This recording was taken in January, and the intial audio files were posted shortly there after (original thread here). However, thank's to Paul's diligant dedication, we are getting some much better copies of the sounds from the original tape.

To read the report for this trip, you can click here.

To hear the audio of the wood knocks right click and save as.

Thanks Monk

Thank Paul for the clear copy. All I did was go and sit in the woods in the dark.

Well Thanks to both of you Good recording !!

Nice and clear. Excellent

More to come from this Paint.
And...working on another recording I have, also, as I think you are aware....

Like I, and Paul said, I hope to have the full suite so to speak up on my site soon. As soon as its uploaded I'll be sure to post the update. Thanks again Paul.

Glad to help Sam, even if it did take a bit longer than originaly planned!
(now...are you sure you want the ENTIRE suite up?.......: )

You can leave out the end.

jest' askin'..

The forum says...



Is that really what you want to critque? Cause if it is, I can do better. :dance:

I have a tinkling..erm..inkling..that what's on the end of the tape is not what everyone wants to hear!(thanks S!)
(I'm just glad thats ALL I heard!!)
Seriously..so as not to derail this thread....we will have more ready for posting soon!

Those wood knocks are great. I've heard some wood knocks too and have always wanted to have something to compare to what I heard.

Good job guys!


I do miss hearing BM say "sh*t" on this version though.

That's on the other sound clip that Paul is working on. Didn't know you were such a dirty bird Jay.


On a serious note I noticed something last night while listening to the sounds again that I had never noticed before. The tempo seems to increase from the first few knocks to the last. Not sure if that has any actual bearing on anything but it was enough to catch my attention.

Why couldn't it be the sound of distant gun fire?

(Edited to put in a working link. You'll have to scroll down to find the "Wood on wood or gun fire?" section with the link to the sound file.)

While it may not be apparent on the tape, the distance involved here was roughly 150-200 yards if not less, with a clear path between ourselves and the ridge where the sounds were coming from. Given the range and the fact we were using a parabolic microphone gunfire would have sounded like cannonfire on the recording.

I would never state with absolute certainty that this was bigfoot related, but given the range, conditions, and equipment being used, gunfire is easily ruled out as a possible culprit.

Whatever. However, it's been my experience that most people DRASTICALLY misjudge distance estimates.

No need to be gruff because I disagree with you. And you're right, most people do misjudge distances. However, I've walked through this area extensively and have become quite familiar with it.

To give you a better image of the location, the ridge across from us where these sounds came from follows the road in a roughly L shape turning west to north, and then hooking back slightly east before making a complete turn back to the west. This area would have been below the road line along the ridgeface, slightly above us, but still below the actual crest of the ridge. In the wintertime you can actually see the road from where we were, as well as the ridgeface including the area where these sounds eminated. Hell, if it had been daytime we could have SEEN what was making the noises. Oh but only if.

Were you disagreeing with me? I was simply noting a fact. Didn't mean to sound "gruff."

Sounds do very weird things in mountains, especially at night. Distinct noises heard by some in one spot may be undetectable by others located fairly nearby. At other times, far-away sounds, such as trucks on a freeway, can sound close when in fact they may be ten miles away. Distant gunfire can sound close; attenuation alters the quality of the sound. Such sounds can be mistaken for wood on wood.

I'm not disagreeing with the concept you're putting forth. However, I could take you to within probably twenty feet of where this sound came from. Given the geographic layout of the area that makes me very confident as to the fact that this was not a remote sound that was distorted due to geography, but instead a very close sound that simply doesn't fit your proposed hypothesis.


Edited to say - Just so there won't be any confusion, and to aid in the study, I will attempt to use my DeLorme topo software to plot the distance between our position and the position the sound came from. Since I've got our position marked on GPS, and since the vicinty the sound came from is known, it should allow me to get a near exact distance. I'll keep you all posted.

Using my DeLorme software, I was able to come up with the following. As you can see, the closest point along the ridge is just under 500 ft. The farthest point along the ridge line is 864 ft. The X at the base of all 3 measurements represents our position, and the second X represents the approximate area/spot that the sounds came from.

Given this the range would have been between 165 and 185 yds.

Thanks for the diagram BM helps me get feel for distances I can't get from the sounds you posted.

Just doing my thing. :dance:

Good job, Bitter !
When ya going back ?

Just so I am clear on this.

Are you saying you were able to triangulate the source of the sound from three different positons on the ridge?

How long did the wood knocking go on? How long were you at each position?

How long were you at each position?

Were you able to triangulate the sounds that night or did you have to wait until you got home?

The knocks do increase in frequency as they progress.

