It seemed like a fun idea... CHP vs Bigfoot | Squat the Planet

It seemed like a fun idea... CHP vs Bigfoot

BradKajukenbo

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I was 18. Me and my best friend Jeremy decided to spend the summer camping around Shasta lake. Lakehead where I grew up. We had a few people who would pay us to mow their yards for a little extra money. We got a job for the day helping a guy clean out his fathers storage unit who passed away. Everything was going to the dump and we were told we can have anything we wanted. We got tons of camping gear. Fishing poles. Tents. But the most prized piece we got was a 25lbs bigfoot costume. A few years later we learned it may have been a costume used in the closing scene in the moive Harry and the Hendersons.

The point of our plan? Simple. Fuck with the drunks coming home from the Basshole Bar & Grill at 2am. I pictured myself as someone coming home from the bar, maybe a little buzzed. Going around a curve and seeing bigfoot standing in the middle of the road. Eating a dead gray squirrel.

About 1:30am we found a great spot on Lakeshore Drive. Didn't take us long to find a dead squirrel. Just around a sharp right hand curve we placed our prop in the middle of the road. I put on the costume. You step into the legs and slide your arms in. From the back it zips from your waist to the neck. The head goes on. You look through the holes in its mouth to see. It zips around the neck and a Velcro flap hides the zipper. Its 106 degrees out. Two minutes after being in the costume I was drenched in sweat. Jeremy stationed himself hidden along the curve with a pen light to signal when a car was coming. I was standing in the middle of the road hunched over as if I was eating the dead squirrel.

It wasn't but maybe 10 minutes of standing in the middle of the road, so hot in the costume I couldn't really breathe, when I got Jeremy's signal. As soon as the car rounds the curve, I appeared in its headlights and the car comes to a stop. Trying to play the part, I threw my arms up in front of my face, then did a bigfoot trot left. On the side of the road was a good sized ditch. Once I was on the side of the road, I dropped on my stomach and lay flat in the ditch.

"Did you see that?" a ladies voice shouts. "Did you fucking see that?"
I'm laying there laughing as quietly as I could.
A guys voice. "Yes I saw it. Roll that fucking window back up."
They drove off after a minute.

Just as soon as I positioned myself back to the middle of the road, another signal. I did the same as I did the previous car. Two guys in the car asking each other "What was that?" "I dunno.It ain't no bear." I just lay there laughing. I tell you all though, as much fun I was having, it was fucking hell in this costume. Like being in a small room with a heater on full blast with a hole the size of a penny for fresh air.

Third times a charm. Got the signal. Did the trot. Hit the ditch. Just by habit I started giggling. But I wasn't hearing any voices of "What was that?". Then a spotlight shines over the ditch up into the hillside. "HUH?" Then the car door opens. "Uh-oh". Then footsteps walking across the roads. "Oh shit". I'm laying in the ditch on my stomach left side of my face. The moonlight is just enough light to see that no more then two feet from my head was the side of the road. I can also see a black boot. Then the tan pants with the blue stripe up the leg. Just as I realized it was a CHP Patrolman, I heard his radio. Within two minutes another CHP shows up.

I realized I had two big problems. Not just the two CHP's standing over me, but I cant fucking breathe. After about 10 minutes I was about to sit up and say "Its only a joke". But after the IF I WAS HIM thought crossed my mind, I was for sure he probably grabbed that shot gun when he got out of his car and I didn't move. After about 15 minutes they got into their patrol cars and left. I jumped up, tore the costume off. Ran up to the corner but no Jeremy. I'm pretty sure when he seen the first CHP car, he wasn't sticking around for any possible laughs.

The next week the Lakehead Community News Bulletin read : BIGFOOT SPOTTED ON LAKESHORE DRIVE
 

roguetrader

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classic ! reminds me of some ghostly sightings in my home town years ago - basically there is a big country mansion and park there called Marbury and an associated legend of the Marbury Lady - a ghost who haunted the area due to some wrongful death scenario years before....

anyway some pranksters (like yourself) made this big scary puppet of a ghostly figure in a white dress, and every dark and stormy night (or Halloween) they'd set it up in the woods near the road and scare the shit out of people driving past late at night ! this went on for years in the late 70's and early 80's til one of 'em finally owned up to it !
 

BradKajukenbo

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I get asked all the time if I still have that costume or what happened to it. I wish I could say I still have it but I have no clue as to what happened to it. I Thought about buying one and doing it all over again just to see what the locals would say or do. However being much older and the thoughts of 'What if they shoot me'.
 

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