Speaker 1: I was about fifteen years old and the youngest of three.
My older siblings had both moved out for their own reasons,
but I thought that I could never leave. My father
owns a small parcel of acreage surrounded by my late
grandfather's land of about twenty five acres a mile outside
of Hurricane, West, Virginia. I have hunted my whole life
in these woods and the adjacent properties. This land is
full of caves, cliffs, and hillsides so thick with bush
in some places you can't shoot one hundred yards even
in the wintertime when the leaves are gone. It was
and still is my home. I don't live there with
my father anymore, but I still hunt and sometimes trap
on the property. It's as much a part of me
as my two year old son. Late one night, we
just got back to the house after helping my father's
new girlfriend move. We got out of the car and
stopped in our tracks. We heard the most god awful
yelping and growling coming from a big hillside field that
used to be a horse pasture on the opposite side
of the house. I took off running around the house
and got there before my dad. We had three little
dogs at the time. One was a rat terrier and
the other two were Chihuahuah mixes. Blinded by the mix
of house lights and darkness, I almost tripped over a
coyote trying to eat one of them. They were spinning
in circles, jaws locked together and growling up a storm. Instinctively,
I grabbed onto the leg of my dog and tugged
him away from the coyote, and I tossed him a
few feet behind me. At that moment, another coyote stormed
through the brush to my right, and he plowed into
the other coyote. They were both back on their feet
in an instant and running up the old logging trail,
an old barn built by my great grandfather from start
to finish. The whole thing couldn't have lasted more than
ten seconds. Once the codes were gone, I realized the
dog they'd grab was Rocky, the smallest of the three.
It ran quickly by my dad, who seemed to have
walked around the house instead of running. I looked back
up at the barn and saw something else. It was
another set of eyes. They were eight feet up a
tree on the far hillside left of the barn. There
was just enough light from my grandmother's house to illuminate
one side of the tree. The eyes were huge, and
they were far apart. They shined with a different shade
from the light on the trees from the house. The
house light was more of a yellow light, while the
eyes were a dark red color. I didn't think it
could be eyes at first, and then it blinked. As
soon as it blinked, it turned its head towards the light.
It was still hidden in the shadows of the tree,
but I never lost sight of those eyes. The head
turned away and then it turned back, never losing their glow.
Do you see that, I asked my dad. He responded
with get inside now. I still wasn't sure he was
seeing what I was seeing, so I asked him again, Dad,
did you see that? He was holding open the door,
and he said firmly, get inside now. I sat in
my room with the lights on and the blinds closed
the rest of the night. My room was on the
side of the house that everything had just happened, but
the window faced the wrong direction, so I couldn't look
out in the field. My window was seven feet off
the ground, and I felt like a sitting duck. That
thing I saw would have had to bend down to
get in. Every minute of that night is burned into
my mind. Waiting for the sunrise may have been the
worst part. I'm twenty five years old now and I
hunt hard. Every year. I go out before sunrise and
I stay out until my girl summons me home. I
have also become an avid Bigfoot researcher. It's become somewhat
of a religion more than a hobby. I do construction
with my uncle and my brother. They're far from believing
in anything of the sort, so I don't talk about it.
I feel like telling you the story will help me
relieve my need to tell my story. On a side story,
my mother is a spiritual woman, a green witch for
lack of a better term. She has many friends of
various calibers. One day she told me she had bought
a gift for someone from an old friend of hers,
and that the woman was coming to deliver it. My
mother said she had a story to tell us from
back when they were teens. I'm not much of one
to sit around and listen to my mother's friends stories.
But the lady arrived and this is the story that
she told. When she was seventeen. She and a handful
of other kids went out on her family's farm way
back in the woods. They had a big bonfire and
a small bowl shaped valley surrounded on all sides by forest.
They were listening to music and letting all firecrackers and
making all kinds of noise when a bipedal creature covered
in hair crept down the hillside and into the light
of the fire. She said. It was covered in long,
brownish hair and looked like an old man with a
long beard, but without a mustache. It was six feet
tall and walked with its arms up like a t rex.
