SC EP:1183 Hunting Guides Experience With Sasquatch

Ian writes "The story I'm sitting down to tell, is a true one. One experienced by a faithful friend of mine, Sam, and I. I'm often reluctant to tell this story at length to most people, as the subject matter is unexplainable and rather strange. I don't want to be viewed as the superstitious nut. But having guided all across the country, and having extensive experience in many environments around the united states, I feel I have the authority to tell this story. Essentially what I'm saying is I've been around, in the deep dark hollows all across North America, and never experienced something so strange as I did that night. I don't fancify my experiences in the woods, nor do I hopefully imagine there's something more to a twig breaking. As anyone who has spent a good deal of time in the woods knows, there's no reason to. Eventually you'll experience something daring or fantastic. I am a hunter first and foremost, and to a hunter there's always an explanation, a reason to the wilderness and her inhabitants. Its how we identify patterns and exploit an animals rhythm to make a successful hunt. As a hunter you're a sort of woodsman detective, piecing together clues to set yourself up for success. Lets just say this tale is a cold-case. Let's get into it. It was early summer and I was itching to go camping. I had recently received a new tent and was eager to use it. I called up my good buddy, Sam, and we planned out our camping adventure. We considered going up to the Grayson highlands, or even south into North Carolina. After debating it, we decided it would be more fun to camp somewhere we wouldn't run into any other people. Deep in the woods, far from anyone else, where we could bushcraft, hoot and holler, and bring a gun without fear of scaring the yuppies camping next to us. While we both lived in the woods, I definitely had access to the most remote stretch of woods between us. So we loaded up our stuff and began hiking, deep into the valley below my childhood home. The hike was almost completely straight down a steep hillside, deep into a a hollow that held a small patch of flat land, a flood plane area and creek. The small creek that ran gave the area a beautiful ambiance. Early signs of summer were visible all around and the weather was great. We hiked until we felt the need to start gathering firewood before nightfall. Behind us a was a steep hillside that rose into the west for miles. In front of us was the creek, and to the left the start of another ridge and hillside that rose high into the east and north. To our right, the valley we were in, continued to go down cutting a deep valley. and on the other side of the creek another ridge, separated by a small stream from the ridge to the left, rose into the west and to the south. These two ridges in front of us ran for miles and the little valley formed by the small creek split these ridges for a long ways up until it hit the spring head. This is important for later in the story. Off to the right, further down the valley, more splits in the ridges are made by little tributaries. We started building camp by clearing the brush and leaves away and constructing a small firepit. I placed a tarp on the ground to separate my tent from the damp earth. Remember this, the tarp extended out roughly a foot on each side of my tent. Sam had a hammock that he planned to sleep in, I've only ever camped in a hammock once, and it didn't go great. But I didn't say anything to him, thinking that maybe he would enjoy it. We gathered a hefty load of firewood, consisting of some reasonably dry stuff. It was shaping up to be a really nice camping trip. I've spoken about the joy of being "out there" on this blog before, so I won't beat a dead horse, but it was really nice to be away from people. Sam and I sat around the fire and shot the shit until the sun went down. Now one of the things Sam and I have always bonded on, has been Bigfoot shows. We're both skeptics, and I would say we hold a similar or the same opinion on the subject. Our interest is less about believing in bigfoot, but rather we just find the subject matter to be nostalgic, silly, and a fun thing to joke about. So, I brought up the idea to Sam, that we begin to "Hunt" Bigfoot. He laughed and thought it was a great idea. So we began doing the antics they do in the "Finding Bigfoot" TV show. We started with the classic, Tree knocks. A "Tree Knock" for those unaware, is when you use a stick to beat on a tree, making a loud knocking sound that echoes through the forest. Supposedly sasquatch communicate this way. We didn't think anything of it at all, as I said before, we didn't really believe, we were just joking around. So we began by knocking on the trees and then stopping and listening for a response. After a few times of doing this we paused, and hearing nothing I began to think of a joke to crack and something else to do. Before I could open my mouth, we heard clear as day, a tree nock far off somewhere on the ridge to the left. I looked at Sam and said, "Dude." Sam just looked back at me in surprise. I then did some more knocks, and we listened again. Then off in the distance, we heard more knocks in response. Then the other ridge to the right we began hearing knocks. Sam at this point was beginning to get freaked out a little and was perplexed as to what it could be. I at the time, was such a hard skeptic I carried on and insisted that it was a person or a woodpecker. "but who in the world would be out there? deeper in the woods than we are, on private land? What woodpecker makes three loud booming knocks on the tree, that sound exactly like the knocks we make?" Sam voiced his rebuttal. I ignored these arguments and held strong to the fact that there is no Bigfoot. I then insisted that we push the envelope by doing woops and howls, just like they do on TV. Sam was not very enthused by this idea, being the humbler and smarter one of us that night, knowing sometimes there's certain things you don't mess with. But at that time I was full of piss and vinegar, and stubborn as a mule about the fact that Bigfoot, is not real. I also had brought a gun with me, and was certain I could fight off anything we would need to fight off. So we started howling into the woods. It was dark that night, being a new moon, and beyond the firelight you couldn't see a damn thing. We would howl and wait listening for a reply. After a few howls, the excitement of "What was that?" started to fade and my logical, rational, science based, theory of the woodpecker began to appear true. Then, out of the dark distance came one of the strangest sounds I've ever heard. A howl. Not a canine howl, not an owls hoot, but a fucking ape howl. Sam's eyes were as big as back hoe tires, and even I was finding it hard to reason that one. Despite this, I continued my ignorant stubbornness, and threw out another howl. Off to the left ridge it replied to us again, the clearest ape whoop I've ever heard. As if it were recorded by researchers in the Congo. I looked at Sam, myself feeling more curious and excited than anything else, I reiterated, "Duuuude." Then something truly unexplainable and spooky happened, more whoops and howls began on the ridge to the right and further down the valley. And they weren't random, they had etiquette, as if they were chatting back and forth with each other. The one to the left would howl, the one to the right would whoop and howl, the first would respond, and then the one way down the valley would chime in. Sam was really freaked out now, and began considering if we should leave. I, being a stubborn idiot, claimed it was owls. "Owls?? We were both raised in these hollers, I've heard owls, you're gonna tell me that was an owl? Have you ever in your life heard an owl that sounded like a fucking ape?" Sam argued against my claim. "Well, no, but there's no way bigfoot is real. It has to be a bunch of owls speaking to each other. There's nothing else it could be." I replied, half laughing in astonishment and disbelief of what was unfolding that night. Sam and I kind of bickered for a minute over it, and then decided the wisest decision was to stop antagonizing whatever it was in the woods miles around us whooping and knocking. It wasn't too long after that, we decided to go to bed. I crawled into my tent, and Sam into his hammock. We left the fire going, and every time the fire died down, the woods came to life. Whether it was paranoia, or paranormal, something was stirring. All around camp we could hear what sounded like things being thrown and footsteps. From time to time we would hear another knock or another howl coming from a new position. Sam would leap out of his hammock and chuck loads of wood onto the fire and make it as big as possible. He would then lay back down to sleep. This repeated about three more times. Each time the fire died, things got spookier and spookier. A few times Sam would say, "Did you hear that?" and every time I would just blame it on possums nearing camp, hoping to find food scraps. Well, about the third time, Sam ran out of firewood. Meaning that this time when the fire died, it died for good, leaving us to the dark void of the Appalachian holler. I vividly remember I had fallen asleep before the fire died, and after it died, there was so much stirring around camp, I began to wake up. I was slowly waking up, thinking I was having some sort of nightmare, when I finally fully sobered, and realized that my dream was pleasant. It was reality that was full of frightening sounds and things that go bump in the night. The woods around us had become loud with unexplainable movement, the movement of multiple large things. The whooping and knocking had stopped, which did not comfort me, with all the new sounds right outside my door. There was maybe a 30 yard perimeter around camp that the sounds did not cross. Then suddenly, an extremely loud crashing began through the twigs, leaves, and branches. It was something large, running full sprint through the woods. Starting maybe 50 yards away, and running straight towards our camp. It grew louder and louder, until the sound of crushing leaves, turned to crinkling tarp. The creature, was standing on the tarp my tent was situated on. I was frozen. Like a child, Frozen in fear, eyes wide open. My heart was pounding out of my chest so hard I thought it would explode. I Then heard high above my tent, not near the ground, not four feet up, but high above my tent, the most terrifying sound I've ever heard. it was the sound of a huff and blow, exactly the way you hear a gorilla do it on TV. Or how the apes in planet of the apes do it. Three forceful huff and blows, then the creature turned around and ran back the way it came, back into the darkness of the night. Sam practically leaped out of his hammock and said, "You had to have heard that!" I replied with, "Yeah lets get the fuck out of here." I slid a round into the chamber of my 30-30 and crawled out of the tent. We both got busy grabbing only our essentials, and started out of the woods. Using shitty dim flashlights, we made our way up the hill. Frantically looking behind us into the terrible night, and trying to move fast without running. We hiked a long ways and by the time we made it back to the house it was far past midnight. We never did see what it was that charged us, and we never did hear anything else after that. But whatever it was, scared us enough to make us hike out in the dead of night and leave all of our gear there. We returned the next morning in full daylight to gather our things. Looking back, I wish we had surveyed the area for tracks or some clue as to what it was, but at the time we did not want to be down there for any longer than we had to. Having been some years since this happened, I would go down there in a heart beat and not think a thing of it. When I come home, I usually feel a sense of ease in the woods. It feels like a weight is lifted off of your shoulders knowing there are no cougars or grizzly bears to worry about. For my western outdoorsy folk, familiar with cougar country, reading this and thinking, "I don't feel a weight in the woods." my reply, would be the question, have you noticed you've been stalked before? Cougars are some of the sneakiest creatures in the animal kingdom, and just because you've never noticed it, doesn't mean it hasn't happened. I myself have been stalked, I've written about it here previously. It's a feeling that will stick with you, and definitely put you on edge in cougar country for a long time after. I have a colleague who guides western big game in New Mexico, who told me a story once that during a hunt he had a fellow guide spotting for him, and that guide watched a cougar stalk my friend through a grove of trees before giving up. My friend never had the slightest idea he was being stalked. I believe for an avid outdoorsman in cougar country, it is inevitable. And as far as grizzly country, it's a similar feeling but a little different. Most ill bear encounters happen because you surprise the bear in thick woods. I have many friends from my time in Alaska who would share stories of being charged by monster grizzlies from out of no-where. They're just hiking along, and then BOOM! 800 pounds of death is blasting straight towards them. And the consensus is the same amongst them, if you spend enough time out there, it will happen eventually. I luckily was never charged during my time in Alaska, I avoided known bear hang-outs. But the few times I spent time in bear country, I always had this jack in the box anxiety, just waiting for it to happen. What is funny though, is despite that weight being lifted initially, an old feeling always returns. I know it's not some sort of psychological thing having to do with that patch of woods specifically, because I feel it in most places in Appalachia. It's a feeling of being watched, a feeling that something is there, and a feeling of dread. And it amplifies every time you hear some strange crashing in the woods or a sound you cannot explain. Most of the times I've experienced this, I've had a gun. And I think to myself, "Come on man! You're the most badass thing out here." Yet I can never shake that anxiety. My brother, without having ever heard this story, reluctantly asked me over the phone one day, "don't think I'm crazy but, have you ever felt creeped out in the woods below the house? I don't know what it is, but every time I go down there I feel like I'm being watched, and I get filled with dread." Hearing him say that sent shivers down my back. Simply because I always dismissed this feeling, I've swept this story under the rug for years, telling myself it was just a bear etc. To hear my brother, who is a marine, tell me that, certified to me that I was not simply being a pussy. I've only ever felt this in two regions of the country. Appalachia, and the Redwood Forests of Northern California. Now some of you may be reading this thinking that I am a nut-job Bigfoot believer. I've been reluctant to share this story for that reason. But I want to end this, saying, I have no idea what it was that made those calls that night. I also have no idea what it was that busted into our camp. We never did lay our eyes on anything. But I want to re-iterate that the story, is true. Verbatim to how it happened as I can recall it, without any embellishment. I have no idea what it was, and you can make your own decision as to what you think it was. But being an experienced woodsman, never have I ever experienced something like that since, and I have no worldly explanation for it. Those were the events that transpired that night, and I'll let you make of that what you will." Here is a link to Ian's blog https://ianlineberry.substack.com/p/an-appalachian-tall-tale?r=1u5uf7&triedRedirect=true

