Bigfoot at Big Sandy!

by Brent Raynes

On October 11, 1980, the legendary Bigfoot was apparently spotted in Big Sandy, Tennessee. It wasn’t until Saturday, December 27, 1980, that I arrived on the scene around 10 a.m. at the home of Larry R. (full name withheld but on file) on Sulphur Creek Road, not far from Kentucky Lake. R was 20 years old and a carpenter.

R told me, “We was coming back, and we got about 4 miles out of Big Sandy, and we was coming up through this little hollow, and my lights shined up on top of the hill and we seen something standing right over on the left hand side of the road and it kind of had its head hung down, and it kind of looked over towards me, and as soon as the lights hit it it acted like the lights might have hurt its eyes or something. And it took off in kindly in a fast trot and went over in the bushes, beside the road—on the right hand side of the road, and I didn’t know what to think so I kept on going and went on down the road about quarter of a mile and I decided I would turn around and come back, and see if I could see anything of it again.”

“Now your wife saw it too?” I asked. “Yeah,” R replied. “And by the time that I got back it was done gone. So I told a couple of my buddies around here and then he told one of his coon hunting friends and he got pretty alarmed about it, so he started looking for it because he said that he didn’t want to be out at night sometime hunting and run up on it, so—and he said he had a couple of kids running around and it might attack his kids, so he was out looking for it and about a mile and a half from where I seen it—he said he was going down the road in his jeep and it was standing in the middle of the road—and it turned around and looked at him and he said it’s eyes were glowing bright red and he said he got out of the jeep with his gun, he was going to shoot it, and as soon as he opened up his door he said it acted like it scared it, and it took off running and went down in the woods.”

R., describing his sighting again, stated: “It stood in the middle of the road for just a minute and it looked towards me, and it took off runningÉ It looked like it was real coarse hair. It was kindly a dark brown, and maybe a black, the best that I could tell. It [hair] looked like it was two inches long, something like that. And it looked like it had long arms, and it had its shoulders slumped up, with its head kindly hung down. ..Right before I had seen it, my wife’s grandmother lives there and soon as she heard about me seeing something she called me up that next Sunday morning and said that she had been scared because she had been hearing something sounded maybe—what she thought it was was a dog had got up there behind the house in the hollow and sounded like a bunch of puppies hollering all in one voice. ÉIt looked like it was real big. It looked like it would be real strong, the best that I could tell. And it didn’t act like it was clumsy. It moved real smooth, and everything. It didn’t take it but like maybe 4 or 5 steps to get all the way across the road.”

Bobby J., 26, a TVA employee and a resident of Big Sandy, told me that on the Sunday night [October 19th], about eight days after Larry R’s creature sighting, he encountered the thing. “The reason I was out, the night before, on Saturday night, they come down here. I was gone hunting, and they were trying to get a party up because they heard it down around those people’s houses. And my father-in-law went back down there and he said he didn’t see nothing, so when I came in she told me about it and the next day I went back down there to see if I could see signs that anything had been around, and I found a footprint. It was about 12 inches long and had four toes on it. So I was going to go back that night to see if I could hear it, and I took my rifle with me. On the way down, I seen something standing on the side of the road before I got to the place where they had been seeing it at. And I turned around and come back, and when I did this thing was standing in the middle of the road, and it had its back turned to me and it just turned around and looked at me like that there, and his eyes looked like a ball of fire, just as red as they could be. And I started to stop my jeep and I started to get out, and whenever I did the thing ran out of the road. I come back to the house and I got my mother-in-law and father-in-law and we went back down there and we sat there and listened to it holler about 10 or 12 different times and it finally were raising cain around there and everything else. “

“It was anywhere between 6 or 7 foot tall. It looked like it weighed anywhere from 300 to 400 pounds. The shoulders looked like they might have been at least three foot apart. The head was down around his shoulders. ÉBlack looking from what I could tell under the lights. ÉWhen I come back and got my mother-in-law and father-in-law we went back down there and we heard it hollering. It wasn’t no really screaming sound but—me and these other boys went down there—it was on a Wednesday night, and I’ve got a sound of it on a tape, but you can’t pick it out too good on account of coyotes that went to barking about the time it started screaming. ..The sound was coming in good until them coyotes started barking, and it was in the distance. It was way off. I just barely did pick it up. If they had never started barking I’d have had it good.”

“There were some gun shots,” I noted. “Do you know what they were shooting at?” “They were just shooting in the air about the coyotes,” J. noted. “I found some [hair] in barb wire. It was sort of a dark brownish, almost black. A boy over at the plant was supposed to have it analyzed but he never did send it off. I don’t know if he’s still got it or not. I gave him all I had. When I seen it it was between 10:30, quarter till 11. Something like that. I was alone at the time. The noise at that time was just like most animals have got a noise they carry when they’ve moving. It wasn’t no screaming sound or nothing like that. It was just sort of a grunting sound, but it wasn’t no kind of an animal I’ve heard around here. I’m out all times of the night coon hunting and stuff, and I’ve never heard anything like it. And the guy’s dogs above where I seen it at, they were raising cain that night, and we talked with people who lived on the road the way it went and they said their dogs were raising cain all night long.”

“I was shook up so bad that it stopped me from hunting for a week or two, until nobody else had been hearing it around, and then I started getting back out.”

“If you had all come down around the time we had seen it I could have showed you some tracks. It was heavy enough I could stick my boot in it and work my foot back and forth in the track of it, and have plenty of clearance in it.”