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Yacolt and the Whistlers
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Nestled deep in the forests of southwest Washington, Yacolt is a tiny town with a haunting reputation that stretches back centuries. In this episode, we explore why Native tribes called it the "haunted place," uncover eerie legends of the mysterious Whistlers and towering Bigfoot-like creatures said to roam the surrounding wilderness, and revisit the terrifying Yacolt Burn of 1902, a wildfire so massive its smoke darkened skies, dropped ash over Portland, and could be seen from Seattle. Join us as we separate history from legend and discover why Yacolt remains one of Washington's most mysterious and unsettling places.
⚠️ Content Warning: This episode includes references to abuse, trauma, and death. Listener discretion is advised.
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Transcript
Introduction to Beneath the Evergreens
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Beneath the Evergreens, where murder, mysteries, and mayhem lurk in the shadows of the Pacific Northwest. I'm Jess. And I'm Anna. From haunted forests and unsolved disappearances to true crime cases buried deep in the moss and the mist, we're digging into the dark secrets hiding under the evergreens. Each episode will explore real cases and eerie encounters, and the legends that keep the Pacific Northwest up at night.
00:00:26
Speaker
So grab your flashlight, lock your doors, and join us Beneath the Evergreens.
Friday Recordings and Monday Listeners
00:00:52
Speaker
Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. day Oh, gosh. It's so funny because we record on a Friday, right? And the thought of someone hearing us on a Monday morning is quite frightening. if i'm being um If I heard us on a Monday morning, I would just, I'd be so relaxed. I'd take off the day.
00:01:16
Speaker
so know what I don't have to work. PTO is calling my name. I'm going on vacation. Can you tell who has to go back to work on Monday and who does not? It does not i ah um I think actually our show could be a pick me up depending on what episode you listen to.
00:01:38
Speaker
That is fair. That is fair. Yeah. If you know, if you're listening to like one of the like death ones, that might be a bit much. Maybe not the like upper you need on a Monday morning, but Yeah. But like a spooky one that might be like a, okay, let's ease into the day.
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah.
Personal Reflections and Gratitude
00:01:56
Speaker
Something like that. anyway Yeah. Um, so how are you? How's life? I am.
00:02:05
Speaker
I am doing well. I am doing well. Not, not much to report in all honesty. I feel like I have done all my exciting stuff for the summer and now I'm getting into the kind of the boring season.
00:02:17
Speaker
Just staying inside an AC. Yeah. Which is lame to say because it's still the beginning of the summer. It's already halfway through the year. That is nuts to me. Isn't that a thing? That absolutely bananas.
00:02:30
Speaker
I ah feel like I blinked. It's absolutely crazy. It's already been almost seven months since my father passed. Isn't that crazy? that is That is crazy. that's great I will never forget the text you sent me.
00:02:43
Speaker
That was probably traumatic text. Let me just apologize to you publicly on this forum and say I'm so sorry. To be honest, i I kind of appreciate it because I know whenever you text to be very direct.
00:02:57
Speaker
It was also really late on a Sunday night and I was like, what do I do? I can't go over there. What?
00:03:05
Speaker
what I texted you on a Sunday? the whole That whole time was a blur. I feel like i was a player it was definitely a weekday night because i was i was getting ready to go to bed. And I was like, because going to go to bed at like, i don't know, or so freaking early. What time you go to bed?
00:03:23
Speaker
I'm going to bed like 8 o'clock, 8, 9 o'clock. I think that's reasonable. Well, yeah. You also get up at like 4. Yeah. But it's horrible in the summertime cause it's so light out that I feel like I'm losing my mind.
00:03:37
Speaker
That's true. Invest in blackout curtains. Oh my God. This is a rough start to an episode.
Eerie Tales from Yakult, Washington
00:03:43
Speaker
Yeah, this is a, I feel like, okay. Every time we record two episodes in a row, the second one is like chaotic as all hell.
00:03:51
Speaker
And it's only going to get more chaotic because I don't really have a story. I just have some ghost stories that I'm going to string together for you.
