Crying Female Bigfoot Begs a Man To Follow Her, Revealing a Sh0.cking Discovery

The Woman in the Cedars

I didn’t believe in Bigfoot— not in the way that mattered—until one followed me home from the Cascades and turned my ordinary life into a long, quiet negotiation with fear. What began as a typical September elk hunt became the most terrifying and heartbreaking experience I’ve ever survived.

I’ve kept it to myself for years, not because I enjoy secrets, but because the truth has a way of making you sound like you’re asking to be laughed at. Still, silence has its own cost. Some memories don’t fade; they ferment. They swell until you either share them or they split you from the inside.

This is what happened.

1) The Kind of Man Who Doesn’t Believe 🧭

I’m not a “mysteries of the universe” guy. I manage construction projects. I like schedules that hold, budgets that don’t. I read weather reports and replacement-part manuals. I’ve never owned a crystal, and I don’t believe in ancient aliens, prophetic dreams, or portals in the woods.

Bigfoot, to me, was a cultural artifact—something you put on novelty bumper stickers. A joke you tell around a campfire when the whiskey is low and the night is high.

And yet I grew up in western Washington, and if you grow up here, you grow up with the idea of Bigfoot the way you grow up with rain: it’s always somewhere in the background.

My father was a logger. Forty years in the timber, hands like knotty roots, a quiet man with a loud respect for mountains. He taught me how to hunt because hunting was what he understood: patience, restraint, and paying attention to what the land was trying to tell you.

“Most people don’t get hurt because they’re unlucky,” he used to say. “They get hurt because they stop listening.”

By my thirties I’d been hunting the Cascades every September for fifteen years straight. Elk season was my reset button. I’d disappear into the folds of Douglas fir and hemlock, where the air smells like moss and old needles, where the world narrows to boot steps and breath and the steady discipline of waiting.

That September started like any other. I packed carefully: rifle checked, ammo counted, water filter, tablets, first aid kit, fire kit, tarp, rope, knife, a lightweight tent, meals for three days, and a satellite beacon clipped to my belt. I didn’t carry it because I expected trouble; I carried it because I’d learned the difference between confidence and stupidity.

The forecast called for clear skies and low fifties—perfect for covering ground. I planned to hike eight miles into a valley I’d scouted the previous year. Remote enough that you didn’t get weekend warriors wandering through, rugged enough that elk could breathe without hearing ATVs.

I left my truck before dawn and started up an old fire road half-swallowed by alder and sword ferns. The headlamp beam caught dew on spiderwebs like little galaxies. An owl called once, and something small—maybe a rabbit—scuffled through brush.

By midmorning I was bushwhacking, compass and GPS working in agreement, pushing through devil’s club that tried to punish my sleeves with every step. The terrain was a mess of slick logs and steep slopes and roots as thick as my forearm. It was the kind of country that makes you earn every mile.

When I reached the valley edge, I saw elk sign immediately: fresh droppings, a few rubs on cedar trunks, torn-up earth where something heavy had pawed and turned. I found a rise overlooking a natural clearing with a stream cutting through it and settled in, back against a Douglas fir, rifle across my lap.

This was the part I loved most—when your whole world becomes quiet enough to hear your own thoughts.

For hours, everything felt normal.

Then, around two in the afternoon, the forest stopped being itself.

The birds went quiet first. Then the squirrels. Even the wind seemed to pause as if it didn’t want to draw attention to itself.

If you hunt long enough, you learn what “quiet” sounds like. This was different. This was absence. The kind that makes the hairs on your neck stand up like they’re trying to see over your shoulder.

I raised my binoculars and scanned the tree line.

Nothing.

I lowered them and waited, breathing slow, trying not to tell my body to panic—because it will happily take instructions.

That’s when I heard it.

Not an elk bugle. Not a bear huff. Not the eerie scream of a mountain lion. This was low and wavering, a sound with a human shape but not a human voice.

It rose and fell like sobbing.

And the worst part— the part that made my chest tighten—was that it sounded grieved. Not threatened. Not angry. Not territorial.

Heartbroken.

I waited for it to stop. It didn’t. It moved, somewhere off to my left, pacing through timber as if circling the clearing’s edge.

My first thought was an injured person. Someone lost, someone hurt, someone calling without words because pain had swallowed language.

