BWBS Ep:148 Bigfoot Takes The Gold!

In the spring of 1972, a man chasing gold and glory ventured deep into the Yukon wilderness, dreaming of striking it rich. But what began as a hopeful mining expedition soon unraveled into a two-month nightmare that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Fresh from Vietnam and toughened by work on the Alaska Pipeline, he believed no wilderness could break him. 

When he purchased the mineral rights to an abandoned 1950s claim—once owned by a prospector named Dutch Hanson who mysteriously vanished after a promising start—he ignored every red flag. Gold fever clouded his judgment, and soon he would realize the true cost of his ambition. After flying into a remote valley with a bush pilot, he built a cabin and began working his sluice box along a promising creek bend. The gold was there—steady and consistent, just as Hanson’s notes promised. But something was wrong. The forest was unnaturally quiet. No birds. No bears. No life at all.Then came the night screams. 

Unnatural wails echoed through the valley, rising and falling with a haunting, almost human cadence. The sounds were answered from multiple directions, as though the darkness itself were alive. He tried to rationalize it—wolves, perhaps—but deep down he knew better. Soon, massive spruce trees began snapping eight feet above the ground, sheared off with tremendous force. Then came the knocks—sharp, rhythmic wood-on-wood impacts echoing through the valley, back and forth, as if some unknown intelligence were communicating.

One afternoon, while working the creek, he heard a rapid series of popping sounds surrounding him—mouth clicks, moving in a circle, coordinated and deliberate. Something was out there. Watching. Stalking. Thinking. The proof came in the form of tracks—eighteen inches long, five toes, a five-foot stride. Too human to be a bear, too large to belong to any known species. And then, the unthinkable: he turned at the water’s edge to find an eight-foot creature watching him from the treeline.

 Covered in dark, shaggy hair with a conical head and intelligent eyes, it showed no fear—only dominance. When it struck a nearby tree with a thunderous slap, others answered from the forest. He was surrounded. That night, the creatures attacked. Rocks rained down on his cabin for hours, splintering wood and shaking the structure. Multiple voices filled the night—the deep, resonant roar of the alpha male, the shrill screams of the female, and the higher-pitched cries of a juvenile.

They circled his camp, making it clear he was not welcome. By dawn, his camp was destroyed. Tools twisted, the sluice box shattered, and every ounce of gold gone. The message was unmistakable: leave.He fled the valley, trailed by the creatures’ heavy knocks and distant cries. At the final creek crossing, the massive male appeared once more—silent, watchful, ensuring he never returned.He never did.

Because some places aren’t meant for humans, some fortunes aren’t worth the price, and some legends should remain undisturbed in the wild.

This is the story of one man’s hunt for Yukon gold… and the terrifying encounter that made him believe in something that shouldn’t exist.

Episode Transcript

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.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
I should have known better.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Than to go that far into the bush alone. But
gold fever does things to a man. Since Cloud's his
judgment makes him think he's invincible. That's what brought me
to the Yukon in the spring of nineteen seventy two,
and that's what nearly got me killed or worse. Looking
back now, I can see all the warning signs I
ignored the way Dutch Hanson's nephew couldn't meet my eyes

(01:26):
when he sold me the claim the way. Terry, the
bush pilot got real quiet when I showed him the
coordinates the way. The old timers in the bar and
Whitehorse changed the subject when I mentioned the valley I
was heading to. But I was thirty two years old,
fresh out of Vietnam and the Alaska Pipeline, and I
thought I knew everything.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
I thought I was.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Tough enough to handle whatever the wilderness could throw at me.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
I was wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
The claim looked perfect on paper. An old prospector named
Dutch Hanson had filed it back in the fifties, but
never worked it much before he died. His nephew, a
soft handed accountant from Vancouver named Gary, sold me the
rights for eight hundred dollars, which was most of what
I'd saved working the pipeline in Alaska. The creek ran
year round. According to the survey maps, the terrain wasn't

(02:14):
too steep, and according to Dutch's handwritten notes, which Gary
included with the deed, he'd pulled out nearly an ounce
in just three days of panning before he got called
away for some family emergency. He never made it back.
The notes were dated June nineteen fifty four, eighteen years ago.
I should have wondered why Dutch never returned to such

(02:35):
a promising claim. I should have asked more questions, but
Gary was eager to sell. The price was right, and
I was eager to get away from people and noise
and civilization. I signed the papers, paid the money, and
started planning my expedition. I flew into Whitehorse in late April.
The town was still shaking off winter, with dirty snow

(02:55):
piled in the alleys and ice on the Yukon River
starting to break up. I checked into a cheap motel
on Second Avenue and spent the next two weeks gathering
supplies and equipment. I knew I'd be on my own
for at least three months, maybe longer if the mining
went well, so I had to plan carefully.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
I bought food and bulk from the general store.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Flour, beans, rice, oatmeal, dried fruit, canned goods, coffee, sugar, salt,
things that would keep without refrigeration. I bought fishing line
and hooks, figuring I could supplement my supplies with fresh
fish from the creek. I bought two hundred rounds of
thirty ought six ammunition for my rifle, and one hundred
shells of double out buck for my shotgun. I told

(03:38):
myself the weapons were for bears and wolves, but I
packed enough ammunition for a small war. I bought mining
equipment from a supplier who'd been outfitting prospectors since the
gold Rush days. A sluice box that broke down into
three sections for transport, several gold pans and different sizes,
a shovel, a pick, a pry bar, essifying screens, a

(04:01):
small scale for weighing gold vials, and a leather pouch
for storing what I found. I bought tools and building supplies.
A chainsaw with extra chains and a five gallon jerry
can of gas and bar oil. A hammer, nails, a handsaw,
a draw knife for shaping logs, a file for sharpening

(04:21):
rope and tarps. A wall tent that would serve as
my home until I got a cabin built. I bought
camping gear, a good sleeping bag rated to minus thirty,
a Coleman lantern and fuel matches in waterproof containers. A
first aid kit that was probably inadequate, but was all
I could afford, water purification tablets, a compass and maps.

(04:44):
Though the maps of that region were sketchy at best.
The bill came to just over three hundred dollars, which
left me with about two hundred in cash for emergencies.
Not much of a cushion, but I was committed now.
I hired a bush pilot named Terry to drop me
at the claim. The snow was still thick on the ground,
but I wanted to get in early, get my cabin built,

(05:05):
and be ready to work as soon as the runoff started.
Terry didn't like the location when I showed him the coordinates.
That's pretty far out, he said, studying the map in
his hangar office. You sure about this. That's rough country
back there. I told him I was sure. I'd been
mining in Alaska for three years and figured I knew
what I was getting into. Terry just shrugged and said

(05:27):
it was my funeral. He'd fly me in, but he
wouldn't be checking on me. I'd have to hike out
the eight miles to the old logging road. If I
needed anything from there, I could probably hitch a ride
to the highway another fifteen miles east. Radio doesn't work
worth a dam back in those valleys, Terry warned me.
As we loaded my supplies into his beaver, and there's

(05:49):
no one within miles of that claim. You get hurt,
you're on your own. I knew all that. That's what
I wanted. After two tours in Vietnam and three years
of crowd camps and pipeline politics, I craved solitude. I
wanted to be somewhere nobody could tell me what to
do or when to do it. I wanted to be

(06:09):
left alone to work my claim and maybe, if I
was lucky, pull out enough gold to buy a little
property somewhere and never have to answer to anyone again.
The flight took about forty minutes. We followed the Yukon
River north and then cut west over endless miles of
spruce forest and winding creeks. The mountains rose up on

(06:29):
our left, still white with snow. Finally, Terry circled over
a small valley where a creek carved.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Through the trees.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
He pointed down at a relatively flat spot near the water.
That's probably your best bet for landing, he shouted over
the engine noise. Ground looked solid enough. He made two
passes to check for hazards, then brought us down smooth.
The skis hit the snow, and we glided to a
stop about fifty yards from the creek. When Terry cut
the engine, the silence hit me like a physical thing.

