Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:1053 Never Going Back To That Area

Episode Date: May 5, 2024

Kip writes "I guess I'll get right to it. Back in the late 90's I had 3 separate terrifying encounters with some type of large black creature over 3 years. The first two encounters were roughly in 1997 & 1998. I was in high school at the time and 16-17 years old. And the 3rd was in late 1999 so I was just about 18. I can honestly say that they were so disturbing that I have thought about them often ever since. Two of the encounters I had multiple buddies with me and the most disturbing encounter I was alone exploring the mountain behind our home on our 4 wheeler. I grew up in a Southern California city called Corona. Its roughly 1.5 hours north of San Diego and next to Riverside. At this time the upper portion of the city had miles of orchards extending from the edge of the housing developments all the way to the base of the mountains that separated us from the coast and Orange County. As a kid myself and my family spent a significant amount of time on this mountain range hiking, mountain biking, exploring the various canyons, and a few of the abandoned tin mines. Although there were known predators such as mountain lions and coyotes that we would see from time to time, I never felt scared being in this area but always knew to be cautious. At the time of what I would consider my first encounter our town was changing a lot. Hundreds of acres, if not thousands, of the orchards were being leveled to build more homes. At this time being of high school age this was a total bummer. All of the cool places we would explore or hang out were going away every week and being replaced with massive housing developments. Because of the size of one of the housing developments, there was a large storm drain project that the army core of engineers was in charge of. This project was situated near the mouth of one of the larger canyons and was intended to divert stormwater underground to who knows where? This area was completely fenced off with barbed wire fences and they even had an on-site security guard at night. This entire area was surrounded by thick orange groves and also avocado groves. Knowing that there was a massive underground tunnel being built and also being obsessed with exploring abandoned mines, there was no choice but to explore this. I did some recon during the daytime hours and figured out the best way to sneak in at night hopefully without being detected by their on-site security guard. Late on a Friday evening my buddies and I drove my truck on a dirt road deep into the orange groves and parked it behind a large pile of dead orange trees that they had ripped out of the ground. This was an area that I was very familiar with. In this area, they also had bulldozers, graders, and loaders parked near a water tank. We snuck through the trees, scaled a barbed wire fence, and at this point the Avocado Grove began. We easily made it in and explored these tunnels which were kind of a disappointment because there was really nothing to them other than concrete and scaffolding. Feeling somewhat underwhelmed we decided to head back to the truck which was roughly a half mile from the tunnel. Upon exiting the range groves we saw headlights coming our way so we quickly jumped behind some of the heavy equipment thinking the security was coming to bust us. To our surprise, it was a two-door Honda Civic with two chicks. Being curious teenage boys we were immediately wondering if they were hot. Lol. After spending some time checking out all of the cool heavy equipment we made it back to my truck. Knowing that the road they were driving on was eventually a dead end we were surprised to see that they still had not come back out. We decided to investigate to make sure they were ok. We assumed the girls were probably drinking or smoking weed because this was not a well known place and was quite creepy especially at night due to how secluded it was. The three of us piled back into my single-cab Chevy truck and started heading in their direction. As we rounded a sharp turn on the dirt road we could see their car parked at the dead end off in the distance. As we got within 100 yards of their car we could see something black crouched down behind the car. The first we thought we had was that maybe one of them was behind the car but as we got closer we could see that it was definitely not a girl and appeared to be completely black and hunched over as if it was hiding and watching them. I had one of those Walmart special 12 million candle spotlight that plugged into the cigarette lighter in my truck. My buddy Aaron turned that on and hung out the window shining it down the road. We then thought that it must be a bear of some other creature but it was not looking like anything that we were familiar with which was kind of a weird sensation seeing something that we were not even sure what it was. As we were now within 50 yards or less, to our horror, this creature slightly turned to look towards us and stood up. This was nothing that we recognized. We immediately began freaking out yelling at one another "what the hell is that thing?!!" I hit the gas and we accelerated towards their car while keeping the light on it! To the south of where the girls were parked was another barbed wire. (To clarify, all of these fences were roughly 7' tall chain link fences topped with like 18" of 3 strands of barbed wire. A sizeable fence). The fence was within 15 feet of the edge of the road only separated by a small ditch that may have been 2' deep. Beyond the fence was a wide open field that had already been scraped of all vegetation. The base of the mountain was probably 400-500 yards away from this location. This creature which I would estimate was between eight and 9 feet tall took two steps towards the edge of the road and literally vanished before our eyes. We saw this happen from maybe 50 feet away. I slammed on the brakes and we slid on the gravel road stopping about 10 feet behind the girl's car. We jumped out paying no attention to them and immediately started shining the spotlight into the field. When the creature vanished we could not understand what we really just saw. Our minds were thinking of rational explanations like maybe it dove into the small ditch just out of sight and squeezed under the fence somehow. Or, maybe it climbed over the fence really fast and somehow we didn't see that which makes no sense. We were grasping for any explanation besides it literally vanishing into thin air. In reality, we should have seen the creature maybe 20 feet away on the other side of this fence running across the wide open field if it had somehow jumped this fence but like I said it had vanished. We had all become very animated at this point yelling and freaking out at what we had just seen. Probably thinking we were absolute psychopaths, the girls in the car immediately started the engine lipped around and just took off. I did hear one of them yell "what's your F-ing problem???" Rightfully so. We calmed down after a few minutes and started to collect ourselves. There was no sign of the creature at all, and because it was a gravel road there were no visible footprints. We stayed shining spotlight for probably a half hour, absolutely shaken by what we had seen. We saw nothing, absolutely nothing. It was now close to 1 am and we rushed back to my house and immediately woke my dad up from a dead sleep and told him what we had witnessed. A little back story on my Dad, he grew up in Starvalley Wyoming. He spent most of his years as a youth as a youth and teens in the mountains hunting. In his late teens and into his 20's he was a hunting guide. He guided hunters from all over the world into the backcountry on horseback. My Dad was tough and fearless, and if anyone would have encountered something like this before it was him. He immediately got out of bed and once we settled down a bit he wanted to entire story, every detail. After listening to our story he became very quiet and serious. He sat down at the table and said "Boys, I have no doubt that what you saw tonight was real. I do not think this was any type of animal but rather a being. Sometimes we are allowed to see things from the other side of the veil or maybe even another dimension. I don't know why we do but I think this is what you experienced tonight. I do not want you going up to that area anymore." after that he told us this was nothing to mess with and not to ever pursue it. It was so unsettling and still to this day I could call either one of my two buddies and have them recount the exact same story word for word. This creature was not how I pictured the typical sasquatch. it did appear to have a shorter sleek jet black fur. Its fur almost absorbed our light and was almost difficult to distinguish any facial features at all. It was almost like a 3 dimensional shadow if that makes sense somehow? It was very tall and athletic-looking. It did not have a massive hulking build but rather a very sleek, powerful, and fast type of build if that makes any sense. Think fairly jacked sprinter instead of a giant bodybuilder. That experience has bothered me ever since. Monday came around and we thought we had the craziest story that we could ever tell at school. To my dismay, people thought we were so full of crap and honestly did not believe us. That really pissed me off but also disappointed me. We didn't really tell anyone else after that reaction from a few people in fear of being seen as weird or just lying. Second Incident This encounter still scares me to this day and I still have so many unanswered questions. This took place maybe 8-9 months later. maybe a year. My parents had sold our boat and bought some 4 wheelers instead. I loved this option! I spent everyday after school enjoying this amazing new found sense of freedom and exploring the mountain behind our neighborhood which was about 1/2 mile away. There were fire roads, old trails, and riverbeds leading up to the canyons. If you would ride to the top of the mountain on a clear day you could see the ocean and Catalina Island off in the distance. A girl that I was friends with who had very wealthy parents just bought a brand new 4 wheeler. She tracked me down at school and asked if I would every want to meet up after school and take her exploring. They literally lived at the base of the mountain but about 3 miles from my house. I was stoked! A few days later I loaded up the 4 wheeler into the back of my truck and met her at her house. I did not know this area very well so this was extra exciting to go explore a new area. We went down the road a ways and decided to cut up through some orange groves on a slightly overgrown road. We climbed a few windmills to get a good view of what was further ahead. After weaving in and out of the labrynth of trees and small dirt roads we ended up at a gate. On the other side of the gate were some avocado trees, bee boxes, and an overgrown trail that turned into switch backs leading up the mountain. This looked awesome and I was so intrigued by it for some reason. A few minutes later an old man pulled up in an old fafrm truck and was PISSED that we were in there. He yelled at us and he said "and don't you ever think about ever going up that road, never go up there!" At the time I though he was just being a grouchy old dick but now looking back I think he knew something and was actually trying to run us off to keep us safe. My defiant teenage brain now had absolute tunnel vision on returning a few days later, finding a way around the gate and exploring whatever that road led to. I had to know where those steel switchbacks led to. Sure enough, a few days later I went back...alone. I had a pocket knife, camelback full of water, and was getting in no matter what. I found a way to cut down into the river bed and up a very steel embankment which put me on the other side of the gate. I showed that old man! After cruising around atg the bottom of the hill for a few minutes I was disappointed only seeing old abandoned farming equipment in the weeds. Now it was time to follow the narrow trail up the steep mountain. Just as I was starting up the trail there was a really sketchy narrow section where it had washed out around a culvert. I carefully made my way around it trying to keep from sliding down into a washed out ditch. As I made my way up the vegetation began changing. There were tons of massive oak trees growing in a large ravine and and along the edge of the trail. By this time I was WAAY up the mountain and could easily see across the whole valley looking out at Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga way off in the distance. Then I found the most bizarre things ever. Huge, old, single wide trailers probably from the late 60's or 70's just sitting on the side of the mountain. There were 3-4 of them one above me on the trail and a few out on this point on the other side of the ravine filled with the massive oak trees. Areas had been dug into the mountainside for the trailers to sit on. I still don't even understand how they could have ever placed those up there unless by a massive helicopter or something. A trailer would literally be impossible. I thought "Well this is super weird but I'm totally exploring these. The first one was really beat up and had no windows or doors. I hiked down off of the trail and began cutting through the ravine to get to the others. The oak forest I was cutting through was thick. even though it was still very light outside, it was very dim under the shade of these massive thick trees. The ground was covered in probable 6' of leaves and was very noisy when walking through. I checked out the other trailers for probably another 45 minutes. Nothing amazing but still interesting. At this point the sun would be setting by the time I got down the mountain and I did not want to try to find my way back out in the dark so I started heading back toward the trail that my 4 wheeler was parked on. I was walking through the bottom of the oak filled ravine when all of a sudden something just stopped me in my tracks. Everything had become so quiet. I'm talking impossibly quiet and I immediately noticed it. I have never experienced anything like this. I was if I just walked into a soundproof room but in the middle of a ravine. I immediately had the feeling that I was not alone and that something dangerous was watching me. I slowly started scanning my surroundings and had such a strange claustrophobic feeling. All I could hear was ringing in my ears. No birds, no breeze, not even the sound of the trees moving slightly. I had never experienced anything like this. I began feeling a very distinct dark and creepy feeling. As I looked at the hillside in front of me, maybe 15 feet in front of me I experience the most intense fear I have ever felt to this day. A quick glint caught my eye and as I looked at where the glint came from the weirdest thing happened. The only thing I can compare it to is when you are staring at one of those weird stereogram pictures. You are straining your eyes and then all of a sudden the 3-D image comes into focus. I was staring at the hillside right in front of me which was covered in leaves. There was a large gray rock to the right and slightly above the rock but 3 feet to the left was the trunk of an oak tree. I was staring at the leaves and in the space between the tree and the rock I saw it. It was like all of a sudden my eyes came into focus and I could see it. I hated what I saw. It literally paralyzed me with fear. I was a sprinter on our schools track team so running was always my best option. I literally could not move. I was looking at what I believe was that exact same creature we spotted that night close to