I just saw a bigfoot.
The teller lives in Bangladesh and works for an organization based in Arkansas. On a two-month work trip to the United States one November, a few outdoorsy colleagues took him on a five-day trek in the Ouachita Mountains. One of them was a regular there and a volunteer trail steward who knew the backcountry well. The teller had never been to the Ouachitas.
On the second day they dropped down steep slopes toward a river, passing six or seven uprooted trees stacked into identical triangular structures, propped on thick stumps. The steward put it down to landslides, storms or lightning, and nobody argued. They camped in a remote, rocky clearing by a stream, with the slope they'd come down behind them and a rocky cliff directly across the water. They hadn't seen another person all day.
Around nine, as they cooked under a clear, moonless sky, a loud wooden knock came from the slope behind them. Twenty seconds later another answered from the cliff opposite, then another from behind. The back and forth went on for about a minute. Then the woods went dead silent for perhaps ten minutes before the insects started up again. They laughed it off and traded Sasquatch stories until about half past eleven.
Then the steward held up his hand for silence. The forest had gone quiet again. All four heard slow, careful footsteps on the dry leaves of the slope behind them, a pause, and then something bolting off to their left, where the river widened. Ten seconds later came three heavy splashes, as if something had crossed twenty-five to forty feet of knee-deep water in three strides. Flashlights on the far bank showed nothing. The steward said he had heard a faint whoop just before the footsteps.
Telling themselves it was a black bear, they buried their food under rocks a couple of hundred feet from the tents and sat in the dark. A clear "whoo-OOP" came from the top of the cliff. The forest died again. Another knock, another long whoop, and then stones the size of a fist began raining down from the cliff in fours and fives, most landing in the stream in front of them. The steward drew his sidearm and wanted to climb the cliff in the dark to find out what was up there. The others refused. Distant knocks went on until they finally slept, around one or two.
In the morning the teller was washing clothes in the stream when he heard rustling on the cliff. A black shape was looking over the rocks directly down at him. He froze, thinking bear, and stood up. It stood up too, on two legs, mirroring him. Against the bright overcast sky he couldn't see a face, only a massive human-shaped body covered in dark, dirty, matted hair, like a ghillie suit, far bigger than any person. They stared at each other for he doesn't know how long. Then it turned and calmly walked away on two legs, almost silently.
Back at the tents he told his colleague, word for word, "I just saw a bigfoot." To his surprise, nobody laughed. They crossed the river and climbed to the spot. It reeked of rotting flesh and iron. The steward, who stands about six foot three, barely came halfway up the rock face that the figure had seemed to fill. The teller felt an overwhelming dread about going back down to camp, a feeling he says he'd had only once before, moments before a huge crocodile surfaced beside him in the Sundarbans.
When they went back for the buried food, the rocks and the food were gone without a trace. They cut the trip short. Only later, back in Arkansas, did he learn that all three of his colleagues had had experiences of their own before. That, he thinks, is why they never panicked.