00:05
Hello everyone and welcome back to Horror Stories.
00:08
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Story 1.
00:28
I worked for 30 years as the chief millwright at a lumber mill.
00:32
I understand wood. I know the sound a branch makes when it strikes the side of a building.
00:38
I know what a bear sounds like when it forces its way through thick brush.
00:42
I know how the forest behaves after nightfall.
00:45
I am telling you this because I need you to understand something.
00:49
I am not easily frightened, and I am not someone who invents stories.
00:53
My wife and I constructed that cabin ourselves. We placed every board and drove every nail with our own hands.
01:00
It stood beside a lake deep in the forest north of Coos Bay, Oregon. There was no electrical grid, and there were no nearby neighbors. We used a generator for electricity, and that was all we needed.
01:12
It was our private place, the home where we intended to spend the rest of our lives.
01:17
It happened on October 3rd, 2019.
01:21
We had already been staying at the cabin for several days.
01:24
It had been a peaceful trip, no different from all the others.
01:28
That evening the kitchen light was on, a single lamp illuminated the front room, and the television played quietly in the background.
01:36
There was nothing unusual about it.
01:38
It was simply an ordinary night.
01:41
At around 10 o'clock, something struck the side of the cabin. It was not a light tap, and it was not the sound of a branch dropping against the wall. It was a loud bang, deliberate and forceful, like someone had slapped the flat of a hand against the outside of the cabin.
01:57
The impact was hard enough that my wife and I both stopped what we were doing and stared at each other.
02:03
I picked up a flashlight, stepped outside, and walked around the entire perimeter of the building.
02:08
I found nothing. There were no tracks that I could identify, no animal nearby, and nothing had been knocked over.
02:16
When I returned inside, I told my wife that a deer had probably bumped against the wall.
02:21
She nodded and we resumed watching television.
02:25
Only a few minutes later it happened again.
02:27
The sound came from the same wall.
02:30
It was the same heavy bang, although this time it might have been even louder.
02:34
My wife shut off the television and then turned off the lights.
02:38
I walked to the bedroom window at the rear of the cabin.
02:41
From that position I could see the generator shed. A light was burning inside the shed.
02:47
It was the only outdoor light still on, and it cast a yellow glow across approximately 15 feet of ground.
02:54
That was when I saw it.
02:56
Just beyond the edge of the light stood a figure.
02:59
It was enormous.
03:00
It was not a bear, and it was not a human being.
03:05
It stood upright, perfectly upright, and appeared to be staring through the shed window as though it were fascinated by the light.
03:12
Then it stepped forward and entered the illuminated area.
03:15
In all my life, I have never witnessed anything like what I saw at that moment. It had to be at least eight feet tall.
03:22
Its entire body, from its head to its feet, was covered in reddish-brown hair.
03:28
It was not fur like the coat of a bear.
03:30
It looked more like actual hair, thick, rough, and coarse, and it covered nearly every part of the creature.
03:38
Its face was flat, with a pronounced brow ridge projecting above the eyes.
03:42
Its nose was broad and nearly flush against its face.
03:46
I could see its mouth because it was slightly open.
03:49
The teeth appeared thick and block-shaped, almost square. They resembled human teeth, only much larger.
03:56
It also had lips that looked like the lips of a person.
03:59
Its arms were unusually long.
04:02
As it moved, it casually swung one arm outward in the same relaxed manner that you or I might swing an arm while walking down a hallway.
04:09
It moved on two legs and remained completely upright. It did not hunch forward. It did not walk on its knuckles.
04:17
It simply walked.
04:19
What I remember most clearly, however, was the expression on its face.
04:23
It did not appear angry. It did not appear frightened.
04:27
It looked curious as though it were examining the light in the same way that I was examining it.
04:32
There was something in its eyes that I can describe only as intelligence. It understood what it was seeing.
04:39
It was thinking.
04:40
I called for my wife. I do not remember my exact words, but I said something like, come in here, you have to see this.
04:48
She approached the window, looked outside once, and immediately ran into the other room.
04:54
Later, she told me that she had known what it was the instant she saw it. She spoke the word before I did.
05:01
Sasquatch The creature remained there for approximately two minutes.
05:06
Two minutes may not seem like a long period of time, but when you are standing inside a dark room, staring through a window at something that is not supposed to exist while it looks back at you, Two minutes feels endless.
05:19
Eventually it turned away.
05:21
It did not move suddenly, and it did not appear startled.
05:25
It simply turned and walked calmly into the tree line, as though it had finished seeing whatever it had come to examine.
05:32
We did not spend the rest of that night inside the cabin. We drove out to the main road and contacted the sheriff's office. Two deputies returned to the property with us.
05:42
I will give those men credit. They did not ridicule us, and they did not attempt to convince us that we had merely seen a bear.
05:51
They searched the property with flashlights and discovered a trail of flattened grass extending from the generator shed toward the woods.
05:58
The vegetation had been crushed into a clear line leading directly into the trees, marking the route the creature had taken.
06:05
I asked the deputies whether they had ever received similar reports from that part of the area.
06:10
They exchanged a glance, and I will never forget it.
06:14
It was the look of two men silently deciding how much information they should reveal.
06:19
Finally, one of them answered,
06:21
Yes, a few times.
06:24
The following morning after daylight, I returned to the generator shed. I wanted to determine the creature's actual height.
06:31
I measured the distance from the ground at the upper edge of the shed's window frame. Then I remembered where its head had been positioned in relation to that window.
06:39
It had been at least eight and a half feet tall.
06:42
I spent 30 years working in the lumber industry. I constructed that cabin with my own hands. I knew every beam and every joint.
06:51
My wife and I had planned to grow old there. We sold it.
06:55
I no longer enter those woods. I do not return to that lake. Whatever lives out there did not behave aggressively.
07:03
It never attempted to harm us, but I stared into its face and it stared into mine.
07:09
I am telling you now that the creature was real. It is still somewhere out there, and it is far more intelligent than most people believe.
07:22
Story 2.
07:24
I remain silent about what happened for 43 years. People are free to call me whatever they choose.
07:30
A liar, an idiot, or a man who imagined things that were never there.
07:35
But I know what happened to us on that mountain.
07:38
I was there. I still carry the scars that prove it.
07:41
And I am not a man who fabricates stories.
07:45
There were five members in our group. Me, Marion Smith, his son Roy, Gabe Lefevre, and John Peterson.
07:52
For six years we had been searching for gold in the country surrounding Mount St. Helens.
07:57
It was difficult, isolated territory. The kind of wilderness where a person could go for weeks without encountering another human being.
08:05
Our mining claim was called the Vander White. It was located approximately two miles east of the mountain, near the edge of a deep canyon.
08:14
We had constructed a small log cabin below the pumice fields.
08:18
It was nothing elaborate, four log walls, a door and a roof with an opening cut through it for the stovepipe. It kept the rain from falling directly on us, and that was all we required.
08:30
The trouble began roughly one week before the attack.
08:33
Every evening around the time darkness settled over the mountain, we heard the same sounds.
08:39
Thumping.
08:40
Deep, powerful thumps like a large man pounding both fists against his own chest.
08:45
Then came the whistles. They were sharp, high-pitched calls coming from the ridgelines on either side of our camp. A whistle would sound from the eastern ridge and another would answer from the west.
08:56
The calls traveled back and forth like some kind of conversation. We could not explain them.
09:02
We tried to convince ourselves that the sounds were caused by wind passing through the rocks or by some unfamiliar bird we had never heard before.
09:10
But none of us truly believed that explanation.
09:14
Then we began discovering footprints. They measured 14 inches long and were shaped like the feet of a human being, although they were considerably wider and deeper.
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Some of them had been pressed 4 inches into the hard soil surrounding the springs and trails.
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Whatever had created those tracks was extremely heavy, much heavier than any ordinary man.
09:35
We found the prints everywhere, beside the spring, along the creek, and once directly outside the cabin door.
09:42
After that, we carried our rifles everywhere we went, even when we were simply walking to collect water.
09:49
It was during one of those trips to the spring that Marion and I saw the first creature. We were approximately 100 yards from the cabin.
09:57
Marion suddenly stopped, lifted his rifle and shouted.
10:01
I turned in the direction he was looking.
10:03
Across the spring beside a large pine tree stood a creature at least seven feet tall, possibly taller.
10:10
Blackish brown hair covered its entire body from head to foot. It stood upright like a human being.
10:17
It noticed us at the same moment that we noticed it.
10:20
It quickly stepped behind the pine tree, moving with obvious purpose, and then leaned out from the side of the trunk to look at us.
10:27
Marion fired three shots.
10:30
Even from 100 yards away, I saw pieces of bark burst from the tree with every bullet.
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But the creature was not struck.
10:38
It pulled its body back behind the trunk and disappeared.
10:42
About one minute later, we saw it again. It was 200 yards farther down the narrow canyon, running upright at tremendous speed in a way no bear could possibly run.
10:52
I raised my rifle and fired three times. I missed.
10:57
The creature vanished into the timber and we did not see it again that day.
11:01
We hurried back to the cabin and explained what had happened to the other men.
11:05
No one disputed our account.
11:07
No one claimed we had imagined it. All five of us agreed that we would abandon the claim and leave at first light.
11:14
We should have departed immediately.
11:16
At approximately midnight, something struck the outside wall of the cabin with enough force to knock the chinking loose from between the logs.
11:24
Pieces of dried mud and moss fell onto Marion while he was sleeping. Within seconds, all of us were standing with our rifles ready.
11:32
Through the openings where the chinking had been knocked away, we could see them.
11:36
Three creatures stood together in the darkness, approximately 30 feet from the cabin.
11:42
They had enormous bodies, powerful shoulders and long arms. All three stood upright.
11:48
They were lifting rocks, not small stones but heavy rocks, and throwing them against the cabin walls. Then they began striking the logs with their fists.
11:58
The entire structure trembled. I could feel the vibrations in my teeth.
12:03
One of the creatures climbed onto the roof. I do not know how it reached it. The roof stood eight feet above the ground, yet somehow the creature had gotten on top of it.
12:13
It jumped and stomped across the roof, apparently attempting to collapse it.
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The logs groaned beneath its weight.
12:20
Dust and wooden splinters fell over us.
12:23
Marion and I aimed our rifles upward through the stovepipe opening and fired.
12:27
Inside that small cabin, the gunshots were deafening. The creature leapt from the roof and the pounding against the walls immediately resumed with even greater force.
12:37
Roy, Gabe, and John stood at the door.
12:39
One of the creatures, the largest of them, was repeatedly slamming its body against it.
12:45
The door began bending inward. The three men pressed all their weight against it, but they could not hold it by themselves.
12:53
They tore boards from one of the bunk beds and wedged them across the door frame as braces.
12:58
Three grown men and a barrier of lumber stood between us and whatever was trying to force its way inside.
13:05
The barricade barely held.
13:07
Then an arm came through the wall.
13:09
One of the creatures had discovered an opening in the chinking wide enough to push its arm through.
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It was a massive limb covered in dark hair.
13:17
Its hand closed around the handle of an axe that had been resting against the interior wall.
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The creature attempted to drag the axe through the opening.
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I threw myself forward and grabbed the handle.
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For several moments, the creature and I were locked in a struggle, each of us gripping the same piece of wood from opposite sides of the wall.
13:37
I could feel the power in its hand.
13:39
Trying to pull the axe away from it was like fighting against a machine.
13:44
Marion pressed the muzzle of his rifle against the opening and fired. The creature released the axe and ripped its arm back through the wall. The siege continued for five hours.
13:54
Five hours of rocks crashing against the walls and roof. Five hours of pounding, slamming, and those terrible chest-thumping noises echoing through the darkness.
14:04
Five hours of us using our ammunition.
14:06
shooting through every opening and crack we could find.
14:10
When daylight arrived, the attack ended. It did not gradually fade away.
14:15
Everything stopped at once as though someone had flipped a switch. The thumping ended. The rocks stopped striking the cabin. The five of us stood in the sudden silence, covered with sweat and dust, our ears ringing from the repeated rifle fire.
14:30
we listened there was nothing we waited for a long time eventually we removed the braces from the door and stepped outside with our rifles raised the ground surrounding the cabin had been torn apart rocks lay everywhere on the roof piled beside the walls and scattered across the clearing the chinking had been knocked loose in at least a dozen places
14:54
The doorframe had splintered where the creatures had repeatedly struck it.
14:58
I looked toward the canyon rim, approximately 80 yards away.
15:02
One of them stood there watching us as we prepared to leave.
15:06
I lifted my rifle and fired three shots. The third bullet struck it.
15:11
I saw the creature stagger. It stumbled backward with its arms reaching outward and then disappeared over the canyon's edge.
15:19
It fell 400 feet into the gorge.
15:22
I heard it strike the bottom.
15:24
We did not climb down to investigate.
15:26
We did not gather our tools or pack our supplies.
15:30
We abandoned the gold claim.
15:32
After six years of work, we walked out of that canyon and never returned.
15:37
Marion reported the incident to a ranger at Spirit Lake.
15:40
I returned to my home in Kelso.
15:43
Somehow the story reached the newspapers. Before long, armed people began pouring into the mountains, searching for the creatures.
15:51
The newspapers called it the Great Ape Hunt of 1924. The gorge became known as Ape Canyon. It is still called Ape Canyon today.
16:00
No one ever discovered the body at the bottom of the gorge. They never located any of the creatures.
16:07
Searchers found our damaged cabin.
16:09
They found the rocks and the evidence of the attack, but they found nothing else.
16:14
I need you to understand something. We abandoned a functioning gold claim, one that we had spent six years developing.
16:21
No prospector willingly walks away from gold unless he has an extremely good reason. We had five reasons.
16:28
I believe those creatures are still somewhere on that mountain. I believe it with every bone in my body.
16:35
On May 18th, 1980, when Mount St. Helens erupted and tore itself apart, I allowed myself to wonder for just one moment whether the mountain had finally buried them.
16:46
I thought perhaps it was over, but I know better.
16:50
Whatever those beings are, they existed there long before we arrived, and they will remain after we are gone.
16:56
Should you ever find yourself in those forests at night and hear whistles traveling between the ridge lines,
17:02
One call followed by an answering call. You must leave. Do not wait until daylight. Get out immediately. Because morning may not arrive quickly enough.
17:17
Story three.
17:19
Before I begin, I want to make one thing absolutely clear.
17:23
I am a professor.
17:25
I teach at Northwest Indian College on the Lummi Reservation outside Bellingham, Washington.
17:30
My work focuses on indigenous cultures and the relationships indigenous communities have with the natural world. I hold academic degrees. I publish scholarly papers.
17:41
I am not the sort of person who spends his time pursuing monsters.
17:45
But I know what I heard, and I know what later came looking for me.
17:50
For several years I rented a house along Haxton Way on the Lummi Reservation.
17:55
The road stretched from east to west and ended near Lummi Point, close to the ferry landing.
18:00
My house stood only a few feet from the road on its southern side. Behind the house lay approximately 100 yards of thick heavy woodland. Beyond those trees was Lummi Bay. It was an exceptionally quiet place.
18:13
Not the kind of quiet that simply means there is no sound, but the kind that feels like stillness itself has a presence.
18:20
People who have spent their lives in cities do not fully understand that kind of silence.
18:25
Out there you could hear yourself breathe.
18:28
It happened on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2009. I had a 540 flight departing from Bellingham for Seattle, where I would connect to another flight bound for Durango, Colorado.
18:40
I was scheduled to give a lecture at Fort Lewis College the following day.
18:44
I woke before four in the morning and began carrying my travel bags outside to the truck.
18:49
The morning was cold, sharp, and almost completely cloudless. The air had that brittle quality that makes it feel like glass.
18:58
I had barely stepped off the porch when the sound struck me.
19:01
It was a scream, or perhaps a cry. Neither word truly describes it, but I do not have a better one. It was a vocalization, one long flowing sound that sliced through the silence like a knife.
19:15
It was incredibly loud.
19:17
Not the kind of loudness produced by something far away, but the kind that comes from something very close.
19:24
It came from the woods directly behind my house, perhaps fifty yards away, possibly even closer.
19:30
The sound continued for approximately five seconds. Then it stopped. There were two or three seconds of complete silence. After that, the exact same sound repeated. The pitch was identical. The duration was identical. The impossible volume was identical.
19:48
It was as though someone had replayed the same recording twice.
19:52
Then every dog within approximately a mile began barking wildly.
19:56
The barking spread outward in waves. The nearest dogs reacted first. Then dogs farther away joined them. Then dogs even farther beyond those.
20:06
It was a chain reaction of alarm moving away from my backyard like ripples spreading across water.
20:12
Only five seconds earlier, everything had been perfectly still.
20:17
Now the entire area had erupted into chaos.
20:20
I switched off the porch lights. I am not entirely sure why I did it.
20:25
Perhaps it was instinct.
20:27
Then I sat in the darkness on the porch and waited for 15 minutes.
20:31
I did not move. I barely allowed myself to breathe.
20:35
I wanted to hear the sound again, but it never returned.
20:39
Whatever had produced it became silent and remained that way.
20:43
After approximately 10 minutes, the last of the dogs finally stopped barking. The silence came back, but it was no longer the same silence as before. This silence felt watchful.
20:55
I will tell you exactly what passed through my mind.
20:59
My first thought, the immediate instinctive reaction that came before my rational mind could interfere, was that the sound had been made by a primate.
21:07
My second thought was Bigfoot. My third thought was the one my education attempted to provide.
21:13
That is absurd. Find another explanation.
21:17
so i tried i mentally reviewed every animal i knew every bird and every mammal native to the pacific northwest a coyote no an owl no an elk absolutely not a cougar not remotely close i had spent years outdoors i was familiar with the sounds made by the region's wildlife This sound did not belong to any of them.
21:44
The closest comparison I can offer, and it is a remarkably close comparison, is the howling cry of a howler monkey in the jungles of South America.
21:54
It had the same deep resonant, far carrying quality. It sounded like something with an enormous chest and a throat naturally designed to project sound across a great distance.
22:04
The problem was that there are no howler monkeys in Washington State. I traveled to Colorado. I delivered my lecture. Then I returned home and attempted not to think about what had happened.
22:16
Four days later, on Saturday, September 27th, I had been pheasant hunting at Lake Terrell, only a few miles from the house.
22:24
It had been a productive day.
22:26
I returned home at around noon with two good roosters.
22:30
To the right of my driveway was a small clearing above the septic tank. Near the edge of the woods I kept a pine log positioned for cleaning birds.
22:38
I would gut and pluck the pheasants there, then toss the remains, the feathers and entrails, into the tree line for raccoons and opossums to carry away.
22:48
I had done this dozens of times. I had just completed cleaning the first pheasant when the woods in front of me suddenly erupted.
22:55
About 20 feet away, perhaps less, a tree began moving violently from side to side. This was not a thin sapling.
23:03
Its trunk measured approximately ten inches across. It swung back and forth as though something incredibly powerful had seized it and was shaking it the way a man might shake a stubborn fence post.
23:14
Branches snapped. Leaves poured down.
23:17
The smaller trees around it were being struck, battered and broken.
23:21
Then everything stopped for approximately three seconds.
23:25
Silence.
23:27
After that came the sound of wood breaking.
23:29
The cracks were loud and deliberate, like someone snapping thick branches across a knee or repeatedly striking the ground with them.
23:37
I immediately stood up with the skinning knife still in my hand.
23:41
My Labrador Robin had been lying beside me chewing on a pheasant wing, He rose as well. He did not growl. He did not bark.
23:50
He simply stared into the trees with an intensity I had never seen in him before.
23:55
Then very slowly he began backing toward the house without taking his eyes away from the tree line.
24:01
That was what truly frightened me. It was not the sound. It was not the violently shaking tree.
24:07
It was Robin. He was a Labrador.
24:11
Labradors do not retreat from disturbances. They move toward them. They charge toward commotion. They retrieve things.
24:19
By breeding and instinct, they are dogs that approach whatever is happening.
24:24
Robin was backing away. The tree began shaking again. The same trunk whipped violently from side to side.
24:32
More branches fell. More wood cracked.
24:35
Whatever was causing the destruction stood less than twenty feet from me, and I could not see it. The brush was too dense. The foliage formed a solid barrier.
24:46
I stared into a wall of green while something enormous tore the vegetation apart from the other side. Yet I saw nothing.
24:54
I want to be exact about this.
24:56
Whatever occupied those woods was not attempting to escape.
25:00
A frightened deer crashes through brush and disappears within seconds.
25:05
A bear that does not want to be near a person creates noise as it moves away.
25:09
This creature was not moving away. It was remaining exactly where it was. The shaking tree and snapping branches were not signs of panic. They were a display.
25:20
It was communicating something.
25:22
The message was simple.
25:25
Leave.
25:26
I gathered the birds, one of them still only partially cleaned, and hurried toward the house with the blood covering my hands.
25:33
Robin had already reached the porch and stood there waiting for me to open the door.
25:37
After those two experiences I began asking questions.
25:41
I spoke with my students, including Lummi students and Coast Salish students.
25:46
None of them seemed surprised. Many had experienced encounters of their own.
25:51
Nearly everyone knew someone who had seen one of the creatures.
25:54
The Lummi people do not call it Bigfoot.
25:57
They have their own name for it, and they do not debate whether it exists. To them, asking whether the creature is real would be like asking whether rain is real.
26:06
It is simply there. It has always been there.
26:10
I eventually learned that the house I had rented stood in an area widely known for sightings.
26:15
Without realizing it, I had been living in Bigfoot's backyard. But the Lummi people already knew. They had always known.
26:23
I once believed that every mystery existed to be solved.
26:27
I am no longer certain that is true.
26:30
I believe there may be things in this world that remain just beyond the limits of human understanding.
26:35
Things that existed long before us and will continue long after we disappear.
26:40
Perhaps the reason we cannot prove their existence is that they do not want us to.
26:45
I still teach. I still enter the forest.
26:48
But now I listen differently.
26:51
I pay much closer attention to silence because sometimes at 3.30 in the morning that silence suddenly breaks apart and whatever emerges from it can change everything you believed you understood.
27:07
Story 4.
27:09
I kept what happened to myself for 33 years. I did not tell my family. I did not tell my friends.
27:17
When I finally emerged from those mountains during the summer of 1924, a logger found me stumbling through the brush and asked what had happened.
27:26
I told him I was a prospector who had become lost.
27:29
That was the explanation I gave.
27:31
For three decades, that was the only explanation.
27:35
I concealed the truth because I knew exactly how people would respond. They would say I was insane.
27:41
They would say the Swede had remained alone in the wilderness for too long. But I was not insane. I have never been insane.
27:49
What happened to me was real.
27:51
I have sworn to that under oath and I would swear to it again at this very moment.
27:56
My name is Albert Ostman.
27:59
In 1924 I was 30 years old. I worked as a lumberman and lived in British Columbia.
28:05
I decided to take a vacation and travel to Toba Inlet on the coast.
28:09
My plan was to do some prospecting and possibly discover traces of a lost gold mine I had heard mentioned in stories.
28:16
I hired an elderly indigenous guy to transport me by boat to the head of the inlet. He was a talkative man. During the journey, he told me stories about the gold and about the surrounding country. Then he began speaking about the Sasquatch. He told me,
28:32
Hair covers their entire bodies, but they are not animals. They are people.
28:38
Large people who live in the mountains.
28:40
I did not believe any of it.
28:42
He left me at the head of the inlet, and I established camp in a suitable location.
28:47
The ground was level. Water was nearby and good timber surrounded the area.
28:52
I arranged my bedroll, provisions and rifle. During the days I hiked across the ridges searching for signs of gold and hunting animals for food. It was beautiful, remote country. There was not another human being for miles in any direction.
29:07
During each of the first three nights something entered my camp while I slept.
29:12
Every morning I discovered that objects had been moved. My pack had been shifted. The cans had been rearranged.
29:19
Food was missing.
29:21
It was not the kind of damage a raccoon would cause.
29:24
A raccoon tears into supplies and leaves destruction behind. This was organized. Something capable of using hands had searched through my belongings.
29:34
By the third morning I had endured enough. That night I entered my sleeping bag while still fully dressed, including my boots.
29:41
I placed my rifle beside me and pushed several cans of provisions into the bag as well.
29:47
If something entered the camp again, I intended to be prepared.
29:51
I never meant to fall asleep, but I did. I woke to the realization that I was being carried.
29:57
I remained inside my sleeping bag, tightly enclosed, and something had lifted the entire bag with me inside it.
30:05
It was not carrying me over one shoulder the way a man might carry a sack of grain.
30:10
Instead, I was pressed against its chest. It held me almost gently, as though cradling me.
30:16
I felt the repeated rise and fall of its movement, up and down, up and down.
30:22
It was walking uphill with extraordinarily long strides.
30:26
I could feel the steepness beneath us.
30:29
Branches scraped across the exterior of the sleeping bag.
30:32
I could not see anything. I could not free my arms.
30:37
My rifle remained trapped inside the bag with me, but I could not reach it.
30:42
I do not know precisely how long the creature carried me.
30:46
Later I estimated approximately three hours.
30:49
For three hours I was transported through the mountains in darkness, unable to move or see, feeling the body heat and smelling the odor of whatever held me.
30:59
It had a heavy, musky, animal-like smell, but it did not resemble the odor of any animal I recognized.
31:06
When the creature finally placed me on the ground, I opened the sleeping bag and looked around.
31:12
Daylight was only beginning.
31:14
I had been brought into a small, protected valley shaped almost like a bowl.
31:19
Steep walls of rock and dense timber rose on every side. Four creatures surrounded me. They were a family. There is no other suitable word for them.
31:29
There was an older male, an older female, and two younger ones, a boy and a girl.
31:35
The older male had carried me.
31:37
I estimated that he stood approximately eight feet tall and weighed somewhere near 800 pounds.
31:43
His chest was enormous and barrel-shaped. His shoulders were wider than those of any man I had ever encountered. Thick, coarse, dark hair covered nearly his entire body.
31:53
His arms extended below his knees. His face was broad with a wide jaw and a pronounced brow.
32:00
He studied me the way a man might examine something he had brought home without yet knowing what he intended to do with it.
32:06
The older female was shorter, perhaps seven feet tall, but extremely broad through the hips.
32:12
She walked with a rolling motion that reminded me of a goose. She did not appear pleased that the male had brought me there. She chattered at him.
32:21
They possessed a language. It was not composed of words in the way human language is, but it consisted of repeated sounds and patterns.
32:30
There was organization and structure within it.
32:33
They communicated with one another. There could be no doubt about that.
32:38
The boy was almost fully grown.
32:40
He stood approximately seven feet tall and probably weighed around 300 pounds.
32:45
He seemed curious about me.
32:48
He repeatedly approached and then moved away again.
32:51
The girl maintained her distance.
32:53
She remained behind the older female and observed me from there.
32:57
During the entire six days, she never once came near me. Hair covered all four of them.
33:03
The only bare areas were the palms of their hands, the bottoms of their feet, and small portions surrounding their eyes and the upper part of their noses.
33:12
Their hands looked human. Their feet were wide and flat. Their eyes were dark, intelligent, and fully aware.
33:20
I still had my rifle. I still had my knife.
33:24
I could have attempted to fight, but they never injured me.
33:28
During those six days, none of the creatures made a single aggressive movement toward me.
33:33
The older male observed me constantly, and I quickly understood that I would not be permitted to leave.
33:39
However, they did not harm me.
33:41
The older female collected food. She would vanish into the trees and return carrying large amounts of grass, roots, spruce tips, hemlock branches, and a type of underground nut that tasted sweet.
33:54
She washed the roots in a small nearby spring and arranged them into piles.
33:59
I never saw any member of the family consume meat.
34:02
I never saw them cook anything. They ate everything raw and they seemed to eat continuously. They slept beneath blankets.
34:11
This detail is important.
34:13
They had created blankets from woven strips of cedar bark and they used those coverings while sleeping at night.
34:19
These were not unintelligent animals. They constructed objects.
34:24
I survived on my canned food while watching them and waiting for an opportunity. I needed to form an escape plan.
34:31
The older male was fascinated by my possessions. He picked up my food cans, shook them, smelled them, and rotated them in his hands.
34:41
On either the fourth or fifth day, he discovered my snuffbox. He lifted it, forced it open, inspected the contents, and before I could prevent him, poured the entire amount into his mouth and swallowed it.
34:54
The effect was immediate.
34:56
His eyes opened wide. He began gagging.
35:00
Then he seized my pot of coffee, which was still hot and filled with grounds, and drank everything in a single motion.
35:07
Afterward, he dropped heavily onto the ground and began groaning.
35:11
The older female rushed toward him. The boy approached as well. The girl moved farther away and watched from a distance.
35:19
That was my opportunity.
35:21
I grabbed my rifle, gathered whatever supplies I could carry and ran.
35:25
I headed toward an opening in the rocks that I had spent six days observing.
35:29
It was the lowest point along the valley wall and I believed I could pass through it.
35:34
I heard the older female pursuing me.
35:37
She moved quickly, far faster than something of her size should have been capable of moving. She produced a sound unlike anything I had heard before. It was a kind of chattering scream.
35:48
I turned and fired one rifle shot into the air. She stopped. She remained where she was and watched me leave.
35:56
I did not turn around again.
35:58
For the next several days I traveled through the wilderness. I had no compass. I had no map.
36:04
I followed flowing water downhill until I reached a logging road. Then I followed that road until I encountered other people.
36:12
I told them I was a prospector.
36:14
I told them I had become lost.
36:17
For 33 years that remained my explanation.
36:20
I am revealing the truth now because I am 64 years old.
36:24
I have read the newspaper reports and I know that other people have encountered these creatures.
36:30
I know I am not insane. I know what carried me into that valley. I know what I lived beside for six days.
36:37
They are not animals.
36:39
I need to make that perfectly clear. They are people. They are a different kind of people.
36:45
They possess language. They make objects. They form families. They care for one another.
36:52
When the older male became sick from swallowing my tobacco, the first thing the older female did was rush to his side. That is not merely an animal. That is a wife.
37:02
I could have shot them.
37:04
I had access to my rifle throughout the entire experience.
37:08
I chose not to fire at them. I continue to believe that was the correct decision.
37:14
What right do we have to impose our own way of living upon other people?
37:18
I do not believe we possess that right. And I do not believe they would enjoy our world. They would not appreciate the constant noise and disturbance of a modern city any more than I do. Leave them alone. That is all I ask.
37:32
Leave them alone.
37:38
Story 5 I grew up in the highlands of Virginia, deep within Appalachia, in the kind of place where the word isolated does not begin to describe the reality.
37:49
Our house stood on a ridge surrounded by timber so dense that sunlight seemed to surrender halfway through every afternoon.
37:56
The nearest neighbor lived half a mile away. There were no sidewalks. There were no streetlights.
38:02
At night, the only noises came from whatever the surrounding forest chose to produce.
38:07
The woods were not merely behind our house. They were everything. They extended in every direction for as far as a person could walk.
38:15
You could continue walking for as long as your body allowed, and when you finally stopped, the forest would still continue beyond you.
38:22
When I was approximately seven years old, I spent my summer days the way children in the mountains usually did.
38:29
I left the house after breakfast and returned before sunset. During all the hours between, the forest belonged to me.
38:36
Two dogs accompanied me wherever I went.
38:39
One was a golden retriever, and the other was a black labrador. They were large, reliable dogs, and neither of them seemed frightened by anything.
38:48
It was a hot afternoon in July. The heat was so heavy that the air felt like a damp wool blanket pressed against my face.
38:56
Cicadas screamed from the trees. Birds called everywhere. The summer forest was alive as it normally was.
39:03
loud humming and filled with noise.
39:06
The dogs moved ahead of me as we pushed through a grove of old-growth oak trees.
39:10
Then everything stopped.
39:12
I do not mean the sounds became softer. I mean every sound vanished at once, as if someone had reached down and turned a volume control completely to zero.
39:22
There were no birds. There were no cicadas. There was no wind moving through the leaves.
39:28
Only a sudden pressurized silence remained. It pressed against my ears.
39:33
It felt as if the entire forest had stopped breathing.
39:37
My golden retriever froze in the middle of a step. His ears flattened tightly against his head.
39:43
One second later, the Labrador stopped as well. The hair along her back stood straight upright, forming a ridge of black fur from her neck to her tail.
39:52
Both dogs stared toward the same location. Approximately 30 feet ahead of us stood an enormous decaying stump, partially buried beneath dead leaves and moss.
40:03
I looked where the dogs were looking.
40:05
At first I believed I was seeing an ordinary section of forest floor.
40:09
It appeared to be a mound of earth, rotting leaves, and debris accumulated in the way material naturally gathers in an ancient forest.
40:18
Then my eyes adjusted.
40:20
The mound had a definite shape. It was long. It was broad. And it was breathing.
40:27
Something lay curled beneath a covering of dead leaves and moss.
40:31
It looked as though it had pulled the forest floor over itself the way a person pulls a blanket beneath the chin.
40:37
The creature was enormous, far larger than anything my seven-year-old mind knew how to describe.
40:43
Through breaks in the layer of leaves I could see hair.
40:47
It was thick, tangled, rust-brown hair covered with soil. The dogs never barked. That is the detail I remember most clearly after all these years. They did not bark. They did not growl. They did not behave in any of the ways dogs normally behave.
41:03
They trembled. Both stood perfectly rigid, shaking as they stared at the mound.
41:09
The expression in their eyes was something I had never seen before and have never seen again.
41:14
Then the mound moved. A low groan rose from the ground. It did not seem to come from the creature. It felt as if the sound came from the earth itself.
41:24
It was a deep guttural vibration that traveled through the bottoms of my sneakers before reaching my ears.
41:30
It was not a growl. It was not a roar.
41:33
It sounded like something enormous awakening.
41:36
The shape began to uncurl. That is the correct word. It uncoiled the way a snake might uncoil.
41:43
Except this creature was the size of a man and considerably larger.
41:47
Leaves slid from its back.
41:50
Moss ripped away.
41:51
The thing began rising.
41:53
We did not remain long enough to see its face.
41:56
All three of us, both dogs and me, turned and ran.
42:00
I do not remember deciding to flee.
42:03
My legs made the choice before my mind did. We crashed through the underbrush. Branches struck my face and arms.
42:10
My lungs burned. The dogs ran directly beside me. Behind us, the groaning continued. It remained low and rhythmic, echoing through the trees like a noise being produced by the mountain itself.
42:23
We reached the house. I locked the deadbolt. Both dogs pressed their bodies against my legs.
42:30
I stood beside the window staring toward the tree line.
42:33
It was the same line of trees I had crossed a thousand times without hesitation, but now it appeared different. It no longer looked like my forest.
42:43
It looked like the forest belonged to something else.
42:46
I had merely been permitted to enter it.
42:49
During the weeks that followed, other things changed.
42:52
The nights grew louder. We heard noises I could not identify. High-pitched whoops cut through the darkness.
42:59
Heavy, deep cracks echoed from the trees like someone striking a trunk with a baseball bat. The sounds came from different directions on different nights, but they always originated in the forest. They were always close. Then came the family cookout.
43:14
Relatives and friends had gathered at our home. It was evening.
43:18
The grill was burning and the adults were talking and laughing.
43:22
I stood near the fire and looked toward the tree line where the shadows were deepest.
43:27
The oak trees grew close together there and the remaining daylight could not reach between them.
43:33
Something stood in that darkness. It appeared as a tall vertical shape perfectly motionless. It had broad shoulders. Its head sat low, nearly between those shoulders.
43:44
It held itself the way something might stand while watching you but attempting not to appear tall enough to attract attention.
43:51
It never stepped into the light. It made no sound. It simply remained at the boundary where the world I understood ended and the world I did not understand began.
44:02
I recognized those shoulders. I recognized that shape.
44:06
It was the creature from the hollow. It had followed us home.
44:11
Or perhaps it had always been near the house and I had simply never looked carefully enough to see it.
44:17
The creature did not approach us. It made no threatening movement.
44:21
Eventually, I turned my attention away.
44:24
When I looked back, it had disappeared.
44:27
The encounters became less frequent after that.
44:30
Or perhaps I simply stopped walking far enough into the forest to find the creatures.
44:35
I grew older.
44:37
Eventually I moved away.
44:39
The hollow still exists. The oak trees are still there, and somewhere beneath the leaves.
44:45
In those places where sunlight disappears and the silence begins pressing inward, I believe the creature remains there as well.
44:53
I was seven years old.
44:55
I know what I witnessed. The dogs knew what they witnessed. None of us ever entered that section of forest again.
45:06
Story 6.
45:08
I was born in Portlock in 1934. By the time I reached 16, there was no longer any Portlock left for someone to be born in.
45:17
People frequently ask what happened there. Writers visit. Television producers visit.
45:23
They all want a story about a monster. They want me to use words such as Bigfoot or Sasquatch so they can place the story on a screen. But those were not the names we used.
45:34
We called it Nantinok.
45:36
And what happened is not merely a story. It is the reason I had to grow up somewhere else.
45:42
Portlock stood near the southern end of the Kanai Peninsula, beside a bay so beautiful that looking at it could stop your heart.
