Bigfoot Is The One Who Knocks

Date: 7/4/17 11:01

(Note to the reader: due to the sensitive nature of the ongoing research discussed in this post, I have been asked to keep some details private, including the location of the place we visited. 
Details that I do write about are all previously known aspects found easily on the internet.)

SAR


I got the call from JB; 'I'm planning a trip to (undisclosed location) with Adam Davies and another guy...do you wanna go?'

JB and Davies 

I agreed, and I have not turned down an invitation to go into the woods with JB on a Bigfoot research effort because he is smart and engaged in the research and he's funny. What's the point of getting into a hobby if it doesn't make you laugh on occasion.

There is a more serious aspect to the subject of course. Acting on tips or hunches, when we are in the field we observe the protocols of evidence gathering like detectives, latex gloves and tweezers, measuring tapes and hydro-cal at the ready, we catch up on deep details as we drive to each research area, interspersing the tension with dirty jokes.

In this case, our focus was on the strange reports of knocking noises coming from a tree next to a mossy knoll in (undisclosed location) as reported by the third in our group, Davies, who I met this same day for the first time in JB's driveway.

Adam Davies

Adam Davies is a British citizen who has the credentials of an adventurer and the requisite garb of broad-brimmed hat, expedition backpack and gore-tex zipper pants. In the front seat of the Mystery Machine on the freeway he is effusive and in a low-britisher accent he says,"I'm not gonna guarantee that we will find anything, yeah, buh, we've had activity here before that scared the livin' shit out of us!" What Mr. D is referring to is his previous visits to the location that included not just knocking noises, but growls, laughter and even a roar. 

After years of JB and I walking lonely forest trails poking sticks into mud and photographing broken limbs with nothing useful to show, with Adam's energy this trip was showing some promise. We arrived at the small mountain town just before 9:30 am and following a couple of turns the road narrowed into a gravel track. As we gained elevation I noticed the terrain of moss-covered tree limbs and deep river gorges surrounded by steep and thick forest, rugged, snow-covered peaks forming a basin around the remote campsites we passed.

The Big Guy, returning with stump bait

At about sixteen miles off the highway, we arrived at our pre-determined camp.
I had been to this site five weeks previous with JB, to reconnoiter the area and on that visit we set up a trail camera overlooking a large pile of scat that JB found just 20 feet from the tent pad there. For this visit the first thing we did was hop out and check the camera.

Unsurprisingly, it had not been tampered with as it is camo-colored and JB is always careful to add extra foliage around it to ensure it goes unnoticed. We were to wait for the fourth of our party Russ Acord to arrive as he had offered to provide electronic gear to upload any results. Because it would be Russ's first visit and he was still absent we decided to backtrack down the hill to make sure Acord had not gotten turned around and lost.

In my van again, Adam suggested we go directly to the spot where the big, double tree was and so we pulled into a turn-out near the grassy knoll and parked. "Ok, we neeeed to be quiet, yeah, as the Big Guy has a bit of a temper, he can get real aggressive very quickly, yeah!?", Adam said,nervously fidgeting in his seat. Mr. D gave us both tasks, I was to walk up to the knoll first with my camera on record with him on my heels, JB coming behind with his audio recorder running. 

The Big Guy's Tree

Here is where shit gets weird.

Stopped about twenty feet from the knoll, with my video camera recording I heard two distinct thumps. 'Whump' 'Whump'...with Davies just behind me, he said, "Did you hear it?" And I replied, "Twice," in soft voice, absolutely surprised. 

I was puzzled, but strove to remain calm and as Adam climbed the small knoll, happy to get results so quickly, JB arrived to acknowledge that he too heard the strange thumps. What the hell was this? 

I held my recorder as still as possible while Davies spoke to the tree, "Hi Big Guy!!..we're so glad to know you're here!

Part Two – 'How Strange'
'How strange'....
That is my single comment, whispered near the end of the video recording. Davies leaning against the double tree, JB fumbled for some dropped apples. All of us in mild shock that the desired result had been realized. We had heard 'the knock', (the 'thumps', more accurately) that Davies had heard when he visited with his former fiancée, Ms.Simmons, the same thumps Ms. Simmons  had heard with her father, Don Simmons the progenitor of this quizzical hunt. 

