Unknown Creatures Caught On Camera We Cannot Explain

Massive, unidentified birds lifting people into the air, giant ape-like figures stalking hikers mere feet away in the wilderness, and more, these are unknown creatures caught on camera we cannot explain. What you're looking at here is a compilation of footage captured by a man named Chief A.J. of supposed Thunderbirds. He captured the footage way back in the summer of 1977. His real name was John Huffer, and he worked as a combat photographer before turning his attention to reports of giant birds being seen around southern Illinois. There was a fair amount of interest in the sightings because of a well-known report at the time called the Marlon Lowe Incident, where two boys claimed that enormous birds swooped down and lifted one of them off the ground before dropping him. Huffer later said he'd been hired by a CBS television affiliate to investigate the reports. While searching the area with his camera, he noticed two huge, dark birds circling overhead. He quickly started filming, and managed to capture several seconds before they disappeared into the distance. The footage is grainy, but you can clearly make out large birds soaring through the sky. The most common explanation is that the film shows turkey vultures that live all over southern Illinois. And without a good point of reference, it's easy for large birds to seem absolutely enormous on camera. Some people think they could have been bald eagles as well, but that hasn't ended the debate. Huffer spent years working as a photographer, and he knew the wilderness very well, so believers argue he'd have been less likely than the average person to confuse everyday birds with something else. Over the years, the footage has shown up in several cryptid documentaries, including Monster Quest, introducing it to a whole new audience. Nearly 50 years later, nobody's been able to 100% say what Huffer really filmed. It's still considered some of the best-known pieces of alleged Thunderbird footage ever recorded. Back in 2018, this cryptid investigator named Jonathan Downes dropped a pretty crazy video. So a group of dirt bikers were riding along a trail in Sumatra, when this very short person, possibly, suddenly popped out and sprinted down the track right in front of them. The bikers tried to chase it down, but the thing was just too fast, it bolted and vanished straight into the thick bushes on the side of the path. Downes was pretty much 100% sure it was an Orang Pendek, which is this local legend in Sumatra that literally translates to short person. People over there have been seeing them for over a century, describing them as little upright walking ape men, living up in the mountains. He said, If I were going to put a probability on the existence of it, I would say 99%. We know so much about it, we've heard them, we've got footprints, and in 2009, two people actually saw one. Downes' theory was that it wasn't a monster at all, but basically a kind of species of orangutan that adapted to walk on two legs on the ground, instead of swinging through the trees. So, a couple years ago in mid-October, a woman named Barb and her hiking partner were out in Vancouver Island, deep in the backcountry. It was the middle of the week, miles from any real civilization, and they hadn't seen another soul all day, until they spotted someone, at least they thought it was someone, lurking about 100 feet away, up a hill. There was this strange figure watching them intently, they had bear spray with them, but the figure didn't approach, it just stood there, scowling down at them. They stood there staring at each other for a couple minutes, trying to figure out what on earth they were looking at, but they got absolutely no reaction. Barb grabbed her phone, her hands were kind of shaking at this point, and she snapped a picture. When the figure finally turned to move away, she noticed it was ridiculously tall and covered in air. Needless to say, they didn't hang around to ask any questions, they turned right around and hiked out in the opposite direction. Sure, given it was October, maybe someone was doing a Halloween prank, wearing a super elaborate costume, but miles into the middle of nowhere, wilderness, on a random weekday, seems like a pretty weird place to pull a prank. Even now, when Barb thinks about the hike, it still creeps her out. Back in 2014, two guys named Jason Heal and Jason Dunn were convinced they caught Australia's version of Bigfoot, the Yowie, on camera, down in South Queensland. They'd been hunting for the creature since 2012, searching through national parks all across Queensland and New South Wales, but this time they tried a different tactic, bribery with fruit. They left out a pile of apples on a rock to lure it out. According to them, it worked, too. On a Saturday morning, they captured footage of what they claimed was a juvenile Yowie. When they posted