00:04:00
Speaker
Buckle up everyone. Buckle the F up. So apologies, but you're welcome at the same time. Cause it's actually kind of interesting. okay okay now so i'm gonna tell you about yacolt washington i've never heard of i've never heard of it before it's essentially like a valley in the foothills of the cascades okay interesting okay so we're gonna start this right out with an imagination story are you ready oh okay yes okay i need you to imagine that you're camping
00:04:31
Speaker
ah you're I'm not a kid. Okay, we'll put it in a cabin, let's say. We'll put you in a cabin. Okay, I can do a cabin. You're in a cabin in the middle of the woods. Okay. Snug deep into your bed. It's a little little cold at night. You're snuggled down deep. You're like hearing the woodland sounds. You're drifting off to sleep. You're just in that like after a long hike vibe where you're just like settling in and sleeping. You're really relaxed. Yeah.
00:04:58
Speaker
And then all of a sudden you smell this Awful, awful smell. And it's getting closer and it's getting more and more foul. It sounds, it smells almost like someone has opened a sewer system underneath you and you're like trying not to vomit. Your eyes start watering you open your eyes and you see this massive shadow in front of you.
00:05:19
Speaker
Huge shadow. my God. And then just as soon as like your fear spikes, all of a sudden you get this overwhelming sense of calm and peace. And you just drift back to sleep.
00:05:33
Speaker
What? And then it's the next morning. You're hearing the sounds of like crackling fire. You're thinking, okay, someone has gotten up and started the fire. We're going to have breakfast. It's going to be great. It was just a weird dream about a sewer and a man standing in front of me. You slowly open your eyes to find that you're in a place that you don't quite recognize.
00:05:57
Speaker
It's you're in a shanty. You open the door. And when you open the door, you find yourself on top of a mountain. There's snow everywhere. Snow is on the ground in front of you and sky is in front of you. You're at the very top of a cascade peak.
00:06:14
Speaker
What? You look around and all around you is nothing but seven foot and higher, large men that are covered in hair.
00:06:28
Speaker
And then you look around and you're stuck in a shanty town of cedar-lined shacks. And you've essentially been taken over by what some would think are Bigfoot.
00:06:43
Speaker
What? And then exactly a year after you're taken, you're dropped back in the exact same spot that you've gone missing from.
00:06:54
Speaker
Your tribesmen find you. And when they find you, you're in a daze. Like they can't get you to come out of this daze for weeks. When you finally come to, you start talking about hairy men that are humongous, that have ungodly strength. And that is where you've been for the past year.
00:07:17
Speaker
What? This sounds like that, you know that SNL skit? The like close encounters? No, but I feel like I need to look this up. Oh oh my God. You don't know this one? Summarize it.
00:07:28
Speaker
What? Summarize it. What is it? So it's Kate McKinnon. I think it's the funniest Kate McKinnon skit that that she's ever done. It's so it's so good. Okay. Like her, of one other person, the Ryan Gosling, and they all get abducted by aliens. And like two of them have this super pleasant experience. And the last one is like getting like poked and prodded and like the craziest, the craziest story.
00:07:52
Speaker
Oh my God. That is what I'm envisioning. because like They get like dropped off back to where they were taken at the end. and like Two of them are like, yeah, it was just this beautiful, lovely experience. I was like, yeah, I got like dropped off at the top of like like a restaurant or something. I had to shimmy down.
00:08:11
Speaker
<unk>s i feel like that's what actually happened to this guy, but he's getting like the pleasant... like He got his mind erased, essentially. like I can't tell if this is like an alien abduction thing, if he...
00:08:23
Speaker
Whatever. But it's it's essentially lore at this point. No one knows where this story actually came from, but it has been passed down through word of mouth in the Yucult Valley region for fore many centuries.
The Whistler and Prospectors' Lore
00:08:36
Speaker
Oh, interesting. And so what this man was essentially abducted by is a creature called the Whistler.
00:08:48
Speaker
oh i've never heard of that and what for it kind of reminds me a little bit of like flush pedestrians or like a bigfoot like creature or
00:09:05
Speaker
i don't know like there's this okay so native american lore says that There was somehow a falling out in previous tribes and this specific subset of a tribe decided that they no longer wanted to integrate with the rest of the community. So they built camp up on top of the Cascade Mountains, like way, way high in the mountains where it's like always snow filled.
00:09:32
Speaker
which forced them to have to only ah become essentially nocturnal because it was so bright when the sun was out that they couldn't really see. So they had to be nocturnal. And then somehow they got this amazing strength capability and they got...
00:09:49
Speaker
to be huge. Like we're talking over seven feet tall. Whenever they're seen in the wild, they're having like two to three large logs just on their back, multiple deers that they're carrying just nonchalantly up these Hills.
