Speaker 1: I've been hiding this story inside for thirty years now.
It's not a Bigfoot story. The creature we encountered is
worse than any bigfoot, least I think it is. I
resolved that I would never tell this story. I thought
it would be safer for me that way, safer for
my sanity, safer for my career at the time and
my reputation, and safer for my machio old manhood. But
that's before I stumbled on your YouTube channel, where I
listened to everyday, person after person tell their strange encounter stories.
I also listened to you, and I heard no judgment,
no matter how strange the story was, and I appreciated that.
So for the first time, I feel like I can
tell this story in a safe place. My only hope
is that you would be as kind to me as
you are to the others who have trust you with
their story. Well, dude, of course, I'm nice to everybody.
What are you talking about, love, I'm so appreciative that
people send these to me, and I would never be
anything but nice to anyone who sends a story. But
let's move on with a story. We're about to get
into the meat of it. I was in the United
States Army with a high security clearance. I was base
station in the center of the United States, but every
two to three years my unit would have a field
training exercise in Germany. We secured and monitored specific communications
that supported this and many other exercises. The monotonous side
of this mission was to find a remote location, usually
on top of a hill or a higher elevation, sit
quietly and listen, monitor and secure communications. Wurzburg is a
city sitting smack in the center of Germany. We were
giving grit coordinates that nestled us deep in a forest
that surrounded Wurzburg. We had finished prepping for one of
our many stays high on somebody's mountain when the host
battalion treated us all to a free movie pass at
the base theater. After that, we'd set our eyes on
a pizza parlor right outside the gate of what we
called our sister battalion in Germany. A German pizza parlor
would be interesting, being that we all swore that we
wouldn't need anything American while we were there, and that
the seven of us who always stuck together would get
totally submerged in the economy We barely managed to squeeze
out a pizza order in between the mingle conversation, where
everybody talked and laughed at the same time, mostly about
the movie that we were privileged to have seen. Complements
of the hosting Army battalion impersonations of scenes of an
American werewolf in London dominated any other noise that tried
to manifest outside the pizza parlor conversation. I left the
table to visit the men's room, making a beeline past
the counter where the owner sat on the opposite side.
Even though I was headed towards him, he needed to
wave me to come over anyway. After sufficient but awkward
nods of hello, he started right in with the conversation,
You're about to enjoy the finest gypsy pizza in Germany.
He bragged. The word gypsy struck me so oddly that
I guess it registered on my face. We never used
the word gypsy in America. It wasn't part of our culture,
so when he said it, I bet I cocked my
head sideways like a dog hearing sirens. The owner met
my awkward pause. You're new here, aren't you, well, I
replied yes, and gave the abbreviated story of why we
were here now? I ended with is it that obvious?
He dipped the corners up his mouth with a simultaneous
side nod of his head and eyes, which pointed out
toward our loud group. I would have noticed you all anyway,
he said, running his fingers through his black beard. He
was gently poking at our ruckus as he stayed his
nod towards our rambuctious crew. Americans laughed so loudly at
things that they don't understand, he said, just before I
could get out, Well, what do you mean by that?
I was cut off as the owner leaned in. I'm
especially surprised that you're among the laughing, he said more,
with a half whisper and a half mumble. At that moment,
goosebumps put me on pause. What could he have have
meant by that? I thought to myself. He must have
sensed a deficit in my understanding by my gaze, because
he tagged on another question that was formed as if
he'd read my mind. You are a Hebrew, right, and
then he waited for an answer. I had hoped his
question rhetorical, but it wasn't. He was genuine in his
inquiry and sat there frozen until I squeezed out an answer. Well, yeah,
I responded, after a dozen or so thoughts rifle through
my mind. He was coming from a historic perspective that
was not normally shared in American history. The American educational
system did not subscribe to the true history of the
American Hebrew. In the US, they just called us black people,
no backstory other than slavery. The gypsy pizza man knew better.
Next he called me Hebrew, which to me meant he
knew a thing or two about the Bible, but possibly
told from a different vantage point, perhaps the Egyptian perspective.
Yanking me back into the conversation, he went on, you're
familiar with the story of Moses in Egypt, right. He
was in rapid fire mode with his questions. I nodded,
thinking I could follow his lead. Hebrew slaves, he said,
I tagged on his proof I was with him, but
he responded quickly, No, No, that's not our story. That's
his story. Our story tells that working class Hebrew worked
right alongside the working class Egyptians. We had to work
for the pharaoh, just like your ancestors had to, and
the Hebrews were blessed by their God, and the Lord
yielded to them, and that made it easy for all
of us. And when Pharaoh relented and allowed the Hebrew
to leave, we were devastated. Guess who was left to
keep up with the quotas it would take to hold
Egypt together. My ancestors wanted to know part of that,
and most of them fled with Moses. When they saw
the giant light floating over the crowd Moses was leading,
it scared them to death. We had taken on many
of the Hebrew followings, but it was then that my
ancestors realized that was not our God, that was the
Hebrew God, and we had no covenant with him. We
would rather realize that the Hebrew were running to a
wilderness that had been made safe for them by their God.
