September 12, 2025 • 54 mins
In this haunting episode, we present a forty-year-old confession from an anonymous Marine who encountered something in the Northern California wilderness that changed his life forever. During a routine training exercise in the Marble Mountain Wilderness in 1983, six Marines came face to face with creatures that shouldn't exist, leading to a violent confrontation that would haunt the sole narrator for the rest of his days.
His account, shared here for the first time since his death, details not just the encounter itself but the decades of guilt, nightmares, and questions that followed. From mysterious howls in the night to massive footprints around their camp, from the intelligence in the creature's eyes to the anguish of a mother holding her child while looking at her dead mate, this story challenges everything we think we know about what lives in our forests.
The Marine's testimony doesn't end with that terrible day in California. Years later, during a hunting trip in Alaska, he would have another encounter, this one peaceful but no less profound, that would cement his belief that these beings deserve to be left alone. His plea from beyond the grave is simple but powerful: let them be. But the story doesn't end there. In an epilogue, a researcher who has spent almost forty years investigating these creatures and conducting nearly a thousand interviews reflects on receiving the Marine's account and what it means for those who seek the truth. Should the existence of these beings be proven to science, potentially dooming them to exploitation and extinction?
Or should their secret be kept while their habitat disappears around them? The researcher's struggle with this impossible choice reveals that sometimes the most profound mysteries are not about finding answers, but about learning to live with the weight of questions that may have no right answer.This episode contains mature themes including violence, death, and explores the moral complexity of humanity's relationship with the unknown.
His account, shared here for the first time since his death, details not just the encounter itself but the decades of guilt, nightmares, and questions that followed. From mysterious howls in the night to massive footprints around their camp, from the intelligence in the creature's eyes to the anguish of a mother holding her child while looking at her dead mate, this story challenges everything we think we know about what lives in our forests.
The Marine's testimony doesn't end with that terrible day in California. Years later, during a hunting trip in Alaska, he would have another encounter, this one peaceful but no less profound, that would cement his belief that these beings deserve to be left alone. His plea from beyond the grave is simple but powerful: let them be. But the story doesn't end there. In an epilogue, a researcher who has spent almost forty years investigating these creatures and conducting nearly a thousand interviews reflects on receiving the Marine's account and what it means for those who seek the truth. Should the existence of these beings be proven to science, potentially dooming them to exploitation and extinction?
Or should their secret be kept while their habitat disappears around them? The researcher's struggle with this impossible choice reveals that sometimes the most profound mysteries are not about finding answers, but about learning to live with the weight of questions that may have no right answer.This episode contains mature themes including violence, death, and explores the moral complexity of humanity's relationship with the unknown.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness, bigfoot,
(00:23):
dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
I've carried this for forty years, forty years of waking
up at three in the morning, sheets soaked through, seeing
(01:09):
those eyes again. People always want to know if they're real,
if Sasquatch exists. I wish I could tell them no.
I wish I could laugh it off like everyone else does,
make jokes about blurry photos and crazy mountain people. But
I can't because I know the truth. We killed one
in northern California, in nineteen eighty three, and it's eaten
(01:30):
at me every single day since I was twenty two
years old. A Lance corporal in the Marines, stationed at
Camp Pendleton, but up in the northern part of the
state for mountain warfare training. There were twelve of us
broken into two squads for a week long exercise in
the Marble Mountain wilderness late September. The weather just starting
(01:51):
to turn cold at night, warm during the day, perfect
conditions for what we were supposed to be doing. Navigation exercises,
survival training, the usual stuff they put us through to
keep us sharp. Our squad had six men. I won't
use their real names even now, even with most of
them dead or scattered to the wind. It doesn't feel right.
(02:13):
So let's call them Rodriguez, Johnson, Patterson, Willis, and Kowalski.
Good men, all of them. Rodriguez was our squad leader,
a staff sergeant who'd done two tours in Vietnam and
had that thousand yard stare that never quite went away.
Johnson was from Alabama, could track a deer through a thunderstorm.
Patterson was our radio man, skinny kid from Oregon who
(02:36):
knew those mountains better than any of us. Willis was
built like a linebacker, could carry twice his pack weight
without breaking a sweat, and Kowski he was the joker,
always had something smart to say, kept us laughing when
things got miserable. The first three days were normal. We'd
been dropped at a trailhead with basic supplies and told
(02:57):
to make our way to a series of checkpoints rough
living off the land as much as possible. The brass
wanted us to get comfortable being uncomfortable, learn to move
through difficult terrain without leaving much trace standard stuff. It
was the fourth night when things started to feel off.
We'd made camp in a small clearing, maybe thirty yards across,
(03:19):
surrounded by old growth Douglas Firs that went up so
high you couldn't see the tops in the darkness. The
trees were massive, some of them probably ten feet around
at the base, ancient things that had been there since
before California was even a state. I had second watch
midnight to two. The fire had died down to embers,
just enough light to see the edge of our camp,
(03:41):
but not much beyond. That's when I heard it, a
sound like nothing I'd encountered before or since. It started low,
almost below the range of hearing a rumble that you
felt in your chest more than heard with your ears.
Then it rose into something between a howl and a scream,
but deeper, fuller than any coyote or mountain lion I'd
(04:02):
ever heard. It went on for maybe ten seconds, then
cut off sharp, like someone had thrown a switch. I
woke Rodriguez whispered what I'd heard. He lay there listening
for a few minutes, but everything had gone quiet, too quiet. Actually,
You know how the forest always has some background noise, insects,
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small animals moving around, wind in the branches. All of
that was gone. It was like the whole mountain was
afraid to move. Rodriguez told me to wake him if
I heard it again, then rolled over and went back
to sleep. Old timers like him they could sleep through
anything once they decided it wasn't an immediate threat. But
(04:44):
I spent the rest of my watch with my rifle
across my knees, safety off, scanning the tree line. The
next morning, I told the others what I'd heard. Kowalski
made some joke about me getting spooked by an owl,
but Johnson backed me up, said he'd heard something around
the same time, thought it was a dream until I
mentioned it. Patterson radioed back to base, checking if there
(05:06):
were any other units in our area. Negative. We were
the only ones within twenty miles. Rodriguez decided we'd push
on to the next checkpoint, but stay sharp. As we
were breaking camp, Willis called out from the edge of
the clearing. He'd found tracks. Now. I'd seen bear tracks before,
black bear, even a grizzly once on a training exercise
(05:27):
in Montana. These weren't bear tracks. They were elongated, almost
human looking, but off too big for one thing, maybe
sixteen inches long and seven inches wide at the ball
of the foot. The toes were distinct, five of them,
with what looked like a big toe offset like ours,
but proportionally larger. The depth of the impression suggested something heavy,
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really heavy. Johnson figured whatever made it had to weigh
at least four hundred pounds, probably more. There were three
sets of tracks, different sizes, the biggest ones I just described,
then a set maybe fourteen inches long, and a smaller
set about ten inches. They came out of the forest,
circled our camp, staying just outside the ring of firelight,
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then went back into the trees, heading northeast, the same
direction we were supposed to go. Rodriguez called it in,
described what we'd found. The response was predictable. Command thought
we were screwing around, told us to stop wasting time
and get to the next checkpoint by nightfall. But I
could see Rodriguez was rattled. He'd been in enough bad
(06:33):
situations to know when something wasn't right. We moved out
in a tighter formation than usual. Normally on these exercises
we'd spread out practice moving through the forest like ghosts,
but that day we stayed within visual contact, nobody more
than ten yards from the next man. The forest felt different, oppressive,
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like we were being watched. Around midday, we found more
tracks crossing a muddy stream bed, same three sizes, but fresher.
The edges were still crisp, water just starting to seep
into the deepest parts. Johnson figured they were maybe two
hours old. Whatever was making them was moving in the
same direction we were, and not far ahead. That's when
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we started finding the markers, little things. At first, branches
broken at about eight feet high, way above where a
deer or elk would disturb them. Then we found a
pine tree with the bark stripped off, in long vertical
gouges starting about seven feet up and going to almost
twelve feet. The exposed wood was sticky with sap, couldn't
(07:36):
have been more than a day old. Patterson tried the
radio again, but we were in a dead zone, hills
blocking the signal. We were on our own until we
reached higher ground late afternoon, maybe four o'clock. The smell
hit us. If you've never smelled it, I don't know
how to describe it properly. Imagine a wet dog rolled
(07:56):
in something dead, then multiply that by ten. It was
musky animal, but with something else underneath it, something almost
human but wrong. It made your nose burn and your
eyes water. Willis actually gagged, had to stop and catch
his breath. We set up a defensive position on a
small rise, good sightlines in most directions. Rodriguez had us
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eat cold rations no fire. As the sun went down,
that oppressive feeling got worse. You know that feeling when
you're a kid afraid of the dark and you're sure
there's something under the bed or in the closet. It
was like that. But I was a trained marine with
five other trained marines, and we were all feeling it.
The sound started just after full dark. Movement in the
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underbrush circling our position, big movement, not trying to be quiet.
Branches snapping, bushes, rustling. Then that sound again, that howl screen,
but this time from three different directions. They were calling
to each other, and they had us surrounded. Rodriguez had
us form a tight circle, backs together, weapons facing out.
(09:06):
We had night vision gear, the old stuff from the
early eighties that turned everything green and grainy, but was
better than nothing. I kept scanning my sector and that's
when I saw the first one. It stood at the
edge of our night vision's range, maybe forty yards out,
just to shape between two trees. But even through the
grainy green image, I could tell it was massive. It
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had to be eight feet tall, maybe more, and broad,
not fat, but built thick like a gorilla. It stood
on two legs like a man, but the proportions were weird.
The arms were way too long and the legs too
short for its height, and covered in what looked like
dark hair or fur. I whispered to Rodriguez pointed it out.
