A few opening words…
This part of the story is where things become very creepy and bizarre. Although I have spoken publicly about this on a few podcasts, it is always quite difficult to talk or write about what happened. I will say to you, those who are taking the time to read this story: I am telling you the truth. What I am about to relate to you happened exactly as written. Believe it or reject it, that is your decision. I hope you will believe me, though, not only because I am telling you the truth but also because I feel that what happened to Adam and me on that mountain in Oregon was meaningful and more than simply a random, anomalous event.
This blog is not for profit at the time of this writing, and I have no financial motive or reason to compel me to relate the details of this challenging incident or fabricate this story. Conversely, I have many good reasons not to talk about it. Firstly, I am a self-employed businessman. There is a distinct possibility that potential clients might do an Internet search on my name, find this article, and decide that I am mentally unbalanced and choose not to work with me. This article will likely cause me to lose some business and cost me income.
Another reason that I am reluctant to write about these events is that it is an embarrassing subject. I understand just how insane this story sounds, and I do not relish the idea that people I know will read this and have a negative view of me. No one likes to be thought of as a crackpot, a liar, or a lunatic (not even a paranormalist), and I am no exception. Yet, I am putting this out there for public consumption because I think it is important. Why I believe it to be important is something I might discuss in the final part of this series of articles.
The second morning
On the morning of Wednesday, June 11, 2104, after our second night at the Southern Oregon Habituation Area (SOHA), Matt and Adam, and I woke up feeling tired but exhilarated by the events of the night before. After a quiet first night, the Bigfoot/Forest People decided to come in for a closer look at us on the second, just as Dr. Johnson had predicted. Although we saw nothing clearly that night, there was a definite sense of constant motion and activity all around us. Heavy footfalls, cracking branches, and strange vocalizations continued through the evening. I again saw a tall, silhouetted figure flitting between the trees.
Six days earlier, as I sat in Newark Airport in my home state of New Jersey, waiting to board my flight to Seattle, I never imagined any of the odd and fascinating events that had occurred after my arrival. I certainly would not have suspected that the strange happenings that I had thus far experienced were about to become much weirder and more disturbing on that beautiful June morning in Oregon.
Once we were up and about, the first order of business was to check the gifting bowls. We walked to the path through the woods that lay behind our folding tables, at the twelve o’clock position. While the bowls were untouched on the first morning, we saw that certain items were taken from them on the second morning. Most of the missing items were from the bowl with the bread-stuff: the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fig newtons, sticky buns, Cheetos, etc.
The other bowl containing mostly fruits and vegetables were largely untouched. Dr. J hypothesized that the high-carb snacks and sweets were more of a treat for them and not something they would find in the wild for the Forest People. Thus, they favored these over the bowl containing fruits and vegetables. Seemed logical to me.
The other interesting aspect was that the missing items appeared to have been neatly plucked out of the bowl. They were not overturned, and there were no crumbs or fragments of food strewn around the bowl. Also, two eggs were placed in one bowl. Both were missing, but no broken shells were to be found – almost as if they were carefully removed and carried off. This, of course, does not necessarily mean that the eggs and other food items were taken by one of Dr. J’s Forest People, but it is interesting nonetheless.
The most compelling find, however, was what we found on the outside of the bowl. We all wore rubber gloves, and Dr. J instructed me to carefully pick up the bowl by the edges and inspect the sides. There was an enormous, greasy thumbprint on the outside of the bowl and three fingerprints on the inside lip. Dr. Johnson looks as if he could easily palm a basketball, and these fingerprints were clearly much bigger than his – far too large to belong to a human being. Clearly, though, they were fingerprints from a hand. A tremendously large hand.
The Oregon Vortex and House of Mystery
For our daytime trip, Dr. Johnson decided to take us to the Oregon Vortex, the famous House of Mystery location. The Vortex and House of Mystery are a local tourist attraction in Gold Hill, OR, near Grants Pass. According to their website, this is an area that is “a spherical field of force, half above the ground and half below the ground.” Within the House of Mystery, strange shifts in perspective and gravitational anomalies occur. It was quite odd, I have to admit, and very entertaining. One of the tour guides told me that they believe that it might have something to do with the high concentration of silicon dioxide (quartz) in the ground in that area. Quartz is a conductor of geomagnetic fields, and it is found in high concentrations in the ground throughout the region.