So my ancestors decided to run west through Libya towards Gibraltar,
through what we would soon find out was an unsafe
and cursed wilderness. As my ancestors ran for their lives
to get to Morocco, everything that would have been menacing
to the Hebrew seemed to be sucked out of their
wilderness and placed into the wilderness my people ran to
and everything attacked us. I mean everything. When my people arrived,
the Moroccans wanted no part of us. They allowed us
to pass through their land only so my people clawed
their way through more cursed wilderness to Europe. And in
that wilderness were bats, lions, ravens, bears and boar. Even
giant hyena looking wolves were there. And all these creatures
attacked us, and in the process of this horror, they
changed us. By the time my ancestors made it through
the wilderness, they had seen every creeping thing in the forest.
Some were half beast and half man. As the gipsy
man stared off into another place, a stabbing twinge in
my bladder suddenly reminded me that I needed to get
to the men's room. As I leaned to slide off
of my stool, the owner grabbed me. As he loosened
his grip, he whispered loudly, pardon me for not finding
fun in your werewolf movie. Well. I finished in the restroom,
rinsed off my hands, and left, hoping for a chance
to hide behind some distraction that would allow me to
slither out the front door of the pizza parlor. Looking
everywhere except where I was going. I banked right nearly
smashed into the owner's daughter. She just about threw her
pizza pan to the ceiling. I caught the pan before
things looked noticeably crazy and handed it back to her
with an awkward silence. And then she said, my dad's
left for the night. He's not feeling well. Well. I
left the place quickly, and as I rounded the corner
of the pizza parlor and headed straight for the base gate,
I reflected on how shaken I still was from the
Gypsy story. I left with an eerie sense about it.
He was saying that all these stories about werewolves, vampires, bats,
and all these weird creatures in the forest, mountains and
caves could have stemmed from what happened to his ancestors. Well,
I tried to shake it off, but a voice in
my head kept pondering, what if this is true. Furthermore,
I had left my friends in that place without a word.
It would seem odd to them, but I would come
up with something the next day, but I needed to
get free of that place. The next morning came, We
ate our breakfast and we're in our little three vehicle convoy.
Before we started burping up the taste of sausage and coffee.
Our goal was to be discreet in our intended destination
Through the city. We weave through other combat units that
were also getting a head start on their missions, and
soon we were at the location that we would set
up our position on a hill dismount rang the orders
of our platoon sergeant. We worked like a fine tune,
freshly oil machine that knew how to park our trucks
back to back, drive our ground rides in, erect our antenna,
and get our temps up, fire up the potbellies, and
get our ao set with all the creature comforts a
soldier needs for a ten to fifteen day mission. After
several days, we'd fallen into a nice routine, hot breakfast
and coffee at morning shift. Change hot tar for me,
which was black coffee and a cocoa pack from my MREs.
We always had good conversations, led by the usual uneventful
knight's reports. The shifts easily blended into each other. Our
platoon sergeant's policy was I ain't gonna push if everybody
keeps up being effective, had nice rewards, and everything was cool.
A friend and I came off a shift and decided
to walk off some of the dense biscuits and sausage
we had for breakfast. We had developed a little ritual
of walking through Wurzburg's strangely immaculate forest after breakfast. Now
I say immaculate because, just like the old World War
two story stated, you could tell the forest was all
newly replanted after it was either burnt or mowed down
as we fought to push back the enemy of that war,
and when it was over, the United States ended up
being responsible and designated to plant new forests all over Germany,
and we did it as a token of our American
sense of humor. We replanted those trees all right. They
were in straight rows and columns. The vast forests looked
like a great, big old army formation, And if you
looked up back or sideways, it is pristine and tightly organized.
But if you make a one to eighth turn in
any direction, everything gets random and you can get lost
in a hurry. With all the trees being in straight
lines and identical, as we walked, the silence was louder
than any big bang we'd ever heard or made in
any forest we'd been in. But The silence was quickly
ripped by the sound of a single twig snapping just
off in the distance. We both halted our steps and
looked down the same row of trees. It was a pig,
a big, fat pig, carefully circling a tree and pawing
or hooking at the base of the tree. We watched
for a long half minute. When my partner reached up
and grabbed his rifle. I looked at him right oddly,
thinking what are you going to do with that? The
military had only issued us blanks for this training exercise.
The only thing he could do was make a pop.
Well before I could say a thing, my buddy had
shouldered his weapon, pointing it right down the column in
the direction of the pig, and pop, Just like I thought,
he let off a blank round. The pig lifted its
head and focused on us immediately and charged in our direction.
I heard two more pops from my friend's rifle, and
the pig kept charging. I wasn't worried at that point.
This thing was so fat I doubted it could make
it to us before it was spent of energy. I
shook my head as it huffed its way towards us.
The closer the creature got, the better I could see
its true size. And then I instantly upgraded this thing
from a pig to a hog. And it was not
slowing one bit. This thing's picking up speed, I said.
