Bigfoot in Texas



Bigfoot sightings in Texas

If you think Bigfoot is only in the northwest states of America, you would be wrong. There have been sightings reported in every state except Hawaii. One of the area's with the most sightings is the nearly 12-million acre "Piney Woods" region in East Texas. Stretching from the Gulf Coast all the way up to Texarkana in the northeast corner, this huge strip of land contains four national forests, five state forests, and accounts for almost all of the state's commercial timber.

It is also home to one of the first documented sightings in history - the strange case of "The Wild Woman of Navidad." This story was recounted in the "Legends of Texas" book published by the Texas Folklore Society in 1924. The creature was described as covered in brown hair and was very fast. She eluded capture because the horses were so afraid of the strange creature that they could not be urged within reach of the lasso. The events occurred in 1837 in the Texas settlements of the lower Navidad. Mysterious barefoot tracks were seen frequently in the area for years. There are Native American legends dating back hundreds of years that describe tribes of giants that were hair-covered and lived in the woods.

In 1965, there was a spike in sightings reported by a number of people living in several small, rural towns located deep in the woods. One of the first of these came from an encounter in a cemetery just outside the town of Kountz.

At that time, there was a group of students at Kountz High School who called themselves the Rat Finks. There sure wasn't much for teenagers to do in the small, isolated town so on weekends they would amuse themselves by going "booger hunting," their name for running around in scary places looking for a boogeyman. One night they took a prospective new member of their group to their favorite place, the Old Hardin cemetery located in the woods a couple of miles outside of town. On that night though, they got more than they bargained for.

The Talking Angel

There is a gravestone in Old Hardin cemetery that has a statue of an angel pointing at the heavens. The Rat Finks called it the Talking Angel and would take the prospective club members to the cemetery in the dark of night to ask it questions. The legend they had made up was that if the angel did not answer you, you were doomed!

On this particular night though, with the half-moon providing just enough light to cast shadows, their ceremony was cut short by an eerie figure racing across the cemetery grounds. It ran into a maintenance shed, turning over cans, tossing equipment around, and generally just making a noisy ruckus for a few seconds. The figure came out of the shed and before running away as fast as they could, each of the kids got a good look at the boogeyman. To their horror, it was a huge, hairy apelike creature! One of the few girls in the Rat Finks, Sharon Gossett, let out a scream and when she did, the boogeyman turned to look at them. That was all they needed to beat feet out of there and jump in their car.

After driving back toward town for a couple of miles and regaining their wits, the teens realized that if they ever told anyone about  their experience, they would be accused of having overactive imaginations, so they went to Sharon's aunt's house and persuaded her to return with them to the cemetery for another look and to verify their sighting.

Closer look at the
Talking Angel.

Sure enough, as they pulled into the graveyard entrance, the car's headlights illuminated the creature standing on two legs at the edge of the woods on the other side of the small cemetery. The aunt later described it as being about 7 feet tall and covered with hair like an ape. The creature disappeared into the trees as the aunt and the teenagers got out of the car with several flashlights. After looking into the shed and verifying for herself the disarray of the contents, they were heading back to the car when they heard rustling noises. Their flashlights illuminated the creature which was now back inside the fenced cemetery. As they ran to the car, the boogeyman followed them, loping on all fours alongside them.

After speeding away, the horrified aunt made the kids drive her straight back to her home. Fearing she would be reluctant to verify the kid's account, they then found an adult male to go back with them. After carefully looking all around the cemetery and in the woods along the fence line and seeing nothing, the adult man was getting mad thinking the kids were playing a trick on him. Wanting to show him how the contents of the maintenance shed had been thrown around, they were walking toward it when the beast once again walked out of the shed's door. This time the creature quickly ran away in the opposite direction, leaped over the fence in one bound and into the woods. It was a good thing it did as after seeing the boogeyman, the brave adult male passed out on the spot from sheer fright!

Later, the grandmother of one of the Rat Finks told the kids she remembered hearing of similar sightings near Old Hardin in the Cypress Creek bottoms when she was a child.

Although there is not yet factual proof for the existence of a Bigfoot creature, it's hard to fully dismiss all of the stories and reported sightings. New creatures are routinely being found in the oceans and jungles of the world; strange creatures which have never been seen until now, living and even thriving in places and environments we assumed could never support life. Would it be that much of a surprise to find a species living off the land alongside creeks, streams, and ponds deep in the sparsely inhabited woods of America? Surviving members of the Rat Fink club still swear - the boogeyman is out there!

