Summer 2014

I moved to extremely-rural SWNH from rural upstate NY, and moved in with a roommate who was from Los Angeles. I got there two weeks after she did, and she hadn’t slept in two weeks because it was the first time she’s ever been that alone, and the silence of the boonies was “too loud” for her to be able to sleep through it.

I became her guide to all the nighttime noises/country noises. I grew up hunting/fishing/stream fishing/hiking/camping, and backswoods survival training as a hobby. I know all the sounds. Almost.

One night, she rushes into my room and says “Matt! Come quick, there’s something huge in the woods making a really loud noise!”. So, I got out of bed and went to investigate, expecting to hear porcupines quarreling or a moose lumbering through. I went to the sliding glass door and stuck my head out, and what I heard was something I’ve never heard before, and to this day I can’t identify.

Something just inside the treeline was expelling air from its extremely-huge lungs very, very hard, almost like the sound you would make if you were faking a really hard sneeze. There was a wheeze to it, and it was quickly and curtly moving a large volume of air. Over and over, every few seconds.

This wasn’t a deer/moose noise, but whatever it was it had absolutely massive lung capacity. If it was an owl, it was an owl the size of a schoolbus. Translation: it wasn’t an owl.

We came back inside and locked up and went to bed, no idea what it was.

Interesting to note: those woods did have an inordinate amount of bent over saplings that were pinned down by various debris and branches, but I didn’t think anything of that at the time. Now I see that some people associate that with sasquatch. Hmmm…

Also interesting to note: that house was way up on a hill (at the top of Old Troy road, Fitzwilliam NH, if you want to see the terrain). We used to sit out on the patio and watch the sun go down, and to the south almost every night there would be a UFO just hanging out on the horizon over Athol, MA. It would move around on the horizon for hours almost every night from late afternoon all the way until early morning sometimes. It would suddenly jet from Athol over toward Brattleboro, VT, and back, and then just continue to hover and tumble around, throwing different colored light. The last time we saw it, it was way closer, almost in our back yard, when a nasty thunderstorm was blowing in from the west. The violent winds up by the clouds didn’t blow it around at all; it hung there as if bolted to the sky.

Yet another interesting note from that property: One night at around 3am I had to put my deaf, elderly dog out to pee. I opened the sliding glass door to let her out, and I heard the infamous “mysterious sky noise” from youtube. It was early September, perfect weather, not a cloud in the sky, no breeze, 68 degrees, and it sounded like a Harrier jet was landing on the roof of our house, mixed with 200mph winds coursing through a canyon. I can’t believe no one woke up, as it should’ve woken up the entire neighborhood. There was nothing in the sky and it persisted for the entire time we were out there. My deaf old dog looked at me and opted against peeing, and just came back inside. I saw reports and video of that freaky noise on youtube years before, but I just thought it was viral marketing for a movie. Nope.

The house was also actively haunted, but they were cool/not an issue.

If the loud “exhale” noise was a squatch, all I’d have left to experience at that property would’ve been the Loch Ness monster! All we had was a large beaver pond with a huge beaver, though.