Fort Pickett: What We Saw Wasn’t Human

0:01 You're listening to Bigfoot Society, and I'm Jeremiah Byron. Tonight's story isn't from a backpacker or a hiker. It's from a man who grew up in the forest of northern California and spent years in the Navy, trained to spot danger, but none of that prepared him for what he encountered near Mount Shasta. A shadow in the brush, a boulder crashing to the ground, saombie like sounds in the dark, and one night, a pair of eyes reflecting back at him from between two trucks on a military base. And this is next story. It's one that spans decades, coasts and things were not supposed to talk about. So stay with us, all right, Bigfoot Society. You've got the privilege of talking to Nick today. Nick is an individual that reached out to me quite a while ago. He's got some interesting things to share from over the years. He is a individual with a military background and also an eagle scout as well, and grew up in the Mount Shasta, California area. So welcome to the show.

1:00 Nick. How's it going, man, Yeah, he jo, I'm doing good. I'm glad that we finally made this made this happen. I know it's been a little bit of a process for sure, but you know, I guess we're here, so that's all that matters. Now, absolutely, man. Yeah, I'm glad to glad to finally get here. We've been talking. I mean it feels like maybe maybe months, maybe over a year, I don't know. But yeah, as you said, the important thing is that we're here. But you know, Nick, I want to make sure that you have the time to to share about the things you've experienced over the years. Feel free to take us back to where these interactions first started happening for you.

1:42 Yeah. So, like you said, I'm born, raised Northern California, matt Shasta Eagle Scout, and then I joined the Navy. I was in a reverine squadron, spent five years in there, came out, and now I'm working on a ranch and doing kind of like ranch hand stuff and kind of my experience has started a long time ago. I guess my first one. I know, I just want to preface it by saying I was, you know, pretty young, uh, but it was I was being babysat by my my cousin and s basally me and my sister in my Shasta and a pretty good sized meadow outside our you know, our backyard. I think it's altogether probably like seven hundred acres, and it butts right up next to uh, National forest Land, I mean like as it crow flies. I mean just to the coast directly west. I mean, there's there's nothing between us and the coast. I mean there's the Trinity Alps National Park and uh, I mean Scott Valley maybe, but that's more more northern than we are. So but we got a large meadow out there. He butts right up the National forest Land and we like to go out there a lot growing up. And my cousin kind of knew that, so she said like, oh yeah, let's

3:16 take the dogs out there, and we're taking for a walk and check it out. And we have this path that leads through all this really thick man's it. It's maybe. I mean I sent you kind of like a pin drop to the location. It should just be home. I don't know if you got that or not, but yes, it's it's clear. It's clear now, but back in the day, kind of all that everything north up until the actual meadow was all this real thick man's and meta so the three of us and we had two dogs at the time, start, you know, walking on this trail. It's kind of like a little deer trail through this this brush and it's you know, maybe six feet high and uh real thick. I mean, mansmy is like, it's pretty unforgiving.

4:05 It's a real hardwood too. Uh. We're out there and we hear something like we get we get out defence, start into the brush. I started hearing something kind of like shadowing us. And my cousin's probably about you know, fifteen sixteen. About this time, I was pretty young. I was probably around around nine. That makes my sister like eleven, eleven or twelve. Uh, it's like late summer and you're this thing like you just working through the brush shadowing us. The dogs are acting weird. I mean, we had Nike and Ta Taz was a sweetheart and Night he was a little more you know, aggressive standoffee. I mean they were both like, you know, not not leaving us at all.

4:54 You're just staying moving through the brush. And uh, my cousin a mac. He thinks it's a person. And I mean I'm pretty young, but ah, she thinks it's a person, and it follows us for a while, and maybe one hundred meters down on this trail, just hear it just crushing through this brush and it's it's hard to move through that, and it's just, you know, it's trailing us pretty good. And she stops and it stops, and we all stop, and she says, hey, like this is private property. You're not allowed to be out here. Like if if you're out here, you need to leave, I'll call the cops, you know, that type of thing. And we waited, we heard nothing, and then we kept on moving again, and like right as we started moving, whatever it was started moving and then just big through the brush, you know.

5:57 And you think that if it was something, you know, more quadruped, more of a quadruped, it'd be a little lower. I feel like it'd be able to navigate kind of underneath the brush a little bit better. I think it was just going right through it and we I mean, we have had black bear back there before. But again, it's nothing crazy, I mean a little bit smaller, and it followed us for probably i mean all the way up into the meadow. And it's a deer tell again, so it's it's real close quarters and we just wanted to get out of that. And I remember my cousin being real scared, and we're kind of following her, and you know, we don't really understand what's happened too much, but we make it out to the larger meadow there out of the brush, and we decide we're going to walk like directly through the meadow, so we have like a large line of site on either side and we can still hear it whatever. It always fall like in the tree line, and we ended up falling the meadow.