Aurora, TX. - UFO Crashes Into Windmill - Alien Buried In Local Cemetery



Cigar-shaped UFO

In 1896 & early 1897, more than six years before Orville Wright made his first flight of 12 seconds covering 120 feet, thousands of sightings of a cigar-shaped flying object were reported from California to Michigan and then down to Texas. Witnesses gave the same general description, sometimes with two lights, sometimes with none, in daylight and at night, hundreds of feet in the air, making right-angle turns and even stopping in mid-air and reversing course. On April 17, 1897, according to reports, a cigar-shaped flying machine suffered a malfunction and, trailing smoke, crashed into a windmill in the tiny town of Aurora, Texas. Afterwards, reports of seeing the UFO dropped off dramatically.

Witnesses at the time said the spaceship exploded upon impact with the windmill and the largest piece of debris hit a large tree with smaller pieces scattered across several acres. In the debris was found pieces of strange metal inscribed with hieroglyphics and the body of the pilot, a small child-sized humanoid. Although the body was badly torn up, it was evident it was a being "not of this world."

Entrance of Aurora Cemetery

The kind, rural folks buried the alien in a grave in the local cemetery underneath a tree and marked the spot with a small hand-made headstone inscribed with the outline of a cigar-shaped airship containing windows.

On April 19th, a small article appeared on page 5 in the Dallas Morning News. It read:
"About 6 o'clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around the country. It was traveling due north and much nearer the earth than before.

"Evidently some of the machinery was out-of-order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour, and gradually settling toward the earth. It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor's windmill and went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge's flower garden.

"The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world."

Texas State Historical Marker at the
Aurora Cemetery

Over the next few weeks, the debris was removed and the farmers went on with their lives. The story was basically forgotten until May 24, 1973, when newspapers around the country published a United Press International account of the story. Within days, the alien's headstone was stolen and on several occasions, intruders were run off from the cemetery by police or, in some cases, local residents armed with their shotguns. The state of Texas declared the area a State Historical Spot and erected a Historical Marker, but eventually, things died down again and Aurora returned to being the small, quiet, rural little town it has been for over 100 years. In 2000, the town's people, utilizing memory and existing pictures, replaced the stolen headstone on the alien's grave.

Alien grave?

Is the story true or was it all just a hoax? The mystery remains.

When I visited recently, I found the residents living across the street from the cemetery to still be wary, watchful, and protective. Parking by the front gate, several dogs began barking as soon as I exited my truck and an elderly lady came out onto her porch to watch me. I waved to her and I think she nodded in return, but I was far enough away that I couldn't be sure. She watched me for a few minutes and then went inside her house and opened the curtains in a front window. About 10 minutes later, a police car slowly cruised by, but didn't stop. I was dressed in good jeans and a pullover shirt and carried nothing in my hands except my camera so I guess I passed his inspection.

Alien's headstone?

The cemetery was very well-kept and pretty with fields of Bluebonnets. It took a while to find the alien's grave. I finally figured out the corner containing the oldest graves and concentrated my search there. Eventually I found what I was looking for. It had been easy to miss because the marker is small and there are no other graves within about 10 feet of it. All of the other graves were next to each other in the normal layout. It was as if nobody had wanted their kin buried next to the alien.

I had been roaming around the cemetery for about an hour and nobody else came in. There had even been very few cars pass on the road, but I still felt like I was being watched the whole time. I'm sure the old lady across the street never took her eyes off me. It wasn't a scary feeling, it wasn't like that "somethings not right, I better be on alert" feeling you sometimes get when you are by yourself in an unfamiliar place; just that general feeling of having someone's eyes on you. I noticed the police car slowly cruise by again, but by then, I was already on my way out. I waved at the policeman and received a small wave of his hand in return, but no smile. I could almost hear the thoughts in his head saying, "It doesn't appear you are here with harmful intent and you are not breaking any laws, but I'm keeping my eye on you just the same." I didn't hang around to see him come back a third time.

I don't know if there's anything in the "alien" grave or not; don't know if the tale is true or not, but either way, it's an interesting story.
 

Philip Work - Civil War Hero Beat The Odds



Philip A. Work shortly after the
Civil War.

Philip Alexander Work, lawyer, Confederate soldier and arguably, the luckiest man to ever go to war, was born in Cloverport, Kentucky, on February 17, 1832. The son of John and Frances, Philip moved with his parents to Velasco, Texas, in 1838 and then to Town Bluff, Texas, where John established a plantation.

In 1853, Philip was admitted to the bar in Woodville. He then enlisted and served with the rank of first sergeant for four months in Capt. John George Walker's Company B, Mounted Battalion of Texas Volunteers protecting the Texas frontier from Indian attacks. After surviving several skirmishes, Philip and the rest of the surviving volunteers were mustered into the regular United States Army. After serving uneventfully for several years, he was honorably discharged and returned to Texas.

