Sasquatch Chronicles

Preston writes "This experience happened during an autumn fishing trip for brook trout in one of the most isolated regions of the Adirondack Mountains. To reach this area is no small task. First, you have to cross a reservoir by boat an eight mile ride across water that itself lies nearly forty miles from the nearest town. Once across, you reach the trailhead. From there, the route winds past a series of ponds deeper into the wilderness. The first leg is a 1.2 mile hike to the first lake. From there, you can either hike around it or paddle straight across. My fishing partner and I use Kevlar/carbon-fiber canoes light enough to carry, so if weather allows, we paddle the lake instead. That lake is roughly two miles long. After taking out on the far side, the trail continues another 1.5 miles into the Five Ponds Wilderness. At the second lake, the trail turns north and becomes more of a bushwhack through old-growth timber, with mountains rising on both sides. That stretch is another two miles, heading deeper into the wilderness until you finally reach the destination lake. This area is considered one of the three most isolated locations in the entire Adirondack Park relative to civilization. It's an absolutely stunning place completely secluded, ringed by mountains, with water that looks glacial and holds trophy class brook trout. It's truly one of my favorite places on Earth. We arrived around mid-morning on the first day and immediately started fishing. We caught plenty of fish, and everything felt normal. As evening approached, we gathered firewood, set up our tents, cooked dinner, and sat around talking. At one point, I stood up and did a Bigfoot call followed by a loud tree knock. It was something we used to do as a joke in less remote areas to mess with other campers. My buddy laughed, and we turned in for the night. Sometime in the middle of the night, we were jolted awake by the sound of a large tree falling not far from camp. It scared the hell out of us. The night was completely calm no wind at all. What struck us immediately was the silence. No peeper frogs. No wood frogs. No loons on the lake. No breeze. Just absolute stillness. It felt wrong. We stayed in our tents until around 4:30 a.m., when we were awakened again this time by a rhythmic pounding, like something repeatedly striking a tree. The hits were forceful, evenly spaced, about every three seconds. It continued steadily until after sunrise, coming from the direction of the trailhead. We tried to rationalize it. I suggested a woodpecker, though I didn't believe it. Then I floated the idea that maybe two moose were sparring since it was close to the rut but neither of us bought that either. The consistency and power of the blows didn't feel natural. It also made us rethink the fallen tree from earlier. I wondered if it could've been a beaver, since they're nocturnal and nearby ponds were close but none of it fully added up. We eventually got moving, launched the canoes, and spent the day fishing. We practice catch and release unless a fish is mortally wounded, which unfortunately happened that day. We kept that fish, cooked it for dinner, then went back out on the water until dark. As we paddled back to camp at twilight, I noticed what looked like a dark shape partially concealed behind a massive old-growth pine that leaned out over the lake. It was nearly night, and the woods were pitch black but whatever this was appeared darker than the surrounding darkness. I chalked it up to my imagination and kept paddling. Later, as we were getting ready to crawl into our tents, I noticed lights hovering over the lake. I'd seen these before on a few occasions. There was one main light above the water, and smaller lights would split off from it, drifting away on either side. Eventually, the main light dimmed, and the smaller lights faded out entirely. I'll be honest I'm terrified of aliens, and having seen unexplained things before, I was already on edge. Lying in my tent, I suddenly felt heavy thuds on the ground. I yelled to Casey and grabbed my headlamp, assuming a black bear had wandered into camp. When I stepped out, I found a snowshoe hare at my feet. This was the largest hare I've ever seen and it showed absolutely no fear. It hopped right up to me and just sat there, right next to my boots. We couldn't understand why