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Geographical Index > United States > Michigan > Mackinac County > Report # 20173
 
 Report # 20173  (Class A)
Submitted by witness on Tuesday, July 10, 2007.
Motorist describes nighttime sighting/encounter in headlights on US-2, west of St. Ignace

YEAR: 1979

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: June

DATE: First week

STATE: Michigan

COUNTY: Mackinac County

LOCATION DETAILS: Hwy 2 just before Hwy 75 south

NEAREST TOWN: I believe it was Manistique, Mich

NEAREST ROAD: I was on Hwy 2

OBSERVED: I saw what I feel was Big Foot, in 1979. I was traveling home from Minot AFB, North Dakota, in the early summer of 1979 with my family, on leave. We were headed for upstate New York.
It was approximately two in the morning, I was driving east on Hwy 2, in northern Michigan, I was driving through the Hiawatha National Forest. I looked down the road and about 3/4 of a mile down, there was something in the road. I couldn't tell what it was, all that I could see was the reflection of the eyes, a red reflection, I thought nothing of it, thought it was an animal and kept going, I was running at about 80MPH. As I approached what I thought was an animal, it didn't move, as I got closer I figured out that it wasn't going to move, I had to slam on the brakes. Naturally, this created a great deal of blue smoke. And I still could see the red eyes, they didn't move. I still could not make out what was in the road. After the car came to a stop, I looked up after the smoke cleared and there it was, this thing was approximately 11 feet tall, fairly slender, his hands reached down to his knees. I sat there looking at this thing, and he stood there unruffled, looking back at me. We stared at each other for approximately a minute and a half. Then he turned to his left, his head turned, then his entire body turned to his left, and took two steps to the edge of the road and looked back at me. He was covered in fur, from his head to his feet. And it was as though his head turned almost all the way around to look back at me. Then he stepped down into the field on the side of the road, it was about 50 feet to the forest, then when he went up to the edge of the forest, he stopped once again, and did that funny turning of his head to look back at me one more time and then he took one big kind of a side step into the forest, and he was gone.
He was about 11 feet tall, covered in dark red short fur with red type highlights, it was clean fur, and somewhat neat and orderly. His eyes were very unnerving. He made no sounds. Oh, yeah, it did smell kind of odd that night, like rotten eggs.

OTHER WITNESSES: My wife and two daughters, but they were asleep

OTHER STORIES: No

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Night time - 2AM
It was extremely dark, except for my headlights (no street lights-country)

ENVIRONMENT: It was a quite clear early June night

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Caroline Curtis:

I spoke to this witness and felt he was very sincere about his report. He remembers the encounter vividly. He was traveling east on US 2 and was somewhere between Manistique and St. Ignace, not too far from I-75 when this incident occurred. When I asked him about the traffic he said, "I was it". There were no buildings or houses nearby.

He was traveling at roughly 80 mph when he noticed something in the road with its eyes reflecting red. He did not slow down at first because animals on the road late at night will normally move off the road as a vehicle approaches ... but not this particular animal. Only when it appeared that he would collide with this animal did he slam on his brakes.

The vehicle he was driving was a yellow '75 Chevy Nova with a hatchback. The type of vehicle is relevant to the incident because it helped the witness estimate the creature's very tall height.

Once his vehicle stopped he was amazed that he had not hit the creature. This animal towered above the vehicle, only a short distance from the vehicle. Hair on the face kept him from seeing normal facial details, except for its "beady eyes".

When I asked if he saw any skin or additional details he explained that everything was covered with hair and that additional details could not be seen.

To the left was a forest of pine trees. To the right was grass for about a football field's length, ending in pine trees. The creature headed south toward the trees on the Lake Michigan side very quickly and crossed the field of grass in no time. By the time he had the spotlight out the creature was looking back just before entering the woods and disappearing.

He insists that this creature was 10 - 11ft tall. This reported height is not uncommon. When witnesses become terrified during close-range encounters with these animals, the terror is usually not driven by the behavior of sasquatches, nor by their hair-covered appearance, but rather by their overwhelming size ... which is most fully appreciated at close-range.

Refer to the following witness sketch of a close-range encounter on an Army base in rural Georgia.




The BFRO has received many credible reports over the years describing close range encounters with sasquatches that were approximately 10ft tall, and some that were over 10 feet tall.

"Red", especially when used to describe hair color, means different things to different people. When I asked him to compare the color to a different animal, he stated that he has seen redhead women with a similar color, closer to red than orange. He said the creature was on the skinny side but still healthy looking. He mentioned the hair seemed clean and neat. He described the hair as "fur" rather than "hair".

He mentioned that it was very tall, skinny and lanky - comparing its body to that of a skinny basketball player. This witness has seen bears and is very adamant that this was not a bear, stating to me "it had no snout". His impression was that it was a mature male sasquatch, but again no additional gender-related detail was noticed, due to the hair.

The creature turned to look at him a total of three times. Each time it turned its head to look at the witness, it did not turn its body, but rather only turned its neck and head. I questioned him about this and asked him to clarify, because many witnesses describe these animals as turning their whole upper body to look "over the shoulder". The upper-body turn is visible in the Patterson footage, and may be a characteristic of smaller, stockier females, rather than taller males. This witness was positive that he saw independent neck + head movement as it looked back at him.

The witness was able to gather himself enough to get his spotlight out, plug it into the cigarette lighter and aim. It worked very well and he lit up the creature, getting one more good look just before it looked his way and stepped into the trees.

I asked him why he stuck around. He told me that because the creature was leaving the scene, he was able to calm down a bit. Wanting to get a better look from a safe distance he got out the spotlight. He was also hoping his wife would wake up and see it. Once the wife did wake up and he described the creature to her, she insisted they leave immediately.

I asked him what was going through his mind at the time. Having heard stories of bigfoot and being a non-believer before, he said he was trying to figure out how a large creature looking like this, could get away with living and thriving in our woods for so long without anyone ever knowing about it.

About BFRO Investigator Caroline Curtis: