YEAR: 2005

SEASON: Spring

MONTH: June

DATE: 10

STATE: Illinois

COUNTY: Grundy County

LOCATION DETAILS: This is on private land.

NEAREST TOWN: Seneca

NEAREST ROAD: IL Route 6

OBSERVED: The following phone interview was conducted by Stan Courtney. Because the witnesses do not have Internet access, the information was entered with their permission. The first names of the witnesses have been changed.

Tom: I told John about my sighting of the 2nd of June 2005 and he and his son went with me to the location. This was about a week after my first sighting.

Right about 30 feet before the bend in the road I parked my car there and I was showing John where I saw the animal the first time. And we heard some commotion over in the woods and we were looking down into the trees. John was the first one to spot the silhouette and he asked me to come over, I guess my eyesight is a little better, and he said "Hey, what does that look like to you?"

And then that was the time when we both saw its arm move and so I get on the hood of the car and I tried to get a better look 'cause I was going to see if it was either a shadow or three dimensional. I was trying to get looks of it from all angles without losing sight of the thing. It was standing motionless on the back side of a tree and you could see the majority of the body, he wasn't hiding behind a tree he was more leaning against it.

That is when after we noticed the arm movement I'm on top of the hood of the car. Something caught my notice out of the corner of my eye to the right of the silhouette. Out in plain sight, plain as day there was an actual fur bodied, walking, probably 10 to 20 feet away from the silhouette I saw a smaller one and this one was starting to walk where the trees thin out it started to make its way to where the trees get thicker, and just walking.

So at this time, I tell John, "There's another one." And he says, "Where, where?" And I point in the general direction, I jump down off the car and run into the woods after it. It didn't run until I got about 20 feet in, that's when its pace picked up. It brought its elbows real high as it was running. And then I lost sight of it, because I didn't know that the ground actually sloped down. By time I got back to the hill I couldn't see it.

Stan Courtney: Okay, when you started chasing the smaller one what had happened to the bigger one?

Tom: I really couldn't tell you. I made a beeline straight for the one in front of me. John and his son were watching the big one.

Stan: When you first saw the big one and you just saw a silhouette why did you think it was a bigfoot?

Tom: At first I didn't know what to think. If anything it could be a man in a suit. When I saw the second one in the clearing as plain as day, I guess I don't know how to explain it but I just knew it wasn't a man at that time.

Stan: What about the first animal? What did you see?

John: When a truck came down the hill and around the bend the animal turned its head very slowly and smoothly and watched it pass by. Then it slowly turned its head back.

Tom: I didn't see the head turn.

Stan: What about the hand movement?

Tom: Actually we saw the silhouette of the body, and as we were watching this thing the arm comes up as if to touch its face. And then we see the hand go back down. And I mean this was slow motion, it moved up as slow as it went down slow.

Stan: How long did you watch it?

Tom: From the time we saw the silhouette of the big one in the trees till the time I saw the little one was probably five minutes. I remember telling John "We could stand here all day and this thing is going to wait longer than us."

John: I kept looking at the first, larger animal. I concentrated on watching it. When Tom got half-way into the woods I glanced over to see where he and the smaller animal were. When I looked back towards the larger animal it was gone.

ALSO NOTICED: Nothing unusual.

OTHER WITNESSES: Yes, three all together.

OTHER STORIES: No.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: 6:30 p.m. Clear and just beginning to cool down from the heat of the day.

ENVIRONMENT: Marsh and woodland.

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Stan Courtney:

I have visited the site three times with the witnesses and three times later by myself. On my first visit to the site, Tom and I both believed that we were being followed through the woods by a large animal. I visited the site again the next week. John brought along his daughter and all three of us did hear very plainly two vocalizations that sounded like the Ohio howl.

The following descriptions of the animals can be added to the report:

The first animal:
• Was about 8 or 9 feet tall and weighed about 600 pounds.
• Had a stocky build.
• Was dark brown in color, mottled darker than tree bark.
• Had no defined neck.

The second animal:
• Was about 6 feet tall and weighed about 400 pounds.
• Was thinner than the first animal.
• Was darkish red in color.
• Appeared to be pointy headed.
• Had longer arms than a human.
• Appeared to have real powerful forearms.
• Had a pungent smell.
• The witnesses were unable to see any facial features other than a jaw line.

The witness John provided the following drawing:


I took the following photo to show where the larger animal had been standing:


This sighting is across the road from Tom's sighting of June 2, 2005: BFRO Report # 11831.

About BFRO Investigator Stan Courtney:

Stan Courtney has a special interest in wildlife audio recording. He has attended numerous BFRO Expeditions. See Stan's blog StanCourtney.com for recordings he has collected over the years.

Stan Courtney can be reached at [email protected]

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