As a follow-up to my recent article on the British Bigfoot, I thought it might be a good idea to demonstrate to you that such accounts are far from rare. And they don’t just reach those of us that investigate such things. Sometimes, the witnesses go direct to the mainstream media. On September 2, 2008, the U.K.’s Sunday Mercury newspaper published a lengthy letter from a resident of the town of Cannock, Staffordshire, England. It told an extraordinary tale. The fact that the name of the writer wasn’t included doesn’t help at all when it comes to trying to validate the encounter, but given that the story is a relevant one, I include it without edit. And here it is:

“Last year around June time, me and two other friends were supposed to go to a 24-hour basketball event for charity. Us being lads we decided to skive and go and sit down the lane in my car, and do what typical teenage lads do. Anyway, so me and two others were parked up in a little pull-in, down a lane in Gentleshaw not too far from Burntwood, Cannock. We were parked in this pull-in facing the road, with trees either side of us, and a gated-field behind. It was around two o’clock in the morning and we had the interior light on in the car, when my friend in the front passenger seat said he could see something moving outside, on the right side of the car.

“We turned off the interior light to get a better look and could definitely see something moving in the trees in the distance. Our first thoughts were a person or an animal, all we could see was something large moving around. This thing must have been about 10-15m away. (I didn’t exactly have time to measure!) I turned the car headlights and hazard lights on, to see if I could see anymore. This thing was the shape of a human, but stood about 7-8ft, it was hard to tell with it being dark and such a distance away.

“At first sight it was crouching, not completely to the floor, but approx half way and facing directly at the car. It was too dark to see whether it was staring at us, but I’m guessing it was! As soon as it realized we had seen it, it stood up straight, hesitated and ran towards us. Well as you can imagine I wasn’t sticking around. This thing was definitely not human, it was huge! It wasn’t just tall, but broad and stocky too. I haven’t got a clue what its face was like, or its skin or fur, or whatever it had. It wasn’t light enough.

“My back passenger darted to the other side of the car, and nobody said a word. As it came towards us it was rustling big bushes, shaking pretty big trees, it was just like in a horror movie. I drove out of the pull-in and turned left down the lane, this thing was keeping up with the car, but in the trees. I was trying so hard not to look in my mirrors, but I could see it in the corner of my eyes, I don’t know whether it was flying or jumping or what.

“Its strength and quickness was unbelievable. Obviously I wasn’t thinking that at the time, I just wanted to get the hell out of there! I drove to the bottom of the lane doing about 80mph, and it just vanished as soon as I came up to a pub at the bottom of the lane. I didn’t stop until I entered a residential area.

“The fear was unreal, I have never been so scared, and didn’t think I would ever experience anything that would scare me so much. I felt physically sick, cold and shaky. I just didn’t want to believe what I had seen. None of us discussed it, I think we were all in denial! I completely blanked it from my mind after that, and didn’t discuss it again until 3 days ago, when the front seat passenger brought it up in conversation, and now I can’t forget about it.

“I hate re-living it, but I thought I would let others know of my experience. I’m not asking you to believe me, because to everyone else it probably seems so far-fetched, but I know what I saw and so do the other two lads. I’m not at all saying I saw ‘Bigfoot’ but I know 100% this thing was not human. I know other stories say the thing they saw had red eyes, but I didn’t see red eyes, I wasn’t close enough to see. Glad I wasn’t too. What haunts me now, is… What would its face have looked like? Where is it? It must have been watching us, and what would it have done if we didn’t get away?”

The story, as extremely controversial as it was and still is, soon got picked up by additional media outlets. One of them was a local radio channel, BBC WM. A couple of days after the story first surfaced, they received a phone call from someone (yep, another anonymous source…sigh…) who claimed to have been one of the guys in question, assuring everyone that the story was absolutely 100 percent true. Of course, the possibility that there was a second hoaxer at work – never mind just the original letter-writer – cannot be ruled out and only serves to complicate things even more. On the other hand, maybe the whole thing really happened just as it was recorded (although the speed at which the beast was said to have been running makes me think the whole thing is, as we say in the U.K., “bollocks”). No wonder the issue of the British Bigfoot is steeped in so much controversy.