45:50
Salmon filled the river so densely that it almost seemed possible to walk across their backs.
45:55
Clams along the shore were as large as a person's fist. The cannery remained active throughout the summer. Fishing boats departed every morning.
46:04
Behind the town, the forest climbed the mountains like a solid green wall.
46:09
It was a good place. It should have remained a good place forever.
46:13
But the forest never belonged to us.
46:16
The elders understood that. They had always understood it.
46:20
When the Sukhpiak people first settled near the bay many generations before my birth, they quickly discovered that something lived in those woods.
46:28
It was something ancient, something that did not want humans living there. They called the creatures Nantinak. The name meant those who steal people. They were not exactly animals. They were not exactly spirits. They existed somewhere between the two. They had hair covering their bodies. They carried hunger within them, and they possessed enough intelligence to remain hidden, observe people, and choose the correct moment to act.
46:57
The old stories described them as giants. They were taller, wider, and more powerful than any human being.
47:04
They moved through the fog as though it belonged to them, because it did.
47:09
Whenever fog drifted inland from the bay and the tree line disappeared into gray, the elders brought every child indoors.
47:16
No one approached the lagoon while fog covered the area. No one entered the forest after nightfall. These were not recommendations. They were laws.
47:26
The town had strict rules.
47:29
There was a nighttime curfew.
47:31
Armed men patrolled around the cannery and school.
47:34
Anyone traveling beyond the last building carried a rifle.
47:38
Before leaving, you told someone where you were going and when you planned to return.
47:42
If you failed to return, people searched for you, but they never searched alone. They went in groups, and they went armed.
47:51
For some time, those rules protected us.
47:54
Then Andrew Kamluk entered the forest to cut timber.
47:57
That happened in 1931.
48:00
Searchers discovered his body with his skull crushed. A piece of his own logging machinery had been used against him.
48:07
The equipment was so heavy that his dogs would have been required to drag it to the location where he had been working.
48:13
The dogs were also dead. Their bodies had been torn apart. They had not been eaten. They had simply been destroyed.
48:21
After that, the town's precautions no longer seemed sufficient.
48:25
Hunters climbed into the ridges searching for dowel sheep and failed to return.
48:30
Cannery workers left to inspect trap lines and disappeared forever.
48:34
A teacher arrived during the 1940s and remained for only one season.
48:39
She said cannery workers vanished individually, one after another, as if the forest were taking attendance and crossing names from a list.
48:48
Bodies appeared in the lagoon.
48:50
They had not drowned. They had been placed there. They were dismembered.
48:55
The wounds did not resemble anything a bear or wolf could have caused. These were not attacks by ordinary animals. Whatever committed the killings understood what it was doing.
49:06
Footprints appeared after nearly every disappearance. They measured approximately 18 inches in length and sank deeply into mud or snow.
49:14
The tracks emerged from the forest and returned to it. They descended toward the lagoon and then climbed back toward the ridge. They encircled the settlement like a predator walking around a fenced pen.
49:26
A man named Tom Larson encountered one of the creatures on the beach. He saw it directly in front of him.
49:32
He described it as enormous, perhaps eight feet tall or more, standing upright and covered in dark hair.
49:39
It watched him with eyes that appeared far too human for something that was not human.
49:44
Tom ran to retrieve his firearm.
49:47
When he returned, the creature had vanished.
49:49
Only its tracks remained leading back into the tree line.
49:53
People gradually began abandoning the settlement. They did not all leave at once. One family departed.
50:00
Then another followed.
50:02
A fisherman loaded his possessions onto his boat and said he was traveling up the coast to Seldovia.
50:08
He claimed he would return in spring. He never came back.
50:12
Then another family left. Then another.
50:15
The children heard warnings every day.
50:18
Stay away from the lagoon. Stay away from the forest. Do not travel beyond the last house. Do not go outside when the fog arrives.
50:27
We grew up inside a protected boundary that became smaller each year. The town continued shrinking. The forest did not.
50:36
The forest always remained the same size. By the end of the 1940s, barely enough residents remained to operate the cannery.
50:44
The school closed. The fishing boats left the harbor less frequently.
50:49
Everyone could feel the town dying.
50:51
It faded in the way a campfire fades, one glowing ember at a time.
50:56
Eventually we abandoned our homes. We abandoned the school.
51:01
We left nearly everything we owned behind and began new lives in Nanwallak and Port Graham farther up the coast.
51:07
My family was among the final families to leave. I remember the day we departed. From the boat I watched the buildings grow smaller behind us. The cannery, the houses, the dock, everything we had built, everything we had fought to preserve.
51:23
All of it remained beside the forest, diminishing into the distance as we sailed away.
51:29
Even at that young age, I remember thinking that the trees appeared to lean toward the abandoned town.
51:34
It seemed as though the forest had been patiently waiting for us to leave.
51:38
Now it could finally reclaim what it wanted.
51:41
The post office closed in either 1950 or 1951.
51:46
After that, Portlock officially ceased to exist.
51:49
No permanent community has lived there since. The buildings eventually collapsed. The cannery rusted. The trails disappeared beneath vegetation. The forest reclaimed everything.
52:02
That is what forests always do when people stop resisting them.
52:06
Visitors still travel there occasionally. Hunters. Filmmakers.
52:11
People searching for the Nantinak.
52:13
A television crew remained there for 40 days several years ago. They heard unusual things. They sensed unusual things.
52:22
They did not remain.
52:24
No one remains.
52:25
My grandchildren ask whether the creature is real.
52:28
They ask whether the Nantianak still lives in those woods after all these years.
52:33
I repeat what the elders told me.
52:35
The forest existed before Portlock. It will remain after every one of us is gone.
52:41
The Nantianak belongs to that forest. You do not question whether fog exists. You do not ask whether tides exist. You simply know that when they arrive you go indoors.
52:53
We abandoned our homes. We abandoned our dead.
52:57
And we never returned.
52:59
That fact should tell you everything you need to understand.
53:07
Story 7.
53:09
I need to tell you about Harry.
53:11
His name was Muchalot Harry. That was the name white settlers used for him because he trapped near Muchalot Inlet.
53:18
His people were Nucha Nolth from the western coast of Vancouver Island. Harry was not a small man. He was large, physically strong and quiet.
53:28
He was the kind of man who could spend months alone in the wilderness and return with animal pelts piled to the gunwales of his canoe.
53:35
He understood the forest the way a fish understands a river.
53:38
He did not fear anything. That is why what happened to him was so difficult for us to accept. It was not simply his story that convinced us. It was his fear.
53:49
Seeing such overwhelming terror in a man like Harry was what made us understand that the experience had been real.
53:56
It happened during the autumn of 1928.
53:59
Harry traveled by canoe to the Kanuma River, approximately 45 miles from the village. He had a favorite campsite in that area.
54:07
The trapping was good. The country was remote.
54:11
No one else lived nearby.
54:13
He established camp as he normally did. He arranged his tent, blankets, rifle, and supplies.
54:19
For several days, he checked his trap lines without encountering anything unusual.
54:24
Then one night, and I am repeating this in the same way Harry eventually described it to us, Something entered his camp and lifted him from the ground.
54:33
Harry had been asleep inside his blankets. He wore only woolen long underwear. He had no boots. He had no coat. He had no shirt.
54:42
Something seized him while he remained wrapped in the blankets and carried him away.
54:47
Harry weighed approximately 200 pounds, perhaps more. Whatever lifted him handled his body as easily as though he were a child. He could not see anything.
54:57
The blankets trapped him.
54:59
His body was pressed against something enormous and warm.
55:03
The creature produced an odor unlike anything he had ever encountered. It was thick, rancid, and animal-like. The smell entered his throat and remained there.
55:13
Harry felt the creature moving.
55:16
It took long strides uphill through the brush while branches snapped around them.
55:20
Its rhythm reminded him of the way an elk covers ground.
55:24
Except this creature moved on two legs. Harry estimated that it carried him approximately three miles. He calculated the distance later using the amount of time in the terrain.
55:35
Three miles through a dark forest. He remained pressed against the chest of a creature he could not see.
55:41
When it finally lowered him onto the ground, the sun had only begun to rise.
55:46
Harry escaped from the blankets and examined his surroundings.
55:50
He stood in a clearing.
55:51
It was not a natural opening.
55:54
The brush had been crushed and flattened. The ground had been packed hard. Trees had been snapped or forced backward to form an open area inside the forest.
56:04
Around the edges of that clearing stood Sasquatch. Not four creatures like the family Albert Ostman described. Not three like those reported at Ape Canyon. There were approximately twenty. They came in different sizes.
56:18
Some stood eight or nine feet tall, with barrel-shaped chests and arms extending below their knees.
56:24
Others were smaller and appeared younger. Dark hair covered every one of them. All stood upright.
56:30
They watched Harry with eyes that reflected the first light of morning.
56:34
They did not immediately attack him. They remained around him. Some moved closer.
56:40
They appeared cautious but curious.
56:43
They extended their hands toward him.
56:45
Several pulled at the woolen fabric of his long underwear as though they had never touched material like it before. They touched his bare skin. They turned him in different directions, examining him the way a person might inspect an unfamiliar object discovered in the forest.
57:01
Then Harry looked down at the ground. Bones covered the clearing.
57:05
They had not been arranged. They had not been buried. They simply lay scattered across the packed soil and trampled brush.
57:13
Harry could not immediately determine what kind of bones they were. Were they animal remains? Were they human?
57:20
He did not know. But there were many of them.
57:24
Far more than could have come from one animal, two animals, or even ten animals.
57:30
Harry had spent his entire life in the wilderness. He had skinned bears. He had gutted elk. He had cleaned hundreds of fish.
57:39
The sight of remains did not normally disturb him.
57:42
But now he stood barefoot and dressed only in underwear. surrounded by approximately 20 beings that were neither human nor animal, and that did not resemble anything he knew how to name.
57:53
Bones covered the ground. That was the moment he understood that he might die there.
57:58
He waited. He watched them closely.
58:02
At some point, several of the creatures gathered together. Not every one of them, but enough that their attention became focused elsewhere.
58:09
Perhaps they were distracted by food.
58:12
Perhaps they were occupied with one another.
58:15
Harry ran. His rifle remained at the campsite. He had no boots. He had no coat. He carried no knife. He was simply a man in long underwear, barefoot and running through the forest at sunrise.
58:29
Branches cut his arms, face and feet. He had no idea which direction he traveled.
58:34
He only understood that he needed to continue moving.
58:37
He could not stop.
58:39
He ran approximately 12 miles. He traveled 12 miles through the dense forests of Vancouver Island until he reached the river where he had hidden his canoe.
58:49
I cannot explain how he accomplished it.
58:52
I do not understand how a barefoot man could run 12 miles through that terrain without collapsing.
58:57
But Harry succeeded.
58:59
He reached the canoe. He climbed inside. He took the paddle. Then he began paddling 45 miles. 45 miles across open water toward the village. He did not stop. He did not sleep. He did not rest.
59:15
For hours, he paddled through the inlet and along the coastline. He still wore only the torn remains of his underwear. Blood covered his feet and arms.
59:25
Eventually, he reached the waters outside the village.
59:28
We heard him before we saw him.
59:31
He was screaming.
59:32
Wild, uncontrolled screams traveled across the water in the gray light of morning. People ran toward the shore.
59:39
They found Harry collapsed over the paddle inside his canoe.
59:43
He was soaking wet. He was freezing. He was barely conscious.
59:48
His underwear had been torn into strips.
59:51
His feet were badly damaged. Cuts and scratches from the brush covered both arms.
59:57
It took him three weeks to recover. For three weeks he rested, ate and remained surrounded by people who cared for him.
60:05
Only after that was he finally able to explain what had happened.
60:09
He told the story one time.
60:11
He never repeated it. His hair had become white, not gray.
60:15
White. Every strand had lost its color, as though it had been drained directly from the roots.
60:22
Harry was not an elderly man. He was still in the strongest years of his life. But the hair that later grew from his head resembled the hair of someone who had witnessed something the human body had never been designed to endure.
60:34
Muchalat Hari never returned to the Kanuma River. Not one time. He did not even return to retrieve his rifle, traps, or supplies.
60:43
Everything he owned remained at that campsite. He abandoned all of it. The man who had spent his entire life alone in the forest refused to enter those woods again for the remainder of his life.
60:55
To determine whether Sasquatch is real, do not ask a scientist. Do not ask a television production crew.
61:02
Ask the people who have occupied this land for 10,000 years.
61:06
Ask the New Chun Nolth.
61:08
Ask anyone from our village who stood on the shore that morning when Harry arrived screaming.
61:13
We know. We have always known.
61:20
Story 8 My father first told me this story when I was a child and I have carried it with me for my entire life.
61:28
He was not a man who invented things. He was practical and methodical, the kind of person who enrolled in forestry school because he genuinely wanted to understand trees. not because he was searching for excitement.
61:41
Nevertheless, excitement found him. This happened during the 1950s.
61:46
At the time, our family lived in Missoula, Montana, while my father studied in the forestry program at the university. He spent most of his days in the wilderness. That was his work. That was his education.
62:00
That was his entire life during those years.
62:03
He and the other forestry students spent more time in remote country than they did sitting inside classrooms.
62:09
One afternoon, my father unexpectedly returned home in the middle of the day.
62:14
That had never happened before. He was not frightened or disturbed. He was excited. He had an energy about him that I had never seen before. He immediately began collecting equipment.
62:26
Ropes, nets, a rifle.
62:30
He moved quickly and spoke just as fast, attempting to explain what had happened while preparing everything.
62:36
One of his friends, another forestry student, had been working in the woods that morning. He had been in an isolated area where an old logging railroad had once operated. The tracks had disappeared years earlier, but some of the railroad equipment had been abandoned.
62:51
Old cattle cars remained rusting among the brush, partially consumed by the forest in the way forgotten objects are swallowed when no one returns to retrieve them.
63:01
My father's friend heard something moving inside one of those cattle cars. It sounded alive.
63:07
He approached the car to investigate. The large sliding door on the side had been left partially open. The opening was wide enough for something to squeeze inside, but apparently not wide enough for it to escape easily.
63:20
He looked through the gap.
63:21
A young Sasquatch stood inside the cattle car. It was small, It was not an infant, but it was clearly young, perhaps approximately the size of a large child.
63:32
Hair covered its body. It stood in the far corner of the car, looking around in confusion.
63:38
It had apparently entered and could not determine how to leave.
63:42
Or perhaps it was physically capable of escaping but had become too frightened to try.
63:47
Fear can make anything freeze, even something that is not supposed to exist.
63:52
My father's friend did not stop to consider what he was doing.
63:55
He reacted immediately. He pushed the cattle car door completely closed, secured the latch and ran to find my father.
64:03
That was why my father had returned home.
64:06
He gathered the ropes, nets and rifle. The two men intended to return to the cattle car.
64:12
I do not know exactly what they planned to do.
64:15
Perhaps they intended to capture the creature. Perhaps they wanted to bring it back and prove that it existed.
64:21
My father had the mind of a scientist. He wanted to witness it personally.
64:26
He wanted evidence. They placed all the equipment inside the truck and drove back toward the site.
64:32
It was not especially far from Missoula, perhaps 30 minutes outside town along one of the abandoned logging roads.
64:39
When they arrived, the cattle car had been destroyed. It had not merely been opened. It had not been knocked onto its side. It had been torn apart.
64:49
The steel walls had been bent outward. The sliding door had been ripped completely from its track. It had not been pushed aside in the normal manner. It had been torn away as easily as someone might rip a page from a book.
65:02
The heavy wooden framework had splintered.
65:05
Fragments of the cattle car lay scattered across the ground within a radius of approximately 20 feet.
65:11
Something had attacked the car from the outside and torn it apart to reach whatever had been trapped inside.
65:17
The young Sasquatch was gone.
65:20
My father never mentioned seeing footprints. Perhaps there were none, or perhaps he simply did not include them when telling the story.
65:28
What he always described was the cattle car itself. He talked about its condition and the tremendous amount of force that would have been necessary to cause that destruction.
65:38
A cattle car is not made like a cardboard box. It is constructed from steel, iron, and heavy timber.
65:46
It is designed to contain animals weighing approximately 1,000 pounds.
65:50
Animals that may struggle violently because they do not want to be confined.
65:55
Yet something had ripped that car open as though peeling apart a metal can.
66:00
My father stood among the wreckage and understood two things.
66:03
First, whatever had destroyed the car possessed more strength than any animal he had ever studied in a classroom, textbook or lecture about North American wildlife.
66:13
Second, it had destroyed the car because it wanted its child back.
66:18
That is the part of the account that has remained with me for more than 60 years.
66:22
Not the young creature inside the cattle car. Not the ropes. Not the nets.
66:28
Not the rifle. The parents.
66:31
The parents returned for their baby. When they discovered it trapped inside a steel enclosure, they did not abandon it. They did not give up.
66:40
They broke open the enclosure.
66:42
My father rarely discussed the experience afterward. He completed his degree. He built a career. He raised a family.
66:51
He was not the kind of man who pursued mysteries he could not explain.
66:55
But I know that day changed something inside him.
66:58
Afterward, whenever he entered the forest, he moved through it differently. He noticed things he had ignored before. He listened to silences he had once walked through without giving them any thought. As far as I know, he never personally saw one of the creatures.
67:13
At least he never told me that he did. But after that day, he believed. He had seen the cattle car ripped apart. He had seen the bent steel and shattered timber. The young creature had disappeared, leaving nothing behind except the ruins.
67:29
From then on, my father believed.
67:31
And so do I.
67:37
Story 9.
67:39
I spent 15 years searching for this creature, 15 years driving isolated roads at night, 15 years sitting in witnesses' living rooms, interviewing them while watching their hands tremble as they described what they had seen.
67:54
15 years hiking into locations where reports appeared in clusters.
67:58
I installed trail cameras. I produced casts of footprints. I recorded and catalogued unexplained sounds.
68:06
For 15 years I worked as a field investigator for the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.
68:12
My name is Jeff Carpenter. I am from Otto, North Carolina, in southern Appalachia, deep within the mountain country of Macon County.
68:21
My father, Irvin, taught me how to live as an outdoorsman.
68:25
I know how to track animals. I know how to hunt.
68:28
I can interpret a forest the way most people interpret a newspaper.
68:33
I recognize what belongs in these mountains, and I recognize what does not.
68:37
I have encountered more bears than I could possibly count. I know the sounds of coyotes, bobcats, screech owls, and nearly every other creature that makes noise in the southern mountains after sunset.
68:49
On the night of June 23, 2015, I saw something that was none of those animals.
68:55
It was a Monday night.
68:57
The moon was in its waxing crescent phase. There was not much illumination, but there was enough to distinguish shapes against the tree line.
69:06
I was driving along US Highway 64 through Macon County.
69:10
This was a normal part of my research.
69:13
I regularly drove those roads after dark.
69:16
Many people would be surprised by the number of sightings that occur along highways.
69:20
These creatures cross roads.
69:22
They follow creek channels that pass beneath bridges. They travel through the same natural corridors used by deer.
69:29
Occasionally, when a driver is moving slowly enough and paying close attention, one of them appears in the headlights just as a deer might.
69:37
I rounded a gentle curve and noticed a coyote standing on the right side of the highway. There was nothing unusual about that.
69:45
I reduced my speed and watched it trot away. Then I turned my attention toward the left side of the road. Something stood just beyond the pavement, behind the guardrail.
69:56
I need to make the distance perfectly clear. This was not something standing 100 yards away in a fog-covered tree line.
70:03
It was directly beside the road.
70:05
It was close enough for the truck's headlights to illuminate its body. It was close enough for me to distinguish physical details.
70:13
When I stopped the truck, it felt as though I were looking at someone standing on the opposite side of an ordinary front yard.
70:20
The creature stood upright. It was tall, considerably more than six feet, perhaps close to seven.
70:28
Its shoulders were extremely broad.
70:30
Its head sat low against its body, almost buried between the shoulders, similar to the posture of a linebacker preparing for a play.
70:39
Dark hair covered it. It was not fur. It was hair.
70:44
The creature watched me. It did not run.
70:47
It did not recoil from the headlights. It simply remained behind the guardrail, observing my truck the way someone might watch a vehicle passing in front of a house.
70:57
Then it turned and entered the trees. It did not hurry. It did not appear frightened.
71:03
Its movements were controlled and purposeful.
71:06
It took three or four steps before the darkness concealed it completely.
71:10
I remained seated inside my truck for a long time afterward. Throughout my career I had interviewed hundreds of witnesses. Hundreds. I had sat across kitchen tables from farmers, hunters, hikers, fishermen, state troopers, and teachers.
71:26
I had listened while they described exactly the kind of creature I had just seen.
71:31
Every time I had believed them.
71:33
I want to make that clear.
71:35
I had never approached the subject as a skeptic.
71:38
I had always trusted the people in my community.
71:41
Those of us raised in these mountains know that certain things live here that never appear in field guides.
71:47
However, there is an enormous difference between believing another person's account and standing ten feet from the creature yourself.
71:54
It is a physical difference, a chemical difference, a sensation that settles inside your bones.
72:01
When you see it through your own eyes, illuminated by your own headlights, And your hands tighten around the steering wheel because your body understands before your mind does that the sight changes everything.
72:12
Belief becomes something entirely different.
72:16
I submitted my own report to the BFRO. For 15 years, I had documented other people's encounters. Now I was submitting one of my own.
72:25
I was not the only person reporting unusual activity in that area.
72:30
Around the same period, two hikers were backpacking along the Appalachian Trail through Macon County.
72:36
They were traveling through my county and my mountains.
72:39
After settling into their tent for the night, they heard a howl. It was not produced by a coyote. It was not a dog. It was not a bear.
72:48
Bears do not howl. It was one sustained powerful vocalization that continued for approximately 10 to 15 seconds.
72:56
The sound came from the ridge line above their campsite. Then everything became silent.
73:02
During the following two hours they heard intermittent whooping calls.
73:05
The sounds were sharp and brief.
73:08
They occurred at irregular intervals and came from different directions. as though something were circling their location.
73:15
The following morning, the hikers discovered tracks crossing the trail. They were not bear prints.
73:21
The impressions had been made by something walking on two feet.
73:25
They appeared in the soft ground approximately five feet apart.
73:29
The heel portions had sunk roughly three inches into the soil.
73:32
The hikers followed the tracks in both directions for approximately 150 yards before the impressions disappeared into the underbrush.
73:41
Approximately one mile farther along the trail, they encountered a second series of identical tracks crossing the path. They submitted a report to the BFRO.
73:50
I investigated the location.
73:53
The tracks were genuine.
73:54
Their spacing remained consistent with a bipedal creature moving at a normal walking pace.
74:00
The stride length was far greater than an ordinary human being could naturally produce.
74:05
The depth of the heel impression suggested that the creature weighed several hundred pounds.
74:10
These mountains belong to my history.
74:13
I was born here. My father was born here. His father lived here before him.
74:19
The Cherokee occupied these mountains long before any of us.
74:22
They have their own name for what lives within the hollows.
74:26
Sul Kalu, the slant-eyed giant, the lord of the hunt.
74:31
Stories about the being extend farther into the past than anyone can remember.
74:36
They predate the Trail of Tears. They predate the first European who entered these hills.
74:42
When people ask me whether Bigfoot exists, I no longer argue. I once attempted to show them evidence. I presented footprint casts. I played audio recordings. I directed them toward the sighting database. I do not do that anymore. Now I simply describe what I saw beside Highway 64 on a Monday night in June.
75:02
I tell them about the creature standing behind the guardrail beneath my headlights.
75:07
I describe the calm expression with which it watched me.
75:10
The fact that it did not run is what remains with me most strongly.
75:14
Everything else flees from headlights. A deer may freeze briefly, but then it bolts. Coyotes scatter. Bears turn and lumber away.
75:24
This creature looked at me. It evaluated me. It decided that I presented no meaningful threat.
75:31
Then it calmly walked into the darkness.
75:34
When something you have always considered a legend becomes real, the experience is almost impossible to explain.
75:41
A person can spend an entire life searching for something and finally locate it, but discovering it does not necessarily feel like a victory.
75:50
It feels as though the ground has shifted beneath your feet.
75:53
It feels as though the mountains you have known since childhood contain an unexplored room whose door you never realized was there.
76:00
I continue doing the work. I still drive the isolated roads at night. I still receive and investigate reports.
76:08
But now I drive slightly more slowly. Whenever I round a curve, I examine the left side of the road more carefully.
76:15
Because now I know what may be standing behind the guardrail.
76:23
Story 10.
76:25
Not every encounter with Bigfoot occurs within the forest. Some encounters happen entirely inside the human mind. What follows is fictional.
76:35
However, the thing at the center of it is very real. We went hunting for Bigfoot on a Saturday morning.
76:41
The sky was covered with gray clouds, perfectly matching my mood until we pulled onto the shoulder of the old highway.
76:48
The instant I opened the trunk and ran my hand across the wooden stock of my grandfather's rifle, my concentration returned.
76:55
I worked the action of the weapon as anger flared inside my stomach.
77:00
Then I looked toward my brother, Darren.
77:02
He had also taken hold of his firearm, although he displayed far less determination than I did.
77:08
Come on, Darren. Stop sulking.
77:11
You know what we have to do.
77:13
Yeah, yeah, I know.
77:15
He slammed the trunk closed, placed his bag over one shoulder, and carried the rifle in both hands as he walked past me toward the woods.
77:22
Let's just finish this.
77:24
His frustration was obvious.
77:26
It disgusted me.
77:28
We entered the tree line. I already knew the route. I had mapped the trail. I knew where the game cameras were positioned. I had casts of the footprints I had found the previous spring. I had documented scratches in the bark approximately eight feet above the ground.
77:44
I knew the creature's territory better than the creature itself.
77:48
I had spent two years studying it. I had been searching ever since Dad died. Darren never believed any of it. He believed a bear had killed our father. He believed the police. He believed the coroner.
78:02
He believed the polite officers who had arrived at our front door holding their hats and explaining that our father's death had been a tragic accident in the backcountry.
78:11
Darren had not seen the body.
78:13
I had.
78:14
I saw what had been done to our father. No bear had caused those injuries. No bear leaves 19-inch footprints beside a corpse. No bear tears a man apart and deliberately arranges the pieces.
78:27
Don't, I growled the word when Darren started to speak.
78:31
Don't say it again.
78:33
I crouched beside a creek bed and pointed toward a track pressed into the mud. It was enormous.
78:39
Five toes were clearly visible, and the impression had sunk deeply into the ground.
78:45
Do you see the arrangement of the pads?
78:48
This is not a bear print. It does not match either of our boots. That is the footprint of our Bigfoot.
78:55
Darren released a tired sigh and stood upright.
78:58
Come on, let's put out the traps already. And you're taking the first watch. It's much too early for me to deal with this crazy obsession.
79:07
We positioned the leg traps along the game trail where I had recorded the highest level of activity. They had steel jaws connected by chains to stakes driven into the soil.
79:18
I had brought four traps. Darren believed I had lost my mind. I believed he was weak.
79:24
Night eventually arrived. Then the storm began.
79:28
Rain pounded through the canopy and transformed the ground into mud.
79:32
We sat inside our blind, which consisted of a shallow depression behind a fallen oak tree covered by a tarp.
79:39
Then we waited.
79:40
Darren fell asleep.
79:42
Of course he did. He did not care. He had never cared the way I did. He wanted to move forward with his life. He wanted to process the grief. He wanted me to speak with someone.
79:55
I did not want to speak with anyone.
79:57
I wanted to place a bullet inside the creature that had killed our father.
80:01
I remained in the rain with the rifle resting across my knees, watching the tree line through the scope.
80:07
Hours passed. My hands became numb. Pain spread through my back. The rain continued without stopping.
80:15
Then I heard something. A branch snapped. Another sound followed. Something heavy moved through the brush near the location of the traps.
80:25
It was large. It did not move like a deer.
80:28
It did not move like a bear.
80:30
Its progress sounded deliberate. I lifted the rifle.
80:35
Through the scope in the dim gray light of the storm I saw a shape. It was tall, dark and vertical.
80:41
It stood approximately 80 yards away at the edge of the clearing where I had positioned the traps.
80:47
The figure stood over something lying on the ground. Its arms were raised above its head. Then it repeatedly brought them downward.
80:55
Hard, rhythmic, violent.
80:59
It struck whatever lay beneath it again and again.
81:02
Even through the rain I heard the impacts. They were wet, heavy blows.
81:07
The traps.
81:08
Something had been caught in one of the traps. The creature was either attacking it or finishing it.
81:14
I did not stop to think.
81:16
I did not wake Darren.
81:18
I pulled a cartridge from my belt, forced it into the chamber, drove the bolt forward and centered the crosshairs on the figure's chest.
81:26
Then I pulled the trigger.
81:28
The rifle shot echoed through the trees more loudly than any burst of thunder.
81:32
The bullet struck the figure.
81:34
I watched it stagger.
81:36
I watched it clutch its body. Then I watched it slowly collapse onto the ground.
81:42
I struggled to my feet. My boots slipped in the mud as I grabbed branches and pulled myself through the rain.
81:48
The cold caused intense pain in my fingers. I held the rifle close in case the creature had survived.
81:55
I prepared for the possibility that it might stand again.
81:58
Eventually, I reached the clearing. I arrived at the exact location where the creature had fallen. There was no creature. There was no enormous body covered in dark hair. There were no footprints. There was no trail of blood disappearing into the forest. There was only my brother.
82:16
Darren lay face down in the mud. His blood combined with the rainwater, creating a dark, filthy pool beneath him.
82:24
The bullet had passed through his chest.
82:26
He must have awakened. He must have gone to inspect the traps.
82:31
He must have been standing in the clearing beneath the rain when I raised the scope and saw what I wanted to see, instead of what was actually there.
82:39
I do not know how long I remained standing over him.
82:42
I do not remember when the rain ended. I do not know when I began screaming.
82:47
I know that I spent two years hunting a monster.
82:50
I know that I became so certain, so obsessed, and so consumed by anger and grief that I could no longer distinguish between a Sasquatch and my own brother standing in a storm.
83:01
I know now that the creature I was hunting had never lived in those woods. It lived inside me.
83:11
Story 11 I, William Rowe of the city of Edmonton in the province of Alberta, swear that everything stated below is completely true and accurate in every detail. That is where I want to begin.
83:24
Not with the encounter itself, but with the oath.
83:27
I signed this statement before a notary public under Canadian law because I wanted there to be no uncertainty about what I was reporting.
83:35
This is not a story told around a campfire. It is not something passed to me by a friend who heard it from someone else.
83:42
It happened directly to me, and I am prepared to swear to it under penalty of law.
83:47
I have spent my entire life in the wilderness.
83:50
Since my childhood in Michigan, I have observed and studied the behavior and habits of wild animals.
83:56
Later, while raising my family in northern Alberta, I supported us through hunting and trapping.
84:02
I have spent more time watching wild creatures than most people spend asleep.
84:07
I know the appearance of a grizzly bear. I know what a black bear looks like. I can identify a moose, an elk, and a wolverine.
84:15
I understand what belongs in a forest and what does not.
84:19
What I encountered on Mika Mountain in October 1955 does not appear in any book I have ever read.
84:26
For approximately two years, I had been working on the highway near Tejon Cache, British Columbia, roughly 80 miles west of Jasper.
84:36
It was October, and I had a day away from work.
84:40
I decided to hike approximately five miles up Micah Mountain to an abandoned mine. I had no particular reason for going. It was simply something to do.
84:49
I carried my rifle, although I had no intention of hunting anything that day.
84:54
At around three in the afternoon, the old mine came into view. I had just stepped from a patch of low brush into a clearing when I noticed what I initially believed was a grizzly bear on the opposite side.
85:06
It stood approximately 75 yards away.
85:09
I had shot a grizzly near that same location the previous year, so seeing another one there would not have been unusual.
85:16
However, I had no practical way to remove a bear from the mountain.
85:20
Instead of shooting, I sat on a small rock with my rifle in my hands and watched.
85:25
At first, I could see only part of the animal's head in the upper portion of one shoulder. Then it rose and stepped fully into the open.
85:33
That was when I realized it was not a bear.
85:36
It began crossing the clearing directly toward me.
85:39
I am going to describe it as precisely as possible because what I saw deserves an exact description.
85:45
The creature stood approximately six feet tall. I estimated its weight at close to 300 pounds.
85:52
Dark brown hair covered its body, and the ends of that hair appeared silver.
85:57
It was not fur. It did not have the thick undercoat found on a bear.
86:02
It was hair.
86:04
The hair was short.
86:05
Even on the head, none of it appeared longer than one inch. The hair covering the face was shorter still.
86:12
The creature was female. I could clearly see its breasts.
86:16
They did not resemble the breasts of an animal.
86:19
They hung in the same way a woman's breasts would hang.
86:22
Its face was wide and flat. The nose was also flat, sitting almost level with the rest of the face.
86:29
Its ears had the same general shape as human ears.
86:32
The eyes were small and dark, similar to the eyes of a bear, but they were set within a face that was clearly not the face of a bear.
86:40
Its neck was short and thick, shorter than the neck of any man I had ever seen.
86:45
The shoulders were broad and heavily muscled.
86:48
It walked upright.
86:50
It did not crouch. It did not shuffle forward.
86:54
It moved the way an ordinary person walks.
86:57
Its arm swung naturally with every step. As it crossed the clearing it was also eating. It reached toward low bushes, which I believed were wild cherry, stripped away the leaves and pushed them into its mouth. It continued chewing as it walked.
87:14
I remained seated on the rock and observed it.
87:17
For several minutes I did nothing except watch.
87:20
My first thought was that a motion picture company might be filming nearby, and that I was looking at an actor wearing a costume. But the longer I studied it, the more certain I became that no costume could produce what I was seeing.
87:34
I watched the muscles moving beneath the skin.
87:36
I saw how the hair lay flat against the body and shifted naturally as the creature walked.
87:42
I saw the weight of each step pressing into the ground. This was alive. It was real.
87:48
Then it caught my scent.
87:50
The creature stopped.
87:52
It turned its head and looked directly at me through an opening in the brush.
87:56
What happened next is something I will remember for the rest of my life.
88:00
An expression of complete astonishment appeared on its face. It looked genuinely amazed. It was the expression a person might show after turning a corner and suddenly finding something entirely unexpected.
88:12
Its eyebrows lifted.
88:14
Its mouth opened slightly.
88:16
It appeared so surprised that I smiled. I could not stop myself.
88:21
There was something almost humorous about its reaction.
88:25
Still slightly crouched, it took three or four short steps backward.
88:29
The movements were quick but cautious.
88:32
It never took its eyes off me.
88:34
Then it straightened to its full height and began moving rapidly back in the direction from which it had come.
88:40
It did not run. It did not panic.
88:43
It simply left quickly and deliberately.
88:46
It reminded me of someone realizing that they had entered the wrong room and immediately deciding to leave.
88:52
As it moved away, it looked back over one shoulder.
88:56
It did this once, perhaps twice. The expression did not appear to be fear.
89:01
It looked more like caution, as though the creature simply wanted to avoid contact with something unfamiliar.
89:07
I raised my rifle.
89:09
I want to be completely truthful about that.
89:12
I lifted the weapon.
89:14
For a moment I believed I should shoot it.
89:17
I thought of preserving the body as a specimen.
89:20
I thought of obtaining proof. I thought of returning with something that would demonstrate to the world what I had witnessed.
89:27
I aimed through the sights. I had a clear shot.
89:31
The creature was walking away without hurrying.
89:34
At that distance, I could have placed a bullet between its shoulders as easily as I had shot a deer hundreds of times before. Then I lowered the rifle. I could not fire. It appeared too human.
89:46
The way it walked was too human.
89:48
The way it had looked at me was too human.
89:51
The surprise visible on its face was too human.
89:55
That was not merely an animal displaying an animal reaction.
89:58
It was something much closer to us than I felt comfortable admitting.
90:02
I knew I could not shoot something that human-like and then live with what I had done.
90:07
The creature disappeared into the timber.
90:10
I remained cedared on the rock for a long time.
90:13
Eventually, I walked back down the mountain.
90:16
I did not tell anyone about the encounter for almost two years.
90:19
Part of the reason was that I feared people would think I had lost my mind.
90:23
But that was not the only reason.
90:26
I did not yet know how to explain what I had seen.
90:29
I needed time to understand it before attempting to describe it to anyone else. In 1957, I finally agreed to put the account in writing. A journalist named John Green asked whether I would provide a sworn statement.
90:43
I agreed.
90:44
The legal department for the city of Edmonton prepared the affidavit.
90:49
On August 26, 1957, I signed it before a notary public.
90:54
I was under no obligation to do this. No one forced me.
90:58
I chose to sign because I wanted the account recorded in my own words and under oath.
91:03
I wanted there to be no doubt after my death about what I had witnessed.
91:07
I am not a scientist. I am not a professional researcher. I am simply a man who has spent his life in the wilderness observing animals.
91:17
On one October afternoon on Mika Mountain, I watched a living being that does not appear in any field guide, textbook, or museum.
91:25
It was real. It was alive. It was eating leaves.
91:29
When it noticed me, it was astonished.
91:32
I smiled. Then I allowed it to leave.
91:40
Story 12 People often assume that I traveled to Bluff Creek because I already believed in Bigfoot. I did not.
91:49
I went because Roger invited me.
91:51
Roger was my friend, and I wanted an opportunity to ride horses through good mountain country.
91:58
That is the honest reason.
91:59
If a Sasquatch happened to be out there, that was fine. If there was nothing, and I assumed there would be nothing, I would still spend a week riding through the mountains. That alone was enough for me.
92:11
Roger Patterson was a different sort of man. He had pursued the subject for years. He had written a book about it. He had previously visited Bluff Creek, where he had examined tracks and spoken with loggers who claimed to have seen unusual creatures.
92:27
At the time, he was also working on a small film about cowboys searching for Bigfoot. He carried a rented 16mm camera and 100 feet of film.
92:36
Roger had absolute confidence. Some men become certain about things long before those things had been proven.
92:43
I was not certain of anything. I simply enjoyed riding horses.
92:48
Before entering the area, we reached one agreement.
92:51
We would not shoot anything we encountered unless it attacked us.
92:55
I carried a rifle, but the rule was clear.
92:59
No shooting unless we believed our lives were in immediate danger.
93:03
We traveled into Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California.
93:07
Bluff Creek was extremely isolated, approximately 18 miles east of the Pacific Ocean and deep within logging country.
93:15
There was no road that allowed us to reach the location by car. We brought three horses and enough supplies for several days. We spent days riding upstream along the creek. We searched for tracks. We looked for any sign that something unusual had passed through the area.
93:31
Friday, October 20th, 1967 was clear and dry. Visibility was good.
93:38
We were riding northeast along the eastern bank of the creek.
93:42
The horses carefully crossed the gravel while the water remained low.
93:46
The sun was high enough to cast shadows across the sandbars.
93:50
Sometime between 1.15 and 1.40 in the afternoon, we rounded a bend. An overturned tree stood there with a huge exposed root system that blocked our view.
94:00
Passing it felt like turning a corner in a hallway. Beyond it was a large log jam. Debris had accumulated there after the flood of 1964.
94:10
Behind that mass of logs on the opposite side of the creek bed, something was moving.
94:15
The horses detected it before we did.
94:18
Roger's horse panicked and rose onto its hind legs while pulling against the reins.
94:23
My horse became rigid. Its ears pointed forward. Its nostrils widened.
94:29
Then I noticed the odor. It was a strong, heavy, musky smell.
94:34
It reminded me of a skunk, but it was worse and much deeper.
94:38
It was the kind of odor that seemed to coat the inside of the throat.
94:42
Roger dismounted almost before his horse stopped moving. He immediately tried to reach the camera.
94:48
It was stored inside a saddlebag. He struggled with the buckle and strap while the horse continued moving sideways.
94:55
I remained mounted.
94:57
I controlled the horses and looked toward the creature on the opposite side of the creek.
95:01
It was walking. It was not running. It was not crouching.
95:07
It moved upright across the gravel bar, traveling away from us with long, smooth, deliberate steps.
95:13
The creature was large.
95:15
Roger's horse had reacted at close range, but the figure stood approximately 120 or 130 feet from Roger as he ran forward carrying the camera.
95:26
It had wide shoulders and a large frame. Its body was covered in dark reddish-brown hair that appeared almost black.
95:33
Its arms swung naturally with every stride, the way a person's arms move while walking with purpose.
95:39
Even at that distance, I could clearly see that the creature was female. Its breasts were visible.
95:46
It was not a man wearing a costume.
95:48
I had spent my entire life around animals. What I saw was a living being with real weight, muscle and movement. No suit could have duplicated it.
95:58
Roger ran toward the figure while filming. The first portion of the footage was unstable because he was still moving and struggling to keep his balance on the gravel.
96:08
Then he dropped onto one knee and steadied the camera.
96:11
That was when the creature performed the movement that would later be frozen into photographs, printed on countless shirts, and examined by experts for decades.
96:21
It turned its head and looked at him.
96:23
It was not a quick glance. It did not flinch.
96:27
It rotated through the shoulders and neck and looked directly at the man holding the camera.
96:32
People have described the expression in many different ways. Some call it disgust. Others say annoyance or indifference. I will tell you what I observed from horseback. I saw something that was not afraid. It looked at Roger the way a person might look at a stray dog standing on a sidewalk. It acknowledged his presence. It evaluated him.
96:54
Then it decided he was not important enough to stop for.
96:58
The creature turned forward again and continued walking. It entered the tree line. Then it moved into the brush and disappeared.
97:06
From the instant we passed the exposed roots until the creature vanished into the timber, the encounter lasted approximately one minute.
97:14
Roger's film ended after 59 seconds. Those 59 seconds changed the rest of my life. They did not change it in any way I would have chosen.
97:23
After the creature disappeared we returned to the sandbar. We found footprints measuring fourteen and a half inches long. They had sunk deeply into the damp gravel. We also discovered a wet print on a rock leading toward the slope.
97:38
Farther up the cliff we located a broad wet impression in the mud where something heavy appeared to have been sitting.
97:44
We believed the creature had been watching us before we ever came around the bend.
97:48
It knew we were approaching.
97:50
It chose to leave.
97:52
That evening, Roger drove to Willow Creek and shipped the film away for processing.
97:57
I remained behind with the horses. When the developed film returned, it contained 60 feet of footage.
98:04
That film would make Roger famous.
98:06
It would also make my life extremely complicated.
98:10
I need to explain what happened afterward.
98:13
Roger took the film on tour. He showed it in many places.
98:17
He earned money from it.
98:18
It was not a fortune, but it was enough to attract attention.
98:23
Some people called him brilliant. Others called him a fraud.
98:27
In 1972, five years after the Bluff Creek footage was recorded, Roger died from Hodgkin lymphoma. He was 36 years old.
98:37
After his death, people turned their attention toward me.
98:40
A man named Bob Hieronymus claimed that he had worn a gorilla costume for Roger that day. A costume designer claimed he had sold Roger a suit. A skeptical publication released an entire investigation.
98:53
Decades later, even Roger's son said the footage had been staged.
98:57
The public decided the mystery had been solved.
99:00
They believed two rodeo men from Yakima had deceived everyone.
99:04
For nearly 60 years, people have questioned me about the film.
99:08
They approach me at conferences. They question me during interviews. They stop me in parking lots and grocery stores.
99:16
They behave as though I owe them an explanation.
99:19
I give every one of them the same answer.
99:22
I was there. I saw the creature. It was real.
99:26
I did not wear a costume. I did not help arrange a hoax. I did not conspire with Roger or anyone else.
99:34
What I observed crossing the creek bed was a living, breathing animal unlike anything I had encountered before or have encountered since.
99:42
I watched it move. I watched it turn.
99:45
I watched it study us with an intelligence I could recognize, even though I could not identify what kind of mind existed behind its eyes.
99:53
Bob Hieronymus says that he wore the suit. I will tell you something about Bob Hieronymus. When he attempted to imitate the creature's walk for television cameras, his movements looked nothing like the walk recorded on the film.
100:07
When the costume maker attempted to reproduce the supposed suit, it looked nothing like the creature in the footage.
100:13
There is visible muscle movement beneath the skin.
100:16
The hair lies flat and shifts naturally with every stride. The limbs have unusual proportions.
100:23
I have listened to experts debate those details for decades.
100:27
Not one of them has successfully reproduced what appears in those 59 seconds using technology that existed in 1967.
100:35
You do not have to believe me.
100:37
I stopped needing anyone's belief a long time ago.
100:41
I know what I witnessed. I also know this.
100:44
People have called me a liar for 58 years.
100:48
During all that time, I have not altered a single detail of my account.
100:52
Not one word.
100:54
Not one.
100:55
Had I been lying, I would have made a mistake by now.
100:58
58 years is an extraordinarily long time to preserve a fabricated story.
101:03
People grow old. They become tired. They stop protecting secrets.
101:09
People responsible for hoaxes eventually confess.
101:13
Con artists move on to their next deception.
101:16
I am 94 years old, and I continue repeating the exact same thing I told the first reporter who placed a microphone in front of me in 1967.
101:24
I was there. I saw it. It was real.
101:29
Roger is gone.
101:31
All that remains is 59 seconds of grainy, unstable 16mm footage that people will probably continue debating for another century.
101:40
I am merely a cowboy who rode into the mountains with a friend and returned carrying something I have never been able to put down.
101:47
I cannot tell you exactly what it was. I know what it looked like. I know how it smelled.
101:53
I remember the sound my horse made when it detected the odor.
101:57
I remember the way the creature turned and looked back at us.
102:00
That slow movement. Those dark eyes. That face.
102:05
It appeared almost human, but it was not entirely human.
102:10
Not quite.
102:12
And I know that whatever it was, it did not fear us. We should have feared it.
102:21
STORY 13 Everything you have heard up to this point happened in the past. Some of those events took place decades ago.
102:30
Others occurred nearly a century ago.
102:33
What I am about to describe happened only last month. March 6th, 2026.
102:37
It was 12.23 in the afternoon, in full daylight.
102:43
A researcher stood in an open field near Mantua Center, Ohio, a small rural community in Portage County southeast of Cleveland.
102:51
The surrounding landscape consisted of farms, scattered woodlots, and the Headwaters Trail greenbelt cutting through the countryside like a green vein.
103:01
The researcher was not hunting. He was not actively searching for anything unusual.
103:06
He was simply outside. Then he noticed it.
103:10
Approximately 120 yards away, at the edge of the tree line, something stood upright.
103:15
It appeared to be 9 feet tall. Brown hair covered its entire body. It was staring directly at him.
103:23
For a brief period, though he could not later determine exactly how long, the two remained locked in eye contact. Perhaps it lasted only several seconds. Perhaps it continued longer.
103:35
A man and an unknown creature faced one another across an open field in the middle of the day.
103:40
Neither of them moved. Then the creature turned.
103:44
It did not simply walk away.
103:46
It moved rapidly and smoothly, crossing the ground with a speed and fluidity that something nine feet tall should not have possessed.
103:53
Within moments, it disappeared among the trees. The researcher left the field immediately. That was the first report. It was not the final one. The following night at 10.52 p.m., another witness reported an encounter in the same general area.
104:10
An eight-foot figure covered in dark brown hair emerged from the tree line approximately 40 yards from the Headwaters Trail.
104:17
The witness did not initially see the creature.
104:20
He heard it.
104:21
A deep vibrating grunt rolled through the darkness.
104:24
The sound seemed to come from every direction simultaneously.
104:28
It was the kind of noise a person feels inside the ribs before fully hearing it with the ears.
104:34
The witness turned toward the sound. The creature stood at the edge of the trail, watching him from the darkness.
104:40
Then it stepped backward into the trees and vanished.
104:44
Two encounters, two consecutive days, the same wooded corridor.
104:50
On March 9th, three additional reports arrived from different locations throughout the county.
104:55
Two sightings occurred near Gerritsville. The witnesses were unrelated and the encounters happened at separate times.
105:02
Another report came from Wyndham. The witness was an older woman.
105:07
I want you to remember her because her account is significant.
105:10
She had never believed in Bigfoot. She had never devoted any serious thought to the subject.
105:16
While she was outside her home, something enormous emerged from the woods.
105:20
It crossed an open area and entered the forest on the opposite side.
105:25
It traveled on two legs.
105:27
It did not move like a bear temporarily standing upright.
105:30
It walked the way a human being walks. She reported the encounter while visibly shaking.
105:36
Then another sighting occurred in Streetsboro. That same night, on March 10th at approximately 4 in the morning, the activity crossed the county boundary into Newton Township in Trumbull County.
105:48
A man took his German Shepherd outside.
105:51
The dog reached the doorway and immediately became frantic.
105:55
It lunged toward the tree line, pulled backward, and then lunged again.
106:00
The owner looked toward the place that had captured the dog's attention.
106:04
A large dark figure stood motionless among the trees.
106:07
It appeared to be nine or perhaps ten feet tall.
106:11
The German Shepherd could not stop trembling.
106:14
Seven sightings had occurred in only four days. Seven unrelated witnesses in two different counties.
106:21
No one captured a photograph. No one recorded video.
106:25
Each encounter lasted only a few seconds.
106:28
The events happened too suddenly and ended too quickly.
106:31
These were not Bigfoot investigators waiting with cameras.
106:35
They were ordinary people walking dogs, hiking along trails, or stepping outdoors at four in the morning.
106:42
None of them had been prepared for what appeared in front of them.
106:45
Jeremiah Byron hosts the Bigfoot Society podcast. During his career, he has conducted more than 1,000 interviews with witnesses. When the Ohio reports began arriving, he placed each encounter on a map.
106:59
The resulting pattern did not resemble a random scattering of sightings.
107:03
It formed a route. The reports created an eastward line extending from Portage County into Trumbull County.
107:10
That line followed the Headwaters Trail, a wooded greenbelt connecting the small communities like a highway beneath the trees.
107:17
Something appeared to be traveling through the corridor. It also might not have been alone.
107:23
Witnesses reported creatures of different sizes.
107:26
Some described a figure nearly ten feet tall.
107:30
Others reported something closer to six feet, possibly a younger individual.
107:35
The reported coloration also varied.
107:38
Some appeared dark brown. Others were reddish brown or black.
107:42
To Byron, the distribution suggested a family group moving through the region. He described it as the largest concentration of Bigfoot reports since the 1970s.
107:52
He was not the first person in Northeast Ohio to make such a claim.
107:57
In August 1978, approximately 50 miles southwest in Stark County, the Kite family lived on Lincoln Street in Paris Township, roughly two miles west of Minerva.
108:08
Their property bordered an abandoned strip mine. The area was filled with dense brush and heavy timber, the kind of terrain people had stopped entering many years earlier.
108:18
One evening, something appeared outside the family's kitchen window.
108:22
It stood at least seven feet tall and was covered in hair.
108:26
The witnesses described its eyes as glowing red.
108:29
The creature returned.
108:31
Night after night, it came back to the property. It threw rocks at the house. It stood at the tree line and watched the family.
108:39
They contacted the Stark County Sheriff's Office. Deputies visited the property and searched the surrounding land. They found no animal.
108:48
However, they reported an unusually powerful odor lingering in the air.
108:52
It smelled musky and strongly of ammonia.
108:56
The scent was heavy and chemical. It did not resemble the smell of a bear, deer, or any familiar wildlife.
109:03
The Kite family publicly shared what had happened. Researchers interviewed them again in 1985 and once more in 1991.
109:12
Their account remained exactly the same as it had been in 1978. They never withdrew their claims. They never changed any part of the story.
109:21
The incident became known as the Minerva Monster and received national attention.
109:26
In Ohio, people do not always call the creature Bigfoot. They often call it the Grassman.
109:32
Descriptions portray it as taller and at times more aggressive than the Sasquatch reported in the Pacific Northwest. It apparently uses waterways as travel routes. It follows streams, creeks, and greenbelts in the same manner that deer follow established game trails. It remains unseen unless someone happens to be standing in exactly the correct place at the correct moment. Or perhaps the wrong place at the wrong moment.
109:56
Portage County Sheriff Bruce Suchowski spoke publicly about the reports in March 2026.
110:02
He told journalists that 10 separate individuals had approached him with the descriptions of a large creature accompanied by a musty odor.
110:10
The Ohio Department of Natural Resources stated that it had received no reports involving Bigfoot activity.
110:16
No formal reports had been submitted. No physical evidence had been recovered. No photographs existed. Yet ten people across two counties had described essentially the same thing within four days.
110:29
They reported a hair-covered creature walking upright through the woods along the headwaters trail.
110:34
Dogs reacted to it with intense fear.
110:37
The creature left nothing behind except an odor that remained in the air after it disappeared.
110:43
The investigation continues.
110:45
Byron and the Bigfoot Society are still gathering witness accounts. Researchers from the Ohio Sasquatch Project remain active in the field. At the present moment, no one has recovered a footprint, hair sample, or clear image.
111:00
But no one has stopped searching.
111:02
The Headwaters Trail remains in place. The corridor remains open. The trees remain dense.
111:09
Somewhere in Northeast Ohio, 10 people are still attempting to explain what they witnessed during the first week of March.
111:16
Something that was not supposed to exist passed through their counties in broad daylight and left no trace behind.
111:23
Except for the odor.
111:25
Every one of them remembers the odor.
111:32
Story 14.
111:34
I need to tell you about a sound. Not an encounter involving a visible creature. Not a footprint. Not a dark shape near the treeline or a shadow moving through the night.
111:45
A sound.
111:47
A voice.
111:48
Something spoke from the forest in a language no human being has ever successfully identified. and it spoke in a place where no person should have been.
111:57
The events began in 1971. At the time, I lived in Merced, California.
112:02
I worked as a hospitality manager and served on the governing board of my church.
112:07
I lived an ordinary life. I was an ordinary man.
112:11
I was not searching for Bigfoot. I had never seriously considered Bigfoot. The subject meant nothing to me.
112:19
Then a friend of mine returned late from a hunting trip in the High Sierra Nevada. He was also a member of the church board and a man I trusted completely.
112:28
He arrived two days later than expected.
112:31
His wife had become extremely worried.
112:34
When he finally returned, he explained what had delayed him. He and the other hunters had camped at their usual location, an isolated wilderness area somewhere between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite.
112:45
It was high elevation country with no nearby roads, trails or other people for many miles.
112:51
The group had used that location for years, but during this particular trip something found them.
112:57
After nightfall strange noises began coming from the ridgelines around the camp. They were not ordinary animal calls.
113:04
They were not produced by the wind. They were vocalizations.
113:09
The sounds were loud and powerful and came from several directions, as though whatever produced them was moving in a circle around the campsite.
113:17
The following morning the hunters discovered footprints surrounding their shelter.
113:22
The Impressions had five toes. They were enormous and pressed deeply into the ground.
113:27
One member of the hunting party refused to return to the area. He was finished.
113:33
My friend invited me to accompany the group on its next trip. He was not asking me to hunt for Bigfoot. He wanted someone who could help keep the men calm, observe the area, and possibly determine what was producing the noises.
113:46
I agreed.
113:47
I have always possessed an adventurous nature. I have never been someone who avoids something simply because I do not understand it.
113:55
We traveled into the mountains during the autumn of 1971.
113:59
The camp was primitive.
114:01
The shelter had been constructed from fallen logs.
114:04
There was nothing elaborate about it. It stood deep in wilderness where a person could spend an entire week without encountering anyone else.
114:12
We prepared the camp. We hunted. Then we waited.
114:17
Nothing happened on the first night. The noises returned on the second. It began with whooping calls.
114:23
Sharp, high-pitched vocalizations traveled from the ridge above us and echoed from the surrounding rock faces.
114:30
Then we heard knocking. The impacts were heavy and rhythmic.
114:34
It sounded like one piece of wood being struck repeatedly against a tree trunk.
114:38
The noises came from different locations around the camp. They were separated in time and seemed coordinated. They did not appear random. They seemed organized.
114:49
Then the chattering started.
114:51
I do not possess an adequate word for what we heard.
114:54
Researchers later referred to it as samurai chatter because of its rapid staccato rhythm.
115:00
It resembled someone speaking quickly in an unfamiliar language. There were consonant-like and vowel-like sounds.
115:07
There was rhythm. There was structure. It did not sound like an ordinary animal, but it did not sound completely human either. It seemed to occupy some space between the two.
115:19
The voice was almost human, but something about its pitch was wrong. It was too deep. It was too resonant.
115:28
It seemed to come from a chest far larger than that of any human being I had ever met.
115:33
There were multiple voices, at least two.
115:36
At times there appeared to be more. They vocalized back and forth as though engaged in conversation.
115:42
They interrupted one another. They responded to one another.
115:47
One voice was noticeably deeper than the others.
115:50
We eventually began calling it the old man.
115:53
That voice carried authority.
115:55
Whenever it spoke, the others became quiet. They were only forty feet away.
116:01
That was the distance between us.
116:03
Forty feet separated our shelter from the place in the darkness where something was speaking in a language we could not understand.
116:10
That is when Al Berry became involved. Al was a journalist and investigative reporter for the Sacramento Bee.
116:18
He was also a Vietnam veteran and held a master's degree.
116:22
He was neither foolish nor gullible.
116:24
He did not believe our story. He visited the camp for one reason. He intended to expose a hoax.
116:32
Al was completely certain that someone within our group had fabricated the sounds. He planned to prove it. He brought professional recording equipment.
116:41
He carried one of the finest cassette recorders available at the time.
116:45
He ran microphone cables between the deadfall logs of the shelter and directed the microphones outward toward the forest.
116:52
Then he searched our belongings.
116:55
He inspected every pack, bag, and pocket. He looked for concealed speakers, playback equipment, or anything else that could reproduce the sounds we had described.
117:05
He found nothing.
117:07
On Al's first night at the camp, the voices returned.
117:10
This time we recorded them. The microphones captured everything. They recorded the whoops from the ridgeline.
117:17
They recorded the knocking. They recorded the chattering.
117:21
The voices sounded clear, close, and unmistakable.
117:25
Al sat inside the shelter with the recorder running. His eyes widened while he listened to something he had traveled there to prove did not exist.
117:33
He could not expose it as a fraud.
117:36
For the rest of his life, he continued attempting to determine how anyone could have manufactured those recordings. He never succeeded.
117:44
Until his death in 2012, he told people that discovering how someone had staged the sounds would have made the story even more fascinating. But he never uncovered an explanation.
117:55
He also never claimed that the recordings were false.
117:58
We returned to the camp repeatedly. We went in 1971. We returned in 1972. We went back again in 1974.
118:09
During each trip, we collected additional recordings.
118:12
The vocalizations changed over time. During the visits in 1971 and 1972, they sounded aggressive. They resembled intimidation displays. They were loud and appeared intended to drive us away.
118:26
By 1974, something had changed. The noises sounded different. We heard rhythmic tapping and pounding. Some of the whoops seemed almost playful. We also heard phrases that came close to being understandable, as though whatever produced them was attempting to communicate with us.
118:44
I began imitating the vocalizations.
118:46
I would make a sound and something hidden in the darkness would answer.
118:51
The exchanges continued back and forth. Call and response.
118:56
I do not know whether it understood me.
118:58
I do not know whether I understood it.
119:01
But the interaction was genuine. It listened to the sounds I made and responded to them.
119:07
That is not typical animal behavior.
119:10
We submitted the recordings to the University of Wyoming.
119:13
The university conducted an evaluation lasting approximately one year.
119:18
The investigators concluded that the sounds appeared primate in origin.
119:23
They also stated that the vocalizations had been produced by something with a vocal range and lung capacity significantly beyond those of an average human being.
119:32
Later, a man named Scott Nelson examined the recordings. Nelson was a retired cryptologic linguist who had served in the United States Navy. His professionally trained role within the government had been to listen to recordings of unidentified languages and divide them into their basic elements.
119:49
phonemes, morphemes, syntax, the fundamental components of communication.
119:56
He had spent his career analyzing intercepted transmissions in languages he did not personally speak.
120:03
He identified repetition, patterns and grammatical structure.
120:07
Nelson listened to our tapes.
120:10
His conclusion, stated in his own words, was that the recordings definitely contained language.
120:16
He believed the language was not human in origin and could not have been fabricated.
120:20
Consider that for a moment.
120:22
A man trained by the United States Navy to recognize and analyze unknown languages listened to recordings made in the Sierra Nevada and concluded that they contained genuine communication.
120:34
Not random sounds, not animal noises.
120:37
Language. Communication containing structure, grammar, and intention.
120:42
Whatever lives in those mountains speaks.
120:45
It communicates.
120:47
It has something to express.
120:49
I am an old man now.
120:51
Al is gone. The tapes have been digitized and preserved.
120:55
Anyone can listen to them.
120:57
Whenever someone new hears them properly, through headphones in a silent room, I see the same expression appear.
121:04
It is the expression Al wore during his first night at the camp. The expression of someone hearing something that alters their understanding of what is possible.
121:13
I do not know what the speakers are. Perhaps they are an undiscovered species of primate. Perhaps they are a surviving hominid.
121:21
Perhaps they are something else entirely.
121:24
I know only that they stood approximately forty feet from me in complete darkness.
121:29
They spoke to one another in a language that a navy cryptologic linguist could not decode.
121:35
They have apparently remained in the mountains between Tahoe and Yosemite for longer than any of us have lived.
121:41
They remain in the deep places where the forests are ancient and the silence is complete.
121:46
Listen to the recordings. Close your eyes. Put on headphones. Then tell me what you hear. Because whatever produced those voices is still somewhere out there. And it is still speaking.
122:04
story 15 we have spent hours in the mountains the sierra nevada the cascades the rockies the appalachians cold air ancient forests deep snow now i am taking you somewhere without any of those things i am taking you into a swamp in florida they do not call the creature bigfoot they call it the skunk ape And the first thing most people notice is not its appearance, it is the odor. The Seminole called it esticapcaki, meaning furry tall man or hairy giant.
122:39
They had reported encounters in the Everglades for centuries before outsiders arrived. In their traditions it served as a guardian of the forest. People were warned not to search for it. If the creature wanted someone to see it, it would reveal itself. And if a person could already smell it, that person had come much too close.
122:59
The smell must be discussed first because nearly every witness mentions it before anything else.
123:04
Not the creature's appearance, not its height, the odor.
123:09
Witnesses describe a mixture of wet dog, skunk spray, musk, sulfur, and decomposing flesh.
123:15
The scent is concentrated and almost chemical. It can be powerful enough to cause nausea. It attaches itself to clothing. It fills the interior of vehicles.
123:26
It remains suspended in the air for hours after the creature has disappeared.
123:31
Within the heat and humidity of the Everglades, it becomes nearly unbearable.
123:36
If Bigfoot is the ruler of the mountains, the skunk ape is its relative from the swamps.
123:41
It is generally described as shorter. Instead of standing nine or ten feet tall, it reportedly measures between six and eight feet.
123:49
Its body is stockier.
123:51
Reddish-brown or dark brown hair covers it in thick matted layers.
123:55
Some footprint casts suggest that it possesses four toes instead of five. And there is always the odor, always the smell.
124:05
On January 9th, 1974, shortly after midnight, Richard Lee Smith drove along US Route 27 near Hollywood Boulevard on the eastern boundary of the Everglades and Pembroke Pines.
124:17
The highway was dark and empty.
124:19
Something stepped into the path of his headlights.
124:22
Smith struck it with his vehicle.
124:24
At first, he believed the car had collided with an unusually tall man wearing dark clothing.
124:29
He stopped and stepped outside. The figure began rising from the pavement.
124:34
It was not a man. It stood seven or perhaps eight feet tall. Hair covered its entire body. The creature lifted itself from the road, turned toward Smith, and roared.
124:47
Then it charged the car.
124:49
Smith climbed back inside and drove away. He reported the collision to the Florida Highway Patrol.
124:55
Officials might have dismissed the account if additional motorists had not reported sightings during the following hours.
125:01
Drivers traveling on US-27 described a giant, hair-covered figure limping along the roadside in the darkness. It was enormous. It moved south.
125:12
At 2.12 in the morning, a police officer from Hialeah Gardens reported visual contact over the radio. He saw an extremely large, hairy creature limping along the highway several miles south of the original collision.
125:25
It eventually stepped away from the pavement and disappeared into the vegetation.
125:30
At sunrise, officials deployed two helicopters. They searched the swamp from above. They discovered nothing.
125:37
The Everglades also experienced major fires during 1974.
125:42
A record drought had dried the region and wildfires burned through the sawgrass.
125:47
As water disappeared and habitat contracted, Reported sightings increased dramatically.
125:53
Something appeared to be moving out of the deepest parts of the Everglades and entering areas occupied by people.
125:59
Throughout the autumn, residents in suburban neighborhoods of Dade County reported encounters.
126:05
A farmer named Buddy Starrett, who lived near Lake Worth, claimed that a skunk ape lifted one of his hogs, which weighed more than 100 pounds, and tore the animal apart.
126:16
Two Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputies, Marvin Lewis and Ernie Milner, encountered a tall figure west of Lantana. They fired their weapons at it. The creature grunted and disappeared into the swamp.
126:28
Deputy Lewis publicly stated, I know it exists.
126:33
A security officer named Carrie Connor, working in Wellington, fired at a skunk ape after it emerged from the tree line and approached him.
126:40
It ignored repeated commands to stop.
126:43
Connor struck it with a bullet.
126:46
The wounded creature turned and fled into the brush. No body was ever located.
126:51
Three years later, on July 14th, 1977, another encounter occurred in Key Largo.
126:57
Charles Stokeman was a Vietnam veteran and former police officer. He was not easily frightened.
127:04
He and his 13-year-old son Charlie were collecting bottles in the dense red mangroves behind their home near mile marker 94.5.
127:13
They detected the smell before seeing anything.
127:16
It carried the odor of a wet dog mixed with decay and an underlying chemical scent. It was powerful enough to make their eyes water.
127:24
Then they saw the creature through the mangroves. It stood approximately eight or nine feet tall. It had a massive head and broad shoulders.
127:33
Long dark hair hung from its body in tangled clumps.
127:36
Stokeman later described it as possessing an enormous head and shoulders, long hair covering the entire body. and the smell of an extremely dirty, wet dog.
127:46
A Vietnam veteran who had experienced enemy gunfire looked at that creature behind his own home and felt genuine fear.
127:54
That detail tells you something.
127:56
Perhaps it tells you everything.
127:58
In 1997, another sighting involved a tour bus. John Vickers was driving passengers through the Everglades when something stood upright and crossed the highway in front of the vehicle. It was approximately seven feet tall.
128:12
Red hair covered its body. It moved rapidly through the sawgrass on two legs.
128:18
Between 30 and 40 passengers were aboard the bus.
128:21
Every one of them gave essentially the same account.
128:24
Two days later, a real estate agent named Jan Brack saw what appeared to be the same creature crossing the road in front of her vehicle.
128:32
She initially assumed it was a bear. Then she realized it did not resemble a bear.
128:38
She could not identify it.
128:40
Only minutes after Brak's sighting, Ochepi fire chief Vince Dorr traveled along the same road. He saw the creature and stopped his vehicle. He managed to take a photograph.
128:51
The image shows a dark upright figure standing in the swamp. It does not appear to be a bear.
128:57
Then there was the woman with the camera.
129:00
In December 2000, three days before Christmas, an unidentified woman living somewhere near Mayocca, Florida, awakened to loud noises on her back porch.
129:10
Something was banging against the structure. A heavy presence moved the deck furniture.
129:16
Along with the banging came a sound she had never heard.
129:19
Low, deep grunting.
129:21
Then the smell entered the house through the walls.
129:24
She approached a window.
129:26
An enormous, hair-covered animal stood on the rear deck. It had been taking apples from a basket she stored outside.
129:34
The woman retrieved a camera.
129:36
She took two photographs through the glass. The images were clear and close. The creature's face was visible. It appeared flat and broad, with eyes reflecting the light.
129:47
The woman did not telephone law enforcement. She did not contact a television station. She did not reach out to a Bigfoot investigator.
129:56
Instead, she placed the photographs inside an envelope. She wrote a letter describing what had happened and mailed the material anonymously to the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office.
130:06
She did not sign her name.
130:07
She did not provide an address. She wanted an official agency to possess the photographs. She also wanted to be left alone. Those images are now known as the Mayaka photographs. They remain among the clearest close-range pictures ever taken of what appears to be an unidentified primate in Florida.
130:27
The woman responsible for the photographs has never publicly identified herself. She never wanted publicity.
130:34
She simply wanted someone to know what had stood on her porch.
130:37
The Everglades encompass approximately one and a half million acres. That area is larger than Rhode Island. Sawgrass can grow above a person's head.
130:47
The water moves even when the air is still. The ground shifts beneath every step.
130:52
There are locations within the Everglades that no human being has entered for decades. Some places may never have been explored at all.
131:01
Scientists maintain that the skunk ape does not exist. There are no scientifically verified bodies. There are no confirmed bones or remains. There are only photographs, casts of footprints, hair samples sometimes classified as unidentified primate material.
131:18
and a powerful odor repeatedly described by unrelated witnesses across 50 years and thousands of square miles of swamp.
131:26
Perhaps the scientists are correct. Perhaps the reports involve bears suffering from mange and people with active imaginations.
131:34
But I continue returning to Deputies Lewis and Milner. They were experienced law enforcement officers. They fired at something in the vegetation west of Lantana and watched it absorb the impact before fleeing.
131:47
Deputy Lewis said he knew it existed. He did not say he believed. He said he knew.
131:54
In the mountains, witnesses see Bigfoot and experience wonder. In the swamps, witnesses smell the skunk ape and feel their stomachs turn. It is the same mystery wearing a different face.
132:05
And in Florida, surrounded by heat, water, and decay, that face carries an unbearable stench.
132:16
Story 16 We have been telling you these stories one encounter at a time and one witness at a time, stretching across a century in more than a dozen states.
132:27
Now I want to step back. I want to show you something that most videos about Bigfoot never address.
132:34
I want to show you how old this mystery truly is. Long before Roger Patterson carried a camera into Bluff Creek, the creature was already ancient.
132:43
Before Fred Beck fired his rifle at Ape Canyon, it was already ancient.
132:48
Before Albert Ostman was carried through the mountains inside his sleeping bag. Before William Rowe sat on a rock and watched one of the creatures eat wild cherry leaves.
132:58
Before the first European settlers stepped onto this continent. It was already here, and the people who lived here first already had names for it. Not one name, dozens of names, possibly hundreds.
133:12
Nearly every culture that has inhabited this land from the Arctic to the Everglades possesses a word for a similar being.
133:19
The Lummi people of the Pacific Northwest call them Smeyem.
133:23
Descriptions vary between families.
133:26
The stories differ regarding what the creatures eat, where they live, and how they behave.
133:31
But the existence of the beings themselves is not treated as a subject for debate.
133:36
A professor at Northwest Indian College who lived on the Lummi Reservation once heard one of them scream at approximately 3.30 in the morning.
133:44
When he later questioned his students, they showed no surprise. Nearly everyone knew someone who had encountered one.
133:51
To them, asking whether the creature existed would be comparable to questioning whether rain existed.
133:57
The sales nation of British Columbia used the word saskets, meaning hairy man.
134:03
That term was later anglicized by a Canadian Indian agent named J.W. Burns. In 1929 it became Sasquatch. The name now used by half the world for this creature originated in a Coast Salish language. We borrowed the word. We also borrowed the knowledge behind it. We borrowed the experiences of people who had already lived beside these beings for 10,000 years, while the rest of us have spent only a few decades arguing about whether they exist.
134:31
The Cherokee of the Appalachian Mountains tell stories about Sul Kalu. He is known as the Slant-Eyed Giant and the Lord of the Hunt.
134:39
He lives in elevated places among mountain gaps and open balds where the ridge lines meet the sky.
134:46
Within Cherokee tradition, he is not simply a monster. He is a powerful being. He maintains balance. He existed when the mountains were still young.
134:56
The Ojibwe of the northern plains speak of the Rougarou, a hairy apparition that appears during periods of danger.
135:04
It serves as a warning.
135:06
It tells humanity to change its behavior.
135:09
The Seminole and Miccosukee people of Florida call the being Esticap cocky, meaning furry tall man. It is regarded as a protector of the forest. They have reported seeing it in the Everglades for centuries. The Denaena people of Alaska call it Nantinok. The name refers to those who steal people. It is the word associated with the creature said to have emptied the settlement of Portlock.
135:33
The Yokuts people of central California described it being known simply as the hairy man. He was a giant covered in long tangled hair.
135:42
According to their traditions, he consumed animals that might otherwise harm people.
135:47
Parents warned children not to approach the river after dark because they might encounter him.
135:52
The Aleut. The Tlingit. The Yupik. The Chinook. Nation after nation. Tribe after tribe. Language after language.
136:03
The same general creature appears again and again under different names. The oldest known written account in English dates to 1721.
136:11
A Jesuit priest living among the Natchez people in the region now known as Mississippi documented stories told by members of the tribe. They described large hairy beings living in the forest. The creatures screamed loudly. They stole livestock. They walked on two legs. They avoided being seen.
136:31
That was in 1721, more than three centuries ago. More than 50 years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the United States did not yet exist, and people were already reporting encounters with this creature.
136:47
In 1818, newspapers in the region, now known as Apalachicola, Florida, published reports about a human-sized ape.
136:56
The creature raided food supplies and followed fishermen along the shoreline.
137:00
It may have been one of the earliest published accounts of what later became known as the skunk ape.
137:05
In 1840, a Protestant missionary named Reverend Elkanah Walker lived near Spokane in the territory that would eventually become Washington State.
137:14
He recorded stories shared with him by the indigenous people of the region.
137:18
They spoke about giants inhabiting the mountains and the surrounding peaks.
137:23
According to those stories, the giants stole salmon from fishermen's nets. They descended from the mountains at night, took what they needed and returned to places where human beings could not follow them.
137:34
Walker documented the accounts. He did not know how to interpret them. He was a religious missionary, not a cryptozoologist. But he wrote the stories down and those writings survived.
137:46
When the account is read today, more than a century and a half later, the description is immediately recognizable. The same creature, the same behavior, the same mountainous environment, the same pattern of quiet coexistence interrupted by theft and avoidance.
138:04
In 1929, J.W. Burns gathered stories from the Sales Nation and published them in Maclean's magazine beneath the title, Introducing B.C. 's Hairy Giants.
138:15
One of the accounts described a tribal member encountering a hairy wild woman who could speak the language of the Douglas First Nation.
138:22
She was not described as an animal.
138:24
She was described as a person.
138:27
A different kind of person living in the spaces between the regions claimed by humans.
138:32
Spanish explorers traveling along the California coast during the 16th century also reported stories of beings known as the Dark Watchers.
138:40
They were large figures that observed camps during the night.
138:44
They stood motionless along ridge lines and watched from a distance.
138:48
Every expedition, every settlement, every new group of people arriving on the continent encountered similar stories already waiting for them.
138:57
Those stories were told by the people who had lived here first. Most discussions about Bigfoot overlook something extremely important.
139:05
These are not isolated beliefs held by a few superstitious individuals.
139:09
They are central cultural traditions shared across dozens of indigenous nations separated by thousands of miles.
139:16
They have survived through oral traditions passed down across hundreds of generations. The consistency is extraordinary.
139:24
The accounts are not identical. They come from different peoples living within different landscapes. But the basic structure remains remarkably similar. The creature is large. It walks on two legs.
139:36
Hair covers its body. It is intelligent. It is physically powerful.
139:42
It is territorial. It is active during the night or at twilight. It generally avoids human beings but may become aggressive when threatened or provoked.
139:51
Its presence is often announced by a strong odor. When a single culture tells such a story, outsiders may call it mythology.
140:00
When nearly every culture across an entire continent independently preserves a similar story for thousands of years,
140:07
The possibility that those traditions describe something real must at least be considered.
140:12
Western science has spent approximately 70 years attempting to prove or disprove the existence of a creature that indigenous peoples have recognized for 10,000 years.
140:22
We approach it as a puzzle that must be solved. They approach it as a neighbor that must be respected.
140:28
Perhaps the difference is not evidence. Perhaps the difference is whether people are willing to listen.
140:34
When a Lummi student was asked by a professor whether Bigfoot was real, she did not argue. She did not offer physical evidence.
140:42
She simply stared at him the way someone might stare at a person who asked whether the mountains were real. She said nothing.
140:49
Some things do not require proof. Some things require attention.
140:54
The creature described throughout these stories, from Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, to Alaska, Virginia, Ohio, Florida, and California, has existed longer than any of us.
141:06
It predates our cities. It predates our highways. It predates our languages.
141:12
It was present before the Jesuits arrived. It was present before the missionaries.
141:17
It existed before the prospectors, lumbermen, highway crews, trail cameras, podcasts, and television productions.
141:26
It will remain after all of those things have disappeared.
141:29
The only real question is whether we are willing to listen to the people who have been telling us about it for 10,000 years.
141:41
Story 17.
141:43
I was only a boy. That is the first thing you need to understand. I was not a researcher. I was not a hunter.
141:51
I was not searching for anything unusual. I was simply a child riding a bicycle home after dark. on a cold November evening in Gate City, Virginia.
142:01
My friend suddenly came running up behind me. He was struggling to breathe. Before I could see him, I heard the soles of his sneakers striking the road.
142:10
When he came close enough to speak, he grabbed the handlebars of my bicycle and said something I have never forgotten.
142:17
Something is following me.
142:19
When I move, it moves.
142:22
When I stop, it stops.
142:24
He was not joking.
142:26
I knew him well. He was not easily frightened.
142:29
But his voice trembled. His eyes were wide. He repeatedly looked over his shoulder toward the darkness behind him.
142:37
We were both afraid.
142:39
I decided to take a shortcut through my grandparents' backyard. It would bring us home more quickly.
142:46
It also placed us closer to the house, where lights were visible through the windows.
142:51
Whatever might have been outside, I wanted to remain close to a door that could be locked.
142:56
We entered the yard. I continued pedaling while my friend ran beside me.
143:01
As I passed the grapevines belonging to my grandfather, The vines that grew along the fence at the edge of the property. I heard something moving in the brush beside them.
143:10
I turned my head. It stood directly beside the vines.
143:14
The figure was approximately seven feet tall, possibly taller. It leaned forward.
143:20
It was not exactly hunched, but its shoulders were bent in a way that created a raised hump where the neck and back met.
143:27
It looked like something attempting to stay low but failing because its body was simply too large.
143:33
The figure was dark.
143:35
Dark hair covered it.
143:36
Its entire form appeared black against the night. It stood so close that, had I extended one arm, I could almost have touched the grapevine separating us.
143:47
I did not stop. I did not scream.
143:50
I kept peddling.
143:52
My friend continued running. We reached the house, we went inside, then we locked the door.
143:58
I did not tell anyone what happened that night.
144:01
Who could I have told? My grandparents? My parents?
144:05
What could I possibly have said? That there was a monster standing beside the grapevines?
144:11
But I never forgot what I saw. I remembered the way it leaned. I remembered the hump across its shoulders. I remembered its size.
144:20
It stood in my grandfather's yard as though it had every right to be there, as though the property belonged to it, as though we were the trespassers.
144:29
I am an adult now. I helped establish an organization called Blue Ridge Monsters and Legends.
144:35
It gives people throughout these mountains a place to share their experiences without being mocked.
144:40
I have gathered hundreds of accounts, but when someone asks why I began the organization, why the subject matters to me, or why I believe, I do not discuss the research.
144:52
I do not talk about evidence. I do not explain the history. I tell them about the grapevines.
145:03
Story 18.
145:05
I need to describe this quickly because that is how the event happened. It was fast.
145:11
One moment we were recording the trees, the next we were running.
145:16
It was October 2012 in Provo Canyon, Utah.
145:20
A friend and I had traveled into the mountains for an ordinary day hike. There was nothing unusual about the outing.
145:26
The area was beautiful. Autumn colors covered the landscape. Aspen leaves had turned gold. It was the kind of afternoon when people take photographs simply because the light is perfect.
145:38
We stood on a trail above a drainage and looked down into a cluster of trees.
145:43
That was when we noticed something approximately 50 or 60 yards below us.
145:48
A dark figure crouched among the brush. It was large.
145:52
My immediate assumption was that it was a bear.
145:55
Black bears live in the canyon, and the shape resembled one. It appeared dark and heavy, with its head lowered as though it were feeding or searching through the ground.
146:05
I removed my phone and began recording. I did not film because I was afraid. I filmed because I thought I was watching a bear.
146:14
A recording of a bear in Provo Canyon is the kind of ordinary wildlife video a person shares with friends. They watch it and say it is interesting.
146:23
Nothing more.
146:24
I zoomed in.
146:25
The figure became somewhat clearer. It was black. It was massive. Its back appeared round.
146:33
It was clearly a large animal. The creature seemed to be doing something near the ground. It may have been digging or feeding.
146:41
It moved what appeared to be its arms or front legs.
146:44
From that distance I could not determine which. The vegetation was thick.
146:49
Then the creature stood.
146:52
I do not mean that it reared onto its hind legs the way a bear does.
146:55
A bear shifts its weight backward and raises its front paws while remaining essentially a four-legged animal attempting to appear taller.
147:03
That was not what happened. The creature rose completely upright on two legs.
147:08
It stood the way a person rises from a chair.
147:11
The movement was smooth and continuous. Its hips aligned beneath its shoulders. Its shoulders aligned beneath its head.
147:19
One moment I was looking at approximately four feet of what appeared to be a hunched bear.
147:24
The next I was staring at something seven or possibly eight feet tall, standing upright among the trees.
147:30
It was looking in our direction.
147:33
We ran.
147:34
I do not remember making the decision. I do not remember saying anything to my friend.
147:40
I remember the phone trembling in my hand.
147:42
I remember the sounds of our feet striking the trail.
147:46
I remember the overwhelming certainty, deeper than conscious thought, that we needed to be somewhere else, anywhere else, as quickly as possible.
147:55
We did not stop until we reached the vehicle. I uploaded the recording that evening.
148:00
I had no idea what it showed.
148:03
I assumed perhaps twenty people would watch it.
148:06
I expected someone to identify the figure as a bear and make me feel foolish.
148:10
Instead, the video spread everywhere. It received millions of views. News outlets covered it.
148:17
People who study unexplained creatures said the proportions did not match those of a bear.
148:22
They argued that the movement used to stand was fully bipedal.
148:26
They said the ratios between the limbs did not resemble those of any known animal living in the Utah mountains.
148:32
Other viewers said it was a person wearing a costume. Some claimed it was a bear suffering from mange.
148:38
Others accused me of staging the event to attract attention.
148:42
I did not fabricate anything. I had attempted to record a bear.
148:47
Then the bear stood upright like a human being. and I immediately lost all interest in wildlife photography.
148:54
The video remains available.
148:56
Anyone can watch it. It lasts 53 seconds.
149:00
The figure rises at approximately the 40-second mark. For roughly 11 seconds, something stands upright among the trees in Provo Canyon.
149:09
Then the camera swings away.
149:11
After that, the only audible sound is running.
149:15
11 seconds. That is all the time required to change what someone believes is possible.
149:21
I have returned to Provo Canyon since the incident. I still hike there. I continue carrying my phone, but I no longer record dark shapes hidden below trails.
149:31
When I notice something crouched in the brush, I turn around.
149:36
I walk in the opposite direction.
149:38
I do not need another 11 seconds.
149:40
The first 11 were enough.
149:48
Story 19 I have spent my professional life explaining the things that frighten people.
149:54
Vampires emerged as cultural responses to disease, plague, and the misunderstanding of decomposition.
150:01
Werewolf legends developed when communities attempted to understand acts of violence committed by men they believed they knew.
150:08
Bigfoot, the great American monster, is what develops when isolated people stare into a dark forest for so long that they begin to feel the darkness staring back.
150:18
I have written three books about these subjects. I have traveled to remote communities, mountain towns, swamp settlements, and every isolated region where someone claimed to have seen a creature near the tree line.
150:31
I have sat in living rooms and kitchens throughout the country. I have listened while people describe their experiences with trembling hands and tears in their eyes. And I remained absolutely certain that every one of them was mistaken.
150:44
Fear darkness long enough, and eventually it becomes a vampire, a werewolf, or a sasquatch.
150:51
A reason to remain beside the fire and avoid the forest. I wrote those words. They appear in my second book.
150:59
I was proud of that sentence. At least I used to be.
151:02
My name is Dr. Jim Dunham. This is the account of my final interview. I was conducting fieldwork in the Ozarks.
151:10
I had scheduled six weeks of research for a new book about monster mythology within rural American communities. By that point, I had already completed approximately 12 interviews.
151:21
They were the usual mixture of sincere believers, obvious frauds, and lonely individuals who simply wanted someone from outside their community to listen for an hour.
151:32
My final interview was with a bow hunter living in the Arkansas Hill Country. He claimed that he had fallen from a tree stand, shattered his pelvis, and encountered a Sasquatch while lying helpless on the ground.
151:44
His name was Frank.
151:46
We had spoken by telephone. He possessed a thick Ozark accent and seemed friendly.
151:52
His property did not appear on any map. I used a paper road atlas to mark the turnoff. Even with the map, I became lost on the back roads.
152:01
The July heat was intense.
152:04
Sweat soaked through my shirt. I squinted against the sunlight and began wondering whether the entire interview was a trick.
152:11
Then a lifted Toyota Tacoma stopped beside my Prius. A weathered face leaned from the window. The driver spat chewing tobacco onto the shoulder of the road.
152:21
Jim Dunham?
152:23
That's me.
152:24
I'm Frank. Figured you might get lost out here, so I came looking.
152:29
He smiled in a friendly, relaxed way. He possessed the kind of expression that made a person feel welcome before a conversation even began.
152:38
He examined my rental car and winked.
152:41
I doubt your little silicon zipper can handle what comes next.
152:45
He was correct. The route to his property could barely be described as a road.
152:50
It climbed steeply through the hills and was covered with large rocks.
152:54
My Prius would not have survived the first hundred yards.
152:58
I climbed into Frank's trunk. The cab threw us from side to side like dice inside a container.
153:04
Empty beer cans rattled across the bare metal floor. His home was a small trailer standing beside a dirt clearing surrounded by forest.
153:13
Frank brought out a cooler and two folding camping chairs. We sat in the shade. He handed me a can of bush light.
153:21
I normally did not drink beer, but in that heat, it tasted more refreshing than anything I could remember.
153:27
I activated my audio recorder. Frank began fidgeting.
153:32
I recognized the hesitation. I had seen it during hundreds of interviews.
153:37
It was the moment when a witness decided whether to trust the person asking questions.
153:42
Tell it the same way you would tell it around a campfire, I said.
153:46
That was the sentence I always used.
153:48
It usually worked.
153:50
Frank studied me.
153:52
Your book is about Bigfoot.
153:54
Not exactly.
153:56
But you believe in Bigfoot.
153:58
I am open to believing in Bigfoot.
154:01
Something shifted in his expression. The friendliness did not completely disappear, but something colder and harder moved underneath it.
154:10
no we both know that isn't true you think we're all ignorant country people inventing stories don't you i don't think that i read your books jim dr jim dunham he leaned toward me it takes very little to sustain a legend in the minds of the simple and the lonely were you lonely when you wrote that jim i placed the beer on the ground
154:34
The mood of the conversation had changed completely.
154:38
I became painfully aware of how far we were from the main road. I was far from my vehicle. There was no mobile phone service. No one knew exactly where I was.
154:49
What is this, Frank?
154:50
Do you think you're the first unstable man from the backwoods who has attempted to frighten me?
154:55
I rose from the chair.
154:57
Thank you for the beer. I'll find my own way back to the road.
155:02
I turned away.
155:03
Then the ground appeared to tilt beneath me.
155:06
It was not the ground. It was my head.
155:10
A powerful wave of dizziness struck me from behind the eyes and traveled through my legs.
155:15
My vision blurred.
155:17
The trees seemed to move. The heat suddenly doubled.
155:21
How is that beer treating you, Jim? Frank asked from behind me.
155:25
He laughed.
155:26
The beer. He had placed something inside it.
155:30
I attempted to turn around. I tried to speak.
155:34
The words emerged thick and distorted.
155:36
Frank continued talking, but his voice dissolved into meaningless sounds.
155:41
The ground rose toward my face. I could not stop myself from falling.
155:46
Then I awakened.
155:47
I was tied to a tree. My right leg was broken.
155:51
I knew it before opening my eyes.
155:54
The pain announced itself like an alarm.
155:57
A white-hot surge began near my knee, traveled through my hip and entered my spine.
156:03
I sat on the ground with my back pressed against a large oak.
156:07
Rope encircled my chest and arms.
156:09
The forest surrounding me was dense. Afternoon sunlight filtered through the leaves.
156:15
Frank's voice came from above and toward my right.
156:18
I twisted my neck and looked upward.
156:21
He sat inside a tree stand approximately 20 feet above the ground. A large compound bull rested in his hands.
156:28
I'm truly sorry about this, Jim.
156:31
Frank.
156:32
Frank, listen to me.
156:34
I'm injured. I'm seriously hurt.
156:37
Untie me, please.
156:39
I can't do that.
156:41
I didn't want to hurt you, but I think this is the only way to make her come.
156:46
Her.
156:47
He had also used that word during our telephone conversation, the female Sasquatch.
156:54
Frank continued speaking calmly, almost pleasantly, as though we still sat in folding chairs drinking beer.
157:01
He explained that this was the exact place where the earlier encounter had occurred.
157:06
Years before, he had fallen from that same tree stand and shattered his pelvis.
157:11
While he lay helpless on the ground, a female creature approached him.
157:16
She sniffed at him like a bear, but she was much larger than any bear.
157:21
Frank eventually lost consciousness.
157:23
When he awakened, the creature was chewing on his shoulder. He drove an arrow into one of her eyes.
157:29
She fled.
157:31
Frank pulled the collar of his shirt downward. The scar was enormous. A crater of uneven heeled tissue covered most of his left shoulder.
157:40
She left me a little love bite.
157:43
I attempted to reason with him. I told him I believed the story. I promised to write whatever he wanted. I said I would never reveal what he had done.
157:53
None of it changed his decision.
157:55
Frank remained in the tree stand with his bow and waited patiently.
157:59
I'll make you a deal, he said.
158:02
You remain tied down there until midnight. If she doesn't arrive, I'll release you and drive you to the closest police station.
158:10
I'll surrender quietly and you can write the best book of your career.
158:15
Local hillbilly kidnaps professor and uses him as bait during Sasquatch hunt.
158:20
That might put you on the bestseller list.
158:23
I screamed at him.
158:24
I threatened him.
158:26
I insulted him with every word I could think of.
158:29
He showed no reaction.
158:31
He remained inside the stand, watching the tree line and waiting for something I did not believe existed to arrive and consume me.
158:38
Eventually I lost consciousness again.
158:41
When I awakened, night had fallen. Complete darkness surrounded me.
158:46
It was the kind of darkness that seemed to possess physical weight and pressed against my eyes.
158:51
Cicadas hummed in waves.
158:53
Far away I heard something that might have been an owl.
158:57
The pain in my leg had settled into a deep pulsing rhythm synchronized with my heartbeat.
159:02
Frank, I called into the darkness. There was no response.
159:07
Frank, damn you.
159:09
Nothing answered.
159:10
Then I detected the odor.
159:12
It did not smell exactly like a skunk.
159:15
It was worse. Heavier. More complicated. There was an underlying odor of decay.
159:22
It coated my throat and caused my stomach to twist.
159:25
The smell felt almost physical.
159:28
It occupied the air around me like fog. I began struggling against the ropes. During the day, they had loosened slightly. My sweat, repeated movements, and the flexibility of the bark behind me had created a small amount of space.
159:43
I rocked my shoulders. The rope burned my skin. The fibers stretched only a fraction of an inch at a time.
159:50
I told myself that the odor came from an ordinary animal, a dead deer, a skunk den, anything rational, anything that possessed a recognized name.
160:01
I stared into the forest. A dark form moved between two trees approximately 100 feet away.
160:08
I could not be certain that I had seen it. I also could not be certain that I had not.
160:13
The longer I watched, the more the shadows appeared to shift.
160:17
Then a branch broke. It was not a small twig. It was a heavy branch. The sound was deliberate.
160:25
At that moment I stopped pretending.
160:28
Something was in the woods.
160:30
It moved between the trunks with a smoothness that did not make sense for something so large.
160:35
I saw only brief portions of it. A silhouette moving from one tree to another.
160:40
It was tall, impossibly tall.
160:44
It moved with a grace that such a massive body should not have possessed. It did not lumber. It did not crash through vegetation like a bear.
160:53
It moved through the forest as though it knew every inch of the terrain.
160:57
I tried to shout.
160:59
I remembered advice given for encounters with bears. Make noise. Make yourself appear larger.
161:06
I screamed until my throat hurt.
161:08
The figure stopped. It lowered itself.
161:12
Then it became completely motionless.
161:14
The transition happened instantly. One second it moved. The next it resembled a statue I felt it watching me from the darkness. Its attention felt heavy.
161:26
I continued working against the ropes.
161:28
The opening gradually increased. My shoulders were raw. My skin burned. But the rope was moving.
161:35
I focused completely on my arms.
161:38
I concentrated on the repeated motion of pushing and pulling while the shape remained still among the trees.
161:44
Then it moved two steps closer.
161:46
I continued rocking. The rope loosened slightly more. The creature took another two steps. It approached again. I could now distinguish its outline. Its torso was broader than that of any human being. Its arms extended almost to its knees.
162:03
Its head sat low between enormous shoulders.
162:06
It appeared to study me in the same way I studied the subjects of my research.
162:11
A thinking mind evaluated something it had never previously encountered.
162:15
Then it charged. It did not come all the way toward me. It moved in a sudden burst. Three or four strides covered an enormous distance in an instant. Then it stopped approximately ten feet away.
162:28
It had performed a false charge.
162:30
It was testing me.
162:32
It wanted to know whether I would flee, fight, or remain motionless.
162:36
I froze. I had no strength left. The adrenaline had already burned away during hours of pain and terror.
162:44
My body collapsed against the ropes.
162:46
I closed my eyes.
162:48
I no longer wanted to see it. I did not want to see anything.
162:52
I wandered only for the pain to end.
162:55
Then I felt its breath against my face. It was hot and damp.
163:00
While my eyes were shut, the creature had crossed the remaining distance.
163:04
It stood only inches away.
163:06
I felt its heat. I felt its mass.
163:09
I felt the intelligence of something bending down to inspect me.
163:13
It sniffed my head. It smelled my hair and skin.
163:17
The behavior resembled an animal investigating something unfamiliar, but it moved more slowly and deliberately.
163:24
Its curiosity felt less like instinct and more like conscious thought.
163:29
I opened my eyes.
163:30
I wish I had not.
163:32
The face was enormous. Its eyes sat deeply beneath a projecting brow.
163:37
One eye was dark and alive. The other was an empty scarred socket. That was where Frank's arrow had struck it. Its lips drew backward. The teeth behind them were too large, too sharp, and too deliberate.
163:51
The odor became overwhelming. It formed a living wall of decay and musk.
163:56
My vision began to blur.
163:58
It was exactly what Frank had described. It was the being whose existence I had denied throughout my career.
164:05
I had built my professional reputation by dismissing such reports. I explained them as folklore, fear, the psychological effects of isolation.
164:16
But the creature was real.
164:18
It stared at me the same way I had stared at every witness I had interviewed. It evaluated me. It judged me.
164:26
Its expression carried the calm certainty of a mind that had already decided what it intended to do.
164:31
Then I heard the snap of Frank's bowstring from the tree stand. The arrow struck the creature's shoulder with a wet, heavy impact.
164:39
It howled.
164:40
I will hear that sound for the remainder of my life, regardless of how little time that may be.
164:46
The creature spun toward Frank. It reached the tree in three strides. Then it extended one arm and dragged him from the stand as easily as someone might remove a doll from a shelf.
164:57
Frank struck the ground.
164:59
The sound immediately answered the question of whether he remained alive.
165:03
The creature stood above him and began striking downward. Its fists were approximately the size of my head.
165:10
They rose and fell in a terrible rhythm.
165:13
I heard what Frank became.
165:15
I possessed no words for those noises. I do not want words for them.
165:20
I was free.
165:21
The rope had finally loosened enough.
165:24
Adrenaline returned, flooding my injured body with one final chemical surge of survival.
165:29
I crawled.
165:31
I used one functional leg and both elbows. I dragged myself through the soil. Away from the oak. Away from the sounds. Away from the creature that continued destroying what remained of the man who had tied me there.
165:45
I do not know how far I traveled.
165:47
It was not far enough.
165:49
A tremendous weight landed between my shoulder blades.
165:52
One foot forced me into the ground with enough pressure to crack my ribs like dry wood.
165:58
It had caught me.
165:59
I felt its hands close around my wrists.
166:02
During the final seconds before I lost consciousness, I felt it pull.
166:07
I wrote three books explaining why the things people feared were not real.
166:12
I spent my entire career telling witnesses they were mistaken.
166:16
I sat in their living rooms and kitchens, listening to their accounts with a calm, professional smile.
166:22
Then I returned home and wrote chapters explaining how fear creates legends and how those legends survive through gullible and isolated people.
166:31
I was not gullible. I was not lonely. I was educated.
166:36
I was rational. I was certain.
166:39
And I died tied to a tree in the Ozarks, consumed by the creature I had insisted did not exist.
166:49
Story 20.
166:51
Before I explain what I encountered, I need to explain who I am.
166:55
Without that context, this may sound like another account from another man who spent too many years alone in the wilderness.
167:02
My name is Bob Jackson.
167:04
Inside Yellowstone, people called me Action Jackson.
167:08
I worked as a seasonal backcountry ranger in Yellowstone National Park for 30 years.
167:13
Every spring, I returned to the park and remained there until autumn.
167:17
During the winters, I went home to my bison ranch in Iowa.
167:21
Over those three decades, I traveled somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 miles on horseback.
167:28
I patrolled an area called the Thorough Fair, a wilderness region covering approximately 500 square miles in the southeastern corner of Yellowstone.
167:37
It contains the most distant point from a road anywhere in the contiguous United States.
167:42
I apprehended more poachers than any other ranger in the park's history.
167:46
I confronted grizzly bears. I dealt with outlaw outfitters.
167:51
I faced armed hunters operating on the wrong side of park boundaries. I received official commendations.
167:58
I was also placed under a gag order because I spoke too openly about subjects the National Park Service preferred not to discuss.
168:05
I am telling you these things so that you understand I am not easily deceived.
168:10
I am not someone who sees a bear and mistakes it for a monster.
168:14
I encountered more grizzly and black bears than I could possibly count while traveling through more wilderness than most people will see during an entire lifetime. I know what bears look like. I know how they move.
168:26
I know the sounds they produce.
168:28
What I encountered in the Fan Creek drainage was not a bear.
168:32
The first incident happened sometime during the late 1970s.
168:36
I believe it was 1978, although years begin to blend together after a person spent so many of them in the same mountains.
168:44
I was riding through the Fan Creek drainage with an outfitter. The area lies in the northwestern portion of the park within the Gallatin Mountains.
168:52
It is elevated country filled with subalpine meadows surrounded by dense fir and spruce.
168:58
The landscape was beautiful, isolated and quiet.
169:02
We were riding at a relaxed pace and talking as our horses moved along the trail beneath a clear afternoon sky.
169:08
Then we heard the sound.
169:10
I cannot offer a comparison that fully communicates what it was like.
169:15
The closest description I can provide is to imagine 1,000 elks screaming simultaneously.
169:21
An elk in distress produces a high, haunting cry.
169:24
Most people have never heard that noise, but anyone who has spent enough time in remote country recognizes it. It raises the hair on your arms.
169:33
Now imagine that sound multiplied by 1,000 and sustained continuously.
169:38
It was not a sequence of cries. It was one uninterrupted vocalization that filled the entire valley.
169:45
The noise seemed to come from every direction. It reflected from the canyon walls and ridgelines until we could no longer determine where it had originated.
169:54
It simply existed everywhere around us.
169:57
It filled the air the way a thunderclap fills the sky, except it did not end.
170:02
The sound continued and continued and continued.
170:08
The outfitter and I looked at one another.
170:10
Neither of us spoke. We had no words for what we were hearing.
170:15
The horses became agitated. Their ears pulled backward.
170:19
Their nostrils widened. They stepped sideways across the trail.
170:24
They understood that something was wrong before we did. But they could not escape because the noise appeared to come from all directions at once. Then it stopped.
170:33
The silence that followed was worse than the sound itself.
170:37
The silence meant that whatever had produced that noise was now quiet.
170:41
In remote country, creatures usually become quiet for a reason. They are listening. They are deciding what to do next.
170:49
We did not investigate. We rode out of the drainage and did not discuss the event again.
170:55
Not that day. Not during the following week.
170:58
The memory remained in the back of my mind like a stone trapped inside a boot.
171:03
It was always present. It was always uncomfortable. But it was not painful enough to make me stop moving.
171:10
I should have taken it more seriously.
171:13
A few weeks later, I was riding out from Sportsman Creek with a packer and two other park employees.
171:19
We traveled on horseback along a switchbacking trail cut into a steep hillside above a subalpine meadow.
171:25
The horses became restless again.
171:27
It was the same agitation I had witnessed in Fan Creek. Their ears pointed forward. Their muscles tightened. They resisted moving at their normal pace.
171:38
I looked down the slope toward the meadow. A deer was sprinting across it.
171:42
It ran with the desperate speed of an animal that knows something is behind it and closing the distance.
171:49
Approximately 50 or 60 yards behind the deer was another figure. It was large black and covered in shaggy hair.
171:56
It ran on two legs.
171:58
Its arm swung as it moved. It traveled quickly, but it did not follow a straight route.
172:04
That detail stopped me. When a bear runs, it normally chooses the most direct path between two points. That is how bears move. They are powerful, efficient and straightforward.
172:16
This figure was not moving directly toward the deer.
172:19
It angled across the meadow. It used patches of brush and dense vegetation as cover while pursuing the animal.
172:27
It moved from one concealed area to another. It was actively considering where it was going.
172:33
It was hunting tactically.
172:35
I watched for perhaps 10 or 15 seconds before it vanished into the timber on the opposite side of the meadow.
172:41
I remained seated on my horse and attempted to convince myself it had been a bear.
172:46
I wanted it to be a bear.
172:48
I had observed hundreds of bears in Yellowstone's backcountry. Not one had ever moved in that manner.
172:54
Not one had ever deliberately used terrain for concealment while chasing prey.
172:59
Bears generally do not need to hide. They are apex predators. They do not care whether their prey sees them approaching. This creature cared.
173:09
It selected its root intelligently. It stood perhaps six feet or six and a half feet tall. Its build was compact and stocky, but not in the way a bear is stocky.
173:20
The torso looked dense rather than broad. Its arms swung more widely than a human's arms normally would.
173:27
Its elbows were not bent in the manner of a person running. The limbs hung loosely from the shoulders and moved in long arcs.
173:34
During the brief moment when I saw the side of its head clearly, it appeared covered with thick hair.
173:40
I connected the sighting with the earlier sound in Fan Creek. Whatever had created that valley-filling scream, the noise that sounded like one thousand elk, occupied the same side of the park where I had just watched a dark figure chase a deer on two legs.
173:56
It was the same general region, the same drainage system.
174:00
Then I found the tracks.
174:02
I was conducting a patrol in the backcountry.
174:05
I will not reveal the exact location because I do not want people entering the area to search for it.
174:11
I discovered footprints in deep snow.
174:14
The snow measured approximately three and a half feet. The prints were 18 inches long and descended almost to the bottom of the snowpack. Whatever produced them was extremely heavy. It was far heavier than a human.
174:28
It was also much heavier than a bear temporarily walking on its hind legs.
174:32
A bear's hind footprint does not have that shape. It is narrower and usually displays claw marks.
174:39
These impressions were wide and flat. They had five toes. They showed a clear heel strike and toe-off pattern consistent with upright two-legged movement.
174:49
Something had walked through waist-deep snow on two feet, sinking approximately three feet with each step.
174:55
During 30 years of backcountry patrol and 50,000 miles of travel on horseback, I had never discovered tracks like those anywhere in Yellowstone.
175:04
Not once.
175:06
The sight gave me chills.
175:08
Actual physical chills.
175:11
I stood alone in deep snow many miles from the nearest road, staring at footprints that should not have existed.
175:18
The final incident occurred near Eagle Creek Pass. My team and I approached the Howell Creek Patrol cabin shortly before sunset.
175:26
It was one of the old backcountry cabins used by park rangers.
175:30
As we neared it, we heard the sound again.
175:33
It was the same mechanical rhythmic vocalization I had heard at Fan Creek. It was continuous and sustained and seemed to come from every direction simultaneously.
175:43
This time I measured its duration. 26 seconds.
175:47
For 26 uninterrupted seconds, something produced a sound unlike that of any known animal in Yellowstone.
175:54
It was not an elk. It was not a wolf. It was not a bison. It was not a grizzly bear.
176:01
It was not a mountain lion.
176:03
I had heard every animal in that park vocalize at every hour of the day, during every season, and under nearly every imaginable circumstance. The sound belonged to none of them.
176:15
It appeared to originate approximately 300 or 400 yards beyond the cabin, inside dense timber.
176:22
It continued for 26 seconds without a pause for breath.
176:26
The following morning we searched the area. We found nothing.
176:30
There were no tracks. There were no broken branches. There was no scat.
176:36
Whatever had made the sound had disappeared without leaving any evidence. This is what people need to understand about Yellowstone.
176:43
The park covers approximately 2.2 million acres.
176:47
The backcountry, the land beyond the roads, geysers, tourist areas and visitors carrying phones. is vast in a way that people who have never experienced it cannot comprehend. There are drainages I patrolled for 30 years without ever exploring completely. There are meadows I passed hundreds of times where the timber on the opposite side was too dense for a horse to enter.
177:09
Entire watersheds can go years without receiving a single human footprint.
177:14
During 30 years and 50,000 miles of backcountry travel, I discovered only two bare carcasses.
177:20
2.
177:22
Yellowstone contains hundreds of grizzly bears and hundreds of black bears. If an animal that common, large and thoroughly documented can die, decompose and disappear without anyone finding its remains inside a park filled with rangers, researchers and biologists, then the absence of a Bigfoot carcass proves nothing. The backcountry consumes things. It always has.
177:47
The Apsailuk people, also known as the Crow, told stories about this land long before it became a national park.
177:54
They said the Absaroka Range was home to the Bigfoot.
177:57
Indigenous people knew. They knew in the same way the Lummi knew.
178:01
The Cherokee knew.
178:03
Every nation across this continent knew before outsiders arrived with cameras, skepticism, and the belief that anything not officially catalogued could not exist.
178:13
After my encounter I began asking questions quietly.
178:17
I asked in the manner people use when discussing subjects they are not supposed to mention.
178:22
I spoke with outfitters, guides, packers and other backcountry rangers.
178:27
These were people who had spent their lives in the same mountains where I had spent mine. They had stories. They described unusual noises and drainages where they had never heard anything similar.
178:38
They found footprints and snow that did not match any known animal. They rode horses that refused to travel in certain directions along particular trails.
178:47
One crew working against white pine blister rust discovered an elk carcass that had been completely stripped of meat.
178:54
The animal had been fully deboned. Its bones were arranged on the ground and surrounded by enormous footprints.
179:01
The location was only five or six miles from the meadow where I had seen the black figure pursuing the deer.
179:07
Every person told these accounts in the same manner. They leaned closer. They lowered their voices.
179:13
They looked around to ensure that no one else was listening.
179:17
You do not discuss such things when you work for the National Park Service. You do not include them in patrol reports.
179:24
You do not mention them during staff meetings.
179:27
If you speak about Bigfoot in Yellowstone, your professional credibility disappears. Your career may end. You become known as the Ranger who sees things.
179:38
I was the only person willing to speak publicly.
179:41
During 30 years, I was the only one who went on the record.
179:45
I waited until retirement.
179:47
I waited until I had returned to my bison ranch in Iowa, where no one could fire me, silence me, or punish me with a poor performance review for telling the truth.
179:57
Then I said it publicly, something lives in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park that does not appear in any field guide.
180:05
I saw it pursue a deer through a meadow while running on two legs.
180:09
I heard it scream continuously for 26 seconds without taking a breath.
180:14
I found its footprints in three and a half feet of snow.
180:18
I do not know what it is.
180:20
I will not claim it is an undiscovered primate. I will not say it is a surviving Gigantopithecus. I will not suggest it came from another dimension.
180:29
I do not know.
180:31
I know only what it is not. It is not a bear. It is not human.
180:36
And it is not disappearing.
180:39
Yellowstone covers 2.2 million acres.
180:42
Its backcountry is deep, ancient, and patient.
180:46
It protects its secrets the way mountains hold snow.
180:49
Slowly. Quietly.
180:52
In places sunlight rarely reaches.
180:55
I spent 30 years inside that wilderness and barely touched its surface. Whatever lives there existed before the park. It existed before the rangers. It existed before the tourists. Geyser boardwalks, souvenir shops, and roadmaps.
181:11
The Epsa look new. They always knew. And now, for whatever it may be worth, I know as well.
181:22
Story 21.
181:25
I grew up on a farm in rural Washington state.
181:28
It was the kind of place where the nearest neighbor lived far enough away that their house lights were invisible from ours.
181:34
We kept livestock. There were chickens, several cattle, and the usual animals found on a farm.
181:41
The back of the property bordered dense forest filled with Douglas fir, big leaf maple, and undergrowth so thick that in some places visibility ended after 10 feet.
181:51
I was 15 years old.
181:53
I had hunted with my father since I was old enough to carry a rifle.
181:57
I understood the woods surrounding our property in the same way most children understand their yards.
182:02
Those woods were my yard. I recognized a bear when I saw one. I knew the sound of a cougar. I could distinguish a raccoon knocking over a garbage container from something heavier moving through vegetation.
182:16
I was a farm boy. I was not frightened by darkness.
182:20
Something had begun disturbing the property during the night.
182:23
Each morning we noticed signs.
182:26
Animal feed had been disturbed. Livestock behaved nervously. Objects had been moved that should not have moved.
182:33
My father suspected raccoons or perhaps a skunk.
182:36
I thought it might be a stray dog or coyote. Whatever it was, we needed to deal with it.
182:43
On a farm, a predator that successfully approaches livestock once will continue returning until someone stops it.
182:49
One evening, sometime during late spring or early summer, I heard movement in the treeline at the edge of the property.
182:56
The sound was heavy. It was not the quick scratching or scrambling of a raccoon.
183:01
Something with considerable weight moved through the brush slowly and deliberately. It did not sound like an animal passing through. It sounded like something that had arrived.
183:11
My father had always taught me that when you heard an animal in the trees that might carry rabies, a raccoon, skunk or stray dog, you took a rifle and handled the situation.