the video to YouTube, they pointed out how the figure moved, writing In 2016, another Yowie video caught some traction. The clip, which ended up on the Yowie Hunter's YouTube channel, showed this dark, hunched-over figure making its way through a forest in New South Wales. People filming were about 100 metres away from the creature. Around that same time, though, a woman walking through Queensland's Darling Downs had a even closer encounter. She claimed she got within 20 feet of an ape-like creature. She described it as a, quote, muscular, seven-foot tall creature with a head like a gorilla and long arms. She ended up reporting it to Dean Harrison, a well-known investigator with Australian Yowie Research, and told him she tried to get it to turn around but was scared and didn't want to aggravate him. Harrison backed up her story, calling the report credible, saying it had all the classic According to him, that made 10 separate sightings in Queensland over just five years. While most people brushed off Yowies as pure folklore, Harrison and his group are convinced there are actually undiscovered apes out there in the outback. This video was captured by a man named Mark, a 45-year-old land surveyor who spent basically all his time out in the Appalachian foothills, so the woods were pretty much his second home. But on this particular day, he was out working when he got this weird feeling like something was watching him. The forest had gone completely silent, and there was this heavy, nasty smell in the air. He described it as a mix of wet dogs, skunk, and copper. He pushed through some thick brush, stopped in his tracks, looked down, and just 10 feet away, behind some dead branches and vines, something was crouching there, staring right back at him. Instead of running, like any normal person would, Mark's brain just turned off, pulled out his phone, and started recording. This wasn't some blurry, brown smudge half a mile away on a ridge. At 10 feet, it was basically right there in his face. He was looking at this massive, ape-like creature covered in dark fur. It had a heavy brow ridge, almost no neck, and ridiculously wide shoulders. He could see its chest rising and falling as it breathed, and its eyes were locked on his camera. This lasted for about 15 seconds, and then the thing moved. It shoved itself backward into the brush, and with so much force, Mark could feel the ground shake, snapping thick branches like toothpicks. That was the moment Mark's brain finally, like, kicked back in, and he scrambled out of there. Wildlife guys said Mark was crazy for standing his ground. An animal that size could have easily crushed a guy in a second, but he chose to run away instead. Which does fit with a lot of stories about Sasquatch being more of a quiet, elusive creature than a violent monster. Crazy part was Mark didn't post the video on YouTube at first, he just showed it to a couple researchers, but only to make sure he wasn't losing his mind. This piece of footage was taken by Todd Standing, who's captured some pretty cool Sasquatch footage over the years. If you've seen some of my Bigfoot videos on the channel, you've heard his name before. This is often regarded as one of his most convincing videos. Here, he saw an ape-like creature peeking out from behind a tree root, and he was able to focus in and get some pretty clear footage of its face. It is some pretty solid video. We get a nice clear look at the thing, at least, and this isn't it. Standing also captured these infamous images of a supposed Sasquatch peeking out from behind some branches. And I appreciate the fact that we see actual faces in these instances, much different than your standard supposed Sasquatch footage, which usually just consists of some dark, blurry thing far off in the distance. This final clip comes from a woman named Mandy Mary. She and her family had been seeing dark figures lurking in their back house. So one night, Mandy and her son went back there. While she was recording, her son was right behind her and decided to mess with her by flicking the light off to give her a quick scare. But the second the lights went dark, the camera caught something. As the outdoor light bled through a window frame, a dark shadow figure showed up. Someone or something was in the room with them. When people tried to write it off, saying it was probably just her son, Mandy shut that down. According to her, he was standing right behind her the entire time, while the figure appeared over in the reflection of the window in the middle of the room, nowhere near where they were standing. And again, Mandy also said weird stuff had been happening constantly around the back house. Shadowy figures were walking back and forth almost every night, constantly triggering her motion sensor lights. And to make matters worse, about a month prior, something shook her door with so much force, that her entire hallway rattled.