Sasquatch Chronicles - SC EP:894 I Was Being Stalked

Episode Date: October 9, 2022

John writes "January of 2017 I moved to Pikeville, Eastern Kentucky. The apartment complex I moved into was an old abandoned coal mine holler that had been converted which had an old coal road that went up a mountain and then swing around it with acre's of woods. Well, whenever Id sit in the picnic area to have a cigarette id notice around 10+ at night this howling out in the nearby hills which now i can say sounded almost identical to the Ohio Sounds. I'd hear one howl and then maybe 30 seconds later there'd be another one from another hill that was maybe a mile or so away, and then I'd hear another, and another, and you could listen to these call and responses for hours without end. Well by April I was trying to get back into shape and I love to hike so I decided I'd get up around 6 am and hike up that coal road and back. As I'm hiking up and it got darker and darker up that road I noticed this strange bird whistling at me. It was strange because of how loud it was, and I mean the pitch was just so loud and I thought to myself, "that's a big damn bird!" And I whistled back. Wes, my grandpa was a Green Beret in Vietnam who partly helped raise me, and I've been in the woods of Illinois and Wisconsin my whole life and never encountered much that was weird, although my Grandpa did and told me stories here and there, but I wasn't afraid of much. Well, I'm hiking up and not only is that whistling getting closer, and I mean close to where it was like ten feet from me in the treeline of woods. I turned on the flash light on my phone and couldn't see anything it was so dense. But then I noticed this "bird" was keeping pace with me. Then small pebbles started landing in front of me as I walked down. At first I thought it was just loose rock sliding down, but then it became apparent that something was tossing them right at my feet. At this point I'm about 300 feet up this old road in the pitch dark. So, I gently tossed one back, and then a big one, maybe 1/2 pound rock flung right at my feet. I froze man! Now, I gently yelled out, "is someone out there?" And that bird whistling started up even louder than it had before! Idk what overcame me, but I started belting out the St. Michael prayer in Latin and then the Hail Mary pretty audibly, and not wanting to turn back continued up that road. All of this whistling, keeping pace, and Pebble tossing just amped up as I was coming to a bend in the road that turned with the mountain. Idk what it was, but as I reach it with rosary in hand I got this bad bad feeling like something is really wrong here, and I spoke aloud and said, "idk what ya are, but im just walking here…" And the Pebble tossing got more intense and I could now hear "things" trudging through the wood at paces that I knew werent people. So I turned around and calmly began to go home. I thought that this could be bear or well hell a damn bigfoot. How loud the trudging was, combined with the whistling, and Pebble tossing I wanted to run the hell outta there down back into that holler, but if ya think that there's an animal ya just don't do that. And idk why, but something told me do not turn your back to them. So I'm trying to make it down while keeping an eye on what's behind me, and the moments that I looked down the road towards the apartment complex something just leaped from the side of the mountain onto the road, and then down into a bunch of thicket. And I stopped and yelled, "what the fuck was that!" If it were a man he'd have fallen 400 feet down a vertical fall and broke his neck or something I mean it was steep! And covered in thicket and thorn bushes. And how loose the rocks were I mean if you did get a footing you'd just fall on your ass and slide and tumble down. Whatever this was got it's footing and slid and trudged down with great volume like stomping through a huge snow drift. So there I am feeling like a fool the sun is begging to make the horizon pink up just a little at this point. I kept thinking to myself that this is not how I'm gonna die! By this point I felt with all of the noise that had to be five to eight things in the woods stalking me. Honest to God I knew that I was being followed and scrutinized and that I had pissed something off with my presence! The pebbles were being tossed at an alarming rate, there were by now eight or so "big birds" whistling at me from about ten or so feet in the woods, branches were snapping, and it was like multiple freight trains just trudging through those woods! This is a steep hill I mean it is steep I cannot imagine men being able to do this without falling down the only flat surface was the road. When I got about 100 feet down before the apartment idk what overcame me but something told me to just book it for the farm lamp and I ran like hell until I got to it spun around. I stood there watching and couldn't see anything! They had stayed up there, but were still just making all sorts of noise. Idk what I started, but after that I felt like I was being watched whenever I was outside in that holler. If I went outside my apartment by my car to smoke pebbles would start getting tossed right at my feet in the parking lot from a mountain side, or a big bird would start whistling at me. And we had huge street lights shinning onto our parking lot. And as this is happening I'd take out a big old flashlight and shine into the woods. I did get eye shine a couple of times, but couldn't make out faces of what they were which just creeped me out to no end. I went up the mountains couple of times in the day and found what appeared to be tree breaks, a couple of structures, sticks in the road. Now idk, these sticks were just laid ever so carefully in the road. What creeped me out was that they'd appear when I was coming back down. On one hike, idk I got dizzy on the way home. Now I do have epilepsy, but this was different. I'm hiking down the road and suddenly I got dizzy, the sound in my ears was like tv static, and I wanted to take my shirt off because I felt so hot, but I laid down in the dirt ditch for a few minutes and just felt drained of everything I just thought of my mother and picked myself up and forced myself down that road. When I got home I just collapsed in bed and slept for a good six hours. Now I think looking back that that was side effects of infrasound. But then one night my roommate and I went out to one of the picnic areas to smoke and talk and as we're making it back toward my building idk Wes the ground shook to the point I felt like I'd lost my footing like a giant was stomping in front of us BOOM BOOM BOOM and let out this scream I've never heard before or since it was like a woman mixed with a bear, a lion, and a witch all in one terrifying scream idk, but I JUMPED like three feet up and just ran up a picnic table and I could not look at it! We were stuck in that parking lot until the sun came up! Everytime we even made an attempt towards my building it would scream and we couldn't find it, couldn't see it! We had the sensation that it was behind this old 100+ year old white oak tree, but we made five attempts to go home and it was not having it. But when the sun began to rise we made our sixth attempt and then heard something just trudge up that mountain side in time that no man or woman could! I'm talking a 100 foot vertical hike that this thing scaled in seconds and just kept going until we saw trees moving at about 500 feet up. We never went that far out at night again and that was a lighted parking lot/picnic area in the middle of an apartment complex. After that I'd smoked at night at the door dealt with the whistling and Pebble tossing give it the finger and go inside. I moved to Louisville in June and never went back! I'm not afraid of the woods or anything, but I definitely will never go in them again without a 30-30 or something bigger! The power just in the lungs of this thing it could have killed us if it had wanted to! I ldk what we did that night; we weren't messing up in the woods or nothing and I feel like I was being stalked for having gone up there, but over residents went up there, but not at night. I have a deeper respect, appreciation of the mountains and the woods. Since all of this the guns I have and carry with me in the woods are enough to take down a bear, but yeah, like I said I will never go in the woods unarmed again."   I will also be speaking to Brian. Brian said "I was stationed at Ft. Lewis in Washington state. We were running a training exercise and we saw what we thought was someone in a ghillie suit. This made no sense since we all had the same equipment and there was not any snipers present. This "guy" was huge he was about 7 foot tall, I am 6'4. I did not know anyone in my unit that big. We decided to track it and find who is was. That is when it stood up. I thought it was 7 foot tall but it was crouched. When it stood up it was closer to 9 feet. Five of us saw it that night."  