Lori Simmons and Adam Davies
(campsite blob on left)

Standing next to the tree, Adam was giddy. "He knocked for me, yeah!...ya heard it didn't cha!?" Adams's need for consensus is quite understandable, given the vagueness of this noise. As we continued to loiter at the tree and a 'gifting stump' next to it, I let my video camera drop to my side, still running, and you can hear me ask JB about coins we had left on the stump from our visit a month ago. This is when the video stops, and we heard no further noises emanating from the tree.

My notes from that Friday:

{ '6-23, 11:50 am. Clear, sunny, very light wind in upper tree canopy.

On arrival I heard two dull thumps come from the area around a large twinned for tree. Underground? One additional thump is heard as AD touches tree.

JB arrived just behind, also heard the last thump. What the hell..'}

The three of us recollected in the road next to the tree and stump. Adam reminded us that we need to make our connection with Acord since he has the rest of the camping gear, including the electronic equipment needed to upload and analyze our video and JB's audio recording. Back in the van, Davies was still excited, and I was still in a state of confusion, we compared mental notes as we drove through the connecting roads looking for Russ. 

What Just Happened?

{Note: a little background- Lori Simmons invited JB via Facebook to the tree location in 2014. Lori's father, Don Wallace had lived in a cabin here for decades and had determined that a bigfoot -who they dubbed 'the big guy'- was living in the deep woods near his place and tracked it until his death in 2010. Lori continued his search, focusing primarily on one location and one particular tree where her Dad suspected the creature lived. Lori met Adam Davies, also via Facebook, and they visited the site together in 2012. They shared a romance, became engaged and subsequently broke it off a few months later.}

Lori Simmons and her dad, Don Wallace

With JB being mostly quiet and Adam continuing to bubble over, I considered the personal equation at work. While JB and I had no real stake in whether a non-human life form existed here or not, Adam had already been involved in the story from prior visits. He had first come here at the request of Ms. Simmons for a camping trip back in 2012 during which they had set up a trail camera overlooking their campsite picnic table and which they claimed had captured an anomalous 'creature' apparently sitting at the table. The game camera photograph was included in Ms S's book and was summarily scanned by skeptics and torn apart online, complete with the requisite red circles, arrows and paragraphs suggesting everything from an actual bipedal creature, a photoshopped artifact, Davies himself in a poncho to an errant plastic bag stirred by wind. 

Because I like to do my cryptid homework before I go into the field, I was already aware of this photo but out of respect for my new, foreign friend, I was keeping my opinion to myself. I knew there would be time to ask Adam about his claims and this photo, this being a three-day expedition. For now, we still needed to locate Russ Acord. Back at the formal campsite, we unloaded some of our gear and before we had stacked the firewood I had brought, a truck had rounded the corner and lurched into our site. I dropped the last armload of wood and waited as the door of the big white crewcab popped open and a man stepped out like he was on a mission.  A full six feet plus, combat boots, short-cropped graying hair and chin beard, a serious look on his face and an even more serious sidearm on his hip, Russell Acord shook my hand and surveyed the campsite.

Adam and Russ Acord

His truck was amazing. I tried to focus on greeting the man, but I was riveted on how nice his vehicle was, a snow white late model Ford F150 4x4 Crewcab with a matching canopy, the sides emblazoned with tasteful, if over-the-top vinyl graphics of a stylized Apollo-like Apeman cradling the earth on his shoulders and the letters 'I B C' beneath followed by 'International Bigfoot Conference.Com'

I like Ford Trucks...

Especially this one...

This guy was all business, and I pulled my gaze away from the machine to see Adam come up the path to hug the military man. After greeting both Davies and JB, Acord stalked back to his truck and began the unloading. I stepped up to help and he wavered at first, "I got this.." but relented when he saw that I had not left and was admiring his amazing inventory of cool shit. In the bed of the bitching F150 was a slide-out drawer system chock-full of camping gear.