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Speaker 00

  It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind and it either heard me or smelt me and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up and that, that shocked me. They don't make people that, that big.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything move like that in my life.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  They were screaming at each other in gibberish.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  It sounded like a language and they were chuntering away, back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  I know what a bear looks like and there is no way on this planet that what I saw bears.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  911, what are you reporting? Jesus Christ, you better... Karen, see ya! Hello? Get somebody out of here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a bitch is about six foot nine, I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. Uh-oh.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  This is Karen from New Zealand and you're listening to Sasquatch Chronicles and I'm thankful that I probably will never have one of these encounters.

• 2:08Wes Germer?

  Welcome to the show, everyone. Thanks for being here tonight. Got a great show planned for you. We'll be speaking with Ian, and Ian comes to us from Virginia. He's an experienced hunting guide, outdoorsman, and he didn't really believe in Bigfoot until about 2019, where he encountered something he could not explain. And I'll let Ian go into it. Last night, I spoke with John, and John is a lineman from B.C. They would fly these guys in, in these very remote areas of British Columbia via helicopter. And after being dropped off by the heli, he tracked his way up Tumbler Ridge.

• 2:48Wes Germer?

  And he thought he was looking at a bear. He's kind of at a high position looking down, and he thought this thing was a bear. Ended up not being a bear, and it wasn't alone. It wasn't just one creature he saw. He ended up seeing a whole family group from this ridge point. He observed them for several minutes. It was a fascinating conversation I had with them. Here's a clip from last night's show.

• 3:14Speaker 04

  I assumed it was a black bear. But when I came into this clearing, and I kinda, I'm looking, and now I'm maybe that 50, 60 meters away from, from this black mass. And when I got into a clear spot, and I'm kinda low and moving slow, and I lifted my head, and I look out over the top. And what it looked like to me, and almost instantly, right away, it wasn't a bear, because this, this thing wasn't laying on its stomach, but it was in like a tripod position. It had its left hand extended out in front of it. And this green field is maybe like a 20 or 25 degree slope on a downward, so it's not super steep, but it's, it's got some grade to it.

• 3:57Speaker 04

  And this thing's hand, and I say hand, it was a, it was a hand, like a, like my hand, for the most part, but...

• 4:08Wes Germer?

  And I want to thank John again for coming on. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is [email protected]. And if you get a chance, check out sasquatchchronicles.com. You can become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it tonight. I want to welcome Ian to the show. Ian, thanks for coming on.

• 4:34Speaker 05

  Hey, thank you for having me.

• 4:35Wes Germer?

  Yeah, and you're a pretty experienced guy. For the audience, give us a little background on yourself.

