My encounter happened June 3, 2009 California stretch of Applegate River around Cooking Greens Trailhead area (I will not give exact location). My buddy and I along with my 15 month old daughter went out for the day to do some fishing, and introduce the woods to my daughter. My buddy was setting up a spot on the little beach that's down by the water. He was watching my daughter while she napped in her car-seat, so I departed to go look around for some lizards, snakes, or scorpions.
I went up the hill from where my car was parked across from to start looking and meander my way uphill. There's a lot of old growth in the area of many types of trees; it's magical to see them standing still, and I wouldn't like to see it any other way. As I'm looking through some rocks that I chased a 5 lined skink into, I thought I heard 3 faint knocks, but loud enough to make me stand up and look at my surroundings. That's when my life changed.
I'm staring at this huge animal, staring straight back and down at me from a small boulder on the hill side. I didn't know what to do; I was frozen in fear, due to I couldn't predict what this big guy's gonna do to me on this hillside. It seemed like forever. I watched him blink his eyes 3 times during my encounter. After a moment, his look turned into a scowl, which made me get the feeling that I wasn't wanted in this area. After the adrenaline kicked in, I flew downhill and over a 8 foot or more embankment.
Still running, I hit the dirt road below, and screamed for my friend to bring my daughter up to me. I said that we needed to leave now, without giving him any explanation whatsoever. I peeled out of the area with my friend still buckling my daughter up, and him in the backseat still.
After my emotions took over, I couldn't talk, for about 20 minutes to a half hour. I was crying with no reason as to why. Finally, I told my friend what had happened, and why I reacted the way I did.
January of 2010 was my first time back into the woods since July, and now I'm gonna take myself back to the area when I can, maybe.
As of to why I say maybe to going back out to the area of my sighting, is strictly to respect this particular animal. The year before on the last weekend of the summer in August, my wife, me, and two of our friends went to a nice area of the Applegate river where it had pooled up. It wasn't moving barely at all, and there was NOBODY around.
We watched a bunch of cars coming down from Cooking Greens area, our day of arrival, so we had the area to ourselves. First night went great, my buddy and I made a rock stacked chimney/fire pit; it was pretty amazing and sturdy. It took almost the whole first day to build. The second day was hot and long, so we all swam in our pool we had there for us in the river. We proceeded to do some exploring, for a while before it got dark.
After dark, all things were normal until we all hear something big splash into the river upstream a little way. We pay attention to what's going on, because we could hear this thing step through the water. And then we heard small sticks breaking in the trees just outside of the light of our huge campfire. My friends 95 pound pit automatically sprang up and was out to investigate, only to come flying back. It runs under my pickup truck, whining and refusing to come out; this alarmed our girlfriends a bit, and had them nervous. We notice small pine-cones being thrown towards us, and a few landing in the fire pit.
At this point, my friend and I start thinking it's a bunch of punks out trying to scare all of us. So, we start throwing stuff back at this point, but this ceased after a 15 pound or bigger rock came hurdling in our direction. All fun and games stopped right then and there. And this didn't stop, tree branches started breaking in the area outside of the glow, and more rocks came flying. We all decided to try and pack up our gear and leave. The girls left first together, so my buddy and I started to clean up the area real quick; but the rocks got bigger. The branch breaking wasn't calming to say the least. We said the hell with it, we're leaving EVERYTHING here, and will make the drive back in the morning to get our things. As we were pulling out of the area this thing let out the most horrifying scream we've ever heard. At this point it was petal to the metal, getting out of the area.
We caught up to the girls really quick, and made it home before them. We all decided that we would stay at my buddies and his girl's place for the night. My buddy and I go back in the morning for our gear in one vehicle :). We arrive at the location in the morning only to find all of our tents, chairs,and any other thing that was not zipped in the tents all over the place. The tents were tipped on their sides; the chairs were stacked neatly next to each other, folded up; the fire pit was destroyed. My wallet was still inside my tent with the 150 bucks I had in it. Our cooler, that was full of meat, fruit, veggies, beer, soda, you name it, was gone!!!And we had climbed to the top of my truck and put it between a couple branches where it couldn't be moved.
I believe that this was the same creature that I saw last year. Maybe it somehow recognized me, my truck or something. I wasn't welcome; I felt, it's for a reason, unknown to me. So, I'm gonna respect this animals wish in that area
Thomas T. Graham
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