Land of the Missing: On the Trail of Bigfoot - FULL MOVIE (Alaskan Sasquatch and Missing People)

[Music] hey I don't remember the year or my exact age but sometime in the early 1990s I became enamored with the idea of Alaska maybe it was reading Call of the Wild that did it or the Nature Documentaries I'd occasionally catch a glimpse of on television or perhaps it was simply this concept of a vast land that was largely uninhabited that existed right here within the United States all I know is that for a large portion of my pre-teens I was somewhat obsessed with the very idea of the Last Frontier in the early 2000s that

interest was renewed through learning about the story of Chris mandas an adventuring young man from Virginia who sought his place in the world amongst the rugged landscape of Alaska only to eventually succumb to its environments it's a tragic and strangely Inspirational story now armed with a renewed interest in the Bigfoot subject I've been exploring Alaska through the lens by Witnesses and researchers alike through these discussions I've come to find that not only might Sasquatch live here but even Thrive I rented a cabin on the outskirts of hey Alaska just down the road from where Chris

mcandless was last seen I decided to put myself in a location where I might have at least a decent chance of seeing one of these Monstrous Sasquatch for myself for three nights I stayed in A Primitive cabin on private property just down the road from an active sighting location I did everything the researchers have spoken with told me to do I hung trail cameras baited a tree with peanut butter and then I waited to see if anything happen true to form Bigfoot didn't appear that didn't mean my little side trip wasn't without incident however Okay

so this is technically night number three we have not had any activity out here other than some weird sounds the closest thing I can think of to describe them to would be your classic like baby crying stuff it sounds like children but we've actually looked around and can't find any homes immediately surrounding this location this house this property where there would be children so that's pretty weird uh we're not really clear on What's going on there um we've heard what sounds like a child laughing or calling out or something a couple times on the Kenai

Peninsula over 500 miles away Alexander pikov and Eli Watson were wrapping up their expedition to area a they had experienced something that sounded suspiciously similar experiences which have a historical precedence in Alaska that goes back hundreds if not thousands of years I'd had no direct encounter with Whatever was creeping around my primitive cabin near the Denali National Park while I'd have welcomed some sort of sighting or interaction I was slowly becoming more aware of the darker side of the Sasquatch subject here in the 49 State fear about what might be lurking in the mountains and

forests here was beginning to creep in a fear that grips many when they come to this wild Untamed region [Music] [Music] [Music] so right now we are on uh the Stampede Road which is the Stampede Road in trail this is obviously a very famous area because this is the Road where Chris mandas was dropped off and the trail continues on and his remains were found in that Fairbanks bus 142 28 mi from the end of this road here uh I just think the connection between you know this being one of the most Famous missing people

cases in Alaskan history perhaps and and worldwide people know about into the wild that whole Saga and connecting it to the other weirdness that we've been hearing about that we're you know kind of looking into I think it just kind of makes sense I'm not saying you you know Chris mcandless was abducted by bigfoots or whatever but there's just a lot of these other weird kind of stories you end up picking up the history of Bigfoot in Alaska Starts with reports of hairy men coming down out of the mountains and killing Prospectors so when you

get in into the the earliest settlers that were here after the natives you're you're getting into these stories that immediately get real dark real fast or for me at least what I've noticed is that it seems to be a little eclectic in terms of we've talked to some people who haven't even heard Sasquatch stories and some people who have like oh yeah they're all over The place and then even still there seems to be a stigma behind it so I think that's really interesting cuz you don't get that in places like Oregon or Washington as

much and I didn't think Alaska would be like that we've been hearing about various like Alaskan Bigfoot activities one of the things that keeps coming up is this idea of of baby crying which we're familiar with in places like Pennsylvania but there's the baby crying and then the whistling and Some of the lore associated with those things you do have the the First Nations lore of baby crying sounds in the woods if you look at some of those First Nation stories it's almost like they're trying to lure women into the woods that's part of that

lore it's almost like there's a trickerish kind of thing going on and a lot of those earlier the native stories do talk about they have different types right some are more trickerish some are more the cannibal Some are more stealing people I can imagine maybe a case or two where something like that might have happened and and that story kind of snowballed and then people were you know very scared of maybe going to certain areas place got a certain reputation um I don't know it's just something really kind of interesting to think about there's this

big boom right now in pop culture of looking at Alaska through the lens of horrific killer Bigfoot right And a lot of that's rooted in again like what we know is actual history of the state with uh places like Port chadam that were abandoned supposedly due to killer bigfoots what I want to do is dig into those stories and actually figure out if there's any truth to them if this is if there's an oral tradition here that relates back to this and see if we can get to the bottom of what is actually behind this

myth of the killer Bigfoot in Alaska fear is a powerful storytelling tool as someone who makes documentaries about often terrifying subject matter it's a tool I've wielded myself when it comes to the Bigfoot subject I've never found it to be one that initiates anything even close to fear fascination curiosity some sense of naive hope but not fear but fear is what sells television is Rife with shows that hinge on Murderous Sasquatch some of them especially in recent years have even been set here in Alaska obviously narrative horror films going all the way back to the

60s and 70s have long played up the killer Bigfoot angle lately an entire cottage industry has built up around the concept of missing people taken by unknown forces often that unknown force is alluded to or downright directly said to be Sasquatch for yourselves right now business is [Music] booming it's said that five of every 1,000 people go missing in Alaska each year in a state where the population is around 700,000 the number of people disappearing is troubling keep in mind how however the numerous challenges the average Alaskan faces on a daily basis simply surviving the

elements and Landscape here is Difficult enough but the numerous causes for winding up on a missing person's list in the Last Frontier are almost Limitless a lot of people go missing in the woods and Alaska is no exception for that either because Alaska is vast um and all the dangers in the lower 48s Woods exist up there but they're bigger and scarier frankly Alaska is a much larger and scarier place in general there's a lot more land to be lost in and the Predators up there are huge you You have the big brown bears which

are clearly carnivores I mean look at Grizzly Man right you have the black bears which are also problematic and much larger up there and you have wolves and all sorts of monsters basically so is it possible that some of these missing people um go missing because of another monster the Sasquatch so people missing in Alaska uh this is a Hot Topic because it happens pretty frequently there's a good portion of Them who are missing because of man versus nature you know we we have crazy temperature swings all over the state you know it might be