I've been back a few time since then. Current plans are to try and get back to the area again in April.

No, the three different lines are to represent the closest and farthest possible positions. Sorry if there was any confusion there in regards to that. The three points meet where we were located at the time we heard the sounds.



The only sound we heard at that spot is the one posted here, so the length you hear on the tape is the full length of the sounds as we heard them. We did hear sounds prior to this, but we were in another location lower in the valley, and they weren't of the wood knocking variety.



We used my GPS to mark the spot where we were located, and then used my Topo software to plot the point. Again, the lines weren't used to triangulate position, but just to give a distance range between ourselves and the source of the noise.

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

I had misinterpreted the maps.

No prob.

Anything else of note on your subsequent visits to the area ?
BTW...
Is your research area in the N. GA mountains ?

We've been to this area now probably twenty times over the course of the last six months. Its a huge expanse of forest with some rural areas surrounding it, so its a lot of area to cover.

We haven't heard or recorded any sounds since that time. Our last three trips were relatively uneventfull, but we plan on continuing to investigate the area as it has definately shown promise.

And yes, most of my research takes place in the North Georgia area.

I have solo hiked the AT from Amicalola Falls/Springer Mt. all the way to VA, and I LOVE the N. GA Mts the best !!!
Had a weird experience one night near Bly Gap & Standing Indian Mt., just over the NC border, in Feb. '00.
Something was crunching around my camp-site & staying out of the firelight....
I felt 'watched'.....

really cool. Wish i was there to hear it. Good Job BM on the recording.

Bitter, that is really good. It sent chills down my spine. Thanks for posting!

Well I used the search because I had a question that I thought may have been already answered.

I wanted to hear an audio of wood knocking because our camp was raided by raccoons two nights ago and woke me up at 3.30 (they didn't find anything but they sure made a ruckus looking. And freak me always looks at my watch when woken up in the dark of am ) and I had a hard time going back to sleep after we ran the buggers off. After about twenty minutes of trying to sleep I heard a back and forth series of something that could have been someone chopping wood...one chop at a time. At 4am.

Two knocks from beyond the east side of the lake. bonk....bonk... followed by one bonk from the northwest side of the lake about a minute later. two bonks from the east. wait one minute. two bonks from the northwest sounding either closer or louder. Wait about 30 seconds. One bonk from the east side, followed almost immediately by one Loud bonk from the nw side. One more bonk from nw that "sounded" pretty friggin close. The nw sound seemed like it was on the move, and the east sound seemed stationary. The whole exchange was over in under five minutes. I have a weird memory thing where I can "replay" and count...so I am exactly certain of the number of bonks, but the spacing and distance are just regular approximations. I have a truly horrible sense of distance so I can only say east was "far" and nw started "far" and came "nearer".

So anyway. Dead Link.

Dead Link.

I would love to hear that much knocking, i only hear like 1 or 2 and thats it. You are very luck to have heard that much, i would have been out of that tent and in the woods in seconds.

Neat experience, Pez. I'd like to hear the wood knocking audio also. Maybe Bitter Monk will give us a new link. How about it, Bitter Monk, if you still have the audio?

Man blast from the past.

Right Click Save As

Slightly abbreviated version of the same clip.

There are pervs all over the AT, probably some creep stalking you...

Thank you, Bitter Monk! Those knocks are definitely interesting!

Thanks for the link!

The "knocks" I heard seemed "crisper", but that could just be the difference between audio and memory. Or the moisture content of the trees. I heard this at Cresent lake maybe five days before they evacuated the area because of the Royce Butte fire. The audio you have seems like one individual. I am kicking myself for not having audio. I had taken a digital recorder camping with me "just in case" but it was in the friggin car and not the tent. Never again.

The knocks I heard seemed very deliberate. The two knocks were like...knock.......knock...with a pause in between longer than the knock interval you recorded.

My boyfriend (who doesn't really get what all this fuss is about and slept through the whole thing) said I had heard campers chopping fire wood. Ok. That's what he thinks. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Without audio of my own I can't prove anything. All I can say is that it seemed like there was an exchange of information going on. NW was heading towards E. I wasn't on the intersect path (NW would cross the lake on the far side from me according to the little algorithm my brain offered up) so I wasn't afraid listening, just curious.....

Again thank you Bitter Monk. That sounds a lot like what I heard. A lot.

Edit for me talk gooder. And wondering if E was a girly girl and NW was a boy.

The audio is a bit skewed due the original audio being less audible.

Here is a better quality solo knock I recorded in Oklahoma.

That's more like "chopping wood" than the last one. I'm beginning to wonder if Doug was asleep after all....