Speaker 1: One summer morning a few years back, two friends Dan
and Josiah went hiking deep into a canyon just outside
of town. Their plan was to build a large teepee
like structure using fallen timber. It would be a gift
to the area's Sasquatch people. They arrived at their destination
about three miles out of town and pulls to look around.
By the looks of things, they'd probably need to venture
a bit farther up the mountain and deeper into the
woods for enough material for the structure. They blazed a
trail as they made their way, adding another quarter to
half a mile to the track before they came upon
a fairly level clearing with a tree stump near the
middle of it. It was the perfect location for their gift.
They split up and started collecting skinny ten to fifteen
foot tall timber two erect into the structure around the
tree stump. The stump would act as a table within
the teepee. The door or the opening was about five
or six feet tall. Once the structure was in place
and standing on its own, they filled the gaps with
smaller sticks and branches and leaves to help keep the
rain out. When they were done, they left a granola
bar on the stump and headed back down the mountain.
After they arrived at their car, they packed up and
began their slow drive back out of the canyon. Just
when they were about to make the bend in the road,
something moving up on the ridge caught their attention, and
it was the ridge that they were just on. There
running on the ridge was a reddish, brown haired sisquatch,
quickly making its way down the mountain towards them. When
the creature reached the edge of the hill and saw
the car, it stopped and just looked at them. As
they looked back at it, and as if it realized
they'd seen it, it morphed into a tree, blending into
the rest of the hillside. One second, it was standing there.
In the next instant, it was a small pine tree.
Was it a sort of defense mechanism or camouflage technique.
Was it something they used to remain unseen from prey
in humans. It really didn't matter at that point, as
they'd already seen it. It would be a while before
Dan went camping in that canyon. Everything seemed normal until
one morning he awoke to find a small blue marble
lying next to his sleeping bag. The marble had a
piece of reddish brown hair embedded inside. What did this mean?
Was it a gift from a sosquatch? Months later, Dan
decided to venture out alone for an evening hike up
another forest service road and then head off the trail
to find a remote camping spot. As the crow flies,
the location of this trip's camp site would be no
more than four miles from the clearing him and Josiah
had built that teepee. He didn't have to venture off
the trail for too long before coming upon a nice
level spot perfect for his two person tent. He was
surrounded by tall trees, which served to block out any
noise from town, which was less than a mile below.
It wasn't long before camp was made and his dinner
was gone. For good measure, he backtracked through the woods
to find a tree branch to hang a small bag
of garbage that would hopefully keep any nosy bears distracted
and away from his tent. As he slept. Before turning
in for the night, he pulled a canister of bear
spray out of his pack and grabbed a book for
some light reading. Nearly an hour later, he rolled over
and turned out the light and went to bed. Sometime
during the early morning hours, he was jolted away by
a deep rumbling feeling coming from the ground and the
sound of a bulldozer crashing through the trees. It sounded
like it was about fifty yards away and coming towards
his campsite. The rumbling wasn't like an earthquake, but more
like a stampede of horses or cattle running right at him.
But how could that be? He was nestled deep in
the woods and far away from the road, and he
wondered were their free range cattle in the area and
where they possibly spooked or attacked, causing them to run
away from a predator and unknowingly towards him. As the
approaching violence got closer and closer, his sleepy brain was
simply overcome by the trembling ground and loud crashing sound
of the large trees right outside his tent. As he
clenched his bear spray, he closed his eyes and he
braced for an impact, and then everything stopped. Everything suddenly
went quiet and peaceful. He opened his eyes and focused
his hearing as he could sense something at the edge
of the campsite. To the left of his tent. There
was no way he was going to look outside, so
he continued to listen for any clue to what was
out there. It took less than a minute for whatever
was outside to turn around and slowly walk away in
the direction in which it had come. Dan lay in
his sleeping bag, holding his breath. He could feel the
heavy thuds from its feet as whatever it was walked
away on two legs. Needless to stay, Dan didn't go
back to bed. He couldn't sleep. He laid helpless in
his mind, replaying every second of the event over and
over again, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Come morning, he cautiously unzipped his tent and slowly and
quietly climbed out. With every inch, he paused all body
movement and held his breath to scan the left into
the right before climbing out. He was pretty shook up up.