(06:59):
No traffic, no machinery, no voices, just wind in the
trees and the distant sound of running water. It took
us an hour to unload everything. I'd brought a wall
tent to live in until I got a cabin built
two months of food, mining equipment, tools, a chainsaw, a rifle,
a shot gun, ammunition, and all the other gear I

(07:21):
figured i'd need. Terry helped me set up the tent,
wished me luck, and fired up the beaver. I watched
him disappear over the ridge line, and then I was alone.
Those first few days were brutal but satisfying. The temperature
dropped below freezing every night, and I'd wake up with
frost on the inside of my sleeping bag and my

(07:41):
breath forming clouds in the tent. But the days were
getting longer and warmer, the sun climbing higher in the
sky each afternoon. Spring was taking hold, slowly but surely.
I spent the mornings cutting logs for my cabin. I'd
identified a stand of dead spruce about two hundred yards
from my tent site trees that had died from Beetlekill

(08:02):
a few years back. The wood was dry and straight,
perfect for building. I'd fell three or four trees in
the morning, limb them, and then spend the afternoon cutting
them to length and dragging them to the building site.
The chainsaw was loud, incredibly loud. The sound echoed through
the valley, shattering the silence, announcing my presence to everything

(08:25):
within miles. I told myself that was a good thing.
Bears would hear me coming and stay away. Wolves would
know a human was in the area and give me
a wide berth. But sometimes when I shut off the
saw and the silence rushed back in, I'd get an
uncomfortable feeling that I was making too much noise, attracting
the wrong kind of attention. In the evenings, I'd scout

(08:47):
the creek. Dutchess notes had marked a bend where bedrock
came close to the surface, about half a mile upstream
from where Terry had dropped me. I found the spot
on my third day. The creek made a sharp turn
to the left, wrapping around a granite outcrop that forced
the water into a narrow channel. On the inside of
the bend. There was a gravel bar maybe twenty feet

(09:09):
long and ten feet wide. The water ran fast and
clear over the gravel, and I could see gold color
in the afternoon sun. I did some test panning that
first week, just to confirm what Dutch had found. I'd
shovel gravel into my pan, add water from the creek,
and swirl it around, letting the lighter material wash away
and leaving the heavy minerals at the bottom. Almost every

(09:32):
pan showed color, fine gold, mostly tiny flakes that caught
the light like bits of sunshine, but it was there,
consistent and real. By mid May, I'd moved into the cabin.
It wasn't finished, not by a long shot, but it
had four walls, a door, and a roof that mostly
kept out the rain. I'd built it about one hundred

(09:54):
yards from the creek on a slight rise that would
keep me dry during.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
The spring runoff.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Nothing fancy, just one room twelve by fourteen feet, with
a small window facing south to catch what daylight I could,
and a door on the east side.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
I'd cut the logs.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
From the dead standing timber, notched them so they'd stack
and lock together, and chink the gaps with moss and
mud i'd dug.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
From the creek bank. The roof was the hardest part.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
I'd used my tarp as temporary shelter and spent three
long days splitting shakes from cedar logs i'd found downstream.
My hands were covered in blisters and splinters by the
time I finished, but the roof was solid. It would
shed water and snow and keep me warm. The stove
was ingenious, if I do say so myself. I'd brought
a fifty five gallon drum specifically for this purpose. I

(10:44):
cut a door in one end with my hacksaw, fitted
it with hinges made from wire, and cut a hole
in the top for a stovepipe. The pipe i'd fashioned
from tin cans, flattened and rolled and fitted together. It
wasn't pretty, but it worked. I could burn wood in
the barrel and the heat would radiate through the metal,
warming the cabin surprisingly well. I built a cot from

(11:06):
spruce poles and rope, stretched my tarp over it for
a mattress, and called it home. I had a small table,
also made from spruce poles, and a stump that served
as a chair. My supplies were stacked against the back wall.
My rifle hung from pegs driven into the logs near
the door. My shotgun leaned in the corner. Everything I needed,

(11:27):
nothing I didn't. By mid May, I'd moved into the
cabin and was working the creek every day. The spring
run off had started in earnest. The creek had risen
about two feet and the water was running fast, cold
and murky with glacial silt. It made the mining harder,
but I'd expected that. I built a small sluice box,
following a design I'd learned in Alaska, about six feet long,

(11:51):
with metal riffle trays to catch the gold. I set
it up at the bend where Dutch had marked his
spot and started running material. My routine became predicted. I'd
wake it dawn when the light started coming through the window,
make coffee on the barrel stove, and eat a breakfast
of oatmeal or fried bannock. Then I'd grab my shovel
and pans and head to the creek. I'd spend the

(12:12):
morning digging gravel from the bar and running it through
the sluice, adding water from the creek to wash away
the lighter material. The gold, being heavier, would settle into
the riffles along with black sand and other heavy minerals.
At midday, i'd take a break, eat some dried meat
and bannock, and check my progress. In the afternoon, I'd

(12:33):
continue digging until my back and shoulders were screaming for mercy,
usually around four or five o'clock. Then i'd clean up
the sluice, carefully washing the concentrates into my gold pan,
and spend an hour panning down to the final gold.
On a good day, i'd recover a quarter ounce, maybe
a bit more if I found a pocket where the
gold had concentrated. It wasn't going to make me rich,

(12:55):
but it was steady work, and the numbers added up.
I figured by fall, if I could maintain that pace,
i'd have enough to make the trip worthwhile, maybe eight
or ten ounces, depending on how long I could stand
the isolation and how long my supply is held out.
But something was wrong with the valley. I'd known it
from the first week, but I'd tried to ignore it,

(13:17):
tried to tell myself I was being paranoid. The forest
was too quiet, too empty. The Yukon was supposed to
be full of life, especially in late spring and early summer.
Moose should have been everywhere, feeding on the new growth.
Caribous should have been moving through on their spring migration.
Bears should have been out of hibernation, hungry and active.

(13:38):
Birds should have been singing from every tree, building nests,
raising young. But I barely saw or heard anything in
three weeks. I'd spotted one lynx, and that was from
a distance, just a tawny shape slipping through the trees.
I'd seen a few ravens, but even they seemed reluctant
to stay long. They'd fly over, calling to each other

(13:59):
in their harsh vay choices, but they never landed near
the cabin or the creek. They just kept moving, heading
somewhere else, somewhere that felt safer. No bears. That's what
really bothered me. It was prime bear country, with plenty
of fish in the creek, plenty of berries ripening on
the bushes, plenty of everything a bear would want. But

(14:21):
I hadn't seen one track, hadn't smelled one, hadn't heard one.
In Alaska, you couldn't go a week without seeing bear
sign here.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
Nothing.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
No wolves howling at night either. I'd hear them sometimes
in the distance, very far away, but never close. It
was like they avoided the valley entirely, like they knew
something I didn't. I told myself the mining activity had
spooked the local wildlife. The chainsaw, the hammering during construction,
the constant splash of water through the sluice, all of

(14:54):
it probably kept animals at a distance. They'd come back
once they got used to me being there, once they
realized I wasn't a threat. But deep down I knew
that wasn't it. Stay tuned for more Backwoods big Foot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. Animals don't avoid an
entire valley just because one human is making noise. They're curious,

(15:18):
they come to investigate. They adapt. The silence wasn't natural.
Something had driven the wild life away, something had claimed
this territory as its own, and everything else new to
stay clear. Then, about four weeks into my stay, on
a cool evening in late May, I heard the first vocalization.

