Previously on expedition big foot...
Between the wildlife and the weather,
Alaska is a pretty dangerous place.
People go missing around here all the time.
Check this out. Look at this, it's a jacket.
What the hell?
Whoa! Hey, check that out, do you see that?
That's not natural at all.
What in... dude, that's skull.
This was all positioned with a reason,
and I'm not sure that I wanna know what that reason is.
Hey, Ronny, I'm in position.
I have the motion detectors set up for IRS.
My god.
Two of the motion detectors, they just got tripped.
Holy.
What the hell was that?
My god.
I'm still walking down this path
and I can still hear something paralleling me.
On the northern side of gray mountain,
mireya believes she's being stalked by an unidentified creature.
So we just heard what sounded like whistles
directly behind us.
Hey, mireya, that motion detector
to your right just went off again.
I'm going in after it.
Those look like footprints.
Hey, Ronny.
Go for Ronny.
I'm directly across from where that sensor went off,
and there are a bunch of deep impressions leading straight up.
Wow, you kidding me?
I'm standing right in front of it.
Mireya, does it look like
it's one individual or several?
With the, the impressions that you are seeing.
What I'm looking at
is one large deep impression
after the other going straight up.
It would look to me like one individual
digging steps of a ladder.
Copy that.
And whatever made these tracks is what triggered that light.
It's not here anymore.
I really wanna go up there.
I mean, it's straight shot up.
I think you should just stay put, let's, let's
maybe head down at first light
'cause we don't know what we're walking into right now.
There's no way that after finding these tracks I, I can abandon.
I gotta see what's on the other side.
Be careful.
I mean, check this out.
Seriously.
Ronny, I just heard a branch pop, hang on.
Do you hear the whistling?
Listen, listen.
My god.
I wanna kinda watch this area for a little while.
Three miles north of Ronny and mireya,
Russel was surveying an area where he discovered
a series of strange structures made from logs.
Have you ever seen anything like that?
But then
a little further out that way
is the stump that came up and the log that went across.
That doesn't happen by accident, look how fragile it is.
This space makes every piece of your body want to turn and run from it.
I want to see if anything visits this space.
Because whatever put this structure together,
whatever put these things in place so meticulously,
I wanna know what did that.
What is that sound?
, you kidding me?
That thing that looks like skull, a ghost skull,
it's got freaking heat on it.
How did that thing get heat on it?
It's not natural at all.
How did something like that generate heat?
It's a piece of wood in the middle of a forest.
There's something moving down there.
Inanimate objects like that don't produce heat.
Few second earlier this thing was ice cold,
so something must have touched it without me seeing it.
Right now, I'm hearing something just down over the hill,
and that's where I need to be.
Whatever that is, I'm not gonna let it slip away.
This is the strangest place I've ever been.
I just heard a branch pop, hang on.
There is a few track, but nothing recent.
I'm gonna walk this trail
and see where that leads me.
Okay, I'm gonna venture out a little bit further.
We're clearly in an area of heavy activity,
and we were seeing lots of tracks and movement here.
And now I'm hearing these loud whistles,
and I don't know what animal is making it or why.
Bigfoot witnesses report hearing whistles in the woods,
and so it's thought that bigfoots are actually using this
as a way to communicate with each other.
At the end of the day we don't know what we're dealing with,
and just about every animal out here
is more powerful than we are.
And I'm not hearing anything anymore.
What the hell was that?
Because the terrain can't catch an impression.
The tracks ended as soon as I got up over that hill.
I don't know, but Ronny,
I can see your lights from where I'm standing,
so I'm gonna start heading your way.
Okay.
Animals don't just disappear,
but they know how to very stealthily move and hide,
and one of the big challenges that we have here
is that there so many places to hide.
Which means that it's possible
that whatever it was that evaded us tonight is still here.
- Hey. - Hey.
Once I got up there, the footprints just completely disappeared.
I don't know how to follow something once the footprints disappear.
Every time I'd stop,
a branch would pop
- parallel to me. - Whoa!
Walked further up and out,
started hearing the whistling.
Whatever it was out here.
I mean, it knew I was there,
'cause it just kept moving, stopping, moving, stopping, every single time.
The fact that
both of those got triggered at the same time,
something was on that side
and something was on the other side.
I mean, that's how a lot of animals hunt.
We have trail cams set up all over in this area,
so whatever it was that evaded us tonight
might show up on one of those trail cameras.
Let's just keep listening out tonight
and see if anything comes back.
Let's be as quite as we can.
I wanna go over this hill and see what we can find.
You ready?
Four miles north,
Russel is tracking an unknown creature along the river
headed towards the coast.
We're getting into some space here that
looks like...
Careful.
I've been tracking whatever left that heat signature
on that log that was shaped like a ghost skull,
and it has brought me to this shoreline.
There's so much going on tonight that,
we're talking some significant findings.
Where are you?
I'm catching something right in the center
of that beach over there.
It's upright.
And it's red hot.
What the hell is that?
I've been tracking something
since I left that odd area where the trees were balanced,
it has brought me all the way down to the shoreline.
Across the water, on what looks like a small island,
I see a heat signature,
and I think it knows we are watching it.
I think it's looking at us like we're looking at it.
And this isn't the first time.
Just two days into their expedition...
There is something moving over there.
Russel spotted what appeared to be
a bipedal creature near the coast.
What the hell is that?
Look, look, look, look.
I have to wonder if once it got to the coastline,
this thing swam across that span of water just to get away from me.
In the temperatures of these waters,
there is no way a human would have done that.
We gotta find our way over that coastline.
You know so far,
whatever is out here is definitely doing a great job of eluding us
because we found some impressive things...
Could here whistles behind me, and that's them communicating.
And it's terrifying, something out of a horror movie.
But this has been challenging.
Everything about this expedition is different.
The extreme weather, the ever changing terrain.
And the idea is to...
We have to basically evacuate our base camp.
There's some serious sign of a bear...
And they have a very serious concern
for the safety of the crew and us, for us.
An opportunity for us to capture with trail cameras
this is a necessary change.
As I was investigating the work site
where we initially started our investigation,
I found someone's clothes.
It's a jacket.
And a bag of stuff.
And it was disturbing because
it was just one person's shoes, pants, keys.
It was as if someone had just disrobed
and disappeared into the woods.
There are some researchers who have focused
on this particular subject,
like, this idea that often
the clothes are found, but the person never is.
For me, personally,
I think of Jeffery and the story he told me about
his grandfather's run-in with the kushtaka.
The kushtaka could have taken over their bodies
and used them for something.
Their clothes were tore up, they had blood on 'em.
- Their blood? - No.
Hearing these stories about how the kushtaka
can get inside somebody's mind
and make them do strange things,
only makes that connection stronger for me,
because why else would somebody
paradoxically undress in the middle of the woods,
and traipse off into their own disappearance?
It doesn't make sense.
We actually turned them into the authorities
to see if they could track down who they belong to,
and, see if they were associated
with any missing persons in the area.
So we're waiting to hear back from that.
But I have to be honest, and I have to tell you
the way that I found those clothes,
and the condition that they were in,
it's concerning, to say the least.
You know, there a lot of missing persons here in Alaska,
and I'm sure that there are some pretty good explanations
as to what's going on,
but right now I can't think of one.
I can see one of the trail cams.
I see it.
Let's see if we got anything.
Ronny and mireya are inspecting a series of trail cameras
to see if they can determine what left the massive footprints
and produced the loud whistling sound they heard the night before.
All right, so that's me coming up to the trail cam.
So we know it was working.
Something left those tracks
and made that whistling sound last night,
but we don't know what it is.
Do you hear the whistling?
What we do know is that this area has everything
that a large animal would need to survive.
Food, shelter, water.
So my hope is that these cameras will show us
what it was that made those tracks.
So aside from just now,
something triggered it six times.
Let's go to five here, this was at night.
Tree, nothing.
I'm not seeing anything
walking past just yet.
It's really strange because the only way to trigger this
is if something is standing right in front of the camera,
but I'm not seeing anything.
It's not even showing the bears that were near camp last night.
So something set it off, but we just can't see it.
The sensor is on top of the camera,
so the first thing that we would see is whatever triggered it.
We got the tree in focus, but in the background,
I mean, something could have
popped behind it to trigger it,
but I don't see anything.
The trail camera was set up high above the ground,
so something is not gonna just randomly set this thing off.
It just doesn't make any sense.
Let's go check the other ones.
All right, here is the next one.
That was weird.
About two seconds of something...
- That was strange. - Large.
It looked like, it also looked like it had long hair.
First, we have a camera that registered six hits,
but nothing on the footage.
And then we have something darting across in front of this camera,
and it shakes as if something was thrown.
What the?
That was really strange.
What the?
That was weird.
It, like, runs past.
