Speaker 1: Today, I want to tell you about a journey that
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Speaker 2: Now, what are your reporting? I got a screen going
Speaker 2: on here. Something just kid with my dog, something to
Speaker 2: kill your dog? My dog. We're flying through there over
Speaker 2: the tree. I don't know how it did it? Okay, Damn,
Speaker 2: I'm really confused. All I saw was my dog coming
Speaker 2: over the fence and name was dead once you hit
Speaker 2: the grill. I didn't see any cars. All I saw
Speaker 2: was my dog coming over the fence. Sat, what are
Speaker 2: you reporting? We got some wonder or something crawling around
Speaker 2: out here? Did you see what it was? It was
Speaker 2: enough out here? Look him new the window now and
Speaker 2: I don't need anything. I don't want to go outside.
Speaker 2: It's fright. Hello, hit the boddy out here? What quin?
Speaker 2: I'm out there? I thought of a venus about text nine.
Speaker 2: I don't know easy him out there? Yeah, I'm walking
Speaker 2: right heady.
Speaker 1: My name is Thomas, and I've spent my whole life
Speaker 1: hearing stories about my grandfather Jim. Though I never met him,
Speaker 1: his legend looms large in our family. He disappeared in
Speaker 1: the dense forests of the Appalachian Mountains back in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two before I was born. The official report says
Speaker 1: he was just another moonshiner who met with an accident
Speaker 1: in those treacherous hills, probably fell down a ravine or
Speaker 1: got lost in a sudden storm. But my father, Samuel
Speaker 1: told me different stories, stories he swore were true, passed
Speaker 1: down from my grandfather himself. This is what I know.
Speaker 1: Jim wasn't just any moonshiner. He was a mountain man
Speaker 1: through and through. Knew those hills better than anyone. He
Speaker 1: could navigate blindfolded through the thickest parts of the forest,
Speaker 1: even in the dead of night. A man like that
Speaker 1: doesn't just get lost, And according to my father, Jim
Speaker 1: didn't meet his end from any normal mountain danger. What
Speaker 1: took my grandfather was something else, entirely, something that most
Speaker 1: folks would dismiss as mountain folklore or the ramblings of
Speaker 1: a whiskey addled mind. But my father never touched a
Speaker 1: drop of alcohol in his life, and he wasn't one
Speaker 1: for tall tales. He believed every word he told me,
Speaker 1: right up until cancer took him last year. Now I'm
Speaker 1: the only one left who knows the full story, not
Speaker 1: just about how Jim disappeared, But about all the years
Speaker 1: leading up to it, his encounters with something that shouldn't exist,
Speaker 1: something that most people would call a sasquatch or bigfoot.
Speaker 1: This is his story, as told to my father and
Speaker 1: then to me, a story about Whiskey Mountains and the
Speaker 1: shadows that move between the trees when no one's look.
Speaker 1: Jim was born in nineteen o eight in a small
Speaker 1: cabin tucked away in the hills of western North Carolina
Speaker 1: near the Tennessee border. His people had been there since
Speaker 1: before the Revolutionary War, scratching out a living from the
Speaker 1: unforgiving mountain soil. Like most mountain families, they supplemented their
Speaker 1: income however they could, and for our family, that meant
Speaker 1: making moonshine. My great grandfather taught Jim the art of
Speaker 1: distilling when he was just twelve years old. By the
Speaker 1: time prohibition hit in nineteen twenty, Jim was already familiar
Speaker 1: with every step of the process, from fermenting the corn
Speaker 1: mash to distilling the clear potent liquor. When my great
Speaker 1: grandfather died from pneumonia in nineteen twenty six, eighteen year
Speaker 1: old Jim took over the family business without missing a beat.
Speaker 1: Your grandfather wasn't just any moonshiner. My father would tell
Speaker 1: me he had a gift for it. People would come
Speaker 1: from three counties over just to get a jar of
Speaker 1: our shine. He knew exactly when to make the cuts,
Speaker 1: how to get that smooth finished that didn't burn your
Speaker 1: throat like cheap hooch. He could have gone legitimate after
Speaker 1: prohibition ended, but he was stubborn as a mule and
Speaker 1: hated paying taxes to a government he never felt did
Speaker 1: anything for him. Jim married my grandmother Martha in nineteen thirty.
Speaker 1: They had their only child, my father, Samuel, in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty two. From what my father told me, they were
Speaker 1: happy in their little cabin, even if life was hard.
Speaker 1: Jim would disappear into the mountains for days at a time,
Speaker 1: tending to his stills or delivering his product, while Martha
Speaker 1: kept a small garden and taught at the local one
Speaker 1: room schoolhouse. He loved those mountains, my father said, used
Speaker 1: to tell me they were in his blood. Said he
Speaker 1: could feel them breathing sometimes, like they were alive. I
Speaker 1: thought it was just talk until I got older and
Speaker 1: realized he meant it literally. My father's earliest memories were
Speaker 1: of sitting on Jim's knee by the fireplace, listening to
Speaker 1: him tell stories about the mountains, stories about strange lights
Speaker 1: in the distance, unusual rock formations that seemed to move
Speaker 1: when you weren't looking, and sounds in the night that
Speaker 1: couldn't be explained away as any known animal. He never
Speaker 1: mentioned the creatures at first, my father explained, I think
Speaker 1: he wanted to ease me into it, not scare me
Speaker 1: right off. But looking back, I can see now that
Speaker 1: all those stories were building up to something. The first
Speaker 1: direct encounter happened in the summer of nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 1: My father was five years old, and Jim had taken
Speaker 1: him along to check on a still for the first time.
