YEAR: maybe 1988

SEASON: Winter

STATE: Minnesota

COUNTY: Anoka County

LOCATION DETAILS: north on Lexington Ave. from Highway 96. cross 85th Ave. continue past Flowerfield Rd. You will barely see Hidden Lake on your right. Take a right on Woodland Rd. (just past the church). Take a right on 92nd Circle. Take the long driveway straight ahead, or walk in there. On your left you will see a trail (actually more than one but they all seem to come together). Looking south toward Hidden Lake you will see the shelters. This is the general area where the Bigfoot was seen.

NEAREST TOWN: Circle Pines

NEAREST ROAD: Woodland Road

OBSERVED: This is a second hand report. Our daughter and her friend, a neighbor, were about ten years old and it was approximately 1988. The two were walking into the woods off a trail near our home and saw a huge beige gorilla like creature. The minute they saw it they were so scared they ran home. Our daughter said there was no way this was a costumed person or another animal. It was a tall two legged creature covered with beige colored hair. The two girls reported this incident to me almost immediately after it happened. There was snow on the ground and they were wearing boots.

I wanted them to show me the clearing where the creature was standing so I could look for footprints. They said they would not go back there, they were too frightened. On the way to tell me they saw another neighbor in her yard and told her but she did not believe them. In the years since their sighting I have not thought much about it. However, after reading websites on Bigfoot I really feel we have had Bigfoot living in the woods here. It is not a really large area, but hard to get around in due to the marshy conditions around the small lake.

ALSO NOTICED: I noted that even now, about 15 years later, there are "shelters" built near the area, and a very strong odor of excrement. Loud screams have been heard in the same general area, and footprints in the snow of a very large size with a very large stride have been seen.

OTHER WITNESSES: There were two witnesses involved. They were looking for a tree with boards on it to climb. In the process they came upon the Bigfoot.

OTHER STORIES: None. I suspect if anyone has seen anything they are afraid to be considered imagining it. The shelters, however, are real. I don't know how anyone could explain what they are doing there otherwise

TIME AND CONDITIONS: This was during the day, not sure of time, it was clear and plenty of light. It may have been early spring but there was snow on the ground.

ENVIRONMENT: The incident occurred in a clearing between the woods and Hidden Lake. The area is wooded but near the lake it is marshy and hard to get to.

Follow-up investigation report:

The place where this sighting occurred is just north of Minneapolis/St. Paul in a loosely populated suburban area. A chain of large marshy lakes with substantial surrounding low lands and some wooded areas extend into the area from the north.

I was shown the place where the sighting occurred by “G,” one of the witnesses (now 25), and her mother, the person who submitted the report. I also interviewed the second witness by phone. Both women described essentially the same thing to me. Fifty to one hundred yards away they saw an upright, blonde colored “gorilla.” It was seen within the wild area only a quarter of a mile or so from the house lined street where the girls lived.

The creature was standing on a rise and was entirely visible to the two girls. At first it seemed to be bending over, but then it straightened up and seemed to notice the girls. At that point they ran home. The sighting was brief but both women impressed me as completely honest and sincere in their belief that they saw what they described to me: a big "gorilla" entirely covered with “blonde” hair. The second woman, “K,” said the animal was dirty, especially the legs. G told me, at the time, they called it a gorilla because they’d never heard of a bigfoot.

The "shelters" mentioned by the G's mother appeared to me to have been made by kids.

G and K saw something extraordinary when they were girls that has steadfastly stuck with them as real. If it was a sasquatch it is noteworthy for having been so near the Twin Cities. The chain of wild lakes and surrounding marsh land would have provided a corridor from the country to the north into the developing suburb where the creature was seen.

It is also interesting that the animal’s color was described by both witnesses as blonde. A 2001 sighting near Bemidji, Minnesota involved an animal described by the witnesses as tan or cardboard colored, and a 1972 sighting near Willow River, Minnesota was of two white creatures.

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