I working through some audio issues but the show will be up in an hour. A listener writes “I’m not sure where to start, but recently my oldest son has been pushing me to write to you in regards to a peculiar event that he and I both witnessed during the summer of 2023 while we were attending Scout Camp in McCall Idaho.
However before I jump into that story, my son also wanted me to tell you about some of the other experiences that I have had personally in the years before this event, and even some that may not have any relation to Sasquatch.
During the week of July 9th – 15th we attended Scout Camp with our Scout Troop and our Sister Scout Troop. There were 3 male leaders with myself included, and 2 female leaders with the 7 girls who were there, while us boys had roughly 10 kids. In short there were a few of us attending camp that year, which was great because it was the first year being a newly established Troop, with me being the Scoutmaster.
When we arrived on Sunday afternoon, we all set up camp pretty quickly, and took up two campsites, given that we were 2 separate Troops, but still worked together.
Our campsites were also at the south end of the camp, and close to heavily forested areas with no campsites except for one or two at least a hundred yards further up the road from us.
And I have to say that the first night was absolutely uneventful, being a typical campout that anyone would expect to be on with beautiful warm weather and slightly cooler nights, and having arrived on Sunday, the camp was only half full with the expected amount of troops, since many more would be arriving Monday morning for sign-in, since many Troops were relatively local, compared to us having to drive 3 hours to get up there.
Though it doesn’t go without saying that the other campsites in the area may or may not have experienced anything Sunday night, but as for us, it was chill, we cooked a great dinner that night and just hung around the campfire in our campsite (the Boys), with the girls also coming over and mingling much like we always do at our regular Scout nights back home.
Monday morning we woke up with the sunrise, being typically 6:30 or so, since summer sunrises were pretty early in the summer, as everyone living in northern Idaho and Washington already knows.
Myself and the other leaders got together, coordinated everything we were going to do for the day, and even get the Scouts out to where they needed to go, being the waterfront so they could get their swim tests or buddy tags situated so they could go swimming or be ready for any of the merit badges they were taking down in that area. Plus we encouraged everyone to go down no matter what, so we could all participate in the Polar Plunges that would be held twice that week.
After check-in, all of the leaders in the camp gathered together at the main lodge next to check-in, so the camp commissioners and Program Director could brief everyone on what to expect for the week, and to get volunteer assignments dished out for campsite inspectors, and letting us know when the roundtable meetings would be everyday (so all leaders could touch base with the happenings of the camp and bring up any issues if there are any).
So in short, this was a typical Scout camp, and ran like all the others around the country, “just to paint the picture of what was expected and how things go”.
After the day was winding down, all the boys would come back to our campsite (Buffalo camp site) and start having fun, and getting their axe yard put together so they could start chopping wood safely, and slowly the girls would begin migrating across the road from their campsite (Sharlie) and coming to ours, since all of us leaders were already gathered in our campsite talking. but being a scout event, we mostly BS’d and just let our Senior Patrol Leaders handle the Troop’s, their camp assignments, and who was going to clean the Kaibo(long drop toilet) that sat between our campsites, which also got used often by other campers on the way to classes, since it sat along side the road, but was still our responsibility to clean. While we as leaders just made sure they were safe and nothing was getting out of hand or inappropriate, (which we can all safely say nothing did get out of hand at anytime during the week), and also would make plans to getting everybody up extra early for the Polar plunge Tuesday morning, meaning we’d be up at 6am, so we could walk the .75 mile down to the waterfront sitting on Payette lake. The walk down always took about 20 minutes, since we were moving at the pace of a young scout, it wasn’t very fast, and as leaders we made it very aware to everyone that we’d have to go quick, and get back up to camp quick to change and be down at morning flags in full uniform by 7:30am.
Now that the plans were made, everyone went back to their own campsites, and went to bed, getting a good nights rest from how busy the day was, and again, it was a beautiful, clear warm night.
Tuesday
As planned, we all woke up at 6am, and with everyone in swimsuits and holding towels ready to go, we all began to go down to the waterfront.
