Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:134 Encounters While Camping

Episode Date: August 10, 2015

Due to technical difficulties tonight we will only have one guest. I will have Holly back on the show mid-week. Tonight the witness describes setting up a camp. Leaving for a short time and when returning to their campsite finding the tent had been rummaged through and every item had been tossed about. Assuming it was a prank or some drunks came through and ruined their campsite the couple decided to leave, as they were leaving hey had a very close encounter with Sasquatch, The creature had been watching from the bushes and when the creature thought it had been seen it stood up out of the brush. The witness said  "It was not a man....it was not a bear....it was huge!"

Five, five, four, four, three, three, two, one, one. When I had come down this hill, I had seen this creature cross the road. They would have ripped my locked door from my truck, extracted me from my vehicle, and no one damn thing I could have done about it. This thing I got to notice in his eyes. His eyes was real, real evil, real sinister looking. The look it was given me.

out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about six foot. Sir? Yes, I'm looking right heading. Saskwatra Chronicle. A place where people share their encounters. Let's start the show.

Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, please email me, Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out the website, Sasquatch Chronicles.com. You know, when we're putting together this show,

I got to thinking, As summer winds down, a lot of us are out camping, a lot of us are trying to get outdoors to get the last bit of summer before winter comes, before fall, and things aren't so nice and pretty outside. And a lot of people are trying to get out to the woods. And what happens when you're out in the woods and you have an encounter with something that you have never seen before, you'd never heard of before, you just run into an unknown creature while you're out there? and originally I was going to have two guests on tonight. There were some technical difficulties with the first guest,

and so, Holly, I apologize to you. I will have you back on the show just due to the technical issues. I was only able to get Stephen on the show tonight, but Stephen, thank you for being here. I really do appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Stephen, tell us your first encounter happened back in 92, is that correct? No, it was 96.

Can you tell us what you guys were doing? Tell us who you're with and what you saw, what you experienced. All right. My wife, Heller, and I were returning from a trip to Seattle that we had made. We were in a process of moving up to Seattle is what we were doing from California. And we were camping the whole way. We decided we were going to make this one and long essential vacation. between California and Washington for about a month.

And we were on our return leg back. We were camping through the mountains in Northern California. We were over near the Trinity Dam area near Lewiston. Literally, we pulled in. It was April. The National Forest actual campgrounds were not open really yet in this area. They still had closed signs on them. However, this particular one that we pulled up next to near the dam, I think it was probably about a half a mile below the dam.

It wasn't chained off. Its gate was open. It just had a close sign. No one, you know, no one that we could tell was there and everything. And this was probably, what, 6 o'clock in the evening? And we decided, yeah, this looks like a good place. We'll just go in there and we'll stay the night or so and fool around, you know, whatever. It was just the two of us.

we went in pretty much chose the back of the campground nearest the Trinity River the campground was actually between the road and the river it was not too heavily treed

not a whole lot of bushes it was actually I mean to be perfectly honest this campground kind of looked like a K-O-A almost I mean it was it was just wide open and flat and and everything else. You know, it's the kind of thing I guess you'd take your, you know, your kids to during the summer or something like that and go fish in the river.

The area around it was pretty much entirely forested. It was the steep valley that we were at the bottom of. Yeah, you know, I mean, it's, it really couldn't have been more of a plain, ordinary site. We were not out in the deep woods or anything like that. I mean, we were a quarter mile from the dam, and if I had to guess, I think five miles north of the town of Lewiston itself. I mean, we were not in the boonies. And so anyway, we got out.

We picked our campsite. We pitched our tent. We were traveling like pigs. I'll tell you what, because for two, you know, for two people, we had an eight-man dome tent. And, you know, I mean, it was just like, you know, if you're going to camp out of a car, you camp in style, I guess. I don't know.

But anyway, you know, we weren't lacking for space. So, you know, we sat there. We threw the tent up. We threw our sleeping bags and pillows and everything else in there. This was my wife's first real experience with camping had been this big trip. And so, I mean, it was pretty much, you know, a kindergarten car camping, nothing too strenuous or anything else. You know, total tourist trap camping is what we had been doing.

We got unpacked. There was still a little bit of daylight left, and we figured what the heck. We didn't feel like cooking dinner or anything. So we got in the car, and we went on down to Lewiston. We found a little steakhouse that was over there. We had a couple, you know, had a bite to eat and stuff and everything. I think it is important to just point out, just for the record. Neither one of us had anything to drink.

I mean, we were soft drinks the whole way through. So no alcohol, no nothing like that. Probably took an hour to an hour and a half at the restaurant. And by the time we left it, the restaurant, it was dark. We drove back up to the campsite. And the way the campsite is, I looked it up. The actual campsite was called the Ackerman Campground. You'll be able to find it on Google if you want to look on Google Earth or something like that.

