Okay, in my never ending quest to do something new, I'm going to
do something I've never done before. I'm going to read the same story that
I received from a real person twice. The first version you're going to get
is the is exactly what I got in the email, and the second version
is going to be how Neoma edited it. Now. I'm not doing this
to make fun of this writer at all. You know, we all have
gifts. Some people have the gift of you know, academics. And some
people are great with their hands. They're good wrenching on engines. Some guys
are good welders. Some people are great with numbers and their accountants and their
engineers, and some of the those people maybe don't have a real good feel
for how a story can flow, you know, a good way to make
a story flow. So this in no way is to poke Funt. You're
not gonna know his name, so he's not gonna be embarrassed. And if
he hears this, I don't remember when I got this, but I think
I just don't know when I got it. But I'm gonna show I'm gonna
you're gonna hear two stories, and I'm gonna show you what we do to
them. The first thing you need to know is we do not change what
happens in the story. We just make the story better. We just make
it told better. And you're gonna see what I'm talking about. And if
you're smart, if you're not one of these crazy Bigfoot extremist enthusiasts who have
been sending me emails lately about me changing stories. I don't change any stories.
I just make them better. I make them flow so that you guys
can enjoy them. So I want you to tell me in the comment section
which story that I'm about to read that you enjoyed better. And you're gonna
see that nothing changes in the story. Everything is exactly the way he said
it. It's just told in a different way because that's what we do.
We try to give you good quality readings so that you can enjoy the story.
So enough talking. This is the original story that I got in an
email. Here's what There is zero punctuation in this email, so I'm just
gonna read it just like he's got it written. Do not use my name
or say my Gmail name, so my name is blank. He doesn't want
his name told. Let's begin. It was short while ago in September seventeenth,
twenty three, I was a little place that is the indoor range for
archery. I do archery and I think I'm pretty good at it. And
it was around two pm. It was nice out, and it was an
old building and it looked in disrepair with spider cobwebs everywhere, and if a
big enough tree fell on this building, it would collapse. So now it's
two thirty and I'm the door is wide open, and I'm sitting there about
to pull back my pull back my bow when a loud bang hits the side
of the building. Now I let my bow down and run the short shut
the door because I didn't know if it was a person or a bigfoot.
And then we grabbed some weapons and then went outside and see what hit the
side of the building. And we saw a pretty big sized walnut that kind
of come from any tree around there. And it felt eerie, feeling like
those eyes on me the whole time when I was outside. I didn't see
anything, but it felt just like there were eyes on me at all times
that I couldn't see outside. It was three pm. I get enough courage
to go back outside and have the door open and I saw a possum,
so I was just chilling outside and then I felt eyes on me again.
I don't know if it was a bigfoot or someone. Later that night,
at around seven thirty eight pm, I was leaving the range and saw a
pair of eyes. I didn't say anything to nobody. In the creepiest part
about it is you have to get out of your vehicle to shut the gate,
and I also throw eyes on me the whole time we was leaving.
That's the end of my encounter. I know it's pretty short. I love
your podcast and you should post some more Steve Lilly content. I really love
that podcast. Thank you for your content. Okay, this man, that's
the end of that's the end of the email. And he's this guy's a
very nice guy. He's a good guy and I love him. And if
I if I read every story just like that, nobody would enjoy the story.
But I don't care if you send them to me just like this,
because we can do we can make them better. We want your experience so
that we can share it with the rest of the world. That's you know,
that's really what I like doing. So now I'm going to read to
you the edited version, and you tell me this is the this is the
second edited version. You tell me which one was easier on the ears in
the comment section. I enjoy archery. I think I'm pretty good at it,
so I tend to spend a lot of time at an indoor range near
here. It's not much of a building. It's old and it's broken down.
It's covered in spider webs, and it looks like a good stiff breeze
might blow it over. But it's close to home, and convenience makes up
for a lot. On September seventeen, twenty twenty three, I decided to
head over and get some practice with a buddy of mine. We pulled up
and I jumped out to open the gate so we could drive in. It
was a nice day with very little wind, and there was a bright sun
overhead. I would have expected to hear squirrels chattering and birds singing, or
maybe some other small creature shuffling through the overgrown brush that lined the fence,
but I didn't, and it didn't occur to me to be worried by the
fact. Instead, I made a mental note of the quietness of the day,
and I jumped back in my truck. After we pulled in, I
told my buddy that it was his turn to get out, and he pulled
the gate shut behind us, and he jumped back in the truck. The
gravel dry from the gate to the building isn't more than thirty yards long.
