Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:1230 Chased out of our campsite

Episode Date: February 15, 2026

Red writes "On August 17th, 2023, I was camping with a close friend In Stephen's state forest in south central Iowa, not far from the Missouri border. It is very remote for the Midwest in that area. There are no electrical lines in this particular forest, so no lights. My friend and I got into the forest at dusk and set up camp. We saw no vehicles as we drove through the forest and the campsite we stayed at was completely empty. Twenty minutes or so after setting up camp, we heard an incredibly loud sound from the northwest corner of the camp. It was so loud it made us both jump and all of my hair immediately stood on end. The sound was like a howler monkey whooping, but it sounded like it was the size of a minivan. Immediately after this, about 150 feet south of us in the tree line, another noise happened. It sounded like Babe Ruth was in the forest slamming a bat against a tree. There were 6 whacks or knocks. They came in 3 successions of twos. Knock knock. Knock knock. Knock knock. That night we got chased out of the campsite by 3 or 4 of these creatures. It kept me out of the woods for a long time. I would love to tell you the whole experience."

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 on the other? That sort of a bitch is about six foot nine, I don't know. Do you see a bouncer? out there? Yes, I'm looking right in. Well, hello, my fellow believers. This is Luke from Bend, Oregon, and I got a fever, and the only prescription is more Sasquatch Chronicles. Welcome to the show. Tonight we'll be speaking with Red, and in August of 2023, he was camping with a close friend of his in Steffin State Forest in south central Iowa, not far from the Missouri border. He describes being run out of

camp by multiple creatures, and I'll kind of let Red go into it. You know, I have encounters come out of Iowa. They're a lot more rare, but they do happen in Iowa. And so I'm looking forward to chatting with Red tonight. 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 Red to the show. Red, thanks for coming on. Yeah, I appreciate it having me with. Yeah, and back in 2023, you were camping with a friend of yours there in Iowa, kind of near the Missouri border. If you would, would you just start from the very beginning? Obviously, guys were camping, but

walk me into what happened. Yeah, so it was August 17th to 2023. And I have a good friend that for years I've gone arrowhead hunting with. We live in the southeast corner of Iowa, but we kind of travel not all over the state, but we travel the central part of the state, the northeastern part of the state, and we hop around to a few other states in the Midwest. we're always researching old, peer-reviewed papers

and different publishings of different stone material types, different megalithic sites that don't really exist hardly anymore in the States. I think something like only 5% of

megalithic sites in North America are still existent, which is unfortunate in the whole other different conversation. But anyway, we it kind of takes us all over the state. And in 2023, we had been looking for, there's a specific type of chert called Exelot Chirt.

And it's this beautiful, shiny black chert. And it has these sort of bands of courts and calcedony going through it. We found, I think, in an old archaeological review, a few places where it occurred. One being in south central Iowa and, The other being in northeast Missouri. So my wife and kids always go to the Iowa State Fair every summer in the camp with my in-laws. I don't like going to state fairers.

I don't like being in really big public places, so I never go. So whenever they do that, I usually go on a camping trip with this buddy of mine where we go and we look for arrowheads. So that's what we were doing this particular week in August of 2023. I think we left at 2 or 3 p.m. that day, just because we had other things going on in the morning. And we, as we made our way west to this state forest in south central Iowa called Stevens State Forest, which in your part of the country isn't hardly a forest at all. I don't remember the size of it. It might be 15,000 acres, something like that.

In Iowa, it's massive. There's not that much forest left here. as we made our way west to Stephen State Forest, we kept stopping in a particular river valley. It's the Des Moines River Valley, and we were artifact hunting on the way. So we didn't get to Stephen State Forest, which is where we were camping this first night of this trip, until I think we got into our campsite a little after 8 p.m. As we drove in, there were no other cars that we saw in the forest, and it was late. I kind of expected that. But there were no other campers either.

There are several campsites in this forest, and they were all empty. Which I was excited about it. I thought, hey, you know, we got a campsite no matter what, because there's no one else here. When we pulled in, it was basically dusk, you know, it was twilight. And I wouldn't call the forest and Stephen State Forest old growth by any means, but there's some old growth in there. And the rest of it's pretty established. And it's really, I don't know if you've heard the driftless area in the northeast part of the state and a few other subsequent states around. But this little section of Iowa and south central Iowa is almost like its own driftless area.

I don't think there is ever any glaciation there. It's beautiful. There are tons of ravines everywhere. It's really hilly. And all the little creek and forest, or sorry, the creek and the river valleys have a bunch of forest around them. We get into the park a little after eight campsite. I left my car running with my lights on while my buddy and I set up our tents. Once I got the fire going, I turned my car off. And we only brought a few reams of firewood with us. And so my buddy started looking around

the campsite or some fallen limbs and things to ease for firewood. firewood and the particular site we were at is shaped kind of like a scaling triangle and we were down in the bottom southeast corner of this campsite and it's probably 150 to 200 yards across so i started making my way from the southeast corner where our campsite was up to the northwest corner and i was checking all of the fire rings and the other sites. I think there were, I think there were 13 sites at the specific campground.

And as I was looking in the fire rings that I didn't see any wood, but I also noticed there was grass growing in most of them. So I don't, I don't think people camp at this place very often. I made my way all the way up to the northwest corner of the campsite. And I have this beautiful mag flashlight that's, you know, like I don't know how many thousands of lumens. It's incredible.

But I had sent it with my wife and kids since they were camping, even though they're at the state fair and there's no need for flashlights, especially that powerful there. But I sent most of the good camping stuff with them. So I was using my phone flashlight and, you know, you just can't hardly see anything with that. I'm making my way along to the northwest corner. and when I got up there I heard probably about a mile, a mile and a quarter away. There's a really big pack of coyotes hunting, and it sounded like they had got into something.

They were kind of yipping and howling a bit, but kind of almost they do this cackle almost when they get something, when they're really excited. It sounded like there were quite a few of them. so I wasn't paying terribly close attention to the sound of the coyotes because it didn't alarm me or any you know I wasn't worried about them but I heard three really loud noises off in the same direction and I would assume the same distance around a mile away I could tell it was some sort of megafauna you know some big animal but I I'd never heard whatever made the sound before and it wasn't terribly clear. It was just three subsequent calls. And I don't know, I kind of ran through the Rolodex in my head of what makes that noise. And again, it wasn't terribly clear, but it was enough to, it was puzzling in a sense.

But I made my way back down to our campsite, you know, empty-handed. And my buddy had found some wood. in the tree line and he had the fire gun a little more and I asked him I said hey yeah you hear those coyotes and said yeah yeah I heard him said did you hear that other noise that other call and he said yeah I heard it and I said well you know what was it I couldn't place it and he didn't know what it was either and I remember saying I know that we hunted elk out of the state the 19 it might have in 1918, 1920, something. The last elk was excited in the state.

So I didn't think it was an elk, but I kind of said, was that an elk? I don't know what else it could be. I don't think it was, but he kind of shook his head and was puzzled too, and that was kind of all it was. And we sat by the fire for a while. As we were sitting by the fire, we're facing southeast, so the entire campgrounds to our back. and we're about 10 yards from the tree line. And the tree line in Stephen State Forest is just, man, it's thick.

It's the brush is incredibly thick out there. And on this particular night on August 17th, there was no moon out. So it was really dark. Probably 20 minutes, I would guess, 30 minutes, you know, after I'd sat down and were sitting by the fire. my buddy wasn't eating, but I happened to be, I was eating a broadwurst. I don't know if that has anything to do with what happened, but it's part of the story, I guess. We heard this noise behind us, and I am pretty sure it was from the tree line at the northwest. I know it came from the northwest corner of the campground, but it sounded like it was just at exactly at that tree line.

and it was it sounded like a howler monkey the size of a minivan or a refrigerator. I mean, this thing, it whooped, made this noise that kind of went down and then came up. And it was so alarmingly loud that I jumped out of my skin. You know, I jumped in the camp chair I had and I about fell over and my buddy jumped too. And all the hair on my body just stood up on end in such a strange way. It was, I'd never heard that noise before, but it immediately just scared the hell out of me. And I looked at my buddy with, you know, the wise eyes, I imagined. And I said, what the hell was that?

And again, I kind of went through the roll-decks in my head of sounds that I know. And every large animal ran through my head, and I couldn't place it. And when that happens, it's a momentary thing. You know, I'm thinking of 30 things in an instant. And immediately after I asked my friend this, what the hell was that? he was looking at me back with these massive eyes scared as I wasn't

he said you know what that is and my friend and I have you know we're out in the woods all the time all the time or camping all the time I've up until that experience I was out

arrowhead hunting I like hunting geodes and things too I mushroom hunt I fish. I used to hunt. I don't hunt that much anymore. Are they all over the last few years, really? But we've talked about Bigfoot, Sasquatch.