7:02 It crossed a couple fences, crossed a some railroad tracks too, and made her way to the nearest rail it was about four miles, and got someone to call my mom and she came picked us up and was pretty upset with my my cousin for dragon us on a three mile excursion out in the woods. But she's pretty adamant that someone was following us. But I mean, I didn't really think too crazy much of it at the time, but then my my later encounters kind of made me go back and think about it. So, yeah, I guess that was kind of the end of my my first experience there. So if you go right back from my house, there's some railroad track running right through. I don't know if you see that one. Yeah, so we we went all the way back and that little kind of dirt spot that used to all be Man's Anita, we're going through that, and we cut through and I mean my cousin, you know, fifteen sixteen, and we're staying out in the middle of this field. We had to cross those little rivers.

8:22 You know, there's a barbed wire fence on either side of that railroad track to you know, keep cows off the off the railroad tracks. I mean it's a seasonal thing, a seasonal like crazy pasture. But and then all the way over that road up there, so I mean it was a hike for sure, and my mom was not super happy with my my cousin. And I mean again I I take that story for you know, the Grand Salt, because I was you know, I was nine, but that's how I remember, and just looking back, I think, you know, maybe I could be associated with it. But I guess if you okay, I'm gonna go into my my second account now. Yeah, and I dropped I dropped another pin to that one kind of location at which that happened, right, So me and my my friend. I'm not gonna name names because he's doing other government stuff now too, But so growing up that there's this house that just like continued to be abandoned. We called it the Chinese Mansion, which I mean, I don't know if mansion is the right word, but I think it's like eight bedroom, six bath, and it's kind of a weird combination of like, uh like Japanese and seventies style, like the core inside it's interesting.

9:51 But every family that like moved in there stayed there for like a couple of months and then move doubt and then is you know, they're asking like you know, at the time, like three hundred thousand dollars or whatever for the property when it's way it's worth way much more than that. And attached to the property there is a it's a cold it's like it's a Japanese structure. They're like super tall or kind of like I think almost like a church of some sort. It's like a pagoda or something like that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, So they have one of those right next to the creek there that runs through the meadow as well. And uh so it was it was late summer in twenty fifteen.

10:43 So it's like the summer of my sophomore year in high school, right, So we decided, me and my buddy, we're like, all right, we're going to run up there, like go down the driveway and like we're going to check out this old pagoda because it's up there. I mean, there's no one's lived there, like, you know, for a hot minute, and we're just gonna look in there and check it out and shoe what happens, you know, And we ride our bikes down there. It's really not that far of a bike ride. We get there, the sun's kind of setting. It's like, you know, seven o'clock during the summer, so sun's kind of starting to go down, and we have a chain across the driveway and we just decide we're just gonna drop our bikes there at the driveway. And there's a really thick like area of pine trees right behind us, like Douglas Fir, you know, where like all the saplings grow up, and it's just like it's almost like a wall, if you know, young trees.

11:45 And then on the other side there's the river with the creek right and so we drop our bikes there and we're getting off and we're just talking about going back there and like, oh, yeah, we need to hurry back, and like as we're talking, uh, this is the part like I feel really silly saying. But from that, like those pine trees, it sounds like like a zombie noise. It's like, uh, I'm assuming you know, like Minecraft is. It's like the zombie was just a real deep like you know, and then followed by like just like some chatter.

12:29 And the closest thing that I can describe it to is like is the old man in the Sierra sounds? And I mean we like we pause, and it's like it's just it's such a deep noise. It's crazy. I mean you could like I want to say, you feel in your chest, but you know, like it's just it was so deep. And we stop and we both look at the pine, like the pine trees there, you don't see anything. And then from the other side of the creek we hear a repeat of the same exact noise just there, like a slightly higher pitch, and we were both pretty pretty freaked out by that, and I mean we just you didn't say anything. We just looked at each other, grabbed our bikes and we paddled home as fast as we could, and you know, and told my parents like, oh yeah, we heard like a zombie in the back or like you know, on the side of the road of there by the the Trya house. And uh, I was, I was. That was the second thing that happened.

13:42 I'm just going to chronological order here through the through the years, you know. So I don't know if you have any anything you want to ask about that, but. Man, it it you hear stories like that, and it's like it really makes you wonder what's going on the property now, and like if you were have you ever been have you been back to that area since that that situation or no? Yeah, yeah, I mean I think I don't think anyone in my family. I mean my sister had an experience out there too, but no one in my family really loves going out there around you know, like.

