JAN'S TALES
LBL
Investigation
(NOTE: The following is an interesting update to what
amounts to be several of Jan's Tales... An effort was made to investigate the
events described, and try to answer what the Beast of LBL could be...)
(Author's Note: BIGFOOT ATE MY BABY!
Ok, ok, the title isn’t
true, but it did catch your attention didn’t it? I apologize and you better grab
a cup of coffee and have your smokes at hand as this is a long tale…albeit not a
very scary one, but it just might make you do some personal ponderings and to
rethink many of the misconceptions we’ve been privy too over the years involving
this mysterious animal.)
The following narrative of events was
not written to prove or authenticate some previous tales already posted on this
site (Through The Fog, The Beast of LBL, From The Woods, Forest Creature and
Creature Of The Night.) but rather to add some absorbing and enlightening
details to all four tales. Among some of the things that will be discussed, are
peculiar building sites found at the supposed site of the killings in LBL, of a
suspicious undertaking; photos included.
Other subjects will include a hypothesis
of certain situations incurred in the past, which will leave you, the reader, to
use your own judgment in discerning the data compiled below. All in all,
the following will probably leave us with more questions then answers, but it
will indeed intrigue those who truly believe the statement, ‘we are not the only
two legged beings in the forests’.
During the last week of September of
2004, some Bigfoot researchers came to Western Kentucky to do some personal
investigations into some sightings of the creature in this area. They came from
various parts of the United States, met up together and then contacted me
locally to assist them in various guided tours. (One of them had read a few
of my stories on this site and passed them along to a few members of his team.
They got a hold of me through the help of San and we struck up some interesting
conversations and planned on meeting during the month of September when they
would gather for a research event close to where I live. I will have to
refrain from using their real names as well as their personal living locations out of
respect for their requests to remain anonymous. I will say that they were all
extremely professional, well experienced with the history and details of
Bigfoot’s worldwide, properly equipped for their tasks and some of the finest
gentlemen I’ve come across in many years. My deepest respect goes out to each
of them in all the time and effort they each put forth in dedicating their time
and resources to such an endeavor as proving the creatures existence. )
Along with my cousin, Joe (see story ‘From the Woods’) and my son Josh
(see stories ‘The Story of Man’, ‘Josh’s Angel’ or ‘He Sees Dead People’)
we took them to the scenes wrote about in ‘From The Woods’ and ‘The Beast of LBL’.
(Time did not allow us to take them to the scenes of the other 3 stories but
we pinpointed them on a detailed map for their own investigations later.)
Some rather interesting information came out of our discussions concerning the
Bigfoot legends with which I would like to take a moment now and write about for
the benefit of you, the reader.
Besides what we all have basically
heard, the following are some new ways of thinking about the habits and possible
behavior patterns of this unknown animal. Keep in mind these are purely
hypothetical answers and nothing is based on scientific fact but they all make
pretty good sense when you think about it and apply them to the data and
information that is already compiled about the Bigfoot from decades of
investigations by hundreds of researchers.
From our two days of interaction with
the three researchers we found out the following fascinating conceptions, some
of which may pertain to and add to the validation of the unknown beings in the
stories mentioned above. There have been reported in the US alone a few basic
types of Bigfoot; the black haired one, the brown and red mixed haired one,
the gray or white one (possibly from aging) and also some that had
actual skin showing from a type of mange (Could it be that is what I
witnessed in the story of ‘Creature Of The Night’, one that had a ravaging case
of the mange?).
Their head patterns range also, from pointed or cone shaped, to
large and round with no neck but merely blending in with the shoulders. In the
Mid West, from the Ohio River and continuing on towards the east coast, numerous
Bigfoot have been seen with snouts, elongated muzzles, and pointed ears.
Nationwide and in the world around, they have also been known to have multiple
rows of teeth, and/or elongated canines and incisors that protrude from their
mouths.
This is quite a frightening picture to imagine, and could also have
been the basis for the long-standing image of the werewolf (This is not to
replace any conceptions as to how the ‘werewolf’ legend started, it is merely
something to ponder, as there are those who believe the ‘werewolf’ to actually
be a separate type of creation all together.).
The creature mentioned in
‘The Beast of LBL’ and in ‘From the Woods’ would definitely meet the
characteristics outlined above, and could have possibly been the same being
appearing in both locations (The ‘From the Woods’ being was in Grand Rivers,
KY, which is at the beginning of the North side of Land Between the Lakes, LBL
for short.) (Also, just for comparison, do a search on your favorite Internet
search engine on ‘The Bray Road Beast’ and you will find a similar description
of a mysterious being living in Wisconsin. To add to this same description, my
own son Josh and several of his friends just last summer, a year ago, witnessed
something along the same nature as the one described above roaming along the
Clarks River bank close to where we live. But, that is his story, I’ll see if I
can get him to write something down and submit it for this site. ).
We
learned also, that if the average man can walk at a steady military pace for 9
hours he could cover close to 20 miles. Now imagine a Bigfoot, having the
stride from three to four times that of a normal man, walking 9 hours in one day
or night. That means he could cover between 60-80 miles in one excursion. This
is huge amount of territory that it could call its own. Witnesses around the US
have also seen them swim across lakes and rivers, which is no different from
what the elk, deer and bears do in the wild. So, any waterways would not be
considered a large obstacle for these animals.
The time frame from the story
lines, (Roughly 1977-1983, give or take a few years.) along with the
descriptions and close proximity of the witness scenes, could perhaps have been
the same individual creature and not two or three different ones. (The
subjects witnessed in ‘Creature of the Night’ and ‘Forest Creature’ where likely
two separate beings as they were on an estimate about 100 miles apart, and many
years in between the actual sightings, besides, the ‘naked’ one may have had the
mange, if indeed this is what category it fell into. The one mentioned in
‘Through the Fog’ may have been a separate being also, as its fingernails were
broad, jagged and chipped compared to the ‘From the Woods’ one whom seemed to
have claws, as it ripped through Joe’s jeans. But who knows what damage jagged
nails can do when reaching out to try and capture someone.)
During the second day of our visitation
with the researchers, Joe enlightened us all with even more details of his
personal encounters with the animal. It seems he was more relaxed to speak of
these memories around those who would not criticize, condemn or denounce what he
had to share. Much of what he said gave the incident of ‘From The Woods’ even
more credibility and also educated myself with newly revealed information.
The
things he spoke of during this particular week had been hidden inside him for a
couple of decades, lying like mummified secrets waiting to be discovered,
unwrapped and reborn. Like most people, things of this nature (dealing with
Bigfoot sightings) are kept to themselves out of fear of ridicule, but some
keep them out of giving fuel to their own fears. All in all, much of what he
had to share was new to me and if I had known this back in the ‘70’s, (Prior
to the ‘From the Woods’ incident.) when I used to
come to Kentucky every summer from up North, I probably would not have
vacationed there any longer.
Joe informed us that he had known of the
animals’ existence prior to the episode of it running after him on his dirt bike
and had met up with it again afterwards. He use to walk the trails through
the woods on foot, (in fact he was the one who blazed the trails in the first
place), along with his best pal, Stubby, one of their many Bassett hounds,
before having the dirt bike. While he walked through the woods he said he
would sometimes feel something watching him, staring at him from the darkened
part of the woods, and that this feeling would follow him during his entire
excursion at times. Over time, the unseen ‘watcher’ would get braver and
venture closer to Joes vicinity, and walk with him from a distance but close
enough for Joe to hear the heavy footsteps through the leaves. When Joe
would turn to search for the source of the noise, the footsteps would cease and
the ‘source’ would camouflage itself within the shadows and dense tree limbs.
It wasn’t long afterwards that the
‘source’ would reveal itself in a nearer point of Joes vision, making the
Bassett tuck its tail and run back home along the well-worn trail. Joe
took the researchers to the exact spot where the creature had stood all those
years ago and had parted the 6 to 7 inch circumference saplings like they were
mere blades of grass and stepped through them towards where Joe was standing.
“Taller than a man, very broad in the shoulders, hairy
and brown.” Joe told them as he described the furry individual, adding that it
smelled like a wet dead dog.
Now, you would think that this would
have been enough of a reaction from the animal, that it actually approached a
human, that Joe would not have traveled those trails again, but, no, on the
contrary, he merely brought along a bigger gun and more rounds of ammunition on
the following walks. This was a typical country boy, and those were his woods
to explore and nothing was going to scare him away from his environment, even
though it was clearly known now that he had to share those forests with a
possible Bigfoot.
He did a lot of hunting down in those woods besides just
shooting snakes, like for squirrels and rabbits. His gun was used more often
after that ‘parting of the trees’ incident, mainly just to shoot and make a
noise to warn off any more curious approaches from the creature. Not long after
this Joe got a dirt bike from his dad and this made traveling the trails even
more safer and faster in his opinion and he used it daily.
He cannot pin point
exactly when the creature decided to chase after him on the dirt bike and reach
out to grab his leg, but he believes it to have been around the same year. The
researchers listening to his re-telling of the story ‘From The Woods’, where
puzzled over the fact that a Bigfoot would actually chase after someone and
lurch out to try and stop or capture its designated target, as this wasn’t
typical behavior. I on the other hand mentioned a simple fact of the
matter…what would you do if you had a teenage boy running around your woods,
where you live, on a screeching, gear changing, ring a ding ding ding ding ding
motor bike squalling for hours? I believe I would have retaliated for sure!
This must have been an extremely annoying sound to listen too for the animal and
it decided to do something about it.
Joe said it kept up with the motorbike,
running along side of it through the woods, parting trees with effortless
strikes and thrashes. He had the bike going at top speed coming up the trail
and the ‘thing’ didn’t even seem to slack off until it stopped abruptly and
continued running up the other side of the hill away from Joe. When he reached
the top of the hill and started coming down to the driveway of his house he
realized then why the animal left him…he turned out to be smarter than he
thought! The creature had tried to ‘head him off at the pass’, and climbed the
hill instead of taking the trail which turned out to be closer to the house, and
Joe saw it coming down the hill after him from the side of the woods.
This is
the point where Joe came sliding into the driveway with the expression of pure
horror on his face, started speaking erratically and when I looked up and saw
the beast at the top of the drive under the street light looking down at us. (After
hearing what the researchers had to say about Bigfoot’s coming in different
colors and shapes, I do now believe that this is what it was after all. And
that ‘howling’ it made was probably his extreme distaste over Joe riding through
‘his’ woods on that contraption. It was just so hard to envision that it had
been a Bigfoot back then with its pointed snout and what appeared to be pointed
ears; now we have some enlightenment to this old mystery.)
This was the
first time Joe ever fully discussed this story since it happened all those years
ago; it was something we all hid away and was fearful to speak of. Hearing it
from his mouth put a new scope on things; this creature knew where Joe lived and
knew how to get to the house quicker then following the trails. Joe also added
that afterwards he woke up one night after falling asleep in the living room
floor and saw it looking through the patio screen door at him. (This
brought back memories of when Joe’s older brother complained to their dad that
there was ‘someone’ that would walk around the house at night and drive the dogs
crazy, and peek in the windows. Sometimes he would see a ‘tall man’ running
into the woods when he would get home from staying out late with his other
friends. I believe my uncle knew what was out there, but he didn’t want to
scare us more then we already had scared ourselves with our own discoveries.)
Joe took the researchers on another
excursion to another part of the woods where he and my dad had explored year’s
prior and found the ‘dead zone’, but the old sawmill was no longer there. Some
new construction is and had been going on for several years back in there. On
one side of the woods there was a new subdivision going in coming in from
another road far on the other side of town, and a few miles apart on the other
end of the woods where it met with the Kentucky Lake, some barge companies had
made a coal and rock depot. They never found any evidence of a Bigfoot living
back there during their hikes this particular day but they did find an
indication of something large that had been walking through the woods, stepping
on tall saplings, bending them over and leaving them lay there, while it
traveled onward.
If, just if, the creature in Joes story
was the same one that did the damage in the Beast of LBL story, what happened to
it? Why did all the sightings cease? Why have there been no episodes or
activities noted since then? Maybe, the following few paragraphs will give us
an explanation worth wondering over.
The alleged site of the LBL killings
back in the early ‘80’s was one road down on the left past a popular camp site,
right after you turned on it, you turned by a cemetery, went down a little ways,
drove through a creek bed, and then there was an entrance on the right that led
into the woods into a small clearing. (I had taken a trip down there soon
after this supposedly happened to take a look myself but didn’t find anything
out of the ordinary.)
After 20 years it seems a lot has changed in terms
of road access as that first road to the left past a popular camp site turned
out to be a new road put in that just ran into the main road to the major camp
site. The researchers found another road close to the vicinity and took it and
found them selves going ‘over’ a creek and then just kept winding around until
it reached the lake. We all went together down that road when I met them down
there but immediately I knew that this wasn’t the road at all; the creek came up
too soon. (You could also tell that the road had been built up with rock so
that it would go over the creek, so you didn’t have to go through the creek as
before, as several of the back roads use to display.)
We eventually found
what appeared to be the correct road, which happened to be now the second road
on the left past the main campground road. It took you to a cemetery and then
you could go straight or turn right. We needed to turn right, but that road was
closed down. Steel barred and locked tight and appeared to have been that way
for numerous years. After pulling off the road we decided to travel on foot
from there down the abandoned gravel pathway around the barred entrance. Before
we got to where the creek should have been, you could tell that tons of dirt and
gravel had been brought in, creating a barrier for any vehicle to travel
onwards. It just ended in a circular pattern so that any vehicles that long ago
went down that far would have to make a turn around. If you went to the edge of
this wall of dirt and rock, you could look down at where the old road continued
on up through the woods on the other side and where the original creek had been
disrupted from its natural path and had to form a new path around the mound.
Now if this wasn’t confusing enough, we also found two concrete block military
bunkers on the left side of the dirt wall. One was actually built into the side
of the dirt and the only entrance into it was from a hole in the top. The other
was next to it with part of a retaining wall broken down. Some kids had found
it in the past as there was graffiti painted all over it as you will see in one
of the photos posted with this story.
To the right of the old gravel road, up
in the woods we found the remains of four more bunkers, only their concrete
foundations and sharp pieces of rebar sticking up, lay as testimony of their
existence in the past. There was also a set of three lonely cement stairs
leading to no where, and a few feet of a telephone pole left in the ground that
had been cut down. The telephone pole we guessed was used for some type of
communication in the past, as the technology we have today with cell phones was
not around in the early ‘80’s.
The bunkers were a total mystery until one of
the researchers mentioned the fact that when something out of the extreme
ordinary happens, as may have been the case with this alleged family killing by
an unknown predator, the FEDs usually come in and take over. This branch of
government involvement has been known to come in and silence all law enforcement
personnel, employees, witnesses and media people, hushing everything up.
This
was sounding more and more like an episode from the X-Files but when you added
up some of the newly discovered facts along with the old tale it wasn’t so far
from a Mulder and Scully type investigation. The bunkers themselves were proof
that some type of protection was needed at the time, that a covert operation had
been established, and were possibly used to keep an eye on ‘something’ in those
particular woods. (Further study showed (after discovering these block
formations), through the Internet and phone calls, that no other information on
the bunkers could be obtained.) Could it have just been a military
exercise location to train soldiers? (Very doubtful, this was a huge
public/tourist area and it would have been dangerous to have pulled off such an
operation so close to vacationing families. There was never any history of any
branch of military using this property for any type of land, water or air
training or maneuvers.)
If these killings actually took place by an
unknown creature wouldn’t they have shut Land Between the Lakes as a whole area,
down? (Does Disney Land shut the entire park down when someone gets killed
or hurt on a ride? No, they just contain the area.) Why was this
particular road shut down, blocked off even further up, a creek redesigned to
flow in another direction, (disturbing the natural habitat no doubt)
and had evidence of small concrete block buildings erected and then most of them
torn down? Did the FEDs indeed come in, take over, and hunt something
down?
All these questions create even more
puzzles to solve, and even greater ‘what ifs’ to ponder. One of the
Bigfoot researchers had done some calling of his own to try and find anyone else
that knew of the killings from years ago. He indeed found someone who had
heard about it through a trusted source, but that source was not revealing any
other details except that ‘yes it’s true, yes it happened and that’s all I’m
saying’. If you do some looking on the Internet you will find others who
have heard of the incident back in the ‘80’s but they too know as little as we
do. Even though we found no evidence that this terrible tragedy actually
took place, or found any proof of a Bigfoot or any other type of unknown animal
that lives in the area presently, the tale still remains like the cry of a
lonely ghost in a wasteland.
Someday, someone will come forward with
the whole story. Maybe someone someday might offer a realistic explanation
for the road being closed, blocked off and why there were those concrete
buildings in that particular area. Maybe a government official, a law
enforcement officer or witness, that might have been involved with that area
back then will come forward, laughing and say what a wonderful imagination we
have, that indeed it was all just a ‘military exercise’, nothing more. We
may never know the truth, but yet we are creatures that believe in things not
yet seen, have faith in things not yet experienced, and wait for the answers to
come while still giving life to the hope inside of us all.
So, we wait, and wonder, together.
As an afterthought, I would like to add
this newly developed opinion over the whole ‘Bigfoot’ furor that has escalated
over the past 40 or so years. This offered view comes from my interaction
with the researchers whom I’ve had the pleasure of intermingling with a few
weeks ago. It is truly an inadequate and unnecessary presumption to label
the Bigfoot as a ‘creature’, a ‘monster’, a ‘beast’ or a ‘mythical creation’.
These are in fact an unknown species of our animal kingdom, more then likely
related to the primates. They have been spotted in every part of the
world, have been a part of history and legends handed down through hundreds of
years, and are still being discovered and seen in numerous parts of the globe.
After listening to these men who came to
visit, and doing even more research on my own, I must say that I have enriched
my own attitude concerning this rare mammal. No longer will I associate
them with the ‘unknown monsters’ that lurk in the dark, or pair them with any
paranormal event. But, I will maintain that you cannot dismiss the utter
fear experienced when meeting up with one, as members of my family and I have.
Of all the things that we talked about
as a group, one certain statement sticks in my mind that a researcher spoke of (after
his personal visit to a foreign country and showing sketches and photos of the
Bigfoot to the natives living there), was, “ Through the aid of a
translator, the natives pointed to the sketches and said ‘That is
what attacks and eats our gorillas!’”
This will leave a lasting impression for
sure in the way I personally will look at the whole phenomenon. These animals
should be treated with the utmost caution and respect, as you would with any
creature found or studied in the wild; they are flesh, bone and muscle, unlike
the misty apparitions of any ghostly encounters. They may injure you
physically, more then likely if provoked or threatened and do more impairment
then any paranormal encounter you might be privy too. So, reader be forewarned
if you decide to go in search of this elusive being…respect its typical docile
and peaceful existence in the forests and do not cause any alarm, aggravate or
irritate it to invoke a reaction.
The motivation behind writing up this
new string of events was not to convince anyone of the animals existence, but to
have you the reader, consider a more appreciated view on all the ongoing
scientific studies, over past and present evidence, found on the Bigfoot.
-Jan Thompson.