Speaker 1: It was just a short trip, less than a mile
Speaker 1: from their cabin, but deep in the woods of Booger Holler,
Speaker 1: where no casual hiker would stumble upon it. I remember
Speaker 1: it was hot, real hot, my father told me, the
Speaker 1: kind of day where the air feels thick enough to
Speaker 1: cut with a knife. We'd been walking for maybe twenty
Speaker 1: minutes when your grandfather suddenly stopped. I crashed right into
Speaker 1: the back of his legs, and before I could say anything,
Speaker 1: he put his finger to his lips and pointed through
Speaker 1: a gap in the trees about fifty year yards away.
Speaker 1: Something large and dark moved between the trunks. My father
Speaker 1: said he thought it was a bear at first, there
Speaker 1: were plenty of black bears in those hills, but then
Speaker 1: it stood up on two legs and reached for a
Speaker 1: high branch. It must have been eight feet tall at least,
Speaker 1: he said, covered in dark hair, with arms that hung
Speaker 1: down past its knees. I only saw it for a
Speaker 1: few seconds before your grandfather pulled me down behind a
Speaker 1: fallen log. We stayed there, quiet as church mice for
Speaker 1: what felt like hours but was probably only fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: Then Jim picked me up and we went home. Never
Speaker 1: even made it to the still that day. On the
Speaker 1: way back, Jim swore my father to secrecy. Not a
Speaker 1: word to your mama, He said, she'll never let you
Speaker 1: come with me again if she knows. That night, after
Speaker 1: my father was supposed to be asleep, he heard Jim
Speaker 1: and Martha talking in hushed tones by the fireplace. I've
Speaker 1: been seeing it for years, Martha, Jim said, always at
Speaker 1: a distance, never this close. I thought maybe it was
Speaker 1: just shadows playing tricks, or my mind, making shapes out
Speaker 1: of nothing. But today Sam saw it too. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: have taken him. Those things are dangerous, Jim. My daddy
Speaker 1: told me stories about them when I was little, said,
Speaker 1: his grandfather lost two hunting dogs to one back in
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, tore them clean in half. It didn't
Speaker 1: seem aggressive, Jim argued, It was just there minding its
Speaker 1: own business for now. Martha said, but that's their territory, Jim,
Speaker 1: you're the trespasser, my father said. Jim went quiet after that,
Speaker 1: and eventually they went to bed. The next morning. No
Speaker 1: one mentioned the creature and life continued as normal. But
Speaker 1: from then on, Jim always carried his old Winchester rifle
Speaker 1: when he went to check on his stills, something he
Speaker 1: hadn't done before. Over the next few years, the sightings continued,
Speaker 1: though they were rare and always at a distance. My
Speaker 1: father accompanied Jim more frequently as he got older, and
Speaker 1: occasionally they would spot the creature, or perhaps different creatures,
Speaker 1: moving through the trees. Sometimes they would find footprints, enormous
Speaker 1: impressions in the soft earth that couldn't belong to any
Speaker 1: known animal in those mountains. Your grandfather started marking them
Speaker 1: on a map. My father told me he wanted to
Speaker 1: figure out their territory, their habits. He was fascinated by them,
Speaker 1: not scared like most folks would be. By nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 1: Jim had developed a theory. They're a family group, he
Speaker 1: told my father during one of their trips. At least
Speaker 1: three of them by my count, they migrate through these
Speaker 1: hills seasonally following the game. Probably they're not much different
Speaker 1: from bears in that way. Did you ever tell anyone
Speaker 1: else about them? I asked my father. He shook his head.
Speaker 1: Jim swore me to secrecy, and I kept that promise
Speaker 1: until now. Mountain folk might believe in such things more
Speaker 1: readily than city people, but even so, claiming to have
Speaker 1: seen a Sasquatch would have gotten us labeled as crazy. Besides,
Speaker 1: your grandfather liked having a secret, said it gave him
Speaker 1: an edge. By the mid nineteen fifties, the moonshine business
Speaker 1: was getting more competitive. Legitimate alcohol was widely available, and
Speaker 1: the revenue agents were cracking down hard on illegal distillers.
Speaker 1: Many of Jim's contemporaries either went legitimate, moved on to
Speaker 1: other endeavors, or got arrested, but Jim adapted. He moved
Speaker 1: his stills deeper into the mountains, into an area that
Speaker 1: locals had always avoided. According to my father, there had
Speaker 1: been stories about that part of the forest for generations,
Speaker 1: Tales of hunters who went in and never came out,
Speaker 1: of strange screams in the night that didn't sound human
Speaker 1: or animal, and of rocks thrown from unseen assailants. Most
Speaker 1: folks called it booger holler. My father said no one
Speaker 1: would go there willingly. The revenue agents wouldn't even venture
Speaker 1: that far into the mountains, not even with armed escorts.
Speaker 1: They were superstitious, many of them being local boys themselves. Jim, however,
Speaker 1: saw an opportunity. If he could operate his stills in
Speaker 1: an area that no one else dared to enter, he
Speaker 1: would have virtually no competition and no interference from the law.
Speaker 1: He was playing a dangerous game, my father said. He
Speaker 1: knew those creatures were real, knew they lived in those parts.
Speaker 1: But he figured if he stayed alert and careful, kept
Speaker 1: his wits about him, he could work there without trouble,
Speaker 1: and for many years he did. Jim established certain rules
Speaker 1: for himself. He would only visit the stills during daylight hours.
Speaker 1: He would never stay overnight in that part of the forest.
