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[Music] I'm very new to Reddit, but I figured I'd give this group a shot. Earlier this year, in early November, my family and I went to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The whole trip was great, and we had a wonderful time up until the last night. We stayed in two cabins. The first one was in a more rural location, surrounded by other cabins. The second one was located further east in the mountains, and it seemed more like a house that was remodeled to, you know, resemble a cabin. It had a narrow dirt road and was on a steep incline. Anyway, the night had been going great. We had dinner together, played games, and settled down for our last night together. Me and my girlfriend were sharing a room that was located on the right side of the house, closer to the woods. My brother and his girlfriend were in the room next to us, closer to the kitchen. My girlfriend and I had a little trouble sleeping at first, but we eventually passed out at around 11:00.
And before I continue, let me explain the room's layout. The room was small; it had two windows, one on the back wall and one on the right side of the room. The bed was directly in the middle, with the head of the bed against the back window. My girlfriend wakes up at around 1:30 to the noise of a faint, as she described it, humming. She had woken me up shortly after it started, and that's when I started to hear it too. At first, it was barely noticeable, but as we raised our voices, the hums grew louder. They were deep, and we would hear them at about every 4 seconds. It couldn't have been a TV, as all of them had been turned off before bed, and at this point, everyone in the house was asleep. At first, we were just joking around, thinking it was an owl or some cute animal, until my girlfriend got up from the bed and turned toward the window right behind us. Before she had opened the blinds, I was hit with this sudden feeling of dread. It felt like, no matter what, I could not let her look out that window. I quickly grabbed her arm and told her not to look. The hair on my arms began to rise, and for some reason, I started to tear up. This doesn't normally happen to me, and she immediately asked what was wrong, and all I could manage to get out was that something was wrong. She instantly became serious, and we both sat there listening as the hums grew louder and closer. We both sat there quietly, just silently hoping that whatever it was would just go away. And eventually, it did.
After around 15 minutes of sitting there in silence, the hums had gotten quieter and quieter until they stopped. No longer being able to sleep, we began to try looking up what it could be. We looked up all the nearby animals and the noises they make to hopefully find a match, but we were unsuccessful. At this point, it's been over an hour since we last heard it, and we began to get tired. My girlfriend turned to her side and said she was going to try to sleep, and I told her that I'll head to bed shortly. While I was tired from the long day, I couldn't help but think about what was causing that noise. So to get my mind off of it, I watched some videos on my phone. As I turned over to lie down, my phone slipped off the bed and landed on the wood floor. Hearing it hit the floor, my chest tightened. My girlfriend, being alerted to the sound, turned over and looked at me. I didn't move a muscle. We sat in silence as we listened to that faint hum start up again, and this time we heard it get louder, like much louder. It felt like it was right outside the window. Most of the time after that was just spent in silence as we heard the hums echo nearby. It felt like the loud noise had attracted it back to the cabin; it had moved some way off and had gotten quieter, but you could still hear that it was nearby. At this point, it's around 2:50 to maybe 3:00 a.m. Not knowing what to do, we just lay there and tried our best to ignore it and close our eyes. We passed out after that, not waking up again until 8:00 a.m.
I tried to explain it to the rest of my family, and even my brother, who's normally all about this kind of thing, but everyone just blew me off, saying I was hearing things or it was just an animal of sorts. When I tell you that I have never experienced anything like this before, I mean it. The fear that I had felt was almost unreal, and I know this whole thing feels made up, but I swear it's not. Me and my girlfriend know what we heard and what we felt. We don't even bother telling anyone about it anymore because they never believe us; they all just say the same exact thing. I just needed to get this off my chest and hopefully someone could help, maybe explain what that sound was or if they had experienced anything like it before. Thanks for allowing me to share my experience. Can anyone think of a wild animal in the United States, the Pacific Northwest specifically, that could repeatedly scream for help in a distressed, deep, middle-aged man's voice—one that is obviously not a human?
