Hello Friends!
Welcome to the third installment of our Unsolved National Park Mysteries Series.
The following five stories discuss some of the most bizarre and disturbing unsolved mysteries within our national parks.
With that said, sit back, relax and lets begin!
Number 5 Man Saved By Owl
In November 2021, 64-year-old Mike Stevenson shared his incredible survival story and wowed
the world when he revealed that an owl saved him and led the way home.
In 1975, Mike had just graduated high school and was looking for a more hands-on sort of job.
The idea of sitting behind a desk didn’t appeal to him, so he found himself a job in
the Flathead National Forest in the Big Salmon Creek area trapping wildlife.
In the autumn, Stevenson was joined by other workers who were out trapping large animals
such as bears, elk and deers, but Stevenson had been tasked with catching smaller animals like beavers.
As the autumn drew to a close and winter began to set in, the other workers left the camp
that had been set up at Big Salmon Creek, leaving Stevenson behind.
The camp had been equipped with a wall tent to keep the cold weather out and to preserve
the hay and grain and the autumn workers agreed to leave the wall behind for Stevenson.
According to Stevenson, the hay attracted rodents which in turn attracted an owl who
would sit on the wall and hoot well into the night.
This owl stayed with the group, waiting each day for its catch before taking its position back on the wall.
As the autumn workers and the hay left the camp. so did the owl, or at least Stevenson thought it had left.
One cold November morning, Stevenson woke up and went about his day as normal, heading
down to Big Salmon Lake to check his traps.
As the day went on, the snow continued to fall and soon Stevenson realised that he had lost his way.
He told US News:
“It got to be late in the day when I was headed back to camp...
The storm had dropped over a foot of fresh snow...
About half a mile to a quarter mile from camp, it got too dark to see...
I wasn’t worried, I knew I was close to camp...
I dug down in my pack for my flashlight but it wasn’t working...
It was only my second winter back there and I was still a rookie...
I didn’t have an extra bulb with me...
I kept going and going and I could not find that camp...
I got completely mixed up...
Completely lost and it was so discouraging because I knew the camp was so close.”
Stevenson continued to walk around, hoping to catch a glimpse of his camp, but he saw nothing.
He kept moving to keep his body temperature up but the cold quickly took over.
Desperate, Stevenson prayed to God for help and that’s when he heard it.
An owl hooting in the distance, the same hoot that he had heard hundreds of times at his camp.
In a last-ditch attempt to save himself, he began following the direction of the hoots.
Using the last of his strength, he followed the hoots as they changed direction abruptly,
confusing him even more.
Eventually, Stevenson came across his camp and was able to make a fire and get into his tent.
The next morning after the snow had settled, Stevenson retraced his steps and noticed that
the direction of the hoots had changed because the owl had taken him around a large drop
near Big Salmon Creek.
Stevenson credits the owl for saving his life that night, saying that without its hoots,
he surely would have perished in the elements.
He told US News:
“A few years back I was transferred the right to keep a Blackfeet pipe...
Through the pipe, through ceremony and talking with elders, I’m learning a little about
the unseen in the natural world around us...
I’ve learned that the Creator will sometimes send us help in unusual ways...
That night, it came in the form of a medicine owl.”
Number 4 Woman sues California over Bigfoot
Crestline, California resident Claudia Ackley made headlines in 2018 when she announced
that she was suing the state of California in the San Bernardino Superior Court for
‘being derelict in their duty to acknowledge the existence of Bigfoot’.
On March 27th 2017 Claudia and her two children were hiking in the San Bernardino National
Forest near Lake Arrowhead when they came across something bizarre.
As dusk was rolling in, the trio was making their way through the winding paths when suddenly,
they froze in fear.
In the distance, amongst the trees, they spotted a large shadowy figure.
Claudia was convinced that she and her daughters had just run into Bigfoot and ordered one
of her daughters to pull out her phone and film it.
She told the Press-Enterprise:
“He looked like a neanderthal man with hair all over him...
He had solid black eyes...
He had no expression on his face at all...
He did not show his teeth.
He just stared at the three of us.”
The three made a quick dash for safety and whilst doing so, Claudia said that two other
similar creatures ran off into the trees.
