SO EP:640 Bigfoot In The Fire

In this episode of Sasquatch Odyssey, three seasoned outdoors professionals share encounters that defy logic and rewrite what they thought they knew about the wild.

Tom, a veteran Michigan bowhunter, finds his gear mysteriously rearranged—and enters into an eerie exchange with something that knows he's there.

Miguel, a former hotshot firefighter, recalls the 2020 Creek Fire, where towering figures walked untouched through flames as strange lights danced in the trees.

And Sharon, a retired Smoky Mountains backcountry ranger, discovers signs of a presence older—and smarter—than any trail map can explain.These aren’t campfire tales. They’re field-tested accounts from people trained to notice what most miss.

Something’s out there—and it’s watching.


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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today, I want to tell you about a journey that
I've been on for most of my life. Ever since
I was a kid, I've heard tales of bigfoot and
wild men while spending time with my friends and family.
As I grew older and read more about the paranormal,
my interest in encryptids and other things strange only deepened.
That's why I'm so excited to share with you what
I've personally become involved with the Untold Radio Network. The

(00:21):
Untold Radio Network is a live streaming podcast network that
airs a new show every day across all podcast platforms, YouTube,
and more. They have eight different shows on all sorts
of exciting topics such as bigfoot, cryptids, UFOs, aliens, and
much more. I even have my own show called Weird Encounters,
where I talk about all things strange. This is more

(00:42):
than just a podcast network. It's a community that allows
me to meet so many amazing people who share their
stories and experiences with strange. If you're interested in hearing
more of these stories and learning more about the paranormal
and encryptids, make sure you check out the Untold Radio
Network for all kinds of exciting shows. It's free to subscribe.
So what are you waiting for visit www dot Untold

(01:04):
Radio Network dot com today?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Now, what are your reporting? I got a screen going
on here. Something just kid with my dog. Something to
kill your dog? My dog. We're flying through there over
the tree. I don't know how it did it? Okay, damn,
I'm really confused. All I saw was my dog coming
over the fence, and they would dead once you hit
the grill. I didn't see any cars. All I saw
was my dog coming over the fence. Are you reporting

(01:46):
we got some wonder or something crawling around out here?
Did you see what it was? It was enough out here.
Look him near the window now and I don't need anything.
I don't want to go outside. Its fight. Hello, hit

(02:10):
the buddy out here?

Speaker 3 (02:11):
What quin?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
I'm out there? I thought of a venus about text nine?
I don't know. Easy am out there? Yeah, I'm walking
right heady.

Speaker 1 (02:18):
Oh. My name's Janet and I've been hunting mushrooms in
the Coast Range for thirty years. Started when I was
a kid with my grandpa, kept it up after he passed.
I know these woods like my own backyard. Every logging road,
every clear cut, every patch where the chanterelles grow thick
after the first fall rains. What happened in October twenty

(02:39):
sixteen made me question everything. I was forty five then
going through a rough patch, lost my job at the mill,
my husband had left the year before, and picking mushrooms
was about the only thing keeping me sane. Plus, with
the commercial buyers paying good money for Shantarell's, it was
keeping me afloat financially. That Tuesday, I headed out before

(03:01):
dawn to my best spot. It's about an hour's drive
from Tillamook, then another forty minutes on logging roads way
back in there, second growth forest that's been left alone
for fifty years, the kind of place where the moss
hangs thick and the air always smells like earth and rain.
I'd been picking since first light, had about fifteen pounds

(03:21):
in my bucket, good haul. The rain had been perfect
that week, enough to bring up the mushrooms, but not
so much that they got water logged. I was working
my way along a hillside, eyes on the ground, when
I noticed I'd wandered into an area I didn't recognize.
That's hard to do when you know a place as
well as I knew those woods. But I must have

(03:41):
followed the mushrooms farther than usual, ended up in this
little valley I'd never seen before, old growth on the slopes,
creek running through the bottom, beautiful spot untouched. The mushrooms
were incredible. There chantrell's the size of my hand, growing
in clusters under the hemlocks. I got excited, started filling

(04:02):
my bucket fast. Should have paid more attention to my surroundings.
Should have noticed how quiet it had gotten. When you're
focused on the ground looking for that golden color in
the doff, you tune out a lot. But eventually the
silence got through to me. No birds, no squirrels, even
the creek seemed muted. I stood up, stretched my back,

(04:25):
and that's when the smell hit me. You know when
you open an old freezer that's been unplugged. That funk
of old meat and mildew like that, but mixed with
wet dog and something sharp, almost like ammonia, strong enough
that I had to breathe through my mouth. I looked around,
trying to figure out where it was coming from. That's
when I saw the structures about thirty yards up slope,

(04:49):
built between two huge cedars. Were these I don't know
what to call them shelters. They were made of branches
woven together, covered with moss and ferns. Like the He'd
been there a while, but the construction was deliberate. Branches
bent and twisted into art shapes, lashed together with what
looked like strips of bark. There were three of them,

(05:10):
different sizes. The biggest was maybe eight feet tall and
ten feet across, big enough to stand up in if
you were tall. They weren't like any hunting blinds or
homeless camps I'd ever seen, too well made, two integrated
into the forest. I should have left right then. Every
instinct I had was screaming at me to get out,

(05:32):
but curiosity won. I walked closer, trying to see inside
the biggest structure. The entrance was low, maybe four feet high.
I had to crouch to look in. The smell was
overwhelming there made my eyes water. Inside was dark, but
I could make out shapes, a bed of sorts made
from cedar boughs, laid over a frame of sticks, and

(05:54):
in the back, barely visible were bones, lots of bones.
I backed out fast, part hammering started to turn around
and froze. There were footprints around the shelters. Everywhere, different
sizes but all the same shape, human like but not.
The biggest ones were at least eighteen inches long. That's

(06:16):
when I heard the whistle, long and low, coming from
somewhere above me on the slope, not like any bird
I knew. It held for maybe ten seconds, then stopped
a few seconds later. Another whistle answered from across the valley,
then a third from downstream. I ran, didn't care about
my mushrooms, didn't care about staying quiet, just ran behind me.

