Mike Conley's Tales of the Weird: Strange sounds can echo in the wilderness

Sometimes when walking my dogs at night, I've heard some strange screeching sounds coming from behind the trees in the backyard. I am sure it is some kind of bird but it doesn't sound quite like anything else.
In our beloved Blue Ridge Mountains, you can encounter weird sounds that defy explanation. I will never forget a story told to me by an old friend of mine. He said one time when he and his sister were kids, they were walking along the woods at Lake Tahoma just as the sun was setting. All of a sudden, they heard this strange loud howl coming from the woods that scared both of them to death. To this day, they have never quite figured out what made that awful noise.
And just nine years ago, a family experienced some frightening noises as they were camping out.
In September 2000, a man, his wife, their children, the man's father and their Lab-mix dog all went to a campground near Spruce Pine, located just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. During the first night of their camping, the man could not sleep and stayed up late reading a book.
"I turned off the lantern and was just getting settled in when I heard a howl/moan," read the man's report. "It sounded sort of like a cow bellowing only a lot deeper. The sound was off to the southwest of the campsite and sounded maybe 1 mile away. It was very quiet that night and I could hear away in the distance a train coming through the valley."
The man described the sound as a series of loud "oooooooohhhs" and it sounded like an animal that was lost or searching for something. He sat up and listened to it for more than 30 minutes. His dog was still asleep.
The weird sound moved away over a nearby ridge to the west. The man thought it might be a cow and he went back to the sleep. At around 4 a.m., he woke up and heard it again. This time, it was coming back over the ridge and moving toward the southeast.
"I told my wife about the next day, she did not believe me," he wrote.
About a day later, the man's father told him about something strange he had heard while camping out at night. "He said he heard what he thought was a bird at first in the trees directly behind my tent around 3 a.m.," reads the man's report. "He said it made a Whoop, Whoop, Whoop noise and lasted for several (minutes) and was very loud. He got up with his flashlight and checked around but didn't see anything. He described the noise as something up in the trees."
The man, his wife and his father didn't check around for anything because they were sure that it was a bird or some other familiar animal. But the strange sounds kept coming in the middle of the night. The next morning, the father said "that thing was back again a 3 o'clock in the morning." He described it as the "same whoop, whoop, whoop sound" and that it ended very low in a chattering kind of sound, like that of a monkey.
"My wife heard my dad and said she had heard it both nights," reads the man's report. "I slept through the whole thing. I sort of felt that maybe it could have been a Bigfoot, but both my wife and dad described it as being up in the trees behind the tent. Also my dog did not wake up at any of the noises. This dog can't stand any kind of wildlife and will bark at it till it leaves."
The man asked his wife and father if they had smelled anything strange but neither had. About a week after they got back from the camping trip, the family was all gathered at the man's home and their conversation went back to those strange sounds. The man remembered that someone else had recorded the sound of what might be a Bigfoot in that area. He found the sound and played it back for his wife and his father.
"I played the howl and scream," reads his report. "The howl is close to what I heard only much longer, lower in pitch and slower. When I played the scream both my dad and wife 'went white.' My dad jumped up and said 'That's it!, that's what I heard only there was like a chattering at the end.' My wife refused to discuss it any further and acted both scared and mad."
In his report, the man adds that none of his children who went along on the camping trip heard that weird sound. He also wonders why his dog didn't react to it either.
This weird tale can be found on the Web site for the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO). The BFRO's Web site is a place where folks like them can post their sightings anonymously. A qualified investigator will look into the matter and follow up on your sighting, no matter how weird it may be. The Web site now lists 48 reports from North Carolina.
Perhaps, you too have seen or heard something strange while camping in the nearby mountains. If you have seen or heard a Bigfoot, you can post your story on the BFRO's site. It can be found at www.bfro.net.