BIGFOOT Attacks RV Park in Alaska on October 11, 2025

The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes

Chapter 1: The Interview

The red light on the recorder blinked steadily, casting a faint glow across the psychiatric evaluation room at Providence Alaska Medical Center. I sat six inches from the device, hands trembling so badly I couldn’t grip the table’s edge. Dr. Helena Voss, her face half-shadowed by the fluorescent wash, asked me for my name and the date. When I opened my mouth, the only sound that escaped was a strangled whimper, animal and desperate. Finally, I managed, “Nathan Webb. October 11th, 2025. 11:47 p.m.”

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Three hours had passed since the Coast Guard helicopter touched down on the hospital pad, with me strapped to a gurney, hypothermic and streaked with blood—most of it not mine. They kept asking what happened to Miles Connelly, Selene Hartley, and David Ocoy. I kept telling the same story, watching their eyes glaze over with professional skepticism that made me want to scream until my throat split open. There was something in Katmai, something that shouldn’t exist. Something that killed three people while I hid in a drainage culvert, hand clamped over my mouth so tightly I drew blood, listening to Miles scream my name until the screaming stopped and the silence became heavy, wet, and final.

Dr. Voss’s pen hovered over her clipboard, thick with intake forms and liability waivers. “Start from the beginning,” she said, as if any of this could ever make sense in chronological order. As if the human brain could process what I saw in neat, sequential packages.

Chapter 2: The Assignment

Six days ago, I was still Nathan Webb, thirty-four-year-old wildlife biologist with the National Park Service. Back then, I believed apex predators were creatures we could track, catalog, and understand. That belief died in the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Back then, I had three colleagues—breathing, arguing about GPS brands, planning Thanksgiving trips. Now, their names are just echoes in my mind.

We were assigned to investigate reports of unusual bear activity in Katmai’s backcountry, specifically along the valley where three hiking groups had reported aggressive encounters in two weeks. Selene Hartley, a bear behavior specialist from Fish and Wildlife, joined us. David Ocoy, a freelance wildlife photographer, rounded out our team. Four people. Seven days. Standard protocol.

The biggest danger, I thought, would be hypothermia or maybe a charging brown bear if we got careless. I was catastrophically wrong. We flew out on October 6th, a Saturday morning, the kind of clear, cold weather that makes you grateful for modern gear, even as it reminds you Alaska can kill you if you’re not careful. The float plane dropped us at Kukak Bay. David’s face pressed against the window, wonder in his eyes. He’d been to Katmai twice before, had photos published in National Geographic—bears catching salmon, volcanic landscapes like Mars. He was good at his job, careful, respectful of the animals. It didn’t matter. There are things that operate outside every known behavioral model, things that treat humans not as threats or curiosities, but as prey.

Selene was already reviewing the itinerary before we’d unloaded our gear, her clipboard covered in laminated maps and permits. She talked grid patterns and scat sample protocols with enthusiasm that made Miles roll his eyes. They’d clashed before—her by-the-book approach versus his intuitive fieldwork—but both were professionals. Both were good. I keep using the past tense and hating myself for it.

Chapter 3: The Tracks

The first day was textbook. We established base camp eight miles inland, surrounded by dense alders and black spruce, a creek nearby for water and noise cover. Bear-proof containers for food, electric fence perimeter, air horn and bear spray on every belt. We spent the afternoon surveying, looking for tracks and territorial markings, documenting everything. David got shots of a female brown bear with cubs; Selene collected scat samples, bagged and labeled with meticulous care. Dinner was freeze-dried stroganoff, tasting of cardboard and chemicals, plans reviewed for the next day, watch rotation set. I took first watch, midnight to two a.m., listening to the creek, the wind, the occasional crackle from the fence. Just Alaska being Alaska—vast, indifferent, older than anything humans have built.

