WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.759 For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace. 2 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:10.279 Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world 3 00:00:10.359 --> 00:00:14.160 refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they 4 00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:18.679 know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we 5 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:22.879 share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot, 6 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.239 dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.320 it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because 8 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:34.640 once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the 9 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.920 woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and 10 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.840 remember some things in the woods don't want to be found. 11 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:46.240 Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, 12 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.399 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 13 00:01:02.679 --> 00:01:05.159 Every state on this road trip has given us something. 14 00:01:05.799 --> 00:01:08.599 Some gave us one good monster and a lot of moonlight. 15 00:01:09.319 --> 00:01:11.840 Some gave us a single strange night on a single 16 00:01:11.920 --> 00:01:17.680 strange road. Louisiana is different. Louisiana gives you two. Down here, 17 00:01:17.879 --> 00:01:21.000 the map itself starts lying to you. Roads that look 18 00:01:21.079 --> 00:01:23.840 solid on paper turned to shell and gravel and then 19 00:01:23.879 --> 00:01:26.879 to mud, and then they just stop. And past that 20 00:01:26.959 --> 00:01:30.159 point there's nothing but water and cypress and seventy shades 21 00:01:30.159 --> 00:01:32.879 of green that all want to eat your boots. A 22 00:01:32.920 --> 00:01:36.920 third of this state is wetland. The Atchafalaya Basin alone 23 00:01:36.959 --> 00:01:39.959 is almost a million acres of river swamp, the biggest 24 00:01:39.959 --> 00:01:42.920 in North America. And when the sun goes down out there, 25 00:01:43.120 --> 00:01:47.120 the darkness isn't a color, it's a substance. It has weight. 26 00:01:47.879 --> 00:01:49.640 You can feel it settle on the back of your 27 00:01:49.680 --> 00:01:53.480 neck like a wet hand. And in that darkness. Louisiana 28 00:01:53.560 --> 00:01:57.400 keeps two monsters. The first one is old, older than 29 00:01:57.439 --> 00:02:00.799 the state, older than the country. It came over on 30 00:02:00.879 --> 00:02:04.519 ships with exiled French farmers. It survived a forced march 31 00:02:04.760 --> 00:02:07.319 down the length of a continent, and it settled into 32 00:02:07.400 --> 00:02:10.520 the Bayous of Acadiana, where it's been scratching at shutters 33 00:02:10.599 --> 00:02:14.400 and counting beans on doorsteps for two hundred and fifty years. 34 00:02:15.280 --> 00:02:19.039 The Cajuns call it the rugaroo. Their grandparents called it 35 00:02:19.360 --> 00:02:22.800 the loop garou. It's a werewolf, but it isn't the 36 00:02:22.840 --> 00:02:26.599 Hollywood kind. This one comes with Catholic guilt stitched into 37 00:02:26.639 --> 00:02:29.240 its hide. This one is a curse you can catch. 38 00:02:30.199 --> 00:02:33.960 The second monster is younger, at least on paper. It 39 00:02:34.039 --> 00:02:36.639 walked out of the Honey Island Swamp in nineteen sixty 40 00:02:36.680 --> 00:02:39.080 three and stood up in front of two hunters who 41 00:02:39.080 --> 00:02:41.240 had every reason to know what a bear looks like. 42 00:02:41.879 --> 00:02:45.719 And it wasn't a bear. Seven feet tall, gray hair 43 00:02:45.800 --> 00:02:50.319 hanging off it like Spanish moss, amber eyes, a smell 44 00:02:50.400 --> 00:02:54.159 that one witness compared to death itself. They call it 45 00:02:54.159 --> 00:02:57.159 the Honey Island Swamp monster, and some folks call it 46 00:02:57.439 --> 00:03:00.680 the Cajun Sasquatch, and I have my own opinions about 47 00:03:00.680 --> 00:03:03.919 which of those names fits better. So Louisiana gets a 48 00:03:03.919 --> 00:03:06.800 double feature, the Curse in the Blood and the thing 49 00:03:06.840 --> 00:03:09.280 in the swamp. We're going to give both