Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “In 1987, I believe I had a Bigfoot encounter. My cousin DJ and I were planning to meet his brother Barry at Lake Serene in Washington. It’s a popular hike, and a beautiful one when you come out of the woods, there’s a small lake, and across it you can see a glacier peeking over the mountains.

Barry headed out early Friday morning, but DJ and I had to work a closing shift at a pizza delivery place. We didn’t leave until around 12:30 a.m., and it was after 1:00 a.m. when we got onto Highway 2. We passed through Monroe, Sultan, Startup, and Gold Bar. Just before Index, we turned onto an old logging road off the highway.

Eventually we reached a gravel parking lot. As we pulled in, DJ spotted his brother’s car, so we parked next to it. When we got out, there was a terrible smell but not the kind people usually describe. To me, it smelled like stale, rotting saltwater and dead fish, which didn’t make sense since we were nowhere near the ocean.

We walked around Barry’s car and found his campsite. There was a small dome tent, a fire pit, and a few chairs but everything was disturbed. The chairs were knocked over, and the tent was flipped upside down.

DJ said, “This looks like my brother’s stuff,” then picked up a chair, sat down, and opened a beer.

I grabbed another chair and sat down. “Do we have a flashlight?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said. “We’ll have to hike in the morning.” Then he started building a fire.

A little while later, as we sat there drinking, we noticed a tree at the edge of the parking lot start shaking violently. It was about 30 feet tall and maybe 6 to 8 inches thick at the base. We stared at it until it stopped.

A few minutes later, another tree started shaking this one closer to us by a few trees.

I turned to say, “What the hell is that?” but DJ was already gone. He had walked around Barry’s car and gotten inside. I followed, moving slowly. Just as I opened the door, another tree started shaking, and I jumped into the car.

DJ leaned his seat back and said, “Time for bed,” like nothing was wrong.

About 20 minutes later, I was staring straight ahead. There was a large Y-shaped tree, and in the split of the Y I saw two red lights like laser points about a foot apart. They didn’t move closer or farther from each other, but sometimes one or both would disappear, like blinking eyes.

It felt like it was watching me… and somehow responding.

I tested it. I blinked one eye, and one of the lights disappeared, then came back. I blinked the other eye the other light vanished, then returned. Then I blinked both eyes, and both lights disappeared and came back again.

At that point, I was convinced I was looking at something alive.

I tilted my head to one side and whatever it was did the same. I tilted the other way, and it followed again.

Then DJ suddenly tapped my arm, turned on the headlights, and pointed.

The tree was empty. Nothing was there.

I didn’t sleep much that night. I kept wondering what I had seen. It seemed too small to be an owl, and the eyes were too far apart to match anything I knew. If it was Bigfoot, I figured it had to be at least six feet tall.

The next morning, we hiked up toward the lake. It was incredibly hot. I stopped at a stream to splash water on my face and ended up taking a few sips.

When we reached the lake, we found Barry. DJ joked that Bigfoot had trashed his campsite. The place was busy campers everywhere and there were even people up near the glacier. Fish were jumping all over the lake.

But on the hike back down, I started feeling sick. I thought maybe I picked up something from the stream or maybe it was something else. I kept thinking about the night before. Was I really communicating with it, or was it all in my head?

Back at the car, I went behind the tree where I’d seen the lights, looking for footprints. That’s when I realized something: the parking lot had been built up about two feet higher than the surrounding ground.

Whatever I had seen wasn’t six feet tall.

It was more like eight.

On the drive home along Highway 2, I kept getting sick, opening the car door and throwing up on the side of the road the whole way back.

And to this day, I still don’t know exactly what I saw but I’ve never forgotten it.”