(06:40):
I heard crashing in the underbrush, not following me exactly,
but moving parallel, keeping pace. The whistles came more frequently,
seemed like they were coordinating. I'm not a young woman,
and running through thick forest with a full pack isn't easy.
After maybe ten minutes, I had to stop, gasping for air.
The moment I stopped, everything went quiet, No more crashing,

(07:04):
no more whistles, just my own ragged breathing. But I
could feel them watching. You know that sensation like pressure
on your skin, That's what it felt like. I started
walking again, fast as I could manage, trying to figure
out where I was. Nothing looked familiar. In my panic,
I'd run the wrong direction. The sun was getting low,

(07:27):
maybe two hours of light left. I picked a direction
that seemed right and kept moving. Every hundred yards or so,
I'd hear movement in the brush behind me. When I stopped,
it stopped. When I moved, it moved. After an hour
of this cat and mouse game, I came to a
small clearing. The whistle came again, very close. I turned

(07:49):
around slowly. At the edge of the clearing, maybe twenty
five feet away. Something stood behind a big maple. I
could see part of it, a shoulder and arm covered
in reddish brown hair. The arm was huge, muscled like
a bodybuilder's, but longer, wrong proportions for a human. It
leaned out slightly and I saw part of its face,

(08:10):
heavy brow, deep set eyes that caught the fading light.
The face was almost human, but not quite, like looking
at a reflection in disturbed water. It watched me for
maybe five seconds, then pulled back behind the tree. I
stood there, shaking, trying to decide what to do. Running
seemed pointless. It was faster than me. Fighting was impossible,

(08:33):
so I did the only thing I could think of.
I took off my pack, pulled out my lunch, a sandwich,
and apple I hadn't eaten and set them in the
middle of the clearing. The woods went very still. I
backed away, slowly, keeping my eyes on the maple tree.
When I reached the far side of the clearing, I
turned and walked away, not running, just walking steady. Behind me,

(08:58):
I heard movement, something approaching the circle. I didn't look back,
kept walking as the light faded, trying to stay calm.
About twenty minutes later I hit an old logging road,
not one I recognized, but any road was better than
the forest. I followed it downhill, figuring it had to
lead somewhere. Full dark. By the time I saw headlights

(09:20):
a truck coming up the road. I waved frantically and
it stopped. Young guy maybe twenty five, looked concerned, asked
if I was okay, said I looked pretty shaken up.
I told him I'd gotten turned around picking mushrooms, lost
track of time. He offered to drive me back to
my truck. Said I was lucky. This road dead ended

(09:41):
in another mile and there wasn't another vehicle for ten miles.
During the drive, I asked him about the area. He
got quiet, then said his dad had logged these parts
in the eighties, always told him there were places you
didn't go, especially alone. Some valleys were off limits, had
been as long as anyone, and remembered. We drove in

(10:02):
silence after that. When we got to my truck, he
waited until I got it started, then said something that
stuck with me. He said his dad once saw something
up here that made him quit logging. Never said what,
but he never came back to these woods. I thanked
him and drove home. Didn't go back for my mushroom bucket,
didn't go back to that area ever again. But I

(10:23):
did do some research. Found out that indigenous peoples in
the area have stories going back centuries about the hairy
giants and the mountains. They left offerings, stayed out of
certain valleys, had rules about when and where you could go.
We've forgotten those rules, but that doesn't mean they've stopped applying.
I still pick mushrooms, but only in areas I know well,

(10:44):
places close to Rhodes. I never go alone anymore, and
when the woods go quiet, when that feeling of being
watched gets too strong, I leave. No amount of Chanterell's
is worth meeting whatever's out there. Sometimes I think about
that circle of mushrooms. Wonder if it was some kind
of ritual or message. Wonder what would have happened if

(11:05):
I hadn't left food. Wonder if that was the only
thing that saved me. But mostly I try not to
think about it at all. Some knowledge comes with a
price that's too high to pay. Some mysteries are better
left unsolved. And some parts of the forest belong to
things that were here long before us. And we'll be
here long after we're gone. That was Janet's encounter from

(11:27):
the Oregon Coast Range in twenty sixteen. What strikes me
about her story is the deliberate nature of those structures
she found, shelters woven into the landscape with a skill
that suggests generations of knowledge, and that moment when she
left food in the clearing, that might have been the
only thing that allowed her to walk out of those woods.

(11:48):
But sometimes these encounters happen in the most unlikely places.
Our next story comes from Bill, a long haul trucker
who spent over two decades driving the Dalton Highway in Alaska.
If you know anything about that road, you know it's
one of the most isolated stretches in North America. Five
hundred miles of wilderness, ice and emptiness, the perfect place

(12:10):
for something that doesn't want to be found. What Bill
saw one September night in two thousand and eight at
a remote pull off changed how he understood what shares
those vast Alaskan spaces with us. The name's Bill. Been
driving trucks in Alaska for twenty three years, mostly the
Hall Road up to Proo Bay. Done that run hundreds

(12:30):
of times in all kinds of weather, seen wolves, bears, moose,
everything you'd expect. But what I saw in September two
thousand and eight was different. I was hauling equipment down
from the oil fields, heading back to Fairbanks. It's a
long drive, about five hundred miles, most of it through
nothing but wilderness. The Dalton Highway isn't a road for tourists.

