A north Georgia resident talks about his Bigfoot encounter as a youth. He was with friends while driving around the mountains in the early 1970s. There had been missing persons reported in the area.

"I was an elementary school student in 1971. I saw 'The Legend of Boggy Creek' film and later read Peter Burns's little paperback book on Bigfoot. The North Georgia mountains, especially in the Appalachians, are rich with legends and strange stories about Boogers. Parents and adults would say don't be out at night because that's when the Booger Bears come out. Nobody ever explained to you what a Booger was or how it looked so we thought it was only a scary story.

In the spring of 1973, a game warden went missing overnight. He was found the next morning walking on a rural road by a passing car. He was exhausted and confused with his clothes torn and couldn't really remember what happened. It was later said that he claimed to have seen a tall hairy creature with a big head and a face like a bull. The story was abuzz for about two weeks and suddenly all talk of it went quiet. I think he either quit or the state relocated him.

It was March 1974 when I was 15. I didn't drink or smoke anything. I was seeing a straight-arrow football player and not the type to tell stories. About 8 30 PM I was riding in a car with three other guys and the driver was about two years older than us. We were spotlighting deer illegally but not for the purpose of shooting one, just checking them out. We're driving down the main road. It was barely paved and full of potholes.

As we rolled along at about 10 to 15 miles per hour we spotted a buck and two does up on a chest-high red clay bank with bushes and overgrown parsley. The overgrowth partially blocks our view. This is a four-way highway. This was at a four-way crossroads where the very narrow dirt/gravel road left off into a completely deserted forest with no houses. On the left was another dirt/gravel road with an old church on the corner. Further down this road were a couple of farms. A river runs down one side that is fed by the Amicalola Falls which is located at the head of the Appalachian Trail. Ironically, there's an area of the river known as the Devil's Elbow where moonshiners, pot growers, and hunters were alleged to have gone missing. This is the same area where the game warden went missing.

I was in the passenger rear seat and couldn't really see the deer. We stopped and the guy in front of me got out with a spotlight and shined the deer. It was apparent they had been running and were tired because they hadn't run off. After exiting the back seat I heard a crack/pop 45 degrees to my right in the forest. I thought it may have been a bear because a 500-pounder was killed in our area. But bears are known to be very quiet when walking so I started saying let's go and the hair started standing up on my arms and neck. I began to feel sick with fear.

At about the same time, a hulking figure crossed the road from bank to bank in front of us in three forward-leaning large steps while swinging its arms. It appeared to be approaching the deer and at that moment they bolted out of there. By that time, I'm frozen with fear and it seems like time has slowed down. My friend to the left says, 'What the hell was that?' We're both saying, 'Let's go! Let's go! I had one foot in the car and then as I looked up on top of the embankment I saw the outline of a figure move slowly to get behind a tree where it's face was obscured. My friend with the spotlight starts slowly getting in the car while the other dude dives in the back seat. At this time my older and more stubborn friend pulls out a .22 caliber pistol and says, 'Who are you? Talk to me or I'll shoot now.' We are screaming, 'Let's go! My friend in front of me still has the light pointed at it over the door even though he is now back in the car.

At that instant, we hear a Bang! Bang! The driver shot the .22 caliber up in the air. He immediately throws the pistol down and jumps in the car. We spin out of there sideways. I'm shaking all over. It was so bad that my feet were actually tapping and everybody but the driver was talking at once. We drove until we found a closed gas station and pulled in. He got out went to the drink machine and downed a Coke. He still wouldn't talk.

So now my friend is driving us all home and it's about 10 pm and we're planning to go back the next day to look around in daylight. We also agreed to only tell our families, minus the part about the gunfire of course. After we drop off my friend in the back. We're headed to my house. My friend in front says to the driver, 'Hey, man. What did you see?' Nothing but silence, until we get to my house. My friend in the front says, 'You saw its face, didn't you?' He very quietly said, 'Um.' I sat there for a minute waiting for more but it was obvious that he wasn't talking and it was getting late on a school night. I then had to get out and walk up the long path to the dark back side of my house which sat at the foot of a mountain.

When I got inside my mom noticed that there was something wrong and her first question was, 'Somebody has been drinking?' That was all I needed. So, as I finally managed to tell my story my mom replied, 'Huh it's probably the devil.' But my dad, who grew up on a farm only a few miles from this incident, sat silent, looking at the TV. It was his older generation on both sides of the family who used the term Booger. Growing up on a farm he knew all too well about Booger stories and later said that he used to hear strange screaming sounds in the woods. They always blamed it on panthers but they're all hunted and killed by the early 1900s. 

The few other people I shared my story with laughed and ridiculed me. So I shut my mouth. The following day we all head back and our driver still doesn't want to talk. We get to the location and cannot find footprints but do find broken branches and impressions in the ground. Then we got to the tree where his face was hidden. A prominent crooked limb stuck out and bent upward. I could stand flat-footed and reach the limb with my arm almost extended and that put the creature at about seven foot ten or possibly more.

About two months later I was in church and saw a girl that lived on that same road but closer to the main highway. I told her what happened and a very serious expression came over her face. She informed me that it had run across the road in front of her one night while coming home from a football game. She also said that her uncle saw it coming out of his chicken house about a year prior. I sat there silently thinking, 'Oh, God. Why have you allowed such things to exist?'

Transcribed source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cay2vqyKzok&t=253s

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