WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.759 For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace. 2 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:10.279 Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world 3 00:00:10.359 --> 00:00:14.160 refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they 4 00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:18.679 know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we 5 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:22.879 share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot, 6 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.239 dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:30.760 it out, others aren't so lucky. 8 00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:32.520 Are you ready, because. 9 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:34.640 Once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the 10 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.920 woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and 11 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.840 remember some things in the woods don't want to be found. 12 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:46.240 Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, 13 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.399 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 14 00:01:02.840 --> 00:01:04.680 The first thing you ought to know about Kansas is 15 00:01:04.680 --> 00:01:07.519 that it isn't solid. People look at that state and 16 00:01:07.560 --> 00:01:10.560 they see flat. They see wheat and wind and a 17 00:01:10.599 --> 00:01:13.560 horizon you could lay a level against, and they figure 18 00:01:13.599 --> 00:01:16.680 there's nothing under it but more of the same dirt 19 00:01:16.760 --> 00:01:20.280 all the way down, dependable as a church floor. That's 20 00:01:20.319 --> 00:01:22.359 the picture in their heads when they drive across it 21 00:01:22.400 --> 00:01:24.519 on the interstate at eighty miles an hour with the 22 00:01:24.560 --> 00:01:27.879 crew set and the radio low, a flat and empty 23 00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:31.120 and finished place. They can't get through fast enough. They're 24 00:01:31.159 --> 00:01:34.040 wrong about the empty, and they're wrong about the solid. 25 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:37.840 Under a lot of central Kansas, there's salt, a bed 26 00:01:37.879 --> 00:01:41.159 of it, ancient, laid down when a shallow Permian sea 27 00:01:41.239 --> 00:01:43.719 sat over the middle of the continent and dried up 28 00:01:43.760 --> 00:01:46.959 and came back and dried up again, leaving rock salt 29 00:01:47.079 --> 00:01:51.000 hundreds of feet thick in places. Geologists call the biggest 30 00:01:51.000 --> 00:01:54.400 of those layers, the Hutchinson Salt. It's been down there 31 00:01:54.439 --> 00:01:57.359 a quarter of a billion years, give or take, minding 32 00:01:57.400 --> 00:01:58.760 its own business in the dark. 33 00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:00.640 Salt dissolves. 34 00:02:01.239 --> 00:02:04.680 Water moves through the rock slow as patience, and it 35 00:02:04.719 --> 00:02:08.159 finds the salt, and it carries the salt away grain 36 00:02:08.240 --> 00:02:12.080 by grain, and it leaves a hollow behind a room, 37 00:02:12.639 --> 00:02:15.439 a space where solid rock used to be, and now 38 00:02:15.479 --> 00:02:17.840 there's nothing but water and the weight of everything sitting 39 00:02:17.919 --> 00:02:21.919 on top. And one day the weight wins, the roof 40 00:02:21.960 --> 00:02:26.280 comes down, and it doesn't always come down slow. Sometimes 41 00:02:26.319 --> 00:02:29.159 the ground over one of those dissolved rooms just lets 42 00:02:29.199 --> 00:02:32.639 go all at once, and a circle of pasture or 43 00:02:32.639 --> 00:02:35.319 wheat or county road drops into a hole that was 44 00:02:35.360 --> 00:02:38.520 waiting underneath the whole time. You could be standing on 45 00:02:38.560 --> 00:02:42.159 it right now and not know. The farmer who plowed 46 00:02:42.199 --> 00:02:45.879 that field for forty years didn't know. That's the country 47 00:02:45.879 --> 00:02:48.879 we're driving through today. And it's a strange stage to 48 00:02:48.879 --> 00:02:51.719 set