Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “My grandparents ran a summer camp out in the mountains in New Mexico about 40 miles east of Albuquerque, so every summer I’d go out there and spend the summer with them, living up at the camp.

It’s a pretty big piece of property, about 150 acres, and butts up against the Cibola National Forrest. Well, in 1992, I was 12 years old, and I was walking with my grandfather up to our “power house” to get the generator started (we made all our own power, solar and wind with a backup generator). While he was messing with that, I wandered away like I was prone to do, playing with my dogs.

Well, their dogs, but they were basically mine. Anyways, I was just playing with sticks like boys do, down in a ravine that ran along the backside of the power house. This was late afternoon, almost evening. The sun hadn’t quite set yet, but down low enough to where it was getting dark down where I was, and the sunlight was just barely beaming over the hill that ran along the ravine. This area was pretty heavily wooded but there was a clearing up the hill from where I was.

After maybe 10 minutes I realized my dogs weren’t with me anymore. That’s when I looked up the hillside from within the ravine and saw this auburn colored creature walking across the clearing. I couldn’t see its feet, I could really only see it from about the knees/thighs up, because it was just on the other side of the hill crest. It was backlit by the sun so it was hard to make out details, but it was clearly human shaped, covered totally in hair. It walked soooo smoothly. Like it just glided across the opening, in maybe like 3 steps. Almost no bobbing of the head as it stepped.

It was so other worldly. And those trees on either side of the clearing were a pretty good distance apart. It was clearly fast because it covered the distance really quickly, but it didn’t look like it was running, just strolling along like it was out for a Sunday walk. It was incredibly graceful. Unfortunately my memory isn’t quite clear enough to judge the distances or its height but I kind of had the impression at the time that it wasn’t particularly huge. If I had to guess, I’d say maybe 6 feet tall? Totally conjecture on my part, but maybe it was an adolescent? That was the feeling I had even then. I think the next time I’m out at the property I’m going to go to the spot and measure things. But I could clearly make out its shoulders and arms swinging which were really long and kind of thin, and its head was cone shaped, with large tuffs of hair flowing off the back of its head. The tuffs of hair were somewhat curly, and really stood out because it was so backlit. It wasn’t really hunched like you see, and from where I was it didn’t really look super muscular. In fact, it was almost kind of skinny (but that’s probably too strong of a word, but it didn’t have the body builder look that many people describe).

Naturally I just froze. I was so scared I couldn’t move or make a sound or anything. I only saw it for a few seconds, but it scared me like nothing else. It wasn’t until my dogs returned a few moments later that I was able to snap out of it. The dogs seemed pretty chill, like wagging their tails and tongues hanging out and happy to see me, so I felt a lot safer then. I have no idea if I thought they saw it at all or reacted to it in anyway. I do have to say, even though I was super scared, I didn’t feel like I was in danger. More like I was seeing something that shouldn’t exist, and my brain couldn’t process it.

After I regained my composure, I went back up to the power house and asked my grandfather if he’d seen it. He was a super rational dude (he was a nuclear physicist who worked on the bomb), so he told me I probably just saw a bear. But I knew it wasn’t a bear. We had black bears up there and from a fairly young age we’d run into them reasonably often, I was familiar with what they look like. And especially at that point, I had run into them by myself before and had been able to scare them off.

This was not a black bear, didn’t move like a bear, and was totally the wrong color. I had seen Harry and the Hendersons (which totally creeped me out as a kid, lol) and had watched things like Unsolved Mysteries, so I knew what they were, and I did immediately think it was a Sasquatch. I just couldn’t believe it was real. It was a lighter color than “Harry,” but that could have been because it was backlit. But it was definitely a reddish/brown color. It was kind of the same color as the bark on a ponderosa piñon tree, if you know what that looks like. I did not see any skin tones and outside of the shape of the face (I could see the outline of its nose), I couldn’t make out any more details. I don’t know if hair covered its face or not.

I told my best friend about it the next day at camp who was into paranormal stuff, and he said it probably wasn’t a Sasquatch “’cause they don’t live down here. They live up in Washington.” So after a while, I kind of just convinced myself I must’ve imagined it or misunderstood what I saw, because of the way it moved I just couldn’t believe it had been real. It was like a dream. Once in a while I’d bring it up at parties and things, but always with a huge caveat that yeah I saw one, but it probably was just my imagination, just can’t be certain.

And then my second experience was in 2001. We moved to New Mexico in 1994 to help my grandparents with the camp since they were starting to slow down, and I basically spent every day hiking on the property all through my teenage years. I really do know that property like the back of my hand. I would often camp by myself out there, even as a young teen, often without a tent so I could see the stars. I just loved being outside.

Having that experience really didn’t put me off of being out there alone, especially since I thought it probably wasn’t real. Well, in 2001, I was involved with a program at my church that was similar to Big Brothers of America, and I was mentoring a kid who was ten years old. I took him camping quite a few times, most of the time at the property because it was pretty convenient. This particular time, it was in September so it was starting to get chilly in the evenings but was nice during the day. It was dark out and we were roasting marshmallows on the campfire, just doing typical camping stuff. I had to pee so I went out to the woods, and when I came back, he was freaked out. He said he saw red glowing eyes in the woods on the other side of our tent. I shined my light over there and didn’t see anything, and told him it was probably just some random critter and it’s eyes were reflecting off the campfire.

After we went to bed in the tent, probably around 10 or 11pm, we started hearing this rustling and commotion going on. It sounded pretty close, like maybe 20 or 30 feet away. The boy whispered to me “Are you still awake?” I was. He was again totally freaked. “What is that?” At first, I honestly just thought it was a bear and I told him so. I told him there’s nothing to be afraid of, I run into bears all the time. The black bears up there are such scaredy cats and would rarely stay around once they knew you were there. So maybe after 10 or 15 minutes of this, the kid whispered he was really getting scared. So I got out of the tent to see what it was. I shined the flashlight all around and didn’t see a thing. Like nothing. Which I thought was odd, but decided maybe it was something smaller like a coyote or a raccoon or something like that as sound gets amplified at night and I was probably just misjudging the size. I got back in the tent and assured him that I am in these woods all the time and there really isn’t anything to be scared of.

After a little while, the commotion started up again. It sounded like something was building a nest or something. I got out again and looked, nothing. Every time I got out of the tent the noise would stop and it would be DEAD SILENT. Which was pretty spooky. This happened maybe 2 or 3 more times, with about 10 or 15 minutes between me getting out and checking. I started getting this feeling like maybe it was a person, like someone was just messing with us. I could kind of hear the walking around, and it didn’t sound right. Like maybe it was walking on two feet instead of four. And that started to make feel uneasy. I’m cool with animals, but creepy people in the woods are not cool. I started to get the mental image of some burly lumberjack type dude out there with a knife up to no good. And since I was with this kid, I have to admit I started to get a little worried. I didn’t want anything to happen to him. So I just kept listening and listening. This probably went on for about an hour or so altogether, and finally I just had enough so I jumped out of the tent as fast as I could with the flashlight and screamed at the top of my lungs “Get out of here!” Again, I didn’t see a thing. When I got back in the tent the kid was sitting up and just scared to death. I finally asked him if he wanted to go back to our house, and he emphatically said YES! We grabbed our sleeping bags and walked back to the house, which was maybe 2-300 yards away and spent the rest of the night inside.

The next morning I went back out to take down the tent and pack up and I found this “tree structure” kind of thing that was, yeah, maybe only 30 feet from the tent. It was so stinking close. I wondered how in the world could I not see what was making all that noise? The structure looked like a ground nest, but it was pretty big, close to 10 feet in diameter (which bears do make, but I understand they aren’t usually that big). But there were all these branches lined up around it, like a poorly made shelter, and there were some branches that were set in a teepee like fashion (well, more of a criss-cross than a teepee) on the one side of it, but no roof to speak of. There were these huge claw marks all around, on the trees and in the dirt, with four long finger marks (no thumbprint that I noticed at the time). I didn’t see any foot prints, but I wasn’t really looking for them. I was looking for bear prints because that’s what I honestly thought it was, but didn’t find any animal tracks of any kind, which I also thought was really weird. I really wish I knew then what I know now, because I could’ve really investigated and I would’ve known what to look for. The part that weirded me out was that it had to be something big to make the structure (still thinking bear), but how could I not see it? I shined my light directly at that spot and all around the area multiple times and never saw anything. There just wouldn’t have been a good place for a bear to hide. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how a bear could stay hidden like that.

I basically just filed that away in my brain as just a weird experience, and hey, weird stuff happens, especially in the woods. I’m certainly not an expert on all things bears, so who knows? It wasn’t until I started listening to the Sasquatch Chronicles that it dawned on me that that really could’ve been one. The things that stand out to me now that’s making rethink everything were the boy seeing the glowing red eyes, the tree structure and the fact that I just couldn’t figure out what it was. I had seen bears before at night, and identified them quickly. Like one time I came around a bend in the middle of the night and heard something, shined my light and there was a bear that got scared and bolted up a tree. So in my estimation, they’re pretty hard to miss. But what do I know?

And lastly, now that I’m rethinking things, I would hear wood knocks from time to time out there. Again, never thought much of it. But it happened enough that it’s something I took note of. I always wondered what was making those noises because it wasn’t a wood pecker. I have to wonder, if what was out there were really Sasquatches, if they came around because of the kids at the camp. During the summer there were anywhere from 150 to 200 kids there a day. We never had any of the kinds of trouble like others report, never had rocks thrown at our house, nothing like that. And looking back, outside of being creeped out, nothing happened. I don’t think it even was trying to get us to leave. It didn’t do anything to us. Just building its structure, like it was minding its own business, just not being particularly stealthy about it. Not sure why it would’ve wanted to be so close to us, outside of maybe curiosity? And that was another thing that makes me think it wasn’t a bear, bears wouldn’t set up camp next to a human, especially after it knew we were there, would it? I was there a lot growing up, and lived there as a teenager for years, so if they were around at all during that time, they likely were familiar with who I was. Maybe it was camping next to us to keep us safe? Obviously that’s all speculation, maybe they’d eat me if they got the chance, I just think it being a camp and having so many kids around so often that perhaps that kept them passive? Or simply curious? Who the heck knows… But looking back, my experience was pretty benign compared to what you hear.”