I have a friend on Facebook by the username of  Rolo Tumasi. He prefers to use this username vs his real name for business reasons. I have spoken with him over the years about his encounters in Southern Illinois.  An avid hunter and outdoorsman he is very alert and has both excellent hearing and night vision. Although he has had previous encounters and several sightings the intensity of what he has been experiencing in his local hunting area has intensified over the past year.

I spent most of the day and night of the 19th and morning of the 20th of March 2012 at his research site in Southern Illinois. We arrived at his hunting camp at about 10:30 in the morning and spent the rest of the day hiking in the woods. We walked down a long ridge and left one of my long term audio recording systems and essentially wanted to make our presence known to the local residents.

Rolo Tumasi,  kneeling next to the 26 1/2 inch left footprint.

Photographs never do justice to what a foot print actually looks like unless the print was in mud. This print being in soil along the road was a lot better than if it had been in leaf litter but still left a lot to desire.

After dark we walked the mile down the road and through the woods to an overlook along the ridge. Our goal was entice the local sasquatch, if they were in the area this particular night, to make their presence known by hopefully vocalizing.

You can click on the following link to listen to Rolo’s narrative as to our experience that evening and the track find the following morning. The first 4 minutes are from the evening and then last 15 minutes are from the next morning.

Click here to listen to this sound clip:  Southern Illinois Giant

Basically we did a series of wood knocks, waited ten minutes and did some more wood knocks. We could hear not responses but while returning along the narrow ridge we got that uneasy feeling of being followed, heard movement besides us and Rolo saw eyeshine to our side as we were coming out of the woods.

Yellow highlight showing the location of Alexander County, Illinois

While walking down a gravel road half-way back to camp Rolo turned quickly around and saw a large upright figure dash across the road.

About 5 minutes later we heard a few unusual frog-like sounds off to our left side that I thought was a preliminary vocal from Southern Leopard Frog. We stopped and listened but the vocal stopped immediately. It was odd because although we had lots of Spring Peepers there were no other frogs in the area and where this particular vocal was on a very steep hillside. Not evidence of anything but certainly an odd sound that was out of place.

We spent the night in the campsite with nothing unusual happening and while leaving the next morning we stopped at the location where Rolo had seen the figure dashing across the road. Rolo found what appeared to be a 26 and 1/2 inch long left footprint pressed into soil along the approach to the road.  The size of the footprint was shocking and something I would not have accepted if I had not been present when the creature both ran across the road the previous evening and seen the print when it was found and measured.

The measurement of the total length of 26 1/2 inches.

Although in the photo it appears the tape measure is not laying properly we checked the print multiple times to make sure everything was accurate.

End of the tape showing the 26 1/2 length measurement.

End of the tape showing the 10 inch width of the ball of the foot measurement.

End of the tape showing the 7  inch width of the heel of the foot measurement.

So just how big was this ‘big boy”. I really don’t want to guess. But if 18 inch prints belong to a  7  or 8 foot tall sasquatch how tall would one with a foot measurement of
26 1/2 inches be?  Perhaps 11 or 12 foot tall? No one knows.

A final thank you to Rolo Tumasi and his wife for opening up their home to myself and showing me their special camping area.  And as to why the increase in activity? I think that is because Rolo has been spending 2 or 3 days a week hiking the woods and getting to know the wildlife and terrain. The sasquatch perhaps have come to realize that he means them no harm.

The breeding season for Red Fox is January in Central Illinois. And that is when they are the most vocal.

Photo courtesy nancyjwagner

The following sound clip is an amalgamation of  four clips recorded during January of 2012. It was recorded using a Sound Devices 722 Field Recorder and Telinga Parabolic Microphone. The recorder was left running continuously from the patio of our home here in Central Illinois. The foxes run up and down the little valley  that our house overlooks.

Click here to listen to this sound clip:  Red Fox Vocalizations – January 2012

Waveform view and spectral view of  Red Fox Vocalizations.

The wolf was a common animal in most European Countries in the pre-modern era and made it’s way into much of the folklore. We have stories about the Big Bad Wolf, Little Red Riding Hood and of course the Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Illustration by Francis Barlow (1687)  -  Wikimedia Commons

In the United States the Gray Wolf was a problem with ranchers and farmers until it was almost exterminated in the last century. Today it has made somewhat of a comeback and is mainly found in Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. Although there have been occasional reports in Illinois I am unaware of any proven unlike Mountain Lions which bodies have been recovered.

My main endeavor is nature recording and as such I am always interested in what people are hearing in the woods or rural areas of Illinois.