After leaving the Oregon Vortex and House of Mystery, Dr. J thought it would fun to do some swimming in one of the many rivers nearby. He found a favorite spot, pulled over, and we waded in and splashed about for a bit. Despite there being little to no humidity at all, the temperatures each day were in the mid-to-upper-90s every day, and a cool swim in a clear river was wonderfully refreshing.
After we had our dip in the river and dried off, we stopped for lunch at another fast-food establishment. Afterward, we met up with Dr. Johnson’s ex-wife and their young son, seven-year-old Grady. They lived nearby, and Dr. J had arranged with the boy’s mother to meet them in the restaurant’s parking lot and take him with us up to SOHA for the last two nights. This was fine with Adam and me. We are both parents and get along well with children. Grady was a very sweet and polite boy – and quite tall for his age, taking after his dad. It was not a bother at all to have him with us.
Visited by a black bear
The day before – or perhaps it was on the first day, June 9th (after almost seven years, I cannot recall) – we saw a large black bear meandering through the woods near the footpath at the top of the camping circle. This was the only time that we saw any wildlife at all while at SOHA. Upon reflection, this in itself was rather unusual. Despite being an isolated, heavily wooded area, we saw very few signs of animals, not even small mammals and birds. Only the black bear, which ambled past us just a few meters away, paying us no mind.
When Matt, Adam, Grady, and I returned to camp late that afternoon, we saw that our black bear had paid a visit to our campsite. There were bear paw-prints visible on the ground throughout the campground. A large hole had been bitten out of a thick plastic water jug, draining it dry, and it scattered most of the supplies that we had not carried with us inside Dr. J’s vehicle. This was an annoyance, as it took some time to clean up and put our camp back in order.
The presence of a large black bear bold enough to enter our camp was also a cause for concern. Clearly, it was not frightened by human beings, having passed right by us so casually. Dr. Johnson then revealed the .44 magnum revolver that he carried in his SUV, a prudent measure when alone in an isolated area in the forest. He let us know that if the bear returned and became aggressive, we had some protection, even if it was only to fire the gun in the air to frighten off the creature.
Night Three at SOHA
The third night at SOHA proceeded much the same as the second night. We sensed continual activity around us, heard heavy footsteps, cracking branches, and rustling underbrush; strange calls and odd vocalizations were volleyed back and forth from our left, front, and rear of the camp.
I was a bit concerned for Matt Johnson’s young son, but having been to SOHA before, he seemed unbothered by the noise and activity surrounding us. Dr. J was quite convinced that there was nothing to fear from these Forest People and believed them to be benevolent and wise beings. He passed on this belief to his son, who was also unafraid and who seemed perfectly at home in this odd place.
At some point in the evening, the younger Johnson nestled into his cot and sleeping bag as we adults continued our efforts late into the night. Matt and Adam, and I persevered in our attempts to communicate with whatever was surrounding us and hoped for a clear view of one of these beings. Once more, I caught a fleeting glimpse of a large, upright figure moving between the trees to our left, silhouetted by the almost-full moon that was rising behind the forest. Unfortunately, an up-close, unambiguous sighting continued to elude us again that night.
Cheap cigars, a glowing mist, and floating orbs
On our first day, the day that we went to Crater Lake, we stopped by a convenience store, and behind the counter, I spied one of my guilty pleasures: cheap, Backwoods brand cigars (except they were now $9 a pack, not as cheap as I remembered). If you’ve never tried these, these are thin cigars that look as if they were hand-rolled, and they come in a soft pouch. I am not a smoker, but I do like an occasional cigar, and I always buy a packet of Backwoods before I camp or go on a long hike. They are mild and have a pleasant taste, and they’re useful when camping because they keep away flying insects.