But the entrance road, the actual road going up the valley is a little bit elevated up on the side of the valley. And so the entrance, you would pull into it and then the road goes down somewhat. Maybe I'm thinking 50, maybe 75 feet of an incline until it comes down to where the campsite is. and when you do, you would swing your headlights and pretty much sweep the entire campground. So when we turned in, you know, with our brights on and everything else, because there's no one else around, we did. You know, we weren't paying any attention to it, but we had to have swept that campground, and we were visible to everything, you know, within a half a mile, I'm sure. We pulled into the campground and pulled up to our campsite, and all of our stuff's just tossed all over.

over the place. We had left this campsite. Everything was, you know, the cooler and the, our gear box and everything else are packing boxes. They were still sealed. They were sitting on the park bench, had not been messed with. The tent, however, we had left zipped up. And in fact, both the interior screen and the outer door, both of those were actually zipped. because my wife was just not wanting any bugs in there.

So she was kind of being anal about making sure if this thing stayed zipped all the time. And anyway, this tent's upside down, sitting on its side. I mean, if I had to take a guess, you know, it looked like maybe an 80 mile an hour wind had come through and just kind of rolled it. And everything has been just stripped, just tossed right out of the sucker. We've got one sleeping bag, which is half. way in and out of the tent and the tent's pretty much laying

on its door and everything. And then the other sleeping bag and sheets and pillows and stuff like that, they're just all tossed out on the ground. And I mean, we're not talking about you know, it it's not like something picked up the tent

and just dumped everything out. There was more to it than that because things were strewn out much farther than that. So something got in there, pulled the stuff out or, you know, or whatever, threw it out a good 10, 15 feet from the, from the tent, and then turned the 10 over. That's the only way I can think of that that event actually happened. We didn't see it. That's just what we walked in on.

And what did you think it was, Stephen? What did you think did that? Oh, I thought it was, I figured we had some drunk teenagers or something, you know, maybe, you know, maybe some hoodlums or something like that came through just, you know, riffling through seeing if they could find anything worth stealing or, or just messing with the campers. Because, I mean, we were before the season. No one else was around. You know, I mean, we were oddballs at that time. You know, there wasn't anybody else up there.

And so, I mean, it didn't occur in me to be anything else and all that. It was, the tent was large enough that, and it was staked down and everything. it didn't just blow over. There was no weather. This was a completely clear night. I remember that. I mean, it was just very calm, you know, and everything else. This was not weather related.

It was obvious that someone had come in and just messed with the tent and done everything else. Among other things, the fact that the tent had been unzipped, you know, just totally made, you know, wasn't ripped. It was just the tent had been unzipped and open. And then, of course, everything tossed out. So anyway, we're sitting here thinking, well, you know, if these kids or whoever they are are still in the area, we don't really want to be staying around here with them. So we decided, okay, you know, it's, you know, let's just start packing up and we'll grab everything, we'll put in, we'll drive back out to Lewiston, and we'll just get a hotel room. No big deal, nothing else. it's important for me to tell you that before I say what happened,

because this was my wife's first time, we had made an arrangement that if something out of the ordinary happened, especially on her end, that needed us to just drop everything and do anything. And I'm talking specifically in case like we had a bear that came into the camp or a cougar or something like that, something that either one of us thought was not a safe situation necessarily

that required our attention and everything else. We just made an agreement to just say to the other, hey, can you quickly and calmly just get to the car? A lot of people might find that strange that you would say that, but I think it's smart. You know, I say that to my girlfriend all the time when we go out. I say if there's anything, not even Bigfoot. related, if it's

a bear related or cougar related, please don't run. Just calmly let me know what's going on and then we'll address it, but please don't run the moment you see, you know, not that she's a wimp or anything, but I'm just saying the last thing I need is for her to bolt off running in fear

and whether it's a cougar, bear, or saskatch, you know, whatever, had that all of a sudden look at her as prey and now I've got a problem on my hand then. So, I mean, I get that. I get what you're saying. Yes. And that's exactly the point. You know, it was, she was not used to being outside.

I mean, she was a city girl, her entire life, you know, and everything. And so, and, you know, whereas I had been, you know, I'd spent a good chunk of mine growing up going outdoors and everything else. And so I was used to these situations, and she wasn't. And so that literally was what our arrangement had been, you know, because I didn't, just like you said, The last thing I wanted was to hurt a freak out. And I have to give her credit. She waited to freak out. I mean, this is the thing.

We started packing up the car. This, I don't have, we don't have a lantern lit or anything like that right now. Just going on flashlight. I've got a flashlight. We've got the car parked pretty much. within five or ten feet, I'd say, of the tent. The interior light would light up the area from the car. We had a...

What we had was we had a Mazda Navajo, which is the other name for a Ford Explorer. And so, you know, we were sitting there. At this point, you guys have had enough. You don't want to stick around to find out when the drunks are coming back or what you think are drunks. So you guys are just leaving. That is correct.

That's all we're doing. You know, we just, we're on vacation. We didn't want to put up with anything. You know what I'm saying? Especially being out just the two of us out in the middle, you know, out in the middle of nowhere relatively, you know, outside of town. So anyway, I'm, I've righted the tent. I'm getting the, the, the sleeping bag that was still in the tent.