(12:53):
It's rough, isolated, and if you break down in the
wrong spot, you could be waiting a long time for help.
It was late, around two am, and I was somewhere
between Coldfoot and the Yukon River. Dark as hell, no moon,
just my headlights cutting through the black. I'd been driving
for hours, was getting a bit drowsy, so when I

(13:14):
saw what looked like a pull off, ahead. I decided
to stop, stretch my legs, maybe catch a quick nap.
The pull off was just a wide spot in the
road gravel pad, may be big enough for three trucks.
I pulled over, set the brakes, and climbed down from
the cab. The silence up there is something else. No traffic,

(13:34):
no planes, just the sound of your own breathing and
maybe some wind in the trees. I was doing some stretches,
working the kinks out of my back, when I noticed
something odd. On the other side of the road. In
the ditch was a caribou. Dead, looked fresh, not unusual
in itself, animals get hit on the Hall road all

(13:55):
the time. But the position was wrong. It wasn't sprawled
out like a roadkill. It was arranged, laid out neat
with its legs folded under it. I grabbed my flashlight,
one of those big mag lights, and walked over for
a better look. The cariboo had been placed there deliberately.
No blood on the road, no skid marks, no damage

(14:16):
that I could see, just dead and carefully positioned. That's
when I noticed the smell, rank, like wet dog mixed
with something rotting. I've smelled dead animals before, but this
was different. Musker Wilder made the hair on my neck
stand up. I swept the flashlight around, and that's when

(14:36):
I saw the prints in the soft gravel on the
shoulder leading from the trees to the cariboo. They looked
human at first glance, five toes heel, but the size
was impossible. My boot is a size twelve, and these
prints made mine look like a child's. I followed the
tracks with my light. They came out of the forest,

(14:56):
went to the cariboo, then headed back into the trees
on a different path, and stay tuned for more sasquatch
ot to see. We'll be right back. After these messages,
whatever made them walked upright and had a stride that
must have been close to six feet. I should have
gotten back in my truck right then, but truck drivers

(15:18):
are curious people. You don't last in this job if
you're easily spooked. So I kept looking around, trying to
make sense of what I was seeing. About ten yards
into the tree line, I found more evidence. Branches broken
at about eight feet high, some twisted until the wood splintered,
and hanging from one of the broken branches was a
clump of hair, dark brown, coarse, about six inches long.

(15:43):
I reached up to touch it, then thought better of it.
That's when I heard the breathing, deep rhythmic breathing coming
from somewhere in the darkness beyond my flashlight beam. Not
like a bear, I know what bears sound like. This
was deeper, more controlled, like bellows working. I backed up slowly,
keeping the light pointed toward the sound. The breathing followed,

(16:07):
staying just outside the range of my beam. I could
hear footsteps, now heavy and deliberate, pacing me as I
retreated toward the road. When I got to the gravel,
I turned and walked quickly toward my truck, not running.
Something told me running would be bad. The footsteps stopped
at the tree line, but the breathing continued. I could

(16:28):
feel eyes on me, that primitive sensation that says you're
being watched by something that might eat you. I climbed
up into my cab, locked the doors, and started the engine.
As I put it in gear, my headlights swept across
the trees. For just a second, I saw it standing
between two spruces, maybe forty feet away. It was massive,

(16:51):
had to be eight feet tall, probably more covered in
dark hair that looked black in the lights. The body
was built like a man, but way bigger, shoulders too broad, arms,
too long, everything out of proportion. The face was what
got me, heavy brow, deep set eyes that reflected my
lights like a predator's, almost human features, but distorted like

(17:13):
someone had grabbed a face and pulled it into a
new shape. It didn't move, just stood there watching me,
staring directly at me, like it was saying, I see
you seeing me. I hit the gas got out of
there fast as a loaded truck could go, didn't stop
again until I reached the Yukon River camp, sixty miles south.

(17:33):
When I pulled in, the guy at the fuel station
took one look at me and asked what happened. I
guess I looked pretty shook up. I told him I'd
seen something weird up the road. He nodded like he
knew exactly what I meant. Said. They get reports sometimes,
truckers seeing things, hunters finding tracks, pipeline workers hearing sounds
they can't explain. Unofficially, everyone knows there's something out there.

(17:57):
Officially it's always bears or wool or over active imaginations.
He told me, I was lucky. Usually they stay away
from the road, keep to the deep wilderness, but sometimes,
especially in fall, when they're moving around more, they come close.
The Cariboo was probably a territorial marker, a way of
saying this is their area. I finished the run to Fairbanks,

(18:21):
filed my paperwork, went home, but I couldn't stop thinking
about what I'd seen. Started asking around quiet like found
out there's a whole history of sidings up there. Native
peoples have stories going back forever. The pipeline workers in
the seventies had encounters. They were told not to report.
Other truckers had seen things, but kept quiet to avoid

(18:43):
being labeled crazy. One old timer told me something interesting.
He said, they're migratory, following the Cariboo herds spring and fall,
they moved through certain areas. The Hall Road cut right
through one of their travel routes. That's why most sidings
happened in September and April. He also said they're smart,
they know about trucks. No, we're just passing through. As

(19:05):
long as we don't stop too long in their territory,
they leave us alone. But sometimes they get curious, want
a closer look. That's what happened to me, I stopped
in the wrong place at the wrong time, and one
came to investigate. I've done that run probably one hundred
times since then, never stopped at that pull off again,
never seen another one. But sometimes, especially on those dark

(19:29):
September nights, I'll see something in the trees, a shape
that's too tall, movement that's too fluid. I keep driving,
don't even slow down. Other truckers have their own stories,
rocks thrown at trucks, woodpiles arranged in patterns, sounds that
don't match any known animal. We all know something's out there,

(19:50):
but it's an unspoken rule. You don't report it, you
don't make a big deal about it. You just drive
and let them have their space. Because here's the thing.
They were there first, long before the pipeline, before the road,
before any of us. We're the ones passing through their territory,
and as long as we keep moving, they seem content

(20:11):
to let us pass. But I'll never forget that face
in my headlights, the intelligence in those eyes, the way
it stared directly at me, like it was acknowledging our
brief moment of contact. It changed how I see the
wilderness up there, changed how I understand what shares this
land with us. Now, when I drive that stretch of road,

(20:32):
I'm more careful. I don't stop unless I absolutely have to.
And when the darkness presses in and the trees seem
to close around the road, I remember that we're not
alone out there, never have been, never will be. Some
things are meant to stay hidden, some boundaries aren't meant
to be crossed, and some mysteries are better left unsolved.

