The vast North American wilderness
is home to evil forces
thought only to exist in nightmares.
But the terrible creatures that roam here are all too real.
Deep in the woodlands lurks a legendary beast
that terrorizes all who venture into its domain.
It sounded like something we didn't want to mess with.
We're going to die today.
I panicked. I started to cry.
And I'm like, "Oh, my God. It's real. They exist."
Forests like these in Washington State
exist all over the world.
The promise of fresh air and tranquility lures people in,
but these woods are not as peaceful as they seem.
Lenn Payne and his friend, Kevin,
are heading out into nature as they often do,
but today they wander into new territory.
This is just my story. It's what happened to me,
and if you believe me, great.
If you don't, I'm okay with that.
Because people are going to believe
what they want to believe.
Well, me and Kevin grew up together.
I've known him since, like, the fourth grade.
Man, it's too bad Tyler couldn't come, right?
Oh, I know, man.
He was actually the one who taught me how to shoot.
- Oh, really? - Yeah, man.
Yeah, we used to kick it back home.
Yeah, right over here.
We were shooting pellet guns out in the woods
and mostly at, you know, pop cans or little birds
or whatever kind of crossed our crosshairs,
you know, just having fun.
Anybody who goes out in a fairly remote part of the woods
does have a chance to run into a creature like this
because they are pretty much all over the place.
Right over here, this nice pocket of...
- Yeah. - Yeah.
We should probably head down there.
- Yeah, yeah. - So watch out.
- I used to come down here... - Really?
When I was a kid, yeah.
So you know the area? To practice shooting.
- Perfect. - I don't know it too well
- because it was a while ago, but... - Oh.
Here, you go set up, and I'll, uh...
Yeah, go over there.
We were setting them up and just shooting target practice,
and we were probably out there for a couple of hours.
Can you see right here?
Yep. Perfect.
Okay. Go for it.
One... Don't hit me, though.
No, no, no. All right. Watch out.
- Ah, dude. You suck. - Let's see you do better.
- All right. - Let's go.
All right.
Here, let me take that.
Oh!
- There we go. - Nice!
- Let's set up another can then. - Yeah, yeah.
- Try again. - Try one more time.
So it's probably, like, 2:30, 3 o'clock in the afternoon,
and way off in the distance is when we heard
that initial sound.
And didn't sound like anything,
you know, that we had heard before.
- Did you hear that? - What was that?
It sounded like a, what, a coyote?
Nothing like I ever heard, man.
Dude, that sounded really close.
We should probably get out of here.
No, man. It can't be that bad.
You know, you're a couple of kids,
and you don't really know what to listen for.
I mean, I could have been an elk or a mountain lion.
We're out in the middle of the woods.
This place is really creepy. No, man.
It's nothing. I'll take one more shot, okay?
All right. One more. I got to hit it.
One more. All right.
Okay.
I got to hit this one before we leave.
Nice!
- That was sick, dude! - That's what I'm talking about, yeah!
Nice!
- You did it. - Okay.
- Where did that come from? - I don't know, man. - That was not a coyote.
- Okay, dude, now we're getting out of here. - All right. All right.
We heard that scream again, and it's a little closer.
It's a little louder.
We got to get out of here right now.
All right. Pack up.
Let's go back to where we came from, dude.
This not good, dude. This is not good.
So we start kind of walking back, and we're just,
you know, moseying along, talking and stuff.
-Okay, man. I've never heard anything like that in my life. -No. We got to...
- We got to get out of here. - Go, go.
The sound that this thing made was really high-pitched,
shrieky kind of a scream but raspy and kind of nasty,
enough to send shivers up your spine and give you goose bumps.
Go, go!
Kevin. Let's go.
It sounded like something we didn't want to mess with,
so we decided to hightail it out of there.
It could have been anything, really.
You know, all of this stuff's going through your mind,
and your first instinct
is to just get the hell out of there.
- It's getting closer. - Let's go.
Let's go. Let's go. Let's get out of here!
We could hear its footsteps crunching through the twigs.
We knew it was coming after us because it was getting louder.
It was getting closer, and at that point,
it was just sheer panic.
The teens have disturbed a creature of legend...
and unleashed its wrath.
It wants you to leave.
It's trying to intimidate you to make you run.
As we were coming out of the woods, like,
literally we thought we were out of the woods.
Heading into the clearing, this was, like,
the home stretch to Kevin's house.
There was maybe an acre or two of cow pasture
and a barbed-wire fence to get through.
We came through the clearing and dove
through that barbed-wire fence.
We looked back at where we came,
and that's when this thing burst out of the trees,
just both hands in the air, hair flying.
