What Scares Army Rangers

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It's the kind of place where soldiers can spend days in the field without seeing anyone outside their own platoon. And among the unit stationed there is second Ranger battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment. Rangers are some of the most elite infantrymen in the world. They're trained to move fast, stay quiet, operate in small teams, and handle themselves in some of the worst terrain, imaginable. Which is why these stories are so interesting. Because according to the men who lived them, there is something in the forests around JBLM that even Rangers, soldiers, and Marines were not prepared for. To the military, Fort Lewis is a massive training area, but to a large community of locals, it sits right in the heart of Sasquatch Country. Washington has long been one of the biggest hotspots for Bigfoot sightings in the United States, and Mount St. Helens, the site of the infamous Eight Canyon story, is only about 60 miles from JBLM. So when servicemen start reporting massive figures in the trees, orange eyes in the dark, footsteps moving through dense brush, and something large enough to make trained infantrymen freeze, run, or wildly open fire with blanks. You start to wonder what they may have stumbled into. From soldiers, Marines, and U.S. Army Rangers, these are the strange but true encounters of tall hairy creatures reported in and around joint base Lewis McCord. I'm Luke Lamana, and this is War Time Stories. Like any Marine who loves upgrading his gear and also hates losing it, I've been using a Ridge Wallet and their tracker card for quite some time now. No more old bulky leather wallet that gets stretched out, cards falling out of it. My Ridge Wallet stays thin, holds its shape, I can carry as many, or as few cards as I need, whether I'm at home or traveling, and even just to record this, I had to use my tracker card to find this, I lose my wallet more than I care to admit. 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After you purchase, they will ask for your heard about them, please support our show and tell them who sent you. If they checked in, Charlie checked in, how the hell are they, bro and Delta? Come on, Jens, enough the only ones who've been up all day, are you ready? What in the shit, what the hell is that? Bravo. Delta, is that you? Come on guys, hey, you need to sound off, I'm just here to make sure you hit your points. Hey guys. Oh shit. If you wander enough forests, you will eventually run into a Bigfoot, or so it seems. The same goes for military-related, Bigfoot stories, and the internet. I wandered into these first two accounts while browsing through the Bigfoot Field Researcher's organization's website. This first story was written by a U.S. Army veteran, who during his act of service found himself instructing a nighttime field exercise on the grounds of Ford Lewis, but while he concerned himself with keeping the trainees in line and making sure they didn't get lost in the woods, something else was stalking him through the dense undergrowth. A creature that he said was unlike anything he'd ever seen, he writes. Okay fellas, here goes. This happened in the fall of 1977, I want to say around early October. At the time, I was an Army instructor at JBLAM, Washington, back when we just knew it as Ford Lewis. During my time at the NCO Academy, we had to take some of the lower ranking enlisted men into the woods as part of their training program, nighttime patrols, land nav, etc. While during one of these exercises, myself and a few other instructors had set up an observation post along this trail in the woods, we did this so that we could actually observe the troops during an X and grade them on their skills. I honestly can't remember what that particular night's exercise was all about, it must have been a patrol or something, but what I do remember was that we were way out in the boonies. This area was full of dead fall, creeks, ridges, thickets, swampy areas, caves, just really dangerous inhospitable terrain that would be very easy to get lost in. Anyway, at some point I moved away from my buddies to see if I could get a better vantage point on the trail, and that's when I smelled it. Man, how do I even describe this stench? It was like a bunch of rotten eggs and a dumpster on a hot summer day. Now, when you're out in the bush long enough, you're going to smell the occasional dead animal, but this was way beyond that. And as I'm trying to figure out where this smell is coming from, I hear the rustling of brush, snapping branches, and tree limbs from out in the darkness, maybe 25 to 30 meters in front of me. This was where the alarm bells really started going off in my head. Keep in mind that it was almost totally dark as this was happening, and this was the 70s long before night vision goggles were widespread. The moon was my only source of illumination, but with the overhead canopy