Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
Speaker 1: on here. Something just kid my dog.
Speaker 2: Something killed your dog, my dog.
Speaker 1: We're flying through the air, over the tree. I don't
Speaker 1: know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm really confused.
Speaker 1: All I saw was my dog coming over the fence
Speaker 1: and he was dead. And once you hit the ground like,
Speaker 1: I didn't see any cars. All I saw was my
Speaker 1: dog coming over the fence. What are you putting? We
Speaker 1: got some wonder or something prowling around out here? Did
Speaker 1: you see what it was?
Speaker 3: Was?
Speaker 1: It was standing enough. I'm out here looking through the
Speaker 1: window now and I don't see anything. I don't want
Speaker 1: to go outside. Jesus quiet, you're back or hello? Hit
Speaker 1: the body out here?
Speaker 2: What went on out there?
Speaker 1: It's thought of a bit of about sixty fort nine.
Speaker 1: I don't know easy of out there? Yeah, the bulking
Speaker 1: right head.
Speaker 2: Oh hey, greetings is Fred and Alaska. Thanks for joining
Speaker 2: me today. What I wanted to share it to you
Speaker 2: today comes from Bernadette known as Bernie. It's been fifty years.
Speaker 2: It's been a long time. She had a homestead at
Speaker 2: one point with her husband. She was a widower at
Speaker 2: the time of this incident. The way it went down
Speaker 2: was is her husband would commercial salmon fish to offset
Speaker 2: the cost of remote living and trying to make a
Speaker 2: homestead going. Many years ago, she lost her husband in
Speaker 2: a fishing accident, so she was left this homestead with
Speaker 2: eight dogs. They didn't have chickens or anything like that.
Speaker 2: They just had sled dogs basically to commute back and
Speaker 2: forth for their water supply, hunting, and all that kind
Speaker 2: of stuff. Now, she was a much younger woman, of course,
Speaker 2: and she's still in the throes of mourning. She was
Speaker 2: having a really rough go of it. She was pregnant
Speaker 2: at the time, but miscarried due to the stress of
Speaker 2: losing her husband, so she was not in the best place.
Speaker 2: She had mentioned that she was at her most vulnerable
Speaker 2: point when these incidents started occurring, which bothers me because
Speaker 2: it's not the first time I've heard it. It started
Speaker 2: off with small harassments and she didn't know what was
Speaker 2: going on. It started off with dogs. Two of her
Speaker 2: dogs went missing. The chains were snapped, and she thought
Speaker 2: they just got into a fight with a black bear
Speaker 2: or something and they broke chains and ran off right.
Speaker 2: Things that she was easily dismissing as life in the
Speaker 2: wilds of Alaska. A few more weeks go on, there's
Speaker 2: other stuff going on. Piles of brush that were piled
Speaker 2: up by her husband at one point were scattered. One morning,
Speaker 2: she made mention several times at a lot of things
Speaker 2: were happening, but she was in the throes of depression
Speaker 2: in mourning that she was just dismissing it offhand, not
Speaker 2: even taking critical thinking time or none of it. Just Oh,
Speaker 2: the wind blew the brush and something ran through. Maybe
Speaker 2: a moose with its antlers was rubbing against it or whatever.
Speaker 2: Grant you, dogs didn't make a noise, which is odd
Speaker 2: because the dogs would always bark at moose or whatever. Again,
Speaker 2: she wasn't in her right space as far as paying
Speaker 2: attention as she should. A few more weeks go by.
Speaker 2: It's salmon season and she has people, of course donating
Speaker 2: fish for her because she just lost a baby, lost
Speaker 2: her husband, going through it right. So the neighbors that
Speaker 2: were five, ten, twelve miles away or whatever, they were
Speaker 2: looking out as best they could. She had processed all
Speaker 2: the salmon and had it in the smokehouse. She was
Speaker 2: tending to it daily. One morning she wakes up to
Speaker 2: dogs yelping. They had eight, they're down to six. She
Speaker 2: gets up to this yelping and it goes outside to
Speaker 2: tell them to knock it off, because there was a
Speaker 2: couple of dogs that were fighting for dominance basically since
Speaker 2: the other two went missing, which were the two dominant
Speaker 2: dogs in that little pack. So these other two had
Speaker 2: been at it and she thought it was just them
Speaker 2: doing that again. When she goes outside, she sees what
Speaker 2: she thought was a very large man at the time
Speaker 2: holding one of the dogs. She yells, hey, let go
Speaker 2: of my dog, and this thing turns and just walks away, nonchalant,
Speaker 2: carrying the dog dog was obviously deceased, just walks off
Speaker 2: into the brush like she didn't exist. And so she
Speaker 2: was just shocked by it, and she thought maybe she had.
Speaker 2: Am I losing my mind? Did that just happen? Kind
Speaker 2: of situation? Right? So she retreats back into the house
Speaker 2: and she's contemplating, I need someone's help. I don't know
Speaker 2: what the hell that thing is, but I need someone's help.
