Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “I have a very strange encounter with what I believe was 2 Sasquatch in St. Clair, Alabama. A lot of people don’t know that Appalachia extends to central Alabama. There are 57 summits in the county this took place in, alone. We have Big Cats (Mountain Lion) and Black Bear. Anyone telling you any different does not spend time in the hollers here. There is enough land and resources in Alabama for these creatures to thrive.

I have mentioned this to a few select family members. My mom who also grew up out there believes me. My husband too but most people think I am lying. I am 34 now. I am a research and data scientist in the process of obtaining a PHd in Industrial Psychology. I am required to be truthful, analytical, and a skeptic. I am, and I know without a doubt Sasquatch is real. I would put my reputation on the line here at the University and state as much if anyone would listen.

The “Holler” I grew up in is located at the base of an Appalachian foothill called Chandler Mountain. My family settled on this land many generations ago. The property was owned and kept by my Grandma and her mom. We had a chunk of land with two small cottages, gardens, barns, sheds, an orchard- all the makings of country life.

My great-grandmother always told me to “watch out for the Wooly Boogers” when I would go into the forest as a kid. She would have me take her food scraps to a specific stump “for the Wooly Boogers”. I assumed this was a made-up word and I was given a made-up task to keep me entertained. It wasn’t until I heard about gifting that I understood it wasn’t made up.

I have seen these creatures many times, but I did not know what they were until I was in my late 20s. I have experienced house slaps, roof knocking, rock throwing, screaming, whooping, seeing them between the trees, seeing them in the trees, finding dogs ripped to shreds (but not eaten) at the edge of our property..etc.

There is a large creek in the woods behind our property. It is about a 10-minute walk to the water. You have to go down a cliff to reach the creek. Once you are down on the creek the banks angle sharply up about 100 feet or more on each side. In other words, you are trapped and the whole forest has a vantage point on you. About 60 yards from the cliff access sits a small cave. I used to collect animal bones from the mouth but I never entered because I was told I wasn’t allowed to.

I spent hours down there alone as a kid. I know for a fact I was surrounded by a clan for many years. I just did not know of Sasquatch. I always thought the oversized, human-shaped dark masses and out-of-nowhere rocks flying by me were odd…but I was entirely unbothered even as a tiny kid alone in the forest. This may sound weird to some, but this was a HOLLER. I was raised to believe spirits keep watch over us, so I assumed it was that. I went to this creek alone when I was less than age 10. I was never afraid. Until…

Age 13, I spent more time in the city and had not been to the creek in a year, maybe two. It was early fall, there was some leaf litter but it was still warm. It was about 2 hours from sundown. I liked to sit by the water’s edge, stack rocks, and read. I had been doing this for about 20 minutes when I started to hear movement. Whenever I looked up, I couldn’t see or hear anything. This went on a bit longer. Great Grandma taught me to leave if I felt strange in the woods. Don’t question it- just calmly start walking home. So that is what I did. I am very familiar with the forest. I know the sounds of different animals. This sounded like something was moving through the trees, then down to the ground, then to the trees again. My initial thought was maybe a mountain lion was stalking me, but these sounds were not lining up with that. I couldn’t figure out what animal could even move that way! At this point, I wasn’t scared, but I felt a sense of urgency I had never felt in the woods before. I am very at home in the forest.

By the time I had made it to the trail, the sounds had stopped. I paused for a moment to listen-silence. I was in total eerie silence. I took a few steps forward and heard the skittering of four legs moving across the brush off the trail to my left and behind me a few good yards. I stopped in my tracks. The sounds stopped just as quickly as I did. I repeated this action several times, never repeating the number of steps I took before abruptly stopping. Whatever was following me stopped in time so perfectly with my own that I started to think I was having some sort of episode and hallucinating sounds. But it kept going, starting/stopping in perfect time with my sudden and unpredictable movement. Just mind-blowing.

I tried to rationalize…This was way too big to be a mountain lion. The bears here are very scarce. We have little black bears that come down into the holler for food but they are not as large as our big cats and bear sightings are very rare this far down. The reaction time of the footsteps was unnatural. It should not be possible for something to stop walking at the exact moment I choose to stop. I paused. What should I do? If this is a human I should run….but this is far too large and agile and HIDDEN to be a person. I settled on the mountain lion. I can tell this thing is huge. I knew I was being stalked, or hunted so I was mentally working myself up to turn around and throw my arms up and yell the way I had been taught. I was thinking, not speaking, THINKING “On the count of three I am going to turn and yell to scare off this cat”.

