Property Damage

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.

Over forty-five years prior to 2023, an interior village native named Jonah was breaking winter trail with his six-dog sled team to transport supplies between a major hub and his 100-occupant home community. Armed with a moose rifle, Jonah spent hours packing the deep snow across flat muskeg segments that led into thick timber valleys. As his team negotiated a sharp 'dog-leg' curve on the packed trail, an immense, 350-to-400-pound dead beetle-killed spruce tree was violently hurled down onto the path directly out of the overhanging brush.

An experienced river guide named Rick ran a rinky-dink charter service on the Nushagak River for ten years, ultimately retiring after enduring four separate encounters with the Sasquatch population. His first event occurred near Sophie's Landing when three clients fishing for king salmon pointed out a large black figure that abruptly shifted from a crouched stance to stand erect and walk into the timber just 25 feet away from their anchored skiff. The second event involved five clients who were targeted by an intense shriek emerging from a slough near Portage Island.

Two years prior to 2022, newlyweds Josh and Bridget spent a week-long honeymoon clearing brush at a remote family cabin located just outside the boundaries of Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. On their third night, under the dense canopy of land of the midnight sun twilight, a relentless owl hoot at an abnormal, highly repetitive cadence caught their attention. Suspecting a trapped bird, Josh armed himself with a .45 Auto pistol and took an 800-lumen flashlight to investigate the 30-yard cleared perimeter with Bridget.

In the early-to-mid 1990s, a Bristol Bay native named David spent weeks alone at his grandfather's (Uppa's) cabin situated on the West Channel of the Nushagak River near Keeper Cutoff, due west of Portage Creek. While constructing a log generator shed, David was pelted by pine cones and endured three consecutive nights of heavy thumping on the cabin roof, later clearing off large clumps of uprooted grass and soil with a dip-net pole under the assumption that his brother was playing a prank.

Three winters prior to 2022, a small construction company owner named Clint treated three of his laborers to a week-long snowmachining vacation near Paxson and the Denali Highway after completing a major renovation project ahead of schedule. While riding near a remote mountain creek drainage feeding a lake just west of the Richardson Highway junction, an 800 RMK snowmachine slipped its track. Due to severe winds and lack of towing gear, the party piled snow over the chassis to stash it overnight.

While managing a salmon subsistence set-net site on the Wood River drainage above Dillingham near the McClung River mouth, a man named Keith, his wife Danielle, and their three young children (ages twelve, nine, and five) were targeted by an unusually bold entity. While stacking gear and mending twine on the riverbank, Keith's 12-year-old daughter pointed out a 'man' inside the 12-foot shoreline willow brush who was actively waving and smiling at her. Keith investigated with a shotgun, firing a warning blast into the air to deter what he assumed was a routine bear.

During a winter backcountry snowmachining excursion, a group of four friends staged out of Trappers Creek to boondock through fresh, deep powder fields. Navigating individual routes using personal GPS trackers, George paused his 700 RMK snowmachine on a segment of packed ground to safely fill his engine with a spare gas can. While refueling, he noted an immense dark form executing high-speed maneuvers through a thick tree line several hundred yards back.

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.

Three years prior to 2022, two finance professionals from São Paulo, Brazil, named Louis and Franco, embarked on a high-priced guided wolf and bear combo hunt on the outskirts of the Katmai Wildlife Refuge down on the Alaska Peninsula. Operating from a remote spike camp carefully hacked out inside a ten-foot radius of thick willow shrubs to shield from heavy winds, the hunters hiked up a treacherous switchback path onto an adjacent high mountain shelf to glass a major north-south river clearing.

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.

Lifelong friends Spencer and Max first explored a remote, three-mile muskeg corridor near Denali National Park back in the 1970s, where they discovered a seemingly abandoned, fully stocked campsite and had their casual whistles and conversation eerily mimicked back by unseen shadows pacing them along a parallel ridge. Ten years later in the 1980s, the pair returned on a Honda three-wheeler, armed with shotguns and a .44 Magnum. Feeling choked by exhaust fumes, Spencer hopped off to walk the mossy trail on foot while Max throttled ahead around a bend.

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 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.