183:22
That was life on a farm. That was how things worked.
183:26
I picked up one of my .22 rifles, gathered several cartridges and went outside.
183:32
My dog followed me. He was not a small household pet. He was a solid farm dog, the kind that chased intruders and returned with them.
183:41
And he was frightened by very little.
183:44
He had treed raccoons. He had driven away stray dogs twice his size. He appeared fearless.
183:51
He ran toward the tree line ahead of me as he always did.
183:54
He moved at full speed with his ears raised and body lowered, prepared to force whatever was hiding in the brush into the open.
184:02
He was approximately 20 feet ahead when he reached the trees. Then he stopped.
184:07
He did not gradually slow down. He froze instantly.
184:11
Every muscle in his body became rigid. He stared into the darkness between the fir trees with an intensity I had never seen before.
184:19
His tail dropped. His ears flattened.
184:23
For approximately two seconds he remained perfectly still.
184:27
That was enough time for me to realize something was wrong. Then he turned and ran. He did not run toward me. He passed me and continued directly back to the house.
184:37
He did not stop until he reached the porch. When I looked behind me, he sat pressed against the door. He was shaking.
184:45
Not panting.
184:47
Shaking.
184:48
I should have followed him.
184:50
The dog understood what was happening. His instincts were better than mine, and every one of them told him to flee.
184:57
But I was fifteen.
184:59
Fifteen-year-old boys do not easily run from things they cannot see, especially when carrying a rifle.
185:06
I pushed through the low-hanging fir branches at the edge of the forest. They scraped my arms and face. Then I stepped through them.
185:14
I found myself inside a small clearing beneath an enormous maple tree.
185:18
What I saw stood 15 feet away.
185:21
I will not exaggerate. I will not embellish.
185:25
I have repeated this account for 50 years without changing the details. These are the details.
185:31
The creature stood at least 8 feet tall.
185:34
I grew up estimating the size and weight of livestock every day. Based on its proportions and build, I estimated that it weighed approximately 800 pounds.
185:44
Its general shape resembled that of a man. It had two arms, two legs.
185:50
It stood upright and walked on two feet, but its proportions were different.
185:55
Its shoulders were too broad. Its arms were too long. Its torso was extremely thick and dense, shaped more like a barrel than a human chest.
186:05
Dark, coarse hair covered its entire body. It was not fur like the coat of a bear.
186:11
It was hair.
186:12
The creature stood beneath the maple tree, approximately fifteen feet from the place where I had passed through the fur branches.
186:19
It watched me.
186:21
During the fractions of a second between seeing it and reacting, several thoughts passed through my mind.
186:27
The first was, what in the hell is that?
186:31
The second was that it must have created the tracks.
186:34
We had found unusual tracks in the snow during the previous winter. They were large and displayed five toes. We had never determined what made them.
186:44
The father of one of my friends had told us stories about large, hairy creatures in the woods.
186:49
They were the kind of stories people did not discuss in polite conversation.
186:53
We had laughed. We were children.
186:56
Children often laugh at things that frighten them.
186:59
I was not laughing now.
187:01
My third thought was whether the creature intended to attack.
187:05
I carried a .22 rifle.
187:07
A .22 is useful against raccoons and squirrels.
187:11
With luck, it might stop a coyote.
187:14
Against something 8 feet tall and weighing 800 pounds, a .22 is little more than a device that makes noise.
187:21
It is not an effective weapon. I might as well have been holding a stick.
187:26
I decided that firing into the air might frighten the creature and cause it to leave.
187:31
I raised the rifle and discharged one round straight upward. The report cracked through the clearing and echoed among the trees.
187:39
The creature did not react. It did not flinch. It did not move. It simply watched me.
187:46
The expression on its face is something I have attempted to describe for 50 years, but I have never found the correct words.
187:54
It was not angry. It was not frightened.
187:57
It was not exactly curious.
187:59
It seemed more like recognition.
188:02
It looked as though the creature understood what I was and had already decided that I presented no danger.
188:08
The firearm in my hands meant nothing.
188:11
I meant nothing.
188:12
Then I heard movement behind me and slightly to the right. It was close.
188:17
Brush was being pushed aside. Something heavy moved through the same fir branches I had just crossed.
188:23
I turned my head slightly.
188:25
I could not take my eyes completely away from the creature in front of me, but I looked far enough to see what was approaching.
188:32
A second creature emerged.
188:34
It walked from the brush and passed me at a distance of approximately ten feet, perhaps less.
188:40
It moved past me in the same manner a person might walk past a piece of furniture.
188:45
It never looked toward me. It did not acknowledge me. It did not increase or reduce its speed. It did not alter its route.
188:54
It passed close enough for me to reach out and touch it.
188:57
Then it approached the first creature and stood beside it. The second one was smaller.
189:02
It stood approximately one head shorter and probably weighed several hundred pounds less.
189:08
Otherwise, the two appeared nearly identical. They had the same build, the same body proportions, the same dark hair.
189:17
They stood shoulder to shoulder and looked at me. Two creatures stood approximately 15 feet away.
189:23
One had just passed within arm's reach without even glancing toward me.
189:27
I need you to understand how that felt.
189:30
I was terrified. The fear was complete. It was the kind of fear that can empty a person's bladder, lock the knees, and make the hands feel like wood.
189:40
But what affected me most was the sense of irrelevance.
189:44
I had a firearm. I had fired it. Neither creature cared. The second had passed a human being carrying a rifle in the same way someone might pass a fence post.
189:55
In their eyes I was not a predator.
189:57
I was not dangerous.
189:59
I was barely anything at all.
190:01
I was only a small, noisy, frightened creature standing inside a clearing where I did not belong.
190:07
That was when I ran.
190:09
I fled in the same way my dog had fled. Blindly.
190:13
In panic, I crashed through the fir branches without noticing the scratches.
190:18
I did not look behind me. I barely breathed.
190:22
I reached the house, went inside and locked the door.
190:26
My dog was already waiting on the porch and continued trembling.
190:30
We looked at one another with the shared understanding of two living beings that had just witnessed something the rest of the world insisted did not exist.
190:38
I called my friend John. His father was the man who had told us the stories.
190:43
The following day, several friends and I returned in daylight. We went as a group and carried more powerful firearms. We found the clearing. We found the maple tree. We discovered broken branches and disturbed soil where something heavy had stood.
190:59
But the creatures had gone.
191:01
Of course they had gone.
191:03
I spent the following 50 years of my life studying this subject.
191:07
I co-founded the Pacific Coast Sasquatch investigation team. Researchers, television producers, and journalists contacted me.
191:15
I investigated reports throughout the Pacific Northwest. I wrote about the things I learned.
191:21
But all the research, organizations, and decades of fieldwork returned to one moment.
191:27
One clearing. One maple tree. Two creatures standing shoulder to shoulder in the darkness while observing a 15-year-old boy with a point a .22 rifle and showing no concern.
191:38
The first looked at me, evaluated me, and found me insignificant.
191:43
The second passed me as though I were part of the landscape.
191:47
I carried that sensation with me for 50 years.
191:50
Not the terror, the insignificance, the realization that inside those woods that night,
191:57
I was the smallest thing in the clearing.
191:59
Everything I had been taught about human beings standing at the top of the food chain disappeared.
192:05
The idea that we were the dominant species vanished. The belief that the forest belonged to us ended during the three seconds it took for the second creature to pass without looking down at me.
192:15
We are not the largest beings in the woods. We never were.
192:19
My dog understood that before I did.
192:22
He always understood.
192:29
Story 22.
192:31
We have spent the entire night in mountain country, the Cascades, the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, the Appalachians, cold regions, high elevations, landscapes where stories about Bigfoot almost feel natural, ancient forests, deep snow, the isolation of altitude, now i want to take you somewhere different somewhere flat somewhere hot somewhere pine trees grow so densely and closely that sunlight gives up before reaching the ground east texas in east texas people do not always use the name bigfoot that name belongs more to the pacific northwest and washington state in the piney woods older residents had names of their own the woolly booger the wild man of the woods And anyone from Cass County near the small community of Atlanta, not Atlanta, Georgia, but Atlanta, Texas, may have heard an older relative speak about the Boggy Creek monster.
193:29
It was described as something that followed people through the timber.
193:33
Something that screamed like a woman after dark and caused the hair on a person's arms to rise like toothpicks.
193:40
People have reported these creatures in East Texas for as long as people have lived there.
193:44
The piney woods extend from the Louisiana border westward toward Dallas and from Oklahoma south toward the Gulf. The region covers approximately 54,000 square miles.
193:55
It contains dense pine and hardwood forests.
193:59
Creek bottoms are choked with vegetation. Bayous lead nowhere. The bottomlands are so thick that someone can walk 30 feet from a logging road and disappear completely.
194:09
Sam Houston National Forest alone contains approximately 163,000 acres, where trees grow so closely together that the sky becomes invisible.
194:20
More than 800 Bigfoot sightings have been documented in Texas. Most come from the eastern third of the state. Many involve hunters.
194:29
I am one of those hunters.
194:31
I was hunting wild hogs in Panola County, located along the Louisiana border in deep east Texas.
194:38
It is about as far from a large city as a person can travel within the state.
194:42
For someone who has never visited, imagine red clay roads that turn into mud after rainfall.
194:49
Imagine pine forests so dense that sunlight disappears by 3 in the afternoon.
194:54
Picture creek bottoms filled with a vegetation taller than a person and cottonmouth snakes that do not move out of the way.
195:01
Then there are the hogs.
195:03
Feral hogs can destroy a pasture overnight. Some weigh 300 pounds. Their tusks can tear open a person's leg.
195:11
We hunt them because otherwise they consume or destroy nearly everything.
195:16
I positioned myself near a creek crossing where hogs regularly traveled at dusk.
195:21
I had hunted from that spot before. I carried a rifle.
195:25
I was alone. The sun was descending.
195:28
The light began performing the strange transformation common in the piney woods. For approximately twenty minutes, everything turned gold.
195:37
Then darkness arrived almost instantly, as though someone had lowered a shade.
195:42
The hogs appeared on schedule. There were perhaps six or seven.
195:47
They moved along the creek bank while grunting and digging through the soil.
195:51
I selected a target and waited for a clean angle on the largest animal. Then something burst from the forest. It moved faster than a creature of its size should have been capable of moving.
196:02
It emerged from the timber on the opposite side of the creek bottom and struck the group of hogs like a truck crashing through a fence.
196:10
It seized one animal. This was not a piglet. It was a fully grown hog weighing at least 150 pounds.
196:18
The creature lifted it.
196:20
It picked up a 150 pound feral hog as easily as someone might lift a bag of dog food. It used one arm and one motion.
196:28
The hog squealed, kicked and struggled.
196:31
The creature held it against its body without effort. I could not move. I could not raise my rifle.
196:37
I could do nothing except watch.
196:40
What I saw should have been impossible.
196:43
My mind used all its energy attempting to make it possible.
196:46
The creature stood approximately seven or eight feet tall. It remained upright on two legs.
196:52
Its body was covered in dark hair.
196:55
The coloration was not completely black. It appeared reddish-brown, thick and tangled. Its shoulders were enormous.
197:03
Its arms were long.
197:05
It held the hog tucked against its ribs in the same way someone might carry a football.
197:11
The hog continued fighting.
197:13
The creature showed no sign of strain.
197:15
It did not appear to be working hard. Then it vocalized.
197:20
The sound was one powerful whoop produced from deep inside its chest. It traveled through the creek bottom like a gunshot. From somewhere in the timber, possibly a quarter mile away, another sound answered.
197:32
It was a howl produced by a different throat and from another direction.
197:37
Call and response. They appeared to be communicating.
197:41
The creature stopped moving. It continued holding the hog. Then it turned its head and looked directly at me.
197:48
I need to be exact about that.
197:51
It did not glance in my general direction. It did not scan the tree line and accidentally notice me. It deliberately turned and stared at my position.
198:00
It knew I was there. It had probably known the entire time.
198:05
It had entered the creek bottom and taken the hog directly in front of me because it did not fear me. It wanted me to understand that.
198:13
A low growl came from it. The noise was sustained and caused the ground beneath my boots to vibrate.
198:19
It did not sound like a warning. It sounded like a statement. The message seemed to be, I see you.
198:27
You do not matter, but I see you.
198:30
Then the creature turned and entered the timber while still holding the hog against its body.
198:35
After three steps, the pine trees swallowed it.
198:38
The hog continued squealing.
198:41
I heard the sound become weaker as the creature traveled deeper into the forest. Then there was nothing.
198:47
Only the creek, the final remaining light, and me standing with a rifle I had never raised.
198:54
That was my encounter.
198:56
One sighting lasting perhaps 45 seconds.
199:00
45 seconds that rearranged everything I believed about what inhabited those woods.
199:04
I am far from the only witness.
199:07
In Sam Houston National Forest, roughly 100 miles southwest of my location, people have reported similar encounters for decades.
199:16
A retired NASA engineer saw one during a frozen January morning.
199:20
He said the creature separated pine branches like curtains. Its eyes appeared emerald green.
199:26
This man had spent 30 years working with some of the most advanced technology on Earth.
199:32
Yet he stood inside a forest and watched something move through the trees that no technology could explain.
199:38
A police officer encountered one on an all-terrain vehicle trail in the same forest. The sighting lasted only three seconds.
199:45
He said that was enough.
199:47
His skepticism disappeared before the creature left his field of vision.
199:52
A professional photographer had positioned himself among the trees with camera equipment worth thousands of dollars.
199:58
Then something began breaking trees, not branches.
200:02
Entire tree trunks snapped like matchsticks somewhere within the surrounding pines.
200:07
The photographer did not remain to capture an image.
200:10
He abandoned all his equipment and ran. He returned the following day in full daylight with other people to retrieve it.
200:18
In 1996, two campers on private land near Appleby, a small community in Nacogduches County, heard something scream outside their campsite in complete darkness.
200:28
It screamed seven times in rapid succession.
200:32
Each call came from a different location around them.
200:35
Either something circled the camp with impossible speed, or more than one creature was present.
200:41
The BFRO investigated.
200:43
Its conclusion was that the volume and changing locations of the sounds ruled out a human source.
200:49
The Big Thicket is a 100,000-acre maze of swamp, pine, and hardwood forest.
200:55
It was the last region in Texas to be fully surveyed because of its density.
201:00
In 1962, two boys hunting hogs watched a creature between seven and eight feet tall step from the shadows and look directly at them.
201:08
The forest had become silent before it appeared.
201:11
There were no birds, no insects, only the heavy pressurized quiet described repeatedly by witnesses.
201:19
It was the kind of silence that means something larger than you has entered the area.
201:23
Jefferson, Texas has a population of approximately 2,000 people and sits within the Piney Woods near Louisiana.
201:31
Since 2001, the town has hosted an annual Bigfoot conference. Hundreds attend.
201:37
They exchange accounts. They compare evidence. They listen to investigators. They do not attend because they consider the subject amusing. They come because they live in those forests and understand what they have witnessed.
201:51
East Texas does not resemble the Pacific Northwest. There are no snow-covered mountains.
201:57
There are no rivers fed by glaciers. There are no ancient stands of cedar and spruce. The land is flat. It is hot. It is filled with insects.
202:08
The trees are pine growing in rows so dense that walking between trunks becomes difficult.
202:13
The creek bottoms are clogged with vines, briars and vegetation that cuts anyone who pushes through carelessly.
202:20
It is not romantic terrain. It is not landscape made for postcards.
202:25
It is land designed to conceal things.
202:28
Not because it is endlessly vast, but because it is dense, close and dark around the edges.
202:35
Something lives in those edges.
202:37
I watched it lift a hog. A NASA engineer saw its separate pine branches. A police officer saw it on a trail.
202:45
A photographer heard it break trees.
202:48
Two boys encountered one inside the big thicket more than 60 years ago.
202:53
People continue reporting them today.
202:55
In East Texas, the argument is not always whether the creature exists.
203:00
The argument is what people should call it.
203:03
The woolly booger. The wild man.
203:05
The boggy creek monster.
203:08
The being inside the piney woods that screams like a woman, steals hogs, and does not care whether humans are watching.
203:15
It lived there before the logging crews arrived.
203:18
It was present before the oil wells were constructed.
203:22
It occupied those forests before highways cut through the trees and towns developed around intersections.
203:28
When the final light is turned off inside the final house on the final red clay road beside the final pine thicket in Panola County, the creature remains.
203:36
It stands at the tree line and watches.
203:39
I know.
203:40
I watched it watching me.
203:47
Story 23.
203:50
I want to describe exactly what happened in the proper sequence, the same way I would prepare a professional field report.
203:58
I am a retired civil engineer.
204:00
Throughout my career I measured distances, loads, angles, and tolerances.
204:05
Before becoming an engineer, I served in the military. Later I hunted bears.
204:10
I have spent more than 50 years in forests.
204:13
I know what a bear looks like when it stands upright. I know how a bear moves when it walks.
204:19
I know what a bear looks like while crossing a highway because I have watched bears cross roads more times than I could count.
204:26
I have seen them in Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia, and nearly every other state where bears and highways occupy the same terrain.
204:35
What crossed Interstate 80 in front of my vehicle was not a bear.
204:39
I was traveling northeast on Interstate 80, approximately 11 and a half miles outside Belafonte.
204:45
For anyone unfamiliar with central Pennsylvania, this is Ridge and Valley country.
204:51
The Appalachian Mountains pass through the region in long, parallel ridgelines covered with hardwood and hemlock. Between those ridges are valleys containing creeks and small towns.
205:02
Bald Eagle State Park is nearby.
205:05
Sproul State Forest lies to the north. Nittany Mountain and Sand Ridge extend through the region. The ridges are low, forested, heavily wooded, and lightly populated. It is excellent bear habitat. It is excellent deer country.
205:20
It is also ideal terrain for anything that wants to remain hidden.
205:25
Traffic moved at highway speed approximately 75 or 80 miles per hour.
205:30
It was daytime. Visibility was clear.
205:34
I was alert, with both hands on the steering wheel and my attention directed toward the road.
205:39
Something emerged from the tree line on the right side of the interstate and began crossing.
205:44
I need you to understand how quickly I had to process what I was seeing.
205:49
At 80 miles per hour, there is no time to examine something carefully. A driver may have only three or four seconds between the moment an object enters the field of vision and the moment the vehicle passes it.
206:00
During those seconds, my mind reacted the way 50 years of field experience had trained it to react.
206:06
It cataloged details.
206:08
Height, tall, well over six feet, closer to seven feet, and possibly more.
206:16
Its proportions did not match those of an ordinary human being. The torso was too thick. The shoulders were too broad. The arms were too long. It remained completely upright and walked on two legs.
206:29
Its stride was smooth and purposeful.
206:32
It covered the ground like something that knew exactly where it was going and had no concern about anything around it.
206:38
Its color was uniformly dark. It appeared black or extremely dark brown. There was no variation. There were no lighter sections, clothing, or reflective materials.
206:50
It was simply one solid dark form moving across the interstate.
206:54
Its gait was bipedal.
206:56
It did not move the way a bear does when standing on its rear legs.
207:00
Bears sway.
207:02
They shift their weight from side to side.
207:04
They appear uncomfortable while walking upright because they are not naturally designed to travel that way.
207:10
This creature walked the way a human being walks, except every stride was longer.
207:15
Each step appeared more deliberate.
207:18
There was a mechanical confidence in its movement, unlike anything I had ever observed in an animal. Its arms swung. They did not move exactly like human arms. The motion was wider, and the limbs hung farther down the body. They appeared to extend beyond the knees.
207:35
The creature never looked toward my vehicle. It did not increase its speed. It did not hesitate.
207:42
It crossed a four-lane interstate while vehicles traveled at 80 miles per hour. It moved across the highway as casually as someone walking through a living room.
207:51
It behaved as though the road did not exist. It behaved as though none of us existed.
207:57
I passed it.
207:58
Then I looked into the rearview mirror.
208:01
The creature was stepping into the tree line on the opposite side of the interstate.
208:05
After three or four strides it disappeared among the trees. I pulled onto the shoulder.
208:11
For several minutes I remained inside the vehicle with the engine running and both hands resting on the steering wheel.
208:17
I repeatedly reviewed what I had witnessed. I am a rational person. I am a trained observer.
208:24
My background includes engineering, military service, and decades of outdoor experience.
208:30
I do not imagine objects that are not present.
208:33
I checked the Waze application. I searched for any report of a disabled vehicle. Perhaps the figure had been a person walking away from a broken-down car.
208:43
There were no reports.
208:45
I examined both sides of the highway as far as I could see in each direction. There was no stopped vehicle. There was no pedestrian.
208:53
There was no reasonable explanation involving a human being crossing Interstate 80 on foot, dressed entirely in dark material.
209:01
Standing that tall and moving with that gait through active traffic, I returned home.
209:07
That night I could not sleep. I repeatedly saw the same image. The dark form, the long arms, the stride.
209:16
I began researching.
209:18
Before this incident I had never cared about Bigfoot. I had never seriously considered the subject.
209:24
I am a bear hunter. I believe in bears. Bears are real. They leave bones, fur, and tracks.
209:32
Their bodies end up mounted on the walls of taxidermists.
209:36
To me, Bigfoot had always been a campfire story for people who watch too much television.
209:41
Then I discovered the BFRO database. I found reports from Pennsylvania.
209:47
Eventually, I discovered something that caused the hair on my arms to rise.
209:51
Other people had reported seeing the creature along the same section of highway on the same day.
209:56
A second witness, an experienced hunter with more than 50 years in the forest, had independently submitted an account to the BFRO.
210:05
His encounter occurred on Interstate 80 in the same general location and on the same date.
210:10
His description closely matched mine.
210:13
He reported a large, dark, bipedal figure crossing the road with a confidence that did not resemble the movement of any known animal.
210:20
He wrote that he knew what he had seen but did not know what it was.
210:24
He emphasized that he was an avid hunter with more than 50 years of woodland experience.
210:30
He also stated clearly that the figure was not a bear.
210:33
That was when I contacted the BFRO.
210:36
An investigator first interviewed me by telephone.
210:40
He compared my spoken account with my written report and searched for contradictions. He found none.
210:46
I later drove more than 100 miles back to the location.
210:50
I wanted to provide the investigator with concrete information.
210:54
Exact mile markers. sightlines, terrain features.
210:59
I am an engineer.
211:01
I do not provide vague guesses when I can provide measurements.
211:05
The investigator described me as sincere and credible.
211:08
He noted my professional background in civil engineering, military service, and decades of hunting.
211:14
He also documented that I had never believed in Bigfoot before the sighting.
211:19
I reached that conclusion only after examining similar reports from the region and failing to find any better explanation.
211:26
The BFRO classified my encounter as Class A.
211:30
That category indicates a clear visual observation without meaningful ambiguity.
211:35
Since that day, I have learned that Pennsylvania ranks third in the United States for reported Bigfoot encounters.
211:42
Only Washington and California rank higher.
211:45
Pennsylvania has at least 138 documented reports in the BFRO database.
211:51
The true number is almost certainly larger because many witnesses never report what they see. They fear damage to their credibility, careers, and reputations.
212:00
I understand that fear. I am a retired civil engineer with a military background.
212:06
I spent my working life constructing things, measuring the physical world, and ensuring that the numbers were correct.
212:14
Now I am the man who saw Bigfoot crossing Interstate 80. Some people will never view me the same way. I do not care. I know what a bear looks like. I have killed bears. I have skinned bears. I have measured bears.
212:29
For half a century I watched bears cross roads in every state where I hunted.
212:34
What crossed Interstate 80 in front of my vehicle was not a bear. It was not a human being.
212:40
It was not an optical illusion, a shadow, mistaken identity, or momentary confusion caused by highway fatigue.
212:48
It walked on two legs.
212:51
Its stride was longer than mine. It stood taller than any human being I had personally encountered.
212:57
Its arm swung below its knees.
212:59
It crossed a four-lane interstate filled with vehicles traveling at highway speed without breaking stride or looking toward a single car.
213:07
The most disturbing part was how little concern it showed.
213:10
That detail continues returning to me.
213:13
It wakes me at three in the morning. The creature did not avoid traffic. It did not wait for an opening.
213:20
It did not run.
213:21
It walked through vehicles traveling at 80 miles per hour the same way someone walks through a familiar house after dark.
213:28
It knew where everything was.
213:30
It understood that the traffic was present.
213:33
It simply did not regard the vehicles as a problem.
213:37
Whatever it was, it did not fear us.
213:40
It was not impressed by our highway vehicles or speed. It crossed our road in the same manner it crossed everything else.
213:47
Slowly, deliberately, according to its own schedule, without asking permission.
213:54
I once believed that human beings owned this country.
213:57
The highways, the forests, the ridgelines.
214:02
I thought the woods were areas we permitted to remain between our communities.
214:06
I no longer believe that. Something crossed Interstate 80 in front of my vehicle. At least two other people saw something similar that day.
214:15
The BFRO classified the report as genuine.
214:18
Pennsylvania contains more than 100 additional reports.
214:22
Whatever lives among those ridges, inside Sproul State Forest, around Nittany Mountain, and a long sand ridge existed before the interstate.
214:31
It existed before the towns. It remains there now, and it crosses our roads whenever it chooses.
214:43
Story 24.
214:45
Every previous account in this series was told from memory. Someone described an event days, weeks, or years after it occurred. This account is different.
214:55
A man stood inside his home speaking with a 911 dispatcher while something remained in his yard and stared at him through a window.
215:02
The BFRO archive still contains the original call. What follows is the context and a reconstruction of the conversation.
215:11
Listening to the witness's real voice on the BFRO website matters because the recording captures something written words cannot fully reproduce.
215:19
Sometime during the mid-1990s, a resident of Washington State's Kitsap Peninsula made two calls to 911.
215:27
Both calls were recorded as emergency calls normally are.
215:30
The recording survived. The BFRO later obtained copies. Many investigators consider them among the most convincing pieces of Bigfoot-related evidence ever preserved.
215:42
They do not contain a photograph or video. What they contain is the voice of a human being attempting to describe something for which he has no adequate vocabulary.
215:51
He speaks to a dispatcher whose procedures contain no category for what he is witnessing.
215:57
The first incident involved the man's three dogs.
216:00
Two were young and aggressive. The third was an older German Shepherd.
216:05
The shepherd was calm and mature. It was past its prime and normally behaved like the kind of dog that slept near the doorway rather than chasing everything outside.
216:15
The younger dogs were different. They were territorial and reactive.
216:19
They normally confronted anything approaching the property.
216:23
One night, something came near the house. The two young, aggressive dogs refused to leave their owner's side. That detail is important. These were territorial animals whose normal instinct was to challenge intruders.
216:36
Yet they would not go outside. They pressed their bodies against the mat and refused to move.
216:42
They understood that something waited beyond the house. Their instincts told them not to confront it.
216:48
The older German Shepherd either failed to recognize the danger or chose to ignore it.
216:53
The Shepherd sensed the presence and ran outside.
216:56
It pursued whatever occupied the yard.
216:59
The man heard the dog squeal. It was not barking.
217:03
It produced one sharp, high-pitched sound of pain lasting less than a second.
217:07
Then he heard a heavy impact. The next thing he saw was his German Shepherd flying through the air over the fence.
217:14
The dog traveled approximately 35 feet from the location where something seized it to the place where its body landed beyond the barrier.
217:22
The dog did not die from the impact with the ground. It had already been killed.
217:27
Something had grabbed the shepherd, killed it, and thrown the body across a tall fence as easily as someone tossing a ball.
217:34
The owner called 911. He reported an intruder and a disturbance. Something had killed his dog.
217:41
He did not tell the dispatcher what he truly believed was responsible.
217:46
He understood that using a word such as Bigfoot might prevent law enforcement from taking the call seriously.
217:52
He needed officers to respond. Therefore, he described the situation using terms the system would accept.
217:59
The second call occurred approximately three weeks later. It involved the same home, yard, and witness.
218:06
The man had installed a motion-activated security light outside the house. One night the light turned on.
218:13
Something had entered its detection area.
218:15
It stood in the portion of the yard between the home and the fence where the German Shepherd had been killed three weeks earlier.
218:22
The man looked outside, illuminated by the security light. A figure stood in his yard. He called 911 again.
218:30
The recording captures a man attempting to remain calm and failing. His voice sounds controlled and tight.
218:37
Beneath that control is unmistakable fear.
218:40
It is the kind of fear that constricts the throat and causes sentences to become shorter than intended.
218:46
He told the dispatcher that someone stood in his yard. He described the figure as a very large person.
218:53
He initially estimated that it stood approximately six feet, nine inches tall. Then he admitted that he was uncertain.
219:00
The dispatcher asked whether he could see the figure.
219:03
The man answered that he was looking directly at it. She asked whether it remained inside his yard.
219:09
He confirmed that it did. Then he said, God, he's big.
219:14
The dispatcher asked what the figure was doing. The man answered, he's looking at me.
219:21
There was a pause. The dispatcher had been trained to classify situations and send the appropriate response. Her procedures required a direct question.
219:31
She asked whether it was a person.
219:33
This is the moment that makes the recording different from nearly every other Bigfoot-related call. The man's thought process appears to stop.
219:42
He must provide an answer. If he says no, the figure is not a person, the dispatcher will ask what it is. He will then be forced to use a word that may make her believe he is intoxicated, mentally unstable, or both.
219:56
If the operator dismisses him, law enforcement may not arrive. If he says yes, it is a person, he will be lying.
220:05
He knows that what he sees through the window is not human.
220:08
After hesitating, he says he would describe it as a person or someone extremely large.
220:14
He adds that the figure is entirely black.
220:17
The dispatcher asks whether the intruder is a black man or a white man. She wants to determine whether he is describing skin color or dark clothing.
220:26
The witness repeats that the figure is all black and extremely large.
220:30
He does not say that it is wearing black clothing. He does not describe a black male wearing dark clothes. He describes something entirely dark.
220:39
It is the way an animal covered from head to foot in black hair might appear beneath a motion-activated light after dark.
220:46
The witness uses the only vocabulary the dispatcher will accept. He frames it as a prowler, trespasser, or human intruder.
220:54
Every part of him knows it is none of those things.
220:58
He's looking at me.
220:59
That is the final meaningful statement before the conversation ends.
221:03
Police officers were sent to the property.
221:06
By the time they arrived, the figure had disappeared. It had not remained after being detected.
221:12
The security light had illuminated it. The man had seen it. Then it left.
221:18
Officers found no tracks or physical evidence. There was only the memory of the dead dog from three weeks earlier, and the witness standing beside a window with a telephone in his hand, staring at an empty yard where something impossible had stood moments before.
221:33
Ron Moore had associated with the Sierra Sounds recordings, later obtained the 911 tapes.
221:39
He and experienced Bigfoot investigator Peter Byrne traveled to the Kitsap Peninsula to interview the caller.
221:45
The witness confirmed what the recording suggested. He knew what he had encountered.
221:50
In one incident, he saw the results of its actions. His dog had been killed and thrown an impossible distance.
221:57
During the second event, he saw the figure directly beneath the security light while it stared through the window.
222:04
He wanted no involvement with the Bigfoot community. He did not want to appear on television. He did not want his identity published. He did not want researchers visiting the property.
222:16
When Moorhead asked for permission to examine the German Shepherd's body for evidence, the man refused.
222:22
He wanted the events to stop.
222:24
He called 911 because that is what a person does when something enters the yard. He described it as a prowler because that was the terminology most likely to bring assistance.
222:35
When the officers arrived, the property was empty. The security light illuminated only grass.
222:41
The witness was left alone with the knowledge that something had visited the house twice. It had killed his dog.
222:48
It had stared at him through a window.
222:50
It could return whenever it chose. He did not want to become part of a legend. He wanted to feel secure inside his own home.
222:58
Listen to the recording when possible. Use headphones. Close your eyes. Pay attention to the witness's voice rather than only his words. Listen to its timbre. Notice how it tightens and briefly relaxes.
223:13
Listen to the way he says, God, he's big.
223:17
There is no excitement or wonder. There is only the exhausted realization of someone witnessing something he will never be able to forget.
223:25
Listen to the dispatcher as well. She performs her job correctly.
223:30
She asks the questions required by protocol. She attempts to place the report inside a category her system can process. Male or female. Black or white.
223:40
Armed or unarmed. The answers do not fit. They cannot fit because the figure beneath the security light does not belong to any category available to her.
223:50
Is it a person?
223:52
The man answers that he would call it a person or someone extremely large. That pause and the word or reveal everything. They capture someone reaching the limit of language while looking at something language was never designed to describe.
224:05
He chooses the closest term that will not cause the dispatcher to dismiss him.
224:10
The call is real. The dog was real. The fence was real. The 35-foot distance traveled by the body was real. Somewhere on the Kitsap Peninsula, the man who made those calls may still be alive.
224:23
or remained alive until recently.
224:26
He still does not want to speak publicly.
224:29
Some encounters end with wonder, others produce understanding.
224:33
This one ended with a man, a dead dog, and a telephone conversation with a dispatcher who asked whether the figure was human.
224:42
She never received an honest answer.
224:44
The honest answer was no, but saying no might have prevented the police from responding.
224:50
When something that large stands at a person's yard and watches through a window, the police need to come, even if they cannot accomplish anything after arriving. Someone else needs to know. That is part of what an emergency call represents.
225:05
It is not merely a request for assistance. It is also a request for another witness.
225:11
The man needed someone else to know.
225:18
Story 25.
225:20
The camping trip was my uncle's idea. He selected a campground beside a lake somewhere in the remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
225:28
Anyone who has never visited the Upper Peninsula may have difficulty understanding how isolated it truly is.
225:35
It is not remote in the suburban sense of being one hour from a supermarket or having unreliable mobile service.
225:41
The Upper Peninsula is remote in the original meaning of the word. There are millions of acres of forest.
225:48
Trees outnumber people.
225:50
Some roads end beside lakes that do not even have names.
225:53
If something there wished to remain undiscovered, it could do so easily because the number of hiding places vastly exceeds the number of people searching.
226:02
We arrived at the campground and established our site. There was nothing unusual about it. We had a camper, equipment and ordinary supplies.
226:11
My uncle suspended a bag of food from a high tree branch. That was standard bear precaution.
226:17
Food is placed where a bear cannot reach it, and under normal circumstances, the bag remains there until morning.
226:24
The following morning the bag had disappeared. It had not been torn apart. There were no wrappers, cans, or food scattered across the ground the way a bear would leave them.
226:34
The entire bag was gone. Something had removed it cleanly from a branch my uncle had deliberately chosen because it was beyond a bear's reach.
226:43
Something capable of climbing or using hands had reached the branch and taken the bag intact.
226:48
As I stood beneath the empty branch in the morning light, I knew something occupied the surrounding woods. Something that was not a bear.
226:57
Nevertheless, I went fishing. That was why we had traveled there.
227:01
A missing food bag was not enough to make me abandon the trip.
227:05
I took a rowboat onto the lake. It was not a motorboat or kayak. It was a flat-bottomed boat powered by oars.
227:13
It moved only as quickly as I could row.
227:15
I spent approximately 30 minutes crossing to the opposite side.
227:20
The lake was large enough that the distant shore remained visible but was not close.
227:25
I wanted to locate a protected cove sheltered from the wind where fish might gather in shallow water.
227:30
Eventually, I found one. It was a small inlet on the far side of the lake, positioned between two ridges.
227:37
A path followed the top of a low hill above the water.
227:41
I guided the rowboat into the cove, placed the oars inside, and cast a fishing line.
227:46
The area was silent. There was only the boat, the water, and me.
227:52
Morning in the Upper Peninsula can be so quiet that the silence feels physically heavy.
227:57
I had not been fishing long when distant thunder began. The storm sounded far away but appeared to be approaching.
228:04
That was enough to make me consider returning to camp.
228:07
Being trapped on a lake inside a rowboat during a storm is dangerous, especially when reaching safety requires 30 minutes of rowing.
228:15
I began reeling in the line.
228:17
Then I noticed a doe.
228:19
The white-tailed deer stood at the edge of the water approximately 40 yards from the boat.
228:24
There was nothing unusual about seeing it.
228:27
I regularly saw a deer.
228:29
She lowered her head and drank.
228:32
I watched in the quiet way people observe wildlife when they are sitting still.
228:36
Then she suddenly stopped. The doe raised her head. She turned as though preparing to flee.
228:43
Then she froze.
228:45
Deer do not normally react that way.
228:47
A deer sensing danger usually bolts.
228:50
It may raise its white tail or stamp one hoof as a warning.
228:54
Complete immobility is different.
228:56
A prey animal freezes when the threat is so near and overwhelming that running no longer appears useful.
229:02
It is a final defensive reaction.
229:05
The animal's instincts calculate that remaining motionless is the only option.
229:10
The doe became rigid.
229:12
I followed her gaze. At the top of the hill, directly on the path and fully visible against the tree line, stood a Bigfoot.
229:19
I use that word because I know no other term that describes what I saw.
229:23
The creature stood upright on two legs.
229:26
It was enormous.
229:28
I am not skilled at estimating exact distances or heights, but it was significantly taller than an ordinary man.