The hair is going this way, so in that direction.
- And I'm saying... - Like, it runs past,
- kind of comes in again and moves out. - -Like this.
We had something that looked like a creature bipedal, walking in one frame.
The fact that it was high up above the ground,
I think there's more to explore and more to be uncovered here.
Look how high we have this trail cam.
And the trail below us is pretty low.
- Yeah, I mean, if I'm standing here. - -So, that...
Even here.
- You're still... - I'm still not
- I mean, the main trail's down here. - I have to come up here.
I mean that's something high if it's walking this way or that way.
Yeah.
We see what is very clearly an animal
moving in and out of frame.
And it definitely triggered our camera
and we could see it moving in and out,
but we have no way of telling what it was.
Those footprints I found last night,
were only a couple hundred feet away up that hill.
Maybe this is what made them.
A couple things pop to mind, right?
A deer could a been coming past,
but animals are always gonna chose that path of least resistance.
So there's all these
- trails that we're picking up on... - They're everywhere.
That they're using over and over,
- so it's sorta unlike that it would... - Go up.
Climb up to go through here.
- Yeah. - The other possibility is, of course,
an animal tall enough.
A bear could fit that.
But the hair seemed very
like... like longer.
- Longer, yeah. - It just seemed different.
All right, let's get this sd card and send it to Bryce.
Let's go check those other trail cams.
Let's see if we get a better shot.
While this video didn't provide anything conclusive.
It does confirm that there is a large animal moving through this area.
So I wanna check out the other trail cams,
and see if we captured anything there.
- Hey, Ronny? - Yeah?
Come look at this.
I've been trekking for a couple hours now,
and everything is comin' straight toward this little island over here.
Russell has returned to the shoreline,
where last night he spotted a heat signature
on the coast of a small island.
Look at this. Brian, you see this?
Since high tide something has pushed this rock outta the way.
You see it?
Right here and here.
See how this thing has been rolled up out of its place?
Something's passed through here recently.
I saw something across that shoreline last night.
But we were in the middle of high tide,
and there's no way to cross that span of water, I'm just not equipped for that.
Right now, we're at low tide.
That means I have, roughly, a six hour window
to get across, do my investigation, and get back,
before that high tide comes back and cuts me off.
I've reached the shore, and I'm already seeing
impressions and tracks all over this area.
This is a little island, there's no place for this thing to go.
Let's go.
Its so quiet through here.
Unbelievably quiet.
Something's just been through here.
You see this?
It's been turned up.
That's loose, something just came right through here.
Yes.
What that is...
This trail is hot.
I'm hearing things moving.
I'm getting tracks, I'm finding drag marks.
It's undeniable that I am hot on the trail of something.
I know I have about roughly six hours
between high tide and low tide.
I need to do as much moving around as I can.
That black mud bog.
It came right through here.
Here.
Ate that moss right here.
There's no ho of prints.
There's no wolf tracks.
No bear tracks.
But there's a lotta big impressions in this moss.
And something is being drug across this forest floor.
Right through there.
This thing is smart.
And it's letting me stay on its trail,
leaving just enough behind,
to where I will continue following it.
That thing is on this island with us.
And it knows I'm behind it.
Hey, Ronny?
- Yeah. - Come look at this.
This looks like a really big print.
Wow, that's a pretty good stride.
Right here.
It step down on that?
It almost looks like a slide, kind of?
Well, I see it coming this way.
Like, crossing over from this side.
There would be the heel.
Here you have these indentations of toes.
Near one of the triggered trail cameras
the team has discovered a set of massive footprints.
See if you see any right around here.
That's a good size.
- But this looks like a really big print. - Yeah.
Yeah.
Right here?
It step down on that?
Yeah, again, going in the same direction.
I suddenly look down and I see
that there's this very large deep impression in the ground.
But better than that there's two.
Finding two prints,
can give you information that a single print can't.
For example, stride length,
which can then help us estimate how tall
the animal was that made these prints.
Got about 15 and a half right here.
And if we did the stride from
say heel to heel.
It's about 60 inches.
And it's in a decent straight line.
That's a good stride.
Measuring the tracks was eye opening,
which actually showed ratios in line with what has been reported.
And better yet, the stride length
was also right on point.
I have the scanner with me.
'Cause you're not gonna be able to cast it,
so I can scan something send it back to Bryce?
See if he sees any details that we can't see?
That's a great idea, yeah.
- Absolutely. - All right, let me set up.
What's amazing about having this 3D scanner,
is it is able to extract details and dimensions,
that are completely invisible to the naked eye.
This new state of the art hand held scanner
will create a 3D model of the footprints.
With its all-in-one capabilities,
the team is able to capture the data
and see the results instantaneously.
They will upload the data via satellite link,
so it can be shared and analyzed quickly.
You seeing a lot of detail?
Absolutely, I think Bryce might be able to do something with this.
Awesome.
Here, come take a look.
Here we go.
Looks like a foot to me.
- Yeah. - -When you start turning it
you start to see more definition of the foot.
I see it.
- The heel. You can almost see the... - Yeah.
- It looks like the big toe. - Look, right there.
Really looks like a foot there, doesn't it?
Wow.
That is awesome.
I'm like a kid in a candy store right now.
Looking at these impressions, I was kind of doubtful,
but it comes alive.
You could see the toes, the heel.
This area is extremely active,
and right off the bat,
we're seeing some evidence of big foot activity.
I'll go ahead and save this,
and then scan the other one.
This area is showing a lot of activity.
So I think we could set up here.
- And have a great vantage point... - To watch them with.
- This clearing. - I like that.
Where we'll be able to see whatever it is that comes through here.
Love it.
Just a few miles more here.
I'm actually on my way to reinterview somebody.
Jeff sheakley, who's a tlingit tribal member,
told me a story
about the time that his grandfather and uncle were possessed
by the kushtaka.
Their clothes were torn up, they had blood on 'em.
No recollection of what happened.
But now he has another story that he wants to share with me.
It took place at his workplace,
and he didn't tell anyone because he didn't want it to affect
the relationship with his employer.
Hey!
- Jeffrey, how's it goin'? - Good.
But he feels the field team might be in danger,
and its information that he's uncomfortable withholding.
Appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today.
Of course.
So Jeffrey, you said you had an encounter of your own,
that when we first spoke you were hesitant to tell me about.
Yeah, I don't talk about it too much.
So tell me what happened when you were working out there by the logging site.
Me and a couple coworkers got tired of driving back and forth,
and we set up a travel trailer out there.
In the middle of the night
something came along the
the trailer and woke us up.
It sounded like... Like claw marks.
But not like a bear that would, like, scratch, it was more...
"Screech" along the whole trailer.
And that was loud enough to wake us up.
That sounds terrifying.
And
next thing you know when it got to the back of the trailer,
and it could hear us moving around,
it started shaking the whole trailer.
Where you couldn't even stand up without holding on.
So something was shaking the trailer?
- Yeah. - Did you get a look at what it was?
We ran outside and there's this tree,
I could see this face
looking at me.
It looked like a... Like a cross between, like a
like a bear and, like, an ape or something,
with human features, more of a flat face.
When I saw it, I
I turned back around and I closed my eyes.
And I shook my head.
And then I looked again,
and it was gone.
What happened after that, did you guys... did you guys hightail it out of there?
We all went back... Tried to go back to sleep
after it left and
not even five or ten minutes later.
I heard a
baby crying in the woods.
A crying baby?
My gut told me to
"don't go towards it, just... time to go home."
This isn't the first story I've heard about cries, coming from a baby
or a woman screaming in the woods.
And legend has it that its big foot and kushtaka
who use these methods to lure in unsuspecting prey.
We hooked up the trailer and drove off.
And that was it, you didn't go back?
And that was it, I didn't go back.
I didn't know what it was.
The only thing I think of is it was big foot or kushtaka.
We're out in an area nobody's been in in 20 years.
And here we come with this little tin box,
it probably didn't know what we were.
Would you be willing to share with me the location of where this happened?
It's about 20 miles away.
Gotcha, so not far at all.
This is a pattern we've seen play out multiple times
with witnesses here in Alaska.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
But it leaves me asking more questions,
why are the big foot more aggressive here on prince of wales island?
Could this place hold some special significance?
There's a lotta signs through here of somethin'.
And I'm willing to be that would be bear.
I mean this right here, I mean... bears are gonna
tear up and... and dig for whatever food of opportunity they can.
That's really not what we're here for.
I don't need proof that bears exist.
Russell continues to explore a small island off the coast,
hoping to find the mysterious animal
he spotted on the shore late last night.
Man.
Brian, it's gettin' late.
I've been trackin' all day long,
and my trail has gone cold.
And it looks like daylight is fading.
And I knew I only had about a six hour window, roughly a six hour window.
