YEAR: 1997

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: July

DATE: 4th

STATE: Oregon

COUNTY: Grant County

LOCATION DETAILS: The place we camped was just off the road, maybe 300 feet. Right at a rock cliff above the creek, the road turns left and splits just above the corner about 2 1/2 miles above the mining ponds that are on the right hand side of the road.

NEAREST TOWN: Galena

NEAREST ROAD: Big Creek Road, FS #2090

OBSERVED: I may have already given this encounter to you a year or so back. I don't remember whether or not I completed it or not , so here it is again. Back in the summer of 1997 or '98, about July 4th, if I recall correctly, my wife and I had decided to go camping for a couple of days, we loaded up the camper. Big creek is where we liked to go. We lived in a little town called Long Creek in eastern Oregon and Big Creek isn't really that far. It's 14 miles to the Middle Fork of the John Day River and then upstream another25 or so miles on a county road. Then you turn up the Big Creek Road and go another 6 miles. Anyway, that will get you in the area of our encounter. We had gone to bed about 10. I was asleep when my wife woke me up to listen to a strange noise she had been hearing for over an hour or so.Well, I listened for a little while and didn't hear anything and was trying to get back to sleep. All the sudden I heard what she had been hearing. I've been in the woods my whole life hunting, fishing cutting firewood, not to mention the years I've spent hauling logs out of the woods. I'll tell you what that was the strangest sound I had ever heard. Almost like a screaming howl. It made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. My wife said that it was moving around us, because she had heard it in 4 different spots since the first time she heard it.She said it sounded closer now than the time before. Needless to say, we were both wide awake by this time and then it screamed again and it was in a new spot. Either it moved around or there were more than one. We were just lying there with the window open staring into the dark. It was a little cloudy so not much light out, but we were still trying to see something. All this time our two brave dogs that normally bark at everything were hiding under the table, shaking. No matter what we did they wouldn't move. Then it screamed again and it sounded really close and loud. I got out of bed and grabbed the gun, a. 22 , that almost made me feel worse. Anyway, we loaded up right then. My wife held the gun and flashlight, while I got out of the camper as I'm disabled and then I held the light & pea shooter while she tried to hurry and put every thing inside. To sum up that part, we left. When we got home we went straight to bed in the morning. We found out that one of the dogs was so scared she pooped on herself in the camper. She has never done anything like that before or since. We just kind of didn't talk about it too much until that show came on, Mysterious Encounters. You played a recording of a bigfoot and when we heard it it sent goosebumps over my skin and my hair stood up again and so did my wife's. That's the same sound we had listened to that night.Oh, by the way, it was about 2AM when I first heard it but my wife said she had been listening to it for well over an hour. Well that's it; I can't think of anything else that happened that night but if L. or I remember anything we will let you know.

ALSO NOTICED: Just the dogs, they always bark at every little noise. For them to act so scared was really odd,and for Tasha to mess herself was something she has never done before or since.

OTHER WITNESSES: No, just my wife and I.

OTHER STORIES: A friend of my son said when he was still in High School. He saw what he thinks is a young bigfoot, about 5 feet tall. It ran across the road in front of him one moring on his way to school. It happened on the south end of the middle fork of the John Day River, which is where you turn to go up to Big Creek. That's about all I know of his story.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: It must have started about 1am, a little cloudy, still warm out, about 60 degrees or so,dry but had a little rain shower earlier that day about 4pm, fairly dark, you could see the skyline, but not to much else.

ENVIRONMENT: Pine and fir forest, lots of trees. There is a spring just up the road about 1/2 mile that has a pipe that runs ice cold fresh spring water year round. we were only about 50 feet from Big Creek.and its really cold year round Also lots of mountains and valleys. Probably 15 miles to the nearest cabin. Very quiet there, area not used very much, too far from the river for most people.