SC EP:1222 The Fort Lewis Training Incident

We will be speaking to Adam. Adam had two encounters in WA state, one when he was with his father and many years later while he was stationed on Fort Lewis. Adam describes being on Fort Lewis and during a training exercise catching glimpses of two creatures. Prior to seeing them they were screamed at from two different directions. Adam said everyone climbed into their Stryker (Eight-wheeled armored fighting vehicles). Something came up to the vehicle.

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  On a late November night in 2012, while driving in the foothills of Washington, two brothers were surrounded by mysterious creatures. Still haunted and forever changed, these men took to the internet, creating a forum for others. If you've had an encounter, and no one else can help, maybe you can contact Sasquatch Chronicles.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind, and it either heard me or smelled me, and he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up, and that shocked me.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  They don't make people that big.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  The way it moved, almost as if it was gliding across the beach.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  I've never seen anything move like that in my life.

• 1:14Speaker 02

  They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language, and they were chuntering away, back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards.

• 1:26Speaker 02

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

• 1:41Speaker 03

  911, what are you reporting? Jesus Christ, you better... Karen? See ya! Hello? Get somebody out 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-uh.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Robert from England. You're about to listen to the greatest podcast on the planet. So grab a cup of tea, sit back, and prepare to be entertained by Sasquatch Chronicles.

• 2:37Wes Germer?

  Welcome to the show. Tonight, we'll be speaking with Adam. Adam had two encounters in Washington State. One was with his father, and then many years later, he was stationed at Fort Lewis, and he had an encounter while doing training exercises. I'll let Adam go into it. I'm also working on a special project for the show and for the website, and I'm hoping to reveal it to the listeners in about a month or so. I watched the sun go down last night, and I watched it come up this morning, and it's gonna be a cool project, though. I hope you guys really enjoy it, and I'm sorry to be so vague, but I think you guys are really gonna like this.

• 3:20Wes Germer?

  And again, I'm hoping to kind of unveil the whole thing in about a month. I received this strange piece of audio from a listener in Virginia. He writes, "I'm a longtime listener, and a friend recently asked me to reach out to you about some unusual sounds they've been hearing. They also took photos of what they believe may be a bedding. It looked like something very large had laid down. To me, some of it kind of resembles deer beds, but one of the impressions does seem unusually large. You previously did an interview with a man just northwest of me. It was the episode titled, 'What's a Gorilla Doing in Virginia?

• 4:04Wes Germer?

  Where that gentleman had an encounter is very near to me.'" And I put these videos up on the blog, but let's take a listen to the first audio clip he sent me, and I'm curious to know what you think it might be.

• 4:30Speaker 06

  It's not a dog.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  Not a dog.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  He's coming up the valley.

• 4:49Wes Germer?

  Here is the second clip from another night.

• 5:41Wes Germer?

  Chat GPT analyzed this and it said it was an owl.

• 5:48Wes Germer?

  Okay, thanks for your input Chat GPT. But I'm curious to know what you guys think. Leave your comments below this episode. 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 Adam to the show. Adam, thanks for coming on. No problem. Yeah, and first off, I want to thank you for your service to our country. Uh, you know, as civilians, I think we we get to run our mouths and write checks and you guys have to go cash them.

• 6:35Wes Germer?

  But I really appreciate your service to the country.

• 6:38Speaker 07

  Uh, thank you for your support. That's what I, uh, that's what I always tell people is when they say thank you, I just say thank you for your support. It's paying for my school and has afforded me a decent life after the military. So I appreciate it.

• 6:52Wes Germer?

  Well, that's the least a country could do for you, ma'am. And I know you had two encounters, both in Washington state. The very first one was actually with your dad. And this was what in the early 2000s?

• 7:06Speaker 07

  Yes, that was summertime of 2006. Uh, along the Nisqually River, just outside of JBLM, uh, Fort Lewis, the military base over there. Uh, just outside of their training areas. So they have a giant swath of woods and right at the border of it. There's the, uh, the river that leads out into the Puget Sound.

• 7:28Wes Germer?

  Well, if you would, would you kind of start from the very beginning? What were you guys doing and what happened?

• 7:35Speaker 07

  Yeah. So we had just moved to Washington and my dad wanted to get into fishing and, uh, outdoor activity. So we bought these, uh, fishing waders and he wanted to go try them out in the river to go fish. So just outside of the base, along Yelm Highway Southeast, there's a yellow bridge that goes across in the Squala River. And we would use that as a landmark. So we parked just outside the bridge and hiked maybe like half a mile down the Squali River. And he was in the river and I was in a rock bed, just like trying to skip rocks, throw sticks, play with grass, just sit there.

• 8:16Speaker 07

  I'm more so, I really didn't want to be out there when I was younger, uh, cause I just didn't want to be out in the woods. It kind of freaked me out a little bit at first. So he's out there fishing. I'm sitting on the river bank. There's sagebrush, tall grass and those evergreen trees behind me. I keep hearing like stuff move and I'm thinking it's just like the sound of the forest, a squirrel, a bird, or like the wind pushing stuff around. I keep hearing it over and over and over. So I look behind me and you know how like the rocks are kind of like mossy or the sides will have moss on them?