I kind of hate those names, you know. There aren't really good names for them, whatever these things are. But we've talked about it. And I've been a listener of your show for years, too. So it's not like this was a new thing that I wasn't aware of, but I just never heard that noise out in the real world. I've heard recordings

and so as soon as he said, you know what that was. It clicked in my head exactly what it was. And as soon as that clicked in my head, you know, only a few seconds had passed since we heard this initial loop, I'll say. But as soon as that clicked in my head, about

maybe 150 to 200 feet often forced in front of us kind of diagonally to the right I heard six knocks and they scared the hell out of me too this something hit a tree so if that's how they make that noise I don't know something made a knocking noise

six times in three series of two it went knock knock knock knock knock so my friend and i are you know kind of frantically whispering to each other what's going on you know are we surrounded by is this bigfoot are we surrounded by bigfoot right now i don't know we just kind of we're in shock and panic mode and um it was so dark we were just in the middle of nowhere and as we're kind of whispering to each other and not making any sense of this. We hear another noise down probably 70 yards or so to the left of us diagonally in the forest.

From our vantage point, we can see just barely into the forest because it's so dark. The fire is not setting hardly any light into the forest, and our phone flashlights aren't doing anything. Because at this point, we've pulled our phone flashlights out. we're shining behind us into the campground and we don't see anything we're shining into the forest in front of us and we don't see anything but there's a there's a ravine that kind of rips down into a pretty big gulch and it's just pitch black down there but from from down in that ravine or that gulch we start hearing something walking up the ravine and as it's walking, it's breaking branches. And I've heard deer walking in the forest plenty.

And you actually don't usually hear them walking in the forest. You'll hear them sometimes, but a lot of times you'll see a deer and you don't even hear them. But when you do, they're not breaking branches. You know, you hear them russing over leaves. This thing was, I would assume, intentionally breaking branches every step it took. And it wasn't running for us. It wasn't, you know,

bulldozing through the forest or anything like that. It just was taking slow, sure steps. And every time it would just snap, snap, break branches. That lasted for realistically, probably five seconds, six, seven seconds.

And we're kind of, you know, my buddy and I, I don't even remember, remember the things we were talking about. I remember saying, you know, we can't stay here tonight. We had both of the tents set up and everything, but we said we can't stay here tonight and we agreed on it. We both kept saying we should leave, you know, and we agreed on that, but we stayed. I think it, the reason we stayed is there was such an anxiety, you know, it's not like some,

we hadn't seen some terrifying thing at this point and we hadn't had some terrible aggression given over to us. But there was some, I don't know, inexplicable primal fear that had just immediately activated in us. At least in me, you know, I don't want to speak for my buddy, but I would assume in him as well. from the second we heard that initial call. And during this entire experience, time is, I think our adrenaline was just so spiked that it's hard to say, you know, 10 minutes past, 20 minutes passed. I don't know how much time had passed during all this.

But at some point, the noise of, the noise of movement, knocking, nothing else happened for a little while. The force was just silent. You know, we're sitting there in our camping chairs with our fire in front of us and our phone flashlights. We're looking all around us constantly and whispering to each other. I don't know what, but probably just saying over and over again, hey, we should leave, hey, we should leave. Maybe 30 minutes passes of that, 45 minutes. There was a tree that, um, I hadn't seen it in the daylight, so I thought it was maybe a cottonwood, but I've since gone back to this place. It took me a couple of years, but I went back, and there's a big oak tree that was behind us diagonally to the left.

From that oak tree, you know, after again, let's say 30 minutes from the first occurrence was happening, from that oak tree, all of a sudden we heard, and this oak tree, I should say it was about 50 feet behind us. We heard this whoop again. This time, we heard four vocalizations in a row coming from what I believe to be a single creature. And I think it was the initial creature that whooped behind us initially. But so we hear another whoop. It's so loud.