229:35
Its shoulders were far too broad for anything human. Its body appeared dark.
229:40
Dark hair covered a dark form. It formed the kind of silhouette that seemed to absorb light instead of reflecting it.
229:47
The creature looked down toward the cove. It watched the deer. It watched me.
229:53
I sat inside a rowboat on the wrong side of the lake.
229:57
The nearest land was the shoreline where the deer stood frozen.
230:01
That shoreline lay directly beneath the hill occupied by the creature.
230:05
If I rode toward land, I would move closer to it.
230:08
If I returned across the lake, I faced 30 minutes of open water, with my back turned toward whatever stood above the cove.
230:16
I remained motionless.
230:18
I cannot say how long the creature stayed there.
230:21
Time behaved strangely during impossible encounters. It felt like several minutes.
230:27
It may have been only seconds.
230:29
The figure stood on the path at the top of the hill, clearly outlined against the sky.
230:34
It watched the scene the way a person watches television. It did not appear to be hunting. It was not stalking. It simply observed everything.
230:44
The deer, the water, the man in the boat.
230:48
Its calm behavior made me feel extremely small and very far from the camper.
230:53
Eventually, the creature turned. It walked along the path away from the cove.
230:58
The trees concealed it.
231:00
One moment, a dark figure stood against the sky. The next, it had vanished into the forest as completely as a stone disappearing beneath water.
231:09
There was no sound of vegetation breaking. It did not crash through the brush. It walked between the trees and the forest clothes behind it.
231:18
The doe immediately fled.
231:20
The paralysis ended.
231:22
She raised her white tail and crashed through the vegetation, behaving the way a frightened deer normally behaves after fear overcomes caution.
231:31
I heard her hooves striking the forest floor. Then the cove became silent again.
231:36
I was alone.
231:37
I picked up the oars. Then I rowed.
231:41
I crossed the lake quickly and steadily without looking behind me.
231:44
For 30 minutes I felt a tingling between my shoulder blades.
231:48
I focused on the opposite shore.
231:51
The camper waited there.
231:52
My uncle was there. It was the side of the lake where the world still made sense.
231:57
I did not immediately tell my uncle what I had witnessed.
232:01
I did not yet possess the right words.
232:03
What could I say? That I saw Bigfoot while fishing? It sounds like a joke. It resembles something an intoxicated man might say inside a bar.
232:13
But I was sober.
232:15
I was not joking.
232:17
The doe saw it as well. That is the detail I repeatedly return to.
232:22
I can question my own eyesight. I can wonder whether I judged the distance incorrectly. Perhaps the lighting created an illusion. Perhaps my mind supplied details that were not present.
232:34
But I cannot explain the deer's reaction.
232:37
A white-tailed doe stood beside the water.
232:40
She turned to run and then became incapable of movement.
232:43
Her body locked with a level of terror beyond flight or escape.
232:47
All she could do was remain perfectly still and hope the creature on the hill did not descend.
232:53
The deer did not know the term Bigfoot.
232:55
She had no theories, arguments, or television programs. She possessed only millions of years of prey instinct. Every part of that instinct instructed her to freeze.
233:06
Anyone who does not believe my account should believe the deer. Michigan's Upper Peninsula has approximately 225 documented Bigfoot reports, ranking eighth nationally.
233:17
The Ojibwe, who have lived in the region for thousands of years, spoke about a creature called the Wendigo.
233:24
It was described as an enormous hairy being associated with deep forests and cold weather.
233:29
The Porcupine Mountains, Taquamenon Falls, Hiawatha National Forest, Sini National Wildlife Refuge. Every major wilderness region in the Upper Peninsula contains reports In 2015, two fishermen near Taquamenon Falls saw a massive figure watching them from the shoreline before it entered the trees. In 1993, an officer from the Department of Natural Resources in Baraga County observed a creature standing beside a creek.
233:59
It ran away at a speed that seemed impossible for its size.
234:03
In 2019, hunters inside the Sturgeon River Gorge heard deep, chest-rattling roars unlike the sounds of any known animal.
234:12
At Sini National Wildlife Refuge, a woman sleeping inside a car with her baby awakened and discovered a large hairy figure staring through the window at the child.
234:21
She did not leave the vehicle. She started the engine and drove away.
234:26
This is the Upper Peninsula. This is what people claim lives there. It is what the Ojibwe always knew and what others are only beginning to acknowledge.
234:36
I traveled to the lake intending to catch fish. I returned with something else. A memory I cannot release and a question I cannot answer.
234:45
What would have happened had I rode toward the shore instead of returning to camp?
234:49
What if I had pulled the boat onto the bank beneath that hill?
234:53
I do not want the answer. I never returned to that cove.
234:57
But the inlet remains.
234:59
The hill is still there. The path continues along its top.
235:04
Whatever walked that trail stood against the sky and watched me with a patience I will never understand may still be there as well.
235:11
The deer understood.
235:13
The deer always understands.
235:20
Story 26. I need to describe the most terrifying night of my life.
235:26
It did not happen deep inside a forest. It did not occur on a hiking trail.
235:31
I was not in the backcountry, mountains, or any other remote place where someone might expect an encounter like this.
235:38
It happened inside a parking area beside a road in Sini National Wildlife Refuge in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
235:45
I was inside my vehicle.
235:46
The doors were locked. The engine was off.
235:50
My baby slept in the car seat behind me. I had been driving for a long time. I do not want to reveal where I came from or where I was going because I do not want anyone identifying me.
236:01
I was exhausted.
236:03
It was the kind of exhaustion that causes a driver's eyes to close at traffic lights.
236:08
I knew I needed to stop before I killed myself or my child. The refuge was dark, quiet and empty.
236:15
I turned into a small gravel parking area beside the road. I shut off the engine, reclined my seat and closed my eyes.
236:23
The baby remained asleep. The doors were locked.
236:27
I told myself we were safe.
236:29
I do not know how long I slept. Perhaps one hour, maybe two.
236:35
It was enough time for our breathing to fog the windows.
236:38
It was enough time for the interior of the car to become cold.
236:42
I awakened because something felt wrong.
236:44
There was no specific sound or movement. It was only a sensation.
236:49
Sometimes a person awakens inside a familiar home and immediately knows someone else is present before opening the eyes.
236:56
There was a weight in the air that had not existed when I fell asleep.
237:00
I opened my eyes.
237:01
A face was pressed near one of the windows. It was not beside me.
237:06
It appeared at the rear window next to my baby's car seat.
237:10
Something stood outside the vehicle, bending down and looking through the glass at my child.
237:15
I could not see it perfectly.
237:17
Condensation covered the windows, but I could distinguish the shape. I saw its mass. I saw the width of its head.
237:26
It appeared darker than the night behind it.
237:29
Its face stood close enough to the glass that its breath had cleared the condensation immediately around it.
237:35
There was a circular opening in the fog. Beyond that clear patch was a face.
237:40
It was not human.
237:42
I knew that instantly.
237:44
It was the same immediate recognition that allows someone to distinguish a dog from a coyote, or a loved one from an unfamiliar person standing inside a home.
237:54
The proportions were wrong. The face was too broad. Its brow was too pronounced. The features appeared flat.
238:02
The nose and profile were nearly level with the rest of the face. Its eyes reflected the faint ambient light.
238:09
They appeared as two dim points inside the circle of cleared glass.
238:14
The creature was staring at my baby. It was not looking at me. Perhaps it had not noticed me in the front seat. Or perhaps it had noticed and did not care.
238:24
Its attention remained on the car seat and the small figure wrapped in blankets.
238:29
My seven-month-old daughter slept with one fist beside her cheek. The creature studied her. Its head moved slightly.
238:36
It tilted in the way someone inclines the head while attempting to understand something unfamiliar.
238:42
I did not scream.
238:44
I want that understood. I did not cry. I made no sound.
238:49
Every cell inside my body and every ancient instinct inside a mother's mind told me the same thing.
238:55
Do not let it know you are awake. Do not draw its attention away from the baby and toward yourself. Do not intensify the situation. Do not provoke it. Remain motionless. Remain quiet.
239:09
When you move, move toward the ignition.
239:12
I slowly reached for the key. My hand trembled so violently that I could barely feel my fingers.
239:18
I found it.
239:19
Then I turned it.
239:21
The engine started. The headlights illuminated automatically.
239:26
Light spread across the gravel, trees, and road.
239:29
Inside the rearview mirror, I saw the shape move away from the window.
239:33
It did not jerk backward. It did not appear startled by the engine or lights.
239:38
It straightened. It rose higher and higher.
239:43
What had been a face beside a car window became an upright figure taller than the vehicle.
239:48
Its shoulders were broader than the rear windshield. Its body was dark and covered with hair.
239:55
It watched the vehicle for another moment. Then it turned and walked toward the tree line.
240:00
It moved with the same unhurried gait I later found described in countless encounter reports.
240:05
It was the walk of something that never needed to hurry because nothing inside the forest could outrun it.
240:11
I shifted the vehicle into drive. Then I left.
240:15
I continued until I found a gas station filled with lights and people. I parked beneath the brightest fixture available. I remained there until sunrise. My baby stayed in my arms. The doors remained locked.
240:29
My hands continued shaking for hours. I did not tell anyone for a long time.
240:35
Who could I have told? My mother? My husband? My friends?
240:40
What words could I have used?
240:43
Something stared at my baby through the car window.
240:46
Even now, speaking the sentence sounds like describing a nightmare. It resembles the kind of hallucination an exhausted mother might experience after driving too long.
240:56
People would say that fatigue, darkness and condensation caused my mind to invent a shape.
241:02
I understand that explanation. But the fog on the window had been cleared in a circle by its breath.
241:08
Its exhalation removed the condensation.
241:11
That is not imagination. That is physical evidence created by warmth and moisture.
241:17
Something alive stood close enough to the glass to clear it with its breathing.
241:21
When I looked through that opening, there was a face on the opposite side.
241:25
My daughter remained unharmed. She slept throughout the encounter. She did not awaken when I started the engine.
241:32
She did not wake while I drove toward the gas station.
241:36
She continued sleeping while I held her inside the front seat beneath fluorescent lights and cried into her blanket for 45 minutes.
241:43
She knows nothing about it. Perhaps she never will.
241:47
I do not know whether I will ever tell her.
241:50
What could I say?
241:51
When you were seven months old, something approached our vehicle and watched you while you slept.
241:56
I could not determine whether it wanted to harm you or whether it was only curious. That uncertainty is what continues haunting me.
242:04
The fear was total. It was the most complete terror I have experienced.
242:09
But the part that remains with me most is the movement of its head.
242:13
That gentle, slight inclination people make when they witness something astonishing.
242:18
It stared at my child the way I stare at her, with wonder.
242:23
Something that should not exist stood beside my vehicle in the middle of the night and looked at my daughter with wonder.
242:29
I do not know how to understand that. I do not know where to place it within my view of the world. I know only that it occurred.
242:37
Its breath cleared a circular area in the condensation.
242:41
My baby slept through the entire event, and I drove until I found light.
242:51
Story 27.
242:53
Accounts like this appear repeatedly wherever deer hunters wait alone in darkness.
242:58
I need to explain an encounter that occurred from a tree stand.
243:02
Anyone who has never hunted from one must understand the experience before understanding why this event was so unusual.
243:08
A tree stand places a hunter 15 or sometimes 20 feet above the ground. You climb into position before sunrise, often around 3.30 or 4 o'clock in the morning. Then you sit in darkness and wait. You do not move. You do not speak.
243:25
You avoid shifting your weight. You attempt to become part of the tree.
243:30
The entire strategy depends on invisibility. Your scent travels above the level of a deer's nose. Your outline blends with the trunk and branches.
243:39
You remain above the forest floor, watching everything below.
243:43
If the preparation is successful, no animal realizes you are there. I had hunted since I was old enough to hold a rifle.
243:51
I knew those woods. My family had occupied the land for generations. My grandmother once walked the property line carrying a garden hoe for protection from snakes, stray dogs, or anything else she encountered.
244:03
She feared very little. Neither did I.
244:07
At least I did not before that morning.
244:09
It was early.
244:11
Sunrise remained approximately two hours away. The air was cold and clear.
244:17
A full moon illuminated the woods.
244:19
It was the kind of moon that turns everything silver and provides more visibility than hunters normally have before dawn.
244:26
I had occupied the stand for about an hour. I was settled comfortably with the rifle across my lap and the safety engaged.
244:34
A pipeline clearing crossed that section of the property. It formed a narrow strip of open ground, approximately 30 feet wide, cut through the forest for a gas line.
244:44
The grass remained short. Under a full moon the clearing glowed.
244:49
Anything moving across it appeared clearly outlined against the silver ground. That was why I positioned the stand nearby. Deer regularly used it as a crossing.
244:59
So did other animals.
245:00
I watched the pipeline when movement appeared at its distant end. Something had emerged from the forest and was walking toward me along the clearing.
245:09
My first thought was that it was a person.
245:11
It traveled upright on two legs. Its stride was steady and deliberate. But it was four in the morning.
245:18
No houses stood near the property. No sensible person walks along a pipeline during a deer season before daylight. Someone could easily be shot.
245:28
I became uneasy and examined it more carefully. It moved closer.
245:33
Seventy-five yards. Then fifty.
245:36
As it approached, the silhouette stopped resembling a human being.
245:40
The proportions were wrong.
245:42
The shoulders appeared too wide. The body was too thick and shaped like a barrel.
245:47
It leaned slightly forward at the shoulders.
245:50
The full moon provided enough light for me to see that it wore no clothing.
245:54
Something dark covered the entire body from head to foot. Perhaps it was hair or fur. I did not know what term to use.
246:02
The covering moved naturally with the body like the coat of an animal.
246:06
When it came within approximately 50 yards of my tree, I decided to prepare the rifle.
246:12
I reached down slowly and carefully.
246:15
Everything inside a tree stand must be done with control and without sudden movement. My thumb located the safety. click.
246:23
That was the entire sound. It was one of the quietest mechanical noises imaginable.
246:29
The safety moved from one position to another. Even with my thumb directly on it, I could barely hear it.
246:36
The creature detected the click from 50 yards away while walking through grass and darkness.
246:42
It reacted immediately. It stopped in the middle of a stride. Then it turned its shoulders and head toward me. It did not rotate the entire body.
246:52
The movement resembled something attempting to identify the source of a sound.
246:56
Now it faced my position.
246:58
It knew precisely where I was.
247:01
I sat 15 feet above the ground. I had remained motionless. The breeze carried my scent away.
247:08
My outline blended into the tree. Yet the creature identified my location from the movement of a tiny metal lever inside a rifle.
247:16
For perhaps three to five seconds we remained fixed in place. It looked upward at my tree.
247:22
I stared down at it. The full moon illuminated the clearing. The rifle rested in my hands. The safety was disengaged. I could have fired.
247:33
I had a clear shot at a target I could not positively identify.
247:37
Everything I had learned about firearms said never to shoot at something you cannot identify. Therefore I did not fire.
247:44
Then the creature performed something I had never observed in thirty years of hunting.
247:49
It walked backward. It took four steps in reverse without turning around. It continued facing me.
247:56
Its attention remained fixed on the tree.
247:59
The steps were controlled and deliberate.
248:01
It did not stumble or drag its feet.
248:03
It moved backward with the same coordination it had shown while moving forward.
248:08
It appeared as comfortable traveling in reverse as it did walking normally.
248:13
After the fourth step it spun around. The rotation was quick.
248:17
Now facing away, it entered the forest at a speed that made it impossible for me to continue tracking.
248:23
One moment it stood inside the clearing, the next it entered the trees.
248:28
A second later even the sound of its movement had disappeared.
248:32
I remained inside the tree stand for another two hours. I did not climb down.
248:37
I barely moved.
248:39
The rifle stayed across my lap with the safety disengaged. My heart beat so strongly that I felt it inside my teeth.
248:47
I watched the clearing. Nothing else crossed.
248:51
At daylight I descended and examined the area. I walked along the pipeline to the place where the creature had stopped after hearing the safety.
248:59
The grass had been compressed beneath its feet.
249:02
I could identify the four backward steps.
249:05
The impressions were evenly spaced and led away from the tree.
249:09
There was also a point where the grass had been disturbed during the rapid turn.
249:13
After that, the trail ended.
249:16
It entered vegetation so dense that following it would have required a machete.
249:20
I did not attempt to pursue it. I want to emphasize the importance of the click.
249:26
A rifle safety is not loud.
249:28
It is intentionally designed to produce almost no sound.
249:32
I have disengaged safeties while deer stood 30 yards away and they showed no reaction.
249:38
White-tailed deer hear far better than human beings. Their survival depends on detecting approaching predators. They can hear a twig breaking at 200 yards.
249:48
They may detect a zipper opening at 100 yards. Yet many deer cannot hear a rifle safety from 50 yards under calm conditions. This creature heard it. It detected a sound a white-tailed deer might miss.
250:01
It identified the source. It recognized the noise as dangerous. It responded in less than one second.
250:09
From the moment my thumb moved the switch to the moment the creature turned toward me, less than a heartbeat passed.
250:15
That reveals something important. It was not merely large, strong, or fast. Its senses exceeded those of some of the best equipped prey animals on the continent. Its hearing was superior to that of a deer. Its reaction time was faster. Its response was tactical.
250:32
It moved backward while maintaining visual contact, then turned and withdrew rapidly.
250:38
I had never seen similar behavior from any wild animal. including predators.
250:43
This was not a bear that had learned to walk upright. It was not a person wearing a costume.
250:49
It possessed sensory abilities and tactical intelligence for which I had no category.
250:54
It heard a noise I could barely detect while producing it with my own hand.
250:59
It also understood what the sound meant. It recognized the click of a firearm safety. It knew that the next noise might be a gunshot. Then it left.
251:09
It understood what a rifle was. Consider the significance of that.
251:14
The creature stood in a pipeline clearing 50 yards from a hunter concealed inside a tree.
251:19
It heard a small piece of metal move inside a firearm and understood the consequences.
251:24
That was not simple instinct. It was knowledge. It suggested an animal that had encountered hunters before. It had heard the sound in the past. It had learned either from personal experience or information passed from others. What followed the click?
251:40
They learn.
251:41
That is the part that keeps me awake.
251:44
It is not their size, speed or strength. It is their ability to learn. They watch us. They listen. They study our equipment, routines and behavior.
251:55
They may have done so for a very long time.
251:58
I continue hunting.
252:00
I still sit inside tree stands before sunrise and wait for daylight.
252:04
But now I listen differently.
252:06
I listen for sounds that do not belong.
252:09
A footstep that is too heavy.
252:12
Breathing that is too deep.
252:14
A sudden silence indicating that something larger than a deer has entered the clearing.
252:19
I leave the safety engaged until I know exactly what I am seeing.
252:23
Whatever heard that click from 50 yards away remains somewhere in the woods on my family's land.
252:29
It travels along the same pipeline it may have used before the pipeline existed.
252:34
It heard the click.
252:35
It understood.
252:37
It left before I decided what to do.
252:40
That is not merely an animal. It is a neighbor that does not want to be seen.
252:49
Story 28 I had been hiking for four weeks when the encounter occurred. I was completing a northbound thru-hike from Georgia to Maine. By the fourth week, a northbound hiker usually reaches the southern Appalachians near North Carolina, Tennessee, and the Great Smoky Mountains.
253:07
These are the tallest and oldest mountains east of the Mississippi River.
253:11
The forests existed before the last ice age. Spruce and fir grow near the summits.
253:17
Rhododendron thickets fill the hollows.
253:20
Fog settles inside mountain gaps like something breathing.
253:24
I need to explain the shelters positioned along the Appalachian Trail.
253:28
Approximately every 8 to 12 miles hikers encounter one. They are simple structures. Most have three walls, a roof, an elevated wooden sleeping platform, and an open fourth side facing the forest.
253:42
Some are constructed from stone and include fireplaces.
253:46
Others consist only of wood and metal roofing.
253:49
Every shelter remains open on one side. That is intentional. It has always been part of the design.
253:56
The shelters allow hikers to carry less equipment because a full tent is not always necessary.
254:01
A person can unroll a sleeping bag on the platform and sleep with the forest only three feet away.
254:07
There is no door. There is no fourth wall. Nothing separates the hiker from whatever occupies the darkness.
254:14
During daylight the shelters feel welcoming. Hikers share food, tell stories, and compare blisters.
254:22
At night after the fire fades and the headlamps turn off, the open wall feels different.
254:28
A person lies on the back staring at the underside of a metal roof while hearing everything outside.
254:33
The creek. Wind passing through the canopy.
254:37
Small animals moving among the leaves.
254:40
Occasionally a heavier branch breaks.
254:42
Something large shifts through the brush beyond the firelight. The hiker tells himself it is a deer. It is always a deer. It must be a deer.
254:52
I was alone at the shelter that night. That occasionally happens along the Appalachian Trail, especially in sections between popular stops.
255:01
A hiker reaches a shelter around four in the afternoon, but no one else arrives. You prepare dinner. You suspend the food bag. You write in the trail register, the notebook containing messages for the next travelers. Then you enter your sleeping bag inside a three-walled structure open to the Appalachian night.
255:20
I maintained a small fire in the ring outside the shelter. It was not necessary for warmth. The summer air was comfortable. I wanted the light and reassurance. Fire has comforted human beings since before language existed.
255:35
I lay on the platform partly inside the sleeping bag. I watched the flames diminish and listened as the forest shifted into its nighttime rhythm.
255:43
The first unusual detail was the silence.
255:46
I do not mean ordinary quiet. A forest is never completely quiet.
255:51
There are always insects.
255:53
Air moves through leaves.
255:55
Something always produces sound.
255:58
The higher layer of noise disappeared.
256:01
Frogs, settling birds, small mammals moving through vegetation.
256:07
All of it stopped as abruptly as a radio being switched off.
256:11
The background layer remained.
256:13
I could still hear the creak and wind.
256:16
Everything else had gone silent. Hikers learn to recognize that particular absence of sound.
256:22
It occurs when a predator enters an area. A bear, a coyote, a bobcat.
256:29
Smaller animals become silent because something larger has arrived.
256:33
Experienced hikers recognize the warning. They sit more upright. They examine the edges of the firelight and attempt to identify whatever caused the forest to hold its breath.
256:44
I sat up.
256:45
I stared toward the tree line beyond the fire ring.
256:48
Only glowing coals and several small flames remained. They cast approximately 10 or 15 feet of orange light before the darkness began.
256:57
Beyond the illuminated area, the forest consisted of shapes, tree trunks, rhododendron, shadows that could represent almost anything.
257:07
Something stood at the edge of the light.
257:09
I noticed the eyes first. Two reflected points appeared approximately seven feet above the ground. They caught the glow from the coals the way animal eyes reflect light.
257:20
Predators possess a reflective layer called the tapetum lucidum.
257:24
Human eyes do not normally shine in the same way, but these eyes were far too high.
257:30
No native Appalachian animal has eyes positioned seven feet above the forest floor.
257:35
A black bear standing upright may reach six feet, but bears do not normally remain motionless at the edge of a campsite and stare at one hiker for several minutes. These eyes watched me.
257:46
I did not move.
257:48
I would like to claim that I remained brave, calm, and rational.
257:52
The truth is that my body became incapable of movement. It made a decision without consulting my conscious mind.
257:59
Do not attract attention. Become small.
258:02
Remain still.
258:04
Be another shape on the platform. Become a lump inside a sleeping bag that is not worth examining.
258:11
The eyes remained fixed.
258:13
As my vision adjusted to the darkness and adrenaline sharpened my senses,
258:17
I began seeing the body behind them.
258:20
The shoulders were broad, much broader than a human being's.
258:24
The head appeared low between them, with almost no visible neck. Its torso was thick and dense. Something dark covered it.
258:33
The material absorbed the orange firelight instead of reflecting it.
258:37
The creature stood precisely at the boundary.
258:40
One step backward would make it invisible. One step forward would place it inside the fire's reach.
258:47
Its position seemed deliberate. It appeared to know exactly where the light ended and the darkness began.
258:53
It may have calculated that boundary.
258:56
I cannot determine how long we remain that way.
258:59
Time stopped behaving normally. I breathed in short, shallow pulls while attempting to remain silent.
259:06
I tried to disappear inside a shelter with no fourth wall. Then the creature moved.
259:12
It did not approach or withdraw. It slowly raised one arm.
259:16
The movement resembled someone waving from a distance. It did not appear threatening. It looked almost peaceful.
259:24
The right arm rose deliberately. Its hand opened.
259:28
I could see the fingers.
259:29
There were five. They spread slightly apart.
259:33
I stared at the raised hand, without planning or consciously deciding.
259:38
I raised my own hand.
259:40
I copied the same movement. It was a reflexive response drawn from somewhere deeper than deliberate thought.
259:47
It resembled the instinct that causes a person to return a wave from a stranger.
259:51
It was a social response older than manners, culture or spoken language.
259:56
We remained there with both hands lifted in the darkness.
260:00
One hand was human, the other was not.
260:03
The fire crackled softly between us.
260:06
Then the creature tilted its head.
260:08
I had heard other witnesses describe the same movement.
260:12
It was a slight rotation, suggesting that it was now examining me differently.
260:16
Then it lowered the arm.
260:18
Its head suddenly turned toward the deeper forest on its left.
260:22
It appeared to hear something beyond my hearing range. The creature produced a low, short rumble.
260:28
I felt the sound inside my chest before hearing it clearly.
260:32
It resembled a growl but it did not sound aggressive. It seemed closer to a word.
260:38
One brief syllable directed not toward me but toward something hidden farther inside the woods.
260:43
It sounded as though the creature was informing another presence that it intended to leave.
260:48
Then it stepped backward beyond the firelight. After one step it became only a shape. After two it was a shadow. After three it disappeared.
260:59
Only the tree line and rhododendron remained. The fading coals cast orange light into empty darkness.
261:06
The ordinary forest noises returned. Frogs, insects, small animals resume moving through the leaves.
261:13
The silence lifted the way a held breath ends after someone finally exhales.
261:18
I did not sleep.
261:20
I sat on the platform with my back against the shelter wall. I held my headlamp and watched the open side until the sky began to brighten and the first bird started calling.
261:30
I packed my equipment in the gray light before sunrise. Then I left.
261:35
I hiked quickly. I continued until reaching the next shelter where other hikers were present. There were voices. There were people.
261:44
I did not tell them what had occurred. Not that morning. Not for a long time afterward.
261:50
The Appalachian Trail stretches approximately 2,190 miles from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine.
261:59
Every year thousands attempt to complete a thru-hike. They sleep inside three-walled shelters open toward the forest. They cook over small fires. They hang food bags from trees.
262:10
Then they lie in darkness and listen to sounds beyond the light.
262:14
Most hear deer. Most hear raccoons, bears, owls, and wind.
262:19
They sleep through the night, awaken, and continue north.
262:23
For them, the forest remains only a forest. The shelters remain only shelters. But the BFRO has collected accounts from Appalachian trail hikers.
262:33
Near Franklin, North Carolina, Hikers discovered enormous tracks crossing the trail and heard a nighttime howl unlike any familiar animal.
262:42
Other backpackers found footprints and unusual arrangements of objects. Mushrooms had been deliberately placed upside down along a game trail as though marking a boundary.
262:52
Hikers near the Virginia-West Virginia border were startled by something outside a remote cabin.
262:58
BFRO investigator Jeff Carpenter had his own Class A encounter on Highway 64 in North Carolina.
263:05
Only six days later, he investigated a report from hikers on the Appalachian Trail in Macon County.
263:12
Their location was approximately five and a half miles from where Carpenter had seen his creature.
263:17
It occurred during the same week. The witnesses were different. The mountains were the same. The description was the same.
263:26
Whatever stood beside my shelter at the edge of the firelight has occupied those mountains longer than the Appalachian Trail itself.
263:33
It existed when the Cherokee traveled along the ridges and called the being Tzul Kalu.
263:38
It was there when Daniel Boone passed through the gaps.
263:42
It remained when the Civilian Conservation Corps constructed the original shelters during the 1930s.
263:48
It is still there now. Tonight, an Appalachian trail shelter may stand empty because no hikers stopped there.
263:55
The firing is cold. The sleeping platform is bare. The open side continues facing the forest as it always has.
264:03
There is no door. There is no lock. There is no fourth wall.
264:09
Only three walls and an invitation.
264:12
I raised my hand. It raised its hand as well. For one moment in the firelight, at the boundary between what I could see and what remained hidden, two living beings acknowledged each other.
264:24
The distance between us was much shorter than I wanted. I no longer hike alone.
264:34
Story 29.
264:36
My husband and I have never argued about what we witnessed. I want to make that clear from the beginning.
264:42
I have heard accounts in which one person sees something and the other does not, leaving them to spend the rest of their lives debating whether the event actually occurred.
264:51
That is not what happened to us. We were both present. We both saw it. We have never disagreed about the encounter because there is nothing to dispute. We witnessed the same creature.
265:03
We are retired and live in the mountains of North Georgia, near Blairsville and Union County.
265:09
Anyone unfamiliar with the region should understand that it is southern Appalachia at its best.
265:14
The Blue Ridge Mountains extend through the area. They are not the tallest peaks along the eastern seaboard, but they are ancient, deeply folded mountains worn smooth by time.
265:25
Hardwood forests cover them for miles in every direction.
265:28
The Chattahoochee National Forest. Blood Mountain. Brasstown Bald.
265:34
It is dense, wild, beautiful country. From the road the landscape can appear gentle.
265:40
Then you travel a mile into the forest and realize the canopy is so thick that the sky disappears.
265:45
We had lived there for years. We hiked. We camped.
265:50
We knew those mountains.
265:52
We knew what bears looked like.
265:54
Sometimes they entered our yard to reach the bird feeders.
265:57
We knew the appearance of deer illuminated by headlights at night. We recognized coyotes trotting across roads. We knew every animal in those forests by sight, sound, and movement.
266:09
The encounter happened on Thursday, January 24th, 2019.
266:14
We had visited friends in town and were returning home along Highway 129.
266:20
Anyone who has driven the mountain roads of North Georgia after dark knows the experience.
266:25
There are two lanes and no street lights.
266:27
The highway curves through the forest while the headlights create a narrow tunnel of visibility.
266:33
Everything beyond that tunnel is a solid wall of darkness. Drivers use their high beams and constantly watch the shoulders because deer regularly cross the pavement.
266:43
You learn to search for eyeshine.
266:45
A deer's eyes reflect a yellow-green flash in the headlights. When you see it, you reduce your speed and wait for the animal to decide which direction it will move.
266:55
It was approximately 12.30 in the morning. We were tired. My husband drove while I sat in the passenger seat, partly watching the road and partly preparing to fall asleep.
267:06
The highway was empty. There were no other vehicles and no approaching headlights.
267:11
There was only our car, the trees, and the darkness.
267:14
Then my husband said, what is that?
267:18
He did not shout. He did not sound frightened. He sounded confused, like someone who had noticed something in the headlights that he could not immediately identify.
267:28
I looked ahead.
267:29
A figure was crossing the highway. It occupied the right lane and moved from right to left toward the opposite shoulder, where a steep embankment descended into the forest.
267:40
Our headlights illuminated it completely.
267:42
For those few seconds it was as visible as anything seen in daylight.
267:47
It was not a deer.
267:49
The creature stood approximately seven feet tall.
267:52
My husband is six feet one inch, and the figure appeared a full head taller than him.
267:57
I know because my mind immediately made the comparison. That is what the brain does when confronted with something unfamiliar.
268:05
It finds the closest known reference and measures against it.
268:09
The figure stood completely upright.
268:11
It walked on two legs. It was not hunched or bent. It moved the way a human being walks, but it was taller, broader, and covered more ground with each stride than an ordinary person could.
268:24
It was muscular. That is the description that continually returns to me. It was not fat. It was not bulky in the manner of a bear. It was muscular. The definition was visible in its shoulders, back and thighs, even beneath the hair.
268:40
It looked like an athlete. Its power came not only from its size but from the way its body had been constructed. Brown hair covered it. The color was not black or reddish. It resembled dead oak leaves. The hair appeared tangled in places, especially across the shoulders and upper back.
268:59
It moved naturally as the creature walked.
269:02
It was not fabric. It was not a costume.
269:05
It was organic and attached to a living body, shifting the way an animal's hair moves with its muscles.
269:12
Then the creature looked back at us over its right shoulder.
269:15
It made only a partial turn of the head. like someone glancing backward after hearing their name.
269:21
For perhaps two seconds I saw its face.
269:24
Its eyes were large and dark. They reflected our headlights with a deep reddish shine.
269:30
It was not the yellow-green reflection of a deer. It was not the orange-eye shine of a raccoon.
269:36
It was a dark red gleam unlike anything I had seen in an animal before, or have seen since. The creature never stopped.
269:44
It did not accelerate.
269:46
It glanced at us with the same casual indifference someone might show toward a passing vehicle on a road crossed every night.
269:53
Then it stepped from the left shoulder and descended the embankment.
269:57
After two steps, the slope carried it below our line of sight. We heard faint rustling as vegetation separated and branches bent.
270:05
Then there was nothing.
270:07
Only the highway, the headlights, and the darkness. The entire encounter lasted between five and seven seconds.
270:14
That was all.
270:16
Five to seven seconds passed between my husband asking what it was and the creature disappearing below the embankment.
270:22
My husband continued driving. He did not stop or pull onto the shoulder.
270:27
he maintained the same speed and remained in the same lane for approximately one mile neither of us spoke we were shocked but that was not the only reason for our silence both of us were processing what had happened we were mentally reviewing the same possibilities each explanation failed a bear
270:48
No.
270:49
Bears do not walk completely upright for forty feet across a highway without returning to all fours. They do not possess that body shape. They do not casually glance over one shoulder with that kind of indifference.
271:01
A person?
271:03
No. No ordinary person stands seven feet tall with brown hair covering the entire body. No one walks barefoot and unclothed across Highway 129 at 1230 on a January morning in the North Georgia mountains.
271:17
Was there another explanation?
271:20
No, there was no other explanation.
271:23
We had lived among those mountains for years. We knew every native animal.
271:28
What crossed the highway in front of our vehicle was none of them.
271:32
After approximately one mile, my husband said, that was a Bigfoot.
271:37
He spoke plainly. There was no drama or uncertainty in his voice. It was a statement of fact from a man who had never believed in Bigfoot. He had never watched television programs about the subject.
271:50
He had never read books about it. He had spent 60 years outdoors without seriously considering that such a creature might exist.
271:58
I answered, I know.
272:01
That was the entire discussion.
272:03
We drove for another 20 minutes along the dark mountain road without mentioning it again. There was nothing else to say. We had seen the same figure simultaneously, from the same position, beneath the same headlights.
272:16
There were no conflicting details to debate or reconcile. There was only the fact of what had happened.
272:23
A seven-foot creature covered with brown hair crossed Highway 129 at 1230 in the morning, glanced at us over its shoulder, and disappeared down an embankment.
272:33
We reported the encounter to the BFRO. The organization classified it as a Class A sighting, its highest category.
272:41
That classification means the witnesses had a clear visual observation with no meaningful ambiguity.
272:47
There were two witnesses. The investigator described us as credible, experienced outdoors people with no history of making unusual claims.
272:57
I do not know exactly what the creature was.
272:59
I know what it was not. It was not a bear. It was not human.
273:04
It was not anything I can explain.
273:07
It was something living within those mountains. The same mountains where I had hiked for years.
273:13
The same forests where I had camped. The same roads I had driven through darkness a thousand times.
273:19
People ask whether I am now afraid to drive that highway.
273:23
I am not.
273:24
I still travel it regularly. But I observe the darkness differently.
273:29
Before January 24th, whenever I drove Highway 129 at night, I watched for deer.
273:37
Now I watch for everything.
273:39
The headlights still carve a narrow tunnel through the road. Darkness remains on both sides.
273:45
Somewhere within that darkness, in the Chattahoochee, on Blood Mountain, or inside unnamed hollows, Something may stand among the trees, observing my headlights and deciding whether to cross.
273:58
On most nights it chooses not to. We were fortunate enough to be there on a night when it did.
274:04
Georgia has 132 documented Bigfoot reports. The Cherokee, who occupied those mountains for thousands of years, called the creature Tzul Kalu, the lord of the hunt and giant of the high places.
274:18
Farther south in the Okofenakee swamp, people call a similar being the swamp ape.
274:23
Along the Chattahoochee, another traditional name is the Shikchi. Different landscapes produce different names. But the creature remains the same.
274:32
The account remains the same. The same backward glance over one shoulder.
274:38
My husband and I have been married for 37 years. We have hiked and camped together. We raised children together. We entered retirement together.
274:48
Now we share something else. We share a memory that does not fit into any familiar category. A five-second opening on a January night when our headlights revealed something the world insists does not exist.
275:00
We do not argue about it. There is no reason to. We saw it. It saw us.
275:07
Then it descended the hill into the trees. We continued home, and the mountains closed behind it, as they always do.
275:20
story 30 i had been driving trucks for 22 years there is no need to calculate the distance i had traveled more than 3 million miles most of those miles were driven at night most were driven alone i had traveled every interstate in the contiguous 48 states i had crossed mountain passes in january and driven desert highways in august At 3 in the morning, I once watched a moose cross Interstate 95 in Maine.
