Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:202 Is that a gorilla?!

Episode Date: March 20, 2016

I will be welcoming two guests on. My first guest is from Washington state. When he was a child he got on his bike along with other neighborhood kids and started riding to a friends house. His friend had called him and said that "the bear is back and looking in the windows." The boys wanted to see this bear and as they were riding up the road they came across this "bear." He said this man-like creature ran across the road in front of them and retreated into the wood line. The boys were unsure what it was but it was heading towards their fort in the woods so the boys got off their bikes and gave chase. My guest was one of the oldest boys and said that he caught up with this thing and it turned to look back at him and that is when he realized it was not a man or bear. He had no idea what he was looking at, he started screaming at the other boys to turn around and go back….. My second guest writes "I saw Bigfoot along with my friend and two daughters on our way to Georgia from Arizona. It was around 2:00 a.m. coming around a curvy mountainous road in Tennessee. We were only traveling about 20 mph around a sharp upgraded curve and boom, here stepping over a guardrail was a least 7 1/2 foot tall blackish greyish huge long armed hairy thing carrying a black trash bag which probably came from a campsite or something. His arms hung low to his knees, he stopped like a deer caught in our bright headlights, he was as tall if not taller than our Chevy van. He stared straight at us and we were looking at him. We were only like 25 feet from him. Saw him clear as day. My oldest daughter came to the front of the van after she heard me and my friend freaking out and said Mom, is that a gorilla?! He stood there at least 35 40 seconds before he proceeds to cross the road, stepped over the other guardrail and headed down in the woods. I had a camera and a video camera within reach but we were in such shock I didn't even think to pick them up and use them. All I know is I stared at this thing long enough to know what I and my family saw. I will never forget it. I kick myself in the ass all the time for not clicking a picture. The car that came up behind us as we were stopped, well, I'm sure they saw it too."

Today's sales leaders face a difficult task, selling the right products at the right time through the right channels. A new three-day program from Harvard Business School Executive Education addresses this problem directly. Join us on the Boston campus in August for managing sales teams and distribution channels, where you will discover strategies that can lead to the best sales performance. Learn more by clicking the banner or visiting hbs.m. me slash sales. That's HBS.m.m. slash sales. Five, five, four, four, three, three, two, 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 there wasn't a damn thing I could have done about it. This thing I got to notice in its eyes. His eyes was real, real evil, real sinister way. You know, look it was giving me. What are you reporting? Jesus Christ, you better.

Here, see him. Hello. Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about six foot nine, I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-oh.

Welcome to Sasquatch Chronicles, a place where people share their encounters. Let's start the show. All right. Sunday night's here, everyone. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show plan for you this evening. Got two guests coming up.

My first guest tonight is Pepper. And Pepper actually, she had a roadside crossing, but it's not your average roadside crossing. A lot of times when these creatures cross the road, it's really quick. They're fleeting glimpses. And wait till you hear this one. Pepper had a great encounter. It has a great description of what she saw. And really walks you through.

what this creature did. And it's interesting what the creature was holding as it was crossing the road. So look for that here in a moment. And my second guest is actually from Washington State, Brad, and he describes an encounter where some buddies of his down the road

were talking about this bear looking in the window. So as kids, they all got on their bikes because they wanted to see this bear. But they came across something else. Very, very interesting. 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 for additional shows throughout the week. I'm now on Twitter. I've been on Twitter for a while, but I'm starting to use it more and more and more.

So if you guys are on Twitter, follow me. My Twitter is Sasquatch Cron. So if you look up Sasquatch Cron or at Sasquatch Cron, you'll find me on Twitter. And I'm going to start talking back and forth with people trying to use it more, trying to jump into, you know, the 2000s, not live in like the 1970s. So if you get a chance,

check me out on Twitter. And I'm really glad you guys are here tonight. Thanks for being here. Got a great show. You know, right before I went on the air, I got this message from this guy, and I'm going to try and talk him into coming on the show. He talked about his cabin getting broken into. and around the cabin, it was something that was gifted to him from his father. I'm not sure if his father passed away or what the situation was. And he started sending me messages, and I was trying to read the messages and prep for the show. But it kind of sounds like the creature took a swipe at this guy. So I'm going to talk with him and hopefully get him on the show.

I know you guys like more of the violent encounters. And this is definitely, as I was reading it, I was thinking, oh, my gosh, you know, I was trying to get him to send me his number because I wanted to give him a call. So hopefully that will be an upcoming show. Well, let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Pepper to the show. Pepper, thanks for coming on. I appreciate you being here tonight.

Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for inviting me. Yeah, absolutely. And if you would, you had a very interesting encounter. It made me think of a lot of past encounters of roadside crossings, but not a lot of people got the view. you that you got. Usually it's a fleeting glimpse. It passes through really quickly. If you would kind of start from the beginning, tell us what you were doing, and then just walk us right into

the encounter. Tell us what she saw. Okay. Well, back in 95, my two daughters and a friend and myself were driving from Arizona to Georgia to go visit my mother. And we had taken some old mountain roads up through Tennessee, Cherokee National Forest, which I believe they called Highway 38. It was about 2 a.m. in the morning, and we're going around a relatively sharp, curvy road, a short curve, but a curvy, you know, roads. And, you know, we had our bright lights on and everything, and we were going slow, probably about 15.20 miles an hour to get around the curve safely. and as we were going into the curve, well, lo and behold, here's this big seven-foot-tall, if not taller, hairy thing, stepping over the guardrail.