a monster on, because the monster in this story 49 00:02:51.800 --> 00:02:55.599 is almost beside the point. The real horror here isn't 50 00:02:55.599 --> 00:02:58.960 a thing with a face, it's the floor. Here's a date, 51 00:02:59.319 --> 00:03:01.800 because a date makes a thing real, and this one 52 00:03:01.840 --> 00:03:06.840 is real. March of eighteen seventy nine, Mead County, Southwest Kansas, 53 00:03:07.159 --> 00:03:09.400 a mile and a half southeast of the little town 54 00:03:09.400 --> 00:03:12.840 of Mead, on the east side of Crooked Creek. Sometime 55 00:03:12.879 --> 00:03:15.199 between the third of the month and the eighteenth, a 56 00:03:15.240 --> 00:03:17.400 circular piece of ground one hundred and fifty to two 57 00:03:17.479 --> 00:03:21.319 hundred feet across simply dropped out of the world. Where 58 00:03:21.319 --> 00:03:24.080 there'd been prairie, There was now a pit filling with water. 59 00:03:24.719 --> 00:03:27.680 They call it the Mead Salt Sink, and it sits 60 00:03:27.800 --> 00:03:30.879 right alongside a fault line that runs through the country there, 61 00:03:31.280 --> 00:03:34.800 the Crooked Creek Fault, and the geologists who studied it 62 00:03:34.840 --> 00:03:38.360 figured that water had crept down along that fracture century 63 00:03:38.400 --> 00:03:42.240 after century and eaten the salt below until the ceiling failed. 64 00:03:42.840 --> 00:03:45.360 Nobody saw it fall, And that's the part that gets 65 00:03:45.400 --> 00:03:48.319 me a piece of Kansas. The size of a town 66 00:03:48.360 --> 00:03:51.840 square disappeared into the earth, and the only witnesses were 67 00:03:51.840 --> 00:03:54.039 the cattle and the wind. And by the time a 68 00:03:54.120 --> 00:03:56.759 man rode out to look, the job was already finished 69 00:03:56.759 --> 00:03:59.719 and the water was already rising. Go a little west 70 00:03:59.719 --> 00:04:02.120 and a little further back in folks memory, and you 71 00:04:02.159 --> 00:04:04.639 come to a place in Clark County they named Saint 72 00:04:04.719 --> 00:04:08.360 Jacob's Well. It's a round pool sitting at the bottom 73 00:04:08.400 --> 00:04:11.680 of a much bigger sink called Big Basin. And Big 74 00:04:11.719 --> 00:04:15.039 Basin is a mile across Rim to Rim, a bowl 75 00:04:15.080 --> 00:04:18.199 pressed into the high plains by the same slow chemistry, 76 00:04:18.600 --> 00:04:22.399 salt and gypsum going to liquid somewhere far below. The 77 00:04:22.439 --> 00:04:25.759 well itself never goes dry. The country around it can 78 00:04:25.800 --> 00:04:29.199 crack from drought, the creeks can quit, the cattle can 79 00:04:29.240 --> 00:04:32.439 stand around panting with their tongues out, and that pool 80 00:04:32.600 --> 00:04:35.560 just sits there, full and dark and fed from somewhere 81 00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:39.040 you can't see. The old story the cowboys told was 82 00:04:39.040 --> 00:04:41.399 that it had no bottom. That they tied their ropes 83 00:04:41.399 --> 00:04:44.439 together and lowered them, and never once touched anything down there. 84 00:04:44.959 --> 00:04:48.000 They were wrong about the no bottom. It does have one, 85 00:04:48.600 --> 00:04:51.680 But I understand why a man on horseback in eighteen something, 86 00:04:52.040 --> 00:04:54.759 looking down into water that stayed full while his whole 87 00:04:54.759 --> 00:04:57.959 world dried to powder, would decide the hole went clear 88 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:02.199 through to somewhere else. Aren't even the big ones. Down 89 00:05:02.240 --> 00:05:05.199 in Clark County, there's a feature the geologists call the 90 00:05:05.240 --> 00:05:08.879 Ashland Inglewood Basin, and it's the largest of its kind 91 00:05:08.920 --> 00:05:12.399 in the state, a vast, shallow bowl pressed into the 92 00:05:12.480 --> 00:05:15.480 high plains, as much as twelve miles across and five 93 00:05:15.560 --> 00:05:18.079 hundred feet below the level of the country around it. 94 00:05:18.920 --> 00:05:21.439 Twelve miles is wide enough that you can't see the 95 00:05:21.480 --> 00:05:24.439 far rim from the near one, wide enough that a 96 00:05:24.439 --> 00:05:26.759 man standing in the bottom of it might never know 97 00:05:26.839 --> 00:05:29.600 he was standing in a hole at all. Might take 98 00:05:29.639 --> 00:05:33.920 