14:23 Dusk big for society. Who will be right back after these messages? Uh yeah? And it was it was interesting too because that same that same summer, like before we had that experience, all right, they had like let some cattle out there and we'd hear them at night like just going crazy and freaking out and we'd aly, you know, and we're thought like maybe you know, some teenagers were out there messing with them. We got we got permission back in those days to go out there and like walk our dogs and whatnot from while the owners, ah, you know, like repair some fences if they needed it, or let them know if their cows got out, or you know, if some high schoolers were going out there and you know, having a bonfire drink because you know, wildfires are a big thing up and you know the north here, so like just let them know. And we had permission to go out there. So we would hear the cows going crazy out there, so the next morning we'd get up and we got check on them. They have calves, you know, uh, just like we'd find them. They'd have like legs or necks like broken. I think we found probably five or

15:56 six just in that one summer, you know, like three months, and we've called me, you know, we called the owners a couple of times and asked them and they come out and they check on it, like, yeah, like probably a cougar. But there's there's no bite marks, there's nothing like that. You know, it's just broken legs and thrown in the same place. All right. So so just for my clarification, so this is the same property as the pagoda. No, so this so the pagoda is across the road, and then that's where the ranching land starts. Right. I don't know if you can see that. They should be under Encounter two for that pin drop, but you can kind of see where that is in relations to like the actual property.

16:55 Okay, so you were you were buddy buddy with the owners of the ranch. Yeah at the time, Yeah, I got it. It went over It came under some new management later down the road, but yeah, at the time we were we were my dad knew the owner of the ranch, and we went to school with some of their kids, or you know, my sister knew one of their daughters or something like that. All right. Yeah, so this this the the pictures really starting to get painted for me here. So you've got this this ranch area, this huge meadow you guys were were you know, something was walking beside you in the woods, and then you've got this other area with the pagoda. You're hearing the Sierra sounds over there. But also the owners of the ranch are having to deal with just their calves just being taken out in really weird ways. So there's a ton of activity happening in this area so far. Absolutely.

17:52 Yeah, yeah, at least back in that time period. I mean I've only been back maybe five months about so I'm kind of curious to see what this summer's like. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean I talked. I mean I think Eric got in touch with you and I met him down to China Flats Museum, right and he recommended some audio recorders. So I'm going to go out there this summer and kind of set that up and see what happens. But no, yeah, Eric is a great dude. He is sending me emails with with people to follow up on and he's like, hey, I got another phone number. The guy wants you to reach out Eric. Eric is a great dude. China Flats Museum people need to check that out.

18:39 It is such a great place. I need to get out there one day myself. But yeah, Eric's a great dude. But yeah, are you thinking of maybe getting some some like handheld recorders, like a task gamor or maybe something a little. Bit Yeah I had one. Yeah, so I have a taskkam right now. I just got it. I was talking to Eric about my experiences when I visited UH and he recommended this one. So I got one of those spot off Amazon, you know, got a little a little windscreen for it in a tripod. So set that up suit we find so absolutely I'm excited for that. But really, I mean during the winter time, I ain't like, really not much happens out here, but it seems like late summer, you know, this seems kind of be the time for it.

19:32 If anything. Growing up in this area, did you hear a lot of stories from like in school or people talking around the town. Yeah, there's stuff, weird stuff going on, or like we don't know what's going on or is it just the time experience? I mean, I had my experiences, and I've talked to a couple of people. I mean, like one of the kids I went to school with was I guess their grandpa was really into the whole as sasquatch. When I'm on the big footing, he had like casts and stuff, and back then I never believed. I mean, my dad is a big non believer too. He's you know, a growing up in Scouts too. I mean we bring it up and talk about it and like, ah, it's not real.

20:13 It's just you know whatever, crazy people they're you know, out and they're drunk or whatever. But yeah, I mean, you know, talk to people around here. I don't think it's uncommon for it. I mean I got ah some McLoud. I don't know if he nor Mcloud's at, but it's it's near here and it's just on kind of the more eastern side, like the Mountain. Went over there. There's a little thrift store and it kind of specialized in like Native American stuff. Uh So I dropped in there one day I was home on leave and I found, uh a first edition of one of John Green his books. Yeah, kind of cool. I of course I bought it, but I had to talk to him. I was like, you know, like, do you have any like experiences? And he's telling me about over McCloud. I just wanted to come in and seeing the books and just been like if I saw one of those, He's like what He's like, yeah, I saw one of those, you know. He just I was like, yeah, I was out one night, I was you know, working, went out to my truck to leave and saw one of those things jump the fence running the woods. So I mean I think that this is a pretty hot spot.

21:36 I mean as the crow flies. I've measured it before because I'd like to go see the Bluff Creek film site, you know, Patterson Game one, and it's probably about sixty miles as a crow flies from my house, So I mean they're around here. So oh absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, and then uh give me am I good to move on to the go ahead, Okay, yeah, So the same same meadow. So there's that that lower meadow and the upper meadow or the small which is the lower one, and the larger one, which is the upper one more northern.