70 70° in Fairbanks and then you might have snowstorm in the middle of summer in Denali at the same day one of the Cryptids in Alaska is actually mountain lions because we're not supposed to have resident mountain lions here but they've been seen up into the Kenai Peninsula and recently they were starting to see them in Delta Junction uh which is more in the interior oh my God you've got Bears you've got moose and moose moose kill more people I believe they kill more people in Alaska than Bears I mean you get a lot of

bear Ms but Moose are extremely dangerous but Bears even where I live and a Gentleman went missing they searched for him I believe for a day the Barrett attacked him just 10 feet on the trail and dragged his body another 10 ft off the trail or 15 and was feeding on It and no of course everybody's going up the trail nobody thought about to look right here in Denali National Park and I know there's the whole subculture of people going missing in the park we have had just a couple of people turn up missing um

or mysteriously dead in one case I can recall back in ' 87 I believe it was when they were looking for a lost hiker they found an abandoned campsite they could not figure out who it was they didn't have any you the Permit wasn't there at the campsite we've also had somebody in the west part of the park come up missing and once again I think they found his tent they never found him I think Bigfoot is a little more aggressive in Alaska because there's so much it's so vast up here and people don't really

get that until they're here there's so much space around here that I think when people kind of come across them they're so not Used to it they they take people on as in this aggressive manner because it's like a territorial [Music] thing about 11 12 I can't remember I had been adopted about 10 and a half by my dad I got up here to Alaska from Los Angeles I lived here for just a little bit my dad really wanted me to be outside more I was used to be in the inner city and orphanages I

wasn't this was like crazy to me you know woods and Stuff so um so my dad's like we're going to go Blackberry hunting I we were camping one night and my dad my brother were sitting around the fire just talking about work and stuff they work together and um I had gone to get firewood and I came back I'd been around my dad enough and stuff and he had told me like if you feel presence you need to get back because that's something hunting you you don't understand that being from the inner city this is

Alaska This is the wild this so I had felt like something was watching me it really freaked me out so I come running back and I went to lay down and my dad and brother were just up going to watch the fire they were taking turn on fire and we started hear a lot of noises like not normal like this whatever was is Big Frank stood up and he's a big dude he stands up and whatever it was stops so it must have seen him my dad was like go find What it is you know

Frank's a big dude he can take care of himself so Frank grabs his little I think he had like 44 Magnum revolver and he takes off in the woods he's fast so he's gone had have been over an hour I was sitting there just worried and my dad was like getting ready to go out and go find him and uh Here Comes Frank goes flying into there and he goes goes I don't know what I don't know what the hell it is but this thing is big and it is fast he had Chased it near

this like rock wall he could see the Rockell kind of it was late at night so he couldn't see very well but he knew was was close to the edge of the mountain cuz when he was running he was starting to see shale rock under his feet and he's like I'm getting closer to the base of the mountain he uh he stopped and uh he said he heard it stop too and he said it didn't move I couldn't see it fully it was like behind this bush like it was Kind of like he saw like

a shoulder past like a piece of like brush and like it was just standing there and you could see like something was swaying but it wasn't like a tree branch it was like a big clob and I was like how big do you think it was and uh and and he told me he's like he goes well he goes he goes I'm 610 that thing was probably about 2T taller than me and he uh he picked up a rock and Threw it he just like picked a piece of Shell Rock so just a little piece

you know and see what happened something flew past him that was bigger like a piece of wood or something so he takes off um comes back to Camp he told my dad this whole all of us the stuff let that night I went to sleep and and we were hearing noises like crazy but they weren't normal noises like we hear like you'll hear like a coyote or a wolf or and uh we started hearing like things Being thrown in the woods like rocks or sticks or whatever I remember my dad's like we're going to stay

here for one more night and see what happens I'm like God no and but it never came back and it never came back to camp and uh and that that was the only time I remember that and it was really weird my dad this is the other thing that bothered me the whole thing about story that bothered me was that my father and my dad are like Outdoors guys they've hunted every an on Alaska there's literally no fear for my dad like he went used to get kodiaks like people hunt deer he's like not even

afraid and my dad was worried he's like this thing was hunting us this wasn't like a this wasn't like a bear that stumbled upon us and like was like o this is a bad idea this is something hunting I was like why do you say that and he go he goes cuz just the way that it walked up on us that's how a hunting Animal hunts and he goes I believe that it saw you your tiny little butt walking around it thought you were an easy meal and when your brother stood up it second guest

coming in the camp he goes if he had stood up it probably would have jumped into our camp and he told me the reason was cuz whatever it was an apex predator and that's a very scary situation I was like why why would you scared he goes he goes an apex predator has no Fear he goes it might have been skittish he goes but if it really wanted to attack it will attack the within State what what are some of the terms that people use describe the nonak is probably the most well-known right now because

of Port Chatham there's also the Bushman the Harryman the gilc is something that people up here in the interior and towards the Arctic Circle have for him that creature according to Alaskan Natives is the cannibal that's what they call him the cannibal he actively hunts and eats people they have a very strong fear of him like being native we have something called a inukun they're big they're dark like black they are hairy but I think they're a little bit skinnier it's like a spirit but it's it's physical but it can disappear it can move things

