“A friend of mine had moved south, to work with his uncle. Things didn’t work out, so he called and wanted to know if I would pick him up, at the bus station, in Springfield. I told him, “Sure.” The day he came back, his bus wasn’t due until 1:30 AM. When it showed up, he was starving, so we headed up the road to Steak and Shake. While we were eating, some girls showed up, after a night of partying. We stayed around and talked with them for a while. Well, by the time we left, Brian wanted to see if we could swing by one of his old girlfriend’s houses before she went to work. He wanted to see if he could stay with her for a while. I didn’t have anything to do the next day, so I told him that would be fine. She lived in Assumption. To get there, we headed back to Taylorville. Then, instead of heading on to Pana, where I lived, we would cut across, through the country, to get to Assumption. To do this, you have to go out by Bertinetti Lake. At that time, they had just started developing the place for housing, so it was semi-rural, with woods around the lake and the road we were on.
So, here we are driving and just about to cross a bridge, when this huge, canine-type thing comes running out of the woods, to our right. There were good-sized, freshly dug ditches on each side of the highway. This thing jumped from the bottom of the right ditch, cleared the highway, and landed on the backside of the left ditch. Then, it ran into the woods. It happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to hit the brakes before it was already gone. I know, some would say it was just a dog, that surprised us, but we both agreed, it was too big. Besides, I don’t know of any dogs that can jump that far. I remember it had gray and light brown fur. It was very bulky and muscular. It was also on all fours. We decided that we didn’t need to hang around the area and sped up.
We told our friends, but most just laughed it off. Whatever we both knew what we saw. Years later, I was looking on the BFRO website. I saw there were two sightings reported, that took place, about a mile to the east, from where our encounter happened. When I first read the woman’s report, years ago, she said it took off running, on all fours, and was wolf-like. I see now, someone has changed her story to sound more like a Bigfoot. However, her sighting and another reported after hers say that this was where Highway 48 crosses the south fork of the Sangamon River. Follow the river back east until you see Lincoln Trail Road. That is the bridge we were at.
It seems like it uses the river bottom to stay hidden. Also, there are all kinds of housing additions there, now. I went to their community-wide garage sales there, a few times. It seems as though a lot of cats and dogs go missing in that area. Posters were up everywhere. Well, I know it was a little long-winded, but that was my encounter.
Anonymous
Time: 5:30 AM
Date: Around 1991″
Mystical Night Media Research 