Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
Speaker 1: on here, something just because my dog. Something killed your dog.
Speaker 1: My dog.
Speaker 2: We're flying through the air over the tree. I don't know.
Speaker 1: How it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm really confused. All
Speaker 1: I saw was my dog coming over the fence and
Speaker 1: he was dead.
Speaker 3: And once you hit the ground like, I didn't see
Speaker 3: any cars.
Speaker 1: All I saw was my dog coming over the fence.
Speaker 3: Sat, what are you putting?
Speaker 2: We got some wonder or something crawling around out here?
Speaker 1: Did you see what it was?
Speaker 3: Or was it was?
Speaker 2: Standing up?
Speaker 1: I'm out here looking through the window now and I
Speaker 1: don't see anything. I don't want to go outside.
Speaker 2: Jesus Quice, you better.
Speaker 1: Hello, get Theboddy out here when I'm out there. I
Speaker 1: thought of a menus about tex forty nine.
Speaker 2: I don't know easy out there, Yeah, I'm walking right heady.
Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm writing this to you. Maybe
Speaker 1: because you're a stranger and that makes it easier. Maybe
Speaker 1: because the doctors say I've got three months at best,
Speaker 1: and carrying this for forty some years feels heavier than
Speaker 1: the cancer eating away at my lungs. My name is Clyde.
Speaker 1: I'm eighty two years old, born and raised in McDowell County,
Speaker 1: West Virginia. I've been digging Jen Saying since I was
Speaker 1: knee high to a grasshopper, learned from my daddy, who
Speaker 1: learned from his But there's more to these mountains than
Speaker 1: Jen Saying. And that's what I need to tell you
Speaker 1: about before I take this knowledge to my grave. You
Speaker 1: grow up in these hollows, You hear things, stories that
Speaker 1: get passed down like family recipes, each generation adding their
Speaker 1: own flavor but keeping the meat of it the same.
Speaker 1: My grandpa used to tell me stories when I was young,
Speaker 1: sitting on his porch with a jar of moonshine, watching
Speaker 1: the sun disappear behind the ridges. He'd wait until the
Speaker 1: shadows got long and the lightning bug started their dance
Speaker 1: before he'd begin. Boy, he'd say, his voice rough as bark,
Speaker 1: these mountains got secrets older than coal, things that was
Speaker 1: here before the Cherokee, before anybody with sense enough to
Speaker 1: write it down. The first story he ever told me,
Speaker 1: I was maybe seven years old. This would have been
Speaker 1: nineteen forty nine, back when half the roads in the
Speaker 1: county were still dirt and you could walk for days
Speaker 1: without seeing another soul back. In nineteen o two, Grandpa began.
Speaker 1: My uncle Harland was running a trap line up on
Speaker 1: black Fork Ridge. He was a hard man. Harland was
Speaker 1: fought in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt, came back missing two
Speaker 1: fingers and afraid of nothing. But something happened up on
Speaker 1: that ridge that changed him. He'd been checking his traps
Speaker 1: for three days, working his way deeper into the mountains.
Speaker 1: On the third night, he made camp near a grove
Speaker 1: of hemlocks, big old trees that had probably been there
Speaker 1: since before the Revolution, built himself a good fire, cooked
Speaker 1: some rabbit he'd snared, and settled in for the night.
Speaker 1: Round about midnight, something woken. Wasn't a sound exactly, more
Speaker 1: like the absence of sound. You know how the woods
Speaker 1: are at night, always something rustling or calling. But this
Speaker 1: was dead quiet, like the whole mountain was holding its breath.
Speaker 1: Harlan sat up, reached for his rifle. That's when he
Speaker 1: saw the eyes, not reflecting the firelight like a normal
Speaker 1: animal's wood, but glowing on their own, pale green like foxfire.
Speaker 1: They were high up, maybe eight feet off the ground,
Speaker 1: just watching him from the edge of the firelight. He
Speaker 1: called out, thinking maybe it was another trapper playing games.
Speaker 1: The eyes didn't move, just kept staring. Then another pair
Speaker 1: appeared next to the first, Then another three sets of eyes,
Speaker 1: all at the same height, all that sickly green color.
Speaker 1: Harlan fired a shot over their heads, trying to scare
Speaker 1: them off. The eyes vanished, but not like they'd run away,
Speaker 1: more like someone had blown out candles all at once.
Speaker 1: He kept that fire burning high all night, feeding at
Speaker 1: every stick he could find. Come morning, he packed up
Speaker 1: and came down off the mountain. He never ran another
Speaker 1: trap line, took up farming in the valley. Wouldn't even
Speaker 1: hunt deer if it meant going above the first ridge.
Speaker 1: When people asked him what he'd seen, he'd just shake
Speaker 1: his head and say, some things ain't meant to be trapped.
Speaker 1: Grandpa took a long pull from his jar, let the
Speaker 1: story sink in. Even at seven, I knew better than
Speaker 1: to ask if it was true. In the mountains, truth
Speaker 1: and story blend together like morning fog, and trying to
Speaker 1: separate them only makes you lose both. The second story
Speaker 1: came a few years later, when I was old enough
Speaker 1: to help Grandpa work his still we were up in
Speaker 1: a hidden holler, tending the mash when he told me
Speaker 1: about the widow Thompson's encounter. This was nineteen twenty three,
Speaker 1: he said, stirring the mash with a long wooden paddle.
