Warning

 

Close

Confirm Action

Are you sure you wish to do this?

Confirm Cancel
BCM
User Panel

Posted: 1/12/2021 12:56:51 PM EDT
The Cowman of Copalis Beach

The Cowman of Copalis Beach

My dad worked in the timber industry his whole life. His father was a logger, and he grew up in and around the woods. My dad started his own logging company when he was eighteen, and has owned and operated shake and shingle mills from Oregon clear up to Thorn Bay, Alaska.

He is an intelligent man and holds over a dozen patents for various pieces of equipment he has designed and built over the years. He has employed dozens of people over the years, all of them spending extensive time in the wilderness.

When I was a boy, I remember hearing bits and pieces of conversations among some of the men at the mill. Although nobody would tell me directly, I understood that something had gone on before I was born, and it involved one of the foremen, ‘Jon’. They weren’t joking around, they were genuinely afraid, and wouldn’t talk about it with a kid.

When I was young, my dad wouldn’t tell me about it because I would often go out into the woods cutting blocks with him on the weekends, and he didn’t want me to be afraid of the woods. While I was speaking with him last weekend, I told him of a couple of strange events that happened to me later in the wilderness, and that reminded me of the hints at a story I heard when I was a boy. After some prodding he told me the following story.

In the mid 1960’s, my dad owned a large roofing product mill in Aberdeen, WA. He had teams of men that would cut the fallen old growth cedar salvage left after a logging operation. He had permits to salvage a large amount of wood in the coastal areas of Grays Harbor County, primarily in the area around Copalis Beach. Several of the men on his cutting crews lived in and around Copalis Beach. His foreman, a man I will call Jon for the story, was a bright, down to earth hard worker. My dad trusted him with thousands of dollars of vehicles and equipment, as well as the safety of his crews. He was not the kind of man to make up stories.

On a Monday morning sometime in July, Jon was several hours late for work. This was highly unusual as he was always there early, getting the saws and trucks ready for the day. My dad said he was visibly shaken up, and when he asked him what was wrong, he asked my dad to go in the office so the others wouldn’t hear them. They went in and sat down, and Jon simply said “Something destroyed our house this weekend.” My dad thought he said “someone” broke into the house, and asked Jon if it was someone he knew. Jon said, “You don’t understand, this wasn’t a person. It was a… I don’t know what it was, but it completely trashed the house. The family is going to stay with my brother in Elma for a while.”

My dad asked him to explain what had happened. Jon said that when he got home from work Friday evening, his youngest son Tim, who was around four at the time, told him he saw a big “Cowman” walking at the edge of their field that afternoon. He thought the boy meant “Cowboy”, because some of his neighbors wore cowboy hats when they were out in the sun. He asked him if the man was wearing a cowboy hat, and the boy said, “No daddy, he was a Cowman, furry and stinky like the cows.”

He asked his wife if she knew what he was talking about, and she said Tim was playing on the porch that afternoon, when he came running in and said the cowman was stuck on the fence. He was very excited, so she went out to see what he was talking about. She said as she opened the door, she was hit by a horrible smell, like wet dogs and garbage. Tim was pointing across to the field opposite their house and said, “He got loose!” She looked where he was gesturing and could see the top strand of barb wire bouncing up and down, as if somebody had just pulled on it really hard and let it go. She didn’t see the “Cowman”, and noticed nothing out of the ordinary except for the smell.

She told Tim to come inside to play for rest of the day, she felt uneasy and a little scared. Their older son, Jon Jr. who was twelve at the time, was at a friend’s house and walked home a short while after Tim saw his “Cowman”. He told her somebody had followed him home, walking in the woods off the right side of the road. He never seen who it was, they never left the woods, but he said it had to be a really big man. He would hear large sticks cracking, and the footsteps were very heavy. Once he got to the driveway of their house where the woods stopped at the field where his brother had his sighting, the footsteps stopped and Jon Jr. never saw anything. He was pretty shaken up by the event, and wanted his Dad to go out to the woods and check it out with him.

Later that evening, Jon strapped on his .357 and took his older son out into the field to have a look. They first walked to the area where the “Cowman” was supposedly stuck on the fence, and walked down the fence line looking for anything. They came upon a large clump of long, reddish brown hair tangled in the top strand of barbed wire. He tried to pull it off but it was really tangled up, so he pulled out his buck knife and sawed it off. He said the hair was over a foot long, real coarse and stringy.

There appeared to be a bit of flesh matted in the clump, and the top wire was pulled loose from one of the posts. Whatever was hung up on the fence was very big. He handed the hair to his son to hold, and they climbed through the fence and walked toward the woods. He said he was looking for any sign of tracks on the ground; the hair kind of looked like it was from a horse’s mane or tail. The ground was a solid grassy field, and there were no hoof prints or any other tracks he could see.

The edge of the woods began about ten feet from the fence line, and they entered on a small game trail that deer frequented. It was around eight at night, and in the woods it was getting to be fairly dark. They walked for a ways, and soon began to smell the rotting garbage/wet dog odor his wife reported earlier. Jon said he got the feeling they were being watched; the hair on the back of his neck was standing up. He told his son they should head back before it got dark, and the boy didn’t argue. As they began walking back out, they could hear heavy footsteps off to their left.

They stopped, and the footsteps stopped. They walked on nearly to the clearing, and Jon whispered to his son to run like Hell to the house on the count of three. Jon Jr. nodded, and Jon whispered, “One, two…Three!” and gave his son a push in the back to get him started, then spun around and raced off the trail in the opposite direction, toward the footsteps with his gun drawn.

