Backwoods Bigfoot Stories

Part Nine brings Bigfoot Country to its climax, and it does so by circling back to where every great investigation begins — with the people who lived it.After years of building this platform, the floodgates finally opened. Witnesses who had been listening from the shadows for months, sometimes years, started stepping forward. People like Patricia Ann Holloway, a seventy-one-year-old retired librarian from Pennsylvania who had carried a secret since 1973 — the summer she was nineteen years old and working at a Baptist church camp in the Allegheny National Forest.

What she saw standing at the tree line that night, seven feet tall with eyes reflecting her flashlight beam, changed her forever. She kept quiet for nearly fifty years. When the only other witness — a twelve-year-old camper named Susan — passed away from cancer, Patricia decided she wasn't going to take that secret to her grave too.Her story opened the door for dozens more. A ninety-year-old former logger from Vermont who remembered the creatures the old timers simply called the Wild Men. A woman from Mississippi passing down her grandmother's encounter from the nineteen twenties. A retired park ranger from California who had spent forty years documenting things he could never put in an official report.

But the witnesses were only half the story. Researchers started coming forward too — scientists and academics who had sacrificed careers and reputations to study something the mainstream refused to acknowledge. A primatologist who recognized authentic dermal ridges on a footprint cast. A geneticist with hair samples that matched no known species. An anthropologist who had collected indigenous oral histories from around the world and found an undeniable pattern running through all of them.Then came the most dangerous interview of all.

A former military intelligence officer, speaking through an encrypted line, revealed the existence of government programs spanning six decades. Programs designed not just to suppress evidence, but to study these creatures — and exploit them. He couldn't say everything. He said enough.The tension ratcheted up from there. Physical confrontations on mountain roads.

Men in dark suits offering deals and making threats. And a manila folder full of classified documents that blew the lid off everything — project names like Titan Watch, Forest Shadow, and Mind Bridge, detailing decades of monitoring, containment, and experimentation on captured creatures.Through all of it, Brian wrestled with the personal weight of the mission. Late night conversations with his mother, who carried her own encounters with the unexplainable. Quiet moments on the porch with Daniel.

A faith that had evolved far beyond the Baptist church of his childhood into something broader and harder to name — a belief that the universe held mysteries worth chasing, no matter the cost.

The final expedition into the Pisgah wilderness brought everything full circle. Days of waiting. Thermal signatures circling in the dark. Vocalizations echoing through old-growth timber. And on the last night, alone at the edge of camp under a full moon, a moment of silent recognition between two species that have shared this land far longer than anyone wants to admit.

Part Nine is about what happens when the dam finally cracks. When the witnesses refuse to stay silent. When the researchers stop protecting their careers and start protecting the truth. And when one man, standing on a dark porch in the Appalachian Mountains, hears a chorus of howls rising from the forest and knows the world is about to change.

A veteran park ranger with over two decades of service reaches out after years of listening to the show in silence. He's heard me share my own encounter and talk about experiences from other law enforcement and first responders, and he finally decided it was time to tell his story. He's never told anyone. Not his wife. Not his coworkers. No one. Kevin was assigned to a week-long solo backcountry bear survey deep in the Pacific Northwest. 

Six miles from the nearest road, surrounded by old growth timber and some of the most remote wilderness in the lower forty-eight. He was experienced. He was prepared. He had no idea what was waiting for him.It started on day one with a cluster of trees twisted and broken at eight feet. By day two he'd found a massive bare footprint next to a structure that had no business being there. That night, sounds he couldn't identify echoed across the ridgeline and something started working its way toward his camp.

By day three, rocks from the creek were being placed near his tent while he was away. And then on night four, everything escalated to a point where Kevin had to make a split-second decision that's haunted him for almost nine years. This is one of the most detailed and credible accounts I've ever received. 

Kevin asked me to keep his full identity and exact location confidential, and I'm honoring that. What I'm not keeping confidential is what happened to him out there, because this story needs to be heard.

If you're in law enforcement, park service, military, or any first responder role and you've been carrying something like this, my inbox is open. You're not alone.

The odyssey reaches new heights as Brian Patterson shares some of the strangest and most profound encounters ever documented on the show. From a North Carolina camper who experienced unexplainable visions of an ancient forest to an Oregon mother whose lost daughter was safely returned by a gentle, hair-covered giant, these accounts push beyond simple sightings into territory that challenges everything we think we know about these creatures. The podcast also faces its greatest crisis when a retired biology professor's elaborate hoax nearly destroys everything Brian has built.

The fallout is devastating, but with Daniel's unwavering support, Brian rebuilds stronger than ever with rigorous new verification procedures that earn the community's trust back.The story goes global as witnesses from Tibet, the Congo Basin, Papua New Guinea, and Siberia share encounters that mirror North American reports in stunning detail. A Lakota elder speaks of the Big Man as ancient guardians of the wild places. A Stanford primatologist risks her career to validate the evidence.

And the Sasquatch Odyssey community grows into a worldwide network of researchers, witnesses, and believers united by shared experience.As the show hits its five hundredth episode, Brian finally tells his own story in full for the first time. But there's no time to rest. New thermal evidence and a late-night expedition deep into the backcountry deliver the most compelling footage yet captured. The men in black are watching again, the truth is spreading faster than anyone can contain it, and the odyssey is far from over.

A former Marine infantry sergeant breaks twenty years of silence about what happened to him in the Trinity Alps Wilderness of Northern California in October 2003. He didn't want to write in. He's not a Bigfoot guy. But his teenage daughter listens to the show and finally wore him down.Mike and two lifelong hunting buddies were on a five-day backcountry elk hunt deep in the Trinity Wilderness, roughly fourteen miles from the nearest trailhead.

On the third day, he picked up on something most people would've missed — the gut-level feeling of being watched and paced. Instead of panicking, he ran deliberate route changes and counter-surveillance techniques to confirm what his instincts were telling him. Something large and bipedal was tracking them from two to three hundred yards back, using terrain and timber for concealment with a discipline he'd later associate with trained military scouts.

On the fourth night, it closed the distance to forty yards and stood at the edge of their camp. His buddy nearly fired. Mike stopped him — not out of compassion, but out of a cold tactical calculation that still resonates twenty years later. They packed out at first light and covered fourteen miles in a single push.Mike went on to enlist in the Marines, served two combat tours in Iraq including Fallujah, and earned a Purple Heart. He says what he experienced in the Trinity Alps scared him worse than anything he faced overseas.

This episode explores why, and what his story tells us about the intelligence, patience, and capabilities of whatever's living in those mountains.This is one of the most detailed and tactically sophisticated encounter reports we've ever received on this show. You don't want to miss it.

In this episode, the journey takes a dramatic turn as Brian's podcasting career reaches new heights and dangerous new lows.

 What begins as a powerful collection of witness encounters from across the country — a conservation officer in Minnesota's Boundary Waters, a Mississippi fisherman on the Big Black River, a West Virginia coal miner who found something living deep underground, and a Cajun folk healer who speaks of the loup-garou with reverence rather than fear — quickly evolves into something far more consequential.

A television producer named Amanda from Meridian Productions returns with an offer to bring Sasquatch Odyssey to the screen as a legitimate documentary series. Brian agrees, but only on his terms: editorial control, no sensationalism, and absolute respect for the witnesses. The production takes the team from the Olympic Peninsula to the Ozarks and back to the Pisgah National Forest, where the mystery of Austin Reeves still lingers in every shadow and hollow.

But the closer Brian gets to the truth, the harder certain forces push back. A devastating act of arson destroys his home, his studio, and nearly everything he and Daniel have built together. 

The local investigation is a sham, but an ATF agent named Sarah Brown finds evidence of professional-grade incendiary devices and a cover-up that reaches far above her pay grade.

Rather than retreat, Brian and Daniel rebuild — bigger, stronger, and more determined than ever.The episode also explores the emotional toll of this work through quieter moments: the frustration of sorting genuine encounters from fabrications, the patience required to find voices like eighty-two-year-old Lucille Marsh from rural Georgia, and the steady, grounding presence of Daniel through it all.

From Wisconsin dairy farms to Nebraska sandhills, witnesses from the American heartland reveal that these creatures aren't just hiding in remote wilderness — they've adapted to live alongside us in the margins, watching from the edges of our everyday world.

The documentary airs, reaches millions, and ignites a national conversation. The community grows. The threats continue. And the odyssey pushes forward, one story at a time.