Stalking

Over seventy years prior to 2023, an elderly witness named Grandma Ruby was a young girl living in a remote village along the Yukon River. Following a large salmon harvest that was hanging in the family smokehouse, she walked to a trail corner near the dense tree line to sit on a doghouse belonging to her sled dog companion, Blackie. While wearing a newly tailored, rabbit-fur-lined kuspuk hood and practicing traditional native drum dance songs, she heard movement behind her in the thicket.

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.

In the fall of 2019, just before the pandemic, a local high school senior named Jane was babysitting five young cousins (ranging in age from roughly five to twelve) at a federal HUD housing unit in a remote northwest coastal village of under 500 year-round residents near the Bering Sea. After coming indoors, the two youngest children were caught staring out a bedroom window, giggling and waving at a 'silly man' standing inside the immediate willow and scrub brush lines. Assuming it was an overactive imagination, Jane dismissed the event.

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.

Some thirty years prior to 2023, a Bristol Bay native woman named Julie experienced an encounter as a young girl during a combined moose hunting and salmonberry harvesting trip up the Kvichak River channel with her grandfather (Uppa), father, and uncle. Landing early before sunrise, Julie and her Uppa combed the tundra slopes for blueberries and blackberries.

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.

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.

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 July 2015, a military veteran named Brian worked a reconstruction contract to clear a helipad and migrate a field recreation camp from a low-lying, flood-prone lagoon island near Bear Glacier outside of Seward to safer high ground. On July 18th, while resting inside a small nylon tent with his head protruding to manage a severe knee infection, Brian was abruptly awoken at 1:00 AM under a dense, black coastal sea fog.

Around 2012, a man named Oscar returned to his family's traditional native homelands along a remote tributary channel feeding into the Copper River near Chitina. While harvesting fireweed blossoms for an elder auntie a quarter-mile from their rural cabin, Oscar witnessed a large brown form performing a series of strange, vertical bouncing movements through a 6-foot tall grass slough 30 yards out. Armed with a .357 handgun and believing it was a maimed, trapped bear that posed a community safety risk, he returned to camp to recruit his elder uncle, who brought a 12-gauge shotgun.

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.