A veteran 92-year-old trapper recounts a terrifying ordeal from the twilight of his trapping career in 1984, northeast of Bethel in the remote Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Relying on an isolated backup cabin he typically avoided due to eerie sounds in the distance, his trapping season began smoothly—until he discovered his newly set wolverine traps repeatedly sprung and empty, reeking of a potent, musty ammonia odor.
The unease turned to terror when the trapper returned to his cabin to find his trap collection violently flung across his shed roof and yard, accompanied by massive bipedal footprints circling his home. That evening, in the perpetual winter darkness of a 24-below-zero Alaskan night, a 10-foot-tall entity peered through his cabin window with dead, soulless, translucent black marble eyes. After enduring hours of methodical pounding on his cabin wall that disturbingly mimicked his own racing heartbeat, the trapper decided to fight back. Bursting out of the cabin door, he fired his rifle directly into the red eyeshine of the towering creature before narrowly escaping on a sputtering snowmachine, desperately feathering the throttle as a second creature pursued him down the winding trail.