a year prior. It truly was probably 8-1/2 to 9' tall. The hillside in that spot was very steep so it was kind of laid back against the hill perfectly camouflaged between the rock and tree but its body was in full view. It did not move but its shiny black eyes just intensely stared at me. I stared right back. I do not remember seeing any whites to its eyes but could tell when its eyes moved because of the glint they created. The eyes looked like tow shiny pieces of obsidian or glass. This is the part that scares me the most. This was not a friendly encounter by any stretch of the imagination. This was not a goofy and happy harry and the hemdersons experience. This thing felt so mean and evil. As it stared into my eyes in that intense quietness I literally could feel that it hated me and did not want me there. I did not hear any type of voice but I could feel the most wicked and intense hate from it. I could literally feeling in my soul that I don't think I was even breathing for an unknown amount of time. I know that sounds weird. I don't know how long I stood there in that trance or whatever this experience was, but I distinctly remember feeling my lips beginning to tingle and feeling dizzy. It was enough to snap me out of it. I stumbled backwards and weakly scampered up the opposite side of the ravine. I was so slow and felt like all of my strength was just absolutely gone. I was pretty much in tears and felt like I may have just almost been attacked or killed. I got on my 4 wheeler and started backing down the trail as fast as could because it was too narrow and the hillside too steel to actually turn the machine around. I got to a switchback area and did probable the most frantic 20 point turn every performed. I was so certain that at any second this creature was going to come sprinting from the edge other oak trees and kill me. I raced down the trail and could not believe my eyes. The narrow area where the trail had mostly washed out around the culvert had large branches and brush literally piled up with other brush. It was probably 3 feet high and was no doubt there to block me or make me stop. I basically said F it and crashed right through the edge of it and made it right through. Getting back to the truck was a blur. That was probably the hardest that 4 wheeler would ever have been ridden. For quite awhile after that experience I really thought that creature could come back and find me somehow. I don't know what it did to me but it absolutely got in my head and I have never felt that much hate and disdain from anything like that in my life. After finding your podcast I have been thinking about that experience so often and recounting so many of the details. I can remember that experience like it was yesterday. I can tell you exactly what the temperature was like outside, what the air smelled like, the smell of the exhaust from the 4 wheeler, and the smell of the leaves and dirt in that ravine. I think that day is pretty much burned into my soul. That creature was the most terrifying thing I have ever laid eyes on. I honestly don't even know what exactly to classify it as. It shares some similarities to a sasquatch but it was so long and slender while still appearing very strong and fast. This might sound crazy but it really felt like it was from some other place or realm. I have had a few very close encounters with bears while camping and while that was scary, especially being in a tent, it wasn't even in the same universe as how terrifying encountering that thing was. I never ever considered going anywhere near that spot ever again and still would not even today. I felt beyond helpless against that thing and am just grateful nothing actually bad happened. I did feel like that experience was a strong warning from that thing. I have often wondered if it was extremely angry at the massive changes taking place in the area with the destruction of all of the orange, lemon, grapefruit and avocado groves. It could have been the perfect environment to remain unseen and an endless food supply. I honestly just don't know. Third Incident   So this encounter I still don't understand. My buddies and Had just graduated from high school. It was the typical time in life when everyone start going their separate ways. One of my good friends Derek was getting ready to move to New Zealand for a few years and another immediately off to College in Utah. I was working with my Dad who was a general contractor and was working as a superintendent helping build our commercial construction projects. As a last fun hoorah 4 of us got together and went off-roading and exploring south of our town down the I-15 a little ways. This was an area somewhat new to us but as the housing developments continued to boom we knew in a few years most of those areas would be gone. I remember driving down a paved road and the area was heavily wooded with oak trees. I was driving and we came around a bend in the road. Now today as an adult, this would have been such an awesome place to have a home on a few acres. It was beautiful and secluded. All of the homes had a significant amount of land and were really spaced far apart. I noticed a long gravel driveway leading up to some large pepper trees. The front lawn of the home looked like it was dying and we could just make out the house back in the trees. The garage door was open and so was the front door. Out of curiosity we backed u and drove up the driveway towards the house. Sure enough it was completely vacant. I suspect that one of the large developers had purchased all of the land to later build one of the current golf course communities. We could not believe our eyes. The people must have moved out no longer than the week before. We yell\ed hello a few times before walking into this vacant home. It was immaculate! Literally clean and well kept. It was a decent size single level home with a 3 car garage. All of the furniture was gone but there were a few random odds and ends left behind in a few of the rooms and garage. We were not the kind of guys that would vandalize a place like this. We thought it was so cool and decided to come back later that night and camp out inside. I think we all told our parents the classic type of story that each of us would be at another house but in reality we were staying the night in this abandoned house. We grabbed sleeping bags, pillows, and my friend stole this massive red candle from his mom's Christmas decoration shelf in his garage. That was going to be our source of light since we didn't have a lantern that we could take without it looking too suspicious. We arrived back at the house just as it was almost all the way dark and boy this place looked creepy now. Especially with the way it was tucked back into the trees. And the house was a good size house which I would estimate between 2300-2500 sf. Backed my truck into the garage and glossed the old style wood garage door that had the big springs on the sides. The power had been shut off to the home so we had to open and close the garage door manually by pulling the disconnect on the opener. We set up shop in the center of the living room and had the angle sitting in a paint can lid with all of our sleeping beds spread out around it. We got settled in and were just talking about future plans, good times we had together throughout the years and just typical conversations. It was a really fun night. Just as we were all getting tired and winding down we thought we heard a weird sounding strange whistle outside. We all shut up and listened but didn't hear again. We blew out the candle. No more than 15 minutes later we heard something hit the large living room window really hard which immediately woke us up and scared the crap out of us! All of the blinds and curtains were gone so I felt like we were in a big fish bowl as soon as we relit the candle. As we were discussing what that loud noise was we heard the strange whistle again. It was a longer whistle and a lower tone than what you would normally whistle. We were so far from the town or really any real road. Nobody even know we were at this house. Then another really loud bang on the kitchen window and another on the dining room sliding glass door. Then another weird long whistle. We were absolutely crapping bricks. There would be a few minutes of complete silence followed by another loud bang on the windows or side of the home. Whatever was out there was seemingly walking in circles just pounding in the windows and would intermittently do a long weird sounding whistle. We were beyond terrified and knew whoever was out there could see us inside perfectly while we could not see it. I ran to the nearest bedroom and pulled off the bi-fold closet doors. My friends did the same and we started putting them up against the windows to block the view into the home. These loud pounds on the windows and sides of the home got more and more intense and began happening all around the home which really made us believe there were multiple people outside tormenting us. We yelled out some obsentities and threats telling them to get the hell out of there. This went on literally all night. We were so scared that we didn't even try to leave. it was pitch black outside. With my truck being parked in the garage that meant that someone would have to manually open the garage door and hold it open long enough for us to drive out and then be exposed for a minute outside of the truck. We were so freaked out that was absolutely not an option. We removed hanger rods as weapons or whatever we could find. We ended up with a shower curtain rod as a weapon too although it was really light weight and cheap. After hours and hours of this nonstop horrifying ordeal the sun began coming up and it stopped. We waited until it was fully light outside and tore out of there as fast as we could. Later that afternoon I got up from taking a an since I hadn't slept at all that night. It was Saturday. The more I thought about that experience the more it pissed me off. I wanted to go back with my Remington 870 shotgun and sneak in on foot and see who is there during the day. Maybe it was some rogue homeless people that were pissed that we took their spot? I called up my buddies Zach and Derek. They were down to go back and spy on the property to see the bastards that did that to us. Zach snuck out his dads 12 gauge shotgun so now we had two. We had no intentions on using them but wanted some sort of protection in case it was some creepy Charles mansion type people. By the time we made it back out there it was basically dusk which would give us cover with it getting darker. We went back to the house after parking 1/4 mile down the road and sneaking in on foot. We could not believe our eyes. The entire house had been absolutely destroyed. Every window broken out, every door kicked in and laying on the ground. The garage door we had opened to pak inside laid broken on the floor of the garage. we peaked inside the house and the amount of destruction inside looked like it would have taken a group if grown men hours to do. This house was 100% destroyed. Destroyed to the point that nobody would even think about trying to stay there. Broken glass was everywhere. All of the bedroom doors were broken right off the hinges and laying on the ground. The drywall had so many holes smashed through it. The ceiling fan in the dining room was ripped down. It was so insane we could not even believe what we were looking at. how could this be the same immaculate place we had stayed the previous night. At that point we were really pissed off. The gravel driveway continued up through the trees and towards the hillside which was basically the base of the mountain. We decided to go see what was up there. We walked a little ways further being as stealthy as possible and I immediately hated what I saw. There were two old mobile homes, very similar to what I had seen a few years before on the mountainside where I had that horrifying encounter with the black creature. The moon wasn't full but was providing a decent amount of light. We decided to check out the two trailers to see if it looked like someone had been squatting in them. Feeling brave being armed we checked them out, They were in terrible condition and disgusting inside. Leaking roofs and water damaged everything along with tons of sharp glass from all of the broken windows. They no longer had the wood steps to the front door so he had to hop down about 3' back into the ground. No sooner had we jumped down and walked out away from the trailer I heard that weird whistle again. Just as I looked up towards the hillside in front of us I caught a glimpse for just a split second of something that appeared to be tall and black. Just as I started realizing that someone, or something was like 30' in front of us a large boulder/rock about the size of a medium watermelon sailed right past my head in between my two friends. The strength it must have taken to throw a rock that large and heavy was unimaginable. Had it struck any of us it would have most likely been fatal. I didn't even think twice and started unloading my shotgun at where briefly saw this figure. I unloaded all 5 rounds and immediately started pulling more from my front pocket. My friends were completely shocked and began yelling at me saying just to run. We did, we ran away as fast as we could and didn't stop until we reached my truck a ways down the road. We never told our parents or anyone else. My friends were kind of mad at me for shooting at the figure even though that rock would have probably killed one of us had it hit us in the head. I didn't regret shooting at it, he, whatever it was. I really hoped I got a piece of him in return. We NEVER went back to that property or even the area in general. Nothing about that mountain felt safe anymore. 28 years later, as I have been replaying these experiences over and over since listening to your podcast I have started to research that area. i pulled up google earth and went as far back with the dates as I could which was the late 90's. I did this one night with my two oldest kids after telling them the story. It was actually very shocking to see how close each of these encounters happened from one another. As the crow fly's, the first two encounters happened only within 1/2 mile or even slightly less from one another. The last encounter/incident has only 1.5 miles away but also right at the base of the mountain where there were thick orchards and oak trees. Very interesting to say the least. Anyway, If you made it this far reading all of this I appreciate you hearing this experience. I have honestly been so reserved for so long in sharing these stories with anyone because I don't want to seem crazy or weird. But after listening to your countless episodes I realize that there are so many others that have had strange experiences that cannot be explained. We ditched California and moved to East Idaho 11 years ago. I spend a significant amount of time riding dirt bikes exploring our local mountains on remote singletrack. I ride with a cool group of buddies. We have seen wolves, black and brown bears, and mountain lions, but nothing even remotely as scary as what I encountered in our little local mountain range in southern California. Go figure."     Link to Sasquatch and the missing man  

It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind and it either heard me or smelt me and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up and that shocked me. They don't make people that that big. The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything moves like that in my life. They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language and they were chuntering away back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forward.

I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet that what I saw were bears. Why don't what he were putting? Jesus Christ, you bet. Can't get somebody out here. out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about six foot nine. I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-uh. This is Colonel Nathan R. Jessa, commanding officer Marine Ground Forces, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And you are listening to Sasquatch Chronicles. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show plan for you.

We will be speaking to Kip. And Kip grew up in Corona California. And in the late 90s, he had three separate encounters, all kind of in the same area, very near to this property. And I'll let Kip go into it. Tonight at 5 p.m. Pacific Standard Time, Tony Merkel is doing a virtual premiere of his new film, Sasquatch and the Missing Man. There's also a Q&A after party, which I'll be attending. And links are below if you'd like to attend. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows.

Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Kip to the show. Kip, thanks for coming on. I sure appreciate it. Thanks, Wes. Yeah, man, I'm happy to have you. And I know your encounters took place in the late 90s in Corona, California. And we're going to go into these three different incidences that happened to you.

But prior to your encounters, I realize it's the late 90s. But what was kind of your feelings about Sasquatch before any of this happened to you? You know, other than, you know, seeing it maybe on TV or, you know, we always see some blurry video of him streaking across some riverbed. I never really even thought about it. I never even thought it would be something that would be in California. It always seemed like it would be a really wooded area. And I didn't know really anything about it other than just, you know, it's probably some made-up story, but it seemed kind of cool.

And, you know, I always just pictured it kind of like that Harry and the Henderson's movie. You know, this kind of goofy, big. hairy dude that is actually pretty friendly. So I really didn't really have an opinion on it. It was just something I didn't think much about. Well, if you would, Kip, kind of walk me into this first encounter. I know, again, we're going back to the late 90s in California. What were you doing?

And what happened? Kind of tell me a little bit about this property. So Corona was, it was honestly, I mean, when you think about California, It doesn't sound like it would be a good place to grow up anymore. But Corona actually was a pretty cool place to grow up in the 80s and 90s. So above the actual city, we had a mountain range that was behind the city. And that separated Corona from like the coastal community. So if you went all the way to the top of the mountain, you could look over the other side and see Irvine and you can see the ocean.

And on a clear day, you could see Catalina Island way out there. So it was kind of a cool spot. And in between where all the houses stopped, it was just miles and miles and miles of orchards. And so there was everything from grapefruit to avocados to lemons and everything like that. And so as a kid, it was a really cool place because, you know, we'd take detours on our BMX bikes and cut through these groves and climb up these windmills. and it was just kind of a part of life. It was really fun to explore. You'd find creepy abandoned houses out in the middle of these groves.

And, you know, we would crawl all over those things and play hide and seek and have lemon wars. We'd find the lemons on the ground and just chuck them at each other and try to eat each other. So that's how kind of I grew up in this area. We were outdoors a lot, you know, always hiking this mountain range as a family on Sundays and stuff like that. So the first and first. encounter, I'm assuming what I would call an encounter, it was not long after I got my driver's license. So I was 16 at the time.

And I just got what I felt was the coolest truck in the world. And so we would always pile. It was just a single cab Chevy truck. And we'd all pile in this truck. And we'd just go all over the town. Well, we loved going up towards the orchards because a bunch of the older high school kids would go up there and make out. And so we, I always had this spotlight in my truck. I got it from Walmart. It was like a 12 million candle power or whatever. And we thought this thing was amazing.

So we'd roll up with the lights off behind this parked car with steamed up windows and we turned the big spotlight on and see them freak out. We just got the biggest kick out of this. So that's, that's what we did a lot. So we knew all these little roads and little access points all over these orchards. Well, about this time, Corona was starting to grow like crazy. And so all these orchards were just starting to get leveled for housing developments to be built, which was a real bummer. So it kind of felt like, oh, man, our cool town is changing a lot. We're losing it.

And so, this is probably a half a mile or maybe a mile from my house. They had just leveled a huge area of orchards. And right at the base of the mountain, there was a large canyon. there. And as we were driving up in there one day, I noticed they'd installed all this barbed wire chain link fence just blocking off this massive area. And they had all these signs up saying that there was a stormwater project by like the Army Corps of Engineers.

And it would there. So essentially they were building this underground tunnel to take care of all the water that would come out of this canyon. So it didn't wipe out this neighborhood when it was built. Well, to us, that just seemed like the coolest thing in the way. world like, are you kidding me? We have this massive underground tunnel in our town that they're building. And I don't know if it was because it was like a military project. I don't really know much about the Army Corps of Engineers, but they had like an on-site security person and they

would cruise around in this car. And I mean, it seemed kind of serious. And we thought, all right, well, we're going to get in there, explore this, whether that person's there or not. We'll find a way to to sneak in there and not be detected. So I spent some time kind of doing some recon on the area. You know, after school, I drive up in there and kind of look around like, okay, I think we can get up into this dirt road. We'll park far away and walk in and, you know, have our little cheap Walmart headlamps. And we'll get into this tunnel and just see where it goes underground.

And so that was kind of our plan one Friday night. I had two of my buddies with me, Carl and Aaron. And so that was our plan. We were kind of excited about it. You know, we talked about it at school. And all right, tonight we're going to sneak into that place. So we hopped in my truck. And, you know, this is probably 9 o'clock at night, if I remember correctly.

And we drove up to the upper part of our town. And we kind of got onto these little back roads and some of the areas that they were starting to tear the trees down and they had a huge pile of dead orange trees that they'd already ripped out. And so that looked like to us the perfect place to kind of hide the truck behind because you couldn't see it from the road. So anyway, we parked the truck. We walked past all this heavy equipment. They had, you know, big bulldozers and loaders and graders and like those construction

site water tanks that they bring in. And just behind that, there was the bar. wire fence. And so, you know, this is like a probably a seven foot tall fence and then it has like three strands of barbed wire on the top. And so that's probably like 18 inches more as far as height goes. So it was kind of tricky to get over, you know, the three of us. And we were pretty athletic guys. It's not like we had never jumped a fence. You know, it was like, oh gosh, how do we get over this thing without getting tore up? So we made our way over the fence. And by this point, it transitions into avocado trees, which even in the daytime, they're super dark.

They're just a dark tree and leaves everywhere. And so we were trying to get through here without making too much noise. We eventually get down to this tunnel. And it was kind of underwhelming. We get down in there and there was nothing really cool about it. It was just drying concrete and scaffolding and some empty beer cans and, you know, construction stuff. And so we kind of checked it out for a bit. And we're like, well, this was kind of a disappointment.

This was kind of lame. And so once we felt like we'd seen it, we just decided to leave. And I don't know. We were probably there for a good hour, hour and a half. So we start making our way back towards the truck. No sooner had we climbed back over that barbed wire fence that we see these headlights coming. And we just thought, oh, crap. How did the security guard know that we were right here?

Like, we were so, no one even knows where we are. So we duck behind some of the heavy equipment. And as this car is approaching, we can see like, oh, that's not the security guy's car. That's like a little two-door Honda Civic. And so the car kind of turns with the road. And as it's passing, we can see it didn't have any tinted windows. Like all of the windows were just clear. You know, sometimes you'll see cars that have like zero tent from the factory.

So we could see right into this car and it was two girls. So of course, me and teenage boys were like, oh, man. I wonder if they're hot, you know. And so we kind of watched them just keep driving. And we had already been all the way up to that road. And I know exactly where it went. It went up and made a hard 90-degree turn left. And then this was kind of the area that they were doing a lot of the work.

So they had leveled a bunch of the trees. And eventually the road just came to an end. And there was kind of a bunch of dirt pushed up where the road stopped. And you could not go any further. There was no way to do it. So you'd have to do it. you turn. And so anyway, we kind of got back to the truck and we're just talking and stuff. And some time had gone by. We're like, man, I can't believe those girls have not come back down the road yet.

I wonder what they're doing up there. Maybe they're, you know, drinking or smoking weed or whatever. And then, I don't know why. We just kind of felt like, uh, maybe we should just go look up there, just make sure everything's fine because it's really odd that they would be back way back in this area where we are. actually further back than where we were. So we got in the truck and started driving up the road. It's just a gravel road that they created. And no sooner we turned left at that kind of 90-degree turn in the road. We looked and we could see as soon as my headlights hit the reflectors in their cell lights,

oh, there they are. They're way down there, probably 100-something yards. And all of us, so we're all sitting in the front seat together because it's just a single cap truck, we noticed something was behind the car. And we all kind of looked at each other and we're like, what the heck is that? And it looked like, you know, either like a black figure or I don't even want to say a bear, but that was like the first thing that came to our mind was like, oh my gosh, there's some type of creature, a bear, something black seemed like it was crouching down behind their car.

And so my buddy Aaron grabs that spotlight, rolls the window down, and puts his hand out the window, and we're shining it down the road ahead of us. And we see this thing a little more clear. You know, we're probably about 100 yards now away. And it is not registering. I mean, all of us are like, dude, what is that? Like, what are we looking at? What the heck is this thing? And so I start accelerating a little bit quicker because we're like, dude, we got to see what this is.

Like, there's something either there behind the car doing something weird or there's something literally hiding behind their car. And so I kind of hit the gas and we got going. And we were probably about, you know, we closed about half the distance. So we're probably 50 yards away. And we've got this light on it. And this thing, even thinking about it all these years later, you know, this is like 1996, 1997-ish, I can remember exactly every single thing about, like, that night.

I mean, the temperature, the air, the way it smelled with the windows down, like, whatever that, whatever we experienced just etched this so deep into my mind. But we saw this black figure, you know, hunched over. So it was, its back, I would say, was level with, like, the surface of the trunk or the top of the trunk. and it it was so weird it was so dark it almost looked like a three-dimensional shadow like we could tell it it kind of

rotated towards us you know because it could see us coming but like you really couldn't make out any features and we were close enough that I feel like we should have seen you know a face or or something that was pretty noticeable and then it

stood up and this thing was massive it was probably eight and a half or nine feet tall and it wasn't and this is where I'm not quite sure what this would even fall under as far as categories of these types of creatures

just because I'm not super familiar with it but it wasn't this massive hulking frame that you hear about of a Sasquatch or Bigfoot it was tall it was definitely that tall it seemed to have fur but it seems shorter

and very sleek and athletic. I mean, this thing, it was lean and it looked super fast while being like really strong. So I guess if you're going to compare it, you know,

not some massive bodybuilder, but more of like a pretty jacked sprinter. You know, some of those guys you see that sprang, I mean, they were ripped and they look like they hit the weights, but they're super fast and lean. That's kind of the build this thing had.

and we literally, like, freaked out. Here we are, we're, you know, closing the distance on this thing. We're staring at it. It is right in my headlights and this bright spotlight. And we are literally staring at something. We have no idea what to even say that this thing is other than absolutely horrifying. And we start freaking out like, what the heck is that? And, you know, we're not like yelling the same thing.

Like, what is it? What is it? Like, we're all saying the same thing to each other. And we're just like panicking. And so I, you know, we're getting pretty close at this point. And, uh, I mean, this was probably just a matter of seconds, really. But this creature turned towards us for just a second, took two big strides and literally vanished right before our eyes. Now, you know, looking back to when we were 16, to us it seemed like, where did it go? So about 15 feet off the road, there was another one of those barbed wire fences. In between the edge of the gravel road where they were parked, the girls were parked, there was like a little indentation, you know, for some drainage. It was kind of a small ditch like two feet deep.

And we just thought, did it just dive into this ditch? Did we not see what it did? you know, maybe it dove down into the ditch and then, you know, somehow squeezed under the fence. On the other side of the barbed wire fence, they had already wiped out that whole area from where we were all the way to the base of the mountain, which was probably like 500 yards across. I mean, there was nothing. It was just dirt. And so we come to a complete stop. We're all out of the truck.

We've got, you know, my buddy's standing kind of on the floorboard of the truck as high as he can get. and he's shining the spotlight out of this field. And we're thinking, okay, well, we just barely saw it. So it should only be like 20 or 30 feet away, probably running. And dude, there was nothing in the field. I mean, no sign of this creature that we saw. It literally had just disappeared. And that floored us.

I'll be honest. It was, I mean, how do you explain that, you know? So we're super animated. we're running around. We're talking loud. I mean, we're, we just saw something so bizarre and so scary. Well,

in the meantime, these girls are still sitting there in their car, and they just think we're probably some psychopaths because we roll up on them super fast, slide to a stop, shining lights, we're yelling around, and they just peeled out of there,

and they didn't seem too happy with us. One of the girls was like, you know, what's your freaking problem? And we were like, whatever, just get out of here. You seem fine.

We got something to investigate now. So we stayed there for probably, I don't know, probably 30 minutes, 35 minutes. And then we were just like, let's get out of here. This has such a weird feeling to it. This doesn't seem like something we should be trying to pursue right now. So we rushed back to my house. And my dad, you know, by this time, it's like 1 o'clock in the morning. So my dad is sound asleep.

And we just thought, we have to go talk to my dad. a little backstory on my dad. He grew up in Star Valley, Wyoming, which actually is not too far from where I currently live in Idaho. And hearing all his stories growing up, I mean, he was a farm boy, he grew up hunting, he was in the mountains outside of Star Valley all the time. When he was like late in his teens and early 20s, he was guiding hunters on horseback. And he was just like a killing machine as far as, you know, hunting. And so we just thought, man, if anyone's ever encountered something weird, it's got to be my dad. He's spent so much time in the back country, like really remote, you know, only accessible by horseback. So we run in, dad, dad, dad, and we wake him up from a dead sleep and I'll be right down. So he comes downstairs and he's like, what is going on? And all of us are trying to, you know, we're talking over each other, trying to get this story out. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

we all sit down at the dinner table he said all right guys something happened I get that so like what happened like something seems like you're terrified so we told him the whole story and I think what kind of disturbed me the most and I should have asked him years later

I just never thought about it I was expecting him to be like oh I don't know about that you know maybe you saw this or maybe you didn't see that and he just was very quiet, listened to our whole story. And then his response was, I have no doubt that you guys saw that tonight. And he said, for whatever reason, I think sometimes, for whatever reason, I don't know, but I think sometimes we are able to see something that typically we shouldn't probably see.

And so he had made mention of maybe this thing just happened to come to this side of the veil and you saw it and then it just vanished. He's like, I don't really know, but all he told us was do not go back up to that area and do not try to pursue this thing. And we were like, yeah, Roger that. We are not going

to go look for that. Heck no. And so that was kind of the end of that experience. And I mean, still to this day, 20-something years later, 27 years later, every now and then,

couple years. So these three buddies, one's still in California. My other buddy lives in Virginia. And we talk, you know, probably a couple times a year. And it's never failed through all these years. Someone will bring it up like, dude, do you remember? It's like, of course I remember that black thing. Are you kidding me? And I think we always bring it up just to make sure like, okay, I just want to make sure after all these years that somehow I'm not crazy, like thinking that we saw that. And so we kind of reinforce it, you know, every time we talk to each other. But yeah, man, that was a really creepy thing to see.

And I have no explanation for that. Yeah, it's a very strange encounter. I wanted to ask you, were you guys able to see details like hair and that sort of thing? Or was it more like a black shape? Yeah. And so that's really the weird part was, like I could tell it had like a short fur and it looked really sleek.

It didn't look all, you know, overgrown and, you know, like turning into dreadlocks and unkept. Like this thing looked super well kept, almost like the coat of a black lab, you know, like not a super long coat, but like a tight, sleek black coat. The weird thing was, you know,

we're shining this light on it and it was like the, like the fur or whatever just seemed to almost absorb the light. Like it didn't, even though we could tell it was moving and changing direction, it was, I don't know. I don't know if it was, you know, some way that it helps camouflage itself, you know, able to kind of absorb the light so you're not seeing a, you know, a hard shine off of its coat. I thought about that a lot. And the really weird part was even when we could tell it had turned to look at us, none of us remember seeing a face.

It was just like this, I mean, we could see enough detail that it's like, okay, that thing's covered in hair. But I don't remember seeing like, you know, a big nose or lips or, you know, gray skin. Like, you know, sometimes you'll hear about, you know, on someone that's seen a Sasquatch. it was almost like it was just really hard to see any detail. It just seemed to almost blend together. But it wasn't, I mean, it wasn't like seeing a ghost or something. It was like definitely something was there. I don't know.

I've never known what to make of that or even how that would even work. I've heard about this in other encounters. Eyewitnesses will say it's almost like it absorbed the light. And when you're shining a light on it, it doesn't really light it up like it should. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's really bizarre. And so I guess recently, so my son and I, we bought like this 195 Buick to kind of work on together as a father and son and restore it. And this thing's all rusted and a million different colors.

We thought, you know, let's just primer this thing black and just have it looks a little bit cooler. And that, it was like that. It was almost like a matte black. because when we just painted that car, I mean, there's no shine off of it. If you were to park that on a street, I mean, someone was so easily hit it because nothing reflects off of it.

And that was kind of like a similar thing. You know, it was like nothing was reflecting off this creature. It was not shiny, but you could see a little bit of detail to say, okay, that definitely is covered in some type of hair. But it seemed really short and, you know, like a really tight coat. that it had on it.

I want to get your opinion on what you think the creature was actually doing. You know, it's kind of creepy. It's behind this car with these two girls. And you're having a chance to really get a look at this thing and it's body language. Do you feel like something malevolent was going on or about to happen? I thought about that a lot, actually. So I think a couple things. I think most nights...

Well, I don't know. I mean, like, I think normal, you know, it's probably the normal reaction when you, when you see someone going, when you already know the area like, well, that's a dead end road, they're going to have to come back out. And when they don't come, it makes you wonder, like, I wonder what's going on. But it was really bizarre because at one point, I mean, we were literally just going to leave. And we all kind of at the same time felt this impression like, yeah, maybe we should go check on those girls and just make sure everything's cool. And it wasn't like it was one person's idea. It was like all of us kind of felt like, yeah, we should probably go check on them real quick, you know?

And I don't know if that was some type of prompting or inspiration because something, you know, really dark was about to happen. But I tell you what, I mean, when we came around that corner, I don't think it could have been a second too soon because, you know, if that thing was curious, I mean, it was behind the car. I think observing them, probably just watching them through the back window. And they were absolutely clueless to it. I mean, they had no idea this thing was behind their car.

The thing that scared them the most was us. And it's kind of embarrassing to say that. It's like, no, we're helping you out. But they thought we were the weirdos, you know? And I guess we didn't really care because we just saw something really terrifying. And that was definitely the most important thing at the moment. I've thought about this a lot, especially since I found your podcast and been listening to all these stories. This area, you know, it's kind of like the perfect environment.

You've got this really, really thick kind of variation of trees, groves. You've got avocados, which are high in fat nutrients. You've got vitamin C everywhere with grapefruits and lemons and oranges. So you've got all of these food sources. And then there's deer. There's, I mean, there's all kinds of animals in the area, too. people's pets probably and then you've got the mountain right there and i just thought after all these years later i thought man what a perfect place if you're if you're going to be a creature and and there's

not like there's no homes up in these orange groves i mean it's kind of the perfect place to be able to to travel unseen and and just kind of hang out there's water that comes out of the canyons so i don't know you know, if it was in the area and it sees this lone car come up and, and was curious, I don't, I just, I don't know. But the thing that throws me off is the way it vanished. It was just like, what? Like, how does that even happen? Just into thin air, just literally, like in a millisecond, just gone right before our eyes.

Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that and kind of get your take on that whole thing because, you know, these creatures are fast. a blink of an eye, they can be gone. You know, but I've also heard of them vanishing as well for many eyewitnesses. And do you think it actually vanished because you guys went over by the field and were kind of looking for it? Yeah. I mean, that was the only explanation we could think. You know, I've never, never seen anything vanish ever. Neither had my friends.

And so later, you know, as we all talked about this, were like, that thing had to have just, like, when it disappeared and we thought, oh, well, maybe it dove down into the bottom of the small ditch really quick and we just somehow didn't notice it, you know, we started making all these more rational explanations like, well, maybe it did dive down and squeezed under the fence. But we should have seen it almost instantly. You know, as close as we were with this spotlight, looking across as wide open, I mean, there was nowhere for it to go and not be seen. And so that's where I'm like, no, I really, I really think that thing somehow just vanished. And it was absolutely the weirdest thing I've ever seen. And you probably said it in the beginning, Kip, and I might have missed it. But at the closest point, how close were you to the saying?

I mean, when it took those few strides towards the edge of the road and disappeared, we were probably 20 yards. I mean, close enough that I feel like, oh, yeah, I could throw a rocket that thing and hit it, like, most likely hit it, you know? I mean, close enough to see the detail on it, but obviously we weren't like, you know, 10 feet away. Yeah, 20 yards is still pretty close, man. And, you know, I think it's odd that you, all of you guys had the intuition, like, let's just go up there and check on them. You know, some people listening to that might go, well, it's pretty girls. but, you know, you guys were having, all of you were having that feeling of like, let's just go up there and make sure everything's okay.

It's kind of weird that intuition kicked in right at that moment. I know eight or nine months later you had another incident. Was it in the same area? You know, I didn't realize it at the time. Just this year, it's really funny kind of going back. So the way I found out about your podcast. was, so I have a company that we do property inspections on like commercial buildings or homes that people buy, you know. And so I was up in the mountains that we have here called Island Park.

And I was doing an inspection for a lady. She was super cool. And so we'd kind of hit it off. And we were talking about all kinds of stuff, how much we don't trust the government. Like all this stuff. And I'm like, man, this lady is totally awake. And she is on board with everything. everything that I am. And so she started telling me about a Sasquatch encounter that she had in,

I think, Washington or Oregon. And she was like, yeah, you should check out this podcast. I was actually on the podcast. I'll have to go back and see what her name was. And I was like, oh, no way. So I wrote it down. And as soon as I got my truck, I pulled it up on Apple Podcasts. I'm like, oh, man, I'm going to check this out. And then I've been hooked ever since. So I've been thinking about these experiences, you know, a lot ever since then. And where I was leading with that was all this time later, I pulled up Google Earth because I was like, I've been thinking about these experiences a lot. And I thought, man, how far away was that second experience from the first one? Because it's kind of in the upper portion of the town where, you know, the orange groves

are fairly close to like the base of the mountain. And so I pulled that up probably a month ago. I was showing my two oldest kids. I told them the story. And again, they'd heard it before. I said, I want to show you guys where this happened. And so we pulled up Google Earth and we, you know, backdated it as far back as we could go, which I think was like 1997 was the latest, which was like the same year. And they were like, oh my gosh, I can't believe your town really was all orchards. That's awesome. So I said, all right, well, this one's here and this one's here. They were like a half a mile from each other. and I didn't realize it at the time because with that many orchards,

you know, it feels like everything was really far apart. And you couldn't just drive from one location to the next. You kind of had to come down and cut around and take this roundabout way. So it seemed further at the time, but now after actually looking at it on the map, I'm like, oh my word, that was actually

pretty close to the first encounter. At this time, my parents had just, we had like a boat, and they sold it and they were like you know what the boat thing's kind of a waste because we only take it out a few times a year so let's sell that and get a couple four-wheeler since we have this mountain behind the house and i was super excited about that and so i just once we got it it was a it was a Honda foreman is what the four-wheeler was so it's like a four-wheel drive more of a utility one and i thought it was cool had a winch on the front i mean i could get that thing almost anywhere so i'd been doing all exploring with it it was just like this new found sense of freedom i had I was just everywhere on that thing up on this mountain. Well, a girl that I was friends with, she actually lived really close to the base of the mountain. They had a super awesome house up in this area.

And she tracked me down at school, you know, this is high school. So this would be like our junior year. She was like, hey, my parents just got a four-wheeler. Do you want to take me out some time? And, you know, like we could go exploring and just go ride up by my house. And I was like, absolutely. That sounds awesome. So a couple days later, it must have been like on a Thursday or something, I loaded it into the back of my truck and headed over to her place.

And so we parked at her place and then just she got on hers and I got on mine. We just kind of went down the road a little ways. And it was a lot more rural up where they live. So they had like, I don't know, probably 20 acres and they had orchards on their property. And that just kind of all blended together with the rest. So it felt really secluded up there. And I wasn't super familiar with that area. So I was like, well, let's just maybe, you know, head down this road.

There's that big riverbed. We can kind of cruise up that and just see what we find. So that was kind of the plan. Well, we started making our way up this road. And it was kind of overgrown. And we're like, oh, yeah, let's go up here. So she's kind of following me. We're just kind of serpentineing our way through all these different orange trees.

And, you know, there's like a drainage ditch. So then you have to go up a little ways and cut across that. And we get way, way up into these groves. And we, the road kind of narrows, and then there's a gate. And we could not go any further. I mean, it was really well blocked off. And so we were kind of bummed out, like, dang it. So as we were sitting there looking at, you know, where the road went beyond the gate,

it went up a little ways. And then it started doing these really steep switchbacks up the mountain. And I was just kind of like, I have never seen this before. I wonder where that goes. Super intrigued by it. Well, just a few minutes later, we hear a truck coming up the dirt road and we're thinking, oh, crap, is this like the property owner? I'm pretty sure we're trespassing, you know?

Sure enough, it was this old guy, and he was super mad that we were in there. And he, you know, jumped out of his truck and was like, you should not be up here and kind of gave us the business. We're, hey, we're sorry. You know, we're just exploring. And I don't know if he saw me looking. that direction, but now after all these years, it kind of resonates different. But he said, and don't you even think about going beyond that gate up that road? You guys get out of here.

And I never, I didn't realize really what he had said until later. Well, in my teenage brain, I'm thinking, okay, dude, just because you're a jerk about it, I'll come back some other time and check this out. You know, I'm going to go see where that goes now just because you said something about it. So we kind of go back to her out. It was still fun, even though that guy yelled at us. So sure enough, you know, I come back a few days later and I am like on a mission. Like, I'm going to figure out a way around that gate and I'm going to go up that mountain up those steep trails and see where those go. I have no idea where they go. And after exploring so much of the mountain to find something new was like, it was really exciting to me because I'm like, I have no

idea where it goes. Like, who knows what's up there. So anyway, I get on the four-wheeler. I'm kind of down in this rocky riverbed, and I find a way to just kind of gun it up this really steep embankment, and it put me right on the other side of the gate. And so I was in. And I didn't know how long I was going to be out there. So I just had like a camel back and then a pocket knife and maybe a few snacks. I don't remember. And so I kind of checked out like the base of the hill. And there was really nothing cool there, just some old junky farm equipment kind of laying in the weeds. And so all it was left was to go see where the switchback road or trail, you know, it wasn't much wider than the four-wheeler. I just wanted to see where that goes. So I start on my way

up this trail. And a weird detail I'll share with you was, and I remember it was so vividly, there was a culvert that came, it was probably like a two-foot in diameter, you know, metal corrugated pipe. It came underneath the trail and enough water must have come out. out of this thing over the years that it kind of eroded the trail away around this pipe and it kind of dropped off into this little drainage ditch. And so it was kind of precarious. He had to really go on the edge with the four-wheeler trying not to slide down and fall down into this thing.

And so I kind of worked my way around that, started cruising up this mountain, just switch back, switch back, you know, going way up there. Well, the further up I got, there was kind of a ravine that was forming on the left side and it was just like an oak forest. There was a lot of oak trees in this area. And, yeah, I'm kind of looking at it like, man, those are some thick oak trees. And, you know, the ravine was not super deep, and it was maybe 30, 40 yards wide. The weird thing was, once I got up to the very, almost to the very top, the weirdest thing I could have never even imagined.

Still this day, I don't understand how these were even there. But there were like three of these really long, old single-werew. trailers from probably the 60s. They were like all silver and they were up on this mountainside. There was no way other than maybe some like massive military helicopter that could, I don't even, I just still, to this day, I have no idea how those even got up there. It was literally impossible to pull them on a trailer. And so I'm looking at these like, what the actual heck is this?

So I park right at the edge of the ravine where all the oak trees start. and I hike up a little ways and I check out this first one. It was pretty trashed. Nothing to really see in there. The other two trailers were kind of out on the point of the mountain. And so the only way to get to that was to kind of hike down through this ravine that was just completely, you know, covered with a canopy of these giant oak trees everywhere. So this is kind of where everything happened. So I go down through the ravine and even though it's broad daylight, it's pretty dim in there.

You know, it's really shaded. And there's probably, you know, six inches deep of just dead leaves that had fallen off the trees over the years. So I'm kind of trudging through that stuff. And I get out to the point and I check out the trailer, the one trailer. And I go in the other one. And, you know, I'm just thinking, how in the world are these up here? This is so crazy. And they were kind of gross inside.

You know, mice had been inside of them and the roofs had leaked. And they were just pretty gross. Windows had broken out. So I kind of looked at the... those for a little while. And then I thought, well, I want to make sure I'm back out of this place before it's dark. And so it was kind of getting later in the day. You know, I figured by the time I got all the way back down, the sun was probably going

to be close to the starting to set. And I just didn't want to try to find my way back out of that riverbed in the dark. So I started heading back to the four-wheeler. And this is the most disturbing part. And still to this day, Every time I think about it, it just gives me the chills. But I was walking through the leaves. And just as I was about to start kind of hiking up the hill to get up to the corner of the switchback where the four-wheeler was sitting,

I just got this super eerie feeling, this really dark feeling like, you are being watched right now. I mean, it was so heavy. It stopped me in my tracks. And the weird thing was, and I've heard this many times on your podcast from other people that you've talked to, was like this weird silence that takes place to where, you know, you hear birds chirping and, you know, insects doing sound, making sounds. And all of a sudden, it just like ceases and it's dead silent. That same type of thing happened. So I've got this creeped out feeling like I'm being watched and I'm down in these trees and it's kind of shepherds. a wee down there. And then all of a sudden, it is, I just noticed, like, it was like I walked into

like a sound deprivation chamber. I mean, it was like, you couldn't hear anything. It was just so quiet, I could just hear the ringing in my ears. And so in my mind, I'm thinking, like, what is this? Like, what is happening right now? This is a, this is weird. And so I just naturally kind of turned a little bit and looked at the hillside right in front of me. And it was probably, probably 25, 30 feet away. And it was kind of a steep hillside covered in leaves. And there was, I can literally picture it perfectly right now. There was a big gray boulder.

It was probably 10 or 12 feet tall. Then there was like a three foot gap where the hillside kind of angled down next to the boulder. And then beyond that, on the other side, there was like a large trunk of an oak tree. And this was so bizarre. are. So I just, for some reason, my eyes were drawn to that area and I'm looking, just looking around like, what is watching me? I can feel something is here watching me. And, you know, I think they're called a stereogram. It's those, oh gosh, when I was, when I was a kid, they used to always have these books. It'd be like this really fuzzy picture that looks like static or these weird images that are all blended together. And you kind of have to focus your eyes a certain way. And then all of a sudden, it's like, you're straining, straining, straining. And I'm, all of a sudden this 3D image, you know, you're like, oh, okay, it's a rubber duck or whatever it is, you know, it's a pyramid. Well, I'm looking at this hillside and it was like all of a sudden my eyes focused and

something caught my eye. There was a strange glint off of something really black and shiny. And as I'm looking, all of a sudden I realize there's a black creature leaning back against the hillside in between this tree. tree trunk and the boulder. And the glint that I saw was like a shine from, and I don't remember seeing any whites of its eyes, but I could see its eyes looked super black and they were really shiny. But I could tell it had moved slightly or its eyes had followed me because the sunlight

coming through the leaves or the tree branches shined off at a certain way. And it was like something, you know, like a shiny piece of like stone or, I don't know, I don't know, a piece of glass. It just caught my eye. And when I realized what I was looking at, I am pretty sure it was, if not the same thing, a similar thing to what we saw that previous time behind that car, that black figure. And it was just leaning against the hill watching me. And it was, I mean, fairly close.

And I have never felt so much fear. that I was actually what I would call paralyzed. I mean, I just sat there, and it was almost like I was in a trance. I was too afraid to move. I was a really fast runner. I was on our track team as a sprinter. And that was always like my best option. Like, if anything weird happens, I'm just running.

I'm just going to sprint. I can get away from probably almost anyone. I couldn't even do it. I was just staring at this thing. And the weird part of the experience, too, was like I could I could sense that this thing hated me being there it was not happy about it and it was almost like in my mind I could just I didn't hear a voice saying hey I hate you you know but I could I could really feel like oh my gosh just I feel so this thing hates me and it was

like projecting that on to me somehow I don't know how it was able to do that, but I mean, I felt it like to my core, like, I should not be here and this thing does not want me here. And it didn't make any type of movement. It was just kind of like, hey, I'm right here and I'm watching you. And I think I must have been so scared. I was almost holding my breath because I distinctly remember my lips started almost feel like they were tingling. And I remember thinking like, oh my gosh, how long has it been since I've taken a breath? And I kind of stumbled backwards and I was terrified to turn my back to it. But I was trying to clamber, you know, up this kind of slippery hill that's covered in leaves. And I was, all I could think is get away from this thing

as fast as you can. Like get absolutely as far from this, whatever this thing is, as fast as you can. And it, it was no, it was no small figure. I mean, it was, It was every bit as tall as that one that we saw, you know, eight or nine months prior. And it was so well camouflaged on this hillside. It just blended in with these shadows. But, you know, like that first experience, it was definitely covered in some type of short black, just super deep black fur or hair. And, man, I couldn't even move fast. It was like my body felt so weak.

It was like everything I could do to just get up this small little hill and get onto my four-wheeler and just try to get out of there. The scary thing was, it's not like I was out of the woods. So I finally got up the hill, jumped on it. You know, I'm frantically trying to start it. It's like I have two left hands or something. I'm just like, what am I even doing? I'm so freaked out. The trail was so narrow and the hillside was so steep.

could not just turn around. So I'm trying to back down this narrow trail while keeping an eye on the edge of the tree line because I just thought any second that thing is going to come sprinting out and just destroy me. I mean, it looked so powerful and fast, just the build of it. And so finally I get down to one of the switchback areas and it's just big enough to where I can kind of do like a 20 point little turn and get turned around. And so I am just hauling butt.

like dangerously fast down this narrow trail. And the thing that really freaked me out, not as bad as of course seeing it, but something that made me feel really unsafe was when I got down to that area where the dirt had washed out around the culvert, it was a narrow, narrow spot. On my way back out,

there was now a bunch of branches and brush piled up on that spot. Like, either that thing or something else, saw me go up and came up and was like, I'm going to block this guy's way out and slow them down a little bit. I don't know if it, I mean, I didn't see what did it or who did it, but I did not stop for it. I went as much on the hillside as I could,

and I just smashed partially through all these branches, and I was out of there and never, ever went back to that area. Yeah, who could blame you? And, you know, when the forest goes quiet, I, you know, if you've never experienced that where everything just shuts off like a light switch, it doesn't sound like that big of a deal. But if you're out there and you do experience it, it's very unnerving. It's almost kind of disorienting.

It gets so quiet. I wanted to ask you, when you were looking at this thing up on the hill, how far away from you was this thing? And what are some details that you remember that really stood out to you? Yeah, so it was, I mean, if it wanted to, it probably could have seized me in like a half a second. You know, I was probably, I'm trying to really think of how close I was to this. I think I'd said like 25 feet. It had to have been closer. I mean, it was close enough to where once I realized, once my eyes focused and I realized, oh my gosh, there's something right where I'm looking like all of a sudden I'm seeing it.

was it was so uncomfortably close that it freaked me out that I you know it's almost like you walk past a rattlesnake and you don't even notice it and you're like oh my gosh it was right there that thing could have bit me it was kind of that feeling way worse though and so yeah I mean it was it was close it was probably we'll even say 20 feet I mean really close and the the weird thing was and I don't know if this was like some type of mechanism has for camouflaging that we kind of experienced on that other other deal behind those girls car but it's fur i mean there was nothing shiny other than its eyes that i could tell were just intensely watching me and i could see as they would move you could see a little bit of light

reflect off of them but the fur just took i mean it just camouflaged and blended in so well with the shadows and just the different colors of shadows that it took me a moment to even notice it was there. But man, like you were talking about the forest, you know, it's really unnatural when something goes that quiet because there's so much background noise all the time. And that's when I realized, like, I think I'm in danger. I mean, this doesn't seem right.

And I just feel really something is definitely wrong right here. And my eyes were just kind of naturally drawn to this spot. And sure enough, it was like, that's where it was. And from this day, what stands out to you from looking at this creature? What are the things that really that you hold on to today? I know you had mentioned the eyes. Yeah, I was staring just right at its eyes. And so, you know, thinking back about it, it, I guess the build of it was definitely more like a man.

You know, it didn't have like an elongated head or didn't even have. have like what would be the face area didn't seem you know strangely out of proportion for like what we would seem you know what we would assume as like a normal shape didn't have like a cone head it was it was almost eerily like the shape of a man you know but it definitely was not a a man that's that's for dang sure um yeah i mean it's eyes and then it did i want to say it did have fur even on its face. Gosh, I just, I wish I could remember that more, but I was so fixed on these eyes because it was watching me and I was just staring right back at it.

Like, am I going to get kind of a heads up if it's going to do something drastic? Can I, you know, am I going to see its eyes look around? And it's, yeah, I mean, like I mentioned before, it was almost like it absorbed any light and it was just almost fuzzy looking. I mean, it almost was hard to make out any real, like, true detail to its face. I know that probably doesn't help as far as describing it. It was just such a bizarre experience, seeing something that was so unnatural looking. It was just so well blended in, but it was definitely right there. Yeah, and I understand what you mean.

A lot of times eyewitnesses will only focus in on one thing. And, you know, in this moment, I can imagine your. probably in shock and a little bit of tunnel vision. I wanted to ask you about when you said, you know, it hated you. And when you think of any other predator in North America, even when they attack you, I wouldn't say that they hate you. It's just part of, you know, the cycle of life. What was it about this creature?

What was it about the eyes that gave you the impression of this thing hates me? Do you think it was like intuition? Yeah, like I said, I didn't hear some type of strange voice, you know, actually telling me that in my mind. I didn't hear anything like that. But if it had somehow a way to, like, project that feeling of, I hate you and everything about you, I hate the fact you're here, it was, I mean, it did it super, super strong. I mean, it's very just the most powerful. I've never felt that hated. I mean, it was just like, oh, my gosh, I've made a huge mistake.

And it was, I mean, everything about it was, you should not be here. I don't want you here, you know, leave type thing. And I was so paralyzed with fear. I just, I couldn't even react. I mean, it was like I was just planted to the ground. Everything in my body was like, get going and I just I mean I felt super weak it was like my muscles had like a quarter of the strength and I don't know if you know if I was holding my breath or what was going on there

other than whatever it was I felt like I had not breath in a long time because my lips felt very tingly and that's kind of what snapped me out of just staring at this thing but yeah it was like it was a struggle to get from where I was up this small hill just to the four wheeler you know and after feeling that intense feeling of just being hated, I mean, I was just like, I have to get away from this thing right now. If that was it warning me, like, I'm going to heed that warning immediately. Yeah, you know, if you go with your gut, I think your gut is usually right 99.9% of the time. And if you feel like you're in danger, you should leave.

What's your theory on why it didn't attack you? I don't know, to be honest. Um, if it wanted to, I mean, I was so oblivious to it until until that quietness came over that area. I, I was, you know, just a happy go lucky, stupid teenage kid off up into this trespassing part of the hill. I shouldn't have been. So, I mean, bad on me for being up there. Um, I don't know why it could have, it could have got me and I would have never even known what happened. You know, I mean, I don't know if it was there when I walked in.

if it was, I walked right past it and didn't even notice it. And that's what creeps me out, too, is like, how long was that thing right there? Was it just watching me for the whole time I was exploring this area and looking in these trailers? You know, was it observing me that whole time? But I don't know why it didn't, I don't know why it didn't attack. Maybe it just didn't see me as a threat. You know, here I am just this young kid, you know, 16 years old. You know, had I been a grown man or had a rifle with it?

I don't know. I don't know what the difference would have been, but I'm super grateful that it projected some hate my way instead of something else, you know. It almost makes me wonder if there was more than the one creature that you saw. And I only say that because on your way out, the road was kind of blocked, you know, had put a bunch of debris in your way. I know you did kind of a Rambo first blood driving through the thing, but I've had that happened to me on two different occasions. And I never saw the creature do it, but it was very odd. One incident I'll tell you about, I was with my brother, and it was during the day, we had just driven past this one area. And Woody was like, ah, you know what, let's just go back. So we flip a U-turn and we head back.

I'm talking like 20, 25 seconds. And there was a huge log across the road. that log didn't fall. That wasn't like a tree that fell over that it was placed there. And again, I never saw the creature do it, but it's, there was no one else up there. It was just, you know, we got out of the truck and we had our guns with us. And my first thought was somebody screwing with us. And, but when you stop and really think about it, there's no one else up there. And it makes you wonder if that is a behavior to keep you in. or to prevent other people from coming in. The last incident I want to talk to you about, you were in high school or just graduating high school. Tell me about this incident. Kind of where did it happen and walk me into what happened? Yeah, so, yeah, we had just graduated.

And, you know, it was kind of that time in life where high school's done. Everyone's kind of making their plans, you know, so-and-so is going off to college, so-and-so. going here. So that was kind of the scenario with me and a couple of my good buddies. And we had a really, like our group of guys was a super cool group of dudes. And it was kind of like a bittersweet thing. Like, hey, go be successful.

But man, this is all coming to an end and you realize it. So my buddy Derek was going to be taken off to go to New Zealand for a few years. And so we were like, well, we should do something really fun before we all take, you know, you take off. And I wasn't going anywhere. I was just going to go to our local college. And then I was working for my dad who was a general contractor. So he had trained me to be a superintendent. So I was like my summer was packed just building some commercial projects that we were doing.

And I was pretty young to be doing that. But I've been doing it with him forever. So I wasn't really taken off. But a couple of the other guys were. So our plan was, hey, let's go off-roading and do some exploring. But we're going to go further. down. So Corona kind of

so the I-15 runs from like San Diego through Temecula all the way up. I mean it goes clear to Vegas and actually clear all the way up to my house from down there. It's like a straight shot. Well, you can follow the freeway down and that area was a lot

more untouched from all the house building that was going on. But it was definitely extending down that I-15 corridor where it was starting to. And so we thought, Well, we don't really know that area super well. Let's just go, you know, we'll just all get in my truck and we'll just go cruise around. Just go do something fun and go see what we can find down that way.

And it was, you know, kind of fun just because we didn't really know the area well. So, you know, who knows what we're going to find, just kind of like how I felt about those switchbacks. Well, you know, we're cruising down this road. We're now off the highway. We're on these little side roads that kind of meander through oak trees. And so actually it was a very beautiful area. and we're coming around this little curve and we look off to our right and there's a long gravel driveway and then a bunch of big pepper trees mixed in with all these oak trees and there was I don't even know why we noticed it but we're like oh man look at that house back there that's a sweet spot for a house and then we noticed the garage door was open and the front door was open and we're like well that's weird I wonder what's going on over there so I kind of backed up on the road and I road and we slowly drove up this gravel driveway just to kind of see like, who leaves their doors

open like that? I would never do that. It's California. So we kind of pull up past these pepper trees and we can see, you know, the home much better now. We're a lot closer. The trees aren't blocking our view. And it's pretty obvious to us like, oh, wow, this home's vacant.

Like, these people moved out of here. The garage doors open. It looks pretty much empty inside. The front door's open. There were a bunch of leaves that had kind of blown oak leaves and stuff that had kind of blown up onto the porch and even a little bit into the entryway of the home. And we felt like, how did we just stumble upon this nice house that's seemingly abandoned? Like, that's weird. So we parked the truck and, you know, we kind of pull up in this half-circular drive and we get out.

We're kind of, hello, you know, hollering around just to make sure, like, is this legit? Or is someone here? Like, this is weird. And we walked into the entryway of this house. And I mean, this place was immaculate. It was like the people had just moved out the week prior. And it hadn't been vandalized. It was clean inside.

And it was a nice house. It was, you know, probably like a 2,500 square foot, just single level kind of rambler back in the trees on, I don't know how many acres of land it had. But it was a really cool setup. So we all look at each other like, dude, we got to spend the night here. Like that would be so cool to camp out in this abandoned house. I don't know. Maybe that's just weird. Maybe we were weird, but to us at the time, that seemed really exciting.

And so that was kind of the plan, like, well, let's come back tonight. And I don't really know if we're supposed to be doing this. It's not our house, but there's no one here. So we kind of did like the typical teenage thing. Like, hey, I'm going to go stay the night at Aaron's house. Aaron says, hey, I'm going to go stay the night at Kipp's house. And then Zach says, hey, I'm going to go, you know, we're all staying at someone. house, in reality, we're camping in that house.

