Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:851 The Runaways

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

Phil will be joining me tonight and over 20 years ago he was a runaway teenager. He lived in the Pine Barrens for some time. One night Phil and his friend had an aggressive encounter with a creature he had never seen before. I will also be speaking to Jeanette. Over 30 years ago Jeanette and her boyfriend were fishing at a campground when they saw this huge creature stand up and walk away. Jeanette said "It was not a bear and it was not a man, 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. What's... What's...

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 but what I saw were bears. What's... What are you reporting? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about six foot nine, I don't know.

Do you see a man, sir? Yes, I'm looking right here. Uh-oh. This is Susie from Southern California. You are listening to my favorite show, Sasquatch Chronicles. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show plan for you.

As we enter into the weekend, I really do appreciate you being here. We're going to be chatting with Phil. And Phil comes to us from New York. And well over 20 years ago, Phil grew up in a very rough household. and ended up running away from home and lived, you know, much like a homeless person out in the woods. And he started going deeper and deeper into the Pine Barrens. And one night he was out there with a friend of his and everything changed. And wait until you hear what happened to Phil.

We're also going to be chatting with Jeanette. And Jeanette comes to us from Minnesota. And over 30 years ago, she was out there with her boyfriend out at this campground, kind of a camp area. It sounds like a resort getaway. And while fishing, they had an encounter with the creature. Great stuff tonight. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com.

And if you get a chance to check out, Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Phil to the show. Phil, thanks for coming on. Thank you, Wes. Yeah, Phil, thank you again for being here. And I know your encounter takes place over 20 years ago. You were kind of in the Pine Barron area, I believe.

If you would, just kind of start from the beginning. Kind of what were you doing and walk us into what happened? Rough childhood. And I ran away from home at a very early age. So I was kind of living on the streets of New York City. I ran away and I was trying to hide from you know, society

and the cops and I was on the missing person's list or whatever you would call it. So I was always hiding and I was, you know, just always somewhere, you know, whether it be New York City or Philly, I was always running around

like crazy trying to hide and one day I got the idea that I should probably explore farther into the woods just to stay hidden because I was having run-ins with the cops I ran into my stepdad while I was on the streets

in New York City he was looking for me there was missing persons posters everywhere so it was just it was just a little sketchy being out in public so I had a buddy who was really close to me we were you know like brothers

he had a kind of crappy home situation too. He ended up living with his grandparents and the grandmother was sweet as hell but the grandfather was really a mean dude. So he was trying to get out of that

situation and we decided just go out into the woods and just hide and that's how we ended up out there. We had a buddy who had a car which was like a big score back in. So he would drive us around. We'd always be up by his house. His mom worked in New York City.

So she was away like all day. When she got home, she took a shower, went to bed. Like she was kind of super business lady. So we were able to spend a lot of time at his house, but we couldn't stay there. So we stayed in like the woods, like pretty close to his house. We decided to go get a bunch of gear. We saved up some money from panhandling and borrowing money or whatever we had to do. Got a bunch of gear. We got a tent. Got some knives. Some, you know, silly little cheap survival gear. And just decided to go out into the woods. And we kept going deeper and deeper. We had been back there a few times. It was pretty creepy. there.

One of the times we were back there, this guy on the dirt bike was telling us about how they were finding bodies back there back in the day. And it was believed to be like a place where like the mob would go dump bodies. So that was super creepy. But, you know, we didn't really think too much of it. We just, you know, we kept going. We found a little area that was. it was all like white sand.

It was like an open area, had white sand, dirt and mud, and it was all kind of dug out a bit. I guess some dirt bikers had gone back there and made ramps and stuff. And we didn't see anyone really back there when we were back there,

but it looked like a place where people would go and ride dirt bikes and whatever. It was pretty cool looking. It was like a nice, open area through the trees. And then we were walking around there and we found this like kind of like little opening that kind of looked like a kind of like a game trail. We went into that area, which was a little more wooded.

And we kind of bushwhacked our way through with some knives and stuff. Found like a cool little area that was semi cleaned out. We decided to make a little camp there. we uh yeah there was all kinds of weird creepy crawly spiders little funnel weavers and all kinds of weird centipedes and bugs there was some snakes and we cleared it all out and we set up the tent we dug out like a little fire pit and we found some rocks surrounded it we found this old shopping cart that seemed like it was from like 1980 stuck that on the side and thought we'd use that to, you know, boil water if we needed to or whatever, cook food on. We stayed there and heard noises that we didn't really know what they were.

