AI Summary
5 min readIn late fall 2005, radio host Joel Sturgis was camping alone at Whiteface Reservoir in northern Minnesota when a powerful, rancid odor began moving around his campsite. Then he noticed red eyes beyond the firelight. When he looked up, a massive, blonde-haired Bigfoot was standing twenty feet away, watching him. “How did something that large get within twenty feet without making a sound?” Sturgis still wonders. The encounter reshaped his life and launched a decades-long investigation into cryptids, the paranormal, and the strange connections between them.
A Close Encounter in the North Woods
Sturgis’s sighting happened at the same reservoir where, decades earlier, the “Minnesota Iceman” was allegedly shot by a man named Hansen. Sturgis was hunting grouse and camping alone in the off-season when the smell hit him—worse than rotten fish, he says, and moving as if carried by wind. When he finally spotted the creature, it was standing next to a birch tree he later returned to measure. The Bigfoot was blonde, with heavily matted hair, a pronounced brow ridge, and large, Neanderthal-like facial features. But what struck Sturgis most were its eyes. “It wasn’t like it was an animal running on instinct,” he says. “This thing was processing me. There was a lot of thought behind those eyes.”
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:00) **The Sighting Setup** - Radio host Joel Sturgis describes the location and atmosphere of his 2005 encounter at Whiteface Reservoir in Northern Minnesota
- 2 (13:21) **First Signs: Red Eyes in the Dark** - Joel notices unexplained red eyes beyond the firelight, then looks up to find a Bigfoot standing twenty feet away
- 3 (15:58) **The 20-Second Stare-Down** - Joel describes the terrifying but non-aggressive encounter when he and the creature locked eyes
- 4 (17:46) **Aftermath and Isolation** - Joel explains how the sighting affected him and why he clammed up about it for years
- 5 (20:17) **Investigating the Minnesota Ice Man Connection** - Joel researched whether others had similar encounters near the same location where the Minnesota Ice Man was allegedly shot
- 6 (27:27) **Learning the Ropes of Investigation** - Joel describes what he learned from experienced researchers after his sighting
- 7 (30:06) **The Wendigo Hunt** - Joel recounts a separate, terrifying experience hunting for a Wendigo in northwestern Minnesota with a Native American guide
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Show Notes
Joel shares the close-range encounter that kept him out of the woods for three years, the reports he later collected from people living near the reservoir, and his 1994 investigation with Loren Coleman in East Texas. He also takes us inside his years as a Coast to Coast AM board operator, his friendship with Art Bell, and his visit to the Sherman Ranch before it became widely known as Skinwalker Ranch.
The journey continues into Fouke, Arkansas, where a question about Bigfoot caused an entire cafe to fall silent—and local residents began sharing stories involving a three-toed creature, an arm reaching through a bedroom window, and a police officer confronting something outside a trailer.
Listen to Joel Sturgis’s remarkable journey through three decades of Bigfoot, paranormal radio, and unexplained encounters.
Resources:
After Hours AM:
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-after-hours-am-80599842/about
Barb Shupe Cloaked Video:
https://youtu.be/vBfMoFY_IlM?si=TofDcdLn6iJL6SGF
https://www.joelsturgisbooks.com
Get the free Bigfoot hotspots report: https://bit.ly/bfsreport
📖 Follow Jeremiah's cancer health updates here:
https://www.caringbridge.org/site/569ef3d3-68be-11f1-8790-97fdfd2bbc64
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