And so we kind of took a couple provisions. We each grabbed a sleeping bag and, you know, a pillow and try to sneak it out to the car without anyone really noticing. And we didn't, like, we had some camping gear, but it would have looked really obvious if we're taking a lantern, you know, the old style one. It wasn't like an LED or anything. It had those little, I don't even know what they're called, those little net things that burn on the white gas.

So we didn't want to take one of those. And so my buddy, his mom had a whole bunch of like Christmas decorations in the garage. He grabbed this massive red candle. And it had three wicks on this candle. It was like the size of like a coffee can. It was huge. Like, well, that should do it. And so we were like, that was our plan.

You know, we got everything, had the story straight. Like, all right, let's go head back out to that property. And, you know, of course, in the day, daytime, this place looked really cool. Well, now we're pulling up and it's like pretty much dark outside. And it was like the whole environment was different there. It looked different. It looked creepier.

It didn't look as nice. You know, it's just like typical. Like, ooh, now it's dark. It seems a little spookier. So we backed my truck into the garage. And it was one of the older style garage doors. That's wood and has the big springs on the sides. And so we backed my truck in and then, you know,

lowered the door down and let it shut. and we checked out the house a little bit more and we're like, man, this place is really a nice house. I cannot believe this is abandoned. Yeah, I'm sure what had happened was some large developer had bought up all that land through there and they were going to level that place, which eventually they did years later. So, you know, now we're in the house. We've got, we found, what was it, like the lid of a bucket or a paint can or something. We set that on the carpet. We put the candle on that.

And then we kind of had our sleeping bags all, you know, kind of sticking out away from the candle. So we could all lay in our sleeping bags, but our faces were kind of close to the candle. And, you know, it was actually a really cool evening. We were just talking and kind of reminiscing on cool stuff or stories or funny stories, you know, from just all the years of grown up together and all the funny stuff that we would do or see. and we were starting to get pretty tired. And I think I must have, I think we were all kind of to the point where no one's really talking anymore. You know, maybe a random comment like, oh yeah, that was cool.

And then it's like moments of silence because everyone's starting to fall asleep. And we hear this really weird whistle. And it wasn't like a typical, you know, whistle. It was kind of a lower pitch. and it was drawn out really long. And it snapped us all like, whoa, what the head? Did you hear that? You know, we're like, we're all looking at each other like, what was that?

And I'm thinking, like, was it some type of weird owl that would make this? Normally they screeed, but who knows? So we're just intensely listening and don't hear anything else. A couple minutes goes by. We hear another one. And now we're kind of like, is somebody outside? is someone whistling at us? And we are super exposed in this house.

You know, here we are in this front living room. There's no curtains. There's no blinds. There's nothing. It's just clear glass windows all around this room. And the candle's lit, so we're illuminated, but it's really hard to see, you know, out into the darkness. So we're kind of straining our eyes, like looking around. And all of a sudden, we something smacks this window so hard.

I mean, we literally leapt, almost leapt right out of our sleeping bags. We were, it was so loud. And that was kind of when like the night really turned into a nightmare. And so we were up on our feet like, oh my gosh, what the heck? And, you know, it would be a couple minutes of silence. And then another loud smack on another window. I think the next one was the kitchen window and then the dining room window. And so we're kind of deducing like, okay, someone's outside and they're walking around the house, just smacking the side of the house and the windows, obviously trying to scare us.

And we were, like, it worked. We were terrified. And it just got more intense and more intense. And so, you know, this was going on forever, I mean, hours. And it got to the point where then we started thinking, oh, my gosh, there's multiple people out there because there would be. a bang on one far end of the house, you know, back in some bedroom that we can't even see. And we would start making our way there. And then another one on the window of the living room that we were just in.

And it was like something was toying with us and scaring the living crap out of us. And so we, we start freaking out. We know it's like, oh, my gosh, there's, are these homeless people that we've taken over their, cool spot? And now they're super pissed off. you know, what's out there. We don't know. But we're scared.

And knowing the, you know, we could have just bailed, but we were so freaked out, we did not even want to, in order to open the garage door to get my truck out, like someone would have to be outside the truck, lifting up the garage door while we drove out and then run and jump into the truck. And it was like, no way. I'm not going to be that guy. Something's going to get me. So we started going to each bedroom and removing like the bifold closet doors. And we were sticking them up in front of the windows, you know, to where hopefully we're going to block its view or whoever and at least shield us a little bit. I mean, I don't know why it made us feel a little bit safer. Well, this whole thing continued on literally until the sun started coming up.

I mean, we did not sleep at all, like zero sleep. We were just freaked out. And whatever this or these things were, were just toying with us and tormenting us the entire night. And after the sun came all the way up, we waited for probably another hour. Everything was super still and quiet. And then we're like, we're going now. We got to get out of here. So we fling the garage door open.

My buddy holds it open. You know, I peel out of the garage. He just lets it run and slam shut, jumps in the truck, and we take off. Well, we, you know, I had to go home and mow the lawn and do some chores and stuff. And the more I was thinking about it, it was like, if there is someone up there that did that to us, you know, screw those guys. Who the heck, who the heck are they to do that to us? I kind of got really upset about it. I was mad.

And so I called up my friends. I was like, dude, I think we should go back. And I think we should parkway down the road and we should sneak into this and just watch the house. Like, we have every right to go hang out there as much as somebody else does. And the fact they did that to us, like, that's messed up. And surprisingly, my buddies were like, yeah, dude, let's go scope it out and we'll just see who's coming and going. And, you know, at least we'll know or maybe we'll confront them and whatever. Who even knows what we were thinking.

Well, we decided to go back and we watched the house for a little bit. And finally, we just drive all the way to the property. and I could not even believe what we saw. When we left this house, it was pristine. When we rolled back up to it, maybe five, however many hours later, this place was absolutely annihilated. Every window was broken out. The front door was broken completely off the hinges and laying in the entryway on the ground, on the tile.

The garage door that we had opened to pull my truck out was literally broken and laying on the floor of the garage. I mean, this was, the amount of destruction to this house was, like, mind-blowing. I mean, we could have gone in there with baseball bats and done our best and not even held a candle to what we were looking at, you know, as far as damage to this house. And that really pissed us off, too, because we're like, I hate those kind of guys that vandalize stuff that come do this, you know, to these places. Like, this could have been a cool place. So we're walking through the house, and it is, it is no longer a place he would ever consider. or even trying to sit down on the floor. I mean, there's broken glass everywhere.

There's holes in the drywall. The chandelier in the dining room was like ripped down out of the ceiling and just laying broken on the ground. Or it was a ceiling fan that it had over, I guess, where the table would have been. And we, I mean, we were just like in a state of shock. We could not believe that someone or something came in and just destroyed this house. and I don't know what prompted us, I think, pure anger, but we thought, all right, we were going to figure out who this is. And we went back again towards the evening time.

And at this point, I had my own shotgun. It was a Remington 870. And I thought, oh, man, I'm going to take that with me. If we're going to go back to this place knowing that someone just destroy this, and we're going to find out who this is. And I'm just, I'm not going to, I had no intention to, like, shoot someone. You know, I had no intention to do any harm, but I just wanted a gun, like, just to have, just in case you need it.

And so my buddy, Zach snuck his dad shotgun out. And so anyway, we had two guns. So we felt pretty, pretty safe. So we go back to this property. We park probably a quarter mile away down the road. We hike in, you know, we're kind of sneak underneath the low, branches of this pepper tree. We watched the house, nothing. And then we look at, okay, well, the gravel driveway continues up. Let's go a little bit further. Maybe someone's parked up there.

And man, I did not like what I saw. It brought back some like complete flashback of that hillside experience because as we got towards the top of the property, there were two of these old mobile homes up on this hillside. I mean, not super far up on the hillside, but they were there and they were in really rough shape. And I just thought, oh, my gosh, of course these would be here. And so we thought, well, maybe there's someone squatting in. And let's go, let's go look at the inside of these things. And so there was no step.

So we kind of had to, you know, jump up a couple feet. It was like probably three feet off the ground, get into it. And no one had been living in this thing. I mean, it was disgusting inside. It was in terrible condition. It was worse than those other ones I saw. All the windows had broken out, been broken out for probably at one. long time and water had been in there and it was just moldy and all the wood paneling was destroyed.

It was just gross. So we hopped back out of the first trailer and these trailers are probably 30 feet apart or so. We hopped down out of this one and we were walking across this gap. We just stepped out from the edge of the trailer and the hillsides right there. And something caught my attention. All of us. It stopped us dead in our tracks. It was like a small whistle.

And right as I looked up, for just a split second, I saw what looked like, you know, a large shadow of a man or that shape. And this boulder, I mean, probably the size of like a medium size, like a medium size water melt. I mean, like a sizable rock, probably like 30 or 40 pound rock, come sailing right past my head. I felt a little bit of wind on the side of my hair, and I could hear it just right past my head, and it went right in between my two friends. I mean, the strength that would have taken to throw something like this, it wasn't like it got lobbed. I mean, it was like a straight shot. I mean, it was coming out as like a cannonball.

And I immediately, I just didn't even think. I was like, oh, that thing tried to kill me. So I just start pumping rounds off into this, into this general area. And so my shotgun, I had a little plug to limit the amount of shells that could hold. And I took that out because it would only hold three if you're, you know, doing any type of bird hunting like ducks. And so I took that out. So it would hold five. And I'd boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

I mean, all five rounds. And it's only bird shot. So I didn't care. It was just like, at least it was something. And my friends are like, dude, what are you? No. You know? And I'm like, oh, heck no.

That thing just tried to kill us. and I had brought some extra shotgun shells and I had them in my front pocket and I'm starting to pull some out and they're like, no, let's just run! And so we sprinted out of there as fast as we could and we didn't stop until we got to the truck

and we never, ever went back to that area. Yeah, do you think you hit anything when you fired? I don't know. I honestly don't know. I had, when I heard that small, what I thought was a small, you know, just a very short, not even super loud whistle. But it wasn't a high pitch. It was definitely the same type of whistle that we had heard that previous night when that one, whatever this was, was outside.

It got my attention. And right when I looked up, I could swear. So it wasn't a full moon. But the moon was still putting off a decent amount of light. And so, you know, in the brush and the weeds, they weren't super tall. But right as I looked up, I know for a fact, I saw, you know, kind of this dark figure standing maybe, I don't know, 25, 30 feet away, just right there on the hillside. And right as I looked up, that's when I just felt the rock. I mean, I just felt the wind of that thing sail within inches of my head.

And if that rock had hit me, it would have killed me for sure. I mean, it was like, that was its intention. There was no doubt. And it almost hit my two friends. Luckily, they were spaced just enough. It skimmed my head and went right in between the two of them. And that's when I shot. But I honestly, I don't even know that I was looking.

I was just pulling the trigger and, you know, pumping the shotgun, jacking the next round into that thing. And I don't even know if I had my eyes open. I was just like, boom, boom, boom. Just so terrified. I started to reload. And yeah, I don't know if I hit it, though. And then, I mean, when I looked up, nothing was there. It was just gone.

I probably would have shot too, man. Even to this day, even being older, I probably would unload like you did. You know, you want to throw a rock at me and, you know, F around and find out. And I probably would have unloaded the shotgun too. Because, you know, in your mind, you don't know, you're thinking maybe someone's trying to kill you because you're right. If that rock would have hit you, we probably wouldn't be talking. I want to go back to the home for a moment. You know, when they were coming up, slapping the house and hitting the windows,

and I realize all this happens very quickly and you're under duress, you're under a lot of stress, and you're worried about your life at the moment. But when all that was going on, did you guys ever get a glimpse of what was actually hitting the home? we saw absolutely nothing and it whatever this was and i'm going to go out on the limb and say maybe it was that same type of you know creature whatever this thing was um i think it could see us so clearly inside and you know how it is if you're in your home at night you've got your your lights on it's bright you can't see three feet outside of your your own window unless you know if it's really dark outside. And I'm sure it was just watching us. You know, here we are freaked out.

We're looking one way. And then it hits another window the opposite way. And we, I mean, we felt like we were in a fishbowl and this thing was absolutely toying with us. It knew which way we were walking. It would hit the opposite side of the house. But what became very alarming, you know, at first we thought, okay, it's either we're thinking person. You know, it's just the more natural thing to think. But when it started happening all around the house within seconds of each other, that's when we thought, oh my gosh, there's multiple people outside. The thing that makes me, you know, later think, no, that was not a person was the ability that this thing had to throw that rock, that heavy, huge rock as hard as it did. I mean, there's no way a person, a normal human

could do that, not even like a really, you know, like a strong man. I mean, no way. This thing, it would be more of a shot put type throw. This thing was thrown with such power and it was so fast through the air. I felt the wind, you know, just go right by my head. It was weird. It just toyed with us all night. It was like it could watch us.

And as soon as we'd go to one room, it would hit the other side of the house. And it, I mean, it just, it was probably having the time of its life. Watching us almost cry. you're so scared. I wanted to ask you, Kip, and I was curious on your thoughts on this. You know, over the years, I've talked to many eyewitnesses that, for example, were run out of their campsite. They'll leave everything there.

They take off. And then the next day, they'll come back, and their campsite is completely trashed. Everything's thrown around. It's almost like someone threw a tantrum. You'll hear in cabins and other places like that. but it's odd behavior to me, you know, because the way people describe it, it's almost like this thing was so pissed and throwing such a tantrum. It just trashes everything.

And, you know, you guys are inside this home and it's tormenting you, but it doesn't confront you. And when you guys leave, it trashes a place. What are your thoughts on that behavior? Have you thought about that over the years? Yeah. actually I have. I'm glad you asked that.

So we wondered that, you know, me and I'm like, why would someone do this? Like this house was super cool and nice. Why would they come back? You know, thinking about this from the perspective of, okay, maybe it's this black creature. You know, I suspect that this thing's whole environment

is getting destroyed by the day. And, you know, all these trees are getting level. everything's changing and it's probably pissed off and then here we are up you know in its area and we're staying here and it probably is just so sick of people I'm just this is just my opinion that is probably like I'm going to wreck this place to where you will never come back here this will never for now on this will never be a place that any person is going to want to come hang out because it is so trashed that's the only only thing. thing I can think of.

Yeah, that's kind of an interesting take, Kip. You know, trash a place so no one else comes back or I guess send a message, you know, that sort of thing. What's weird is you'll find reports of these creatures living in abandoned homes or old barns that really no one uses anymore. And I feel for you, man, I mean, these are three scary encounters for sure. It makes me wonder if that first one that you saw was a part of all three of these. Because I know from your email, this last incident was only about a mile and a half from where the other two incidents happened.

I mean, it's all basically in that same area. I want to go back for a moment on the, I believe it was the second encounter where he ran into the old man and he was kind of yelling at you guys. you better not go back there, you know, that sort of thing. I guess now being older, hearing you recount it, to me, it didn't sound so much like a threat. It sounded like a warning. Do you think that old man knew that they were back there? I think there's probably a good chance because, you know, it's weird. When you have a really scary experience or something that sticks with you, you know, you almost as you dissect it, you're like, oh my gosh, I totally forgot this guy said that.

Like when he was yelling, he had said this. And when he, now thinking back when he specifically said, and don't even think about passing this gate and going up that road, you know, now I look back and I'm like, man, maybe he knew like, no, this is not a place you want to be. Do not come back, especially up that road. you know my tiny little teenage brain translated that to okay there must be something really cool up that road so heck yeah i'm coming back but i i've wondered if maybe he knew what was up and was like trying to do us a favor like i'm going to run these kids off make them think they got scolded but you know make sure that they don't come back because it's it's probably just not even safe yeah that's kind of what i got from it from listening to you recount this incident with the old man I mean, it sounds more like a warning. I mean, he did it in kind of a dick way. He totally was. And that's what I thought was like,

grumpy old dick, you know? Like, he just seemed like the typical, just old angry guy. Of course we were on his property, but, you know, we weren't hurting anything. And that's a, like knee-jerk reaction was,

oh, we just got yelled at because he was mad we were up here. But I'm kind of along the lines of what you're saying. It's like, I think maybe he was, he kind of had a he knew maybe what was up in that area and you know someone that lives in that area gosh I would love to the whole city has changed so much now it's unrecognizable from what it used to be I mean all of these orchards are 100% gone and it is houses and golf courses and

big thoroughfare roads I mean when I was down in California a couple years ago it broke my heart when I drove through corona it was kind of fun like oh we'll go see my house I grew up and we'll go see. I was just like, what the heck? I don't even know where I am in this town. It doesn't even look the same. All those areas are just 100% wiped off the map. So I don't know if, you know, maybe whatever was living in that area is just now long gone,

but it would have been really interesting to have gone back, you know, that same year or just a short time after and start asking some people that live around there. Hey, have you ever experienced anything? because how could you not? I mean, if in three years I had three experiences up in almost the same area, I would think that anyone that lived remotely near there would maybe have, you know, seen something or heard something. Usually in situations like these, the locals know.

And that's where you're going to get the bulk of your information because they're generally the ones running into it. And you're right, it is too bad about California. California is to be such a beautiful place. and it's just a shame now what's going on there. You know, I ask everyone on the show, Kip, what do you think Sasquatch is? And, you know, I'm curious on your thoughts on it. But, you know, if someone were to ask you, what do you think Sasquatch is?

What would you say? And there's no wrong answer, of course. So there's a couple things, I think, you know, kind of quickly just going. After having this experience, I think it kind of opened me up a lot more to, you know, know, if you want to call it a rabbit hole, it definitely made me realize like, okay, there's more to this than maybe what I would have ever known or what we're being told. And I honestly think, I honestly think that what we've been told about a lot of things is either a complete lie or we're just not getting the whole story. You know, kind of like what you had mentioned about Antarctica and Atlantis. You know, it's on all these old maps.

And so obviously it's a known, it's a known thing. So I'm almost wondering if, you know, these creatures are kind of the same thing. I think it's something, I don't know if, I don't know, I've looked into the Nephilim type stuff. I don't know if I'm totally going down that route. I think that whatever this is is something ancient. I mean, you know, it's been depicted in multiple cultures all over the entire world in various different forms. you know, every one of them looks slightly different, but they all have some similar, similar things about them. But I think it's something that's been here on this earth either longer than we have.

One thing that my dad said to me all these years ago, and I never thought much about it until, you know, over this last year was, you know, he said sometimes we might see something that either we weren't supposed to be seen or, you know, it came, somehow we were able to see something from that side of the veil that normally we wouldn't see. And after seeing the way that that first thing disappeared on the road, I almost wonder if they can almost, you know, move between dimensions, if you want to call it that. And to me, that would explain a couple things. You know, we sometimes wonder like, well, like you had said, you know, in the Pacific Northwest, if one of these things dies, like its body's gone in a week, you know, acidic soil and whatnot. Arizona, not so much. that's kind of a harder. But if they have the ability to just disappear, you know, it's like maybe that happens when they die.

I don't know. But it's one of those things. I thought about it. And just when I think I'm like, okay, I think this might be it. Then I hear someone else's story and it changes my mind a little bit. I don't really know that I have like a solid answer, but I think it's something really ancient. I don't think it's fully human.

I think there's probably. various, if you want to call it races or versions of these creatures, you know, it seems like there's quite a few different types that people have encountered. So yeah, man, it's a mystery. Sometimes I think, oh gosh, I'd love to experience it again and see if I could find out more, but then I think, no, you wouldn't? Like, why would you want to ever see one of those ever again? The thing was terrifying. I don't know, man. All I can do is keep researching and keep listening to stories and hopefully someday have a better idea of what it is. It's really weird to finally really talk about this because after that first encounter,

you know, my buddies and I, we just thought, oh, my gosh, come Monday, we've got the craziest story to tell everyone at school. And very quickly, it was like we were getting shot down, you know, oh, you guys are so full crap. And it was super disappointing. And then you felt kind of stupid. And that stuck with me. Like, it was kind of a burn.

Like, oh, man. Everyone thinks we're lying about this. And now we probably seem a little weird by even saying a story like that. And so that second encounter that I had, I did not tell very many people about that. It was just like, I'm just going to keep that to myself because no one's going to believe it anyway, you know? Yeah, it really sucks to, you know, want to share an experience or an encounter. And the person you're sharing it with all of a sudden it becomes a joke, you know, and it's, I think what happens, happens is a lot of people just shut up. They never share it again. And it's kind of a shame,

man. And, you know, all of this that happened to you and your friends over this three-year period, four-year period, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing it. You know, a lot of things that you talk about in your encounters, I've heard many times. And that's what you made one comment about, you know, when you're wondering what Sasquatch is, sometimes you think, oh, it could be this and then your opinion gets changed. That's a frustrating part. Sometimes you hear encounters and it sounds like they ran into an animal. But then there's other encounters and it sounds like they ran into a person. And then there's other encounters where a bunch of weird stuff goes on. You know, like you being blocked out from leaving, you know, to put a bunch of stuff across the

trail. And that happens more than you might think. I bet I could pull 10 Bigfoot Reefi searchers on right now and nine of them have experienced that it's weird i mean how do you explain it i realize no one saw the creature do it but it's a it's a weird circumstantial thing that happens and it's like what do you you know what do you make of that all of a sudden you're kind of looking around like is someone's screwing with me am i about to be killed and um you know so it's it they were definitely scary encounters man i really appreciate after all these years you know almost 30 years ago, you would come on and share it. I really enjoyed chatting with you, Kip.

Yeah, likewise, man. I really appreciate you reaching out today. And I was kind of shocked. I was like, holy cow. You know, I'm sure you get flooded with so many stories and experiences. But yeah, I also just want to say, I appreciate what you're doing with this podcast because, you know, it's a really cool outlet to kind of be like, all right, I'm not crazy. And, you know, everyone that calls in, it's like, yeah, I hundred people.

believe that guy. Like, why would anyone lie about this? There's nothing to gain from making up a weird story, you know, that just makes you seem crazy. But, yeah, man, keep up the great work. I love your podcast. You're doing a killer job. I appreciate it, brother.

Thank you again. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles. You can become a member and get additional shows. And I shared the link last night for the members. If you want to come hang out for the virtual premiere of Sasquatch and the missing man, Tony Merkel's film.

He also has a podcast, The Confessionals, definitely check them out. I'll be there tonight and I'll be there for the after party and the Q&A. if you get a chance to listen to this before 5 o'clock Pacific Standard Time, check out the link below. Until next time, everyone.