You know, we heard things dropping or branches kind of twisting and breaking off and footsteps. We never saw anything. when we looked it was just super creepy you know you're sitting in this tent in the middle of nowhere and you hear things walking

and you know we're just like all right there's not really that many dangerous animals out there so we were just like whatever it must be just like raccoons or foxes or whatever we didn't really think too much of it

and one night we went to Jeff's house we went to New York City, hung out there for a while, and came back, and our buddy dropped us off, like, at the tree line. And we were walking back in, and both of us were feeling, I don't know, disoriented, nauseous. There was just, like, a weird feeling. We both felt it. It was just super creepy. We were both talking about it, too, like, walking through. into like where the sand is.

And then we heard this loud, loud scream. It sounded like a woman was getting murdered. And we heard it a few times. Yeah, we were just like, all right, let's get back to where our tent is as soon as fast as possible. So we started walking really fast toward that little opening. And we heard trees falling down. and these are pretty big trees that we heard falling down. And we got to the little opening

and looked where our camp was. There was trees on top of it. There, we, you know, there was, it was, there was trees knocked down all over the place, which was terrifying. We looked in, you know, it looked way different than when we left. It was just, there must have been like 20 trees down in there. So we turned and started kind of walking out of there really quick.

And we heard these leaves shaking really loudly. We looked back and there was about five or six trees that were shaking back and forth. So, so hard that it was like making cracks. It sounded like the actual tree was like cracking at the back. It was terrifying, you know? We had no idea what that was. And at the time, you know, back then we didn't know anything about Sasquatch or anything like that. We didn't know what it could be.

We thought we were tripping, to be honest. We were like, did someone slip something in our, you know, in a drink or something? The only other person we saw that day was our friend who definitely would have never done that. So it was pretty, we were just kind of thrown for a loop. We had no idea what was happening, but it was terrifying. Yeah, sounds like it, man. It sounds terrifying. The trees that were down, were they on your actual tent?

It was completely on top of our whole camp, yeah, the tent. I didn't mention, I forgot to mention, we had, once we were hearing those noises, we actually put up a, like, a weird little perimeter fence, like, around our area. Took a few days to me. That was gone. That was destroyed. The whole thing was just destroyed. Like, there was no going in there.

We were, there was nothing left in there that we can salvage. Like, we were just out of there. And we're lucky we weren't sleeping because we definitely would have died if we were in that tent. I mean, that tent was destroyed. They had like a couple trees on top of it. But in my opinion, we had been there for a while. So I don't think whatever it was was trying to hurt us. I think it was just, they just didn't want us in there.

Because they could have done that any night when we were actually in the tent, which never happened. But yeah, like, so the trees are shaking and we are like, we were freaking terrifying. like we were kind of like in panic mode we're flight fight or flight um we ran and there was this like kind of like you know through those like dirt bike ramp things there was like this like pool almost like this big divot in the sand the whole like crater we jumped right in there and just kind of got down low and like we were literally holding on to each other so tight that the next day we had bruises, like, from each, grasping each other so tightly in this little hole. My buddy started, he was actually crying, which was crazy because I had never seen him show

that kind of emotion before. He was a very, like, hard-ass kind of dude. Yeah, so we're in this thing, and we look out at these trees shaking, and there's one tree that is literally rooted its roots are showing and it's being bashed left and right from tree to tree probably about five feet, six feet

from tree to tree just bashing left and right there's dirt flying off of it and it's loud there's thumps it was thumping so loud that you could literally feel it vibrate through your body and super intense and at the same time

as this is all going on, these screams and weird noises are all around us. It did not stop. And it sounded like, I don't know if you've ever seen like a Tasmanian devil, like fighting over food. But it was like loud and crazy. It was just obnoxiously loud.

this happened until the sun came up the tree thing the shaking of the trees and stuff probably was had to be a couple hours straight of this screams and trees shaking and then we actually caught

sight of something in a tree kind of far down the hill and it looked like a person standing there like completely still. And at this point, we have been terrified for so long that we weren't even thinking straight. It almost looked like someone was just dead in a tree. And that's where our minds went to.

We're like, what the F is going on? Like, it was definitely a silhouette of an upright person or something in the tree. And as we're looking at it, it literally, like hopped down onto the ground on both feet. And that's when we started really freaking out. And we're watching this thing. And it gets down on all fours. Starts doing this weird sound.

It's like a lash. It's like a hyena. It wasn't like a happy sound for sure. It was definitely pissed off. So this thing started running on all fours toward us. And it would do these kind of run bys as we were like in this ditch. And as it ran by, the back legs were kicking mounds of sand, white sand and dirt and mud all over us. And it was a lot.

It wasn't just a little. It felt like a wheelbarrel of sand just unloading on us every time it ran by. and it would you know these things were screaming in the woods around as this was going on as well so it was definitely more than more than one

I got a kind of good look at its face and its hair and the big eyes the big black eyes that were like kind of deep set under like a kind of its face was like pretty flat, but the brow was pretty big.

