Woman Shares Brother's Childhood Bigfoot Encounter in Arizona

Posted Friday, July 31, 2026

By Squatchable.com staff

So there's this wild secondhand account floating around YouTube right now that's got the Sasquatch community buzzing, and honestly, it's the kind of story that makes you pause and think about how many of these encounters are happening right under our noses in suburban neighborhoods. The storyteller, a guy named Michael Joy, was reminiscing about growing up in Arizona back in the day on a street called 69th Place in Paradise Valley. He paints this picture of classic suburban desert life — ranch houses, oleander bushes lining the properties (which, fun fact, are actually toxic, so Boy Scouts definitely shouldn't be roasting hot dogs with those sticks), and quirky neighbors like "Nosy Henry" who walked a tiny Chihuahua and apparently made a habit of peeking in everyone's windows. There's also "Boozy Byron," the tall skinny neighbor who walked a little crooked, and a ham radio operator with a half-dome antenna setup in his backyard that could apparently bounce signals off the moon. Classic suburban weirdness. But here's where it gets interesting. Decades later, Michael is at a culinary trade show at the JW Marriott in Scottsdale, chatting with a distributor and their longtime sales rep — a woman in her 50s, well-established, credible. When he mentions growing up in Paradise Valley, she lights up. Turns out her family lived on the same street. 69th Place. A few doors down. That's when she drops a story she's apparently never told anyone in her entire life. When she was a kid, her parents were out of the house. The kids were home alone. Something started making noise — a clunking on the window or door. Her older brother, a tough football kid, the kind of guy who wasn't afraid of anything, said he saw something move outside and went to investigate. He came back inside, shut the door, and was, in her words, "pure white." Couldn't talk. Breathing weird. Something had seriously shaken this guy up. When they finally got him to speak, he told them not to go outside. What he had seen was a Sasquatch standing at the backyard fence — a six-foot cinder block wall, the kind everyone had around their pools back then. The creature put its hand on the fence and, in one casual leap, cleared the wall into the neighbor's yard. Now, Michael knew that street. He knew those cinder block fences. And the woman emphasized that her brother was not someone who would make something like this up. This was a tough kid who didn't scare easily. The encounter happened in what was suburban desert at the time — not far from wooded areas at the foot of a mountain, with undeveloped patches scattered around. The kind of place where kids could ride bikes and families felt safe. Not some remote wilderness. What makes this account stand out is how ordinary the setting was. This wasn't deep in the forest or up some mountain trail. This was a regular neighborhood with ranch houses and oleander bushes and nosy neighbors with Chihuahuas. And yet, a Sasquatch apparently strolled up to a backyard fence and vaulted over it like it was nothing. The woman told Michael she'd never shared this story with anyone before. He was just lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, talking to the right person, about the right street. It's a fascinating piece of Sasquatch lore — the kind of quiet, suburban encounter that probably happens more often than anyone realizes. Definitely worth checking out the full video for the whole story and Michael's colorful storytelling style.