Whistling

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.

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.

In the 1980s, lifelong outdoorsmen Spencer and Max returned to a remote, reverse-Z-shaped muskeg swamp line near the boundary of Denali National Park, ten years after discovering an abandoned camp layout and enduring anomalous mimicry whistles and gibberish vocalizations in their youth. Operating a high-speed Honda 250R three-wheeler, Spencer hopped off the rear rack to escape exhaust fumes, walking the spongy moss edge while Max opened the throttle down a 3-mile valley trail.

While investigating an active beaver dam system on the Kings River, the channel researcher and his companion, 'Squatch Bait,' documented complex engineering in the form of multiple, multi-cut tree trunks and a submerged, canopied beaver tunnel. Transitioning to a specific encounter site marked by orange surveyor tape, the researcher noted the exact location where a local witness named Daniel observed a large, dark-brown figure squatting on a log segment that jutted into the water.

In the late 1970s, retired oilfield worker Johnathan and his then-wife were travelling down the AlCan Highway in their RV and decided to pull over at a rest stop, where a Sasquatch began to open the roof and reach into the vehicle.  With is wife hiding under the bed, Johnathan began to look for his machete to hack at the arm.  After a loud whistle in the distance, the Sasquatch attacking the RV stopped and left, along with footsteps of others who were also outside.

While enjoying a private family fishing trip drifting down the lower Nushagak River, Michelle, her husband, and their teenage son were interrupted by a piercing, two-finger whistle echoing from the shoreline. Assuming it was just another angler celebrating a catch, they ignored it—until the sharp whistle was followed by a bizarre, garbled chatter resembling a twisted form of Pig Latin mixed with animal grunts.

Certain that his fishing captain was just trying to prank the new guy with local tall tales, Caleb arrogantly agreed to camp out in Rainbow Valley near Aleknagik in the late 1980s. His skepticism vanished on the third morning. While brewing cowboy coffee over the fire, Caleb felt a massive presence behind him. He turned to find an enormous entity crouched on all fours just 25 feet away, staring directly into his eyes. In a state of pure shock, Caleb let out a nervous laugh—which the creature immediately mocked back at him with a terrifying, booming baritone.

Gathered around a hunting campfire in 2005, a First Nations elder recounted a harrowing 1968 encounter west of the Kvichak River. While hiking through the sparsely wooded tundra with two friends, they spotted a dark figure darting among the black spruce. Assuming it was a fellow hunter, they called out, only to be answered by a massive Hairy Man that suddenly burst from the brush. The men immediately opened fire, sending the creature sprinting toward a nearby beaver pond, where it dove in and vanished beneath the surface.

Here's a story of mine from my younger days back in 1984 when hiking with my older sister and her boyfriend, when I heard a distinct whistle and voices in the distance where nobody was.  I also share a scarier experience of mine of voices in the wind that happened while camping with friends in Sunshine Valley.