August 20, 2025 • 49 mins
Tonight, we bring you six firsthand encounters that challenge everything you think you know about Sasquatch stories. No howling in the night, no massive footprints, no blurry photographs. Instead, these accounts from timber workers, truck drivers, and Forest Service employees reveal something far more unsettling: evidence of intelligence, curiosity, and perhaps even attempts at communication from something that shouldn't exist.We begin in the timber lands of Coos County, Oregon, where a harvester operator discovered bent trees that defied physics and later found unexplainable hair wrapped in his equipment. From there, we travel Highway 97 through central Oregon with a truck driver who encountered something that walked like a man but stood eight feet tall and could keep pace with his moving vehicle.
The third account takes us to a remote Forest Service monitoring station that was dragged thirty feet from its foundation by something strong enough to dent quarter-inch steel with what appeared to be handprints.The stories grow progressively stranger as we hear from a fisherman on the Klamath River who woke to find river rocks stacked in perfect spirals around his camp, followed by a ski patroller who tracked something walking upright through deep snow at angles that should have been impossible to climb.
Our final and perhaps most disturbing account comes from a man who inherited his grandfather's remote cabin, along with forty years of journals documenting an ongoing attempt at communication with something that was learning to speak human words.These aren't the Bigfoot stories you've heard before.
There's no dramatic monster reveal, no chase through the woods, no triumphant evidence collected. Instead, these are quiet accounts of boundaries crossed, of intelligence observed, and of evidence that conveniently disappears whenever proof might threaten the carefully maintained secret of something living alongside us in the vast forests of the Pacific Northwest. Each storyteller was forever changed by their experience, left with questions that have no comfortable answers and knowledge they can't quite reconcile with the ordinary world.
A word of caution: these stories were selected specifically because they don't fit the usual narrative. They suggest something more complex than a hidden primate, something that watches us with the same intensity we search for it. Whether you're a believer, a skeptic, or somewhere in between, these accounts will leave you reconsidering what might be out there in the darkness between the trees.
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The third account takes us to a remote Forest Service monitoring station that was dragged thirty feet from its foundation by something strong enough to dent quarter-inch steel with what appeared to be handprints.The stories grow progressively stranger as we hear from a fisherman on the Klamath River who woke to find river rocks stacked in perfect spirals around his camp, followed by a ski patroller who tracked something walking upright through deep snow at angles that should have been impossible to climb.
Our final and perhaps most disturbing account comes from a man who inherited his grandfather's remote cabin, along with forty years of journals documenting an ongoing attempt at communication with something that was learning to speak human words.These aren't the Bigfoot stories you've heard before.
There's no dramatic monster reveal, no chase through the woods, no triumphant evidence collected. Instead, these are quiet accounts of boundaries crossed, of intelligence observed, and of evidence that conveniently disappears whenever proof might threaten the carefully maintained secret of something living alongside us in the vast forests of the Pacific Northwest. Each storyteller was forever changed by their experience, left with questions that have no comfortable answers and knowledge they can't quite reconcile with the ordinary world.
A word of caution: these stories were selected specifically because they don't fit the usual narrative. They suggest something more complex than a hidden primate, something that watches us with the same intensity we search for it. Whether you're a believer, a skeptic, or somewhere in between, these accounts will leave you reconsidering what might be out there in the darkness between the trees.
Get Our FREE Newsletter
Get Brian's Books
Leave Us A Voicemail
Visit Our Website
Support Our Sponsors
Visit Untold Radio AM
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
on here, something just because my dog. Something killed your dog,
my dog. We're flying through the air 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 he was dead. And once you hit
the ground like, I didn't see any cars. All I
saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat, what
(00:38):
are you putting? We got some wonder or something crawling
around out here? Did you see what it was?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Or was it was?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Standing enough? I'm out here looking through the window now
and I don't see anything. I don't want to go outside,
Jesus Quice, you better Hellohet thebody out here? What quin?
I'm out there? I thought of a bit about tech
forty nine.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Easy ann ount there, Yeah, I'm walking right.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Hey.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
You ever notice how the really strange stories never start
with you're not going to believe this. The people who've
seen something genuinely inexplicable, they tell it straight, no embellishment,
no dramatic build up. They just lay out what happened
and let you decide what to make of it. That's
what struck me about the accounts you're about to hear.
(01:33):
These aren't campfire tales or internet creepy pastas. They're told
with the kind of matter of fact clarity that comes
from people still trying to make sense of their own experiences.
Construction workers, truck drivers, government employees, regular people who stumbled
into something extraordinary and came out the other side changed.
(01:53):
I've been collecting these stories for years now. Not the
sensational ones that make the rounds on paranormal podcasts, The
quiet ones, the ones people only share after a few
drinks or late at night when they're tired of carrying
it alone. The ones that don't fit the standard Bigfoot
narrative we've all heard a hundred times. No whooping calls
(02:13):
echoing through the forest, No mysterious equipment failures at convenient moments,
no spiritual awakenings or telepathic communications. Just encounters with something
that shouldn't exist, something that moves through our world with
an intelligence we don't quite understand. What interests me most
about these accounts isn't just what people saw, it's how
(02:35):
they process it afterward, how they integrate the impossible into
their ordinary lives. Some quit their jobs, some never go
back to certain places. Some spend years trying to rationalize
what they experienced, but they all carry it with them,
this knowledge that the world is stranger than we pretend
it is. The Pacific Northwest keeps its secrets well. Millions
(02:58):
of acres of forest, most of it never seen by
human eyes, deep canyons, remote ridges, places where you could
disappear and never be found. If something wanted to stay
hidden out there, it could. Maybe it does. So listen
to these stories with an open mind. Consider the details
that don't fit the usual narrative. The bent trees that
(03:21):
straighten themselves, the voices learning human speech, the deliberate intelligence
behind seemingly random acts. These aren't stories about monsters. There's
stories about boundaries, the ones between the known and unknown,
between our world and something else's. Sometimes those boundaries get crossed,
(03:41):
and when they do, the people who witness it are
never quite the same. Let's start in Oregon, in the
timberlands of Coos County, where a harvester operator encountered something
that changed his understanding of what might be sharing the
forest with us. I've been working timber and Oregon for
twenty three years, started when I was nineteen, right out
(04:04):
of high school. The thing that happened in Coos County
back in twenty eighteen still bothers me. Not in the
way you'd think. It's more like when you can't remember
if you locked your front door, that nagging feeling that
something's off. We were cutting a section about forty miles
inland from bandon private land, old growth that had somehow
(04:24):
escaped the saw for one hundred years. The company had
finally gotten permits to take it down. Beautiful trees Douglas
firs that four men couldn't wrap their arms around. Part
of me hated cutting them, but work is work. It
was late September. The mornings were getting cold, that wet
Oregon cold that gets into your bones. I was running
(04:46):
a harvester that day, one of those big tracked machines
with the head that grabs the tree, cuts it and
strips the branches all in one go. Loud as hell.
You wear ear protection, but you still feel the vibration
in your chest. I'd been working the line along a
ridge since dawn. The fog had burned off around ten
and I could finally see more than fifty feet ahead.
(05:09):
The other guys were working different sections. We stayed in
radio contact, but mostly we were alone out there. Around
two in the afternoon, I shut down the harvester to
eat lunch. The sudden quiet always gets to you. Your
ears ring for a minute, then you start hearing the
forest again, birds, wind in the trees, all of it.
(05:30):
I grabbed my sandwich in thermous and climbed down from
the cab. That's when I noticed the trees were wrong.
I don't mean damaged or diseased. They were bent About
thirty feet up. A line of firs were all bent
at the same angle, pointing uphill, not broken, just curved
like they'd grown that way. But trees don't grow sideways
(05:51):
for ten feet then straighten back up. These did. I
walked closer to get a better look. The bend was smooth,
like someone had heated the wood and shaped it. But
these were living trees, thick as telephone poles. At that height.
The force needed to do that would be incredible. I
was standing there neck crane back, trying to make sense
(06:12):
of it when I heard breathing, not mine. This was deeper,
slower like a horse after a long run, but bigger.
The sound came from uphill, maybe sixty feet away in
thick salal and rhododendron. I stood very still. Black bears
were common here, but they don't breathe that loud unless
they're right on top of you. This was different. The
(06:35):
rhythm was wrong, too slow, too deliberate. The breathing stopped.
I waited, hand on the radio clip to my vest.
Then I heard movement, not footsteps exactly, more like something
shifting its weight. The salal rustled, but I couldn't see
through it. I backed toward the harvester, keeping my eyes
(06:56):
on the spot where the sound came from. The Movement
stopped when I moved, moved started again when I stopped,
like it was matching me. I made it to the
harvester and climbed up into the cab. From that height,
I could see over most of the brush. There was
a gap in the salaw where something had pushed through.
Not a trail, just a space where the bushes were
(07:17):
mashed down. I started the machine back up. The engine
roared to life, and I went back to work, but
I kept glancing at that spot. About an hour later,
I saw motion, just a glimpse of something dark, moving
parallel to me along the ridge. It stayed in the
thick stuff never coming into the open. I radioed Jake,
(07:38):
who was working the next section over, told him I
might have a bear hanging around to keep an eye out.
He said he'd had a weird feeling all day too,
like something was watching him. But that's not unusual in
the woods. You get that feeling sometimes. The thing is,
I went back the next day to look at those
bent trees and better light. They were straight, every single
(08:01):
no bend, no curve, nothing, same trees, same location. I
knew exactly where they were because I'd marked the spot
with flagging tape. I asked the other guys if they'd
noticed any bent trees. They looked at me like I
was losing it. I didn't push it. But here's what
really gets me. About a week later, I was servicing
(08:22):
the harvester's head, cleaning out the feed rollers. Wrapped around
one of them was hair long, dark brown hair, almost black,
too coarse to be human, too long to be bare.