(15:38):
It was late maybe nine or nine thirty, though time
was getting hard to track. The sun was still up
at that latitude in May, hovering just above the mountains
to the northwest, painting the sky in shades of orange
and pink. I was inside the cabin, eating a dinner
of beans and salt pork, reading an old Louis Lamore
Western by lantern light. The story was good, taking my

(16:01):
mind off the isolation, letting me forget for a while
that I was alone in the wilderness, miles from the
nearest human being. The sound cut through the evening air
like a knife. At first, my brain tried to categorize
it as something familiar, a wolf howl, maybe, but it
wasn't quite right. It started low down, in a register

(16:22):
that I could feel in my chest as much as
here with my ears. Then it rose in pitch, climbing
higher and higher, more of a whale than a howl,
with a quality that was almost human, but not quite.
It went on for at least ten seconds, maybe longer,
echoing through the valley, bouncing off the mountains. When it
finally stopped, the silence that followed felt heavy and oppressive,

(16:46):
like the air itself was holding its breath. I set
down my book in tenplate, my appetite suddenly gone. I
sat there on my cot listening, waiting, my heart pounding
in my chest. The cabin felt very small, suddenly very fragile,
just thin logs and mud and hope standing between me

(17:07):
and whatever had made that sound. Nothing, just wind in
the trees, just the creek running over stones. I got up, slowly,
trying not to make any noise, and picked up my
rifle from where it leaned against the wall. I checked
the chamber, confirmed there was a round ready, and moved
to the door. My hands were steady, but my guts

(17:27):
were churning. I lifted the bar and cracked the door open.
Peering out into the twilight, the clearing looked normal, trees
casting long shadows, the creek glinting in the low sun.
Nothing moving. I opened the door wider and stepped outside,
bringing the rifle up to my shoulder, scanning the tree
line in both directions.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
Still nothing.

Speaker 1 (17:50):
The sound came again, from the same direction as before,
from somewhere up the valley to the northwest. It was
the same wailing cry, starting low and rising high, going
on and on until I thought it would never stop.
When it finally did, I realized I'd been holding my breath.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Then, from a.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Different location, from somewhere west of my position and closer
to the creek, another cry answered. This one was higher,
pitched from the start, almost like a woman screaming. But
with that same inhuman quality that made every hair on
my body stand on end. It went on for five
or six seconds before cutting off abruptly. I stood there
in the clearing, rifle at my shoulder, turning slowly in

(18:32):
a circle, trying to pinpoint where the sounds had come from.
But the echoes made it impossible.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
To be sure.

Speaker 1 (18:38):
The valley played tricks with sound. What seemed close might
be far away. What seemed to come from one direction
might actually come from another. I waited for ten minutes,
maybe fifteen, standing perfectly still, listening and watching. The mosquitoes
found me and started biting, but I barely noticed. My

(18:59):
entire focus was on the forest, on those dark spaces
between the tree trunks, where anything could be hiding. But
I didn't hear the sounds again. Whatever had made them
was done, calling for the night. I went back inside,
barred the door, and sat on my cot with the
rifle across my lap. I tried to read again, but
couldn't focus on the words. My mind kept replaying those sounds,

(19:22):
kept trying to identify what could have made them. Wolves
didn't sound like that, Lynks didn't sound like that. Bears
could make some weird vocalizations, but nothing like what I
had heard. Could it have been a person, someone else
in the valley signaling for help, maybe, But the nearest
claim was at least ten miles away according to the

(19:42):
territorial maps, and Terry had said, nobody else was working
this drainage, And besides, no human throat could make sounds
like that. The pitch was wrong, the duration was wrong,
the raw power behind it was wrong. I didn't sleep
well that night. Every sound outside had me reaching for
the rifle. Every creek of the cabin settling, every gust

(20:04):
of wind, every snap of a twig, all of it
made me jump. When dawn finally came and light started
filling the cabin, I felt exhausted, but relieved.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
Whatever was out.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
There seemed to be nocturnal. As long as I stayed
in the cabin after dark, I'd be safe. That's what
I told myself. Anyway, the next morning I found the
first tree break. I'd forced myself to go back to work,
to maintain my routine, to not let fear control me.
I needed to mine, needed to keep finding gold, needed

(20:37):
to justify being out here. So I grabbed my shovel
and headed downstream to check a spot where I thought
I might find better gravel, an area where the creek
widened out and slowed down. The broken tree was about
a quarter mile from the cabin, right along the creek bank.
I almost walked past it, but something made me stop
and look. A spruce tree, maybe six inches in diameter

(21:00):
at the break point, had been snapped off about eight
feet up from the ground. Not cut with a saw
or an axe, not chewed by a moose or stripped
by a bear, just snapped like someone had grabbed the
top and bent it until the wood gave way. The
top section was still attached, hanging down by strips of
bark and some inner fiber, swaying slightly in the morning breeze.

(21:23):
The break itself was fresh, maybe a day.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Old at most.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
The exposed wood was still white and wet, seeping sap
that glistened in the sunlight. I could smell it, that
sharp pine smell that comes from fresh cut or broken spruce.
I walked around the tree, studying it from every angle.
The trunk below the brake was solid and healthy, no
sign of rot or disease. The wood hadn't been weakened

(21:47):
by beetles or fungus, It was a healthy tree that
had been broken by force by something applying tremendous pressure
to the top until it snapped. I looked up, trying
to estimate the height feet maybe eight and a half,
way too high for any animal I knew about. A
bear might stand on its hind legs and reach that high, maybe,

(22:09):
But bears don't break trees like that. They claw them,
mark them with their scent, bite them sometimes, but they
don't snap them cleanly in half the wind, but there
hadn't been any significant wind in the past few days,
and this was a single tree. If wind had been
strong enough to snap a six inch spruce at eight feet,

(22:30):
there would be other damage, other trees down, branches scattered everywhere,
But everything else around this tree looked normal. I spent
maybe twenty minutes examining that tree, looking for some logical explanation,
some natural cause that would make sense. I found nothing.
The break was deliberate. Something had grabbed that tree and

(22:51):
broken it on purpose. I continued downstream, but my attention
wasn't on finding new gravel deposits anymore. I was looking
for more trees, and I found them. Two more broken
spruce trees within the next hundred yards, both along the creek.
Both snapped at around eight feet off the ground, both
with the tops hanging down. One of them was even

(23:13):
fresher than the first. The woods so knew that it
was still dripping sap onto the forest floor. I stood
there looking at the third tree, trying to control the
fear that was building in my chest. This wasn't random,
This was a pattern. Something was marking territory, leaving signs,
communicating in a way I didn't understand, and that something

(23:35):
was big and strong enough to snap healthy trees eight
feet up. I went back to the cabin and spent
the rest of that day inside door, barred, rifle loaded thinking.
In Vietnam, we'd learned to read signs to understand what
the enemy was doing based on the evidence they left behind.
Broken branches meant someone had passed through. Footprints and mud

