I receive a fair amount of sighting reports from Arkansas & Missouri, mostly from the Ozarks region. This account it similar to other encounters I've received from the same general area
"In June of 2012, on a weekend, Don and Mary (not their real names) decided to go on a relaxing weekend drive through the rugged but beautiful countryside of Stone County, Arkansas, not far from their home in Batesville. They chose a route they had taken before, traveling north up Highway 5 between steep wooded bluffs.
“If it would help pinpoint the location, I remember there was a guard rail running along the opposite side of the road, and I looked on a map later and think we were just a little bit south of being straight west of Mt. Olive. We were on a relatively straight, level stretch of road and I noticed something brown and upright off to the left between the guard rail and a steep bluff on the left-hand side of the road. It was about the color of a dead cedar tree that had not yet lost its needles, and at first glance I thought maybe that was what it was. But I quickly realized it was the wrong shape and too solid-looking, if that makes any sense. At about that moment my wife said, ‘What is that thing?’”
As the witnesses drew closer to the mysterious object they came to realize what they were seeing, or at least were able to see it in more detail. “It had thick brown hair a few inches long all over its body, except for on its face. I slowed way down and it stood there without moving, except for turning its head to watch us pass. I thought about stopping and if we would have had a camera with us I might have stopped long enough to try and get a picture, but we are not much for taking pictures and left our camera at home. Believe me, when we go for drives since then it is right on the seat between us.”
A few direct questions resulted in a more detailed description of the creature observed by the couple. It was approximately six feet or slightly over in height, with a muscular build that led Don to compare it to a football linebacker or body-builder. The hair that covered its body was probably three to four inches in length; slightly longer on the lower arms and considerably so on the head. The eyes appeared to be a very dark brown and the skin exposed on the hairless portions of its face ‘looked like a person that spent a lot of time out in the sun; tanned to the point of being more of a brown color and somewhat wrinkled.’ The lips were noticeably lighter in color and ‘pinkish’.
“It was the face that I remember most of all,” Don told me. “It looked so damned human. Yeah, it had that ridge above its eyes more like an ape or gorilla, but the eyes and the rest of the face showed a clear expression of intense curiosity. It was like he was just as interested in figuring out what we were as we were about him. There was no sign of fear or threatening at all.” Another direct question elicited the fact that the shape of the head “might have been rounded up just a little bit more, but was very much like a person.”
The couple had come to a complete stop when they got even with the creature, with no more than twenty-five feet or so between them. “I have read about the foul odor mentioned more than once by Bigfoot witnesses, but we had the window down and there was very little breeze at the time. There either wasn’t any odor or it was too slight to notice. They also reported no audible sound, such as a vocalization, coming from it. When asked, Don stated that they had done quite a bit of reading about Bigfoot on the internet since their experience but prior to it had only been vaguely aware of the phenomenon.
When asked how the sighting ended, Don chuckled and said; “It was almost like he got bored looking at us or decided we weren’t going to get out of the way if he wanted to cross the road. He just turned around and walked off into the woods until we couldn’t see him anymore. The amazing thing to me was that something so big could be so quiet. He barely made any sound at all.
Don only expressed on regret involving the encounter, aside from not having a camera. “If we had simply stopped to look at the scenery there would have been a car come up behind us in no time at all, so we would have to move on. But here we were wishing another witness would show up, and as far as other traffic we might as well have been on Mars.”
Provided by Sam Uptegrove
Astonishing Encounters: Pennsylvania's Unknown Creatures, Casebook 3
Bigfoot in Pennsylvania: A History of Wild-Men, Gorillas, and Other Hairy Monsters in the Keystone State
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