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What if it's True Podcast

BIGFOOT - Staying at This Cabin Was a Big Mistake

What if it's True Podcast

Cameron Buckner

Drama, Fiction, Science Fiction

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2025

⏱️ 60 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Staying at This Cabin Was a Big Mistake
In the mid-1960s, a financially struggling family from Ely, Nevada, was offered the use of a friend's ramshackle cabin in the Great Basin near Baker, Nevada. The isolated, one-room cabin lacked electricity and running water, with minimal furnishings like plywood-covered bed frames and a makeshift dining table. Despite its condition, the family—parents and four daughters—enjoyed their stays, cherishing the wilderness, a nearby creek they dammed for a pool, and a playful badger that raced their car. They hiked to an abandoned garnet mine, though the garnets were small and rough. In 1971, after staying with their grandparents, the daughters were excited to return to the cabin. During the drive, they teased their mother about Bigfoot, prompted by a National Enquirer article, unaware of her unease. Upon arrival, they found the back door violently torn off and the interior littered with leaves and mud, which they attributed to careless hunters. They cleaned up and stayed, but their mother remained anxious, staying awake all night by the fire. A sudden wind gust during a light snowfall heightened the tension, flapping a plastic sheet covering the doorless entry. The family left the next day and never returned. Years later, in 2020, the now-elderly mother, bedridden with dementia, revealed to her daughter a terrifying incident from a previous cabin visit with her husband, when they were alone. Something large and heavy circled the cabin at night, trying doors and windows, causing intense fear. They fled at dawn, seeing a tall, shadowy figure zigzag through the trees. The mother’s fear explained her anxiety during the 1971 trip, especially seeing the damaged cabin, yet she stayed to avoid disappointing her daughters. Years later, she and her husband found the cabin in worse condition, with both doors torn off and the heavy iron stove ripped out and discarded in a ditch, an act difficult to attribute to humans given the remote location and the stove’s weight. The family’s experiences left a lasting impression, blending fond memories with an unsettling mystery.
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Transcript

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0:00.0

The mid-1960s friends offered our family use of their cabin in the Great Basin near Beka, Nevada, only a few hours dry from our home in Eli.

0:22.3

That part of the country is mostly barren with a few pockets of beauty and mystery.

0:27.6

It's where most of Nevada's rivers and streams go to die, disappearing into the dry

0:33.0

basin only to tragically flow into the Great Salt Lake. We were financially challenged, not homeless or starving, but we definitely struggled and had some very lean times.

0:45.3

It felt really good to tell people that we were going to the cabin.

0:49.3

However, it wasn't the quaint, rustic lakeside log cabin or alpine chalet that one might have envisioned.

0:57.9

After what seemed like a really long drive, some overrutted dirt roads up through a small canyon,

1:04.8

we reached a tiny ramshackle-framed house.

1:09.1

This pitiful thing looked very out of place, and there wasn't another structure anywhere

1:14.2

that we could see.

1:16.0

I was momentarily disenchanted.

1:18.8

The cabin consisted of only one room.

1:22.2

At one side there was a big iron stove, possibly a few cabinets.

1:26.8

It had no running water or electricity. It had at least

1:30.8

one window on each side and two doors front and back. The latter opened onto a short path that

1:37.4

led to a small creek surrounded by shade trees. Because of the property slope, they had leveled

1:43.7

the cabin using pallets and shims on the downhill side.

1:47.0

This made the front left side stand off the ground a couple of feet, making the windows on the sides fairly high up to anyone walking along.

1:57.0

There wasn't much in the way of furnishings, a couple of old metal bed frames that someone

2:02.5

had placed sheets of plywood on, and those served as couches and beds.

2:08.4

Using sawhorses and wood slats, we made a tiny table by removing the plywood sheet,

2:14.1

setting a saw horse in the middle and adding a one-by-six slat to each end for seating and replacing the plywood crossways on the sawhorse for a table.

...

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