It was wrap tight, like it had been pulled through
during operation. I never ran anything through the head that
day except trees. I'm sure of that. The hair was
(08:43):
wound in their good like it had been caught while
the rollers were spinning, but caught from what the head
was twenty feet in the air when it was operating.
I kept that hair for a while, had it in
a zip lock bag in my truck. Then one day
it was gone, lost, not misplaced. The bag was there,
(09:03):
sealed but empty, like the hare had just disappeared. I
still worked timber, but not in Coos County anymore. The
company moved me to a different sector at my request.
Told them I wanted to be closer to home, and
that was partly true, but mostly I just didn't want
to go back to that ridge. Sometimes I dream about
(09:24):
those bent trees. In the dreams, they're not trees at all.
They're markers, warnings, maybe boundaries that aren't meant to be crossed.
And in the dreams I can still hear that breathing,
patient and steady, waiting for something I don't understand. Bent
trees that straighten themselves, hair that disappears from sealed bags,
(09:45):
physical evidence that exists one day and vanishes the next.
It's a pattern you'll hear again and again in these accounts,
the frustrating inability to prove what you know you saw.
Our next story comes from a truck driver who had
his own encounter with something that shouldn't exist. Unlike our
timber worker, who could at least return to the site later.
(10:06):
This trucker's experience happened in the fleeting space of a
highway at night, where evidence is left behind in the
rear view mirror at sixty miles per hour. But some
images burn themselves into your memory regardless of proof, and
some things follow you longer than they should be able to.
I drove truck for fifteen years before I retired, mostly
(10:27):
Pacific Northwest routes Seattle down to Sacramento, over to Boise,
back up through Portland. You see a lot of empty
highway at three in the morning. You learn which rest
stops have good coffee, which stretches of road the deer
like to cross. You get to know the roads like
the lines on your own hands. Highway ninety seven through
(10:47):
central Oregon is one of those roads that feels longer
than it is, miles of nothing but pine forest and
lava rock. Cell service comes and goes, Radio stations fade
in and out, just you and the yellow lines for hours.
This was November twenty sixteen. I was hauling a load
of lumber from Bend down to Redding. Nothing special, just
(11:09):
another run. I'd left Bend around midnight to beat the
morning traffic in California. The weather was clear, cold, no
snow yet, but you could smell it. Coming south of Shemalt,
there's a stretch where the forest presses right up against
the highway. No shoulder to speak of, just asphalt and
then trees. I was making good time, had the cruise
(11:31):
control set at sixty. The truck was running smooth. I
came around to curve and had to break hard. There
was something in the road. My head lights lit it up,
but I couldn't process what I was seeing. At first,
it was hair, a massive pile of brown hair in
the middle of my lane, like someone had emptied a
barber shop in the road. But as I got closer,
(11:53):
slowing to a crawl, I realized it wasn't just hair.
It was attached to something. The pile was moving, rippling
like water. Then it stood up. I'm six foot three.
I've been in plenty of fights in my younger days.
I've seen bears, elk, all kinds of wildlife. This was different.
It stood maybe eight feet tall, covered in that brown
(12:16):
hair that had looked like a pile in the road.
But it didn't stand like a bear. It stood like
a man, but wrong somehow. The proportions were off arms,
too long, torso too thick. It turned to look at
my truck. The headlights caught its eyes, and they reflected
green like a deer's. But the face around those eyes
(12:37):
wasn't quite animal, wasn't quite human either. It was something
in between that made my hands go cold on the
steering wheel. The thing didn't run. It walked to the
side of the road, casual as could be, like it
was stepping aside to let me pass, But it watched
me the whole time. I could see its head turned
to track the truck as I rolled by, a floored
(13:00):
It should have put miles between me and whatever that was,
but I did something stupid instead. I stopped about fifty
yards past it and looked in my mirrors. It was
following the truck, not running, just walking, with these long,
measured strides, eating up ground without seeming to hurry. I
put the truck in gear and started rolling again, watching
(13:22):
my mirrors, it kept following. I picked up speed ten
miles an hour twenty thirty. It kept pace for longer
than should have been possible, then finally fell back and
disappeared into the dark. I didn't stop again until I
hit a truck stop in Klamath Falls. I sat in
that well lit parking lot for an hour, drinking coffee
(13:43):
with hands that wouldn't quite stay steady. I thought about
calling someone, but who the cops and tell them what
The drive back three days later was worse. Coming through
that same stretch, I was tense as a wire. Nothing
happened to empty road and dark trees. But about a
mile from where I'd seen it, there was a dead
(14:05):
elk on the shoulder. Big bull must have weighed eight
hundred pounds. It was torn in half, not hit by
a car, not taken down by wolves, torn like something
had grabbed the front legs and back legs and pulled
until the animal came apart. The strength required to do
that is insane, and the weird part. No scavengers, no birds,
(14:27):
no coyotes, nothing would touch it. I reported the elk
to O DOT said it was a road hazard. They
said they'd send someone to clean it up. I drove
that route six more times over the next two months.
The elk was never moved. It just slowly disappeared piece
by piece, but I never saw what was taking it.
(14:48):
I started timing my runs different after that, made sure
I hit that stretch during daylight. Told myself it was
because of ice conditions, but that was a lie. I
was scared. Still am. If I'm on honest and stay
tuned for more sasquatch ot to see, we'll be right back.
After these messages, I retired early just last year. My
(15:13):
wife thinks it's because of my back, and I let
her believe that, but really I just couldn't do those
night drives anymore. Couldn't shake the feeling that something was
out there walking along the highway in the dark, waiting
for trucks to slow down. The thing that really bothers
me is how it acted. It wasn't aggressive, it wasn't afraid.
It just moved aside, like it understood what a truck was,
(15:35):
what a road was for, like it was choosing to
let me pass. That kind of intelligence and something that
shouldn't exist, makes you question a lot of things. I
still have dreams about it. Sometimes. In the dreams, I
stopped the truck and get out. I walk back to
where it's standing by the side of the road. It
says something to me, but I can never remember what.
(15:57):
I wake up feeling like I've forgotten something important, something
I was supposed to do. I don't drive at night anymore,
not Ever. The intelligence behind these encounters is what unsettles
people most. Not the size or strength, but the awareness.
The way something watched that truck and chose to follow it,
the way it understood what a road was for. This
(16:20):
next account comes from someone whose job was to monitor
the forest itself, to collect data, watch for patterns, predict dangers.
But what do you do when the forest starts examining
your equipment with the same curiosity you use to study it?
And what do you do when the evidence of that
curiosity is so impossible that even documenting it feels like fiction.
(16:41):
I worked for the Forest Service for six years, mostly
fire prevention stuff, manning lookout towers during the dry season,
checking monitoring equipment. It was good work if you didn't
mind being alone. I never minded, actually preferred it. In
twenty nineteen, they had me stationed at a monitoring site
in the cast Sca Range, about sixty miles east of Eugene.
(17:04):
It wasn't a regular lookout tower, just a small equipment
station that tracked weather patterns, air quality, seismic activity, boring
data collection that helped predict fire conditions. The station was
a metal shed about the size of a shipping container,
solar panels on top, bunch of antennas and sensors. It
sat on a cleared patch at the end of a
(17:25):
forest service road. I'd drive up every two weeks to
download data, check the equipment, swap out batteries if needed.
It was July when things got strange. I'd driven up
on a Tuesday morning early to beat the heat. The
road was rough, barely more than a dirt track. The
last five miles my truck could handle it, but you
(17:46):
had to go slow. I noticed the smell first, not
a dead animal smell, but something organic and wrong, like
wet dog, mixed with crushed pine needles and something else
I couldn't place. It got stronger as I got closer
to this. When I came around the last bend, I
saw the station had been moved, not damaged, not knocked over, moved.
(18:09):
The whole thing had been dragged about thirty feet from
its concrete pad. The cables connecting it to the solar
panels were stretched tight. Some of them snapped. I got
out of the truck and walked around it. The metal
skids on the bottom had gouged deep tracks in the dirt.
Whatever moved it had dragged it in one straight pull.
But here's the thing. That station weighed about three thousand pounds.
(18:31):
The amount of force needed to drag it that far
would be enormous. There were marks on the metal sides,
not claw marks, not exactly, more like something had gripped it.
The metal was actually dimpled inward in spots, like giant
fingers had pressed into it. But to dent quarter inch
steel like that, you'd need hydraulic pressure. Nothing does that
(18:52):
with just muscle. I called it in on the satellite phone,
told my supervisor someone had vandalized the station. He asked
if I could see tire tracks from a vehicle. I couldn't.
No tire tracks, no cable marks, nothing to indicate machinery
had been used. He told me to document everything and
get the station operational if possible. So I did. Took photos,
(19:15):
measurements the whole deal. Then I tried to get inside
to check the equipment. The door was bent, not kicked in,
but bent outward, like something inside had pushed against it.
The lock was still engaged, but the frame around it
had buckled. I had to use a prie bar to
get it open enough to squeeze through. Inside was chaos.
(19:36):
The monitoring equipment was mostly intact, but everything else was destroyed.
The emergency cot was shredded. The supply cabinet had been
pulled off the wall. Boxes of MRIs were torn open
and scattered, but nothing was eaten. It was like something
had been searching for something specific. The computer was still
running on battery backup. I downloaded the data onto a
(19:59):
thumb drive. Routine stuff mostly, but when I checked the
motion sensor logs, there were dozens of triggers over the
past three nights, all between midnight and four am. The
sensors only saved still images, not video, and most of
them just showed darkness or blurry shadows. But one image
made me stop breathing for a second. It was from
(20:20):
two nights before two forty seven am. According to the timestamp,
the infrared camera had caught something standing right outside the window.
The image was grainy, but you could make out a shape, tall, bipedal,
one hand pressed against the glass. The hand was huge,
fingers spread wide, human like, but too long, too thick.
