Woman remembers 'hairy' creature looking in school house window

Many readers will recall that in early August I told of an unusual Bigfoot sighting that occurred on Interstate Highway 65 on July 23. The witness in that case said that he and his son were traveling from Greenville to Belleville around 10 p.m. and had just gotten on the interstate at the Greenville-Pine Apple Exit (Exit 128). About 1-1/2 miles south of the exit, they saw a tall creature with “long, stringy, black hair that covered its face.”

The creature’s body was black and covered in hair, the witness said. Only its fingers were visible, he noted.

“Whatever it was, it was as tall as a speed limit sign,” the witness said. “It stood right by the road, toeing or almost toeing the white line, staring at the ground. As we passed by it in our van, it never looked up. It never moved. It just stood there.”

Since that story first ran in the paper, I’ve received a number of emails about the July 23 incident, including a message from a person who said his father and brother saw the same creature at different times. This person said that his father hunts in the Greenville-Pine Apple area and several years ago the father came home saying he’d seen a “very tall and very hairy” creature in the woods. At first, he thought it was a poacher dressed all in black.

The man called out to the suspected poacher, but when he got closer, the creature “crouched down on all fours and ran off.” He said that it didn’t look like a bear, saying instead that it looked like a “really tall, long stringy-haired man with big hands.”

“It freaked him out,” the reader said, noting that his brother saw the same creature, but at a later time.

Another reader said that on July 30, 2006, he was traveling with his wife and two children from Ohio to Lower Peach Tree. As they traveled down I-65 near Evergreen, a “big, black thing covered in hair” suddenly ran in front of their car. Their car, a 2006 Chrysler, struck the creature so hard that they felt the impact of the collision, the man said.

“Yes, I believe it because I saw it,” the man said.

A few weeks ago, on Oct. 19, a reader named “Nick” said that his mother, who is now 69 years old, has often retold an unusual Bigfoot-type story from her early school days in Butler County. Years ago, when she was a young girl, she attended school in the Forest Home area and tells of the day when she and her classmates saw a Bigfoot-type creature looking in their classroom window.

“They called it a hairy man,” Nick said, noting that if this truly was some type of Bigfoot creature there may be many of them in the Butler County woods. He also theorized that the creatures seen nowadays might be the offspring of those seen years and years ago.

Nick joked that family members have been calling his mother crazy for years, but now they’re not so sure.

Many readers will know that Forest Home is located in western Butler County, about half way between Greenville and Pine Apple. As the crow flies, Forest Home is about 35 miles northeast of Evergreen. Give or take a mile or two, Forest Home is around 10 miles from I-65 as it passes through Butler County.

In the end, I’d like to hear from anyone else in the reading audience who has seen anything unusual on I-65, whether you think it’s a Bigfoot or not. If you’ve seen something out of the ordinary out on the road, apparently you aren’t alone.