the rising ground on every horizon for ordinary hills. That's 99 00:05:33.920 --> 00:05:36.680 what the salt does at full scale. It doesn't always 100 00:05:36.720 --> 00:05:38.759 make a neat round pit you can fence off and 101 00:05:38.800 --> 00:05:41.959 warn the children away from. Sometimes it eats a piece 102 00:05:41.959 --> 00:05:44.439 of country the size of a township and leaves the 103 00:05:44.480 --> 00:05:48.240 survivors farming the floor of it, calling it home, never 104 00:05:48.279 --> 00:05:50.920 once looking up to wonder why all the land leans 105 00:05:50.959 --> 00:05:54.439 toward the middle. And it kept happening all over that 106 00:05:54.480 --> 00:05:58.800 part of the state, right up into living memory. Nineteen 107 00:05:58.879 --> 00:06:02.600 twenty six, Wallas County, way out west near Sharon Springs. 108 00:06:03.240 --> 00:06:05.839 A rancher was riding his land and saw a strange 109 00:06:05.839 --> 00:06:08.759 cloud of dust hanging over a spot where no dust 110 00:06:08.800 --> 00:06:11.839 ought to be, and he rode toward it, and the 111 00:06:11.839 --> 00:06:17.160 ground had collapsed. A fresh sink raw edged the dirt, 112 00:06:17.279 --> 00:06:20.680 still settling that cloud of dust the only announcement the 113 00:06:20.720 --> 00:06:24.160 earth had bothered to make before it opened. They sent 114 00:06:24.199 --> 00:06:27.360 a geologist out from the survey, a fellow named Moore, 115 00:06:27.879 --> 00:06:29.560 and he looked it over and noted that there was 116 00:06:29.600 --> 00:06:33.600 another old collapse nearby that folks called the old maid Pool, 117 00:06:34.240 --> 00:06:36.639 and that one was so old nobody could say when 118 00:06:36.639 --> 00:06:41.160 it had formed, decades back, at least maybe centuries. The 119 00:06:41.240 --> 00:06:43.839 land out there has been quietly falling in on itself 120 00:06:43.839 --> 00:06:46.560 for longer than there's been anybody around to write it down. 121 00:06:47.160 --> 00:06:51.079 There's a modern one too. Drive Interstate seventy across Russell 122 00:06:51.120 --> 00:06:54.399 County over the old Gorham oil field, and you are 123 00:06:54.480 --> 00:06:58.040 driving across salt that is dissolving under the pavement right now. 124 00:06:58.759 --> 00:07:02.600 The highway sinks there. It sinks slow, but it sinks, 125 00:07:03.240 --> 00:07:05.079 and the state has to come back and build the 126 00:07:05.160 --> 00:07:09.199 road up again and again because the ground underneath won't 127 00:07:09.199 --> 00:07:12.240 hold still. Men in trucks fighting a hole that isn't 128 00:07:12.279 --> 00:07:15.279 done forming yet, a hole that is the same age 129 00:07:15.319 --> 00:07:18.399 as the dinosaurs, and in no hurry at all, and 130 00:07:18.439 --> 00:07:22.000 they've measured it, which is the thing. This isn't folklore. 131 00:07:22.920 --> 00:07:25.959 Since the late nineteen seventies, the State Survey has gone 132 00:07:26.000 --> 00:07:29.160 out with seismic gear to map the hollows under the roads, 133 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:32.399 and the method they settled on tells you something all 134 00:07:32.480 --> 00:07:35.959 by itself. To send a sharp enough pulse down into 135 00:07:35.959 --> 00:07:39.560 the rock, they drilled boreholes and fired rifles straight down 136 00:07:39.600 --> 00:07:43.000 into them, heavy rounds into the earth, and they listened 137 00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:45.759 with their instruments to how the shot came back, and 138 00:07:45.839 --> 00:07:48.199 the way it came back drew them a picture of 139 00:07:48.240 --> 00:07:51.639 the rooms down there, the salt gone to water, the 140 00:07:51.759 --> 00:07:54.319 voids waiting under a pavement that a quarter of a 141 00:07:54.360 --> 00:07:58.480 million cars cross every year. Men firing guns into the 142 00:07:58.480 --> 00:08:01.000 ground to learn how empty it is beneath an interstate 143 00:08:01.079 --> 00:08:04.959 highway that is not a campfire story, that is an 144 00:08:05.000 --> 00:08:08.439 engineering report, and the report says the ground is full 145 00:08:08.480 --> 00:08:11.519 of holes. The survey people will tell you there are 146 00:08:11.519 --> 00:08:14.120 more than one hundred known areas of land subsidence in 147 00:08:14.199 --> 00:08:18.279 Kansas tied to that salt going away, more than one hundred. 