Bigfoot & Dogman Reports

People Who Witness Impossible Creatures. The Fortunate Unfortunates.

How many times have you heard the statement “I would love to see something like that” or “wow your so lucky, I would give anything to see one up close” Or my favourite “why didn't you take a picture to prove what you saw” Being a witness to something impossible is not the lovely spiritual meeting most imagine. In this book I will explain what it is really like being a child witness to something nobody could explain away or smooth over quickly, or a hurried explanation given by a parent who wants to help their child but doesn't know how to. Children have vivid imaginations or flights of fancy and it's something we encourage in them, but that can be a double edge sword, it was for me and in writing this book I'm hoping I can express how it feels to spend your whole life trying to prove to others that you are in fact not mad or in need of medical intervention. You simply saw something one day that has an effect on your entire life.

As children we don't ask to see “them” or set out equipped like a researcher hoping for a glimpse of said creature or monster, it happens by happenstance, a fleeting moment frozen in time, that face etched in your memory and for most of us it was a horrifying traumatic experience that's refuses to go away. The fear contained within these encounters can leave some witnesses with an almost PTSD condition affecting them through life, and although the fear may lesson as we look at it with adult eyes, it never really leaves.

To be honest deep down we will always be that child frozen in those seconds of time. I struggled for decades with my encounter and I know many of the witnesses in this book did the same. Hopefully we have now set in place somewhere people can report these events too and receive validation that we are not alone, as I show each witnesses a validation account in the same area they encountered their “creature” or where the “monsters” description fits with what they saw too, it gives the person involved a feeling of “companionship” a feeling of being believed by others who understand. Sometimes these validation reports can take decades to be reported, or are future sightings that have not yet taken place.

But each new reports fits like a cog into this huge puzzle we have, sometimes that cog enables a door to open or a screen to slide and we suddenly understand a small pattern of behaviour or a match in description or habitat. In this book you will notice the term “green belt” mentioned in most of the accounts, there does seem to be a pattern to all of these experiences regardless of what County the event took place. Children playing on disused land, old crofts and scrubland, building swings and playing in the woods along these routes. If I could start my research career from this point rather than 30 something years ago, I would probably have used the term “Green Belt Creatures” the words are used so often. The witnesses I encounter are not only children, they are aged between 6 - 83, from all walks of life, sensible people doing everyday tasks who see something impossible to explain. Many of the adult accounts start with “I was out with the dog” or “I was just taking my usual walk” but that’s for another book and another time, and I need to take you back to 1982 when everything changed for me and the world has never been the same since.

I grew up in an ordinary town, my Mum worked for the Local Authority and my Dad worked at the famous Boddingtons Brewery, my Family have worked the Docks and Mines of Salford for generations. My Grandfather owned the local scrap yard or (tatters) as they were called then, a Man with a horse and cart who collected any metal you didn't want or any junk that was of no use and he would reward you with a “dolly blu” a “donkey stone” or a balloon in return. Simple hardworking folk who lived in this very ordinary mill town in the North West of England. Salford is a working class town, bombed heavily in the second World War due to the Manchester Ship Canal that runs through our town, the River Irwell rolls down from the North and out to sea and the Valley it rolls along was my playground as a child, back then there were limited restrictions on fun, riding the cart horses or catching sticklebacks in jam jars and frogspawn carried home in your welly. We would build wooden “dens” that were guarded by fierce children with stones and “duckers” at the ready to defend these forts. Ideal times and fond memories.

As a child of the town I was very lucky in the sense that my family would take off for weekends and school holidays to the countryside or the beach, my Grandfather Ged would take us to the horse fairs and fetes where hundreds of families from the towns and countryside would meet,sell livestock and share tall tales. My Grandad had Horses and Ducks, Geese and Chickens, we raised Jack Russell Terriers and my Dad raised some of the best Greyhounds to come out of Ireland in the 80’s and 90’s and we travelled to race them at every Dog track across the North West, my Dad was also an avid fisherman and my Sisters and I grew up on the banks of the Rivers that flow here. The Severn and the Trent have some of my most treasured memories growing up, getting up at 4am to load the car or van, lunches packed and flasks filled, bait and rods and kids in the back, every trip a different woodland or copse. But in 1982 all that stopped for me, the places I used to play had another connotation that year, where I had never experienced fear there was now a hidden danger in every bush, an enemy behind every tree, hidden down in every ditch.

