The Night We Ran: A Father’s Story

Right now, it’s 3:00 a.m., and I’m sitting in my truck outside my wife’s parents’ house. I can’t sleep. My ribs still ache where the bruises are fresh, but my son is inside, safe, sleeping in a real bed for the first time in three days. That’s all that matters.

But I keep replaying it in my head—how close we came, how thirty seconds slower and my boy would be gone.

Let me tell you how it started.

We’d been working our little farm for five years. Nothing fancy—twenty chickens, a few goats, a couple pigs. Just enough to scrape by. My wife grew the garden and helped with the animals. Our son was six, and his favorite thing was feeding the chickens every morning. The property backed up to thick, old-growth forest. Our nearest neighbor was two miles down the road. Most days, we didn’t see another soul. It was peaceful, hard work, but peaceful.

We weren’t rich. The farm barely covered expenses, but it was ours. We’d put everything we had into buying that land. My wife grew up in the city; her parents thought we were crazy. But she loved it—at least, she used to.

The forest behind the house was dense. Sometimes you’d hear deer or a fox moving at night. That was normal, expected. You live on the edge of the woods, you get wildlife.

About a year before we left, the problems started. Chickens disappearing. At first, I figured foxes or coyotes. You expect to lose a few birds. But the losses piled up fast. I reinforced the coop, added motion lights. For a week or two, things were fine. Then, three chickens vanished in one night. The coop door was still latched, but the frame was bent, the metal latch twisted and broken. Whatever got in was strong—too strong for a fox.

Three days later, a fence post was knocked clean over—thick wood, set in concrete. Something massive had pushed through. I started staying up nights, rifle across my lap, watching the windows. My wife said I was paranoid, but every chicken lost was money we couldn’t afford.

Then things got stranger.

One afternoon, working in the far field, I got that prickling feeling—like someone was watching. I looked up and saw a figure between two trees. At first, I thought it was a person, maybe a hunter. But it was tall—taller than any man I’d ever seen. I shouted, told them it was private property. The figure didn’t move. Its proportions were wrong—arms too long, shoulders too broad. I walked closer, but it turned and melted into the woods.

I tried to tell myself it was a trick of the light. But over the next few days, I kept seeing it—always at a distance, always at the edge of the woods, like it was studying us.

I started carrying my rifle everywhere. My wife tried to rationalize—maybe a homeless person camping out. But nobody in our community was that tall. Nobody moved like that.

I stopped letting my son play in the far field. He didn’t understand, thought I was being mean. I just wanted him safe.

Then, the sounds started at night—whoops echoing from the woods, wood knocking, always from different spots. Sometimes there was a pattern—three knocks, pause, two knocks, pause, three knocks again. Too deliberate to be random. I recorded the sounds, but listening to them in daylight made my skin crawl. My wife asked me to delete them—they gave her nightmares.

About three weeks before we left, everything changed. I woke at 2:00 a.m. to the goats screaming in terror. I grabbed my rifle and flashlight and ran outside. The goat pen was torn apart—wooden posts snapped like toothpicks. Two goats gone, four huddled in fear. In the mud, I found massive barefoot tracks—five toes, eighteen inches long. I followed them to the tree line and found clumps of coarse, black hair on a branch. I heard heavy footsteps fading into the forest.

I called the local ranger. He was an older guy, spent decades in these woods. When he saw the tracks, his face went pale. I told him about the figure I’d seen. He asked to talk privately, away from the house. He told me, quietly, to leave. Pack up and go. Don’t tell the neighbors. Just leave.

He said there were things in those woods the department didn’t talk about. They’d tried to hunt it, but it always vanished. It was smart, knew the forest better than any human. It hunted small prey—goats, chickens, pigs. Wouldn’t take cows. He said three other families had left in the last fifteen years because of it. Same pattern: livestock vanishing, fences torn apart, something watching from the woods.

He called it Bigfoot, but said the name didn’t matter. What mattered was that I couldn’t fight it. Couldn’t scare it off. Once it wanted something, it kept coming. He told me to think about my family, especially my son. That made my blood run cold.

My wife was terrified when I told her. She wanted to leave immediately. But where would we go? We had no savings, no plan. We argued quietly, trying not to wake our son. We agreed to wait a few days, fortify the property, see if it stayed away.

I spent the next day installing new locks, stronger fences, more motion lights. I set up a bell system so we’d hear if anything disturbed the coops at night. My wife helped, both of us knowing deep down it wouldn’t matter.

That night, the wood knocking returned, closer than ever. The ranger was right.

Two weeks later, we lost a pig. The pen gate was torn off its hinges, the pig gone. Again, massive footprints and drag marks into the woods. That pig weighed 200 pounds, carried off like it was nothing.