Speaker 1: The Thompson place sat way back in Laurel Holler, about
Speaker 1: as far back as folks dared to live. She'd lost
Speaker 1: her husband and a mind collapse, but she was a
Speaker 1: tough woman. Stayed on with her three young'uns rather than
Speaker 1: move to town. One October evening, just as the leaves
Speaker 1: were turning, her oldest boy, James, didn't come home. He
Speaker 1: was twelve, old enough to roam, but young enough to
Speaker 1: know better than to stay out past dark. The widow
Speaker 1: waited until full dark, then lit a pine not torch
Speaker 1: and went looking. She found him about a half mile
Speaker 1: from the house, standing in a clearing, still as a statue.
Speaker 1: The boy was staring up at something in the trees,
Speaker 1: his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide as dinner plates.
Speaker 1: The widow called his name, but he didn't respond. She
Speaker 1: had to grab him by the shoulders and shake him
Speaker 1: before he seemed to see her. Mama, he whispered, the
Speaker 1: tall man in the trees, he's been talking to me.
Speaker 1: The widow looked up but saw nothing except branches and shadows.
Speaker 1: She dragged James home, and he came down with a
Speaker 1: fever that lasted three days. When it broke, he couldn't
Speaker 1: remember anything about that night, but he was never the
Speaker 1: same after. Would wake up screaming about the tall man
Speaker 1: who walked bent over, dragging something behind him. Said the
Speaker 1: tall man wanted to take him to a special place
Speaker 1: where the bones piled high. The widow moved her family
Speaker 1: to town before the first snow. The house still stands,
Speaker 1: or what's left of it. Nobody's lived there since. My
Speaker 1: Daddy had his own stories, though he was less inclined
Speaker 1: to tell them than Grandpa. Daddy was a practical man,
Speaker 1: believed in what he could see and touch, but even
Speaker 1: he couldn't explain everything that happened in these mountains. I
Speaker 1: remember one story he told me when I was sixteen,
Speaker 1: the night before my first solo, jen saying Hunt. We
Speaker 1: were sitting at the kitchen table, him nursing a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee that it had gone cold hours ago. This
Speaker 1: was nineteen fifty four. He began his voice low so
Speaker 1: as not to wake Mama. I was working timber with
Speaker 1: a crew up near Panther Creek. Six of us, all
Speaker 1: mountain boys who knew our way around, an axe and
Speaker 1: a crosscut saw. We'd been cutting virgin timber trees so
Speaker 1: big it took two men with arms outstretched to reach
Speaker 1: around them. We had a camp set up near the
Speaker 1: cutting site, just canvas tents and a cook shelter. One night,
Speaker 1: our cook, an old fellow named Earl, went to the
Speaker 1: creek to fill the water buckets. Full moon that night,
Speaker 1: brightest day almost He was gone maybe ten minutes when
Speaker 1: we heard him scream, not a yell like he'd heard himself,
Speaker 1: but a real scream, like a woman or a child
Speaker 1: in mortal terror. We all grabbed lanterns and rifles and
Speaker 1: ran toward the creek. Found Earl standing knee deep in
Speaker 1: the water, the buckets floating away downstream. He was pointing
Speaker 1: at the far bank, shaking so hard he couldn't speak.
Speaker 1: We looked where he was pointing, but didn't see nothing
Speaker 1: at first. Then one of the boys held his lantern
Speaker 1: higher and we saw the tracks. They came out of
Speaker 1: the woods to the creek edge, then followed the bank
Speaker 1: up stream. But these weren't bear tracks or human tracks.
Speaker 1: They were wrong too big for one thing, But it
Speaker 1: was the shape that bothered me, like a man's foot,
Speaker 1: but stretched out with toes that were too long, too
Speaker 1: spread apart, and every other track was dragged like whatever
Speaker 1: made them couldn't lift its left foot proper. We got
Speaker 1: Earl back to camp, gave him some whiskey to calm
Speaker 1: his nerves. When he could talk, he said he'd seen it,
Speaker 1: said it had been crouching by the water when he
Speaker 1: came up, drinking like an animal. When it hurt him,
Speaker 1: it stood up and up and up, eight nine feet tall,
Speaker 1: covered in dark hair, with arms that hung down past
Speaker 1: its knees. But it was the face that got him.
Speaker 1: Almost human, he said, but with eyes that reflected the
Speaker 1: moonlight like a cat's. And when it looked at him,
Speaker 1: it smiled, not a friendly smile, but the way a
Speaker 1: fox smiles at a rabbit. It walked away, he said,
Speaker 1: dragging that left leg, following the creek upstream toward the
Speaker 1: high country. We broke camp the next morning. The timber
Speaker 1: company sent another crew, but they only lasted three days
Speaker 1: before they pulled out too. Said tools went missing, said
Speaker 1: they heard things at night, said they found more tracks.