Speaker 2: She doesn't know what to do at the moment, so
Speaker 2: she decides she's going to stay inside keeping She got
Speaker 2: her husband's rifle. She hadn't even thought about guns the
Speaker 2: whole time he had been gone or whatever, even though
Speaker 2: he told her and taught her how to use it
Speaker 2: and everything like that. But so happens her husband had
Speaker 2: forty five seventy right lever action old Marlin. So she
Speaker 2: went and got that, got the ammal for it, loaded
Speaker 2: it up, had it by the door. Now, she went
Speaker 2: out and did her smoking stuff for her salmon. She's
Speaker 2: processing it, doing her thing, and she made a specific
Speaker 2: point to take those guts and go dump them down
Speaker 2: at the river, which was quarter mile away. She had
Speaker 2: the gun inside right inside the door because she's not
Speaker 2: used to it and didn't really want to have to
Speaker 2: use it. She kind of just left it alone and
Speaker 2: had it nearby just in case because she wasn't thinking
Speaker 2: Harry Man when she saw this large man walk off
Speaker 2: with her dog. Again, She's going through a lot emotionally,
Speaker 2: so she was just like, I don't want to shoot
Speaker 2: a neighbor or someone that I didn't recognize in a
Speaker 2: moment that may have been helped me out and I
Speaker 2: didn't even know it or something. Just trying to dismiss it.
Speaker 2: She goes and dumps this bucket of salmon. Carcass's just
Speaker 2: flay out salmon or whatever. When she does that, she
Speaker 2: hears weird huffing. But it's not like anywhere near she said.
Speaker 2: She could hear it back up on a ridge just
Speaker 2: above her house, this weird huffing sound. Or she thought bear.
Speaker 2: She was like, oh, that's a really big bear. So
Speaker 2: she drops her bucket, hauls ass back to the cabin,
Speaker 2: gets inside, grabs a rifle. All the dogs were in
Speaker 2: their little houses. They normally, with bears, they would be
Speaker 2: outside of their houses barking unless the bear came close
Speaker 2: and they've retreated inside and harassed the bear or whatever. Right,
Speaker 2: they never stopped barking at a bear. Whatever this was,
Speaker 2: They weren't barking. They all retreated in their houses, right,
Speaker 2: So she doesn't know what to do. She listens for
Speaker 2: a while. That huffing noise stops, the dogs come back
Speaker 2: out of their houses. Things calm down. She sets the
Speaker 2: rifle down and goes intends to her smokehouse. Now, as
Speaker 2: she's tending to the smokehouse, she hears her dogs start
Speaker 2: growling real, real loud. It was echoing from inside their
Speaker 2: little doghouses, right, So she thought it was odd because
Speaker 2: they were just all outside of their houses she steps
Speaker 2: into the smokehouse less than two minutes, and they're making
Speaker 2: all this noise from inside their individual doghouses. So she
Speaker 2: sticks her head out of the smokehouse and she doesn't
Speaker 2: see anything. It's just quiet. So she gets this eerie
Speaker 2: feeling of being watched and retreats back to the house
Speaker 2: after shutting the door real quick to her smokehouse. She
Speaker 2: gets the house, grabs a rifle, comes back out with
Speaker 2: a rifle, and standing there a minute, looking around, just
Speaker 2: feeling very out of her own skin. She said she
Speaker 2: was scared, but she didn't know of what. She says.
Speaker 2: She went over to her smokehouse and opened some of
Speaker 2: the vent doors on the side where this fish didn't
Speaker 2: get too smokey. So she was tending to that while
Speaker 2: being aware of what's going on around her and trying
Speaker 2: not to feel like she's losing her mind, because she
Speaker 2: was chalking a lot of this up to stress. You're
Speaker 2: over exaggerating this because of that. You're over exaggerating this
Speaker 2: because of this, because she's missing dogs, and if there's
Speaker 2: stuff she's dismissing that, she freely admits she shouldn't have been,
Speaker 2: but it was just too much at the time. So
Speaker 2: when she gets the little event doors open and stuff,
Speaker 2: she said, she retreated back into the house, set the
Speaker 2: rifle up against the inside of the door, left the
Speaker 2: door wide open, and sat on the four little steps
Speaker 2: that came down from the cabin. She said. As she
Speaker 2: was sitting there, she just started talking out loud to
Speaker 2: her deceased husband, basically putting it out there, Hey, what
Speaker 2: do I do? I don't know what to do. I
Speaker 2: think maybe I should leave here. There's nothing here for me.
Speaker 2: It's too hard and stuff like this. Now you got
Speaker 2: to remember, this is fifty years ago. It's been a
Speaker 2: while now. As she is doing this talking out loud,
Speaker 2: she hears voices off in the distance, off to her left,
Speaker 2: which would be down towards the river from the front
Speaker 2: of this cabin. She thought, maybe neighbors are coming. She goes, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll go greet them, thinking happy thoughts like ah,
Speaker 2: maybe my husband and spirit sent some relatives to come
Speaker 2: visit or something. Because she was thinking I should have
Speaker 2: heard a skiff for something, but she didn't. She just
Speaker 2: heard murmuring off in the distance. She thought nothing of it.
