Following a spring bear-hunting drop-off east of Salcha, an experienced Alaskan bush pilot named "Buck" decided to take advantage of extra fuel and landed his Piper Cub on a remote stretch of tundra north of the drop zone. Struck by an unnatural, deafening silence upon stepping out of the aircraft, he grabbed a day pack and his digital camera, armed with a .454 Casull revolver. Spotting distant movement along a black spruce tree line roughly 500 yards away, Buck walked over to photograph what he assumed was a bull moose, kneeling in the moss to attempt a cow moose call.
Instead of attracting game, small pebbles began landing methodically on the spongy tundra around him. Thinking another hunter was nearby, Buck called out twice to announce himself, but was met with utter silence and a sudden, bone-chilling dread unlike anything he had felt around brown bears or polar bears. Moving into the timber to investigate, a continuous, minute-long guttural growl halted him in his tracks. As he raised his camera toward rustling brush thirty yards away, the device abruptly shut down dead. While fumbling to replace the camera's batteries, a deafening, air-raid-style scream erupted directly overhead, concussive enough to vibrate his chest and force him to his knees clutching his ears.
Backing frantically out to the open tundra with his revolver drawn, Buck was frozen in shock when a towering, ten-foot-tall entity stepped out of the black spruce less than fifty feet away. The creature had deep buckeye-colored skin, dark sunken eyes, and a bare face framed by grizzled, straw-blond hair with no visible neck. Buck fired a warning shot into the air, dropped his pack, and fled toward his airplane across the uneven moss. Looking back over his shoulder every few steps, he realized the massive entity was matching his pace across the tundra, maintaining the exact distance with a chilling, closed-mouth smile. Reaching the Piper Cub, Buck turned to find the creature had sprinted back to the tree line in seconds, nudging his abandoned pack with its foot as he scrambled into the cockpit and took flight.
