It sounded like music to me. Otherworldly, terrifying music.
Until that night the teller was neither a believer nor a skeptic. They just didn't think much about Sasquatch. They and their boyfriend were tent camping in Gifford Pinchot National Forest outside Carson, Washington. Their car sat about 150 yards up a hill on the road to the north. To the south was dense forest and, some distance off, a loud creek they could hear but never saw, even when they tried to walk to it the next morning.
Around nine, sitting by the fire, they realized they'd left something in the car, and the boyfriend went up the hill to get it. While he was gone the teller heard knocking among the trees, the sound of wood striking trunks, maybe four knocks from three different directions, including the direction he had walked. Then, faintly, from what seemed to be the far side of the creek, came a sound like a woman screaming. They put both down to the forest playing tricks.
He came back, they crawled into the tent, and within five minutes they heard what they took for an owl. Both of them know their wildlife sounds well. The teller grew up studying zoology and can identify plenty of exotic animal calls. This was no owl they had ever heard. It was guttural and whooping rather than hooting, and it reminded them of a gibbon.
Then a second voice joined in, and a third, and maybe more. The calls built and built into a loud mess of whoops, howls and noises the teller still can't describe. The two of them lay side by side, frozen and, they admit, mesmerized as well as frightened. It went on for several minutes, though they lost track of time. It ended in a great swelling crescendo that sounded almost like singing, and then it faded away.
That wasn't the end. Something came right up to the tent and began making a rapid chattering sound. By the teller's estimate it came from about seven feet off the ground. It chattered for maybe thirty seconds and then moved away.
They agreed it was the strangest thing either of them had ever been through, and somehow they went to sleep. The teller stayed awake a while longer, listening to a few more whoops, each one further away than the last, until they drifted off.
They posted the next day with a short conclusion. They had arrived indifferent, and they went home believers.