(20:53):
That's what I learned that night on the Dalton Highway.
That's what I remember every time I make that run.
The wilderness up there is vast empty in a way
most people can't imagine. Plenty of room for things we
don't understand, plenty of space for creatures that know how
to stay hidden when they want to. I'm retiring next year.
Thirty years of driving these roads is enough. Part of

(21:16):
me will miss it, the solitude, the beauty, the challenge.
But I won't miss those night runs through that particular stretch.
Won't miss the feeling of being watched from the darkness
beyond my lights. Because they're out there, whatever they are,
they're real, and the best thing we can do is
give them their space and hope they continue to give

(21:37):
us hours. Bill's encounter on the Dalton Highway shows us
something important. These beings are everywhere, from the Oregon forests
to the Alaskan tundra. That caribou arranged so carefully, those
massive footprints in the gravel, and that moment when Bill's
headlights caught it watching him. It's the intelligence behind these

(21:57):
actions that makes you realize we're dealing with something far
more complex than any known animal, Which brings me to
Rachel's story. She was a Forest Service crew leader in Montana,
someone who'd spent more nights in the back country than
most people spend in their own beds. In July twenty twelve,
she and her crew helicoptered into the Cellway bitter Root

(22:18):
Wilderness for what should have been a routine week of
trail maintenance. But when something started visiting their camp at night,
examining their gear, rearranging their equipment, and making sounds that
seemed almost like language, Rachel realized they'd set up camp
in someone else's territory. I worked for the Forest Service
for twelve years, mostly in the Bitterroot National Forest along

(22:41):
the Montana Idaho border. Did everything from trail maintenance to
fire prevention. Spent more nights in the back country than
I did in my own bed. The name's Rachel, and
what happened in July twenty twelve made me rethink everything
I thought I knew about those mountains. I was thirty four,
then crew leader for a trail maintenance team. We were

(23:02):
working on a section of trail about fifteen miles from
the nearest road way back in the Cellway bitter Root Wilderness.
It's rough country, steep terrain, thick forest, the kind of
place where you can walk for days without seeing another human.
There were four of us on the crew, me, Jake, Marcus,
and Annie, all experienced backcountry workers. We'd helicopter in on

(23:25):
Monday with our gear, work all week, clearing deadfall and
repairing washouts, then hike out Friday. It was hard work
but satisfying, and I loved being that far from civilization.
This particular week, we set up base camp near a
small alpine lake, beautiful spot surrounded by lodge pole pines,
peaks rising all around. We'd work this area before, knew

(23:48):
it well or thought we did. Tuesday night, things got weird.
We were sitting around after dinner planning the next day's
work when Jake noticed something. He'd hung his path from
a tree about thirty feet from camp standard bear precaution,
but the pack was swaying. No wind, no animals visible,
but the pack was moving like something was examining it.

(24:11):
We all turned our headlamps that direction. The pack stopped
moving immediately. Jake walked over to check it out, found
nothing disturbed, but when he came back he was quiet.
Said there were prints around the tree, big ones. I
went to look in the soft duff beneath the tree
were several impressions, not clear prints, but depressions where something

(24:33):
heavy had stood. Whatever made them had been tall enough
to reach Jake's pack without jumping. It was hung a
good ten feet up. We laughed it off, made jokes
about Jake seeing things, but that night I set up
the trail cameras we used for wildlife monitoring, just in
case Wednesday was normal. We worked hard, cleared about a

(24:54):
mile of trail, but coming back to camp that evening
we all noticed the smell hit us about one hundred
yards out musky wild like a bare den, but stronger,
and he said it smelled like the primate house at
the zoo. But concentrated. The smell got stronger as we
entered camp. Our tents were fine, gear undisturbed, but something

(25:17):
had been there. The fire ring was dismantled, rocks moved
into a different pattern, not scattered, deliberately rearranged into a
rough circle. About ten feet across. Marcus found more tracks.
These were clearer, pressed into a muddy spot near the
lake shore. Human shaped but huge. I put my boot

(25:37):
next to one for comparison. The track was nearly twice
as long, five toes, clearly visible, ball of foot heel,
even what looked like an arch, but the proportions were
off the big toe, more separated than a humans would be.
I checked the trail. Cameras should have had images of
whatever visited our camp, but both cameras were turned to

(25:59):
face the treees not knocked down or damaged, carefully rotated
on their mounts to point away from camp. Whatever did
it understood what the cameras were for. That night, we
stayed up late, kept the fire burning high. Around midnight,
the whistling started, long, sustained notes that seemed to come
from different directions, not like any bird or animal. I

(26:22):
knew the notes would overlap harmonize, almost like communication. Jake
wanted to investigate, but I shut that down. We were
fifteen miles from help, no radio contact, no cell service,
whatever was out there, we weren't equipped to deal with it.
We agreed to pack up at first light, hike out early,

(26:43):
but they weren't done with us. Around three am, something
entered camp. We were all in our tents, but I
was awake, listening footsteps, heavy but careful, moving between the tents.
It stopped at each one, and I could hear breathing,
deep controlled breathing, like it was smelling us. When it

(27:03):
got to my tent, I could see the shadow through
the fabric, massive, probably seven feet tall, maybe more. It
pressed against the tent wall gently, the fabric bowing inward.
I held my breath, hand on my bare spray, trying
not to move. Then it made a sound I'll never forget.
Started as a low rumble, almost below the range of hearing,

(27:26):
rose into something between a hum and a growl. But
there was a pattern to it, a rhythm. It sounded
like a language, like it was trying to speak. The
sound went on for maybe thirty seconds, then the shadow
moved away. I heard it at the other tents, making
similar sounds, different tones for each tent, like it was

(27:47):
addressing us individually. The footsteps moved away from camp. I
waited another hour before carefully unzipping my tent and looking out.
The others were doing the same. We all looked scared,
but also amazed. We'd all heard it, all felt it.
Examining our tents by flashlight, we found more evidence. Tracks everywhere,

(28:08):
circling the camp multiple times, but also strange arrangements pine
cones placed in lines, sticks balanced impossibly on end, rocks
stacked in small cairns. It looked like art, or messages,
or something we couldn't understand. We packed up in the dark.
We're on the trail by five am, but we weren't alone.

