Knobby- The Bigfoot of Cleveland County

The above pic of Capenters Knob Dr and Carpenters Knob mountain (straight ahead) that I took during my visit there.. This road is one area where knobby was seen by locals. The locals also believed Knobby resided on Carpenters Knob mountain.

Here is an interesting article from the late 70's about Knobby..

Article: Knobby: Where is He? What is He?By Jennie PalmerGastonia Gazette
TOLUCA - From the back roads that wind through the Smokey Mountain foothills and from the cities that lie below, the masses are converging on this usually quiet Cleveland County community that it's fair week. And they're all searching for "Knobby", the mysterious ape- like creature folks around here have reported seeing for almost a month now. Stop at any one of the country stores and many of the homes that dot the hillsides and you'll hear the latest "Knobby" tale. If your face is strange, no one will ask why you've come. Instead, they"ll offer to direct you to Minnie Cook's house or Sally White's for a first-hand account of the sightings.

Minnie, an 88-year-old woman who became the first to let her story be known, is so terrified of what may be lurking outside her front door that she won't talk to a visitor unless she's been forewarned of his arrival by her son, Elbert, or daughter-in-law, Ruby. Each time Minnie goes outside the house, Ruby said, she carries a rifle. "People aren't just saying they saw it," Ruby said Thursday afternoon as she sat inside the store she runs with her husband. "They have seen it." The Cooks' store lies in the afternoon shadow of Carpenter's Knob, the foothills hill point just west of Toluca and the landmark from which the creature draws its name. The store and nearby Mountain View Grocery are where area folks gather to swap their "Knobby" stories and where outsiders stop to track down leads to its whereabouts. "Everybody that comes in here talks about it," Ruby said. "A lot of them are scared to death. Me? Well, I'll just tell you I'm not about to go out looking for it." But others are.

Throughout the day Thursday a Shelby radio station crew broadcast live from a campground near the base of the knob. The crew, a smattering of newsmen and a host of curious searchers spent the night hopping from spot to spot in hopes of sighting the creature that's causing the stir. Robert Shoup and Butch Craig cut their high school classes to sit all day by a campfire near the top of the knob. "We're just waiting and looking for it," Butch said. And Russell Cook took a day off work to go "Knobby" hunting with Rondal Huffman. "We've been all over these woods looking for signs of it but we haven't seen a thing," Rondal said. Their last trek of the day was through a deep gully that runs behind Sally White's house, the site of one of the most recent "Knobby" reports. Mrs. White claims to have seen the animal three times, the last on Tuesday about 8:30 p.m. "I heard the dog barking and I looked out," she said. "he was barking and jumping up. When he did that I knew there was something outside that was more than another dog." "I looked down the path and I saw it - something long and black coming up through the woods. Its the same thing I've seen twice before, once before Christmas and once right after." That's the best description, Mrs. white says, she can give of "knobby." But others who claim to have seen it wandering along the roadsides, snatching food from a trash dump and making his way through the woods say "Knobby" is about six feet tall, weighs about 200 pounds, has a small head, flat face and dark, hairy body. Speculation about the creature's identity ranges from wandering mountain panther to escaped carnival baboon to misplaced bear to Big Foot, the supposed missing link between man and ape.

A state park developer drove from eastern North Carolina to Toluca to check the Big Foot possibility. Two other researchers, working on a project for a Massachusetts university, spent at least one night on Carpenter's Knob checking out their own theories about "Knobby." Area residents say they do not know whether the men have left the area. At least 16 "Knobby" sightings have been reported since late December in the vicinity of Carpenter's Knob. Earlier this week Forest Price of Casar, a community located about 10 miles west of Toluca, reported finding his goat dead of a broken neck and speculated that "Knobby" may have been the killer. His brother said he saw the creature roaming the woods near their homes. An animal den and tracks were found about two miles from the Price houses. Searchers said the tracks were at least as large as a man's hand and similarly shaped with a thumb-like protrusion. But most people, both hunters and wildlife protectors, are turning up no trace of the mysterious creature as they comb spots where sightings have been reported. "Most of this talk is just plain old hearsay," said Clyde Price, whose relatives own a large tract of land near the top of Carpenter's Knob. "When something like this gets started it gets bigger and bigger."

Un-Explained Siting

This has been several years ago some time around 1996 or 1997, I can’t remember the year not. It was in September and very warm. A friend of mine and I decided we would take our mountain bikes for a ride down through what is called the basin in Poplar, North Carolina which is in Mitchell Co. This is about a 7 mile trip from the top of the mountain down and back out. We left my truck at the bottom and hauled the bikes up in my friends truck. After we made it down off the steep part of the mountain trail, the old road had some steep parts and we were pushing our bikes. We came around a bend in the road where there was a small hollow with some type of bushes that has little red berry’s. We heard a noise and looked, probably 35 yards away, I saw the back of something tall jump through the bushes. It looked maybe 8 or 10 feet tall.. All I saw was it’s back. It has long shaggy brown hair. I couldn’t see it’s head as it appeared in a leaping position going away from us. All I saw was the back of something large and hairy. I asked my friend what was that, he said I don’t know.. we knew it wasn’t a bear or a deer. The bear around here are back bear and they don’t have long hair, and neither do the white tail deer we have around here. What was so strange was we went over to the thicket to investigate. We stood silent for a minute or so and it got so quite. This is a very wooded place with leaves on the ground. We thought we could hear something run off. There was nothing. Just quite. We couldn’t find any track. None of the leaves on the other side of the thicket were disturbed as would have been natural if something had run up through the woods. The total quiet in the woods was kinda eerie, not even a bird sound. We are both experienced hunters and neither of us had ever seen anything like that.

