He Knew He Was Looking At Bigfoot
A Christmas Night with Bigfoot
It was Christmas night, a few years back, and already shaping up to be a less-than-merry holiday. My wife and I were stranded at a tiny, family-run motel somewhere along I-90 in Wyoming, the kind of place where the sign out front is missing a letter and the curtains never match. We’d been forced off the road by a sudden snowstorm, the interstate closed by state troopers and blinking marquee signs. Every chain hotel was full, so we settled for this little “Mtel”—no ‘O’—that at least promised a clean room and, as it turned out, a kind-hearted desk clerk who gave us a “stranded rate” for the night.
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By ten o’clock, my wife was asleep, the TV murmuring in the background and the wall heater rattling away. I couldn’t sleep—never do in motels—and after a day of sitting around, I needed fresh air. I grabbed my jacket, a cigarette, and my phone, planning to call my brother back home. I stepped outside into the L-shaped corner of the motel, near the ice machine and vending machines, where the wind was blocked and the cold felt sharper, more real.
I lit my cigarette, dialed my brother, and tried to ignore the ache in my hand from the cold. As we talked about Christmas, about family, about all the things I was missing, my eyes drifted across the parking lot. The snowplow had pushed up big mounds along the far edge, and beyond that were dumpsters, then a dark field and a line of trees.
That’s when something moved.
At first, I thought it was a person climbing over the mound from the field, maybe a late-night dog walker. But then it straightened up—and kept straightening. One long leg came over the three-foot snow berm, then the other, smooth and unhurried, like stepping over a curb. There was no hat, no coat, no swinging parka—just a continuous, dark shape with impossibly broad shoulders and arms that hung low and swung naturally as it walked.
It strode behind a row of parked pickups, then under the tall pole light that illuminated the motel sign. For a few seconds, I saw it clearly: from head to mid-thigh, covered in hair that caught the light in a way no costume ever could. There were no seams, no zippers, no flapping fabric. It looked… solid. Real. The head jutted slightly forward, the way someone might lean if carrying a heavy pack, only there was no pack.
It never looked at me. It just crossed the parking lot with long, effortless strides, then slipped behind the dumpster enclosure and into the trees, melting into the darkness as if it had never been there at all. The whole encounter lasted maybe ten seconds.
My brother’s voice crackled in my ear, asking if I was still there. All I could say was, “Yeah, I am. But it’s really something out here tonight.”
I didn’t go looking for footprints. I didn’t shine a flashlight or snap a photo. I was tired, cold, and more than a little shaken. I just went back upstairs, crawled into bed, and lay awake, replaying those few seconds over and over in my mind, wishing I could pause the moment, study every detail, make sense of what I’d seen.
The next morning, the world looked ordinary again. The snow was churned up with tire ruts and bootprints, the sun struggling through low clouds. By noon, the interstate reopened, and we were back on the road. I didn’t tell my wife the full story until we were home, a week later. She listened, didn’t laugh, just said, “I can’t believe you’re just now telling me this.”
I never reported what I saw. It wasn’t dramatic—no screams, no strange smells, no giant footprints. Just a big, unknown something using a snowy parking lot as a shortcut on a winter’s night. Every Christmas, I put up a little tree in my office, decorated with Bigfoot ornaments, and I remember.
If you ever find yourself stranded on Christmas in a half-empty motel, look up from your phone for a moment. You never know who else might be stretching their legs out there in the quiet, snowy dark.
And that’s my story—nothing wild, just what I saw.