Adam had never heard of Backwoods and never tried them. When I offered him one the night before, he enjoyed them immensely. So much so that the next day I picked up three more packs. However, Dr. Johnson did not like them and informed us that he has asthma and hates the smell of tobacco smoke and to please confine our smoking to the backend of the circle, at the camp entrance (six o’clock position).
Adam and I understood completely and readily complied. Every hour or so, we would take a break from circling the camp’s perimeter to stand at the back of the circle for a bit as we smoked our cheap cigars, Dr. J’s Suburban on our left. We talked, smoked, and idly stared down the road that led into the dead-end turnaround area where we were camped. As alcohol consumption was also against The Rules, we rather enjoyed this one small vice. Dr. J continued his efforts without pause.
On that third night, we felt a bit more rested, I suppose, and the Forest People were quite active, demanding our attention, so we were up later than on nights one and two. It was almost 2:30 AM, and we had no immediate plans to turn in when Adam and I decided to take another smoke break by the camp entrance.
As we smoked our Backwoods cigars, we took our positions at the entrance with our backs to the camp and facing the road that led into it. After a few minutes, we both noticed something unusual. Maybe 100 feet (30 meters) from the entrance, a vaguely glowing mist had begun to form. Odd that there would be mist, I thought. The air was dry, the humidity level remained at about 0%, and there was a steady breeze weaving through the trees.
Nevertheless, there it hung, spanning the road’s width, approximately 8 – 10 feet (about 3 meters) wide and nearly half as tall. It was roughly oblong in shape and had no clearly-defined edges. I initially thought that the soft glow that the mist emitted was due to the reflection of the bright moonlight, except that as Adam and I stood there watching this amorphous cloudy mass, it seemed to be growing slowly and steadily brighter.
Eventually, as it became undeniable that we were looking at something unusual, one of us turned to the other (I honestly can’t recall if it was Adam or if it was me) and said something like, “Do you see that? What do you think that thing is?” A glowing orb of light suddenly appeared, either out of it or beside it, and shot off into the woods. Several more lights quickly flashed and faded, like an old-fashioned camera flashbulb. Another ball of light crossed from one side of the road to the other in an arching trajectory, above the glowing mist.
A window into another world
“Hey, Matt! we called. “Come here and take a look at this!” – or something to that effect. Dr. J was at the other end of the camp, near the ten o’clock position, continuing his efforts to get his Forest People to say hello. Hearing us, he walked over to where Adam and I stood at the camp entrance, looking down the road.
The glowing mist was now very bright, and a fiery orange-red light had begun to form at its center.
“Ever see anything like this up here before?” we asked Dr. Johnson. To which he responded in the negative, saying something like, “No, never. This is a first.” I had not seen Dr. J appear as anything but perfectly comfortable and relaxed while at SOHA. He now seemed puzzled and concerned by this new phenomenon.
The red-orange fiery center was beginning to become more pronounced now when something even more bizarre occurred: this area turned translucent, and some strange landscape appeared within it as if we were looking through a window or doorway into another world.
The landscape within looked barren and desolate, bathed in this fierce red glow and strewn with rocks. Inside stood a tree, gnarled and twisted and leafless, the only sign of any organic thing inside this red hellscape – that is, until two small figures appeared.
Entities from Beyond – Aliens or Demons?
The two small figures stepped forward out of the red window at the center of the mist. Adam and Dr. J and I stood watching with disbelief as these beings emerged from this portal to another dimension or gateway to Hell, or whatever it was, and onto the road in front of us. There they stood, looking right back at us. They moved forward a bit in our direction and then stopped, again looking at us.
These beings were now close enough to make out their form and some details of their appearance. We saw that the reddish glow from the portal’s center continued to surround them faintly, illuminating their features somewhat.
Flashlights were also verboten according to SOHA rules, but we each kept one in our packs. At this point, we thought it wise to take them out and see if we get a better look at these…things. Dr. J also took his handgun from the glovebox of his old Ford. The three of us stood there, and Dr. Johnson shouted out to them something like, “Who are you and what do you want?” The two entities stood their ground and continued to stare at us silently, but they did not advance further up the road toward us.
