‘I’m a Logger and Bigfoot Terrorized Us’ – BIGFOOT ENCOUNTER STORY

The Freight Train of Fury: An Account from the Redwood Curtain

I never believed in any of that crypted nonsense until what happened in the forests of Northern California back in 1993. Even now, thirty years later, I still wake up some nights hearing that sound, like a freight train made of muscle and fury tearing through the woods. What I’m about to tell you isn’t some campfire story or internet hoax. This really happened. And the only reason I’m finally talking about it is because I figure enough time has passed that maybe nobody cares anymore. Maybe I’m wrong about that. But I’m getting old and tired of carrying this around.

It started in late September of 1993 when our logging crew got hired for what seemed like a dream job. The company, I won’t say which one, but they were big enough to have lawyers in three states, wanted us to clear a section of old growth forest about 60 miles northeast of Eureka. The pay was almost double what we usually made, which should have been our first red flag. When someone pays you twice what a job is worth, there’s usually a reason.

The foreman, a grizzled guy we called “The Old Man” because of his size and temperament, gathered our crew of twelve men around his pickup truck that first morning. The area was massive, close to 800 acres of virgin timber, mostly Douglas fir and redwood, some of the trees easily over 200 feet tall and older than the United States itself. We had six weeks to clear it, an aggressive schedule for our two massive feller bunchers, a couple of skidders, and a loader that could lift logs the size of school buses. The camp—three sleeping trailers, a mess hall, and a maintenance shed—was already in place when we arrived, like they had been planning this operation for months. The weirdest part was the location: deep in national forest land, yet somehow this company had permits to log in an area that was supposedly protected. When one of the younger guys asked about it, the Old Man just shrugged, said the paperwork was above his pay grade, and as long as the checks cleared, he wasn’t asking questions.

The Unseen Presence

The first week went exactly as planned. The timber was incredible, some of the finest old growth I’d ever seen. It felt wrong, cutting down trees that had been growing since before Columbus landed in America, but the money was too good to walk away from.

It was the skidder operator who first noticed something was off. On the morning of our eighth day, he looked nervous, constantly looking over his shoulder toward the tree line. He asked if I’d heard anything strange. I listened—the usual sounds of the forest were there—but he shook his head. He said he thought he’d heard something following him that morning when he was dragging logs out, like footsteps, but too heavy to be a person. I laughed and suggested a bear, but he insisted he knew what a bear sounded like. This was different. Two legs, not four, and bigger.

The next day, our best climber came down from topping a massive redwood with a story that was eerily similar. Sixty feet up, he’d seen something moving through the trees below him. He said the proportions were all wrong: it was too tall, maybe eight feet, maybe taller, and covered in dark hair or fur. It moved like a person, though, not like any animal he had ever seen.

The reaction from the crew was predictable. Most of the guys laughed and made jokes. But something about the climber’s expression made me think he wasn’t joking. The Old Man tried to settle things, suggesting it was just a hunter in a ghillie suit or shadows playing tricks. But over the next few days, more reports trickled in: a chainsaw operator saw a dark shape watching him from the ridge; a smudge of what looked like footprints near the shed.

The most disturbing incident occurred on Friday morning of our second week. Our main equipment operator went out for his pre-start inspection and found his feller buncher had been messed with. The cab door was hanging open, and the door itself looked like it had been yanked open with tremendous force, bending the metal hinges and cracking the safety glass. The Old Man examined the damage. It wasn’t mechanical failure. It looked like something had grabbed the handle and pulled with enough force to overcome the safety locks and bend solid steel. He suggested it was environmental sabotage, but there was no graffiti, no damage to the critical systems. Just that door, hanging at an unnatural angle like a giant had tried to climb into the cab. The mood in the camp was changing from skeptical amusement to genuine unease.

The Breaking Point

The breaking point came during our third week. I was running the loader when the skidder engine shut down abruptly. After several minutes of silence, I got concerned and went to investigate. I found the skidder operator 50 feet from his machine, standing perfectly still behind a cluster of young firs. He was staring deep into the forest, looking terrified.

He whispered that there was something in there. He’d been watching it for ten minutes. It was just standing there, watching him back. He said it was big, really big, and standing on two legs. I looked, and for a moment, I thought I saw a darker patch among the trees that seemed too vertical, too regular to be natural. Then it was gone. He insisted he knew what he saw. That thing was at least eight feet tall, covered in dark hair, and when he shut down the skidder, it had tilted its head like it was listening.

That night, the operator told the rest of the crew. The Old Man tried to maintain order, but even he was starting to look worried. We started working in pairs, and everyone was constantly looking over their shoulders.

