Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “In late may of 2021 myself and my 2 boys (9 and 10 at the time) visited my mom and her boyfriend at their home in Cherokee NC. My husband is a delta pilot and is normally busy so on summer breaks it’s just my boys and me.

We live in metro atl (Douglasville ga) and it’s about a 4 hour drive, so not that bad. My mom had been asking us to visit when the kids got out of school so the week after they got out we headed up to spend a week at their house. Now moms boyfriend owns 20 acres that back right up to the Smokey mountains. We get there and for the first two days everything is fine. Kids swim in the pool, ride 4 wheelers, and play in my moms garden. Nothing crazy, just average stuff they do when we visit. Now they have a beautiful stream/tiny river that runs through the property, but it’s about a 25 min hike back in the woods. It’s my boys favorite place to go Bc it’s clear and there’s a small sand bank that they enjoy building dams in and playing with their army men. I enjoy it Bc I love to fly fish and i always catch trout there. It’s still on my moms bfs land so it’s always just us when we go, which we love. So the kids asked the day before to go and my mom didn’t show much interest in the hike to get there and Lou (her bf) is getting pretty old and has hip issues so he couldn’t make it. I said no problem and that it would just be us. Next day, mom packs us a picnic lunch, I make sure we have towels and that I have my glock 22 loaded and in its carrier.

I don’t expect to run into anything but I don’t go anywhere unarmed period. Lou hands me a can of blue spray paint and ask me to touch up the tree trail as we go. He has the trees painted with a blue line to mark how to get to the river. I say sure, kids have backpacks full of toys, I have lunch and bag of towels and we head out. The hike out was absolutely beautiful. The woods are full into late spring. We smell something kinda musty when we get to the clearing but it doesn’t set off any alarm bells. Kids start playing, we all swim a bit , have lunch and then they start damn making. We’ve been there around two hours by now. I have my shorts back on over my bikini, gun safely in the small of my back where I like to wear it. About 10 mins in of helping my kids build damns I start feeling watched. Hairs raise on my arms, my muscles clench up on their own and my head is now on a swivel. My oldest son picks up on my nerves and ask what’s wrong, I smile and say nothing Bc I don’t want him freaking out. He goes back to playing and I decide to fish and keep a eye out. I’m so wound up that I need to get up and move. So I set up my rod. Wade out a little and start casting. I catch a few, kids are playing great but I cannot shake the feeling of being watched.

My hands are sweaty and I’m on such high alert I feel sick to my stomach. I go to cast again and I see this tree on the other side of the river shake some and hear some rustling. First thought is it’s a bear, that’s why I’m afraid and feeling this way. I start to back up toward the shore to tell the boys quietly that there’s a bear and we need to leave now. I take two backwards steps toward shore and out of the side bank about 10 feet downstream steps a creature out of s horror movie. It’s looking right at me and I freeze. This thing is so big, it takes my breath away. I’m 6 foot, athletic build with a fair share of muscle from CrossFit and weightlifting. This thing is close to 8 maybe 9 feet tall. Massive shoulders, no neck, huge head, long arms and just solid muscle. He has a big forehead, big broad kind of flat nose, black eyes and huge mouth. We stand there for what felt like to me hours but was only like a minute just staring at each other. Then he takes a small step toward me and that’s enough to kick in my flight response. I drop my rod and start backing up slowly toward my kids who haven’t noticed yet. I say very sternly but in a normal level “ boys, stand up very slowly and walk to me. Walk slowly!!! Heads town and get directly behind me”. My kids know my tones and they know something’s up but they do as I ask. My oldest ushering his brother behind me. He presses his brother against me and then ask what’s going on. The entire time from when I call out to my kids to them walking to me this thing never moved a inch. His eyes are glued to me. I tell my oldest to slowly lean around me and look downstream. I can feel his brother shaking behind me and then my oldest shift slightly. He takes a big gasp and then starts crying, hiding behind me again. My youngest ask what it is and I snap for him to be quite. This thing begins to move closer, one small step at a time like he wasn’t trying to spoke me. I still have eye contact and I’m shaking like a leaf, frozen to the spot. When he gets about 8!feet from us he stops and faces me fully. He puffs up even bigger and shows me his teeth. The canines on this thing were enormous. I start to cry Bc I think he’s going to attack and we’re going to die.