But we were deep—eight miles from the road. No trail. No reason anyone should be here except hunters, and hunters don’t cry like that in daylight. Hunters swallow their trouble and keep moving.

I marked my position on the GPS, rose slowly, and started toward the sound.

I told myself I was doing the responsible thing.

The truth is, I was curious— and curiosity is a more dangerous compass than people admit.

2) The Tracks That Don’t Belong 🔍

The sobbing faded as I moved. I followed its direction the way you follow a scent you can’t name: carefully, skeptical, half convinced you’re about to feel foolish.

Ten minutes in, I found a small clearing made by a fallen cedar. Its trunk lay like a collapsed bridge, sunlight pooling through the broken canopy.

I stopped at the edge and scanned.

Nothing moved.

Then I looked down.

The soil in that clearing was soft—years of decomposing needles and leaf litter. It held footprints the way wet cement holds truth.

And the footprints there were… wrong.

They were human-shaped, unmistakably, but enormous: sixteen inches long at least, wide through the ball, with toe impressions pressed deep and clear. Five-foot stride. Consistent. Purposeful.

I knelt and placed my hand beside one print. My palm looked ridiculous next to it, like a child’s hand against an adult’s boot.

I’ve tracked a lot of animals. Bears can leave something vaguely foot-like when they rear up and walk. But bear tracks are bear tracks: toes arranged differently, claws, the weight distribution wrong.

These weren’t that.

My mind tried to do what it always does—build a plausible story out of pieces it recognizes.

A prank? A hoax? Some giant barefoot guy? But who hikes eight miles barefoot through devil’s club and slick logs just to leave prints and sob in the woods?

I took photos from multiple angles, rifle beside the print for scale. Then I followed the tracks across the clearing.

Near the far edge, a broken branch held a tuft of dark brown hair snagged seven feet off the ground. Coarse, thick, not deer, not elk, not bear. I pulled a few strands free and sealed them in a small bag.

Evidence. Proof.

Of what, I still couldn’t say.

The sobbing came again—close now, from just beyond the trees.

I froze, rifle coming up, safety on but finger resting near where it could be needed.

The sound turned into something sharper for a moment, like a strangled inhale, then back into that low, wavering grief.

Movement stirred in the shadowed timber.

And then it stepped out.

3) The Woman Who Shouldn’t Exist 🌲

It wasn’t the hulking, roaring monster from TV shows. It wasn’t charging. It wasn’t baring teeth.

It walked into the clearing like something exhausted, shoulders heavy, head slightly bowed.

Eight feet tall, give or take, covered in dark brown fur that swallowed light. Its arms hung long, past its hips, and its chest and shoulders had a thickness that looked less like bodybuilding and more like… labor. Like a creature built by years of climbing, carrying, surviving.

The face was what I’ll never forget.

It had a flatter, more human arrangement than I expected—wide nose, deep-set eyes, cheekbones beneath fur, a mouth that could have belonged to something that understood language even if it didn’t speak it.

And the eyes—God, the eyes—weren’t empty.

They were aware.

This one looked female. The brow ridge was less pronounced. The shape of the face, the way it held itself, and—most of all—what came next convinced me I wasn’t imagining that detail.

Because it was crying.

Tears cut through fur on its cheeks. It made those sounds again, and up close they were unmistakable: sobs. Not a call. Not a vocalization like a bird or a deer. This was grief trying to breathe.

We stared at each other from maybe thirty feet away.

Everything in me screamed to back away.

And everything else—something older, something I didn’t like admitting existed—held me still. That instinct that recognizes another mind, another presence, and knows that running can flip a switch you don’t want flipped.

The creature lifted one huge hand and gestured—two motions, clear as a road sign.

First, it pointed at me.

Then it pointed into the forest behind it.

Follow.

The gesture was so intentional, so communicative, that my skepticism cracked like thin ice.

My rifle felt suddenly obscene in my hands. Not because I’d never kill—hunting is killing, and I don’t pretend otherwise—but because the thing in front of me wasn’t acting like prey or predator.

It was asking.

Pleading.

It took two steps back into the trees, then stopped, turning its head to look over its shoulder. The eyes weren’t threatening.

They were desperate.

Some part of my mind tried to shout: This is how you die. This is how people become missing-person posters.

