A college student attending Indiana University moved into an "A" Frame house in the fall of 1983, that was located on Low Gap Road which bordered Morgan-Monroe State Forest. The home sat off the road far enough you could easily drive right by it.

One evening he was visited by a couple of students that had stopped by to celebrate the start of the school year and what ever else occasion that would give them the excuse to drink a lot of alcohol. About 1:30AM the young man that lived in the house decided to walk out on his deck to take a look at the full moon that was lighting up the forest.  The moon was so bright it seemed like you could see every rock, tree, and blade of grass that made up the forest floor. He saw an opossum that was waddling thru the underbrush heading towards his trash can. 

As he looked down the trail that ran down the back of his house he thought he could see someone walking on the trail and they seemed to be heading towards his home. He squatted down and watched to see if he could make out who it might be. As the figure came closer, he noted this person was huge and it looked like a football player wearing a fur coat. Then he thought, it is too warm to be wearing a fur coat.

As the student watched this figure, he recognized this is not a person, because it is too big, it had no neck and the walk was unusual it. The figure did not really swing its arms a great deal. And the arms were very long and the stride was not human like at all. Panicked, he ran into the house and told his guests to lock themselves in the back bedroom because they were about to be visited by something and he did not know what it was.

The student went to his gun cabinet and pulled out machine gun that was a part of his collection. He loaded the gun and walked out his back door. At first he did not see anything in the darkness then he looked to his side and he could see a huge black shape standing at the edge of the forest. It was about thirty feet away. With out any hesitation he started shooting and sprayed the shape with several bullets from the gun. It seemed to slip into the woods and he could hear it crashing thru the heavy undergrowth. He ran back into the house and announced to his guest that he had shot someone or something and to stay in the bedroom. The two guests said that when they heard the shots, something ran by their window, which was located on the other side of the house. The man told his guest that they would wait for daylight and then they would look for a body. They told him that they were not going to look for anything and they were going to leave.

He thought that if he had shot & killed a human that he was going to bury it in the forest and not tell anyone. At daylight he walked out of the house and he started looking for the spot where the shape was standing. He saw several shell casings lying on the ground and he could see where the grass was mashed down from something very big standing on it. He also saw where it ran through the underbrush and the trail was very easy to follow. The trail headed down a ravine and all of a sudden it joined a very well established trail that followed the ridge behind his home.

The trail would go straight and all of a sudden it would make a really weird jog. This occurred several times and when he got to looking and he realized that every time it did it there was a really low hanging limb. His conclusion that what ever was using this trail it was so tall that instead of ducking underneath the limb it was simply walking around it.

The trail stopped at the top of the ridge behind his home and at the end of the trail there was a bare spot on the ground about 20 feet in diameter. In the dust and mud there were several human like footprints, different sizes. One print was easily over 20 inches long.

Looking around, he figured that whoever was standing on this bare spot had a perfect view of his home and whoever stood in this spot could also see everything coming and going from his home. He never found a body.

Larry Battson, Wildlife Educational Services, Inc.  2007

”…it bothers me that this informant allegedly fired an automatic weapon (the report states it was a “machine gun”) at something he couldn’t clearly identify and then thinking he had killed someone, he waits until morning??! And at no time phoning the police for help!?! - Why didn’t the informant call out to the dark figure he ultimately shot at repeatedly then did nothing until daybreak? –Maybe his automatic weapon was illegal.


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