Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

A listener writes “I‘m an artist out of Brooklyn NY. On June 11th I decided I needed to get out of the city.

So I made preparations and on June 12th 2018 I decided to load up all my camping gear and my lil 20lb dog named sofi onto my bicycle and ride 6miles to Grand Central Station and then I took the Metro North train up to the Wassaic stop.

It’s 2 hours north of the city. I took the 8AM train and arrived a little after 10AM I believe. I then biked 10miles east to the Macedonia state park which is in Connecticut just over the NY border. This park is over 2300 acres. I was planning on staying a week and doing some low profile back country camping until my trip got cut a little short because of the events that took place on Thursday night June 14th.

Day 1 Tuesday June 12th: I arrived at the state park. It was super lush and green with a meandering creek that followed the road. There were lots of beautiful large fields of grass where people could set up camp that followed the roadway as well. I got concerned cause I saw no pet signs so I stopped to ask a woman who was walking her dogs what was up with that. She said not to worry about it. We had small talk and then she also said, “Yah know it’s really strange, this is a beautiful park but no one ever comes here.” That was my first mental note of strangeness. I locked up my bike and loaded all of my gear into my pack. I was extremely tired after biking almost 20mls (10 of which were straight up tremendously steep roads) that day with all my gear. There was a creek that ran along the road into the state park so it made it easy to get water. I started to hike into the woods with my dog and all my gear when I realized I was just way too tired and I started to get a horrendous caffeine headache. I hadn’t drank coffee that day nor had I brought any source of caffeine. So I decided to set up camp for the day in an open patch of grass close to the trail head which was also close to water. It was raining catepillars and millepedes. They were everywhere. I couldn’t move without squishing em. So after I set up my camp I was laid out from the caffeine headache. I basically laid on the ground for the rest of the day with a throbbing head. That night the forest was alive with a cacophony of birds, insects and crystal clear beautiful owl hoots.

Day 2 Wednesday June 13th: I woke up and it was raining out but the canopy was so green and thick overhead that I could barely feel it. So I said sofi we’re going hiking today. I woke up kind of late. By the time I made breakfast and got moving it was about 11:30AM by the time we hit the trail head. I made a mental note that we’d do a 3.5- 4 mile hike and then we’d turn around to get back before it got dark. The woods was super rocky and we hit some really steep rocks and inclines where it was basically rock climbing and I had to lift the dog up onto some parts. When we started hitting higher elevation there were neon orange Newts scattered about on the trail. They were really cool. Everything was very lush green and wet. It felt like a rain forest. At about 3.7 miles on the trail I look up and I notice a small branch with a twist break about 8ft up and then I look to my right and there’s a 2.5in diameter sapling with a twist break. It felt like marked territory and even before I saw the twists this section of woods started to feel strange to me like this was a good place to turn around and so we did. Hiked back to camp. Bathed with dog in creek and went to sleep.

Day 3 Thursday June 14th: Same drill woke up hiked all day. Bathed in creek and went to sleep. At about 12:30AM I woke up and again the forest was alive with birds and insects and then all of a sudden the forest went dead silent. You could hear a pin drop and then I heard footsteps approaching my camp. And sofi starts shaking uncontrollably and growling under her breath. I placed my hand gently on top of her muzzle and told her to shush. I didn’t want her to bark but I think she was too scared to bark anyway. I’m not a religious person but I started to pray to god and Jesus and visualized a protection force field around my tent. Anyway footsteps were approaching my camp and it sounded like a person walking over.

Then all of a sudden about 8ft from my tent I hear very deep gorilla whoops in a very low guttural tone way deeper than I can imitate. And I can hear breathing that sounds like it’s in a barrel. I can hear the vastness of this things barrel chest. It sounds like so much space and emptiness. This is the first time I’ve experienced this but out of this deep feeling of survival mode my auditory senses started to take over for my eyes and my hearing started to map out in my brain on behalf of my eyes so I could see what was out there. I’ve never been so scared to where my senses took over and performed in this fashion. I was so scared that I was like in a dry sweat and stunned with fear. Then I moved past fear and came to a place of surrender because I knew there was nothing for me to do and I was a sitting duck. This being let out very deep gorilla whoops and then just as quick as it walked in I heard it take off in the other direction and a Doppler affect of gorilla sounds as it got further away from my tent (But the crazy thing is that it went into some kind of stealth mode because I couldn’t hear it’s footsteps as it left but I could hear it gorilla whooping off into the distance). The vibe I got from this being was that it happened upon my tent camp by accident. He/she walked up on me like oh shit and then quickly left. I never got the vibe that it was pissed and wanted to attack me. As soon as this being was out of the vicinity the forest became alive again with birds and insect sounds. Then off in the distance I could hear fake owl hoots from one side of the valley to the other. And the other was responding in fake owl hoots. They were hooting back and forth but their pitches were different. And they definitely did not sound like the real owls I heard on the first night. Also to add to my fright 20mins later I hear the dog food bag get pulled out from under my tent (which was right next to my head) and my food bag and I hear plastic tearing and munching away right next to the tent. But this was definitely a raccoon. I heard him lapping up sofi’s water too. He was thirsty after eating dry dog food and a couple loaves of bread. Haha. Anyway that was enough for me. The next day I packed it up and we were out of there.”