Hayden writes "Hey there Wes. Hope you're doing well. I have been listening since the start and I love your show so much. I have been very reluctant to share this with you, but in hopes of sharing these stories with your audience I'll find some other locals that have experienced the same thing as I did, so we can connect and I don't feel so "alone" anymore haha.

 Location: Tallowa Dam, South of Moss Vale NSW (my encounter), 3 months ago

So it all started when I had left on a Friday afternoon to go on a camping trip down the coast and come back on the Sunday. The drive was about 2ish hrs to the location that I was going to which is called Tallowa Dam, I had planned to canoe up the dam and camp in a valley and do some fishing and hiking/sightseeing. I arrived at the car park at around 4pm and immediately packed the canoe with my camping gear and started the 3km row upstream, I was losing sunlight fast because of the mountains casting their shadow into the dam. about 2kms in I heard this hellish scream/roar, kinda reminded me of someone bleeding out with blood pooling in the throat as gory as that sounds. I had never heard this before so I shrugged it off as a lyrebird making their strange noises, but it certainly caught me off guard. I finally arrived at the campsite and started on making a fire immediately before setting up my swag etc, fire was my priority as it was the middle of august in the winter, and the sun had basically set. I got the fire going and set up my swag and decided to go for a night fish, as Australian bass which was my target species are more active at night. I hiked probably 500metres upstream and saw a stick structure. It was 3 logs that had been placed kinda like a Tepie or pyramid shape, I didn't really think much of it until 5 seconds later I heard that same hellish scream/roar.

Which then got me thinking about my mates story for some reason and I freaked the f---- out. I quickly walked back to my camp and jumped in my swag holding my knife towards the roof. About 20mins go by with not a single sound after getting in the swag when all of a sudden I can faintly hear bipedal footsteps getting louder as it gets closer to me. Keep in mind I haven't seen anything besides the stick structure, I also remember there only being 1 other car in the carpark and it was the park rangers car. So hoping it was the park ranger walking towards my swag I yelled "hey who's there" and the walking stopped. 5 seconds go by and the best way I can describe what happened next is it sounded like a 2 ton elephant ran straight towards me. I'm not a religious man but when I tell you I prayed to god please don't kill me like this, I mean it. As soon as the running reached me it sounded like it took 1 big huff and then jumped over me, cause the running sound stopped for like 5 seconds then a big landing sound happened on the other side of my swag. Then I heard it just take off running. Now I stayed in my tent the entire night (this happened around 7pm) I didn't eat dinner, get out to pee, nothing. I eventually fell asleep somehow, probably because the 3km row took all my energy, and I woke up around 7am on the Saturday.

My main objective now was just getting back to my car. So I packed up camp and started the 3km row back to the carpark, it was around 10:30 am by the time I got back to my car and when I went to open it I realized I lost my keys. I looked everywhere for them in the canoe and camping gear but couldn't find them, I thought I put them in my pocket so I thought that must have fallen out when I was packing up camp. So as much as I didn't want to go back to the camp spot I did the 3km row back again, once I got there it was about 12pm I would say, so I quickly looked around the camp and they were nowhere to be seen. So I then backtracked that 500meatre hike I did the night before in hopes of finding them and low and behold they were hung up on little stick coming out of a tree on the trail which was super weird, so I think what happened is when I was running back to the campsite after the scream they fell out my back pocket and whatever this creature was that I now know what it was, had picked them up off the trail and placed them on that tree knowing I would have to come back and look for them, and as soon as i picked them up it started running at me again, I honestly think it was just toying with me and using me as entertainment because it didn't actually get me and it definitely could have if it wanted to. So by the time I got back to the canoe and rowed out to open water it had stopped chasing me, and I did the 3km row back to the carpark with my keys.

By the time I got back it was 6pm which was suppppperrrr strange because I thought it was a quick 3hr row there and back but anyways it felt like time had warped or fastened idk how to explain it. Because this dam was property of government land they closed the access gates at 5:30 pm. So I had to camp another night, at least this time it was in front of my car and not in the bush, the only car that was there besides mine was that same park ranger's car. There was actually a no camp sign in the car park but my car wasn't big enough to sleep in with all my camp gear so I just set up my swag. It was about 8PM and I was just going through all of what happened and I said out loud and idk why I did maybe because it was a rhetorical question "did i even check if my car doors were unlocked before i left to go get the keys". And as soon as I did that I heard my car door open and I thought it was getting broken into by someone stalking my swag so I quickly got up with my knife out of my swag turned and look at the car and saw harry and the hendersons looking right at me, that's the first thing that popped into my head when we made eye contact was the actor in the suit is standing right infront of me. Then both of our eyes widened kinda like an oh shit moment and he ran off into the woods and I quickly layed back down in my swag. I didn't sleep that night at all so when morning came around I was up and out by 7am because they open the gate at 6am. I also forgot to mention I found a footprint coming out of the water and onto the land.

I have probably missed a lot of details but my fingers and brain are hurting writing all this. I'm hoping we can call but I'm not too sure because you're in the states and I'm in Australia but Wes I haven't told anyone else my encounter/sighting besides you I haven't even told my mate yet, please get back to me if you have any questions but I'd really like if we could chat on the phone somehow and we talk about this because I need to talk about it with someone. I have also included diagrams of where these encounters took place. I will also include photos I took at the dam while sightseeing. And a photo of the footprint I found on the edge of the dam."