22:23 So we're walking up there towards the larger meadow, and it's it's me and a different friend this time. It's again late summer, but twenty sixteen, so I'm going onto my senior year in high school. And we're walking up there and the road is kind of cut out of this little like ridge bridge line here, so it's really you know, real steep on one side and the other side has like a little embankment, and we're walking and then all of a sudden, like a branch, I mean it's been cut because they had done some like fire reduction out there the year two years prior, and it was like a fire a firewood like size piece of log I just flew down and hit the side of the bank, maybe ten feet in front of us, you know, rolled down in front of his on the road, and we're like, man, you know, that's kind of crazy, like it probably got stuck in a tree during like you know, the logging and fire reduction. I guess the wind blew it down and we were you know, looking up in the trees, and I mean, it really wasn't any wind, but like, man, well, good thing it didn't hit us.

23:48 And uh continued out there and uh, I mean we had probably just reached that log that was in the road, and then it's probably about football sized stone. You know. Well, first off we hear we hear this thing hitting like branches coming through and then a football sized stone hits the embankment on that same side and rolls in front of us, and we look to our lefts and you can see the branches like in a perfect arc like where it had just been like hitting branches flying over and it kind of leads to a larger the incense seater probably sixty meters sixty seventy meters out and we're just looking at this stone, you know, the size of a football. They've just been shocked at us and were just about faced. Went right home like yeah, we're we're not doing that whatever that was. And uh, they just just turned back and went and as the end of that one.

25:11 But does do you think the ranch owner has any idea what's going on with his property? So it's under new management, I don't. I mean maybe at the time he did. I mean, so that that river or that that creek I guess runs all the way through the large the larger meadow down into the smaller meadow under the road by the Pagoda house. So I think they kind of follow that stream there. But he had a property like that. He had like a little campsite kind of he had like a mobile trailer there and you know some like horseshoe pits kind of right along that little creek. Then they go out or you know, once or twice a summer and just kind of hang out, have a little party or whatever. I can't imagine, you know, owning that property for so long as it was a family property, you know, so his dad had owned it before him, and then he inherited it, and then his you know, he keeps on going, right.

26:18 I can't imagine they didn't know that there's something like that going on, you know, especially if you're you're spending all that time out there and you know the other properties. I can't imagine they're losing as many cattle as they were out there. So you know, it's just wild. It's absolutely wild. It's like if you were if you were going to have a huge land area where you could I get involved with some really good sasquatch activity. I mean, it's in a perfect area. I mean, it's like you've got Mount Shaster there. It's nuts man, so cool.

27:04 Yeah, it's yeah. So I'm excited. I mean, and it's it's unfortunate. I mean until you know my my other encounter, which I've talked about in a second, but it's like I don't really connect the dots. I mean, the first two stories and I told you know, or it's like all right, you know weird, but I didn't know. I didn't see anything. I mean, and the first encounters like all right, you hear like some like strange kind of zombie moan and then some gibberish coming from the woods, you know, like, yeah, all right, maybe there's some someone doing some illegal substances out here, right or something. You know, I didn't really put two and two together, and then by the time that I kind of put it together, it's like I'm I'm training, I'm you know, in the delayed entry program for the Navy and getting ready to go.

27:59 So it's like I didn't really have time to go out there and check things out, which is unfortunate. But yeah, I'm excited to be back, so hopefully I can go out and kind of explore a little bit more. And I'm thinking about putting together a some type of reporting system just for the area. I think it'd be cool to, you know, once a year release like a little magazine or something with some some local reports, release that we have a big Fourth of July festival. Would be kind of cool to sell those there or something. So, oh so, is it like a local town Fourth of July festival thing? Yeah, we have the was it the country's largest small town gathering for the Fourth of July here? Oh wow? Yeah? Yeah.

28:43 One year we had to you know, we had to replace the entire sewer system. And it goes from like a town of like five thousand to like fifteen thousand and one week. Yeah, it's kind of wild. I would I would definitely encourage you to start becoming the guy for that area that you know. I mean, eventually it'll happen if you start, you know, talking to people and people will start to know you're the guy. I'm going to come to this guy with with the weird stuff that's that I've encountered, and it will come man. But uh yeah, it'd be interesting if you can also uh find I'm sure there's other people in that area probably right now where you know, you could maybe even make a team. But you know, it's uh such a good area, dude. I mean you you would never run out of reports. It would be so cool. So I'm excited to see what comes from this in the future.

