BIGFOOT ATTACKED ME IN VERMONT – I Was A Forest Ranger And I Can’t Stay Silent Anymore

BIGFOOT ATTACKED ME IN VERMONT – A Forest Ranger’s Silent Encounter With Something That Should Not Exist

I Was a Forest Ranger in the Green Mountain National Forest, and I Can’t Stay Silent Anymore

For more than a decade, I worked as a forest ranger in Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest. I believed I understood the woods better than most people ever could. I knew the rhythms of the seasons, the subtle warnings carried by birdsong, the difference between fear and imagination. I believed, as many professionals do, that the wilderness was dangerous but ultimately knowable. What happened to me near Stratton Pond in early October shattered that belief completely. This is not a campfire story. This is not folklore. This is the account of a man who encountered something real, violent, intelligent, and terrifying—something the official reports still refer to only as an “unknown animal.”

The first signs appeared quietly, the way all serious problems do. In early August, hikers began reporting sections of the Long Trail and the Stratton Pond Trail blocked by fallen trees. At first, we assumed routine storm damage. Vermont gets its share of summer weather, and fallen branches are nothing unusual. But when we arrived to clear the trail, what we found didn’t match storm patterns. Saplings had been snapped cleanly at chest height. Birch trees were twisted, not uprooted, and laid across the trail in deliberate crosshatch formations. We cleared the obstructions. Two days later, they were back. We cleared them again. Within forty-eight hours, the trail was blocked once more.

I filed three separate maintenance reports in two weeks. That alone was unusual. That stretch of trail typically needed clearing twice a season, not three times in fourteen days. My supervisor suggested moose activity, possibly territorial behavior during rutting season. But moose do not twist trees at chest height, and they do not arrange fallen timber into patterns. More troubling were the claw-like bark shreds found nearly seven feet off the ground. No animal native to Vermont leaves marks like that.

By late August, the complaints changed. Backpackers camping near Stratton Pond began reporting a powerful odor drifting through the area at night. Not the mild smell of decay you might expect from a dead deer, but something thick, organic, and overwhelming. Several hikers described it as a mix between wet dog and rotting meat, a musk that seemed to cling to the back of the throat. One group packed up their campsite at two in the morning and hiked out by headlamp rather than stay another hour. When I smelled it myself on September 12th, I gagged. The scent hit me in a sudden wave and vanished just as quickly, leaving behind a memory that refused to fade.

The sounds came next. Deep, resonant vocalizations reported by multiple hiking parties on the same nights. These were not coyotes, not foxes, not owls, and not fishers. The calls rose and fell in pitch, echoing across ridgelines with a haunting, bottle-blown quality that carried for miles. When I heard it myself near Kelly Stand Road on September 18th, my body reacted before my mind could rationalize it. The sound was too deep, too sustained, and too intentional. It triggered a primitive fear I hadn’t felt since childhood, the kind that tells you something is watching from the dark and it is bigger than you.

I reported the sounds to dispatch. The dispatcher confirmed four similar calls in the previous three hours, all from the Stratton Mountain area. Officially, it was logged as wildlife activity. Unofficially, I began to feel that the forest itself was changing. The woods no longer felt empty when I walked alone. They felt occupied.

On September 24th, a solo hiker named Marcus Webb came into the ranger station visibly shaken. He was an experienced backpacker with over two hundred nights in the Green Mountains. He told me he had been stalked near Stratton Pond. Something large circled his campsite for over an hour, breaking branches and huffing just beyond the reach of his headlamp. When he shouted, it did not retreat. At one point, it snapped an entire tree, not a branch, but a trunk several inches thick. Marcus packed up in the dark and hiked six miles out because staying felt more dangerous than leaving.

I believed him.

When I sent his report to the district office and recommended increased patrols, the response was silence. Tourism was peaking. There was no confirmed visual evidence. I was told to focus on maintenance and leave wildlife matters to the biologists. What I didn’t say out loud was the word that had begun creeping into my thoughts late at night: Sasquatch. Bigfoot. Saying it would have ended my career instantly.

Instead, I started reviewing old incident reports. Patterns emerged. Trail destruction involving heavy stones thrown into the forest. A snowmobiler who reported a tall upright figure crossing a trail at dusk. Hunters who found sixteen-inch footprints near Bourne Pond. None of these incidents were investigated seriously. They were filed, labeled, and forgotten.

By late September, I began carrying a camera on every patrol. I told myself it was precaution, but deep down I knew I was hoping for proof.

Two days before the attack, I heard wood knocks while working alone on the Stratton Pond Trail. Sharp, deliberate cracks of wood striking wood, spaced seconds apart. Then another knock from a different direction. I realized something was communicating, triangulating my position. I left the work unfinished and returned to my truck shaken but alive. I convinced myself I was overreacting.

That decision nearly killed me.

On October 3rd, I returned to finish the job. The trail was empty. The forest was silent in a way that felt wrong. When the smell hit me again—stronger than ever—I knew something was close. I heard breathing. Deep, rhythmic breathing from the spruce trees just thirty feet away. When it moved, I saw it.

It was upright. Massive. Covered in dark brown hair. It moved too smoothly to be a bear, too tall to be human. When it turned its head, I saw a flat, dark face with an intelligence that froze me in place. Then it vanished into the trees.

I tried to document it. My fully charged phone died instantly. My radio crackled uselessly. When I tried to leave, rocks were thrown—deliberately—forcing me away from the trailhead. When I shouted and raised my bear spray, the forest exploded with movement and a scream that shook my chest. It was not rage. It was dominance.

I ran.

Something followed me, matching my pace without closing the distance. When I fell, struck my head, and lay bleeding on the trail, I was certain I was about to die. The creature approached while I was helpless. Then, miraculously, a hiker appeared. The creature withdrew without a sound.

I woke up in an ambulance. Officially, I slipped and fell. Unofficially, I was attacked by something the Forest Service does not want to acknowledge.

The investigation that followed focused not on what happened, but on what I failed to explain. My radio found disassembled. My bear spray discarded. Scratches on my arms inconsistent with a simple fall. I lied. I lied because telling the truth would have destroyed my career and my credibility in a single sentence.

I returned to work weeks later, changed forever. I no longer hike alone. I carry multiple cameras and trackers. I avoid Stratton Pond. The creature has not appeared again, but the signs continue. Blocked trails. Strange smells. Unexplained sounds reported by hikers who don’t yet know what they’re hearing.

The forest keeps its secrets. The Forest Service keeps its reputation. And I keep my silence.

But silence has a cost.

I know what attacked me in Vermont. I know Bigfoot is not a myth, not folklore, and not harmless. It is territorial, intelligent, and capable of violence. And it is still out there.