I had like a big deep, like extending brow, these black eyes. And its mouth was open when it was walking, when it was like running by us. I didn't see any teeth, though. But it was kind of making like a weird face, almost like it was like, I don't know, it looked almost like it was like trying to make like a, like an evil looking. face like uh i don't know it wasn't just like a flat face it wasn't just like it had like a weird expression on it i don't know how to explain it um but like i said most of the time when it was running by it had its back toward us but it would peer over almost like over its shoulder and then it

would run away down the hill over these sand dunes like so fast like it was incredible like the only thing i can compare it to is at the san diego zoo they do a uh a cheetah run. And that's, that's like it was running about that fast. It almost looked very human-like. Definitely not ape-like, like a lot of, you know, other videos that you've seen are pictures. Jeez, ma'am. I feel for you, Phil, because right now you're, what, 14, 15 years old,

and your friend is about the same age. And you guys are just a bunch of kids out there. What a terrifying, what a terrifying experience. I know now being an adult, you're 6'3. What kind of a size compared to what you are now would you say it was? The shoulders alone and the arms, because it was kind of like running like a spider. The back was just insanely wide. And with the arms out like that, it just looked.

It looked like it was like seven feet wide with the arms out from elbow to elbow. This thing had that arm span on it like I've never seen. I didn't know what to think of it, really. You know, after watching Todd Standing and Les Stroud and kind of put like a light on it, and that's how I kind of discovered you. I just, you know. And hearing all these eyewitness accounts and, you know, I kind of wrote it off in my head over the years, you know, because it did a lot of damage to me after that. Like, I didn't sleep after we got out of there.

Like, I had nightmares and night terrors and sleep paralysis for years after that. Going into the woods at night was just like kind of like a no-no. like I would never I wouldn't even want to go near the woods that night yeah it just like did a lot of damage it was just insane and like I said

like during the time we didn't know what the hell it was we were just like you know were we tripping like what was that what just happened it's just so strange and there was there was at one point where we both kind of

this is like the weirdest part of it. We both kind of heard something in the back of our minds tell us to get the hell out of there. And we both looked at each other at the same exact time when that happened and like we're kind of dumbfounded.

Like did you hear that? Did you hear that? I heard that. Like what the hell was that? It wasn't get the hell out. It was more just like get out. But the weirdest part was I heard it in my own head. Like it wasn't like, audible. It wasn't like I heard it like through another being. And then the weirdest part was my buddy looked at me at the same

time that happened with the same exact reaction as me. Like he had just heard it. We're literally in this hole with our eyes closed, pissing ourselves. And it was a long time. I mean, we're in, we're literally in there

for a few hours as this was going on. And you know, it would go off and it wouldn't come back for a minute, we'd be in there, we'd take like a peek out, and we're still hearing like the trees, like kind of shaking a bit,

foot stom, screams, like different noises, almost like they were, like, they were, like, arguing, just wanting us out of there. Like, they wanted us out of there. And the thing would come back and run, and sometimes it wouldn't even come near us. It would just run, like, kind of around us. But just hearing, like, the thuds from this thing coming close and backing farther away, it was just terrifying.

And this happened until the sun came up. We were in there until the sun came up. And once the sun started coming up, we took a peek. And when we didn't see anything, we kind of just ran full speed, got out of there. We crossed the street. There was like a street that was kind of close. and as we were crossing the street, we heard something crashing through,

like the tree line, and we crossed the street into like the other tree line on the other side of the street, and as we're running, we heard the brakes of a car, and the car went crashing through the woods, like right off the road into a ditch. And we looked at each other and just kept running.

And thinking back about it, I don't know if this thing was trying to cross the road after us or whatever to chase us, but it was weird that the car screeched like kind of skid sideways and went into the bushes, into the trees. I don't know if they had seen it or if it jumped out in front of their car or what. We didn't stick around to find out, that's for sure. And we were terrified. We were so scared and we had so much adrenaline pumping through us that we literally,

walked around 18 miles on the train tracks back toward like our hometown hours and hours and hours of just walking like almost in silence just like completely in shock as we were walking on the railroad tracks we came to a road as we're going down the railroad tracks and a train had just come by and the railroad crossing things were down. And as they were going up, we were waiting for the cars to go by. And it was so random. A girl we knew had been driving and saw us. And it was like, what the hell?