We then turned on our flashlights and pointed the beams directly at the creatures and the glowing mist behind them when something shocking and unexpected happened: they vanished as if they were never there. Could this have been a hallucination shared by all three of us? Although it seemed as unlikely to me then as it does now, the idea briefly entered my thoughts.
Shared pareidolia?
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines pareidolia as the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern. If we had convinced ourselves that we saw a Bigfoot/Forest Person out of a deep desire actually to view one, I might entertain this idea of shared pareidolia. After all, that was what we were hoping to see at SOHA. We most definitely were not expecting to see whatever these things were, which did not resemble Bigfoot at all.
The three of us stood there, astonished that these beings and the mist/portal-thing vanished instantaneously and completely as it did. We talked a moment, and Dr. J decided that he should walk down the path to the area where the portal and creatures had appeared and attempt to warn them off and prevent them from returning.
Walking down there with his flashlight in one hand and .44 Magnum handgun in the other, Dr. Johnson loudly announced to the surrounding forest, “You are not welcome here! Do not return! You are not welcome here! Return to where you came and do not come back! You are not welcome here!”
After a few minutes of this, Dr. Johnson walked back up the path to where Adam and I stood. We were now accompanied by Dr. J’s young son Grady. The commotion had awakened him, and he wanted to know what was happening. As Dr. J explained and told his son that there was nothing to fear, Adam and I noticed that the mist had reappeared and grew steadily brighter.
The four of us stood there suddenly transfixed at the sight of this bizarre phenomenon. The luminescence of this weird mist was rapidly increasing and the red-orange glow formed in the center, giving way to the “window” into the strange, alien landscape bathed in red light. Once more, the small, humanoid entities appeared and stepped out of the “portal” and onto the road, moving forward several yards before stopping. Again, they made no sound and never took their eyes off of us.
Young Grady was visibly frightened at seeing these creatures and asked what they were. Dr. J did his best to soothe him and ushered him to his cot, laying next to him until the boy fell asleep. Adam and I continued to stand at the camp entrance, looking down the road at the two small, dark entities. Their eyes burned in the darkness, like tiny red coals, watching us as we watched them.
“They want us to go to sleep…”
“They want us to go to sleep,” I said to Adam. He agreed. “Yes,” he replied. “I can sense that.” We both felt this very distinctly. Like my possible mind-speak incident at the Olympic Project, it wasn’t quite a voice, but it was a very distinct feeling or thought that Adam and I shared. “I don’t think they expected to find us awake,” one of us said to the other (again, after seven years, I do not recall if it was I who said this to Adam or him to me, but we were sharing most of the same thoughts). We agreed on this as well. We sensed that they were surprised at our presence.
We were asleep in our cots by 1:30 AM on nights one and two. This was the third night, and these creatures appeared at 2:30 AM. Could it be that they expected us to be asleep and were surprised to find that we were still awake? We felt this to be so, although we had no way of knowing if it was true.
This led us to a disturbing thought: did these beings visit us as we slept on the first two nights? And if so, what could they have done to us? I do not think it was anything physical. There were no signs of bodily trauma to us afterward. No nosebleeds, or unusual scarring, or any such evidence are often reported in alien abduction cases. I have some thoughts on this, but I will speculate further on this subject later.
Dr. Johnson returned to the camp entrance where Adam and I stood, continuing to watch these entities and the glowing mist behind them. We decided to shine our flashlights on them again, which Dr. J was reluctant to do because he felt that the Forest People disliked flashlights. Nonetheless, we turned the beams of our flashlights toward the creatures and the luminescent mist, and once more, they winked out instantly. Within two minutes, the pattern reoccurred. The fog reappeared, rapidly growing brighter, red portal-area forming in the center, and out came the creatures.
Nightlong vigil
“So what do you think?” Adam and I asked Dr. Johnson.
“Well, you two can keep standing here and watch these things if you want to, but I’m going to bed,” he replied. Adam and I were somewhat shocked and confounded by this, and we asked Dr. J how he could go to bed with these beings just a few yards from where we slept?
