Tracking down infrasound: Interview with Sally in North Carolina

As a part of a continuing investigation, I have been finding people who have had something happen to them that seems as if it might be related to the infrasound hypothesis. You may recall I've had a series of posts about this already. For an overview of the theory, you can look here.

Here's the interview in its entirety. The first half deals with an experience Sally had in West Virginia in 1983 which probably doesn't have anything to do with infrasound, but it's interesting in itself so I'm including it.

DB: What we’re interested in is the possibility of some kind of an infrasound thing happening a couple of times when you were not necessarily out looking for bigfoot, right?

Sally: Right.

DB: But you noticed some strange feelings you were having, and that’s what is interesting to me. So this happened twice?

Sally: It happened at the waterfall, it didn’t happen on my first experience where the thing screamed at me.

DB: Ok, well you know the “screamed at you” story is interesting anyway so lets talk about that if it happened first, and then we’ll get to the infrasound stories.

Sally: OK. I was hiking down a trail in Pipestem State Park in WVa. It was June, a hot day -- beautiful weather. I was hiking down the trail with a friend of mine, we were in college together at the time. And the trail drops almost, I think it’s 1800 feet from the top of the hollar all the way down to the bottom.

DB: Yeah, I’ve actually been there so I’ve seen that area. I don’t think I’ve actually been on that trail you’re talking about, but I’ve been to Pipestem and the nearby environs.. about what time frame is that the we’re talking about?

Sally: It was in June of 1983.

DB: ’83, ok.

Sally: And it was the middle of the afternoon, and if you’ve ever seen the tramway at Pipestem, this is the only other way to get to the bottom is to go down the horse trail. So we were going down the trail. If my memory serves it’s two miles to the bottom, and we were probably about half way down, just walking and talking. And I do distinctly remember that there were no birds. No sounds. And then all of a sudden there was this blood curdling scream, that was just up the hill, just behind us. Maybe about 30 to 50 yards away. It was close. And it was incredibly loud. It sounded like a woman that was just enraged, and yet it didn’t sound human at the same time. So we started running because we didn’t know what it was. And we ran fast, because we were running downhill on a clear wide trail with no roots or rocks, so we ran *fast*. And I think we ran at least a half mile if not a mile before we stopped to catch our breath. We stopped long enough for me to ask my friend, “Was that a mountain lion? Was that a bear? Was that a bobcat?” and he’s sitting there saying, “No no no no no.” And then it screamed again.

DB: Uh huh!

Sally: It had followed us! And it was still just uphill, just behind us, a little bit further away than the first time, but it was still pretty close. So we took off running again and we ran all the way down to the bottom. Got to the bottom, and there’s no bridge across that river. And we waded across the river. It was about hip deep, and I can’t swim -- I was freaked out. But we got to the other side and never heard anything or saw anything, and at that point my friend was explaining to me that he grew up in a hunting family, and they’d hunted all over the country, and he’d heard all there is out there. He pointed out that if it was a predator, it wouldn’t have given away its location twice. And it if was prey, it wouldn’t have given away its location at all. And I was the one who actually tossed out, “Do you think it was bigfoot?” And he said, “Yeah, I’ve never believed in them before, but now I do.”

DB: Uh huh. Did you hear anything else, like did you hear any sounds in the woods besides the scream..

Sally: It was perfectly silent before the first one. I mean it was quiet, except for him and me yak yak yakking, but I do remember that there weren’t any birds. And then all of a sudden there was this incredibly loud scream, and there was no sound after it. Between screams of course we were running, and you couldn’t hear anything while you’re running. And then when we stopped to rest I don’t remember hearing birds, I don’t remember hearing anything up in the woods, because we were shocked when we heard the second scream.

DB: And what would you estimate was the distance of the second scream? A little further, a little closer..?

Sally: Just a little bit further away.

DB: Ok, some odd questions that I want to ask are, did anything appear in your mind when you first heard that scream?

Sally (pauses to think): No. It did not. I remember we stopped dead in our tracks, and both of us.. we both looked up hill. And I said, “What was that?” And he said, “I don’t know, but we’ve got to get the hell out of here!” And it happened just that quick.

DB: Right

Sally: So I didn’t have any feelings but fear.

DB: Right, right. Which is perfectly understandable when something screams and you don’t know what it is and you are on a mountain road and there’s nobody nearby!

Sally: And it sounds pissed off!

