Hunter Caught Bigfoot Family Before Bear Ambush, Then He Had to Help – Sasquatch Story

Chapter 1: The Return to the Woods

Back in October 2017, up near the Gford Pincho National Forest in southern Washington, I found myself at a crossroads. At 41, I was hunting alone for the first time in three years. My daughter was home with her mother, six miles down a gravel logging road, where the cell reception was spotty and the propane heater clicked ominously all night. As I stepped into the woods, a chill ran through the air, the cold rain mingling with the fog that rolled through the Douglas firs like a living creature, breathing life into the forest.

I was tracking what I believed were elk signs when the scream pierced the silence. It was unlike anything I had ever heard—neither human nor cougar, but something else entirely. My heart raced as I peered through my rifle scope, catching sight of a mother and two young ones, each around four feet tall, huddled near a boulder outcrop. Then, I saw the bear.

I recorded 47 seconds of shaky footage on my phone, a moment I would later regret sharing with only my brother. When I showed him, he made me swear to delete it. But I couldn’t. That was the easy part. What followed would change everything.

Chapter 2: The Forgotten Ridge

I had hunted that ridge for nearly 15 years, back when my father still accompanied me. The roads were better maintained then, but after the 2015 mudslides, the Forest Service had closed two access points, pushing most hunters closer to the highway. I preferred the quiet, the solitude of being the only truck parked at the trailhead before dawn.

That October morning, the fog hung thick, obscuring my vision to barely 20 yards. As I followed a game trail along a ravine, a foul smell hit me—wet dog, but stronger, mixed with something sour, like old garbage left in the sun. I stopped, checked the wind, but the smell lingered, heavy and wrong. I had smelled bear and rotting elk before, but this was different.

Ignoring my instincts was mistake number one.

Chapter 3: The Tracks

About a quarter-mile in, I knelt down and ran my hand over the mud. There it was—a barefoot, human-shaped print, stretched and deep, measuring 18 inches long, too big for a man and too clear for a hoax. The impression was fresh, pressed into the soft ground as if something heavy had walked through during the night. I snapped three photos, checking the timestamp: 7:42 a.m. The rain began to pick up, blurring the edges of my thoughts.

I stood, scanning the trees, but heard nothing—no birds, no wind, just the rain tapping on my jacket hood and that smell still lingering like a dark omen. I didn’t tell anyone about it that day. I returned home, kissed my daughter, microwaved leftover chili, and sat on the couch, staring at the photos on my phone. My ex-wife asked if I had anything to show. I said no, that the road was worse than I thought.

Chapter 4: The Online Search

That night, while everyone slept, I turned to the internet, typing in “large barefoot prints Washington.” I found exactly what I expected: forums filled with arguments, blurry photos, and people calling each other liars. I scrolled for hours, seeing prints that looked like mine, stories of Bigfoot sightings near Mount St. Helens and the Columbia River, places I had camped as a child.

I closed my laptop, unable to sleep, haunted by the silence in the woods and the way the birds had stopped singing.

Chapter 5: Back to the Forest

The following weekend, I returned, telling my ex I was scouting for elk season. She didn’t care. My daughter, however, wanted to come. I told her no, knowing she was smart enough to sense my unease. I brought better boots, a handheld GPS, and a small video camera I had bought at a pawn shop for $60. My plan was simple: find the tracks again, document them properly, maybe set up a trail cam.

I wasn’t expecting to see anything alive. I wasn’t expecting to hear anything. But the woods felt different that day. The fog had cleared, and sunlight streamed through the canopy, illuminating the ferns and fallen logs. It was beautiful, a morning that made me forget my fear.

Chapter 6: The Knock

I located the spot where the tracks had been, though the rain had washed most of them away. I could still see the outline of one print under a low hemlock branch. I set up the camera on a fallen log, pointed it at the trail, and began walking a grid pattern through the underbrush.

That’s when I heard it—three knocks, wood on wood, deep and resonant, coming from somewhere upslope. I froze, counting to thirty. Then I heard it again—three knocks, evenly spaced. I had heard trees fall and branches crack in the wind, but this was different. This was communication.

Chapter 7: The Encounter

With my hands shaking and breath loud in my ears, I pulled out my phone and started recording audio, moving toward the sound. If this was real, everything I thought I knew about these woods was wrong. I walked for 20 minutes, following the slope, checking behind every cedar trunk, every moss-covered boulder. The knocking stopped, and the forest fell silent again.

