YEAR: 1972-1978

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: September

STATE: Illinois

COUNTY: Madison County

LOCATION DETAILS: 1214 Old Rock Road, Granite City, Illinois

NEAREST TOWN: Granite City

NEAREST ROAD: Illinois Route 3

OBSERVED: I live in Granite City. Just across the river from St. Louis Missouri. Where we lived we used to see bigfoot on a regular basis. Had encountered many sitings from them standing at our picture window of the house to being in the barn with our horses have not seen any in a long time due to expansion in the area and habitat destruction. Have found scat and they are omnivores from the shape it looks human not vegetarian. May be a good area to search some time in the future in area locations, still a lot of wooded areas locally.

OTHER WITNESSES: My mother my wife my best friend

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Used to see them all year round even. Had prints in snow outside of house

ENVIRONMENT: Several wooded areas some lakes and near Missisippi River

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Stan Courtney:

I interviewed the witness at his home.

The first name of the witness has been changed.

September 1972 - Sighting

Tom - I used to live at my parents house, was actually 1214 Old Rock Road. Out by Chouteau Slough area, canal and everything out there. This probably started, I guess first time I really noticed there was something going on out there was when I was probably eleven years old so it's been forty years ago.

A friend of mine was spending the night out there with me. My dad had two and a quarter acres of land out there. We had a horse barn and a couple of out buildings. And he comes running up and says "There is a werewolf in the barn." We were about a hundred yards away looking and standing in the doorway of the barn was a big, hairy, I mean just filled up the doorway of the barn. We ran in telling the parents and of course they didn't believe us. And by time anyone else came to look it was of course gone.

That was before any bigfoot stuff was well known or anyone was talking about bigfoot. And so it just kind of got blown off.

Winter 1972 - Mother's sighting and footprints in the snow

I don't know how long it was but one morning my mother was cooking breakfast for us, it was winter time, it was early in the morning. She saw one standing at the picture window of the house, actually looking in, watching her cook breakfast. It startled her a little bit but she didn't freak out a whole lot. There were actually large footprints out in the snow outside the picture window. It was like "who would be out here barefoot in the snow?"

Summer - 1978

I believe there was a family unit living in that area at that time. We had quite a bit of activity off and on throughout the years out there. One time another friend of mine was going to spend the night and we were going to spend the night in the hay loft in the barn. We had a couple of sleeping bags like kids do. We were up there messing around. It was getting dusk and we heard this terrible, terrible howl. It just made the hair on the back of your neck stick up. I had never heard anything like it before. I had never heard one vocalize like that before. My friend was "What was that?" It wasn't fifteen minutes later that we heard something come in the barn below us. You cold hear it breathing heavy, you could hear it walking around. You know it is bipedal because you could hear two footsteps. And there are no bears or large cats around here. It wasn't a coyote, I have heard plenty of coyotes out there. So we made our escape and beating feet back to the house. We never saw that one but know it was down in the lower portions of the barn.

It is amazing to have experience it, I guess to have lived around them as long as we did, from age of eleven until eighteen. And then they started doing more construction out there, building more houses. They tore a lot of the woods out, they changed the way Chouteau Slough was setup. After that it was quiet.

September 1972 - Sighting

Stan - What time of year was the one you saw in the doorway of the barn?

Tom - Oh, it was late August, early September.

Stan - And what time of night was it?

Tom - It was just starting to get dusk.

Stan - How tall do you think it was?

Tom - It's head was above the doorway just as it finished coming out of the barn so I would say eight foot. It was broad enough to fill the entire doorway. It had to turn sideways to get through the door.

Stan - And what about weight?

Tom - Probably four hundred lbs, it was humongous.

Stan - And what about color?

Tom - It was a brownish-black, not like a reddish tint. The sun was still up and I could see real well.

Stan - When did it move off.

Tom - We ran into the house to tell our parents and it was gone when we came back out.

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