My wife said we needed to go. I reached out to family, swallowing my pride. We started packing essentials. But the figure started coming closer.

One afternoon, my son froze, staring at the tree line. There it was—eight feet tall, broad shoulders, arms hanging past its knees, covered in dark hair. It was watching my son. I yelled for my wife to take him inside. She grabbed him and ran. I stood there with a shovel, useless against something that size.

That night, my wife insisted: we leave tomorrow. I called her parents and asked if we could stay. They heard the desperation and said yes.

Two days later, it tried to look into our house. Footsteps outside, breathing at the window. A dark shape blocked the glass, huge, bending down to peer inside. I stood frozen, rifle in hand. It circled the house, checked every window, then walked away. In the morning, I found massive handprints on the glass.

We packed in earnest. I started sleeping in my son’s room, guarding him. He thought it was fun at first, but soon realized something was wrong.

The last few nights blurred together. No one slept. My wife packed, my son had nightmares. I did patrols at night, but knew I couldn’t stop it. One night, I heard it walking on the roof. The house creaked under its weight. My wife and I sat on the couch, holding hands, listening to it pace above us.

We planned to leave in three days. We didn’t make it.

That final night, I tucked my son in, checked under his bed and in his closet. He clutched his stuffed bear, asked if the animals would stay away. I told him yes. I went to the living room, rifle across my lap.

Around midnight, I heard a thump outside. I checked the chicken coop—nothing wrong. As I turned to go back, I heard my son’s voice: “Daddy, look! A standing bear.”

He was in the yard, pajamas and bare feet, pointing to the tree line. I saw it—eight feet tall, covered in dark fur, walking upright, moving toward my son with slow, deliberate steps.

Time slowed. I ran, screaming for my son to get inside. He froze, confused. I reached him, grabbed his arm, shoved him toward the house. “Run!” I yelled. He started running. The creature was closer than I thought, its massive arm reaching for me. It caught me in the ribs—pain exploded through my side.

I stumbled, twisted away, threw myself through the doorway, my son already inside, crying. The creature hit the doorframe, wood splintered. I slammed the door, wedged a shelf under the handle. It hit the door again, the wall shook.

“Get him! Back door! Truck!” I yelled to my wife. She grabbed our son and ran. The door gave way behind me, the creature ducking through, too tall for the frame, musky, rotten smell flooding the house.

It followed us into the kitchen, crushing furniture. My wife burst out the back door with our son. I ran after them. The creature filled the doorway, watching us run, then started across the yard.

We reached the truck, scrambled inside. I started the engine, shaking. The creature stopped, watching us. I backed up fast, headlights sweeping the yard. It turned and walked back toward the house.

As we drove away, I saw it in my son’s bedroom, standing in the doorway, looking at the empty bed. It was searching for him.

We drove all night. My wife didn’t speak, my son cried himself to sleep. My ribs were agony, but I kept driving. Four hours later, we reached my in-laws’ house. My wife collapsed in her mother’s arms, sobbing. My father-in-law took our son, who clung to me, whispering, “You’re okay now.”

But I wasn’t sure any of us would ever be okay again.

The next few days were a daze. My in-laws tried to rationalize, saying it was a bear, or stress. But my son had seen it too. Six-year-olds don’t hallucinate the same thing as their parents.

My ribs were badly bruised. My wife barely spoke. My son wouldn’t sleep alone, started wetting the bed again. My father-in-law drove with me back to the farm during the day to get the rest of our things. The house was destroyed, my son’s room torn apart, gouges in the walls—like something had searched frantically for him.

We never went back. Eventually, I let the bank take the property. I heard the house burned down later—maybe the ranger had something to do with it, erasing evidence.

My son still has nightmares about the “bear man.” We tell him it was just a dream, but he knows better. He won’t play near trees, checks his closet before bed, asks for the hall light to stay on.

Six months after we left, I started searching for answers. I read every Bigfoot account I could find. Most sounded fake, but some matched my experience—especially the way it targeted children. I found stories of other families who’d fled, some who weren’t as lucky.

My wife caught me reading about it, told me to stop. She was right. I deleted my account, but the memories remain.

Some say Bigfoot is a myth, a campfire story. I know better. It’s real, and it’s out there. We were lucky—the ranger warned us, my son followed me outside, I was awake. Thirty seconds slower, and he’d be gone.

The bruises faded, but the fear never did. I lost everything—our home, our dream, our safety. But we have each other. We have our son. That’s all that matters.

Every night, when I tuck my son into bed, safe in our little house far from the woods, I thank God we got out when we did. And I never, ever stop checking the locks.