Speaker 1: He would make noise as he approached, so nothing would
Speaker 1: be startled by his presence. It sounds crazy, my father admitted,
Speaker 1: but it worked. The business thrived. While other moonshiners were
Speaker 1: getting caught or giving up, Jim was expanding. He had
Speaker 1: buyers as far away as Charlotte and Atlanta. People said
Speaker 1: our shine was worth the premium because it was so smooth,
Speaker 1: but they had no idea that they were paying extra
Speaker 1: for whiskey made in Sasquatch Country. Whenever other moonshiners would
Speaker 1: ask Jim about his secret locations, he would just smile
Speaker 1: and tap his nose. There are places in these mountains
Speaker 1: that belonged to something else, he'd say, cryptically. I tread
Speaker 1: careful there, but you might not be so lucky. This
Speaker 1: reputation actually helped insulate Jim from competition. No one wanted
Speaker 1: to follow him too closely or encroach on what they
Speaker 1: believed was his territory. The few who tried reported strange experiences.
Speaker 1: Tools gone missing, stills destroyed by what looked like enormous hands,
Speaker 1: terrifying screams in the night that sent them running back
Speaker 1: down the mountain. Did the creatures actually protect his stills?
Speaker 1: I asked my father once he shrugged. I can't say
Speaker 1: for sure. Maybe Jim damaged those stills himself to scare
Speaker 1: off competition, But I do know he genuinely believed he
Speaker 1: could work in their territory if he was careful. He
Speaker 1: respected their space, didn't make a nuisance of himself. But
Speaker 1: he never forgot they were wild animals, dangerous ones. He
Speaker 1: never let down his guard. Those instincts would serve him
Speaker 1: well as the years passed, though in the end they
Speaker 1: wouldn't be enough. By the early nineteen sixties, my father
Speaker 1: was a young man of twenty working alongside Jim in
Speaker 1: the family business. The sightings had become more frequent and
Speaker 1: sometimes more concerning. The creatures seemed to be getting bolder,
Speaker 1: my father recalled. We'd catch glimpses of them watching us
Speaker 1: from a closer distance than before. Sometimes we'd hear wood
Speaker 1: knocking or strange whistles that Jim said was their way
Speaker 1: of warning each other of our presence. In the spring
Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty three, they found one of the stills destroyed,
Speaker 1: not just tipped over or damaged, but completely torn apart.
Speaker 1: The copper coils twisted like pretzels. The wooden fermentation barrel
Speaker 1: splintered to pieces. No human could have done that, my
Speaker 1: father said. It would have taken three or four strong
Speaker 1: men with tools, but this looked like it had been
Speaker 1: done with bare hands. Your grandfather just stood there looking
Speaker 1: at the destruction, then said, they're warning us. They want
Speaker 1: this territory back. Jim decided to abandon that particular side
Speaker 1: and move the operation elsewhere, still within Booger Holler, but
Speaker 1: in a different section. For a while, things calmed down.
Speaker 1: The sightings continued, but at a distance. Then came the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen sixty seven. It was unusually hot and
Speaker 1: the forest was dry from lack of rain. Food would
Speaker 1: have been scarcer for all the mountain creatures, including the
Speaker 1: Sasquatch family. We were checking on the most remote still,
Speaker 1: my father told me, when we heard a commotion ahead
Speaker 1: of us, Jim motioned for me to stay back while
Speaker 1: he crept forward to investigate. I didn't listen, of course,
Speaker 1: I was twenty five and thought I was invincible. What
Speaker 1: they saw through the trees was something My father said
Speaker 1: he would never forget. Two creatures, both well over seven
Speaker 1: feet tall, were fighting over the car of a deer.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more sasquatch oat to see. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back after these messages. The sounds they made were
Speaker 1: unlike anything he'd ever heard, not quite human, not quite animal,
Speaker 1: but something in between grunts and roars that seemed to
Speaker 1: contain meaning. They were so focused on each other that
Speaker 1: they didn't notice us at first. My father said we
Speaker 1: should have backed away immediately, but we were transfixed. Then
Speaker 1: one of them threw the other into a tree, just
Speaker 1: picked it up and threw it like it weighed nothing.
Speaker 1: The tree cracked from the impact. The sound of the
Speaker 1: breaking tree caught the creature's attention. Both heads snapped toward
Speaker 1: where Jim and my father were hiding. Your grandfather grabbed
Speaker 1: my arm and said, one word.
Speaker 2: Run.
Speaker 1: They ran faster than they ever had before, crashing through
Speaker 1: the underbrush with no attempt at stealth. Behind them, they
Speaker 1: could hear the creatures giving chase, moving through the forest
Speaker 1: with surprising speed for their size. We made it to
Speaker 1: a creek and splashed across, My father continued. Jim said
Speaker 1: they didn't like water, that it might slow them down.
Speaker 2: He was right.
Speaker 1: They stopped at the edge of the creek, pacing back
Speaker 1: and forth making those awful sounds. We didn't stop running
Speaker 1: until we reached the truck. That night, Jim was unusually quiet.
Speaker 1: When my father asked if they should move the stills again,
Speaker 1: maybe even out of Booger Holler entirely, Jim shook his head.
Speaker 1: They could have caught us if they wanted to. He said,
Speaker 1: they're faster than us, stronger than us. The fact that
Speaker 1: they stopped at the creek means they were just warning
Speaker 1: us off, not truly hunting us. But they're getting more territorial.
Speaker 1: The food scarce this year. We need to be more careful.
Speaker 1: My father wasn't so sure. I suggested that maybe it
Speaker 1: was time to get out of the moonshine business altogether.
Speaker 1: He told me the country was changing, there were more
Speaker 1: legitimate opportunities. I'd met your mother by then and was
Speaker 1: thinking about starting a family. I didn't want to keep
Speaker 1: risking my life in those mountains. But Jim was adamant.
Speaker 1: This is what our family does. He said, this is
Speaker 1: our heritage. I'm not giving it up because of a
Speaker 1: couple of hairy beasts. From then on, my father limited
Speaker 1: his involvement in the business. He would help with the
Speaker 1: distribution end, driving the product to buyers and nearby towns,
Speaker 1: but he rarely ventured into Booger Holler with Jim anymore.
