It's late... Wife's asleep.. Might as well add a story I heard and a (possible) experience of my own.
Please note: I wouldn't call myself a Bigfoot believer, but I think it's pretty arrogant to say that theres nowhere in the world an undocumented primate exists.
Anyway... My sophomore year of college I both heard a pretty incredible story and had an interesting encounter in the woods. Story first.
Once of the guys on my dorm hall was from north Georgia. I think cartersville was the closest city. When he was 16, him and some friends went out hiking deep in one of the guys family property. Nothing for miles except for the house a couple of miles back.
For context, this is one of the more intelligent guys I've ever met. Majored in biomechanics and minored in physics.
Back to the story: the group of guys made their way over a ridge and around the side of a hill to find themselves standing face to face with what they thought was a super tall naked man. Man like shape. Tan skin colored. They all stood in shock confused about what they were looking at. The more the looked, the weirder it was. The face wasn't a human face, shoulders super broad, and the skin looked like some sort of fur or hair. The creature stood motionless and stared at them. All were frozen for what felt like several minutes.
Finally, one guy took a step, and the creature got startled and sprinted away on 2 feet. My friend said he'd never seen anything move so fast... It was incredible. The creature was running over hills, turns, logs, through brush and hanging tree branches with no break in stride, no losing balance, no regard for thorns or branches harming it's skin or fur... As smooth as someone would sprint on a track.
The thing eventually got out of sight and they never saw it again. He said the adrenaline rush of the experience was like nothing he'd ever felt before.
Now my story: much less eventful. My grandmother owns 30 acres on top of Dayton mountain. Back in the 70s, she and my grandad were the only people that didn't sell the property in the area to the state. It's surrounded by thousands of acres of Tennessee owned, untouched wilderness. The Cumberland trail runs through it, as do several streams and springs.
In October of 2010, me, my brother and cousins camped up there. We try to do an annual camp out.. Typical "rough it" weekend and what not.
You can't go to a place like that without guns. We had a few smaller pistols, I had a 12 gauge with heavy shot, and my older cousin had his 357 mag.
We'd heard typical woods noise thru the night. Owls, rustling wind, good fun creepy stuff that makes you feel alive out there in the middle of nowhere. At about 5:30am, when the sky starts to turn purple instead of black, on opposite sides of the 8 person tent, my cousin and I both find ourselves awake. We lean up, look at each other as if to say "you just woke up too, huh?" and laid back down without waking the others. It was unnaturally quiet. Not a sound. No wind, no night sounds, the dog with us was nowhere to be found. Next thing we knew, there was heavy footsteps. And by heavy, I mean... So big, so strong, such distance between steps, you immediately knew something very very large was within 10 yards of the tent.
We both slowly reached for the shotgun and Python and sat motionless while whatever it was, very distinctly and disturbingly walked a semicircle around our tent. We were too terrified to unzip the tent to look for fear that the animal would charge the tent if spooked. After about 45 seconds of heart pounding clutching to the guns, we heard the steps slowly fade away into the distance.
I've had my fair share of seeing things in the woods. A mountain lion, snakes, Eagles... You name it. But there was nothing as shocking, awe striking, and terrifying as hearing those footsteps right outside the tent that night.
BFRO has some documented testimony not far from there within about a year of that experience.