(09:50):
He saw it too, tracked it with his rifle. Then
Johnson spotted another one to our left, and Patterson saw
one on our right. They were just standing there, watching us,
not moving in, not moving away, just watching. This went
on for maybe an hour, the longest hour of my
life up to that point. Then, without any signal I
(10:11):
could detect, they melted back into the forest. One second
they were there, the next they were gone. The normal
forest sound slowly came back, insects first, then the small
nighttime rustlings of rodents and birds. We didn't sleep that night.
We sat there in that circle until dawn, weapons ready,
(10:31):
taking turns with the night vision. Nothing came back, but
we could feel them out there, watching, waiting. When the
sun came up, we found tracks all around our position.
They'd circled us dozens of times, coming as close as
twenty yards. The smell lingered in the air, fainter but
still there. Rodriguez made the call to abort the exercise.
(10:53):
Screwed the checkpoint, screw the brass. We were getting out
of there. We started moving at first light, trying to
route that would take us to a road, any road.
The map showed an old logging road about eight miles
to the west. We figured we could make it by
afternoon if we pushed hard. They followed us. We couldn't
see them, but we knew they were there. Every once
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in a while we'd hear a branch snap off to
one side, or catch a whiff of that smell on
the wind. They were pacing us, staying just out of sight.
Around noon, we hit a steep ravine we had to cross.
The sides were loose shale and dirt, maybe a forty
degree angle going down, and the same going up. The
other side. At the bottom was a small creek, crystal
(11:37):
clear and cold as ice. We started down single file,
Rodriguez on point, me second, the others spread out behind.
Rodriguez was halfway across the creek when it happened. The
big one, the eight footer, came out of the trees
on the far side of the ravine, maybe thirty yards
from Rodriguez. In daylight without the night vision, I could
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see it clearly for the first time, and I wish
to God I hadn't. Its face was almost human, but
not quite. The brow ridge was heavy, projecting out over
deep set eyes that caught the light like an animal's.
The nose was flat and wide, the mouth broader than ours,
with lips that seemed too thin for the size of
(12:18):
the face. But it was the eyes that got me.
They were intelligent, not animal intelligent like a chimp or
a gorilla, but aware in a way that made my
skin crawl. It knew exactly what we were, and it
was making a decision about us. The hair covering its
body was dark brown, almost black in some places, shorter
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on the face and chest, longer on the arms and back.
Its hands were enormous, hanging down past its knees. The
muscles under that hair were clearly defined, rippling as it moved.
This thing was built for power. Rodriguez froze for maybe
two seconds, then slowly started to raise his rifle. That's
when the creature screamed that same howl scream from before,
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but louder, angrier. It charged. You wouldn't think something that
big could move that fast, but it covered those thirty
yards in maybe three seconds. Rodriguez got one shot off,
hit it center mass, but it didn't even slow down.
It back handed him like you'd swat a fly, and
Rodriguez flew sideways into the creek bank. I heard bones break.
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I opened fire on full auto, emptied half my magazine
into it. I know I hit it at least three
times because I saw the impacts, saw it jerk with
each hit. Johnson and Willis were firing too. The thing stumbled,
went to one knee, then got back up and kept coming.
It grabbed me by my pack straps and lifted me
off the ground like I weighed nothing. I'm looking into
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its face from maybe a foot away, and there's blood
running from its mouth. It's breathing as labored, but those
eyes are still aware, still intelligent. It's dying and it
knows it, but it's going to take me with it.
Then Willis hit it with everything he had, point blank range,
maybe a dozen rounds. The creature dropped me and fell
(14:07):
backward into the creek. It tried to get up once
made it to its hands and knees, looked right at me,
and then collapsed. The water around it turned red. We
stood there in shock for maybe ten seconds. Then Rodriguez
groaned and we snapped back to reality. His left arm
was broken, probably some ribs too. Patterson was trying to
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raise anyone on the radio. Finally got a weak signal,
called for immediate extraction, said we had a man down.
That's when we heard the other scream, different from the males,
higher pitched full of what I can only describe as grief.
Up on the ridge above us, maybe sixty yards away,
stood another one smaller, maybe six and a half feet tall,
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more slender build. The hair was lighter, more reddish brown,
and it was holding something a baby or infant, juvenile,
whatever you want to call it. Stay tuned for more
Backwoods bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. Maybe
two feet tall, clinging to its mother's chest. I knew
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it in my bones. We just killed her mate, the
father of her child, and she was looking down at
his body floating in the creek. She didn't attack, She
just stood there for maybe thirty seconds, looking at us,
looking at him. Then she turned and disappeared into the forest.
We never saw her again, but I've seen her every
night since in my dreams. The extraction was a nightmare.
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We had to carry Rodriguez two miles to a clearing
big enough for a helicopter. The whole time we were
dragging the body of the creature with us. Willis and
Johnson rigged a trouvois out of branches in our ponchos.
The thing had to weigh five hundred pounds maybe more.
It took all five of us who could still walk
to move it. When the helicopter arrived there, U Chief
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took one look at what we were dragging and went
white as a sheet. They loaded Rodriguez first, got him
on a stretcher, started working on him. Then they loaded
the body, covered it with a tarp, but I could
see the crew stealing glances at it, trying to figure
out what the hell it was. We were flown directly
to a military hospital. Rodriguez went into surgery. The rest
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of us were separated, debriefed individually. They brought in people
I'd never seen before, civilians in suits, who asked the
same questions over and over. What did we see, what
did we hear? How many were there? Did we take
any pictures? Did we talk to anyone? They made it
clear that what had happened was classified. We'd encountered and
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killed an unidentified animal, possibly a bear. That was the
official story. We were not to discuss it with anyone ever.
They had assigned papers, lots of papers, the kind that
promised federal prison if you violate them. Rodriguez survived, but
was medically discharged. His arm never worked right again. The
(17:03):
rest of us were split up, transferred to different units.
I never saw any of them again, except for Johnson.
Ran into him at a VA hospital fifteen years later.
We didn't talk about it, just nodded at each other
and went our separate ways. But here's the thing that
really messes with me. They knew the people who debriefed us.
They weren't surprised. Concerned, yes, worried about containment, absolutely, but
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not surprised. They dealt with this before, there was a
protocol in place, a whole system for making it disappear.
I did another eight years in the Marines, but it
was never the same. I'd wake up in cold sweats
seeing that female on the ridge holding her baby. I'd
think about that male, the intelligence in his eyes as
he died. Were they just animals, I don't think so.
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They were something else, something in between. They had family groups,
They cared for their young. They're dead. I started drinking
heavy after I got out, tried to kill the memories
blurred the edges, got married, got divorced, got married again.
My second wife, she saved me, got me into therapy,
(18:14):
helped me get sober. I could never tell her the
real reason for the nightmares, but she loved me anyway.
We had two kids, good kids, grown now with families
of their own. I thought maybe it would fade with time,
become less real, like a story i'd heard rather than lived.
But if anything, it got sharper as I got older.
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Every detail crystallized fixed in my memory, like insects and amber.
Then in two thousand and one, I went to Alaska
hunting trip with my brother in law, up near Denali.
We'd been there three days, had a nice camp set up,
tree stands positioned overlooking a game trail. It was early morning,
that golden hour, just after sunrise when the light comes
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in sideways through the trees. I was in my stand,
maybe fifteen feet up, watching the trail, when movement caught
my eye. Off to the left. There was a meadow
that way, maybe one hundred yards from my position, visible
through a gap in the trees. Something was crossing it.
At first I thought it was a bear walking upright,
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maybe injured, but the gate was so fluid there was
no way it was a bear. It was walking smoothly, purposefully,
like a person hurrying but not quite running. As it
got to the middle of the meadow, it turned its
head and looked directly at me. Different from the ones
in California. Lighter colored, more gray than brown, and taller,
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but not as bulky. Built for a different environment, I guess,
but the same basic shape, the same impossible proportions, the
same intelligence in the way it moved. It looked directly
at me for maybe five seconds, not aggressive, not afraid,
just acknowledging that I was there. Then it continued across
the meadow and vanished into the trees on the far side.
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I sat in that stand for another hour, rifle across
my lap, trying to process what I'd seen. Part of
me wanted to follow it, to prove to myself it
was real. Part of me wanted to run, get as
far away as possible. In the end, I climbed down,
went back to camp, told my brother in law I
wasn't feeling well. We packed up and left that afternoon.
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I've never been hunting since, can't do it. Every time
I look through a scope, I see that male creature
in California, blood running from his mouth, trying to get
up from the creek. I see his mate on the
ridge with their child. I think about how we were
in their territory, how he was probably just protecting his
family and we killed him for it. People ask me
(20:48):
sometimes if I believe in Bigfoot, usually as a joke,
something to laugh about over beers. I just shrug, change
the subject. What am I supposed to say? That they're real,
that we killed one, that they have families and more
in they're dead, that the government knows and covers it up.
They'd think I was crazy. But late at night, when
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I can't sleep, I think about them out there in
the wilderness. How many are left? Do they remember us
the way we remember them? Do they tell stories about
the hairless creatures with thundersticks who killed one of their own.
I'm seventy three years old now. My hands shake a
little when I write, and my memory isn't what it
used to be. I forget where I put my keys,
(21:32):
what I had for breakfast, But I remember every detail
of those days in northern California. The sound of that
first howl, the smell in the air, the weight of
the creature's hand on my pack straps, the look in
his eyes as he died, the sound of anguish from
his mate. I've carried this story for forty years, and
I'll carry it to my grave. But maybe by telling it,
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even if anonymously, even if no one believes it, I
can let go of a little of the weight. Maybe
that female and her child survived, found others of their kind,
lived out their lives in the deep wilderness where we
can't find them, I hope. So I know what we
did with self defense. The creature attacked us would have
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killed Rodriguez, maybe all of us. We didn't have a
choice in that moment, but we had a choice about
being there in the first place, pushing into territory that
wasn't ours, dismissing the warning signs, treating it like just
another training exercise. There's a lot of wilderness left in
North America places humans rarely go, the deep forests of
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the Pacific Northwest, the vast ranges of Alaska and Canada,
the swamps of the southeast. If they're smart, and I
think they are, they've learned to avoid us completely, stay
in the places we can't or won't follow. Sometimes I
dream about them, but not the nightmares anymore. I dream
about that female and her child somewhere safe, teaching the
(23:00):
young one to forage, to build shelters, to read the seasons.
