Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “This happened on the night of May 9th, a Saturday. We were in Arkansas for my daughter’s college graduation and had rented an Airbnb on Beaver Lake near Rogers, Arkansas. You could walk down to the lake from the house, although it involved a very steep staircase, so we only went down once. The house sat high on a hill overlooking the water, and the view was beautiful.

Knowing Arkansas has a lot of Bigfoot lore, I naturally started thinking about Sasquatch stories in the area. The house wasn’t isolated exactly it was in a lakeside neighborhood with other homes nearby but it was definitely far outside town.

The Airbnb itself had huge windows all across the back and sides, plus multiple levels of decks overlooking the lake. Because the house sat on such a steep hill, it felt like there were three or four stories of decks stacked down the slope.

Every night before bed, I made sure to close all the blinds on those giant windows. Partly because I hate the idea of critters outside at night, but honestly because I was irrationally terrified of looking out and seeing a Sasquatch peeking through the glass. Ridiculous, I know but I also have lingering trauma from being a teenager when I dealt with a peeping Tom constantly looking through my bedroom windows. Ever since then, windows at night make me uneasy.

Anyway, this was our third night there.

Around 11:30 p.m., my dog needed to go outside, so I took him out and brought him back in. He had been stressed about staying in a different house and had already had two accidents inside, so I was hyper-vigilant about making sure he got outside when he needed to.

Then around 3:30 a.m., he started wandering around the room sniffing and pacing. He wasn’t scared or whining, just investigating something. I was half asleep and got up because I thought he probably needed to go out again.

My husband asked, “What are you doing?”

I said, “I’m worried he has to go to the bathroom.”

And my husband replied, “At this point, who cares?”

So I laid back down, trying to fall asleep, but the dog kept sniffing around the room like something had his attention. The master bedroom was directly beside the deck where all of this happened, so if something was outside, he absolutely would have noticed it.

Now, I’m a very light sleeper. I wear earplugs at night, and both my husband and I use CPAP machines, so my hearing is already muffled while I sleep.

Around 4:15 a.m., I suddenly heard the loudest commotion at the deck door beside the bedroom. It was loud enough to hear clearly through the earplugs. It sounded like a series of heavy THUDS almost like someone dropping objects or slamming into the door with their shoulder trying to force it open.

Now let me back up for a second.

The night before, my mom and I had left a bag of kitchen garbage outside on the deck because we couldn’t find an outdoor trash can anywhere. We both looked at each other and said, “We probably shouldn’t do this because of critters,” but we didn’t know what else to do. In hindsight, we definitely should have just left it inside.

So when I heard the noise, I immediately assumed some animal had gotten into the trash.

The strange thing was that the sound didn’t really resemble scratching. It was more like banging or crashing. But in my sleepy state, my brain convinced me it was probably the dog pawing at the door because he needed to go out.

So I got out of bed, threw on my pajamas, and walked to the door.

There were no lights on outside, and the switch for the deck lights was several feet away, meaning I had to actually step out onto the deck in the dark to turn them on. The moment I stepped outside, I immediately felt this eerie atmosphere.

It wasn’t completely silent, but it was much quieter than the previous nights. Normally the area was incredibly loud with frogs, birds, insects constant noise. I had actually been shocked by how alive the woods sounded at night. But this time, almost everything had gone quiet.

I walked a couple of steps to flip on the light and immediately saw the garbage torn apart. I remember thinking, “Yep… figured that would happen.”

Meanwhile, my little dog had already wandered partway into the yard. I looked up to see where he was, and that’s when I noticed the footprints near the trash.

They were muddy footprints. Extremely fresh. Wet looking fresh.

And instantly I realized whatever made these is still here. I immediately called my dog back inside. Once back in the room, I stood there trying to decide what to do. I was still worried the dog needed to go out, but I also knew something had just been on that deck moments before. For some reason, I opened the door again to let him out but the feeling outside was so intensely wrong and creepy that I couldn’t even step onto the deck. I just knew whatever had been there was still nearby.

So I shut the door, went back to bed, and laid there replaying everything in my head. There was no strange smell. No growls. No obvious sounds. But the footprints bothered me because they genuinely looked like feet. One of them almost looked like a shoe print.

I kept trying to rationalize it. Maybe a bear? Maybe a cougar? But the shape didn’t look animal.

The other weird thing was the way the garbage bags had been opened. They weren’t shredded apart with jagged tears or bite marks. The bags looked almost neatly pulled open like someone had used their hands to tear them apart and sort through the contents.

Even stranger, there were only about four visible footprints. It looked almost like whatever it was had climbed over the deck railing, crossed the porch, then jumped back off once all the commotion happened with my dog. The next morning, I went back outside to look again. The muddy prints had dried overnight, so they had lost some detail compared to when I first saw them wet, but they still clearly resembled footprints.

My husband put his shoe next to one for comparison. He wears a size 13, and the print was fairly large, though honestly I’d estimate it was probably closer to a size 8 or 9 human foot. So if it was something unusual, it definitely wouldn’t have been huge maybe even juvenile sized.

I took photos of the prints, which I’ll attach. I don’t think it’s good enough for any sort of show. I don’t even think it’s like an encounter. I’m not even sure what it was, but I thought hey at least you would have the pictures and you could add it to your records.