sasquatch chronicles blog

The chill of October 1955 clung to the slopes of Mica Mountain in British Columbia as William Roe made his way up the trail. Roe was no stranger to the wilderness, a seasoned woodsman and hunter who knew the shape, sound, and smell of every creature that roamed the Canadian Rockies.

But that day, he would see something that would challenge everything he thought he knew.

As he rounded a bend in the trail, Roe froze. Just ahead, partly hidden in the brush, was a massive, shaggy figure bent over, feeding on leaves and berries. His first thought was simple: bear. He dropped into a crouch, rifle steady, heart thudding against his ribs as he waited for the beast to move into the open.

Then, it did.

The “bear” rose to its full height. Roe’s breath caught. This was no grizzly.

Before him stood a towering figure — upright, broad, and powerfully built. Covered head to toe in dark brown hair tipped with silver, the creature loomed nearly seven feet tall. Its arms were impossibly long, hanging nearly to its knees. Its head seemed small for its massive shoulders, and its face — God, its face — was flat, humanlike, with a heavy jaw and piercing eyes that glinted in the mountain light.

What struck Roe most was the shape. The creature was female. The swell of her breasts left no doubt. Roe’s rifle wavered. The hunter in him whispered to fire. But the man in him recoiled. I can’t kill something that looks so human.

The creature shifted. She turned her head slowly, deliberately, and locked eyes with him. For a heartbeat, the forest was silent, the two of them — man and beast — caught in a moment older than time. Then, with calm, almost disdainful grace, she turned away.

Her stride was long, swinging her arms like a person’s. Roe watched her climb the slope, step by powerful step, until she vanished into the timber, leaving only silence and the pounding of his own heart.

Years later, Roe would swear under oath what he had seen. He hadn’t misjudged a bear, nor been fooled by shadows. On that lonely mountain trail, William Roe had looked into the eyes of something unclassified, something ancient — a Sasquatch.

According to Roe’s sworn affidavit:

“It was about six feet tall, covered from head to foot with dark brown, silver-tipped hair. It had a rather small head for its bulk, with a short thick neck. Its arms were very long, reaching almost to its knees.”

He also noted:

• A flat, humanlike face with a pronounced jaw.

• A feminine shape — the creature had breasts, which made him conclude it was likely a female.

• No clothing or tools, but it walked upright with long strides like a human.

• Large, humanlike feet visible when it walked away.

What if a hidden meadow in the wilderness held more than just trees and grass? In this episode, Tony, Joel, and Ward recount their expedition into a place where cubes of light appeared on thermal cameras, radios crackled with unexplainable interference, and perceptions bent in ways that felt supernatural. From bizarre spiritual attacks to face-melting visions, the crew wrestles with forces that seem intent on deceiving and dividing. Their story reveals a battle between the counterfeit and the true, where even a cube might point to the cross.

The Confessionals: The Cube & The Cross | The Meadow Project

Portals, Deception & The Supernatural (What Really Happened)

A listener writes “Hello Wes, I just had an experience this weekend that has cemented the reality of bigfoot in my mind. I’m not sure if I want to be on the show, but I needed to tell my story to someone who wouldn’t think I am losing my mind. For a bit of background, I have been interested in the subject of sasquatch for about ten years after finding the Finding Bigfoot show.

Learning about bigfoot did two things for me. First, it changed my perspective of an incident I was a part of when I was a teenager. Second, it made me pay more attention to my surroundings when in the woods and the mountains. Because I was more aware of bigfoot, I’ve seen things and experienced things that could be caused by bigfoot.

But I am a scientist, so I have to rule out any other variable in the equation before I could conclusively say that sasquatch was involved. That said, I had some experiences that were very difficult to attribute to anything else. One occurred in Wyoming, three in Utah, and most recently, in Georgia.

But this weekend, I had an encounter that I can only attribute to at least two sasquatch.

I live in the metro Atlanta area, and I like to do bike packing. I load my camping gear on my bike and spend multiple days riding to several camp spots.
The Silver Comet trail is my favorite place to do overnight training rides. 44 miles along the trail is a small campground called Camp Comet that is reserved for bike packers. A few times every year, I do training rides of different distance to Camp Comet, stay over night, then ride back in the morning.

I’ve had some odd occurrences at this camp site in the past. The camp is situated in a piece of dense forest surrounded by farm land. It’s an island of trees that’s a couple hundred acres and also includes a small lake.

A couple years ago, I did a ride to Camp Comet in the late summer. When I arrived, I found that several homeless people were using the camp spots. IT had happened before, and it usually doesn’t bother me. Generally, they are friendly. But on that occasion, I gat a bad vibe from a couple of the guys there. I didn’t want to turn around and ride 44 miles back to my car through the night.
There’s a hill on the west side of the camp. I pushed my bike about a hundred yards to the top of the hill and found a spot where I could hang my hammock and have a little campfire. Nothing happened that night. In the morning, I rode back to my car. A couple months later, my teenage son did a ride to Camp Comet with me. We had the camp to ourselves at that time. We went looking for firewood up the hill and I asked my son if he wanted to see the spot that I camped at on the hill. When we reached the top of the hill, there were two dead tree trunks that were laid on the ground in an x shape right where I had my little campfire. Then a few yards away we saw another long tree trunk that was set into the crotches of two trees about twelve feet up. Another tree trunk was set perpendicular to the first one at nearly a 90 degree angle and it was connected to another young tree that had been bent over and woven into the horizontal trunk.

There are some other strange things that have occurred at the camp.

On Friday I did a ride to Camp Comet to try out some new camping equipment. When I got to the camp, there was a man set up about a h hundred yards back in the woods. Based on the state of his camp, it looked like he was homeless and using the campground. When I arrived, his very friendly dog came over to my campsite to say, “Hello”. He looked like a pit bull/boxer mix.

I got my camp set up and my little camp stove and skillet to cook my dinner. I was sitting in my little camp chair, reading a book as my dinner cooked in the skillet. I heard things falling through the tree leaves and hitting the ground near me. This is common- trees shed leaves, oaks and hickory trees are dropping their nuts. But I noticed that there were a lot of them hitting near me.

It was just getting dark enough that I turned my headlamp on to finish cooking my dinner. Then a rock landed right between my feet and bounced into my right ankle. I kind of half yelled, “Ouch!” because I was so surprised from the rock hitting me. The rock came from my 9 o’clock position, and when I shouted out, I heard a loud voice on the hill that sounded just like the “Samurai chatter”. It sounded like a handful of words and then there was a response from my 7 o’clock position. The voices were very loud and very clear.

Adrenaline shot through me like you can’t believe. I was so scared. I keep both bear spray and a handgun in my handlebar bag. I went to my bike and I put the gun in my right pants pocket and the bear spray into my left pocket. My hands were shaking so bad. I started packing my stuff because I just wanted to get out of there. But then I realized that there was nowhere I could go. If they wanted me, they could easily chase me down, even if I was on my bike.

I moved my chair to a broad tree. I sat with my back to the tree and facing the hill. After an hour of nothing else happening, I got into my tent. I decided that they had already announced themselves and if they wanted to harm me, they would have done it by then.

About fifteen minutes after I got into my tent, there was a loud ,”Whoop” call from on the hill. It was the high pitched whoop, not the lower pitched howl like the Ohio howl. But it was so loud, I felt it vibrate in my body. The guy in the other camp shouted, “What the beep was that?” and his dog went nuts. It was barking and growling and sounded pissed. After a few minutes the dog stopped barking.
I sat in my tent with my gun in my hand until I was too tired not to sleep.

As soon as it was light enough, I packed up all my gear and biked out of there. And I don’t plan on going to Camp Comet ever again.”

A listener writes “When we first moved in, my brothers were the first to have incidents with these beasts one of my brothers said he heard what sounded like something falling very hard and then the sound of a woman getting murdered. Later, he saw something walking down the road away from our house.

My other brother said that something tapped on his window and he was curious but he said he knew better then to open the curtains, this was at night.  All 3 incidents. last year one of my brothers actually saw the beast he said that it was near where we keep our ducks and when he put the light on,  it ducked down trying to cover it’s face my other brother was out in the car one night and heard something growling over down the hill across the road- and was so scared that he had my dad come out with his gun.

After this incident me and my sister were getting hay for our goats and in our neighbors field we heard 2 or 3 wood knocks after that me and my mom and sister were walking outside one night and we heard a sasquatch in our woods a few minutes later we were close to our front door and I hear something running around the corner and there is my brother i asked him if he heard that and he said ” I don’t run for no reason” and a few months before that,  my brother and my mom were taking care of our sheep late at night and heard a sasquatch in the same area where we heard it my sister my brother and my mom were outside at night taking care of our goats and heard it again, my sister shined the flash light on the area the sound came from and heard the neighbor’s dogs barking.