I dream about others finding them, forming a new group
continuing on. It's probably wishful thinking, but it helps me sleep.
I've left instructions for when I die. Cremation, no funeral,
no marker. My ashes are to be scattered in the
(23:21):
Marble Mountain wilderness in northern California, not in the exact
spot where it happened. I could never find it again
if I tried, and I wouldn't want to just somewhere
in those mountains. Maybe it's stupid, but I feel like
I owe them that much to return to their territory
one last time, not as an invader, but as part
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of the land itself. My wife passed five years ago cancer.
My kids have their own lives, their own families. They
don't need their old man around telling war stories they
can't quite believe. So I sit here in my apartment
looking out at the city, remembering the forest. The thing
that gets me is how normal it all seemed until
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it wasn't. We were just marines on a training mission.
Then we were face to face with something that shouldn't exist,
and in a moment of fear and violence, we destroyed
something unique, maybe irreplaceable. I think about the intelligence in
those eyes a lot, not human intelligence, but not animal
either something else, something that maybe could have taught us
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something if we'd been willing to learn instead of shoot.
But that's not what we were trained for. We were
trained to identify threats and eliminate them, and that's what
we did. There's a quote I read once, can't remember
where from the wilderness holds answers to questions we have
not yet learned to ask. I think about that when
I remember those creatures. What questions could they have answered?
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What could we have learned from beings that lived alongside us,
hidden for thousands of years? But we'll never know, because
our first instinct was to kill what we didn't understand.
That's the real weight I carry, not just that we killed,
but that we destroyed a chance to understand something extraordinary.
The official story, if you can even find it, says
(25:09):
six Marines encountered a bear during a training exercise in
nineteen eighty three. One marine was injured, the bear was
killed in self defense. End of report. Nothing about the tracks,
the sounds, the intelligence in those eyes, nothing about the
female and her child. Just another wildlife incident, filed away
and forgotten. But I haven't forgotten. I can't forget every
(25:34):
time I see a nature documentary about great apes. I
think about the similarities. Every time someone mentions missing persons
in national parks. I wonder every time I smell wet
dog on a hiking trail, My heart rate spikes, and
I'm twenty two again, holding a rifle, staring at something
that shouldn't exist. They're out there. I know they are
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not many, maybe fewer every year as we push deeper
into the wilderness, build more roads, cut more timber, But
some survive. They have to. The alternative that we killed
one of the last ones is too much to bear.
I've done a lot of research over the years, carefully,
quietly Native American stories going back hundreds of years, describing
(26:20):
similar creatures. The Lummy call them semech wes, the Lakota
call them chia tanka. The Cherokee call them nun yinui.
Different names, same basic description, large hair covered, intelligent, elusive,
living in the spaces between our world and the wild.
There are modern sightings, too, thousands of them. Most are
(26:43):
probably mistakes, bears walking upright, shadows, playing tricks, but some
I think some are real. The ones where people describe
the eyes, the intelligence, the way they move. Those I
believe because I've seen it myself. I've thought about going public,
telling my story openly, but what would that accomplish Without proof,
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I'm just another crazy veteran with PTSD. And with proof
what then? It would validate every monster hunter, every expedition
trying to capture or kill one. It would turn their
remaining habitat into a circus. No, some secrets are better kept.
But I needed to tell someone, even if it's like
this anonymously, possibly never to be believed. I needed to
(27:30):
get it out of my head and onto paper, to
make it real in a different way, to acknowledge that
it happened, that they existed, that we did what we did.
I don't expect forgiveness, not from them, certainly, and not
from whatever cosmic justice might exist. But maybe by telling
this story someone somewhere we'll think twice before pulling the
(27:53):
trigger on something they don't understand. Maybe someone will remember
that intelligence can take many forms, that not every threat
needs to be eliminated, that sometimes the best thing we
can do is step back and let the wild things
be wild. The hardest part is living with the knowledge
that the world is stranger and more complex than most
people realize. That there are still mysteries out there, things
(28:17):
that don't fit into our neat categories of known animals,
and that we, in our fear and ignorance, are probably
destroying them before we even know what they are. I
still wake up sometimes at three in the morning, but
it's different now. Instead of nightmares, it's just memories, clear,
sharp memories of those few days when the world revealed
(28:38):
itself to be larger and stranger than I'd imagined. I
lie there in the dark, remembering the weight of that
silence in the forest, the way everything held its breath
when they were near. Sometimes I wonder if that female
ever told her child about us about the day the
hairless ones killed as father. Do they have language? They
must communicate somehow, The coordinated way they surrounded us, the
(29:03):
warning calls, The way she looked at us with such
clear understanding that wasn't just animal instinct. I wonder if
we're there monsters, the cautionary tales they tell they're young,
Stay away from the places that smell of metal and smoke.
Avoid the ones who walk on two legs but have
no fur. They bring death from a distance with sounds
(29:24):
like thunder. There's a part of me that wants to
go back to those mountains one more time while I'm
still able not to hunt or search, just to sit
quietly in the forest and remember to maybe somehow apologize
to whatever might still be out there. But I'm too
old now, too broken down. The mountains are for younger people,
(29:45):
people who can still climb steep trails and sleep on
hard ground. So I tell this story instead, hoping it
serves as some kind of testament. They were real, we
encountered them, we killed one, and it was wrong if
we didn't have a choice in the moment. Stay tuned
for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
(30:08):
The wrong was in being there at all, in pushing
into places where we didn't belong, in responding to the
unknown with violence. I think about the trajectory of that bullet,
how it changed everything. One second, a living being with
thoughts and feelings and family, the next meet in a creek,
all because we were afraid of what we didn't understand.
(30:32):
The Alaska sighting haunts me in a different way. It
was so brief, so clean, no violence, no fear, just acknowledgment.
That's how it should have been in California. We should
have observed, documented if we had to, and withdrawn, let
them have their space, their lives, their secrets, But we didn't.
(30:54):
We can't change the past. All we can do is
learn from it, carry its weight, and try to do better.
That's why I'm telling this story, why I'm breaking forty
years of silence, not for fame or vindication, but as
a warning. They're out there. They're intelligent, they have families,
and they deserve to be left alone. I'll be gone
(31:16):
soon enough. My health isn't what it was, and I
can feel the weight of years pressing down. When I go,
this story will be all that's left of that encounter,
the only record that had ever happened. Maybe that's enough.
Maybe someone will read this and understand that the world
is fuller and stranger than we know, and that not
every mystery needs to be solved, not every unknown needs
(31:39):
to be dragged into the light. The creature we killed
had a name, probably not a name we could pronounce
or understand, but something his mate called him, something his
child would have learned. He had a history, preferences, habits,
He knew which berries ripened when, where to find shelter
from storms, how to move through the forest without sound.
(32:03):
All of that knowledge, all of that existence, ended in
a creek in northern California because we were afraid. I've
never told my children this story. They think their old
man did his time in the Marines and came home
with some standard issue PTSD. They don't know about the
classified debriefings, the papers I signed, the real reason I
(32:23):
wake up at night. Maybe someday they'll read this and understand,
or maybe they'll think their father lost his mind in
his final years. Either way, the truth will be out there.
The truth such a simple word for such a complex thing.
The truth is that we share this world with beings
we don't understand. The truth is that they've been here
(32:45):
longer than us, living in the margins, in the spaces
we've left wild. The truth is that we're destroying those spaces,
pushing them into smaller and smaller territories, making encounters inevitable.
And when those encounters happen, we respond with fear and violence,
because that's what we're trained to do. We see something
(33:05):
outside our understanding and we destroy it, then classify it,
bury it, pretend it never happened. How many other incidents
have been covered up. How many other soldiers, hikers, hunters
have seen what we saw and been silenced. I think
about the body, what happened to it, somewhere in a
military facility, probably frozen or preserved and formaldehyde studied by
(33:28):
people with clearances I never had, reduced to tissue samples
and measurements, or maybe destroyed incinerated to remove any evidence.
I'll never know, but I know that female got away
with her child. I have to believe they survived, found
others continued their species. The alternative is too heavy to carry.
(33:49):
We might have killed one of the last breeding males,
might have doomed an entire species with our fear and
our bullets. That's the weight I carry every day, not
just guilt for killing, but the possibility that we contributed
to an extinction, that future generations will live in a
world diminished by our actions, a world with one less mystery,
(34:10):
one less wonder. The forest feels different now when I visit, smaller, tamer,
less alive. Maybe that's just age talking, the nostalgia of
an old man for a world that seemed bigger when
he was young. Or maybe it's because I know what
we've lost, what we're losing Every year more wilderness becomes
managed land. Every year the wild places shrink. Where do
(34:34):
they go when we take their forests? Do they retreat deeper, higher,
into places we haven't reached yet, or do they simply
fade away one by one until only stories remain? Stories
like this one dismissed as fantasy, as misidentification, as the
ramblings of a traumatized veteran. But I was there, I
(34:55):
saw them, I smelled them, I killed one, and that
truth will stay with me until I die, a weight
that no amount of time or therapy can lift. It's
changed how I see the world, how I understand our
place in it. We're not alone, not the only intelligence
on this planet. We share it with others who have
chosen to remain hidden, to live apart from us. And
(35:19):
maybe that's for the best, because when our worlds collide,
when the hidden becomes visible, we respond with violence. It's
who we are what we are. We're the species that
destroys what it doesn't understand, that fears what it can't control,
and they know it. That's why they hide, that's why
they run, that's why they only come out in the
(35:41):
deep wilderness, in the places we haven't conquered. Yet I
hope they survive us. I hope, long after we've destroyed
ourselves with our wars and our pollution and our endless
need for more, they're still out there in the forests,
living as they always have, free from our curiosity. Our
cameras are guns. That's my prayer. If an old soldier
(36:02):
is allowed to pray, let them be, Let them have
their wilderness, let them raise their young and bury their
dead in peace. We've taken enough from this world. We
don't need to take their mystery too. This is my confession,
my testimony, my burden shared at last, I, a United
States marine, encountered and killed an unknown primate in northern
(36:25):
California in nineteen eighty three. It was intelligent, it had
a family, and its death has haunted me for forty years.