Whatever it was it was gone. There was no visible
destruction within the campsite, and even more alarming, the trail
back to the road was clear of any sign of
violence he'd both heard and felt. Even the garbage bag
was still tied above from the branch. Dan gave a
lot of thought to what happened before telling me about
that wild night. Whatever it was. Once it found me
asleep with the campfire put out properly, it turned around
and it let me be. He said, I hadn't been
making a lot of noise and my fire had been small,
so I'm not sure how it knew where I was.
Dan wasn't the only one to have follow up experiences
During a solo hike. Josiah found himself about a mile
or more outside of town, on the opposite side of
town from where him and Dan had built that teepee.
It was early evening when he set out. As he
hiked parallel to a river, he eventually came upon a
batch of similar tpee tree structures. They had been created
by boy Scouts and varied in sizes and distance from
the trail. Hikers and campers used them as shelters. After
he passed the first structure, he suddenly felt like something
was circling him. It was such a strong feeling it
made him pause to look around to see if he
could see anyone or anything nearby. That's when he felt
the need to look down. There in front of his
feet was an arrowhead, but it wasn't a normal arrowhead.
Josiah is part Native American and has seen a lot
of arrowheads and knows how to make them. This one
was different. Whereas they're usually created using a chipping or
flaking method known as flint napping, this one seemed more
like it was rubbed into shape. By this time, it
was getting dark, so he hiked up to one of
the tea and climbed inside to rest and examine the arrowhead.
While inside, he heard small stones being tossed at the teepee.
He leaned over and stuck his head outside, but he
didn't see anyone. The sound of stones hitting the structure continued,
so he decided to take the hint and move along.
Obviously someone didn't want him there. That's when things got
a bit more strange. As he retreated back down the
slope towards the trail, the stones continued to land all
around him at the trail, and after stopping to look
for the culprit once more, a large piece of tree
bark suddenly manifested from thin air right in front of him.
He said it wasn't there, and then it was. He
watched as it hovered in front of his face briefly
and then fell to the ground. It was as if
someone dangled it in front of him for a moment
and then simply let it fall to the ground. This
freak come out, so rather than continue up the trail,
he decided to quickly backtrack towards town Aways down the trail,
he realized he dropped the cap to his camera. Reluctantly,
he turned back up the trail and used his flashlight
to scan the ground ahead of him. Just as he
spotted it and bent over to pick it up, someone
threw something very large and heavy in his direction. When
it made an impact with the ground, he literally jumped
and yelled, I'm just coming back for this. Josiah then
hastily made his way back into town into his cabin.
That was the last time he's hiked that area alone.
I've been mountain biking my entire life. I love the outdoors.
I had a customed mountain bike made by Seven Cycles
in Massachusetts. It had a titanium frame, a belt drive,
and a fourteen speed roll off gearing. It was very
light and it was incredibly strong. I could ride this
bike anywhere. I decided to do an overnight hammock camping trip.
I thought I would use the mountain bike right out
of my house, and five miles down the road is
a two hundred acre wildlife refuge laid in the fall.
The woods in Connecticut are very beautiful, so this would
be a gorgeous trip. People drive from all over the
country to see the golden display of the fall leaves.
I loaded my bike with twenty pounds of gear, food, water,
and my camera and a carbon tripod. I had thought
that I would try some low light photography and see
how it came out. It was getting dark in another
ninety minutes, so I brought my helmet and handlebar led lights.
The handlebar light is seventeen hundred lumens, and I can
ride at night just as fast as I can during
the day. The helmet is nice because it always points
where you're looking. I rode into the woods, and I
took about an hour and fifteen minutes to get far
enough in so that I wouldn't have to worry about
anyone seeing me. After, I dragged my bike and my
gear up a big hill to get more than a
three hundred feet off the trail to find a good spot.
By that time it was dark. There were two trees
twenty feet apart with no widow maker dead limbs on them,
and I strung my hammock between them. I put a
tarp above the hammock. It was a nice night, so
I tied the sides of the tarp up so I
could see three hundred and sixty degrees. I heeded some
water to make coffee. After twenty years in the Navy,
I just can't live without my coffee. And then I
had a snack and it was pitch dark. There was
no moon and no stars to be seen that night.
If I turned off my head lamp, I couldn't see
my hand in front of my face. It's not a
good night for photography regardless. I set up the camera
and took some long exposure shots and got just what
I expected. A picture of black by camping is zero impact.
There is no fire, and I leave the site exactly
as if I had never been there. On past trips,
I learned that the animals know you were there. It
seems to disturb them that a human is hanging out
in their home in the middle of the night, usually
just after dark. The woods come to life and everything
is moving. Some animals are curious and will come close
to see what is hanging between the trees. It tends
to keep you up, but I found it very interesting
because it is amazing how well animals communicate with each other.
