Is this viral video evidence that Bigfoot really is out there?

Perhaps the best reason to never be without your smartphone is that you just don’t know when you might be able to record a video of what could be evidence of a cryptid.

Bigfoot, Sasquatch, or whatever you want to call the creature imagined as a hairy humanoid that tramples its way through the forests has remained elusive. There was a close call when someone picked up a few suspicious hairs — but DNA tests proved they were shed by an ancient bear. While the bizarre video below, recently taken by hunter Gino Meekis, doesn't prove anything with scientific evidence, it doesn’t rule out the existence of Bigfoot either. Just listen to those weird noises.

“When it let out the first scream, I thought it was a moose, but my mind changed when it screamed again and again,” Meekis told Motherboard, while noting that he had “heard many different animals in the wild but nothing like this.”

Those mysterious howls definitely sound like the type of audio special effects you’d hear in a haunted house (that high-pitched noise in the background is his grandson howling in response). Meekis heard them on the way back to his car after a hunting trip. He stopped to record the howling until it got more intense, which was the point when he figured it was safest to get himself, his wife, and grandson in the car and out of there as soon as possible.

Listen to an actual moose call here, then listen to the video again. That is no moose.

Of course, this has ignited excitement across the cryptid-obsessed. Many believe that this really is a sign of the beast’s existence, something that Sasquatch hunters have been trying to prove through everything from FBI files to documentary series like Finding Bigfoot. Even the doubters might start to question their doubts after this.

So is it proof? Probably not, but you can’t doubt that there was something terrifying lurking in the woods that day.

(via Motherboard)