Inky Presents: the Bigfoot Story

I'm continuing the 31 days of Halloween theme by telling you a spooky story. And it's up to you do decide a) if you believe I'm telling you a true story or b) if I'm a complete crackpot. Here goes....

Inky Presents: The Bigfoot Myth

It was a warm November evening in 2001. My then-husband Dan and I were relaxing in the hot tub at my parents' house after dinner. When we were relaxed and pruney, we shut off the jets and climbed out of the tub. There was no other sound outside, which was odd. There should have been something. Then, piercing the silence, was the most blood-curdling wail I've ever heard. No human vocal chords could have made this sound, and yet it was not an animal's cry either.

After the wail ended, every dog in the area began barking and howling as if they were scared to be outside. We hurried into the house and told my parents what we heard, but they didn't hear anything inside the house. Dad is so hard of hearing he has the television turned up almost to its maximum. A car bomb could have gone off under the living room window and Dad wouldn't have heard it. 

In January, 2002, Dan and I packed up our meager belongings and prepared to move back to our most recent hometown of Billings, Mt. With my back injury, I was completely useless for helping to load the truck. We got very creative. Dan would pick up one end of a table and hand it to me, then go get the other end of the table and we walked it out to the truck. In the process of cartwheeling the couch out to the truck, we once again experienced the complete uncharacteristic silence of the neighborhood. No birds chirping. Not even the wind rustling through the evergreen boughs. This time, the silence was broken by footsteps. They weren't particularly heavy footsteps, but they were definitely made by a biped. No dog or deer or rabbit made this noise on the grass. It started on the north end of the grass and sounded as if it disappeared into the back yard. We hurried after the sound, but found nothing and no one.

The house in question is still there, and the neighborhood hasn't changed much. No more land has been cleared and no new houses have been built. So whatever was living in the woods, howling in the night and sneaking around by day, hasn't been pushed out by development. Begs the questions: what was it?... Is it still there?