Six Terrifying Bigfoot Encounter Stories From Viewers

If you're looking for a video that packs multiple spine-tingling Sasquatch encounters into one sitting, there's a recent upload on YouTube that's worth checking out. The channel Shadow Trail Stories put together a marathon of six viewer-submitted encounters, and the first four alone are enough to make you think twice about heading into the woods at night. The video opens with the host explaining that he receives four or five encounter submissions a day, and he's been working through a stack of them. He notes that women tend to write their encounters in a way that's easier to read and visualize, which is an interesting observation. The first story comes from a woman named Patricia, and it sets a chilling tone for the rest of the video. Patricia grew up in Wyoming, West Virginia, a town surrounded by mountains with no streetlights. Around 1976, when she was about 21, her family would hear loud, inhuman screaming coming from the holler near the old dump every year when the seasons changed. After the dump closed, the screaming became more frequent near her home. One night, with a full moon lighting up the landscape, she spotted four large figures coming from the holler into a nearby cornfield. She describes them as standing 8 to 9 feet tall, covered head to toe in long hair. Her dog Red began barking at the figures as they approached her neighbor's house, and the barking turned to whimpering before going silent after a loud yelp. The next morning, Red was found beside the neighbor's trailer with a large bite wound in his back. A news article later reported that a police officer claimed to have seen a Sasquatch throwing rocks at him from across the river, though the event was brushed off as a hoax. Patricia mentions that even today, you can still hear the screaming in that area at night, and many townspeople have grown accustomed to their presence. The second encounter comes from Jody, who used to fish at Ben Lake with a buddy. One evening, he went alone and had been fishing for a couple of hours when everything suddenly went quiet and still. He heard rustling on a ridge to his right, followed by a god-awful scream and small trees being shaken violently. Jody admits he left his fishing rod and tackle box behind because he knew exactly what was making that sound. Despite the scare, he still drives through the forest in the evenings hoping for a glimpse of the creature, which speaks to how these experiences can hook someone for life. The third story is submitted anonymously, and it's one of the most intense in the collection. The writer had hunted and fished his whole life and thought he knew everything that lived in the woods. In July 2014, he and his cousin were hunting deeper than usual in the hills near his grandmother's house. About two hours in, the birds stopped chirping, the bugs went silent, and they felt like they were being watched. They came upon a large lean-to structure and immediately smelled a stench three times worse than rotting animals or skunks. They noticed a spot where something had bedded down, and then the entire structure shook. Outside, they saw a large stone that had been thrown from behind the structure. His cousin froze and pointed at a black mass next to a tree stump. Thinking it was a bear, the writer threw a stick and yelled, but the creature stood up on two legs, at least 8 feet tall, with long arms and thick dark hair covering its body. It let out a blood-curdling scream and shook large saplings. The two walked back to back for at least a mile, hearing grunts and growls from the brush. When they reached familiar territory, they looked back and saw the creature walk out of the thick leaves, point at them, and growl before turning away. Neither has returned to those woods since. The fourth encounter is from Eric, who grew up in central Indiana in the 1970s, spending his childhood running the swampy areas along the Whitewater River and playing in the woods. He became fascinated with Bigfoot, Yeti, Loch Ness, and all things cryptid at a young age, thanks in part to shows like Boggy Creek and In Search Of. When his grandparents moved to Florida, he spent a lot of time there as a young boy and recalls feeling watched while playing outside. Numerous times, he and his friends would walk toward an old, overgrown sawmill but couldn't muster the nerve to explore it. Just a few hundred yards down the road, the swamps and forest began, super thick and dark. Eric notes that despite being comfortable in the Indiana woods, something about those Florida woods always gave him the creeps. What makes this video stand out is the variety of encounters and the different ways people describe their experiences. Some involve visual sightings, others involve sounds and feelings of being watched, and some involve physical evidence like bite wounds on a dog. The host does a good job letting the stories speak for themselves, adding brief commentary between each one. If you're a fan of firsthand Sasquatch encounters, this marathon is definitely worth a watch. The host promises a cool ending with the final story, so it's worth sticking around for all six.