I'm rolling it up. My wife has grabbed the other sleeping bag and one of the pillows off the ground. and she walks it over to the car, takes it over to the passenger side, which is the opposite side of the vehicle from where I was. Okay? She opens the rear door,

which kicks on the light and everything, the interior light of the vehicle, and puts her, you know, throws the stuff in the back seat. When she backs up to turn around to close, you know, to close the door, and this, this is how she described the event.

As she put her hand on the door and she started to turn around, which if you can picture the situation, you have me in the tent, then you have the vehicle with her on the far side, and then if you continue out in a straight line, it would be in that direction. So farthest from me, if we had a straight line through me to the vehicle to her and onward. in that direction as she's looking out she sees this

animal being whatever you want to call it a thing at this point it catches her eye because it stands up it was sitting crouched right next to a tree that was about maybe 10 feet 15 feet away from where we'd parked the car and I'd say it's about a car length away from the from the car

So fairly close. This thing stood up. And she said when she saw it stand up, she just froze. And as it stood up, it turned. She said the whole body kind of turned. She remembered that it maneuvered as it did this in such a way that it avoided this branch that it was standing under. But as it turned, then it just walked away. And it left the light.

And she didn't see anything else anymore. but it had been sitting there, crouched, watching her. And when it stood up, she said it was just the hugest, biggest thing she had ever seen in the fact that it was so utterly quiet. She said it never made a sound, but it just turned around and walked off out of her view. She panicked and very calmly asked me to get in that car. I hear her say this Then I hear the door slam

That was her getting in it And I'm like Okay wait a minute What's going on here And so you know she's not She's been gone for almost a month camping She's never ever done this So so instantly you know

I know my wife She's not one to scream You know or cry wolf or anything like that And so instantly you know I'm on alert a little bit And I'm like okay So I drop it and I go over to the car I get in the driver's side

and she's sitting there and she's just starts the car, start the car, just get the car, go, go, go, get going. You know, that's how she's being. And I'm like, what's going on? What happened? Blah, blah, blah. As I get the keys out and everything else.

And the longer I take to get those keys in there, I couldn't have gotten them in fast enough. She's starting to melt down. She's freaking. And I'm like, okay, okay, okay, okay, you know. And so we started to get to. I start the car, and I'm looking all around. I'm trying to figure out what it was.

And she's like, my God, it was huge. I don't know what it was. It's just over there. She's like, get me the hell out of here. That's not how she put it, but that's essentially it. And, you know, at this point, just, I mean, not hysterics, but as close to it as we can get. And then I do the worst thing I could possibly do. I sat there and I was like, well, I got to know what it is you saw.

And so I take the long way around the campground or the campsite. I go around the tent because I'm trying to sweep everything with my headlights because I'm wanting to know what the heck she saw. And that was too much for her. She started screaming and hitting me, telling me just to get her the hell out of here. And so I'm like, okay, okay. So we start driving. I get her on up.

We're on the road. We're getting out of there. And for the next 45 minutes to an hour, maybe. a little bit longer. I don't remember exactly how far. I think we ended up having to drive to Reading and get completely out of the mountains and into the valley, the Central Valley, before she felt safe enough for me to stop the car.

This entire time we were driving down the road, she is shaking, she is shivering and quaking and crying. I wanted to ask you, did she ever describe what she saw or wasn't more of just a huge outline of something big. No, I'm asking her down the trip. I'm like, what is it?

You know, what was this? And at first, she was like it was big. It was hairy, you know, and everything else. And my first inclination was I was like, well, we saw a bear. Did, you know, it wasn't a bear or everything. And she swear, she goes, no, this was not a bear. She goes, I've seen what bears look like. I've been to the damn zoo.

She goes, this is not, you know, that was not a bear. And I was like, well, are you sure? You know, it can't be. I was like, bears stand up. They could do that. And she goes, this thing stood up and turned and walked away. You know, she's like, it was sitting there, you know, watching me. She remembered, she didn't see the head.

It was the movement of the animal standing up. That is what brought her attention to it. And so she only really saw the shoulders down. She never did see the face because by the time she was looking at it was already starting to turn as it stood up. She remembered, however, that it had essentially it kind of stooped as it stood up a little bit to get around this branch. She said she remembered the branch, the shoulder was actually behind this branch on this tree. And this was the only, actually this was the lowest branch on the tree and it was the only one. at that level.

I mean, we didn't go back the next day and mistake this branch for another branch. This was the only option there at that height. But anyway, I'm getting forward there a little bit. I got her calm down. I got her at the motel the next day. We decide, okay, we're going to drive back. It's daylight. Whatever it was, obviously, it's gone.

Let's go back and get our stuff before someone else helps themselves to it. We drive back out there. Everything's pretty much as we left it. We didn't see any change or anything. She's really nervous. I asked her to tell me, okay, show me where this was. And she did. She told me this is where it was standing.