• 8:56Speaker 07

  And I see what look looks like a bush or like a like looks like foliage? And I'm looking past it and I can see that it's like swaying or like moving a little bit like breathing. And I'm just staring at it like looking like intently and I'm trying to see what exactly it is. And eventually I see like this, this eye and the, the pupil. The best way like I could describe it is like, it was like the size of a dollar coin. And then the, the white part of the eye was like, kind of like bloodshot red, like red, but not like glowing red.

• 9:36Speaker 07

  It was like when somebody is dehydrated or really tired type of red eyes. And I saw it and it freaked me out. I didn't know what it was. Sasquatch wasn't even a thing that I knew about at the time when I was younger. Cause I was new to the area. I was like maybe nine years old. And as soon as I saw it, I freaked out because I knew it was an eye. And I yelled out to my dad. I was like, dad, we gotta go, we gotta leave. He ended up coming out of the river and then we hiked back to where the truck was about a half mile. I remember I was like freaked out the entire time. And that, that's the best way I can describe it. It was just like a body just breathing in the bushes.

• 10:19Speaker 07

  And then I saw a giant eye looking at me. And I, I know it's like, I sound nervous or anything right now, but

• 10:29Speaker 07

  that, I mean, that's the best way I could describe that incident. And then when we turned back, it was just, it wasn't there anymore. He didn't, uh, he didn't see it or hear it at all. He wasn't like annoyed with me. He was just, he could tell something had really bothered me. I told him I saw an eye and he told me it was probably an animal. And I, I was like, I think it's an animal too. But it was, I didn't realize or have a suspicion of what it was until like later on. Like after learning about Sasquatch and then my other encounter I had near there.

• 11:05Wes Germer?

  The area where you guys were at is notorious for sightings, especially near the Nisqually River. Many, many, many reports come out of there. And Yelm, Washington actually has a long history. And I'm not just talking about inside Yelm, but around Yelm has a very long history of encounters. I think the BFRO reports go back to the late 60s, but you can look up newspaper articles that from the turn of the century of people seeing the wild man or the hairy man through that area. And even up until this day, and it doesn't really shock me, you didn't get a good look at it.

• 11:47Wes Germer?

  Cause through that whole area is very dense brush. It's very thick through there. Tell me about this other incident that you had. Where were you at? What were you doing? And how much later is this?

• 12:01Speaker 07

  So it was about 11 years later. Back in 2018, I was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, the same base that my dad was at. And we were leaving Fort Lewis through the training areas to get to a mock village. It's like a open field with like, like a container village that we would use to like train, like room clearing and just war games. So we're driving out there and our whole goal was to stand out in this field and just be props for the Cav Scouts training. So the Cav Scouts, they would go out and they would,

• 12:44Speaker 07

  their whole job was to observe combatants or infantry out in the field and not be seen. That's the whole role of a Cav Scout. They're kind of like reconnaissance. And so our job was just to stand out there, do whatever we want to do. They come up, they observe us and they're getting like evaluated on their performance for observing us. We were allowed to basically do whatever we want, you know, hang out, play cards, smoke cigarettes, talk, cook food if we wanted, or we had MREs, but just hang out. It was basically like a glorified camping trip for us. And it was about a one, it was only going to take one night.

• 13:22Speaker 07

  When we were leaving the training areas, we ended up crossing that same exact bridge because it's one of the only bridges that you can cross with our strikers. Which is like an eight wheeled armored personnel carrier. So we end up crossing the same yellow bridge that I would go fishing with my dad. We would end up fishing there a lot uh throughout my childhood, even camp along there. I just chalked up that first incident to like, it was probably an animal staring at me. But it was, I mean, it was big and it was like, most animals out in Pacific Northwest aren't gonna sit there and look at you. They're more skittish of you than. They're more scared of you than they are curious of you. So we, we crossed the river. I can see the same exact spot where me and my dad would go fishing.

• 14:06Speaker 07

  And after we crossed the bridge, we end up passing Yelm Highway. And that leads into more training areas out there. So we, we pull up, it's still daylight out. And we're just, you know, kinda just getting set up. Getting MREs ready, playing cards, smoking cigarettes. Just talking crap to each other. And then the sun goes down and that's really when we kinda really had to be like out in the field standing around. So the Cav Scouts could use their infrared devices to view us. So we're just standing there talking. And then to the east, towards the Nisqually River, we hear like a loud scream.

• 14:50Speaker 07

  And I don't know if you've heard the Elk Meadows scream from nineteen eighty-six, but it's, it sounds like.