Make of that what you will, believe it or don't,
but know that somewhere out there, in the spaces we
haven't mapped, in the forest we haven't cut, they exist.
They're real, they're intelligent, and they're hiding from us with
(36:49):
good reason. I'm tired now, tired of carrying this, tired
of remembering, tired of the weight. But I'm glad I've
told it finally, Even like this, maybe someone needed to
hear it. Maybe someone else has seen them and needs
to know they're not crazy. Or maybe it's just the
rambling of an old marine with too much time and
(37:10):
too many memories. Either way, it's done. The story is told.
The truth, my truth is out there. Now do with
it what you will. But remember, when you're in the
deep woods and you feel like you're being watched, you
probably are, and the best thing you can do, the
only thing you should do is leave, turn around, walk away,
(37:34):
and let them be. They've earned their solitude. We've taken enough.
Let them have what's left of the wild. It's the
least we can do, after what we've done, after what
I've done. That male creature, the one we killed, I
think about him every day in my mind. I've named
him Guardian because that's what he was doing, guarding his family,
(37:57):
his territory, his way of life. He died doing what
any father would do, what any man would do. He
died protecting what he loved, and we killed him for it.
We killed him because we were scared, because we didn't understand,
because that's what we were trained to do. No amount
of justification changes that fundamental truth. We were the invaders,
(38:20):
we were the threat, and when he tried to drive
us off, we killed him. I'll take that to my grave,
that weight, that knowledge. But maybe by sharing it someone
else won't have to carry the same burden. Maybe someone
will hear this and remember it when they're faced with
the unknown, Maybe they'll choose differently. Maybe they'll lower their
(38:41):
weapon and back away. That's all I can hope for now,
that's all that's left to me. The story is told,
the truth is revealed, and I can finally rest. Forty
years is a long time to carry a secret. Forty
years is a long time to see those eyes in
the dark, But now you know they're out there. They're real,
(39:01):
they're intelligent, and we killed one. God forgive us. I
was there, I pulled the trigger, I watched him die,
and I've regretted it every single day since. I've been
researching these creatures for almost forty years, four decades of expeditions, investigations,
late night interviews with witnesses, and hundreds of hours analyzing
(39:22):
evidence that always seems to fall just short of definitive proof.
I've interviewed close to a thousand people, hunters, hikers, truck drivers,
forest service employees, Indigenous elders, and yes, military personnel with
stories they weren't supposed to tell. I've been laughed at, ridiculed,
had my credibility questioned more times than I can count.
(39:43):
But I've never stopped looking, never stopped believing, because I've
seen them too three times now, never as close as
the marine did, never in circumstances that violent, But I've
seen them, each encounter lasting just seconds, but those seconds
changed to everything. This marine story has shaken me more
than any encounter I've had myself, not because of the violence.
(40:08):
I've heard similar accounts before, though never this detailed, never
this raw. What gets me is his clarity about what
discovery would mean. After forty years of pushing for answers,
his story forces me to confront questions I've been avoiding.
Think about what would happen if we had irrefutable proof tomorrow.
(40:28):
If someone produced a body or perfect HD footage that
couldn't be disputed, The forest would be flooded with hunters
wanting trophies. Scientists would demand specimens for study. The government
would need to create new regulations, new departments, new bureaucracies.
Their habitat would be mapped, gritted, monitored tourism would explode.
(40:50):
Come see the sasquatch, preserve guided tours twice daily. We'd
radio collar them for their own protection, of course, track
their movements, study their genetics, observe their behavior. Documentaries would
be made. Zoos would petition for exhibition permits for conservation purposes. Naturally,
(41:10):
their DNA would be sequenced, patented by biotech companies looking
for the next medical breakthrough. And what about them, these
beings who have successfully avoided us for thousands of years,
who have made the conscious choice to remain hidden. We
drag them into our world against their will, strip away
their mystery, their autonomy, their right to exist undefined by
(41:33):
our science. The marine was right. They're intelligent. The fact
that they've remained hidden this long proves it. They know
what we are, what we're capable of. They've watched us
clearcut forests, poison rivers, drive species after species to extinction.
They've made the calculation that no matter how hard life
(41:54):
is in the shrinking wilderness, it's better than being discovered
by us. Every piece of evidence I've collected, did, every
interview i've conducted every night I've spent in the woods
listening for their calls. I told myself it was for
their protection, that once we proved they existed, we could
protect their habitat and share their survival. But would we
(42:15):
really or would we just find new and creative ways
to exploit them. I think about that female with her baby,
watching her mate die in that creek. She could have attacked,
could have sought revenge, She had the high ground, the
element of surprise, but she didn't. She chose to retreat,
to survive, to raise her child away from the creatures
(42:37):
that had just demonstrated their capacity for violence. That's not
just intelligence, that's wisdom. The indigenous peoples knew about them,
still do, but they don't seek proof. They don't need it.
They share the land with these beings, acknowledge their presence
through stories and traditions, but they don't hunt them, don't
(42:58):
try to capture them. There's a respect there and understanding
that some boundaries shouldn't be crossed. But we modern humans, scientists,
researchers like me, we can't accept that. We need to
categorize everything, understand everything, own everything. We tell ourselves it's
for knowledge, for conservation for the greater good. But is
(43:21):
it or is it just another form of conquest, another
frontier to be claimed? After almost forty years, I have
evidence things that would make skeptics pause, that would demand
further investigation. But is it enough? And more importantly, should
I even be trying to gather more? Would discovery be
(43:41):
the worst thing that could happen to them? I think
about this every night now. In my optimistic moments, I
imagine a world where we recognize them as fellow primates,
deserving of rights and protection, where vast areas of wilderness
are set aside for them, inviolate, protected by law and respect.
(44:02):
But then I remember our history, what we did to
the indigenous peoples of this continent, what we do to
the great apes in Africa and Asia, what we do
to anything that stands between us and what we want,
And I fear that discovery might be the beginning of
the end for them. They could become commodities. Their body
parts might end up in traditional medicine markets. Trophy Hunters
(44:25):
would pay hundreds of thousands for permits. Scientists would argue
that invasive research is necessary for conservation. Tourists would demand
access their habitat would be developed right up to the
borders of whatever inadequate preserve we designated for them. Within
a generation, maybe two, they could be gone. Oh, there
(44:46):
might be a few in captivity, in research facilities or
conservancy programs. But the wild ones, the free ones, the
ones who chose to remain hidden rather than engage with us,
they'd be extinct, stay tuned from more backwoods bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages, and we'd congratulate ourselves
(45:08):
on having discovered and documented them before they disappeared, never
acknowledging our role in their destruction. But what if I'm wrong?
What if keeping them secret dooms them just as surely?
Every year more of their habitat is destroyed. Every year
the wild places shrink without official recognition, without legal protection.
(45:29):
Won't they disappear anyway? Crushed by the relentless expansion of
our civilization. This marine carried the weight of killing one
for forty years. What weight would I carry if my
silence led to their extinction? What weight would I carry
if my evidence led to it instead? Sometimes I think
about walking away from the search that's consumed most of
(45:50):
my adult life. But I can't. I still live in
the forest. I still investigate sightings, still interview witnesses. Part
of me hopes for that one piece of undeniable proof.
Part of me hopes I never find it. What about
habitat protection? What about the logging companies and developers who
are destroying their homes? Wouldn't official recognition force the government
(46:13):
to protect them? These are the arguments I have with
myself at three in the morning, the counterpoints that keep
me from walking away entirely. And then I remember the
spotted owl, the cariboot, the polar bear, all protected, all
still declining. Protection on paper means nothing. If we don't
change our fundamental relationship with the natural world, and have
(46:35):
we will we Other researchers contact me, share their findings,
ask for my opinion, Young enthusiasts, full of passion and
certainty that discovery would save them. I listen. I encourage
their careful research, but I also share my doubts, my
fears about what discovery might mean. Some think I've gone soft,
(46:56):
lost my nerve after so many years. Maybe they're right.
Is keeping the secret the right decision is revealing it?
I don't know. After almost forty years, I'm less certain
than when I started. The marine in this story knew
exactly where he stood. He wanted them left alone, but
he'd killed one, he'd seen the consequences of contact firsthand.
(47:20):
My experiences have been different, more ambiguous, leaving me with
questions rather than answers. They've survived this long without our help.
They've adapted, evolved, persisted despite our best efforts to destroy
every wild thing on this planet. Maybe they don't need
our recognition, Maybe they don't need our protection. Maybe they
(47:40):
need us to stay away. Or maybe they need an advocate,
someone to fight for their habitat before it's all gone.
Maybe they need science to acknowledge them before it's too late.
Maybe keeping them secret is just another form of abandonment.
The marine story ends with a plea let them be
years of searching. I understand the wisdom in that, but
(48:03):
I also understand the danger. In a world where we're
destroying wilderness at an unprecedented rate, can we afford to
let them be? Or by the time we decide to act,
will there be nothing left to protect? I think about
that creature in Alaska. He saw the one that looked
at him and kept walking. No violence, no fear, just acknowledgment.
(48:25):
Two intelligences recognizing each other across the divide of species
and choosing to maintain that divide. That's beautiful, That's how
it should be. But is it sustainable? Can they maintain
that divide when we're pushing deeper into every corner of wilderness?
Can they stay hidden when every square foot of forest
is being mapped by satellites, when trail cameras are everywhere,
(48:47):
When their habitat is shrinking every year? The drive to discover,
to prove, to know is strong. Someone someday will provide
the evidence that can't be dismissed. Someone will take that
perfect photo, recover that perfect specimen, produce that perfect DNA sequence.
I don't have answers anymore, just questions. Every piece of
(49:11):
evidence I gather makes the questions harder, the ethical dilemma
more complex. Do I have the right to make this
decision for them? Do I have the right to keep
their existence secret? Do I have the right to reveal it?