around it can do things it can take you I don't know where they Take you it's kind of like a Bigfoot maybe it is a big but who knows I don't know but it's something different there it can appear and disappear I mean it'll leave tracks and do things and I guess one of the big things about Bigfoot taking people is a lot of natives in Alaska they they don't want to talk about Bigfoot because if you talk about Bigfoot it might draw the attention of Bigfoot and then something might happen whether it's someone gets

taken or you Know your food stash or whatever gets taken something's going to happen but they think simply the active mentioning it and discussing it will bring them around with Bigfoot you do find a lot of stories about Bigfoot taking people and there's also some stories within native lore of like these hybrid Bigfoot native children as well you just have to dig around for those kind of stories but they're out there the natives seem to have stories that revolve around Sasquatch or Harryman being a little more aggressive in terms of kidnapping women and children and

for me it kind of was a I had the thought of well a lot of these stories that are told in in in our cultures are sort of a warning tale it's a cautionary tale right maybe this only happened once maybe you know person got lost in the woods and they blamed it on the hay man that became the the cultural story just to keep the kids at Bay keep the women from wandering too far off and Getting mauled by a grizzly bear kind of historically can you can you walk us through the history of

sasquat sightings in the state like what what are some of the oldest known sightings the one in Valdes at the top of the Valdes Glacier and so and that's in 1895 uh abber cromby was he was a captain there to kind of do like Geo physical survey type work and they used to go up the Valdes glacier to get to the eagle Trail to go to the kond that Was one of the ways for the gold rush they were fighing gear up the to the up the glacier that was one of the ways to get

up there it was like a father and son the son had been attacked by a you know Sasquatch then the son ended up being killed it was supposed to be the glacier demon that was up there and then the father had come back down and he's all distraught trying to tell this story and of course all the other guys that are there are like oh yeah I Yeah that that's probably it you know they because they had seen it or something or there's parts of it that are hard because there's not like names you know

the guy's name the old swed well who was that you know if you had a name then you could look at a census record or something and track it down a little bit further but where did you find that story it was probably a Library of Congress because he was there doing the geophysical survey kind of Stuff and that was just an you know incidental story to his surveys in the 30s and 40s there were many miners that wouldn't go past the King Salmon River here in the Ruby type area of Alaska uh because they

believe that the other side of the river the northern side was the Gile territory and you could get eaten or taken there was an encounter where three Hunters were hunting Caribou up there in around September or August and in the night one of them was killed and Taken off somewhere and they had an entire Village out looking for him and never could find him so another story involved a Bigfoot trying to take a this guy uh kidnap him and they it decid to swim across uh the Tanana River and if you're in Nana you go

across the Tanana River and there's this big giant Hill this thing like swam across the river with this guy but in the process the guy ended up drowning so Bigfoot like let him go and kept swimming to the other Side of the tan of river uh which is it's kind of a wide river and it ran off into the woods so do you think big foot is is um responsible for a lot of missing people or it's quite possible in that time period between before the Alaska Highway was built when this was more Miners and

the native population here now that's Urban I mean you got black top everywhere so that you know that then you got the drugs and all this kind of Other stuff so but early on in Alaska history I think there was more disappearances because of that yeah are you aware of any stories that you you personally believe like a missing person case that might be attributed to well I I can't say any names but years back there's a village that two guys went missing there was three in the group they had went to a cabin for

an elder to get it ready for his trapping season it was late fall they walked back they had Planned on hanging out at this cabin to party for a weekend and set it up for their Elder so they got there they basically got it set up in a couple hours and they were just hanging out in the cabin while they heard a noise Up on the Roof and then something was going on just outside the door and it lured him out well his two friends were in front of him the first one that went out

he said was snatched he could he didn't see what happened the guy was just out of View and the other guy behind was yelling running around the corner and all of a sudden there something big something grabbed on him as he came out he turned around and looked back up and something was on the roof and there was two other ones that had his friends and they were doing various portions of ripping them apart he took off running two of jumped on the one and the other one and he said he'd stopped behind some trees

and turned around and looked and One of them had tore his friend's chest open and was just like scooping blood from the from the cavity when I first heard it through someone else I thought that's you know I mean really but when I talked to him and he told me it you talk to that guy with his eye twitching cuz it didn't it never used to I've known this guy my whole life and that eye twitching like that something very bad happened you know but it it's labeled as a Missing person so they chocked it

up to some drunk delusion and didn't really follow through with what he was telling them happened and I think there's a lot of that that happens in some of the remote Villages it's easier to deal with oh he was drunk he was hallucinating versus actually the reality of what he said happened now this is this was told to me from one of the guys that got out of there the other two did not native lore repeatedly warns of Harryman taking women and children while newspaper articles and historical accounts recall Tales of settlers running up against

bloodthirsty wild men indigenous people's caution against following whistles or baby cries heard while in the forests according to Legend these sounds are emitted by the hairy people in an attempt to bait in an unsuspecting victim often these stories end in the death or disappearance of a woman or Child I don't know what to make of all this it flies in the face of the secretive shy Forest ape that I've learned about over the last decade back in the lower 48 but you can't escape this side of Sasquatch here maybe there's no better example of this

than the tale of the abandoned town of portlock also known as Port Chatham Port Chatham has come to prominence in recent years years thanks to its notoriety as a town that was Attacked by Sasquatch and subsequently abandoned the truth behind the abandonment of the Town doesn't quite align with the [Music] Legends just talk to us about Fort chadam what it's beautiful it's Majestic almost like going into a fairy tale untouched and you know there's only 300 people there in the summer 150 in the winter um that was where the original town was from my understanding

of it uh There was a chrome mine down there in a fish fishery uh and it was a very large community at one time it had a post office School a hospital and for some mysterious circumstances people just started abandoning The Fishery they abandoned the mine even though there was still Chrome in it the story goes that you bigf foots or Sasquatch Harry man nanak I think as they were calling him were were killing people in the woods and that's why they abandoned the town And they had so much activity all the time and really

bad things happened there they mov from there because of victim and it had a lot to do with people being found mangled in the woods or in in the bogs it had a lot to do with um people saying they were being harassed by some creature it's a 15 kind of year period where it was it wasn't just overnight that everyone packed their bags and ran out but you know I think it was the 1940s and 50s is Really when the town sort of died because less and less people were needing to work off the

land and harvest some of these resources and uh just sort of faded off to scare off an entire town and abandon the settlement when there was really Plenty of Fish plenty of resources whatever was happening out there was enough to drive everybody away I think that there's a lot of that kind of thing and I think that there's a lot of I don't want to say population Because you don't you never know exactly how many but there's a lot of activity around urban areas settlements and things just like coyotes you know they're here they're raiding

smok houses and chicken coops and this sort of thing near a village The Village or the human activity associated with that would be you know curiosity plus it's a food [Music] source I was told by somebody who grandmother lived in Port chadam that The stories of the nonok Harry man were true that there were encounters but it wasn't really alluded to that they were killing people or massacring people there were probably people that died that maybe got crushed by logging equipment and That Was Then blamed on the Harryman and that was a kind of cautionary

tale that's just from my perspective that sort of makes sense like with some of those tribal stories similar kind of human way of sort of Explaining a weird uh occurrence and blaming it on something folkloric in nature what I've noticed is like certain areas back home in the fall it's I don't know if the activity is heavier but more people are there in those places in the fall cuz during the summertime we're out on boats fishing you know so when everyone comes back in the fall you got moose hunting and Caribou hunting going on so

everyone's kind of splitting off and going up the rivers and that's when You usually there's occurrences happening but I think they're all through that Watershed one sighing after another missing people um just all all sorts of different things do you think there's a connection between a lot of these missing people reports around the state and Bigfoot I I think there's a good chance that there's a portion of them that do go missing because of it it's hard for people that haven't been in the Deep Woods of Alaska there's a Feeling in the air and I've

I've done this most of my life even now to this day when I go out into the Deep Woods you just you get this feeling like unless you felt it it's hard to explain it you it's just an awareness you get hyper aware real quick and it's like this feeling of you know what is that there's just something you know something different about it you said you're uh you're interested in David pl's work are you aware of like the any Legends or stories about Bigfoot taking people or um around here in nun wallik people have

disappeared they found they had two uh surveyors went missing when they finally sent somebody to go look for them they did find them way up higher sitting on a tree they didn't have their legs a lot of the people there that I know have all seen and they're so scared of Bigfoot [Music] There so people are going missing in Alaska it's established fact Sasquatch researcher Michael Thompson had spoken with me about this idea that there were multiple types of Bigfoots here whether offshoots of the same species or different creatures altogether he isn't able to say

with any certainty I've always had my own personal issues with the idea of multiple types of Bigfoot it's hard enough to believe one massive hair covered unknown being is hiding in Her own backyards in the lower 48 let alone multiple types but in the land of the Midnight Sun Legends of mysterious creatures are as much a part of the landscape of lore as traditional hairy apes are the disturbing Trend seems to be that many of these Legends revolve around people being taken or killed by one of these legendary beings here in Alaska it isn't just

the known animals that want to Ma you but Apparently everything hiding just out of sight does as well what about other Cryptids there are actually a lot of other cryptids in Alaska we do have a lot of little people reports um there are some Giants in the north but uh little people are actually I think even more prevalent than Sasquatch as far as Alaskan natives are concerned they're always portrayed as a little impish mischievous type creatures they are considered negative most of the Time they they tend to cause trouble you know they'll harass you throw

rocks at you sometimes like Sasquatch do they'll play tricks on you try to lure you away into the forest and get you lost you know there's there's probably more than one thing in the woods the smaller four to 5 foot folk they're supposed to be hostile they're supposed to have worse attitudes than Sasquatch sometimes I think maybe that might have something to do I I I think They're basically at war with people and if they have a chance they they deal with L Hiers possibly once again I don't want to think it down in the

Homer area there was a family that said that the the wife had started seeing them around her house up in the trees and they terrified her eventually her husband saw one and they started to notice that the trees in which these creatures were being seen were starting to die and they eventually left that home uh but when They came back years later all the trees on the lot had had basically died and and they attributed that to these little people there have always been Harryman or Bushmen stories from Alaskan natives and Hunters things like that

Bushmen are like a non-con tribe so there's like some spiritual Supernatural kind of stuff that has has risen up around them but they are not Bigfoot and Bushmen are also said to kidnap people and from what I was told By uh by this native guy who's who's a friend of mine he said that Bushmen will kidnap you and you won't no one will see you for S years he said it's always seven years I think some missing people are probably taken by by Sasquatch but I also think there's some missing people that get abducted up

here I'm a big UFO re researcher on top of Bigfoot stuff UFOs get seen in just like really remote Areas usually by pilots or something who's to say they're not they're not taking people and running experiments or something like that there are a lot of reports in which people will see strange lights in the sky and will'll have a Big Foot encounter around the same time there are also a lot of just strange UFO reports in general but there was a report of Two Gentlemen that they were seeing and experiencing things like wood knocks um

strange Noises kind of Sasquatch like behavior and then a couple days later they found a circle of dead animal carcasses and they had seen strange lights in the sky the night before and then these these animal carcasses were from several different kinds of animals like there's a caribou and a moose but the strangest one was they said they had found a dead Ora in this circle and they were hundreds of miles from the coast so there's no way that this animal could Possibly have come this far inland and that to me is one of the

strangest UFO type phenomenon uh in regards to any kind of Bigfoot activity in the area we've begun waiting into Waters here that only help to further muddy the Bigfoot topic UFOs and folkloric creatures tend to turn off a lot of levelheaded people to the entire subject when you start integrating them however it's difficult to broach the topic of missing people without delving into some Of the alternative theories as to why they might be missing to begin with while a large portion of the cases that seem mysterious might have mundane explanations there are still a standout

number of them that defy logic but what is behind them I struggle to jump to a paranormal explanation for many of these reports but I'm equally hesitant to consider that Bigfoot is out in our forest taking everyone they see I've always thought that if Sasquatch is Responsible for the large number of genuinely bizarre missing people reports then we definitely have more evidence or even definitive proof that these things exist they'd be leaving behind mountains of evidence as they carved their bloodthirsty Trails across the American wilderness eventually someone would kill one in self-defense there would be

far more face-to-face encounters on record as well but here's where another Theory Comes into play Alaska hosts numerous military bases some still active and an equal number abandoned the uan islands are covered in empty bunkers used to safeguard the Northwest from a military Invasion during World War II it's theorized that there even exists a secret government complex deep in Denali National Park called the dark pyramid a site so secretive so hidden and so important that the need to keep it off the radar Would Trump even the lives it might take to keep it so Denali

of course also has a long history of Sasquatch sightings to go along with its mysterious hidden bases the possible connection between Sasquatch hidden bunkers and missing people was illustrated by the strange disappearance of Nathan Campbell in June of 2020 when people would hear that I work for the National Park Service they would get pretty excited and then when they heard that I worked for National Park Service in Alaska they got really excited they thought I must be on top of some dark secrets govern cover up yeah and also the area I'm talking about is getting

kind of close to the dark pyramid you've probably heard of that yeah yeah I was part of a group to go out looking for this Black Pyramid and it's supposedly located somewhere about 50 Mi Southwest of Denali supposedly it's larger than the Pyramid of Giza it's completely Subterranean and supposedly the military had set up a temporary base there to study it because it was giving off energy of some kind that they were trying to harness or see if they could make use of do you know that somebody actually died trying to get to it no

they haven't really advertised it but last year somebody was dropped off with supplies for several weeks and the plane came back and the supplies were still there and the tent he'd set up to house The supplies but they found no trace of them Park Service got involved trying to find the person and they found nothing we were unable to go out and do that Excursion that year due to covid reasons it was right in the middle of Co so we were unable to go and it was very ironic because another fow decided to go out

by himself and look for this pyramid and he disappeared and he was nobody's found him he's still a missing person and and that was the same year we were supposed To go out there so in a way there's part of me that feels like maybe we weren't meant to go as someone that did work in the park do you do you buy into the cover up stuff at all well I have a story okay I feel a little funny sharing it but I've had some experiences out near the benol national parks um I have found

logs torn apart that was along um a Section of woods where mysteriously there was what some people call a big boy Trail in the woods that started and ended in the woods and it was a place not hiked very often um this we have established trails in the park through people occasionally locally through Grizzlies but a Grizzly Trail will go under branches that are only about 4T off the ground this Trail carefully made it around the branches um this Trail was designed for something tall it was in The woods off of a creek it looked

to me more like an ambush route than the route hikers would go on so I was off in the woods and I was quite startled to get into the woods find this Trail which lasted only about A4 mile then it was gone again one of the times I had experiences out there one of the members of our party was a former deputy superintendent of Denali National Park so second in command when these things were happening out There I brought it to their attention and said I know everyone can be explained by by something but altogether

is starting to make me wonder it was just interesting he didn't try tried to talk me out of the existence of such a creature he tried to chalk it up more to coincidences upon coincidence so I got the impression that he was not hostile to the whole concept of there being a relic homed out at the Susana River in regards to Sasquatch the government is Trying to cover it up a lot of the military in this area or former military I've had uh gentlemen tell me that they have done Arctic training in the Arctic Circle

and they've been briefed that the government's aware that these creatures are here if you encounter one not to engage it but they might you know run across one and there actually is uh some reports I think from around 2013 2010 2013 about a Special Forces Unit that did find tracks in in the snow during One of these training trips up in the north and they followed these tracks to a little like outcrop of woodlands and they heard a howl or or a scream and it was enough to scare them and they actually decided to just

back out and return to base they were not going to in investigate it further so they say I definitely think that there is some government cover up I also think that perhaps the government protects some of the these Wilderness areas Because they're aware that these creatures exist in these areas and they don't want them to be disturbed and they're kind of trying to keep people out of those areas to lower the amount of encounters with them a fully formed cover up of the existence of Sasquatch stretches the boundaries of my imagination while I understand the

implications the proof of unknown creatures residing in her Forest would have on Industries like logging or Even hunting I struggle to understand how to connect the dots between the government or military and Bigfoot I can however understand the far more believable notion of a smallscale need to gloss over sightings in a place like Denali Norm's discussion with his Superior sounds believable and even further bolsters the possible existence of Sasquatch in this part of the state it makes sense after all it's a suitable habitat for these things and their more Aggressive nature in this part of

the country is probably due to the fierce competition for food they face but could it be something else one of the most well-known accounts of hary creatures was that of Albert Osman who claimed to have been taken captive by a family of Sasquatch somewhere deep in the mountains of British Columbia he claimed to have escaped his kep AC ity but not until he learned that his reason for being taken wasn't as a Meal for Hungry creatures but rather to be a mate for the female juvenile member of the family it's a bizarre story but one

