Speaker 1: And these people that claim or carry themselves without actually
claiming to be an expert, a bigfoot expert. I mean,
come on, what the hell is a bigfoot expert? There
is no such thing as an expert when it comes
to bigfoot.
Speaker 2: They know in an instant that you were in the woods.
There is no hiding from them, There is no being
quiet or sneaking up on them. As soon as you
walk in the woods. Do you walk in their front
door thinking that you are going to surprise them? You're
only kidding yourself.
Speaker 1: We have got to get it out of our heads
that anecdotal evidence is not evidence. The best way, in
my opinion, that we have to learn about these creatures
right now is by listening to and talking to those
that have experiperience them, those who have witnessed them and
experienced them in their own environment.
Speaker 2: We do what we do to try to bring awareness
to this topic, to be an open door for somebody
to walk through, to be able to share their story,
a listening ear, a support hold for those who have
had their own encounters with that which is not supposed
to exist.
Speaker 1: We've got to open our eyes, people, there is something
out there. All of these thousands of people that have
seen something. They're not all aligned, they're not all crazy.
There are some very reputable, good people out there that
have seen something.
Speaker 2: I never really believed in bigfoot. I'm sure you hear
that all the time. Growing up in western Pennsylvania, we
heard the stories, shadowy shapes in the woods every house
at night, footprints where no man should have been walking barefoot.
But like most people, I figured it was just old
hunters trying to keep kids from trespassing, or drunks telling
tales by the fire. That changed in October of twenty eighteen.
At the time, I was working for a local environmental
group doing conservation work in some of the reclaimed wilderness areas.
One such place was dead Man's Hollow, an old industrial
site turned nature preserved near the river. A lot of
folks said the place was haunted. Supposedly people died there
in the still mill days, and hikers reported strange lights
and whispers. Honestly, I thought it was just urban legend
wrapped in campfire smoke. That Saturday started normal enough. I
was alone, hiking deep into the hollow to check on
some camera traps we had set up along some game trails.
It was late afternoon. The sky was gray and heavy
and the wind was sharp, with that dying leaves smell.
I didn't bring a gun. I didn't think I needed one,
just my pack, my tools, and my GPS. By the
time I reached the third camera, things fell off. The
woods had gone too quiet. No bird song, no squirrels chittering,
not even the drone of distant highway traffic, just my
own breath and the crunch of leaves under my boots.
Then I noticed the smell. It hit like a wet
sack of road kill. Something rotten, sour and musky all
at once. I thought maybe I'd stumbled on a dead deer.
That's when I saw the first footprint. It was in
the mud next to the stream, bigger than my boot
by a long shot, maybe seventeen inches long, broad at
the heel toes, splayed wide, no shoe tread, just skin
toes and deep impressions like something heavy had come through.
I told myself it was a bear, a big one.
I even laughed out loud to break the tension, but
the hairs on my neck were not buying it. I
kept moving, got to the camera, swapped the card, turned
to head back and froze across the stream. Maybe fifty
yards up the slope, stood something watching me. Tall, broad,
covered head to toe in dark, matted hair. It wasn't
a bear. It stood upright, shoulders slumped forward, arms long
enough that its fingertips brushed its thighs. The head sat
low between the shoulders, and even from that distance, I
could see the eyes, deep set, dark, and fixed right
on me. For what felt like a full minute, neither
of us moved. My brain couldn't process it fast enough. Fight, flight, freeze,
all tangled up inside of me. Then it huffed, not
a growl, not a roar, a short, sharp breath, like
a grunt of warning. It turned, melted into the undergrowth
and was gone. I didn't run, not at first. I
walked fast, but careful, trying not to trip or make
a noise. Once I hit the old access road, I
broke into a sprint. Back at my truck. I sat
there with the doors locked, shaking until the sky went
fully dark. I still had to drive out of those woods.
Every shadow looked alive, the kicker When we pulled the
SD cart from that camera the next week, the last
photos showed deer raccoons, the usual, then one shot just
after four point thirty PM of something tall, hairy and
humanoid stepping through the trees. Blurry, sure, but unmistakable. I
quit that job a month later. I haven't been back
to Dead Hollows dead Man's Hell since, and I believe now,
I believe that something is out there. I grew up
in rural Washington, just outside of a town called Morton,
right on the edge of the Gifford Pinched National Forest.