hardly any light was reaching the ground. So it's just me alone in the dark, listening, as something big is making its way closer and closer to me. At first I held out hope that it was just one of my fellow instructors, or maybe even a few of the trainees. That all changed when I saw the eyes. They had this dull orange color to them, and they were moving from left to right. And let me tell you this thing, new, where I was, it was looking straight at me as it went. I just froze in panic. The spot that I was hunkered down in was on a bit of elevated ground. And this thing was walking in a shallow draw beneath me. I should have been looking down at it, but the eyes were on level with mine, which meant that whatever this was, it was at least 8 to 10 feet tall. At some point I must have come to my senses and ducked down into some nearby brush to hide not that it would have done me much good at that point. And from there I just listened as this thing walked past me and faded off into the woods. When it left, the odor disappeared with it. I don't know how long I stayed hidden there, but it felt like a while. Eventually I got up, moved back to my previous position, overlooking the trail. The next day I went over to the area where all this went down to see if I could find some tracks. Anything that could shed some light on what I saw. But there wasn't anything, which I guess was to be expected. The forest floor in that area was quite wet and marshy. When the exercise was over, I talked with some of the other NCOs about what had happened. To my surprise, there were at least three of them, who mentioned seeing or hearing something weird in the woods from time to time, but nothing quite like I'd experienced. I know all this sounds like a load of crap, but the whole thing really had a profound impact on me. This really happened. I mean, I really have no reason to lie about it after all these years. And honestly, even after all this time the smell of this thing has never truly left me. This next story, again, this was also found on the Bigfoot Field Researcher's Organizations website. It was written by U.S. Marine. He wasn't an instructor. His story finds us in a situation that many of us who have served are all too familiar with, especially lieutenants. Lost in the middle of the night, on a nighttime, line navigation exercise. This devil dog writes. So this happened while I was serving in the Marine Corps. I was stationed at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard aboard the USS Carl Vinson. He ended up being ship 2 Fort Lewis, Washington, to conduct some day night patrols and land app training. I can actually remember the exact day this all went down June 24, 1997. I remember because earlier that day we were listening to the Mike Tyson fight on the radio while we were in the field, you know, the one where he bit Holly Field's ear, wild stuff. Anyways, night comes and our exercise kicks off. One thing leads to another, we lose the path we were supposed to take and yeah, we were completely lost. If you've ever been to Fort Lewis, JBLM, you know that the brush out there is no joke. The stuff we found ourselves in was thick as hell and hard to get through. I was on point with my saw, which is this fully automatic belt-fed gun, just brush busting my way through this stuff in near total darkness. But as I was pushing my way through, something big suddenly stepped out in front of me. In what little moonlight we had, I could see that this thing was shaped like, well, like freaking bigfoot. I couldn't make out much in the way of features, but the mass and height alone were enough to freak me out. It had to be at least 7 feet tall, and at least from what I could see, it didn't have much of a neck. This thing and I couldn't have been more than 10 feet apart, and I just reacted. I raised my saw and started firing. It was only loaded with blanks, but at that point, I honestly didn't care. Man, I must have burned through an entire belt by the time I stopped shooting. And the noise that it produced was enough to send this thing running off down the hill. I and a few other guys watched as this thing bolted away on two legs, taking these huge strides. I mean, this thing was crashing through that same dense brush like it was nothing, and it was gone. In a matter of seconds, we were just absolutely stunned. I'm convinced that what we encountered that night was a Sasquatch. Keep in mind, this was back in 97, a time before Google and computers were really widespread, so up until that point, I'd only ever heard rumors about how Washington State was a hotspot for bigfoot activity. And I never knew until finding this website, where this story is being posted, that the Pierce County Ford Lewis area had more bigfoot sightings than anywhere else in the U.S. Honestly, reading through the dozens of other accounts from other people in that area was kind of comforting, like just knowing that I wasn't crazy and that other people saw