YEAR: 1983

SEASON: Spring

MONTH: May

DATE: 11

STATE: Washington

COUNTY: Pierce County

LOCATION DETAILS: At the end of 119th St E. There is a logging road that leads to a gravel pit. This is also next to some power lines. Also there use to be a horse farm at the start of the old logging road.

NEAREST TOWN: Puyallup

NEAREST ROAD: 119th St E

OBSERVED: A friend and I were walking home from Sunrise Elementary school in the spring. This is on South Hill in Puyallup. There was an area of woods we had to go through between gravel pits to get home. We were on an overgrown old logging road that had a ditch on one side. It was on our left as we walked. We were also not too far from some power lines. Both of us had sticks and we were chopping down dandee lions along the trail as we walked. My friend was in front and I was about 20 feet behind him chopping what he had missed. As I got to a big patch he missed, I stopped and started chopping away as my friend kept walking. The ditch was to my back now. Suddenly, I felt like someone was behind me. I turned around and was pretty much face to face with a bigoot. It was about eight feet away from me. My guess is it was sleeping or hiding in the ditch and just stood up to see what was going on. It could have reached out and grabed me with no trouble. I think it was just as surprised to see me as I was to see it.

It was standing in a ditch so it wasn't towering over me, but it was still taller than me. It had red hair like an Irish setter dog and a little bit matted. It had wide shoulders, the and eyes looked black, but to be honest I didn't look for very long. It took me about two seconds then I ran, and ran past my friend. He started running in right behind me asking what was wrong. I just kept yelling to keep running. We ran all the way home. It didn't chase us. We lived on 123th St.

Now I read and watch all I can on this matter. They are out there. I'm lucky enough to say I know this for sure! Scared the hell out of me.

ALSO NOTICED: My best guess is that my friend woke it up when he passed it, and then I was standing right there when it finally got up.

OTHER STORIES: I wish. I only have seen posts on the web sightings vary...

TIME AND CONDITIONS: It was right after school about 3:45 p.m. Lighting was bright and it was a clear day.

ENVIRONMENT: A small Fur tree forest, this is in between power lines and a gravel pit. Small over grown logging road with a ditch on one side.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator John G. Callender:

I spoke with the witness for forty minutes or so. He said the animal was in the ditch that was covered in Scotch Broom (a plant). He said the road wasn’t very wide and the ditch was perhaps four feet deep. He estimates that he was four to four and one half feet tall at the time.

The witness couldn’t tell the sex of the animal since all he saw was from the chest up. He said it was “really muscular”. He remarked that it had a "really big, broad chest”.

When I asked him if it reminded him of an orangutan he said that it was similar to an orangutan’s hair, except darker. He kept saying the animal had “coarse hair” and when I asked him what he meant by “coarse” he compared the term "coarse" to a dog's hair.

He said the hair around the face was darker than the hair on the rest of the body. He said the lips were fuller than an ape's lips. The head was “pointy” and the hair on the head stood up.

He says had not heard of bigfoot sightings before his encounter. He was sheltered from the bigfoot story because his family had recently moved to Washington from Detroit, MI about one year before the incident happened.

About BFRO Investigator John G. Callender:

John Callender hails from Mississippi where he received a BA degree in Accounting from the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). He spent 26 years in the Seattle area flying for a major airline before retiring and relocating to Middle Tennessee in 2017. John quickly found that he missed flying and he’s now on his second career as a pilot for a major airline. He has done extensive field work in the Pacific Northwest, as well as Mississippi and he has attended the following expeditions: WA - Oly Pen (Aug. '04); New Mexico (Jicarilla Apache SEP '04); WA - Oly Pen (October '04); CA - Redwoods (May '05); WA -Oly Pen -3, (AUG '05 ); WA Cascades Expedition (AUG '06); Central Oregon Expedition (JUNE '07), BC, Vancouver Island Expedition (SEPT 2007), WA Cascades Expedition (June '09), 2009 Washington Olympic Peninsula Expedition.

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