And so he stopped, we stopped, and we were only a matter about 25, 30 feet away from this thing. And so we stopped, like I said, we had our bright lights on, and my friend and I looked at each other, we started freaking out, you know, what the heck is that? Oh, my God, oh, my God. And he stood there for at least a good 30 to 40 seconds. So we were able to get a very good look at him in the headlights. He just watched the van. He had a black trash bag in his hand, you know, pretty broad, chested-looking hairy creature,

big long arms, big deep eyes, you know, like he would normally see on a picture. that, you know, people describe them as. And so anyways, we stopped, and we just, we sat there. We watched him. He watched us. And like I say, after about maybe 30, 40 seconds, he proceeded to cross the road. It's a double road. You know, it took him about three and a half steps to get across it.

And went over the guardrail and went back down in the mountains. We, back down in the woods, you know, we stayed stopped. for a moment, and I rode the window down, just to look and, you know, see if I could see where he was heading, and this is really dense, unpopulated area up in the mountains. There's nothing around, no lighting, no anything. So, but, you know, we were absolutely freaking out. I, like I said in my write-up, we had a video camera, we had a camera sitting right between us in the seats, and we were both in so much shock.

We didn't even think to pick them up and make a picture or anything. And my two daughters from the back of the van had come up to the front of the band, and they saw a two. And my oldest daughter said, Mommy, is that a guerrilla? I'm like, no, honey. And, oh, wow, I get chills speaking about it right now. But I saw him. He was there.

And to this day, I did chills just thinking about what I saw, you know, what we saw. I'll never forget it. Such an amazing encounter to be able to see something so talked about and not believed in that close up and for that length of time. It was almost like he was standing there like, well, are you guys going to go or can I cross the road type attitude? But as he did cross, he did keep his head turned towards the van, you know, like the

corner of his eye watching us, you know. And like I said, I had rode the window down. to see if I could see anything else. And there was this horrific odor in the air. And I knew that was the smell. What did it smell like? Well, to me, it smelled like old musky dead dogs or something. I mean, it was just a putrid, horrific odor that had,

and cast that part of the Still Mountain Air. You know, I mean, it stayed there. and there was another car had pulled up behind us too and had stopped and I'm pretty sure that the way they were angled behind us that they were able to see

this thing step over the guardrail too why he came up over the guardrail I don't know because he was only about five feet from the entrance of the road where there wasn't a guardrail why he chose to step over and step over the other one I don't know he could have very easily just walked down

and you know pack off the road there but yeah it was a pretty putrid odor something I've never really smelled before other than if you've ever had the sense of a dead animal, you know? Yeah, that's interesting. And it's interesting, too. The creature was carrying a trash bag. Yeah. I get so many reports of them going through dumpsters, going through people's trash.

And that's interesting that it was actually carrying. It almost makes you wonder, there must have been food in it. That's why I just grabbed the whole bag and walk. off with it. Well, I realize this is an old country road that you guys are driving on. I almost wonder if there's campgrounds around, or was it pretty remote? It's very isolated, very dense woods, and down below, I know there was a river, because I remember the signs saying the name of like Sweet Creek or something like that, and it's possible that there was a campground down below the mountain, you know, by the river or something. I'm not really sure. I've never been there.

so I don't know what's down there, but evidently it came from a campground or something, but it was a black trash bag. And it wasn't very full. It was maybe only a quarter of the way full. There wasn't very much in it from what I could tell. But, yeah, he had something in that bag. There must have been some kind of food or something in there. Yeah.

What color was a creature? Well, from what I could tell into headlights, which I could. figured illuminated the gray a little bit more. It was kind of a dark black reddish with a gray hue to the hair. You know, it's very dark, but I could see like the red highlights, but also the gray. I could see the gray in the hair. I wanted to ask you, when you were looking at the face of this thing, what would you compare it to?

Can you kind of describe the face, and is there anything you could compare it to? The only thing that I could compare it to would be between a large-headed human and a gorilla, honestly. There was facial hair all around, however, the nose area and around the eyes. It was not very hairy. I've seen a lot of pictures and drawings of other people that have seen a big foot and drew their description. of it. He didn't have like the pointed head, like I've seen in a lot of, you know, pictures and drawings. It was just a normal round shaped head. Rather large, very large. I'm going to say that even his chest span had to been at least a good three foot wide. I mean, if they had to weigh a good

500, 600 pounds at tops, you know, he was pretty large. But the face, his nose, um, I've seen a lot of pictures where people have described them as having these big white noses with a big splared nostrils. This wasn't that big. It wasn't like that. I mean, it was large, and he did have large nostrils, but not as it has been depicted in a lot of pictures and drawings that I've seen. His eyes were large, and a lot of people say they see a red background and the lights when they shine a light on them and stuff, But I didn't see any red in his eyes. If anything, it was more of like a greenish color with the lights reflecting on his eyes.

You know, we were that close. I could see that. Yeah, I think a lot of times with the eye shine, people describe, I honestly believe, and I could be wrong, but I honestly believe it has to do more with the type of light that you hit him with. I've said this before on past shows, but I know like the guys at the Siege of Honabia, or Honobi, sorry, the way they described the eyes was it was kind of on older cars, they'll come back kind of a yellowish, reddish, depending on the car. And then on some of the newer cars, they have the halogen bulbs.

You'll get kind of a greenish, yellowish color to it. So it kind of, you know, in my opinion, I think it really has more to do with the type of light you hit them with. Did the creature make, was there any facial expressions? No, there wasn't. If anything, it was like a deer caught in the headlights. He just stared at us. He didn't take his eyes off of us. He just stood there.