DB: Yeah. Now I’ve never heard that particular kind of vocalization and I keep hoping I’ll hear it one day. I have a number of friends who are into recording and they’ve had that scream screamed at them before they’ve got their recording stuff ready. I’ve got at least three friends who’ve said that they’ve done that. So I don’t think we have that one recorded, or if we have it.. I mean, have you ever heard that again from some of the files on the internet?

Sally: I have looked at every file on the internet, nobody has recorded that scream. I’ve heard it described as a woman dying. To me, it sounded like female rage. I’ll never forget it. If I ever hear it again, I’ll know it.

DB: Right. Well I think that probably wraps up that one, which is a good, although I’m sure it was terrifying to you, it was a good encounter. It’s what the BFRO would call a class B encounter, because you didn’t see it. But that sound -- what else could it be? Because you’ve probably heard by now what a bobcat sounds like, or what a mountain lion can sound like..

Sally: Yeah, and none of those sounds match it at all.

DB: Ok, now the possible infrasound situation happened much more recently, right?

Sally: Yes, that was.. it could have been early June. But it was this year, you could say early summer. And I was with a hiking group that went up to Brevard NC for the weekend. Everybody else in the hiking group likes to do fourteen mile forced marches up and down mountains and I don’t.

DB: Right!

Sally: So they went off on their little torturous track and I decided I was going to go waterfalling. And I was using a book that’s very popular here in North Carolina, that includes details on the trails to all the waterfalls. And I found one that’s called Eastatoe. And it’s basically in somebody’s back yard. And it’s very easy to get to and it looked like it’d be pretty. So that was on my list that day, so when I got there -- the house sits back from the road quite a distance, at least an eighth mile. They used to have a gift-shop that is in another little building in their yard, so there’s a little parking area. And their yard is very large. It’s sort of shaped like a V, with the two buildings at the wide part of the V and then it gets skinnier back toward the falls. The falls look like they are about 150, maybe 200 yards away. I’m not that great with distances, but you could see the falls from their house. So I parked, I walked all the way to the back of their yard, which was about a hundred yards. They had cleared the trees years ago so they could see the falls, I’m supposing. So there’s a layer of underbrush that’s maybe two feet high that goes the rest of the way up to the falls. There’s a well worn trail from all the people that have come there to see the falls. And the trees get closer and closer to you on either side as you approach the falls, but once you reach the falls, the clearing is still a good fifteen, twenty feet wide.

DB: Uh huh.

Sally: So I didn’t feel anything until after I got there. I got there and I’m like, “Wow, this is really pretty. I need to take a bunch of pictures.” And as soon as I lifted up my camera, I was just overcome with this feeling of fear, and dread, and I need to leave, I’m not welcome there.. And it was really strange, because you don’t often associate words with feelings, but the feeling was, “I’m not welcome here, I have to go away.”

DB: Uh huh!

Sally: At first it felt like it was all around me, but then it very quickly became focused form one area to my left. And I was afraid to look over there. I kind of tried to glance up at the underbrush, but it was like I was afraid to lift my eyes but so high. It was a *weird* sensation. And of course - I’m a very logical person, and I’m trying to do a lot of self talk, “There’s no reason to be scared, there’s nobody around here, just take your pictures, enjoy the waterfall,” and I couldn’t do it. I took the pictures and I started leaving. I just couldn’t hang around. If it hadn’t happened, I would have sat down on a rock and looked at those waterfalls for fifteen or twenty minutes, because they were beautiful. But I kept telling myself, “Stay calm, there’s no reason to get upset, there’s nothing going on here.” I snapped a few pictures. I stood there maybe five minutes max. And then I turned around, and I was making a conscious effort not to leave like I was afraid. And I don’t know why I felt like I had to do that. But I didn’t want to run. I mean, I wanted to run, but I knew it would be a stupid thing. I don’t know, I can’t explain it. It was totally emotional.

DB: Right.

Sally: So, I walked on back down through that short underbrush. And the entire time I still felt it, then when I got about half way across the yard it went away. And it went away in an obvious way.

DB: Now that’s very interesting. That’s a detail that matches Dennis’ experience too, that there’s a certain limit to the range of the feeling and as soon as you pass it, it’s like it just ended.

Sally: Right, it was like a switch flipped.

DB: You know in his case, he was really motivated to try and see it. So he kept going back, and then getting overwhelmed and leaving, and then going back again. So there was a definite limit to whatever effect that is.

Sally: Another interesting thing about it, based on what I remember about the chat session we had that night, he knew what it was when it happened to him, or he figured it out. Ok. I had just started looking into bigfoot, and that’s online. I saw a mention of infrasound, and I said, “Oh, that’s just some of that paranormal crap,” and I didn’t read it. So I was not predisposed in any way to expect or anticipate this happening to me. I was also not predisposed to assuming this had anything to do with bigfoot, or how I would react to it. So it was really interesting to hear his experience that night, and I’m sitting here thinking, “Geez, that must be what happened to me at the waterfall.”