Afterwards she thought that it ran towards the neighbors. I have seen a ball of light dart behind a tree I have seen a big white sasquatch looking beast when I saw it, it turned and ran and I didn’t stick around to see where it went and we also heard a bird at night near our neighbors field we’ve also had several ghost encounters.”

A listener writes “This was taken on a trail cam in TN by my friend, a paranormal investigator. He does not believe it is Sasquatch. He calls it an elemental spirit.” For the members that listen to last nights show, this will make sense.

Bigfoot and Beyond writes “Cliff Barackman, James “Bobo” Fay, and Matt Pruitt discuss what the discovery of the sasquatch might look like with modern DNA analysis, the mythos surrounding genetic samples attributed to an “unknown primate,” and Bobo’s phone woes (AKA “Woebos” or “Bowoes”). Also mentioned are a new study of the chimpanzee genome, Darby Orcutt’s new website, the upcoming New York Bigfoot Conference (Oct. 3-4), and CryptidCon (Nov. 22-23)!”

Bigfoot and Beyond: DNA, Discovery, and the “Unknown Primate” Myth!

Here is the full interview from last nights show, if you guys and gals want to check it out.

NC 911 call man says he saw a soldier on the road near a battlefield

A listener writes “In 1979 I was 15 years old. I come from a middle-class family in northern Indiana, so when we went on vacation we would usually go camping and fishing around the Great Lakes. This particular year our whole family including aunts and uncles headed out to go on a fishing excursion in northern Minnesota. My Dad and his brothers had rented a houseboat large enough for all of us and we were headed for an area just Northeast of Lake Superior known as the land of a thousand lakes. After a pretty long drive we had finally entered Minnesota. We ended up driving through the Superior National Forest. Being an Indiana boy, this was like nothing I had ever seen. This was an old growth forest the largest and deepest Woodlands I had ever seen.

After camping for one night at a roadside Minnesota KOA, we finally arrived where we were to pick up the houseboat. We were very close to the Canadian border at this point. I don’t really remember the name of the place that we acquired the houseboat, but I do remember that this area was where many lakes chain linked together along the Canadian border. Many of these Lakes were directly on the border. The southern shorelines in the United States and the northern shorelines were Canadian. The Lakes were named things like Lac La Croix, Rainy and Saganaga Lake.

When my cousin and I finally laid eyes on the houseboat, it was actually a bit old and weathered. It almost appeared to be an old trailer that someone put on top of two very long pontoons and then stuck two motors on the back of it. But even with it being what it was, my cousin and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Our families had brought two boats with them, smaller fishing boats. One was my grandpa’s boat, it was the larger of the two, a Mastercraft with a steering wheel and nice motor. The other boat was just a small flat bottom aluminum boat with a 5hp engine that you steered with a tiller. My cousin Tony and I had our eyes on the smaller aluminum boat, we knew that that would mostly be our plaything on the lakes. I remember my Uncle explaining to the man that we were renting the houseboat from that we were planning on towing the two smaller boats behind the houseboat, to use for fishing. That’s when the man looked directly at me and my cousin and said to never get out of eyesight of the houseboat because it was very easy to get lost in this area. The area we were in was called the land of a thousand lakes for a reason, all of the different lakes on the Canadian border were chained together and almost formed a maze.

There were thousands of channels, peninsulas and Islands all through these lakes and many people have had to be rescued after getting lost. If you zoom in on this area in Google Maps, you can see exactly what I mean. There was a lot of talk between the houseboat guy and my dad, uncle’s and grandfather about navigating through this area. It was all about the yellow buoys floating in the lakes that had numbers on them, and one of the cabinet doors inside the houseboat was actually a map with the numbered buoy locations marked on it. This was very important because there were only three or four places to get fuel for the houseboat once you were back in this wilderness and they were all on the American side of the Lakes.

There was also a radio in the houseboat to communicate with these small marinas. It kind of looked like one of those old CB radio home base units. You have to remember we were going out into this area at a time when there was no GPS no Google Maps and no smart phones. It really was a different world back then. After all was said and done, and groceries were bought. The smaller boats were dropped into the water via the boat ramp and we all climbed aboard our Aquatic Trailer Park Home and sailed off into the unknown.

Now let me kind of explain to you about what kind of pure wilderness we were in. By the second day we were deep into the Lakes. We would find spots to anchor the boat and have fun and go fishing. So at one point and my cousin were out in the smallest boat, kind of putting around on one of these lakes when we saw what must have been a pack of 10 to 12 wolves running along the bank. We only saw them for a few seconds and from about 150 yards away when they turned and bounded back into the tree line and disappeared. During this same little excursion we also saw from a distance, on a different shoreline what we thought were bears. Two dark furred animals on all fours that seem to be large enough to be bear cubs. When we headed in closer for a better look, the closer we got the more we realized that these were not bears. They were beavers. They were sitting on their back haunches, stripping the bark off of small branches and paying no attention to us. I had no idea that beavers got to this size.

The way they were sitting they looked like they would have came up to my waist in height. During the entirety of this vacation, we saw moose, bears, beaver, and wolves. So a lot of large animals and carnivores that two Indiana boys are not used to.

On a later day in our vacation, we were pushing the limits on the whole “keeping the houseboat insight at all times thing”. We were pretty far out and did go into a small cove where we could not see the houseboat. We were fairly sure we could just come out of this cove, turn left and see the houseboat. The reason we went into this cove is, we saw the massive face of a cliff. It was pretty tall and we could see tree line at the top of it. It was all rock, almost like it was made out of one rock. The face of it was at a little more than a 45° angle.

Of course we wanted to climb up and look around. We had fun climbing and we had one of those old school throwaway Kodak film cameras. We took turns taking pictures of each other. Sort of profile views and turning the camera to make it look like we were climbing straight up. Like Spider-Man. When we got to the top the edge of the forest was right there. As we stood there staring into the forest we both kind of got this uneasy, prehistoric feeling in the pit of our stomachs. This was deep old growth forest on the Canadian side of this Lake. It was not at all like looking into a woods in the farmlands of Indiana. Where we were from, when you looked into the woods you could usually see glimmers of light from the other side and if you couldn’t see through you always knew you could just walk through and there would be a country road or farmer’s field on the other side.

Looking into this deep Canadian forest was different. It was kind of like the first time you ever see the ocean and you realize there is no other side, it just keeps going.

As we looked through these huge tree trunks, beneath its canopy and trying to see in between the trees, it just got darker and darker until it was just blackness and this was the middle of the day.

I remember Tony saying to me that you could walk back into that Woods and make one wrong turn and die. No one would ever find you. I looked at him and a little shiver went up my spine. But when I looked back into the trees, the shivers became a kind of dread because something was different. A ways back into the forest, I could have swore that before I turned to my head to look at Tony, there had been several different trees that had large bumps on the sides of them. These bumps were all several feet off the ground and at the time of seeing them I thought they just looked like when a tree gets a deformed lump or growth on its trunk.

If I had to guess there were maybe 7 to 10 of them, ranging anywhere from 30 to 60 yards back into the forest. After that it got too dark and hazy to see. Now after turning my head back towards the forest, there were no lumps, all the tree trunks were smooth and straight. My brain almost didn’t realize it at first until the dread set in and my voice cracked as I said to Tony,” you’re freaking me out let’s just climb back down to the boat”.

After that we made our way back to the houseboat. My uncle had anchored the boat so that the front of it was touching a small sandy beach, I guess I should say the bow of the boat. The beach was on one side of a small strip of land that connected an island to the main Forest. If you were to look down from the sky at this little area, it would look like a round Island about the size of maybe four or five football fields.

Connected to the mainland buy a strip of land about 60 yards long and 15 to 20 yards wide, like an umbilical cord. The island was full of the same old growth trees, and we explored and played on most all of it. Around the outside of the island and on the side of the strip of land opposite of the beach, were large rocks and boulders. The rocks and boulders formed a rocky border about 30 to 40 ft from the water’s edge, to the tree line, all the way around the island.

My story has a lot to do with the rocks and boulders around this island. Right at the water’s edge between the large boulders and the water there was a two or three foot wide area of gravelly rocks that formed a small beach that was also around most of the island. This will come into play later in my story. When the day was done about an hour after sunset we heard wolves calling to each other in the distance. The sound was pretty far away but you could tell it was a lot of different wolves.

