Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “As a runaway teenager, I had to stay hidden from society. In our small town, everyone knew each other and the cops were always lurking and did not like us punks one bit. I was always fearful of being picked up and returned home to an abusive household or being put into a group home or juvenile detention center. So I ran away to NYC and lived with the street punks in the Lower East Side.

I was able to blend right in and hide in plain sight. In fact, I saw my step father looking for me as I walked right by him with a large group of crusty punks. He did not see me and we were literally three feet away from each other. That’s when I started thinking about leaving the city. I had a close friend named Pat. He was like a brother to me and still back in NJ living with his grandparents also in an abusive home. His super agro grandfather hated him. He met up with me and we lived on the fringes of society evading the law for a long time. We would stay anywhere we could. Many nights under random bridges, on the floors of friends rooms daring enough to sneak two runaways in, in friends vehicles, roof tops….I could go on and on. One day, we decided that living even in the shadows was far to great of a risk of being caught and put into the system.

We decided to go to a more remote area. We spanged (panhandled) enough money for a two man tent and some other survival gear to go live in the forests of New Jersey. We got the tent, a bunch of knives, a couple flashlights, lighter fluid, a giant box of strike anywhere matches, some water canteens, a bunch of duct tape, and a bunch of other cool low budget survival gear. I had already been living on the streets and had a bunch of gear from a youth drop in center like a military canvas pickle sack, a p-38 can opener, a medical kit and a prison blanket. Our other buddy Jeff who I briefly mentioned earlier had a car, so he would usually drive us wherever we needed to go after he got out of school. He was kind of spoiled and his Mother worked in NYC so he had the house pretty much to himself till like 8pm. He drove us to get the supplies and dropped Pat and I off at the tree line a few miles away from where he lived. We had been back there a few times but never made it to far in. We hiked about 3 miles or so in and there was this open area of high power lines and soft sand and dirt. Dirt bikers had it all dug out with big jumps and deep pits and all sorts of hills. It was really cool because it was so open and the sand was almost white contrasted with the dark earth. A few weeks before we ran into a dirt biker coming from back there who told us bodies have been found mutilated back there. People believed it was a mafia body dump.

Anyway, We searched for a place to call home. As we were walking we saw what appeared to be a small game trail. It was the only opening in the heavily vegetated tree line which was full of poison ivy, poison oak and poison sumac. We went in and hiked back a bit literally bush whacking our way in. We found this cleared out area that was surrounded by pitch pines, large red pines as well as some tall oak trees. There were loads of marsh ferns everywhere and we even came across some wild blueberries near by. There was a fresh water creek leading to a lake near by as well. We cleared out the area which was filled with nasty funnel orb weaver spiders and some other creepy crawlers and a couple cottonmouth snakes. We set up the tent first. Then we dug out a fire pit by hand. We found the basket of an old 80s looking grocery cart on the way so we laid that sideways in the pit and surrounded it with large stones we found by the creek. We figured we could use it as a sort of stovetop to cook food. We put a couple big logs around the pit to sit on. As we were doing all of this work, we both kept feeling like we weren’t alone. We were also hearing lots of noises as if living tree branches were being slowly bent and twisted. We didn’t think much of it. Just wrote it off as just weird sounds of nature.

We heard some other noises that almost sounded like when you put your finger horizontally in your mouth and make a cheek popping noise, but in a fast repetition. I remember saying to Pat that has to be a wood pecker or something even though I was pretty sure it was not because it did not sound like wood. But I didn’t think much of it. The first night it started to rain. We had a fire going but it was starting to go out. We both ate some smashed dry ramen noodles with the flavor packet poured in and some chef boy-r-d right out of the can in our tent. Then we laid back and just bullshitted for a while before trying to sleep. As we laid there, we started hearing things moving around outside the camp. We just laid there in silence staring at each other amazed and slightly terrified. We had no clue what could be making the noise. It sounded like something was trying to tip toe around but every step you could hear twigs and sticks snapping. We thought we heard some mumbling but the sound of the rain on the tent drowned out a lot of the sound. We finally fell asleep and woke up really wet as the rain had somehow seeped into the tent. The morning was rain free. We lit the fire back up and sat around it to dry off. We talked about the strange sounds we were hearing and made the decision to put up a perimeter fence. We grabbed every sapling and large stick we could and sharpened the tips with knives. We then twisted them into the ground about a foot or so down all around the camp. We duct taped them together and stuffed the cracks as much as we could with ferns and moss and wet mud. This took a few days to complete and we were hearing the noises every night. We were also getting pinecones tossed at our tent. At first we thought it was just pinecones falling from the trees above but i noticed the cones in all the trees surrounding the camp were small and round pitch pine cones. The ones hitting the tent were long and thin from the Eastern White Pine, which wasn’t anywhere near our camp. We then decided to take the handles off of two knives and make spears out of them for protection and to hunt with. (We failed at hunting anything haha) We cut down a couple of very strong saplings with a rock and a 10 inch Rambo survival knife. Then we scraped off all the bark and split the ends down a few inches. We stuck what was left of the knife handles in, poured some krazee glue in and duct taped around it. Then we wrapped it really tightly with some para-chord. We would bring them with us whenever we went out exploring or looking for supplies. We practiced throwing the spears at trees and small game and birds. We also would bring them to the creek and look for fish. We failed every time. On more than one occasion we found deep imprints but they were not clear tracks as the ground was littered with fallen leaves and twigs and all sorts of foliage. We wrote them off as just soft spots or random divots in the earth.