Then I smelled it again—the same sour, wet dog scent, but fresher, closer. I turned in a slow circle, rifle in one hand, phone in the other, but saw nothing. The smell clung to my jacket, filling my mouth when I breathed. I backed down the hill, not stopping until I reached the logging road. My truck was still there, untouched. I sat in the cab for ten minutes, hands on the wheel, trying to convince myself I had imagined it. But I hadn’t.

Chapter 8: The Call

That night, I called my brother. He worked for the state and didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see on a spreadsheet. I told him about the tracks and the knocking. He laughed, asking if I’d been drinking. I said no, and he suggested it was probably a bear or my mind playing tricks after too many hours alone in the woods.

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to hang up and forget the whole thing, but I didn’t. I asked if he remembered the stories Dad used to tell about hunters in the Cascades seeing things they couldn’t explain. He went quiet, then said, “Dad told a lot of stories. Doesn’t make them true.” We didn’t talk for three weeks after that.

Chapter 9: The Obsession

I kept returning every Saturday, sometimes on Wednesdays if I could get off work early. I brought the video camera, a notebook, and a tape measure, marking trees with orange tape, creating a rough map of where I’d heard sounds, where I’d found prints, where the smell was strongest. The tracks appeared sporadically—sometimes clear, sometimes just a toe impression in the moss.

I found scat once, dark and fibrous, full of berries and what looked like bone fragments. I bagged it, labeled it, and put it in my freezer under a bag of peas. My ex found it two months later and threw it out, asking what was wrong with me. I didn’t have an answer.

By mid-November, I had spent close to 60 hours in that section of forest and hadn’t seen anything larger than a Roosevelt elk. I was starting to think my brother was right. Maybe it was bears. Maybe it was my own boots making prints I misremembered. Maybe the knocking was just trees settling, wind in the branches, my ears searching for patterns that weren’t there.

Chapter 10: The Revelation

Then, on a gray Sunday morning with fresh snow starting to fall, I saw them—a mother and two juveniles moving through a clearcut about 300 yards below me. I got my phone out, hit record, and watched a bear emerge from the brush behind them. It was a young male, maybe 400 pounds, its black coat matted with rain.

The bear came in fast, low to the ground, no warning. The mother turned, putting herself between the bear and the young ones. She was massive, 7 feet tall, with broad shoulders and arms longer than any human’s. The two juveniles scattered—one climbing a broken snag, the other crouching behind a stump.

The bear hit her like a truck. She went down hard, rolled, then came up swinging. I heard the impact from 300 yards away, a sound like a car door slamming. My phone shook in my hand as I zoomed in. The footage was garbage—pixelated and jerky—but you could see her. You could see the bear. You could see what happened next.

Chapter 11: The Choice

She grabbed the bear by the scruff, twisted, and threw it sideways into a pile of slash. The bear came back, claws out, teeth snapping, catching her across the shoulder. She screamed—a high-pitched sound, almost human, full of rage and pain. The juveniles screamed too, a sound I hope to never hear again.

The bear circled, looking for an opening. She was bleeding, favoring her left side, backing toward the young ones. I realized I was witnessing something that wasn’t supposed to be seen, something the forest had kept hidden for a reason. And in that moment, I had a choice.

I fired once into the air. The crack echoed across the clearcut. The bear stopped, head up, looking for the threat. I fired again, this time into the dirt 20 feet in front of it. The bear bolted, crashing back into the brush, gone in seconds.

Chapter 12: The Connection

The mother stood there, breathing hard, blood running down her arm. She looked up the slope, right at me. I don’t know if she could see me through the trees, but I felt it—eye contact, recognition, something passing between us that I can’t explain. Then she turned, gathered the young ones, and disappeared into the timber.

I stood there for five minutes, maybe ten, watching the empty clearcut. Then I checked my phone. 47 seconds. I had 47 seconds of footage that could change everything or ruin everything. I wasn’t sure which.

Chapter 13: The Dilemma

I didn’t go back for a week. I told myself I needed to think, to figure out what to do with the video. But the truth was, I was scared. Not of the mother or the juveniles, but of what it meant. If Bigfoot was real, if I had proof, then what? I had spent 40 years believing the world worked a certain way, that the wilderness had been mapped and understood. Now, I had 47 seconds that said otherwise.