of them 50 00:03:09.360 --> 00:03:12.360 their full time on the stand. But before we get 51 00:03:12.400 --> 00:03:14.080 to any of that, I want to tell you why 52 00:03:14.120 --> 00:03:16.680 this state sits heavy with me. One of the most 53 00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:20.360 disturbing encounter stories I ever documented came out of Louisiana 54 00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:24.280 way back in the early days of Sasquatch Odyssey. A 55 00:03:24.280 --> 00:03:27.000 witness named Tyler sat down with me and told me 56 00:03:27.039 --> 00:03:29.520 about a night that took something from him. He was 57 00:03:29.560 --> 00:03:31.840 out in the woods with his dogs, the way he 58 00:03:31.879 --> 00:03:35.120 had been one hundred times before, when the dogs jumped 59 00:03:35.120 --> 00:03:37.520 on something in the tree line, and the woods went loud, 60 00:03:38.199 --> 00:03:43.319 snarling impact, then a sound he couldn't place, a heavy, 61 00:03:43.319 --> 00:03:48.039 wet sound, and then silence, which was worse, And then 62 00:03:48.080 --> 00:03:50.759 his dog came back to him. It came back through 63 00:03:50.759 --> 00:03:53.719 the air. Something inside that tree line killed one of 64 00:03:53.759 --> 00:03:55.680 his dogs and threw the body out of the woods 65 00:03:55.680 --> 00:03:59.520 at him through it like a message, like a warning 66 00:03:59.560 --> 00:04:03.319 shot that used his own animal as the ammunition. Tyler 67 00:04:03.400 --> 00:04:07.080 never saw the whole creature. He didn't have to. Whatever 68 00:04:07.080 --> 00:04:09.439 stood inside that dark had the strength to kill a 69 00:04:09.439 --> 00:04:12.360 grown dog in seconds, and the intent to deliver it 70 00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:15.199 back to its owner. And Tyler told me his other 71 00:04:15.280 --> 00:04:18.720 dogs wouldn't stop shaking for two days, and neither if 72 00:04:18.720 --> 00:04:22.720 he was honest, did he. I've carried that story for years. 73 00:04:23.160 --> 00:04:25.279 I think about it every time somebody tells me these 74 00:04:25.319 --> 00:04:28.519 animals are gentle forest people who braid horse manes and 75 00:04:28.600 --> 00:04:32.959 leave gifts. Louisiana is where that story lives. So when 76 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:35.759 the road trip Odometer rolled over into the Pelican State, 77 00:04:36.160 --> 00:04:38.560 I knew we weren't going to do a drive by episode. 78 00:04:38.839 --> 00:04:41.279 We were going to park the truck, get in the boat, 79 00:04:41.600 --> 00:04:45.279 and go all the way in. Welcome to Louisiana. To 80 00:04:45.399 --> 00:04:48.199 understand the rugaroo, you have to start about four hundred 81 00:04:48.279 --> 00:04:51.879 years ago and four thousand miles away. In rural France. 82 00:04:52.600 --> 00:04:56.439 Medieval and Renaissance France was werewolf country, not in the 83 00:04:56.439 --> 00:05:00.040 fun way, in the legal way, the French had a 84 00:05:00.079 --> 00:05:03.199 word for a man who turned into a wolf, loop garu, 85 00:05:03.720 --> 00:05:07.879 from loop meaning wolf and garu, which traces back through 86 00:05:07.920 --> 00:05:10.439 Old Frankish to the same root that gives us the 87 00:05:10.480 --> 00:05:15.519 English word wear wolf. So the name literally says wolf twice. 88 00:05:15.639 --> 00:05:18.079 And they weren't treating it as a campfire story either. 89 00:05:18.839 --> 00:05:21.920 In the fifteen hundreds, French courts put people on trial 90 00:05:22.000 --> 00:05:28.720 for lycanthropy, real trials, real verdicts, real executions. If livestock 91 00:05:28.759 --> 00:05:32.079 got torn apart, if a child went missing from a village, 92 00:05:32.439 --> 00:05:35.319 if a house got ransacked in the night, the loo 93 00:05:35.399 --> 00:05:39.000 garoo was a genuine suspect, and sometimes a genuine neighbor 94 00:05:39.040 --> 00:05:42.519 burned for it. Fear of the wolf man was woven 95 00:05:42.560 --> 00:05:46.160 into the fabric of rural French life, right alongside fear 96 00:05:46.199 --> 00:05:49.839 of witches, and the two legends fed each other in 97 00:05:49.879 --> 00:05:51.920 plenty of versions. It was a witch who made a 98 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:55.160 loop garu in the first place. Either by taking wolf 99 00:05:55.160 --> 00:05:58.199 form herself or by throwing the curse onto some poor 100 00:05:58.279 --> 00:06:02.279 soul who crossed her. In the sixteen hundreds, French colonists 101 00:06:02.360 --> 00:06:05.560 carried the Loop Guru across the Atlantic to Acadia, the 102 00:06:05.600 --> 00:06:09.040 region we now call Nova Scotia and the Canadian Maritimes. 