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Hey, y'all, how's it going. This is Cam Buckner with the Dixiecrypted

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Podcast. This podcast is going to
be different than anything I've ever done.

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It's really short, It's only eight
or nine minutes long, but it is

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an experiment with artificial intelligence voice recordings. Two of the stories are my voice

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cloned and it sounds like my voice, but they can't duplicate my accent,

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and the others. I think the
story in the middle is just some random

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voice I picked off the software just
to read a story. This is probably

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the only one I'm ever gonna do, but I thought it would be fun

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just to try it out. And
if your story is in this podcast,

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I will do it in my own
voice in the next week or so.

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You're going to hear this these stories, probably twice, but I'd like to

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get some feedback from you in the
comments or what you think of story one,

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two, and three and how it
sounded to you. And I'm just

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here. I think it sounds good. I don't think it's as good as

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a naturally read or narrated story,
but it is interesting how this technology is

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progressing. And I bought a subscription
to this service. I may probably cancel

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it next month, but I want
to get my money's worth out of it,

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so I got three stories out of
it. Let me know what you

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think. I hope you enjoy it. And remember this is probably the only

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time I'm going to do this unless
people just really love it. It takes

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just as much time to edit these
and get them ready as it does to

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record them, so it makes no
difference to me. But I just thought

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it'd be a fun little project.
Let me know what you think. I

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hope you enjoy it. In the
mid two thousands, my friend Eli had

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gotten a new video camera. He
was around twelve years old and was eager

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to put it to good use.
His camera was not nearly the same quality

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as the ones on the market today
and was definitely not as user friendly,

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especially when filming something without benefit of
a second pair of hands. Eli lived

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way out in a rural area.
There was a clearing near his home that

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was overgrown with tall grass and weeds, typical of a country boy his age.

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He wanted to film himself on his
four wheeler. Eli set up his

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camera and tripod at a safe distance, jumped on his ATV, and began

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doing a series of reckless stunts.
The more dangerous, the better. He

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was a beginner as a budding film
director and didn't always capture himself in the

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center of the frame. When he
was done, he took the shot footage

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back to his house to pull it
up on his computer and review his movie

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making skills. Watching the videos he
took that day, something unexpected appeared in

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several of the frames. What he
saw shocked him. The footage shows Eli

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on his ATV performing a several stunts. Suddenly, in the background, on

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dead center, a dark figure walking
on two legs rises up from behind a

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tree and walks into the forest.
It's hesitant in its movements, as if

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waiting for Eli's attention to be drawn
away so it can escape undetected. Eli

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posted it to YouTube, and the
video got ridiculed and labeled his fake.

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The haters and non believers suggested a
number of scenarios on how Eli used everything

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from camera angles, a guerrilla suit, and even photoshopping the image. November

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fifteenth is a holiday in Michigan,
as it's the opening day of the state's

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firearm deer season. Schools close and
families get together for the annual tradition of

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deer hunting. A friend of ours
name Jimmy was a sixteen year old man

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child who stood at six two inches
and weighed two hundred pounds. He was

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eager to get out there well before
daybreak, park his truck and begin the

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mile long trek to his deer blind, which was really more of a shack

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with windows and a door. He
had been regularly placing deer bait in front

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of it to out the deer.
Jimmy had gotten about sixty yards from his

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blind when he heard something off to
his right. What he saw would seriously

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change his attitude towards hunting in general. He panned his flashlight in the direction

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of the disturbance and saw a huge
figure moving quickly through the trees. He

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didn't glimpse any defining features beyond its
enormous, brown haired back. He later

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described it like a freight train barreling
through the woods. Whatever it was,

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it freaked him out. Too scared
to run back to his truck, he

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instead headed to his blind and quickly
locked the door behind him. He dropped

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to the floor and hid there until
dawn. Once the first rays of sunlight

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began streaming through the cracks of the
deer blind, Jimmy wrenched open the door

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and raced to his truck as fast
as he could, never daring once to

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stop and look behind him. No
opening morning of deer hunting season was going

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to bring him anywhere near that place
again, even if we agreed to travel

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back there with him. Like me, Eli and the rest of our friends,

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Jimmy grew up in the sticks and
swears what he witnessed wasn't a bear

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or like anything he ever saw before
out in those woods. I know I

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believe him. I've always had a
recurring dream where I was being pursued by

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what I don't know. I always
managed to outrun it, apparently, and

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wake up before whatever it was had
me cornered. It was really unsettling.

