BFRO #28095: Man recalls possible encounter at a family cabin in Big Cottonwood Canyon outside Salt Lake City

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It was in 1964 around August. I was at a family cabin with a friend of mine. I was born and raised in Salt Lake and when we were in junior high middle school one or the other of our parents would drive us out to our cabin in Cottonwood Canyon, Salt Lake County. One or the other of our parents would drive us up to the family cabin and drop us off for the weekend or a few days and then the other parents would come pick us up. I had spent a great deal of time in Big Cottonwood Canyon because of my grandparents' cabin. I went deer hunting regularly with my father when I was younger and later on by myself. So I thought I knew everything there was to know about that canyon. We got dropped off, got settled in and being 14 or so there was no drugs, no alcohol no mind altering nothing - at all, just good straight kids enjoying a little camping trip making us feeling grown-up. Its hard to describe the feeling of utter isolation. In the summer time, mid week,it was not uncommon to not see a single car or truck for four days on that dirt road, no telephones of any kind. We used to go hiking, get up in the morning and decide which direction to go, up or down the road. We decided we would go up the road and it was so hot and so dusty that you couldn't help but see there were a great number of deer tracks heading down the canyon. I mentioned it to my friend and he said there has always been a lot of deer, but I was like yeah but its summer time and its hot and they normally go higher up in elevation where they got the creeks and they shouldn't be going down this low. As we walked along, I looked down at a set of cat tracks and I said my god that's why they are heading down the canyon, we got a cougar on the prowl. They got the deer moving down the canyon, their afraid of it. We got up the next morning, we went down the road toward the Big Cottonwood highway. We used to leave fishing hooks on a line in a creek down the road, we got so absorbed in playing in the creek we didn't realize it was getting dark, the bats were coming out. We decided to head back toward the canyon. By this time it was really dark it was hard to see your hand in front of you. As we go up toward the road towards the cabin you could be level with the ground on one side or you could be staring at a dirt wall on the other side, where they cut thru the hillside to put in the road. As we walked along I kept feeling like there was something not quite right and I said Dean stop. Just stop, don't ask me just stop. I heard a crunch and whatever made the sound would have been following alongside of us. And when we walked, it walked and when we stopped it stopped, about one step behind us. I said Dean we are being hunted, its that cougar and we didn't know exactly what to do so we kept on walking and sure enough you could hear it crunch, crunch, crunch, some very large animal. And I said Dean I think this is a bear its just too noisy to be a cougar and it is after us. Well we stopped and picked up a good size rock on the side of the road and decided if it came out of the darkness toward us we would throw a rock in its direction and take off. So the two of us are stopped and staring into the darkness, laterally you could see nothing but black, and we hear a low guttural growl, it wasn't feline, it wasn't bear it wasn't human. It was just unearthly and we looked at each other and we took off running as fast as we could go. The road toward the cabin and the outhouse leveled off. To get from the cabin to the outhouse you would walk straight out and another 50 yards to the right and then there was the outhouse, it was right alongside the gully. So we forfeited the long way on the road and dropped into the gully, ran past the outhouse, ran into the cabin, slammed the door and locked it. And all of a sudden you could hear the outhouse door open and slam shut. Oh, we were terrified, we flipped on the light outside the cabin to the outhouse and couldn't see a thing, no movement no noise and it dawned on me - a cougar doesn't hide in an outhouse, a bear didn't hide in an outhouse. I had no idea what it was. I had heard of bigfoot or yeti and I knew about those but thats in Tibet and Nepal and I had no idea there was anything other than an occasional bear or a few cougars. So we are glued at the window in the cabin, staring at the outhouse. We then got tired of watching, stopped looking out the window and then you could hear the outhouse door fling itself wide open and whatever it was crashing through the undergrowth. We took our kitchen knives and went upstairs. Spent the night staring at the staircase wondering what was going to stick its head up to scare us to death. We got up the next morning, beautiful hot day and we thought let's try and salvage this and go the other direction and see whats up that way. So we took off toward Cardiff Mine, a lead and gold mine back in the old days. It got its name from Cardiff Wales where the ore was shipped. We had spent so much tim

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