YEAR: 2011

SEASON: Winter

MONTH: February

DATE: 3

STATE: Illinois

COUNTY: Kane County

NEAREST TOWN: Algonquin

NEAREST ROAD: Algonquin Road

OBSERVED: To protect the confidentiality of the witness the witness names have been changed.

Stan Courtney is familiar with this story since he spoke to both Mary and myself about what Mary and her husband saw.

Mary lives in Algonquin, Kane County, east of the Fox River and her property backs right up against the Illinois Prairie Path, a one time railway. This path goes from McHenry to Aurora, as far as I know. Stan has a picture of this path that I sent to him.

Mary has given me permission to write this report. She is in pre-nursing and busy with school and hesitant to write this report herself so she asked me to write it, our mutual friend Sarah was witness to this verbal permission.

What Mary and her husband saw:

It was Thursday morning February 3, 2011, the blizzard had finally stopped dumping some 3 to 4 feet of snow with drifts much higher. Mary had a snow day off from school. She gets up and her husband immediately starts to joke with her about having to use the outhouse located in their back yard.

This plastic outhouse was left over from a big party held many years before and it was never picked up by the company, so it sits there and is used sometimes during the summer. So he was kidding her about having to use this outhouse so bad and during the worst blizzard in many, many years.

She asked why was he saying that? He said to take a look at the tracks someone left going through their back yard, starting at their patio on the side of the unattached garage, then heading south going towards the outhouse and then continuing on to the point that the tracks could not be seen anymore. They do have a chain link fence that spans the whole width of the back yard along the path. It seemed strange that ANYONE would be out walking in that blizzard and especially crossing their yard, very strange but they thought nothing more of it.

They eventually went outside and dug themselves out of big drifts up against the house and opening up a sidewalk that leads from the back door to the unattached garage...giving the tracks no further thoughts.

Now its March and Mary and Sarah and myself are having our usual Saturday morning breakfast. I was telling them about the BFRO site and of the pictures of bigfoot tracks in the snow following deer tracks. Well, Mary's eyes got real big and she said "Oh my gosh, so thats what those track were". Of course, we encouraged her to tell us her story.

A few weeks later Sarah and I went to Mary's house after breakfast and took some pictures. By now the snow is all gone but we were able to see the outhouse and its relationship to the patio. We did notice that the chain link fence was pushed down but that did not look like a new happening. I asked Mary how long has that fence been that way and she did not know...just did not pay attention to it...this part of the fence was in the very south west corner of their lot, well behind the outhouse with lots of trees covering the path itself.

At our breakfast as she was telling us her story we tried to think of what animal (besides a human, maybe) could make tracks like that. There are lots of deer in the area, perhaps some coyote, but we could not think of what or who in their right mind would walk in 3 or 4 foot deep snow, not make any drag marks in the middle of a blizzard??

Mary and her husband did not take any pictures, darn, their minds were just not into thinking about a tall 7-10 foot creature walking down their driveway (which had been plowed) stopping at the edge of the patio, then walking across their yard, head towards the outhouse and then continue on and most likely leaped over the fence and onto the Prairie Path. It was our theory that perhaps the outhouse had enough of an odor to draw the attention of a sasquatch on its way to somewhere????

I hope I have remembered things correctly...I was really hoping that Mary would do this report herself, but apparently she has some fears on telling the story accurately, I don't know. As I said Stan has spoken to Mary at length and perhaps can add some more details.

OTHER WITNESSES: Just Mary and her husband. They had just gotten up from sleeping.

OTHER STORIES: Have read some reports of sightings along the Fox River, Illinois River and other reports from this area.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Morning, not sure of the exact time. The weather was cold and sunny. Very different from the day or night before when the wind was blowing.

ENVIRONMENT: Back yard with unattached garage, everything is frozen and coverd with anywhere from 3 to 4 feet of snow. Some trees in yard and trees all along the Prairie Path (at this point its called the Fox River Trail).

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Stan Courtney:

I spoke with the witness both on the phone and in person.

- The long trackway of prints came down her rural driveway, through her back yard, and into a the woods that adjoins the property.

- It took the witness awhile to realize what she was looking at and she just did not think about taking pictures.

- Although she did not measure the tracks I did show her casts of prints that I had. With that comparison she said they were of greater length than sixteen inches.

- She was also impressed with the distance between each footprint and did not think a human could step that far between each step.



A photo of the Prairie Path behind Mary's house. Through its extensions it winds it way for over a hundred miles north- south through northeastern Illinois.

About BFRO Investigator Stan Courtney:

Stan Courtney has a special interest in wildlife audio recording. He has attended numerous BFRO Expeditions. See Stan's blog StanCourtney.com for recordings he has collected over the years.

Stan Courtney can be reached at illinois@bfro.net