But the sobbing—those tears—did something to me. If it had been a lost woman, I would have followed without hesitation. If it had been an injured kid, I would have run.

Was I really going to refuse because the creature asking didn’t have clothing?

I lowered the rifle, keeping it in my hands but angled down, and I nodded.

The creature’s shoulders loosened, as if a tight cord inside it had relaxed. It turned and moved into the forest.

And I followed.

4) The Hidden Shelter 🪨

It moved fast, but not reckless. It chose a line through brush that seemed to anticipate obstacles before they existed. Despite its size, it was quiet—quiet in a way that made me feel clumsy. I kept twenty yards back, trying not to lose it, trying not to trip and fire my rifle by accident.

We climbed a steep ridge. Devil’s club shredded my sleeves and scratched my hands. My heart hammered. Sweat soaked my shirt despite the cool air.

After half an hour, it slowed, glancing back once to make sure I was still there. That look—checking on me—was so human in its intent that it made my stomach turn.

We came to a pocket of old growth and a shallow overhang of rock—a natural shelf like the beginning of a cave. Branches had been arranged into a crude screen, not woven neatly, but placed with intention.

From behind that screen came a thin, high sound: whimpering.

The creature let out another broken sob and stepped aside, almost like it was clearing the doorway for me.

I approached slowly.

Inside, on a bed of moss and ferns, lay a young one.

Four feet tall, maybe. Fur lighter, face softer, eyes wide with pain. Its left leg was twisted at an angle that made my own bones ache in sympathy. Swelling. Dried blood in the fur. Its breathing came shallow and fast, and its skin beneath fur felt hot when I hovered my hand close enough to feel warmth.

Fever.

Infection.

The mother—because I couldn’t call her anything else—knelt beside the young one and made soft sounds that weren’t words but weren’t mindless either. Comforting noises. Coaxing.

The young one tried to move, cried out sharply, and then whimpered into exhaustion.

I stood there with my mouth open, unable to speak. Because in that moment, the impossible wasn’t just that Bigfoot existed.

It was that Bigfoot had families.

It had children.

It had grief.

The mother looked up at me, tears still shining in her fur, and for a moment I understood exactly what she was doing. She had found the only other intelligent creature she knew of in these mountains and gambled everything on the chance that intelligence could include mercy.

I knelt carefully, keeping my movements slow. The mother watched every inch of my body with the focus of a loaded spring. Not hostile—protective.

The fracture was severe. I wasn’t a medic. I wasn’t even close. I had basic first aid and the kind of practical experience you get from years of hunting injuries and rough country, but this wasn’t a twisted ankle.

This was a life-or-death break.

I looked at the mother and shook my head, helpless.

Her face crumpled in a fresh wave of grief.

And then, in the middle of that helplessness, an insane thought rose like a flare: a veterinarian.

I had a friend—an old buddy from high school—who worked with large animals. Not an ER trauma surgeon, but someone who knew bones, anesthesia, antibiotics, splints, casts. Someone who could treat a horse kick or a broken deer leg brought in by wildlife rehab.

The thought was ridiculous. The logistics were ridiculous. The consequences were terrifying.

But the alternative was worse.

I pulled out my phone. No signal.

Of course.

I mimed what I could: pointed at the young one, then at myself, then made a carrying motion. Pointed down the mountain, toward where my truck sat. I mimed injections, wrapping, fixing.

The mother watched me like she was reading subtitles to a language she’d never heard.

When I finished, she reached out—slowly—and put her massive hand on my shoulder.

Not heavy.

Not threatening.

Just contact.

Permission.

I swallowed hard. “Okay,” I whispered, though I didn’t know who I was saying it to—her, myself, the mountain.

I slid my arms under the young one, supporting the broken leg as gently as I could. The young one whimpered, pressing its face into my jacket, heart racing against my chest.

It weighed maybe eighty pounds—heavy, but manageable.

The mother followed close, ten feet behind, making soft sounds that seemed to soothe the young one. Every so often she reached out to touch it through my arms, like she needed to keep contact with the world’s most fragile thing.

The descent was the hardest hike of my life.

Not because of the weight—though my arms burned—but because of the stakes. One slip could drive that broken bone wrong. One misstep could turn fever into shock. One bad decision could turn trust into tragedy.

