Alaskan Timber Worker's Chilling Sasquatch Encounter on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska

0:04 This thing is not a mangy bear, and I couldn't figure out what the hell it was. I was questioning my sanity. It looked more a for sure as big cheeks brown like a what is that thing? The orange ones from Asia? Worrying at tain? You probably covered ten twenty feet in matter of nothing. He was gone in almost instantly. Either you're listening to the Big Society podcast and I'm Jeremiah Virn. Every week I talk to individuals who have experienced sasquatch in some way or another, so you won't want to miss an episode. Make sure you're subscribed on the platform that you're listening to, and share this episode where the friend does not cost a thing and it helps the show continuing to grow. If you'd like to hear Bigfoot Society episodes early in ad free, you can do so by becoming a Patreon supporter or YouTube channel member. Links to those are in the show notes in Bag for Society.

1:27 I've taken far too much of your time so far, so let's get on with the show, all right, Big for Society've got the privilege of talking to Dylan from Prince of Wales Island up in southeast Alaska. Today. How's it going, Dylan, I'm pretty good. Are you doing well? I'm excited to talk to you on the phone. I was trying to see if I could get a whole of anyone that actually lives on the island and has had some bigfoot encounters, and through some posts that I made in some groups, we were able to get connected. And so background on yourself.

2:13 You do work in the timber industry up there in Prince of Wales, but you said that you do have some interesting sightings to to share with the podcast listeners. I'm going to let you take the floor, and I know you've had a few times where you've seen sasquatch over the years, but I'll have you start wherever you feel is a good starting point. Okay, Now, I guess I could start with the first time I've seen one. I lived on the island now for about four years and the first time I come up. I have a friend who lives in Cassan, which is in the There's a peninsula sticking out towards catch a Can and there's a little town on that peninsula. You can drive to it and it's an old native village. But we went crab fishing in that bay there, it's a pretty good place to go fishing. And we were throwing pots over and I looked over to go mark the buoye, and I've seen a shape moving between these two islands.

3:19 And we didn't think anything about it. Kept putting around, putting pots in, and we got closer and closer to this thing. I thought it was a lot. There's lots of logs floating around after storms, dead heads, and if you hit it with your boat, you'll get a hole or mess up your prop. So I told him, and he took a look at it, and he said, that ain't a log. That is a They call him a Kushtika. It's the Native Alaskan people here. They believe in these creatures that live near water, and they make these siren sounds like babies crying, women crying at night to draw men towards the water, and they pull them in and eat them. That's the story. And he wanted to get really close to it and kill it. We got in a fight.

4:11 I didn't want him to mess with this thing. He was going to bring us in the water and kill us. But we got fairly close and looked at it through a scope on our rifle, and it was swimming pretty fast over towards this island that has a bunch of berry bushes, no trees, And I didn't think nothing of it if I was a weird looking bear. But he swore up and down that that was indeed a kushtaka or a sasquatch. I'm pretty sure that they're about the same thing. And I didn't see nothing for a long time after that, for about e three years, and then last year I always went to the Carter River Wilderness and I was going to go to the lake, take a week off of work, have a big fishing trip, start at the lake, and make my way down the river and then go beach sane and then get picked up. So I was at the cabin at the lake for two three days and headed off down towards the mouth of the river where there's another cabin. And this area is very overgrown. It ain't been logged, I think ever. So there's nine ten foot sick of spruce, very dense canopy, very dark, and that year we got fifteen feet of rain, so it was raining NonStop the whole time.

5:38 It's very dark, and when it's raining you don't have a very good sense of anything, hearing or vision, smell, You can't really I don't know I how to describe it. You're almost numb walking through that stuff. And a bunch of salmon berry bushes extremely dense around a corner on the river, and I was going to go throw in see if I could get a couple of saki. They were running. It's about June, and I peered over and I thought it was a bear because it's black and it was looking down, so it looked like a snout of some kind. But I got closer to it and it looked up. It hurt me, and we were just staring at each other across the river. Its head looked up. I saw its eyes, and anyone's not a bear because bears don't. Bears have snouts, they don't have flat faces. It didn't stick around long tuck I'm taking I'm thinking probably about two three seconds, and he was gone, turned around, ran. It's about it. I don't know what else to give you. When you saw the creature for a few seconds, do you remember it had a particular shaped to the head that you saw. Yeah, pretty long head, but a small face, if that makes any sense, really big forehead just verty and huge, okay, and yellow eyes and a real

