MAN FILMS BIGFOOT DIGGING GRAVES AT NIGHT—AND WHAT HAPPENED NEXT WILL MAKE YOU NEVER SLEEP AGAIN

You won’t believe what happened outside Skykomish in late October 2019. I still don’t. I haven’t slept the same since that night. I went out for owls and came back with a memory I can’t shake loose—because that night, in an old logging cemetery, I recorded something that should not exist. Something that changed how I see the world, the woods, and myself. This is not a campfire story. This is the truth about what I saw, what I filmed, and what I will never, ever forget.

I’m not a thrill-seeker. I don’t chase ghosts. I’m 40, I run a small YouTube channel about wildlife and trail skills. A couple thousand followers, enough to pay for boots and gas, nothing more. I film alone because I like the quiet, because a camera hears better when no one else is talking. The Cascades feel like home—moss, cedar, the kind of damp that gets in your bones. I grew up two valleys over. My older cousin went missing as a teen, vanished on a weekend hike. No one found him. My family doesn’t talk about it. We all just got quiet in different ways. Mine was the camera.

That week, I drove an old forest road until the gravel broke into potholes and grass. There’s a cut locals use to get wood; it passes an old cemetery from the logging days. Ten or twelve headstones, some tilted, some sunken. No fence, no sign. Most people don’t know it’s there. A guy at the bait shop pointed it out years ago when I was looking for frogs to record. He said it was a piece of history. Then he added, real casual, “Don’t go there after dark.” He laughed, but wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I wasn’t there for scares. Late October is good for recording owls. My plan was simple: hike in by late afternoon, hang two audio recorders, set my small tent in the trees, get some night calls, pack up in the morning. One night only. It drizzled the whole drive. The road narrowed, the turnoff showed as two muddy ruts curving into brush. I parked by a rotting stump and killed the engine. It was quieter than it should have been. No chainsaws, no dogs, just the faint drip of rain through needles.

I walked in with my pack and tripod. The ground had that slick feel like you could skate if you let your weight go. Leaves stuck to my boots. I found the cemetery without trying. The headstones were pale against the ferns. Names half gone. One read “Avery” and a year ending in 18-something. Another leaned like a loose tooth. A cedar had pushed up one corner of the plot, roots like knuckles coming out of the earth. I set my tent twenty yards back, out of sight. I told myself that was so I wouldn’t step on anything, not because I was spooked.

I put an audio recorder on a tripod near the stones, another in a tree facing downhill toward the creek. The trail cam went on a sapling pointing across the cemetery at chest level. I don’t bait, don’t leave food, don’t change the place. I just watch and listen. While I worked, I kept smelling dirt. Not the clean loam after rain—heavier, clay and metal. I told myself it was the roots, or the ground shifting after rain.

By dusk, mist came in soft and low. The trees held a lot of water from the week, it fell in little patters. I cooked on the stove—plain rice and canned soup. Bird calls faded. A coyote yipped way out, then the long hold of quiet before night, when the forest feels like it’s inhaling and waiting. I checked my phone—lost signal right then. No bars. Didn’t bother me. I sat by the tent, camera on tripod pointed through the trees toward the stones. I zoomed until the marks on the closest one looked ghost-pale and sharp. Fog moved like breath across the lens. I pulled my jacket tighter. At full dark, owls started up further down the valley. Good sound. I recorded notes—wet leaves, sulfur smell, question mark.

Around nine I heard the first thump. Not a branch falling—I know that sound. This was low and hollow, like someone dropped a 50-pound sack of grain onto soft ground. Then a pause, then another, not regular. I stood, clicked off my headlamp, let my eyes adjust. The camera saw more than I did. I leaned in and watched the tiny screen. Nothing, just softness. I listened. Another thump. Closer this time. I swallowed the urge to call out. That’s a rule I have: let the woods announce themselves. Don’t answer.

I took the handheld cam off the tripod and slid into the trees, slow so I wouldn’t crunch every twig. My breath sounded loud in my ears. At the edge of the cemetery, I saw steam—a little coil rising from the ground around one of the stones. I smelled that heavy earth smell, stronger now. Metal, wet clay. Then I heard it: the sound of dirt being moved. The rhythm of drag, lift, toss. I’ve dug latrines a hundred times. I know that sound.

“Hey,” I whispered before I thought. It sounded wrong in the quiet. I bit it back and stepped behind a cedar. The sound stopped. I held still until my calves shook. Something moved on the far side of the stones—a dark shift, a shoulder rising above a waist-high mound. I raised the camera and clicked record. There’s a certain wrong size your brain rejects before it lets you see. This was that. The shape was too tall to fit where it was standing. When it straightened, its head was above the tallest stone by two heads more. It stood with dirt sliding down from its elbows. One arm hung longer than I expected, hand below the knee. The body looked like a piece of the forest peeled up and given weight. Dark, wet, shoulders rounded, head forward, no clear neck. The whole thing was just mass.