It curves around a little clump of trees and opens into a parking lot big
enough for four or five vehicles. You can't see the building from the road,
and if you weren't a local or an archer, you might not even
know it was there. Normally, my buddy wouldn't have got back in the
truck. He would have just walked up. But as I began to pull
forward, he slapped the tailgate to let me know that he wanted me to
wait. We pulled up to the building and got our bows out of the
back. Did you notice how quiet it was out there? He said?
Yep, I replied. An uneasy feeling crept over me. As I stood
there. It was like I was being watched. My eyes scanned the trees
around us, but I didn't see anyone. I didn't even see any animals,
and I thought to myself, man, this is a really quiet day.
It was two o'clock When we got there, we went inside knocked away
a few spider webs. We never got rid of all of them because the
place was so old and rickety that we couldn't help, but wonder if those
webs weren't what was holding the building together. We had the place to ourselves,
though, and it didn't take us long to get set up and start
shooting, and within minutes we had both forgotten all about how quiet it was
outside. Half an hour later, I was about to pull back my bow
when something loud banged on the side of the building with a loud crack,
I nearly jumped out of my skin. My buddy looked at me, and
I looked back at him, and we were both wondering if someone was outside
trying to stir up some trouble. The door was wide open, so we
would have seen anyone pull in, but that didn't mean someone couldn't have walked
in. With our weapons in hand, we headed out the door to see
what hit the building. No one was around, but it was still eerily
quiet, and right away I began to feel like someone was watching us from
the woods, but a quick scan of the tree line didn't reveal anything,
and we made our way around the building, where we found a walnut lying
on the ground beside it. I felt a rush of relief, and I
told myself, you fool, It was just a walnut that fell out of
a tree. I looked up as the thought crossed my mind, fully expecting
the tree directly overhead to be a walnut tree. But the tree I was
looking at was an oak. And I looked at the tree next to it,
and the one on the other side of that, and at the next
and the next, but there was no walnut tree in sight. My mind
went through several scenarios that would have explained how a walnut landed next to the
building. A squirrel might have managed to carry it there, but how could
it have thrown it at the building? What we heard didn't come from the
roof. He came from the sidewall. My buddy looked up at the trees
too, and then back at the woods, and I knew right away that
he was feeling the same question of being watched that I was, but I
didn't say anything. There wasn't a point. We were both already getting a
little edgy, and we decided to go back inside. By three o'clock,
I had talked myself into believing there was a logical explanation for the walnut,
even if I couldn't think of one. So I went back outside. When
I got there, there was a possum in the driveway, inspecting something on
the gravel. It was the first wildlife I had seen since we got there.
Now, this place is out in the country. It's set in the
woods, so we normally saw rabbits and squirrels all over the place. Birds
were usually flying around from tree to tree, and there was always the sound
of some insect or other chirping critter. One time we had to sit inside
for half an hour while a skunk wandered around the parking lot, But there
was none of that today. Seeing that possum felt like I had an open
door back to sanity Land. Then I got hit with a strange feeling of
being watched again. I looked around, and again I didn't see anything.
My common sense was telling me there was someone out in the woods and I
just couldn't see them. But something deep inside me was triggering my flight or
fight response mechanism, and it told me that whoever or whatever was out there,
that it was dangerous. I went back inside and I tried not to
think about it for the next few hours while we practiced. My buddy went
outside once and he came back with a haunted look on his face. He
didn't say anything, and I didn't ask. Sometimes it's better not to know.
The whole time we were there that day, everything fell off. My
imagination was kicking in and I had visions of someone coming in and shooting up
the place. My buddy was nervous and jitterly acting, and neither one of
us was willing to say out loud what I knew we were both thinking.
