Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:816 I Saw A Monster

Episode Date: December 12, 2021

Tonight I will be speaking to Darren and he will be sharing an encounter he had when he was 13 years old. Darren talks about finding a structure in the woods and this monster came from around the structure. Darren and his friends were about 30 feet away from the creature. Darren said "At the time I did not know what it was..."

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. 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 moved like that in my life. They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language and they were chuntering away back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards.

I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet of what I saw were bears. What's going on, what do you report? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That's son of a bitch is about 6'9, I don't know. You see a bounce, sir? Yes, I'm looking right here. Uh-uh.

Hi, I'm James Wafer from Liverpool, UK, and I'm listening to Real Life Diabolical Accounts on Saskatch Chronicles. Happy holidays, everyone. Thanks so much for being here tonight. Got a great show plan for you. Tonight, we're going to be chatting with Darren. And over 41 years ago, he was in the New Jersey Pine Barron area. His grandparents owned property up there.

And Darren, along with his brothers and some of their friends, friends had a run-in with one of these creatures. Darren didn't know what it was at the time, but I'll let him go into it. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. 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 Darren to the show. Darren, thanks for coming on. Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

And I know that this encounter happened to you over 41 years ago. If you would, just kind of start from the very beginning. Kind of tell us what you were doing and then walk us into what happened. So yes, this was in approximately 1980, maybe 1981. My brothers and I, we lived with our grandparents on and off for various reasons. And at this time, we happened to be. with them. And they lived very much on the edge of the southern New Jersey pine barons. I don't know if every, you know, I'm sure some people are familiar with the Jersey pine barons.

It's a very, if you look at it on the map, it goes from the northern tip of New Jersey, straight down the, pretty much straight down the center of New Jersey, all the way towards the southern, almost towards the southern tip of New Jersey. It is both beautiful and sometimes scary. It can be very, very dense, wooded areas that open up into open fields. But it's huge. I used to know some statistics about the pine bairns as far as like how much of the state it covers. It's a lot more than people think.

It's massive. When we were younger in the area that we lived at, There wasn't a lot to do. But the one thing we did like to do is hike. And that's my brothers and my friends from, we'll call it the block that we lived on. It really isn't a block, but just a country street. So we did a lot of that. It was normally every weekend.

We were either out on our tree forts that were also in kind of the edge of the pine barons. Or we would take long, long hikes that would span the entire day for the most part. And we wouldn't be getting home until it was almost dark. There were times when we would do this, we would bring food with us. And we didn't really have to bring anything to drink because I think I might have mentioned you before is that in this area of Southern New Jersey, there are springs everywhere. And as kids, we knew this. We knew where they were.

And so when you got thirsty, you knew that within, at least in the area that we had explored to that point, as far as we had been able to make it. because we would go out and try and see how far we could go before we'd have to turn back to be home before it was late and we would get in trouble. And so we didn't really worry about that much because we knew we could stop at one of these springs. And we took pretty much the same kind of path when we would take these hikes pretty consistently. And part of the reason for that was exactly what I was just mentioning, the springs, because we knew where certain springs were and we knew we would be thirsty by the time we would get there.

We would stop, take a rest, drink. One of the things that's interesting is that over time, and I have no idea who did this or when it was done, it could have been within years of us at the age that we were taking these hikes. It could have been there for 40 years. I have no idea. But some of these springs would have these metal pipes driven down into them. So here in the middle of the pine barons where there is nothing. And you'd come across this metal pipe sticking out of the,

out of the ground with pure crystal, very cold water just pouring out of the top of it. It was actually pretty smart that someone would do. I assume hunters did that over the years, you know, so you didn't have to be drinking out of a kind of a stream. But anyhow, that's what we would do on the weekends. and we would usually get up pretty early to do this because we wanted to maximize, even at that age, you know, to us, this was fun to get away from the grownups and just us, buddies, you know, us friends, you know, hiking through the woods and, you know, kids at that age, you know, between 11, 12, 13, just horsing around.