• 14:59Speaker 07

  It's it sounded like it was kinda far away, maybe like a few hundred meters. I mean, it was close to the river. I mean, it came from that direction. So, I mean, that's maybe a thousand meters. But you could, I could tell that it was far away. But the way like it hit, like it felt like it hit you in the core. Like it was, it was like. And I knew exactly what it was when I heard it because I had been listening to recordings in the past. And I was like, that's, that's freaking, like I told all my buddies. There was me, Norman Proctor Rosario and Lieutenant O'Connor. So about five of us.

• 15:42Speaker 07

  We, I instantly, I was like, that's Sasquatch. Uh, excuse the language. But I'm like, that's Sasquatch. And they're like, no, no way. And I'm like, yeah, dude. I'm like, that's Sasquatch. Like I know, I've heard that scream in recordings in the past. Like, that has to be. After about a few minutes, we're sitting there talking again about like what happened and they're shrugging it off. Really, it's probably an animal, but like I'm freaked out. Then we hear out to the west. And everybody gets dead silent. So like now there's like two of them. So there's one to the west and one to the east. The one we heard from the west was a little bit closer than the one that we initially heard from the east.

• 16:22Speaker 07

  It was, it was, I have, like growing up, I was curious about Sasquatch. And I was like, yeah, it'd be cool to see one or hear one. But when I heard that scream, my, like my first reaction was like, kind of like fear. More so fear and like shocked. I didn't expect to hear that out there. Uh, I, I, I always believed that they're out there, but I did not expect that I would ever hear one.

• 16:49Wes Germer?

  Yeah, that Elk Meadow scream is, is a notorious scream. Uh, it's a very famous scream and it's always in Bigfoot movies and that sort of thing. Um, and I don't have the one from 1986, but I do have the one from 1973. And for about 30 years of this went on, in fact, up until this day, people still hear this. Uh, but for the audience who doesn't know what the Elk Meadow scream is, uh, let's take a listen.

• 17:32Wes Germer?

  Yeah, that would get my attention really quick. Forgive me for cutting in. So what kind of happens next?

• 17:40Speaker 07

  So we hear both of them and we're hanging out on the back of the striker and like we're just like dead quiet. We have our night vision with us, but there was no moon out that night. And a lot of people think that night vision, like it automatically makes you able to see everything at nighttime. But it relies very heavily on starlight and moonlight. So loom, it takes that light and amplifies it basically. But since it was pretty dark and our night vision was pretty old at the time, pretty beat up. It had been through multiple hands and you're supposed to baby these devices, but most guys abuse them. They throw them on the ground. They throw them in pouches. They fall on their gear like they get abused. They're scratched up.

• 18:23Speaker 07

  So all we can really see is like a, it kind of looks like a static UTV with like a black background. We could make out the, the grass in the field that we were in. And by the way, the field was about a thousand meters north and south and 500 meters east to west. So it was kind of, it was more like oval diamond shaped. So we were standing out there kind of like seeing what we can see at nighttime. But we're still like in a training environment. So we just can't start flashing flashlights. Like the Cav Scouts are supposed to be able to find us on our own. So we can't, we can't use flashlights. We can't even use red light and the red light wouldn't reach that far anyways.

• 19:05Speaker 07

  So the tree line looks pitch black with static and the grassy field is semi-clear. My buddy Proctor, he's like looking around and he's probably the only other one that would believe that it was Sasquatch. Cause he was very open about being pagan. So he, I mean, he was open to like ideas of like supernatural or cryptids, all of that. So he's looking around with his night vision and he says he sees something moving out there. He's like, I see, I see something to the south of us, uh, kind of moving, uh, like getting closer to us. So it stepped out from the southern end. This, this creature, this, what I believe was Sasquatch, stepped out from the southern end of the field into the,

• 19:50Speaker 07

  out into the open a little bit, and then walked, uh, west to east. And we could see the, the backdrop of the creature against the trees was hard to see, but we could see two legs moving. And I mean, it was moving, it's 500 yards and it's walking casually and it crossed from west to east in like a matter of like 10 seconds. Like not that far. I don't know if it was running. We, we couldn't hear it at all, but we could see it. So we see like the, the black legs moving across the grassy field. Then we see it get up next to another dark silhouette, kind of like a, kind of like a hump.

• 20:32Speaker 07

  The best way I can describe, like the top of it, and then the, the legs were very similar to the one that traveled east to west. And then they passed on into, towards the river. And once we saw that, we were like, let's get inside the striker and just lock it up. Like, we're not gonna, we're not gonna mess with this. We don't like know what that is. And by the first one, the first time we heard the scream, everybody was like, kind of casual about it. Like, oh, it's the Cav Scouts messing with us. And I was like, there's no way, like, how would they make that sound? And they don't have like speakers or anything like that, that could make a sound, sound that far away, but like that punchy

• 21:14Speaker 07

  at the same time. And the fact that there was two screams, one to the west of us and one to the east of us. So everybody's pretty freaked out by the second scream and then even more freaked out when we see something walking across the field. So we get inside the striker and you're able to combat lock it. So if you close the door and you turn the handle and, and stick a notch in it, it's combat locked, meaning nobody can open it from the outside. Uh, we, these strikers, they have turrets on them that have infrared cameras. And the thing was, is our striker was a really old one. And since it was only being used to transport us out there. It, it's digital imaging system. It's my task. That's what it's called was, uh,

