YEAR: 1984

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: July

DATE: The first or second week of July 1984.

STATE: Michigan

COUNTY: Dickinson County

LOCATION DETAILS: The incident occurred at Lake Ellen baptist camp on Crystal Lake in Dickenson County, Michigan, USA.

OBSERVED: Two other kids and I saw tracks in mud on old two track. They were big and especially wide, and only had three toes. There were only probably seven steps that we could see clearly. My friends and I thought this was probably a hoax since it was a summer camp and everyone there likes to pull pranks.

That night, one of the same kids was with me, and we knocked on one of the other cabin doors. Before they could answer we ran and hid on the two track where we had found the tracks. Off to the left I heard a low growl. My friend heard it too and we ran back to the cabins.

We went to bed and planned to go out and look for whatever had made the tracks and the noise. I waited for everyone to go to sleep and while I waited I heard what sounded like a woman screaming. It was a scary sound. It was like someone scared a woman and she screamed but without being hysterical. It wasn't like a panicky scream. Anyway it was an all boy camp and all male councilors. Some of the cooks were women and also the main preacher guy had his wife there. Oh, the sound also came from roughly the same place as the growl and the tracks.

I am afraid I am not too good of a source. I was in Fifth grade then and it was July of 1984. Neither me nor the other kid have said anything since then unless we were joking around. Nobody would have believed us from the camp. And that night it rained so the tracks were washed out. I went back to the camp for a few more years and always hoped to find something to prove that what I saw and heard was REAL and not just a imaginative kid. The tracks might have been someone walking barefoot and expanded by the mud drying but I could swear that it had three toes and the steps were kinda of far apart. It was slightly down hill and If I ran and jumped I could land with each step and I was about 5'6 then.

OTHER WITNESSES: My friends and I were just going for a hike in the woods when we stumbled onto the tracks. Just exploring, I guess.

Then, for the growl we had sort of put the tracks out of our mind and were hiding after prank- knocking on the cabin next door.

Then I was waiting for everyone to fall asleep when I heard the scream. And, unfortunately, everyone was so, no one else heard it.

ENVIRONMENT: The whole area is quite swampy, but the tracks we could see were on a two track that led around the lake. There were cabins were like fifty or seventy-five feet away from the tracks but the camp is empty for all but a few months a year.

The tracks went into the woods and there was a deer trail nearby.

The two track was declined because of a hill. The farther down the hill the more wet and swampy it becomes.

When I heard the scream I was in the cabin closest to the woods. The growl came from ten to fifteen feet away from the very edge of the two track and there was thick brush between myself and the origin of the sound.