Like, ultimate panic at that point, like, scared to death.
When I looked up at it, I didn't really know
what I was looking at, so it's, like,
it took a second for my brain to just process this.
But it was such a scary moment in time
that time almost stood still,
but then as soon as it caught up with me, I was out of there.
This thing was massive and pissed off.
This thing's whole purpose was to get us.
It was mad at us for some reason
and was chasing us down no matter what was in the way.
It probably knows that humans aren't used to seeing them,
and it takes that as its advantage to try
and make you leave its territory.
Frightening thing to see in person.
There have been reports of violent acts by these creatures.
Hunters gone missing, of hunters found brutally killed,
and there's a lot of big barefoot-type
footprints in the area.
Their rifle has been wrapped around a tree.
Lenn and Kevin headed into an unfamiliar part of the woods
for a bit of fun...
and now they're being chased by a terrifying beast.
That was probably the most scared I have ever been.
I mean, this was, like, "We're going to die today"
kind of scared.
So as we're getting closer to Kevin's house
at just a full-on sprint,
I could tell this thing was getting closer behind it.
I could hear it breathing.
I could hear it moving through the grass,
and the smell preceded it.
It just smelled like a dead animal and wet garbage.
Kevin's door was open, luckily,
and it was the backdoor of the house,
and it was a big, thick door with no windows in it.
And Kevin got to the door first. I got in second.
Slammed the door behind us.
We were kind of making our way through the house,
still scared, didn't know
if this thing was going to come breaking through the door.
Where is it?
We heard it hit the door,
and it hit so hard, it shook the house.
Me and Kevin were just, like, "What are we going to do,
you know, if this thing gets inside?'
That thing broke out the kitchen window,
the trashcans hitting the door.
And it probably thrashed around back there
for a good 5 to 8 minutes.
And then all of the sounds stopped.
Once the banging and the crashing
and the glass breaking stopped, it felt like...
It's hard to explain, like,
"Is it over, or did it make it inside?"
I can just remember that I am out of breath,
physically shaking.
Kevin is physically shaking.
We're hiding some boxes or a dresser
or something for probably a good 20, 30 minutes
until we heard Kevin's dad come in.
Hey!
Kevin, are you home?!
Dad?
Are you there?
Then we knew it was probably safe to come down.
We came downstairs and... Cautiously at first,
and there's broken glass everywhere.
There's some trash that made it in through the broken window.
We went outside, and that metal door had dents in it.
Two of these big galvanized metal trash cans
looked like flat beer cans.
The beast is gone, but a piece of it remains behind.
We went out and looked at that barb-wire fence,
and there was a string of hair probably 10,
maybe 12 inches long, like a dreadlock, almost.
Kevin got in contact with someone
at the University of Washington, and they did some DNA analysis.
It came back as an unknown primate.
When I spoke with Lenn, the tone in his voice,
the fear came back it seems, and he was very afraid.
His voice was shaking.
The first thing that piqued my interest
is the fact that he says he was chased through the woods
by something big,
and the fact that he actually saw this creature.
This creature was real.
John is certain he knows what chased Lenn and Kevin
through the woods.
Every culture on every continent
seems to have a legend or whatever you want to call it
of something we would associate as being a Bigfoot.
In Asia, it's called the Yeti. We have the Orang Pendek.
You have the Yowie in Australia.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, we go by Bigfoot.
John understands how terrifying
an encounter like this can be.
I could tell that this story deeply affected Lenn.
It's not something he's going to forget.
I've never seen anything or heard
anything like it personally myself, so...
But, yeah, I do believe it's out there.
So we got chased by Bigfoot.
This mythical beast is thought to be hiding in forests
all around the world,
as Anna and Cindy are about to find out.
We were in its territory.
We were not wanted up there.
Deep in the woods of Washington State,
Lenn and Kevin venture into Bigfoot's territory
without knowing it.
And now, in a different part of the state,
Anna and Cindy are about to do the same.
The tale Anna has to tell terrifies her so much,
she doesn't want to be identified.
When you tell people the story, my friends, they would laugh,
but I get nervous just talking about it.
I'm shivering, and I'm still bothered by it.
It's still scary.
Anna and Cindy decided this is the perfect day
to go grab some fresh air.
Cindy had called me that afternoon
and told me to get ready.
"Let's go on a hike." It was a beautiful day.
I said, "Sure, why not?"
It's looking a little dark out.
Yeah. It should be okay.
Cindy and I realized we were starting the hike
a little bit later than your typical hiker.
Should we still go?
Yeah. Yeah, it will be fine.
We were the last ones on the mountain.
That's what kind of spooked us. There was no one else on there.
