Family Fed Bigfoot for 63 Years Before Hunter Vanished

A video recently surfaced on the Midnight Terror Tales YouTube channel that has to be one of the most chilling pieces of Bigfoot content to come out in years. It weaves together actual spotlight footage, a multi-generational family log book, and a disappearance that still has no answers. If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and carve out some time, because this one stays with you. The story centers on Dwayne Hickla, a 67-year-old retired paper mill worker from Manistique, Michigan, who spent every November of his life at a one-room deer camp in Schoolcraft County in the Upper Peninsula. The cabin was built by his grandfather in 1953 on 40 acres of hardwood ridge, with a cedar and tamarack swamp stretching north toward the Seney National Wildlife Refuge. Beautiful country, and for the Hickla family, deeply sacred ground. In the week before the 2019 Michigan Firearm Deer season opened, Dwayne was shining the swamp at night with a handheld spotlight. He had zip-tied a small camera under the light so whatever the beam touched would be recorded. In one of those clips, a Bigfoot steps out of the cedars and into the beam. The clip is short, but what it shows is extraordinary. The figure stands over seven feet tall beside the buck pole Dwayne built back in 1987. The top crossbar of that pole sits just over six feet off the ground, and the head of the Bigfoot clears it easily. The description matches what so many witnesses across the country have reported over the decades: a heavy, bony brow ridge, a broad prominent nose, a wide flat humanlike face with no muzzle, dark rust-brown hair shading to charcoal over weathered gray-brown skin, and flat reflective eyes that throw the light right back. There's even a torn notch in the left ear, a detail that becomes incredibly significant once you learn the family history. And here's where it gets wild. Instead of freezing or turning away like any animal caught in a spotlight, this Bigfoot walks straight toward the light. What makes this case stand apart from typical sighting reports is the documentation. For 66 years, the Hickla family kept a handwritten log book about the Bigfoot at that swamp. For 63 of those years, they had been feeding it. Every November, without fail, a fresh deer heart was left on a split white pine stump at the edge of the cedars. The tradition started with Dwayne's great-grandfather Arvo Hickla, a Finnish immigrant who came over in 1912 and bought the land in 1953. His first entry in the log, dated November 16, 1953, describes seeing two figures in the cedars while he was dressing out a deer at dusk. The big one was taller than a door with a face like a man and no snout like a bear. The second one was young, about the height of a 10-year-old boy, with a torn notch in its left ear. Arvo cut out the heart, set it on the pine stump, and walked away backwards. In the morning it was gone, and his wood pile, which he had left as a loose heap, had been stacked neatly, every piece. Under that entry, he wrote one line in English: "We have an agreement now." The rules passed down through the family were simple. Never shine the swamp. Never hunt past the stump. Never skip a year. When Dwayne's daughter Jolene asked her grandfather what happens if you skip a year, he simply said, "You do not skip a year," and passed her the potatoes. In 2016, Dwayne stopped the tradition. On the morning of Sunday, November 17, 2019, a Michigan DNR conservation officer named Keith Rodio found Dwayne's truck parked at a back gate on the far side of the property. The engine was still running. The fuel needle was on empty. The spotlight was lying on the passenger seat, still switched on. Bootprints led from the driver's door into the swamp, and beside them, stride for stride, was a second set of tracks. They were bare and roughly 17 inches long. The two sets of tracks walked into the cedars together, side by side. Neither one came back out. Dwayne Hickla has not been seen since. For anyone familiar with Sasquatch research, 17-inch bare tracks fall right in line with documented footprint evidence from across North America, where track casts have ranged anywhere from about 14 inches to over 20 inches in length. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan in particular has long been considered a hotspot for activity, with a deep tradition of witness reports from loggers, hunters, and trappers going back generations. The combination of dense swamp habitat, remote cedar stands, and minimal human population makes it ideal territory. The video also includes Jolene's firsthand account of growing up with the tradition, including the knocking sounds that would come from the swamp at night, three hard cracks like someone swinging a baseball bat into a hardwood tree. Her grandfather would answer by knocking back on the cabin wall with the stove poker, three times, slow and even. The knocking from the swamp would stop. Nobody ever talked about it. There is so much more to this story than I can fit here, including the moment in 1998 when Jolene found the original log book hidden under a loose floorboard in a coffee tin, and the night her father took her out to the stump for the first time after her grandfather had passed. The full account from Jolene, the family dynamics, the way the knocking changed after her grandfather died, lighter and higher and coming from farther north in the cedars, all of it is in the video. It is the kind of storytelling that reminds you why these cases matter and why the people who live them deserve to be heard. Do not skip this one. Head over to Midnight Terror Tales on YouTube and watch the whole thing. It is the kind of footage and testimony that reminds you the woods still have secrets.