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 forward.

I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet of what I saw were bears. David, what do you report? Jesus Christ, you better. Sheriff, see ya! Hello? Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about six foot nine, I don't know.

Do you see him down, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-uh. This is Jason from East Tennessee, and you're listening to Saskatch Chronicles. Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show plan for you. Tonight we're going to be chatting with Brian.

And Brian had an encounter on the base there, Fort Lewis in Washington State when he was training one night. I'll kind of let him go into it. We're also going to be chatting with John. And John had an encounter in Kentucky. He's roughly about 20 miles from the West Virginia border where this encounter took place. And it's a pretty terrifying night. I'll let him definitely 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. And if you get a chance to check out, Sasquatch Chronicles.com, you can be become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Brian to the show. Brian, thanks for coming on. Yeah, no problem.

Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks again for being here. And gosh, I've heard so many encounters from veterans who trained at Fort Lewis of running into these creatures. I know you're probably in your 20s, you know, when this happened to you. At that time, what was kind of your thoughts on Sasquatch? I mean, to be completely honest, I mean, yeah, I watched X-Files as a kid. So, you know, I think I always had a little bit of interest in it, or at least I think a basic knowledge of what the idea or the lore is of Sasquatch or big, whatever you want to call it. But as far as what I seek it, no.

And, you know, did I really believe it? Uh-uh. Well, if you would take us back to that night, kind of tell us what you were doing and what did you guys end up seeing? So this was 2005. Before we go on deployments, usually you get new guys into the units throughout the year and just, you know, randomly sometimes. So when you do deployments, we call it a spin-up. And basically, we start training six months out. And really, it's to get the young guys or the new guys, you know, accustomed to what we're doing.

You know, what you're doing out there is important and everybody has to be on the same pitch. age, you know, and then just working together with people helps you also be able to just almost predict them. You know, when you're out there with those guys, you have to know what someone's going to do without knowing what they're going to do. It has to be an instinctive kind of thing. There's a bond, you know. So we were doing a field training exercise, and we were out at Yakima, which, you know, when we talked, you said, of course, you know, you've heard, I've heard, I think everyone's heard a story from the range. So we were out there. It was a multi-day exercise. I was in a five-man element. I was a gun leader. So basically, I had the

big machine gun, but that doesn't mean anything on these training exercises, because they're blacks. It's not a real bullet. We were out there and we were tracking what we thought was the opt-for element, opposing forces, the bad guys, the guys who were supposed to be fighting and, you know, fighting against and training with. And, we thought, like I said, we thought we were tracking people. And when I say tracking, you know, I, God, you know, we're using night vision. And this is 2005. Night vision is not what it is on Call of Duty today.

