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