(20:45):
I copied everything and got out of there. Didn't even
try to fix the station, just drove back down the
mountain and told my supervisor the damage was too extensive
for field repairs. They sent a crew up the next
week to retrieve the station, brought it back on a
flat bed. I heard later that they couldn't explain the damage.
The official report blamed it on vandals, maybe eco terrorists
(21:07):
or something, but they never explained how vandals moved three
thousand pounds of steel without machinery. I went back once
more about a month later, had to retrieve some sensors
they'd left behind. The concrete pad was still there, and
so were the drag marks, but there were new marks too, footprints,
kind of depressions in the hard packed dirt. They led
(21:29):
from the forest to where the station had been, then
back into the trees. The prints were maybe eighteen inches long,
humanoid in shape, but wider with what looked like tow impressions.
The stride length was about six feet. I'm tall, and
my stride is maybe three feet at a normal walk.
Whatever made those prints was moving in huge, easy steps.
(21:52):
I took photos of those two, but when I got
home and checked my phone, those specific photos were corrupted.
Every other picture was fine, just not those footprints. Technical
glitch probably, but it felt deliberate somehow.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I quit the.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
Forest Service a year later, told people I wanted to
try something new, and that was partly true, but mostly
I couldn't stop thinking about that hand pressed against the window,
The deliberate way the station had been moved, the way
the damage inside seemed almost curious rather than destructive. Whatever
was out there, it was studying us as much as
(22:28):
we were studying the forest, and it was strong enough
to toss around our equipment like toys. That knowledge changes
how you see the woods, makes you realize how small
and fragile our little monitoring stations really are. I work
in an office now, climate controlled, well lit, lots of
people around. It's boring, but I sleep better. No more
(22:51):
dreams about things standing outside windows in the dark, trying
to understand what we are. Three thousand pounds of steel
dragged thirty feet without out machinery, a hand pressed against glass,
studying our technology. These encounters suggest something that goes beyond
animal behavior into genuine curiosity about human artifacts. But not
(23:12):
all encounters involve our structures and machines. Sometimes they involve
communication attempts that are harder to dismiss. Patterns left behind,
like messages, deliberate arrangements that suggest meaning. This next story
takes us to the Klamath River, where a fisherman found
himself at the center of something that seemed less like
an encounter and more like a test. I was twenty
(23:35):
six when it happened. This was back in twenty fourteen.
I'd just gotten divorced. Needed to clear my head, so
I decided to go steelhead fishing on the Klamath River.
There's a spot about thirty miles up river from Happy
Camp that not many people know about. You have to
hike in about three miles from the road, perfect place
to be alone. I went in October, right when the
(23:57):
steelhead start running. Packed light, just a small tent, sleeping bag,
and enough food for four days. The hike in was beautiful,
old growth, cedar and pine, the sound of the river
getting louder as you descend into the canyon. I set
up camp on a gravel bar about fifty feet from
the water. Good spot, flat, protected from wind by a
(24:19):
stand of alders. I spent the first day fishing, caught
two nice steelhead released them both. That night, I cooked freeze,
dried pasta, watched the stars come out peaceful. The second
night was different. I woke up around two in the morning.
Wasn't sure what woke me at first. Then I heard
rocks moving outside. Not little rocks, big ones. The gravel
(24:42):
bar was mostly river rocks the size of basketballs. Something
was moving them around. I lay there listening. The sound
would stop for a minute, then start again, scraping, grinding,
like something was rearranging the rocks. I thought maybe a
bear was looking for fishcrkses, but bears don't usually mess
with rocks that size. I unzipped the tent window and
(25:05):
looked out. Moon was almost full, so I could see
pretty well. The rocks near my tent had been stacked,
not randomly, but deliberately, balanced on top of each other,
little towers, three or four rocks high. There were maybe
a dozen of them in a rough circle around my camp.
While I was looking, a rock flew past my tent,
(25:27):
didn't roll, didn't bounce, flew, It landed in the river
with a huge splash. Then another one from the opposite direction.
Something was throwing rocks from both sides of the river,
big rocks that must have weighed forty fifty pounds. I
zipped the window shut and grabbed my knife, not that
it would help much, but holding it made me feel better.
(25:50):
The rock throwing continued for maybe twenty minutes. Some landed
in the water, some on the gravel bar. One hit
a tree with a crack that echoed off the canyon walls.
Then it stopped. Everything went quiet except for the river.
I didn't sleep the rest of the night, just lay
there listening, waiting. At first light, I packed up my
(26:10):
gear in record time, but before I left, I looked
at those rock stacks. They were arranged in a pattern,
not random at all. They formed a spiral, starting small
near my tent and getting bigger as they curved outward.
The biggest stack was seven rocks high. Perfectly balanced. Engineering
students would have trouble making something that stable. I started
(26:32):
hiking out, moving fast. About a mile from camp, I
found something that stopped me cold. A tree across the trail,
not fallen placed. It was a pine maybe sixty feet long,
and it had been laid perfectly perpendicular across the path.
The root ball was on one side the top. On
(26:52):
the other, that tree hadn't been there when I hiked in.
To move it into that position, something would have had
to carry it from wherever it fell and set it
down just so. The trunk was probably two feet thick,
the weight would be enormous. I climbed over it and
kept going. Found two more trees like that before I
reached the road, each one placed across the trail deliberate
(27:15):
as could be, like something was trying to slow me
down or mark the path, or maybe both. When I
got to my car, I sat there for a long
time before driving away. I kept thinking about those rock stacks,
the perfect spiral they made, the thrown rocks that came
from both sides of the river at once. Either there
(27:35):
were two of whatever it was, or one that could
move incredibly fast. I went back to that spot once
five years later, brought a friend. That time, the rock
stacks were gone, scattered by spring floods, probably, but the
trees were still there, right where they'd been placed, across
the trail, gray and weathered now but unmoved. My friend
(27:57):
asked how they got there. I told him deadfall from
a storm. He accepted that, but I could see him
trying to figure out how three trees fell in exactly
the same direction, exactly across the trail, exactly the same
distance apart. We fished for a day and left. Nothing
happened that time, but I kept feeling like we were
being watched, that prickly sensation on the back of your neck.
(28:21):
My friend felt it too. We didn't talk about it,
but we both kept looking over our shoulders, scanning the
tree line. I don't fish the Klamath anymore, plenty of
other rivers in northern California, But sometimes I think about
those rock stacks, the time and effort it would take
to build them in the dark, the intelligence required to
create that spiral pattern. Whatever made them was trying to
(28:44):
communicate something. I just don't know what. The rocks getting
thrown from both sides still bothers me. The physics of it.
To throw a fifty pound rock across a river that's
sixty feet wide, you'd need incredible strength, and to do
it accurately in the dark from different positions. That suggests
planning coordination. I've never told anyone the whole story until now.
(29:08):
People already think I'm a little off since the divorce.
This wouldn't help, but it happened. Those rocks didn't stack themselves,
those trees didn't walk across the trail on their own.
Something out there is a lot smarter and stronger than
we want to believe. Rock sculptures arranged in perfect spirals,
trees placed as barriers or markers. The Klamath River encounter
(29:32):
suggests something capable of abstract thinking, of creating patterns meant
to convey meaning. These stories challenge our assumptions about what
we're dealing with. If these things exist, they're not just
large primates hiding in the woods. There's something more complex,
something that observes us. As much as we search for
them and stay tuned for more Sasquatch ot to see,
(29:54):
we'll be right back after these messages. Our next account
comes from someone who worked ski patrol, someone whose job
was knowing every inch of their mountain. But mountains change
at night, and sometimes tracks appear in places nothing should
be able to reach. I worked ski patrol at a
(30:16):
small resort in the Northern Cascades for three seasons. This
was twenty seventeen through twenty nineteen. Won't say which resort,
but it's one of those places that locals love, and
tourists haven't discovered yet. We'd get maybe two hundred people
on a busy Saturday. The resort closes at four in winter.
By five the mountain is empty except for patrol doing
(30:37):
final sweep and the grooming crew preparing the runs for
the next day. It's peaceful then, just the sound of
wind and the distant rumble of the snow cats. This
happened in February twenty eighteen. We'd gotten two feet of
fresh snow the night before, perfect conditions. I was doing
sweep on the backside of the mountain, checking the tree
(30:58):
runs to make sure no one was stuck or injured.
It's easy to get turned around in the trees when
everything's covered in fresh powder. I was working my way
down through a section we called the glades, tight trees,
steep pitch, definitely expert terrain. The sun was already behind
the ridge, so it was getting dark under the canopy.
(31:18):
I had my headlamp on scanning for tracks. That's when
I found them. Tracks that didn't make sense. They were bipedal,
like a person walking, but no ski tracks, no snow
shoe prints, just deep depressions in the snow. Maybe two
feet deep. The stride was huge, probably seven feet between steps.
(31:39):
And here's the weird part. They went straight up a
slope that I could barely climb with my skins on.
I followed them for a bit. They led to a
cluster of trees where the snow was all disturbed. Branches
were broken off ten twelve feet up, fresh breaks, SAPs
still running. Something had pulled them down, twisted them off.
(32:00):
The ground around the trees was packed down, like something
heavy had been walking in circles. I radioed Base, told
them I might have found evidence of a lost skier.
They asked if I needed back up. I said no,
I check it out and report back. Stupid decision. The
tracks led deeper into the trees, away from any runs.
(32:20):
I followed them for maybe ten minutes. The forest got thicker, darker.
My headlamp beam only went so far. Every shadow looked
like something crouching. Then I smelled it. Not the rotten
smell people always talk about. This was musky, animal like,
but with something else like wet cement or minerals cave smell,
(32:42):
if that makes sense. It was strong enough to cut
through the cold air. I stopped and listened. Could hear
my own, breathing, my heart beating. Then from somewhere ahead,
I heard snow falling off branches, a lot of it,
like something big had brushed against a tree from a
different direction. Whatever it was, it was circling me. I
(33:05):
turned around and started back toward the run, not panicking
but moving with purpose. The sound followed me, snow falling branches, creaking,
always staying just outside the range of my headlamp. I
made it back to the groomed run and radio that
I was heading down. Told them the tracks were just
postholing from some idiot hiking without snow shoes. Nobody questioned it,
(33:28):
but here's what happened next. I had to go back
up there the next morning to retrieve a boundary sign
that had blown down. Daylight this time, plenty of people around.
