YEAR: 1978

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: May

DATE: May, 1978

STATE: Arkansas

COUNTY: Hempstead County

LOCATION DETAILS: Just east of Hope Arkansas and beside State highway 73.

NEAREST TOWN: Hope

NEAREST ROAD: Arkansas highway 73.

OBSERVED: April-May 1978
Hope, Arkansas. Hempstead county

Sighting was at a farm house (no longer there) on hwy 73 between hwy 278 and hwy 195.

My family lived on a farm with all of your typical farm animals, and we all worked on the farm. There wasn't much sitting and watching TV. The house was your typical little farm house that set back off the hwy about 50ft and behind it was a huge pasture with cows and horses. To the left of the house there was a small thicket that had a pond in the middle of it. Which is cleared out now. Directly behind the house another small patch of trees and brush on the pasture side of the barbed wire fence. The back yard was butted up to the fenced pasture where my horse Diamond would avoid and would always go the other side of the house to visit me. Back yard was big and full fresh cut grass. I didn't like playing in the back or on the side that had the thicket and the pond, but this day my mom had bought me a big red ball. I took the ball outside while my mom and 2 older brothers were in the house finishing up chores. I'm kicking the ball around and wind up in the back yard with it. There was a foldable chaise my mom used to lay out in. So I started kicking the ball around that chair playing soccer in my head with this big red ball. I kicked it really hard and it rolled to that small thicket behind the house and stopped at the fence. I ran really fast after it, bent down to pick it up and when I had the ball in my hands I heard something above me I looked up and there was this huge monster as I described at the time. It had it's huge hands on the fence bending over the fence at me. It wasn't too far from my face and looked me right in the eyes. I was starting to scream, but it took me a minute because I was frozen. It looked at me like it was studying me and when I started to scream it neared it's mouth open at me and it's human like eyes was darting around my house. (Because I was screaming at the top of my lungs by then.) And i knew it knew it was in deep crap, i kept screaming and i was running backward away from it while i was screaming bloody murder. I saw it up close and very personal. I felt at the time it wanted me, not sure if it wanted me for food or as a pet.

As I was running backwards from it and it was looking at my house and decided to run from me. By this time I was up against my house screaming with my nails dug into my house. My mom came running from the front of the house and my brothers came from the other side of the house. They were asking me what's wrong what happen?! My mom thought I was hurt. She was looking for blood. My brothers and mom were asking me questions and I never took my eyes off where I last saw it. My mom and brothers finally got me calmed down enough to tell them about the monster I saw. At first my mom didn't know what to think. She got scared herself. My 2 brothers were scared out of their wits when I told them and my mom. My brothers had been telling my mom that when they go fishing in the thicket pond there would be rocks thrown into the water and were blaming each other at first. Then they thought my dad was messing with them, but he'd be at work during that time. My bothers were very shaken at me seeing this monster. Looking back now at this it makes me wonder if it had been watching us for quite some time..waiting...After I told them of this experience they did not go back to the pond by themselves after this. I was 5-6 and they are 7 and 9 years older than me.

It's waist was well over the barbed wire fence which the top wire came midway to top of a quarter horses back. The top wire came to the monsters upper mid thigh.

Human type eyes you could tell it was very smart because when I started screaming it immediately looked right at my house for other humans and got nervous. I felt It wanted me. It had long orangutan colored hair all over it. The hands looked like a gorilla but had a full thumb like a human, and not the nub like a gorilla. It had hazel yellowish eyes. It's face covered with leathery looking skin with hair. Long arms very muscular. Walked and ran on two legs. It smelled like a unkempt wet dog, mixed with a skunk and goat smell. Many years later visiting a zoo I smelled the primates section and my memory was like yeah that primate smell with goat and skunk and dog. My brother was a very good artist and some years later he had me describe it to him in detail and he drew it exactly, but have since lost the paper.

This thing wanted me and as a child I suffered trauma from experiencing this. I wish I would've never seen it. I used to tell people about it until I got to my mid 20's and got made fun of for seeing it an “imaginary” creature. It wasn't until I was 12 or 13 that I came across that bigfoot movie that's real popular. I fell out because I showed it to my mom and said MOM! This is what it was but it didn't look like this it was orange colored. Then I knew I saw a Bigfoot that day. It's permanently in my mind of that day I will never forget. This was 1978, no internet, no cnbc, no cnn. We didn't watch a lot of TV then. I know what I saw. It wasn't my imagination like my dad said it must be. It wasn't till I got older and kept telling him the story over and over exactly the same that he finally said I believe you. I only wanted to protect you and didn't want to admit that I believed you then. But we did move to Washington state right after that! Looking back now I'm like really??dad! But he didn't know...That's where they all are. But really they are all over the States. They are very intelligent.