(28:30):
As we hiked out, we could hear movement in the
forest parallel to us, sometimes ahead, sometimes behind, always just
out of sight. When we stopped, it stopped when we moved.
It moved about five miles from the trailhead. We found
a final message. In the middle of the trail was
an arrangement of objects, stones in a circle, feathers in

(28:53):
the center, and spanning across the trail, a barrier made
of crossed branches. It wasn't meant to stop us. We
could easily step over it. It felt more like a
boundary marker, a line we were crossing. We carefully moved
the branches aside and continued the feeling of being watched
faded after that, like we'd passed out of their territory.

(29:15):
Made it to the trailhead by noon. Exhausted and shaken,
I filed my report, included everything. My supervisor read it,
locked it in his desk, told me to write another
version that mentioned aggressive bear activity as the reason we
left early. That's what went in the official file. But
he also told me something interesting. Said there had been

(29:35):
similar reports from that area going back decades, always the
same pattern, curious approach, nonviolent contact, apparent attempts at communication.
The Forest Service unofficially designated certain areas as culturally sensitive,
which meant crews were discouraged from working there. The area
we'd been in. It was on the list, but somebody

(29:58):
had forgotten to update the current mapp apps and stay
tuned for more sasquatch ot to see We'll be right back.
After these messages, I went back to the bitter Root
many times after that, but never to that particular Valley.
Other crew leaders reported similar experiences, equipment carefully examined, objects rearranged,

(30:22):
those strange vocalizations, always in the same general areas, always
following the same pattern. What struck me most was the
intelligence behind it all. The way they turned our cameras,
the careful examination of our gear. These weren't the actions
of animals. This was curiosity, maybe even an attempt at contact.

(30:44):
I left the Forest Service in twenty eighteen, moved to Missoula,
got a desk job. But I still think about that night,
about the shadow at my tent, the sounds it made.
Was it trying to communicate? What did those arrangements mean?
What would have happened if we'd stayed. Sometimes I research
other encounters, looking for patterns. The whistling seems common, and

(31:07):
the object arrangements. People report similar vocalizations, like attempted speech.
It makes me wonder if they're trying to bridge the
gap between us. But we're too different, too afraid to understand.
I keep in touch with Annie, she's still with the
Forest Service, working in Washington now. She told me she's
heard similar stories from Creus. There, same patterns, same behaviors,

(31:32):
Like there's a parallel society and the deep wilderness. One
that watches us, studies us, maybe even tries to communicate,
but we run. We always run, too scared to stay
and see what they want. Two locked into our view
of the world to accept that we might share it
with something else, something intelligent, something that might have things

(31:53):
to teach us, if we could just overcome our fear.
That's what haunts me. Not the fear I felt that night,
but the missed opportun tunity, the chance to make contact
with something extraordinary, and I ran away. We all did,
just like everyone before us and probably everyone after. They're
still out there, still watching, still trying, and we're still running,

(32:16):
still refusing to see what's right in front of us.
Maybe someday someone will be brave enough to stay, to
try to understand. But it wasn't me, and I'll always
wonder what might have been. Rachel's experience with her crew
shows us something fascinating. These beings don't just observe us
from a distance. They study us, try to understand our technology,

(32:38):
maybe even attempt to communicate. Those vocalizations at each tent,
different for each person, suggest a level of sophistication. We're
only beginning to grasp, but sometimes the communication goes beyond
sounds and observations. Sometimes they leave things behind. That's what
happened to Tom, a bow hunter from Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

(32:59):
He'd been hunting those woods for twenty years, knew every
trail and clearing, but during the twenty fourteen season, he
became the recipient of gifts that would challenge his understanding
of the natural world. My name's Tom, and I've been
bow hunting the Upper Peninsula for over twenty years. I
know the woods up there like most people know their neighborhoods,

(33:20):
every trail, every clearing, every place the big bucks liked
to bed down. But what happened during the twenty fourteen
season changed everything for me. It was early November peak rut,
and I was hunting state land near the Hiawatha National Forest.
I'd been scouting this area all summer, had three good
stands set up along travel corridors. The spot was about

(33:43):
eight miles from the nearest paved road, accessed by an
old two track that most people didn't know about. I
went in on a Tuesday, planning to hunt through the weekend.
Set up my camp about a half mile from my
best stand, small tent, minimal gear, trying to keep my
scent and noise down. I'd hunted this way for years, alone,

(34:04):
deep in the woods where the pressure from other hunters
pushed the deer. Wednesday morning was perfect, cold, still, frost
on everything. I was in my stand an hour before
light bow ready watching the woods wake up. Around eight
that morning, I had two doughs pass within twenty yards,
then a small buck. I let them go, waiting for

(34:26):
something bigger. That's when things got strange. The woods went
completely silent, not normal, quiet, dead silent. The squirrels stopped chattering,
birds stopped moving, Even the breeze seemed to die. In
twenty years of hunting, I'd never experienced anything like it.
Movement caught my eye about sixty yards out, something big

(34:49):
walking through the thick stuff. I raised my binoculars, trying
to get a clear look. What I saw made no sense.
It was walking upright, had to be seven feet tall,
maybe more, covered in dark brown hair except for the face.
The face is what got me. Heavy features, pronounced brow
but unmistakably intelligent eyes. It moved through the thick brush

(35:12):
like it wasn't even there branches that would stop me. Cold,
barely slowing it down. I watched it for maybe ten
seconds before it stopped, turned its head and looked straight
at me, not past me or through me, at me,
like it had known I was there all along. We
stared at each other. Then it took two steps backward

(35:32):
and vanished into the brush. No sound, no snapping branches,
just gone. I stayed in that stand for another hour, shaking,
trying to process what I'd seen. Finally climbed down, went
back to camp. Spent the rest of the day doubting myself,
trying to rationalize it. Maybe someone in a suit, maybe

(35:53):
a bear standing upright. Maybe exhaustion playing tricks that night
convinced me otherwise. I was in my tent, reading by
headlamp when something walked into camp. Heavy footsteps, no attempt
at stealth. It circled my tent twice, breathing loud enough
that I could hear it clearly. The smell was overwhelming,
even through the tent fabric. It stopped at my pack,

