YEAR: 2018

SEASON: Winter

MONTH: January

DATE: Monday 15th

STATE: Missouri

COUNTY: Taney County

LOCATION DETAILS: Entry for TANEY COUNTY, MISSOURI dated 1998 is mine, about my property. It is only one of NUMEROUS incidents. BFRO Investigator RON BOLES is intimately familiar with ongoing activity on my property over the years. He is also familiar with this case, and arranged for another BFRO Investigator to visit and take photographs before the snow tracks melted.

NEAREST TOWN: Forsyth

NEAREST ROAD: H Highway

OBSERVED: Dual track line - MANY photos taken and measured - immediately after heavy 6" snowfall on the night of Monday 15 Jan 2018.

The night of Monday 15 Jan 2018, was dark - the night of the new (dark) moon. The overnight low temperature was -1° F, and the wind chill was -7° F, and there were six (6) inches of snow on the ground.

At around midnight… we heard a “THUMP” outside our bedroom window. Just beneath our window is a large plastic storage box for BBQ charcoal. The BBQ grill (covered with a winter tarp) is approximately 8 feet from the storage box, with an area between for use by summer grill masters. The “THUMP” was the sound of something striking the side of that large plastic storage box - a sound we’d heard numerous times in the past when working around the box and accidentally bumping or kicking it. Despite the sound being a very familiar one, and one which we instantly recognized, it was “out of place” for the middle of the night and both Sharon and I awoke instantly.

I said aloud “DID YOU HEAR THAT?”
Sharon answered “YES I DID!”

I felt the bed tremble several times very slightly… similar to when a heavy truck drives by on the road out front… and I said aloud “I HEAR FOOTSTEPS!”

At that point I considered grabbing my handgun to deal with a potential intruder, but the sounds and the vibrations were not repeated. We listened for a few more minutes then went back to sleep.

The next day, Tuesday 16 Jan 2018, the temperature never climbed over 12° F, with light winds, but a wind chill that remained at-or-below 0° F. We stayed inside nearly all day, only venturing out on the east side of the house briefly to check temperatures in our out-buildings.

Mid-afternoon Sharon asked me if I’d been outside in the yard. I told her that I had not gone out at all except to check the well house earlier. She stood at the bedroom window and pointed to a line of large, widely spaced footprints outside… and said that it appeared that we HAD been visited by an “intruder” during the night.

We went out to find TWO lines of tracks coming toward the house from the west, then curving south alongside the house just outside the bedroom window. One of the line of tracks was footprints that were 13”-14” long, 5” wide at the heel, and 7” wide at the toe. Some of those tracks clearly showed individual toe prints. All were smooth, with no pattern or marking and no break between heel and the remainder of the foot (as would be found with a boot or shoe).

One of the line of tracks appeared to be smaller footsteps - presumable a juvenile - with clear toe prints showing in some of the footprints. At times the juvenile tracks showed dragging toes side-by-side as if the walker was partially lifted upward so that both feet dragged marks in the snow, side-by-side, before resuming walking. At other points the smaller juvenile prints appeared to indicate that the walker had hopped repeatedly two or three times on one foot, then “jumped” or been lifted, dragging both feet for a distance of some 8 feet, and then planting one foot and resuming stride, or hopping onto the other foot. We believe that one of those hops or jumps resulted in the juvenile bumping the storage box which woke us inside the bedroom, and prompted out vocal comments. Those comments would have been very clearly audible just outside the window.

Beside the plastic storage box located beneath our bedroom window the two lines of tracks became a single track (apparently the juvenile was lifted by the larger adult). The stride length of the larger prints averaged 5 1/2 feet as the tracks approached the house. Both lines curved, turning south close beside the house (this is the point at which the juvenile prints appear to show lifting, dragging both feet, and hopping). At the point where the two lines of tracks changed to a single line of large (adult) footprints - presumably due to the adult having heard our vocal comments inside the bedroom, and reacted by lifting/carrying the juvenile. At that point the stride length of the larger prints grew to 6 feet in length, at some points nearing 7 feet apart.