103 00:06:09.720 --> 00:06:12.360 The legend rode, along with the language, the faith, and 104 00:06:12.399 --> 00:06:15.560 the fiddle tunes. And then in seventeen fifty five, the 105 00:06:15.600 --> 00:06:18.519 British did something that changed the map of North American 106 00:06:18.519 --> 00:06:23.920 folklore forever. They expelled the Acadians, burned their farms, loaded 107 00:06:23.920 --> 00:06:27.439 families onto ships, scattered them down the Atlantic coast in 108 00:06:27.480 --> 00:06:32.439 what the Cajuns still call Legrand de Rangements, the Great Upheaval. 109 00:06:32.959 --> 00:06:35.720 Thousands of those exiles eventually found their way to the 110 00:06:35.759 --> 00:06:40.720 one place in North America that still felt French, South Louisiana. 111 00:06:41.519 --> 00:06:44.480 They settled the Prairies and Bayous west and south of 112 00:06:44.519 --> 00:06:48.160 New Orleans, in the region we now call Acadiana, and 113 00:06:48.240 --> 00:06:51.839 over generations, the word Acadian softened in the local mouth 114 00:06:52.000 --> 00:06:56.000 into Cajun. The wolf came with them, but something happened 115 00:06:56.000 --> 00:06:59.360 to the word on the way down. Cajun French is 116 00:06:59.360 --> 00:07:02.959 a living, breathing dialect famous for sanding the corners off 117 00:07:03.000 --> 00:07:06.519 words until they roll easy. Loop garoo got worked over 118 00:07:06.560 --> 00:07:10.319 the same way. The el softened, the sound slid together, 119 00:07:10.399 --> 00:07:13.920 and somewhere in the Bayous the loop garoo became the rugaroo, 120 00:07:14.519 --> 00:07:18.600 same monster, new name. You will still hear both down there, 121 00:07:19.040 --> 00:07:21.879 sometimes from the same person in the same sentence, and 122 00:07:21.920 --> 00:07:28.120 folklorests have collected a half dozen spellings rugaroo, rugaroo, rugaroo, 123 00:07:28.920 --> 00:07:31.879 Pick your poison. The thing in the story doesn't care 124 00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:35.079 how you spell it, and the swamp changed the monster too. 125 00:07:35.920 --> 00:07:39.519 That's the part I find genuinely fascinating, because it's folklore 126 00:07:39.639 --> 00:07:44.079 doing exactly what folklore does. In France, the loo garoo 127 00:07:44.160 --> 00:07:48.759 stalked farmland and village lanes. In Louisiana, the rugaroo moved 128 00:07:48.759 --> 00:07:51.680 into the cypress swamps and the cane fields because that's 129 00:07:51.720 --> 00:07:55.199 where the dark was. The legend adapted to its habitat, 130 00:07:55.319 --> 00:07:59.519 like any invasive species. The earliest written traces show up 131 00:07:59.519 --> 00:08:03.920 in nineteen century Louisiana folklore collections, most famously the work 132 00:08:03.959 --> 00:08:08.360 of Alsay Fortier, a Louisiana scholar who documented Creole and 133 00:08:08.480 --> 00:08:12.040 Cajun oral tales in the eighteen nineties and caught the 134 00:08:12.120 --> 00:08:15.639 Lugaroo alive on the page. By then, it had already 135 00:08:15.680 --> 00:08:19.199 been prowling the Bayous for over a century, passed parent 136 00:08:19.240 --> 00:08:23.120 to child, porch to porch in French. Here's where the 137 00:08:23.199 --> 00:08:26.759 rugaroo stops being a standard werewolf and becomes something much 138 00:08:26.800 --> 00:08:30.000 more interesting to me as a student of how legends work. 139 00:08:30.879 --> 00:08:34.279 The rugaroo is a Catholic monster. South Louisiana is one 140 00:08:34.279 --> 00:08:37.279 of the most deeply Catholic regions in America, and the 141 00:08:37.360 --> 00:08:40.200 Rugaroo legend is soaked in that faith the way a 142 00:08:40.200 --> 00:08:44.360 good boudon is soaked in seasoning. The single most famous 143 00:08:44.440 --> 00:08:47.200 rule of the legend, the one every Cajun kid grew 144 00:08:47.279 --> 00:08:50.759 up hearing, is this, break the rules of lent, and 145 00:08:50.840 --> 00:08:54.679 the Rugaroo will come for you. In the older French versions, 146 00:08:54.720 --> 00:08:58.240 the math was specific failed to observe lent seven years 147 00:08:58.240 --> 00:09:00.360 in a row, and you don't just get visit by 148 00:09:00.399 --> 00:09:04.960 the loogaroo, you become one. That's a genuinely brilliant piece 149 00:09:05.000 --> 00:09:08.799 of moral engineering. Most