The polar plunge itself was more or less a swim in the lake, which involved running in and out of the water, but for the most part, you’d prefer to just stay in the water, rather than get out, but once the event was done, we all got dressed and went back up to camp to make it to flags and breakfast in time… the nick of time… and we went throughout the day as planned with getting the kids out on time for merit badges and making sure my senior patrol leader was doing what he needed to do. For me, I attended the 10 O’clock roundtable for all of the leaders, and then after that the majority of that day was taking my chainsaw up to a campsite at the top of the camp where I began sawing falling trees so that the Scout Camp could open up that particular campsite for future use, where my friend and Assistant Scout master helped me with moving some of the heavy logs around. The one thing that I noticed but didn’t mention, was how quiet everything was in that area, though I could easily chock it off with the fact that the chainsaw scared everything away and muted all of the other animals. (Looking back, I can honestly say that there were 2 instances where everything was quiet with me using the chainsaw. Every other time I still had animals and birds bickering while I was working.)
After about 2 hours of working out asses off, we walked back down to the bottom of the camp to grab lunch with the scouts, and plus we defiantly needed the break, and it was good to catch up with everyone to see how they were doing and if there were any issues, which of course we had a few personal issues thought out the week, but nothing serious enough to get into with the story, just kids being kids and trying to get along with other Troops.
After lunch as we lingered around the lodge area before going back up, we overhead a staff member asking someone else if they heard “that scream” in the middle of the night, and how it sounded like a deep woman’s voice, followed by someone crying uncontrollably.
They even brought it up with some of the leaders who were in the 4 campsites above the staff area, and everyone they’d talked to said they only heard a kid crying, but nothing else.
Me and Jay thought it was weird, and we immediately came up with our own ideas, but otherwise laughed it off and I kept my own experiences and opinions on that to myself and we kept going about our day, and I just couldn’t wait to take a shower that night.
Back at camp, it was the same atmosphere as the nights before where all the Scouts came to our campsite to talk and hang out for the remainder of the night.
When the sun began to set, we could start to hear owls calling back and forth, which got us all excited because its not everyday you get to hear owls, especially as close as they were to us, one owl flew into the tops of the tall pines above us, and kept calling out. We could only see an outline, and very quickly 2 more owls began calling back and forth in the distance however we didn’t see those 2
As I listened, I could honestly say that out of the 3 owls, 2 of them sounded a little off.. close, but off. Perhaps it was a Scout trying to mimic them to get a response, but I didn’t think a kid could make an owl sound that good… I’ve been surprised before, but who knows, all I can say is that from experience, I heard what I head and in the back of my mind, knew a kid couldn’t make an owl sound that good. (I remember a couple of the Scouts even said they we’re sure if the owls in the woods were even owls.) The owl closest to us coming from high up in the pines I believed was a legit owl, which myself and the others didn’t look into too much past that. With that I still kept it in the back of my mind, just because I was being cautious that way. Paranoia? Maybe, but that’s okay.
Now, the other thing that happened as the owls began calling, was how everything in the area grew quieter, and quieter, and quieter, and colder, until it was just the light wind rustling of pine and other tree’s. Nothing else. That’s the moment I shot my other leader a look and told him to “just be on the lookout”.
This quiet lasted the rest of the night as the kids all began to bed down in their tents, along with the girls going back across the road to their campsite to also go to bed.
Once the kids all went to sleep, my assistant scout master came over to me and asked if everything was okay, because he did see something in my face that I thought I hid pretty well… but obviously not well enough for him. I’m also pretty sure it was my constant scanning of the area that gave it away also.
We talked and I told him that something is off, and that we should stay extra cautious that night, and emphasize to everyone that they needed to stay in camp that night, and if they had to use the bathroom, that they needed to go in pairs, no exception, which was easy enough because we harped on the buddy system all the time already, they didn’t think anything of it.
I also told him I’d be up late anyways because I had to take a shower and I’d keep an eye on everything. And something I should mention, at that moment in time I had only been home for 3 months from an Air Force state-side deployment where I was a lead supervisor over an Operation Center that oversaw all the maintenance and reporting actions for multiple middle eastern bases. My shift was also from Midnight to 0800 Eastern Standard time, so my internal clock was still pretty fucked up, to the point that I felt like an insomniac half the time, ontop with dealing with other things where walking at night helped calm me down and kill the anxieties.
