In this photo taken outside of Centertown, Ky., and dated Oct. 30, 2008, the foreground features shining white eyes from a group of raccoons and a deer eating on a pile of corn. In the background, a pair of orange eyes glow from a wide and open section of a walking path. Kentucky Bigfoot Research Organization lead investigator and researcher Don Neal said in the next picture that was taken, the animals disappeared because they were scared off by the unknown creature that was watching them, and it was gone, too.[/caption]
When the night drowns out the last rays of daylight over Ohio County, some have claimed to hear, in its vast wooded areas, the pounding footsteps and horrifying screams of a large, ape-like, humanoid creature. A rare few have seen it. This creature is known as a Bigfoot.
While there have been decades of debate over its existence, eyewitnesses within the county have found a source in which they can share their encounters and evidence. He is Don Neal, a McLean County preacher and minister, who also serves as a lead investigator and researcher for the Kentucky Bigfoot Research Organization (KBRO). He’s been on the hunt for the truth behind the myth and legend for over 20 years and has used the Ohio County’s woods as a primary research site for the last six to seven years.
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In this undated photo, an 18” right footprint from an unknown creature was found embedded in mud in Narrows, Ky. The footprint was detailed enough to include the vertical dermal ridges that cover its sole.[/caption]
His inspiration to research the creature came from two particular incidents in his life. The first was around the age of 14 after he saw the raw 1967 Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage. This film showed a large, muscular and hairy ape-like creature walking upright across a stretch of Northern California soil, but gave no explanation about what it was.
“I saw that, and it kind of piqued my interest, and as a 14-year-old boy, I thought, ‘Wow! That’s amazing,’” he said.
His second spark of inspiration came when he crossed paths with another minister, during a 1977 minister’s convention in Louisville, and heard his story about the Bigfoot.
The minister said he was in the Wyoming mountains, perched on a rock, hunting, when he saw an eight-foot tall creature, covered in hair, emerge into an open field and walk across it.
“He said, ‘I was stunned. I’d never seen anything like that in my life.’ And he gets his gun and puts the scope on it, and he said, ‘I could have killed it. I could have pulled the trigger and killed it,’” Neal said.
But he didn’t. Neal said the minister spared it because it looked so human in the face.
As the minister kept his eye on the scope, the creature looked back in the minister’s direction, and in that moment, the minister was convinced it was looking back at him, even though it shouldn’t have been able to find his position.
“’I looked through that scope, it looked straight at me, and I put the gun down because I would not have shot it. Its face was totally human looking, more than animal, and it walked off.’ He was telling me that story, and I thought, ‘Man, this is it. I’m sold,’” Neal said.
But these were only the first few steps in Neal’s long journey on discovering the Bigfoot mystery.
Throughout his 43 years as a minister, Neal has travelled to 28 states and three foreign countries. During his travels, he’s had people come up and describe to him their odd, Bigfoot-related occurrences.
“I’ve had (Native Americans), on the reservations out in Arizona, tell me about the tall man of the woods or the man of the mountains,” he said.
Neal said the Native Americans have a strong belief in, and respect for the creature, and described it as being six to seven feet tall and covered in hair.
While spending time in upper New York, he talked with a logger who told him about a Sasquatch that was living in the woods. Another witness near Florida’s Ocala National Forest, who was also an avid hunter, told Neal about seeing their version of the Bigfoot called the Swamp Ape. And when Neal traveled to New Mexico, he said the Spanish ranchers he talked to also saw a seven-foot tall humanoid creature.
“I started collecting all of this evidence, and I’m going, ‘Wow! These people are seeing something,’” he said.
But in his 43 years of hunting the elusive creature, he’s had every experience possible related to the Bigfoot, with the exception of seeing one.
“I’ve had tree knocks returned in the dead of night, in the thick woods, and even in the forests of Kentucky where there’s no one around. I have found tree structures that we believe they build. I have found rock stacks even in Land Between the Lakes area,” he said.
He’s also heard their howls, screams, whistles, footsteps, growling roars that can make a human’s chest shake, a tree being pushed down at night in the woods of Ohio County and he's even smelled their odor. The closest he’s ever come to being close to one is within 20 yards.
But to understand his passion for hunting such a myth, and unveiling the truth, is to experience the hunt for oneself. So I, along with Beaver Dam resident Rylan Dockery, went on a hunt with Neal at one of his primary research locations within the county on Oct. 24 from 8-11 p.m.
Before the hunt began, Dockery wanted to get some answers of his own after hearing about his younger brother’s experience of witnessing one several years ago.
“I want to know what’s going on, see what we can find, prove that it’s real. I can’t prove until I see it,” he said.
During those three hours, we camped at three different spots. At those spots, Neal banged two wooden poles together and howled in the air while scanning the darkness with his thermal camera. This brought out three different groups of noises. The first sounded like monkeys chattering in the distance, the second a screeching cry of a child and the third was a layer of howls at different pitches.
After the three sets of sounds were recorded and analyzed, Neal confirmed the first two were of a barn owl and fox. The third was of a dog and a pack of coyotes howling in the night, plus the low-pitched howl of something else.
During the hunt, Dockery said the sound was “not an animal that I know of, and you can pick it out with the coyotes. It was a lot louder, and it seemed to go a lot longer than the coyotes did.”
Neal said he thought the unidentified, low-pitch howl, was a Bigfoot.
While he understands there will be skeptics of his research and the belief in the Bigfoot, he and the other members of the KBRO try to conduct scientific-based studies on the phenomena of Bigfoot or what it actually is. They then post their reports and findings on the organization’s web site.
“We take this seriously. We’re not just a bunch of hicks in the woods with nothing to do. We really approach this with a scientific method and try to debunk what’s false and what’s left to be a true claim,” he said.
To see the KBRO’s Bigfoot reports and findings, visit their web page at kentuckybigfoot.com, and to report a possible Bigfoot sighting or evidence to Neal, call 270-991-1053.
To see a video from Neal detailing many reports of Bigfoot sightings in the Centertown/Matanzas area, click here.