Speaker 1: I had a bad feeling, he confessed to me, like
Speaker 1: something was building up, Like we were heading towards something
Speaker 1: we couldn't turn back from. I tried to tell your grandfather,
Speaker 1: but he wouldn't listen. He'd been operating around those creatures
Speaker 1: for twenty years by then. He thought he understood their patterns,
Speaker 1: thought he knew how to avoid trouble. But I think
Speaker 1: he was underestimating them their ferocity when pushed too far.
Speaker 1: Looking back, my father believed that the summer of nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty seven marked a turning point. The creatures that had
Speaker 1: tolerated human presence at a distance were becoming increasingly hostile,
Speaker 1: increasingly territorial. The late nineteen sixties brought changes to the mountains.
Speaker 1: More people were moving into areas that had once been isolated,
Speaker 1: building vacation homes or looking to get back to nature
Speaker 1: as part of the counterculture movement. The increased human presence
Speaker 1: put pressure on all the wildlife, including presumably the Sasquatch family.
Speaker 1: Jim noticed they were becoming more aggressive my father said
Speaker 1: he'd find his truck scratched up, like something with massive
Speaker 1: claws had run down the side of it. Twice he
Speaker 1: found dead animals, a fox once, a raccoon another time,
Speaker 1: placed very deliberately on the path to one of his stills.
Speaker 1: I told him they were warnings, but he just saw
Speaker 1: them as territorial markers, like a bear might leave. Despite
Speaker 1: these signs, Jim became more determined than ever to maintain
Speaker 1: his operation in Booger Holler. He began carrying two guns
Speaker 1: instead of one, and would sometimes fire shots into the
Speaker 1: air before approaching stills, thinking the noise would scare the
Speaker 1: creatures away. It was pride, my father said, simply, He'd
Speaker 1: spent too many years thinking of that land as partially his.
Speaker 1: He couldn't accept that the creatures wanted him gone completely.
Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen seventy, there was an incident
Speaker 1: that shook even Jim's confidence. He had hired a local boy,
Speaker 1: nineteen year old Billy, to help him with some of
Speaker 1: the heavy lifting around the stills. Billy disappeared one day
Speaker 1: while checking on a fermentation batch. Jim found the still untouched,
Speaker 1: but Billy was gone without a trace. An extensive search
Speaker 1: was organized, with dozens of locals combing the mountains for
Speaker 1: any sign of the young man. After a week, they
Speaker 1: found one of his boots, nearly three miles from where
Speaker 1: he had last been seen, the leather torn and covered
Speaker 1: in dark stains that looked like dried blood. Nothing else
Speaker 1: was ever found. The official explanation was that Billy had
Speaker 1: been attacked by a bear or fallen from a cliff
Speaker 1: and been dragged off by scavengers. But Jim knew better,
Speaker 1: and so did my father. That was the first time
Speaker 1: I saw real fear in your grandfather's eyes. My father
Speaker 1: told me he came to our house, your mother and
Speaker 1: I were living in town by then, and he just
Speaker 1: sat at our kitchen table with his head in his hands.
Speaker 1: I got that boy killed, He kept saying, they took
Speaker 1: him because of me. For a few months after Billy's disappearance,
Speaker 1: Jim stayed away from Booger Holler. He focused on his
Speaker 1: stills in the safer parts of the mountains, even though
Speaker 1: they were more vulnerable to discovery by revenue agents. My
Speaker 1: father thought he might finally be ready to leave the
Speaker 1: dangerous area for good, but by the spring of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one, Jim was back to his old ways. The
Speaker 1: lure of the isolated territory and the protection it offered
Speaker 1: from law enforcement was too strong to resist. He told
Speaker 1: me he had a new strategy. My father said. He'd
Speaker 1: reduced his operation to just two stills in Booger Holler,
Speaker 1: and he changed his patterns constantly, different days, different times.
Speaker 1: He thought if he was unpredicted, the creatures wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to ambush him like they might have done with Billy.
Speaker 1: My father told me Jim had become almost obsessive about
Speaker 1: safety during this period. He set up trip wires with
Speaker 1: bells around the steals, not to hurt anything, but to
Speaker 1: warn him if something large approached. I think he knew
Speaker 1: his time and Booger Holler was running out, my father said,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't bring himself to leave. It was like
Speaker 1: a game of chicken with creatures that didn't know they
Speaker 1: were playing. As nineteen seventy one turned to nineteen seventy two, Jim,
Speaker 1: now sixty four years old, showed no signs of slowing
Speaker 1: down or retiring from the moonshine business. If anything, he
Speaker 1: became more entrenched in his routine, more determined, to prove
Speaker 1: he could outwit the increasingly hostile creatures of Booger Holler.
Speaker 1: The last time I saw him, my father said, his
Speaker 1: voice catching slightly, was in April of seventy two. He
Speaker 1: came by the house to meet you. Your mother was
Speaker 1: eight months pregnant with you. Then he brought a jar
Speaker 1: of shine for me to save for when you were grown.
Speaker 1: He seemed jumpy, looking over his shoulder, checking the door
Speaker 1: was locked. I asked him what was wrong, and he
Speaker 1: just shook his head. My father still had that jar,
Speaker 1: kept it all these years. He showed it to me
Speaker 1: on my twenty first birthday, but wouldn't let me drink it.
Speaker 1: This is the last thing your grandfather ever made, he said.
Speaker 1: We're just going to look at it and remember him.
Speaker 1: As I held that jar, I wondered what Jim had
Speaker 1: seen or heard in those final weeks that had made
Speaker 1: him so nervous. Had he known somehow that his time
Speaker 1: was almost up. On May seventeenth, nineteen seventy two, Jim
Speaker 1: drove his old truck up the mountain road for the
Speaker 1: last time. He told my grandmother he was going to
Speaker 1: check on both his Stills and Booger Holler and would
Speaker 1: be back by dinner. When night fell with no sign
Speaker 1: of him, she called my father, who organized a search party.