a wild animal would act that way. It was as if it was seeking shelter. The hare stayed by the fire with us like it was an old friend. Eventually, I went back to my tent and left it there by the fire. Later that night, another tree fell nearby. We lay in our tents talking quietly about it before eventually drifting off. Once again, near dawn, the tree pounding started same cadence, same duration continuing until the sun came up. That day, we headed to the north end of the lake, where a massive dome-shaped mountain rises with cliffs and sweeping views. That end of the lake acts like a natural amphitheater. Casey decided to hike the mountain to try to get cell service and check the weather for our departure. The climb is brutal you have to crawl on your hands and feet for much of it. The mountain rises about 3,000 feet, with sections that feel nearly vertical. On the back side is an exposed cliff overlooking other ponds, and that's where you can sometimes get fleeting reception. While Casey was climbing and calling his wife, I stayed behind fishing along the opposite shoreline, parallel to the mountain. At one point, I saw trees moving on the slope and assumed it was him. I yelled out his nickname. "Is that you, Poop?!" What answered me was one of the most nerve wracking sounds I've ever heard a blood-curdling scream that sounded like a woman being murdered, assaulted, and losing a child all at once. I know that sounds extreme, but it's the only way I can describe it. Worse still, whatever made that sound was moving fast crashing through trees and running across terrain so steep we'd had to crawl up it earlier. The scream shook me to my core. I was convinced Casey was dying. I gathered myself and paddled hard toward the sound, yelling his name. No response. Eventually, he came down the mountain. I confronted him, telling him not to mess around like that I thought he was in serious trouble. He looked at me completely confused and said, "What the hell are you talking about?" He told me he'd been on the far side of the mountain facing another pond. He heard something faint but assumed I'd hooked a big brook trout or was yelling in excitement. That night was deeply unsettling. The woods felt wrong unnaturally silent. It sounded like people talking at the far end of the pond, always just out of earshot, followed by faint, distant screams throughout the night. Morning couldn't come fast enough. We woke again to the same rhythmic tree pounding. This time, I decided to investigate. I headed toward the sound, crossing a creek and climbing a nearby hill. As soon as I reached the area where I believed it was coming from, it stopped instantly. That was it. I packed up my gear and canoe, and we got out of there. About a half mile down the trail on our way out, we passed through a muddy stretch between two hills. In the middle of the mud pit about twenty feet long and twelve feet wide was a single, distinct footprint. It looked as if something had stepped straight down into the mud from the hillside and climbed back out the other side. I took a video, which I later lost when I misplaced the SD card, but I did save a screenshot that I still have. Inside the print was a mature beech leaf typically three to five inches long placing the track somewhere between twelve and fifteen inches in length. I don't know what was going on out there. I've spent my entire life in the woods, often solo, and had been to that lake many times before without issue. I've only returned once since, in 2018. Other hardcore backcountry anglers I know have mentioned strange feelings in that area, though nothing as intense. This wasn't the only odd experience I've had in that wilderness either. Another incident occurred even deeper in the Five Ponds Wilderness among untouched old growth forest stranger still. You couldn't pay me to hike the one way, eleven plus miles back in there again. Something is going on in that section of the Adirondacks. I've heard stories from others that only reinforce that feeling. As a final oddity, on our way out that day, Casey and I ran into two armed military personnel carrying AR-style rifles. They were friendly, walked us back toward their camp, showed us around, and then escorted us partway before we continued to our vehicle. The whole experience was strange, start to finish and it's stayed with me ever since."