I didn’t say bear, not even to myself. Bears move different. They tip and roll like they’re thinking with their nose. This thing uncoiled slow, like it had all the time and all the quiet. It stood and breathed. I heard the breath, deep but not loud. I smelled the sulfur sour again, and underneath it a rot that wasn’t full rot, not dead animal. August rot, like something pulled up from where it should stay. The camera shook in my hand. I didn’t want to blink. My eyes watered, I blinked anyway. When I opened them, the shape had stepped forward, now between two stones. It crouched, set a hand down—fingers thick, blunt, packed with dirt. It reached into the ground like kneading bread. Drag, lift, toss, but no shovel. Just its arm, moving earth in smooth rolls of shoulder and back.

It kept digging. The grave took shape, earth blacker and wetter than the rest. There was a soft hiss, then a wooden snap. It had hit board. That sound is in me now. Dry wood giving under wet weight, like a brittle rib, like a coffin plank that had waited years for this night to break. I gagged quietly. The thing didn’t flinch. It leaned in, put both hands down as if bracing, then pulled. The line of its back changed under the hair, two thick cables from shoulder to hip. It didn’t jerk or strain—it just pulled, and something cracked. The smell that came up made my eyes burn. I took a slow step backward. My heel slid, I caught myself on wet bark. I didn’t make a sound, or I thought I didn’t, but a crow woke and gave one single call.

The thing stopped. It lifted its head enough that I saw the faintest catch of light in its eyes—not red, just a wet shine. I went still. It paused. The forest went dead. My heart hammered so hard I felt it in my teeth. My hands felt numb, but the camera still pointed. The red record light was a pin on the side of the screen. I put my thumb over it to hide it. I don’t know how long we stayed like that. Long enough for my legs to shake again. Then it did something I didn’t expect. It huffed—a short, deliberate huff, like fogging a mirror. Then it went back to pulling. I started to cry, not out loud, just tears running because my body wanted an outlet.

When it finished opening the hole, it reached in, vanished to the shoulders, and brought up a piece of board with nails, then a bundle of rotted cloth. It was careful—surprisingly careful, like a person who’s done a job a lot and knows how not to break what’s left. The bundle came apart in its hands. I saw a thin slither of white catch the light and drop. It tilted its head, dog-like, sniffing a puzzle. There was no sound for a long beat. Then another huff, gentler. It set the bundle on the grass beside the hole. I should have left, but my legs had other plans. I stayed, because my mind grabbed onto one idea: I’m recording this. If I have this, then I can make sense of it later.

It lifted one handful of dirt and poured it over the bundle, like covering a sleeping child with a blanket. Only a handful. Then it stopped, sat back on its heels, put one hand flat on the earth next to the hole, and held it there. Not a human hand, but the gesture was human enough that my chest hurt. It stayed like that for a long time, quiet, head low. I thought I heard a sound come out of it, a tone you feel in your ribs more than hear. Not a word, a tone. Then it started filling the hole—scoop, toss, press. The earth rose, it made a little mound, patted it once, heavy, sealing it.

It wasn’t stealing from the dead. It was doing something to the grave—fixing it, checking it, moving it. My brain overloaded trying to label it. It stood, taller than anything I’d ever been close to. Wet hair hung in clumps, wrist thick, something white clung to its forearm—mold from the wood. It shook its arm, it flew off in a wet sheet. Then it lifted its head and looked past the stones into the trees. Not at me. Something moved in the brush off to my left—a smear of dark, eye shine, two points, not as high, not as solid, a small sound, a thin whine. My skin went cold. There were two or more. A smaller one, or something younger.

The big one made a click, heavy. The small one stopped dead. The big one turned, not toward me, but to the small one. Two strides, slow and deliberate, put one hand down where the small one had been. No fuss, just a slow exhale, then the brush settled. The small one moved away. The feeling in the air changed, like a tension wire loosened. I had a thought that this was a lesson—show the little one what not to touch. I wanted to laugh, not because it was funny, because it was this insane blend of normal and wrong—a big thing and a small thing in the woods at night, simple as deer, but at a grave.

Everything shifted. The big one stepped past the stones and into the trees, not toward me, but close enough that if I leaned, I could have touched the shoulder. I smelled it fully—wet hair, dirt, that sour note, and something like turned earth in winter. It didn’t look at me. I think it knew I was there. I don’t think it cared. It moved with the confidence of something that only fears a very short list of things. I wasn’t on that list. It passed into the brush. Then a snap, a breath, a shape low, four feet tall, dark as a boulder, stepped toward the stones, touched the dirt, the big one was there in a blink, a wall between the small one and the mound. Deep click. The small one backed up, sat on its heels, stayed. Lesson.

I must have been breathing shallow too long; my vision fuzzed. I put my hand against the tree to steady myself. Bark crumbled, made a tiny sound. The big one turned its head, not at me, but to the space right of me, listened for five heartbeats, then turned back to the small one and moved them both off the cemetery path and into the trees in three big steps. Slow, tucked, controlled. Like curtains being drawn aside and let go. When they were gone, the forest sound didn’t come back. That was wrong.