Speaker 1: We waited until morning. My father said no one wanted
Speaker 1: to go into those mountains at night, especially not Booger Holler.
Speaker 1: We found his truck park at the usual spot at
Speaker 1: the end of an old logging road. His rifle was
Speaker 1: still in the cab, which was strange. He never went
Speaker 1: into those woods unarmed, especially not in recent years. The
Speaker 1: search party followed the path toward the first still. They
Speaker 1: found it untouched, with no sign that Jim had been
Speaker 1: there that day. They continued to the second still, deeper
Speaker 1: in Booger Holler. We knew something was wrong as soon
Speaker 1: as we saw it. My father said the still had
Speaker 1: been completely destroyed, worse than before. The copper pieces were
Speaker 1: missing entirely. The wooden parts were splintered and scattered across
Speaker 1: a twenty foot radius. Jim's hat was there, too, crushed
Speaker 1: flat like something had stomped on it, and there was blood,
Speaker 1: not a lot, but enough to know someone had been hurt.
Speaker 1: But there was no body and no gem. The search
Speaker 1: continued for two weeks. Professional trackers were brought in and
Speaker 1: even a few bloodhounds, though the dogs were strangely reluctant
Speaker 1: to follow any scent in Booger Hall, whining and pulling
Speaker 1: at their leashes to go back the way they had come.
Speaker 1: We found tracks, my father said, not just gems, but
Speaker 1: something else. Enormous footprints, bigger than any I'd seen before,
Speaker 1: and deeper too, like whatever made them was carrying something heavy.
Speaker 1: The footprints led deeper into the mountains, into areas so
Speaker 1: remote and rugged that even experienced woodsmen in the search
Speaker 1: party were hesitant to follow. Eventually, the trail was lost
Speaker 1: on a rocky ridge where no prints could be seen.
Speaker 1: Jim was officially declared missing, presumed dead, though no body
Speaker 1: was ever found. The official theory was that he had
Speaker 1: fallen victim to a bear attack or a fatal accident,
Speaker 1: his body dragged off by scavengers, or lost in one
Speaker 1: of the many deep ravines that cut through the mountains.
Speaker 1: But my father knew better, and now so do I.
Speaker 1: They took him. My father told me, he pushed too
Speaker 1: far into their territory, stayed too long after they made
Speaker 1: it clear they want him gone. They were animals protecting
Speaker 1: what they saw as theirs. After Jim's disappearance. My father
Speaker 1: never went into Booger Holler again. He left the moonshine
Speaker 1: business entirely, got a job at a textile mill in town,
Speaker 1: and raised me and my mother in a small house
Speaker 1: far from the deep woods where his father had vanished.
Speaker 1: But he never stopped telling me the stories. As I
Speaker 1: grew older, he shared more details, more of his theories
Speaker 1: about what really happened. It became a kind of obsession
Speaker 1: for him, especially after my mother died when I was twelve.
Speaker 1: He would spend hours poring over maps of the mountains,
Speaker 1: marking siding locations and trying to define the territory of
Speaker 1: the creatures that had taken his father. There's something else
Speaker 1: I never told you, he confessed to me in the
Speaker 1: hospital during the final days of his battle with cancer.
Speaker 1: Something I saw the year after your grandfather disappeared. He
Speaker 1: had gone up to the old cabin where he grew up,
Speaker 1: which had stood empty since my grandmother moved into town
Speaker 1: Jim vanished. He was gathering some family heirlooms, things he
Speaker 1: wanted to keep before selling the property. It was getting
Speaker 1: dark and I was loading the last boxes into my
Speaker 1: truck when I heard something moving in the trees at
Speaker 1: the edge of the clearing. He said, I knew I
Speaker 1: should leave right away, but curiosity got the better of me.
Speaker 1: I took a flashlight and walked to the tree line.
Speaker 1: What he saw there haunts me to this day. Just
Speaker 1: beyond the reach of the flashlight beam, standing between two
Speaker 1: tall pines was an enormous figure. It was hard to
Speaker 1: make out details in the gathering darkness, but my father
Speaker 1: swore it was one of the creatures, taller and broader
Speaker 1: than any he'd seen before, with silver gray hair instead
Speaker 1: of the dark brown he remembered from his youth. It
Speaker 1: just stood there, watching me, he said, not moving, not
Speaker 1: making a sound. Then it raised something in its hand,
Speaker 1: something that caught the light. It was your grandfather's pocket watch,
Speaker 1: the one he always carried. I recognized the silver case,
Speaker 1: the chain. The creature seemed to be showing it to me.
Speaker 1: My father was frozen in place, too terrified to move.
Speaker 1: Then the creature let out a low, rumbling growl, not
Speaker 1: immediately threatening, but clearly a warning. It dropped the watch
Speaker 1: on the ground and backed away into the darkness. When
Speaker 1: my father worked up the courage to approach the spot,
Speaker 1: he found the watch just as the creature had left it.
Speaker 1: The case was dented, the glass cracked, but it was
Speaker 1: unmistakably Jim's prized possession, the one he never went anywhere without.
