Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:1104 A Moment In Time I Will Not Forget

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

John writes "My wife and I went for a trail run in Scottsburg, IN in the summer of 2005 and came upon a clearing where we saw a large creature that stopped us in our tracks. It was approximately 50 yards away when we came upon it but we immediately felt unsafe and froze in our tracks as we stared at it. We left the area pretty quickly. Matt writes "Hello, I caught your podcast the other day and at the end you advised that people who have experienced encounters could contact you. I have spoke to very few people about what I experienced but would like to get the stories out there.  A little background about me. I am a Systems Analyst. I am from southern California both my experiences happened at a remote lake in the San Rafael Wilderness about an hour North of Santa Barbara.  The first encounter involves what I believe to be a bipedal Bigfoot type animal and the second encounter has to do with something very large in the small but deep lake I lived and worked at."

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 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. What would he report in? Jesus Christ, you better? Care. See you. Hello. Get somebody 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-oh. This is Mr. Rogers from Phoenix, Arizona, and the only podcast we listen to in my neighborhood is Sasquatch Chronicles. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show plan for you.

We'll be chatting with John, and John comes to us from. southern Indiana. And back in the summer of 2005, he was with his wife when they came upon this creature. And I'll kind of let John go into it. We'll also be chatting with Matt. And back in the late 90s in Southern California, he had a run in with one of these creatures. It was a pretty close encounter enough to frighten him. And he has a strange encounter on a lake in the same area with something completely different, and I'll kind of let Matt go into it. 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. And last night I spoke to Jessica and Marcel from Ontario, Canada, and they had a run-in with this creature. It was a... an upright canine and it's probably one of the best descriptions I've heard. Here I'll play a little clip. This is from episode 1103. As I passed the house, so it passed between the barn and the house and met me on the other side and stood at the end of the ditch and I was like, whoa, like, I'm going to hit this thing and hit the brakes a little bit. And this thing, it's, mouth is open and it's got like teeth, like more teeth than a wolf or a regular dog has in its mouth, like so many teeth. Its muzzle is long and reminds me of a crocodile, but it is the muzzle of

a wolf or a German shepherd looking thing. It's ear. were like little half moons, just silly looking on and too small for its head. And I thought maybe they were horns just because of the shape of them, but thinking back later in memory can play tricks on this, I guess.

So that's not really reliable. So I don't know what to say about the ears so much. But it had Maine and its hackles were standing up like they would in the silhouette of a Halloween werewolf picture, like silly and very apparent. Its mane went down its chest and it was standing like a man. its arm fell and hung like a man's arm would hang. Its muscles on its bicep were like that of a bodybuilder,

like this thing worked out in a gym. It's like leg and not that I saw its butt, but it had a sort of butt to it was like that of like a football player's. and it made sure that I like say this because it's like looking at me in the eye like and opening its mouth, making sure that I can see all its teeth. I don't know what it was. And again, that was episode 1103. I want to thank Jessica and Marcel for coming on.

let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome John to the show. John, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me, Wes. Yeah, and back in the summer of 2005, you and your wife had an encounter out there in southern Indiana. Before all of this happened to you, John, what was kind of your take on Sasquatch?

You know, I really had not thought about it. you know, probably my only exposure was, I don't know if you remember the movie, Harry and the Henderson's was really popular growing when I was growing up. That was probably the closest, you know, awareness or experience that I had was just movies. It wasn't something I really even gave any thought to or had any real opinions about. Well, if you would take me back to 2005 in southern Indiana. What were you doing and what happened? So my wife and I were newly married.

We didn't have kids yet. And that summer, we have some family that live in rural southern Indiana that went on vacation and they asked us to house it for them while they were gone. They didn't have a huge amount of land, but about six acres that ran east to west, kind of a rectangular lot that was almost all forestry, which, you know, southern Indiana, there's huge Hoosier National Forests. You know, it's a very rural area. Well, their property was, you know, their house was kind of in the front and then, you know, it had this forest behind it. and to the north of the property was a good amount of land that was being farmed. So it's cleared.