• 4:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, so what I do professionally, I'm a wilderness guide is kind of what I'll like call myself, just because I wear a lot of different hats throughout the year and I work with the seasons. But my main profession right now is definitely like hunting guide, just because it's the one thing that kind of makes the most money and it's also the most skilled thing that I do. Yeah, I started guiding in general back in 2021, something like that. It was a couple of years ago and I started as a whitewater rafting guide and did that as two for two summers. You know, the whitewater rafting guide spent a lot of time outdoors. We lived in shacks. You know, we didn't have running water. We didn't have any of those

• 5:24Speaker 05

  luxuries. We had one big community kitchen, literally lived in the woods. I think I wore shoes like once or twice throughout the summer, just always barefoot. And that was in Tennessee, so still in the Appalachian Mountains. And then after that, became a ski instructor. So I've been ski instructing every winter since then. Two years at Taos, New Mexico, and then one year in California. So ski instructing, you know, outdoors, all that stuff, but it is in at a resort, so it doesn't feel as outdoorsy. But then I got into guiding Western big game hunts about three years ago. So I'm going on my, my third fall now. So I guess like two-ish years ago. So yeah, I'm about to ship out for my third fall here in

• 6:09Speaker 05

  a couple of days. But yeah, it's, it's pretty awesome. I've been a part of, you know, dozens of, of elk hunts, dozens of mule deer hunts and antelope hunts. Spent a lot of time way out in the woods, far from roads, far from cell service, all that sort of stuff.

• 6:29Wes Germer?

  Well, if you would, take me to 2019 in Virginia. What were you doing and what happened?

• 6:37Speaker 05

  So I had just gotten a new tent and my friend Sam, he had just gotten a new hammock um that he's gonna start hammock camping out of. And we were super excited to go camping. I think this was like early summer, like springtime. Because it it was just warm enough where you could go camping without like freezing your butt off. Yeah, so we're like, yeah, do you like, let's go camping. Basically, like the way I grew up, I know a lot of people don't grow up this way. I I lived in a wood house, like a like a log cabin style house in the woods, like down a dirt road. Uh, front of my house is a a field, behind my house is a field and all the rest of it was woods. And we had acres upon acres of woods. My parents had thirty acres.

• 7:23Speaker 05

  My grandfather had over a hundred, my uncle had over a hundred, and they were all kind of connected. And you know, in in Appalachia, it's like, we don't have like giant mountains, we have hills and hollows. You know, and so you're looking out across everything and it's. You're seeing is like, oh, yes, it's rolling hills, but once you try to cross those hills, you realize that everything is connected with like super deep hollows. And everything's super deep in the hollows, you know, it goes really far down. And so where my house was situated is on a hill and down below it was a holler. And there's a little stream that goes through there and we deer hunt through there and we would uh squirrel hunt through there. But we always wanted to go camping down there. So me and my friend Sam, we got our new camping gear.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  We went down in there and we set up camp real close to the the creek. I put down my tent and I put my tent on top of tarp. Cause at the time I had read that, you know, putting it on a tarp kind of assists you in keeping from getting all that ground uh cold going up into your tent. And just like freezing your butt off all night. So I put mine on a tarp. We had a little fire hanging out. I do want to mention we were not drinking. Cause at the time we were both, just, we just didn't really drink, you know, like once in a blue moon, maybe we would, but we were kinda, we had hit our phase where we just didn't want anything to do with it. And we were kinda just focusing on school and everything like that.

• 8:49Speaker 05

  But yeah, so we weren't drinking at all. We were just down there, had, had a fire. We're sitting there hanging out and talking and there's only so much time that can go by if you're not partying and you're sitting in the woods. Or you kinda get a little bored. We're just talking to each other. And we kinda, one of us has the idea, I can't remember exactly who had the idea, but one of us had the idea that we should start doing tree knocks. And, you know, see what happens. And it, it was kind of a joke, you know, and I'm picking on my buddy Sam. I'm like, yeah, man, like we're gonna find Bigfoot or whatever. So we go have some sticks and it's a big poplar tree that we were tree knocking on. And we start tree knocking. And where our camp is situated, we're like right next to a little stream.

• 9:33Speaker 05

  Behind us is a super steep hill. In front of us is another super steep hill. And other like ravine type canyons that go up these hills. And kinda splinter up. Like you know how if you find a spring and you follow it down, you'll find that there's all these other little springs that join in at a larger creek and all those other little springs are, you know, basically the bottom of these deep valleys, deep cut valleys. That's kinda what we were like looking at. And we're sit- situated a little bit in a flood plain of sorts. So we're knocking and in that area, they'll kinda echo a little bit, just a little bit, you know, so you can hear that it's traveling pretty far. So we do it. Boom, boom, boom.

• 10:17Speaker 05

  Boom, boom. Boom, boom, boom. You know, just kinda putting a rhythm to it. After a couple of minutes, we start hearing knocks coming from in front of us.

• 10:30Speaker 05

  I look at my buddy Sam and I'm like, dude, did you just hear that? And he's like, yes. And we do it again. I started doing the knocks again. And it repeats back to us again, directly in front of us. And, and this isn't an echo or anything, because it's like seconds after I, I do the knock. Like, I'll do the knock, I'll go one, two. And then it's like, one, two, three, four, five seconds, and then one, two, you know, it'll repeat back after a couple of seconds. So we're getting like a little freaked out. So I just kept pushing the envelope. So I keep knocking. And this is where it starts to get a little weird. So the tree knot directly in front of us coming from that ravine, or that canyon, that hollow. It goes off. We're standing there like, whoa, dude.

• 11:16Speaker 05

  And then up the canyon. Another tree knot starts on, on a different ridge, like farther north of us. And then the first one responds back to that tree knot. And then down below, another tree knot starts. And now we're, we're like standing here looking at each other. And I'm like, dude. What? And my buddy at this point is like, dude, you gotta stop, like no more of this. Like, he's getting really freaked out. And we're both kind of amazed. We're both kind of like, I don't, just confused, I guess, is the best way to put it. What could that be? Like, it was that moment where I'm trying to be the naysayer. I'm trying to find anything to say, this is, this is why it's not real. And having a hard time.

• 12:02Speaker 05

  And we didn't have any neighbors over there at the time, too. So we had no neighbors out that way. If somebody was wanting to be out there to do that to us, they would have to hike in probably eight miles or so into the woods to a random ridge top that's private property. And a place where you don't go on the private property because somebody might shoot you, you know, like. And so it just didn't add up. I tried to say, well, maybe it's owls. You know, everybody always defaults to owls when they can't explain something. Oh, dude, it's just an owl. You know, and just someone is like, that's not what an owl sounds like. You just change what species of owl you're talking about. But anyways, so we hear that. Like, man, that's crazy. And we, and we go on.

• 12:46Speaker 05

  So we kind of, we put away the sticks. And I'm like, okay, I'm, I'm the one pushing the envelope at this point. I'm like, dude, we should do some owls. We should do some whoops.

• 12:56Speaker 05

  It sounds like.

• 12:58Speaker 05

  Like, man, I don't know about that. Like, this seems like a bad idea. Like, I'm getting a little freaked out. I'm like, no, man, come on. Like, let's do some whoops. So we start whooping. And we, we basically do exactly like you'd see in the documentaries. So you know, like Dr. Jeff Meldrum? And like all those guys? We basically do like exactly what you see in the documentaries, how those guys will do it and talk about it. Just to apow, pretty much. So we're going like, whoop, whoop. Like, kind of like in the intro of this show, there's like whoops and stuff. We did it like exactly like that. And not hearing nothing. And at this point, like, it's kind of silent for a little while. And I'm like, really jumping on that, like, naysayer horse being like, aha, I told you it's not real. Well,

• 13:44Speaker 05

  after a couple whoops, we hear a whoop, clear as day, directly in front of us, call that. And all, and mind you, all of this is going on pretty much at nighttime. Like, we had waited until nighttime to start doing this. So we hear a whoop coming from directly in front of camp, where the first tree knock came from. Which I found interesting, that it came from the, the first one came from the same place as the first tree knock. And at that point, we're like, dude, are you kidding me? Cause you can, you, a tree knock, it's like, whatever, coincidence, blah, blah, blah. But a whoop? Is like, hold up a second. There's nothing here that sounds like, and it, that doesn't make any sense. So, hear the whoop.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  We call back to it. Sam's freaking out. He's like, stop, stop, stop. Don't like, quit, dude. You're freaking me out. I call back to it. And then we just set off like a chain reaction. Up the holler, another whoop. Directly in front of us, a whoop. Down the holler, another whoop. And they're just chattering back and forth to each other. Like, just, just like, you hear all the time, like, you've heard it on this show multiple times about, they, they're just talking to each other. And we're looking at each other like, dude, at this point, I kinda got a little afraid. This point, my naysayeriness wasn't enough to protect me anymore. And I'm like, all right, maybe there is something going on here. Maybe we should stop messing with it. But at that point, it was kinda too late, right? Like, we had already made ourselves known in the area.