(23:57):
told us how many how recently, Which direction disturbed earth
might mean a mine or a trap. This felt like that,
like someone was leaving signs, marking trails, establishing boundaries. But
these weren't human signs. The scale was all wrong, the
height was wrong, the strength required was wrong. I remembered

(24:19):
stories I'd heard growing up My grandfather had been a
logger in organ and he used to tell tales around
the campfire about things in the deep woods. Creatures that
walked like men but weren't men, harry giants that lived
in the most remote forests and avoided humans but sometimes
let themselves be seen, sasquatch, bigfoot, wild man, different names

(24:41):
for the same basic legend. I'd always figured those stories
were bullshit, camp tales to scare kids and greenhorns. No
serious person believed in monsters in the woods. We had scientists, biologists,
people who studied wildlife. If there were giant apes running
around North America, we'd know about it. We'd have bodies, bones,

(25:03):
clear photographs, irrefutable evidence. But standing there in my cabin,
thinking about those broken trees, about the vocalizations i'd heard,
about the unnatural silence of the forest, I wasn't so
sure anymore. What if the stories had some basis in truth.
What if there was something out there that science hadn't
cataloged yet, something that lived in the most remote regions

(25:27):
and stayed hidden from humans. The Yukon was big, huge,
hundreds of thousands of square miles of wilderness. Much of
it had never been explored or mapped in detail. If
something wanted to stay hidden here, it could. If something
wanted to avoid people, it would have no trouble doing so.
There was room in this country for secrets. I started

(25:49):
paying closer attention to my surroundings after that. When I
was working the sluice, i'd stop every few minutes to
look around and listen, scanning the tree line for any
sign of movement.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
When I was cutting.

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Wood or hauling water, I kept the rifle close, leaning
it against a tree within easy reach. I couldn't shake
the feeling that I was being watched, that eyes were
on me, even when I couldn't see who or what
they belonged to. The knock started about a week later,
on a night when the moon was almost full. The
first one woke me from a fitful sleep. I'd been

(26:22):
dreaming about Vietnam, about patrol through the jungle, about that
feeling of being hunted. The knock brought me awake instantly,
heart pounding, reaching for the rifle before my eyes were
fully open. It was a single, loud thump, like someone
hitting a tree with a baseball bat, close enough to
the cabin that I heard it clearly, even through the

(26:42):
log walls. The sound was sharp and clear, resonating through
the night air, nothing like the natural sounds of the forest.
This was purposeful, This was communication. I sat up, threw
off my sleeping bag, and pulled on my boots. My
hands were shaking, but I kept my breathing steady, falling
back on military training, Stay, calm, assess the situation, react appropriately.

(27:07):
I grabbed the rifle, checked the chamber by feel in
the darkness, and stood up. The lantern was on the table,
but I didn't light it. Better to stay dark, not
give away my position or make myself a target. I
moved to the window and looked out. The moon was
bright enough that I could see fairly well. The clearing
around the cabin looked empty, just shadows and silver light.

(27:30):
The creek glinted beyond the trees.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
Nothing moved.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
I waited, watching, listening for five minutes that felt like
an hour. Nothing, just that one knock, still echoing in
my memory, making my nerves sing with tension. I went
to the door, lifted the bar as quietly as I could,
and cracked it open. The cool night air rushed in,
carrying the scent of spruce and damp earth. I stepped

(27:56):
out onto the small porch i'd built, rifle ut my shoulder,
scanning left and right, looking for any sign of what
had made the sound.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
The forest was.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
A wall of black shadows broken by moonlight. I could
see the nearest trees clearly enough, their trunks pale in
the silvery light, but beyond them was darkness. Anything could
be hiding in that darkness, anything at all. I stood
there for maybe ten minutes, turning slowly covering all approaches
to the cabin. My eyes adjusted to the moonlight and

(28:28):
I could see better, could make out individual trees and bushes.
But I saw nothing that shouldn't be there, no movement,
no shapes that didn't belong. Finally, I went back inside,
barred the door, and sat on my cot with the
rifle across my lap. I didn't bother trying to sleep.
I lit the lantern on its lowest setting, just enough

(28:49):
light to see the inside of the cabin, and waited
for dawn. Just before first light, when the darkness was
starting to turn gray, I heard another knock. This one
was farther away from somewhere up the valley. It was
answered within seconds by a different knock from down by
the creek, then a third knock from the east, from
the direction of the ridge line. They were spaced out,

(29:12):
maybe five seconds between each one, like something was communicating,
sending signals back and forth across the valley. The pattern
repeated three times, then stopped. Silence rushed back in, somehow
louder than the knocks had been. I didn't go outside again.
I sat there until the sun was well up, until
daylight filled the cabin and chased away some of the fear.

(29:35):
Then I made coffee, ate a cold breakfast of dried
fruit and jerky because I didn't want to mess with
the stove, and tried to figure out what to do.
Leaving seemed like the smart option. Pack up, hike out
to the road, catch a ride back to Whitehorse, and
never come back. Cut my losses, and get the hell
out while I still could. But I'd invested everything I

(29:57):
had in this claim, two months of work, most my savings,
all my plans for the future. Stay tuned for more
Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. If
I left now, I'd have maybe three ounces of gold,
not enough to make any real difference. I'd be broke
and starting over from nothing, So I stayed. I told

(30:20):
myself the knocks were just animals, maybe bears knocking over
dead trees or moose bumping into timber. I told myself
the vocalizations were wolves or lynx, or some other wildlife
I wasn't familiar with. I told myself the broken trees
were caused by wind or rot or natural processes I
didn't understand. I told myself a lot of lies that week,

(30:41):
trying to convince myself to stay, trying to push down
the fear that was building in my chest. After that night,
the knox became regular almost every evening, starting around dusk.
I'd hear them, sometimes just one or two, casual, almost
like whatever was out there was just check in. Other
times i'd hear whole conversations, knocks back and forth between

(31:05):
multiple locations, lasting for ten or fifteen minutes. They varied
in volume and distance, but they were always deliberate, always purposeful,
wood on wood, loud and resonant, echoing through the valley
like drum beats. I tried to convince myself to keep working,
to maintain my routine, to not let fear control me.

(31:26):
Some days I managed it.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
I'd work the sluice for a.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Few hours, recover some gold, focus on the task at hand.
Other days I couldn't do it. I'd hear a sound
in the forest, a branch breaking or leaves rustling, and
I'd grab my rifle and retreat to the cabin. My
progress slowed, my gold recovery dropped, but I was still there,
still holding on, still hoping things would get better. Then

(31:52):
came the mouth pops. I heard them for the first
time on a bright afternoon in early June, during what
should have been the safest time of day. The sun
was high and hot, the sky was clear and blue,
and I was working the sluice box, bent over with
my back to the forest, shoveling gravel and watching the
water wash away the lighter material. I'd been at it

(32:13):
for maybe two hours, lost in the rhythm of the work,
starting to relax a little. The physical labor felt good,
the sun on my back felt good. I was finding
decent color in almost every pan, which meant the gold
was there, steady and real. For a few hours, I'd
managed to push the fear aside and just work. The

(32:34):
sound came from directly behind me, from the forest, maybe
fifty or sixty feet away. It was a rapid series
of pops, like someone smacking their lips or popping their cheeks,
but louder and faster than any human could possibly do,
maybe ten or twelve in quick succession, so fast they
almost ran together. I straightened up and spun around, dropping

(32:55):
the shovel, reaching for the rifle I'd propped against a
rock a few feet away. My heart was hammering. That
sound had been close, too close. I scanned the tree line,
searching for whatever had made it. Nothing, just dark spaces
between the spruce trunks, shadows that could hide anything. The
forest looked still and innocent, just trees and underbrush and

(33:18):
dappled sunlight. But that sound had come from there. I'd
heard it. Clearly, something was watching me. I stood there,
rifle at my shoulder, breathing hard, waiting. The mosquitoes found
me and started biting, but I barely noticed. My entire
focus was on the tree line, on trying to spot movement, trying.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
To see what was there.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
The pops came again, from a different location, this time
from my right, maybe eighty feet away, still in the forest,
but from a different direction, that same impossibly fast rhythm,
that same wet sound like flesh on flesh, then silence,
Then again from my left from a third location, pop

(34:00):
pop pop pop, closer, this time, maybe only forty feet away.
I swung the rifle in that direction, finger on the trigger,
ready to shoot at anything that moved.