We would leave between like 6 or 7 o'clock in the morning. Our parents, our grandparents, they knew where we were going. I know it was myself, my brother who was, I'm the oldest of three boys. My youngest brother was too young at this time, so he was not with us. So it was me and the middle brother. And at least three, maybe four of our friends. When we took these hikes, I would say there was anywhere between five to eight of us. It just depended on who was around, who could go.

and at that time on that particular day, I want to say, because I remember the names of the three, of three people that were with us, and that's what leads me to believe at this particular time there was five of us, many of my brother and the other three. We start on our hike,

we head out there. We're about, I want to say maybe a mile or so into our hike. and we knew that we were coming up. It might have actually been a little longer than that now that I think about it. Maybe a mile and a half, two miles possibly, because I'm trying to remember this particular spring.

We knew we were coming up on the very first spring, and it's the one that I was explaining earlier that had the metal pipe sticking out of it very soon. And this particular spring happened to be very close to what we were termed, called a fire cut. I have no idea who did this. I think I mentioned before, I'm assuming that the forestry service did this. I have no idea when they did it because they did look old, but there are basically trenches gouged out through the forest. And because there's so many springs in that area, they would fill up with spring water. And they were about two, two and a half feet wide, maybe a foot to two feet deep. And I guess the idea with a thwart,

fire cut is basically to try and prevent fire you know forest fires from spreading i don't know if they actually work but that's what we were told they were so we knew we were come up to to this particular area because there was the fire cut and there was a spring now i i will say this that most on the on the beginning of the of the hike most of what we were walking on was a trail was an established well-established trail through the forest however at one at some point the trail kind of like narrows and then we would veer off the trail to head towards where this spring was. It was not on an actual trail. I really don't know how far away I was when I first noticed that something looked different.

Given that we used to take these hikes so routinely, you get used to seeing landmarks or not seeing landmarks. You know, if there's an open area, you typically, if something all of a sudden pops up, up in there, you're going to kind of go, what is that? You know, and that's kind of what went through my mind. I'm looking. I know where this spring is, the general direction, and something looks different about that area. As we get closer, it became evident that something was different because the area on the

opposite side of the fire cut from where the spring was had been basically shaped into a a hut. And when I say shaped, it wasn't that someone, it wasn't like someone broke down limbs and then, you know, engineered a freestanding hut or something like that. Everything that had been there was almost like weaved into this. The limbs of the trees, the bushes, the whole, it was very dense back there. It had just been molded into this kind of dome shape. If you, I always say, like, if you took a sphere, cut it in half, now you have a half a sphere, cut that in half again. So now you got this kind of half dome looking structure. That's what this was.

Now, it wasn't perfectly shaped like a dome, but it sure was close. And you were seeing this as we're coming up on this area, and I'm thinking to myself, well, who the heck did this? You know, in my head, I'm thinking how, and how, you know, how could this be done like this? And it was actually pretty impressive, but strange at the same time. As we're getting closer and we're able to see more details, I smell something, but it smells rotten. I mean, it smells horrible. And sitting in this hut, this dome-shaped hut was a deer.

There was a dead deer lying in the hut. Now, again, we're not right up on us yet. We're on the other side of the fire cut. you'd have to get to the other side to where this dome-shaped structure was, you would have to, you know, leap, pretty, you know, a good leap over this thing. And trust me, there were times where I'm sure we did this and we fell into it. And then had soaked and went feet. But you would have to jump over.

There was no going around the fire cut. It was that long. So we were coming right up towards the edge of the fire cut on the side that we were on and looking at this deer. And it was, if I'm facing towards it, its head was to the left of me and its rear was to the right of me from about i'd say a good foot or so from the tail up the spine all of the meat and skin was gone completely gone the rest of the deer looked pretty much intact it it wasn't it was it was if there was any decayed it

well i don't know if this was decay or not and you'll see what i mean by this in a little bit When I remember I mentioned I smelled something, it was a putrid kind of smell. I'm thinking it's this deer, but the deer did not look like it was rotting. I'm sure there was some decomposition going on one, because I have no idea how long it was there. It couldn't have been a long time because even though the back end of it had been stripped of all its flesh, all of its meat, and when I say stripped, I mean the bone looked like it had been almost bleached. there was very little if any flesh or sinew or anything on any of this deer skeleton just the back its hips and what remained of the legs but the front end part was still intact the head of the deer was even though it was towards my left i couldn't say it because it was tucked kind of under itself like the neck had been twisted and the deer's nose and face was facing like towards the ground. So initially I didn't really get a glimpse of the face. But we're just sitting there standing and looking at this thing. And even though we're pretty young,