So I need to make my way back to the coastline and get back across that span.
We're not really prepared to stay the night,
but if we can't get there in time,
we can handle just about anything.
Dude, we're cuttin' it close.
We're cuttin' it close.
Watch your step.
Brian, look.
This is high tide.
And Bryce said we had six hours?
We didn't have six hours.
There's no way we're gettin' across there.
We're stuck here.
We're gonna be here tonight.
We gotta figure out... We have to get some shelter,
a place we can bed down for the night.
What do you have for supplies, 'cause
all I have is a little bit of extra gear.
Okay, so, I got a little bit of water, let's... let's just
make that last us.
I can't believe I missed our window.
That's my fault.
Hey, meriya?
Yeah!
Check this out.
Bryce sent us some new toys here.
Six miles south, after discovering a massive set of footprints,
and having their bear safety team clear the location,
Ronny and mireya have set up a temporary base camp
to investigate the surrounding area.
What do you got?
Basically, eavesdropping equipment, surveillance tech.
And we can place these
in different positions, and monitor for sound.
Okay.
Yeah, the beautiful thing with this laptop is if we get any hits
between the two different signals,
we can record and then we can analyze those sounds after.
Developed for us in law enforcement and covert surveillance,
these high-powered, long-range microphones
are motion and sound activated.
When triggered, they begin recording
and will transmit the files to a receiver.
I like that we're not limited too much by distance.
The fact that we can really head deep into the woods,
- and just let things roam as they will? - Absolutely, yeah.
And we'll be able to pick up on it?
That's really great.
The cool thing with this too, is, like, if I can get this up on top of that hill,
we can get animals that are coming up, not even know we're here.
Let's set up the two zones.
On that side, we had that footprint,
so we can set that up over there, and then up on the hill.
So that way we have both of these areas covered
where we know we had activity.
The fact that we have two sets of these high-powered microphones,
we can place one on one side of the camp,
and another on the other side.
And we can tune in and determine which side that sound is coming from.
So I can see base camp
down below, directly there.
We're at a very good, high vantage point.
There's a big trail that's running up this way.
Just wanna see if I can connect to it over here.
This could be a cool little spot.
We wanna blanket this entire hillside,
so anything that's coming up over,
we'll be able to hear before we see it.
So I got this double-stick tape.
The idea is to stick 'em on
the bark of the tree that way they're up a little bit.
And unlike using a single mic, we can use the entire array,
and that will help us triangulate where the noise is coming from.
This smooth one might be good for the tape.
And it's just along this really wide trail
which seems to be pretty used,
and it leads right down to the water source.
Difficult to pick up on tracks here.
I'm gonna place this one here.
Big stump right here.
And that's a nice trail comin' up.
Perfect for the last one.
Okay.
We'll see if we can capture anything comin' up.
We gotta get some rest.
After missing his chance to leave the island
Russell has begun to search for a location
to take up shelter until the tide recedes.
We know that we're gonna be here for quite a few more hours.
We're gonna take advantage of this.
We're gonna spend more time dissecting everything we can on this island,
and following all those clues.
What is this?
Look at this.
That's fresh.
Brian, something moved here just recently.
Came right through here.
Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.
Did you hear that?
It's a bone.
Something has been feeding here.
We keep having activity going through here.
There's a small water source over there.
Do you see inside the water?
These are footprints.
And this was recent.
Holy.
This small tree has been pulled up,
and literally jammed in the ground
in the center of this water.
I'm wondering
is that some kind of a message or a symbol or a marking.
Something that is ripped from the earth, and turned upside down,
doesn't feel like a welcome.
It's like it's marking its space.
Make no mistake of it
we are trapped on this island
with something, I don't know what it is.
So, we'll check on it.
Zone a, over by the river.
Ronny and meriya have finished placing
the motion-activated surveillance microphones,
and have begun monitoring the recordings.
Right, I guess my question is is we had a very distinct other tone there...
Signal, yeah.
There it is.
One of the biggest misconceptions
is that you go out on an expedition
and you walk out into the forest and suddenly things will start happening.
As soon as it started, it stopped.
Animals survive out here by being reclusive.
So it's very rare that things happen quickly.
And even though we have this tech, this audio surveillance,
waiting for those nocturnal animals
can take a very long time.
That one's not giving us anything.
Go back to where we heard the other one.
And hopefully we'll be able to pick something up again.
It looks like something's happening here.
Weird.
Holy.
Something' howling.
Something's howling up the hill.
My god.