At about 1:45 a.m. on July 5, 2026, Kevin Klimas, a 45-year-old father from Westerly, Rhode Island, was driving home from a friend’s cabin in Voluntown, Connecticut, on the edge of Pachaug State Forest, the state’s largest at about 27,000 acres. He had gone roughly 200 yards and just crossed a bridge over the Pachaug River when, he says, something stepped out of the woods directly into his headlights. He slammed on the brakes.

He describes a two-legged creature about eight to eight and a half feet tall, covered in long, coarse, matted brown hair that looked greasy, with shoulders at least four feet across and legs that seemed short for its huge torso. It walked swiftly across the road and into the trees. He believed it was female. “This was not a bear,” he wrote in his report. “I’m no longer a skeptic.”

He filed a report with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. Investigator Mike Young interviewed him at the spot two days later, and the group’s founder, Matt Moneymaker, called him credible. The BFRO rated the sighting Class A, meaning a clear, close-range view, and noted a 2019 report from the same county that it said was almost identical.

Many local residents are unconvinced. Connecticut has a growing population of black bears, which can stand and walk upright briefly. State police and environmental officials have no record of a large two-legged animal in the area.