What happened to you guys? Where have you been? You know, because people, we kind of just disappeared. People thought we were dead or, you know, they didn't know what the hell happened to us. So she told us to get in the car And we did And we didn't tell her what happened We just told her we were living in the woods

We told her we were living in the woods and it didn't work out And we left And to be honest This is literally the first time I've ever Spoke this It's never even come out of my mouth I'm honored Phil That you would come on

and share it with me. I mean, and I mean that. I really am honored you, share it with me. It was, it sounds like a terrifying night. Can I ask you, you know, you being an adult now, because when this happened to you, again, you're like 14, 15 year old kid, but being an adult now and having time to process it, what do you make of that behavior of, you know, two kids are in a ditch and this thing's running back and forth and kicking dirt on you, basically terrifying you guys. What do you make of that behavior? I feel if that, if any of what was in there wanted us dead, it would have killed us.

I mean, the thing was way bigger than both of us combined. I don't think it had any like cruel intentions. I think it was just maybe protecting its house where it's, been living or whatever, it's area. I don't know. Maybe, you know, some animals kind of react in like a hostile way when there's like babies around or whatever. There's like, there's like a breeding time.

It could be any of that. You see in like a lot of like primates when they start going through maturity, when they start, you know, when all that testosterone is pumping through them, they get crazy and territorial. Yeah, you're right, Phil. And most non-human primates, you get in their area and they're going to harm you, if not kill you. You get into an area where a bunch of chimps are at, and they'll rip your arms off and beat you with them. So I definitely understand what you mean.

And, you know, what's strange with Sasquatch is, and again, this is my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. I think most of their behavior is meant to intimidate you. Most of their behavior is to terrify you and make you leave. And they're smart doing that as opposed to trying to go toe to toe. I mean, they could have killed you two. No problem. But I almost wonder if Sasquatch sometimes wonders, is more humans going to show up if we kill these two kids? Gosh, what a terrifying night, man.

And I know from talking to you, the friend you were with that night, you guys have kind of lost contact after this. with your description and the behavior is something, you know, I really appreciate you coming on. Let me ask you, because you got such a good look at this saying, if someone were to ask you, you know, Phil, what is Sasquatch? What would you say to them? Oh, man. So, you know, I go back and forth. I definitely think that we've got to be just a biological creature that maybe outdated. man, like as we, as we are today. They, you know, maybe have evolved over the years since, like, the Ice Age era when we first have, you know, I know that, I know bones of giant ape-like creatures have been found

around the world, you know, from around that time. I don't know if these things just maybe ended up surviving somehow and evolving. I mean, I'd love to believe that they're just, you know, a very rare hominid that, you know, we just don't know about as much. You know, we have no... And, you know, science has kind of turned its back on kind of crypted kind of creatures like that. You have to have, you know, they keep saying that they need a body and this and that. And they have a lot of evidence. I mean, there's been hair and...

scat and DNA footprints with dermal you know ridges and I mean it's just like endless endless endless endless evidence you know videos I mean I know videos aren't

aren't you know 100% but some of them I mean some of them are pretty when you see the eyes moving and stuff I mean there's some videos where you see it's a creature it's not it's not a

costume, you know. It's got to be just some kind of hidden away hominid. If we had a gun, I don't even think we'd be able to shoot that thing. It was moving so fast and it wasn't moving in like a way that was smooth. It was going back and forth and it was, I mean, you would have needed to be like a sharpshooter to shoot anything like that. Yeah, something that big shouldn't be able to move that quick. Does this encounter still affect you even to today? Well, it affects me, you know, over the years, I've gotten over like the night terrors, really, and like the sleep paralysis.

And now, you know, I'm fascinated by them. So I'm just at this point, just researching them and it doesn't affect me in a negative way anymore, especially thinking about how that thing could have killed me and my buddy at any time of that night. And there was multiple. They have to be

pretty big to rip a tree out of the ground and smash it against another tree. These trees were they had a diameter like a saucer. These were big, thick trees. I mean,

if it was strong enough to rip one of those out of the ground. It could have killed us at any time and it did not. So I've kind of come to terms with it. It wasn't trying to kill us or eat us or anything like that. Just want us out of there. That's understandable. You wouldn't want someone breaking in your house and squatting in your basement, right? That's basically what we did, in my opinion. We went into its territory and, you know, lit fires and it didn't want us there. Yeah, it's a lot easier, you know, as the years passed by to kind of go back and process what happened. I'm sure at the moment none of that was going through your head, you were just trying to survive and what an encounter.

I want to ask you, if you had the chance, would you want to see one again? I definitely would. I definitely would, yeah. Maybe not that same kind of situation. but it would be cool to see one just to kind of back up like what happened almost like kind of clarify everything for me you know because I see the videos and

it's it's cool you know and I hear the stories and that's awesome too but yeah seeing seeing one again I think would would be awesome maybe from a from a distance not you know but still I mean I would say like

I definitely going into the forest at night still kind of irks me. I still don't feel right. I feel very uneasy, knowing that there could be something out there that

nine feet tall that could literally rip you in half if it wanted to. It's kind of like an uneasy feeling, you know? Yeah, it's a very uneasy feeling, man. I mean, especially, you know, you guys are a bunch of kids trapped in a hole and this thing's running back and forth and back and forth.

And, you know, even being an adult, I don't think I would have gotten out of the hole. I would have been terrified. We were paralyzed. Literally, we were paralyzed. Like, we, like, grasped onto each other and just stayed like that. Like, we're so tense, like, literally so stiff. It was like we had, like, rigormortus or something. We were just stuck, like, in this fear.

holding our breaths. I was not trying to make any noise or breathe. It was, yeah, it was something else, for sure. It was terrifying. You know, doing this research and stuff, I think I mentioned earlier, I came across something that kind of reminds me of how this thing was moving. And it's another kind of cryptic homin. that lives in Central America

toward like Guatemala and I think in like Southern Mexico they call it the Sizamite this one gets on all fours indigenous peoples for a long, long time have stories of this thing upright but then getting down on all fours and running at like very, very high speeds

so this this thing has feet that are backwards the feet face the rear. It's very interesting. But the way it moves, the way it's depicted, the way how it moves, reminds me of what we saw, how that thing moved. Yeah, I'll have to look into that. I appreciate you sharing that. And like I said before, Phil, I really am honored that you would come on and share your account with me. in the audience.

And I know it's not the easiest thing on the planet, but I really do appreciate it, brother. I really appreciate it too. I mean, like I said, I have never spoken of this. My wife doesn't know. I mean, I have never told anyone about this. I kind of just tried to forget about it over the years. It affected me in such a negative way.

Yeah, that behavior that you mentioned, Phil, of it, running back and forth. I've heard that a handful of times. And man, I was so glad to have you on. And I really enjoyed chatting with you. Thank you again, Phil. Thank you, Wes. Next up on the show, I want to welcome Jeanette.

Jeanette, thanks for coming on. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, I really appreciate you being here. And I know your encounter took place in Minnesota back in 1988. If you would, just kind of start from the beginning. What were you doing? and walk us into what happened?

Okay, well, to kind of give people an idea of where we were, if anybody looks on the map of Minnesota, we have the big city of Duluth, and we went 120 miles approximately north along the north shore of Lake Superior to a town called Tofti. And Tofti, like, it's a double-lane road on the tar for like four miles or something. so until you hit dirt and then gravel and whatnot. And then you go another 20-some miles up into an outfitter. So it's some pretty rough terrain up that way.

My dad used to take us up there fishing every year. Anywhere from like a week to two weeks at a time, we'd portage back, whatever. It was just a place where we could all relax in the wilderness. It was so thick that you, if you walked like 20 feet into that stuff, you would get lost. So to kind of give you an idea. At the time, you know, I really wanted to go back there and I had, you know, my ex was with me. And we went up there just for the sheer pleasure of going fishing.

I wanted to expose him and show him what it was like to go fishing in boundary waters. I knew the terrain. And we had every ambition of going and doing that. So we booked a campsite up at an outfurt. fitter at the end of the trail. And the campground is not like an RV park of any sort. It's where you can like pitch a tent. You can bring like your truck, a four-wheel drive truck was pretty much, you kind of

needed it. Just because that road was turned into a logging road, it was pretty rough terrain getting up in there. Anyway, so we get up there. The campgrounds, you literally, had to bring your own tent, have a truck with a four-wheel drive with a camper on the top, like a cab over kind of a thing. The water situation was you would have to pump your own water from these wells that they had the hand pump things. There were no public bathrooms. They had like

outhouses in certain spots. It was pretty primitive. Anyway, so we left early that morning to go up and go camping. So about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, we get done setting up camp at our campsite. We were a couple campsites up on the left, up on the hill, whatever, on a flat. And so we came back down and we decided to go fishing at the lagoon or down by the canoe landing or boat launch.

And we went off probably about 15, 20 feet to the left of that boat launch. Now, the boat launch, if you're looking straightforward when you're sitting there, there's a peninsula that comes out from the mainland. And that juts out probably, I'd say, maybe two blocks long, and it goes out into the middle of the lake. And the lake is part of the BWCA entry point, blah, blah, blah. So anyway, we're sitting in this lagoon, and there's a little water runoff because all of the BWCA entry point, blah, blah, blah, blah. water runoff because all of the lakes are interconnected with this little waterway. So we're just sitting in the sun and the bobbers were doing their thing, nothing was biting,

whatever. And then all of a sudden across on the peninsula, we started hearing some like brush movement or branches and stuff, something moving around up on that, up on the top part of that peninsula because it was all, it was wavy just like the terrain goes that way. We hear this movement going on and then all of a sudden this thing gets up and it's like getting up like it was sleeping and it like pushes itself forward and it starts walking down this little embankment that was part of the train and we could see waist up and the thing was about eight foot tall. I was looking at it.