That's the just of my first encounter….I HAD A 2ND ONE years later. Even though I had that encounter previously that didn't stop me from being a country kid. I still hunted in the woods but I didn't go unless I was armed. This time it was about 25 miles south of Hope, Arkansas in a town called Bodcaw, Arkansas. Lots of timber and dirt roads chicken houses some houses are as close together as a mile. It's country! I was 16 and a few of us would sometimes sneak out at night and go to this spot in the woods to have a bonfire and drink whatever we could snag from our parents liquor cabinet.

So, where I lived on this dirt road off the hwy 32 it dipped downhill back up a big hill them ran flat. We lived after those 2 hills. If i sat on the first hill looking toward the highway I could see headlights turn in. So I sneaked out of my house start walking down by the dirt road to wait on my friends to get there. All is quiet, normal nighttime noises and such. I get to the hill and wait on the dirt road for them. Back then we didn't have cell phones we just had to time things right.

So I'm sitting on this hill and there is huge pasture behind me, I faced the woods. I light up a cigarette and I'm sitting there on the dirt waiting on my friends. I'm hearing some deer running through the woods and they are taking the low ground on each side of the hill. Full moon very bright. Some run through there, being a hunter myself I started to wonder what's chasing these deer? Coyotes? Panthers? So I am listening, more deer are running through on each side of the hill. I thought what in the world?!! Thats a lot of deer!! WHAT COULD HAVE had them so spooked like this. Now I'm seeing a lot more deer! Like a stampede of them. I'm not talking 5 or 6 deer. I could see them in the moonlight clearly. The most deer I have ever saw at one time. Well over 50 and more. I'm still sitting on this hill and by then I'm kinda getting nervous there is still more coming but im hearing huge heavy steps but the 2 legged kind all spread out. More than one. I'm still on this hill all bug eyed. Hairs all over my body start going up and I'm praying that whatever it is isn't going to come out on top of this hill. All of this didn't take 10 minutes from the first few deer that flew out of the woods, to the stampede to the elephant sounding footsteps. I'm still on the hill looking back and forth at the bottom of these hills. I saw 2 bigfoots run to the left and 3 run to my right. They didn't miss a step in chasing these deer following these deer exactly where they ran and they are fast. It was a flash of them. At first I'm like ok it was a bear, but bears don't run that fast on 2 legs and it was too tall and too heavy to be a bear. Not wanting to admit to myself i just got caught in the middle of a feeding! I heard all 5 of them clear the fence behind me like a deer and they were trying to gather the deer into an open spot to snag them. I turn around to the pasture to try to see the commotion, but I heard the huge footsteps fading as fast as they got there. Clouds started covering any light I had to see anything..then I thought what if there is more and here my ass is a sitting duck. I was froze there for a minute not wanting to bring attention to myself as a “lost deer” or a potentially tasty morsel that's better than deer. How do I know?! I took of running full blast to my house ¼ mile away from that hill I was on. I didn't stop till I got in my house. Luckily I didn't wake up my parents! I eventually told them about what happened to me that night. And they were too occupied with me sneaking out to listen to what I saw! So over the next few days I had asked the landowner that had the hay pasture my back was turned to if he found any dead deer in his pasture when he mowed for hay. He knew I was a hunter and asked me usual questions about what was I hunting with and things related to that. I didn't tell him about the stampede or anything. I wanted to know if he saw anything the next day in his pasture. Hurt animals and such. He also had cows but they we're on another fenced pasture and he kept that one clear of cattle for hay.

He said I have in the past came across a dead cow here and there, but no deer. So I went to look to see if I could find any evidence of these things. During the daylight bright noon! I looked at the fence where they all jumped over and I found hairs but it looked to be mostly deer. I saw lots of deer tracks on either side of that hill but no footprints or track prints of anything but deer.

I've seen these things run full blast. It's unbelievable at how fast they are! They can cover a lot of ground in just a short time. I know what I saw that night on the hill. It was no bear or anything that had 4 legs. It wasn't anyone in suits, because why would weird people run around in suits chasing deer and humans can not run that fast. I knew after they past me over the fence I smelled their stench. Primate, wet dog, goat and skunk. These were black not the orange color of the other one I saw. The moon was big full and bright that night and I could tell the color of the deer while they were running full blast past me. Needless to say….that was the last time I sat on a dirt road at night by myself with nothing but a cigarette.
I could wrap my brain over the fact that I just saw them in a feeding frenzy, and they hunted in a group! Triangulated the deer to an open area for an easier catch. That in itself was amazing to me.

ENVIRONMENT: [Investigator note: Small rolling hills with extensive areas of wetlands in the valleys]

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Tal H. Branco:

The observations the witness provided about both of these incidents are unusually detailed and convincing.This investigator and many other hunters are aware that the general areas in which these events occurred are inhabited by groups of animals as described by this witness during her second encounter.

About BFRO Investigator Tal H. Branco:

Tal Branco is a lifelong resident of AR. He began hunting, fishing and tracking many years ago in south AR. Since he was a teenager, his outdoor activities have been primarily conducted in the Ouachita Mountains, although during the past forty years he has also conducted field investigations of reports of enigmatic and unclassified animals in the southeastern U.S. and in the Amazon Basin of Brazil.

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