Jim writes “For five years I lived on Malcolm Island which is off of the northern part of Vancouver Island In 2022 in June of that year I was with my girlfriend at the time travelling from Nanaimo British Columbia north towards my 5 acre property on Malcolm Island
It’s a long drive north about six hours
I picked her up from the Ferry terminal at approximately 9 PM. She had caught A ferry from Vancouver after work on Friday. And the plan was to go up that night sleep in the vehicle and then make our way on the first ferry over in the morning so that we could spend the weekend together on Malcolm Island.
I was tired and it was getting late so we pulled over into this little tiny nature interpretive area. Not really a park but something that a logging company created after they cleared the area really not much more than a turn around big enough for maybe 5 6 cars with a small path and some signs along the river but it’s exactly where the old growth and the cut are side-by-side
I really don’t think anybody uses it and certainly no one is there at night. It was located in this place called SAYWARD
Which is also not much really just a place to stop on the highway. Interesting note though Tom SEWIT I think is his name or DEWIT. Was a guest you had on the show. And his artwork is on this long house at the gas station rest area
Anyway. We probably pulled into this little nature trail parking area to sleep for the night at 1 AM
I have a converted UPS truck. So really only the front windows let in any light and then everything else is just steel panels
If you’re in the back you really can’t see what’s going on outside and you can’t see what’s going on inside at all
Anyway we park we kind of chill out for a minute and one thing leads to another and we are starting to get intimate because it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other she lives in the city
So this is going on probably it’s almost 3 in the morning at this point definitely after 2 AM
And the vehicle is rocking and the springs are noisy and we are noisy
Lol
And this is really my focus. But then
The whole back section of the vehicle pretty much drops to the ground
And a little bit sideways
To the point where we are almost about to fall off of this little bed back there which runs front to back on one side on the left
I was initially really confused because I thought maybe our motion did it
But then it was obvious that something was back there you could feel it back there
There’s a heavy duty 2 foot wide mesh steel step off the back loading area it runs the whole width
And something was clearly on that that was really fucking heavy on the back right corner
Natalie froze
And so did I but I was really confused
My brain couldn’t understand if this was a bear possibly. There are pretty big black bear up there and if you go more far north there are grizzly on the mainland but not really on the island
I weigh over 200 pounds and when I step on the back it shifts a little bit but not much. This was something super heavy it wasn’t rocking on it like a bear it was just standing there
The next part probably lasted 30 seconds but it felt like five minutes
The whole back of the vehicle is just stuck in this position
And my mind is just trying to check all the boxes of what is going on I’m even wondering did we Roll backwards into some mud or something like because I had it in neutral by accident. But it’s an automatic so not really possible… my mind is just trying to understand what the fuck is going on
We are both naked so this is not a good situation
I’m trying to decide what to do next and then whatever is back there must have stepped off
The whole vehicle really popped up
Fast and hard
And then it kind of shook for a minute like bouncing and came to a rest into a normal orientation
The steel box springs underneath was making a bunch of noise both times before and after when this is happening so I could not really hear anything come or go
We sort of stayed there frozen for a minute wondering if it was gonna come back or what the fuck that was
I eventually put on some clothes and went to the front and turned the vehicle on
And then I drove around the circular roundabout a couple of times shining my lights around and I couldn’t see anything. It was dry ground so little chance to see anything anyway
Natalie did not want to stay there and I was much too awake at that point so I just drove most of the rest of the way to Port McNeil to wait for the ferry in the morning while she slept in the back
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Something that is I think interesting and possibly related to what happens next is that at the time that this all took place the muffler on my truck was broken so it was really loud with this big Ford V8 engine especially if you were trying to climb a hill or accelerate rapidly
But no matter what it was too loud and really expensive to fix. This vehicle it was already 19 years old at the time so I just lived with it. But this was a distinct sounding truck
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Monday afternoon I drive her back and she catches the 7 PM ferry, I eat something and I turn right back around because I like to live in the bush. I’ve spent most of my life in the bush. Unlike many of your guests though my time in the forest has been because of old growth logging protest and activism mostly. But I have lived off grid in small cabins in the back wood most of my adult life
I never saw anything approaching a Bigfoot. And although I thought it was interesting. After nearly 15 years of more or less living in the woods in various ways I still hadn’t even seen a cougar. So I never dismissed it either
Anyway I don’t like the city so after dropping her off at the ferry the roads are empty that time of night. And I just decided to go again most of the way back
This time I parked just outside of Campbell River and slept for a few hours starting at around 10:30 p.m.
