Home Encounter

An experienced interior wilderness trapper with twenty years on the Kuskokwim River drainage abruptly terminated his business after a terrifying multi-day encounter loop. While running his 10-mile oval line on a Skidoo Tundra snowmachine, he discovered several traps systematically sprung with zero target catches; strangely, the surrounding snowpack had been meticulously scrubbed with fresh spruce boughs to purposefully erase any track marks.

A couple named Isaac and Marcy, along with their yellow lab Jesse, reserved a remote day cabin near Lynx Lake within the Nancy Lake State Recreation Area between Big Lake and Willow. While hiking an un-frozen shoreline trail during the autumn season, a sudden, absolute silence dropped over the forest canopy, prompting Isaac to prudently turn the party back out of bear caution.

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.

Fred sits down with fellow Dillingham resident and tribal council member Hillary to discuss growing up in the Bristol Bay region and what it was really like navigating day-to-day life with the presence of the Hairy Man. Spending her childhood traveling between villages along the Nushagak River—including Ekuk, Ekwok, Portage Creek, New Stuyahok, and Koliganek, as well as Aleknagik—Hillary describes an upbringing steeped in practical awareness rather than fireside tales.

Back in the 1990s, Kathy lived on the Kenai Peninsula across from a neighbor who was raising homestead animals and raising several children while her husband worked away on the North Slope. Shortly after sending her kids off to school one morning, Kathy answered an urgent knock at her door from the shaken neighbor pleading for help. Walking over to the homestead, Kathy was met with a chilling sight: eight or nine farm-raised meat rabbits lined up in pristine condition with their bodies still warm and limp, but every single head cleanly removed with zero blood or sign of a struggle.

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.

A native resident named Mike joins Fred to share personal encounters and ancestral accounts passed down from his grandfather on a remote, treeless island in the Bering Sea. His grandfather recounted an ancient tribal incident where a rogue hairy man stole nine village children before being tracked and killed by a shaman. Beyond the hairy man lore, Mike details widespread modern encounters with the "little people"—powerful, elusive beings whose tiny footprints frequently appear around village homes, stolen dry-meat racks, and out onto the Bering Sea sea ice.

A husband and wife, John and Betty, agreed to house-sit for close family friends along the highway north to Fairbanks. To deter local equipment thieves while their friends were away, the couple parked their fifth-wheel camper jackknifed across the driveway. After spending a quiet evening by an outdoor fire pit behind the house, they were walking back to the camper when they heard a bizarre, guttural gurgling sound coming from the darkness.

In August 2018, Robert Johnson, a government investigator with experience in high-profile disaster scenarios like Katrina and 9/11, embarked on a solo motorcycle trip from Idaho to Fairbanks. Seeking a rest stop near Denali National Park, he stayed at the White Moose Lodge—a single-story, 20-room complex. During the night, Robert was awakened by rhythmic, forceful thumping emanating from the back wall of his room.

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.

I had to split this share up into two parts because of editing issues.  I recorded this at Squatchbait's house.

A week before Father's Day in 2020 near Papoose Lake, Jason and Jennifer were enjoying the outdoors with their young children when he saw something he thought was a moose in the water.  When it stood up, it wasn't a moose.  It made eye contact with the kids and they quickly exited the area.

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.

Jim and his neighbor on the Kenai Peninsula thought the other was causing problems on the other's property until they saw the Sasquatch about 3 weeks ago. About a week after the sighting, outside Jim's house, it mimicked a meow that was unique to his cat that died the previous year.