October 18, 2010

The White Thing, Or Something Like It

Cryptomundo reader finalfirst submitted the following to Cryptomundo in response to an article I posted here in November 2006 entitled: The White Thing – An Albino Bigfoot?.

Happy Hollow’s story is absolutely true so people ought to stop trying to find excuses or reasons for it–and certainly they are not qualified to debunk it if they weren’t there. It just is what it is.

My sisters saw it (or something like it) when they were little and there is no reason they would have concocted such a tale. Just because we didn’t know what it was they saw doesn’t make it a lie or a figment of their imagination.

Anyway, I don’t know how they could have imagined the same thing at the same time, and frankly, they lack the creative spark to make up such an interesting tale and stick to it for 50 years.

They tell the same story except only one girl saw the red eyes. They agree though that as they were walking home from drawing water from a spring in the woods of Tuscaloosa County in Alabama, a large and white thing (they never referred to it as an animal of any type) with red eyes jumped from a tree (shaking the ground–remember, they were small girls) before it ran into the woods.

The year was 1960 give or take a year or two. I was not born.

They saw it because their dog started barking up a tree and they wondered what he was so agitated about. The dog was standing with his front legs on the tree and barking up. They didn’t see the thing until it jumped from the tree. They didn’t have time to run from it–all they could do was stand frozen and stare as it bounded into the woods with the dog giving chase. They dropped their buckets and watched it disappear.

They said that it was a quadruped. Then they started screaming and running home–scared out of their gourds of course. They got the story out and my father took his gun and tried to track it but could not find the thing. They never took that particular path to the spring again.

We are African-American, Baptist, poor, and from deep in the woods of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. We don’t make stuff up, and that’s what they said happened.

They saw it clear as day and I was doing a little research on their story (and others because there are plenty) when I came across this post. It is the only other story that sounded like what my sisters saw that day.

I think they would have known the difference between a mountain lion (even if it was albino) and a thing with red eyes that was so big it shook the ground. Here’s what I find most interesting: seems that only dogs can detect this thing and flush it out. Had the dog not been with them, they would never have known what was in that tree.

So, the thing is real. What it is, well, that’s a different matter altogether.finalfirst

Did finalfirst’s sisters see the fabled White Thing of Happy Hollow?

On Happy Hollow Road, residents see the fabled White Thing year round. The fearsome creature is reportedly snow white and has a piercing scream, much like that of a woman in distress or a baby crying. He is reportedly as tall as a man with claws strong enough to scrape bark off trees, and as swift as the wind. White Thing sightings have been reported for at least 150 years.

About Craig Woolheater
Co-founder of Cryptomundo in 2005. I have appeared in or contributed to the following TV programs, documentaries and films: OLN's Mysterious Encounters: "Caddo Critter", Southern Fried Bigfoot, Travel Channel's Weird Travels: "Bigfoot", History Channel's MonsterQuest: "Swamp Stalker", The Wild Man of the Navidad, Destination America's Monsters and Mysteries in America: Texas Terror - Lake Worth Monster, Animal Planet's Finding Bigfoot: Return to Boggy Creek and Beast of the Bayou.

Filed under Bigfoot, Bigfoot Report, Cryptomundo Exclusive, Cryptotourism, Evidence, Eyewitness Accounts, Folklore, Sasquatch, Skunk Apes, Swamp Monsters