Two friends are camping in Lassen National Park in Northern California. That night, they begin to hear multiple guttural 'barking' sounds from an irritated beast emanating from the hill above them.
"I'm 60 years old and, except for 5 years in the 1990s when I lived in northern Idaho, I have lived in Northern California all my life. Thanks to my father I've been hunting, fishing, and camping since I was old enough to walk. I've had quite a few experiences of these Sasquatch beings from whoops that were so close and loud enough that I could feel it in my chest to being escorted out of the woods with that weird walk when you feel like you're being stalked.
The nights at my current residence can be a bit of an adventure with strange murmurings and whistles, to being woken up from the house being banged on.
The experience I want to share is my first. It happened during the summer by a high mountain stream in a meadow while I was with my friend Mike. This was in the Lassen National Park in Northern California. I first discovered this beautiful secluded place several years earlier during a deer hunting trip with my dad. Once you leave the paved road it's about an hour's drive up a winding dirt road full of switchbacks to where we parked.
It was about an hour before sundown. we began gathering firewood and setting up camp. It was about 2 hours after the sun went down we had a bite to eat and were sitting around the fire discussing how we wanted to fish the stream in the morning. Then uphill from us, about 50 yards away, came a strange sound. The best description I can give you is a cross between a cough and a bark, only much louder and more guttural, for lack of a better description. I'll just refer to it as a bark. Then it did it again and again. Soon there was barking in groups of five or six and then it would go silent for a minute or two then would start up again. I've never heard anything like it before or since. I've been all over the internet trying to find out what it was and the closest thing I find is some close gorilla sounds and a baboon bark that is close but not exact.
We both stood up and Mike asked, "What is that?" I was dumbstruck. I didn't know what to tell him. He was new to the outdoors and I was a so-called experienced outdoorsman. I admitted I was scared. Finally, I whispered, "I don't know." I told him to put more wood on the fire and unstrapped the Winchester 2535 carbine I had packed. It was a moonless night so seeing anything beyond the fire was impossible.
After about 25 minutes of this damn barking going on, I told Mike I was going to step away from the fire to see if I can spot anything silhouetted against the night sky. I stepped away about 15 yards, sat at my rifle against a tree, and cupped my hands around my eyes binocular-like to try and black out the light from the fire. I stared up the hillside every once in a while. I thought I could see starlight being blocked out or a dark shape appearing where it wasn't a little bit before, but nothing conclusive. After a few minutes, I realized Mike was standing next to me with his knife in his hand.
I was just about to speak when there came a loud crashing of brush and branches as something was heading down the hill straight for us. I grabbed my rifle and levered a shell into the chamber when all of a sudden, out of the darkness, came a doe. She stepped into the firelight, slowed to a walk, stopped directly between us, and stared at us with huge eyes. She was so close I could almost have reached out and poked her with the barrel of my rifle. My heart was beating out of my chest and I was almost hyperventilating. I was so relieved when that doe stepped into the firelight, not some beast. But I was really confused. Was the doe making those sounds?
Then that damn barking started up again and this time it sounded even more irritated. The doe's head snaps back looking over its shoulder. Then she did a quickstep past us heading in the opposite direction from us and disappeared into the darkness. That doe was less afraid of us and our fire than of whatever was up the hill from us! We both stepped back over to the fire and briefly discussed packing up and heading out, but quickly decided against it, fearing the trail would be impossible to follow in the dark.
Then that damn thing started pacing back and forth while barking at us. The barking would get farther away, maybe 100 yards or more, and then it would make its way back directly uphill from us. It seemed like every time it got closer the barking sounded more irritated. It would get farther away, then back again, farther away, then back again. Our nerves were getting worse and worse with our ever-shrinking wood pile when finally, after about 2 hours of the barking, it got farther and farther away and then went silent.
Thank God, the rest of the night was uneventful. Needless to say, neither of us slept much and every perceived sound sent us both upright and wide awake. The next day we packed up early and hit the trail."
Transcribed source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u0KNrfOz00
NOTE: Was it a Sasquatch, or something else, possibly a cryptid canine? What are your thoughts? Lon
The Encyclopedia of Demons and Demonology
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