That's what keeps me up at night now, not the
frustration of not having enough proof, but the fear of
what to do if I ever get it. The marine
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killed one and regretted it for forty years. What would
I regret more revealing them to the world or keeping
them hidden while their world disappears. They're real, they're intelligent,
they're out there. But what we should do about that,
I honestly don't know anymore. Some say mysteries are meant
to be solved, that knowledge is always better than ignorance.
(49:55):
Others say some things are better left alone, that not
every secret needs to be dragged into the light. After
forty years, thousands of hours in the field, close to
a thousand interviews, I'm no closer to knowing which is right.
The marine learned through violence and regret that they should
be left alone. But I've learned through decades of research
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that nothing is ever that simple. Every choice has consequences,
Every action and every inaction carries weight. So I continue
to struggle, continue to search, continue to question. Maybe that's
all any of us can do when faced with something
this profound, Sit with the uncertainty, carry the weight of
(50:37):
not knowing what's right, and hope that when the moment
of decision comes, will make the choice that causes the
least harm. But I look at the world we're creating,
the forest we're destroying, and I wonder if we're running
out of time for such philosophical debates. Maybe the luxury
of leaving them alone is one we can no longer afford,
or maybe it's the only moral choice left. I don't know.
(51:00):
After forty years, that's the only thing I'm certain of,
and that uncertainty, that's what keeps me up at night.
(54:00):
The
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness, bigfoot,
(00:23):
dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
I've carried this for forty years, forty years of waking
up at three in the morning, sheets soaked through, seeing
(01:09):
those eyes again. People always want to know if they're real,
if Sasquatch exists. I wish I could tell them no.
I wish I could laugh it off like everyone else does,
make jokes about blurry photos and crazy mountain people. But
I can't because I know the truth. We killed one
in northern California, in nineteen eighty three, and it's eaten
(01:30):
at me every single day since I was twenty two
years old. A Lance corporal in the Marines, stationed at
Camp Pendleton, but up in the northern part of the
state for mountain warfare training. There were twelve of us
broken into two squads for a week long exercise in
the Marble Mountain wilderness late September. The weather just starting
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to turn cold at night, warm during the day, perfect
conditions for what we were supposed to be doing. Navigation exercises,
survival training, the usual stuff they put us through to
keep us sharp. Our squad had six men. I won't
use their real names even now, even with most of
them dead or scattered to the wind. It doesn't feel right.
(02:13):
So let's call them Rodriguez, Johnson, Patterson, Willis, and Kowalski.
Good men, all of them. Rodriguez was our squad leader,
a staff sergeant who'd done two tours in Vietnam and
had that thousand yard stare that never quite went away.
Johnson was from Alabama, could track a deer through a thunderstorm.
Patterson was our radio man, skinny kid from Oregon who
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knew those mountains better than any of us. Willis was
built like a linebacker, could carry twice his pack weight
without breaking a sweat, and Kowski he was the joker,
always had something smart to say, kept us laughing when
things got miserable. The first three days were normal. We'd
been dropped at a trailhead with basic supplies and told
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to make our way to a series of checkpoints rough
living off the land as much as possible. The brass
wanted us to get comfortable being uncomfortable, learn to move
through difficult terrain without leaving much trace standard stuff. It
was the fourth night when things started to feel off.
We'd made camp in a small clearing, maybe thirty yards across,
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surrounded by old growth Douglas Firs that went up so
high you couldn't see the tops in the darkness. The
trees were massive, some of them probably ten feet around
at the base, ancient things that had been there since
before California was even a state. I had second watch
midnight to two. The fire had died down to embers,
just enough light to see the edge of our camp,
(03:41):
but not much beyond. That's when I heard it, a
sound like nothing I'd encountered before or since. It started low,
almost below the range of hearing a rumble that you
felt in your chest more than heard with your ears.
Then it rose into something between a howl and a scream,
but deeper, fuller than any coyote or mountain lion I'd
(04:02):
ever heard. It went on for maybe ten seconds, then
cut off sharp, like someone had thrown a switch. I
woke Rodriguez whispered what I'd heard. He lay there listening
for a few minutes, but everything had gone quiet, too quiet. Actually,
You know how the forest always has some background noise, insects,
(04:23):
small animals moving around, wind in the branches. All of
that was gone. It was like the whole mountain was
afraid to move. Rodriguez told me to wake him if
I heard it again, then rolled over and went back
to sleep. Old timers like him they could sleep through
anything once they decided it wasn't an immediate threat. But
(04:44):
I spent the rest of my watch with my rifle
across my knees, safety off, scanning the tree line. The
next morning, I told the others what I'd heard. Kowalski
made some joke about me getting spooked by an owl,
but Johnson backed me up, said he'd heard something around
the same time, thought it was a dream until I
mentioned it. Patterson radioed back to base, checking if there
(05:06):
were any other units in our area. Negative. We were
the only ones within twenty miles. Rodriguez decided we'd push
on to the next checkpoint, but stay sharp. As we
were breaking camp, Willis called out from the edge of
the clearing. He'd found tracks. Now. I'd seen bear tracks before,
black bear, even a grizzly once on a training exercise
(05:27):
in Montana. These weren't bear tracks. They were elongated, almost
human looking, but off too big for one thing, maybe
sixteen inches long and seven inches wide at the ball
of the foot. The toes were distinct, five of them,
with what looked like a big toe offset like ours,
but proportionally larger. The depth of the impression suggested something heavy,
(05:51):
really heavy. Johnson figured whatever made it had to weigh
at least four hundred pounds, probably more. There were three
sets of tracks, different sizes, the biggest ones I just described,
then a set maybe fourteen inches long, and a smaller
set about ten inches. They came out of the forest,
circled our camp, staying just outside the ring of firelight,
(06:13):
then went back into the trees, heading northeast, the same
direction we were supposed to go. Rodriguez called it in,
described what we'd found. The response was predictable. Command thought
we were screwing around, told us to stop wasting time
and get to the next checkpoint by nightfall. But I
could see Rodriguez was rattled. He'd been in enough bad
(06:33):
situations to know when something wasn't right. We moved out
in a tighter formation than usual. Normally on these exercises
we'd spread out practice moving through the forest like ghosts,
but that day we stayed within visual contact, nobody more
than ten yards from the next man. The forest felt different, oppressive,
(06:54):
like we were being watched. Around midday, we found more
tracks crossing a muddy stream bed, same three sizes, but fresher.
The edges were still crisp, water just starting to seep
into the deepest parts. Johnson figured they were maybe two
hours old. Whatever was making them was moving in the
same direction we were, and not far ahead. That's when
(07:15):
we started finding the markers, little things. At first, branches
broken at about eight feet high, way above where a
deer or elk would disturb them. Then we found a
pine tree with the bark stripped off, in long vertical
gouges starting about seven feet up and going to almost
twelve feet. The exposed wood was sticky with sap, couldn't
(07:36):
have been more than a day old. Patterson tried the
radio again, but we were in a dead zone, hills
blocking the signal. We were on our own until we
reached higher ground late afternoon, maybe four o'clock. The smell
hit us. If you've never smelled it, I don't know
how to describe it properly. Imagine a wet dog rolled
(07:56):
in something dead, then multiply that by ten. It was
musky animal, but with something else underneath it, something almost
human but wrong. It made your nose burn and your
eyes water. Willis actually gagged, had to stop and catch
his breath. We set up a defensive position on a
small rise, good sightlines in most directions. Rodriguez had us
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eat cold rations no fire. As the sun went down,
that oppressive feeling got worse. You know that feeling when
you're a kid afraid of the dark and you're sure
there's something under the bed or in the closet. It
was like that. But I was a trained marine with
five other trained marines, and we were all feeling it.
The sound started just after full dark. Movement in the
(08:43):
underbrush circling our position, big movement, not trying to be quiet.
Branches snapping, bushes, rustling. Then that sound again, that howl screen,
but this time from three different directions. They were calling
to each other, and they had us surrounded. Rodriguez had
us form a tight circle, backs together, weapons facing out.
(09:06):
We had night vision gear, the old stuff from the
early eighties that turned everything green and grainy, but was
better than nothing. I kept scanning my sector and that's
when I saw the first one. It stood at the
edge of our night vision's range, maybe forty yards out,
just to shape between two trees. But even through the
grainy green image, I could tell it was massive. It
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had to be eight feet tall, maybe more, and broad,
not fat, but built thick like a gorilla. It stood
on two legs like a man, but the proportions were weird.
The arms were way too long and the legs too
short for its height, and covered in what looked like
dark hair or fur. I whispered to Rodriguez pointed it out.
(09:50):
He saw it too, tracked it with his rifle. Then
Johnson spotted another one to our left, and Patterson saw
one on our right. They were just standing there, watching us,
not moving in, not moving away, just watching. This went
on for maybe an hour, the longest hour of my
life up to that point. Then, without any signal I
(10:11):
could detect, they melted back into the forest. One second
they were there, the next they were gone. The normal
forest sound slowly came back, insects first, then the small
nighttime rustlings of rodents and birds. We didn't sleep that night.
We sat there in that circle until dawn, weapons ready,
(10:31):
taking turns with the night vision. Nothing came back, but
we could feel them out there, watching, waiting. When the
sun came up, we found tracks all around our position.
They'd circled us dozens of times, coming as close as
twenty yards. The smell lingered in the air, fainter but
still there. Rodriguez made the call to abort the exercise.
(10:53):
Screwed the checkpoint, screw the brass. We were getting out
of there. We started moving at first light, trying to
route that would take us to a road, any road.
The map showed an old logging road about eight miles
to the west. We figured we could make it by
afternoon if we pushed hard. They followed us. We couldn't
see them, but we knew they were there. Every once
(11:15):
in a while we'd hear a branch snap off to
one side, or catch a whiff of that smell on
the wind. They were pacing us, staying just out of sight.
Around noon, we hit a steep ravine we had to cross.