Some days we would wake up early and walk to Jeffs house and wait till wed see his Mom leave. She hated us both at that time haha. Then wed climb up onto the roof of his garage off the garbage cans and jump up near his bedroom window upstairs and wake him up. He would let us eat whatever, shower and grab small amounts of supplies like bottled water, canned food and toilet paper. We also grabbed a couple of old brown tarps from his garage to put over and under our tent.

One night after a visit to NYC with Jeff he dropped Pat and I off at the tree line as usual and we started hiking back to our camp. We were both starting to feel kind of nauseous and disoriented. I said I feel like my chest and my head are vibrating. Pat said he had the exact feeling. He even said he heard something tell him to go away loudly but I did not hear that, so we didn’t think much of it. I said maybe its a ghost in a half joking manor. We kept hiking back towards the camp and got to the opening where the power lines and dirt jumps were. The moon was really big and bright and illuminated the white sand. We felt like everything looked extra vivid.

While moving towards our campsite we both heard a scream like a woman was getting tortured. It was loud and felt like it vibrated through our bodies. We stopped and both got down really low. The screams started getting closer and from multiple directions. We then started hearing large trees falling and crashing down. And there were multiple of these sounds. I said lets just run to our camp. As we went toward the little opening in the tree line towards our tent we realized the trees that were coming down were right where our camp was. We got to the opening and saw our camp had been destroyed by fallen trees. There were downed trees all over there! We ran the other way through the soft sand and heard the sound of leaves shaking. We looked back and there were at least 5-6 trees violently shaking right where we had just been standing. We were in shock!

We ducked inside of a dugout sand pit and got down and huddled up together. Pat was literally crying and he never cried. He was the least emotional person I have ever known. (Hes now a biker/driller haha) Thats when I heard “Leave!!” as if my own mind had told me to do so. As that happened Pat looked at me with a face that I can only describe as “did you hear it?” I know, its hard for me to even say it sounds so ridiculous. But….it happened none the less. The screams were still happening and started sounding like words of some kind. I said we should look to see if we can see anything and when we did there was a tree being smashed from left to right between two larger trees. We could see the roots and dirt flying off with every hit. It was so loud and violent we could feel it vibrate through our bodies. And thats when things got even weirder.

I noticed this dark shadow in a dead twisted burnt up tree. We were staring at it for what seemed to be an hour but it was probably not that long. It looked like a person was hanging from the tree. I was like holy shit is that a dead person!? Is that a suicide? Is it a murder!? We both agreed thats what it looked like. Then it appeared to be moving and it dropped from the tree and was standing upright and very large. It only looked like a black silhouette as it was probably 2 am at this point and very dark as the moon was starting to hide behind the large pines. It then dropped to the ground on all fours but spread out and made an almost laughing like noise but not a friendly laugh. Almost hyena like. It was running at incredible speeds through the soft sand toward the tree line then did a 90 degree turn right toward us.

We literally collapsed in fear and got down back into the sand pit holding each other so tightly that we each had bruises on our arms and shoulders the next day. As we laid in the pit the thing kept running by and kicking large amounts of dirt and sand on us. We could make out some features as it circled us. At the time the only thing i saw clearly was its face which looked like a large version of the Honeycombs Craver monster but crawling like it was imitating a spider or something with its stomach almost touching the ground. The trees were still crashing in the woods and the screams and yelps were still happening.
We both felt paralyzed probably from hours of panic. This went on literally until the sun started coming up. Once there was enough light to see we ran full speed out of there. We heard large movements in the brush as we got to the road.

We crossed it into another tree line on the other side. As we were heading towards where Jeff lived we heard a cars breaks screech and looked back at the car flying off the road crashing hard into a ditch in the bush. We think maybe to swerve out of the way of whatever was chasing us? We don’t know. We turned and kept going even faster. Jeff had already left for school so we had nowhere to go. We walked to the nearest train tracks and followed them for around 7 hours (18miles) south towards our hometown. We got to a street crossing and randomly saw a girl we knew driving to her parents house. She saw us and said “what the fuck happened to you guys and where have you been? People think your both dead!” We told her we were living in the wilderness to avoid detection and that we were forced out and have nowhere to go. We were bloody from pricker bushes and falling down so much. We were covered in mud and dirt. We were bruised. And we were as white as ghosts. She was the nicest person ever and told us to get in the car. She took us back to her apartment and told her parents something came up and she couldn’t visit them. She let us live at her house for a long time. She called us her adopted children haha. We never told anyone about that experience and we never went back for our gear.”