I have never linked the account of exactly what happened in Myakka on our expedition in detail with the video I made. Because of what happened over the course of those three incredible days I have not been able to let go of the fact that nothing is being done about validation this species.
From my personal research journal-
August 18,
2012 Myakka State park
My son is a
very mild mannered and unassuming young man. He’s well adjusted socially and
got good grades in school. In point of fact, he’s never really been a problem
for his mother or me. He’s very active and successful in whatever he sets his
mind to doing. Really…He’s the best son a father could have hoped for. His
mother and I separated when he was 4 years old. I was devastated and have never
really recovered from that. He was everything to me. As time went on she remarried to a really
nice guy and I moved on as well. I have always tried to respect my son’s
journey in life. I never tried to control or direct him in any way. I was simply
there when he needed advice or guidance and those times were in fact few. Looking
back over the years, I think that although he listened intently to all my rants
about Bigfoot, he really didn’t understand my interest in the subject.
As time
passed and my interest and knowledge on the subject strengthened…he had
developed his own belief about Bigfoot…It wasn’t real.
Being the respectful
young man he was, he’d never shared this belief with me. In my mind I assumed
that who I was and what I thought had somehow through osmosis, been absorbed by
his mind. I had no Idea that my own son,
my own flesh and blood… really thought that I was crazy and all of this was
ridiculous. To him there was no such thing as Bigfoot…period. Upon realizing
that this was how he felt, I thought a dose of reality would be a good idea, I
really wanted to take him with me on an expedition, now that I knew what I
knew.
"Jurassic Park"
I’d been
researching Myakka state park for over a decade, reading reports, developing my
own maps and sightings comparison overlays. Based on my extensive map and
satellite research of the park, I was very sure of exactly what areas in which
we’d find evidence of Bigfoot activity, despite their proximity to humans. You see, here in Florida, the dry areas of the state are currently occupied by human habitation and most of the reports from Florida are in close proximity to human activity or actual human habitation. Although I’d researched Myakka for a very
long time, up to that point I’d spent only one night inside the park,
it was the single most unnerving location I’d ever camped or hiked at night. The wildlife has boomed in that park. Hiking a trail there at night in the summer is an exercise in self control.
The events of the
expedition I’m about to describe to you, were something that neither my son nor
I were expecting. The account of this expedition is taken directly from my journals.
All of this, however impossible it may sound, happened exactly the way it is described and had a profound affect on my life.
Day 1 Ft. Lauderdale, 4:00 a.m.
We loaded
the night before and left for our three day expedition to Myakka on the west
coast of Florida. As usual when traveling to the west coast, I took I-75 and
cut across the everglades. When we reached the other side I came north and
headed toward Sarasota. After stopping for breakfast, we arrived at the park at
approximately 8:30 a.m. As we pulled up to the entrance on the left, there was
a very large wild hog, around three hundred and fifty pounds I’d say, rooting
off the side of the road beneath the Myakka State Park sign. I looked over at
“Lil Z” as I call him, and smiled. “Welcome to Jurassic Park,”
He was like
“Wow, look at that thing, that’s a big one!”
We checked
in with the office ranger and headed for the “Big Flats” campground. Big Flats
is not “Deep” in the wilderness. It sits on the eastern side of a very large
wetland prairie with a paved main park road leading up to it. The park itself
is visually stunning. The wildlife, including every native species that
originally inhabited the state of Florida, abounds and is easily viewed from a
car by simply driving on the main park road, and of course there are thousands
of wild hogs.
Chris was
amazed at how the deer were just standing on the side of the road chewing on
stuff. We slowed and rolled the window down a few different times to get some
photos. Sometimes they’d stay right there, ten feet from the car.
Day 1-9:00 a.m.
We arrived
at “Big Flats” and started unloading the gear. We set up the campsite in about
an hour and started getting ready for our first hike.
There are no
firearms allowed in the park. We had one machete each, one large hunting knife,
five pounds of plaster for casting, water, energy bars and two cameras, one
video and one digital still photo. I like to use a natural mosquito repellant
that contains eucalyptus. It smells a lot better than the other more popular
brands and once applied to the skin has a cooling effect, especially when the
wind hits you. This aids in staying cool on hikes and man, it was a typical
Florida August day, it was around ninety-five degrees out with ninety-nine
percent humidity.
Day 1-10:15 a.m.
We jumped in
the car and headed for the research area. The spot we were headed to is not off
the beaten path; in fact it’s heavily used every single day by the people that
camp in and visit the park, the main trail observation towers. A few weeks
earlier I’d read a report online that was filed by a professional nature
photographer who had recently visited the park. She stated that in the early
morning hours she climbed to the top of one of the towers to get a bird’s eye
view of the park from above the jungle canopy. While up there photographing the
vast jungle and forest treetops she heard a noise from below. She looked down
and to her own amazement there was a giant, heavily muscled, hair covered
humanoid feeding on something at the base of some cypress trees. She said she
was so shocked by what she saw, she forgot all about her camera and never even
thought about taking a photo until whatever it was had moved off and
disappeared into the jungle.
