YEAR: 1991

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: July

STATE: Michigan

COUNTY: Gratiot County

LOCATION DETAILS: Removed.

NEAREST TOWN: Ashley

NEAREST ROAD: Removed.

OBSERVED: I lived in the swampy woods surrounded by stateland in Michigan. I absolutely love walking through the trails in the woods, the solitude of it. So my feelings that I was not alone in the woods started when I was 15 and I got into a fight with my dad and took off into the woods. I got lost. It became dusk and started to rain. I sat on a fallen tree and sobbed. Then, like a switch was turned, I felt like I was being watched. It was so unnerving I looked around, then just ran. I did get out of the woods, but it was after dark.

Fast forward to age 18. I was pregnant and walking down the road with my boyfriend. It was dark and we both felt like we were being watched. I thought it might be a bear, because a neighbor of ours had a black bear in captivity and it had gotten out. We never saw anything though.

When my son is one week old. I'm feeding him during the middle of the night, we are alone in the house on the sofa in front of the big window in the living room, and suddenly there were 5 knocks on the side of the house! I didn't see anything when I looked.

One week later, I got up during the night, again to feed my son who was crying, and when he was put back to bed I went to my own room. I had a waterbed and because I had had a c-section, it was difficult getting in and out of the bed... so I was sitting on the wood side of the bed, looking down at my sleeping boyfriend. I felt that feeling again at the same moment I heard this thing grunt/growl. It sounded loud, yet muted, very guttual. I turned to the window and saw it. It was looking into a window that had to be 9 ft up... I lived in a mobile home, this was a typical window for trailers. I only had a nightlight on in the hallway, and it was dark outside, but I could still see it for the most part. The size of the head was huge. Covered in reddish brown hair (at least that's what the color looked like in the low light), a little bit long- not like dog fur or anything, more like a medium haired cat has longish hair. The hair was covering the whole of it's face from what I could make out. The nose was very wide with huge nostrils. It absolutely looked pissed off. It was staring at my boyfriend.

I froze to the spot. I couldn't even breathe. Then it was gone. It took awhile before I could speak... I have no idea- several moments. I was so scared that when I tried to speak I was stuttering and breathing frantically.

Of course my boyfriend didn't get up, hence he is now an ex... but the next day we did walk around the house looking for blocks or something that someone could have stood up on to look inside, but found nothing. It was rainy out that night, but we couldn't see any tracks of either shoes or feet because the ground was covered in layers of dead leaves.

I believe that I saw bigfoot that night. I believe he was, indeed, pissed off because he saw my boyfriend in my bed. I believe he found me when I was 15 and had 'followed' me since.

Either that, or he (or she) was investigating my crying infant.

So, I believe your search for bigfoot using a crying baby might actually help you out if you tried it more often. ??

OTHER WITNESSES: Just myself. I was feeding my infant son prior to the sighting.

OTHER STORIES: My sister saw something looking at her in the window. She said, "It was either sasquatch, or someone wearing a really hideous mask". She filed a police report.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Between 11pm and 4am

ENVIRONMENT: Swampy, heavily wooded

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Jim Sherman:

This report came in as an email from the contact@BFRO.net line. I was interested in this story because it comes from the area where I went to college as well as where I did my student teaching and had my first coaching job. Further, I have been doing a great deal of research in central Michigan including the counties of Isabella, Mecosta, and Gladwin. Gratiot County has some impressive river systems running through it. The sources of the Saginaw River, which flows into Saginaw Bay, as well as the Pine and Maple Rivers, act as a travel route for all types of animals as the banks of these rivers are more forested than the surrounding land. This is particularly true of the Maple River State Game area to the southwest and the Gratiot-Saginaw State Game Area to the west of the county which is near to where the incidents related below occurred.

I emailed Ms. M in response to her contact. I wanted to encourage her to submit a report that we could use to further our research. I knew that she was concerned about privacy even though she no longer lives in the area. I introduced myself and she provided her phone number so that we could discuss what she had experienced. Normally when I am conducting research on a phone I ask a lot of questions—on this day, I listened. I was fascinated with the stories that I was being told. I was immediately struck by the manner in which Ms. M was speaking. We spoke for over an hour.

While many people might be most interested in the sighting, I was particularly intrigued with the multiple possible interactions Ms. M had as a young girl growing up in the area. As a child, Ms. M frequently walked in the woods with her sister. On one occasion they had gotten lost and began to feel a sense of fear that did not seem connected to the fact that they were disoriented. It was as if they were being watched. They found their way back but this would not be the last time this sense of awareness that somebody or something was watching them was felt. At Fifteen, Ms. M got into an argument with her father. She left for the solitude of the woods and was not paying enough attention to her surroundings and became lost. Dusk was approaching and it began to rain. She found a spot on a log and quietly sobbed. Initially she felt a peaceful feeling. But suddenly “like a switch was turned” she again got that feeling that she was being observed. She ran and was lucky to make it back to her house before it was completely dark.

Three years later and in the same area, Ms. M and her boyfriend were walking down a dark road. She was pregnant at the time. They both got the same feeling of being watched. They picked up their pace and never saw anything but the feeling was unnerving. Not long after, Ms. M gave birth to her son. She was living in a mobile home and when he was a week old she was feeding him in the living room when she heard five very loud knocks on the side of the house. She looked outside but saw nothing.

One week after this incident Ms. M had gone to console her son who was crying. When she got back to her bed she again had that strange feeling of being watched. She then heard a growl that was similar to others recorded near central Michigan. (Please see the links below) We discussed the growl and it seemed to sound like a grunt that turned into a growl. She turned to the window and with the dull interior light and some available light outside she was able to see just the head of a reddish-brown hair covered human-like face. This is the point where she said it could have been a guy in a mask but the window was nine feet high and later inspection showed that there was nothing for a prankster to stand on. She got a good enough look to describe the hair as covering most of the face and the figure had huge nostrils. She tried to explain that the figure looked very angry and seemed to be staring at her sleeping boyfriend.

I asked her how long the experience lasted, if she had made a sound, or if her boyfriend had responded. The last question is why she added the comment about an ex-boyfriend to her report (which was filed after our discussion, explaining why some of this detail is repeated in this report). She thought that the whole thing lasted a very long time, from the initial feeling of being watched to when the head suddenly disappeared. She could not move and attributed this to fear. She tried to speak in order to wake her boyfriend but was completely frozen and even when she did regain the ability to speak she found it difficult to explain what she had seen. This is similar to an experience felt by a camper in report Report #35357

Later, she contacted her sister and found out that around a similar time and in a similar area, she too had been visited by something that looked in her window. (The sister later described the “face” and it was remarkably close to what Ms. M had seen). She contacted the police who arrived on the scene but attributed it to someone in a mask.

Our discussion then moved to why she would get these feelings while walking through the woods. Was something out there attracted to her because she was crying? Was something watching over her? Did that “protection” take the form of a menacing growl when Ms. M was observed with her boyfriend? There is no way to know, but the idea is certainly very interesting.

Here is a compilation of possible vocalizations from central Michigan:

CentralMichiganmontage

More vocalizations can be found in this report from a nearby location:

Report 32981

About BFRO Investigator Jim Sherman:

Jim is a High School History teacher and Track and Cross Country coach. He attended the Michigan Northern Lower Peninsula Expedition in 2011, the Michigan Upper Peninsula Expedition in 2012, co-organized the Michigan UP 2013 Expedition and attended the 2014 Wisconsin Expedition. He assisted in the production of Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot Michigan episodes (Bigfoot and Wolverines and Super Yooper). He participates in Ironman Triathlons and enjoys fishing and camping with his wife and daughter. Jim can be contacted at germanicus1@hotmail.com and Twitter @shermanbigfoot and his YouTube account is : Lordcryptid

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