‘I’m a Logger and Bigfoot Terrorized Us’ – BIGFOOT ENCOUNTER STORY

I never believed in any of that crypted nonsense until what happened in the forests of Northern California back in 1993. Even now, 30 years later, I still wake up some nights hearing that sound, like a freight train made of muscle and fury tearing through the woods. What I’m about to tell you isn’t some campfire story or internet hoax.

This really happened. And the only reason I’m finally talking about it is because I figure enough time has passed that maybe nobody cares anymore. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But I’m getting old and tired of carrying this around. It started in late September of 1993 when our logging crew got hired for what seemed like a dream job.

The company, I won’t say which one, but they were big enough to have lawyers in three states, wanted us to clear a section of old growth forest about 60 mi northeast of Eureka. The pay was almost double what we usually made, which should have been our first red flag. When someone pays you twice what a job is worth, there’s usually a reason.

The foreman, a grizzled guy we called the old man because of his size and temperament, gathered our crew of 12 men around his pickup truck that first morning. He spread out a topographical map on the hood and pointed to a section marked in red pencil. The area was massive, probably close to 800 acres of virgin timber that had somehow escaped the logging boom of the early 1900s.

Most of it was Douglas fir and redwood, some of the trees easily over 200 ft tall and older than the United States itself. The old man told us we had 6 weeks to clear the designated area, which was aggressive but doable with our equipment. We had two massive feller bunchers, a couple of skitters, and a loader that could lift logs the size of school buses.

The company had even provided us with a temporary camp setup. Three trailers for sleeping, a mess hall, and a maintenance shed. Everything was already in place when we arrived, like they had been planning this operation for months. The weird thing was the location. We were deep in national forest land, but somehow this company had gotten permits to log in an area that was supposedly protected.

When one of the younger guys asked about it, the old man just shrugged and said the paperwork was above his pay grade. He’d seen stranger things in 20 years of logging, and as long as the checks cleared, he wasn’t asking questions. Our crew was a mix of experienced loggers and a few newer guys who needed the work.

We were all hardworking men who’d spent our lives in the woods, comfortable with the isolation and the dangerous work that comes with bringing down giants. The first week went exactly as planned. We set up our operation in a clearing about half a mile from the tree line and started working our way systematically through the marked area. The timber was incredible.

Some of the finest old growth I’d ever seen. These trees had been growing since before Columbus landed in America, and we were cutting them down to be turned into deck furniture and house frames. It felt wrong, but the money was too good to walk away from.

It was the skitter operator who first noticed something was off.

He’d been running equipment for 15 years and knew the sounds of the forest as well as anyone. On the morning of our eighth day, he shut down his machine during the lunch break and walked over to where I was eating a sandwich on a stump. He looked nervous, which was unusual. He was normally the joker of the crew, always ready with a smart comment or a story about his weekend adventures.

But that day, he seemed jumpy, constantly looking over his shoulder toward the tree line. He asked if I’d heard anything strange out there. I listened for a moment. The usual sounds were there. Birds calling, the distant rumble of machinery working about a quarter mile away, the wind moving through the canopy above us.

Nothing seemed out of place. He shook his head and took a bite of his ham sandwich. He said he thought he had heard something following him that morning when he was dragging logs out, like footsteps, but too heavy to be a person. I laughed and told him it was probably a bear.

The area was known for having a healthy black bear population, and they were getting ready for winter hibernation. A hungry bear following the scent of our food wouldn’t be unusual. But he shook his head again. He said he knew what a bear sounded like, and this was different. Two legs, not four, and bigger.

The next day, our best climber came down from topping a massive redwood with a story that was eerily similar.

He’d been about 60 ft up, working his way around the trunk with his chainsaw when he heard something moving through the trees below him. When he looked down, he saw what he thought was a person walking between the trees, but the proportions were all wrong.

He said it was too tall, maybe 8 ft, maybe taller, and it was covered in dark hair or fur. Moved like a person, though, not like any animal he had ever seen.

The reaction from the crew was predictable. Most of the guys laughed and started making jokes about our climber spending too much time in the thin air at the top of the trees. One of the younger guys started doing an exaggerated impression of a caveman, beating his chest and making grunting sounds.

Even I chuckled, though something about the climber’s expression made me think he wasn’t joking around. He insisted he was telling us what he saw and we could take it or leave it. The old man who’d been listening from his folding chair near the fire finally spoke up.

He said there were all kinds of wildlife in these woods. Could have been anything. Maybe a hunter in a ghillie suit. Maybe just shadows playing tricks on his eyes. Point was, we had a job to do and we were getting paid good money to do it.

We needed to keep our focus on the work.