YEAR: 1980

SEASON: Spring

MONTH: April

STATE: California

COUNTY: Sonoma County

LOCATION DETAILS: Sonoma County, California. The nearest road was River Road and Guernville.

OBSERVED: This was at a youth camp. There were 20 kids all about 16 to 18 years in age.

There were two dorms, one going out to the east and one going to the south, with a living area and kitchen in the middle. Each dorm was open to the middle. There were two large windows at the end of the dorm with a door in the middle. I was in the dorm to the south sitting on my bed. There were three kids still up in my dorm. It was about 9:30 or so at night; we were getting ready for bed.

About 10 of us were still up. I heard the kids in the east dorm start to yell and say someone is walking around outside. I heard the counselors say that there was no one outside and go to bed. So I didn't think much of it. A few minutes later they started to yell again. The counselors got mad at the kids for yelling and turned out their dorm lights. I thought they were just goofing off because we were a good 10 miles from town and no one would just be out there walking around.

About 2 or 3 minutes went by when a movement caught my eye out the window . I was about 12 feet from the windows. I looked out the far window from my bed and I saw what looked like someone at the garbage dumpster. There was a big light but it was hard to see. I kept looking but didn't say anything. I didn't want to get in trouble if it was nothing.

It started to walk to the end of the dorm and I lost sight of it because of the door in the middle. I was trying to look around the door from my bed when it looked in the window from the other side of the door. It was bent down looking in the window and I was looking out the window. I was 12 feet away. We looked at each other for about 20 to 30 sec. which seemed like a long time. I could see it was holding stuff in it's left arm and it had brown eyes and kind of a big nose. Well I got scared and dove under my blankets and when I came back up it was gone.

I think 7 to 10 kids seen it maybe not as good as me. I'm not sure. No one said much about it. It didn't try to hurt anyone or seem threatening when I got scared, but I was a kid of 16.

ALSO NOTICED: The next day a large box with tuna cans in it was sitting on the ground by the garbage. I had put it in the garbage the night before. There were some large footprints all around. I don't know how big, I didn't have a tape measure.

OTHER WITNESSES: Getting ready for bed or sleeping.

ENVIRONMENT: It was mostly redwood forest with some large rivers. The Russian River was near by.