Speaker 1: Daddy paused stared into his cold coffee. I never told
Speaker 1: your mama this part, but I went back up there
Speaker 1: alone a week later. Don't know why. Maybe I didn't
Speaker 1: believe what I'd seen. Maybe I needed to prove to
Speaker 1: myself there was an explanation. I found our old camp site,
Speaker 1: found the creek where Earl had his scare, and I
Speaker 1: found something else. About one hundred yards upstream from where
Speaker 1: we'd seen the tracks, there was a pile of bones,
Speaker 1: deer mostly, but some bear too, all cracked open, the
Speaker 1: marrow sucked out, and in the middle of the pile
Speaker 1: a timber crew ruiser's compass. One had gone missing from
Speaker 1: our equipment the night before Earl's encounter. I got out
Speaker 1: of there fast and never went back, never told the
Speaker 1: other boys what I'd found. Some knowledge is too heavy
Speaker 1: to share. These stories were just the background music of
Speaker 1: growing up in the mountains. Every family had them, every
Speaker 1: holler had its history. But it wasn't until I had
Speaker 1: my own encounter that I started paying real attention to
Speaker 1: the patterns. After what happened to me in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: I became something of a collector of these stories. Not officially,
Speaker 1: mind you, but I'd listened closer when the old timers talked,
Speaker 1: buy a few extra drinks at the VFW to loosen tongues.
Speaker 1: What I learned painted a picture I wish i'd never seen.
Speaker 1: Take Luther for instance. Luther was a bear hunter, one
Speaker 1: of the best in three counties, ran hounds that could
Speaker 1: track a ghost through a thunderstorm. In November of nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, two years before my encounter, he was running
Speaker 1: a bear that his dog's jump near Elcorn Creek. The
Speaker 1: dogs were on a hot trail, their voices echoing through
Speaker 1: the hollows like a church choir. Luther was following on foot,
Speaker 1: his rifle ready, when the dog's voices changed, went from
Speaker 1: that eager hunting cry to something else fear, pure primal fear.
Speaker 1: Then they went silent, all six of them at once.
Speaker 1: Luther found them huddled together in a laurel thicket, shaking
Speaker 1: like leaves, their tails tucked so far under they were
Speaker 1: touching their bellies. These were dogs that would face down
Speaker 1: a five hundred pound baar without blinking, and here they
Speaker 1: were terrified of something. He was trying to coax them
Speaker 1: out when he heard the breathing, slow, deep rhythmic coming
Speaker 1: from somewhere above him. He looked up and saw it
Speaker 1: perched in a massive oak, like some nightmare bird. It
Speaker 1: was huge, covered in dark hair, with arms wrapped around
Speaker 1: the trunk, but it was looking down at him with
Speaker 1: eyes that caught the light like copper pennies. Luther raised
Speaker 1: his rifle and fired, without thinking. Hit it square in
Speaker 1: the left thigh. Saw the blood spray, heard it roar,
Speaker 1: not like a bear or a big cat, but something
Speaker 1: almost human. It dropped from the tree, landing hard, and
Speaker 1: took off through the laurel. But that left leg wasn't
Speaker 1: working right. It dragged behind, leaving a blood trail in
Speaker 1: those strange wrong tracks. Luther's dogs wouldn't track it, wouldn't
Speaker 1: even leave the thicket until he physically carried them out
Speaker 1: one by one. He never hunted that section again, and
Speaker 1: his dogs were never quite the same. Would start whimpering
Speaker 1: for no reason, refused to cross certain creeks. I know
Speaker 1: I hit it good, Luther told me one night, drunk
Speaker 1: on my whiskey and his own memories. That leg was ruined.
Speaker 1: If it was a normal animal, it would have died
Speaker 1: from blood loss or infection. But maybe it wasn't normal.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was something else, something that don't die easy.
Speaker 1: Was the thing I couldn't stop thinking about. The creature
Speaker 1: I shot in nineteen eighty three, had a bad left leg,
Speaker 1: dragged it just like the one Luther shot in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, same area too, just different ridges of the
Speaker 1: same mountain system. Could it have been the same one?
Speaker 1: Living with that injury for two years, getting hungrier, more desperate.
Speaker 1: And then there were the missing kids. The first was
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy nine, before Luther's encounter, the poly twins
Speaker 1: Bobby and Brian, age nine. They'd gone out to pick
Speaker 1: blackberries on a July morning, just up the slope from
Speaker 1: their family's trailer. Their mama could see the berry patch
Speaker 1: from the kitchen window, but when she looked up from
Speaker 1: her dishes, the boys were gone. The whole community searched
Speaker 1: for three days. Found one bucket, still half full of berries,
Speaker 1: sitting neat as you please on a log. No sign
Speaker 1: of struggle, no blood, no tracks except the boy's own.
Speaker 1: It was like they'd just vanished into the air. Most
Speaker 1: folks figured they'd gotten around, died of exposure somewhere, but
Speaker 1: a few of the searchers mentioned finding other tracks, big
Speaker 1: ones that the Sheriff's department dismissed his bear sign. Then,
Speaker 1: in spring of nineteen eighty two, six months after Luther
Speaker 1: shot whatever he shot, little Sarah Morrison went missing. She
Speaker 1: was seven, playing in her backyard while her daddy worked
Speaker 1: on his truck. He heard her laughing talking to someone.
Speaker 1: When he looked up, she was walking into the woods,
Speaker 1: looking up at something tall, like she was following a
Speaker 1: grown up. He called out, but she didn't turn around.
Speaker 1: By the time he reached the woodline, she was gone.