the exact same thing I did, you know? But either way, this isn't a story I bring up much unless we're talking about Bigfoot or some other paranormal stuff. And it sure as hell wasn't something I was talking about when I was still in the Marines. It just really isn't something most people would believe, unless they've come face to face with it themselves. During Gears, I bumped into this next story, while browsing the Rocky Mountains Sasquatch Organization's archive. It doesn't exactly take place on the grounds of Ford Lewis, admittedly. The account follows another U.S. Army veteran, who at the time was active duty, who simply identifies himself as D.L. Delta Lima. And as is sometimes the case in the active military, occasionally your unit has the opportunity to participate in something that isn't really what you'd ever imagine doing. For my unit in Hawaii, as an example, we helped out with the filming of an episode of Hawaii 50, a TV show. Of course, because they knew that I had tried to pursue an act in career before enlisting, my staff and CEOs made sure that I was nowhere near the set, and they laughed a lot about robbing me of that opportunity. But this soldier, his unit, was mustered by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take part in a manhunt, somewhere along the nearby Columbia River. They never found the man that they were looking for, but what private, or whatever rank he was at the time, Delta Lima, Mr. D.L. encountered, was something far more interesting and kind of terrifying. He writes. Okay, I don't really know how to start this story, but here it goes. This happened back in 1972. At the time, I just returned from Vietnam and was stationed with the Third Cavalry at Fort Lewis, Washington. I think the exact date I arrived was October 27, 1971. But a month later, the DB Cooper case happened, you know, the guy who hijacked an airplane and then jumped out with 200 grand. Well, in February of 1972, we, Third Cav, Third Squadron, were assigned to the FBI. And we're taken to the mountains in Southern Washington State along the Columbia River. We spent a little over a month searching all over those mountains for any signs of that DB Cooper guy. During the third week, we were searching at an altitude somewhere around 6,500 to 7,000 feet. And during that patrol, we actually came across some bodies in various states of decomposition. I don't think any of these were the guys that we were looking for, but we reported them and moved on. There were about 200 of us out there in total, moving through the dense woods in this stretched out line formation, 4 to 5 meters apart. My squad was assigned to the far left side of the line, and it was really foggy that day. Let me tell you, when you combine fog with equally dense woods, keeping your guys in formation is a lot easier said than done. But as we pushed on, we came across something odd. Smack in the middle of the woods were these structures, logs that had been placed at strange angles, small trees and entire tree limbs that looked like they'd been snapped off at about the 7 to 8 foot high mark. Like I said, it was odd, but we didn't think much of it because it didn't really seem relevant to the guy we were searching for. So we carried on moving west along the top of a cliff that ran almost parallel to the Columbia River. By this point, it was about 11 a.m. and was very cold. The fog had gotten a bit heavier and we found ourselves in an area with a lot of brush and small trees. Some were just a few feet high and others were up there like 12 to 16 feet. There was a moment where I had to push through some really heavy bushes and in the process I got separated from the soldiers my right, Tommy. I fought my way through and I found myself in a small opening about 20 feet wide. I couldn't even see my buddy anymore but we could talk to each other as I made my way across this opening inside the bushes. And as I went, I noticed this dark mass in the vegetation to the left of me, just on the edge of this clearing. And right about then was when the smell hit me, something rotten and nasty. Honestly, I was afraid that we'd stumbled on another body. But that was when this mass stepped out of the trees right in front of me. This thing was massive. I'm not the tallest guy around, I think I'm about 5'9". It had to be at least 3 feet taller than me at minimum. It had this really muscular build and if I'm not mistaken it was covered in brown or dark brown fur with some streaks of gray hairs on the upper torso. I looked up and I can see it now. Black eyes, teeth, it was foggy, but its face had this uncanny human quality to it. I was completely frozen. I tried to scream, tried to call for my buddies, but I could not utter a sound. And then this thing just lunges forward and hits me, I felt it hit me. I must have stumbled 10-12 feet to my left crashing through the brush trying to get control of my body, but I was too close to the cliff. I just felt the ground fall off