• 21:58Speaker 07

  pulled off of it and used on a, on a striker that was in better condition, uh, engine wise. So we're basically blind out there. All we, the only way we could see out of there is if we opened up a hatch on the top and then looked out with night vision, which wasn't very good that night. Or if we look through the periscopes, which are hazy, scratched up and it's dark out. So we're in there. We're not really sleeping. We're just sitting in there and we can, we can feel

• 22:24Speaker 07

  something like moving up against the striker, like scratching it, like, kind of like running, almost like it's running its nails. And then kind of like pushing it. We like the suspension is like moving ever so slightly. It's a twenty thousand, twenty ton. Yeah, it's a twenty ton vehicle. So like, it's not light. But if you push up against it, the suspension will give a little bit. We, so we hear like, maybe over the span of like fifteen, twenty minutes, we hear just something moving around, moving its hand across it, touching stuff. I don't think they know what like a door handle was of like, no, nothing was, you know, trying to like open the hatch and get in, but they were like curious about like what this saying is or who we are.

• 23:10Speaker 07

  And I'm sure that they've seen soldiers out there and they've seen like vehicles out there in the past. And but when daylight breaks, we, we open up the hatches and get the engine, get the striker ready to roll. And then we get out and we walk around the striker. And there's, we're like looking for footprints. But mind you, we've been like walking around the striker like all day and then most of that night. And it was summertime, so the ground is very dry, like Washington state during the summertime isn't like a lush, wet land. It's extremely dry. It's like not, I won't say desert level dry, but there's no moisture out there. And the area we're in was a little bit sandy, just from the dry foliage and the dirt.

• 23:55Speaker 07

  So we couldn't see any tracks or anything. And, uh, so.

• 24:01Speaker 07

  We look around and we decide like we can't see anything, but we know like something was moving up against the striker. It wouldn't be the Cav Scouts because their job wasn't to approach us or come up to our vehicle. Their job was to observe us from a far distance.

• 24:18Speaker 07

  So we, I'm sorry, I'm like stuttering a lot.

• 24:22Speaker 06

  There you go.

• 24:22Speaker 07

  A little nervous.

• 24:24Speaker 06

  You're good.

• 24:24Speaker 07

  So. Once the, uh, once we turn over the striker, the vehicle, we start driving back to base and like nobody's saying anything because everybody's freaked out. I'm convinced it was Sasquatch. The other guys, they either they weren't convinced or they want to admit that they were convinced. A lot of them, some of them weren't from areas like the Pacific Northwest. Uh, Proctor, he was from Colorado, so I'm sure he's heard stories. Uh, Rosario, my buddy, who was also out there, he was from New Jersey. Uh, Camden, New Jersey. So I mean, there's no woods around him. Norman was from Illinois, like, uh, Cornfield, Illinois.

• 25:04Speaker 07

  Uh, I don't think he believed in Sasquatch. And then our LT, the officer that was with us, I don't remember exactly where he's from. But nobody would admit that it was Sasquatch. And I was telling everybody, I was like, that's, we heard Sasquatch that night. That was Sasquatch. Definitely. So we get back to, uh, so we, we start moving, we start moving back to base. Nobody's saying anything about it. Except me, because I'm, I'm so like excited and kind of shocked that I experienced that. We get back to base and it turns out that we drove up to the wrong spot, the wrong mock village that we were supposed to stage out, the, the wrong field we were supposed to be in. So the Cav Scouts.

• 25:48Speaker 07

  They never even found us that night. We were off by like five miles from where we were supposed to be. And we're unloading the striker, cleaning it up and our LT that was with us is getting chewed at, yelled at, because we basically wasted an entire day. Uh, for the Cav Scouts evaluation. Uh, I know I sound a little nervous right now because I'm not used to doing interviews about it, but. It was very bizarre. I believe it was Sasquatch that we saw and heard out there. And to this day, it kind of creeps me out. Initially, the first few years after this, I would listen to Sasquatch screams and it would make my hair stand up because I was, I mean,

• 26:31Speaker 07

  like, that's exactly what I heard out there. Now, when I listen to it, I'm a little less freaked out. I don't think Sasquatch out there is like aggressive. I think they're just curious. And that area that we're in leads off into the Mount Rainier Cascades area with very few homes and towns in between. They, I mean, I think they use the Nisqually River as a way to navigate up and down from like Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens area. And I think they use it for, you know, the same reason humans would use it for fishing and drinking water and hunting. I mean, there's a lot of wildlife out there, like deers, coyotes, elk, bear.

• 27:16Speaker 07

  You know, who knows what they eat? I believe they're cannibals. But I'm, I'm not, like, I was surprised when I heard it, but I'm not like surprised that that it really happened in that area, like, at all.

• 27:31Wes Germer?