I'm not worried.
There's only one way in and one way out of that mountain.
It's getting a little bit steeper.
Yes. Harder than I expected.
Hey, do you think we can get
up the mountain and back before the sun sets?
- Yeah, I think so. - Yeah?
- If we hurry. Come on. - All right.
We were a little bit embarrassed because we should know better.
We know that with the mountains and the way the sun comes down,
it gets dark pretty quick.
No one wants to be trapped on a mountain
after darkness falls, miles away from civilization,
especially without cell phones.
Anna and Cindy hike deeper into the forest,
and that's when they discover something bizarre
and unsettling.
We noticed a hut, so that was kind of peculiar.
Hey, what's that?
I don't know. Uh...
It was, like, a tree trunk that had been covered
with branches like a roof.
It was really odd, and there was fresh branches,
and it was very difficult for any typical person to get to.
Cindy is more of an adventurous personality.
She wanted to check it out.
It was so steep and a little bit dangerous to get to,
but it was strange, and I was curious.
I don't even know to call it a hut.
That is just the strangest thing I've ever seen.
The women get the strong sense
they're somewhere they shouldn't be,
but they can't help themselves.
We were nervous because at first, we thought,
"Oh, my God. What if there's some creepy guy living in it?"
I said, "It smells in here."
It smelled like a wet dog times 10.
Oh! It was really bad.
Ah, jeez.
Oh, jeez.
Oh, my God. Look at this.
The pair find the remains
of old clothes and devoured animals.
It just started to get more eerie and scary.
Wha...
Are those bones?
These.
The inside of the tree was scraped,
and that being a little bit spooky.
It seemed like there was somebody there.
It really did feel like we were being watched.
- Cindy? - What?
I don't think we're alone.
Cindy, she doesn't scare easily,
but she was like, "Come on. Let's go."
You know what? Let's... Let's get out of here.
And she started climbing up, so I just started to follow her
to get out of there as quick as we could.
It was getting to a point of where it started to get dark.
The way the sun sets on that mountain, we had to get off.
They finally determine they are safe enough to stop
and catch their breath.
Hey, slow down.
I have to pee. Just make it quick.
And she went behind some brush and leaned up against a tree.
I was just standing there.
Hey.
Jeez. Don't sneak up on me like that.
What are you doing throwing rocks at me?
Wasn't me. Then who was it?
Okay. Don't be ridiculous. It's getting dark.
We got to go. Okay?
I looked at her, and I said, "What?"
She honestly believed it was me.
She didn't believe me when I told her,
"No, that was not me."
Damn it.
What? Now I got to go.
That's when I saw one rock come right at me at a direction
from where Cindy was not standing.
And then another, close to my head,
within inches from the top of my head.
It hit the tree that I was leaning against.
I panicked.
Oh, my God. No...
- There's something out there. - Okay. Let's go. Come on.
I was in a bit of panic mode because I thought,
"There's some guy, somebody up there watching us,"
and that, especially as two females,
two young females up on the mountain,
you don't know if it's a guy, or you don't what it is.
Once again, they are off and running.
But escape may be impossible.
That fear of not knowing who or what that was,
the scariest part.
Actually I get nervous just talking about the story.
I just get the shakes.
Anna and Cindy went for a hike on the mountain
and ventured deeper into the woods than they should have.
Now, after investigating a mysterious dwelling...
Run!
They're suddenly under attack
by the creature known as Bigfoot.
Whoever or whatever it was throwing rocks at us,
we were the last ones on the mountain.
It was scary. That did elevate the fear,
and it was as if that person or thing
was right in front of me, but I couldn't see it.
I grab Cindy, and I whisper, and I say,
"Shh, I think there's someone nearby."
As we're walking, it feels like there's someone there,
like someone's watching us.
We started to walk fast,
and that's when we can hear branches snapping.
And that's when Cindy actually started to cry.
And when I saw her crying
and the look of panic on her face, that scared me.
They can't see what's chasing them,
but they know it's angry.
We race down that trail.
No!
I knew that I'd have fear telling this story
because of, you know, how intense it was,
how scary it was to be followed by something,
you know, that you can't see, but you can feel.
The uncontrollable fear that takes over you,
and you cry, and you can't stop and the shaking.
I just remember shaking a lot.
I grabbed Cindy, and I said, "Come on," and I grabbed her,
and I threw her on the ground, and we both hid behind a tree.
And... we're laying there. It got quiet.
We're both just whispering, shaking and crying.
To think that, "Okay, maybe we lost it,"
or, "Let's just stop and listen."
Whatever it was, it was very obvious
that it didn't want us up there.