being around hunting and people who hunted, you know, we were no strangers to seeing deer, you know, being strung up and and butchered and things like that. That didn't bother us. And we were, it was a pretty not routine, but it was a normal thing in our lives. So I was. I was, wasn't really concerned about what I was seeing. What I was concerned about was how it looked. You know what I mean? It didn't look normal. Yeah, that doesn't sound like a normal kill at all. I want to ask you, now, are you guys across the fire cut at this point? Are you near the shelter? Or kind of where are you at this point? No, we're not inside the structure. We're still on the other side of the fire cut. So in between us and the deer is that,

that two, two and a half foot wide stream that that is the fire cut. And the the dome shape structure is nearly right to the edge of that side of the fire cut. I got it. Yeah. It was it, we were close. We were about two and a half feet away from maybe three feet away from the deer. Um, but we were not in it. We, the, the, the dome structure itself, like, I'm pretty tall.

Um, I'm, I'm six three, six three and a half. Now at that time, I wasn't this tall, but I was still pretty tall, even at 13. This dome-shaped structure was big enough and tall enough for me at that time. I don't really, I'm going to guess and say maybe five feet or five feet or so. I could have stood and I wouldn't have hit the top. It was pretty big. And it was, I would say maybe four or five feet deep.

and just laying right inside of it, right up close of where the fire cut was, is this deer? We were perplexed. We were just kind of trying to rationalize it, thinking if a hunter did this, why would he have left it here? Number one,

why take all this time to weave this crazy dome structure out of all the plants and the trees like right here? It really didn't make a lot of sense. And I couldn't figure for the life of me how the bone could have been left like that. Why there was, why it looked the way it did. The actual part of the deer that still had flesh on it, it was dried for sure, but not to the point where I could still see glistening of the blood around, especially around like the spine area. You could still see it wasn't running, but there was a glisten. And so that had not been there too awfully long.

I don't know how long, but not too long. I guess long enough for whatever took the meat off the back to do what it had to do. So we're sitting there just kind of horsing around and trying to figure out what we're seeing here. Of course, we're looking around now because we're thinking, I guess my initial thought process was, of course, this had to be somebody else. You know, did this. but just couldn't get my head wrapped around this scene I was looking at it again nothing looked normal or as I would expect it to be and I remember grabbing a stick we never crossed that fire cut I will put up I'll say this we never actually went to the other side and went into this structure

none of us did I was trying to find a stick that was both long enough and strong enough that it wouldn't break or bend because I wanted to try and get a look at the deer's face because like I said it was turned and facing towards the dirt so I got this stick and I'm like reaching across the fire cut and I was able to pop the deer's face around not looking straight at at us but just to you know looking left and I could see that it all looked in his tongue was sticking out and its eyes were slightly hazy. You know, you'll, you see a lot of times like when, when animals die that they get this kind of foggy look in their eyes over time, the longer they've been sitting there.

This was, there was for sure, but not much. And again, in my head, even though I was only 13, being around hunting and all that stuff, I'm thinking to myself, this has not definitely has not been here too long. At this point, I would say we were there about a minute or two. As I'm looking at this deer's face, we all hear a shuffling sound behind the structure, but it was like, and it was loud, but it was going towards the right. So it was kind of funny when I think about it now, but almost in unison, the entire group of us just shifted to the right of the dome. And that's when we saw what we saw.

I was instantaneously stunned. I remember I actually got tunneled. vision. Like, I don't know if I was going to pass out or what, but I literally got tunnel visioned. Because when we've shifted to the right and after we had just heard all this noise, about 30 to 40 feet behind to the right and behind that dome is now standing the scariest looking thing I've ever had ever at that point and have ever seen in my life. and it was massive, it was tall. And when I say massive, I think I used a word when we talked before, gargantuan. Because I don't know what else to say. I mean, it was every part of this thing's body, its shape was huge.

And it had hair over its entire body, but it was matted like dreadlocks. it most of the when not and I wouldn't say like when I say dreadlocks and not the actual definitive what most people think of dreadlocks where they're like they look like ropes of hair

it's the only way I could say it because it was more matted but it did it that the picture in my head is like dreadlocks it was matted dreadlocky type hair like a reddish brown color and it was everywhere and it was hanging all down its face

we never actually got to see its actual face because that hair was everywhere to me i don't even know how it could see i mean i'm sure it saw us but there were so much hair and it was so matted i have no idea what it saw through it or how it was seeing through that and it was it was just standing there and again even at 53 years old when i think about this it's still shocks me like in my head i i thought within that first few seconds that we were dead i thought i thought i thought that was where i was going to die right there we were all so scared we couldn't move there was no sound nobody not a one of us made a peep and neither did this thing either not initially within about 15 to 30 seconds of us standing there.

So we're on the other side of that fire cut. It's about 30 feet to 40 feet directly in front of us. It was so big, even at that distance, it was so big, I had to tilt my head up to look at the top of this thing. I'm going to say it was easily, easily eight feet tall. Easily. I'm sure I'm under I'm selling it short. I'm sure I am. And it had as even though it had hair all over it, like I could tell that it was muscular because of the form. And it made no sense to proportions of this thing. No sense at all. And because I couldn't see its face, that in a way, I initially thought, maybe that was even scarier, but I'm kind of glad in a way that I didn't see his face,

because we were already scared. I'm not sure what was behind that hair, but I'm wondering, I wondered after the fact that maybe that was a good thing until I didn't actually get to see it because, I don't know, I mean, you hear about people dropping dead of heart attacks. I know if that would happen at 13,

but I was close to that in my, you know, rhetorically, I guess you can say. And within about 15, or I'm saying 15 or 30, because I don't remember exactly how long before this thing actually made a noise, but it felt like forever. It felt like forever that we were standing there looking at this thing. And it was just looking. I mean, it was just straight, not moving.

In fact, when I first saw it, I'm thinking to myself, am I seeing what I'm seeing? You know, it wasn't moving. I knew it could move because we heard the noise. It's why we shifted off to the right. and all of a sudden it literally it let out a I say a scream because it wasn't like an the closest thing I could say to the way this thing sounded was if you've ever been to a zoo and you hear if you're inside a inside enclosure where they had the lions and the tigers and they roar it was like that now it wasn't a roar a roar

like a lion or a tiger, but the effect was similar. This thing let out a scream. It was an escalating sound. It started out as a low rumble and then just went up and up and up in tone. It almost, at some point, Russ,

it almost sounded like there were multiple voices. I don't know why I'm saying that, but it's the only way I can get across how crazy this sound was. It was like hearing, hearing it in stereo or something like that or out of, not out of phase, but it's like there were multiple tones in it.

So it was so loud and so scary. You could feel it through your whole body. Like my chest was vibrating, was vibrating. And so when you compound seeing that, you know, being 13 years old, seeing this scary thing in front of you,

and now it's making this sound. I think that's actually when I really thought we were dead, because anything that could make a sound like this, it was the scariest thing ever. The scariest thing, Wes. I don't know what else to say other. And I was, you know,

I heard people now, again, being 53 now, and I've watched some of your shows, and I heard people talk about something called and for sound and all that stuff. And I know what that is. All I could say is that this thing,

I felt this roar. I called a roar. I felt this roar through my bones, into my bones. And then as it got at the very, like I'll call it the top of the roar, it leaped, it,

it's like it fell forwards and then leaped straight at us. And I, I never I actually never saw when it when it leaped when it lunged when it came down like it was coming down like it was going to go on all fours but I never saw it going all fours because when it did that as the top of its you know roar and it was coming down it was obvious to me it was going to lunge towards us so I grabbed my brother who was standing right to the right of me and as I grab him and I turn around I see I think I think we were probably a little late off the starting point. My friends were already in motion. They were there, just like I was, they were kind of stuck still as we were witnessing this thing. But when that thing screamed like it did or roared like it did and then came down as like

in a like taking off a start like you never watch runners when they're sitting there and they get their foot up against the brace, the guy pulls the trigger and they take off. Yeah. That's what this looks like. that's what this reminds me of like it came it came down like to a starting like if it was on a starting point and going to go on a race and it just

there was no doubt it was lunging at us and I wasn't waiting so I turned around and ran to him my friends take off we're heading back the way we came we're all going in the same general direction but everybody kind of scattered

you know but going in the same direction I knew when when we started running and now I got a hold of my brother. He's going to be, he would be like at least two, two and a half, two years,

well, he was two years, two years younger than I. So he was younger. And I, I kept hold of him and we ran straight. And in that area of the pine barons, there are these,

there's tons and tons of different types of trees, of course, but then there are these bushes. Now, we used to call them deer bushes. I don't know what kind of bushes they were. They were a broad leafed plant bush. a broad leaf bush and deer used to sleep under them.

We would find deer under them all the time or evidence of where deer had curled up underneath them and slept. I'm guessing because of the broad leaves on them, it would keep the rain off of them and stuff like that. But one of the things about these bushes that was common is that they would get overgrown with thorns. These thickets and thorns would grow into them. Now, I knew that. but I was so scared and I didn't want to deviate from the path I was taking. I just went right through them with my brother.

I'm thinking I don't give a darn about how cut up I get right now. I will deal with that later if I survive this event. And we went straight through them. We were, everybody did because every one of us was cut up and scraped up when we got to the point where we actually stopped and were able to calm down and take a breath because, you know, even though you can do some amazing things when you're scared or under pressure, but there is a limit where you get to a point where just nothing left. I thought I was going to have a heart attack because I ran so far and so hard dragging my brother

that when I came to a stop and I'm sure others felt the same way, I was breathing so heavily and my heart was pounding so hard. I thought I was going to die then. I just could not catch my breath. Obviously I did, and we all did kind of. down but I got to tell you I mean it was from the point of actually seeing this beast to the point where we got to there where we were because it I never looked back not once when we took off running I never once turned around to see if this thing was still

following us because I thought to myself number one if I turn around and look I could trip and fall and then it's over you know I had no weapons on me I had no I didn't have a for me, which was kind of weird because I usually, one of us or more than one of us, would typically have at least a pocket knife with us, but I had nothing on me. Of course, neither did my brother. But I thought, if I turn around and look at this thing running after me, what good is it going to do? But maybe I'll fall, trip, and then we're both dead.

So I never, ever looked back until we finally got to that point where we were, God knows how long we ran for him because it was quite a distance. We were back on trail for sure. before we stopped and not too far from the end of the street where our homes were. That is a terrifying account for sure. I'm sure, you know, at 13, your 13-year-old self, you probably assumed it was chasing you. But looking back now over, you know, over 40 years ago, do you think the creature was actually chasing you guys? Personally, I do not. I don't think so. Because

Here's why I say this, because even though I was running pretty damn fast, I was just holding my brother. I had a hold of him the whole time. I had a hold of his jacket, like his wrist and his jacket. And because I kept thinking, well, number one, I love my brother. I love both my brothers. But I love my brother. And I thought to myself, even at that time, like, I would have rather it got me than him, you know. And also, I guess a little selfishly, I'm thinking of myself, if anything happens to my brother, my parents are going to kill me, you know.

But I say no because as big as this thing was and the word it came out of it, I have to believe that if it wanted to catch us, it could have. So you guys make it home, and this is your grandparents' home. Do you sit down with either your grandmother or your grandfather and tell them what you guys ended up seeing? Now, before we came home, where we were at the, where we had stopped. and realized this thing had not followed us. And we got our breasts back. You know, we had to take a good five minutes or so before we could even start walking.

I mean, we were all spent. Every one of us were spent, dripping sweat, cut up, dirty. And I will say there were a few curse words going back and forth between us because we were, we were just, as we were, it's the discussion started at that point. But as we were going back, we talked about this. We talked about our experience. We didn't know what we saw. I do not know and I do not recall if the word Bigfoot ever came up. Because I just don't remember that coming up.