You know, the land to the north of their property was cleared for the most part. And my wife and I were, we exercised, you know, quite a bit back then. And we decided we wanted to go for a trail run. They had a trail that had cut back through the woods behind their house. and many, many years ago, the very back of their property kind of came up to a plateau that overlooked the farmland to the north of their property. And our family members had cleared off, oh, I'd say a quarter of an acre space at the very back of the property that they had thought about building like a cabin or something,

you know, out there. And so they had this trail boat that wound through the woods behind their property and that would kind of terminate out at this plateau. And then so our plan was to run the trail out to the plateau, maybe run around the clearing and then come back through the woods. And so it was probably, I think we slept in that morning. It was probably late morning. This is middle of the summer, and we go for the run, and we get out to the plateau, and so we break through, you know, it's real thick woods, and we come into this clearing, and to the farmland, to the north of us, there is, you know, 50 yards away.

And this is pretty close. There's this huge creature standing in like a line of trees. And it's looking, you know, we were running from the east. We were running west. And it was looking east. So if that makes sense, you know, we come into this clearing to our right. You know, we're looking north at this creature. creature and it's kind of crouched like a semi, you know, it's got the structure like a human,

very long arms, almost like like an orangutan or baboon. You know how their arms are like a little disproportionate more than humans. Yeah, I know what you mean. Um, you know, the real long arms and it's, but it's standing, it's upright and it's like fixated on. something to the east. And when we break out of the woods, we both see it at the same time and just freeze. We just stop. Neither one of us had to say a thing.

It was like one of those things where it like takes your breath away where you can't even say anything. You know, you immediately had a sense of danger. you're even reliving it. I'm getting a little shorter breath, you know, just telling this story. And we stop and just stare at it. And it doesn't, you know,

it doesn't seem to be aware of us. And my wife, who's in front of me, we were running in a line. You know, it was a narrow path through the woods. And so she was running in front of me. and she says, what is that? She didn't yell it. You know, she just, I was, we were right, I was right there on top of her.

And as soon as she said that, it turned its head and looked at us like it heard us. And then that's when we immediately turned and just ran as fast as we could back through the woods. It was close enough and large enough that, It felt like it could catch, you know, if it wanted to, it could catch us. And so we just ran, we didn't even talk. You know, we were so scared. We just ran as fast as we could back to the house, ran in the house, shut the door, and then stood there at the door looking at the woods to see, you know,

we were almost kind of expecting something to break out of the woods, you know, at us. It was completely terrifying. It's terrifying to run into something of the unknown. How far away from you was this creature? It, and I was just looking at this space on Google Maps, it looks like a block away, almost like not like we didn't grow up in the city, not like a New York City block, but like literally from one corner to the next corner of a block. It was, we were pretty close.

And we were higher, you know, we were higher than it. We were kind of looking down on it, whenever it was. What details kind of stood out to you the most? Would you describe what you saw? If I, like conservatively, I would say at least pushing seven feet. I mean, this was a large frame. Even crouching down seemed to be just so large. and totally covered in like a thick fur, almost like the color of a, like a bear, like the brownish and blackish fur.

And, you know, the face, the head. You know, I know some people have noticed the eyes. I didn't really notice anything about the eyes. but just the what was really kind of just searing in my mind was just the just the large structure and the fur was very clear and the distinctness of its you know the human-like body like one foot was forward one foot was back and kind of bent knees you know how you would kind of crouch down almost like an umpire maybe how they crouched down a little bit not quite that low, but how an umpire crouches down behind a baseball player and the catcher, you know,

kind of crouched. And even crouch, you know, it was so huge. That's really what, you know, stands out. I'll never forget that. Yeah, I completely understand. But Dave, definitely will never forget. I know that you don't know and I don't know. But what do you think it was doing right before your wife said something and it started turning your way? It was definitely so, and I was just, you know, before we jumped on this call, I was looking, I said I was looking at Google Earth and like studying the area. And it's in this, it was in this line of trees looking up towards a clearing and then another set of woods. You know, I don't know if it was pursuing something or this was the middle of the day. So I don't know if it was trying to move and was like waiting.

to, you know how sometimes deer will really stand. We have a lot of deer in Indiana. You know, deer will kind of like study the area for a long time before they actually start, you know, moving. I don't know if it was, you know, really studying before it was about to make a move somewhere. Or if it was pursuing something, it definitely had its attention focused on something. It wasn't like it was moving around or scanning or, you. anything, it was staring directly to, you know, the east, which was kind of behind us. And I know you weren't really a big believer in Bigfoot, and now you're seeing this saying,

did you know what it was when you were looking at it? I mean, it immediately, it clicked in my head, like, oh my gosh, that's Bigfoot, you know, what you see on TV and in media or in culture. it was like so stereotypical. You know, like if you had to have like created what we were going to see, it was I think what most people would draw as Bigfoot. So it immediately that's what came to my mind. But it was so shocking.

You know, that's when my wife was just like, what is that? You know, she was just so, we were both so taken back. Like I said, it stopped us immediately in our tracks. And we didn't even have to say, like, run or, you know, as soon as it looked at us, our immediate reaction was to turn and sprint. You know, we did not feel safe. What was it that caused the fear that made you guys run? Was it just seeing something so large and unknown?

I think it was like, first of all, you're looking at something that you've never seen. seen before, right? It's kind of otherworldly or kind of I don't know. And maybe from our perspective, even like fantasy, like something that's not real. Not that we weren't believers, but you know, we really didn't have

an opinion on it. You know, seeing something that doesn't fit your kind of view of the world or framework is shocking, you know. And then the sheer size of it, you know, I think that was probably the

the two scariest parts. Yeah, it is shell-shocking to see one of these things. It's almost like your brain reboots because it can't quite process what you're actually seeing. Have you and your wife been back to this area? Yes. Yeah, we've been back to the area. We have not trying to think if we've been back in those woods since then. I went halfway through the woods with a group of,

our family members, maybe 10 years later, just halfway. We didn't go very far back. But we, you know, our family's still in the area, so we still visit the home. We just don't, you know, venture out into those woods anymore. Yeah, I understand the way you feel for sure. You know, I ask everyone on the show, what do you think Sasquatch is? And there's no wrong answer, John, because no one knows. But, you know, after you have this encounter going back to 2005 and giving it, I would imagine, so much thought over the years, what do you think Sasquatch is?

Gosh, you know, we've told this story, you know, to family members and friends and coworkers over the years. and it's been interesting to hear people's thoughts on what they think we saw. And recently somebody told me, do I think that it could have been a hunter like in, you know, like gear that they, that kind of camouflage gear. Sometimes hunters will wear, you know,

complete head to toe camouflage. Yeah, like a gilly suit? Yeah. I we were close enough that I think we I think we would have noticed that you know the the proportions were weird were not like human like proportions and so it was I think if it would have been a human in a costume or an outfit I think that one of us. would have picked up on that. We were just able to see so much detail that I really don't think it was that. And also, this is the middle of the summer. And I don't think, you know, that's farmland.

I don't even think they are allowed to hunt over there. So that didn't quite make sense to me. A few years later, we saw a newspaper article where just south of the area that a bear had been found and this area part of Indiana doesn't typically have bears. But, you know, one of our family members at that point, you know, I wonder if that was a bear that you guys saw. And, and again, we'd seen bears before. And I don't think the arms were just long, you know, and it had a torso, you know, humans kind of had kind of like a male structure, you know, kind of like a broad shoulders and a torso and legs, you know, and just these really

kind of longer arms. So I don't think that could be confused with a bear, you know. And again, I don't think both my wife and I would have been so. So if it would have been one of those things, I think one of us would have picked up on it, if that makes sense. Like, you know, we both came to the same conclusion at the exact same time without talking about. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think the whole bear argument is pretty insulting, really. There's been a few times where even little kids, they know what a bear looks like. You know, I'll ask him, you sure it wasn't a bear?

and they'll kind of be like, come on, I know what a bear looks like. And so I think the whole argument, even a child knowing what a bear looks like, it's kind of insulting to say, you sure wasn't a bear? And if it would have been a hunter A's out of season, but when your wife was like, oh, what is that?

