Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “Good evening Wes, First of all, I love the show! This show has given me the courage to talk about in public a couple of experiences my boys and I have had in South Eastern Ohio.

I can tell you that I NEVER thought that Bigfoot really existed. I used to watch documentaries on the subject and make fun of the witnesses. That was until we had our own experience. Which has made me reflect on a another experience previously.

The encounter that changed it fore happened in 2010. To give a little background, I have spent more time in forests (not woods or parks) than anyone I know. I have been backpacking for well over 30 years and am very aware of the animals within them. I know their movements and the noises they make. I can also identify by sound most birds and owls native to the Midwest and eastern United States. I do not mention these things to be boastful, just to give a background on my time in the trees.

In May 2010, I had received a jack links beef jerky cutout of Sasquatch from a store display. It was only the top half of him. I thought this would be fun to strap to the backpack and take some pics with the cutout in various places while backpacking and post them to Facebook.

On this particular weekend backpack trip I took two of my sons 15 and 13 years old, one of their friends, along with two of my daughter’s aged 12 and 9 and one of their friends. We decided to go try a new trail in Wayne National forest in Southern Ohio called Archers Fork. The trail is very very remote. I have been there a few times since and still have yet to see anyone on the trail with the exception of the people who go with me, even though various sites have it listed as moderately traveled. In my opinion, this area is probably the most remote area of Ohio.

The trail head is at the entrance to an old historical cemetery, and when we first got there we were pretty bummed. There was no rain scheduled in the forecast and I decided to leave the cutout of Sasquatch in the Suburban. We started the trail and about two miles in my son said to me do you notice how quiet it is today? No birds, no squirrels or Chipmunks rustling about. Which was strange even with the light rain. I would say about four miles in, the rain had stopped, and the seven of us were walking along a Ridgeline when my 13 year old who was bringing up the rear of the group yelled to me that someone was throwing rocks at him. I assumed it was my older son and made and I made him walk just ahead of me so I could keep an eye on him. A few minutes later my son again said someone just threw a rock at him. Because there were so many of us and differing ages, we were kind of spread out. I would say probably 100 feet from beginning to end. I told them to quit screwing around, and I don’t want anyone to get hit in the head. All the kids swore it wasn’t them. I dropped to the back of the pack to keep my eye on them and walk with my son. Apx. 15 minutes later another rock comes in at us. Except the rock came from our right side and through the trees. You could hear it hit a couple branches on its way in. We stopped for a moment and looked around and don’t see anything. A few miles later it started to really rain. So much so, that we decided to make camp a little earlier than expected.

We made camp in this little are of small pines situated on a little knoll to help Ock the rain. To the back of us was this little open area with Creek running through it so we could filter water. We hung a small tarp between a couple of pine trees and made an improvised fire pit out of the rain. We pitched camp, made a little fire and cooked our dinner over it. Around 9:30 the rain was so intense that our tarp and pine trees were no longer holding back the rain.

We decided to call it a night, and the boys slept in their tent and I slept with the girls cause my youngest was a little scared. My oldest son was the last heading into his tent as I was the last heading into mine. We were having a quick conversation about how wet everything was, when all of a sudden there was a crashing sound coming through the tops of the pine trees, and this rock about tow thirds the size of a football landed in between me and my son. We both looked down at the rock and back to each other. My son quickly says to me “Well, goodnight Dad” and quickly made his way into his tent and act as if it didn’t happen. This rock was ax 8-10 pounds and was thrown through the trees. We were in a flat area with the exception of the little knoll about 12 feet high, and this rock was thrown, there is no way that it could have rolled down the knoll and up into and through multiple trees. I got out my flashlight and and scanned the trees and didn’t see a thing. I went to bed, and just after one in the morning I woke up wet and cold and my arms wrapped around my youngest daughter and realized it had stopped raining at some point. I blinked a few times to adjust to the lighting and I noticed my daughter’s eyes were open. She said to me “did you hear that?”. I listened for a moment, and realized something was walking around our tents. Now back to being in the forest quite often. I hunt, and spend countless hours just watching and listening to animals. I know what two feet and four feet sound like and this was clearly two feet. As I listened to it walking around, my 13 year old son tells to me from the other tent, “Dad, you got your gun?” I responded with a yes. There was no movement from outside the tent after that brief conversation. It was like a dead calm, but I knew it was out there. After about the longest two minutes of my life, whatever it was walked away. After laying there paranoid and listening in what seemed like forever, the silence was immediately broken by this vocalization that I can’t even describe. This howl/yell came from behind the knoll where the rock was thrown from and it echoed through the forest. Let me tell you, everyone was up after that. About 30 seconds later there was a similar return howl/yell from off in the distance. Then we got another howl from where the first one came from then silence for the rest of the night. We woke up the following morning and no was talking about the night before. As we broke camp we found a partial footprint in the mud about 15 feet behind the tent. There are zero animals that could do what we experienced on that trip. I wish we could have had a visual on what ever it was, but we didn’t. We came home believers and I don’t share with people because they don’t understand or a desire to do so. Most people think that being in the woods is camping in a small park and camping a few feet from a road. They have no idea what it is like deep in a forest. So to most people they think they have an understanding of the forest and how dense it truly is. My wife thinks that we made the story up, so we don’t talk about it much.

My oldest son and I tried to recreate the experience last spring and even camped at the same spot. We did have a few small stones thrown at us, but nothing Earth shattering.

After processing this encounter and doing some investigating, I realized my boys and I had another experience as well and we didn’t put it together at the time.”