Man recalls close encounter at dusk as a youth near Macon witnessed in Bibb County, Georgia

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I haven't told this too often but this is exactly what happened. Macon, Georgia. I was 10 or 11 yrs old, 1956-57. My house was on a main highway with some homes scattered behind it, then miles of woods. My friend and I had been at the creek in the woods behind my house, maybe 3/4 mile from my house. It was getting dark, summer, and we were heading home. I was almost home, house was 100 yds away. Not scared, almost home, never had heard of Bigfoot. There was a gulley to our right with a trail in the shallow end of the gulley we used as a path. I heard a loud clomping sound coming toward us on the other side of the gulley, swishing thru the small pines coming down the path toward us. I thought it was a mule that had gotten out and I would try to catch it. That is how loud it sounded as it came toward us. When it came up on our side of the gulley I saw a large ape/man like hairy creature jogging toward us on the path on two legs. Needless to say my friend and I didn't stay around for an extended look, maybe two to three seconds of observation then we took off. The creature was probably close to six/seven feet tall. It looked like that video [Patterson-Gimlin film]. When we told our parents and playmates we were the subject of much ridicule, that is until about a week or so later when five or so of them were down at the creek damming it up. I wasn't with them as I no longer played in the woods. Well they saw the thing, this was the middle of the day, as they came running out of the woods, some of them crying they were so shaken. Their parents called the sheriff and he said it was probably a bear. It wasn't. It was no hoax with someone in a suit.