Finally, it was seven thirty PM and the sun had set. It was
dark outside. We had an excuse to leave without looking like a couple of
chickens, so we quickly loaded up the truck and drove out to the gate.
Now it was my turn to get out and open it, and I
jumped out as quickly as I could and rushed over and I swung it wide,
And as I turned around to go back to the truck, that's when
I saw it. A set of eyes inside the tree line were staring out
at me. They were too tall to be human and too wide to be
an owl, and they seemed almost to glow of their own accord. In
my hurry to leave, I stepped on the gas a little too hardened scent
rocks flying behind us, and my buddy gave me in an odd look,
and he just said, hurry up and shut the gate. I want to
get home. He jumped out and did as he was told. And when
he got back inside, I knew from the look on his face that he
had seen those same set of eyes, and neither one of us spoke about
it on the way home. I don't know what we saw. Maybe it
was a big foot, maybe it was something else. Maybe it was a
really big man in those woods. But whatever it was, every one of
my senses was telling me that we needed to get the heck out of there,
and we never went back. Now that's the edited version. You may
have liked the first version. You may be a purist and you may say,
you know, just read a word for word, or you may be
one of the people who I hope to attract to this channel, who enjoy
story. But I'll tell you this, I did not change one detail in
that story. It was told. All the details of what happened were exactly
exactly the same as the email that he sent me. But it was just
a little easier on the ears, and we made it a better story.
We didn't make it a better encounter. I'm not trying to make it a
better encounter. We just made the story told better. Does everybody understand now?
I know that ninety eight percent of the people who listen to this podcast
and go, oh yeah, it makes perfect sense, But there is that
one or two percent that gets so bent out of shape. They're like,
it's like they just look for things to pick at. And so anyway,
I just want to give you an example. I've never never once changed a
story, and there's only one time in all in five years I've been doing
this. You guys know, I have like six hundred videos up. One
woman contacted me after I put up a story, and she was very upset
because there was something about the story about her. And her husband had stopped
so she could get out and go to the bathroom in the woods. She
came back and they looked in their rearview mirror and there was a big foot
behind them. She never said how far close it was to the car behind
the car, so I just made up a distance I said it was I
think I said it was twenty yards behind the car, but it was actually
she said in her email that it was like one hundred yards behind the car,
and she just jumped in my shit about that, and I'm like,
well, if you wanted people to know how far it was behind the car,
why didn't you put that in the story. I had to put something
in there. You got to give some kind of reference in these stories so
people know they can visualize in their head what's going on. So if you
leave it out and I add something in that's very critical to the story,
that's not on me. That's on you. Put the details in that you
want in. So I'm not being critical. I'm just saying, there's only
one time someone has ever come contacted me and said you changed my story,
and that was it. That was the only thing I've ever heard out of
anybody. So if you're not a good writer, if you're if you're a
storyteller like this guy is, please keep sending your stories in. We're fine
with that. We can make them great stories and we won't change a single
detail of your story. So keep them coming. I appreciate you. I
appreciate you enduring this podcast. It just was kind of on my mind,
and I have the opportunity here. I had both versions right in front of
me, and I thought I'd read it to you. So there you have
it. There you have it. Okay, here's kind of a short story
about a woman who talks about her psychic ability. Let's see. Uh Neilma
says, when you read this, tell me that you can't hear friend Dresher
from the nanny telling the story. Can you do a nasally New York accent?
I don't know. I don't know anyway, here's the story. I've
always known there was something a little different about me, but I could never
give it a name or even describe it. I get messages about other people
in advance. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, it is
earth shattering for me, and occasionally it is for the people around me too.
When I was thirteen, we went to my cousin's wedding. His new
bride's brother, Frank was dancing with all the girls in the room. I
didn't dance with him. Something about him kept me away, and I couldn't
explain why. Years later, Frank and I would meet in a different social
setting when a mutual friend introduced us. He and I dated for a while,
and I loved his company, but I realized that our relationship was not
meant to be boyfriend girlfriend. We did, however, have a strong connection.
It was very strong. Eventually we stopped seeing each other. He moved
on and started dating a girl from my high school that I knew, but
I was not friends with. She was a little too wild for me.
Well, they got married, and I married someone else, and I never
gave him much thought after that. And then one night I dreamt that someone
close to him died. I was telling my husband about the dream, and
he was countering with his jealousy of me dreaming about someone else. When the
phone rang. It was my mother telling me that my cousin's mother in law,
Frank's mother, had passed away. And when I told my family that
I knew, they were understandably shaken. As the years went by, I
began to think that I had outgrown this ability. I didn't have any more
premonitions, so I never gave it much thought. The next time I would
see Frank was on Interstate ninety five, the New Jersey Turnpike, of all
places. My husband was in the United States Navy and we were heading to
his next duty station when I happened to look over and who should drive up
alongside our truck but Frank on a motorcycle. We made eye contact and he
waved and I nodded, and he drove off. That would be the last
time I saw him alive. Another six years passed before I gave him more
than a passing thought, and then suddenly I couldn't get him out of my
mind. Somehow I knew there was a message coming to me from him,
but I had no way of finding out where he was. At that point.
I had heard that he and his wife had divorced and that Frank had
moved south, but even his sister didn't know where. I lost touch with
my cousin and his wife for a while, and several years passed and we
made contact again, and over the course of a long conversation, it came
out that Frank and I had dated, and something that his sister had never
known before. And it was then that she told me that Frank had passed
away from a heart attack in his forties. It felt like I had been
punched in the chest. I figured out the year of his death, and
that was when I put too and two together and realized it coincided with the
time that I was getting really strong messages from him. Over the years,
I learned not to talk about this ability to anyone These days, most of
the people who were in my life then are no longer with us, so
it doesn't matter so much anymore. I wasn't always that way. One day
at work, I got a feeling that an upcoming death very close to me
was about to occur. It was so overpowering that I began to cry uncontrollably.
Several concerned co workers pressed me to tell them what was wrong, and
I regret today that I told them the truth. And a few days later,
I got the call at work that my father had died suddenly of a
brain hemorrhage. I was never treated the same again. And when I knew
my sister was about to die, I called her and despite her reluctance to
allow me to visit, I went. I took her out to dinner,
and we went to the movies, and we enjoyed the whole weekend together.
It was the last time I saw her alive. This is how it is.
I can predict events as well, but then people look at me.
Strangely, if I tell them about it. It takes time for some of
us to realize that we don't need to share the message that we receive,
even when they are true. Oh, that may be the first psychic story
I've ever done. That was very interesting. I think people kind of get
messages and undercurrents and feelings. Sometimes I don't know, I can't put my
finger on it, but there were times. There are times when I've dreamed
things, and those dreams absolutely come true to the detail. Some of them
are scary dreams, some of them are fun dreams. Some of them are,
you know, just kind of average, kind of benign, mediocre dreams.
Maybe there's probably been a half a dozen in my life, and the
exact same thing, the exact same thing I dream actually happens. I could
go into detail on them, but that would be kind of boring. So
but anyway, I kind of believe in this stuff. I think the psychic
thing is it's for real, And I think it's even more for real when
somebody just kind of keeps it to themselves, people who use it to profit
and to gain attention from others. You know, I think there's a little
bit something in it. For him. But I don't know what do I
know? I don't know much at all. I just read stories. But
thank you to the woman who sent this. I'm glad that you sent it.
And the New York nasally accent that was just a joke from Nioma.
This was a very good story. And I didn't hear I didn't hear her
telling the story in that nasally accent. But Nioma, you a bad woman.
Here's a bigfoot story, and this is kind of a manly story.
