DATE:      July, 1974
 

TIME:        5:00 P.M.-9:30 P.M.

LOCATION:  Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, Hoke County
                 Manchester Road, swamps in and around Manchester
                 Road and what was then the Recondo School
                 at Ft. Bragg.

TERRAIN:      Wooded

OBSERVED:    Although I marked the terrain as woody, we had been moving through
the swamps all day long, and emerged about 5:30 to an open fairly level pine
forest and scrub undergrowth.  I am being vague as to exact dates and times
because I am writing this from memory almost twenty years ago.  We were in
the Recondo School for 82nd Airborne Division.  Sort of a "baby" Rangers
school where they try and cram nearly 3 months of impossible training into
three weeks.

My first sense of something odd was what I thought was either someone
pacing us just beyond our range of vision into the underbrush.  I tried to
brush it off as just the "echo" of our own footsteps off the brush.  That
just wasn't ringing true though.  I mentioned it too a buddy, he thought he
heard it too.

Just as the sky was beginning to darken we moved into a perimeter, to
begin briefing for the next leg of our mission.  Just as the platoon leader
for this phase of the field training exercise began to give the operations
orders, we all heard what sounded like the heavy footsteps of a man just
beyond our range of vision, and only where there was ample brush for cover.
The Blackhat, the grader for our platoon sent two men out to see what it
was, in the meantime we continued on with op orders.

After about 15 or 20 minutes of looking they came back.  Only to have
those footsteps return as well.  This was maddening, here we were trying to
focus on getting these orders down and exactly what our individual roles
would be, and someone was out there stomping in the brush.  The Blackhat, a
veteran of these training exercises, and a full fledged Ranger did not look
at all comfortable with what he was hearing either.  He sends two more guys
out to investigate, meanwhile we try get back to the operations orders.

By now it is getting fairly dark.  You can still make out shapes and avoid
bumping into trees, but details on something dark are just not
distinguishable.  I am recounting now how the story was relayed to me by
these two guys who saw it.  They were moving slowly through an area the
sounds of the footsteps were coming from.  Trying to avoid what looked like
a large shrub of some sort on the ground, they moved toward and to the side
to go around it.  At this time the "shrub" stood up on two legs and raised
it arms over its head.  These two real tough Recondo's screamed, turned tail
and ran full speed right straight through our perimeter, and likely would
have kept going had we not called them back.

One guy said the thing was as high as I could hold my M-16, this
would make it 9-10' tall as I am 6'2".  I voiced some doubt about the size
and he backed off the size a bit, When I started snooping around a little I
turned up some reports of a Bigfoot like creature they called the Manchester
Monster.

ACTIVITIES OF WITNESS(ES):

DESCRIPTION OF CREATURE:

NOTES: Finally, I no longer live in NC, I live in my home state of Oregon.
Ironically no close encounters here.

OTHER NOTES:  Sometime later after graduating the school I had occasion to run
into our grader on a couple of occasions.  At first I couldn't get him to
talk at all about it.  Finally on one occasion he admitted that there was
something out there, but wouldn't commit to what he thought it might be.

OTHER SIGHTINGS IN THIS AREA: