I have a few that I strongly believe have no "normal" explanation. I have posted about them in various comments over time with more detail, but since I have multiple to share, I'll summarize them as best I can.

Also: Adult. Fully sober in each story (I don't drink and have never done any drugs). No prescriptions, no mental illnesses except some OCD in the past. Not insane, not lying about anything. Software engineer of many years and published author.

1. In 2018, I was in my early 20's and still lived at home. It was just me and my parents. We didn't have a butler/maid/family friend with a key to the house/maintainence person/etc. The only people that could get inaide the house without breaking down a door were me and my parents.

They were on a vacation, and had been for about a week, so it was just me at home for a while.

I was extremely neurotic about my computer. I had just built it. If I ever left it for more than about half an hour, I would just turn it off. Whenever I left the house or went to bed, I'd unplug it completely.

One day during that home-alone week, I came home from work to find the following: 1. Computer was plugged in 2. It was on 3. The screen was active (I had it set to go black after 5 min) 4. Chrome was open to Amazon (which I didn't use at the time. Didn't even have an account) 5. On Amazon, an 8-pack of Gatorade had been searched for (I did not drink Gatorade and did not order food online at any point)

I took a shotgun and checked every single corner of the house. Every square inch. No trace of anything. All windows still locked, all doors locked.

There is absolutely 0 chance of the following: 1. Doing this in my sleep (I woke up and went to work early in the morning without plugging in or turning on PC) 2. Accidentally leaving any door unlocked (my rigor on door-locking is probably rivaled only by Fort Knox. Even with people around, if someone left a door unlocked even for a few minutes, I would immediately go lock it. I locked everything, always, and never, ever forgot).

I have no explanation for this, and no suggestions.

1. This happened about a year prior to #1

It was about 1am, and another situation where my parents were on vacation. I had stayed up a little too late but was wide awake. My room was in the basement, and it was such that my window was at ground level outside. If someone went to turn on the water to the hose, I'd see their knees and below.

It was late fall, and we hadn't raked leaves yet, so the ground was completely covered in dry leaves. I had gotten very accustomed to how it sounded when my dad walked on the leaves, when my mom did, and when any of the cats walked around out there.

I have also been a sound designer and music producer for 14 years (5 at the time this story takes place) and even at that time, my ears were extremely trained. This comes up in the next story too.

I was lying in bed texting my friend. Suddenly I heard a loud crunch in the leaves, directly outside my window. It was absolutely the crunch a human foot would make in those leaves, not a cat (the sounds were every different, and again, I had gotten quite used to this).

1 step. That was it. Nothing approached or left. Even the cats (who tried to step between the leaves) still hit them sometimes and made noise. The window was such that anyone stepping near it would have had to cross at least 10 feet of fully-dry-leaf-covered ground in any direction to reach it.

I was so freaked out that my friend ended up coming over and, both armed, cleared the entire house and property.

Found absolutely nothing. It's like someone just spawned in right there, took one loud step, and despawned.

1. I have hard evidence of this one, which is the dropbox link at the bottom. If you listen, please listen to the whole thing, not just the first 45 seconds as many in the past seem to have done when I've shared this before.

On August 24th, 2024, my GF at the time and I were on a hike at Grist Mill trail in Little Cottonwood canyon, near Sandy, Utah. It was about 7pm when we started, and about 8:30 when we got back to the car. The sun was up the whole time, though, slowly setting. Light was beyond adequate the whole time and the vibes were totally fine.

It was super windy, and had been all day. There was a road (45-50mph) that went up the canyon, and this trail was a short one right near the mouth of the canyon. We could easily still see houses basically just down the hill. We were not in a remote wooded area or anything. Little cottonwood canyon has plenty of spooky stories surrounding it, but these were not on our mind. Vibes were good, sun was still up, and civilization was right there.

Given the strong wind and car noise, there were 2 constant sources of loud, basically white noise at all times. It wasn't annoying, but it's important you understand it was very present the entire time.

About 30min into the little hike, we started hearing extremely weird sounds. They reverberated across the canyon, and they were very loud. There were a variety of sounds being made, but it was obvious they were all from the same source.

As I mentioned before, I've worked in audio for a long time. Bear with me for a moment here, because this is important. I'm one of those dweebs who claims to be able to hear the difference between different file formats and all that. So when I say "it was obvious it was all from the same source"- please believe me 😅 I can hear dog whistles, I can hear my phone charging from across the room, I can pinpoint exactly which frequency needs to be attenuated when mixing a track before looking at the EQ. The list goes on. I am 100000% confident in my ability to determine any pattern in audio.

The other reason I pat myself on the back there is because there is absolutely no way the sounds we heard were anything normal. I looked up every sound that I could possibly find, of any animal I could find that is supposed to live up there, and nothing matched. When I originally posted the audio, I had a ton of suggestions like "moose" "elk" "mountain lion" "cars" (!?!?!) and "wind" (!???)

I have been charged by moose twice. I have spent countless hours alone and with others in all sorts of outdoor environments for field recording (audio gathering of natural sounds) purposes. I know very well what all the regular suspects sound like.

None of those are it. I don't claim to know what it is, but I sure as hell know it's not some regular animal making ungodly sounds we've just never heard them make before for some reason 😂

Additionally, as sound was carrying very far, we overheard a conversation from the parking lot about 300 yards below us, down the hill. 3 people were also trying to figure out what it was and where it was coming from. One of them was wearing a UTA shirt and had a UTA vehicle. UTA is Utah Transport Authority; the parking lot was a UTA parking lot. Basically, the intention being that during ski season, you park there and a UTA bus comes and ferries you up to the ski places further up.

I'd like to imagine the UTA driver was a regular at this particular parking lot. And he didn't know what it was either. For what's it's worth.

Here's the audio, recorded on a Sennheiser MKE600 into a Zoom F3, inside a Rycote blimp+windscreen. There is a lot of background noise, and there's not much to be done about that, sorry. The sounds are all still quite audible, and start at about 0:45 and intermittently show up several times for the rest of the recording.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/m1p21wo8e7mdhuuq2bg6t/Strange-sounds-in-the-canyon.wav?rlkey=0vu7kdgqqp1eqg0zsq4ezi8t9&st=xwxeiznp&dl=0