Off the trail, the underbrush was dense with ferns and bushes; he had a hard time making headway. But as he got closer, he could hear it moving away from him, deeper into the woods. At this time, he told my Dad that he thought it was a vagrant camping out in the woods and possibly scoping houses out to rob at night.

Jon was a big man and capable of taking care of himself in most any situation and he had a large caliber handgun so he wasn’t too worried about confronting a vagrant in the woods. He was a few yards off the trail in deep brush when he heard the movement stop just ahead of him. He stopped to look and listen, and thought he saw movement by a large tree, like someone was trying to hide there. He leveled his gun and said “Come out nice and slow, or I swear to God I’ll come back there and shoot you!”

It was silent for a moment, and then he caught movement out the corner of his eye and spun around to his right for a better look. He said it looked like a huge bear moving through the brush, he could only see bits of it through the dense ferns, but it was moving quietly away from the tree on four legs. It was about fifteen feet away from him. At first he thought it was a bear, and then suddenly he saw a huge hairy arm with a human like hand reach out of the brush and grab a small alder tree. The tree was about four inches in diameter, and it grabbed hold about five feet up.

He said it happened so fast it was a blur, but the thing pulled itself upright out of the brush by holding the tree. It stood on two legs and turned its upper body to glare at Jon. It was enormous; he couldn’t believe how bulky it was. He said it was well over seven feet tall, and at least half that big through the chest. It was too dark to make out many features, but its eyes seemed to glow a deep red, and he thought he could see teeth, like it was curling its lips back.

It stood for just a brief moment, and then lunged ahead, pushing back on the tree with tremendous force. The tree snapped loudly and crashed into the trees around it, getting hung up in the branches and not falling to the ground. It then disappeared into the deep brush with frightening speed, sounding like a bulldozer with no engine sounds. Jon stood there in shock, his gun temporally forgotten, and then he realized it was heading toward the house, the way his son had went. He turned and ran to the trail, hoping to gain ground on it and cut it off before it reached the clearing. He hit the trail and ran as fast as he could toward the clearing, all the while hearing the creature thrash through the brush on his side.

He burst into the clearing and looked franticly about for his son. Jon Jr. was standing just inside of the fenced field, waiting for his Dad. Jon screamed at him to run to the house, then he saw the thing crash out of the woods about fifty feet to his left. It crossed the ten foot clearing and stepped over the fence in two strides, and was running through the field parallel to his son in a matter of seconds. Jon screamed at his son to run faster, and took aim at the creature. He didn’t fire because he was afraid to hit his son or his house, so he vaulted over the fence and ran in pursuit of them. He could see it angling toward his son, and knew there was no way his boy would make it to the gate before it cut him off. In desperation, he pointed the gun to the ground at his side and fired as he ran, hoping to scare it. It veered more sharply toward his son, and put on an enormous burst of speed. He heard his boy scream as they seemed to collide, he saw the creature dip its shoulder down a little bit and suddenly Jon Jr. was airborne, he flew about ten feet then hit the ground rolling.

The creature never paused; it continued to run at an amazing speed in a loop back towards the woods. Once the line of fire was clear, Jon stopped and squeezed off the remaining five rounds at the retreating creature. He was pretty sure all the shots went wild; the creature never made a sound or slowed down, and was soon over the fence and back in the woods. He reached his son, who was shaken up but not physically hurt. He asked his Dad

if it was a bear. Apparently, little Jon was so busy running for the house that he didn’t see the creature running after him, he said something big and black suddenly ran into him, and he felt a huge paw hit his bottom and he said he felt like he was falling.

Jon pulled his son to his feet and they ran through the gate and into the house locking the door behind him. They were both out of breath and white as ghosts, his wife was screaming at him, demanding to know what the gunshots were for and if they were all right. When he could catch his breath, he told her to make sure the back door was locked, he was going to call the Sheriff. He went to the phone and began to dial the number; this was before 911, then stopped and wondered what exactly he was going to say. He hung up the phone, realizing what an idiot he would look like if he told the Sheriff the boogie man just chased them out of the woods.

He told his wife that it was a large animal, possibly a bear. He didn’t know how to begin to tell her their four year old was right, his Cowman was real and it was more frightening than anything he could imagine. He told them all to keep the doors locked, and stay away from the windows. Around ten o’clock that night, both boys were in bed and Jon and his wife sat down to watch the news. They soon heard a loud moaning cry, kind of like the siren on the volunteer fire department. It would stretch out for a long time, and then end with a “whoop whoop” sound. It was coming from the woods opposite the house.

His wife asked “What the Hell is that?” Jon answered truthfully; “That is Tim’s Cowman.”

He then described to her the full details of what had happened, and she immediately wanted to call the Sheriff. He persuaded her that they would sound crazy, and that he would handle it himself. She reluctantly agreed, and told him she didn’t want either of the kids to go outside until this thing was gone. The howling went on until around midnight, when it got quiet again. Jon wanted to stay up through the night and watch over the house, but he had a long day at work and the excitement earlier had worn him out. They went to bed around one in the morning, and had no further problems that night.

They slept in that morning, and the boys were already up and watching cartoons when they got out of bed. The first thing little Jon said was that he had heard the bear rubbing against the house last night. He said he was too scared to get up and tell his parents, and fell back asleep soon after.

Then Tim said “The Cowman talks funny.” This stopped Jon cold. He asked his son “When did you talk to the Cowman?” Tim replied “Last night, in my room.” Jon asked: “The Cowman was in your room?”