7:12 big eyebrow. By big eyebrow, do you mean the actual hair of the eyebrow or the ridge. I mean it's all covered in hair, But you could see that area was like a bump across the whole forehead, one big bump. Would you say most of the face was covered with hair or only certain parts the face part It almost looked like an Amish guy. You know how they shave the mustache. They have a big beard from the sideburns all the way around looked like that. Did you notice anything particular about the nose of their creature at all? Pretty flat and people have round nostrils. This thing had more like a slit looking thing. Did it show its teeth at all? Any any emotion that you got from its face in the few seconds that you saw it. I think it was surprised, looked at me pretty wide eyed, one of those stunned looks for a second, like a deer in the headlights. It sounds like you were able to see it move a little bit, moving on two legs are on four. It moved on too.

8:26 It stood up and just turned away and walked. You able to see the hands at all, or what's the lower part covered by bushes or something like that. No, he was in the river, so saw the hands. These wet, but they were there. Did you notice anything out of the ordinary about the hands. Oh, they had thumbs, for sure, they weren't more feet, gotcha. And hair covered all the way down to the hands. Oh yeah. Looking at the face of the creature. Let's say, if you had to put in a category in human category and you have ape category, or I guess maybe you have something completely different, could you put it in any of those categories? I mean it looked more eight for sure, has big cheeks, brown like a what is that thing?

9:20 The orange ones from Asia? Orang atane? Oh really, it reminded you of an orangutang look. Oh yeah, for sure because of the cheeks. Okay, yeah, I'm picturing that in my head. I know exactly what you're talking about. Length of the hair. Did you notice anything in regards to how long the hair was. It's pretty shaggy, so it had to have been fairly thick. What that would be maybe three four inches thick, like a shagg rugged looking deal. Did you notice a color to the hair at all? Yeah, like a dark brown black looking, very dark colored. Were you able to see the feet or lower legs at all? Yeah?

10:05 Okay, did you notice anything about the feet or the legs at all? Not anything other than they had two two feet definitely no shoes. The hair went pretty much clear down there, but I couldn't tell you in detail what the feet looked like. What was the weather like at this time? Raining temperature? Oh, probably about sixty sixty five degrees. Okay. Did you notice any particular smell at this time? Yeah? It was frankly one of the worst smells I've ever smell in my life, wet, mangy.

10:46 Have you ever been to a camel shelter and smelt that weird, rancid, sweaty dog smell? Yeah? And you could smell across the river. Okay, remind me how far away roughly you were again, I would say between forty and thirty feet the river there probably about that wide, and that smell just hit you from that far away. Wow, that's that is wild. When you saw the creature moving, getting out of the river, then probably walking a bit, did you notice anything about how it walked its gate?

11:28 Yeah, it stood up and turned, but it's a heel in one motion, and it took a huge step onto the river bank, and then another step, and then it stepped into the salmon berry's but really big steps. You probably covered ten twenty feet in matter of nothing. He was gone and almost instant, quiet, in quiet, quiet, quiet, Okay. Picturing the way that it's moving in your mind, do you feel like that's a way of moving that a human could replicate or was it different than the way that a human would move. I don't think a person, even a tall guy with really good coordination, because tall people usually ain't that coordinated. I don't think you could really get out of the river soaking wet, and the ground heres moss and rock, so when you're stepping on it, you think it's soft, but it's It will tear your feet up really really quick.

12:33 It's slick too, and it was really rainy that day. I don't think that a person could make that kind of movement with bare feet. They have to be wearing cork boots. Were you able to get a feel of how long the actual foot of the creature would be if you had to give estimate the foot of it, yeah, how I wouldn't be able to guess, probably something in the range at fourteen fifteen inches, if I had to guess, I know, sure pretty big around this time, What were the sounds around you? Like, what other sounds were you hearing? Are you hear the river? You would hear some crows, there were some eagles, and little breeze going through the trees. Mainly the rain is really heavy rain.

