Cliff Phalen Recalls Multi-Day Bigfoot Encounter at Alabama Camp

There's something about a man of the cloth sharing a Bigfoot encounter that just hits different. When a preacher who's spent over half a century studying scripture and four decades in ministry starts talking about dermal ridges on footprints and creatures leaving buzzard feathers as gifts, you know you're in for a wild ride. A recent interview popped up on YouTube that any researcher or witness will want to check out. Linda Eastburn sits down with Cliff Phalen, a retired preacher from Alabama, who recounts an absolutely chilling series of encounters that happened back in 2006 during a religious camping event. Now, here's what makes this one stand out. Cliff's church group was celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles, an eight-day biblical festival where you essentially leave your comforts behind and rough it in temporary shelters, much like the patriarchs of old. They set up a primitive campsite at Arrowhead Park in Crane Hill, Alabama, down in a valley where Smith Lake's waters had receded due to a brutal two-year drought. Picture a dried-up lake bed, a cove, and a small group of faithful folks gathered around a campfire. Nothing unusual, right? Wrong. The very first night, Cliff had to head back to the house because he forgot his CPAP connections. His wife stayed behind in the tent. Around 4 or 4:30 in the morning, she got up to stoke the campfire and make coffee. That's when she noticed a figure standing right beside their tent. She assumed it was Jonathan, the tallest guy in their group, but something felt off. The silhouette was just a little too tall. She looked at it, it looked back at her, and then it casually walked around the back of the tent. Ten minutes passed. No one came back. She walked around to check and found nobody there. She called out "Jonathan" and got a response from inside the tent. Jonathan had been asleep the whole time. What really got me was her description of what she saw. She mentioned the figure had a heavy coat with a fur collar. At the time, she didn't think much of it. Cliff even teased her about shadow people, a phenomenon often discussed on Coast to Coast AM radio. But looking back, Cliff now realizes that "fur collar" was hair. The first real visual, and it was dismissed as something else entirely. The next night, another gentleman in the group had a similar experience. A tall figure was peering down into his tent at him and his dog. The dog went absolutely ballistic, which is a reaction that comes up time and time again in credible encounters. Dogs seem to sense these things long before humans do. Then came Sunday. The group discovered hundreds upon hundreds of footprints scattered across that dried lake bed. We're talking about five different sizes, including one that was reportedly around four inches long, almost child-sized. Cliff, being new to all of this, did manage to cast some of the prints, and a few of them actually showed dermal ridges. For anyone unfamiliar, dermal ridges are those fingerprint-like skin patterns that show up on exceptionally clear footprints. They're considered a hallmark of credible evidence in Sasquatch research because they prove the print came from an actual foot with textured skin, not just some hoaxer pressing a carved mold into the mud. What happened next is where things get really interesting. Throughout the week, the creatures were in and out of camp. They were taking food and, in exchange, leaving behind buzzard feathers. Whether that was a gift or some kind of retribution for stealing their snacks, Cliff couldn't quite figure out. They apparently didn't care much for honey buns. Cliff found a bunch of them discarded about 75 yards out in the lake bed, each with just one bite taken out. He actually froze those honey buns and kept them in his freezer for years before his wife finally convinced him to toss them. And then there's the siege. Cliff's son and his friends endured a five-hour ordeal where they were surrounded by at least three of these creatures arranged in a triangulation formation. Cliff described it as almost military in nature, like a coordinated operation. The young men ended up stuck on a picnic table with their rifles, too spooked to move. Cliff also captured a recording of a growl that he describes as really interesting. The whole encounter eventually led Cliff to connect with Bill White from Arkansas, a well-known figure in the Bigfoot research community, who came out to camp with the group a couple of weeks later. This is the kind of story that reminds you why so many witnesses stay silent for years. Imagine being a preacher, a man of faith, and suddenly finding yourself face to face with something that challenges everything you thought you knew about the natural world. Cliff's willingness to share his experience openly is a gift to the community. If this has piqued your curiosity, do yourself a favor and track down the full interview. There's a lot more detail that didn't make it into this recap, and hearing Cliff tell it in his own words adds a layer you just can't get from a summary. The Feast of Tabernacles setting, the dried lake bed, the footprints, the food exchanges, the five-hour siege, it's all there, and it's the kind of multi-witness account that researchers dream about.