Knobby: The North Carolina Bigfoot That Sent Hundreds Into the Woods in 1979
In 1874, a North Carolina Preacher Prayed for the Mountain to Shake. The Next Day, It Did.
Around 3 a.m. one morning in June 2010, a man near Casar, North Carolina, called 911 with a problem nobody had written a procedure for: something enormous had come out of the woods and was bothering his dogs. He believed the visitor was Bigfoot. And before he called the authorities, he said he had already run the thing off himself.
His name was Tim Peeler, and what he told Cleveland County dispatchers was extraordinary. He described an upright creature nine or ten feet tall, with long arms, yellowish hair, a beard, and a face that looked human. He also thought it had six fingers on each hand. Of all the details Peeler could have emphasized, one was particularly memorable: the creature had beautiful hair.
I realize how that sounds. But here’s why I love this story: we’re not relying on a half-remembered local legend. The 911 calls were recorded, the sheriff’s office responded, and television reporters interviewed Peeler at his home. You can watch the original news report below.
He was calling coyotes. Something else showed up.
Peeler told reporters he’d been calling coyotes when he heard unusual noises outside his mountain home. He went out and saw what he described as a towering, hairy figure near his dogs. According to his account, the visitor got tangled around the dogs’ chains. Peeler confronted it, spoke sharply to it, and even poked it with a stick.
The creature retreated down a path into the woods, he said. Then it came back. So Peeler sent it off a second time, telling it to get away. He later said he hadn’t had time to take a photograph. Whatever was in his yard, his immediate concern was getting it away from his animals.
And then he picked up the phone.
Listen to what he told 911
In the calls released by the Cleveland County Communications Center, Peeler described a creature that walked upright and resembled a giant ape with a man’s face. He told the dispatcher that he had not shot it. In a separate exchange, he asked what trouble he might face if he did shoot such an animal. The dispatcher could not give him a legal answer.
A deputy was dispatched, but authorities did not find a Sasquatch. The sheriff’s office recorded the matter as a suspicious person report. WBTV later asked the county’s 911 director about handling this sort of emergency. The answer was basically that dispatchers take every call seriously, but the department had no special policy for Sasquatch sightings.
Watch Tim Peeler tell the story
Here is the original WCNC television report from 2010. Listen to Peeler describe the creature, watch him point out where it came from, and hear how a deputy who grew up with the old Knobby legend responded to the latest report.
Archival WCNC news coverage, June 2010. The video documents Peeler’s account; it does not show an unidentified creature.
Wait. Hadn’t Cleveland County heard this before?
Yes. And this is where the story gets especially good. More than thirty years earlier, people around Carpenter’s Knob had reported a large, hairy creature they called Knobby. The accounts drew crowds into the woods, generated newspaper maps and radio coverage, and inspired a 1979 television special. We told that remarkable story yesterday, with the surviving 1979 broadcast.
One of the deputies interviewed after Peeler’s encounter, Sgt. Mark Self, remembered hearing about Knobby as a child. The tales of an animal that supposedly disturbed livestock and frightened neighbors had stayed with him. Then, three decades later, someone in the same general part of Cleveland County was calling 911 with a fresh report of an enormous visitor from the woods.
There is one interesting wrinkle: Peeler’s yellowish-haired, bearded visitor didn’t sound exactly like every description of the dark-haired figure from the 1970s. The suggestion that he had met Knobby again was a connection people made because of the place and its history, not proof that the two accounts described the same thing.
So what actually happened?
We know that Peeler made the calls, that the calls were recorded and released, and that law enforcement responded. We know exactly what he told reporters because the interview survives. What we don’t have is a photograph of the creature, physical evidence that establishes what it was, or independent confirmation that Bigfoot walked through his yard.
I don’t think you have to believe in Bigfoot to appreciate any of this. A mysterious visitor in the woods, a man protecting his dogs, a perfectly real 911 dispatch, and a local legend that had been waiting more than thirty years for another chapter—it’s one of those stories that could only become part of the fabric of a place like Casar.
And I have to say, if a ten-foot creature ever appears in my yard, I can only hope I handle it with as much confidence as Tim Peeler, who apparently decided the proper response was to scold it like an unruly neighbor and send it back down the path.
We covered Bigfoot in our spooky issue
Long before we revisited Tim Peeler’s remarkable 2010 call, we covered Bigfoot in Foothills Digest Issue #23, our Fall 2023 Ghosties, Witches, Haints & Spirits edition. That original “Bigfoot” feature starts on page 10. Here’s the real magazine spread; click it to open the issue and read more.
More North Carolina Bigfoot stories
We’ve collected all our investigations and other reported encounters in one place. Back to the North Carolina Bigfoot archive → Browse the stories by county, compare the evidence, and revisit our original magazine feature.
The original reporting
- WBTV: 2010 reporting on the 911 calls, dispatchers and deputy response.
- Contemporary NBC/WMBF account of Peeler’s interview and Sgt. Mark Self’s recollections.
- CNN’s June 16, 2010 transcript, documenting national coverage and excerpts from the calls.
- Foothills Digest: the original Knobby sightings and 1979 TV special.
Featured photograph: John Towner/Unsplash. This is atmospheric woodland imagery, not a photograph of Peeler’s property or of an unidentified animal.
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