Speaker 1: Three years ago, my son, my brother, and I hunted
Speaker 1: a parcel of private land opening weekend of deer rifle season.
Speaker 1: We were in the woods before daylight. My brother didn't
Speaker 1: fill up to the physical stress of the hills we
Speaker 1: were about to assault, so he stayed close to the
Speaker 1: truck on flat ground. My son and I were going
Speaker 1: to walk the area to drive deer to each other.
Speaker 1: We called it deer kicking. Three hours later, and not
Speaker 1: seeing a deer, my son suggested that we get to
Speaker 1: a higher elevation. His idea was that the deer were
Speaker 1: up there and we just needed to get to him.
Speaker 1: We started to track up the hill and fought briars
Speaker 1: and brambles the whole way. We were exhausted when we
Speaker 1: got to the top. When we reached the top, we
Speaker 1: walked around the ridge trying to get a better look
Speaker 1: at the terrain below. When we walked up on a
Speaker 1: large structure, tree lambs were formed into an almost perfect shelter.
Speaker 1: I assumed someone had built this, but looking closer, it
Speaker 1: became clear this was not built by human hands. It
Speaker 1: was well built too, because my son crawled on top
Speaker 1: of it and walked around it never gave an inch
Speaker 1: built on the edge of a steep drop off. Made
Speaker 1: me a bit nervous, so I got him to jump
Speaker 1: down and we backed away. We sat down and we
Speaker 1: had a smoke. Then he asked if I could detect
Speaker 1: a strong odor. I couldn't smell anything due to an
Speaker 1: accident years ago that took away my sense of smell,
Speaker 1: but he said it was strong. The first guess was
Speaker 1: that Bigfoot had built this thing. We both laughed that
Speaker 1: off and decided to move on back down the hill.
Speaker 1: Taking a different route, we exited the thick brush and
Speaker 1: we stood on a ledge. It gave us a great
Speaker 1: view of the valley below. In the distance, on the
Speaker 1: opposite hillside, I saw a dark figure scaling the mountain.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a bear, but I've never heard
Speaker 1: of bear in this area. I just watched for a
Speaker 1: minute to see better. I raised my rifle scope to
Speaker 1: my eye and I could clearly see this thing was
Speaker 1: on two legs and it was covered in dark hair.
Speaker 1: I asked my son to keep it in his scope
Speaker 1: while I dug for a camera that I carried on
Speaker 1: all my hunts. It took me forever to dig this
Speaker 1: camera out, and while I was doing that, my son
Speaker 1: lowered his rifle to look at me and ask what
Speaker 1: was taking so long, And when he got the object
Speaker 1: back in his scope, it was just going over the
Speaker 1: top of the hill. Neither of us could believe that
Speaker 1: that thing made it up that hill so fast, but
Speaker 1: it was gone. In my mind it was a bear.
Speaker 1: It had to be. The day was shot, so we
Speaker 1: headed back to the true up. We were about halfway
Speaker 1: back to the truck and a rock whizzed by our
Speaker 1: heads and tumbled off into the brush. We stopped and
Speaker 1: looked around for the person who had thrown it, but
Speaker 1: we never saw anyone. Then I realized it had to
Speaker 1: be my brother messing with us, so I called him
Speaker 1: on the two way radio. He was close to the
Speaker 1: truck and emphatically insisted that he had not walked up
Speaker 1: that mountain. It was getting close to dark by now.
Speaker 1: We had not seen or heard an animal all day,
Speaker 1: no insects, birds, nothing. As we walked onto the truck,
Speaker 1: something was tracking us in the brush. While we walked.
Speaker 1: Whatever was in the woods walked. If we stopped, it stopped.
Speaker 1: Limbs and twigs broke in the distance. We stopped and
Speaker 1: called out, hoping to get an answer from someone, maybe
Speaker 1: we were on someone else's land. We got no answer,
Speaker 1: and then I recall our joking that Bigfoot had built
Speaker 1: that structure that we had found, and now I wasn't
Speaker 1: laughing at that idea. The whole thing gave me an
Speaker 1: uneasy feeling. So we wasted no more time and we
Speaker 1: made it to the truck and out of the area
Speaker 1: in a hurry. Finally back at the truck, and a
Speaker 1: bit unnerved, we started unloading our rifles and throwing our
Speaker 1: gear in the bed. We sat on the tailgate waiting
Speaker 1: for my brother to show up. I heard something in
Speaker 1: the brush off to my right. It was rustling in
Speaker 1: the brush, and then, like a bat out of hell,
Speaker 1: it took off running. And whatever it was it was big.
