YEAR: 2006

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: June

DATE: 7th

STATE: Georgia

COUNTY: Paulding County

LOCATION DETAILS: From Hwy 92 going south through Hiram, GA, you will come to Ridge Rd. Turn right at the light. Go a few miles just past a baseball field on the right. Once you pass this it will be the next street (not subdivision) on the left. This is Austin Bridge Rd. Go down about a half mile to a subdivision called Austin Meadows. (Exact location removed at request of witness.)

NEAREST TOWN: hiram/douglasville

NEAREST ROAD: austin bridge/bakers bridge rd

ALSO NOTICED: I have lived on this land for a decade. I have always kept dogs in a fenced in yard that borders the wooded area of the property. At just after 1:30 am I awoke to my dogs barking in a very agressive manner. I got out of bed to go and shut them up, thinking that it was likely just a dog or deer that was wandering through the woods at night. It was nearly a full moon this night. I should add here that in the ten years I have lived here I have never seen a human in the woods behind my home.

I stepped out onto the back porch in my underwear and yelled at the dogs. This is where it got very different from all the countless times I had quieted them in the past. I yelled,"Alright, ya'll chill out. People are sleeping...." and before I finished the sentence I heard footsteps, NOT of a four legged variety, but one very methodically after the other.This got my full attention.

I have a storage building at the back corner of my yard. My first thought was that somebody must be trying to break into it. It sits in the very back corner of the fence and could be accessed by hopping over a four foot chain link fence.

I went back inside to grab a flashlight and my 9mm pistol, but as I went back in the door I heard a sort of scream/shreik. It was very loud and actually made me jump a bit. I was thinking it was likely teenagers at this point, likely shouting some sort of insult, but there was something unnerving about the way it carried into my home. I told my girlfriend, who was stirring back to being awake, that there was somebody walking in the woods making weird noises and that she needed to come hear it for herself and I am going to run them off. I ran back onto the porch and shouted,"Whoever you are, I am going to let these dogs out so you'd better speak and be on your way!" No response came back, but the footfalls were obviously close to the fenceline and were heavy sounding. I went over to the gate and the dogs would not leave the yard or my side. This is the first time ever that I have witnessed them refuse a chance to run in the woods. At this point I was a bit angry and embarrassed that I had made a threat to the intruder and the dogs just stayed put.

This was when my whole world was tilted on it's ear. I shouted that "I am about to come out there and find you and when I do I am going to shoot you", figuring that this would make whoever it was haul thier ass out of there. As I yelled this thing went from one end of my yard, around the corner of the fence to up near the front of my yard in less than 15 seconds with a very distinct two legged sound, loud and heavy. In broad daylight I could not duplicate this speed in twice the time. There are obstacles everywhere that you will bust your butt out there.

I had no intention of going into the woods in my underwear and barefooted so I chambered a round and fired three shots into the ground with the fourth being a misfire that I quickly cleared. At that moment something started shrieking and howling at extremely high decible levels and was coming closer...not running away, but running towards the side of the front of the house where I was standing. My girlfriend was up on the side porch and was asking,"What the hell is that?" and then, even though I was between her and the woods, she said she was going back in the house.

Normally when an animal is in the woods I can trick it into looking into the flashlight by making a high pitched noise or whistle, thereby giving me a look at its position.This time, this thing never revealed its eyes to me. I found that to be very unusual.
I have to add here that I was physically shaking at how much noise this thing made and how heavy it sounded as it kept howling/wailing/screaming and moving around in the treeline just beside my fence.

I am 6'4", 290 pounds and I am not fat. My friends often joke that I am a shaved sasquatch. I am 41 years old and have worked as a bouncer/babysitter in bars from the nicest type, all the way down to the nudie bar hell-holes. I am NOT an easy man to intimidate! Whatever was moving out there was MUCH bigger than me, as well as much faster. I moved up onto the side porch to be ready to flee from whatever the hell it was. I would be lying if I said otherwise here. I was badly shaken by this thing.
Being unable to see it while it was so close was chilling my blood.
When I got to the porch and up the stairs (both porches are about five feet above ground) it moved back away into the woods, likely a couple of hundred feet. How do I know this? I heard it as it went, one step after another, then I and my girlfriend who was standing just inside the side porch door, hear what seemed to be heavy timber being smacked or knocked together. It came in a sucession of three "whumps" each time, which really unnerved me, as I had just fired three rounds. Coincidence or not, it was like it was letting me know it was aware of what I just did and replicated this three knocks/slams each time and would pause for a few seconds between doing so again.

