Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside. Brad Steiger
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of heaven; always peaceful, inviting, mysterious, and provides a strange sense of solitude. It is on a dead end, and very few people ever wander down the road. One man owns most of the mining claims on the creek, and he has dug up the head of the creek to its maximum extent in the last few years. This particular area is under the control of the Forest Service.
During the Veteran’s Holiday three-day weekend in 1996, Peggy and I decided to stay a night in Ellensburg. It snowed that night, the first of the season. It was a wet snow about three to four inches. I parked down by the highway, loaded my pack onto my back and began the three-quarters of a mile walk into the claim.
Peggy decided to stay in the car and read a book. I made my way up the old mining road roughly half-way to my claim when I heard a guttural snarling sound coming from a short but steep embankment above the road and off to my right side. The sound was repeated every ten to twelve seconds and reminded me of the sound that a man might make just prior to vomiting.
The distance was about 70 to 75 feet. I could see something large and furry or hairy standing at the edge of the tree line. For the first time in many trips into isolated areas alone, I was armed. I stayed put, watching and listening for maybe 10 to 12 minutes.
I realized that it could have had me if it had wanted to. That was the key for me and always will be. Whatever it was, it was trying to intimidate me, not injure me.
I left the gun holstered and began to walk by it up the road toward my claim. I was very frightened, but I was not going to let it scare me off. It must have known me from prior trips into the area.
It was about 6′5″ maybe 6′7″. I’m 6′2″ and I spent a long time trying to judge its height. I had never seen a bear or its sign in the area. This thing had no snout or conical ears. It was quite stout. I couldn’t guess its weight, but it was substantial.
I worked the adit [entrance to an underground mine] of my prospect hole for about 20 minutes when I decided to return downhill to see if this creature was still around. I was getting hit with wet snow from the trees around me, and I knew my wife must be getting tired of waiting for me.
I had an old Kodak camera in my pack, but no film—and this is a big regret. As I approached the hillside, I could see it. The creature had moved about twenty-five yards along the bank closer to me and again began its guttural sounds. I watched this thing for at least twenty minutes that day. After returning to the car, I mentioned to Peggy that I thought I had seen a sick bear, only that it did not look like a bear or sound like a bear. I dismissed the experience from my mind. In late March of the following winter (1998), I stopped by and again walked the road. The snow had melted down to where the road was passable on foot.
I was amazed at what I saw. There were tracks in the snow made where no man could have any local logical reason to go. Some of these tracks were fairly old. But, they were all very large. Whatever it was, it appeared to follow a regular route, preferring to stay off the road. It also would come part way down one embankment and watch cars on the highway from behind a bush. I’m guessing that the night lights would attract it.
I began leaving celery and carrots, but I had no takers. I set up a camcorder to film the area around me while working the claim. No luck here either. I switched to apples, and I discovered that they love apples, especially the reds. I began to lose interest in the claim but I would leave apples in five selected places.
In July of 1999, while I was in the adit doing some clean up work, I heard the car door slam down below. Later, after arriving back home, I asked Peggy what had caused her to leave the car. She responded that she heard me call her by name.
I felt a chill, for I rarely call her by name. We discussed this issue at length. I still go numb whenever I think about it. In late March of 2000, I stopped by on my way to Tacoma. I had to get to my claim on snow shoes. The sun was out and the snow was very deep. I was several hundred yards below my claim near the basalt dike and a steep hill when I noticed very fresh tracks going from the stream across the road and up the steep hillside.
I could clearly see the toe imprints in the fresh snow, then the knee strike, and then another foot imprint. I was amazed that this thing could run in deep snow unaided. I tried to run up after it. I fell down and rolled into the ditch. I thought that I was going to drown in snow before I got back on my feet. It must have been only minutes in front of me.
Later that year in August, Peggy and I stopped by coming back from Leavenworth in the evening. It was about 7:00 P.M. We parked below the claim and exited the car. I had the camcorder in hand.
We could hear a holler or a high-pitched yell coming from down below us near the stream. It repeated roughly every ten seconds. We listened for quite some time, not knowing what to do.
I could clearly see the toe imprints in the fresh snow, then the knee strike, and then another foot imprint. I was amazed that this thing could run in deep snow unaided.
I finally yelled a hello in its direction, and it fell silent. I climbed the hill to the adit. After a few minutes, I heard something stomp through the brush down below on the other side of the road. It came toward me, but it completely managed to escape me.
I did not even think to turn the camcorder on to record the sound. Over time, this thing has left me a sandstone block at one of my apple placement sites, and several handfuls of wood chips at another. The chunk of sandstone also gets moved around. I move it back, and it gets moved, again. We moved to Montana in January of 2002 to take a job managing a County. I really missed being able to visit the claim. I let it lapse—even though I got into the area and left apples once or twice a year. It was a twenty-hour round trip by car from where we lived near Kalispell, Montana, and we moved back to Washington in 2007.
I last made visual contact with the creature in October of 2008 when I attempted to sneak up on it while it was slapping a tree with a rock on the far side of the stream below my claim. In November of 2008 I visited my caved-in adit and again left apples for it. Downhill a few hundred yards where Peggy had parked the car, we began to hear a very strange noise. I’ve never heard anything like it. It also moved on the bank across and above the stream. It wasn’t an elk, bear, deer, cat, rodent, or bird. We listened and watched for 15 to 20 minutes, and I frankly am not certain what it was. It was fast and curious, almost brazen. Over the nearly 20 years of our bizarre interaction, I have developed a few observations and opinions:
1 My wife thinks that it knows me and communicates because I feed it. I’ve left enough apples to claim it as a dependent.
2 They cannot walk quietly through the brush. It sounds more like an elephant.
3 It is territorial and works a regular route. The developments west of Cle Elum terrify me. Loss of habitat and more people wandering the woods does not bode well for them.
4 It picks me up at a considerable distance. Approaching the creature while concentrating on only positive thoughts is important. Leave your worries behind.
5 Pay attention, but don’t think too much about your quarry.
6 It is very quick and basically nocturnal. It knows when there is a camera mounted close by day or night.
7 I also think that it knew my car.
8 Sometimes I get the impression that I may be dealing with a phantom.
9 It has cognitive abilities that we only dream about. If it can call my wife, having not heard her called by name, then we are moved one step lower on the intelligence ladder.
Loren Coleman studies at the Cryptozoological Museum in Portland, Maine (photo by International Cryptozoology Museum/Loren Coleman/Jessica Meuse).
Don Avery met a man in Walla Walla in the 1990s who did not believe in these creatures. He was from Houston and had recently arrived in the Northwest. “One day in the fall of 1993 he was parked on a dirt road up in the Blue Mountains when two of these creatures walked across the road in front of his pickup truck,” Don said. “The Texan became an obsessed fanatic. He