In 1990 I was 11. Before high
school I spent a lot of time at my friends house on Gallison Hill in Montpelier.
His house was just on the edge of the city limits, and located very close to
Union 32 High School (U32). Everything that happened to my friends and I
happened within the small area between the bottom of Gallison Hill and
U32.
So in the early 90's, there were 5
of us that spent a lot of time at my friend Matt's house. My older brother,
Jeff, was also close friends with my buddy's brother, Larry. They had another
friend named Jim, and he was also usually around. We spent a ton of time
outside and often played late. There was many times when we would come in
between 2 and 3 in the morning.
One night I was up late playing
video games with Matt. Suddenly Jim and Larry came running in the house
claiming that something was in the woods. They could hear it making this
strange noise. They looked pretty scared, and of course I wanted to go and
check it out. Larry was hesitant to go back outside and Matt was too immersed
in video games. I looked at Jim and he said OK. It was the middle of winter. I
remember putting on all my gear to go outside. We sat on the snow behind the
garage facing the woods. There is about 200 feet of lawn between the garage and
the line of trees. It was very quiet that night, and I was pretty shaky. I
wasn't hearing anything though and Jim told me to just wait. He said "At first
it sounds like a dog barking, but it's not!". After a few minutes I started to
hear it. He was right too, a dog barking, but not. We sat there and listened,
but the more you listened, the more strange it sounded and the more intense the
mood was. The only other way I can describe it is to imagine a pipe being hit
with a wrench wrapped in cloth. Super creepy! It didn't take long before we
darted inside.
The following summer there were two
encounters that I recall. One of them was a footprint that we found in the
woods one day. For the longest time I never thought about that, but as I look
back on it now, I am able to place significance on that day. We were playing at
the tree line and one of the guys noticed a footprint in the mud right along the
edge of trees. A bare foot. At the time we did not think anything about the
footprint, it just looked like and adult footprint in the mud. The only thing
we wondered was where that guys shoe had gone, because he must have lost it in
the mud.
The other encounter that summer was
way more intense. The usual four, Larry, Jeff, Matt and myself decided to play
some late night hide and seek. Jeff and Larry went to hide first. Matt and I
hung at the house for a few minutes before going to seek. We proceeded to walk
down the main road to start seeking at the bottom of the hill. The plan was to
work our way back up towards the house. At the time, on the opposite side of
the road there was only one house. It belonged to friends of ours that we knew
from school, but on that particular night they were on vacation. The house was
situated so that the garage is on the east and up the hill from the main
building. It was detached from the home and surrounded by gravel that was also
laid down on the driveway. We approached the garage first and checked the doors
to see if maybe our brothers had gone inside to hide. However, all the doors
were locked.
While we were standing there kind
of looking in the garage and out in the field behind the home, we started to
hear a strange noise. Matt looked down and we could see pebbles hitting the
gravel. We quickly realized that the pebbles were rolling down the roof of the
garage and landing all around us. Our first assumption was that Jeff and Larry
were on the other side of the garage, chucking little rocks at us. We thought
we had them trapped. We knew exactly where they were and had an easy capture.
Since the garage was not attached to the home, we were able to circle the
garage, each of us going in an opposite direction. Within 2 or 3 seconds we met
on the other side, dumbfounded because neither Jeff or Larry was there. No one
was there. The panic didn't really set in until the pebbles started coming down
on us again. Now they were coming from the other side, rolling down the roof of
the garage and landing on the gravel. We immediately took off running back up
the hill.
We went full speed back to my
friends house and slammed the door behind us. We stood inside the house trying
to grasp what had just happened. But much to our surprise, Jeff was sitting at
the dining room table halfway through a bowl of Captain Crunch and Larry was
standing at the fridge pouring a glass of tea. Jeff looked up at me and said
"What the hell! Where have you guys been? We waited forever for you and finally
decided to come back to the house." I looked at Matt. He didn't know what to
say. I said "What do you mean? We were just down by the Kitchens' house and we
thought you were throwing stones at us." My brother responded "No, we've been
back for almost 2 hours. You guys have been outside all this time.". 2 Hours!
We lost 2 hours while looking for our brothers. It seemed like 5 minutes to
us.
The following winter we had another
encounter. All five of us where there and we decided to go for a late night
walk up to U32. Mother nature dumped over a foot of snow on us during the day
and walking was tough work. When we reached the Soccer field that sits to the
south of the school building, we noticed a light emanating from the woods. This
was further off from the school beyond the baseball field, right at the tree
line. We were all familiar with this area and we knew that there was no light
there. No flood lights, no street lights, nothing. But there it was, about 30
feet off the ground, up in a tree. As soon as we noticed the light, Matt and I
decided to not approach it any further. Larry, Jeff and Jim wanted to get
closer to inspect, so they went on without us. Matt and I stood still, watching
their every step. After closing about half the distance to the tree line, the
guys stopped. They stood there, staring at the light. They didn't speak, just
stood there. After a few minutes, they turned around and returned to where Matt
and I stood. "What? What happened?" I asked. "Nothing, we just got too
scared!" Too scared? I've never heard my brother say he was too scared. That
was the only time. After that we went back to the house, and never saw the
light again.
Many years later, I was approached
by Christopher Noel. He came to me for assistance with producing a DVD
companion that was to be sold along side his new book, Impossible Visits. I
told him that I was a bigfoot enthusiast and he gave me a copy of his book. I
read it over the next couple of days and my life was changed. I became
convinced that everything that had happened to myself and all the guys up on
Gallison Hill had in fact been a Sasquatch, messing with us kids! I immediately
contacted Christopher and told him about my experiences. (Readers may note that
Impossible Visits makes no mention of people seeing lights in the woods. I
asked him right away if that was normal. He responded that lots of people
report seeing lights, but that he chose to leave that out of his book.)
Fast forward to this year. When
the Musky Allen story broke, I asked Chris Noel if he believed Ricks claims of
shooting a bigfoot. He told me it was true. I've supported Rick Dyer 100%
since that day. I've spent many nights burning the candle at both ends, making
sure that I got into every Google Hangouts that I could. I've only missed a
handful of Hangouts since then, but I will always remember back in the beginning
when Rick called us all out during the show, and told us that he would remember
our faces. Rick has always expressed his deep appreciation for the support
that he has gotten, and I will continue to stand by him.
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