that draws similarities to indigenous Tales of women and even children being taken by Sasquatch and then adopted into a similar family unit another early well-known account is the ape Canyon incident most of those already educated on the Sasquatch topic are familiar with it but a Cliff's version would simply state that in the Early 20th century a group of miners somewhere in Northern Washington were attacked while sleeping in their cabin by a group of angry Apes the Apes hurled rocks at their cabin and eventually tried to gain entry before being warned off by gunshots from the

terrified miners it turns out that this historical account has some modern-day successors and one of them took place here in Alaska and involved Fred r One of my elders had planned this gold mining prospecting trip for a couple years we're good for a 10day trip out there to do some looking for Pay Dirt basically some sample buckets for him to file a claim we get up on the new yuk and it's a salmon counting Tower so this this place hasn't been used in uh when we were there it probably been close to 10 years that

it hadn't been used and it's basically 8T Square 2x4 fr in with 5H plywood and they had the windows Blocked off to as a blackout when we got there we unload and we were contemplating kind of checking things out but as it was starting to get dark we figured we would just chill and wait till the next day so we're inside my Elder had just got done making us a meal a few minutes before and it was just about a half hour after dark the whole place just kind of goes like we figured the wind

but there was no wind blowing well as I look over over my cousin's Shoulder there was a small Gap and I saw something dark move out of the way of the window we're on a Salmon River I was immediately like bare so he grabs the rifle I had that shotgun and grabbed that Spotlight we opened the door to run this bear off and the river bank is literally 15 20 ft to my right as we go out the door and it kind of it's kind of on a cut bank so we beam and there's nothing

there and we're literally like maybe a foot and a half out the door Shoulder to shoulder and as I pan to the left that's when we saw the three set to ey shine and immediately we knew something was real wrong cuz it it was just it's hard to explain the feeling of um instant dread the worst kind of icky feeling on the inside like you just knew it was all bad well we immediately duck back in when we got back inside he's right here on my left and he's holding a rifle like this and when

I was speaking to him it was like Everything was muffled it was almost like talking to someone on a plane when your ears haven't popped it was similar to that and I was like did you see the eye shine and then all a sudden my cousin's underneath that c table he's got a death grip and he had wet himself and he's looking across that Shack at the other window so we we look at each other and then we look down at him and I still got the I'm holding the shotgun in my hand off-handed and

we Turn and look at the window where he was looking and that's when we saw the face in the window and as soon as I made eye contact with it within 2 seconds I I shot three times through the wall and then the whole place shifted a couple feet real quick it almost took me off my feet when the place shift I thought they were going to push us in the river cuz we're right there this this face I saw from the bottom of its nose to the top of its brow and it Filled that

18inch Gap I I had no doubt there was no mind speak or nothing like that it was just an immediate understanding that I was food after the place had shifted my Elder went back and sat on the bunk and was just sitting there I think he got out of his Bible but my younger cousin he was under the table still just looking out the window death gripping and I went to get that 30 o 6 from him cuz I wanted a more powerful gun but it was loaded and he he Wasn't letting go he was

out there so when I get him up and I I coach him into back to reality because he was still babbling a little bit it took like a good 3 to five minutes just to get him to let go of the gun you know I ended up sitting there for hours underneath that lamp pumping it every once in a while and I I resigned myself that I was going to die I just knew that the there was no other side to this it was going to somehow they were going to get us we we Had

a short conversation about how we were going to get out of there and our plan was to make it to the skiff which was about 20 25 ft away roughly 20 foot to the of Trail and then it drops down to Landing there at the river got our game plan we were going to get in the skiff and use that Spotlight and and see the water and just drift away from there my cousin was like well let's Spotlight out the windows and see if we see any activity out there there was an old ouse About

40t you know kitty corner off the back corner of this place so when we beamed we were looking at the place we saw the ey shine first and we're trying to sweep back and we saw nothing until we reached that ouse and we saw this black silhouette behind it it was every bit of like 13 14 ft tall the size of it was immense but what was scary was it was like it was absorbing the light it was so pitch black so we saw that and we saw it move and when it moved to its

uh Would be its left we immediately killed that Spotlight and we all tucked back into that little cubby we're freaked out we got barrels crossed and we had all the lamps and stuff off so it was it was dark it was pitch dark I'm not sure how much time had passed after that happened cuz it almost sounded like off in the distance uh rotor wash like the near distance it was like a Thump Thump Thump buum kind of sound and and we're like and then we Started feeling it in the ground well it was one

of these things that ran by the window it ran by and it was like they were staged around the place and all of a sudden they were all running around it and at one point it sounded like one of them was sniffing the trailer they could have broke that place and smashed us against a tree just like that you know and that's another question that drives me forward too is why didn't they as it was getting lighter we were getting more Brave to make it to the skiff so we got all of our important stuff

we went out the door now when we go out the door it only takes seconds I mean we were motivated we get to the edge of the River My cousin jumps down to get the boat started the ski started this rock bigger than a basketball whizzed by my head like if I hadn't to get you know slid back a little bit I I we wouldn't have this conversation right now so immediately my eyes lock on to it that Noise snapped me out of it and I whip around and that big black thing was coming out

of the tree line and I immediately 30 odd 6 I put three rounds Center mask now I heard the rounds hit this thing I heard them thck I I heard the impact this thing didn't Flinch it stopped moving forward it it just it still boggles my mind cuz it just stopped moving forward so immediately we're we get down in the ski and we're trying to get out of there and unbeknown To me I found this out years later they were still chucking rocks at the outboard as we were getting up on step to go back

down to new Yak uh I don't know it it's it's hard to explain I I got personal issues you know what I mean not a vendetta but just personal issues and what what drove that we got there and we went right into that cabin we didn't we were not whooping it up shooting something you know we weren't disrespecting the land in any Way that in the moment it it's really hard to grasp but looking back on a 2020 hindsight I I still don't have an understanding of it but it it unlocks this primal fear that

