About eight years ago, two young brothers—Kyle and his younger sibling—were out picking berries along a remote trail roughly a mile and a half from the nearest road just outside Fairbanks. Their peaceful outing turned unsettling when a persistent, low grumbling noise began shadowing their movements through the brush. Realizing something was pacing them, Kyle tried to keep his composure, telling himself and his terrified brother to walk instead of run to avoid triggering a predator's chase response.
The discipline broke almost immediately when the younger brother panicked and sprinted ahead. Catching up and stopping him, Kyle turned to look back down the trail, only to spot a massive, dark figure standing forty yards away before smoothly slinking into the timber. The boys bolted, tumbling multiple times as they sprinted toward safety. Pausing three-quarters of a mile later to catch their breath, they were shocked to hear heavy thudding footsteps ahead of them crossing the trail—the creature had circled around to cut off their path in the thicker brush.
Making a desperate sprint through the dense growth, the younger brother caught full eye contact with the towering entity, locking eyes with its dark, sunken face as it watched them run past from the timber line. Breaking out onto the gravel road, Kyle tried to calm his sobbing brother down so their parents wouldn't find out how far they had wandered. Looking back toward the apex of the road where the tree line met a swampy culvert, Kyle caught one final chilling sight: an eight-foot-tall, dark silhouette standing dead still in the trees sixty yards away, watching their retreat.