Acord yanked a big duffle out of the rear and handed me another smaller bag. Without exchanging words, we marched down to the 14 x 14 tent pad and began the set up. I like well-made stuff, appreciate the thought and engineering that goes into machinery and durable goods and this tent was a Cadillac. Rubberized base, triple stitched seams and heavy aluminium poles, after Russ had scratched his head for a moment over the layout, he remembered the procedure and while the other two looked on we erected the big six man canvas palace in just a few minutes. Then it was on to the gear.

In the Bigfoot Truck were several armored travel cases that Acord fetched out and plopped onto a folding table he had struck. We all gathered round as the cases opened, revealing the techy treasures inside. Rugged looking laptop - check, digital Nikon 35mm camera - check, nylon encased binocs with nightvision - check, full on fucking nightvision IR mono-scope-check, additional dual-scope gen 4 IR nightvision goggles, just wow.   This shit was expensive, top-of-line, Mililtary-grade equipment and as RA sorted the stuff I detected a small grin expanding on his face. He loves this stuff. 

Russ shows off his gear

And we loved this stuff. As Russ demo-ed the Night vision binos for Adam, I thought of how we would use the gear to find our quarry. 

Deep, wee-hour sojourns through some pitch-dark trail to stake out an open area with a baited trap? Long distance early morning scanning of water courses far below our position for Bigfoot crossing a river? The weekend was looking increasingly promising but before we could agree on a plan to deploy the observation gear, Adam took the reigns. "Ok, let's get Russell down to the Big Guy, yeah, and see if we can get him to knock!" We stowed the expensive stuff back in the BF truck and as Acord offered to drive, I put up no resistance. We piled into the great white crew cab and floated down the pot-holed track back to where the ‘Big Guy’ lived. 

I'm in the trees, Dude

Note: one aspect of this habituation location that was overlooked previously. It is the manner in which the tree is approached and in how the Big Guy is greeted. For my part at this point in the story, I am still scratching my head over the nature of the noise source. JB is seemingly less 'on the fence' about it and refers to the tree and stump location as if it was a living entity, but Adam, who has a vested history here, is fully convinced that a creature lives inside or underneath the big double tree and he addresses it the way one would speak to a zoo ape, a child or possibly a senior citizen with dementia.

AD: "Hey Big Guy!...we've come back to see you....are you here? We brought you some apples!"

It's a bizarre thing to witness, as JB and now Russ Acord join in at Davies request. "Say hello to him guys..", Adam half whispers. His child-friendly approach is not his own idea, but a method he learned from his ex-fiancee, who had learned it from her father. The goal here is not to antagonize the Big Guy, as Adam explained in the truck later. "He's got a quick temper, yeah!...he fucking WENT OFF on us last time we were here, yeah, he fucking ROARED at us, scared the shit out of us, yeah!" Adam’s foot and leg vibrate nervously as he relates the event, suggesting that even if he's wholly mistaken about the nature of the phenomenon, he believes something is inside that location and it's not always friendly.

It's useful to remember that this is a guy who travels the planet looking for cryptid animals like the Orang Pendek and the Tibetan Yeti. His adventures are chronicled in The History Channel and on Monster Quest. When it comes to hard trekking in Nepal, sleeping rough in mosquito-swarmed Congo and struggling through border crossings surrounded by machete-wielding guards with bad attitudes, when it comes to adventurers, Adam Davies is the real deal. 

And here he is sweet-talking a tree like it was a recalcitrant dog. 

The Big Guy Tree

Part Four – Where Is He?

Back at the Big Guy tree access road, Acord wheeled the big truck into a neat four point turn and sidled into the turnout, turning off the motor.

Davies whispered nervously, "Ok, we have ta talk quietly now, yeah, because the big guy can hear us all over, yeah?" Adam assigned tasks to each of us, just as he had done previously and we exited the truck one at a time per his instruction. I felt a little stymied by the control he exerted over the situation, but I fell into line because it's his gig as the first investigator here and it is how I would wish to be treated if it was me.

Adam grabbed a bag of green apples from the floorboard, hopped out quietly and sauntered up the road the 40 paces we had parked at from the tree.
JB followed, audio recorder at shoulder height, Russ was behind me with his camcorder running and I had my cell camera in one hand with my audio recorder in the other hand, held up to show any clear spikes in the wave form display so we could have a running time signature to compare each noise the big guy might make.

