A listener writes “Hey Wes I just wanted to start out by saying that I’m a huge fan of the show.
I wanted to share a possible encounter my dad and I had back in ’99.
We live in Southern California and decided to go camping in a remote area of the San Bernardino mountains. I was around 15 or 16 at the time. I don’t know where or how my dad found this place but it was out in the middle of nowhere, the place is called Paiute Canyon and it’s near Lytle Creek, anyway we got to the camp site and set up and were already finished with dinner and we’re just enjoying the sights from the campfire and we heard a very loud howl coming from our left.
The howl was a good deal away from us and was coming from the entrance to the canyon (there’s only one way in and one way out of this canyon which kind of resembles a horseshoe) and was very similar to the Ohio howls. At the time both my dad and I had never heard anything like that in the woods before. Whatever it was vocalized a few times and seemed to be getting closer. We kept wondering what the hell it was and decided to load up the guns. After the guns were all loaded up we were back at the campfire when we heard another vocalization (still from our left side) and then we heard a response vocalization coming from our rear right side. The response was more of a whoop. This kinda got us on our toes and pretty alert as to what was going on around us.
I’d say for about maybe 10-15 minutes there was a call and response exchange but every time there was an exchange the sounds would be in different locations like whatever they were was rotating around our camp. Then the sounds just stopped. I should mention that it was sometime in January or very early February, the moon was out and there was a lot of snow on the ground so there was a lot of ambient light for most of the night until a few hours later when the clouds rolled in. The rest of the night was uneventful so we went to bed…with the guns just in case.
Well in the morning we’re getting up and part of the plan was to go down and look for tracks to see if we could figure out what it was but sometime during the night it had snowed and left a nice layer of snow on everything wiping out anything that was there.
Thanks for taking the time to read, Wes I’m curious if you’ve gotten any other reports from the area or even in Southern California in general, just curious because we’re pretty urban out here but we do have some really remote areas in the mountains.”
Rod C
I lived up on Grand Ave, up on the North End when I worked out of Azusa. The foothills was my back yard. The San Bernadino foothills is a hot spot with a lot of encounters, even right down into some of the towns along the foothills. A lot of local people while hiking the foothills have had encounters.
Rod C
The BFRO.net currently has 11 encounters for San Bernadino County posted.
Charles R
It was in about 1985 my first wife and I rented a cabin in the San Jacinto Mountains, just south of the San Bernardino Mts. Town called Idylwild up above the Coachella Valley. ( Palm Springs ). It was also winter and a light snow was falling, something you never see in Palm Springs. I stepped outside for 10 minutes just to take it all in. In the distance I heard a howl/growl. At that time I was not sure what it was ( although I remember thinkingt do they have cougars up here ) except whatever it was had big lungs. It may have been a cougar, then again maybe something else. Years later when I started to read of all the Bigfoot encounters in this area, Bernadino Mts and foothill towns going back to the 1800s, well just maybe it was one.