148 00:08:18.560 --> 00:08:21.720 And those are only the ones somebody noticed, only the 149 00:08:21.720 --> 00:08:24.160 ones that fell where a road or a town or 150 00:08:24.199 --> 00:08:27.879 a man's fence happened to be paying attention. So when 151 00:08:27.879 --> 00:08:29.759 I tell you a story about something living in a 152 00:08:29.839 --> 00:08:33.240 Kansas sinkhole, I want you to start from there, from 153 00:08:33.320 --> 00:08:36.720 a state that is very slowly eating itself from the inside, 154 00:08:37.120 --> 00:08:40.519 opening rooms in the dark, dropping the ceiling without warning, 155 00:08:40.559 --> 00:08:42.840 and saying nothing about it but a little dust on 156 00:08:42.879 --> 00:08:47.039 the wind, Which brings us to Enman. Inman sits in 157 00:08:47.120 --> 00:08:50.039 Macpherson County, right in the belly of the state, a 158 00:08:50.120 --> 00:08:53.080 quiet Mennonite farming town where the families have worked the 159 00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:57.639 same sections of ground since the eighteen seventies. Good plain people, 160 00:08:58.159 --> 00:09:00.320 the kind who don't go in for tall tales as 161 00:09:00.360 --> 00:09:03.240 a rule, Wo'd rather you didn't make a fuss, who 162 00:09:03.360 --> 00:09:06.960 keep their heads down and their fields clean. Just southeast 163 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:10.039 of town, out about four miles, there's a low patch 164 00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:12.679 of country that used to be a whole lot wetter. 165 00:09:12.440 --> 00:09:13.240 Than it is now. 166 00:09:14.120 --> 00:09:17.200 There was a lake out there once, inmand Lake, which 167 00:09:17.240 --> 00:09:20.600 has the distinction of being the largest natural lake in Kansas, 168 00:09:20.919 --> 00:09:24.480 which tells you something about Kansas. Over the years, the 169 00:09:24.519 --> 00:09:27.039 water shrank back, and what got left behind was the 170 00:09:27.120 --> 00:09:30.039 lake and a scatter of deep, low spots full of 171 00:09:30.080 --> 00:09:33.360 water sink holes, and the biggest of them, the local 172 00:09:33.360 --> 00:09:37.360 people called, with the flat practicality of farm folks, the 173 00:09:37.399 --> 00:09:40.720 Big Sinkhole. Here's the thing about the Big sinkhole, and 174 00:09:40.759 --> 00:09:44.279 everything strange about this story runs straight through it. It 175 00:09:44.320 --> 00:09:47.559 is not a deep place. People hear the word sinkhole 176 00:09:47.600 --> 00:09:50.480 and picture a shaft going down into the planet. But 177 00:09:50.559 --> 00:09:52.519 go out there and look, and you'll find a pond, 178 00:09:53.120 --> 00:09:55.919 a wide, muddy bowl that gets maybe fifteen feet at 179 00:09:55.960 --> 00:09:58.600 the center after a hard rain, and a good deal 180 00:09:58.720 --> 00:10:01.559 less than that the rest of the time. There have 181 00:10:01.600 --> 00:10:03.919 been years it dried down to four or five feet. 182 00:10:04.559 --> 00:10:06.440 Years you could walk across the bottom of it in 183 00:10:06.480 --> 00:10:08.960 your boots and find fresh water clams in the muck 184 00:10:09.320 --> 00:10:14.039 and not one single fish. A shallow, drying, fishless pond 185 00:10:14.120 --> 00:10:16.799 in the middle of a Wheat county. That's what was 186 00:10:16.879 --> 00:10:19.720 really out there, and the descriptions that came out of 187 00:10:19.759 --> 00:10:23.080 it ran a good deal bigger. The strangeness out there 188 00:10:23.200 --> 00:10:26.360 is older than the town's interest in it. Long before 189 00:10:26.399 --> 00:10:29.519 anybody named a monster, the tribes who knew this country 190 00:10:29.600 --> 00:10:31.639 had their own water and their own. 191 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:32.039 Things in it. 192 00:10:32.960 --> 00:10:36.240 The Arapaho spoke of a horned serpent, the Heatica be it, 193 00:10:37.000 --> 00:10:39.840 the salk and the fox, and the Potawatami carried stories 194 00:10:39.879 --> 00:10:43.120 of a giant serpent, a man eater, a thing that 195 00:10:43.200 --> 00:10:45.159 lived in the deep water and was not to be 196 00:10:45.240 --> 00:10:48.879 trifled with. You find versions of that creature all across 197 00:10:48.919 --> 00:10:52.120 the middle of the continent, in nation