Multiple Witnesses

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.

Around 2013, a seasonal lodge worker named Tim took four days off to join two indigenous local friends in a 20-foot Lund skiff traveling up the Kokwok River, a tributary of the Nushagak River below Ekwok. Half a mile past a teardrop-shaped gravel bar at the river's mouth, they discovered a local subsistence gill net that had been intentionally and intricately woven through with thick tree branches and driftwood.

Outside of Yakutat within the Tongass National Forest, siblings Tatiana and Nikolai spent five years renovating an inherited family cabin that had been abandoned for two decades. The aggressive encounters escalations began in the second year when Nikolai used a weed-whacker to clear a switchback trail behind the cabin to mitigate bear encounters, unaware that Tatiana's Australian Shepherd had been consistently alerting to a presence hiding on the slope. Three years later, Tatiana returned with her city-dwelling fiance, Robert, and their dog, Roscoe.

A few years prior to 2023, Tabitha and Nicholas, two experienced long-distance hikers, set out on the Power Creek Trail near Cordova to reach the Ohman Falls cabin. After successfully navigating an initial major landslide approximately 0.8 miles into the trek under heavy rain, they reached a low saddle section of the trail filled with clear standing water and deep mud. Nicholas stepped off the trail to avoid the pool, prompting Tabitha to discover a fresh series of massive, water-filled muddy tracks that initially resembled large double bear prints.

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.

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 March 2023, an outdoorsman in his early 60s named Hank was walking his black Labrador retriever along a remote shoreline within the Prince William Sound region. Two miles into the beach walk, Hank discovered a large, fresh pile of shellfish and clams that had all been freshly broken open, accompanied by massive, ambiguous depressions in the sand and gravel. Turning back as the sun began to set, the dog suddenly exhibited unprecedented behavior, running in frantic looping circles and barking wildly into the air.

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.

Around February 15, 2019, an experienced outdoorsman and former law enforcement officer named Mark Frank was exploring a remote seismic trail roughly five and a half miles down Oil Well Road near Ninilchik. Glassing through his binoculars in a low-horizon winter landscape with four feet of snow, he spotted what initially appeared to be a hunter crossing the path 150 yards away. Mark gave a friendly hand wave, and the entity immediately mirrored the identical gesture with its right hand.

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.

In late August, a long-distance runner named Russell Bradshaw traveled to the Denali Highway near the MacLaren River to support a caribou hunting group, opting to stay behind in a rental RV. During his routine morning jog toward Paxson, Russell paused about two miles out to observe a flock of ptarmigan get startled from a 50-yard willow slough. Dropping into an S-curve washout, he spotted what he assumed was a large black bear stalking the birds through the six-to-eight-foot tall brush.