It looked like Andre the Giant, but much bigger.
In May 2021 a freight train heading back from Boston Bar, British Columbia, went into emergency braking a few miles east of Hope, around 2:30 on a clear night. The train hadn't derailed, and the engineer got the air pressure back, but they had lost communication with the monitoring unit at the very back. Someone had to walk back and reset it.
That was the conductor, a coworker of the person who posted this. He took bear spray, a knife, flares and one of the railway's old lanterns, the kind with a small bulb that reaches about a hundred feet on a fresh battery. The train was almost 12,000 feet long, more than two miles, so it was a long walk. At the end he pressed the button, got communications back, checked the pressure, confirmed with the engineer and started back.
Partway back, he saw one of the cars ahead swaying from side to side. His first thought was a rockslide, that rocks were hitting the train and more might be about to come down on him. As he got closer he saw something underneath the car, and he thought it was a bear. He stopped about two car lengths away, roughly a hundred feet, and got the bear spray ready, planning to climb the nearest car if it came at him.
It came out from under the car and stood up.
In the lantern light it stood on two feet, almost as tall as the railcar, and it was black, he thinks. It was definitely not a bear. The comparison he reached for was the wrestler Andre the Giant, only much bigger. Its eyes shone in the lantern beam. They stared at each other for what felt like forever, probably five to seven seconds. Then it turned and walked away up the hillside on two legs.
He was so frightened that he wet himself a little and cried, sure he was about to be killed. He ran most of the way back to the locomotive and felt watched the whole time. He didn't notice any smell or hear any sound from it.
He never told his engineer. When the engineer asked why he was so out of breath, he joked that a big cat must have been chasing him.
He had never believed in any of this. He hadn't even heard of the famous 1967 Patterson-Gimlin film until his coworker showed it to him. After watching it, he said that was what he saw. He no longer takes road trips. He works only in the rail yard now.