after nation. A 198 00:10:52.200 --> 00:10:54.720 long thing in dark water that takes what it wants 199 00:10:55.240 --> 00:10:58.519 different names on the same shape. And if people don't 200 00:10:58.559 --> 00:11:01.440 carry the same warning across that many languages and that 201 00:11:01.559 --> 00:11:05.080 many generations, for no reason at all, there's a deeper 202 00:11:05.080 --> 00:11:08.639 old fact under even that one the geology hands us 203 00:11:08.639 --> 00:11:11.759 for free. The reason there's salt under Kansas is that 204 00:11:11.840 --> 00:11:14.960 an actual sea sat over it, back in the Permian 205 00:11:15.399 --> 00:11:18.200 and before that, and after that, other seas came and went, 206 00:11:18.600 --> 00:11:22.799 and those seas were full of long swimming things mosasaurs 207 00:11:22.879 --> 00:11:26.960 and plesiosaurs, forty foot reptiles with mouths full of teeth, 208 00:11:27.320 --> 00:11:30.879 cruising over what is now wheat. They're gone, every one 209 00:11:30.919 --> 00:11:34.759 of them, dead a tremendously long time, and turned to stone. 210 00:11:34.799 --> 00:11:36.919 And we dig their bones out of the Kansas chalk 211 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:39.919 by the wagon load and stand them up in museums. 212 00:11:40.679 --> 00:11:43.919 Western Kansas is built out of those bones. There's a 213 00:11:43.960 --> 00:11:46.960 band of pale rock out there, the Smoky Hill chalk, 214 00:11:47.519 --> 00:11:50.759 soft white stone that erodes into spires and bad lands, 215 00:11:51.080 --> 00:11:54.679 and it's packed with the dead of that sea. Mosasaurs 216 00:11:54.720 --> 00:11:58.919 thirty and forty feet long, all muscle and jaw plesiosaurs 217 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:01.200 with necks like a question mark and a barrel for 218 00:12:01.240 --> 00:12:04.519 a body, fish the size of a rowboat, with smaller 219 00:12:04.559 --> 00:12:08.200 fish still sitting inside their stomachs, swallowed whole the day 220 00:12:08.240 --> 00:12:12.200 they died and turned to stone. Mid meal flying reptiles 221 00:12:12.240 --> 00:12:15.559 with wingspans whiter than a barn door. Kids out there 222 00:12:15.600 --> 00:12:17.639 grow up finding sharp teeth in the dirt of their 223 00:12:17.639 --> 00:12:20.679 own yards, and a rancher mending fence will turn up 224 00:12:20.720 --> 00:12:23.279 a vertebrae the size of a dinner plate and think 225 00:12:23.360 --> 00:12:26.080 nothing of it, Toss it in the truck, set it 226 00:12:26.120 --> 00:12:28.440 on a shelf in the barn next to the baling wire. 227 00:12:29.200 --> 00:12:32.480 The bones are so common they're almost dull. The sea 228 00:12:32.600 --> 00:12:36.080 is gone, but the seas dead are everywhere, worked right 229 00:12:36.080 --> 00:12:38.759 into the soil. A man plows, and the rock a 230 00:12:38.799 --> 00:12:41.919 town stands on. But a man standing at the edge 231 00:12:41.919 --> 00:12:44.480 of a dark pond, A man who knows in his 232 00:12:44.519 --> 00:12:47.600 gut that this whole country used to be ocean doesn't 233 00:12:47.639 --> 00:12:51.120 always do the math the museum way. Sometimes he does 234 00:12:51.120 --> 00:12:53.759 it the old way, the way that asks a more 235 00:12:53.799 --> 00:12:57.600 interesting question, what if not all of them left? It's 236 00:12:57.600 --> 00:12:59.559 not a crazy question if you've spent your life on 237 00:12:59.600 --> 00:13:02.399 that ground. You plow up the vertebra of a sea 238 00:13:02.440 --> 00:13:04.600 reptile in the spring and set it on the shelf 239 00:13:04.639 --> 00:13:07.320 in the barn. You water your stock at a sinkhole 240 00:13:07.360 --> 00:13:09.960 pond fed from a source you can't see. And the 241 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:12.440 oldest people in your country have warned about a long 242 00:13:12.519 --> 00:13:15.000 thing in the deep water since before your town had 243 00:13:15.039 --> 00:13:17.960 a name. Put those three facts in a row, and 244 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:20.720 the conclusion practically draws itself. 245 00:13:20.480 --> 00:13:23.320 True or not. The sea was here, The sea was 246 00:13:23.360 --> 00:13:24.519 full of long things. 