INVISIBLE BIGFOOT ?

INVISIBLE BIGFOOT ?

As a long-time Fortean Investigator in western KY I’ve learned that there is a
huge amount of hairy inhumanoid sightings which take place here. Trying to get to
the bottom of it all has even led to a few personal encounters of my own. Here is
one of them which I wrote about in my first book, “Mysterious Kentucky,
(Whitechapel Press, 2007)”

There is a place in Smith Mills, Henderson Co. KY, called Burbank’s Lake, also known
locally as ‘Spook Hill’. As you might guess by the name, down through the years this
particular spot has garnered a reputation for being haunted. I believe it to be a
‘window’ location as many inexplicable experiences have taken place in this area,
including various cryptid sightings such as Bigfoot, water monsters, giant birds and
black panthers. UFO activity is not uncommon in this area, and there are many ghost
stories associated with Spook Hill as well. Lending to this aura of mystery, no
doubt, is the fact that there are 2 very old cemeteries, long since reclaimed by the
forest, to be found at the hilltop. Also situated there between the main cemetery
and the slave cemetery, are 3 ancient lakes. One is fairly big and deep and all were
rumored for as long as I could remember to contain monster bass. The male members of
my family have always been avid fishermen so, one day back in the summer of 1987, we
all decided to go and fish there. This was totally against our dad’s better
judgment. He had lived near the area when he was younger and had been personally
warned by Mr. Burbank never to let dark catch him on the property. He never said
why. Also, my older half brother, Harold, had told us a scary story about a time
when he and a brother-in-law had went night fishing there in a boat a few years
before. He claimed that every time the two tried to land the boat and come ashore to
leave the woods would erupt with the sound of breaking branches and heavy footsteps,
forcing them to shove back out into the lake. ” It sounded like a herd of elephants
was trompin’ around in there,” he had said. Every attempt to leave the lake was met
by this resistance, which frightened them both, and they were forced to spend the
entire night in the boat out in the middle of the lake. Only when dawn broke were
the two ‘allowed’ to leave, which they did in all haste, never to return. This
intrigued me to no end, green as I was back then, but the lure of trophy bass
enticed us all.

We arrived at the lake in the early afternoon and headed through the trees down to
the water. We had been able to procure a one man bass boat with a small trolling
motor from a friend. It could hold two people-but just barely. As there were 6 of
us, four brothers and two friends, this meant that four would be confined to fishing
from the banks. We found the place to be absolutely teeming with water moccasins and
not one of us had brought a weapon of any type, only fishing poles. Since everyone
wanted to fish the other side of the lake we opted to be ferried across one by one
rather than walk through the tall grass, trying to avoid a possible snake bite. It
took forever for the little motor to chug everyone across the lake. By the time we
made it to the other side it was already late afternoon. The sun was making a rapid
disappearance behind the trees. We fished awhile without much luck. I remember
catching one largemouth that weighed a couple of pounds and, before we knew it,
darkness was fast approaching.

My older brother, who had been hogging the bass boat with a family friend, finally
sputtered in to shore and began taking everyone back across one at a time. This took
around 30-40 minutes round trip, with five trips to be made.

Complete darkness fell with just myself and one of my younger brothers remaining on
the far side of the lake. We had half a gallon of kerosene and had earlier gathered
what wood we could find, which was mostly wet since it had rained there a couple of
days previously, and used it to build a small fire. We were sitting there bemoaning
so much trouble for nothing when the sound of breaking branches and heavy footsteps
erupted from the woods in front of us. It was a terrifyingly loud commotion and we
jumped up in fright. I have never before or since, been so terrified by any type of
sound. It was ,looking back, totally unlike me to react in such a manner. Perhaps it
was because, at the first limb fracture, we BOTH knew immediately what was out there
in the darkness of those haunted woods. Worse, the sounds soon began to come from
behind us and to our right as well, and they were getting closer. We heard no
grunts. No growls. No breathing . Just the heavy footfalls and the terrific
explosions of cracking tree limbs all around us. We thought we were both going to
die that night, without a doubt, and I still count myself lucky to have made it out
of there alive.

We could see nothing as it was quite dark. No moon and heavy cloud cover. When the
sounds got quite close I threw some kerosene into the fire, determined to at least
see what was about to eat us. The fuel ignited and the fire flared up, illuminating
an area of about 25 radial feet in all directions. We saw nothing. The light would
only last for a few seconds then it would subside and plunge our surroundings back
into utter darkness. When this happened the sounds would start up and approach us
again. Over and over I threw the fuel into the shrinking fire, washing the woods in
sudden firelight. When I did this all the sounds immediately stopped. We never did
see a thing. Not even a single eye-shine. The kerosene didn’t last too long.

We had been yelling and making a good sized noise of our own, to no avail. It seemed
that only the light was holding our would be attackers at bay. But the fire was
fading fast. Soon it was reduced to a tiny flame at one end of a small, wet
branch-and the noises were closing in once again. The smaller the light became the
closer the ungodly racket approached. I grabbed the burning twig and held it up in
front of me as we walked backwards down toward the water’s edge. I told my brother
to get ready to swim for his life. The noises followed us down to the lake,
amazingly, even though this area had very few trees! It sounded like invisible
branches were being broken by invisible beings. Lucky for us, just as we were about
to get wet, we heard the sound of our brother on the boat shouting his approach. We
yelled for him to hurry. When he reached us we were in a state of agitation, to say
the least. He wanted to know who was next. Well, to put it simply, we found out a
one man boat can actually carry three people in an emergency.

We had no doubt that the creatures were there, but why couldn’t we see them? Could
the sound of tree-breaks, an oft-reported facet of the Bigfoot phenomenon, be some
type of induced auditory ;hallucination’? We may never know but I strongly suspect
that, if I had went back to the scene of the experience the very next day, no sign
of the creatures presence would have been visible to the human eye.

BMN