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I couldn't remember if any of my
friends were in the dream. Maybe they

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were the ones who got caught while
I escaped. It's like that joke when

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you're in the water with a buddy
and a shark attacks. You know you

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don't have to outswim the shark,
just the other guy. One weekend,

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a couple of my friends and I
were hiking. It was autumn and the

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ground was heavy with fallen leaves,
the kind that dry up quickly and crunch

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under your feet as you make your
way down the trail. Sometimes you can't

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tell the sounds of the outdoors from
the sounds of your friends as they laugh

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at dumb jokes or struggle to maintain
a heart healthy walking pace through the woods.

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We were oblivious to all else.
We'd hiked for hours, so we

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stopped by a tree for a rest. It was getting dark and we didn't

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have the energy to make the long
trek back to my car, so we

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decided to just stay there for the
night. We told more dumb jokes and

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laughed until we each started to drop
off to sleep. That's when I heard

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something rustling around out in the dark. I grabbed my flashlight out of my

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backpack and swept the light beam back
and forth into the darkness, but saw

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nothing. The noise stopped, which
only put me on edge. I made

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one more sweep of the area with
my flashlight and that's when I saw it.

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It looked like something half human on
all fours with its hind end up

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in the air. I couldn't tell
if it was wearing a black suit or

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if its entire body was covered with
coarse black hair. I flashed my light

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back at my friends just to see
if any of them were awake and seeing

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what I was seeing. They were
still snoozing, totally unaware. Suddenly I

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heard this horrible, demonic roar,
like something out of that movie The Conjuring.

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I spun around with my flashlight and
there it was some sort of animal,

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standing upright on two legs like a
man. I ran my light up

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its body all the way to its
head. It must have been eight feet

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tall. My friends were now wide
awake and scrambling. It was every man

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for himself as we ran back down
the trail. After ten minutes of total

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panic, we finally ran out of
breath and sat down by a big rock.

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We realized we'd left our wallets behind
with our hiking gear, so we

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voted to wait until daybreak and go
back. I kept aiming the flashlight into

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the night, but it appeared that
our monster friend hadn't followed us. Maybe

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he was as afraid of us as
we were of him. One could only

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hope. At the crack of dawn, we went back and recovered our things.

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Our backpack smelled like sewage. When
we got back to the car,

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I threw everybody's gear into the trunk. I left my backpack outside in the

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rain for weeks before I finally broke
down and took everything to a laundromat.

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I didn't want to contaminate my own
washer. Goes without saying that. No

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one believed our story, but at
least I knew that, unlike my dream,

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in real life, all of us
got away. Not long ago,

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my husband and I purchased a small
log cabin that sits on ten and half

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acres of land in the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan. We're working to restore the

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property and bring it back to its
former glory. It faces a small pond

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and we can see a few neighbors
in that direction. To our northeast is

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an open meadow. Other than that, we are surrounded by densely forested state

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owned land. It's isolated, but
it's the kind of seclusion that induces peace

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and tranquility. I was sitting out
on the open front porch enjoying a tall

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glass of iced tea one day when
I saw something directly ahead of me that

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looked like a massive iridescent bubble floating
about fifteen feet off the ground. It

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was moving slowly into the thick forest
and changing shapes and configuration as it was

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doing so, I wasn't sure what
I was looking at. After watching it

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for several minutes and marveling at how
beautiful it looked, I chalked it up

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to being some sort of weird natural
phenomenon and went back inside. Later,

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we were putting together our log bedroom
set in the small back bedroom when I

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was overwhelmed with a feeling of being
watched that raised goose bumps all over my

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body. I glanced out the two
side by side windows and saw a gray,

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human looking creature with a large elongated
head, two big black oval eyes,

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and no eyelids, staring back in
at me where its noose should have

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been. It had two small slits, but I couldn't see its mouth.

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We had a one hundred gallon propane
tank right outside the window that wasn't hooked

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up yet, and the creature was
standing behind it. The tank was four

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and a half feet tall. The
being had its long fingers stretched out across

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the tank and was craning its neck
to look over the tank so it could

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watch me. The second we made
eye contact, it ducked down behind the

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tank and out of sight. I
ran to the window, but it was

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gone. It was mid morning on
a clear day. I reached the window

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and plenty of time to see any
human that might have been out there before.

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They could have disappeared into the woods, but this thing was gone.

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I have never had an experience like
this before. It isn't a story I

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share with anyone who knows me.
I wasn't frightened by what I saw.

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In fact, I was probably as
curious about it as it was about me.

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But I sure would like to know
what it was. Do you have any ideas

