Old Hag vs Infrasound vs Unknown

The 21st of September 2008 I spent the night in a remote campground in the Lewis and Clark National Forest in Montana. This is one of my brother's favorite campgrounds and I had camped here with him in 2005.



I arrived at the site about an hour after dark. There was one other camper, in a motor home on the other loop. Normally it would make me a little nervous pulling in and sleeping in a strange area but I had camped here before and I remembered the surroundings. The campground is along a creek nestled in the bottom of a little valley. Recording conditions were going to be perfect. I got out of my car and looked around. There was no wind and the creek was dried up, obviously only running during the winter and spring. The air was perfectly still.



I placed my microphone outside on my car's driver side mirror and ran the cord through the window to the recorder which I placed on the dash.



I woke up four or five times during the night and looked around but seeing nothing quickly went back to sleep. At about 4 a.m. I woke up and just felt like something was very close to my car. I started to sit up and look around but couldn't. Even though my mind said sit-up my body did not respond.



I quickly went back to sleep.



So what was this feeling I had? Was some animal close to my car? Was I paralyzed, why couldn't I move? Was it just a bad dream or the old hag syndrome. Was it infrasound?



To read about the old hag syndrome see:



The 'Old Hag" Syndrome



What is sleep paralysis





To read about infrasound and bigfoot see:



The Blogsquatcher



Infrasound? Interview with Dennis in New Jersey, parts 1-5



Tracking down infrasound: Interview with Sally in NC



Starting at about 4 a.m. the recordings do show that something was close to my car. Now I can not say whether it was a deer, perhaps a black bear or some other unknown visitor.



Sound Clip 1



The campground was very quiet and what was outside my car was very quiet also and although you can hear rustling the only sound of sufficient volume is this one sound clip. I do not know the maker of the sound. So did I record the Old Hag or something else?

Singing Coyote

At 2 a.m. on Sunday the 31st of August, 2008 I recorded several groups of coyotes. I had placed three different recorders at different locations within a half mile of each other. My best recording was of a single male coyote. It was so close to the microphone that it almost overpowered the unit. I won't ever record a better single coyote than this one. The first clip is the original and in the second clip I filtered out the cicadas.

Lone coyote with cicadas

Lone coyote without cicadas

These sounds may not be my desired target species but they are still wonderful sounds to hear and record. Hopefully I am increasing my recording skills and learning techniques to record other animals as well.