Speaker 1: It's a friend and I made plans to go hog
hunting in the Honey Island swamp a few years back.
We invited two other friends, Mike and James, who we
know loved to hunt. The hunt happened and we had
a great weekend, but Mike and James never showed up.
Only the two of us went. The next week, I
called them to find out why they had never gotten
back with us about going on the hunt. I couldn't
reach them, but the next week they both came by
the house. I was persistent in asking them why they
had never called us back. They didn't really want to
talk about it, but after a while they relented, and
here is what they told me. They had actually been
down in the swamp the weekend before that we went.
Mike launched his eighteen foot aluminum boat on Friday afternoon
and they left the ramp on the way. They decided
to go farther in the swamp than they usually went,
finding a good spot to pull the boat up on
the bank and some dry ground. They unloaded the boat
and they set up their tents and started cooking some steaks.
Everything was perfect so far. After finishing off the steaks,
they played cards until after dark. Then they went to bed.
Throughout the night, whenever one of them got up to
pee or get a drink, they would throw wood on
the fire to keep it going. James was afraid of
those woods at night, and he wanted to keep it lit.
At some point way after midnight, James woke up and
saw that the fire was down to coals, so he
got up to throw another piece of wood on the fire.
Walking back to his tent, he heard a loud, odd
scream way off in the swamps. It echoed across the water.
He had never heard anything like it. Crawling back in
his tent, he began to settle down to get some sleep,
but the scream blasted out again, and it was much closer.
It sounded like it was moving towards them, and when
he heard something huge walking in the water, he got nervous.
At this point in there retelling of the story, James
and Mike both were shaking. It was weird listening to
them while watching both men's hands twitch and shake like
it was all happening to them again. I didn't say anything,
I just listened. James started shaking Mike to wake him up.
Mike was a sound sleeper, and he slept through several
minutes of shaking and kicking, but he woke up real
quick when that scream blasted out again right out by
the boat. Mike sat straight up in his sleeping bag,
asking James what the hell made that noise. It was
as if it had woken him up, but it had
not registered what had made the sound. Mike looked at
me and he told me he knew animal sounds in
the woods. Whatever this thing was, it didn't belong there.
Mike had a pistol under his pillow. He pulled it
out and they both sat there in the tent listening
to this thing walked down the bayou towards them. This
thing was getting closer with each step. They had each
brought a rifle and a shotgun, but they had left
those in the boat. Now this thing was beside the boat,
and they heard something banging on the aluminum hull, like
it was being dragged or shoved. It dropped the heavy
boat and came into their camp. Ice chests and camp
stoves were tossed about. It sounded like it was pissed,
and then it started walking towards the tent. Mike threw
his pillow to James and told him to bury his
face in it. James was crying uncontrollably, and when the
beast walked between the fire and the tent, Mike could
see it silhouette through the tent fabric. It was on
two legs. It was tall and slender, but built like
a lion, thick shoulders and no neck. They were terrified,
but sat silently in the tent and they waited. I
looked over at James while Mike was telling his version.
His head was dropped and tears rolled off his nose
to the ground. That's when I was sure that they
were not pulling my leg. The thing took a couple
of steps towards the tent and it bent down, almost
touching the fabric, and it screamed. Neither man would have
made it if they had had heart trouble. The beast
stood there for a minute, and then it walked around
the camp, rattling more items to the ground, and then
it walked off into the swamp. They both sat awakened
the tent for several hours, never opening the fly to
see out until well after the sun was up. Their
camp was a mess. Every piece of gear had been
thrown about, and all their food was scattered across the ground,
but none of it was eaten. When they got to
the boat, they saw it fully on dry ground, ten
feet away from the bank, with the motor down making
the rear of the boat elevated. This boat and motor
weighs twenty five hundred pounds easy, and it had been
dragged onto the bank with ease. There was no way
they were going to pull it back in the water
to get home. About two hours later a boat raced by,
and they were lucky to flag him down, but one
boat wasn't enough. It wound up taking two boats pulling
from the water and four men pushing to get the
boat moved. These two men grew up hunting and fishing
in those swamps. To my knowledge, they've never been back,
and they don't plan to go back. I've known them
all my life. They've never told any kind of story
like this. They're not prone to pranks or making things
up to get attention. Ever, when two men you have
known all your life till you a story like this,
and you see the look on their faces while they're
telling it, you tend to believe them. Oh man, man,
what a story. This Honey Island swamp thing is. I'm
guessing it's a bigfoot. I mean, I haven't really read
too much on it. I think we've done three or
four stories on it throughout the life of this channel.
But apparently it's a swamp Scot's swamp squatch, or a
family of them, or a tribe or troop or whatever
you call them. The reports are constant on this thing,
and whatever it is, it must be still in there now.
