Speaker 1: For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Speaker 1: Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
Speaker 1: refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
Speaker 1: know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
Speaker 1: share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot,
Speaker 1: dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
Speaker 1: it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
Speaker 1: once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
Speaker 1: woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close and
Speaker 1: remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Speaker 1: Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
Speaker 1: and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
Speaker 1: They say, some inheritances come with strings attached. Mine came
Speaker 1: with something else entirely. I've spent twenty seven years trying
Speaker 1: to forget what happened at that cabin in the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety five. Twenty seven years of therapy sessions
Speaker 1: where I dance around the truth of waking up at
Speaker 1: three in the morning with my sheets soaked through with sweat,
Speaker 1: of never being able to look at a dark tree
Speaker 1: line without feeling my chest tighten. My therapist thinks I
Speaker 1: suffered some kind of trauma related to my grandfather's death.
Speaker 2: She's half right.
Speaker 1: There was trauma, but it had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: losing Grandpa Roy. The truth is something I've never told anyone.
Speaker 1: Not the sheriff who found us on Highway two seventy
Speaker 1: eight that August morning, our truck's engine blown and our
Speaker 1: face as white as fresh cotton. Not my ex wife
Speaker 1: who left me because I refused to take our kids camping.
Speaker 1: Not even my son Tyler, who's thirty nine now and
Speaker 1: still asks why we left Alabama and never went back.
Speaker 1: Sixty eight years old, and my doctor says, my heart's
Speaker 1: not what it used to be. If I don't tell
Speaker 1: someone what really happened at that cabin in Cleeburn County,
Speaker 1: the truth dies with me. Maybe that would be for
Speaker 1: the best. Maybe some truths are meant to be buried.
Speaker 1: But every time I close my eyes, I can still
Speaker 1: smell that thick animal stench that used to seep through
Speaker 1: the cabin walls. I can still hear those massive hands
Speaker 1: slapping against the wooden siding, and the dead of night,
Speaker 1: I can still see those eyes reflecting red in the darkness,
Speaker 1: watching us through Tyler's bedroom window. So I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you everything exactly as it happened. Not because I
Speaker 1: expect you to believe me, held there are days when
Speaker 1: I barely believe it myself, but because maybe, just maybe
Speaker 1: it might save someone else from making the same mistake
Speaker 1: we did. Maybe someone else will inherit a piece of
Speaker 1: property in the deep woods of Alabama, and they'll remember
Speaker 1: this story, and they'll have the good sense.
Speaker 2: To stay away.
Speaker 1: We should have known something was wrong from the beginning.
Speaker 1: The signs were all there, But grief has a way
Speaker 1: of blinding you to danger, and desperation can make even
Speaker 1: the most obviously cursed gift seem like a blessing. The
Speaker 1: call came on a Tuesday morning in May of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five. I was working at the paper mill in Montgomery,
Speaker 1: standing near the digester tanks when my supervisor tapped me
Speaker 1: on the shoulder and pointed toward the office. The plant
Speaker 1: manager was holding the phone, his face arranged in that
Speaker 1: particular expression people where when they're about to deliver bad news.
Speaker 1: Grandpa Roy had died in his sleep, eighty three years old.
Speaker 1: Heart gave out peaceful as could be. The lawyer said
Speaker 1: he'd left me something in his will, and could I
Speaker 1: come to Heflin for the reading. I hadn't seen Grandpa
Speaker 1: Roy in probably five years. He'd become something of a
Speaker 1: recluse after Grandma died in eighty seven. Hold up in
Speaker 1: that little house in town, only coming out for groceries
Speaker 1: in church. We'd exchange Christmas cards, maybe a phone call
Speaker 1: on birthdays, but that was about it. The distance wasn't personal.
