Cryptomundo
for Bigfoot, Lake Monsters, Sea Serpents and More

Written By: Ken Hulsey

Since I joined the staff here a Cryptomundo in early May, many readers have enquired about my background.

I know that both Loren and Craig have gotten messages to the effect of, “Who is this guy?”

Well, today, on the brink of a long holiday weekend, I figured that it was about time that I told my story.

For the past eleven years, I have been building, and writing for, my own monster and sci fi websites. The first was a little site called, ‘kensforce.com’. It featured a lot of stuff about Godzilla movies and old Universal Horrors.

After about four years, I moved the site and renamed it, “Monster Island News”, again keeping with the Japanese monster theme with other classic movie reviews added in for good measure.

I found that building a website from scratch was just too time consuming, so I switched the site over to a blog in 2007. Doing so freed up many of my hours to where I was able to begin reporting on new movies and news items.

I also began to add stories of ‘real life’ encounters with monsters and UFOs to my daily posts.

My readers really liked these, so I tried to do as many as time would allow.

Craig discovered my blog earlier this year and asked me to join the team here at Cryptomundo.

I was honoured!

My passion for stories about Bigfoot are fueled by my own personal encounter. An event that has changed my life forever!

Way back in July of 1990 an ex-girlfriend and I were returning from a trip out to California, (I lived in New Mexico at the time) when we decided to stop by the Grand Canyon. My ex had never seen the canyon, so we decided to take the detour off I-40 and give it a look.

We spent a couple of hours along the rim of the canyon admiring the scenery. It was starting to get towards evening and the sun was beginning to set, so we decided to pack it in and start back on our long journey home. Being the typical male that I am, I pulled out my trusty road map to see if there was a shortcut back to the highway. I quickly discovered that Highway 180 cut through the mountains and led straight back to I-40 in Flagstaff. This route would save us a ton of time, so we headed out from the Grand Canyon towards our destination.

The trip started out normal enough. Just a typical drive through the mountains. There were few cars on the highway that evening, as I remember it, and the road was kinda curvy….winding through the mountains. By this time the sun had set and it was getting dark.

This is when it happened.

I remember coming around a curve in the highway and there was a long straight-away in front of us before the road turned again.

As we began to proceed down the straight section, we both noticed a very large animal walking down the right side of the road. Since I had just came out of a curve, the car wasn’t moving very fast, and when I saw the animal, I slowed the car even further.

I remember my ex exclaiming, “Is that a bear?”

As we came closer to the animal, it became apparent quickly that what we were looking at was not a bear. There was a very large, hairy, mass walking away from us on two legs. I can still remember the arms swaying as it strolled naturally down the side of the road away from us.

As we got closer, about 50 yards or more as I remember it, the cars headlights shown past the creature. I was at that time that our companion on the highway became aware of our presence. It stopped, and I stopped.

I remember this vividly, the animal went to turn around to get a look at us. Now this was odd, because the animal had no neck, or not much of one, so it couldn’t turn it’s head to look at us, it had to turn its whole upper body.

That apparently wasn’t good enough for the creature so it turned around completely to face us.

I remember my ex saying nervously, “What the hell is that?” I don’t think that I answered her. I just sat there in amazement at what I was looking at, somehow trying to wrap my my mind around it.

What was there before us was this giant…..well ape. It was about seven to eight feet tall (about the same height as a road sign to my estimation), covered in brown fur, large….with very little definition. That is to say that it didn’t have a typical human build. Kinda built like a ‘brick-wall’, like football lineman, large from head to toe.

Facially the animal looked a lot like a character from “Planet of the Apes.” There were areas on the face that looked ‘hairless’, mostly around the eyes, nose and mouth. The eyes were like a cats, they reflected green in the light from the cars headlights. Overall looking very much like a ‘great ape’.

The animal was covered in very ‘shaggy’ fur, possibly an inch or more in length. On the arms the hair was twice as long or so, than it was on the head and body. The color was mostly a chocolate brown color, but I remember there being lighter spots in some areas.

I had heard enough stories from my father, who was an avid hunter and owned a gun shop that catered to hunters, and seen enough TV to know exactly what we were confronted with, a Bigfoot.

The Bigfoot was very curious about us and our car. I could read it’s facial expressions. I remember that I wasn’t scared, the animal never acted in an aggressive manor.It just seemed to be as perplexed about my ex and I, as we were about it.

I remember the Bigfoot paused, and rubbed its tong across its front teeth, again in curiosity, like it was calculating it’s next move.

It took one or two steps towards us and my ex went ballistic. Apparently she took the moves as a sign that it was going to attack us, I thought that it was just coming over to get a better look at us, anyway she pushed back into her seat and began screaming. The Bigfoot stopped its forward approach when she went off. Puzzled by the commotion, it stopped, then took two long strides into the timber, disappearing from site.

My girlfriend stopped her panic attack and we sat there silently looking at the spot where the creature once stood. I think we sat there for some time before I snapped out of my trance and decided to get out of there in case the Bigfoot came back.

I remember driving over onto the left hand side of the road, just in case the creature can charging out of the woods at us or something.

We looked into the woods as we drove past the spot where it had been, and saw nothing.

Amazingly after we had gotten back on I-40 in Flagstaff, we both acted as if nothing had happened.

In the days, and months, after our encounter, my girlfriend refused to talk about the incident. We, of course, broke up months later, and I haven’t seen her since.

For years I kept the story about my run-in with Bigfoot to myself. I didn’t want to be ridiculed, or called a liar, so I kept quite about it.

It wasn’t until my wife April and I had been married for a few years that I shared the story with her. She was always perplexed at why I was so obsessive about TV shows and books about Bigfoot, so I told her my story. At first she had a hard time believing it, but she knows that I am an honest person, and she has seen how emotional I have been about it. She believes me now.

Wanting to help serious efforts to study the animal, I submitted my story to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization in 2005 (You can read the report – HERE). I was interviewed not too long after that by Cliff Barackman about the encounter. Barackman, who has done extensive research in both Arizona and California, told me that my sighting was just one of several that had been reported in that same area, that same year.

You never ever believe in these sort of things, until they are right in front of you. Seeing is definitely believing!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Bigfoot, Bigfoot Report, Cryptozoology, Eyewitness Accounts, Sasquatch. You can follow responses via our RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.