It was acting curious like a child. I was glued
to every word of this woman's story, and I was
taking in every detail, she said. The other kids were
getting scared, so they started throwing firecrackers at it. Can
you believe that I would have given anything to have
been there that night. I've I've had numerous unexplained experiences,
and I found tracks at the creek not too far
from my home. Actually, tracts are everywhere around here. I
hope you don't mind my cruddy typing abilities and can
tell my story. I hope everyone who has a story
will come to your page and tell it. Thank you
so much, Cam, I hope you're having an awesome new year.
An avid listener and subscriber thanks Brandon to live in
a small coastal village in Alaska on the Keenai Peninsula.
The name of the village is Nanuelik. Most of the
people from here originally came from infamous Port Chatham or
port Lock. Sidequatch are known around here as the Nantina
n a n t i Naq. Carol says it is
pronounced Nantina, but it could be Nantinac Nantanac, I guess,
and they're part of their culture and their lives. He writes,
it's common for people to witness things, and ever since
I was young, I've heard stories from elders and community
members about these things. The creature is believed to be
a big factor in the abandonment of the fishing village
of Portlock. This event happened to me in early May,
when I was seventeen. The snow finally began melting, so
black bears were out. Everyone's freezers were running low at
the end of winter, and we needed meat. My cousin
and I headed out on a four wheeler toward a
nearby bay eleven miles away, and we were hearing the
black bears were in the area. Many had already been taken,
and we searched the area and we came up with zero.
We moved on to other areas looking for signs for bears,
but again we found nothing. It had been a long
day and we were tired, so we headed toward home,
hoping the next day would be better. We were getting
close to home. I wasn't paying attention much. It was
a long ride. Now. I lifted I had and looked
at a mountain that we were approaching, and I saw
a black figure contrasted against the snow. Is that bear
in range? I asked my cousin, Well, it looks like it.
He said, that's the biggest black bear I've ever seen.
I told him I'm gonna take a shot. I found
a good rest and got the bear in my scope,
and then I decided the shot was too far. We
didn't want to cripple bear in the area. It's getting dark.
Take the shot. My cousin said, you've made shots like
that before. Kill that bear so we can get home
with some meat. I settled back in and I squeezed
off around the animal never flinched. I obviously had not
hit my target. Now I was determined to take this bear,
so I began to move closer. My path straight to
the bear was blocked by a thick stand of alders,
and there was no way I was going to get
through all that tangle of vegetation. I'll clear a path
for you with the four wheeler, my cousin said, you
can move behind me, and plus it'll make it easier
getting the bear out. He headed straight into the brush,
plowing down a path for me to come in behind him.
After a hard one hundred yards, the brush cleared and
the area began to open, and I could still see
the bear. It had not moved. I still didn't feel
confident in my position. I needed to get a bit closer,
and I kept moving, looking for the right angle to
take the animal. With all the noise and commotion we
were causing, I expected not to see the bear, but
it remained. It was black as coal against the dirty
spring snow. I kept moving forward, and soon I was
in a thick stand of berries, and throughout the short walk,
I had looked up several times to make sure the
bear was still there, and again he had never moved.
Even though it was difficult to see through the maze
of branches that I was now trudging through, I would
stop every few steps and listen. Up until this point,
all had been quiet except for the noise my cousin
was making for their back. Once I stopped, I heard
footsteps all around me. Leaves were crunching, and branches were snapping.
I called back to my cousin to see what he
was doing, but he never answered. A step later I
heard him start the four wheeler, and I knew the
noise I was hearing wasn't him. Well. I wrote it
off as local wildlife getting out of there while the
human invaded their space, and I kept moving until the
area cleared once again. In front of me stood the mountain.
While taking a breather, I looked up to find the
bear and it was gone. While I started to climb.