I should have packed up and left. Instead, I crept forward. The mound looked new, dirt a shade darker, four marks where big fingers had pressed. No footprints, just drag marks, a burlap sack. Steam rose from the mound. I pointed the camera, whispered, “This is not real.” I wiped my nose, stepped around the board, tried to pick up the board and set it out of the wet. Disrespectful, dumb. I was trying to balance an equation in my head: if something was opened, something should be closed. I took the edge of the board. It was lighter than I thought. That’s when it hit me—not a hand, not a body, a sound. Close behind me in the trees. One single exhale. Not hot, just present. I didn’t turn. My arms pulled in, shoulders rose, I made myself small. I put the board down gently. I waited for a touch that didn’t come. The breath did, one more, slower. Then the brush in front of me moved, pushed aside by something I couldn’t see, and I felt, more than heard, heavy footfalls slide past me to my right.

I stayed folded. I watched a shape in the space between trees, like a dark cloud moving across darker clouds. The big one. It walked past me, stopped at the mound, put its hand down, the small one behind it somewhere, a tiny click, a huff, then it turned its head and looked over my shoulder, not at me, but into the trees behind me, made a sound I felt in my gut. The small one answered with a soft rumble. They shuffled away, a current slipping off a rock. When the sounds were gone, my knees gave out. I sat in the wet, hands shaking, camera still rolling.

Fifteen minutes of footage, then twenty. My mind did math badly. Will the battery hold? Did I pack extra SD cards? Where’s my headlamp? Why does the air taste like coins? Eventually I stood, backed away, tent glow through the trees, crawled inside, zipped it shut. I held the camera like a wounded animal. I listened—nothing for a long time but the drip and, far off, a truck on a highway. I fell asleep. Don’t ask me how.

I woke to a different quiet. The light from my lantern was out. The tent felt cold. My breath fogged, I saw it drift. My camera was no longer on my chest. I reached for it, found it under me. I didn’t think about how it could have slid there. The tent zipper had a damp smear, long and narrow, like dishwater fingers across fabric. I checked the footage. The last clip had recorded for forty-seven minutes after I closed my eyes. The footage was pointed at nylon for a long time, then a pale smear when my breath fogged the ceiling. Then a shape passed across the pale, not a hand, not light, a shadow, moving in the wrong direction for outside. I heard breathing that wasn’t mine. Once, very softly, the sound of a fingertip dragging along nylon. I shut it off.

When I finally unzipped the flap, nothing moved. I did a slow circle with the headlamp. I saw the line where something had brushed the side of the tent and left damp. No clear prints, just a drag look in the needles. The smear led toward the cemetery. I didn’t follow it.

Here’s the worst: I was tolerated. That’s a sharp, small knife to live with. There is something in those trees that knew I was there. That walked around me, put its breath on the back of my neck, reached a hand or something like one against my tent while I slept—and let me go. Not out of kindness. Not because I was special. Because I was a mosquito you don’t bother to swat when you’re busy with something that matters.

I went to the ranger station. I asked if there had been disturbances at the old cemetery. The ranger looked at me like he’d been expecting a quiz. “You don’t want to mess around out there,” he said. An old logger on a bench said, “Sometimes they fix what the weather takes.” The ranger told me, “Be careful where you point a camera.” No forms, no notes, no night search. He didn’t ask for the footage. He didn’t want to know more. Or he already knew.

I dumped the footage onto my computer. The audio recorders picked up the drag, lift, toss. The trail cam got fog until the battery died. The handheld got the dark shapes at the edge, the smear of movement, the lean of a tall shadow. Enough to ruin my own peace, not enough to make a believer out of anyone who didn’t want to be. I edited a cut that night. I didn’t post it. I saved the file, named it October_Skykomish_Graves, moved it to an external drive, put the drive in a box behind winter socks. For a week, I didn’t sleep well. I would wake up with my breath caught, my chest hurting. I kept smelling dirt, heavy and wet. I didn’t go back.

A week later, a knock on my door. Two short taps, one long. No one in the hall, just an envelope taped to the door. No name. Inside, a photo—daytime, the same cemetery, a mound, a bouquet of dead flowers on a stone. On the back, block letters: “Leave it.” I took it to the ranger station. A younger ranger said it might be a prank. I agreed, took it back, kept it in the same box as the drive.

Sometimes at night, I wake up and reach for my camera like it’s a teddy bear. When I don’t find it, I panic, then remember it’s in the drawer. I stand at the window, watch the empty street, breathe until the world feels ordinary again. I think about going back a lot. Some days it’s almost a pull in my stomach. Curiosity is a kind of hunger. But there isn’t closure. There is only knowing, and there is a price for knowing.

The worst happened in a different way than people think. It wasn’t claws or blood. It was a mirror. Something looked at me without looking at me, and I understood my place in a food chain I’d forgotten I belonged to. Not top, not middle. Footnote. Also present: one man with a camera.

So that’s what happened. You wanted the truth, not the legend. Here it is. I went out for owls and came back with a weight I carry in my chest. Some things are bigger than fear. Some things are older than stories. And some things, if you’re lucky, will just let you walk away.