You know, the night vision back then was like one monocular and there's no depth of perception. And you can't see more than like maybe, you know, 50 yards on the best. conditions possible. So when I say tracking, what I meant was we knew that we could see something. And in our minds, the only thing out there is the other guys. And it, you know, it didn't cross my mind until midway through the encounter, but we came up over this, over this ridge. And, you know, you know, out there, those forests, they're so, so,

dense. And, you know, sometimes you can't see, but four feet in front of you and broad daylight. And then sometimes at night you get lucky and you can see for a distance. And nothing crazy, but you can just see and you can make out silhouettes and outlines. You know, your eyes adjust. So we come up over this ridge and basically on the other side of the draw, there's something. I thought it was a guy. I'm not going to lie. You know, we thought it was another dude. What struck me as weird was that he, at that point, what I believed, was wearing a gilly suit.

And, you know, a gilly suit, military sniper suit. They're made of the burlap with the strands. And that was, that's kind of my first red flag in that situation was, well, wait, there's no snipers out here. Why is there a guy wearing a gilly suit? I know what these guys are carrying. I was with them, you know, 12 hours ago. I, you know, we all have the same gear and no one has a gilly suit. So that was my first.

But, you know, you kind of, you kind of just put that away because, you know, of course, I don't think I'm hunting saskwops at this point. So we come up, we look, and we see it. And I thought for some reason or just whatever because of night vision, you know, distortions that the terrain was maybe playing a trick on me because I also noticed this is a big guy. I immediately, my immediate thought was seven and a half feet tall. And that's when I said, okay, so that's not right. That can't be right. You know, okay, this is the terrain, it's the distance, it's night vision. But there's things you can look at to gauge. You know, you can look at a tree

and kind of figure out like how big that tree is compared to the tree you're next to and gauge someone's height and, you know, death, it just kept coming back seven and a half feet. I was like, there's no way this, this is a, this is a really tall guy. I don't know anybody in the unit that's this tall. So, you know, that's my, that's my next red flag. What the hell? So again, you're still, you're still not thinking that this is anything other than another person. And we push up.

So we come down, down through the other side, through the draw. And the whole time, this thing is. is just backing off and it's staying just far enough, just far enough out of sight that we can't, you can't get a real read on what it was. But we knew it was there, you know, there's five of us. We knew it was there. Everyone saw it. There's no disagreement that there was something.

So we're running up. And at this point, we're kind of confused. Everyone's starting to scratch their head because why aren't we getting lit up? That's the whole point of this exercise is to engage the judge. other and why is there one person to almost seemingly like just observe it and that you know that was weird but again you know you think to yourself you know we used a tactics like that in Afghanistan in the Middle East we would use a scout to lure out you know the enemy to come and find us and that's how we would grab them so you know in your head you're still you're still just not

thinking that that's what's going on well at this point we've we've we've we've We've been kind of playing tag with this thing for, you know, two or three hours. You know, we would see it. We'd push up. You know, when I say push up, we would go forward. We would try and engage and it would, it would just retreat. And it was like, and it would retreat just far enough that we couldn't see it from, you know, a few meters. And then we, you know, like I said, we would crest another switchback or come back across another little hill or something.

or there'd be an opening in those forests and you would and there it was but you still you couldn't see anything you could just see an outline and it was huge you know i mean at least four feet shoulder to shoulder and it it i mean even right now i'm still having like trouble like trying to say like how how big the swing was it's big and then it stood up up and I realized that the whole time, every time we had come up on it, it had been crouching. And when that thing stood up, it was a minimum of nine feet tall, a minimum. And it stood up and all what I can imagine looked directly at us. Again, you know, we're not close enough.

I don't see face. I didn't get me eye glare or anything like that. No glowing eyes. I've heard that in some people. You know, nothing like that. It's far enough. It's also pitch black. We don't have any light.

So there's nothing really to, you know, get in the eye shine. And it takes off. But I've hunted people. I hunted people for years in the military. Again, that doesn't sound right. But you know what I mean. You know, people hunt animals. You know how I know how a person runs, even now.

I know now better than I knew that. It didn't move like a person. It was such a smooth locomotion. There was no, you know, there was no, you know, when a person runs and their whole body moves, there was none of that. None of that. And I could see, I could see it moving. So I could see what I believed were its legs moving. But it wasn't like a, I don't know, it was almost like a, like a jaunt.

not a run, not a jog, but like a walk. And it was silent. I mean, silent. And when you're out there, you can hear a, you know, you can hear a bird fart out there at night in those places. And it was, I mean, dead silent. Dead silent. We all kind of just looked at each other.

And, you know, what the, you know, what the hell? And I think that we just chalked it up to being up for maybe two or three days. And, you know, we used to have a saying, you know, talking to the wizard or seeing the wizard. And I think that we kind of just convinced each other at that point, okay, you know, like, let's just do what we got to do. Let's process this later. You know, we'll talk about it once we can. So, you know, we continue through the exercise and, you know, we get back and we finish the exercise and we start to talk to leadership. And, you know, that's always after action reports.

