Two miles south of Sugar Creek Covered Bridge, and also along Sugar Creek  in southern Sangamon County, Illinois lies the little country cemetery known as Cumberland Sugar Creek Cemetery. On Saturday evening, June 25th, 2011 Jenny Lowery Bertoni and four friends arrived at around 10 p.m. to do a little ghosthunting.

The entrance to the cemetery in rural Sangamon County, Illinois

GPS Coordinates -39.6200, -89.6845

From a phone interview:

Jenny – There was five of us all together,  four girls and one guy. We just went out to look around. We had done our walk-through, we sat down in the drive-through along the rocky road under some trees. We were all sitting down in a horse-shoe shape.

Jenny - We heard this horrendous branches breaking. Our first instinct was that some deer had come through the forest into the cemetery though we didn’t see anything until we saw a really dark shadow, a really big dark shadow, and we heard really heavy footsteps. We couldn’t really see well, and the whole time we aren’t thinking anything except ghost.

Jenny - All of a sudden from behind, but way up high we all get pelted with these really big rocks and dirt. We all got hit in the head and the face and the body with the rocks and the dirt. And then we heard this horrendous shuffling noise and we were booking it to the car.

Stan – And what time of night was this.

Jenny – It was probably about 10 o’clock, it wasn’t very late.

Stan – And what did the shadow look like.

Jenny – It was large, just huge. We saw the shadow running through the cemetery from where we heard all the brush fall.

Stan – I have been in that cemetery several times, can you describe to me exactly where it was?

Jenny – Where you first pull in you can park right there. You can then turn to the right and start walking down that way. Straight ahead of you in that fence line, that brush area, is where he came out of and ran towards us.

Cumberland Sugar Creek Cemetery

# 1 – location where the witnesses were sitting when pelted with the rocks.
# 2 – area in which they heard the branch breaking and saw the large shadowy figure.

Stan – And when you say “shadow” do you mean”dark figure”?

Jenny – Yes, because it was so dark outside.

Stan – But you could see it’s figure.

Jenny – Yes, and it was big. It was at least seven feet tall, if not taller than that. He was running in the dark, we couldn’t see features. And we could hear it, it is like it’s feet were really heavy, he was making so much noise with every footstep as he would run.

Stan – I don’t think these animals are dangerous, but they do like to scare people.

Jenny – Well he certainly did that. The rocks and the dirt did not come from where we were, they were really big rocks. We were sitting in little white rocks. It sounded like he circled around behind us. The way the dirt and rocks came down it was right above us but yet back quite aways, so he had to be really tall to make that throw.

Stan – And were the rocks large?

Jenny – Oh yes, they left a big welt underneath one of the girls eyes. These weren’t huge rocks, they were just bigger than the rocks we were sitting in. The rocks we were sitting in were like little white driveway rocks and what was thrown at us was like rocks you would find in the dirt.

Jenny – Until my mom said that bigfoot likes to do that, it hadn’t even dawned on us that that is what we were dealing with.

Jenny – Before the rocks were thrown we did hear a growl of some kind, we didn’t know where it came from. It was a weird, very strong growl.  And that did happen right before we got hit with the rocks and dirt.

Stan – Thank you for allowing me to interview you about this interesting incident.

# 1 is Cumberland Sugar Creek Cemetery showing its proximity to Sugar Creek.

When looking on a satellite map of this location one is immediately struck by how open the country is. As in many areas of Illinois this is farm country, large fields of corn and soybeans bisected by wooded creeks.