00:10:02
Speaker
They also have the speed of being able to, with just their band bare hands, climb up sheer cliffs at incredible speed. oh being able to jump from one side of the valley to the other. Like I'm talking like 14 feet leaps to 14 foot leaps at a time, like just in crazy amounts of speed, all of this other kind of crazy stuff. And so interesting.
00:10:26
Speaker
They've essentially become like this big, Bigfoot, like creature in, in, the native American folklore in this particular area. But and the one thing that sets these, I guess, creatures or beings apart is that they smell rancid and that when they come near any other native communities, they'll whistle like three times, I guess, to like alert others or maybe to alert you. And then they start throwing rocks.
00:10:57
Speaker
So when you hear this, go ahead. Is this similar to the story you told a while ago about the, do you remember there was the guy at the, like in the, cat like in the like hut almost that was getting like rocks thrown at him? 1000%. Actually, this is in the same area.
00:11:14
Speaker
As those other people. And what's interesting is that that story that I told you earlier, there's actually more folklore to that, that I had no idea about. And I found, I have to give a huge shout out to Washington myths and legends.
00:11:28
Speaker
The true stories behind histories, mysteries by L E Bragg, because they go into detail about these creatures and that story in particular that I had no idea about. Oh my God. You know, I love a callback. This is fantastic. Yeah.
00:11:43
Speaker
that Okay, so essentially that is what they're talking about. There's like this whistler, they're throwing rocks, they're trying to like beat down shacks if they feel threatened by someone. So they're very territorial, right? oh yeah. Exactly like um the story that I was telling earlier about Mount St. Helens.
00:12:01
Speaker
So... Tribes say that whenever you see these creatures, or if you talk about these creatures, you'll see them more. So if you see one, let me know. But if someone was to speak out loud about these creatures, they'll immediately be abducted or someone in their tribe will be abducted and you'll never see these people again. There's only one account in their histories of someone returning. And that was the story that I told you at the beginning of this call.
Native Conflicts and Hauntings in Yakult Valley
00:12:28
Speaker
Oh, yes. And so... Now we're going to go into like my strange connection with this, because while I was looking at these whistlers, if you will, I found that story that I had previously told you about, um, some prospectors that were in Mount St. Helens looking for gold, okay how they actually came to be in that place is very different than, than just stumbling upon a vein of gold,
00:13:02
Speaker
How they got there, they drove – one of the the men had an old Chevy. They drove randomly on Mount St. Helens. They get it out of the car and they start walking around.
00:13:13
Speaker
This being appears to them who happens to be like a Native American woman spirit. Okay. They say something along the lines of, oh my gosh, why are you appearing to us? You're so overpowered, like you're so all powering, all knowing, like, can you help us find gold? And this, this woman or who who appears to be a woman says, I can help you, but I am not the the being here. I'm just your perception of a being, but everything around you is actually all powerful. Like goes into this really weird, like spiritual situation.
00:13:51
Speaker
The men are in awe and the being then says, you have been chosen to, or like you've been bestowed a gift and we will show you to this gold mine that you'll become very rich. Just follow this white arrow through the woods.
00:14:09
Speaker
okay which sounds like everyone has taken leave of their senses. Are we okay? like i Are we on peyote? What is happening? I don't understand. But apparently apparently they all saw it. So for for multiple days, they're following this arrow randomly through the woods.
00:14:31
Speaker
So many days have passed that one of the men says – man, screw this. This is stupid. i think we're hallucinating. Like we just got to go immediately. As he says that the arrow shoots up straight into the air, this ghostly arrow comes back down and then goes into the ground and it disappears.
00:14:52
Speaker
Then this like smoky door comes up and the the being comes back and says, because you disrespected our elders and this being because of you're like essentially mocking us.
00:15:07
Speaker
We are going to show you where you could find riches beyond your imagination, but we're never going to allow you to find the actual wealth you seek. And then as it says this, the smoky door closes.
00:15:21
Speaker
That is how the men came to be at that area where their shed was. And they started getting hit with rocks by the whistlers. oh Oh, it is in the same general area.
00:15:33
Speaker
Interesting. Okay. Isn't that a weird story of how you came to a prospect cave? Yeah. And they actually named their prospecting site in the cave because they did find gold eventually, but they could never find the true vein. They found offshoots of it, but they couldn't find the main one. Um, they named it like, um, the vanishing white or something along with those lines.
00:15:55
Speaker
Because like in an ode to this white arrow that led them to wherever they needed to be. Yeah. Oh, fascinating. Yeah. So then going to take you to the Yucult Valley, which is essentially at the bottom of the foothills of the Cascades near Mount St. Helen. So in, in the same general area. Yeah.