There's always, we do what we call peer reviews. And, you know, everyone kind of sits down in a room and, you know, we go over the good, the bad, the ugly. It's, you know, what did you do wrong? What did I do wrong? How did we fix it? How do we do better? And, you know, we kind of got dinged on the amount of time it took us to find the objective. And, you know, partially the reasoning for that was we were, you know, chasing the wizard, chasing something off into the woods that wasn't the enemy. It wasn't our objective. one of the senior leaders he came over and he said you know what what happened what were you guys doing and you know we didn't we didn't want to say anything but you know he got it out of us he's like hey like you guys what happened so we we told him our story he looked us dead now and he said you're not the

first time it's not the first time i've heard this but my advice to you is if you want to stay in the military that you forget what you saw and you never talk about you're not you're not about it until no one knows that you were here. He said, that's my best advice for you, for your career. He said, you just don't want to get discharged for being crazy. Yeah, that seems to be the response from the higher, the higher ups. You know, even pilots that see UFOs, it's like, you don't report it. You never saw it.

When you guys were out there and you first noticed a creature, what was it doing? Was it just observing you guys? Yeah, I just feel like it was watching us or just checking us out. You know, we were out probably out farther than anyone else was at that point. Yeah, and it wasn't just you, Brian. I mean, you were there with four or five guys. Did you ever talk with the guys afterwards? I mean, did the conversation ever come up?

You know, it's 2005. Did you guys go, was that a freaking Bigfoot? Oh, of course. You know, it came up 100 million times in bars. and, you know, in helicopters, you know, a 12-hour helicopter rides. I just think that, you know, I know that two guys are,

two guys are for sure still in, so I know they're not going to talk about it. And then the other two guys, you know, I haven't really talked to them in years, but the last time that we spent time together was probably three or four years ago at one of the reunion reunions. And we've brought,

it up. And it was like, hey, do you remember that? I think everyone kind of was just like, oh, yeah, you know, like seeing the wizard, seeing the wizard. Crazy stuff, crazy stuff. But, you know, we didn't hunt nothing. You know, like, I wasn't tracking nothing. I didn't see, you know, five of us didn't hallucinate the same nothing. There's so much that happens on these bases. I think the general public will be shocked how many current and former soldiers have seen these things running around on the base. I wanted to ask you, I know you can only speculate and I can only speculate, but anyone can walk on a military base or military reservation, however you want to word it, like Fort Lewis.

You can walk on there. I don't recommend it, but you can. And they find you, they're going to escort you off very quickly. And second time, they may not be quite as nice as they might be the first time if you do it again. And what's strange is these things are running around on the base. And the answer you get from the leadership is the same every time. Just keep your mouth shut. You didn't see a thing. Why do you think that is? I think that there's, there has to be knowledge. If I, if a senior, and when I said senior leader who I spoke to, you know, I mean, at that point, I was a,

I was a nothing, you know, I was an E3. Nobody. And, you know, so senior to me was the 27-year-old, you know, Sergeant First Class. You know, and that's a 27-year-old guy who's been around for a while who's heard this story. So if there's, you know, guys who've been career officers at these bases, they've heard the story. Why they don't acknowledge it? I don't know. You know, I can only speculate. But I would say that it probably has something to do with if the military can't keep its own basis secure, then what else is it incapable to secure? Yeah, that's a good point. You know, every government, U.S., UK, all every government around the world is power hungry. And the one thing you don't want to show is that you don't have

any control. And I kind of think that's what the UFOs in the skies are the reason why, because, you know, the U.S., for example, they're not going to tell people, well, we don't know what the hell is going on in the skies. We can't shoot them down. We can't, you know, there's really no protection. And I kind of think the same thing with Sasquatch. I often wonder sometimes if even the government's like, we can't control these things. And I had a high-ranking, well, when he retired, he was a colonel. And he was telling me about an encounter he had for Lewis back in the 80s.

And what was strange is he actually did report it. And when he went to report it, he went to an Air Force guy to report it, which made no sense because he wasn't in the Air Force. But he goes to an Air Force guy. And basically what the guy told him, almost word for word, is what the guy in charge in your situation said. Almost word for word said the exact same thing. Exactly. I mean, but that's the situation in the military. You know, they can say that to you about anything.

You know, anything. They can say, if you want a career, keep your mouth shut. They own you. So what are you going to do? You know, I was in love with what I was doing at that point in my life. So, you know, I definitely didn't want to lose it. And, you know, I was in a pretty, pretty prestigious unit. So it was, you know, it was a coveted position to have, you know.

And so we didn't want to mess it up. We were just kids. Yeah. No, I get it, man. And the same reason, like I said, the same reason pilots don't report UFOs because, you know, you don't want to lose your gig. I get completely where you're coming from. I really enjoy encounters that happen on military bases because it's always the same thing. You guys are kind of doing training, war games.

