An Everything Bigfoot™ Campfire Tale: an original work of fiction. The people, places and events in this story are invented, and Pine Ridge Lookout is not a real tower. It is inspired by the wood knocks people commonly describe in Bigfoot reports, not by any real case.
The following pages were found in a spiral notebook in the cab of the lookout tower on Pine Ridge. The volunteer who wrote them, a retired schoolteacher named Ellen Marsh, had signed up for a three-week stint at the end of the summer fire season. She asked that her log be shared "so the next person knows to count."
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Day 1. 6:40 p.m.
Arrived at noon. The tower is everything the brochure promised: a glass box on stilts, sixty feet above a sea of pine. A narrow bed, a propane stove, a radio, a fire finder in the middle of the room, and windows on all four sides. You can see three valleys from up here and one thin ribbon of gravel road, the road I came up on.
The ranger who drove me up, a young man named Cody, showed me how to use the radio and the fire finder and then said, "Oh, and you might hear knocking at night. It's the tower settling. Old wood." He laughed. I laughed.
I'm writing that down because it seems important to note what I was told before anything happened.
Day 1. 11:15 p.m.
Heard a knock.
One, sharp, like a hammer on a fence post. From the woods to the north, not from the tower. I am quite sure of that. The tower creaks and groans when the wind moves it, but this was different. This was out there.
Probably a branch falling. Going to sleep.
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Day 2. 7:30 a.m.
Beautiful sunrise. Fog in all three valleys, so thick the ridges looked like islands. No smoke anywhere. Called in my morning report.
Asked dispatch, casually, if there were any campers on Pine Ridge. They said no permits had been issued for the area this month.
Day 2. 11:02 p.m.
Two knocks.
Tok. Tok.
Spaced about a second apart. From the north again, maybe a little closer. I went out on the catwalk with my flashlight, which was silly, because the beam just died in the trees.
I stood there a long time. No wind. No owls. The crickets had stopped. Not slowly, all at once, like someone switched them off.
Then from the south, across the ridge behind me:
Tok.
One knock. Like an answer.
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Day 3. 9:00 a.m.
I have been a science teacher for thirty-one years, so let me do this properly.
Possible explanations for the knocks:
- Falling branches. Against: they come at nearly the same time each night, and there's been no wind.
- Woodpeckers. Against: woodpeckers don't drum at 11 p.m., and the sound is single heavy blows, not a drumroll.
- Deer or elk. Bucks and bulls can knock antlers on trees. Possible, though it's early in the season.
- A person. Someone with a stick or a bat, having fun with the lady in the tower. Possible. That's what I'd bet on.
- The tower itself. Against: I was outside on the catwalk and could tell the direction.
I've decided it's number four. Some local kids, maybe. I'll mention it to Cody when he brings water on Friday.
Day 3. 11:00 p.m. exactly.
Three knocks. North. Then one from the south. Then, for the first time, one from the east, down toward the road.
I turned on every light in the tower so whoever is doing it would know I'm awake and not frightened.
I am a little frightened.
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Day 4. 2:15 p.m.
Walked down the stairs and around the base of the tower this afternoon, which I had not done since I arrived. The ground is mostly pine needles, hard to read. But in a patch of dried mud by the old water tank, there was a track.
I am not going to describe its size, because I didn't have anything to measure it with and I don't trust my memory. I will say I put my own hiking boot next to it, and my boot looked like a child's.
I took a picture with my phone. When I looked at it later, it just looked like mud. That's the way of things, I suppose.
Day 4. 11:00 p.m.
Four knocks from the north.
Then the south answered. Then the east. And then, from the west, the side of the tower facing the steepest drop, where nothing could possibly stand:
Tok.
I'm surrounded. I'm writing that sentence, and then I'm going to read it back, and then I'm going to decide that I'm being dramatic.
I read it back. I'm not being dramatic.
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Day 5. 8:00 a.m.
Told dispatch about the knocks during my morning call. There was a long pause on the radio, and then a different voice came on, an older man.
"How many last night?" he asked.
I told him four, then one from each side.
Another pause. Then he said, "Lock the trapdoor. Keep the lights on. Cody will come up early." And he signed off before I could ask him anything else.
The tower has a trapdoor in the floor at the top of the stairs. I hadn't thought of it as a door that locks. I found the bolt. It's new. Much newer than the rest of the tower.
Day 5. 4:30 p.m.
Cody didn't come.
Radio says the road washed out in a storm two valleys over. Tomorrow, they say. Possibly the day after.
There was no storm here. The sky has been perfectly clear all day.
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Day 5. 10:58 p.m.
Lights on. Trapdoor bolted. Sitting in the middle of the room on the fire finder stool, as far from every window as I can be. Writing so my hands have something to do.
11:00 p.m.
Five knocks from the north.
They're closer. I can feel them in the floor now.
11:01 p.m.
South. East. West. One each.
11:02 p.m.
Silence. A long one.
The crickets haven't come back. Nothing has come back. It feels like the whole mountain is holding its breath.
11:04 p.m.
Something is on the stairs.
I can hear the steel steps flexing, one at a time. Slow. Heavy. Much heavier than Cody. Each step is followed by a pause long enough that I think it has stopped, and then another.
Sixty feet of stairs. Eight flights. I have counted the landings in my head every day since I got here. It is on the fourth landing. Now the fifth.
11:09 p.m.
It's under the trapdoor.
It hasn't touched the door. It's just there. I can smell it now, coming up through the floorboards. Like a wet dog that has been sleeping in a pile of rotten leaves. My eyes are watering.
I am not breathing. I'm trying very hard not to breathe.
11:10 p.m.
One knock. On the underside of the trapdoor. Not hard. Almost polite.
Tok.
Then a second, from the same place.
Tok.
Then nothing.
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Day 6. 6:50 a.m.
The sun is up. I'm alive. I didn't sleep. At some point the stairs flexed again, going down, and the smell went away, and around 3 a.m. the crickets came back all at once, as if someone had turned them on again.
I haven't opened the trapdoor. I'm waiting for Cody.
Day 6. 9:20 a.m.
Cody came. He said the road was fine. He said there had never been a washout. He said nobody at dispatch had talked to me about a trapdoor, and nobody at the station was older than about forty.
I asked him who installed the new bolt on the trapdoor.
He looked at it for a long time, and then he said, "Ma'am, I think you should pack your things."
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Last entry.
I'm leaving this notebook in the tower on purpose. If you're the next volunteer, please read this part carefully.
Count the knocks.
Each night there was one more. Each night it came a little closer. And on the last night, it knocked twice on the door I'd locked.
I've thought a great deal about those last two knocks. I don't think it was trying to get in. I think it was telling me something. Two knocks, the way you'd knock on a neighbor's door just to let them know you'd stopped by.
I don't know what it would have done on the next night.
I don't intend for anyone to find out.
E. M.
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About this story
This is a work of fiction written for the Everything Bigfoot™ Campfire Tales series. Ellen Marsh, Cody, Pine Ridge and its lookout tower are invented. Wood knocks are one of the sounds most often described in Bigfoot reports, and they often have ordinary explanations like falling limbs, woodpeckers or other people. Our upcoming guide to Bigfoot sounds vs. animal sounds explains how to tell common forest noises apart.
Need another chill? Read The Whistle in the Hollow. And if you ever hear something real that you can't explain, our guide on how to report a Bigfoot sighting shows you what to write down.
