Under Water

Sonny Grant, a Tlingit elder of the Wolf Clan from Juneau, shares deep ancestral knowledge regarding the 'Cannibal Giant'—a figure synonymous with the Sasquatch/Hairy Man. Sonny recounts stories passed down through generations in Haines, Cake, and Juneau of these entities capturing and consuming children left out past dark.

I recount an experience by William, an Elder, while at his cabin in Southeast Alaska back in 1978.  While fishing for crab, he was trying to scare off what he thought was a sea otter stealing his crabs by throwing rocks at it.  He left Alaska and moved to the lower 48.

Twenty years ago, Sabrina and her aunt were scouting for a berry picking spot off the Denali Highway when they had an odd experience where they lost track of direction and distance.  Sabrina never picked berries again since this experience.

Also, another brief share from Scott, who reached out to me to warn about an incident by Lynx Lake while fishing in a canoe when he saw a stream of bubbles pass by when something that looked like a caveman popped up out of the water.

In early spring 1987, a professional analog wildlife photographer named Derek and his wife Gabrielle (Gabby) set up duck-hunting photography blinds near a large pond in a vast marshland just west of the cabins located at the confluence of the Mulchatna and Koktuli Rivers near the Jack Rabbit Hills. Having left general equipment behind at the site during a multi-day blind construction process, Derek arrived alone at 4:00 AM in the dim pre-dawn silhouette light to swap film canisters.

Around 2013, a seasonal lodge worker named Tim took four days off to join two indigenous local friends in a 20-foot Lund skiff traveling up the Kokwok River, a tributary of the Nushagak River below Ekwok. Half a mile past a teardrop-shaped gravel bar at the river's mouth, they discovered a local subsistence gill net that had been intentionally and intricately woven through with thick tree branches and driftwood.

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.

I had to split this share up into two parts because of editing issues.  I recorded this at Squatchbait's house.

A week before Father's Day in 2020 near Papoose Lake, Jason and Jennifer were enjoying the outdoors with their young children when he saw something he thought was a moose in the water.  When it stood up, it wasn't a moose.  It made eye contact with the kids and they quickly exited the area.

Two shares, the first a retired fish and game biologist that had an experience ten years ago off the Mulchatna river while gathering data on salmon with three others, where they realized what they at first thought was a person exiting the freezing cold river was a Sasquatch they estimated to be over 10'.  They later met up with a group of observers who didn't believe them at first, but did later after they had an encounter, topped off with screams.  When both groups tried to relay their experiences to a fish and game trooper, they fell on deaf ears.

An encounter from Jerry who told me his story over lunch while I was in Togiak about how he and two others were chased by a Hairy Man while caribou hunting. Another common consequence of such encounters, which happened to Jerry, is those involved, regardless of how close they were, no longer communicate and drift apart. 

In 2005, an elder shared with me around the campfire this incident that took place in the late 1960s around the Kvichak River. As the elders would tell us, don't go in the woods alone, and don't whistle.