The 4th of April, 2005 I recorded some unusual howls near Pawnee, Illinois. I labelled them the Illinois Howl.  I was convinced that they were not coyotes and took them to a neighbor of mine who has raised coon hounds for 30 years and spends more time in the woods at night than any one I know.  His statement was “That sound is not a coyote, I don’t know what it is, perhaps it is a wolf.”

I submitted the sound on a lot of hunting forums.  I had several readers who contacted me privately and stated that they had heard the sound while coyote hunting and always explained it as being a different sounding coyote or perhaps a wolf.

Recently I spoke with an individual from Eastern Illinois who has been hearing what he termed a “very low mournful howl, perhaps from a wolf.” He listened to the Illinois Howl Illinois Howl on my website and exclaimed “that is the sound exactly.” Hopefully with the landowners help we can get a good quality recording.

So what we are left with is several people who say they are hearing sounds that match the Illinois Howl Illinois Howl. Those reports include Oregon, Washington, Colorado and Illinois.

And each time the listeners say that the sound does not appear to be a coyote but deeper, more like a wolf. Are these sounds actually not from a coyote or wolf but perhaps instead from a sasquatch? We can never be for sure without a video verifying the sounds. In each of the areas where this sound has been reported there has also been suspected sasquatch activity.

I am always amazed at how “close in” sasquatch appear to come to people, whether it is in campgrounds, vehicles or homes.

Summer 2006 – Mason County, Illinois

The summer of 2006 I was contacted by a witness who lived close to the Illinois River in Mason County, Illinois.  Her husband worked evenings and nothing unusual happened at her home until after her husband would arrive at home.

Clipart courtesy clker.com

They liked to watch TV in their bedroom before they retired for the evening. They started to hear movement and unusual sounds coming from outside their bedroom window.  This would happen periodically and went on for several months.

One evening they became aware of something outside their window again. So, the husband slipped out to the kitchen and on cue he flipped on the outside lights as his wife looked out the window. They saw the culprit, a very large seven foot bipedal animal quickly moving away from the house.

Their answer to the problem was to put aluminum foil completely over the window, preventing any light from being seen outside the window and also prevented any peeping Tom’s from looking in.  It was their opinion that the TV, which hung on the wall of the bedroom was an attractant.

October 2011 – Chatham, Illinois

I was contacted early Summer 2011 by a witness who felt that he was having occasional bigfoot activity. Odd smells, odd sounds and a frightened dog were part of the scenario. I started a recording project at his home and advised him that finding a good footprint would be the best evidence.

In October 2011 he contacted me again. He was very excited and related to me how he believed something was outside his living room window. He had Venetian blinds, the vertical type, and believed something was watching his TV. From where the witness was sitting in his living room he could not see out the window. The next morning he found a large (18 inch) footprint in his freshly worked flower bed outside his window. Please see – New Footprints Along Sugar Creek.

November  –  December 2011 – Central Illinois

I have lived in my present home since early 2009. Although I have heard lots of unusual vocals I had never heard anything up close until recently. However, that all began to change mid-November.

Please see the following posts for all the files:

Voices In The Woods – Pt. 1 

Voices In The Woods – Pt. 2 

Voices In The Woods – Pt. 3 

This past year we had a sliding glass door installed on our deck and had three windows replaced with much larger units. It opened up our view but also made our living room very visible to anything that is outside doing the nighttime. My wife now laughingly refers to our home as the “Tree House”.

The sounds that I think are the most remarkable are:

Soundclip # 1:  this sounds like someone laughing. Actually I wonder if something is mimicking me watching sitcoms on TV.

Soundclip # 2: another laughter, this time in the rain.

Soundclip # 3: this sounds like a muffled conversation. Again I am wondering if this is mimicking of what is on TV.

In all these cases we have something that is approaching a house and appears to be interested in what is going on in the living rooms while the families are watching TV. One family had  a sighting, one family found a footprint and the last family recorded sounds.

I assembled a couple of charts to show both sounds that I have recorded and a chart showing comments I have received from others in Illinois thought to have experienced some type of sasquatch activity during 2011.

The first chart, is strictly my recordings of possible sounds or experiences.

2011 – The Year In Review – My Sounds, etc.  

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The second chart is comments of possible activity from Illinois. A lot of them are 2nd hand reports or Class C reports. Sorry if I missed anyone’s comments, you can send them to me at stancourtney@hotmail.com.

2011 – The Year In Review – Illinois submitted comments