Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener from Alberta, Canada writes “I was camping this mid June on the opening weekend for fly fishing in one of my favorite spots.

I had arrived on a Thursday ahead of my friends and sat up our main campsite. Another friend joined me in the evening and we called it an early night as the rest of our friends would be joining us the following day. During the night around 3-3:30am I was suddenly awoken by a physical sensation on my head like something touching me through my tent.

I was sleeping in a very confined 1-man feather-lite backpacking tent. I thought to myself that I had just startled myself somehow but I leaned up into a semi-reclined position with my elbows on the ground and my head maybe 8-12” off the ground trying to gather myself and figure out what happened. After about 15 or 20 seconds it happened again: an incredibly large hand pressed its palm through my tent wall and cupped the top of my head.

At this point I’m wide awake and I now have this huge hand depressing my tent wall nearly 2′ from the ground at close to 45 degree angle and it’s feeling around my head, making minor grip adjustments as it palpates the shape of my skull. If this was a black bear or a grizzly I would have expected to feel a wide flat paw with sharp claws but all I felt was a symmetrical palm and fingers in a cupped motion, feeling over my head. If it was a bear I would have also expected some grunting or clumsy adjustments of its position but I heard nothing.

I held completely still out of fear and it kept feeling around my head for about 20 or 30 seconds continuously. When I’d had enough I moved my head slightly and it suddenly jerked its hand (or paw?) back as if startled. Of course at this point I’m panicking because I don’t have my bear spray, a firearm, or even a knife on me. What was weird at this point is that I didn’t hear anything move off even though I sat there in fear for the next hour in a state of hyper vigilance.

In the morning I checked over the campsite for sign of wildlife that may have entered our campsite but there was nothing. What I had expected to see was rubbing along the tailgate of my truck since all of our food was locked in the box of the truck and if it was a bear who smelled it, I would have expected to see licking, gnawing, or body rubbings along the vehicle where it tried to get in – but there was nothing like that. So, I don’t want to get “Sasquatch crazy” and say that’s what grabbed my head, it could have in fact been a bear, but I’ll just chalk this up to something unexplained.

I should also note that I could hear my friend snoring in the background during the incident and we were in a remote part of government land and had no other campers surrounding us.”