This is my favorite camp fire story.
Back in the late 70s we were deer hunting on some property near Maxeys, Ga. We stayed in a one room school house that must have been built in the 30s. for share croppers in the area. The windows were gone and all there was was in place was some tattered plastic. After a meal we would toss out the scraps out the window which attracted critters at night which we could hear moving about. Likely skunks and possums. There were six of us sleeping in cots lined up in a row. I had the luck of being the one closest to the open window. We hit the sack about 12 and as I was drifting off to sleep I heard something moving around outside in the woods not far from the building. Since it was cold I eased down into the bag and covered my head. Now this is when the story gets interesting. About 2 in the morning I awoke with the sensation that someone was grabbing me by the shoulder through the window. I spun away from the window and landed on the guy next to me while still in my bag and screamed out "it's got me!" Everyone jumped up and someone grabbed a light and a gun and went out to look. Nothing. Now I get the embarrassment of having to explain what happened after waking everyone up. It must have been a dream, I guess, but it sure seemed real. I took a good ribbing for that one but the funny thing was, no one else would sleep near the window after that.

On a side note, I did read of a sighting near Maxeys back in the mid 70s. Did a bf grab me that night or was it a dream? Who knows...most likely a dream but it still creeps me out to this day.

No one ever found or saw or anything related to bf and we spent many hours in the woods hunting. This area was and still is a very remote dense pine forest with a few hardwoods mixed in.

I wouldn't have slept by the open window either!

So much for leaving the windows open tonight

I forgot this,
something/someone had taken a big nasty dump near the cabin which I stepped in.
I can remember being really pissed that one of us would doo doo so close in.
I can recall that it was light colored and mushy and it took a long time to get the stinky off my boots. No one would admit to it and there was no toilet paper nearby.

So much for stepping out of a cabin in bare feet.

my dad has told me a story very similar to this...

one night while sleeping on the bank of a river in a tent in alaska, he awoke to some noise outside his tent. he listened for some time until the sound of steps started coming closer and closer. eventually, whatever it was was standing right outside the tent. he layed their motionless trying not to make a sound for a bit, then all of sudden, the tent just ripped open and in came a grizzly's head. he yelled at the bear and reached for his rifle, but the bear was so shocked by his presence that by the time he had gotten a hand on his gun the bear was already running off down the beach.

i didn't believe him when he first told me the story upon his return from the trip, but when he pulled out the tent and i saw the claw marks for myself, i was sold. pretty intense situation i would have to say.

Now Blair, can you point to the spot on this doll where the bigfoot touched you?

Seriously, I woke up one night to hear something padding by my tent. I lay there, listening to the footsteps, and then CRASH! I jumped grabbed my maglight and poked out of the tent to discover a big black bear tearing through my drinks cooler. Damned thing drank all my milk and left. The food stuff was locked up in the truck's lockbox. I remember thinking, when i heard the heavy steps, that it might be a bigfoot... I think I'd have shat myself had it been one when I poked my light outside.

I'm never leaving my house ever again.

well that sounds just terrifying.
and a little embarassing.
hope they didn't tease you too much.

After all this Ga stuff, maybe I WAS grabbed by a bf. Hope not.

This story made my day

I knew there was a reason I don't like camping. No really I like camping just not where BF comes roaming around.

Funny stuff Blair.

BF grabbing or simply nudging a (usually) sleeping person through the side of a tent is not unheard of. The BFRO folks have reported this on a few occasions during their pay-per-play excursions. It happened to a friend of mine in Algonquin Park in Ontario back around 1982 or '83. That got the entire bunch of us up pronto when he started screaming. My then girlfriend said she saw 'the bear' go by the side of our tent and that it was 'really tall', walking on two legs. Uh huh -- bear on two legs strutting through camp...
Dudlow

Bob

Hmmm...I suppose it also might depend on just WHERE he grabbed you. Maybe he just wanted to cop a feel but miscalculated the distance, being more used to BF sizes than puny humans?

