Three years ago, two friends, Jack and Eric, launched their kayaks near the Denali Highway to caribou hunt down the remote Maclaren River. After setting up a spike camp downriver, they awoke to a deafening, unnatural silence. While hiking the tundra in the lifting morning fog, Eric spotted a dark shadow pacing them laterally just inside the mist. Hours later, after returning to their kayaks and moving further downstream to Tyone Creek, they attempted to flank what Eric swore was a massive, dark figure peering at them over 12-foot-tall alder bushes, only to be met with deep, guttural grunting that sounded like a sea lion echoing back and forth across the valley.
That night, the hunters were repeatedly jolted awake by god-awful screams echoing down the small valley, sounding progressively closer. Breaking camp at first light, they began the grueling paddle back upriver toward the boat launch. As they navigated a bend in the creek, they heard thrashing in the waist-high grass along the bank, accompanied by deep, short, chattering vocalizations that sounded like someone mocking a kung-fu movie. Terrified by a dark shape repeatedly popping up from the grass to look at them, Eric abruptly dropped his paddle and fired a shot from his rifle blindly into the brush.
The frantic men paddled for miles until they finally paused in a shallow section of the river to rest their burning arms. As Jack held his oar in the gravel to keep the kayak steady, he looked past his friend and saw a massive, 12-foot-tall creature stand straight up from the riverbank barely 20 feet away. The entity had a dark, Cro-Magnon-like face with a heavy jaw, and thick, matted, dreadlock-like hair covering the back of its head. Frozen in shock for only a moment, Jack screamed at Eric to paddle, and the two men desperately fled upriver, abandoning the area—and eventually, their friendship—for good.