A rock threw right at us, right above our heads.
We just booked it down that mountain.
- Let's go! Let's just go! - Run, come on!
When we got to the parking lot,
we were crying, jumped in the car.
Locking the doors was the first thing we did.
It takes a while for Anna to realize what they saw.
It wasn't until we were actually on Highway 2
that we started talking and gaining composure
and trying to figure out, "What was that?"
That's when I told Cindy, "That was Bigfoot."
Expert John Ray agrees.
There are common themes to the reports.
We find stick structures that we can't explain.
We've had these vocalizations
that we hear that we can't explain.
The witnesses says they experience a nasty smell.
Oh! It smells so bad.
We've had reports of rock throwing,
where witness had rocks coming out of the woods at them.
It wants you to leave its territory.
Anna has learned her lesson.
Years after that incident, I carried my gun to go hiking.
Experiences like this can turn skeptics into believers.
Dr. Matthew Johnson dismisses the legend
until he takes his family on a hike
right into Bigfoot's territory.
Within a matter of minutes, we're surrounded.
I was scared to death. I was terrified.
The legend of Sasquatch,
or Bigfoot...
goes back for centuries.
I do believe that Sasquatch had been around for hundreds,
if not thousands, of years.
All the tribes of Native Americans
have some sort of legend
and believe in some sort of creature
that we would call Bigfoot or Sasquatch.
Why are these things so allusive?
Why can't we find them with our technology?
No amount of survival skills that you have can ever
prepare you for being in the presence
of something huge in the middle of the woods
at night that could rip your lungs out.
Not everyone,
much less a trained psychologist like Dr. Matthew Johnson,
believes these stories until they have to.
I remember in sixth grade, I checked out a book
from the elementary school library
that had a picture of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster
and a UFO and ghosts on it,
and I read through that book and ate it up.
Did I believe it?
Meh, maybe, maybe not, and it wasn't on my radar.
I'm very familiar with the outdoors,
very familiar with wildlife.
Got chased by a grizzly bear along the Russian River
in Alaska, south of Anchorage,
while I was fishing with a buddy.
My family just moved down from the state of Alaska.
We wanted to get the kids out on a hike in Oregon.
The nice thing about this hike
was that there wasn't going to be any grizzly bear.
So no stress, no anxiety, no need to carry a handgun.
Hey, guys.
But you're going to want to be careful.
See this right here? These are called brambles.
They got thorns in them, so you want to avoid them.
Okay, buddy?
We're almost at the clearing.
We cross the path where we could smell
this horrific stench coming downwind down the mountains.
Oh. Oh, jeez.
What is that?
It smelled as strong as a skunk, but it wasn't a skunk.
It was a mix of...
I don't know, garbage,
wet dog, fecal matter.
It was... I can't describe it other than it was just horrific.
Do you see that?
At that point, we knew we were being imparalleled,
so we knew we were being watched and followed,
but we couldn't figure out what it was.
- What is that? - I don't know.
Run. Come on.
It was making a deep bass guttural mammal,
"Wha, wha, wha."
We're talking big lungs.
I've never heard anything like that in my life
in 20 years of hiking and camping and fishing in Alaska.
It's going to be okay.
Stay. Stay here. What?
It's okay, buddy. Daddy's coming back.
And that's when I saw Bigfoot,
out of the left corner of my eye,
walk off the pages of myth and legend into reality.
It was about 9 to 10 feet tall, hair all over its body,
3, 4, 5 inches long, and it had a protruding brow ridge.
Its nose was flat, and the hair came up to the face
but not all the way, and the skin was black,
eyes were dark, and then it was behind a tree
watching my family over on the trail.
Everything I knew about the great outdoors
came crashing down inside my head.
I literally could feel
that cognitive schema just crash.
What the heck was I looking at?
You know, and I'm like,
"Oh, my God. It's real. They exist."
Then I felt my brain reboot.
And then these real strong protective instincts kicked in.
I started making my way down to the trail through the brush
and the trees, made a left up to my family
and was, like, moving them along, "Let's go."
- Let's get out of here. - What's wrong?
Move, move. "Go, let's go. Let's move now."
Keep running. Keep running. Keep running.
Go, go, go. Come on. You okay, Buddy? You okay?
And they knew something wasn't right
because I don't act that way.
I'm going to follow 50, 75 feet behind,
so if anything comes up the slope,
it's going to run into me first,
and if that happens, you take the kids...
and you run.
You run, and you don't look back.
Although I am almost 7 feet tall and weigh 300 pounds,
what I saw on the mountain that day was 9 to 10 feet tall,
close to 1,000 pounds
and could have crumbled me up and thrown me away.