I looked at its head, and it was super furry. I have never seen hair like that on anything. The head was like pointed a little bit at the top. I didn't see any facial features because the way it was walking and the lighting and stuff. The body was massive. It had huge shoulders. the arms, I was like totally focused on the arms. They were ginormous.

And what I noticed about the arms is that the upper part of the arms were shorter than the lower part of the arms. And there was hair hanging off of it. And they swung when it walked. I don't know if it was he or she. When it walked, they were swinging. It had kind of a saunter to it where it was like walking. back and forth, you could see that gate, but it wasn't like, it wasn't a man. It wasn't a bear because I've seen plenty of bears up there.

It was just huge. Because I kept noticing the head and the hair, but the arms were like ginormous. There was hair all over them. The upper part of the arm was shorter than the lower part of the arm from the elbow down. And there was just a lot of hair on that thing. and it was reddish brown and it was like sauntering down the hill like it didn't walk it didn't walk like a man and it didn't walk like a bear um because we could only see from the the waist up the chest was ginormous i could see like the it was like a breastplate kind of a thing it was like it wasn't female but there were like huge breasts on a thing

like it had like total upper body strength in the chest and it was super thick and it had a little bit of a gut on it like it had like one would get if you'd had like a really big breakfast and your gut kind of just like explodes a little bit um and then yeah it just kind of sauntered down that hill waddled back and forth and then it just disappeared in the brush at that point you know when it disappeared. My axe and I, we looked at each other at the same time and we were like, what the heck was that? But we, I mean, we didn't say it that loud.

We were like kind of whispering, yelling, kind of like, what the heck was that? And we were, our eyes were like giant like quarters. And we just started reeling in our lines, fishing lines and stuff. We didn't want to make too much noise or anything like that because we didn't know what it was. We woke the dog up. and he woke up and he was just kind of looking around, didn't do much of anything, didn't react and all that. We just kind of high-tailed it back to camp.

So we were sitting, we got back to camp, and we were sitting there talking about it, like, what was that? What did we, and he, my ex, Ted, he said, I don't know what that was. That was like really weird. And I said, yeah, it was really weird. And I've seen bears up here a lot. and that was definitely not a bear.

We just couldn't place it. So I told Ted, I said, well, let's go down to the outfitters and stuff and see if they have any accounts or anybody else that has seen it or said anything or whatever. He says, okay, fine, let's go down there. So we walked, we locked the dog in the truck, and we walked down to the outfitters and walked in there and the owner, his wife, and then one other employee was there. they were stocking shelves and doing what they do and their two dogs and whatnot. And they looked at us and the wife finally says, oh, what can we help you with today?

And the guy, the owner, he just kind of, they all had like weird looks on our face. I imagine we probably looked like we soiled ourselves at that point. We were just so freaked out. And so we started telling them what we had seen. The guy says, the owner says, no, you had to have seen a bit. a bear and it's like, no, that wasn't a bear. And I said, no, no way. That thing was huge.

And he says, well, we got some pretty big bears around here. So yeah, you probably saw a bear. I'm like, no. So we weren't getting anywhere with those people. So we walked out. I told Ted, I said, let's go down by those cabins and stuff like that because that's where the peninsula joins the mainland. So we go down there.

and the first thing I noticed is that there's this huge barricade that's put up. There's like two huge posts, and then they have like the cross beams and stuff, and they have like no trespassing, stay out signs and all that kind of stuff. I look down and the cabins, they're all in a row, and they're not probably more than 15, 20 feet apart. And I remember those things. Like I said, I've been up there since quite often, like, since I was, was 10 years old. All of those cabins were rented out on a yearly basis because you had ice fishermen,

you had snowshoeing people, cross-country skiers, snowmobilers, all that kind of stuff. Those were always rented out and they were always open. We went down there, there was this barricade up and then all of a sudden all four of these cabins, they're all boarded up with plywood, the doors are plywooded shut. Everything is like shut down. I'm thinking, this is like the freakiest stuff I've seen, no, there's something wrong with this picture. So that's what I told Ted. So we walked back to the camp again. So we build a fire and have some dinner.

It's, you know, we're still throwing this stuff back and forth and everything. Like, what was that? It's really weird describing everything that, and everything that we saw gets to be about 9 o'clock and we're like, okay, fine, I'm done with this. I'm going to bed, whatever. So we both get in the tent. And we're still like just wide awake and totally amped up from this whole thing. And it wasn't but maybe half an hour, 45 minutes later.