And we're so on edge that it scared us even more than the first time. So as soon as we hear that loop, we both jumped out of our chairs and turned around. And this all happened really in slow motion. It's hard to explain because from the time, you know, we jumped up and turned around and shown our flashlight said this thing. It had to have only been seconds. but it played out in my mind in the moment and it still does as though it were 30 seconds, 40 seconds

but there's no way that's how it happened. So we heard this initial whoop and in the same breath, it then, you know, I've heard the Sierra sounds so many times. I think they're incredible. the samurai chatter people talk about. This thing

did that, you know, it spoke in a sense, but it it was so garbled and it was such a, it sounded like the Tasmanian devil from Looney Tunes. You know, just, just

unbelievably quick. Just spitting out this ferocious um, it's hard to say, you know, it's, speech or language, but it seems to be just that. And again, in the same breath, it then went down to this

deep, deep, deep yowl. Sound like a mountain lion yowl, but again, something that's just, you know, six or seven times the size of a big mountain lion. Just the deepest, just deep. I just felt like hatred just deep anger and during that sound we were just about

turned to see this thing and I have a connotation in my head I can't explain why and I've talked to my friend about this he had the same feeling it felt very feminine well I shouldn't say feminine it felt like a female

I can't explain why. So I'll say as we were turning around to see her, as she made that noise, I had enough time in my head, or these thoughts came to me so quickly. I remember thinking, almost having a dialogue with myself saying, do you really want to turn around and see this thing?

I would say most of me didn't want to. I didn't, from the sound of that yowl, the intense anger or hatred, I don't know how long I had to stop, but I thought I was going to die. This thing just sounded horrifying. And I had this incredible sensation in my organs that I've never had before and I've never had since. It felt like every single organ in my torso had pulled down into my pelvis. I don't know how to explain another than that, but it felt like literally every organ inside of me just pulled down into my pelvis. And I had just such a gut fear of some impending doom.

At that point, we had turned fully around to about where this oak tree was, where we assumed the sounds these sounds were coming from you know the flashlights were coming up and it's it's strange to describe it that way is because again this must have happened in within a matter of seconds but just seemed like so long this thing then emitted one last sound and it was to be honest this the sound in my mind is not very clear the other three sounds are very clear but this last sound It wasn't a whoop, but it was just some loud last noise. I don't know. Just a yell almost, but it wasn't a scream or a ferocious yell. It was just kind of a loud noise. And all of these noises happened in one breath, which is, again, it's incredible. Everything about these things is just incredible and amazing, terrifying at times.

But the long capacity to do that. That was just, I didn't think about it at the time, but looking back, it just blows my mind. I don't understand how a living creature can, there was just so much noise coming out of it. And I didn't hear any reprieve to take a breath. So we shine our flashlights exactly where this thing seems to be. And there's nothing there. It's just black over there. There's nothing over there.

And so this is kind of, it's kind of broken us from this spell of fear. You know, it's, I'm kind of able at this point to say, hey, it's time to go. And my friend agrees, you know, but he starts breaking down his tent. And I can't lie. I was so mad. I shoved him and I said, what are you doing? You know, we got to get out of here, man. These things don't want us here.

We got to get out of here. And just the infusion of nothing being there when we looked exactly in the area where we heard these noises, I just said, it's time to go, man. He's had this little tent he camps with for years and he paid a lot of money for it. He does Ragbri, which is, you know, that bike you cross the state. He always takes it on Ragbri with him. and I don't know, he loves the tent, I guess. He wouldn't leave it.

He was saying, no, I'm not leaving this tent. I'm taking it with me. It's a pop-up tent, so it collapsed quickly. But I'm yelling at him the whole time, cursing at him. And he goes to break down my tent. Then I said, dude, I'm, you know, screw to that tent. We're not taking it. I don't care.

He starts breaking it down. And I took out my knife and I cut the tent pole. holes, you know, the cord that keeps the tent pulls together and just say, I don't care about this thing, man, leave it. But he keeps messing with it. And as he's doing that, I was looking over at that tree again. I was shining my flashlight around everywhere. We were hearing things moving in the woods again from those two areas where we heard the tree knocks and that thing moving down in the ravine. so I'm shining my flashlight around trying to see

if I can see any of these things and I'm not seeing anything but I noticed that by that big oak tree you know 50 feet or so away where we thought that sound the sounds came from there's this huge

stump next to it huge it's like I don't even know what to compare it to but it's it's massive and it was so black. It was blacker than anything else I could see in the forest past it or around it. I, even in the moment, thought, it looked like that color, you know the color of Vanta black? That some people will paint expensive cars or I've seen motorcycles painted in this color.