I think you guys will like it. Here's what he writes. It's really
good. It has taken me more than eight years to find the courage to
share these two stories with the general public. But I'm tired of waking up
screaming and fighting in the night. And I'm done with all the bigfoot magnets
and socks and shirts I get for Christmas every year. They all think it's
a big joke. But when I ask any of them if they want to
come with me to the Honey Island Swamp to do some fishing or hunting,
they're always too busy or they've already made other plans. Even my wife,
who insists that she is a non believer won't come camping with me. Some
say that's because she's smarter than me. Now that can't be right. Growing
up in South Louisiana, I have spent a great deal of my life hunting
and fishing. My dad would take me as often as he could before I
got my license. Once I was able to drive myself, I was out
there nearly every weekend doing one or the other. Now I'm an avid bow
and gun hunter as well as a dedicated fresh water, saltwater, and bluewater
fishermen. When I was a teenager, most of my friends had drive up
camps on the Pearl River that we'd disappear up the river to every Friday night
after football games. After I graduated from college, I found myself in suits
for most of the work week, but on the weekends I'd always find myself
back in my rural surroundings. Even after all these years, I won't say
I'm great with a bow and an arrow, but I'm pretty good. I'm
better with a gun, and better still with a rod and reel and a
spinner bait. It was back in nineteen ninety or nineteen ninety one that I
first realized there was something out there that I couldn't easily explain. I was
still single then, and it was early October, and my buddy and I
had taken a small John boat up the river to do some bow hunting.
It's a tricky area to get into, the dams and locks and underwater sawyers
and snags and seals and weirs that were built by the Corps of Engineers.
We were in the area that what most people know is the Honey Island Swamp,
but we called it the Big Woods. It's a beautiful upland swamp most
of the time that stretches for forty miles and it reaches five miles across.
It's a part of the Pearl River basin that goes all the way to Jackson,
Mississippi. But we found a good spot we set up camp. We
gathered up some firewood before walking away from the river several hundred yards and separating.
I went another four hundred yards with a breeze in my face and a
hundred and oak flat. It was a quiet evening. I hadn't seen any
deer and it was getting dark. Once I couldn't see the sights on my
bow anymore, I decided it was time to head back to camp. As
I was getting my flashlight and backpack together, I heard a very loud and
heavy walking coming toward me from one hundred yards away. Figuring it was either
a deer, my buddy, or a panther, I sat tight and I
sat still for a few minutes and I waited. All it did was get
darker. I couldn't take it anymore, so I said, hey, buddy,
is that you. The walking stopped forty yards from me and to my
left. Everything went silent. All right, man, you're not scaring me,
I said a little louder. Still, I didn't get an answer,
and the hair on the back of my neck stood up as the feeling of
big watch came over me. This had me unsettled enough that I finally screamed
at whatever this was, and my buddy called back to me from a good
four hundred yards away. At this point I was a little concerned. I
turned on the flashlight and I scanned the area, and there didn't appear to
be anything out there. I already had a broad head from my quiver and
my knife out to make the walk back, so I started to ease my
way down to the right, talking to this thing as I did. So.
Now I'm gonna hurt you, I bluffed. You don't want none of
me. I'm a bad dude at the very best, I'll cripple you.
Finally, I hollered at my buddy and he hollered back from a little closer
this time. Meanwhile, when I was walking, this thing walked, and
when I stopped, it stopped. It felt like an eternity. Before I
made it to our meet up point, and right away I told my buddy
that something was following me. Well, we both kind of laughed and agreed
that it was probably a panther. We've seen them in southeast Louisiana. It
was only one hundred yards back to camp, and this thing followed us the
whole way, and with our phantom stalker close by, we decided it would
be a good idea to gather a little extra firewood for the fire before we
sat down in our lawn chairs. We sat there with our flashlights on in
bowie knives in our hands, and we talked loudly to it, telling it
to go away, and we assured it that it didn't want any part of
us. We were bad dudes. All the while, it walked in a
slow semi circle around us, fifty yards out in the dark. Eventually we
chose to go about our business. We cracked open the cooler for some cold
fried chicken and some beer. For thirty minutes, we sat there eating our
supper, throwing chicken bones at it and telling it to get leave us alone
because we didn't want to hurt it. After a couple of more beers,
we began to feel better. We weren't thirsty anymore, and that's when we
came up with the kind of idea that gets people elected to the doorwin awards.
We decided to charge it with our knives and bows. Our flashlights were
probably brighter than we were that night, but it would not leave us alone.
And seeing two men bluff charging into the woods a good twenty yards while
screaming like a couple of banshees did make it back off, And looking back,
I wonder if we actually startled it or if it went somewhere to get
control of its stuff and stop laughing at us. Either way, we felt
like we had chased it away and went back to our alarm chairs by the
fire. We stayed close to the other side of camp, gathering more firewood
so we could keep a big fire going until well after we went to bed.
