Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “First, I want to thank you for everything you do. You really listen to everyone and make people feel so comfortable. I have never spoken to anyone about what happened when I was 5 years old.

My husband of 21 years has no idea and he knows EVERYTHING about me, he just knows I’m fascinated by Sasquatch but to him it’s more of a joke type of thing. I’ve never spoken about it because I was young when it happened, and if I told someone I loved and they dismissed me it would cause hard feelings for sure as I take a lot of pride in being an honest person.

I can recall the encounter clearly no matter how many years have gone by. I think it’s forever engrained in my mind.

I feel like I’m babbling now because I’m getting nervous to say something after all these years of keeping quiet. Here we go….

It was around July here in Maine, peak of summer and the best summer day you could ask for. My family are HUGE hunters and we spent almost all of our free time at our family hunting camp in the thick of central Maine. The camp was at the end of a dirt road with no neighbors for miles and miles. Right outside the camp on the back side was a clearing with a bunch of apple trees and shooting lanes, but pretty much wide open field for about 150 yards x 100 yards (I’m a golfer so I use yards bc I’m pretty accurate with that measurement unit). Behind this clearing it’s thick and established woods. So anyway, to get to the camp you turn left off the dirt road and the road ends right there but if you walked straight and kept going for about 1/4 of a mile longer to the left yards and yards of wild raspberry bushes started. Now these raspberries are natural there and not planted, so they are taller and thicker than the ones you plant on your own. This is important, because they are so thick it basically creates walls, mother natures OG maze. These bushes are probably two football fields total, a lot of them and the animals loved them as much as we did! We all shared though and were used to each other. Often there would be bears getting berries 15 ft away from us and that was just normal, we didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother us. The black bears here in Maine are very docile, you’re lucky to even see one while living here these days.

Okay anyway, sorry. My grandmother and I used to take 5 gallon buckets and walk to the raspberries and pick for hours while the men stayed back at the camp and worked on the “man things” and sipping on LTD lol. So my grandmother and I went out with our buckets like we always did, talking and singing kids songs while walking to the raspberries. We got there and it was pretty quiet, just birds. Now at 5 years old, I could pick berries for about 3 minutes before I switched to just eating them all and in the summers heat I decided to sit down and just hang out. My grandmother was to the left of me picking like crazy and I was sitting cross legged in a trail through the bushes, a game trail. It was well used and patted down by all the animals so it was a good place to sit. I must’ve been there about 30 minutes before I noticed something black come in and sit down.

Quietly and carefully it came in walking in on all fours but then sat down like I was, cross legged lower body and sitting upright with its upper body. It looked curious, seemed harmless. I remember it scratched its armpit with a hand…. With fingers. I looked at my grandmother and said “there’s a big black animal here”. She kept picking and said , “it’s okay, it’s just a bear”. I knew of bears, but I’d never seen one close up where my family aren’t bear hunters and I’d only heard bears previously while picking berries. So she kept picking berries and I kept sitting there looking at this “bear”. It just kept looking at me and once in a while it would grab a berry off the bush and plop it in its mouth.

I used to do this thing when I was little where instead of waving with my whole hand I would just use my pointer finger and bend it up and down to wave. I waved like this to the “bear” and it did it back!!! I giggled and then it started picking more berries and it would eat one and then throw one to me so I would eat it.

My grandmother had worked her way further down the line away from me, probably 30-35ft. Still close, but far because she didn’t know the bear was still there as I learned later on. This went on for probably 20 minutes total before the bear walked by on all fours over to the buckets of berries, she (•)(•) stood up and used her hands to grab two buckets and quietly but briskly walked away. When it took the berries I was like, “Grammy, the bear is taking our berries!”. This got her attention and she stood up and walked over to me and gasped. This is about when I realized something might be wrong. Her blood drained from her face. I’m still sitting on the ground and she kept her eyes down the game trail while pawing at my arm to pull me up. Now keep in mind, the wild raspberry bushes that have been there for more than 50 years are about 4ft tall.

My grandmother is about 5’3” so she couldn’t see bears in the next row over normally, but she saw this easily when she stood and when she got to the lane where she could see its entire body walking on two feet carrying the buckets she was in a state I’ve never seen before. She scooped me up and speed walked the 1/2 mile back to the camp, because we were way back into the berries. We got to the camp and she yelled to my grandfather and told him this black animal walked away with the buckets of berries (my ears were covered in the other room with my uncle so I couldn’t hear all the conversation).

I did hear, my grandfather say “that fucking wood booger again” and he went and got his hand gun and a rifle. Now, my grandfather had been a police officer here for years and years and by the way it sounded he was familiar with this from work not so much from here at camp. My father, uncle, and grandfather took their guns and went out. We didn’t see them for a couple of hours. While they were gone my grandmother and I cooked them dinner and she just kept looking out all of the windows that faced the shooting lanes. Nothing ever came out. They came back, and she asked how it went. My grandfather just mumbled something and they started talking about not berry picking without a gun when I was with her.

That’s it…. It was never spoken of again. My grandfather always told me, “don’t ever go out after dark, the wood boogers will get you” and we’d laugh and laugh. I think he laughed bc I laughed, but as an officer he always told me not to do things in the woods at night, be aware of your surroundings always, know your escape route, etc. my father was also a small town officer so he was the same way, but more stern about it.

This is something that once I got older I knew it wasn’t a bear, but I had no idea what it was. It wasn’t until the 90’s when there was the gorilla named KoKo that had the kitten and you’d see them on the tv. I was like “why would this be in Maine??”, I was probably 14 or 15. There was no way I was questioning this bc I would definitely be made fun of for asking why we had something like a gorilla here in our state. But when KoKo would sit on the floor of her enclosure, that’s exactly how this creature sat with me. It looked very natural, a bear could never sit like that. Nothing about that would work for a bears posture or bone structure.

Thank you for your time, and thank you for what you do.

I cannot imagine having a terrifying experience and having no one to speak to about it, or being called a liar. This outlet is needed and you suit it perfectly.”