Tom Troxel
North Carolina, 1973
I was a member of the California National Guard and March 1973 we went down to North Carolina for war games. We were camping between Maysville and Belgrade on Hwy 17, on the east side of the road. Back then there wasn’t a camp ground there; it was a clearing with 3 homes. The one we were connected with was owned by a retired Marine. He had a small pig farm and I think he owned the parcel of woods that our main camp was located.
The first night it got down to freezing and in the middle of the night, something screamed in my ear, was very shrill sounding. When I say it screamed “in my ear”, I do mean it sounded as if it was just outside my tent and in close proximity and I never heard it coming or going. After that I was up for the rest of the night!
A few days later we moved deeper in to the woods where it was very swampy. I was on the midnight to 3:00 am guard duty. The crickets and frogs were very loud and suddenly it went dead silent. I thought “Uh oh; I’ve seen this movie before!” and then I heard a sound. I was listening intently and I realized it was footsteps walking on leaves. It stopped on the edge of the tree line, but it was pitch black so I could only imagine that something was standing there with no clue of who or what it was.
After the first incident and being deeper in the woods it seemed like my senses were really kicked in. Still I wasn’t sure if my imagination was playing tricks on me, but felt like something was staring at me. I had my M16 rifle, but it was loaded with blanks so not much help. I didn’t really feel threatened anyway. All of a sudden, as quickly as they stopped the night sounds started back up. I didn’t hear it leaving. Back then didn’t know much about Bigfoot, so didn’t think to check for tracks.
Half a week later, back at first camp I was once again on late night guard duty (mainly because no one else would do it). I was with another guardsman and we kept hearing tree branches breaking. I thought it because it was so cold. The next morning I saw some trees with branches broke off about 10 feet above the ground, but at that time still thought it was the cold. It wasn’t until sometime later did I think it could have been something else! Since then I’ve noticed there have been a lot of Bigfoot sightings in North Carolina.
Wish I was younger and healthier, would love to be out there looking for myself, but I want to say I really admire and am very thankful for all of you folks who are out there looking for the truth. It needs to be told.