Speaker 1: That's just how the Brennan men were, spread out across Alabama,
Speaker 1: like seeds scattered by an indifferent hand. Sarah took it
Speaker 1: harder than I did. She'd always liked the old man,
Speaker 1: said he had character. Tyler barely remembered him at all,
Speaker 1: which somehow made it worse. A twelve year old boy
Speaker 1: shouldn't have so few memories of his grandfather. When I
Speaker 1: told them about the will, Sarah insisted we all go together.
Speaker 1: Make it a family trip. She said, show Tyler where
Speaker 1: his daddy grew up. The drive from Montgomery to Heflin
Speaker 1: took three hours, winding through the kind of small towns
Speaker 1: that seemed to exist solely to slow you down on
Speaker 1: your way to somewhere else. Tyler had his face pressed
Speaker 1: against the back window most of the way, watching the
Speaker 1: hills roll by. Sarah kept touching my hand on the
Speaker 1: gear shift, that gentle way she had of showing support
Speaker 1: without saying anything. The lawyer's office was above the hardware
Speaker 1: store on Main Street, up a narrow staircase that with
Speaker 1: every step. Mister Pemberton was older than Moses and moved
Speaker 1: about as fast, shuffling papers with liver spotted hands, while
Speaker 1: we sat in chairs that probably came with the building.
Speaker 1: The will was simple enough, a few thousand dollars in savings,
Speaker 1: some tools his truck, and then Pemberton adjusted his glasses
Speaker 1: and read the part that changed everything. The cabin forty
Speaker 1: acres of woodland, a place I'd never even known existed.
Speaker 1: Pemberton pulled out a Manila envelope thick with documents and
Speaker 1: old photographs. The picture showed a log cabin that looked
Speaker 1: straight out of a frontier museum, tucked into a hillside
Speaker 1: and surrounded by massive pines. There was Grandpa Roy in
Speaker 1: one photo, maybe thirty years younger, standing on the porch
Speaker 1: with a rifle, looking proud as could be. The deed
Speaker 1: went back to nineteen twenty four. Roy's father, my great grandfather,
Speaker 1: had built the place with his own hands. It had
Speaker 1: been in the family ever since, though Pemberton said Roy
Speaker 1: hadn't been out there in nearly a decade. Too remote,
Speaker 1: too hard to maintain. The old man had kept paying
Speaker 1: the taxes on it, though, year after year, like he
Speaker 1: couldn't quite let it go. Sarah grabbed my hand when
Speaker 1: Pemberton showed us the location on a county map, forty
Speaker 1: acres of pristine woodland. He called it only accessible by
Speaker 1: an old logging road, no power lines, no phone service,
Speaker 1: but there was a well and a septic system installed
Speaker 1: in the seventies. The nearest neighbor was three miles away.
Speaker 1: To understand why this mattered so much, you have to
Speaker 1: understand where we were in our lives. The paper mill
Speaker 1: had been laying people off for two years.
Speaker 2: Every Friday.
Speaker 1: We'd hold our breath until the shift ended, grateful to
Speaker 1: have survived another week. We were behind on the mortgage,
Speaker 1: behind on the truck payments, behind on everything except the
Speaker 1: urgent business of keeping our heads above water.
Speaker 2: Tyler needed braces. The roof leaked.
Speaker 1: The transmission in Sarah's car was making sounds that promised
Speaker 1: expensive repairs. And here was forty acres of land, free
Speaker 1: and clear. Here was a place to start over. We
Speaker 1: drove out to look at it that same afternoon. The
Speaker 1: logging road was exactly as advertised, a rough cut through
Speaker 1: the forest that had our truck's suspension groaning. It went
Speaker 1: on for two miles, winding through stands of pine and
Speaker 1: oaks so thick you couldn't see more than twenty feet into.
Speaker 2: The woods on either side.
Speaker 1: The trees seemed to press in on us, their branches
Speaker 1: scraping the truck's roof like fingers testing for a way in.
Speaker 1: But then the road opened into a clearing, and there
Speaker 1: it was. The cabin sat on a rise, looking down
Speaker 1: into a hollow where a creek ran, clear and cold.