“No Daddy, he’s too big for my room, he talked to my window.” Tim said, and turned back to the cartoons. “What did the Cowman say, Tim?” Jon asked. “He talks funny; I don’t know what he said. He talks like this…OOH AHH AHH OOH!” Tim said, and started making strange monkey like noises. “Did the Cowman try to get in your window?” Jon asked, breaking out in a cold sweat. “He’s too big for that. He made funny faces, he has Lincoln Log teeth!” Tim said with a smile.

Jon later learned Tim meant it had square teeth that looked the same size as the small blocks in a Lincoln log set. It apparently spent quite a while “talking” and making faces outside the boy’s window. Tim said it lay down and went to sleep outside, and he could hear it snoring. Jon walked to his younger son’s room, and cautiously peered out the window. No sleeping Cowman. Jon told the boys to get dressed; they were going to go visit their uncle in Elma for the day.

After his wife and kids left, he called one of the men from his crew, and asked him to come over. I’ll call him Patrick, he was an ex-State patrolman and my Dad said he was kicked off the force because of his drinking problem. He was a good worker and never got drunk before dark, so Jon figured they would have most of the day to look for this thing.

When Patrick arrived, Jon greeted him at the door and said, “Are you up for some hunting?” Seeing how it was not hunting season, Patrick told him he doesn’t poach, and doesn’t even want to know about it if Jon did. Jon told him it wasn’t deer he was after, and went on to explain the previous night’s events. Patrick didn’t really believe him, but could see he was sincere and still shook up. Jon had his pistol and a bolt action 30.06, Patrick had a .38 in his car and Jon loaned him a 12 gauge. They first circled the house looking for any signs of a nocturnal visitor.

At the back of the house, there was a spigot for the garden hose, and it always leaked. There was a patch of ground worn bare of grass under it, and it had turned to mud. In the center of the mud, there was a huge, clear imprint of what looked like a bare human foot. Jon said it was at least 18 inches long, and very wide. It was so clear that he got the feeling it was left there on purpose.

They found no other prints around the house, and in places in the field and woods where a track could be made, the creature seemed to avoid them. Off to the side of the track in the mud were four straight lines about eight inches long. He said it looked like someone had raked their fingers through the mud. When they circled around the side of the house and got to Tim’s window, they saw what it was for.

Above the top of the window, a good seven feet up, were four muddy streaks. And on the window itself were dozens of large, muddy fingerprints. The glass wasn’t cracked or broken, just smeared with mud. By this time Patrick was fast becoming convinced something strange had indeed happened the night before.

Before going out into the woods, Jon wanted to feed the families pigs. They had two of them apparently fairly young weighing around 40 pounds each. The pig pen was about a hundred yards away from the house, behind an old barn. As they got closer Jon became concerned because they couldn’t hear them making any noise.

Usually they squealed like crazy when they knew food was near at hand, but this morning it was completely silent. They rounded the corner and the pen was empty. No sign of damage or struggle, the pigs were just gone. They searched the barn but found nothing out of place, so they decided to hit the woods and try to kill this thing.

They entered on the same trail Jon and Jon had used the day before, Jon showed Patrick the broken fence wire and told him again about the hair. It was a bright summer morning, and Jon was surprised at the difference from the previous evening. The night before had been still and silent, now the woods were alive with birds and small animals. He showed Patrick the broken tree, and they followed the creatures’ trail and found several more trees and large branches twisted and broken. They could see large, faint impressions of footprints where the ground was soft. They followed the deer trail further into the woods, and encountered nothing unusual. By noon they were both getting hungry, so they hiked back to the house for lunch. They spent the rest of the day poking around, but saw nothing more out of the ordinary.

Just before dark that night, his wife and kids drove up. He and Patrick were sitting on the porch with the guns, watching the woods. His wife asked if they had seen anything, Jon told her about the footprint and mud on the window.

Patrick had retrieved a pint of booze from his car and was well on his way to getting smashed. Jon decided he didn’t want a frightened drunk with a gun around his family, so he suggested that Patrick could go home, nothing was going to happen anyway. Patrick agreed and drove off, and Jon continued to watch the woods. His wife brought out a plate of food and a Coleman lantern and a flashlight.

He told her he would stay out here and watch the house through the night. Before they went to bed, he went into their bedroom and with help from his wife, pushed the king sized bed as far from the windows as they could. They agreed that his wife and kids would all sleep in that bed for the night and he would keep watch around the house. She had grown up hunting and knew how to handle a gun as good as him, so she insisted on keeping the shotgun in the room with them. He agreed after making her promise to ask for a name before shooting anything. If it replied “Jon”, please don’t shoot it.

There was a full moon that night, and Jon could see across the field and into the inky dark of the woods. The night air was filled with the sound of thousands of crickets, and the pond behind the house was full of croaking frogs. As the moon rose higher, clumps of weeds in the field began casting sinister shadows, and before long Jon was seeing big hairy creatures sneaking up on him in each of them. He stood up and lit a cigarette, trying to shake the fear and concentrate on the task at hand. As he smoked, he wandered to the end of the porch, and stood looking at the darkened barn. Something was different, but he couldn’t quite place it.

The front of the barn facing the house was open, and the moonlight was hitting it from the side, casting the interior in deep shadows. He stood watching the black opening as he finished his smoke, thinking about the missing pigs. He then realized what was wrong. All the crickets and frogs had gone silent. It was as quiet as the inside of a mausoleum at night; he could hear the minute shrill buzz of his own nervous system. As he turned to walk back to his chair, he thought he saw movement in the barn.

He looked intently at the opening and could make out nothing, then turned his head a bit to the side and saw what looked like two red eyes hovering about eight feet off the ground. He couldn’t see them if he looked straight at them, but when he averted his eyes a little, they became clearer. They were a deep burning coal red, almost invisible in the dark. Every few seconds they would disappear when the creature blinked.