• 15:14Speaker 05

  Um, and where we're camped, like I was saying earlier, it is like a long hike from where my parents' house was. It was way down in the holler, way down in there. Uh, we had to pack our stuff in pretty far to get down there. And there's no roads, nothing around. It's just the woods. So, yeah, we're, we're pretty freaked out. And at this point, we basically give up antagonizing it. Both of us, like, I finally agree with Sam. I'm like, okay, let's stop antagonizing it. Then we sit around the fire. We don't hear nothing for a while. And I'm telling Sam, I'm like, yeah, dude, it's just an owl, you know, my, I, I keep holding on to that. Like, I just didn't want to be like, yeah, it's a bigfoot. Cause I guess I thought to myself, maybe if I just, I'm like, no, it's not real enough.

• 15:59Speaker 05

  Then if it is real, somehow it'll know that that's my attitude and it'll come out and show itself. You know, like, that's kinda how I felt. Uh, so, yeah, and we're hanging out around the campfire. I could tell Sam did not wanna go to bed. He did not wanna go to bed. And we had a gun with us, too. We had a thirty thirty rifle. Uh, anytime I went in the woods, I'd bring a gun. Like, I never went to the woods back home without a gun. I'll go into the woods out west without a gun, depending on what, you know, where it is. But back home, I never would. And it's weird because, you know, out west, I've been in grizzly territory, I've been cougar territory. But back east, you know, you don't have as many cougars and you don't have the grizzlies. But I still just feel, a lot of times, like, I don't know, it's a weird feeling back home.

• 16:44Speaker 05

  Like, I always have to have a gun. Out here, I feel a lot safer. Just, which is strange. So we had a thirty thirty with us. And Sam, you know, I wanna go to bed. Didn't wanna go to bed. And I, I know why is because he's in that hammock and he was afraid that he's gonna be a Sasquatch hot dog that night. He just did not wanna go to bed. And so, he's just talking and talking and talking, trying to keep us from going to bed. And finally, I'm tired. I'm tired enough of hanging out around the fire. So I tell him, like, all right, like, it's time to go to bed. Like, come on, like, let's go to sleep. So we lay down to go to sleep and we had a little pile of firewood saved up.

• 17:25Speaker 05

  We didn't have much and we didn't bring firewood with us because it's too far of a hike to bring like stacks of firewood. We just brought a saw and an axe and we had cut some before we had gone to bed. Uh, or before the, you know, night had fallen on us. And so Sam had like a little reserve of firewood. And I had crawled into my tent and basically just, you know, forgot about the world. Was trying to go to bed, but I could hear him every time the fire would go down. He'd get up and throw a bunch more firewood on it. So he didn't want that fire to go out. And I know why is because every time the fire, you know, went out and it was pitch black again. Cause you know, especially down in those hollers with thick trees and woods. It don't matter what kind of moon it is, don't matter how clear it is.

• 18:09Speaker 05

  It's dark at nighttime, you know, you're, you're nestled in between two, you know, tall ridges. It's just dark, um, and could be kind of spooky. So every time the fire would die out and it comes dark again. It's the weirdest thing. No birds, you know, no, no critters like that moving around camp. But you could hear something moving around. It's really freaky because. If you spend enough time in the woods, like I grew up hunting, grew up fishing, you know, we would cut, cut wood for, uh, for heat in the winter, you know, we'd cut wood and that's how we heated our home in the wintertime. Spent a lot of time in those woods and you get a sense for what movement is what.

• 18:53Speaker 05

  You can hear as a squirrel goes through the brush, it's a squirrel. You can hear as a buck goes through the brush, it's a buck, a bear, so on and so forth. And we could hear around camp, something big for sure. But we weren't sure uh what exactly or what, you know, but it was something big and it and the weirdest part about it is it was circling camp. And it's not uncommon to have like a deer or something walk by your camp when you're sleeping. But this is like walking around our camp. And the freakiest part is as a fire would die down, it would get closer and closer.

• 19:32Speaker 05

  And that's why Sam kept freaking out, throwing all the firewood back on the fire and getting it built up to keep whatever that was at bay. And every now and then he'd say something like, Ian, Ian, do you hear that? Do you hear that? Like, dude, tell me you hear that, you know, he's freaking out. And I'm, I'm, at this point, I got a little short with him. I got a little upset. I'm like, dude, like, it ain't nothing. Ain't real. It's just like, you're hearing things, you're hearing the wind and you're hearing a possum that's coming over here because it wants to get uh food or something. It thinks we have food and which we didn't. We didn't bring anything with us. But that's what I wrote it off of, like, oh, dude, you just, you're hearing a possum. So we keep camping and eventually Sam runs out of firewood.

• 20:17Speaker 05

  Cause where we didn't bring firewood with us and we had cut it up, we're cutting up really dry. Just like soft wood type firewood, like poplar, you know, things like that that burns just real quick. Pines and stuff like that. We didn't have any good hardwood because that's a lot harder to cut down. It's a lot harder to saw. So we didn't mess with hardwood. We were just using those softwoods as easy to gather quick. So he burns out of his firewood really quick. So now it's pitch black and he's hidden in his little hammock. I got the gun next to me and I'm thinking to myself, finally he ran out of firewood so we can go to sleep. Cause I was, I was pretty annoyed of hearing him jump up and down and throwing all these logs on the fire and everything all night long. So we finally started going to sleep.

• 21:02Speaker 05

  And you can hear all the noises around camp. I mean, just like movement all over, all over. And, and there's this like oppressive feeling that like we're just being watched or something. It's kind of how it is just a weird feeling. It's like hard to explain. And still in my mind, I'm like, it's not real. It's nothing, not real. And also I have a gun, therefore I'm the biggest, baddest thing in the forest right now. So I actually started nodding off to sleep a little bit. I was in this dream state that was like halfway between sleeping and halfway between being awake. You know, when you're just about to fall asleep, but you could still hear things. I'm hearing all these noises around camp. And it's getting like louder and louder.

• 21:48Speaker 05

  And I'm thinking like, I'm in a dream. You know, I'm thinking I'm hallucinating. I'm in a dream. You know how that'll happen? You'll hear, you'll hear things from your dream. And you'll think it's in the real world, but it's just from your dream. So I kind of write it off in my mind. I don't see it as an alarm. Then far off in the woods, I hear something just break out into a run. Just a dead sprint straight towards us. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Just crashing through the brush.

• 22:20Speaker 05

  Just breaking twigs, breaking limbs, just hauling it right towards us. You know, and I hear it and it's getting louder. And there's a certain point where I, I start waking up. And I start like rising up and I open my eyes and I think to myself, this, this is real. This isn't a dream. This isn't a hallucination, nothing like that. I'm not halfway between sleeping and and being awake now. I'm, I'm fully awake and I'm like, this is real, like whatever it is running towards. This is all happening within the span of like four seconds.