Speaker 2: She did, however, grab the rifle because of everything that
Speaker 2: was going on and feeling watched. She felt unsafe, so
Speaker 2: she grabbed the rifle and walks down the trail back
Speaker 2: to where she just a little bit ago dumped the
Speaker 2: fish guts right into the water. Of course, she didn't
Speaker 2: dump them on the ground, but when she gets there,
Speaker 2: the bucket was gone. She saw right where she had
Speaker 2: dropped all the guts and stuff. It was like a
Speaker 2: little bit of an eddye, so the current hadn't swept
Speaker 2: it all away. She noticed that the actual flat out
Speaker 2: sammon themselves, not necessarily the guts and stuff, those were
Speaker 2: all missing, right, And so she's standing there looking around
Speaker 2: trying to figure out where the murmuring was coming from.
Speaker 2: That she heard that drew her down there. And as
Speaker 2: she's doing so, she's holding this gun, and she said
Speaker 2: the gun was bigger than her. She's just a little
Speaker 2: short at the basket lady. So she decides she'll look
Speaker 2: around and start hollering out, hey, I'm over here, I'm
Speaker 2: over here, this is Bernie. No one's responding, and then
Speaker 2: she hears murmuring back towards her cabin, and she just thought,
Speaker 2: what the heck, there's only one trail, and I didn't
Speaker 2: hear anybody go and buy me. So immediately she got
Speaker 2: very paranoid, and she starts walking back down the trail.
Speaker 2: She said, as she was walking, she was trying not
Speaker 2: to think about bad stuff. She was just trying to
Speaker 2: think happy thoughts, to keep the clouds away, kind of mentality.
Speaker 2: And she said, the closer she got, the harder it was.
Speaker 2: She said, just as she was coming through the brush
Speaker 2: on the trail where it opens up and you could
Speaker 2: see where they had cut down trees and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: and they had the doghouses and the smokehouse and stuff.
Speaker 2: She was walking up. There's just a short little trail
Speaker 2: up to the steps of the cabin, she said. When
Speaker 2: she got to that little breakoff from the trail, that
Speaker 2: ran forward, because she had the small house off to
Speaker 2: her left and the short little run to the stairs
Speaker 2: off to her right, and the doghouses in front of her.
Speaker 2: She said, as she stood there, she froze because what
Speaker 2: she was seeing in front of her she couldn't make
Speaker 2: sense of right. So what she saw was four individuals,
Speaker 2: two very small. She thought they were bear cubs initially,
Speaker 2: that's why when she froze, she didn't realize they weren't bears.
Speaker 2: The two smaller ones that looked like bear cubs because
Speaker 2: they were hunched over on all fours or whatever. They
Speaker 2: stood up and then took off into the brush. She
Speaker 2: noticed that when they took off running, there was another
Speaker 2: dog that was dragged by one of them. So she's
Speaker 2: stuck watching this unfold in front of her, trying to
Speaker 2: figure out what she's looking at. And the other two,
Speaker 2: she said, we're about the same size. She didn't know
Speaker 2: how tall they were, but much taller than her, very wide.
Speaker 2: She said, they look like cavemen, caveman without winecloths. I
Speaker 2: asked if she could tell if those male female, and
Speaker 2: she just said they were just there. She had no
Speaker 2: other description other than they look like cavemen and their
Speaker 2: faces were dark, she said. She stood there for a
Speaker 2: second and then slowly was turning the rifle. This rifle
Speaker 2: she couldn't fully put up on her shoulder. She had
Speaker 2: to tuck it under her armpit because she was too
Speaker 2: small to shoulder it properly. So she swung it under
Speaker 2: her armpit and faced it towards these two creatures, and
Speaker 2: they bolted different directions. Gone. She thought again, she was
Speaker 2: losing her mind. She didn't know what to do. She
Speaker 2: retreats into the house, shuts the door, drops the gun
Speaker 2: on the floor, and retreats into a corner behind the
Speaker 2: woodstove and just sits there quietly. She was crying. She
Speaker 2: started saying prayers. At the time she was saying these prayers,
Speaker 2: it wasn't an actual prayer to Jesus or anything like that.
Speaker 2: She was just asking for help, God help me. As
Speaker 2: she was sitting there, bam, bam, she starts hearing this
Speaker 2: pounding going on, and it sounds like it's opposite side
Speaker 2: of the room, on the outside of the cabin. This
Speaker 2: banging is happening. She's petrified, she's froze up. And as
Speaker 2: she's sitting there, she said that she got the overwhelming
Speaker 2: sense that she needed to stand up for herself right.
Speaker 2: She says, she doesn't know where it came from. It
Speaker 2: was just in that moment. She stood up, walked over,
Speaker 2: grabbed the rifle, opened the door, and she said when
Speaker 2: she opened the door, one of the taller ones. She
Speaker 2: doesn't know which one. She's assuming it was one of
Speaker 2: them because that's what she just saw. Moments ago, was
Speaker 2: standing by the smokehouse and was halfway in it. She
Speaker 2: turned the rifle and bam, fired a shot. The scene
Speaker 2: fell to the ground, rolled out of there, stood up,
Speaker 2: and took off, running towards the river. Now, when it
Speaker 2: took off running towards the river, she heard screaming from
Speaker 2: somewhere else. It wasn't screaming from the one she just shot.