In 1861, Philip was one of the two delegates from Tyler County to the Secession Convention, but before the convention reconvened on March 2, he resigned to raise a company of Texas militia known as the Woodville Rifles. The company was mustered into the Confederate Army at New Orleans in May 1861 and became Company F of the First Texas Infantry Regiment, Hood's Texas Brigade. By the beginning of 1862, Philip and his men would be in Virginia and almost continuously right in the middle of the most intensive, bloodiest battles of the war.

During the year 1862 alone, Philip and the brigade would engage the enemy in 24 battles, sustaining a causality rate of over 60%. Due to his leadership abilities, the appalling number of casualties suffered by both the enlisted men and the officers and the fact that he miraculously came through each engagement with hardly a scratch, Philip rose steadily in rank, receiving battlefield promotions almost every month until he became the regimental commander on June 27 during the battle of Gaines' Mill after Col. Alexis T. Rainey was seriously wounded. Afterwards, Philip commanded the First Texas Infantry in the battles of Malvern Hill, Freeman's Ford, Thoroughfare Gap, Second Manassas, Boonesboro Gap, Sharpsburg, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg. By the end of the war, of the approximately 4,400 men who served in Hood’s Texas Brigade, only 600 remained and the unit would go down in history as one of the hardest fighting and most well-known and respected units of the Civil War.

At Sharpsburg, Philip’s regiment suffered 81% casualties, the greatest percentage of losses sustained by any regiment, Union or Confederate, in a single day of fighting during the war. Of the 226 men he began with that morning, only 44 were still alive by nightfall. His post-battle report is considered one of the most poignant, yet straightforward accounts of the war. At least 8 men had been killed carrying the company’s flag during the fighting and it was lost as he and the handful of survivors retreated through a corn field. When they emerged from the field and he discovered the flag was not with them, he ran back desperately trying to locate it, but only made it into the rows of corn a few yards before encountering a wall of Yankees. He was forced to return without the flag, running through the field as corn stalks all around were cut down by the musket balls being fired at him. In his report, he wrote, “It is a source of mortification to state that, upon retiring from the engagement, our colors were not brought off. I can but feel that some degree of odium must be attached… the loss of our flag will always remain a matter of sore and deep regret.”

Philip was promoted to the command of Hood's Brigade on the third day of the battle of Gettysburg. Although having never been physically wounded during any battle, he became ill on September 18, 1863, the day before the battle of Chickamauga and had to be evacuated to a hospital. He resigned as lieutenant colonel of the First Texas Infantry on November 12, 1863. At that time, he was simply diagnosed with “fatigue.” Today, he would most probably be diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (PTSD). After dozens of battles, a number of them requiring hand-to-hand fighting, witnessing hundreds of men die horrible deaths or sustaining disfiguring wounds following his orders, personally killing an unknown number of the enemy, seeing the effects of war every day for over a year, and the stress of almost constant battle, every day waking up never knowing if that day would be his last, nothing else could be expected.

He returned to Texas in late 1863, but just 8 months later, raised and commanded a company in Col. David Smith Terry's Texas Cavalry regiment. Returning to the war, Philip fought in battles in Kentucky and Tennessee under Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. His company of men fought in numerous skirmishes as part of the forces under Gen. Joe Johnston that attempted to slow Sherman’s "march to the sea" during the final months of the war. Philip and the remaining Terry’s Rangers delivered what was probably the last charge of the Army of Tennessee at the battle of Bentonville (March 19–20, 1865). Rather than surrender with the rest of Johnston's army at Durham Station, North Carolina, on April 26, 1865, Philip and 157 of the 248 survivors of the regiment slipped through Union lines to join other Confederates that were still in the field. At the actual end of the war, the few remaining Rangers, including Philip, drifted home as individuals and in small groups, having never officially surrendered. 

With the exception of Hood’s Texas Brigade, the Eighth Texas Cavalry was probably the best-known Texas unit to serve in the Civil War. It earned a reputation that ranked it among the most effective mounted regiments in the western theater of operations. Against all odds, against all reason, Philip Work not only survived, but remained virtually unharmed through dozens of battles while serving with two of the most infamous combat units in the Civil War.

Philip Work's simple grave marker.

Work returned to Texas and resumed his law practice in Woodville. After 1874, he lived in Hardin County, Texas, where he became well-known as a land lawyer and the owner of the steamboat Tom Parker, which navigated the Neches River. Late in his life, he wrote several accounts of his wartime experiences, but unfortunately, only fragments of these manuscripts have been preserved.

Philip A. Work died on March 17, 1911, and was buried in Hardin Cemetery in Kountz, Texas, a very rural, quiet graveyard. Rest in peace, Philip, rest in peace.