YEAR: 1999

SEASON: Summer

MONTH: July

DATE: 10/26/03

STATE: Georgia

COUNTY: Carroll County

LOCATION DETAILS: The area is steep terrain in some places clear cut in some and very wooded in others. This is a very remote area with several thousands of acres. There is plenty of game in the area and a well known whitetail hunting area.

NEAREST TOWN: Whitesburg, Ga

NEAREST ROAD: Hutcheson Ferry Rd

OBSERVED: MY brother and I were fishing on wolf creek in a area known as high shoals. This area is heavily wooded with steep terrain and a rushing waterfall. We had park our truck at the top of the hill and walk down the trail to the creek below. We had been fishing about a hour and had no luck when we decided to move upstream. We got our gear together and starting walking up the shoals and heard a large splash hit the water up ahead. We first thought it was a rock that had rolled of the side of the steep terrain when suddenly a large black/brown human like creature was slashing at the water with it's long arms. The creature never new we were there and we must have viewed him for 2-3 mins playing around in the water. We never moved only making eye contact with each other. Suddenly it darted off to the right up the steep terrain not knowing whether it had seen us or not. We never got a good look at it's face. It must have been 6-7ft. around 300-400lbs. and look very healthly. We were around 25-30yds from it. We kept this to ourselves for quite a while only shareing it with family members . We have returned to the area several times and have never seen it again but have seen unexplained markings when no bear is to be in the area.

ALSO NOTICED: The area where it went up the bank was very steep and torn up

OTHER WITNESSES: My brother and myself

OTHER STORIES: Douglasville, Ga

TIME AND CONDITIONS: It was around 3:00 P.M. the weather was hot, sunny, and clear

ENVIRONMENT: High shoals is a gorge like area with small caves on it's banks very wooded damplike from the waterfall. Mostly hardwoods with pines and a lot of rocks

Follow-up investigation report:

This is one of those investigations where I came away knowing sasquatch is real.

I talked for about an hour by phone to the man who submitted this report, “John” (46 years old), and to his brother, “Joe” (50), the other witness. Both men impressed me as intelligent, normal, and utterly sincere as they described the sighting and their reaction to it – an unsettled fear and upset that such a thing is out there.

John figured the sound of the shoals drowned out the sounds of their approach. He said, “We seen something move and… there was this… I don’t know what… I mean, our hearts just stopped! This thing had its back to us…” The men and the creature were standing in about knee-deep water. “His arms looked like they were, I don’t know… four foot long… almost down to his knees. And it was just splashing, just hitting the water very forcefully with his hands… We were frozen and… he never knew we were there.”

“It had wide broad shoulders on it… and its neck looked like… it didn’t have a neck. It looked like its head and shoulders were all one.” The waist area seemed more narrow. He couldn’t describe the legs really except to say they went down into the water and didn’t seem too long. I believe he meant the legs weren’t as proportionally long as the arms seemed to be. The creature was a brownish, blackish, reddish, John said. More reddish where the neck would be and then darker again on top of the head. And he said its hair looked like a real full coat of hair, not a short hair by any mean but a long hair. Joe described the hair color as chocolate. John said it looked real healthy.

The only explanation for the creature’s splashing that John could offer was that it was trying to cool itself. Joe didn’t seem to notice the splashing after the creature came into sight like John did; he’d certainly heard it as they were walking toward it, but didn’t seem to have seen or remembered the splashing once the creature came into view. He didn’t have much to say about the actual sighting generally – the way it looked, what it was doing – and I didn’t push him. Talking about it was obviously unpleasant for him.

After 30 seconds (at least, said Joe) to 3 minutes (2 to 3 minutes, thought John) of watching the thing splashing the water (according to John), the creature stopped, tilted its head up, leaped to the shore, and disappeared into the vegetation. Joe said it just walked to shore like it wasn’t surprised at all; “It seemed so human,” he said.

John thought it might have scented them, Joe said it seemed to sense they were there. Neither man was sure it ever knew they were there behind it; the creature never turned and looked at them.

Neither of the brothers had any prior interest in bigfoot or knowledge beyond the basic awareness of the issue most have. They aren’t particularly interested in it now either, but seeing what they saw seems to have forced them to look into the bigfoot phenomenon. John found the BFRO website; they talked it over and decided to report their sighting. The men have told only those close to them of their experience.

John and Joe have hunted since they were boys; they know the woods and the animals in it – they thought. Joe said that now when he hunts deer he waits for it to get light before he goes out. And he has sleepless nights. He said the thing was “inside my comfort zone” about 40 yards away (John thought 25 to 30 yards), meaning it was too close. Joe mentioned that during a recent elk hunt near Yellowstone Park a grizzly bear also invaded his comfort zone; it was about 75 yards away.

Joe was also bothered because aspects of the creature were so “human,” and he seemed somewhat comforted and a little surprised when I told him other witnesses have said the same thing. When I told him he was lucky to have seen it, he said he wishes he hadn’t and that he never wants to see another one. John made a point of saying he didn’t feel in danger during the sighting.

Joe also said that seeing the thing made him think back on incidents in his life that he didn’t understand at the time and has come to think could have been to do with this creature – the time a neighbor called saying something was after his cattle and asking that they bring their bear dog (a Plott) and four coon hounds over right away. They did. The dogs tore straight into the woods on the fresh trail but in a couple of minutes came running back whining, totally spooked by what they’d found. He’s never seen anything like it; the dogs had always been fearless. And there had always been strange vocalizations heard in the area – summers, but not every year. And there were the times coon hunting at night with hounds that something very big moved around them in the woods, unseen, beyond the bounds of their flashlights. (A coon hunter in Iowa told me the same thing).

I can’t find anything to explain away or even cast doubt upon what these men say they saw – watched for 30 seconds or more – a stone’s throw away: a big human-like, hair covered animal that stood and walked off on two legs... something that, though it well fits the description for the animal we call bigfoot or sasquatch, neither witness chose to name as such. “I don’t know what it was,” they both replied when I had said, “Well, if it wasn’t a bear or a man, what do you think it was?” Not only were both men certain the thing they saw was not a bear or a man, they said it couldn’t have been a person in a suit; it was too big, and it looked real; and that would be real dangerous, John said, because there are “gun happy” people around there.

This sighting took place just 50 miles from Atlanta.

• Explanation of the report classification system
• Submit a report for the sightings database
• Please send any comments or inquiries to ContactUs@BFRO.net