Beast of Seven Chutes

The photos at the bottom is of an unidentified species. It is standing beside a waterfall (on bottom left of the 1st photo) near Quebec Canada. The park is named 'Parc des Sept Chutes'. Amazingly, the creature appears to be holding something and is staring at the photographer, who doesn't notice it. This creature does not match the descriptions of the legendary Bigfoot. Bigfoot is usually described a being a massive creature that resembles a human. Bigfoot is also usually described as having a conical head and a human looking flat face. And bigfoot is not usually described as being aggressive.

As described in the bullet points above the creature in the photo has the several unique physical attributes that differenciate it from typical bigfoot sightings. The creature is erect, standing on two legs and appears to be between 5-6 feet tall. It has an elongated snout that appears doglike as well as silver hair on its head reaching to it's shoulders. The creatures body is black and it's left arm is visible, bent at the elbow and, quite remarkably, the creature is holding a white dog. Based on the red area that looks like blood on the creatures head, it may have been eating the dog. The creature has a triangular shaped head and unlike bigfoot creatures who retreat when seen, this creature is holding his ground and staring aggressivley directly at the photographer.

Felid Creature (outside of marshall nc)

Hello Danny, I must've missed the response to the post I made about the creature I saw on Old Marshall Hwy. The creature I saw was walking on two legs as it came down the bank to the road and walked on two legs as it crossed the road. It looked rather clumsy as it made it's way down the bank to the road and then paused for a few seconds in front of my truck, as it lept over the edge of the bank heading toward the river it began moving on four "legs"; although I would say limbs as they looked more like arms. As the creature made this transition from moving on two legs to four limbs it lost the clumsy apearance and looked rather graceful, almost like the movement of a large cat. When the creature moved on two legs it had a strange wadling gait similar to that of an oragutan. The creature had very slender limbs that looked too long for it's own body. The torso and abdomen of the creature looked very slim also. This mysterious creature appeared to weigh between 65 to 85 pounds and stood approximately four to four and a half feet tall. The creature was covered in reddish-brown hair that appeared course and wiry. The eyes of the creature were the most extraordinary part about it, they were very large compared to the rest of the creature's body. The eyes looked to be around three and a half to four inches in diameter and had a strange yellow glow to them, much like a cat's eyes reflecting car headlights. The face of the creature was hairless with a wide forehead growing even larger around the eye sockets. The creatures nose was flat and shaped like of a cat's. The creatues mouth appeared to be rather small with thin lips and a small chin. This features gave it a facial look of an over sized house cat, with the exception of no hair or fur. The appearance of the creature, other than these strange over-sized glowing eyes, was not frightening. It's body movements appeared to show confussion then fear. I say that it appeared to be confused because when it paused in front of my truck it tilted it's head sideways like a perplexed dog would! Then the speed at which it clamored over the edge of the bank toward the river makes me believe that it was perhaps more scared of us than we were of it! The creature had a small tail that was about three feet long curled up behind it's body. By the way the tail curled behind it I would believe it to be prehensile like that of a monkey!

I wish that I hadn't missed the post by the woman who said that her son, a friend and her and her husband saw a similar creature around Weaverville. Is it possible that what I saw was a adolesent of whatever undiscovered species this might be and what they saw was an adult? We may never know. In retrospect I wish that I would have stayed around when I saw this strange creature, perhaps get a better look at it and maybe collect some evidence; fur, droppings, footprints, etc... Although four buddies who are freaking-out because of this creature yelling "Oh my God, what is that? Get outta here!" tends to make the heart beat just that little bit faster and raise the "fear factor" of such an encounter even higher.
I hope this answered any questions you may have had about my encounter with this cryptozoological creature; I wish that I could give me more details, but this is all that I know. Please feel free to email me again with any other questions that you may have regarding anything paranormal; if I can't give you a decent and respectable answer I will try my best to find someone who can!
Good luck on your research of cryptozoology,

Old Fort NC- Bigfoot

I live in Old Fort, North Carolina. It is an extremely small town with a population of about 800. About a year ago I bought a new house. It's in the woods well away from town ( not that 800 people is much of a town )!!!!!!!! Right after I moved in I started hearing strange sounds at night. There is "gibberish" that I can't really understand. It kind of sounds like talking but I can never make out any words. I have heard some screams that are so blood crudling that I've actually went into the woods with a flashlight to see if a woman was hurt. My children often play outside until 9 or 9:30 pm ( if it's not a school night!! ) and they have repeatedly seen something that they call " The Brown Man ". They say he is bigger than a man and he is brown in color and all he does is stand at the edge of my front yard in the treeline and watches them play. They are not afraid because he has never ventured into the yard and if they try to approach him he runs away. Even though I have heard the strange sounds I'd never seen anything until last September. It was about 11 pm and I had to go to the pumphouse to get my toolbox. The pumphouse is not actually in my yard it is behind the treeline at the back of my house. The kids were playing a cd really loud and they were dancing around the house ( three kids can make alot of noise !!!!). I stepped out the front door and walked around the corner of the house and there he was. BF was standing not 5 feet from my sliding glass door. He was standing in the shadows looking in the door like he was totally fascinated with what my children were doing. I was so shocked that I just stopped and stared. He saw me at the same time I saw him. He was about 15 feet from me. There was such a shocked expression on his face that I now think it's funny but then I was kinda shook up. He turned and ran into the woods. I've got no real idea how tall he was. My brother is 6 foot 4 inches tall and BF was alot taller than that. I would guess at least 7 feet. He is brown in color ( 'bout like a Hershey bar.) I have searched the woods repeatedly and I've never found a footprint but that's not surprising considering the ground cover, leaves, rocks, etc. I've never been "into" BF until that night but I now own a night vision device and I sometimes sit in the backyard after the kids are asleep and just try to see him again. I have seen him at a distance. I just hope to get a photo one day.