Justin Finley (7:15)
And it's a beautiful thousands of acres. A lot of camping, fishing, swimming, hiking. Around that time, I was doing homeschooling. So I had a lot of time on my hands because it was like, okay, I got my homework done, and, well, what do you do in a small town? But you go ride your mountain bike. And that's what I did a lot of the times was I rode up and down all the trails. I mean, I knew that part like the back of my hand. So one day I decided to take a little bit longer trip, and so I took off to a place called Bison Springs. It's a natural spring where they have bison that come out and they graze and they water out there, and it's. That's real nice. And I guess I kind of stayed out there a little too long. As I came back, it got a little darker than I was used to. As I was riding my bike down the trail, I. You know, I wasn't looking up in the hills or anything. I was just looking ahead because I'm trying to not crash, trying to stay focused on what was ahead of me. And all of a sudden, a sharp pain hit me on my left leg. It caused me a lot of pain, and I started groaning. I'm looking around, trying to find what hit me or what I had hit. I had no idea what was going on. A few seconds later, something else came flying out of the woods and smashed into the front part of my bike and dented some of the spokes, nearly knocking me over. Didn't, like, knock me off the bike, but it definitely made me stop. And I looked up into the hills. I said, hey, you hit me. And I could hear rustling. I could hear leaves crunching. I could hear sticks breaking. Then at that point, I got scared. I started getting nervous because I knew something. Something was definitely nearby. Something was obviously trying to harm me. That just intensified my fear, knowing that there was something up there wanting to hurt me. I didn't have a gun. I didn't have a knife. I didn't have any way of defending myself. I didn't even have a cell phone. But figuring maybe I could play the head game of scaring somebody up there in the hill, Saying that I had a phone, I thought maybe that'll scare them to walk off or leave me alone. It was a full moon, so I could see to a certain degree. And when I yelled out that I had a phone, that I was going to call the cops, All I see is this dark figure stand up. I could hear it running down that hill in my direction and screaming. And all I seen was hair and a lot of it. I just. I froze. I just kind of stood there, absolutely petrified. I finally snapped out of whatever trance I was in, as it were. I said, nope, nope. I'm taking off. So I got on my bike and I took off as fast as my legs could carry me, Nearly coming off of the low water bridge to cross over the creek. Golly knows what would have happened if I would have lost control and fell into the creek, Knowing that this thing was right behind me. Once I passed the creek, I was still shaking so hard from fear. Every couple of minutes I was behind me. I was going behind buildings. Once I got to a certain point, I finally was able to stop and look, and I didn't hear anything. I didn't see anything. And at that point, I was able to kind of take a breath, Slow down, and figure out what just happened. My main thinking was something large and something hairy. Did I just seriously have an encounter with bigfoot in sulphur, oklahoma? So I got home, and my mom was actually working that night, so I didn't even get a chance to tell her. And I was. I was still. I was so shaken up that I felt like I was needing to either reassure myself that it was or it was not. I was. I was very 50, 50 on it. Because my logical mind Was saying, that's not what happened. There is no bigfoot up in these mountains. But then the other part of me is like, you just had something scary just happen, and you seen with your own eyes something large, Something with lots of hair as it looked like something screaming and bellowing at you, Running down a hill, Chasing you, Throwing something at you, and you just got out of there. Finally I was able to get some rest, and I knew that the next day I needed to tell the authorities. I needed to tell someone, because if this happened to me, it's going to happen to somebody else. Who knows what would happen if someone else was not Able to get away? What if someone else was not able to defend themselves? What if someone was not able to get on a bicycle and ride away as fast as they could? So the next morning, after I woke up, I went ahead, rode my bike to downtown where the ranger station is, and went inside and talked to one of the rangers, and I let them know the entire experience that I was attacked by something last night. They interviewed me, asked me, like, what was it? I told them, truthfully, I said, I don't know what exactly it was, but I do know that it was something large and that I felt that it was dangerous, that it could potentially harm somebody else. They went down the list of, oh, was it a bobcat? Was it a mountain lion? What exactly was it that you're saying attacked you? I knew that there was no real way that I was going to be able to describe this creature to them without them thinking that I'm completely insane. But I knew that I needed to for the safety of other people. I explained to them that whatever this large creature was, was on two legs with lots of hair. And that after I made the threat of calling police, that's when it charged at me down the hill. That was about the time that the facial expression changed from oh, my God to right, you were attacked by a large, hairy, man like creature in the woods. And, yeah, okay, sure. And so at that point, that's when the ranger pulled out a sheet of paper and he wrote down mockingly, justin finley was attacked by bigfoot in the park. And I was like, well, you know, look at this freaking bruise on my leg. That must show you something. It hit me hard enough that it caused a bruise on my thigh. And I told him, I can take you downstairs right now and I can show you my spokes of my wheel. They are dented in from something hitting it so hard. He's like, okay, sure. I just kind of rolled my eyes and I said, look, I know what happened to me last night. And I just wanted to let you know so that way you could take precaution and if someone else said something, if something else happened to somebody else. And he said, okay, well, we'll keep that in mind. Thanks a lot, Justin very much, you know, passed it off as whatever. I just said, yeah, thanks, and turned around, walked downstairs, got on my bike, and I left about three days later, give or take. I wasn't really wanting to get back on the trails, so I was sticking with the main roads. And as I was coming down one of the main roads, the park ranger, he Pulled up in his truck and he turned on his lights and everything to get my attention. He pulled up next to me and he's like, hey, Justin, I need to apologize to you. At first I wasn't really sure what he meant. And I was like, why do you need to apologize to me? He said, well, about the other day, about your report, for not believing you. We had an incident happen the other night in the park, and it kind of corroborates what happened to you that evening. He told me about how there was a couple who was camping in the area, and they were hiking down that same trail, it was well past night. And said that something was throwing rocks and sticks at them. Well, they did have a cell phone, so they ended up calling the police, who of course in turn called the park rangers, since they were on site. And so they came in and they found the ruckus going on on the other side of the creek and crossed over the low water bridge. And they held their guns up and they found a man, and they ended up having to tackle this guy. They arrested him and took him in. And he was about like six something. He said he was a very big guy, but he was an old man. I asked, well, was he a camper, Was he a homeless guy? Like, who was he? They said that what it was was he had escaped the veteran's home on Veterans Lake on the other side of Bromide Hill, where veterans from foreign wars, they go there and they live out the rest of their lives. Almost like a nursing home, an assisted living home. Well, he had medication but didn't take his medicine. So because of that, he was out in the woods and he thought that he was back in Vietnam. And so he made his own ghillie suit, as it were, out of mud, sticks, leaves, things like that. And he was up there in the hills naked, and said that he had long hair and he had a beard. So he said that corroborates the whole large hairy creature running at you as far as the rocks and sticks. He thought that he was back in Vietnam throwing grenades at the enemy. I asked, what's going to happen to this guy? They said they were actually going to take him to a different facility, get him on medications, and that he would get the help that he needed. At that time, though, he needed me to go to the police station, give my story about what had happened, so that way they could build up a file for the guy. I just. I'm glad that he didn't have a knife or something else with him. And I'm glad that I ran.