Speaker 1: They found her shoe three miles away, up near the
Speaker 1: ridge line, just one shoe, sitting on a rock like
Speaker 1: it had been placed there, nothing else. Her daddy swore
Speaker 1: until his dying day that she'd been talking to someone.
Speaker 1: That he'd seen a shadow moving between the trees, too
Speaker 1: tall and wrong shape to be human. But the worst
Speaker 1: came after my encounter, which makes me wonder if I
Speaker 1: only wounded it made it meaner. Stay tuned for more
Speaker 1: sasquatch ott to see We'll be right back. After these messages.
Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen eighty four, not even a
Speaker 1: year after I'd shot it, the Stapleton Boy vanished. Tommy Stapleton,
Speaker 1: age eleven experienced in the woods. He'd gone squirrel hunting
Speaker 1: early on a Saturday morning, taking the trail up toward
Speaker 1: Beartown Ridge. Yes, the same ridge where I'd had my encounter.
Speaker 1: His daddy found his twenty two rifle at the base
Speaker 1: of a cliff. The barrel bent nearly in half. There
Speaker 1: were tracks in the soft earth, Tommy's boots and something else.
Speaker 1: Those wrong, dragging tracks, one foot normal, one sliding through
Speaker 1: the leaves. They led up to the cliff edge and
Speaker 1: just stopped. They never found Tommy, but hikers reported finding
Speaker 1: strange things over the years. A child's torn shirt hung
Speaker 1: high in a tree, small bones arranged in patterned toys
Speaker 1: left on stumps like offerings. Old Mary, who lived at
Speaker 1: the mouth of the holler and knew things about these
Speaker 1: mountains that nobody else remembered. She told me something that
Speaker 1: chilled me worse than any winter wind. This was in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, when I finally got the courage to
Speaker 1: ask her about what I'd seen. There's always been something
Speaker 1: up there, she said, her voice, like dry leaves. My grannies.
Speaker 1: Granny knew about it. Said the Cherokee wouldn't hunt those ridges,
Speaker 1: said something walked there. That wasn't man nor beast, but
Speaker 1: something caught between. Said it had been there since before
Speaker 1: the tribes, since the world was young and different. They
Speaker 1: live a long time, these things, maybe forever if nothing
Speaker 1: kills them. But they get hurt like anything else, and
Speaker 1: hurt makes them dangerous, makes them forget the old agreements,
Speaker 1: the boundaries. A hurt one is a rogue one, and
Speaker 1: a rogue one needs to eat. She looked at me
Speaker 1: with eyes clouded by cataracts, but somehow still sharp. You
Speaker 1: shot it, didn't you? Up on Beartown Ridge. I can
Speaker 1: see it on you, like mud on your shoes. I
Speaker 1: couldn't answer, but she nodded like I had. It's still
Speaker 1: up there, hurt, worse now, hungrier. Those children, it's trying
Speaker 1: to heal, trying to get strong again, young blood, young bones,
Speaker 1: the old ways, the bad ways. You opened a door
Speaker 1: that should have stayed closed. I wanted to tell her
Speaker 1: she was crazy, but the words wouldn't come, because deep
Speaker 1: down I knew she was right. The thing I'd shot
Speaker 1: wasn't dead. It was up there, dragging that ruined leg
Speaker 1: through the hollows, taking children to some hidden place where
Speaker 1: bones piled high, just like the tall man in Young
Speaker 1: James Thompson's nightmares. Let me tell you about my encounter now,
Speaker 1: the one that connects all these threads. It was September
Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty three. I remember because Reagan was president
Speaker 1: and my youngest boy had just started high school. I
Speaker 1: was up on Beartown Ridge, way back in the hollows
Speaker 1: where even the old timers don't venture much. That was
Speaker 1: my secret spot. You understand. Five generations of my family
Speaker 1: had worked those slopes, and I'd found patches there that
Speaker 1: make your eyes water, roots thick as a man's thumb,
Speaker 1: some older than the Civil War. I'd been up there
Speaker 1: three days, camping rough like I always did, had my
Speaker 1: tent pitched near a little spring, maybe four miles from
Speaker 1: where I'd left my truck. The weather had been perfect
Speaker 1: for digging, cool mornings, warm afternoons, the kind of September
Speaker 1: that makes you forget winters. Coming on the third evening,
Speaker 1: something changed. I can't say exactly what. At first, you
Speaker 1: spend enough time in the woods, you develop a sense
Speaker 1: for things. The jays had gone quiet, the squirrels weren't chattering.
Speaker 1: Even the creek seemed to run softer. I was cleaning
Speaker 1: roots by my tent when I noticed it, and the
Speaker 1: hair on my neck stood up like I'd touched a
Speaker 1: live wire. I kept but my eyes were moving scanning
Speaker 1: the tree line. Nothing, just shadows getting longer as the
Speaker 1: sun dropped behind the ridge. I had my thirty thirty
Speaker 1: leaning against a log nearby, always did when I was
Speaker 1: that far back. Bears, mostly though I'd never had to
Speaker 1: use it. That's when I saw it move, maybe seventy
Speaker 1: yards up the slope between two big oaks, just to
Speaker 1: shape at first dark against the darker woods. Too big
Speaker 1: for a bear, wrong shape for a man. It stepped
Speaker 1: out from behind one of the trees and I got
Speaker 1: my first clear look. Lord help me. I wish I hadn't.
