Donald J. Potts
I am the one that saw a large hairy creature riding between box cars listed in the first
paragraph above. See 1st comment here: Railroading Sasquatches
I was 15 years old and the year was 1975. At that time in my life, I grew up spending
every non-school hour possible outdoorsfishing in the summer and hunting in the winter
and use to love to rabbit hunt with my Beagles up and down all along the railroad tracks
in my area. The animal I saw was very huge and balled up so I could not see the face.
It had long auburn brown hair that glistened and blew in the sunlight/wind. At that
time back in 1975 it was mostly thought that bigfoots only lived in the deep woods of
the Pacific North West and Canada. I had heard stories of bigfoot sightings in IL, but I
too was skepticback then and if you said you saw one, you were ridiculed and chastised
for it.
Yellow highlight showing the location of Bond County, Illinois
Now that I am older (51) and much wiser and have researched all the information I can
find on them, I am very confident that both Stan Courtney and I saw a Bigfoot riding the
trains in Illinois. I know it sounds crazy as hell, but knowing what I knownow about them,
I no longer tell myself it was a huge dog, or an orangutan escaped from the St. Louis Zoo.
This is what I told myself all of these years because I had no other explanation for
what I had saw with my own eyes. My incident occurred in Bond County, IL out near the
heavily wooded areas near the Kaskaskia river bottoms.
I am now retired military and retired law enforcement. My entire career has been spent as
a trained observer and an investigator. I am not lying about what I saw since I have
nothing to gain by lying. If Stan or someone else sets up some cameras on tripods so they
can film the trains from both sides and both directions, it is only a matter of time when
this same incident can be captured by HD camcorder.
I urge others not to automatically jump to the conclusion that Stan was hoaxed. I know for
sure nobody hoaxed me back then. I think bigfoots are extremely intelligent, super strong,
and ninja like stealth masters. I now believe they do ride trains and I hope others will
prove it to everyone else by being the first to catch one riding the rails on 1080 HD video.
Once again, great report Stan.
Donald J. Potts
I suppose this business of hitching a ride on a freight train might have gotten started back during the 1930, the Depression Era when many 'hobos' were actually riding trains that way. This behavior could easily have been ovserved and the copied by sasquatch who may be continuing to do it to this day.
I wonder if one could put cameras to monitor the Keyesport causeway railroad track. That would be at the north end of Carlyle Lake in the vicinity of once was called "Boulder Bottoms". This is a fairly remote area.
Interesting concept Jim. I would imagine any area close to woods and has slower trains would be possible.
Wouldn't there be a danger of a train carrying a sasquatch into a metropolitan area though?
I can just imagine a train rolling into the Chicago Rail Yards and coming to a stop.
Maybe it is just something they do on in local area to stay hidden in the daytime while traversing open areas.