Speaker 1: It was crashing and tearing through the tangled mess like
Speaker 1: a bulldozer. It's hard to explain how this experience affected me.
Speaker 1: It really shook me up. If I heard an elephant
Speaker 1: crashing through the brush, I think it would sound the same.
Speaker 1: In the distance, I heard a sound that I will
Speaker 1: never be able to replicate. It was a sort of
Speaker 1: a howl or scream, and it was terrifying to my ears.
Speaker 1: The radio cracked and it was my brother asking us
Speaker 1: if we had kicked up a deer, to which we
Speaker 1: both immediately responded no, and to get back to the
Speaker 1: truck we needed to go. He finally walked up and
Speaker 1: I hurriedly pushed him in the truck. I started the
Speaker 1: engine and I threw gravel behind me as I sped away.
Speaker 1: And on the drive home, we recounted the story to
Speaker 1: him and he was sure that we had encountered a bear.
Speaker 1: My son and I we knew it wasn't a bear.
Speaker 1: We knew exactly what this thing was. The next year,
Speaker 1: we were told that this piece of land was posted
Speaker 1: and we no longer had permission to hunt it. That
Speaker 1: was fine with me. I wasn't going back to that
Speaker 1: place anyway. We got permission to hunt land not far
Speaker 1: from this location the next year. There are signs of
Speaker 1: bigfoot on this property too, but they never messed with us,
Speaker 1: so we continued to hunt it. This year, I'm staying
Speaker 1: out of the woods. I have concluded that we are
Speaker 1: invading their territory and it must cause them stress. I
Speaker 1: don't want to do that to these creatures. I've studied
Speaker 1: the phenomenon lately and learned quite a bit and I
Speaker 1: think they are closer to humans than we think. This
Speaker 1: is not an average animal, so from now on I'm
Speaker 1: going to be staying out of their habitat. I have
Speaker 1: a few stories to tell. The first one is my
Speaker 1: father in law's and it was told to me by
Speaker 1: my wife. This occurred in Salibas, Indonesia. I think I
Speaker 1: pronounced the town right around nineteen seventy give or take.
Speaker 1: Salivas is a horseshoe shaped island near Borneo. My wife's
Speaker 1: father recounted this story to her, and it happened on
Speaker 1: a cross country motorcycle trip when he was around fifty five.
Speaker 1: My wife's English is not very good, so I'm translating
Speaker 1: this from Indonesian. Getting all the details as a bit
Speaker 1: of a chore. Also, her father passed away five years ago,
Speaker 1: so some of the story may have been lost to memory.
Speaker 1: He was trying to save time on this trip, so
Speaker 1: instead of following the highway, he cut across the wilderness.
Speaker 1: It really was cross country, and as he was traveling,
Speaker 1: the bike suddenly felt like a big weight had been
Speaker 1: added to it and it wouldn't move forward anymore. He
Speaker 1: got off the bike to see what was the matter,
Speaker 1: and behind him stood a huge person. In fear, he
Speaker 1: dropped to his knees to pray, thinking he was about
Speaker 1: to die. The last thing he saw before he closed
Speaker 1: his eyes was its feet. After a while, he opened
Speaker 1: his eyes and it was gone. My impression is that
Speaker 1: my father in law referred to this thing as a
Speaker 1: person because he had no other term to describe it.
Speaker 1: He never saw the face, nor did he describe in
Speaker 1: detail what the legs and feet look like, other than
Speaker 1: that they were huge. The fact that he was so
Speaker 1: close to it but didn't see the head should provide
Speaker 1: some idea of how big this thing was. He would
Speaker 1: have to look up to see the face, but he
Speaker 1: was too terrified to do that. I would guess it
Speaker 1: must have been a minimum of seven and a half
Speaker 1: feet tall, maybe even taller. Apparently, this thing came up
Speaker 1: behind his motorcycle and held on to the back to
Speaker 1: stop it. My father in law never saw it until
Speaker 1: he got off the bike, by which point it had
Speaker 1: to be only a few feet away. He never mentioned
Speaker 1: that it had an odor or made any sound. I
Speaker 1: believe the incident took place at dusk, so he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have been able to see much since there are no
Speaker 1: lights in the jungle. My wife said her father told
Speaker 1: her this story only once. I think as a cautionary tale.