The next morning brought our first real evidence. The mess hall door, which was heavy wood and always locked, was hanging open. The entire door frame was split and splintered like something had forced its way in with tremendous strength. Inside, the food storage was ransacked, canned goods dented and punctured by what looked like massive fingers or claws. Wet marks—drool or saliva—were on the floor and walls. Most chillingly, on the metal surface of our industrial refrigerator, were two hand-shaped impressions pressed into the steel. They were enormous, easily twice the size of any of our hands. Our climber pointed out that those weren’t paw prints. The thumb placement showed it was an opposable thumb, just like a human’s, but bigger.

The Discovery and the Assault

The Old Man tried to restore control. He set up a watch rotation, but the incidents continued. The watch teams reported hearing distant crashing sounds and occasional calls that didn’t match any animal either of us recognized—low, guttural sounds that seemed almost like attempted speech. One night, they heard a sound like a large tree being slowly torn apart.

The next morning, we found a Douglas fir about a hundred yards from camp that looked like it had been attacked by a tornado. The tree, easily two feet in diameter, was snapped off 20 feet from the base. The wood was splintered and shredded, with long gouges that looked like claw marks. Smaller trees nearby had been twisted into unnatural knots. The Old Man, documenting everything carefully, admitted he’d never seen anything like it.

By our fourth week, the entire crew was on edge. Productivity plummeted. The thing that bothered me most was the feeling of being watched. It started as an occasional sensation, but it became constant.

Our equipment operator had the most disturbing experience. Working alone, he noticed something large and bipedal moving parallel to him through the trees, pacing him. When he shut down his machine and shouted, the movement stopped. Then, from 50 yards away, came a sound that made his blood run cold: a call, deep, resonant, and unmistakably vocal, but not human. It was answered from another direction, then another. He realized he was surrounded by at least three of these things, and they were communicating. He dropped his baseball bat and ran.

It was our climber who found their camp. He followed a musky animal scent to a primitive settlement hidden in a grove of ancient redwoods. The trees had been modified, branches woven together to form shelters. There were fire rings and food caches, and sleeping areas large enough for something much bigger than a human. He counted at least eight. He also found tools—carefully shaped pieces of wood and stone, primitive spears.

But the most disturbing discovery was the collection of human artifacts scattered throughout the camp: pieces of clothing, work shirts, boots, license plates, wallets, watches, and wedding rings arranged in a deliberate display. The implication was terrifying.

The Old Man immediately tried to call it in, but the company stonewalled him, demanding he continue working. We were sharing this forest with intelligent creatures that collected human belongings as trophies.

The attack came during our fifth week. I was operating my loader when the forest went silent. Then I saw movement: something large moving through the trees, keeping pace with my machine. I stopped and shut down the engine. The response was immediate: a sound that was part roar, part scream, and completely inhuman.

I caught my first clear glimpse as it emerged from behind the trees. It was enormous, at least eight feet tall and closer to nine, covered in dark brown, shaggy hair. It stood fully upright with arms that hung down past its knees. The face was clearly humanoid but primitive, with a heavy brow ridge and dark, intelligent eyes focused on me with deliberate intent.

It roared again, a sound so loud I felt it in my bones, and began moving toward me with surprising speed. I ran for my life. Behind me, I heard the sound of metal being torn apart. I glanced back to see the creature attacking my loader with its bare hands, twisting the bucket until the hydraulic line snapped. The thing was easily lifting and manipulating parts that weighed thousands of pounds.

I found two chainsaw operators and gasped that we needed to get everyone and get out. Before I could explain, the roar echoed through the forest, closer now and seeming to come from multiple directions. We ran toward the staging area where the rest of the crew was working. As we started toward the trucks, creatures began emerging from the tree line around the entire clearing. I counted at least six of them.

The largest, nearly ten feet tall, walked directly toward the main feller buncher, which was still running. It approached the massive machine fearlessly, grabbed the boom arm—a piece of machinery that weighed several tons—and began twisting it like it was made of plastic. Steel beams snapped like twigs. In less than two minutes, it had turned a quarter-million-dollar piece of equipment into scrap metal. Then, it grabbed the 40-ton feller buncher and began pushing it toward the slope, moving it like a wheelbarrow until it rolled and tumbled down the hill, creating a path of destruction that looked like a tornado.

The creature watched its handiwork with satisfaction, then turned its attention back to us. It simply stared with those dark, intelligent eyes. The message was clear: this was their forest, and we were not welcome.

We piled into the two operational trucks, leaving behind everything. We tore down that mountain road like the devil himself was chasing us.