I have a love for nature and animals and I remember thinking how beautiful it sounded. They sang to each other for over an hour, everyone on the boat could hear it. What ended their singing was one long howl that sounded much louder, deeper and different than the other howls from the wolves. It still sounded far away but you could tell it was closer than the wolves. It was strange how long and monotoned this howl was, it almost sounded like a siren.

Everyone was standing on the roof deck listening to the wolves when this happened, we all kind of went silent and then my uncle said “man that was a big one” and we all kind of laughed and brushed it off. I would later come to believe that the last howl was absolutely not a wolf.

The next day my dad, uncles and grandfather decided that we would stay in this spot for another day or two, because they were catching so many fish when they would take the fishing boat out in this area. They were catching mostly walleye, but some crappie, perch and a few northern pike were also caught. Tony and I would go out on the boat with them and also catch quite a few fish. We would also mess around on the island during the day, stealing cigarettes from my grandmother and heading to the other side of the island to smoke. We were after all teenage boys and it was the 70s.

Tony and I had also decided that we were going to be big and bad, and take the smallest boat to the other side of the island and that night we were going to fish all night long. So we pilfered two cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, another pack of my grandmother’s cigarettes and some Twinkies. Right at about sunset we putted around to the other side of the island in our little boat. We ran the boat up onto the Gravelly Bank and tied it off to a rock. We then set up on the bank for a night of fishing.

This night would also end up being one of the most terrifying nights of my life. We set up our little night fishing spot as follows.

We set up our little night fishing spot as follows. We sat on two large rocks at the water’s edge, using our orange life jackets as cushions for our back sides. We had a Coleman lantern, the kind that used the liquid fuel and you pumped it up and it made that hissing noise after you let it. It burned very brightly. We had a piece of foil wrapped around one side of the glass on the lantern, so the light would only shine out into the water and not back into our eyes. That was an old night fishing trick of my grandpa’s. We had two fishing poles and two old wool army blankets.

From where we sat on the rocks to The Waters Edge there was a three to four foot wide gravelly strip of beach, like I spoke of earlier in the story. It was right at the moment that we caught our first fish that we realized we didn’t bring anything to put the fish in or on, we had no stringer. My cousin Tony had the idea to dig a hole out of the gravel right at the waters edge so that the water from the lake would run into it and form a small pool for us to put our fish in. It worked very well. We lined the edge of it next to the water with larger rocks forming а little dam to keep the fish in. After that we really started to catch fish. We caught quite a few and they were all large crappie.

I think we must have had somewhere between 12 to 15 fairly large fish in our little dugout pool. We actually had to make it bigger a few times as we were catching fish. Now for the creepy part. Late into that night I feel like it must have been maybe 3:00 in the morning. We were kind of getting tired but we were still catching fish. The moon was out the stars were bright, so you could kind of see out across the lake. Our Lantern was shining out onto the water.

Suddenly, down the bank maybe 50 yards, further than we could see in the dark, we heard a deep splash. That kind of splash that sounds like a depthy kubloooch kind of sound.

My cousin said that it was probably just a beaver or a big fish jumping. It just didn’t sound like that to me. The beavers we had seen swimming in the lake, when they would see our boat coming they would always slap their tail on the water and then dive down, making a completely different sound than what we just heard. A fish jumping usually makes a slapping spattering sound not that deep depth sound that we just heard.

It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes after this happened that we heard something back in behind the tree line. It was like footsteps, wrestling leaves, cracking sticks. It didn’t sound heavy like giant footsteps. It sounded like someone trying to be careful and being sneaky. Either that or just some kind of animal walking through the woods.

We immediately thought that it was one of our uncles or our dads trying to scare us. Tony yelled back into the woods behind us “if you’re trying to scare us it’s not working. We know you’re back there”. When Tony did this, the footsteps and wrestling noise immediately stopped. After that it was silent for a few more minutes and then we heard the wrestling sounds again. They sounded like they were going on past us and away through the woods.

A few minutes later we hear another deep splash on the opposite side of us from where the first splash had taken place down the bank. Picked the lantern up and shined it in that direction for a moment and saw nothing. I sat the lantern back down and had a seat back on my rock. We were both getting fairly nervous at this point and being quiet.

Just sitting there with our fishing poles in our hands. For a brief moment we could hear the footsteps behind us in the tree line again, when suddenly we hear a branch crack high up in the trees directly behind us. At this moment we are still looking out over the water where the lantern is shining light on to the lake. That’s when we see it. A rock the size of a football tumbling and flying through the air it came directly over our heads about 20 ft High and flew out into the water 40 to 50 ft. It hit the water and made that same deep splash that we had heard two times before. The rock and the splash were directly within the area that was being lit up by the lantern. The Rock sent a splash straight up into the air like a pillar of water.

Tony and I immediately jumped straight up and faced the woods. The boulders and rocks that framed this island were between us and the tree line. The distance to the tree line was about 40 ft. We looked into the darkness and saw nothing. I don’t think either of us were brave enough to pick up the Lantern and shine it towards the forest. We were both scared out of our minds. Tony whispered to me, his voice cracking “Bears can’t throw rocks, can they”. Now then, let’s do some math. A rock the size of a football came from somewhere in the woods, cracked branches high in the trees when it came through the canopy. Flew 30 to 40 ft over the boulders and 40 to 50 ft out into the water over our heads. Conservatively that’s 80 ft. Having said that, have you ever picked up a rock the size of a football and felt the weight. There is no way a human being could throw a rock that size, that far and that high.

Immediately after Tony said the thing about the Bears can’t throw rocks we heard a deep guttural huff type noise come from the woods where we were looking. It sounded like a large bull letting out an abrupt sigh. Something large with big lungs.

As soon as we heard this we both took off running for the houseboat. We didn’t even think about jumping in the boat that was right beside us. We ran down the bank full speed in the dark, our feet jumping across the tops of large boulders like ninjas in a kung fu movie. Skinny teenage boys can run very fast, especially when they’re terrified. When I think back on it, if one of us were to have fallen we would have probably been hurt very badly. We would have probably broken some bones.

When we did make it the 200 or so yards back to the houseboat, the makeshift gangplank was pulled up for the night. That did not stop us in the least. We dove up onto the edge of the houseboat, our feet splashing through the water and scampering up onto the bow of the boat. We practically broke the sliding door down as we went into the houseboat. We found everyone asleep, but our noisiness was waking everyone up. At first they were not happy but then they realized we were in a panic.

I think the fact that everyone was still on the boat made us truly know that it wasn’t one of them trying to scare us. It made our state of panic even higher. After a moment we were finally able to explain to them what happened to us. My dad and uncles were having a hard time believing us and said that we were imagining things and that it was just fish jumping, or a moose, or a deer in the woods. My grandfather on the other hand, said nothing. He walked out onto the deck of the boat, pulled up the two anchors, started the engines on the houseboat, and backed it off the beach about 150 yards out into the lake. Then he cut the engines and re-anchored the boat. I can tell you the reason my grandfather did this later in my story. About a half hour later, everyone had fallen back to sleep. I was in my bunk, high up close to the ceiling in the front of the houseboat. I had a tiny long rectangle of a window exactly beside my lofted fold-out bunk.
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I laid there staring out at the night. I could see the beach and the land bridge and part of the island being backlit by the moon. I could see a slight mist around the rocks and cattails that were growing on the land bridge. there were also many sapling trees that were not much taller than a man scattered amongst them.

I was almost becoming more relaxed, then I saw it. I really saw it. I stopped breathing, my stomach shrank and I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. The silhouette of a large figure upright with shoulders and just a bump for a head. It walked across the land bridge on the opposite side from the beach. I guess trying to stay out of sight from the houseboat. I could see it from the waist up. The cattails that came up to my chin we’re only up to this thing’s waste the sapling trees came up to just below its shoulders. At one point I saw what looked like an arm reach out and push aside one of the larger sapling trees as it lumbered across the entire length of the land bridge. Then it disappeared Into darkness, into the main forest. I never told anyone what I saw. I don’t know why, I just didn’t.

I believe I did fall asleep for just a little while. The next morning when I woke up, I felt weak and sickly. I didn’t want to leave the boat but my dad said that we have to go get all that stuff you left on the other side of the island. Tony, both of my uncles and my dad and I all walked the same path that me and my cousin had made that terrifying run the night before. I don’t think I looked into the woods one time. When we got to where we had been doing our night fishing nothing was disturbed.

