Red (0:03)

It looked like somebody was bent over and had their head in the window of the deer blind. And it either heard me or smelt me. And he pulled his head out of the tent and stood straight up. And that.

Wes (0:17)

That shocked me.

Red (0:24)

They don't make people that. That big. The way moved almost as if it was gliding across the beach. I've never seen anything move like that in my life. They were screaming at each other in gibberish. It sounded like a language. And they were chuntering away, back and forwards, back and forwards, back and forwards. I know what a bear looks like. And there is no way on this planet that what I saw were bears. Nine one, one, what are you reporting? Jesus Christ. You better, sir. See ya. Hello. Get somebody out here. What's going on now, sir? That son of a is about 6 foot 9. I don't know. Do you see him now, sir? Yes, I'm looking right at him. O. Hello, my fellow believers. This is Luke from Bend, Oregon. And I got a fever. And the only prescription is more Sasquatch Chronicles. Foreign.

Wes (2:09)

Welcome to the show. Tonight we'll be speaking with Red. And In August of 2023, he was camping with a close friend of his in Stefan State Forest in south central Iowa, not far from the Missouri border. He describes being run out of camp by multiple creatures. And I'll kind of let Red go into it. You know, I have encounters come out of Iowa.

Red (2:34)

They're.

Wes (2:34)

They're a lot more rare, but they do happen in Iowa. And so I'm looking forward to chatting with Red tonight. If you've had an encounter and you'd like to be on the show, shoot me an email. My email address is wesasquatchchronicles.com and if you get a chance, check out sasquatch chronicles.com you can become a member and get additional shows. Let's jump into it. Tonight. I want to welcome Red to the show. Red, thanks for coming on.

Red (3:06)

Yeah, I appreciate having you with. Yeah.

Wes (3:09)

And back in 2023, you were camping with a friend of yours there in Iowa, kind of near the Missouri border. If you would. Would you just start from the very beginning? Obviously guys were camping, but walk me into what happened.

Red (3:25)