Well, anyway, backstory: I live in the Pacific Northwest in a fairly populated but still mountainous town. I specifically live on about 425 ft of riverfront. Last night, around 9:30 p.m., myself and my partner started hearing an initially distant, indistinguishable voice screaming in a state of panic and distress. We live near a popular trailhead, and a few times over the years, people have somehow wandered down our road late at night—sometimes inebriated, sometimes in small groups, sometimes transient. So when we started to hear an erratic voice, we got up and we started initially checking the parameters of our house and the road. There was absolutely nobody out there. However, over the next couple of minutes, the voice got louder and louder and closer, and it was screaming at the top of its lungs for "help." I quote "help" because it was a little difficult to make out, but it did sound like a not fully enunciated "help." However, whatever it was was clearly in extreme distress, screaming for its life—I mean, yelling—but we could only make out the "help," like "help" with a soft P, if that makes sense. But the word sounded the same every time; there was no variance or other sounds with it, just the word "help" back to back in the most distressed voice I've ever heard. With how quickly the screams were approaching and with a weird echo to them, we quickly realized whatever was screaming for help was actually coming from the river, actively being pulled down the river current. Our river is wide, fast-moving, and dangerous this time of year. There was no other way for a sound to be approaching so rapidly and from the location unless they were in the river. We see and hear a lot of kayakers and know how their voices travel down there. For about 3 minutes, we heard what seemed like a distant cry for help growing louder until it sounded just like a few feet away, then slowly fading until the screaming was no longer audible. Again, this sounds like a deep, middle-aged man's voice, and the screams are approximately 2 to 3 seconds apart, just back to back.
At first, we tried to convince ourselves it was an animal. We do see a lot of wildlife here; elk practically live on our property, and we see bears and wild cats constantly. We initially thought a young elk fell into the river, but no. We Googled just about every animal distress call, every scream, fight sound, etc., and nothing even comes close to this. I've always heard that coyotes can scream like people, but not sound like an older man. I've heard bears can yell deep; however, they have no definition to their calls, and elk are way more high-pitched, and the same for all of our local wild cats. Even the birds of prey and ravens that can mimic sounds can't sound like this voice. Dead initially, I called the non-emergency line because I wanted to convince myself it was an animal; however, they quickly patched me over to 911 and said I was the third call for the same thing. So apparently, the voice was strange and concerning enough that even my more wilderness-raised and savvy neighbors were concerned, and the police department took it very seriously. Then the more I thought about it, I started to think that if I were in a freezing river fighting for my life, screaming for help, I might not yell as clearly as possible due to the pure state of panic, distress, and attempt to stay afloat. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure it was a person. 911 sent out two police officers; they were extremely nice, and they took the call seriously, but with just two of them, all they had were flashlights and a chainsaw. They kind of just walked down to a few spots at the river and looked around. When our city has genuine suspicion of a person in the river or a lost hiker, they send search and rescue and a helicopter. For some reason, this time they didn't. I told my partner I wouldn't be surprised the next morning when it's daylight if someone finds a body at the river spot, but it's getting later in the morning, and I've kept my eye on the police scanner and the local social media pages, and I haven't seen anything. And now I'm back to really hoping it was a wild animal. So tell me, does anyone know of a wild animal that could sound like that? What are the chances, if this was a human man, that he pulled himself out of somewhere down the line and got help? Or do we think it's just a matter of time until someone reports him missing or that we find a body down the river?
Update one: Within the last 15 minutes, a helicopter has begun tracing up and down the river and circling at an area a ways past my house, so I'm feeling a little discouraged that it likely was indeed a human. That being said, I haven't seen anything on any social media, and usually my local police post updates about stuff like this if it was a human, and also the locals usually buzz about things like this on social media, and I'm seeing absolutely nothing posted, so not sure what's going on at the moment.
