YEAR: 2024

SEASON: Fall

MONTH: October

DATE: 5

STATE: Illinois

COUNTY: Peoria County

LOCATION DETAILS: [Investigator (Notes): GPS Coordinates for location: 40.550928, -89.810545

This occurred on Highway 24 due south of Glasford.

NEAREST TOWN: In between glasford and canton

NEAREST ROAD: route nine

OBSERVED: I'm a truck driver. I drive route 9 between Glasford and Canton six days a week.

On October 5th at about 6 AM I was heading towards Canton. Walking towards the side of the road as if it was trying to cross the road, a very tall brown creature with a lot of fur. About 8 feet tall with very large yellow glowing eyes.

OTHER WITNESSES: There was just me on the truck but there were also other vehicles on the highway at the time

OTHER STORIES: No

TIME AND CONDITIONS: It was 6 AM, but very dark still. The conditions were clear no rain or anything

ENVIRONMENT: Around the area there's a lot of fields and grass and fishing ponds and lakes. Right near a wildlife park

Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Matthew Moneymaker:

I spoke with witness Gary Rutherford at length. He works as a truck driver and was not shy to let his name be published with his report. He knows what he saw.

He drives this same route four times per day, six days per week. He drives for a private trucking company contracted to the US Postal Service. The trucking company transports loads of mail between postal centers in various nearby towns. He rises at 4am to begin work early.

The exact time of the incident was closer to 5:50AM. On weekdays he says there is a lot more vehicles on this highway compared to Saturday morning at this same time. This incident occurred on a Saturday morning.

He says the bigfoot was very close to the edge of the road on the south side of Hwy 24. The nearby woods borders some protected marshland between the highway and the Illinois River (see maps).

The bigfoot was facing across the highway as if preparing to cross there. The headlights from the truck lit up only the lower half of the figure as he passed by, but he could still see the rest of figure. It had very dark fur.

He says it must have stood roughly 8 feet tall because its head was at the same height as his own head as he sat in the cab of a big truck.

He described what he thought was bright eye reflection -- "yellow-ish orange eyes." When I said other people have described "amber colored eyes," he said that it is exactly what he was trying to describe.

There is an interesting anecdote about dashcams:
The truck has a dashcam system. A camera faces internally to record the driver and one faces forward to record traffic ahead.

Gary thought for sure this camera had recorded the Sasquatch. When he returned to his employer and told them what he saw, there was a sincere desire to get the clip of the Sasquatch on the side of the road. To the dismay of all of them … the forward camera does not record unless there is some event like braking or engine turn signal activation etc.. It won’t keep full recordings of uneventful highway driving.

The funny part is that it DOES keep full recordings of what the driver was doing the entire time. So his boss offered to get him the clip of his own facial reactions … but not what he was reacting to.

Gary asked me if he should try to get that part of the dashcam footage.

I said that would be nice … but it’s not helpful at the moment.

Note to trucking company bosses in the area:

Remind your drivers to tap the brakes slightly if the truck has a company dashcam and they spot a Sasquatch on the side of the road. That should trigger the camera to retain the clip of the braking event and the 10-30 seconds preceding the event.

Gary went to back to the location a few days after the incident to look for footprints and take photos. The whole area was grassy and thus did not hold any clear footprints.

This location is not big surprise to those whole follow sighting reports in Illinois. There are reports along tributaries of the Illinois River for miles in different directions -- tributaries like the Sangamon River. There is no shortage of second had stories about bigfoot sightings among the large marshy areas connected to the lower Illinois River.

Why this area? One commonality with all other sighting areas: Lots of deer around. It is also a very sparsely populated part of Illinois, especially as you move southwest away from Peoria.

Please alert friends and contacts about this sighting who live in the following Illinois counties:

- Peoria
- Fulton
- Tazewell

Tazewell County has eight (8) reports listed on the BFRO site.

Fulton County has twelve (12) reports listed on the BFRO site.

Peoria County has five (5) other reports and/or newspaper articles about bigfoot sightings in the area.

Note: The BFRO's Media Articles section has a glitch that prevents the newspaper articles from showing on the web site, but this web site still shows the citations for those newspaper articles if you want to look them up yourself.

About BFRO Investigator Matthew Moneymaker:

Matthew Moneymaker is originally from the Los Feliz District of Los Angeles, California.

- Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

- Juris Doctorate (Law degree) from University of Akron School of Law

- Founder of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization,1995.

- Writer and co-producer of the Discovery Channel documentary "Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science", 2001.

- Co-producer of the TV Series "Mysterious Encounters" for the Outdoor Life Network (OLN Channel), 2002.

- Producer of the "2003 International Bigfoot Symposium" (Willow Creek Symposium) DVD set, 2004.

- Co-host of "Finding Bigfoot" on Animal Planet Channel, 2010 - 2017.

- Current Director of the BFRO

- Available for private bigfoot expeditions and conferences. To inquire please email [email protected]