Yeah. So it was August 17th of 2023, and I have a good friend that for years I've gone arrowhead hunting with. We live in the southeast corner of Iowa, but we kind of travel, not all over the state, but we travel the central part of the state, the northeastern part of the state, and we hop around to a few other states in the Midwest. We're always researching old peer reviewed papers and different publishings of different stone material types, different megalithic sites that don't really exist hardly anymore in the States. I think Sounds like only 5% of megalithic sites in North America are still existent, which is unfortunate in a whole other different conversation. But anyway, we, it kind of takes us all over the state. And in 2023 we had been looking for. There's a specific type of chert called exilo chert and it's this beautiful shiny black chert and it has these sort of bands of quartz and chalcedony going through it. We found, I think, an old archeological review a few places where it occurred, one being in south central Iowa and the other being in northeast Missouri. So my, my wife and kids always go to the Iowa State Fair every summer and they camp with my in laws. I don't like going to state fairs. I don't like being in really big public places. So I never go. So whenever they do that, I usually go on a camping trip with this buddy of mine where we go and we look for arrowheads. So that's what we were doing this particular week in August of 2023. I think we left at 2 or 3pm that day just because we had other things going on in the morning. And we as we made our way west to this state forest in south central Iowa called Stevens State Forest, which in your part of the country isn't hardly a forest at all. I don't remember the size of it. It might be 15,000 acres, something like that. And Iowa, it's massive. There's not that much forest left here. As we made our way west to Steven State Forest, we kept stopping in a particular river valley, it's the Des Moines River Valley. And we were artifact hunting on the way. So we didn't get to Stevens State Forest, which is where we were camping this first night of this trip, until I think we got into our campsite a little after 8pm as we drove in, there were no other cars that we saw in the forest and it was late, so I kind of expected that. But there were no other campers either. There are several campsites in this forest and they were all empty, which I was excited about. I thought, hey, you know, we got a campsite no matter what, because there's no one else here. When we pulled in, it was basically dusk. You know, it was twilight. And I wouldn't call the forest and Stevens State Forest old growth by any means, but it's, there's, there's some old Growth in there and the rest of it's pretty established and it's really. I don't know if you've heard of the driftless area in the northeast part of the state and a few other subsequent states around, but this little section of Iowa and south central Iowa is almost like its own driftless area. I don't think there was ever any glaciation there. It's beautiful. There are tons of ravines everywhere. It's really hilly and all the little creek and forest, or, sorry, the creek and the river valleys have a bunch of forest around them. We get into the park a little after eight. The campsite. I left my car running with my lights on while my buddy and I set up our tents. Once I got the fire going, I turned my car off and we only brought a few reams of firewood with us. And so my buddy started looking around the campsite or some fallen limbs and things to use for firewood. And the particular site we were at is shaped kind of like a scalene triangle. And we were down in the bottom southeast corner of this campsite and it's probably 150 to 200 yards across. So I started making my way from the southeast corner, where our campsite was, up to the northwest corner. And I was checking all of the fire rings and the other sites. I think there were. I think there are 13 sites at this specific campground. And as I was looking in the fire rings that I didn't see any wood, but I also noticed there was grass growing in most of them. So I don't. I don't think people camp at this place very often. I made my way all the way up to the northwest corner of the campsite and had I. I have this beautiful mag flashlight that's, you know, like, I don't know how many thousands of lumens. It's. It's incredible. But I had sent it with my wife and kids since they were camping, even though, you know, they're at the state fair and there's no need for flashlights, especially that powerful there. But I sent most of the good camping stuff with them. So I was using my phone flashlight and, you know, you just can't hardly see anything with that. I'm making my way along to the, to the northwest corner. And when I got up there, I heard probably about a mile, a mile and a quarter away, there's a really big pack of coyotes hunting. And it sounded like they had, they had got into something. They were, you know, kind of yipping and howling a bit, but Kind of almost. They do this cackle almost when they. When they get something, when they're really excited. It sounded like there were quite a few of them. So I wasn't paying terribly close attention to the sound of the coyotes because they didn't alarm me or any. You know, I wasn't worried about him, but I. I heard three really loud noises off in the same direction, and I would assume the same distance around a mile away. I could tell it was some sort of megafauna, you know, some big animal. But I. I'd never heard whatever made the sound before, and it wasn't terribly clear. It was just three subsequent calls. And I don't know, I kind of ran through the Rolodex in my head of what makes that noise. And again, it wasn't terribly clear, but it was enough to. It was puzzling in a sense. But I made my way back down to our campsite, you know, empty handed, and my buddy had found some wood in the tree line and he had the fire going a little more. And I asked him, I said, hey, you hear those coyotes? And he said, yeah, yeah, I heard them. I said, did you hear that other noise, that other call? And he said, yeah, I heard it. And I said, what was it? I couldn't place it. And he didn't know what it was either. And I remember saying, I know that we hunted elk out of the state. 