And that's the first time I realized that what we probably saw was not a bear. Because I'm 5'7. I put my hands over my, you know, stretched fully up over my head. and I can probably reach seven and a half feet, you know, maybe, you know, seven and a half, eight feet. I can almost touch the ceiling, you know, in a normal room. So I guess that's what, about an eight foot ceiling. This branch was at least a foot and a half above where my fingertips could reach.

And I was like, you said that this thing was even, she goes, it stood above it. She goes, that's where its shoulder was. She goes, it had to actually move over a little bit to get out of the way, you know. And I was like, really? And she's like, yes. And I'm like, you realize that means this is a nine or a ten foot thing that you saw at the very least. I was like, Grizzlies don't get that tall.

And she's adamant. She's like, this is what I saw. You know, and she got, if I questioned her more than it, all she did at that time was get irate. You know, it was like, you know, it was like, you know, it was like, you know, I know what I saw. I'm telling you this is what I saw. And this woman was not like that. This is not her.

That she genuinely had a come-to-Jesus moment here and everything. And I mean, which in its own right really kind of shattered me a little bit because, you know, it's just the very last thing I expected from her. Yeah, and the other thing, too, you know, with bears. Bears don't, in the area that you're in that you're talking about and describing is there's black bears in that area. And black bears are good for one thing and that's running from you. They will take off. They'll sprint. They really want nothing to do with you.

And if you have a black bear come into your camp like that and it's 10 feet from your wife, you got some real problems because if the black bear isn't running, it's not scared. I mean, you have some real, real problems. you're not just going to get in the car and leave. There's going to be some sort of altercation there. And the standing up, turn around, walking off, I mean, it sounds like a Sasquatch, especially with the way it tore up your...

Yeah, exactly. And that's what... That was the conclusion I came to. We both came to, actually, was that we probably interrupted this thing going through our stuff when we entered the campground. If we didn't interrupt it,

it had disturbed our camp and then stayed in the area. But for whatever it was, it was watching us. And now that we look back on it and everything else, we really pretty much kind of think this was a none too subtle hint to get the hell out of its valley. I mean, you know, that's pretty much what it was. You know, I don't think it was necessarily curiosity. that got it as much as I think, you know, this thing was just like, you know, I really resent the fact that y'all are here, you know, and everything. And, you know, we weren't there at the time, but it took it out on our stuff. You know, it decided. I mean, I, you know, I say, you know, nothing was broken. There wasn't a whole lot actually that could have been broken. You know, the tent was, you know, one of those fiberglass domes. And so unless it had actually tried to crush it or something like that, the poles give, you know, and everything else is fabric.

So unless it went into a tirade, it wasn't really going to. You know, I find it interesting that it managed to unzip the thing. That's something it gets me. A bear does not unzip. A bear would have gone through the fabric if it was going to tear through something or whatever. You know, the zipper had been undone. I mean, it was like three-quarters undone. It wasn't undone the entire way.

It was done like, you know, just far enough, you know, over and around that, you know, the door opened up and it could see in and whatever. And I think that's what it did. It opened it up and it looked in, maybe reached in one or two things, and then it picked up the damn tent. I just...

It's interesting. It makes me think of two things. Last week when Bob Garrett was calling these things, what do you call them? Campsite robbers. But he said that they could use zippers, they could undo knots. And he said it wasn't just a real random,

him like they just rip things open. He said they'll actually undo it like a person would undo it. But it also makes me think of the trapper that was killed that episode. I don't know if you heard that or not with the... Oh, I have. You know how their campsite. They left to go set the beaver traps. They came back.

And it was kind of how you're describing your campsite is how he describes it in the writings. Well, yeah. And it's funny that you mentioned that. Actually, we're talking about other campsites that we know of that have been torn up. It was actually the, it was my, oh, I don't think it was the Lone Star Trail episode. See, I just discovered, I just discovered the podcast about a month and a half ago, I'd say. Thanks for listening, man. Oh, no, I did. Hey, man, it's one of the best ones on there if you ask me.

And that's a compliment. Let me tell you. I appreciate it. The one of Bob Garrett, if you'll remember right, Bob Garrett came. across a torn up campsite and and everything else. That whole thing and everything else. I had found the video of that on YouTube and they were showing, now that campsite was torn up more aggressively because, I mean,

things were actually destroyed in that one. But the general mayhem and the way the tents were and things were strung about and everything, that reminded me of our experience. and so, you know, and everything, and that, that actually finding that and knowing that you had talked about it, that, you know, on the show and things like that itself and everything else, that's what prompted me to say, you know, hey, you know, maybe I've got something that's worth, you know, calling and telling Wes about anyway. You know, because before, you know, before that, this isn't something you just normally go about and tell everybody. you know, we got back into town and, you know, we were actually basing out of my parents' house at the time while we were trying to find a place to live. And, you know, we told my parents what had happened. And I think we learned our question, our lesson real quick, that was the last people we told.