13:26 Gotcha, So not entirely one hundred percent quiet, but you're still hearing a few birds, Okay, gotcha? Do you remember what your emotional reaction was in a few seconds you saw this happen first? I was in a daze and I stood there probably two three minutes after it left. I couldn't move. Almost felt like an out of body experience, like I was paralyzed. Did you tell anyone right afterwards what had happened? Or did it take a while for you to share what you'd experienced. No, I didn't tell anybody for six seven months. I've only told about three four people. Is there a reason why you took so long to share that way? I was trying to figure out what the hell could be for sure. I don't like jumping on things and just coming up with theories I know. I have a really good friend of mine, and he'll see aliens everywhere. There's aliens in the supermarket and lizard people and all that other stuff. But I was thinking of I've been in the forest in my whole life. I was logging since I was fourteen, So I've seen bears. I've been logging in Alaska for six years now. There's wolves, there's bears, there's deer, and in southeast Alaska that's about it. Large animals. I've seen some. Really, there's

14:56 mangy bears. They get sick sometimes and they'll lose hair. They look really weird, and sometimes they'll stand on two feet. This thing is not a mangy bear, and I couldn't figure out what the hell it was. I was questioning my sanity for a while. Wow some other questions about what you had seen. Do you remember anything about the arms of the creature at all? Apart from them being hairy and all that. Was there anything weird about the length? They were long? For sure, longer than proportionately we'd see on a bear. The hands definitely went lower to the About the knees, I'd say a little bit about the kneecaps or the fingers would be resting if he's standing straight up. Did it look like you're looking at a creature that had normal amount of digits, like we would have like five fingers and five toes or I don't know if that's something you were able to know at all, or I wouldn't be able to tell for sure because he's soaking wet and some of those hairs are bunched up. Might have looked like fingers, but I couldn't think more than five in less than four. Gotcha? Was there anything that made you were you able to tell if you were looking at like a male or a female of the species or anything like that. It did have a big chest, well again too graphic. It didn't look like a

16:30 guy. It looked like the memories there. Okay, gotcha? That's that sounds like it's the first major interaction you've had, because I was thinking back to the first story and it sounded like at that point you only saw a creature that was in the water. Did that creature ever get out of the water that you saw or know? How'd you feel it? It's just it was swimming and it was an animal. It wasn't a log for sure. It had was making noise in the water. You could see trying to breathe and stuff. How much of the animal were you able to see in the water, was it shoulders up or just the head or the water was pretty clear. We could see the head up in the water, and when it would swim, you could see parts of the upper shoulders, but you couldn't see anything definite below the water lying there. Okay, what were the main features since you weren't able to see a lot of the creature like you were the one that we just talked about, were there major features that you saw that were like you're like, okay, yeah, this is a sasquatch or a kushtaka or kushtaka oh kushtaka. Yeah yeah, still that the flat face, but the heads on they're so oblong that they look like they could be

18:03 a snout, but they aren't pointed in the direction that the animal moves. If that makes any sense. It's the peak of the head points back and the animal is moving forward. It wasn't on a bear. I think seeing bears swim and any other animal I've seen swim, the snout is always pointed in the same direction. Bears in them they don't do backstroke. Have you ever seen any other creature that has a head shape similar to that? Nope? Okay, you said the one creature looked more like a had a rangu tang face to it. Was that also similar to the one that you saw swimming or was that a completely different setup? We weren't close enough to be able to make that out, gotcha, Yeah, asking some basic questions either of these encounters, were you able to get any pictures or audio recording, or see any tracks, any evidence like that. I did not take pictures, and I just honestly don't look to take any pictures of anything. I'm not a good photographer. So I did come back not long after, and I looked in the river there for any tracks, But it's hard to find tracks here. It's all moss and anything's there an impression. The best luck you have is around a riverbank, and when it's raining, you won't find

19:36 much. Going back to the orangutang one, do you have any idea of what the creature might have been doing there at that spot when you sounds like you stumbled upon it. Was it trying to do any certain activity? Or I would assume it was fishing, because it was a salmon run and it was leaning over the water. It the prime arms there in the water, and it was looking in the river watching. It wasn't looking anywhere else before I showed up, So probably fishing. Did you ever do any research to see if you could find any or talk to anyone who had seen similar things in that area where you were at? Yeah, my friend from Casan, I've talked to him, and the locals around here, they'll tell you that it's kushtaka, and their stories and descriptions of them are pretty similar. What they look like, what they're up to, where you find them. They almost always seem to be around water. That's the one commonality in all those encounters I've ever heard of up here. Did you grow up on the island then, No. I came up here to work, Okay, ended up staying. When you first got to the area, did you notice the presence of Sasquatch and the culture right away? Oh? Yeah, Before I came