19, it might have been 19, 18, 19, 20, something. The last elk was cited in the state. So I didn't think it was an elk, but I kind of said, you know, what was that an elk? I don't know what else it could be. I don't think it was, but he kind of shook his head and was puzzled too. And that was kind of all it was. And we sat by the fire for a while. As we were sitting by the fire, we're facing southeast, so the entire campground's to our back, and we're about 10 yards from the tree line. And the tree line in Stevens State Forest is just. Man, it's thick. The brush is incredibly thick out there. And on this particular night on August 17, there was no moon out, so it was really dark. Probably 20 minutes, I would guess 30 minutes, you know, after I'd sat down and we're sitting by the fire, my buddy wasn't eating, but I happened to be. I was eating a bratwurst. I don't know if that has anything to do with what happened, but it's just part of the story, I guess. We heard this noise behind Us. And I am pretty sure it was from the tree line at the northwest. I know it came from the northwest corner of the campground, but it sounded like it was just at. Exactly at that tree line. And it was. It sounded like a howler monkey the size of a minivan or a refrigerator. I mean, this thing, it looped, made this noise that kind of went down and then came up, and it was so alarmingly loud that I jumped out of my skin. You know, I jumped in the. In the camp chair I had, and I about fell over, and my buddy jumped, too, and all the hair on my body just stood up on end in such a strange way. It was. I'd never heard that noise before, but it immediately just scared the hell out of me. And I looked at my buddy with, you know, the widest eyes, I imagine, and I said, what the hell was that? And again, I kind of went through the Rolodex in my head of sounds that I know. And, I mean, I was. Every large animal ran through my head, and I couldn't place it, you know, and that when that happens, it's a momentary thing, you know, I'm thinking of 30 things in an instant. And immediately after, I asked my friend this, you know, what the hell was that? He was looking at me back with, you know, these massive eyes, scared as I was, and he said, you know what that is? And my friend and I have. You know, we're out in the woods all the time. All the time. We're camping all the time. I've. Up until that experience, I was out arrowhead hunting. I like finding geodes and things, too. I mushroom hunt. I fish. I used to hunt. I don't hunt that much anymore, hardly at all. Over the last few years, really. But we've talked about Bigfoot, Sasquatch. I don't. I kind of hate those names, you know, there aren't really good names for whatever these things are. But we've talked about it, and I've been a listener of your show for years, too, so it's not like this was a new thing that I wasn't aware of. But I just never, you know, heard that noise out in the real world. I've heard recordings, and so as soon as he said, you know what that was? It clicked in my head exactly what it was. And as soon as that clicked in my head, now, only a few seconds had passed since we heard this initial whoop. I'll say. But as soon as that clicked in my head, about maybe 150 to 200ft off in the forest in front of us, kind of diagonally to the right, I heard six knocks, and they scared the hell out of me, too. This. Something hit a tree. So if that's how they make that noise, I don't know. Something made a knocking noise six times in three series of two. It went knock, knock, knock, knock, knock, knock. So my friend and I are, you know, kind of frantically whispering to each other. What's going on? You know, are we surrounded by. Is this bigfoot? Are we surrounded by bigfoot right now? I don't know. We just kind of were in shock and panic mode, and it was so dark. We were just in the middle of nowhere. And as we're kind of whispering to each other and not making any sense of this, we hear another noise down probably 70 yards or so to the left of us diagonally in the forest. From our vantage point, we can see just barely into the forest because it's so dark. You know, the fire is not sending hardly any. Any light into the forest. And our phone flashlights aren't doing anything because at this point, we've pulled our phone flashlights out. We're shining behind us into the campground, and we don't see anything. We're shining into the forest in front of us, and we don't see anything. But there's a. There's a ravine that kind of rips down into a pretty big gulch. It's just pitch black down there. But from. From down in that ravine or that gulch, we start hearing something walking up the ravine, and as it's walking, it's breaking branches. And I've heard deer walking in the forest plenty. And you actually don't usually hear them walk into the forest. You'll hear them sometimes, but a lot of times you'll see a deer, and you don't even hear them. But when you do, they're not breaking branches. You know, you hear them rusting over leaves. And this thing was, I would assume, intentionally breaking branches every step it took. And it wasn't. It wasn't running for us. It wasn't, you know, bulldozing through the forest or anything like that. It just was taking slow, sure steps. And every time, it would just snap, snap, break branches. That lasted for, realistically, probably five seconds, six, seven seconds. And we're kind of, you know, my buddy and I, I don't even remember the things we were talking about. I remember