from underneath me, and I tumbled down some 30 or 40 meters before coming to a stop. Thankfully, my squad heard me hollering and rushed to my aid, still took about 2 hours to drag my aspect of the cliff sight. I was pretty roughed up, I hurt my lower body, left leg, my back was pretty damn sore. It's been a while in the Fort Lewis Military Hospital after that. I know this all sounds pretty outlandish, but I know what I saw. Before this, I trained in long range recon, and field intelligence had forebending before being shipped out for a 16-month tour of Vietnam. That's all to say that my observation skills were in tip-top shape. I'm also an advent hunter, an outdoorsman, and I have been all around, Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Spokane, and Yakima. But believe me, when I tell you that this was not a bear, it was far bigger and more human than any animal I've ever seen. Unlike most bigfoot, this next story is kind of short. It has made the rounds around the internet, but I always try to track down where these stories originate, and this one was originally posted by another US Army soldier named Mark Ferris on BigfootEncounters.com. He writes, "A buddy of mine who I met at Fort Ord in 1989 started his army career with the Second Battalion 75th Rangers. He once told me about an encounter, somewhere on the Nisqually River up in Washington near Fort Lewis. They had sent a swimmer across to recon the opposite riverbank. The guy they sent crept up the steep embankment on the other side and disappeared into the thick woods. After a few minutes, the guy lets out a scream, and he came flying back down to the Nisqually River. Marks himself in the water and swims back across as fast as he could. The guy was in hysterics, saying that he had an effect, snuck up on Bigfoot, much to both of their surprise. The creature, apparently, freaked out just like he did and took off in the opposite direction. My buddy and the other Rangers didn't see anything, but they did hear the snapping of brush, like something big was hauling ass through the trees. The company crossed and did a quick recon of the area, and apparently they did find these big, distinctive footprints left behind by whatever large animal the Ranger had seen. The young soldier who had the encounter apparently left the army, not long afterwards. According to my friend, this was a life-changing event for him, and he supposedly ended up working for a Bigfoot organization in Oregon. I don't have that person's name, so I can't be much help, but this happened in mid-1983. There's also this great story on a website called Ranger Stories from Hell. You'll have to find it through one of the Ranger organizations I don't have the web address anymore. The story involves a company of Rangers on a night ambush, sometime after they'd gotten into position, they heard a guy stalking them. They maintain their fire discipline, waited for what they thought would be the rest of the opt-4 unit that they were trying to hit. Instead, this guy was alone, and as he came up on their position, he stops. And then he proceeds to stalk their perimeter. And the Ranger tells the story, he's marveling at this guy's expertise. After completing his recon, this guy slowly backs up the way he came and disappears into the night, leaving a very distinct odor behind. Now that I think about it, it seems like every person I've met who was a Louis from Fort Louis had some kind of Bigfoot story, or knew of someone who did. As Master Sargents and Lieutenant's love to say during weekend safety briefings that just seemed to drag on forever, I want to piggyback off that last story. I really wanted to get my eyes on that Ranger Stories from Hell, Bigfoot story, to see what it was all about. But no matter where I looked, I came up empty handed. So I tried reaching out to Nick over a tail from the Gritz Square to see if he had any leads. I felt he ran into the same dead end I did. He had heard of the original story, but his attempts to get in contact with the Rangers who ran the blog didn't quite pan out. According to what little details Nick was able to gather, the authenticity of the story is debatable. Not like this is the first story we've covered that is, but we at least like to tell you when, like these stories, something stinks. However, for what it's worth, Nick said that he does believe that there may be at least some truth to it. As so often happens, this, next story, might just be one of the many offshoots of the original story as it spread across the internet, a tale of a rangeable tune, and they're encounter with what they called the Harry man, and it goes something like this. I was an Inventory Battalion S3 Operations Officer at Fort Lewis, JBLM from 2005 to 2007. During which time we were standing up a newly formed striker unit. Our command sergeant major, up to that point, had spent his entire career in the Ranger Regiment with most of it being at the second battalion at Lewis. One