00:16:14
Speaker
We're going way back to like the early 1800s when the Klickitat tribe would travel to the Yucult Valley because it was, it was like essentially a bumper crop of wild strawberries and wild blueberries. So every year when spring came, they would do this pilgrimage to this area. Mm-hmm.
00:16:32
Speaker
One year they show up there and a bunch of the kids go out for the day to pick berries. And apparently that night they had some conversations around this whistler character.
00:16:43
Speaker
The kids go out the next day and they disappear. Never. They don't come back. A group of kids leave. They never come back. They go out. the The tribe goes out and looks. They just, they just can't find them. They're gone forever.
00:16:58
Speaker
What the heck? huh and then Clickatat tribe obviously has to leave. They come back the next year or a few years later. And when they show up, the Willamette tribe is actually there as well.
00:17:13
Speaker
Well, they don't get along. They're not friends. They're not making flower crowns and playing merry-go-rounds. They're like really upset yeah that they're there because this, this is their bumper crop. This is kind of their sacred area. And so they're a war ensues and the click attack tribe kills everyone in the Willamette tribe.
00:17:33
Speaker
Wait, is it Willamette? Willamette. Willamette? Willamette? It's probably Willamette. I feel like I've heard Willamette County or something like that before.
00:17:47
Speaker
um Well, write in and tell me how I'm wrong. well tell me if it's I'm going to say Willamette from now on. Actually, i'll probably like interchange the two. But either way, the tribes go at it.
00:18:00
Speaker
All of the Willamette tribe... Dies. Oh my God. At least that's what the click of chat tribe thought. Oh, apparently when they showed up the next year, they go to pick the strawberries. And as soon as they start picking the strawberries, they start hearing the Willamette like tribes, like um killing song. Like they're, they're going to war songs. Like they start hearing, but it's one singular voice.
00:18:31
Speaker
They're looking around and they can tell like it's a a girl's voice, like a young, like teenage voice. yeah And they're looking around and they're looking around and then they look in the distance and they see this singular figure of this woman singing all of the tribe's war music to them. And then she kind of like steps over the ridge and then like disappears.
00:18:52
Speaker
But they continue to hear, but they continue to hear these, this like ominous singing. And then... There's also so um ah some other stories about this particular valley. And this valley is like just kind of steeped in sorrow and like ghost stories. These whistlers, things are seen all the time. And so there's this other story of this woman who is it madly in love with this man in the tribe, but her father doesn't think he's good enough. And so he doesn't allow her to marry this man. So she goes in despair off into the woods and,
00:19:31
Speaker
and is never seen from again. Oh. Now, is that true or is that more lore of like to keep people ah like from seeking solace in the woods? I don't know. But they said that she was a spirit and spirit in the tongue of the Klickitat is Yakult, which is why it's been known as the Yakult Valley.
00:19:52
Speaker
Oh, gotcha. Okay. Okay. So that that's where the the roots of this come from. And then to add further grievance into this whole valley situation, Lewis and Clark actually came to visit this same kind of bumper crop area.
00:20:07
Speaker
Okay. Because in this bumper crop area, this is also where a lot of coastal tribes would meet high highland tribes and they would do a lot of trading with like roots and dried salmon and berries. There's a lot of trading going on here. Gotcha. Yeah.
00:20:21
Speaker
So, of course, Lewis and Clark show up in 1806 and they're like, hey, we would like to trade with you as well. Well, what they traded was actually like plague epidemic shit because these these tribes have never yeah been exposed to what they potentially were carrying with them. Yeah.
00:20:37
Speaker
And so from them, the Klickitat and Cowlitz tribes nearly were completely wiped out after 1870. And in in this particular valley leading to more of that speculation that this is a haunted, like evil spirit location, why it's called the occult.
Devastation and Opportunity in Yakult Valley
00:20:54
Speaker
So we're going to forward to the early 1900s when logging starts to take place in this area. Okay. As loggers are in this area and they're cutting down trees and they're doing all this stuff, the evil spirits kind of start coming out. Okay.
00:21:10
Speaker
People are seeing they'll be in the middle of a settlers and pioneers that are white come into this area. They'll be in the middle of a field and all of a sudden they'll see this huge figure like seven foot three, seven foot four, just show up on the very edge of where the forest meets the, the valley or the meadow.