you don't even know you have it it's it's really hard to put into words do you think these things are Supernatural in any way or Flesh and Blood well I heard it hit Flesh and Blood you know I think they're flesh and blood and they've just been around Forever I mean our heritage it it's always been a part of it you know our oral history and the hay man's always been a part of it so folk tale mythology urban legend or something else that's the question regarding the darker side of Bigfoot lore here in Alaska

thus far I'd spoke to multiple people with their own terrifying encounters with Sasquatch I'd heard of the history of missing people in the state and I'd even delved into The alternative theories as to what might be taking people to begin with and yet while Fred's encounter is terrifying and its impact on him has changed how I've used the creatures I don't have a Smoking Gun there's nothing definitive yet that could be considered proof that Sasquatch is taking people so on the Denali Highway we make a pit stop to talk to a local named Jonathan to

learn about a missing person's case he was directly connected to the case involved A young boy named Billy Pope Billy's father Jean had moved from his home state of Ohio to Alaska where he' met a native woman named metrona who he married and had six children with Billy was one of these Jonathan dur grew up with Billy and remembers when he went missing in January of 1975 a child growing up in the harsh landscape of rural Alaska learns quickly how to survive in almost any situation and to do so independently unfortunately Even the sturdiest of

outdoorsmen have succumbed to The Wilds here and Alaska doesn't seem to make allowances for the lives it takes based on age yeah we are in as uh classified if you look on your Alaskan Maps the South Central but we're we're really right at the edge of uh the Denali burrow foothills of the Talina mountains where tala range meets the Alaska range I've lived here all of my life well most of my life my my my early uh childhood Was spent in the lake Omni country and over there that's where I got got the got hooked

and in the native culture Bigfoot is as real as moose or Caribou or or anything I mean it's just a given that that they exist not only exist are an essential part of of uh the community Billy would have been 16 he lived at popeo Landing which is an intricate Bay Billy was courting a little girl over in Coock so he he had walked he had walked to knock the day before and did did his visiting and whatnot and he was walking home which you know to him that's nothing that's like walking across the street

to most people the people in do called poo he says yeah Billy just left he should be home in about 3 hours so when Billy doesn't show up you know they start going back and forth and okay he should have been here They retraced his steps it had begun to snow as well major major search Party from all over the lake went looking for him and it was so strange cuz they found where Billy had had stopped and he had he had built a fire but like this where he built the fire was like a

Lone Tree like away from the rest of the forest he had like been breaking off branches like this I mean it was a place that you know it made no sense to stop And start a fire and then they they found the prince the the Bigfoot Prince they had been circling where he had built this fire and like I say it had been snowing and kind of raining so everything was a little distorted and some people had gone through on the search made a M of things before they could really but they had clear evidence

that he was being surround you know circled and uh they think somewhere in Their is where this uh this big F uh apprehended Billy and killed him and you know I think he would he wanted a line of vision because he knew this he was being followed and and he was had to be scared to death to be snapping off those branches and that's the last they saw them and there was you know speculation did he go through the lake well no they never found any evidence of that and Besides that you know he had

grown up there he was not going to fall through the lake and despite the fact that you know he's light as a fox he can walk on [Music] if picture this if you will it's stormy night and the rain's pouring down and I'm sitting with uh with his father and I said well I got to know what happened to Billy and he says oh it was Bigfoot we didn't tell the press that but we all know it was and we found [Music] tracks Billy's story isn't that unusual here people go missing all the time after

all especially individuals living on the outskirts of civilization it's also not unusual for there to be rumors or stories that grow up around the disappearances Upon returning from our Alaskan trip I was able to learn more about Billy his family suffered a string of tragic events following his Disappearance including subsequent disappearances of Two Brothers Tommy and Jean Jr the death of his mother and his older sister Dolores Alaska continued to claim his family after his passing and today Billy Pope is remembered by his friends and the family still remaining his death wasn't reported on in

the local news or talked about on social media he was simply gone vanished and in his place there is now an empty hole that those who knew him Have tried to fill with questions and answers that could help make sense of where he went one of Billy's friends and the last person to have seen him alive anonymously divulged to us that he didn't believe Sasquatch was responsible for his disappearance at all the same night that he went missing a massive snowstorm dropped over 4T of snow across the region so what are the BigFoot tracks that

Billy's father recalled seeing how could tracks even be visible In 4T of snow it's possible that in searching for answers a grieving man grasped at the one thing that could offer a solution a monster from the forest took his son or maybe it's true maybe there was a bloodthirsty Sasquatch wandering the area who just happened to bump into Billy On's path home whatever the case may be time has killed all hope of learning what happened on that winter night in January Of 1975 [Music] could they possibly be a little more aggressive yes there are some

stories where people have said they've been a little more aggressive um to get them out of the out of a certain area but then you also have stories that you know consist of curious creatures staying just outside that campfire light looking in I I think any any being whether it's Them us can be aggressive if provoked you know if you're in their territory or you know they don't want you there Rock being thrown you know the wood knocks the howls the chatter stuff like that you know what does it all mean behavioral for them there

are a couple accounts I heard of where it appeared to be curious iOS it you know um but when someone is panicked it's aggressive you see what I mean even if it's just seen and maybe Shakes a tree they can easily out of fear take that as you know a form of aggression a lot of the Alaskan native the Superstition is that if if you're in their territory they will take you they'll take you away or or they will kill and eat you like the gilc would sasquatches are obviously very intelligent they're primates of some

sort some sort of great ape um how closely related to us another great ape they are remains open to question but Clearly if they're anywhere in our family they're the smartest things out in the woods yeah they're not using fire they're not doing math but they're obviously very intelligent so is it possible that some of these missing people um go missing because of another monster the Sasquatch yeah sure it's possible I don't think it's the the shouldn't shouldn't be the first culprit that you point your finger at I think it's entirely possible though um because

