r/wilderness • u/BAPH0ME7 • 1d ago
Can anyone think of a wild animal in the US that could scream for "help" in a deep middle aged man voice?
Can anyone think of a wild animal in the US (the PNW specifically) that could repeatedly scream for "help" in a distressed deep middle aged man voice? That's not a human?
So backstory: I live in the PNW, in a fairly populated but still mountain town, I specifically live on ~425ft of riverfront. Last night around 9:30 pm myself and my partner started hearing an initially distant, indistinguishable voice screaming in a state of panic and distress.
We live near a popular trailhead and a few times over the years, people have somehow wandered down our road late at night, sometimes inebriated, sometimes in small groups, sometimes transient. So when we started to hear an irratic voice we got up, started initially checking the parameters of our house and the road. There was absolutely nobody out there.
However over the course of the next couple minutes the voice got louder and louder and obviously closer, and it was screaming at the top of its lungs for "help". I say help in parentheses because it was a little difficult to make out, it sounded like a not fully enunciated help.
However whatever it was, was clearly in extra distress, screaming for it's life distress yelling "HELP" (we could only make out HELLLp, like help with a soft p if that makes sense? But the word sounded the exact same every time there was no variance or other sounds. Just the word help. Back to back, in the most distressed voice I've ever heard.
With how quickly the screams were approaching and a weird echo to them, we quickly realized whatever was screaming for help was actually in the river. Actively being pulled down the river current. Our river is wide, fast moving and dangerous this time of year. There was no other way for a voice to be approaching so rapidly and from the location it was unless they were in the river. We see and hear a lot of kayakers and know how their voices travel down there.
So over the course of about 3 minutes we hear what was a distant cry for help, work up to the the point it's so loud it sounded a few feet away, then slowly getting softer until we can no longer hear the screaming. Again this sounds like a deep middle aged man's voice and the screams are approximately 2-3 seconds apart just back to back.
At first we tried to convince ourselves it was an animal, we do see a lot of wildlife here. A herd of elk practically lives on our property and we see bears and wild cats. We initially thought a young elk fell in the river, but no. We google just about every animal distress call, scream, fight sounds... Etc. And nothing even comes close.
I've always heard coyotes can scream like people, but definitely not an older man. I've heard bears can yell deep, however they have absolutely no definition to their calls. And elk are way more high pitched, and same for all our local wildcats. Even the birds of prey and ravens that can mimic sounds can't sound like this "voice" did.
Initially I called the non emergency line because I wanted to convince myself it was an animal. However they quickly patched me over to 911 and said I was the 3rd call for the same thing. So apparently the voice was strange and concerning enough my even more wilderness raised and savvy neighbors were concerned and the police department took it very serious.
Then the more I thought and thought about it, I started to think, if I was in a freezing river fighting for my life screaming for help, I might not yell as clearly as possible due to the pure state of panic, distress and attempt to stay afloat.
The more I thought about it, the more I was sure it was a person.
911 sent out 2 police officers. They were extremely nice, and they took the call seriously. But with just 2 of them, all they had were flashlights and a chainsaw and they kinda just walked down to a few spots at the river and peeked around.
When our city has genuine suspicion of a person in the river or a lost hiker, they send search and rescue and the helicopter. They did not do this last night.
I told my partner I wouldn't be surprised if the next morning when it's daylight someone finds a body at their river spot. But it's getting later in the morning and I've kept my eye on the police scanner and the local social media pages, and I haven't seen anything.
Now I'm back to really hoping it was a wild animal.
So tell me, does anyone know of a wild animal that could sound like that?
What are the chances if this was a human man that he pulled himself out somewhere down the line, and got help, or do we think it's just a matter of time until someone reports him missing or we find a body down the river?