It stopped doing this and I shouted out again, this time saying something to the effect of "Who are you?", and then I heard it moving back this way yet again. It moved so fast that it really defies anything logically explained away and again, the very heavy and rhythmic sound of one foot after another was very audible. I was only shouting at this point because in the back of my mind I WANTED to hear a human voice or laughter from kids.....anything but that god awful howl again. I was hoping for a known explanation or reason for the sounds to be as loud as they were, like maybe a recording played through a bullhorn or something, but I knew that this was something very different. My mind was refusing to believe that this was real, yet there I was hearing it for myself.
At this point my girlfriend was pleading for me to come back inside so she could lock the doors. I went inside and put on some pants and shoes, dug the video camera out and turned off all the lights on the backside of the house. I wish I had taken it out the first time, but I believed that it was a prowler or vandal at first so there was not reason to take a camera...a gun and flashlight are my two best bets in that case. I truly regret not having it with me when this thing started making those sounds.

I crept down the stairs to the yard in the darkness. I sat there for a while and then decided to move over toward the fenceline by the side porch. Just then , from the woods there came those damned footfalls again. I was in the dark (I had a flashlight too, but I did not want to reveal my position) and this thing was shadowing my movements from the left to the right of the yard, staying an equal distance it seemed outside the fence.

This I did for over an hour with it moving every single time I did. I would remain stationary for five to ten minutes each time. At one point I thought I heard my dogs down in my storage shed. I figured they went in there to bed down. I walked back up my stairs to go inside and my blood ran cold when I realized that both dogs were cowering in my living room. I had not pulled the door closed behind me when I went outside, and they had to be physically removed from the house to the back porch.That has also never happened before. At this point I actually went into my workroom and grabbed a thick peice of wood and cut it to bar the back door from sliding open. In the decade I have lived here I have NEVER had a lock on my back door due to the fact that there were always dogs in the yard who hate everything that is not me or my family. Nobody goes in the back yard. I thought about calling the sherriffs department, but what could I tell them? I am afraid a bigfoot is pissed at me and is after me? I don't think so. It just sounds too damned crazy!

That all happened the first night.

The next day I was mad that I was so afraid the night before. I had two rechargeable spotlights, but neither one was working that night, bulbs or batteries were bad...who knows.
I went to Home Depot and bought a 2.25 million candlepower spotlight and went home that afternoon. I have hunted all my life, so I thought I would rig up some light along my fenceline near the shed and if it came back I would flip a switch and turn night into day and maybe get a look at this thing as it fled the light into the same dark corner of my lot, at which point I would light it up with the 2.25 million candlepower light.

My girlfriend walked to the shed with me and I went to the fence to position the light. As I got to the fence I was talking to her, saying,"If I put it here it should run it back to the other side..." and there it was. I saw with my own eyes. Between two trees and some brush, there was a 3x3 foot section of long brown fur, clearly visible and moving slightly. I yelled, "There it is!" and although my girlfriend thought I was kidding, she saw the bushes as they were being parted as something moved rapidly into the more dense growth. It was not a bear. It was not a dog. It was too massive. I think I saw the rounded back of this animal as it sort of "duck-walked" away towards a creekbed. It was gone in a matter of seconds and I was not going to chase it.
We were standing there in total disbelief. The damned thing was STILL there the next day in broad daylight. It just seemed too surreal to believe. Was it waiting for me? We waited for a while and never heard anything move. It was in there and it was trying to hide.We walked around to the front part of the shed and that is when we noticed two odd things.One was that there is black water bubbling up from the ground and it has a very strong smell to it. This is on the other side of the yard from where my septic lines should be as well as uphill from it. I am wondering if this smell drew this thing in close to my home. Secondly was the spookiest of all. There is a footprint in my yard that measures 15 inches in lentgh right by my fence where it seems like it stepped over into the woods. It is in the soggy part near the blackwater. I tried to replicate it myself with my size 14's but the difference is huge.