This was our
starting point for the expedition; however ridiculous it seemed, I had the
feeling that it was a good move. We pulled into parking lot at the trail head
and got geared up. We checked the batteries in our cameras and started shooting
video right then. We joked about what we might see or find. And of course
Little Z was hamming it up. He seemed excited to be with me on the expedition,
I felt great about that. I went over a few important things right then before
we left the parking lot.
Knowing what
I knew from the other encounters I’d already had, I learned a few things.
This is
exactly what I told my son: “Christopher, what you do or don’t believe is real,
has no bearing on reality. I know it’s real and I can tell you that it’s very
big, very scary, and capable of ripping your arm off and beating you to death
with it, or worse, so don’t do anything stupid like wander off on your own or
try to chase after anything you may see, tell me first, don’t run off without
me, this is not a joke, were here and we may get into some serious shit, Ok?”
To which he
replied sarcastically, “Got it daaad!”
Day 1-10:30 a.m.
We headed in
under the canopy of the main trail. I slowed us down immediately and started
looking for tracks, figuring this would be a good time to show my son what to
look for. I explained how and what to look for given the varying substrates we
were on. The fact is; it took all of two minutes and seventy-five yards of
hiking to find our first track. Right off the bat, we came upon a perfect
thirteen and a half inch long, six inch wide, flat, barefoot track. The toes
were visible even though it was in a harder, rougher substrate. The track was
so obvious we both spotted it at the same moment. Immediately I noted that my
own weight left no visible impression at all. Whatever left this track was big
and very heavy. This is the first clue to the validity of a track; could it
have been made by a normal human being? It was right on the side of the main
trail you couldn’t miss it, if you were looking. Christopher was flat out
shocked, and even though I knew they were here in the park somewhere, so was I.
We filmed the find carefully, measuring the track with a tape. It did not
appear to be human though it was a human type of track. We commented on the
obvious nature of the track itself and scouted the area for others.
Little Z
stated on camera, “We can still see the car through the trees and here it is,
this is our first track already, and this is just the beginning.”
Now…He was
looking and he was officially “On expedition.”
As we stood
there shooting video and documenting the track, some people started coming up
the trail heading towards us from the parking lot. Remember, this is not a spot
that is way out in the middle of nowhere, it’s literally the most visited spot
and heavily used trail in the park. We stood there in amazement as these people
simply walked right by us like nothing was going on at all. We stopped filming
and remarked at how truly unaware they were of what was so obviously going on
right under their noses. We decided to
go straight to the area of the nature photographers sighting, after all, we
just found a track and were no more than a hundred feet from the exact spot of
her encounter.
Upon
reaching the observation tower, we looked around for more tracks and that’s
when I noticed a small game trail leading off to the south into the thick
jungle. I looked at little Z and asked him if he was ready to go in, he said
“Let’s do it.”
We turned
off the main trail into the brush, heading south from the base of the
observation towers. At that moment I was hopeful we’d find more evidence, But
neither of us were prepared for what was about to happen. As I stated, my son
was not a “Believer” that any of this was real, all that was about to change.
Day 1-11:00 a.m.
Hiking in
Myakka is like traveling back in time. The trees have a prehistoric look to
them. Some of the most incredible photos I have ever taken have been in this
park and they’re just photos of trees from the trail.
Although there are several types of trees in
the park; Banyans, oaks, cypress, pines and palms to name a few, the palms make
up the majority of the off-trail cover. For the purposes of describing this
encounter I’m going to use two general descriptions, Ground palms and tall
palms. The ground palms, consisting mainly of cabbage and saw palmettos are
larger in Myakka than I'd ever seen anywhere in Florida up to that point. Typical ground palms
in the state of Florida will rarely get over six feet in height. The ground
palms in Myakka rarely get less than six feet in height; some of these cabbage
and saw palmetto hammocks were in excess of twelve feet high. The patches or
hammocks of these ground palms grow so thick that in most cases you cannot get
into them. The saw palmettos have long, flat and thin branches that are covered
in saw teeth the entire length of the branch itself. These palmetto hammocks
appear in front of you when you’re hiking a trail and are approaching a
clearing in the canopy above. Suddenly you’re stopped in your tracks by a huge
impenetrable wall of ground palms. It’s because of these “Walls” of ground
palms that when we cut off trail one of the first things we realized was we
going to have follow whatever “lesser” trails we could find. I found a few very
small but well used game trails heading into an area that borders the swamp
that winds its way around the entire area. Skirting the huge patches of ground
palms, we were led to an opening in the canopy and yet another giant patch of
saw palmettos stood in front of us.
That’s when the owl first appeared. It was
huge; it flew in and landed about twenty feet away from us up in an oak tree.
We took pictures of it for a few minutes as it stared at us and “Hooted”
loudly.
