Surveyor's Terrifying Two-Night Bigfoot Encounter in West Virginia Forest

A chilling first-person account from a hiker who claims to have been stalked by a Sasquatch deep in the West Virginia wilderness has resurfaced online, and it's one of the most detailed encounters to come out of the Appalachian region in recent memory. The story comes from a YouTube channel called Error 199, where a man named Mark Resck recounts what he describes as a multi-day encounter back in October 2014. Resck, a surveying engineer from Ohio, was 35 at the time and had taken two weeks off to solo hike a section of the Appalachian Trail through the Monongahela National Forest. He's now 46 and says he's finally ready to share what happened. What makes this account stand out isn't just the encounter itself, but the physical evidence Resck describes finding along the way. On his fourth day, after veering off the main trail to cross a ridge, he heard strange booming sounds in the distance — like something heavy striking a tree with tremendous force. When he investigated, he found a clearing with a massive dead oak surrounded by young maples and birches that had been snapped off roughly 2.5 meters above the ground. The trunks weren't cut — they were twisted and broken, with bark stripped away and deep indentations in the exposed wood that Resck, as an engineer, says couldn't have been made by any animal he knows of. The breaks were fresh, still seeping sap. That night, the situation escalated. Resck describes being woken by a thick, musky, nauseating smell — a mix he compares to wet dog, rotting meat, and something acrid like ammonia — and hearing something bipedal circling his tent. The shadow that blocked the moonlight was enormous, covering the entire tent, and a hot, foul breath hit the side of the nylon close enough to feel against his face. He heard a low, guttural sound he describes as more felt in the chest than heard with the ears. The next morning, he found a footprint in soft earth near a stream where he'd gone for water the day before. Nearly half a meter long, almost human in shape but wider, with a massive heel and short, thick toes. Resck says his rational, engineering brain essentially short-circuited looking at it. He tried to bail out directly east toward a highway, pushing himself to exhaustion all day, but he had to spend one more night in the woods. That's when he says he actually saw the Sasquatch — a 2.5-meter-tall figure with broad shoulders, long powerful arms reaching nearly to its knees, and a conical head sitting directly on its shoulders with no visible neck. It moved with what he describes as a strange, fluid elegance completely at odds with its size. The moonlight reflected in its eyes normally — no supernatural glow, just the ordinary shine of an animal caught in headlights — but nothing about the rest of it was ordinary. The Appalachian region has long been considered one of the most active zones for Sasquatch sightings east of the Mississippi. West Virginia in particular has a rich history of reports, and the rugged, densely forested terrain provides exactly the kind of habitat researchers believe a reclusive, large-bodied hominid would need to remain undetected. The Monongahela National Forest itself spans nearly 100,000 acres of some of the most remote wilderness in the eastern United States. What makes accounts like Resck's especially compelling to researchers is the combination of physical traces — the broken trees, the footprint — alongside the sensory details. The musky, ammonia-like smell is a recurring descriptor in Sasquatch encounters across North America, and the bipedal footprints with their distinctive wide heel and short toes match the general morphology reported by witnesses from British Columbia to Florida. The tree damage he describes — snapped at heights well above where a bear could reach and twisted rather than simply pushed — is also consistent with what's been documented at suspected Sasquatch "tree structures" and feeding sites in other regions. The video cuts off at a particularly tense moment — Resck describes the figure approaching his hiding spot and his panic finally breaking through, with him leaping out brandishing a knife. The full conclusion of the story is worth watching for yourself. Error 199 has put together a compelling narration with atmospheric visuals that really sell the isolation and fear of the experience. Definitely worth checking out.