  Yeah, and there's no reason to be nervous too, man. Nothing exciting is gonna happen here. No one's getting waterboarded. There's, it's not an interrogation. So there's really no reason to be nervous. I almost kind of think I know the general area of where you guys were. I just talked to another veteran. I almost want to say it was exactly where you guys were at, that general area. And he had actually got off track too, or his group did during a training exercise. And they had experiences out there. I would imagine in that moment you had with your dad many years before, kind of came back into your mind after this incident.

• 28:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly. Like, I remember since then, in that, in that exact moment, I wasn't thinking so much about that incident from 2006, but I was after the fact, like, thinking about, like, oh, yeah, we used to go fishing out there, we used to camp, and I had that weird encounter, or that weird, I, I feel like, almost, like, I don't want to call it a sighting, because I don't know exactly what I saw, but I had, like, a weird moment out there with something staring at me from the tree line behind bushes and grass and stuff. And since then, like, I've thought about it, I was like, that was, I'm like, the fact that I heard screams out there, like, 11

• 28:54Speaker 07

  years later, and then that incident happened, like, I think they're connected. Uh, I don't know if, like, it's the same one, or same group of them, uh, cause that area, like, it's, it's very wooded, it's very, like, foresty, and pretty thick, but I mean, there is, like, small towns like Young that you have to get through, Roy, and then, like, some roads that would have to be crossed to get up there, but it is, there, there's not a whole lot of people in between Fort Lewis and, uh, Mount Washington Cascade area.

• 29:29Wes Germer?

  Yeah, that area through there, if you wanted to vanish from society and have no one find you, that's exactly where I would go, cause no one would ever find you there. And there is a lot of encounters that go on there, not only near Fort Lewis, but as you get closer to Mount Rainier, and Mount Rainier is weird, there's a lot of weird stuff that goes on there. But yeah, if you wanted to vanish, that would be the place to go. You know, I was thinking about that Elk Meadow scream, and I've heard many different versions of that here in Washington anyway, uh, because it's been going on for so many years. The weird thing about that vocalization, I can't say that I have one from almost any other state.

• 30:15Wes Germer?

  I guess maybe California, but that particular vocalization really is something here in Washington. And I've heard many different versions of recordings of that. It's very, very close to that. And it's such a strange vocalization. And that Striker vehicle you guys are using, if my memory is right, it's basically like a big armored personnel carrier, isn't it?

• 30:43Speaker 07

  Correct.

• 30:44Wes Germer?

  It's basically like a tank without its turret. When it was scratching on that thing and you guys were all inside of it. Why do you, why do you think no one got out? I mean, I wouldn't have gotten out, but why do you think no one got out?

• 30:59Speaker 07

  We didn't have weapons at all with us. We had, well, we didn't have live ammunition rather. We had our M4s with us because they always wanted us to be with our rifles. And some of us had like knives, but they were like multi-tools, like three inch blades. Nobody wanted to get out because we didn't know what it was. And the fact that it was kind of like moving, like, like not like rocking a car, like when a group of people rock a car and it rocks violently. But more like rocking, like you're on a, like a big boat and it's like slowly swaying back and forth. I don't know if it was because it was like pushing it on purpose or if it was leaning up against it. But it was, it was like moving its hand across and these vehicles, they're not like steel through and through.

• 31:43Speaker 07

  What they are is like they're Kevlar plating, like, like, kind of like really, really compressed fabric plating that you can bolt onto the side of the vehicle. And then underneath that, there's like a sin layer of steel. And then on the interior, there's like another portion of that Kevlar plating. So, I mean, you can, you can hear, like, if you're inside that thing and people are talking outside, you can hear what's going on outside. The seals around the hatch, patches aren't like airtight either, like they're supposed to be. So, I mean, if water can seep through that, then I'm sure that attributes to like being able to hear out there. But, I mean, you can, you can tell when something's moving across it.

• 32:24Speaker 07

  And I think, yeah, nobody wanted to get out because, I mean, we didn't have weapons and we didn't know what it was. And if we would have gotten out, we would have been completely blind to what was around the vehicle until we were already outside of it. Yeah, we felt pretty safe in there. Like nothing's getting inside those things if you combat lock them.

• 32:42Wes Germer?

  I get it. I wouldn't have gotten out either. I know a few Marines that would have gotten out, but they're a little crazy. So, and God bless them. I'm just joking, man. I, you know, I wouldn't have gotten out either. I'd been right there with you guys, been like, screw this. And you know, their behavior of screaming back and forth to each other, and then actually coming down to that Striker vehicle and touching it, pushing it. And, you know, I'm a pretty big, strong guy. I don't know that I could rock one of those Striker vehicles.