We didn’t know it right then, but this owl would shadow all our
movements in the park for three days. It showed up everywhere we went, on foot
or by car. We both remarked on the owl’s presence several times over the course
of our expedition to each other, it was strange to say the least.
Little Z was standing on my right side
surveying the eight foot high wall in front of us, when he looked over at me.
“Do a couple
of calls dad.”
What he
refers to as “Calls” are actually more like aggressive, frightening loud, low
pitched screams. I believe the species is highly territorial, like us, so I
want them to know someone has just aggressively entered their area. I used this
same type of “Intrusive” scream to illicit my first close encounter; if it
works don’t fix it, right?
I took a
couple of deep breaths and screamed out at the top of my lungs like a madman.
Instantly, I caught movement off to the left of my position. Several wild hogs
shot out of the hammock in a panic and ran off screaming and grunting. I was
focused on that when little Z called to me softly from his position.
“Dad, did
you hear that?”
“The hogs?”
I replied as I walked to him.
“No,
something else, something moaned like HMMMMMM! Right over that way in the
there.”
He pointed
to the right, out in the hammock, not the left where the hogs came rushing out.
I realized it could have been another hog and asked him if it could have been a
hog, he said yes.
I decided we
needed to make sure. So we went into the saw palmettos, very carefully. In
spite of our efforts to remain as quiet as we could be, we were making so much
noise it was all you could hear. To say we were loud is an understatement. I
was bogged down and being torn apart by the saw blade covered branches. I fell
several times caught up in the thousands of razor sharp swords.
I realized we would never hear anything else
in the hammock so I waved him to stop like me and when we did, we could hear
something moving just ahead of us inside the patch around sixty feet away. Then
it stopped. We moved, it moved. We stopped, it stopped. We kept looking at each
other in disbelief like, “Someone’s toying with us!”
This game of
“cat and mouse” went on for almost forty-five minutes. We could not see what it
was, but it sounded like heavy human footsteps, like ours, and we were starting
to get a bit freaked out over this. This is not the behavior of hogs, or deer
or any other animal for that matter, this behavior was sneaky and intelligent
not instinctive.
You see,
wild hogs have absolutely no desire to be near humans; they are instinctively
afraid of humans and will flee, most times at the sound or sight of a man.
Day 1-11:45 a.m.
I decided that since we couldn't see whatever
it was, we should move as fast as we could to the other side of the hammock and
get out to the edge into the open. I explained that once we got out of the
hammock, we would run down to the end and try to cut off whatever was in there
with us, hopefully before it exited the hammock itself. It seemed like a good
plan, so we took off for the edge of the patch.
Of course I fell again, bogged down and bleeding like I’d been in a
sword fight. “Shorts, why did I wear shorts?” I kept thinking. Finally we
reached the outside of the patch regained our footing and ran for the other end
to see if we could get a look at whatever was in there with us. As we reached
the end of the saw palmettos we came upon a large clearing that was in the open
sunlight with no canopy over head. This was the first time since we entered the
park that we were in direct sunlight. There at the end of the hammock we’d just
exited was the edge of a swamp and lots of water. We noticed the area was
recently cleared and the ground was mulched. This clearing looked very
different from anything we’d seen in the park that day. Little Z walked up to
the end of the palmettos, I paused and started to change the batteries in my
video camera, they had gone dead inside the hammock.
He was
standing around ten feet from me on my left past the end of the palmettos with
a clear view ahead of him for around fifty yards or so, the wall of palmettos
still blocked my view ahead. All of the sudden, Christopher made a strange,
guttural sound, one of shock and disbelief. I looked up at him as I placed the
new battery in the camera. He was looking straight ahead, his mouth was hanging
open.
He said softly, “What? What is that?” Then he
shouted, “There it is! There it is! It’s Right there! Its right there, it’s
fucking right there!”
Then, he
tried to chase it.
I hit the
power button on the camera and ran at him, I had not seen what he’d seen, so I
didn’t know what we were up against; I reached out, grabbed his shirt and
yanked him to a stop.
“Hang on
man, what was it?”
I wanted to make sure of what he saw.
“It!”
I looked off in the direction he was looking,
but saw nothing.
In sixteen
years I had never heard my son use profanity; he’s a devoted Christian and
simply does not, in spite of my regular profane outbursts. I was a little
shocked at first, but then it made sense, he was in shock too.
The camera
came on; I hit record and went after it with my son just behind me, hoping to
catch him in a few frames.
“How far?
And Where?” I shouted back at him.
“Right
there, it was right there.” We took off
in the direction it was walking. We tried to catch up to it, by the time we got
to the exact spot that if firsts appeared, I would estimate approximately twenty
five seconds had passed, I panned the camera in the direction my son said he
went in, it was very thick brush and nothing else. Already, thirty seconds or
so had passed since he saw it. We gave chase, but he was gone. I was amazed and
excited and disappointed all at the same time. I’d missed a chance at seeing a
Bigfoot for the first time because I had to change the batteries in my camera.
I felt good about putting us in a position to see him, but honestly I was
envious that he saw what I had searched for all those years.