I don't know when this story took place, there's no
dates on it, but man, can you you know the
swamps are kind of creepy at night anyway. I love
being down there at night, by the way, seeing the
gators and the snakes. I don't know. There's something about
those Lowland areas that I love. They don't really bother
me at night, but I guess if you thought about it,
it could be really creepy. But it's such a beautiful place.
It's hard to imagine anything scary being in there. But
apparently there are in the Honey Island area and maybe
all over Lowland America. I don't know, but can you
imagine being back there on a quiet night, sleeping and
you hear the scream and this things. You can hear
it walking through the swamp walking at you. I don't
blame them for not going back in there at all,
not one bit. Well, thanks w for sending this. This
is a great story. I love these secondhand stories. In
mid August of two thousand and three, we lived in
a small town in Wexford County, located in the northern
lower half of Michigan. At the time, we had eight
grown ducks and a couple of dozen hens. We kept
them in a well built coup, but we lost a
couple of hens in our rooster to weasels. Those weasels
are nasty critters and they're known for rating henhouses. But
when even more hens began to disappear, we decided that
it wasn't just the weasels at work. We suspected that
our neighbor, he was a cruel man that we didn't
care for, may have been helping himself to our birds.
And then one morning my husband came in from feeding
the hens before work and he said, Hey, did you
say there was a trapper or a tracker that lives
in Buckley? Yeah? I said, will you give him a
call see if he can come out here, my husband
answered in an abrupt tone that kind of scared me.
I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what
was wrong, what had he been seeing? Just call him,
he said, And don't let the kids play in the
backyard was the only answer he gave me that really
frightened me. I got in touch with the tracker and
he came out a day or so later. By the
un every duck we had was gone, as we're over
half of our hens. The tracker was an older fella
in his late sixties who looked every inch of the park.
It was obvious that he knew what he was doing.
He walked over to the empty duck pen and studied
the ground, and then searched the area around the chicken
coop with the same precision. Looking up, he gave me
a weird look, and he said, you might want to
send the kids inside. My children were two and four
back then. My heart was beginning to jump out of
my chest even before I demanded to know why, what
the hell was he seeing? Please, he answered, with a
gentle smile. Send the kids into the house, he said.
The tracker continued to search the turf around the coop
for several more minutes before stopping and looking up. He
focused on a tree that was a few feet from
the coop, and he said, I thought, so got you.
My eyes traced upwards along the long trunk until I
saw them. There were four huge claw marks that were
slashed into the bark twenty feet above the ground. The
tracker backed away and continued his search, this time expanding
it to include the ground around the tree as well.
A minute later, he called me over and he pointed
to the largest footprint I had ever seen. What made that?
I gasp? Have your husband call me as soon as
he can, was the man's only reply. When my husband
got home that night, he made the call, and I
could tell by watching his face that the things the
tracker was saying on the other end were not good.
There were a lot of okay, yeah, are you sure
I understand? With each word my stomach churned a little more.
All right, what's going on? I asked when he finally
hung up the phone. My husband is part NATEI of
American and he gave me a serious look and he answered,
don't let the kids play in the backyard, and don't
be outside after dark. You hear me okay, I answered slowly.
But why it's what I was thinking it was? He said.
I didn't want to say anything until I got confirmation
from the tractor. And you may not believe this, but
he thinks, and I do too, that we're dealing with
a dog man, a really big dog man. Well, why
do you reply to that? And I stood there staring
at him for a minute, trying to wrap my mind
around what my husband had just said, before I finally
managed to say, are you serious? Yes, he said, my
husband is not a BS kind of guy. Even if
he were, no one would joke about something involving the
safety of their own children. Well, I believed him, and
for the next few nights we slept in our front room.
My husband kept a shotgun beside the bed, and from
there we could see the chicken coop through the big window.
On the third night, we were lying there half asleep
when my husband quietly said, did you hear that? No,
I answered, honestly, But he was already up and loading
the shotgun. Get the big flashlight ready, he said, and
when I give the signals, shine it on the coop.
I did as I was told, and I waited and
my husband went to the back door, and he looked
at me and he whispered, go. I turned on the
light and aimed it right at the coop, and as
I did so, something huge jumped out from the side
of it. It moved so quickly that I didn't see
much more than the yellowish red eye shine. There was
a good nine feet above the ground, and I was
also able to tell that it was standing on two legs.
My husband was out the door as soon as the
light came on, and he's a good shot, and I
knew that he had hit it. I could see a
dark shadow as it turned and leaped across the coop,
and with one stride, it vanished into the woods. A
few seconds later, we heard a horrible sound that was
somewhere between a shriek and an extremely powerful howl. We
didn't have any more animals come up missing after that,
but to be safe, we didn't let the kids play
in the backyard. I thought we were done with that
entire thing, and then in September, about a month later,
my husband came home from work one night and he
said I saw it again. My first thought was, oh
my god, not again. He was on his way to
work that morning taking the back roads as he always did.
When he saw something down in the ditch beside the road,
he slowed down, thinking it might be a deer or
a bear that could jump out in the road. But
it wasn't. What it was A massive creature rose up
and crossed the road from one side to the other
in two strides, and it looked straight at my husband
and then it was gone. He said it was at
least seven feet tall, and then it walked on two legs,
and he said it had the face of a dog. Oh, man,
can you imagine anything more horrifying than that? Do these things?
I don't know much about dog men, but are they
known for attacking people? It's like, do they prey on people?
It sounds like a werewolf to me, But I know
there's a difference between dogmen and werewolf. Werewolves change from
humans to wolves and back to humans, and dog men
are supposedly just dog men. That's what I hear from
everybody when I ask that question. But are they predators
on humans? I don't know. Just seeing one of these
things seems scary to me. It's a great story. To
the writer, I really appreciate you sending it, and again
that's my only dog man story that I could find.
There may be more in there, but if I do
a search in Google that says dog man dog m
a N it should pop up in my search. If
that word is anywhere in the email, A few of
them pop up, but they're not stories. They're something else.
They're like, hey, look at this video of the dog
man or whatever. Anyway, there's a great story. Thank you
man for sending it. Family likes to hunt public ground
in Stone Call, West Virginia. I was seventeen years old
when this happened. It was turkey season, and since my
dad couldn't make it out that day, I made plans
to go with a buddy instead. We're like brothers. He
has a shotgun of his own, but I taught him
how to use calls. I had my twelve gage long time,
and he stayed overnight so we could get up and
get out the door at four the next morning. Stone
Coal has a lot of turkey in a variety of
different animals. It was way too quiet that day, but
we just thought there might have been some bears around,
and for that reason I keep buckshot in my pocket.
We made our way three miles back to a clearing,
and by now it was five thirty am. I thought
i'd dropped my buddy off, and I put him against
a tree where he had an amazing view, and I
placed a few decoys out for him. I continued two
miles down the ridge and I set myself up. It
was still dark, but day was coming fast, and I
placed my decoys, but when I made my location call,
I didn't get a call back. Thirty minutes later, I
gave a second crow call, and this time it got returned,
but it didn't sound anything like a crow or turkey.
I thought it might have come from another hunter in
the area, even though I was five miles back in
the woods and hadn't spotted anyone else. I followed up
with a third crow call, and the return sounds were
getting closer. Twenty minutes later, I saw what I thought
was another hunter peeking around a tree fifty yards away.
Kind of shook me up. He appeared to be dressed
in a black suit, but the guy had to be
nearly seven feet tall and he was made of pure muscle.
I pulled up my binoculars and then I could see
his face. It had a jutting brow like a monkey.
And its skin was brown and leathery, with human like eyes,
and it had the mouth of an ape. Scared me
to death. I needed to get out of there, so
I picked up my gun and my buckshot in case
it decided to get much closer or chase me. I
struggled to get my backpack on, and I wound up
leaving my decoys behind because they were within forty yards
of where I eyeballed this thing. As I scaped down
the hill, I heard the worst scream you could ever imagine.
It's like a bobcat from Hell. I sped up and
I could tell the beast was following me, maybe fifty
yards behind, and it was just pacing me, though my
lungs were exploding. By the time I emerged into the
clearing three hundred yards from my buddy, his face was
as white as a ghost. We packed up his gear
and on our way back to my truck, he claimed
an hour earlier that three hairy monsters between six and
seven feet tall were stalking the outskirts of the clearing.
He had heard the scream come from the woods, but
once we got a safe distance away, our surroundings seemed
to change. We even saw a nice eight point buck
in velvet. There was a life force compared to this
feeling of creepy oppression where these things seemed to hold
rule over every animal deep in the backwoods. My best
guess is we were in their hunting grounds, but because
they knew we had guns, they didn't want any trouble.
If they meant to scarce a way, it worked. I've
only told this story once to you and once to
my buddy. We tend not to talk about it since
it just brings back to how scared I was of
these things, even with a twelve gage and buckshot gives
me goof spumps. To this day, there are hunters that
allegedly have gone missing in that part of the woods,
and it makes me wonder what would have happened if
I would have taken a shot at one of these
things and missed or not killed it. I'm in college
now and I'm studying to be a wildlife officer, and
I want to thank you for reading this. I'm not
a good storyteller, and I wish for you not to
say my name if you ever decided to tell this
on the podcast or YouTube. No problem, buddy, good story.
I didn't mention your name, and I respect that. This
is a terrifying story. I mean, it's a I'd like
to know. Do you normally walk two or five miles
back in the woods to go turkey hunting West Virginia.
I'm guessing you're in the mountains, man. That is a
long way. That is a long way to walk to
get a turkey. Just thought i'd ask that question. Anybody
else walked that far through the mountains and bushwhack up
into the hills to kill a turkey? I wouldn't do that.
I love turkey hunting, but I ain't doing that. My
grandmother on my dad's side lived in a holler in
West Virginia. My family and I live in Ohio, but
we would go visit her from time to time over
the years. It was like an adventure every time we visited.
Grandma was fun of telling us a story of a
time when she saw a face in the window. She
described it as a large, hairy man she called burper.
Since my grandmother's house sat up on a hill, in
the window she was referring to easily sat eight feet
off the ground, we always laughed it off with a
sure Grandma. She was always telling us story so we
figured this was another one for our entertainment. That was
part of what was wonderful about my grandmother. She was
always telling tales and spinning yarns for us, even if
they were oft in the kind my mother would have preferred.
My sister and I not here. That's why we assumed
Burper was another one of Grandma's special stories. Years later,
when I was an older teen, I went to visit
my grandmother by myself, and by the time I struggled
to get my bags up the hill to her house
and got settled in, it had gotten late. I noticed
that my grand seemed nervous, which was highly unusual for her.
It got my attention, so I asked her what was wrong.
She was reluctant to talk at first, but after some coaxing,
she said that she'd been hearing noises in the woods
at night, and then she added that she would rather
I didn't go out there alone. Well, I did my
best to assure her that it was nothing to worry about.
It's probably animals in the woods, Grandma, I said, Ignoring
my explanations, she said, if you wake up in the
night and you have to go outside to use the outhouse,
and you wake me up and I'll go with you.
Then she pointed to the big, heavy silver flashlight that
she kept by the door and added, and we'll take
the flashlight out with us. There was no doubt in
my mind that I was going to have to go
out to the outhouse at some point. My only other
option was to use the bucket that she kept for
nighttime emergencies, and I didn't think I could bring myself
to do that. But I could see that she was serious,
so I promised that I would wake her if I
needed to go out. A week passed, during which I
spent my time riding quads up and down the haller
with the neighbors, waiting the creek, and generally having a
good time. I forgot all about my promise to my grandmother.
It was a typical hot and sticky summer night. I
was tossing and turning in the heat with no air
conditioning when I realized I had to go to the bathroom.
The bucket was in Grandma's room, and I didn't want
to wake her. Besides, I didn't really like using that
bucket anyway. I slipped on my shoes and grabbed my flashlight,
and I shut the door as quietly as I could
behind me, and walking down that dark wooded path at
two o'clock in the morning was creepy, but I had
the flashlight, so I shined it up and down the
path to make sure nothing was going to jump out
at me. I wasn't actually scared until I heard a
twig snap behind me. I stopped and I turned around
to shine the light back down the path, but there
was nothing there. Hearing noises in the woods set me
on edge, and until that night I had been using
the bucket, so I felt a bit like I was
in unfamiliar territory. I shined the light along the trees
once more for reassurance, and then continued on my way
to the outhouse. And by the time I reached the door,
I had to go so bad I didn't even latch it.
The unpleasant odors had me holding back my breath, but
all outhouses smell, and the relief was worth it. Once
I finished my business, I stood up to leave, but
as I reached for the door, something slapped the side
of the outhouse so hard that it shook. I froze
in fear for a second before reaching up and locking
the door. And then I held onto the handle as
if my life depended on it, and at that moment
I was pretty sure it did depend on it. Another
slap shook the little building again, as I clutched the
handle tighter, and I screamed at the top of my lungs.
I was more terrified than I had ever been in
my life. I was sobbing hysterically now as another slap,
this time at the top of the door where the
screen was, and it rattled the door terribly. I looked
up in time to see a big, hairy arm tear
through it. I grabbed the flashlight and began hitting the
arm over and over with all my strength, screaming as
loud as I could the whole time. There was a
howl of pain and heavy breathing, and then the thing
must have run back into the woods. I slid down
onto the floor, terrified and stunned, but too afraid to leave.
I sat there on the outhouse floor the whole night,
with my shirt sleeve through the handle and the flashlight
cradled in my arm. At some point I fell asleep.
The next morning I was awakened to the feeling of
someone trying to opened the door and the sound of
my name being called. It was my grandmother. And when
I opened the door, she kneeled down and she hugged
me while I cried. I'll never forget that comforting hug
as long as I live. Grandma is no longer with us,
but she was the kind of person you never forget.
And now I know that her stories about the Burper
were true.