Reader Luke West comments:
I live in the Adirondacks, where The Last of the Mohicans story takes place* and we’re almost on the NY/Vermont border.
There is a mountain nearby that has two marked hiking trail approaches, one on the lakeside of Lake George from the west, the other from the east. The east side trail, the “backside” trail as it is sometimes called, is well known in the area as a place where bigfoot sightings happen frequently. They’re usually accompanied by strong, off-putting smells. As strong as a skunk smell but not quite as offensive. This is the trail that locals don’t like to hike alone. If locals hike this mountain, they almost universally prefer the lakeside approach. I have not heard of anyone ever being overtly threatened but I have heard numerous stories of what might be called menacing behavior; sightings and sounds where the sounds follow the hikers, as well as the ‘eyes on the back of the head’ sensation. Nearby Vermont has a tons of these encounters rumored as well. A local place called Whitehall, NY, right on the border, has a reputation for sightings and a couple of the local cops and deputies I know have responded to reports of creatures.
Our DEC always chalks them up to black bear sightings. But our NYS DEC has a history of lying to us about other animals, particularly wolves and mountain lions. They claim officially that NYS has no population of either animal, wolves and mountain lions. But Canada has them, Vermont has them, and Pennsylvania has them and we’re supposed to expect the animals respect those surrounding borders. I am an experienced hiker and former SAR volunteer (I was a whitewater/swiftwater and high angle rope rescue specialist) and have the sign of wolves many times. I know many people who have seen them and photographed them.
While bears can walk on their back legs, and they can run on all four faster than a horse, they generally can’t move that fast on two legs, at least that I am aware. This leads me to my father’s encounters.
My father used to hunt in the same region where Thomas Messick went missing. He was the 82 year old man featured in David Paulides’ Missing 411: The Hunted documentary.
The first encounter was a typical sighting: at first he thought he was looking at a bear. But it was walking quickly on its hind legs and then he thought it was man, due to the way it swung its arms. It was very man-like that way, but not bear-like.
The second encounter: My father was also an expert marksman in the military, who won three awards for his ability. But he never shot a deer. And I always wondered why this was when I was a kid, since his friends all said he was better with the rifle than they were. It wasn’t until later a friend of his told me that my dad went hunting to hang out with his buddies, get some solitude away from work, and read a book. He would stake himself out by a comfy tree, read a Tom Clancy novel, eat some candy bars that my mother wouldn’t allow in the house, and sometimes fall asleep with his book and rifle on his lap- very similar to the situation Messick was in, by the way (though my dad’s encounter was in the 80’s.)
One hunting trip, he got comfortable and nodded off. When he woke later, he discovered all his candy bars missing, only to find two wrappers discarded about fifty feet away. The wrappers were torn apart and a mess of chocolate. Not like a human opens them. Could it have been a bear? I guess anything is possible. Could it have been a friend, playing a joke? Sure. Maybe even likely. But my father never hunted in that area ever again. It shook him. I heard the story from my uncle. My dad told his little brother and my mother about the encounter but no one else. My uncle said it scared the crap out of my dad, so much that he was ashamed of it. He was a Navy veteran of the Vietnam War who served on a PBR. Very little scares my father.
So, there are my stories, Brian. I hope you enjoy them! Strangely, with all the time I spend in the woods- I am a NYS High Peaks 46er and I guide hikes year round- I have never encountered anything like my father has or the other sightings.
*Where The Last of the Mohicans story takes place, but not where it was actually filmed. All the locals get a kick out of the movie, since we don’t have forests of giant rhododendrons up here, and you can’t row a canoe from Lake George to the Hudson river. Still a good movie though.
I may not write American colonial fiction like James Fenimore Cooper, but my award-winning horror-adventure series is as chilling as this real-life story, and my hit mecha series features space colonies.
Read them today:
