YEAR: 1997

SEASON: Winter

STATE: Oklahoma

COUNTY: Payne County

LOCATION DETAILS: 6 miles west on highway 33, 1 mile north, northeast corner.

NEAREST TOWN: Perkins

NEAREST ROAD: Highway 33

OBSERVED: My family and I arrived home after sundown and I left my car headlights on to open the door to my house. We could hear my dog barking and coming toward us when he chased what I at first thought was a man. When it came around the trees we could see it was dark brown, covered with fur, and running towards the car (which we were still in). It then veered and ran back into the woods, still followed by our dog.

It looked to me to be more of a youth than full grown.

OTHER STORIES: I don't know of any other stories.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Just after dusk. Clear and cold night.

ENVIRONMENT: My home was in the back of a field, surrounded by trees. There is also a creek very nearby.

Follow-up investigation report:

I spoke with the reporting witness, E. D., by phone for about forty minutes. E. D. could not get more specific regarding the date of the sighting than what she originally indicated; it was sometime between December of 1997 and the following March. She did remember that it was very cold. E. D. and her husband had just returned home with their three young children.

The home was located in a rural part of Oklahoma between Coyle and Stillwater. Area residents commonly kept livestock. The nearest neighbor lived a quarter of a mile away. E. D. and her family resided in a trailer sitting at the back of a pasture. A very large cedar grew near the trailer. Its branches were described as going all the way to the ground - the typical growth form. A heavily wooded creek ran behind the trailer. This creek joins the Cimarron River, a tributary of the Arkansas River; the rivers meet west of Tulsa, a distance of about forty miles.

As was their custom when arriving home after dark, E. D.’s husband got out of the car to unlock the trailer’s entrance while she stayed with the car (she was the driver) waiting to turn off the headlights. As the family prepared to leave the vehicle they could hear their dog barking and crashing through the vegetation near the creek. At that time the dog, a pit bull and boxer mix, was less than one year old; E. D. described it as a big pup.

The sound of the dog’s barking drew nearer. E. D. said she hesitated in exiting the vehicle because she could hear something coming. Suddenly the dog and an upright creature burst from behind the cedar and into the headlights of the car. It approached within twenty-five feet of the family before turning quickly and running away, this time on the other side of the cedar. Max, the dog, was right on the creature’s heels.

The family watched it disappear into the darkness, then they retreated, terrified, into the vehicle. The creature was in their sight for about four seconds; it was fully illuminated by the headlights for about half that time. No one noticed any unusual vocalizations. E. D. said Max came right back.

E. D. could not get anyone to come to the property to check things out. Greatly concerned for the safety of her children, she no longer allowed them to play outside. The encounter caused the family to move shortly thereafter.

Like most people, E. D. was aware of sasquatches and identified the creature in her yard as one, but she thought the animals only lived in the Pacific Northwest. Fearing ridicule, she and her husband kept the sighting to themselves for two years. When news reports concerning a bigfoot sighting in southeastern Oklahoma came to their attention last winter (Jan. 2000), the decision was made to tell the story. E. D. went to the Internet, checked out several bigfoot-related sites, and submitted a report to the BFRO.

There are several aspects to this report that I find interesting: the number of witnesses (4), the size of the animal, and the pursuit by a dog.

I don’t know the national average for number of witnesses per sighting, but I would guess it is only slightly greater than one. The older two children in this case were not interviewed, but I did speak to the husband and wife. This situation, naturally, creates a more comfortable environment for the witnesses and the investigator.

E. D. mentioned in her submission that the animal seemed young. I asked her several questions about that, trying to get a more specific picture of what she saw. She described it as about five feet tall, arriving at this estimate by comparing it to herself. It was quite close, if only briefly, and E.D., who is five and a half feet tall, said it appeared to be a little shorter than she, thus the guess as to its height.

I also asked her about its build. This was more difficult to quantify. She said it was not thin and it was not huge; finally she described it as having “bulk.” She did not recall seeing any muscle definition.

The animal ran swiftly. One of the things that impressed E. D. was the way it held its arms out from its body, bent at the elbow and pointing down, as it ran. She thought perhaps this assisted its balance as it made the sudden turn after entering the glare of the headlights. The fact that it had an obvious bend in its arms at the elbows implies to me that it was also bent over at the waist, even though E. D. did not specifically offer that observation during our first conversation. I suggest this because of the way she said the hands and forearms were angled toward the ground. The only other way to achieve this position of the arms would be to rotate the shoulders forward, which is not a natural running position. This also suggests the possibility that the standing height of the animal was at least a few inches more than the estimated five feet. (During a subsequent conversation E. D. stated that the creature was bent over at the waist.)

I asked E. D. if what she and her family observed could have been a kid wearing some kind of hooded winter clothing. She stated emphatically that they could clearly see that it was covered with thick hair. The hair on the arms, while not long, could be seen hanging down as it turned. She said the hair was so thick, appearing thicker even than a gorilla’s, that it looked furry. The hair color was described as dark brown, with a slight reddish cast.

The pursuit of a sasquatch by a dog is also unusual. Most dogs are reported to be frightened of the creatures, especially when they are close to each other. I can only speculate that the dog was too young to know any better and the sasquatch was too small to scare the dog and/or too inexperienced to know how to deal with the situation.

It is natural to wonder why the sasquatch was there in the first place. Possibly it was simply wandering through the region. My guess is that it was looking for food. Although people living in the country often have typical barnyard-type animals around, I doubt that the creature seen by E. D. and her family posed much of a threat to livestock. The family also kept a garden, but nothing would have been available to pilfer in mid-winter.

Perhaps the animal was seeking to supplement its diet with garbage. This area of the state does not have trash service. Residents have to burn their garbage. A large hole dug in the ground often serves as a container for trash and wastes of all kinds, including food. About once a week, E. D. said, the garbage is burned. This is the procedure followed by many families in that area. It’s at least conceivable that a sparsely populated agricultural area with plenty of water, dense cover, and abundant small game, could offer a juvenile sasquatch a suitable temporary home, especially when food scraps are routinely made available.

Although extremely nervous about talking to anyone regarding what she and her family experienced, I found E. D. to be completely credible.

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