When I got to the glades, I looked for those tracks.
They were gone, not covered by new snow. We hadn't
gotten it, just gone. The snow was smooth, undisturbed, except
(33:50):
I found one thing, a tuft of dark hair caught
on a tree branch about eight feet up. Long, coarse hair,
almost black. I pulled it free, looked at it in
the sunlight. It wasn't from any animal I knew. Too
long for elk, wrong color for bear. I pocketed it,
planned to research it later, but when I got home
(34:12):
and checked my pocket, it was gone, just a few
strands left, like it had dissolved or something. The next week,
one of the groomers quit said he'd seen something running
alongside his cat one night keeping pace with the machine,
which goes about twenty miles an hour. Said it ran
on two legs, stayed just at the edge of his lights.
(34:32):
Management told him he was seeing things, maybe needed to
lay off the beer, but he was stone sober. I
knew the guy. After that, I started paying attention. Found
more tracks, sometimes, always in the back country, always gone
by the next day. Other patrol members mentioned seeing them too,
but nobody wanted to be the one to make it official.
(34:53):
We all just pretended not to notice. The last season
I worked there, twenty nineteen, we had an enc sident.
A snowboarder went missing for six hours. When we found him,
he was sitting in the middle of a run board,
nowhere to be seen, just staring at the trees. Hypothermic. Confused,
he kept saying something had carried him, picked him up
(35:15):
and carried him through the forest. We rode it off
as delirium from the cold, but his board turned up
three days later at the top of a cliff, band
placed carefully against a tree, no tracks leading to it,
No way he could have climbed up there. Someone would
have had to carry it. I don't work ski patrol anymore.
Got a job as an electrician. Steady work, good pay.
(35:38):
But sometimes I missed the mountain. Then I remember that smell,
that circle of disturbed snow, those tracks that disappeared, and
I'm glad to be working somewhere with walls and locks
and lights that stay on all night. The mountains are beautiful,
but there's something up there that doesn't want us around
after dark. Something that can move through deep snow like
(35:59):
it's nothing, climb vertical slopes and carry a grown man
through the forest. Something that's smart enough to hide its
tracks and strong enough to place a snowboard on top
of a cliff as some kind of message. I still
ski sometimes, but only on busy weekends, only on the
main runs, and I'm always in the parking lot before
the lifts close. Some boundaries you don't cross twice the
(36:23):
mountains at night. Empty ski runs, tracks that appear and disappear,
evidence that vanishes as if it was never there. Each
of these stories shares that frustrating element, the inability to
prove what you experienced. But what if proof isn't the point?
What if these things reveal themselves only to certain people
(36:44):
at certain times, for reasons we don't understand. This final
story is different. It's about a long term relationship between
a man and whatever was living near his cabin. Forty
years of coexistence, forty years of gradual communication, and a
suggestion that maybe, just maybe we're not the only ones
trying to make contact. My grandfather left me his cabin
(37:10):
when he died in twenty twenty. It sits on Devil's
Creek up in the Siskiou Mountains, about forty miles from
the nearest town. He built it himself in the sixties,
lived there alone for the last thirty years of his life,
off grid, no neighbors for miles, just how he liked it.
I went up there in August to clean it out,
figure out what to do with the place. The road
(37:31):
end was overgrown, barely passable. Took me three hours to
drive the last ten miles. When I finally got there.
The cabin looked exactly like I remembered from childhood visits, small, sturdy,
surrounded by Douglas firs so thick you could barely see
the sky. Inside was like stepping back in time. Wood stove,
(37:52):
oil lamps, shelves of canned goods, everything covered in dust,
but otherwise intact. I spent the first day just cleaning,
opening windows, airing the place out. That night, I found
his journals, forty years worth, stacked in a closet. I
started reading them, expecting fishing stories and weather reports. That's
(38:13):
mostly what they were. But starting about ten years ago,
the entries changed. He wrote about voices in the creek
at night. Not human voices, but something trying to sound human,
like something was practicing words, getting them wrong. He'd written
phrases he'd heard, hello, there, morning, good night, walking, thank you,
(38:34):
very coming, always just a little off. I thought maybe
he'd been getting dementia, but the rest of his writing
was clear, sharp. He still balanced his check book in
the margins, kept detailed notes about repairs and supplies. Only
these voice entries seemed crazy. The second night I was there,
I heard them too. I was lying in bed, windows
(38:56):
opened to cool the place down The creek was loud,
running high for August, but underneath the water sound I
heard talking, low, mumbling, like someone having a conversation, just
out of earshot. I grabbed a flashlight and went to
the window. The creek was only thirty feet from the cabin.
I could see it reflecting moonlight through the trees. The
(39:18):
voices were coming from upstream, maybe fifty yards away, two
distinct tones, one higher, one lower. They seemed to be alternating,
like question and answer. I couldn't make out words at first,
Then clear as day, I heard window light there looking
my flashlight. They were talking about my flashlight. I turned
(39:40):
it off and stood in the dark listening. The voices continued,
but quieter, now harder to understand. I wanted to go
outside see what was making those sounds, but something in
my grandfather's journal stopped me. An entry from just a
month before he died, don't go to the creek at night.
They're learning getting better at sounding like us. Sarah's voice
(40:03):
last night, but Sarah's been dead three years. Almost went
to her almost Sarah was my grandmother. I went back
to bed, but didn't sleep. The voices continued until dawn,
sometimes closer, sometimes farther away. When the sun came up,
I walked down to the creek. Found prints in the mud,
(40:23):
like human footprints, but they were too wide, toes, too long,
and they went into the water but didn't come out
the other side. I spent that day reading more journals.
Found entries about things watching from the trees, about finding
his tools, moved his firewood stacked in strange patterns, about
waking up to find hand prints on the outside of
(40:45):
his windows, too high to be human fingers, too long,
but he never left. Forty years of this, and he stayed.
I found an entry that explained why they don't mean harm,
just curious learning. They copy what I do, try to understand.
Found my words written in the dirt by the creek,
(41:06):
my exact words from yesterday spelled out in sticks. They're
studying us like we study everything else. Fair enough. That night,
the voices were clearer, still not quite right, but better.
I heard my own name pronounced slowly, carefully, then my
grandfather's name, then words I'd said that day while talking
(41:28):
to myself. They were repeating me, practicing. I stayed five
days total. Each night the voices got clearer, more human like.
By the last night. If you weren't listening carefully, you
might think it was people talking down by the creek.
But the rhythm was still not quite right, the inflection off,
like an artificial voice trying to sound human but not
(41:51):
quite getting it. The morning I left, I found something
on the porch, a bundle of sticks tied with grass,
arranged in a pattern. It looked deliberate, meaningful, like a
gift or a message. I left it there, felt wrong
to take it. I haven't been back to the cabin,
haven't decided what to do with it. Can't sell it
(42:12):
without disclosure, and who would buy a place with whatever?
Those things are living nearby. Can't live there myself, knowing
they're out there practicing human speech, getting better at it
every year. But sometimes I think about my grandfather choosing
to stay, living alongside something impossible, something that shouldn't exist.
(42:32):
They watched him, copied him, learned from him, and he
let them, maybe even taught them in his way. The
last entry in his journal, written the day before he died,
was just one line. They said goodbye correctly today. I
don't know what that means, don't know if I want
to know, But I kept the journals. Sometimes I read
(42:53):
them looking for patterns, trying to understand what my grandfather understood,
what made him stay, what made him unafraid. The cabin
is still there, empty now, the creek still runs past it,
and at night, if anyone was there to listen, I
bet you could still hear voices in the water, practicing, learning,
(43:14):
getting better at being human, or at least sounding like it.
Maybe someday I'll go back. Maybe I'll sit by the
creek at night and listen to them talk. Maybe I'll
talk back. My grandfather did, near the end, whole conversations
recorded in his journal, his words, and their attempts at responses.
But not yet. I'm not ready for that, Not ready
(43:37):
to find out what they want, what they're trying to say,
Not ready to hear my grandmother's voice coming from the creek,
calling me down to the water in the dark, some
knowledge you can't come back from. My grandfather knew that,
he chose it anyway. I'm not that brave. Not yet.
(43:57):
They said goodbye correctly. Today, that line haunts me more
than any other detail in these stories, the possibility that
these things aren't just observing us, but learning from us,
developing evolving their understanding of what we are and how
we communicate. Each of these encounters share certain elements. The
intelligence displayed, the curious rather than aggressive behavior, the way
(44:22):
evidence disappears as if something understands the importance of remaining hidden, and,
most unnervingly, the suggestion that contact isn't random, that their
selection happening criteria we don't understand. The timber worker with
his bent trees, the trucker on Highway ninety seven, the
forest service employee with his damage station, the fishermen with
(44:45):
his rock spirals, the ski patroller with his vanishing tracks,
the grandson with his inherited voices. And stay tuned for
more sasquatch otta see, We'll be right back after these messages.
Each of them crossed a boundary, witnessed something outside normal experience,
(45:07):
and came back changed. But here's what keeps me up
at night. If these things are real, and if they're
as intelligent as these accounts suggest, then they're choosing to
remain hidden. They have the strength to overturn our equipment,
the speed to outrun our vehicles, the intelligence to learn
our language. Yet they stay in the shadows, revealing themselves
(45:29):
only in glimpses, leaving behind evidence that conveniently disappears. Why.
Maybe they're protecting themselves, maybe they're protecting us. Or maybe,
like the grandfather who spent forty years listening to voices
by the creek, some boundaries are meant to be approached slowly, carefully,
over generations. The Pacific Northwest is vast millions of acres
(45:53):
where something could live undetected if it was smart enough,
careful enough, And according to these stories, whatever's out there
is both. I don't know what to make of these accounts.