Just after 10pm, the night warmed up slightly, and I hiked down to the parking lot area where the shower was, which was honestly amazing because there was no roof to the shower house, and with how clear the night was, I was able to take a hot shower under the clear stars. So I can honestly say that particular shower being magical would be an understatement.
As soon as I finished and began getting dressed, a message popped up on my phone from the girls Troop Scoutmaster,
11:25pm
“Vincent, are you hearing that ?”
“I just finished at the shower. What are you hearing?
“Loud snorting”
“Down by the trailer”
“on my way”
“We are sitting at the fire”
“Ok”
“You hear it?”
At the moment I replied “on my way”, and I can’t confirm or deny that I retrieved my .45 from the truck, since I was ironically a few yards away from it, and threw it into my small pack that I used to carry my cloths in, and ran up the hill back to camp, because the safety of my son and the other kids in camp took priority and I didn’t know what kind of animal I was going to run into (which a Grizzly and black bear immediately came to mind). Within 5 minutes, I slowed my run down to a hastened walk and I could see the girls in their camp around a fire (only the leader, and 3 girls who were woken up and couldn’t sleep). So instead of pulling out the .45, I left it in the bag and drew my Bowie knife instead .(custom made with high tempered steel and 16” inches long, something I carry on all campouts and whenever I go outdoors in general).
This is where it gets peculiar.
I could hear that snort-like breathing clearly, it sounded like a bear with a really bad cold, and was very loud and in the spot that she had said.
I also stayed on the road and looked into the thick forest across from both our camps, and immediately couldn’t see anything, only hear, at which point I pulled out my 300 lumen flashlight and lit the shit out of the forest in the direction of the sound.
As I did this, the sound went from being very loud, to slowly fading away as whatever it was, tho it sounded heavy, heavy walking, but not branches breaking at all as it was walking away, because it was distinct that it was becoming distant, not just quieter.
After a minute or so of trying to catch whatever it was making that sound, I changed positions and walked the slight curve of the road to where the trailer was and looked into the tree’s again and saw a tunnel in the tree’s. I never noticed that tunnel before, and I was already very familiar with that camp spot from having been up there multiple times before from past scouting events, and even having spent a week in that same campsite from the year before when we attended scout camp.
Needless to say, I stopped and shined my light into that tunnel and saw a clear tunnel that went up the hillside. Again, no obstructions. From spending so much time in the forest, mountains, desert, high planes, I’ve never seen anything like this. Maybe it was a trick with the light that I never caught before, being nighttime and never really noticing it in the day, but it caught me off-guard.
Eventually the sound went away entirely, and the cold air in that particular spot dissipated, but it left me unnerved even more.
I looked up at the girls camp and asked permission to enter, and walked to the campfire, making sure to holster the knife and tuck everything away so the kids didn’t see anything, though I know the older girl who was their senior patrol leader saw me walking the tree line with a big knife. The Scoutmaster from the girls troop, who’s also a good friend asked me what it was, and I lied, I told her that it was probably just an elk or at most a black bear.
She shot me a glare that could of burned a hole through my head as she said, “Vincent, that was not an Elk, what was it?”
I tried lying to her a couple more times before I just told her that tonight I’ll stay up a bit later to keep an eye on everyone and that we’ll discuss it in the morning when all the kids were in classes and couldn’t hear any of our discussions.
After sometime, we all finally retired to our tents, and called it a night.
Wednesday
Wednesday morning arrived and everyone got up, got their uniforms on, performed out campsite flag ceremony and marched down to breakfast.
We ate, and tried acting like everything was normal as usual, then after breakfast, I went back to camp with the other leaders, and I pulled Jay aside and we walked over to where that sound had come from the night before, and he immediately say very large impressions in the tall grass going into the tree’s from beside the troop trailer. He immediately began getting ideas on what I was looking for the night before from what the other leader and myself had told him. Then I asked if he wanted to go on a quick walkabout, where he agreed and we made our way into the thick tree’s.
And the first thing I’ll say is that there was no tunnel… no tunnel at all, just a tree-line, and maybe a very small animal path that went into the general area that we were walking into.
Either way, be both made our way into the tree’s with the other 3 leaders watching us for the next 10 minutes.