• 33:16Speaker 07

  Yeah. I mean, there, maybe since it was taller, it had more leverage to be able to, to move it. I mean, like, it wasn't like moving, it was maybe moving like side to side by an inch, but you could feel like something like pushing up against it. And I've heard stories of them, like walking up to people's tents and like touching the outside of tents. I've done a lot of camping out there. I've never experienced that. Thankfully, that would have, that would freak me out. That would probably keep me outside of the woods for a while, if I heard that. But this, I mean, yeah, it was pretty freaky. And it's kind of a bummer that we didn't get to see like

• 33:57Speaker 07

  an entire silhouette body. It was more so like just being able to see the legs in the, in the grass. Cause under night vision, that comes up a lot lighter than tree foliage. And then like, imagine like during the daytime, but you know how during the daytime in the Pacific Northwest, there can be tree foil or tree, groups of trees that are so close together and so sick that the sun can't even get through them. Like they're almost, I won't say pitch black, but it looks like nighttime in there during the day, just because it's blocking out the sun. So like, imagine at nighttime, like, and there's barely any moonlight. So, I mean, the only very little amount of moonlight that could

• 34:40Speaker 07

  It's hard to explain. I'm sorry, dude.

• 34:42Wes Germer?

  Yeah, no, you don't have to explain it. I completely get it. I have a night vision camera. And mine has an IR light that I can press to kind of light everything up. But without that, and the starlight, that's the reason why you could actually see the legs in the grass as it was running by because there's no obstruction. And a lot of times the grass will reflect light. So you'll be able to see about a foot up from the grass. I know exactly why you weren't able to see the whole thing. And I've experienced that with my, and mine's not even military. But I've experienced that before to where you can kind of see in the grass, but if you go into the wood line, good luck, you're not gonna, without an IR light, you're not going to be able to see anything.

• 35:27Wes Germer?

  You know, after all this happened, did you and your friends ever talk about this again?

• 35:33Speaker 07

  Uh, we would, like amongst ourselves. Uh, we never really told anybody like higher about it. Uh, I mean, we would chit chat about like weird stuff we've seen all the time. But never like, oh, like an official, uh, report or anything like that. Uh, if we did, I mean, if you, I mean, in the infantry, there's a, there's a ton of weird dudes that say weird stuff all the time. But if you kept talking about it, they would, I mean, you'd get written off as like a crazy dude. Especially if, uh, the, the LT that we were with, or platoon leader, if he told his, his commander, which was company commander, or further up, the fact that he's like saying like stuff that most people would believe to be like crazy.

• 36:18Speaker 07

  It would be worse for him. For us lower enlisted guys, we'd just be written off as like, all right, dude, you're weird. But for officers, it'd be like more of an issue. Uh, but, so like, the, the military, a lot of people don't think about like how, like the places we go within the United States are pretty desolate. And they kind of have to be so that we have room to do our training with all our vehicles and, um, like artillery and helicopters, like all that kind of stuff. So I mean, the places we go to sometimes, not the Fort Lewis area, but in other parts of the country are the size of like East Coast states. Really, uh, like the Mojave Desert over in uh, NTC Fort Irwin area. I mean, that it's a massive place. There's nobody out there. Same with Twenty Nine Palms.

• 37:02Speaker 07

  Uh, Hawaii has thick jungle. I don't believe Sasquatch is in Hawaii, but just like as an example, like the the military is full of like weird stories of paranormal or Sasquatch. I mean, I know that there are a ton of stories from soldiers from the Fort Lewis area of like Sasquatch sightings, more like especially decades ago, like in the seventies and eighties, when these towns weren't as big as what they are now. I mean, there was literally, it was very, it was a very like rural country area. Now it's very urbanized. It was like subdivisions everywhere. We always get sent to places where like nobody's at. You're truly like in the middle of nowhere.

• 37:43Wes Germer?

  Yeah, and I say this every time, but that's what really amazes me about the military or the government that they don't look into this. I mean, I get why uh, if you're in the military, why you don't want to talk about this. You don't want to ruin your career and that sort of thing. Uh, but Fort Lewis in particular, man, decades of people coming forward that have had run-ins with Sasquatch on the military reservation out there. Um, and I'm talking about like veterans, high ranking guys that are way up on the food chain. I've had on the show that have shared encounters from thirty, forty, fifty years ago. Um, and even up until this day, it happens all the time.

• 38:28Wes Germer?

  And you would think the military or the government would take interest or take note of it privately anyway, but they don't really seem to be.

• 38:39Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, if they do, they're not telling us. My dad, he was a uh, a pilot when he was stationed up in Fort Lewis, a Iowa pilot. And I mean, they have IR on their helicopters and they fly at night vision all the time. And they would, I mean, they would fly around the Fort Lewis training areas, but they would also like go up the peninsula, go up towards Rainier. I'm like, I'm sure like other listeners in the Washington area maybe an hour or two out have seen like military helicopters flying around like the the forest out there. And he would tell me that he would see like there would be like no roads because you would see a road lit up at nighttime. There would be no roads, no, no towns, no nothing. And he said he would see like

• 39:22Speaker 07

  Like people out there, but it's like, what, what are they? I mean, they could have been hikers or campers. But the fact that like, there's nothing else out there and there's just some random person out there at nighttime. I don't know if he saw hikers or what he saw was maybe Sasquatch, but he like later on in life, I've talked to him. And he's, he's a believer. He would go out into those woods alone. A lot of the time when I'd be in school or. Or whatnot, he would go out there and hunt or hike or scout out new uh locations for us to hunt and hike. And he would tell me that he would hear like chirps, like little whoops or just like. Just weird feelings like you're being watched by something.