monsters punish you by eating you. 150 00:09:09.440 --> 00:09:12.000 The rugaroo punishes you by turning you into the thing 151 00:09:12.039 --> 00:09:16.120 that eats. Your sin doesn't summon the wolf. Your sin 152 00:09:16.440 --> 00:09:20.480 is the wolf. The transformation is the sentence, and your 153 00:09:20.519 --> 00:09:23.799 own hide is the prison. Every fear in that legend 154 00:09:23.840 --> 00:09:27.039 is doing a job. Keep the fast, go to mass, 155 00:09:27.720 --> 00:09:31.080 stay out of the swamp at night, behave children, or 156 00:09:31.120 --> 00:09:35.080 the rugaroo will get you. Generations of Cajun parents deployed 157 00:09:35.080 --> 00:09:39.240 that monster the way parents everywhere deploy the Boogeyman. Except 158 00:09:39.240 --> 00:09:42.320 this boogeyman came with the full backing of the parish priest. 159 00:09:43.480 --> 00:09:47.519 Folklorists like Barry gene Ensilat at the University of Louisiana 160 00:09:47.559 --> 00:09:51.679 at Lafayette have spent careers documenting how these stories functioned 161 00:09:51.720 --> 00:09:55.840 as social control in Cajun communities. The rugaroo kept kids 162 00:09:55.840 --> 00:09:59.240 out of the water at night, kept teenagers home, kept 163 00:09:59.240 --> 00:10:03.240 the faithful fact a monster with a day job. Now 164 00:10:03.279 --> 00:10:06.279 let us get into the mechanics, because the Rugaroo comes 165 00:10:06.320 --> 00:10:08.840 with a rule book, and the rules are strange and 166 00:10:08.879 --> 00:10:12.039 specific in the way that only genuine folk tradition. Ever, 167 00:10:12.279 --> 00:10:15.960 is nobody writing a movie would invent rules this crooked. 168 00:10:16.320 --> 00:10:18.960 They only get this way from two centuries of retelling. 169 00:10:19.600 --> 00:10:23.399 Rule one, the curse runs one hundred and one days, 170 00:10:24.159 --> 00:10:27.360 not one hundred, not a year and a day, one 171 00:10:27.399 --> 00:10:30.879 hundred and one days. In the most common version, a 172 00:10:30.919 --> 00:10:34.200 person under the Rugaroo curse turns beast by night and 173 00:10:34.320 --> 00:10:37.840 walks human by day, sickly and gray and hollow eyed 174 00:10:38.279 --> 00:10:41.279 for one hundred and one days, and there's only one 175 00:10:41.360 --> 00:10:44.320 way out. Early the rugaroo has to draw the blood 176 00:10:44.320 --> 00:10:48.279 of another human being. Do that, and the curse jumps. 177 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:53.440 It transfers victim to victim, like a supernatural chain letter 178 00:10:53.440 --> 00:10:57.039 written in blood. The old rugaroo wakes up human and free. 179 00:10:57.559 --> 00:11:01.279 The new victim inherits the hide rule two. You can't 180 00:11:01.320 --> 00:11:04.200 talk about it. The freshly cursed can't tell anyone what 181 00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:07.799 happened to them. In some tellings, speaking of the curse 182 00:11:08.159 --> 00:11:11.240 means death on the spot. In others it means the 183 00:11:11.240 --> 00:11:14.600 community will kill you out of fear. Either way, the 184 00:11:14.679 --> 00:11:19.399 legend seals itself. The cursed man suffers in silence, wastes 185 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:22.320 away in front of his family, and nobody ever gets proof, 186 00:11:22.960 --> 00:11:26.240 which is convenient for a legend and heartbreaking if you 187 00:11:26.240 --> 00:11:29.600 think about what that story was probably explaining a neighbor 188 00:11:29.639 --> 00:11:33.120 gone pale and strange and silent, a husband who stopped 189 00:11:33.120 --> 00:11:36.559 eating and wouldn't say why. Two hundred years ago, in 190 00:11:36.600 --> 00:11:39.759 a by you community with no doctors, the rugarou was 191 00:11:39.799 --> 00:11:44.360 sometimes the only diagnosis on offer. Rule three, the thing 192 00:11:44.399 --> 00:11:47.440 can't count past twelve. This is my favorite rule in 193 00:11:47.480 --> 00:11:50.399 all of Louisiana folklore, and I say that with love. 194 00:11:51.120 --> 00:11:54.120 The traditional defense against a rugero is to lay thirteen 195 00:11:54.200 --> 00:11:59.759 small objects by your door. Thirteen coins, thirteen beans, thirteen pebbles. 