You know, because, I mean, you know, I think all I did was, you know, solidify what my mother already knew was, you know, that woman who married my son. You know, and that's saying something. Actually, they ended up having a great relationship. But anyway. The other thing, too, about the whole situation, it rips apart your camp, or we're assuming it did. I think you and I pretty much agree that it did. And then it doesn't leave.

That's the key to this whole story. It does not leave. It stays. And it makes you wonder why it's staying. Is it staying to shake a hand, or is it staying because you didn't get the message? to leave, and now you're going to pay for it if you guys would have stayed that night. You see, and that's really what kind of gives, you know, gave us the willies.

There afterwards was the fact that we were being observed. It had done this, it had gone in, you know, it had violated the campsite. And then after we returned, it was waiting to see what we did. and the fact that it was relatively that close to her and it was coming and you got to remember she just randomly

walked around the vehicle to the passenger's side it was coming at us from our blind side on the other side of the vehicle okay from where we were at the tent standing there talking deciding what we were going to do that animal

was on the opposite side of that SUV. We wouldn't have seen it. If it was crouching and everything else, there was no way we could have seen it, but it would have been able to observe and hear us. And it was, you know, there's no reason to the world. It was just her habit. She carried that stuff around to her side of the car

that put her that close to that animal and everything. That animal had to be there sitting there the whole time or close to it, you know, not long after we got out of the car when we first pulled up. We never heard anything. We never saw anything. I mean, you know, Sasquatch are like the forest ninjas if they want to be. I'm convinced of this. They can either make their noise or they can be as silent as a ghost.

And that's what this one was doing. It was being as silent as a ghost. It was just sitting there, observing. I don't know if it had been approaching her as she was on that side or if it had been crouching there the whole time. All we know is when it became visible to her attention. You had a couple experiences several years later, didn't you? Yes, we did. Yes, we did.

Long story short, we went ahead and moved up to Seattle. And after about a year, year and a half of essentially digesting what this was and what had happened. We started going out camping again and things like that and coming to terms. She especially came to terms and really started researching into this wanting to know what had happened, what she thought it was. She wanted confirmation and affirmation very much of anything else of what she had experienced. And conversely, being so affected by this experience, you know, and that's a thing. thing. You know, I

really wish I'd seen it, but at the same time, part of me still to this day says, you know, maybe I'm better off not having been on that side of that car at the time. You know, maybe the both of us in that situation, panicking would have not been a very good thing at the time. So saying, you know, hey, God

was looking out. We, you know, after we started going camping and getting used to it, and at the same time, pretty much coming to the conclusion that, yes, we did have a Sasquatch encounter, you know, and everything. We decided we really, as we started researching and getting into this more, finding out more about the, you know, on the internet and everything. And back around 97, 98 in that

time period, you know, there was a Sasquatch community online, but, you know, I mean, other in the BFRO and Bobby Short and a couple of others, you didn't really, you know, it wasn't that big of a, of a thing yet. And we had joined the group, you know, the, the forums and the groups, you know, I remember we, you know, we exchanged emails with John Green and, you know, and all them. And we're sitting there thinking, holy cow, you know, I mean, at the time, it was like, you know, starstruck. We ended up volunteering with the BIFRO and everything to try to be researchers to go out there and, you know, and start getting involved in searches and things like that. And we, I don't know if I want to mention names or not. I mean, well, I'll mention one of them because one of them I know is publicly known.

The other one I'm just going to say his first name and all that. He was a BFRO researcher, kind of a coordinator in the South Washington area. His first name was Jeff. The other one that we ended up working a lot with and everything else was a guy by the name of Rick Knoll. We met them in, honestly, I can't remember if it was 97 or 98. thinking it was 98. There was a get-together for everybody in the region, you know, in the Seattle metropolitan area and surrounding.

At one of the coffee shops, I'm wanting to say it was up in Pialup or something like, or down in Pial-up or something like that. But, no, that's not right. It was Everett. It was up around Everett. I remember it. Anyway, you know, we got 20, 30 people there. It was a much bigger showing than we thought it was going to be.

and everyone exchanged numbers, said, you know, hellos, you know, things like that. And over the next couple of months, you know, we started communicating with them and everything else. And Jeff and I hit it off really good. And Jeff worked closely with Rick. And so we started going out, you know, Jeff was like, hey, you know, where is it you all want to, you know, go searching at?

You know, I mean, he was actually being pretty open, you know, and everything. And, you know, we were telling him, we were like, well, you know, after everything we've considered and all that. I was like, to be perfectly honest, we think it'd be safe to just start out down in the Gifford Pinchot in that area. And, you know, in Skamania and that region, because that's historically one of the hotbeds. And we're like, you know, hey, if we're going to find evidence, that's one of the regions that just consistently has produced over the years and everything else, we may find something. And he was like, yeah, he goes, that works. You know, he goes, I'm not even that far from it.