He watched the, I don't know if he could see us or not. Like I said, we had our bright lights on, so we were probably blinding him. You know, but we could see him just find almost every little detail of his body. You know, the hands, not very hairy around the finger area. you know, you can see the actual dark skin. Other than me being able to describe the fingernails, no. But as far as the hands and the fingers and the wrist, I'll tell you when he was walking, I noticed how his wrist bent under more so that when we walk, you know, the way our hands go,

his wrists seem to be a little bit more bent. And the way he was holding the trash bag, like if we were holding something, how our thumb would grasp underneath, more or less, his more or less crossed over the top of his fingers. That's interesting. Yeah, the way he was gripping the bag. And his wristings would be bit underneath a lot more

when he walked than the way we walk. That's very interesting. So almost like it was cupped up and backwards, almost like you would, when you say bent, almost like you're going to give someone a high-five, but, you know, like from behind, well, it's a bad way to describe it. Just like it was, its hands were cupped backwards? Yes, yes, going underneath, yes.

That's really interesting. That is one thing I noticed. Just like I've seen pictures of the gorillas, they, you know, their hands are bent under like that too. When they walk and move themselves around or when they're down and walking on their knuckles or whatnot, you know, how they keep their wrist bent. That's how it was. Yeah, that's interesting. I was just about ready to say that exact same thing. You know, gorillas do that.

I'm trying to think of how a gorilla walks, and they do kind of have their hands cupped backwards when they walk. And it's interesting how you describe how it was holding the bag. How long would you say the arms were? Did they go down to, like, the knees? Yes, they did. They were very long. They reached down to his knees, much longer than a human's arms, definitely.

For sure, definitely. and his legs were very long, you know, the body's stature, he was pretty much straight up. He wasn't really humped over, you know, maybe his shoulders a little bit humped over, but as far as him just standing there, he was relatively straight up. I wanted to ask you, did you notice anything strange about the way it walked? Well, other than him carrying the trash bag, his left arm, the way we were. pulled up to the curb, he was crossing from the left to the right. His left arm swung back pretty far, but the one he was holding the bag in didn't. It was relatively, you know, pretty much still

beside his body, but his leg stride was very long. Like I said, it only took him like three and a half steps to cross a two-ring road, but the left arm had a, I'd swing to it. The left arm had a swing to it as it walked? Yes, yeah. and it went way back. It went way back behind him. As his right leg would go out, his left arm was back behind him pretty far. And that's when I noticed how the hand was cut underneath.

The reason I'm so detailed like that is because I work with the sheriff's office, as executive director of our search and rescue and special tactics teams out in Maricopa, Arizona, and trained by professional Indian guide and certified through the state and everything else. and I've, you know, been trained to notice certain details and things like that. And with the late at the time that I had, I was able to notice a lot of different things. You know, instead of just staring at his face, you know, I noticed all the different things that he did, just, you know, being able to stand there and watch him cross the road and how he did it. So he leaves the area, and what happens next?

Do you guys just drive off? Yeah, well, we sat there probably for about, oh, another four, 45 seconds after he stepped over the guardrail and headed down the hill back into the woods, like I say, I rode the window down, and I kind of sat up in my feet a little bit because we're high up and this older shedded in, trying to look down to see if I could still see any of him, which I couldn't. He disappeared so quickly. That's when we noticed the odor. But that was all I saw.

The back of them was very hairy. I didn't see any genitalia or anything like that, you know. Like not a regular buttock front of person that was all covered with hair, you know, his legs, everything was covered with hair pretty much other than around the eyes and the actual nose area and the top of the hand, the top of the fingers, you know. I mean, there was hair, but it wasn't like real long hair. I actually wanted to ask you about the jaw, the structure of the jaw. How would you compare it to like a person's jaw?

Well, much wider and much protruded out a whole lot more. If you were to see the side view, an ape, a gorilla chimpanzee, it extended out more like that. The lower jaw came out a lot further than, you know, more so on a human. I did notice that. and the forehead was rather large. Wasn't a lot of hair on the forehead area. What was on top of his head hung down, but it wasn't like his face was completely covered with hair.

That's interesting to be able to get a, I would love to get inside your head and see the image that you saw. I think it's fascinating how the creature reacted almost kind of nonchalant. It sounds like nonchalant. Like, you know, are you guys going to go on or what are you guys doing? okay, I'll cross the road. You know, it's amazing because they're not really, they're not stupid creatures. They are intelligent, you know.

It's not like a deer that would just run across the road and stand there. You know, if you have its headlights on, you've got to turn your lights off so the stupid deer will get going. But these things, man, they will, almost like you could tell it was waiting for you to either go or wait or what are you doing. Right, exactly. And that's what we thought, too. he's waiting on us to see if we're going to go or not. And, yeah, he just don't show while we stood there. I mean, we kept my friend Lynn Compton that was with me.

We were kind of like, well, was he going to charge us or what is he going to do? And what they got? He's big enough and powerful-looking enough that he could tip our van over and roll us off the embankment or something, you know. We were worried about that. We really were that if he was contemplating coming at us or just going to cross the street. Fortunately, he just crossed the street. street. What did your friend say? What was the conversation like after you guys drove off?