196 00:12:00.440 --> 00:12:02.879 The rugaroo, for all its teeth and hell fire, is 197 00:12:02.879 --> 00:12:06.799 a compulsive counter, and it can't count past twelve. So 198 00:12:06.840 --> 00:12:09.519 it stands on your porch all night, counting to twelve, 199 00:12:09.919 --> 00:12:14.519 losing its place, starting over, counting to twelve, starting over, 200 00:12:14.840 --> 00:12:17.559 until the sun comes up and the curse drags it home. 201 00:12:18.120 --> 00:12:21.200 Your entire home security system is one bean more than 202 00:12:21.240 --> 00:12:25.679 the monster can handle. People still do this. I'm not exaggerating. 203 00:12:26.200 --> 00:12:29.519 There are households in Terra Bonn and Lafourche parishes today 204 00:12:29.840 --> 00:12:32.960 with thirteen pennies sitting by the door, and if you ask, 205 00:12:33.279 --> 00:12:35.639 you'll get a shrug and a smile, and the pennies 206 00:12:35.639 --> 00:12:38.840 will stay right where they are. Rule four, and this 207 00:12:38.879 --> 00:12:43.759 one varies what the rugaroo actually looks like. The classic 208 00:12:43.799 --> 00:12:45.960 description is a man's body with the head of a 209 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:49.679 wolf or a big dog, standing upright seven to eight 210 00:12:49.720 --> 00:12:52.840 feet tall in the taller tillings, covered in dark fur 211 00:12:53.240 --> 00:12:58.360 with eyes that glow usually red, sometimes amber. But the 212 00:12:58.399 --> 00:13:01.440 deeper you dig into the old counts the stranger the 213 00:13:01.440 --> 00:13:05.679 creature gets because the rugaroo of genuine by U folklore 214 00:13:05.960 --> 00:13:09.320 was a shape shifter in the fullest sense. Forty eight 215 00:13:09.320 --> 00:13:13.000 era tails and twentieth century collections have the rugarou appearing 216 00:13:13.039 --> 00:13:16.960 as a huge dog, a hog, a calf, a rabbit, 217 00:13:17.440 --> 00:13:21.000 even a bird. There's a documented account in a nineteen 218 00:13:21.080 --> 00:13:25.320 seventy one Louisiana Folklore Society publication where a driver hits 219 00:13:25.320 --> 00:13:27.840 a calf on the highway at night, gets out of 220 00:13:27.840 --> 00:13:31.360 the car and finds no calf at all, just an 221 00:13:31.440 --> 00:13:34.559 uninjured man walking away from the spot where the animal 222 00:13:34.600 --> 00:13:37.720 went down. That story has stayed with me since I 223 00:13:37.759 --> 00:13:41.879 first read it. No clause, no howling, just a calf 224 00:13:42.120 --> 00:13:44.679 that wasn't a calf, and a man walking away in 225 00:13:44.720 --> 00:13:47.840 the dark who shouldn't have been there. And one more 226 00:13:47.879 --> 00:13:50.799 piece of the rule book, because it says everything about 227 00:13:50.840 --> 00:13:54.879 how personal this legend is. In many Cajun tellings, the 228 00:13:54.960 --> 00:13:59.519 rugarou isn't a stranger. It's someone you know, a jealous neighbor, 229 00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:03.320 a wronged friend, a member of your own family, carrying 230 00:14:03.399 --> 00:14:06.559 the curse in silence. When the beast is wounded and 231 00:14:06.600 --> 00:14:09.279 the blood is drawn, it turns back into a human 232 00:14:09.320 --> 00:14:12.360 being right in front of you, and you recognize the face. 233 00:14:13.440 --> 00:14:16.240 The horror of the rugaroo was never really about the wolf. 234 00:14:16.600 --> 00:14:19.600 It was about the person inside it. Before we get 235 00:14:19.600 --> 00:14:21.600 to the encounters, I want to show you how deep 236 00:14:21.639 --> 00:14:24.840 this thing is buried in the culture, because the rugaroo 237 00:14:24.960 --> 00:14:29.200 isn't museum folklore. It's a living word in a living dialect. 238 00:14:30.039 --> 00:14:33.039 Down in Tara Bonn and La Forche parishes, when somebody 239 00:14:33.039 --> 00:14:35.759 spends a night tossing and turning, they say they made 240 00:14:35.799 --> 00:14:40.519 the rugaroo. All night fair rugaroo. A person who runs 241 00:14:40.519 --> 00:14:43.200 the roads all night, carousing and causing trouble is out 242 00:14:43.200 --> 00:14:46.799 making the rugaroo. The monster became a verb. That's what 243 00:14:46.879 --> 00:14:49.960 two hundred and fifty years of storytelling gets you. The 244 00:14:49.960 --> 00:14:53.559 beast worked its way into the grammar. Huma, Louisiana throws 245 00:14:53.600 --> 00:14:56.960 the Rugaroo Fest every October, a full festival with the 246 00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:00.000 costume ball and the Audubon Zoo. In New Orleans had 247 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:03.159 It's kept a life size rugaroo glowering at visitors in 248 00:15:03.200 --> 00:15:06.960 its Louisiana swamp exhibit for decades. Stay tuned for more 249 00:15:07.039 --> 00:15:13.039 Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. When 250 00:15:13.039 --> 00:15:15.960 New Orleans professional basketball team was hunting for a new 251 00:15:16.039 --> 00:15:19.840 name years back, Rugarus made the short list. The wolf 252 00:15:19.879 --> 00:15:23.080 almost made the big leagues. But don't let the festival 253 00:15:23.080 --> 00:15:26.519 floats fool You drive forty five minutes south of Huma, 254 00:15:26.960 --> 00:15:29.399 past where the oaks quit and the marsh takes over, 255 00:15:29.720 --> 00:15:32.600 and ask an older trapper about the rugaroo, and watch 256 00:15:32.639 --> 00:15:37.000 what happens to his face. The smile stays, something behind 257 00:15:37.080 --> 00:15:40.519 the smile doesn't, because people down there still see things. 258 00:15:41.159 --> 00:15:43.480 I want to walk you through some rugaroo accounts. Now. 259 00:15:44.159 --> 00:15:48.159 Some of these are documented in folklore, collections and news coverage. 260 00:15:48.240 --> 00:15:50.559 Some came to me the way most stories come to me, 261 00:15:51.120 --> 00:15:54.200 secondhand and first name only, from people who would rather 262 00:15:54.240 --> 00:15:56.720 eat glass than have their full name attached to a 263 00:15:56.759 --> 00:16:00.360 werewolf story. I'll let you sort them for yourself. That's 264 00:16:00.399 --> 00:16:03.159 the deal on this show. I bring you the accounts, 265 00:16:03.559 --> 00:16:06.159 you bring the verdict. The first one comes from a 266 00:16:06.159 --> 00:16:09.720 woman I'll call Celeste. Celeste grew up down the Bayou 267 00:16:09.799 --> 00:16:12.879 in Terrebone Parish, in one of those communities where the 268 00:16:12.960 --> 00:16:15.840 road and the water run side by side for twenty miles, 269 00:16:16.159 --> 00:16:18.840 and every house faces the boat instead of the street. 270 00:16:19.600 --> 00:16:23.360 This was the late nineteen nineties. She was nineteen, working 271 00:16:23.360 --> 00:16:26.200 an evening shift at a diner up the highway, driving 272 00:16:26.240 --> 00:16:29.000 home after closing a hand me down oldsmobile with one 273 00:16:29.039 --> 00:16:32.559 working headlight. The drive home was eleven miles of two 274 00:16:32.639 --> 00:16:35.240 lane black top, with the bayou on her left and 275 00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:38.519 cane fields on her right. No street lights passed the 276 00:16:38.559 --> 00:16:42.639 first mile. She had driven it a thousand times. That night, 277 00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:45.399 about four miles from home, she caught something in the 278 00:16:45.480 --> 00:16:48.600 edge of her one good headlight. Two points of light 279 00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:53.320 low off the shoulder on the cane side. Eyeshine. She 280 00:16:53.399 --> 00:16:57.399 knew what eyeshine looked like. Deer eyes float high and scatter. 281 00:16:57.919 --> 00:17:01.159 Dog eyes sit low and track you. These sat about 282 00:17:01.240 --> 00:17:04.039 four feet off the ground and they kept pace with 283 00:17:04.119 --> 00:17:08.039 the car. She was doing forty. She watched the eyes 284 00:17:08.119 --> 00:17:10.119 slide along the tree line at the edge of the 285 00:17:10.119 --> 00:17:15.359 cane forty miles an hour, smooth, no bobbing, just two 286 00:17:15.480 --> 00:17:18.400 amber points, gliding through the dark like they were on 287 00:17:18.440 --> 00:17:22.000 a rail. She sped up to fifty. The eyes stayed 288 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:25.319 with her. She could hear the cane breaking over the 289 00:17:25.359 --> 00:17:28.119 engine and the tires. She could hear it, a ripping, 290 00:17:28.400 --> 00:17:31.559 thrashing sound of something big shouldering through a wall of 291 00:17:31.599 --> 00:17:35.119 sugar cane at highway speed. Four miles is a long 292 00:17:35.200 --> 00:17:38.039 time to be followed, she told me. The worst moment 293 00:17:38.119 --> 00:17:41.079 was the bridge. There's a little bayou side bridge near 294 00:17:41.079 --> 00:17:44.079 her family's place, and the cane field ends a quarter 295 00:17:44.160 --> 00:17:47.400 mile before it. She watched the eyes coming up on 296 00:17:47.440 --> 00:17:49.920 the end of the cane and she thought it has 297 00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:52.880 to stop. There's nothing but open ground and then water. 