like the only possible place you could have actually made a footprint was right there because everything else was either overgrown or it was rotted. It was like that was the only place that had a little bit of uncompacted dirt, you know what I mean. And I've put it on social media and I've got slammed for it, Like, while is there only one prant? Oh, it looks like a cowl or it could have been a bare double stamps. I'm not saying it's big foot. It just got my curity curiosity to rouse why it was there. And then you know, a few yards from it, I have this tree with this limb ripped off. I don't know.

25:36 It is very weird. And you said on the Snake. River right, Yes, it was right outside of a Palisades reservoir. We lived not far from there were We lived like an hour and a half hour and forty five minutes from Yellowstone Park. We lived there by Wyoming and Montana line. So if you bring up a Palisades reservoir, it's going to be right there on the Wyoming line. Oh, absolutely, because you've got Palisades, But then you've also got Swan Valley right there. Right, yep.

26:22 And this was to the south of Swan Valley. There's a dirt road that goes up on the south side of the Snake River there at Swan Valley, and it was off to the south on one of those before you get to the move. Absolutely. Yeah, this this location has come up on the show before. It was back in episode eight fourteen. There were a ton of accounts that were sure there's been a lot of things out of happened around Palisades Reservoir over the years, going back to late nineties, sightings and tracks and multiple tracks, screams, roars being growled at. So I am not actually even things that sounded like the Sierra sounds. So I'm not surprised that if that's where you're you know, doing your hunting, that you're you're finding stuff like that. I mean, it is a really active spot in Idaho.

27:38 I wish I would have done that while I lived there. We'd done a little bit more investigator right there you. Go, there you go, I mean, yeah, you never know. That's why I've been trying to put this map together. I have on my website of all like the different encounters I've taken over the years because like some places you would have no idea unless you have access to the information. This place in Idaho, I mean you have this is a very popular trout fishing location. Okay. You have like homes that are along that dirt road. You have you know, people's vacation homes. They have, you know, trout hunters and lodges and stuff like that. And the footprint and the tree was like, I don't know, maybe a quarter of a mile behind them. I mean, you wouldn't think it would be that close to civilization, but it is.

28:43 Absolutely that. It is weird when you start to see stuff in civilized area, but it's I don't think it's out of the question for sure. Did you have when you lived in that area, did you ever talk to any neighbors to see if you know, they had ever seen any weird stuff or things like that around the reservoir? I do, And I have stickers on my throat, and you know sometimes I've got a big tattoo in the back of my leg of big Foot and people stop to me and talk to me. And that's why I do it, so that I can learn things. Not everybody talks, you know, what we are now, They don't they were kind of scared that people are going to laugh at them.

29:31 I don't care if people laugh at me. It's I'm not saying that it's one true. I'm asking a question, you know what, what did you run into? What happened to you? And I have had several people talk to me about their experiences, uh some of them in Idaho. One guy that I actually worked with said that something through a rocket has head about the size of a softball, and it hit a tree right in front of him, and it hit so hard that it sounded like a gun going off, and he got scared and ran out of there and got back to his truck and left and he's never been back. He also had extremely good pictures on his phone of a trackway that he found in Washington, where his parents lived, and I thought that was very interesting. So I'm not really sure, I said, I'm just I'm telling you what happened to me. And as far as the one in Arkansas goes, I said, I've never been more scared of anything in my life.

30:48 But it didn't try to attack me. It didn't, it didn't do anything. It was like it was more curious than anything. It just kind of stood behind the tent and walked stuff. And the odd thing is we had a lot of raccoons there in Arkansas, big ones. They would have run up and stealed the chips out of your hand while you were eating them. They were brave. But my buddy had left it an open bag of Cheetos on the chair when we went to bed and part of the families. Nothing came to our campground that night and took anything. If it would have been a bear, I could see it stealing food. Raccoons, Yeah, but nothing was touched. Even when we went and hunted the next morning and come back and broke the campdown, everything was still there. There had been no animals around our campground for that entire time.