29:39 For sure, I'll get you the fourth here, right, So the fourth encounter kind of breaks the norm a little bit. But I mean, I think you had a growing up. I think every like, you know, person that's into Big Player's housequatch you know, at some point has seen you know, finding Bigfoot. Big for Society will be right back after these messages. And I think growing up kind of watching that and seeing a little bit of it, right yeah, at the time too, it's like, you know, my Dad's like, man, this is you know, complete bs and I'm like, yeah, this' bs. I mean not seeing that, you know, you know they do anything crazy on that show anyways. But anyways, so this the lash boar I have kind of breaking norm happens in December. It's December third. I'm up pretty late.

30:48 I had gone through kind of a rough period in my life. I went through a breakup and I was upset about it. And it was about two am, and I like was just getting ready to lay down. I don't know if I said to stop the December thirty, twenty eighteen, that is just about to lay down. And like as I'm sitting on my bed to like get in right, I just hear this. Like at first, I think it's an air siren, like like the old air raid sirens from World War Two, you know, I think it's that, but just slowed down and pitched down, and I mean it just like it starts. It just keeps on going up up and up and volume and it and it starts like resonating with my window, Like I can feel my window vibrating, and then I start feeling in my chest as I'm sitting there in my bed.

31:53 I'm not in bed, I'm just I'm sitting like on the side of my bed, and it just keeps on going all the way up and then down. And then that's it. And that's the only thing that happened. But that that noise reminded me enough of like the calls that they make in that show where I'm like, oh man, that's probably what that was. And then I've been I've been kind of looking for that sound for a long time, and then I found the Ohio Howels and that was the closest thing that I could find for the longest time until you released episode six ninety four with a Garden of the Gods and that noise. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

32:45 It is like exactly the first recording you played exactly it. Mine was maybe just a little bit longer. But I mean, like I was here, I heard that I was I was driving my car, like I told you, I listened to this like on my way to and front work. Right, the ranch is probably like twenty minutes twenty five minutes maybe from where I live. Right, this is almost perfect, and I was on my way back listening to that episode and I heard that and I pulled off to the side of the road and I just like had to. I played it like four times, and I was just like, that's crazy. And I looked up and it's I mean, it's the same noise that I heard here in northern California that they're recording now, you know, years later in the Garden of the Gods, which is about eighteen hundred miles from where I am. And that's crazy. And I, you know, I'm used to being around larger animal. You know, we had all those cattle out in the back growing up.

33:43 Go to bed during the summer, have your windows open, you hear them out there, you know. And then now I'm working out there and you out there, you know, feed the bulls, and you know they're are and making all their noise. Nothing compares to just like the volume that whatever was making that noise made that night. It was crazy. And I saw the Paul Freeman footage, you know, from from a was it nineteen ninety four. I just looked at like the girth of the animal that like was walking through that video, and you're just like, man like that could probably you know, resonate, you know. So that was my uh my last encounter here in northern California that I've had. It was just like put all the dogs together to you. I mean like I got up and my my dad and my sister A go sleep with the ear plugs. And I don't know how they do that, but my mom is a super light sleeper.

34:49 And she got up and I you know, came outstairs or came outside my bedroom and walked into the kitchen and she gets up and she's like, what is that, you know, And I'm like, oh, I you know, idea, you know. So do you know why they sleep with ear plugs? They're just like sleepers. Yeah, I mean they just need like complete quiet to sleep. It's it's interesting, but all right, sweet, all right. So that was my final last experience there. I mean nothing visual so far or anything like that. So then from there, I joined the Navy. I spent a couple of years in I got back from my first deployment. I was back home for now three weeks and we had to keep up on our weapons squalls. This extrasory commands. So everyone needs to shoot and I'm a gunner's mate or I was a gunner's mate, so we run all the ranges.

35:57 So I was back for three weeks after deployment and then went out to a range and uh Fort Pickett, I believe now it's been renamed Fort Barfoot. It's in uh it's in Virginia, a way back in the sticks there. It's probably about two and a half three hour drive from Norfolk. And uh, so I went back there to get one qualed. I was, you know, line coaching all that. In the first four weeks were fine. I worked on the small arms range the entire time, which was it was so cool. I liked the orso out there and it was a good time. But uh, I ended up volunteering to stay for an extra two weeks and just doing some some night watches. Right, So the cruiser range ended and it was just a couple of straggs for small arms, and uh we're out there and all the weapons.

