Amazing Mysterious Military Encounters with Bigfoot

Throughout the annals of military reports of all kinds, there are some that have managed to slip through the cracks. Here we have amazing stories that show that the enemy is often not the weirdest thing one can come across in the military, and that there are some encounters soldiers were never trained for. 

In one case from the files of Albert S. Rosales, in September of 2002, an unnamed Army tank commander was on a training mission in  Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire, England, and while scanning the landscape through the turret of his tank. he saw quite a bizarre sight. There, standing amidst the chaos and clanking noise of other tanks rolling and rumbling about, was a large, hairy ape-like creature described as looking similar to an orangutan in appearance and color, with a black or darkish face. The tank’s gunner saw it too, and they watched on in awe as the creature ran in quick, long strides across the field into the brush beyond. The tank commander would report the incident to his superior officer only to be ridiculed and laughed out of the room. What did they see out there and why would such a creature be present under these conditions?

In another report from Reddit user “PrecedentialAssassin,” we have a story concerning his brother, who was stationed in Tacoma, Washington back in the 1990s. At the time of the incident, his unit was out in Eastern Washington around Yakima on a training mission where they were dropped off by themselves and they had to navigate their way through the unforgiving rough wilderness to different points. The poster says what happened next:

“As he was working his way through the forest, he got the feeling that something was watching him. He didn't see anything but kept feeling like something was watching him and following him. Then he started hearing something move in the brush. He picked up his pace as he started to get creeped out and as he picked up his pace, whatever was following him picked up its pace.

He had his weapon but no rounds and at this point he said was so freaked out that if he had ammunition, he would've started spraying the woods. He did have a knife but he said he could sense that whatever was watching him was really big and he at this point he's probably convinced himself that bigfoot is real and is looking for dinner. When he retells the story and gets to this point, even to this day, he gets shaky and his hair stands up on end. He can tell that whatever is out there is tracking closer and closer to him and he knows from his map that he's only a couple hundred yards to his next checkpoint. Totally freaked out, he breaks into a sprint. As he does, he hears the creature pick up its pace. He says it was behind him and off to the side a bit. He makes it to the clearing and there's a porta potty and he jumped inside it, locked the door and grabbed his knife. Watching him tell the story, I crack up every time.

The creature stalked around in the clearing and he could hear it grunting. He said it was out there for about 5 minutes and then he heard it walk off. Bear is the obvious culprit, but he insists on whatever was out there was bipedal and huge. He sat inside the crap box for 15-20 minutes and realized he had to open the door at some point. Long story short, he opened the door and it was gone and he didn't encounter it the rest of the hike. Again, he is extremely skeptical even with his experience and he is not one prone to hyperbole. Whatever it was freaked him the fuck out and still does today.”

Moving on we come to a case from the Bigfoot Field Research Organization (BFRO), concerning a witness who claims this happened to him while stationed in the Marine Corps in North Carolina. The witness eerily describes how Bigfoot would often stalk and track them during their training exercise, and he elaborates as follows:

“It didn’t matter how many of us were out there. We were armed with rifles and no ammo and or blanks during field ops. They would pick up whatever trash or snacks we would drop. We sometimes could see their eyes in the treeline and see random glimmers of shadows through our nods. Military nods are pretty crappy. But, you can see outlines and or someones figure. I mean like stuff that was used probably during the early 2000s and they were monocular. We would hear knocks or rustling through out our nights around Verona loop training grounds or on Camp Lejeune. Many of us who spent time in the Infantry spend about 45-60% of the year in the woods. You could hear them at night. One night I was doing patrol ops in the woods/hills and we decided to take a pause. It was around 3am we were taking a nap break. It was during a wargame and I was on watch with one of my buddy’s. 

Holding security we were seeing an outline in the woods and meanwhile we are sleep deprived not thinking we were seeing real things in the tree line till we talked to each other to confirm what we were seeing through our nods. Pebbles were being thrown at us and we were confused. Thinking we were about to be run up on by Opfor (Opposition Force). So we wake up our guys slowly thinking we’re about to be ambushed. Turns out we were being stalked. We decided to get into defensive positions and the rocks kept coming thinking we were being messed with by the Advisors running around overwatching the wargame. We checked on the radio if there were any nearby. None. None at all. So we thought it was Opfor. 

We opened up with blanks. But, as we opened up we saw a massive creature and another one about 25-30 meters away. The creatures knocked over a semi-thin tree and gave a deep growl. Something that would shake guys who were de-sensitized and not really scared by anything. When day light came we circled back to look and we found huge footprints. We were so confused and shaken. After that situation we didn’t know how to explain what we saw or experienced. That night I became an actual believer I was always skeptical about bigfoot or some creature being in the woods. It was about 3 1/2 years ago. Till this day I struggle to go into the woods. Thank you for reading my experience. I also apologize for my poor punctuation.”

There are strangely many supposed encounters with Bigfoot-like beasts reported from the War in Afghanistan, a place not traditionally associated with this sort of giant hairy wild man. In one account from Reddit user “StarChild7000” the witness claims that he had been stationed at a command center and that typical nights would be filled with boredom and being lost in their thoughts. One way they would entertain themselves was by looking at the feeds from the drones that crisscrossed and patrolled the area, and although they did not control the drones and were not allowed to record anything, it was still an interesting diversion in the grinding boredom of their shifts. However, one night things would get a bit more exciting. The witness says:

“One night this drone was watching someone that was hanging out at the base of a mountain, near a village, about 50 meters or so away from the nearest building, most likely a home. We notice that the drone operator keeps cycling through the different camera modes; Infrared, thermal, low light, regular cam, etc. Trying to get the best picture and such. Then this "guy" starts walking around and is moving very weird. At first we think it's a guy with no legs that is walking around on his stumps using his arms to do most of the movements. Not unheard of for someone with such a disability to have to resort to such a thing in that area. Then the drone gets a view from a better angle and we see it from the side. It totally looks like a gorilla that's walking with his arms and just swinging his legs as he walks and isn't really using the legs in a "walking" fashion. We all immediately start doing google searching to find out if gorillas are native to the area and such. They are not. We even took note of the grid coordinates, plotted it on a map, then searched if there were nearby zoos in the area, maybe an animal escaped? Nope, no zoos around. Searched for traveling circuses, again nothing. Really weird. After about 30 minutes of this drone watching this thing, the drone repeatedly toggles on/off his targeting systems. We're like " they're gonna blow this thing up!?!?" And they did. Then after the drone confirmed nothing was still moving, it started to fly back to base. We were confused as all hell. There was 3 of us on shift that night. The highest ranking guy was an officer and during the daily morning commander's brief we showed on a map where the drone blew up bigfoot. And explained the situation to him. His response was simply, "huh, interesting" and that was the end of it.”

There are quite a few outlandish cases outlined in The Havok Journal concerning large hairy bipeds in the wilderness of Afghanistan during wartime. In one anonymous account, a U.S. soldier had been deployed as an infantry team leader with the Army in the Kunar province of Afghanistan from 2008 to 2009. One night they were on an observation patrol to overlook a village that they suspected IEDs (Improvised Explosive Device) were coming out of due to a successful IED recovery a few weeks prior. They were equipped with some fancy new thermal imaging gear called “Recon3,” which they were also supposed to test out and report on. The night would prove to be perhaps a bit stranger than anyone could have imagined. The witness says:

“I started to look across the valley to what I could see and that led me to look along the spur we were set in on and saw a very large heat signature at the top of one of the false peaks. I did everything I could to get as clear of an image as I could, suspecting that it was a group of Taliban huddled together around a light as they tend to do in the mountains. All of the sudden, the heat signature stood up as one being. The trees in that area grew up to about 10 to 12 ft tall, and this thing was at least as tall, if not taller than the trees that surrounded it. It started taking steps parallel to my position and was covering ground quickly with ease. Its stride was slow and relaxed, yet it moved with incredible speed. That led me to believe that this creature was gigantic.

It very quickly traversed the landscape, and I lost sight of it along a neighboring spur. I did not believe what I saw initially, assuming I had imagined it. I never had seen anything like that in my life. I didn’t tell many people about it, while I was in and even when I got out. I kept it to myself, thinking there was no way I saw what I saw. But then in 2010, I listened to a story on Coast to Coast… specifically the story about the Giant of Kandahar. That made all the memories of my time in service come flooding back and made me consider other things I saw during that deployment.

For instance, the creature was described as having fire-orange hair and it reminded me of a tradition the locals in the area of my sighting would do. They would dye their hair a bright orange color and even would dye their goats the same color. They never gave any explanation why. It seemed like it was every once in a while they would do this, and then all of a sudden those orange-dyed goats would be gone, and the local’s hair would also no longer be dyed orange. I assumed maybe it was a cultural thing I didn’t understand, but now it makes me wonder if that was some kind of gesture to the creature/Nephilim or if the goats were sacrificed to it. I am a Christian, and the bible briefly discussed the “Men of Renown,” aka the Nephilim. I think that’s what I saw, a member of an ancient race of giants that descended from fallen angels. Or it could be something like Sasquatch. I’m not sure.”

What was this thing? Another case is from an anonymous Air Force Reaper Operator working in the northern parts of the country. The witness explains what happened as follows:

“There are small villages up high in the central mountains that I’ve scanned probably a dozen times. Found a super small mud hut, which is where I saw the giants. They were 3ish maybe even 4 meters tall. There’s a ruler tool that tells you how wide your crosshair is, and the people were as tall as the crosshair was wide. The few mud huts were extremely rudimentary, like just a mound with some holes for a door and windows. They didn’t do anything crazy, just normal people things, tending fires and other chores. I wish I could say they did something exciting, but really just mobbed around their small clearing. There were a few goats tied up, and a fire that one person was tending.

Hard to tell details, but they seemed to wear rugged clothing. I would guess similar to Afghan traditional from how they moved but they seemed heavily cloaked. The only interesting thing was the size. The goats looked like cats next to them. This was all in mid-wave IR at night, so they showed up as black humanoid heat signatures. I wish I could have used our daytime camera. I always wonder if they had red hair lol. I only monitored them for like 10 mins before we were too far away to see.”

In yet another report from Afghanistan, a former member of the Australian Army at the time and deployed to Uruzgan province as a lieutenant. Early in the dark hours of one morning, he was working as a sentry, scanning the landscape with thermal imaging equipment when he saw something quite out of the ordinary. He explains:

“I was on picquet (what you Yanks would call security or sentry) in my LAV in the early hours one morning and was scanning across the valley with the Thermal Imager looking for threats and saw a large human-like figure that looked different from normal because it didn’t have the usual clothes the Afghans would wear.

It looked like a person, but lankier. Not much detail through the TI and due to distance. It walked behind a few compounds and I could see it from the chest/armpits up. I lased the compound walls to confirm distance a few times because I knew I would get a good return off the walls. I thought it was around 500-600m away but when I did a more detailed scan (it was also unusual to see individual people out at that time of night) I realized it was further away, so I used the LRF to get the range and was shocked to see it was 1800m away.

It wasn’t in any hurry and I followed it for about 5min before it went out of my FOV. Just looked like it was walking. Wasn’t in a hurry at all but was aware of what was happening around it. Kept looking around, especially near the compounds. No idea what it was but it would have been at least twelve feet tall. I don’t know of anyone else who saw anything like it. Never told anyone about it before but it has stayed with me over all these years.”

What in the world? Another type of location that seems to have attracted a large amount of Bigfoot and “hairy giant” activity is military bases. Several encounters with large hairy hominids roaming about military installations come to us from the 1970s, with one notable and very dramatic one occurring at the Fort Lewis U.S. Army Military Installation in the state of Washington, which lies sprawled outright against a rather untamed wilderness area. In 1978 a very strange sighting was made on the base grounds by a soldier named Edwin Godoy, who at the time was on his way back from training exercises one evening along with some platoon mates. The truck allegedly suddenly and without warning sputtered to a halt at around 8 PM and could not be restarted, prompting the others to venture back to base on foot. Since Godoy had been the one to sign out the truck that day he stayed behind alone to keep an eye on the vehicle until it could be towed away in the morning.

As he sat there by himself in the dark surrounded by the spooky sounds of the nighttime forest, a little after midnight Godoy’s attention was allegedly drawn to a massive figure skulking about and looming near a stand of trees around 300 meters away. As he stared he could make out that whatever it was was very tall and broad, and covered with what looked like hair all over its body, and rather eerily possessing eyes that seemed to glint or glow. The figure was described as “swinging his body sideways” and staring directly at the lone, frightened witness. Things got rather harrowing when this hulking brute purportedly began to break out into a run directly towards Godoy, who would describe the following dramatic events thus:

“That thing started running towards me, so I shouted a halt three times, asking that thing to stop and identify itself. As it wouldn’t reply I made a first shot to the air and then I shot at him or ‘it’, I don’t know how to call it. The hairy thing grabbed its chest and emitted a loud moan, stopped and then ran to his right, disappearing into the forest.”

Godoy was left there shaking and terrified, yet out there alone in the night surrounded by darkened trees and with no way out of there except on foot. He decided to lock himself in his truck, although he was also well aware that this would be little protection from the enormous hairy beast, which was probably none too happy about having been shot. There would be no sleep for him that night, and when the tow truck arrived at 6 AM he was still there wide-eyed and clutching his weapon close.

When Godoy told the tow truck mechanics what had transpired the previous evening, they skeptically went out to where the thing had been standing and much to their surprise found very large footprints pressed into the ground by something massive and heavy. Even more surprising was blood found on the ground, which was assumed to have been that of the wounded monster. This is where the whole story gets even more bizarre.

According to Godoy, the mechanics made a secretive radio call, and not long after a group of men in what appeared to be lab coats and thick rubber gloves descended upon the area taking samples of the blood and making casts of the footprints. The whole time Godoy claims that he was not allowed to speak to anyone at all and that he was kept to the side away from what was going on. The perplexed Godoy was then whisked away to the base hospital, but rather than be looked at by the usual medical staff he was examined by a doctor who was from the Air Force, which was odd considering it was an Army installation.

This doctor was apparently ranked as a full Colonel, and rather than disbelieving Godoy seemed very interested in every last detail of the encounter. This mysterious doctor was particularly concerned with any anomalous physical symptoms that Godoy may have been experiencing, such as headaches, dizziness, or a tingling sensation, of which the witness had none. Godoy was then thoroughly examined and had blood, skin, and urine samples carefully collected, after which he was told to return to his barracks and told in no uncertain terms to never mention a word of what had happened to him. This all gets even more far-out still when Godoy was later approached by a hospital worker by the name of L. Robles, who seemed to come to him secretly and allegedly said:

“I, together with two other guys, had to analyze the blood samples taken from the ground, and we now you are the soldier involved because it was stated as such in the report…” And you know? It’s crazy, but… what the hell was it you shot out there? When we examined the blood samples we found out three weird things in it… That blood contained human blood cells, animal blood cells…and chlorophyll. Man, that’s incredible! What the hell was it?”

Godoy stayed true to his orders not to tell anyone and declined to explain anything to Robles. The whole thing would have likely been forgotten and swept under the carpet forever if it were not for a chance meeting with Godoy made by a paranormal researcher from Puerto Rico named Jorge Martín many years later, as the witness was vacationing in Cabo Rojo with his wife. It was here that Godoy would relate the whole outlandish tale to Martín and the story would finally come out.

Also in the 1970s, there was a strange account related by Bigfoot researcher Doug Trapp at the Sasquatch Chronicles blog. Through interviews with various military personnel at California’s Edward’s Air Force Base, who spoke under condition of anonymity, Trapp has been able to piece together a very bizarre story of desert Bigfoot haunting the locale for years. One of the men interviewed was a Lieutenant in charge of security in the sector of Edward’s AFB near Rogers Dry Lake, who was at the base from 1972 to 1975.

This unnamed Lieutenant informed Trapp that the base’s security force spent a lot of time using armed sentries, motion sensing equipment, and starlight scopes on the lookout for trespassers wandering into the area, especially curiosity seekers who were interested in all of the UFO conspiracies that have orbited Edwards Air Force Base for years. One evening the witness claimed that there was a perimeter breach, and the guard who had detected it cryptically described the intruder as being “a very tall man, but not really a man.” When the Lieutenant went out to talk to the guard he too saw the thing, whatever it was. Trapp would write of the scene unfolding:

“Through the starlight scope he could clearly see that this was not a man. It was a very tall, hair-covered, ape-like man walking through the desert. He said the animal appeared to be looking at the desert floor in search of something. The animal was about 500 yards distant, but the scope was very powerful and tripod mounted so it could be observed clearly. Both men continued to observe the animal as it wandered around almost aimlessly. He then reported to his superiors of the activity and was told to keep the animal in sight. This was no problem as the animal remained in the area. About five minutes later a helicopter was heard approaching the area, then it was seen coming in fast from the east. They continued to observe the animal which continued its activity. The helicopter came in over a rock-pile, then the animal "spooked." It looked at the helicopter, turned, and ran "like a deer" around a rock-pile and out of sight.”

A full search of the area offered up not a trace of where the strange trespasser had gone, and the whole thing was reported to superiors the following day. It was then that the Lieutenant was apparently told that these creatures were sporadically spotted around the base, and he was told to continue to keep an eye on the situation. Over the next few years, he would reportedly spot these creatures several more times, and he even claimed that they had been captured on surveillance video footage, although this evidence was unfortunately, or perhaps conveniently, classified. Then he was moved away from the base and that was that. It is very intriguing, but then again this witness also claimed that there were alien spaceships kept on the base and that the Sasquatch might have been connected, so make of that what you will. If real, it all is a very intriguing look at Sasquatch in the desert.

A second officer interviewed by Trapp was a Major serving at the base from 1970 to 1978, and he too had his own odd stories to tell. This witness not only confirmed the previous reports but also claimed that the things were known to prowl about in the various subterranean tunnels said to fan out in the depths under the base. This witness also confirmed that the Sasquatch had been filmed on surveillance cameras numerous times, but that these were also top secret. A third soldier interviewed was described as a “security grunt,” who claimed to have witnessed these Bigfoot several times through night-vision starlight scopes. Trapp would say of this man’s testimony:

“He told me that he had seen a couple of Sasquatches that stood over ten feet high, had seen "obvious" females (one with a young one walking with her), and once saw a group of five Sasquatches walking together, all over six feet tall with the tallest about eight feet tall. They were fully hair-covered except the palms of their hands, the base of their feet, and their face. He said their face resembled an ape with very small eyes, a flat nose, and ape-like lips. The arms were long and slung down to the knees. He said their feet were like ours, without an arch, as they had tracked them through the desert several times. When I asked him about the surveillance videos, he told me that he knew of them but was not involved in them. He said only officers were allowed to videotape the creatures or UFOs."

Interestingly, all of the base personnel had been given strict orders not to harm the creatures in any way, and this third witness said that he believed this was one reason why they gravitated to the area because they “knew” they were safe there. Again, it is hard to know whether any of this is real in any sense or not, but desert Sasquatch are not unheard of and two of these witnesses were high-ranking, so one is left to wonder just what is really going on here.

In the winter of 1979, there was an intriguing report published on the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) website from the US Army Signal School-Fort Gordon-Small Arms Impact Area in Richmond County, Georgia. The witness, known only as J.R.H., claimed that he had been near a ravine at South Prong Creek at around 2 PM when he was allegedly approached through the brush by a broad and muscular “large man/ape creature,10' to 10'6" tall.” The face was described as being:

“Rather like a Gorilla. Dark skin and Dark deep set eyes, the head sloped back and was Neanderthal shaped, had no eyebrows, prominent lips but not protruding, jutting square chin, no ears or teeth were seen, prominent nostrils slight nose (not flat like a gorilla) and an aged look to the face.”

Contrary to many Bigfoot reports of an obnoxious stench, this particular individual was reported as having no discernible odor. The witness reportedly backed slowly away back to his truck and got out of there. A later examination of the area would turn up footprints measuring a whopping 22 inches in length, as well as 20 to 30 rock piles and what appeared to be vomit containing deer skin with hair attached and egg corns not well chewed, as well as droppings laced with deerskin, egg corns, and tree bark. Other assorted sightings during the 1960s and 70s occurred around the ammo storage area of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which happens to be the largest military base in the world. Over the decades there were supposedly numerous sightings of hairy giants measuring 8 to 9 feet tall lurking about the site, which sits up against secluded wilderness and swampland. There were so many sightings that the creature even earned the nickname “The Manchester Monster.”

Moving into the 1980s, we come to an account from the spring of that year, which supposedly occurred at Fort Leonard Wood Army Base, in the state of Missouri, in the spring of 1982. At the time the soldiers on the base were engaged in an intensive 8-week training exercise, and for one Erik Youngdahl, it would all be particularly memorable. During the Internet Virtual Bigfoot Conference in 1996, Youngdahl would tell Bigfoot researcher Cristopher Murphy that the soldiers had been driving along in the back of a military truck towards an engineer bridge crossing training site deep in the woods when he observed a giant 7-foot-tall hairy creature from the back of the vehicle. He would explain knew right away what he was seeing, and would say:

“It is funny how this realization dawned on me because the immediate moment that I viewed him, there was not a doubt in my mind that the creature I observed was Bigfoot. I wasn’t looking for it, nor did I think that there have ever been sightings in that region of the country. It was automatic, boom, no doubt. What really surprised me was its coloration, which was a light brown color, almost like the color of cork on a bulletin board. That definitely is not a person, someone in a suit? No way. It did occur to me to alert the other trainees in the truck, but I immediately thought that by the time I did, they would awaken, crane their necks to look out the back, and by that time, not see anything. This all occurred to me in milliseconds."

Also in May of 1982, there was a late-night encounter at the Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton, California, in San Diego County, which was reported by the BFRO. The unidentified witness was involved at the time with a youth program consisting of a rigorous series of two-week-long mini-boot camps for teenage boys overseen by the Marines. On one calm evening, the witness and around 300 boys on the camp settled down for the night, and the Marine ended up being one of the last awake on watch duty. As he patrolled the camp he said something very weird happened, which he would explain:

“As I turned facing west and looked towards the closest edge of the perimeter I noticed a tall, dark, bulky figure standing about 15 meters beyond the last tent or 20 meters from where I stood. We seemed to be staring at each other, but it’s hard to say because I could not make out any of its facial definition, but I had a strong gut feeling that it was checking me out real good since I was the only thing moving around. I could feel my heart begin to pound and my entire body felt like it wanted to anchor to the ground. There was no doubt someone or something very odd and dangerous was standing there looking at me. I mean this thing was TALL and wide at the shoulders.

I used my peripheral vision to make sure I wasn't seeing things, but it only confirmed what I already knew. It gently and slightly moved its upper body left and right ever so slowly as though looking around to its front, surveying the area. It was an easy 8 feet tall. Like I mentioned previously, all I could make out was its massive silhouette and no real detail features. It had very broad shoulders, little or no neck, dark, and looked very powerful.”

The witness then allegedly grabbed a flashlight and went to investigate, but he would lose sight of whatever the creature was. It was all very disconcerting because he was in charge of several hundred untrained civilian teenagers and was unsure of just what he was dealing with. Luckily, nothing strange happened for the rest of the evening, but when the area was investigated in the morning there was found to be no sign of what it could have been, and it remains a mystery.

In another report, a man named Robert, a former US Army specialist, recounts his terrifying experience during his service at Fort Campbell, a military base spanning the Kentucky-Tennessee border. The report was covered on the YouTube channel “Curious Conundrums Mysteries Unveiled,” and is quite outlandish, to say the least. The base is surrounded by a vast stretch on empty land, and it was on this moonscape that Robert and his partner found themselves on patrol one evening. As Robert and his partner patrolled a large darkened fenced lot filled with old decrepit rusted cars and equipment, they noticed a figure moving swiftly among the husks of equipment and vehicles. Immediately after this, the night was pierced by loud, blood-curdling screams that echoed through the area, and the two knew that this was not just any normal trespasser. They then saw the hulking figure stand near a car and realized that it stood at least 8 feet high and seemed to be covered with hair, with eyes that seemed to glint with the light of their flashlights. The creature apparently turned a baleful gaze upon them before loping off into the night. 

These are certainly strange cases, and it makes one wonder just what might draw these mysterious beasts to these particular people and places. If Bigfoot are indeed real then why should they want to gravitate towards these places of soldiers, weaponry, and machines of war? Are they curious as to what we are up to? Or is it the relative safety and isolation these places might provide? After all, these are secure bases well-protected from outsiders and acting as refuges in a sense, so maybe these beasts sense that they in a way have some sort of sanctuary here. There is no way to know, and reports such as these just add further layers to the weird world of the Bigfoot phenomenon.