Still in shock, disbelief. Can you believe that we saw that? Can you imagine that that thing is really here that we witnessed this? And we were just in disbelief. And then that's when we started talking, oh my God, I wish we could have got a picture of this thing. Why didn't we think, you know, to pick up the camera, we had bright enough light shining on him that we were. we would have gotten a good picture of them, you know. And like I say, we just kicked ourselves years and years, and I'm still kicking myself because I did not take a picture. I think of myself all the time.

What an amazing photograph I could have had to prove to the millions and millions of people that have never seen one that don't believe in them, you know, 2 o'clock in the morning, there's not going to be some homeless guy out in the middle of the dense woods carrying a trash bag and pitch black dark, you know, through the woods. It just, I mean, it was just too large. Like I said, we were in an older Chevy van, and he would have probably stood higher than the top of our van, which was, oh, I'm pretty tall. I'm almost six foot. And getting in the van, you know, I've still got a good foot and a half above my head, you know.

Don't feel too bad. You know, some of the people who have had many encounters, and they go, They research these things. It's like I was telling you, and I won't mention his name on the air because I don't want to embarrass him. But I know this guy's had some major, major encounters. And, well, I guess I'll go ahead and say his name. But it was Moe down in Texas. And I was laughing because he was telling me he went into this area where they know that they're in there.

And he had a camera in his hand. And what goes running across the trail is one of these creatures. And he's just in shock. he just stops where he's at and his jaw drops and it runs right across the trail. You know, and he's out looking for it. And I'm not being Mo up by any means. What I'm trying to say is it doesn't really matter how many times you see him. It still shocks you when you see them and reaching for a camera or your cell phone or it really is the last thing on people's minds.

People who haven't seen them might think that's a dumb statement that you go for your camera. but once you see it, I'm telling you, a camera is the last thing on your mind. You know, it's the last thing you think of until it's over with and they're gone, you know? It sure was. But the thing that it just wasn't a quick glimpse, you know. We had ample time, you know, like I said,

a good 30 to 40 seconds. We had ample time to pick that camera up and made pictures. But like you said, you know, we were using so much shock in disbelief what we were looking at. We didn't want to take her eyes off of it, you know. And even my daughter is, who got to Georgia, you know, my daughters are trying to tell my mother and grandmother what we

saw, and, you know, we were scared the rest of the trip going down through the mountain roads, you know, thinking, oh, my God, you know, we're going to run across another one. We were actually, we were scared. We were petrified. And we couldn't get my mother to even believe me, you know. And I'm like, Mommy, you know, my children aren't going to make up a story like this. I said, we saw this thing. And my brother, Eddie Bearden, he believed this because, you know, he knows people that have had encounters.

And he's a hunter. You know, he's out deer hunting all the time. And he's never seen one, but he's got friends that have. And they've described them to him. And when I described it, he pretty much said that's the same description I got off to some of my friends. And he believes that he's got a travel cam up on his property because there's been some spots there in Georgia. up by late one year. And he's hoping one day to catch one on his trail can.

There's a lot of deer on his property, you know, any furl land. And that's just hope one day if he kept that thing on his trail can. Yeah, it's, well, like I said, the thing probably could have sat there for two minutes and you wouldn't have gotten a picture of it just because it's not the normal reaction. Right.

And, you know, it's interesting. You got the encounter. I think most people dream of where you're in your car, you're, you know, you can drive off or you can back up or you can get out of there. You know, you're not face to face with it, you know, out in the middle of the forest somewhere. It's a fascinating encounter and I'm sorry to hear about your mom. I mean, it amazes me. I, and maybe it's because I've seen them.

I have a skewed view of the whole thing, but it just blows me away when I just wish someone would shoot one of these things and bring it in, show everyone, let everyone know it's, out there. And then that's it. Don't, don't kill anymore. Don't, you know, one and done. And, and, and, and they're so elusive. And like you said, they're very intelligent. And, and I am surprised that he did not start across that road because he would have had plenty of time to go ahead and run across that road and, you know, go back down the other side of the hill. But he didn't. He just stood there, just stood there holding that black trash bag, looking at us like you know are you going to run over me can I cross the road type thing you know he was very patient he didn't make any quick movements or gestures or anything like

that you know I didn't see him raise his lip and show any teeth or anything like that like a lot of people say they'll raise their teeth and growl or something I didn't see any of that there was no facial expression other than that look of are you going to let me go or are you going to go type thing, almost like a question in his eyes, you know? This big brown eyes with a shine of green hue to them. Yeah, it's something you'll never forget. I'm sure that your kids will never forget. Your friend will never forget.

It's one of those things that only happens once in a lifetime, you know. It's a fascinating encounter. And I can't thank you enough for coming on and sharing it. I really enjoyed reading it when you email. knowed it to me. I read it over a couple of times, and I laughed because your daughter, is that a gorilla? Yeah. You know, and that's, you know, that's most people's first reaction. Like, what is this gorilla doing out in these woods or what is this chimpanzee doing out here?

So I had to laugh. Right. And they're so, yeah, and they're so fascinated with it, too. They tell her friends the story and their friends just laugh at them. And, you know, they're really honest. Ask my mom, she was there. She was in the front feet of the man, honest to God, ask her, you know. And I've even said to myself, I wish somebody would give me a lie to check test so that I could prove my truth, you know, in my encounter. You know, even my friend Lynn, you know, she would like, yeah, I'll take a light of

a test test any day, you know, just to prove that we saw what we saw, we know what we saw. There's no doubt in my mind. I know that that was his basquatch. I know in my heart what I saw, and I'll never forget it. As long as I live, I'll never forget it. We've talked about it to this day still. You don't need a lie detector test here on the show. I believe you 100%.

