Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “This occurred in August of 2024. I grew up in small town central Oklahoma and spent a lot of time in the woods hunting and fooling around as a kid and as a teen. I was very much what most would consider a redneck. After high school I moved away to the city and spent less and less time in the woods.

After a while I decided I wanted to escape from the city life for a few days and get away into the forest. I purchased permits for a couple back country camping sites within Rocky Mountain National Park and planned a solo trip. I planned to stay out in the wilderness for 3 nights.

I got to RMNP early on the first morning of my trip and parked at the trail head and began my hike. My first night campsite was a few miles into the backcountry. The first few hours of my hike in were very normal. I passed other hikes and exchanged chit chat about the weather and the views and then pressed on. Just before noon I stopped to get water from a stream about a quarter mile from my campsite. As I was filtering water into my Nalgene I felt the hairs on my neck stand up. I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me from the tree line behind the stream. I finished filtering my water and finished up the hike to my site. The site was in pretty rough shape so I took a minute to clean up some fallen limbs and pine one and then I set up camp and cooked one of my backpacking meals. This is when things started to get more strange.

As I was eating my meal I kept hearing what sounded like conversations in the distance. This area of the park is pretty remote and not within earshot or eye shot of any other trails or camp sites. You have to have a permit displayed on your bag just to access this trail section so no one should be around. Nevertheless I’m hearing talking just out of range from what I can see. It was clearly speaking but not in any language I could understand. I eventually decided to ignore it and finished up my meal.

After my meal I walked down to the stream to rinse out my cook pot and again I felt something watching me. I kept trying to ignore it and went back to my camp to read my book. I was sitting on a stump when I saw what looked like a dark figure, almost like a shadow, glide between two trees. Whatever it was was very low to ground and the way it moved was like it was gliding effortlessly. It went between the trees and did not come out the other side of the tree it went behind. It was low down but it looked like it was almost crawling. I chalked it up to maybe a hallucination from the altitude. I continued trying to ignore what I saw and read my book. A few minutes later I heard a low guttural growl that made me completely freeze. Every instinct in me told me to get out of there so I packed up my day pack and hiked back to my car.

When I got to my car I called the ranger station because I had been instructed by the rangers to contact them if I had seen any possible bears around the campsites when I picked up my permits. I honestly didn’t think it was a bear but it was the only thing that made sense at the time. I explained what I saw and heard to the rangers and they had the bear technician for the park meet me at my trailhead and we hiked back to my site so he could examine everything and determine if there was any bear sign in the area. At my site he spent about 15 minutes checking everything out and determined there was no evidence that any bears had been in or around my campsite. That put me at ease and the ranger left me his phone number and hiked out after telling me to contact them again if I saw anything else. At this point the sun was getting low in the sky and I decided to hop in my tent and relax for a minute.

As I was laying in my tent I got the most horrible feeling in my stomach that if I did not leave the area that something terrible was going to happen. I cant really explain the feeling it’s almost like something was psychologically forcing me to leave. So I packed up all my gear into my pack which took about 15 minutes. As I was doing this the voices started picking up again. By the time I was packed up and beginning my hike out the sun was just dipping below the horizon.

After about 30 minutes into my hike out the sun had completely set. I started to get an intense wave of dread. I decided to ditch my backpack off the side of the trail and covered it with some loose brush so I could move faster. I don’t know why I did this because all the contents of my bag were pretty expensive but I did it anyways. I figured I could come back in the morning to get my bag. As I was making my way out I started to see those dark figures darting between the trees again moving along side me. They were always just behind and to the side of me that was uphill. As I kept moving I swear they started laughing. It sounded almost like a juvenile kind of laugh like kids. It seemed like they were making fun of me. About that time it started raining and the laughing got louder. This kept up until I was about a quarter mile from my car at the trailhead.

I made it back to my car and ended up sleeping in my car that night. I went back the next morning to retrieve my backpack off the side of the trail. When I got to my backpack the pockets were unzipped and some of my items like my map and my first aid kit were pulled out and laying just beside my bag. I collected my things and left the park and ended my trip right there.

I have been back to RMNP on 2 other camping trips since then and have had no issues or encounters. Once in a main park car camping site and another back country trip into the wilderness. I don’t know what I encountered but I have not been back to that specific area of the park since.”