‘I HAD TO SHOOT BIGFOOT’ – Police Officer Encounters Bigfoot During Distress Call
The Eyes in the Dark
Chapter One: The Call in the Night
I’ve been a cop for eleven years, and I thought I’d seen it all. Domestic disputes that spiral into chaos, bar fights that end with grown men rolling in the street, and the occasional meth-fueled hallucination where some poor soul swears their furniture is plotting against them. But nothing—absolutely nothing—prepared me for the events of that October night three years ago.
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It was a Thursday, edging toward midnight. I was working the night shift in a county that sprawled over miles of farmland and thick, ancient forest. My partner had called in sick, so I was riding solo, parked at the local all-night diner with paperwork and my fourth cup of coffee. The night was quiet, the kind of silence you only get in the country, where the nearest neighbor might be two miles away.
Then the radio crackled to life. The dispatcher’s voice was tight, professional, but I could hear the edge beneath it. “Unit 12, we’ve got a domestic disturbance at a farmhouse out on County Road 47,” she said, giving me an address that made my heart sink. That stretch of road was deep in the sticks—isolated, surrounded by forest, the kind of place where help could be a long time coming.
But what really caught my attention was the rest of her message. “The caller was screaming about something huge outside the house,” she said, her voice wavering. “Not someone—something. The call cut out. I heard glass breaking before the line went dead.”
My mind raced through the worst-case scenarios. Maybe a bear, maybe a hallucinating intruder, maybe something else. I radioed back, confirmed I was en route, and started down County Road 47. The night was moonless, and the trees pressed close, forming a tunnel of darkness around my headlights.
Halfway down the dirt road leading to the farmhouse, my lights caught something odd—a piece of white fabric hanging from a tree branch, fluttering in the breeze. It was a fresh, clean scrap of t-shirt, snagged eight feet off the ground. Too high for any person to reach. I made a mental note.
A little further on, I saw deep gouges in the bark of several trees, running vertically, like claw marks. But they were bigger than any bear I’d ever seen, some ten feet off the ground. My skin prickled with unease.
The farmhouse finally appeared in my headlights—a two-story structure from the 1950s, white wooden siding, wraparound porch. Lights blazed from several windows, but the front door was wide open, the screen door hanging off its hinges. I parked, scanned the silent house, and felt the weight of the forest pressing in. No sounds of argument, no television, just dead silence.
I stepped out of my cruiser, flashlight in hand. The windows were smeared with what looked like mud—but as I got closer, I saw they were massive handprints, positioned so high whoever made them would have to be eight feet tall. The prints were bigger than any human hand, the fingers impossibly long.
I called out, announcing myself as police. My voice was swallowed by the silence. No response, but I heard a faint rustling in the trees behind the house—a heavy, deliberate movement.
I drew my weapon and approached the porch. The smell hit me first—a thick, musky odor, like wet dog and something else, something wild and unfamiliar. It was so strong it made me gag.
Inside, the living room was a disaster zone. Furniture overturned, deep scratches in the wooden walls, muddy footprints tracked from the front door toward the back of the house. The prints were enormous—fifteen inches long, wide, and deep enough to suggest something incredibly heavy had made them. No human footprints, no signs of a struggle—just those massive tracks leading deeper into the house.
Upstairs, I heard whimpering—a faint, desperate sound, and urgent whispers. I climbed the stairs, heart pounding, and found an elderly couple barricaded in the walk-in closet, shaking with terror.
The woman kept repeating, “It was looking through our window. Right at us.” The man described something enormous, upright, covered in dark fur, with a face almost human but wrong—eyes that reflected light like an animal’s, but filled with intelligence.
Whatever had visited their home, it wasn’t gone. And as I stood in that dark, silent house, I realized we were not alone.
Chapter Two: Shadows in the Forest
I helped the couple to their feet, reassuring them as best I could. They were in shock, eyes darting to the window as if expecting something to crash through at any moment. The woman’s hands shook uncontrollably; the man gripped my arm, voice trembling. “It’s still out there,” he whispered.
I left them in the bedroom and swept through the rest of the house. The kitchen was wrecked—chairs scattered, cabinet doors hanging open, muddy handprints smeared across the walls, some eight feet up. On the counter, slabs of raw meat sat abandoned, squeezed and indented by those same massive fingers.
I checked the back door—a solid, old wooden frame, now gouged and splintered by claws so large I could fit my fingers into the marks. Outside, the porch chair had been torn apart, not just broken but shredded, pieces hurled against the house with enough force to dent the siding.
Stepping onto the patio, I found more handprints on the windows, forming a path around the house. Whatever had done this had circled the building, peering in, searching for a way inside.
Then I heard it—heavy, deliberate footsteps in the treeline. Not the quick shuffle of a deer or bear, but measured steps, bipedal, moving closer. Branches snapped as something enormous pushed through the underbrush.
I swung my flashlight toward the sound and caught a glimpse—something upright, massive, dark fur glistening in the beam. Two eyes reflected the light, pausing to study me before vanishing deeper into the woods.
My blood ran cold. More footprints appeared in the mud, some larger, some smaller, circling the house. There wasn’t just one creature—there were several.
I tried my radio. Static. My cell phone—no signal. The forest seemed to close in, cutting me off from the outside world. The silence was oppressive, broken only by a low, rumbling vocalization that echoed from multiple directions. It wasn’t quite a howl, not quite speech—something in between, like creatures communicating in the darkness.
A rock crashed through the kitchen window, thrown with precision. Upstairs, the couple screamed. Something pounded on the walls, moving from side to side, as if a group was coordinating an attack.
