YEAR: 1998

SEASON: Spring

MONTH: April

STATE: Texas

COUNTY: Henderson County

NEAREST TOWN: LaRue/New York

NEAREST ROAD: CR 4325

OBSERVED: It was dark and my wife and son saw something crossing the road in front of their van. This is a very heavily wooded road with no lights. My wife actually saw the form of a large animal walking upright and very tall crossing the road. It seemed to be covered totally in hair. By the time my son looked up he saw the creature peering at them from behind a tree. They said that the eyes were approximately 7 to 8 feet high, wide apart and red. The "head" was very large and hairy. When the van came alongside of the creature my wife saw it walking toward the lake. She said that it seemed to walk right into the water and disappear. They were on their way to our new house that was under construction to turn the lights on for the night. Neither of them wanted to go out there that night so they went down the road a little further and turned around. They were both very upset with what they had seen.

OTHER WITNESSES: My wife and son.

OTHER STORIES: Yes, there is a report on www.texasbigfoot.com about an encounter a lady had at her house where a creature would frequently roam around her house. According to the report the creature would scream and it left a lot of feces around her house. According to my calculations this happened about 1 1/2 miles from the area of this sighting. This is in the LaRue area. There have also been sightings around the Athens, Texas area which is about 13 miles from this sighting. And there has been at least one sighting at a community called Baxter. This is about 6 miles from this sighting. Several people have jokingly talked about "Old Sloughfoot" being around the area, but will not elaborate on the subject.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: 9 pm, warm & muggy.

ENVIRONMENT: Swampy, there are many cattle ranches in the area. Some farming in the area but mostly cattle and hay.

Follow-up investigation report:

I spoke at length with the witnesses (a mother and son) at their home. The family had been living in the church parsonage, but had just bought a house that someone had only half-completed and they were finishing the work so they could move in. On the evening of the sighting, they had forgotten to turn off the lights at the new house. As the mother and her son made their way to the house to turn off the lights, they came around a sharp curve and the headlights of their mini-van lit up a large object on the north side of the road (driver’s side).

The mother described the object as being very large and covered from head to toe with hair, initially standing in the ditch before walking across the road in front of the van. The witnesses said the animal crossed the road, which is fourteen feet wide, in two steps. When the creature reached the opposite side of the road, the son looked up and saw it move behind the trees. Then it stood and peered out around a tree at them before turning and disappearing into the woods. Both witnesses agreed that the animal was about seven feet tall and was covered with hair. The son noticed a “red-eye glow” as the lights from the van hit it just right. The creature made no noise, and there was no odor detected.

The son remarked that, "It was taller than the van we were riding in." The witnesses remembered that it moved from north to south across the road, in an upright manner “like a man.” Both witnesses sought reassurance from each other that they had seen what they thought they had seen. The witnesses turned the van around and went home, leaving the lights on at the new house.

Both the mother and the son seem to be honest in what they saw. As they recounted the events, I could see the fear in their eyes and how the hair stood up on their arms. I interviewed them separately and got the same exact story.

The witnesses escorted me to down to the location of the encounter.

Earlier in the afternoon before meeting with the witnesses, I had a chance to meet the gentleman who lives across the road. The old gentleman, who has lived in the area all of his seventy years, told me in a straightforward manner, "I've never seen anything like that around here, BUT, I've heard some things I can't describe, screaming down in those bottoms." The old fellow went on to tell me that he’s heard a “long, loud, high pitched scream…yell” many nights coming from an area that’s about two miles from his house and is approximately 3,000 acres of bottom and swampland.

The witnesses have had many of their friends in the area tell them that they have seen this same creature many times over the years in this area. I am currently working on getting several of these people in the same place at the same time to interview them all and maybe record their sightings and stories. The area seems to be prime habitat with lots of bottom and swamp land with very few people around. Also, there is plenty of vegetation and wild game in the area.

TBRC Field Investigator