I Caught Footage of Bigfoot Attacking My Trail Cams, It Knew I Was Watching…

It Didn’t Destroy the Cameras First — It Watched Me

I used to believe the forest was empty at night.

Not quiet—never quiet—but empty in the way that made solitude feel safe. August 2016 changed that belief forever.

My cabin sat forty miles from the nearest town, deep in the Cascade foothills where Douglas firs grew so dense they swallowed daylight by mid-afternoon. I moved there after my divorce, telling everyone I needed space, telling myself I needed peace. The truth was simpler: I wanted to disappear without dying.

I worked remote IT jobs, survived on generator power, and rarely spoke to anyone except the cashier in town once a month. To feel less alone, I installed trail cameras. Four of them. Cheap ones. A hobby. I wanted to see deer, bears, maybe a cougar if I was lucky.

What I didn’t expect… was to be seen back.

The first clip was easy to dismiss. A blur at the edge of frame. Too tall, too upright—but I blamed motion blur, shadows, my own imagination. Isolation does that to a man. I told myself that as I replayed the footage again and again, my coffee growing cold beside me.

Then it came back.

Night after night, always at the edge of visibility. Never centered. Never clear. Like it understood exactly where the camera could see—and where it couldn’t.

That’s when the feeling started.

Not fear yet. Awareness.

The forest felt… attentive.

The first camera was destroyed on a Thursday morning. Not knocked loose. Not chewed. Destroyed. The mounting strap still buckled to the tree, but the camera itself had been ripped free and smashed into pieces scattered across the ground.

Bears don’t do that.

They don’t unbuckle straps. They don’t tear electronics apart component by component. And they don’t leave deep hand-shaped gouges in tree bark.

I found footprints nearby.

Sixteen inches long.

Five toes.

My size-11 boot looked like a child’s shoe next to them.

That night, I heard the knocks.

Three of them.

Evenly spaced.

Intentional.

They came from the tree line, about fifty yards out. I sat at my kitchen table, rifle untouched beside me, heart pounding so hard I was sure it could be heard outside.

Three knocks aren’t random.

They’re communication.

The message became clearer when the second camera vanished. Then the third. One was ripped from a steel lockbox bolted to a tree, the metal peeled open like foil. Another was crushed while still mounted, its shattered remains left hanging in place.

Not rage.

Precision.

The thing wasn’t angry.

It was correcting a problem.

Me.

I stopped sleeping. Sat up at night watching live feeds that showed nothing—nothing but trees and shadows and the unbearable sense of being watched from just outside the frame.

Then one night, it stepped fully into view.

Eight feet tall. Broad shoulders. Arms hanging too long. Eyes reflecting infrared light but positioned wrong—too human, too focused. It walked directly toward the camera and stopped five feet away.

It stared into the lens.

Not past it.

Into it.

Into me.

And in that moment, I understood something horrifying.

It knew I was on the other side.

The knocks escalated after that. From one direction. Then two. Then four. Surrounding the cabin like a conversation happening about me, without me. The impacts started next—heavy blows against the walls, testing the structure. Once, I heard footsteps on the roof, the ceiling groaning under the weight.

They could have come in.

They never did.

That was worse.

They weren’t trying to kill me.

They were teaching me.

First the cameras, so I couldn’t watch them.

Then the truck tires, slashed clean through the sidewalls, so I couldn’t leave.

Then the generator, dismantled piece by piece, fuel tank punctured, power gone.

Isolation by design.

Psychological warfare.

I finally understood the truth too late: this wasn’t one creature. It was a group. A family. I heard them calling to each other from different ridges, whooping in patterns that sounded disturbingly like language.

I was in the middle of their land.

And I had been disrespectful enough to document it.

The last message came silently.

I woke up one morning to find my front door open.

Unlocked.

Nothing stolen.

Nothing broken.

Just my laptop placed carefully on the kitchen table.

Every file was gone.

Every video.

Every photo.

Every backup.

They hadn’t destroyed the proof.

They had erased it.

That was mercy.

That was restraint.

That was a warning I finally understood.

I left that day.

Walked forty miles to town with a pack on my back and fear in my chest that never truly faded. I sold the cabin at a loss. Told everyone the isolation had gotten to me. Let them believe I’d cracked under the quiet.

Maybe I had.

But not in the way they think.

I live in the city now. Concrete. Lights. People. Noise. I sleep better—but not well. Sometimes, late at night, when the city grows quiet enough, I swear I hear three distant knocks echoing through memory.

I don’t tell people I believe in Bigfoot.

I tell them I believe in boundaries.

And that some things don’t want to be proven.

They just want to be left alone.