Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “Just wanted to reach out to you regarding an encounter I had with something in the local mountains here in Southern California. I am a bowhunter and this happened the first year I had started hunting here in 2020. It was on Palomar Mountain in early October of that year.

I had a treestand that was set up for the season in the National Forest and had been coming to this spot multiple times a week to sit my stand (bow season runs from September to December for this unit). The treestand was positioned in a group of pines in the middle of a meadow, where I almost had a full 360 degree view of the surrounding area, and the deer would feed through the meadow almost every single morning and evening. I had 6 trail cameras in to monitor the deer in the field as well as the trails coming through the forest in the immediate area.

This meadow where I was hunting was located about 1 mile from where I parked my truck. From where I parked, I would hike through the forest off-trail, and had made my own trail by clearing leaves and brush so I could enter in the meadow without making a huge amount of noise. The last bit of which was almost like a tunnel that I had to duck and crouch to make it through, then it opened up into the meadow.

The morning my encounter happened I had gotten to the parking spot early (about 330 AM) and instead of waiting in my truck, I decided to hike in and sit in my treestand until sunrise. It was cold that morning with a slight mist/fog, and from the moment I stepped out of my truck it felt completely off. It was dead silent, no sounds of bugs, no owls (which I had heard almost every time I either hiked in our out in the dark), just complete silence. As I was walking through the trees I had the feeling something was watching me the entire time, and I had never had this felt this prior in the many many times I had hiked this same route. I remember stopping to look over my shoulder multiple times, and also thinking that I was hearing something off in the distance just out of sight of my headlamp, only moving while I was moving. But I continued on the trail, eventually made it into the meadow and climbed into my stand at about 4:15AM.

Knowing that it would be a couple hours until sunrise, I hung my pack and my bow, put on my puffy jacket, and pulled out my thermos of coffee. About 15 minutes after after I had got settled, I heard off in the distance coming from the exact area I had hiked in from, what sounded like faint footsteps on leaves. It distinctly did not sound like animal footsteps, it had a much more human-sounding rhythm to it. The steps on the leaves continued to get louder and eventually I heard the sound of snapping twigs and branches of trees and brush moving against each other. At that point I realized that whatever it was, was following my trail and had entered the meadow, busting through the brush where the “tunnel” I had made. From that point it was about 150 yards to the edge of the tree line though the meadow to the group of trees where my stand was located. There was a pause in the noise four a couple minutes, but then I could hear the sounds of the swishing of grass getting louder and louder (the grass in the meadow was about knee-high), and it was clear that whatever it was was heading straight to me.

It had walked my exact same trail through the forest and followed my same exact path though the meadow as if it was tracking me by scent. It then stopped directly under my treestand. I froze completely still and stared straight down, trying to see if I could identify what it is by a shadow, but there was no moon that night and I was so terrified I didn’t think to grab my headlamp. I could hear it breathing once it stopped, it was a quiet, deep, sort of congested breathing. My stand was hung about 15 feet up and it sounded like it was right underneath my feet. It continued to stand there and breathe for what was probably 3-5 minutes. Then it walked off to the opposite side of the meadow to the treeline behind me as I listened to its footsteps fade.

I sat in the tree until about 11AM, and when I got down I checked all of my trail cameras in the area. I had one facing the corner of the meadow I walked in at, and it caught me walking in, but nothing else. There were no deer any of my cameras for 2 days prior to that, which they were consistently there morning and evening up until then.

We do not have bears in these mountains, there are mountain lions in the area (that I have gotten on camera), bobcats, deer, turkey etc. But nothing that would have walked or sounded like this. The only thing I could really rationalize is that it was another person who had followed me in, but did so in complete darkness without a headlamp or flashlight.”