North Dakota: Miniwashitu & Bigfoot

On this stop of the Backwoods Cryptid Road Trip, Brian heads into North Dakota and follows the Missouri River in search of one of the strangest creatures ever recorded in the folklore of the northern plains: the Miniwashitu.

More than a century ago, ethnologist Melvin Randolph Gilmore wrote of a mysterious being said to live beneath the Missouri. Covered in red hair like a buffalo, with a single eye, one horn, and a jagged backbone resembling the teeth of an enormous saw, the Miniwashitu was believed to swim upstream each spring as the river broke apart.

Witnesses were said to hear its terrible roar, see a strange redness trailing through the water, and know better than to look directly at it in daylight.According to the story Gilmore preserved, the last man who did was struck blind, lost his reason, and died soon afterward.

From that chilling piece of recorded folklore, Brian travels the Missouri and the reservoirs connected to it through five unsettling accounts involving something moving upstream beneath breaking ice. A nine-year-old girl watches a saw-toothed back rise from the river north of Washburn. A worker below Garrison Dam sees an enormous red-haired form tear through an ice jam. Teenagers on Standing Rock watch a red glow moving beneath frozen Lake Oahe. Kayakers encounter something impossibly large fighting the Missouri's current.

And an ice fisherman feels the frozen lake rise beneath his feet before hearing a roar coming through the ice.Then the episode leaves the water behind.North Dakota may be known for open prairie, but its river bottoms, wooded valleys, badlands, and scattered forests have produced another kind of report.

Brian heads into the Turtle Mountains, Pembina Gorge, Missouri River bottoms, Killdeer Mountains, and Sheyenne Valley for five accounts of enormous upright, hair-covered figures seen by hunters, riders, ranch hands, and families.

Along the way, Brian also reflects on the unexplained things he's encountered on his own property in the Appalachian woods—footprints, strange nighttime vocalizations, bent saplings, tree structures, and rock stacks—and why stories from people who encounter something impossible in familiar country hit differently once you've experienced something you can't easily explain yourself.

From something roaring beneath the Missouri River ice to massive figures watching from the timber, North Dakota may be one of the most unexpected—and unsettling—stops on the entire road trip.



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Have you experienced a Bigfoot sighting, Sasquatch encounter, Dogman experience, UFO sighting, or any unexplained cryptid or paranormal event deep in the woods? We want to hear your story.

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Backwoods Bigfoot Stories is a paranormal storytelling podcast featuring real Bigfoot encounters, Sasquatch sightings, Dogman reports, cryptid experiences, and true scary stories from the backwoods.

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