Posted: 28 Apr 2022 08:50 AM PDT

A well-respected senior geologist comes forwards with a Bigfoot encounter and white orbs account that he and his father experienced while researching in the Book Cliffs in Utah.

I recently received the following account:

“I took a good friend/colleague to lunch a couple weeks ago. A few minutes into our conversation, I began telling him about a project that I had been managing in a remote area of central/eastern Utah called the Book Cliffs. This is a large geographical region with almost no full-time human inhabitants. The area is mostly a semi-arid to arid plateau crisscrossed by deep canyons, but, there are also some moderately tall mountains (8,000 to 9,000 feet high) covered by fairly expansive pinion pine, spruce, and even aspen forests.

My friend is one of the most respected and senior geologists in the state of Utah. He’s a very disciplined scientist and researcher, and an incredibly logical thinker. He’s an amazing guy, but, there isn’t a single particle of superstition or irrationality in his body. You might imagine my surprise, then, when instead of asking me about the details of the project he asks:

“Have you seen anything strange out there, yet?”

I asked him what he meant by “strange”, and expected him to say something like “gem bearing pegmatites” or “fully articulated Elasmosaurus remains.” Instead, he said, “Like bigfoot, or UFO’s.”

I laughed out loud. I was positive he was joking. This guy is famous in the local geology community for his totally dry sense of humor. I was sure he was yanking my chain. I expected him to eventually crack a smile, but, he didn’t. He just sat there stone-faced. Then, after a few moments of what appeared to be serious hesitation, he began telling me a story that I would have known was complete fiction had it been told by just about any other person I have ever known.

His story took place when he was 16 years old. His father, a prominent local geologist, had won a small contract to map and explore a fairly large tract of wilderness within the Book Cliffs area.

Naturally, my friend was conscripted as free (or nearly free) labor to help his father and his uncle complete the project over the course of what they assumed would be an entire summer. As the youngest, fittest member of the troop, my friend was often told to hike up and down ridges, into and out of deep boxed canyons, and over and around mountains, all with a large surveyors stick in one hand, and a heavy 1960’s vintage arm surplus walkie-talkie in the other so that his grandfather and uncle could record elevations at key points in the topography. He often found himself bushwhacking through thick juniper, pinion pine and aspen forests, several miles off of any trail, hundreds of yards away from his father and uncle. He said he felt like someone or something was around nearly all the time, but just out of site.

A few days into the job, my friend and his little group returned to their camp at the end of the day to find it had been totally ransacked. They all assumed it had been done by bears, tidied up, and thought very little more about it.

The next day, my friend was told to bushwhack to the bottom of a deep, wooded ravine while his father and uncle remained at the top. He stood in an opening in the base of the ravine, holding his surveyors stick for a measurement when he heard something big making its way through the timber somewhere downhill from him.

He looked a couple hundred yards down the ravine and saw what looked at that distance like, “a big bearded man wearing brown buckskin trousers and a buckskin shirt – the kind with long leather strings hanging from the arms and legs,” making his way through the trees away from him. He watched the man for a moment, but had to take his eyes off him or a few minutes in order to concentrate on his job. When he had a moment to look towards the man again, he had disappeared.

When he got to the top of the ravine again, my friend asked his dad and uncle if they had seen the man. They hadn’t, but they claimed to have heard something move through the timber and brush near the bottom of the ravine as my friend began hiking. Of course, both of the older men seemed totally unconcerned. My friend, however, was totally creeped out by the idea of some weird dude wandering around a place as remote as the Book Cliffs on foot, and dressed from head to toe in buckskin.

They went back to their camp that night and were awoken by howling and sticks being thrown at their tent. They fired a few shots into the air and whatever it was stopped and appeared to flee on foot.

A couple weeks went by without incident. Then, one morning my friend found himself hiking up the side of a mountain, in a fairly dense pine stand. As he approached the summit, he heard something crash through trees in front of him. He assumed it was probably a deer or an elk, so he kept going without caution. As he broke out of the stand, he saw a large man moving quickly up the side of the mountain about a hundred yards ahead of him.

At first glance he thought it was the same man that he had seen wearing brown buckskin. At that closer range, though, he could see that it wasn’t buckskin with strings hanging from its arms and legs. It was long, brown hair. He said he couldn’t believe his eyes, and that he might not to this day had his father’s voice not crackled over the old walkie-talkie, telling him to head back the way he had come, that they had seen it too. Needless to say, he didn’t need to be asked twice.

They were there in the Book Cliffs for another couple months but never saw the man/creature again. He’s been back to the area countless times hoping in vain to spot whatever it was again.

He said that in addition to his Bigfoot sightings, they also saw strange white orbs at night. He said that they would float up and down the high ridges for hours at a time, but none of them ever came closer than a few hundred yards. He says he has seen this several times since.

In any event, I thought it was very strange to hear such an unbelievable story from such an incredibly believable character.” CM

Phantoms & Monsters