Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:569 Something At The Ranch

Episode Date: August 4, 2019

A listener writes "I'm going to try and keep this as short as possible but I have had about a half dozen encounters with what I used to think, but now KNOW, was a Sasquatch or something thereof. My cousin and my brother have spent the past week talking about all of our encounters here in AZ up off the Mogollon Rim and out at our family ranch north of Wickenburg. My cousin Chris came upon your show less than a week ago by accident and we have each listened to about 35-40 of the episodes since. He and I have talked over the past few days and because of what we've heard on your show, we are CONVINCED that what we've encountered is similar to those on your show. The timing worked out where my brother, who is active in the military, is in town and staying with us so the three of us have been reliving these experiences trying to find answers. The first memory was at our family ranch out in the middle of the desert where the nearest house or living human is a 45 minute drive down a dirt road. I was about 14 or 15 and my brother is two years younger than me. He and I heard the horses making a ton of noise down in the pasture in the creek that runs alongside the mountain the ranch houses sit on. We walked to the edge of the slope of the mountain where we could see below and saw the horses huddled together in the middle of our fenced in pasture. We caught glances of what we thought was a coyote in between the brush so we yelled down and made some noise. As soon as we did, this thing took off down the wash towards the Hassayampa river. We saw it running and it was big and black. It ran kind of like a dog but was 90-100 yards away below in the wash so it was thought to tell. It darted between the mesquite and the brush but it was jet black. If it was a canine, it was the biggest one we have ever seen. Running on all fours, it's back had to be at least as high as my chest at the time but it was very bulky. When we asked our grandpa about it he said it was a bear but we have never seen a bear move that fast or agile. We had another encounter while sitting on the porch of the ranch house at night a few years later. My cousin and I were sitting on the porch with a girl from Germany and the rest of the family was inside. About 30 yards away, just outside of the light coming from the sliding glass door, we heard some movement for a few minutes, then the deepest growl I could have possibly ever imagined. It last for a few seconds and my cousin and I slowly got up on our feet. We looked at each other terrified and pulled our guns out. The SECOND I cocked the hammer back on my revolver, the growl turned into this terrifying scream. It didn't sound like the typical woman scream you hear about, it sounded like a dinosaur. We threw open the door and slammed it shut and our family told us we looked like we had just seen a ghost. Neither of us slept that night. Around the time I was 19, my brother and a different cousin of ours had walked about a mile up river to do some target shooting with a shotgun. We didn't have a lot of time before dinner so we were only shooting for 10-15 minutes before we headed back home. Walking down the creek we saw a jet black raven sitting in the middle of the creek. It was huge and wasn't afraid of us. It had to sit 2.5′ talk and I have never seen a raven out there in that area. We walked by and didn't think anything of it but as we got close to the house we saw a massive black creature on the side of the wash in the brush. At the time we all thought it was a bull but even then we thought it was pretty strange to see one off on its own that close to the house. 10-15 seconds later, when we turned to look back at it, it was completely gone. We asked our grandpa about a big black bull and he told us that we didn't have any. I was 23 when I went camping off the Young road up on the Mogollon rim with some buddies. After the sun went down, we had a fire going and started hearing what we all thought was a woman screaming off in the distance. Over a minute or two the scream got closer until it was just outside the firelight and less than 30 yards from us. We were all freaked out since it sounded like this woman was dying. We called out and shined our flashlights towards it but never got a response or saw anything. Over a period of an hour, we heard some noises near by but eventually it got quiet and then we started hearing the screams again but the were moving away from us. We all slept in the truck that night and left the next morning. My last encounter was again, near the Mogollon rim with my cousin Chris, his wife, and a friend from work as his wife. The story is pretty long but we had heard screams in the forest during the day and after the sun went down we started to hear whistles coming in from at least 3 different positions getting closer to us. We saw red, green, and white lights coming down one of the hills that bordered the wash we were camping in. They were very soft lights like a glow stick in the distance. We would hear branches breaking and someone walking up the road. We would go out to look and couldn't ever find anything. The whistles and noises would ebb and flow but during a period of quiet, our friend and his wife went to bed in their tent. The noises started up again and our dogs went so crazy we had to put them all in our trucks. My cousin, his wife, and I sat on his tailgate near the fire hearing at least 3 distinct whistles coming from different areas like we were being flanked. His wife didn't read too much into it but we were terrified. I've got tears in my eyes just thinking about it. When one of the whistles got within 40 yards and right on the creek, I whistled into the dark and immediately, this thing immediately whistled right back to me in the exact same tone. The three of us panicked, we woke up our friends, packed up our camp within 10 minutes and left there in the middle of the night."   https://sasquatchchronicles.com     [e-mail]

Black thing go from left to right, and I thought, I'm going to die out here and no one's ever going to know. I couldn't believe what my eyeballs was showing me. I'll never forget how evil the eyes were. It was horrible. I mean, I've never seen nothing that evil. It ran towards me at a rate that I can't even explain, turned and stared at me. And this look of, I just want to kill you. I want to say it was human, but it wasn't.

He was yelling at me to grab a gun, grab a gun. I was like, for what? He said, just grab a gun. And there's footprints all the way to the door of my house. It had went inside my garage all the way to the door. 911, what are you reporting? 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. You're listening to Sasquatch Chronicles. Check us out online at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you've had an encounter, email me. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. Welcome to the show, everyone.

Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show planned for you tonight. We'll be talking to Doc. And Doc comes to us from Arizona. He grew up on this family ranch down there in Arizona. And him and his family have had many run-ins with. these creatures, a lot of other weird things too as well. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you get a chance,

check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Doc to the show. Doc, thanks for coming on. Hey, thanks for having me, Wes. I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm really interested to hear about this ranch down there in Arizona and some of the weird things that you ran into. We'll also talk about a camping trip a little bit later. But to begin with, can we start with the ranch? Tell me a little bit about this ranch and what did you see down there? Yeah, sure thing.