Speaker 1: He wanted his family to know it was dangerous out there.
Speaker 1: He told her that the story scared him as much
Speaker 1: now as it had years later. It was like it
Speaker 1: only happened yesterday. My next story comes from my wife's grandfather,
Speaker 1: and it happened on the same island, but a different
Speaker 1: part of it. I'm not sure on the time, maybe
Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds, and it may have happened as
Speaker 1: recently as nineteen twenty. My wife's grandfather and some friends
Speaker 1: of his were going hunting. It was a large hunting
Speaker 1: party of about ten people, and they decided to explore
Speaker 1: a cave they'd found at the bottom of a ravine.
Speaker 1: They were looking for bird droppings or guano. They heard
Speaker 1: something from inside and it startled them enough to make
Speaker 1: them start running. Most of them scrambled up and out
Speaker 1: of the ravine, but one person fell back down. They
Speaker 1: threw a rope down to him to help him, but
Speaker 1: he told them he couldn't climb out. Something was holding
Speaker 1: his foot. They heard more noises, like people scurrying around.
Speaker 1: They were loud, marching noises. It wasn't just one or
Speaker 1: two people or whatever they were, It sounded like a
Speaker 1: whole group of them. The others fled in fear, leaving
Speaker 1: the man to fend for himself, and he was never
Speaker 1: seen again. This story, like my father in laws, was
Speaker 1: told to warn the children of the dangers of the jungle.
Speaker 1: These men apparently stumbled on a bunch of or a
Speaker 1: society of some kind of creature. They never actually had
Speaker 1: visual contact, but what they heard terrified them so much
Speaker 1: that ten well armed men ran like helpless children and
Speaker 1: abandoned one of their own to die. Getting these stories
Speaker 1: and getting accurate details was difficult. I would think I
Speaker 1: had it and then ask another question, and her answer
Speaker 1: to it would shed a whole new light on what
Speaker 1: she was trying to describe. I think I finally got
Speaker 1: all the pertinent information. Though these last encounters are my own,
Speaker 1: and at the time I was in the wilderness working
Speaker 1: as a paramilitary contractor, it was over a decade ago,
Speaker 1: so some of the minor details may be hard to recall,
Speaker 1: but I will do my best. I was part of
Speaker 1: a four man teams sent to prep camp for training
Speaker 1: exercises that were being held near the California Oregon border.
Speaker 1: The first night, it was just the members of the
Speaker 1: advanced team. Our intel told us that bears were unheard
Speaker 1: of here. Mountain lions were becoming common, but not to
Speaker 1: the point that we expected to see any I don't
Speaker 1: recall any information on non predators, but I'm sure there
Speaker 1: were deer and probably wild boar in the area as well.
Speaker 1: I was sleeping in a small one man dome tent,
Speaker 1: barely big enough to hold me. Head and feet were
Speaker 1: lightly touching the walls. I had covered the tent with
Speaker 1: camo panels and placed a sheet of clear plastic underneath
Speaker 1: that extended eight inches beyond the tent walls. The weather
Speaker 1: was damp and drizzly, and this kept the muddy, wet
Speaker 1: ground from soaking into the tent floor. In the field,
Speaker 1: I would normally not even use a tent, much less
Speaker 1: a sheet of plastic. It didn't take long for the
Speaker 1: falling pine needles to cover the plastic, making it invisible.
Speaker 1: It was a rocky, forested terrain with lots of trees
Speaker 1: and pine needle covering the ground. Large mossy boulders stuck
Speaker 1: out here and there between the trees. Once I was
Speaker 1: finished camouflaging my tent. It looked like one of those boulders.
Speaker 1: A few of us who were there did not make
Speaker 1: our camps together. We were maybe two hundred feet apart.