We never smelled it. The wind was wrong for that. But it
came back and stayed with us for several hours. I could feel it watching
us, and sometimes we heard it moving. I don't know what that animal
was, but it was smart. It sounded like three men walking heavily in
the woods. By nine pm, we couldn't hear it anymore, so we
turned in and went to sleep, and we hunted the next morning without incident,
and we packed up and went home. We didn't hear screams or wood
knocks, and there were no tracks. It may have been a bigfoot,
or it might have been a hungry panther. I've heard panthers scream near where
we were that night. They sound like a crazy woman screaming if you've never
heard one before, and it'll send chills down your spine. Whatever this thing
was, I've never forgotten it. Time marches on in twenty fourteen, my
youngest son was ready for a hunt in the big woods. I was in
my early fifties by then. Over the years, for all the general reasons
that make life what it is, a wife of children and my job,
I hadn't hunted this part of southeastern Louisiana as much as I had when I
was younger. I had still killed my share of deer and ducks and hogs
here, just not as often. It was late January muzzleloader season that inevitably
happens in conjunction with the coldest weather that the Deep South can throw at you.
Our plan was to go in by boat on Thursday afternoon. I had
taken time off from work, and I'd pulled my son out of school at
lunch for the trip. We got the boat loaded, and then I said
a quick prayer for protection before we launched, and we headed up river.
It was just before dark when we reached our camping spot and we pitched our
tent, and then after that we set up our long chairs and unloaded the
boat. There were virtually no issues on that trip except one. My son
was set up a few hundred yards away from me on a crossing with a
single shot twenty gage slug gun while I was upriver a bit. The era
of hollering across the woods or using walkie talkies had been replaced by cell phones
and texting by now. My son would text me and he would tell me
what he was or was not seeing, and I would text back the same.
It was almost dark when he texted the message. That sent a chill
down my spine. Something is close and loud and it's walking, but it
won't come out. It sent me charging on a hot trot with my headlamp
bobbing. He never saw anything. All he knew is that it walked around
and that it was too loud to be a deer. We decided it was
time to head back to camp, where we ate supper and went to bed.
The river was rising fast and it was about to spill over its banks,
so after one more day of hunting we left. It was a place
where high water runs swift and swirls into dangerous whirlpools, and we didn't want
to get caught in that. That was the end of our twenty fourteen trip.
I think it was a bigfoot that made the noise in the dark for
my son, but there are no smells. There were no knocks or anything
else to prove it. We'd had such a big time together while camping the
previous January that we decided to go back in for an early youth only hunt
on the ninth in November of that year, like we did in January,
I took a couple of days off from work and I checked my son out
of school on Thursday at lunch. Then we headed straight for the Honey Island
Swamp. I said another prayer for protection before leaving the boat ramp. We
had eaten supper on our way there, so we didn't cook anything that night,
which meant we only had a small fire. I learned the next morning
that my cell phone didn't pick up enough signal to set off the alarm,
so we didn't get up until daybreak. We dressed and we ate in a
hurry before jumping in the boat and heading off to a good deer and hogspot
that I knew. It was Friday morning, opening day of youth rifle hunt.
We tied the boat up and began stalking and creeping across the wind.
We jumped several deer, but they moved off too quickly to offer my son
a shot, and that day we hunted the area with him in front of
me by twenty five yards. As we slowly stalked through the woods as if
we were hunting the squirrels, it was more stopping than walking back at camp.
That night, we got our headlamps and I grabbed a hatchet to cut
some firewood. My son decided that he wanted to chop a fallen tree down,
so I handed him the hatchet and I told him not to cut his
leg off. Have you ever watched a fourteen year old with a hatchet by
headlamp? He beat it down to oak into submission before I pointed out that
it wasn't making enough noise to call in a bigfoot. Laughing, he said,
skunkate yetti, wookie sasquatch, and we both chuckled. Took a few
trips to get all the firewood back to camp, so it was pitch black
before I started building the fire. I was busy working on that while drinking
a beer when we heard five loud, distinct tree knocks fifteen hundred yards down
the river. It sounded like an NFL lineman with a four by four hitting
a tree. We looked at each other and shrugged our shoulders. Maybe someone
else down river from us was cutting firewood too, So we ate our supper
and we went to bed. On Saturday, we went to another favorite spot
of mine and walked for hours. We jumped more deer, but again there
was no easy shot from my fourteen year old. We walked our way back
to the boat where we ate our lunch, and suggested that we go back
to the spot we were at last January when my son had heard something.