The first sign something was wrong came on day two, around 4:30 p.m. during a ridge survey, three miles northeast of camp. David spotted them first—tracks in a muddy stretch near a seasonal stream. Humanoid, but wrong. Too large. Each print eighteen inches long, eight wide, deep enough to suggest something extraordinarily heavy had passed through recently. The stride length was six feet—far longer than any human could manage without sprinting, but the pattern was walking pace, deliberate.

Selene crouched with her measuring tape and camera, her face tight with worry. Miles joked about Sasquatch, but his laugh didn’t reach his eyes. David took fifty photographs, his professionalism overriding unease. I marked the GPS location, trying and failing to come up with a rational explanation. Black bear tracks can look almost human, I said, and everyone nodded because it was easier than acknowledging what we were all thinking. But black bears don’t weigh five hundred pounds or walk with a stride that long, and the dermal ridges visible in the clearest prints weren’t bear—weren’t anything I’d seen.

We followed the tracks for four hundred meters before they disappeared into rocky ground. Selene wanted to set up camera traps, start documentation, but daylight was fading and none of us wanted to be out there in the dark. The hike back took twice as long, everyone moving slower, checking over shoulders, jumping at shadows. I kept thinking about the missing persons in the area—three in four years, all experienced hikers who vanished without a trace. Official explanation: exposure or bear attacks. But the statistics were wrong. The frequency too high for random chance.

Chapter 4: The Night Terror

Dinner that night was subdued. David showed us his photos, zooming in on the ridges, the depth, the scatter pattern. Selene flipped through her field guide, finding nothing that matched. Miles cleaned his rifle, a .308 Winchester, checking magazine and chamber with mechanical precision. I should have said we should leave. Should have trusted our instincts. But professional pride, denial, the voice that says you’re overreacting, kept me silent.

That night, sitting in my tent, listening to the creek and the wind, I tried to ignore the feeling that something was listening back. The screaming started at 1:47 a.m. I know the exact time because I was checking my watch, unable to sleep, body locked in hypervigilance. Not the fence alarm, not a bear or wolf, but a vocalization that bypassed my rational brain and went straight to the part that remembers when humans were prey. It started low, subsonic, a rumble I felt in my chest before I heard it, rising to a roar-scream full of rage or challenge or something I had no words for.

Selene was shouting from her tent. David yelled about the fence. Miles was outside with his rifle; I grabbed my headlamp and bear spray, hands shaking so badly I nearly dropped both. The fence was active, indicator lights glowing, but something was just outside the perimeter, moving through the undergrowth, branches snapping under enormous weight. My headlamp caught only trees and shadows, swallowed by the vast darkness. But I could smell it—a thick musk of wet fur, decay, and something else, something that made my hindbrain scream warnings in a language older than words.

Miles tracked movement, voice tight with adrenaline. Selene’s radio got nothing but static. David filmed, night vision casting everything in grainy green, documenting something circling our camp with deliberate intent. The vocalizations came again, closer. I could hear the intelligence in it, the way it tested us, measured our responses. Not animal, not human—something in between. We stayed like that for twenty minutes, weapons drawn, lights scanning, hearts hammering.

And then it was gone. The sounds receded, leaving only wind, creek, and ragged breathing. Selene wanted to break camp immediately, hike out in the dark. Miles pointed out that whatever was out there knew the terrain better, could move in darkness while we’d be stumbling. We waited for daylight, weapons ready, wondering if every sound was it coming back. None of us slept.

Chapter 5: The Hunt

At dawn, we broke camp in record time. Bear protocols abandoned for speed. The plan was simple—head southwest to Kukak Bay, eight miles, radio for extraction, gone by afternoon. Survival instinct kicked in. We should have left the day before.

Selene took point with GPS, Miles at the rear with the rifle, David and I in the middle. The morning was cold and clear, breath visible as we moved through the alders, almost running. Two miles in, David found the first rock—river-worn, heavy, placed deliberately in our path. Miles hefted it, calculating the strength needed to throw it with precision. We kept moving, pace quickening. Another mile, three more rocks arranged in a line. David filmed, hands shaking. I watched the tree line, certain we were being watched.

