About this episode
Bigfoot Shot in the Chest In this reflective memoir, a man recounts his grandfather Calvin's life as a skilled woodsman and hunter born in 1886 in rural Florida. After losing his logging job in the 1929 crash, Calvin became a sharecropper during the Great Depression, relying on a mule and wagon for transport. One moonlit night in Lafayette County, while walking home through sparse woods, Calvin spotted a massive, silent figure—taller and broader than any man—at a road intersection. Recognizing it as neither human nor known animal (ruling out bears or locals), he halted, challenged it to identify itself, and, receiving no response, fired two close-range shots from his .38 Special revolver into its chest. The creature, unfazed and painless, simply walked upright into the woods like a man. The next morning, Calvin and armed neighbors searched but found no tracks, blood, or signs; no reports of shootings emerged, leaving the incident unsolved. The narrator, born in 1937, grew up farming and hunting (squirrels at 10, turkeys for 64 years), served in the Army, and became a Tallahassee police officer. A lifelong skeptic of Bigfoot lore—dismissing amateur "researchers," unexplained woods sounds (attributed to hogs), hoax-prone reports with inconsistent descriptions, and claims of bulletproof creatures (countered by high-powered rifles)—he questions the "watched" sensation as fear-induced. Yet, he ponders his grandfather's impeccable character: an honest, hardened man with nothing to gain from fabricating a tale that risked his reputation and livelihood in tough times. Neighbors' belief, shown by joining the search, bolsters this. Ultimately, the narrator concludes Calvin told the truth about encountering an enormous, bipedal, otherworldly being impervious to gunfire. Though a healthy skeptic who needs to "see is believing," he admits: if Bigfoot exists, he'd rather not encounter one. Join my Supporters Club for $4.99 per month for exclusive stories: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/what-if-it-s-true-podcast--5445587/support