Ramona Bell
Missouri, 1996
The Richwood area in Missouri is made up of tiff cuts, creeks & rivers and deep, amazingly thick woods and as an outdoors woman…I’ve seen and heard and awful lot there. I moved there at age 16 in 1986 and lived there until 2002 and one of the most insane sightings I ever saw (besides 2 separate cougar/panther sightings) was near our home off of highway A. These woods are some of the thickest and most remote, with more caves and hiding places than other remote areas across the south and mid-west. I guess hence the name RICH…WOODS.
The oldest two of my young children witnessed this encounter first hand as well. It was in the days following while doing my own short interviews with the elders in the area…when I discovered the reason so many old timers and young folks alike talked about a monster called the “Pig Man”. Pig Man was tormenting this and surrounding areas for many years. I had pretty much blown those reports off as mis-identifications and paid little attention to most of the stories before my encounter, because I thought they meant it looked like a MAN with a PIG head.
However, it wasn’t until after our encounter of this FLAT OUT BIGFOOT SIGHTING that I began to ask deeper questions about why the locals had always called it “PIG MAN”. Then one after the other folks began to explain that this tall hairy “monster” first got its name not long after the Depression Era. Apparently the creature(s) was caught by many folks stealing their pigs from their pins and carrying the pigs away as they squealed. A few told me that they seen Bigfoot like creatures carry a pig under each arm as it ran into the woods with the farmers shooting at the “monsters”. Some folks believed this was the work of only a few tall and hairy creatures while others believed the area had a large population. This was based on the many howls and various descriptions of height, estimated weight and even color of these animals.
In my personal account on that Summer day in 1996, my youngest was inside sleeping while my two older kids were playing outside. It was at dusk that evening when I went out on the deck to call them inside for their baths and that’s when we saw it! I can attest the Sasquatch we saw was at least 8 to 9 feet tall and walked right over a 6 rail fence with ease as my children and I began to scream and yell at the thing. The kids had been playing tag and catching lightning bugs that evening under our outside electric pole light and it had been watching them as it stayed crept down under an abandoned structure on our old property.
I NEVER LET THEM EVER DO THAT AGAIN…ONLY WITH ME RIGHT THERE NEAR THEM AND RIGHT IN OUR FRONT YARD. Thank God me and my huge dogs were all outside with them at the time. I shudder to think of what would have happened otherwise. I truly do.
FYI… I have to tell you, it still seems like yesterday for me and my two oldest kids and for us the effect this sighting had will last a lifetime.