37:07 You can't just leave out on the range at night. Uh, So you have to have an armed watch out there. And there's TPI so two person integrity. So it's me and a watch partner and we're standing night watches. How don't let me get into this, so say I'm just trying to pull up the range here. So one of these nights we're out there, and it's probably February of twenty twenty three, and we're we're out there and one of our we have we have two range tasks or like watched tasks out there because it's it's already on a military base, so not really we're worry about anyone actually like showing up or bothering us or anything. It's a closed range. You have to make radio reports every hour on the hour, you know, saying that all kissions are normal, and we're out there. We have to keep the fire going, and we have to clean a couple cruiser weapons like while we wait. This it's a twelve hour watch, so from eight am till eight am, and then the rest of the range staff shows up, shows up, you know, takes command of the range, and the shooters

38:39 show up maybe thirty minutes later. So we're out there keeping the fire stoke, we're cleaning some fifty cows, have our little headlamps on, we have just the red light going. It was particularly cold that night, so we were just like really trying not to go out to the fire or trying to sit in the truck as much as we could. You let me just kind of describe the range here a little bit. I don't know, do you have the Google accentia or the. Guys I do have it pulled up. It's kinda out there.

39:19 A little bit. Yeah, it's out in the sticks for sure. And I mean most of that stuff you see too, like it's it's a very empty base. It's not like you know, all those barracks are full. I mean they use it for this here and refugees back in the day just because they had their rooms. So I mean the base looks big, but really there's not a lot going on out there. There's some training center for something kind of important out there, but other than that, I don't really know what what else is out there. It's always super quiet every time we go out there. It's a little a little creepy. But so you got the range going down there kind of towards the south east, and then you're going up and you see that little green awning there when we back a state truck up there that has like our mobile armory on it all right, and then the fire pit that we had is just like a like a fifty gallon drum right like a hobo fire, and it's between that awning and that red like conics box there. I don't know, you had some kind of yeah, And then where all those little trees are, it's probably like a good ten foot kind of hill drop down. And then there's that little car junk yard

40:54 which they use for like scenarios. They take different cars from there and make different barriers and whatnot. But anyways, so we're underneath that awning doing our gun maintenance and uh, we're just finishing up with some of our fifty couns. We're like, all right, we've cleaned like the allotted amount of weapons that we had for that night. Like, let's let's throw something else on there. I'm gonna pee and let's get in the truck, start it for a little bit, crank the heater and just hang out, you know. And I'm walking over there to pee, I have my red light on. I throw a couple like pieces of the wood into the fire the drum. I'm peeing, and as I'm turning, I turned kind of towards that little ledge there right, and there's that little white building. We have two other state trucks there and they're parked. You know, there's there's like a four foot gap between the two of them, and and uh one one of them is a State truck that has a conics box on the back of it for our dunnage, and the other one there is a State truck with the conics box for actual ammunition, and they have you know, reflective plaquers on the back. And uh, I'm I panned by it with my red light and I see the reflection of two eyes from between those two trucks, and I'm like, oh,

42:28 there's a coyote over here, right, and I'm I'm looking at it with my my red light on, and I'm kind of looking at I'm like, man, I things like really far up there, and I'm trying to switch to my white light. But the way these these head these headlights work, it's a red lamps. It's a red, green, and blue, and they have to hold it down for like three seconds to get a white light, and they're kind of finicky, and I really could not get my white light going, so I'm just like strobing it with all these different lights, and there's things just like looking at me, and I'm looking at it, and I'm like, God, you know there's there's four hinges on the doors of these Conics boxes, and it's already on top of the truck, and these eyes are looking at me between the third and the fourth's like all the way at the top, and I'm like, I'm really starting to try to like focus on my visions, kind of getting adjusted to the darklobe, and I can kind of make out like the headlines or like the contour of like shoulders and a head.

43:48 And then I started like, I'm just I'm just looking at this thing, and I can't really see any any details of it because of the the reflective markers on the back of these Conics boxes. And just as I'm able to kind of make out some shapes, it turns, but with its entire body, like I can see its shoulders and its head move duck down and it comes up real fast, and then a rock hits on top of that metal metal awninging my range partner, here's that and he's the one that's armed and Nick, Yeah, did you.

44:44 Hear that interference? No? I jumped out of my skin. Holy Mackrel. I hope it got caught. On the recording on the audio. You're doing great, Just yeah, keep going, man, sorry, that interference break me out. Yeah. So so there's things between these two trucks. I see its eyes. It's up higher than it should be. As I'm kind of putting two and two together, it's like, you know, there's this entire body throws something. It's the top. It is like, you know, it's kind of like an aluminum AUNI. Big for society, who would be right back after these messages.

45:38 Like you'd have like oh, I mean it's it's over like some some kind of some benches, you know, And it's for the shooters when they're not doing their course of fire. They can sit down or whatever. And my armed range partner hears that, and I I'm like, hey, I think there's a you know, a coyote over here right when I first saw it, and he's a great you know really and I was like, yeah, I started looking at it, flipping through my lights and that happens, and he's already walking over Here's that, you know, and he starts seeing some crazy you know, hey mother, you know, and he sees the eyes now too. He's you know, hey mother, you know I have a gun. I'll shoot you, you know, like and you see this thing I don't think it knew that he was there at the time, because it it goes like you can see it's body move, like it's looking between me and him. And at this point, this guy has drawn his nine is yelling at this thing.