His heart began thudding in his chest, and he waited for it to leave the barn and approach the house. He slowly backed up to his chair, never looking away, and picked up his 30.06. He walked back to the end of the porch and watched and waited. He stood looking at the blinking red eyes for what seemed like hours, and then the eyes blinked out and never came back.

He watched intently but could see no movement. He thought for a moment, then grabbed the flashlight and shined it at the barn. The flashlight was too small to penetrate the darkness of the barn from this distance, he had to get closer. He was none too keen about leaving the relative safety of the porch and confronting a glowing eyed monster in his barn, but he was damned if he was going to live in fear in his own house.

He left the porch and began slowly working his way toward the barn, taking his time, building his courage up. He got closer and could still see no movement; it had gone further into the dark. He got within 20 feet of the opening, and his flashlight would now penetrate the gloom in the barn. He moved the feeble beam of light over the contents of the barn, an old tractor, and old pickup, boxes and buckets.

Too many places for something to hide, even something big. He cautiously walked closer, now shining the flashlight down the barrel of his rifle. He stopped at the entrance and shined the light all over, searching the corners and under the vehicles. He stepped into the barn, every sense straining for sound or movement. He walked around the pickup, tensing for a huge, hairy arm to reach out and grab him at any second. He made his way clear to the rear of the barn without seeing anything, and slowly turned around to leave. He felt both relieved not to have encountered it in the dark barn, and frightened and somewhat confused about where it could have gone.

As he was walking out he glanced at the wide stairs leading up into the hayloft and froze. He knew with complete certainty that it had climbed those stairs and was waiting for him to walk out under the hayloft and jump down upon him. He couldn’t move, he was literally frozen in fear. He swore he could here the floorboards softly creak above him as an enormous weight edged stealthily closer to the edge.

He stood with his heart pounding in his ears, unable to move or act. Suddenly there was the booming explosion of a shotgun from the house, followed by his wife screaming. His paralysis broke and he bolted out of the barn toward the house, completely forgetting what may have been in the hayloft.

As he ran toward the house, he heard an inhuman roar coming from the woods behind the house. It sounded pissed off and in pain. It screamed again and he heard branches breaking as it plowed through the forest, thankfully away from the house. He got to the house and almost knocked down the front door in his hurry to get inside.

He ran down the hall to their room and found his family huddled together on the bed, sobbing. One of the windows was blown out, and his wife was still pointing the shotgun at it. When he burst into the room she swung the gun in his direction and screamed and he hit the floor. He waited for the blast but it didn’t come. He slowly stood up and she had put the gun down and he went to the bed. He asked her what had happened, but she was too shook up to answer just then.

Tim started crying: “Why did you shoot the Cowman Mommy, why?” Jon Jr. Had his face buried against her shoulder crying. After they calmed down a bit, he told them to get up and follow him. He led them to the living room, then went out the open front door and looked carefully around. He could see no sign of it, all was quiet again. He told them to come out and get in the car. They ran out in their pajamas and piled in the car; he got in and drove them to his brother’s house in Elma.

On the way there, they had calmed down enough to tell him what happened. She said a couple hours after they went to bed, she finally dozed off. She was awakened by Tim talking to someone, and this bizarre clicking chirping sound. Tim wasn’t in the bed; he was standing in front of one of the windows. The moonlight was shining through both windows illuminating the room pretty good, but there was a large shadow, like a tree obscuring the window in front of Tim.

She knew there were no trees close enough to cast a shadow, she told to get away from the window. “Mommy, listen! The Cowman can sound like a bird!” Tim said pointing excitedly at the dark figure in the window. “Timmy, get away from the window.” She said, trying to keep her voice quiet. Right after she spoke, the noises from outside changed, it went from a soft chirping, to a strange gibbering, almost like human speech with an occasional pig-like snort thrown in.

At this time, little Jon woke up and said “What is that?” rather loudly. This seemed to incite the creature and it hit the side of the house with its fists hard enough for the walls to tremble. At this, Little Jon screamed and Tim yelled “Quiet, you’re going to scare him away!” She yelled at Tim to get away from the window again, and reached up on the headboard and grabbed the shotgun. She got out of the bed and started toward Tim; the creature leaned down and looked straight in the window at her.

She screamed and raised the shotgun, afraid to shoot because her son was so close to it. She started forword to grab Tim, and there was an explosion of breaking glass; a gigantic hairy arm reached through the window toward her son. She screamed again and fired over Tim’s head, blowing out the rest of the window and hitting the creature with .00 buckshot. It jerked backwards out of the window and disappeared into the dark. A few seconds later she heard it screaming in the woods. “It was trying to get Tim, it was trying to grab my baby!” she started crying again and he comforted her as best he could while driving.

They stayed the rest of that night and the following night with his brother’s family. He told his brother about it, but could see he didn’t really believe him. He agreed to ride back to Jon’s house with him early Monday morning before work. They had left the front door open in their haste to leave, and he was afraid animals or vandals would have got into the house. When they arrived, the house looked like a tornado had gone through it. The couch was upside down.

They had a large, heavy console TV and it was apparently thrown across the room, lying in a spray of broken glass. The kitchen was trashed, the refrigerator knocked over and food everywhere. The doors to both of the boy’s rooms were left closed, and the rooms were untouched, same as the bathroom. The master bedroom was torn apart, the pillows ripped up and feathers everywhere. The chest of drawers was knocked over and the large mirror smashed. Jon’s brother looked around in awe, and said “You better call the police!” Jon looked at him and said “And tell them what? Bigfoot destroyed my house?”