In terms of a scientific research approach, how we tackled this inquiry is perhaps imperfect at best. A real, data-driven, fact establishing effort would require more stringent methods like the inclusion of two professional videographers staged at predetermined points, a professional audio person with much more high end gear and maybe an impartial observer taking notes. This is, after all an officially undocumented phenomenon, and because the elements at work are ephemeral more than physical, in terms of discovery science, having repeatable phenomena to compare and analyze is crucial. 

Adam Davies is familiar with how undiscovered species are cataloged, having worked with DNA scientists and film crews from Nat.Geo while searching for evidence of the Orang Pendek. That cryptid primate peculiar to Indonesia remains unofficial, but the 100-plus year history of sightings and encounters of the creature is difficult to ignore. 

Davies was a member of a party that visited Sumatra to search for the Orang Pendek in 2003 and they managed to find a footprint and hairs that they submitted for DNA analysis. The footprint was determined to be that of an unknown extant primate, but the hairs found were human, further clouding possibility of a true, new taxonomic classification. 

The Green Man

Without the benefit of bones, fossilized or fresh, full documentation of new species can never be established by scientific standards. This is how real discovery science is accomplished, and though our foray here in the woods of the North Cascades is less than scientifically perfect, you have to start somewhere. 

I held the pair of electronic devices as steadily as I could while Russ passed around me at Adam’s request and stepped up to the mossy, doubled tree.

Davies kept calling to the air around us, "Hey Big Guy..we've come to see ya...i brought my friends....say hello you guys." JB greeted the phantom entity as did Russell, but I stayed quiet so as not to step on the audio in case of a response. We waited. JB sorted apples on the stump, Adam walked around the back of the tree and I endeavored to keep the camera on him as he was the only member of our group who was out of sight. He reappeared on the opposite side as Acord walked up to physically hug the tree. I stifled a chuckle as he turned his face to the camera, huge silly grin. The seemingly stern guy has a sense of humor.

Acord is a little weird

(click on any photo to enlarge)

For the next five minutes I kept my recorders running without any clear offering from the Big Guy. Adam stomped his boot at the tree base a couple of times hoping to elicit a response, but my arms were tiring and I knew that video clips longer than a couple of minutes are hard to send over the internet so I clicked the off button while JB and Acord moved off the stump location look for clues within the immediate area.

Davies joined them and I followed and before we had gone twenty-five feet, JB spotted an unusual thing. Hanging from a mossy branch about 18 inches from the ground was a mesh bag with what looked like some decaying fruit inside. It was obvious then that others had been to the site and had left bait.

I surveyed the surrounding trees for game cameras but saw nothing. (Note: JB and I DID find a game camera pointed at the Big Guy tree on a previous visit here, so the phenomenon is clearly being researched by others.)

Disheartened, Davies murmured loudly, "Maybe the Big Guy has moved on...he's not here, anyway." This was directed at the Big Guy as opposed to a real sentiment Davies held, but as we made our way back to the truck we experienced no more noise, saw no other evidence of baiting or tree cameras. It was time to move on ourselves.

Davies, JB and Acord next to the Tree

My notes from June 23rd, Friday

Big Guy Tree Video Clip 1 – First visit
Site: large double fir tree, joined at base, a nearby stump is associated with the phenomenon
As a gifting site, ie., apples, coins, routinely
Aprox. 10:45 am
Weather: clear, sunny, almost no breeze.
Video Clip length: 2:34 seconds
Note: AD, JB and SAR only. AD instructed us to approach the tree one at a time.
SAR to go first and begin filming, AD to follow and JB to come third with audio running.
I walked up and as I readied the video camera, I heard two dull thumps come from the area of the tree and stump. The clip begins immediately after with AD walking into the frame.
AD: Hey, was he knocking?
SAR: Twice 
AD: Oh! You noticed it! (Turning toward tree) Hey, how are you? (Turning partially back toward camera) There you go! He knocked, didja hear him?  Jason, he’s knockin' for ME!
JB: (faint) I heard it.
AD: Huh? He knows me…did you remember me Big Guy? Hey, that’s pretty cool,(turns toward JB) have you got the apples?
JB: (still off camera) I brought one.
AD: We're gonna bring you an apple, is that OK?
JB to SAR: Ok, This is the first time you’ve heard this sound, right?
AD: (Turning back toward the camera) yeah, it’s cause he, he knows me…come in, come in, it’s fine. (Sees JB has apple) Oh, there you go.
SAR: (quietly, behind camera, regarding the two thumps that happened before fiming) That’s rather strange.
Note: the tape continues but no further sounds are heard aside from source indeterminate clicking.  
----------------------------------------------------------

