YEAR: 2001

SEASON: Fall

MONTH: October

STATE: Texas

COUNTY: Fannin County

NEAREST TOWN: Ector

OBSERVED: Our daughter told us this at Christmas following the event in October of 2001. She had been afraid of ridicule and did not mention it until we decided we needed to tell her about its existence. We had become acutely aware of its passing through our area due to its screams which could be heard several nights in a row in the creek (Caney) bottom below our house (about 3/4 mile). I had been aware of the screaming since I moved to this location in the winter of 85/86. Local residents had spoken of a "wild man" that jumped fences and made loud yells but I assumed that if the stories were true, they were referring to some mentally ill human. It was years later that I became aware that there were sasquatch-type creatures along the Red River. In September of 2000 my wife and I found some extremely unusual rock formations in the Kiamichi Mountains of Oklahoma and in the course of our investigations were told of 6 bigfoots that lived in the area by a 98 year old resident. When we arrived home around 9:30 pm that night we heard the screaming down in the creek bottom and all the livestock, dogs and cats in the vicinity were agitated for days afterward. We heard the screams even after sunrise the following day. We did not mention this to our daughter because she worked a night shift in Sherman and returned home between 2 and 3 am. During a series of nights in the fall of 2001 my wife became so anxious that she finally decided to tell our daughter so that she would get into the house quickly at night. By Christmas, though, our daughter had moved to Sherman and would not even come back to get her clothes. That's when she finally told us what she had seen. As she drove up the one lane gravel road that connects the new highway to where we live, it ran a few yards in front of her headlights, running very fast upright from the west to the east. This is an open cow pasture on the west bounded by a barbed wire fence about chest high. On the east side of the road was a maize field and an abandoned house about 200 yards further. My wife pressed her for details but all she said was "It looked like that thing from Harry and the Hendersons". She doesn't like to talk about the incident because her friends in town make fun of it. After this incident early in 2002, my wife and I found a coyote completely stripped of flesh except for the paws. It was very fresh and the bones were still "wet"; that is they were not dried and discolored to white. I cannot positively say what did that but I've lost 14 dogs since I've lived here and I have never found any traces of their bodies or bones. Then around June of this year I went into the fallow field behind my house to dig for some very old stone artifacts I've been finding for two years on a low mound above the creek. There in the yellow clay was a very large human looking footprint between 14 and 16 inches long on the side of a trench I had excavated about 3 feet deep. I noticed a swarm of flies boiling around something on the opposite side of the trench from the footprint. It turned out to be a square piece of white meat about two inches square and 1/4 inch thick. One of the edges had coarse hair like a coyote's. I brought my wife back and showed her the track and the meat. She thought we ought to make a cast of the track but I told her it was pointless as no amount of casts would ever convince anyone of anything. Besides, I was not interested in convincing anyone of the thing's existence; those who are involved don't need to be convinced and those who need convincing aren't involved. We have seen "nests" in the tall grass behind the house and under the big pecan tree in front of the house. They could be some other large animal bedding down but there are not many animals that big around here since we stopped pasturing cattle a couple of years ago. I have suddenly smelled a strong skunk like odor when I've been digging at my site but we have a lot of skunks around here. On two occasions I've found stone artifacts lying on top of soil I've removed from my excavation the next day as if they had been left there for me. At the suggestion of a bigfoot hunter from Sulphur, Oklahoma, I left a small hand mirror and some dried fruit in a plastic bag at my dig site, but nothing ever disturbed them. Likewise I leave all the natural flakes and pebbles I dig up in small piles but I've never found them disturbed either. Many times as I am digging I have a strong sense of something watching me from the treeline on the creek below but I've never seen anything to confirm that.

ALSO NOTICED: The footprint we saw was between 14 and 16 inches long and had a prominent big toe. It was very human looking except for its size and the fact that nobody would be walking barefoot there since there are all kinds of stickers in that field.
Our daughter described it as bigger than a man running upright very fast but slightly hunched over. It was covered with fur and in her words looked "like that thing in 'Harry and the Hendersons.'" The screams we have heard many times are a long sustained note with a short "yell" at the end. The sound is like a wolf combined with an owl and a human but distinctly different than any of these. It often seems to be taunting the cattle to drive them into a frenzy of panic.

OTHER WITNESSES: Me, my wife and daughter.

OTHER STORIES: The "Direct Monster" comes through the area twice a year in the fall and early spring. One was reported in the '50's crossing Hwy 82/56 at Mill Creek in Grayson County. Earlier this year I was told that one ran out of a man's barn early one morning near Colbert, Oklahoma which is between Denison, Texas and Durant, Oklahoma in southern Bryan County. In Broken Bow, Oklahoma the Choctaw residents have been terrorized since last spring by a bigfoot they claim threw one of their community over a cliff, killing him.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Various.

ENVIRONMENT: Open pasture surrounded by hardwood forest. Our area is nothing but farms, pastures and barns. The nearest concentration of houses is in the little town of Ector.

Follow-up investigation report:

I interviewed the witness and his wife. The couple had prior knowledge of bigfoot activity in the area around their home north of Ector, Texas. He had heard local accounts of a “wild man” moving through the area, had done research at the Bonham Library, and had visited the Sulphur, OK area with researchers from another group.

According to the witness, the local waterway by the name of Caney Creek would be a suitable means of an unknown animal to travel and not be seen. There seems to be food sources in pears, pecans, small game and livestock to support an animal that was moving through the area for a short time. Livestock, pets and animals such as coyotes had been reported mutilated.

The couples' daughter was the only member of the family to have a sighting, and does not want to discuss the incident. The creature was reported to move in front of her headlights running in a slouched manner early one morning as she was returning home from work.

A foot print was found by the witness that looked like a large human print on his property. The number of toes numbered 3 or 4, it was hard to tell from the deterioration of the prints.

The family has heard screams, growls, and a pounding sound as though something large was pounding the ground one night near their home. He felt that perhaps something was tampering with the back door on the same evening, around 3 or 4 a.m.

I feel there is a possibility of an unknown creature moving down Caney Creek from the Red River area, possibly from more remote areas in Oklahoma. Future plans were made at the time of the interview for our research team to look around the area.

TBRC Investigator

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