Nothing was missing, nothing was broke. Our fishing poles were laying exactly where we dropped them and the lantern had run out of fuel. However there was one thing, there were no fish in the little pool that we had dug. There were no bones or scales around the hole, like some Predator may have just stopped there and ate them. They were just gone.

For the rest of this fishing vacation I pretty much stayed on the boats and fished. When I did get off the boats I did not go into the woods or even look at the woods.

One of the days later in our vacation, my grandfather pulled me aside and told me a story. He said there was a time that he was fishing in the Upper Peninsula Michigan on a large lake. That they had pulled their boat up to where they could see some abandoned cabins. He said the cabins looked fairly new but they looked abandoned with broken windows and overgrown brush and a half sunken doc. He told me they were about а hundred yards out into the water fishing when rocks the size of
baseballs started splashing in the water all around their boat.

He said the rock were big enough that they could have killed someone. When they turned to look at where the Rocks were coming from, he said they were coming from the trees and brush around the cabins. They couldn’t see what was throwing them but they could see them coming towards them and splashing all around them. He said it was a lot of rocks and they had to quickly start their motors and run their boats further out into the lake.

He told me that he didn’t know how a person could throw a rock the size of a baseball a hundred yards, and then he told me that was why I pulled the houseboat off the beach the other night. My cousin will acknowledge that this happened to us, but he won’t talk about it or tell this story. Whenever the subject of Bigfoot comes up in any conversation, or if I am asked if I believe there is such a thing as a Sasquatch. I say yes, I think they’re probably is and I tell them this story.

I couldn’t see any detail in the figure I saw that night through my tiny window. I could only see it silhouetted by the moonlight through the mist from about 150 yards away, but I believe that it was a Bigfoot.”

High in the misty mountains and jagged cliffs of Papua New Guinea, the local people speak in hushed tones about a creature that haunts the night skies. They call it the Ropen, a mysterious flying cryptid that glows in the dark, hunting silently over rivers and forests.

The Ropen is said to be large, with leathery wings stretching wider than a small boat, a long tail, and a slender, reptilian body. Its most striking feature is the bioluminescent glow along its tail and sometimes its body, which illuminates the night as it swoops low over the jungle, startling fish and small animals with its eerie light.

Scientists and cryptid hunters who have visited the remote island of Umboi have speculated that the Ropen could be a surviving pterosaur, a species of flying reptile thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago. Locals, however, tell a different story: the Ropen is a guardian of the forest, a creature of both fear and reverence, appearing to warn travelers or protect sacred areas.

The first widely reported sightings in the modern era describe glowing, bat-like wings gliding over the water, or streaks of orange light darting through the cliffs. Some witnesses claim the creature is larger than a human, yet moves with uncanny speed and silence, vanishing as suddenly as it appears.

No specimen has ever been captured, and evidence is limited to blurry photographs, eyewitness accounts, and the occasional unusual footprints. But for those who have seen it, the Ropen is unmistakable—a living ghost of prehistoric skies, gliding silently under the veil of night, a bridge between myth and reality in the wild, untamed heart of Papua New Guinea.

Duane Hodgkinson (1944)

In August 1944, during World War II, U.S. Army serviceman Duane Hodgkinson was stationed near Finschhafen, Papua New Guinea. While on a jungle trail with a companion, they came upon a clearing where they observed a large, winged creature. The creature took several steps before ascending at an angle and disappearing into the trees. It then returned, flying over the clearing and presenting a side view of its features. Hodgkinson described the creature as having a wingspan similar to that of his Piper Tri-Pacer airplane, approximately 29 feet. He noted its dark-gray coloration, long serpentine neck, beak, and distinctive head crest. The tail was estimated to be at least 10 to 15 feet long. Hodgkinson was so focused on the head crest that he did not notice details at the end of the tail.

After the encounter, Hodgkinson, a certified flight instructor with over 13,000 hours of flight experience, likened the creature’s wingspan to that of his Piper Tri-Pacer. He also noted the creature’s large size and distinctive features, which he described as resembling a “pterodactyl.” Years later, in 2005, investigator Garth Guessman interviewed Hodgkinson about the sighting. Hodgkinson reiterated his observations and provided additional details about the creature’s appearance.

Significance of the Sighting

Hodgkinson’s encounter is considered one of the most significant modern-day sightings of a creature resembling a pterosaur. The detailed description provided by Hodgkinson has been used by researchers to compare with other reported sightings of similar creatures, such as the Ropen of Umboi Island. While no physical evidence has been found to confirm the existence of such creatures, Hodgkinson’s account remains a key piece of cryptozoological research.

Ropen or Pterodactyl? American Eyewitness Talks

Jacob Kepas (2006–2007)

Jacob Kepas, a Baptist minister and native of Papua New Guinea, has been a significant figure in the investigation of the Ropen, a flying cryptid reported in the region. His involvement in Ropen research began in 2004 when he assisted American explorers Garth Guessman and David Woetzel during their expedition on Umboi Island. His dual understanding of native traditions and Western perspectives made him a valuable asset in these investigations.

Kepas’s first personal encounter with a creature resembling the Ropen occurred during his childhood near Wau, in the Salamaua district. At approximately twelve years old, he heard a noise from a flying creature, known in his village as “seklo-bali,” which translates to “creature that carries its bed.” He briefly observed the wings and tail of the creature and noted a glow emanating from it.
His second sighting took place in late 2006 near Tawa Village. Using binoculars, Kepas observed what he believed to be the head of a giant indava, partially covered by a wing, suggesting the creature was resting. The viewing angle was poor, but a local man named Joseph, upon climbing to a higher vantage point, confirmed it was the creature they sought. Unfortunately, their video recording failed to capture the sighting.

Kepas’s experiences have contributed to the ongoing research into the Ropen, providing firsthand accounts that support the existence of this enigmatic creature.

Paul Nation (2006–2007)

In late 2006, cryptozoologist Paul Nation embarked on a significant expedition into the remote jungles of Papua New Guinea to investigate reports of a mysterious flying creature known as the Ropen. During his journey, he ventured into the mountainous region near Tawa Village, where local inhabitants referred to the creature as “Indava.” The locals described the Indava as a large, glowing, nocturnal flyer, often associated with the Ropen.

On one of his nights in the area, Nation observed and videotaped two distinct, slowly pulsating lights on a ridge. These lights exhibited characteristics that set them apart from common sources such as campfires, vehicle headlights, or meteors. The footage was subsequently analyzed by a missile defense physicist, who confirmed that the lights were authentic and not the result of camera artifacts or manipulation. This analysis lent credibility to the idea that the lights were produced by a biological source, possibly the bioluminescent Ropen.

Nation’s findings were among the first to provide video evidence of the strange flying lights associated with the Ropen. His expeditions and subsequent documentation have been instrumental in bringing international attention to the creature and have spurred further investigations into its existence. Despite the compelling nature of the evidence, the Ropen remains a subject of debate among cryptozoologists and scientists, with no conclusive proof of its existence as of yet.

For more detailed accounts and updates on Paul Nation’s research, you can visit his dedicated site: IndavaBird.com

Garth Guessman (2005)

Garth Guessman, a Southern California firefighter and cryptozoologist, has been a prominent figure in the investigation of the Ropen, a flying cryptid reported in Papua New Guinea. In 2004, Guessman, along with fellow researcher David Woetzel, conducted an expedition to Umboi Island, a location known for numerous Ropen sightings.

During their time on Umboi Island, Guessman and Woetzel interviewed several native eyewitnesses who described encounters with large, bat-like creatures exhibiting bioluminescence. These interviews provided valuable insights into the local lore and consistent descriptions of the Ropen, suggesting the possibility of a living pterosaur in the region.

In addition to conducting interviews, Guessman and Woetzel explored various areas of the island, including the vicinity of Lake Pung, where a group of boys had previously reported seeing a Ropen-like creature. While they did not personally observe the creature during this expedition, the consistent testimonies from multiple witnesses added credibility to the reports.

Following the 2004 expedition, Guessman continued his research into the Ropen phenomenon, collaborating with other investigators and analyzing reports from both native and Western witnesses. His work has contributed to the ongoing discussion and exploration of the Ropen as a potential living cryptid. For those interested in learning more about Guessman’s research and the Ropen expeditions, his book “Searching for Ropens and Finding God” provides detailed accounts and analyses of the investigations.

The Dover Demon is a cryptid, first reported in Dover, Massachusetts, in 1977. The sightings occurred over the course of a few nights in April 1977, primarily by teenagers who reported seeing the creature on bridges and along roadsides. It seemed to move awkwardly, almost like it was climbing or hopping.

No physical evidence, like footprints or photos, was ever definitively linked to it, though sketches were made based on witness descriptions.

It’s described as a small, humanoid creature with some very distinctive features:

• Height: About 3–4 feet tall
• Head: Large, bulbous, and almost glowing in appearance
• Eyes: Huge, glowing or reflective, often described as orange or amber
• Skin: Smooth, hairless, and usually light orange or peach-colored
• Limbs: Long, thin arms and fingers, giving it a spindly, alien-like look

The First Sighting – April 21, 1977

It’s just after 10:30 PM on a chilly spring night in Dover, Massachusetts. Seventeen-year-old Bill Bartlett is driving along Farm Street with two friends. The headlights sweep across a crumbling stone wall on the side of the road, then something catches his eye.

At first he thinks it’s a dog or maybe a cat, but then his stomach drops.
Perched on the wall is a pale, spindly creature, no bigger than a child but with a huge, round head—almost out of proportion to its body. Its eyes glow orange in the headlights. The thing’s skin is hairless and peach-colored, almost like wet sandpaper.

It turns its head slowly toward the car, staring right at him. Bartlett later said the look on its face wasn’t aggressive, but alien—utterly unlike anything he’d ever seen. In a flash, the creature scrambled down the wall on long fingers and vanished into the trees.

The Second Sighting – Just Hours Later

Around midnight, about a mile away, fifteen-year-old John Baxter is walking home from his girlfriend’s house. He notices a small figure walking toward him in the dark. Assuming it’s a kid from town, he calls out but the figure doesn’t answer.

As it comes closer, Baxter realizes it isn’t a person. The creature stops, staring, then scurries down into a gully by a brook. Trying to be brave, Baxter follows, but at the edge of the ravine he stops. In the dim light he can see it clearly now: a spindly-bodied creature crouched on a rock, its long fingers gripping like a spider, its large head tilted. He backs away, his heart racing, and runs.

The Third Sighting – The Next Night

The following evening, seventeen-year-old Abby Brabham is riding in a car with her boyfriend on Springdale Avenue when she sees a strange figure crouched on the roadside. She describes it later as “monkey-like but with no nose, just huge glowing eyes” and a strange orange-tan color.

Aftermath

All three groups of witnesses give very similar descriptions independently. Bartlett, a skilled artist, sketches what he saw immediately after the incident. His drawing has since become the iconic image of the Dover Demon—a thin, child-sized creature with a massive, featureless head and glowing eyes.

No one ever reports seeing it again after those two nights. No tracks or fur are found. To this day, no one knows if it was a misidentified animal, an escaped exotic pet, an alien visitor, or something stranger.

It was the winter of 1811, and the snow lay thick across the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. David Thompson, the renowned explorer and mapmaker, trudged through the frozen forest with his small party of men. The wind howled through the pines, carrying the sharp, biting chill that only a Canadian winter can deliver.

Every step crunched in the deep snow, and the men kept close, wary of the dangers that lurked in the untamed wilderness.

Thompson was accustomed to the wild. He had mapped rivers, crossed mountains, and endured storms that would have broken lesser men. Yet, as he moved along the Athabasca River valley that day, he noticed something that made him pause.

In the fresh snow ahead of them lay footprints and they were unlike anything he had ever seen. Thompson bent closer, brushing snow from the edges of the prints with his gloved hands. They were enormous at least 14 inches long and showed only four toes, an oddity that immediately set his mind racing.

“What manner of creature could leave such tracks?” he murmured to himself.

The men gathered around, eyes wide. Their hands instinctively went to their muskets, though no one fired. The footprints were set in a bipedal stride, like a man walking upright, yet far larger and stranger than any human. The trail wound through the forest, leading deeper into the wilderness, leaving a sense of unease in its wake.

Thompson carefully recorded the tracks in his journal. He noted their size, their stride, and the peculiar shape. Yet, true to his nature as a meticulous observer, he tried to rationalize the mystery. Perhaps it was a grizzly bear with a deformed paw, he considered, or maybe snow had distorted ordinary tracks into something extraordinary.

But even he could not deny that these were not ordinary tracks. His men whispered among themselves, uneasy. They had seen bears, wolves, and other creatures of the forest, but nothing walked like this. Nothing left such strange, humanlike marks in the snow.

For hours, they followed the trail cautiously, hearts pounding, but the tracks eventually disappeared into the thick forest. No creature appeared. No roar, no growl, no figure—only the lingering mystery of those strange footprints, frozen into the winter earth.

Thompson continued his expedition, mapping rivers and charting mountains, yet he never forgot the sensation of seeing those prints for the first time. Whether the tracks belonged to a bear, a trick of the snow, or something far stranger, the memory remained—a silent testament to the unknown that still roamed the wilds of North America.

Over two centuries later, explorers, cryptozoologists, and storytellers still speak of that winter day in 1811. The footprints discovered by David Thompson may never be fully explained, but they stand as one of the earliest and most intriguing records of what we now call Bigfoot.

A listener writes “I’m from Tulsa, Oklahoma. About a year ago, on September 18th, 2024 I went on a solo camping trip in the Ouachita Mountains of southern Oklahoma. It was just going to be a one night trip, do some hiking, cook some dinner, and enjoy a few drinks under the night sky.

At first, things went normal, up until around 2:00 am. I’d fallen asleep around 11:00pm, however I was awoken around two by my truck violently shaking side-to-side. I sat up, peeking out my rear-view window, when I saw it. A large, easily 8ft tall silhouette, with its hands close enough while gripping the side of my truck bed that I could see them and the dense hair that ran up to its hands.

Whether this thing was warning me directly, or could smell the food stored under my truck bed, I don’t know. I just knew I had to act. I reached up to the front of my truck and put the keys in, starting the vehicle. I then proceeded to open my rear door, not leaving the vehicle but pointing my AK47 with a light at this creature, where I saw its full, horrifying magnificence. We made eye contact for about two seconds, I believe the creature was confused as to why I was actually confronting it.

I fired three rounds at the ground right in front of this being, not wanting to kill it but wanting to make sure it understood this was a fight it didn’t want to be involved in. As I fired the rounds, the creature looked to get the fear of God in its eyes, and made a mad dash towards the trees, covering around 100ft in probably 2 seconds, letting out around a dozen loud hollers/growls while running.

I immediately made sure to pack everything I had and left the campsite. I’ve since returned to this spot 3 times, not to look for Sasquatch but just because I like camping there. I’ll leave offerings of food hanging from a tree whenever I go now, on occasion you’ll hear noises that are similar to the Sierra Sounds or tree knocks, but usually far off. That’s been my only visual encounter.”

In North Carolina a Made was driving home in his truck when he spotted something strange on the side of the road, so strange he decided to call 911 but to his surprise this was the least of his worries. Something so scary and terrifying jumped on his truck and he tells the the person on the phone, It’s not human, its not human. Take a listen to the raw recording of the very moment the man is face to face with this 7 foot skinny white being.

Scary 911 Call in North Carolina – Not Human?

A listener writes “My brother, myself, and two friends, Adam and Marsee were camping out next to our lake. We had 80 acres of farm and mountainside. In the valley there were 4 different spring fed creeks that flowed thru our tomato fields.

On a little rise above the tomato fields my grandfather had built a 5 acre lake. There was a small field on the dam. About enough room to park 3 cars around a bonfire. At the lake was a trail that led up the mountain. It was an old logging trail that we rode 4wheelers on. It led to other logging trails and we could ride to the top of the mountain to an apple orchard.

One night in the snow we were ridding 4 wheelers and marsse got lost in the woods. He was chased up the mountain by something in the woods. He never saw it, but he told me about it after we found him. I told him our lake had a ghost in it, but I’d never seen anything in the woods. We decided to go camping out there to determine what was going on.

I bushhogged the field on the damn so we could set up a fire. Marsee brought his 1970’s Chevrolet Van for us to sleep in. It was white with no windows. We called it his rape van. To try to improve it, he had spray painted black zebra stripes up and down the sides front and back. It only had front seats so there was plenty of room in the back for the 4 of us to spread out our sleeping bags in the back and sleep. We were all in high school.

We had sat around the fire till it was dark. Well after midnight, telling ghost stories, and talking. We finally decided to go hike up the trail since nothing was happening around us. We hadn’t planned out this excursion so well. We didn’t have any flash lights, but we made two torches. Using some sticks and rags and some fuel we set off around the lake to get to the trail. By the time we reached the trail, our torches were struggling to stay lit. One kept going out, so we decided to add it to the one good one and that left me carrying the one working torch. While we were rebuilding our torches, my brothers dog had started up the trail without us. As we started up the trail, we heard her yelp, and she came running past us, yelping like she’d just been scared. We could hear her run past our camp site and continue on out the pathway back towards our house. Her yelps getting fainter and fainter as she ran.

We all started laughing at her. Wondering what happened to scare her off. Not thinking mush about it, we started up the trail.

We hadn’t planned gone in about 200’, around a few bends and up a slight hill when we got to an area where it leveled out. We were in a thick white pine patch that my grandfather had planted as an investment. About another 100’ and we would have started getting into more natural trees for North Carolina, oaks, Maple, and poplar trees. It was very dark under the pines. The light from our torch only went out about 10’. And the way it flickered in the wind it didn’t always stay straight and bright infront of you. We are walking 2 at a time side by side. Me and Marsee in the front with the torch, and my brother and Adam following in the back. As we started to walk around this big pine on the left, I see something gray and blurry run across the path ahead of us in the flickering torch light. It was just at the edge of the flames reach. I could tell there was multiple colors of black, brown and gray, but the overall color of the fur was gray. It was only a split second glance, but both me and Marsee stopped when it disappeared across the trail. Marsee grabbed my arm and said what was that, I was getting ready to say “this is just like the Blair Witch” when above us, in the big pine tree we were standing next too, we heard a loud crash. Something large was falling out of the tree. It hit the ground in front of me and Marsee.

It landed in a massive clump. Our torch was blown out from the air that was stirred up when this thing landed. We were standing in pitch black dark. There was enough moon and starlight that as you eyes adjusted you could make out the shapes of the trees around us, and the mass that was lying on the ground infront of us. This was a span of about 10 seconds, from the thing running across the trail, till this thing landing in the trail. There was a low gruff, grunting noise and this thing stood up. It raised straight up to a standing position like it grew out of the ground. Almost like how a shadow extends out from an object as the sun moves around it. It how it seemed this thing stood up. It went from a clump in the trail to a tall wide dark shadow looming over us. Its arms were up in the air facing Marsee and myself. It leaned over top of us with its arms outstretched, like it was gonna grab us both at the same time. It reminded me of the opening of the old scobby doo show. Where a dark shadow monster looms over the troop to scare them. I was 6’4” in high school and 190 lbs. this thing was a good 2 to 3 feet taller than me. It’s chest and shoulders were wider than the space that me and Marsee took up standing side by side.

When this thing had risen and leaned forward, Adam and my brother saw it too. We all four turned around and started running back down the trail. Marsee and I passed Adam and Justin. Marsee was out in front of me a good 15-20’ when he stopped and said wait let’s go back. As I ran past him I grabbed him up in one arm, threw him over my shoulder, and continued running to the van. We all make it back and fall down around the fire. We are terrified, but full of adrenaline and excitement. What was that? What did you see? Was that real? That’s all we talked about until we calmed our nerves down.

We had found out there was something out there. We succeeded. Mission accomplished. Time for bed. The fire has died down to coals. So we climb into the van, spread out our sleeping bags, shut the doors and lay down to go to sleep.

A few hours later I wake up. I’m confused cause at first I don’t know where I am. And there is a noise that I keep hearing that I don’t know what is causing it. As I wake up, I’m still laying down. I can hear what sounds like someone walking around the van. As I lay there listening to it, occasionally you can hear what sounds like fingernails scratching the side of the van as it makes a pass.

I start getting freaked out remembering the thing that chased us out of the woods. Wondering if it’s it, but at the same thing thinking this thing sounds smaller than the big clump that stood up. As I lay there I realize it’s too quit on the inside of the van. I whisper “Adam”, cause he was the closest to me in the van. There was no response. I say his name a couple more times each time getting a little louder, when he finally answers with “go the f–k to sleeep!” I sort of shocked me, cause he sounded nervous and on edge. I asked him, “do you hear anything?” He was quiet for a sound, and responded “your not hearing anything, go back to sleep.” I knew he was lying, and not wanting to admit it. So I said, if you don’t hear anything, sit up and look out the window. His response told me he heard it. He said “f–k you. I ain’t looking out that window. You can.” He was the disbeliever in our group. He did not think there was anything out there, but his refusal to look told me he heard it. Satisfied that I wasn’t imagining things, I drifted back to sleep.

In the morning we woke up to the sun shining thru the windows. We walk outside and look around the van. Nothing is disturbed, and there were no paths or tracks that we could see. The grass had been tall before we camped, but I had bushhogged it down and there was just clumps of cut grass around. The one sign that what we heard was physical that night, was there were scratch marks on the side of marsee’s van. He used cheap black spray paint to paint his zebra stripes. And at about waist height on the side of his van, thru all the black stripes, you could see white under them. It was like someone had lightly keyed the car. The base white didn’t have any scratches due to the clear coat protecting it. But when it passed thru the zebra stripes, it pulled the black paint off with its finger nails.

This evidence made us go looking more. On the weekends and over the summer we camped out and hunted the woods with our friends. With the goal of going out and getting scared. We always called them ghost. Cause we believe in spirits and haunts in the mountains of western North Carolina. It wasn’t until I started listening to your show, that I started hearing similarities between my stories and your witnesses. I still don’t know what we messed around in the woods with. But it became a game between us. We would chase them, and they would chase us. This went on for about 2 years then I left for the Marine Corps. When I finished my time in the Marines, I lived in the house for about a year, and there were things still going on. My mom sold the house, and the last two people that have lived there and owned it, have confirmed with me that things still happen out there.”

Lehto Files writes “In this groundbreaking interview, retired U.S. Air Force test pilot Dan Isbell breaks 45 years of silence on his close-range UAP encounters, including a pivotal 1980 sighting at Upper Heyford that aligns with the Rendlesham Forest incident—often called England’s Roswell. With a career spanning over 70 aircraft types, from F-111s carrying nuclear payloads to U-2s at the edge of space, Isbell offers a credible, engineering-grounded perspective on anomalous craft that defy known physics.

Major themes explored include:

Isbell’s first UAP sighting—a silent, triangular craft with plasma-like lights hovering instantaneously, observed near nuclear storage sites. Subsequent encounters involving directed beams, expanding plasma orbs, and tracking phenomena, raising questions about non-human intelligence. Deeper implications for fringe science, including plasma cosmology, zero-point energy, and challenges to mainstream physics like Big Bang theory and gravity-centric models. Connections to remote viewing, reverse engineering, black projects, and consciousness, blending high-level aviation stories with revelatory insights.”

“They’re tracking you”- Test Pilot breaks silence on UAPs and Unexplained Propulsion

Paranormal Portal writes “There are some events that are so shocking and profound, they become a part of our culture. The shocking Borden double murder is one such event. The trial of Lizzie Borden shocked the nation as young Lizzie stood accused of a horrific murder that saw her parents brutalized with an axe.

While Lizzie did stand trial and was ultimately acquitted, her legacy would even become the mantra of a children’s nursery rhyme. I am joined by Ryk McIntyre who is a long-time tour guide at the Borden House. Ryk joins me to discuss the history, the controversial nature of this horrific homicide and trail and the incredible events and presences that continue to haunt this tragic location.

Join us for this incredible conversation and so much more! Enter the Paranormal Portal…if you dare! To learn more about the Lizzie Borden House and to inquire about tours or booking arrangements, please visit: https://lizzie-borden.com.”

NPR writes “Every year, when NPR opens up our Student Podcast Challenge, thousands of young people send us their stories. We get investigative journalism, heartfelt family interviews, and deeply personal stories.

Our judges hear podcasts about sports, and music, and life at school. And, inevitably, we get some absolute gems. Like this one:

“Monster Madness, it’s the podcast that we need,” 11-year-old Ryan Betts-Ng sings cheerfully in his entry this year, Monster Madness. “It tells tales of monsters and how they came to be.”

Ryan is a sixth grader at Redwood Day School in Oakland, Calif. With the help of his younger brother, Marshall, he devoted his submission to their favorite monster, Bigfoot.

On top of his thorough research and creative writing, Ryan used original sound effects, and he and his brother brought a joyful, sometimes hilarious enthusiasm to their story.

Our judges found it charming.

Take a listen to Monster Madness by Ryan and Marshall Betts-Ng, middle school finalists in the 2025 NPR Student Podcast Challenge.”

‘Monster Madness’: A sixth grader podcast

A listener writes “In 1979 I was 15 years old. I come from a middle-class family in northern Indiana, so when we went on vacation we would usually go camping and fishing around the Great Lakes. This particular year our whole family including aunts and uncles headed out to go on a fishing excursion in northern Minnesota. My Dad and his brothers had rented a houseboat large enough for all of us and we were headed for an area just Northeast of Lake Superior known as the land of a thousand lakes. After a pretty long drive we had finally entered Minnesota. We ended up driving through the Superior National Forest. Being an Indiana boy, this was like nothing I had ever seen. This was an old growth forest the largest and deepest Woodlands I had ever seen.

After camping for one night at a roadside Minnesota KOA, we finally arrived where we were to pick up the houseboat. We were very close to the Canadian border at this point. I don’t really remember the name of the place that we acquired the houseboat, but I do remember that this area was where many lakes chain linked together along the Canadian border. Many of these Lakes were directly on the border. The southern shorelines in the United States and the northern shorelines were Canadian. The Lakes were named things like Lac La Croix, Rainy and Saganaga Lake.

When my cousin and I finally laid eyes on the houseboat, it was actually a bit old and weathered. It almost appeared to be an old trailer that someone put on top of two very long pontoons and then stuck two motors on the back of it. But even with it being what it was, my cousin and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Our families had brought two boats with them, smaller fishing boats. One was my grandpa’s boat, it was the larger of the two, a Mastercraft with a steering wheel and nice motor. The other boat was just a small flat bottom aluminum boat with a 5hp engine that you steered with a tiller. My cousin Tony and I had our eyes on the smaller aluminum boat, we knew that that would mostly be our plaything on the lakes. I remember my Uncle explaining to the man that we were renting the houseboat from that we were planning on towing the two smaller boats behind the houseboat, to use for fishing. That’s when the man looked directly at me and my cousin and said to never get out of eyesight of the houseboat because it was very easy to get lost in this area. The area we were in was called the land of a thousand lakes for a reason, all of the different lakes on the Canadian border were chained together and almost formed a maze.

There were thousands of channels, peninsulas and Islands all through these lakes and many people have had to be rescued after getting lost. If you zoom in on this area in Google Maps, you can see exactly what I mean. There was a lot of talk between the houseboat guy and my dad, uncle’s and grandfather about navigating through this area. It was all about the yellow buoys floating in the lakes that had numbers on them, and one of the cabinet doors inside the houseboat was actually a map with the numbered buoy locations marked on it. This was very important because there were only three or four places to get fuel for the houseboat once you were back in this wilderness and they were all on the American side of the Lakes.

There was also a radio in the houseboat to communicate with these small marinas. It kind of looked like one of those old CB radio home base units. You have to remember we were going out into this area at a time when there was no GPS no Google Maps and no smart phones. It really was a different world back then. After all was said and done, and groceries were bought. The smaller boats were dropped into the water via the boat ramp and we all climbed aboard our Aquatic Trailer Park Home and sailed off into the unknown.

Now let me kind of explain to you about what kind of pure wilderness we were in. By the second day we were deep into the Lakes. We would find spots to anchor the boat and have fun and go fishing. So at one point and my cousin were out in the smallest boat, kind of putting around on one of these lakes when we saw what must have been a pack of 10 to 12 wolves running along the bank. We only saw them for a few seconds and from about 150 yards away when they turned and bounded back into the tree line and disappeared. During this same little excursion we also saw from a distance, on a different shoreline what we thought were bears. Two dark furred animals on all fours that seem to be large enough to be bear cubs. When we headed in closer for a better look, the closer we got the more we realized that these were not bears. They were beavers. They were sitting on their back haunches, stripping the bark off of small branches and paying no attention to us. I had no idea that beavers got to this size.

The way they were sitting they looked like they would have came up to my waist in height. During the entirety of this vacation, we saw moose, bears, beaver, and wolves. So a lot of large animals and carnivores that two Indiana boys are not used to.

On a later day in our vacation, we were pushing the limits on the whole “keeping the houseboat insight at all times thing”. We were pretty far out and did go into a small cove where we could not see the houseboat. We were fairly sure we could just come out of this cove, turn left and see the houseboat. The reason we went into this cove is, we saw the massive face of a cliff. It was pretty tall and we could see tree line at the top of it. It was all rock, almost like it was made out of one rock. The face of it was at a little more than a 45° angle.

Of course we wanted to climb up and look around. We had fun climbing and we had one of those old school throwaway Kodak film cameras. We took turns taking pictures of each other. Sort of profile views and turning the camera to make it look like we were climbing straight up. Like Spider-Man. When we got to the top the edge of the forest was right there. As we stood there staring into the forest we both kind of got this uneasy, prehistoric feeling in the pit of our stomachs. This was deep old growth forest on the Canadian side of this Lake. It was not at all like looking into a woods in the farmlands of Indiana. Where we were from, when you looked into the woods you could usually see glimmers of light from the other side and if you couldn’t see through you always knew you could just walk through and there would be a country road or farmer’s field on the other side.

Looking into this deep Canadian forest was different. It was kind of like the first time you ever see the ocean and you realize there is no other side, it just keeps going.

As we looked through these huge tree trunks, beneath its canopy and trying to see in between the trees, it just got darker and darker until it was just blackness and this was the middle of the day.

I remember Tony saying to me that you could walk back into that Woods and make one wrong turn and die. No one would ever find you. I looked at him and a little shiver went up my spine. But when I looked back into the trees, the shivers became a kind of dread because something was different. A ways back into the forest, I could have swore that before I turned to my head to look at Tony, there had been several different trees that had large bumps on the sides of them. These bumps were all several feet off the ground and at the time of seeing them I thought they just looked like when a tree gets a deformed lump or growth on its trunk.

If I had to guess there were maybe 7 to 10 of them, ranging anywhere from 30 to 60 yards back into the forest. After that it got too dark and hazy to see. Now after turning my head back towards the forest, there were no lumps, all the tree trunks were smooth and straight. My brain almost didn’t realize it at first until the dread set in and my voice cracked as I said to Tony,” you’re freaking me out let’s just climb back down to the boat”.

After that we made our way back to the houseboat. My uncle had anchored the boat so that the front of it was touching a small sandy beach, I guess I should say the bow of the boat. The beach was on one side of a small strip of land that connected an island to the main Forest. If you were to look down from the sky at this little area, it would look like a round Island about the size of maybe four or five football fields.

Connected to the mainland buy a strip of land about 60 yards long and 15 to 20 yards wide, like an umbilical cord. The island was full of the same old growth trees, and we explored and played on most all of it. Around the outside of the island and on the side of the strip of land opposite of the beach, were large rocks and boulders. The rocks and boulders formed a rocky border about 30 to 40 ft from the water’s edge, to the tree line, all the way around the island.

My story has a lot to do with the rocks and boulders around this island. Right at the water’s edge between the large boulders and the water there was a two or three foot wide area of gravelly rocks that formed a small beach that was also around most of the island. This will come into play later in my story. When the day was done about an hour after sunset we heard wolves calling to each other in the distance. The sound was pretty far away but you could tell it was a lot of different wolves.

I have a love for nature and animals and I remember thinking how beautiful it sounded. They sang to each other for over an hour, everyone on the boat could hear it. What ended their singing was one long howl that sounded much louder, deeper and different than the other howls from the wolves. It still sounded far away but you could tell it was closer than the wolves. It was strange how long and monotoned this howl was, it almost sounded like a siren.

Everyone was standing on the roof deck listening to the wolves when this happened, we all kind of went silent and then my uncle said “man that was a big one” and we all kind of laughed and brushed it off. I would later come to believe that the last howl was absolutely not a wolf.

The next day my dad, uncles and grandfather decided that we would stay in this spot for another day or two, because they were catching so many fish when they would take the fishing boat out in this area. They were catching mostly walleye, but some crappie, perch and a few northern pike were also caught. Tony and I would go out on the boat with them and also catch quite a few fish. We would also mess around on the island during the day, stealing cigarettes from my grandmother and heading to the other side of the island to smoke. We were after all teenage boys and it was the 70s.

Tony and I had also decided that we were going to be big and bad, and take the smallest boat to the other side of the island and that night we were going to fish all night long. So we pilfered two cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon, another pack of my grandmother’s cigarettes and some Twinkies. Right at about sunset we putted around to the other side of the island in our little boat. We ran the boat up onto the Gravelly Bank and tied it off to a rock. We then set up on the bank for a night of fishing.

This night would also end up being one of the most terrifying nights of my life. We set up our little night fishing spot as follows.

