Cloaked Jinn and Angry Bigfoot in Florida - Chilling Accounts!

Upon occasion, when I begin an interview with a witness, I am impressed that they are both uneducated about the cryptids in the world and also a meticulously accurate witness with great detail. 

It helps to know that this is someone who is trying to make sense of the nonsensical encounter and also able to give enough description that it's apparent what they saw, they truly noted without influence. 

One brave man in Florida (I will call him "Johnny") was willing to share encounters that have happened that to this day still provide nightmares and fear of the dark forests. 

It is his hope that others have seen these things and perhaps can feel less scared to know that they are not the only ones....

1988

At the time of his first encounter “Johnny” (not his real name) had no knowledge of Bigfoot. He was a good southern boy who was focused on day-to-day living, hunting, being self-reliant and attending church. He was a 19-year-old whose entire world was the wildlife of Florida and he felt quite at home there. That is, until this incident - 

It was a restless April evening with his best friend, his girlfriend and his best friend's girlfriend. They all loaded into Johnny's 77 Nova 4-door and drove out to find a pretty place to park. 

They headed into a housing community at Colony Country Club in Panama City. There, Johnny drove down a long dirt logging road that had no name. It was a service path in the forest heading toward the intracoastal waterway. (Today, the road is called Moonlight Bay Drive).

He pulled the car up as close to the shore as possible, just outside of the sandy beach. The car faced north.

Johnny climbed out and sat down on the hood. His girlfriend came over and stood between his legs, her knees to the fender, facing him. Johnny's best friend and his girlfriend stayed in the car.

Ahead of him was a ditch that went down about 3 feet and then a row of planted pines. Behind the car was tall trees about 3-feet in diameter and older, casting dark shadows, and making the area dark.

It was about 10:30 at night and even though there was a full moon, the light was only dappled where they were. 

As he glanced over at the trees beyond his girlfriend's shoulder, Johnny saw something odd - a neon green light. It looked like the glow one would get from a glow stick. 

The glowing light was curved, like the smile on a smiley face. The strange light moved an inch or two to the side. The light then got thinner and then thicker, perhaps 2-3 inches wide from one edge to the other and about pencil thickness.

The green light started rising and got about 3 feet off the ground.

At first, Johnny thought perhaps it was a bobcat. The light was a good 8 feet away, but rising. He had no point of reference for the unknown, as he was a practical man of the great outdoors.

His girlfriend decided to go back into the car, but Johnny stayed and watched the light still rising.

He leaped off the hood. The light was at about his stomach level of this 5’9” youth. If this was reflective eye, it would be at about the 8-1/2 foot range in height. 

That can't be a bobcat unless it was in a tree!

Squinting, Johnny puzzled at the light. If something had tried to climb one of those younger trees, it would have made a helluva lot of sound as they were scratchy and crackly. But, oddly the entire area around the water was silent, not even a bullfrog from the ditch sounded this night.

Johnny came around to his best friend’s window. None of his friends were outdoorsy like him, so they wouldn’t know what was unusual, but he decided to get his buddy’s opinion. His buddy told him there were no bobcats and rolled up the window.

As Johnny observed it the light went to the right, widened, looked like a triangle if you took the bottom and rounded it and turn it sideways. The triangle was facing south.

Then, it moved fast to the left and Johnny’s heart stopped!

He realized at this point that it was the trace of an eye orb glowing and there was a solid black pupil. The neon green light had been emitting from where the white of the eye should be.

Johnny jumped into the car.

It took about a 5-point turn to get the car aimed out of the narrow logging road. 

When his headlights hit it, Johnny's girlfriend slid to the floor and started kicking Johnny to get out of there. His friend and his girlfriend in the back seat start pounding the ceiling and screaming to leave.

Fascinated by the headlights illuminating the shape of a man on the bank, Johnny took a mental note of what was wrong with the figure. 

The man’s head was in profile. It was shaped like an egg in profile. The brow ridge jutted back toward the back of a rounded head. He had a tiny bit of a chin and it looked like a full bottom lip and no top lip.

Hair was on the face, but not on the nostrils and more sparse than on the body, which was covered. There was no shine to the skin beneath. Hair was thicker near the brows and down the nose, but not the sides of the nose. No "fur" was seen on the ear, but the ear was shaped like ours only very small, perhaps like the size of a quarter and a bit lower on the head than ours sits.