00:21:30
Speaker
Do these crazy noises, like screeching away you can't unhear is what these people are saying. Like, and then people are trying to shoot at it, but it moves so fast that you, you can't hit it. Yeah.
00:21:43
Speaker
Rocks are being thrown. This awful smell is coming out. They're not able to track it down. It's just, it's all over the place. Then hotels are being built because this is a big logging community now. And so in these hotels, they're starting to hear the laughter of children when there's no children out.
00:22:02
Speaker
my God. It's being connected to those children that disappeared in the woods many, many, many moons ago. Yeah. Yeah. You'll look in mirrors in the middle of night and you'll see this Native American woman with this beautiful brown, like dark brown hair who looks like she's been like through the wars type situation. Like who knows ah if all of this is true or if this is just folklore coming down, but there's still these like ghostly hauntings that are connecting back to folklore in the Yakult Valley, named for these spirits, these evil spirits that are still around there.
00:22:35
Speaker
Well, then in 1902, Yakult,
00:22:40
Speaker
has the worst thing ever happened the worst fire in history until 2014 happened it burned square miles oh which is massive yeah it killed people and burned homesteads and it burned from september to the of september who pat That's like not that long for a fire that size. it It was moving so fast that the but some of the bodies that were found were still... It was so fast and so hot that they were like burnt in place.
00:23:19
Speaker
Oh my God. like There's a story of this pig pen where all of these pigs were like still standing, but all dead. And then there's also these weird pockets in within the, beer bur hello, burned area that never really burned down. It's like something was protecting them there.
00:23:41
Speaker
But still, the fire was so destructive that ash was raining down on Portland. which is many, many miles away. It was the, the smoke was so thick that you had to use lights in Seattle all day long because it was blocking out the sunlight.
00:23:59
Speaker
That's how awful it was. And from this, or One of the firefighters that was trying to fight the fire said they would fight from dawn until dusk every single day trying to control this fire. They just couldn't control it. The smoke was so bad that often people would pass out like they couldn't breathe and actually would die trying to fight this fire. Or the fire would switch positions so fast that it would take out entire crews.
00:24:28
Speaker
that were trying to help this. And then the smoke was so thick in the area that you had to use like lanterns all day. Cause you couldn't like, it was just too, it was blocking out everything.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah. So when the fire finally stopped, there was nothing left of this Valley, nothing except for burnt logs, smoldering ashes, like nothing, nothing.
00:24:51
Speaker
But then the enterprising man named Weyerhaeuser
00:24:56
Speaker
came into the area. He saw some value in and all of this burnt up land. And I don't know if you guys all know this, but Weyerhaeuser is a huge logging name in this area. And actually this is why Weyerhaeuser became so huge.
00:25:10
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Because he was able to salvage a lot of the logs. Because the fire moved so quickly and was so hot, only some of the layers of the wood was truly unusable. So he just stripped that away and he became like a logging magnate.
00:25:26
Speaker
After he stripped the land and got all the lumber... that he could, he replanted. And that is where he harvests a lot of the logging that we see today. So that was actually the start of the Weyerhaeuser logging dynasty.
Conclusion and Bigfoot Comparisons
00:25:40
Speaker
Oh, interesting. I didn't know that. Yes. And that was my wild story for you today. That was fascinating. I loved all the twists in that and like the connection to Weyerhaeuser and the callback to a previous episode. That was really, really cool. Yes. And I'm interested to do more in this like Whistler that the Native Americans talk about because it sounds a lot like Bigfoot. And a couple of the stories they were saying you would find in the middle of the woods like 19-foot...
00:26:09
Speaker
or not 19 foot, 19 inch footprint that was like four inches deep, but it would be just like two, like a set of footprints, one right and left foot, four inches deep.
00:26:21
Speaker
And then there would be nothing else. So almost like it was plopped down and then like plopped right back up. Or it's hopping. Or it's hopping massive. I mean, hopping or, but where's the other footprint? Like you have to hop so far. That's crazy.
00:26:36
Speaker
yeah. Anyways, that's my story for you. Ooh, that was fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that. Of course. That's it for today's dives into the dark corners of the Pacific Northwest. If you love the stories or shivered a little, be sure to subscribe and follow so you don't miss what's lurking beneath the evergreens next time. Thanks for joining us on Beneath the Evergreens. We appreciate you diving into the mysteries with us.
00:26:58
Speaker
Until next time, keep your eyes open and your door is locked. To back to the dark.