Screams

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.

Beginning in December 2015, a resident named Sally endured ongoing seasonal Sasquatch activity at her rental home situated roughly 75 feet off the Delta Clearwater River bank in Alaska's interior, noting that events consistently peaked in April and autumn. While relaxing with her boyfriend in an outdoor hot tub on a small knoll 25 feet from the structure in -10°F weather, a massive multi-octave shriek-whistle erupted from the river slough, immediately accompanied by a heavy rock thrown forcefully against the hot tub's framework.

Following a successful solo caribou hunt the year prior, an Anchorage resident named Doug brought his wife Claire and their 15-year-old son back to the North Fork of the Gulkana River, traversing a steep, frosted trail past Swede Lake down to the river crossing. Seeking to avoid a crowded hunter 'shanty town' near the foothills, Doug steered his four-wheelers and an equipment trailer Due West along a rough, overgrown river slough trail, eventually establishing a 'glamping' site on a flat shelf at the base of a prominent tundra shale-rock Butte.

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.

In the winter of 1987, an 11-to-13-year-old native youth named Joseph gained permission to drive his father's Arctic Cat Jag snowmachine, leading his two younger brothers (ages nine and seven) on a Yamaha Bravo 340 into the remote tundra islands west of Sophie's Landing along the Nushagak River. Armed with a heavy 8mm rifle and two .22s to harvest small game, the boys successfully dispatched a porcupine on an oblong island of black spruce trees. While processing the harvest, a dense, blinding winter sea fog rolled in rapidly off Bristol Bay.

While salmon fishing along a secluded bank of the Russian River on the Kenai Peninsula, a local angler named Brandon and his two out-of-state college friends spent three days fishing and joking around. Working on his fly-casting, Brandon caught a flash of vivid red in the brush across the river—hair so striking he compared it to chimpanzee red—and figured another angler was moving down the opposite trail. Back at their day stash he ribbed his buddies about scaring off a beautiful redhead, which was enough to send the curious trio back toward the water for a look.

A few years ago, Dillingham resident Keith took his wife Danielle and their three young children up the Wood River in their skiff to swap in his red-salmon subsistence set-net gear at a relative's site on the way toward Aleknagik. With his relative's okay, Keith pulled the other net, put up his own sign, and was on the bank securing his lead line and mending a tear in his netting when his 12-year-old daughter insisted that a man in the brush was waving at them.

Last winter, George and three friends parked their trucks at Trappers Creek to spend the day backcountry snowmachining, tracking each other via GPS while carving lines through untouched powder. While stopped on hard-packed snow to refuel his 700cc two-stroke, George spotted distant dark movement shifting quickly through deep snow along the tree line. Circling back to investigate, he hit the kill switch on his screaming motor, only to be startled by a loud scream echoing from behind him.

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.

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.

Following a spring bear-hunting drop-off east of Salcha, an experienced Alaskan bush pilot named "Buck" decided to take advantage of extra fuel and landed his Piper Cub on a remote stretch of tundra north of the drop zone. Struck by an unnatural, deafening silence upon stepping out of the aircraft, he grabbed a day pack and his digital camera, armed with a .454 Casull revolver. Spotting distant movement along a black spruce tree line roughly 500 yards away, Buck walked over to photograph what he assumed was a bull moose, kneeling in the moss to attempt a cow moose call.

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.