Speech or Sound Imitation

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 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.

During an autumn backpacking trip along the Resurrection Pass Trail system stretching from the Girdwood/Indian area toward Eagle River, a medical professional named Bailey and her younger brother Brian set up camp in a remote valley pocket. After hearing an identical series of sharp, crisp whistles tracing their trek, they pitched a bright neon yellow-green dome tent within a grove of black spruce and willow trees.

An Ahtna tribally enrolled woman named Mary recalled a profound historical account from her childhood in Chitina during the early 1970s, where a village elder shared an encounter from his youth on the eastern side of the Copper River. While hunting deep inland on an open flat situated directly above Horse Creek, the hunting party experienced an intense, creepy atmospheric dread and followed a strange chattering sound up a ridge line.

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.

In the autumn of 2011, a Yup'ik villager named Vincent Wasley, his sister Grace, and a cousin traveled by skiff up the Kayugajak Lake River system near Nunapitchuk for a moose hunt. Stepping onto the riverbank, Vincent walked 200 feet onto the open tundra to forage a local berry patch, where he was suddenly halted by a colossal, booming cow-moose call imitation that echoed powerfully around the entire lakebed. Recognizing that the extreme acoustic volume and length exceeded human or animal capabilities, Vincent retreated to the skiff in shock.

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.

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.

Three years ago, just as fall was setting in, Isaac, his partner Marcy, and their yellow Labrador, Jesse, reserved one of the rental cabins near Lynx Lake in the Nancy Lake State Recreation Area. While walking the lake trails at twilight, the forest suddenly fell into total, unnatural silence. Recognizing the warning signs of a nearby predator, and with his firearm still packed in the car, Isaac turned the group back toward the cabin.

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 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.

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.

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.