Alan Perreault
Massachusetts, 1971
I saw a Bigfoot around 1971 in Spencer Mass, approximately at the corner of Bell and Vernon Streets in July or August about 9 pm, which was completely dark at that time. Maybe I should first mention a different encounter. I’ve had lots of other Cryptic like things going on from then to now. Some stuff is similar to what you hear on Bigfoot channels, some is weirder, but something significant happened prior to my Bigfoot encounter.
When I was around 8 or 9 years old something very weird happened to me. On a Sunday morning I got up at 5:30 to go to church. I went to my lighted closet to get my clothes and when I turned around there was a man standing in my bed room. It was very clear, like he was actually there and dressed like Abe Lincoln like you see in the old photos in the 1860’s to 1880’s. I remember he had big pork chop sideburns. It scared me so bad I leaped out of my room. My parents thought I was dreaming and of course when they checked he was gone.
As time went by me and the neighborhood kids started venturing into this wood lot nearby. It’s across the street from a swamp with a small river running thru it. We all were practicing bush craft, though I never heard that term till recently. We built forts and lean-tos, etc. I had a coon hound and I started walking her down an old railroad spur line. I used to see a group of Native American men sitting around a fire out there frequently.
My uncle gave me an old 10 x10 tent and I set it up in my back yard. A friend and I decided to sleep out so we walked to his house to get pillows and blankets. It was on the way back that we both seen a huge, hairy biped walking thru the neighbor’s yard that I always mowed. It was 6 or 7 feet tall with seriously big shoulders. Its head was way too far out in front of shoulders and it was the darkest black I ever saw! We knew in seconds that thing was not human and we needed to be elsewhere quick, especially since it was only 40 yards from and walking towards my tent in the back yard! I think Bigfoot may have followed me home from that woodlot.
My buddy Ralf, who was overweight, actually out ran me up a hill and at that time I was the fastest kid in school. In High School later on I was a two time track MVP of a team that lost only once in 2 years. I was very fast and a fat kid outran me up a hill! We’re talking about a serious adrenalin rush!
Of course later that night we slept in the tent anyway. If you find that weird you need to consider back then Bigfoot was pretty much unheard of, especially in Massachusetts and afterwards anyone we told just laughed at us; including our parents. I guess I didn’t know exactly what we saw till I started watching YouTube a couple years ago. You can compare it to the typical black profile of Bigfoot walking that you see all over the internet. My kids gave me a set of beer glasses with that image on them and now I look at my beer glass and I realize that the artist rendition is almost exactly what I saw. I tried to look up my old pal, but cancer took him in 2017.
To me it was a lot like the man in my bedroom. I saw it, I know what I saw, but everyone told me I was mistaken so I just stopped talking about it.
Reflecting back, Central Mass was once all dairy farms. Pretty much the whole state was deforested. By the time I was a kid, most of the dairy farms were gone. The town I grew up in had at one time a farm with 2,500 cows. You can tell the whole place was cleared, because when you walk in the woods there are stone walls everywhere. The farmers picked up all these stones (glacial deposits) and built walls and all the critters up and left when the woods were cleared, but with the farms moving on the woods slowly grew back and so have the critters. Since the place was critter free for so long, folks don’t think to look for something like a big hairy man, but I think the truth is they are around here still to this day… maybe closer than we think.
As far as the man encounter in my bedroom, that house was built in 1959, the Lincoln incident was in 1968 or so and my family was the first family to live in the house. I’ve always thought it was a passed relative paying me a visit. Ironically, I now have three children and my middle child has psychic abilities. She sees dead people. Wonder where she gets that from?
Something is still out there. Back in June 2020 it started making noises at night. Sometimes it sounds like an owl, sometimes it sounds like a dog, then it woops. I can’t quite figure it. I know when I go to the window it woops at me!
My current layout has 2.25 acres, a half acre of which is wooded. A large wooded area behind me has a stream running thru it. This summer we had beavers building a pond out back. But when the pond threatened to flood the liquor store parking lot, somebody made short work of the beavers!
My property used to be owned by a guy who had green houses and was a florist as well as a landscaper. I have a lot of mature plants. Until last year I had 2 peach trees, which is very rare in this area. A storm took them out. I would watch the trees every time I mowed. Then I would think to myself that the peaches will be ready next week. Next week I come out and all the peaches are gone. Not some, not most, all are gone. And nothing on the ground, not even a pit. What animal would do that?
Editors Note:
The seeds of stone fruits, including cherries, plums, peaches, nectarines, and mangoes naturally contain cyanide compounds, which are poisonous.