298 00:17:53.799 --> 00:17:56.559 The eyes reached the end of the field and crossed 299 00:17:56.559 --> 00:17:59.400 the open ground. She got one look at it under 300 00:17:59.400 --> 00:18:02.319 the security light at the boat launch by the bridge, 301 00:18:02.359 --> 00:18:06.839 maybe a second and a half tall, upright, moving in 302 00:18:06.920 --> 00:18:10.240 long strides that ate the ground, with something wrong about 303 00:18:10.240 --> 00:18:14.480 the head too long, too forward, like a dog's muzzle 304 00:18:14.519 --> 00:18:18.079 grafted onto a man's shoulders. It crossed the launch light 305 00:18:18.160 --> 00:18:20.960 in maybe four strides and dropped down the bank toward 306 00:18:21.039 --> 00:18:24.279 the water, and was gone before her car reached the bridge. 307 00:18:25.319 --> 00:18:27.839 Celeste drove the last mile at eighty and sat in 308 00:18:27.920 --> 00:18:30.799 her daddy's driveway with the doors locked, leaning on the 309 00:18:30.839 --> 00:18:34.200 horn until the porch light came on. Her grandmother didn't 310 00:18:34.240 --> 00:18:36.839 laugh at her. That's the detail that stuck with me. 311 00:18:37.920 --> 00:18:40.680 Her grandmother listened to the whole story at the kitchen table, 312 00:18:41.079 --> 00:18:44.279 then got up, went to the junk drawer, counted out 313 00:18:44.279 --> 00:18:46.880 thirteen pennies, and set them on the window sill by 314 00:18:46.880 --> 00:18:50.839 the front door. Didn't say a word of explanation, didn't 315 00:18:50.880 --> 00:18:54.119 need to. Celeste told me those pennies were still on 316 00:18:54.160 --> 00:18:57.279 that window sill when her grandmother passed twenty years later, 317 00:18:57.839 --> 00:19:01.240 and her mama keeps them there now. I shine. Pacing 318 00:19:01.240 --> 00:19:03.240 a car along a tree line is a story I've 319 00:19:03.279 --> 00:19:06.960 heard in Sasquatch reports from thirty states. So is the 320 00:19:06.960 --> 00:19:10.400 sound of something heavy crashing through cover parallel to a road. 321 00:19:11.400 --> 00:19:14.160 If you took Celeston's account, change the parish to a 322 00:19:14.200 --> 00:19:18.240 county in Washington State, and swap the word rugaroo for sasquatch, 323 00:19:18.720 --> 00:19:22.640 nobody would think twice. The second account is a dog story. 324 00:19:23.119 --> 00:19:27.079 Dogs don't have folklore. Dogs don't know what a rugaroo is. 325 00:19:27.920 --> 00:19:30.440 Dogs only know what their nose tells them, and a 326 00:19:30.480 --> 00:19:34.279 dog's nose doesn't lie for attention. This one comes from 327 00:19:34.279 --> 00:19:37.119 a man I'll call Remy, a trapper and hog hunter. 328 00:19:37.200 --> 00:19:41.039 Out of assumption. Parish a fourth generation swamper who ran 329 00:19:41.119 --> 00:19:45.680 a line of catahula curs that he bred himself. Cattahulas 330 00:19:45.720 --> 00:19:49.200 are Louisiana's state dog for a reason. They are bred 331 00:19:49.200 --> 00:19:52.200 to Bay wild hogs, which are three hundred pounds of 332 00:19:52.279 --> 00:19:55.759 tusk and hate. A good catahula will run into a 333 00:19:55.799 --> 00:19:58.440 palmetto thicket after a boar that could open it up 334 00:19:58.480 --> 00:20:02.440 like a letter. These aren't nervous animals. Remy had a 335 00:20:02.480 --> 00:20:05.400 stretch of swamp he hunted off a pipeline canal, a 336 00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:08.799 place his family had trapped since his grandfather's day in 337 00:20:08.839 --> 00:20:11.240 the winter of two thousand and eight. By his telling, 338 00:20:11.680 --> 00:20:16.720 his dogs quit it, not gradually overnight. He put the 339 00:20:16.720 --> 00:20:19.640 boat in one morning in January, ran the canal to 340 00:20:19.680 --> 00:20:22.200 his usual cut, and the dogs wouldn't get out of 341 00:20:22.240 --> 00:20:26.400 the boat. Three seasoned hog dogs, dogs that normally hit 342 00:20:26.440 --> 00:20:29.240 the bank before the hull touched mud, sat in the 343 00:20:29.240 --> 00:20:32.480 bottom of that boat and shook hackles up from neck 344 00:20:32.519 --> 00:20:36.319 to tail. One of them, his best strike dog, an 345 00:20:36.400 --> 00:20:38.759 eight year old female who had scars on her from 346 00:20:38.799 --> 00:20:41.839 boars she had won against, put her head down in 347 00:20:41.880 --> 00:20:44.920 the bilge water and wouldn't lift it. Remy did what 348 00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:48.480 a stubborn man does. He grabbed the lead dog's collar 349 00:20:48.519 --> 00:20:51.559 and set her on the bank himself. She got back 350 