Speaker 1: It was bigger than the photos suggested, maybe twelve hundred
Speaker 1: square feet, with a stone chimney and a covered porch
Speaker 1: that wrapped around two sides. The logs had weathered to
Speaker 1: a silver gray, and the metal roof was rusty but intact.
Speaker 1: Behind it, the forest rose up the hillside, thick and
Speaker 1: dark even in the after afternoon sun.
Speaker 2: Tyler was out of.
Speaker 1: The truck before I'd fully stopped running toward the creek
Speaker 1: with the kind of pure joy only a twelve year
Speaker 1: old can muster. Sarah stood beside me, her arm around
Speaker 1: my waist, looking at that cabin like it was a mansion.
Speaker 1: We spent two hours exploring. The inside was rough but livable,
Speaker 1: two bedrooms, a main room with a stone fireplace, a
Speaker 1: kitchen with an ancient wood stove, and a bathroom that
Speaker 1: miraculously still worked when we primed the pump. The furniture
Speaker 1: was covered in dust and mouse droppings, but it was
Speaker 1: solid stuff, hand built pieces that had lasted seventy years
Speaker 1: and might last seventy more. Tyler found a shed full
Speaker 1: of old tools, each one wrapped in oiled cloth. Sarah
Speaker 1: discovered a root cellar stocked with empty canning jars. I
Speaker 1: stood on that porch, looking out at land that belonged
Speaker 1: to me, to us, and felt something I hadn't.
Speaker 2: Felt in years. Hope.
Speaker 1: We should have wondered why Roy had stopped coming. We
Speaker 1: should have asked why a perfectly good cabin had sat
Speaker 1: empty for a decade. We should have noticed that there
Speaker 1: were no bird sounds in those woods, no squirrels in
Speaker 1: the trees, no deer tracks by the creek, but we didn't.
Speaker 1: We saw salvation where we should have seen warning. We
Speaker 1: moved in three weeks later. It took everything we had.
Speaker 1: I cashed out my retirement from the mill, such as
Speaker 1: it was. We sold everything that wouldn't fit in the
Speaker 1: truck or the U haul trailer. Sarah's mother called us crazy,
Speaker 1: said we were dragging that poor boy into the wilderness
Speaker 1: like some kind of mountain hermits. My brother down in
Speaker 1: Mobile said I'd lost my mind giving up a steady
Speaker 1: job to play pioneer. But every night Sarah and I
Speaker 1: would sit at our kitchen table in that rental house
Speaker 1: in Montgomery, going over the numbers. No rent, no mortgage,
Speaker 1: no utility bills except propane for the stove and generator
Speaker 1: fuel for the few appliances we absolutely needed. We could
Speaker 1: make it work. We had to make it work. The
Speaker 1: move itself was a nightmare. The logging road, which had
Speaker 1: seemed rough but passable in Pemberton Sedan, became a genuine
Speaker 1: obstacle course with a loaded U haul trailer. Twice we
Speaker 1: had to unhook it and clear fallen branches. Once the
Speaker 1: truck got high centered on a ridge of exposed rock,
Speaker 1: and it took two hours with the jack and boards
Speaker 1: to get free, But finally, as the sun was starting
Speaker 1: to set on that first Saturday in June, we pulled
Speaker 1: into the clearing home. We worked until well past dark,
Speaker 1: hauling boxes by flashlight, Tyler helping despite clearly being dead
Speaker 1: on his feet. Sarah had thought ahead and packed sleeping
Speaker 1: bags and pillows in the truck cab, so at least
Speaker 1: we had somewhere to sleep that first night, I remember
Speaker 1: lying there on the floor of the main room, Sarah
Speaker 1: on one side and Tyler on the other, listening to
Speaker 1: the absolute silence. No traffic, no neighbors, no hum of
Speaker 1: electrical wires, just the soft whisper of wind in the
Speaker 1: pines and the distant gurgle of the creek. Tyler fell
Speaker 1: asleep almost instantly, exhausted from the move. Sarah took longer,
Speaker 1: but eventually her breathing deepened and slowed. But I stayed awake,
Speaker 1: staring at the ceiling beams in the darkness, wondering if
Speaker 1: I'd just made the best or worst decision of my life.