Update two: This update isn't super informative, but I know people were interested, so I'm back with everything I learned and processed after thinking things over. I am absolutely 100% positive that it was a person, or if not human, cryptid, and not some animal that fell into the river. No animal sounds I could find were deep enough and made well-formed enough sounds constantly back to back that all sounded like "help," even later addressed. A peacock is too abstract; a goat bleats too much and is inconsistent, and it wasn't a bird. I've worked with corvids, and we do have two ravens that live on our property, and this was not them. The sound was in the river, low and traveling with the current, so not where the ravens hung out, and it wasn't their voice. I could recognize a crow and a raven voice, although yes, they can talk and mimic quite well. This was not a corvid. This scream for help was extremely distressing, and it was consistently the same word over and over again. I'm just assuming because they were struggling their screams were a little hard to make out the full enunciation, and I think I got stuck on not trying to overreact, so I might have tried to convince myself it was an animal, but it's very clear to me at this point that it was a human. I called the park rangers, and they hadn't heard anything about someone falling in or search and rescue being utilized, so nobody looked for this person, and obviously nobody was found or recovered. The river I live on is wide and wild; people die almost every year trying to swim before the current dies down in the early summer, so it's quite dangerous. That being said, right after my house there is a bend where the river gets wider and more rocky, but it also has a very flat and fine rock bank strip on each side, so I am hoping someone just fell in and was able to crawl out at the bank right around the corner. I talked to a couple of friends who worked in search and rescue, and they also said, unfortunately, sometimes bodies are pushed down and caught under rocks, especially in wild conditions, so people can go literal years without being discovered. We had no power in the neighborhood; we had just had an extreme storm, and the river was at a crazy high, super dirty, and full of debris from the storm, so obviously it's an awful time to fall in. People were outside enjoying bonfires down by the river and drinking up the road, so maybe the theory about someone being a little drunk and falling in could be correct. I would like to think if the person didn't crawl out that there would be some sort of missing person's report at this point, but there isn't. But again, my friend who works in search and rescue reminded me that a lot of people solo hike in my area, and they can be on their own for weeks at a time, and not everyone has a family who would report them missing. She recounted finding many bodies lodged under rocks and rivers that were not reported that had been there for a while. So again, I don't have an answer, but my mind stopped being restless and felt positive about someone crawling out at the bank around the corner, and maybe they're just being too embarrassed to post publicly about it. I don't know; I'm going with that as it's likely what happened, and that everyone is okay. But I guess I can't say for sure. I think this is all I'll ever know; maybe no news is good news.
Longtime lurker, first-time poster. I haven't been able to stop thinking about this incident, and I wanted to see if it resonates with anyone else.
Me (male, 28), my wife (female, 28), and my dog recently went to the Red River Gorge, a state park in southeast Kentucky. We're no strangers to camping in the park, having been there at least 20 times over the past eight years. So we chose a spot I've been to about two to three times before. It's worth noting that this site is outside other dispersed camping areas and is essentially the only proper spot with car parking along a 2-mile stretch. There's a dilapidated barn about a mile up from where we drove in and a cemetery about a third of a mile in the opposite direction. Otherwise, it's a rarely traveled road, and we saw no one all day, just an occasional car, maybe one or two every hour. This spot is at the base of a 30-ft incline that a 4x4 could handle. Our SUV was parked horizontally at the top, blocking other vehicles from descending from there. It's about 30 yards into the campground with another slope leading to the river's edge and a swimming hole. The day itself went great. We spent time near the beach letting our dogs swim and then did typical camping activities like hiking, foraging, chopping wood, throwing the hatchet, and, you know, enjoying a few beers. Once sunlight began to fade around 6:30, we started a fire and began cooking dinner. As darkness fell and the last light disappeared, we heard the usual sounds—squirrels rustling, things falling into the leaves, which spooked my wife a bit, but we didn't think much of it. Then, at about 9:00 p.m., sitting around the healthy fire and listening to music, we heard heavy shuffling in the leaves—definitely something large or heavy. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the road, about halfway between us and our car. I stopped the music, and after about 10 seconds of dead silence, we heard the shuffling again. Before I could call out, we heard the strange and unnatural noise—something like a throttling, ascending pitch mixed with a shriek. Neither of us can verbally describe it, and I can confidently say I've never heard anything like it before. It's about 20 to 25 ft away, just outside the reach of my headlamp, and our dog went insane—hair standing on end and barking incessantly into the darkness. He was on a long lead, or I'm sure he would have taken off after it. My wife and I were frozen; I was holding my hatchet and trying to catch any movement or sound. After about 2 to 3 minutes of that with no further noises, I calmed the dog; we grabbed some essentials, and we hurried to the car. Our adrenaline was pumping as we discussed coyotes, foxes, or other animals as the possible culprits. I didn't even want to mention the possibility of people, as that would have just heightened the paranoia. We eventually passed out after about an hour, but I spent the rest of the night in and out of shallow sleep, feeling very uncomfortable both mentally and physically. I've always struggled to sleep anyway, except when I'm fully horizontal. But around 3:00 a.m., right next to my head, I heard a singular knock on my window, like someone tapped the glass with one knuckle. My wife didn't wake up, and I scanned the outside of the car, but I didn't see or hear anything. I struggled to doze off again, and my heartbeat was rapid. When we finally got the first light around 7:00 a.m., we cooked breakfast, packed up our campsite, and got the hell out of Dodge. No prints or anything out of sorts with our remaining belongings either.