Speaker 1: It was massive, eight feet tall, maybe more, covered in
Speaker 1: dark hair that looked almost black in the fading light.
Speaker 1: But it was the way it moved that stuck out.
Speaker 1: It dragged its left leg, pulling it along like dead weight.
Speaker 1: Each step was deliberate, calculated, and it was watching me.
Speaker 1: Even at that distance, I could I feel its eyes
Speaker 1: on me the left thigh. Even through the hair, I
Speaker 1: could see it was wrong, twisted, scarred Luther's shot from
Speaker 1: two years before had to be. This thing had been
Speaker 1: living with that injury, and now it was here, watching
Speaker 1: me with eyes that held too much intelligence for an animal.
Speaker 1: I reached for my rifle, slow as molasses, never taking
Speaker 1: my eyes off the thing. My hands were shaking so
Speaker 1: bad I could barely work the lever. The creature took
Speaker 1: another step down the slope, then another. That dragging leg
Speaker 1: made a sound like somebody pulling a sack of feed
Speaker 1: through dry leaves. It stopped, maybe forty yards out, partially
Speaker 1: hidden behind a maple. I could see its chest rising
Speaker 1: and falling, see the way its head tilted as it
Speaker 1: studied me. The light was almost gone, but I could
Speaker 1: make out the shape of its face, almost human, but
Speaker 1: wrong in every way that mattered. The eyes were too
Speaker 1: deep set, the jaw too heavy, and there was something
Speaker 1: in its expression not curiosity, not fear, hunger, the kind
Speaker 1: of desperate hunger that makes animals do things they normally wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I stood up, real slow, rifle in my hands. Get
Speaker 1: on out of here, I said, Surprise, my voice worked
Speaker 1: at all. Go on now. It made a sound then,
Speaker 1: not a roar or a howl like you'd expect, more
Speaker 1: like a long, low moan. That seemed to come from
Speaker 1: somewhere deep in its chest. The sound to hurt animal makes,
Speaker 1: but there was something else in it too, something that
Speaker 1: made me take a step back toward my tent. Pain, yes,
Speaker 1: but also rage, old rage, the kind that ferments over time.
Speaker 1: That's when I remembered the stories, the missing kids, the
Speaker 1: strange tracks, Luther's shot. This wasn't just some animal protecting
Speaker 1: its territory. This was something that had been hurt, had
Speaker 1: been hungry for two years, had maybe taken children to
Speaker 1: sustain itself, and now it was looking at me like
Speaker 1: I was the next meal. It shifted its weight and
Speaker 1: I saw its hands clearly for the first time too long,
Speaker 1: the fingers like pale spiders against its dark fur. One
Speaker 1: hand gripped the maple trunk, and I watched the bark
Speaker 1: crumble under its grasp. The other hand hung at its side,
Speaker 1: clenching and unclenching. I know what you are, I heard
Speaker 1: myself say, I know what you've done. Something changed in
Speaker 1: its face. Then the lips pulled back, showing teeth that
Speaker 1: were almost human but too large, too sharp. Not a smile,
Speaker 1: not a snarl, but something between an acknowledgment, maybe like
Speaker 1: it understood me, and wanted me to know it understood.
Speaker 1: It came at me, not charging wild like a bear,
Speaker 1: but purposeful, deliberate. Even with that ruined leg, it moved
Speaker 1: with terrible grace. It used the trees, swinging from trunk
Speaker 1: to trunk with its long arms, the bad leg dragging,
Speaker 1: but not slow it as much as I'd hoped. I
Speaker 1: fired when it was thirty yards out. The rifle kicked
Speaker 1: against my shoulder, the shot echoing off the ridges. I
Speaker 1: saw the impact, saw it stagger, but it kept coming.
Speaker 1: I worked the lever, fired again. This time it roared
Speaker 1: a sound that was almost words, almost human, screaming twenty yards.
Speaker 1: I could see its eyes clearly now that copper reflection,
Speaker 1: the intelligence and hunger and pain all mixed together. I
Speaker 1: fired a third time, backing up my foot, catching on
Speaker 1: a root. I went down hard, the rifle flying from
Speaker 1: my hands. When I looked up, it was right there,
Speaker 1: ten feet away, reaching for me with those spider fingers.
Speaker 1: Blood was running from its shoulder, where one of my
Speaker 1: shots had hit, more blood from its side. The wounds
Speaker 1: would have dropped a bear, but this thing was still coming.
Speaker 1: I scrambled backward, my hand finding a broken branch, not
Speaker 1: much of a weapon, but I held it out anyway.
Speaker 1: The creature stopped, tilted its head like a dog, hearing
Speaker 1: a strange sound. Then it made that moaning sound again,
Speaker 1: lower this time, and I realized it was trying to speak,
Speaker 1: trying to form words with a throat and mouth not
Speaker 1: quite made for human speech. Hurt, it said, or something
Speaker 1: like it hurt long time. My hand found the rifle
Speaker 1: I'd landed almost on top of it. As I brought
Speaker 1: it up, the creature lunged. I fired point blank, saw
Speaker 1: the impact knock it backward. It fell hard, that broken
Speaker 1: leg twisting under it at an angle that made me
Speaker 1: sick to see. But it wasn't done. It tried to rise,
Speaker 1: pushing itself up with those long arms. Blood was pooling
Speaker 1: beneath it, more running from its mouth. It looked at me,
Speaker 1: and for just a moment, I saw something in its
Speaker 1: eyes that wasn't hunger or rage, understanding maybe, or just
Speaker 1: the recognition that one of us was about to die.
