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Bigfoot in the Headlights: Driver Reports Close Encounter on a Connecticut Back Road
VOLUNTOWN, Connecticut — It was the kind of road where the darkness seems to swallow everything beyond the reach of the headlights.
Shortly before 2 a.m. on July 5, 2026, Rhode Island resident Kevin Klimas was driving away from a friend’s rented cabin near Beach Pond when something large stepped from the woods directly into his path.
Klimas hit the brakes.
What crossed the road, he says, was no bear.
A Shape in the Road
The encounter reportedly occurred near Wylies School Road and Forge Hill Road, close to the Pachaug River and the wooded Connecticut–Rhode Island border.
Klimas told the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization that he was traveling only about 15 to 20 miles per hour when a towering, hair-covered figure suddenly entered the road from his right.
He estimated the creature stood between eight and eight-and-a-half feet tall.
Its shoulders appeared more than four feet wide. Its arms hung nearly to its knees, and its body was covered in long, coarse, matted brown hair. Klimas also described a slightly cone-shaped head and a face with relatively little hair. (BFRO)
Three Steps Into the Darkness
According to Klimas, the creature never stopped or turned toward his vehicle.
It stepped onto the pavement, crossed the road in only a few long strides and disappeared into the forest on the opposite side.
The entire sighting lasted only seconds.
Klimas said the figure moved upright, more like a human than any animal he recognized. He remained stopped in the roadway for more than a minute before recovering enough to continue driving. (BFRO)
There was no photograph.
There was no video.
There were no footprints recovered from the roadside.
What remained was one shaken witness and a description that sounded as though it had stepped from an old New England campfire story.
Investigators Visit the Scene
Klimas submitted his account to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, which classified the incident as a Class A report—its designation for a clear visual sighting rather than unexplained sounds, possible tracks or other indirect evidence.
BFRO investigator Mike Young met Klimas at the location two days later. Young wrote that he found the witness’s description accurate and honest. Another investigator, Matt Moneymaker, interviewed Klimas separately and also said he believed the witness was truthful about what he saw. (BFRO)
That does not prove the creature was Bigfoot.
It means only that the investigators believed Klimas was sincerely describing his experience.
Where Was the Evidence?
Heavy rain had fallen around the time of the sighting and continued during the following days. Investigators said the forest floor was covered with pine needles over hard ground, making clear footprints unlikely even before the later storms arrived.
Much of the nearby land was also privately owned, limiting any search into the woods. (BFRO)
Skeptics may suggest a bear briefly standing upright, a person in dark clothing or an error caused by fatigue and poor nighttime visibility.
Klimas rejects those explanations.
He insists the figure was too tall, too broad and too humanlike in its stride to be a bear.
An Old Mystery Returns
The forests surrounding Voluntown and Pachaug State Forest have produced other alleged Bigfoot reports over the years. BFRO investigators say Klimas’s description resembles another reported encounter from the same general region in 2019. (BFRO)
No physical evidence has surfaced to confirm that an unknown primate walks the woods of Connecticut.
Yet on a dark road just after Independence Day, one motorist says something enormous crossed through his headlights—and vanished in three steps.
Was it a frightened animal, a trick of the darkness or one of America’s oldest living mysteries?
You be the judge.