• 22:53Speaker 05

  And then I hear the steps go from.

• 22:58Speaker 05

  Leaves to tarp. So it goes from leaves to tarp. Well, my tent is situated on the tarp. So it's standing right next to my tent, like right at my tent. And I'm, I'm laying here and actually, I actually, at this point, I'm fully awake and I'm like frozen. I can't move. Like I'm literally froze, could not move. And I guess it was partly just because I was so afraid. You know, I think at that point, the jig was up, you know, we had just heard ape howls coming from three different ridges. And tree knocks, you know, like, so my mind at that point, I'm like, all right, this is a freaking bigfoot. You know, I'm like, I can't be a naysayer anymore. This is a freaking ape man.

• 23:40Speaker 05

  And there's nothing else to it. Like I can't, I can't write it off anymore. So I hear this, goes from the leaves to tarp. This is all one fluid motion, right? I'm laying here, I'm frozen. I hear up above my tent, probably, who knows, you know, seven feet, eight feet in the air. It was high up above my tent, sounded like it was directly above my tent. I hear this noise, it goes

• 24:09Speaker 05

  like an ape, like, like a, like a gorilla or something. Like when you, you watch on, uh, National Geographic, like the silverback gets pissed off and he's like

• 24:21Speaker 05

  like it literally went

• 24:24Speaker 05

  and then turn and back into the woods. And I, I jump up, Sam leaps out of his hammock. He's like, dude, you had to have heard that. I'm like, yeah, I heard that. He's like, let's get out of here. I'm like, all right, let's get out. So we, we grabbed the gun, our flashlights, our phones, wallet, keys, you know, important stuff. And we left everything else. We left the tent, we left our clothes, we left, uh, the hammock. Like we just left anything that we didn't absolutely have to have. And we stuffed a box full of things that we absolutely had to have. Sam carried the flashlight and I carried the gun and we, we hiked out. I put one in the chamber and we hiked out a pretty long ways. We didn't get back to.

• 25:08Speaker 05

  My parents' house until dang it was probably like two or three in the morning. Maybe more like three in the morning because it was getting close to where like the sun kind of starts coming up, but it's not coming up. It's just like you could tell it's going to be light in a couple hours. And that was, that was pretty much it. That was pretty much the experience. And I've had other experiences in that area specifically multiple times and my brother has as well. And I could talk about that too, if you want me to.

• 25:35Wes Germer?

  Yeah. Scary night. It's kind of hard to put it to a known animal. You guys never got a look at what this thing was, did you?

• 25:44Speaker 05

  We never did. And see, that's the thing that like this, this story I held on to for a long time. I didn't tell anyone about. I only recently put it on my blogs for, for friends and stuff to see. And then also started sharing it with people because I'm like, man, like you got to share the story. But I never did actually see it. That was a big thing, a big reason why I didn't share it because I always felt like people, you don't actually see it. People discredit it really quickly, but I don't, man, with my experience. And being, I've been around bears, been around cougars. I've been stalked by cougars before. Like I've literally been stalked by a cougar before.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  You know, so I like, I know the energy of these animals. I know what it feels like be around them. I know what their eyes look like in the dark, even if I don't see them. It's, it's literally my job. So, and I look back to that and I'm like, there's this, it couldn't have been anything else.

• 26:42Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I will say, you know, most of the time when these things come into people's camp, they never see it because they never get out of the tent. A lot of times they're frozen in fear, like how you described. And it goes to show how scared you guys actually were. I mean, you know, as a hunting guide, you don't get up in the middle of the night and hike out of an area. A lot of times that's more dangerous than, uh, sitting through the night, waiting for the sun to come up.

• 27:09Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, dude. We were terrified. Like that's something we would never do.

• 27:14Wes Germer?

  When you guys went back, did you find any sort of evidence or anything around the camp?

• 27:20Speaker 05

  So we went back the next morning and we found nothing. We looked for tracks. We looked to see if it'd messed with our tent. Didn't find nothing. We looked for scat, didn't find any scat. We didn't find anything at all, which was really strange, but I have found stuff in the, in that hollow before. I went down there one day in the winter and in the winter it's like rainy, just above freezing. It's probably like, it's like 35 degrees and rainy. You know, and it's a good time to squirrel hunt, but other than that, it's not good for much. Most people won't, you know, go out in that time. Just miserable cold weather. And I went down there squirrel hunting and I, something I do is I always trek, I always check but

• 28:03Speaker 05

  just past a log or something or a stick in a trail. Cause that's where you're going to find tracks. Cause the animal, it sees that log or that stick going over the trail and it steps over it. And so you get a good, consistent track just beyond that obstruction. And there was a log with some mud just beyond it. So I see that little mud patch, see the log. I go down there to see if anything had traveled past. And I found, I kid you not, a perfect human footprint. Like perfect looking human footprint in the middle of the woods, way deep down in there. Miles from the nearest road and tens of miles from the nearest house that didn't belong to my family.

• 28:49Speaker 05

  So I get real close to it looking, looks like it has dermal ridges. Perfect human footprint, but here's the catch. It's not 15 inches long. It's not 22 inches long. The sucker is like eight inches long or so. It's like, it's super tiny.

• 29:06Speaker 05

  And that that was the thing that got me. I was like, dude, what? Because it could, it couldn't be a person. Nobody's down there. If you were out there barefoot, you'd freeze like in that kind of weather. Like you get hypothermia. That was the weird thing. It was like literally a human footprint, which kind of got me thinking about people have those um, theories about Appalachian uh, feral people. And that that one I've always written off. The Appalachian feral people thing. I've always been like, you know, I could believe in a Bigfoot, but like feral people, no, dude. Like I grew up in Appalachia. It's not real. Like, no, no way. But seeing that I was like, because if it was like 20 some inches long, you're like, okay, this is a Bigfoot. No, or whatever. Okay, we got a Bigfoot track.

• 29:51Speaker 05

  But if it's within the realms of possibility for the length of a human footprint,

• 29:59Speaker 05

  it's just weird. How do you explain that? I don't understand.

• 30:03Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I don't think every track you're gonna find is gonna be 20 inches long. I remember, uh, David Ellis from the Olympic Project. He had actually give me a cast of a footprint that he took. And it was like a baby footprint. It was a little weird, but I mean, I would compare the size to like a baby. Um, when you and your friend actually talked about this incident, what was the conversation like?

• 30:31Speaker 05

  We basically like, dude, this is real. Like this is real. And then also we we kind of joked about it. We joke about things all the time. We always were joking about something. We kind of joked about it where we're like, okay, well now we have a story. We can't tell anyone ever.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  Cause like, uh, like in my personal life, I'll tell some people. But I don't, you know, I don't tell people this story very often unless I think there's someone who's gonna actually like believe it because it, we talked about like you're cursed with the story. You can't tell. You know, and I I do like the fact that people are getting aware. They're talking about this more and more. Cause it makes other people feel better about being able to talk about this. And that's part of why I came out to start telling the story. But yeah, that was kind of our conversation. It's just like, well, now we got a story. We can't tell. And that was crazy. And we're never gonna do that again, because that was scary as well.

• 31:27Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I get it. I always chuckle inside when you have a skeptic banging on a tree. I often think be careful what you wish for. You know, in that area, you you had said there was other experiences. Tell me about them.

• 31:43Speaker 05

  I had one. This one is really crazy. So I mentioned earlier, my house is it's on a hill. And in Appalachia, you got hills and haulers. So you got the hill and then the hauler is going to be super deep down next to the hill. So my house is on the hill and it was situated in the middle of one acre that was just a yard. We had some fruit trees. And then in front of it was a field and behind it was a field. So the field behind it, it's gently sloped down. Pretty far. So my house is at like, or my childhood home is 2,600 feet above sea level. And then the bottom of this hauler was like 2,000 or so, you know, so it goes down really like 600 feet.

• 32:26Speaker 05

  You know, it goes way down in there, but it's a gentle slope all the way down. It's pretty steep. So that was a good place to go squirrel hunt because at the end of the the field started this big pine barren. And the squirrels love the pine nuts. And then right next to it as well was a bunch of oak trees. And the squirrels like acorns. So I would go squirrel hunt a lot. And I know a lot of people that aren't from Appalachia find it weird or they they're not used to it, but you know, out in Appalachia, you eat squirrels. It's just something we do. You make squirrel dumplings. So you go squirrel hunting, you shoot like three or four of them, take them back home and cook them up. So I'm going down there and at this time I was probably, I don't know, 15 or so, around that 14, 15 or so.

• 33:10Speaker 05

  I was pretty young, but I wasn't like super young. And I'm going down in there and I've got a 22 and the 22 that I had, it was one of those that you load through the stock. You put all the bullets in the stock and you put a rod down it and you twist it. And that's how you put all your bullets in there. Well, if you want to take your bullets out, you got to do that undo that rod and you got to go through this whole process to get the bullets out. So generally, when I got done using that rifle, I would just shoot all the bullets that I had left in it. It was also more fun that way. And twenty-two is a cheap round, so I wasn't really concerned with saving them. So I go down in there. And at this time, I'm still hunting. And I get through the field and I get to the pine barrens.

• 33:51Speaker 05

  And I've had another experience in that pine barren, I could tell as well, if you want to hear another one. But anyways, I'm in this pine barren and I'm kind of walking the edge of it, the pines and the oaks. Cause I don't, I, I never really liked going in the pine barren real far. I would go a couple, you know, a couple of steps into the pines, go through a couple of them, but I never really liked going to the middle of that pine barren. Cause it was just creepy in there. So I'm kind of walking the edge. And I'm chirping. When you're squirrel hunting, you're making a squirrel noise, you're kind of chirping, you go like that, I'm doing that noise. And, you know, in Appalachia, it's like the part that I'm from is the Blue Ridge Mountains. And it's like a spotty rainforest.

• 34:32Speaker 05

  So here and there are areas that get so much rain that they're considered rainforest, temperate rainforest. But it's not the entire area. So it's like all these isolated thunderstorms and isolated storms. There's a lot of water, it's warm, a lot of life. And you're always hearing birds, you're always hearing squirrels, you're always hearing something is flying around, making noise, buzzing, bugs. Bugs especially in the summertime, you're always hearing bugs. I'm going through and everything just gets silent, totally silent.

• 35:07Speaker 05

  And I'm like, hmm, you know, and I get that weird feeling, you know, back home, going through the woods every now and then you just get that weird feeling. And you know, you gotta go home, like you, you gotta, like you gotta get out of the woods, you know? Like get out of the woods as quickly as possible. If that means going up to the road and walking along the road back home, do it. If that means going into the field and walking back up to home, do it. You know, you just gotta get out of the woods. Sometimes you just get that feeling.

• 35:35Speaker 05

  I'm down in there. Everything goes silent. I kind of get that feeling. Like, okay, so I start walking back up towards the field. And so that's what I'm doing. I'm going to hit the field and then go straight up the field because I don't want to be in the woods. I want to be out in the open. I don't like having the trees and the thick brush and stuff. Cause it makes me feel like something could sneak up on me. And at the time I was thinking bear. You know, and I, as I'm walking up, I heard a big, real loud dump.

• 36:04Speaker 05

  You know, and I didn't, I didn't really know. What that was, I don't know how to explain that. I thought maybe a bear, you know how bears will stand up on their back legs and then they'll sniff around. Like if they catch a wind of you or they catch wind of something, but they can't see you, they'll stand up on their hind legs and sniff. And then when they come back down, depending on what they smell, depending on how they're feeling, sometimes they thump real hard. And that's a, an aggression. Bears will send that aggression to kind of tell you to, hey, get out of here. So that's what, kind of what I was writing it off as. I start going up the field. And I can't shake this feeling and I'm being watched. And I can hear in the woods to my right, as I'm walking up the field.

• 36:48Speaker 05

  Just soft like movement through the leaves. You know, like something's moving through the leaves, but it's like trying to be silent almost is what it sounds like. And I'm like, dude, what is that? I get back up to the yard. And I'm at the edge of the yard now. So I feel really safe and we had a dog over there that was tied up to, to, uh, it's tied up to a chain. So it was one of those chains that allows it to run up and down the yard. So I'm like, okay, I'm here with the dog, the house is just, just right there. You know, it's super close. I could run up to it if I need to. Turn around and I start shooting the bullets. You know, like I mentioned earlier, it's easier to just shoot them and get rid of them. So I just started laying out all my bullets.

• 37:33Speaker 05

  Just off towards the pine barrens. And as soon as I'm done shooting all those bullets. Something in the woods goes crashing up the woods and not running away, not running towards me. But running up and down the woods. Because there's a tree line. You know, once you cross over the tree line, you're either in the field or you're in the yard. And whatever it was would not cross the tree line. It just goes.

• 38:00Speaker 05

  Up the woods, back down the woods, just up and down. And I'm like, no way. And I run up to the house. I get my parents, have them come outside. And they're listening to it. I'm like, what is that? And my dad's like making this face. He's like, super confused because a bear don't, like bears don't do that. Bears aren't afraid to show you, hey, I'm a bear. Like bears, bears will just appear. They'll just be like, hello. You know, like, or if they're afraid of you, they'll run away. You know, they're not, like a bear isn't trying to hide itself within the tree line. My dogs start going crazy. They're barking. After a minute of the dog barking, it goes and hides in its doghouse. And my dad's looking around and I'm like, dude. And we, we didn't ever see anything that time either.

• 38:46Speaker 05

  So whatever, whatever it is wants to remain hidden, I suppose. And I always, growing up, I wrote that off. He's a bear. That's what I wrote it off as, even though it just doesn't really line up. My family has been there since the seventeen hundreds, like not just in that town. But I mean, like in that patch of woods. There's an old foundation of a house way down in the holler. Like down from where we were camping from the original story. There's an old foundation of a house down there. And it's not like it has wooden boarding or anything like, no, like this is a house from seventeen something. This is a house from before people were legally allowed to settle in Appalachia. And it was still quote unquote, Indian territory.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  And it's just, all it is is just the stones that they stacked up to have as their foundation for their house. And you can go down there and you can metal detect and stuff and find little scrap pieces of metal from that period. And from later on, when people still lived in that one little spot. We've been there a super long time and it's still just woods. And down below my house, a little bit farther, like if you follow the creek that we were, or I should say stream, it was a really small stream. The little small stream that we were camping near, if you follow that down, you'll end up at a creek. And that section of the creek, real close to where I live, just a couple of miles away. That also, you know, my family used to live over there and up until, I don't know, about fifteen years ago.

• 40:13Speaker 05

  No one lived down there at all and it still has some of the only old growth timber in the county over there because it's where the creek cuts through the the mountains. It's so deep and so steep right there, like the hills are so steep that some of those hills, you can't, you could never get the logs out. So they, they never fooled with logging over there. And growing up, I used to, I would walk down to that creek to go swimming all the time. I would walk in, walk in there. And when I was growing up, I still remember at a really, really young age, nobody living down there. It's called a copper's hill. It's what it was originally called.

• 40:53Speaker 05

  Nobody lived down in there and it was one of the last like wild, wild places of our county with old growth timber. And I would walk down to the creek and we would swim and then we'd walk back home. And then probably when I was around eight or nine, they put a gated living home or gated community over there. And so there's like three or four log cabins down there now and they're really spread out away from each other. It's all dirt roads. But yeah, so now there's some people that live down there, but there's only like one or two people that live there um 24/7 year round. But I've always thought that whatever it is, as people settle the area,

• 41:32Speaker 05

  it kind of shrink its range into the old growth. And that's why it's, you know, over there. It's because of that old growth timber over there that hasn't been touched. Um, and there's caves over there too, that I found as a kid and old mines, old copper mines. So.