Speaker 2 (34:11):
Nothing.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
The forest was playing games with me. Whatever was out
there was moving, circling me, staying just out of sight,
but letting me know it was there, multiple individuals, I realized,
at least three, maybe more, coordinating their movements working together.
The pops came from behind me now from the direction
of the creek. I spun around, almost losing my footing

(34:34):
on the loose gravel. Nothing there either, just the creek
running clear and bright over the stones, just willows and
grass and sunlight. I was surrounded. They'd positioned themselves in
a circle around me, hidden in the forest and brush,
communicating with those strange pops, coordinating their movements, hurting me maybe,

(34:55):
or just toying with me, showing me how helpless I was,
how exposed I was out here. Away from the cabin,
I backed toward the cabin, keeping the rifle up, turning
in a slow circle, trying to watch all directions at once.
The pops followed me, moving through the trees, keeping pace
with my retreat. Pop from the left, pop from the right,

(35:17):
pop pop from straight ahead. They were calling to each other, signaling,
working together like a pack of wolves, but with an
intelligence that felt way beyond any animal I'd ever encountered.
My back hit the cabin wall and I side stepped
along it until I found the door. I fumbled with
the latch, got it open, and backed inside without taking

(35:37):
my eyes off the clearing. The pops continued for another
minute or two, coming from multiple locations surrounding the cabin.
Then they stopped. Silence fell over the valley like a blanket.
I stood just inside the door, rifle pointed out at
the clearing, waiting for them to show themselves, waiting for
an attack that didn't come. After maybe ten minutes, I

(36:01):
risked closing the door and barring it. I went to
the window and looked out, scanning the tree line. I
couldn't see anything moving, no shapes that didn't belong, but
I knew they were out there. I could feel them watching, waiting,
planning their next move. That's when the fear really took hold. Up.
Until then, the encounters had been mostly at night. I

(36:23):
could tell myself that As long as I stayed in
the cabin after dark, I was safe. But this had
happened in broad daylight in the middle of the afternoon.
They weren't nocturnal. They were active whenever they wanted to be,
and they could get close to me, close enough to
surround me without me seeing or hearing them approach. I
stayed inside for the rest of that day, and all

(36:45):
through the night. I heard knocks after dark, distant vocalizations,
and several times what sounded like heavy footsteps circling the cabin,
but nothing tried to get in. They seemed content to
just make their presence known, to let me understand that
they were there, and I was in their territory, and
there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it.

(37:06):
The next morning, I found footprints, not the first time
I'd seen them, but these were fresh and clear and
close to the cabin. They were in a patch of
bare mud near the creek, about fifty yards from my door,
right along the path I walked every day to get water.
The prints were enormous. I knelt down next to them,
comparing them to my own.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
Boot for scale.

Speaker 1 (37:27):
My boot was a size ten, about twelve inches long.
These prints were eighteen inches long, maybe more, and at
least seven or eight inches wide. At the ball, five
distinct toes with a pronounced arch and a deep heel impression.
The toes were splayed out longer than human toes, with
what looked like nail marks at the tips. There were

(37:49):
four clear prints in the mud, forming a stride pattern.
I measured the distance between them with my boot laces,
about five feet from the heel of one print to
the heel of the next. Five feet. I couldn't stride
that far, not even close. Whatever made these tracks was tall,
with legs that were.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Much longer than mine.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
The prints headed toward the forest on the east side
of the clearing and disappeared into the pine needles and leaves.
I followed them for maybe thirty feet before losing the trail.
But in that thirty feet I found something else. A
tree had been freshly marked, deep gouge marks in the
bar about seven feet up, four parallel scratches that looked

(38:29):
like they'd been made by massive claws or fingernails. The
wood underneath was exposed, pale and fresh. I reached up
and tried to touch the marks, even stretching on my toes.
I couldn't quite reach them. Whatever had marked this tree
was taller than me, much taller. I went back to
the cabin and spent most of that day just sitting

(38:51):
trying to process what I was seeing, trying to make
sense of it. The evidence was piling up. The vocalizations,
the tree breaks, the knocks, the pops, the footprints, the
claw marks. All of it pointed to something that shouldn't exist,
something that science said didn't exist. But it was here,

(39:12):
it was real, and it was getting bolder. I spent
that whole day in the cabin, door barred, rifle loaded,
trying to figure out what to do. Part of me
wanted to pack up and hike out right then eight
miles to the logging road, fifteen more to the highway,
and I could be done with this nightmare. But I'd
invested everything I had into this claim. Two months of

(39:35):
backbreaking work, building the cabin, establishing my camp, working the creek.
I was finding gold, decent, gold, steady and consistent. If
I left now, I'd have nothing. I'd be broke and
back to square one, probably have to take some shit
job just to eat. I decided to stay, but to
take extreme precautions. I spent the afternoon cutting shooting ports

(39:59):
in the cabin wall, small gaps between the logs that
I could fire through if something tried to break in.
I moved all my food into the cabin and hung
it from the rafters and burlap sacks, making sure it
was secure and out of reach. I made sure I
had ammunition for both the rifle and shot gun within
easy reach at all times, boxes stacked next to my

(40:19):
cot where I could grab them in the dark. I
resolved to work only during daylight hours, to never go
far from the cabin, and to always be aware of
my surroundings. For a few days, things were quiet, suspiciously quiet.
No knocks at night, no vocalizations, no sounds of movement
around the cabin. I worked the sluice cautiously, constantly looking

(40:42):
over my shoulder, but nothing bothered me. I started to
relax a little. Maybe whatever had been around my camp
had moved on. Maybe I just had a few strange encounters,
but things would settle down now. Maybe I could finish
out the summer, get my gold, and leave on my
own terms. I should have known better. The quiet wasn't
a good sign. It was the calm before the storm.

(41:06):
I saw the Big Mail for the first time in
early July, on a day that started out beautiful.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
The sky was.

