Dave and I have always been interested in paranormal phenomenon, but this experience took place in 1990, long before we involved ourselves in ghost research. We had heard stories of Bigfoot, but we never dreamed our path would lead us into a remote canyon where we would experience Bigfoot firsthand. Although it has been eighteen years since this incident took place, it remains clear in our minds.
We had done some research into historic sites in Utah, where we were living at the time. We discovered that not far from where we were living in northern Utah there was a site where many stagecoaches had fallen into a steep canyon. It seemed according to records that the trail led dangerously close to a steep canyon, and if the driver was unaware of the location of the deep crevice in the ground, chances were good the coaches would end up at the bottom between the steep rock walls. Many coaches ended up at the bottom shattered, and many people perished. Rumor had it that gold coins and valuable items had never been recovered.
We decided to ask two of our friends to join us in a day of hiking to see what the canyon was all about. It was a blustery day with the wind howling, and remnants of past snow storms remained in nooks and crannies in the mountains.
Dave and I met our friends, Dave and Diane, at a café not far from our destination. The aroma of homemade cinnamon rolls and fresh brewed coffee filled the air. The sun was just rising over the mountains, and we looked forward to a day of hiking and exploring even though the weather was cold and stormy. The weather forecast promised sunny skies so we decided to proceed with our plans and headed farther into the mountains to find the mouth of the canyon.
We found the turn, parked our vehicles under old growth trees, grabbed bottled water, and started off on our adventure. We could hear water gurgling over the rocks in a stream nearby. The stream seemed to flow down the length of the canyon, but at that time most of the streambed was solid ice. The trees towered around us, and rocks formed solid walls that formed around the mouth of the canyon. It didn’t look like much at first glance, in fact it didn’t appear to be a canyon of any length or depth. Looks can be deceiving as we were soon to find out.
We walked side-by-side for a short time, but soon found we had to walk single file as the trail angled around rock outcroppings, rising and falling, narrow enough for only one person at a time. Mostly we walked in silence, listening to the sounds and stillness around us. There were birds here and there chirping in the treetops and a squirrel here and there but little else outside of the distant sound of the gurgling stream. There was no cold wind blowing; we had left that behind.
When the trail dipped down along the frozen stream and widened enough so we could rest and talk, we stopped and sat on boulders along the trail. It was cold and beautiful, and we felt as if we were a world away from civilization. We were four friends enjoying the beauty of nature, exploring an area of Utah history. It was exhilarating.
Though we had heard the sounds of birds chirping and water flowing as we walked along the trail, we realized that as we sat catching our breath, there wasn’t a sound. The deeper into the canyon we’d hiked, the less the snow had melted under the cover of the trees. The canyon was heavily wooded; trees lined the top of the rock walls, which seemed to insulate the canyon from outside sounds.
We decided to go on, deeper into the canyon though we had been walking for quite some time. We were all curious as to how far the canyon went into the mountain and what we might see along the way. We had to walk slowly as the trail was steep and slippery in places where ice had formed. As we looked around and at each other we realized we all felt a bit uncomfortable though no one wanted openly to admit it.
When we finally did speak, we all agreed it was getting very eerie, and we all felt as though we were being watched even though we knew we were totally alone. We reasoned that maybe because all outside sound was blocked out and because we felt isolated from other people we felt the discomfort. No one really knew where we were if something were to happen.
Dave found a solid footprint in the partially melted snow, about eighteen inches long. There were signs of what could have been more prints, but little was left and only one print remained clear enough to identify. It was not the print of a bear, but something close to human with huge feet.
Dave and Sharon Oester (photo courtesy Dave and Sharon Oester).
We slowed our pace to cross over some large rocks crossing the trail; Dave discovered a bone lying on the ground. He held it up and we all looked closely at it. It was fairly long and very unusual, unlike a human bone or that of any animals we had seen before. We felt very uncomfortable as though we were trespassing on private property and as we stood there, we started to look at our surroundings more closely to see if there were more bones or a carcass from a dead animal.
Dave turned and pointed down to the canyon floor below us, and there among the trees and snowy ground was what appeared to be a make-shift type of shelter. It was roughly put together with tree branches and leaves and if we hadn’t looked closely, it would have blended in completely with the brush and terrain.
We immediately thought that someone had built a shelter because they had gotten caught in a snow storm. We looked closer and found no sign of life, no fire residue, or evidence of human presence. It was then we realized we might have found a Bigfoot lair in the middle of nowhere.
Dave had slipped the bone into his pocket as we had decided to take it with us to see if someone could identify it. As the decision was made, the first rocks started to fall. We thought that maybe an animal, a deer or elk was escaping from the canyon because it heard us talking.
That was a logical conclusion since we had heard no other sounds for quite some time. If it were a deer, climbing the canyon wall would have certainly knocked loose rocks out of place. We couldn’t tell which direction the rocks were coming from but gave it little thought, as we were ready to head farther up the trail.
A family discovered this deer behind their house. Its foot lodged in a tree, the animal’s head bore welt marks as if it had been bludgeoned, and its belly had been ripped open. How it died remains a mystery (photo courtesy of the Pennsylvania Bigfoot Society).
We started to turn to leave when the rocks started falling closer to us. They were also more numerous and larger than before. It seemed as though as we started to walk, the rocks started coming down harder and faster and they were getting bigger all the time. That couldn’t have been a deer causing that to happen, and we hoped it wasn’t the start of some type of rock slide!
We still could not tell which direction the rocks were coming from, only that it seemed they were coming down all around us now. It seemed they were not only warning us, but they were preventing us from leaving. We had to have hiked two miles up into the canyon and there was one way out. It was slow going at best along a narrow, slippery trail. We hoped that we didn’t have to run from whatever was out there that remained unseen.
The rocks had turned into boulders coming down from above us and we didn’t know what to do about the situation.
“Dave, the bone, they want us to leave the bone,” I said. It was the only thing that could have created such a stir.
Dave took the bone out of his coat pocket and placed it back where we’d found it.
Whatever had made that footprint was now hurling boulders at us from an unseen place—and it meant business. Dave suggested that we all focus our thoughts on our intentions, “We meant no harm and will leave the bone where we found it.”
Maybe we could let whatever was angry with us know our intentions telepathically. There was little else we could do, and we all felt we were in danger. We also felt there was more than one “creature” and our actions were closely scrutinized and had been for a while. None of us had encountered anything such as