Merry Christmas! Wishing you peace, warmth, for this holiday season. May your days be filled with good stories, good company, and moments that stay with you long after the lights come down. I wanted to share with you some memorable interviews from 2025.

Tonight we will be speaking to Virgil, who is from Washington. He was turkey hunting in 2016. As the sun was coming up, Virgil describes what he thought were other hunters talking. Virgil said he could not make out what they were saying and it sounded like mumbling. A few moments later a large creature stepped out into view as Virgil sat there in shock and second creature stepped out, this one was female.

John writes "October 2025, there were a few of us sitting around the table in our off‑grid hunting shack, just enjoying each other's company. For context, we're deep in the PNW backcountry: no power, no civilization for miles, and no motorized vehicles allowed anywhere near the place. Out of nowhere we heard a thud on the side of the shack. My wife said, "There's something outside," but a friend brushed it off, saying it was probably just a piece of firewood settling in the stove. So we ignored it. A moment later, another thud, louder this time. Three of us got up, opened the door, and checked down the side of the shack where the sound came from, but there was nothing there. Convinced it was probably nothing, two of us headed back inside while the third said he needed to use the shitter (our name for the outhouse). We had barely sat down again when, just seconds later, he, let's call him "J" came sprinting back inside, not even making it to the outhouse. He blurted out, "There's something out there," and the fear on his face was real. This is a military veteran who's seen his share of things, and he said whatever it was made a deep exhale or grunt from just outside. So J, S, and I went back out. We'd only walked about 15–20 feet toward the shitter before stopping. The outhouse sits around 40–50 feet from where we stood, with no trees between us. Behind it, though, the timber tightens up. I saw it first. "What the hell is that?" I said. What I saw was a small red glowing light, pulsing faintly. A minute later J said, "What the hell is that?" he had finally locked onto it too. S still couldn't see it yet. The red light looked like a tiny, dim LED, pulsing on and off. The night was pitch‑black—so dark I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. Whenever I stared directly at the light, it would vanish, and I'd have to move my head around, almost like searching around branches for an angle. Then it would reappear… then vanish again… then reappear somewhere slightly different. At one point, I saw three separate red lights at the same time, all at different heights but roughly eye‑level. Always single lights, never two together like eyes. That's when S finally said, "What the hell…" and he was clearly shaken. He'd been scanning the area with a thermal scope the whole time and seeing nothing until suddenly he saw what he described as a face, a circular white heat signature peeking from behind a tree or stump before disappearing again. After that, the red light on the far right appeared noticeably closer, now unobstructed by any branches. S kept saying, "Red… off… red… off… red… off…" in rhythm with the pulsing. We've had three other strange experiences over the past decade that we've never been able to explain, one was an extremely loud and heavy scream that terrified all of us, and the other involved a group of large ground nests. All of those seemed like possible Bigfoot‑related activity. Because of that history, it almost feels logical that these red lights might be connected. What I'm trying to figure out is whether you've ever come across anything like this, or if you know of any accounts describing similar red lights. I'm obsessive when it comes to researching things, but I keep running into dead ends, mostly references to red glowing eyes or floating orbs. This wasn't eye shine; there was no light source to reflect off of. And the orb stories I've found don't match what we saw either. This experience doesn't resemble anything I've come across in the short time I've been digging into it." We will also be speaking to Marissa, she writes "I've gone back and forth about writing to you because I'm not sure how relevant my experience really is but after hearing witnesses on your show describe encounters with dogman-type creatures, I can't help wondering if what we saw might fit into that category. My boyfriend, Brian, and I live full-time in a truck camper, traveling around the U.S. This happened in mid-July, when we were camped on BLM land past the Delta-09 Missile Silo, just outside Badlands National Park. It was a full-moon night, but we set up camp while there was still daylight. We made a fire, Brian cooked dinner and almost immediately after we arrived, I noticed something odd. A herd of cows in the distance suddenly came running over a hill, almost as if they were spooked. For the next several hours, as we ate and the sun went down, those cows made nonstop distressed sounds. We couldn't see them, but we could hear them, and it was eerie. One of my dogs refused to get out of the truck as well, which was extremely unusual for her. Eventually, once the moon rose, the cows went silent. The night was beautiful, so we decided to take a moonlit walk along the dirt road with our other dog. We walked maybe half a mile and then laid down to look at the stars. We'd been on the ground less than a minute when my dog gave an alert bark. We sat up, and about 60 yards ahead of us, we saw a large black figure. My first thought was that it was a cow until my eyes adjusted and I realized it had canine features. I tried to convince myself it was a coyote, even though it was far too big. We aimed our flashlights at it, and that's when everything turned strange. It had no eye shine at all. I've lived in the woods most of my life; every animal I've ever seen at night reflects light. But this thing's eyes were just… black holes. The entire body almost seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. No matter how many times we shone our beams on it, no more detail appeared. It just stayed this pitch-black shape, panting loudly far louder than you'd expect from that distance. I had the unsettling feeling that it was staring directly into my eyes and that it was intelligent, more so than any wild animal I've encountered. We yelled at it, but it didn't flinch or move. A normal coyote would've bolted. I told Brian, "I don't want that thing behind me," which is not how I react to coyotes at all. We started heading back to camp me walking forward, Brian walking backward to keep an eye on it. Later, when we talked it through, things got even stranger. There were two of them. I had been so fixated on the one in front of us that I completely missed a second creature off to our right closer, and according to Brian, noticeably larger. Brian isn't someone who believes in Bigfoot, dogmen, skinwalkers, or anything of that nature, but he said it felt like the one farther away the one I was staring at was in control of the closer one, almost like an owner and a dog. He also said its legs looked blurry or formless when the light hit them, which matched what I felt but didn't say out loud. As he kept watch, both creatures followed us for about a quarter mile, staying just far enough back, until they finally slipped into the hills. Almost immediately after they disappeared, the cows started up again with the same panicked cries from earlier. We've gone over this experience so many times, and we always land in the same place: those were not coyotes. They were something neither of us can explain. So I'm reaching out to ask have you heard other reports of canine-like creatures with jet-black eyes and no eye shine? Does this sound more like something people attribute to a skinwalker, or is a dogman encounter a possibility? I know humans lack eye shine, but these things were absolutely not human. I haven't been able to find anything online that matches, other than a general trend of strange reports from the Badlands. I'd really love to hear your thoughts on what we might've seen."      

Tonight we will be chatting with Max. I was streaming a live show during Thanksgiving and Max joined my live stream and gave a brief summary of what happened to his family. I reached out to him and asked him to share this period of his life and what his family went through. You have to hear this full account.