• 40:03Speaker 07

  And I mean, he's a, he, I'm sure he has stories about like screams, chirps. One time we were. Out there when I was a kid and not the Fort Lewis area, but like if you keep going past like Yelm. Towards like uh like Douche Falls or Duchette Falls Park. There's uh, there's like all these like logging fields that like you, you turn out on. On a like a, a dirt road and like all of a sudden it's like acres of like chopped down trees. So we would go camping out like in that area. And one time we were like in this little cutoff from the main road that went down. It looked like it was like a turnaround point for these logging trucks, cause it was just like a grass trail.

• 40:45Speaker 07

  That just ended in the woods, like it led to nowhere. So we decided to camp out there. But prior to that, we had hiked around and checked out like this. This uh, this field, the side of the hill that was completely logged and we were shooting clays. Just like looking around, just like logging equipment still sitting out there. So we come back to the hiking spot and it's like nighttime now. It's like me, my dad, uh my stepmother at the time. And this dog, we had this bull mastiff. And then we're just sitting around the campfire, just talking and I don't know, we hear like coyotes. But like, they're not like, you know how you hear coyotes like talking to each other as they're like running through the woods or in the field? Like they're just like chirping at each other. This sounded like the coyotes were like fighting something.

• 41:27Speaker 07

  Like they were like screaming like that yelp when a dog gets hurt. We could hear that. I mean, this logging field was, wasn't too far away from us. And we could hear them out there like screaming and like, like they were either. Attacking something or something was attacking them or they were, they were fighting something, but the, the sounds just eventually ended. And maybe like 30 minutes later, where this dirt road cut off into this little outcropping that we're, that we were camping in, my dog just like starts going ballistic at the end of this trail, like barking at it for like, I mean, I don't know how long it was because it was so long ago, but it was, it was for a good while that my dog was just standing there, just barking at the entrance of this trail we were at.

• 42:09Speaker 07

  So whatever like was out there, like wouldn't move. It just kept, my assumption is that thing was at the end of the trail, just staring down at us. And my dog was just barking, going crazy, going crazy. And we had no way to see what was down there. We didn't have flashlights that were big enough. So we, we had no way to see what was down there. But I mean, it's a long, you know, it's towards Mount Rainier. And I mean, those coyotes weren't, they, they weren't just talking to each other. They were like fighting, beating up something or something was beating them up. And after that incident, whatever, whatever was probably dealing with those coyotes was probably at the end of that trail, like looking at us.

• 42:51Wes Germer?

  Yeah, that is creepy, especially hearing the coyotes and then kind of the way your dog was reacting. Uh, you know, a coyote isn't hard to take down. A group of coyotes, which is generally how they show up, is a different story. And I always say, watch your dog. Your dog will generally tell you when these things are around. Uh, dogs will react in one of two ways. Either they'll kind of get down in a submissive position and whine or want to find a place to hide. Or like your dog, they'll bark, but they're not going to go after it. They'll stand there around and bark. Uh, you know, if it would have been a normal animal, you'd think it would have taken off,

• 43:32Wes Germer?

  especially hearing, you know, humans and dogs and, uh, black bears and cougars are big and bad, but generally speaking, they really want nothing to do with us. And that's about the only thing we have here. You know, I ask everyone on the show, what do you think Sasquatch is? What's your take?

• 43:51Speaker 07

  I used to. When I was younger, I believed it was like some some animal that like hadn't gone extinct. And then I went through a phase where I thought it was maybe something paranormal. Uh, like just due to the fact that we can't find it, we can't like capture it or anything like that. I was like, it has to be something paranormal. If we can't like actually like physically document it. But then I heard stories of uh like native tribes like modern natives. Like along the Columbus River between Oregon and Portland. That like have like have like the bones of it. I'm not sure. But as I get older, I I kind of believe it. I go back to believing it's like some animal, some creature.

• 44:36Speaker 07

  That's like probably on the edge of extinction. And there very, there isn't very many of them. I think that they don't reproduce very fast, just due to like their numbers just not growing. I mean, there's plenty of food out there for them. They're like, obviously like experts of their environment. I mean, they're they're hard to hear that. I mean, they they know their environment like like crazy. So I do believe that it's just some old creature that just hasn't gone extinct yet.

• 45:05Wes Germer?

  Yeah, and you could be right. I really want you to be right. Uh, you know, even some animals have kind of uh human like terroristics. Uh, if you ever watched like gorillas and chimps play. Uh, there's a lot of things that they do where you're like, wow, that looks like something a little kid would do or, you know, a human would do. So you're thinking more of an animal than really anything human like.

