Recently, A man named Marc forwarded a first-hand account of an encounter with Bigfoot near Ft. Lewis, Washington in 1989. A friend of his had been stationed at the Army base.
He and his platoon were practicing a recon mission along the Nisqually River a few miles from the fort. The commanding office ordered one of the soldiers to swim across the river and scope out what was happening on the other side. The soldier did as he was told, and swam across the river. He climbed up the steep, muddy embankment on the other side and disappeared into the forest. The rest of the platoon waited for a few minutes and then heard the soldier scream. Seconds later, he reappeared into view, flying down the embankment with a terrified look on his face. He was in hysterics as he crossed the river.
When he was safely on the other side he collapsed onto the ground, and told his platoon that he had inadvertently run into Bigfoot on the other side. Caught off guard, the creature freaked out, and took off running in the opposite direction. As he recounted what happened, the other soldiers could unmistakably hear the sounds of something large and heavy barreling through the trees and foliage on the other side.
Marc's friend informed him that the soldier who had run into the creature, left the army not long after. He moved to Oregon and became involved with the Bigfoot investigations there. The encounter had changed his life.
I had previously posted an account of a possible Sasquatch incident near the same military installation. I later received several BFRO links from a reader (Joe C.) describing other military-related Bigfoot encounters, including another report from Ft. Lewis in Pierce County, WA:
Report # 11930 (Class B)
Submitted by witness on Monday, June 20, 2005.
Soldier sees large figure while on patrol at Fort Lewis
YEAR: 1971
SEASON: Winter
MONTH: March
STATE: Washington
COUNTY: Pierce County
LOCATION DETAILS: This occurred in 1971 so if you could locate the barracks area of Company E 4th Battalion 2nd Brigade. You will find the location.
NEAREST TOWN: Ft.Lewis
NEAREST ROAD: unknown
OBSERVED: Read report 3281.
I had basic training at Ft.Lewis, WA. I was there from Jan. 71 to May 71. I was assigned to Company E 4th Battalion 2nd Brigade. That is were my barrack was. Between the barracks was an open field 100 yds or more wide.
On the other side of the field the outline of the forest trees began and after them more trees and more trees.
Anyway it was winter and it had snow. The area was covered in snow. It was a cold clear night. There was a full moon which illuminated the night sky. I can't recall what month it was. I was assigned guard duty of our barracks area. My shift was the early mourning hours (After midnight). I was to walk for two hours patrolling our company area.You could hear the crunching of the snow under my boots as I walk.
As I was walking towards the last barrack, I was facing the open field. I saw something at the distance in front of were the forest trees began. It was walking towards me and then it would stop. Where it stood, I looked to the right side of the area and to the left side of the area and saw only this thing in front of me. It started to move again towards me. I saw a silhouette of a figure it was all black.
When it walk it was swaying back and fourth. Scared, I turned around and walked towards my barrack and went inside and told no one about what I saw. A day or two later I think it was in the Seattle times newspaper there were photos taken of Bigfoot prints in the snow near a fence at a ranch in the area. I wonder if this is what I saw that night?
ALSO NOTICED: Come to think of it the figure I saw looked like the thing on the DVD cover 'The Legend Of Boggy Creek'. It was swaying back and forth as it walk. That is the silhouette I saw a black figure walking towards me.
OTHER WITNESSES: None
OTHER STORIES: The newspaper article I mentioned here. Also the report listed on your website.
TIME AND CONDITIONS: Early morning (after midnight) Maybe between 1AM and 3AM. Clear winter night. Full moon.
ENVIRONMENT: The barracks. The open field covered wit snow.At the end of the field a lot of pine forest.
Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Kristine W.:
The witness was a brand new, 19 year-old soldier going through basic training when he had this encounter. He was so new that he had not even been issued a weapon yet. The witness described himself as a city boy from San Jose, California who was unused to the heavily wooded areas of the Pacific Northwest.
The witness’s assigned duty was to patrol the perimeter of the barracks area. He carried a folding shovel instead of a weapon. He came to a field that was about 100 yards to the tree line. In front of the tree line was a black figure that moved with an unusual, swaying gait. When the figure stopped walking and held still, it blended so well into its background that it looked just like a stump or tree.
The soldier couldn’t believe his eyes because there were not supposed to be any personnel out at that time of night. He looked to the left and right of the figure, then back at it, just trying to figure out what he was seeing. What made it look unusual was the "huge" size (much taller and bulkier than a man), the way it was able to blend into the background and its peculiar swaying walk. The witness said the shoulder area was exceptionally broad and that the figure looked “big on top.”
The young man was scared by what he saw and decided to go back inside the barrack. He told no one for fear he would be forced to “investigate” what was out there. He said his folding shovel didn’t seem like a very effective weapon against an animal of this size.
At the time of the sighting, the witness did not know what he was observing. It was not until he saw an article about sasquatches that he determined what he might have seen.
Fort Lewis is almost 16 square miles in size and has a long history of possible sasquatch activity within its borders.
The other link provided was:
US Army Ranger training mission near Greenwater finds large barefoot human shaped tracks
The following BFRO report from Alaska was also forwarded:
Report # 6486 (Class B)
Submitted by witness on Friday, June 13, 2003.
Special Forces team follows bipedal trackway, gets screamed at
YEAR: 1988
SEASON: Spring
MONTH: March
STATE: Alaska
COUNTY:
LOCATION DETAILS: The team was flown by helicopter out of Wainwright A.F. Base in a south-easterly direction for about an hour before being dropped off in the wilderness for an orienteering excercise lasting several days. The location is north of the Brooks Range and south of the region of the National Petroleum Reserve. Technically, the area is in the North Slope Borough of Alaska.
NEAREST TOWN: Not pertinent.
NEAREST ROAD: None
OBSERVED: In March of 1988, I was the Team Commander (Captain in rank) of a Special Forces "A" Team, conducting a Strategic Reconnaisance training mission in Alaska. There were 11 soldiers on the Team with a lot of Special Forces experience between them. We were wearing rucksacks and walking through the deep snow in a wooded area with cross-country skis. As we approached an area where the woods were too thick to go through on the skis, I decided to walk ahead on snow shoes with two other soldiers to check out the way ahead. After walking about 200 meters into the thicker woods, we came across a set of tracks that immediately drew our attention. The tracks were obviously of a two-legged creature walking through the woods on a course perpendicular to our own. Human tracks of any kind are extremely rare in that part of Alaska but these were particulary unique due to the length of the stride and the fact that there was no crushed snow on either the entry or the exit side of the holes.
We stopped to investigate. When each of us took off our snow shoes we sank into the snow to a depth of about 2 feet (above the knee). When we attempted to take a step in the deep snow, we left an area of crushed snow on the entry side of the hole and then crushed the snow again upon taking our foot out of the hole to take the next step. Our feet made a drag mark in the snow as well no matter how hard we tried to extract the foot without touching the surrounding snow. The best any of us could do was a stride between steps of about 1 1/2 feet. The tracks we were looking at had a stride of over 5 feet between steps and left the snow on both entry and exit from the hole totally untouched. After discussing the rational possibilities for a while, I sent one of my men back to bring up the rest of the Team. Between the 11 men on that Team, we had over 150 years of combined Special Forces experience in the woods all over the planet. They also had extensive experience in the tracking of everything with either two or four legs. We all studied the tracks and tried to come up with a reasonable explanation for what we were looking at. Only one explanation seemed to fit everything we saw but it was not a reasonable explanation. Based on our group experience in tracking humans, we made an approximate determination as to the height and weight of the person who had made the tracks based on the stride and depth of indentation in the snow. THe group consensus was a two-legged person about around 9 ft tall and weighing approximately 500 to 600 pounds. That was our best educated guess.
I then made a decision to set the training mission aside for a while and to follow the tracks through the woods. Wearing snow shoes, we followed those tracks for about an hour before we heard it. From somewhere ahead of us (and quite a distance from what we could tell) we heard the most horrific sound any of us has ever heard. Every other sound in the woods went instantly silent and we could almost hear our hearts beating. The only other time any of us has heard that kind of silence in the woods or jungle was in the last seconds before initiating an ambush. It is as though every creature and insect in the woods knows that something is about to die and they go silent out of fear or self-preservation. After hearing the sound (it was a cross between a howl and a roar), my Team Sergeant (the most senior and experienced member of my Team) stopped me and said, "Sir, speaking for both myself and the rest of the Team, we really do not want to know what is at the end of these tracks (expletives deleted)". This was surprising to me in that, through all of their years in Special Forces, these men had never expressed a fear of anything on two or four legs. I understood their consternation and agreed to resume the original mission. There was also a general consensus not to discuss the incident with anyone upon our return. Mind you that we were on a training misson and did not have live ammunition so any eventual confrontation with whoever or whatever made those tracks would not have been without a great deal of danger. Our curiosity to know what it was that made the tracks was overcome by the reality that we would be no match for it and, more importantly, that we really did not want to know what was at the end of those tracks. Tracks in the snow are much easier to deny and ignore than actually seeing what made them. My soldiers, and I, were afraid of what we heard and saw and the soldiers just didn't want to know.
The tracks stayed on the military crest of ridgelines and in low areas as much as possible. The only times the tracks crossed a ridgeline was in a saddle where it would not be seen. The thing which struck us all as odd was that, while the tracks depicted someone far too large to be human, whatever was making the tracks was moving through the woods exactly as one of us would have if we were conducting an escape and evasion. Whatever it was knew the land (as it maneuvered to bypass clearings well before they came into view) and was making a concentrated effort to remain unseen. I still think that the sound we heard was intended to warn us to back off and not follow.
I have thought back on that incident hundreds of times and wondered how it would have turned out if we had proceeded to follow the tracks. There are pros and cons to both sides of the issue. As for me, there are just some things that cannot be denied. Since then, I have had a VERY healthy respect for Sasquatch.
ALSO NOTICED: There was no denying the tracks and what they meant. As for the sound we heard, it was like nothing any of us had experienced in all of our years in the various woods and jungles around the world.
OTHER WITNESSES: 10 Special Forces soldiers other than myself.
OTHER STORIES: No
TIME AND CONDITIONS: Middle afternoon. Clear day, not snowing, temperature around freezing.
ENVIRONMENT: Thickly wooded area, rolling terrain.
Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Dr. Wolf H. Fahrenbach:
This extraordinarily concise report is indubitable the northernmost record of any sasquatch observation. An unverified report (Unreachable) stems from Unalakleet, about 5 degrees of latitude (450 miles) to the south.
The officer who submitted this report was, when I contacted him, overseas on duty and I talked with him at length when he returned. His report was factual and to the point, without exaggeration. Given some considerable delay between the originator retelling this account, assorted inaccuracies might have crept in along the way, specifically names and directions (since they were not specifically told where they were being taken on this orienteering mission).
The footprints were very large and essentially round, presumably from snow adhering to the hair on the sides of the foot. The witness could turn his boot with inflatable "Mickey Mouse" overboots sideways in the footprint.
The witness described and imitated partially the singularly guttural, angry sounding growling scream at a deep pitch.
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