Local Bigfoot sightings have left lasting impressions: ‘We looked it dead in the face’
Bigfoot, sasquatch, grassman: these are the colloquial names people have come up with for a bipedal, humanoid being that remains as mercurial as the mist that hangs over the North Georgia hollows.
And yet, there’s a group of people who insist they’ve seen something. My research process for these stories included navigation to self-proclaimed experts’ websites; an in-person visit to Expedition Bigfoot, the museum and research center just north of Ellijay; and conversations with a local expert and with people in Northwest Georgia who reported sightings to me.
As one may imagine, a lot of the internet material is gritty, homemade stuff. It’s not like you can just pull up a website for a national-level, governmentfunded organization and quote from a collection of eloquently worded scientific studies — these are grassroots efforts, and researchers are often reporting their findings in informal language and with whatever cameras they have available.
Accounts vary by location and happenstance, but there are distinct similarities among them. I learned common signs of Bigfoot activity can include hearing pieces of wood being knocked together, which may serve to warn humans away from an area; dead zones in woods where bird and wildlife activity is not audible; and screams or “whoops” that may allow these beings to ward off human interference or to communicate with each other.
And there’s a nearly universal, visceral fear that goes along with Bigfoot sightings. I’ve read about it and felt it radiating from those I’ve interviewed. As Expedition Bigfoot owner David Bakara told me, people who spot a Bigfoot know they’re “outclassed.”
I now bring you eyewitness accounts from around Northwest Georgia. I’ve kept my sources
anonymous so as to protect their privacy. Some of the descriptions in these accounts — the speed with which these beings move, roadside sightings, the glowing eyes, the vocalizations, broken branches sometimes seemingly strategically placed in the woods — mirror others I’ve read about online. Let’s jump in, shall we?
FLOYD COUNTY, GA./ ALABAMA LINE
Three or four years ago, the source I spoke with for this account was traveling with a cousin toward the Alabama line between 10 and 11 p.m.
“We saw something standing no more than six or seven feet from the passenger side,” he said.
The two men thought the thing was a horse at first.
“We noticed how big the eyes were,” he said. “We saw it was standing upright like a human. It was way taller than our vehicle. I immediately hit the brakes.”
They stopped and turned the car around to get a better look, and the figure was still there.
“We looked it dead in the face,” my source said. “It was looking at us while we were looking at it. It was staring directly in the car at us.”
It’s eyes, he said, were bright white.
He sat on this experience for a month before beginning to research it on YouTube. He found other people online who mentioned sightings in the North Georgia mountains.
TRION, GA.
This source told me he found a footprint he believes belonged to a Bigfoot in a place “surrounded by woods” behind the Trion Dam. The year was 1992.
“I smelled something really bad — almost like a wet dog but worse,” he said. “I thought I saw something go from light to dark — like something moving.”
He heard a branch break and thought it might have been caused by a deer. He saw movement again as if something was undulating back and forth.
“I could feel it in the ground — like an impact tremor,” he said.
He heard a “Whoop,” which he later learned is a signature Bigfoot utterance.
When he approached the area where he’d seen the movement, he found a four-inch branch that had been snapped down.
He recognized the same smell again a couple of years ago during a particularly dry summer on his way to DeSoto Falls above Suches, Georgia, with his girlfriend. He remembers his girlfriend identifying the distinctive scent as “wet dog.”
When the two passed back through the area sometime later that day, the smell was gone.
ROCKY FACE, GA.
Three years ago, this source detected a smell not unlike that of a rotting compost pile as he headed home at 3 a.m. from work. His wife was asleep in the vehicle as they traveled along U.S. 41 near
Rocky Face.
Something running at a speed he thinks was around 50 miles per hour passed their car and crossed the space of five lanes. He put its height, when it was on all fours, at the equivalent of that of a truck hood.
“It was moving close to as fast as I was,” he said. “It was big, and it was hairy.”
This is not his only sighting. Soon after, about a mile from the first sighting, on Mill Creek Road this time, something about three feet tall — again on all fours — ran in front of his vehicle.
He’s also come across environmental evidence in the woods near his home in the Tunnel Hill/ Rocky Face area.
“It’s a very unique area of woods,” he explained.
There are thin pine trees broken down in an unusual and distinct pattern.
“It looks like a fence — it’s round,” he said.
He checks on the area every six months or so, and it remains the same.
“We don’t mess with it,” he said. “I really feel like they’re no threat as long as you’re no threat to them.”
After talking with these folks, I can say their descriptions sounded detailed and unfeigned over the phone, and their accounts served to deepen the mystery of Bigfoot in my mind. When it comes to these beings, there are few direct conclusions available, and yet, as my Rocky Face source suggested, “there’s a little bit of truth to every fairy tale.”
On that note, let’s not let the story end here. Have you experienced Bigfoot in person? Email me and let me know via my website, collective-ink.com.