The sides were loose shale and dirt, maybe a forty
degree angle going down, and the same going up. The
other side. At the bottom was a small creek, crystal
(11:37):
clear and cold as ice. We started down single file,
Rodriguez on point, me second, the others spread out behind.
Rodriguez was halfway across the creek when it happened. The
big one, the eight footer, came out of the trees
on the far side of the ravine, maybe thirty yards
from Rodriguez. In daylight without the night vision, I could
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see it clearly for the first time, and I wish
to God I hadn't. Its face was almost human, but
not quite. The brow ridge was heavy, projecting out over
deep set eyes that caught the light like an animal's.
The nose was flat and wide, the mouth broader than ours,
with lips that seemed too thin for the size of
(12:18):
the face. But it was the eyes that got me.
They were intelligent, not animal intelligent like a chimp or
a gorilla, but aware in a way that made my
skin crawl. It knew exactly what we were, and it
was making a decision about us. The hair covering its
body was dark brown, almost black in some places, shorter
(12:38):
on the face and chest, longer on the arms and back.
Its hands were enormous, hanging down past its knees. The
muscles under that hair were clearly defined, rippling as it moved.
This thing was built for power. Rodriguez froze for maybe
two seconds, then slowly started to raise his rifle. That's
when the creature screamed that same howl scream from before,
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but louder, angrier. It charged. You wouldn't think something that
big could move that fast, but it covered those thirty
yards in maybe three seconds. Rodriguez got one shot off,
hit it center mass, but it didn't even slow down.
It back handed him like you'd swat a fly, and
Rodriguez flew sideways into the creek bank. I heard bones break.
(13:24):
I opened fire on full auto, emptied half my magazine
into it. I know I hit it at least three
times because I saw the impacts, saw it jerk with
each hit. Johnson and Willis were firing too. The thing stumbled,
went to one knee, then got back up and kept coming.
It grabbed me by my pack straps and lifted me
off the ground like I weighed nothing. I'm looking into
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its face from maybe a foot away, and there's blood
running from its mouth. It's breathing as labored, but those
eyes are still aware, still intelligent. It's dying and it
knows it, but it's going to take me with it.
Then Willis hit it with everything he had, point blank range,
maybe a dozen rounds. The creature dropped me and fell
(14:07):
backward into the creek. It tried to get up once
made it to its hands and knees, looked right at me,
and then collapsed. The water around it turned red. We
stood there in shock for maybe ten seconds. Then Rodriguez
groaned and we snapped back to reality. His left arm
was broken, probably some ribs too. Patterson was trying to
(14:29):
raise anyone on the radio. Finally got a weak signal,
called for immediate extraction, said we had a man down.
That's when we heard the other scream, different from the males,
higher pitched full of what I can only describe as grief.
Up on the ridge above us, maybe sixty yards away,
stood another one smaller, maybe six and a half feet tall,
(14:52):
more slender build. The hair was lighter, more reddish brown,
and it was holding something a baby or infant, juvenile,
whatever you want to call it. Stay tuned for more
Backwoods bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. Maybe
two feet tall, clinging to its mother's chest. I knew
(15:15):
it in my bones. We just killed her mate, the
father of her child, and she was looking down at
his body floating in the creek. She didn't attack, She
just stood there for maybe thirty seconds, looking at us,
looking at him. Then she turned and disappeared into the forest.
We never saw her again, but I've seen her every
night since in my dreams. The extraction was a nightmare.
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We had to carry Rodriguez two miles to a clearing
big enough for a helicopter. The whole time we were
dragging the body of the creature with us. Willis and
Johnson rigged a trouvois out of branches in our ponchos.
The thing had to weigh five hundred pounds maybe more.
It took all five of us who could still walk
to move it. When the helicopter arrived there, U Chief
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took one look at what we were dragging and went
white as a sheet. They loaded Rodriguez first, got him
on a stretcher, started working on him. Then they loaded
the body, covered it with a tarp, but I could
see the crew stealing glances at it, trying to figure
out what the hell it was. We were flown directly
to a military hospital. Rodriguez went into surgery. The rest
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of us were separated, debriefed individually. They brought in people
I'd never seen before, civilians in suits, who asked the
same questions over and over. What did we see, what
did we hear? How many were there? Did we take
any pictures? Did we talk to anyone? They made it
clear that what had happened was classified. We'd encountered and
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killed an unidentified animal, possibly a bear. That was the
official story. We were not to discuss it with anyone ever.
They had assigned papers, lots of papers, the kind that
promised federal prison if you violate them. Rodriguez survived, but
was medically discharged. His arm never worked right again. The
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rest of us were split up, transferred to different units.
I never saw any of them again, except for Johnson.
Ran into him at a VA hospital fifteen years later.
We didn't talk about it, just nodded at each other
and went our separate ways. But here's the thing that
really messes with me. They knew the people who debriefed us.
They weren't surprised. Concerned, yes, worried about containment, absolutely, but
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not surprised. They dealt with this before, there was a
protocol in place, a whole system for making it disappear.
I did another eight years in the Marines, but it
was never the same. I'd wake up in cold sweats
seeing that female on the ridge holding her baby. I'd
think about that male, the intelligence in his eyes as
he died. Were they just animals, I don't think so.
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They were something else, something in between. They had family groups,
They cared for their young. They're dead. I started drinking
heavy after I got out, tried to kill the memories
blurred the edges, got married, got divorced, got married again.
My second wife, she saved me, got me into therapy,
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helped me get sober. I could never tell her the
real reason for the nightmares, but she loved me anyway.
We had two kids, good kids, grown now with families
of their own. I thought maybe it would fade with time,
become less real, like a story i'd heard rather than lived.
But if anything, it got sharper as I got older.
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Every detail crystallized fixed in my memory, like insects and amber.
Then in two thousand and one, I went to Alaska
hunting trip with my brother in law, up near Denali.
We'd been there three days, had a nice camp set up,
tree stands positioned overlooking a game trail. It was early morning,
that golden hour, just after sunrise when the light comes
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in sideways through the trees. I was in my stand,
maybe fifteen feet up, watching the trail, when movement caught
my eye. Off to the left. There was a meadow
that way, maybe one hundred yards from my position, visible
through a gap in the trees. Something was crossing it.
At first I thought it was a bear walking upright,
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maybe injured, but the gate was so fluid there was
no way it was a bear. It was walking smoothly, purposefully,
like a person hurrying but not quite running. As it
got to the middle of the meadow, it turned its
head and looked directly at me. Different from the ones
in California. Lighter colored, more gray than brown, and taller,
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but not as bulky. Built for a different environment, I guess,
but the same basic shape, the same impossible proportions, the
same intelligence in the way it moved. It looked directly
at me for maybe five seconds, not aggressive, not afraid,
just acknowledging that I was there. Then it continued across
the meadow and vanished into the trees on the far side.
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I sat in that stand for another hour, rifle across
my lap, trying to process what I'd seen. Part of
me wanted to follow it, to prove to myself it
was real. Part of me wanted to run, get as
far away as possible. In the end, I climbed down,
went back to camp, told my brother in law I
wasn't feeling well. We packed up and left that afternoon.
(20:26):
I've never been hunting since, can't do it. Every time
I look through a scope, I see that male creature
in California, blood running from his mouth, trying to get
up from the creek. I see his mate on the
ridge with their child. I think about how we were
in their territory, how he was probably just protecting his
family and we killed him for it. People ask me
(20:48):
sometimes if I believe in Bigfoot, usually as a joke,
something to laugh about over beers. I just shrug, change
the subject. What am I supposed to say? That they're real,
that we killed one, that they have families and more
in they're dead, that the government knows and covers it up.
They'd think I was crazy. But late at night, when
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I can't sleep, I think about them out there in
the wilderness. How many are left? Do they remember us
the way we remember them? Do they tell stories about
the hairless creatures with thundersticks who killed one of their own.
I'm seventy three years old now. My hands shake a
little when I write, and my memory isn't what it
used to be. I forget where I put my keys,
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what I had for breakfast, But I remember every detail
of those days in northern California. The sound of that
first howl, the smell in the air, the weight of
the creature's hand on my pack straps, the look in
his eyes as he died, the sound of anguish from
his mate. I've carried this story for forty years, and
I'll carry it to my grave. But maybe by telling it,
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even if anonymously, even if no one believes it, I
can let go of a little of the weight. Maybe
that female and her child survived, found others of their kind,
lived out their lives in the deep wilderness where we
can't find them, I hope. So I know what we
did with self defense. The creature attacked us would have
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killed Rodriguez, maybe all of us. We didn't have a
choice in that moment, but we had a choice about
being there in the first place, pushing into territory that
wasn't ours, dismissing the warning signs, treating it like just
another training exercise. There's a lot of wilderness left in
North America places humans rarely go, the deep forests of
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the Pacific Northwest, the vast ranges of Alaska and Canada,
the swamps of the southeast. If they're smart, and I
think they are, they've learned to avoid us completely, stay
in the places we can't or won't follow. Sometimes I
dream about them, but not the nightmares anymore. I dream
about that female and her child somewhere safe, teaching the
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young one to forage, to build shelters, to read the seasons.
I dream about others finding them, forming a new group
continuing on. It's probably wishful thinking, but it helps me sleep.
I've left instructions for when I die. Cremation, no funeral,
no marker. My ashes are to be scattered in the
(23:21):
Marble Mountain wilderness in northern California, not in the exact
spot where it happened. I could never find it again
if I tried, and I wouldn't want to just somewhere
in those mountains. Maybe it's stupid, but I feel like
I owe them that much to return to their territory
one last time, not as an invader, but as part
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of the land itself. My wife passed five years ago cancer.
My kids have their own lives, their own families. They
don't need their old man around telling war stories they
can't quite believe. So I sit here in my apartment
looking out at the city, remembering the forest. The thing
that gets me is how normal it all seemed until
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it wasn't. We were just marines on a training mission.