When I start to cry he stops showing teeth and I swear to god tried to make his face look none scary…. Which is not possible. We just stood there, him standing in the shallow water and me and my boys standing right at the shoreline. Then we heard some rustling behind us and then a low growl came from the woods behind us. I mean you could feel this growl low in your body, it just shook you to the core. My youngest cryed out and was shaking so bad that if it wasn’t for being pressed between his brother and I he would have fallen. My youngest was crying and he whispered that he had peed himself. I just reached back and grabbed hold of his arm and squeezed it, I didn’t want to talk while I made eye contact with what was in front of us. I saw the moment that the other one must have stepped out of the tree line behind us because the one in front of me changed completely. He went from scary as fuck but non threatening to deadly in a secound. His face changed, teeth showed, shoulders and body pumped up and he started growling real low in his chest. The sounds these things make are insane….. I don’t know how to describe it or how you can feel them in your body. The one in front of me now has his attention on whatever is behind me and he takes one BIG step and is practically right next to us. He stands there and he smells awful. I mean it’s so so so bad. My oldest starts to gag and my youngest throws up all down my back and butt. This thing was so close me or my boys could have reached out and touched him. I am no longer breathing, just standing there with a arm behind me shielding my kids. Then the one behinds us screams and the one next to us disappears. He takes off after the other one so fast it’s like he had magic. Just tucking gone! I stay frozen for a few moments more and then we hear another scream from the woods and I just turn fast and scream run! At my boys. We take off! My oldest in front, my youngest who is the fastest close on his heels and me. We’re running back on the trail that’s marked. I just keep shouting for them to keep running! Don’t stop no matter what!!! Run to grandma!! And then we hear another scream not to far from us and my kids hit overdrive. I mean they take off!

I’m running as fast as I can and I can hear something loud running up behind me. Just loud breathing and thumps and I scream one more time for them not to stop and I stop fast, turn around and pull my gun. All I can think is that if I can just give them a head start they will be safe. When I stop and turn real fast and draw my gun I see the one from the river maybe 10 or 12 feet behind me. He stops dead, like not breathing hard or anything and I’m fighting to just catch my breath from the sprint I just did. He looks right at me and takes a step toward me. I point to gun straight up and fire a round then point it back at him. He looks kinda shocked and then shows his teeth at me. I’m so shaken and stressed and I swear I’m running in instinct I show my teeth right back at him. He takes another small step toward me and I scream at him. I mean I SCREAM!!! I just keep screaming at him and he just stops. I swear we stood there him looking at me and me screaming for like 2 mins. Then he made some sound in the back of his throat and then took a step back. Then another and another. I mean like big steps back! When he was a ways down the trail but still holding my gaze, he turned and walked away into the tree line. I just stay frozen there in my stance, gun up just waiting for him to come back.

After a few minutes I turn back and start running back toward the house. When I get there loud out in the yard loading up a 4 wheeler with guns and the kids are hysterical. I step out of the tree line and make eye contact with Lou and just pass out. I wake up in my moms house in the couch a few hours later with the worse headache of my life and sick as a dog. I’m in and out of it for 4 days. My husband even drives down and stays Bc he’s worried about me. My boys told everyone what happened and I told them the same. Mom believes but is pretty shaken by it, Lou’s lived in those woods his whole life and beloved us completely. My husband grew up in a very small valley town in pa, spent his entire life hunting in the woods there are heard stories. He believed us. My youngest still has night terrors about it, he refuses to go into the woods at all. We’re working with him on it. My oldest started digging for stuff on Bigfoot and tho he has nightmares about it he’s more interested then afraid anymore. I don’t really talk about it, I don’t honestly know how to process it or how to feel about it. I don’t bring it up unless one of my kids ask about it and I still have nightmares about it. I’ll go in the woods but not without my husband or Lou and a big ass gun.”