YEAR: 1974

SEASON: Spring

STATE: Tennessee

COUNTY: Gibson County

LOCATION DETAILS: Withheld at witness request.

NEAREST TOWN: Atwood,TN

NEAREST ROAD: Cades-Atwood Road

OBSERVED: I was 9 in 1974. I lived on the same farm land I live on now with my husband and 3 children. My older brother and I would take the trash off to the edge of the woods where there was an old oil drum and we would burn the garbage there. One late afternoon we rode our 3 wheeler called a scattracker down the hill to the burn site and started to burn the garbage. We were watching the garbage burn and I heard a loud growling noise and turned my head towards the right where the sound came from. I saw something in the shape of a man, black and hairy.It was walking into the edge of the woods just over a slight hill. I grabbed my brother and said, "What was that?" He said "I don't know but lets get the heck out of here and we jumped on the 3 wheeler and road back to the house as fast as we could. We had never heard of bigfoot or sasquatch so I told my parents I had seen a bear. My brother did not see as much of it as I had. I swore to them I was telling the truth. The coon dogs in the pen started throwing a fit, and they started to believe that I had seen something but were not sure as to what I had seen. I told them I would never forget what I saw and would hold to my story forever. Now I am 40 and I have told my children the story. Just this Saturday, my oldest son, came running to the house out of breath, saying he believed me because he saw it too in the edge of the woods past our back field.

ALSO NOTICED: The dogs were barking like someone or something was in the woods behind their pen.

OTHER WITNESSES: My older brother. We were watching the trash burn.

OTHER STORIES: My 14 year old son, says he heard limbs on the trees breaking and saw it come out to the edge of the woods on April 16th, 2005 in the afternoon about 3 or 4 pm.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Afternoon about 6 p.m. Still light enough outside to see very well. Clear weather.

ENVIRONMENT: a mixture of pasture and woods. The connecting property runs into the bottom land where a river runs through. The specific area was next to a gully ditch where runoff water flows.We have lots of wildlife here.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Tony Gerard:

I spoke with the witness by phone. Although she was very young at the time, the sighting has had a life long impact on her. She said she had initially told her parents she had seen a bear because she could think of nothing else it could have been even though it did not look or walk like a bear. It was much later that she saw the movie "The Legend of Boggy Creek". She said the recreated creature in the movie was very similar to what she saw.

She only saw the back of the creature, from a little below the waist up, as it was walking over a hill. "At first I thought it was a black man, but then I saw it was hairy all over. It looked like a big, muscled up man." Its black hair was "like a gorilla" in length. She estimated the vocalization to have lasted about three seconds, and described the sound as "more of a growl or roar than a scream." The sound was of a much lower pitch than any of the vocalizations currently posted on the BFRO website.

The witness still lives on the location, but has had no other personal incidents.

About BFRO Investigator Tony Gerard:

Tony Gerard is a community college biology professor.