The Coverup and the Silence

We drove straight through to the company’s regional headquarters in Eureka. Word had traveled fast. What followed were three days of intensive questioning by company officials, insurance investigators, and people who claimed to be from various government agencies but never showed identification.

The questions were relentless: What exactly did we see? How many? Did we take photos? Were we drinking? We stuck to our story, but the skepticism was visible.

The turning point came when our climber told them about finding the creatures’ camp and the collection of human artifacts. The reaction was immediate and dramatic. They suddenly became very interested in the exact location and started asking who else we’d told and whether we’d spoken to the media or researchers. It was becoming clear that they believed us, and they were very concerned about our story becoming public.

On the third day, we were brought together for a “resolution meeting.” The lead attorney laid out the situation: the forest area was part of a classified research project involving a relocated population of a rare primate species being studied and protected under federal law. Our logging operation had been a cover story. The details were classified for national security reasons.

The company offered generous compensation—a full year’s salary plus medical coverage—in exchange for us signing comprehensive non-disclosure agreements. Violation would result in immediate criminal prosecution and financial ruin.

After the formal meeting, one of the unnamed government officials pulled me aside. He was soft-spoken but his message was anything but gentle. He explained that the existence of large, intelligent primates in North American forests was a matter of national security and had implications for land use and public safety that I couldn’t possibly understand. People who talk publicly about these creatures often found their lives becoming very difficult—they lost jobs, faced tax audits, and sometimes experienced “random bad luck.” He assured me it wasn’t a threat, just a realistic assessment of how things worked.

We all signed the papers. The money was real, the legal threats were real, and the implicit understanding was that these people had ways of making problems disappear.

The Truth That Cannot Be Buried

The crew scattered. I took my money, bought a small farm in Oregon, and tried to forget. For a decade, I thought that was the end of it. But the nightmares never completely went away, about that roar and the feeling of being watched by those dark, intelligent eyes.

I began to understand that what we’d experienced was part of something much larger and more organized: a deliberate effort to suppress information about these creatures. It’s a loose network of interests that all benefit from keeping the truth hidden: logging companies don’t want their operations shut down; the government doesn’t want panic; the scientific establishment doesn’t want evidence that challenges fundamental assumptions.

The system is brilliant in its simplicity: create enough doubt and confusion that no one knows what to believe. Mix the real accounts with so many hoaxes that the truth becomes impossible to distinguish.

But the hardest part about keeping the secret has been the isolation. When you’ve seen something that fundamentally changes your understanding of the world, but you can’t share that knowledge with anyone, it creates an unbearable psychological burden. I kept quiet to protect my wife, knowing the company’s reach extended to family members.

The nightmares faded, but the knowledge remains. Those creatures are still out there. I’ve followed news reports of missing persons, wondering how many disappearances might be connected. A case in 2003—a family of four vanished while camping, leaving behind their tent—particularly haunted me.

I’ve also noticed changes in how remote forest areas are managed: more restrictions, more surveillance. I suspect an ongoing effort to monitor and manage these populations. The logging operation we were part of might have been a method of testing their behavior and establishing boundaries. We weren’t just cutting trees; we were unknowingly participating in some kind of research or management program.

What finally convinced me to break my silence was a new story: a construction crew near where our encounter took place reported being harassed by large, aggressive animals that damaged their equipment, forcing them to abandon work on a new residential community. A residential development would bring hundreds of families into direct contact with these creatures. The potential for conflict would be enormous. The secrecy, I realized, was breaking down under the pressure of expanding human development.

I’m telling the story now because I’m old, and because people have a right to know what’s sharing the forest with them. I know the consequences for breaking the NDA will be severe, but some things are more important than personal safety.

Those creatures we encountered weren’t monsters. They were intelligent beings trying to survive. They had families, tools, and social structures. They were also incredibly dangerous when threatened. The strength they demonstrated in destroying our equipment could easily have been turned against us. People who venture into remote wilderness areas deserve to know about this potential danger.

More importantly, these beings deserve recognition and protection. Their existence is living proof that our understanding of human evolution and the history of life on Earth is incomplete. The coverup is a fundamental denial of reality that prevents us from understanding our true relationship with the natural world.

I don’t expect everyone to believe me. After thirty years of cover-ups and disinformation, the truth has become almost indistinguishable from fiction. But for those willing to consider the possibility that our world is stranger and more complex than we’ve been told, I offer this account as evidence.

The creatures are real. They are intelligent, powerful, and trying to survive in a world that refuses to acknowledge their existence. They are our responsibility. The forest remembers everything, even when we choose to forget. And somewhere in those deep woods of Northern California, in the shadows between the ancient trees, they’re still watching and waiting for the day when we’re finally ready to acknowledge their existence.