I mean, we obviously knew this was some kind of animal, but it was something we had never seen before. We had never seen anything like this before. I couldn't even imagine something like this, you know. and I do recall we talked about number one if we tell our parents or whatever they probably aren't going to believe us

right that's number one number two if they did believe us and or maybe they didn't believe what we thought we saw but they thought somebody maybe we've been doing something out there they shouldn't have been doing like maybe

poachers or something like that we didn't want them going out there I like if I told my grandfather I think he probably would have went out there and investigated that. I did not want that to happen because I'm thinking if he goes out there, what if it is still there? It's going to get him. You know, we never, never told him. We kept this to ourselves.

I have no idea if any of the other guys ever told anybody. I actually talked to my brother Clint. The first time I talked to somebody or talked about this event was about a year ago. And I talked to my brother Clint before that. and talked to him. I asked him if he had ever told anybody. He had told his first wife about this. He told his current wife and maybe one or two of his other very close friends.

But outside of that, it wasn't like he talked about this widely. I had not told anybody about this except to my wife. That was it. I had never told anybody else about this. My wife was the only exception. Yeah, and I understand where you're coming from on it, Darren. I mean, how do you explain to, you know, your grandfokes and what you just saw? The fear of having your grandfather go out there too as well.

I get all of that. You know, a lot of eyewitnesses, they'll talk about these shelters, hunters that run into them. And I don't think I've ever talked to an eyewitness that has seen them make them. But it's obvious that most of us suspect that they do it, why they do it. You know, there's different theories on that. I wanted to ask you, so you're looking at this shelter. You guys hear this noise and then you guys all kind of look to the right and there it is. It doesn't come out of the shelter.

It actually comes around the shelter. What do you think it was doing? I suspect I've had time to think about this. I've had the time to talk about this in another venue. And I think what happened was we came up upon that structure. and again, an area we had been to many times before, and whatever this was, was behind that structure,

a good 30 feet behind it, and maybe it was coming back, maybe it was going away from it. I don't know, but it was already there. Because we didn't hear any noises leading up to getting there, checking out this deer and flicket.

It was quiet as, it's quiet as normal out there other than, you know, like the normal sounds you hear in the wilderness, you know, the wind blowing the leaves and you know i don't remember if we heard any other animals going on squirrels and stuff like that but um it i think it was already there and it was probably like what the f is going on at my food you know what i mean like it it knew we were there um and was watch either watching of us

to see if we were just going to go away and when we didn't go away uh it had enough and it just started it when when i say when we heard the shuffling and we all stepped to the right it had no there was no movement going on at that time in other words it was standing out in the open amongst a bunch of trees but there was not a single tree between us and it there were trees all around us but not we had a clear line of sight right to it to the left of it where i presume it came from it was a it was thickets everywhere from that structure leading all the way back towards where it was standing was a mess of thickets that you i mean i deer could probably navigate through it but that sure as heck couldn't have without making noise you know what i mean so i i think it really just was

checking out to see if we were going to go away or or what and it we didn't go away and it finally just said that's enough just like i think to myself like an animal protecting it's food. One thing that's interesting is, remember I mentioned that this hut was big and that I could probably stand in it. It was not big enough if this thing was standing because this thing was towering over it. But when it had been, when it lunged over and went down, yeah, it could have been inside that, it could have been, it would have fit inside that hut. It was, the hut was really wide. It was, I would say it would be at least twice the width as it was. deep and high.

That's what I would say because it gave it that dome shape. So it was a pretty big, it was a pretty big deer to begin with. And it was still room. Like the deer was sitting in the, in the middle of the hut right up on the water. And there was still room inside this thing. I don't remember seeing any, for the life of me, I try and remember what the ground look like, you know, where the deer, like, was there anything? different about the ground and nothing jumps out at me. So I'm only going to believe that as far as the ground was, it was normal just except for this

deer laying there. And I'm wondering, I always wonder why did it make that shelter there, number one, because it had the branches and everything were there to do it with. Plus, it was right on a stream. So here you got your food and you got your water. I'm assuming they drink. So, yeah, I think we ran up on it after it had been full. feeding and then we disturbed it. Just like any animal that you, you know, especially any

predator, any, I'll call it a predator, any predator animal with its prey. If you mess with it, they're going to get mad. Yeah, the one thing I'm kind of curious about, Darren, I know you had grown up around hunters and you've been around guys cleaning deer and, you know, it does stink. I mean, you're around blood and guts and that sort of thing. And so even by the age of 13, you knew that smell. When you were walking up on this hut and this deer, do you think that smell that you were smelling was a dead animal? No. I don't. That's why I mentioned earlier that when I mentioned about the smell and that, you know, why I wanted to look at its eyes, that this will come into play later. I think it was this thing. I think the smell we were smelling was this thing.

because when we got up on the deer and we again on the other side of the fire cut so we were still about two and a half feet maybe three feet away from being able to physically touch that deer the smell we were smelling got stronger but when i got up there were no flies do we're no flies festering around this thing now granted it wasn't the middle of summer i don't remember exactly what you know what month it was or anything like that but we were let's say fall okay It hadn't snowed. It wasn't snowing. It was not cold enough where we would have to put jackets on, but you weren't going to be out in shorts, for sure.

So it was, you know, that might help preserve, you know, a carcass of a dead animal a bit. But it was not, there were no maggots. There were no flies, which I remember thinking when I was trying to get to, when I was looking at this thing and trying to get the deer's head around, Now, I didn't know what Rigamortis was then, you know, as a 13-year-old, but I did know that if a dead animal lays for a while, that it gets stiff. That I knew.

And I think there's a point in time where it becomes stiff, and then after a period of time after that, act as stiffness goes away. I could be wrong about that, but I believe that is the case. but this thing the neck had just been twisted it was not stiff i was able to get it popped back around with that stick so it was pliable you know uh so i don't think the smell was the deer because i don't think it was right it was not at the point of decompensation where you would typically get that much of a smell this smell i think was this then and it was it was gagging it was like a Like, I remember I wanted to gag and maybe even get sick.

It was compounded seeing it. When I say that this thing looked disgust, I mean, it looked disgusting. In fact, I'll go as far as to say it might have been ill. It looked ill to me. Yeah, what was it about the creature that makes you say, you know, you thought it was ill? The matted hair. The madded, again, we couldn't see. I could see skin under the hair, which was like a, it was like a grayish black, like the charcoal, I would say, a color.

But the hair was, again, reddish brown, and it was matted everywhere. Every part of this thing's body was matted, raggedy, disgusting-looking hair, as if it hadn't bathed in a million years. I mean, it was horrible. It was like a scene out of a, it was just like a scene out of a horror movie, you know, a monster movie. I mean, this was a monster to me. Yeah, and what an amazing account to go through, you know, especially being so young and seeing this thing. Was there anything else that really stands out to you regarding the creature, you know, its behavior is, I think their behavior in this situation is meant to terrify you. It's meant to scare you, that sort of thing.

think you and I agree if it wanted to run you guys down it would have sure yeah there's no doubt in my mind the shape of this animal is i i think the closest thing i could i know some people have said gorilla you know like well we'll say it's like it's like it's gorilla like but with human features or something like that to me as i got older um and actually even at that time i don't know if i told you this, but when I was at age and younger, I thought I wanted to be either a, when I grew up, I wanted to either be a veterinarian. Well, that was the big one. I really loved animals. And I thought, because the other thing was an ocean, was a marine biologist. That was the other, again, something to do with animals, you know. But I, I loved the wilderness. I loved

animals. And that was thought in my head. And I remember. asking for Christmas one time, I don't know if you remember this, because I don't know how old you are. There was a company, I think it was Mutual of Omaha, had this thing where you could, they would send you each month, this like kit with all these cards in it.

They were different animals and all about those animals. You know, or we might even be National Geographic. I don't remember. And it came in a case, like a case with a hinge lid and it was clear, plastic on top. So it would have a thing in there about

lions and tigers, every animal of the world, you know. And I had those. This, what I saw, now I'm just going on the sheep. The closest thing I could, I could say that it looked like, but way bigger than it should have been, would be an orangutan. Now, granted, I didn't see the face. So I'm not talking about the face of the orangutanic. I'm talking about it's look. it had long, dangly, but massive arms and the legs were very similar and it had

even though most of the head I could see the head to me was a mound of hair but it just the word mound is important because it looked like a mound it didn't look like a normal head it didn't look like it had a neck and like a regular head like human being had or even a gorilla head

If you look at a gorilla, to me, gorillas have a very well-defined head and neck and shoulder. You know what I mean? It might be a little bit less definitive as far as the neck is concerned, but I think it's mainly because of the muscular around them. But to me, like orangutans have, yeah, they have a head, but this thing looked like the head was right on its shoulders. Now, I could be wrong in that underneath all that matted hair and they're coming. could have been a neck, a more defined neck, but not from what I could tell, that didn't exist. You know, it was just this mound of hair. Yeah, I understand what you mean.

I want to ask you, Darren, you know, after over 40 years of this happening to you, you're recalling it like it happened yesterday, which is what every eyewitness does, because it really does stay with you. But how did this kind of affect you over the years? Well, I will say this, that even though there's a problem, some ancillary things about the event that have faded over time. The core of the experience is like it happened yesterday. I will never forget this until the day I die.

It made me realize, it made me realize that there's, that there's things out there that just are not mainstream. You know what I mean? That, that, again, I didn't have a big, like, fault in my head. that this was Bigfoot we ran into at the time. I mean, I had heard the word Bigfoot before, but that's not what I thought when I saw this. It wasn't until later in my life that I thought about that. But I think it might have been brought up,

but this was just an animal of unknown origin to me at the time. And it was definitely an animal. It wasn't like esoteric or paranormal or anything like that. It was a being a real live animal standing in front of it. but I didn't think things could get that big. But the immediate thing it did to me, it took my love of the wilderness away for a very long time.

Number one, I was never going into the woods again by myself, ever. And that was something I did routinely. Yeah, I think most people go through that. I think people who've had encounters, you know, you always hear of the hunter who he lives for hunting and he goes every year and it's, you know, it's tradition, and then they'll have an encounter and that hunter no longer hunts. And it's kind of a shame that fear grips us in that way.

But it's definitely justified to have that fear grip you, you know. I could see you're not wanting to go back out in the woods. I know you're in your 50s now, and this happened to you when you were 13. If someone were to ask you, what do you think Sasquatch is? What would you say to them? well if saskatch is the thing i saw which i'm pretty sure probably was it's it's an animal it's an animal and you know i i do believe that it is

you know what it's funny i hear people say in fact i not not too long ago i heard someone bring this up um well they'll say something like how can we haven't found a big you know a Sasquatch body. One that's just died in the woods. Well, how come we don't find dead bears everywhere? You don't hear people saying, oh, it's routine

to find dead bears. Because the ones that do die, the ecosystem takes care of itself. Other predator animals, eat dead animals, it's like that. Even the bones sometimes. You know, or the bones get scattered.

So I don't buy all that stuff. It's like, we don't have, I know that the scientific community in general won't believe in this stuff until they have one. It's going to take someone either shooting one and killing it or capturing it or something like that before they're ever going to take this seriously. All I know is that what I saw was an animal and it was definitely not a bear. It was definitely not. I mean, first off, size-wise alone, I don't even think that knowing what I do know now,

that's the, you know, the, which there's bears that they say are like the largest grizzlies, the is it the Codiac bear or something like that they get these massive size it it was big it was bigger than what they can get I mean now that I think back to it it was huge it was the proportions were huge I think it's an animal I think it's possible that it's an animal that maybe uh you know when you look like gorillas and chimpanzees and stuff I mean they've been able to treat they've been able to teach champa I'm sorry I'm saying it wrong I think chimpanzees they've been able to teach them

sign language it's very possible that there's some other branch of primate that's not us that's more intelligent or just a different animal and I think it's an animal that's my thought

yeah I like your answer and I hope you're right because you know no one really knows but what an amazing account And, you know, it's something to where it'll stay with you the rest of your life. It has most of your life. And it's just something that'll never go away. But when people come forward, you know, we can gather so much information, you know, behavior and that sort of thing. I really enjoyed chatting with you, Darren.

Thank you so much for taking the time. Welcome. It was my pleasure as well. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk to you about it. Thanks again, Darren. And that's it for tonight, everyone. if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at

Sasquatch Chronicles.com. If you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone.