Five Hunters Encounter Bigfoot, Only One Survives

There's a story floating around YouTube right now that stopped me in my tracks, and if you haven't come across it yet, you need to set aside some time for it. A channel called Weekly Terror posted a video featuring a firsthand account from a man named Ellis Warick, and it's one of the most chilling Sasquatch narratives I've heard in a long time. Ellis is 61 years old now, and he's the last surviving member of a five-man hunting party that went into the Kuribo back country of British Columbia back in October of 1998. The area northeast of Quinnel, above the Cottonwood River, is exactly the kind of remote old-growth territory where sightings have been reported for generations. This isn't some fringe location either. The Cariboo region of BC has long been considered Sasquatch country by researchers and Indigenous communities alike, with deep cultural traditions acknowledging the presence of these beings in the wild timber. The hunting party consisted of Gordon Pike, a 44-year-old outfitter who knew the land, his brother Terren, a welder from Prince George named Von Ashby who was 51, and a 26-year-old named Isaac Ren that Gordon was mentoring. Ellis came along because he could shoot, keep quiet, and didn't complain about the weather. Sounds like the kind of company you'd want in deep bush. For the first couple of days, everything was ordinary. They saw moose sign, bear scat, and a grouse that Isaac apparently couldn't hit. But Ellis started noticing things he didn't say out loud, because nobody wants to be the guy who says them. The birds went silent in the afternoon, all at once, like someone had thrown a blanket over the whole basin. There was a smell near the creek, wet dog and rot, with something else underneath that Ellis couldn't name. And the wind changed twice that day, but the smell stayed put, which doesn't happen with a carcass. Then Ellis found a print in the mud at the creek's edge. Longer than his boot by a hand's width. Five toes. Pressed deeper than his own weight would press. He stepped around it and said nothing. The fourth day is where everything changed. They were still-hunting along a north-facing slope when Gordon spotted something dark and low in a pocket of alder, pulling at something, making a wet tearing sound. Gordon thought it was a bear on a kill, and a bear on a kill is dangerous to walk up on, so he made the call to take it. He raised his rifle, and the thing stood up. It kept standing. Past bear height. Past anything that made sense. Seven feet and then more. And it turned its head, and it wasn't a bear. Ellis describes a broad, flat face with a heavy shelf of bone over the eyes, a wide flat nose, no muzzle, no snout. A face too much like a man's and too far from one at the same time. Rust-dark hair, skin the color of wet ash where the hair thinned at the cheeks. Gordon's rifle went off. The thing dropped into the alders and didn't get up. What they found when they approached is the part that makes this story hit different. The creature was enormous, longer than any of them was tall, thick through the chest and shoulders in a way no bear is thick. The arms were long and heavy, ending in real hands with five fingers, a thumb, calloused pads worn smooth, dirt under the nails. And the smell, that wet dog rot they'd been chasing all week, only now with something almost like a person underneath. Sweat and skin. But here's the part that broke Ellis, and it's the part he says he's carried for 27 years. The creature Gordon killed had been feeding, but it hadn't been feeding alone. There was a young one with it, half its size or less. Same broad face, same dark hair, thinner and softer, with proportions all wrong the way a child's proportions are wrong compared to a grown one. The young one was hurt, lying on its side, making a soft high sound that Ellis had heard earlier and thought was a bird. Its breathing was wrong and its eyes were open and moving. Isaac, the 26-year-old, wanted to help it. Gordon told him to get back. Von was saying they had to leave right now. Terrence just stood there with his rifle pointed at nothing, shaking. And the young one died while they argued about it. Then, from the dark timber on three sides of them, something began to answer. Not a howl, Ellis is clear about that. He's heard wolves. This was a long low sound that came up out of the ground itself, joined by others from different directions, spaced around them in the dark. Not moving closer. Not moving away. Just letting them know they were there. Gordon made a decision that night that Ellis has gone over ten thousand times in the years since. He said they were taking the big one out. He said nobody would believe them without proof. And four of those five men never came home. I don't want to spoil the rest of what Ellis has to say, because the way he tells it deserves to be heard in his own words. The video runs through the full account, and it's the kind of testimony that stays with you. Whether you believe every word or not, it's a perspective from someone who claims to have stood over one of these beings and looked it in the face, and that's not something you come across every day. Do yourself a favor and go watch it. Bring a cup of coffee. You're going to want to sit with this one for a while.