saying, you know, we can't stay here tonight. We had both of the tents set up and everything. We said, we can't Stay here tonight. And we agreed on it. We both kept saying we should leave, you know, and we agreed on that, but we stayed. I think it. The reason we stayed is there was such an anxiety. You know, it's not like some. We hadn't seen some terrifying thing at this point, and we hadn't had some terrible aggression given over to us, but there was some, I don't know, inexplicable primal fear that had just immediately activated in us, at least in me. You know, I don't want to speak for my buddy, but I would assume in him as well. From the second we heard that initial call and during this entire experience, time is. I think our adrenaline was just so spiked that it's hard to say, you know, 10 minutes passed, 20 minutes passed. I don't know. I. I don't. I don't know how much time had passed during all this, but at some point, the. The noise of movement, knocking, calling. Nothing else happened. For a little while, the. The force was just silent. You know, we're sitting there in our camping chairs with our fire in front of us and our phone flashlights. We're looking all around us constantly and whispering to each other. I don't know what, but probably just saying over and over again, hey, we should leave. Hey, we should leave. Maybe 30 minutes passes of that 45 minutes, there was a. A tree that I hadn't seen it in the daylight, so I thought it was maybe a cottonwood, but I've. I've since gone back to this. To this place. It took me a couple years, but I went back and there's a big oak tree that was behind us, diagonally to the left from that oak tree. You know, after. Again, let's say 30 minutes from the first occurrence was happening from that oak tree. All of a sudden, we heard. And this oak tree, I should say, was about 50ft behind us. We heard this. This whoop again. This time we. We heard four vocalizations in a row coming from what I believe to be a single creature. And I think it was the initial creature that whooped behind us initially. But so we hear another whoop, and it's so loud, and we're, you know, we're so on edge that it scared us even more than the first time. So as soon as we hear that whoops, we both jumped out of our chairs and turned around and this all happened really in slow motion. It's hard to explain because from the time, you know, we jumped up and turned around and shown our flashlights at this thing, it had to have only been seconds, but I. It played out in my mind in the moment, and it still does, as though it were 30 seconds, 40 seconds. But there's no. There's no way that's. That's how it happened. So we heard this initial whoop and in the same breath it then, you know, I've heard the Sierra sounds so many times. I think they're incredible. The samurai chatter. People talk about this thing did that. You know, it spoke in a sense, but was so garbled and it was such a. It sounded like the Tasmanian devil from looney tunes. You know, just. Just unbelievably quick, Just spitting out this ferocious. It's. It's hard to say, you know, it's speech or language, but it seems to be just that. And again, in the same breath, it then went down to this deep, deep, deep yowl. Sounded like a mountain lion yowl, but again, something that's just, you know, six or seven times the size of a big mountain lion. Just the deepest. Just deep. I just felt like hatred, you know, just deep anger. And during that sound, we were just about turned to see this thing. And I have. I have a connotation in my head. I can't explain why. And I've talked to my friend about this. He had. He had the same feeling. It felt very feminine, or I shouldn't say feminine. It felt like a female. I don't. I can't explain why. But. So I'll say when, as we were turning around to see her, as she made that noise, I had enough time in my head or these thoughts came to me so quickly. I remember thinking, you know, almost having a dialogue with myself saying, do you really want to turn around and see this thing? Because I would say most of me didn't want to. You know, I didn't. From the sound of that yowl, the intense anger or hatred, I. I don't know how long I had this thought, but I thought I was going to die. This thing just sounded horrifying. And I had this incredible sensation in my organs that I've never had before and I've never had since. It felt like every single organ in my torso had pooled down into my pelvis. I don't know how to explain it other than that, but it felt like literally every organ inside of me just pooled down into my pelvis. And I had just such a gut fear of some impending doom. We. At. At that point, we had turned fully around to about where this oak tree was, where we assumed the sound was these Sounds were coming from, you know, the flashlights were coming up. And it's, it's strange to describe it that way as. Because again, this must have happened in within a matter of seconds, but just seemed like so long. This thing then emitted one last sound and it was. To be honest, the sound in my mind is not very clear. The other three sounds are very clear. But this last sound, it wasn't a whoop, but it was just some loud last noise. I don't know, just a yell almost. But it wasn't a scream or a ferocious yell. It was just kind of a loud noise. And all, all of these noises happened in one breath, which is again, it's incredible. Everything about these things is just incredible, amazing, terrifying at times, you know, but I. The lung capacity to do that was just. I didn't think about it at the time, but looking back, it just blows my mind. I don't understand how, you know, a living creature can. There was just so much noise coming out of it and I didn't hear any reprieve to take a breath. So we shine our flashlights exactly where this thing seems to be and there's nothing there. It's just, it's just black over there. There's nothing over there. And