(36:17):
which I'd hung from a tree branch. I heard rustling
zippers opening, not frantic like a bear would be, but careful, methodical.
I lay there, too, terrified to move, listening to it
go through my things. After about ten minutes, the sound stopped,
the footsteps moved away from camp. I waited another hour

(36:38):
before looking out. My pack was on the ground, contents
laid out in neat rows, food in one line, clothes
in another, hunting gear in a third. Nothing damaged, nothing taken,
just examined. Hindsight is always twenty twenty. But I know
now that I should have packed up right then, in

(36:58):
the dark and got now. But morning was only a
few hours away, and the thought of stumbling through eight
miles of dark forest seemed worse than staying put. I
rebuilt my fire, kept it burning high, and sat up
the rest of the night with my bow across my lap.
Just before dawn, I heard whistling from the ridge above
my camp, long complex notes that seemed to have a pattern.

(37:22):
Another whistle answered from across the valley, then a third
from downstream. They were communicating, calling to each other. As
soon as it was light enough to see, I packed up.
As I was breaking down my tent, I found footprints everywhere,
different sizes, but all the same shape. The biggest were
at least sixteen inches long, with clear tow impressions. The

(37:45):
hike out was the longest eight miles of my life.
I felt watched the whole way. About halfway I found
a dead deer in the trail, fresh killed, neck twisted,
laid out neat with its legs folded under. I walked
around it, didn't touch it, made it to my truck,
drove straight home to Marquette. Didn't tell anyone what happened

(38:06):
for weeks. Who would believe me? But I started researching.
Found online forms where people shared similar experiences. The patterns
were consistent, the examination of gear, the whistling communication. One
detail that kept coming up was the intelligence in those
eyes and its actions. It all pointed to something with

(38:26):
human level intelligence, but completely different priorities and ways of thinking.
I went back to that area once the following summer,
not to hunt, just to see found what might have
been footprints in a muddy spot, but the feeling of
being watched was so intense I only stayed an hour.
Talked to some old timers at the bar, carefully indirectly.

(38:49):
One guy must have been eighty, told me his grandfather
had stories, said the ojibwe knew about them, called them
names I couldn't pronounce, said they'd always been here, had
their own territories, their own ways. The smart thing was
to respect those boundaries. He also said something that stuck
with me. He said, they're curious about us, but we're

(39:11):
maybe too different to really communicate, like trying to talk
to someone from another planet. The objects they leave might
be messages, but we don't have the context to understand them.
I still hunt, but not like before. I stick to
areas closer to Rhodes, places with more human activity. I
don't go in alone anymore. And when I feel that

(39:32):
sensation of being watched, when the woods go silent in
that particular way, I leave. No deer is worth encountering
whatever's out there. Other hunters report similar experiences, gear examined
objects left behind that distinctive whistling. Most don't talk about
it publicly, but in quiet conversations after a few beers,

(39:54):
the stories come out. We all know something's there, we
just don't know what to do about it. Maybe that's
for the best. Maybe some boundaries shouldn't be crossed. Maybe
they have their world and we have hours, and the
occasional overlap is as close as we should get. But sometimes,
studying those patterns, I wonder what we're missing. What knowledge

(40:16):
or perspective or understanding we're too afraid to gain. That's
where we leave Tom's story. But the Upper Peninsula Forest
aren't the only places where these encounters happen. Sometimes it
takes extreme circumstances, moments when nature shows its most destructive face,
for these beings to reveal themselves. Mguil, a former hot

(40:37):
Shot Crew firefighter, discovered this truth in the smoke and
chaos of California's worst wildfire season. The name's Mgil, and
I spent eight years on a hot shot crew fighting
wildfires across the Western US. Saw a lot of things
in those years, fire behavior that didn't make sense, landscapes
transformed in minutes, the raw power of nature unleashed. But

(41:00):
what we encountered during the Creek Fire in September twenty
twenty was something else Entirely. We were stationed in the
Sierra National Forest working to contain a section of the
fire northeast of Shaver Lake. It had been burning for days,
was already massive, and we were cutting line in steep
terrain trying to stop it from spreading further east. My

(41:21):
crew of twenty was working a remote section helicopter access only,
camping rough and working eighteen hour days. On our third
night in that particular spot, things got weird. We'd made
camp on a ridge line, good defensive position. If the
fire shifted. Around two am, our lookout woke everyone up,

(41:41):
not because of fire, because of lights. Down in the
valley below us, where there should have been nothing but
dark forest. Were lights moving through the trees. Not flashlights.
These were different amber, colored almost like flames, but steady,
moving in patterns that made no sense, flustered together, separate

(42:02):
form lines, then scatter again. At first we thought it
might be another crew, but nobody was supposed to be
in that area. It was too dangerous, too close to
active fire. Our crew boss, Danny, tried to raise them
on the radio.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Nothing.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
The lights continued for about an hour, then faded out
one by one. Next morning we repelled down to check
it out. What we found made no sense. In a
meadow where the lights had been centered, the grass was
bent in perfect circles, not burned, not trampled, bent like
something had pressed it down gently. There were seven circles,

(42:38):
each about ten feet across, arranged in a pattern that
looked almost deliberate. But that wasn't the strangest part. In
the center of each circle were objects stones arranged in
small pyramids, feathers stuck in the ground, and in one
a piece of carved wood that looked like it had
been shaped by fire. The carving showed wavy lines that

(42:59):
could have been flames, or water or something else. Jose,
one of our guys, found tracks at the edge of
the meadow. We all gathered around to look human shaped,
but massive, pressed deep into the ash and dirt. The
stride length was impossible. Whoever made these was taking steps
six feet long without running. We documented everything, took photos,

(43:22):
but didn't report it. You don't report stuff like this
unless you want to get drug tested and possibly pulled
off the line. We had work to do, fire to fight,
but we all felt different about that. Valley kept looking
down there, wondering. Two nights later, the fire made a
run at our position. We had to evacuate fast helicopter