Speaker 1: I fired one more time. The sound echoed forever, bouncing
Speaker 1: from ridge to ridge until it faded into the coming darkness.
Speaker 1: The creature fell back and was still. I waited rifle ready.
Speaker 1: When it didn't move, I grabbed my pack, left everything
Speaker 1: else and ran. I ran through the dark woods like
Speaker 1: hell itself was chasing me. Branches tore at my clothes,
Speaker 1: roots tried to trip me, but I kept running behind me.
Speaker 1: I thought I heard sounds, not footsteps, but voices calling,
Speaker 1: like the woods themselves were mourning. I made it to
Speaker 1: my truck just as the moon was rising, started it
Speaker 1: on the third try, and drove out of there without
Speaker 1: looking back. When I got home, my wife took one
Speaker 1: look at me and knew something had happened, but she
Speaker 1: never asked, and I never told. But that wasn't the
Speaker 1: end of it. Three days later I drove back to
Speaker 1: the trailhead. Don't ask me why. Maybe I needed to
Speaker 1: know if it was real. Maybe I needed to know
Speaker 1: if it was dead. I didn't go up to my campsite,
Speaker 1: just walked a little way up the trail, listening. The
Speaker 1: woods were normal, birds singing, squirrels chattering. But there was
Speaker 1: something else too, A smell on the wind, like copper
Speaker 1: and old leaves, and tracks in the mud, not the
Speaker 1: dragging tracks I'd learned to fear, but others, similar but different, smaller,
Speaker 1: some of them like juveniles, larger others, massive prints that
Speaker 1: sank deep in the soft earth. They'd come for their dead,
Speaker 1: or they're wounded, because when I asked around, casual like,
Speaker 1: nobody had found any strange bodies up on Beartown Ridge.
Speaker 1: No bones, no blood except what the rain hadn't washed away.
Speaker 1: Whatever I'd shot, Others of its kind had taken it away.
Speaker 1: That's when I understood what Old Mary had meant about
Speaker 1: opening doors. I'd hurt one of them, maybe killed it,
Speaker 1: and they knew. They all knew. The disappearances can tinued,
Speaker 1: but different now. Not just children, hikers who ventured too
Speaker 1: far from the trails, hunters who stayed out past dark,
Speaker 1: a whole family, the Washburns, who went camping up near
Speaker 1: the ridge in nineteen eighty seven and never came back,
Speaker 1: found their tent shredded, their car still parked at the trailhead.
Speaker 1: But no bodies, no blood, just those tracks everywhere, like
Speaker 1: a gathering, like a council of war. My cousin Derek
Speaker 1: had his own encounter in nineteen ninety one. He was
Speaker 1: deer hunting, had a stand up in a white oak
Speaker 1: about two miles from where I'd shot the creature, just
Speaker 1: as the light was fading, he heard something big moving
Speaker 1: through the laurel below his stand. Figured it was the
Speaker 1: ten point buck he'd been after. But what emerged from
Speaker 1: the laurel wasn't a deer. It was one of them,
Speaker 1: a female, he thought, smaller than what I'd described, but
Speaker 1: still massive. She was carrying something, cradling it like a baby.
Speaker 1: As she passed under his tree. She looked up right
Speaker 1: at him, like she'd known he was there all along.
Speaker 1: Her eyes, Derek told me later, whiskey, brave but still shaking.
Speaker 1: They were almost human, sad like she was grieving. And
Speaker 1: what she was carrying christ Clyde. It was wrapped in
Speaker 1: what looked like a burial shroud, but I could see
Speaker 1: a hand sticking out, a hand with those long, wrong fingers,
Speaker 1: but smaller like a child. She didn't threaten him, just
Speaker 1: looked at him for a long moment before continuing up
Speaker 1: the ridge. Derek waited until full dark before climbing down
Speaker 1: and getting out of there. He never hunted that area again,
Speaker 1: never told anyone but me what he'd seen. You started something,
Speaker 1: he said, when you shot that one. They're different now, bolder, angrier.
Speaker 1: It's like you broke a treaty nobody knew existed. He
Speaker 1: was right. The patterns changed after nineteen eighty three. Before
Speaker 1: encounters were rare, separated by years or decades. After, they
Speaker 1: became almost common. Not that anyone talked about them openly,
Speaker 1: but if you knew how to listen, the stories were there,
Speaker 1: Like the group of college kids who went camping in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four came back missing one of their friends
Speaker 1: and refusing to say what happened. Or the Forest service
Speaker 1: crew that quit en Mass in nineteen ninety seven, leaving
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars of equipment behind. Or the developer who
Speaker 1: tried to build vacation homes up there in two thousand
Speaker 1: and one found his bulldozers flipped over and his survey
Speaker 1: stakes arranged in patterns that hurt to look at. My
Speaker 1: own son, though he don't know, I know, had a
Speaker 1: run in in two thousand and five. He'd taken his boy,
Speaker 1: my grandson, fishing up at beaver Dam Creek. They were
Speaker 1: packing up to leave when my grandson pointed at the
Speaker 1: woods and said, Papa, why is that tall man watching us?