I watched the video every night, headphones on, frame by frame. You could see her face for maybe two seconds—flat nose, heavy brow, eyes that caught the light wrong. You could see the juveniles, smaller and darker, clinging to each other behind the stump. You could see the bear and you could see her throw it. No human could do that. No person in a suit could move that fast, hit that hard. I knew what I was looking at; I just didn’t know what to do about it.

Chapter 14: The Warning

My brother called on a Thursday, asking if I was still going out to the woods. I said no. He said, “Good.” He’d been reading about people who get obsessed, who spend years chasing shadows and lose their jobs, their families, their grip on reality. He said he didn’t want that for me. I told him I was fine. He didn’t believe me.

That night, I copied the video onto a flash drive, put it in a lockbox in my closet, and deleted it from my phone. I told myself that was the end of it. I told myself I’d let it go.

Chapter 15: The Call to Action

Then, two days later, I got a call from the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office. A hiker had found tracks near the same logging road—big tracks. They wanted to know if I had seen anything unusual. I met the deputy at a coffee shop in Carson. His name was Mills, late 50s, the kind of guy who’d spent his whole career dealing with tourists and drunk drivers.

He showed me photos on his phone—prints in the mud, the same size and shape as the ones I’d found. He asked if I’d been hunting in that area. I said yes. He asked if I’d seen any wildlife, anything out of the ordinary. I said no. He looked at me for a long time, then nodded.

“They get reports like this every few years,” he said. “Usually bears, sometimes elk, once in a while, a hiker with big feet playing a prank.” He didn’t say Bigfoot. He didn’t have to. I could see it in his eyes. He’d heard the stories too. He just didn’t want to believe them.

Chapter 16: The Descent

The deputy told me to call if I saw anything else. I said I would. He left, and I sat in the coffee shop for another hour, staring at my reflection in the window. A couple at the next table talked about hiking the Eagle Creek Trail, how beautiful the gorge was this time of year. Normal conversation, normal lives. I wanted that. I wanted to forget the video, forget the prints, go back to hunting elk and fixing my daughter’s bike and arguing with my ex about child support. But I couldn’t, because I knew something now. I knew they were out there. I knew they were real.

Chapter 17: The Night Watch

I started going back at night. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought they’d be more active after dark. Maybe I just wanted to see if I could find them again. I parked at the trailhead around 8, walked in with a headlamp and a thermos of coffee, and sat on a stump near the clearcut.

The forest at night is a different place. Every sound is sharper. Every shadow moves. I heard owls, mice in the underbrush, and the distant hum of logging trucks on the highway. On the third night, I heard the knocks again—three times, wood on wood coming from the ridge above me. I turned off my headlamp, sat in the dark, and waited.

Chapter 18: The Approach

The knocking came again, closer, then again, maybe 50 yards away. I could feel my pulse in my throat. I wanted to run. I wanted to turn on the light and shout, break the silence, but I didn’t. I sat there, listening. After a while, I heard something else—footsteps, heavy and slow, moving through the trees just beyond my line of sight.

I never saw what made the footsteps. The darkness was too complete, the canopy too thick. But I heard them circle me twice and then move off down slope. I waited until the sound faded, then stood, turned on my headlamp, and walked back to the truck. My hands were shaking so badly I dropped my keys twice.

Chapter 19: The Test

I drove home, windows down, radio off, trying to process what had just happened. I had been evaluated, checked, maybe even accepted. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did. The mother had sent one of the juveniles or another family member to see if I was a threat. I had passed some kind of test by staying still, by not panicking, by not pulling my rifle.

I didn’t sleep that night. I sat on my porch until dawn, watching the treeline, waiting for the knocks to start again. They didn’t.

Chapter 20: The Gift

A week later, I found the basket. It was sitting on a flat rock near the trailhead, woven from cedar bark and vine maple, about the size of a dinner plate. Inside were huckleberries, still fresh, and three small river stones stacked in a can. I stood there staring at it for a long time. There was no note, no sign, nothing to indicate who’d left it or why, but I knew. I knew it was for me.

I took a photo, then took the basket and carried it back to my truck. My hands were shaking again, but not from fear. It was something else—gratitude, maybe, or the weight of understanding that I had crossed a line I couldn’t uncross.