Speaker 1 (41:12):
Clear and deep blue, the sun was warm, and the
mosquitoes weren't too bad. I decided to go down to
the creek to refill my water containers. I'd been careful
about water, always treating it with purification tablets, always making
sure I had enough on hand so I didn't have
to make multiple trips. I'd brought both containers, five gallon

(41:33):
plastic Jerry cans that I carried on a pole across
my shoulders. The rifle was slung over my back. I'd
gotten into the habit of bringing it everywhere, even for
simple tasks like this. I walked down to my usual spot,
a place where the creek ran clear and deep enough
to dip the cans in. I set down the pole,
unslung the rifle, and leaned it against a rock where

(41:54):
I could reach it quickly. Then I knelt at the
water's edge and started filling the first container. The water
was cold and clear, running fast over smooth stones. I
could see small fish darting in the shadows, grailing, probably
rising to feed on insects. It was peaceful, almost normal,
the kind of moment that made me remember why I'd

(42:16):
come here in.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
The first place.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
I filled both containers, secured the lids, and was about
to hook them back onto the carrying pole when I
felt it, that prickle on the back of your neck
when you know you're being watched, that primitive instinct that
had kept our ancestors alive when they were prey animals themselves.
Every hair on my body stood up, my guts turned
to ice water. I turned around slowly, very slowly, not

(42:42):
making any sudden movements, and there it was, standing at
the edge of the forest, maybe forty yards away, partially
obscured by the shadows and low hanging branches, but I
could see enough, more than enough. My brain struggled to
process what my eyes were showing. It tried to fit
this thing into some category that made sense. Tried to

(43:03):
tell me it was a bear, or a moose, or
a man in a costume. But I knew better. I
knew what I was looking at. It was massive, at
least eight feet tall, probably taller. The proportions were too
human like to be anything else. The legs were thick
and powerful, planted wide in a stance that screamed confidence
and dominance. The torso was barrel chested, massive shoulders tapering

(43:27):
to a narrower waist. The arms hung down past its knees,
impossibly long, thick, with muscle visible even through the hair
that covered them. And it was covered in hair dark
brown or black, I couldn't tell for sure in the shadows,
shaggy and thick, longer on the arms and shoulders, shorter
on the face and hands. It looked coarse, not like

(43:50):
an ape's sleek fur, but more like a bear's rough coat,
hanging in uneven lynks, like it had never been groomed
or cared for. The face was the worst part, because
it was almost human, but not quite. The head was
cone shaped, rising to a peaked crest, like some ancient
hominid skull I'd seen in a textbook. The brow ridge
was pronounced heavy bone jutting out over deep set eyes

(44:13):
that caught the light and reflected it back at me
with an amber glow. The nose was flat and broad,
The mouth was wide, lips pulled back slightly to show
teeth that were too large and too flat to be
fully human. But the eyes, the eyes were what got
me They were dark, almost black, with that amber reflection

(44:34):
only when they caught the light at the right angle.
And they were intelligent, not animal intelligence, not the blank
stare of a bear or the nervous awareness of a deer.
This was something else, something that thought and planned and understood.
Those eyes studied me the way I might study an insect,
with curiosity and calculation and absolutely no fear. Stay tuned

(44:58):
for more Backwoods big foot story. We'll be back after
these messages. We looked at each other for probably only
ten or fifteen seconds.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
I couldn't move.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
My body had locked up, frozen in some kind of
primordial terror response. My brain was screaming at me to run,
to grab the rifle, to do something, anything, but my
muscles wouldn't obey. I just stood there, locked in place
by those dark, intelligent eyes. The creature shifted its weight slightly,

(45:29):
muscles rippled under the hair. It had to weigh five
hundred pounds, maybe six hundred, all of it muscle and
bone and raw power. It could have covered the forty
yards between us and seconds if it wanted to. It
could have torn me apart before I got the rifle
unslung and aimed. We both knew it. The knowledge hung
between us in the afternoon air, as real and solid

(45:52):
as the trees around us, slowly like I was moving
through honey. I reached for the rifle. My hand found
the stock. I brought it around, not pointing it at
the creature, but just holding it ready across my chest.
My hands were shaking. The rifle felt like it weighed
one hundred pounds. The creature didn't react to the rifle.

(46:12):
It just kept staring at me. Had tilted slightly to
one side, like it was trying to figure me out,
like it was deciding what to do with me. Then,
without any warning, it raised one massive arm and slapped
its hand against a tree trunk next to it. The
sound was like a gunshot, loud and sharp, echoing through
the valley. The impact was so hard I saw bark

(46:34):
fly off the tree. It did it again, then again,
establishing a rhythm boom boom boom. Each hit was perfectly timed,
perfectly controlled, sending a message I couldn't quite understand, but
felt in my bones. I took a step backward, then another.
My legs were working again, but they felt weak, unreliable.

(46:57):
The creature didn't follow, It just kept hitting the tree,
maintaining that steady, deliberate rhythm, boom boom boom. Each impact
seemed to shake the ground, seemed to reverberate in my
chest like a second heart beat. I took another step back,
forcing myself to move slowly, forcing myself not to run.

(47:18):
Running would trigger something, Running would make me pray. I
knew that instinctively, knew it the way you know not
to run from a dog or a bear. So I
walked slowly and deliberately back toward the cabin. The creature
stopped hitting the tree. It lowered its arm and just
stood there, watching me go. I wanted to look away,

(47:39):
wanted to turn around and make sure I wasn't walking
into a tree or tripping over a rock. But I
couldn't take my eyes off it. If it moved, if
it came after me, I needed to see it coming.
I covered maybe twenty feet, then thirty. The creature still
hadn't moved, but then from somewhere off to my left,
I heard another knock, different location, different sound, Then another

(48:03):
knock from my right. They'd been watching the whole encounter,
multiple individuals positioned around the clearing, hidden in the forest
where I couldn't see them. I was surrounded again. The
big male wasn't alone. He had back up family, maybe
a hunting party. Whatever they were, there were several of them,
and they'd coordinated this encounter, set it up deliberately to

(48:25):
show me something. We know you're here, we've been watching you.
This is our territory. You're only alive because we're allowing it.
That's what it felt like. That's what the whole encounter communicated,
without a single word being spoken. I was being warned
this was my final chance to leave peacefully. Next time,

(48:45):
they wouldn't just watch. I made it back to the
cabin and went inside, slamming the door and barring it
with hands that shook so badly I could barely grip
the wood. I went to the window and looked out,
pressing my face against the glass, searching for any sign
of them. The big Male was gone. The tree line
looked empty, innocent, just forest and shadows and sunlight. But

(49:09):
I could still hear the knocking slower, now coming from
different locations around the clearing. They were letting me know
they could be wherever they wanted to be. They were
in control here, not me. That night was the worst
yet the rock throwing started just after dark, around ten
or ten thirty, when the last light had faded from

(49:30):
the sky. I'd been sitting on my cot rifle across
my lap lantern burning low, trying to decide what to
do leave or stay, cut my losses or push through
every argument I could think of on both sides. The
first rock hit without warning. One moment there was silence,
the next moment a sharp bang as something slammed into

(49:52):
the roof directly above my head. I jumped, nearly dropped
the rifle, my heart lurching into my throat before where
I could react, another rock hit than another. They were
coming fast, maybe one every few seconds, slamming into the
roof and walls of the cabin from multiple directions. Some
were small, just pebbles that made light tapping sounds against

(50:14):
the logs. Others were big, fist sized or larger, hitting
hard enough to shake the whole structure. I could hear
them bouncing off the roof, rolling down, the shakes hitting
the ground around the cabin. The sound was constant, now,
like hail, but much louder, much more violent. Thump, bang, crack, thump.

