Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “For most of my young life, I was out in the surrounding wilderness. I camped with my pops, hiked, played in the creek bottoms and surrounding hills, and later spent weekends and week-long adventures with the Boy Scouts until I earned my Eagle.

I know the sounds of most animals in Arizona. I’ve had face-to-face encounters with bears, rattlesnakes, javelinas, elk, and even a mountain lion. The mountain lion was the only creature that ever stood its ground and forced me to back away from it, although I was only about fourteen at the time.

So when I say I know what belongs in the Arizona wilderness, I’m pretty confident in that statement.

My First Experience With “Monkeys”

My first experience with what I would later call “monkeys” happened shortly after my family moved into the Verde Valley.

We lived in a very rural area. There were maybe three houses spread across a half-mile stretch, with two creeks running through the area before eventually joining together. The creek bottom had wild blackberries, great fishing and swimming, cattails, crawdads pretty much everything a kid could want.

It was a great place to grow up.

Or so I thought.

Pops had a never-ending war with the javelinas, which were constantly trying to eat anything Mom planted. He eventually encouraged us to sit on the back porch and shoot at them. Our house was about 80 yards from the creek, and the only time the floodwaters ever came close was during the flood of ’93. During our first few nights in the house, Mom kept commenting on the howling sounds coming from the river bottom. Pops always brushed it off.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just a bird or a frog.”

Mom, however, was always the adventurer. She had traveled to Australia at a young age, and drawing from those experiences, she kept pressing Pops about the sounds. In her opinion, they sounded like howler monkeys.

For the first few years, whatever was making those sounds would pass through the creek bottom around springtime. They never stayed for more than a week, but during those periods Mom wouldn’t let us kids wander too far from the house.

Eventually, more people built houses in the area. The howls were replaced by dogs and coyotes, and the neighborhood slowly became less wild. But there was always one particular section of wilderness that we kids never went into. None of us ever talked about it. We just didn’t go there.

There was something about that particular area that none of us despite being kids who carried spears and knives and thought we were invincible wanted to explore.

To this day, as a grown man, I still will not venture into that area.

The Boy Scouts

I was practically gang-pressed into Boy Scouts when I was a Webelos. It was either that or piano lessons which Mom still forced me to take anyway after my sister chose Girl Scouts over piano. One of our campouts took us to a section of Marshall Lake. Our leaders at the time consisted of two forest rangers, a Fish and Game officer, a Mormon priest, and an old Army veteran who absolutely terrified us boys. Our leaders had keys to a gate that gave us access to a part of the “lake” that humans rarely visited.

We were there for four days. Throughout the trip, the old Army vet had a habit of disappearing and reappearing at random times during the day.

So one night, when most of us were gathered around the campfire and rocks suddenly started flying out of the darkness, we naturally assumed it was the old vet screwing with us. We didn’t find out until after the trip that every night he had gone to bed before sundown. He was also on breakfast KP at five in the morning. So, apparently, the old Army vet wasn’t the one throwing rocks.

We never figured out who or what was.

Stoneman Lake — August 27, 2012

In my late twenties, I worked in the Editorial department of a newspaper. Every so often I had to pull a 10-to-12-hour day, which was nothing compared to the photographer, who could work 20 or even 30 hours at a time, sometimes sleeping in his car between shoots. On Monday, August 27, 2012, I was working late into the night.

Personally, I loved working those hours. By six or seven in the evening, everyone else had gone home, which meant I could finally get some serious work done without being interrupted. The crime reporter had a police scanner in the office that he kept running 24/7. It helped him pick up tips about what was happening and where.

That night, I was working while listening to the scanner in the background when something was said about Stoneman Lake.  I stopped working and started listening.

The people involved were camping more than 40 minutes away from Interstate 17. Dispatch told them that they needed to handle the situation over the phone. Otherwise, they would send someone, with an estimated arrival time of about an hour.

The caller was reporting something screaming in the woods. These people were panicking because they could hear what sounded like a woman screaming for her life somewhere out in the woods. And dispatch was telling them to deal with it over the phone. I knew that area.

Stoneman Lake is more of a mud puddle these days. From the air, it looks almost like a giant crater or sinkhole that happens to act as a natural water trap. There are a few cabins around it, along with a small campground and picnic area on a cliff overlooking the lake.

Several springs feed into the lake, although during the current drought many of those springs have essentially become local water holes. Getting there is about a 30 minute drive on a forest road or, for a city person, a dirt road where 30 mph is pretty much the top speed.

The area is a mixture of high-desert junipers and lower-elevation pinyon and ponderosa pines. I’ve seen elk and deer throughout the area. It’s also cattle country during the summer, and the roads can become snowed in during late winter.

Stoneman Lake is in Coconino County, so the nearest sheriff might have been dispatched from Flagstaff. However, because the call was being handled by Yavapai County dispatch, it was more likely someone from the Camp Verde office would have been sent. From Camp Verde to Stoneman Lake would have been roughly an hour’s drive. But dispatch never said exactly where the campers were.

They could have simply been using Stoneman Lake as the nearest recognizable landmark, meaning they could have been another 20 plus minutes away from the lake itself. Either way, they were out there in the dark, hearing a woman screaming somewhere in the woods. And something about that bothered me.

The Campout

I joined a combat club in 2003. In 2011, a bunch of our members in Phoenix were planning their second annual campout. The first one, in 2010, had been scheduled for late July, right in the middle of monsoon season. They got hailed on, rained on, and generally had a miserable time. Although one guy, LOGAN STEELE not his real name, but the name everyone there called him became the hero of that entire event by basically saving everyone’s ass.

This time, they didn’t want to be cold and wet, so they planned the campout for June. The downside was that fire restrictions would be in effect statewide. That meant no traditional campfires. Only liquid-fuel, above-ground grills were allowed.

Our friends in Phoenix posted driving directions to the location. A few of us, including possibly some friends coming from out of state, were supposed to travel there.  The location was somewhere along an old logging road off 95J.

The directions were simple: If you cross Bear Creek, you’ve gone too far. Knowing how easily I can get lost following directions, I decided to take a weekend in May to scout the location ahead of time. It happened to be a holiday weekend, which meant the fire restrictions hadn’t gone into effect yet. I invited a girlfriend, got a Forest Service map of the area, and followed the directions.

From Route 87, which was paved, we moved onto Rim Road 300, which was dirt, and then onto Forest Road 95. It took nearly two hours of slow driving. Parts of Rim Road 300 run right along the edge of the rim, so there wasn’t exactly any incentive to speed.

I drove back and forth along 95 looking for the road marker.  Eventually, my companion and I stopped and had lunch on the road overlooking Bear Creek.

There was a small amount of water in the creek at the time, and an apple tree beside the road was in full bloom. Because it was a holiday weekend, I expected to see plenty of people.  And I did. There were people everywhere along Rim Road 300.

But when we reached the creek, something changed. My companion and I could have been the only two humans left on Earth.

When we finally found FR 95J, we both noticed something strange.  It wasn’t really a road.

It was a road marker next to almost nothing. A person could easily drive right past the brown road marker. We had done exactly that.

Five times.

Maybe more.

I finally coaxed my SUV onto what passed for a road, and we could tell where the old road had once been because of the gaps in the tree line. About five or six minutes into the drive, progress came to a sudden stop.

Several pine trees had fallen across the road.

They weren’t huge the thickest was probably nine inches in diameter but they were completely blocking our way. Being an Eagle Scout, I pulled out an axe and some rope and managed to drag them off the trail.

But there was something odd about the way they had fallen.

They didn’t look natural. They looked placed. Still, we continued. Eventually, the road dead-ended overlooking the bridge over Bear Creek.

Apparently, we’d missed the old logging road. It took nearly an hour of scouting around before we found what appeared to be an old road.

I put the SUV in gear and slowly coaxed it down the “road,” with tree branches scratching the paint the entire way. When we finally reached the bottom of the ridge, I pulled out my camera and started taking pictures. Originally, I had planned to photograph the route turn by turn so I could add pictures to the directions. The site itself became an added bonus. The campsite was tucked between two ridgelines.

It was completely hidden from Forest Road 95  and, as we would later discover, even sound seemed to disappear down there. A small runoff stream trickled through the center, keeping the bottom unusually green. The opposite ridge gradually narrowed toward an almost cliff-like drop overlooking Bear Canyon and the creek below.

From a defensive standpoint, I thought it was a terrible location. From a hiding standpoint?

Perfect.

You could have been hiding from everyone in the entire state of Arizona and nobody would have known you were there. There was also absolutely zero cell service.  Not even a bar. At the proposed campsite, we found a small lean-to built against a large tree, with a little reflective fire pit beside it.

Our friends had apparently found the location during the winter before the snow closed the forest roads and had built the shelter sometime between then and May.