During this pause, which was only a minute or two there had been silence. Just before I was able to turn around I heard Bipedal movement to my right. So now I am flanked by a large creature on all fours to my left with insane accuracy and agility, and an even larger bipedal creature on my right. I took a deep breath and mentally started counting down to turn and confront 2 mountain lions??? Two strange men on my land?…. “3…2..” In the space between 2 and 1, I heard words in my head saying “Do not turn around”. It didn’t sound like my speaking voice. It didn’t sound like anyone’s voice it was just words but this was not what my internal dialogue sounded like. I had to brush this off because my survival required me to turn and confront this thing.

I shifted my weight and adjusted my shoulders preparing to turn and look when I heard the “thunk” sound a log makes when it is struck or dropped. A second time, and louder in my head I heard DO NOT TURN AROUND- KEEP GOING. I tried to slowly increase my pace without running. The creature to my left responded by moving faster. I can’t properly describe the “skittering”. There was something about that sound that was so bestial and strange. Exactly what you’d think a massive creature spider crawling towards you in the woods would sound like.

I picked up the pace and the skittering creature went BIPEDAL. I thought “Whatever this is has just stood up and is now chasing me even faster on two legs…What..the..hell.” Men don’t skitter, and neither do big cats, or dogs… bears cannot move that fast when bipedal. The other creature was keeping pace to the right. I was out of explanations, and I honestly thought I was going to die. The creature to my left starts closing in. I hear heavy breathing, similar to a large man exerting himself but with animalistic snorts here and there. I hear the sound of bare feet, not paws, wide, flat human-esque feet just booming through the trees, branches snapping and cracking. This thing was literally on my heels. I had finally reached a point in the trail that opened up to dirt road. The same intrusive “voice” I heard earlier said RUN. I took off and after I had cleared maybe fifteen feet I heard the creature that was to my right crash from the trees and over the path. I did not care to look. I just ran.

I never told anyone about this. I would play it over in my mind now but I was always at a loss. There was no explanation. I am among those who thought Bigfoot was solitary in the PNC. I believed in spirits but not cryptids. That was not in our Southern vocab. Bigfoot NEVER crossed my mind. A few years ago I started listening to your show…I am sure you know where I am going with this. I now realize that I was surrounded by them all of my childhood. When I was very small and playing on the creek they were always moving through the trees or in the trees as big dark shadows, or hairy black shadows, throwing rocks into the creek beside me (I chalked this up to jumping fish. Even in the winter months.) I have turned that afternoon over in my head so many times. The hardest part to accept was the “mind speak” and the odd sense of trust and comfort I felt with the 2nd creature. But I know what happened to me. I made a point to replay the memory often so that it would stay fresh. It was a baffling mystery for over a decade.

In hindsight, I had many encounters both before and after I was chased. Including one where I went to enter an unused barn at the edge of the property but stopped at the entrance due to a strong awful smell. I was then chuffed at by something and a branch crashed down from the forest that was overtaking the barn. I was about 9 years old so I tucked tail and ran. I believe my great-grandmother had a clan of Wooly Boogers that she had “befriended” for lack of a better term. We had to do all sorts of crazy stuff for “the Wooly Boogers” like cut a piece of my hair and put it in a knothole in the tree so the Wooly Boogers could get it and “take away my allergies”. I come from a line of Appalachian healers. My Great-grandmother used folk and plant medicine. I guess she had a spiritual thing with them? They never hurt us and there were no men living there, just 2 elderly ladies and a young child. She and my Grandma had passed by the time I discovered Bigfoot. The property was sold in 2012. Now I am stuck with that itch of someone who has “the wooly boogers in their head”.

I believe this clan was “okay” with me, possibly even keeping me safe because of this relationship with my family. They had to know that I fed them with my G-Grandmom. I think the creature that was chasing me was either from another clan, or a juvenile. It had been 2 years since I had been on the creek. If this was a juvenile, and I believe it was based on the size difference in movement sound, it must have been too young to know whatever the older ones knew of me that made them leave me alone. Or, as my husband suggested, maybe the fact that I was a teenage girl alone in the woods prompted the juvenile to come towards me. I believe the larger of the two was keeping me safe, somehow telling me not to look, when to run, and then crossing the trail to take the other squatch down before it could reach me.

If you read this email, I hope it wasn’t too long, or a drag. I have debated sending this encounter to you for over a year now.”