The Creature

Personal Experiences with Bigfoot

by Jan Klement

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I

Sometimes the mind plays strange tricks upon us and with the passage of time we find it difficult to separate truth from fantasy. Time has passed, about two years to be exact, and I feel that I better write down my story before it passes into that gray area of unreality.

You who read this story can expect no great prose, no witicisms to tempt the chuckle bones, nothing to challenge the imagination. This will be a straightforward account of what happened. You may believe it if you wish or refuse to believe it. Your acceptance or rejection of this tale will have no effect on the future of the world or the future of yourself.

I had built a cabin in a small wooded area in south-western Pennsylvania. The land comprises about eleven acres and the nearest neighbor is approximately a thousand feet away. My property is in south facing slope and a small stream and road separates this slope from another slope across the way. The other slope is rented and upon it a farmer raises cattle. His land is clear and I can sit on the porch of my cabin and occasionally see his cattle through the tree limbs and leaves.

After I built the cabin I began clearing a road and making other improvements on the property. This was to be my retreat from the world of teaching earth science in a small college. I am by nature an introvert and the crush of large college classes and conversation with people leaves me physically exhausted. The cabin and wooded acreage were to be my bunker protecting me against the outside world.

The previous winter I had slept at the cabin in the silent months of January and February. It was a cold winter, the coldest on record for the county, and often the ground was covered with powdery snow. Sometimes the moon reflected a ghostly image on the snow and the shadows of trees and often as not the snow would be melted and the moonlight then played upon the decaying leaves and the dry grass of the woods. I was alone and would return to the cabin to sleep each night and embrace the silence of those woods. Here my mind played strange tricks and in the moonlight I believed I saw shadows among the bare tree trunks, shadows which were watching me.

I was not exactly living in the cabin by choice. I had committed an indiscretion the year before and my wife Sally asked me to leave so that we could work out our desires and needs without distraction. In short, she had kicked me out. We would meet occasionally and I would tell her about the watchers and the quiet of the winter nights. She would laugh and recite the stories of the watchers from the old New England poet's tales.

I finally returned to live with her and my two children in the college town and forgot about the shadows of the night. I was once again consumed with teaching and the mundane matters of society and marriage.

The adventure which I am about to relate began late on a hot August day. I had been digging a small pond by hand and the sweat rolled from me freely. I am so prone to digging ditches, holes, ponds, embankments and the like that I named the cabin area the Diggins. Anyway, after I had sweated enough and worked enough my habits called for me to retire to the porch of the cabin and enjoy a beer. I had made my way up the slope to the cabin slower than usual since I was extremely tired that day. I went into the cabin, got a cold beer, and went back to sit on the porch and relax.

I took the beer, flipped open the can and sat on the side of the porch with my feet up on a bench in front of me. I heard a slight noise to my right and so I lifted myself and peered around to the side of the cabin from the porch and there crouched before me was a large hairy creature. In an instance the creature turned and leaped into the brush to the back of the cabin and was gone. I stood stunned. "My God." I must have shouted it out loud.

What to do. Shall I tell anyone? Whom can I trust? Did I want hundreds of people tramping down my property? Could I believe what I saw? A poet friend of mine from West Virginia told me of a story from his past. He was a boy growing up in Turtle Creek. Pennsylvania. He and a handful of louts were standing around general store on a wintry day when a large snowy owl landed on an electric pole near the store. He said that every one of the buys save he, ran home to get his gun. The first to return shot and killed the owl.

My trouble was twofold. I did not want people around and did not want to see anything killed. I had given up hunting about ten years before and even winced when I cut down trees to clear my road. Certainly I did not wish to see the creature killed.

I was trained as a scientist and if I had to, I would track the creature if at all possible and study it. I would keep the incident to myself since anyone seeing "bigfoot" like creatures were portrayed as loonies by the news media. I take this method now to tell of my subsequent meetings with the creature and the events that followed. You may doubt me or believe me, your opinion is of no consequence to me or to truth.

The Second Sighting

There were many grassy areas in the cleared patches of my woods and Often I would see these trampled down. My speculation was that deer were bedding in the area although I had never seen deer except only in a situation which I will repeat later. I combed my property and the adjoining properties for signs of the creature but could find none. I wanted to tell someone about it but who would believe me and what good would it do anyway. So I was alone in my search and extremely frustrated.