Speaker 2: She heard screaming from up on the ridge behind the cabin.
Speaker 2: And as she's standing there and shock like holy crap,
Speaker 2: and she's trying to work that. The lever action sheet
Speaker 2: unchambered the round, but she was having a hard time
Speaker 2: closing it back up because it was pinched up in
Speaker 2: her coat, and so she was working that kind of
Speaker 2: looking down at that and not watching totally around her.
Speaker 2: And then she heard the dump dump right and as
Speaker 2: she's looking, she's just shutting it, putting another round in it,
Speaker 2: and this thing runs by, one of the smaller ones,
Speaker 2: runs by right, just right through the doghouses, past them,
Speaker 2: taking off down towards the river. She didn't know what
Speaker 2: to do, but she was emboldened like you better run,
Speaker 2: but you better run. She goes down the steps hangs
Speaker 2: that left to go down the trail, and as she
Speaker 2: does so, she sees the other one coming out onto
Speaker 2: the trail and taking the smaller one off to the right.
Speaker 2: So the one of the larger ones comes off from
Speaker 2: the left, gets a hold of the smaller one running by,
Speaker 2: and they move off to the right of the trail
Speaker 2: and stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see We'll
Speaker 2: be right back. After these messages, and its thick brush,
Speaker 2: she can't see what they were doing, and she could
Speaker 2: see the one she just shot further down the trail.
Speaker 2: It stopped moving, it was just standing there. So she decides,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna shoot it again, and starts walking down the
Speaker 2: trail that direction. She said, in that moment, all fear
Speaker 2: was blocked out. It was like tunnel vision. She was
Speaker 2: gonna shoot this one again. That was just in the smokehouse.
Speaker 2: She said. She got about two three steps and then
Speaker 2: she heard a loud, howling kind of scream coming from
Speaker 2: the one down the trail. Now where she stopped was
Speaker 2: just where the brush was starting to get heavier, outside
Speaker 2: of where they cleared the area for this cabin, And
Speaker 2: she said when she stopped there, she got down on
Speaker 2: one knee to hold the rifle and try to aim
Speaker 2: down the sights, and she was having a hard time
Speaker 2: with it because she couldn't quite handle it good enough
Speaker 2: to be able to get a good sight picture. So
Speaker 2: she said, she stood up and calm me, started walking
Speaker 2: that way again. The whole time that's happening. The scream
Speaker 2: is happening. This thing is bellowing a scream, real loud.
Speaker 2: And as she's going down the trail, she hears off
Speaker 2: to her right, she hears the other one with the
Speaker 2: little one, and there's weird. She said. It sounded like
Speaker 2: you pick, but she couldn't tell what they were saying.
Speaker 2: And it was that murmuring again, and she said, she's
Speaker 2: listening to that, but she was focused on the ones
Speaker 2: she could see, and she wanted to go over there
Speaker 2: and shoot it again. So as she's going down the trail,
Speaker 2: she said she was very focused to a dumb level.
Speaker 2: Those are her words. She said, I was being very dumb.
Speaker 2: She got about twenty feet into the thicker brush going
Speaker 2: down this trail, and she noticed it was where she
Speaker 2: had dropped the bucket not too much earlier. You got
Speaker 2: to understand, this isn't just right over there. This is
Speaker 2: a good little distance. She could see this thing still
Speaker 2: on the trail further down, She got down on her
Speaker 2: knee again, picked it up, bam, fired a shot, and
Speaker 2: she said, when she shot the second time, this thing
Speaker 2: crumpled down, jumped up, frog hopped a couple times, and
Speaker 2: jumped into the river. She again was working that action
Speaker 2: and held it out a little further away so she
Speaker 2: was able to operate it properly. So she got another
Speaker 2: round in there, and she heard that movement off to
Speaker 2: her right explode the smaller one and one of the
Speaker 2: bigger ones takes off across the trail out of you.
Speaker 2: She only saw it briefly when it was on the trail,
Speaker 2: quickly out of you, and howling sound going on, she said,
Speaker 2: when there was a chorus of howling at least three individuals,
Speaker 2: and she suspects it was two smaller ones and a
Speaker 2: large one just by. Some of it was super high
Speaker 2: pitched and the other had more of a bellow to it.
Speaker 2: And immediately she froze, turned around and went right back
Speaker 2: to the cabin, she said. When she got to the
Speaker 2: cabin steps, she was shaking real hard. Everything was so surreal,
Speaker 2: she said. The greens and all the different hues of
Speaker 2: green seemed to be very vibrant and bright, she felt
Speaker 2: herself going into shock. She didn't know what it was
Speaker 2: at the time, but being older now and explaining it,
Speaker 2: she realized that she was going into shock. At that moment.