so this is kind of. It's kind of broken us from this spell of fear, you know, it's. I'm kind of able at this point to say, hey, it's time to go. And my friend agrees, you know, and. But he started breaking down his tent. And I can't lie, I was so mad, like I shoved him and I said, what are you doing? You know, we got to get out of here, man. These things don't want us here. We got to get out of here. And just the confusion of nothing being there, you know, when we looked exactly in the area where we heard these noises, I just said, it's time to go, man. He's had this little tent he camps with for years and he paid, I think a lot of money for it. And he does ragbride, which is, you know, that biking across the state, he always takes it on rag right with him. And I don't know, he loves the tent, I guess he, he wouldn't leave it. He was saying, oh no, I'm not leaving this tent. I'm taking it with me. It's a pop up tent. So it, you know, collapsed quickly and. But I'm yelling at him the whole time, you know, cursing at him, and he goes to break down my tent. And I said, dude, I'M you know, screw that tent. We're not taking it. I don't care. He starts breaking it down. And I took out my knife and I cut the tent poles, you know, the cord that keeps the tent poles together. And just say, I'm. I don't care about this thing, man. Leave it. But he keeps messing with it. And as he's doing that, I was looking over at that tree again. I was shining my flashlight around everywhere. We were hearing things moving in the woods again from those two areas where we heard the tree knocks and that thing moving down in the ravine. So I'm shining my flashlight around, trying to see if I can see any of these things, and I'm not seeing anything. But I noticed that by that big oak tree, you know, 50ft or so away, where we thought that sound, the sounds came from, there's this huge, huge stump next to it. Huge. It's like. I don't even know what to compare it to, but it's. It was massive. And it was so black. It was blacker than anything else I could see in the forest past it or around it. I even in the moment thought it looked like that color, you know, the color Vanta black that some people will paint expensive cars or. I've seen motorcycles painted in this color. It's such a deep black that it doesn't reflect any light. And just. It looks. It looks very strange. It's almost like a play of trick to the eye. This stump was that black. It was just soaking in all the light of my flashlight. And so I looked at it for. I don't know, I held my flashlight on it for longer than anything else. Again, it's probably only 3 seconds, 4 seconds. And I had kind of nudged my buddy and I said, what is that? Look at. Look at this stunt man. I've never seen something this black. And as I was saying this to him, this thing I realized was outline of something crouching, holding its legs. All of a sudden, it extended its hands and just dove, hands first into the forest, just right by the tree line. I'm not ashamed to say it. I yelped like a little puppy or something. I must have sounded like an just. It scared the hell out of me. The way this thing moved was unbelievable. It was so long. It's what I imagine, you know, having Kareem Abdul Jabbar get down on his. On his heels, around the balls of his feet, you know, crouch down, and then to lunge forward like that, and how long his arms would be jumping forward and his Torso and his legs there. But this thing, it's like this thing just went on forever. It was so long. I've never seen something move with that agility. I've never seen an Olympic athlete move with that agility. I've never seen a big cat in a documentary series hunt with that agility. I've never seen something move like that. It was so fast and agile. It reminded me of how the only thing I can think of is when a little bird is moving, you know, moving its head around or kind of jumping around, it's almost mechanical. It's so fast. This moves like that, you know, And I only saw it leap into the forest. I didn't see it move around besides that. But it just. I've just never seen something move like that. The thing that still is incredible to me is I. I didn't hear it land. It made no noise. Seems so agile. And it just. These, these things are. They. They would make Navy SEALs look like fools in the forest. These things know the forest. They know how to move better than anything. They're unbelievable. That was kind of enough for me, you know, just seeing it. I'd known everything was real as it was happening, but just seeing it, even for that quick second, I just took everything and just threw it in the back of the vehicle and we drove out incredibly quickly. And we were, I think, two and a half or three hours west of where I lived at the time we left. It was just after 10 o' clock at night when we left. So we were there for two hours. I had such an adrenaline rush and I was so kind of outside of myself from the experience that we just drove around in circles for an hour. I didn't know what to do. I wasn't going to camp somewhere else. I didn't have the wherewithal. Just because I was so filled with adrenaline and confused. I didn't have the wherewithal to stop at a motel or something. So we just. We drove home to my place and I had so much adrenaline that I didn't have an adrenaline dump or the. I didn't crash from it until I was probably 10 miles west of my house. I'm trying to remember if it was maybe between 1 and 2 in the morning when we got there. I don't. I don't. I don't recall. But I just remember seeing an exit for my place, the town where I live. And as soon as I saw that exit sign on the interstate, I just got so unbelievably tired because it was like everything just all the adrenaline finally left my body, but it was for hours. I was just wired from the experience. And for a really long time, it kept me out of the woods. I wouldn't go back in the woods for a long time.