Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “Your show has given me the courage to come forward—it’s helped me process the experiences my family and I had while living next to the Withlacoochee State Forest. I’ve written this story out many times over the last couple of months, and each version feels more like a short story than an email.

So I decided to send you an abbreviated version—just a glimpse into what happened to us over an eight-year period.

When my husband and I built our dream home on a raw piece of land near the forest, we couldn’t have imagined what we were stepping into. Over time, we encountered lights/ orbs, ghosts, shadow figures, what appeared to be either a skunk ape or a dogman.

My personal sighting occurred about three years after we moved into our house. I was out on a solo ride one early morning along a deer trail about a half mile from our home. Riding quietly was my favorite way to spot wildlife there were normally tons of deer. On this particular day, things felt… off. This particular trail was along an old railroad track bed. I had decided to switch over to a secondary path. To do so I had to ride up a small incline. By this time my horse was pretty lathered up so, as I continued to ride my saddle started shifting slightly .

I knew I’d have to get off and tighten the cinch pretty soon so, I began looking for something I could use to get back on him. ( a little about this horse) My horse was a paint stallion named Joker. He was 17 hands high; well, I am 5’1 so when I got off, lol, I had to find something to get back up on high enough to get my foot in the stirrup. I knew up the trail about 150 yards was a large rock that would work for my problem. My horse began acting nervously, side stepping and tossing his head. I was starting to freak out a little myself , sensing I was being watched. Another thing was I hadn’t seen one deer or even any of the wild hogs that had recently started filtering in because of the fires in the green swamp south of us and Ocala national forest to the north of us.

As I approached the large rock, I planned to use to adjust my saddle , I glanced back over my shoulder and to my disbelief I saw what I initially thought was a stump off of the trail I had just ridden by. No way I rode by a stump lol. I just shook my head and wondered at myself how I had ridden by that stump while actively looking for somewhere to dismount and tighten my cinch. Minutes later, as I slid off my horse to tighten the cinch my horse sidestepped looking back down the trail stomping his foot and pawing at the ground this was really out of character for him. I finished tightening my cinch and climbed up on the rock.

As I pulled myself back up on his back, I looked in the direction he was staring at and that same “stump” was suddenly in the center of the trail—about 75 yards away—that’s when I realized it was some kind of creature sitting on its hunches and staring directly at me. My horse reared and I barely stayed in the saddle. It stood straight up then and kind of sniffed at the air in my direction that’s when I noticed the ears. We were both just looking at each other for what seemed like hours, then it turned its head sideways kind of like a dog when it hears a squeaky toy,. It stepped forward towards us and my horse just tried to bolt so I was fighting him trying to keep control of him then he whirled around and away from this thing .

I only got a chance to look back once before my horse turned into the trail heading back to my farm. The creature was running up into the trees. I didn’t see if it was chasing me nor did I try to look again, My horse was flying down that trail and there were many low hanging tree branches over the trail that I feared I’d end up flat on my back in the trail with that thing around. I never rode back out there after that.

We had several things happen around our house that I thought were related to this thing. I always thought it was a sasquatch that I saw until I started listening to your podcast now, I think it could have been a dogman.

There’s so much more to tell. Our dogs had several disturbing run-ins, and my son experienced deeply unsettling phenomena. The entire time we lived there, the activity never stopped.

We were haunted by a shadow figure that seemed to fear the appearance of a Native American spirit. Whenever the spirit showed up, the shadow figure would vanish. It was surreal—and traumatic. The property drained our finances, disrupted our family life, and turned what we thought was our forever home into something almost unlivable nightmare.”