day he asked me to coordinate for some maneuver training areas so that he could conduct a week-long fire team leader scores. It was sort of like a patrolling field training exercise based on Ranger School in order to develop some of his junior NCOs. Through RFM SS, basically the Army System for Reserving Ranges in Training Areas, I was able to schedule a few areas in the South Rainier Training Area near the base of nearby Mount Rainier. It's all densely wooded, rainforests, and notoriously rough terrain that's really only suitable for dismounted movements. As we were working away, the CSM, command sergeant major, comes into the three shop to look at the map on my wall as I had the areas outlined in alcohol marker. He studied the map for a minute, and then he took one of my black alcohol pens and started marking it up with X's over certain areas and with big block letters that said, "No go." I came around my desk to take a look and had what he'd written, and after a minute I asked him, "What's wrong with those areas, like shitty terrain or what?" I kind of figured that the land was impassable, severely restricted, or maybe the remeth labs out there. It happens at JBLM, but he kept his eyes on the map and just said, "No, sir, that's where he lives." He looked at me, without missing a beat and simply said, "The Harryman." Thursday, after hours in garrison, the sergeant major assistant operations officer and I would have a couple of beers in my office. I asked the CSM to stop by, and when he arrived, I point blank, asked him with a smile on my face about the Harryman. During this, he paused, sat up straight and said, "Okay, sir, but I'll only tell you this once." When he was a young ranger private first class, the CSM's platoon had conducted a raid as part of a training mission in South Rainier training area and had to ex-fill overnight to a link up point the next day. This was a heavily wooded rainforest with dead fall and thick undergrowth, so the platoon was forced to move in a ranger file or column formation. And it wasn't long before they noticed the smell. He described it as a mix between a wet farm dog that had rolled in something dead and raw sewage. At first, it was just a faint stink, but the deeper they pushed, the more prevalent and overbearing it became. While at halt, rear security then passed up that someone was following them. Now this was in the early to mid 80s, so only squad leaders and above actually had those old PBS 5 night vision optics. Most of the rangers could barely see their hands in front of their faces, thinking it was the opposing force in training the opt-for. They set up a hasty ambush and waited for any side of movement. But after waiting a couple hours without detecting anyone or anything, they decided to move forward another hundred meters dog leg and then occupy a patrol base until first light. The dead fall and thick undergrowth made this movement a slog and sure enough rear security detected someone following them again. It wasn't long before the entire platoon who'd hear movement outside the patrol base. Something was out there in the forest, moving, stopping, and then moving again as it made a slow complete circle around them. Even with the few NVGs they had no one could see anything definitive due to the thick over it canopy and practically zero illumination. Those things need moonlight or starlight or something to actually work. The platoon sergeant closed the rangers into a tight perimeter until all of them were laying side by side in a triangular shaped patrol base. As time goes by whoever was out there is inching closer and closer. Now the rangers are getting nervous whispering to each other thinking that they're being tracked by maybe a bear or some crazed hermit and if something did pop off all they had on them was blank ammunition, smoke grenades, and a few star clusters. So no one slept, security was at 100% all night. The CSM remembered at this point the story his squad leader asked him if he had his white lens flashlight when whatever was stalking them charged. They could hear it stomping through the brush, breaking branches, and breathing heavy as it's coming straight at them. In just a few seconds it ran right through their patrol base and kept on running into the forest, basically knocking down trees as it went. The stench plowed through with it and the CSM only saw a huge dark outline of a giant two-legged figure swinging its arms as it stomped by within just a few feet of them. He said it was easily eight feet tall and in his words 100% not a bear. They fired off star clusters shot blank ammo on full auto just trying to scare away whatever just charged at them. But as soon as the scene appeared it had vanished back into the woods. The Rangers didn't see or hear anything else for the last few hours before daylight. Before dawn the platoon got up moved out to their linkup point loaded onto two and a half done trucks and headed back to the barracks to clean