Then we were face to face with something that shouldn't exist,
and in a moment of fear and violence, we destroyed
something unique, maybe irreplaceable. I think about the intelligence in
those eyes a lot, not human intelligence, but not animal
either something else, something that maybe could have taught us
(24:26):
something if we'd been willing to learn instead of shoot.
But that's not what we were trained for. We were
trained to identify threats and eliminate them, and that's what
we did. There's a quote I read once, can't remember
where from the wilderness holds answers to questions we have
not yet learned to ask. I think about that when
I remember those creatures. What questions could they have answered?
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What could we have learned from beings that lived alongside us,
hidden for thousands of years? But we'll never know, because
our first instinct was to kill what we didn't understand.
That's the real weight I carry, not just that we killed,
but that we destroyed a chance to understand something extraordinary.
The official story, if you can even find it, says
(25:09):
six Marines encountered a bear during a training exercise in
nineteen eighty three. One marine was injured, the bear was
killed in self defense. End of report. Nothing about the tracks,
the sounds, the intelligence in those eyes, nothing about the
female and her child. Just another wildlife incident, filed away
and forgotten. But I haven't forgotten. I can't forget every
(25:34):
time I see a nature documentary about great apes. I
think about the similarities. Every time someone mentions missing persons
in national parks. I wonder every time I smell wet
dog on a hiking trail, My heart rate spikes, and
I'm twenty two again, holding a rifle, staring at something
that shouldn't exist. They're out there. I know they are
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not many, maybe fewer every year as we push deeper
into the wilderness, build more roads, cut more timber, But
some survive. They have to. The alternative that we killed
one of the last ones is too much to bear.
I've done a lot of research over the years, carefully,
quietly Native American stories going back hundreds of years, describing
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similar creatures. The Lummy call them semech wes, the Lakota
call them chia tanka. The Cherokee call them nun yinui.
Different names, same basic description, large hair covered, intelligent, elusive,
living in the spaces between our world and the wild.
There are modern sightings, too, thousands of them. Most are
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probably mistakes, bears walking upright, shadows, playing tricks, but some
I think some are real. The ones where people describe
the eyes, the intelligence, the way they move. Those I
believe because I've seen it myself. I've thought about going public,
telling my story openly, but what would that accomplish Without proof,
(27:06):
I'm just another crazy veteran with PTSD. And with proof
what then? It would validate every monster hunter, every expedition
trying to capture or kill one. It would turn their
remaining habitat into a circus. No, some secrets are better kept.
But I needed to tell someone, even if it's like
this anonymously, possibly never to be believed. I needed to
(27:30):
get it out of my head and onto paper, to
make it real in a different way, to acknowledge that
it happened, that they existed, that we did what we did.
I don't expect forgiveness, not from them, certainly, and not
from whatever cosmic justice might exist. But maybe by telling
this story someone somewhere we'll think twice before pulling the
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trigger on something they don't understand. Maybe someone will remember
that intelligence can take many forms, that not every threat
needs to be eliminated, that sometimes the best thing we
can do is step back and let the wild things
be wild. The hardest part is living with the knowledge
that the world is stranger and more complex than most
people realize. That there are still mysteries out there, things
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that don't fit into our neat categories of known animals,
and that we, in our fear and ignorance, are probably
destroying them before we even know what they are. I
still wake up sometimes at three in the morning, but
it's different now. Instead of nightmares, it's just memories, clear,
sharp memories of those few days when the world revealed
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itself to be larger and stranger than I'd imagined. I
lie there in the dark, remembering the weight of that
silence in the forest, the way everything held its breath
when they were near. Sometimes I wonder if that female
ever told her child about us about the day the
hairless ones killed as father. Do they have language? They
must communicate somehow, The coordinated way they surrounded us, the
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warning calls, The way she looked at us with such
clear understanding that wasn't just animal instinct. I wonder if
we're there monsters, the cautionary tales they tell they're young,
Stay away from the places that smell of metal and smoke.
Avoid the ones who walk on two legs but have
no fur. They bring death from a distance with sounds
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like thunder. There's a part of me that wants to
go back to those mountains one more time while I'm
still able not to hunt or search, just to sit
quietly in the forest and remember to maybe somehow apologize
to whatever might still be out there. But I'm too
old now, too broken down. The mountains are for younger people,
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people who can still climb steep trails and sleep on
hard ground. So I tell this story instead, hoping it
serves as some kind of testament. They were real, we
encountered them, we killed one, and it was wrong if
we didn't have a choice in the moment. Stay tuned
for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
(30:08):
The wrong was in being there at all, in pushing
into places where we didn't belong, in responding to the
unknown with violence. I think about the trajectory of that bullet,
how it changed everything. One second, a living being with
thoughts and feelings and family, the next meet in a creek,
all because we were afraid of what we didn't understand.
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The Alaska sighting haunts me in a different way. It
was so brief, so clean, no violence, no fear, just acknowledgment.
That's how it should have been in California. We should
have observed, documented if we had to, and withdrawn, let
them have their space, their lives, their secrets, But we didn't.
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We can't change the past. All we can do is
learn from it, carry its weight, and try to do better.
That's why I'm telling this story, why I'm breaking forty
years of silence, not for fame or vindication, but as
a warning. They're out there. They're intelligent, they have families,
and they deserve to be left alone. I'll be gone
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soon enough. My health isn't what it was, and I
can feel the weight of years pressing down. When I go,
this story will be all that's left of that encounter,
the only record that had ever happened. Maybe that's enough.
Maybe someone will read this and understand that the world
is fuller and stranger than we know, and that not
every mystery needs to be solved, not every unknown needs
(31:39):
to be dragged into the light. The creature we killed
had a name, probably not a name we could pronounce
or understand, but something his mate called him, something his
child would have learned. He had a history, preferences, habits,
He knew which berries ripened when, where to find shelter
from storms, how to move through the forest without sound.
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All of that knowledge, all of that existence, ended in
a creek in northern California because we were afraid. I've
never told my children this story. They think their old
man did his time in the Marines and came home
with some standard issue PTSD. They don't know about the
classified debriefings, the papers I signed, the real reason I
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wake up at night. Maybe someday they'll read this and understand,
or maybe they'll think their father lost his mind in
his final years. Either way, the truth will be out there.
The truth such a simple word for such a complex thing.
The truth is that we share this world with beings
we don't understand. The truth is that they've been here
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longer than us, living in the margins, in the spaces
we've left wild. The truth is that we're destroying those spaces,
pushing them into smaller and smaller territories, making encounters inevitable.
And when those encounters happen, we respond with fear and violence,
because that's what we're trained to do. We see something
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outside our understanding and we destroy it, then classify it,
bury it, pretend it never happened. How many other incidents
have been covered up. How many other soldiers, hikers, hunters
have seen what we saw and been silenced. I think
about the body, what happened to it, somewhere in a
military facility, probably frozen or preserved and formaldehyde studied by
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people with clearances I never had, reduced to tissue samples
and measurements, or maybe destroyed incinerated to remove any evidence.
I'll never know, but I know that female got away
with her child. I have to believe they survived, found
others continued their species. The alternative is too heavy to carry.
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We might have killed one of the last breeding males,
might have doomed an entire species with our fear and
our bullets. That's the weight I carry every day, not
just guilt for killing, but the possibility that we contributed
to an extinction, that future generations will live in a
world diminished by our actions, a world with one less mystery,
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one less wonder. The forest feels different now when I visit, smaller, tamer,
less alive. Maybe that's just age talking, the nostalgia of
an old man for a world that seemed bigger when
he was young. Or maybe it's because I know what
we've lost, what we're losing Every year more wilderness becomes
managed land. Every year the wild places shrink. Where do
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they go when we take their forests? Do they retreat deeper, higher,
into places we haven't reached yet, or do they simply
fade away one by one until only stories remain? Stories
like this one dismissed as fantasy, as misidentification, as the
ramblings of a traumatized veteran. But I was there, I
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saw them, I smelled them, I killed one, and that
truth will stay with me until I die, a weight
that no amount of time or therapy can lift. It's
changed how I see the world, how I understand our
place in it. We're not alone, not the only intelligence
on this planet. We share it with others who have
chosen to remain hidden, to live apart from us. And
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maybe that's for the best, because when our worlds collide,
when the hidden becomes visible, we respond with violence. It's
who we are what we are. We're the species that
destroys what it doesn't understand, that fears what it can't control,
and they know it. That's why they hide, that's why
they run, that's why they only come out in the
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deep wilderness, in the places we haven't conquered. Yet I
hope they survive us. I hope, long after we've destroyed
ourselves with our wars and our pollution and our endless
need for more, they're still out there in the forests,
living as they always have, free from our curiosity. Our
cameras are guns. That's my prayer. If an old soldier
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is allowed to pray, let them be, Let them have
their wilderness, let them raise their young and bury their
dead in peace. We've taken enough from this world. We
don't need to take their mystery too. This is my confession,
my testimony, my burden shared at last, I, a United
States marine, encountered and killed an unknown primate in northern
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California in nineteen eighty three. It was intelligent, it had
a family, and its death has haunted me for forty years.
Make of that what you will, believe it or don't,
but know that somewhere out there, in the spaces we
haven't mapped, in the forest we haven't cut, they exist.
They're real, they're intelligent, and they're hiding from us with
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good reason. I'm tired now, tired of carrying this, tired
of remembering, tired of the weight. But I'm glad I've
told it finally, Even like this, maybe someone needed to
hear it. Maybe someone else has seen them and needs
to know they're not crazy. Or maybe it's just the
rambling of an old marine with too much time and
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too many memories. Either way, it's done. The story is told.
The truth, my truth is out there. Now do with
it what you will. But remember, when you're in the
deep woods and you feel like you're being watched, you
probably are, and the best thing you can do, the
only thing you should do is leave, turn around, walk away,
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and let them be. They've earned their solitude. We've taken enough.
Let them have what's left of the wild. It's the
least we can do, after what we've done, after what
I've done. That male creature, the one we killed, I
think about him every day in my mind. I've named
him Guardian because that's what he was doing, guarding his family,
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his territory, his way of life. He died doing what
any father would do, what any man would do. He
died protecting what he loved, and we killed him for it.