Speaker 2: She sat down on the second step from the bottom,
Speaker 2: and she was holding the rifle between her hands and
Speaker 2: she was rocking and crying, not knowing what the hell
Speaker 2: to do, she said. She sat there a good while.
Speaker 2: There was other noises that happened that were down by
Speaker 2: the river, but she couldn't make it out. She would
Speaker 2: just hear it, notice it nothing nearby, so she just
Speaker 2: went back to what she was doing. She said about
Speaker 2: after that last noise she heard that got her attention,
Speaker 2: she said, it had to have been forty five minutes
Speaker 2: to an hour something like that. She hears the skiffs,
Speaker 2: and she hears the skiff coming downriver. The only people
Speaker 2: that usually came downriver where some the closest neighbors come
Speaker 2: check on her right. So she sat there for a
Speaker 2: minute given time, listening for the motor to get closer,
Speaker 2: because she wanted to go and talk to somebody, but
Speaker 2: she was scared of what just happened. So she gets
Speaker 2: up when she assumes she's got time and she'll walk
Speaker 2: down and there'll be someone to meet her there. Because
Speaker 2: she heard the boat slow down and pulling up by
Speaker 2: where they'd tie off skiffs, so she started on down there.
Speaker 2: She said, every step she took was heavier than the
Speaker 2: last one. By the time she got down by the
Speaker 2: river bank, she was using that forty five seventy is
Speaker 2: like a crutch to keep herself up, because she said
Speaker 2: she felt so so heavy. I personally felt that feeling.
Speaker 2: It's hard to fight. So she said, what she got
Speaker 2: down there, she recognized one of the neighbors was up
Speaker 2: on the river bank. He had a rifle in his hands,
Speaker 2: his head of scope. It was his Moose rifle. She
Speaker 2: knelt down and was leaning onto this forty five seventy
Speaker 2: watching him. The neighbor was pointing the rifle off to
Speaker 2: her left and he was just looking through the scope.
Speaker 2: And then he turns he sees her, of course, stops
Speaker 2: what he's doing and runs over to her. She said.
Speaker 2: When he came up, his eyes were real, real big,
Speaker 2: and he goes, that thing's over there. That thing's over there, right.
Speaker 2: He says, come on, you're coming with me. Come on,
Speaker 2: helps her up, and they walked down to where the
Speaker 2: skiff is. He took the rifle from her and helped
Speaker 2: her because she was going through it. Man, the shock
Speaker 2: was sitting in heavy. She was shaking really hard. She says.
Speaker 2: She felt so cold but hot at the same time.
Speaker 2: That got her to the skiff. Her neighbor's wife helped
Speaker 2: her in and their oldest son was with him. They
Speaker 2: both were out of the skiff at this point while
Speaker 2: she's taking to Bernie asking her what's going on? Them
Speaker 2: to get up on the riverbank, she said, and was
Speaker 2: out of you. She didn't know what was going on.
Speaker 2: She sat there in shock, trying to explain what was
Speaker 2: going on, but nothing was coming out. She would continuously
Speaker 2: sob A few minutes later, she doesn't know exactly how
Speaker 2: much time because she was severely trumize. At this point,
Speaker 2: she watches them come back over and they're mumbling to
Speaker 2: each other up on riverbanks. She couldn't hear what they
Speaker 2: were saying. They jump into the skiff, they fire up,
Speaker 2: and they take her up to their house. She said.
Speaker 2: When they got to their house, she was coming out
Speaker 2: of the fog of trauma. What she heard him saying
Speaker 2: was is that when they pulled up they saw one
Speaker 2: larger one and two smaller ones helping one of them
Speaker 2: off into the brush. And they're having a hard time
Speaker 2: because the one kept falling, they said. And they watched
Speaker 2: that for a little bit until they were out of sight.
Speaker 2: Right now, this isn't all that far from their house,
Speaker 2: not that far. They're concerned. As she was sitting there
Speaker 2: being doctored by the neighbor's wife and consoled and all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff, they took off again in their
Speaker 2: skiff to go down there. When they went down there,
Speaker 2: they gathered up some of her stuff, some clothes for her,
Speaker 2: some of her personal longings. And what they did was
Speaker 2: is they unchained the dogs that were left. There was
Speaker 2: like four of them left at this point. Something like that.
Speaker 2: Unchained them and had them jump in the skiff. The
Speaker 2: dogs followed willingly, all except one. One took off running,
Speaker 2: just took off. The other three followed them, got in
Speaker 2: the skiff. They brought her belongings back, and they said
Speaker 2: when they got back there, when they went to go inside,
Speaker 2: the front door had been left open. But they saw
Speaker 2: a small set of wet footprints and a large set
Speaker 2: of wet footprints, and it smelled real bad inside the cabin.
Speaker 2: The stove had been pushed over, and the sink that
Speaker 2: was attached to a makeshift counter had been ripped out,
Speaker 2: thrown out a window totally destroyed the window. In front
Speaker 2: of where the sink area was, there was a dresser
Speaker 2: that was knocked over. They had to flip that over
Speaker 2: to get her clothes out. The place was trashed. They
Speaker 2: didn't know what to make of it. They're like, what
Speaker 2: the hell? So she tells him it was a harry Man.