I can't verify them, can't fact check them, can't prove
or disprove what these people experienced. All I can do
is present them as they were told to me, straightforward, unembellished,
(46:16):
troubled by their own implications. Whether you believe them or not,
they raise uncomfortable questions about what might be sharing these
forests with us, about what might be watching us from
just beyond the reach of our headlights, our campfires, our understanding.
The next time you're out there hiking a remote trail,
(46:36):
driving a dark highway, skiing an empty run, pay attention
to that feeling of being watched, that sound that doesn't
quite fit those tracks that shouldn't be there. And if
you see something, if you experience something that doesn't make sense,
know that you're not alone. Others have stood where you're standing,
seen what you're seeing, and carried that knowledge back into
(46:58):
their everyday lives. The world is stranger than we admit.
These stories are proof of that, not proof of Bigfoot
or Sasquatch or whatever name we want to give it,
but proof that there are still mysteries out there, still
boundaries we haven't crossed, Still things that watch us from
the darkness and perhaps wonder about us as much as
(47:18):
we wonder about them. Some boundaries are there for a reason.
Some knowledge changes you, and some things, once seen, can
never be unseen. But that's for you to decide until
next time. Keep your eyes open out there, and remember
not all evidence is meant to be found. Not all
(47:39):
encounters are random, and not all voices in the darkness
are human, even when they're trying to be.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Not science steps.
Speaker 4 (48:14):
Step, joy, this child, that chart, everything came in right,
pry back joy for me, need.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Joy staying right, Come it right away? Still listen, sass
(49:06):
ssst SAT, do.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Not, do not talk about messstsssssssssss
Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
on here, something just because my dog. Something killed your dog,
my dog. We're flying through the air 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 he was dead. And once you hit
the ground like, I didn't see any cars. All I
saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat, what
(00:38):
are you putting? We got some wonder or something crawling
around out here? Did you see what it was?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Or was it was?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Standing enough? I'm out here looking through the window now
and I don't see anything. I don't want to go outside,
Jesus Quice, you better Hellohet thebody out here? What quin?
I'm out there? I thought of a bit about tech
forty nine.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Easy ann ount there, Yeah, I'm walking right.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
Hey.
Speaker 5 (01:12):
You ever notice how the really strange stories never start
with you're not going to believe this. The people who've
seen something genuinely inexplicable, they tell it straight, no embellishment,
no dramatic build up. They just lay out what happened
and let you decide what to make of it. That's
what struck me about the accounts you're about to hear.
(01:33):
These aren't campfire tales or internet creepy pastas. They're told
with the kind of matter of fact clarity that comes
from people still trying to make sense of their own experiences.
Construction workers, truck drivers, government employees, regular people who stumbled
into something extraordinary and came out the other side changed.
(01:53):
I've been collecting these stories for years now. Not the
sensational ones that make the rounds on paranormal podcasts, The
quiet ones, the ones people only share after a few
drinks or late at night when they're tired of carrying
it alone. The ones that don't fit the standard Bigfoot
narrative we've all heard a hundred times. No whooping calls
(02:13):
echoing through the forest, No mysterious equipment failures at convenient moments,
no spiritual awakenings or telepathic communications. Just encounters with something
that shouldn't exist, something that moves through our world with
an intelligence we don't quite understand. What interests me most
about these accounts isn't just what people saw, it's how
(02:35):
they process it afterward, how they integrate the impossible into
their ordinary lives. Some quit their jobs, some never go
back to certain places. Some spend years trying to rationalize
what they experienced, but they all carry it with them,
this knowledge that the world is stranger than we pretend
it is. The Pacific Northwest keeps its secrets well. Millions
(02:58):
of acres of forest, most of it never seen by
human eyes, deep canyons, remote ridges, places where you could
disappear and never be found. If something wanted to stay
hidden out there, it could. Maybe it does. So listen
to these stories with an open mind. Consider the details
that don't fit the usual narrative. The bent trees that
(03:21):
straighten themselves, the voices learning human speech, the deliberate intelligence
behind seemingly random acts. These aren't stories about monsters. There's
stories about boundaries, the ones between the known and unknown,
between our world and something else's. Sometimes those boundaries get crossed,
(03:41):
and when they do, the people who witness it are
never quite the same. Let's start in Oregon, in the
timberlands of Coos County, where a harvester operator encountered something
that changed his understanding of what might be sharing the
forest with us. I've been working timber and Oregon for
twenty three years, started when I was nineteen, right out
(04:04):
of high school. The thing that happened in Coos County
back in twenty eighteen still bothers me. Not in the
way you'd think. It's more like when you can't remember
if you locked your front door, that nagging feeling that
something's off. We were cutting a section about forty miles
inland from bandon private land, old growth that had somehow
(04:24):
escaped the saw for one hundred years. The company had
finally gotten permits to take it down. Beautiful trees Douglas
firs that four men couldn't wrap their arms around. Part
of me hated cutting them, but work is work. It
was late September. The mornings were getting cold, that wet
Oregon cold that gets into your bones. I was running
(04:46):
a harvester that day, one of those big tracked machines
with the head that grabs the tree, cuts it and
strips the branches all in one go. Loud as hell.
You wear ear protection, but you still feel the vibration
in your chest. I'd been working the line along a
ridge since dawn. The fog had burned off around ten
and I could finally see more than fifty feet ahead.
(05:09):
The other guys were working different sections. We stayed in
radio contact, but mostly we were alone out there. Around
two in the afternoon, I shut down the harvester to
eat lunch. The sudden quiet always gets to you. Your
ears ring for a minute, then you start hearing the
forest again, birds, wind in the trees, all of it.
(05:30):
I grabbed my sandwich in thermous and climbed down from
the cab. That's when I noticed the trees were wrong.
I don't mean damaged or diseased. They were bent About
thirty feet up. A line of firs were all bent
at the same angle, pointing uphill, not broken, just curved
like they'd grown that way. But trees don't grow sideways
(05:51):
for ten feet then straighten back up. These did. I
walked closer to get a better look. The bend was smooth,
like someone had heated the wood and shaped it. But
these were living trees, thick as telephone poles. At that height.
The force needed to do that would be incredible. I
was standing there neck crane back, trying to make sense
(06:12):
of it when I heard breathing, not mine. This was deeper,
slower like a horse after a long run, but bigger.
The sound came from uphill, maybe sixty feet away in
thick salal and rhododendron. I stood very still. Black bears
were common here, but they don't breathe that loud unless
they're right on top of you. This was different. The
(06:35):
rhythm was wrong, too slow, too deliberate. The breathing stopped.
I waited, hand on the radio clip to my vest.
Then I heard movement, not footsteps exactly, more like something
shifting its weight. The salal rustled, but I couldn't see
through it. I backed toward the harvester, keeping my eyes
(06:56):
on the spot where the sound came from. The Movement
stopped when I moved, moved started again when I stopped,
like it was matching me. I made it to the
harvester and climbed up into the cab. From that height,
I could see over most of the brush. There was
a gap in the salaw where something had pushed through.
Not a trail, just a space where the bushes were
(07:17):
mashed down. I started the machine back up. The engine
roared to life, and I went back to work, but
I kept glancing at that spot. About an hour later,
I saw motion, just a glimpse of something dark, moving
parallel to me along the ridge. It stayed in the
thick stuff never coming into the open. I radioed Jake,
(07:38):
who was working the next section over, told him I
might have a bear hanging around to keep an eye out.
He said he'd had a weird feeling all day too,
like something was watching him. But that's not unusual in
the woods. You get that feeling sometimes. The thing is,
I went back the next day to look at those
bent trees and better light. They were straight, every single
(08:01):
no bend, no curve, nothing, same trees, same location. I
knew exactly where they were because I'd marked the spot
with flagging tape. I asked the other guys if they'd
noticed any bent trees. They looked at me like I
was losing it. I didn't push it. But here's what
really gets me. About a week later, I was servicing
(08:22):
the harvester's head, cleaning out the feed rollers. Wrapped around
one of them was hair long, dark brown hair, almost black,
too coarse to be human, too long to be bare.
It was wrap tight, like it had been pulled through
during operation. I never ran anything through the head that
day except trees. I'm sure of that. The hair was
(08:43):
wound in their good like it had been caught while
the rollers were spinning, but caught from what the head
was twenty feet in the air when it was operating.
I kept that hair for a while, had it in
a zip lock bag in my truck. Then one day
it was gone, lost, not misplaced. The bag was there,
(09:03):
sealed but empty, like the hare had just disappeared. I
still worked timber, but not in Coos County anymore. The
company moved me to a different sector at my request.
Told them I wanted to be closer to home, and
that was partly true, but mostly I just didn't want
to go back to that ridge. Sometimes I dream about
(09:24):
those bent trees. In the dreams, they're not trees at all.
They're markers, warnings, maybe boundaries that aren't meant to be crossed.
And in the dreams I can still hear that breathing,
patient and steady, waiting for something I don't understand. Bent
trees that straighten themselves, hair that disappears from sealed bags,
(09:45):
physical evidence that exists one day and vanishes the next.
It's a pattern you'll hear again and again in these accounts,
the frustrating inability to prove what you know you saw.
Our next story comes from a truck driver who had
his own encounter with something that shouldn't exist. Unlike our
timber worker, who could at least return to the site later.
(10:06):
This trucker's experience happened in the fleeting space of a
highway at night, where evidence is left behind in the
rear view mirror at sixty miles per hour. But some
images burn themselves into your memory regardless of proof, and
some things follow you longer than they should be able to.