It was five o'clock when we heard it. It was the same loud walking
sound in the woods one hundred yards away from us. I took my pistol
out in case it was a sounder of hogs. I could smell something like
wet dogs and rotten garbage that I attributed to hogs. My son looked over
at me questioningly, and I said under my breath, it's okay, just
sit tight. The wind was wrong for us. We were upwind of whatever
was out there. All we could do was sit still and listen. It
never showed itself, and finally we walked back to the boat and headed back
to camp again. We had to gather firewood in the dark, and I
watched my son beat another treated death, and we gathered up the limbs for
the fire. I had barely got the fire going when we heard another round
of knocks, but this time it was not fifteen hundred yards down the river.
It was only four hundred yards and it was even with us, and
this wasn't funny. I had no explanation for it. I didn't think anyone
would be stupid enough to prank a couple of armed hunters in the woods.
I built the fire as big as I could, and I got out of
the portable grill, and the wind was blowing almost straight from us toward whatever
was out in the woods. We had deer burgers for supper, and afterwards,
my son got his phone out and we shared earbuds so I could listen
to the Arkansas LSU game. We were laughing and yelling at the game when
I suddenly got a funny feeling and I reached from my pistol and I put
it in my lap. Again. What's up with that, said my son.
Something's watching us. I got a funny feeling. I told him you
did that earlier today. He said yeah. I answered, when you have
a funny feeling, you get ready for it. Hard to teach that kind
of primal skill to someone. Either you have it and know or you don't.
We sat there quietly while the hair on the back of my neck danced
around, and we listened to our surroundings. We weren't interested in the game
anymore. And that was when all hell broke loose. Thirty yards outside of
the firelight, something screamed. It was like a panther, but it was
louder. Then the scream turned into a howl, and that turned into something
more like monkey laughter. It happened all in one long, bellowing breath.
We looked wide eyed and open mouthed at each other, and I told my
son to get his rifle and I stood up and pointed my handgun at the
sound. We stood there with our backs to the fire, facing the river
and staring into the blackness all around us. Dad, what is that?
My son asked. I had to tell him I don't know, son,
and all my years of hunting, nearly four decades, I had never heard
anything like this. Even as I was telling him this, everything went silent,
and then it happened again. It started as a scream and worked its
way into a howl and ended with a crazy laugh. Again. It was
so loud that it vibrated in our chests and rattled our teeth. I'm a
very loud man when I want to be, but I never could have matched
that sound in a million years. Do you want to turn on our headlamps
and go hunting for this thing. My son asked, no, if it
wants us, it can come into the firelight. I wasn't about to head
into the darkness with a pair of headlamps and a pistol and a fourteen year
old boy with a rifle. It must have screamed fifteen more times now.
I told my son to take the rifle off safety and scan the area to
the left and the right where the sound was coming from, and if you
see anything coming in, shoot it in the chest. I'll go for the
head. It finally stopped screaming, and my son asked if we should try
to shoot to scare it away. I didn't think that was a good idea.
We needed to save our ammo in case we needed to try and kill
this thing. We're gonna scream back at it, I told him, and
that's exactly what we did. We stood there and screamed at it maybe five
or six times, and then everything went silent except for the crackling of the
fire and the gurgling of the river. There were no bugs, no frogs,
no other night sounds at all, and for ten minutes we stood there
in the silence. We didn't budge an inch. A lot of people might
ask why we didn't record it. If you were in the woods with your
child thinking something that you can't even imagine is so close by, and ready
to make a meal out of him, would you think, hey, I
better get this recorded. We finally sat down, but we kept our weapons
ready. There was another twenty minutes of dead silence before my son asked if
I wanted to pack up and leave. Well. I almost said yes,
but it would be trying to navigate out in a swift current in the dark,
and I decided it would be better to wait until daylight. We also
considered sleeping in the boat out in the middle of the river, but that
would leave us vulnerable to being rammed by another boat at daylight. Our best
hope was to sleep in the tent with our guns between us. I didn't
sleep much anyway. On Sunday morning, we decided to go ahead and hunt
one more time, and then we went back to camp to pack up and
leave that afternoon. It was a relief when we finally pulled into the drive
around dark. We were home and we were safe. On Monday evening,
I sat in my recliner in the living room with my son on the couch
nearby, and I searched my iPad for the sounds that we had heard.