There is no indication of running at any point in the larger print tracks, either before or after the closest approach to the bedroom window and the plastic storage box. There were no toe scuffing or heel scuffing as are made by a human attempting to run in the snow. There were “brush” marks behind several of the large (adult) footprints. Close examination of those mark revealed they looked like they were made with a whisk broom with a very light touch. Individual traces could be seen clearly… and it is presumed that the marks were made by dragging hairs that hung from the legs of the creature that made the tracks.

The line of large prints made a line heading directly for the roadway - obviously quickly moving away from the house and our voices inside the bedroom. The tracks crossed the road (and were later obliterated in the roadway by multiple visits from the snowplow on Tuesday), continuing at an angle across the yard on the other side. Approximately 100 feet into that other yard, the stride length of the large print tracks slightly reduced, and the smaller (juvenile) prints reappeared. We presume that that larger creature (adult) put the smaller (juvenile) back on the ground. The two lines of tracks continued in a straight line another 300 feet toward a dense treeline.

I contacted RON BOLES with the Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO) who had been involved in investigating the traces of activities we have had on our property for many years. While he was unable to visit in person, he arranged for another BFRO Investigator to stop by on the morning of Wednesday at 8am to photograph the prints. Sadly many of the prints in our yard were slightly degraded by wind-blown snow dropping from overhanging trees that eroded the sharper edges of the prints. The track of prints in the neighbor’s yard across the road was not degraded due to an absence of overhanging trees to shed snow.

Temperatures later on the day Wednesday, then on Thursday, melted enough snow to remove all but a single handful of prints in the deepest snow in the neighbor’s yard. Those prints, however, were degraded by tracks from stray dogs which appeared to find extreme interest in the line of strange tracks. By Friday virtually all snow had melted and no evidence of the tracks remained.

ALSO NOTICED: Overnight low on Monday 15 Jan when tracks were left was -1° F, windchill -8° F.

We DID hear the noise outside our bedroom window and made verbal comments. See description above for further details.

OTHER WITNESSES: My wife and I discovered the tracks (left during the night of 15-16 Jan) on Tuesday 16th in early afternoon.

OTHER STORIES: We had a similar snow track cross our property and span a distance of about 1/2 mile in (Feb) 2015. I have photographs of THAT snow track as well, with measurements, etc. MANY witnesses to that one... and apparently it could "see" the IR light from my security camera as the snow track deliberately veered to stay just beyond the range/illumination of the detector/illuminator.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Close to midnight - NEW MOON. Absolute silence, no traffic sounds, no wind. We have NO security lights on our property (10 acres of wooded forest just north of Forsyth, MO.

ENVIRONMENT: Forested residential land. 10 acre lot - 1 acre partially "domesticated" but HEAVILY wooded, and 9 acres of "natural" Ozark forest. Lot is long narrow rectangle roughly oriented NORTH-SOUTH. Length of property along long axis is roughly 1000 feet. South (road/driveway) end elevation is 936 ft. North (creek) end is rocky, all natural, elevation 700 ft.

More photos of the tracks taken:

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Ron Boles:

Photo of the track line:



Please click on the above link to see more photos and a video of these tracks.

The witness contacted me January 16th 2018 about this latest snow print discovery. I was unable to arrive to the scene but asked fellow Missouri BFRO investigator Jeff Lansman to go there the next morning being time was of the essence. Jeff took a number of pictures and measurements. The prints were not degraded by thaw due to the severe cold temperatures of the previous 24 hours. The snow was powder fine but a warm up would soon melt the evidence away by the next day. Jeff is approx. 6'7" and when he went to take pictures even he could not meet the stride between the tracks. I also asked BFRO investigator Larry Newman to advise the witness as how to properly measure and record the tracks.

I think this set of tracks is very interesting because I believe this is a set of an adult and a juvenile.

Later that week I personally showed up at the witness' home and went over the path that was taken when the event took place.

I've known these witnesses for almost 10 years and can confidently say that their integrity is beyond approach. They have never led me to believe that their findings were nothing less than what they claim to be true.

About BFRO Investigator Ron Boles:

BFRO Investigator for the Ozarks
Attended and organized numerous BFRO Expeditions starting in 2007. In the states of Arkansas, Colorado, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas. Ron is an avid student of the outdoors, ecology, folklore and regional history.