Terror in the Woods

what was that?

Jimmie: It stopped us dead in our tracks.

I'm panicking. I'm frantic and terrified.

It felt like this is it, for sure.

We're goners. It's got us.

I think we all instantly thought monster.

all of a sudden, I smelled, like, rotting flesh.

no hands, no feet. It didn't have a face.

what's wrong?

I saw something. It was levitating.

She's frightened. She's scared.

stephen?

Aah!

My stomach dropped.

never seen her in this bad of shape before.

aah!

Kayla!

my name is jimmie bar.

It was a normal day, just like any other day,

and I'd come across a show about a bigfoot

and how the native americans called the bigfoot "hairy man."

when sighting the huge, hairy, manlike...

hairy, manlike...

And as soon as he said the words "hairy man,"

it unlocked a floodgate of memories and emotions

and feelings that overwhelmed me.

And I was just -- I was unable to control all that emotion.

And when it came back, it consumed me for about a week

of what I had went through.

I haven't told too many people at all about my encounter.

I don't share it with too many people.

we're from illinois.

You know, we're surrounded by corns and beans

and so couldn't be happier.

But we moved to north carolina because my stepfather is from

that area, and his family is from that area.

As a native american, that's where he's from.

So we went back to his home.

When we left illinois, we were in a truck.

I have a middle brother, an older brother,

and we're all two years apart.

Most of the time, we just laid down in the back of the truck

and just stared up at the sky.

Long, long, long drive.

It was just my brothers and us and some belongings in the back.

after a long ride, we pull up to our new trailer,

new mobile home, just looking around.

Before we even got out, we noticed that it was

a lot different landscape than what we're used to.

There was lots of trees. It was a nice change.

we were pretty numb from the drive.

took a long time to get there, but once we got there,

we were relieved just to get out and stretch.

You like it?

Awesome.

Trust me, you're gonna learn to love it.

around the trailer, the woods weren't as thick,

but as farther away you got from the trailer,

the woods got thicker.

boys, come here.

My stepfather, who's cherokee indian --

he said to all of us, "stay out of the woods."

listen.

You respect these woods, you understand?

The woods is where the hairy man lives,

and he don't want you going in there.

this ain't a joke.

Remember what I told you.

Stay out of there.

Of course, we laughed and giggled.

We'd never heard the words "hairy man"

put together side-by-side in a sentence.

As we laughed, he looked at us and said, "I warned you."

I'm the hairy man.

mostly, what we did was just being normal kids,

exploring our surroundings, turning over logs,

looking for snakes, bugs, sticks,

throwing sticks at each other, throwing dirt at each other,

just playing tag.

But we never really went too far.

We stayed close.

It was probably three weeks after we were there.

And I remember us running around,

chasing each other, running around the trailer.

I don't think we should leave them.

Nancy, they'll be fine.

Listen, boys. We've got to go in town.

Our parents were gone that day running some errands.

Robert, come here.

we'll be back later tonight.

Robert, please keep an eye on your brothers.

Okay, mom.

and it was just us three boys alone,

playing around the trailer.

as we were running around from the trailer,

chasing, sticks in our hands,

we were on the backside of the trailer.

what was that?

and the scream sounded like...

It sounded like a woman being murdered or ripped apart.

let's go check it out.

It was extremely loud and terrifying.

But herman said we can't go into the woods.

Come on, let's go check it out.

but there really was not much of a group discussion.

It was more like we were drawn to what had screamed,

and we just had to go see what it was.

"that was kind of creepy, but let's go check it out."

I'm not sure if it was just the adrenaline and the fear

that we had from hearing what we had heard.

But we made our way towards the woods.

I'm not sure we should be doing this.

Don't be scared. Come on.

It's fine. Let's keep going.

the one thing I do remember is, you know, there were no birds.

There were no crickets. There were no noises.

robert, I want to go back.

You go back if you want to.

the farther back you went, the more thick the trees were.

that's when we heard the sound.

stay close.

we need to go home.

just keep together.

as we're walking, we heard a crack.

stop.

look.

We looked up, and about 15 feet up,

we saw what -- at the time, only thing I could compare it to

was something from the "planet of the apes."

it was the hairy man.

I mean, that's all we knew what to call it,

'cause I had nothing else to compare it to before.

I had never heard of bigfoot. I'd never heard of sasquatch.

It was something that was never introduced to us.

be still.

I think we all instantly thought monster.

aah!

look.

reliving and talking about my encounter,

it boggles my mind how it puts you back

to being there at that very second.

39 years later, but feeling like you're still there,

the trembling throughout my body,

my voice shaking when I talk.

when we looked up, it was squatted down with its left hand

holding on to the tree.

It didn't have any emotion on its face.

It was just a stone look on its face.

It just seemed like it was observing us.

What's it doing?

Shh. Be still.

Jimmie: We were terrified.

And then when we made eye contact with it,

it made eye contact with us.

That's when it made a move. It all came crashing down.

- Aah! - Run!