I had never been so scared in my life than that day.
When I encountered the Bigfoot on July 1st of 2000,
I had no idea at the moment in time
how it was going to profoundly change my life.
This won't be the doctor's last meeting
with the mythical beast.
In fact, his journey is just beginning.
- Oh, my God. - What is that?
- What? - On your arm?
Please don't hurt my family.
Although hundreds of people have seen
Bigfoot over the years,
many don't believe he actually exists.
Dr. Matthew Johnson is a trained psychologist who was a skeptic
until he sees the legendary creature for himself.
After spending years up in the mountains,
it's very clear to me that they exist.
Every since then,
Matthew has been determined to find Bigfoot again.
It's a passion he shares with his second wife, Cynthia.
Similar to Matt, when I was in elementary school
and junior high,
I read the books that were available
that told the Native American stories.
I pretty much had made up my own mind
that if there was that kind of creature,
human development had probably forced it into being extinct.
But when Matt told me his story, I believed it.
While some experts believe Bigfoot has lived
alongside humans for millennia...
Matthew disagrees.
I found the truth. I know who they are.
I know where they're from, and I know why they're here.
His obsession for answers
fills his days... And his nights.
This looks good, guys.
- Yeah? - Yeah. I think right here.
- Okay. - Set up.
All right.
So we would go out there around midnight
in the middle of the woods and set up a night sit area,
turn our flashlights off and sit there in the dark
and wait for them to come to us.
The couple invites a close companion to join them.
Howie's a friend of ours
because he was a Bigfoot fanatic.
Maybe a little bit more this way.
- This way? - Yeah.
I'll set up here, and then I'll be able to see
right in between you guys. Okay.
We set up three chairs.
We were kind of in a semicircle,
and the idea behind setting up our chairs
that way was that we would have a 360-degree view.
I'm sitting in this chair, and Cynthia is sitting here,
and Howie is sitting here, and all of a sudden,
Cynthia and I are looking over at Howie,
and we see this dim light.
- Oh, my God. - What is that?
There's this glowing light right by his right elbow.
All of a sudden, this ball of light moves up
his right arm up to his hand and then back down to his elbow
and then up to his right shoulder.
- What? - On your arm.
- What? What, what, what? - On your arm!
- What is that? - What is it?
- Did you see it? - I don't know.
Okay.
And then it zips up into the sky about 20, 30 feet above us,
and then it zips off out of the woods.
It's really hard to describe.
I was just really left with my jaw hanging open.
And we're sitting there in the dark,
and all of a sudden, we...
I don't know, within a matter of minutes, we're surrounded.
You guys hear that?
What is it?
It sounds like footsteps.
Sounds like they're coming closer.
- Is it them? - Yeah.
Really?
Sounds like there's more than one, yeah.
Is it dangerous?
There was light coming through what was left
of the leaves on the trees.
So I start speaking up in my calm psychologist voice,
and I say...
Look, we mean you no harm. We don't have any weapons.
We're not armed.
And Howie is going, "Doc, Doc, he's coming right at you."
And all of a sudden, he disappeared,
but you could still hear the footsteps coming.
You could see the brush moving.
You could see the ferns where his feet were,
you know, kicking the brush were moving,
and he was coming closer and closer.
- Watch out! - What?
He bumps my left side and spins me around
like I'm a little kid.
He continued to walk past me
and into the brush and trees behind me.
The encounter changes both Matthew's idea of Bigfoot
and his life.
During my first encounter with the Bigfoot,
I was scared to death. I was terrified.
Why? Well, because I didn't know then what I know now.
That's why.
Between his claim
of Bigfoot's ability to manipulate light...
and its capacity to appear and disappear,
Matthew now believes that the Sasquatch
are a race of beings with special powers,
perhaps not even of this earth.
You're not dealing with an animal.
You're dealing with an intelligent sentient being,
and their ultimate goal is to connect with the human race.
Whether extraterrestrial in origin
or indigenous to our planet...
expert John Ray still warns
everyone to stay out of their territory,
as Anna and Cindy...
and Lenn and Kevin found out the hard way.
If they felt threatened,
these creatures are known to be very territorial.
It's its kingdom. It's going to want to protect it.
It's not going to want humans
or anything else messing around with it.
It's weird because I'm shivering.
I'm surprised that I'm still bothered by it.
We never went out to that part of the woods
I don't think ever again.
We avoided that place like the plague.
If a Sasquatch wanted to kill a human, it would be very easy.
They could throw a fairly big rock at us
and hit us in the head, and it would be all over.
It could kill us easily in many different ways,
the same way it kills its prey.
We're not any different than the prey.