Saylor Park Forest - Cadets from the Air Force Academy participating in Survival training have reported feeling presences, seeing glowing figures among the trees. Night vision goggles reveal pulsing lights near various scattered granite monoliths between 1am-3am. Swamp gas...or extraterrestrials?
Mountain-biking through here one evening last summer on the way home from a 20-mile rigorous ride on the trails and jeep roads in the Rampart Range region, I got an unexplainable eerie feeling and couldn't pedal out of there fast enough. Fatigue...or a paranormal foreboding?
Is it significant that Teller County, less than one mile from Saylor Park, has had more Bigfoot encounters than any other county in Colorado, according to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization? Could the Bigfoot sighting logged for a nearby Geocache be related (that incident is documented here)? A few other nearby encounters:
One Teller County report [edited for brevity] reads:
I had made camp at the bottom of a valley that held some remarkable bulls [elk] in it. There is a stream that runs through the valley and through out the valley runs a series of beaver ponds and I was camped at the last one at the bottom. After a restless nights sleep, due to the anticipation of big bulls, I woke up at 3:00am and fixed breakfast, gathered my gear and was off by 4:30 or 5:00am. I hiked up the valley to a area I have always seen elk. As the sun was coming up, I bugled several times looking for a response. I heard a bull elk respond in the same direction that I took coming up. I went with my glasses to where I thought I had heard the bugle and when I glassed around the beaver pond that's when I saw it. I saw a very dark object squatting beside the beaver pond. At first I thought it was a bull lying in the pond. The creature stood up and was looking around. When he looked at me or in my direction, I got the feeling he knew I was there, and a feeling of excitement and terror filled my body. The creature was again around 7 foot tall maybe taller but not much. And it had short dark brown almost a reddish coat. It had facial features of that of a human, with the exception of a human nose. It was smaller and looked as if it sat on his mouth. Another feature that stood out to me was the size of it's hands. They were long and were like 1/2 the size of it's forearm. For the first time ever I was truely scared. Not of what I saw but of not ever really seeing anything like this before and having to face a reality. After at least 5 minutes of observing the creature he turned and walked through the creek towards my camp. He then turned and walked up a ridge and stopped and watched my camp or at least in that direction. After he moved off I got down off my perch and ran to my camp. I packed my gear and have yet to go back in there.
Whether you believe this stuff or not, Saylor Park is dotted with small ponds, spread with a million wildflowers, and ringed by aspens that typically turn near the end of September. It should be safe enough to visit in the daytime...I think.