The ones that came close would always give out some
kind of sound that was responded to by more than
one distant animal. Small rodents would scurry through the leaves
right underneath you. The dry leaves made it so that
you could hear anything moving well. I climbed into my
hammock and I covered up, and I was comfortable and warm.
My head was on an inflatable pillow so I could
see out. I hung my seventeen hundred loomin handlebar light
just above my head on a ridge line in case
something big came in close. This night was different. There
wasn't a sound. I was in the middle of a
wildlife refuge and I couldn't hear a thing. My ears
are very good. I was a sonar technician and my
ears were tested quarterly by the Navy. My hearing tests
indicate that when I retired, my ears were just as
sensitive as they were when I was seventeen years old.
The unusual quiet was disturbing. Well, I got bored and
I closed my eyes and I dozed off. I was
awakened a few hours later by movement. There was something close,
rustling in the leaves. I heard a distant chattering to
the south, which was answered by the same to the north,
and then the third chatter that was close to the west.
After many minutes of quiet, a fear suddenly came over me.
It was a fear that I never in my life
have experienced. I've served on submarines. I survived an onboard
fire and a couple of loss of depth controls close
to test depth, and I can tell you that the
fear that I felt that night brought back those memories
because it was so strong. The difference was that this
time was the fear in my head and it was
not in my gut. It gave me goose bumps all
over my body. I retrieved my hanging light from the
ridge line and made sure my thumb was on the
switch whatever was out there. If it got too close,
it was going to get blinded by that light. I
was unarmed, so the light and my leathermen were all
I had. The next thing I knew I heard steps approaching.
There were two steps at a time, approaching from the
east and then there was a long pause the paws
between the steps, and adrenaline through my veins. This time
they were walking right toward me, and I knew it
was there. This went along for what seemed like forever,
and then I heard two steps followed by what sounded
like a massive log hitting the ground hard enough to
reverberate the earth underneath, making it sound hollow. I managed
to stay in my hammock after I was startled by
that thump, and then I was wondering if I had
the courage to let this thing get any closer. I'm
guessing the first thump was fifty yards away. Each additional
step were followed by the same loud thump. This thing
was trying to get a start out of me. The
camera was on the bag on my bike, and I
was too clumsy to use my phone at the same
time as the light. I would be dropping my light
and I decided against getting the shot. When I got
to the point that I felt it was six steps
from me looking into my hammock, I turned that light on.
It was so bright that I could see the dust
floating in the air. I saw two eyes. They were
red and they were really high off the ground. The
eyes drop low and then swung back and forth. All
I could see was the eyes, no antlers, no tann fir,
just eyes. The eye swung back and forth, seeming to
try to get out of the intense light. It seemed
like forever, but after a few seconds, I decided to
give the animal one out and I shut the light off.
Whatever this was, it took off like a rocket. I
could hear every massive, powerful footstep and branches snapping as
it blindly trudged to the north. In seconds, this thing
was at least a half a mile away before I
could no longer hear it. Well, it got quiet and
I calmed down, and I thought wow, and then I
dozed back off. I woke up just after sunrise. I
never sleep long. I was surprised it was being light already.
I checked the area out where the creature had approached.
There was a huge bush in that direction with no
leaves left on it. Whatever this thing was, there was
no place for it to hide. Therefore, I am perplexed.
While I only saw the eyes. Looking at my camp
area for the first time in daylight, I realized that
I had hung my hammock right in the middle of
a very heavily traveled animal path. Honestly, I can't say
what those eyeballs belonged to. I still go hammock camping,
and I've never had any experience like this again. When
I was nine, my sister and I, along with two
of our aunts who were our age, decided to explore
or a concrete ditch that ran alongside my great grandmother's
house near Memphis. We used a rope to propel down
and then walked along until we came to a covert.
We looked inside, but couldn't see daylight from the other end,
just a black, empty space. I wanted to explore this
cave like structure and maybe get a good scare on
the girls at the same time, as kids will do,
I dared them to go in to see who would
go the farthest or stay the longest. They dared me back,
and with pride on the line and no one wanting
to be the one who chickened out, we all stepped inside.
