In August 2026, Gus and Sophie, along with their adult son and young niece, traveled by four-wheeler to an isolated berry-picking spot. Leaving their village near Norton Sound, the family rode for nearly two hours to reach an untouched patch of tundra. Along the way, the young niece, visiting from Anchorage, repeatedly expressed a feeling of unease, though the family initially attributed it to her being unfamiliar with the remote Alaskan wilderness.
Upon arriving near a dense island of willows and alders, Gus and his son caught the stench of rotting meat and heard strange noises from the brush. Armed with a 12-gauge shotgun and a .410 rifle, the men approached to investigate, assuming it was a ptarmigan or a bear. As they pushed the willows aside, the young niece screamed from 40 feet behind them, frantically pointing and yelling for them to look up. Elevated in the alders, roughly 20 feet away, was a massive, dark, deeply-wrinkled face with sunken black eyes staring back at them. As soon as Gus clicked the safety off his shotgun, the massive entity vanished into the brush, sounding like a bulldozer tearing through the timber.
The terrified family scrambled onto their four-wheelers and fled. During the hours-long ride back, the entity actively stalked them across the open tundra, at one point dropping low to the ground and moving at an impossible speed while keeping its head perfectly level to cut them off. Later, the niece spotted a second, towering black figure emerging from a stand of dwarfed trees over 500 yards away and rapidly closing the distance. As they navigated a steep creek crossing, a deafening whoop echoed from the brush, prompting Gus to fire his .357 Magnum into the trees as warning shots. Both creatures fled, though a massive air-raid siren scream echoed from the timber behind them as they finally reached the safety of their village. The niece later described hearing a telepathic voice in her mind luring her into the brush before the chaos erupted.