They left and closed the front door this time, and drove to my Dad’s mill in Aberdeen. Jon’s brother waited in the car while Jon went in and told this to my Dad. After he was done, my Dad said, “Well, let’s go have a look at it then.” They drove back out to the house, and Jon showed my Dad the damage. He pulled the clump of hair from his shirt pocket and let my Dad look at it. As they were walking through the house surveying the damage, my Dad pointed out cracks in the ceiling where it had apparently stood up and hit its head. Jon told my Dad that they couldn’t live there anymore, even if the creature was gone, they would always be afraid.

Their homeowners insurance wouldn’t cover the damage; the adjuster claimed Jon must have done it in a drunken rage. My Dad helped them find a place in Aberdeen, and gave him a loan for new furniture and stuff. The house was eventually fixed up and sold, and my Dad never heard about another problem there.

A few observations about this story; My Dad lost contact with “Jon” and his family in the mid eighties. They moved out of state and my Dad hasn’t heard from them since. His brother died around the same time. Why didn’t they call the cops? Jon had a lot of pride as well as a lot of common sense. He knew he couldn’t logically explain what had happened to the authorities, and he didn’t want the story to get out and have him branded a nutcase.

I asked my Dad if they saved the hair, he said Jon never mentioned it again and my Dad never asked him about it. I asked my Dad if he saw the footprint and muddy fingerprints, he said he did. He said it looked like a giant barefoot man had stepped very carefully in the center of the mud. He’s not a tracker, but he said it was the clearest print of any kind he had ever seen. I asked my Dad if the neighbors had heard any of this. He said if they did, none of them ever mentioned it again. I also asked him if he thought it was possible Jon had made it all up.

That he HAD trashed his house in a drunken rage, and made up this elaborate cover story. My Dad said Jon and his family were terrified of that place; they didn’t even want to go back and get their clothes.

If was just an elaborate story, what did he stand to gain? To profit from a story in any way, you have to share it with people. My Dad and the other folks mentioned in the story are the only ones who ever heard it, until now, of course. He also said that whatever trashed that house was no man. The TV had to have weighed close to 200 pounds, and it was obviously thrown across the room with great force. He said that even after two days, there was still a wild animal smell in the house.

I asked him if thought there might have been two creatures involved, considering the incident in the barn. He said he asked Jon that same question, and was told that Jon felt there was only one, that it lured him into the barn then snuck out the side door to the house. The thing he thought he heard in the hayloft was either his imagination, or some common animal like a raccoon.

For whatever reason, this critter seemed focused on their four-year-old son. Their son was the only one who never showed any fear of it. He seemed to think of it as his friend. And although the sex of the animal was never determined, it was referred to as a male because of the predatory stalking type behavior. That and the conspicuous lack of breasts, or perhaps it was just not as well endowed as the Patterson Film Subject?

Anyhow, its behavior almost seems indicative of a mother that has lost her little Bigfoot and is looking for a replacement. I rather facetiously asked my Dad if little ‘Timmy’ was a particularly hairy child, perhaps suffering from that rare condition that causes uncontrollable hair growth all over the body. He said ‘Timmy’ was a normal little boy, with normal brown hair on his normal head. I didn’t ask if ‘Timmy’ regularly reeked of rotting garbage and wet dogs, didn’t seem a polite course for the conversation to take.

He told me of other possible Bigfoot encounters he and his crews had in the woods around Grays Harbor. None of them are quite as titillating as the ‘Cowman’ story, but interesting nonetheless. Perhaps I’ll share them if there is an interest here in them.
Link Posted: 1/12/2021 1:37:27 PM EDT
[#1]
Subscribed
Link Posted: 1/12/2021 10:38:26 PM EDT
[#2]
Love this story!
Link Posted: 1/12/2021 10:41:33 PM EDT
[#3]
In for more...
Link Posted: 1/13/2021 2:43:10 PM EDT
[#4]
definitely good read
Link Posted: 1/13/2021 6:58:12 PM EDT
[#5]
I have read this exact story somewhere else, or it is the strangest case of deja vu ever.
Link Posted: 1/13/2021 9:00:40 PM EDT
[#6]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
I have read this exact story somewhere else, or it is the strangest case of deja vu ever.
View Quote


Oh no, it's a VERY famous case. It's been in GD many times.
Link Posted: 1/14/2021 1:31:56 AM EDT
[#7]
Thank you. I had a stroke some time back, and memory is sometimes foggy.
Link Posted: 1/14/2021 1:47:57 AM EDT
[#8]
I'll have to finish it later.  Made it halfway.

I'm in Oregon.  Everyone here knows bigfoot is real.  We hang out sometimes...
Link Posted: 1/14/2021 9:30:55 AM EDT
[#9]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
Thank you. I had a stroke some time back, and memory is sometimes foggy.
View Quote


I'm sorry to hear about your stroke. God Bless you and keep you.
Link Posted: 1/14/2021 5:11:03 PM EDT
[#10]
Copalis and Moclips used to be a very out of the way place, especially back then. If you didn't log or fish, or do something to support those industries, it probably would not be a place you wanted to live.

It is really grown now though, not like it was back in the 80s and earlier.
Link Posted: 1/15/2021 5:24:32 AM EDT
[#11]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
I have read this exact story somewhere else, or it is the strangest case of deja vu ever.
View Quote



So have I. Was it posted in the Creepy Thread?
Link Posted: 1/15/2021 12:23:09 PM EDT
[#12]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
So have I. Was it posted in the Creepy Thread?
View Quote

Most likely
Link Posted: 1/20/2021 1:05:44 AM EDT
[#13]
You said you had more . . ?
Link Posted: 1/26/2021 11:29:13 AM EDT
[#14]
Great story, thanks for sharing @ValleyGunner.
Link Posted: 1/26/2021 11:59:30 AM EDT
[#15]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
Great story, thanks for sharing @ValleyGunner.
View Quote

Link Posted: 1/26/2021 2:25:47 PM EDT
[#16]
What happened to the Skinwalker Ranch story?  When I look for it I just get hits for the history channel show.  I remember there used to be a narrative print story that was similar to the Cowman story that told about the original family and their interactions with the paranormal stuff there.
Link Posted: 1/26/2021 2:42:49 PM EDT
[#17]
@DesignatedMarksman                                    
                                  Skinwalker Ranch Story

In 1994 Terry and Gwen Sherman purchased a well-known piece of land now known as the Skinwalker Ranch. The couple moved in with their two children and livestock. They were surprised to find that the previous owners had placed deadbolt locks on all the doors and windows, including those inside the house. Some these had deadbolts on both the inside and the outside of the house. Even the kitchen cabinets had bolts on them. And at both ends of the house, iron stakes and heavy chains had been installed, which Sherman guessed were used by the previous tenants for large guard dogs.

The very day they took possession, the family spotted a large coyote or a wolf in one of their pastures which soon approached, making its way to a livestock pen. It then grabbed a calf by the nose, trying to drag it through the corral bars. Terry Sherman and his father then began to beat the animal to make it release the calf but were unsuccessful. When that failed, Sherman shot the animal with a .357 magnum at point-blank range, but still, the wolf held onto the calf. After another shot, it released the calf and just stood there calmly looking at the men. After a few more shots, the animal trotted off. Amazingly, there was no blood or sign of injury in the animal. The men then followed the tracks of the animal for about a mile, before they suddenly ended, as if it had simply vanished. This was just the first foreshadowing of the events that would follow.

A few weeks later, when Gwen Sherman was in her car, encountered a wolf that was so large, its back was parallel with the top of her window. The large wolf was accompanied by a dog-like animal that she couldn’t identify.

Over the next two years, the Shermans, as well as their neighbors, reported seeing a number of strange animals in the area. These included exotic, multicolored birds not native to the region and tall dark beasts that resembled a Bigfoot or Sasquatch.

On one occasion, the Shermans saw a strange hyena-like creature attacking one of their horses, which they described as “low to the ground, heavily muscled, weighing perhaps 200 pounds, with curly red hair and a bushy tail.” As Mr. Sherman approached the animal, it vanished before his eyes. Afterward, they checked the horse and found numerous claw marks on its legs. A few months later, a neighbor reported seeing a similar beast running across their property.

The Shermans, like their neighbors, also saw strange lights and flying objects, including more than a dozen on one evening. On many of the occasions that they spied these UFOs, they also experienced the death or disappearance of seven of their best cows. Four disappeared without a trace and three more were found dead and partially mutilated.

One of the dead cows had a peculiar hole in the center of its left eyeball but was otherwise untouched Another was found with a similar hole in its left eye and a 6-inch hole, about an inch deep, had been carved out of its rectum. The last cow to be killed and mutilated had been seen alive by the Shermans’ son just five minutes earlier. It had a 6-inch wide, 18-inch deep hole cored out of its rectum that extending into the body cavity. In all three cases, there was no trace of blood found, a chemical odor was apparent, and no evidence of predators, footprints or tire tracks.

Of the cattle that disappeared, one seemed to have been magically lifted from the snow. Its hoofprints led into a field and then just simply stopped. The ground was littered with broken twigs and branches and the tops of the trees appeared to have been cut off.

Other strange events were also happening during these years. Pastures would unexplainably light up at night, the sounds of heavy machinery could be heard that seemed to be operating under the earth, poltergeist types of activities were occurring such as items disappearing only to reappear at later times, and strange disembodied voices, often speaking an unfamiliar language, were heard from above. Crop circles of flattened grass were found on the ranch.

“For a long time, we wondered what we were seeing if it was something to do with a top-secret project. I don’t know really what to think about it.” — Terry Sherman

The final straw occurred one evening in May 1996 when Sherman was outside with three of his dogs. When he noticed a blue orb darting around in the field near the ranch house, he urged his dogs to go after it. The dogs chased and barked at the orb as they followed it into some thick brush. Sherman heard them make three terrible yelps and when he called for them they didn’t respond. The next morning when he went to look for the dogs, he found only three round greasy lumps with what appeared to be a scorched spot. The dogs were never seen again.

After two years of these terrifying events, the family began to publically speak out. The first claims about the strange claims about unusual events at the ranch first appeared in the Salt Lake City, Utah Deseret News, and later in the alternative weekly Las Vegas Mercury as a series of articles by journalist George Knapp.

George Knapp and co-author, Colm Kelleher, subsequently authored a book in which they detail the earlier investigations into alleged UFO sightings in the Uintah County region, the vanishing and mutilated cattle, large animals with piercing red eyes that were not injured when struck by bullets, invisible objects emitting destructive magnetic fields, crops circles, bigfoot-like creatures, and poltergeist activity.

The Shermans planned to sell the property, however, before they got the chance, Robert Bigelow, a millionaire businessman, a believer in ufology, and founder of the National Institute for Discovery Science, offered to by the property after he read about the events in the newspaper.

Bigelow bought the ranch for $200,000 contingent on a non-disclosure agreement with the Shermans, who agreed not to talk further about the events on the ranch. He then began to establish a compound with high-tech sensing equipment, PhD-level field investigators, scientists, and a security detail which guarded the property 24 hours a day. The investigators were tasked with collecting evidence, interviewing witnesses, and searching for explanations.