The eerie feeling we all had was overpowering. I was
certain the girls wouldn't last long in this environment, and
I would surely win. After fifty yards, one of my
aunts said Jim, what's that. I looked deeper into the
darkness and I saw a set of glowing red eyes
walking in our direction. A reasoned that it must be
a cat or a dog, and that the eyes were
catching the light from the opening behind us. But I
also knew that if I made it out to be
bigger than it was, the girls would run and i'd win.
I was done exploring this place anyway. I just needed
to turn the fear up a little bit and I
would be the victor. It was working. The closer the
eyes got, the more frightening they became. And then I
noticed that whatever was connected to those eyes was getting
bigger and bigger. I think it was on all fours
at first, and then it began to stand up. Okay,
I thought dogs and cats don't walk on two legs.
That was when my sister and ants gave up the ghost.
They spun around and they ran screaming from the cave,
yelling back to me to run. I just stood there.
I guess I was waiting for them to get further away.
I knew I could outrun them, and I didn't want
one of them to get I just kept standing there,
hoping to stall it. Or something. I waited longer than
I should have, and it came at me, quickly, overtaking me.
As I ran backwards towards the entrance, I could hear
the girl screaming somewhere behind me, and I screamed back
for them to get help. This thing, so tall it
had to stand hunched over to keep from hitting its
head on the ceiling of the colvert, towered over me,
shrouding me in the heavy mist of its breath and
stench of its fur, and it glared down at me.
I'm dead, I thought. I stood still, and my eyes
were closed, my arms and legs were shaking, and I
was waiting to become this thing's next meal. And then
it made a rattling noise, almost like a coup or
a purr. The fear started to subside. I found it
in me to start backing away slowly that furs, and
then a little faster. When I backed far enough, I
turned and bolted as fast as I could, and I
hit daylight like a runner breaking through a ribbon. At
the end of the race, the girls were up ahead,
scurrying up a rope that we'd use to climb down.
I grabbed it and pulled myself to safety. I was
frantic to get away from this thing. I wasn't sure
if I was going to make it. We ran to
our parents hysterically telling them about the culvert, the red eyes,
and the four legged animal that stood up on two feet.
You stay out of that ditch, was all they said.
They didn't believe us. Years later, I must have been
thirteen or fourteen, it was carnival time in Memphis. The
Mid South Fair was a big deal and I went
every year. A couple of weeks before it started, I
checked out a book at the library that was all
about the lock Ness Monster and other cryptid After my experience,
I was fascinated with this subject. In the back of
the book was a story and a picture of the
Patterson Gimlin Bigfoot. My jaw dropped at the sight, even
though I'd been too afraid to look up that day
in the culvert, it seemed like this is what I
had seen. It made me wonder how many people have
ever seen these things, and without any form of reference,
they just never knew what they were looking at. That year,
at the fair, the freak show was boasting one particular
exhibit claiming to be a dead Bigfoot on ice. Most
people don't remember or maybe even know that until recently,
as the nineteen eighties, freak shows were a common element
of carnivals, fairs, and circuses around the world. These attractions
were always fakes, a mix of plaster, makeup, costume, and
lighting designed to extract money from the fairgoers, post and
nothing else. I had no doubt that the Bigfoot behind
this curtain was as fake as the mermaid behind the next.
Curiosity got the best of me, though, and I paid
for my ticket and I went in to have a look.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. It was bad.
I looked around and I saw others holding their noses.
I recognized it. Looking at this thing, I began to
reason with myself. It had to be fake. If a
man had shot it, he'd be in jail. This thing
is just a big, hairy humanoid. I focused on the
bullet wound visible in its chest. It all looked too real. Well,
my time was up and I had to move on,
but what I had seen was disturbing. I couldn't forget it.
The next year, the fair was back, and I was
still obsessed. This year, I brought a magnifying glass with
the hope that the Bigfoot exhibit would be there. I
was not disappointed. First, I examined the bullet wound. I
could clearly see through the ice and the jagged tear
where it had entered the creature's chest. It all looked
very real. Its skin appeared to have poorers, the hair
seemed to sprout from individual follicles. There was dirt under
the fingernails and toenails. It was even quite obviously a male.
I would pay to see this thing three more times
that year. The next year it was back, and so
was I. This time, I'd used a set of medical
encyclopedias to familiarize myself with the effects of gunshot wounds,
dermal layers, hair growth, and anything else I could learn
about anatomy that might prove this to be a fake.
On the other hand, I also studied makeup artistry in prosthetic. Again,
I paid to see the thing multiple times, and again
I could not find a flaw. Even the fingernails and
the toenails had lateral ridges with cuticles. I'm convinced it
was real.