Speaker 1: Due to the heavily wooded terrain, we were completely out
Speaker 1: of sight of each other. We were running twenty four
Speaker 1: hour watch, so in the middle of the night, when
Speaker 1: I was done with my turn, I headed back to
Speaker 1: my tent. I found it with difficulty. It was camoed
Speaker 1: up really good, and I fell asleep. Some time later,
Speaker 1: I was awakened by the sound of something stepping on
Speaker 1: the plastic sheeting right by my head. This thing's foot
Speaker 1: and my head couldn't have been more than twelve inches apart.
Speaker 1: There was nothing between us except a wall of fabric.
Speaker 1: Maybe two seconds later I heard two very strong sniffs.
Speaker 1: Something with huge nostrils was sniffing me. Its nose was
Speaker 1: just a few inches from my ear. These nostrils were
Speaker 1: definitely larger than man's sized. At that time, I didn't
Speaker 1: believe in bigfoot, and I never heard of dog Man. Also,
Speaker 1: I slept with a loaded forty five pistol on my
Speaker 1: right hip and a marine k bar knife on my left.
Speaker 1: Plus I was well trained in how to use both
Speaker 1: of them, and I wasn't scared. I was, however, very tired,
Speaker 1: so I just closed my eyes and I went back
Speaker 1: to sleep. Looking back, I realized that it should have
Speaker 1: made the same noise when it removed its foot as
Speaker 1: it did when it stepped on the plastic. I never
Speaker 1: heard it make that noise, so it must have still
Speaker 1: been standing there when I fell back to sleep. The
Speaker 1: next day, I looked around for a bit of tracks,
Speaker 1: but there were none. Now I ask around the morning
Speaker 1: fire who was snooping around my tent, but everyone denied it.
Speaker 1: I knew it couldn't be any of them because I
Speaker 1: wasn't in the type of group to joke around. Everyone
Speaker 1: was armed and very serious about their job. We don't
Speaker 1: play silly pranks like that. People could get killed. Whatever
Speaker 1: it was that sniffed at me that night didn't fit
Speaker 1: anything in my reality, so I just pushed it out
Speaker 1: of my mind. It wasn't until years later, when a
Speaker 1: friend started sending me tons of stories on bigfoot encounters,
Speaker 1: that I started noticing similarities between many of them and
Speaker 1: some of the aspects of my own strange encounter. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: I couldn't attribute it to being a bear because there
Speaker 1: were none in that area and it seemed way too
Speaker 1: big to be a mountain line. The next day the
Speaker 1: trainees arrived and I was part of the opt for opfoor.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what that means. My job was overwatched,
Speaker 1: so I set up my sign grid and picked out
Speaker 1: a spot with a good view of the area. I
Speaker 1: only had to watch in one direction. If they were coming,
Speaker 1: I knew from which direction it would be. I was
Speaker 1: well camouflaged, and plus I found a small depression in
Speaker 1: a few inches deep, big enough for me to lay in,
Speaker 1: and I dragged a dead branch over the top of me.
Speaker 1: And as long as I didn't move, I wasn't going
Speaker 1: to be seen. We used throat mics and earpieces for communication,
Speaker 1: so radio noise was never an issue. I was lying
Speaker 1: on my belly on the ground. I could feel someone
Speaker 1: walking up behind me. I thought maybe it was someone
Speaker 1: from the training exercise and had gotten around me and
Speaker 1: was coming up on my position. I kept still so
Speaker 1: as not to give myself away. I knew from experience
Speaker 1: that people can almost be standing on top of me
Speaker 1: and not see me. As long as I didn't move,
Speaker 1: I waited for what felt like an eternity, nothing moved.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel the movement anymore, so I finally looked
Speaker 1: back and there was nothing there. Looking back on that event,
Speaker 1: I don't think I could have felt a man walking
Speaker 1: up behind me. I later found out that there was
Speaker 1: never anyone from our group in that area beside me.