247 00:13:24.799 --> 00:13:27.840 The water never entirely left, so why would all the 248 00:13:27.919 --> 00:13:30.840 long things have gone with it? A man doesn't need 249 00:13:30.879 --> 00:13:33.840 a degree to run that arithmetic. He just needs to 250 00:13:33.879 --> 00:13:36.399 be standing at the edge of dark water at dusk 251 00:13:36.559 --> 00:13:38.600 with a fish on the line and a cold smell 252 00:13:38.679 --> 00:13:42.200 coming up off the surface, and the arithmetic runs itself, 253 00:13:42.639 --> 00:13:45.000 and he reels up early and stays away from that 254 00:13:45.080 --> 00:13:48.720 spot for a good while after. In the nineteen twenties, 255 00:13:48.960 --> 00:13:51.840 fishermen out at the inmand Water started saying they'd seen 256 00:13:51.919 --> 00:13:55.720 something and it wasn't a fish, something long and much 257 00:13:55.759 --> 00:13:58.600 bigger than any fish that are supposed to be out there. 258 00:13:59.320 --> 00:14:02.480 The reports were thin, and they didn't travel far. Farm 259 00:14:02.519 --> 00:14:05.320 gossip and bait shop talk, the kind of thing you 260 00:14:05.360 --> 00:14:07.440 mentioned to your brother in law once and then never 261 00:14:07.480 --> 00:14:09.799 bring up again because of the look he gives you. 262 00:14:10.480 --> 00:14:13.399 It sat that way for thirty years, a low rumor 263 00:14:13.440 --> 00:14:16.759 in the mud, and then came a dry year and 264 00:14:16.799 --> 00:14:20.799 two young men with a rifle, and everything changed. The 265 00:14:20.799 --> 00:14:23.879 summer of nineteen fifty two was a drought summer. The 266 00:14:23.919 --> 00:14:27.320 country was parched. The big sinkhole was drawn down, low 267 00:14:27.399 --> 00:14:30.440 and muddy and warm, and out there fishing it the 268 00:14:30.480 --> 00:14:33.879 way they'd fished it for years were two young Mennonite men. 269 00:14:34.639 --> 00:14:38.799 Their names were Albert Neufeld and George Raeger. These weren't 270 00:14:38.840 --> 00:14:41.679 carnival barkers, and they weren't a couple of drifters looking 271 00:14:41.679 --> 00:14:44.320 to get their picture in the paper. They were church 272 00:14:44.360 --> 00:14:48.000 going farm boys from a community that prizes humility and 273 00:14:48.080 --> 00:14:52.159 distrusts attention, a community that would sooner you said nothing 274 00:14:52.200 --> 00:14:55.240 than said too much. If you set out to pick 275 00:14:55.279 --> 00:14:57.840 the two least likely people in the state of Kansas 276 00:14:58.120 --> 00:15:01.039 to invent a sea monster, could do a lot worse 277 00:15:01.080 --> 00:15:03.919 than a pair of young Mennonites out fishing on a Tuesday. 278 00:15:04.080 --> 00:15:07.639 Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back 279 00:15:07.679 --> 00:15:12.960 after these messages. The way they described it, the water 280 00:15:13.080 --> 00:15:15.799 moved and broke open, and what came up out of 281 00:15:15.799 --> 00:15:19.120 that shallow, muddy pond was long, pale, and it was 282 00:15:19.159 --> 00:15:21.840 thick as the tire off an automobile, and it was 283 00:15:21.919 --> 00:15:25.440 nothing either of them had seen before. Albert had a rifle, 284 00:15:25.679 --> 00:15:28.120 a twenty two, and he did what a farm boy 285 00:15:28.200 --> 00:15:30.360 does when something that size comes up out of the 286 00:15:30.399 --> 00:15:31.639 water he's standing next to. 287 00:15:32.440 --> 00:15:33.039 He shot it. 288 00:15:34.039 --> 00:15:36.519 The story says he fired more than once from up 289 00:15:36.519 --> 00:15:40.159 on a bridge nearby, putting rounds into the thing. It 290 00:15:40.200 --> 00:15:44.559 didn't care. The creature didn't thrash, flee, or die. It 291 00:15:44.600 --> 00:15:46.759 just took the bullets the way deep water takes a 292 00:15:46.799 --> 00:15:50.159 thrown stone. The two of them came back to town with that, 293 00:15:50.480 --> 00:15:53.320 and you can imagine the dinner table, the careful way 294 00:15:53.360 --> 00:15:55.759 you'd have to say it, the quiet on the far 295 00:15:55.960 --> 00:15:59.200 end while your father decided whether to be angry or afraid. 