YEAR: 1972

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: July

DATE: 15

STATE: Texas

COUNTY: Burleson County

LOCATION DETAILS: Lake Somerville, Texas

OBSERVED: 1. Strange howling scream. 2. Foul stench.

Shortly after moon set, the lake wind had died down and the night was calm. Our dog started getting nervous & ran whimpering under the car. A few minutes later the air filled with the most god-aweful stench, like that of rotten meat only mustier. I remember my mother saying what the hell is that smell & my brother sat up in his cot. When he sat up is when all of us heard the scream.

My family & myself have spent many hours in the Texas woodlands & I know most of the sounds native animals make. I have never heard anything like that in my life. Even thinking about it now, some twenty four years later, it still makes me shiver & break out in goose bumps. As I have stated I KNOW most of the animal sounds in this state. I can tell you that it was not a bobcat, panther, couger, javalina, screech owl or anything else I can think of. I have only heard one thing that even comes close & that's the audio tape of Sasquatch that Art Bell has played on his radio show. And as I said, it was only close. The scream started out as a low growling sound that ended in a shrill scream. It was loud, I mean incredibly loud. I shot one round from my gun into the air and what ever it was went away or so we thought.

By now we had built a roaring fire, but this did not stop it. It came back eight times before day break. It was not afraid of us nor the fire, only the sound of the gun fire would drive it off. All shots were fired in the air because quite frankly we could not find a target to shoot at. As soon as it got light enough we went looking for tracks, a path through the grass, something. There were plenty of track from racoons, possums, the dog, ourselves, mice & birds. But nothing unusal. The only thing we found was a small stand of sapplings with their tops broken about 5-1/2 feet above the ground about 200 yards East of our camp. I mention this because these sapplings had that same horrible stench, only not nearly as strong.

The second night we were there, the full moon had set about 03:00. Earlier that night I had moved our garbage can up to the road after dinner to keep the racoons from keeping us up all night.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Mid-summer ,hot, very dry

ENVIRONMENT: We had our lean-to pitched between two live oak trees in a tall grass field that sloped down to the lake's shore. There had not been any rain in the area for some time so that most of the grass had dried out, dry grass cuts down on ticks & chiggers. There was about an 8th inch of dust over the hard tack in the exposed areas. There was also a small pond about 40 yards down slope between our camp site & the lake shore. This I belive this had once been a stock tank. The open end of the lean-to was facing the lake shore so as to get the breeze from the lake. The other end (foot) faced a dirt road that was about 300 yards up grade.