275:49
I saw a mountain lion sitting on a guardrail beside Interstate 70 in Colorado, as though it were waiting for a bus.
275:56
My headlights had revealed things that made me reduce my speed.
276:00
Other things caused me to accelerate. Some made me enter the next truck stop and remain beneath the lights until sunrise. I am explaining this because I need you to understand that highways do not frighten me easily. The road was my workplace. Darkness was my shift.
276:17
I had spent more hours alone at night than many people spend awake during an entire year.
276:22
I understood what belonged on a roadway after dark. I also knew what did not.
276:27
What I encountered on US Highway 199 did not belong on a road. It did not belong anywhere I knew how to categorize.
276:36
I was transporting a load south.
276:39
It consisted of timber products, which account for a large portion of truck freight moving through the Pacific Northwest.
276:45
I traveled along the corridor connecting Grants Pass, Oregon with Crescent City, California.
276:51
Anyone unfamiliar with US 199 should understand that it is a two-lane road following the Smith River through the Siskiyou Mountains.
276:59
It is one of the most isolated paved highways on the west coast. Dense forest rises on both sides.
277:06
There are old-growth Douglas firs, Sitka spruce, and redwoods after the route enters California.
277:13
There are no towns or services for long stretches.
277:16
Mobile phone reception disappears.
277:19
At night, a truck's headlights may be the only light for miles. The walls of forest extend directly to the fog line.
277:26
Driving the route feels like passing through a tunnel made of trees.
277:30
That tunnel continues for approximately 70 miles. It was around 2 in the morning, perhaps later.
277:36
Night drivers eventually lose track of precise hours. Time becomes a repeated rhythm of engine noise, centerline reflectors, and high beams sweeping across the pavement.
277:48
I was making good progress. There was no traffic. The road was dry. The night was clear. There was no fog, which was unusual for that corridor.
277:58
Fog from the Smith River often reduces visibility to almost nothing. But conditions that night were excellent.
278:05
Stars were visible above the canopy.
278:07
I entered a long sweeping left curve that descended slightly into a straight section.
278:13
My high beams illuminated something standing on the highway. When the headlights of a tractor trailer reveal an obstacle, the driver has a little more time than someone inside a passenger car.
278:24
It is not much time, but the lights on a semi are mounted high and project farther down the road.
278:30
Mine were approximately eight feet above the pavement.
278:33
However, an 80,000-pound truck cannot stop quickly.
278:37
It loses speed gradually.
278:39
The air brakes engage with a deep pneumatic hiss.
278:42
Anyone who has stood near a stopping semi recognizes that sound. The load continues pressing forward from behind.
278:50
Eighteen wheels fight against friction.
278:53
Throughout the entire process, whatever stands ahead becomes larger and more detailed with every foot of pavement the truck consumes.
279:01
The figure stood directly in my lane.
279:04
It was not crossing.
279:06
It stood in the center of the lane facing away from me, as though it had been walking along the middle of the highway.
279:12
Perhaps it had not heard the approaching truck, or perhaps it had heard and did not care.
279:18
The first detail I registered was its height.
279:21
I sat inside a cab approximately eight feet above the roadway. The headlights were mounted at a similar level.
279:29
Whatever stood before me was illuminated at roughly its own eye level. It was tall.
279:34
I estimated that it stood between seven and a half and eight feet.
279:38
The headlight struck it around the chest, meaning the head and shoulders rose above the strongest part of the beam.
279:45
Ambient light illuminated the upper body while the torso and legs were fully visible.
279:50
The second detail was that it was not human.
279:53
Its proportions were incorrect. The shoulders were broader than those of any man I had ever seen, including bodybuilders who sometimes exercised in truck stop parking lots.
280:04
Its arms hung far below the waist, almost reaching the knees. The torso was thick and solid, like an upright barrel.
280:12
Dark hair covered the entire body. It was not fur. It was hair.
280:17
It moved naturally.
280:19
Individual strands reflected the headlights at the edges of the body with a faint shine.
280:24
The creature faced away from me.
280:27
I saw the back of the head, shoulders and upper torso.
280:30
The hair on the head was longer and more disordered than the hair covering the body.
280:35
It wore no clothing. There was no backpack or equipment.
280:39
There was no reasonable explanation for a human being standing barefoot and naked in the middle of US 199 at 2 in the morning inside a national forest.
280:49
I continued reducing speed. 40 miles per hour. 30. 20.
280:55
The air brakes worked while the load pushed from behind.
280:59
The figure grew larger inside the windshield. Then it slowly turned its head over the left shoulder. It was the same partial turn described in many other accounts.
281:08
A brief glance backward. An acknowledgement.
281:12
The creature looked at the truck.
281:14
I want to describe the face precisely because I saw it clearly. The headlights were approximately eight feet high. The creature stood only about forty feet from the front of the truck. There was nothing between us except open air and asphalt. Its face was flat. It was flatter than a human face. The nose was wide and low, nearly level with the rest of the features.
281:37
A heavy brow projected outward like a shelf, creating shadows over the eyes.
281:43
The jaw was broad. The mouth remained closed.
281:46
Then I saw the eyes. They reflected the headlights with a deep amber glow.
281:52
It was not the green reflection of a deer or the orange shine of a coyote. The color resembled old whiskey held in front of a lamp.
282:00
The creature was not afraid.
282:02
I need to make that absolutely clear.
282:05
I was operating a fully loaded 18-wheeler. 80,000 pounds of steel and timber approached it. The air brakes screamed. The headlights blazed. The engine roared.
282:16
The creature regarded the truck the way someone might regard a mosquito. At most it appeared mildly inconvenienced. It registered the rig.
282:25
It evaluated the situation.
282:28
Then it decided the truck was not interesting.
282:31
It stepped from the highway. One step carried it left from the pavement onto the shoulder. Another placed it beside the tree line. It did not run.
282:40
It showed no urgency.
282:42
It left the road the same way a pedestrian steps from a curb to allow a vehicle to pass. It made one minor alteration to its route, nothing more.
282:52
I drove through the location where it had stood. As the cab passed, the passenger side mirror briefly reflected the creature. It remained upright at the edge of the trees. It appeared to watch the trailer pass. Then the curve removed it from my mirror.
283:07
I was alone on the highway again.
283:10
I did not stop. I want to be honest about that. I did not pull onto the shoulder. I did not reverse the truck. I did not leave the cab carrying a flashlight to search for tracks.
283:22
I was not a researcher or hunter.
283:25
I was a truck driver carrying freight with a deadline. I was alone inside a national forest at two in the morning. Something seven and a half feet tall had looked toward my truck with amber eyes and entered the trees as though it had more important things to do.
283:39
I continued south. I drove the remaining 40 miles toward Crescent City with my hands gripping the wheel.
283:46
I checked the mirrors approximately every 10 seconds. The image of the creature's face remained fixed inside my mind.
283:53
Flat. Heavy-browed. Amber-eyed.
283:57
Unimpressed.
283:58
At the truck stop in Crescent City, I remained inside the cab with the engine running and parking lights illuminated.
284:05
I attempted to decide what to do. I considered calling my wife. I thought about contacting dispatch or law enforcement.
284:13
But what would I report? There was something standing on Highway 199. They would ask what it was.
284:20
I would answer that I did not know.
284:23
They would ask whether it was a bear.
284:25
I would say no. They would ask whether it was a human being.
284:30
Again, I would answer no. Then they would ask what it had been.
284:34
I would have to use the word Bigfoot.
284:37
When someone says that word to a dispatcher, police officer, or spouse at 2.30 in the morning, that person becomes someone different.
284:46
From that moment onward, he is the truck driver who saw Bigfoot on Highway 199. That becomes part of his identity forever.
284:55
I contacted no one that night. I remained inside the cab, drank coffee from my thermos and watched other trucks idle around the parking lot.
285:04
I waited for daylight In the morning, surrounded by other drivers, diesel exhaust, engines, and the ordinary machinery of the world performing ordinary work, it seemed possible to store the encounter away.
285:17
I attempted to place it inside a mental container labeled unexplained things seen on the road.
285:22
Then I closed the lid. The lid never remains closed.
285:26
Years have passed. It still opens.
285:29
I continue seeing the face. I remember the amber eyes.
285:33
I remember how the creature regarded 80,000 pounds of American machinery approaching at 30 miles per hour and concluded that it presented no serious danger.
285:43
It stepped aside as casually as someone avoiding a crack in the pavement.
285:47
Since then I have spoken quietly with other drivers.
285:51
The conversations occur late at night inside truck stops when people begin discussing unusual things encountered on the road.
285:58
Some drivers have stories, not all of them, but enough.
286:03
They mention US 101 among the Redwoods. Highway 20 through the Cascades.
286:09
Remote roads in East Texas.
286:11
Mountain corridors in West Virginia.
286:14
They have seen figures illuminated by headlights. They watched beings cross roads that were too tall, too fast, and moved incorrectly.
286:23
None reported the encounters. None called anyone.
286:26
Using the word carries too high a price.
286:29
It can destroy credibility, professionalism, and reputation.
286:34
A truck driver depends on a record of safety, reliability, and sound judgment.
286:39
Tell the wrong person that you saw Bigfoot and you become the driver who imagines things.
286:44
You become the man who has spent too many hours behind the wheel and needs rest.
286:48
Therefore, we remain quiet. We sit inside our cabs at truck stops. We drink coffee and tell one another privately what we witnessed.
286:57
Then we return to the road. We drive through tunnels of trees with the high beams illuminated and watch the fog lines.
287:04
Every one of us understands something.
287:07
The road may belong to us during daylight. At night, it belongs to something else.
287:17
Story 31.
287:19
I fish at night. That is the first detail you need to understand.
287:24
Anyone who considers nighttime fishing unusual probably did not grow up around the Missouri Ozarks.
287:30
Fishing for catfish is normally done after dark. The largest flatheads and blue catfish become active at night. They move toward shallow water near the banks and search for food along the bottom.
287:42
Someone who understands the river and knows the deepest holes can sit on a gravel bar with a lantern and folding chair and catch fish throughout the night.
287:50
I had done it since I was 14.
287:53
My father did the same. So did his father. For us, it was not simply recreation. It was part of life.
288:01
The location involved in this encounter was beside a tributary of the current river deep within Mark Twain National Forest.
288:08
Reaching it required taking a forest service road from the highway. From there I followed a logging road. Then I walked the final quarter mile to the water.
288:18
Almost no one visited the place. That was why I preferred it.
288:22
The fishing was excellent because there was no pressure.
288:25
There were no other fishing lines, boats, or noise. There was only me, the river, and whatever came to drink on the opposite bank.
288:33
I had been fishing since approximately nine that evening. It was a good night. The air was warm. The sky was clear.
288:41
There was no moon which is ideal for catfish. The water and sky were both dark.
288:47
I placed my lantern behind me.
288:50
It produced enough illumination to see the tips of the fishing rods and place bait on the hooks.
288:55
It did not reach the opposite shoreline.
288:58
At that location, the river measured approximately 60 feet across.
289:02
It was not particularly wide, but the channel was deep enough that no one should attempt to wade without knowing where the bottom suddenly dropped.
289:10
At around midnight I heard a splash near the far side. It was not produced by a fish. It did not resemble the sound of a beaver slapping its tail. It was a rock striking the water. There was a specific heavy plunk. It sounded singular and deliberate. Thrown.
289:28
I had spent hundreds of nights beside rivers. I knew the difference between part of a bank collapsing naturally and a rock being intentionally tossed into the water.
289:38
That rock had been thrown.
289:40
I looked across the river. I saw nothing.
289:43
The opposite bank was a dark wall of trees and vegetation blending into the night sky.
289:49
I told myself a raccoon had knocked something loose. Perhaps a child from one of the farms upriver was throwing stones.
289:56
I returned my attention to the rod.
289:59
Another splash followed. This one was closer.
290:02
The rock did not land beside the far bank.
290:05
It struck the water approximately 40 feet from my gravel bar.
290:09
It hit with enough force to produce a plume of spray visible in the lantern light.
290:14
I placed the rod down. Then I stood.
290:17
Hey, I called across the river.
290:20
My voice sounded weak against the darkness.
290:23
Hey, who's over there?
290:25
There was no answer.
290:27
Only the river, insects and darkness.
290:30
A third rock landed approximately 30 feet from me. It produced a larger splash.
290:36
Perhaps the rock was heavier.
290:38
Perhaps it had been thrown with greater force.
290:41
The impact occurred well within casting range of the gravel bar. Whatever occupied the opposite bank appeared to be measuring the distance to my position.
290:50
I want to make one thing clear.
290:52
Rocks do not throw themselves. They do not naturally land in a progression beginning far away and moving closer as though someone were adjusting aim.
291:01
What happened across that river was intentional.
291:04
Something with hand selected rocks and threw them into the water near me.
291:09
Each throw became more accurate. I increased the brightness of the lantern.
291:13
I did not believe the additional light would illuminate the opposite bank. It would not reach 60 feet.
291:20
But increasing light is what human beings do when frightened.
291:24
We create more illumination.
291:26
We have done it since the first campfire.
291:29
More light feels like more safety.
291:31
That relationship has protected us for thousands of years.
291:35
The rock stopped for approximately five minutes.
291:38
Nothing else happened. There were no splashes or noises from the far side. Only the river, insects and lantern hissing inside the darkness.
291:48
I considered packing my equipment.
291:50
I thought about walking the quarter mile back toward the truck. I reviewed every reasonable action a person should take after something unseen begins throwing rocks from a dark shoreline.
292:01
Then I heard something enter the water.
292:03
The sound came from the opposite side. Something heavy stepped into the river.
292:08
It did not jump or dive.
292:10
It walked in.
292:11
One step. Then another.
292:14
Water moved around something with considerable mass.
292:17
The resistance and displacement made it clear that this was not a raccoon.
292:22
It was not a deer.
292:24
It did not sound like a human being wearing waders.
292:27
Whatever entered the river treated the current as though it were not an obstacle.
292:32
I grabbed the lantern and extended it in front of me as high as possible.
292:36
I tried to cast light farther over the water. I saw the river's surface and the current moving beneath the lantern glow.
292:43
Ripples reflected the light.
292:45
Approximately 30 feet from my bank, I saw a disturbance.
292:49
It formed a V-shaped wake moving steadily toward me.
292:53
The wake resembled the movement of a boat, but there was no boat. There was only the spreading water and the sound of heavy steps.
293:01
With each step, the water became shallower.
293:05
Whatever had entered the river was crossing toward my side. I ran.
293:09
I did not gather my equipment. I did not retrieve the fishing lines, fold the chair, or pack the cooler.
293:16
I abandoned everything.
293:18
The rods, the tackle, the lantern.
293:21
The chair.
293:22
The entire setup.
293:24
I ran up the bank and along the logging road in complete darkness.
293:29
I stumbled over tree roots and tire ruts. The flashlight on my phone bounced across the trees until I reached the truck.
293:36
I entered.
293:38
I locked the doors.
293:39
I started the engine and activated the headlights. For fifteen minutes I remained there with the engine running. The high beams pointed along the logging road toward the river.
293:49
Nothing approached. Nothing entered the light.
293:53
The forest remained dark and still.
293:56
It possessed the absolute silence that follows after something large has recently moved through an area and every smaller creature continues hiding.
294:05
I drove home.
294:06
The next day I returned with a friend during daylight. We walked toward the gravel bar.
294:12
All my equipment remained exactly where I had abandoned it. Nothing had been disturbed.
294:17
The lantern had burned out.
294:19
The chair still stood upright. The rods remained inside their holders with the lines extending into the river.
294:26
Then we found tracks on the gravel between the chair and the water.
294:30
They were not mine.
294:32
My boot prints remained behind the chair where I had been sitting. The new impressions were in front of it. They stood between the chair and the river.
294:40
They resembled bare human feet but were far larger than mine. The tracks were deep.
294:46
Whatever produced them was extremely heavy. The toes spread widely as they might when a barefoot creature walks across uneven ground. Each footprint had five toes. The stride was longer than my friend could reproduce. He stood six feet two inches tall.
295:03
Something had emerged from the river, climbed onto my gravel bar, and stood between the chair and the water while my equipment remained arranged for fishing.
295:11
Perhaps it arrived while I was still running along the logging road. Perhaps it stepped onto the gravel shortly afterward.
295:18
It crossed the river to reach my position.
295:21
By the time it arrived, I was gone.
295:24
My friend studied the tracks and asked what I believed had made them. I answered that they were the reason I would never fish that location at night again.
295:32
I have not returned. Fishing rods can be replaced. They are not particularly expensive.
295:38
I own more folding chairs than anyone needs. But that particular place beside the current river tributary belongs to something else now.
295:47
It is the location with deep holes, no fishing pressure, and a gravel bar where large flatheads feed around midnight.
295:54
It is also the place where something throws rocks to determine distance and then walks through a river to introduce itself.
296:02
I continue fishing after dark, but I choose different locations. They are closer to roads than other people.
296:09
I keep my vehicle within sight of the chair. It is not because I believe the truck would protect me.
296:15
Anything capable of crossing a river in darkness and leaving footprints that large would not be stopped by a vehicle.
296:22
I keep it near because running a quarter mile through a dark forest was the most frightened I had ever been. I will not repeat that experience. The rocks had been a warning.
296:32
I understand that now. They landed progressively closer.
296:36
The behavior was not necessarily aggressive. It was communication.
296:41
Something was telling me to leave.
296:43
It was saying that the river and the night belonged to it. I failed to listen.
296:48
Therefore, it crossed the water to tell me directly.
296:52
I was fortunate enough to be running toward the road when it arrived.
297:00
Story 32.
297:03
I need to explain what a portage is.
297:05
Anyone who has never traveled through the Boundary Waters may not understand why running was impossible.
297:11
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness covers approximately one million acres of boreal forest and interconnected lakes along the border between Minnesota and Ontario.
297:21
Motorized travel is prohibited. There are no roads. There are no cabins.
297:27
People travel through the region by canoe. You paddle across one lake. When the water ends, you lift the canoe and carry it overland until reaching the next lake.
297:37
That overland route is called a portage. Portage trails may measure only 100 yards or extend for more than a mile. They are narrow, muddy, filled with roots and winding.
297:49
They pass through some of the thickest spruce and birch forest on the continent.
297:53
When carrying a canoe over a portage, you turn it upside down above your head.
297:58
A crossbar near its center, called the yoke, rests across your shoulders. The canoe sits over your body like a shell.
298:05
Your hands hold the gunnels on either side. Your head remains inside the hull.
298:10
You can see the ground directly in front of your feet and perhaps several feet of trail ahead.
298:16
Your peripheral vision disappears.
298:18
The canoe blocks everything above you and on both sides.
298:22
You are walking through the wilderness beneath a 70-pound aluminum blindfold.
298:27
You cannot see what surrounds you. You cannot move quickly.
298:31
The trail is too uneven.
298:33
The weight is too difficult to balance.
298:36
To put the canoe down, you must stop, squat, lower the bow to the ground and slide out from beneath it.
298:44
The process takes approximately 10 seconds.
298:47
If something unexpected happens, you stand alone on a narrow trail inside a remote forest with a canoe over your head.
298:55
You have no immediate option except to stop, lower it, escape from underneath, and confront whatever is nearby.
299:03
You are on foot. You are unarmed.
299:06
You are many miles from anyone else.
299:08
I am explaining this because carrying a canoe across a portage may be the most vulnerable position a person can experience in the wilderness. You are blind, slow, burdened, and alone.
299:19
Hearing is almost the only useful sense you have left.
299:23
I had traveled that particular portage approximately 100 times.
299:27
Literally 100.
299:29
It connected two lakes where I regularly fished. The trail measured roughly 800 yards.
299:35
It climbed slightly uphill through old-growth spruce with birch growing beneath it.
299:40
The path was heavily used. I knew it so well that I could almost walk it while asleep.
299:45
I had crossed it during rain and wind.
299:48
I had traveled it in darkness. I had used it during the cold of October and the heat of July.
299:54
I knew every route and rock. I recognized every muddy section where a person must spread the feet and lean forward to maintain balance.
300:02
I knew every sound normally produced along that trail. It was the middle of September. I was traveling alone on a five-day trip across four lakes. Nothing unusual had occurred. The leaves were beginning to change. The birches were turning gold. The tamaracks were becoming yellow. The spruce remained green as spruce always does.
300:24
I had paddled across the first lake and brought the canoe onto shore.
300:28
I secured the portage pack across my back. Then I lifted the canoe onto my shoulders.
300:34
It was the usual procedure.
300:36
My head entered the hull. My hands gripped the gunwales. My eyes focused on the trail.
300:42
I moved one foot in front of the other.
300:45
I had traveled approximately 200 yards when I heard movement in the brush to my left.
300:50
At first, the sound was ordinary. There was a rustle and a branch breaking. It was the kind of noise a deer or moose might produce while shifting position among the undergrowth.
301:00
I regularly heard wildlife while crossing portages. When carrying a canoe through the forest, you are passing directly through their home.
301:09
They notice. Some animals retreat.
301:12
Others remain motionless and watch.
301:15
I continued walking. The noise continued as well.
301:19
It was not behind me. It was not ahead. It remained beside me.
301:25
Something moved through the spruce on my left, approximately 10 or 15 yards from the trail.
301:31
It traveled at roughly the same speed I did.
301:34
Its footsteps remained parallel to mine.
301:37
I heard feet pressing into the forest floor. Dead branches broke softly.
301:42
Vegetation shifted as the unseen figure advanced beside me while maintaining a constant distance.
301:48
I stopped. The sound stopped.
301:51
I stood motionless beneath the canoe and listened.
301:54
There was silence. It was not ordinary forest quiet.
301:58
It was active silence. It had the particular quality created when a living creature becomes perfectly still and waits.
302:06
I felt it. It was the sensation of knowing someone inside a room is watching you before turning around and seeing them.
302:13
Something occupied the spruce on my left. It stopped when I stopped.
302:18
It waited for me to continue.
302:20
I began walking again.
302:22
The footsteps resumed.
302:24
I need to describe those steps because the pattern is important. The sound was bipedal. It was not the four-footed rhythm of a deer. It was not the heavy rolling gait of a moose. There were two feet. Left, right, left, right.
302:40
The steps were evenly spaced and consistently timed. They were heavy. Each footfall carried noticeable weight.
302:48
I could hear compression beneath every step.
302:50
Whatever moved beside me weighed considerably more than I did.
302:54
I weighed approximately 190 pounds. The canoe added 70 pounds. The pack weighed another 40.
303:02
Together, my body and equipment totaled roughly 300 pounds.
303:06
The unseen figure still sounded heavier.
303:09
I stopped again. It stopped again.
303:13
This time I listened for longer.
303:15
Thirty seconds. Then one minute.
303:19
I remained completely motionless beneath the canoe and concentrated on the spruce to my left.
303:24
I heard absolutely nothing. There was no breathing. No shifting. No movement of vegetation.
303:32
Whatever stood nearby had become as still as a rock. It was waiting patiently, prepared to move the instant I moved.
303:40
I began walking faster.
303:42
I did not run.
303:44
Running with a canoe overhead is impossible. The weight pulls forward.
303:49
The gunnels catch on branches.
303:51
A person would fall.
303:53
Instead, I deliberately increased my pace. It was a test. The unseen figure matched the change immediately. Its steps accelerated. It remained at the same distance and followed a parallel route through the brush.
304:07
It did not fall behind. It did not move ahead.
304:11
It copied my speed exactly. It behaved like a shadow following the object that created it.
304:17
Whatever traveled beside me was not merely reacting. It was mirroring me intentionally. It was paying attention.
304:25
The portage measured 800 yards.
304:28
I had completed approximately 300. 500 yards remained.
304:33
That meant several more minutes beneath the canoe with something moving alongside me. I could not see it. I could not outrun it.
304:41
I could not even turn my head and look because the hull blocked both sides.
304:45
I made a decision.
304:47
I stopped.
304:48
I lowered myself into a squat. I tilted the boat toward the ground and slid from beneath the canoe.
304:55
Then I stood.
304:56
For the first time since hearing the footsteps, I could see the woods to my left.
305:01
The spruce forest was extremely thick.
305:04
Lower branches intertwined.
305:07
Dogwood and alder formed a tangled understory. I could see only 10 or 15 feet before the vegetation became a solid wall of green.
305:15
I searched carefully. I scanned from left to right.
305:19
I looked for movement.
305:21
I searched for the outline of a body.
305:24
I watched for brown or black hair against the green spruce and yellow birch.
305:28
I saw nothing. I heard nothing.
305:32
Whatever had traveled beside me was no longer moving. It did not breathe loudly enough for me to detect it.
305:38
It could not be seen through the dense vegetation, but it was present.
305:43
I knew it was there in the same way someone knows another person is standing inside a dark room because the atmosphere feels different.
305:51
Hey, I shouted. My voice sounded more controlled than I expected.
305:56
Hey, I can hear you.
305:57
There was no response.
305:59
Birch leaves shifted in a light breeze. A jay called somewhere behind me. Through the trees, I could still see part of the lake I had left.
306:08
The lake ahead remained hidden.
306:10
Nothing answered. Nothing moved. But it had not left.
306:15
I could still sense it approximately 10 yards inside the spruce. It continued waiting.
306:21
I lifted the canoe. I placed it back onto my shoulders. Then I traveled the remaining 500 yards while something moved beside me among the trees.
306:31
It matched every step.
306:33
Whenever I stopped, it became silent. When I reached the lake at the far end and lowered the canoe into the water, the footsteps ended.
306:41
They did not gradually fade.
306:43
They stopped immediately.
306:45
One moment something walked through the spruce on my left.
306:48
The next there was only the lake, the wind, and the movement of water.
306:53
Whatever had escorted me reached the end of the portage and continued no farther.
306:57
It was as though the trail belonged to it and the lake belonged to me.
307:01
The boundary between the two seemed understood.
307:04
I paddled into the center of the lake before my hands stopped trembling.
307:09
I have returned since that day. I have crossed that portage again.
307:13
Now I listen for the sound. Parallel steps. Synchronized stops.
307:18
The patient's silence of something standing ten yards away while remaining invisible.
307:23
Sometimes the trail is quiet. At other times a moose suddenly crashes through the vegetation and frightens me. When that happens, I reach the other side, realize it was only a moose, and laugh. But on two later trips I heard the same pattern again. Twice. The same footsteps. The same behavior.
307:44
It walked when I walked. It stopped when I stopped. It matched me through the spruce step for step for the entire 800 yards.
307:52
Every time I reached the lake it stopped at exactly the same boundary.
307:56
Whatever it is does not follow me onto the water.
307:59
It remains among the trees.
308:02
It travels beside me through its forest and along its trail for the time required to cross its territory.
308:08
When the territory ends, it allows me to continue.
308:11
I do not believe it intended to threaten me. I have considered the encounter repeatedly. If something that large, fast, and silent wanted to harm me, it could have crossed fifteen feet of spruce in two steps.
308:24
I carried a canoe over my head. I could not have defended myself against a wreck.
308:30
much less a creature weighing four or five hundred pounds. It was not threatening me. It was escorting me. It was making sure I crossed its territory and exited on the other side.
308:42
It behaved like a border patrol observing someone through a checkpoint. It was not friendly. It was not hostile. It simply ensured that I continued moving and did not stop.
308:53
I keep moving. I do not remain there.
308:57
When I reach the lake I place the canoe in the water and paddle away. Behind me the portage becomes empty and silent.
309:04
The spruce remains dark and thick on both sides.
309:07
Somewhere within it, invisible and patient, something stands completely still.
309:13
It waits for the footsteps of the next canoeist.
309:21
Story 33 I operate a trap line in northern Ontario.
309:27
I will not reveal the exact location.
309:29
I do not want people traveling there to search for what I encountered.
309:33
It is north of Highway 11. That is all I will say.
309:38
Anyone familiar with Ontario understands that north of Highway 11 the world begins to disappear.
309:44
The boreal forest starts there. Black spruce. Jack Pine, Tamarack, Muskeg.
309:51
The wilderness continues until it reaches the tundra.
309:55
Some lakes have no names. Certain rivers do not appear on maps.
309:59
A person could walk north from my trapline for 600 miles without crossing another road.
310:04
I had been trapping since I was 17 years old.
310:08
Martin Fisher Lynx Beaver.
310:10
My line extended for approximately 40 miles through the bush.
310:14
Depending on the weather, I checked it every three or four days. During winter, I traveled using snowshoes or a snowmobile, depending on the snow depth.
310:23
Most of the time, I was alone.
310:26
I maintained a small cabin with a wood-burning stove. There was no electricity or telephone. The nearest town required a two-hour drive along a logging road. Whether that road had been plowed depended on whether a logging company was working in that area.
310:41
I knew those woods. I recognized every animal by its tracks, scat, kills, and behavior.
310:47
From 50 yards away, I could identify whether a track belonged to a wolf, lynx, moose, or wolverine.
310:54
I could estimate the age of a print by examining its edges. Sharp edges indicated freshness. Soft edges meant the track was older.
311:02
Snow filled by wind probably dated to the previous day. This was not a hobby. It was how I earned a living.
311:10
If I could not interpret the bush, I did not eat.
311:13
One January, I discovered tracks that I could not understand.
311:17
I was working along the eastern portion of the trap line, approximately eight miles from the cabin.
311:23
Four inches of fresh snow had fallen the previous night on top of an existing snowpack approximately three feet deep.
311:30
The surface was clean and untouched. It resembled a blank sheet of paper.
311:35
Everything that had moved after the snowfall ended would leave its history written across it.
311:40
I found the tracks inside a spruce stand near a small lake. They emerged from dense timber to the north.
311:47
They crossed a ridge and descended toward the shore.
311:50
My first assumption was that a moose had made them.
311:53
The spacing was wide. The depressions were deep.
311:57
The stride suggested something large, but moose tracks are unmistakable. They have two toes and an oval shape. In deep snow, they often leave drag marks because moose do not lift their feet completely above the surface. These were not moose tracks. They resembled feet, human-shaped feet, bare feet. They crossed four inches of fresh snow above three feet of existing snowpack in January in northern Ontario. The temperature during the previous night had fallen to 8 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
312:29
I stopped the snowmobile and climbed off.
312:32
I knelt beside the nearest impression. It measured approximately 18 inches long and 7 inches wide.
312:39
Five toes were clearly visible in the fresh snow.
312:42
The footprint passed through the new layer and penetrated deeply into the compacted snow beneath it.
312:48
The edges showed compressed snow. It had been crushed rather than merely pushed aside. Whatever produced the track was extremely heavy.
312:57
It weighed much more than I did, and I weighed approximately 210 pounds while wearing winter equipment.
313:03
I examined the stride. The space between impressions measured roughly four and a half feet.
313:10
It was longer than my natural stride, and I am six feet one inch tall.
313:14
The tracks followed a straight line. Each foot had been placed directly in front of the other, like someone walking across a balance beam.
313:22
This is known as inline tracking.
313:25
Wolves sometimes move that way.
313:27
I later learned that Sasquatch researchers also claim their subject uses the same pattern.
313:33
At the time, I knew only that it was not the normal gait of a human being.
313:37
The prints were fresh. Their edges remained sharp. The toes showed clear detail.
313:43
Very little new snow had accumulated inside them.
313:46
They had been created after the snowfall ended. That meant they were less than six hours old.
313:52
Whatever crossed that area had done so sometime between midnight and dawn. It had walked barefoot through temperatures of minus 22 degrees.
314:01
I followed the tracks toward the lake.
314:03
The lake was frozen.
314:05
Naturally, everything in that region freezes by November and does not thaw until April.
314:10
The ice was thick. Snow on its surface had been packed firmly by the wind. The footprints descended the bank, crossed the shoreline rocks, and continued onto the ice.
314:21
I stopped at the shore. Then I looked across the lake. At that location, it measured approximately 660 yards across.
314:34
It was not a large lake by northern standards.
314:37
Some lakes are so wide that the opposite shore is invisible. This one was narrow enough to see a cross.
314:44
The far shore appeared as a dark line of spruce against the white snow.
314:49
Low hills stood behind it. A grey winter sky stretched above.
314:53
On the ice approximately 330 yards away, a figure moved from left to right across my field of vision.
315:01
It was dark. It stood upright.
315:03
It walked against the white surface of the lake. There was no ambiguity. It formed a black shape crossing a white landscape with a steady relaxed stride toward the opposite shore.
315:15
I carried binoculars on the snowmobile for observing wildlife.
315:19
I returned to retrieve them and raised them to my eyes. They provided 10 power magnification. At that strength, a distance of 330 yards appeared closer to 33. What I saw through those binoculars could not be reconciled with anything I understood about Northern Ontario wildlife. The figure was bipedal.
315:39
It walked upright on two legs while leaning slightly forward.
315:43
It was not hunched.
315:45
The posture resembled someone leaning into a headwind.
315:48
Long arms swung beside the body and extended below the waist.
315:52
Dark hair covered the entire figure. The color was not completely black. It appeared dark brown or charcoal gray. The hair was thick enough for me to distinguish its texture through the binoculars. It moved naturally with the body and reflected the flat winter light.
316:09
The shoulders were enormous.
316:11
The head rested low, almost between them.
316:14
Very little neck was visible. The legs were thick. The stride was long. It moved smoothly across the ice as though the journey required no effort. 330 yards of exposed ice lay beneath it. It crossed in full daylight. There was no cover. It showed no hesitation. It did not hurry.
316:36
I watched it through the binoculars for approximately two minutes. Two minutes of continuous observation through 10 power optics at 330 yards.
316:46
That is a substantial amount of time. It was long enough to study the proportions.
316:51
I observed the gate.
316:53
I examined how the hair lay across its shoulders. I watched the arms swing. I saw how the feet contacted the ice.
317:01
I attempted to memorize every available detail.
317:05
My professional instincts took control.
317:07
I was a trapper.
317:09
I survived by reading tracks and carefully observing animals.
317:13
I watched the figure in the same manner I watched any wild creature.
317:17
I recorded details mentally. I constructed a profile. I tried to classify it.
317:24
I could not.
317:26
No known animal in northern Ontario walks upright across a frozen lake in January. It was not a bear.
317:33
Bears enter their dens by November. It was not a moose. Moose do not travel on two legs. It was not human.
317:41
No person had that size, darkness, or covering of hair.
317:45
No human being would cross a frozen lake barefoot at temperatures near minus 20 degrees.
317:51
The figure reached the opposite shore.
317:53
It climbed the bank and entered the spruce without changing pace.
317:57
The dark body moved among the dark trees.
318:00
Then the forest absorbed it. The lake became empty.
318:04
I lowered the binoculars. Then I traveled onto the ice.
318:08
I followed the tracks.
318:10
They remained the same.
318:12
Bare footprints. Eighteen inches long.
318:15
The same inline pattern crossed the entire lake toward the far shore. They climbed the opposite bank and entered the spruce.
318:23
I stopped following there. The forest was dense. I was alone. Whatever had produced those impressions was large enough to sink six inches into hard packed snow with every step.
318:35
I returned to the cabin. I sat at the table with a cup of tea and considered what I had witnessed. I am not someone who reaches conclusions quickly. I had no strong opinions about Bigfoot, Sasquatch, or whatever people farther south called it.
318:50
I was a trapper.
318:52
I dealt with evidence directly in front of me.
318:55
That day the evidence consisted of tracks I could not identify and a figure I could not classify.
319:01
The tracks and the creature were connected by a straight line extending across the frozen lake.
319:07
The Cree and Ojibwe peoples had occupied that country for thousands of years. They possessed names for beings like the one I observed.
319:15
The Cree called it Wetiko.
319:17
The Ojibwe sometimes used Rougarou or Wendigo. Wendigo referred to something different, a spirit associated with hunger, cold and the cruelty of the forest.
319:28
Rougarou more closely matched what I saw.
319:31
It was described as a large hairy being living deep inside the bush and avoiding human contact.
319:37
The elders did not debate whether it existed.
319:40
They explained where such creatures lived. They advised people to remain away from those locations. Perhaps I should have listened.
319:48
During the following two winters, I discovered similar tracks three more times. They appeared within approximately five miles of the same lake.
319:57
They were always in fresh snow.
319:59
They were always bare footprints. They always moved with a clear destination and purpose.
320:05
I never saw the creature again. I saw only the tracks.
320:10
They provided repeated evidence that something possessing five bare toes traveled through my trap line during the most severe part of winter.
320:17
Its footprints measured 18 inches long. They sank into snow that would not hold a moose track to the same depth. Whatever it is, it remains somewhere in that country.
320:28
It continues walking through spruce stands and across frozen lakes in temperatures that could kill a human being within hours.
320:36
It wears no boots. It uses no snowshoes.
320:40
It travels barefoot through a world of snow and cold where I require a snowmobile and three layers of wool to survive.
320:47
I do not know what it is.
320:49
I know what it is not.
320:51
I also know that the Cree and Ojibwe understood its presence long before any trapper from the south placed a line in that country.
320:58
The bush protects its secrets.
321:01
I was simply another person who discovered one without searching for it.
321:05
I found it written in tracks I could not identify across a lake where something walked that should not have been there.
321:16
Story 34.
321:18
I rounded a bend in the trail, and it stood directly in front of me, 20 feet away, possibly less.
321:25
The trail followed a ridge through the Adirondacks and doubled back through a switchback.
321:30
It was the kind of turn where thick mountain laurel grows inside the bend, preventing anyone from seeing what is around the corner until they have already entered it.
321:39
I came around that blind turn and found the creature standing in the middle of the path facing me.
321:44
My first thought was that it was another hiker. A large hiker. Someone unusually tall wearing dark clothing and standing motionless in the trail.
321:53
For some reason my mind reached for the most ordinary explanation it could produce.
321:58
A large hiker was the best explanation available. Then I began noticing the details. That is how details arrive when a person stands close to something unfamiliar. and the eyes begin accepting a reality the mind has not yet approved.
322:12
It was not wearing clothing.
322:14
What I had initially interpreted as dark fabric was hair. Dense dark brown hair covered the chest, arms, legs and the rest of the body.
322:23
Its face was broad and flat.
322:26
A pronounced brow cast shadows across the eyes. Its mouth remained closed.
322:31
The expression, if it can be described as an expression, was neutral.
322:35
It did not appear aggressive. It did not appear frightened.
322:39
It did not seem particularly curious. It wore the calm, unreadable face of something that had encountered hikers before and had already decided how to respond to them.
322:50
It was extremely tall. I stand five feet ten inches.
322:54
The creature looked down at me from a point at least one and a half feet above my eye level. It was approximately seven feet tall, perhaps seven and a half.
323:03
Its shoulders appeared wider than the trail.
323:06
Twenty feet separated us.
323:08
I stood close enough to see the texture of the hair covering its forearms.
323:13
Close enough to see its nostrils.
323:15
Close enough to hear it breathing.
323:18
Each breath was a low steady pull of air passing through a chest larger than a barrel.
323:23
We stared at each other for approximately five seconds.
323:27
I did not count or measure the time. Five seconds is simply my best estimate.
323:32
When a person stands 20 feet from something impossible, five seconds feels extremely long.
323:38
It was enough time to notice that the eyes were dark brown, almost black.
323:42
It was enough time to see the hands hanging loosely at its sides. They had fingers, five fingers on each hand.
323:50
I noticed that most of its weight rested on the left foot. The right foot remained slightly forward.
323:56
It looked like the stance of something that had been taking a step when I entered the bend and stopped moving at the same moment I stopped.
324:03
We had surprised one another.
324:05
I believe that is what happened.
324:07
The creature had been walking along the trail.
324:10
Perhaps it was heading toward water. Perhaps it was moving toward the ridge. Maybe it had no particular destination.
324:18
Then I came around a blind switchback. Without warning, we stood only 20 feet apart.
324:24
Neither of us had an immediate escape route. The creature made the first decision. It stepped to its right, which was my left, and left the trail.
324:33
It did not move quickly.
324:35
It showed no panic.
324:37
It took one step into the hardwood forest, then another, then a third.
324:43
The undergrowth concealed it completely.
324:45
For approximately ten seconds I heard it moving away.
324:49
There were heavy footfalls. Branches separated as it passed. Then all sounds stopped.
324:56
The birds began calling again. A chipmunk chattered from a rock somewhere above me. The trail stood empty.
325:03
I remained at the bend for a long time. I cannot say exactly how long.
325:08
I stared at the place where it had been standing.
325:11
I concentrated on breathing. In.
325:14
Out. In.
325:16
Out.
325:18
Eventually I approached the location.
325:21
I stood where the creature had stood and examined the ground.
325:24
Leaves had been disturbed. The forest litter was compressed beneath the place where its weight had rested.
325:30
I looked toward the opening in the undergrowth where it had left the path.
325:34
Branches had been pushed apart but were already beginning to return to their original positions.
325:40
I looked down the trail in the direction the creature had been traveling. Then I looked back toward the route I had followed. I was alone.
325:48
It was October in the Adirondacks. Golden sunlight filtered through the canopy.
325:53
It was a perfect afternoon on a perfect trail. Something weighing perhaps 500 pounds had stood in that exact place only 30 seconds earlier.
326:02
Now it had disappeared.
326:04
The forest behaved as though nothing had happened.
326:07
I continued hiking.
326:09
What other choice did I have?
326:11
The trailhead was three miles away. I was not going to sit in the middle of the path and wait for the creature to return.
326:19
I was not going to leave the trail and force my way through thick forest to avoid it.
326:24
I placed one foot in front of the other.
326:26
I passed the location where it had stood.
326:29
I rounded the next bend.
326:31
Then the next. Then another.
326:33
I completed the hike. I returned to my vehicle and drove home.
326:38
I told no one for two weeks. Twenty feet. Five seconds.
326:43
One shared look.
326:45
Then the creature stepped away from the trail and allowed me to pass. That is the entire account. I have no additional evidence.
326:53
There are no photographs, recordings, tracks, or other witnesses.
326:57
I possess only the memory of five seconds of eye contact with something that was not supposed to exist.
327:03
It happened on a trail in the Adirondacks on a Tuesday afternoon in October.
327:07
The creature was real. It stood 20 feet away. When it decided to leave, it left.
327:14
I continue hiking. I use the same trails and travel through the same mountains. I still encounter the same blind switchbacks. But now I approach those corners more slowly.
327:25
I look before moving forward.
327:28
I always look.
327:34
Story 35 Five of us stayed at the hunting camp. There was me, my brother Dale, my cousin Mike, and our friends Tommy and Rich.
327:45
We had hunted the same mountain property in Pocahontas County for 15 years.
327:50
We used the same cabin. We traveled the same ridges.
327:54
Every November we hunted the same hollow where the largest bucks passed. The cabin belonged to the family of a friend.
328:01
It was a single room structure containing a wood stove, five bunks, and a propane cooking stove.
328:07
A rear porch overlooked a clearing descending toward a creek.
328:11
Approximately 30 feet behind the back door stood a meat pole. It consisted of a crossbar mounted between two posts approximately eight feet above the ground. We used it to suspend deer and allow the meat to cool.
328:24
By Wednesday evening of rifle season, three animals hung from the pole.
328:28
Mike had taken a doe on Tuesday morning.
328:31
Tommy shot a spike buck that same afternoon.
328:34
At dawn on Wednesday, I harvested a good eight-point buck weighing approximately 200 pounds after field dressing.
328:41
All three deer hung upside down by their rear legs.
328:45
They had been cleaned and were cooling in the November air. There was nothing unusual about the arrangement.
328:51
We had suspended deer from that pole for 15 years.
328:55
Nothing had ever interfered with them.
328:57
Coyotes occasionally wandered close enough to investigate, but coyotes could not reach an eight-foot crossbar and normally did not attempt to do so.
329:06
We ate dinner. We played cards.
329:09
We drank some whiskey.
329:11
It was the usual routine at deer camp.
329:14
By ten that night, most of the men had entered their bunks.
329:17
I remained at the table cleaning my rifle. Dale was also awake and read a magazine. The wood stove burned steadily. The cabin was warm.
329:27
At approximately 11, we heard something outside. It was not an animal sound. At least it did not resemble any animal noise I recognized. There was cracking, thumping.
329:39
A heavy scraping noise came from behind the cabin. It originated near the meat pole.
329:44
Dale lowered the magazine.
329:47
Coyotes, he said.
329:48
Coyotes don't make that much noise. I answered.
329:52
We listened. More sounds followed. They were heavy and deliberate.
329:57
Something occupied the area around the meat pole, and it made no attempt to remain quiet.
330:02
I heard the wooden crossbar creaking. Something placed weight against it or pulled on one of the animals hanging from it.
330:10
Mike awakened. Then Tommy did as well.
330:13
Rich remained asleep.
330:15
Rich could have slept through a mortar attack.
330:18
Four of us stood inside the cabin, listening to something struggle with the deer outside.
330:23
A bear, Mike said.
330:25
Bear season is over.
330:27
They should be in their dens, Dale replied.
330:30
A bear that hasn't denned yet, Mike said.
330:33
It happens.
330:35
Go look, Tommy suggested.
330:38
No one moved. I took the spotlight. It was a handheld Q-beam designed to connect to a vehicle's cigarette lighter, but we had a portable battery adapter.
330:48
The light produced approximately half a million candle power. It could illuminate an entire mountainside.
330:55
I approached the rear window. From the correct angle, the glass provided a view of the clearing and meat pole.
331:01
I pressed the spotlight directly against the window to reduce reflected glare. Then I switched it on.
331:08
The beam struck the meat pole like daylight. Something stood beside it.
331:13
The creature was upright.
331:15
Its back faced the cabin, although the body was turned slightly to one side.
331:19
One arm extended upward. Its hand, and it was clearly a hand rather than a paw, gripped my eight-point buck by one rear leg.
331:28
I could see fingers wrapped around it.
331:31
The buck remained attached to the pole, but the rope had been pulled tight.
331:35
The creature attempted to pull a 200-pound dressed deer from an eight-foot crossbar using only one arm.
331:41
It handled the animal the way someone might pull a jacket from a coat rack. The creature was enormous.
331:48
I do not use that description casually. I had spent my life around large animals. I had seen elk. I had encountered moose. I had seen bears weighing approximately 500 pounds.
332:00
This creature was larger. Its head rose above the crossbar. That meant it stood considerably more than eight feet tall.
332:08
Its shoulders appeared as wide as the cabin door.
332:12
Black or extremely dark brown hair covered the body.
332:15
The spotlight's bright white beam made the precise shade difficult to determine.
332:20
The hair was thickest across the shoulders and upper back.
332:24
It appeared thinner on the arms.
332:26
When the light struck it, the creature turned its head toward the window.
332:30
Four grown men stepped backwards simultaneously. I nearly dropped the spotlight.
332:36
Mike used a word I will not repeat Tommy reached for the rifle beside his bunk Dale stood motionless with his mouth open the creature looked toward the cabin it stared at the light in the window where four human faces watched it it did not flinch it did not narrow its eyes against the brightness it regarded us with the flat
332:58
Unreadable expression of something interrupted while eating and deciding whether the interruption deserved a response.
333:04
It decided that it did not.
333:07
The creature turned back toward the deer. Then it pulled. The rope broke. It did not come untied. It snapped. The quarter-inch nylon rope had been rated to hold 500 pounds. It broke like sewing thread. The buck dropped from the pole. The creature caught it. It caught the 200-pound animal with one arm as easily as someone receiving a sack of potatoes.
333:31
Then it tucked the deer against its body.
333:34
The creature began walking toward the tree line at the edge of the clearing. It took four or five steps.
333:40
I followed it with the spotlight until the trees blocked the beam. Then it disappeared. It took my deer with it.
333:48
Tommy continued holding his rifle. He had never raised it. None of us had raised a weapon.
333:54
There were five rifles and three handguns inside the cabin.
333:58
Not one of us had even disengaged to safety.
334:01
What was that? I asked.
334:04
No one answered.
334:05
Mike lowered himself onto his bunk. Dale returned to the window and stared at the meat pole, which now held two deer instead of three.
334:14
Tommy slowly returned the rifle to its case.
334:17
Rich, who had slept through the entire encounter, finally rolled over.
334:21
What's happening? He asked.
334:23
Nothing, Dale answered.
334:25
Go back to sleep.
334:28
We did not leave the cabin until daylight. Five hunters with five rifles waited for the sun to rise.
334:34
Consider what that means.
334:36
We were five men who had hunted those mountains for 15 years. We had killed and dressed deer. We had followed wounded animals through brush so dense that our feet disappeared beneath it.
334:47
We were comfortable in darkness. We carried weapons. We did not consider ourselves afraid of the forest. Yet not one of us opened the rear door.
334:57
At dawn we went outside.
334:59
The meat pole remained undamaged except for the broken rope. The other two deer had not been touched. The soil near the base of the pole was badly disturbed.
335:09
Deep impressions marked the frozen mud where something heavy had stood and shifted its weight.
335:14
The footprints were extremely large. They showed five toes. The stride measured more than four feet.
335:21
We followed the tracks to the tree line. They entered the forest and traveled uphill toward the ridge. We continued for approximately 100 yards. Then the slope became steeper and the vegetation thickened.
335:34
We stopped. It was not because we were physically unable to continue. We did not want to discover what waited at the end of those tracks.
335:43
My deer had vanished.
335:45
Something had carried 200 pounds of meat uphill through dense mountain forest. It had broken rope raided for 500 pounds.
335:53
Then it walked away from five armed men without hurrying.
335:56
We rarely discuss the encounter.
335:59
When we do, the conversation is brief. We do not debate what happened because there is nothing to debate.
336:05
Five people saw the evidence. Four of us watched the creature through the window.
336:11
The tracks confirmed the event for everyone, including Rich.
336:14
We continue returning to the camp every November. We still use the same meat pole. Nothing has disturbed the deer since that night. Perhaps the creature moved elsewhere. Maybe it no longer needs our food. Perhaps it obtained what it wanted and had no reason to return.
336:31
But now we lock the cabin door. We never did that before.
336:36
For 15 years, no one had considered locking it.
336:39
What would have been the purpose? There was supposedly no one else out there. Now we secure it every night. And when noises come from the meat pole after dark, we do not investigate.
336:51
Some things are better seen only once.
336:58
Story 36.
337:00
Whenever possible, I walk along the beach at dawn.
337:04
I live close enough to the Oregon coast that leaving my house by 5.30 allows me to reach the sand before sunrise.
337:11
I had followed that routine for years.
337:14
It is my version of church, if that is the correct way to describe it.
337:18
The tide retreats. Then it returns.
337:22
For several hours, the ocean deposits everything it has been carrying onto the sand before reclaiming it.
337:29
Agates, driftwood, kelp, shells, occasionally a glass float from a Japanese fishing net.
337:37
Treasures.
337:38
I walk along the shore and search. I collect small objects and place them in my pockets. Then I return home with sand covering my boots and salt in my hair.
337:48
That makes me happy.
337:49
This section of the coast is isolated.
337:52
It is in Curry County in southern Oregon where the forest reaches the cliffs.
337:57
The cliffs descend toward the beach and long stretches of sand remain empty. The nearest town is approximately 20 minutes away. During summer people visit the shore.
338:07
In winter it is often deserted.
338:10
In early spring, when this encounter occurred, it is possible to see no one at all. There is only the ocean, sand, gulls, and whatever the tide has left behind.
338:19
I reached the beach before six in the morning. It was still before dawn. The eastern sky had only begun to brighten. The sun had not yet risen.
338:28
The first gray light lifted from the horizon. The tide was receding.
338:33
Wet sand formed a dark, compact surface capable of preserving details like clay.
338:38
Every shell, piece of gravel, and footprint appeared clearly.
338:42
I walked south with my headlamp illuminated. I searched the tideline as I always did.
338:48
Approximately one quarter mile from where I had entered the beach I noticed footprints.
338:53
At first I assumed they belonged to another person.
338:56
Someone had visited earlier.
338:58
Perhaps a surfer, fisherman or person walking a dog before sunrise.
339:03
The tracks emerged from dry sand higher on the beach. They came from the direction of the cliffs and the forest above.
339:10
Then they turned south and followed the tideline in the same direction I traveled. Whoever created them had walked along the wet sand before me. I followed the prints without seriously considering them.
339:22
Beachcombers naturally follow lines. The tideline itself is one. Footprints create another.
339:29
I walked beside them the same way I followed the water's edge. My headlamp moved from side to side while I searched the ground.
339:37
I traveled approximately 100 yards before realizing something was wrong.
339:41
The feet were too large.
339:44
I wear a women's size 8 boot.
339:46
These tracks were much longer and broader.
339:49
I stopped and examined one closely. It was enormous.
339:53
It extended far beyond the length of my footwear, and the individual had been barefoot. Barefoot on the Oregon coast in early March, the sand temperature was probably around 40 degrees Fahrenheit. The air was colder.
340:08
The water washing onto the beach was winter Pacific water, likely in the low 50s at best.
340:14
Yet something had walked there without shoes.
340:17
I knelt beside one of the impressions.
340:20
i placed my hand next to it with my fingers spread the distance from the heel of my palm to the tip of my longest finger is approximately seven inches the footprint was more than twice that length it measured approximately 18 inches perhaps longer five toes appeared clearly the impression had been pressed deeply into the wet sand the toes were broad and widely separated
340:45
They were not narrow or compressed like human toes shaped by years of wearing shoes.
340:50
These toes spread across the ground and appeared to grip the sand. They looked like feet that had never been placed inside footwear.
340:58
The depth disturbed me most. The wet sand had been packed firmly by repeated tides.
341:03
My boots barely left visible impressions, and I weighed approximately 140 pounds.
341:10
These footprints descended three inches into the compact surface. Three full inches. Whatever produced them was extremely heavy. It probably weighed at least 300 pounds.
341:21
Possibly much more.
341:23
I continued following the tracks for another quarter mile. They remained along the tide line. The path was steady and consistent. The stride measured approximately four feet. There was no wandering, hesitation, or turning away.
341:38
The prints formed one direct line south along the water.
341:42
They were fresh. Their edges remained sharp. There was no erosion from wind. No waves had washed across them.
341:50
Whatever created the impressions had walked the beach less than an hour earlier.
341:55
I was following something.
341:57
It remained somewhere ahead of me, traveling in the same direction.
342:01
I stopped and looked south into the gray light before sunrise.
342:05
The beach curved toward a headland approximately half a mile away.
342:09
I could not see another person.
342:11
The shore appeared empty for as far as I could observe. But the tracks continued.
342:17
I kept following them.
342:19
I cannot fully explain why. Perhaps it was curiosity.
342:23
Perhaps stubbornness.
342:25
Maybe it was the beachcomber's compulsion to follow a line and discover where it ends.
342:30
The headlamp became less necessary as the sky brightened. Dawn approached.
342:35
Gray turned blue along the edges.
342:38
The first pink light touched the undersides of the clouds.
342:41
I rounded the headland. Then I saw it.
342:45
Approximately 300 yards farther south, a dark upright figure walked along the wet sand.
342:51
It followed the tide line. Its arm swung beside its body.
342:56
Its feet produced the same tracks I had followed for half a mile.
343:00
At that distance and in the dim light, I could not distinguish fine details.
343:04
I saw only the shape, but the proportions did not resemble those of a human being.
343:10
The shoulders were too broad, the waist was comparatively narrow, the arms were too long and swung too low.
343:18
Even from 300 yards away, I could estimate its height by comparing it with driftwood and sea stacks whose dimensions I knew.
343:25
It was tall, well over six feet, possibly seven.
343:31
It walked the beach in the same manner I did. It followed the tide line south at dawn, alone.
343:37
I stopped and watched. It never turned.
343:41
It did not look behind itself.
343:43
It continued walking at a relaxed constant pace.
343:47
Because I had stopped and it continued, the distance between us increased.
343:51
After approximately one minute, the figure reached rocks at the base of the next headland.
343:56
Then it turned.
343:58
It left the beach and climbed the rocks toward the spruce forest growing above the bluff.
344:03
It remained upright on two legs. It used its hands on the rocks the way someone might use their hands while climbing a ladder. Then it entered the trees.
344:12
The forest concealed it.
344:14
I remained on the beach, listening to the ocean while the sky turned pink.
344:19
I attempted to understand what I had just witnessed.
344:22
I walked to the location where the figure had left the sand.
344:25
The footprints continued onto the rocks. There were scrape marks and displaced gravel.
344:31
On one flat stone I found a handprint wider than both of my hands placed together.
344:36
The trail climbed toward the bluff and entered the tree line.
344:39
I did not follow.
344:41
I am a beachcomber, not a mountain climber. Whatever had climbed those rocks with such ease was not something I wished to encounter among the spruce trees.
344:50
I turned and walked north along the tide line.
344:53
I followed the tracks in reverse. My footprints and the creatures ran beside one another across the wet sand.
345:00
Mine were made by small hiking boots and barely entered the surface.
345:04
Its were barefoot, enormous, and three inches deep.
345:08
Two lines of prints crossed the same beach in opposite directions.
345:12
They resembled two commuters passing each other on a sidewalk.
345:16
The tide had started returning.
345:19
Every wave reached slightly farther.
345:21
Water touched the lower edges of the impressions.
345:24
By noon, every track would disappear.
345:27
The ocean would leave the sand flat and smooth. There would be no evidence that anything had walked there.
345:33
Not me.
345:35
Not the creature. Not anyone.
345:38
The ocean would reclaim it all, as it eventually reclaims everything.
345:42
I took photographs. I knelt in the sand and documented every footprint possible.
345:48
I photographed the toes and heels. I placed my hand beside the prints for scale.
345:53
I positioned my boot beside one for comparison.
345:57
I photographed the stride length. I captured the line of tracks extending south along the tide line and curving with the beach.
346:05
I took 17 photographs before the phone battery failed.
346:09
Cold temperatures drain batteries quickly.
346:12
The images still exist on my phone.
346:14
They show large barefoot impressions in wet sand.
346:17
My hand and boot appear beside them for scale.
346:21
They show a trail of footprints following the tideline on a southern Oregon beach. They do not show the creature. When I could see it, I never considered using the camera.
346:31
I was too occupied with watching.
346:34
By the time I thought about taking its photograph, it had disappeared.
346:38
I have returned to that beach hundreds of times. I walked the same section of shoreline during the same hours before sunrise.
346:45
I have never found the tracks again.
346:47
I have never seen the figure. There is only the ocean, sand, gulls, and whatever the tide carries ashore, but I no longer walk in the same way. I still follow the tideline.
347:00
I continue examining the sand ahead, but I am no longer searching only for agates.
347:05
Now I also look for footprints, large ones, barefoot impressions, tracks that sink three inches into compact wet sand and vanish beneath the following tide.
347:16
The ocean erases everything. That is what it does. It removes the evidence and smooths the surface.
347:23
By afternoon, nothing remains. Had I not reached the beach at 6 that morning in early March, I would never have known.
347:31
The tracks would have appeared and disappeared with the tide. The figure would have continued walking the coastline as it had probably done for years, decades, or centuries.
347:41
It would have traveled at dawn while no one else was present. It would have been alone beside the water, waves, and wind.
347:48
On that single morning I arrived early enough. I saw what walks along the beach while the rest of us sleep.
347:59
Story 37.
348:01
I am going to tell you something I have never included in an official report.
348:06
I have worked as a sheriff's deputy in this county for 20 years.
348:10
I will not identify the county.
348:12
I will not provide my name. I am still employed.
348:17
What I am about to describe could destroy my career more quickly than a DUI or a complaint involving the discharge of a firearm.
348:25
In law enforcement, certain incidents can remain on a person's record without ending a career.
348:31
An excessive force complaint can sometimes be survived. An administrative reprimand can be overcome.
348:38
Telling your sergeant that you saw Bigfoot on County Road 7 at 2.30 in the morning is different. That stays with you. It becomes your identity.
348:47
You are no longer simply a deputy. You become the officer who saw Bigfoot.
348:53
That officer does not receive promotions.
348:56
He is not trusted to execute warrants.
348:58
He is assigned to a desk or dispatch duty while everyone inside the department quietly agrees that his judgment can no longer be trusted.
349:06
That is why I wrote the log entry in the only way I could. 237 hours, County Road 7, large unidentified animal crossing roadway.
349:17
No hazard to traffic. No action taken.
349:21
That is what I recorded.
349:23
Technically, every word was true. The time was 2.37.
349:27
I was on County Road 7.
349:30
The figure was large. It appeared to be an animal.
349:34
I believed it was crossing the highway.
349:36
I took no action because there is no established procedure for dealing with something that appears in no field guide, training manual, or protocol I had received during 20 years in law enforcement. This is what actually happened. County Road 7 follows the eastern boundary of Daniel Boone National Forest.
349:54
It is a narrow two-lane road without a center line or shoulder.
349:58
The pavement is cracked and repeatedly patched. Its edges break apart into gravel.
350:04
The gravel falls into ditches. The ditches lead directly into the forest.
350:09
At night, it is one of the darkest roads in the county.
350:13
There are no houses for miles.
350:15
There are no street lights. There is nothing except the road, the trees, and whatever lies between them.
350:22
I patrol the route twice each week as part of my regular circuit. You drive slowly. You check for disabled vehicles. You search for people spotlighting deer illegally, an offense I had documented more times than I could count.
350:37
The patrol was routine.
350:39
I had traveled county roads 7 at 2 in the morning at least a thousand times.
350:44
That particular night was clear and cold, but the temperature remained above freezing. It was probably in the mid-40s.
350:51
I believe it was late autumn. The pavement was dry.
350:55
I drove with the headlights on and the emergency light bar off. The windows were partially open for fresh air.
351:02
The radio remained quiet. It was the kind of uneventful shift an officer appreciates.
351:08
I entered a long gradual curve that climbed slightly uphill.
351:12
My headlights illuminated something standing on the right side of the road.
351:16
It was partly inside the ditch and partly on the gravel edge of the pavement.
351:20
My first thought was that it was a deer.
351:23
My second thought was that deer do not stand on two legs.
351:27
I slowed the patrol vehicle.
351:29
When I came within approximately 80 yards, I activated the spotlight.
351:34
A patrol car spotlight is not comparable to a flashlight or headlamp. It is a roof-mounted halogen unit producing approximately 500,000 candle power.
351:44
It can illuminate an entire football field from 100 yards away.
351:48
When that light switches on anything inside the beam goes from darkness to daylight instantly.
351:53
People attempting to flee from police often freeze when it strikes them. The light is overwhelming and disorienting.
352:00
For many individuals, it is the brightest illumination they will ever experience.
352:05
The beam struck the figure beside the road. I saw it as clearly as I have ever seen anything.
352:12
It stood upright on two legs near the edge of the pavement. It faced the roadway.
352:17
It may have been looking toward me or across the road. Its body was angled slightly, so at first I could not determine the exact direction.
352:26
It was tall.
352:27
Police officers are trained to estimate height as part of preparing suspect descriptions.
352:33
I placed it between seven and seven and a half feet. Its shoulders were wider than those of any person I had encountered, and during my career I had dealt with some very large people.
352:44
Dark brown hair covered the entire body. It was not clothing. It was hair.
352:50
The covering remained uniform from head to foot, although its length and density varied slightly.
352:56
The hair around the head and shoulders appeared longer and darker. On the arms it looked shorter and somewhat lighter. The face is what remains with me whenever I close my eyes.
353:07
I observed it under half a million candle power from approximately 60 yards away.
353:13
I saw the features clearly.
353:15
The face was broad and flat. The visible skin around the mouth and nose was dark and leathery, resembling weathered hide.
353:22
Its nose was wide and almost level with the surface of the face. The brow ridge projected outward like a shelf of bone.
353:30
It cast shadows across the eye sockets even beneath the powerful spotlight.
353:34
The jaw was broad, heavy, and squared. Its width seemed proportionate to the enormous shoulders.
353:40
The mouth stayed closed. There was no expression. It did not snarl. It did not smile. It did not expose its teeth.
353:50
The face remained neutral.
353:52
The eyes reflected the spotlight.
353:54
The color was amber.
353:56
I had seen eyeshine from every nocturnal animal in eastern Kentucky.
354:00
Deer, coyotes, raccoons, opossums, foxes, bobcats, occasionally black bears.
354:12
I understood what animal eye reflection looked like.
354:15
This was different. The eyes were positioned too high and too far apart.
354:20
The color was also wrong.
354:23
Amber and not green, not yellow, not orange.
354:26
The creature looked directly at the patrol car.
354:29
It looked toward the spotlight and toward me behind the windshield.
354:33
I sat behind a badge, radio sidearm, and 20 years of training that had not prepared me for that moment.
354:40
I had survived two armed confrontations during my career. I had entered methamphetamine laboratories. I had responded to domestic incidents involving armed suspects. I had removed people from burning vehicles.
354:53
I understood adrenaline. I understood fear. I knew the difference between them.
354:58
What I felt on County Road 7 was not the adrenaline produced by a confrontation.
355:04
It was the fear of standing in the presence of something over which I had no authority.
355:08
My badge meant nothing.
355:10
The radio meant nothing. My .40 caliber sidearm and its 15 rounds meant nothing.
355:16
Everything I carried wore and represented depended on the assumption that I was the most powerful and officially authorized.
355:23
presence in any situation to which I responded.
355:27
That assumption disappeared under the spotlight on County Road 7.
355:31
The creature watched the cruiser for approximately three seconds, three seconds beneath 500,000 candle power.
355:39
Then it turned. It did not turn away from me.
355:42
It faced the highway as though I had interrupted it while crossing and it had decided to continue.
355:48
It walked across the pavement. Three or four long smooth unhurried strides carried it across the road faster than an ordinary person could cross a living room.
355:57
It stepped from the opposite edge of the pavement, entered the ditch and disappeared into the tree line.
356:03
The brush concealed it completely.
356:05
The spotlight followed the movement.
356:08
Then the beam illuminated only empty trees.
356:11
I remained inside the running patrol vehicle with the spotlight directed toward nothing.
356:16
I do not know how long I stayed there. It was long enough for the adrenaline to fade. Long enough for my hands to stop trembling.
356:24
Long enough for me to make a decision.
356:26
I picked up the radio microphone. I pressed the transmit button.
356:31
Then I said nothing.
356:33
I returned the microphone to its holder. I switched off the spotlight.
356:37
I placed the cruiser in gear and drove the final four miles of County Road 7 at the posted speed.
356:43
I repeatedly checked the mirrors.
356:46
Then I returned to the station.
356:48
I sat at the desk.
356:50
I opened the activity log and wrote, 237 hours, County Road 7, large unidentified animal crossing roadway.
356:59
No hazard to traffic. No action taken.
357:03
Every word was accurate. Every word was useless.
357:07
The truth of what I witnessed does not fit inside a log entry. It cannot be communicated over the radio.
357:14
It does not fit into any conversation I could have with my sergeant, sheriff, wife, or anyone else who needed to continue considering me credible afterward.
357:23
I am a law enforcement officer.
357:25
My entire professional existence depends upon people believing me.
357:29
I am supposed to be the person whose observations are accurate and whose testimony can withstand examination in court.
357:37
If I report seeing a suspect carrying a weapon, the district attorney accepts my account.
357:43
If I testify that a vehicle crossed the center line, the judge accepts my observation.
357:48
If I say I saw a seven and a half foot creature covered in brown hair crossing County Road 7 at 2.37 in the morning, no one accepts it.
357:57
Not my sergeant. Not the district attorney.
358:01
Not the judge.
358:03
Probably not even my wife.
358:05
therefore i wrote large unidentified animal i returned home i went to bed i stared at the ceiling in darkness i continued seeing the face broad flat leathery amber-eyed neutral i did not sleep since then i have quietly spoken with other officers not many never openly
358:29
The conversations happen in the same manner truck drivers discuss unusual encounters. They occur privately, at the edges of ordinary conversations, when no one in authority is listening.
358:41
Some officers also have stories.
358:43
They involve nighttime patrols in rural counties, spotlights illuminating figures that do not belong.
358:50
Official entries using the word unidentified because writing the true description would end a career.
358:56
We are supposed to protect the public. We carry the training, weapons and authority. But when we encounter something our training does not address, our guns may not stop and our authority cannot reach.
359:09
We write large unidentified animal.
359:12
Then we return home and sleep poorly for a while.
359:15
County Road 7 remains part of my patrol route.
359:19
I continue driving it twice every week. I still use the spotlight on curves where visibility is limited.
359:25
I have never seen the creature again.
359:28
But the log entry remains. 2.37 hours. County Road 7.
359:34
Large unidentified animal.
359:36
Anyone inside the department could read it. No one would understand its meaning.
359:41
I understand.
359:43
And now you do as well.
359:50
Story 38.
359:52
I am a psychologist. I work professionally with the human mind. I understand perception.
359:59
I understand how fatigue, stress, and expectations can alter what people believe they see.
360:04
I know about pareidolia, the tendency to recognize meaningful shapes and patterns where none actually exist.
360:12
I understand confirmation bias. I know how false memories develop. I know all of those explanations.
360:19
and I know what I saw.
360:21
It happened during the summer of 2000. I was hiking with my family at Oregon Caves National Monument. My wife and children were with me. We were on vacation. The trail passed through Old Growth Forest. It was the kind of route maintained by the National Park Service, with signs, benches, and other families walking in both directions.
360:43
It was not especially isolated. It was not physically difficult.
360:47
It was simply a pleasant day hike through a beautiful landscape.
360:51
I am 6 feet 9 inches tall.
360:54
I weigh more than 250 pounds.
360:57
I am not accustomed to feeling small.
360:59
During my adult life I had never looked upward at another living thing and experienced the sensation I felt on that trail.
361:07
I had completed approximately half the loop when I noticed something standing farther ahead.
361:12
It was perhaps 100 yards away.
361:14
Trees partly obstructed it, but the figure remained visible.
361:19
It stood upright and motionless, facing in my direction.
361:22
My first thought was that it was another hiker. My second thought was that it could not be a hiker.
361:29
The figure appeared approximately 8 feet tall.
361:32
I know how 8 feet looks.
361:34
I stand only 3 inches below 7 feet.
361:37
This creature looked down from a height that forced me to view something from below in a way I had never experienced before.
361:44
Black hair covered the body. It was not fur. It was not fabric. It was hair.
361:51
The face appeared broad and flat with heavy features. The chest was deep and wide. Its arms were proportionally longer than human arms should be.
362:01
It occupied the trail with the relaxed posture of someone standing inside a familiar hallway.
362:06
It looked completely at home.
362:08
When the creature realized that I had stopped and was observing it, it turned. The movement was not quick. It did not appear startled.
362:17
It rotated with the calm, unhurried ease of something that had never been chased, threatened or given a reason to move quickly.
362:24
It looked at me for several seconds, perhaps three, possibly five.
362:30
We stood approximately 100 yards apart on a forest trail during the middle of the afternoon.
362:35
A psychologist faced something for which psychology had no name.
362:40
Its expression did not appear aggressive.
362:42
It was not frightened.
362:44
If I were forced to describe the behavior using a clinical term, I would call it assessment.
362:50
It examined me in the same way I evaluate a new patient during the first 30 seconds of a meeting.
362:56
It gathered information. It formed an impression.
363:00
It decided what to do next. There was cognition behind its eyes. There was decision making. There was a mind.
363:08
Then it turned back toward the direction of the trail and stepped into the brush.
363:12
It did not run.
363:14
It moved deliberately, as though it knew exactly where it was going.
363:19
After three steps, the forest concealed it. Branches did not shake violently. The ground did not tremble beneath its weight.
363:27
It simply disappeared.
363:29
It was as though the trees opened a door and closed it behind something they intended to protect.
363:34
I remained on the trail for a long time. Eventually, my family caught up with me. I told my wife what I had witnessed.
363:42
The following day, we returned with a park ranger named John Roth.
363:46
Roth searched the area. He found no tracks because the ground was rocky and the brush extremely dense.
363:53
However, he later publicly stated that there was absolutely no question that I had not invented the encounter.
364:00
A Bigfoot investigator named Derek Randles interviewed me afterward.
364:04
He rated my credibility 10 out of 10.
364:07
He said I was not the typical type of person who reports seeing a Sasquatch. I do not know what the typical witness looks like, but I now know what the typical creature looks like.
364:18
I have seen one.
364:19
I entered that forest as a scientist who understood the human mind.
364:24
I left as someone who had looked into a non-human mind and recognized intelligence within it.
364:29
The creature was calm. It was intelligent.
364:32
It did not fear me.
364:34
When it finished observing me, it left.
364:37
It did not leave because I frightened it.
364:40
It left because it had somewhere else to go.
364:43
Wherever it was traveling, it may still be moving there tonight. It may be somewhere in the old growth forests of Southern Oregon, walking along trails that close at sunset and belong to something else after dark.
364:55
You have been listening for a long time. Perhaps you remain completely awake. Perhaps you are beginning to drift towards sleep with these voices still inside your ears.
365:04
Either way, I want to leave you with one final thought.
365:07
Almost every account you heard tonight came from a real person. A retired millwright who constructed his own cabin. A prospector who protected his secret for 33 years. A professor who heard something screaming after dark. A ten-year-old child who fled from something inside a hollow.
365:25
A cowboy who never altered his account.
365:28
A woman who mailed photographs to a sheriff's office without providing her name.
365:33
Those people did not search for these encounters. Most probably would have preferred that they never occurred, but they happened.
365:41
Every witness from the miners at Ape Canyon in 1924 to the people walking their dogs in Ohio last month described the same basic reality using different words.
365:51
Something exists out there. It is enormous.
365:54
It is intelligent.
365:56
It has occupied these landscapes longer than we have. Tonight, wherever you are, inside your bed, on a couch, in a vehicle, or sitting in a dark room, the nearest forest is probably closer than you realize.
366:12
Somewhere inside that forest, between trees where the light cannot reach, something may be standing completely still.
366:19
It may be listening to the same silence you hear now.
366:22
It is not necessarily waiting for you. It is not hunting you. It does not need you.
366:28
It simply knows you are there.
366:30
Sleep well.