I don't say war games in a derogatory way, but you know what I mean. And you guys are out there with blanks. It's like, and then they run in, you know, these soldiers run into these creatures on these bases. And it's like, what are you going to do? I mean, you have blanks. And like the way that thing moved, it could have been on us in a heartbeat. And I don't think there's anything any of us could have done to stop it. And we weren't little guys.

You know, I'm 6'4. I was a big dude back then. And there's nothing I could have done to stop that thing. Yeah, thank God it wasn't aggressive. It was kind of retreating from you guys. Let me ask you, Brian. I ask everyone on the show, and there's no wrong. answer because no one knows.

But what do you think Sasquatch is? A part of me says it's physical. I don't think that it's supernatural in origin. I think that the world is big enough that there are things that we still don't know.

Like I told you, we were in places that like, you know, that touch areas that humans just haven't gone. You know, you take a, you take a three-hour helicopter ride just any direction at Yakima, and you're in the middle of nowhere. And you, you can't guarantee you that humans have been in any of those places.

So there, so what's to say there's not something out there that we just don't know about? No one's ever proven it to be not real to me now. I have more, you know, I have more proof in my eyes that it is. is real, then it's not. Yeah, I get it. And that's a fair answer. You know, a lot of times people go, well, it's a non-human primate we just haven't cut up with. And I don't know how much I buy into that, but I love that answer.

And I want that person to be right. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. I don't want it to be like, you know, something malicious. But I also didn't feel that it was malicious. You know, nothing about it was aggressive. creepy for sure but not not aggressive

but I heard of aggressive encounters you know I know some guys that have an interesting story from the Middle East about one that was aggressive but you know again I wasn't there so I can't verify whether any of it really happened but the story was interesting but that's not that's not what I felt

I just you know not curiosity but maybe just what are you doing I get it completely usually on a military basis for whatever reason, they're really not aggressive. It's more of that watching and observing type behavior. Would you want to see another one again? I think my answer is yes, if for no other reason, then to make myself believe that I didn't hallucinate something or that, you know, the five of us didn't hallucinate something.

Yeah, that's a very common reaction. common feeling a lot of eyewitnesses have, especially after an encounter. What you'll find most of them will say is, if it wasn't aggressive anyway, they'll say, yeah, I'd like to see one again, just so I could, you know, there's that doubt even after you see it of like, God, did I just have a stroke? Am I losing it? And what you guys saw, you know, you're talking seven and a half feet, squatted down, and then it stands up and it's over nine feet tall. and I've said this before in the past, you know, your average home, the ceilings are about eight feet up, just on your average normal home.

And you're talking another foot and a half above that as far as what you're seeing. And it's huge. It's hard to really, you know, people always ask, why don't you take a picture? Why do you shoot it? Why do you do this? It's easy to do that from the sidelines and make those comments. But when you're in the moment, your first reaction is shock. You know, you don't really know where to place what you're in.

place what you're seeing. Nothing makes sense. I've never seen anything like it or since. Never. And it's just, it just almost doesn't compute sometimes. You know, I can,

if I close my eyes, I can, I can picture the silhouette and the outline, but it's still, it's just like it doesn't make, it's fleeting, you know what I mean? Like,

it's just, it's almost like my brain is like, come on, man, you didn't really see that. but I saw it. It was there. There's no question in my mind. I would definitely,

definitely want to see one. And maybe, you know, maybe not in the middle of the woods where nobody can come help me with not any bullets. So that thing was huge. And I, you know,

I've heard you ask people, you know, like you just said, why didn't you shoot it? What the hell would a bullet have done to that thing? There was nothing that I had. That even if I had live ammunition, There's nothing that we had that would have stopped that thing before it took out at least one of us. There's nothing we could have done.

I mean, it would have gone very, very bad. Yeah, a lot of things can go south when he started engaging with these things. And, you know, I couldn't agree more. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and share what happened to you. And thank you so much for your service to the country. Yeah, no problem. you. Next up on the show, I want to welcome. John, John, thanks for coming on. No problem. Yeah, man, and I'm excited to have you on. I know your encounter took place in

2017 in Pikeville, Kentucky. It's near the West Virginia border. If you would, just start from the very beginning. What were you doing? And what happened? Well, I was trying to get back in shape because for several years I had developed a seizure disorder being in the mountains and being an avid hiker in the past I really wanted to get back into it also I wanted to go up into the hills and pray anyways I had decided the day before that I was going to get up early and hike up this mountain watch the sun come up and pray. And anyway, so the apartment complex

I was staying at was an old abandoned coal mine that had been shut down in the 1950s. And so they had taken out all the mining equipment and everything and built these really nice

complexes. But they left the old coal road and the coal road went up around the complex. and on the other side of this mountain is an interstate highway going to West Virginia. Anyway, so I'm hiking up there and it's pitch blackout. And I got about, it started when I got about 200 feet up this road. And now I can look back and I can see the complex.

Clear as day, the farm lamps are going. So it's pretty illuminated down there. Anyway, so I get 200 feet. First thing that happens is I start hearing a big bird, a really, really big, loud bird. And I can't mimic it by sound bites that I've heard of people recording these things is almost spot on, you know. I mean, it really sounds like an 800 plus pound bird.

And it really disturbed me because this noise is like 10 feet or so from me up into the thicket on this going up the hill. And looking down at me, I can't see anything. So I just kept going. And it just got more and more assistant. And what really disturbed me is the pace that it kept with me. It kept perfect pace with me. Yet I'm not hearing anything trudging alongside this mountain going up. There's no leaves, no stomping, any of that.

Anyway, so as I continue, this bird whistling continued, then pebbles started chucking at me and landing perfectly in front of me every single time. Nothing actually hit me. That's when I stopped, and I'm starting to get nervous because, you know, I've heard the stories

of the pebble throwing and that, and I thought, well, you know, you know, this can't be happening. This, you know, come on. What are the odds? So I continue and just ignoring it for a while Until I don't know It had to have been a half pound rock

Just whirled right at my feet And I stopped and I'm okay All right so I picked it up and I chucked it back at it Not thinking and I yelled You know is anybody there Are you messing with me? You know you never know who's up in the hills and nothing.

The bird whistling just got even more aggressive sounding and almost agitated sounding. I don't know. I was insistent because, you know, I don't want to be in my mind paranoid or anything. And so I continued up. And the pebble throwing continued, the whistling continued.

And looking back at it, I probably should have turned around. I probably should have. It's not that I, you know, ever disbelieved, which isn't even a good word for this, but I'm discounted the reality or the potential of these preachers existing. But it was one of those things.

Number one, I wanted to hide. And number two, I mean, what are the odds? That's why I just got to ask myself, what would the odds be? So I continue up and I got about 400 feet up. Up there, it comes to a bend and you go another 200 so feet up. And the pebble throwing got more aggressive as I'm going up there. But then when it first started freaking me out, I hear, so the bird sound is happening right at my side.

And then it's happening about 50 feet ahead. and then it's happening 25 feet in between and then there's several of them going and pebbles are being thrown from all that direction I don't know what it was but something overcame me when I came to that bed do not go on that bed and I stopped and I took a knee and I'm thinking about it

And I realized something is pushing me along into an ambush. That's how I felt. Because it really dawned on me that there are several things watching me. Very scrutinizingly, my adrenaline started to spike. And so I started to pray out loud because at this point, If I had tried to book it, there's no way. If these were a coyote situation or a bear, oh, I'd be, they would get me. You know, it's a long run down there.

And so I slowly started to walk backwards. And you can only do that so far without falling back and killing yourself. So I'm trying to do it kind of halfway, so my back isn't completely turned to whatever this is. As I'm going down, a big stick, I mean a really big stick, curled right onto the coal road. What weirded me out is that it was thrown from the thicket,

but yet it landed perfectly pointing at me. I don't know if that's just a coincidence, but it was, it's just odd is what it was. As I'm going down the sun, I'm starting to see peeking the horizon, peeking out. And for some reason, thank God that's happening. But I was hoping that maybe it would illuminate what's happening and make it stop, maybe make it stop. But then the pebbles start hurling again at peace with me. And then I start hearing real trudging happening. Real aggressive trudging.

I mean, this man was like a freight train coming down into that holler. And I thought, oh, God, in heaven. These, whatever it is, they're just going to jump out onto this coal road and drag me into these woods. And so I tried to pick up pace without running. And the chirping, the whistling, the rock throwing, I mean, it just got ever more intense. And finally, when I make it down, I'd say 100 feet,

I just said to hell with it, and I ran. I don't know what it was, but something just told me, run. Run with everything you have. And as soon as I made it underneath that barn light and slid, I grabbed a hold of that light post and whirled myself around it. And there's nothing. I surely thought I was going to see something.

There was absolutely nothing. But I could hear all the trudging and rustling and whistling and whistling still over there. And finally, I back up more and more and more. and whatever these were went from being at that 100 foot level to within just not even 10 seconds at 200 feet and then 300 feet and I could just hear them going all the way up that hill the speed that which they maneuvered no person can do that I mean, there's no way that some redneck is going to be able to do that, even growing up in those hollers. Yeah, and that's what I was trying to tell people, just because you see one, it's never alone. I mean, most of the time, they're never alone, not always, but you know what I mean?

I think they travel around. If there's one, there's probably two or three nearby. What's strange, though, is none of the pebbles, none of the log, nothing actually hit you as you were leaving or going up? No. And that's what shocked me. That really surprised me the accuracy. Always, I would say, six inches from between my feet is where these things were landing.

And I don't understand that. I don't understand the logic behind it. And how, how they can be that accurate through the thicket, you know? I know this is in 2017. What did you think was going on now that you're back at the apartment? You're away from this situation. Kind of what do you do next? Honestly, you know, I went right online trying to figure out what it was, trying to rationalize it.

In the end, you know, I just, again, I didn't want to say what I thought it was. You know, I didn't want to say this was a Sasquatch. I didn't see anything. Just, you know, a bunch of things just didn't have. up in my mind because whatever these were did not behave like an animal should behave in my mind you know and I mean after that I mean the next day I during in daylight I went up there I went all the way to the top and that's about five 500 or so feet I didn't have anything no weird experiences I took my camera and I'm like you know let's see let's see you know maybe I'll catch something in the

backdrops, you know, just aimlessly taking pictures, you know. I didn't see or experience anything, but what I did get noticed when I got way up there were weird structures, weird, where you had two 15-foot, almost logs that, from Deadwood, that had been put up like, uh, trying to. with a third one as a support. And I'm looking and I saw up there around 14 or 15 of these things. And what I couldn't figure out is how they're holding up, okay, because it gets windy in these hills.

And I couldn't figure out. So I poked one with a stick, seeing if it would just fall over. Wouldn't fall over. I mean, it would, I really would have had to. And then I noticed that, The center one had been jammed into the earth. I mean, literally just plunged into the ground. The one I found, and this one really weirded me out.

And this one was way up in the woods. But this one was a small tree that had been uprooted. And the roots were still intact, almost in the same pattern. I never saw what I thought was a shelter or anything, but in the other thing I saw constantly were tree breaks, and they were all aiming toward the complex. I didn't mess with any of it, never took, tried to take any of it down.

And then late March, going into April, I would go out of the complex, the smoke, and I'm standing in the parking lot and pebbles started being tossed. Again, right at my feet, I would hear the bird whistling on occasion. And so, you know, since I'm so close to my apartment, I threw them back. And it would just continue on and on. But the whistling never got aggressive like it had that night, that morning. But the thing that with the parking lot that really weirded me out

was when I tossed up, it had something that's thrown this really big one one evening. And when I threw it back, the bird whistling happened. I mean, it's kind of like a jagged, you know, hillside, you know, where they had stripped, you know, for mining. And so it's about 15 feet of rock. until you have actual earth, right at the tree line of that, that whistling just erupted very aggressively. I'm looking, I walked right up to it,

which I'm looking back is stupid, but I'm trying to see because I'm like, am I crazy? I can't see anything, and I shined a flashlight right on there, and there's nothing. But I go back to where I had been by my car, And I hear trudging. And this thing moved, again, within just a matter of seconds, it's at 200 feet, and it's just going going.

I can see the trees and saplings shaking. But the one night, and this was April, I had another priest, we had dinner together, and then we went out to this picnic area, the smoke. and we're just, you know, talking about theology and our work. And, well, it was getting cold. And so we decided to go back. And this is just a big open area. We're not in the woods.

We're in illumination from those farm lights. And as we're going, we feel this boom, boom, boom, like something's stomping. And I nearly fell over. And he almost fell over from it. And there is this god-awful scream-slash-howl. The only thing I can compare it to in my mind is like a bear mixed with a wolf with a witch and a lion.

I mean, I could feel the vibration. in my, I could just feel it in my organs. And being an epileptic, I got disorientated from it. I'm very sensitive to pitches and things, I can't go to concerts, and this disorientated me, but I leaped, I'm telling you, there's nothing even around me, I'm in the open, and I leaked four feet in the air, screaming,

just with, I lost all control, I just started screaming. He lost it and started screaming. So you have two priests in their cassocks running back through this open area like their dresses and jumping onto a picnic table. Screaming like women, worse than women. And I don't know what over came to, right, at this table was a broom, and I just swept this broom into my hand. with the bristles outward, like a spear.

I don't know what I was going to do with it. But I think it was just spontaneous reaction and pure fear. And we're standing there on top of these tables looking. Where is it? Where is it? We can't see anything. Everyone's in bed. It's a work night, you know.

And we also don't want to be as odd as the sound. we didn't want to wake up the entire complex. At first, you know, we're trying to rationalize this because we actually were dealing with our church work with an exorcism case. So for a moment, we thought, you know, is this spiritual, you know, is this a demonic manifestation? and so we lit up, you know, another cigarette

and we're contemplating this, calming ourselves down. And finally, I just said, you know what, let's go back. We go back at the roar started again. We looked at each other, and I said, Patrick, this is no demons. This is an animal.

So we're looking, and we still cannot see. it though. But here and there we felt these stomps. I mean, we literally can feel the vibration into the earth and into our bodies. And there's absolutely nothing. I'm like, my God, we own guns, but they're in the apartment. And whatever this is, we tried six, eight times that night to get back into the apartment. It would not let us. How far away is the apartment from the picnic tables where you guys are at? That was in plus feet.