46:50 And again it's still like I just have a single red light on it, and the reflective tape on the back of this and this truck is really keeping that light from penetrating any farther than like, so we can make how many details, you know, and uh, it just turns around, ducks down, and we didn't see it anymore. And then just about that time, I get my white light to turn on right and my buddy, my my watch partner again I'm not gonna say I mean, it's kind of generic, but so I'm gonna say his last name, but uh, comes over and he's like, dude, what what was that? I was like, I don't know, and I my white lid on and he has the gun and we're going around and we're like looking behind like that white building. And as we're doing that, we hear just something start just just running through some trees back behind the cars there that like car lot, so it had ducked down and somehow managed to stay away from the

48:23 light and get over there. And it was just plowing through these bushes at that point where these trees at this point, I mean not like knock them over, but you could hear it breaking branches and whatnot. And we opened up our mobile armory and we got some M five hundreds. We load them up with doublet buck pulled out some thirty one bravos, hooked those into our helmets and we sat in that truck and it was the longest night of my life. We just sat there all night with shotguns night vision looking out the windows and there's that little I don't know if you can see that, that building kind of north of the range. Yes, yeah, there was a light post up there too that just was flickering on and off. And every time we do that mess up your your mvgs. Just sitting in there, just like after experiencing that, and it was it was just a very long night. And then our relief came, you know, eight o'clock. We got there a little early, studnizing them and we told them what happened, and they didn't believe us, and you know, they thought that we were like just messing with them or whatever, but yeah, it was so it was quite an experience.

49:48 Yeah, that is intense. How did that conversation go with the guys that were were leaving you? Was it like, hey, there's something out here messing with us, or did you go straight to it might be a big foot or like how was that? No? I mean at that point, like I was pretty like, you know, I'd only had that call up to that point, and I was pretty reserved with like talking about that stuff. Again, I still don't know what is, but you know, you know, I saw the shoulders in the head and uh, yeah, I didn't have much of a neck. And we one of the guys that was were leaving us, we called it. We called him big Red had a uh he was probably he was probably like six six sixty seven something like that. His son's coming up. So we went down to where we saw it, and his head just like was barely at that third third what's it called, like the pivot on the door? Got it? Yeah, so I mean it's probably seven eight feet maybe that's where the eyes were at. Yeah, I mean yeah we did. They just showed up and and we told them, hey, we we saw something between the two trucks. Its eyes were at this point, and it threw a rock at us,

51:19 and I mean we just kept it pretty simple and they're like, you're joking and we're like no, And I mean the rock was even up on the the Awnings still and me and me and my either Washburn, we were pretty pretty ready to be out there at that point. And I mean that happened probably like two am, and we had, you know, another six hours of watch, just sitting out there in the truck listening, had the windows cracked. I don't know, that's intense.

52:00 After you tried to tell the other guys that were coming, they were kind of like whatever about it. Did you then have a conversation with your partner like Okay, we're not going to share this anymore, or did you keep sharing their story to other people as well on the base? I mean not like not on the base. I mean we it was kind of like a a two day thing. We had a pretty pretty skilt and watch crew and our guys kind of told those guys like, hey, you know, Nick and his watch partners saw saw saw something out there, and uh, you caught a little a little flak for that, but I mean it's it doesn't feel too much like flackness.

52:51 You know, you're just telling the truth. It's like that's that's what happened, you know. Uh. I mean later the the guy that came to the like six seven guy it'd come out and talked to me. He was like, yeah, like they were out here before, and Fort Pickets were usually do all of our ranges and whatnot. And I guess back in the day, uh you know eight endres whatever, before the base was actually there, there were like some hod homesteads out on the base itself, and uh, they bought the land from the families, right, but they still had like some graveyards out there, and they would go out there just to like check them out. I guess one weekend they went out there, like at night to check out one of those graveyards. Uh, and things kind of like a Civil war time frame. I'm not sure exactly like those houses were out there, but so they went out there to check out those those grave sites.

53:59 And I mean they're in government vehicles and they're out on these range roads which seem to go for you know miles. I don't know how how many you know miles of road they have out back on those bases. But they're out there, they're driving around these dirt roads and then all of a sudden they get stopped by two unmarked black SUVs with dudes in civilian clothes with guns that say, hey, you're not allowed to be back here, and then tell them to get back in their truck and then they'll escort them out and then escort them out, and so I don't know what's going on there, but I mean I was just kind of nice to hear that someone else had had like something else weird happened to them out there. So it's nice to have that kind of camaraderie with Mentley's, you know, kind of have a shared experience, even with what exactly the same, you know.