August passed and September came along. Apples were ripe and I would gather these and keep them in a basket or put them out on my porch railing for the raccoons or whatever it was that took them from the railing. It finally came to me that it may be the creature that took the apples. However, I did find either squirrel or raccoon tracks on the porch in wet weather. I had given up hope of ever seeing the creature again and went back to digging the pond and sweating.

I had made myself comfortable on the porch at dusk and was munching an apple when the creature appeared at the railing about eight feet from me. I had positioned myself in the middle of the porch to avoid looking into the low sun. The neck and head of the creature were above the railing and with a hairy arm it reached out, took two apples, stared at me, then turned and bounded into the bushes again. I rose slowly and walked to the edge of the porch and peered into the bushes. I lowered myself over the railing where the creature had appeared and walked toward the bushes but the creature was not to be found. When I returned to the porch I noted that the railing was over my head by an inch or so and that it was at least six feet high. Later measurement confirmed the height at six foot one inch. Estimating the size of the creature's head it must have been seven feet tall. I was able to confirm this later but I wish to relate the story to you exactly as I remember it.

My first impression was that the creature was apelike or manlike, about seven feet tall and covered with short brown hair. Its eyes were large and its mouth expressive. It did not have a large protruding jaw or excessively thick lips as artist conceptions of apemen usually have. The body was powerful with well developed leg and shoulder muscles and sported a protruding stomach.

The protruding stomach may seem normal when one considers apes and sees pictures of them but when an artist conceives a human the human is pictured as flat stomached and muscular which is a misconception. Stand on any street corner and you will observe that humans are flabby with protruding guts. The older the human the more protruding the gut. I can say this, as I look down over my own creeping obesity. So you should not consider the creature as too much different than humans on that basis.

For about a week thereafter I set apples on the railing to no avail. I would set out two at a time and would not leave more than that overnight. The secret of the creature's appearance escaped me. My wife Sally wondered what the hell I was up to and why I spent so much time out at the Diggins. The tension which was already high between us intensified. I had become hooked on the creature and yet could not divulge my obsession. Can you imagine any man telling his suspicious wife that be was late because he was tracking a large hairy creature.

I finally hit upon some of the ingredients of my meetings with the creature. I had parked my car down near the pond and not at the cabin. I had worked hard and had a good sweat and I was on the porch. So, my next move was to work up a good sweat and stay on the porch of the cabin.

This system finally paid off for on the day of the autumnal equinox I made friendly contact. I had a good sweat, the car was parked below the property and I had my apple bait set out.

My first impression was that the creature would not appear for this was only the second day of my luring. As the sun began to set I took a pencil and drew a line on the porch railing in an east west direction for no other reason that I was a scientist and on the day of the equinox the sun always set in the west and I would always be able to observe where the directions were from my porch. As I rose from my marking I saw the creature standing about four feet from the porch, I stood still for a moment and then I made slight hand motions for the creature to come to me. I realized at once that it was not a human and hand motions meant nothing so I retrieved an apple from my side pocket and tossed it at the creature's feet. I saw then that it was a male. Its penis hanging limply in front, scarcely noticeable in the failing light. He picked up the apple, opened his mouth and with one chomp crushed it in powerful jaws. I threw him another and another and on the third apple I spoke in low hushed tones increasing my voice to normal about the tenth apple. I was now fishing apples from the chip basket on the railing. The creature loaded most of these in his arms and walked to the bushes at the end of the small clearing and disappeared.

The next evening he returned a little earlier and took apples from my hand but would not really let me get near him. As long as the railing was between us he was calm and when I went to leave the porch he would walk away. The reader may ask was I not frightened? I can assure you that I was highly excited and frightened may not be the proper descriptive term. I have always prided myself on not being afraid of anything and this seemed to be a situation in which the creature was afraid and I was the aggressor. I have traveled somewhat in Europe and have slept among hostile gypsies in Hungary and faced a knife point in an alley of Piccadilly Circus in London. When these adventures occurred to me they seemed unreal and as if it were happening to someone else, perhaps to my alter ego or some other psychological manifestation of my personality. It was and is this sense of unreality about life that makes me unafraid. Besides I was a scientist and this was a situation in which all true scientists wish to find themselves someday.

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