We set up our little night fishing spot as follows. We sat on two large rocks at the water’s edge, using our orange life jackets as cushions for our back sides. We had a Coleman lantern, the kind that used the liquid fuel and you pumped it up and it made that hissing noise after you let it. It burned very brightly. We had a piece of foil wrapped around one side of the glass on the lantern, so the light would only shine out into the water and not back into our eyes. That was an old night fishing trick of my grandpa’s. We had two fishing poles and two old wool army blankets.

From where we sat on the rocks to The Waters Edge there was a three to four foot wide gravelly strip of beach, like I spoke of earlier in the story. It was right at the moment that we caught our first fish that we realized we didn’t bring anything to put the fish in or on, we had no stringer. My cousin Tony had the idea to dig a hole out of the gravel right at the waters edge so that the water from the lake would run into it and form a small pool for us to put our fish in. It worked very well. We lined the edge of it next to the water with larger rocks forming а little dam to keep the fish in. After that we really started to catch fish. We caught quite a few and they were all large crappie.

I think we must have had somewhere between 12 to 15 fairly large fish in our little dugout pool. We actually had to make it bigger a few times as we were catching fish. Now for the creepy part. Late into that night I feel like it must have been maybe 3:00 in the morning. We were kind of getting tired but we were still catching fish. The moon was out the stars were bright, so you could kind of see out across the lake. Our Lantern was shining out onto the water.

Suddenly, down the bank maybe 50 yards, further than we could see in the dark, we heard a deep splash. That kind of splash that sounds like a depthy kubloooch kind of sound.

My cousin said that it was probably just a beaver or a big fish jumping. It just didn’t sound like that to me. The beavers we had seen swimming in the lake, when they would see our boat coming they would always slap their tail on the water and then dive down, making a completely different sound than what we just heard. A fish jumping usually makes a slapping spattering sound not that deep depth sound that we just heard.

It couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes after this happened that we heard something back in behind the tree line. It was like footsteps, wrestling leaves, cracking sticks. It didn’t sound heavy like giant footsteps. It sounded like someone trying to be careful and being sneaky. Either that or just some kind of animal walking through the woods.

We immediately thought that it was one of our uncles or our dads trying to scare us. Tony yelled back into the woods behind us “if you’re trying to scare us it’s not working. We know you’re back there”. When Tony did this, the footsteps and wrestling noise immediately stopped. After that it was silent for a few more minutes and then we heard the wrestling sounds again. They sounded like they were going on past us and away through the woods.

A few minutes later we hear another deep splash on the opposite side of us from where the first splash had taken place down the bank. Picked the lantern up and shined it in that direction for a moment and saw nothing. I sat the lantern back down and had a seat back on my rock. We were both getting fairly nervous at this point and being quiet.

Just sitting there with our fishing poles in our hands. For a brief moment we could hear the footsteps behind us in the tree line again, when suddenly we hear a branch crack high up in the trees directly behind us. At this moment we are still looking out over the water where the lantern is shining light on to the lake. That’s when we see it. A rock the size of a football tumbling and flying through the air it came directly over our heads about 20 ft High and flew out into the water 40 to 50 ft. It hit the water and made that same deep splash that we had heard two times before. The rock and the splash were directly within the area that was being lit up by the lantern. The Rock sent a splash straight up into the air like a pillar of water.

Tony and I immediately jumped straight up and faced the woods. The boulders and rocks that framed this island were between us and the tree line. The distance to the tree line was about 40 ft. We looked into the darkness and saw nothing. I don’t think either of us were brave enough to pick up the Lantern and shine it towards the forest. We were both scared out of our minds. Tony whispered to me, his voice cracking “Bears can’t throw rocks, can they”. Now then, let’s do some math. A rock the size of a football came from somewhere in the woods, cracked branches high in the trees when it came through the canopy. Flew 30 to 40 ft over the boulders and 40 to 50 ft out into the water over our heads. Conservatively that’s 80 ft. Having said that, have you ever picked up a rock the size of a football and felt the weight. There is no way a human being could throw a rock that size, that far and that high.

Immediately after Tony said the thing about the Bears can’t throw rocks we heard a deep guttural huff type noise come from the woods where we were looking. It sounded like a large bull letting out an abrupt sigh. Something large with big lungs.

As soon as we heard this we both took off running for the houseboat. We didn’t even think about jumping in the boat that was right beside us. We ran down the bank full speed in the dark, our feet jumping across the tops of large boulders like ninjas in a kung fu movie. Skinny teenage boys can run very fast, especially when they’re terrified. When I think back on it, if one of us were to have fallen we would have probably been hurt very badly. We would have probably broken some bones.

When we did make it the 200 or so yards back to the houseboat, the makeshift gangplank was pulled up for the night. That did not stop us in the least. We dove up onto the edge of the houseboat, our feet splashing through the water and scampering up onto the bow of the boat. We practically broke the sliding door down as we went into the houseboat. We found everyone asleep, but our noisiness was waking everyone up. At first they were not happy but then they realized we were in a panic.

I think the fact that everyone was still on the boat made us truly know that it wasn’t one of them trying to scare us. It made our state of panic even higher. After a moment we were finally able to explain to them what happened to us. My dad and uncles were having a hard time believing us and said that we were imagining things and that it was just fish jumping, or a moose, or a deer in the woods. My grandfather on the other hand, said nothing. He walked out onto the deck of the boat, pulled up the two anchors, started the engines on the houseboat, and backed it off the beach about 150 yards out into the lake. Then he cut the engines and re-anchored the boat. I can tell you the reason my grandfather did this later in my story. About a half hour later, everyone had fallen back to sleep. I was in my bunk, high up close to the ceiling in the front of the houseboat. I had a tiny long rectangle of a window exactly beside my lofted fold-out bunk.
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I laid there staring out at the night. I could see the beach and the land bridge and part of the island being backlit by the moon. I could see a slight mist around the rocks and cattails that were growing on the land bridge. there were also many sapling trees that were not much taller than a man scattered amongst them.

I was almost becoming more relaxed, then I saw it. I really saw it. I stopped breathing, my stomach shrank and I could feel my heartbeat in my ears. The silhouette of a large figure upright with shoulders and just a bump for a head. It walked across the land bridge on the opposite side from the beach. I guess trying to stay out of sight from the houseboat. I could see it from the waist up. The cattails that came up to my chin we’re only up to this thing’s waste the sapling trees came up to just below its shoulders. At one point I saw what looked like an arm reach out and push aside one of the larger sapling trees as it lumbered across the entire length of the land bridge. Then it disappeared Into darkness, into the main forest. I never told anyone what I saw. I don’t know why, I just didn’t.

I believe I did fall asleep for just a little while. The next morning when I woke up, I felt weak and sickly. I didn’t want to leave the boat but my dad said that we have to go get all that stuff you left on the other side of the island. Tony, both of my uncles and my dad and I all walked the same path that me and my cousin had made that terrifying run the night before. I don’t think I looked into the woods one time. When we got to where we had been doing our night fishing nothing was disturbed.

Nothing was missing, nothing was broke. Our fishing poles were laying exactly where we dropped them and the lantern had run out of fuel. However there was one thing, there were no fish in the little pool that we had dug. There were no bones or scales around the hole, like some Predator may have just stopped there and ate them. They were just gone.

For the rest of this fishing vacation I pretty much stayed on the boats and fished. When I did get off the boats I did not go into the woods or even look at the woods.

One of the days later in our vacation, my grandfather pulled me aside and told me a story. He said there was a time that he was fishing in the Upper Peninsula Michigan on a large lake. That they had pulled their boat up to where they could see some abandoned cabins. He said the cabins looked fairly new but they looked abandoned with broken windows and overgrown brush and a half sunken doc. He told me they were about а hundred yards out into the water fishing when rocks the size of
baseballs started splashing in the water all around their boat.

He said the rock were big enough that they could have killed someone. When they turned to look at where the Rocks were coming from, he said they were coming from the trees and brush around the cabins. They couldn’t see what was throwing them but they could see them coming towards them and splashing all around them. He said it was a lot of rocks and they had to quickly start their motors and run their boats further out into the lake.

He told me that he didn’t know how a person could throw a rock the size of a baseball a hundred yards, and then he told me that was why I pulled the houseboat off the beach the other night. My cousin will acknowledge that this happened to us, but he won’t talk about it or tell this story. Whenever the subject of Bigfoot comes up in any conversation, or if I am asked if I believe there is such a thing as a Sasquatch. I say yes, I think they’re probably is and I tell them this story.

I couldn’t see any detail in the figure I saw that night through my tiny window. I could only see it silhouetted by the moonlight through the mist from about 150 yards away, but I believe that it was a Bigfoot.”