It couldn't have moved that far, and maybe I could
move in on the animal within a short distance. I
was back into a stand of berries again, and if
the bear had been right in front of me, I
wouldn't have seen it. Halfway up the slope, I heard
the noises again and animals moving around me. Leaves were crunching,
and branches again were snapping. Something was moving in front
of me, and it was coming my way. It was
not getting out of the area of the human. In
my mind, it had to be that bear, and it
was about to walk right into me. But whatever it was,
it was big and it was moving fast. But behind
me I heard the same noises. Were there are two bears,
I thought. I chose an angle to move that avoided both,
and I headed up the slope again, stopping to catch
my breath every few yards. I saw another clearing ahead,
and I picked up my pace because if I could
get there, I would have a good field of fire
if something were tracking me. It would also get me
out of these berry tangles and give me a chance
to rest before the action started. So I waited and
I waited, and nothing came into view. Soon I began
to relax, thinking the crisis was over. So I found
a rock and I sat down. The silence was almost
as unnerving as the noises I heard. Now looking down
the slope to the clearing at the base of the mountain,
I saw my cousin burst into that clearing, waving his
hands and screaming my name. Now, he's not a dramatic
person and he's not much for talking, so this was
unusual seeing him behave in this way. It was obvious
that he couldn't find me. So I removed my hoodie
and I raised it with a stick and I started
waving it in the air like a flag so he
could see me. With me now located, he sprinted the
distance I had just walked up the slope in five minutes.
It had taken me twenty minutes. Shaking and sweating, he said,
I couldn't stay in that brush. Something's in there and
it's big. There were several of them. Have you ever
felt like you were being stalked? Well, that sent chills
down my spine, and even though I was nervous, I
tried to stay as calm as possible. Okay, I said,
forget this bear, let's get off this mountain and get home.
I've been hearing the same noises. His eyes were wide open,
and he kept nodding as if to say, let's go.
We were in the last ten minutes of daylight and
we needed to move fast. To get to the four wheeler.
We would have to walk the way that we had
come through the area. We had both heard large animals
that we felt like were stalking us. Together, we ran
down the slope at a pace that wouldn't get us hurt.
And at the bottom of the slope, where the ground
somewhat leveled out, I pointed to the left and I
said this way. No, it's to the right. My cousin
yelled in a panic, and off he ran. I felt
like either path would probably get us in sight of
the ATV, so I stayed to the left and I
ran like hell. It was dark by now, and the
thicket was difficult to maneuver through, and I was tired
and disoriented, but I kept running. At one point I
had to stop and catch my breath. And then even
over the heaving I could hear those things around me
stomping around and moving. The sounds seemed more aggressive now,
as if the predator was about to make its move,
So I kept going. That's all I could do. I
wasn't gonna quit when I had energy left. The thicket
went on and on, and I knew there was no
way I was headed in the right direction. Earlier, I
had moved through this area much faster at a walk.
Now I was running and I could not break out
of it, so I had to stop and call for
my cousin up to my right, and on the road
I heard him go back to me. It was one
hundred yards. I thought I can make that now. I
lowered my head and I bull through the branches and
brambles at full speed until I finally hit the open ground.
Just up the bank was my cousin sitting on the ATV,
waving his arm for me to hurry up. Within seconds
we were full throttle headed toward home. My parents had
been worried about us, and we stood in the kitchen
retelling the story. There was a long silence until my
father told us both to sit at the table. They
spent several minutes telling us the story of the Nantina
and the little people who live on that mountain. Many
people had heard and seen them. We believe we had
been stalked or chased from the area by a bigfoot.
Now well, in bed that night, I heard something at
my window, shuffling and scraping, and then a knock. There
were no trees close to my bedroom window, so it
wasn't that. And then there were more knocks, and than
I heard the window being raised, as if something were
trying to get in. I had left it cracked that
night just to get some air. I jumped from my
bed and ran to the window, and I slammed it shut.
And I would endure this for several nights. I wasn't
getting any sleep, and I was always tired. On the
last night, the knocking started and I could plainly hear
something trying to open my window. And I had had enough,
and once again I jumped from the bed and I
ran outside with a light to confront this creature, but
nothing was there. The next day, I pulled a tape
measure from the sill to the ground. The dimension was
thirteen foot six What size of an animal would it
take to reach from the ground up thirteen foot six inches. Finally,
I told my parents about the thing at the window,
and they didn't believe me. I told a few friends,
and they didn't believe me either. I was beginning to
think I was nuts until I heard you telling stories
from others with similar situations. Now. I don't know if
sharing this story on your podcast will help me, but
it feels good to share it with people who have
an open mind.