You know, even a dick will kind of look over and be like, hey, guys, you know, I'm over here, blah, blah, blah. And it didn't have that reaction. And based on your description, it doesn't match either way. one of those. And I think he would have been carrying a gun or a bow, right? He would have had some, if it was a hunter, I would have thought he would have had some

equipment maybe or a hat. You know, I think there were, you know, I don't know. I just, there was nothing else with this thing to make that make sense, you know, that it would be a hunter. Yeah, I don't think it was a hunter. what you saw. Plus your guys's reaction. That fight or flight kicked in right away to where you guys didn't have to tell each other. You guys both turned and ran away. And I almost wonder if there's something like in our gut or something within our history, in our DNA that tells us to flee

when we're around these things. It's very strange. And I would imagine over the years, you know, you guys have really looked into this subject and tried to figure out what it was. Obviously, I think it was a Sasquatch, but what is it, you know? You know, we talk about your list you want to ask God about, you know, someday. And it's definitely on our list. Like, what in the world was that? Yeah, it's definitely on my list as well. Hopefully one day we'll have answers.

But I really appreciate you coming on and sharing what happened to you and your wife. John. I really enjoyed chatting with you, ma'am. You're welcome. I enjoyed it too and enjoy your podcast. Next up on the show, I want to welcome Matt. Matt, thanks for coming on, man. Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, I appreciate you being here. And you had an encounter in the late 90s in Southern California.

If you would just kind of start from the beginning, what were you doing? And what happened? What'd you end up seeing? So I kind of, I dropped out of high school. when I was 14. And I got a job up in the, a volunteer job up in the mountains north of Santa Barbara when I was, when I was 15. I was working up in a place in the Los Padres National Forest Area in the San Rafael Wilderness. So it's a private area up there called Zach Lake. And it's kind of, it's kind of famous now, I guess. But at the time, I didn't know that it was. Anyway, so I got a chance to go up to the time.

there and volunteering work. When I had got up there, we had like a week trial period to kind of see if we fit in with the group, because there was a real small group of people who worked this 400-acre parcel that's right out in the middle of this wilderness. And so in that week, we were basically told to go explore. So me and my cousin was about two years younger than me at the time. We started kind of hiking around and stuff, and we found some mountain bikes they let us use when we started biking around and we knew there was a campground back up in this canyon that we've gone through and picked trash up and stuff at before. So we were going to try to go around that campground and back to this waterfall that we'd

heard about that was about a mile back in the woods away from the campground. It's actually on Forest Service land, I believe, back there. So we were biking back there and we kind of got lost on the path. think and kind of went off the path. So we ended up being just north of the path in some real rocky like creek bed terrain. And I was able to kind of spot the path again. So I, the bike was getting like pretty hard to bike through this like bouldery area. We got up on the trail and I started walking. And my cousin was probably, say about 10, 15 feet behind me or so. And it's real dense in there. like when we refound the trail, it's super dense, like a lot of oak trees and a lot of like,

like Manzanita and a lot of saplings. So it's kind of like a canopy overhead. And it's almost like a hallway of bushes and trees. And so I started walking up there and we started to smell something. Pretty bad, like kind of like pawns gum a little bit. But like something definitely decaying. It reminded me of when we used to clean my grandpa's fish, fish ponds out when I was a kid. So I was like, that's weird, you know. And I heard a rustle in the bush to my left, and I turned towards it, and I saw this arm, like, come through the brush and snap off, like, a tree limb. It was probably, I don't know, five feet in front of my face. So it was real close to me.

In the bush there's, like, so thick, it's really hard to see. see into it. So I could see this arm kind of protrude out towards me and it snapped this branch. And I noticed that it was, the hair was kind of reddish brown and it was stringy looking. So I had never, at this point, I had never like encountered a bear or anything like that in my life. But I knew, you know, I was pretty positive. That was not what we had encountered. So this thing like broke this branch off and I saw its hand was very human like. And I just turned around. And I, when I looked, my cousin, was already running. He ditched his bike and he was running, you know, and so I took off after him.

So we ran out of there as quick as we possibly could. And I went back and told my foreman at the time, and he goes, yeah, you know, there's stuff like that happens all the time. You know, we'll go back out tomorrow and get your bikes. And we did. And we went back out there. We went, kind of went around the backside of where this thing would have been. And it was very thick brush. And because of the rocks, we couldn't really get any tracks or anything. So it was, it was, wasn't super helpful going back there and looking around. But so we couldn't really identify anything. I got my bikes back and we headed back up to the cabin.

And I was pretty freaked out by it. But I had, I kind of grew up with like thinking that, you know, that stuff was relatively normal just because my family, my uncle lived up in Watsonville and they used to do farm up in the coastal redwoods and stuff, and they had encounters. So I'd heard about it growing up and stuff, so I was kind of okay with it, I guess, once I settled down. And then it really confirmed it later for me because I did have a lot of interaction with bears up there. There was a ton of bears up there, and there was nothing like that, you know, I mean, at all.

I mean, that's like, this thing was, had to be, like, where the path was was raised up. So where it was standing and where its arm came down, it had to be like eight foot. because it was a big slope down this little, the pathway, you know, down to the riverbed where it must have been standing. And what was kind of interesting is when I had, I spoke to one of the tribal elders about it because the land up there is, it's sacred to the Shumash Native Americans. So they would use the lake and stuff when I worked up there. So I got to know them pretty well too. And I spoke to them about this encounter a couple months afterwards. and they had told me that

that they had images of things like this and their painted caves and stuff like that and I should be very I guess thankful that it allowed me to see it

is what they told me. So I was. I was super, super thankful and it didn't stop me from going back there many, many, many times on that trail and finally finding that waterfall. So you see kind of like this huge

giant arm, hairy arm come out from behind a tree, what do you think it was doing? I don't know. I think today, I think I might have, I mean, I don't want to say startled it,

but that's kind of what it seemed like, like that it was, or maybe it was feeding on something. Maybe, I don't know, you know, because it seemed like it didn't want, like the way that it approached us was,

I don't know, it felt kind of aggressive to me a little bit. Not like, not super aggressive, but it scared me. Like I said, I didn't just like, but I broke a tree branch, like, you know, in like a pretty fast motion. So that's what I originally I thought, well, I stumbled upon it, maybe eating or something and really made it angry or something like that.

Or today, maybe I happened to start a little. I'm not sure how it didn't hear us coming up. But, yeah, that's my best guess. Yeah, so you kind of already knew what it was. You'd mentioned your family had run-ins with them before. Before we go into the second incident, what did your uncle tell you? So they lived up in, he said they lived up in Watsonville, and then they had a cabin up in Northern California. And both of those places they lived there, very kind of remote at the time.

And, you know, the dirt floor cabins, they were very, very woodsy people, you know, ate off the land, lived off of land. And they had a VW bus. So my dad and them, they'd go out and visit, and they'd go hunting and stuff like that. And my dad said on a couple occasions that they saw something run in front of their Volkswagen bus and my uncles, or I guess they'd actually be my second cousins now that I think about it because they're my dad's cousins. But anyway, they would go, oh, yeah, we see that, you know, see that all the time all through the woods here and all up north, you know. And so it was kind of like a, in my family, it was kind of like a normal thing. Like, we just kind of, I guess, believed in it, really.

I wasn't real, real skeptical that there was something out there like that. You know, I was pretty positive. I just didn't think I'd ever see, you know, have an encounter with anything like that. And you were pretty young when this happened. I mean, you were like 15. After this incident, did you stay with the job? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I stayed. Yeah, I worked there for a year, and then I volunteered up there every summer for like three years after that. It's kind of interesting, too, about your boss being, you know, after you told him what happened, he was like, oh, yeah, we see that up here all the time. And, you know, in those California mountains, I kind of believe it. You're getting out those remote areas. A lot of encounters come out of there. I wanted to kind of talk with you about the second incident. And I know it's not really Sasquatch related, but I'm fascinated. by it. A good friend of mine, Michael Luray, he had an encounter, and we actually did the interview, but my hard drive actually crashed and I lost everything. And he had seen this weird creature come out of the ocean, actually on the beach with his aunt when he was very young. How much later

did this happen after the first incident? And if you would, just kind of start from the beginning. What were you doing and what happened? So the other experience I had up there, that was the same year. So it was 98 as well. And I don't know if you guys, if you remember or not, but we had that real bad El Nino year in 1998 in California. So I got a ton of like heavy rains, things like that. So we got like landlocked. We couldn't really get out to get food and stuff too often.

So I had spent a lot of my time basically on the lake. And this lake there, I'll just take. give you a little backstory on it. The lake is only about, I think it's like a mile and a half around. It's not very big. If you look online and you find it, it says it's about 40 to 60 foot deep.

And when I worked there, we had the UC Santa Barbara had come out and they were doing surveys on the algae and the fish that were in the water because this lake, the catfish would be there's thousands of them on the surface, which is really odd if you're a fisherman. if you're a fisherman, you know that, like, that's pretty rare to have a catfish, you know,

like, especially like channel cats, just swimming around the top, top of the water, you know, their bottom feeders. And, I mean, they'd be everywhere you'd be, you'd jump in the water by the dock and you'd be falling all over them. So it was kind of an odd thing. So they were kind of studying this stuff, and they were part of our volunteer group that would come up and volunteer for, we had a kid's retreat in the summertime, like a volunteer retreat that would come up. And so he had somebody come out and. test the depth and he had a diver out there and he said at 60 foot they had hit like an algae

layer that was anywhere from four to six foot thick and when they broke through that he said they don't know how deep it goes because they weren't able to get to the depth with the equipment that they had so i don't really there is like you know of course the local lore and stuff and the shumash believed that it was bottomless and it is interesting because in the wintertime the water would stay about 70, 75 degrees. Like there's steam almost, you know, like fog coming off of that water in the wintertime. You know, so it's really like, it's really eerie looking, but I mean, it's amazing, really. Because that water's so warm and it's cold outside.

And the waterfall I spoke of earlier, that's like, that's all lava rock. So it's all white lava rock, that waterfall. So there's a lot of volcanic activity that must have occurred at some point in that area. So anyway, So we couldn't get the town much, so I spent all my time on the property, really. And I was out in the lake pretty late in the evening. And it was probably around midnight, I should say. And I was patting around my canoe and having, you know, a couple of cigarettes and a beer.

And I was listening to the bear's fish because the bears would grab those catfish and eat them. So I canoe pretty close to the shore, about 40 feet from shore. shore so. And I was going to another spot on a canoe. I was in a three-man 17-foot canoe at the time. And I was going to a different spot. So I was going back towards the middle of the lake. And it was a full moon out and there was that steam coming off. I was talking about or fog coming off or whatever it is. And something hit me and pushed me up out of the water. And when I looked down to my right, I could see that I was like on the ridge of something like it was a an animal. So I had pushed me up and the ridge was like I was balancing on this ridge.

My boat was out of the water as far as I could tell. You know, it was like completely out of the water and I was kind of rocking on it. I was in a canoe all the time. So my balance was very good. Thank God. I probably would, for sure, would have gone over. But I was able to kind of teach. it probably only happened for a couple seconds,

but when it pushed me up, I could see that there was several feet of this thing to my right. And it was, I'd kind of gone like, I'd say like almost front to the back at an angle. So like a diagonal angle to the canoe. So it had majority of the canoe out of the water. And so to my right,

it was going in back of me and pushing me up. And to my left, it was in front of my canoe and kind of lifting me out. So whatever it was, I would say was, I mean, the part of it, it was out of the water was bigger than my canoe, or at least close to that.

And that obviously probably wasn't the whole thing. So I totally panicked, of course. I was, like, I was astonished at first. I was just, like, you know, almost froze. And when I let me back down pretty quick, and I could see, like, the scales on it, you know, like big scales that were probably the size of, like, a tea saucer. you know, for like a teacup or a coffee cup is what it looked like. You know, it was like reflecting.

So it was hard to tell, but that's kind of with the moon reflecting off of it. It looked, it was obviously probably, I couldn't really tell the color, but I would think dark. It was like gray or black. And there's no lights out there. So you don't have like, there's zero light pollution for about 40 miles. So at night, it's like it's dark. But when the full moon's out, it's pretty light. Like you can go walking around, no problem at night and everything glows.

So I could definitely see some of the detail in this thing. And it let me back down. And when it let me down, I was gone. I was paddling as fast as I possibly could towards the dock to try to get out of that lake. And so I had already had this encounter with Sasquatch, you know. And a couple months later, I have this encounter. And so the next morning I went right to a tribal elder and I told him what happened, you know. And he goes, oh, yeah, it's another thing.

Yeah, that's a legend that we have up here, you know. And again, he told me that I was really lucky to have experienced it. You know, at the time, I didn't feel lucky. But I used to swim in that lake. So, you know, and I did. I took a couple days, but I went back on the lake and it never happened again. But I have no idea what it was. Let me back up so I understand.