Through the 1 to 1-1/2” thick fur on the body, Johnny could see that this thing was very very muscular, but not like a human male. He was the same width across the chest as the mid section. The knots in the muscle could be seen beneath the hair.

He compared the hair on the body to a hair sheep that doesn’t need to be sheared –

The proportions of its body were odd. The head seemed too small for the massive body. And his knee bones were huge, as if all his bones were massively built. The penis was seen and uncircumcised.

The best Johnny could describe it, the hair on the body reminded him of vintage camouflage worn by soldiers. It was mostly a light blondish tone and then patches of black, silver, and deerskin tan.

Then to their horror, the man-beast turned his head and directed his attention on them.

Johnny cringed at the sight. Terrified, he sat there looking at this thing now staring at him. As it looked into his eyes, Johnny felt it was somehow reaching deep inside of him. The others in the car were hysterical, but the sounds of them pushed aside and sounded distant. He could hear his own heart thumping in his ears and time felt suspended.

The thing’s face showed why Johnny was only seeing one glowing eye sclera. The other eye was missing and the half of the face was mangled horribly. It was raw looking as if it had been a few days since the injury, but the hair around the neck and head was yellow brown from dried blood. The side of the nose, eye, forehead were all shredded.

The man-beast looked down into the ditch where it stood and then stepped up to head toward them.

Johnny came to his senses and sped the car away with a sharp turn.

The whole way home, no one spoke. Johnny dropped the girls off. He spent the night at his best friend’s. They made it home around 1 am and had been at the water’s edge about 10:30 pm.

His friend’s stepdad, upon hearing from them about the encounter, called someone in Central Florida. He had Johnny tell the man over the phone about it. The man finished the description for Johnny and was strangely accurate, except for the strange camo-type hair coloring. The man referred to it as the Florida yeti or Skunk Ape.

2011 

Johnny was attending to a peanut farmer who had hog problems. He set some traps on the property and monitored them. 

The farmer had a small peanut field and a car tire trackway through the weeds and thicket to the other larger field. A trickle of ankle deep water cut through the earth there.


Johnny asked his girlfriend at the time to drop him off so he could check the traps. He had her park on the trackway in the thicket between the two fields and stay in the car with the air-conditioning running around 9-10 pm.


Johnny got out of passenger side, carrying GPS, snake bite kit, compass, and head lamp. The head lamp had four settings you had to toggle through from off, low light, bright light, and red light. He also carried a 7 mm short magnum, good for hog hunting.


Johnny walked down the car tire-rutted path. Something on the left was walking too. He stopped. It took one more step and stopped. He continued walking toward the water ditch which was about 5 feet away.

Then, he heard a weird grunt. Johnny stopped. It stopped. Heavy breathing sounded nearby. 

Worried a hog might be following, he moved on to the trap out in the other field. He set the trap door and went back to the path toward the car.


Again, he heard a growl. Johnny had never heard anything like this before and he knew wildlife well as he hunted for his food all his life. The growl sounded, kind of like a pig’s but much deeper and more throaty.


An odor started and built up until his eyes watered. It was like the smelly feet in a locker room, a dog that hadn’t bathed but got wet, the smell of a tub of earth worms and ammonia urine. If the smell of road kill that sat a long time was combined with it, that was the odor! Johnny started breathing through his mouth. He wanted to gag.


It didn’t dawn on Johnny he had a rifle in his hand. He put one foot in front of the other, quietly and deftly easing forward down the tire paths in the dirt-filled center where it would muffle any sound.


The creature began to parallel him. It was on two legs, definitely not four. 

Johnny’s heart pounded wildly. In his mind, he told himself it must be a bear, but that was something he had never seen in his part of Florida. 

The growing panic made him up the speed of his walk.


When it started growling and making more noises, louder and louder, Johnny realized it was about 10 feet away on his right. Then, it parted the dense plants and stepped onto the trail behind him.


The breathing it did was like a gurgling emphysemic. Huge amounts of air were going in and out. Each breath sounded like it took in four times the oxygen that Johnny did. And when it exhaled, it growled with release of the breath. Johnny was certain he felt the air move on his neck.


