A southeast Oklahoma family is trapped in a storm dugout after a tornado. A tree had fallen on top of the door. Then they heard and smelled something outside, eventually rescuing them.
"I was checking on the animals when the weather radio blared out the tornado warning. I wasn't too surprised there was a large storm over the area (southeast Oklahoma) and there was already an advisory in effect. I closed up the barn door and hurried towards the house, meeting with my kids and my husband. Halfway there are tornado shelters and an old dugout house on the side of a hill from when my family first moved to the area. Tornadoes don't occur often in our area.
We got ourselves into the shelter and we barred the metal door. The dugout has had a few upgrades over the past century but the metal door was there from the beginning. My great-grandparents lived in the dugout for five years until they met the Homestead Act requirements. My great-grandpa didn't mind the dugout but my great-great-grandma was a whole different story. My husband keeps the dugout prepared for anything. His dad was a kid living in Woodward, Oklahoma when the Woodward tornado came through. His family survived the destruction but they became preachers of preparedness after that. He made sure that the dugout was stocked with a week's worth of canned food, water, a radio, flashlights, and batteries. We never had to use more than the radio and the flashlight in all these years of occasional tornado warnings until this particular tornado that is.
About five minutes after we settled into the dugout the wind started picking up outside. We could hear thunder and rain outside the doors. We started hearing the impacts of large hail hitting the metal dugout door. The sound of the wind changed to a roar, similar to a plane about to take off. We could hear the different sounds of objects hitting the door but then we heard a loud crack and a lot of scraping on the door. In total, the entire event lasted maybe seven minutes, but we didn't try to leave the dugout until the wind died down.
My husband unbarred the door and tried opening it but it would only open about an inch. We could see through the crack that the apple tree next to the dugout had blown over in front of the door. We tried to pry the door open every which way, slamming our bodies against the door but nothing worked. We were stuck in the shelter. We knew at some point there would be people checking on places in the tornado's path so we stuck a piece of wood in the crack of the door to hold it open and got comfortable, prepared to wait.
My husband never thought about latrine logistics for if you were trapped in a shelter. When 7 PM rolled around we discovered that claustrophobia and panic attacks can strike anyone no matter how prepared you are. We were safe and were prepared physically for a week, but I'm not sure our minds could have lasted a week. We could see it was dark through the crack of the door when a foul odor wafted in. It smelled like a wet dog combined with a male goat and a teenager's armpits. I thought it was an overly pungent skunk and I went to shut the door but I stopped when I heard what sounded like footsteps. We started yelling for help, calling out to whoever was out there but nobody responded. There was a shuffling sound and the smell got even stronger. My eyes were watering as I yelled out and pounded on the door. I heard a grunt before the sound of footsteps and the odor started fading away. The kids asked why the person didn't help us. I didn't know but I told them that maybe they were going for extra help. It didn't explain why the person didn't at least talk to us.
The footsteps returned. We yelled and pounded on the door and again no response. The footsteps and odor faded away again. This time I felt uneasy and I barred the door shut. Two times this person came and ignored our calls for help. Something wasn't right with this person. The kids and my husband fell asleep and I kept an ear out for rescuers for a few hours.
Around three in the morning, my daughter woke up from a nightmare and started crying. I was comforting her when I heard branches cracking and scraping against the door along with grunting. I woke my husband up and we pounded on the door and yelled. We could smell that odor again so we left the door bar just in case. When the noises outside stopped we waited about 10 minutes to try to open the door. This time the door opened enough for us to step out. The trunk of the tree was still laying near the door but there was a pile of branches off to the side. There were a lot of footprints but they were bigger than any foot I had ever seen. We woke our son up and we all left the dugout and headed towards the house. It was still dark but we could see that for the most part, the tornado didn't do much damage.
We checked the house. I headed out to the barn to see if the animals were okay. I was about halfway there when I heard one of our hogs screaming. I ran towards the barn and stopped a few yards away. I could see my market-ready Hampshire Barrow struggling and screaming while slung over the shoulder of a dark hulking human-like figure. I yelled at the figure to drop my pig and it just turned and looked at me. I shined my flashlight at the creature's face. It had a grayish face with a flat-looking nose. It had thin dark brown hair all over its body and massive feet. After a few seconds, it turned and walked into our cornfield towards the creek and disappeared from my view.
I've seen 'Finding Bigfoot' so I know what I was looking at. I know it was a Bigfoot. I talked to my mom and she said she had seen the 'wild people' when she was a kid. My great-great-grandpa had installed the metal door on the dugout after hearing stories of wild people in the area but the only trouble they seemed to cause was stealing livestock like what I had seen. We've had animals seemingly disappear in thin air over the years and it makes sense now.
By that point, I didn't mind the loss of the pig. The 'wild people' had rescued my family from the dugout."
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