So our family owns a ranch. It's about 18 miles north of Wickhamburg down an old dirt road. The ranch house sits at the end of the dirt road. You pass by a bunch of, well, one. ghost town and a couple of old lucrative mines that they pulled a lot of gold and copper out of over the last 150 years but they've been long since abandoned. The piece of property itself is 20,000 plus acres. You know, and we own a portion of that, but part of it is leased from the BLM. We lease the grazing and water rights. Have a bunch of cattle out there.

So, yeah, you know, we grew up in the city, myself, my brother, all my cousins, we would grow up in the city, go to school out here in Phoenix or surrounding area. And then we'd spend most every weekend all of our winter breaks, all of our summer breaks out there at the family ranch with my grandparents and my dad, my uncles and aunts. We'd go out and do the real cowboy thing. So, you know, we grew up in the desert out there and grew up camping around here up in the pine and off the rim had a unique childhood. You know, we carried guns from the time we were like 10 or 11 years old. You know, we're out on horseback in the middle of nowhere. The occasional snake or coyote, pretty rare, but we did have some mountain lion problems back when we were younger. So it was kind of like stepping back in time every time we'd go out there.

So around the time I was, I guess, about 14 years old. My brother, who's a couple of years younger, he was out there along with our cousins on one of these breaks. We went to get ready for dinner and we were standing out on the side of the mountain that the house sits on, the ranch house. Down below in a wash is where the corral for our horses and a large feeding pasture is. It sits down in the wash, comes right off the Hasiampa River that runs right by the ranch house. But the ranch house itself and all of our trucks and everything sits elevated up above this wash. So I heard a bunch of the horses making a bunch of noise down in this pasture and trying to figure out what's going on. my brother and I step over to the edge of this flat spot where the house is and look down.

It's a fairly large pasture. At the time, my best guess, we had probably 40 to 50 horses out there at any given point. And all of our feeders were placed around the outside edge of this pasture. So the horses were usually paired off, you know, two, three, four of them sitting over by the feeders, pulling their hay out or hanging out in the shade. to the mesquites out there. Well, we walked out to the edge of the cliff and every single horse was bunched up in the middle of this pasture just as far away from the fence as they could possibly get. I thought that was a little weird. He was making some weird noises, you know,

like they were afraid. At the time, we thought, well, there must be some coyotes, but we didn't hear any coyotes. So we made a bunch of noise up on the side of the hill thinking, okay, I would just scare the coyotes off. Did what kids do. Throw a couple of rocks down the side of the mountain. And off to the left side of this pasture, we see this big black creature. At the time, my brother and I described it as a dog. And I say dog, because I don't really have anything else to compare it to.

You know, from our elevation, it was really hard to tell the exact size. but at best guess at that time, I would have thought height-wise. It was about the size of a Great Dane, but maybe three or four times as bulky. It was a really girthy creature. Stayed on all fours, took off from the edge of the pasture, down this wash back towards the river. From the pasture to the river is about 100 yards, 120 yards. And there's quite a bit of mesquite and Palaverdi down there in the loss. So this thing, unlike a dog, which would run from point A to point B whenever it gets scared or run off,

like you've seen coyotes do if you've ever been out hunting them. This thing kind of moved back and forth between the brush down there, and it would dart from one mesquite to the other, kind of like looking back, almost like it knew that we were watching it. I was 14. my brother and I were pretty young. Kind of seemed a little weird, not a place. But, you know, we wrote it off as just a big old coyote or big old something.

You know, didn't think a whole lot of it at the time. Just struck us as kind of weird. But the thing ran on all fours, and it was quick. It was really, really quick, much quicker than any of the ranch dogs that we have out there or any of the coyotes that we've seen or hunted out there. Talk to our family about it and, you know, they shrugged it off. So we didn't think too much of it. Fast forward about a year and a half to two years later, we were out there on a summer break.

And at the time, we had a lot of guests come over from Germany. You know, they didn't have the whole Wild West thing out there. So they, Germany, all over Europe, but specifically Germany, we had a lot of guests come out and they'd stay with us a few days or a few weeks. They wanted to come out and see what the real cowboy life was like. So they'd come out and we'd take them target shooting and they'd watch us brand cattle. They'd go out hunting with us or go fix fence, ride horses for 10 hours straight. Whatever we did, they did. But I was about 16 years old.

And myself, my brother, all of our cousins were once again out there on summer break. And one evening we were sitting outside the bunkhouse where we all stayed whenever we stayed out there. The bunk house had a big sliding glass door that led from the house to the patio. And my cousin Chris and I were sitting on the patio with one of these gals from Germany. You know, they loved hanging around us and picking our brains and trying to figure out what the cowboy life was all about. And so it was dark. We had been sitting out there for a while. My brother and the rest of our cousins were inside watching an old VHS movie or something.

But the light was on inside, so there was quite a bit of lights going out through this sliding glass door. So again, you know, we were sitting out there. and I don't recall hearing any movement down below, but there was this old road that went, you know, from the ranch house to the bunkhouse and then turned into a bit of a hiking trail that went right down to the Hacianpa River right there. So this ranch house had been out there for close to 100 years. There's a bunch of old mining equipment and old tractors, old school buses. where the miners would come out and they'd take their kids to school out here. Next to the bunk house is this little red, what used to be a schoolhouse. My grandpa had turned it into a leather working shop at the time.

But down near this big bus and this big pile of junk back where this little red house was, we all of a sudden hear this really deep, bassy growl. And I don't know that a growl quite covers it. It was really deep and it and it lasted a good 10 or 15 seconds. I mean it wasn't quick. It just it just kept going and it was loud enough

my best guess would be 30 to 35 yards away from us at the time. It was loud enough that my cousin Chris and I stood up slowly off the bench on the patio and this gal from Germany kind of stepped behind us. We're both staring at each other going, what the heck is that? So we pull out our pistols. Like I said, we carried sidearms out there.

It wasn't strange for us to go walking around in the middle of the night and come across something that didn't like you walking across it. But as soon as we pointed our pistols down in that direction, Um, the second that I cocked the hammer back on that old revolver. And, and I mean, it went from this really deep, basic growl to this ear piercing screech that came from the same spot immediately. Like I said, the, the growl lasted probably 10 or 15 seconds, but it didn't, it didn't pause in between. It was growl to screech. At the time, we kind of called it a scream.