We hit a point of walking in there to decide to turn around because of how tough it was to navigate the terrain without making a sound, and no matter how I applied my own tracking and stalking skills, I was still hitting something that snagged me, I was stepping in years of over growth of leaves and branches that were just snapping and making a world of noise.
After we got back to the road, we spoke with the other 3 as we walked down to our morning leaders meeting, they told me and jay that they could hear us the entire time, and we were noisy as hell.
During our morning committee meeting, we went through basic training objectives, such as climb on safely and safe swim and what-not, then toward the end of the meeting, the main commissioner brought up that a couple of scouts had reported seeing what they thought was a giant black bear on the other side of camp, but had left the details at that. Then the leader of a scout troop in the only camp site just above us, said that they thought they saw a bear also, but he was extremely vague, and I knew he wasn’t actually sure about what he saw.
After the meeting I approached him personally and asked for more details about what he saw and he said that it didn’t make sense, but he saw what he thought was a black bear, but when he tried looking closer, it stood up and completely disappeared behind a large pine tree.
The rest of the day was then relatively uneventful until later that night. I ended up helping with guiding some scouts from our troops on a cat-eye compass course in the dark, and then after that, we all returned to the campsite.
That night however became stark quiet again, and this time there was a bit more of a sharp chill, on top of the extremely eerie silence that actually began unnerving everyone. Then add that the night seemed to become darker than usual, as in, I’d watch the lights from everyone and myself shine into the tree’s, and it seemed almost as though it was getting absorbed more than usual.
With how quiet it all went, I made it a point to announce to everyone in both our campsites, that no matter what, nobody is to walk around without a buddy.
Right after that, we began hearing the owls again, both in the distance and nearby, except we didn’t see them at all.
I’m not going to embarrass my other leader, but he practices Nordic pagan, and decided to… do his thing… he let me know what he had done, and that’s when I got upset with him, because I already knew at that point that it was not a good idea to perform any rituals or sacrifices of any kind, because of the very physical nature of what’s going on.
And then shortly after that, it was as if allllll the sound in the camp was shut off, like we were in a vacuum. Not even tree’s rustling could be heard. It was the most eerie dead silence anyone could imagine, and again, something I wasn’t unfamiliar with, given this wasn’t my first time having this type of experience.. only a first time with trying to keep everyone calm.
All the scouts knew something was very off, and they all went into their tents very fast, and I could hear some of the whispers about how they were scared, or even addressing how “weird” everything was.
The other thing that helped keep everyone calm was by telling them there was a storm coming through and that we also had to be up early for the second polar plunge, in which the majority of the girls troop decided to go on, versus when majority of the boys who went on Tuesday.
But the truth was, no storm went through, tho a pressure drop could of explained the utter silence that night again, however, it really wasn’t likely from what I was thinking in the back of my mind.
Thursday morning began early with all the girls heading down to the waterfront, with only 2 boys from my Troop, so I woke up early along with everyone and I went down with them for the 2nd polar plunge. The funny part was that I had been walking most of the way down to the waterfront behind the 2 girls leaders and they didn’t know I was there until a half mile down, at which point they both just about jumped out of their skin.
Either way, everything went good, and I decided to run back up to camp on my own so I could make sure my Troop was ready for the morning flag ceremony. I got up into the start of this meadow area where the single path trail was, which was roughly 200 yards away from my camp site, at which point a Doe (deer) began running with me, and being that she was running along side of me, I didn’t do anything else but keep my pace, and thinking nobody would ever believe me that this deer was running with me (or the fact that I oddly have animals follow me frequently already, even if its mostly coyotes). But thankfully another leader witnessed the whole thing, watching me run, having this deer within arms reach until I got to the campsite, and she veered off into forest.
Embarrassingly, he always brings that story up at any occasion now, so in the end, I guess that was the validation I needed for people to believe me if I tell them about some of the weird things I’ve experienced. I only mention this because these kinds of things have led into other experiences directly or indirectly, and I just find it fascinating.
Now, after morning flags and breakfast, I met up with all of our leaders and we gathered again for the 10am commissioners meeting, and began the Q&A on how everything was going so far, along with what’s been going on in camp. This meeting however started off with the lead commissioner saying, “wow, what an odd night, I’ve never experienced anything like that before.” And that sparked a lot of discussion.
At which point we were all told to continue being on the lookout for that “bear” because this time it was seen near a couple campsites that were just above the meadow on the other side of camp again. But again, the sightings were vague and it was just shapes that were seen, with no actual confirmation that it was a bear.
Then the meeting continued on with everything going on that night, such as stargazing and wilderness survival and asking for adult leaders to volunteer to go to wilderness survival, in which they ended up getting a large amount of leaders to go to the top of the camp and help with watching everyone that night.
I wont get into the day too much, seeming as it was another uneventful day excluding the personal drama’s created by the youth, or how one of the girls started undue drama’s with her sister.
And we also did have youth from both our troops who were participating in wilderness survival that night.
Both our Troops decided earlier on that day that we were going to at least take everyone up to go stargazing, which the venue for it was in the same area as wilderness survival, being that it was higher up on the mountain, with a lot of good openings to see the sky, and how it already at a lot of people to help watch over everything, despite needing to walk around a half mile, the atmosphere was fun.
As we were preparing to leave the campsites to go up, we had the youth get themselves ready. My son was at our shared Kaibo, and was in both earshot, and eye shot of me, since I was near the road getting ready to gather everyone up, when he started waving at me frantically, then when it finally clicked for me to start walking to him, he pointed frantically into the treeline where I saw the tunnel in the tree’s and where the loud sound came from earlier that week.
I finally looked and only saw a couple of branches moving, but nothing else.
He came over to me quickly and told me he had just seen a really tall figure in the tree’s that looked lanky and creepy (he told me later on when we sat down and talked, that whatever he saw was roughly 9 – 11ft tall, had a grey clammy skin, and walked smoothly into the treeline and disappeared, but didn’t really get a good look at the face).
I have to say that he did a good job of trying to hide how freaked out about it he was, considering I was still able to convince him to go with me and the rest of the troop to go stargazing. And I knew he was still trying to convince himself that whatever he saw wasn’t real. 2 years later and his story has stayed the same.
The other thing I should mention is the fact that none of the leaders, including myself told him or any of the other scouts about what had been going on that week. I also stayed quiet about seeing the tunnel in the tree’s and what other leaders had thought they’d seen earlier in the week.
I do know that a few things also clicked with him suddenly after he saw whatever he saw.
It was honestly hard for me to believe that what he had seen was real, because everything I was trying to piece together was more consistent with Sasquatch or Dogman, and not what he’d described. Of course since he didn’t see the head, we honestly can’t put a name to this creature. But the fact is, he saw what he saw, and I can’t dispute it.
From that point, I prepared and took along a couple extra items I wasn’t planning on taking with, along with an extra flashlight. Then we all went up stargazing as a big group. Thankfully the atmosphere was still fun, and we all around enjoyed it. However my other leader was still nervous as hell about everything still.
While we were up there I over stressed the buddy system when going anywhere, and we had one scout that really needed to use the bathroom, so his buddy and one of the girls buddied up to go down to the nearest kaibo to use. What we didn’t realize was that the girl was apart of wilderness survival, so when we were all going down, we met up with her as she was coming back up on her own (still 80 yards or so away from where she needed to be.
At that point, the girls leader and myself buddied up to walk back up to wilderness survival with her, all while we asked, “what were you thinking?”, and she was just gave us the typical teen clueless answer of, “I don’t know.”
Well, we got her back with the others, and both of us began walking back down to our own campsites, and we began talking about everything going on and I told her what had happened before going up, and that got her even more freaked out… bad call on my part to tell her, but I had to be honest.
It also didn’t help that we were also walking along the road where there were no campsites for a ways, and was just dark forest. We could also tell that in that small gap, things went quiet again until we rounded the corner to our campsites and everything seemed to lift up and became more active once more.
Since then, I had talked about it occasionally with my assistant scoutmaster, since he and I shared a lot of views on how everything went.
It’s also something that kept me going out into the woods, despite having that happened, I just stay more cautious than anything else. It hasn’t swayed me from not going out, but I’m not naive about it either. It’s also the same sentiment that my son has also.
With all of that, I will have to write down everything else that I’ve been through at a later time, but this is the summed-up version of everything that happened during that week.”