Man Recalls Childhood Bigfoot Sighting on Maryland Family Property

Posted Wednesday, August 05, 2026

By Squatchable.com staff

There's something really special about hearing a Bigfoot story from someone who saw one before the term "Bigfoot" even existed. That's exactly what makes this particular video so compelling for anyone interested in Sasquatch history. The clip, which surfaced on the Sci-Fi No More YouTube channel, features an older gentleman recounting a childhood encounter he had as a six or seven-year-old kid on his family's sprawling 337-acre property in rural Maryland. The land was purchased by his parents shortly after World War II, back when property was dirt cheap and nobody had much money. His father worked for the Navy Department, and his mother worked for the Treasury, so they were solid government folks who saved up and paid cash for all that woodland. The young boy was looking out the front window of the house one day when he spotted something walking across the front lawn with what appeared to be a baby. His first thought was that it might be a bear, but the more he looked at it, the more it struck him as being ape-like rather than ursine. This is a kid who grew up around black bears, so he knew the difference between a bear walking upright on its hind legs and something else entirely. His father, a somewhat paranoid man (which makes sense given his government background), didn't dismiss the sighting outright but also didn't want his son getting worked up about it. Instead, he came up with a clever plan. He had just baked a couple of loaves of bread, so he placed a cinder block where the creature had been spotted, stuck an old rake handle in the hole, and perched an entire loaf of fresh bread on top as bait. The idea was that the smell of freshly baked bread might lure whatever it was back. Unfortunately, nothing came for the bread, but the witness remained certain about what he saw that day. What makes this account particularly fascinating from a Sasquatch research perspective is the timeline. The witness saw this creature years before the term "Bigfoot" entered the public lexicon. He mentions that it wasn't until roughly five or six years later, when the famous footage surfaced and those massive footprints were discovered, that the name "Bigfoot" was even coined. For him, it was simply an unknown ape-like critter wandering through the woods of Maryland with its young. The story also touches on some of the other strange occurrences that happened on that property. Geese would occasionally disappear without explanation, and the family's orange cats had a habit of vanishing once they grew to a certain size. The father suspected a neighbor on a nearby farm might be responsible for the missing animals, though he handled it in his own diplomatic way. For anyone interested in historical Sasquatch encounters, especially from the eastern United States where sightings often get overlooked, this video is absolutely worth checking out. The witness comes across as genuine and level-headed, and his familiarity with local wildlife makes his identification of the creature as something distinctly non-bear quite credible. It's a reminder that these encounters have been happening for generations, long before anyone had a name for what they were seeing.