Because of prior neck surgery, Johnny couldn’t turn his head. He pivoted enough to see the whites of the eyes and white teeth being bared.


He made out facial features. In his panicking mind, Johnny told himself it must be a bear and he wasn’t seeing the muzzle because it was facing him.


The ape-like face had a very wide flat nose. The best he could compare it to was the new version of “Planet of the Apes” the head gorilla guard, Thade. He could see the very widened almost pushed-in nose and into the nostrils without it tilting its head back. 

Its fists were balled up and both arms at 90 degrees, swinging them as if it were banging on a table and stomping its feet. The breathing was raspy and congested sounding.

Facing the car, Johnny remembered his rifle in his hand. He shot big pigs before with this caliber and they ran off. If he were to shoot this “bear,” would it only piss it off?

As he got closer to the car, Johnny clicked on the headlamp, through the settings to show his girlfriend he was there. She turned on the headlights and then the high beams and then she hit the horn a few times. 

It was so bright, he couldn’t see but instinctively Johnny. ran toward the car and scrambled to get inside.

“It’s a bear!” He cried out. 

The honking horn and headlights must have sent him off, because the narrow path was wide open now.
“No, Johnny! It was a man! Oh my God!” She sobbed. “A hairy man. His hair looked black with red tinge to it. He was grimacing and opening and closing his mouth, bearing his teeth. His fists were balled up and swinging toward the ground, feet stomping. The arms were like 5-pound buckets in width! So much mass!" She gestured. "He was so tall! I could see to his upper abdomen above your head and he was 5 feet behind you!” 

It was then that Johnny realized this thing was easily 3 feet taller than him and massive.

As they drove off, his girlfriend continued to insist it was a man. And Johnny left all his hog bait equipment and the like, never going back to get them. He couldn’t afford to leave it, but he also couldn’t face going back again.

December 2018 

Vernon, Florida 


Johnny had acquired access to a piece of land in a thicket of woods. He clipped his chair to a tree about 12 feet up to sit and watch and hunt. 

After his bad encounters in the past, he was still having nightmares and trauma from them, so he didn’t dare stay out after nighttime fell.

He promised himself he’d sit there until twilight and hightail it back to his truck before darkness set in.

While he sat there, Johnny studied the forest. He learned to look for the parallel line of the back of a deer against the other vertical lines of the forest. But, at this moment, he saw something turn and its edge blurred.

It walked past limbs and shimmered like ripples on water on a pond. Johnny figured it was about 4 feet tall with arms, legs, body, and hands like a little human. In the December shadows, it turned and Johnny lost sight of where it was before he could figure what it was. 

The best he could explain was something camouflaged or cloaked. He would talk to an acquaintance, "Alex," about what he'd seen. Alex showed him a scene from the film "Predator" and asked, was it kind of like this? And Johnny could only nod with surprise.

January 2019 

In January, Johnny went back to the area to hunt. He was about 15 away from a logging road area where three logging roads met in a horseshoe shape.

He walked down the logging road to the horseshoe shaped area and stopped. He thought he saw a Bigfoot step from behind a tree. The left foot and hand were still behind the tree as if it were holding on and leaning out to study him.

The face was a bluish-gray as if it had little or no hair but a beard. The skin color baffled him. It was not the color he was expecting a Bigfoot to be. Johnny saw the whites of the eyes. The mouth was closed.

Johnny scanned the area, looked back and it was gone. How was it gone? The tree was too thin to hide behind and if it were on the ground, he’d see it.

At this point, being spooked, Johnny headed toward the creek. About 100 yards to the left, Johnny heard what sounded exactly like a 2 x 4 hitting a green tree three times. It reverberated loudly.

He got back to his chair in a hurry and watched from the tree at about 12 feet up. A dove coo’d strangely. It was so loud it hurt his hears and very drawn out and long sounding. He saw nothing.

Disturbed by the feelings he was getting, Johnny unclipped his chair and headed back down the logging road to his truck. He could hear thumping as if something was taking long brisk strides.

If Johnny stopped walking, it stopped walking. Then, it picked up again when he walked. 

Suddenly, a “woo woo!” sounded loudly. It was like when kids play cowboys and Indians and one of them makes “woo woo” exclamations. It wasn’t as loud as the dove coo but it sounded like it could travel far.