It seems to have a rounded heel and toes seem to be visible. I do not know if plaster will set there due to this new mystery spring that has crept up, but I covered it with a paint rollor trey to protect it from the dogs walking on it.I do not see how it could be from anyone but me in this yard, and once again, I cannot duplicate it. I hope there is an explanation for this print other than a friggin sasquatch in my yard.

There is also a branch broken in my yard at the ten to twelve foot height on a fresh limb that we just noticed. The thought of it coming over the fence into my "safe zone" is a little more than I want to believe right now.

I went exploring the woods today with a friend who told my that he has read that sometimes sticks or big limbs will be stacked in a triangle or pyramid fashion. We found at least seven such things back in that area along and around the creekbed, some of which were from a species of tree that is nowhere near the site. These do not seem to be anything that naturally would happen if a branch falls. I do not know if these are significant or not. I also found a five inch diameter tree that has been knocked down with all the roots intact and not enough vegitation on it to account for the wind having done it.This is just on the other side of my fence, right behind my shed.

OTHER WITNESSES: Yes, my girlfriend (may as well say wife, we have been together 18 years and lived here ten of those).She was in bed with me when I heard the dogs barking. She was asleep when I got up to quiet them down thinking that it was another dog or a deer back in the woods.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: 1:30 am, alerted by my dogs going, pardon the pun, ape-shit at the fenceline.

ENVIRONMENT: This occured in an area that is flanked to the north by a swamp/marsh waterway.To the north as well there are farmlands with cattle. Just southwest there are a series of creeks and waterways that lead into the woodlines behind a couple of small farms, one of which has horses on it.The incident took place in the woods just behind and around my home.The land behind my home has a natural series of creekbeds and it grows very thick in the summer.The area is heavily wooded with many low areas at the back of the four acres I live on. One acre is fenced in and clear cut. The rest is natural growth. The area, although being developed for housing, is still seated in a lot of heavy wooded terrain.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Leigh Culver:

I met with, and interviewed the witness in depth. He is very credible as is his girlfriend, with whom I also spoke. The witness is very familiar with native wildlife and is a man that doesn’t scare easily. His experience, however, has clearly unsettled him and has made him much more vigilant of his surroundings. I will, also, note that his dogs apparently have been moved by the experience as well. They now rarely leave the perceived safety of the back porch since the initial event.

I will not recap all of the details of our interview as the witness has covered everything in his report. The day after the initial vocalizations, the witness and his girlfriend, described seeing a “three foot square patch of fur” several yards out from the fence line that was moving away from them. The fur was described as being similar in color to that of an “Irish Setter” dog and as being “wavy.” I had the witness stand at the location from where he saw the fur and I stood where the fur was seen. This area is moderately to heavily vegetated, and the ground is sloping slightly downhill from where the witness was standing. I measured the distance from the ground to where the witness saw the fur. The patch of fur would have to have been five feet off the ground as viewed by the witness.

Being a visual tracker, I walked the environment looking for both ground sign as well as top sign. Other than the possible footprint that the witness described, I did find several large human-like tracks, measuring around 21 inches long and 9 inches wide in another area of the property. Due to the nature of the ground cover No attempt was made to make casts of the tracks. Also, the tracks had been altered slightly due to recent weather. The environment contained several high limb breaks that could have easily been caused by nature. One, however, was a small tree that had recently been broken off at the top by twisting and was still green with leaves. The break measured 10 feet off the ground and there was nothing in the environment that suggested how this could have been done short of it being manually twisted and broken. This particular location offered a very strategic vantage point of viewing the property.

This particular area of Paulding County (near the Douglas County line) is very near Sweetwater Creek which has been an area of alleged bigfoot sightings going back, as far as this investigator is aware of, for thirty or more years. This area, as is very common now, was once an extremely rural area which is now seeing more and more development. This may account for the recent activity at this location. Any new developments regarding this case will be updated here on BFRO.