A man recalls his encounter with a long haired biped while growing up in New Hampshire. He suspects that it may have been a Bigfoot, but isn't quite sure what it was.

The following account was recently forwarded to me:

"This happened when I was a child, and to this day I really can't explain it. I'm going to tell the story as objectively as possible in order to get your reaction. BTW, I'm now 35 years old and an evidence-based scientific person. I work as an analyst for a large organization and deal with information, statistics, and numbers. I believe that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

This encounter occurred when I was about 8 years old while living in New Hampshire. At the time, my family was renting a renovated house that had been built in the 1700's. Some of the original house remained on the exterior. Admittedly an awesome place to live as a kid if you're the adventurous type. The property sat on 80 acres that included a large forest and a small pond about a mile back behind the house.

My dad, sister and I would often walk out to the pond, which entailed a 15-minute journey through the dense New England forest. We called the pond "Beaver Pond," owing to the many beavers that lived in the area. My sister is two years younger then I, so she was about 6 at the time.

One day, the three of us made our usual walk to the pond in the early evening. Soon after we arrived at the pond, for some reason I wanted to go back to the house. I don't believe it was anything unusual. Halfway along the pathway home, the forest had started to dim a bit and I got uncomfortable so I began to run. I'm not sure why I wasn't looking in front of me, I might have been glancing to the sides and back as my paranoia mounted, and suddenly 'BAM,' I ran into it. Shocked, I took a step back and this is what I remember seeing.

It was at least three times my height and stood on two legs. It was completely covered in long, gray-brown slightly matted hair. Not fur but hair, similar to a human's. I recall it looking like a sloth (especially the head) that was walking upright on hind legs, with very slow movements - almost as if it were moving in slow motion. I don't remember any facial features. Its 'arms' were held up, kind of like a kangaroo's front legs. I didn't sense any malice or aggression from the creature. If anything, I got the feeling that it was as surprised as I was. As soon as I got over my shock, I ran around it and continued running back to our house. I glanced back and saw it slowly turning its entire body around to look at me as I raced home.

A couple days ago I asked my mom if she remembered me telling her about the incident and she did, and added a couple of details. She said that I did describe a face and eyes watching me and that at some point it hid behind a tree to watch me. I don't recall this part.

Now, when I was 18 I was watching an episode of Unsolved Mysteries with my late father and a segment about a Sasquatch sighting came up. After the segment my dad told me that once, when we lived in New Hampshire, he took my sister in the family station wagon for a drive through the woods around our house. He said that at one point both he and my sister saw something brown race across the road in front of them. "At first, I thought it was a deer," he said. "But I quickly realized that it had a humanoid shape and stood on two legs, taking giant strides." I recently asked my sister about this and she remembers it well.

So, there you have it. I know all too well about the fallibility of memory and readily admit that there are a lot of inconsistencies, but I've documented exactly what I remember, no more or less. At the time of the encounter, I didn't know anything about ghosts, monsters or Bigfoot. I did however have an intense phobia of primate faces for the rest of my childhood, up until I hit adolescence. Some people have suggested I undergo regression hypnosis, but to be very honest I'm a little too afraid to. I can't shake the sense that there was more to the encounter that I can't remember or was somehow lost. There could be a perfectly normal explanation, in fact this is most likely. However, I haven't been able to come up with anything that makes sense, other than the whole thing being the overactive imagination of a child." RC