He lived down near the Columbia River. And so, you know, so we started coordinating out of there. And we ended up picking up this area just in the Gifford Pinchot area that some people may end up having heard of or not. It was, you know, it's this little place called Skooka Meadow. The meadow itself was right there, but we weren't confined to the meadow itself. We searched and camped constantly in the whole surrounding region within, in the next two or three valleys. Pretty much, you know, what we did was we went up by Yale and Swift Reservars,

went up through past Cougar, then went over to Eagle's Cliff, and then we headed on up the mountains. And once we got up there, we went out, and I'm thinking we were just west of Indian Heaven and that region. You know, there's several square miles out there of decent forest. I'm thinking, West, that you're familiar. familiar with that area. Am I correct or am I wrong? I know that whole area really well.

You know the area really? Okay. So you know where I'm talking about when I say Eagles Cliff and all that? Okay. All righty. I can't remember the road's name, but when you leave Eagles Cliff, you go up, there's a forest road out of Eagle's Cliff that eventually cuts up a hillside and it's just switch back after switch back after switch back for a while. And then it gets up on top of the plateau and then you just go for like two or three miles. And then once you're there, the forest roads start branching off. And we would always go towards the left and stay. Our base camps that we stayed at would usually be somewhere in that area. We would go out there as often as we could. We were still in college at this time.

and I mean we were well to be honest we were silver spoon kids we weren't working we had all the time we had our money to afford this and that and this is what we were doing for fun she and I had just gotten the bug

and this is where we were going and so we were out there more than anyone else I'm setting that up because we had two experiences my wife and I had one experience and then I myself and my best friend who had come into town visiting we had an experience over here during this time period. All of this led up to ultimately that expedition

that made that that created the documentary legend meet science in which we had the skukum cast and everything else was there. It's important for me to mention we had nothing to do with that documentary. We, for personal reasons, we ended up moving back to Texas a week before that expedition started. We were supposed to go on it. And we ended up just, I mean,

we've all seen what Discovery Channel does to Bigfoot hunters. And honestly, we just thought, you know, I don't know if it's going to be the smartest thing to be on TV. So we kind of bailed on it. And knowing how that documentary turned, trust me, that was something we've regretted for many years because that was one of the few that did not make people look like, you know,

idiots or flute players or anything like that. It did a fairly decent job of being serious. But anyway, first, let me get back to what we had for our two experiences. The first one, we were out there. this was by ourselves one of the times when we didn't have Jeff or Rick or anyone else out there at the time. We camped out there and we had this routine during the day sometimes, especially in the heat of the day, where we would just very slowly cruise the forest roads and the back roads out in that area. and our idea was we were looking at the embankments on the side of the road

because we knew these things eventually had to cross the road. And we were just looking to see maybe just on the off chance, we'd be lucky enough to find a trail or something like that that we could see from the road and pick up from there. I mean, you know, lazy man's Sasquatch and I admit it. But, you know, on a hot summer day, it was better to sit in the air conditioning. we're doing this, we're driving down the road and we're creeping. We're maybe doing 10 miles an hour.

I'm looking out the left side. She's looking out the right side and we're looking at the embankments. We are not watching what is in front of us. Okay? I mean, I'm glancing every now and then to make sure I'm on the road. But, you know, I mean, it's not like there's any traffic out there. All of a sudden, there is this motion that moves in front of our vehicle, maybe about 10 or 15 feet out, about a vehicle's length out.

And it's this blur. It is this impression of motion. As soon as the brain registers it, we both whip our heads to the front. But by the time we get there, that thing's gone, and all you're seeing on the left-hand side is this tree just rocking back and forth. from where, you know, and whatever it is, it had just gone right past that tree and just, you know,

knocked the hell out of it as it went through. I don't think it hit it directly, but, you know, it brushed it or whatever, but it was enough that it, it was swaying two or three feet and, you know, in every direction kind of a thing. And we looked at each other and we were like, I mean, that thing was huge. It was black.

And I was like, did that look like it at two legs? And she's like, Yeah, I think it did. So you think it was actually up and running on two lines? It was, whatever it was. Yeah, and I'm thinking now, as I look back at it, it has to have been a Sasquatch because I can't possibly imagine anything else moving that fast.

Because, I mean, literally, it crossed that forest road in front of our vehicle from going from one side over to the other. it had to be in a tenth or a twentieth of a second. It was, I mean, whose stain bolt could not have moved this fast. This thing was just going. And it had crashed all the way through into the other brush. That one, maybe two trees. You know, it disturbed the initial outer brush going in there.

But then there wasn't anything being disturbed anywhere past. because I'd stopped the car. I got out. It was on my side. And I'm looking. I walked down the embankment. I walk to the tree line. You know, it's right there about five feet away from the road.

And I see this tree swing and I can't see anything else. There's not a whole lot of brush once you get away from the tree line. The underbrush kind of clears out and you've got mostly trees and everything else there. And you don't see anything. It's as if this thing was a ghost. It's something huge, crashed right in front of our vehicle, went right over there, hit that tree line, and disappeared. Never did see it.