The three left and Claudia immediately reported what they had seen to the nearest forest ranger.
The forest rangers insisted that Claudia had seen a bear and dismissed her claims.
This enraged Claudia who was a Bigfoot researcher and fanatic, so she decided to sue the state
and claim that they were negligent in their duties to keep the public safe.
She told the Press-Enterprise:
“People have to be warned about these things...
They are big...
We’re totally vulnerable to these things.”
Claudia presented the video she took as evidence along with a plaster mould of a Bigfoot footprint
that she obtained from Washington State.
She also claimed that she planned on presenting evidence from wildlife biologists, wilderness
experts and DNA evidence from a supposed ‘Bigfoot’ hair sample.
By March 2018, the courts had dismissed Claudia’s case after her legal team advised her to drop the lawsuit.
She told Mercury News:
“The attorneys wanted me to stop it and then for them to rewrite it...
I only get one chance and I must do it correctly in order to proceed.”
There have been no further updates and it is unknown whether Claudia is going to proceed
with the lawsuit in the future.
But if we hear anything we will report it in a future episode.
Number 3 Valley of the Headless Men
Hidden deep within the Northwestern Territories of Canada lies a national park that has picked
up a disturbing reputation.
The Nahanni National Park has picked up the nickname of “The Valley of the Headless
Men” as amongst its sprawling natural beauty it is rumored that men go missing and are
found much later with their heads missing.
The Nahanni National Park is only accessible by plane or boat and attracts some of the
most hardcore hikers and explorers out there.
The park gets its name from the Dene language, a group of Indigenous people who live in the
North-Western Territories and the arctic regions of Canada.
Unfortunately, it has picked up another, not so beautiful name in the last few centuries.
The legend begins in 1927 with Raymond Patterson, a British explorer who received a chilling
warning before he embarked on the adventure a lifetime.
Patterson was told:
“Men vanish in that country and down by the river they say it’s a damned good country to keep clear of.”
This warning came after Frank and Willie McLeod visited the park for the second time in 1905.
The first time, they had made it out alive, but the second time around, they wouldn’t be so lucky.
When the brothers failed to return home, a search party was sent for them and years later,
their headless, skeletal remains were found.
This wouldn’t be the last time that men would wander into the park, only to be found headless years later.
Throughout the 20th century, intrepid explorers visited the park, looking for gold and resources, never to return.
When the RCMP investigated their disappearances, they found their remains.
These events led people to believe that the park was haunted or that something supernatural
was at play and further events would solidify this belief.
The RCMP were able to deduce that those who passed in the park, likely did either from
exposure or at the hands of others, but that hasn’t stopped the legend of the Valley
of the Headless Men from living on.
As if these incidents weren’t enough to make Canadian’s think that Nahanni National
Park was haunted, a spate of UFO sightings and mysterious plane crashes only added to their fears.
The Dene people have spoken about the park for many centuries, passing down folk stories
through the generations of monsters and unexplainable things in the park.
Despite logical explanations existing for most of the bizarre goings-on, the Canadian
people are still very wary of the park and pars of the park itself have been closed off to the public.
The official reasoning is because parts of this park are important to Indigenous communities,
but some have postulated whether the Park Service is trying to keep a lid on the unknown
that lurks in the shadows of the trees.
Number 2 Encounters with Mantis Man
In July 2011, an interesting post titled “Praying Mantis Sighting NJ” popped up on the website
‘PhantomsandMonsters.com’.
The author of the post Lon Strickler explains how he received an email from a witness who
claims to have had contact with a bizarre ‘praying mantis’ like creature.
The witness details how they were out fishing on the Musconetcong River in New Jersey (which
is part of the National Park Service Wild and Scenic River System) when out of the corner
of their eye, they saw something not entirely human.
As they waded through the river, something to the left of him caught his attention.
The witness described the creature as:
“Humanoid...
Tall...
6 feet at least, but I sense 6’6” - 7”...
Triangular head...
Huge, slanted black eyes...
Just like a praying mantis...
It’s whole body was gangly, nobbly, but you could still sense it was powerful.”
He explains how the creature had a grasshopper thigh but was bent forward like a human.
In a heart-stopping moment, the creature noticed him and the two stared at each other before
the creature slowly began to back away.
