YEAR: 2013

SEASON: Spring

MONTH: April

DATE: 9th

STATE: Minnesota

COUNTY: Roseau County

LOCATION DETAILS: North of Badger, MN approximately 5 miles on County Road 3.

NEAREST TOWN: Badger, MN

NEAREST ROAD: County Road 3

OBSERVED: I was driving on my way to school at 6:30am. I'd just left my house and was only about 2 miles from home. To my right was a large pig farm, and about a quarter mile ahead and on my left, was just a small farm. I wasn't even driving the speed limit because the road was very icy. I'd just come up to the driveway of the pig farm when I saw in my headlights what I initially thought to be a snowmobile pulling up out of the ditch right next to the mailbox. It stopped and appeared that what I thought to be the operator of the snowmobile was standing and leaning down to reach the handlebars. I instantly thought it was strange that they didn't have their headlights on. At that moment, the figure bolted across the road. The way I can describe it best is that it ran the way a young child would racing against friends. The differences were, that the size made me believe that there was no way it was a child, it ran so fast and disappeared into the woods behind the house of the small farm and the amount of steps it took were so few that it couldn't have been any person that I knew. I called my husband right away and asked about the owner of the home and if they were strange or different and if he would have any explanation as to why they would be out so early in the morning checking their mailbox. I was trying to rationalize the situation. He said that the owner of the property was "normal" as far as he knew, but they had moved out months ago and nobody had been there since. I wasn't able to make out too much detail as the sun hadn't quite come up over the horizon, but I could tell that it was tall and bulky with long arms and a very long stride. This would explain why I thought the shadowed outline was a snowmobiler standing up and holding onto the handlebars. An average person would appear taller, would look large in width because they most likely would have plenty of warm clothing and a helmet on and would appear to have longer arms down by their knees if they were reaching for the handlebars. This residence is about 3 miles from the Roseau River and just a couple more miles from the wildlife refuge.

ALSO NOTICED: My husband stopped by after he dropped the kids off at school and not a single track was seen. He's an avid hunter and has been in law enforcement for nearly 14 years.

OTHER STORIES: About a month after the incident, I was able to contact the owner of the property through Facebook. After I explained who I was and what had happened, he was shocked. Not at my story so much but that his son had claimed that a night he was home alone he swore that someone or something was watching him through their living room window at the same residence. That window's bottom sill is probably 8 feet from the ground. He also said that he had trail cameras set up in the woods behind his house and the cards went missing from all of them. Not that a bigfoot would know to do that, but it's odd.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: I honestly remember looking at the clock and it was just after 6:30am. It was just before dawn. I could see light from the sun, but it hadn't come up over the horizon. More dark than light. The sky was clear because I could still see some stars in the sky. It was very cold with snow still on the ground but had been thawing slightly during the day and refreezing at night.

ENVIRONMENT: Combination of farmland and forest. More farmland south, more forest north. River and wildlife refuge to the north. Pig farm just to the northwest (the direction it was coming from).

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Robert Barhite:

I spoke with Priscilla regarding the early morning road crossing. She had left at 6:30 am to go to Grand Forks. It was a chilly, early spring morning and the roads were ice covered due to the melting snow and frost. The sun was just starting to rise (sunrise was approximately7:06 am). There was some daylight, but mostly shadows still at that time of the morning. Heading south on Highway 3 she was driving slowly, maybe 40-45 mph, because of the icy conditions. She was just a couple of minutes from her house and just passing a large farm, when she observed in her headlights what appeared to be a snowmobiler riding upright on the sled pausing in the west side ditch and with the lights off. The rider appeared to be wearing a very bulky suit and a large black helmet. Priscilla clearly remembers being perturbed that a snowmobiler without any lights on would cut her off. But, within a moment or so what she thought was a snowmobiler stood up in the ditch and ran upright on two legs across the road, covering the width of the highway and both shoulders in maybe five steps before it disappeared into woods near a mailbox of a farm where no one lived at the time. “It took the longest strides!” she said. Priscilla remembers thinking at the time, “What the heck just happened? It looked just like someone crossing the road.” There was enough early morning sunlight and headlights to tell the creature was black. She immediately called her husband.

About a month later Priscilla talked with the property owner of the vacant farm. The owner confirmed that no one was living there at the time. He also told her that two years earlier his son had an experience at the house as well.

“It blew my mind,” Priscilla said. “I used to laugh at Finding Bigfoot, but not anymore. There is no doubt in my mind what I saw.”

Roseau County, Minnesota, is located in far northwest Minnesota and borders Canada. There are many parks in the county, including the 54,915 acre Lost River State Forest.

About BFRO Investigator Robert Barhite:

A native of far northeast Iowa, Robert has always had an intense interest in Bigfoot and exploring the great outdoors.

His first expedition was the 2012 BFRO Iowa Hill Country Expedition He the 2013 Iowa Big River Expedition, 2013 Oregon Cascades Expedition, 2013 Michigan Upper Peninsula Expedition, 2014 and 2015 Wisconsin Expeditions, 2014 Iowa Expedition, and the 2015 Iowa Spring Expedition. Since 2012 Robert has participated in several private expeditions in Iowa and in Wisconsin. In addition to expeditions, he has conducted numerous solo research trips in Iowa and Wisconsin throughout 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016. And for the last two years has been a guest lecturer at the request of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. Robert led the 2016 Iowa Spring Expedition and is assisting with the 2016 Iowa Fall Expedition and is scouting locations across North America for 2017 expeditions, and continues to monitor activity in a long-term study location in the Midwest.

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