Craig Corbell
Seven Springs, Arizona
September 2017
Basically, I went fishing down a road that’s not fit for a three quarter ton truck with a cab over camper on it! It was a long slow, haul and it got dark before I got to my spot. Didn’t see any one for hours, but when I came to the top of a ridge I seen a big white thing to my left 20 feet off the road. Thinking I must be fatigued, I stopped and rubbed my eyes and it was still there. It was a full moon and I could tell it was squatting down. I didn’t really know what I was looking at and thought if it moved I’d get a better look, so I yelled at it. It turned and looked at me with big, solid black eyes. When it started to stand up I boogied out of there as fast as I could.
Maybe I should preface that part. There was no cell service and hardly no signs back there. I had never taken that road that far before and didn’t know how bad it was. Trust me if I knew where I was, I would have kept going. The only signs that I saw for hours were the ones that said “Low riding and overweight vehicles not advised “. So when I say “I boogied out of there” keep in mind I was driving a three quarter ton pickup and with a camper that weighed 2,506 pounds empty. Now consider I filled the water tank before I left. Going in I couldn’t go faster than 15 mph and most of the time I was doing 5 mph. That is until I stop and yelled at that thing and it looked at me!
Going back I was flying fast enough that my transmission cable popped off, luckily it was in drive and kept going. I actually didn’t notice it had come off until I was pulling off the road to see what was wrong with my lights. That was after about seven or eight miles of hard driving. That’s how far I went before it was safe to get out and fix my truck! I got the cable back on, but couldn’t figure out the light problem.
Exhausted I climbed up into my camper and fell asleep… for a while at least until something started kicking or stepping on my lift gate. Then it tried to open the camper door! Luckily I had recently put a new deadbolt on it. Then it slapped the back of the camper and dragged its hand down the side of it. So much for being safe! I laid there motionless and mostly holding my breath until out of exhaustion I finally fell asleep again. A while later it woke me up again rocking my truck side to side. The shocks and springs kept getting louder. I was petrified to the point that I was wishing I had a hole in the bottom of my camper so I could crawl out and bury myself to get away from it. It was insanely scary.
Have you ever been so scared that you get mad?? This was that time. So I pounded on the inside wall of my camper and yelled “I’M NOT COMING OUT, GO AWAY!” It stopped and I chose then to call on Jesus to surround me with his angels. There was no going back to sleep now and I never was so happy to see the sun rise… ever! I had my phone and a Handycam in my truck and never thought once about getting them. Trust me, taking a picture does not go through your mind when you are that close to a monster!
It was clearly white and looked a lot like a Bigfoot, but it didn’t have a dome type head and I didn’t see hair or fur. The eyes were very big and solid shiny, almond shaped and I didn’t see any whites. I’d compare the size of the eyes to that of a horse. It had to be at least 500 pounds. I couldn’t really tell how tall it was cause it was squatting down and I didn’t wait for it to stand up. It ran after me for a while, but with the road being so bumpy and having stock side mirrors it was hard to gage how long.
That morning I did look for tracks and hand prints, but only found two since it hadn’t rained for months. They were about 8 feet apart. I took a picture of one. You can take a virtual trip down on Google for most of that road I was on. You might even see the signs that say “Overweight and low riding vehicles not advised”. It is very desolate back there. Seven Springs Creek is fed by seven natural springs and has many canyons with caves. Parts of it looks like a small Monument Valley.
I told my girlfriend Gail’s son about what happed and he and his girlfriend took a trip out there to stay the weekend. They took their ARs with lots of 30 round clips. From the pictures they showed me, the spot they decided to camp at wasn’t far from where I first saw that thing. The sun went down and the screaming started. They lit up that canyon and the screaming got closer and closer to them. When they ran out of bullets they packed up and high-tailed it to me and at 3:00 am and I open the door to a couple of wild eyed 30 year olds!
The next year he and I went out there. He was already there when I showed up and he told me something was throwing stuff at his truck the night before. The night I stayed, I was asleep in my truck and he was asleep in his, but for some reason we both woke up at the same time. As we were throwing more wood on the fire, we heard this scream. Sounded kind of like a big hyena. Immediately after that a pack of coyotes started yipping. That stopped and an owl hooted, except it sounded like a huge owl.
Nothing happened for a little while, but then we heard some vehicles driving down the dirt road we camped not far from. So we decided to find out who was cruising around at 3:00 am. We took a short cut and ended up in front of them. We pulled twenty or so yards off the road and turned the lights off. Three identical SUVs passed in front of us! We couldn’t see the plates, but judging by the pattern of the tail lights all three were the same make and model. Make of that what you will.
That’s about the whole story other than once it got light out and was safe to go outside, when I was walking around my truck looking for hand prints and tracks and an older guy in an ATV rode up. He worked for some agency… didn’t ask him which, but we started talking. He was very surprised when I told him I came from Phoenix through Cave Creek because of the size of my camper. I asked him why there were so few signs down that dirt road. He told me that they stopped putting them up because people kept stealing them to sell for scrap metal. Being suspicious, it didn’t make much sense to me.
Then I asked him if he knew of any big critters out there. He started stuttering and finally said “Uh Uh Uh… We got bear.” I didn’t tell him much about my horrifying night other than that something was messing with me. I had the distinct idea that he knew more than he wanted to let out.
So anyway I couldn’t find any hand prints, only the 2 big foot prints. I had a picture with my size twelve shoe next to one. It was almost double the length and width of my foot, somehow it’s not on my phone anymore. No clue why.