Chapter 21: The Warning Ignored

I showed the basket to my brother when he came over that Saturday. He looked at it on my kitchen table and shook his head. “It could have been left by anyone—a hiker, a kid, a forest service volunteer.” I asked him about the stones, about the berries still being fresh. He didn’t have an answer. He just said, “You need to stop. Let this go before it gets out of hand.”

I asked what he meant. He said, “People who go looking for Bigfoot don’t come back the same. They lose perspective. They see things that aren’t there.” I told him I wasn’t looking anymore. I told him they found me. He left without saying goodbye.

Chapter 22: The Missing Child

That night, I put the basket on my mantle. My daughter asked where it came from. I said I made it. She said I didn’t know how to weave. I said I learned. She didn’t believe me, but she let it go. Kids are good at accepting things adults can’t.

She touched one of the stones, turned it over in her hand, and said it looked like the ones at the river where we used to fish. I said, “Maybe it was.” She put it back carefully, like she understood it was important. Then she asked if I was okay. I said yes. She said I seemed different lately, quieter. I told her I was just tired. She hugged me and went to bed.

Chapter 23: The Gifts Continue

I sat on the couch, staring at the basket, and realized I wasn’t tired. I was changed. I had been led into something old and secret, and I couldn’t pretend I hadn’t. Over the next two weeks, I found three more cans—one near the clearcut, one by a creek crossing, and one on the hood of my truck. Each time, three stones stacked perfectly. No footprints, no sign of who’d left them.

I started leaving things in return—apples, jerky, a hunting knife I didn’t need anymore. The gifts disappeared within a day or two, no trace, just gone. And every few nights, I’d hear the knocks—three times, always three, coming from different parts of the ridge. I stopped using my headlamp. I stopped carrying my rifle. I just walked into the woods and listened.

Chapter 24: The Disappearance

Then my daughter went missing.

It was a Tuesday in late November, cold and clear. She had been playing in the yard after school, building a fort out of old pallets and tarps. My ex called me at work, her voice cracking. She said she had gone inside for ten minutes, and when she came back out, our daughter was gone—no note, no sign of struggle, just an empty yard and the back gate open.

I was there in 15 minutes. My ex was on the phone with 911. I checked the treeline, the road, the neighbor’s property. Nothing. The dispatcher said a deputy was on the way. I didn’t wait. I grabbed a flashlight and started walking the trails behind the house, calling her name, my voice growing hoarse.

Chapter 25: The Search

The search went on for six hours—deputies, volunteers, a K-9 unit from Stevenson. They found her jacket near a creek a quarter mile from the house, but no other sign. The dog lost the scent at the water. Deputy Mills, the same one who had asked me about the prints, pulled me aside and asked if there was any reason she’d run away. I said no.

He asked if there were problems at home. I said, “Normal problems, divorce stuff, nothing that would make a 9-year-old disappear into the woods at dusk.” He nodded, said they’d keep looking, said, “Most missing kids turn up within 24 hours.” I didn’t believe him. I could see it in his face. He had already started thinking worst-case scenario—cougar, ravine, hypothermia.

Chapter 26: The Truth

I didn’t tell him what I was really thinking. I didn’t tell him about the basket, the knocks, the prints. I didn’t tell him I thought Bigfoot might have taken her or protected her or led her somewhere I couldn’t follow. Because how do you say that out loud? How do you tell a sheriff’s deputy that you think a creature from campfire stories has your daughter and might be keeping her safe?

You don’t. You keep searching. You check every hollow tree, every cluster of ferns, every shadow that moves in your peripheral vision, and you pray. Around midnight, they called off the search until first light. My ex was inside with a victim advocate. I stayed outside, sitting on the porch steps, staring at the treeline.

Chapter 27: The Call of the Forest

The woods were silent—no knocks, no footsteps, nothing. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run into the forest and beg them to bring her back, but I just sat there, numb, watching the stars come out above the ridge. Then around 2:00 in the morning, I heard it—three knocks, faint and distant, coming from the southeast.

I stood up, grabbed my flashlight, and started walking. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t wake my ex. I just followed the sound into the trees, into the dark, trusting something I couldn’t see and didn’t fully understand.

