Army Patrol Captures Thermal Footage of 8-Foot Figure in Montana

**Thermal Optics and a 7-Foot Figure: A Montana Military Encounter That Deserves a Second Look** Came across something pretty compelling over on the Mystic Wilds YouTube channel the other night, and it's been sitting with me ever since. It's a narrated story — part of their "Paranormal Tales" series — and while it's not fresh footage per se, the way it's told and the details included make it worth paying attention to, especially if you're someone who keeps up with encounters happening in remote, forested terrain. The story is set in October 2006, in western Montana, near the Bitterroot Range. The narrator is a retired staff sergeant named Daniel Hayes, who spent time at a small, little-known joint Army Air Force communications annex called Black Ridge. If you've never heard of it, you're not alone — most people haven't. It was the kind of place that barely registered on any map, tucked into a high forested basin with mountains rising on three sides. Cold War-era infrastructure, isolation, and a lot of nothing happening for long stretches of time. The kind of posting where the biggest complaints were usually the weather, the food, and the night shifts. Hayes ended up on perimeter patrol as punishment for a paperwork mistake — signing the wrong block on a transfer package and causing six hours of confusion. Major Holloway decided he needed ten nights walking fences instead of pushing papers. That's how he got paired with a quiet 20-year-old private first class from Wisconsin named Tyler Reed. The northern perimeter is where things get interesting. It drops toward a steep ravine full of fir, lodgepole pine, and broken rock. Beyond the ravine, the mountain rises again. There's also a concrete service building up there — R7 — a Cold War-era environmental and radiological monitoring vault that had been repurposed for storage of low-level radioactive waste and old calibration sources. Nothing dangerous unless you did something stupid, according to the safety briefings. But the building itself, partially buried into the hillside with its steel access door and two security cameras, sits right at the edge of that ravine. Reed had already been hearing things before Hayes showed up. Footsteps. Breathing. Movement in the trees. The kind of reports that get dismissed as bored soldiers inventing monsters at 3 a.m. But Reed wasn't the type to play it up. When Hayes asked him what he thought it was, Reed just said, "I don't know." That answer, honestly, is more unsettling than any confident Bigfoot claim would have been. Things escalated over the course of those ten nights. Reed called Hayes to Post 3 after hearing someone — or something — walk behind R7. The gravel was wet enough to hold prints. There were none. Forty-three minutes later, Reed called again, whispering. It came back. It was breathing. When Hayes arrived, nothing was there. The radiation monitor read normal background. The woods were still. Then the cameras started acting up. And this is where the story shifts from campfire tale to something harder to wave off. Fourteen feeds covered the northern sector. Hayes and Reed watched as cameras 8, 9, 10, and 11 failed in sequence — not randomly, but moving north along the perimeter. Camera 11 caught a glimpse before it went down. A vertical shape between two trees. Too vertical. What looked like an arm, with a hand hanging below the level of the knee. A head near a branch that Hayes knew was well over seven feet from the ground. Then the feed corrupted. The file stopped two frames before the shape appeared. Everything after was unreadable. The cameras came back online later in the same order. No technician touched them. The real moment, though, comes on a later night. Reed asks Hayes to bring the thermal monocular — a piece of equipment kept in the cabinet for wildlife identification and perimeter checks. He doesn't want to be told it's a deer again. Hayes signs it out and drives to Post 3. Reed is waiting near the edge of the ravine, not looking at him, just pointing across the darkness. Hayes raises the thermal. Sweeps left to right. Nothing. Comes back. And there it is. A figure standing between the trees, about 140 yards out, maybe more. Upright. At least seven feet tall, probably closer to eight. Narrow shoulders. Arms so long the hands hung somewhere near the middle of the lower legs. That's where the discussion cuts off, but the image is already painted. A tall, narrow-shouldered, long-armed figure caught on thermal optics in a remote Montana forest, near a military installation with a history of strange perimeter reports and cameras that conveniently fail in sequence. What makes this story stand out isn't just the description — it's the context. Military personnel. Thermal equipment. A trained observer. A second witness. A location that fits the profile of countless other reports coming out of the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies. The Bitterroot Range, for those who follow this stuff, has a long history of sightings. It's the kind of terrain that big, far-ranging hominids would thrive in — dense cover, elevation, water, and plenty of space to avoid people. The full story, including whatever comes after that thermal sighting, is worth the listen. Mystic Wilds does a solid job with the narration, and the pacing builds in a way that doesn't feel rushed or sensationalized. It's told like a man recounting something that genuinely happened to him, not someone trying to sell you a t-shirt. If you've got an hour to spare and an interest in encounters that happen outside the usual trail-cam and windshield-stamp territory, this one belongs on your list.