(43:42):
extraction in dangerous conditions. As we were loading up, I
looked back and saw them three figures standing at the
edge of the fire line, just inside the smoke. They
were huge, had to be seven or eight feet tall,
covered in dark hair that looked reddish in the firelight.
They were watching us, standing perfectly still despite the heat

(44:03):
and smoke that should have driven any living thing away.
Then all three turned and walked into the burning forest,
not running from the fire, walking into it. They disappeared
in the smoke, and that was the last we saw
of them. But when we returned to that area a
week later, after the fire had passed through, we found
something impossible. In that same meadow where we'd found the

(44:25):
circles where everything should have been burned to ash was
an untouched area, perfect circle about thirty feet across where
the fire had burned around but not through. In the
center were those same stone pyramids, somehow surviving temperatures that
melted aluminum and cracked rocks. Danny had been fighting fires

(44:45):
for twenty years. He stood in that unburned circle looking
at the stone pyramids and just shook his head. Said
he'd seen fire do unexplainable things before, but this was different.
This was intentional. Something had protected this spot. And stay
tuned for more Sasquatch ott to see, we'll be right back.
After these messages, we worked that area for another two weeks,

(45:14):
never saw the figures again, but we found more evidence
tracks in ash that should have been wind scattered trees
that fell in patterns that made no sense, And one
night we all heard it, a deep, resonant call that
echoed across the burned landscape, nothing like any animal we knew.
It sounded almost mournful, like mourning for the burned forest.

(45:37):
After the Creek fire was contained, some of us started talking,
comparing notes from other fires. Turns out there were similar
stories going back years. Firefighters seeing large figures near fire lines,
finding inexplicable unburned areas, hearing calls that didn't match any
known wildlife, always in remote areas, always during major fires.

(46:00):
One theory was that they have some relationship with fire
we don't understand. Maybe they use it, maybe they protect
certain areas from it. Those unburned circles could be important
to them somehow, sacred sights, gathering places, something we can't comprehend.
I left firefighting last year, moved to the coast, got

(46:21):
a job that doesn't involve risking my life every summer.
But I still think about what we saw. Those figures
standing at the edge of the fire, walking into flames
that would kill anything else. The protected circle with its
stone monuments. Were they trying to tell us? Something, show
us something about fire, about the forest, about the relationship

(46:41):
between things, or were they just protecting what was theirs,
keeping their sacred places safe from our disasters. I kept
one of those carved pieces of wood. It sits on
my desk, now black from fire, but intact. The patterns
seemed to shift in different lights. Sometimes they look like lames,
sometimes like water, sometimes like something else, entirely a message

(47:05):
I can't read from beings I can't understand. But here's
what stays with me. They didn't run from the fire.
They walked into it with purpose, like they knew something
we didn't like. They had some power or knowledge that
made them unafraid of something that terrifies every other living thing.
Makes you wonder what else they know that we don't,

(47:26):
What other relationships with nature they might have that we
can't perceive. We think we understand the forest, understand fire,
understand the natural world. But maybe we're just scratching the surface.
Maybe there are older, deeper ways of knowing that we've
lost or never had. They're out there in those forests,
even the burned ones, especially the burned ones, moving through

(47:49):
landscapes we've written off, is destroyed, finding life and meaning
where we see only devastation, protecting what matters to them
in ways we can't understand, and sometimes, in the smoke
and chaos of a major fire, they show themselves just
for a moment, just long enough to remind us that
we don't know everything, that the world is stranger and

(48:12):
more complex than our training and equipment and scientific understanding
can explain. That's what I learned fighting fires in the
Sierra Nevada, not just about fire behavior or forest ecology,
but about the limits of what we know, about the
other intelligences that share this world with us, and about
the humility that comes from realizing you're not the only

(48:34):
one who calls these forests home. Miguel keeps that fire
carved piece of wood on his desk now it's patterns
shifting between flame and water in the changing light. His
story raises profound questions about these beings relationship with the
natural world, a relationship that suggests knowledge and abilities we
don't possess. But what happens when those whose job it

(48:56):
is to protect our wilderness areas come face to face
with evidence that something else has been protecting these lands
far longer than we have. Sharon A. Veteran backcountry ranger
in the Great Smoky Mountains learned that some boundaries are
older than the park service itself. My name is Sharon,
and I worked as a backcountry ranger in Great Smoky

(49:17):
Mountains National Park for fifteen years. Retired early after what
happened in October twenty eighteen. Not because I was scared,
but because it made me realize I'd been willfully blind
to something that had been there all along. I was
doing a solo patrol in the southeastern section of the park,
checking permits and campsites along the Appalachian Trail. It was

(49:39):
late in the season. Most of the through hikers had
already passed, so the backcountry was pretty empty. I liked
it that way, peaceful, just me and the mountains. I'd
planned to stay out four nights, covering about forty miles
of trail. The first two days were routine checked, a
few campsites, picked up some trash, enjoyed the fall colors.

(50:01):
On the third day, I decided to investigate some reports
of illegal camping off trail. Hikers had mentioned seeing fire
rings in areas where camping wasn't permitted about a mile
off the At following game trails in my GPS. I
found something strange, not illegal camp sites, something else. Trees

(50:21):
bent and woven together to form shelters, not like the
debris huts survival enthusiasts make. These were sophisticated, using living
trees trained into dome shapes and covered with woven branches
and moss. There were four structures in a rough semicircle
facing a central area where the ground was worn smooth,

(50:41):
no fire ring, but there were other signs of use.
Flat stones arranged like seats, worn paths between the structures,
and most unsettling bones not scattered like animal kills, arranged
skulls lined up by size, leg bones stacked like firewood.
I took photos, made notes, tried to make sense of it.