Speaker 1: I never told your mother, he said, never told anyone
Speaker 1: who would believe it. But I kept that watch. It's
Speaker 1: in the lock box under my bed. The key is
Speaker 1: in my wallet. After he died, I found the watch,
Speaker 1: just where he said it would be. It looked ancient,
Speaker 1: the silver tarnished, the mechanism long since stopped working, But
Speaker 1: engraved inside the case were my grandfather's initials, JM. I've
Speaker 1: kept watch along with that jar of moonshine. They sit
Speaker 1: on my mantle now, reminders of a grandfather I never knew,
Speaker 1: and the strange circumstances of his disappearance. After my father died,
Speaker 1: I found myself drawn to the mountains in a way
Speaker 1: I had never been before. I had grown up with
Speaker 1: the stories, but I had always viewed them as just
Speaker 1: that stories, possibly exaggerated through years of retelling. But holding
Speaker 1: that watch, supposedly returned by a creature that science says
Speaker 1: doesn't exist, I began to wonder. I started making trips
Speaker 1: to the area where my grandfather had disappeared. The old
Speaker 1: logging road was still there, though nearly reclaimed by the forest.
Speaker 1: The first time, I only went as far as where
Speaker 1: Jim's truck had been found, too nervous to venture deeper
Speaker 1: into Booger Holler alone. But I returned again and again,
Speaker 1: each time going a little farther, I found the remains
Speaker 1: of one of the stills, just rusted metal parts now
Speaker 1: half buried in leaves and soil. I never found the
Speaker 1: second still, the one where my grandfather's hat had been discovered.
Speaker 1: On my fifth trip in the summer of twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: I decided to stay until sunset, not overnight. I wasn't
Speaker 1: that foolish, but later than I'd ever stayed before. I
Speaker 1: set up a small camp near the ruins of the
Speaker 1: first still and waited. As the sun began to sink
Speaker 1: behind the mountains. The forest grew quiet in that peculiar
Speaker 1: way that often precedes dusk. No birds called, no squirrels chattered.
Speaker 1: The silence was absolute and unnerving. Then I heard it,
Speaker 1: wood knocking against wood, a hollow sound that echoed through
Speaker 1: the trees. It came from behind me. Then another knock
Speaker 1: answered from my right. A third knock sounded from deeper
Speaker 1: in the forest. I froze, my heart hammering in my chest.
Speaker 1: The knocking continued, a complex pattern that couldn't be random.
Speaker 1: It was communication or a coordinated encirclement strategy. Have been terrified,
Speaker 1: should have run back to my car, driven away, and
Speaker 1: never returned to those mountains. But instead, I felt an
Speaker 1: overwhelming sense of connection to my grandfather, to the stories
Speaker 1: I'd grown up with, to the mystery that had shaped
Speaker 1: our family. Slowly, I packed up my things, slung my
Speaker 1: backpack over my shoulder, and began walking, not running, back
Speaker 1: toward the logging road. The knocking followed me, always just
Speaker 1: out of sight, moving parallel to my path through the trees.
Speaker 1: When I reached my car, the knocking stopped. The forest
Speaker 1: went silent again. As I drove down the mountain, I
Speaker 1: couldn't shake the feeling that I was being watched from
Speaker 1: the trees along the road, not with curiosity, but with warning.
Speaker 1: I've returned to the mountains many times since then. Each visit,
Speaker 1: I pushed a little farther into Booger Holler, trying to
Speaker 1: chart the territory as my grandfather had done decades earlier.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I hear the knocking sometimes strange calls in the night.
Speaker 1: Once I found an enormous footprint in mud beside a creek,
Speaker 1: eighteen inches long at least, with five distinct toes and
Speaker 1: a depth that suggested whatever made it weigh hundreds of pounds.
Speaker 1: Last summer, I went back with a different purpose. I
Speaker 1: brought a small brass plaque engraved with my grandfather's name
Speaker 1: and the dates of his birth and disappearance. I affixed
Speaker 1: it to a large rock near where I believed the
Speaker 1: second still had been. As I finished, I heard the
Speaker 1: knocking again, closer than ever before. I turned slowly and
Speaker 1: saw movement in the trees about fifty yards away, something large,
Speaker 1: moving with surprising speed through the underbrush. I caught a
Speaker 1: glimpse of dark hair, a massive shoulder, and then it
Speaker 1: was gone. This time I didn't linger. I hiked out quickly,
Speaker 1: not running, but moving at a steady pace, constantly checking
Speaker 1: over my shoulder. The knocking followed me all the way
Speaker 1: to the edge of Booger Holler, then stopped abruptly. When
Speaker 1: I reached my car, I found something disturbed, long deep
Speaker 1: scratches down the driver's side door, scratches that hadn't been
Speaker 1: there when i'd parked. They looked like they'd been made
Speaker 1: by enormous claws or perhaps massive powerful fingers. I've spoken
Speaker 1: with a few of the older locals since then, people
Speaker 1: who might remember my grandfather, or at least the stories
Speaker 1: about him. Most are reluctant to talk about Booger Holler
Speaker 1: or the creatures that might live there. But one old man,
Speaker 1: well into his nineties and seemingly past caring what people
Speaker 1: thought of him, had this to say. Those things been
Speaker 1: in these mountains since before the Cherokees. They're territorial, like bears,
Speaker 1: but smarter. They'll warn you off first, strange noises, broken branches,
Speaker 1: rocks thrown near you, but not at you. If you
Speaker 1: don't listen to the warnings, they get more direct. They'll
Speaker 1: destroy things you leave behind, mark your vehicle so you
Speaker 1: know they found it, and if you still keep coming back,
Speaker 1: if you push into their core territory. The old man
Speaker 1: drew a finger across his throat. Nobody ever finds bodies.
Speaker 1: They drag them deep into caves, down sinkholes, places humans
Speaker 1: can't or won't go. I asked him if he thought
Speaker 1: they had killed my grandfather. The old man shrugged, What
Speaker 1: do you think man spends decades trespassing in their territory
Speaker 1: gets warned off clear as day keeps coming back. Your
Speaker 1: grandpa was lucky they tolerated him as long as they did.
Speaker 1: He must have been careful, must have shown some respect
Speaker 1: for their boundaries. But in the end he crossed a line.