weapons and get their kit, their gear squared away. They didn't talk about it outside the platoon for quite some time. But apparently that encounter has been part of second Ranger battalion lore at JBLM ever since. You know, nobody ever talks about what happens after a story like this. These guys have been punching through thick brush for a week, sleeping in the mud, wearing the same rotten camis. And now they've spent an entire night huddled together with no sleep because some eight-foot thing was stalking around their campsites, milling like sewage for hours, and then it runs right through their patrol base. When we were doing training in Guam, so we left the ship. And I think I've told this story before, but anyway we patrol through all the spiders. We set up our hide site and the next morning we're kind of just laying there. I'm on radio watch. We had one guy in security and pretty sure he was asleep, Justin. And I remember looking, we heard something. We heard something running through the woods and all of a sudden this animal, of some of this forward-legged animal, just runs into our patrol base, into our hide site. Freaks out when it realizes that there's a bunch of people there. I guess it didn't immediately see us because of the camis. It runs in a circle, basically, like every person it sees, it's trying to change directions and freaking out. And then it just takes a jumps over Justin, who, like I said, he's laying prone on the ground. I'm pretty sure he was asleep on his rifle, jumps over Justin and then runs out of the area. And we were all very tired, but we were just very taken aback. Like, what the hell was that? Now, our first thought was that it was like a dog. Like, one of the walkers, one of the cadre that's out there evaluating us. He brought his dog with him and the dog just kind of ran around us. After we kind of took a moment to think about it, we realized that it was probably just like a small deer. So if a small deer could freak us out like that, I can't imagine what these guys in the dark hearing something stalking around them for several hours and then barreling through their patrol base. It's crazy. So I know that after we finish our exercise, we didn't really talk about the deer story because it wasn't that interesting, but we immediately wanted to go back to ship, strip all of our gear off of us, take a hot shower, eat something that wasn't an MRE, and then we were actually supposed to be getting off ship and going out into Guam for liberty. Just take a week off just to decompress from all of the training we've just been doing. So do you think that these guys, after they finish their field exercise, I mean, they want the same thing. They want a hot shower, they want a change, and they want to go take some time off. Do you think these guys went out and talked about this story? Do you think they wanted to? Or do you think they just wanted to forget it ever happened? Maybe one guy just gets plastered and starts blabbing his mouth at the bar and everybody's like, bro, like shut up, like they're not going to believe you. Well, regardless of what the aftermath was, they definitely wanted nothing other than a hot shower, something that wasn't an MRE and a change of clothes. Oddly enough, I still seem to dress like I did in the Marines. My go-to is usually a t-shirt with some kind of over shirt or light jacket. Maybe I just miss wearing my camis. So naturally, when I started looking through Quince's catalog, this is immediately what I gravitated toward. I've never actually owned linen shirts before and I'm kind of sold on them now. They're light, airy, enough for summer, but they have this weight to them. It just makes them hang really nicely instead of getting all wrinkled up at the bottom. I don't normally tuck my shirts in. They feel considerably nicer and more bougie than what I'm used to wearing. And yes, I picked these myself. I absolutely wear them and I will keep wearing them. Upgrade your everyday head to quince.com/warstories for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's q-i-n-c-e.com/warstories for free shipping and 365 day returns. What stands out to me about these stories is that none of them happen in a place where seeing something in the woods would really be that unusual. JBLM and the training areas around it are exactly what you'd expect from the US military. Send our troops into the worst possible terrain to train them. That way, anywhere they go on this planet to fight in a war after that will seem tame by comparison. The kind of terrain where a man can be standing 30 feet away from you and still disappear if the light is bad enough in broad daylight. So yeah, there are maybe easy explanations for stories like these. Bad visibility, fog, stress, training fatigue, bears, misidentified shadows. People getting turned around in the woods, letting their imagination fill in the blanks. But even with all that in mind, these accounts keep coming back to the same details. The smell, the size, the way these things move through the terrain that slowed everybody else down. The way trained soldiers, Marines, and Rangers describe seeing something walking upright, moving fast, and leaving them with the immediate impression that they had not just seen a bear. The instructor at Fort Lewis didn't see much more than orange eyes in the dark, but whatever passed in front of him was tall enough that its eyes were level with his while it moved through a low draw beneath them. The Marine who was sent out to Fort Lewis to do some landapp training from the USS Carl Vinson, while he got lost during that landapp and came face to face with something huge enough that he dumped an entire belt of blanks into the woods just trying to get away from it. Delta Lima, Mr. DL, while helping search the mountains after the DB Cooper hijacking, described strange structures, snapped limbs, a terrible odor, and then a massive human-like creature that allegedly swatted him hard enough to send him over a cliff. Then you have the Ranger on the Nisqually River, who accidentally walked up on something that apparently scared the bejesus out of him just as badly as he scared it. And finally, the Hairyman story. The Ranger Platoon moving through the South Rainier training area, picking up that same awful smell, realizing something was following them, setting a perimeter, and then watching a massive two-legged shape charge straight through their patrol base in the middle of the night. That last story is probably the one that ties this whole episode together, because it's not just one guy alone in the woods, it's a platoon. Rangers, the kind of men who were supposed to stay calm in ugly places at night with limited visibility, while something is moving nearby. And according to the story, even they came away from that night with an area on the map, they didn't want to go back to. And that's the part I keep coming back to. JBLM is not just some random patch of woods. It's one of the largest military installations in the country. Soldiers have been training there for generations, units know those ranges, they know the terrain, they know what bears sound like, what deer sound like, what bears look like, what people sound like when they're stumbling around in the dark. So when enough of them come back, describing something bigger, stranger, and harder to explain. I find that interesting. Maybe every one of these stories has a normal answer, maybe. But if there is anywhere in America where a creature like Sasquatch could stay hidden, avoid people, move through dense terrain and still occasionally cross paths with men training in the field, the forests of the Pacific Northwest are about as good as any. And maybe that's why these stories keep following for Lewis, not because every soldier sees something out there, most don't. Most probably just leave with wet boots, bad knees, and a lifelong hatred of moving through dead fall in the dark. But every now and then, someone comes back with a different kind of story. A smell they can't forget, eyes in the timber, something crossing a trail, something crashing through the brush, like the woods belong to it. And whether you believe these men saw Sasquatch a bear, or something else entirely, one thing seems clear. There are parts of those forests, or even our toughest troops, no longer feel like they're at the top of the food chain. War Time Stories is created and hosted by me, Lucle Manna, written by Jake Howard and myself. Audio-editing Sound Design Mixing and Mastering by Alex Carpenter, with additional audio work by me. Animation and motion design and production coordination by David Williamson, research by Jake Howard and myself. Artwork by Piccata and Radomere is Garovic. Hey guys, thanks for sticking around here for the after-action in the credits. Don't have any personal stories to share on this one, but one of the things I mentioned before is that there was a survival map issued, I think, in the '70s or '80s by the U.S. Army, that interestingly, in the top right corner, where there's a legend of, like, different animals to be aware of, you know, that I remember they had, like, orcas and sharks in the water, and bears, snakes, cougars, things like that, but there's a big foot on that map. And so it just kind of implied that whether or not the military actually acknowledged the existence of this creature, they included it on their survival maps, which are these maps they would give to, like, pilots and things like that. Like, it was this big map and you could use it as like a blanket. It was made from fiber, stuff like that that was very durable. But anyway, on this episode, I happened across another little piece of historical, military information, and that is that in the 1970s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued something called the Washington Environmental Atlas. And from what I can tell, it wasn't some little pamphlet that somebody just stapled