I googled dreams, howls, laughs, and then returned sounds from California.
We listened to several before I came across one recorded at night from an Indian
reservation somewhere in California. And as soon as I heard it, my son
bounded off the couch and looked me dead in the eye. Dad, that's
exactly what we heard. I had to agree with him. If I were
a smarter man, this story would end here. But no one ever accused
me of that luxury. When my son was seventeen, we tried over Thanksgiving
to go back, but between the issues I was having with my truck and
the fifteen horsepower motor that broke beyond repair before we ever left the dock,
we had to turn back. My wife said to me, then, maybe
maybe God did not want you or our son to go and meet up with
Bigfoot. Something bad may have happened. Come on home, she said over
the phone. It was sound advice, but it was not like A had
any choice, so we went home. Two years later, my son was
in college and getting busy with his own life. But me, being the
hard headed man that I am, I wanted another crack at hunting that area.
I took my buddy with me this time, because I figured the place
where my son and I had camped was his bigfoot hunting area, and we
picked a different spot to camp. We saw what almost looked like a shelter,
and my buddy got a medium sized dough and I tore up another motor,
but we didn't see bigfoot. These days, I go in at daylight
and I hunt all day. I take naps in the woods, but only
during gun season when I'm carrying both my rifle and my pistol. I carry
my pistol with me when I bow hunt, but I don't nap then.
Over the last ten years, I've learned a lot about bigfoot. I listened
to and watch a lot of podcasts and videos. I watched The Missing four
one one about bowhunters and hikers going missing in various nash and parks. I
think these bigfoots are smart. I think they take and eat people who go
into the woods without a rifle. They know the difference between a bow and
a rifle in a hunter's hand, My advice to hunters and hikers who go
into the woods without a good pistol is to beware. You could be an
easy meal, a target of opportunity for these things. As my dad taught
me when I was a boy, it's better to have a gun and not
use it than to not have one and need it. And that's the end
of the story. That was an excellent story. This guy, they never
saw it, They never saw whatever this creature was. But the evidence and
the sounds and the movements they were hearing, and the walking around them every
time they would go hunting in the swamp area, it's pretty compelling evidence to
me that they were actually dealing with maybe the Honty Island swamp monster. What
do you guys think? Anyway, it was a great story. The man's
name was John. I appreciate you you sending it. John loved it,
loved the story. Hey, thank y'all for listening to this podcast. If
you thought it was good enough, maybe give it a thumbs up, leave
a comment. Maybe you could even subscribe. That would help me. I
just looked at my subscriber count. I'm almost at two hundred thousand. Isn't
that cool? Who in the world would think a redneck for Mississippi would have
two hundred thousand people click the subscribe, but it blows my mind. Also,
I'm in the short rows on Steve Lily sixteen. I think it's going
to be really good. Y'all probably don't know I've used that term in a
short ROAs. Do y'all know what that means? Back one hundred years ago,
when a crew was picking cotton, the boss would yell out. He'd
say where y'all at? And they would holler back at him. Boss went
in the short rows. That meant they were at the end of the field,
probably in a corner with a rose shortened up, because I I guess
they'd always start in the long row. So if you're in the short rose,
you're almost done. I thought I would just give you a little explanation
of what in the short roads means. But I am in the short ROAs
on Steve Lily sixteen, and it's going to be pretty good. I don't
have a date yet when I'm gonna put it out, but it'll just be
a few days, all right. Thanks again for listening to the podcast,
and we'll see you guys on the next one. Thank you