This part of this story is more difficult for me to write. Let me preface this by saying that I’m a spiritual person, so believing in angels, demons, and prophetic or meaningful dreams is easier for me to do than someone who believes only in science.
I don’t say this to bash science. In fact, I respect science, but I think there’s more this world has to offer than science currently acknowledges.
Let me also preface this by following up with my previous post. I reported that I found strands of dark hair in a tree in the forest. I happened to find them where I saw juvenile Bigfoot thirty years ago. I contacted Dr. Jeff Meldrum, and he emailed me back the same day. He wanted to see the hair under a slide, and he also mentioned that the width of the strands seemed varied, suggesting that it wasn’t hair, but perhaps organic.
Pondering this, I did some online research, and I found out about a fungus called horsehair fungus. It grows in tropical and subtropical environments such as the one we experience every sweltering summer in Southeast Texas. This fungus looks like horsehair. After scanning through many images of this horsehair fungus, I now believe that’s exactly what I found. Not Bigfoot hair, but fungus. My twelve-year-old niece happened to find some “hair” on the second day of our exploration, and I don’t have the heart to tell her yet. Eventually.
So that’s the bad news. But the story doesn’t end there.
My trip down to Texas also included a Christmas gathering with my mom’s side of our family. Apparently, some of my cousins must have read my account, because one of my cousins had an account of her own.
My cousin Lana recounted a story which I found particularly interesting. She remembers being a young teenager and helping her dad out on the farm where I grew up. This would’ve been in the late 1970s. She remembers working with her dad out in the same field near the forest where I had my encounter.
They heard wood knocks in the forest. When she mentioned it to her dad, he didn’t react in a way she expected, which, she told me, is why she was able to so clearly remember the event. After hearing the wood knocks, her dad told her to ignore them. When she pressed him, arguing that maybe there was someone out in the woods who needed help, he expressly forbade her from going out to look. She said he clammed up and didn’t want to discuss it, like he was afraid. If you knew my Uncle Larkin, you would know that fear wasn’t an emotion you saw on him. Ever.
After returning to the barn, Lana felt strangely compelled to go out to the forest, almost as if something were pulling her there.
She went as far as the fence line, then stopped, remembered what her dad had said, and went back to the barn with him.
That’s the extent of her story. Uncle Larkin sadly passed away years ago. But as she was telling me about her experience, all I could think about was a dream I had a few years ago. I remember in my dream feeling lost. I remember thinking about seeing the young Bigfoot as a teenager and feeling like maybe I was crazy. Had I really seen it? If so, why hadn’t anyone else? There were two generations of families living on that same property. How was it that I had an encounter and no one else?
These were my worries as I went to sleep that night, and then, in my dream, Uncle Larkin paid me a visit. I told him, “You’re not going to believe this, but I saw Bigfoot.”
In my dream, I was hesitant to tell him. He was a hardened cowboy and an English professor. He was a kind man in that stern, old-fashioned, tough love sort of way. Lana told me that when Uncle Larkin was younger, he would spend days out in the woods. He’d saddle up a horse and sleep under the stars. He was a quiet person and kept things to himself.
I was a little embarrassed to tell him, to be honest, which is why I felt shocked when he told me, “Yes, I saw it, too.”
I remember that dream with clarity. It stayed with me. So, when Lana told me about her experience, the dream came full circle. She was certain, as was I, that I wasn’t the only one in the family to see it.
I want to follow up this post with another, because I finally found the courage to contact my parents’ neighbors who now live near the spot where I had my encounter. And…I had another dream…
Circa 1952.
L to R Back Row- Grandpa Vernon Franklin, Grandmama Millie Franklin, Larkin, Mavy
L to R Front Row- Jane, Larry, Joan
Jane is my mother and Uncle Larkin was her oldest brother.