“I’m a romantic; I would like Bigfoot to exist. I’ve met people who swear they’ve seen Bigfoot, and I think the interesting thing is, every single continent there is an equivalent of Bigfoot or Sasquatch. There’s the yeti, the Yowie in Australia, the Chinese Wildman and on and on and on.” – Jane Goodall

This was me. I was a romantic. I romanticized the idea of Bigfoot being real, like many have and still do. I thought it was innocent, playful, fun. So I decided to write about it.

'I knew this being was not of God, but an ultimate deceiver. I knew eternity was at stake. And it’s at stake for you too if you continue in this search.'

Before I did this, I wanted to speak to this man who had been studying and searching for Bigfoot for the last 10 years.

An obsession begins

Jacob is in his early 60s, both a husband and a father. His son is a friend of mine, and when we were young, he would tell me stories of going with his father on Bigfoot adventures.

Usually, when something mysterious or paranormal happens, the person telling the story would be eager to have a listening ear. This was never the case with my friend. He showed extreme restraint and hesitancy.

He didn’t want his listeners to think he was crazy because he knew what he would say sounded ... crazy. He knew what he saw, and he believed it with his whole heart, although he never expected me to believe him as well.

Fast forward five years, and I never once stopped thinking about his words, which I will relate to you shortly. In short, the most honest and level-headed guy I knew told me something so mind-blowing that I became infatuated with the idea that Bigfoot was real. Honestly, I became nearly obsessed.

'Something I never wanted to experience again'

My friend's story went like this:

My father started joining all these Bigfoot groups, and it began as a small side hobby that he grew to love. He would travel all over the country with these groups of cryptid hunters, mystics, Sasquatch believers, etc.

We would all poke fun at him, but he started to take it really seriously. He started to have these — encounters. These stories that he was shy to tell but when he would tell them you would be dumbstruck by how much belief he had in his eyes. I never knew my father to be a liar. I trusted him, and I still do. So one day I went with him.

My father and I lived in the northeast ,and we traveled up and over to Washington state, very close to the Canadian border. We camped. In my head I was thinking this is just a cool camping trip with my dad where we can bond and I can get a glimpse into his world.

It ended up being more than that. Much more. My father told me that to see a Bigfoot you had to camp under the stars with no tent, no fire, and no electronics. So that's exactly what we did. We had our cots under the stars out in the middle of the forest, just us and the anxious feeling growing inside my chest.

Dad never seemed nervous or scared so I knew if he had seen them they weren’t to be feared, but I still felt on edge. Even without the event of a Bigfoot sighting, I was thinking of bears, wolves, mountain lions. He said that the minute we put the campfire out we would start to hear things, feel things, and maybe even see things. My heart raced. He was right.

The fire goes out, and we immediately hear the sound of running feet. Smaller feet, like children playing a game of tag. Bipedal. It’s pitch black, and you can’t even see your hand in front of your face. The moon was hidden by clouds. The stars barely peeked through. I’m tucked into a sleeping bag, and I feel something run up and touch my side. I'm frozen.

I still hear the sound of small feet, and then I hear something much bigger. The heaviest steps I’ve ever heard. One heavy step, then another, closer and closer. Closer. I feel the presence of a large body standing before me, I can see nothing but a dark massive outline.

Then something happened. The smaller bodies came close like they were its children. One of them stepped onto my body. I couldn’t breathe. It walked across me, and it did this two more times. The steps went over to my father’s cot and eventually trailed off out of our camp. We could hear the family of footsteps leave.

I laid completely still, unable to move. The next morning I knew what we had experienced was real — and something I never wanted to experience again.

A universal figure

This story has haunted me. What were they? Are they peaceful? Are they spirits? Demons? Mormons believe Bigfoot is the spirit of Cain. New Agers believe he’s an alien.

I thought it was an ancient native creature that only showed itself to certain people in certain places at certain times. My mind went straight to all the indigenous cave drawings of Bigfoot.

Every tribe, every culture around the world has their own depiction of a large bipedal figure. These cultures are separated by time and geography, yet they all claim to have seen a similar creature.

Corbis via Getty Images

Was this what they saw? I had to know. So I made a cup of coffee, and I went and sat in the chair on my balcony, and I called my friend's father, Jacob.

'Are you a child of God?'

I thought he might be out on one of his Bigfoot hikes up in the Alaskan wilderness, but he answered the phone almost as if he were expecting me to call. We hadn’t spoken in years, and it honestly felt intrusive for me to reach out and interview him, but he was prepared to speak to me that day. It was a day that changed my life.

You see, Jacob is a man of God. If you belong to God, you can feel the anointing on him, and if you don’t, you might just get this sense that he’s different. I told Jacob why I was calling, and he said, “I will tell you anything you want to know. I have 10-plus years of stories that would chill you to the bone, but I want you to know that I don’t partake in this anymore. I no longer look for Bigfoot, nor do I wish to see one ever again.”

Ok. What? I was shocked. Something must have happened. I asked the only reasonable question in my mind. “Why?”

Jacob asked me this: “Are you a child of God?”

I said yes, and he said, “I know. Which is why I must warn you and urge you to stay away from this new curiosity in Bigfoot. He’s not what you think, and I had to find that out the hard way.”

I felt an immediate check in my spirit that I needed to listen closely to what this man was about to say to me.

My first thought was that it was a demon. I said this out loud, and he confirmed. He didn’t want to use the word demon because he wasn’t positive, so he chose the phrase “spiritual being.”

“Have you ever heard of a shapeshifter?” Jacob said.

I said yes.

“Satan was a shapeshifter. He took on the appearance of a snake in the garden.”

He continued:

“That’s what these creatures are. They are very real, more real than you could imagine. When I realized what they were and the spell they had on me for all these years, I made my exit."

"I still talk to my friends who are in the Bigfoot groups, and they are all just as deceived as ever. Their families are all rife with sickness and disease. All of them. Destruction follows them wherever they go, and it took me some time to notice.”

I’m going to tell you two stories that he told me. One is of his many encounters with Bigfoot up in Oregon. The other is the encounter that haunts him to this day and the reason why he left it all for good. Although if you ask him today, he will say that the creatures are just waiting for him to return. They wait for their invitation back into his life. Patiently. Watchfully.

Inviting the spirit in

Here is his first story:

There is a large group of career Bigfooters up in Oregon, and I hadn’t yet been there but knew the community was strong, and I’d be with a solid group that knew their way around. The leader of the group had been doing this for 20 years, and he took a liking to me.

I’ll never forget what he said right before we set up camp. “You know Jacob, if you really want to see Bigfoot, all you have to do is invite the spirit in.”

Red flags started going off in my mind. Invite the spirit in? That didn’t sit well with me. I had seen Bigfoot many times already because if they know you're looking, they love to reveal themselves. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was inviting them in. I thought about this our entire hike up the mountain.

We made camp just below the snow line. It rained for two days and two nights, and on the third day I decided to invite the spirit in. Although this began to grieve my heart, it was too late, because the fire had gone out at camp, and my cot was under the stars.

I was away from the group, close to the old gravel road that loggers would use. It was dark and cold. I lay there for a few hours, and as I was about to drift off into sleep I heard it. The steps. Heavy. Crunching the gravel.

With each step you could almost feel the earth vibrate. It got to the edge of my cot and stood over me, but I didn’t get the sense it wanted to hurt me. My face was covered by the sleeping bag, but the group told me to never try and startle them but to always remain still with no sudden movements. So I was a corpse.

I could hear it breathing. Long and steady breaths. Heavy like its feet. This next part might not make sense but the being scanned me. It scanned my right shoulder down to my elbow, and I can’t describe the sensation. I just knew the being was looking at this part of my body through the sleeping bag and something was happening.

The being slowly walked across the road, and I started hearing voices in a language I have never heard before. It was speaking to other beings. They were talking back and forth. It came back over to my cot for a few seconds and then walked back up the road and disappeared.

'They know you now'

It was only two hours from sunrise, and I woke up and hurried closer to the camp. While I was walking, I noticed something. My right shoulder, which normally held a constant dull ache, no longer hurt. The ache was gone.

I told the leader what happened, and he didn’t seem surprised at all but said, “They know you now. You’ll never have to search for them again because they will find you. They’ll come to you wherever you are.”

Again, I felt red flags. I was confused because had the being healed my shoulder? I was too shocked to even consider what it was that I was dealing with but knew that I almost needed to see them again. The obsession grew.

We packed up camp and started heading down the mountain. What happens next might sound odd and paranormal if you will.

The leader and I had trailed behind the group to where they were out of sight, but we could hear the distant voices. All of a sudden (and I know this sounds crazy), we saw this orb of light. It was round, white, and blueish, 20 feet up into a tree.

We both saw it, and it was BRIGHT. I looked over and said, “Are you seeing this?” and again this was no surprise to the man at all for he spoke in a hushed voice saying, “It’s an orb. Those are spiritual beings that have not manifested an earthly form yet. I have one that follows me around all the time. It won't hurt you.”

My mind was tired. My eyes were heavy. We got closer to the tree, and right in front of us were footprints. Not from the group because they weren’t boot prints, but they were large bare feet prints with five toes, bipedal.

