Have You Seen Him?

Aug 20, 2024

I spend a lot of time alone on the shop. I’m pretty sure everyone knows this by now. The Silva & Ore shop can be a pretty lonely place sometimes. Yeah, there are dogs and the occasional pterodactyl sized wasp and maybe a mouse hiding. But overall, it can be lonely. I do love solitude. Mostly if it’s a lone hike in the woods but that doesn’t happen much these days. I used to go out there all the time when I was young and vibrant and healthy! And childless. I could spend hours hiking and just being out there. And I do miss that as time and space and physical restraints just don’t allow it anymore.

In all that time out there I have never or don’t recall ever having any type of encounter. Which is probably for the best. With the big guy being a huge part of my marketing tactics and making lots of things involving him, he’s very much become a point of interest for me more so than ever before. We’ve all spent lots of time watching Bigfoot Sighting documentaries and docuseries over the last couple years and the as of late, I’ve really enjoyed the podcasts and the websites and the research. Although minor on my part… it’s kinda drug me in.

Today I spent some time chatting with someone. I often do when I am out and about at the stores where I have my products. And today the conversation turned to mythical creatures and the paranormal and then Bigfoot of course.

I stood and listened to stories that made me think back on other stories and compare what I’ve heard from encounters.

The first thing she told me about was that she was a wildlife rehabber years ago and she spent a lot of time out on the family property in the woods along the Mississippi in southern Illinois. She also raised a few emus. When the emus where old enough to be outside, something odd happened to all of them. When I asked how large the emus were she held out her hand to indicate maybe “this tall” which by my rough calculations, about 4’. These weren’t small birds.

She went on to tell me what happened… she went outside one day and found one hanging way up in a tree and was just mangled and dangling from the tree. The next night night, the rest of them were found dead too. I don’t recall that they were all hanging there but she did state that it appeared that just their inards were eaten. Now granted, these birds were young and not massive, and we do have a lot of predators around here, but it was definitely odd.

Then she told me of a sighting her kids had when they were teens. The property they lived on was up in the bluffs. One night, the took a drive down the hill to a convenience store to grab sodas about 10 pm. It was a normal activity for the boys to do so this was no big deal. When they got home they went to their mom and told her what they saw. They claimed that they’d seen a tall gray creature walking along a fence line. And that it was huge and was taller than the fence. A privacy fence is 6’ so you know he was taller than that!. She listened to their story and told them they were lying. "You boys are lying! stop lying!" she said. And all these years later, the "boys" now being in their 50’s, still swear that they saw him.

Have you seen him?

-AJ