Screams

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 noted a series of unusual disturbances across the water. While practicing his fly-casting loops, Brandon first spotted a patch of vibrant, chimpanzee-like red hair moving through the opposite brush line, which he initially joked was a fellow redhead angler.

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.

Jonathan, a 30-year resident of a remote forested property situated within the Wasilla-Willow corridor, was ambushed by a pair of massive Sasquatch entities while executing nighttime supply runs from his vehicle to his cabin. Transporting an awkward bulk package of Costco toilet paper balanced on his left shoulder, Jonathan heard heavy brush-crashing seamlessly parallel his step just feet away inside the pitch-black thicket. Hit by an unprecedented wave of absolute dread, he left the package on the trail and retreated to secure a 10mm Glock pistol.

In the 1980s, lifelong outdoorsmen Spencer and Max returned to a remote, reverse-Z-shaped muskeg swamp line near the boundary of Denali National Park, ten years after discovering an abandoned camp layout and enduring anomalous mimicry whistles and gibberish vocalizations in their youth. Operating a high-speed Honda 250R three-wheeler, Spencer hopped off the rear rack to escape exhaust fumes, walking the spongy moss edge while Max opened the throttle down a 3-mile valley trail.

Two years prior to 2022, a couple named Jesse and Monica purchased an uncompleted 10x12 Caribou cabin kit on the outskirts of Fairbanks to insulate and use as a rural starter house. Located a half-mile down a private driveway off the main road, the site was surrounded by dense, un-cleared timber and willow thickets. While setting up a wood stove on a weekend visit during a light autumn snow dusting, the couple began hearing a loud, exceptionally crisp, and snappy 'clicking' noise that occurred at a strict, regular cadence of every two to three seconds.

During a spring bear hunt expedition, a veteran Alaskan bush pilot named Buck flew two out-of-state hunters to a remote base camp east of Salcha. Left with an hour of free fuel time, Buck puddle-jumped his Piper Cub onto a nearby open tundra ridge flanked by a sparse black spruce tree line and large old-growth timber stands. Encountering an uncanny, absolute silence upon stepping out of his cockpit, Buck slung a .454 Casull revolver on his chest and hiked 500 yards out into a tundra berry patch to engage in wildlife photography.

In a village panel recording, a Dillingham-born Yup'ik woman named Hillary detailed the traditional, generational safeguards and encounters surrounding the communities of the Nushagak River drainage, including Ekwok, Portage Creek, Stuyahok, and New Koliganek. Raised under strict elders' warnings that stepping into the dark sloughs or river bluffs would cause children to be abducted or eaten by the 'hairy man,' Hillary noted that the presence of inverted, root-up spruce tree markers cleanly jammed into the soil was a routine sight in the region.

In the 1990s, a Kenai Peninsula resident named Kathy provided field testimony regarding a violent, point-blank raiding campaign executed against a nearby homestead where a mother was left alone with her young children while her husband worked the North Slope. Following a terrifying 45-minute screaming siege that occurred during a heavy rainstorm, the panicked mother recruited Kathy to investigate her layout.

In the 1990s, a Bristol Bay native named Joseph was left alone to overnight inside an unfinished, windowless log cabin frame under construction on the west bank of the Nushagak River, roughly 40 feet from a steep riverbank cut. After executing a secure, bear-aware camp cleanup, Joseph heard an anomalous, interactive series of 'imitation wolf howls' echoing from several miles deep in the timber line. Sitting on the entrance logs at dusk, a severe 'glass-dome' silence enveloped the tree line, and the vocalizations re-emerged less than 200 yards out.

Around 2012, a native villager and his hunting partner portaged their skiff across an ice-overflow gravel ridge into Henry Slough, a specialized secondary channel of the Nushagak River located just south of New Stuyahok. Spotting a bull moose over a mud-and-grass cutbank, the men anchored the skiff using a concrete stake and initiated a silent layout stalk through the alders. While tracking the antlers, an interactive clacking sound erupted from multiple directions, which they mistook for a competing bull.

In an extensive panel interview, a mainland native resident named Mike detailed the profound oral histories and recent close-range encounters on a remote, windswept island in the Bering Sea. Mike's grandfather (born in 1904) maintained historical accounts of a rogue 'hairy man' who systematically abducted and consumed disobedient village children caught out past dark, culminating in a historic campaign where a local shaman tracked and dispatched an entity, slicing open its stomach to recover nine hairless, amnesiac children.

While house-sitting a rural property north of Glennallen along the Richardson Highway to protect against localized equipment theft, a married couple named John and Betty jackknifed their 16-foot fifth-wheel trailer across the driveway entrance, placing their camper a mere 100 feet off the primary asphalt road. While returning to the rig at dusk after utilizing an outdoor fire pit behind the main house, they were unsettled by a low, non-animal gurgling throat-clear emerging from the foliage.

Around 2019, a first nations hunter named Jack and his less-experienced partner, Eric, executed a remote catch-and-release style caribou hunt via single-man kayaks, launching from the Maclaren River bridge off the Denali Highway down to the Tyone Creek confluence. After pitching pop-up tents on the river's west bank, they awoke to an absolute, deafening silence that dropped over the tundra canopy. Proceeding on foot down a game trail through heavy morning fog, Eric spotted an edge-of-vision dark shadow tracking them.