• 41:49Wes Germer?

  Sounds like a good environment for them for sure. Uh, kind of going back to your encounter for a moment, even a skeptic would have a hard time describing what natural animal came into your camp. I mean, if you don't believe in Bigfoot, a gorilla must have come in. What do you think Sasquatch is? What's your take?

• 42:10Speaker 05

  Man, it's really hard to say, cause I wanna just, cause the whole idea of Sasquatch, I think is really, like, that's like the most believable or the most, I don't know, um, it's, it's the one that just makes the most sense. No, or is like, yeah, like, that's possible, that, you know, North America has a, a large ape that is still undiscovered in some kind of way, who knows? But the idea of like feral people is, to me, is just like, that's just so far out, you know, I'm just like, I don't really see that, maybe somewhere like in West Virginia, really far out, but where I'm from, I just, I have a hard time believing that as much, but also at the same time, it's like, dude,

• 42:54Speaker 05

  I don't know how you explain it. And also at the same time, for me, it seems like whatever it is has, it's, it's more complex than like flesh and blood. That's what it seems like to me. And I have other experiences I could tell you about that, that kind of lend me to feel that way. One specifically about the Pine Barrens, but I, part of me is like, maybe it's some kind of Sasquatch type being, and I feel like maybe they have some kind of advanced spiritual powers or something. I have no idea, but there's just a lot of weird stuff that goes on out there.

• 43:28Wes Germer?

  Beyond Sasquatch, I mean, you're out there in the woods a lot. What's the weirdest thing you've come across?

• 43:34Speaker 05

  So, uh, that creek, a lot of times when it was snow, we didn't get a lot of snow. But, you know, once a year, we get maybe a foot, two feet of snow. That was a good snow for us. So one year we got two feet of snow. So I was in high school at the time, school's closed, nothing else to do, can't get to town. You know, I didn't live near town, I lived way out in the woods. So I go hiking down to the creek. Anytime it snowed, I loved going down there. There's one hill, there's a tallest hill in the area is around like thirty, three hundred feet. You get to the top of it and look around and just see everything covered in snow is beautiful. And then could hike down that hill all the way down to the creek. So I go down there and I'm looking at it, creek was always super beautiful in the snow. Uh, sometimes I'll try to fish it.

• 44:18Speaker 05

  So I go down there, I'm looking, and this is fresh, fresh snow, no tracks on it, just fell that morning. You know, it had just fallen over the night in the early morning hours, and this is like morning time as I'm hiking around. And I find this set of tracks that is coming out of the creek.

• 44:36Speaker 05

  Like coming straight out of this cold water creek, this pretty large creek. About the width of a road, maybe a width of the road and a half or so, you know, like three or four lanes of traffic width of the road. Pretty big creek. And these tracks are coming out of it. And they're spaced out because I'm, I'm really tall. And ever since even at that time, I was about six foot five or so. And so I can measure things with my stride. You know, my stride is around six feet or so, you know, I have a pretty long stride. Or I don't, I don't know if six feet, but I have a long stride, you know, so I can usually measure things against my stride. And this thing, even if I stand there, I've got super long legs. If I match my foot with the first track.

• 45:20Speaker 05

  And then stretch it out to the next one, I couldn't match this thing stride. It, it had a stride that way more than mine and is way taller than me. And the weirdest thing was is the tracks. So these tracks. Very similar like what I've heard of is the Jersey, Jersey Devil. You could do it with your hand right now, if you wanted to. You hold down your pinky finger with your thumb and you spread out your other three fingers, your pointer, your ring and your middle. You make like a three with it. It kind of was like that three pronged track. Except like the thumb, you hold the thumb out. And the back, right? So I had a three prong in the front and then one prong in the back. That was the track. And it was deep, like super deep in the snow.

• 46:05Speaker 05

  And the stride was like super far apart. And it just came straight out of the creek and went up the hill and I followed them for a ways. And it went all the way up into the woods and then just disappeared. The tracks just disappeared.

• 46:20Wes Germer?

  Was it like an extra toe?

• 46:22Speaker 05

  This thing at the back, it looked like it had another appendage. It had like three in the front, one in the back. And I, and that's a story I don't usually tell people because I'm like, people are just going to think I'm crazy, you know, but I mean, it's something I saw down there.

• 46:35Wes Germer?

  Yeah, that's really weird. The track sounds weird and then having it disappear in fresh snow is even weirder. You know, I wanted to ask you, out of all your time out there in the woods, people will report seeing these lights. A lot of times when people have Bigfoot on their property, they will say, and I'm also seeing these weird lights. But having said that, I've talked to a lot of people who've been out in the woods who haven't had a Sasquatch encounter, and they come across these weird balls of light. Out of all your years of being out there, have you ever seen these lights that people talk about?

• 47:13Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Then, and dude, the lights is another one that when it's like a UFO type light, it's easier to, I don't know, show people or like share with people because people are more open to it, right? They're like, oh, you saw a UFO? No way. I hope I get to see one. But like I've seen, I've only once in my life, I've seen an orb, which was just like insane. I literally just saw an orb. It started about 20 feet away from me. And it just, it had a, it was yellow. It looked like it was the like eight foot diameter, big orb, and it just floated through the sky, made like a little wispy kind of movement, and then disappeared. And it had a tail, too.

• 47:57Speaker 05

  It's just one of those things. You just don't tell people. That's one, that's one thing that I'm like, I never tell people about because they're just gonna think I'm crazy. But I literally saw an orb. And that was one thing that after seeing it, I felt very upset because I was like, that was amazing. That was crazy. I want to tell everyone, but I just feel like I can't. That's another like thing I'm cursed with. And I had another experience down below the house. So I mentioned the backyard of my house, meeting with that backfield. So we had a little burn barrel down there, you know, and back home in the country, you don't take your cardboard and all that stuff to the dump. You burn that stuff because they weigh everything you take to the

• 48:41Speaker 05

  dump. So if you could burn it, you could save a little bit of money. So that's what we would do. And a lot of times when we had a lot of cardboard saved up that we needed to burn, I would call over my buddies. This is in high school. And they'd come over and we would hang out down at the burn barrel and have a little bonfire. We'd burn the cardboard, but we'd also burn some wood and just hang out. So I have my buddies over. And I've got some buddies over at that that night in particular that never go outside. Like they just weren't outdoorsy people. They lived in town. They were townies. And they just didn't, you know, hike and do all that stuff. So we're hanging out. And we see off in the sky, this crazy looking like orange light.

• 49:22Speaker 05

  It looks like a lantern almost. Like you know, those um, those lanterns that people light and they just let it fly away, the paper lantern? So it kind of looked like that, except it was almost like too big. And then also the movement of it was crazy because those things will go up and then they'll go along. So this thing is like, it's kind of floating around and then it starts zipping, goes up, then goes over, shoot, super fast, down, super fast, sharp, like ninety degree turns. We're like, dude, what is that? You know, like, what, what is that thing? And it's yellow and then it starts to turn red, like a slow shifting of colors to red. And then it turns back to yellow. And then, as we're looking at it and we're talking about it,

• 50:08Speaker 05

  it, and it was pretty large, it kind of like sucks in. That's the only way I could describe it. It looked like it literally was like sucked into a wormhole or something. Like it was like, like that, like that's the sound it would have made was like that. And it goes and just shrinks until it disappears and then it blinks, like this white light blinked. Like twice, boop, boop, and then it was gone, completely gone. And we were like, dude, you know, like, like, no way, like, what was that, you know?

• 50:42Speaker 05

  I don't know. It was too big to be like a drone. It didn't have like the drone lights on it. It had this like, it literally had like this big, large, yellow look to it. And right after, it shrank and disappeared off to the left of us. You remember the story earlier about the thing that wouldn't come out of the tree line? Off to the left of us, we hear this crazy noise, like

• 51:09Speaker 05

  like this roar. Dude, I'm not kidding. Heard a roar off in the woods and then busting up and down the woods. And we all look at each other and we're like, oh dude. And we just throw our water on the fire and we ran up to the house. We all ran up to the house and went inside the room and hidden there. And what's so crazy to me is like, I, I understand it because I've done it too. But my friends that don't spend any time outdoors or don't spend a lot of time outdoors, I shouldn't say no, no time outdoors, but they don't spend a lot of time outdoors. They all go, dude, that was crazy. Like, we saw that UFO thing and then we heard that cow. And I was like, there are no cows over there. And they're like, well, somebody's cow must got loose. I was like,

• 51:51Speaker 05

  even if somebody's cow got loose, that's not what a cow sounds like because my father has cows, my grandfather has cows, been around cows, not what a cow sounds like. And then B, no cow in, in this country would ever go down that holler. They got no reason to go down that hole. There's no food for them down there. Like cows go into woods sometimes, but it's mostly just to get to another field, you know, and they wouldn't have gone over there. I know the proximity to that area and where a cow could have escaped from and where he couldn't have escaped from. And there's no way a cow would escape from those areas and then go into that holler. No way. You know, it's just, they wouldn't do it.

• 52:32Speaker 05

  And on top of that, that's not what a freaking cow sounds like. And then on top of that, cows don't move that quick. I mean, this thing was like busting through the woods. And my friends still are just like, no, it just had to be a cow. And me and my buddy Sam from the other story, we're sitting there like, dude, that, that was not a, we're like, dude, that was not a cow. That was something freaking whooping and roaring in the woods, right after we just saw a freaking UFO get like sucked into the hyperspace.

• 53:02Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I've seen the lights on two occasions. I would say the average size is from a baseball to a soccer ball, but I have taken, gosh, over the last 10 years, many reports of these lights. And, and even from eyewitnesses that describe a larger ball of light, kind of like what you're talking about, Ian. What's your take on those lights? What do you think that they are?

• 53:26Speaker 05

  I don't know, man. I, I go back and forth on it. I look into it a lot where part of me thinks is, um, you know, people talk about like secret technology, maybe, you know, and I, so I was guiding in New Mexico, you know, New Mexico is a UFO hotspot. Um, there were nights when I was out there midnight, one in the morning, packing elk out, walking through, you know, miles of that country with an elk on my back, you know, like, or pieces of an elk on my back, just trying to get it back to camp, you know, and you would think at that moment, I'd be afraid. You think at that moment, I'd see a light or something, but the area that we were in, never saw anything.

• 54:07Speaker 05

  I never saw anything, never felt weirded out, freaked out by the woods out there. It's comfortable, happy as could be. I was literally stalked by a cougar one night out there, literally saw it. I mean, something that I saw with my eyes stalking me in the middle of the night. And I still, to this day, will go out there in the middle of the night and feel less fear than if I were to walk down to where I'm, you know, this place that I grew up right next to and I'm describing to you. And the lights, man, I don't, I don't know. Cause like out there in New Mexico, I never really saw that many lights. I've never really seen anything. I can't think of anything that I saw in New Mexico. I lived there for two falls and two winters, never experienced anything crazy

• 54:50Speaker 05

  out there. I don't know. Some people say it's like secret technology. And to me, it's like, maybe, some people try to say it's aliens. Um, to me, it's like, maybe, I don't know. I've got no idea. I think the idea that it's secret technology is probably a better idea. I've heard the theory that. They're gonna try to say like aliens are invading or whatever and then basically declare ultimate martial law over the entire world, you know, and maybe that's it. Who knows? I got no idea. But personally, I just don't really think about it a whole lot. I, and what's strange is like my whole career has fallen, followed this vein of curiosity. Like, I love the woods, love spending time outdoors. I've always been curious about these

• 55:35Speaker 05

  things. And you hear the story of the hunting guide that saw this or saw that. You hear the story of the fisherman, the experience this, experience that, whatever. So I've always heard that growing up and thought, man, like, I want to get to the bottom of this. Like, I want to experience that. Like, there's no way that's real. And I, but I want to see it if it is real. So, and I love the outdoors. And so I got into the outdoor industry, you know, and now I'm at this point where I'm like, okay, I've experienced things and I can't describe them, or I can't write them off, you know, and I've experienced things outside of Apalachia as well. And I can't write them, write them off. And then I've

• 56:18Speaker 05

  also met people who've experienced things and told me wild stories from all over the country. And, and now I'm kind of like, I feel like cursed a little bit. Like, I keep saying that you're cursed with this story, or you're cursed with this experience, because there's a lot of people that aren't going to believe you. But it happened. And you know, in your heart, it's real, you know, and, and even me growing up, when I was interested in Bigfoot, I was still skeptical. I'd hear people's stories and I'd go, wow, that's interesting. I don't know if I buy it. You know, and, and now I'm on the other end.

• 56:51Wes Germer?

  Yeah, well, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your experience. Ian, the lights are a mystery, man. I, you know, I wish I had a great answer for what they are. It is kind of interesting, though, that you saw the light blink out and then heard the vocalization from the wood line. That's very interesting. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and share what happened to you. I really enjoyed chatting with you, Ian.

• 57:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. Thank you. I appreciate you having me on. Out of curiosity, would you care if I linked like my Substack for people to find if they wanted to find it? Is that something that you do? If not, it's okay.

• 57:34Wes Germer?

  No, I don't mind at all. What's your Substack?

• 57:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, if people are interested in hearing what I'm doing or keeping up to date with me, if I have any more crazy experiences, I'm probably gonna call you or email you and hit you up again. But if people want to keep up with just my travels and everything, and then I put stories like this on my Substack as well. I also have a written out version of this of the tale on my Substack too, if people want to go find that. But my Substack is called Stretch Times. And it's just on substack.com, but it's called Stretch Times. Kind of like the New York Times, except Stretch, which is my guy nickname.

• 58:14Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I'll include a link underneath the show Stretch Times and people can go check it out. Thank you again, Ian, for coming on.

• 58:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, thank you. Wes is awesome. It's really cool to be a part of the show. I'm a longtime listener, so it's really awesome. Thank you.

• 58:31Wes Germer?

  Thanks, brother. And that's it for tonight, everyone. Remember, if you've had an encounter, shoot me an email. My email address is [email protected]. And if you get a chance, check out sasquatchchronicles.com. You can become a member and get additional shows. Have a great weekend, everyone.

• 59:39Speaker 06

  Mindlessly drinking, not tasting, just thinking

• 59:47Speaker 06

  About limitless infinite life She is my thunder No wonder I'm going under The intoxicating danger I like Save me from myself, let me drown in my black lake Let me float away Save me from myself, let me drown in my black lake

• 1:00:26Speaker 06

  Beauty is a black lake, let me sail away

• 1:00:38Speaker 06

  Beauty is a black lake, let me sail away Yeah, yeah, yeah

• 1:01:14Speaker 06

  Darkness approaches

• 1:01:17Speaker 06

  Deep water keeps flowing It inhales me in stormy tide Endless emotion A dark blue devotion An epiphany bring the shore to life Save me from myself, let me drown in my bad day Let me float away Save me from myself, let me drown in my bad day

• 1:01:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah

• 1:02:01Speaker 06

  Beauty is a blinding, let me sail away

• 1:02:13Speaker 06

  Beauty is a blinding, let me sail away Yeah, yeah, yeah