Before the witness had time to react, the creature ‘evaporated’ as it was moving away from him.
Another witness account added to the same post came from a person in Texas who also
claimed to have seen something very similar.
In December 2009, the witness was having a family get together when members of their
family came running into the room, screaming that a plane had crashed into a nearby field.
The witness and his brother ran to the field to see what was going on and it was there
that they experienced something that they will never forget.
The witness wrote:
“We didn’t see anything out of the ordinary except a strange burning smell that smelled
like burning mesquite...
We didn’t think anything of it since it was kind of nippy and someone could have been
burning wood in their fireplaces...
We told them to show us where they saw the plane go down and we walked over to the place they showed us.”
As the witness and the group moved closer to the spot, they felt an electrical charge
in the air followed by lights peeking through the trees.
As they got closer to the trees, they saw that the lights were emanating from an ‘oval
shaped’ object that was hovering a few feet off the ground.
The witness wrote:
“As we stood there in total shock, my brother next to me expressing his disbelief,
we saw two strange looking men appear from around the object...
They at first didn’t notice us, they were busy running around
and gathering objects from the ground, from the trees...
They didn’t seem to notice us at first, they looked to be about the size of my oldest nephew,
about 4 feet tall, but they looked very skinny, like they had no meat on their bones...
Their heads were large and their arms were long,
skinny and hung down around their knees.”
According to the witness, their nephew shouted to them,
which startled the creatures running around the shiny craft.
The witness said:
“That’s when the creatures turned and noticed us...
The sight of these creatures was something that will haunt me till the day I die...
It turned and looked right at us...
It’s eyes were large, almost like the eyes of a praying mantis,
except they were jet black and wrapped around its head...
The two creatures looked at us for about 7 seconds,
not an ounce of movement, before they calmly walked around the craft, one right after the other...
They disappeared behind the craft and we never saw them again.”
Other encounters with ‘praying mantis’ type creatures were also featured in the article,
however, these two are the most prominent.
Are these accounts proof of hybrid creatures living amongst us,
or is there a scientific explanation for what these witnesses saw?
Number 1 Woman Kill by Mysterious Animal
77-year-old Brenda Hamilton stepped out of her home in Pantego,
North Carolina near Pettigrew State Park for what would be the final time.
February 15th 2019 had started out like any other for Brenda,
she went about her daily routine before leavin before leaving to go for a walk.
Brenda was described as a pillar of the community, she was a school teacher at the Pungo Christian
Academy, having been there since 1968.
Everyone in Pantego knew her and nobody had a bad word to say about her.
So when she was discovered on the side of Indian Run Road, everyone was in shock.
According to reports, Brenda was badly mounded and had to be transferred to the nearest hospital.
Unfortunately, her injuries were too severe and Brenda passed away shortly after being admited.
News reports quickly sprang up about Brenda’s passing with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s
Office announcing that they were unable to determine what animal had caused her wounds.
DNA samples were taken from Brenda and submitted for testing, but the announcement by the Beaufort
County Sheriff’s Office left local residents fearful .
Was there a mysterious and unknown animal lurking in the woods, or was there a reasonable
explanation behind this?
Two long years later the University of Florida, who partnered with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s
Office, announced that DNA testing had finally revealed the animal responsible for Brenda’s injuries.
In a statement to WECT 6 News Ann Marie Clark of the University of Florida Forensic Programme said:
“Evidence suggested it was a domestic dog and there was no indication of a grey or red
wolf, coyote or fox.
It also suggests there was no bear or large cat, such as a bobcat or panther.”
Ann Marie also surmised that multiple dogs had attacked Brenda, finally putting to bed
the rumors that a dangerous and mysterious creature lurked in the woods around Pantego,
North Carolina.
Well friends there you have it!
What do you think of these stories?
I look forward to your comments.
As always, please be respectful in the comment section.
And before we go I want to remind everyone that all three volumes of my books National
Park Mysteries and Disappearances are available on Amazon.
If you enjoy our work here on the channel, you will love the books!
Your purchase directly helps the channel and helps fund and improve future content!
Links to all three books can be found in the description box below.
With that said take care of yourselves and each other.
I’m Steve Stockton, and I'll see you a little further on down the trail.