Speaker 1: My son looked and saw nothing, but he knew the
Speaker 1: stories had grown up, hearing whispers of them. He grabbed
Speaker 1: the boy and their gear and left quick. On the
Speaker 1: drive out, my grandson kept looking back, waving at something
Speaker 1: only he could see. And stay tuned for more sasquatch
Speaker 1: out to see. We'll be right back after these messages.
Speaker 1: The tall man is sad. The boy said he walks
Speaker 1: funny because his leg hurts. He wanted to show me
Speaker 1: where the special bones are hidden, but I told him
Speaker 1: we had to go home. My son never took him
Speaker 1: fishing there again. The boy, he's grown now, doesn't remember
Speaker 1: any of it. But sometimes I catch him staring at
Speaker 1: the tree line, head tilted, like he's listening to something
Speaker 1: the rest of us can't hear. I think about that
Speaker 1: creature I shot, more than I should. Dream about it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes in my dreams, it's still alive, still up there,
Speaker 1: dragging that ruined leg through the hollows, still hungry, still hunting.
Speaker 1: And sometimes in those dreams it speaks clear, tells me
Speaker 1: about the pain that never stops, about the hunger that
Speaker 1: can't be filled, about the children it took trying to
Speaker 1: heal itself. You did this, it says in my dreams,
Speaker 1: You and the other one, the hunter broke the old ways,
Speaker 1: made us desperate made us dangerous. The children we needed,
Speaker 1: the children, young blood for old wounds, young bones for
Speaker 1: ancient hunger. I wake from those dreams, gasping, reaching for
Speaker 1: a rifle. I don't keep by the bed anymore. My wife,
Speaker 1: God rest her soul. She knew something was wrong all
Speaker 1: those years, but never pushed. Maybe she had her own suspicions.
Speaker 1: Mountain women know to leave some questions unasked. But now
Speaker 1: she's gone, and I'm dying, and I can't take this
Speaker 1: to my grave alone. Someone needs to know. Someone needs
Speaker 1: to understand that there are boundaries in this world, lines
Speaker 1: that shouldn't be crossed, treaties written in shadow and silence
Speaker 1: that we break at our peril. I killed something on
Speaker 1: Beartown Ridge in September of nineteen eighty three, or maybe
Speaker 1: I only wounded it worse. Either way, I change things.
Speaker 1: The old balance was broken. The things that walk those
Speaker 1: high ridges, that have walked them since before memory, they're different, now, hungrier, bolder,
Speaker 1: less willing to keep to their ancient places. If you're
Speaker 1: ever in the deep mountains past, where the cell phones
Speaker 1: work and the trails peter out, be careful. Watch for
Speaker 1: tracks that drag. Listen for voices that almost form words.
Speaker 1: And if you see eyes watching from the trees, eyes
Speaker 1: too high and too intelligent to be animal, don't shoot,
Speaker 1: don't break the treaties you don't understand, because they remember
Speaker 1: every wound, every broken promise, every bullet fired in fear.
Speaker 1: They remember, and they hunger and they wait, And sometimes,
Speaker 1: when the moon is dark and the mist rises from
Speaker 1: the hollows, they come down from the high places, looking
Speaker 1: for what was taken from them, looking for healing, looking
Speaker 1: for revenge. The children who vanish, the hikers who don't
Speaker 1: come home, the hunters who leave their rifles and swear
Speaker 1: off the woods forever. They're all part of a price
Speaker 1: being paid for wounds that won't heal, for a balance
Speaker 1: that can't be restored. I'm the one who pulled the trigger,
Speaker 1: who drew blood on Beartown Ridge, But Luther started it
Speaker 1: with his shot in nineteen eighty one, turned a creature
Speaker 1: that might have been content to remain hidden into something
Speaker 1: desperate and dangerous. And I finished it, or tried to.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I think I can feel it still, not just
Speaker 1: in dreams but in waking moments, a presence at the
Speaker 1: edge of consciousness, a weight on my chest that isn't
Speaker 1: just the cancer. It's waiting for me, maybe waiting on
Speaker 1: the other side of whatever comes next. The tall man
Speaker 1: with the ruined leg, still hungry, still hunting. My grandson,
Speaker 1: the one who saw it that day, fishing. He's got
Speaker 1: children of his own now. Sometimes I want to warn him,
Speaker 1: tell him to keep them away from the deep woods,
Speaker 1: away from the ridges where the mist hangs too long.
Speaker 1: But what would I say? How do you explain a
Speaker 1: treaty written in fear and blood? How do you describe
Speaker 1: the hunger of something ancient and wounded? You can't. All
Speaker 1: you can do is hope the boundaries hold, Hope the
Speaker 1: old agreements still means something. Hope that what Luther and
Speaker 1: I broke can somehow be mended by time and distance
Speaker 1: and silence. But I don't think it can. The disappearances continue,
Speaker 1: not often, not enough to make the news, but enough.