What's strange to me is that after hearing the noise, we heard no additional heavy shuffling from the source. With our dog barking so aggressively, we should have heard whatever was moving away. We've looked up various animal noises native to The Gorge, and nothing even remotely resembles what we heard. The knock on the window was also isolated; there were no other noises or visible happenings outside the car immediately following. Lastly, I had a thought the day after we left. I remember whistling for a dog after dark since we had some scraps to give them near the fire. Immediately I thought, "[___] I shouldn't have whistled." But up until this trip, I've never been a believer of those superstitions; I just like to respect the folklore. In hindsight, we're now convinced I may have invited a windigo or a skin walker to our camp. I won't take those superstitions lightly again, and I'm sure this occurrence will affect at least my next few overnights within those woods.
In the late fall of 2010, my dad, mom, sister, uncle, and I decided to try and hike to the Goat Canyon Trestle, located deep in the desert of San Diego County in Southern California, near the Mexico border. The trestle is basically a very tall bridge-like structure made entirely of wooden beams and columns that was built with the railroad in the early 1900s. The railroad is now decommissioned, and the tracks, bridges, and tunnels are all abandoned. There is a lot of good and interesting information about the trestle online if you're interested; it is allegedly one of the tallest freestanding wooden structures in the world, I believe. Now there is a lot more information on how to hike out to the trestle online, but back in 2010, there was very limited information about it, and you really had to search deep to get information on where to start and what route to take. My uncle was super into these remote abandoned locations at the time, and it was his hobby to research and plan out how to get to them. There was no dedicated trail at that time to the trestle—I'm not even sure if there's one today—and you had to more or less make your own path across the rocky desert hills. I was a sophomore in college at the time, and we all decided it would be best to do the hike over Thanksgiving weekend, when me and my sister would be in town for the holiday and it would be cool enough temperatures to attempt.
When we got to the location where we parked our car, it was pretty barren and out in the middle of nowhere, with desert all around. My uncle told us we would have to hike up into the hills ahead of us and then down the other side through a canyon that led to the trestle. It's this canyon that the trestle traverses. The hike started off without incident, but the lack of a dedicated trail soon made it difficult. The terrain was very rocky, with loose, light rocks that were lined with sand and made you slip and fall easily. Within the first few hours, I had fallen and scraped my knees and hands several times. It was a lot of scrambling over rock to get up into the hills, and it took us much longer and a lot more effort than we expected. We probably started to hike around 9:00 or 10:00 a.m., and by the time we reached the top of the hills, it was already midafternoon, and we still had the descent down the canyon on the other side, the trestle, and then walk all the way back to the car. Recall that it was around Thanksgiving time, so the sun would set around 5:00 p.m. My mom and dad were naturally worried that we didn't have enough daylight to make it to the trestle and back and thought that we should start heading back to the car. But my uncle really wanted to see at least the trestle from the top of the canyon and said he would go on ahead alone while we went back. Being the young, invincible-minded male I was at the time, I convinced my parents to let me go with my uncle. My uncle and I were much faster hikers than my parents and sister, and we were sure we could make it to the trestle and back with enough light. We parted ways, and my uncle and I continued into the hills towards the canyon. This is where things started getting very strange.
I want to take a moment to explain a little about the area for those who might not be familiar. As I said above, the trestle was located relatively close to the Mexico border, with the abandoned tracks running between Yuma, Arizona, and San Diego, California, more or less paralleling the Mexican border. This area, at that time, was well known to be a very active route for illegal immigrants crossing into the United States from Mexico. There were stories online that my uncle found that said that people would hide in the abandoned train tunnels to escape the border patrol officers during the day and would then walk the abandoned tracks at night. Border Patrol was also very active in the area at the time. It was also a hot spot for coyotes or mules—not the animals, but individuals who would help escort immigrants into the country and individuals who were transporting illegal drugs. Getting back to the story, my uncle and I continued through the hills in search of the canyon that led down to the trestle. After we had been walking for a while, we came across a small grove of fan palms. If you're not familiar with fan palms, they're basically a shorter and stockier version of a typical palm tree, with a lot of palm fronds arranged down the trunk of the tree such that the actual trunk can't be seen behind all the fronds. The palms in this grove were all relatively short, ranging from 8 to 10 ft tall, and the fronds dropped all the way to the base of the tree. I remembered it was a little creepy coming across the grove in the middle of the hills; it felt like something was behind the thick layer of palm fronds watching us, and I would be lying if I wasn't a bit relieved when we continued past them. Eventually, my uncle and I found the canyon that we thought led down from the hills to the trestle. The canyon was very rugged, with tons of loose rock. You can only imagine how difficult it was trying to go down it, slipping and sliding over rocks the whole way. Once we were about halfway down, the sun was starting to set, and that eerie quietness that comes with sunsets in a desert washed over the canyon. It was also starting to get cold, with the sun dipping below the hills, covering the canyon in shadows. It was around this time that both my uncle and I started seeing things. We both swear we saw my mom at the top of the canyon looking down at us. My uncle joked with me that my mom would never let me go on alone, and so she must have followed us. We continued down the canyon some more, and when we looked back up, there was no one there. We thought maybe she had just walked behind some rocks or something, and we began calling out to her from below, but there was no response. I admit I was a little freaked out then, and I told my uncle that we should start heading back. But my uncle wanted to keep going and insisted.
