So first off, I can't claim to have ever seen Bigfoot, not even a track, and if this creature exists, I think there'd be a good chance I'd have seen some proof, having spent fifteen years working in the forests of British Columbia.
That said, I don't discount the possibility of its existence either...but I suppose that depends on how you define "existence"...I do believe I have read that some (all?) native tribes of the Pacific Northwest, or maybe BC specifically, believe that Bigfoot appears in times of trouble, or something along those lines. I tend to lean towards that way of thinking - Bigfoot only makes an appearance under certain circumstances - it would go a long ways to explaining why we've never found bodies, bones, etc...
I have a story, but not about Bigfoot; it's more a "there's more to this world than meets the eye" type thing, possibly involving a parellel universe(s), a UFO, or a tear in the fabric of space/time...
I can't tell you exactly how old I was when this happened. I think I was 7/8...at most, I was 10. So we're talking 1984 or earlier when this incident occurred.
I grew up in small town in an eastern Canadian province. The town is located at the far western end of an inlet that juts in from the Atlantic Ocean; this inlet is the major water feature in the area, heavily used for fishing, hunting, and travel/recreation.
At this point my father hadn't built our cabin, so our excursions generally entailed going old school and putting up a canvas wall tent - but in this case we actually traveled with a friend of his - whom I'll call "Joe" - via boat (open, outboard-equipped) to Joe's cabin, about 1.5 hours "down the bay" as we say back there.
When we put the boat ashore near Joe's cabin, there wasn't much a puny grade-schooler could do to assist in getting gear (coolers and other mostly kinda heavy items) to the cabin, so I walked up to the cabin and then behind it, whereupon I noticed a well-worn footpath heading straight back/away from the cabin through the woods.
Being a kid who loved being in the woods, this was right up my alley, so I decided to walk it until either (A) the trail petered out and/or (B) I got bored and/or tired and/or (C) I started getting too far away from the cabin for my liking.
I recall the trail not being very long. If it was 200 meters, that's all it was, and I think it was less, like 100, 125 meters. However long it was, it was very well-worn/well-defined for the whole length, and it terminated at one end of an oval-shaped opening that contained a shallow pond (also oval-shaped.)
This opening/the pond wasn't very big...yes, this was nearly 40 years ago, but I'm pretty confident in saying that the opening was perhaps 75 meters long, and the pond not quite that, as it was bordered all around by spongy, wet moss for, I want to say, 5 - 7 meters before hitting a treeline of scrubby black spruce.
And this is where things started to get weird. My plan was pretty basic and, as far as I could tell, not prone to error: I would simply walk the whole circumference of this oval-shaped pond and, when I got back to where I was currently standing - ie., the path - I'd simply walk the path back to the cabin.
So that's what I set out to do. When I arrived at the far end of the pond - the other "tip" of the oval - I looked back from where I'd come, and could see as plain as day the opening in the treeline where the path came out. So I simply started walking back (down the side of the pond opposite of the side I'd already come down) until such time as I got to the path.
Except - when I got to where the path should have been, it simply wasn't there. You can imagine my confusion, because it wasn't like a had been bushwacking through featureless forest for hours, with no real landmarks, no map, no compass, etc. - I had just spent, at most, 15 minutes walking around a small pond, in a well-defined opening - and I had even looked back and seen the path that I had taken to get there, but now that path was gone!
Except it wasn't. I glanced back down the pond and there it was - the path - the opening in the treeline, plain as day. How could that be though? For it to be at that end would mean that I'd have had to have made two complete circuits of the pond (and in doing so, blown right past the path), and I knew I hadn't. - Or had I?? - Well, I had to have, otherwise...
So, I started down the side of the pond again - and the same thing happened: arrived at the far end, no path. Turned around, there's the path at the end I'd just walked from. I remember very distinctly thinking to myself "Okay, look, you're just a kid...you're not lost per sé, how could you get actually lost in a place like this, you're just confused..." - and so, I headed back toward the far end of the pond again...and the same thing happened...
And happened...
And happened.
I can't tell you for certain how many times I went around that pond, with the path doing its flip-flop/mirror act each time. What I can tell you is that in the end of it, I was in such a complete state of confusion and panic that I decided to run straight down the middle of the pond (which was fairly shallow, and I was wearing rubber boots), crying and screaming my head off for my father - thankfully, I heard him calling back in the distance, and a few moments later I saw him break out of the treeline (via the path), whereupon I ran to him, and we went back to the cabin and, to the best of my recollection, had a decent weekend.
The end? Not quite. One night when I was nineteen, I was having my first (legal) beer with my father...I couldn't tell you why that incident came back to me that night...I had never really forgotten it, but I wasn't overly prone to thinking about it either...regardless, at some point while having beers, I blurted out "Do you remember that time at Joe's cabin? The pond...?"
I'm almost 47, and to this day I can't tell you what my father believes/doesn't believe in when it comes to things like cryptoids, UFOs, the paranormal, etc...whether he believes in none, some, or all of it, he keeps it pretty close to his chest. But when I said that to him he got real quiet and a certain look came over his face that I had never really seen before and he said "You remember that? - I don't know what was going on that day, but something was trying to take you away from me..."
My father would have been in his early to mid-thirties when the incident occurred, so while I may have been a scared, confused kid, he definitely wasn't, and when he said that - "something was trying to take you away from me" -, I had chills, because I am quite certain that had he not come looking for me when he did, and/or had I not changed tactics and ran down the middle of the pond as opposed to walking around it, I'd have been one of those kids who disappeared in the woods with no solid explanation.
Now THAT is freaky.
