A Mattagami Lake, Ontario cottage owner recalls the tree-whacking sounds and blood-curdling screams emanating from the forest around his property for the past 20+ years.

"I bought a cottage on Mattagami Lake in June 2000. Mattagami Lake is located approximately 90 kilometers south of Timmins, Ontario off Highway 144 towards Sudbury. It's a water-access cottage and all the lots in our area are in the 1.5-acre range. We spend all of our summers there ever since then. I also grew up spending all my summers at our family cottage since the age of five so I'm no stranger to being surrounded by forest and I'm very familiar with the sounds of nature and wildlife that occupy the area.

As kids, we used to wander off into the odd logging roads behind our cottage in the middle of the night with no flashlights and no care in the world. We had never come across anything remotely scary strange or unexplained. Anyway, back to adulthood.

One night about 10 years ago my wife and I are out of a cottage on an early spring weekend. I believe this is either late April or early May the only other people around us that weekend were our neighbors two doors down on one side of us and my wife's parents three doors down on the other side of us. I know our neighbors well. They're in the 70s and they never wander around outside after dark nor are my wife's parents.

It's about 9 15 PM and getting dark fairly fast. My wife and I are sitting by the fire behind the cottage facing the woods. The forest behind our cottage is vast for many miles. My wife decided to retire to bed about this time. After she went inside for bed I was sitting there quietly staring at the fire when I heard what sounded like three whacks at a good distance behind the cottage. It's hard to say exactly how far it was because I wasn't sure what I heard. I estimate that it might have been somewhere between half a kilometer to one kilometer straight back based on the trailing echo from the sound. I didn't pay much attention to it but I did notice the sound. I wondered about it for a minute or so.

Another 10 to 15 minutes goes by and then I heard it again. The same thing, three whacks. But this time it is considerably closer and louder and there's a lot less echo. I thought maybe a moose was hitting antlers against a tree but at that time of year, they don't have their antlers yet. Besides, the three consistent whacks seemed too well-timed and way too loud for that. I sat there for a good 15 minutes trying to figure out what the noise could be. Then after about 15 minutes, I heard the same three whacks again, but this time it was really close, probably within several hundred feet. I immediately rose up out of my chair. This wasn't making any sense to me. The bush is thick back there and it was pitch black by this time and there was no light to be seen. I'm standing by the fire with only a pen-sized LED flashlight. I could barely see the tree line from the fire. I was concerned and I thought about going to the garage for an ax, but I didn't want to get away from the cottage at this point so I quietly and slowly walked along the deck toward the front of the college. I stopped there for a few minutes and listened for a bit, then slowly walk back again toward the back of the cottage. I stood there listening attentively.

After a moment the three whacks came again but now it was probably less than 100 feet away right at the tree line somewhere behind the fire pit. I immediately ran towards the front of the cottage, went in, and locked the door. I made my way to the back bedroom to look out at the firepit. I peeked my head up the window carefully and expected to see someone or something walking around back there. I saw absolutely nothing. I didn't hear anything.

It took me several hours to find sleep that night. My heart was still racing as I tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.

Something else happened out there a few years later but I was not alone this time. At least 10 of us were out there that night and we heard a blood-curdling scream from a few hundred yards away. Everyone stopped talking immediately and we all looked at each other wondering what the hell that was. Soon after the same type of scream can be heard way back in the forest as if it was answering the first screen. I scoured the internet listening to all kinds of animal sounds and screams and nothing comes close to what we heard that night.

Was it a Bigfoot? We have never seen anything closely resembling a Bigfoot, but I believe that's what we have around us.

Transcribed source: The Round Table Of Knowledge By HTH

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