Big Guy Tree Knock Video Clip 2
Time: aprox. 1:30 pm
Location: back at tree/stump location 
Weather: clear, sunny. Slight NE breeze in upper tree canopy.

'Our party of 3 (AD/SR/JB) reaches the tree/stump and AD goes up first.
I follow and stand right next to the tree.
As the clip begins, AD is to the left side of the tree, I am directly in front.
AD: 'We're gonna bring things, Okay?' Then moves behind the tree.
At 00:4 and 00:6, two static clicks are heard in the recording (source indeterminate)
At 00:10, two additional static clicks are recorded (source indeterminate)
I pan up the tree, to the right of the tree.
At exactly 00:11 seconds into the clip, a low thump is heard.
I assumed AD had done it, and panned quickly around to the left the see if he was there.
AD was not where I suspected, but had walked quickly back to JB's location.
How quickly AD made it back to JB’s location was surprising.
Looking in my direction, AD says 'yeah?'
JB: (asking SAR) 'Where you there when that happened?'
I respond, expletive, 'Fuck yeah!'
SR- camera operator- My summation: 
Having visited the site on two previous occasions, I was aware of the claims made of knocking noises being associated with the location. Growls, laughter and a roar were also claimed to have been heard by AD on previous visits. These sounds are all ascribed by AD to be emanating from inside or below the tree by a 'Bigfoot', or some other intelligent entity, which he has come to know as 'the Big Guy', a term originally used by LS.
AD also ascribes emotional swings to the Big Guy, from happiness to anger, from being docile to becoming dangerously aggressive in an instant. 
On my arrival on this date, I approached the tree with the same open mind and quiet as previous visits and did hear the low thump noise at 00:11 seconds. I did not hear the static clicks (my description) during the visit, but only later when reviewing the clip.
While the thump noise is curious and very unlikely to have been created by someone in our party, I cannot dismiss the possibility that it was created by wind in the upper tree limbs, which are thick and well-enveloped around the upper trunk.’


Part 5 – After Dark Sortee
Time: aprox. 11:00 pm

Location: main campsite 

At Adam’s suggestion we plan a night trip to deploy Russ’s Infrared night vision equipment.
Russ unpacked the gear and demonstrated how to use it to gave Adam a head mounted unit, while JB was tasked with operating a binocular with IR recording capability.
I had recently purchased a FLIR device that attaches to my tablet and I readied it. 

Our first stop was at the Big Guy tree location and standing near the entrance to the access road, outside the pickup truck it is pitch dark, even disconcertingly dark.

Davies suggested that we walk down to the tree location while wearing the IR headsets, but soon they discovered that it was difficult to do because of the disorienting nature of the equipment to any sense of balance in the blackness and on the rough, uneven road surface. They tried walking arm in arm, then with JB in the lead as a guide, then suggested that I go down alone as a sort of guidepost but without a flashlight because of its tendency to obliterate the night vision capability of the head gear. I declined because,frankly this proposition felt scary. Also I don’t have very good regular night vision and didn’t relish the idea of falling on my face, so Davies suggested I wait in the truck while the three slowly walked down to the tree.

I carefully the 20 paces back and got in and the cab lights went off as I heard the three men shuffle down the gravel road. For the next 25 minutes or so I waited, sometimes looking at my tablet, sometimes just sitting in the pitch black cab listening, until the guys returned and got back in the truck. Verdict: No results.

Adam then suggested we try another location and we drove further down the road to take a spur road down to a river crossing. I felt a little like a soldier in a Humvee on a night maneuver, expecting radio transmissions with ‘whiskey, foxtrot, tango…bridge is in view.’
We stopped on the bridge and idled for a moment until Acord deftly backed the rig around and parked on the east end. We got out and walked onto the bridge in the starry, moonless night.
The heat from the day rose noticeably off of the bridge and with my FLIR attachment on my tablet I saw deep yellows and oranges delineating the flat, square outline of the concrete structure. Russ and Davies had made it over to the west end of the bridge while JB and I scanned the river banks and treeline for any heat sources that might indicate a living creature. I snapped some still images of the river and of the guys at the bridge end and that’s when I heard the noise. A low hum that rang in a rhythmic pattern, ‘woooo….wooooo….wooooom.’
I whipped the tablet to the west in the direction of the sound and saw a stooped form near the bridge abutment rail. ‘wooooo….woooooooo….woooooooooo.’

It was then that I realized it was Acord himself, playing with one of the Tibetan Singing Bowls he had brought.

A cool idea, and a good contrast to the high end electronic equipment, I was impressed by the concept as an organic tool to potentially draw in a sentient creature. Our goal was never to hurt anything or anyone, despite the firearm Russ kept. Guns are often seen as counter to having a Sasquatch experience in the nighttime woods, and perhaps this is why we got no useful results, but I pass no negative judgment on the presence of a weapon. As fragile life forms in comparison to animals like Mountain Lions and Bears, it is prudent for humans to have a way to protect ones self. I didn’t bring a firearm on this trip but did have bear spray back at the campsite.

The night being a bust for Bigfoot, we drove solemnly back to camp.

PART 6 – The Portal Incident

Back at the camp, Davies had promised to relate the story about the infamous ‘Portal Incident’.

The Portal Incident is important because, if true, it represents one of the first times a paranormal event like a door between worlds may have been witnessed by more than one person. (Note: The Skinwalker Ranch story has very similar aspects and occurred sometime around year 2000., ref.,www.skinwalkerranch.org)

That is the case here, and to re-brief, it went as follows.

Adam and a friend, John Carlson made arrangements back in June of 2014 to visit a Sasquatch habituation site controlled by Matthew Johnson. Matthew Johnson came to internet fame as a man who had a scary Bigfoot encounter near the Oregon Caves Monument trail and then basically became a self-proclaimed Bigfoot expert through a series ongoing habituation camps in his hometown of Puyallup, Wa. and in southern Oregon. At his southern Oregon site, which he called SOHA, the three men set up camp for a three night stay and on the second night they had some ‘activity’ in the form of noises in the trees, silhouettes of something large and vocalizations that Carlson said was like that of a primate (meaning, Ape).

On the third night of their camp-out, all three men apparently saw a reddish glowing rounded area of dull light form on one aspect of their campsite and within that circle were two small entities that, according to Carlson, had evil intent. Davies stopped short of the summation of evil intent, but acknowledged that he felt threatened by the creatures, to point of fearing for his life.

At this point, I will recall our own camp-out as Adam Davies relates the story. Back at camp, we got the fire going and staged our chairs. I got out my cigars a offered them and Adam pulled the cap from his McNaughton’s bottle. He sat, contemplating the fire, but his foot was vibrating, propped on his knee, he was clearly nervous. As he began to speak he stammered a good deal, searching for the words and over the course of a few minutes, with the whisky and the fire glow he settled in to an absolute whopper of a scary campfire story.

The first two nights at SOHA were relatively mundane, with footfalls and blackish forms moving between the deep forest tree line. But the third night was dramatically different.
‘So, there we were at the campsite, and it’s the 3rd night, and I see….about 150 feet down the road….a light. It’s a horizontal strip of light, about the width of the road comin in there,yeah?

It’s me and John (Carlson) and Matt has gone to bed….and we see a mist…it’s glowing,its red and then we see these two little….entities…and Matt Johnson, he says they were, like ‘ewoks' or whatever, or little hairy Bigfoots, but they were not hairy, they were smooth and black…they were small and stocky, with red eyes like dots.’

Note from SAR: I am on my second whisky rocks by this time and it’s really going down easily. In a word, I am buzzed, and even though I have read the details previously, I am riveted by his story and his nervous, halting delivery. Adam continues: “Johnson, that fucker, he went to bed!”

By this time, Davies was well into his bottle too. “These things….they were just standing there, yeah?...so we were startled, yeah?...and so we swung the flashlights at em..and they DISAPPEARED!” 

I was digging the narrative, and I mumbled things like, “fucking awesome” I think. It had been a long day of driving and monkeying with game cams, but we were wide awake as Davies continued, “We stayed up all that night, yeah, and they didn’t come back, but when Johnson got up that next morning, he said ‘It’s ok, the Bigfoot told me it’s nothing evil.’ He said they spoke to him in his mind, mindspeak, yeah? and that they wouldn’t hurt us…but like I told John, I was NOT going to BED!...I was concerned with living!”

The next day, Davies said, was surreal, as they went into town to the grocery store, the gas station, etc., Adam and John both felt like they were dreaming. It was likely mild shock and lack of sleep, but they stayed awake through that final afternoon and ate dinner on the fourth night. 

“We’d picked up Matt’s 10 year old son, Grady the night before, yeah, and with him in camp, hearing us talkin about the weird events of the previous night, I think it sorta freaked the kid out, yeah?

He was walkin around, saying things like, ‘Are we gonna DIE?’, to his Dad, yeah and he wanted to call his mother y'know?”
It got darker and they readied their cots for the night and Davies said, “So the fucking things, they’re deeply unpleasant….we didn’t want to, we couldn’t fucking sleep…it happened once, I wanted to see if it would happen again.”

At this point I summoned the presence of mind to ask Adam, “what about cameras…or audio recording?” He didn’t hesitate, “it was so dark…I didn’t think we'd get photographs of ANYTHING!”

He took a long swig of his mostly drained whiskey bottle, then “So we’re windin down, yeah, and a similar thing from the previous night happens…a see-through mist, red glow, and a TREE, a gnarled, twisted tree is there, yeah…we can see it clearly and these two entities are there yeah, and…” a low expletive escaped my mouth as I listened to Adams story….two non-human creatures, witnessed by two seemingly sane people, in a glowing red portal…it’s just crazy.

When I asked Adam Davies if he will be going back to Johnson’s portal location, he became dismissive and said, “Fuck him,” going into a short tirade about how Johnson is wrong about the nature and intent of the creatures. “he thinks they're friendly, yeah, but I felt like it was a battle, yeah? I didn’t sign up for a battle with extraterrestrial creatures!”

What Davies really thinks he encountered varies as he speaks. He stopped short of using the word ‘demon', and when pressed he concluded, “they weren’t friendly, these things had technology that was beyond us, yeah?...they weren’t just after a peanut butter sandwich! There was certainly a malevolence about them, they were CHARGIN’ us!”

At this point in Adam Davies story, I lost my focus. The combination of the long, hot day and the libations clouded my head because I cannot recall how Davies related the last bit of this fantastic story. It was a lot to think about, but it was still odd, and out of character for me as a writer, because I pride myself on my ability to absorb the salient points of any story for later dedication to my hard drive, but for the reasons above, on this occasion I have a blank spot.

Luckily, now that the meat of this amazing story has already been served, the clean up has been handled by an interview both Adam Davies and John Carlson did in 2015 with the Podcast radio host Tim Binnall on his site, Binnall of America. I will finish the story now, with details I pulled from listening to that podcast.

Johnson, Davies and Carlson, pre-weirdness

Part 7 – What Really Happened?

On the fourth and final night of Adam Davies and John Carlsons visit to Matt Johnson’s Southern Oregon Habituation Area, the two newcomers were exhausted. 

“There was a deep sense of dread,” said Carlson, as they settled in for the night.
A couple of hours after Johnson and his boy went to their cots on the opposite side of the campsite, Davies and Carlson again saw the red mist and the gnarled tree. 

“If I had been then only one there, I would have thought I was hallucinating.” John Carlson.

Disputing Matt Johnson's suggestion of benevolent beings, Carlson said,
“These black things with glowing red eyes, they were NOT friendly.”

"Blzxzat, do you see what I see?"

