Geographical Index > United States > Oregon > Curry County > Report # 36671
(Class A)
Submitted by witness on Sunday, October 14, 2012.
Face-to-face encounter at dusk along the Pacific Coast Trail
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YEAR: 2012
SEASON: Summer MONTH: September DATE: 15th STATE: Oregon COUNTY: Curry County LOCATION DETAILS: A foot path for hikers just above the natural bridges viewpoint. the trail was called loop trail. on the same path is a trail called coastal trail NEAREST TOWN: Brookings Oregon NEAREST ROAD: 101 OBSERVED: I took a three day vacation beginning on September the 14th 2012 from Northern Nevada to the Southern Coast of Oregon. I take professional photos for a website I operate and was hoping to get in some great scenic shots before it got to cold and lousy for the rest of the year.
My fiance and I were on a hike about six or eight miles above Brookings Oregon, in Curry county. We were on a hiking trail in a densely wooded area following a trail called the loop trail. This trail is about a quarter of a mile past the area called Natural Bridges viewpoint.
We had gone down the trail without incident, although it was getting dark and I felt as though we needed to hurry to get back, even though there was no reason to. It was just a feeling like the hairs on the back of my neck had started to stand up. I can't quite explain it, I just suddenly felt uncomfortable. We did not see any other hikers while we were on our way back up the trail, or on the way down.
We stopped walking when we heard some loud snaps in the forest around us, like something was breaking tree branches. We looked around, but did not see anything at first. We decided to keep walking, when we saw some bushes about twenty yards ahead of us sway back and forth. We stopped again and were then assaulted by a horrific smell that reminded me of garbage baking in the sun.
By then, the nervous feeling I had had intensified and I was really beginning to worry about the onset of fog and the fading light. The forest was misty and it was raining lightly. We were climbing a steep part of the trail and I gave it my best push to get to the end of the trail.
As we were finishing the final climb, I turned and looked behind me. I'm not sure why. It was like I knew someone was watching and yet I told myself I was just being silly. When I turned, I saw a head above some tree branches with the rest of the body obscured by the heavy vegetation. The head was covered in Dark, reddish brown fur and was impossibly far from the ground. If this was a man he must have been at least close to eight feet tall. I blinked a couple times convinced I was seeing things.
The thing I was looking at did not disappear. Instead it looked at me curiously for a few seconds and then moved out of my view behind a tree. I grabbed my fiance's hand, too afraid to tell him what I had seen because I thought he might go looking for it and then made my way back to our vehicle as fast as I could. I am not crazy. This was not a trick of light or fog. Something very large with the face of an ape was looking at me. I will never forget it. ALSO NOTICED: the forest became unusually quiet a few minutes before the incident. it was like the crickets stopped and the birds quieted and everything went still. we attributed it to the onset of light rainfall. OTHER WITNESSES: I was the only one who saw it but my fiance was there and heard the breaking branches and smelled the smell. OTHER STORIES: I am not from this area but have visited this same stretch of coast many times without incident. TIME AND CONDITIONS: Evening, sometime after seven pm. It was foggy and drizzling. ENVIRONMENT: heavy forest
Follow-up investigation report by BFRO Investigator Geoff Robinson:
I spoke with the witness via telephone and during the interview she articulated an account that was compelling as well as detailed. She confided in me that she is a doctoral candidate in neuroscience for a prestigious New England university, and has always prided herself in her capacity to be "firmly grounded in reality," but that this incident has shaken up her view of nature in general.
She went on to tell me about her trip to Oregon and how she grew up in the region and loved hiking in the area near the coast. During a hike in the late afternoon she and her fiancée began to hear what she said sounded like "good sized trees being broken at ground level." She described this sound as incredibly loud in the relatively serene surroundings of the hiking trail. She said that her initial feeling was that the sound was created by a bear, and began to urge her partner to start heading back to the trailhead as it was getting close to dusk, there was a light drizzle, and the air was starting to get a chill. She said that all the while she felt uncomfortable, as if "someone were watching her." She also stated that there was a smell of "sour coffee grounds" or "rotten garbage" in the air.
As they headed down the trail she noticed that wildlife sounds in the area all at once became silent. This was particularly curious to her as well as her fiancée, so they hastened their pace in a steep part of the trail only to hear more very loud "breaking trees" again thinking they were in the presence of a bear.
At this point she caught movement out of the corner of her right eye and looked around where she saw from a distance of about 25 feet a very large figure, obscured from the chest down peering over a tree branch at her. She gaped in disbelief for about 3 seconds and grabbed her partner's hand. By the time she turned to look again, the figure was gone. Her fiancée was seemingly unaware and later reported that he did not see the subject.
While the glimpse was relatively quick, she said it felt like "moments" because of the unusual nature of the eight-foot figure. She described the face as that of a "person" but "twice as big" with a long, reddish-brown receding hairline and light brown, human-like facial skin. She said that the nose was proportionally long compared to the rest of the face, and rounded with wide nostrils. The large, dark eyes were greenish in color, with no whites visible, just irises.
She said that the subject's very muscular ("bulging") right shoulder connected to its head at the jawbone, with no real sense of neck at all, and that the chest was "as wide as a person is tall." She described the most fascinating aspect of the incident was the complexity of the subject's expression. She detected genuine curiosity emanating from the figure's face as if it could not help but reveal itself to her because of that curiosity.
As the couple rapidly descended to the trailhead they discussed what they had just heard and what she had seen, and neither had any tangible explanation. The witness went on to express how this event had changed her assessment of wildlife and the outdoors and instilled a new fear of hiking and camping.
I found this witness to be extremely credible. Her discussion of the event came from a scientific vantage point, and she expressed curiosity regarding why this particular subject had singled her out, and the meaning of the apparent behavior.
About BFRO Investigator Geoff Robinson:
Geoff Robinson is a software engineer and manufacturer's representative. As a teenager Geoff spent many nights in remote Georgia forests raccoon hunting. Mystified by seemingly inexplicable events during that time, Geoff has pursued explanations in the Pacific Northwest via study of an elusive bipedal primate that leaves tracks attributable to the taxon Anthropoidipes ameriborealis
Since those early experiences, Geoff has had encounters at his home in Granite Falls, WA, at the 2008 and 2009 WA Cascades expeditions, the 2009 Olympics expedition, as well as a number of smaller outings in WA and OR. He currently resides in Portland, OR with his wife and two sons.
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