Speaker 1: The whole thing was just very odd. I definitely felt someone,
Speaker 1: that is, something by petal coming up on me. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what to make of all that. That general
Speaker 1: area is, as everyone knows, a place where cryptid sightings
Speaker 1: are comparedatively more common than most. One strange take from
Speaker 1: this is how I was willing to ignore my instincts
Speaker 1: in these situations that defied rational explanation, and according to
Speaker 1: my worldview at the time, as I've been a hunter
Speaker 1: all my life, of both man, not only in times
Speaker 1: of war and beasts, though the lines between both seemed
Speaker 1: to get blurred. I was a middle aged man once
Speaker 1: in the prime of my life. I was always outdoors,
Speaker 1: enjoying the seasons. I find the woodlands, even with what
Speaker 1: I know to be a peaceful place, do I fear
Speaker 1: the woods well? A man can be peaceful when he
Speaker 1: is scared of something. You learn this on the battlefield
Speaker 1: given time. I know courage is facing one's fear head on.
Speaker 1: But still I say, I'm not courageous. I'm just ignorant
Speaker 1: of the times. My stories start. As I said, in
Speaker 1: the prime of my life was in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: A hundred for money, good money, and when not doing
Speaker 1: something for Uncle Sam, I was a guide and a tracker.
Speaker 1: I never had one place to call home. It's easier
Speaker 1: when you're not attached to leave things behind, knowing you
Speaker 1: may not see it again. I was working in the
Speaker 1: area of northeastern Alaska. I was deep in the woodlands
Speaker 1: along the river. Huh Okay. This story has a couple
Speaker 1: of words in it that I'm going to have trouble with.
Speaker 1: But he says he was deep in the woodlands along
Speaker 1: a river near Vinettai ven Tie. You guys look it up.
Speaker 1: I had been here for months, enjoying the weather. At
Speaker 1: this time it was summer, but at night you would
Speaker 1: still freeze if you didn't know better. I was out
Speaker 1: for my cabin, checking my traps and jigging for fish,
Speaker 1: and enjoying the day. I kept an eye out for
Speaker 1: grizzlies and wolves. And polar bears or any predators. Man
Speaker 1: is not at the top of the food chain there,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know of Bigfoot or believe any of
Speaker 1: the local legends of such creatures or others. For that manner,
Speaker 1: I thought it was all malarkey, bullshit, At least I
Speaker 1: did at one time until that day. I was hooking
Speaker 1: fish out of the river with a gaff hook. This
Speaker 1: is a large piece of steel shaped like a hook,
Speaker 1: as thick as your pinky finger, and attached to a
Speaker 1: six foot pole. I did this so I didn't have
Speaker 1: to go into the water as much. I had been
Speaker 1: catching fish most of the day. I had a good
Speaker 1: catch held up off the ground between two trees. They
Speaker 1: were twenty feet off the ground and held by a rope.
Speaker 1: The rope was made of thick hemp. I just caught
Speaker 1: a good forty pound fish and was coming back to
Speaker 1: my cash of fish when I noticed the line was
Speaker 1: no no longer where I placed it. I remember looking
Speaker 1: between the trees, dumbfounded they were not there, nor was
Speaker 1: my rope. As I came closer to the trees, a
Speaker 1: smell like rotten wet dirt mixed with urine and blood
Speaker 1: hit my nose and made me stop in my tracks.
Speaker 1: That copper tone of blood is what made me stop.
Speaker 1: It had to be wolves. Wolves are known to roll
Speaker 1: in the mud and blood after fighting for a place
Speaker 1: at a kill. My head was on a swivel as
Speaker 1: I looked around, and I pulled my thirty six to ready,
Speaker 1: but paused as I noticed the tracks around the trees
Speaker 1: were those of a person. Though they were bigger. They
Speaker 1: appeared to be barefoot, but maybe I was reading them wrong.
Speaker 1: It wasn't uncommon for tribal members to take fish and
Speaker 1: take them back to town if they found them in the
Speaker 1: woods unattended. Knowing that, I followed the trail to catch
Speaker 1: up with them and get my fish back, or at
Speaker 1: least be compensated well. After a few steps, I had
Speaker 1: to stop because none of this made any sense. The
Speaker 1: stride for this person was too long. I was walking
Speaker 1: in damp earth and the tracks were clear, but every
Speaker 1: three steps I took was one stride for this being.
Speaker 1: Given the size of these tracks. I assessed my losses
Speaker 1: and I went back in and decided to head close
Speaker 1: to my cabin and fish there. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: meet this person or thing on the trail whatever it was.