00:20:51.559 --> 00:20:54.400 in the boat. He tried the same cut four times 351 00:20:54.440 --> 00:20:58.079 over two weeks, same result every time, and it was 352 00:20:58.119 --> 00:21:02.440 only that cut down the canal. The dog's hunted normal 353 00:21:02.920 --> 00:21:06.880 a mile up normal that one stretch of woods. They 354 00:21:06.920 --> 00:21:10.160 refused like it was on fire. The fifth trip, Remy 355 00:21:10.200 --> 00:21:13.119 went in without them, walked his old trap line about 356 00:21:13.160 --> 00:21:15.960 three hundred yards, and he said the swamp was silent 357 00:21:16.039 --> 00:21:19.200 in a way he had never heard it. January, swamp 358 00:21:19.279 --> 00:21:25.720 isn't quiet. There's ducks working, ibis Kingfisher's fussing squirrels. This 359 00:21:25.880 --> 00:21:29.200 was nothing. And in the mud beside a slew where 360 00:21:29.240 --> 00:21:32.640 his grandfather's trap line crossed the water, he found a track. 361 00:21:33.480 --> 00:21:36.839 It had five toes longer than his rubber boot, which 362 00:21:36.920 --> 00:21:40.119 was a size twelve, and pressed deeper into that mud 363 00:21:40.240 --> 00:21:42.920 than his own boot right beside it, and Remy weighed 364 00:21:42.920 --> 00:21:45.160 about two hundred and twenty pounds with his gear on. 365 00:21:46.079 --> 00:21:49.039 He never told me it was a rugaroo. Remy was 366 00:21:49.160 --> 00:21:52.000 raised on rugaroo stories the way all by you kids are. 367 00:21:52.400 --> 00:21:55.039 And when he stood over that track, the old word 368 00:21:55.240 --> 00:21:57.839 is the one that came up in his chest. But 369 00:21:57.960 --> 00:22:02.279 what he described was a barefoot five toed oversized human track, 370 00:22:02.559 --> 00:22:05.519 sunk deep and swamp mud in a patch of woods 371 00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:08.319 that three fearless hog dogs refused to enter for two 372 00:22:08.319 --> 00:22:11.359 weeks straight. He pulled his traps out of that cut 373 00:22:11.400 --> 00:22:14.359 and never set it again. When his son asked him 374 00:22:14.359 --> 00:22:17.680 why they didn't hunt Grandpa's line anymore, Remy told him 375 00:22:17.680 --> 00:22:21.279 the hogs had moved. The dogs knew better. The dogs 376 00:22:21.319 --> 00:22:25.960 always know better. A nineteen seventy one Louisiana Folklore Society 377 00:22:26.000 --> 00:22:29.759 publication preserves an account of a motorist driving a highway 378 00:22:29.799 --> 00:22:32.279 down in the Bayou Country at night who struck a 379 00:22:32.279 --> 00:22:37.799 calf hard impact. The driver stopped, got out, walked back 380 00:22:37.799 --> 00:22:41.000 to deal with the animal. There was no calf. There 381 00:22:41.039 --> 00:22:44.119 was no blood, no hair on the grill, no animal 382 00:22:44.240 --> 00:22:48.839 dying in the ditch. There was a man uninjured upright 383 00:22:49.279 --> 00:22:51.680 walking away from the exact spot where the calf went 384 00:22:51.759 --> 00:22:55.240 down into the dark. And that's where the account ends, 385 00:22:55.680 --> 00:23:00.000 because the driver didn't follow him. And honestly, I can't 386 00:23:00.119 --> 00:23:03.640 say that I blame him, And the rugaroo hasn't retired. 387 00:23:04.640 --> 00:23:07.799 In twenty sixteen, a video shot in a residential neighborhood 388 00:23:07.839 --> 00:23:11.400 in Huma made the rounds online, showing what appeared to 389 00:23:11.400 --> 00:23:14.400 be a large, dark figure moving between houses at night. 390 00:23:15.119 --> 00:23:18.640 Locals dusted off the old word immediately. Was it a 391 00:23:18.680 --> 00:23:23.599 hoaxer in a suit three days before Halloween? Probably? Was 392 00:23:23.640 --> 00:23:28.000 it a person of unusual size doing something innocent filmed badly? 393 00:23:28.680 --> 00:23:32.119 Also possible. I've watched the footage and I won't pretend 394 00:23:32.160 --> 00:23:34.759 it proves a single thing, but I want you to 395 00:23:34.799 --> 00:23:37.960 notice what happened around it, because that's the real data. 396 00:23:39.079 --> 00:23:42.160 A blurry figure walks through a human neighborhood and the 397 00:23:42.200 --> 00:23:46.759 first word out of the community wasn't prowler, it was rugaroo. 398 00:23:46.839 --> 00:23:49.839 Two hundred and fifty years after the Acadians landed, the 399 00:23:49.880 --> 00:23:52.759 wolf is still the default explanation for a big shape 400 00:23:52.759 --> 00:23:56.519 in the Louisiana Dark legends don't hang on that long 401 00:23:56.599 --> 00:24:00.000