296 00:16:00.080 --> 00:16:02.799 But other people had seen it too. A couple of 297 00:16:02.799 --> 00:16:06.120 inman men never named in the tellings, had reported a 298 00:16:06.159 --> 00:16:08.399 thing in that water before the no feled boy ever 299 00:16:08.480 --> 00:16:11.799 raised his rifle. And once Albert and George said their peace, 300 00:16:11.879 --> 00:16:15.320 the dam broke, and it all came out, every half buried, 301 00:16:15.360 --> 00:16:18.639 sighting every fisherman who'd kept his mouth shut for thirty 302 00:16:18.720 --> 00:16:22.039 years because of the look he knew he'd get. The 303 00:16:22.080 --> 00:16:25.080 pond had a reputation. Now the pond had a name 304 00:16:25.159 --> 00:16:29.039 in it. They called it sinkhole Sam. The descriptions, once 305 00:16:29.080 --> 00:16:33.000 they started flowing, did what descriptions always do, which is grow, 306 00:16:33.559 --> 00:16:36.960 so that fifteen feet became twenty, and twenty became thirty. 307 00:16:37.600 --> 00:16:39.960 Somebody said it had a tail with a fluke on it, 308 00:16:40.279 --> 00:16:43.679 like a whale. Somebody said it had a face, and 309 00:16:43.799 --> 00:16:47.320 worse that the face was grinning a wide grin that 310 00:16:47.440 --> 00:16:52.000 wasn't a snake's grin, a non snake like grin. What 311 00:16:52.120 --> 00:16:54.720 did that man see that made him reach past every 312 00:16:54.759 --> 00:16:57.639 animal he'd ever known and land on the word grin? 313 00:16:58.519 --> 00:17:02.919 Albert Neufeld's own told it best years later. He said 314 00:17:02.919 --> 00:17:05.119 his father used to laugh about the whole business and 315 00:17:05.160 --> 00:17:07.720 say that the more people who claimed to see sinkhole Sam, 316 00:17:08.240 --> 00:17:11.519 the bigger sinkhole Sam got. Which is the wisest thing 317 00:17:11.559 --> 00:17:14.359 anybody ever said about a monster. And it's a farmer 318 00:17:14.400 --> 00:17:17.720 who said it about his own father's monster with a 319 00:17:17.759 --> 00:17:19.519 straight face and a fly rod. 320 00:17:19.319 --> 00:17:19.920 In his hand. 321 00:17:20.680 --> 00:17:23.680 But look at what the joke quietly admits, It admits 322 00:17:23.720 --> 00:17:26.640 there was a hymn. The argument in that family was 323 00:17:26.680 --> 00:17:29.920 never whether Albert saw something. It was only ever about 324 00:17:29.920 --> 00:17:33.200 how big. Here's where a small town fish story turns 325 00:17:33.200 --> 00:17:36.839 into a circus. And the man who was responsible. His 326 00:17:36.960 --> 00:17:39.839 name was Ernest Alva Dewey, and he wrote a column 327 00:17:39.920 --> 00:17:43.200 for the Selena Journal. Before that, he'd been a publicist 328 00:17:43.279 --> 00:17:45.960 for a traveling circus, which is the kind of detail 329 00:17:46.000 --> 00:17:49.400 that explains a man's whole career, and his particular sport 330 00:17:49.480 --> 00:17:53.240 was making gentle fun of country superstition. He'd already done 331 00:17:53.240 --> 00:17:56.680 it with flying saucers. When the saucer panic was on 332 00:17:56.839 --> 00:18:00.039 and people were watching the sky and losing sleep, he 333 00:18:00.079 --> 00:18:02.359 wrote that the lights folks kept seeing were just a 334 00:18:02.359 --> 00:18:07.240 creature called the ball tailed snickele hoopis migrating across the 335 00:18:07.279 --> 00:18:11.519 country harmless. Fond of pranks, he made it up on 336 00:18:11.559 --> 00:18:13.279 the spot and ran it in the paper with a 337 00:18:13.319 --> 00:18:17.240 straight face. That was his whole game. So when word 338 00:18:17.279 --> 00:18:19.799 reached him that the good people of McPherson County had 339 00:18:19.839 --> 00:18:23.559 themselves a lake monster, Dewey came running with his pen out. 340 00:18:24.279 --> 00:18:27.200 He drove to Inman and he announced in print that 341 00:18:27.279 --> 00:18:29.880 he'd brought along a man of science to settle the matter, 342 00:18:30.240 --> 00:18:32.759 a distinguished doctor by the name of Erasmus P. 343 00:18:33.039 --> 00:18:33.759 Quaddle Bomb. 344 00:18:34.400 --> 00:18:37.960 You will not find doctor Quadlebaum's credentials anywhere, because doctor 345 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:41.880 Quaddlebaum did not exist. Dewey invented him the way he 346 00:18:41.960 --> 00:18:45.799 invented everything. And then he had this invented doctor perform 347 00:18:46.000 --> 00:18:50.240 hours of rigorous examination at the sinkhole and deliver a verdict. 348 00:18:50.599 --> 00:18:51.519 And the verdict was. 349 00:18:51.480 --> 00:18:55.599 That sinkhole Sam was no snake at all. Sinkhle Sam, 350 00:18:55.640 --> 00:18:59.039 the doctor determined was a foup and Girkle. A foop 351 00:18:59.079 --> 00:19:02.880 and Girkle, explained, was the most thoroughly extinct creature ever 352 00:19:02.960 --> 00:19:06.200 to live on the Kansas Plains, a beast that dwelt 353 00:19:06.240 --> 00:19:10.119 in underground caverns, which conveniently explained how a thirty foot 354 00:19:10.160 --> 00:19:11.400 animal could live in a pond. 355 00:19:11.440 --> 00:19:13.480 You could wade across the. 356 00:19:13.400 --> 00:19:16.400 Foup and Gircle, he assured his readers, was a vegetarian 357 00:19:16.440 --> 00:19:19.400 and not very bright, so the fishermen and swimmers of 358 00:19:19.400 --> 00:19:22.799 Inman had nothing to fear. He ran it around Thanksgiving 359 00:19:22.799 --> 00:19:25.680 of nineteen fifty two, and he thought it was hilarious, 360 00:19:26.200 --> 00:19:29.400 and it probably was. And here's the thing Dewey did 361 00:19:29.400 --> 00:19:32.880 not count on. It didn't kill the monster, it fed it. 362 00:19:33.680 --> 00:19:35.799 The column went out, and instead of laughing the whole 363 00:19:35.799 --> 00:19:39.160 thing off, the country came to look. Mill Penner, whose 364 00:19:39.160 --> 00:19:41.839 family had farmed that very section of land since eighteen 365 00:19:41.920 --> 00:19:45.599 seventy four, wrote about it later. He described coming home 366 00:19:45.599 --> 00:19:49.039 from church one Sunday and finding his road lined with automobiles, 367 00:19:49.400 --> 00:19:53.400 DeSotos and Chevies and nash Ramblers parked nose to tail 368 00:19:53.599 --> 00:19:56.519 along the edge of the big sinkhole full of people 369 00:19:56.559 --> 00:19:59.599 who'd driven out from who knows how far, with binoculars 370 00:19:59.599 --> 00:20:03.240 and boxes cameras, hoping to catch the Foop and Girkle surfacing. 371 00:20:04.119 --> 00:20:06.720 A neighbor had reported a thirty footer earlier that week, 372 00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:09.920 and the crowd had come for it. The Pinner family 373 00:20:10.079 --> 00:20:13.000 plain farm people came home to a traffic jam of 374 00:20:13.039 --> 00:20:15.319 monster hunters in the yard and had to do their 375 00:20:15.359 --> 00:20:19.440 Sunday around it. The story spread coast to coast. The 376 00:20:19.480 --> 00:20:22.519 Inman folks started getting telephone calls from strangers in. 377 00:20:22.519 --> 00:20:23.480 Far away states. 378 00:20:23.960 --> 00:20:26.880 A satirical column meant to make the legend smaller, had 379 00:20:26.920 --> 00:20:30.160 handed it a megaphone and a national tour. And that's 380 00:20:30.200 --> 00:20:33.519 the trap, the thing I keep circling, the reason I 381 00:20:33.559 --> 00:20:35.920 half resent old Dewey, even as I tipped my hat 382 00:20:35.960 --> 00:20:39.240 to him. He buried the truth under a joke. He 383 00:20:39.319 --> 00:20:42.119 took two sober young men who saw something they couldn't name, 384 00:20:42.160 --> 00:20:44.440 and put bullets into it, and he wrapped them in 385 00:20:44.480 --> 00:20:46.400 a made up doctor and a made up animal and 386 00:20:46.440 --> 00:20:50.039 a punchline, so that for seventy years afterward, anybody who 387 00:20:50.039 --> 00:20:53.079 heard the words sink hole Sam heard foop and Girkle 388 00:20:53.160 --> 00:20:55.240 right behind it, and laughed and moved on. 389 00:20:55.839 --> 00:20:56.920 But take the joke away. 390 00:20:57.359 --> 00:21:00.279 Set Dewey's whole circus off to the side, and look 391 00:21:00.279 --> 00:21:03.759 at what's left underneath. You're left with a drought summer, 392 00:21:04.079 --> 00:21:07.119 a shallow pond, and a long, pale thing that took 393 00:21:07.160 --> 00:21:10.920 a rifle without flinching. You're left with thirty years of 394 00:21:10.920 --> 00:21:14.359 fisherman who'd seen it before anybody made it funny. You're 395 00:21:14.440 --> 00:21:17.519 left with the oldest peoples in that country warning about 396 00:21:17.599 --> 00:21:21.680 exactly this a long thing in dark water, for as 397 00:21:21.720 --> 00:21:25.359 long as anybody had been keeping warnings. The joke is loud, 398 00:21:25.599 --> 00:21:28.680 but the joke isn't The evidence, and the evidence, what 399 00:21:28.720 --> 00:21:31.200 little there is of it, was never funny at all. 400 00:21:32.000 --> 00:21:34.240 The trouble with Sinkhole Sam is that you can't put 401 00:21:34.240 --> 00:21:38.200