“I’m tired,” was his reply, “and I’m not staying up all night long, looking at those things. You two feel free to stay up if you like.” And so, Dr. Johnson retired to his sleeping bag and cot and was soon snoring away peacefully beside his son.
Adam and I had no intention whatsoever of going to bed while these demonic-looking creatures stood a stone’s throw from the perimeter of our camp. Clearly, these beings would enter our campsite just as soon as we were asleep. Of that, we had no doubt. What would they do to us afterward? Who knew? Going to sleep while those things were out there, watching us, was not an option for Adam and me.
We felt an unmistakable sense of menace and dread in the presence of these beings. Both Adam and I felt this strongly and remarked on this fact at the time and many other occasions in our discussions aftward. The idea that these things might be benevolent was not something that we felt to be true at any point in time. This palpable sense of foreboding and evil had much to do with our decision to stay up the entire night to prevent these creatures from entering our camp.
After our conversation with Dr. J, we turned our attention back to the creatures and saw that they had moved up the road, closer to us and our camp entrance. They stopped and stared at us, moving from side-to-side on the road at times, but advancing only very slowly. They seemed wary of Adam and me and hesitant to move directly towards us.
A physical description
Still, they continued to advance steadily, if slowly, down the road toward us. As they moved, the ragged reddish glow continued to surround them. They were now close enough for us to make out their features well.
They were short, perhaps a meter tall, or about 3 – 3.5 feet in height. They were humanoid in that they walked upright and had two legs, two arms, a torso, and one head. They were very robustly and powerfully built, with sloping shoulders and short, thick neck. Their legs were short but appeared stout and strong. Their arms were somewhat long in proportion to the rest of their bodies, but they were also muscular and powerful-looking.
Their heads were square-ish, their face and nose flat, their mouths wide with thin lips, like a slit, and unopened (no teeth were visible). Their eyes were small and glowed red, like hot coals. They were entirely black, jet black, ink black, blacker than night. If they had hair or a coat of fur, then it was short and close, not long and shaggy. Adam felt that they did not have fur, while I couldn’t be sure. It may have just that their skin or hide was black.
The monsters from my childhood
As they advanced closer and I took in the details of their appearance, a horrifying realization flooded into me. I knew these creatures. I had encountered them and had been terrorized by them many times during my childhood. In July of 2010, almost four years earlier, I wrote an article about these beings, these “nightmares” from my youth in my article, “Aliens? Gnomes? Boogeymen? Night Terrors?” [Linked].
These were the same beings that I repeatedly encountered as a child for the five years that my family and I lived in our old home in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Without a doubt in my mind, these were the very same entities – short, stocky, powerfully-built, glowing eyes – just as I describe in my blog post from 2010.
My initial emotions were shock and fear. This was quickly replaced by seething anger. Many times since this incident, I have wondered if this is what victims of childhood trauma feel when, as an adult, they encounter their abuser: shock, fear, and then anger. I feel very much as if I was abused by these creatures – another topic too deep and murky and troubling for me to delve into now. That subject would require a separate post to go into. It might even need an entire book.
Adam Davies prevents me from doing something stupid
I was angry at these little monsters. Enraged, really, at seeing them again after so many years. Furious at once again being in the presence of the nighttime tormentors from my childhood. I wanted revenge, and on those rare occasions that I feel this level of rage, my common sense leaves me.
“Hey! I know you guys! I know who you are!” I shouted at them. “Guess what? I’m not a little kid anymore, and you can’t scare me! And you know what else? We’re not going to bed! I know that’s what you want us to do, and we’re not doing it! We’re not going to let you do what you want to do to us! Hear me? We’re going to stay up!” (I may have also let fly some four-letter words in their direction).
I did not realize that as I was screaming at these creatures in my infuriated state, I was also marching up the road, straight at them. I wanted to get my hands on them. My blood was up, and I wanted to fight them. Then, I heard Adam shout from behind me, “John! Get back here! Don’t go any further towards that light and those things!”
Adam’s voice snapped me out of my state of temporary, rage-fueled stupidity. I looked back at him standing at the entrance and realized that I had walked a fair way up the road and was halfway between Adam and those entities.