I kept
saying, “I knew it! I knew it was here!”
We checked
the entire area for tracks, but found only disturbances and dig outs, no
discernible tracks. The leaf-litter was too thick to allow for any significant
tracks or a trail to follow.
This is my
son’s description of what he saw:
He was
looking straight ahead as it walked right out in front of him from over by the
swamp on the left side of the trail; it walked out in front of him heading back
towards the palmettos. It had apparently in spite of how fast we ran, beat us
out of the hammock and was hiding at the edge of the swamp.
No chance of "mis-identification" in this instance, he got a good four to six second look at it as it
passed behind a standing coconut palm on the left and walked out onto the trail
directly in front of him. He watched it cross the trail from left to right. He
described the creature to me as being at least three or four feet higher than
the saw palmettos that were between five and six feet tall. It was massive,
beastly huge.
He said this
“person” that he saw, was all black and hairy, he had very broad and muscular
shoulders, a big chest, and a very thick torso. He said he couldn’t make out
the face it was so dark colored but that the head was coned, huge and he had a
very large and pronounced lower jaw. As it “Power walked” it passed behind
another palm on the right side of the trail, at which point little Z took a
step forward as he started to lose sight of it, and he saw it for one more
second as it disappeared behind the wall of saw palmettos that blocked my view.
It was
interesting watching my son process the encounter. At first he stated that it
could have been a really, really big hairy black man. I asked him if he thought
that it was possible “Shaq” was visiting the park that day and was in a Bigfoot
costume. Then, as he worked out the explanations in his own mind he was amazed
and excited about the entire encounter. In the end, he concluded that he did
indeed see a real wild man, a Bigfoot. With all this having happened in such a
short period of time…We were a little taken back. We’d only just arrived in the
park three hours ago, and here we were witnesses to something that was not
supposed to be there. I asked my son what he wanted to do; “Should we report
the incident?” He insisted it was the right thing to do and I was curious to
get the park officials reaction to the incident. We humped it back to the car
and headed for the Ranger station at the entrance. I pulled in and we got out.
My son was just ahead of me as we entered the front office. I opened the door
of the ranger station to hear him asking the on duty ranger for a piece of
paper and a pencil so he could “Draw what he just saw in the park.”
She eyed him
for a second and said with a very matter of fact tone, “Is that thing still in
here?”
My son
replied, “Yes, I just saw it, and I want to make a drawing of it.”
The ranger
retrieved a pencil from the desk drawer and handed him a sheet of paper from
the copy machine.
She said,
“We get these reports from time to time, and I remember back in the nineties,
we had a bunch.”
I didn’t say
much, just listened to the information she offered and the way she offered it.
She then
said, “We better call the park biologist and let her know what’s going on.”
They had a
really old type of answering machine telephone that looked to be from the
nineteen eighties, she walked to it hit the speaker button and appropriate
extension. The biologist picked up after a few rings, on the loud speaker. My
son and I listened carefully to what was said.
The ranger
said, “Good morning, ahhhh….We got a couple of guys over here at the front
office that say they saw something in the park about a half an hour ago and I
think you need to get over here and talk to them.” There was a pause for a second
and the biologist spoke.
“Tell’em it
was a bear.”
My son and I
looked at each other and I shook my head in disgust.
The ranger
quickly interrupted, “Uhh…they’re standing right here listening to you on
speaker, you better come talk to them.
She said she
was on her way.
At this time
in my research, I was unaware that most state parks and preserves have
biologists that are on staff and most of them are stationed in the park and
live there in cabins.
We walked
outside and she literally walked out of the bushes from a small trail on the
other side of the parking lot. From her quarters, I assume.
As we stood
waiting for her to cross the parking lot I asked my son to see his drawing of
what he saw. This is his actual drawing of what he saw that day. How could anyone
explain this as misidentification? Not a chance.
She walked
up and we introduced ourselves.
To my
surprise, she asked us, “Where did you see it?”
Not, “What
did you see?” or “Please, describe what you saw,”
She asked
only one question about the encounter, “Where did you see it?”
That was
enough for me. I went for the throat.
I said, “I
research this kind of thing, we’ve been here for a grand total of three hours,
we’ve already found tracks and seen this thing, what’s going on here in your
park man? You’ve got hominid tracks right off the main trail, and this thing is
wandering around out there walking right out in front of us? Have you been
studying it? You know this thing is in here don’t you.”
She did not
appear amused with my questions and what I said. In fact, she immediately went
after me and started asking me questions that had nothing to do with the
incident. She wanted to know who I was, why I was in the park, where I lived
and my address, my phone number, and how long we were going to be in the park.
She never even asked to see the drawing my son made of what he saw. Right then
two maintenance men pulled up on mowers, I assume the ranger in the office got
on the radio and called them. The word was out, the park staff was responding
to our report. They pulled up and immediately asked us what we saw and where we
saw it. I described the area of the encounter to him and he stated that he had
just been over there a few days earlier cutting, confirming the tree cutting
I’d seen in the area we had the encounter. I started to think there was more
going on here than they were letting us in on. The biologist stated that she
had everything she needed, whatever that meant, and walked off to the office.
