Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “I’m a woodland firefighter. I have hiked around a lot of woods. I am also a skeptic, I’m not sure what exactly it was that I saw or experienced. I have been listening to your show for about a week or 2. I find it entertaining, educational and comforting to know that it’s a safe place for all.

I have had a couple of experiences I would like to share. I’m originally from Leadville, Colorado. It’s a place of many mines and lots of wilderness. Stories have run around town for years from the Hispanic immigrant miners about this unknown thing called the “El Chupacabras”. If you know anything about it, it’s a doglike being that stands on its 2 feet and sucks the blood from its prey.

It’s very elusive, fast and extremely dangerous according to lore. When I was in middle school, we lived in a house almost 20 minutes outside of Leadville. Our back yard was the rolling hills that lead up into the Rocky Mountain range and a large field sat before that. The whole area was visible from our back door in the kitchen and every morning we saw a huge herd of elk of at least 60.

One morning me and my dad started enjoying a cup of coffee to start our weekend around early October. As we were talking we gazed outside to see the elk herd and relish in the beauty. Well as we sat there looking at them for a few minutes, they suddenly started to stampede as fast at they could away from that area and towards the foot hills. This is totally bizarre behavior as we have never seen this before unless there was a near by predator.

My dad, out of instinct, pulled out his binoculars to find this predator that scared them. As we took turns scanning for a couple of minutes. We didn’t see anything, until all of a sudden my dad said that he is seeing something running out in the distance. He adjusted the binoculars to get a clearer vision but couldn’t totally make out what is was, for it was too far out in the distance.

He handed me the binoculars and pointed to the area. My stomach sank when I saw this thing running abnormally fast… on 2 legs. I couldn’t make out the facial features but it was brownish tan with dark areas on the chest. I was totally bipedal, I saw it running towards the area the elk ran. When it reached the area it’s had stopped for a couple of seconds then book it towards the direction the elk ran.

My dad asked me what the hell it was. I had no idea, I still have no idea. We reached out to a couple of locals and they told us about this El Chupacabras. They even have news articles about these things being seen and supposedly have found one dead in Leadville by the local game warden.

It was unreal. My second experience is a bit bizarre also. I just moved up here to John Day, Oregon at the beginning of this year for fire season. Because I am a Wildland Firefighter we do a lot of project work to condition us and keep us bus until we get a dispatch. Well being in the woods for work, you find the best mushroom picking spots.

So me and my kids went up to an area where we dug a prescription burn line for work like three days before. I found some mushrooms up there while working and figured the kids needed a day out. So the drive up there was pretty treacherous, but was gonna yield great reward in mushrooms when we got there. So me and the kids get out of the vehicle to hike the rest of the way until we hit our line then hike it up further to the sweet spot.

As we got about 50 yards from the start of the line we heard what sound like a howl hoot then what could have been a tree that was broken. If it was a branch then it was huge. The hoot sounded like it was about 100 yards away from where we were standing. The kids asked me what they was and told them I had no idea but maybe it was a good idea we got out of there. So I had the kids get in front of me then we walked back to the vehicle slowly with my front facing towards the direction of the sound. As we started to walk we heard what sounded like crunching twigs under something really heavy, my stomach sank again.

It was following us. I haven’t had that feeling since what I saw in Leadville. I knew we weren’t safe and so I got close to the kids and hurried them without running towards the vehicle. As we finally made it to the vehicle I got the kids in right away and blared the horn as hard, long and annoying as I could to scare this thing off. I got my composure and left with a quickness to never return to that area. It still makes me feel uncomfortable to talk about it or even think about these experiences but I have no idea what they could have been. What they could be or why. If you read this thank you for taking the time to read this and I hope to maybe be able to share this cause honestly no one else believes me. Thanks so much for your time in this.”