Ohio County, Summer 1988

Witness Chad Askins and a friend had parked near a creek bed on an isolated farm to sip a cold beer or two after a long day of hunting.A few feet in front of them the creek bank sloped upwards before dropping down the other side to the creek bed, which was not in view. They had been there only a few minutes when a large,dark shape rose up from the other side of the bank, as if whatever it was had been stooping down in the creek. Chad saw it immediately as it rose to its full height and observed that, although it was human in shape, it was of tremendous size and covered with dark colored hair. Neither Chad nor his friend could believe their eyes as the thing took two long, slow strides to their right,then stopped and turned in their direction.It did not turn its head,Askins said, which seemed to be mounted directly onto the shoulders with no visible neck, but turned its entire upper body from the waist up. The sun was setting behind the creature,which turned it into little more than a stark silhouette,but they could see that it had extremely broad shoulders and was very thick through the middle. They could not see any facial features,nor could they see the creatures lower extremities which were blocked from view by the slope of the creek bank in front of them, but stated that it had a human shaped head with long hair and thick, muscular arms. Chad felt sure that it must have been over ten feet tall. It stood there, completely unafraid and still as it watched the two men. The feeling was not mutual, however, and the two wasted no time in exiting the area.

I asked him why the encounter had such a frightening effect on he and his friend, since the creature made no aggressive move towards them. He replied that the scariest thing was the thing's size and the fact that it looked immensely powerful. Also, it had seemed completely unafraid of them, making no attempt to flee from human presence as most wild animals would. Further questioning left me with the impression that he knew very little about the bigfoot phenomenon, other than the fact that he was convinced that this was what they saw. When asked of his impression of the famous Patterson/Gimlin film of the late 1960's he was completely unaware of its existence and seemed anxious to view the footage. Chad impressed me as being completely honest and intelligent and his sincerity while recounting the event was obvious.

From witness interview by Bart Nunnelly,1997