These shares involve kayaking, canoeing, or rafting—paddle travel and float trips where the waterway is the route and something meets people on the banks or in camp.
Common threads are human-powered craft, river corridors, and multi-day floats. Browse these shares for paddle-country encounters.
Derrick shares his encounter while camping at Lynx Lake with his dog. While waiting for his friend to show up, a hairy man terrorized him and his dog in the cabin. When his friend finally showed up with his pickup truck, he was privy to the experience and quickly helped Derrick and his dog leave the cabin.
Joshua, his wife Candace, and his friend Tim shared their experience while camping during a float trip on the Maclaren River.
First, a quick report from three kayakers from Skilak Lake from a few days ago.
Alexi, who's in his twenties now, but had a terrifying encounter when he was ten years old and forced to protect his younger sister and brother.
Twenty years ago, Sabrina and her aunt were scouting for a berry picking spot off the Denali Highway when they had an odd experience where they lost track of direction and distance. Sabrina never picked berries again since this experience.
Also, another brief share from Scott, who reached out to me to warn about an incident by Lynx Lake while fishing in a canoe when he saw a stream of bubbles pass by when something that looked like a caveman popped up out of the water.
Cliff and Sylvester share their experience while staying at a cabin after kayaking at Skilak Lake near Bear Mountain in 2019. The following year, Sylvester had another incident and decided to leave Alaska and move back to the lower 48, even quitting his high-paying construction job.
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.
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.
Three years ago, two friends, Jack and Eric, launched their kayaks near the Denali Highway to caribou hunt down the remote Maclaren River. After setting up a spike camp downriver, they awoke to a deafening, unnatural silence. While hiking the tundra in the lifting morning fog, Eric spotted a dark shadow pacing them laterally just inside the mist.
Filming near the site where James and Deborah heard a scream and saw movement while they were in a remote area a few miles west of Nancy Lake Recreational Area last year in summer of 2021. As they're running in fear towards the recreation area with bear spray in hand, they're being paralleled while hearing imitation owl hoots and birds. Once they made it to a parking area and met up with a canoe group to tell them what happened, they heard loud thrashing in the trees.
A peaceful kayak excursion took a terrifying turn for vacationers Janice and Scott while exploring the rugged coves of Southeast Alaska, east of Cordova. After tying off their kayaks in a secluded inlet to photograph a stunning, tiered waterfall, the couple noticed the towering trees at the edge of an old-growth meadow slowly rocking back and forth. As Scott raised their expensive camera, he spotted a massive, dark humanoid figure repeatedly leaning out from behind the tree line to observe them.
An experience of two girls who were scammed by a fake hiking guide and ended up in a bad situation in the Wood Tik-Chik State Park. This video had some audio issues.
This encounter involved a trio on the Yentna River at the end of caribou hunting season in 2019 while trout fishing.
These events occured 1998 in the Wood-Tikchik State Park in a canoe on the Aguluwok River with my friend Brian. This area has a long history of encounters.
