The moment the forest goes quiet
It is rarely a sighting. It is the woods going silent, wood knocked against wood, something moving parallel and out of sight, a smell that should not be there, and the certainty of being watched by something that is not a bear.
It is rarely a clear sighting. It is the woods going abruptly silent, the birds and the insects stopping at once. It is a sound of wood knocked against wood, answered from another direction. It is something moving parallel to the trail and just out of sight, a smell that does not belong, and the flat certainty of being watched by something large.
The people who report it most carefully are the ones who spend their lives outdoors, because they know what a bear sounds like and what a deer sounds like, and this was neither.
Most of these come from the Bigfoot and Sasquatch archives, but the experience people actually describe is smaller and stranger than a creature crossing a clearing: the silence, the knocks, the watched feeling. It travels under many names, the feeling of being watched, forest silence, the thing that paces you, and it is reported in woods on every continent that has them.
Sound carries strangely under a canopy, animals fall silent when a predator moves through, and a treeline at dusk plays tricks on tired eyes. Owls, foxes and rutting deer make noises people do not expect. We hold those up first. What an account has to survive is not whether the woods can be frightening, but whether the specific pattern, the silence, the knocks, the parallel movement, adds up to more than a jumpy night.
screaming or howling 1485a very tall figure 1130the feeling of being watched 231wood knocking 168a foul smell 125
This trip was, in actuality, an expedition my brothers and myself had planned into the mountains of Siskiyou county. Our rationale came from an obscure Californian document called which records one of the earliest Sasquatch encoun…
knocking · wood knocking · three knocks
As a young person I vaguely remember hearing something about a creature called "Bigfoot". I suppose I thought he was something the Indians had conjured up. That is how others seemed to think. Then approximately eight years ago, my…
buzzing · heavy footsteps · a very tall figure
Lake Milton, Ohio: Summer 1972 About the time my siblings and I were entering that turbulent period known as our "teens", my family had the great good fortune of having moved into a house flanked on either side by a pair of brothe…
voices with no source · a triangle shape · vanishing suddenly
My Big Foot Sightings over the years. My first introduction to Big Foot was about 1965. A series of articles appeared in the Portland Oregonian, the Salem-Statesman Journal, the San Francisco Chronical, and at least one other. I s…
growling · an unexplained boom · a very tall figure
August 1991 Stark County, East Canton OH near to US Route 30 It's hard to say where these stories come from. When I was younger I had always read about them with a grain of salt. I mean you never really take anything serious that…
screaming or howling · whooping calls · sudden silence
It happened close to midnight on August 18, 2007, on the last official night of a private expedition, east of Mt. Rainier in the Wenatchee National Forest, of Washington State. Out of respect for our WA-BFRO crew's primary Central…
knocking · screaming or howling · growling
REPORT OF A FIELD INVESTIGATION by Richard D. McCuistion, Sr., Chilton Williamson, and Keith Foster Between 4 and 7 August 1998 we began a long term study in a drainage thought to be the summer range of the Sasquatch(s) described…
screaming or howling · glowing eyes · footprints
I want to start out by saying that I have never discussed this with anyone except for one other person. I have not discussed it with my wife, my best friend, or any other person close to me in my life. I was fortunate to have a co…
a very tall figure · a hooded figure · a mark or residue left behind
this all started when we were asked to be night watchmen for a logging company to watch the big equipment during the summer months of july and august. it was last week of july when we got there . first incedent we went fishing at…
knocking · screaming or howling · whooping calls
"The Zoobies" -- 1992 interview with Sgt. Doug Huse, San Diego County Sheriffs Department MONEYMAKER: Okay, just go ahead and tell me about yourself, when you started working there and so on. HUSE: I started working the Alpine are…
knocking · growling · voices with no source
This is the second in a set of chronological reports that I am submitting regarding a series of encounters I had between 1970 and 1983 in Nevada, California, and Washington States. I grew up several miles Northwest of Reno, Nevada…
screaming or howling · voices with no source · a very tall figure
The Backpack trip Draft 9-8-2014 Background: Biologist at a major biotech company. No previous experience with Sasquatch or similar, but have seen a couple shows on television (1 episode of finding BF, and one episode of Survivorm…
knocking · buzzing · screaming or howling
[ Note: The first names of the witnesses has been changed. ] Preface: This information is based on witnessed facts, and is as close to the events as I can recall. I am blessed with a near photographic memory. First is some backgro…
a low hum · screaming or howling · growling
This is a compilation of experiences over a period of years in the same area (1988- 2009) - feeling of being watched, wildlife silenced, tree breaks, strong smell once, numerous late night vocalizations, rock knocking, things bein…
knocking · screaming or howling · whooping calls
| 1930s | 1 | |
| 1940s | 3 | |
| 1950s | 15 | |
| 1960s | 49 | |
| 1970s | 231 | |
| 1980s | 218 | |
| 1990s | 259 | |
| 2000s | 787 | |
| 2010s | 541 | |
| 2020s | 70 |
Counts follow reporting rather than the world. Why that matters
Pierce County, Washington (34) · Skamania County, Washington (25) · Lewis County, Washington (23) · Snohomish County, Washington (23) · Tuolumne County, California (23) · King County, Washington (19) · Coconino County, Arizona (19) · Humboldt County, California (17)
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The same dream, the same place, or the thing before it happened.
Hours that cannot be accounted for.
The oldest phenomenon in the record, and the most often explained.
What the record actually holds from the dead of night.
Anomaly