Chapter 28: The Reunion

I found her a mile in, sitting under a Douglas fir with a blanket I didn’t recognize wrapped around her shoulders. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t scared. She was calm, almost serene, as if she had been on a field trip instead of lost in the woods for six hours.

I ran to her, dropped to my knees, checked her for injuries. She was fine. Cold, but fine. I asked her what happened. She said she followed a trail. I asked what trail. She pointed into the darkness and said, “The one they showed me.” I asked who they were. She looked at me with her mother’s eyes and said, “The big people. They said you’d come.”

Chapter 29: The Aftermath

I carried her back to the house. My ex met us at the treeline, sobbing, pulling our daughter into her arms. The deputies asked questions—where was she? How did I find her? What happened? I said I followed a hunch, checked a game trail we used to hike. My daughter didn’t contradict me. She just held on to her mother and stayed quiet.

Mills looked at me like he knew I was lying, but he didn’t push. He said we were lucky, that it was a miracle she didn’t get hypothermia. He said we should take her to the hospital just to be safe. We did. She checked out fine—no scratches, no bruises, no sign of trauma. The doctor said she’d probably just wandered off and got disoriented. My ex believed him. I didn’t.

Chapter 30: The Truth Revealed

That night, after everyone was asleep, I went into my daughter’s room. She was awake, staring at the ceiling. I sat on the edge of her bed and asked her to tell me the truth. She said she already did. I asked her to tell me more. She sighed, rolled over, and said, “They’re nice. They don’t talk like us, but they’re nice. The mom has a hurt on her shoulder. The little ones wanted to see me. They brought me to a cave and gave me berries. Then the mom said you were coming, and they left me under the tree.”

I sat there for a long time holding her hand. Then I asked if she was scared. She said no. She felt safe—safer than she had felt in a long time.

Chapter 31: The Changes

I didn’t tell my ex. I didn’t tell the deputies. I didn’t tell my brother. I just went back to work, went through the motions, and tried to pretend everything was normal. But I kept finding Kairens on my porch, in my truck bed, once balanced on my mailbox—three stones, always three.

My daughter started drawing pictures—tall figures with long arms standing in forests, holding hands with smaller figures. She taped them to her bedroom wall. My ex asked what they were. She said, “My friends.” My ex thought she meant imaginary friends. I knew better. I knew my daughter had been accepted into something I was only beginning to understand.

Chapter 32: The Connection Deepens

And I knew the Bigfoot family was watching over her now, the same way I was. I went back to the woods alone three days after we got her back. I needed to see them again, needed to say thank you or sorry or something that made sense of what had happened.

I brought the basket filled with apples, smoked salmon, and a handwritten note that just said, “Thank you for keeping her safe.” I left it at the clearcut in the same spot where I had seen the bear attack. Then I sat down on a stump and waited.

Chapter 33: The Encounter

The sun was setting, casting long shadows through the timber. The air smelled like rain and cedar. I didn’t hear the knocks. I didn’t hear footsteps. But after about an hour, I heard breathing—deep, slow, rhythmic—coming from somewhere behind me.

I didn’t turn around. I don’t know why. Instinct, maybe, or respect. I just sat there, hands on my knees, listening. The breathing continued for a few minutes, then stopped. I heard a rustle, like something moving through the underbrush, then silence.

I waited another ten minutes before I turned around. The basket was gone. In its place was a single eagle feather, gray and white, stuck upright in the dirt. I picked it up, turned it over in my hands. It was perfect—no damage, no wear. I put it in my jacket pocket and walked back to my truck.

Chapter 34: The Reflection

On the drive home, I cried—not from fear or sadness, but from relief, from understanding that I had been forgiven for watching, for recording, for being human in a place that belonged to them.

My daughter started talking about Bigfoot openly—at school, at home, to her friends. She’d say things like, “Bigfoot doesn’t like loud noises,” or “Bigfoot taught me how to stack rocks.” Her teachers called my ex, concerned. My ex called me, angry. She said our daughter was becoming obsessed, that she needed therapy, that I needed to stop filling her head with nonsense.

I said I hadn’t told her anything. She didn’t believe me. She threatened to revisit custody. I said, “Fine.” She backed down, but the damage was done. My daughter stopped talking about it around her mother, but she still talked to me.