It was an ordinary day, those perfect days between Spring and Summer when it's not too hot and the breeze blows easily with no hint of rain or a cloud in the sky. Days when school seemed like a punishment and School Jumpers were compulsory and thousands of hot tired teenagers would be taking their “mock” exams heads nodding and sweat building, myself included. The school I attended was an old victorian mansion owned by the SummerHill family, the grounds that surrounded it were nice but a little left to the wild, the park was directly across from the school, the new school building was added a few decades before and was a square concrete assault on the eyes with a thousand windows or so it seemed, really easy for a teacher to spy you skipping school, or school kid wishing they had also skipped would point out the window and dob you in.

I had skipped the odd day before (Mum if you're reading this it's too late to ground me) I found the academic side of school easy and I would get bored so quickly, most of my days spent staring out the window daydreaming,the social side was a complete puzzle to me and I just winged it most days hoping I had used the correct response or had not shouted out inappropriately when I found something exciting or it held my interest. I had lot of friends back then, all in a similar position no doubt, you just don't realise as a child most of your friends have the same fears and peer pressure. So I was never one to say no to a new adventure. I did have one particular friend back then I spent most of my time with, my partner in crime so to speak, much braver than I and usually to be found smoking round the back of the gym or in smokers corner as we called it. I had gone in to my lessons in the morning and had only two study periods after lunch, so I wasn't missing anything other than revision and it was too nice of a day to be stuck indoors.

Lunch would be two sittings between 12 noon and 1.30 pm I can’t remember what sitting I was on that week but I remember being in 4 year and we had a rotation because the walk between the two buildings could take 15 minutes and we could do that walk 4 times a day. I don't remember much “before I saw “him” or for about an hour and a half (the time it took me to get home) after the event. Theres is an old Edwardian House in the middle of the park, country gardens, golf course and meadow, animal enclosures with goats, Rabbits, Horses and a menagerie of birds, there was a fantastic “glass house” with tropical plants from all across the world, like a huge rain forest within a glass dome. The “glass house” was always hot, steam would rise from the huge Koi pond in the centre, there was also a screened Butterfly house which was like a steamy bath, most folks called it the “hot house.”

The “hot house” was open to the public and could be visited for free, there was also a sensory garden for the blind. Lots of tactile and heavily scented plants and herbs with Braille metal plaques beneath each flower or shrub. Everytime I smell Lavender or Wild Garlic I’m transported right back to warm childhood days. The gardens in the 70’s were beautifully tended, one of my family members worked there and My Dad would take me everytime he had the chance. I have many pictures of myself as a kid in Buile Hill until that day in 82.

By 1982 the park was in a rougher state, many of the groundsmen had been laid off, the old house was in the process of being turned into an Art Gallery or a mining museum, it has changed so many times over the decades and now stands broken deserted and vandalised. It's a very sorry sight indeed.

Between the House and the Sensory garden was an old victorian flower bed, which sound delightful but it was a tangle of weeds by this point, Laurel and Box Privet all intertwined with the Rhododendrons and Ivy left to grow to around 25 ft high and in between all of that was an flattened down area almost like a bed of some kind and we would climb in through the brambles and nettles and from your position in there you could see out, but people passing by would have no idea you were in there at all. So if you stayed quiet and kept yourself hidden in there till around 3.20 pm you could walk home with the other kids and it looked like you had been to school all along. That was the plan for the afternoon and then within two hours I was running from that Park, crying and screaming running from a monster I thought had come to kill me and he was probably in hot pursuit in my mind as without thinking I ran home without any real thought given to the action.

