Camping

Take a journey back to the early 1974 pipeline boom in the Alaskan bush. While taking a one-week vacation from his strenuous work as a pipeline welding assistant, a welder named Sam accompanies his Native Alaskan friend to a remote area outside of Fort Yukon heading toward Venetie Landing. What was intended to be a relaxing camping trip along the banks of the Yukon River quickly devolves into a terrifying, multi-hour psychological standoff. After nightfall, Sam spots a static set of glowing eyes reflecting the campfire from less than 30 yards away.

At a commercial salmon set netting fish camp in the Bristol Bay / Dillingham region, a young boy named Joe Jr. experienced multi-year contact with Sasquatch entities starting at age four. Initially, he told his family about a 'man' waving at him from the beach, which escalated to multiple hairy creatures whispering to him when his grandmother was distracted, attempting to lure him away to play. Interestingly, the creatures explicitly told Joe Jr. they could not cross a semi-circular boundary line where his grandmother had walked and sprayed a spiritual prayer of protection.

In August, an experienced outdoorsman in his mid-60s named Douglas traveled by four-wheeler to the Savage River area where it intersects the Stampede Trail to search for signs of a missing person, Mary Wilson. Arriving near twilight under dense forest canopy, he heard loud, abnormal yelling sounds and witnessed a large silhouette cross the trail.

In early spring 1987, a professional analog wildlife photographer named Derek and his wife Gabrielle (Gabby) set up duck-hunting photography blinds near a large pond in a vast marshland just west of the cabins located at the confluence of the Mulchatna and Koktuli Rivers near the Jack Rabbit Hills. Having left general equipment behind at the site during a multi-day blind construction process, Derek arrived alone at 4:00 AM in the dim pre-dawn silhouette light to swap film canisters.

Around late July in 2017 or 2018, a group of four friends from Colorado—Billy, Chuck, Dennis, and Maria—set up a large two-room blackout tent on a gravel wash in Rainbow Basin, situated at the northwestern corner of Lake Nerka within Wood-Tikchik State Park. After encountering deep, sub-audible grunts that physically vibrated their folding chairs and a series of sharp, crisp whistles that closely shadowed Dennis and Maria during a walk, the group constructed a wide 50-foot perimeter using fine fishing lines rigged with 12-gauge shotgun shell proximity alarms.

A few years prior to 2023, Heather and Carl flew via floatplane from Lake Hood to a remote state park cabin at Klutina Lake near the mouth of the Mahlo River, northeast of Valdez. While exploring the marshy mouth of the river for wilderness photography, they were unsettled by a long, mournful, and sorrowful howl echoing through the tall grass. That night, while sitting outside, they observed a powerful, anomalous bright light across the lake that rapidly dimmed and performed an oblong, figure-eight tracking motion up and down the beach.

In the summer of 2003, a university biology student named Roger participated in a salmon-fry field study along the Nuyakuk River drainage, a component of the Nushagak River system. Dropped off alone on a remote riverbank roughly three miles below the Nuyakuk Falls to dip-net samples out from underneath the river's cutbank, Roger experienced an intense, overwhelming sensation of being watched by 'a thousand eyes' amidst total silence and swarming mosquitoes. Moving down the shoreline trail, he heard a rapid, distinctive 'bloop' sound of small stones splashing into the channel.

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.

In the Copper River Valley along the Edgerton Highway near Chitina and the Wrangell-St. Elias region, an elderly widow named Miss Carol experienced continuous, escalating Sasquatch harassment at her home, beginning prior to 2019 before her husband passed away. The activity initially manifested as unexplained heavy objects dropping onto her roof and evolved into complex, highly anomalous acoustic events, including what sounded like an organized, interactive conversation between an owl and a raven right outside her walls.

An indigenous village hunter embarked on a multi-day backcountry moose hunting trip miles away from his community. On the third or fourth morning, while scanning the open landscape, he spotted a large brown form moving on all fours across the tundra, initially assuming it was a bear. Through his binoculars, he watched the creature travel over several tundra ridges until it suddenly stood completely upright and continued down a slope, leaving only its massive head and shoulders visible over the crest.

In the mid-1970s, a geology student named Alexander and his partner Carol chartered a boat to drop them off for a week-long backcountry expedition up the Nellie Juan River drainage toward Wolverine Creek at Kings Bay on the Kenai Peninsula. On their third day, following heavy storms, they paused on a river gravel bar to construct a small spike camp behind an old tree stump to shield their campfire from the heavy valley winds. While Carol cooked a pot of beans, Alexander moved 50 yards up the slough to survey rock strata.

Over seventy years prior to 2023, an elderly witness named Grandma Ruby was a young girl living in a remote village along the Yukon River. Following a large salmon harvest that was hanging in the family smokehouse, she walked to a trail corner near the dense tree line to sit on a doghouse belonging to her sled dog companion, Blackie. While wearing a newly tailored, rabbit-fur-lined kuspuk hood and practicing traditional native drum dance songs, she heard movement behind her in the thicket.

During an autumn backpacking trip along the Resurrection Pass Trail system stretching from the Girdwood/Indian area toward Eagle River, a medical professional named Bailey and her younger brother Brian set up camp in a remote valley pocket. After hearing an identical series of sharp, crisp whistles tracing their trek, they pitched a bright neon yellow-green dome tent within a grove of black spruce and willow trees.

During the final cleanup phase of a seasonal placer gold-mining camp situated off the Yukon River drainage, an imported heavy equipment operator named Doug was running a loader in a deep mining pit. During his pre-dawn shift, he noted an edge-of-vision dark form darting into the tree line. At midday, while sitting in the camp smoking area, Doug heard a terrifying, screaming howl echoing from the pit, prompting him to ride a four-wheeler down to investigate under the assumption that a co-worker was injured.

During a fall caribou hunting trip along a trail leading past Swede Lakes down to the North Fork of the Gulkana River south of the Denali Highway, an eight-man group of experienced hunters successfully harvested five caribou. Late one afternoon, a solitary hunter stayed behind to watch a fresh carcass while his companions returned to camp for additional game bags and tools. Left alone in the gathering dark with only a headlamp, the hunter was aggressively confronted by a 9-foot-tall, bipedal creature that issued a highly abnormal, complex 'chirping and bellowing' vocalization.