I then understood that I was in the process of doing something that could have turned out very badly. I said in reply, “Oh yeah. You’re right.” I turned and quickly walked back to Adam’s side at the camp entrance. “Don’t get close to those things or that mist,” he said. “Who knows if you might get pulled through that doorway!” Realizing that Adam was 100% correct, I thanked him for calling me back. Those things might very well have been strong enough to pull me into that gateway/portal, small in stature though they were. Or maybe I would have been sucked into it. Who knows? I am grateful that I did not find out. Thanks again, Adam.
The monsters attack
As it turns out, I had antagonized the little red-eyed beasts. They apparently were not happy about my aggressive tone and that I approached them as I did, and they began moving forward, directly at Adam and me. We were both in shock and trying to understand what we were seeing. These things – whatever they were – were moving toward us, first at a jog and then into a full run – straight at us.
“They’re coming after us. They’re running at us!” Adam said. “Yeah, they are,” was all I could muster in reply. Then, “They’re running at us!” we both yelled simultaneously. “Flashlights!” Adam shouted.
By the time our brains could process what was happening, and we began to raise our flashlights, these things were almost upon us. They were not more than ten feet from us, and we could see them clearly. Their faces were a grimace of furious anger and malevolence when we turned the beams of the flashlights on them. At the same time, I shouted something like, “Begone in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ!” Then, within feet of reaching us, they once again vanished.
Our hearts were pounding, and I believe we were both in a state of shock at this point. We stood there, unable to speak for a few moments. We looked down the road to see if they would return, but all was dark and silent. No sign of the mist, the red portal, or those malevolent beings. “At that moment,” Adam later said, “I thought I was going to die.” I felt the same.
A brief respite
We decided that we needed a break from fending off interdimensional monsters and moved back a few yards toward the camp center. Adam and I sat down on our camping chairs and breathed in the night air, trying to clear our heads. Dr. Johnson and his son slept a few paces away, their cots against the back of the Suburban. The shouting and tumult did not appear to have disturbed their slumber.
“What the F!!!?” was the next words out of our mouths – mine or Adam’s, whoever said it first, it did not matter. It was what we were both thinking: What-The-F!!!. I never wanted a drink more than just then and silently cursed Dr. Johnson’s Rules. I would have broken them then if I had a bottle in my pack. Demon-fighting ought to qualify as an exception to The Rules. “I came here to look for Bigfoot,” said Adam. “I didn’t sign up for this shite!” I agreed wholeheartedly.
We sat for a bit, happy to be off our feet and that, for the moment, there was no further sign of that mist and those entities. We talked quietly, trying to unpack the events of the past ninety minutes. Adam and I agreed that we had no choice but to stay up all night and do our best to keep those beings from breaching the perimeter of our camp, should they return. Going to sleep was out of the question, and we resolved to stay up until dawn, exhausted though we were. With the morning sun, we felt that we would somehow have outlasted them. This turned out to be a correct assumption.
A flashing light in the treetops
Then, another bit of weirdness occurred. As we sat in our camping chairs, high above us in the branches of the tall trees surrounding the camp, a light flashed. It illuminated the upper tree limbs and leaves for a few seconds, went off, and then back on again. It remained a bit longer the second time before shutting off once more. Where it could have come from was a mystery. It did not appear to be a beam directed at the treetop. It simply lit up. If someone were aiming a high-powered spotlight, we would have seen the direction of its origin. We could see no such thing, and so far as we could tell, we remained alone at the end of this eleven-mile-long abandoned logging road.
A brief aside: In October, I came across a video titled “The Bigfoot-Alien Connection Revealed,” in which James “Bobo” Faye” of Finding Bigfoot fame is interviewed and speaks of seeing orbs while “squatching” and a bright light flashing high in the treetops. He talks about this at the 1:00 hour mark of the video and sees floating orbs of light on a few occasions while Bigfooting.
I had heard of people seeing orbs and strange lights while searching for Bigfoot, but never before had I heard of a light illuminating the treetops. Bobo’s description sounded identical to what Adam I witnessed. I was pleased to have someone corroborate this strange phenomenon, and I passed along the video to Adam. He has appeared on Finding Bigfoot and knows Bobo and the rest of the cast well, but he had not heard Bobo’s account of the treetop lights.