I drove truck for fifteen years before I retired, mostly
(10:27):
Pacific Northwest routes Seattle down to Sacramento, over to Boise,
back up through Portland. You see a lot of empty
highway at three in the morning. You learn which rest
stops have good coffee, which stretches of road the deer
like to cross. You get to know the roads like
the lines on your own hands. Highway ninety seven through
(10:47):
central Oregon is one of those roads that feels longer
than it is, miles of nothing but pine forest and
lava rock. Cell service comes and goes, Radio stations fade
in and out, just you and the yellow lines for hours.
This was November twenty sixteen. I was hauling a load
of lumber from Bend down to Redding. Nothing special, just
(11:09):
another run. I'd left Bend around midnight to beat the
morning traffic in California. The weather was clear, cold, no
snow yet, but you could smell it. Coming south of Shemalt,
there's a stretch where the forest presses right up against
the highway. No shoulder to speak of, just asphalt and
then trees. I was making good time, had the cruise
(11:31):
control set at sixty. The truck was running smooth. I
came around to curve and had to break hard. There
was something in the road. My head lights lit it up,
but I couldn't process what I was seeing. At first,
it was hair, a massive pile of brown hair in
the middle of my lane, like someone had emptied a
barber shop in the road. But as I got closer,
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slowing to a crawl, I realized it wasn't just hair.
It was attached to something. The pile was moving, rippling
like water. Then it stood up. I'm six foot three.
I've been in plenty of fights in my younger days.
I've seen bears, elk, all kinds of wildlife. This was different.
It stood maybe eight feet tall, covered in that brown
(12:16):
hair that had looked like a pile in the road.
But it didn't stand like a bear. It stood like
a man, but wrong somehow. The proportions were off arms,
too long, torso too thick. It turned to look at
my truck. The headlights caught its eyes, and they reflected
green like a deer's. But the face around those eyes
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wasn't quite animal, wasn't quite human either. It was something
in between that made my hands go cold on the
steering wheel. The thing didn't run. It walked to the
side of the road, casual as could be, like it
was stepping aside to let me pass, But it watched
me the whole time. I could see its head turned
to track the truck as I rolled by, a floored
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It should have put miles between me and whatever that was,
but I did something stupid instead. I stopped about fifty
yards past it and looked in my mirrors. It was
following the truck, not running, just walking, with these long,
measured strides, eating up ground without seeming to hurry. I
put the truck in gear and started rolling again, watching
(13:22):
my mirrors, it kept following. I picked up speed ten
miles an hour twenty thirty. It kept pace for longer
than should have been possible, then finally fell back and
disappeared into the dark. I didn't stop again until I
hit a truck stop in Klamath Falls. I sat in
that well lit parking lot for an hour, drinking coffee
(13:43):
with hands that wouldn't quite stay steady. I thought about
calling someone, but who the cops and tell them what
The drive back three days later was worse. Coming through
that same stretch, I was tense as a wire. Nothing
happened to empty road and dark trees. But about a
mile from where I'd seen it, there was a dead
(14:05):
elk on the shoulder. Big bull must have weighed eight
hundred pounds. It was torn in half, not hit by
a car, not taken down by wolves, torn like something
had grabbed the front legs and back legs and pulled
until the animal came apart. The strength required to do
that is insane, and the weird part. No scavengers, no birds,
(14:27):
no coyotes, nothing would touch it. I reported the elk
to O DOT said it was a road hazard. They
said they'd send someone to clean it up. I drove
that route six more times over the next two months.
The elk was never moved. It just slowly disappeared piece
by piece, but I never saw what was taking it.
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I started timing my runs different after that, made sure
I hit that stretch during daylight. Told myself it was
because of ice conditions, but that was a lie. I
was scared. Still am. If I'm on honest and stay
tuned for more sasquatch ot to see, we'll be right back.
After these messages, I retired early just last year. My
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wife thinks it's because of my back, and I let
her believe that, but really I just couldn't do those
night drives anymore. Couldn't shake the feeling that something was
out there walking along the highway in the dark, waiting
for trucks to slow down. The thing that really bothers
me is how it acted. It wasn't aggressive, it wasn't afraid.
It just moved aside, like it understood what a truck was,
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what a road was for, like it was choosing to
let me pass. That kind of intelligence and something that
shouldn't exist, makes you question a lot of things. I
still have dreams about it. Sometimes. In the dreams, I
stopped the truck and get out. I walk back to
where it's standing by the side of the road. It
says something to me, but I can never remember what.
(15:57):
I wake up feeling like I've forgotten something important, something
I was supposed to do. I don't drive at night anymore,
not Ever. The intelligence behind these encounters is what unsettles
people most. Not the size or strength, but the awareness.
The way something watched that truck and chose to follow it,
the way it understood what a road was for. This
(16:20):
next account comes from someone whose job was to monitor
the forest itself, to collect data, watch for patterns, predict dangers.
But what do you do when the forest starts examining
your equipment with the same curiosity you use to study it?
And what do you do when the evidence of that
curiosity is so impossible that even documenting it feels like fiction.
(16:41):
I worked for the Forest Service for six years, mostly
fire prevention stuff, manning lookout towers during the dry season,
checking monitoring equipment. It was good work if you didn't
mind being alone. I never minded, actually preferred it. In
twenty nineteen, they had me stationed at a monitoring site
in the cast Sca Range, about sixty miles east of Eugene.
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It wasn't a regular lookout tower, just a small equipment
station that tracked weather patterns, air quality, seismic activity, boring
data collection that helped predict fire conditions. The station was
a metal shed about the size of a shipping container,
solar panels on top, bunch of antennas and sensors. It
sat on a cleared patch at the end of a
(17:25):
forest service road. I'd drive up every two weeks to
download data, check the equipment, swap out batteries if needed.
It was July when things got strange. I'd driven up
on a Tuesday morning early to beat the heat. The
road was rough, barely more than a dirt track. The
last five miles my truck could handle it, but you
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had to go slow. I noticed the smell first, not
a dead animal smell, but something organic and wrong, like
wet dog, mixed with crushed pine needles and something else
I couldn't place. It got stronger as I got closer
to this. When I came around the last bend, I
saw the station had been moved, not damaged, not knocked over, moved.
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The whole thing had been dragged about thirty feet from
its concrete pad. The cables connecting it to the solar
panels were stretched tight. Some of them snapped. I got
out of the truck and walked around it. The metal
skids on the bottom had gouged deep tracks in the dirt.
Whatever moved it had dragged it in one straight pull.
But here's the thing. That station weighed about three thousand pounds.
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The amount of force needed to drag it that far
would be enormous. There were marks on the metal sides,
not claw marks, not exactly, more like something had gripped it.
The metal was actually dimpled inward in spots, like giant
fingers had pressed into it. But to dent quarter inch
steel like that, you'd need hydraulic pressure. Nothing does that
(18:52):
with just muscle. I called it in on the satellite phone,
told my supervisor someone had vandalized the station. He asked
if I could see tire tracks from a vehicle. I couldn't.
No tire tracks, no cable marks, nothing to indicate machinery
had been used. He told me to document everything and
get the station operational if possible. So I did. Took photos,
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measurements the whole deal. Then I tried to get inside
to check the equipment. The door was bent, not kicked in,
but bent outward, like something inside had pushed against it.
The lock was still engaged, but the frame around it
had buckled. I had to use a prie bar to
get it open enough to squeeze through. Inside was chaos.
(19:36):
The monitoring equipment was mostly intact, but everything else was destroyed.
The emergency cot was shredded. The supply cabinet had been
pulled off the wall. Boxes of MRIs were torn open
and scattered, but nothing was eaten. It was like something
had been searching for something specific. The computer was still
running on battery backup. I downloaded the data onto a
(19:59):
thumb drive. Routine stuff mostly, but when I checked the
motion sensor logs, there were dozens of triggers over the
past three nights, all between midnight and four am. The
sensors only saved still images, not video, and most of
them just showed darkness or blurry shadows. But one image
made me stop breathing for a second. It was from
(20:20):
two nights before two forty seven am. According to the timestamp,
the infrared camera had caught something standing right outside the window.
The image was grainy, but you could make out a shape, tall, bipedal,
one hand pressed against the glass. The hand was huge,
fingers spread wide, human like, but too long, too thick.
(20:45):
I copied everything and got out of there. Didn't even
try to fix the station, just drove back down the
mountain and told my supervisor the damage was too extensive
for field repairs. They sent a crew up the next
week to retrieve the station, brought it back on a
flat bed. I heard later that they couldn't explain the damage.
The official report blamed it on vandals, maybe eco terrorists
(21:07):
or something, but they never explained how vandals moved three
thousand pounds of steel without machinery. I went back once
more about a month later, had to retrieve some sensors
they'd left behind. The concrete pad was still there, and
so were the drag marks, but there were new marks too, footprints,
kind of depressions in the hard packed dirt. They led
(21:29):
from the forest to where the station had been, then
back into the trees. The prints were maybe eighteen inches long,
humanoid in shape, but wider with what looked like tow impressions.
The stride length was about six feet. I'm tall, and
my stride is maybe three feet at a normal walk.
Whatever made those prints was moving in huge, easy steps.
(21:52):
I took photos of those two, but when I got
home and checked my phone, those specific photos were corrupted.
Every other picture was fine, just not those footprints. Technical
glitch probably, but it felt deliberate somehow.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
I quit the.
Speaker 5 (22:08):
Forest Service a year later, told people I wanted to
try something new, and that was partly true, but mostly
I couldn't stop thinking about that hand pressed against the window,
The deliberate way the station had been moved, the way
the damage inside seemed almost curious rather than destructive. Whatever
was out there, it was studying us as much as
(22:28):
we were studying the forest, and it was strong enough
to toss around our equipment like toys. That knowledge changes
how you see the woods, makes you realize how small
and fragile our little monitoring stations really are. I work
in an office now, climate controlled, well lit, lots of
people around. It's boring, but I sleep better. No more
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dreams about things standing outside windows in the dark, trying
to understand what we are. Three thousand pounds of steel
dragged thirty feet without out machinery, a hand pressed against glass,
studying our technology. These encounters suggest something that goes beyond
animal behavior into genuine curiosity about human artifacts. But not
(23:12):
all encounters involve our structures and machines. Sometimes they involve
communication attempts that are harder to dismiss. Patterns left behind,
like messages, deliberate arrangements that suggest meaning. This next story
takes us to the Klamath River, where a fisherman found
himself at the center of something that seemed less like
an encounter and more like a test. I was twenty
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six when it happened. This was back in twenty fourteen.
I'd just gotten divorced. Needed to clear my head, so
I decided to go steelhead fishing on the Klamath River.
There's a spot about thirty miles up river from Happy
Camp that not many people know about. You have to
hike in about three miles from the road, perfect place
to be alone. I went in October, right when the
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steelhead start running. Packed light, just a small tent, sleeping bag,
and enough food for four days. The hike in was beautiful,
old growth, cedar and pine, the sound of the river
getting louder as you descend into the canyon. I set
up camp on a gravel bar about fifty feet from
the water. Good spot, flat, protected from wind by a
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stand of alders. I spent the first day fishing, caught
two nice steelhead released them both. That night, I cooked freeze,
dried pasta, watched the stars come out peaceful. The second
night was different. I woke up around two in the morning.
Wasn't sure what woke me at first. Then I heard
rocks moving outside. Not little rocks, big ones. The gravel
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bar was mostly river rocks the size of basketballs. Something
was moving them around. I lay there listening. The sound
would stop for a minute, then start again, scraping, grinding,
like something was rearranging the rocks. I thought maybe a
bear was looking for fishcrkses, but bears don't usually mess
with rocks that size. I unzipped the tent window and
(25:05):
looked out. Moon was almost full, so I could see
pretty well. The rocks near my tent had been stacked,
not randomly, but deliberately, balanced on top of each other,
little towers, three or four rocks high. There were maybe
a dozen of them in a rough circle around my camp.
While I was looking, a rock flew past my tent,
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didn't roll, didn't bounce, flew, It landed in the river
with a huge splash. Then another one from the opposite direction.
Something was throwing rocks from both sides of the river,
big rocks that must have weighed forty fifty pounds. I
zipped the window shut and grabbed my knife, not that
it would help much, but holding it made me feel better.
(25:50):
The rock throwing continued for maybe twenty minutes. Some landed
in the water, some on the gravel bar. One hit
a tree with a crack that echoed off the canyon walls.
Then it stopped. Everything went quiet except for the river.
I didn't sleep the rest of the night, just lay
there listening, waiting. At first light, I packed up my
(26:10):
gear in record time, but before I left, I looked
at those rock stacks. They were arranged in a pattern,
not random at all. They formed a spiral, starting small
near my tent and getting bigger as they curved outward.
The biggest stack was seven rocks high. Perfectly balanced. Engineering
students would have trouble making something that stable. I started
(26:32):
hiking out, moving fast. About a mile from camp, I
found something that stopped me cold. A tree across the trail,
not fallen placed. It was a pine maybe sixty feet long,
and it had been laid perfectly perpendicular across the path.
The root ball was on one side the top. On
(26:52):
the other, that tree hadn't been there when I hiked in.
To move it into that position, something would have had
to carry it from wherever it fell and set it
down just so. The trunk was probably two feet thick,
the weight would be enormous. I climbed over it and
kept going. Found two more trees like that before I
reached the road, each one placed across the trail deliberate
(27:15):
as could be, like something was trying to slow me
down or mark the path, or maybe both. When I
got to my car, I sat there for a long
time before driving away. I kept thinking about those rock stacks,
the perfect spiral they made, the thrown rocks that came
from both sides of the river at once. Either there
(27:35):
were two of whatever it was, or one that could
move incredibly fast. I went back to that spot once
five years later, brought a friend. That time, the rock
stacks were gone, scattered by spring floods, probably, but the
trees were still there, right where they'd been placed, across
the trail, gray and weathered now but unmoved. My friend
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asked how they got there. I told him deadfall from
a storm. He accepted that, but I could see him
trying to figure out how three trees fell in exactly
the same direction, exactly across the trail, exactly the same
distance apart. We fished for a day and left. Nothing
happened that time, but I kept feeling like we were
being watched, that prickly sensation on the back of your neck.
(28:21):
My friend felt it too. We didn't talk about it,
but we both kept looking over our shoulders, scanning the
tree line. I don't fish the Klamath anymore, plenty of
other rivers in northern California, But sometimes I think about
those rock stacks, the time and effort it would take
to build them in the dark, the intelligence required to
create that spiral pattern. Whatever made them was trying to
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communicate something. I just don't know what. The rocks getting
thrown from both sides still bothers me. The physics of it.
To throw a fifty pound rock across a river that's
sixty feet wide, you'd need incredible strength, and to do
it accurately in the dark from different positions. That suggests
planning coordination. I've never told anyone the whole story until now.
(29:08):
People already think I'm a little off since the divorce.
This wouldn't help, but it happened. Those rocks didn't stack themselves,
those trees didn't walk across the trail on their own.
Something out there is a lot smarter and stronger than
we want to believe. Rock sculptures arranged in perfect spirals,
trees placed as barriers or markers. The Klamath River encounter
(29:32):
suggests something capable of abstract thinking, of creating patterns meant
to convey meaning. These stories challenge our assumptions about what
we're dealing with. If these things exist, they're not just
large primates hiding in the woods. There's something more complex,
something that observes us. As much as we search for
them and stay tuned for more Sasquatch ot to see,
(29:54):
we'll be right back after these messages. Our next account
comes from someone who worked ski patrol, someone whose job
was knowing every inch of their mountain. But mountains change
at night, and sometimes tracks appear in places nothing should
be able to reach. I worked ski patrol at a
(30:16):
small resort in the Northern Cascades for three seasons. This
was twenty seventeen through twenty nineteen. Won't say which resort,
but it's one of those places that locals love, and
tourists haven't discovered yet. We'd get maybe two hundred people
on a busy Saturday. The resort closes at four in winter.
By five the mountain is empty except for patrol doing
(30:37):
final sweep and the grooming crew preparing the runs for
the next day. It's peaceful then, just the sound of
wind and the distant rumble of the snow cats. This
happened in February twenty eighteen. We'd gotten two feet of
fresh snow the night before, perfect conditions. I was doing
sweep on the backside of the mountain, checking the tree
(30:58):
runs to make sure no one was stuck or injured.
It's easy to get turned around in the trees when
everything's covered in fresh powder. I was working my way
down through a section we called the glades, tight trees,
steep pitch, definitely expert terrain. The sun was already behind
the ridge, so it was getting dark under the canopy.
(31:18):
I had my headlamp on scanning for tracks. That's when
I found them. Tracks that didn't make sense. They were bipedal,
like a person walking, but no ski tracks, no snow
shoe prints, just deep depressions in the snow. Maybe two
feet deep. The stride was huge, probably seven feet between steps.
(31:39):
And here's the weird part. They went straight up a
slope that I could barely climb with my skins on.
I followed them for a bit. They led to a
cluster of trees where the snow was all disturbed. Branches
were broken off ten twelve feet up, fresh breaks, SAPs
still running. Something had pulled them down, twisted them off.
(32:00):
The ground around the trees was packed down, like something
heavy had been walking in circles. I radioed Base, told
them I might have found evidence of a lost skier.
They asked if I needed back up. I said no,
I check it out and report back. Stupid decision. The
tracks led deeper into the trees, away from any runs.
(32:20):
I followed them for maybe ten minutes. The forest got thicker, darker.
My headlamp beam only went so far. Every shadow looked
like something crouching. Then I smelled it. Not the rotten
smell people always talk about. This was musky, animal like,
but with something else like wet cement or minerals cave smell,
(32:42):
if that makes sense. It was strong enough to cut
through the cold air. I stopped and listened. Could hear
my own, breathing, my heart beating. Then from somewhere ahead,
I heard snow falling off branches, a lot of it,
like something big had brushed against a tree from a
different direction. Whatever it was, it was circling me. I
(33:05):
turned around and started back toward the run, not panicking
but moving with purpose. The sound followed me, snow falling branches, creaking,
always staying just outside the range of my headlamp. I
made it back to the groomed run and radio that
I was heading down. Told them the tracks were just
postholing from some idiot hiking without snow shoes. Nobody questioned it,
(33:28):
but here's what happened next. I had to go back
up there the next morning to retrieve a boundary sign
that had blown down. Daylight this time, plenty of people around.
When I got to the glades, I looked for those tracks.
They were gone, not covered by new snow. We hadn't
gotten it, just gone. The snow was smooth, undisturbed, except
(33:50):
I found one thing, a tuft of dark hair caught
on a tree branch about eight feet up. Long, coarse hair,
almost black. I pulled it free, looked at it in
the sunlight. It wasn't from any animal I knew. Too
long for elk, wrong color for bear. I pocketed it,
planned to research it later, but when I got home
(34:12):
and checked my pocket, it was gone, just a few
strands left, like it had dissolved or something. The next week,
one of the groomers quit said he'd seen something running
alongside his cat one night keeping pace with the machine,
which goes about twenty miles an hour. Said it ran
on two legs, stayed just at the edge of his lights.
(34:32):
Management told him he was seeing things, maybe needed to
lay off the beer, but he was stone sober. I
knew the guy. After that, I started paying attention. Found
more tracks, sometimes, always in the back country, always gone
by the next day. Other patrol members mentioned seeing them too,
but nobody wanted to be the one to make it official.
(34:53):
We all just pretended not to notice. The last season
I worked there, twenty nineteen, we had an enc sident.
A snowboarder went missing for six hours. When we found him,
he was sitting in the middle of a run board,
nowhere to be seen, just staring at the trees. Hypothermic. Confused,
he kept saying something had carried him, picked him up
(35:15):
and carried him through the forest. We rode it off
as delirium from the cold, but his board turned up
three days later at the top of a cliff, band
placed carefully against a tree, no tracks leading to it,
No way he could have climbed up there. Someone would
have had to carry it. I don't work ski patrol anymore.
Got a job as an electrician. Steady work, good pay.
(35:38):
But sometimes I missed the mountain. Then I remember that smell,
that circle of disturbed snow, those tracks that disappeared, and
I'm glad to be working somewhere with walls and locks
and lights that stay on all night. The mountains are beautiful,
but there's something up there that doesn't want us around
after dark. Something that can move through deep snow like
(35:59):
it's nothing, climb vertical slopes and carry a grown man
through the forest. Something that's smart enough to hide its
tracks and strong enough to place a snowboard on top
of a cliff as some kind of message. I still
ski sometimes, but only on busy weekends, only on the
main runs, and I'm always in the parking lot before
the lifts close. Some boundaries you don't cross twice the
(36:23):
mountains at night. Empty ski runs, tracks that appear and disappear,
evidence that vanishes as if it was never there. Each
of these stories shares that frustrating element, the inability to
prove what you experienced. But what if proof isn't the point?
What if these things reveal themselves only to certain people
(36:44):
at certain times, for reasons we don't understand. This final
story is different. It's about a long term relationship between
a man and whatever was living near his cabin. Forty
years of coexistence, forty years of gradual communication, and a
suggestion that maybe, just maybe we're not the only ones
trying to make contact. My grandfather left me his cabin
(37:10):
when he died in twenty twenty. It sits on Devil's
Creek up in the Siskiou Mountains, about forty miles from
the nearest town. He built it himself in the sixties,
lived there alone for the last thirty years of his life,
off grid, no neighbors for miles, just how he liked it.
I went up there in August to clean it out,
figure out what to do with the place. The road
(37:31):
end was overgrown, barely passable. Took me three hours to
drive the last ten miles. When I finally got there.
The cabin looked exactly like I remembered from childhood visits, small, sturdy,
surrounded by Douglas firs so thick you could barely see
the sky. Inside was like stepping back in time. Wood stove,
(37:52):
oil lamps, shelves of canned goods, everything covered in dust,
but otherwise intact. I spent the first day just cleaning,
opening windows, airing the place out. That night, I found
his journals, forty years worth, stacked in a closet. I
started reading them, expecting fishing stories and weather reports. That's
(38:13):
mostly what they were. But starting about ten years ago,
the entries changed. He wrote about voices in the creek
at night. Not human voices, but something trying to sound human,
like something was practicing words, getting them wrong. He'd written
phrases he'd heard, hello, there, morning, good night, walking, thank you,
(38:34):
very coming, always just a little off. I thought maybe
he'd been getting dementia, but the rest of his writing
was clear, sharp. He still balanced his check book in
the margins, kept detailed notes about repairs and supplies. Only
these voice entries seemed crazy. The second night I was there,
I heard them too. I was lying in bed, windows
(38:56):
opened to cool the place down The creek was loud,
running high for August, but underneath the water sound I
heard talking, low, mumbling, like someone having a conversation, just
out of earshot. I grabbed a flashlight and went to
the window. The creek was only thirty feet from the cabin.
I could see it reflecting moonlight through the trees. The
(39:18):
voices were coming from upstream, maybe fifty yards away, two
distinct tones, one higher, one lower. They seemed to be alternating,
like question and answer. I couldn't make out words at first,
Then clear as day, I heard window light there looking
my flashlight. They were talking about my flashlight. I turned
(39:40):
it off and stood in the dark listening. The voices continued,
but quieter, now harder to understand. I wanted to go
outside see what was making those sounds, but something in
my grandfather's journal stopped me. An entry from just a
month before he died, don't go to the creek at night.
They're learning getting better at sounding like us. Sarah's voice
(40:03):
last night, but Sarah's been dead three years. Almost went
to her almost Sarah was my grandmother. I went back
to bed, but didn't sleep. The voices continued until dawn,
sometimes closer, sometimes farther away. When the sun came up,
I walked down to the creek. Found prints in the mud,
(40:23):
like human footprints, but they were too wide, toes, too long,
and they went into the water but didn't come out
the other side. I spent that day reading more journals.
Found entries about things watching from the trees, about finding
his tools, moved his firewood stacked in strange patterns, about
waking up to find hand prints on the outside of
(40:45):
his windows, too high to be human fingers, too long,
but he never left. Forty years of this, and he stayed.
I found an entry that explained why they don't mean harm,
just curious learning. They copy what I do, try to understand.
Found my words written in the dirt by the creek,
(41:06):
my exact words from yesterday spelled out in sticks. They're
studying us like we study everything else. Fair enough. That night,
the voices were clearer, still not quite right, but better.
I heard my own name pronounced slowly, carefully, then my
grandfather's name, then words I'd said that day while talking
(41:28):
to myself. They were repeating me, practicing. I stayed five
days total. Each night the voices got clearer, more human like.
By the last night. If you weren't listening carefully, you
might think it was people talking down by the creek.
But the rhythm was still not quite right, the inflection off,
like an artificial voice trying to sound human but not
(41:51):
quite getting it. The morning I left, I found something
on the porch, a bundle of sticks tied with grass,
arranged in a pattern. It looked deliberate, meaningful, like a
gift or a message. I left it there, felt wrong
to take it. I haven't been back to the cabin,
haven't decided what to do with it. Can't sell it
(42:12):
without disclosure, and who would buy a place with whatever?
Those things are living nearby. Can't live there myself, knowing
they're out there practicing human speech, getting better at it
every year. But sometimes I think about my grandfather choosing
to stay, living alongside something impossible, something that shouldn't exist.
(42:32):
They watched him, copied him, learned from him, and he
let them, maybe even taught them in his way. The
last entry in his journal, written the day before he died,
was just one line. They said goodbye correctly today. I
don't know what that means, don't know if I want
to know, But I kept the journals. Sometimes I read
(42:53):
them looking for patterns, trying to understand what my grandfather understood,
what made him stay, what made him unafraid. The cabin
is still there, empty now, the creek still runs past it,
and at night, if anyone was there to listen, I
bet you could still hear voices in the water, practicing, learning,
(43:14):
getting better at being human, or at least sounding like it.
Maybe someday I'll go back. Maybe I'll sit by the
creek at night and listen to them talk. Maybe I'll
talk back. My grandfather did, near the end, whole conversations
recorded in his journal, his words, and their attempts at responses.
But not yet. I'm not ready for that, Not ready
(43:37):
to find out what they want, what they're trying to say,
Not ready to hear my grandmother's voice coming from the creek,
calling me down to the water in the dark, some
knowledge you can't come back from. My grandfather knew that,
he chose it anyway. I'm not that brave. Not yet.
(43:57):
They said goodbye correctly. Today, that line haunts me more
than any other detail in these stories, the possibility that
these things aren't just observing us, but learning from us,
developing evolving their understanding of what we are and how
we communicate. Each of these encounters share certain elements. The
intelligence displayed, the curious rather than aggressive behavior, the way
(44:22):
evidence disappears as if something understands the importance of remaining hidden, and,
most unnervingly, the suggestion that contact isn't random, that their
selection happening criteria we don't understand. The timber worker with
his bent trees, the trucker on Highway ninety seven, the
forest service employee with his damage station, the fishermen with
(44:45):
his rock spirals, the ski patroller with his vanishing tracks,
the grandson with his inherited voices. And stay tuned for
more sasquatch otta see, We'll be right back after these messages.
Each of them crossed a boundary, witnessed something outside normal experience,
(45:07):
and came back changed. But here's what keeps me up
at night. If these things are real, and if they're
as intelligent as these accounts suggest, then they're choosing to
remain hidden. They have the strength to overturn our equipment,
the speed to outrun our vehicles, the intelligence to learn
our language. Yet they stay in the shadows, revealing themselves
(45:29):
only in glimpses, leaving behind evidence that conveniently disappears. Why.
Maybe they're protecting themselves, maybe they're protecting us. Or maybe,
like the grandfather who spent forty years listening to voices
by the creek, some boundaries are meant to be approached slowly, carefully,
over generations. The Pacific Northwest is vast millions of acres
(45:53):
where something could live undetected if it was smart enough,
careful enough, And according to these stories, whatever's out there
is both. I don't know what to make of these accounts.
I can't verify them, can't fact check them, can't prove
or disprove what these people experienced. All I can do
is present them as they were told to me, straightforward, unembellished,
(46:16):
troubled by their own implications. Whether you believe them or not,
they raise uncomfortable questions about what might be sharing these
forests with us, about what might be watching us from
just beyond the reach of our headlights, our campfires, our understanding.
The next time you're out there hiking a remote trail,
(46:36):
driving a dark highway, skiing an empty run, pay attention
to that feeling of being watched, that sound that doesn't
quite fit those tracks that shouldn't be there. And if
you see something, if you experience something that doesn't make sense,
know that you're not alone. Others have stood where you're standing,
seen what you're seeing, and carried that knowledge back into
(46:58):
their everyday lives. The world is stranger than we admit.
These stories are proof of that, not proof of Bigfoot
or Sasquatch or whatever name we want to give it,
but proof that there are still mysteries out there, still
boundaries we haven't crossed, Still things that watch us from
the darkness and perhaps wonder about us as much as
(47:18):
we wonder about them. Some boundaries are there for a reason.
Some knowledge changes you, and some things, once seen, can
never be unseen. But that's for you to decide until
next time. Keep your eyes open out there, and remember
not all evidence is meant to be found. Not all
(47:39):
encounters are random, and not all voices in the darkness
are human, even when they're trying to be.
Speaker 4 (47:46):
They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
Not science steps.
Speaker 4 (48:14):
Step, joy, this child, that chart, everything came in right,
pry back joy for me, need.
Speaker 3 (48:31):
Joy staying right, Come it right away? Still listen, sass
(49:06):
ssst SAT, do.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
Not, do not talk about messstsssssssssss
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