Whistling

A share from Benjamin who had an encounter in 2018 off the Yukon River.

An experience shared by an Ahtna Elder named Agatha recalls her childhood near Horse Creek, where her family routinely heard distant screams while berry picking. She also recounted an incident at their fish camp when her uncle and brother-in-law found their fish wheel intentionally jammed with a large log. While working to clear it, they heard whistling from the shore and turned to find a hairy man crouching on the bank. After shouting at it, the brother-in-law fired a shot into the air, causing the entity and two other unseen companions to crash away through the brush.

Around late July in 2017 or 2018, a group of four friends from Colorado—Billy, Chuck, Dennis, and Maria—set up a large two-room blackout tent on a gravel wash in Rainbow Basin, situated at the northwestern corner of Lake Nerka within Wood-Tikchik State Park. After encountering deep, sub-audible grunts that physically vibrated their folding chairs and a series of sharp, crisp whistles that closely shadowed Dennis and Maria during a walk, the group constructed a wide 50-foot perimeter using fine fishing lines rigged with 12-gauge shotgun shell proximity alarms.

A few years prior to 2023, Heather and Carl flew via floatplane from Lake Hood to a remote state park cabin at Klutina Lake near the mouth of the Mahlo River, northeast of Valdez. While exploring the marshy mouth of the river for wilderness photography, they were unsettled by a long, mournful, and sorrowful howl echoing through the tall grass. That night, while sitting outside, they observed a powerful, anomalous bright light across the lake that rapidly dimmed and performed an oblong, figure-eight tracking motion up and down the beach.

A few years prior to 2023, Tabitha and Nicholas, two experienced long-distance hikers, set out on the Power Creek Trail near Cordova to reach the Ohman Falls cabin. After successfully navigating an initial major landslide approximately 0.8 miles into the trek under heavy rain, they reached a low saddle section of the trail filled with clear standing water and deep mud. Nicholas stepped off the trail to avoid the pool, prompting Tabitha to discover a fresh series of massive, water-filled muddy tracks that initially resembled large double bear prints.

In the summer of 2003, a university biology student named Roger participated in a salmon-fry field study along the Nuyakuk River drainage, a component of the Nushagak River system. Dropped off alone on a remote riverbank roughly three miles below the Nuyakuk Falls to dip-net samples out from underneath the river's cutbank, Roger experienced an intense, overwhelming sensation of being watched by 'a thousand eyes' amidst total silence and swarming mosquitoes. Moving down the shoreline trail, he heard a rapid, distinctive 'bloop' sound of small stones splashing into the channel.

During the historic gold rush era around 1898, an expedition consisting of six men—Austrian-German prospectors Fritz and Johann, two young greenhorn laborers from St. Louis, Missouri, and two Gwich'in Indian guides—traveled into the remote interior near the southwest slopes of the Beaver Mountains along modern-day Billy Goat Creek. After two weeks of constructing a windowless log cabin to support a multi-year gold panning operation, the two Gwich'in guides went berry picking along the mountain slopes.

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.

In the mid-1970s, a geology student named Alexander and his partner Carol chartered a boat to drop them off for a week-long backcountry expedition up the Nellie Juan River drainage toward Wolverine Creek at Kings Bay on the Kenai Peninsula. On their third day, following heavy storms, they paused on a river gravel bar to construct a small spike camp behind an old tree stump to shield their campfire from the heavy valley winds. While Carol cooked a pot of beans, Alexander moved 50 yards up the slough to survey rock strata.

In late August, a long-distance runner named Russell Bradshaw traveled to the Denali Highway near the MacLaren River to support a caribou hunting group, opting to stay behind in a rental RV. During his routine morning jog toward Paxson, Russell paused about two miles out to observe a flock of ptarmigan get startled from a 50-yard willow slough. Dropping into an S-curve washout, he spotted what he assumed was a large black bear stalking the birds through the six-to-eight-foot tall brush.

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.

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.

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.

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.