together at the office. This was a big, detailed, environmental reference book on Washington State. Maps, charts, drawings, reports on geography, plant life, wildlife reptiles, amphibians, fish, mollusks, all the stuff you'd expect to find in a serious government atlas. But if you flipped to the wildlife section right there next to pages about Washington's reptiles, amphibians, fish, and mollusks, you'd find an entire page labeled Sasquatch. And the page is honestly kind of amazing. At the top, there's a map titled Reports of Sasquatch, Tracks, and Sightings, with red markings scattered all over British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, California, and some other areas. The legend separates reports from before 1968 and after 1968, and breaks them down by sightings, tracks, and cases where both were reported. The table lists 497 total reports, 170 more tracks, 266 sightings, 57 reports involving both tracks and sightings. And then off to the side, there are these hand-drawn illustrations of Sasquatch on one is this tall hairy figure walking away from sort of camera, big footprints behind it. Another is kind of cartoonish, this giant goofy-looking Sasquatch standing around with what look like little people or campers in front of it. And underneath that cartoon in the caption reads, "Mythical creatures shouldn't be mentioned in the atlas in quotations." So obviously the army was preemptively responding to critics who would think that they lost their marbles by including this animal and an otherwise conventional, very scientific book. It's all very professionally written, it doesn't read like pure mockery, it reads like somebody was trying to summarize the subject as carefully as possible while also making it clear that the whole thing is disputed. So the atlas says, "For batom, the very existence of Sasquatch or Bigfoot, as it is sometimes known, is hotly disputed. Some profess to be open-minded about the matter, although stating that not one piece of evidence will withstand serious scientific scrutiny." Others because of a particular incident or totality of reports over the years are convinced that Sasquatch is a reality. And then the article adds this, "A legend Sasquatch hair samples inspected by FBI laboratories resulted in the conclusion that no such hair exists on any human or presently known animal for which such data are available." And from there, the atlas describes what people were claiming to see. It says, "The reports conjure up the picture of an ape-like creature stand between 8 and 12 feet tall, weighing an excess of 1,000 pounds, and taking strides of up to 6 feet." It mentions large square foot prints, 14 to 24 inches long, and 5 to 10 inches wide. It says the creature is reported to be covered in long hair, except for the face and hands, with a distinctly human-like form. And then this part lines up almost perfectly with the stories we just heard. The atlas says Sasquatch is very agile and powerful, able to cover a huge range in search of food, shelter, and others of its kind. It says it can apparently see at night, and it says it is extremely shy, leaving minimal evidence of its presence. And the final line of the page is probably the best way to leave it. If Sasquatch is purely legendary, the legend is likely to be a long time in dying. On the other hand, if Sasquatch does exist, then with the Sasquatch hunts being mounted and the increasing human population, it seems likely that some hard evidence may soon be in hand. Legendary or actual Sasquatch excites a great popular interest in Washington. Do with that information what you will. I hold a lot of reservations myself about many of the stories you've heard on this channel, because we simply don't have enough information to go on to make informed decisions about what does and doesn't exist, what might be hallucinogenic, or what might be the product of sleep deprivation, something like that. But as for Bigfoot, personally, when I spend time thinking about it, after all the stories I've heard and read and even heard from professionals like Jane Goodall, and I like to imagine that if I'm ever walking through a forest or even a desert area, and I see some tall bipedal hairy, humanoid, while I will undoubtedly feel terrified as any of these guys have described facing some unknown creature. Is it going to attack me? You know, is it how dangerous is this thing? I've heard different stories. I would like to think that by now I wouldn't really be all that shocked to see it. With that being said, thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. For subscribing, liking, sharing, commenting, anything and everything you guys do that helps support this show, we really appreciate it here wartime stories. As always, a huge shout out to both our patrons, our YouTube channel members for your incredible support. May God be with each and every one of you, no matter what you're dealing with. And I will see you in the next episode.