And when you say it wouldn't let you leave, was it just the roaring and the vocalizations would take off or, you know, would explode the moment you guys would try and leave? Every time that, oh yeah, every time we try to make it, just very gradual, like, trying to get back to the complex, it would start screaming. And we were convinced that whatever this was was going to attack us. We're terrified that we were going to get mauled by it. And so literally we were out there from 1145 at night until 6 in the morning. And freezing. I mean, it got down to about 38 degrees that night. And it wouldn't let us near our cars.

It wouldn't let us near the apartment building. And so literally we're just sitting, standing out at this picnic table, literally all night smoking, scared to death. We just waited out. And what's weird, as soon as the sun came up to where everything, you know, is lit by the sun, right? We hear this crash through the trees behind the landlord's house. and we see the trees swaying and moving. Again, you know, it just jumped, you know, a couple hundred feet, you know, in a matter of seconds. And but what really disturbs us, again, at the base of that hill is about 15 feet of rock.

So whatever this was, was able to leap up there past 15 feet of rock. And I cannot, I don't know if it's like, you know, kind of spider-band it or what it did, but no person can do that. And it dumb found us. And we went over behind the landlord's house looking. And he, his wife came out in her nightgown robe. And she said, what are you doing? And we told her.

And she yelled at her husband that. you know, honey, these priests just dealt with, you know, the wild people all night. And I said, uh-huh, of the wild people. And she said, you know, the Bigfoot's. So then she tells us that once in a while that she would leave out a blackberry cobbler and things on occasion when they would get really restless and acting up, or as she put it acting a fool up there, she'd take their four-wheeler up into the hill

and she'd leave a pie or a cobbler or something and that they would calm down. Now the thing, now that was a bad night. We were scared to death because we didn't know. And here you heard grunting and snorting, like an angry bowl. But for some reason, this will sound weird, but based off of the voice, it really, I think it was a female.

That sounds odd in my mind based off of its behavior. But there was this feminine quality to it that really made us think of like, you know, you're like the wicked witch or the West. Yeah, I get what you mean. I totally get that. And I've heard that tone before where in your mind, you're like, that sounds like a female. even though, I mean, in my mind, that's aggressive as hell as far as you guys being out there and just smoking and not even being up in the wooded area.

I realize the wooded area isn't far from there. When it crashed, as a sun was coming up, did you guys ever see anything or was it mainly just the trees moving? Just the trees, just the trees in the bushes. And that weirded us out because whatever this is had to be huge. It had to be. And I'm telling you, I have participated in exorcisms. I have seen crazy things. And this scared me the death.

I've never been more scared in my life. Pure helplessness. I hear a lot of people say that they have a sense of evil. I didn't sense evil. I just sensed that this was a pure predator. and not saying I was the prey, I feel like for some reason, our presence agitated it.

It did not like us. Because I asked neighbors, have you had anything, you know, chasing you around here at night? No. No. And for some reason,

I feel like it targeted me. And the only thing I can think of is going up there that morning. Yeah, that could have been what set the thing off. It's weird that the neighbors, you know, they already knew about it. She's feeding them. I'm curious, how long did you live at this place after this incident?

Till June. Till June. And fortunately, my work was completed and they asked, do you want to stay? Nope. I want to send me somewhere else and I went to Louisville. Yeah, I don't blame me. I would have loved to. Thank God your mission work was.

done, you didn't have to stay there any longer. Why do you think these creatures didn't harm you that, that first night that you were going up there? I don't know. It really bothers me. I don't understand what did I did wrong. I mean, if this were a bear or something, I could figure out what I did, you know? Yeah, their behavior in this situation, and again, this is my opinion.

I, you know, I don't know one way or another. But if I were to guess, they were trying to prevent you from going up into that area. And as you were leaving, they were making sure you were still, that's why it was still aggressive as you were leaving. They just wanted you out of the area. That's what I think happened. Let me ask you, John, after this experience, I ask everyone on the show, what do you think Sasquatch is? And obviously, there's no wrong answer. But what are your thoughts?

What do you think Sasquatch is? Well, it's been I've had a lot to think about with this I honestly I think it's an animal I want to lean for some reason toward a more paranormal stance I'm not close to it because there are things that don't make sense

that animals do not do they're not capable to our knowledge of doing unless we you know go into spiritualism of some kind. But as a priest, we're taught to look at things with a duality. Everything is both physical as well as spiritual. And I definitely believe there is some type of spiritual,

something or other going on with it. I don't know what it is. Yeah, your struggle is my struggle, John. I mean, they do, they have an appearance of an animal. They act like an animal. animal, but then at times they don't act like animals. And then all the weird stuff that goes on. And what a terrifying night you had out there, a terrifying couple nights out there.

And I'm glad you're not in that position anymore. And I really want to thank you for taking the time to come on. Oh, you're welcome. And that's it for tonight. Everyone, remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is Wes at Sasquatch Chronicles.com. And if you get a chance to check out Sasquatch Chronicles. Watch Chronicles.com, you can become a member and get additional shows. Until next time, everyone.