SC EP:1200 Tumalo Creek Creature

JD writes "I was 17 years old. Heading into my senior year in high school. Life was good. This was in 2001, over summer break. On a blue sky summer day, my friend and I decided to go out for a drive and walk around a park, known as Shevlin Park. Now, back in 2002 you could go out to places in and around Bend and it wouldn't be overcrowded by tourists.

Shevlin Park was on the outskirts of town with trails along Tumalo Creek that backed up to nothing but nature. Of course today there's houses and it feels more like a park surrounded by residential housing.

I included a photo to help understand my encounter. In the photo, the red dot is where my friend and I parked. The yellow dot is where we had our encounter and the direction this creature went. That day we got lucky as there was nobody else around. We decided to take a walk over to Tumalo Creek. Within minutes of walking I noticed in front of me a large pine tree that had fallen over. The tree was resting up on its stump and it had fallen over into a thick growth patch of pine trees and aspens and your random shrubs. I got the immediate idea to hop up onto the tree and attempt to balance my way along the fallen tree. Now this tree, resting on the stump and the top of the tree now resting in a thicket of trees, there was probably about 3 feet of space from the tree parallel to the ground. I was about 5ft 11inches so I figured once I was up on the tree walking along it I would have been close to 9ft. My friend stayed on the ground and walked along the side as I walked my way on the fallen tree. Now I had only been up on this fallen tree for a matter of seconds and as I started to walk on the fallen tree I suddenly started hearing what sounded like branches breaking, shrubs being smashed, basically, trees being disturbed by something. I glance up towards the sound and all I can see is this black mass at the end of the tree behind the thicket of trees and shrubs. This black mass starts to rise and my first thought is, "oh shit, we just woke up a bear!". Only problem was this black mass kept rising and rising and rising. I froze, not knowing that I was seeing.

I knew there were no animals known to Central Oregon that were that big. I had no idea what to think. And that's when this black mass steps out from the thicket of trees and shrubs into full view. My eyes could not believe what I was seeing. Frozen in fear, hair standing up on the back of my neck, here was this huge dark brown bipedal creature that I would estimate to be maybe 2 feet taller than me. The head rested right on the body as if there was no neck at all. The shoulders on this thing had a massive width. And the arms seemed to be long, which would place the hands right around the knees. At the time I was experiencing mostly fear, but I know a small part of me was also amazed. I was seeing something that wasn't supposed to exist. I had heard about the legendary bigfoot and seen the Patterson footage. But I never thought much on the subject. When this creature stepped out, it was clear as day what I was witnessing and when I try to describe what I saw, this thing literally looked like the creature from the Patterson footage, except the hair seemed a bit shorter and cleaner. As this creature walked off into the woods, it never looked back. My friend and I only saw the back of this creature. I think it was possible we woke it up. In Shevlin Park there is a pond (the green dot in the photo) that was usually stocked with fish. I could only think that it might have come down in the night, had some fish, and decided to sleep a little longer than planned. As this creature walked off into the woods every step sounded like if you took a brick and threw it on the dirt and heard that thud. We watched this creature walk away for about 20 seconds until it was no longer in sight. This whole experience from it rising in the thicket to stepping out into view and walking off probably lasted around a minute. But during this encounter it felt like time almost stopped and my friend and I were frozen in fear for an hour. After the creature was no longer in view I turned to hear and all I could say was "what the heck was that!". She couldn't respond, still being confused about what she had just witnessed. We headed back to the car and when we both got in the car, I turned to hear and said, "I think we just saw bigfoot."

From that day nature has never been the same. I still have a huge passion for the outdoors but since that encounter, I always catch myself scanning the tree line or taking a moment to pause and listen, wondering if I would run into this creature again. I remember being excited to share the experience with my mom once she got home from work. First thing she asked me was if I had been smoking anything. She found the whole thing funny and she listened to my whole encounter but I could tell she did not believe me. It turned into a joke, a laughing matter, that to this day, I stil