Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:635 Stalked In The Woods

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

James writes "I've seen what could have only been a Sasquatch in Huntsville AL. Back in the 90s and since I've been living here in Washington state I have had three times things happen to me that can only be describe as weird and not normal animal behavior."

All right, I want to take a second before we go any further in the show and check in with Wes Gummer from Sasquatch Chronicles. He is actually right now hovering over Portland, Oregon in T.C. Chopper 1. And he is going to give us an update as to what's going on in Portland, Oregon, but also the state of Washington, since we all know that the state of Washington is actually ground zero for the COVID-19 virus. And so, Wes, has it going up there. Keep up there, buddy. It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind. It either heard me or smelt me and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up and that shocked me. They don't make people that big.

The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything move like. that in my life. They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language and they were chuntering away back and forward, back and forward, back and forward. I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet, but what I saw were bears. 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 here. This is Kerr from Minnesota and you're listening to Sasquatch Chronicles. There is a famous quote and the quote goes like this. Sometimes, crying or laughing are the only options left and laughing feels better right now. No, we're not making fun of the pandemic. No, we're not making fun of people who died.

But it's important in moments of crisis to keep the right perspective and don't forget to find moments to laugh. There is a famous Greek philosopher I've been reading about, and I want to share it with you. His name is Diogenes. He only had one possession in life, and it was a wooden bull. And he used to carry this wooden bowl around with him everywhere he went. One day he saw a poor peasant boy drinking water with his hands, cupping his hands from the water and drinking it. He threw the wooden bowl away and said, fool that I am, to be carrying around this surferpolous baggage. this whole time. There are a lot of stories about Diogenes and his life. He's often depicted living

in a barrel. There's a famous encounter between Diogenes and Alexander the Great. Alexander the Great had heard about Diogenes philosophy and wanted to meet him, and one day found him in a field next to a barrel. As he approached Diogenes, he said Diogenes, anything I can do for you. You name it, and I will give it to you. Diogenes thought for a moment and said, yes, there is one thing. Can you move out of the way? You're blocking the sun. After this encounter, Alexander the Great was reported as saying, If I wasn't Alexander, I wish to be Diogenes.

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you deal with it. Everything is perspective. Is there a point to this story? No, but it got your mind out things. I hope everyone is staying safe during this time of crisis. I hope everyone's doing well. We're going to be fine. We're going to get through this.

In a couple months, we'll forget about the coronavirus. We'll forget about all of this and life will go back to normal. Got a great show planned for you. We'll be talking to James, and James comes to us from Washington State. He's had a couple strange encounters that happened to him up there near Darrington. which is a notorious hot spot for sightings. But the bulk of his encounters happened to him in Alabama, I believe back in the 90s. He even had one siding out there in Alabama and pay close attention to the behavior of the creatures.

I know if you've been listening to the show for a while, you guys can probably pick up on it right away. But it's fascinating, fascinating stuff. 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 Saskatchew. Watch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out, Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows.

And I'm going to try and do a couple additional shows this week. I know a lot of people are stuck inside, can't get out. So thank you so much for being here. Let's actually jump into it tonight. I want to welcome James to the show. James, thanks for coming on. Yeah, thanks, buddy. I'm glad to be on.

Just interested in get these stories out. So people aren't afraid of talking about this. A lot of people are scared to talk about their encounters. I think it's important that we get the word out there to everybody. Yeah, well, I appreciate you being here. And I know you're up there in Seattle. Can you give the audience just a real quick update? How are you doing up there in Seattle with this whole coronavirus?

And kind of what are you seeing up there beyond empty grocery stores? You know, everything right now is really just, you know, as normal, unless you go to one of the big box stores and then you see, you know, some people overbuying some things and, you know, the shelves cleared out in the can aisles and, of course, the toilet paper, which I don't understand the toilet paper thing. But, you know, it's not actually that bad because, you know, this is considered the hot zone up here. But it doesn't seem to be that bad. I don't think people need to worry. Just, you know, do the regular precautions that you would normally do in a situation where, you know, You have a virus going around.

Just practice good sanitation. It's good advice. Good advice. Well, again, I know people aren't tuning in for the coronavirus. But, you know, I like to ask people, it's not everyone's mind. We're all thinking about it. I think deep down, we're all a little nervous about it. But you're right, James.

We're going to get through this. Everything's going to be fine. Everyone relax. And save some toilet paper for the rest of us. You know what I mean? I almost think like the CIA is buying up the toilet paper because everyone I talked to He's like, I don't get the toilet paper thing. Exactly.

But if you would, I know your encounter took place in Alabama. There's a couple encounters, but the very first one where you saw it with your friend. If you would, just kind of take us back to that moment. Tell us what you were doing and walk us into what happened. Yeah, sure. Well, this is back in the early 90s, and I played in a rock band. And we had just got finished recording a demo. and we were all happy about the demo and we decided to go up to an old place to celebrate where we used to have BB gun wars.

And it was up on a ridge to give you an explanation and a layout of the land where we were. It's in Huntsville, Alabama. I don't mind saying where this is at. I got a lot of friends back there, so hopefully some are listening. But right behind Grissom High School, there's a mountain that runs from, it's called Montesanto Mountain and Green Mountain. They're connected in Huntsville, Alabama, and they run all the way down to the Tennessee River. And Green Mountain is the one that's closest to the Tennessee River. Well, we had went up to this place where we used to have Bibigo Moors, and it was behind Grissom High School.

And it's not a place that there's a known trail. It's just got to kind of know how to get up there because you've got to go between people's houses and stuff like that. So we decided to go up there and camp out for a night and just kind of stuff. celebrate amongst the band, you know, the completion of the demo. And it was about, it was a late decision. So it was around 9.30 at night when we decided to go up there. And this was during the, all I can say, it was during the dry time of the year. So anywhere from, you know, I would say April through August, September in Alabama, it's going to be very dry, very humid. And so, you know, there was a lot of dead leaf on the ground from the year past, but the trees were very green.

And, you know, so we hiked up there through the woods. It's about probably a 35-minute hike up through the woods to get up there. It's not very far. But when you get up on top of the mountain there, it kind of flattens out into a nice, big, wide-open area. And then, you know, we decided to just set up right there because it wasn't windy, wasn't going to rain. He just said, yeah, let's build a fire here, set up our camps because there were five of us. It was me, Carlos, David, and David, and Mike. And so we started setting up camp, and we got everything set up, and we had the fire going.

And, you know, what we were doing is we had brought a box or, you know, a radio cassette player or whatever. And we were playing our demo. We were listening to it. And I'm just enjoying it and talking about it. and about 11 to 1130. I think I was the first one to start hearing it. And on the backside of Green Mountain there, it goes off into a valley where there's just a few homes and a lot of farms.

You know, it's a lot of open land, but it's a very steep incline to go down that way. I mean, you could traverse it, but it would be, it wouldn't be fun. And we heard something coming up that way. And so we were like, is this somewhat homeless coming up? Because it was real obvious that it was on two feet. You could hear each footstep very clearly going through the leaves as it was walking up. It was a and then when it kind of topped up on top of the mountain there, we noticed it sounded like to us it either had an accident or it was very frustrated because a lot of limbs started being broke.

there was a lot of commotion over in that area and then it started walking around our camp and it was outside of the fire line okay it was just it stayed outside that fire line you know where we could not see it and it walked around our camp for about it walked around fully around

about twice and it took about 40 to 45 minutes for it to do it because it would walk a little bit and it would stop and we would listening because we were paying a lot of attention to this because we were very nervous at this point you know all five of us we i mean one of us had a jack daniel's bottle on his hand the other one had a small hatching in his hand i mean you know it was uh it was a perfect horror movie scenario and you know we're just looking out there and when it would stop it would move a little bit you could hear it move within the brush a little bit you know like uh you could hear like a limb

break and just like small stuff nothing major. And, you know, after about 40, 45 minutes of that, we just said, okay, we've had enough of this. We're not going to, we're not going to go to bed. We're not going to, this isn't going to happen. So we literally just took what we was important to us and we left and we came back the next day and got our stuff. Now, can I say that was a big foot? I can't say it was a big foot, but I don't know anything else that's on two feet that

was doing that would have done the stuff it did and one thing i did leave out is it huffed at us a couple of times and when i say huffed i'm not talking about like a deer grunt you know when they're mad if you've heard them stomp and they'll run at you so it's not like that it was a release of air a very big release of air a couple of times you could just hear the you know wherever the air was coming from there was a lot of room there and it was very noticeable and that's that's really what freaked out because, you know, at first we thought it was just some homeless man. But then when we heard that, that's really a thing that kind of, you know, made us go, okay, this isn't normal. This doesn't sound right. We don't feel good about this. We're just wanting to listen to our demo tape and have a good

time. And this isn't going to happen. So we just decided to vacate and get out of there. And we came back the next day to get our stuff. And for the like of me, I wish I could remember the condition of the stuff because I do want to say I remember some stuff being messed with, but I can't say 100% for sure because it's been so wrong. But on that same ridge, going to the second encounter here, because this happened about two years later, me and Carlos, he was up there that night, that same night, just down about probably four miles. I figured out it was when I looked on Google Earth. It's about four miles from where we were down to the end of Green Mountain where we would go and hang out. And, you know, just me and a bunch of buddies and a lot of people. I mean, I'm 51.

And people back in Alabama at that time, you didn't hang out in the bars. You didn't go to any. You went out in the woods and partied. That's what you did. You went and built bonfires and just had a good time and socialized. And there was no electronics, you know, always. only maybe one cool person might have a beeper, but that's about it. I remember.

Yeah. So, we would, you know, we decided to go meet a couple of friends, Brad and Brian, up on this power line trail is where it was on top of the end of Green Mountain. And you had to drive up into a small neighborhood and then cut across the field and go over into the power line trail. And there was a trail that we drove back. You could drive the car. It wasn't like real, real smooth, but you could get your car back there. And there was a certain point when you went back there that you had to pull around this big tree limb. It was a big pine tree limb that hung really low out.

I'd say about three or four feet off the ground. And it hung real low out into the trail. We left it there because we thought it was a good cop to turn it. You know, keep them from coming back there. So everybody just kind of drove around. it otherwise it'd scratch your car up real good and um what we had done is we had pulled down to where we always built the fire we'd turn the car around now this is at night mind you it's uh probably around oh nine or ten o'clock i would say and we were waiting for brad and uh brian to come up

there and we had turned around facing out the trail well in alabama you know and in the south there's a lot of red clay and when the red clay is real dry it's uh bright and orange kind of. So the moon was nice and, the sky was nice and clear that night, and the moon lit up the trail real well, so you could see the trail real easy, the red clay.

And you could see the limb, you know, coming out, that big limb coming out into the trail. And as me and Carlos were sitting there listening to a new album, they just come out, I think it was Defenders of the Faith by Judas Priest. We were sitting there listening to it.

Carlos was doing something over in his passenger seat or in the driver's seat. I was in the passenger seat. And I was looking down the path waiting to see headlights come for our friends coming down the path. And all of a sudden I noticed that part of the trail got blocked out for some reason. And I thought it was just the glare from something that Carlos was doing, you know, in the windshield. There was a glare. And I thought maybe that's what it was. But then I noticed that's not what it was because I noticed it was just really big.

It was really blocking out a big portion right next to where that tree limb came out. Well, as soon as I started really trying to pay attention, it walked. And it took about, I'd say, two and a half steps to clear the whole thing. And at first when I saw it moving, I was just like, okay, I'm seeing something. And then I noticed it actually pushed the branch or ran into the branch. I couldn't tell because I couldn't really see arms, but I could see two legs for sure. And it was probably about, I'd say maybe, I'd say it have to be seven foot. But what was interesting about it was that I would have had to easily say from front to back how thick it was in the chest area.

It would have been about two and a half feet. That's how thick it looked. You just look really, really thick. And I was like thinking that I was going to see a back half come by, you know, like the half of a horse or, you know, or big deer or something, but that's not what I saw. I saw two very plain legs walking. And when it hit that branch, it pushed the branch around or ran into it, and you could hear the branch crack, because we had our windows down.

And that got Carlos's attention, because I was just at the very moment going, Carlos did you see that? And he looked up, and he heard the crack, and he says, what? I said, just walk there. And he saw the branch moving. and he freaked out, I freaked out. He was like, I'm not trying to stay up here. So he instantly started the car and we just took off.

We took off, you know, down the mountain and we ran into Brad and Brian coming up. And we told him we're not going back up there. They made fun of us. And, you know, that was a long lasting joke for quite a while. Let me ask you, how far away from you was a thing? Probably about 20 yards. It was pretty close. I mean, I could definitely see.

I couldn't see detail because it was just a silhouette. You know, you could see it from the background, from the trail and the moonlight. But it was light enough, you know, where you could definitely see that it wasn't a deer. We don't have bear there. You know, I've heard of cats there, but I've never seen any sign of a cat. You know, mainly what we have there is deer and big fox squirrels. That's about it. Yeah.

I would imagine, too, James, seeing that, your memory went back to the, two years prior when that thing was circling your camp. Did you know what you were looking at? Or at the time, what did you think you were looking at? Well, there's a stigma or a, this part of the mountain on Green Mountain actually has a lot of really creepy stuff. So anytime you're up on top of Green Mountain, it's creepy no matter what, because there's been a whole lot of really weird stuff that goes on there. It's had everything from devil worship. I mean, this is in the news and stuff.

devil worship there was a really terrible murder that happened up there um there was uh you know just all sorts of real creepy stuff that uh you know goes on up there so right around the corner from where we you know built our bonfire all the time if you went down the trail about another probably hundred yards there was a it turned real swampy and no one ever liked going down there because everybody would get freaked out they felt like they were being watched and just felt like something that was watching them. It wasn't a really good feeling. So what did I think it was?

I don't know. I didn't really, well, if I have to reflect back on the time behind, up behind the high school, the two years prior, I would have had to say that it took me about a few days, you know, me and my friends talking about what we thought it was. Because I was the first one to come out and say, man, that was a big breath. And everybody else was like, oh, I don't know, man. I don't know what it was. They didn't want to, you know, they weren't in disagreement with me.

They just didn't know. They weren't as much as into Bigfoot because I'd already seem like, you know, the famous first one with the Women in Needmore, you know. The Patterson. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the first time I'd ever seen that, I was just like, no, as a kid, because I grew up loving

monster movies, you know, Godzilla, a creature from Black Lagoon. I loved it all. And, you know, when I saw Bigfoot and I knew it was a documentary, I understood it as a kid, I was like, no, I think that could be real. You know, to me, it felt like that could be real. And so, you know, I always had an interest in it, but I was never going out of my way to look for it. But I also thought that they were only up here, like in the north. In Washington, yeah. I get that a lot.

Yeah. So it was very shocking. It took days for me to really reflect back on it and actually years because when something like that happens to you, you can only, you know, you go through moments of when you assess what happened, you know. And you're like, maybe it was this, maybe it was that. You try to debunk it, you know. And when you can't debunk it, what, you know, what do you do? I just don't throw it away. You know, I'm not just going to say, well, I'm never going to talk about it again.

And I'm just going to say, had something very strange happen, and it definitely wasn't a view. And like I said, there's no other animals there. There's, I don't, there was actually some horses up there because people had some bar, you know, some stables up there. But it was no horse. It was absolutely no horse. Because if it was a horse, I would have seen the legs. But what I saw was big, thick legs. And as I'm looking at them right now in my head, picturing them, the legs looked to be like probably, oh, man.

you know, a big round, I mean, goodness gracious, maybe, you know, like a foot across, you know, at the top part, a full foot across. And, you know, they were big. I mean, I wouldn't say this was a big monster, you know, as far as, like, from some of the numbers that I've heard, like, especially up here, but it was big enough for me to not want to be around there. Yeah, I get it. No, I get it.

And their legs are like tree trunks when you see them. You know, yeah. And you know, we could hear it actually go off into the woods as we were pulling off. We heard it. And that's what even, because I was rolling up my window because he was pulling around the tree. I was telling him, hold on, no, my window. And he was just getting out of there. And so it was kind of a funny moment. But, you know, that's what happened to me in Alabama. And that's, that sparked an interest in me for a long time. And so from that point on, I started really looking into it. never went and looked for these creatures. I never, you know, thought that I would know the proper way to do it, you know, and, uh, so anyhow, we moved to Washington up here to Washington State, you know, back about eight or nine years ago. And up here in Washington State, uh, I live up here, you know, around Lake Stevens area. And we decided to go hunting the first time being a friend of mine that I had met through work, we decided to go hunting towards Darrington. And we were way out in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the sticks. And we had set up camp behind a bunch of a fall

off of a mountain, a bunch of boulders so we could block the wind from us. And so the boulders were actually very stacked real high. I mean, they were probably stacked about 14 or 15 feet high. It was really big. So it was a perfect, you know, place to, you know, have a windbreak. And we had something, the second night we were there, we were there for three days, two nights. We had something walked down. Same thing, you could tell it was on two feet. It had very raspy breathing, and it growled at us.

And when I say growled, I've heard bears growl. I've never heard a cat growl, but my buddy who was there with me, Chad, he said it wasn't a cat and he uh he didn't know what it was he was the first one to start putting a round in the rifle so i succeeded to follow his lead and we just sat there real quiet listening to this thing as it growled at us for about probably 15 seconds and then it walked off and when it walked off it was 100% on two feet i dare anybody to argue that they can walk through the woods on two feet and make themselves sound like a deer or vice versa. You know, it just doesn't work.

And I know that wasn't your only encounter there, but you know, have you ever looked up the history of Darrington, that whole area? I mean, I didn't until after this. Oh, I got you. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty notorious for sightings. Yes, it is. It's a hot spot.

I think I live pretty close to some hotspots here. And in fact, I heard just recently that there was. a family of them sited down, coming through a field right off smoking point, which is just down the road from me. And so that was pretty interesting.

I didn't mean to interrupt your story. So did you and Chad leave or did you guys end up staying? No, we, you know, we stayed because we didn't know what it was. We stayed and we hunted. And the very strange thing about this area, though, was that we did not have any signs of

animal while we were up there. I think we saw, saw two, what do you call them? What are the birds? Not the, what are the mountain chickens? You know, what's the bird that everybody hunts? Turkey? No, it's like a small, small chicken. Like a wild chicken out in the woods.

Oh, what is it called? I have to think of it. You're not talking about a grouse, are you? Grouse, yeah, grouse. That's when they're talking. He was calling it a mountain chicken. I think he was doing that because I'm from my wife. Alabama. He kept calling it a mountain chicken. So that's the only thing we saw. And we saw plenty of

bedding sites, you know, where animals had been bedding down. We found great, you know, wildlife trails. But there was no sign of any animal during this three days we were there. And we found that to be very, very strange, especially him. He's from Oregon. And he's hunted up here a lot. He's like, man, that's never happened. So we decided to try. hunting again the next year. This time we decided to try hunting in Monroe. And we had went to Monroe, the two of us again, and I dropped him off at one area. We were just scouting, you know, before we actually were going hunting for the weekend. We were just scouting an area out. And I decided to go check out another area. I said, well, I'll pick him up in about an hour

and a half. So I drove down to this area where there was a closed off gate and I walked beyond the gate and walked up the clearing beyond the gate about 200 yards to another open clearing. And the same thing happened to me there that happened the year before, where it was just like completely dead silent, very weird. And I saw where the path continued on beyond this kind of bowl, I don't know what, just a big depression in the ground, about 50 feet by 50 feet. And something just told me, don't go up there. And I had this really weird feeling.

I didn't want to go up there. And the reason why I'm telling you these things is because I can't, I don't know what these things were. These are weird occurrences in the woods. That's kind of what I call them. And I can only relate them to Bigfoot because that's the only place that I've ever heard anything like this. And so as I was leaving this area after getting this really weird feeling,

like I don't, I shouldn't be up there. As I'm walking back, something started following me. And every time I would stop, it would stop. I would move. It would move. And it was 100% clearly two feet without a doubt. And the way it was moving through the trees was interesting to me after thinking back on it because it was fluidly moving through the trees.

But, you know, when I looked over into the trees, now if the trees, like if there was a lot of more open on the other side of the trees where I could see, maybe that. That's the only thing that can make this possible. But from what I could see, I mean, this stuff was so thick that I don't see how anything could move through it without just making a major crashing cell. But this thing was moving through it, like, fluid. That's what was so weird about it. That's what kind of freaked me out. So I actually turned halfway down and looked at the area. You know, it stopped.

The footsteps stop. And I turned and I looked. And I said, okay, you know, I'm going to face this. What is this? you know, had my gun with me. And I just sit there and stared into the woods. And I heard, you know, crack of a little limb and another little crack. And then I just freaked out and I just took off running.

And so, you know, I ran to my truck. I got in my truck and went pick Chad up, told him about the same thing. And he just made fun of me because, you know, what happened to year before. Well, I was able to make good or make fun of him after this next one. because the very next year with Chad, the same guy, we decided to go elk hunting in their Olympic Peninsula. So we went up past Port Townshend, and I mean, we went way back up in the mountains there. We were really deep. And we had to hike in about three quarters of a mile to get to where we were going to hunt.

And we had stood up camp a little bit ways away from that, you know, so we could go camp out. but we were able to get my truck up there. It was basically just an old logging road that kind of widened out in an area. And so we just made that our camping area. But as we had went up into the area where we were going to hunt and checked it out, we came back. It was getting dark real fast and we had gotten up there kind of late. So we were like, okay, let's quickly make a fire. And as we were looking around and get firewood stuff and everything's wet and cold during this time of year,

I started hearing movement in three different areas around us. Now, this was freaking me out, big darn. And Chad just started saying, dude, you're just freaking out quick, quick. He didn't want to hear me. And I kept telling him, Chad, listen, be quiet, listen. You know, and he wouldn't shut up. He was just kind of mumbling and making fun of me. And then finally, I got him to shut up and listen because it was nice little, you know,

you could hear something for sure. So he noticed, and he was like, yeah, there's three of them, whatever it is. and he chalked it off the beginning of a deer. And I'm like, dude, that's not a deer. You know, it's on two feet. Oh, in all three areas here. What is this? Is this hunters, you know, sneaking up on us?

So anyhow, he got me to, you know, focus on the fire because the sun was almost completely down. I mean, it was pretty dark. And we had tucked up the truck right next to the woodline. And on each side of the woodline, I mean, well, where we were, the woodline that I'm specifically talking about, you couldn't see a foot in here. It was just that thing.

And we had got the fire and we had maybe a fire going about maybe 10 inches, 12 inches, it wasn't a big fire at all. It was just getting going. And we were both crouched down, like if you were, you know, standing up and you just kind of crouched down, putting your knees on the ground, but just squatted and, you know, hold your hands out to get your hands warm by the fire. That's what we were doing. And my back was about three or four feet from the wood line. and we're sitting there warming our hands,

not really saying anything, and then all of a sudden, and we, after thinking about this, we think it was probably within about eight feet behind me where this happened. It sounded like a gunshot going off right behind me, and it was a stick breaking. There was a branch breaking.

And this branch, when it broke, it sounded like a rifle round going off. and it made me, you know, I'm in that squatted position. It made my head fall down, you know, like, I don't know if you've seen that magician or whether he sneezes and it looks like his head is falling into his hands, you know, and so that's kind of how I felt because I felt like I was going to get hit in the head by something. And Chad was in front of me looking at the woodline and he, when I looked, you know, I was kind of covering my head when this all happened and I looked at him and he was looking above me

and he said, he said, F, and he just, you know, took off running. And that freaked me out. And I said, F, you know, and I jumped over the fire, took off running. And we ran to the truck, and, you know, he was already in the truck, loading his rifle. And he was completely freaked out. He, I think he actually saw something because he would never talk about it. And he did not want me to turn the lights of my truck on when we got in the trunk. I kept saying, I'm going to turn the lights on.

He says, don't turn the lights on. Do not turn lights on. He was very adamant about this. And I didn't know what was going on. I was like, oh, my gosh, you know. And I was kind of yelling back at him like, I told you, I told you so it was there. I told you. And, you know, what animal is going to sneak up on you?

You know, knowing that you're a human and knowing that there's two humans right there, what animal does that? You know, I mean, an elk's not going to do that. you know, a deer's not going to do that. You know, will a bear do that? You know, I don't know. I'm not real sure, but whatever did this, this is the most interesting thing after thinking about this,

that the branch or whatever it broke was not broke in a fashion of like, if you can think about pulling it, pulling on a branch, all of us have broken branches before them. When you pull them, you know, they'll have a loud pop, but you'll hear all that fiber pop too. You'll hear all the fiber pull, you know, and pop. This was just like a single, pow, and that was it. I mean, there was no preface to this sound coming at all.

It was just instantly, pow, and that scared me to death. I have never had anything like that happened before in my life. And the only thing I can contribute to, because it was definitely up, probably around what we figured, what Chad told me, It was probably about seven or eight feet in the air where the sound came from, where he was looking. But, you know, again, I think he actually saw something in the wood line and just never wanted to talk about it. Because since then, he actually lives down in Texas now. And he works for another company that travels around all over the United States, of CNC machines.

So I haven't gotten him to come clean on what he actually saw. I'm hoping one day I can get him to do that. So, yeah, it is terrifying when you hear that. pop, you know, I've heard it before, and it does sound like a gun going off. I mean, it really does. And that's close. You hear about them sneaking in on camps like that all the time. Obviously, you didn't see what it was, but I mean, what else could it be? It wasn't a person. And I don't know about a black bear. I mean, I think if they're that close, they're going to come in. If a predator's that close, it's going to come in. Just like your other encounter where they circle the camp.

I mean, I've heard that type of encounter. I can't even tell you how many times. And they do this weird thing where they'll circle your camp and kind of close in on you and kind of get closer and closer. But they'll stay just outside of the light, the firelight. It's creepy, man. It's real creepy. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say that, you know, I've never had anything like that happened before.

I mean, that was something that, you know, when you try to explain it, you try to debunk it. We tried to, you know, figure out, you know, what the most practical thing it could have been. It doesn't make any sense. And the weirdest thing about it is getting there, you know, how did it get so close without us hearing it? I don't really believe in coincidence. I'm not one to really believe in them. And for a branch to be broke like that, that close to us doesn't make any sense to me, there's nothing to comprehend that was a purposely broke branch by something. It wasn't

like, oh, there's a big fat owl sitting up there in the branch broke or something, you know, like that, a big bear up there. You know, we didn't hear anything hit the ground. I mean, what we heard was a pow! And then it was completely dead quiet. You know, there was

you didn't hear, you didn't even hear the, like the, you know, it might have happened, but I don't remember hearing the branch even hitting the ground or anything. We just heard the pow, and that was it. We took off running like, you know, with our tails between our legs. We didn't want nothing to do with it because whatever that was was way more powerful than we were.

I mean, it sounded as if, I don't know if you've ever took a two by four and jumped up and broke it, you know. You know, it could be a little, real loud pop, you know, a good fresh two by four. And, you know, you like place it between two centerbox and jump up and break it. You know, if it's a good one, you know, it'll pop. real good, but if, you know, it just doesn't splinter. I mean, this was like a loud pop. So it was very unusual, very, very unusual. And then, you know, we hiked in that morning around 3.30 into our hunting area,

and it was completely dead again. Nothing going on at all. We didn't see a single animal, and there was tracks everywhere the day before. So, you know, we don't know what was going on. So actually, Chad was making fun of me saying that, I kind of ragged me saying, every time I go out, something weird happens and that's never happened in all my years of the time. Yeah, it's your fall all of a sudden. Exactly. But, you know, there was another encounter, something else that happened most recently, and this is up high around eastern Washington, high in the mountains.

We, me and a group of friends, a newly required group of friends, had, went camping around, around Labor Day weekend it was. Okay. So, you know, there was some people out there, you know, they were running their side by sides, you know, their motorcycles and stuff. But no one was, you know, we were the only ones camping in this area. And it was in a pretty dried up creek bed at the time. There was a small amount of water going through there, but it was pretty

dried up at the time. They told me that, you know, after the snow melts from the next season, it'll be, you know, rushing. But right now, because of the time of season, it was just low. And we got, we had, we were there for a few nights and we had one morning, woke up to about 5, 3rd in the morning. I was in a hammock sleeping. I felt so vulnerable. And there was a, in fact, The first night I freaked out so much, I slept in the truck. I was too scared to sleep in the hammock. And there was a guy in a tent, and then the other couple was in the truck. And I was woke up, and Tony, who was in tent, was woke up in the creek just right.

And we were camped right next to the creek. And there was rock clacking going on about 5, 5.30 in the morning. and that got our attention big time. And then we found a bunch of prints, some rock stacks. Now, could that have been human? Absolutely. But the prints were not human at all. Absolutely not.

The dimensions were way, way out of proportion. And I'll send you some of those pictures, too. And also, the second time we went up to this spot, we, and I wasn't part of this, I had just climbed into the tent to go to bed. And the other three that were there started singing, Living on a Prayer, really loud. That's what alcohol does to you a little bit. And right after they finished,

within probably, you know, I don't know the exact time, maybe 10, 15 minutes or something like that, maybe five minutes. I can't really remember. They got whooped at from across the way, across the creek. You know, they heard a bunch of whoops. that were coming from the tree line up there. And, you know, where we're at, there's no one out there.

We knew there was no one out there. And it's just a lot of strange stuff. There's been rock throwing out there, you know, and previous camping ventures out there by us, you know, had rocks thrown and stuff. So it's a pretty interesting area. And actually, we found the area from one of your previous shows. We knew where this area.

it was and we went out there. We're not looking for them again. We're just camping, having fun, but we like to go and kind of scare ourselves a little bit. And so, yeah, and, you know, we're just older big, you know, older big kids, I guess you can say. And we just like to go out there, have fun. Yeah, be careful in those areas, though. Yeah, be real careful, because these things are so unpredictable. And the areas that you're going to, there, there is a lot of activity. What do you think that they are? I'm kind of curious, James, on your opinion. What do you think that these things actually are? I thought about this a lot. And, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to throw some stuff out here and then try to weave it together. I love what M.K. Davis has said. I like what

Indian tradition says. And what I mean by what M.K. Davis said. M.K. Davis said he believes that, what is it, the Blue Ridge Mountain, Bigfoot, I forget the guy's name. You know, the one of the most famous footages of it walking he's going oh Jesus when he sees it yeah I can't remember his name

anyhow he's you know MK Davis thinks that's a real giant you know and that's what he called it that's a real giant and then like Patty is a hybrid I'm definitely on board with the Sasquot's genome project I believe that's an absolutely

100% legitimate you know study done with good science and good lab work I don't see anything faulty in the lab work. The only thing I see is people poo-pooing all over the results. And they said that, you know, and most of the people say the results were contaminated. Well, Dr. Ketchum, who was the head of the study, she showed that these samples were cleaned and you can actually clean the samples.

And if you have a dirty sample, it will show up after you get your results back. and so everything that you know that the genome project did i think is absolutely uh you know legit which means that the mitochondrial um DNA was human female i think i think it might even been native i'm not sure about that but then the nuclear DNA was unknown they'd never seen anything like it and so to me that makes a lot of sense and now where could you go from there. I mean, that's where you could get real crazy and start going off into the Nephilim and, you know, the Raphim and, you know, all that stuff. And I don't know where to go from there. I just know that the, I do not believe they are an ape. Let's just put it that way. I typically apes, especially when you look at feet, apes don't have human-looking feet. I don't know of any ape that has a human-looking foot. Most apes have, um, you know, a distended big toe, you know, like a hand. And, you know, these these footprints are very human-like.

And so, you know, and then when you add in the Sierra sounds and all that, it's just, we've got something unique. It's, you know, can I call them a people? I don't know. But I don't believe they're just an ape. I believe there's something more than an ape. And that's really the best thing I could say. I'm not going to shut my mind to, you know, something, you know, what's the simplest thing in this case?

You know, this is where I think you've got to keep a pretty open mind. Yeah, I agree with you. I don't think that they're an ape either. And I thought about that too. I remember one time I was sitting in front of my desk and I had all these casts sitting there. And I thought the same thing you did. I was really looking at them. And I was like, man, these are on a large scale human footprints.

But they do, I understand why people say ape, though, because a lot of their behavior sometimes does act like an ape, you know, like a non-human primate. A lot of what they, the way they vocalize, throwing things at you. A lot of their behavior is, but you're right. A lot of their behavior is not ape-like, like the Sierra sounds, or like Claire's encounter. You hear her in the intro of the show, and she's saying they were chattering back and forth. and when I asked her, did it sound like the Sierra sound? She's like, absolutely. That's exactly what I heard.

So it does make you, I think you're right. I think it has something very unique. My next question is, where do they come from? You know, once we figure out what they are, what does it come from? And there's more questions than answers, you know. The more you get into this, the more questions you have than answers. And anyone that has all the answers for you, that's probably lying to you. Yeah, absolutely.

I would not disagree with that one bit because you can't pin. What's interesting is you can't pin any one thing down with these things. Nothing, not a single thing. There's not a single thing about them you can pin down. You know, every time you think you've pinned down one little part of them, whether it's, you know, looks, footprint, you know, voice, whatever, you know, whatever it is, then you get thrown all out of whack, you know, by something else that you hear about. and so it's a fascinating subject.

I mean, I'm totally fascinated with it. And I'd just like to throw something out here that, and I might get his name wrong, and I hope I'm not getting his name wrong, but Steve Isdall, Isdall? Is that his name?

Oh, Yeah, how to hunt. Yeah, I am super supportive of him and what he's doing because he's trying to bring some credibility back to the Bigfoot groups, people who are interested in this. I think that's a fantastic thing he's doing. And I'm in full support of it just to make that know.

He didn't ask me to do this. I don't even know him. But, you know, I like where he's going with it because that's the big, I think the biggest problem with the whole subject itself, with people that call themselves researchers. You know, if those people that call themselves researchers had just an easy open mind and could, you know, take in what witnesses are actually saying. and go from there, there'd be a whole lot more respect in the whole field, I think. But you have too many people that have agendas, biased agendas at that, and it causes problems, you know, and then they start crapping all over each other. And I've never even been to a single Bigfoot conference, but, you know, I hear about all the

stuff. And I'm like, man, you know, it's not, doesn't sound good. It does not sound good for the, you know, for the interest. But of the subject. But, you know, here's the thing when it comes down to. it. We know these things are real. We have all the evidence, period. The evidence is there. The DNA's evidence is there. The scat evidence is there. The hair evidence is there. The footprints evidence is there. We know they're there. It's a fact. What are they? That's the big question.

Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. And you're right. Steve on his YouTube is How to Hunt. If anyone wants to check it out. Steve's actually a really nice guy. I've talked to him in the past. And he does have legitimate encounters. I mean, this guy's seen some stuff, and I know he gets a lot of crap, but Steve's actually a really nice guy. But have you thought about going back out to these areas? Have you been back out since you had these type of encounters? Yeah. Actually, you know, like I said, we don't go out to look for these things, but we like to put ourselves out there. And I can't remember the researcher that you've had on one time. He was one of the few that you like.

And a nice guy, but, you know, I agree with him. If you want to go look for these things, you don't go looking for him. You just put yourself out there and act like a human and then pay attention to your surroundings. You know, and that's what you've got to do. And that's typically that's what happens. But, you know, we don't go to regular camping areas. We go out in the sticks when we go camping. And that might be another reason why we, you know, get the situations that we get is because we're not really out there where regularly people are out there.

So it's an interest to whatever animal may be coming in to look at us. You know, it's like, hey, what are these guys doing? Come to check us out. Yeah. So, you know, and, you know, I'm, I'd be foolish to say that it's not risk. but I do believe it is risky. And we usually are going out there pretty, you know, safe. We're well armed.

So we don't go out there looking for trouble, but we go out there and want to pay attention. And I think the guy that, you know, that did the tent study where he put the recorder in the tent. Oh, yeah, Randy Harrington. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I love what he's done. I've paid attention to a lot of his work, and I love what he's done. And we're going to try to maybe duplicate that a little bit. I'm looking at buying some really good audio recording equipment that can be left out, you know, for 24 to 48 hours at a time.

And I'm wanting to do that just, it's just for my own self-enjoyment. I mean, I don't, yeah, I don't, you know, anybody asked me about big stuff. I'll tell them and if you think I'm crazy, well, that's your opinion. That's okay. I don't mind. I'm not out to keep up with the Jones. Is there anything like that? I'm just easy-going Southern boy that, you know, had some weird things happen to him and now has a little bit of interest in finding out what it is.

That's pretty much what it is. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let me know if you get anything and be safe while you're out there. And I appreciate coming on, James. Thank you so much for taking the time. Absolutely. Thank you so much. And that's it for tonight.

Everyone remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you get a chance, check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone. Betting is sweeping across the country faster than the coronavirus and wagering week is your antidote. I'm Tom Barton, and I'm a veteran sports analyst and respected sports head. 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

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