Speaker 1: Sometime around midnight, I heard the first rock hit the roof.
Speaker 1: It wasn't loud, just a solid thunk that could have
Speaker 1: been a pine cone or a branch. I barely noticed it,
Speaker 1: but about ten minutes later there was another, then another,
Speaker 1: irregular intervals, but deliberate, somehow, like someone was standing out
Speaker 1: there in the darkness, tossing stones onto our metal roof.
Speaker 1: I got up carefully, not wanting to wake Sarah and Tyler,
Speaker 1: and crept to the window. The moon was nearly full,
Speaker 1: casting everything in silver light and black shadows. I could
Speaker 1: see the truck, the trailer, the edge of the forest.
Speaker 1: Nothing moved.
Speaker 2: The rock stopped after a.
Speaker 1: Few more minutes, and I convinced myself it had been
Speaker 1: branches falling from the trees. Old forest, old trees, dead
Speaker 1: branches falling natural as could be. I should have known better.
Speaker 1: Nothing about those woods was natural. The next morning, Tyler
Speaker 1: was up with the sun, eager to explore. Sarah started
Speaker 1: the monumental task of unpacking and organizing while I worked
Speaker 1: on getting the generator running. It was an old diesel unit,
Speaker 1: probably from the sixties, but it fired up after I
Speaker 1: changed the fuel filter and bled the lines. We had power,
Speaker 1: limited but sufficient. Tyler spent the morning down by the creek,
Speaker 1: building a dam with river rocks. I could see him
Speaker 1: from the kitchen window, knee deep in that cold water,
Speaker 1: happy as I'd ever seen him. Sarah hummed while she
Speaker 1: worked arranging our few pieces of furniture, hanging pictures on.
Speaker 2: The log walls.
Speaker 1: For a few hours, it felt like we'd made the
Speaker 1: right choice. The rock started again that second night. This
Speaker 1: time I was ready for them. When the first one hit,
Speaker 1: around eleven o'clock. I grabbed the flashlight and headed for
Speaker 1: the door. Sarah stirred but didn't wake Tyler was dead
Speaker 1: to the world in his small bedroom. I stood on
Speaker 1: the porch, flashlight beams sweeping the tree line. The rocks
Speaker 1: were coming more frequently now, not just hitting the roof,
Speaker 1: but the walls. Too small ones, maybe the size of
Speaker 1: golf balls, but thrown with enough force to make a
Speaker 1: solid impact. Then I saw eyes shine, just for a second,
Speaker 1: two points of red light at the edge of the forest,
Speaker 1: maybe seven feet off the ground. When I swung the
Speaker 1: flashlight toward them, they vanished. A deer, I told myself,
Speaker 1: had to be a deer, But deer don't throw rocks.
Speaker 1: I stayed out there for another hour, but nothing else happened.
Speaker 1: The rocks stopped as suddenly as they'd started. The forest
Speaker 1: was silent. Even the creek seemed to have quieted its voice.
Speaker 1: When I finally went back inside, I found Tyler standing
Speaker 1: in the hallway, pale and wide eyed in his Superman pajamas.
Speaker 1: He said he'd heard something at his window, scratching like branches,
Speaker 1: but rhythmic, deliberate. I told him it was just the trees,
Speaker 1: that we were surrounded by forest and would have to
Speaker 1: get used to the sounds. He nodded, but I could
Speaker 1: see he didn't quite believe me. I didn't believe me either.
Speaker 1: By the end of our first week, the pattern was established.
