YEAR: 1968

SEASON: Summer

STATE: Idaho

COUNTY: Bear Lake County

LOCATION DETAILS: Saint Charles Canyon, Bear Lake County, Idaho (near Bear Lake)

NEAREST TOWN: St. Charles

OBSERVED: A dark humanoid form was observed standing in the woods, just outside the campground clearing. Four of us were camping in sleeping bags, no tents, in a clearing recently cut by the Forest Service to develop a campground. No one else was in the area. It was in the early morning hours, perhaps 3am. My best friend and I had been talking about the strange atmosphere of the place and our wives were asleep. I was just dozing off when I suddenly felt myself jarred awake by a powerful feeling of a nearby presence watching us. I sat bolt-upright and looked directly at a large, humanoid form standing at the edge of the woods, about a hundred feet way. He/it was totally black. I could see no features, but the form was perfectly clear. At this point, my friend sat and looked in the same direction. "Do you see what I see?" I asked him. "I sure do," he replied. We continued staring at it, and it at us, for several minutes. Then I somehow got the "message" that it wasn't going to bother us, if we didn't bother it. I told my friend we should just lie down and go to sleep. He agreed -- and this may be the strangest part -- we both fell instantly asleep. At the time, I'd never heard of Bigfoot. I don't know what this being was and still don't. It could have been a Bigfoot. There are a lot of limestone caverns in the area and it was still very wild then. We didn't smell anything or hear any unusual sounds.

ALSO NOTICED: Although the has multiple, fully-developed campgrounds and paved road, now, in 1967 it was very wild and little visited. Even in the daylight, there was something primitive and haunted about the place -- quite different in feeling from other camps in the area.

OTHER WITNESSES: My wife and I and a friend and his wife were in sleeping bags, no tents. The women were asleep, but my friend and I had been talking and were just dozing off, when I felt a strong sensation of being watched.

TIME AND CONDITIONS: Early morning hours, perhaps 3am

ENVIRONMENT: At this time St. Charles Canyon was just beginning to be developed by the Forest Service. The campground had been "roughed-out" at the top of several miles of a narrow dirt road leading to the nearby Minnetonka Caverns. Pine and Aspen forest covered the steeply angled sides of the narrow canyon. No one else was in the campground, or the area, for miles.

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