County resident bears witness to Bigfoot

By Jason Gibbs

From Dallas to Brownsville and beyond, Bigfoot hunters are focusing their eyes on El Campo.

Since the Leader-News published a report of a sasquatch sighting in Matagorda County, an anonymous West Wharton County resident has reported peculiar goings-on just outside the city limits.

Last weekend, representatives from the Texas Bigfoot Research Center said they were contacted by a local family who said they were inspired by the newspaper report to call in their own recent experience.

"We received a good sighting report from an El Campo resident after they read the article," said Craig Woolheater, a representative of the TBRC.

The sighting occurred just over a week ago, about 10 p.m. on Aug. 31, he said. The center is devoted to tracking reports from eyewitnesses who believe they have seen a large, ape-like mammal, roaming in fields and forests throughout the state.

Its existence has yet to be proven through scientific methods, but the center believes the creature to exist.

The center reported the following account just outside the city limits. The account — which comes on the heels of a similar sighting in Matagorda County — can be found at the research center's Web site at www.texasbigfoot.com.

According to the reportee — who, for their own reasons, chose to remain anonymous — "I was sitting out on the porch around 10 p.m. on Tuesday night. My dogs, a lab mix and a pit bull, started acting strange and growling."

The reportee said they heard a noise coming from a darkened area near the house. "It sounded like something heavy stepped on a piece of tin that is over there on the ground," they reported.

The woman summoned her husband, who grabbed his pistol and went to investigate.

"As my husband was coming out the door, our pit bull ran inside the house very scared," the witness reported. "We stood there on the porch for a little bit when suddenly this grayish animal that looked like an overgrown monkey jumped up on the corner of a refrigerator that was lying on the tail end of my husband's trailer.

"It was stooped over and very fast. My husband fired his pistol toward the ground just as (it) started to run off very fast."

The sheriff's department confirmed a deputy was summoned to an El Campo home along U.S. Business 59, near the Garden of Memories cemetery. The deputy was unable to locate anything suspicious and departed the scene about 20 minutes later.

The report states the creepy critter was "grayish and had a man-like face, but it's nose was flatter than a human nose." It was about five feet tall, they added.

According the center's investigator, the deputy reported the male witness was "disturbed and shaken, but very sober and clear-minded," at the time of the sighting.

"I know you're going to think I'm crazy, but I am not and I have not been drinking whatsoever," the witness reportedly told the deputy.

From: El Campo Leader-News, 15 September 2004.