Bigfoot Sightings on the Appalachian Trail
These are works of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is coincidental.
Immersive first-person fiction set in the remote wilderness of the Appalachian Trail
Featured account
“IT FOLLOWED ME OUT”
— Marcus, Appalachian Trail, Tennessee/North Carolina border
This was three days into a solo section hike. Tennessee side of the AT, heading northeast toward the North Carolina line. I'd been in the backcountry since Tuesday morning. No cell service. No other hikers. The elevation was around 5,200 feet and the ridge forest up there is dense — hemlock, beech, a lot of old growth that doesn't get much light at the ground level. By late afternoon the light was going flat and gray even though sunset was still a couple hours out. The canopy just kills it.
I heard it first. Something moving through the trees parallel to the trail, maybe thirty feet to my left, uphill from me. My first thought was deer. But the footfall was wrong. Too heavy, and the spacing between steps was too wide. A deer's gait has a kind of lightness to it even when it's moving fast. This was deliberate. Slow. Like something that wasn't in a hurry.
I kept walking. So did it. I went maybe a quarter mile and it stayed right with me, same distance, same pace. I stopped to adjust my pack straps. It stopped too. Not immediately — there was a pause of maybe two seconds, then nothing. I stood there for a full minute. Complete silence. I started walking again and within a few steps I heard it again, moving when I moved.
That went on for close to a mile. I kept my eyes on the trail. I told myself it was a bear tracking my food smell. Bears do that. I'd read about it. I kept walking.
Then I turned around.
It was standing between two hemlocks about forty yards back down the trail. Just standing there. Not moving. Watching me. I put it at eight feet, maybe taller — hard to judge scale in low light, but it was well above the lower branches of those trees and those branches were at least seven feet up. It was dark-colored, covered in what looked like hair, and it was built wide across the shoulders in a way that didn't match anything I had a name for. It wasn't shaped like a bear. It wasn't shaped like anything I'd seen before. It was standing upright. Completely still.
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Why the Appalachian Trail?
The Appalachian Trail covers 2,190 miles through some of the most remote wilderness in the eastern United States. Thru-hikers and section hikers frequently report unusual encounters — sounds that don't match known wildlife, structures in the tree line, something moving parallel to the trail and matching pace. The backcountry sections run through terrain that sees very little human traffic outside of the hiking corridor itself.
The dense ridge forests of Tennessee and North Carolina are among the most commonly cited corridors in these accounts. The old-growth hemlock and beech stands at elevation create low-light conditions even midday, and the terrain favors something that doesn't need a trail. Many witnesses describe the same pattern Marcus did: parallel movement, deliberate pacing, the sudden stillness when you stop.
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About The Dark Archive
The Dark Archive is a members-only community built by author Keith Tackett. Keith has published over 100 poems and two books — Faded Joy (poetry) and The Hollow (horror). He is currently collecting first-person cryptid encounter accounts for an upcoming book registered under the VisionForge Studios imprint.
Members get access to every account in the archive — Bigfoot, Dogman, and more — plus Keith's full poetry collections, horror fiction, and exclusive pre-publication content.
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Accounts collected by Keith Tackett — author of Faded Joy and The Hollow, available on Amazon.