It wasn’t large, but it was well built. The fire pit was barely warm from the sun, so it hadn’t been used in several days. We decided to camp on the ridge overlooking the site.

From there, we had a good view of the lean-to in case someone happened to come back that night. Our position was surrounded by a tight stand of small pines on our right, my SUV and the forest road directly in front of us, a sharp drop behind us, and scattered pines to our left. We set up the tent, dug a small rocket stove, and settled in as the sky darkened.

Shortly after sunset, we went to bed. That’s when things started going bump in the night. Something large began moving around out there. Whatever it was started on our left. Then it moved around the SUV.

Then it continued toward our right. My companion had never been camping before and didn’t seem particularly concerned about the sounds. Whatever it was eventually paused at the ridge.

Then it doubled back. I have no idea how long this went on. I’d left all my electronics in the SUV because there was no cell service anyway.

Then everything stopped.

Complete silence.

Deafening silence.

I assumed it had to be a bear.

But there was no food outside.

There was nothing around except a vehicle and a tent.

Then THWACK!

Something slammed into a tree.

Whatever had hit it was large.

Dense.

And close.

The next few moments are still a blur.

I remember sticking my head out of the tent with a flashlight and scanning the direction the impact had come from.

That’s when I saw the eyes.

Two enormous yellow-orange eyes.

They were far too high off the ground to belong to a normal bear.

And with the trees being as thin as they were, there was no way a bear could have been sitting in one.

The eyes blinked.

Then they dropped low to the ground.

And disappeared.

I immediately started tearing down camp.

I shoved as much of our gear as I could into the SUV while my companion scanned the darkness with the flashlight.

I knew something big was out there.

The only weapon I had brought was a hand axe.

It took me 31 minutes to get from that spot on the rim back to pavement.

A little after 10 p.m., we checked into a hotel in the nearest town.

I didn’t tell anyone about what had happened.

Not before the planned campout.

Not yet.

The Return

June eventually arrived. This time, we were going back to the rim. I was slightly better prepared. I had a .30-30 rifle, three women including my previous companion two men, and an SUV packed with camping gear. Most of the guys from Phoenix had arrived at the site the day before. They had also encountered the fallen trees and had to move them to reach the old logging road.

As it turned out, our friend LOGAN STEELE from California had gotten lost a few times too. Fortunately, he had my photo directions. By the time everyone arrived, we had nearly 40 people gathered at the site.

Apparently, the frat-bro types from Phoenix hadn’t liked the lean-to.

So they crushed it.

But they were also apparently paranoid about the “Mountain Man” coming back. Not paranoid enough to move camp. Not paranoid enough to set up a perimeter alarm.

But apparently paranoid enough to destroy the shelter. Nothing unusual happened the first night I was there.

Everyone stayed up until nearly 3 a.m., drinking, carrying on, and playing something called wizard staff which involved duct-taping empty cans together to make a staff while inventing drunken magical powers.

The second night was quieter.

Most of the booze was gone, and without a fire to sit around telling stories, people started going to bed around 10. Most of the group was preparing to leave the following morning. I’d already packed away all my nonessential equipment phone, camera, rifle and locked everything safely inside the SUV.

I was ready to leave in the morning. Then I was awakened by my ex practically strangling me. At first, I assumed she was terrified.

It had to be three or four in the morning.

It was completely dark.

Then I heard it.

Something was screaming.

But the scream wasn’t normal.

There were gasps or maybe laughs mixed into it.

It sounded something like:

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAH—AH AH AH AH AH AH…

Pause.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH—AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AH…

I’ve tried to imitate that sound over the years.

I can’t.

The lung capacity required to make it is far beyond what I can manage.

It sounded like it was coming from just up the draw.

According to my ex, it continued until daybreak.

At some point, I fell back asleep.

I still wish I’d had my camera inside the tent.

I could have recorded it. Although, knowing my ex, she probably would have killed the battery recording herself anyway. Once our fellow campers started cautiously peeking out of their tents to see who had survived the night, the questions began. Everyone had heard something. The “hyena” laugh had scared the hell out of people. Some guys claimed they hadn’t heard anything at all. But strangely enough, those same guys packed up much faster than the rest of us.

Those of us who had rifles started pulling them out and searching around the campsite. The ground was mostly pine needles, rocks, and grass.

Nothing obvious appeared to be disturbed. Nothing was out of place. Except for the enormous collection of trash bags filled with empty beer cans.

And whatever had been screaming in the darkness was nowhere to be found.”