Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “I’ll start with a couple of stories from the 1990s that my father told me. At the time, he worked as a tree planter for Weyerhaeuser. One day, he and another guy were driving logging roads near Kalama when they stopped so my dad could use the bathroom. He said he could see the river through the trees below the embankment.

When he finished, he noticed what he thought was a round cut log near his feet. He casually kicked it down the hill only for a large, black, hairy creature to jump up onto two legs. According to my dad, it immediately took off, running straight across the river. He estimated the distance to be about two football fields, and the thing covered it in roughly ten seconds. My dad has told this story the same way for as long as I can remember, without ever changing the details. I can get more specifics if needed.

Another time, while my dad was planting trees for Weyerhaeuser, an upper-management employee was out inspecting sites. This guy had left his truck window down. One of the workers my dad planted with stole a map from the truck so he and my dad could locate Weyerhaeuser gates for hunting later. What stood out was that the map had Bigfoot stamps marked at various locations areas where Weyerhaeuser apparently knew Sasquatch sightings had occurred.

Now for the two experiences I was personally involved in.

The first happened in the summer of around 2005, above Riffe Lake near Mossyrock. It was my first real hiking and camping trip, and I was about eleven or twelve years old. We hiked six miles into Vanson Lake in the Goat Mountains and stayed for four days. The group included my dad, one of his friends and his wife, their dog, a buddy of mine, and me. My friend and I shared a tent for the first couple of nights, but on the third night my dad offered space in his larger tent, so I moved my sleeping bag there.

Sometime during the night, I woke up to my dad saying, “What is that sound?” Across the lake which isn’t very big something was hollering louder than anything I’d ever heard in my life. I was absolutely terrified. The dog was lying outside the tent near my head, growling nonstop. My dad asked me if I heard it, and all I could do was shake and say yes. He stepped outside and fired his .22 pistol into the lake to scare whatever it was away. Eventually, the noise stopped.

About ten minutes after my dad got back into the tent, the dog started growling again, and my fear came rushing back. This cycle continued for what felt like hours until I finally fell asleep. What’s strange is that my buddy never woke up once through any of it.

Years later, I listened to Bigfoot Society episode 628, “Deadman’s Lake,” and the encounter described was incredibly similar to mine. It happened around the same year, and Vanson Lake is only about a six-mile hike from Deadman’s Lake. The sound was comparable to the Ohio howl recordings, mixed with the Klamath sounds but more like a scream. I never saw the creature, but I’ll never forget that sound.

The final experience happened during one of our annual boys’ trips. Every summer, my friends and I head out to a remote lake, usually kayaking across with our gear so we can avoid other people. That year, we chose Lake Ozette on the Olympic Peninsula. There were six of us, and we stayed for four nights at a small beach area called Ericsons Bay. Our tents were a few minutes’ walk from the shoreline.

I brought a bivy sack that year because I was still uneasy about sleeping after my earlier experience. I also had an inflatable hammock and seriously considered sleeping alone on the beach that night. Typically, on the second and third nights, we play Dungeons & Dragons pretty nerdy, but it’s tradition. On the last night, after finishing our game around midnight or 1 a.m., everyone went to bed except one buddy and me. The fire had burned down to glowing coals, just bright enough to see each other, and the moonlight was strong as well. We stayed on the beach talking for a couple of hours.

Around 3 a.m., between us and the South Sand Point hiking trail, we heard a howl that sounded exactly like the Ohio recordings. I knew immediately what it was. My friend started getting nervous and asked what the sound was. It was loud and close, and it kept howling repeatedly for five to ten minutes. Eventually, we had enough. Just before leaving the beach, I shined my very bright flashlight into the area where the sound was coming from. The noise stopped instantly and completely, which was incredibly unsettling.

We went back to our sleeping areas, and nothing else happened that night. The next morning, we told the rest of the group what we’d heard. None of them had heard the howls, but more than one person said they thought I was messing with them earlier because they heard something snuffling and sniffing around camp like a pig or some kind of animal.

My personal guess is that whatever was on the beach was either calling to another one or warning it and when the noise stopped, it may have realized we were heading back toward camp.”