Speaker 1: When I was close to my camp, I went to
Speaker 1: retrieve my three point fifty seven. The one thing that
Speaker 1: kept hitting me was the feeling of being watched. I
Speaker 1: learned long ago not to ignore my gut, so I
Speaker 1: kept looking around from time to time. The scent of
Speaker 1: blood and dirt kept hitting me as I went about
Speaker 1: my business, and I decided to smoke as many fish
Speaker 1: as I could. The smoke would keep the bears and
Speaker 1: wolves at bay for enough time. I then went into
Speaker 1: town in case someone was messing with me, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk to the tribal chief at the time
Speaker 1: and see if anyone knew what was going on. When
Speaker 1: I spoke to the man, he actually looked at me
Speaker 1: in the eyes without a blink. He said, you're lucky,
Speaker 1: you're alive. Okay, here's another one of those words. You're
Speaker 1: a yearly. You're a yearly, you are a y u
Speaker 1: l I will kill you, he said. I think that
Speaker 1: stands for Bigfoot. So he said, you're lucky, you're alive.
Speaker 1: Bigfoot will kill you. I asked him what do I do,
Speaker 1: and I will never forget his words. He said, go home,
Speaker 1: fish and hunt, but leave some for him. Then he
Speaker 1: will leave you alone. Well, I retorted, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't believe all this bullshit, and he said you will,
Speaker 1: and then he asked me to leave. After two days
Speaker 1: of fishing and hunting, nothing happened. I would fish and
Speaker 1: leave one for every two I caught, for every animal
Speaker 1: I hunted or trapped, and I would leave a portion
Speaker 1: hanging in a tree. To be honest, I didn't take
Speaker 1: it very seriously. But on the third day, I decided
Speaker 1: to start early, so I got up and had some
Speaker 1: pickled eggs and meat. I came out the door and
Speaker 1: I could smell it. It was hot copper and the
Speaker 1: smell of fresh blood. I looked around and thirty feet
Speaker 1: from my cabin, there it was as plain as day,
Speaker 1: looking right at me. And I'll never forget that look
Speaker 1: on this creature's face. I don't know why, but I
Speaker 1: spoke to him. For some reason. I wasn't scared, hello,
Speaker 1: I said, He just stared at me with a stone face.
Speaker 1: He was big, at least nine feet tall, if not tall.
Speaker 1: He was covered in shaggy hair, was white to gray
Speaker 1: with some black mixed in here and there. He had
Speaker 1: the look of a bodybuilder through all that hair. I
Speaker 1: know it was just a few moments, but I swear
Speaker 1: he nodded at me, and I'm not sure, but I
Speaker 1: know one thing. He did smile and showed his teeth,
Speaker 1: and they looked like ours, but they had pronounced canines.
Speaker 1: I was shocked when he spoke something to me, and
Speaker 1: what I found out was Inuit. He moved his arm
Speaker 1: out to its sides and then turned and walked away.
Speaker 1: It moved gracefully, without a sound, and this chillney to
Speaker 1: the bone. The tribal group here called them the silent Death,
Speaker 1: and now I knew why. I waited a bit and
Speaker 1: gathered some things. Looking around as I did, I found
Speaker 1: a grizzly bear at the foot of my cash and
Speaker 1: it was dead. Its blood was the smell that I
Speaker 1: was tasting in the air. It was a fresh kill,
Speaker 1: and the jaws were pulled apart from the head. And
Speaker 1: when I tried to tell the chief about it, he
Speaker 1: was as dismayed as I was. But he told me
Speaker 1: that it called me brother and said the land will provide.
Speaker 1: But he said this as a warning too, and I
Speaker 1: was just meet to this being. When I returned to
Speaker 1: my cabin, the bear was gone, but in its place
Speaker 1: was a caribou with its neck broken. Until I was married,
Speaker 1: I left half of my kill for these beings out
Speaker 1: of respect as well as fear. I believe that there
Speaker 1: are tribes of these things, each different just as we are,
Speaker 1: but in their own unique way. Lucky I never had
Speaker 1: to hunt them, but I have heard rumors that our
Speaker 1: government does regularly,