All of a sudden we hear this crashing coming through the woods. We could hear something walking. And it was big enough. He could hear the footsteps. There were branches breaking. And they weren't like little pencil twigs or stuff like that. It was like branches that were like two and a half or two inches to two and a half inches. to two and a half inches in diameter that they were like snapping off.

This thing, whatever it was, was like crashing through the woods. And it did that for, I couldn't even tell you, a second felt like an hour. And it just lasted and then all of a sudden it stopped. And from that point, it just like, you could hear there was like this low, deep guttural growl. and it escalated into like this, this murderous screech and scream that I've never heard in my life. And it lasted for like three, four seconds maybe. And it sounded like a, like a lady was getting murdered right out behind the tent.

It was, it's something that I can't forget that I, and when I spoke to my ex last night, it's something he can't forget either. And it's just, it's something that sticks in your, your head. And at that point, we were just so freaked out by this thing. I don't know if it followed us. I don't know what, I don't know. But so we grabbed both of our sleeping bags. We grabbed the dog. The dog was absolutely quiet. And like I said, she was like a year old and half white wolf. He didn't make a sound. And so we ran into the truck and we laid the sleeping bags in the first. And the front seat of the truck and put the dog in between us. He curled up in a little ball,

and we just sat there for the rest of the night. And that was like the longest night I've ever experienced in my life. It was just because I didn't know if anything was going to come out. I didn't know. We didn't know. It was just there. We never saw it again. We never heard it again. It was just like gone. Right around five in the morning, sun started coming up. I was up. And I literally reached over and I smacked Ted in the shoulder. And I said, come on, it's time to go. We literally took the tent down in about five minutes. We rolled it up into a ball.

We rolled everything into a huge massive ball and threw it in the back of the pickup truck, tethered it down with ropes, whatever we had. And we left. We couldn't leave the night before because of the condition of the roads and stuff. It was too dangerous. That's why we had to stay. So we left that next morning. And as we were driving back down into the, back down to the cities and stuff like that, Ted finally says, well, I wonder if that was a big foot or a Yeti.

And I looked over him and I said, what's that? Because I was naive. I was in my 20s. And I was like, what is that? And he started to explain that to me about Yeti's big foot and stuff like that. somewhere he had heard about it. And I was like, I don't even know what that is. And so then, you know, we were discussing it more and stuff like that.

And finally, we get back to home or he was living with his mom at the time. And we walk in the front door and she goes, his mom says, well, I thought you guys were going to go up camping for like a whole week and stuff. Why are you back the same day? And she could tell there was something wrong. And so we sat down at the dinner table with her and stuff and told her everything that we had. And she was like totally freaked out too. And both of us, we were just like still shaking from the whole event. And she says, well, you know what you should probably do is go down to the library and see if there's anything that's listed in there or shows up or any books or something like that.

And we're like, oh, that's a really good idea. the next day we go down to the library on hamlin avenue in roseville so we found like five books that they were supposed to have there were only three on the shelf we actually pulled one of the books and i was leafing through one of them and opened up ironically to the page where they had had a picture of the 1967 patterson uh still shot of that that bigfoot that they had and And I said, Ted, look at this. Look at this. This is what we saw. And he goes, holy shit. And so, yeah, we were reading about that and everything. And the biggest thing that hit home was the fact that we saw that, that picture of the 67 Patterson still frame of that Yeti walking through that field or Bigfoot or whatever you want to call it.

But that's, that's what we saw. And like you said, the one that was standing on that peninsula, that was. that thing was at least eight foot tall. It was huge. It was huge. Yeah, it sounds like it. And I know from talking to you previously that you really couldn't get a good look at the face because of the angle it was, it walked off at a pretty amazing account. You know, being 1988, I can understand going down to the library.

I mean, there's no Google at that time. I want to ask you, when you guys first saw it and it stood up, how far away from you? was it? From where we're sitting on the peninsula or from the canoe launch to that peninsula was about 200 feet. So it was pretty close. Yeah, that's pretty close. That's really close, actually. Do you think the creature heard you guys when you were fishing and that's why it got up and left?

No. No, it got up on its own. It didn't even, if it would have heard us doing anything, it would have probably looked at us if it even would have gotten up. Because normally, I don't know, just from watching wildlife and stuff, if they hear you, they kind of look in your direction. We were like completely still and silent. We were just sitting there doing nothing. We were watching our bobbers. And we were enjoying the sun and nothingness.

We were adamant about just being quiet down there. We weren't talking. We weren't doing, we weren't like eating candy bars or doing anything. We were just sitting there doing nothing. Yeah, it sounds like maybe it was oblivious that you guys were even there. I know this happened to you over 30 years ago. And I know it's something that, you know, is really stuck with you throughout your whole life. What do you think that they are?