That we must be close, he was right. Around the next few bends, we saw The Trestle ahead of us. It was very cool to see, but we still had a good way down the canyon to get to the base of it, let alone climb to the top of it, which was our original plan. My uncle, being the crazy adventurous guy he is, insisted we keep going. But as we were heading down further, I stumbled and sprained my ankle very badly and decided that I could not go down any further. My uncle finally agreed and said he would just go alone a little way further to get some pictures, and then we would turn, turn around and head back together.
So there I was, sitting alone in this canyon that was getting darker and darker by the minute, trying to mend my twisted ankle. When I looked back up the canyon to see if my mom was visible again, I didn't see anything initially, but something large moved out of the corner of my eye up the canyon, like it was darting behind a rock. This freaked me out, and I felt a sense of dread wash over me, like I was being watched from every shadow. I remember it was quiet; it all felt unnatural.
A little while longer, my uncle returned, and we began to make our way back up to the canyon. It was very dark at this point, and just a glimmer of sunset was left on the horizon. I was really starting to freak out because I knew we would be walking back in pitch black. When we were almost at the top of the canyon, my uncle, who was walking ahead of me, stopped on his tracks and pointed ahead. It was my mom again, standing at the top of the canyon looking down at us. We both yelled at her, but she didn't respond or even move; she just stared at us. We continued forward, thinking maybe she couldn't hear us, and when we came around the next bend, she was gone again. I was losing it at this point, and I'm not sure what I would have done if my uncle hadn't been there with me.
We eventually made it to the top of the canyon, and it was indeed pitch black. There was no sign of my mom or anyone else; we were utterly alone in the dark desert hills. Luckily, my uncle had a small headlamp that he brought with him, and we used that to start a slow track back through the hills to the car and hopefully to my waiting family. I can't explain to you how dark it felt out there; it felt like I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. The only thing keeping us on somewhat of a path was this small beam of light from my uncle's headlamp. We had no camping or emergency gear—stupid, I know—but we were able to find the small path that we had come by on the way into the canyon, and we began following it back.
After some time, we made it back to the grove of fan palms. I would be lying if I told you I wasn't terrified, seeing those trees in the dark just standing watching over the path like ancient sentinels. I remembered how I felt the first time we encountered the palms and how it felt like something was watching us. I hesitantly followed my uncle through the trees, and as we walked by, there was a loud rustle from one of the trees—much too loud to be just a rodent or a reptile. My uncle swung the headlamp around on the tree, but there was nothing there. A few seconds later, there was more rustling from the tree behind us again. My uncle shined the headlamp at the tree, but it was completely still. It was at this moment that I felt something push me hard away from the palm that I was standing in front of, and I crashed down into the dirt. I remember it felt like something had reached through the fronds and pushed me from behind, but I don't remember hearing any rustling, even though I was so close to the tree. I was utterly freaked now and I started yelling at my uncle that something had pushed me. My uncle went up to the tree with a headlamp and peered deep inside to see if he could see anything, but there was nothing. After that, we quickly made our way out of the grove and continued through the hills back towards the car.
I remember it felt like forever walking through those hills in complete darkness, and every once in a while I would hear rustling behind or to the side of us, but there was no way to know what it was without any light. The whole way, I felt like something was following us, though, trailing just behind us outside the light where we couldn't see it but could feel its presence. Finally, we made it through the hills and were about to traverse back down to the car, and in the distance we see a faint light coming towards us. As we got closer, it was apparent that the light was coming from someone with a flashlight, and me and my uncle were nervous whether this individual was there to help or harm us, given the position we were in. However, we decided to make our way to the light, and thankfully it was a border patrol agent who was actually out looking for us. The agent had come across my family who were waiting for me and my uncle in our car, and my parents told them that we were still out there. The agent then immediately went looking for us. The agent led my uncle and I back to our car, where my terrified mom rushed toward me, giving me a hug and scolding my uncle. We then told my mom that we had seen her at the top of the canyon and asked why she didn't respond to us or wait for us to get to her. I'll never forget that sinking feeling I felt in my stomach when my mom told us that she had never gone any further after she, my dad, and my sister turned back. She said they had been waiting in the car for hours for us to return.
I don't know who or what me and my uncle saw in that canyon or what was inside those fan palms, but I know for certain we were not alone out there that night. Maybe it was all just our minds playing tricks on us, but it's been 14 years now, and I still think about it to this day.
The story I'm sitting down to tell is a true one, one experienced by a faithful friend of mine, Sam, and I. I'm often reluctant to tell this story at length to most people, as the subject matter is unexplainable and rather strange. I don't want to be viewed as the superstitious nut, but having been guided all across the country and having extensive experience in many environments around the United States, I feel I have the authority to tell this story. Essentially, what I'm saying is I've been around in the deep, dark hollows all across North America, and I never experienced something as strange as I did that night. I don't fancify my experiences in the woods, nor do I hopefully imagine there's something more to a twig breaking, as anyone who has spent a good deal of time in the woods knows—there's no reason to. Eventually, you will experience something daring or fantastic. I'm a hunter first and foremost, and to a hunter, there's always an explanation, a reason, to the wilderness and her inhabitants. It's how we identify patterns and exploit an animal's rhythm to make a successful hunt. As a hunter, you're a sort of woodsman detective, piecing together clues to set yourself up for success. Let's just say this tale is a cold case. Let's get into it.
It was early summer, and I was itching to go camping. I had recently received a new tent and was eager to use it. I caught up my good buddy Sam, and we planned out our camping adventure. We considered going up into the Grayson Highlands or even south into North Carolina. After debating it, we decided it would be more fun to camp somewhere without—we wouldn't run into other people—deep in the woods, far from anyone else, where we could bushcraft, hoot, and holler and bring a gun without fear of scaring the yuppies camping next to us. While we both had lived in the woods, I had access to the most remote stretch of woods between us, so we loaded up our stuff, and we began hiking deep into the valley below my childhood home.
The hike was almost completely straight down a steep hillside, deep into a hollow that held a small patch of flat land, a flood plane area, and a creek. The small creek that ran gave the area a beautiful ambience. Early signs of summer were visible all around, and the weather was great. We hiked until we felt the need to start gathering firewood before nightfall. Behind us was a steep hillside that rose into the west for miles; in front of us was the creek; and to the left, the start of another ridge and a hillside that rose high into the east and north. To our right, the valley we were in continued to go down, cutting into a deep valley, and on the other side of the creek, another ridge separated by a small stream from the ridge to the left, which rose into the west and to the south. These two ridges in front of us ran for miles, and the little valley formed by the small creek split these ridges for a long way up until it hit the spring head. This is important for later in the story. Off to the right, further down the valley, more splits in the ridges are made by little tributaries.
We started building camp by clearing the brush and leaves away and constructing a small fire pit. I placed a tarp on the ground to separate my tent from the damp earth, and remember this: the tarp extended out roughly a foot on each side of my tent. Sam had a hammock that he planned to sleep in. I've only ever camped in a hammock once, and it didn't go great, but but I didn't say anything to him, thinking that maybe he would enjoy it. We gathered a hefty load of firewood, consisting of some reasonably dry stuff. It was shaping up to be a nice camping trip. I've spoken about the joy of being out there on this blog before, so I won't beat a dead horse, but it was nice to be away from people.
Sam and I sat around the fire and shot the [ __ ] until the sun went down. Now, one of the things Sam and I have always bonded on has been Bigfoot. We're both skeptics, and I would say we hold a similar or the same opinion on the subject. Our interest is less about believing in Bigfoot, but rather we just find the subject matter to be nostalgic, to be silly, a fun thing to joke about. So I brought up the idea to Sam that we were to begin hunting Bigfoot. He laughed and thought it was a great idea, so we began doing the antics they do in the Finding Bigfoot TV show. We started with the classic tree knocks. A quote-unquote tree knock, for those unaware, is when you use a stick to beat on a tree, making a loud knocking sound that echoes through the forest. Supposedly, Sasquatch communicates this way. We didn't think anything of it at all, as I said before; we didn't believe in it; we were just joking around. So we began by knocking on the trees and then stopping and listening for a response. After a few times of doing this, we paused, and hearing nothing, I began to think of a joke to crack and something else to do. Before I could open my mouth, we heard, clear as day, a tree knock far off somewhere on the ridge to the left. I looked at Sam and said, "Dude." Sam just looked back at me in surprise. I then did some more knocks, and we listened again. Then, off in the distance, we heard more knocks in response. Then the other ridge to the right, we began hearing more knocks. Sam, at this point, was beginning to get freaked out a little and was perplexed as to what it could be. At the time, I, being such a hard skeptic, carried on and insisted that it was another person or a woodpecker. But who in the world would be out there deeper in the woods than we are, on private land? What woodpecker makes three loud, booming knocks on the tree that sound exactly like the knocks that we're making? Sam voiced. I ignored his arguments and held strong to the fact that there is no Bigfoot. I then insisted that we pushed the envelope by doing whoops and howls, just like they do on TV. Sam was not very enthused by this idea, being the humbler and smarter one of us that night, knowing that sometimes there are certain things you don't mess with. But at that time, I was full of piss and vinegar and stubborn as a mule about the the fact that Bigfoot is not real. I also had brought a gun with me and was certain I could fight off anything that we would need to fight off. So we started howling into the woods. It was dark that night, being a new moon, and beyond the firelight, you couldn't see a damn thing. We would howl and then wait, listening for a reply. After a few howls, the excitement of "what was that" started to fade, and my logical, rational, science-based theory of the woodpecker began to appeared true. Then, out of the dark distance, came one of the strangest sounds I've ever heard: a howl—not a canine howl, not an owl's hoot, but a [ __ ] ape howl. Sam's eyes were as big as backo tires, and even I was finding it hard to reason that one. Despite this, I continued my ignorance, stubbornness, and I threw out another howl. Off to the left ridge, every replied to us again—the clearest ape whoop I've ever heard, as if it were recorded by researchers in the Congo. I looked at Sam, myself feeling more curious and excited than anything else. I reiterated, "Dude." Then something truly unexplainable and spooky happened: more whoops and howls began on the ridge to the right and further down the valley, and they weren't random; they had—I ate—as if they were chatting back and forth with each other. The one to the left would howl; the one to the right would howl and whoop; and the first would respond; and then the one way down the valley would chime in. Sam was really freaked out now and began considering if we should leave. I, being a stubborn idiot, claimed it was just owls. "Owls? We were both raised in these hollers. I've heard owls. You're going to tell me that was an owl? Have you ever in your life heard an owl that sounded like a [ __ ] ape?" Sam argued against my claim. "Well, no, but there's no way Bigfoot is real. It has to be a bunch of owls speaking to each other. There's nothing else it could be," I replied, half laughing in astonishment and disbelief at what was unfolding that night. Sam and I kind of bickered for a minute over it and then decided the wisest decision was to stop antagonizing whatever it was in the woods. Whatever it was, whooping and knocking, it wasn't too long after that that we decided to go to bed. I crawled into my tent and Sam into his hammock, and we left the fire going. And every time the fire died down, the woods came to life. Whether it was paranoia or paranormal, something was stirring all around camp. We could hear what sounded like things being thrown and footsteps. From time to time, we would hear another knock or another howl coming from a new position. Sam would leap out of his hammock and chuck loads of wood onto the fire, making it as big as possible. We would then lay back down to sleep, and this repeated about three more times. Each time the fire died, things got spookier and spookier. A few times Sam would say, "Did you hear that?" And every time I would just blame it on possums nearing camp, hoping to just find food scraps. Well, about the third time, Sam ran out of firewood, meaning that this time when the fire died, it died for good, leaving us to the dark void of the Appalachian holler.
