One Foggy Mornin'

One Foggy Morning
By: Eugene Mathena

It was a quiet, chilly morning, just before sunrise, around 3:30 AM. The year was 1995 and the world was still, except for the soft hum of Doug’s car as it cruised down Robinson Tract Road. I was riding shotgun, helping him deliver the Roanoke Times along his usual route through Pulaski, winding our way toward Brookmont Road near the Jefferson National Forest. The fog clung to the trees, and the car’s headlights barely cut through it.

We’d been talking about nothing in particular, just the usual banter to keep us awake, when Doug suddenly slammed on the brakes.

“Whoa! What’s wrong?” I asked, gripping the dashboard.

Doug didn’t say anything at first. His eyes were wide, staring straight ahead at something just beyond the car’s beams. He pointed a shaky finger toward the side of the road. “Eugene, look.”

I followed his gaze, squinting through the fog. And then, there it was.

A huge, shadowy figure, easily over seven feet tall, covered in dark, scruffy fur, lumbering across the road in front of us. It moved slowly, its long arms swinging low as it walked, almost like it didn’t care that we were there. For a moment, the thing turned its head toward us, its eyes catching the light, reflecting it back and then it disappeared into the thick woods like a ghost.

“You seeing what I’m seeing?” Doug whispered, his voice barely audible.
“Yeah,” I stammered, still trying to wrap my head around it. “That was...that was Bigfoot. Doug, that was Bigfoot!”

Doug let out a shaky breath and leaned back in his seat. “I can’t believe it,” he muttered, rubbing his hands on the steering wheel. “I’ve heard the stories, but I never thought...”

“Me neither,” I cut in, heart pounding. “No one’s gonna believe this. Not in a million years.”

Doug chuckled nervously, still glancing toward the spot where the creature had disappeared. “Who’s gonna believe a couple of guys delivering papers at 3:30 in the morning, Eugene? They’ll think we’ve lost it.”

“Well, I’d think we were crazy too,” I said, shaking my head. “But we both saw it.”
The fog seemed even thicker now, pressing in on us, and the air felt heavy with something I couldn’t quite describe. We sat there for a few moments longer, neither of us wanting to drive forward, like we’d crossed some line between the normal and the unknown.

“Do we keep going?” I finally asked.

Doug gripped the wheel tighter. “Yeah, let’s keep moving. But man, I’ll never forget this.”

As the car rolled forward, the road ahead seemed even darker, and the quiet woods around us felt a little less empty. We finished the route, but the conversation kept circling back to what we saw something neither of us would ever forget.

(This story is partly a work of fiction inspired by actual events, local legends and reports of Bigfoot sightings in the Jefferson National Forest area near Pulaski, Virginia. While it is based around the idea of eyewitness accounts and actual events, liberal licenses have been taken in this narrative.)