The tree shaking started at 10:30 a.m., during a water break. A spruce sixty meters to our left began to sway, trunk moving with deliberate force. Then another tree, then another, a display of raw power meant to terrify. Selene backed toward the group, bear spray out, hands shaking. Miles swept with his rifle, composure cracking. David had stopped filming, camera forgotten. I tried to remember protocols, but this wasn’t a bear. This understood psychological warfare.

The shaking stopped abruptly, silence worse than before. Pressure built in my skull, like the air before lightning. We moved faster, formation tighter. The alders grew denser, every snap making us flinch. Four miles to the bay, four miles that felt like continents. My legs burned, pack straps cutting into my shoulders. Stopping wasn’t an option.

We crossed a creek, water numbingly cold. I saw a fresh track in the mud—the same impossible dimensions. It was ahead of us now, cutting off our path. Miles called a halt, voice authoritative. He was looking downstream, rifle raised, body language screaming “Threat.” I saw it—eight feet tall, shoulders too broad, arms too long, bipedal, aware. David raised his camera. The shape moved, parallel to us, disappearing with impossible speed.

Then the vocalization—closer, vibrating in my bones. Underneath, the sound of something massive moving through brush. Miles fired twice, shots deafening. We didn’t wait. Selene shouted to run, and we did. All pretense abandoned, just pure flight. Packs bouncing, branches whipping, the thing keeping pace, always close, always out of sight.

David went down first, tripping over a root, pack shifting. He hit the ground, camera swinging. We screamed for him to get up. The undergrowth exploded. Something came through, warping the air. I got one clear look—dark brown fur, massive hunched shoulders, a face partially obscured but showing fangs, eyes too aware. It covered the distance in two strides, grabbed David around the torso. I heard his ribs break, his scream starting human and ending somewhere else. It lifted him, then vanished into the alders, David still screaming. Miles emptied his magazine, brass casings pinging. Selene screamed coordinates into her radio. I was frozen, terror so pure it was almost hallucinogenic, watching the alders thrash, David’s screams getting weaker, then stopping.

Chapter 6: The Escape

Miles yanked me into motion, and we ran. Selene led, GPS forgotten, heading downhill toward the bay. Miles reloaded as he ran. I tried to keep moving, every instinct screaming to hide. Behind us, something made wet, terrible sounds. David was dead. Whatever was doing to him in the shadows left nothing intact. We made another mile before Selene slowed, breath ragged, hand pressed to her side. Miles swept the rifle, face locked in painful focus. My pack was abandoned, bear spray gripped in both hands, useless against something that could break a grown man like kindling.

The terrain shifted, rockier, less vegetated. I smelled salt water, heard surf—close to the bay. Selene’s radio crackled with a voice, distorted. She tried to respond when the rock hit her. I didn’t see where it came from, but heard it whistle, saw it impact her back with a sickening sound. She went down, face first, didn’t move. Miles yelled her name, dropped beside her, tried CPR. Blood came from her mouth and nose, eyes open but unfocused.

Miles kept doing compressions, voice cracking. Selene’s radio crackled, something about “copy and extraction,” meaningless noise. I heard branches breaking, massive weight moving through the forest. I screamed at Miles that it was coming, we had to leave her. The look he gave me was full of hatred and despair. I almost stayed, almost knelt beside him and waited for whatever was coming. But I ran. Ran toward the ocean, the promise of open ground. The last thing I heard was Miles screaming, not words, just pure sound, rage and terror mixed.

I didn’t look back. Just ran until my lungs burned, legs threatened to give out. The ground became a slope, then a cliff. I slid down loose scree toward a drainage culvert, concrete and rebar like broken bones. I heard it behind me, heavy footfalls on stone. I dove into the culvert, crawling into darkness that smelled of rust and old death, pulling myself deep into the tube where something that size couldn’t follow. Twenty feet in, the passage narrowed. I wedged myself in, back against one wall, feet braced against the other, breathing through my mouth, heart hammering.

