Dec 23

I Stayed Up Most Of The Night Terrified

A listener writes “I have two experiences that I can’t really explain and growing up Indigenous from Canada was told from a very young age about sasquatch and the wild men. My family has many experiences with these creatures and I grew up hearing these tales. My experiences feel similar to these stories.

First experience: I was at on cortez island staying in at a resort, our cabin was attached to the cutline of a provincial park that takes up the majority of the island. One night my friend cara and I were up late on the deck that faced a huge forest line on the edge of a large cliff that led down to the ocean – there was a 8 ft fence line between us and that ravine. It was about 12 pm at night and we were up late chatting on the deck. All of a sudden we heard a loud guttural grunt/monkey noise in front of us – post sound was large crashing through the bush. Both the movements and sound were so loud that I felt it in my guts, and immediately got this feeling of being unsafe. I felt like we pissed something off, that we were too loud and this thing was offended or something. Cara wanted to run into the cabin but I felt like if we turned our back on whatever made these sounds that it would pounce on us. So I told Cara to stand up, we both stood up and got big and I said out loud to it that we were sorry and that we would be going inside now.

I didn’t know why I felt that I needed to talk outloud to it but it just felt like whatever it was was intelligent with the sounds and movement. And all I could think was we are invading whatever it was’ territory or something. So we went inside and I locked up all the doors and headed to bed. As soon as I laid my head down I heard the loudest smack on the cabin – it shook the windows above my bed. I immediately got up and peaked my head outside my room – cara did the same. I said are you okay? and she said yeah, are you? I said did you hear that? She replied yes. I sort of just shrugged it off and said goodnight.

I laid in my bed and just thought holy crap, I think that was sasquatch. I couldn’t sleep thinking about this experience and why it would be there on this last night by our deck. This would have been our 6th night and we hadn’t heard anything up until then. The only difference of that particular night is that we had a huge oyster fry down on the beach in front of the cabin. My reasoning is that we lured whatever it was in by the scent and it had sat perched up on the cliff overlooking our oyster fry. I also remember that night walking back from the main hall in the forest up to our cabin which is about a 10 minute walk through dark woods, and I was getting pelted by what I assumed was the wind knocking down pinecones or something. I thought nothing of it. But laying in bed that night, I thought about that and how weird it was cause there was no wind – and on one windy night that had no occured.

Second Experience:
My partner and I this summer went on a canoe trip to a set of islands off the coast of victoria called Discover and Chathum islands. We got stranded on small chatum due to strong winds. So we decided that it’s best if we camp there for the night and wait to see if the winds die down the next day. We set up our tent beside a large tree line a bit ways off the water so that we could be protected from the strong winds. We spent our day with a full hike around the island, at one point we stumbled into a clearing due to following a pathway that looked like a large human had made. We figured it was a short cut to the water. When we got into the clearing, it was a large mossy swamp that may have been the source of the freshwater.

I got this super eerie feeling in that clearing so I told my partner that we should go back the way we came and find another way around the side of the island. The island we were on is uninhabited and it’s a first nation reserve of traditional lands. So it would be odd that there was this large cut out in the shape of a person there.

Anyway, we headed back the way we came in and were cutting through the forest back to the other side. When we finally made it back to our camp, we were exhausted and talked about how weird the swamp was, we were both freaked out by it. We also talked about a point on our walk when we were cutting through the forest that we both felt like we were being watched. it was a very strange experience during that day. When it was night time, we headed to bed around 9pm so that we would have enough energy for our canoe trip back to Victoria. In the middle of the night I woke to strange calls coming from behind our tent to the beach in front of our tent.

These calls were going back and forth like they were communicating with each other. I woke my partner up because I was terrified and asked him to listen – the first time around he didn’t hear anything and told me to go back to bed. I couldn’t – I stayed awake listening. About an hour later there was another call, and I shook my partner awake – he stayed up listening and this time he heard it out on the beach. he said that it was a really strange sound, that he had never heard it before which made me feel better cause I felt like I was losing it a bit at this point.

He listened for a bit as these things made calls to each other for a bit longer. The call sounded like whoops, classic whoops. The one behind our tent in the treeline I could hear crashing around from time to time. At one point I heard it climb into this large tree directly above our tent. I stayed up most of the night terrified that whatever was in the tree above us would jump down on us. It sounded fairly medium size and I sort of got to the point that I imagined it as a child or juvenile sasquatch curious of what we were doing. I think I did this cause I needed to sleep by this point. It was about 3 am. I started to drift off to sleep when I heard the larged inhaled sniff right by my head outside the tent. This freaked me out so bad that I was frozen in my sleeping bag, I could not move. I finally pushed my partner awake and told him what I heard, he stayed up listening to the tree movement and expressed that it was in fact so strange. I lightly slept but awoke to hear whatever was in the tree climb down back on the ground and sort of stumble it’s way through the forest. As soon as daylight came up I shook my partner awake and said it’s time to leave. It was the perfect time to leave in my mind, the wind stopped, those things were gone for about an hour. It was the fastest I have ever packed up a canoe – we left within 20 minutes. I didn’t even look back for fear that I would see something on the beach.”

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