Chapter 35: The Bond

Late at night, she’d come into my room and ask questions. Do Bigfoot have houses? Do they get cold? Do they know we’re sorry for cutting down the trees? I answered as best I could. I told her I thought they lived in caves, that they probably did get cold, that I hoped they knew we were sorry.

One night, she asked me if I had a picture of them. I hesitated. She saw it in my face. She said, “You do, don’t you?” I nodded. She asked if she could see it. I thought about it for a long time.

Then I got the flash drive out of the lockbox, plugged it into my laptop, and played the video. She watched in silence—47 seconds of shaky footage. The mother throwing the bear, the juveniles screaming, the blood on the mother’s shoulder. When it ended, my daughter looked at me and said, “You saved her.”

I said, “I just scared the bear.” She said, “No, you saved her, and now she’s saving us.” I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just closed the laptop, put the flash drive away, and held her until she fell asleep.

Chapter 36: The Unbreakable Bond

I realized she was right. We were bound now—our family and theirs, tied together by something older than fear, stronger than disbelief. The following spring, I moved not far—just 20 miles south, closer to the gorge, farther from the logging roads. My ex got primary custody. My daughter visited on weekends.

She was quieter now, more thoughtful. She’d spend hours outside stacking stones, arranging sticks, leaving little offerings at the treeline. I never asked what she was doing. I just watched from the window and let her be.

Chapter 37: The Departure

One Saturday, she came inside and said, “They’re not here.” I asked who. She said, “The big people. They didn’t follow us.” I said, “Maybe they had their own territory, their own family to take care of.” She nodded, but I could see the sadness in her eyes. She missed them. So did I.

I still heard the knocks, though—not every night, but often enough. Three times, always three, coming from different directions. Sometimes close, sometimes far. I’d step outside, listen, and whisper, “I hear you,” into the dark.

Chapter 38: The Connection Remains

I don’t know if they heard me back, but the knocks kept coming. I kept finding Kairens on my porch, by my mailbox, once on the roof of my truck—three stones perfectly balanced. I started leaving gifts again—fruit, nuts, dried meat. They’d disappear within a day, no footprints, no sign, just gone.

And I’d feel that same sense of relief, of connection, of being seen by something the rest of the world refused to believe in. My brother called one last time a year after I moved. He said he’d been thinking about what I told him—about the prints and the knocks and the basket.

Chapter 39: The Understanding

He said he still didn’t believe in Bigfoot, but he believed I’d experienced something real. He asked if I was okay. I said I was better than okay. I said I’d been led into a secret, and it had changed me, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. He was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “Just don’t lose yourself in it.” I promised I wouldn’t.

We haven’t talked about it since. But every Christmas, he sends me a card with a picture of a forest on it—no words, just the trees. I think he understands in his own way. I think he knows I found something out there that most people spend their whole lives looking for and never see.

Chapter 40: The Hidden Truth

Years later, I still have the video. It’s on the flash drive in the lockbox, buried under old tax returns and my daughter’s baby photos. I’ve thought about releasing it a thousand times—posting it online, sending it to a researcher, letting the world see what I saw. But I never do because I know what would happen.

Hunters would flood the area. Scientists would set up cameras. The forest would fill with people looking for proof, looking for fame, looking for something to kill or capture or explain. The Bigfoot family would disappear—or worse, they’d be found. And I can’t let that happen. I owe them too much.

Chapter 41: The Legacy

My daughter is 16 now. She doesn’t talk about Bigfoot anymore, at least not out loud. But I see it in the way she moves through the world—careful, respectful, aware of things most people miss. She volunteers with a wildlife rehab center. She wants to study ecology. She leaves Kairens when we hike.

And sometimes late at night, I hear her on the phone with friends, telling them stories about the time she got lost in the woods and something kept her safe. She never says what. She just says she knows it was real. That’s enough.

Chapter 42: The Final Connection

I still live near the forest. I still hear the knocks three times—always three—drifting through the trees at 3:00 a.m. when the world is silent and still. I step outside barefoot on the cold deck and listen, whispering into the dark, “I’m still here.”

I don’t know if they answer, but the knocks keep coming. And I know deep in my bones that the Bigfoot family is still out there, still watching, still remembering the day a hunter with a rifle chose not to look away. I’ll carry that with me until I die—the video, the basket, the feather, the stones—all of it locked away, hidden, protected. Because some things aren’t meant to be proven. Some things are meant to be kept.