My only fear that day was being caught “wagging” it, it wouldn't have been fun being marched in school the day after, with a clipped ear as a reminder by my Mother who wouldn't stand for much messing about on my part. Or some older kids who would move us off and into the open where the odd teacher sneaking a quick smoke would see us or one of the “parkies” who would drag you back to school sharpish given the chance. I remember talking about “top of the pops” and the charts and I think we were making plans what to do that evening after tea, we were laughing and giggling and sat in a sprawled position on the grass just looking up at the sky and forgetting we were running the risk of being caught, we forgot to be quiet and to be honest were making a racket as most teenage girls do.

I remember looking up and watching the leaves as they moved and out of the corner of my eye in my peripheral vision I saw for a split second a movement in the shade, I looked at it thinking “bird” at first or “cat” but nothing moved at all, like that moment before the storm hits, or the ship runs aground, when everything goes quiet as your brain processes the danger your in, and sends that signal to your legs to run, I realised what I was looking at was not the colour of a bird or the flash of a ginger tom, but eyes, eyes the same colour as amber contained in an impossible face. Even in that moment being a down to earth girl I thought “oh god it's a teacher, we are in for it now” excuses already being chosen in my head, if only I had thought to run then, before he looked out, before I saw a face I can never forget, not matter how hard I tried to.

Before I could raise from the ground, before my legs started to run, before I screamed a scream I have never duplicated in my 51 years, I saw something that looked like a man and an ape had been combined in some way, pushed together to form one unit. Hairy with hair that was long and dark, the darkest brown, with highlights of auburn as the sun caught it, which in a way sounds romantic, but it wasn't, it was like the colour of a red setter before it bites the hand holding the biscuit, something so beautiful in colour but yet deadly and smarts long after the injury.

That sentence “he looked like a man and and an ape combined” is one I have used to describe him ever since, simply because that’s what he looked like, an old caveman weathered and worn, or an escaped ape that was somehow human at the same time. A Neanderthal or Troglodyte looking creature with hair everywhere, he had a thick jaw and a pronounced brow ridge, a terrifying face with a slack jaw looking back at me from within that mess of foliage. I don't remember a smell, or a sound, just terror, I looked at him then at my friend, and without even knowing why as we we rose to run I pushed her hard, as hard as I could to the ground without even thinking through the process, now I know it was primal instinct to survive. I have felt guilty about that moment every time I think of it, even now. I was up and running and as I looked behind me to see A. if he was in pursuit or B. that she was up and running too, I saw him simply melt back into the greenery as if he was never there to start with.

He had teeth like ours, not fanged or pointed like a dog, square like a human just larger, at a guess and from my position he was taller than a tall man, probably around 7 ft in height, with dark tanned skin and even though he had a weathered face I don't think he was old, more that he lived outside in the sun, like the men who used to tarmac the road, darkly tanned and weathered. His eyes were like ours but not clean and white, more a yellowed or a jaundiced look to them, I concentrated on his eyes and his teeth, waiting for him to rush out and grab us and begin to do whatever he did with teenage girls he found in the woods, or an arm to hit me with such force I would be flat on my back and easy prey within seconds. But none of that happened, she ran one way towards Salford Precinct and I ran like the wind till I made it home, being physically sick a number of times on the run, running every green space through my head till I got in.

I didn't care about punishment, I didn't care how mad she was going to be, I ran in the door expecting my Mum to drop to her knees and comfort me, to receive the reply “bloody hell Deb, what’ve done to your uniform it's a right mess” was not the reaction I needed. She whipped my jumper off and pushed me to the kitchen sink, all the while I’m trying to explain about the Ape man that had tried to get me while my Mums saying “don't be silly it was probably just a tramp, don't tell your Dad you didn't go in school or you will be in for it” at which point I burst into tears all over again and tried to explain over and over what had happened. At first her answered made me really upset and I couldn't stop the tears, then I got mad, mad at not being believed and a little bit mad that they had not warned me about things like this, if there is a crazy Ape like thing out there, surely adults would know and warn you off, then came the realisation that Mum wasn't brushing me off just because she had her hands full with my Dad, me and my sister to see too, two jobs and an ageing parent to care for and was just “done” with my drama, it was she did not have a clue, and that meant neither did anyone else. The realisation I was on my own with this one was the most awful feeling I have ever felt.

