Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “Back in the mid-late 90’s I was attending the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. I was employed as a Resident Assistant at North Carrick Hall on campus and a group of RA’s got together one night and wanted to do something spooky because the night in question was a Friday the 13th.

So, kids being kids, we decided that we would go on a night hike in the Smoky Mountains. I can’t remember the time of night but I would guesstimate it was somewhere around 10 – 11 pm when we arrived. We parked, found the beginning of a trail and began to hike in. It was a group of approximately 10 friends and as we walked we were laughing and cutting up when all of a sudden I heard a deep low growl off to our left. We all froze and instantly quit talking. Our fun moment quickly turned into something different and I remember one girl said “wait, did you guys hear that?”.

Before anyone could respond, it growled again. I wished I could describe the growl. I’ve heard you play the crocodile growls on your podcast but it wasn’t that deep or menacing. It was deep and sounded like it could have been 20 yards from us. On the second growl, we simultaneously changed our course of travel and headed back for the car. I remember thinking “don’t run, just don’t waste any time getting out of there”. The thing is, it paced us out. I remember hearing it walking beside us until we had cleared the woods and made it back to the beginning of the trail. I would have never thought much about it until I heard stories of how sasquatches have been reported to pace people out of the woods. Who knows. Since then, I’ve lost contact with those friends and have no way to pick their brains to see what they think we encountered that night. I’m not seeking to be on the show and my story certainly wouldn’t make the cut…I get that. I just thought I’d share this with you and see if you’d weigh in on what this may have been.

A totally different type of encounter that I had was very definitive and one that I have only told a handful of people about. This also took place during my time at UTK. Our residence hall had a pool table on the main floor and one night I was having difficulty sleeping. So, I went down to shoot some pool. A good friend of mine at the time (Robert) ended up coming down as well and we decided to go for a ride out in the country. There was no booze or drugs, we were completely sober, just riding because we couldn’t sleep. Anyways, we were out on the back roads, listening to music and just having a good time. As we were coming up on a hill, all of a sudden, there was an object in the sky. It appeared out of nowhere. It looked like it was 70-100 feet off of the ground and it was so large it took up 80% of the windshield. It was silvery grey metallic in color and had an oval shape, with the longest part of the oval being parallel to the horizon. The middle section of that object had large multicolored lights. The night was clear and while we were listening to music, we weren’t blaring it. I say that to say that I feel that I would have heard an object of this size and distance either approach or leave. It was completely silent. It simply hovered there for maybe 2-3 seconds. Robert was driving and came to a quick stop. We stared at this object for 2-3 seconds, looked at one another in amazement, and when we looked back out the windshield, it was gone. Completely 100% gone. No sound, no vapor trail, no nothing….just gone. Our windows were down because it was a nice night and I pulled up out of the car (like Bo Duke) and scanned a 360 of the sky but saw absolutely no trace whatsoever of what we had just seen. It seems impossible to me that any aircraft that we have manufactured, could have gotten completely and silently out of sight in that time frame.

We began to drive away and within a couple of minutes, we had headlights coming up behind us. We both got a little uneasy because the chance of having headlights come up behind you at 2 or 3 am on backroads after seeing what we just saw, seemed nerve wracking at best. Robert got so upset that he began to cry. I don’t remember how long the headlights stayed with us but they never got close and never gave us any problem.

Robert refused to speak of the incident ever again. I shot him a message on Facebook some 15 years after that night and I asked him what he thought we saw. He only replied…I don’t know.

I know the second story sounds crazy and that is why I have shared this without only a small, select group of people in my life. I am considering passing this on to Tony Merkel but am still pondering if I want to do so.

Anyways, I wanted to share my weird experiences with you. I like what you do and I respect the show you have. Keep up the good work!”