YEAR: 1986

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: May

DATE: 24

STATE: Tennessee

COUNTY: Sumner County

LOCATION DETAILS: A day or so later, J told me that he accompanied his father, along with some other friends, to the spot where we'd had found the trees. Said the knife was still in the ground. Mentioned that they found additional tracks.
A month or so after that, he said there was a nighttime sighting of something crossing a neighbor's field.

NEAREST TOWN: Portland

NEAREST ROAD: Highway 76

OBSERVED: This happened in May/June of 1986.

I was visiting a friend's farm near Portland, TN. My friend, "J", wanted to make preparations for his upcoming birthday party, he wanted a campout of sorts. I offered to help him get firewood. So, J and I went to the woods near his farm, accompanied by his dog to gather the firewood.

While we were in the woods, his dog started to act very strange. Refusing to obey J's command's and breaking for the nearest open field. We followed the dog until we stopped to notice that several trees were stripped of their bark. The tree bark had been completely removed and then we noticed that the branches on several of the trees were snapped off. This upset J very much that he wanted to leave the woods to tell his father. J marked the spot by sticking his knife in the ground and said that we'd come back with his father. And so we left the woods and J's dog came with us too.

J walked me over to his father's barn and told me to sit tight as he went to get his father. The dog stayed with me when J left, but for some reason the dog didn't want to be in the barn. So, I let the dog out and it went to the nearby watering pond, and so I followed the dog. While at the pond, I decided to have a sit with the dog. Shortly afterward, the dog turned and started barking. I turned around to see what the dog was barking at and then I saw it!

A little over 100 feet away from me, it was standing at the electric fence separating the field from the woods. The creature stood near some trailers used to haul tobacco during harvest time. This creature stood head and shoulders taller than the trailers. It was very tall, had reddish-brown hair, muscular build, stood upright and had a very gorilla-like face. Scared, I dropped to the ground and kept watching it. The creature sniff the air and grunted some as the dog kept barking at it. Then suddenly, it turned and run back into the woods, shortly after that J's dad arrived in his truck.

J's dad got out of his truck with a shotgun and asked if I had seen it. I pointed at the woods and said it just ran off. J's dad mumbled about something attacking his cows and then asked J to take him to where we had found the trees stripped of bark. I told J's dad that it was just there moments before he had arrived, J's dad decided to check the spot before going into the woods.

At the spot where the creature had stood were footprints in the dirt. J's dad was a tall man and wore cowboy boots. He placed his foot inside the track, the track was larger then his boot. He mumbled something, looked at J and said that they'd come back for J's knife later. J's dad said he'd take back to the house, and while we rode in his truck, he asked us not to say anything to J' mother about this.

ALSO NOTICED: Over than what I described, no.

OTHER WITNESSES: I was the only witness to this incident.

OTHER STORIES: Shortly after this incident, I broke my arm. While at the doctor's office for an appointment about my arm, my mother and I met a lady in the waiting room. She was equipped with a walkie-talkie and a map. I asked her was she was doing and she told me that a Bigfoot had been sighted in Franklin, Ky and her team was investigating. Franklin is about 10 miles North of Portland. I never got an opportunity to tell her about my sighting because mom stopped me from bothering the lady while she was working.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: This was during the daytime.

ENVIRONMENT: A large flat cow pasture bordered by woods. The barn was a curing barn for tobacco. The pond had been recently dug.

Follow-up investigation report:

I visited at length with the witness, who is in his early 30's now, but was only nine at the time of this encounter. I found him to be very intelligent, well-spoken, and with a thoughtful mind. This sighting made a vivid and lasting impression on him, even though he was so young at the time of the event.

In addition to his written account, I can add the following details:

As the boys were searching for firewood, they had crossed a fence line and entered a thicker portion of the woods. The witness felt that they had left J's family's property. It was while they were in these heavier woods that the dog began acting up. It was also here that they found the trees that had been stripped of their bark to a great height. The witness estimated that the bark had been stripped off at least 8' up. A footprint was found under one of these trees, and at this point J felt that they needed to leave, and placed his knife in the ground as a marker near the footprint.

The dog was very agitated at this time, and the witness felt that the dog was very aware of the animal's presence (although the boys did not see anything at this point).

When the witness looked up from the pond bank and saw the creature standing approximately 100' from him, he immediately slid down the bank toward the water to try to conceal himself, while still keeping his line of sight open. He did have a BB gun, but quickly realized that shooting it at the creature would probably only anger it.

The creature stood behind a tobacco trailer, and it's upper torso was visible above the top of the trailer. While many tobacco trailers are hand made and vary somewhat in construction, the height is usually around 5 1/2' to 6' tall at the top of the pipe rack that holds the tobacco plants. The witness was down over the pond bank at this point, and thus looking up at the creature, which lends strength to his estimate that the creature was of a great height. Additionally, when J's father arrived and stood in the same place, the witness could tell that the creature had been much larger than the father, who was 6'9".

I asked if the witness could determine gender, and although there was no visible genitalia, he 'felt' that this was a male. It stood erect on two legs, and by the witness' description was very 'gorilla-like' in appearance. When I asked him to expound on why he felt it was 'gorilla-like', he explained that the head shape was very similar to that of a gorilla - conical.

He further noted that the nose was large and flat, the eyes were black, and there was a very defined brow line.

I feel confident that this young man had a legitimate Class A sighting. At the time of this encounter, the area around Portland was a mixture of farmland interspersed with heavy forest, a good deer population, and plenty of fresh running water.