Pepper, I mean, you have way too many details from what you guys saw for it. I can't imagine anyone hearing that story and thinking, well, maybe it was a bear, because, I mean, it just doesn't, nothing else makes sense but Sasquatch in the situation. I just, I can't believe it was carrying a bag. I guess I don't know why I'm shocked by that, because you hear about them doing that kind of stuff all the time. But that's really cool, especially with the details with the hands, how the hands were positioned. I believe you, and I can't thank you enough for coming on. Well, thank you.

I appreciate you. Having me on your address, yes. And anybody has any other questions or anything? Of course, I'm, you know, on the site there. And they want to contact me and talk about it. Feel free. I'll answer any questions. anybody might have. And I enjoy being able to talk to you and be on your show and I appreciate

your investigation very much and pleasure of knowing you and talking with you too. Thanks, Pepper. Next up on the show, I want to welcome Brad. Brad, thanks for being here tonight, man. Oh, thank you for inviting me. Yeah, I'm super excited to have you on. I was, like I told you, I've read your emails several times. And if you would for the audience, before we jump into the encounter. What part of the country did your encounter take place in? This was on an island in Puget Sound called Vashon Island. It's kind of off of West Seattle, across from Port Orchard. Yeah, no, I know the area well, and I'll have to, there's a couple other encounters. I know you and I talked the other night I need to send to you from that area. But if you would, kind of start from the

beginning. Tell the audience what were you doing and what did you experience? Just kind of walk us right into the story? Sure. We were renting a little house kind of off the old Vashon Highway. This was back in 1971, and I was nine years old, and we lived in a neighborhood with a bunch of kids. And I can't remember if it was in the summertime or not, but we were off for the day. And my brother and the younger kids came riding down to us other group of kids and said, hey, there's a bear looking in Lewis's house. And we're like a bear, and they're like, yeah. And we're like, man, We've never seen a bear before, so we hopped on our bikes, and we go racing down the road towards the Lewis's house. And there all of a sudden this big black thing strides across the road.

And one of my friends goes, that's not a bear, that's a man. And we're like, what's he doing, man? And so he went down into the woods, and we had a trail that went down into the forest down there. It was a real dense forest kind of this drainage that ran all the way down to the beach. And we hung out in this forest all the time. We had a little fort down there called Lager 1, and there's lots of fallen trees and stuff down there. Just a good place to hang out as a kid.

So anyway, this man, all dressed in one color, runs down there. So we decided to follow him down there and figured he was going to go mess with our fort. You know, what would this guy be doing messing with our fort? So I'm kind of leading the way down the trail and kind of switchbacks to get down there. And I was in this last little switchback that drops down to like a log bridge and treat us over this little drainage.

And I popped around the corner and all of a sudden there was this thing. And it wasn't a man. To me, it was a monster. And I kind of just looked at it and thought, you know, this is not supposed to be in our woods. You know, this is our woods. And so I stopped real quick and other kids were kind of piling up behind me. and this thing just kind of turned its body and looked up and it just looked with no expression whatsoever.

I mean, it spooked me, but we sure didn't spook it. It just kind of just looked at us. I didn't even care that we were right there. So I kind of turned around and yelled at everybody else to go, go, go get back up the trail because I didn't know what it was or what it was doing there. I was just, you know, spooked and confused. I can imagine. What did it look like? Can you describe for the audience what you saw? You know, it's just that blank look in its face. I can't really describe the face in general.

You know, we rented the Red Box movie Lucy for a while back, and there's a part in there where this Neanderthral pops up in the middle of the movie. And I remember watching that, and as soon as I saw that face, I just had butterflies in my stomach. And then as it went on, you know, it was a smaller Neanderthal and it'd be quite look. But that initial look to me, it just, it's just spooked me and just, like I said, I got butterflies in my stomach. And so I don't really, I wasn't really focusing on the face because it had this, uh, had this big blonde patch. And I could tell it had a kind of like long head or a cone head that had this big blonde patch on it. It was all black and then this long patch of hair on it on its head.

And I always tell people when they, tell the story. It's like Ferrell de Ville of 101 Dalmatians. There's just this, you know, it just didn't look right. And then really, I, you know, it was kind of down below me. I couldn't really tell you how tall it was.

I didn't really get a look at a lot of features because I was basically turned around and heading back up the trail. And that's interesting. You mentioned that it had no facial expressions, almost like it didn't care. It just turned around and saw you guys. I think that's an interesting. I've heard

both ways. Mainly what I hear from witnesses is when they see these sayings and they run into them, there's zero facial expression. Some witnesses will say there's a look of surprise, a look of shock. It makes you wonder if it heard you guys coming down the trail. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, as surprised as I was, I would think that it would have been surprised, especially with, you know, four or five kids running down this trail, and it didn't really care at all. I know there was a few other things that happened, but before we jump into that, you were talking about the island.

And how could these things be on the island? As you and I were talking the other night, I was telling you about the crazy lady or what everyone called, the crazy lady here on the Washington side of the Columbia River. And she would describe apes swimming across the Columbia River. And everyone just thought this woman was nuts until I think it was the mid-90s. one almost got hit on the highway right across the Columbia River on the Oregon side. It was running along the highway. And so, you know, I do get a lot of reports of them swimming channels, swimming rivers, Vancouver Islands, a hot spot.

What happened next in the encounter? Well, I mean, we got pick up to the top of the road, and I went to grab my bike, and I could not get on my bike for anything. So I just kind of pitched it and ran back to my house. And then everybody else kind of gathered back there. And we went basically right in and told my mom, and said, man, there's a monster down in the forest. And so we need to do something.

And she just kind of blew us all off. And I remember it was a wasted day because, you know, kids like to go off and play. And we didn't want to go in the woods anymore. And we just sat around talking about, you know, what was that? What was that? There was a one of my other friends. He must have saw it because he asked me.

He goes, what was that? And the other kids, I don't really think, had it saw it or had a good look at it. We could sit around all day trying to figure out what the heck that thing was and why was it in, you know, why was it in our area? And so then that night, I found out when my dad got home after work, I said, hey, told him the story and he didn't really pay much attention to it either. But I did make him walk me down and get my bike and bring it back. says I wasn't going down there by myself. What did your dad say about the whole situation? Really, not a whole lot.

You know, like, yeah, okay, whatever. I mean, he didn't seem too concerned about it or any of the parents really in the neighborhood because we pretty much told everybody that nobody really did anything about it. It would be nice to go back and talk to the witnesses that said a bear was looking in the window. I would love to talk to those witnesses

and see what. what they actually saw. Most bears don't look in the window. You know what I mean? They go and they look for food. If there's no food, they're gone. And the black bears out here in Washington State, they're skittish, man.

They're really, really skittish. When you saw the creature, was it on two legs a whole time, or did it ever drop down to all fours? When I saw it, and that was real brief, even. I mean, it just zipped right across. And when I did see it,

it was just standing. Like I was trying to decide which way to go or something, because that's kind of where there was, You could take paths or go different directions right where it was. You could go up or down or up the other side. It was kind of a crossroads down in the woods. Now, I know in your email you talked about mumbled voices.

We talk about that a little bit. What happened in that situation? Yeah, you know, for years, I just kind of figured, okay, I know there's one of these things out there. And it wasn't until a few years ago when the television shows started. And I thought, you know, it would be real interesting. They would actually find one of these things to prove it. It kind of validated a lot of things for me.

And then they started, just things started coming up in conversations with your show. And one of them with the mumbling voices. And, man, I can't tell you how many times I thought I heard voices when we were down in those woods. And I would, you know, be quiet. I think there's somebody else here, you know, who would be down here in our woods? because I always thought people were messing with our fork. I don't know why. And we would look around, and we never saw anybody.

But those mumbling voices, you couldn't hear what they were saying. You could just tell that they were, somebody was trying to communicate with somebody in a low tone. And what was weird about the mumbling voices is when I moved to Eden Claw, a couple of years later, same thing we were up missing around the woods. I heard mumbling voices up there, and I couldn't figure out why. Why do I always hear these mumbling voices? Maybe it's too much information that I've read and heard, but I can remember telling them the kids, you know, hey, be quiet.

I hear somebody coming. And we never saw anybody. And that's pretty common, too, with witnesses. I've talked to many, many hunters where they'll say they heard what sounded like people talking, but they couldn't quite make out what they were saying, almost like it was a different language. You hear that a lot. And so that's interesting. Now, after your encounter, when did you guys move away? When did you guys move to a different place?

Well, we were renting a house there because we were building one up the north of the prairie dock. So it's probably three or four months later I actually moved away from that neighborhood and moved up to the north end. And then we were only in that house a year and then we moved to Union Claw. So which I found out later was kind of a hotbed for these things. What happened in – so this happened in 1971. one. You'd mentioned something else happened in 1979.

Can you tell us about that? Oh, that one. Yeah, that was a weird one. We were up after a football game. We were up by the old dumps. And we're just a bunch of us, a couple carloads of kids, you know, hanging out in the really dark back there, real quiet, a lot of tall brush. And just doing high school kid things, you know, back there. And people kind of wandered off.

I think there was an old abandoned house or something over there. And all of a sudden, I remember somebody saying something about, you know, they heard something in the brush. Then it was like, well, it's getting closer. And then I heard it. And there was definitely something coming through the brush towards all the cars and all of us. And, you know, everybody kind of went in panic mode and jumped in the cars. Took off.

So, you know, I can't really say what that was. But it was, it was pretty. it was pretty, pretty eerie because just the way it just came plowing through the brush was really weird. It wasn't like, it was something to sneak into. It wasn't like a deer, you know, sneaking up on here or some other kind of animal. This thing was coming through pretty hard. And again, it was one of those things that we all got back. Everybody was like, what the heck was going on there?

No, we don't know. You know, I couldn't tell you what it was exactly. Was it enough to startle everyone in the group? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we were, there was a lot of adrenaline going. I can remember people trying to get in the cars, you know, the comedy trying to get everybody in the cars and get out of there. I mean, it was, somebody panicked, the other people start panicking, too. But there was a lot of people that, you know, couldn't figure out exactly what it was.

You know, somebody thought it was a dog, but there was no way it was a dog. What was it just sound like? Was it just sound like something huge, or what was it that you guys actually heard? Well, it was, no, it just like, like something forced. its way through a bunch of brush, you know, that nobody, no person would ever try to go through it. I mean, there's just no way that you would try to run through heavy, heavy brush like that. But this thing was sure trying, you know, and it was too dark and I didn't look around

or I didn't see anything pop out. I don't know what it was. You know, it's interesting. I've come across vehicles before when I've been out in areas here in Washington State, and they seem to be military vehicles. I'll give you an example. I saw one, well, I've seen a couple of them, but one of them that really caught my attention recently looked like it had a thermal. It had a bunch of antennas, but then it looked like it had a thermal camera mounted to the top of this thing.

And I thought it was interesting. Part of your email you had talked about that. I think it was 1985. And you have to correct me, Brad, if my date's wrong on your email. But what did you guys see? Well, that one, I was in college, and my roommates wanted. I wanted to, as I could call it Central, my roommates wanted to go up and scout for Elks season. It was in the fall, and we kind of got to school early.

So we went up the, up the Tannum, and we were going to just spend the night, and they were going to get up and go scouting. So we took my truck up, and we were just going up towards Quartz Mountain, and we were just back in the middle of nowhere on these roads. And we came around this one corner near the cutout, and there was two military rigs sitting there. One was a Humvee, and Humvees were like brand new at the time. And then there were this big end truck type thing with a bunch of antennas on it,

and it was obviously doing some type of communication or had some kind of communication set up. There was the guy standing outside. He kind of looked at us, and went by, and went up the road. Came back down, the rigs were still there, probably went a couple, two, three miles back down the hill on the spot we wanted to camp, set up camp. And that night we were sitting around and the fire and just hanging out. And all of a sudden we heard these footsteps coming around our camp. And it was definitely, you know, bipedal footsteps.

And they're kind of coming from all sides. And one of the guys said, oh, man, these military guys are doing a recon on us. I thought, that was just really dumb for these guys to be coming down spying. on us. I didn't understand why they'd be doing that. Plus, they were, like, way up the road, you know. So we heard him kind of, heard these movement around us. And finally, one of the guys is, like, you know, he's getting tired of this. These guys are spying on us or being a training exercise on us.

So he kind of said, you know, we should do some target practicing. He went and got a can and put it on the log and kind of looked around and he said it again pretty loud. You know, okay, let's do some target practicing. and pulled out a little handgun popped a few rounds off, and we didn't hear anything else after that. But we're just kind of weird for those guys to get up in the middle of nowhere. And then if they really were down, running around our campsite, you know, we had guns too.

I don't know what they were thinking or why they'd be doing that, or even if it was actually Army guys, I don't know. It was just kind of a weird day. That next day, too, I got up and the buddies went out. They were rifle hunters. That wasn't a rifle. hunter. I had my shotguns. I actually drove down below.

I was just going to do some grouse hunting by myself and and push running around. And I heard that damn mumbling voices thing again, which was really weird. And so I thought, well, it's got to be a stream or brick or something around and I looked around and I

looked around and I couldn't find it. And then I kind of got a little unnerved and thought, you know, I think I just did my truck and head back up to where the camp was. And we wait for those guys to come back. So I don't know what that was either. You know, sometimes you just get yourself spooked, but I sure had a weird feeling when I was out there by myself, you know, and I even had a shotgun, but I didn't think that was going to, whatever it was, it was just, I needed to kind of go.

And even at that time, I really wasn't, I kind of not really even thought about Bigfoot or Sasquatch. It really wasn't on my mind anymore, you know, in your early 20s and, you know, that, I knew there was something, I knew there was something on Bashan Island, but I, I think there was any of them anywhere else, really. I knew there was a, you know, we had seen the Patty film shortly after that episode on Vashon, and we thought, oh, there's just another one of those, you know, running around down there, their own thing, they can do whatever they want. But, no, I never really was thinking about it on that story or the one of the dump.

Didn't really think about that being a saskatch or Bigfoot either. So you see the saying, you're seven, eight years old, you see this saying. how did it compare to the Patterson Gimlin film? If you can answer that question, and I guess I can kind of understand if you can't, it's funny when you're in high-intense situations. I've talked to a lot of witnesses in the past, and they'll generally focus on one thing

because they're in such shock. I'm sure you've heard on the show, you know, the guy that almost shot one, he could tell me everything about the nostrils. And you get into these high-intense situations, and you tend to focus on just the eyes or you tend to focus on the blonde strip in its hair, or you tend to focus on the hands or the shoulders.

And that's pretty common, but could you compare it to the Patterson-Gimlin film compared to what you saw? No, I mean, the only thing I could say really was I would say that the one I saw was a lot more muscular, a paddy one. I thought, oh, it just looked like it was flabby or had a lot of flabby hair or something. I don't know. I just had the impression that the one I saw was, you know, a little more muscular, I guess. That's about it. Like, you know, it was such a, you know, so many things happened in a really short period of time.

And like I said, I remember it didn't care that it was, that we were there. And I said it just, like, corralled the bill. That was really weird. Yeah, and that's interesting. Did this change your life at all when he saw that at such a young age? Well, like I said, I kind of really didn't. it didn't really bother me or affect me. I mean, I would go out into the woods or we'd go camping with people or do whatever.

But, you know, I guess I always wanted to make sure there was a lot of people around me for the most part. I really didn't take a whole lot about it just if I was around a bunch of people, you know, there was one out there. There was one out there. And then it wasn't until just a few years ago that I didn't realize that these things were in clans or families. And that that has really bothered me, like I said, in the last few years when I started kind of being a little more attention to the information that was out there. And, you know, that makes me feel uneasy. There may have been more than one because I sure didn't have any idea that there was more

than one hanging around. I just thought they were kind of loners that ran around, which, you know, doesn't really make a lot of sense. They got to breed somehow. But in my mind, I really wasn't thinking that way. So, yeah, it bothers me a little bit. I recently remarried a few years ago, and my wife really likes going outdoors,

and took her back to Eden Claw and went to Mount Rainier. She wanted to do some hiking, and I'm like, nah, you know, I don't really want to go hiking up here. You know, this is a good view of the lodge. There's lots of people right here. So, yeah, I mean, I would say I'm really not a, really don't care to be outside at night, especially with just myself or a couple of people.

