Listen to this story on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/Q7rEoOZNveQ
This incident is about a strange light, that became a terrifying experience, and by design or coincidence it happened in almost the same location of my possible Sasquatch encounter camping with my horse back in 1978.
This happened over Memorial Day weekend in 1980. My best friend and I decided to take a survival canoe trip over the weekend. The only thing we took in the way of food was coffee and salt. We intended to live off the land for a couple of days. First, a little about my friend.
His name was Greg, and he was the black sheep in a family of intellectual, left leaning people. He was conservative in his politics, and he hunted, trapped, and fished … All activities that his family was not enthusiastic about. About the only thing he had in common with his family was that he was an atheist. Although he did not believe in God, he was spiritual in his connection to nature. He absolutely did not believe in anything paranormal. He sort of made the perfect witness to what we saw. Something that I have no doubt was paranormal, and now I have to wonder if it was Sasquatch connected.
Our trip. We left Weir Dam on the East Fork of the Whitewater River in Richmond, Indiana on Saturday morning with our goal of reaching the Silver Creek boat ramp on Brookville Lake by Monday. It was a fun leisurely trip, but it did have a few white knuckle moments along the way with the river itself … Mostly involving rapids and down trees across the river. On Saturday night we camped on a sandbar and had a great supper of bullhead catfish and wild onions. The night passed peacefully, and after an invigorating swim early in the morning we resumed our trip.
Sunday was being pretty much like the day before, except that we stopped to catch some soft shell turtles that had been sunning themselves on a log in a hole of water cut off from the river. Greg caught them by wading into the waist deep water and stepped on their shells barefooted. I told him he was crazy to do this, but he caught several turtles using this method.
Late on Sunday afternoon we passed under the bridge at Brownsville, Indiana and headed into the Brookville Lake property. We passed right by the spot where my horse and I had spent a terrifying night two years prior, and when about one hundred yards downstream, Greg motioned to head to shore along a sandbar on the same side of the river that my prior camp had been on. Keep in mind that I was still under the impression that whatever had circled my camp until I fired a shot from my Winchester at three in the morning was human … Or possibly a ghost. I felt uneasy about his choice of campsites, but I was not going to voice my concerns, or mention my harrowing night two years earlier. Besides, I wasn’t alone, I had a human companion. I will mention that we were only armed with belt knives, and a camp axe … Rifles and canoes are not compatible in white water. So we set up our two man tent, kindled a fire, and while I prepared a turtle for supper, Greg found a bounty of fresh water muscles in the mud at the end of the sandbar. After supper we let our fire die down and we prepared for an evening of fishing for channel catfish.
Now a little about the topography. Across the river from where we were camped a creek entered into the river. The creek meandered down from the northeast, and for a while paralleled the river itself separated by a high bank. Directly across from us the creek made a hard right turn in its course and joined the river. Where the creek made its bend, the east bank was a high cut bank scoured out by years of flooding. All of the land across the river as well as behind us was wooded.
I don’t know what time it was, but it was full dark when suddenly across the river a good ways off in the scrub woods we saw a bluish light moving along through the woods. It didn’t float, but moved like someone walking over the uneven ground carrying a Coleman lantern. We watched it as the light headed north, and discussed what anyone would be doing over in that thick scrub walking around carrying a lantern. The best we could come up with was maybe someone was hunting frogs. Presently the light went out of view, but it still left me with an uneasy feeling.
Perhaps about an hour later, we began to see the faintest glow of light coming from upstream in the creek channel across the river. “Great” I thought, someone was going to come right on down to where we were camped. The light steadily grew stronger, and before long it was so bright upstream of the channel of the creek that we could see the shadows of tree branches on the far cut bank of the creek. It was an amazingly bright light that just kept getting stronger. The light being cast was bright enough to see objects on our side of the river. Across the river, in the creek channel it was so bright that a book could have been easily read … And then we saw it.
Both Greg and myself sat speechless, transfixed on the bend of the creek waiting for whoever it was to round the bend and reveal themselves to us. Then it happened, the light, traveling over the middle of the creek, rounded the bend and stopped! The light stopped as if it was surprised to find us sitting there. And I mean the light … There was no person, no creature, just a brilliant, bluish light. As we stared at it, the light suddenly went out. It did not fade out, it went out like someone turned off a switch. This left us blind as bats in the sudden darkness, but we heard nothing, we saw nothing. After a few long seconds, I whispered in a low raspy voice ” What was that!?” Greg answered in just as low a voice … “I don’t know!” The next thing I heard out of Greg the atheist was “Oh my God!”
Right about then, I had a strong hit on my fishing pole and after a battle landed a 17 pound blue catfish. That broke the tension, and we did not mention it again. In fact we never spoke to anyone about it.
What was it? I don’t know. I have seen swamp gas and foxfire and they in no was resembled what we saw. Maybe it was Sasquatch related. I just don’t know. What I do know is that I have never stepped foot along the Whitewater River north of the Brookville Lake since then. Two terrifying nights are enough for me.
Oh yeah, apparently an atheist got religion … At least for that night.