Speaker 2: They all have a discussion about the Harryman and stuff.
Speaker 2: She had a really hard time. This was fifty years ago.
Speaker 2: She had a really hard time expressing some of the details.
Speaker 2: To get the details I did, it took a very
Speaker 2: long time. You got to understand she's in her eighties now,
Speaker 2: she no longer lives in Alaska. It was one of
Speaker 2: her relatives had mentioned the channel and it took her
Speaker 2: a while to reach out, and then it took a
Speaker 2: while to get the complete story. So I want to
Speaker 2: thank Bernie for doing that because it was not easy
Speaker 2: for her. Again, this former homestead is on the Yukon.
Speaker 2: I guess someone else is there now. One of her
Speaker 2: distant relatives. She didn't want to say exactly where, but
Speaker 2: it's on the Yukon River. She said she had talked
Speaker 2: to those same neighbors over the years, off and on.
Speaker 2: When telephones came more prevalent and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: she reached out and she talked to him, and come
Speaker 2: to find out, their oldest son went missing. She said
Speaker 2: about five years after the incident, he went out to
Speaker 2: go caribou hunting and was gone. She blames herself, like
Speaker 2: maybe something she did back then caused him to disappear.
Speaker 2: And I was like, well, you don't know for sure.
Speaker 2: Don't beat yourself up like that, right, Some of these
Speaker 2: things that happen to people out in the wilds is
Speaker 2: very hard for the average person to grasp being in
Speaker 2: a situation like that until you've been in those shoes.
Speaker 2: I'd refrain from passing any judgment as far as I've
Speaker 2: heard it before. People like you shot at them, so
Speaker 2: you cause problems. That's not necessarily the case when they're
Speaker 2: killing your critters and everything talking is done. As far
Speaker 2: as I'm concerned, I want to thank Bernie for sharing that.
Speaker 2: It wasn't easy for It took quite a few calls
Speaker 2: to get that whole experience. When I was sharing with
Speaker 2: her what I picked up from her chain of events
Speaker 2: and stuff. I was telling her own story back to
Speaker 2: her to make sure I had it right. And that
Speaker 2: was difficult too, because she kept breaking down crying. She
Speaker 2: was essentially reliving it. I want to thank her, bless
Speaker 2: her heart, thank her for sharing that wasn't easy. Alaska
Speaker 2: got to love it. What I wanted to share with
Speaker 2: you today outside of this creepy area, only creepy because
Speaker 2: of the fog. What I want to share with you
Speaker 2: today comes from Joseph's This happened in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: He was young. He's my age, so he had to
Speaker 2: have been eleven twelve ish at thirteen somewhere in there.
Speaker 2: He just gained the trust of his dad to use
Speaker 2: his dad's snow machine, which was arcticat jag Right. So
Speaker 2: he has his own snow machine, which is a Yamaha
Speaker 2: Bravo Little three P forty Cci. So he being older now,
Speaker 2: his dad gave him the responsibility to go and get
Speaker 2: some hair some spruce chickens, basically do a little hunting.
Speaker 2: He takes his two younger brothers with them, nine and seven.
Speaker 2: They ride the little Bravo. He rides his dad's arcticat.
Speaker 2: They're from Bristol Bay. They were west of Portage Creek,
Speaker 2: west of Sophie's Landing, basically on the New Shigak River.
Speaker 2: Now when they went out, they're good many miles from home.
Speaker 2: They had brought gas. He had his dad's eight millimeter
Speaker 2: rifle and a couple of twenty two rifles for the
Speaker 2: smaller game. The bigger boar rifle was you never know
Speaker 2: if a moose is going to attack you kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So as they're going along, it's wintertime, of course, and
Speaker 2: we don't get a whole lot of daylight. The particular
Speaker 2: time of year, you were getting about three hours of
Speaker 2: actual daylight and then the rest of the time is
Speaker 2: dusk for a couple hours to twilight. On both sides
Speaker 2: of that, they were circling these little islands of black
Speaker 2: spruce looking for porcupine, and they happened to find one.
Speaker 2: They dispatched. They harvest the porcupine. He was teaching his
Speaker 2: little brothers shot placement, all that for proper harvesting, because
Speaker 2: they use the quills for a native bead work. The
Speaker 2: meat's not bad. It's kind of like really greasy chicken
Speaker 2: in my opinion, not a huge fan, but it's not bad.
Speaker 2: So they're sitting there. He's shown them how to properly
Speaker 2: stow it without getting quills all in your hands. And
Speaker 2: so as he's doing so, the nine year old brother says,
Speaker 2: there's a fox. He says, get it, turns and looks,
Speaker 2: and he's watching with his own eyes this fox running
Speaker 2: towards another group not that far away of black spruce.