Speaker 1: A child here, a hiker there, always near the old places,
Speaker 1: always leaving those dragging tracks that the Sheriff's department won't acknowledge.
Speaker 1: Last month, my nephew called, said he'd been squirrel hunting
Speaker 1: up near Panther Creek, same area where Daddy saw the
Speaker 1: tracks back in fifty four said he'd found something I
Speaker 1: should know about. He'd followed what he thought was a
Speaker 1: game trail, ended up in a hollow he'd never seen before.
Speaker 1: There was a cave there, behind a fall of rocks,
Speaker 1: the entrance almost invisible unless you knew where to look.
Speaker 1: The smell coming from it was wrong, he said, like
Speaker 1: copper and old death and something else, something alive but ancient.
Speaker 1: He didn't go in. Something about the darkness beyond that entrance,
Speaker 1: the way it seemed to swallow light made him back away.
Speaker 1: But as he left he saw them tracks in the
Speaker 1: soft earth near the entrance, dozens of them, all different sizes,
Speaker 1: some dragged, some didn't, like a family group like a clan,
Speaker 1: and arranged on a flat rock near the cave, like
Speaker 1: an offering or a warning. Were three things, a child's shoe,
Speaker 1: faded and weather worn, a hunter's compass, the brass green
Speaker 1: with age, and a piece of cloth that might have
Speaker 1: been from a burial shroud stained with something dark. He
Speaker 1: left them there, left the whole hollow, and hasn't been back.
Speaker 1: But he told me because he knew I'd understand, knew
Speaker 1: I'd recognize the message in those objects. The shoe from
Speaker 1: one of the taking children, the compass, maybe from Daddy's
Speaker 1: crew or some other vanished hunter, the burial cloth from
Speaker 1: whatever ceremony they'd held for the one I shot. They're
Speaker 1: still there, still waiting, still remembering. That's all I wanted
Speaker 1: to say. You can believe it or not, doesn't matter
Speaker 1: to me anymore. But if you ever find yourself in
Speaker 1: the deep hollows of the Appalachians, past where the trails
Speaker 1: end and the old folks won't go, you be careful.
Speaker 1: There are things in those mountains that don't belong in
Speaker 1: this world, and they're hungry, hungry and hurt, and holding
Speaker 1: grudges that span generations. I wouldn't go up there if
Speaker 1: I was you. Some places are better left alone. The
Speaker 1: cancer will take me soon, three months, the doctors say,
Speaker 1: maybe less. Sometimes I think that's mercy. I won't have
Speaker 1: to dream about those copper eyes anymore, won't have to
Speaker 1: wonder if the next missing child is somehow my fault,
Speaker 1: won't have to feel the weight of that creature's dying gaze,
Speaker 1: the almost human recognition in its face as my bullet
Speaker 1: found its mark. But sometimes on nights, when the moon
Speaker 1: is dark and the wind moves through the trees outside
Speaker 1: my window. I think I can hear them calling to
Speaker 1: each other across the ridges, and voices that almost make
Speaker 1: words mourning. They're dead, planning their revenge, waiting for the
Speaker 1: right moment to come down from the high places and
Speaker 1: collect what's owed. I pray I'm gone before that happens.
Speaker 1: Pray my children and grandchildren have sense enough to stay
Speaker 1: away from the deep woods. Pray the old boundaries hold
Speaker 1: a little longer. But I don't think they will. I
Speaker 1: think Luther and I broke something that can't be fixed,
Speaker 1: opened a door that can't be closed, change the rules
Speaker 1: of a game we didn't even know we were playing. God,
Speaker 1: forgive me, And if you're smart, you'll delete this email
Speaker 1: and forget you ever read it. Some knowledge is too
Speaker 1: heavy to carry. Some truths are better left in the
Speaker 1: shape where they belong. But I had to tell someone,
Speaker 1: had to pass this burden on before it drags me
Speaker 1: down into whatever darkness waits beyond. Maybe that makes me selfish,
Speaker 1: Maybe that makes me weak, But I'm old and dying
Speaker 1: and tired of carrying this alone. Be careful out there,
Speaker 1: watch the tree line, Listen to the silence, and whatever
Speaker 1: you do, whatever you see, don't shoot. The mountains have
Speaker 1: a long memory, and they're still counting the cost of
Speaker 1: what we've done. PS. If you do go up there,
Speaker 1: despite everything I've said, leave an offering at the cave,
Speaker 1: food maybe, or something shiny. They like shiny things always have.
Speaker 1: Maybe it'll buy you safe passage. Maybe it'll just make
Speaker 1: you easier to track. I don't know anymore. I don't
Speaker 1: know anything except that I should have listened to the
Speaker 1: old stories, should have respected the boundaries, should have left
Speaker 1: that wounded thing alone to heal or die in peace.
Speaker 1: But I didn't. And now the debt keeps growing, paint
Speaker 1: in blood and sorrow, and children who never come home.
Speaker 2: They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
Speaker 2: And I don't want to be alone. World out it Chid,
Speaker 2: this chip, that chart, everything right back. Joy for me, Joy,
Speaker 2: stay right there, Come in right away, baby, Sissie still
Speaker 2: states side still starts said, sass side still stay still.
Speaker 3: Suss games still stay
Speaker 2: Us astis and pens in fast uss f insis