So you're out there canoeing and something in the lake kind of comes up out of the water and actually lifts your canoe out of the water with you in it? It was pushing me out of the water. Like, I was being, I got completely lifted. I would say, like, at least a foot or two completely out of the water and with my boat. And I was basically perched on top of this thing, whatever it was. It seemed like really high, but it was probably more like two or three feet, you know. And in my head, I like envisioned maybe, like after I thought about it, you know, after I got to the dock and I started thinking,

I kind of vision of something was swimming and it kind of arched up, you know, like I was making like an arch towards the surface and arched out of the surface. That's kind of what happened is I kind of rolled with it, you know, it brought me up and out with it. And then I pretty calmly put me back in. So that's why I think it was moving when it did it and kind of pushed me up and I followed it like an arch and then back down. Jeez, ma'am. I know that you're in the San Rafael Wilderness out there in California. I'm trying to think of what would do something like that.

I mean, a sturgeon, but sturgeons, I mean, don't get me wrong, they're big. They're in the Columbia River. And if anyone who's ever caught one knows what I'm talking about, you're basically catching a dinosaur. They're huge. But even then, I don't see them pushing a canoe out of the water with a man in it. Were you able to see any other details you'd mentioned? It had scales? yeah it looked like it had like like these overlapping scales you know like kind of like a if you ever seen like a like a carp but like huge you know um like how they have like bigger scales so these scales look real big and they were overlapping each other so you'd see like three cores of the scale and that that scale would overlap the bottom of the next scale and so on and the ridge the part that was pushed me about the like that i was kind of teetering on it was like a

thick, like, round spine. And then it kind of drastically kind of dropped off into a big, a lot of girth. It was super girthy into, you know, big round body, I guess. So it had like this protruding spine that I was kind of on top of. That's the only part of it I got to see. I don't know if it's a giant fish or what, you know, know, I really had no idea. And to this day, I mean, they did have the Shumash there. They had a, they believed that there was an animal that lived in that lake that was big. And they had drawings of it.

And it kind of looked like a submarine. Their drawings, from what I understand, you know, which I guess this is kind of what that seemed like to me at the time, you know, like a, but, you know, and, you know, in animal form of it. So yeah, that was really all I, I was just like, man, I don't know, it's some big animal. And like I said, I was really freaked out for about two days. And then I started swimming back in the lake again. And I was back on that lake every night.

I never experienced it again. Yeah, I've been out there probably another 100, 200 times easy. Yeah, it's like a real life lake monster. What kind of a distance are we talking from where you had seen the creature to where you're having this experience. In that one spot, I mean, we're probably, I'm probably a mile and a half away from where I saw Bigfoot on this lake, you know, like in that scene, it's just so crazy because that same little 400 acres, eyewitness two of those things happening to me, you know, things that I only

heard about, you know, legends, I guess, really, at the time. I had, I used to do like a night hikes. I would guide night hikes. So there's like a, there's a loop along the Zachary Ridge, they call it. And it's, I think it's 15 miles. And I would do 12 miles. And I'd come down a canyon. And I'd take people from all over the world.

I'd take them up to the top of the peak and we'd hike the peak, you know, all around the top of the peaks. And we'd come back down to the canyon. And when we come back down to the canyon, the last very few miles of the hike goes right through where I had my first encounter. And I felt, I'd feel so at home when I got down to that spot. Like, it felt good. You know, I felt very, I guess we're ending our hike, you know, but I always, you know, would hear things and, you know, rustling around and stuff like that. And, but I never got to see anything again. Let me ask you a question about the lake. I know it's not really relevant, but I'm just curious, in my own curiosity, what is it about the lake that keeps it warm?

I don't know. From what I understand, there's some type of warm underwater springs that feed into it. And there is a place called Matilla Haw Hot Springs that's relatively close. We used to do like a barefoot hike out to it when I was younger. So it's like you can get to it. So I think there's just a lot of maybe volcanic activity that has caused these. The lake was very sulfury. So like we would never eat the fish out of there. because they taste like you're eating, you know, like sulfur. So I think it's just there's a lot of that volcanic activity. So hot spring style type activity that keeps that thing warm. And like I said, that algae that they found on the bottom was so thick. You know, it's not really natural in like a regular lake to have algae that thick, like a whole algae layer that's almost acting as a bottom. Yeah, that's a trip, man.

That second encounter would have freaked me out. and, you know, I'm a Pisces, so I'm all for water. I have no fear of swimming in the ocean or swimming late at night in a lake or, you know, something like that happens to me, and I could change that opinion very quickly. It makes you wonder what it was. You know, I ask everyone on the show, what do you think Sasquatch is? What's your take? You know, I used to just think that it was just flesh and blood, and now it's really, it's

real hard for me. I'm a systems analyst, so I work in IT. I've had a lot of jobs in my life. I've done a lot of things. But as I sit here today, it's hard for me to pinpoint because I think there's so many different possibilities.

And then after watching a lot of people I respect talk about it and kind of go through their own battles with their belief structure on it, I've I think I'm

I'm real open to the fact that this might be something that is you know here and also not here you know so the multi-dimensional theory is something that I think might be a real thing you know when it comes to these things because it's hard for me you know I've listened to of course the the Sierra sounds and stuff like the

you know Ronmorehead right and listen to these things and like, man, it's 100% like you hear something like it's there, you know? And then when you go to track it and try to find it, sometimes it just ends. You know, it's like,

like we had a lot of tree, tree scrapings there. And those scrapings would be at, you know, eight to 12 foot tall, you know, on a tree, on an oak tree. And we're talking about like the bark ripped off and claw marks deep into the, into the tree. And, you know, we had bears, but, like, they would have had to, like, go up there and, like, focus on this spot for hours and hours.

And they'd had to climb the tree to get there, you know what I mean? There's just no sense to why they would do that. So it didn't dawn on me until much later. That's probably what I was seeing was some type of marking from Sasquatch there. But, you know, that'd be the only evidence. So I started to really lean more into, I think they're here, but I think that they're also. Not here at the same time. You know what I mean? Yeah, it does feel like that at times. I mean, there's been times where I've been out there and I've made the comment a few times.

This feels like chasing a ghost. You know, you get screamed at from an area, but there's nothing there. Sometimes it feels like you're chasing a ghost. Let me back up and ask you about that day with you and your cousin. Did you ever sit down and talk with your cousin? Did he? give you any sort of perspective from what he might have seen? Yeah, he said he smelled the smell, and he heard the breaking of the branch, and he said that my face looked like I was going to, like, I'd just seen a ghost. So he said my face was just like, like in awe. And he said that was enough for him. Then he was just gone. So he turned around just left me. But we had, you know, talked to my grandfather and stuff. And actually, before I worked

there, I had gone camping up there. It's how I originally found out about the place. And I went with my grandfather. And my grandpa was, uh, his, he's still alive. And he, um, he taught us everything we knew about the outdoors and, you know, how to fish and had to stay alive outside in the woods. And he had told us that, you know, he had had an encounter in the, in the, uh, in the, in the, uh, the Sierras and was something he knows not wasn't a bear you know so he had told us these things and that he'd smelled something when it happened so as well so that was on the other side of the family as well so I guess both sides of my family had encounters um and so we kind of my cousin that's what my cousin had told me like he thought back to my grandpa saying that

and he said it when we were up there too which is funny um when we went camping about it's probably a year before I went up there to work we went up there to work um and he had mentioned it when we were up there just telling us that story, you know, about the smelling. So I don't know if he queued into something while we're there or not, but, yeah, so anyway, that's what my cousin had told me. He related that, like, in that moment, he thought of that, and that was, like, enough for him. He was gone. And we do talk about it.

We've talked about it several times. We'll laugh about it, you know, and joke about it. And I had a hard time getting him to go, go out and go hiking with me. He went once and we worked together there for about, he worked there for about three months with me and he would not go back out and really like go hiking, especially like the night hikes and stuff. So it did it. I think it scared him, maybe more than it scared me. Yeah, who could blame him, man. I really want to go investigate that lake and find out what in the world's going on there.

And I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and share what happened to you. I really enjoyed chatting with you, man. Yeah, you too. you know, thanks for having me. It's awesome. I have, um, wrote about the account before I reported it a couple of years back. I never heard anything. And, um, so I just have never said anything to anybody about it besides that. Um, so I'm really, it's really cool that, uh, you know, I was able to share it with you today. It's really cool. Yeah, well, I'm glad that you came on, Matt. 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, check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone.