A listener writes “First off, we camp a lot. I grew up in Canada and spent 80% of my time in the woods. I’m very familiar with animals in the forest. Have heard bears and have had many bear encounters, had coyotes living behind us for 7 years in California, know what a deer sounds like, fox, wolves, and even mountain lions. I’m realizing that people like me, who have really been immersed in the outdoors to the extent where we can recognize these calls, are more rattled when they hear something out there that just makes. no. sense.
Mid May, we went camping outside of Nevada City California. Because of COVID, all of the camp sites were closed, no one was around. We were in national forest, and I wasn’t surprised that, around 5am a black bear came into our camp and lingered. He actually took off with some stuff and we had to yell him away. He was really bold and I was surprised what it took to get him out of there. But, we felt like it had a lot to do with the fact that the huge decline of tourists and people in general in those areas since February, were probably bringing the wildlife closer to the edges of where human activity was no longer encroaching and animals were widening their regular territory.
So over June I did a road trip with my 13 year old son to Oregon. We were checking out a sheep ranch for a project I have going on and decided to drive slowly and camp in National Forest for the next week and make our way back to Mill Valley (in the Bay area). On the 21 of June, we arrived in Shasta. The campgrounds were open, but full. We prefer camping away from them anyway, but knew of some fire roads close by that would do. About 4 miles away from an open and full campground, just about 6 or 7 miles from the town of McCloud.
We found a spot that was used for day recreation, and had a little creek. No one was there and there was a fire ring we could use. We chose a spot that was close to the creek and facing into a deeper part of the woods away from the fire road. By 6pm another family had arrived and saw us so probably felt comfortable to set up. It was a couple with a baby. They set up about 2000 feet away from us. We knew they were there because every once in a while we could hear the baby, but we couldn’t see them. Then someon else came with a 4 year old and set up next to them.
We have a roof top tent. Around 10pm my son and I were talking with the lights off and I was about to read my book. I also want to note that June 21 was a new moon. I joked that I wondered if we would hear wolves, and wasn’t even sure if there were wolves in that area. Around 10:45, from the darkness came a loud, long, groan howl. I don’t even know how to properly describe it. The way the sound pulsated through the woods is how you would imagine a siren is able to spread its sound. I could not tell how far away it was. I knew, that it wasn’t right next to us, but whether it was 1/2 a mile or 4 miles, I didn’t know. At first we thought it had to be a joke. Or was there a festival? was someone using a speaker to spook us? But it continued on for at least 30 minutes. It didn’t sound like an injured animal, it sounded like something was making a call out to something else. It was gutteral. It didn’t sound like any animal I had ever heard in my life, but, it also didn’t sound human. We were scared stiff. Mostly because we were stuck on top of our jeep in a tent, and my phone was dead, we didn’t have anything to use as a weapon and I was too frightened to try and descend the tent, because in order to take off I had to take the tent town BEFORE i would drive away.
Halfway through these “calls”, my son notices something outside the tent. This part is really really bizarre. He said mom what is that green light. I look over and from the outside corner of our tent, there is some sort of green glow. Like as if you have an orb in your hand that is green, it was a softer, not piercing light. not like a flashlight were you point it and it pierces one area. it took up about 3 or 4 inches diameter worth of green glow, and lingered outside of that corner of our tent. I have never been so frightened in my life. Because I didn’t want to make the situation more frightful for my son, I said “oh it’s nothing don’t worry about it”. and I turned around from it. Later the next day, my son says he saw several of these in the same area for at least 10 minutes that night.
The calls stopped and I was up until 3 am , literally sitting up in the tent, waiting for anything else to happen and the next thing I know I’ve woken up at 6am, I had fallen asleep from exhaustion.
The first thing I did that morning was drive over on my bike to the other campers, and ask them if they had heard what we did. The guy with the 4year old had heard nothing. But when I asked the other couple if they had heard any sounds in the woods she said this to me “yes, it wasn’t an animal, but it didn’t sound human, i don’t know what it was”. I was relieved in a way, that she described it just the way we would have.
I didn’t want to go back. But my son, insisted we stay a second night but closer to the other campers. At this point we really didn’t know anything about “sasquatch” and felt like if it WAS a bigfoot it would probably have taken us or attacked us that night. Now of course after listening to about 20 of your episodes my opinions on that are changed.
So the second night we camp closer to the other people. Around 50 feet away. That night, nothing much happened. I heard some sounds close to use but they sounded like deer, and the next day I saw the tracks. BUT- around 2am I was woken up with a loud loud loud THUMP about 5 feet or so from my tent.It sounded like someone had taken a massive stump and just JAMMED it at the ground. TWice. then nothing. I snapped up in bed and again, didn’t sleep the rest of the night. The next day, I told my son I refused to sleep there again.
At this point, we met up with my ex boyfriend and my daughter and he also has a roof top tent so we were all going to camp together that night, but in a new spot. I had to explain to him why we didn’t want to sleep in the current spot, and he laughed at us and called us crazy. So we drove up the road and camped about 1/4 of a mile away from the busy campground of people, feeler safer that nothing would venture too close.
At 11pm, everyone was sleeping. Except for me. I was reading. My ex was sleeping by himself in his roof top tent about 15 feet away from me. I was sleeping with my two kids in my roof top tent and was sandwiched in between them. Then, my ex starts to say “Hey Finn (that’s my son) cut it out. Stop that. I said stop it. Cut it out”. And this goes on for a minute until I say “Aaron, Finn is in the tent sleeping with ME.” He says “well where is james then? (that’s my 3 year old daughter”. I said James is ALSO sleeping with me. As I started to say this, something crashed and snapped its way into the brush from next to his truck. Something had been pushing at his truck and sort of shaking him.
I was up all night again!
I tried to broach these “sounds” with a few locals, that owned some shops in McCloud. One person told me oh you must have heard a cow. Umm, no. It was NOT a cow. I called the ranger because at the very least if it was a “regular” animal I thought maybe I should report it. I just came right out and told him what I heard and how disturbing it was, and that it didn’t sound like a human or an animal. He said “you aren’t still hter are you”> I said NO. why. He said, just don’t go back to that spot and we will take care of it. I said Ok can you call me if you get any information. Well about 30 min later, I see 4 rangers vehicles (two trucks, two cars), i’m not sure if all of them were rangers but two of them were for sure, driving down the road towards where we had the encounter. I’ve never heard from them about it.”