Now, I never did look up, but it never occurred to me back then to be looking up to see anything. Maybe I should have. This thing was going so fast. I didn't see how it could have stopped. It had to have kept going down that hill, because, I mean, that's the direction that was going. going. It was going downhill. There was nothing there. There was no

crashing. There was no noise. No sound of anything going through the forest. You know, you just, you heard the birds in the background and that was it. And it was really, really kind of strange. For a long time, we were

really reluctant to really say, hey, we saw something. Because the truth is, we didn't see something as much as we just experienced something and it was weird. This thing moved so fast, it seemed, I don't want to say paranormal, but that's the way we felt, because it was so far outside of our experience to have something moved like that. I mean, we had this impression of large black blob. I mean, if you ever wanted to see a blob squatch, I'm sure that's

what we actually saw. It was just sitting right, going right across. And it's okay to say paranormal. You know, a lot of times with how fast these things move, it feels like that when you see them, especially when you see them, the way they move and how fast they can actually move. I would imagine by the time you saw it, your brain's starting to process what you saw, and it's gone by then.

Yeah, oh, it was. I mean, literally, it was, by the time my eyeballs registered the movement. You know, because I'd say, you know, like if you're looking straight out the front of your vehicle and then you're turning your head to the left, to a 45 degree angle. That's about where I was looking out.

I was looking out about 45 because I was just right there around where the side view mirror would be. I was looking just right past the mirror at the embankment and everything else as it was coming along. That's about the angle of my head. So, I mean, my peripheral was still sitting there on the front of, you know, on the roadway. And this thing passed it. And by the time my peripheral registered the movement and I whipped around. It's just blurring and gone. That's probably the absolute biggest thing for me to say.

This thing was off the ground. This thing, I mean, and by saying that, I'm not meaning, yeah, it was actually flying. I mean, it was a single stride type leap or whatever you want to call it across the road. Okay? when it went, yeah, when it went into that brush on my side, that's where it was landing, you know. I mean, it was fast, you know, and if I had to, if I had to judge it, it was coming to, it had to have been running at full speed down the hill.

And not having seen these things before in the flesh myself, not having seen it move, you know, in this fashion or anything like that, when it was outside of our experience or even what we had heard of before to think of these things moving fast. And in fact, to be honest, it probably really wasn't in my experience to realize these things could move quite like that

until maybe, really, I mean, I was getting confirmation of it when I started listening to your show. I mean, your show, if nothing else, has really started, has made me really feel, you know, affirmed that this actually is what that was. This was the one thing that she and I

never really told anybody out of me because we didn't get a clear enough look and we just really didn't want to feel like you know, I mean, I mean, come on now. We had already had one experience in 90s out there looking. What was the chances we were going to look at something else? You know?

I mean, you know, people, you know, we didn't want people to think we were nuts. Yeah. Well, tell me this. What happened with your last encounter? Okay. With my best friend, Andy, he had come, he came out usually two or three times a year to Seattle

on that area to come out and visit for a couple of days, Philadelphia. And this particular trip, he came out and he and I were going to go, we were going to go spend three or four days out in the woods. you know, Andy was Mr. Mega Boy Scout growing up, you know, been a hiker, all his life. He didn't believe in Bigfoot at all. And at this point, I've been immersed into everything enough. I don't want to say I was a true believer, but I felt the evidence said this thing was there. You know, I mean, I believed my wife.

But anyway, he came out, and it was just going to be a boy's timeout. We packed up, we drove south, we headed out into the same area that we were going on. We ended up on, I think it was Forest Road, NF-712, but don't quote me on that. That's just what my telling me, that's what it was. It was an older, clear-cut recovering area. The trees around here that were growing were sparse, a lot of undergrowth. And the trees were probably not more than 20 or 30 feet tall. You know, and there was a nice little clearing at the end of this road,

and we just figured, okay, this has got a good view. You can see out. You actually had kind of a commanding view of the valley and everything else. You could see quite a ways. And we figured, yeah, this is a good spot. We'll go ahead and camp out here. And so we got out. We started unpacking.

We set our stuff up. We had our little tent and everything. I remember we had ribs that night. We cooked them over an open fire. It was actually pretty good ribs. One of the things we were going to be doing while we were out there, we were both armed because we decided we're there. The next day we're going to go out and just go target shooting.

That was one reason we got this clearing was that had some excellent areas where we could do some shooting. And anyway, it's probably 11, maybe 12 o'clock. We're sitting there around our fire, just chilling, talking, doing what friends do. Again, I feel like it's important to say there was no alcohol there or anything like that. And just out of nowhere, these screams started. And it was a series of five of them.

They were loud. They were sharp and crisp. If you listen to the audios, you'll, you have the Pial Lips CREM, things like that. I'm wanting They were they were short They were What What?

