Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “Hey, Wes. So, I had an odd experience in July of 2012. Having found your podcast it makes me wonder what it was, as it was completely out of the ordinary. I didn’t see the animal, but the behavioral characteristics has some interesting correlations with what others have described.

I grew up in Texas and spent lots of time outdoors. In my late teens, a friend and I would go camping and pursue packs of coyote at night for fun just to see how close we could get. Served in the military, mostly overseas, traveled solo around the US camping, hiking, biking and canoeing. Been around lots of sounds and wildlife in camps and remote areas. Have lived in Virginia for thirty years, now, and spent plenty of time in the woods of Appalachia hiking and hunting. Live on a hundred plus acres in a hollow surrounded by everything that makes this area so wonderful, day and night.

My event occurred above Fridley Gap trail on the Massanutten Mt range on July 22, 2012 at about 2pm on a clear sunny day. After it occurred I typed it up to remember the details, but have since lost the file while upgrading computers, but I recall it well and will jot it down again.

Fridley Gap heads up from the west side of the range in the national forest north east of Harrisonburg. It’s an easy hike along the lower creek and a cool, shaded place in the summer with pools of rolling water that folks like to visit. As I got to the upper end, a couple with young kids were playing in a pool having a good time. A little farther up a couple had set up a tent at the fork with another creek that flows from the east through the gap in the mountains.

Here, the trail forks, either continuing up the hollow or east following the other creek. A short way up to the east a different trail forks to the south and heads up the mountain rather than following the gap. This is the trail I took. It gets steep and zig zags its way up. I had my head down watching my steps until I got to a large boulder about the size of a van in one of these zigs when I heard three deep, loud grunts immediately followed by a heavy thrashing of brush from behind the boulder. The grunts were something of a rough grunt with a huah mixed in. My first thought was a bear, but after a few seconds of thrashing it went silent. No sound of anything running away, which is what bear
always do around here. Been around a lot of bear in the woods and have them on my property, but I have never heard this nature of a sound from a bear.

Couldn’t see anything and nothing ran away, so I wasn’t sure what was up. I had strained my knee hiking the day before and I was packing light. No weapons, axes or anything else, just some water and food. About thirty feet back down trail was a tree growing at an angle, so I climbed it to get elevated and look around. I got more caught up in the beautiful day than what I thought was just a bear and was up there for about fifteen minutes.

When I came down I eased wide around the boulder to find nothing and continued up the trail. Reaching the ridge line I wanted to take a break and walked over to a line of rocks that looked down the shallow valley on the other side. Lots of mature hardwoods, lots of dry leaves and I made lots of noise getting there. As soon as I stepped up on
those rocks, Wes, I felt more uncomfortable in the woods than I have ever felt. When I’m out, I poke around and observe everything for hours and take my time. I stood there thinking, this is a really weird feeling and makes no sense. Why in the world do I feel this way.

Tried to push it off, but after a couple of minutes it continued to have hold of me and I headed back to the trail crunching through the leaves. I decided to give it one more shot and head down in the next hollow. The trail hear was clear of leaves so the soft, damp duff was exposed. There was a brush screen on my right for a hundred feet or so and I went from making lots of noise in the dry leaves to no noise. When I walked out of the brush screen, to my right, which was below where I was standing on the rocks, there was an explosion of movement.

I was amazed by the speed. There was under story brush and boulders and I did not see a thing, which still seems strange to me. There were no foot steps, it was just one continuous crashing movement like dragging a tire through the leaves at a really fast speed. Sounded nothing like how a bear runs. A creek with a thicket of growth was about two hundred feet down the slope and this thing came to a dead stop, and silent, when it hit that thicket. My thoughts were, this is way too odd and the trail goes through that thicket. Three odd things like that in forty five minutes is enough to call it a day, so I headed back down the
mountain.

It was such an odd experience. Still reflect on it sometimes since I’m out in the woods so much. I’ve had a couple other anomalous sound events in the past on that mountain range, but this was much more peculiar and lasted longer.”