I heard it reach the entrance, stop, then nothing for thirty seconds that felt like hours. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. The circle of daylight at the entrance was blocked, shadow filling the opening as something leaned down to look inside. I clamped my hand over my mouth, pressing back into concrete until my spine threatened to crack. The smell hit me—musk, animal, ancient. I heard breathing, slow, deep. And then sounds, not quite words, structured, intentional, almost like it was trying to speak. The intelligence implied was more terrifying than raw predation. It stayed there for an eternity. At some point, I heard new sounds—helicopter rotors, voices, coordinates. The shadow shifted, withdrew, moved away, confident and unhurried.

Chapter 7: The Aftermath

I stayed in that culvert for two hours after the Coast Guard SAR team landed, after they called search patterns, after my muscles locked up and my throat went raw from thirst. When they found me, pulled me out into the gray daylight, I couldn’t speak, could only shake and stare at the tree line, waiting for it to come back. They loaded me into the helicopter, wrapped me in thermal blankets, started asking questions I couldn’t answer. I watched the forest recede, the vast expanse of Katmai spreading out—thousands of square miles that could hide anything.

They found David’s body three days later, or what was left, scattered over a quarter mile in a pattern forensics said was inconsistent with known predators. They never found Selene, just her radio and blood spatter. Miles was discovered four hundred meters from where I last saw him, in pieces. The medical examiner used clinical language to describe trauma that sounded like horror fiction. The official report listed “wildlife attack, species undetermined,” and recommended closing the valley pending further investigation.

The investigation lasted six weeks, fifty personnel, and concluded an unusually large brown bear was responsible. Despite the bite radius not matching any bear, and the strength required to inflict the injuries being beyond anything in the literature. David’s camera was recovered, memory card corrupted, nothing salvageable. My testimony was recorded, filed, and ignored—traumatic stress response, unreliable witness.

Now I’m on administrative leave, mandatory psychiatric evaluation. Dr. Voss asks about intrusive thoughts, sleep patterns, suicidal ideation. I keep telling her the problem isn’t what I think I saw. It’s what I actually saw. What I know is still out there, waiting for the next group who think they’re the top of the food chain. I wake at 5:23 every morning, not from nightmares but from the absence of them. I can’t be in enclosed spaces, can’t stand open doorways, can’t handle the sound of branches against windows. I’ve lost twenty-two pounds in six days. My hands shake constantly. I can’t finish a conversation without drifting, replaying those moments, wondering if I could have done anything differently.

The news coverage lasted four days. Local stations ran stories about tragic wildlife attacks, climate change affecting bear behavior, risk management and visitor safety. Nothing about the things that don’t fit the narrative. The evidence disappeared, the witness statements contradicted the official conclusion. I tried talking to journalists, but I’m the crazy guy now, the traumatized witness whose story doesn’t match reality. Someone created a Reddit thread—people debated whether I was a liar or delusional, suggested I killed my colleagues and invented the cryptid story as cover. The internet is forever. These threads will be there for decades, people arguing about what happened like it’s entertainment.

I went to David’s funeral, stood in the back while his sister spoke about his passion for nature photography, his gentle soul. I wanted to scream that wild places killed him, that his passion got him torn apart by something that shouldn’t exist. I didn’t. Just clenched my hands and jaw until the service ended. Selene’s family is in Texas; I couldn’t go. Miles’s remains are still with the forensic unit. His sister doesn’t want me at the service. She’s right to hate me. I hate me, too. Every morning when I wake up alive and they don’t.