After two hours, my muscles were trembling. I stopped, set the young one down on moss, and rolled my shoulders, wincing.

We still had miles to go.

I couldn’t carry it all the way.

I gestured: stay here. I pointed at myself, then toward the trailhead, then made a driving motion with my hands. I pointed back to them.

The mother hesitated—just a flicker—then settled beside the young one, never taking her eyes off me as I turned and ran.

I dumped my pack and rifle behind a fallen log a mile down, marking the spot on GPS, and ran harder.

When I reached my truck, I nearly dropped the keys. I started the engine, checked for signal, and got two bars—enough.

My friend didn’t answer, so I left a message that sounded like a man confessing a crime: emergency, critical injury, need you at the clinic, no questions, please.

Then I drove up the logging road until a washout stopped me cold.

Three miles. That’s all I could get.

I grabbed a sleeping bag, slammed the door, and ran back into the trees like I was trying to outrun disbelief.

5) The Clinic, the Lie, and the Price of Help 🏥

When I found them again, the young one looked worse—breathing faster, eyes duller, the fever blooming. The mother’s face was streaked with dried tears and fresh ones.

I laid the sleeping bag on the ground and wrapped the young one carefully, using it like a splinting burrito. It immobilized the leg better and made carrying more stable.

The hike back to the truck took an hour and felt like a day.

At the truck, the mother stopped at the tree line. She did not step onto the gravel. She didn’t need to.

I opened the back door and laid the wrapped young one across the seat.

Then I turned back.

The mother stood just inside the forest, still as a stump, watching. I tried to communicate: I will bring it back. I will help. I will return.

She stepped forward one pace and touched my face with her fingertips—so gentle it made my throat ache. There was something in that gesture that felt like both blessing and warning. Like: Do not break this.

I got in the truck and drove.

The entire way to the clinic, I talked out loud, like speaking could keep panic from finding me. The young one made small sounds—weak whimpers—and I kept glancing in the rearview mirror, half expecting it to sit up and tear itself free, half terrified it wouldn’t move at all.

My phone rang twenty minutes from town.

My friend.

I told him I was bringing a critically injured “animal” and needed immediate help. My voice shook. He heard it and didn’t ask what kind of animal. He just said, “Get here fast.”

When I pulled into the clinic lot, he was waiting with his bag. He jogged toward me, asking questions.

I opened the rear door and peeled the sleeping bag back enough to show the young one’s face.

My friend stopped like he’d hit glass.

His mouth opened. No sound came out.

Then, quietly, like saying it louder would make it worse, he said, “That’s… that’s not possible.”

I met his eyes and nodded once. “I know.”

He stared again, then snapped into professional mode so quickly it almost broke me with gratitude. “Bring it inside. Now.”

We moved fast. He took vitals with hands that were steady despite what his eyes were doing. Fever high. Dehydration. The leg… bad.

He prepped fluids and antibiotics and—after one long, sober pause—anesthesia, explaining risks I already understood without the words: unknown physiology, unknown dosage, unknown reactions.

I stayed by the table, holding the young one’s small hand as sedation took it. Its eyes found mine, and in them I saw fear and trust braided together so tightly I couldn’t separate them.

The procedure took hours.

He cleaned the wound, set the bone, stabilized it with pins, and casted the leg from hip down, building a brace that looked too large for any animal he’d ever treated.

When he finished, he leaned back against the counter, exhaling through his nose like he’d been holding his breath since I opened the truck door.

“This never happened,” he said.

“I know,” I replied.

“If anyone finds out, I lose my license.”

“I know.”

He looked at me. “And you—what are you going to do with it?”

I didn’t say return it to its mother who is waiting in the woods and can break a tree like a broom handle. I just said, “Put it back.”

My friend nodded once, expression tight. Then he handed me meds and instructions, and he added one sentence I didn’t expect:

“It understood we were helping.”

I swallowed. “Yeah.”

He didn’t smile, but something softened in his eyes. “Be careful.”

6) The Promise You Don’t Get to Break 🌧️

By morning, the fever had dipped. The young one drank water, eyes clearer, still weak but present.

I wrapped it again, loaded it into my truck, and drove back to the trailhead.