You know kind of like that They were not long They were not long Screams They were very authoritative Very loud But not so close

I've heard a lot of people On the show Say when they hear screams Of these things Being that close It's like they can feel them in their chest I do not remember feeling that.

I didn't notice like that. However, this thing still sounded like it was right next door. I don't think it was at the edge of the camp, but I do think it was probably within two or three hundred yards at the farthest of where it was. It was

close to the area, and it shut up the whole valley. And it took about a minute, and within about a minute span, it did these five screams. after the first one, it got our attention. After the second one, we were standing up.

And by the third one... You're packing up. Well, no, we weren't packing up, but by the third one, we both had our weapons and our hands. Yeah, that's what I was going to say. And we're sitting here, I remember because, you know, to this day, it's kind of a funny thing in my brain. I can picture the two of us standing back to back.

I've got a 12-gauge. He's got a 45, and we're just sitting there looking at the woods. You know, because we just know something's about to walk out. You know, I mean, you know, it was scary. But that was it. We had nothing else. Given the area we were in and how low the brush and everything else was, this thing easily could have been two or 300 yards and still been staring at us.

Okay. The underbrush and everything was low enough. There were plenty of area, you know, in that area, the direction that those screams came from, you know, you could have gone a ways before you started getting into terrain that would have really hindered the views or something like that of where we were.

And so this thing easily could have been watching us. And I don't know. I mean, the fact that we both stood up and we've got guns in the air by the time, you know, pointed out of the woods by the time it stopped screaming, maybe that's why we didn't hear anything else again. I think Saskatch are completely smart enough to know what a firearm is.

I mean, I think that's been proven and established a long time ago. And so that may be why we had no other experience. I mean, looking back at it now, knowing what I know now, the last thing I do was be ever to reach for a firearm in that situation now. But that's because I do feel like, you know, hey, if you're going to have something and it's doing it, you don't want, you know, that's a point where you're, that's a point where you're, You don't necessarily want to scare it off if you may have an encounter as long as it's not an aggressive one necessarily, you know, or something like that. So I don't, you know, if I had it to do over again, wouldn't have done that. But in the, you know, at the heat of the moment, yeah, I'm out there in the middle of nowhere and I got this screaming banshee, you know, going off. And it's, it's kind of frightening.

It makes you feel small. What did your friend think it was? he never could come to grips with it. He knew it wasn't an elk. He knew it wasn't a bear and he knew it wasn't a moose. You know, because he and I both very familiar with those animals. We knew it wasn't a cougar. Obviously wasn't a coyote or anything like that.

You know, we both, you know, we grown up in the woods. We were familiar with these sounds. And that's not what any of them were. but he could never ever say yeah that was a big foot what he could say was I can see why people would think that could be a big foot he's like I'm not going to say that's what it was but you know and and you know but again he's one of those people you know he he doesn't believe something unless he sees it with his own eyes and so for him to say that much you know I kind of put a a notch in my black book of, yeah, I got it. You know, that was, that, you know, that, that, that proved the point.

And forever afterwards, I did not actually get ribbed by him anymore for spending my weekends out there looking for something that most people thought was a myth. You know, he, after that experience, he could understand, all right, you know, there is something out there that I can't place and I can't readily identify that, yeah, I think, you know, warrants more investigation. That was the last time, however, that he ever went camping with me. You know, ever since then, never since, never after that. That was the last interaction and sighting or event that I had.

And that one right there was actually both of those were the summer of 2000. They're fascinating encounters. I mean, all three of them are very fascinating encounters. And it's stuff that people experience. I mean, I don't know that they get that up close and personal like your wife did. And you were in that same situation. But very, very, very fascinating encounters. I can't think you enough for sharing them, Stephen.

I mean, I enjoyed listening to them. Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you. It actually feels pretty good to actually, for once, to be able to talk about it and not entirely feel like, you know, people are going to be looking at me like, you know, okay, what planet did you just get off of, you know? Yeah, like I always say, it's fun of games until you run into one. And then it's a whole different story, you know, changes your life.

And I just can't thank you enough for coming on. I appreciate it. You have a good day, Wes. Thank you, Stephen. And I want to thank Holly, too, as well, for coming on the show. And thank you out there, the listener, for taking the time to listen to the show, listen to people's encounters. And if you want to hear more stories, you want to hear more shows throughout the week,

please visit Sasquatch Chronicles.com for additional shows, additional content. There's a blog up there I've been trying to keep up with. And if you've had an encounter, email me, Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Until next time, everyone, have a great weekend, and have a great night. Being across the country faster than the coronavirus and wagering week is your antidote. I'm Tom Barton, and I'm a veteran sports analyst and respected sports handicapper who will help build ESPN's brand. I've been recognized and awarded by Pro Football Weekly and Gaming Today magazine as the honest handicapper. Let the other guys give you the same old boring sports talk with the same tired storylines.

We'll give it to you straight here every Friday on Wagering Week. Don't gamble with other podcasts. Let SportsGarten Network's Wagering Week help your bottom line.