Possible SC Sasquatch encounter

The following story is one I've shared many times (though never in an online forum), and it has been met with varying degrees of skepticism. All I can say is that this was my experience and the event described is what got me so interested in cryptozoology. My reasons for making this post mostly stem from a desire to share the experience, but I also value the input of others more experienced than myself.

When I was 16 years old I lived in Coward, South Carolina. Its a small, no-stoplight town near the east coast. Coward is a good place to receive a speeding ticket, but flashing red and blue lights would be the only compelling reason for most people to stop there. Myself and a good friend at the the time named Matthew had been camping every weekend for a month in the woods behind his house. Feeling we needed a change of scenery, he and I made plans to camp the following Friday night in the Middle Bay. The Bay is a large densely wooded area on the outskirts of town. There are trails and dirt roads throughout the Bay and it is peppered with hunters' tree stands, but there are no homes beyond the outer edge of the woods. When Friday arrived, Matthew and I, accompanied by his cousin Jason and a mutual friend named Stephen, loaded our gear onto a trio of four-wheelers and headed into the wild. Now I will preface this next bit with a confession: there was beer. One of the guys had brought three or four cans of Budweiser that he'd pilfered from his dad's mini-fridge. We all had a taste (lest our masculinity be endangered), but only he was drinking. I only mention this because when things began to get intense he was certainly inebriated but the rest of our group was entirely sober.

Most of the night went exactly as anticipated. The tent was assembled, the campfire lit, and hot dogs consumed. It was roughly 2 AM when we heard the first scream. We were laughing at a funny story when suddenly the most bloodcurdling shriek Ive ever heard echoed through the bay silencing all of us. It sounded a lot like a woman screaming, but there was something I can only describe as animalistic about the sound as well. The scream seemed to have come from fairly far away from us, so apart from being startled, none of us were really scared yet. That would come later. We briefly discussed what the sound could have been. Steven claimed he'd heard a bobcat before and declared that was what had made the noise. We accepted that explanation. Maybe 30 minutes passed and we had pretty well forgotten the scream until it ripped the night open again, this time much closer to our campsite. In the stunned silence that followed we heard the sound of something very large moving in the woods. The footsteps sounded heavy and while the animal had gotten close to us stealthily it was now making no attempt to move quietly. We heard bushes shaking and sticks snapping. Whatever it was moving out there, it was clearly circling our campsite. I remember all of us looking wide-eyed at one another across the fire and whispering that it was circling us and getting closer. All of us were terrified... except for Mr. Budweiser who'd had just enough canned courage to stomp over to the trees and started barking and cursing loudly in an attempt to scare it off.

At this point the woods grew quiet again and it seemed his outburst had achieved the desired effect. For the next hour or so things returned to normal. It was about 3:30 and all of us were in agreement that we were ready to move to the tent and get into our sleeping bags. The fire had died down to embers and we were all cold and sleepy. We stood and began moving in the direction of the tents when we heard the scream again this time only a yard or so away. We panicked and piled onto the four-wheelers. We left the tent and everything behind and made for home in a frenzy. We got turned around in the dark a few times before finding the main trail out of the bay. By the time we got to Matthew's house our hearts were almost beating out of our chests and we were all in tears. We spent the rest of the night on the floor of Matthew's bedroom.

When morning came our courage returned and we all admitted with great chagrin that we had probably just gotten spooked because it was dark. We had certainly heard something, but it had probably just been a bobcat like Stephen had suggested from the start. We decided to head back to the campsite and retrieve all of our gear. Before we got to the clearing we smelled an overpowering odor of dead animal. It smelled like Yankee Candle Co. had released a roadkill scented and someone lit a hundred of them in the woods. The smell got worse the closer we got to our campsite and along with the dead smell there was another stronger stink that was growing. We arrived to find the campsite destroyed. The tent was torn apart and the flexible metal frame had been twisted into pretzel shapes. This struck us as odd because those frames are pretty strong and only something with hands would have the dexterity to twist metal into loops. All our camping chairs had been similarly ruined and the entire area reeked of very strong urine. Oh, yeah... there were enormous piles of feces everywhere. These poop piles were a good foot and a half high and there were several of them. At the time we didn't know what to think, we were just glad we had chosen to flee the night before.

A few years later I was watching a show on either the Discovery Channel or the History channel about Bigfoot. On it they talked to a California police officer who had responded to a call about a Sasquatch sighting. The officer claimed that when he stopped his car he saw a Bigfoot creature come out of the woods on the opposite side of the road. He claimed it attacked his car screaming at him and hitting the back of the car with its fists. He showed pictures of the dents on the back of the car then he played a recording from the camera in his cruiser. The creature wasn't visible, but you can hear a scream on the recording along with the banging of its fist on the back of the vehicle. It was the exact same sound we heard in the woods. My blood froze when I heard it.

From that point on my interest in anything Bigfoot related has been piqued. Does anyone have a similar experience or any ideas as to what may explain my encounter?

a reply to: Hedbangking83

Probably a bear. SC is full of them. Had you stayed at the camp, it probably would have gone elsewhere. The screaming was likely a bobcat. SC is full of them. It was prob screaming at the bear. That’s what they do to keep larger predators away. The smell was likely from the enormous piles of poo and urine.

Your friend did the right thing by making as much noise as possible. Brown bears and black bears will avoid humans if you let them know you are there.

TL;DR Heard an animal in the woods at night. Therefore bigfoot.

Get a grip.

Don't particularly feel I have lost a grip on anything. Simply sharing a story from over twenty years ago. I also never definitively said it was Bigfoot only that it was a possibility.
a reply to: savvo

a reply to: savvo

That's how I feel about lots of ufo sightings.
You saw a light in the sky.
I'm not saying aliens but it's aliens.

Who knows what's in the sky or in the woods...

I've considered the bear explanation as well, the only issue I have with that was that the tent frame was twisted up suggesting it had been gripped with hands. I also remember that there weren't claw mark on the tent. I suppose the tearing could have been done with a bears mouth but I didn't know bears were capable of making the twisted up shapes out of the metal pieces.

a reply to: Woodcarver

In fact I didn't consider anything other than a bear until a few years later when I saw the show and found the recording of the scream to sound so similar.
a reply to: Woodcarver

a reply to: Hedbangking83

Many years ago, me and a group of friends were camping in a dry creek bed in smithville TN, near a road called pine creek falls. There is a huge waterfall at the head of the trail. The water collects in a pool, but drains underground. The rest of the river bed is dry as a bone for miles with 20-80 foot walls on either side of you. You feel like you are teleported 1000’s of years into the past when you are there. Especially if you partake.

We cooked some beef tips and fish for lunch and then we ate the other. By the time it kicked in, the sun was going down and every body was #ting in the woods, multiple times within the hour.

And then we heard the first bobcat cry out. Everyone freaked out. We built the fire up and started singing and playing the instruments we had brought with us, but in pure terror. We saw more than a few cats that night, as they slowly walked by just inside the edge of the firelight. I had never seen cats as bold as this, but i figured they had the numbers, and probably had trapped large prey together between these tall walls before. This went on until daybreak when we could see well enough to make the treacherous trek back to present time and our trucks. We still laugh about it to this day and call ourselves the dookey tribe.

a reply to: Hedbangking83

I would encourage you to get into a collaborative writing project here on ATS.

I really enjoy your writing style.

And ya know - just don't pay attention to the naysayers. They're judging your experience like the arm chair warriors they are. You, were there.

S&F! Great thread.

Thanks, like I said in the intro, I mostly just wanted to share the story. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
a reply to: silo13

Like you wrote this, just read it to my wife. Egnore the nay sayers, as said they are arm chair critics, the cheapest advise you could look for. I am very critical even of my own experiences, but when things go beyond the norm, look for that which is not normal. Also I have three lake lots and get lots of bear crap, they do not leave enormous piles and when they destroy things, they do the minimalistic approach, tear down the feeder, rip away the wire to eat or perhaps play with things, but anger such as you illustrated is not a part of it.

Great story. I don't have any experiences or thoughts to add. I'm always interested in hearing what others have experienced in the realm of Bigfoot, UFO's and the paranormal. I've never had my own Bigfoot experience, and part of me thinks I'd be happy never to be put in the situation, even thought I lean pretty heavily towards them not existing, or at least not anymore.

I guess I'm in conflict with myself over the existence of Bigfoot, so I appreciate reading about the possible encounters of others. At the very least it keeps the little kid inside me alive and well.

Quite the tale!

A couple things stood out to me:

• The scream sounded exactly like a mountain lion call. We hear them here once in a while from deep in the mountain. A bobcat screams as well, but it's less like a "screaming woman" than a mountain lion. Those screams will send the hairs on the back of your neck all the way to your forehead.
  
  
• The initial stealth also supports the idea of a large cat. While I can usually pick up on them, barely, few people can.
  
  
• The damage does NOT sound like a cat, nor the thrashing when it got close. That sounds more like a bluff tactic... something trying to scare you off instead of attack. Whatever it was, you were in its territory and it wasn't feeling hospitable at the time.
  
  
• The damage to the campsite could possibly have been caused by the smell of food, or it was the human smell on it that agitated the critter. The feces are a way of marking territory, so I'm betting on the human smell being the culprit. Whatever it was, it saw you as an invader and even after you left it wanted to destroy any evidence you were there. In the animal world, territory is everything and territorial animals will defend it to the death (theirs or yours).
  
  
• It sounds from your narrative that the campsite wasn't just ransacked, but destroyed intentionally. That as well indicates territorial tendencies, but moreso indicates some kind of rudimentary intelligence. Animals typically only destroy in the search for food or out of a perceived sense of danger, not out of anger or to destroy evidence.

In short, I think you encountered more than one critter. The mountain lion is easily explained, as it could have been hunting the other critter, or perhaps it smelled/heard you as well and happened to be checking you out at the same time.

I would say the latter... because whatever it was that destroyed the camp was not a cat, and anything that can't take a lion down will avoid them like the plague. Even bears tend to leave lions alone.

From what I know of the area (which is less than you, obviously), I think you have about the same type of critters we do... black bear few and far between, lions once in a while, regular but sparse bobcats, the occasional lynx, and the standard assortment of smaller predators and prey critters (coons, deer, foxes, possums, rabbits, squirrels, etc.). Nothing really explains everything. A bear might come close, but it doesn't explain the type of destruction you describe or the scream. You may well have been in the vicinity of a sasquatch... the smell when you returned seems to indicate it. The species we have in the South is smaller than their Northwestern cousins (still large) and give off a horrendous death-like smell. That's why a lot of people call them "skunk-apes."

When in the woods, it is usually a good idea to quietly listen from time to time. You're entering the home of something else that probably isn't very happy to have you visit... knowing where your host is can be a very, very good thing. You should also be aware of things like wind direction (your scent will travel downwind), lay of the land (to determine where a critter is on the food chain by their choice of route), and what sounds animals make (if any). You'd be amazed at what is actually going on around you when you think you're all alone.

TheRedneck

All very valid points! The idea of a mountain lion is a bit implausible because our area is really flat and a lot closer to the beach than the mountains, but I suppose it is possible. I didn't add this detail initially because it comes with an enormous shaker of salt, but Jason's uncle (perpetually drunk and untrustworthy) swears he used to see "families" of Sasquatch in the Bay. I've never believed him though, I'm pretty sure he was pulling our collective legs.

a reply to: TheRedneck

a reply to: usernameconspiracy

I'm on the fence myself as physical evidence is slim. That said a highly intelligent, bipedal primate, possibly nocturnal, living in large and unpopulated areas could be very good at staying hidden. I doubt the ecosystem could support many in a single spot and if they dispose of their dead... who knows. I'll keep the torch burning for the big hairy man ape for awhile longer.

a reply to: Hedbangking83

"...ripped the night open...", that's good.

a reply to: MissSmartypants

Thank you!

a reply to: Hedbangking83

I believe. Your description of the metal bent into loops makes me think of the guy who has a site on youtube called Sasquatch Ontario. In a number of videos he had been left presents by the beings that consists of reed or vine-like weavings, and some of them were formed into small figurines complete with hoops and loops on them....Strange indeed. Thanks.

That's really interesting! I'm going to check those videos out.
a reply to: donktheclown

a reply to: Hedbangking83


Great read!! Quite an experience. S&F. The Budweiser dude cracked me up.