It was really high-pitched and sounded very aggressive. As soon as we heard it, my cousin and I threw open the sliding glass door, grabbed the girl from Germany, and ran inside, shut the door behind us. We stood inside, breathing real hard, had our guns out. So, of course, our cousins and my brother are going, hey, what's going on? What's going on? and, you know, hey, there's something out there. Something was just growling at us and it just shrieked.

You know, so they got a little curious, but they didn't take it too serious. At the time, you know, we had been hunting all over, and it really didn't fit anything that I could think of. But, you know, when they asked us, hey, what did this screech sound like? The word I used to describe it was like a pteradactyl. It sounds like a dinosaur You know something out of a movie You know just this real deep growl

And then all of a sudden it explodes into this This just really loud screeching Squealing I'm gonna get you scream And so scared the hell out of us Next day walked down there in the daylight And didn't really find anything So again one of those weird things

That goes bump in the night You can't explain we were teenage kids and full of adrenaline and just shrugged it off and kind of moved on. Yeah. Still terrifying, though, man, especially when you can't pinpoint it. And it's interesting you say dinosaur because I know when I was in Texas, that's how I described it. I was like, man, it's freaking Jurassic Park out here, you know, with, it sounds like dinosaurs, really. I mean, the poor woman from Germany, I guess, welcome to America.

But, you know what I mean? You aren't kidding. You know, she's probably like looking at when her next plane ticket leaves back to Germany. So what happens next on there? Was there anything else that strange happened out of that property? Yeah, so there were a couple of weird things that happened out there, some of which I was present for. You know, all of this kind of started, the talk of all of this kind of started a few weeks ago when my cousin sent me an episode of your show and said, hey, you've got to listen to this.

And we listened to it. Some things really matched up with some stuff that we had seen out at the ranch and camping years later. So we've kind of gone down the rabbit hole on all of this. And my brother just happened to be in town for the last two weeks. He's in the military. So my cousin came over a couple of times. And my brother and my cousin and I would sit around the table and talk about these things.

And I mean, you're talking about three grown men sitting around a kitchen table late at night and all of us are hair on end, tears in our eyes, struggling to get through some of these stories. My brother described him and one of our other cousins up working on the fence line back behind the ranch house up at the top of this mountain that the ranch house kind of sat midway down on, and they were finishing up their work. They were packing everything up and getting ready to go back down the hill. Well, when they looked behind them on the other side of this mountain, they described, and my brother swears, that it was a gorilla,

this big black gorilla running down the side of this steep mountain, and out there in Wickenburg, it's all canyons and large rocks. These mountains are all really tough to get up, even with horses. and he said this thing moved. It booked it down the side of this mountain, and he and my other cousin stared at each other for a second. Like, hey, is that a bull? No, I don't know.

It doesn't look like a bull. It's not moving like a bull. But my brother swears to us that this thing ran on its knuckles. He didn't describe the distance at the time, but he's talked about this story two or three times over the last two weeks, and he just, he calls it. The gorilla. He doesn't have anything else that he can explain it with. He just says it was a big black gorilla. A few years later, after we had this growling scream, my brother, one of our other cousins and I were out at the ranch. I was about 19.

And it was late in the evening. We went down to the river. It took a couple of guns with us and we were going to do some target shooting down there in the canyon right off the river. So we walked a better part of a mile up river from the ranch house where we weren't going to disturb our grandparents who were getting dinner ready. So we walked up the river right in the river bed and we did some target shooting down there on the bank, shooting some paper targets or cans, whatever it was at the time. And so we weren't out there too long, but we had fired off probably 100 or 150 rounds. started coming back to the ranch house, knowing that it was getting ready for dinner time. And as we're walking back through the creek, we, you know, we're talking, being loud, being kids, and we see this very large raven, and I mean a raven, had to be at least knee high at the time, sitting in the middle of the creek bed.

And it was jet black again, sitting right there in the middle of the creek bed. It was the weirdest thing that we could have thought at the time. We've never seen a raven out there before or since. And it was massive. Didn't make sense to us. We kind of walked in a semicircle around it and kept our distance, but the thing just watched us. Didn't fear us, didn't move, nothing.

So we keep walking. Another 150 yards. we start seeing at the time it looked like a big black squirrel, you know, a longer body than it was tall, kind of a tail behind it. It was a big black squirrel or a small black dog, something darting back and forth from bank to bank, about 100 yards in front of us. And it would run from the left all the way across to the right, and it would hop. It moved kind of like a squirrel.

Again, we're kind of thinking, well, this is weird. What the heck is this? You know, we're seeing a raven and this black squirrel. What's going on? It goes from bank to bank a couple of times and then stops. As we get close to the lower water gap there, a quarter mile from the house or so, you know, where we keep the cattle out, we see at the time what we thought was just this huge black bull. And I mean jet black. and it's standing on the bank, kind of back behind some mesquite, back behind some brush, but it's staring right at us. And for whatever reason, it just seemed off.

You know, and we all called attention to it like, hey, what? Never seen that bull before. What's that doing over there? Walked past it. Thing just kept looking at us. Kept walking through. Got through the pass-through gate and the water gap. and as we looked back, the thing was gone.

I mean, couldn't have been more than 10 or 15 seconds. Went from standing there right on the bank behind a couple of things of brush to completely gone. We're thinking, well, that's weird. Okay, well, things happen. So as we get past the fence a little bit, we turn around and this thing standing right in the middle of the river looking at us. And it freaked us out. All three of us saw it. And we immediately just booked it right for the ranch house.

For whatever reason, it just scared the crap out of us. You know, the movement of it, I think, is what scared us. That it had gone from this brush to disappeared to all of a sudden in the bed, the bed or the river in a matter of maybe a minute tops. The whole thing just freaked us out. So we got back to the ranch house and told our grandparents, you know, hey, yeah, when we were shooting down there, we had seen this big black bull.

They said, well, we don't have any big black bulls. Maybe it was one of the neighbors. You know, none of our cattle are jet black like that. That's kind of weird that it was that close to the house. So it seemed a little weird again. Can I ask you about the, can I ask you real quick about the bull? So I'm assuming it stayed on all fours. Did you ever get a look at the face or was it kind of just this huge black thing?

It was this huge black mass. At its closest, we were probably 20 to 25 yards from it. When we initially saw it, it was, yes, absolutely on all fours. You know, it sat probably five and a half, five feet, best guess, maybe even a little bit bigger, but it was just a really large bulky, what we thought at the time was a bull. That was what we said to each other. That's what made sense. You know, it didn't really make sense that anything else would be out there. Didn't really get a look at its face other than just the jet black. But we remember it, all three of us said, man, that thing was just staring at us. And it had these real black eyes. And the sunlight would reflect off the eyes.

We caught the glare of the eyes. So we know we saw the eyes. But back behind the brush, we didn't really. get a full look at the face. For years, we described it as a bull. Now talking about it, my brother and I are both sitting there going, well, did we ever really get a good look at it? Like, was it for sure a bull? You know, because then when it's standing out in the middle of the river, we both look behind, or all three of us look behind us and see this thing, and we like panic. I don't think I looked at it for more than a second. And, you know, here's this big black mass on all

all fours in the middle of the creek. And for whatever reason, it just scared the crap out of us. We just booked it. So I call it a bull. I couldn't tell you if it was actually a bull. It didn't make sense for it to be a bull, but it doesn't really make sense for it to be anything else either. Yeah, and I think the interesting part is, you know, you guys are a bunch of cowboys out

there. You guys have your guns. You guys, you know, you know the wild. No, I don't mean in a bad way. I just mean you guys are out there. You guys know your animals. And I don't think a bull is going to scare off. two, three guys out there, young guys, armed to the teeth, they're probably not going to give

it a second look. The fact that it did bother you makes me wonder what it was, you know what I mean? The whole encounter, really, like I said, you know, talking about when we were sitting around the table the other night talking about this growl and this scream, this story, for whatever reason, I mean, I'm getting kind of teary-eyed talking about it. It gives me the shivers, for whatever reason, the second that we saw this big black raven out

there, something just didn't seem right. And, you know, we saw another black animal of some kind moving back and forth across the river, and maybe it's all a big coincidence, but it just put us on edge.

And for whatever reason, turning around and seeing this, we, I mean, we were like, no, we need to go. We need to get out of here. And you're right. We each had a sidearm on us, and we had a shotgun and a long rifle. Yeah, you know, we grew up on that land, and I've spent years of my life collectively at this point. I know the land pretty well, and we all know what's out there, and it just seemed off. Something didn't seem right. Yeah, the raven part seems off too. I mean, I've seen some big ravens, but you're talking about knee-high raven. That's a big raven, ma'am. It's a really big raven. And, you know, I've always been pretty skeptical about all this. But after hearing your show and kind of hearing some of the weirdness that other people have experienced, I guess my mind's kind of open to, well, I'm not crazy. I'm not the only one that saw this big black raven or this big black bull.

You know, my brother, who's in town from the military, we're describing the same exact thing. And as we hear each other describe it, man, it just spooks us for whatever reason. You know, this is 15 years ago now. It just scares us still to this day, you know, thinking about going back out there. Okay, well, what was that? Yeah, I don't blame me. I mean, that's what I would be asking. Did anything else happen on that property?

that was that was probably the last thing that I've really seen out there my cousin Chris after he graduated out of high school he ended up moving out there to help my grandparents with the ranch for about a year and a half and years later him and his wife both moved out there again for about a year to help out with taking care of the land and the cattle but he he described a couple of calf kills that looked like like they had been placed on top of a

a fence post and for anybody who's familiar with barbed wire fences you know you've got your strands of barbed wire and they're tied into a green tea post which is made out of metal and my cousin described

this one calf kill in particular that really bothered him it looked like something had staked this small calf up on a tea post and then butchered it right there on the post. And with my, my grandpa was with him at the time, and my grandpa said, well, we might have a mountain lion out here.

And my cousin Chris, oh, that doesn't look like a mountain lion. How's a mountain lion going to get that up there? And my grandpa just shrugged it off and said, oh, I don't know, what else would do that? You know, and we've, we've asked our grandparents and our uncles that have, you know, they grew up out there as kids. They've owned that piece of land for the better part of 50 years. And then, you know, they've moved around and stuff, but that's been our ranch for half a century.

And everybody that we talked to, with the exception of my dad, who kind of entertained some of the weirdness and would talk about some weird stuff that he experienced out there, my grandparents basically shrug it all off and say, well, you must have seen a bear. Well, I've never seen a bear out there. I've never even heard of a bear out there. You know, they don't really want to talk to it, talk about it.

When it gets brought up, you know, they give us a quick explanation and then, hey, we're done talking about it. Let's talk about something else. One time talking to my grandmother, who is, she's from the Cherokee tribe, or partially anyways, she had told us a story about skin walkers. And I don't know if she told it to us kind of just to make us kids behave or stop running around the desert in the middle of the night or what. But she told us the story of skin walkers and how her mom had told her that these bad medicine men would do things

and take forms of different animals. And, you know, she told us that story. one time and I don't even remember all the details. I just really remember her talking about a skin walker. And that was it. Outside of that, nobody ever talks about the weirdness. But for them living out there all those years, my uncle's living out there all the years, you know, sometimes you'll be back in a canyon and you just get this feeling like there's something staring at me. and it comes out of nowhere. And then you move a quarter mile down the road and everything's fine.

But your adrenaline starts pumping, your hand moves to your pistol, you're ready to fight. And then it goes away. But none of them want to talk about it. They all brush it off pretty quickly. Yeah, and I want to get to what happened to you guys up on the Mogi on Rim. Before we get to that, though, what did your dad tell you? I mean, did he share with anything weird that happened to him out there? my dad

he passed away a few years ago but back when we were kids we would talk to him about some of these stories I say kids teenagers and young men and he would tell us about some of the weird encounters that he did have out there when he was younger and

you know he he would describe the occasional ghost story you know he he told us one time that he he swore that he saw these two little girls that had died in a fire out there back in the early 1900s walking up the ranch road from the hill up to the house and then they were gone and he told us a story about how my grandma and my grandpa both saw the same ghost and the same night it was a relative of theirs i don't remember who but they both asked questions and the next

morning, they woke up in a panic and they both shared their dream, quote unquote. And they described exactly what each other had just experienced. And so he would entertain some of the weirdness. You know, he would say, yeah, you know, I've seen some stuff out there and seen some really weird calf kills, seen full-grown cows killed. And he had killed a mountain lion out there. I mean, he was a pretty avid hunter. He, he knew the land better than any of us kids did. And so for him to admit that, you know, something's not right was a big deal at the time. Yeah, I can imagine. Well, so many years go by and you decide to go up to the Mogian Rim. Yeah. Kind of tell us what you, why did you go up there and what happened while you're up there?

Yeah, sure thing. You know, we've, we've, we've camped. up on various parts of the rim a few dozen times. My cousin Chris, he grew up in Payson. His family, his mom's side of the family is from Payson and Young out there. And so he knows the area really well. But we go camping up there all the time. It's great to get up where it's 20 or 25 degrees cooler than it is down here in the desert. So this was almost two years ago. I know it was was on September 15th because that was my birthday. We decided to take a little camping trip up just north of Payson and, I guess, kind of east of strawberry and pine, if you're familiar with the area up there.

I drove up early one morning. It was myself, Chris, and his wife, Heather, and then a friend of ours from work and his wife. We all met over at Chris's house, and we drove. up early that morning and tried to find a place that we wanted to go camp. We were just going to do a camping trip, just get out into the woods and have a good time. We went up this, you know, a few miles of Forest Service Road up there and ended up finding a spot kind of close to where there's an old Boy Scout camp up there. Where we picked was right off this little stream and there's there's a hill on the one side of the stream that goes up and levels up,

levels off about 100, maybe 150 feet above this stream. Then on the other side of the stream is a flat spot where we decided to camp, and on the other side of that is the road. And then you've got another hill that's a little bit taller than the other one, but it slopes off real gradually and moves off into the distance. So we get out there, we set up camp. I've got my two dogs and Chris has his dog. So we start doing camping stuff.

You know, we're walking around the forest and saying if there's going to be any fishing that we can do and messing around. And throughout the day, you know, we were out on the stream. We walked up on this hill, walked all over. We were making noise. You know, we all had our guns and our dogs. And, you know, we were just making a ton of noise throughout the day. we went and made lunch, went back out into the forest, just messing around, exploring everything out there. And, you know, it got real still and quiet.

And I don't even think I had noticed it until maybe Chris had pointed it out. I don't remember exactly who said it, but somebody said, man, it's really weird. You know, there's no animals out here. That's like you don't even hear any birds. And, again, didn't think too much of it at the time. just one of those things you know we were in a spot where there just didn't happen to be any wildlife we had set up some crawdad traps down in the stream and we're messing around and we started hearing this scream off in the distance it's still daylight at this point but mid-afternoon or late

afternoon. As we're up on this hill on the other side of the stream, we hear this scream. And it sounds like a woman screaming, like a real high-pitched shrill scream. And it's pretty far off in the distance. Pretty faint the first time we heard it. The second time it was a little bit closer. We heard it a couple of times, but it didn't get too close. And we all looked at each other, the five of us. Hey, okay, well, that's kind of weird. Maybe we've got a cougar in the area. I don't know.

Anyways. So, you know, we're walking around and doing our stuff, come back to camp to make dinner. And the sun's starting to go down. We're hanging around, telling stories, you know, and enjoying the nice weather. And once the sun starts to, go down and it's and it's starting to get real dark.

We start seeing these lights up on the side of the hill opposite the road. And they started out at the top of this hill. And at the time, I remember them being red and green. But they were real faint. The reason I remember them being red and green is because I thought, you know, where they were at up at the top of the hill that maybe they were airplane lights. You know, we were seeing the light off in the distance. and somebody was, you know, we were just catching the light from an airplane.

Over a couple of minutes, we realized that that's not airplane lights. These things are, you know, moving, looks like they're moving gently down the hill. And all five of us saw it. Didn't seem too terribly weird at the time. You know, you'd see it move one way and then go behind a tree and disappear and then come back the other way and disappear for a second. And then they'd gradually, moved down the hill over, you know, 15 or 20 minutes, whatever it was. And then the lights

disappeared. Okay. I remember my cousin Chris thinking that, you know, hey, maybe somebody's tracking something out there. Maybe that's a blood light or, you know, somebody's up on the hill. They're looking for something. Wouldn't be that weird. But the lights, I mean, the best way for me to describe it. It wasn't like a flashlight. It was, you know, it didn't emit like a beam of light. It was, it was like somebody cracked a glow stick and held it in their fist and then pointed it at you on end. Like you were just seeing the one end of the glow stick. And it was real soft, real faint, red and green, which, you know, was a little weird because none of us ever carried red or green flashlights. but who knows, you know, there's other campers not too far from us.

Maybe somebody was out for a hike. And so it gets quiet for a while. Well, eventually the lights come back. And this time, it's, you know, there's a mixture of red and green and then like a bluish white. And this time they worked, you know, again, towards the top of the hill, back down towards the middle section of the hill. And at the time, we only really ever saw two lights at a time. They would move back and forth, and then, you know, you'd have this one on the left disappear.

But then a new one would pop up way on the right, and this one would be blue. And then a few minutes later, the one on the left that had disappeared would come back. And instead of being red, it would be green. And I thought it was really weird, but again, you know, somebody could just be walking down the hill. And it was pretty faint. all five of us were, I just remember we were staring there, standing there looking at them, and one of us would go, oh, that one disappeared. Oh, hey, oh no, there's a blue one over there.

Oh, what's that? Oh, yeah, there's a new one. Hey, check that out. Didn't scare us. Just seemed weird. About that time, we started hearing whistling down to the south of us. We'd hear a whistle and be a couple hundred yards. off, but it'd be pretty loud, or at least it sounded that way at the time. Just a single-note whistle,

and then, you know, a little later you'd hear a two-note whistle, or back to the single note. Well, whistles start kind of getting a little bit closer to us, you know, like they're walking up the stream. We're thinking someone's out for a night hike. Well, at this point, we've pretty much finished dinner, and we're just hanging around by the campfire. So the lights disappear again. The whistles get quiet. Everything's back to normal camping mode. Sitting around, well, after a period of time, whatever it was, you know, maybe 20 or 30 minutes, the lights come back up again. This time they're about halfway down the hill and they're moving back and forth. Again, same thing, you know, they'd show up in this area and then disappear and then you'd have another one over there. Well,

then the whistling would start again. And the second time we had something around our six o'clock position, you know, coming up the stream towards us. Then we had something over on the hill across the stream from us somewhere around our 10 o'clock, you know, northwest area. And when we heard that whistle, the dogs started getting, you know, they'd kind of bark off into the darkness. So, you know, you'd get a whistle every 30 seconds to a minute, maybe two minutes, and then thinking, okay, weird. You know, this is kind of at this point giving us the weird feeling because these whistles aren't that far off from us. So, lights go off. Chris and I grab our flashlights and we walk across the stream

and we're, you know, looking at things and don't really see anything. You know, we hear stuff moving way off in the distance, but don't really think too much about it. Come back. to camp, sit around the fire. Well, about this time, um, our friend and his wife go to bed and they, they go into the tent and hit the hay. So we're sitting around the,

the fire and the lights come back. We're thinking, boy, this is weird. You know, they're, they're a quarter, you know, maybe just a quarter of the way up the mountain at this point. They're mostly at ground level. And same thing, you know, white and blue. It was always these same, faint lights and they'd show up and they disappear and they'd zig back and forth, you know, left

and right and left and then they'd go behind a tree and disappear. And not long after the lights came back, the whistles came back. And this time we had, at best guess, three different whistles coming from different areas. So the one from the six o'clock was probably within 80 to 75 yards of us. It was fairly close into camp. The one up on the hill was again, you know, best guess is the crow flies on the diagonal. It was maybe 60 to 70 yards from us. And then we had this other one that was back towards the road kind of off towards the hill where we were seeing these lights. Well, you'd hear one whistle and then another one would call out to it and then it would go quiet. And then you'd hear another one whistle in a different area.

And then the second one would call back to it, and then it would go quiet. Well, so we stepped out and said, hey, you know, if anyone's out there, just so you know we're camping out here, we've got guns, and we don't like being screwed with. So just want to make that known. So it gets quiet for a little bit. And then we hear what sounds like walking or something moving up the road past where our friend's tent is. And so I tell Chris, hey, you know, I'm going to go check this out. you shine the light towards me and I'll take my light and my gun. We've got rifles and sidearms with us. So I go out towards the road and I'm standing there in the road trying to

listen and see if I can hear this movement again. I don't really hear much. On the other side of the road towards this hill is a bunch of brush. I think it was mostly Manzanita and Mesquite. And all of a sudden I see this big black mass on the other side. of this brush in between me and it take off running north, kind of up towards where the lights are. I mean, it just takes off. And at this point, I'm like, what the hell was that? And I book it back to camp and Chris is going, hey, what's that? I'm like, I don't know, man, there's something out in the brush. I think I spooked it and it just took off. And man, that was weird. At this point, kind of getting the hebie-jeebies being out here. So lights are still kind of

to disappearing and then they'll show up and we get a period of of whistles coming in and at this point our dogs are going nuts so we end up putting our dogs in our truck my dog's going my truck his dog goes in his truck and we're just the three of us are sitting there on the tailgate of his truck our fires basically burned down to embers at this point we're trying to enjoy what we can of this camping trip and the whistles start coming back and this time they're much closer. We heard something walk

into this stream on the other side of my truck and I remember pointing our flashlight over there and didn't see anything and we're getting this whistle that comes from the same area

kind of by the trees that's on the other side of the bank you know my truck's park not far from the stream where it bends and then on the other side of that that's where it sounds like this whistle's coming from and then we get another whistle up on the hill and this time it sounds like it's it's like right on the edge of this hill and looking at us and this third whistle back from where kind of where we saw the light you know towards the road and we're standing there or you know they were sitting there. I was standing there and Chris and I are getting a little worried at this

point. And so if I remember right, I think he yelled out again like, hey, you know, stop screwing with us. We've got guns. And, you know, we were shining our flashlights around. But we started to hear these three noises, these three whistles kind of move in a counterclockwise rotation around us. you know, you'd hear the one, and then 15, 20 seconds later, you'd hear a second whistle. And instead of being at the 10 o'clock position, well, now it's down at 8. And the one that was down in the stream now sounds like it's over at the road. And the one that was in the road sounds like it's up north of us. And you can hear some movement off in the distance, not too far outside of where our firelight.

You know, it was a pretty small fire at this point. But we're shining our flashlights everywhere. Chris's wife, she's always kept a level head, and she doesn't seem too concerned with the whole thing at this point. But Chris and I are getting pretty worked up. We've got our rifles in our hands. You know, we're ready. You know, we racked shells into the chamber, and we're thinking, man, this is not a good idea. If there's someone out there screwing with us, like we've told them multiple.

times. We've got guns. This is not a good idea. If somebody's out there being this dumb. And so I think when we rack the shell back in the rifle at the time, you know, we'd hear the whistle and then it would get quiet. And so we're sitting there and it's like we're being toyed with a little bit. You know, and the whistles that we kept hearing were the same type of whistles that we would always use when we were out hunting with each other just, you know, to get each other's attention. It wasn't like a real loud whistle. It was just something to, you know, like let someone know where you're at. Yeah, that real sharp, quick whistle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Almost like you're trying to mimic a bird, you know, just a, yeah. Yeah, I've done it many times, yeah. Yeah. So we're hearing these whistles

and they're getting close to camp at this point. And then it gets quiet again. And we can, we can hear our, I mean, like I remember hearing my heartbeat just, you know, I'm just standing there silent. And the three of us are just sitting there not saying a word or if Chris says something to his wife, it's just a real low whisper. And it's like we're just waiting for the whistles to come back or whatever it is. And I mean, it was really tense. A few minutes go by and we hear another whistle come from our southern position. I hear my dog stirring in the truck.

But this one comes from like just on the other end of the front side of my truck. It couldn't have been 30 or 35 yards. I mean, it was pretty darn close to our camp. It was like inside of our camp. So we hear this whistle and we're all kind of frozen. And for whatever reason, I don't know why I did this, but I turned and I whistled just a two-note whistle off. in the direction. And as soon as I did, it was, it mimicked it perfectly. I mean, same notes,

same cadence right back at me. And at that point, like, I looked at Chris and I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm really worried at this point. Like, it's not my imagination. We're not here in a bird. I just whistled something out into the darkness and something whistled it right back at me. Like, that is call and answer. That scared the crap out of me. And I remember looking at Heather and at this point she's terrified. Like I remember the look on her face and I've never I've never seen her like that. She's just as cool as they come. And, and she's like, hey, let's get out of here. That's weird. That's enough. Let's get out of here. So we jump off. We go wake up our friend and his wife, you know, unzip their tent. Hey, hey, hey, we're leaving.

We're getting out of here right now. And they're going, hey, what, you know, what's going on? Nothing. We'll tell you about it later. We're getting out of here. There's something in the woods. It's screwing with us. We just need. need to go. We're pretty sure there's more than one. We just need to get out of here. Come on, trust us. So we kind of spotted each other as we picked up camp. You know, we'd go pick up someone's tent and throw it in the back of the truck real quick, throw our bags on top of it to hopefully try and wait it down so it didn't fly out of the back of the bed. You know, we had tent poles hanging out. And I mean, we were out of there in less than 10 minutes. Backed up three tents,

a hammock, cook stove, you know, and we just, we would use our flashlight. or headlights and spotlight each other. And we just worked together and throw this in the bed and get out of there. So we got out of there and flew down that dirt road back towards Payson. That was about 1130 at night when we packed up and got out of there. We got back to Chris's mom's house. She was out of town at the time. So we all decided, hey, we're just going to sleep there.

It's after midnight. So we got back there and our friend and his wife were, you know, they're going, hey, what's going on? What just happened? You know, at this point, we've had about an hour to cool down and kind of think it over. And I'm, you know, we're trying to explain to him, there's something, there's someone out there that's whistling at us. And when I whistled to it, it whistled back. And those lights didn't go away. And it sounded like there was somebody moving around the outside of our camp. and we're trying to explain this to them without sounding completely crazy. Like it was hard for us to say we were scared out of our mind and terrified.

And for whatever reason, we thought this was like we needed to go now. And I remember our friend saying something like, well, yeah, I guess that's a little weird. You know, maybe it was better we got out of there. And it was, I remember him saying it. And it was just like, oh, man, he thinks we're nuts. like we totally overreacted or something. And I remember sitting there with, but looking back to the way Heather reacted to it,

like I will never question our judgment to get out of there. Like she might call us paranoid, but when she was scared, it was time to go. And so, you know, I got back to town and I've told my kids and my family about that story and they get the hebees listening to it.

and I get weirded out talking about it, but I don't know. It was just this feeling of like terror, like the boogeyman was out there in the dark getting ready to grab us. Yeah, no, I get it. I get it completely what you're saying. I think, and I've heard a lot of encounters like this where they will move in a counterclockwise motion, kind of like closing in and on a news, where they're not really trying to scare you off, which should make you nervous, that they're not trying to make you run. Right.

What was your impression of what was going on? I mean, you were there. What was your impression as far as what they were doing? Do you think they were just curious? Or do you think there was something more sinister going on here? At the time, I mean, it's only been a couple of weeks since I've really even accepted that, you know what? There really is some weird stuff going out in the woods. They can't be explained.

And we're not the only ones that have had this happen. So you know what? Sasquatch is a very real possibility. Like I believe this now, but back then, the rational part of my brain is going, man, there's just some dumb campers that are out there trying to screw with us and they don't understand what they're doing. You know, I tried to rationalize the whole event as it's going on, but there's this primal part of me that is just terrified. You know, the same, like, fear that I had being 16 years old, being. growled and screamed at by what I thought was a dinosaur out in the desert. It really did.

At the time, it felt like we were being circled and closed and on. I don't know if we were on the menu. I feel like if we had really been on the menu, we left ample opportunity for that to occur. because the second that we decided to get out of there, we flipped on lights, we caused a bunch of commotion, and I remember listening,

trying to hear if we could hear a whistle, and maybe I missed it, but I didn't hear any whistles, I didn't hear any movement. I just remember us packing up and getting out of there, so I don't know if something was trying to scare us off, you know, if it was a territorial thing. But at the time, man, I was just terrified it.

I didn't think of the intent. it was just we need to go. This is not going to be good. Whatever happens here, it's not going to be good. What's your gut tell you the lights are, and do you think they're related with these things? I don't, that's a tough one. I've listened to your show for the better part of two weeks,

and I listened to one or two of them a day, and I've heard some stories about the lights, and it seems like they tend to come along with, you know, Bigfoot or Sasquatch. I remember thinking, you know, once we determined they weren't flashlights and they weren't plain lights, I remember thinking that it was possibly like eyeshine coming off of our campfire. Again, trying to rationalize this away, but it was way too far away for that to even be the case.

And then it's like, well, it's red and green and then blue and white. Like, that doesn't make sense. My gut feeling says that they're connected in some way. I don't know in what way that is. I very much think that Sasquatch is a flesh and blood creature, but I would not be surprised if there's more to that story. I don't think that it's just a primate that we haven't discovered out there. I think that it is a primate or maybe it's more closely related to humans.

but it's it's got some things about it that we can't easily explain away yeah a good point it's definitely a good point me always makes me wonder about the lights because they do seem to show up around people's property or when people encounter them generally they'll talk about the lights and i'm not talking about like you know a hunter coming around a corner and bam there's a saskwash there rarely will you ever hear him say anything weird um beyond he saw a wild animal but people who have these things around or they come around in groups late at night, weird things happen. And it's hard to figure out what's actually going on. I tend to agree with you.

I think there's more to the story than it just being a monkey we haven't caught up with or an ape, however you want to put it. Right. I mean, if it's an ape, it's a weird ape. But I think there's more to it. Yeah, and there's a lot of weird things that go on up on that Mogi on Rim. I mean, lights to dogmen. to Sasquatch. I've heard ghost stories. I've heard UFO stuff up there. I mean, you name

it. It goes, and I don't know why it's so concentrated in that area. You know what I mean? Oh, yeah. No, I mean, from the time we're kids, when you hear a ghost story out here in Arizona, it usually revolves around either an old western mining town or somewhere up on the rim. Like, it is a well-known area of weirdness. I've had, friends back in high school who swear they had lights push in on their tent in the middle of the night. Like somebody was pushing a mag light up against the tent and then all of a sudden it disappears. And we've camped up there dozens of times and I can tell you, you know, we camped up there a few, this would have been five or six years ago. I was with a couple of friends of mine

and we heard something screaming. Again, similar to what we heard in this last camping trip I was telling you about just a high-pitched scream like someone's like the woman's dying. I mean, I don't know how to explain it other than like she's being set on fire while alive. And this thing got real close to us. And we heard it a couple of times as it got real close right outside her firelight. And then over, you know, a few minutes, it starts receding. We hear it again. But boy, we didn't sleep that night. I mean, there's there's a lot of strange stuff that happens out there. And it's pretty well known amongst the locals. Yeah.

Well, and like I said, I tend to agree with you. I've heard so many weird stories out there, you know, on the rim. And even in weird places, you wouldn't think like Tucson or, you know, outside of Tucson where it makes you wonder how these things could survive out there. So maybe there is something more to it. I think if you go in with the mindset of your chasing an ape, then there's no way it could survive in Arizona. Not in the desert. So maybe it's not an ape, you know, because I get tons of reports of them out there. I get tons of reports of dog man out there, especially around Tucson.

I get a lot of dogman reports out there for whatever reason. And it's just bizarre, ma'am. It's really, really bizarre in it. I hope one day we can figure out what this thing is and what its purpose is. Yeah, I agree. I have a hard time with the mystery of it all. I mean, my kids kind of, you know, we can't start a puzzle without me staying up till two or three in the morning to finish it. And so I've really been bothered by this over the last couple of weeks because I basically more or less tried to rationalize it all away over the last few years.

But ever since listening to the episode of yours that my cousin sent me, it kind of opened up Pandora's box. And to be honest, like it kind of scares the crap out of me. You know, when the lights are off in my house and no one else is home, you know, the kids and my other half's out, it's like, boy, I kind of want to turn all the lights on before I go down that hallway all of a sudden. You know, and a month ago, I could have cared less. And I think that's normal, Doc. I think a lot of people, they do the same thing, you know. Oh, it must have been a bearer. I always joke about the hunter who called me, who wanted to tell me about the,

this weird bear he saw. And I was like, well, tell me about this weird bear you saw. And it was running on two legs like a man, except for I was running about 35 miles an hour across this clearing. And I think as humans, we try and rationalize things off and go, that must have just been some weird bear. But if you, and I think it makes us feel better because if you really stop and think about it and you really stop and go, that wasn't a bear, now you're worried.

You're like, what the hell is out there? You know, what am I going to run into? Well, and living in Arizona, and I mean, we've hunted all over the state. And we, I mean, we grew up in the desert and camping out, like, we didn't take vacations as kids. We went on camping trips. That's what we did. We'd go out there for a week. And most of it was in Arizona, but we've camped all over Utah and Colorado, New Mexico, California.

You know, we've been all over the country. But Arizona, I mean, I take a lot of pride when I take my kids out into the desert and try explain to him, okay, well, this is edible and this is not. This is what you need to look for when you're searching for water and this is how you survive out here. You know, I know the animals. I know the terrain. And so now looking back on it, it really opens up this line of questioning of, okay, I definitely don't know what any of that was. And it doesn't fit into any category of any animal that I've ever come across. And so now, what is it? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, keep me up to date, Doc. Let me know if anything else happens out of that ranch or if you

decided to go up to the rim. I would love to hear any updates from you. I want to, I like to take my daughters out camping, but after all of this, it really makes me hesitant to take them out on the rim. I do, you know, it kind of goes back and forth. There are days when I listen to one of your old shows and somebody has one of these encounters, and it makes me feel the bravado of, you know, I want to get out there and figure out what this is. Like, I'm not scared of it. And then there's times when I hear a show and it's like, I'm never camping again, man. You know, so I do want to get back out there and I want to get my kids back out there.

I do want to feel a little more comfortable with whatever it is that's out there before I do take them out there. But yeah, we go out to the ranch as much as possible. It's been years since we've really seen any kind of weirdness, but now I'm definitely on the lookout for it. Yeah, definitely keep your eyes and ears open. And I appreciate you coming on and taking the time to share, you know, some of the family history out there on the ranch and, you know, taking the time to talk about what happened on the rim. Thank you so much. Hey, thanks a lot, Wes. I really appreciate your show.

You know, if nothing else hearing all these other people, experience. similar or almost identical things as what we've seen alone or together out here. It makes me feel less crazy. I mean, it really does. It's like, okay, you know, we didn't just make those things up. There's something out there. Thanks, Doc, for the kind words. I agree with you.

There's definitely something out there. But thank you for the kind words. I appreciate it. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address, West at saskwatch Chronicles.com. Until next time, everyone. Country faster than the coronavirus and wage.

And I'm a veteran sports analyst and respected sports handicapper who helped 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. 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.