Its purpose was the research and advance the study of various fringe sciences and paranormal topics, including UFOs and cattle mutilation. With little “apparent” success, the National Institute of Discovery Science was disbanded in 2004.

However, the organization was quickly replaced by the Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), which had was more secretive and was apparently working towards having a government sponsor. In 2007, the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was a secret investigatory effort funded by the United States Defense Department to study unidentified flying objects, primarily on Skinwalker Ranch.

In the next several years, $22 million were spent on the program, which investigated reports of unidentified flying objects and was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo from the Pentagon. The shadowy program was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. He was was also a longtime friend of Robert Bigalow.

This information, however, was not publically known at the time, until it was released by the New York Times in 2017. When the story broke, a Department of Defense official confirmed the government-funded program and Senator Harry Reid admitted his complicity.

Today, parts of the study remain classified and the Department of Defense has never officially acknowledged the existence of the program, but, interestingly, it does admit that the program was shut down in 2012.

That year, the Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies lost its funding from the Department of Defense, as the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program contract expired and was not renewed. This was primarily due to Luis Elizonodo’s explanation that officials feared the public might learn about the program and see it as misappropriation of taxpayer funds.

In the meantime, the ranch was sold for the rumored amount of 4.5 million in 2016 to Adamantium Holdings. Bigalow’s company then disbanded its security team, but it was quickly replaced by the new owners.

That same year, the Hicken Ranch Road, a Uintah County public road, which bisected the Skinwalker Ranch, was illegally gated. Later that year, a representative of ranch owner Adamantium Real Estate, approached the county for a road vacation, claiming rampant trespassing issues led the owners to make the road private. The request was granted, there is no access to the property today, and gates block the entrance with large warning signs.

Link Posted: 1/26/2021 2:43:39 PM EDT
[#18]
History of the Pre-Sherman Skinwalker Ranch

Located in the Uintah Basin in northeast Utah, the Skinwalker Ranch, also known as Sherman Ranch and the UFO Ranch, is filled with myths and mysteries, including UFOs, aliens, cattle mutilations, crop circles, and Navajo witches called Skinwalkers. The 480-acre ranch is located about 3.5 miles southwest of Fort Duchesne, Utah and borders the Ute Indian reservation.

The Uintah Valley Reservation was created for the Ute in October 1861 by executive order of President Abraham Lincoln. The Uncompahgre Reservation (commonly called the Ouray Reservation) was created in January 1882, and in 1886 the two reservations were merged to become the Uintah and Ouray Reservation. For more than 150 years, the Ute have lived here on the reservation that covers over 4.5 million acres.

The Indians have long said that the bordering ranch is “on the path of the skinwalker” and for that reason, have long been forbidden to go near the property. The Skinwalker is a malevolent shapeshifting witch of the Navajo people, which the Ute people take very seriously.

Before the Ute moved to the reservation, they were a fierce and warlike people, who lived primarily in Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. At one time, the Ute and Navajo fought together against their common enemies. However, later when the Ute first acquired horses from the Spanish, they began to abduct Navajo people and sold them in New Mexico slave markets.

Later, during the Civil War, some Ute bands took joined with Kit Carson in a military campaign against the Navajo. This ended in the Navajo being expelled from their lands and forced to march to a reservation in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, called the Long Walk of the Navajo. Though the tribe was allowed to return to their homelands in the Four corners area several years later, the Ute believe that the Navajo put a curse on the Ute tribe for their previous transgressions. Afterward, the skinwalkers began to plague the Ute people.

The Ute believe the skinwalker presence in the Uintah Basin extends back at least 15 generations. They don’t believe that the skinwalkers live on the ranch, but rather hide out in a place called Dark Canyon, which is located nearby.

According to reports, skinwalkers have been seen in the area by the Ute numerous times. The witches have been spied near the ranch, on the road to Fort Duchesne, and on various areas of the reservation. One account described them as looking like humans with dog heads smoking cigarettes. Another described them as large black hairy humanoid figures that were very fast. They are also described as having unusually large “coal red” eyes. Others have said they have seen and taken pictures of very large tracks, which skinwalkers are said to leave.

The ranch, which takes its name from these shapeshifting witches, was first homesteaded by the Myers family in 1905 and first consisted of a few small buildings on the northwest corner of the ranch at the foot of Skinwalker Ridge. Later, the original homestead was abandoned and the Myers established a new home on the eastern side of the ranch. By the 1930s it was occupied by Kenneth John Myers and his wife Edith Child Myers. They stayed on the property until 1987. During their occupancy, they made no reports of any strange occurrences, though some of their neighbors did.

In the meantime, other unusual events began to occur in the Uintah Basin in the 1950s – numerous reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). This continued throughout the next several decades. Interestingly, these were not the first reports of strange aircraft in the sky. The earliest mention dates from the late 1700s when Spanish explorers in search of the Spanish Trail passed through the Uintah Basin and reported seeing craft in the sky over their campfires at night.

The UFO reports, numbered in the hundreds, included strange fireballs, and aircraft that ranged in size from 20-30 feet across to as large as the size of a football field. They were described variously as round, oval, cigar-shaped, and triangular. Some were surrounded by a glowing green light, others emitted wavy red beams, and others appeared to shoot colored lights from their underbellies. By the 1970s the Utah Highway Patrol was getting so many UFO calls that the troopers stopped filling out incident reports. At the same time, local ranchers also began to report bizarre cattle mutilations.

