Cabin

During the historic gold rush era around 1898, an expedition consisting of six men—Austrian-German prospectors Fritz and Johann, two young greenhorn laborers from St. Louis, Missouri, and two Gwich'in Indian guides—traveled into the remote interior near the southwest slopes of the Beaver Mountains along modern-day Billy Goat Creek. After two weeks of constructing a windowless log cabin to support a multi-year gold panning operation, the two Gwich'in guides went berry picking along the mountain slopes.

Since 1983, a seasoned Alaskan outdoorsman in his early 60s named Sam owned a remote recreational property intersected by a winding creek within the Juneau region. While hunting alone from an elevated moose stand overlooking a dense, 12-foot-tall jungle of alder willows, Sam heard heavy brush-thrashing approaching from his right. Assuming it was his brother playing a prank, Sam issued a short whistle; the movement immediately ceased and an identical whistle was returned from the thicket. Sam whistled twice in rapid succession, which was immediately countered by two identical whistles.

Around 2012, Oscar was back visiting family along the Copper River when an auntie asked him to collect fireweed. Armed with a .357, he hiked a trail beside a smaller river that flows into the Copper, about a quarter mile from his relatives. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something brown hopping in the grass 30 or 40 yards out. He took it for a bear, drew the pistol, and yelled "hey bear," but the shape kept hopping just above the grass, unlike any bear he'd seen.

Newlyweds Josh and Bridget spent their May honeymoon at a relative's remote cabin just outside Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, reachable only by plane. They spent the first couple of days clearing brush and getting the little dock ready. On the third night, a hoot began repeating every few seconds from the brush. Thinking an owl might be caught in a snare or fishing line, Josh, a combat veteran, took an 800-lumen flashlight and his holstered .45 around the cabin with Bridget close behind, feeling watched.

David was getting his grandfather's remote cabin on the west channel of the Nushagak River ready for family in the early 1990s when the harassment began. Pine cones and clumps of grass and dirt were thrown onto the roof, and the whitefish net he set in a slough was pulled, tangled with alder branches woven into the mesh, and eventually sunk by a heavy rock, with a strange double bear print left nearby.

Roughly twenty-five years ago, a veteran fur trapper running a ten-mile trap line with his Ski-Doo Tundra near the Kuskokwim River began experiencing bizarre disruptions to his winter season. Several of his sets were mysteriously sprung with no animals in them, and the surrounding snow appeared deliberately swept clean with spruce boughs to conceal tracks. After noticing strange silhouettes watching him from a nearby rise and hearing single, uncharacteristic squirrel barks echoing through the timber at dusk, an unnatural sense of dread began eating away at him.

Three years ago, just as fall was setting in, Isaac, his partner Marcy, and their yellow Labrador, Jesse, reserved one of the rental cabins near Lynx Lake in the Nancy Lake State Recreation Area. While walking the lake trails at twilight, the forest suddenly fell into total, unnatural silence. Recognizing the warning signs of a nearby predator, and with his firearm still packed in the car, Isaac turned the group back toward the cabin.

Having lived on his remote wooded property between Wasilla and Willow for over thirty years, Jonathan was thoroughly accustomed to walking the trail to his cabin in pitch darkness. Carrying supplies back from a Costco run in Anchorage, he shouldered a bulky bundle of toilet paper and began walking toward his cabin armed with his trusted 10mm Glock. Halfway down the familiar path, the sound of heavy footsteps and breaking branches began pacing him thirty feet away in the thick brush.

Two years ago, Jesse and Monica were outfitting a newly built Caribou cabin kit on an isolated parcel along the outskirts of Fairbanks, working late into the evening to insulate the structure and install a wood stove before the bitter subarctic winter set in. As Jesse stood on the stove fitting pipe sections together, an intensely crisp, rhythmic clicking sound began echoing every few seconds. Thinking it might be a shifting weight clicking against something metal, the couple tried to brush it off until Monica spotted a dark shape lurking outside the cabin’s single 4x4 window.

Continuing his on-site investigation into the remote coastal rainforest where the Gulf of Alaska meets the Chugach Range, Fred shares field footage surveying old-growth timber, deep moss beds, and rich coastal food sources. Picking his way across spongy ground littered with old fallen timber, he examines potential ground impressions, including what appears to be a possible step-over footprint with visible toe outlines. Along the shoreline, he points out mussels embedded in nearly everything, underscoring the abundance of natural sustenance available in the isolated inlet.

Fred embarks on his first dedicated field research expedition under the Alaska Hairy Man Project, traveling to an intensely remote coastal property where the Gulf of Alaska meets the Chugach Range. Joining fellow researchers Larry "Beans" Baxter and investigator Rob Roy, the group explores dense, moss-draped coastal rainforest near the location of Les Stroud’s notable Alaskan incident. Even before diving into the wilderness, the expedition starts on edge after a loud, echoing whoop vocalization rings out across the bay just as they arrive at the cabin.

Back in the late 1990s, Joseph was staying alone overnight to guard supplies at an unfinished family cabin along the remote Nushagak River. The cabin was still under construction, lacking finished window panes and leaving open, rough-framed cutouts directly into the wilderness. As dusk fell, Joseph heard an unsettling, unusually loud howl echoing miles away that sounded like a poor imitation of a wolf. Within an hour, the unnatural howling had closed the distance, sounding less than 200 yards away from the cut bank before falling dead, unnervingly silent.

Ten years prior to 2022, two brothers, Jim and James, began constructing a remote 5-acre cabin cabin in the interior of Alaska, south of Fairbanks and north of Wasilla. During the building phase, they experienced recurring bear-like encroachments, forcing them to adopt a hyper-vigilant 'two-person always' security protocol. While James was left alone at the cabin to overnight, he began hearing a persistent 'click-click' sound originating from the walls of the windowless log shell.

Greg, who lives in Europe, used to spend a lot of money to fly his dogs and equipment to Alaska to participate in the Iditarod.  About five years ago, while training a few months prior to the race, he and fellow team members stopped a few miles outside of Rainy Pass to camp out in an area with multiple available cabins before continuing the next day. That night, his dogs were huddled together in fear and kept moving around the cabin away from something outside.

John, a long-time trapper, had to cut short his trapping season once he realized what was stealing from his traps. As he decided to hunker down at his remote cabin until his resupply plane came through, he was surrounded by three Sasquatches attempting to intimidate him. They failed and John instead went on offense.