It's such a deep black that it doesn't reflect any light. And it just, it looks very strange. It's almost like a play of trick to the eye. This stump was that black. It was just soaking in all the light of my flashlight. And so I looked at it for, I don't know, I held my flashlight on it for longer than anything else. Again, probably like three seconds, four seconds. And I had kind of nudged my buddy and I said, what is that?

Look at this stump, man. I've never seen something that's black. and as I was saying this to him, this thing I realized was an outline of something crouching, holding his legs. All of a sudden it extended its hands and just dove hands first into the forest.

Just right by the tree line. I'm not ashamed to say it. I yelped like a little puppy or something. I must have sounded like a just it scared the hell out of me the way this thing moved was unbelievable it was so long it's what i imagine you know having kareem abdul jabar get down on his on his heels around the balls of his feet you know crouched down and then to lunge forward like that and how long his arms would be jumping forward and his torso and his legs there but this

It's like this thing just went on forever. It was so long. I've never seen something move with that agility. I've never seen an Olympic athlete move with that agility. I've never seen a big cat in a documentary series hunt with that agility. I've never seen something move like that. It was so fast and agile. It reminded me of how the only thing I can think of is,

when a little bird is moving its head around or kind of jumping around. It's almost mechanical. It's so fast. This move like that. And I only saw it leap into the forest. I didn't see it move around besides that, but it just,

I've just never seen something move like that. The thing that still is incredible to me is I didn't hear it land. They made no noise. This thing was so agile. And it just, these, these things are, they would make Navy SEAL look like fools in the forest. These things, you know, the forest, you know how to move better than anything. They're unbelievable.

That was kind of enough for me, you know, just seeing it. I'd known everything was real as it was happening, but just seeing it, even for that quick second, And I just took everything and just threw it in the back of the vehicle. And we drove out incredibly quickly. And we were, I think, two and a half or three hours west of where I lived at the time. We left. It was just after 10 o'clock at night when we left. So we were there for two hours.

I had such an adrenaline rush. and I was so kind of outside of myself from the experience that we just drove around in circles for an hour. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't going to camp somewhere else. I didn't have the wherewithal just because I was so filled with adrenaline and confused. I didn't have the wherewithal to stop at a motel or something. So we just, we drove home to my place. and I had so much adrenaline that I didn't have an adrenaline dump,

or I didn't crash from it until I was probably 10 miles west in my house. I'm trying to remember if it was maybe between one and two in the morning when we got there. I don't recall, but I just remember seeing an exit from my place, the town where I live. And as soon as I saw that exit sign on the interstate, I just got so unbelievably tired because it was like everything. Just all the adrenaline finally left my body. But it was for hours, I was just wired from the experience. And for a really long time, it kept me out of the woods. I wouldn't go back in the woods for a long time.

Yeah, who could blame me after a night like that? I would have got up and left too. How far away from you was that one that you actually saw? It had to have been, I bet it was by the time we had turned and looked, you know, that tree was, I would say,

50 feet from us. And again, I was in construction for years and years and years. So I'm good with measurements. By the time we'd moved around a little bit around the campsite as this was, you know, as we'd stood up and,

this thing was on the side of the tree on our side. So I bet I was within 35 to 40 feet of this thing. What do you think the intention was? I know in the moment you think you're a dead man and I would have thought the same thing. But now after some time has gone by and you've had a chance to kind of reflect on it, what do you think their intention was? Yeah, I've thought about it. a lot

I don't think that my life was in danger years in the future looking back I think it could have been if I would have stayed and not kind of heated the warning signs I don't think well I'll say this one of the things I said to my buddy when we drove away and I said my God they're here

that means they're everywhere because this this part park is only like an hour and a half south of the Des Moines, Iowa. And Des Moines, Iowa is kind of the biggest metropolitan area in Iowa. It's, again, Iowa doesn't have a massive population, but it's not that far from a pretty big city, for Iowa at least. And so I just said, you know, if they're here, they're everywhere, man, they're everywhere. And I think that that, you know, I said it earlier to you, there's not much forest left in Iowa. It really only exists where in the early 20th century, a few people in ecology and biology

and biology said, these forests are about gone. We got to make some state forests happen. We've got to make some preserves happen. And it's just along the rivers where people can't till and they can't farm. And sadly, that's the last stronghold, the last bastion of the Iowa forest. And so I don't think these things have a lot of home in Iowa. And I think they probably were thinking, man, get out of here. You know, this is our place. And they probably chase people out of there all the time because it's a beautiful forest. And for there to be grass growing up on those firings was, I thought it was crazy.

You know, how could there not be people camping there? But I assume these things chase people out of there. and maybe not all the time, but I think the intention was they didn't have a ton of time to be able to watch us during the day and get a feel for who we were and what we were. Because I assume anywhere that these things are living, they probably have an incredible handle on what comes around and into their vicinity because these things don't want to be found and they don't want to be seen. they have watched us from afar for who knows how long.

I would assume they've been here as long as we have, maybe longer. I don't know. I don't know if, yeah, I don't know. But I assume they've seen, you know, what we've done to the other hominids that existed. They've probably seen what we do to each other, seeing what we do to the forest, seeing what we do to every other animal. They've said, you know, if we want to stick a. around, kind of have to hide from these human things because they sure like to kill. And they've become absolutely perfect at hiding for them to be as big as they are and to be able

to move silently to just basically be shadows, ghosts. They're perfect at it. They're so good at it that most people around the world don't know they exist and don't believe they exist. That is a feat. That is, that's wild. So you're kind of thing it's more of a display that it was doing like get out of here. We don't want you here. Yeah, I think we were in their territory or in their house or whatever you'd call it. And I think if we would have gotten there earlier, we would have gotten there, you know, in the evening with some light out and they would have heard us and they could come watched us or some. They might have said these guys from

you know they're just they're not a threat who knows maybe that it wouldn't have been that way at all but um i think there at least was because we showed up late um and my buddy and i weren't like listening to music we weren't hooting and horror and stuff you know we're quiet and respectful so i think they would chase anybody out of there and you know fortunately we did listen to the you know, to get out and we got out because I would assume most people would leave. But who knows?

I've sort of thought to if other people might have been in the situation, they might have been drinking or something. They just didn't have their wits about them. And I don't know if they would have stayed. Who knows what would have happened? I don't, looking back, think that my life was in danger because if these things wanted to be seen,

they would have come right out and, you know, done everything to scare us out of there. And they did everything they could not be seen. Yeah, I think if they wanted you dead, you would have been dead. Yeah, but it's still terrifying. I mean, it still would have scared me. I know in your email you had talked about things happening around your home. Tell me about that. So we moved about 40 minutes west of where we had lived,

my wife and three kids. We'd lived for about nine years. Again, we're in the southeast part of the state. We'd lived in the country to a degree, but we were really just at the south end of a pretty small town. But now we've moved into the country and we have a couple acres and we're right on a river in a small river valley. And if you followed the river west, there's a really beautiful big land preserve. And there's a really beautiful, big land preserve. And there's a, There's a decent amount of forest along the river. There's so much agricultural, you know, just millions of tillable fields around here, though, that I didn't imagine I would be experiencing them here. And within the first month, I have trouble sleeping sometimes. I've kind of had it my whole life. Some months I'll be able to sleep perfectly, and some months I just went up quite a bit. And this first month, we moved in to this place. I wasn't sleeping very well.

So I think probably after midnight one night, I'd gone outside to the north end of our house, which overlooks the river. And our garden is on that end of the house. And we have a tree line that comes up within 50 feet of the house. And off to the north, it was far away. It had been a mile and a half. away. I heard the sort of

I don't know, like the telltale Ohio Howl. I'd never heard that in my life. I'd never heard that out. I'd heard recordings of it, but I'd never heard that out in the world. And it was far, it was far away. But it was

incredible. It was it lasted for so long. And I could tell that it was obviously an organic thing, making the sound. Again, it just shows the lung capacity of these things, and it just, it just doesn't stop. It, you know, it just went on and on, and it sounds like, I've heard people say this, but

it sounds like an air raid, you know, or some kind of terrible alarm. It didn't startle me, and it didn't scare me. It was far off, and I just thought, well, you know, I guess they are everywhere. They're here, too. and that was kind of bad with that experience. But that same summer, it would have been, I think, a year to the week at least of my experience in Stevens State Forest. My wife and kids were at the state fair again.

And instead of camping, I just stayed at my place. But I had an old friend come to visit me. He lives about an hour away. and he drove up, spent the day here. At night, we were sitting around a fire on the north end of my house. And this is, I don't know what this is. And I experienced this out here every once in a while. But it's, I don't know, it's something strange.

It's so he was leaving a little after 11 o'clock at night. And we walked around to the south end of my place. where my lane is where he was parked. So we're sitting at the top of my lane, just south of my house. And there's a cemetery really close to my place. It's an old county cemetery. I think it actually sits on top of an old burial mound. I've found several contemporary in a sense,

contemporary cemeteries that are actually located on top of indigenous burial mounds. And I think the reason that is, I think when settlers were looking to put their dead somewhere, at some point they would dig into these burial mounds back then by accident. And they would say, oh, this is, you know, they're dead people here. This is, or their bodies here. This is where we should put our dead. And it just becomes a recycled cemetery, basically. But the cemetery next to us, you know, you can throw a baseball and get there. It's truly within a stone's throw.

It's a real mounded conical shape that sits on the highest point above the river, just like a mound would be. So off toward that cemetery, which is to the west of us, we started hearing three or four, sounded like something doing an impression, doing an impression of owls. and it only lasted 10 seconds maybe and then the sound changed and sounded like something doing an impression of coyotes and as these three or four things were

sounding off the hills all to the west and the northwest for a mile just started sounding off with these things there must have been almost two dozen of these things. things for a stretch of a mile. And they all sounded, and I've heard coyotes in my entire life.

I grew up right on the Mississippi River. I was out in the country always. I've heard coyotes on 35, and I've heard them for 35 years. You know, I know what coyotes sound like, and I know they can make really weird noises, and they have a pretty broad array of vocalizations they do. This sounded so strange. And there are probably two dozen of these things calling. My buddy is also, he's heard who knows how many coyotes in his life.

So we're standing there in the dark in my drive looking at each other is bewildered. And finally he goes, what the hell is that? I said, I don't know. I've never heard that before because I'd never heard it out here. And they sounded off like that for almost. a minute and then they kind of died down and then the noise changed again and it sounded like I couldn't even tell you but it sounded like I don't know something doing an impression of something I don't know I don't know it was like a worst impression of a coyote almost but it wasn't

I don't even know how to explain it and my friend kind of laughed and he said I'm sorry man but I I'm leaving you know because he had been planning to leave anyway and nothing happened that night after that. Thank God. But it was just strange, you know, another strange thing out here. And maybe two months after that, my son, who was seven at the time, he was just about to turn eight, I'm a painter. And we moved into this house. There was a machine shed. I'm sitting in it right now. There's a machine shed 100 feet off the house, and I just turned it into a painting studio. I'm sitting in this painting studio with a buddy of mine who was over. He'd come over for dinner and after dinner.

He and I came out here and we were just talking at probably 10 o'clock at night. He left and I went in the house. And my wife was in my son's bedroom with him and my son was just crying and crying. Really upset. I walked in and I said, hey, what's the matter? Because he doesn't, because he just stays up that late. and he's sitting there crying. My wife kind of said, you know, I'll tell you later.

And I just sat with him for a while and asked if he was okay. And he just seemed so scared, but he didn't want to talk about it. So after we got him calm down and asleep, my wife told me that he had come out to the painting studio, which is on the south end of our house. And there's, you know, the forest comes right up to the back of it. and it was probably at 8 o'clock he'd come out probably to say good night to me or something but he'd stopped short because to the left of the painting studio in the tree line

he saw what he described as a coyote man he said it was this really big hairy man big he said and he just kept describing it as a coyote man and it scared the hell out of him. He ran inside and was in tears and absolutely just dreadfully afraid for, who knows, an hour and a half, two hours until he got to sleep. And I don't know what to make of that, you know, because I don't sit here and my kids know about Bigfoot, but I don't, I didn't actually tell them that I had the experience that I had or the experiences I've had before. until they, they, they would hear people ask me about it.

And finally, you know, my kids would be like, we know you experienced Bigfoot. We know you saw on, you know, tell us about it. And I still haven't really told them about my full experience. But I don't, I don't know that it's not really in their wheelhouse or in their, in their lives really where they're hearing about or seeing Bigfoot things. so I don't know where he would have gotten the coyote man thing. I know kids have incredible imaginations, and it could be chalked up to that,

but I don't know my sons. I hadn't seen him upset like that before, but something that had scared him. So it just, I don't know what to make of it. I don't know what it was because I didn't experience it, but it sounded like he saw a coyote man. Yeah, that's pretty specific that he brought up the coyote man. It almost sounds like he's talking about dog man.

Yeah, I hope to God that that's not the case because I've never had experiences with those things. But from what I've heard in people's experiences, it sounds just horrendous. You know, I've heard Bigfoot experiences that mine really wasn't all that bad. It was terrifying in the moment. But looking back, I'm very fortunate that I didn't have that bad of an experience with them. When I hear people's experiences with dog man, it sounds pretty horrendous across the board.

What's strange is that into that fall even, that would have been late summer, into that fall, we had weird things happening. Always by my painting studio and maybe a little to the east along the tree line too. It was always in this one area over here on this part of the property where at night there would be some. something baying from the forest. It almost sounded like a coon dog, baying, wanting to get out and hunt. And how they whined just that real,

like, please take me out. It wasn't that, though. It was, I don't know what it was, but every couple weeks, there would be something

just in the woods, in the dead of night, just baying, kind of whining, but more than whining, crying almost from the forest. And it was unsettling. You know, it would sometimes it would be when I would come home from work or my wife would come home from work.

Or it would just be, I'd go out at night just to go look at the stars or to be outside. And for no apparent reason there would just be something crying in the forest. And it happened probably half a dozen times that we experienced it. And I would sit there and shine flashlights into the forest. I never saw anything. And then it just stopped. I've never, we've never had that happen again.

I don't, I don't know what the hell that was, but it was all around that same time. Yeah, I appreciate sharing that. You'll have to keep me up to date. Let me know if anything else happens out there. I think Iowa specifically,

most of the time they're just kind of passing through, and you'll find them near waterways and, you know, very limited forest, but I've had accounts come out of there for sure. Let me ask you, what do you think Sasquatch is? What's your take? You know, I've had different, I think about it all the time. I've come up with who knows how many theories, and I'm sure every one of them's wrong. I think these things, probably some kind of something in the homo line, you know, there have been Homo erectus,

Homo Neanderthals, you know, Denisovans, Homo sapiens, Homo Hidalbergensis, there have been so many different hominids. We anthropomorphize every one of them,

not just in that we make them manlike. We make them as human as possible in our minds and in our depictions. We have no idea what these things are like. We find our stone tools. with Neanderthals, we find some of their art and some of their their flutes. They're, you know, we just don't know what they were like. But I really think that these things, probably some sort of something in the homo line.

And one of the things that really leads me to that is not just that they're human-like and their appearance to a degree. but I do think that they do have psychic occurrence and I think every human has that too and I don't just mean in being able to speak to someone in your mind or something like that I think some people can do that every single human that's walking around today

has psychic experience and they don't realize that that's what it is because it's such a normative thing in our lives and I'm talking about creativity if you can conceive of something before it exists and you can create it in your mind and then you can pull it into the real world and you can create it that is a psychic occurrence you're creating something in your mind that didn't it did not exist before and it's so prevalent in people so many people have it every person has creativity not every person

uses it, but it's not seen as a psychic occurrence because it's in our everyday lives. I do not think that Sasquatch or whatever we want to call these things have creativity. I think their minds developed in a different way in a different fashion. They use whatever portion of their brain is creating their own type of psychic occurrence in mind speak and whatever. else they're using. You know, so many people talk about seeing these things cloak and turn invisible in the forest. And I don't know that they're truly turning invisible, but maybe they're using some sort of psychic occurrence in their mind. Maybe they're using infrasound in a way that

is making it so we're perceiving them disappear. I don't know. I think these things are extremely intelligent. I do think they're more human than animal. Yeah. But sometimes I don't know, maybe it's some sort of spiritual being that we don't have, I don't know, maybe it's, it's something like that, you know, that just comes and goes from this reality. I'm not sure. Yeah, I appreciate your answer, kind of your well-thought-out answer. And I would love an explanation for some of the weird stuff that does get reported. It really does make you wonder. and the night that you guys were out there camping, I mean, it would have startled me. I would have got up and left as well.

I think you guys did the right thing. And I'm kind of curious on what happens in the future on your property. You'll have to keep me up to date. But I really enjoyed having you on, Red. Thanks so much for taking the time. Yeah, absolutely. Again, I've listened for years, Wes. You know, I hear people say it sometimes,

but I don't think enough people do. Thank you, man. Thank you for giving so many people a platform to talk about their experiences to share what they've done, what they've seen, what they've heard, and just to hear fascinating, weird, weird things that happen out in the forest, man. I appreciate you. I appreciate that. Thank you, Red. That means a lot to me. And thank you again for coming on.

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.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone.