YEAR: 2010-2012

SEASON: Spring

MONTH: May

DATE: May 14, 2012

STATE: Michigan

COUNTY: Mecosta County

LOCATION DETAILS: (Removed)

NEAREST TOWN: (Removed)

OBSERVED: About 2 years ago, sometime during warm weather, my husband and I were sleeping with our window open.  It was very early morning, and my husband was startled awake by a very high pitched screaming sound.  I was awakened just a few moments later by the same sound.  It sounded like a terrified woman, or a child's high pitch scream.  My husband was very scared, as he thought it was our 3 year old daughter that had climb out of her window and was walking on the dark road.  He ran downstairs to check on her and found her and our 2 year old son asleep in their rooms.  While he was checking on them, I heard the scream again.  My husband and I had never heard that sound before.  It gave us chills.  The next day, curiosity got a hold of me.  I started searching online for that sound, and came across supposed Bigfoot screams.  It sounded the exact same.  We even looked up screech owl noises, and many of the other noises that people have said this scream is.  Although the noises came close, nothing matched exactly, except the supposed Bigfoot screams. 
 
That was the last we heard of those noises until recently.  The current situation is actually happening at my dad's house, which is about 2 miles if you take the road, and maybe 1-1.5 miles straight shot, from our house.  He moved to that house about 3 months ago.  A few weeks or so after he moved into the house, he told me one morning that he heard this screaming sound the night before that he had never heard before, and that it gave him chills.  I jokingly said that it was Bigfoot.  Well, one day I was watching Finding Big Foot at my dad's house, and he heard the sound that the cast had heard in the woods, and MM said was a Bigfoot.  He came into the room and said, "that's the sound I heard, what was that?"  -He did not know the name or content of the show I was watching.
 
My dad has said that a few times since, he has heard that same sound.  He also said that his dog, who is a lab mix, usually starts growling and the hackles on his back stand up, when there are animals, such as deer, in the backyard or in the woods across the river.  However, he said there are times when the dog acts like he hears something in those areas, and will run back into the house and hide.  There has also been one time, about 12:30 at night, my husband was letting our dogs outside, and he came into the house, at little scared, and said that he had heard that sound again.  The next morning, my dad told us that he heard the scream again, about 12:30 at night, and we told him that we had heard it too. 
 
The latest "event" and the reason that I reached out to MM, was because my dad had our kids over at his house on Monday (5/14) evening.  Earlier that day, he had taken a few panoramic pictures of his backyard as he was playing with his dog.  My kids went over to his house around 7pm.  He had them outside most of the evening, in and out, and then they ate dinner.  Sometime around 9pm, my dad noticed a very large limb sticking straight out of the ground on the bank of the river. He looked back at the picture he took earlier and the stick was not there. The stick is probably around 9'-10' tall.  It was in the ground approximately 9".  I have attached two pictures showing this.  I am in the picture, and I am about 5'6".   My husband got to my dad's house about 15 minutes after my dad noticed the stick.  He started walking down to the stick, and had a very uneasy feeling, and only made it half way between the house and the river, when he heard a rustling sound in the woods across the river. That was when he turned around and walked back to the house.  I got to the house about 15 minutes after that, and my husband and I walked down the the stick to look for footprints and found nothing.  My husband mentioned that he did not have the uneasy feeling that time.  We looked around and tried to see if maybe the limb had fallen from the tree, and while this is a possibility, I feel it is very unlikely.  The conditions would have had to be perfect for this to happen.  My dad said the next morning, that he thinks that the limb probably fell from the tree, but I'm not convinced.

OTHER WITNESSES: 3 adults, 2 small children. One adult and the two children were playing outside where this happened, and where going in and out of the house.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Around 9pm for the most recent "event". It had been a fairly sunny day, and was fairly dark when the incident occurred.

ENVIRONMENT: Wooded area, in a community though. There is a shallow river in the backyard where this happened.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Jim Sherman:

I received a text from Australia regarding this report from a cast member from the Animal Planet show Finding Bigfoot so I was immediately intrigued. This report comes from an area, Central Michigan, which has had a substantial history of possible bigfoot activity. In fact, the Finding Bigfoot cast and crew visited this area during the filming of the Michigan episode and I was lucky enough to be involved. I have numerous long-term recording projects ongoing in this area. Nearby there are numerous rivers, swamps and cropland. I have personally witnessed the substantial number of deer in this area. As we were travelling on the roads to a nearby location to scout out areas for filming, we counted over 100 deer standing on the side of the road.

I am fascinated with possible bigfoot recordings so when I spoke with M. I was interested in sharing vocals captured in nearby areas. The following is a reaction by M. after I sent her some of the ones I had collected:

Jim,
Thank you so much for the recordings! I played it for my husband, and the second sound is exactly why we heard a few years ago. I played it for my dad, and the second sound is also what he heard. I have another story for you now as well! I was outside at my dad’s house last night. It was around midnight, and I decided to play the vocals outside. I played them a few times and then heard something big moving around in the woods. I played it again, and got a response! It was three, short kind of whooping sounds! I had that very uneasy feeling, and had to stop. The sound sounded very close! It was so exciting!! My dad is working on setting something up for recording the sounds. Possibly a thermal imager too!

The possibility that one could communicate with woodland creatures is not new. Hunters use deer and duck calls to bring game animals closer. Any animal in the forest would need to communicate so it stands to reason that if you could find something that interests your quarry you might get lucky. Researchers have attempted to make knocking noises on trees and with rocks. They have yelled into the woods. They have even tried to reproduce possible recordings and call blast them into the field, all in the hopes of eliciting a reaction. Please see the link below.

Arrive Knock and Howl

I have been a witness to a reaction to a knock made on a percussion block so it is possible. To have a recording played into the woods behind your house and hear something large walking away would be quite interesting indeed.

I asked M. if she could send along photos of the tree branch found sticking in the ground. Not only did she send the photos, she also carefully documented the height of the branch, more of a tree really, the depth of the branch in the ground with comparisons of known objects. There was even a picture of the entire scene to give a better perspective of the location. Further, even though there are trees nearby the branch in the ground seems very much out of place.





More recently M. sent me this message regarding more recent activity outside of their home:

The activity has died down quite a bit around my dad's house, however my husband and I have heard the same sounds very, very close to our house! We had an incident back in July, where my husband heard the scream again in the middle of the night, he said it sounded like it was right outside our window. Our dogs were going crazy, so my husband went downstairs to check things out. The dogs were barking out the front windows, so my husband went out the front door to see if he could see anything. He couldn't see, but he heard something walking away that sounded to be very large. We have deer in our yard all the time, and they are fairly tame in our area, you have to get pretty close to get them to run away, so my husband knows what they sound like running away. He said it sounded much larger and there was only one. It was rainy that night, we tried to look for tracks the next day but found nothing.

I asked M. to try to record anything she hears in the future. I also asked her if she ever felt threatened. She did not feel that way and was actually rather interested in what was going on. She was pleased to know that other people were experiencing similar situations and so very close by. This area in Michigan may be home to some of our most interesting, vocal and elusive residents.

About BFRO Investigator Jim Sherman:

Jim is a High School History teacher and Track and Cross Country coach. He attended the Michigan Northern Lower Peninsula Expedition in 2011, the Michigan Upper Peninsula Expedition in 2012, co-organized the Michigan UP 2013 Expedition and attended the 2014 Wisconsin Expedition. He assisted in the production of Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot Michigan episodes (Bigfoot and Wolverines and Super Yooper). He participates in Ironman Triathlons and enjoys fishing and camping with his wife and daughter. Jim can be contacted at [email protected] and Twitter @shermanbigfoot and his YouTube account is : Lordcryptid