Before my buddy could answer, the hog made a move
that neither of us were ready for. It pulled its
front legs off the ground and began running on its
hind legs. It was now running like a big barrel chested,
well fed man. The freak of a roar it began
to bellow shook me to my core. It sounded both
far away and close at the same time. Furthermore, I
could feel it in my chest, and my eyes shook
in their sockets, and it was as if the sound
made waves in the air that were invisible to us.
And then the creature jumped space. It skipped time. It
was way off in the distance and closing fast, and
in an instant it was fifty feet in front of us,
and it was time for us to make a move.
I snapped out of the astounded days and I tried
to move in any direction away from this thing, and
my body felt as though my blood had been and
replaced by molasses. Heart beating in my ears and heaving
for oxygen and trying to get my legs to move.
It was a nightmare. All the trees in the forest
had gone unnoticed until I needed one. Now I headed
for the nearest, while somehow finding the ability to yell
to my body to do the same, and he was
a few seconds behind me and snapping out of his days,
now a few branches high and out of reach of
this beast. To my horror, I saw my friend having
trouble grabbing the lowest branch on his tree. Go to
the next tree. Damn it, I yelled as tears rolled
down my face, knowing I was about to watch this
thing devour my friend. The slow motion effects set in
as I watched him dash to the next tree and
find a knot low on the trunk, where he perfectly
planted his foot and sprung to the lowest branch. He
swung his legs up into the fork of the trunk,
lifting him himself out of the reach of the monster.
The demon hog planted its front hoofs and the dirt
and missed my friend at the last possible second. Dirt
was vaulted into the air, much like when a grenade explodes.
He had made it into the tree just in time.
The beast roared and stomped wildly around the base of
the tree, kicking clouds of moist soil into the air
covering the lower bark. This thing was boiling mad as
it circled the tree, looking for a way to get higher,
but now seeing that it couldn't reach the man above,
it fell back on all fours and stomped around more,
still looking up at my buddy with hate. It made
several attempts to leap onto the trunk and climb, only
to missus mark by a few feet and slide back
to earth. Each try up the tree produced a roar
again and again, and the sound was like two creatures
screaming at once, with low and high pitched tones, perfectly sink,
almost as if the voices were harmonized. After several tries,
I noticed the marks left in the bark, as if
it were dragging its claws as it fell. This prompted
me to focus in on its front legs, looking for
the claws. The claws were there, but they were at
the end of human looking hands. I hung there, staring
in silence as everything faded into a hum. All I
heard was the wail in between the heavy, dense huffing
sound it made every time it attempted to leap off
the ground at my buddy. Stranger still was that this
hogman was covered in thick gray mud or clay. Through
the cracks in the clay, I swear I saw blue
denim like this thing had on jeans or overalls underneath
its fur. It screamed and clawed at my body up
in that tree with such terrible hate that I thought
it would never stop. Its hate was offensive and demonic.
The roars and screams from the demon took the oxygen
out of the air, and I slowly closed my eyes
and tightened my grip on the tree trunk. My face
was chafed from hugging the tree so tightly, and I
knew my face was bleeding, and its roars had a low,
steady hum that nauseated me. I couldn't move. This thing
had me immobilized, but I needed to see if my
friend was okay. But my head would not turn and
my eyes would not open. Hey, man, are you all right?
My buddy's voice broke the silence. I was able to
open my eyes and see the sun now directly over
our heads. It had to be near midday. Now. To
my surprise, my buddy was standing on the ground below me.
He was talking to me. Where did that thing go?
I asked, with a disturbed look at me. He said,
I don't know. I think I passed out. When I
came to it was gone. I released my dear bathgrip
on the jagged bark to come down, but my muscles
were locked into place and cramped when I moved. I
finally made it to the ground below. How long was
I up there, I asked, a little longer than me.
I guess who knows how long we've been here. Let's
get out of here before that thing comes back, my
buddy said. We hobbled our way back to camp. Just
before we entered camp, and my buddy stopped me and
asked if we were going to say anything about the
events of that day. I quickly told him that I
wasn't going to say a word. The fellows met us
with a good ribbing as we entered the camp. Well,
where the hell have you love birds been? One of
them asked, Well, I guess love birds don't need no sleep.
Another cracked. They all chuckle, Everyone except the two of
us in our platoon. Sergeant, he glared at us, waiting
for the stale lives to dry off. Y'all gonna get
enough venturing far enough out in these woods, he said,
looking down his nose at us. There's a lot of
blood in them hills and plenty of haunts. Well, he
was damn right. We sounded off in unison, yes, Sergeant.
As we moved our way past him into the tent
and to our cots, we didn't say a thing to
each other. We got out of our bedus and climbed
in our sleeping bags and crashed with the rest of
the night crew. We never talked about what happened. That
agreement was made without a whole lot of words. Only
a slight glance to each other was all it took
for us both to remain tight lipped about this whole thing,
and as a matter of fact, we never really ever
conversed about it again. There were no more walks after breakfast.
I hope my friend is okay wherever he is. I
personally hope that telling you will put an end to
the nights that I wake up having sweats with biceps
and hamstrings boiling, and that hum vibrating in my chest
and ringing in my ears.