YEAR: 1977

SEASON: Summer

STATE: Missouri

COUNTY: St. Clair County

NEAREST TOWN: Osceola

OBSERVED: Large footprints and actually saw a large, fur covered creature of great size/height.

ALSO NOTICED: We arrived at Sunrise Beach (it's not a swimming beach area, the banks of the Osage river were muddy, not sandy) late in the evening. Instead of going down into our usual campsite area, my parents decided to sleep off the night in our station wagon at the top of the ridge by the abandoned cabins. During the night, (I don't remember the time, as I was pretty young at the time) I remember hearing some breaking sounds in the wooded area around us. I then heard mom and dad talking by the campfire. I guess I rose up from my spot in the back of the station wagon and mom asked me if I heard "it". I told her that I heard what I thought to be branches breaking, she and my dad said that they have heard it several times within the last few minutes. At any rate, I went back to sleep and woke up early in the morning, at which time we drove on down to our usual campsite. While my mother was cooking breakfast on our portable camp stove, my dad was collecting wood for a camfire. My sisters and I were in the area where my mother was, as we had erected a tent and there was still things to be laid out, unpacked, etc. A few minutes later, my father shouted for my mother to come to his location. As kid's usually do, we followed my mother and went to see what dad was wanting. Upon arrival at his location, which was a dried up creek bed, he pointed to a very large footprint in the creek bed. I'm sure that there might have been other prints, but I can only remember seeing one, and it was huge. We did not have anything to preserve that print with us and dad said something about going into town and getting some plaster of paris. We all walked back up to our campsite, where mom's bacon and eggs were still cooking. For several minutes, we all talk about the huge foot print that we had observed. My father had taken a broken stick and made marks on it to denote the length while we had been down at the creek bed. I remember looking at the stick when! we returned to the campsite and trying to imagine just how big someone had to be to leave a footprint like that. It was at this time that my youngest sister, who was about 3 at the time, began crying uncontrollably. It may not be unusual for a child to cry, but this seemed out of character for her. Suddenly, dad pointed to the valley adjacent to us and said "look at that!" Up the hillside, behind a tree, there was a large, brownish haired covered creature that was looking right at us. My other sister started crying at this point, and I can assure you that I too was very scared. At this time, as if the creature were suddenly aware that we saw him (or her, who can tell?) it started walking back toward the main campground road. It's strides were long and it covered a lot of ground, but it was not "running". We began packing up quickly and loading up the station wagon. We were on our way out of there in only a few minutes. As we meandered up the camp road, dad said that he saw the creature cross the road ahead of us. I did not see this, but he said that the creature had crossed under one of the inactive lines attached to the poles. Dad later told me that he saw the creature literally lift the line out of his way as he walked under it and then across the road. At a much later date, we did return to Sunrise Beach and we got out at the area where the creature had crossed the road. My father, who stands about 5'5", took an axe handle and could barely touch the inactive line that the creature had to lift out of its way to cross under it. incidentally, the stick that dad had notched the length of the footprint? 18 inches in length ...

OTHER WITNESSES: My father was chopping wood for our campfire, My two sisters (younger than I) and myself were with my mother back at our campsite.

OTHER STORIES: I would like to be contacted back by one of the researchers. I would like to know if there had been any other reports of this kind reported in that area. We had been to that area many, many times before and few times since, but have never seen or heard of anything like that before.

ENVIRONMENT: The area that we were in is called "Sunrise Beach", it was at one time, an area with cabins for people to stay in. The cabins were then non-usable, as the campground had long since been abandoned. There were still poles with inactive lines attached which stretched the length of the campground road. The majority of the area is wooded, heavy foliage. The foot print was found in a dried up creek bed.