They Whistled Back at a Knock in the Kentucky Woods. Then, a Witness Says, Their Spotlight Found Something 7 to 8 Feet Tall

? What’s claimed

Accounts, testimony and theories, as told by the people who tell them.

The answer. After Sims whistled, he says, the group heard what sounded like sticks or saplings breaking, so they jumped back into their vehicles. According to Raymond’s summary, the group heard two apparent wood knocks in all, and the second came noticeably closer after Sims whistled back at the first.

The spotlight. The friends drove farther down the road to turn around, Sims wrote, then stopped at the lookout again on the way back to listen. “We wasn’t going to get out this time.” He shined a spotlight into the woods. “I seen around 40 yards away from the truck a black hairy figure that was so dark I couldn’t see it until it moved,” he wrote. “It was around 7 to 8 feet tall. Its back was turned to me but it slightly turned to us as if it was checking to see if we was still there. The outline of the face was ape like with the cone kinda shaped head and a yellowish green eye shine.”

“At that moment I told my friend to get out of there,” Sims wrote. “He floors it.”

The fuller description. In the Zoom interview, as Raymond summarized it, Sims described a figure standing inside the tree line about 50 to 60 yards away, lit by a bright hunting light. It was 7 to 8 feet tall with an extremely bulky build, shoulders 3 to 3.5 feet wide, a thick chest and a very short, thick neck. Its hair was jet black, long and somewhat flowing, and wiry around the shoulders. It seemed to be hunkered down with its arms tucked close to its body, keeping its back to them “as though attempting to remain hidden,” Raymond wrote. When the light hit it, it briefly turned its shoulders and upper body toward the truck, showing “bright greenish-yellow eyeshine,” a somewhat conical, elongated head and a protruding, “gorilla-like” face. The face was longer than a human’s but without a true muzzle, and dark brown against the black body hair. Sims saw mostly the upper body, and the whole sighting lasted about five seconds before fear sent them driving away, according to Raymond.

The details differ slightly. Sims’s written report puts the figure at about 40 yards and the time at around 10 p.m. Raymond’s summary of the interview gives 50 to 60 yards and 9 to 10 p.m.

The neighborhood stories. The group had been to the lookout “plenty of times with no problems,” Sims wrote. He added that they have heard stories of coon hunters whose hounds disappeared during the night, and who found the dogs’ tracking collars “hanging in trees where there are no people anywhere around.” Those stories are secondhand.