August 27, 2025 • 52 mins
Six veteran law enforcement officers break their silence about encounters that challenged everything they thought they knew about the wilderness they patrol. From a deputy sheriff responding to escalating wildlife complaints at a remote Washington property, to a state trooper whose routine traffic stop on a foggy Kentucky highway became anything but ordinary, these firsthand accounts reveal what happens when those sworn to serve and protect come face to face with something that shouldn't exist.
Travel across America through the eyes of the officers who documented the evidence that was later buried in bureaucracy. A park ranger's search and rescue operation in Northern California that uncovered more than missing hikers. A Michigan deputy's investigation into vandalism at abandoned copper mines that led deep underground. An Alaska state trooper's encounter on the desolate Dalton Highway where something survived impossible Arctic conditions. A Texas deputy's missing person case in the Big Thicket that ended with an inexplicable recovery.These aren't campfire tales or local legends.
These are detailed accounts from trained observers who filed reports, collected evidence, and photographed proof of something living in the forgotten corners of America. Something that walks upright, demonstrates intelligence, and has learned to avoid human contact while dwelling in the spaces between our world and one far older.Their badges couldn't protect them from the truth. Now they share what really lurks in the backwoods of America.
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Travel across America through the eyes of the officers who documented the evidence that was later buried in bureaucracy. A park ranger's search and rescue operation in Northern California that uncovered more than missing hikers. A Michigan deputy's investigation into vandalism at abandoned copper mines that led deep underground. An Alaska state trooper's encounter on the desolate Dalton Highway where something survived impossible Arctic conditions. A Texas deputy's missing person case in the Big Thicket that ended with an inexplicable recovery.These aren't campfire tales or local legends.
These are detailed accounts from trained observers who filed reports, collected evidence, and photographed proof of something living in the forgotten corners of America. Something that walks upright, demonstrates intelligence, and has learned to avoid human contact while dwelling in the spaces between our world and one far older.Their badges couldn't protect them from the truth. Now they share what really lurks in the backwoods of America.
Get Our FREE Newsletter
Get Brian's Books
Leave Us A Voicemail
Visit Our Website
Support Our Sponsors
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.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
How it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm really confused.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
All I saw was my dog coming over the fence
and he was dead.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And once you hit the ground like, I didn't see
any cars.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
All I saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat,
what are you putting? We got some wonder or something
(00:42):
crawling around out here? Did you see what it was?
Or was it was? Standing enough?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'm out here looking through the window now and I
don't see anything. I don't want to go outside, Jesus quice.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
You bick Hello, get the Boddy out here?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
What quent on out there? I thought of a bench
about tech forty nine?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I don't know. Easy ann out there? Yeah, I'm walking
right head.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You're about to hear something different. These aren't your typical
campfire tales. These are first hand accounts from law enforcement
officers across America, men and women who took an oath
to serve and protect. Officers trained to observe, document, and
report facts. What you'll hear in these accounts challenges everything
these officers thought they knew about the world. Each story
(01:35):
comes from a different corner of our country, from the
rain soaked forests of the Pacific Northwest to the frozen
tundra of Alaska, from the ancient mountains of Appalachia to
the deep swamps of Texas. These officers didn't seek out
these encounters. They were just doing their jobs, responding to calls,
investigating complaints, searching for missing persons. But what they found
(02:00):
in the darkness beyond their headlights and flashlight beams changed
them forever. They filed their reports, they documented the evidence,
but the official records tell a different story. Bear sightings,
equipment malfunctions, wandering hikers suffering from exposure. The truth got
buried in bureaucracy and disbelief. Tonight they're breaking their silence.
(02:22):
No last names, no badge numbers, just the truth about
what lurks in the forgotten corners of America, About what
watches from the tree line, About why some officers refuse
to patrol certain areas after dark. Our first account takes
us to the Pacific Northwest October twenty nineteen. Deputy Sheriff
(02:43):
Marcus tells his story from Clallam County, Washington. I'd been
with the Clallam County Sheriff's Department for twelve years when
the call came in about the property on the logging
road October twenty nineteen. The dispatcher said it was another
wildlife complaint, third one in that week from the same family.
Tom and Beth lived forty minutes outside Port Angelus, down
(03:05):
a logging road that hadn't seen commercial traffic in two decades.
Their nearest neighbor was eight miles away. The previous complaints
had been vague, something large moving through their property at night,
dogs going crazy, their chicken coop destroyed, not just damaged,
but torn apart. The two by fours snapped like matchsticks.
(03:26):
I'd written it up as a bear, told them to
secure their garbage, and figured that would be the end
of it. This time was different. Tom met me at
the end of their driveway, and I'd never seen him
like that. The man was a logger for thirty years,
built like a refrigerator, and his hands were shaking, not trembling,
actually shaking. He walked me around to the back of
(03:48):
their property without saying much, just pointing at things. The
smell hit me first, like a wet dog rolled in
something dead but stronger. Made my eyes water. Their shed
door was ripped off, not pride open or broken, ripped
clean off and thrown twenty feet into the woods. The
metal hinges were twisted like someone had used pliers on them,
(04:10):
except the force required would have been enormous. Inside the shed,
Tom's ATV was flipped upside down. That's a seven hundred
pound machine. I started taking photos measurements, standard procedure, even
though I had no idea what I was documenting. That's
when Beth came out of the house and asked if
I wanted to see the handprints. I thought she meant
(04:31):
fingerprints evidence of human vandalism. She led me to their
back porch, where they had a chest freezer. On the
white metal lid were two handprints and what looked like
mud and grease. The span from thumb to pinky was
sixteen inches, the palm was twice the width of mine.
But what shocked me were the dermal ridges, clear as day,
(04:51):
like any print I'd ever lifted, but the proportions were
all off. I called it in, requested someone from Fishing Wildlife.
All waiting, Tom finally started talking two weeks ago, their daughter, Sarah,
home from college, had been sitting on the back deck
around sunset.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
She saw what she thought.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Was a person at the tree line, about one hundred
yards out, tall, covered in dark hair, just standing there
watching the house. When she called out, it turned and
walked into the forest, walked, not ran upright on two
legs with arms swinging at its sides. Since then, they'd
been finding tracks. Tom showed me three sets he'd preserved
(05:32):
by putting buckets over them. Eighteen inches long, five toes clear,
mid tarsl break. The stride length was almost six feet.
I'd investigated hundreds of wildlife incidents, tracked bears, cougars, even
a few escaped exotic animals from private collections. These prints
didn't match anything I knew. My backup arrived around seven
(05:55):
that evening. Deputy Jim took one look at the prince
and the shed and radioed for additional units. We decided
to do a perimeter search before dark. Jim took the
north side of the property. I took the south, standard
search pattern, staying within side of the house. About three
hundred yards into the woods, I found a deer carcass,
(06:15):
fresh kill maybe two days old.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
What struck me was.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
How it was positioned, laid out neat, almost respectful, with
the choice portions removed, with what looked like clean tears,
not the ragged marks of claws or teeth. The bones
weren't gnawed, they were cracked open for marrow. Something with
hands had done this. I marked the location and continued.
The forest was too quiet. Anyone who spends time in
(06:42):
the woods knows that silence when all the birds and
insects stop at once. I'd felt it before when predators
were near, but this was heavier. Somehow I found myself
checking over my shoulder every few steps. Near a creek bed,
I discovered what looked like a shelter. Branches woven together
against a massive cedar, creating a lean to about eight
(07:03):
feet tall and twelve feet wide. Inside were matted ferns
like bedding. The smell was overwhelming, that same wet dog
and death stench. I photographed everything, my hands steady now
from pure adrenaline. That's when I heard it. A whistle,
long and low, coming from uphill. Not a bird. I've
(07:26):
hunted these woods since I was a kid, and I
know every bird call in the Pacific Northwest. This was different,
had a quality to it, almost like language. Then another
whistle answered from the opposite ridge. They were communicating. I
backed out of the shelter and started toward the house,
not running, but moving with purpose. The whistles continued, at
(07:48):
least three distinct sources, now triangulating around my position. About
halfway back, a rock landed ten feet in front of me,
baseball sized, thrown from somewhere uphill. Then another closer, not random, deliberate.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
They were hurting me.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I made it back to the house as darkness fell.
Jim was already there with two State patrol officers who'd
responded to our call for assistance. We compared notes. Jim
had found similar tracks, another shelter and what appeared to
be a cache of salmon heads near the creek fresh
Salmon in October, fifteen miles from the nearest run. We
(08:27):
stationed ourselves around the house that night, four officers each
taking a corner. The family stayed inside, lights on. Around midnight,
the activity started knocking sounds, wood on wood, rhythmic from
multiple directions. Then the screams, I've heard mountain lions, foxes, owls,
(08:48):
all the animals that make sounds that can raise the
hair on your neck. This wasn't any of them. It
was primate like, but deeper, longer, with a volume that
seemed impossible for lungs to produce. At two in the morning,
Jim's thermal scope picked up movement three heat signatures at
the tree line, standing upright at least seven feet tall.
(09:09):
They stayed there for twenty minutes, just outside the range
of the house lights, swaying slightly. Then they turned and
walked back into the forest. Walked like Tom had said, upright, deliberate, unhurried.
We filed our reports. Fish and Wildlife sent a biologist
who took plaster casts.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
And hair samples.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
The hair came back as unknown primate. The investigation was
quietly closed, labeled as bear activity. The family moved two
months later. I still patrol that area. The logging road
is overgrown now and the house stands empty. Sometimes I
stop at the old driveway, engine idling and listen. Once,
(09:49):
just once, I heard that whistle again, distant but unmistakable.
I drove away and didn't look back. I know what
I saw, what we all saw. The evidence was clear, documented, photographed.
But some things don't fit into incident reports. Some things
challenge everything you thought you knew.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
About the world.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
So you file it away, mark it as resolved, and
try not to think about those heat signatures swaying at
the tree line, or wonder what was watching us watch them?
That was Deputy Marcus from Washington State. Our next account
takes us three thousand miles across the country to the
mountains of eastern Kentucky. State Trooper Daniel shares what happened
(10:30):
on a foggy November night in twenty eighteen on Highway
twenty three. Three years on highway patrol in eastern Kentucky
teaches you to expect certain things. Drunk drivers, meth labs,
the occasional marijuana grow hidden in the hollers. You don't
expect to question your sanity. At two forty seven am
on a Tuesday in November, I was running radar on
(10:53):
Highway twenty three near the Virginia border, parked in a
cutout overlooking a long straightaway. The road wind through the
mountains there, following the old coal seams, mostly empty at
night except for long haul truckers. Light fog was settling
in the valleys, but visibility was still decent. The first
odd thing was the smell. My window was cracked, and
(11:15):
suddenly this stench rolled in, like a barn that hadn't
been mucked in months, mixed with rotting meat. I rolled
the window up, figuring a trucker had hit a deer
somewhere upwind, but the smell got stronger even with the
windows sealed. Then my radar went haywire. The display started
jumping forty five miles per hour, one hundred, twenty miles
(11:37):
per hour, eight miles.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Per hour all over the place.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I'd seen interference before from power lines or weather, but
nothing like this. The unit was less than a year old,
state of the art equipment. I turned it off and
back on, same problem. My radio started crackling with static,
not normal static, rhythmic, almost pulsing. I tried calling dispatch
(12:02):
to report the equipment malfunction, but couldn't get through. The
static had a pattern to it, like breathing, deep, slow breathing.
That's when I saw the eye shine in my side mirror.
Two amber points of light about eight feet off the
ground at the woodline behind my cruiser. Too high for
a deer, wrong color for a bear. They didn't move,
(12:24):
just stayed fixed on my vehicle. I turned on my
spotlight and swiveled it toward the trees. Nothing there but
the underbrush was moving, branches swaying like something large had
just passed through. I stepped out of the cruiser, hand
on my duty weapon and walked toward the tree line
with my flashlight. The smell was overwhelming, now making my
(12:45):
eyes water. About ten feet into the woods, I found
a footprint massive. My size thirteen boot looked small next
to it, five toes, clear as day, with what looked
like a mid tarsl break. The woods around me were
dead island, no insects, no birds, nothing, just my breathing
and heartbeat. A branch snapped somewhere to my left, then
(13:08):
another to my right. I was being flanked. Twenty years
of tactical training kicked in and I backed toward my cruiser,
flashlight sweeping side to side. That's when I saw it
clearly for the first time. It stepped out from behind
a massive oak, maybe thirty yards away, at least eight
feet tall, covered in reddish brown hair, walking on two
(13:30):
legs like a man, but with a gait that was
somehow different, longer arms, broader shoulders, head that seemed to
sit directly on its shoulders without much of a neck.
It looked at me, not past me or through me,
but directly at me, with intelligence in its eyes. We
stood there for maybe five seconds, though it felt like
(13:51):
an hour. Then it turned its head slightly, like it
was listening to something, and took three enormous strides across
the clearing and disappeared into the darkness. The way it
moved was fluid, powerful, completely silent despite its size. I
got back to my cruiser and locked the doors. My
hands were shaking so bad I could barely hold the
(14:12):
radio mic. The static had cleared and I called dispatch,
reported a large animal crossing near my position. They acknowledged,
asked if I needed animal control.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I said no.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
For the next hour, I sat there, engine running, every
light on my vehicle activated. Around four am, rock started
hitting my cruiser, not thrown hard enough to damage anything,
but deliberate pebbles at first, then larger stones. They came
from different directions. Whoever or whatever was throwing them was
(14:45):
moving around my position. Then came the howl started low,
rose to a pitch that made my teeth ache. Held
for maybe twenty seconds before trailing off. It was answered
by another howl from across the highway, then another from
up the mountain, at least three of them communicating, and
stay tuned for more sasquatch Ota see, We'll be right back.
(15:07):
After these messages, a semi truck came around the bend,
air horn blaring. The driver later reported to dispatch that
he'd nearly hit something crossing the road. Said it looked
like a huge man in a gilly suit, but moving
too fast, taking strides that were impossible. Dawn came slowly
(15:29):
as the sky lightened, the activity stopped. No more rocks,
no more howls, the smell faded. I finally worked up
the courage to get out and look around. Found dozens
of prints, some clear enough to cast. Found where something
had been watching me from various positions. The grass matted down,
branches broken at the eight foot level. I took photos
(15:53):
of everything, wrote a detailed report. My sergeant read it,
looked at the photos, and told me to file it
as a bear. When I protested, he took me aside
and said three other troopers had reported similar encounters in
the past five years, all filed as bears. He said
some things were better left alone, and if I wanted
(16:13):
to keep working these mountains. I'd learn when to look
the other way, but I couldn't.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Let it go.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I researched old reports, newspaper archives, found dozens of sightings
going back to the eighteen hundreds, coal miners refusing to
work certain shafts because of the wild men in the tunnels,
Cherokee stories about the nun Yanui, the giant hairy beings
that lived in the mountains before humans came. I still
work Highway twenty three, still see things sometimes, shadows crossing
(16:43):
the road, too fast to be human, too upright to
be bear eye shine at the wrong height, prince after
rain that I don't investigate anymore. Other troopers know too,
we just don't talk about it. There's an unspoken understanding
that some things in these mountains are beyond our jurisdiction.
Last month, a rookie reported a suspicious person near the
(17:05):
same spot where I'd had my encounter. I was first
to respond. Found him, white faced, sitting in his cruiser
with the doors locked. He'd seen it too. I told
him it was a bear, helped him write the report
that way. He transferred to Lexington three weeks later. The
mountains keep their secrets. We keep ours too. From State
(17:25):
Trooper Daniel's encounter in Kentucky, we move west to northern California.
August twenty twenty one, Park Ranger Deputy Sarah tells us
about a search and rescue operation in the Shasta Trinity
National Forest that revealed more than just missing hikers. Search
and rescue operations in the Shasta Trinity Wilderness are never routine,
(17:47):
but the one in August twenty twenty one changed how
I view these forests forever. A family of four had
gone missing near Lost River Trail. Parents and two teenage
kids experienced hikers. According to their permit APPT application, they
were three days overdue. I'd been a law enforcement ranger
for six years, worked dozens of SAAR operations. This one
(18:09):
felt different from the start. Their car was at the trailhead, undisturbed,
no signs of struggle, equipment failure, or medical emergency. They
just vanished somewhere along twelve miles of well marked trail.
We deployed two ground teams and a helicopter. I led
Alpha team along the main trail while Bravo team searched
(18:30):
the connecting spurs. The first day, we found their camp
about four miles in tents still standing, sleeping bags, laid
out food in the bear canister. Their packs were there,
water bottles full. It looked like they'd stepped away for
a moment and never came back. The strange part was
the condition of the camp. No animal disturbance at all.
(18:52):
In thirty years of wilderness work, I'd never seen predators
ignore an abandoned camp with food. Even the granola bars
and the tent pockets were untouched. But around the perimeter
we found odd impressions in the pine duff, huge barefoot prints,
some overlapping, like something had circled the camp repeatedly. Radio
(19:12):
communication was spotty, which isn't unusual in these canyons, but
the static had a quality i'd never heard, almost vocalized
like whispers, just below the range of understanding. Our GPS
units kept losing satellite lock, spinning uselessly. On day two,
we found the father's cell phone near a creek, screen
(19:33):
shattered but still functional. The last video on it was ominous,
to say the least, shaky footage of the forest at dusk,
the kid's voice saying, Mom, there's something out there, then
a dark shape passing between trees.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
In the background.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
The shape was upright, massive, moving with purpose. The video
cut off abruptly. We expanded the search zone. I took
two volunteers and pushed deeper into the drainage system where
the phone was found. The forest changed there, old growth,
trees so large that three people couldn't wrap their arms
around them. The canopy was so thick it felt like
(20:10):
twilight at noon, and quiet, that oppressive quiet that makes
you whisper without knowing why. We found the first sign
of the family near a rock out cropping. The mother's
jacket neatly folded and placed on a boulder, no tears,
no blood, just carefully set down, like she decided she
didn't need it anymore. Fifty yards away, we found one
(20:32):
of the teenager's boots, just one, standing upright in the
middle of the trail. That's when we started finding the structures.
Branches woven together in complex patterns, forming corridors and shelters,
not random deadfall, deliberate construction that would have taken tremendous
strength to bend and weave those thick limbs. Inside one shelter,
(20:53):
we found the family's water bottles arranged in a perfect circle.
The volunteers were getting spooked hell. I was spooked, but
we had a job to do. We followed what looked
like a game trail deeper into the canyon. The smell
started there, musky, overwhelming, like a zoo exhibit, but wilder.
Fresh scat along the trail, massive piles that didn't match
(21:17):
any animal. I knew the lab would later classify it
as unknown primate. We heard them before we saw them,
not the family, something else. Wood knocks echoing through the canyon,
clear patterns like Morse code. Then movement in our peripheral vision,
always just out of clear sight, something paralleling us through
(21:38):
the trees, staying about fifty yards out, matching our pace perfectly.
I made the call to return to base camp. As
we turned back, we heard a child crying somewhere uphill.
We called out, identified ourselves, but the crying stopped immediately.
Then it started again from a completely different direction. The
sound was off. It was almost too perfect, like a recording,
(22:02):
like something mimicking a child's cry. That night at base camp,
things got worse. Rocks pelted our tents from the darkness,
not violently, but consistently methodically. Our motion sensors kept triggering,
but the thermal imaging showed nothing. At three am, something
walked through camp, bipedal, heavy enough to shake the ground
(22:25):
slightly with each step. It stopped at each tent, and
I could hear breathing, deep, measured breathing just outside the
nylon wall. Nobody moved, nobody spoke. It circled the camp
three times before disappearing. Day three, the helicopter pilot reported
seeing the family. They were walking single file along a
(22:46):
ridge two valleys over, moving steadily, but when we reached
the coordinates nothing. The pilot swore he'd seen them clearly,
said they looked dazed but uninjured, following something large and
dark that stayed just inside the tree line. We finally
found them on day four. They were sitting in a
clearing five miles from their original camp, arranged in a circle,
(23:08):
holding hands, alive, unharmed but completely unresponsive. Their eyes were
open but unfocused. They didn't react to their names, to touch,
to light in their eyes. They were completely catatonic. The
medical evacuation was surreal. As we loaded them into the helicopter,
(23:28):
the forest erupted with wood knocks and howls from every direction.
The pilot later said he saw dozens of heat signatures.
On thermal standing at the tree line watching us leave.
The family recovered physically within days, but they had no
memory of the missing four days. The youngest, a fourteen
year old boy, eventually started having dreams. He'd wake screaming
(23:50):
about the tall people who took them to show them
something important, something about the forest, dying, about humans not listening.
His parents insisted it was alma induced hallucination. I went
back once alone, against regulations, left my radio, my GPS,
my weapon, just walked into that same drainage with a
(24:12):
digital recorder and an open mind. They were there watching,
I could feel them. I sat on a log and waited.
After an hour, one emerged from the trees about forty
yards away. Female, I think based on the body shape,
seven feet tall, covered in auburn hair, with eyes that
held more intelligence than any animal I've ever encountered. She
(24:36):
looked at me for a long moment, then turned and
walked away. I filed my report Search and rescue, successful
recovery victims suffering from exposure induced delirium. Case closed. But
I know what I saw, what we all saw. They're
out there, have been out there longer than us, and
sometimes for reasons we don't understand they interact with our world.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
I still work the the forests.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
But now I know we're not alone out here, and
I know they're watching, always watching, keeping their own council
in the deep places where humans rarely go. I leave
them alone, They leave me alone. It's an understanding. Some
mysteries are meant to stay mysterious. That was Ranger Sarah
(25:22):
from California. Our next encounter takes us to the frozen
north Michigan's Upper Peninsula. November twenty twenty. Deputy Marcus shares
his experience with abandoned copper minds and what still lives
in the darkness below. November in Michigan's Upper Peninsula is brutal,
the kind of cold that makes your lungs hurt, Snow
that comes sideways off Lake Superior. I've been dealing with
(25:44):
a string of vandalism reports near the old copper mining
sites outside Calumet. Abandoned buildings, damaged, heavy equipment, moved, trail cameras, destroyed.
The mining company wanted answers. It was my seventh year
as a deputy in Houghton County. Thought I'd seen everything
the up could throw at me. Meth labs and hunting camps,
(26:05):
copper thieves and the old mines, even a few sovereign
citizens holding up in the woods.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
This was different.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
The first scene was at the Quincy Mines abandoned shaft house.
The steel door, thick as my fist and secured with
industrial padlocks, was bent outward like something had pushed from
the inside. The padlocks were snapped, not cut inside. Hundred
pounds ore carts were stacked like toys. The mind company's
security estimated it would take a crew with heavy equipment
(26:35):
hours to move those carts. This was done overnight in silence.
Trail cameras in the area were destroyed, but one partially
damaged unit still had a memory card. The footage showed
a dark mass approaching at two fifteen am. The figure
was enormous, walking upright. The camera was mounted eight feet
(26:55):
high and this thing looked directly into it at eye
level before the feed cut out out. The last frame
showed a hand reaching for the camera, massive covered in
dark hair with opposable thumbs. Local Jibue elders weren't surprised
when I asked around. They had stories about the wind
to go, but also about something else. The old people
(27:17):
of the woods who were here before anyone. They said
the abandoned mines had disturbed things better left alone, opened
passages that should have stayed closed. I started patrolling the
mining sites at night. The company had pulled their security
after two guards quit without explanation, just me and my
cruiser driving the forest roads between shaft houses and processing
(27:38):
plants that had been dead for fifty years. Two weeks
into the investigation, I got a call about someone inside
the Champion mine buildings. Arrived to find the chain link
fence peeled back like aluminum foil. Inside the main building,
I found tracks in the dust, barefoot human like, but
much larger than any foot I'd ever seen, with thee
(28:00):
that covered eight feet. I followed the tracks through the building,
passed rusted machinery and collapsed conveyors. They led to an
old ventilation shaft that connected to the mine proper. The
grate covering it was torn away. Fresh scratches on the
walls showed something large had gone down. I called for
backup and waited an hour. No response. Radio dead, cell
(28:24):
phone showed no signal, though I'd had three bars when
I arrived. The temperature was dropping fast, maybe ten below already,
but I kept sweating feeling. Watched a sound from the shaft,
rocks falling, echoing up from deep underground, then breathing, deep
rhythmic breathing that seemed to come from the earth itself.
(28:46):
I backed away from the shaft, and that's when I
saw it standing in the doorway i'd entered through. Nine
feet tall, easy, covered in dark brown hair except for
its face, which was almost human but not quite. The
brow ridge was pronounced, the jaw massive. Its eyes reflected
my flashlight beam like a nocturnal animal's. We stared at
(29:09):
each other for a few short seconds. It made a sound,
not quite speech, not quite animal, a low rumble that
I felt in my chest. Then it turned sideways to
fit through the doorway and disappeared into the night. The
ease with which it moved, the casual display of size
and power, made me realize how vulnerable I was. I
(29:31):
ran to my cruiser. As I started the engine, something
hit the roof hard enough to dent it a rock
the size of a bowling ball.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Then another hit the hood.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I drove out of there without looking back, rocks pelting
the vehicle until I reached the main road. The next morning,
I returned with another unit. We found my tire tracks,
the damage fence, the footprints in the building. We expanded
the investigation found seventeen different sites with similar damage over
a forty mile rati always the same pattern. Incredible displays
(30:03):
of strength, intelligence in how things were moved or manipulated,
and those massive footprints. Stay tuned for more sasquatch ott
to see, We'll be right back. After these messages, hair
samples came back as contaminated or inconclusive. Plaster casts of
(30:24):
the prints were lost in transit to the state lab.
I started researching on my own time. Found reports going
back to the eighteen hundreds, miners refusing to work certain
shafts because of the wild men underground. A nineteen thirteen
newspaper article about a giant hairy man seen near the
Calumet and Hecla mines, a nineteen sixty seven state police
(30:46):
report about unknown individuals living in the abandoned mine systems.
Then I met Tom, a retired miner in his eighties.
After a few beers, he told me about the summer
of nineteen seventy one. He and five other minds were
working a deep shaft when they broke through into a
natural cavern. Inside they found things tools made from copper
(31:07):
and stone, pictographs on the walls, and fresh footprints. Management
sealed the cavern immediately threatened the miners with their jobs
if they talked. Tom believed there was a whole network
of natural caves connected to the mines, and something had
been living in them long before humans started digging. He
thought the mining operations had forced them to the surface,
(31:29):
into our world. The vandalism stopped that winter abruptly, no explanation.
The mining company quietly increased security and installed motion activated
lights everywhere.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
They also sealed.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Every shaft entrance with reinforced concrete way beyond what was
needed for safety. But I still get calls hunters seeing
something walking upright through the deep woods, snowmobilers finding tracks
crossing trails where no human could walk without snowshoes, strange
howls echoing off the cliffs along Superior. Last spring, I
(32:02):
was fishing a remote stream near the old cliff mine.
Found a shelter built from trees woven together with incredible skill.
Inside were bones, deer, rabbit fish, arranged almost ceremonially, and
on a flat rock, a piece of native copper hammered
into a rough tool shape, fresh work, the hammer marks
(32:23):
still bright. I left it there, didn't report it. Some
things the modern world doesn't need to know. The forest
keeps its secrets, the mines hold their mysteries, and we
pretend we're alone out here in the north Woods. But
on cold nights, when the aurora dances and the wolves
are silent, I know better. They're out there, have always
(32:44):
been out there, living in the spaces between our world
and something older. For our next story, we traveled to
one of the most remote places in North America, the
Dalton Highway in northern Alaska. February twenty nineteen. State Trooper
Robert shares his encounter in a place where the Arctic
holds ancient secrets. The Dalton Highway in February is about
(33:07):
as remote as you can get and still be in America,
five hundred miles of ice and wind between Fairbanks and
dead Horse. Mostly truckers hauling equipment.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
To the oil fields.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
I'd been stationed in Coldfoot for three years, one of
a handful of troopers covering an area of the size
of several states. The call came in at one am
from a trucker named Carl. He was pulled over at
mile two thirty five. Said he'd hit something but couldn't
find a body. Said it was large, walked on two
legs and disappeared into the storm. Temperature was forty below,
(33:39):
winds gusting to fifty. Nothing could survive exposed out there
for long. I found Karl's rig two hours later, hazards
still flashing. The front bumper was damaged, headlights shattered. Blood
on the grill, but not much. Carl was shaken, kept
saying it stood up after he hit it and walked away.
I figured he'd clipped a cariboo and the weather was
(34:01):
playing tricks on him. Then I saw the handprint on
his hood, blood partially frozen, but clearly a hand, five fingers,
a posable thumb, but massive. The span was incredible, and
in the blood visible dermal ridges. Fingerprints essentially, but from
something that wasn't quite human. I followed the blood trail
(34:25):
off the road. The wind was brutal, but I could
see impressions in the snow, bipedal long stride heading into
the tundra. After fifty yards, the trail disappeared, not covered
by snow, just stopped, like whatever was bleeding had simply vanished.
Back at Carl's truck, I took photos, scraped blood samples.
(34:46):
The trucker's dash cam had caught something through the blowing snow,
A dark figure crossing the road upright, at least seven
feet tall, moving with purpose. The impact was at maybe
fifteen miles per hour, enough to knock it down but
not kill anything that size. The figure got up immediately
and strode off. I called it in as a vehicle
(35:08):
wildlife collision, but kept investigating. The blood samples went to
a friend at the University of Alaska. Came back as
unknown primate, closest match to human, but with significant genetic variations.
Two weeks later, pipeline workers reported someone vandalizing equipment near
pump Station five. Security footage showed a figure approaching at night,
(35:31):
examining the machinery, then bending a steel maintenance ladder like
it was aluminum. The company wanted answers. I drove out
during a break in the weather. Found tracks everywhere in
the snow, around the buildings on the frozen river nearby.
Cast one in dental stone eighteen inches long. Clear tow
impressions found where something had been watching the station from
(35:54):
a hill overlooking the complex. The snow was compressed in
a body shape, like it had been lying pro observing.
The workers were nervous. They'd been hearing things at night,
wood knocks, which shouldn't exist because there are no trees
for miles, rocks hitting the buildings. One welder swore he
saw a face at his window on the second floor.
(36:15):
Another found the station's emergency generator, weighing eight hundred pounds,
moved ten feet from its pad. I started interviewing indigenous
elders in the area. The Inupiate had stories about the Tornarsuk,
powerful beings that lived in the mountains in tundra. They
weren't quite spirits, weren't quite flesh, but something between. The
(36:37):
elders weren't surprised by my questions. One said, these beings
had always been here, were the true inhabitants.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Of the Arctic. We were just visitors they tolerated.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
In March, I had my own encounter, responding to a
jackknifed semi middle of the night blizzard conditions. As I
set up flares, I felt watched that primitive feeling that
makes your hair stand up. I turned and saw eyes
shine about thirty yards away. Too high to be a
wolf or bear. I hit it with my spotlight. The
(37:09):
figure didn't run. It stood there, massive, covered in what
looked like white or light gray hair. The face was
almost human, but elongated, with deep set eyes that didn't
flinch from the light. We looked at each other across
that frozen distance for maybe ten seconds. Then it turned
and walked into the storm. The way it moved was fluid, powerful,
(37:32):
completely at home in conditions that would kill a human
in minutes. The tracks it left were clear until the
wind took them. I followed for one hundred yards before
common sense kicked in. Whatever this thing was, it was
adapted to this environment in ways humans weren't. Following it
into a blizzard would be suicide. More reports came in
(37:53):
that spring, truckers seeing figures crossing the road, pipeline workers
finding massive footprints, hunters reporting strange howls echoing off the
Brooks Range. A National Geographic photographer claimed he got within
fifty yards of one before it noticed him and disappeared
up a cliff face no human could climb. I compiled everything, photos, videos,
(38:15):
blood samples, hair samples, plaster casts, sent it to a
contact at the FBI who dealt with unusual cases, got
a call two days later. They had similar reports from
all along the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic. Had been tracking
these things for decades. Officially they didn't exist. Unofficially, field
agents were told to document but not engage. The most
(38:39):
interesting case was from nineteen seventy nine. An oil exploration
team found a body in the permafrost near prude Hoe Bay,
seven and a half feet tall, covered in hair, partially mummified.
The company flew it out immediately. Officially it was a
prehistoric bear. The workers who found it said otherwise. One
(38:59):
took photos before the body was removed. The skeletal structure
was humanoid. The skull was all wrong for a bear.
I'm still stationed on the Dalton, still get reports, but
now I know what to look for. They avoid the
pipeline and the Hall Road mostly, but sometimes our worlds intersect.
In the long Arctic twilight, you might see them moving
(39:21):
across the tundra, dark shapes against the snow, walking upright,
impossibly large. The truckers know, the pipeline workers know. The
indigenous peoples have always known. There's something else out here
in the Arctic wilderness, something that was here first, and
we'll be here long after the oil stops flowing and
the road crumbles back to tundra. Our final account brings
(39:45):
us to the swamps and forests of East Texas. October
twenty twenty. The Big Thicket National Preserve Sheriff's Deputy James
tells us about a missing person case that became something
else entirely October twenty twenty, we had a miss person
case that evolved into something that I'll never forget. Robert
sixty seven years old, disappeared while hiking in the Big
(40:07):
Thicket National Preserve. Experienced outdoorsmen knew the area like his backyard.
His truck was at the Kirby Nature Trail Parking Area.
Keys under the mat like always. The Big Thicket is
different from what most people imagine Texas to be. It's dense, swampy,
a biological crossroads where eastern hardwood forests, Gulf coastal plains
(40:30):
and pine forests converge. Locals call it impenetrable for a reason.
It's easy to get lost in there, easier to stay lost.
We started the search immediately, dogs helicopters, volunteer groups. The
dogs acted strange from the start, refused to track, kept
circling back to the handlers with their tails between their legs.
(40:52):
The best tracking dog in East Texas, a bloodhound named Duke,
sat down at the trailhead and howled. Wouldn't budge no
matter what his hand did. I'd been with hardin County
Sheriff's office for eight years, worked plenty of searches in
the thicket. This felt wrong from the beginning. Robert's trail
went cold about a mile in, just stopped, not like
(41:13):
he doubled back or gone off trail. The scent just ended,
according to the dogs. Day two, we found his backpack
hanging from a tree branch twenty feet up, not thrown
or caught, deliberately placed, his water, food GPS, all still inside.
No way Robert, with his bad knee, climbed that tree.
(41:36):
The bark showed no scuff marks from climbing. That's when
we started finding the prints in the mud near Village Creek.
Clear as day, human like, but massive, with a mid
tarsl break that no human foot has sixteen inches long
stride length that suggested something over seven feet tall. The
game warden said, black bear. But I've seen bear prints.
(41:58):
These had five toess clear heel strikes and that distinctive
push off pattern of bipedal movement. The search zone expanded.
I was working with two volunteers searching along the Turkey
Creek trail. The smell hit us first, like a wet
dog rolled in swamp. Gas and rotten eggs made your
eyes water throat close up. The volunteers wanted to turn back,
(42:22):
but we pushed through. Found a shelter built from pine
trees that had been bent and woven together while still alive.
Inside were beds of Spanish moss and pine needles. The
ceiling was eight feet high. On the ground, more prints
and what looked like a collection of objects smooth river rocks,
pieces of colored glass, and Robert's compass from his missing pack.
(42:46):
We called in the find, but by the time the
main search party arrived, the shelter was gone, not destroyed, gone.
The trees were standing straight like they'd never been bent.
Only thing left was disturbed ground and that lingering smell.
That night, we set up base camp at the Pitcher
Plant Trail parking area. Around midnight, the howls started long, mournful,
(43:09):
but with a quality that was almost human, like someone
screaming in grief, but deeper, more resonant than wood knocks,
clear patterns from multiple directions. The search and rescue coordinator,
a thirty year veteran, packed up and left, said he'd
seen enough. Day three brought the closest encounter. I was
(43:30):
searching solo along Cypress Slough when I heard footsteps paralleling
me through the water, heavy deliberate splashing. I stopped, they stopped.
I moved, they moved. Finally called out, identified myself as
law enforcement. The footsteps stopped. Then Robert walked out of
the palmetto thicket alive, uninjured but different. His clothes were intact,
(43:55):
but covered in mud. He didn't respond to questions, just
walked past me toward the trail. I followed, calling for backup.
When we got him to the ambulance, his vitals normal,
no injuries, but completely unresponsive. At the hospital they found
something odd his feet. The souls were clean, soft, no
(44:16):
cuts or bruises, despite supposedly walking barefoot through the thicket
for three days. His boots were never found. Robert came
around after a week, said he remembered following something that
walked upright but wasn't human. Said it led him to
a place where others like it lived, families, he insisted
with young ones. They didn't hurt him, just watched him,
(44:38):
brought him food.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Nuts, berries, fish.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
He said they were trying to communicate something about the land,
about changes coming, but he couldn't understand. The psychologist diagnosed
it as stress induced hallucination, but Robert drew pictures, detailed
sketches of faces that were almost human, but not quite.
(45:03):
Stay tuned for more sasquatch otta see, We'll be right
back after these messages pronounced brow ridges, wide noses, hair
covering everything but the palms, souls and face. I went
back alone a month later found the spot where Robert
had emerged. The ground was covered in footprints, dozens of them,
(45:25):
different sizes, including small ones that suggested juveniles. In the
center was a pattern made from arranged stones and sticks.
Took photos, then left everything undisturbed. Started researching the Alabama
Kushata and Cato tribes had stories about the shadow people
of the thicket. Early settlers reported wild men stealing from camps.
(45:47):
In nineteen sixty nine, three hunters disappeared for a week,
found later with similar stories to Roberts, led away by
tall hair covered beings who lived in the deep Thicket.
The state biologist I consulted off the record wasn't surprised,
said the Big Thicket was one of the most biodiverse
areas in North America, with species found nowhere else. If
(46:08):
something like this existed anywhere in Texas, it would be there.
He showed me castings from tracks found in nineteen seventy six,
hair samples that came back as unknown primate in nineteen
eighty three, and a game camera photo from twenty eighteen
showing a tall, dark figure walking upright through the trees.
But nothing official. Never anything official. The reports get filed
(46:32):
as bears, feral humans, or hoaxes. The evidence disappears or
gets reclassified, the witnesses are discouraged from talking. I still
patrol the edges of the thicket, sometimes find prints after
heavy rains. Once found a deer carcass field dressed with
obvious hand manipulation, no tool marks. Another time a pyramid
(46:53):
of turtle shells stacked by a creek, each one cleaned perfectly.
Last spring, During another search for a missing hiker found
safe two days later, I saw one clearly dawn heavy
fog about forty yards away across a slough. Female I
think based on the build, maybe seven feet tall, covered
(47:13):
in reddish brown hair. She was picking something from the water,
crawfish maybe, and eating them. She knew I was there,
looked right at me, then continued what she was doing.
No fear, no aggression, just acknowledgment. After a few minutes,
she stood, made a sound like a whistle crossed with
a hum, and three smaller figures emerged from the palmettos juveniles.
(47:38):
They all walked deeper into the thicket, unhurried, the young ones,
playing as they went. I never reported it, what would
be the point, But I know they're there, a whole population,
maybe living in the most impenetrable parts of the thicket,
avoiding us mostly, but sometimes our worlds overlap. Sometimes someone
like Robert crosses that boundary and comes back changed. These
(48:02):
accounts were shared by six law enforcement officers from across America,
from the rainforests of Washington to the frozen tundra of Alaska,
from the ancient mountains of Kentucky to the deep swamps
of Texas. Each officer continues their work, carrying the knowledge
of what they've seen, maintaining the thin blue line between
the known world and something far older, far stranger, that
(48:24):
shares our forests and wilderness. They serve and protect, but
they also keep secrets because some truths the public isn't
ready for, and some mysteries are better left unsolved. These
officers didn't ask for these encounters. They were simply doing
their jobs when they crossed paths with something that shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Exist but does.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
The evidence is there, photographs, footprint casts, hair samples, blood analysis,
all carefully documented, then quietly filed away or reclassified. The
official reports tell one story, bare sightings, equipment malfunctions, wilderness hallucinations.
But the officers who live these experiences.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Know the truth.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Out there, in the forgotten corners of America, in places
where cell phones don't work and satellites can't see through
the canopy, something else lives. Something that walks upright, that
watches from the shadows, that has learned to avoid us
as we've spread across the continent. They were here first,
they'll be here after we're gone. The next time you're
(49:29):
driving a lonely road at night and see eyeshine at
the wrong height, or hiking a trail and find a
footprint too large to explain, or camping in the wilderness
and hear a sound that doesn't belong to any known animal.
Remember these stories. Remember that there are those who wear
badges and carried guns, who have seen things that challenge
everything we think we know.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
About the world.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
And remember that sometimes, just sometimes, the old stories are true,
The legends have substance, and the things that go bump
in the night are more re than we ever imagined.
This has been Backwood's Bigfoot stories, real encounters from real
law enforcement officers, because the truth, as they say, is
stranger than fiction and infinitely more terrifying. Stay safe out there,
(50:15):
and whatever you do, stay out of the woods after dark.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
They say, you.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
I don't want to feel.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
We're out the.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
Job, this job, that chid everything.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
You call it right looking back, joy for me, joy,
staying right, you call it run away step still, stay, stay,
(51:45):
stay still fast stay passes states, basingst usssess
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.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
How it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm really confused.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
All I saw was my dog coming over the fence
and he was dead.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
And once you hit the ground like, I didn't see
any cars.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
All I saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat,
what are you putting? We got some wonder or something
(00:42):
crawling around out here? Did you see what it was?
Or was it was? Standing enough?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I'm out here looking through the window now and I
don't see anything. I don't want to go outside, Jesus quice.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
You bick Hello, get the Boddy out here?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
What quent on out there? I thought of a bench
about tech forty nine?
Speaker 1 (01:08):
I don't know. Easy ann out there? Yeah, I'm walking
right head.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You're about to hear something different. These aren't your typical
campfire tales. These are first hand accounts from law enforcement
officers across America, men and women who took an oath
to serve and protect. Officers trained to observe, document, and
report facts. What you'll hear in these accounts challenges everything
these officers thought they knew about the world. Each story
(01:35):
comes from a different corner of our country, from the
rain soaked forests of the Pacific Northwest to the frozen
tundra of Alaska, from the ancient mountains of Appalachia to
the deep swamps of Texas. These officers didn't seek out
these encounters. They were just doing their jobs, responding to calls,
investigating complaints, searching for missing persons. But what they found
(02:00):
in the darkness beyond their headlights and flashlight beams changed
them forever. They filed their reports, they documented the evidence,
but the official records tell a different story. Bear sightings,
equipment malfunctions, wandering hikers suffering from exposure. The truth got
buried in bureaucracy and disbelief. Tonight they're breaking their silence.
(02:22):
No last names, no badge numbers, just the truth about
what lurks in the forgotten corners of America, About what
watches from the tree line, About why some officers refuse
to patrol certain areas after dark. Our first account takes
us to the Pacific Northwest October twenty nineteen. Deputy Sheriff
(02:43):
Marcus tells his story from Clallam County, Washington. I'd been
with the Clallam County Sheriff's Department for twelve years when
the call came in about the property on the logging
road October twenty nineteen. The dispatcher said it was another
wildlife complaint, third one in that week from the same family.
Tom and Beth lived forty minutes outside Port Angelus, down
(03:05):
a logging road that hadn't seen commercial traffic in two decades.
Their nearest neighbor was eight miles away. The previous complaints
had been vague, something large moving through their property at night,
dogs going crazy, their chicken coop destroyed, not just damaged,
but torn apart. The two by fours snapped like matchsticks.
(03:26):
I'd written it up as a bear, told them to
secure their garbage, and figured that would be the end
of it. This time was different. Tom met me at
the end of their driveway, and I'd never seen him
like that. The man was a logger for thirty years,
built like a refrigerator, and his hands were shaking, not trembling,
actually shaking. He walked me around to the back of
(03:48):
their property without saying much, just pointing at things. The
smell hit me first, like a wet dog rolled in
something dead but stronger. Made my eyes water. Their shed
door was ripped off, not pride open or broken, ripped
clean off and thrown twenty feet into the woods. The
metal hinges were twisted like someone had used pliers on them,
(04:10):
except the force required would have been enormous. Inside the shed,
Tom's ATV was flipped upside down. That's a seven hundred
pound machine. I started taking photos measurements, standard procedure, even
though I had no idea what I was documenting. That's
when Beth came out of the house and asked if
I wanted to see the handprints. I thought she meant
(04:31):
fingerprints evidence of human vandalism. She led me to their
back porch, where they had a chest freezer. On the
white metal lid were two handprints and what looked like
mud and grease. The span from thumb to pinky was
sixteen inches, the palm was twice the width of mine.
But what shocked me were the dermal ridges, clear as day,
(04:51):
like any print I'd ever lifted, but the proportions were
all off. I called it in, requested someone from Fishing Wildlife.
All waiting, Tom finally started talking two weeks ago, their daughter, Sarah,
home from college, had been sitting on the back deck
around sunset.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
She saw what she thought.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Was a person at the tree line, about one hundred
yards out, tall, covered in dark hair, just standing there
watching the house. When she called out, it turned and
walked into the forest, walked, not ran upright on two
legs with arms swinging at its sides. Since then, they'd
been finding tracks. Tom showed me three sets he'd preserved
(05:32):
by putting buckets over them. Eighteen inches long, five toes clear,
mid tarsl break. The stride length was almost six feet.
I'd investigated hundreds of wildlife incidents, tracked bears, cougars, even
a few escaped exotic animals from private collections. These prints
didn't match anything I knew. My backup arrived around seven
(05:55):
that evening. Deputy Jim took one look at the prince
and the shed and radioed for additional units. We decided
to do a perimeter search before dark. Jim took the
north side of the property. I took the south, standard
search pattern, staying within side of the house. About three
hundred yards into the woods, I found a deer carcass,
(06:15):
fresh kill maybe two days old.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
What struck me was.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
How it was positioned, laid out neat, almost respectful, with
the choice portions removed, with what looked like clean tears,
not the ragged marks of claws or teeth. The bones
weren't gnawed, they were cracked open for marrow. Something with
hands had done this. I marked the location and continued.
The forest was too quiet. Anyone who spends time in
(06:42):
the woods knows that silence when all the birds and
insects stop at once. I'd felt it before when predators
were near, but this was heavier. Somehow I found myself
checking over my shoulder every few steps. Near a creek bed,
I discovered what looked like a shelter. Branches woven together
against a massive cedar, creating a lean to about eight
(07:03):
feet tall and twelve feet wide. Inside were matted ferns
like bedding. The smell was overwhelming, that same wet dog
and death stench. I photographed everything, my hands steady now
from pure adrenaline. That's when I heard it. A whistle,
long and low, coming from uphill. Not a bird. I've
(07:26):
hunted these woods since I was a kid, and I
know every bird call in the Pacific Northwest. This was different,
had a quality to it, almost like language. Then another
whistle answered from the opposite ridge. They were communicating. I
backed out of the shelter and started toward the house,
not running, but moving with purpose. The whistles continued, at
(07:48):
least three distinct sources, now triangulating around my position. About
halfway back, a rock landed ten feet in front of me,
baseball sized, thrown from somewhere uphill. Then another closer, not random, deliberate.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
They were hurting me.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I made it back to the house as darkness fell.
Jim was already there with two State patrol officers who'd
responded to our call for assistance. We compared notes. Jim
had found similar tracks, another shelter and what appeared to
be a cache of salmon heads near the creek fresh
Salmon in October, fifteen miles from the nearest run. We
(08:27):
stationed ourselves around the house that night, four officers each
taking a corner. The family stayed inside, lights on. Around midnight,
the activity started knocking sounds, wood on wood, rhythmic from
multiple directions. Then the screams, I've heard mountain lions, foxes, owls,
(08:48):
all the animals that make sounds that can raise the
hair on your neck. This wasn't any of them. It
was primate like, but deeper, longer, with a volume that
seemed impossible for lungs to produce. At two in the morning,
Jim's thermal scope picked up movement three heat signatures at
the tree line, standing upright at least seven feet tall.
(09:09):
They stayed there for twenty minutes, just outside the range
of the house lights, swaying slightly. Then they turned and
walked back into the forest. Walked like Tom had said, upright, deliberate, unhurried.
We filed our reports. Fish and Wildlife sent a biologist
who took plaster casts.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
And hair samples.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
The hair came back as unknown primate. The investigation was
quietly closed, labeled as bear activity. The family moved two
months later. I still patrol that area. The logging road
is overgrown now and the house stands empty. Sometimes I
stop at the old driveway, engine idling and listen. Once,
(09:49):
just once, I heard that whistle again, distant but unmistakable.
I drove away and didn't look back. I know what
I saw, what we all saw. The evidence was clear, documented, photographed.
But some things don't fit into incident reports. Some things
challenge everything you thought you knew.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
About the world.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
So you file it away, mark it as resolved, and
try not to think about those heat signatures swaying at
the tree line, or wonder what was watching us watch them?
That was Deputy Marcus from Washington State. Our next account
takes us three thousand miles across the country to the
mountains of eastern Kentucky. State Trooper Daniel shares what happened
(10:30):
on a foggy November night in twenty eighteen on Highway
twenty three. Three years on highway patrol in eastern Kentucky
teaches you to expect certain things. Drunk drivers, meth labs,
the occasional marijuana grow hidden in the hollers. You don't
expect to question your sanity. At two forty seven am
on a Tuesday in November, I was running radar on
(10:53):
Highway twenty three near the Virginia border, parked in a
cutout overlooking a long straightaway. The road wind through the
mountains there, following the old coal seams, mostly empty at
night except for long haul truckers. Light fog was settling
in the valleys, but visibility was still decent. The first
odd thing was the smell. My window was cracked, and
(11:15):
suddenly this stench rolled in, like a barn that hadn't
been mucked in months, mixed with rotting meat. I rolled
the window up, figuring a trucker had hit a deer
somewhere upwind, but the smell got stronger even with the
windows sealed. Then my radar went haywire. The display started
jumping forty five miles per hour, one hundred, twenty miles
(11:37):
per hour, eight miles.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Per hour all over the place.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
I'd seen interference before from power lines or weather, but
nothing like this. The unit was less than a year old,
state of the art equipment. I turned it off and
back on, same problem. My radio started crackling with static,
not normal static, rhythmic, almost pulsing. I tried calling dispatch
(12:02):
to report the equipment malfunction, but couldn't get through. The
static had a pattern to it, like breathing, deep, slow breathing.
That's when I saw the eye shine in my side mirror.
Two amber points of light about eight feet off the
ground at the woodline behind my cruiser. Too high for
a deer, wrong color for a bear. They didn't move,
(12:24):
just stayed fixed on my vehicle. I turned on my
spotlight and swiveled it toward the trees. Nothing there but
the underbrush was moving, branches swaying like something large had
just passed through. I stepped out of the cruiser, hand
on my duty weapon and walked toward the tree line
with my flashlight. The smell was overwhelming, now making my
(12:45):
eyes water. About ten feet into the woods, I found
a footprint massive. My size thirteen boot looked small next
to it, five toes, clear as day, with what looked
like a mid tarsl break. The woods around me were
dead island, no insects, no birds, nothing, just my breathing
and heartbeat. A branch snapped somewhere to my left, then
(13:08):
another to my right. I was being flanked. Twenty years
of tactical training kicked in and I backed toward my cruiser,
flashlight sweeping side to side. That's when I saw it
clearly for the first time. It stepped out from behind
a massive oak, maybe thirty yards away, at least eight
feet tall, covered in reddish brown hair, walking on two
(13:30):
legs like a man, but with a gait that was
somehow different, longer arms, broader shoulders, head that seemed to
sit directly on its shoulders without much of a neck.
It looked at me, not past me or through me,
but directly at me, with intelligence in its eyes. We
stood there for maybe five seconds, though it felt like
(13:51):
an hour. Then it turned its head slightly, like it
was listening to something, and took three enormous strides across
the clearing and disappeared into the darkness. The way it
moved was fluid, powerful, completely silent despite its size. I
got back to my cruiser and locked the doors. My
hands were shaking so bad I could barely hold the
(14:12):
radio mic. The static had cleared and I called dispatch,
reported a large animal crossing near my position. They acknowledged,
asked if I needed animal control.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I said no.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
For the next hour, I sat there, engine running, every
light on my vehicle activated. Around four am, rock started
hitting my cruiser, not thrown hard enough to damage anything,
but deliberate pebbles at first, then larger stones. They came
from different directions. Whoever or whatever was throwing them was
(14:45):
moving around my position. Then came the howl started low,
rose to a pitch that made my teeth ache. Held
for maybe twenty seconds before trailing off. It was answered
by another howl from across the highway, then another from
up the mountain, at least three of them communicating, and
stay tuned for more sasquatch Ota see, We'll be right back.
(15:07):
After these messages, a semi truck came around the bend,
air horn blaring. The driver later reported to dispatch that
he'd nearly hit something crossing the road. Said it looked
like a huge man in a gilly suit, but moving
too fast, taking strides that were impossible. Dawn came slowly
(15:29):
as the sky lightened, the activity stopped. No more rocks,
no more howls, the smell faded. I finally worked up
the courage to get out and look around. Found dozens
of prints, some clear enough to cast. Found where something
had been watching me from various positions. The grass matted down,
branches broken at the eight foot level. I took photos
(15:53):
of everything, wrote a detailed report. My sergeant read it,
looked at the photos, and told me to file it
as a bear. When I protested, he took me aside
and said three other troopers had reported similar encounters in
the past five years, all filed as bears. He said
some things were better left alone, and if I wanted
(16:13):
to keep working these mountains. I'd learn when to look
the other way, but I couldn't.
Speaker 1 (16:18):
Let it go.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
I researched old reports, newspaper archives, found dozens of sightings
going back to the eighteen hundreds, coal miners refusing to
work certain shafts because of the wild men in the tunnels,
Cherokee stories about the nun Yanui, the giant hairy beings
that lived in the mountains before humans came. I still
work Highway twenty three, still see things sometimes, shadows crossing
(16:43):
the road, too fast to be human, too upright to
be bear eye shine at the wrong height, prince after
rain that I don't investigate anymore. Other troopers know too,
we just don't talk about it. There's an unspoken understanding
that some things in these mountains are beyond our jurisdiction.
Last month, a rookie reported a suspicious person near the
(17:05):
same spot where I'd had my encounter. I was first
to respond. Found him, white faced, sitting in his cruiser
with the doors locked. He'd seen it too. I told
him it was a bear, helped him write the report
that way. He transferred to Lexington three weeks later. The
mountains keep their secrets. We keep ours too. From State
(17:25):
Trooper Daniel's encounter in Kentucky, we move west to northern California.
August twenty twenty one, Park Ranger Deputy Sarah tells us
about a search and rescue operation in the Shasta Trinity
National Forest that revealed more than just missing hikers. Search
and rescue operations in the Shasta Trinity Wilderness are never routine,
(17:47):
but the one in August twenty twenty one changed how
I view these forests forever. A family of four had
gone missing near Lost River Trail. Parents and two teenage
kids experienced hikers. According to their permit APPT application, they
were three days overdue. I'd been a law enforcement ranger
for six years, worked dozens of SAAR operations. This one
(18:09):
felt different from the start. Their car was at the trailhead, undisturbed,
no signs of struggle, equipment failure, or medical emergency. They
just vanished somewhere along twelve miles of well marked trail.
We deployed two ground teams and a helicopter. I led
Alpha team along the main trail while Bravo team searched
(18:30):
the connecting spurs. The first day, we found their camp
about four miles in tents still standing, sleeping bags, laid
out food in the bear canister. Their packs were there,
water bottles full. It looked like they'd stepped away for
a moment and never came back. The strange part was
the condition of the camp. No animal disturbance at all.
(18:52):
In thirty years of wilderness work, I'd never seen predators
ignore an abandoned camp with food. Even the granola bars
and the tent pockets were untouched. But around the perimeter
we found odd impressions in the pine duff, huge barefoot prints,
some overlapping, like something had circled the camp repeatedly. Radio
(19:12):
communication was spotty, which isn't unusual in these canyons, but
the static had a quality i'd never heard, almost vocalized
like whispers, just below the range of understanding. Our GPS
units kept losing satellite lock, spinning uselessly. On day two,
we found the father's cell phone near a creek, screen
(19:33):
shattered but still functional. The last video on it was ominous,
to say the least, shaky footage of the forest at dusk,
the kid's voice saying, Mom, there's something out there, then
a dark shape passing between trees.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
In the background.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
The shape was upright, massive, moving with purpose. The video
cut off abruptly. We expanded the search zone. I took
two volunteers and pushed deeper into the drainage system where
the phone was found. The forest changed there, old growth,
trees so large that three people couldn't wrap their arms
around them. The canopy was so thick it felt like
(20:10):
twilight at noon, and quiet, that oppressive quiet that makes
you whisper without knowing why. We found the first sign
of the family near a rock out cropping. The mother's
jacket neatly folded and placed on a boulder, no tears,
no blood, just carefully set down, like she decided she
didn't need it anymore. Fifty yards away, we found one
(20:32):
of the teenager's boots, just one, standing upright in the
middle of the trail. That's when we started finding the structures.
Branches woven together in complex patterns, forming corridors and shelters,
not random deadfall, deliberate construction that would have taken tremendous
strength to bend and weave those thick limbs. Inside one shelter,
(20:53):
we found the family's water bottles arranged in a perfect circle.
The volunteers were getting spooked hell. I was spooked, but
we had a job to do. We followed what looked
like a game trail deeper into the canyon. The smell
started there, musky, overwhelming, like a zoo exhibit, but wilder.
Fresh scat along the trail, massive piles that didn't match
(21:17):
any animal. I knew the lab would later classify it
as unknown primate. We heard them before we saw them,
not the family, something else. Wood knocks echoing through the canyon,
clear patterns like Morse code. Then movement in our peripheral vision,
always just out of clear sight, something paralleling us through
(21:38):
the trees, staying about fifty yards out, matching our pace perfectly.
I made the call to return to base camp. As
we turned back, we heard a child crying somewhere uphill.
We called out, identified ourselves, but the crying stopped immediately.
Then it started again from a completely different direction. The
sound was off. It was almost too perfect, like a recording,
(22:02):
like something mimicking a child's cry. That night at base camp,
things got worse. Rocks pelted our tents from the darkness,
not violently, but consistently methodically. Our motion sensors kept triggering,
but the thermal imaging showed nothing. At three am, something
walked through camp, bipedal, heavy enough to shake the ground
(22:25):
slightly with each step. It stopped at each tent, and
I could hear breathing, deep, measured breathing just outside the
nylon wall. Nobody moved, nobody spoke. It circled the camp
three times before disappearing. Day three, the helicopter pilot reported
seeing the family. They were walking single file along a
(22:46):
ridge two valleys over, moving steadily, but when we reached
the coordinates nothing. The pilot swore he'd seen them clearly,
said they looked dazed but uninjured, following something large and
dark that stayed just inside the tree line. We finally
found them on day four. They were sitting in a
clearing five miles from their original camp, arranged in a circle,
(23:08):
holding hands, alive, unharmed but completely unresponsive. Their eyes were
open but unfocused. They didn't react to their names, to touch,
to light in their eyes. They were completely catatonic. The
medical evacuation was surreal. As we loaded them into the helicopter,
(23:28):
the forest erupted with wood knocks and howls from every direction.
The pilot later said he saw dozens of heat signatures.
On thermal standing at the tree line watching us leave.
The family recovered physically within days, but they had no
memory of the missing four days. The youngest, a fourteen
year old boy, eventually started having dreams. He'd wake screaming
(23:50):
about the tall people who took them to show them
something important, something about the forest, dying, about humans not listening.
His parents insisted it was alma induced hallucination. I went
back once alone, against regulations, left my radio, my GPS,
my weapon, just walked into that same drainage with a
(24:12):
digital recorder and an open mind. They were there watching,
I could feel them. I sat on a log and waited.
After an hour, one emerged from the trees about forty
yards away. Female, I think based on the body shape,
seven feet tall, covered in auburn hair, with eyes that
held more intelligence than any animal I've ever encountered. She
(24:36):
looked at me for a long moment, then turned and
walked away. I filed my report Search and rescue, successful
recovery victims suffering from exposure induced delirium. Case closed. But
I know what I saw, what we all saw. They're
out there, have been out there longer than us, and
sometimes for reasons we don't understand they interact with our world.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
I still work the the forests.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
But now I know we're not alone out here, and
I know they're watching, always watching, keeping their own council
in the deep places where humans rarely go. I leave
them alone, They leave me alone. It's an understanding. Some
mysteries are meant to stay mysterious. That was Ranger Sarah
(25:22):
from California. Our next encounter takes us to the frozen
north Michigan's Upper Peninsula. November twenty twenty. Deputy Marcus shares
his experience with abandoned copper minds and what still lives
in the darkness below. November in Michigan's Upper Peninsula is brutal,
the kind of cold that makes your lungs hurt, Snow
that comes sideways off Lake Superior. I've been dealing with
(25:44):
a string of vandalism reports near the old copper mining
sites outside Calumet. Abandoned buildings, damaged, heavy equipment, moved, trail cameras, destroyed.
The mining company wanted answers. It was my seventh year
as a deputy in Houghton County. Thought I'd seen everything
the up could throw at me. Meth labs and hunting camps,
(26:05):
copper thieves and the old mines, even a few sovereign
citizens holding up in the woods.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
This was different.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
The first scene was at the Quincy Mines abandoned shaft house.
The steel door, thick as my fist and secured with
industrial padlocks, was bent outward like something had pushed from
the inside. The padlocks were snapped, not cut inside. Hundred
pounds ore carts were stacked like toys. The mind company's
security estimated it would take a crew with heavy equipment
(26:35):
hours to move those carts. This was done overnight in silence.
Trail cameras in the area were destroyed, but one partially
damaged unit still had a memory card. The footage showed
a dark mass approaching at two fifteen am. The figure
was enormous, walking upright. The camera was mounted eight feet
(26:55):
high and this thing looked directly into it at eye
level before the feed cut out out. The last frame
showed a hand reaching for the camera, massive covered in
dark hair with opposable thumbs. Local Jibue elders weren't surprised
when I asked around. They had stories about the wind
to go, but also about something else. The old people
(27:17):
of the woods who were here before anyone. They said
the abandoned mines had disturbed things better left alone, opened
passages that should have stayed closed. I started patrolling the
mining sites at night. The company had pulled their security
after two guards quit without explanation, just me and my
cruiser driving the forest roads between shaft houses and processing
(27:38):
plants that had been dead for fifty years. Two weeks
into the investigation, I got a call about someone inside
the Champion mine buildings. Arrived to find the chain link
fence peeled back like aluminum foil. Inside the main building,
I found tracks in the dust, barefoot human like, but
much larger than any foot I'd ever seen, with thee
(28:00):
that covered eight feet. I followed the tracks through the building,
passed rusted machinery and collapsed conveyors. They led to an
old ventilation shaft that connected to the mine proper. The
grate covering it was torn away. Fresh scratches on the
walls showed something large had gone down. I called for
backup and waited an hour. No response. Radio dead, cell
(28:24):
phone showed no signal, though I'd had three bars when
I arrived. The temperature was dropping fast, maybe ten below already,
but I kept sweating feeling. Watched a sound from the shaft,
rocks falling, echoing up from deep underground, then breathing, deep
rhythmic breathing that seemed to come from the earth itself.
(28:46):
I backed away from the shaft, and that's when I
saw it standing in the doorway i'd entered through. Nine
feet tall, easy, covered in dark brown hair except for
its face, which was almost human but not quite. The
brow ridge was pronounced, the jaw massive. Its eyes reflected
my flashlight beam like a nocturnal animal's. We stared at
(29:09):
each other for a few short seconds. It made a sound,
not quite speech, not quite animal, a low rumble that
I felt in my chest. Then it turned sideways to
fit through the doorway and disappeared into the night. The
ease with which it moved, the casual display of size
and power, made me realize how vulnerable I was. I
(29:31):
ran to my cruiser. As I started the engine, something
hit the roof hard enough to dent it a rock
the size of a bowling ball.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Then another hit the hood.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
I drove out of there without looking back, rocks pelting
the vehicle until I reached the main road. The next morning,
I returned with another unit. We found my tire tracks,
the damage fence, the footprints in the building. We expanded
the investigation found seventeen different sites with similar damage over
a forty mile rati always the same pattern. Incredible displays
(30:03):
of strength, intelligence in how things were moved or manipulated,
and those massive footprints. Stay tuned for more sasquatch ott
to see, We'll be right back. After these messages, hair
samples came back as contaminated or inconclusive. Plaster casts of
(30:24):
the prints were lost in transit to the state lab.
I started researching on my own time. Found reports going
back to the eighteen hundreds, miners refusing to work certain
shafts because of the wild men underground. A nineteen thirteen
newspaper article about a giant hairy man seen near the
Calumet and Hecla mines, a nineteen sixty seven state police
(30:46):
report about unknown individuals living in the abandoned mine systems.
Then I met Tom, a retired miner in his eighties.
After a few beers, he told me about the summer
of nineteen seventy one. He and five other minds were
working a deep shaft when they broke through into a
natural cavern. Inside they found things tools made from copper
(31:07):
and stone, pictographs on the walls, and fresh footprints. Management
sealed the cavern immediately threatened the miners with their jobs
if they talked. Tom believed there was a whole network
of natural caves connected to the mines, and something had
been living in them long before humans started digging. He
thought the mining operations had forced them to the surface,
(31:29):
into our world. The vandalism stopped that winter abruptly, no explanation.
The mining company quietly increased security and installed motion activated
lights everywhere.
Speaker 1 (31:40):
They also sealed.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
Every shaft entrance with reinforced concrete way beyond what was
needed for safety. But I still get calls hunters seeing
something walking upright through the deep woods, snowmobilers finding tracks
crossing trails where no human could walk without snowshoes, strange
howls echoing off the cliffs along Superior. Last spring, I
(32:02):
was fishing a remote stream near the old cliff mine.
Found a shelter built from trees woven together with incredible skill.
Inside were bones, deer, rabbit fish, arranged almost ceremonially, and
on a flat rock, a piece of native copper hammered
into a rough tool shape, fresh work, the hammer marks
(32:23):
still bright. I left it there, didn't report it. Some
things the modern world doesn't need to know. The forest
keeps its secrets, the mines hold their mysteries, and we
pretend we're alone out here in the north Woods. But
on cold nights, when the aurora dances and the wolves
are silent, I know better. They're out there, have always
(32:44):
been out there, living in the spaces between our world
and something older. For our next story, we traveled to
one of the most remote places in North America, the
Dalton Highway in northern Alaska. February twenty nineteen. State Trooper
Robert shares his encounter in a place where the Arctic
holds ancient secrets. The Dalton Highway in February is about
(33:07):
as remote as you can get and still be in America,
five hundred miles of ice and wind between Fairbanks and
dead Horse. Mostly truckers hauling equipment.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
To the oil fields.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
I'd been stationed in Coldfoot for three years, one of
a handful of troopers covering an area of the size
of several states. The call came in at one am
from a trucker named Carl. He was pulled over at
mile two thirty five. Said he'd hit something but couldn't
find a body. Said it was large, walked on two
legs and disappeared into the storm. Temperature was forty below,
(33:39):
winds gusting to fifty. Nothing could survive exposed out there
for long. I found Karl's rig two hours later, hazards
still flashing. The front bumper was damaged, headlights shattered. Blood
on the grill, but not much. Carl was shaken, kept
saying it stood up after he hit it and walked away.
I figured he'd clipped a cariboo and the weather was
(34:01):
playing tricks on him. Then I saw the handprint on
his hood, blood partially frozen, but clearly a hand, five fingers,
a posable thumb, but massive. The span was incredible, and
in the blood visible dermal ridges. Fingerprints essentially, but from
something that wasn't quite human. I followed the blood trail
(34:25):
off the road. The wind was brutal, but I could
see impressions in the snow, bipedal long stride heading into
the tundra. After fifty yards, the trail disappeared, not covered
by snow, just stopped, like whatever was bleeding had simply vanished.
Back at Carl's truck, I took photos, scraped blood samples.
(34:46):
The trucker's dash cam had caught something through the blowing snow,
A dark figure crossing the road upright, at least seven
feet tall, moving with purpose. The impact was at maybe
fifteen miles per hour, enough to knock it down but
not kill anything that size. The figure got up immediately
and strode off. I called it in as a vehicle
(35:08):
wildlife collision, but kept investigating. The blood samples went to
a friend at the University of Alaska. Came back as
unknown primate, closest match to human, but with significant genetic variations.
Two weeks later, pipeline workers reported someone vandalizing equipment near
pump Station five. Security footage showed a figure approaching at night,
(35:31):
examining the machinery, then bending a steel maintenance ladder like
it was aluminum. The company wanted answers. I drove out
during a break in the weather. Found tracks everywhere in
the snow, around the buildings on the frozen river nearby.
Cast one in dental stone eighteen inches long. Clear tow
impressions found where something had been watching the station from
(35:54):
a hill overlooking the complex. The snow was compressed in
a body shape, like it had been lying pro observing.
The workers were nervous. They'd been hearing things at night,
wood knocks, which shouldn't exist because there are no trees
for miles, rocks hitting the buildings. One welder swore he
saw a face at his window on the second floor.
(36:15):
Another found the station's emergency generator, weighing eight hundred pounds,
moved ten feet from its pad. I started interviewing indigenous
elders in the area. The Inupiate had stories about the Tornarsuk,
powerful beings that lived in the mountains in tundra. They
weren't quite spirits, weren't quite flesh, but something between. The
(36:37):
elders weren't surprised by my questions. One said, these beings
had always been here, were the true inhabitants.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
Of the Arctic. We were just visitors they tolerated.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
In March, I had my own encounter, responding to a
jackknifed semi middle of the night blizzard conditions. As I
set up flares, I felt watched that primitive feeling that
makes your hair stand up. I turned and saw eyes
shine about thirty yards away. Too high to be a
wolf or bear. I hit it with my spotlight. The
(37:09):
figure didn't run. It stood there, massive, covered in what
looked like white or light gray hair. The face was
almost human, but elongated, with deep set eyes that didn't
flinch from the light. We looked at each other across
that frozen distance for maybe ten seconds. Then it turned
and walked into the storm. The way it moved was fluid, powerful,
(37:32):
completely at home in conditions that would kill a human
in minutes. The tracks it left were clear until the
wind took them. I followed for one hundred yards before
common sense kicked in. Whatever this thing was, it was
adapted to this environment in ways humans weren't. Following it
into a blizzard would be suicide. More reports came in
(37:53):
that spring, truckers seeing figures crossing the road, pipeline workers
finding massive footprints, hunters reporting strange howls echoing off the
Brooks Range. A National Geographic photographer claimed he got within
fifty yards of one before it noticed him and disappeared
up a cliff face no human could climb. I compiled everything, photos, videos,
(38:15):
blood samples, hair samples, plaster casts, sent it to a
contact at the FBI who dealt with unusual cases, got
a call two days later. They had similar reports from
all along the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic. Had been tracking
these things for decades. Officially they didn't exist. Unofficially, field
agents were told to document but not engage. The most
(38:39):
interesting case was from nineteen seventy nine. An oil exploration
team found a body in the permafrost near prude Hoe Bay,
seven and a half feet tall, covered in hair, partially mummified.
The company flew it out immediately. Officially it was a
prehistoric bear. The workers who found it said otherwise. One
(38:59):
took photos before the body was removed. The skeletal structure
was humanoid. The skull was all wrong for a bear.
I'm still stationed on the Dalton, still get reports, but
now I know what to look for. They avoid the
pipeline and the Hall Road mostly, but sometimes our worlds intersect.
In the long Arctic twilight, you might see them moving
(39:21):
across the tundra, dark shapes against the snow, walking upright,
impossibly large. The truckers know, the pipeline workers know. The
indigenous peoples have always known. There's something else out here
in the Arctic wilderness, something that was here first, and
we'll be here long after the oil stops flowing and
the road crumbles back to tundra. Our final account brings
(39:45):
us to the swamps and forests of East Texas. October
twenty twenty. The Big Thicket National Preserve Sheriff's Deputy James
tells us about a missing person case that became something
else entirely October twenty twenty, we had a miss person
case that evolved into something that I'll never forget. Robert
sixty seven years old, disappeared while hiking in the Big
(40:07):
Thicket National Preserve. Experienced outdoorsmen knew the area like his backyard.
His truck was at the Kirby Nature Trail Parking Area.
Keys under the mat like always. The Big Thicket is
different from what most people imagine Texas to be. It's dense, swampy,
a biological crossroads where eastern hardwood forests, Gulf coastal plains
(40:30):
and pine forests converge. Locals call it impenetrable for a reason.
It's easy to get lost in there, easier to stay lost.
We started the search immediately, dogs helicopters, volunteer groups. The
dogs acted strange from the start, refused to track, kept
circling back to the handlers with their tails between their legs.
(40:52):
The best tracking dog in East Texas, a bloodhound named Duke,
sat down at the trailhead and howled. Wouldn't budge no
matter what his hand did. I'd been with hardin County
Sheriff's office for eight years, worked plenty of searches in
the thicket. This felt wrong from the beginning. Robert's trail
went cold about a mile in, just stopped, not like
(41:13):
he doubled back or gone off trail. The scent just ended,
according to the dogs. Day two, we found his backpack
hanging from a tree branch twenty feet up, not thrown
or caught, deliberately placed, his water, food GPS, all still inside.
No way Robert, with his bad knee, climbed that tree.
(41:36):
The bark showed no scuff marks from climbing. That's when
we started finding the prints in the mud near Village Creek.
Clear as day, human like, but massive, with a mid
tarsl break that no human foot has sixteen inches long
stride length that suggested something over seven feet tall. The
game warden said, black bear. But I've seen bear prints.
(41:58):
These had five toess clear heel strikes and that distinctive
push off pattern of bipedal movement. The search zone expanded.
I was working with two volunteers searching along the Turkey
Creek trail. The smell hit us first, like a wet
dog rolled in swamp. Gas and rotten eggs made your
eyes water throat close up. The volunteers wanted to turn back,
(42:22):
but we pushed through. Found a shelter built from pine
trees that had been bent and woven together while still alive.
Inside were beds of Spanish moss and pine needles. The
ceiling was eight feet high. On the ground, more prints
and what looked like a collection of objects smooth river rocks,
pieces of colored glass, and Robert's compass from his missing pack.
(42:46):
We called in the find, but by the time the
main search party arrived, the shelter was gone, not destroyed, gone.
The trees were standing straight like they'd never been bent.
Only thing left was disturbed ground and that lingering smell.
That night, we set up base camp at the Pitcher
Plant Trail parking area. Around midnight, the howls started long, mournful,
(43:09):
but with a quality that was almost human, like someone
screaming in grief, but deeper, more resonant than wood knocks,
clear patterns from multiple directions. The search and rescue coordinator,
a thirty year veteran, packed up and left, said he'd
seen enough. Day three brought the closest encounter. I was
(43:30):
searching solo along Cypress Slough when I heard footsteps paralleling
me through the water, heavy deliberate splashing. I stopped, they stopped.
I moved, they moved. Finally called out, identified myself as
law enforcement. The footsteps stopped. Then Robert walked out of
the palmetto thicket alive, uninjured but different. His clothes were intact,
(43:55):
but covered in mud. He didn't respond to questions, just
walked past me toward the trail. I followed, calling for backup.
When we got him to the ambulance, his vitals normal,
no injuries, but completely unresponsive. At the hospital they found
something odd his feet. The souls were clean, soft, no
(44:16):
cuts or bruises, despite supposedly walking barefoot through the thicket
for three days. His boots were never found. Robert came
around after a week, said he remembered following something that
walked upright but wasn't human. Said it led him to
a place where others like it lived, families, he insisted
with young ones. They didn't hurt him, just watched him,
(44:38):
brought him food.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Nuts, berries, fish.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
He said they were trying to communicate something about the land,
about changes coming, but he couldn't understand. The psychologist diagnosed
it as stress induced hallucination, but Robert drew pictures, detailed
sketches of faces that were almost human, but not quite.
(45:03):
Stay tuned for more sasquatch otta see, We'll be right
back after these messages pronounced brow ridges, wide noses, hair
covering everything but the palms, souls and face. I went
back alone a month later found the spot where Robert
had emerged. The ground was covered in footprints, dozens of them,
(45:25):
different sizes, including small ones that suggested juveniles. In the
center was a pattern made from arranged stones and sticks.
Took photos, then left everything undisturbed. Started researching the Alabama
Kushata and Cato tribes had stories about the shadow people
of the thicket. Early settlers reported wild men stealing from camps.
(45:47):
In nineteen sixty nine, three hunters disappeared for a week,
found later with similar stories to Roberts, led away by
tall hair covered beings who lived in the deep Thicket.
The state biologist I consulted off the record wasn't surprised,
said the Big Thicket was one of the most biodiverse
areas in North America, with species found nowhere else. If
(46:08):
something like this existed anywhere in Texas, it would be there.
He showed me castings from tracks found in nineteen seventy six,
hair samples that came back as unknown primate in nineteen
eighty three, and a game camera photo from twenty eighteen
showing a tall, dark figure walking upright through the trees.
But nothing official. Never anything official. The reports get filed
(46:32):
as bears, feral humans, or hoaxes. The evidence disappears or
gets reclassified, the witnesses are discouraged from talking. I still
patrol the edges of the thicket, sometimes find prints after
heavy rains. Once found a deer carcass field dressed with
obvious hand manipulation, no tool marks. Another time a pyramid
(46:53):
of turtle shells stacked by a creek, each one cleaned perfectly.
Last spring, During another search for a missing hiker found
safe two days later, I saw one clearly dawn heavy
fog about forty yards away across a slough. Female I
think based on the build, maybe seven feet tall, covered
(47:13):
in reddish brown hair. She was picking something from the water,
crawfish maybe, and eating them. She knew I was there,
looked right at me, then continued what she was doing.
No fear, no aggression, just acknowledgment. After a few minutes,
she stood, made a sound like a whistle crossed with
a hum, and three smaller figures emerged from the palmettos juveniles.
(47:38):
They all walked deeper into the thicket, unhurried, the young ones,
playing as they went. I never reported it, what would
be the point, But I know they're there, a whole population,
maybe living in the most impenetrable parts of the thicket,
avoiding us mostly, but sometimes our worlds overlap. Sometimes someone
like Robert crosses that boundary and comes back changed. These
(48:02):
accounts were shared by six law enforcement officers from across America,
from the rainforests of Washington to the frozen tundra of Alaska,
from the ancient mountains of Kentucky to the deep swamps
of Texas. Each officer continues their work, carrying the knowledge
of what they've seen, maintaining the thin blue line between
the known world and something far older, far stranger, that
(48:24):
shares our forests and wilderness. They serve and protect, but
they also keep secrets because some truths the public isn't
ready for, and some mysteries are better left unsolved. These
officers didn't ask for these encounters. They were simply doing
their jobs when they crossed paths with something that shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Exist but does.
Speaker 2 (48:45):
The evidence is there, photographs, footprint casts, hair samples, blood analysis,
all carefully documented, then quietly filed away or reclassified. The
official reports tell one story, bare sightings, equipment malfunctions, wilderness hallucinations.
But the officers who live these experiences.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
Know the truth.
Speaker 2 (49:08):
Out there, in the forgotten corners of America, in places
where cell phones don't work and satellites can't see through
the canopy, something else lives. Something that walks upright, that
watches from the shadows, that has learned to avoid us
as we've spread across the continent. They were here first,
they'll be here after we're gone. The next time you're
(49:29):
driving a lonely road at night and see eyeshine at
the wrong height, or hiking a trail and find a
footprint too large to explain, or camping in the wilderness
and hear a sound that doesn't belong to any known animal.
Remember these stories. Remember that there are those who wear
badges and carried guns, who have seen things that challenge
everything we think we know.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
About the world.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
And remember that sometimes, just sometimes, the old stories are true,
The legends have substance, and the things that go bump
in the night are more re than we ever imagined.
This has been Backwood's Bigfoot stories, real encounters from real
law enforcement officers, because the truth, as they say, is
stranger than fiction and infinitely more terrifying. Stay safe out there,
(50:15):
and whatever you do, stay out of the woods after dark.
Speaker 1 (50:20):
They say, you.
Speaker 2 (50:21):
Don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
I don't want to feel.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
We're out the.
Speaker 1 (50:56):
Job, this job, that chid everything.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
You call it right looking back, joy for me, joy,
staying right, you call it run away step still, stay, stay,
(51:45):
stay still fast stay passes states, basingst usssess
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