I vividly remember I had fallen asleep before the fire died, and after it died, there was so much stirring around camp that I began to wake up. I was slowly waking up, thinking I was having some sort of nightmare, when I finally fully sobered and realized that my dream was pleasant; it was the reality that was full of threatening sounds and things that go bump in the night. The woods around us had become loud with unexplainable movement—the movement of multiple large things. The whooping and knocking had stopped, which did not comfort me with all the new sounds right outside my door. There was maybe a 30-yard perimeter around camp that the sounds did not cross. Then, suddenly, an extremely loud crash began through the twigs, leaves, and branches. It was something large running full sprint through the woods, starting maybe 50 yards away and running straight towards our camp. It grew louder and louder until the sound of crushing leaves turned to crinkling tarp. The creature was standing on the tarp that my tent was situated on. I was frozen like a child, frozen in fear, eyes wide open. My heart was pounding out of my chest so hard I thought it would explode. I then heard, high above my tent—not near the ground, not four feet up, but high above my tent—the most terrifying sound I've ever heard. It was the sound of a huff and blow, exactly the way you hear a gorilla do it on TV or how the apes in Planet of the Apes do it: three forceful huffs and blows. Then the creature turned around and ran back the way it came, back into the darkness of the night. Sam practically leaped out of his hammock and said, "You had to have heard that." I replied, "Yeah, let's get the [ __ ] out of here." I slid around into the chamber of my 30-30 and crawled out of the tent. We both got busy grabbing only our essentials and started out of the woods, using shitty, dim flashlights. We made our way up the hill frantically, looking behind us into the terrible night and trying to move fast without running. We hiked a long ways, and by the time we made it back to the house, it was far past midnight. We never did see what it was that charged us, and we never did hear anything else after that, but whatever it was scared us enough to make us hike out into the dead of night and leave all of our gear there. We returned the next morning in full daylight to gather our things, and looking back, I wish we had surveyed the area for tracks or some clue as to what it was, but at the time we didn't want to be down there for any longer than we had to.
Having been some years since this happened, I would go down there in a heartbeat and not think a thing of it. When I come home, I usually feel a sense of ease in the woods; it feels like a weight is lifted off your shoulders, knowing there are no cougars or grizzly bears to worry about. For my Western outdoorsy folk familiar with cougar country reading this and thinking, "I don't feel weight in the woods," my reply would be the question, "Have you noticed you've ever been stalked before?" Cougars are some of the sneakiest creatures in the animal kingdom, and just because you've never noticed it doesn't mean it hasn't happened. I have been stalked, and it's a feeling that will stick with you and put you on edge in cougar country for a long time. I have a colleague who guides Western big game in New Mexico who told me a story once that during a hunt he had a fellow guide spotting for him, and that guide watched a cougar stalk my friend through a grove of trees before giving up. My friend never had the slightest idea he was being stalked. I believe, for an avid outdoorsman in cougar country, it is inevitable. And as far as grizzly country, it's a similar feeling, but a little different. Most ill bear encounters happen because you surprise the bear in thick woods. I have many friends from my time in Alaska who would share stories of being charged by monster Grizzlies from out of nowhere; they're just hiking along, and then boom, 800 lb of death is blasting straight towards them. And the consensus is the same among them: if you spend enough time out there, it will happen eventually. I luckily was never charged during my time in Alaska; I avoided known bear hangouts, but the few times I spent time in bear country, I always had this Jack-in-the-box anxiety, just waiting for it to happen. What is funny, though, is despite that weight being lifted initially, an old feeling always returns. I know it's not some sort of psychological thing having to do with that patch of wood specifically because I feel it in most places in Appalachia. It's a feeling of being watched, a feeling that something is there, and a feeling of dread, and it amplifies every time you hear some strange crashing in the woods or a sound you cannot explain. Most of the times I've experienced this, I've had a gun, and I think to myself, "Come on, man, you're the most badass thing out there," yet I can never shake that anxiety. My brother, without having ever heard this story, reluctantly asked me over the phone one day, "Don't think I'm crazy, but have you ever felt creeped out in the woods below the house? I don't know what it is, but every time I go down there, I feel like I'm being watched." He, of this feeling of dread. Hearing him say that sent shivers down my back, simply because I always dismiss this feeling, and I swept the story under the rug for years, telling myself it was just a bear or etc. To hear my brother, who's a marine, tell me that certified to me that I was not simply being a [ __ ]. I have only ever felt this in two regions of the country: Appalachia and the Redwood forests of Northern California. Now, some of you may be reading this thinking that I'm a nut job Bigfoot believer. I have been reluctant to share this story for that reason, but I want to end this by saying I have no idea what it was that made those calls that night. I also have no idea what it was that busted into our camp; we never did lay our eyes on anything. But I want to reiterate that the story is true, forbade him to how it happened as I can recall it without any embellishment. I have no idea what it was, and you can make your own decision as to what you think it was, but being an experienced woodsman, never have I ever experienced something like that since, and I have no worldly explanation for it. Those were the events that transpired that night, and I'll let you make of that what you will, for for.