YEAR: 1974

SEASON: Spring

MONTH: March

STATE: Georgia

COUNTY: Gwinnett County

LOCATION DETAILS: 7 miles from Chattahoochee River, a couple miles from Norcross.

NEAREST TOWN: Norcross

OBSERVED: The incident took place in Gwinnet County, a couple of miles away from Norcross - the area used to be much more residential and undeveloped than it is now. The Chattahoochee River was about seven miles away - I assume that this creature had made its way from that direction. I had consequently learned that the area has had several incidents of sightings over the years previous to mine. The events that led up to my sighting occurred over a four month period in the spring of '74. Since then, I have always wished that I could get up close to the creature.

The incident started one day in a swampy area. My friends and I were building a "fort" with bamboo stalks, when we noticed that the animal sounds in the woods had disappeared - it was deathly quiet. Then we heard a large branch snap. We got scared, as the sound had come from only 50-75 feet behind us in the swampy part of the bottoms. We imagined a psychopath with a large knife, and proceeded to quietly leave the area in single file. That is when we heard the animal scream and run toward us by the sound of the stomps in the leaves! Afterwards, we discussed what could possibly have made such noises!? A monster? What? We did not know, but somewhere in the conversation, the possibility of a bigfoot came up, and that seemed more plausible to our fourteen year old minds.

In the subsequent weeks, we found tracks, five-toed and three-toed, but never a trail of them. We would hear far-off animal sounds, and such....we even found an area of pushed down grasses a few days later, in the spot we figured the screams had come from. We had mounted an 'expedition' to look for the creature a few days after the initial incident, and had left our shoe prints in the mud and sand...a couple of days after that, a few of us went back, and, we discovered something very peculiar. In addition to three-toed tracks, we found a series of tracks that looked like the bare feet of children! following our trail of footprints - I am convinced to this day that the creature that had screamed at us was probably a female - with babies! This was the only time we found a trail of tracks.

Another time we had found, further back in the woods, a large footprint shape with no discernable features such as toes, etc. on the side of a small creek. On the other side we found another in the mud, which appeared to be the opposite foot. These two footprints were several feet away from each other! A BIG step! I have a picture of the second print.

Anyhow, my fiend Mike and I would walk up to the bus stop in the early morning hours, as the dawn began to eventually brighten the sky. He came to my house one morning, with an excitement in his voice, as he told me that he had seen the shadow of the creature across his back yard as he got dressed. He lived just two doors over, and there was a section of woods that ran up behind the houses. He told me that he heard our neighbor's dog barking wildly, and could hear the creature running through the woods behind the houses. I wasn't sure if he could be believed, but I was too excited by the prospect to be skeptical.

As we walked up to the bus stop, we proceeded to look back down the street our calusac turned off of, as it dead-ended at a petroleum pipeline field, with the swamp on the other side. There was also some woods on the left side of the street, with a stip of cleared ground between the edge of the woods and the street. There was one street lamp on a telephone pole down there near the end of the road on the left side, and it was under this lamp that we noticed a large, cone-shaped dark area. We knew that there had been no mound of dirt or sticks there before - just level ground. As we watched, the 'mound' decided to stand up and walk toward the end of the street. However, it turned left, picked something off the ground and ducked into the strip of woods there. As we were about three hundred feet from the creature, it appeared dark grey like a shadow. I grabbed Mike's sleeve and said "We gotta get closer!"- of course, he didn't want to.

The creature was estimated to be seven foot tall, and quite skinny. It had wide hips, and its arms were almost to its knees. It also had what appeared to be a sagittal crest at the top of its head. I don't know what color it was, but I would guess, from what I subsequently learned about previous sightings in the area, and from Grover Krantz' book, that it must have been white. It would make sense, would it not, that Krantz' 'Rouge Males' group might very well include any Albinos, or others with 'different traits' form the majority of sasquatch apes, that may very well be shunned into a life of wandering the rest of the North American continent.

On one morning, I believe it may have been that fall, we were walking (Mike and I) up to the bus stop, and heard a far off two-tone call from the swamp. I 'Answered back', and in a few seconds we heard it again, but this time it seemed to be closer-not so far off. I called again, and immediately we heard a return call, again much closer, as if the creature were moving through the swamp toward us. I called again, and this time it sounded as if it were at the edge of the swamp. Then my step-father yelled at us out their bedroom window, which was in front of house, second floor-they often had their windows open in fair weather. "Alright, alright," I yelled, and a few moments later we heard the call again, this time coming from far, far away as the first call had been. It was a two-toned call - a high pitched note, that turned into a low pitched note. It was definitely a call of some sort.

ALSO NOTICED: One morning, it was still dark, we walked up to the bus stop, looking back at the swamp, we saw an orange flash of diffuse light spread up and out over the sky above the swamp - duration was about two seconds. Flash lightning? Swamp gas?

TIME AND CONDITIONS: The initial incidents occurred in March, and continued for four months or so. The sighting took place in the morning while it was still dark. The calls were heard in the morning, but it was light outside when we went to the bus stop - a few months later?

ENVIRONMENT: Pine forest, creek bottom, somewhat sandy and muddy. Very thick underbrush-swamp-like. There were many large creeks in the area, a sewage treatment plant, and heavily forested areas to the north and east of the swamp, which was probably only a half-mile square. We also found evidence in the swamp of its previous history - upright ties 15 feet high from the ground-part of an old wall? There were three of them about ten to fifteen feet apart in a row. Further back we found an old rotting outhouse. Then further back still, we found a skinny mound of earth that went straight for several hundred feet - off of this we found some pea plants. The creek in the swamp near where we first encountered the creatures' screams seemed to have been man made. Like a small irrigation ditch. It was about three feet wide, had vertical sides and a flat bottom. All together a very strange place!

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