The chest camera footage was reviewed—hours of trees and terrain, nothing useful. My camera stopped at 11:47 a.m. on October 8th, around when David was taken. Miles’s camera recorded until 12:03 p.m.—eighteen minutes of him trying to revive Selene, scanning the tree line, then black. Audio continued for forty seconds, just silence and the faint sound of branches breaking. Investigators showed me the footage, asked if I could identify sounds or movement. I watched Miles die on a small LCD, watched something enter the frame, a blur of mass and motion, then impact, the camera tilting skyward, recording the canopy until the battery died.

They told me trauma can affect perception, that the brain fills gaps with information, that I should focus on recovery. I’m writing this now because Dr. Voss thinks it will help. She’s wrong, but I’m doing it anyway. The recorder’s red light is still blinking. I’ve been talking for nearly four hours, my voice going, throat raw. But I can’t stop. Stopping means being alone with the silence, and the silence is where it lives.

The thing in Katmai—the thing that killed three people and sent me running into a drainage culvert like a terrified animal—is real. Whatever you call it, Sasquatch, Bigfoot, undocumented primate, demon from hell, the label doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s out there and it’s hunting, and nobody’s doing anything because nobody believes it exists. That’s the real horror. Not the creature itself, but the certainty it will happen again, and the next group won’t even have my warning.

I can’t sleep without the lights on. Can’t watch nature documentaries, can’t look at maps of Alaska, can’t handle the sound of wind in trees. I went to a grocery store yesterday, first time out in three days. Made it halfway down the produce aisle before I had to leave, lights too bright, crowd too dense, exits too far, brain screaming danger until I was hyperventilating in the parking lot.

My therapist says this will get better with time and treatment, but she’s treating the symptom, not the cause. The trauma is real and ongoing because the thing that caused it is still out there. I’ve started researching—databases of cryptid sightings, missing persons, wildlife attacks, looking for patterns. Hundreds of reports, thousands across the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. Descriptions that match what I saw, dismissed as hoaxes or misidentifications. But not all of them. Some match too closely.

I’ve tried contacting researchers, offering to be interviewed or examined. No responses except one cryptozoologist who wanted me on his podcast, turning my friends into content for conspiracy theorists. I blocked his number. I’m alone in this. Nobody’s coming to help.

The Coast Guard pilot who flew my extraction emailed last week, saying he’d been thinking about the way I stared at the tree line, flinched at the rotor pitch, the way the forest felt wrong. He included a link to a news article about increased wildlife activity in Katmai, reports from guides about unusual sounds and disturbed campsites, clients swearing they saw something that wasn’t a bear. The superintendent says they’re monitoring the situation, encouraging proper bear safety protocols—corporate speak for doing nothing.

Sometimes, in the dead of night, I think about going back, hiking into the valley with proper equipment, trying to get proof. Then I remember David’s screams, the wet silence, Miles’s face in that last moment, and the fantasy evaporates. I survived by pure chance. Going back would be suicide. Whatever’s in those trees isn’t interested in being studied. It’s interested in maintaining territory and removing threats.

Researchers will eventually go in. They won’t come back, or they’ll come back like I did—broken, disbelieved, carrying memories that poison everything good. Dr. Voss just knocked, told me I should stop recording, get rest. She’s right. My voice is barely a whisper. But I need to finish this. The thing in Katmai is real. It exists. My testimony is worthless because the truth is too terrible to accept.

This recording will be filed somewhere, maybe heard decades from now by some future researcher who wonders why nobody followed up. By then, it won’t matter. There will be more victims, more families, more official reports citing “wildlife attack, species undetermined,” quietly closed.

I’m turning off the recorder. Midnight, October 12th. I’ll try to sleep, try to remember what it felt like to be Nathan Webb, the biologist, instead of Nathan Webb, the only survivor. I don’t think I’ll succeed. But I have to try, because the alternative is waiting for it to come for me. To finish what it started. And that’s not paranoia. That’s pattern recognition. Predators remember. Territory is everything. And I left its territory knowing too much.

The lights in this room will stay on. Every night. Because darkness is where it lives. And I can’t face darkness anymore.

End.