I do think it's a primate of some sort. But I think it's beyond that. I've also have, I've seen pictures like of Todd's, what is it, Todd's landing or Todd's Crossing. Yeah, Todd's standing. Todd Standing, there you go. Sorry. Yeah. And I've seen like where they've gotten actual pictures of these, of the faces and stuff.

I do believe that there's a probability that there's maybe a little bit of Native American stuff going on. I don't know. as human beings we always when we see something different that's out of the norm we try to place it in a place that we can understand it because we only have so much capability for understanding oddities i mean if we see something that looks like a mouse if it's a shrew then we can put it in the mouse family but when it comes to primates or things that look like primates but they're eight feet tall and they look like things that we've never seen before, but yet they're so intelligent in their ways of behavior, where do you put that? I almost think there's like an infusion of primates and humans, but where the human fits in in that eight-foot standing, I got nowhere to put it. I don't know how to even define it. That's my only, that's the only way I can reasonably place it in my head. head. Yeah, I would say it's human nature to fear the unknown. And it's really hard to put these

things in a box. And I like your explanation, Jeanette. You know, most eyewitnesses, when they see these things up close and they'll get a good look at it, they'll say what wasn't human and it wasn't an animal was kind of somewhere in between. It's so hard to know what box to put it in, you know. Right. Well, yeah, we don't have a definitive genus or species or something that science has literally placed them and can categorize them. And so it's based, it's, yeah, you got nowhere to put it. It leaves you kind of in an unsettled position for the rest of your life until somebody finally in a heat to see one get, you know, killed and, you know, scientifically dissected and all because they are, I know they exist.

To what degree I don't know, but I'd hate to see one, like, suffer and, you know, go through all that scientific stuff just so that we can put a name on it just because of all of us freaked out people, you know what I mean? Yeah, I understand what you mean. And, you know, with your encounter, Jeanette, you know, the intelligence, and it's a little unnerving, really, that it came back that night just to kind of screw with you guys. Right. And that's the thing is that being that we had gone down back to where it disappeared in the mainland from that peninsula, where all those cabins were, it's like I was wondering, you know, was it sitting out there?

Did it, did it smell us? Did it, did it watch us? Did it follow us back to the, to the campsite? You know, and that's where I give it, I give it the credibility of being that, that intelligent to actually stalk us, maybe. I don't know. But for us, for it to pinpoint our tents and to be as aggressive as it was and just let out, it was almost like a warning scream or something like that. I just, you got to wonder. Yeah, it makes you wonder. Maybe it knew that it did hear you guys.

And that's why I got up and walked off. The intelligence, though, to come back that night is something you hear. lot. And it makes you wonder, too, about the cabins. Why were all the cabins boarded up? Well, and that's the thing, too. The cabins were all boarded up. Plus, they had this big, huge barricade out there. I've never seen that in the years that I've been up there. And, you know, from, from, like, you know, I've been listening to shows and stuff like that about how, you know, sometimes maybe the government gets involved and stuff and the, just kind of blockade everything. and everything.

I don't know. And then the fact that the people over at the outfitter said, oh, it was just a bear. No, it wasn't bear. And they knew. I know they knew. They knew that there was something out there. And I think that it was all maybe a cover-up.

I don't know. Yeah, it's hard to say. It really is hard to say. And it's a weird coincidence. Let me ask you, if you had the opportunity again, to see one, would you take it? It kind of depends.

I mean, if it was in that proximity, if it was in 200 feet of me, absolutely not. If I could see it like doing a jaunt across like a hayfield or something like that where I was like maybe a half a mile away, sure, I'd take advantage of that in a minute. But that close, no thank you.

It was just, it was, no. I don't want to hear that scream anymore. I don't want to feel that intensity. I don't think my heart would take it, to be honest. Yeah, I hear you. Maybe in a roadside crossing and you're in a tank, that sort of thing. You know, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing it, Jeanette. I know this happened to you over 30 years ago, and I know it's bothered you most of your life

and you were nervous coming on. and I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and having the courage to share what happened to you. Well, I appreciate everything that you've done for the community. I truly believe that if I would not have listened to a lot of the podcasts that you had on, I would not have been brave enough to really even call or say anything. But, I mean, you make it easy for people to talk. And I really appreciate that.

because it's really taken a lot off of my shoulders, being able to tell my story and to know that somebody's going to listen and somebody's going to believe me instead of laughing in my face. I'm not a great speaker, but I'm a great listener. No, I appreciate it. And thank you again, Jeanette. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatchfronicles.com.

and if you get a chance, check out Sasquatchpronicles.com you can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone.