Screams

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.

Back in the late 1990s, Joseph was staying alone overnight to guard supplies at an unfinished family cabin along the remote Nushagak River. The cabin was still under construction, lacking finished window panes and leaving open, rough-framed cutouts directly into the wilderness. As dusk fell, Joseph heard an unsettling, unusually loud howl echoing miles away that sounded like a poor imitation of a wolf. Within an hour, the unnatural howling had closed the distance, sounding less than 200 yards away from the cut bank before falling dead, unnervingly silent.

While navigating the Nushagak River near Henry Slough (just south of New Stuyahok) roughly ten years ago, two hunters portaged their skiff into a narrow, muddy backchannel to scout for moose. After successfully dropping a massive bull with a single shot from the bank, the hunters sat down for a celebratory cigarette before the grueling task of field dressing it. Their break was interrupted by a deep, guttural grunt echoing from the nearby willows. Believing it was a second, agitated bull moose, the hunters crept closer, hoping to drop a second animal and save themselves an extra trip.

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.

A husband and wife, John and Betty, agreed to house-sit for close family friends along the highway north to Fairbanks. To deter local equipment thieves while their friends were away, the couple parked their fifth-wheel camper jackknifed across the driveway. After spending a quiet evening by an outdoor fire pit behind the house, they were walking back to the camper when they heard a bizarre, guttural gurgling sound coming from the darkness.

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.

In 1978, Eric and two friends from the Tongass National Forest cruiser team took their two-week leave to camp and explore the pristine wilderness around Powers Creek, located in the ominous Tracy Arm-Fords Terror Wilderness of Southeast Alaska. On their second day, the peacefulness of their trip was shattered by a hellacious scream originating further down the Endicott Arm inlet. Dismissing it at first, the three unarmed men returned to camp to find their belongings strangely shifted and toyed with.

About 25 years ago, a fly fisherman named Daniel paid to be dropped off by a guide service on the first big bend of the Tikchik River. Armed with a .480 Ruger revolver, he fished for hours before sitting down by the riverbank willows for a snack. As the autumn wind rippled the leaves, he suddenly spotted a massive, towering dark shadow lurking just inside the brush. Thinking it was a grizzly bear, Daniel drew his hand cannon and fired a warning shot into the willows, only to be met with an eerie, low, humming vocalization.

While prospecting for gold veins along the remote King Salmon River (north of Dillingham), Ivan and his younger brother set up a small spike camp on the riverbank. On their third night, their quiet evening was shattered by a scream from across the river that sounded like a woman being murdered. Grabbing their rifles, the brothers crossed the river in their 18-foot skiff to investigate. Finding nothing in the small stands of black spruce, they heard splashing back across the river—and turned to see a dark figure running into the brush exactly where they had just left their camp.

Brian was driving up the Richardson Highway toward Delta Junction in the dead of winter to help a friend fix a broken snow machine track. Along the long, snowy route, he noticed a strange black dot far out on the tundra, initially writing it off as an out-of-season black bear. The next morning, while driving back south, a sudden wave of severe, unexplained nausea forced him to pull his truck over near the river. While stopped, he spotted another dark figure moving swiftly across the distant, snowy marsh.

Over 15 years ago, a retired teacher named Mary and two former co-workers traveled to the Kennecott Mine to fulfill one of her bucket-list adventures. After setting up a remote camp away from the main site, the trio spent the day hiking the steep terrain around the abandoned mine. While taking a lunch break on a high ridge, the male teacher jokingly whistled the Smurf and Sesame Street theme songs. As they hiked back down the trail, they were shocked to hear the Smurf theme perfectly whistled back at them from the ridge they had just left.

A man named Rick booked a bush plane flight deep into the mountains north of Tanana, across the Yukon River, on a deeply personal backpacking trip. He had spent two years planning the multi-day excursion to spread his late mother's ashes in an alpine meadow she had always longed to revisit. After spending his first day scattering ashes around the scenic mountain bowl, Rick set up his tent near the timber line on the far side of a small alpine pond.

Fred and Squatch Bait hike two miles deep into the dense, overgrown brush along the Kings River to document the site of a harrowing encounter from the previous year. After navigating past massive beaver dams and deeply scarred timber, they reach the exact spot where a man named Daniel was stalked and chased from his isolated camp.

Ten years prior to 2022, two brothers, Jim and James, began constructing a remote 5-acre cabin cabin in the interior of Alaska, south of Fairbanks and north of Wasilla. During the building phase, they experienced recurring bear-like encroachments, forcing them to adopt a hyper-vigilant 'two-person always' security protocol. While James was left alone at the cabin to overnight, he began hearing a persistent 'click-click' sound originating from the walls of the windowless log shell.

Approximately 20 years ago, a couple named Margaret and Kyle were foraging for wild berries along a remote muskeg slough near the Alphabet Mountains, south of the Denali Highway. While separated by 100 feet to maximize coverage, Margaret heard a deep, guttural grunt; assuming it was her husband, she called out until she caught sight of a massive, dark movement through the alder brush that did not correspond to her husband's location.