Years later in my 30’s as a single Mum of two I was told “you will probably never walk unaided again” after a really bad accident, and that shook me to the core, but it was nothing compared to that cold sickly feeling in the very pit of your stomach when a fear becomes a reality. When your whole world suddenly becomes blurry and you feel like your knees will give way as the sudden realisation that you have to go back there tomorrow and for another 6 months or so until you leave to start college. I don’t think I slept a wink for weeks,every shadow was him or his kind, every noise or bang, sudden running footsteps were no longer just another kid running, but one of “his” kind coming for you. That fear stayed with me,through my teens and my 20’s never mentioned out loud like the massive Ape man in the room, or if mentioned brushed of with “oh your so dramatic, it was just a homeless man” “are you still going on about that, you would think at this age, you would be over that by now” So I stopped talking about it, stopped saying how confused and scared I was, I buckled everything down and went off the rails for a good few years there.

Marriage and children didn't quell it, no holidays in the woods or camping trips, I remember a work colleague offered me her centre parks cabin in the woods for free for two weeks and the horror in my face at the idea gave her the impression I was an incredibly ungrateful friend who should probably count her blessings as she stormed off in a huff, but I was just stood there flummoxed not knowing what to say or how I could explain my actions without actually having to tell her why. The amount of times my parents went off for holidays and weekends and I would stay behind with my Nan safe in a tall block of flats away from “him and his kind.”

Don't get me wrong I have walked the streets of Salford as most of us have growing up at night in the dark, it's a terraced house cobbled streets, car lights, people everywhere type of town. Like most people with “phobias” I learnt to hide it, to adapt my world around it so it didn't seem like a problem anymore and somehow I managed to file it away for long periods of time but deep down it was always there in the background, chipping away until I realised that I had to find others who may have seen him too which would make “him” a reality, or my best hope others who may know about something that could explain all this away, a local circus visit maybe, or some ape film being made? Here I am 37 yrs later writing it down for other to read, I did find them, and they were not hard to find, people like me, hundreds of them with stories like mine, and here in this book you will hear their stories too.

37yrs on from my encounter I have collected over 500 reports in the UK and in the last 2yrs those sighting reports have spread across Europe and Asia, America and Russia each week another report comes in which of course is another witness out there feeling alone. I would like to share all of these accounts with you from every corner of the world, but first let’s concentrate on the child witnesses as this is where my journey began, and I hope as your read these pages settled with a cuppa on the sofa or on a warm day relaxing in the garden pondering life, give thought to all the other children out there who never got to report what happened, and what thoughts and feelings they are left with.

As an adult one of the hardest things we do is to put our head up above the parapet and speak out loudly knowing all around you heads will shake, eyes will roll and you will be met with utter disbelief. Adults have coping skills, cognitive minds that reason, as a child you have nothing like this, the grown ups own all the answers. Back then I had no real sense of self, nothing to reason what “he” was and any stray wisp of “self” left within you will be wiped out in weeks to come with the constant explaining of how “you didn't see it” or “it was a homeless man” or my absolute favourite “she's always been a bit dramatic” and I admit that on occasion I was prone to childish exaggeration and flights of imagination as all children are.

What happened to me that day back in 1982 changed my whole life forever, and left me with more fears than any child should have, more questions than leaves on a tree, left to work it all out on my own the “monster” each child saw grows in size and ability, arms although of the large variety, in your head become arms that can stretch around the corner and grab you as you run up the stairs to the flat as fast as you can, arms that will reach from under every bush and hedge, every tree a blind for him to hide behind and every shadow becomes a 7ft Apeman that surely wants to eat you and will come looking for you in the night. His height grows each year in your head, so woodland visits and night camping become things you did “before” and your life is sectioned in two, before the incident and after. Never explaining just accepting there are things you loved you can no longer do, memories no longer made, just nagging doubts, hours of searching online and a need for a place to report this too, to find other like you who are out there alone with just the questions we all have rolling around in our heads.

