Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “Hey Wes, I live in upstate NY. I don’t claim to be any type of researcher or expert on the subject it’s just something that I’ve always been highly interested in since I was a kid.

I’ve listened to near every episode but the Nuclear Lake episode sticks out to me because I live about 20 min from there and this is why I’m reaching out now. Before I go further yes I know this is a big no-no in sasquatching 101 but I selfishly wanted an experience for myself.

Around a month ago I put a cell cam in the park near the Appalachian Trail and nailed a basket to a tree about 8ft off the ground with some food (closed jar of peanut butter, half of a cooked chicken, 1 hard boiled egg shell on). Did a test run, camera works fine, put the setting to receive a picture every 4 hours with or without detection. Nothing for about 3 weeks.

Last Saturday at 4pm I could still see the peanut butter with the blue lid visible, with some snow covering the rest of the basket (28° F). Next picture comes at 8pm (15° F) the PB jar is no longer visible and the snow is gone. Obviously it couldn’t have melted so I wanted to go check for myself. Finally having time on Monday I go check with my brother and nephew (not thinking anything of it, we bring him in the woods for scouting/hunting often) to take a short 20-25 min hike to the camera that’s about a 10 min hike off the trail up rocky hill/terrain.

There’s some small game tracks on the way we could see because there was a fresh coat of snow Saturday morning (it hasn’t snowed since) but nothing unusual. We get to the camera and the basket is empty. There’s no tracks at all around the tree the camera was on besides what was from a couple small critters but no sign whatsoever of the food that was left in the flimsy basket.

Anything that would’ve leaned on it the basket would’ve snapped and left some sort of trail. The only thing odd on the ground looked like to be one soul footprint the size of my boot but it wasn’t fresh and a layer of snow covered it so it could’ve been anything. My brother and I looked at each other and knew right away it was time to go. He even said “grab the camera and let’s go,” reading my mind.

As I go towards the camera to take it down there was a subtle 3 knocks on top of the hill that sounded close and that was when my heart dropped. My brother is pretty educated on the subject and has had his own experiences so he knew what it was as well.

Keeping our composure because we didn’t want his son/my nephew to freak out so we started our way down the hill and that’s when we heard more knocks from a further distance deeper in the woods. We noticed strange looking tracks on the way down so I quickly video taped what I could and you could hear some knocks at the end of the video.

This situation was quickly turning ugly and there was nothing we could do except keep our cool as we urgently leave the woods. My brothers eyes stayed on the ridge/hill with my nephew between us as I kept watching our 6. The knocks continued every couple minutes on our right as they seemed to follow us out the woods. Made it back to the car and drove off in complete disbelief feeling very stupid at the same time because of the situation I just put us all in.

I guess I honestly thought the food was in the basket and fell over and thinking that the odds of something happening like that would be extremely unlikely. It’s like you always say “be careful what you wish for.” I’ll add the trail cam pics and video with the knocks (they’re at the end and you have to really listen but I promise you can hear them). Not sure what good any of this information will do but I listen to the show so much I figured why not.”

Link to video