We killed him because we were scared, because we didn't understand,
because that's what we were trained to do. No amount
of justification changes that fundamental truth. We were the invaders,
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we were the threat, and when he tried to drive
us off, we killed him. I'll take that to my grave,
that weight, that knowledge. But maybe by sharing it someone
else won't have to carry the same burden. Maybe someone
will hear this and remember it when they're faced with
the unknown, Maybe they'll choose differently. Maybe they'll lower their
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weapon and back away. That's all I can hope for now,
that's all that's left to me. The story is told,
the truth is revealed, and I can finally rest. Forty
years is a long time to carry a secret. Forty
years is a long time to see those eyes in
the dark, But now you know they're out there. They're real,
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they're intelligent, and we killed one. God forgive us. I
was there, I pulled the trigger, I watched him die,
and I've regretted it every single day since. I've been
researching these creatures for almost forty years, four decades of expeditions, investigations,
late night interviews with witnesses, and hundreds of hours analyzing
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evidence that always seems to fall just short of definitive proof.
I've interviewed close to a thousand people, hunters, hikers, truck drivers,
forest service employees, Indigenous elders, and yes, military personnel with
stories they weren't supposed to tell. I've been laughed at, ridiculed,
had my credibility questioned more times than I can count.
(39:43):
But I've never stopped looking, never stopped believing, because I've
seen them too three times now, never as close as
the marine did, never in circumstances that violent, But I've
seen them, each encounter lasting just seconds, but those seconds
changed to everything. This marine story has shaken me more
than any encounter I've had myself, not because of the violence.
(40:08):
I've heard similar accounts before, though never this detailed, never
this raw. What gets me is his clarity about what
discovery would mean. After forty years of pushing for answers,
his story forces me to confront questions I've been avoiding.
Think about what would happen if we had irrefutable proof tomorrow.
(40:28):
If someone produced a body or perfect HD footage that
couldn't be disputed, The forest would be flooded with hunters
wanting trophies. Scientists would demand specimens for study. The government
would need to create new regulations, new departments, new bureaucracies.
Their habitat would be mapped, gritted, monitored tourism would explode.
(40:50):
Come see the sasquatch, preserve guided tours twice daily. We'd
radio collar them for their own protection, of course, track
their movements, study their genetics, observe their behavior. Documentaries would
be made. Zoos would petition for exhibition permits for conservation purposes. Naturally,
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their DNA would be sequenced, patented by biotech companies looking
for the next medical breakthrough. And what about them, these
beings who have successfully avoided us for thousands of years,
who have made the conscious choice to remain hidden. We
drag them into our world against their will, strip away
their mystery, their autonomy, their right to exist undefined by
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our science. The marine was right. They're intelligent. The fact
that they've remained hidden this long proves it. They know
what we are, what we're capable of. They've watched us
clearcut forests, poison rivers, drive species after species to extinction.
They've made the calculation that no matter how hard life
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is in the shrinking wilderness, it's better than being discovered
by us. Every piece of evidence I've collected, did, every
interview i've conducted every night I've spent in the woods
listening for their calls. I told myself it was for
their protection, that once we proved they existed, we could
protect their habitat and share their survival. But would we
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really or would we just find new and creative ways
to exploit them. I think about that female with her baby,
watching her mate die in that creek. She could have attacked,
could have sought revenge, She had the high ground, the
element of surprise, but she didn't. She chose to retreat,
to survive, to raise her child away from the creatures
(42:37):
that had just demonstrated their capacity for violence. That's not
just intelligence, that's wisdom. The indigenous peoples knew about them,
still do, but they don't seek proof. They don't need it.
They share the land with these beings, acknowledge their presence
through stories and traditions, but they don't hunt them, don't
(42:58):
try to capture them. There's a respect there and understanding
that some boundaries shouldn't be crossed. But we modern humans, scientists,
researchers like me, we can't accept that. We need to
categorize everything, understand everything, own everything. We tell ourselves it's
for knowledge, for conservation for the greater good. But is
(43:21):
it or is it just another form of conquest, another
frontier to be claimed? After almost forty years, I have
evidence things that would make skeptics pause, that would demand
further investigation. But is it enough? And more importantly, should
I even be trying to gather more? Would discovery be
(43:41):
the worst thing that could happen to them? I think
about this every night now. In my optimistic moments, I
imagine a world where we recognize them as fellow primates,
deserving of rights and protection, where vast areas of wilderness
are set aside for them, inviolate, protected by law and respect.
(44:02):
But then I remember our history, what we did to
the indigenous peoples of this continent, what we do to
the great apes in Africa and Asia, what we do
to anything that stands between us and what we want,
And I fear that discovery might be the beginning of
the end for them. They could become commodities. Their body
parts might end up in traditional medicine markets. Trophy Hunters
(44:25):
would pay hundreds of thousands for permits. Scientists would argue
that invasive research is necessary for conservation. Tourists would demand
access their habitat would be developed right up to the
borders of whatever inadequate preserve we designated for them. Within
a generation, maybe two, they could be gone. Oh, there
(44:46):
might be a few in captivity, in research facilities or
conservancy programs. But the wild ones, the free ones, the
ones who chose to remain hidden rather than engage with us,
they'd be extinct, stay tuned from more backwoods bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages, and we'd congratulate ourselves
(45:08):
on having discovered and documented them before they disappeared, never
acknowledging our role in their destruction. But what if I'm wrong?
What if keeping them secret dooms them just as surely?
Every year more of their habitat is destroyed. Every year
the wild places shrink without official recognition, without legal protection.
(45:29):
Won't they disappear anyway? Crushed by the relentless expansion of
our civilization. This marine carried the weight of killing one
for forty years. What weight would I carry if my
silence led to their extinction? What weight would I carry
if my evidence led to it instead? Sometimes I think
about walking away from the search that's consumed most of
(45:50):
my adult life. But I can't. I still live in
the forest. I still investigate sightings, still interview witnesses. Part
of me hopes for that one piece of undeniable proof.
Part of me hopes I never find it. What about
habitat protection? What about the logging companies and developers who
are destroying their homes? Wouldn't official recognition force the government
(46:13):
to protect them? These are the arguments I have with
myself at three in the morning, the counterpoints that keep
me from walking away entirely. And then I remember the
spotted owl, the cariboot, the polar bear, all protected, all
still declining. Protection on paper means nothing. If we don't
change our fundamental relationship with the natural world, and have
(46:35):
we will we Other researchers contact me, share their findings,
ask for my opinion, Young enthusiasts, full of passion and
certainty that discovery would save them. I listen. I encourage
their careful research, but I also share my doubts, my
fears about what discovery might mean. Some think I've gone soft,
(46:56):
lost my nerve after so many years. Maybe they're right.
Is keeping the secret the right decision is revealing it?
I don't know. After almost forty years, I'm less certain
than when I started. The marine in this story knew
exactly where he stood. He wanted them left alone, but
he'd killed one, he'd seen the consequences of contact firsthand.
(47:20):
My experiences have been different, more ambiguous, leaving me with
questions rather than answers. They've survived this long without our help.
They've adapted, evolved, persisted despite our best efforts to destroy
every wild thing on this planet. Maybe they don't need
our recognition, Maybe they don't need our protection. Maybe they
(47:40):
need us to stay away. Or maybe they need an advocate,
someone to fight for their habitat before it's all gone.
Maybe they need science to acknowledge them before it's too late.
Maybe keeping them secret is just another form of abandonment.
The marine story ends with a plea let them be
years of searching. I understand the wisdom in that, but
(48:03):
I also understand the danger. In a world where we're
destroying wilderness at an unprecedented rate, can we afford to
let them be? Or by the time we decide to act,
will there be nothing left to protect? I think about
that creature in Alaska. He saw the one that looked
at him and kept walking. No violence, no fear, just acknowledgment.
(48:25):
Two intelligences recognizing each other across the divide of species
and choosing to maintain that divide. That's beautiful, That's how
it should be. But is it sustainable? Can they maintain
that divide when we're pushing deeper into every corner of wilderness?
Can they stay hidden when every square foot of forest
is being mapped by satellites, when trail cameras are everywhere,
(48:47):
When their habitat is shrinking every year? The drive to discover,
to prove, to know is strong. Someone someday will provide
the evidence that can't be dismissed. Someone will take that
perfect photo, recover that perfect specimen, produce that perfect DNA sequence.
I don't have answers anymore, just questions. Every piece of
(49:11):
evidence I gather makes the questions harder, the ethical dilemma
more complex. Do I have the right to make this
decision for them? Do I have the right to keep
their existence secret? Do I have the right to reveal it?
That's what keeps me up at night now, not the
frustration of not having enough proof, but the fear of
what to do if I ever get it. The marine
(49:33):
killed one and regretted it for forty years. What would
I regret more revealing them to the world or keeping
them hidden while their world disappears. They're real, they're intelligent,
they're out there. But what we should do about that,
I honestly don't know anymore. Some say mysteries are meant
to be solved, that knowledge is always better than ignorance.
(49:55):
Others say some things are better left alone, that not
every secret needs to be dragged into the light. After
forty years, thousands of hours in the field, close to
a thousand interviews, I'm no closer to knowing which is right.
The marine learned through violence and regret that they should
be left alone. But I've learned through decades of research
(50:16):
that nothing is ever that simple. Every choice has consequences,
Every action and every inaction carries weight. So I continue
to struggle, continue to search, continue to question. Maybe that's
all any of us can do when faced with something
this profound, Sit with the uncertainty, carry the weight of
(50:37):
not knowing what's right, and hope that when the moment
of decision comes, will make the choice that causes the
least harm. But I look at the world we're creating,
the forest we're destroying, and I wonder if we're running
out of time for such philosophical debates. Maybe the luxury
of leaving them alone is one we can no longer afford,
or maybe it's the only moral choice left. I don't know.
(51:00):
After forty years, that's the only thing I'm certain of,
and that uncertainty, that's what keeps me up at night.
(54:00):
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