A couple of months ago I was scrolling through Facebook when a news story caught my attention: “Father, son had ‘credible’ Bigfoot encounter in Michigan swamp.” According to the article, a father and son were fishing in Monroe County when they encountered the North American legend known as Sasquatch or Bigfoot. The creature, nestled in the brush next to some railroad tracks, was startled by their dog and bolted through the woods, the son saying it’s “big as a bear, but it looked like a gorilla!” The pair reported their sighting to the leaders of Sasquatch research, the BFRO (Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization), which produced the TV series Finding Bigfoot. The intrepid witnesses were granted a follow-up visit on this “Class A” sighting by the co-host of the series and director of the organization, Matthew Moneymaker (I really hope that is his real name).
Reading through the article and report, I was transported back to middle school summer vacation, eating Cheetos on the couch and procrastinating on my summer reading of Swiss Family Robinson, watching this iconic program of 2010s Animal Planet. I’m not going to lie, the series had me convinced that Bigfoot was 100% real. Granted, I was also convinced that my goldfish, Dennis, was 9 years old and that my mom definitely wasn’t replacing him every couple of years.
In the intervening 15-odd years, I have lost some of my whimsy and am a little more skeptical. The article, while nostalgia-inducing, did have me wondering: has there ever been a Bigfoot sighting reported in Oceana County? Turns out, the BFRO website boasts three Bigfoot sightings from our little corner of Michigan, the oldest occurring in the 1970s and most recently from 2011 - around the same time I was falling for Gigantopithecus propaganda.
While the oldest Oceana Bigfoot reports come from the 70s, they were reported to the BFRO in 2016, when a “Mr. P” sent the organization a letter asking to be put in touch with the Michigan chapter representative, Jim Sherman. Sherman’s investigation covered a series of occurrences on Mr. P’s family farm in New Era 40 years prior. Some of the evidence is mundane, such as objects around the farm being moved or going missing, “clicking” sounds in the woods (which the investigator does explain is behavior exhibited in squirrels and bears), and the substantial amount of deer in the area (the organization loves to remind us that they believe deer is Bigfoot’s primary food source).
Other evidence is slightly more compelling: rocks thrown at the witness from the woods, large footprints discovered in an asparagus field, and “strange tree formations” that “appeared to be intelligently created to hinder someone’s progress down a trail.” Then there are some stories that feel almost supernatural: Mr. P feeling watched in the forest, the family dog being too frightened to enter the barn and late-night “banging” sounds on the house and other structures on the property.
Altogether, the interview has the investigator interested if any more witnesses from this time and place in the county could “come forward with similar instances of activity and more data can be collected and analyzed.”
The second witness reports come from the same source, a “Mrs. S” from the summer of 2000 and the fall of either 2003 or 2004. The first story is of how the witness and three others were camping deep in the woods near New Era when their campsite was surrounded by the sounds of a tremendously large animal crashing through the undergrowth and “smacking” stones together. The experience was, understandably, frightening and the campers left the next morning, too scared to investigate any signs of what may have happened in the night.
Several years later, “Mrs. S” was driving down Wilke Road in Rothbury, not too far from where the first encounter occurred, when she came across a “chimp-like animal” lying in the right-hand lane. Due to the late hour, the creature was only seen in the headlights of the car as it maneuvered out of the way, but according to the report, it was too skinny to be a bear and had a flat face like a chimp. Its arms/front legs were also longer than the back legs, again, quite like an ape. Despite laying “lifeless” in the road, there appeared to be no trauma to the body and no blood on the road. What’s more, when the witness returned to the scene, the creature had vanished, with no sign that anything had been there.
The final report took place in July 2011. The unnamed reporter and a friend were driving home following a concert at Val Du Lakes in Silver Lake. They were traversing slowly down the road when a large obstruction was spotted 20 feet ahead of them in the road. Upon flashing the high beams, the creature stood up and escaped up a hill, moving remarkably fast. The witnesses were adamant that this was “either a Sasquatch or someone in a very large Bigfoot suit,” citing its gait being similar to that of an ape. The witness also claimed that others that weekend also spoke about sighting the creature, noted that Val Du had recently restarted their concert series, and asked if this may have “bothered” the Bigfoot. From what I could find on the internet, there were two concert weekends at Val Du Lakes in July 2011: on July 16 the band Buckcherry headlined, with guests Loaded, Taddy Porter and Stars of Boulevard, and July 23 featured Big & Rich, with guests Gretchen Wilson, Cowboy Troy and 2 Foot Fred. If any readers are familiar with these performers, which ones do you think brought Bigfoot out of hiding?
Please enjoy these wonderful, if far-fetched, examples of oral storytelling. And while I admitted my skepticism earlier, if anyone can corroborate these reports, or even bring forward their own stories, I would love to hear. I miss my old, fanciful self almost as much as I miss Dennis the goldfish.