Sasquatches are not your Forest Friends they're they're not the they're not out there in in benign disney-esque Landscapes picking flowers and giving them to you they are animals trying to survive and those and sasquatches are smart animals that can survive in a variety of ways other ape species have grabbed babies and whatnot and ate them there's stories from Washington of sasquatches doing the same thing sasquatches are wild animals of the Scariest type because they're humanlike wild animals cuz we're the real monsters so Sasquatches actually resemble the real monsters I'm thinking about Sasquatch a lot you

know I if I hear noises I'm kind of paying attention to what's going on around me in the woods I start listening and I'm hearing stories that are blowing my mind and just aren't what I grew up hearing um from the old-timers and I start getting a little more flexible Maybe maybe there's Something else going on maybe I do have to rethink this and I start rethinking it well maybe it isn't the dumb Forest ape that's just really good at play hiide and go seek I have a a sudden Epiphany and I don't I don't

believe this is true or anything to worry about folks out there um but my Epiphany is if Sasquatch really wanted to and considering people like me or even just people in Suburbia if they wanted to they could push people out of rural Areas back to population centers I don't yeah death by Alaska is real common I mean look you get a mile away from the village that's death out there you know I've been dealing with with it my whole life I mean laskan laskan can kill you without even trying I mean so many you know

good men and women have woken up one morning and by noon they're they had they've run into something it happens around here a lot but not 16,000 people where so Something's going on out there people go missing in Alaska all the time every year I mean you know Alaska is the end of the road you guys probably did your research coming up here to see how many people have gone missing in the last 20 years up here you know you you can you attribute that to Bigfoot squats the Harry man whatever I don't [Music] know

the connection between missing People Alaska and Bigfoot is unmistakable it's there the concept of Bigfoot taking people has been a part of the lore as long as there has been a Bigfoot lore well yeah I mean that goes right to the first nation's accounts a lot of those stor and of these things come in they take our women and children that only needs to happen once for that to become a story that then then gets told you know keep the village kids from going Too far out um but like you said there's this weird kind

of connection there and uh probably more so than than I would even like to assume I mean Alaska's the kind of place that it chews you up and spits you out and the woods out here are no joke historically the sightings of Bigfoot that then correlate some sort of missing person's case even in the modern era do exist and you can't just write all of that off it's also if you think of Bigfoot as a natural creature it's Going to be some sort of apex predator it's it's massive it's capable of taking people if it

wants to yeah it's somewhat intelligent we know that about it so the odd missing person being somehow attributable to Bigfoot I'm I'm on board with that idea I mean it's there's a lot of cherry picking going on I think nowadays in terms of sensationalizing that the killer Bigfoot story cells This creepy encounter story cell I mean majority of Encounters of Bigfoot across The continent are pretty mundane you know somebody start crossing the road that sort of thing these creatures do have personalities and and differences there may be some that are just mean and nasty that

want to do something malicious to humans maybe they've had a bad experience they've been shot at who knows uh whereas overall it seems like Sasquatch is curious but not very aggressive although like we said that is sort of the the popular depiction is the Killer Bigfoot I don't think it's common I think especially in a place like Alaska like Alex was saying I mean especially even the places that we went to if I would have fallen off a cliff and died no one would have found me you know not even Alex you know it's too

thick and there's almost there's too much happening I feel like if 16,000 people miss are all attributable to Sasquatch or even a third of that are attributable to Sasquatch we would 100% Know they exist there's no way that many people go missing without us finding out that they're there somebody would do something most likely the government uh I do think we have uh far far more questions now when it relates to Alaska missing people some of the high strangeness aspects of what we've learned I'll be back to the state simply because it's it's absolutely breathtaking

like the the wilderness Ness here is what we've been looking for In various other places around the United States I I would come back here just for the sheer scale of it I didn't come to the Last Frontier in search of terrifying Sasquatch Tales or looking to push a narrative about killer bigfoots I didn't set out looking for the darker side of Sasquatch lore but it certainly found me anyway whether you view the entire topic is a little more than mythology or you're a died in the wool believer Alaska will challenge the way you view

Bigfoot maybe you think Bigfoot is simply an Undiscovered species of ape basically a mountain gorilla or a chimp but one that walks on two feet and has managed to avoid us for centuries while Alaska will throw stories of humanlike forest Giants and tiny monkey Devils at you to challenge that notion maybe you're of the opinion that Sasquatch is a friendly Forest creature A benign being who curiously observes us from the Shadows but secretly wants the best for mankind well it turns out that there are hundreds of years of native oral tradition and legends not to

mention newspaper and written accounts of maning baby stealing Horrors that lur just behind the trees like I said for yourselves thanks to television and numerous books that push the killer Sasquatch angle far more Than the more mundane encounters that make up the bulk of the topic there are even people too afraid to journey into the woods behind their own homes fear not only sells but dissuades us too dissuades us from searching for answers for ourselves dissuades us from living the life we're called to live my response to this is simply to remember the earliest peoples

to travel the Last Frontier indigenous people who fought constant challenges in order to Not only survive here but Thrive to seek fulfillment where none else dared seek it out sure have a healthy fear of the Wilderness but more than that respect it you can even replace the word Wilderness With Sasquatch if you'd like those most hearty of Outdoors have died in these mountains and valleys Jack London had a quote about this one I'd read as a young boy and one that I believe now applies to me and my View of this place as well he

said despite everything every piece of Alaska sang to me I remembered every curve in the trails every tree in the forest it was familiar to me comfortable more I thought about leaving it the less I liked the idea [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]