We got in the car and went back to our campsite for lunch, blown away by our
first hike together in “Jurassic Park.”
Back at the
campsite I started to absorb this new information I received while observing
the park staff. All of what happened with the ranger in the office and park
biologist points at some very important things to consider.
Christopher's drawing of what he saw- Does this look like a bear to you? |
Day 1-12:45 p.m. Mission
Accomplished.
The fact
that all of this occurred within a few hours of us arriving at the park, was a
lot to process for both of us. Back at the camp we made a small fire to cook
lunch on and keep the mosquitoes away. I set up the tri-pod and shot my son’s
encounter interview. If you’ve ever seen the interview you probably agree, he’s
a calm and credible witness. We made plans for our afternoon hike considering
everything we learned earlier that morning. The Bigfoot we encountered was
heading toward the swamp that borders the first of only a few main dry areas in
the publicly designated areas of the park. If we were going to find more
tracks, the muddy areas surrounding the swamp would be our best bet.
We needed an
easier way to get there. I checked my maps and found a back door route into the
swamp he seemed he was headed to…The power lines.
The power
line trail is exactly what it sounds like, the route of the electrical power
lines coming and going from the park.
3:00 p.m.
We arrived
at the power line trail parked and set off for the cypress swamp in the rear of
the hiking areas. The power-line trail is around a mile long and basically
would allow us to walk freely to the rear swamp area without having to hump
through the thick stuff we encountered earlier in the day. The straight, flat,
clear trail was perfect to hike on. We made great time and arrived at the swamp
in about a half an hour.
3:30 p.m.
The area we
ended up in was at the edge of a very large cypress swamp. We immediately found
that this area was littered with thirteen to fourteen inch human type foot
shaped punch holes. They were left foot shaped punch holes and right foot
shaped punch holes. I estimate based on my own foot impressions in the
substrate that the person/persons who left the tracks weighed about four
hundred pounds more than I did. We found no such impressions, other than the
first single track we found earlier that day off the main trail that resembled
“Giant Human feet” anywhere else in the park up to that point on the
expedition. The point is, this was not an anomaly, or a natural occurrence and
I can only conclude with common sense and everything that had occurred up to
that point; that a giant human type being made these tracks. There were dozens
of these in the area. The quantity and confusing lay of the tracks suggested
that the Bigfoot was loitering in the area at the edge of the swamp for a
while, milling around for some reason. Eventually we found a few heading out into
the deeper part of the cypress swamp. We shot some footage of the tracks and
while we were there, from out in the swamp-we heard some very loud limb breaks
and knocking sounds. It was our distinct feeling that it was out there, within
a few hundred yards of us, but concealed by the mass of cypress trees.
All of this
was quite disconcerting to me given the massive size of the individual my son
saw, our current location and its proximity to any help if something was to
happen. I felt waves of “WE NEED TO LEAVE RIGHT NOW!” washing over me. I
remained calm and told little Z we should get going and head back to the car.
We humped out of the area immediately, reached the car and headed back to camp.
Day 1-5:00 p.m.
A storm of
epic proportions hit the park. The wind was blowing at least forty miles an
hour and the rain was coming down sideways. We were pinned in our car watching
as our entire campsite was dismantled by the wind and heavy rain. The tent
spikes pulled out of the ground and the tent started to blow away, we jumped
out of the car, fighting the wind and pelting rain and ran over and grabbed it.
The bedding and pillows inside were soaked and weighed a ton.
Quickly, we
refastened the tent to the ground, tied it to the surrounding trees and ran
back for the car. We were exhausted at that point and with the pinging sound of
the rain on the car, I fell asleep in the driver’s seat.
Day 1-7:00 p.m.
I woke in
the front seat of the car to a stick tickling the inside of my nose and my son
bursting with laughter. The storm had passed. The sun was back out and it was
hot.
“Ha, Ha,
good one,” I said.
We rebuilt
and stabilized our encampment. Then we loaded the wet bedding and pillows into
the car and went off to town to find a Laundromat, turns out the only Laundromat
we could find was in the Myakka state park, back at the campground an hour
later. After we dried our bedding and clothes we went back to camp and started
a fire as the sun went down on the first day of our expedition. We ate like
pigs and laughed about the things we’d done and seen that first day, but one
thing we both agreed on, was that the day’s adventure was far from over. We
were going back at midnight to the area of the sighting to see what was around
in the pitch dark jungle.
Day 1-11:00 p.m.
The storm
had dumped close to four inches of rain on the park in less than two hours. I
did not expect to be wading, knee deep-in alligator infested swamp in the
middle of the night; but as we pulled up to the main trail at the observation
towers it was obvious, that would be the case. I briefed my son on the
importance of awareness when hiking a swamp at night. He seemed confident about
going in, so we left the safety of the parking lot and the car for the flooded
trail and the area of our encounter earlier that day.
Alligators
have a bright amber eye-shine when hit with a spotlight. The general rule is;
for every inch in between the eyes, is a foot of length in how big the gator
is. All of this was on my mind having seen the hundreds of massive alligators
all over the river and both the upper and lower lake areas. We checked our gear
and set off into the flooded jungle. The trail heading to the observation
towers was shin deep. We moved slowly, scanning with our head lamps looking for
eye-shine, cautious of every step we took. We came upon the towers and the spot
we would need to leave the relative safety of the main trail. I was carrying a
two million candle led spotlight. This lamp is literally capable of turning
pitch dark into day in a twenty foot perimeter.
We turned
off trail; the water deepened and flooded my boots. Eventually it shallowed
again and we came upon a small dry game trail. I stopped and emptied my boots.
We pressed on. Then as we came upon the first patch of saw palmettos I turned
on the big led and shined it on the front edge of the palmetto hammock on my
left up ahead. The spotlight lit up the entire trail. About twenty feet away on
the left, I caught something beige and white out of my peripherals, I glanced
over and there sitting up on its haunches, ears pinned back, was a two hundred
pound Florida panther.
“Freeze!” I
whispered urgently to my son who was a few steps behind me. He stopped
instantly.
The cat eyed
me and sniffed at the air. It then turned and looked in my son’s direction as
he stopped.
“Back out
slowly, do not turn around son-just slowly…start backing up.”
“What is
it?” he asked, he could not see the cat from where he stood.
“A very big
cat, it’s a big panther, real big panther, back up slowly.” I said.
We slowly
backed out of the area watching for the cat until we got around a hundred feet
away, then we turned around and quickly headed straight for the parking lot.
“That’s
enough night hiking for one evening, were going back to camp.” I said,
disappointed at our results, but happy we were both still in one piece. We hit
the tent and passed out exhausted from the days experiences. That was the
closest I’d ever come to a big Florida Panther, I wouldn’t complain if I never
saw one again.
Day 2-(Site 2)
Research
site two is lower Myakka Lake or more accurately; the swamps and jungles that
surround the entire lake. Myakka Lake is actually two lakes that are
interconnected by the Myakka River, upper Myakka Lake and lower Myakka Lake. I
chose the lower lake area as our secondary expedition site because of a report
I read that was filed in the mid 2000’s; the encounter was corroborated by both
men. Two young men rented a canoe from the upper Myakka lake canoe rental to go
Bass fishing in the lake that day. The canoe comes with a battery powered
trolling motor and two paddles. The two men were busy fishing and followed the
river out of the upper lake area, without thinking they ended up in the lower
lake a few miles to the southwest. The battery on the trolling motor started to
die and then went completely dead. Looking around at everything, I’m sure these
guys were freaking out. It was late afternoon with only a few hours of light
left they needed to get out now. They had to be horrified at the prospect of
being stranded in the canoe at night with hundreds of giant alligators cruising
around them, so they decided to beach the small canoe and hike out of the
jungle back to the main park. Obviously they felt like they could make the hike
in time to beat the dark. Of course once on shore they realized their
predicament. There are no trails leading out of the area it’s just thick, wild
Florida jungle.
Eventually
they found a route on the edge of a palmetto prairie that was relatively easy
hiking and were heading out of the area confidently when all of the sudden, a
large rock went flying past one man’s head, almost striking him. The two men
stopped and watched in the direction the rock came from. They could hear
someone trailing them off in the brush to the side about thirty yards away.
Whoever it was-was big and didn’t mind hiking in thick, razor sharp saw
palmettos. They kept moving, listening and watching as the rocks kept came
every so often. The ordeal continued the whole way out, the unknown rock
throwing assailant paralleled their position all the way out to the main road
from the thick bush. The men, terrified and exhausted were relieved to see the
park rangers were out looking for them.
This report
blew my mind, how is it that something like this goes uninvestigated by the
park staff? I don’t buy for even one second that this kind of activity goes
uninvestigated, quietly.
Day 2-8:00 a.m.
We got up
early and cooked a big breakfast of eggs, bacon and left over Italian sausage
from the night before. We set off for site two, and the “Rock throwers”
territory. We pulled into a large dirt parking lot. There I noticed several
cabins off to the side with quite a few official park vehicles that I had not
seen before sitting parked in front of the stilted cabins. It appears that not
only do they have “Park Staff” in Myakka, but they have a lot of unseen park
staff in Myakka. I noticed several wires coming off telephone poles, only the
wires went into the forest. I wondered if they had sensors or perhaps
camera/video traps out in the forest. I would, it makes perfect sense that they
would have such research tools active in the park, especially if they are
actively studying the “Wildlife.”
My son and I
stood for a moment at the edge of the trail and looked out over the vast plain,
you could just make out the tree line of the swamp at the edge of the lake on
the horizon.