54:57 Absolutely were you were you and your partner at any time told to not share what happened to you that night. No, I mean we never like try to make any formal report of it. It's just kind of a weird encounter. And I mean we we talked about it a little bit, kind of, you know, in the barracks. Better than that. It's not like, you know, we're like when you know, founder any tenant or whatever, and like, hey, you know, sir, this happened to us. You know, they should probably check into that, you know, But right so, as far as I know, it's only a bunch of you know, four e fives that you know about that.

55:40 So that's some wild, wild stuff, dude. I mean, those are the stories that that make me wonder. It's like you just you just had enough, you know, yeah, you just saw enough. And I mean it's hard to logically explain way what you saw. I mean, you were seeing outlines. Yeah, it's kind of hard to tell. Its kind of hard to tell it too. It's like it was the entire thing like black or was it just you know, was I just seen outlines? You know? So I don't know, he's get the eye shine. I'm trying to turn my light on. It was not having a good time. And then of course right after it it dips down and goes off and I I managed to get that thing on.

56:39 But yeah, I don't know. I've heard stories two of them like getting down on all fours, be crawling off or something, you know, And I'm not sure. Maybe maybe that's what it did, because I mean we did pretty good scan. I mean, there's some trees there, but they're cut up pretty high, so we had a pretty good view. There's not a lot of places that could have gone. And then we kind of started moving down past the fire pit and we're trying to get like a look at because we thought gone but behind the white building and we hear it crashing through the trees, you know, back behind that, you know, I mean that's some good distance.

57:26 I mean, I don't know, I haven't measured that, but you know, maybe one hundred meters and you know, Olympic sprinter speed. Yeah, without making any noise until it gets to some type of consumer. It's impressive. But yeah, So Nick, You've had some really interesting things happen over the years. I mean out in northern California and then out in this base in Virginia. And I mean, you're it sounds like you are. You're going, you know, going gung ho to see what you can find next, and you're going to start talking to more people in that area of California. Are you prepared for, you know, if you start looking around in California for if you are to have a really good visual sighting, like let's say in the daytime, are you prepared for that?

58:37 No? Yeah, I mean I've thought about that before, and just like, do I like, do I want to see one? You know, because I mean at this point, I've had you know, rock story. I mean, I've just heard noises, I've seen outlines of something. I think, really I'd love to have an actual one D visual sighting. But I mean my ideal siding be me, you know, on a highway doing right, you know, fifteen, see one run across the road and I'm like, oh, well, good thing, I'm in my car. You know, I don't say I don't think i'd want to be out in the woods at night and you know see one. I mean even during the days. I mean, I'm a couple of miles from my house. I don't know if I want to see one.

59:27 I mean, I don't know if they're particularly aggressive, but I mean I think that, you know, every animal has the ability to be aggressive, and they're obviously large, you know, and strong and fast. So NIX is a fascinating account across the years, and it's really cool because you know, as we said before, you're you're keeping going with it. I cannot wait to see what you're able to hopefully find next to Northern California. And I want to say thank you for coming on the show. And I also want to, you know, make sure that you were able to share everything that you wanted to share tonight.

1:00:16 Yeah. I think that's it. I mean, I don't know if I did an amazing job of describing it. I was a little nerves to come on, but I mean it's behind me. I feel like it's important to share your experiences, even if it's the best detail. But I think it was a great sharing of some really interesting things that happened on both sides of the US. But just thank you for coming on the show. Man. Yeah, man, I appreciate you have a good one. Just wanted to take a minute to say thank you truly for listening to this episode of the Bigfoot Society podcast. And next story isn't just memorable because of what was seen or heard, because of how it all connects across years, across states, and across some seriously remote ground, from the shadows of Mount Shasta to the edges of a military range in Virginia. His experiences remind us that bigfoot encounters don't always happen the way we expect. And if you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe to the channel on YouTube, hit the bell icon so you don't miss any new episodes, and share this one with a friend who's into Cryptid's military mysteries or just a good old eerie campfire story.

1:01:24 If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, make sure you're following the show and if you'd be willing to leave a review, it really helps more folks find us. Now. If you or someone you know has had a Bigfoot encounter, especially near Mount Shasta for picket or the trendy alps, I'd love to hear from you, so shoot me an email at Bigfoot Society at gmail dot com. And don't forget The Sasquatch Summerfest is coming up July eleventh through the twelfth at Greenwaters Park in Oakridge, Oregon, and Bigfoot Society listeners can grab two day passes for the price of one with code b FS at checkout. So huge thanks to Priscilla for making that happen. You can get your tickets available now at www dot Sasquatch Summerfest dot com.

1:02:07 Thanks again for being part of the Bigfoot Society, and until next time, stay curious, trust your instincts, and never stop searching and see you in the woods,