From 4 a.m. until dawn
We felt that the flashing light was an alert, as the bell ringing before the next round of a boxing match. Adam and stood up from our camping chairs slowly, wearily, and walked back to the camp entrance, facing the road. What we feared lay before us: the mist had reappeared in the same place, again taking shape and had begun to glow faintly. We stood and watched the pattern that had now become familiar repeat itself. The glowing increased to its zenith, the red-orange center formed, the gateway-portal opened, and out came the same two stocky, red-eyed entities.
The way this portal-mist seemed to gain power and luminescence slowly struck us both as being almost mechanical in how it operated. It seemed to take several minutes to “power-up,” so to speak, after being shut down. As the mist’s luminescence reached its peak, the orbs and flashing, popping lights would appear, almost as if it was some electrical discharge.
Why it was that direct light seemed to switch off the portal-mist and cause those beings to vanish confounded us. Nevertheless, we were glad to have some means of disabling them, even if only temporarily.
The beings again stepped through the portal and onto the road. Once again, they advanced warily, moving from side to side in the road and only taking an occasional step forward. They continued to watch us intently, advancing slowly. We never took our eyes off of them either, mostly out of concern that they might charge at us again. When we felt that these strange creatures had moved in close enough toward us and the camp, we trained our flashlight beams on them, and I would simultaneously rebuke them in the name of Jesus Christ.
Adam soon joined me in doing this as well. I had read, I told him, that it had been reported that alien abduction cases could be stopped by invoking the Lord’s name or by praying. I did not (and do not) know what the origins of these creatures were, but we were convinced that they were malevolent. And if that portal area at the center of the mist was not a gateway to Hell, then it certainly looked Hell-ish. Also, these being seemed more like demons than aliens, in my opinion. Either way, I figured it couldn’t hurt to call on God for some help. If these things were evil, then they should be turned back at the utterance of His name.
This pattern repeated itself throughout the night. The creatures would advanced, we would turn them away, after a few minutes, the mist-portal would reappear and power up, the creatures would return. This went on perhaps a half dozen times over the next two hours. Shortly before dawn, I was almost asleep on my feet when Adam said, “Go lay down for a while. It’ll be sunrise soon. I’ll call you if I need you.” Since my cot was close to the entrance, I said “yes” to his kind offer and thanked him.
I will add that the Forest People continued to be quite active during the entire time of our ordeal with the portal creatures. We joked later with Matt Johnson that we were literally telling the Bigfoot to be quiet because we were focusing our attention on the entities.
One last bit of weirdness for the night
I think I had only been asleep for twenty minutes when Adam woke me. He was leaning over me and whispered loudly, “John! There is a Bigfoot in those bushes!” In the dense bushes between the left side of the road and where Dr. J’s Suburban was parked, and our cots set up, there was a rustle. I got up and stared at where Adam pointed (breaking the no-pointing rule). I was greeted by a thunderous bellow or a roar that seemed to be emanating high up within the bushes. Maybe they really don’t like being pointed at!
The sound was loud enough that I felt it vibrate in my chest, and I felt that it had a distinct primate-like quality to it. Definitely, not a bear, I thought. If it had been a bear, it would have been reared up on its hind legs, and its head would have had to have been nine or ten feet off of the ground, judging from the direction of the sound. Black bears do not get that tall, and there are no grizzly bears in this region.
Once again, we saw nothing. There was a roar, bushes moved, but no visual sighting. I was too tired to ponder this.
The gray light of early morning suffused the camp. I looked down the road, and it was no longer pitch dark, and there was no sign of the portal or the entities. Adam was convinced that they were gone, unable to operate except under the darkness of night. I agreed and returned to my cot, too exhausted to think or function.
My last thought before falling asleep was, “One more night in this place. I hope we don’t see those creatures again.” I did not get my wish.
Part Four of Bigfoot, Interdimensional Portals, and Childhood Monsters is now online! Round Two of our battle with alien entities from another dimension.