The house creaked under the assault. I knew I had to act before panic or shock claimed the couple. I checked my weapon, took a deep breath, and stepped outside.
The pounding stopped, replaced by a tense, predatory silence. I felt eyes on me, watching from the shadows. My flashlight cut through the darkness as I moved around the house, every nerve on edge.
Near the barn, I saw it—eight feet tall, broad shoulders, arms hanging past its knees, covered in matted, dark fur. Its face was almost human, but the features were exaggerated, primal, and the eyes burned with intelligence.
It didn’t run. It didn’t flinch. It studied me, calculating, deciding.
I raised my weapon, shouted commands. The creature began to walk toward me, slow and deliberate, making low, complex sounds—a threat, a warning.
It reached for a heavy metal plow, lifting it over its head as if it weighed nothing. I realized, with a chill, that it intended to use it as a weapon.
I fired three shots center mass. The creature dropped the plow, staggered, blood dark and thick on its fingers. It let out a scream—pain, rage, and something else. Betrayal.
It turned and ran, crashing through the forest, and from the darkness, other voices answered—howls, calls, echoing through the trees. There were more of them, and they were angry.
Chapter Three: The Aftermath
I rushed back inside, checked my radio—suddenly, it worked. I called for backup and medical support, careful with my words. I couldn’t tell dispatch I’d shot at something out of legend.
The couple upstairs were terrified, asking if I’d killed it, if it was safe. I told them I’d wounded something, but I didn’t know if it was dead. I urged them to stay put until help arrived.
Outside, I followed the blood trail—black, viscous, pooling in the mud. The creature had stumbled, fallen, left a clear path into the forest. But I wasn’t about to follow it alone, not with more of them out there.
Backup arrived twenty minutes later—patrol cars, an ambulance, more officers. They saw the footprints, the handprints, the damage. Jokes died on their lips as they realized this was no ordinary animal attack.
We documented everything—photos, plaster casts, measurements. The blood trail led a hundred yards into the woods before vanishing on rocky ground. Crime scene techs collected samples, but I never heard what the lab found.
The physical evidence was undeniable—massive footprints, deliberate handprints, a house systematically examined and attacked. The creature had used tools, communicated with others, shown intelligence and intention.
The official report classified it as an animal attack by an unknown species. The shooting was justified as defense of human life.
I was placed on administrative leave, pending investigation. Psychological evaluations followed—questions about stress, fatigue, mental health. The department psychologist looked at me like I was losing my mind. An eleven-year veteran, claiming to have shot an eight-foot creature with intelligence in its eyes.
During the day, I couldn’t shake the memory—the way it looked at me, understanding, calculating. Most animal attacks are instinctual, but this was different. This was something that could think, plan, and remember.
That was the most terrifying part. What if it came back? What if it held a grudge?
Chapter Four: Echoes in the Woods
Six weeks later, I was cleared to return to duty, but only desk work. The official reason was to give me time to readjust after a traumatic incident. The real reason was to keep me away from the woods.
Some officers believed my story, especially those who’d seen the evidence. Others thought I’d gone off the deep end. I became the guy who shot at Bigfoot, the butt of jokes about silver bullets and werewolves.
But the story didn’t end there. Reports trickled in—farmers found livestock killed by something strong, precise, not like bears or coyotes. The animals weren’t eaten or dragged away—just killed and left behind, as if sending a message.
One farmer found three cattle dead, massive blunt force trauma to the head. The vet couldn’t explain the injuries.
Hikers reported footprints in the mud—sixteen inches long, stride lengths suggesting something much taller than a human. Trees were found twisted and snapped, not by wind or lightning, but by something powerful enough to bend them until they broke.
The incidents clustered within a ten-mile radius of my encounter. It was as if something was defending its territory, escalating its aggression after the shooting.
The pattern was clear—sightings, minor damage, then livestock killings, property destruction, intimidation. It was learning, adapting, responding to threats.
What disturbed me most was the possibility that these creatures weren’t isolated. If they existed here, maybe they lived in other remote wilderness areas, hidden from science, from civilization.
Sometimes I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Should I have tried to communicate? Would it have left peacefully if I hadn’t fired? But then I remembered the way it lifted the plow, the intelligence in its eyes, the responsibility I had to protect the couple.
I did what I was trained to do. But the world felt different now—stranger, darker, full of things that didn’t fit into neat categories of animal or human.
Chapter Five: Between Worlds
Months passed. The forest remained quiet, but the tension lingered. I returned to patrol, but never alone, and never in the deep woods.
The other officers watched me, some with sympathy, others with suspicion. I kept my story to myself, but I listened to the rumors—the farmers, the hikers, the old-timers who whispered about things seen in the shadows.
I drove out to County Road 47 sometimes, parked at the edge of the forest, and stared into the darkness. I felt eyes watching, felt the weight of something ancient and unknown pressing in.
There are things in this world we don’t understand—creatures that exist in the spaces between what we know and what we refuse to believe. I saw intelligence in those eyes, a mind that could plan, remember, even hold grudges.
Would I do the same thing again? I honestly don’t know. But I do know that the world is stranger than we think, and sometimes the line between myth and reality is thinner than we’d like to admit.
That’s my story. Make of it what you will. I protected those people from a threat I couldn’t understand, acted as I was trained to do. Whether it was human, animal, or something in between doesn’t change the fact that I believe those people were in danger.
And somewhere out there, in the darkness between the trees, something remembers.
End.
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