Speaker 1: Despite these warnings, I continued my trips to Booger Holler,
Speaker 1: not out of the same stubborn pride that drove my grandfather,
Speaker 1: but out of a need to understand what happened to him,
Speaker 1: to connect with the mystery that defined our family. I'm
Speaker 1: more cautious than Jim was. I never stay after dark.
Speaker 1: I don't build anything permanent. I don't try to reclaim
Speaker 1: the moonshine business in those dangerous woods. I'm just an observer,
Speaker 1: a chronicler, trying to make sense of what happened all
Speaker 1: those years ago. The last time I went to the mountains,
Speaker 1: about a month ago, I found something at the side
Speaker 1: of the plaque, A pile of freshly broken branches heaped
Speaker 1: directly on top of it, completely obscuring the brass marker.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a random collection of deadfall. The branches had
Speaker 1: been deliberately snapped, not sawn and carefully arranged in a
Speaker 1: mound over the memorial message received. They didn't want reminders
Speaker 1: of human presence, even a simple plaque. As I hiked
Speaker 1: out that day, the knocking followed me as usual, but
Speaker 1: this time it was joined by something else, A deep,
Speaker 1: throaty vocalization that rose and fell like speech, but no
Speaker 1: speech I've ever heard. It followed me all the way
Speaker 1: to the edge of Booger Holler, growing louder and more
Speaker 1: insistent with each step I took. When I reached the
Speaker 1: old logging road where my car was parked, I found
Speaker 1: another warning. Arranged in a neat line across the hood
Speaker 1: were three objects. A rusted piece of copper tubing that
Speaker 1: might once have been part of a still, a small
Speaker 1: stone with unusual markings that resembled a crude face, and
Speaker 1: most disturbing of all, a tattered piece of cloth that
Speaker 1: I recognized with a chill as being from the same
Speaker 1: pattern as the shirt my grandfather was wearing on the
Speaker 1: day he disappeared. And stay tuned for more sasquatch ot
Speaker 1: to see. We'll be right back after these messages. According
Speaker 1: to my father's description, I took the copper and the
Speaker 1: cloth but left the stone where it lay. Some instinct
Speaker 1: told me that taking that particular item would be crossing
Speaker 1: a line. That night, back at my cabin several miles
Speaker 1: from Booger Holler, I examined the scrap of fabric carefully.
Speaker 1: It was faded and weathered, but unmistakably the same distinctive
Speaker 1: plaid pattern my father had described many times, blue and
Speaker 1: green with thin red stripes. How had it survived all
Speaker 1: these years in the elements. Had it been preserved somehow,
Speaker 1: kept in a drug place until now, or had it
Speaker 1: been deliberately saved by something or someone for just this moment.
Speaker 1: I was still pondering these questions when I heard a
Speaker 1: sound that made my blood run cold. Three distinct knocks
Speaker 1: on the wall of my cabin, just outside the window,
Speaker 1: then silence. I didn't sleep that night. I sat in
Speaker 1: a chair facing the door, my grandfather's rifle across my
Speaker 1: lap until dawn broke. Nothing else happened, no more knocks,
Speaker 1: no attempts to enter, but the message was clear. They
Speaker 1: knew where I lived. They could find me anytime they wanted.
Speaker 1: The next morning, I drove into town and sought out
Speaker 1: the old man I'd spoken with before I found him
Speaker 1: on his usual bench outside the general store, whittling a
Speaker 1: piece of wood with a pocket knife. They followed you home,
Speaker 1: he said, matter of factly. When I told him what
Speaker 1: had happened. It wasn't a question. I nodded. You're pushing
Speaker 1: too far, just like your grandpa did. They're telling you
Speaker 1: to back off. But I haven't done anything, I protested,
Speaker 1: I'm not setting up stills, not taking anything from the forest.
Speaker 1: The old man spat tobacco juice into a can by
Speaker 1: his feet. Don't matter. You're stirring up old memories, old grievances.
Speaker 1: That plaque you put up, that was a claim, like
Speaker 1: saying this was my grandpa's land, But it ain't. Never was.
Speaker 1: They were there first, and they'll be there after we're
Speaker 1: all gone. What should I do, I asked. He considered
Speaker 1: this for a moment, his weathered hands never stopping their
Speaker 1: rhythmic carving motion. Stop going to booger holler for one thing.
Speaker 1: That's their place, always has been. Let your grandpa rest
Speaker 1: wherever he is, and he hesitated, then reached into his
Speaker 1: pocket and pulled out a small leather pouch. Put this
Speaker 1: above your door. Mountain tradition might help might not, but
Speaker 1: can't hurt. The pouch contained dried herbs and what looked
Speaker 1: like animal bones, all tied together with sin. It smelled earthy,
Speaker 1: and ancient old Cherokee showed me how to make these.
Speaker 1: The old man said, said, they keep the forest folk
Speaker 1: away from your home. I don't know if it's true,
Speaker 1: but my daddy used to hang one up, and his
Speaker 1: daddy before him. None of them ever got bothered at home,
Speaker 1: even if they saw things in the woods. I thanked
Speaker 1: him and headed back to my cabin. I hung the
Speaker 1: pouch above my door as instructed, feeling slightly foolish, but
Speaker 1: unwilling to dismiss mountain wisdom out of hand. That night,
Speaker 1: there were no knocks, no strange sounds. Whether because of
Speaker 1: the charm or because the creatures had made their point,
Speaker 1: I couldn't say. For several weeks, I stayed away from
Speaker 1: Booger Holler. I focused on my work, tried to put
Speaker 1: the whole experience behind me, But the questions kept nagging
Speaker 1: at me. What really happened to my grandfather? Why return
Speaker 1: his watch a year after his disappearance? Why show me
Speaker 1: these things now decades later? Against my better judgment, I
Speaker 1: decided to make one final trip to the mountains, not
Speaker 1: to booger holler itself, I'd learned that lesson, but to
Speaker 1: the edge of it, to a ridge overlooking the area
Speaker 1: where Jim had disappeared. I wanted to take photographs, document
Speaker 1: the landscape, create some tangible record of the place that
Speaker 1: had shaped my family's history. It was a beautiful autumn day,
Speaker 1: clear and cool, the forest ablaze with red and gold leaves.