It continued to make foot falls beside him as he made his way to the truck. He turned and left the woods quickly on the logging road.

2019

Once again in the same area, Johnny sat on a 12-foot ladder stand. His position had him looking toward a pine tree about 15-18 feet away. The tree’s trunk was about as big around as a toilet bowl size. There was a limb pointing towards him but to the right a bit, enough to see the branch length.


It was fairly dim in the trees and Johnny heard what sounded to him like a chameleon or something climbing up the tree in front of him, the bark falling off. The limb aiming slightly toward him and veering to the right had some bark fall off of it. The limb was the diameter of a soda can.


Then, as he stared intently, Johnny saw a shimmer above the limb. It looked like a kid shape, perhaps 7-8 years old in size. It was squatting like a toddler might squat with butt near the ground. 

The feet were bent around the limb like hands! The arms were between the legs. The toes, however, were wrapped around the limb. When it reached up, some bark fell down.

Johnny couldn’t see ears, the sides of the head were slick. There was a sharp point in the middle. The best he could make out it reminded him of Alfalfa from " Little Rascals" TV show with the hair slick that stood up.





The daylight was right on it and Johnny could see the forest foliage right through this creature. The outline of it shimmered, letting him know the shape. A tiny bit of speckle in it gleamed like white sunlight.

Johnny didn’t wait any longer. He shimmied down the ladder chair and left.

Followup

At this point, Johnny was faced with so many questions he couldn’t answer. He didn’t have a computer and didn't go online so finding information was difficult. He really had no point of reference on what he was encountering and how to put a perspective on it. Was it demonic? Was he losing his mind? Was it something that could hurt or kill him?


When he contacted an acquaintance, "Alex," he was relieved to find the man was plenty willing to go back to the location Johnny had just left.


The two men approached the tree where the Bigfoot with the blue-gray face peeked out. The limb that was even with its head was at the 8-1/2 foot mark. 

Alex started looking around the ground. An avid outdoorsman, Alex noted under the pine needles some very large footprints. With Alex's size 14 shoe, the prints were a good 3 inches longer (17”)


While Johnny showed Alex around to the location of the weird watery camouflage cloaked being, they both stopped. A ringing sounded inside their heads, but neither was certain what ear it was going in. Unsteady on their feet and feeling very sick all of a sudden, they decided to rush on.


Soon, they got out of the area that was causing the weird sensations and Alex proceeded to explain to Johnny that Bigfoot can utilize infrasound, a range of sound below our threshold of hearing but that affects how we feel. It is somewhat like when a car drives by playing loud bass on their stereo and a person’s chest thumps, but much deeper, much stronger and creates chaos to the water molecules in the body. 

Alex will continue to do research in these areas where Johnny had this unusual encounters. Updates will be added as they come in from both Johnny and Alex. 

In the mean time, I did a little research about cloaked beings and came across the Jinn (Djinn). 

The Arabic word Jinn is from the verb 'Janna' which means to hide or conceal. Thus, they are physically invisible from man as their description suggests.

Jinn are perceived as an invisible entity that were created from smokeless fire. These creatures are known to have similar motivations and needs to that of humans.

In terms of an invisible being, this fellow seems to meet the standards for Jinn. But, the Native People of this southeastern region must have run into these creatures also, so what do their legends tell us?

In the Northeast, we hear of Puckwudgies among the Algonquian. In the Cherokee, we hear of Yunwi Tsundi little people. 

LINK: Yunwi Tsunsdi' (Little People): A race of small humanoid nature spirits, sometimes referred to in English as "dwarves" or "fairies." They are usually invisible but sometimes reveal themselves as miniature child-sized people. Yunwi Tsunsdi are benevolent creatures who frequently help humans in Cherokee stories, but they have magical powers and are said to harshly punish people who are disrespectful or aggressive towards them. Their name is pronounced similar to yun-wee joon-stee (or yun-wee joon-stee-gah,) which literally means "little people." The singular form is Yvwi Usdi (pronounced yun-wee oon-stee.)

I often say that local legends have a poignant hint of truth to them. If these beings are seen over time in a region, they are accounted for in local legends. 

Alex is going to plug on in these locations to see what he can come across. Expect updates on this one!