Driver Recalls Close Encounter With 8-Foot Sasquatch in Florida

# White Sasquatch Spotted on Florida Highway: A Witness Speaks Out After 11 Years of Silence Sometimes the most compelling encounters come from people who never planned on sharing their story. That's exactly the case with John Stewart, a guest on the Entering The Unknown Podcast, who finally opened up about a roadside encounter that haunted him for over a decade. Back on January 4th, 2003, John was driving his Ford Ranger pickup north on Highway 301, heading from Tampa toward Zephyrhills after working an overnight shift at a magazine company. It was around 7 in the morning, light enough that he didn't need his headlights, with swampy woods flanking both sides of the road. He was fiddling with the radio when something caught his peripheral vision on the left side of the road. What he saw stopped him cold. Standing in the southbound ditch line was a figure standing 7 to 8 feet tall, completely motionless, staring directly at him. John had roughly five seconds to take in the details before the creature vanished, and those details are burned into his memory forever. The figure had white hair covering its head, shoulders, arms, and down the sides of its legs. Its face was red, almost like a severe sunburn, but the skin wasn't leathery or aged. The musculature was staggering, with shoulders roughly three feet across, and the chest and stomach showed dark gray skin with very thin hair coverage. John could clearly see the creature's left hand, dark gray and massive, and its eyes were enormous with all-black pupils that tracked him as he passed. Here's where it gets really interesting. The face wasn't ape-like at all. John describes it as distinctly human, with a wide nose, wide mouth, and a noticeable brow ridge. The creature was frozen mid-stride, tilted slightly to the left, as if caught completely off guard by John's vehicle. John was only about 20 to 25 feet away when this happened. When he looked back after checking his lane, the figure was gone. Less than a second had passed. In his rearview mirror, he could only see bushes moving on the opposite side of the road, suggesting the creature had crossed the entire roadway in that impossibly brief window. Now, here's the part that really gets me. John didn't even know what he had seen. He wasn't a Bigfoot believer. In fact, he had dismissed reports of the creature his whole life, assuming people were just misidentifying bears. When he tried to tell his sister and his mother about the encounter, they laughed it off. His mom literally asked him what he was on. So John did what so many witnesses do. He stayed quiet for eleven years. It wasn't until around 2014, when he discovered podcasts like Cam Buckner's Dixie Cryptid, that John finally found his answer. He was listening to stories about white Bigfoot encounters in places like Kentucky and Tennessee, and suddenly everything clicked. The thing he had seen on Highway 301 had a name. White Sasquatch reports are fascinating because they pop up across different regions, often describing similar features: pale or white hair, sometimes unusual skin tones, and the same massive build and human-like facial structure that John describes. Florida isn't typically the first state people think of when it comes to Bigfoot sightings, but the state has a long history of reports, including the famous Skunk Ape of the Everglades, though John's description doesn't match that particular regional variant. What makes this account stand out is the level of detail John provides. The five-second freeze, the eye contact, the impossible speed of disappearance, the human-like face, and the sheer physical description all align with patterns reported by witnesses across North America for decades. The fact that he was a complete skeptic before the encounter, and that he waited over a decade before finding a community that took him seriously, adds another layer of credibility to his story. If you're interested in hearing John's full account in his own words, definitely check out the video. The interview format lets him walk through every detail, including how the encounter changed his entire perspective on what's walking through those Florida woods. Highway 301 cuts through some seriously wild country between Tampa and Zephyrhills, and John's story makes you wonder how many other drivers have had similar experiences and never said a word.