When I woke up it was probably 2 AM
I like to drive when the roads are empty. So I stopped at the 24 hour gas station got a coffee and started driving
This time I was coming through SAYWARD just after four in the morning trying to catch the 545 ferry from Port McNeil
It’s still dark
I come past the gas station which is essentially the towns entrance on the highway the same place where that artwork from your former guest is.
And then I start to come up and out of the valley beginning the climb into the mountain pass between this area and where I’m headed
The road is steeply dropping off to the left I’m in the northbound lane on the right and to my right is essentially blasted out rockwall for the most part extremely close to the Side of the vehicle
It’s a narrow road and it more or less hugs mountains for about 35 km
But as you are coming up and out of the valley off to your left you can see this massive unbroken wilderness stretching for more than 4000 km² there’s a guard rail and then an open Vista
As I come up and out of the valley I am going to estimate I am maybe 500 feet up from Valley level and I’m going extra slow because of my muffler situation
And I’m also hitting the gas hard
Part of the reason I like to drive when the roads are empty is because how obnoxious my vehicle is and how slow it can be
Anyway I’m going up. I’m focusing straight ahead because the road is twisty
And then from my left, which still does not make any sense to me because it’s a very significant Drop off on the left going down many hundreds of feet of pitched Forest
From my left this absolutely enormous dirty white/Grey thing comes sailing over the guard rail so fast
So fast. So smooth. So fast
I am maybe doing 60 km an hour very slowly increasing in speed as I fight with the hill and the muffler so not super fast
But still this thing came close enough to the front of my vehicle that as it went past my vehicle rocked kind of the way that your car shakes when a big rig goes by you
It just launched from the left and looked as though to me it totally cleared the left-hand lane I don’t know if it kicked itself off of the guard rail or if it cleared the guard rail as well but it just came sailing from the left
Directly in front of the vehicle.
If you can picture a UPS truck they have big square windows that are very high off the ground
My face because I measured later is almost 8.5 feet off the ground Close to 9 feet as I’m driving and sitting. There are two stairs that come up to the driver seat from the ground and then there’s the vehicle lift
What I saw was essentially a side profile
From about the armpit down and about the thigh up
That’s how big it was and that’s how close it was when it crossed in front of me
It had one arm on the left side the far side from me out and the right arm was sort of back and down off of the torso
And you could tell that it had just jumped because also one leg was sort of forward and the other was back like it had been running and jumped
I have a LED bar on the front bumper of the truck and this thing was definitely White gray but dirty like a dirty polar bear
And I had the full 7 foot interior height model which is about 13 feet tall total. And this thing was not much shorter.
It wasn’t super High off the ground but it was mid air essentially sailing in front of the vehicle in one motion
So let’s say conservatively it was a foot off the ground maybe a foot and a half from the bottom of its feet. I was still just looking at his shoulder and mid torso top of the thighs
Yes it was a he
I saw hair
I saw muscle definition
You could see things in the hair like twigs or parts where it wasn’t really even
It got to basically two just before it cleared the vehicle and I thought I was gonna hit it with my front right bumper on its butt maybe.
It was so fast I didn’t even get a chance to break at this point or even really steer to correct. There’s not much room to go anywhere on the climb just the two lanes
And then it continued and cleared the small little ditch on the right and essentially grabbed onto like a 60° grade hillside made mostly of blasted rock and just kept going up
I did stop but maybe 100 m further down
And then I was just in the middle of the road idling trying to look out my right mirror but it was gone
There’s no way to turn around or go back because you’re on the mountainside climbing and the next pull off was several hundred metres maybe even more than a kilometre or more
And after being stopped on this twisty road for like one minute I realized this is definitely not safe and I proceeded on
Anyway I don’t know if one is related to the other but I do wonder if it Heard my vehicle the first time. Stepped on the back because it was interested in the sex and then later when it again heard it coming back through the same area it decided to run across the road
Why it would do that I don’t know
But whatever stepped on the back the first night was really heavy. And this thing was really big
Maybe that’s why my mind is connecting it
I wonder if it’s possible that it lives in an around this hundred person populated town and the connected forest. In your show you hear a lot that they’re curious about people and maybe they eat garbage and other things.
I have been reluctant to send you this message for several years. But I’ve been a longtime fan of your show.”