He Spoke To Me In My Mind

Sawtooth National Forest near Hailey, Idaho. Photo: Acroterion.

“Our eyes locked and the 10-foot-tall male Sasquatch and I stared at each other for what felt like several minutes…’You’re only a human,’ he said to me, silently.”

Chris Evans, a solidly built, 62-year-old, 6’5” plus man from Hailey, a small town near Sun Valley, Idaho, came into the Forks, Washington Sasquatch The Legend store this week to tell me about the time when he encountered a Bigfoot. Like so many of those visitors to our store who come in in order to talk to someone about their experience, he looked me straight in the eye with absolute sincerity as he recounted his tale. There was no question about whether this encounter happened to him or not—it’s quite clear that it did. 

Philadelphia Smelter, Hailey, Idaho 1884 (public domain)

It happened about eight years ago in an area near Eastfork, Idaho, an old silver mining town with hundreds of miles of abandoned mining tunnels and caves. Evans had come to the area to do some camping and enjoy the warm weather and beautiful colors of the autumn. He set up camp in a forested area at the end of an old logging road, near the beginning of a game trail. 

Sawtooth National Forest scene (Photo: Fredlyfish4)

Evans had brought a friend’s dog with him, a spirited black lab, who was entertaining herself by chasing deer while Evans set up camp. He set six New York strip steaks on a rock to defrost and began to pitch his tent, an expensive domed model with a camouflage-patterned exterior. The dog ran into the woods and suddenly Evans heard a long noise, a “Whoooooooooooo” sound reminiscent of an ambulance siren, a sound that went on and on and on. The dog immediately came scurrying back, fell over and collapsed on the ground. Evans thought the dog might be dead but it seemed to be having a heart attack, a literal heart attack! He gently placed the dog in his truck and raced back to town to get some help for the ailing animal. 

Later that night Evans returned to his campsite and discovered a huge hole in the side of the tent, about a foot in diameter. Something had reached into the tent, pulled out his sleeping bag and shredded it with fingernails or claws—he could see the marks scratched into the nylon exterior of the bag. Evans had an uncomfortable feeling—he thought it must have been a mountain lion or a bear that had attacked his camp and he decided not to wait around to find out which one it was. He packed up his stuff and started driving back on the logging road. 

He came around a hairpin turn and there, just 20 yards away, was a Sasquatch, standing on two legs, with its arm just about around the neck of a moose. He was quite evidently male, solid black, with a built-up nose, not a flat one, and he was standing leaning over with his arm out, seemingly about to grab the moose. “He had black sand on his shoulders, like mining tailings, and I thought maybe he’d been living in a tunnel or a cave,” explains Evans. The Bigfoot looked incredibly powerful, with very strong muscle structure. Evans had the feeling that he was a young male. 

“We looked each other dead in the eye. I had the feeling that he was thinking, for a split second, about hopping on the moose and riding away. We had this really powerful psychic connection for a few moments. I wasn’t scared—I was calm and collected. I’d seen a statue of a Bigfoot in California and I knew exactly what I was looking at. I knew this is what he was. He looked at me and said ‘You are only human.’ That’s what he said, but he didn’t say it out loud, he somehow gave that message to me in my mind. Then he ran across the road and was gone in the dense trees. I noticed that he had about an inch of granite dust on the soles of his feet.”

“I had the feeling that he was a little upset with me for messing up his hunting. He didn’t get the moose he was after—the moose got away. I came out to the area again later to track him and came across a stack of old bones, an elk pelvis and lots of bones scattered around, but I didn’t see the Sasquatch again. A friend of mine, a Nez Perce man from the area, told me he had also seen a Bigfoot near there, and that the Bigfoot was standing near a river holding a massive salmon, and that to kill it he just gave its head a quick squeeze with one hand.”

“There is also a man named Robert R. Swaner who said he saw a group of Sasquatch in the area many times. That man later disappeared in the forest and has never been heard from again.”

Thank you, Chris, for sharing your story with us and our readers! We really appreciate it.

Story written by Christina Hebert, as told by Chris Evans of Hailey, Idaho.

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