A retired science teacher named Joseph “Junior” Hicks from Roosevelt, Utah, investigated more than 400 UFO sightings in the Uintah Basin. He found that the UFO appearances often coincided with the cattle mutilations. Over the years, many of the eyewitnesses saw living beings in the windows or portholes of UFOs.
Link Posted: 1/26/2021 2:50:06 PM EDT
[#19]
Another Bigfoot Account

No Bigfoot connoisseur worth his night-vision equipment doesn’t know the story of Albert Ostman—a Sasqualogy cause célèbre second only to the 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film. Ostman, a Swedish Canadian logger, claimed he was kidnapped in his sleeping bag one night while prospecting in the wilderness at the head of Toba Inlet, British Columbia (just south of the Great Bear Rainforest), in 1924. Ostman alleged that after being picked up in his bag and dragged through the mountains for most of the night, he was dropped in a clearing in a small valley where the light of the rising sun revealed a nuclear family of Bigfoots—a father, mother, son, and daughter—staring at him in the faint light of dawn. His otherwise curious and mostly benevolent hosts, chattering in an incomprehensible patois, kept him prisoner there for almost a week. Ostman finally made a successful dash for freedom after poisoning “the Old Man,” as he called him, by feeding him a can of chewing tobacco he happened to have in his sleeping bag.

In 1957, Ostman came forward and related the incident to journalist John Green, just before the humanoid tracks discovered in Bluff Creek, in northern California, propelled Bigfoot into popular awareness. “I Was Kidnapped by a Sasquatch,” the title of Green’s dead-serious newspaper story on Ostman’s encounter, appearing on the front page of the Agassiz-Harrison Advance, foreshadowed every chintzy supermarket-tabloid headline to ever appear on the subject.

Soon after Ostman’s tale came to light, another yarn, also reported to have occurred in 1924, resurfaced to take its rightful place in Sasqualogy’s annals of the unforgettable.

On July 13, 1924, the Oregonian, a Portland daily, reported that a group of five miners, prospecting on the southeastern slopes of Mount Saint Helens in Washington State, had been attacked in their cabin by a group of “Mountain Devils.” The story later came to be known as the “Ape Canyon incident,” named after the gorge where the attack took place and where gorilla-like creatures had been seen for as long as anyone could remember.1

Early Sasquatch investigators found and interviewed the last surviving member of that drama, Fred Beck, after digging up the old Oregonian article in the mid-1960s. Beck told them the assault on the cabin came in response to the prospectors’ firing on creatures that had been shadowing them in the woods for several days. The account of the cabin attack, which came in the dead of night and continued in unrelenting waves until daylight, is worthy of its own horror film. The mob of ape-men swarmed the outside of the cabin, banging on its door and walls, stomping on the roof, pelting it with rocks, and reaching in with their shaggy arms through gaps in the logs. The terrified miners barely kept the creatures at bay, firing their rifles at the walls and ceiling all night, until the attack finally came to an end with the rising sun. The Oregonian reported that the miners “were so upset by the incidents of the night, they left the cabin without making breakfast.” The forest ranger who was assigned to that district, and who claimed to have met the men as they were fleeing, later told investigators, in the 1960s, that he’d never seen grown men more frightened.


Link Posted: 1/26/2021 3:10:38 PM EDT
[#20]
I'm pretty sure "Bigfoot" is protecting marijuana fields and has been since the early 70s. That is, the sightings that are not just outright lies.

Fight me.
Link Posted: 1/26/2021 3:28:57 PM EDT
[#21]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
I have read this exact story somewhere else, or it is the strangest case of deja vu ever.
View Quote

I watched the movie last week............

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3748048/
Link Posted: 1/26/2021 4:00:30 PM EDT
[#22]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:

I watched the movie last week............

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3748048/
View Quote


I'll watch this today. IT LOOKS CHEESY AND LOW BUDGET SO I AM HOLDING YOU ACCOUNTABLE.



ETA: HELL NO!!!!

This is like those cheesy movies churches put out!
Link Posted: 2/3/2021 3:45:01 PM EDT
[#23]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
Subscribed
View Quote

Link Posted: 2/3/2021 4:05:25 PM EDT
[#24]
This is the famous interview of the Albert Ostman kidnapping.

Link Posted: 2/8/2021 12:53:27 PM EDT
[#25]
ya the part of these stories that unnervesme  me iss the kid kidnapping angle
Link Posted: 2/12/2021 8:01:47 PM EDT
[#26]
Discussion ForumsJump to Quoted PostQuote History
Quoted:
ya the part of these stories that unnervesme  me iss the kid kidnapping angle
View Quote
Kids are easy pickings and good eating to bigfeets.
Link Posted: 2/13/2021 1:27:55 AM EDT
[#27]
Do not tempt or taunt dragons... they find us crunchy and go good with ketchup.

There are things we do not understand about existence, the universe...and beyond...  

Saw this tonight on Prime Video.. free and second entry into "Sir Noface" phenomenon.... strange enough..
Two Face: The Grey  by: Chad Calek

The opening... and for a good clip of the video it is just stuff.. I guess about 1/2 way the meat comes to the table.  

Like all, just leaves you sleepless... maybe..  or resigned...
Link Posted: 2/13/2021 12:47:23 PM EDT
[#28]
Close Join Our Mail List to Stay Up To Date! Win a FREE Membership!

Sign up for the ARFCOM weekly newsletter and be entered to win a free ARFCOM membership. One new winner* is announced every week!

You will receive an email every Friday morning featuring the latest chatter from the hottest topics, breaking news surrounding legislation, as well as exclusive deals only available to ARFCOM email subscribers.


By signing up you agree to our User Agreement. *Must have a registered ARFCOM account to win.
Top Top