Knocks in the woods... a rancid musky smell... weird hoots and grunts from within the shadows of the trees. Every once in a while, a story begins like a classic Bigfoot encounter… But then takes a turn nobody expects.
A friend of mine, Jeff shared an experience from Central Iowa. It started with eerie woods, mysterious sounds, and the unmistakable feeling that something big was lurking nearby. But what he eventually discovered was something even stranger.
The Phone Call
“Back around 2011 or 2012,” Jeff recalls, “a buddy of mine who lived in Carlisle, close to the Middle River called me up. I was about 20 and he was 18. He tells me, ‘I think I’ve got Bigfoot in the woods behind my house.’" This friend told Jeff that something was killing his chickens and throwing rocks at his house. The house had aluminum siding, and these rocks were allegedly putting dents in it. “Of course I thought he was full of crap. I figured he was messing with me, or maybe his friends... or his brother’s friends were messing with him.”
Still, curiosity won out. Jeff made the 45 minute drive to Carlisle. "When I pulled into his driveway, his Dad was there," Jeff explained. "His dad said, 'Oh you're here to play into that Bigfoot bullshit?" That interaction only validated Jeff's skepticism. Not for a second did Jeff believe that Bigfoot was actually lurking in the adjacent forest.
Entering the Woods
When the two of them walked into the woods behind Jeff's friend’s house, things immediately felt... "off." “The first thing I noticed was the silence,” Jeff explained. “I’ve hunted before. There’s always noise in the woods—birds, insects, something. But this was dead quiet.”
No birds. No cicadas. Nothing but the wind moving through the trees.
“If you dropped a pin on concrete you probably would’ve heard it,” he said. “It was the eeriest, creepiest silence I’ve ever experienced.”
Then they noticed a strong, musky smell.
“Honestly, the smell reminded me of the monkey exhibit at the zoo," Jeff said." It was strong. I've never smelled anything like that out in the woods.”
The Strange Nest
As they moved deeper—about 200 feet into the woods—they found something unusual.
“It looked like a big thicket where branches and debris had been dragged together into a pile,” Jeff explained. “And the closer we got to it, the stronger that smell got.”
Then they heard a noise from in the surrounding forest. “A hooting sound.”
Jeff looked at his friend and nodded. “There’s something here.”
Setting the Trail Cameras
They decided that Jeff would drive home and return the next day with trail cameras. It seemed to be the best way to determine what was actually moving through the area.
“We left the trail cameras up for about three days. When I went back and got them, I plugged them into my laptop and started looking through the footage.”
The first clip appeared, and Jeff couldn't believe what he was seeing. There was something dark and furry in the image. Something bi-pedal and definitely not human.
“I’m thinking… maybe that’s Bigfoot. Maybe a juvenile or something. I mean, it looked very similar to the Jacobs' photos." Jeff was referring to the 2007 trail cam capture in Pennsylvania when R. Jacobs produced several photos from his trail cam that featured what looks like a juvenile ape-like figure hunched over next to a tree.
The Jacobs Photographs were a series of photos taken by R. Jacobs in 2007 that shows a furry, primate-like creature appearing after two bear cubs were filmed at an earlier time. Many have speculated that it could be a juvenile sasquatch or another mystery primate. Others have simply deemed it a mangy black bear who, under poor light conditions, took the appearance of a primate. Jerry Feaser of the Pennsylvania Game Commission was under great pressure from the public for answers on what was in the photos he said "One of the things bears do is they will rub their heads on the ground just like dogs do". Matt Moneymaker, head of the BFRO said he agrees with Feaser on one point that they want the mystery solved and were setting out to replicate the photos. They failed other than a chimpanzee photo that appears to be in the same position. The photographs, taken by a trail camera set up in a forest, shot two pictures of the odd creature 30 seconds apart because the Bushnell game camera used by the hunter was set on a 30 second delay.
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| An image from the Jacobs' trail cam |
Then came a Fourtean twist. When Jeff opened the next video, the mystery became solved.
“That’s a chimpanzee.”
It clearly was not Bigfoot. It was a smelly, hooting, rock throwing, nest building chimpanzee. In Central Iowa. Now the real mystery began.
“What the hell is a chimpanzee doing running around the woods in Central Iowa?” Jeff wondered.
He drove home and immediately started making phone calls.
First Jeff called the local zoo.
“The first words out of their mouth were, ‘We didn’t lose a chimp,’ Jeff said. "I’m like… okay… that’s not what I asked.” They wanted nothing to do with this situation.
Then Jeff called an exotic primate conservation and rescue center called The Great Ape Trust. It's a non-profit research center focused on studying the intelligence, language and behavior of the world's most endangered great apes, located in Des Moines. Now called the Ape Cognition and Conservation Initiative, it's the only facility of it's kind in the world.
“They told me they didn’t have the manpower or the funds to deal with it, but if I could catch it they’d take it.” Jeff laughed at the suggestion. “I’m not catching a chimpanzee.”
Finally he contacted the Iowa DNR. “The DNR wanted nothing to do with it either, but did tell me that Chimpanzees aren't a protected species in Iowa… so technically I could hunt it if I wanted to.”
Jeff had no interest in doing that.
“My buddy had already said, ‘Yeah, you should go hunt that.’ I told him, ‘I’m not hunting a chimp. They use tools! He'd probably knock me out with a rock and eat my face!"
At this point it was late summer. Jeff assumed the mystery animal would move on, find a place to migrate to for the winter.
“I figured once winter hit it wouldn’t survive in Iowa. I told my friend just to stay out of the woods.”
Sadly, as monkey-luck would have it, Iowa was hit with one of the coldest winters in recent memory. “It the year of the first polar vortex," Jeff pointed out.
The Sad Ending
When spring arrived, Jeff’s friend went back into the woods to see if anything remained and what he found was heartbreaking.
“He found the chimp frozen in that little thicket where it had been staying. It must’ve died during the winter. It's bones were laying there like it had been hugging itself," Jeff said. "You could see where it had tried to cover itself up with leaves and branches to try and stay warm."
As sad as it is, Jeff says, his friend keeps a strange reminder of the entire ordeal. “He’s got the chimpanzee skull sitting on his desk. Or at least he did two or three years ago when I last talked to him."
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| Image from University of Wisconsin-Madison library |
Bigfoot… or Something Else?
Looking back, Jeff still laughs about how the whole thing started. “When we first walked into those woods and heard the hooting and saw the structure, I really thought for a second we might’ve found Bigfoot.”
Instead, the encounter turned out to be something arguably even stranger: A lone chimpanzee wandering the woods of Central Iowa. Jeff said that they showed his friend's dad the footage on the trail cam, and all he said was, "OK then. I guess you weren't bullshitting me."
How the chimpanzee got there remains a mystery to this day.
Now playing: "(You Must Fight to Live) On the Planet of the Apes" - The Mummies
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