My favorite BF anecdotes/stories are (not in order) the report filed by the two Weyerhauser surveyors; the report filed by a Mountie regarding the theft of two (2) kegs of beer & a carton of junk food snackies (chips, pretzels, popcorn, jerky, you name it) by persons unknown from a party of husbands who were supposedly out hunting but were actually not planning on doing much hunting but a good deal of beer-drinking; & the one filed by the yodeler who was answered by another yodeler, & they kept yodeling at each other as they got closer & closer - until they met. I also rather like the one about the couple parked out on a dark road who heard a noise, decided to leave, & backed into the BF, who was so annoyed s/he/it chased them down the road after denting their trunk with its fists. I would too if someone backed into me, come to think of it. I think the eeriest was the one (I think filed by either Texas BFRO or Gulf BFRO) of the pig hunter who was up in a tree blind & witnessed a BF stalking & killing a wild pig. The Weyerhauser is (to me, at least) the funniest, but a close runner-up is the one about the kid who heard a noise - the door of the trunk-style freezer on their cabin porch slamming shut - went out to look because he thought he was home alone - & there casual as you please was a female BF leaning into it, picking over the frozen roasts within for something she was in the mood for. The kid stood there screaming bloody murder while she finally made her choice, hefted a good sized ham, & strolled off taking her own sweet time about it too. It explained where the meats that had gone missing that summer had gone & exonerated the old man who lived down the mountain aways, at least.

Are you sure Blair is a woman?

I recall a story, I think in Oregon, where a man and his son went hunting. Upon reaching the sight where they were going to camp, they discovered that they had forgotten their tent poles. So they slept under the stars and did not make a campfire because it was so dry. Well, the father said he was awaken by fingers going through his beard. I believe I would have had a heart attack right then and there....

Are you sure BFs are straight?

Most reports have them hunched over.....

I read in a outdoors magazine in a section called "So there I was" where hikers relate quick stories. This one was where a couple had bedded down for the night in their tents. They heard the rapid thumping of hoof coming at them when something, presumably a deer cleared their tent, landed on the other side and kept on going, then the persuer plowed into their tent mowing it down and kept going. The husband recieved a broken nose and the wife some cracked ribs. They dont know what either animal was but I would like to think it was BF chasing a deer.

(&**^%$& campers!!! I chase deer through here every night. I hate it when they do that. Twisted my ankle and slipped and fell. The crunching sound was satisfying though...

Interesting story there..

I'd be inclined to discount coyote, wolf, and cougar from considering that they'd probably have made an attempt to clear the tent too, and also I wouldn't have thought they would have cracked ribs and broken noses unless they knocked you down from standing. That leaves bears. I know they can get up a turn of speed in a sprint or charge, but would they really chase down a deer like that?

Or a buck chasing a doe : )

There was a guy on the BFRO a couple of years ago who had 3 great encounter stories from when he was a kid. One of them nearly made me piss myself. he had just moved into a new timber house and his parents were doing jobs around and about (fencing, decorating, planting borders etc). one night he was awoken by a bunch of feral dogs barking and chasing something through the woods. And it was getting closer and closer until he could hear the dogs rounding the front corner of his house and move up the driveway to the side. these dogs were virtually rabid. the next thing there was an almigty thump on the corner of the house which sort of moved the house a tiny bit on its raised foundations. it was a warm night, so his window was open and he heard a bladder releasing low loud growl that stopped the dogs in their tracks for a few moments. he saw the outline of thing through the window and it must have been 8'. It then ran and leaped over the fence which was 6' high. Next morning he went out to find a low hooped fence intended for a planted border around the house that his dad had set in concrete all ripped and torn up. The image of some big hulking hairy wookie tripping over a fence and falling face first into the side of a house so hard it shakes makes me laugh everytime i think of it.

Thing is, they must be out for a laugh themselves half the time messing with campers, grabbing them; running off. There are stories i read somewhere recently of two guys listening to some some disturbance going on near their camp just out of sight of the camp fire. Then one supposedly slips in the mud and goes down with a big 'ooof'. they pissed themselves laughing.

Megatarsal

That is probably pretty accurate, It was just a few lines not much info at all but my guess is they put their tent in a small clearing that was probably a well travled game trail and there were several deer thats how they heard it. A small deer could clear a pretty tall tent but would probably make very little noise even running at full speed. They probably heard the lead deer and the next 2-3 mis judged the leap trampleing the tent. Pretty funny when you think about it. Even funnier if you picture an 8ft Bigfoot taking a spill on some dorks tent. I am not sure but I think we have a new Jack Links commercial here.

Are you sure all BFs reported are male?

Just saying, anyway it could have very well being a so called night terror.