Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “My encounter happened on November 3, 2014. I’ve sat on sharing my story for nearly two years because the other witness that afternoon doesn’t want to be involved in sharing our story nor does she want her name involved.

My friend and I set out around 11am from Moreau, NY, located in the foothills in the Adirondacks along the Hudson River, to Geocache the historical D&H Rail Trial just over the boarder of Vermont in the town of Rupert. Along the way to Rupert we stopped off to find geocaches and arrived at our destination at about 1pm. I figure it to be that time of day due to the digital log times of the geocaches we found before we arrived in Rupert.

Geocaching, if you’re unfamiliar, is a hobby/game that involves a log to sign your name, hidden inside an object anywhere from the size of your thumbnail to the size of a 50 gallon trash can. Each geocache is tagged with geocoordinates to guide you in the right direction.

The D&H Rail Trail is void of rail ties and rail lines. The trail itself in various spots is either overgrown with weeds, inch deep mud and puddles of muck, as it was that day my friend and I were there.

Along the trial are open fields of uncut grass, scummy ponds, streams, trees, roads, homes, and forest. The entire area of the trial is surrounded either by mountains or small towns.

Along the trail we passed behind a church and a graveyard. The graveyard was off the D&H Rail Trail. Within the graveyard, was a geocache hidden in a bush, which we found, from there we cut across a large field of uncut grass back to Rail Trail. The field we cut across had a long and winding matted down trail of grass with larger spots a few feet off the impromptu trial of matted down grass as if something large had bedded down. We figured deer. We also figured other geocachers matted down the grass because from the graveyard the next geocache to find is located back on the rail trail.

At the opposite side of the grassy trial there’s a wall of trees about three trees deep with a stream beyond that and again a wall of trees with the D&H Rail Trail just beyond that.

We came to the tree line and realized we would have to jump across the stream. This particular spot of the stream was about 5 feet in width. There was no way either of us were going to make this jump. But someone before us had. We noticed a heel print in the mud on the side we were standing and a footprint in the mud on the opposite side. I recall saying, “Whoever jumped that is in better physical shape we are.”

I said that because we weren’t going to make that jump without falling into a foot deep stream unlike the person before us. We figured it to be another geocacher who we would meet up along the trail.

We walked along the stream for about 5 minutes until we came across a thinner area we could jump across. Once across we continued to follow the Rail Trail. We found 2-3 more geocaches until we saw a group of turkeys run out from the right side of the bushes and run up the trial a little ways and disappear into the left side of the brush.

I had my iPhone open to the geocaching app and quickly opened the camera app and took a couple photos of the turkeys. I lowered my iPhone and asked my friend if she saw the turkeys. She said yes and I looked back up the trial and that’s when I saw a large person step from where the turkeys emerged from the trees and walk the same length of the trail the turkeys had, then stop, turn its torso and look at me square in the eyes.

It was at that moment I realized that wasn’t a person. It was probably 7-8 feet tall, covered in what I would describe as uneven length salt and peppery hair that made it look dark grey in patches and black in others. It’s face was flat, not necessarily completely covered in hair but like a monkey’s face would be, dark hairless skin around its eyes, mouth and nose. I can’t recall any exact facial features, like size of eyes or if the nose was flat for example, other than what I mentioned because I didn’t focus much on the face as my eyes ran down its left arm. It’s arm was bulky and covered in hair. I then focused on the motionless turkey held under its arm like it was carrying a football. Before I could make eye contact with it again it quickly lumbered into the trees.

Later my friend would say that the creature made eye contact with her and scrunched its nose up and showed its teeth. I didn’t get much more info on what it looked like other than what I typed and what my friend told me about the facial expression it made. She wouldn’t say much more than that. It was also silent. I heard no noise such as grunts or heavy breathing.

After it disappeared into the woods I lifted up my phone which was still open to he camera app. I was about 50-75 feet away from it and could’ve gotten a good photo. But I was too shocked at what I was seeing to remember I had my phone set to take photos. I knew I was that far away from it because the next geocache we were looking for was in about the area it and the turkeys appeared in front of us and the geocache app tells us how far we are from what we are looking for. The app can sometimes, depending on connection to cell towers, be off by 25 feet which is why I said 50-75 feet away. Connection was poor that day due to 3G compared to 4G LTE which I have now with my iPhone 6 compared the 4 I was using then.

Without discussion, we ended our day and head back to our car in he opposite direction. Later, I’ve tried talking to her about what we saw but she refuses. I told her I wanted to share my story with you but she said, “If you do don’t use our real names and leave me out of it, I’m not talking about it to anyone ever and I don’t want anyone knowing what I did or didn’t see.”