Describing in more detail the actual portal itself, he said, “the creatures, they were moving within the orangey,red glow, it went with them as they moved.” Because of Carlson's religious upbringing, and his state of abject terror in seeing the creatures running up the road directly at them, he invoked the name of Jesus. “when they came at us, I called out ‘I rebuke you in the name of Jesus Christ!...and we turned on the flashlights and they disappeared.”

I contacted John via his blog site and over a few weeks came to learn his feelings about the events of 2013 with Matt Johnson. He asked me to keep his words confidential, so the quotes above are gleaned from his blog and from the internet.

“It was a fairly traumatic experience,” he told Tim Binnall in the Podcast they did in 2015.
“I have a theological point of view, I think they were demonic.” Carlson writes a blog from his home in New Jersey called `The Paranormalist' and he covers the weird topics usually associated with the paranormal like ghosts, monsters and demons. He links Johnson’s portal location with the portal story found in George Knapp's book ‘Hunt For The Skinwalker.’

Following a night of high strangeness like the one Davies and Carlson experienced at Matthew Johnson's SOHA, if true, is enough to induce symptoms of shock, if not a clinical case of PTSD.

We have two seemingly sane, intelligent men (I exclude Matt Johnson here not because I think he’s insane or stupid, but because he is the host at this habituation site) who have a shared experience that is by nature inexplicable and therefore not normal, but paranormal. 
A claim of an extraordinary nature like this would be easy to ignore if it was made by a single individual, and if, upon investigation that individual had a history of unsubstantiated, wild stories (ie; Rick Dyer, Tom Biscardi or bigfoot comedian Peter Cain) this train never would have made it to the next stop. 

But because we have two individuals who have no apparent history of hoaxing and who stand to gain nothing (but derision) by going public with these amazing details, it is much harder to dismiss outright, and as Dr. Meldrum is known to repeat, this situation ‘deserves further study.’

Therein lies the difficulty with this story. 

Johnson, Davies and Carlson, post-weirdness.

Matthew Johnson has continued his trips to southern Oregon (now named SOIA, for ‘interaction area) with regularity and is still claiming that extraordinary, and I mean really crazy stuff, is happening at his area there.

And Adam Davies returned in 2015, without Matt Johnson's approval or attendance, bringing other researchers with him, including Russ Acord. They had camera malfunctions, saw unusual color on night vision equipment but had no other unusual experiences.

Davies said during his interview with Binnall, “There are other portals out there, I’m investigatin' ‘em, I’m not gonna name ‘em.” concluding, “it was the worst, harrowing experience of my life.”

So what did happen in the foothills of Southern Oregon on those two summer nights to create such disparate, apparently extranormal experiences? Matthew Johnson maintains during conferences and on his YouTube posts that Davies and Carlson have the situation completely backwards, that the two small entities the two men saw were not, smooth-skinned, evil monsters but small bigfoot-type entities put in place to PREVENT the men from entering it. Johnson claims that through ‘mindspeak’ he communicated with a large Sasquatch who he says was in charge of the situation that there was never any danger.

He has continued his visits to that location in general, having found a new site specific spot through a telepathic connection to the Bigfoot people there and he has brought multiple witnesses along to back up increasingly unusual claims like the ‘immigration’ of thousands of Bigfoot souls, who, escaping a dying planet with the help of Johnson and friends with a purpose built energy machine, arrived in the habituation area as ‘orbs', which then became absorbed by trees in the area, where they reside today. “They’re IN THE TREES!”, Johnson exhorts to his audience.

One of these two is Johnson

Further, Johnson has come to refer to the entities he interacts with there as ‘the Xanue’ (pronounced ‘jaw-nu') where he brings interested individuals to experience whoops, stick breaks, loud stomping and touching that they claim results in healing. (More recent Youtube posts by Johnson have revealed that he has identified individuals and refers to them by name ‘Zorth’ is one, and Johnson does admit to some negative aspects with the revelation that ‘Treykons' are apparently unfriendly, cannibalistic Bigfoot creatures.)

Why Davies and Carlson have not gone back, and have cut off direct communication with Johnson varies. Carlson was traumatized by the demonic aspect, citing a PTSD-like result that he links with experiences he had as a child. Davies is just pissed off. 

“When we the red mist came up, Johnson had gone to bed! I was concerned with living!”

End.