YEAR: 1956 or 1957

SEASON: Summer

STATE: Georgia

COUNTY: Bibb County

LOCATION DETAILS: The location is in Bibb County, less than a mile from the Jones County line.

NEAREST TOWN: Macon, Georgia

NEAREST ROAD: Millerfield Rd.

OBSERVED: I haven't told this too often but this is exactly what happened. Macon, Georgia. I was 10 or 11 yrs old, 1956-57. My house was on a main highway with some homes scattered behind it, then miles of woods.

My friend and I had been at the creek in the woods behind my house, maybe 3/4 mile from my house. It was getting dark, summer, and we were heading home. I was almost home, house was 100 yds away. Not scared, almost home, never had heard of Bigfoot. There was a gulley to our right with a trail in the shallow end of the gulley we used as a path. I heard a loud clomping sound coming toward us on the other side of the gulley, swishing thru the small pines coming down the path toward us. I thought it was a mule that had gotten out and I would try to catch it. That is how loud it sounded as it came toward us.

When it came up on our side of the gulley I saw a large ape/man like hairy creature jogging toward us on the path on two legs. Needless to say my friend and I didn't stay around for an extended look, maybe two to three seconds of observation then we took off.

The creature was probably close to six/seven feet tall. It looked like that video [Patterson-Gimlin film]. When we told our parents and playmates we were the subject of much ridicule, that is until about a week or so later when five or so of them were down at the creek damming it up. I wasn't with them as I no longer played in the woods. Well they saw the thing, this was the middle of the day, as they came running out of the woods, some of them crying they were so shaken. Their parents called the sheriff and he said it was probably a bear. It wasn't. It was no hoax with someone in a suit.

OTHER WITNESSES: Myself and a friend. Later sighting was six
kids, I do not know who saw what in their group.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Dusk, almost dark

ENVIRONMENT: Small scrub pines. It was in the subdivision that
is next to Bowden Golf course. There are homes there now but there were only a few then.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Matt Pruitt:

I spoke with the witness at length about his observation. The witness is a semi-retired owner of a financial services group in California. He holds a degree from the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, and served in the United States Marine Corps. At the time of the encounter, the witness was around 10-11 years of age.

There was a creek in a heavily wooded area behind the witness' home that the local children would dam with rocks occasionally to make a swimming hole during hot summer days. On this particular day, the witness and his friend (now deceased) had been down at the creek for hours building a dam.

They were walking the path back towards the witness' house and were within about 100 yards of the home when they heard the distinct sounds of something large approaching them from the pine forest that surrounded them. As the witness recalls, there was no initial fear, as they were quite close to the house, and had never encountered anything dangerous or frightening there before.

It was dusk, and as such was beginning to get dark. The sounds were described by the witness as heavy footfalls approaching at a "slow trot", akin to the sounds of a horse or mule. This sound was accompanied by the sounds of movement through the pine trees.

The witness' first thought was that they were hearing a mule or horse that had gotten loose from a neighboring property, so they stopped immediate along the path and waited for the approaching animal to come close to them so that they could identify it, and possibly catch it and return it to its owners.

Emerging at a small gully approximately 50 feet away from the boys was a large, upright, hair-covered creature that the witness described as "massive and ape-like". In the fading twilight he could see that the creature was approximately seven feet tall and had a uniform covering of long hair on its body.

The boys stared at the creature for a few seconds before breaking away and running as fast as they could back to the house. The witness was absolutely terrified at the sight of the creature he had just seen. It was something that he was completely unprepared for.

Roughly a week later, the witness' brother and a few of his friends claimed to have encountered the same creature during daylight hours while playing in the creek. Alarmed, the neighborhood parents called the local Sheriff's office. The police assured the parents that the children had likely seen a bear, but the kids (some of them teenagers) were adamant that what they had seen was not a bear.

It is important to note that these events occurred before the modern "bigfoot" media hype, and as such, the witness had no point of reference for the creature he'd seen. Over a decade later, the witness saw the Patterson-Gimlin film on television and was awestruck at the footage, particularly by the similarity of the film subject to the creature that he encountered.

The encounter has had a long-lasting impact on the witness. During our conversation he told me that a few years ago he had visited Yellowstone National Park, and during his visit had a close, harrowing encounter with one of the park's resident grizzly bears. As he put it, "I remember that grizzly encounter as if it happened last month, but I remember the encounter with the creature over five decades ago as if it happened last night."

The immediate area has changed quite a bit since the mid-1950s, but the general area itself still holds a great deal of wildlife. The area is nestled between two National Wildlife Refuges; the Piedmont NWR, and Bond Swamp NWR. Both of these refuges have yielded multiple bigfoot reports.

About BFRO Investigator Matt Pruitt:

Matt Pruitt grew up in the mountains of Northeast Georgia, and has been conducting active sasquatch research for several years in various parts of the country.

Matt has attended/organized the following expeditions:

North Carolina - 2007
South Carolina - 2007
North Carolina - 2008
Georgia - 2008 (Expedition Organizer)
Washington (Cascades) - 2008
Washington (Olympic Peninsula) - 2008
Georgia - 2009 (Expedition Organizer)
Washington (Cascades) - 2009
Washington (Olympic Peninsula) - 2009
Oregon - 2010 (Expedition Organizer)
Washington (Olympic Peninsula) - 2010
Georgia - 2010 (Expedition Organizer)
Oklahoma - 2011 (Expedition Organizer)
North Georgia (1) - 2011 (Expedition Organizer)
North Georgia (2) - 2011 (Expedition Organizer)
Arkansas - 2012 (Expedition Organizer)
North Georgia - 2013 (Expedition Organizer)
North Carolina - 2013 (Expedition Organizer)

Matt is a trained visual tracker. During the summer of 2007, Matt co-instructed a tracking course for BFRO members in the Southeast. In 2009, he co-instructed an updated version of the same course for BFRO members in Utah. He currently lives in Northeast Georgia.

He can be contacted at Georgia@BFRO.net