My family owned a little cabin up near Elk Creek,
deep enough in the woods that cell service was nonexistent,
and the closest neighbor was about half mile through dense timber.
That cabin was my dad's pride, hand built by him
and his brother in the late seventies, back when they
logged these woods. When he passed away, the place sat
empty for years until I decided to clean it up
and use it as a weekend getaway spot. This happened
in September of twenty twenty, just after Labor Day. I'd
gone up alone to do some repairs. The first couple
of days were uneventful. Morning spent patching the roof, afternoons
fishing Elk Creek. At night, I'd sit on the porch,
drink a beer, listen to the frogs and owls, and
feel a kind of peace I hadn't known for years.
But on the third night something changed. Around two am,
I woke up to the sound of footsteps, heavy ones,
circling the cabin, not a deer, not without weight. Every
few seconds the steps would stop, then I'd hear this low,
rasping breath through the cracks in the log walls. It
just sounded wrong, too big to be human, but too
deliberate to be an animal. I grabbed my flashlight and
crept to the window. I didn't want to shine the light.
At first, part of me thought maybe it was a
bear blinding It would just make things worse. But when
the steps circled around to the front porch, I lost
my nerve. I flipped on the light. Nothing just empty
porch boards, swaying trees beyond. I stayed up till dawn
with my shotgrun across my lap. The steps didn't come back.
The next day I found the footprints in the dirt
by the woodpile, long, bare feet wide as dinner plates,
toesplay deep into the mud. Whatever made them had stood there,
watching me through the window for god knows how long.
I should have packed up right then, but stubbornness kept
me there. I told myself it was just a bear,
or maybe some hiker pulling a prank. That night, it returned,
same time, just past two am, same steps, circling slow,
but this time it didn't stop at the porch. It
came up to the steps. Boards groaned under its weight.
Something leaned against the door, not pounding, just pressing, testing it.
I sat there in the dark, shotgun aimed at the knob,
heart hammering. Then came a sound I'll never forget. A hand,
five fingers slowly dragging across the woodgrain of the door,
nail scratching, testing, almost curious. I didn't move, I didn't speak.
I just waited, barely breathing. After what felt like forever,
it gave this low guttural, almost like a laugh, and
step back down. The next morning I found handprints on
the door, huge smudged in dirt, fingers as thick as sausages,
nails like black claws. I packed up and I have
not been back since. About six months later, I told
this story to an old logger at a diner in Morton.
He didn't laugh, just said that thing's been up there
longer than we have, and you were lucky and just
wanted to look.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more, but the big flop report, We'll
be right back.
Speaker 2: Back. In the summer of two thousand and four, three
friends of mine, Paul, Randy, and Mike, decided to take
a week long backcountry trip into the mountains of Arkans.
They were all seasoned outdoorsmen ex military hunters, no nonsense types.
They weren't out there for ghost stories or thrills. They
wanted to fish, hike, and camp far away from anyone.
They hiked in about twelve miles to a ridge known
as Lonesome Rich, a remote place with no cell service,
no traffic, noise, no people from miles. It's a stretch
of wilderness known for black bear and the occasional cougar.
What it's not known for is bigfoot, or at least
that's what they thought. The first couple of nights went fine, campfire, whiskey,
good laughs, But on the third night things went sideways.
They'd settled into their tents, fire burned down to coals.
Around three am, Randy woke up to something moving through
their camp, not a raccoon, not a deer, something big,
heavy and slow. He said he could hear it breathing.
He sat up and unzumped the tent quietly and shone
his light toward the noise. Just at the edge of
the light stood a figure massive, maybe eight to nine
feet tall, covered in thick dark hair. Shoulders were broader
than any man, and its face wasn't human. Deep set eyes,
flat nose, wide mouthed. It stood there staring back at
him like it had no fear at all. Randy yelled.
The others woke up fast. Paul grabbed his rifle and
stepped out. The creature didn't flinch. It huffed a deep,
chesty sound, then turned and walked off into the tree line.
They didn't sleep for the rest of the night. At first,
they found tracks circling the tent by the firepit, even
near where their food had hung, and they were huge
and barefoot. They decided to cut the trip short packed
up fast, and that's when they realized they weren't alone.
As they hiked out, something paralleled them just off the trail,
hidden in the dense woods. They could hear it breaking branches, breathing,
moving when they moved. Sometimes they caught glimpses between the trunks,
a tall, dark shape, always staying just out of full sight.
Then it got bold. Rocks started flying, big ones, not
rolling down the hill. These were being thrown, crashing through
the trees, landing near their feet, forcing them to pick
up their pace. Mike nearly got his head split open
by one the size of a softball. The creature, or creatures,
because now they were starting to think there was more
than just one, shadowed them for four miles, never revealing
themselves fully, never getting closer than a few dozen yards,
but never letting them leave its woods in peace. The
final straw came at a narrow crossing where the trail
skirted a steep ravine. As they hesitated figuring out the
safest route, a log, a full sized, rotted log, came
crashing down from the slope above, not rolled, thrown. That's
when Paul raised his rifle and fired two warning shots
into the trees. Whatever was up there gave this horrific
guttural scream. This was not a bear, this was not
a man. But it finally retreated into the deeper woods.
They made it back to their trucks, shaking and silent.
None of them have been back since. Paul told me
this story years later, and I asked him flat out,
do you really believe it was Bigfoot. He didn't blink
at me, he didn't smile at me. He just said,
what else could it have been? This story was told
to me by Quinault elder when I worked briefly on
a forestry project in Washington State. The tribe has lived
in those forests for untold generations, and they don't call
it Bigfoot. They call it the watchers or the hidden people.
He told me this story quietly, not like a tale
for tourists, but like something serious, something true. Noah's grandfather,
back in the nineteen forties, was a young man living
near Lake Quinaut. Like all the men then, he hunted, fished,
and respected the land. One autumn, he took his canoe
far up river, higher than usual, into thick cedar forest
where even their people rarely went. He was following elk tracks,
planning to camp for a few nights alone. On his
second night, just before dark, he noticed something strange. No birds,
no insects, not even frogs, just a heavy silence pressing
on the forest. That's when he smelt it wet. Fur earth,
and something sour. He didn't light a fire, instinct told
him not to. As he lay in his blanket under
a lean to, he heard something walking around, slow, deliberate,
and heavy. He stayed still. He said a prayer sometime
past midnight. It spoke, not words, not human speech, a
kind of deep throated rumbling chatter, like two rocks grinding together.
It circled three times, then moved off into the darkness.
At dawn, he found footprints around his camp, huge and barefoot,
like a man's, but wrong, somehow, white with large toes.
He backed up. He didn't hunt, and he paddled home fast.
When he told the old people what had happened, they nodded.
They knew. They said, you went too high. That was
the watchers. You went too far. That is their place,
not ours. They explained something he'd never known. The watchers
aren't animals. They're not bears, they're not apes. They're just
the watchers of the mountains, the keepers of balance. They
don't bother you unless you forget to share respect, unless
you take too much, stay too long, or think that
the forest belongs to you. He wasn't afraid. After that,
he understood. He taught his children and his grandchildren how
to behave in the deep woods. Leave offerings, never mock
the unseen, never whistle after dark, and if you smell
wet fur and silence falls around you leave quietly and respectfully.
They were here before us, he'd say, they'll be here
after we're gone.
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, thank you so much for checking out this
episode of the Bigfoot Report. We appreciate everything that you
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Thank you guys for everything that you do. We love you,
We thank you. We'll talk again soon.
Speaker 3: Through the woods, the pine trees, sway, shadows long at
end of day, Bigfoots call on the whispering breeze, Secrets
kept by a shoot, trees, dog man house beingeth, the
moon echoes in the silent too. Tracks weave fine, but
answers none. A hunt for truth that's just begun. We're
searching past the fire light. Four creatures hidden out of
sight in the forest hardware, Shadows lay seeking see krets
in the twilight. Through the fall a shape did gly
skin walker eyes so wide, legends of Oh, we chase
to night in the dark. Our lanterns bright by the creek,
quil water spill, whispers wry, the winds chill fullest, deep
man tails.
Speaker 2: On toll.
Speaker 3: In this land, the myths of over. We're searching past
the fire light, full creatures hidden out of sight in
the forest, heart where shadows lay seeking seacrets in the twilight.
Speaker 1: Bred in