YEAR: 1995

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: July

STATE: New Mexico

COUNTY: Otero County

NEAREST TOWN: Cloudcroft

NEAREST ROAD: About 5 minutes from the town.

OBSERVED: I found your web page a few days ago. I was astonished when I started reading some of the articles. They reminded me of a situation that my friend Edgar and I experienced one night when we were camping in Cloudcroft New Mexico.
It was [1995] in the summer months. Edgar and I had pitched a tent. At about 1 in the morning we were awakened by a scream that was coming from far away. The sound kept getting closer and closer. We kept trying to figure out what animal was making those noises. We were too scared to look out so we just stayed very quiet inside the tent. We could tell that the 'animal' was looking for food because it was making stops at each of the camping spots. It sounded awful. It was like a screaming baby or screaming woman. In between each scream you could also hear some grunts. Eventually, it reached our caming spot. We could hear that it was looking around and it left. It continued the screaming untill it faded in the distance.

The following morning we asked the camp manager if he had heard anything during the night. He said no. When we told him what we heard, he dismissed it as a cougar. Since we are not experienced campers, we believed him and left it as that until I herd the recordings on your web page. The sounds are almost identical to those on the recordings. The recordings sounds are from far away. We heard it within a few feet, but they sounded the same.

OTHER WITNESSES: There were 2 witnesses: Edgar and myself. We were both sleeping inside our tent.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: About 1 am. It was a clear night. No lights were in the area. There was a fire pit with some ambers still burning.

ENVIRONMENT: Pine forest.

Follow-up investigation report:

A correction by Hector regarding the date of the sighting was given to me as Summer (mid-July) of 1995, rather than 1996. The time of the sighting was anywhere from 11pm to 1am.

The weather was clear, dry, and the evenings were cool enough up in the mountains to need a jacket. Sighting occurred in Otero County, NM. The area is wooded (although thinly within the campground itself), and the grounds were nestled between two hills in a more flat area at the bottom. Mountains and hills surround the area, and are heavily wooded with pine trees, etc.

No bigfoot creature was seen by Hector, and he said his friend Edgar did not see it either, they only heard it screaming. They were awakened from within their tent in the night by a screaming in the distance that sounded like a cross between a woman and a baby. Hector stated that the sounds continued, with pauses in between, from very far in the distance, until they came closer, and into the campground. He (they) could tell that the creature was not human, nor did it sound like any animal they had ever heard before. The creature, they thought, was walking through the campground checking out the four spots or so where campers were at, and possibly foraging for food. The creature got to their camp and stood near the fire pit, or between the fire pit and their tent. Total distance was estimated to be at approximately 20 to 25 feet away from the tent. The creature continued to scream and pause, grunting and sounding like it was sniffing in the pauses. Then it would scream LOUD again and it started to walk off into the forest. The witnesses dared not poke their heads out of the tent. The only weapon they had was a hammer.

Estimated time from the first screams they heard until the last screams they heard were approximately 10-15 minutes.

Hector and Edgar got up the next morning and looked for tracks, but none were found.

Weather Conditions: Chilly, due to higher altitude during the Summer.

A sound similar to what Edgar says he heard can be found here. Edgar chose that particular sound after listening to several alleged Bigfoot sounds on several websites.

A cougar cry sounds like this.

A female cougar in heat sounds like this.

A cougar snarl sounds like this.