The hike in was slower, heavier, more complicated with the cast. I stopped to give water and meds, to rest, to keep my legs from becoming useless. Sometimes the young one reached up and touched my cheek with two small fingers like it was trying to understand the shape of me.

When I reached the clearing near the rock overhang, the light was fading.

And the sound came—low, wavering, unmistakable.

The mother had been waiting.

She emerged from the trees and rushed forward, then stopped herself short, forcing control into her body like a leash. She knelt beside her child, touching the cast with cautious fingers, confusion flickering across her face.

I mimed time—weeks—healing. I showed the meds, pantomimed giving them. I shook my head firmly when she touched the cast like she wanted to remove it.

She watched, absorbing.

Then she lifted the young one carefully into her arms, cradling it against her chest.

The young one made a sound I can only describe as relief—soft and breathy—and wrapped its arms around her neck.

The mother’s eyes met mine over her child’s shoulder.

She made a sound—deeper than her sobs, structured, almost word-like. Not English, not anything I could name. But the meaning felt clear enough:

You did what you said.

Then she turned and carried the young one into the forest.

I stood in that clearing until the light drained away, until the shapes of trees became a single dark wall.

Part of me wanted to follow, to make sure the young one would survive the weeks ahead.

But my father’s voice—old and practical—rose in my head: Respect the wilderness. Don’t push where you’re not invited.

So I left.

7) What Followed Me Home 🌲

You might think the story ends there: strange encounter, improbable rescue, a secret kept.

It didn’t.

Because three nights later—back at my house, miles from the trailhead—I heard something outside.

Not a branch tapping the window. Not a raccoon in the trash. Something heavier.

I froze in bed, listening.

There was a soft, rhythmic sound—like slow footsteps on damp ground. Then a low exhale that raised the hair on my arms.

I got up, moved to the window, and peeked through the curtain.

The yard was dark, but moonlight silvered the edges of my fence line. Near the tree line behind my property, I saw a tall shape—still, watching, as if confirming I had returned to my world.

I couldn’t see details. But I knew the posture. I knew the silhouette.

My stomach turned to ice.

It didn’t approach. It didn’t threaten. It stood there for maybe a minute, then shifted back into the trees and disappeared.

The next morning, on the flat stone by my back steps, there was a small pile of berries—fresh, arranged neatly.

A thank-you.

A reminder.

Or both.

After that, it happened three more times over the following months—always at night, always at the tree line, never closer, never aggressive. And always, after, something small would appear: a feather, a smooth stone, a twist of cedar bark placed where it didn’t belong.

I didn’t tell anyone.

Not my neighbors. Not the sheriff. Not even my friend at the clinic.

Because I understood something then that I hadn’t understood in the mountains:

This wasn’t just a wilderness story.

This was now a boundary story.

A line had been crossed—by both of us—and the crossing had consequences.

Eventually the night visits stopped. The gifts stopped too.

Life returned to its ordinary shape, except it didn’t feel ordinary anymore. The world had gained an extra layer—one I could never unsee.

8) The Thing That Still Haunts Me 💡

People ask—when I’ve told this to exactly no one in my real life, but when I’ve asked myself in the private courtroom of my mind—why I didn’t bring back proof.

Photos, video, hair samples, something that would shut the skeptics up.

Here’s the truth I don’t like admitting:

I could have tried.

And I didn’t.

Because the moment I saw her tears, the moment she touched my face, the moment I held her child and felt its heart panic against my chest, “proof” started to feel like a kind of theft.

I don’t know what Bigfoot is in the taxonomy of life. I don’t know how many exist, whether they have language, whether they have elders, whether they mourn their dead the way we do.

But I know this: that mother made a calculation any mother would make.

She risked the monster she believed humans to be because her child was dying.

And I—by some miracle of timing and choice—didn’t become the monster.

That’s the part that haunts me most. Not the fear. Not the impossible footprints.

The trust.

Because trust like that is heavy. It’s a debt that doesn’t get repaid once and forgotten. It changes the way you walk through the world. It changes the way you look at the dark edge of a forest and wonder what might be looking back—quietly, intelligently, hoping you stay worthy of what you were given.

I still hunt the Cascades every fall.

But I don’t go as deep anymore. And when the woods go silent, I don’t argue with my instincts.

I listen.