• 45:31Speaker 07

  I would, it's hard to. Maybe human. I would lean more towards more human. Um. Pro- because there are stories of them like interacting with Native Americans. Just the fact that like they can use, you know, tools that I mean, they could, they're able to grab stuff and like build stuff. Uh, like the stories of them building like little, not forts, but shelters with sticks. And like breaking limbs off of trees. I haven't heard that. I haven't seen that. But like I hear stories of that. Uh, I think they're probably like maybe somewhere along the like the genome of like humans.

• 46:12Speaker 07

  I don't think they're monkeys. Like, I don't think they're primates. Uh, I think they're like, just like, maybe like ancient people that used to like coexist with like the people who used to live out here before we were out here.

• 46:27Wes Germer?

  Yeah, it could be. You know, a lot of times I'm listening to encounters. I often think, man, that sounds like something a human would do more than an animal. And I would prefer it to be some great ape we haven't caught up with. That's really what I want Sasquatch to be. But what I want is a real event. But even when you look at their behavior, like in your guys' situation, coming up to that Striker vehicle and kind of pushing it and running its nails along the side of it. That sounds like something some creepy human would do over an animal.

• 47:01Speaker 07

  Yeah. Yeah, I don't really see an animal, uh, doing that. Uh, that's more like something curious, like using its hands. Most animals are just like freaked out by us. They don't want anything to do with us.

• 47:13Wes Germer?

  Yeah, it's so true. You know, we, I bet we have more cougars in Washington state than anywhere else probably on the planet. We have towns called Cougar. And I bet if you ask most people in Washington, I bet the majority of people have never seen a cougar. It's because they really want nothing to do with us. And you know, that's what really surprises me about Sasquatch on these bases. I realize that you guys have blanks. And if you fired guns before, you can tell the difference between a blank and a live round. Uh, but I wouldn't imagine that these creatures know that, or for that matter, any animal out there that knows that. You know, I've talked to guys on bases that have run into these things, especially for a Lewis. And they've opened up.

• 47:57Wes Germer?

  And they know they're shooting blanks. They're not going to shoot anything. They're just making a bunch of noise. And you'd think Sasquatch would flee. But I will say most of the time they don't. I remember I had this one guy on the show. He's very high up now in the military. He's retired now, but he was talking about how they were doing. I don't remember what they were shooting. They were shooting something. I did a whole show on it. I want to say it was mortar fire, but it was live fire. And it was during the day and there's a huge group of people out there and they're doing this mortar training. One of these things down range goes running across the little field that they're shooting at.

• 48:40Wes Germer?

  And the guy had to shut down the whole training exercise and everyone saw it. Everyone knew it wasn't a human. You would think that would scare them off. You know, no bears in the area, no cougars in the area. But these things hang around. It's strange, man. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and share what happened to you and thank you again for your service and your time coming on. I really enjoyed chatting with you.

• 49:10Speaker 07

  Yeah, no problem. I hope it was interesting, you know, for the listeners and I want to make my way back out there someday. Maybe I'll be passing through. I want to that area. You're able to drive out there. There's no fence that's stopping you from getting to this area that I was at. I want to go back out there and see if I can hear it again or, you know, see something. I used to work on towers on the Pacific Northwest. So like a lot of the job sites were out in the mountains. And you'd have to drive for like an hour or two off a main road just to get out to the tower that's just out there. And we would be at the top, you know, working and during downtime while we were up there.

• 49:53Speaker 07

  I would look out into the tree line, see if I could see anything or hear anything. And I never saw anything again, but.

• 50:02Speaker 07

  Like now that I'm older, I think uh I I wanna see one again. Uh I'm less scared of it now. I don't think they're like inherently like aggressive towards us, at least on the west coast. I don't think they're like, I don't think they're as aggressive because they have more space to like move around. I mean, they have a giant swath of mountains and woods and tons of rivers and ponds to like feed from and live. So I don't think they're as like stressed out as like, you know, stories you hear from like the Midwest or the east coast. Where they just don't have as much space.

• 50:38Wes Germer?

  Yeah, I would agree with you. I think, I'm not so sure I would test that theory. Uh because I think that they all can be very aggressive. The real question is, are they gonna kill you? Um and you know, I think most of the time they're probably not. But I think they can be aggressive to the point of where you think they're going to. Uh definitely be careful if you go looking again. And uh thank you again for coming on.

• 51:05Speaker 07

  No problem.

• 51:07Wes Germer?

  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. Until next time, everyone.

• 52:19Speaker 06

  So we both must be a little wiser

• 52:25Speaker 06

  To do something a quieter The lights on, this is my home Close your eyes, memories of you dear Untie your eyes, close at the sky I'll miss my ride, memories of you dear

• 53:11Speaker 06

  Close your eyes, this is my home Close your eyes, memories of you dear Untie your eyes, close at the sky I'll miss my ride, memories of you dear

• 54:16Speaker 06

  So much to feel, many memories And a smile and a feeling many Yes, I found the key to my life

• 54:27Speaker 06

  So I won't keep dying