Videographer Captures 34 Seconds of Bigfoot in Washington Forest
Posted Friday, July 31, 2026
By Squatchable.com staff
So there's this video making the rounds right now from the YouTube channel Error 199, and honestly, it's the kind of footage that makes you sit up straight and pay attention. If you haven't seen it yet, you're going to want to carve out some time for this one.
The story centers on Alex Thompson, a 32-year-old tourist and amateur videographer from Portland, Oregon, who decided to spend a few days in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest back in October 2017. His goal was straightforward: capture footage of elk during the autumn rut season. He set up camp south of Mount St. Helens along Forest Road 23, a remote area perfect for wildlife observation. Alex was well-equipped, pragmatic, and by all accounts, not someone who entertained forest monster stories. He was there for the elk. That's it.
But the forest had other plans.
The first night, around 2 AM, Alex was jolted awake by a deep, heavy thud nearby. Not a branch falling. Not wind. Something had struck a large tree with tremendous force, followed by absolute silence. No growls, no footsteps retreating. Just... nothing. He stayed awake for an hour, flashlight in hand, but the woods stayed quiet. He chalked it up to a falling tree or maybe a bear knocking a rock loose.
The next evening, he found the source. A young but sturdy Douglas fir, roughly 15 centimeters in diameter, had been snapped at about two and a half meters up. But it wasn't cut or wind-fallen. The trunk was twisted and broken, fibers jutting in every direction, as if something had gripped it with enormous strength and wrenched it apart. No claw marks. No teeth scoring the bark. Just raw, splintered wood.
That night, the sounds returned. Heavy, measured footsteps. Boom. Pause. Boom. Not the shuffling gait of a bear. Not the elegant stride of a deer. Something bipedal. Something massive. The footsteps passed roughly 50 meters from his tent and faded into the trees.
At dawn, Alex followed the sound to the creek. What he found there stopped him cold. Humanoid footprints in the mud, each one at least 45 centimeters long. Five toes clearly defined. A defined heel and arch. But far too wide for any human. His size 43 boot looked like a child's shoe next to them. The depth of the impressions told the real story: whatever made these tracks was incredibly heavy.
Now here's where the story takes a turn that will leave you speechless. Instead of packing up and leaving, Alex made a decision that would change his life forever. He grabbed his camera, his first aid kit, and followed the tracks.
About an hour into the hike, deep in old-growth timber, he heard branches cracking ahead. He peered around a giant sequoia trunk and saw movement in a small clearing roughly 100 meters away. Something tall. Something dark. Something upright. Too tall to be a bear standing on its hind legs.
He hit record.
The creature turned its head toward him. Even at that distance, Alex felt the weight of its gaze. Then it made a sound, low, guttural, vibrating, like it was rising from the ground itself. Not a roar. Not a growl. A warning. And then it took a step toward him.
Alex ran. He tripped, fell hard on his knee, got up, and kept running. The thing didn't chase him. It walked. But its strides were so long it nearly kept pace. When he broke through the brush toward the creek, it was already there, blocking his path.
And for the first time, he saw it clearly.
Three meters tall. Covered in long, matted dark brown fur, almost black. Long, powerful arms reaching nearly to its knees. Broad shoulders. And a face that was almost human, with deep dark eyes, a flat nose, and a wide mouth. But what froze Alex wasn't the size or the fur. It was the intelligence behind those eyes. A calm, cold, evaluating mind. It looked at him the way a person looks at an insect that wandered into the wrong room.
The creature raised its massive hand slowly.
Thirty-four seconds. That's how long the recording lasted. The first ten seconds are shaky, blurred footage of a dark mass against green fir trees, the camera desperately trying to focus. Then, at the eleven-second mark, the focus locks. And there it is. Right there in the frame.
The aftermath was brutal. Alex ended up in the hospital with broken ribs and a ruptured spleen. The official report? Bear attack. Case closed. But the footage, the twisted tree, the 45-centimeter footprints, and the physical evidence tell a completely different story.
This is one of those videos that sticks with you. The kind that makes you wonder what else is out there in those old forests, watching us the way we watch them. Definitely worth checking out the full video for yourself, especially if you're someone who keeps an open mind about what's walking these woods.
And honestly? That footage at the eleven-second mark is the kind of thing researchers have been waiting decades to see.