Speaker 1: I hiked up to the ridge without incident, set up
Speaker 1: my camera on a tripod, and began taking panoramic shots
Speaker 1: of the valley below. I was so absorbed in my
Speaker 1: work that I didn't notice the silence falling around me.
Speaker 1: The birds had stopped singing, the insects had ceased their buzzing,
Speaker 1: the forest held its breath. Then I heard it, a
Speaker 1: rhythmic thumping, like something heavy. Walking deliberately through the underbrush
Speaker 1: behind me, thump pause, thump pause, getting closer with each step.
Speaker 1: I froze, my hand still on the camera. Slowly, I
Speaker 1: turned my head to look over my shoulder. Standing at
Speaker 1: the edge of the clearing, partially obscured by a large oak,
Speaker 1: was a figure. Even from that distance, I could see
Speaker 1: it was massive at least eight feet tall, covered in
Speaker 1: dark hair, with silver streaks on its chest and shoulders.
Speaker 1: Its face was in shadow, but I could feel its
Speaker 1: eyes on me, watching, evaluating. We stared at each other
Speaker 1: for what seemed like an eternity. Neither of us moved.
Speaker 1: I was too terrified to run, too fascinated to look away. Then,
Speaker 1: with deliberate slowness, the creature raised one enormous hand. In
Speaker 1: its palm was something small and glinting in the sunlight,
Speaker 1: a metal flask, the kind my grandfather used to carry
Speaker 1: his shine in when visiting buyers. The creature placed the
Speaker 1: flask on a fallen log, then took two steps backward,
Speaker 1: Still watching me, it made a sound, a low, rumbling
Speaker 1: vocalization that seemed to vibrate the air between us. Not aggressive,
Speaker 1: but firm, commanding. I understood this was my grandfather's flask,
Speaker 1: one final piece of him being returned, one final message.
Speaker 1: This was the end of the story, as far as
Speaker 1: they were concerned. Take it and go, never return. Keeping
Speaker 1: my eyes on the creature, I slowly moved toward the log.
Speaker 1: It watched me but made no move to interfere. I
Speaker 1: picked up the flask, tarnished with age, but unmistakably my grandfather's.
Speaker 1: His initials scratched into the bottom and backed away. The
Speaker 1: creature nodded once, a shockingly human gesture, then melted back
Speaker 1: into the forest with surprising grace for something so large.
Speaker 1: Within seconds, it was gone, though I could hear branches
Speaker 1: breaking as it moved away. I didn't wait around. I
Speaker 1: abandoned my camera equipment, clutching the flask, and half ran
Speaker 1: down the trail to my car. As I drove away
Speaker 1: from the mountains, I caught a glimpse of movement along
Speaker 1: the ridge line, a large dark shape watching my departure.
Speaker 1: That was six months ago. I haven't been back to
Speaker 1: the mountains since, haven't felt the need. The flask sits
Speaker 1: on my mantle now, alongside the watch and the jar
Speaker 1: of moonshine, three pieces of my grandfather's legacy, three reminders
Speaker 1: of the price he paid for trespassing in booger Holler.
Speaker 1: I had the flask tested for DNA, curious if it
Speaker 1: might hold some answers. The lab found traces of human DNA,
Speaker 1: likely my grandfather's from his use of it, but also
Speaker 1: something else, something they couldn't identify, animal but not matching
Speaker 1: any known species in our database. The report said, I
Speaker 1: didn't tell them what I suspected had handled it. In
Speaker 1: the decade since my grandfather's disappearance, sometimes at night I
Speaker 1: still hear knocking three distinct taps on the wall outside
Speaker 1: my bedroom. But whether it's actually happening or just echoes
Speaker 1: in my memory, I can't say for sure. The old
Speaker 1: man's charm still hangs above my door, and I've made
Speaker 1: my peace with not knowing all the answers. The shadows
Speaker 1: still move between the trees when no one's looking. As
Speaker 1: the locals say, booger Holler ain't just got a name
Speaker 1: for nothing. The creatures are still there, still watching, still
Speaker 1: protecting what's theirs. My grandfather learned that lesson the hard way,
Speaker 1: and I've taken it to heart. I still visit the
Speaker 1: mountain sometimes, but I stay on the marked trails, stick
Speaker 1: to the touristy areas. I don't venture into Booger Holler,
Speaker 1: don't seek out the places Jim used to go. Some
Speaker 1: family traditions aren't worth continuing. But on quiet nights, when
Speaker 1: the wind is right, I sometimes sit on my back
Speaker 1: porch with a jar of that same family recipe, moonshine
Speaker 1: and listen, and sometimes carried on the breeze from the
Speaker 1: distant ridges. I swear I can hear the wood knocking,
Speaker 1: a warning, a reminder, a message from the shadows that
Speaker 1: have always lived in these ancient hills, a message about
Speaker 1: respecting boundaries, about knowing when to stay away, about the
Speaker 1: price my grandfather paid for trespassing where he didn't belong.
Speaker 1: Jim might be gone, but the creatures of Booger Holler remain,
Speaker 1: And they don't forget, and they don't forgive, and they
Speaker 1: sure as hell don't share their territory for long, not
Speaker 1: even with the best moonshiner these mountains ever knew in