“That’s
we’re we are headed.” I said pointing at the barely visible tree line.
“That’s real
far, dad.”
“Yes…it is,
are you ready for this?” I asked.
Little Z
shouted excitedly, “Let’s do it!”
We hiked the
three miles to the lower lake and then another mile or so into the swamp on the
outskirts, we saw only alligators, and wild hogs. We found no giant human type tracks anywhere
and it was hot, I mean “Africa” hot. I was dying.
I thought
perhaps we should have looked for a thick, shaded forest canopy in the area to
investigate but we were exhausted and still had to hump all the way back to the
car. We’d reached our half-empty tanks, and turned around for the return hike.
In total, I figure we hiked a little over nine miles that morning. The
afternoon sun cooked us, it was almost a hundred degrees and muggy. My son
seemed fine. As for me, when we reached the car I was on the verge of heat
exhaustion and physical collapse. I said I was fine, but he knew I’d had
enough.
We drove
back to the campsite, rehydrated and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. We
were planning on going back to the area we had the encounter and also saw the
panther the night before. All things considered, we had no Idea what to expect
at this point in the expedition. We were in for a hell of a night.
When
considering a baiting technique for a Bigfoot, it all seemed ridiculous. But,
ridiculous seemed to be par for the course so far so why stop. We left the
large bag of red delicious apples in the hot trunk of the car for two days on
purpose. I thought the heat would ripen them and increase the apple scent. In
addition to that I purchased ten apple scented car fresheners to hang from the
trees around our Bait. Given the obvious intelligence of the species, I didn’t
put much stock in baiting him to get footage or a photo. However, to leave a
gift of food with no intent other than to see if it was touched the next day
could be a good Idea I thought.
I had my
doubts, but if I lived out there…I’d take the apples.
We loaded
the car and geared up for the night hike. We had to get in there, regardless of
the other wild life that was standing guard.
Day 2-11:30 p.m.
We pulled up
to the trail, got out grabbed the bag of apples and checked our gear-especially
our batteries for our head lamps and spotlight. We re-applied the eucalyptus
oil mosquito repellant all over ourselves, which turned out to be a good thing,
I will explain that later. Given the situation and everything that we’d seen
and experienced up to that point, I was surprised that my son was still willing
to go back in there. I was more aware of the reality of our situation having
spent all my life in the wilds of Florida dealing with the usual wildlife, I
was very apprehensive.
We set out
into the pitch black flooded area and headed to the observation towers. There
was no wind at all and it was dead quiet. Our head lamps only lit up around ten
feet in front of us so I turned the spotlight to the trigger mode, this gave me
instant access to the powerful led’s that lit up the jungle like daytime. We
were both as quiet and as cautious as we could be. We arrived at the towers and
considered things for a moment. We decided it was better if we didn’t go off
the trail into the area we saw the panther the night before, we stayed on the
trail. The water deepened in the pot holes, but always shallowed out again in
the higher spots. We came to a very large palm tree on a sharp left turn in
trail. The palm had grown sideways across the trail due to thick canopy
overhead. The tree was trying to reach an open hole in the canopy for sunlight,
funny how even a tree can figure out how to survive. My son went under the
trunk of the tree and I climbed over it.
Day 2-12:00 a.m.
The trail was higher in the stretch after the
tree so it was dry. We both whispered that it was good to be on dry land. We
felt relieved to be out of the water for a minute. We got about thirty feet
from the palm and all of the sudden a very loud “Snap!” broke the silence. We
both whirled around in an instant. I hit the spotlight and there, falling from
top of the bushy palm tree we had just past under was the broken branch and
what I perceived to be; a juvenile Bigfoot. It fell with its arms up over its
head and rotated while falling to the horizontal position. It hit the ground
with such a thud that the concussion traveled through our boots. I heard the
air expel from its lungs like the wind being knocked out of somebody. Both of
us screamed loudly, jumped back and looked at each other terrified. His head
lamp blinded me for a second, as mine did to him. He shouted, “No! What is it?
Don’t look at me!” He raised his arms to block my light from his eyes.
Blinded, I
shouted “NO! What is that thing?” I looked back at where it hit the ground a
second later as my vision returned, it was already up and running off, its arms
were flailing wildly in a very disturbing way as it ran off. Christopher jumped
backwards into me as he saw all this and I backed up a few steps as well. We
kept screaming the whole time this was going on. “Holy Shit! What is it? What
is that? Holy shit! What is that thing?”
It was fast.
Faster than anything I had ever seen in my life. In less than two seconds it
covered around twenty-five feet or so and was gone into the palmetto hammock.
The weird thing was that as it reached the thickest part of the hammock and we
lost sight of it, all the noise it made as it ran suddenly stopped and
everything went silent again. We both noticed that and assumed it had stopped
and was hiding right there. We collected ourselves for a second and stared in
the spotlight at where it disappeared, waiting for something else to happen.
Nothing happened.
We pulled
out our machetes, just in case and walked over to where it ran into the
hammock. We stood there for at least five minutes watching everything in the
spotlight carefully, but we neither saw nor heard anything else. Somehow it
just vanished without another sound into a hammock in which there was no way
anything could vanish into without making a ton of noise. That alone was
freaking both of us out and we were completely freaked out of our minds.
Christopher
said “I don’t want to do this” chuckling nervously.
Then he said
“That was really freaky.”
I agreed
with him but said let’s calm down for a minute and think. We had to get past
all of this somehow so we could plant the apples in the trees. I said let’s
keep going and he reluctantly agreed saying “This is crazy.”
I said “I
know Z, what’s gonna’ happen next, right?”
That’s what
we both were thinking at that point.
We left the
area on the trail and headed to the bridge that leads to the Island in the main
swamp. We made it to the bridge; I think we both felt relieved at that point to
be on “Firm” ground. It actually seemed to settle us down a bit, being on
something man made. We both remarked about felling better. I think we were
actually grateful we made it. The bridge to the island is approximately seventy
yards long. In the center of the bridge is a little bench. We took our packs
off and pulled out the bag of apples. The swamp was alive with the sound of
frogs. It was so loud it was incredible. We walked across the bridge to the
edge of the island and carefully placed a few apples around six or seven feet
up on the thick branches and headed back to bench.
Day 2-12:45 a.m.
We sat for a
few minutes and Christopher asked me to make a few calls. I agreed to do it and
stood up to make the calls. I let out one hell of a scream and the entire swamp
went silent all at once. We looked at each other like, “Wow that was cool!” It
was suddenly dead quiet.
A second or
two later as if on cue, out on the island about a hundred yards off, we heard a
tree shake violently and then something very, very large landed on the ground
with a powerful thump. Whatever it was, landed on the ground so hard, the
entire dock vibrated under our feet. As the vibration shook the dock we both
looked at each other again, this time in complete disbelief.
“He’s here.”
I said. We were stunned.
I took that kind of response to my scream as a
warning. Like… “Yeah, I’m here and you’re pissing me off, so leave now!”
We had to go
out onto the island and at least try to get close again.
We gathered
our courage, got all our gear back on and walked off the bridge onto the
Island.
This hike
was not a good Idea, we were both very fearful of what we might see or
encounter. It was pitch black accept for where our lights hit. Every now and
then I’d pull the trigger on the spotlight and light up the whole area we were
in. We could hear the distinct sound of palmettos being smacked in the
distance, but never saw just who was smacking them. Every time I lit up the
jungle around us, I expected to see him coming right at me. After about a half
an hour or so of absolute terror, we’d had all we could stand so we decided to
call it a night.
We couldn’t
wait to get off that island and the hell out of that jungle. We walked at a
brisk pace glancing back every now and then, until we reached the palm tree
that blocked our trail. Then we slowed down, carefully snuck past it and jogged
for the safety of the car. The night was not over yet. Now that we were ok, and
we lived through it, we were all excited and couldn’t stop talking as we drove
back to the campsite. We climbed into the tent and passed out from emotional
exhaustion.
Day 3 7:00 a.m.
We got up,
grabbed our packs and supplies and quickly drove to the trail head. No one was
there yet. We ran down the trail, passed the palm that the thing fell out of
and headed for the bridge.
“Stop!” I
yelled. Right in the middle of the recently flooded trail was a single 14 inch
human foot shaped punch hole. We stood quietly and listened for a second. I
turned on the camera and started recording the track when suddenly from behind
us I heard two rocks being smacked together four or five times. I spun around
and held the camera up as high as I could get it over the palmetto hammock that
the sound was coming from. As we listened, about fifty feet away in the middle
of the palmetto patch, a vine that was connected to a large banyan tree started
to swing back and forth. The rock banging started again we both heard it there
was no mistaking the tic-tic-tic-tic-tic sound of the two rocks hitting each
other. We were getting ready to charge in and then as if nature was saying
“You’re done here.” It started pouring down rain. We forgot the water for
making the plaster. I sent Christopher back to the car. “Go Z, as fast as you
can!”
I hovered
over the track to keep the rain from washing it out worse than it already had.
He must have run as fast as he could because it only took about twenty minutes
for him to get back with the water. I mixed the plaster, poured it into the
track and covered it with my poncho. The track cast came out as good as could
be expected given the circumstances. We pulled it and headed for the car in the
heavy rain. We were drenched by the time we got back to the car. We left Myakka
with an incredible sense of accomplishment and my son knew now that there are
indeed giant hairy wild-men roaming around in Florida’s own Jurassic Park.
The idea that we hallucinated all of this is insulting and preposterous, we know what we saw and experienced. I have every intention of pursuing this campaign to confront science about this and I hop you will join our movement to bring the truth of what is "really" going on out there to the world.
The idea that we hallucinated all of this is insulting and preposterous, we know what we saw and experienced. I have every intention of pursuing this campaign to confront science about this and I hop you will join our movement to bring the truth of what is "really" going on out there to the world.
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