DB: Yeah, he had the two different experiences and he gave me an awful lot of data to check against other people’s experiences, and that’s one of them. Another one was the thought, “I’m not welcome.” He used the same words. I’m not welcome, I have to leave, this is not my place.

Sally: Yeah.

DB: Those thoughts entered his mind also. He was also able to tell me about what was happening to him physiologically when he first got the fear.

Sally: Yeah, that thumping and everything?

DB: Well that’s the first one, but the one that just happened recently he didn’t hear the thumping. But it affected him physically, and he described what happened. Do you remember anything about what happened to you physically, like sometimes you feel your heart start to race..

Sally: It was.. I felt heavy inside. I felt full maybe, sick. It was weird, I felt it at the core of my being. And I don’t remember my heart racing. I don’t remember anything like he described for that first time, like that thumping or anything, but then again I’m sitting there in front of a waterfall that’s making a lot of noise. And there’s this constant roaring vibration in the ground. So I don’t know how much the waterfall may have interfered with some of those feelings. But that feeling of “I’m not welcome, and I need to be scared, I need to go away,” and all that, when I started feeling it, it was accompanied by this very strange feeling deep in my body. And it was just like this heavy, uncomfortable feeling. And then as I left, when the fear went away, so did that feeling. I remember the feeling was fading as I walked away, and then it stopped completely when the fear went away. And I mean, when the fear went away, it went away big time, then all of a sudden I was thinking, “Oh well wasn’t that silly, wonder what was wrong with me? I was just being stupid, maybe it was just because I was out here alone and I was overreacting to being by myself, and that was stupid.” And “Oh Look at these plants, I think I’ll take some pictures before I get back in the car.” It was like it didn’t matter anymore. Because it was such a weird psychological experience, and I guess that’s just how I dealt with it.

DB: Right, so there is something that is going on physically when we’re hit by infrasound.. or what I guess is infrasound. That’s why I think that some of this stuff is.. maybe not proving but suggesting.. because you’re feeling stuff going on inside your body, and as soon as the fear stops, suggesting that you’re out of the range of it, you stop feeling that inside your body too.

Sally: Right.

DB: So I’m thinking that maybe we’re on the right track with that. The last thing I would ask is whether you felt nausea or maybe a headache coming on or something like that?

Sally: Well.. that’s a good question. If this feeling had been worse, it would have been nauseating. It was sort of in that family of feelings. As far as headache goes, I have a lot of migraines, so if I’d had a headache at that time, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.

DB: I think that.. I mean obviously we aren’t going to be able to prove there was a bigfoot there, unless you actually got it in the picture. I haven’t scanned through there looking for the blobsquatches yet.

(both laugh)

Sally: Well when I took those pictures, I was aiming I think perpendicular to where the source was. The source was twelve.. ten or twelve feet off my left shoulder as I took those. It was close. And it was really strange because, to me, I felt the spot in the brush that I didn’t want to look at was not a huge spot. It was a tall spot. But there was a place that was only about six feet wide that I didn’t want to look at. And it was really strange that it was such a focused feeling of that’s where it was coming from.

DB: That is odd. Does that show up in your picture? You probably just told me that it’s not in your picture.

Sally: Right, yeah, it’s not.

I'd like to thank Sally for doing the interview with me. I have gotten to know her and I appreciate her intelligence and rationality. I also appreciate the fact that she has kept her mind open and is willing to share what she's experienced with the rest of us.

At some point, maybe right away, I'm going to do a post on what I've found in these infrasound stories that suggests there is an underlying phenomenon. These folks aren't just imagining things, in other words, if their experiences match. This is one of the areas in bigfoot research where there is nothing that prejudices folks. It has only been a part of the lore for a short time, and it hasn't made it in to the books and articles yet. So random folk around the continent aren't influencing one another into somehow imagining the same things. If their experiences match, it suggests something real is there underlying the experience.

Is it proof of bigfoot? I'm afraid not. Identifying a phenomenon like this is not the same as identifying its source. But the fact is, people report these things while they also report other indications of bigfoot, so there's an association, but it is rather tenuous at the moment. When I've built up the profile, I'll go back through the literature to see if I can find reports from long ago that match some of these points. I'm sure that I'll be able to. (And maybe I'll see if some of my readers wouldn't like to help in that search, so stay tuned..)