21:07 up here, I was logging in Oregon and Washington, and it's pretty similar. As far as a prevalence in the folklore and culture of the region, I would say it's very intense closely tied guys that you were working with. Did they have similar experiences themselves, or if they did, they don't tell anybody. And it's pretty hard for me even to talk about it. You don't talk about this kind of stuff. It's a pretty no nonsense industry. Oh. Absolutely, And I'm very very thankful that you are able to talk about this. I know it's a thing where you are still in your career, and I can tell that at times this is hard to talk about for you. If you had the choice whether to see it again, would you want to see it again or I'd absolutely like to see it again. I'd love to because it's a special thing. It's something that I don't think there's a whole lot of them left. It's like walking in an old growth forest.

22:15 Only a handful of people will ever be able to do that, unless as the world is closed up and we destroy more of it. Really probably going to go out again and look for it at the card that'd be awesome. Definitely let me know if anything comes to that. Is this a thing where the memories were coming into your dreams things like that? Oh, I couldn't tell you. I don't think so. I had a dream about it, but it's not like a thing that had happened all of a sudden, like a magical shamanistic deal, more like a PTSD dream. Quite honestly, do you have any advice for people that maybe they've had an encounter like this of ways that they can move past it and just be able to deal with everyday life. Yeah, eventually you got to tell somebody, and I wouldn't be too concerned if they believe you or not, because who gives a rap whether or not anyone believes you. You can only believe your own two eyes and your nose and your ears. Why do you think it's important to actually be able to share to someone else? Partially because you drag them into it with you, and all of a sudden there's another person who's they might not believe it. They might, but now there's more people who have to at least think about it. Gotcha dealing. It's a very interesting encounter. Thank

23:51 you so much for sharing what you saw with me and my listeners. I hope you are able to go back to that area if you are able to notice anything weird up there, definitely keep us in the loop. Thank you so much for taking some time chatting with us tonight. Do you have any closing words about your experiences or I suppose the last thing to say would be, I really hope that nobody comes out here to hurt them. That's about it, because we get a lot of trophy hunters and I would imagine they'd love to get their hands on something like that. I would hope it never comes to that. That's totally different than getting a specimen for science, I think, the whole trophy hunting thing. But yeah, I hope that it definitely does not come to that. But Dylan, thank you so much for your time tonight, No problem. May ask you a question, Yes, does this need to be off record? I don't think so, All right, go ahead. Do you get a lot reports from around here? So I've only had the opportunity to talk to one gentleman who was a chaplain with the Salvation Army about his time up there a Prince of Wales Island. From what I've heard, there are many people. It's just being able to get the connection to them, which is why I resorted to pretty much posting in

25:23 random Prince of Wales Island Facebook groups. And then someone I think sent a message to your tagged you in it. But I know there are lots of people in your area that are seeing things. It's just being able to get in touch with the right people. Yeah was he from klook? Oh yeah, okay, Yeah it was a klobok thing yea. So it's pretty interesting if listeners are listening and there's other individuals that have had sightings in the Prince of Wales Island area. I would love to talk to you as well. Unit always send me an email at bigfost Society at gmail dot com. But yeah, I've had the privilege of talking to one other person so far, hopefully more in the future. All Right, all right, Dylan, thank you so much for chatting. Feel free to reach out there's anything that I can ever help out with and hope to be in touch with you in the future. Sure, thank you, all right, have a great rest of your night, Dylan, do goodbye. You're at Bigfoot Society. Our goal is to provide a platform for those that have encountered Bigfoot to share their encounter and a safe and respected environment. But we need to hear your story.

26:45 If you've experienced something that you just can't explain, please send me an email at Bigfoot society at gmail dot com. Then we can start the conversation. And I know a lot of you have not shared your encounter at all. It's been twenty years and it's time that you get this off your chest and then you can get some well deserved for rest, because I know you haven't been sleeping. I understand what you're going through, and I appreciate every one of you listening