A demon of the ages

I'm sitting in my chair still listening to Jacob tell me all this. I have a million questions. You would think that he would have excitement in his voice, but his tone was always one filled with remorse and even disdain.

“If the being healed your shoulder, do you think that it's truly evil?” I asked.

I’m sure the snake giving Eve an apple seemed like a nice gesture at the time. He just wanted to give her knowledge after all. Harmless.

“I asked myself the same thing," replied Jacob. "Now, looking back on it, I believe this is how they deceive you. If they do this miraculous gesture, they know you will always come back and always be dependent on them. What man would believe he needs God in his heart after that?”

He continued. “Every spirit on earth has a name. This spirit's name just happens to be Bigfoot.”

I looked down at my bare arms, and they were covered in goosebumps. I’ve experienced demons before. Growing up I would spend the night at my best friend's house, and every time we would both wake up in the middle of the night and have to cast a demon out of her room. I think it was attached to her mother.

I remember my mother’s stories of growing up with a witch for a grandmother. The seances, the rituals, the disturbed spirits in the house. She warned me and my sisters about the dangers of witchcraft.

I always think of Saul. God denied Saul as king of Israel for he tried to contact the dead with a medium. God considered this a great offense. An offense enough to deny him kingship. For Saul spoke to the spirit he summoned. The spirit of Samuel. Many say it wasn't actually Samuel he spoke to but something else.

The enemy waits to devour

This final encounter that Jacob tells me about is one I’ll never forget. I’m even hesitant to share, but I believe it could help those who were on the same path as me. Curiosity begins innocently, but our enemy is always waiting to devour:

After the Oregon trip, I went back home to the northeast. We live tucked away in the woods. I kept thinking about the leader of the group telling me that I didn’t need to look for them anymore because they would find me.

I had half the right mind to never go searching again, but I told myself I would try one last time in the comfort of my own backyard, and then I would back off.

My flesh did not want me to back off. It was fighting me. I went out back where our shed stood in the far left corner of the yard. I hid my cot behind it so it would be out of sight from my wife because I knew she would make fun of me. I stood there looking at it on the ground in broad daylight, and I said out loud, “I’ll be here tonight. I’ll be right here.”

I thought if I said it out loud, they might know. I felt ridiculous. At that moment, my cell phone rang in my pocket, and it was my son. He asked me if I wanted to go to this church event with the grandkids, and I hadn’t seen them in a few weeks, so I said, "Of course."

I went to the event and spent time with family and ended up being out later than expected. By the time I got home, I was so tired and craving a good night's rest in my own bed, so I did just that and said I’d go out to the cot tomorrow.

In the early morning, my wife woke up and went to shower. The second the water turned on, I heard the metal ladders in the shed all clang to the ground. I shot up in the bed. Hands trembling. It felt as if they were trying to tell me something. Like, “Where are you?”

I sat there in bed and turned the lamp on. I knew they were out there.

The name of the beast

Before he continued he asked me this question.

“Are you familiar with the term 'mindspeak'?”

I said, “Like telepathy?”

“Yes. Exactly that. This is how they communicate."

“I sat in bed and I asked a question out loud that I regret," Jacob continued. "I asked the being his name. It answered. It answered through mindspeak, where it pushed its thoughts into my mind clear as day. More vivid than spoken words.”

“Akee.”

“The second it told me its name, I knew that I had to close the door on this. It could push thoughts into my head. I felt sick.”

When Jacob spoke the name to me I felt my throat close. I sat in silence and waited for him to speak again.

“I have never felt something grieve the Holy Spirit more than I did in that moment. The second I realized it could speak to me, I knew this being was not of God, but an ultimate deceiver. I knew eternity was at stake. And it’s at stake for you, too, if you continue in this search.”

Jacob went on to tell me that in the five years of his absence from their world, he can feel them waiting for him. He knows that all it would take is if he were to give a simple invitation.

May we turn from darkness

In this very real spiritual world around us, what spirits have you invited into your life?

I wrestle with putting the demon’s name in writing. I keep removing it. We have heard many of their names in scripture. Legion, Lucifer. The Book of Enoch lists them as well.

Their names do not have power, and I did not want to bring attention to a being that craves such attention, but I wanted to deliver the truth. There is only power in the name of Jesus Christ, and they tremble at His name.

After reading this, you might feel fear. I did. So I want to remind you that if you are a child of God, and not just a creation of God, you were not given a spirit of fear. Death has been defeated. Since the time of Christ’s death, He has been sitting at the right hand of the Father advancing His kingdom and putting all enemies under his feet.

"For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death." — 1 Corinthians 15:25-26

"Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness; rather, expose them." — Ephesians 5:11