Speaker 2: They're like little islands because they're basically driving around on
Speaker 2: the tundra, on the snow machines, and you got little
Speaker 2: outcroppings which are black spruce mixed in. So the reason
Speaker 2: I call them islands is because it's they're usually oblong
Speaker 2: shaped and they're just a patch of black spruce and
Speaker 2: some wool alders and stuff in there. So his little
Speaker 2: brother shoots at the fox and it runs off. He
Speaker 2: missed it. They continue on with the porcupine. He says,
Speaker 2: once we're done with the porcupine, follow me. We'll see
Speaker 2: if we can find out where that fox is hiding.
Speaker 2: Maybe you can get another shot on it, or maybe
Speaker 2: it's after rabbit and we'll see some rabbit. No harm,
Speaker 2: no foul, Live and learn. As he's talking to his
Speaker 2: second youngest brother, The very youngest brother, who was seven
Speaker 2: at the time, says, what's that over there? They turn
Speaker 2: and look and they don't see anything. At this time,
Speaker 2: there was a warm front moving into the cold air,
Speaker 2: so that creates very dense fog and it was rolling
Speaker 2: in off of Bristol Bay. So he sees this fog
Speaker 2: bank coming and realizes, well, in that fog bank, it's
Speaker 2: going to be hard to see, it's gonna be hard
Speaker 2: to hunt. We should just pack it in, which is
Speaker 2: Why's choice. So as they're doing this, he was doing
Speaker 2: a couple of last minute things, refueling gas for both machines,
Speaker 2: just stand on top of it. Being the smart young
Speaker 2: man his dad raised, he gets done. He's teaching his
Speaker 2: brothers what he can and as they're sitting there and
Speaker 2: he's discussing what he's doing and why and just pointing
Speaker 2: out certain things to his brothers that fog bank has
Speaker 2: moved in on them. Now they knew the trail, they
Speaker 2: knew the area, but in really dense fog makes it
Speaker 2: hard to navigate. So keeping that in mind, he was like,
Speaker 2: we'll wait a minute and then we'll just take our
Speaker 2: time on the trail. We're refueled on gas. We're good.
Speaker 2: They decide, they fire up the machines. They are going
Speaker 2: to go over to a larger little band of black
Speaker 2: spruce and willows and check for rabbits, since they're right
Speaker 2: there now. He knew he had about an hour or
Speaker 2: so before it started getting dark and had to really
Speaker 2: be beaten feet home, so he figured he'd kill that
Speaker 2: time looking for rabbit. They get over there, he tells
Speaker 2: his little brothers, you guys, go on your machine, circle around,
Speaker 2: come back around and meet me and tell me if
Speaker 2: you see any fresh sign. But yes, they agree. May
Speaker 2: he hears, and he listens, and they're going slow out
Speaker 2: of sight, and he's guestimating at this point on the
Speaker 2: other side of this little island of black spruce. He
Speaker 2: hears the machine power up and sees them tearing away,
Speaker 2: and stay tuned for more sasquatch out to sea. We'll
Speaker 2: be right back after these messages not coming back towards him,
Speaker 2: so he chases after him, cuts him off, gets them
Speaker 2: to stop, and they're panic. They're like, there's a Harry
Speaker 2: Man over there in the fog over there in the
Speaker 2: trees is right over there. We saw it it was
Speaker 2: standing right there. So he's a calm down. You probably
Speaker 2: just saw a group of cluster of trees. Let's go
Speaker 2: take a look. They wanted no part of it. They
Speaker 2: were freaking out there crying. He had his dad's eight millimeter.
Speaker 2: That's a powerful rifle. He goes over there by himself.
Speaker 2: He tells him stay put, takes their key so they
Speaker 2: couldn't be scared, and take off without him. Rips back
Speaker 2: over there, and as he's getting to where he assumes
Speaker 2: they picked up speed, he notices movement in the black spruce.
Speaker 2: He's aow. That must be a moose because it had
Speaker 2: a brown tens to it. Now, what he was looking
Speaker 2: at was the shoulder of this creature. At his angle,
Speaker 2: it looked like the rump of a moose. We don't
Speaker 2: need a moose, but if it's a good moose, maybe
Speaker 2: i'll harvest a moose. He thought about it for a
Speaker 2: minute and was like, nah, I probably shouldn't do that.
Speaker 2: It's getting too close to dark, and my little brothers
Speaker 2: are too small to really pack quarters out. So he
Speaker 2: opted against it and decided he would flush it out
Speaker 2: and see how big it was. So he circles around
Speaker 2: and starts cutting a trail through the black spruce. They
Speaker 2: were tight, but he was on his dad's new articat.
Speaker 2: He was tearing through there, making a whole bunch of ruckus,
Speaker 2: makes it all the way through, doesn't see the moose again,
Speaker 2: and as he clears and comes out on the other side,
Speaker 2: he's looking off to where his brothers are. He goes
Speaker 2: over there, hands them to the key and says, it
Speaker 2: was a moose. It was a moose, And they're pointing
Speaker 2: back at the trees on his trail, just inside the
Speaker 2: tree line that he just came out of. This thing
Speaker 2: was standing there, swaying back and forth. And as this
Speaker 2: is going on, the fog is getting thicker, it's getting
Speaker 2: harder to see. They just see a dark shadow moving
Speaker 2: back and forth, and he was really trying his best
Speaker 2: to wrap his mind around what he was actually seeing.