I need to be in a large group of people if I'm going to be outside at night in the woods. I don't blame you there one bit. It's interesting, you know, with these things. I guess you solved the mystery on what the quote-unquote bear was coming up looking in the windows. I guess you guys kind of solved that mystery that day

on probably what was going up looking in the windows. Yeah, we went. I said after I remarried, and I'm like, yeah, this is the house. I think we saw that Bigfoot, looking through the window. And I said, this is where we went down, and that's where the monster was in the woods. And then we looked at the window,

and the front porch, I didn't really remember it this way, but, you know, it's six or seven steps up to this nice, big covered porch, and that window that the kids said it was looking through. And I think it was like six feet off the ground easily. And I guess you could, you know, from you hear stories about them looking through windows and stuff. And he would have to be pretty big to look in that window. Yeah, and that's generally what you'll find when they're looking through the window. It's usually pretty far off the ground.

Going back to your other comment of them traveling alone, you know, in most of these encounters, you're right, another one's not too far off. And you'll hear that from a lot of witnesses on the show. They'll say, I saw it, but I swear there was something going on behind me, something moving in, trying to move in closer behind me. I mean, in most of these encounters, besides roadside crossings,

when you talk to witnesses, a lot of times they'll say, I swear another one was close by. A lot of campers, hikers, hunters, they'll all kind of say the same thing. So you're right, they don't travel alone. It is kind of disturbing, you know what I mean? Yeah, it is now to think back.

I mean, you know, at the time we had no clue. I mean, like I said, I just thought it was a, I thought they were lone, you know, beings just roaming around. And, yeah, it's a little unsettling now to think, you know, what if there had been another one in those woods, all those times we were down playing. playing down in the fort that they're keeping an eye on us, you know. That's weird, weird to think anyway.

It really is. We talked the other day, and the other weird coincidence I had is, you know, when we were in that, down the woods in that fork, we had a, what we called the tobacety bird noise. And we looked for this bird. We thought it was somebody's exotic bird that had gotten loose because we'd hear it all the time when we were down in the woods. I don't even know how to imitate it other than it was just a weird exotic.

We would look and look and look for that bird, you know, because we thought we were going to see toucans andam or something sitting up in this tree, this big, beautiful bird, never, ever, ever found it. And I remember up in Yeniklaw, when we were roaming around, we sort of messed around on the old railroad tracks going up to a warehouse mill there. And I heard that tobacety bird up there. and I remember telling my new friend, I'm like, man, you guys got the toboxy bird just like we had on Vashon. That's really weird.

So, again, I don't know exactly what it was. Maybe it was just an owl or something, but it was just weird how we used to hear that weird call. And I've never heard it before. I mean, since, rather than those couple times, I'm on Vashon and one of the Union Cloud. But it was just weird coincidence, I guess you'd say. That is a strange coincidence. It's interesting. I know when I was down in Texas,

you would hear around midnight, 1 o'clock in the morning, you would hear bird calls that you normally don't hear until about 6, 7 o'clock in the morning when the sun's coming up. But they were always a little off. I realized you were 7 at the time. I know when I was listening to the ones in Texas, I thought, you know what, there's something that's not right about that bird call.

There's just a little off. There's something not quite right. and they do. They mimic owls. They mimic birds. They mimic coyotes. They mimic just about everything in the woods. And if you listen really closely, you can kind of tell there's something not right about it. Makes you wonder what you guys heard. Yeah. Like I said, I'm not a big outdoorsman, so I really couldn't play what all the different owls are. I mean, I know what an owl kind of sounds like, but I'm sure there's all kinds of noises that they make.

And like I said, this one was just, I guess, in our ear, it just sounded like it should be this exhaustive. a colorful bird. That's all I can say about that one. Well, Brad, I appreciate coming on and sharing the encounter, man. I really enjoyed reading your email. I posted it to the blog, and I really enjoyed it. So thank you so much for coming on. Oh, I appreciate you, man.

Like I said, I mostly wrote that email, and I put off writing it so many times because I thought, oh, you know, it's just going to be another one of those guys, you know, writing in a story. But then as I started writing it, you know, it really just, was kind of a relief to just, you know, push that button and send it to you and think, you know, I know you're not going to be biased. You're just going to, you know, read it. If you had questions, you get a hold of me.

And it felt good because I don't come across people very often. And I really haven't had a conversation with anybody else that's actually seen one. So it's always a one-sided conversation for the most part whenever I tell about my encounter to people. So, you know, talking with you, it sure helps. a lot. Thanks, man. I appreciate that. Like I said, I read the email three times. I was fascinated by it. You know, it's not just because I'm here in Washington and it happened in Washington. I thought it was a fascinating encounter. And there's always little details to encounters. You know, like what you were saying, the people of the home were saying a bear kept looking in the window. That's common.

I mean, I hate to say that's common, but I hear it from a lot of witnesses. And then just kind of it the way it acted in your encounter, not really caring that you were there. You hear that a lot. So there's a lot of little things to it, man. So I do. I thank you for sending it to me. Well, thank you for listening. Thanks, Brad. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, 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. For all the subscribers, I will probably see you guys midweek with the show. For everyone else, I will see you back on Sunday. Have a great night, everyone. 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 Sports Guard Network's Wagering Week help your bottom line.