31:59 You know, bringing up the Arkansas situation. I did have a few questions for you about that, And I know it sounded like you weren't really in the mindset that next morning to go looking around at stuff, just because you're like, get the weapon, use the facilities, right, But did you notice like anything of the ordinary, like any tracks on the ground or that was just totally out of your mind. Well, I did try to look for something around the campground, but it's a pine forest. Like I said, everything is completely covered with pine needles, so you really don't get any like crushed down brush or footprints in the mug or anything like that. It's just a really thick layer of dead pond needles. So that being said, we wouldn't really hanging out that much, you know, to do that much. Lookingly, we kind of loaded our rifles, got in the truck, drove on down to the other end of our camp, and hundreds a little bit until it started ringing, and then we come back, just broke everything down and left as quick as possible.

33:19 Gotcha when you were there during that time, besides the very just the strange breathing noise, did you guys hear any other sounds that were that didn't really fit the area, anything else strange that you were hearing? Yeah, there was nothing nothing, No birds, no frogs, no crickets. Everything was completely silent except for that. And I've been asked, well, did you see a shadow on the tent? Well, no, because the moon went now, the stars went out. It was cloudy. It was like laying in pitch darkness just listening to something right behind you and that's all you can hear. Wow.

34:11 Uh at any time where there are any trees or stick breaks or maybe trees getting sounded like trees fell, anything like that. No, nothing, No coyotes, and we have a lot of coyotes up there, and usually as soon as the sun goes down, you can hear the packs running chasing rabbits or whatever they're doing. We heard nothing, nothing whatsoever. We wow. So it sounds like you the way you're explaining it sounds like you're in that that overpowering silence where it's like, so there's nothing and it's just I don't know if you've ever experienced that where it's like it's hard to think because it is so so quiet.

35:06 Yeah, And as I was panicked, I really was, and I was gripped in that pocket night and I don't understand how I fell asleep, because I mean almost as immediately as we stopped hearing it, I was out. I fell asleep and I didn't wake up until I needed to go to the restroom. Most people would have been panicking and go, Okay, it's gone, let's get in our truck, let's go. We fell asleep and slept the whole night.

35:46 That that is the thing you hear that you hear that a lot in these and it's just it's just one of those weird things you just cannot explain. Not even any owls in the area. No, nothing. That that is just that's a freaking night dude. My goodness. Wow. So you've had that in Arkansas and then the things you you found in Idaho. Is that the last time that you've experienced anything out of the ordinary or have there been things where you are currently as well?

36:28 Well? I haven't. I haven't been able to get back out there here lately the past couple of years. They've had to put me on disability. I was an iron worker and a loader and everything. My back's gotten bad. Hopefully the end of September I'll get my last back surgery so that I can get back out there. And so I haven't been able to hunt or do anything like that in a couple of years, but I'm hoping to get back out there. We still have property in Arkansas. The guys want me to come back down and hunt with them after I get my back surgery. I'm hoping next year I will actually be able to get back down there into Arkansas, and this time is not just going to be hunting. For deer. You know it's going to be looking and seeing if there's any signs or you know, you go through stuff like that. It makes you look at things differently, it really does. I used to love the woods. I would be on my tree stand at least a half hour before daylight and it's just magic out in the woods. You hear the birds wake up, the squirrels start coming down right at daylight, the forest starts looking up, all the animals are getting out.

37:55 It's purely magic. Yeah, I don't do that anymore. I am not going into the woods unless it's daylight. I have to be able to see what's around me. I really do. I get scared. The woods aren't the same anymore, not like they used to be. And I think if people ever experiencing things like I did, they're not going to be the same for you either. You're going to look at them differently.

38:36 It is. It's a weird experience, I don't think. I think it's hard for people to understand that and let until they get in the situation like you've been in, where you experience that thing that is just extremely strange and has just affected the rest of your life. Now, is it Okay to mention where your current state is. Yes, okay, uh, we just recently moved to Jefferson c Missouri. Gotcha. So you're down in Missouri. Now you. Have the tattoo on the back of your leg. You can't really get rid of that, so you have at least some form of a big footfalling you around. Have you gotten people down there that have been like, hey, I've I've had stuff happen down here too.

39:25 Yes. Absolutely. I went to the ose Art big Foot Conference last year. I was hoping to go again this year, but just with medical conditions, I just can't get down there. But that was in Springfield, Missouri last year, and I talked to one other guys that was in the audience, and he was he was kind of a believer, but he didn't know what to believe. And I talked to him in the audience and he said that he was there. He got elected from his small town in South Missouries to come there and learn about it because they had so many occurrences there, like they've seen them coming out of their sheds and their barns and stuff and running off into the woods. And I was trying to talk to him. I told my story a little bit, and then they sent everybody to lunch. Well, when we come back from lunch, I really wanted to talk to him and find out what town this was that he had left and he didn't come back. I've also ran into people at grocery stores and things like that. We'll say, oor, you know you a big foot hunter and I go, well,

40:56 I'm kind of a researcher, or what do you got. They'll tell me, you know, one time when I was a kid, this happened, and so yeah, it's a great way to meet people. And I believe the most important thing we can do as far as researchers or a bigfoot community is listen to what other people have done. Like I say, we're not going to get to go out there and live with a family of bigfoot and see what they do and record it all down. So our best information comes from people like me, people that have seen something, They've had something happen to them, and then maybe somebody on your show hears about it and go, hey, you know what, that happened to me too, and so maybe they'll make a report of it, and so we can start gathering this information up a little by little one goes, hey, this guy over here, Thank Lewis said this, and that matches the same thing in the sky room Pennsylvania, or you know. I mean, that's how we're getting all our information of how they behave and what they do.

42:15 I think that's a great idea. And the other interesting thing is, I mean there are people that say they have I mean that they are I guess not to the extent of doctor Jane Goodall, but that they have them on their property and that it's like a habituation thing going on. But yeah, it's it's interesting when you listen to all the accounts, you know, and maybe not maybe not kick some to the side, right and as you were saying, you know, kind of listen to everything that's going out there at all parts of the US and actually the world really. I mean there's stuff we can hear from other countries that applies to the US to situation as well.

43:00 But yeah, I mean there's just those little small things that somebody might tell you a story of something they've seen and there's one little small part of it that matches with somebody else's story, and it matches with somebody else's story, and so that we can get to build a picture of it. I mean like you would do if you were, say a murderer investigator and you went out and interviewed everybody and showing that one little thing that ties everything together. And that's kind of what I think is. I love listening to people's stories. I really love hearing their sightings because it gives us just that one little bit more of information every.

43:52 Day, Absolutely, Joe. And that's part of why I do what I do too. The main part is to give people a place to share where they don't have to worry about, you know, being made fun of or anything like that. But it is also it's a learning experience for me as well. But you know, it's been fun talking to you this afternoon, Joe. I want to make sure that you know you were able to share everything that you came on the show to share today. Yeah. I think that that's about it. I'm just ready to get Sergerie done. I'm ready to get back out there and put some boots on the ground and you know, see, we're looking find.

44:37 Next absolutely well, once you're able to do so, and if you do run into some other things, you know, please reach out. We'd love to hear from you again and and hear any updates further down the road. But thanks so much for coming on the show today, Joe, absolutely, thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the big Foot Society podcas ast. Every encounter we share reminds us that the world is bigger and stranger than we think, and that the truth is often hiding just beyond the tree line. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the channel on YouTube hit the bell so you don't miss the next episode, and share this with a friend who's into mysteries, monsters, or the unexplained. And if you're listening to us on Spotify or Apple Podcast, please follow the show there and leave us a five star positive review because all that helps more people discover the show. And remember, if you or someone you know has had a Bigfoot sighting, please I'd love to hear from you, so email me at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com and let's start the conversation.

45:40 If you haven't gotten a chance yet, check out our membership community over at www dot Bigfoot Society podcast dot com and that's where you can hear tomorrow's episode today early in ad free and members only episodes every week. Also, it's a place to connect with other people that are into the Bigfoot subject as much as you are. Thanks again for following along with the Big Fat Society until next time. Keep your eyes open, trust your gut, and never stop asking what else might be out there? And see you in the woods.