(50:36):
I grabbed the rifle and went to the door, but
I couldn't see anything in the darkness outside. The moon
hadn't risen yet, and there were no stars, just thick
cloud cover that turned the night into a solid black wall.
I fired a shot into the air, aiming high, hoping
to scare them off. The muzzle flash lit up the
clearing for a split second, bright as lightning. Then darkness

(50:59):
rushed back in. The throwing stopped immediately silence. I stood
there in the doorway, breathing hard, the smell of gunpowder
in my nose, listening for any sound of movement. For
maybe thirty seconds. There was nothing. Then it started again,
even heavier than before. Rocks hammered the cabin from all sides, east, west,

(51:22):
north south. They weren't just throwing from one location anymore.
They'd spread out, surrounded the cabin and were launching a
coordinated barrage. The noise was incredible, overwhelming, like standing inside
a drum while someone beat it with hammers. Something big
hit the wall next to the window, and I heard
wood crack. The whole cabin shook. Another big rock hit

(51:45):
the door right in the center, and I saw the
wood flex inward, saw the bar start to split. They
weren't just harassing me anymore. They were trying to get in.
I fired several more shots, spacing them out around the
compass points, trying.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
To drive them back.

Speaker 1 (52:01):
I aimed high, not wanting to actually hit one of them,
knowing that wounding one would only make things worse. Each
shot lit up the clearing and a brief flash that
showed nothing but trees and shadows and flying rocks. The
gunfire worked, but only for a minute or two. The
throwing would pause, they'd regroup, and then it would resume,

(52:22):
sometimes lighter, sometimes heavier, but always constant. They kept it
up for forty five minutes or an hour. My ears
were ringing from the noise. My nerves were completely shot.
I'd retreated back inside the cabin and was crouched next
to my cot rifle pointed at the door, waiting for
it to give way. Then, mixed in with the rock impacts,

(52:44):
I heard the vocalizations, the low wail from the big mail,
that sound I'd first heard weeks ago, but closer now,
much closer, maybe only thirty or forty feet from the cabin.
It was answered immediately by the higher pitched scream from
another direction. And what I assumed was the female. She
sounded angry, aggressive, her scream going on and on until

(53:06):
I thought it would never stop. And then a third
voice joined in, younger, higher pitched, still almost like a
child's voice, but with that same inhuman quality the juvenile.
All three of them were out there, calling to each other,
coordinating their attack, working together like a military unit. I

(53:27):
fired through the wall through one of the shooting ports
i'd cut, aiming in the direction of the big male's voice.
The sound inside the cabin was deafening, worse than outside.
My ears went numb. The muzzle flash blinded me temporarily,
but I had to do something. I couldn't just sit
here and let them tear the cabin apart around me.

(53:47):
The vocalization stopped. The rock throwing paused For maybe ten
or fifteen seconds. There was blessed silence. I could hear
myself breathing, ragged and panicked. I could hear my heart
hammering against my ribs. Then I heard footsteps, heavy footfalls,
at least three different sets circling the cabin. They weren't

(54:09):
even trying to be quiet anymore. They wanted me to
hear them, wanted me to know they were right outside,
just on the other side of these thin log walls.
They were seven or eight feet tall, immensely strong, and
there were at least three of them, and I was
alone with a rifle that held five rounds and a
door that was already cracked and might not survive another assault.

(54:32):
The footsteps continued for maybe five minutes, just circling round
and round the cabin. I turned with them, keeping the
rifle pointed at wherever the sound was loudest, ready to
fire through the walls if they tried to break in.
But they didn't try. They just circled, letting me know
they could come in whenever they wanted, that I was trapped,

(54:53):
that I was at their mercy. Finally, the footsteps faded,
the sounds moved away back into the forest. For a
few minutes, I heard distant knocks, then those two faded
into silence. The attack was over. For tonight. I didn't
sleep at all. I couldn't. I sat on my cot

(55:13):
with the rifle across my knees, the lantern turned up bright,
listening to every sound, waiting for them to come back.
Every crack of the cabin settling sounded like footsteps, every
gust of wind sounded like breathing. My imagination filled the
darkness outside with shapes and movement and malevolent intelligence. When
dawn finally came, gray light seeping through the window, I

(55:36):
felt like I'd aged ten years in one night. My
hands were shaking with exhaustion and adrenaline, my eyes burned,
my head ached from stress and.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Lack of sleep. But I was alive.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
The cabin had held, they hadn't gotten in. I waited
until the sun was well up before I ventured outside.
I needed to see the damage, needed to understand what
I was dealing with. When daylight came, I went outside
to survey the damage. The sight that greeted me made
my stomach drop. The area around the cabin looked like

(56:09):
a war zone. Rocks covered the ground, scattered across fifty
feet or more in every direction, dozens of them, maybe hundreds.
They ranged from golf ball size to bigger than my head,
and they'd been thrown from multiple angles with enough force
to carry them well past the cabin. I walked around, slowly,
cataloging the damage, trying to understand the magnitude of what

(56:31):
had happened. The door was splintered and cracked down the middle,
barely hanging on its hinges. Two of the shooting ports
I'd cut had been widened by direct impacts, and I
could see daylight through several new cracks in the walls
that hadn't been there before. Part of the roof looked damaged,
some of the cedar shakes knocked loose or broken. The
cabin was still standing, but barely. Another night like that

(56:56):
and it might not hold. But that wasn't the worst
of it. As I walked toward the creek, toward where
I had left my mining equipment, my heart sank even further.
The sluice box had been completely destroyed, not just knocked
over or displaced destroyed. It had been sitting on the
gravel bar in three sections, fitted together, and working fine

(57:17):
yesterday afternoon. Now it was scattered in pieces across fifty
feet of ground. The wooden frame had been smashed to splinters,
broken into pieces no bigger than my forearm. The metal
riffle trays, which had been securely attached with bolts and screws,
were bent and twisted, like someone had grabbed them with
their bare hands and just crumpled them like tinfoil. Some

(57:39):
pieces had been thrown into the creek. Others were scattered
up on the bank. One section was hanging from a
tree branch fifteen feet up, like it had been hurled
there deliberately. My shovel had been snapped in half, the
wooden handle broken cleanly across someone's knee or against a tree.
The metal blade was bent at a right angle, completely

(57:59):
used less. My pick, a heavy tool with a four
foot handle and a steel head that had to weigh
eight or ten pounds, was simply gone. I searched for
it for ten minutes and finally found it in the
creek thirty feet downstream, the handle broken off and the
head wedged between two rocks. My gold pan was crumpled
like a piece of paper, lying in the mud near

(58:21):
the creek. My scale, a delicate instrument I'd paid twenty
dollars for, was smashed beyond repair. The wooden carrying pole
I'd made for the water cans was broken into three pieces.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
Tools I'd left scattered.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
Around the work area, my file, my wirebrush, my classifying screens.
All of it had been thrown into the forest or
into the creek. And the gold, the gold I'd spent
weeks recovering maybe four ounces worth stored carefully in glass
vials in a small wooden box i'd kept near the sluice.
The box was gone, just gone. I never found it.

(58:59):
Maybe it was in the creek somewhere, buried in gravel.
Maybe they'd taken it or thrown it deep into the forest.
It didn't matter. It was gone, along with weeks of work,
weeks of risk, weeks of dealing with fear and isolation.
I stood there in the morning sun, looking at the wreckage,
and I felt something break inside me, not just frustration

(59:21):
or anger, something deeper. My will to stay, my determination
to make this work, my stubbornness that had kept me
here despite everything. It all just crumbled, like those metal
riffle trays, bent and twisted beyond repair. These creatures, whatever
they were, had won. They'd made their point in the

(59:41):
clearest way possible. This was their valley, their territory, and
I wasn't welcome here. They'd given me warnings, plenty of warnings.
The vocalizations, the tree breaks, the knocks, the footprints, even
the face to face encounter with the big male. Stay
tuned for more.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
Back Woods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
After these messages, all of it had been leading to this,
and I'd ignored the warnings. I'd stayed when I should
have left. So now they destroyed everything I needed to
work the claim. Without the sluice, without the tools.

