Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “ So I’ll get right into it. My wife and I really enjoy camping and hiking as well as a work friend of mine.

I have specifically built my truck so that we can go way out and deep into the woods to just get away, unwind and pretty much get away from civilization. We like to go as far away as possible as often as possible. So my buddy and I get off work at a decent time and run home finish loading up our trucks and get on the road as soon as possible to maximize our time. Unfortunately that day traffic was extraordinarily bad trying to get out of the Hampton roads area. We like to camp up in the Shenandoahs. It usually takes any where from four to four and a half hours to get up there. This time it almost took us 6. So we get to the spot and make camp and by this time its already after 10. We start a fire make dinner and have a few drinks before heading off to bed. I have a rooftop tent on my truck but my friend has just a regular ground tent. Where the camp is though my wife and I have to walk back to the truck maybe 6 yards so not very far.

We climb up with our dog and crash out. At about 2 or 3 im guessing I didn’t check my phone I hear a strange howling noise but its kind of off like scretchy and deep. More of a guttural howl. Just really weird but I don’t think much of it. My tent is up high and I have my rifle as well as my pistol. I just figure its some kind of wolf or something. I go back to sleep and a few moments later it does it again. I wake up and kind of tune in to see if I can figure out where it came from approximate distance and so fourth. But it goes away and I don’t think much of it. The following morning is just a normal day at camp. Wake up make some breakfast. My wife goes for a walk with the dog while I hang out at camp and just relax. They come back everything is normal for the whole day. At about sunset we all go down to this valley with wild wheat growing. Its beautiful with sunset and golden hour. My dog is running around through the wheat and you can barely see him minus his tail. Its great we have a laugh and head back to camp to make dinner. We have dinner and are sitting around the fire hanging out have a nice time when my wife points out that it is eerily quiet and that our dog is hyper focused on something just outside of camp. I call for him to come back because we keep him off leash as he stays near us and doesn’t just run off. So I call him again but he is now point with his paw up and ears up. So I walk over cause I have to take a leak anyway. So I walk over and ask him what hes looking at while I start to do my thing. I look in the direction he is pointing and through a break in the bush I can see a head and two eye just looking straight at me maybe 10 feet away. Im looking at it thinking its probably some leaves reflecting the moonlight at the perfect angle theres no way those are eyes. So I take out my flash light and when I shine it in that area it ducks.

So im thinking theres no way. So I turn it off and it pops back up. So I calmly get my dog and just walk back over and sit down. I didn’t say anything to my wife about what I had saw but she said she saw something moving in that area. Mind you the area I was looking at was a steep drop off of a hill. So we’re all sitting there and we hear a faint branch snap. We stop and we hear a bigger one this time. It had moved from the right side of camp to the left. After the big snap I go to my truck and grab my AR because maybe it was a bear or something and its better safe then sorry. Before all of this happened my friend started packing up his tent because it was sprinkling on and off and he didn’t want to pack up a wet tent in the rain come morning if it did come down. So half of camp is already mostly packed. So as my friend is packing his stuff up into his truck he calls my name and says look. Theres a single lane dirt road that leads up coming into to camp. Were at the top of a kind of hill at a trail head. He points me at that area and im looking and I just see what I thought where trees until it took step. My thoughts this cannot be happening. But at the same time didn’t feel threatened at all. Just kind of a sense of hey maybe we shouldn’t be here. So after this takes a step my wife asks if she and the dog should get in the truck to which I agree. She tells me I should put on all the lights. I have flood lights all around my truck for setting up camp and so on. I trun on all the lights so now the truck looks like a giant beacon. We go back to packing camp and my buddy calls me again. Hes spotting it with his flash light and from what seemed like just a few seconds it went from down at the end of the dirt road to the top of it. Hes spotting it and sees yellow eye shine just massive eyes staring straight at him. He calls me and I look and it turns and looks at me. I say lets go and we finish clearing out camp and high tail it out of there. All the way bac to virginia beach. Just a little background on us my wife grew up in Washington and Oregon and had had a few encounters out there when she was younger but didn’t tell me until I started diving into this. Background on me I grew up in a military family and my mother was in the Marine corps. We went camping a lot as well when I was a kid. I also grew up in southern California desert going to big bear and all up and down California.

So I know what different animals sound like and should look like. I have also been in the navy for about 12 years and been stationed all over the place and still never seen anything like this. My buddy is also navy and is a bow hunter that likes to go out solo as much as he can and decompress his way out in the sticks. All three of us know what animals should be around us and what they should sound like. Ive never hear those howls before like I heard the first night and ive never seen anything like I saw that second night. After that night I started doing a bunch of research on my own and found your podcast. Its helped put me at ease that im not insane but also kind stoked the fire to see what else is out there. Well that’s my story Wes and I hope we can talk soon.”