(51:04):
The construction was too elaborate for homeless camps, too permanent
for hikers, and the location didn't make sense. No water
source nearby, difficult terrain to reach, no view or any
of the things people usually look for in a campsite.
I was examining one of the structures more closely when
I smelled it that thick animal musk everyone describes, like bear,

(51:26):
but stronger, mixed with something almost sweet like rotting fruit.
I'd smelled bear plenty of times, and this wasn't bear.
My training kicked in. I backed away, slowly, hand on
my radio, though I knew I was in a dead
zone with no reception. That's when I saw the first
print in a patch of bare earth near one of

(51:47):
the shelters, A footprint that made my stomach drop human
shaped but huge. I documented it quickly, took measurements and photos,
tried to keep my hand steady. The print was fresh,
edges still sharp in the damp soil. Whatever made it
had been here recently, maybe was still here. The forest

(52:08):
had gone quiet in that way that makes every ranger nervous.
No birds, no squirrels, even the breeze had died. I
made the decision to leave, head back to the trail,
but as I turned to go, I saw something that
stopped me cold. Hanging from a tree branch about ten
feet up was my hat, the one I'd been wearing,

(52:29):
the one I hadn't noticed falling off. But I hadn't
walked under that branch. I'd remember having to duck under
something that low. Someone had taken it off my head
without me noticing, and hung it there. I reached up
for it couldn't get close. I'm five feet eight inches
and couldn't reach it even jumping. Whatever hung it there
was tall, very tall. That's when the whistling started, low

(52:52):
and melodious, almost like a tune. It came from upslope,
maybe fifty yards away. Another whip answered from my left,
a third from behind me. I was surrounded. I did
the only thing I could think of. I spoke out loud,
said I was a ranger, that I didn't mean any harm,
that I was leaving. Felt foolish talking to the forest,

(53:15):
but what else could I do. The whistling stopped. The
silence stretched out for maybe a minute. Then one of
them showed itself, just briefly, stepping partially out from behind
a massive oak about thirty yards away. Even partially visible,
the size was staggering. Dark hair covered its body, but
the face was visible in the dappled sunlight, heavy features,

(53:38):
deep set eyes that were definitely watching me. Intelligence in
those eyes, not animal cunning, but real intelligence. I blinked
and it was gone. No sound, no movement I could track,
just gone. But the message seemed clear, don't go that way.
I backed up, chose a different route. As I moved

(54:00):
I heard them following, not pursuing, escorting. When I'd veer
too far left or right, a whistle would come from
that direction. They were hurting me, keeping me on a
specific path. It took me an hour to get back
to the main trail, the longest hour of my life.
When I finally stepped onto the familiar tread of the

(54:20):
at the feeling of being watched faded. I hiked out
that day, didn't stop until I reached my vehicle at
Klingman's Dome. But here's what really messed with me. When
I reviewed my GPS track later, I saw that the
path they'd herded me on avoided three areas. I went
back to the maps checked those spots. All three were

(54:41):
locations of recent missing hiker reports, people who'd gone off
trail and never came back. Had they been protecting me,
warning me away from dangerous areas, or protecting something of
theirs I was getting too close to. I reported the structures,
but not the encounter said I'd found what looked like
old hunting blinds, possibly historical. A team went to investigate

(55:03):
two weeks later, found nothing. The structures were gone, not destroyed, disassembled,
The bones were moved the bent trees somehow straightened like
it had never been there. But I knew better, and
once I started looking, really looking, I found signs everywhere,
prints in places they shouldn't be, Trees bent in ways

(55:25):
that weren't natural, stones stacked in patterns, things I'd been
walking past for years without seeing. I talked to other
rangers carefully found out there was an unofficial network of
us who'd had encounters. We'd share locations, compare notes, try
to make sense of it. The pattern was always similar,

(55:45):
intelligent behavior, apparent communication, attempts, territorial, but not aggressive unless threatened.
One ranger who'd worked the park for thirty years told
me something that changed my perspective. He said, they'd always
been here. The Cherokee had stories, the early settlers had stories.
They're as much a part of these mountains as the
bears and deer. We just refused to officially acknowledge them.

(56:09):
He also said something that haunts me. He said, they're
getting bolder because they have to. Development is pushing into
their territory. Trails are going deeper into the back country.
They're running out of places to hide. The encounters are
increasing because we're not leaving them anywhere else to go.
I worked another season after that, but my heart wasn't
in it. I couldn't walk those trails without wondering what

(56:31):
was watching from the forest, couldn't investigate reports of bear
activity without wondering what we were really covering up. Couldn't
pretend anymore that we understood these mountains. My last week
on the job, I was hiking out from a back
country patrol when I found something on the trail, A
small bundle of sticks tied with vine with a black

(56:52):
feather woven through it. It was placed right in the
middle of the trail, where I couldn't miss it. I
picked it up, studied it. Ruction was intricate, deliberate. It
felt like a message or a gift. I looked around,
said thank you to the empty forest. Felt silly, but
also right. I keep that bundle on my bookshelf now.

(57:14):
Sometimes I look at it and wonder what it means,
A farewell gift, a token of recognition from one guardian
of the forest to another. I'll never know, but I
know they're still out there, still living their parallel lives
in the deep places, still watching hikers pass through their territory,
still maintaining whatever ancient relationship they have with those mountains,

(57:36):
and sometimes when a hiker goes missing and is found
days later with no memory of what happened, when strange
sounds echo through the valleys, when experienced outdoorsmen report things
that don't make sense, I know what's really happening. We're
sharing these spaces with something that doesn't fit our understanding
of the world, something intelligent, ancient, and deserving of respect.

(57:59):
That's why I retired, not from fear, but from respect,
from understanding that some boundaries shouldn't be crossed. Some knowledge
comes with responsibilities I wasn't ready for. I'd spent fifteen
years as a ranger thinking I was protecting the park.
But maybe the park never needed our protection. Maybe it's
been protected all along by something far older and more

(58:21):
capable than us.

Speaker 3 (58:24):
They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
I don't want.

Speaker 2 (58:34):
To be.

Speaker 3 (58:37):
Out, be joy this job, that chid. Everything came right

(59:05):
by rocking back for joy from me joy, staying right.
You come in right away, steps, steps, steps, steps, bossas

(01:00:14):
state passes states and Thames, US tosses