Speaker 2: He was trying to wrap his mind around what the
Speaker 2: hell was happening just approximately not even fifty yards away,
Speaker 2: just like right over there. He hands the key to
Speaker 2: his little brother says, start it up, go to the
Speaker 2: main trail and wait right there. I'm gonna use a
Speaker 2: faster snow machine and try to get a better look
Speaker 2: at it without getting too close, and they're like, don't
Speaker 2: do it, don't do it. He wasn't gonna listen to
Speaker 2: his little brothers. They take off for the trail and
Speaker 2: he starts cutting back. This thing has been standing there
Speaker 2: the whole time, just inside the black spruce, kind of
Speaker 2: swaying back and forth. Fog is thick. He could still
Speaker 2: see the dark shadow as he's getting closer, because he's
Speaker 2: trying to gain speed to make a sharp year just
Speaker 2: to get a closer look and still stay up to
Speaker 2: speed without slowing down. As he's getting closer, and the
Speaker 2: headlight starts to get closer as well, and starts penetrating
Speaker 2: the fog a little bit. It moves, and it starts
Speaker 2: moving away from him, but just inside the tree line,
Speaker 2: so he parallels it as it's going through the trees,
Speaker 2: and he's just looking over to his left watching this thing,
Speaker 2: and then it really starts moving. It bolted, he said.
Speaker 2: He track speed was probably fifty or sixty miles an hour,
Speaker 2: and this sing just took off, sped past him, cut
Speaker 2: across and went back across the open tundra into the
Speaker 2: fog towards that other little island. They've just harvested the
Speaker 2: porcupine at right, not all that far away, so he's
Speaker 2: just intrigued. He needs to go back that same direction
Speaker 2: to catch up with his brothers, and that dawns on him.
Speaker 2: His little brothers are that way too. No longer worried
Speaker 2: about this thing, he wants to get to his little brothers,
Speaker 2: so he starts hauling ass as fast as he can.
Speaker 2: As he passes that little island of trees where they
Speaker 2: harvested the porcupine, he notices, just off into the fog
Speaker 2: off to his left, still this thing was still there.
Speaker 2: He could just barely make out the shadow of it
Speaker 2: as it was moving. He couldn't tell how fast because
Speaker 2: he was moving fast, but he was guestimating it. It
Speaker 2: had to have been moving about the same speed he was.
Speaker 2: He was a little panic stricken, worried about his little
Speaker 2: brothers hauling ass. Once he gets up and catches up
Speaker 2: catches trail of his little brothers, he follows their tracks.
Speaker 2: He followed them all the way back to where it
Speaker 2: meets up with the Noushigak River more towards the mouth,
Speaker 2: and then they had to go upriver to cross and
Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. But that's where he met
Speaker 2: up with them. Now, when he caught up with them,
Speaker 2: they were sitting there waiting on him. They were panic stricken, scared,
Speaker 2: where's our brother? So they were relieved when they I
Speaker 2: saw him. When he got up to him, they kept
Speaker 2: pointing at him, and he goes, yeah, I'm here, I'm here.
Speaker 2: He hits the kill switch and they point and start
Speaker 2: driving away. He turns around and looks. This thing is
Speaker 2: in the trail behind him, approximately maybe sixty feet at
Speaker 2: the most, swaying back and forth watching him. He said
Speaker 2: he could hear the gurgled breathing. It wasn't breathing hard,
Speaker 2: it was just big and breathing. He said. He fired
Speaker 2: up the snow machine. He was so shaken up he
Speaker 2: could barely hold the throttle, and he followed his little brothers.
Speaker 2: He didn't look back for a long time, and he
Speaker 2: didn't see anything. So they ended up going following the
Speaker 2: wood river back on up to Elecnigig, through the trail
Speaker 2: and all that stuff. They end up going home from there.
Speaker 2: That happened in nineteen eighty seven. He shared this with
Speaker 2: me a while ago. I've been waiting for a little
Speaker 2: bit of fog. It's starting to you can see it's
Speaker 2: still a little fog is starting to lift now. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna thank Joseph for sharing that with me. Outside of
Speaker 2: him and his little brother's talking about it every once
Speaker 2: in a while, we're the first to hear his whole experience,
Speaker 2: and I thank him for sharing. There is a lot
Speaker 2: of stories of the little people I'm going to be
Speaker 2: sharing here in the near future. For every hairy Man's
Speaker 2: story I get when I talk to people, nine times
Speaker 2: out of ten, the next thing out of their mouth
Speaker 2: is I got some little people experiences too, So we'll
Speaker 2: be delving into that as well. His friend Alaska, thanks
Speaker 2: for joining me. I'll catch you guys on the next one.
Speaker 4: They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be world outen.
Speaker 4: Means chot this job, that chid every day came, get back,
Speaker 4: pry back the joy for me, joy, stay right, you.
Speaker 3: Come in right away.
Speaker 5: Steps steps instead set steps, do.
Speaker 3: Don't talk about the games.
Speaker 5: Steps us still states gas Stass