You don't know at 15 you will one day help others in your situation, help them to bring their stories forward, help them to stand up and say “me too, I saw it and nobody ever believed me” words we have all said, all of us who see the “wild ones” the “hair covered ones” the creature people now refer to as the British Bigfoot but who back then was the Apeman and somewhere deep inside he still is that to me.

No matter how many people I help, whether male or female we all have a shared experience, a trauma left within us and nowhere to go. And I hope writing this book will give you an idea of just what it is like to be one of the unfortunate fortunate ones!

I normally get three reactions when I share my story, the classic eye roll and cuckoo noises happen the most, then the well known friend of a friend story, but on more occasions than you will believe I see a spark of recognition, a cog turns and a story starts to unravel, remembered from childhood of things pushed way down within, as looking at them would make it all real and you will be right back there in your head, right back to the time you dread to think of, because it makes you remember that you have seen things that make you question the very core of man and this world we think we know so well.

Am I the only one who has seen this? I asked myself over and over, do they not know these things live out there? or worse do the adults know and just choose to ignore it?

Back then I didnt know which one was the scariest option, they all weighed the same to me. I knew that all the tales that we were told of humans being the only thing that walks the planet on human legs and feet, well other than the Great Apes of course were wrong. Sadly what we witnessed was not Human or Ape, it was a blend of the two somehow? And it would take decades for each of us to find each other, to find people prepared to help, prepared to hear us out, without judgement.

Like any person who has an experience with Alien life, or someone who saw a ghost, we just ask that you hear us out, listen to what we have to say about the things we saw as children, maybe you too have witnessed something similar or you may hold a tiny piece of the puzzle that helps each witness to understand their experience within your hand all the time without realising.

For the sake of ease I will call each creature witnessed a “British Bigfoot” that's the trendy name, the name fashion brings, for me he is the Woodwose, our Man in the woods, the Greenman of old, Herne or Pan even, that's after 35 yrs of researching the theory I have settled on. So I started searching in dusty book shops and newspaper archives. MSN and CB radio were a good source for me in the early day, contacting truckers and drivers here and in as many countries as I could find, asking if they too had seen anything, joining camping groups and woodland walkers in the hopes one of the people included would hear me out or have a tale of their own to tell. And the emergence of the wonderful world wide web gave me another tool to search with and I was lucky enough to contact many American and Canadian witnesses, Russians and Europeans also. Some of the old names in Bigfoot were really happy to share encounters or research tips.

Plugging away on my own for years was hard but it did enable me to build a knowledge base of the Sasquatch people that live across the world. The images and descriptions they shared fitted, they looked like the figure I saw, mine a slightly smaller version, like the Russian Almasty or the Leshy and Puka’s of old, A hair covered “man” with an ape like face, naked, no clothing is ever reported. Large hands and feet are seen not paws or hooves.

Wild humans is how I think of them but there are a whole host of theories behind “what they are” “where they come from”? I strongly feel that it is for each witness to choose the theory that works for them, in this book I would just like to bring you their stories as they happened. In their own words as they speak of their experiences, what changed for them afterwards and what happened to them on the day in question.

I have included some Adult witness accounts as they are in the immediate area or have the same MO so to speak. I call these validation accounts, not all of the witnesses get validation and It is one of the things we strive for. I hope reading the accounts contained in the book it will give not only validation but a few more people may just feel that the time is right to tell their story also.

For more of these True Accounts https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fortunate-Unfortunates-Children-Impossible-Creatures-ebook/dp/B07P3Z6BWQ/ref=tmm\_kin\_title\_sr?\_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=