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
I couldn't mine. I was done. I could try to rebuild.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
I supposed I could hike out to the logging road,
get a ride to white Horse, buy new equipment, come
back and start over. But they'd just destroy it again,
and next time they might not stop with the equipment.
Next time they might come after me directly. The door
was already broken, the cabin walls were cracked. If they
really wanted to get in, they could. And I'd seen

(01:00:45):
how big the mail was, seen how strong I wouldn't
last five seconds in a physical confrontation. I had two choices,
and only two. I could stay and probably die, either
from starvation when my supplies ran outre when winter came,
or from a direct attack when they finally lost patience
with me. Or I could leave, admit defeat, and hike

(01:01:08):
out while I still had the strength and the daylight
and the slim chance that they'd let me go. The
decision wasn't hard. I wanted to live. The gold wasn't
worth dying. For nothing was worth dying for, not like this,
not alone in the wilderness, torn apart by creatures that
shouldn't exist. I spent that day packing what I could carry.

(01:01:31):
I took my rifle, ammunition, enough food for a few days,
water purification tablets, a tarp, my sleeping bag, and a
few other essentials. I left everything else. The stove, the lantern,
the cot, my extra clothes. All of it stayed in
the cabin. I couldn't carry it, and I didn't care.
I just wanted out. I left at first light the

(01:01:53):
next morning. The creatures had been quiet during the night,
no rock throwing, no vocalizations, but I knew that they
were out there watching. I could feel their eyes on
me as I stepped out of the cabin and shouldered
my pack. The hike out was eight miles to the
old logging road, eight miles through dense forest, across creeks,
over ridges, eight miles of looking over my shoulder, expecting

(01:02:17):
at any moment to see one of those creatures step
out of the trees. The first few miles went okay.
The trail was faint but followable, an old game path
that Dutch Hansen had marked on his map. I kept
a steady pace rifle in my hands, eyes and ears alert.
I heard birds for the first time in weeks. A
squirrel chattered at me from a spruce tree. It felt

(01:02:40):
like I was leaving their territory, entering country where normal
animals still lived. Then around the fourth mile I heard them,
the knocks coming from somewhere behind me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:52):
Boom, boom, boom. They were following me.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
I picked up the pace, almost jogging now I packed,
bouncing on my back. The knox continued, always behind me,
never getting closer, but never falling back either. They were
pacing me, making sure I kept moving, escorting me out
of their territory. At the six mile mark, I had
to cross a wide creek. The water was fast and

(01:03:18):
thigh deep, cold enough to take my breath away. I
waded across, holding the rifle over my head, trying not
to slip on the rocks. When I reached the far side,
I turned around and looked back. The big male was
standing on the bank I just left, partially hidden by willows.
We made eye contact across the water. It didn't make

(01:03:38):
any threatening gestures, didn't vocalize, It just watched me, making
sure I kept going. I didn't wait around. I climbed
out of the creek and kept hiking faster, now almost running.
The Knox had stopped. I didn't hear any more vocalizations.
After another hour, I reached the logging road. It was

(01:03:59):
overgrown and rutted, more of a suggestion of a road
than an actual road, but it was man made and
it led to civilization. I turned east and started walking.
Three hours later, a pickup truck came bouncing down the road.
The driver, a Native guy in his fifties, gave me
a ride to the Highway. From there, I hitched to Whitehorse.

(01:04:20):
I never went back to the claim. I contacted a lawyer,
and Whitehorse asked him to handle the paperwork to abandon.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
The mineral rights.

Speaker 1 (01:04:28):
I didn't want to profit from it, didn't want to
risk selling it to someone else who might end up
in the same situation I'd been in. I just wanted
to be done with it. I left the Yukon two
days later, caught a bus south to British Columbia, and
eventually made my way back to the Lower forty eight.
I've been a lot of places since then, worked a
lot of different jobs, but I've never gone back to

(01:04:50):
the bush. Never been prospecting again. The gold isn't worth it.
People ask me sometimes why I left such a promising claim,
why I walked away from the investment i'd made. I
usually just say it didn't pan out. The gold wasn't
there like I'd hoped. That's easier than telling the truth.
The truth is there are things in those forests that

(01:05:10):
we don't understand, things that look almost human but aren't.
Things that are intelligent enough to coordinate attacks, to communicate,
to drive away anyone who encroaches on their territory. I
know that sounds crazy. I know people will think I
was just paranoid, or that I hallucinated the whole thing
from being alone too long. But I know what I saw,

(01:05:32):
I know what I heard. I have the memories that
wake me up at night, even now, more than three
years later. I remember those dark eyes watching me from
the trees. I remember the sound of rocks hitting the
cabin walls. I remember the footprints in the mud, too
big to be anything I'd learned about in school or
read about in books. Dutch Hansen never came back to

(01:05:54):
that claim. After his first visit, his nephew told me
Dutch wouldn't talk about why just say the place had
bad juju and he wanted nothing to do with it.
I thought that was just superstition, old man nonsense. Now
I understand Dutch must have encountered them too. He was
smart enough to leave after just three days. It took
me two months to get the message. The claim is

(01:06:16):
still there, technically still filed with the territorial government unless
someone else has picked it up by now. The cabin
has probably fallen down by now, reclaimed by the forest.
The gold is still in that creek, waiting for someone
brave or foolish enough to work it. But it won't
be me. I learned my lesson. Some places aren't meant
for humans, some claims aren't worth the cost, and some

(01:06:40):
things are better left alone in the wilderness where they belong.
I think about those creatures sometimes, wonder if they're still there,
still guarding that valley. I wonder if the big male
is still alive, or if he's passed that territory on
to his offspring. I wonder if they remember me, the
human who came and stayed too long before finally getting

(01:07:01):
the hint. Mostly, though I try not to think about it,
I try to focus on the present on the life
I've built since leaving the Yukon. I have a job now,
working construction in Oregon. I have friends, a girlfriend, a
normal life. But sometimes late at night, when everything is quiet,
I'll hear a sound outside, a knock maybe, or a

(01:07:24):
distant vocalization, and for a moment, I'm back in that cabin,
rifle in hand, listening to something circle my walls in
the darkness. Then I remember I'm hundreds of miles away,
in a town with street lights and neighbors and police.
The sounds are just branches hitting the house or cats
fighting in the alley. Nothing to worry about, nothing to fear.

(01:07:46):
But I keep my doors locked anyway, and I sleep
with a baseball bat next to my bed, just in case.
Because once you've seen what's out there, once you've looked
into those dark, intelligent eyes and understood that you're not
at the top of the food chain, you never quite
feel safe again.

Speaker 2 (01:08:02):
The Yukon taught me that. The creatures taught.

Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
Me that, and it's a lesson I'll carry with me
for the rest of my life, however long that might be.
Stay out of the deep woods, respect the wilderness, and
if something starts throwing rocks at your cabin in the
middle of the night. Don't wait around to see what
happens next. Just pack your things and get the hell
out while you still can.

Speaker 2 (01:09:21):
Di