Speaker 1: During the day, everything was perfect. We worked on the cabin,
Speaker 1: Tyler played in the creek. Sarah started a vegetable garden
Speaker 1: in a sunny spot near the shed. The sun made
Speaker 1: everything feel safe and normal and possible. But at night,
Speaker 1: the woods came alive with something that had no name.
Speaker 1: The rocks were every night now, starting around eleven and
Speaker 1: continuing for an hour or more, but it was escalating.
Speaker 1: By the fourth night, it wasn't just pebbles, but stones
Speaker 1: the size of baseballs, hurled with impossible force. One shattered
Speaker 1: a window in the kitchen. I boarded it up and
Speaker 1: told Sarah a branch had fallen. Then came the slaping.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back
Speaker 1: after these messages. The first time it happened, I shot
Speaker 1: straight up in bed, heart hammering. The sound was massive,
Speaker 1: like someone had hit the side of the cabin with
Speaker 1: a telephone pole. The whole structure shook. Sarah grabbed my arm,
Speaker 1: her nails digging in deep enough to draw blood. It
Speaker 1: came again, a tremendous slap against the wall, this time
Speaker 1: on the opposite side of the cabin, then the back wall,
Speaker 1: then right above our heads on the roof, an impact
Speaker 1: so powerful that dust filtered down from the rafters. Tyler
Speaker 1: appeared in our doorway, crying. He was twelve years old,
Speaker 1: trying so hard to be grown up, but this had
Speaker 1: broken through his defenses. Sarah pulled him into bed with us,
Speaker 1: and we lay there, the three of us, as something
Speaker 1: circled our cabin, striking the walls with what could only
Speaker 1: be enormous hands. It lasted for twenty minutes, then silence.
Speaker 1: The next morning I found handprints in the mud outside.
Speaker 1: They were human in shape, but wrong in size. The
Speaker 1: palm was as wide as a dinner plate. The fingers
Speaker 1: were proportionally too long, almost delicate despite their size, and
Speaker 1: they were everywhere, dozens of them, pressed into the dirt
Speaker 1: around the cabin's foundation. I showed Sarah. Her face went white,
Speaker 1: and she asked the question I'd been avoiding. What could
Speaker 1: make prints like that? I didn't have an answer, or
Speaker 1: rather I had an answer, but it was impossible. It
Speaker 1: was the kind of answer that belonged in supermarket tabloids
Speaker 1: and grainy documentaries on cable TV, not in real life, not.
Speaker 2: In our life.
Speaker 1: That afternoon, I drove into town alone. Heflin wasn't much,
Speaker 1: but it had a library, and the library had old
Speaker 1: newspapers on microfilm. I told Sarah I was getting supplies.
Speaker 1: I think she knew I was lying, but she didn't
Speaker 1: call me on it. The librarian was a widow named
Speaker 1: missus Henley, who remembered my grandfather. She set me up
Speaker 1: at the microfilm reader and showed me how to work it,
Speaker 1: then left me alone with sixty years of the Cleborne
Speaker 1: County News. It didn't take long to find what I
Speaker 1: was looking for. August nineteen fifty three, local farmer reports
Speaker 1: livestock missing. Giant footprints found near Chokaloco Creek. October nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty one. Hunters claim encounter with wild man and National
Speaker 1: Forest sheriff investigates finds no evidence. July nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: family abandons homestead after reported harassment by unknown persons. Strange
Speaker 1: prints photographed it scene, and then from April nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 1: a longer article, a family named the Washburns had lived
Speaker 1: about five miles from where our cabin sat. They'd reported
Speaker 1: weeks of harassment, rocks thrown at their house, livestock killed,
Speaker 1: their children, terrorized by something that watched them from the forest.
Speaker 1: The father, Dale Washburn, had finally had enough. He sat
Speaker 1: up one night with a rifle, determined to kill whatever
Speaker 1: was tormenting his family. The sheriff found him the next morning,
Speaker 1: wandering on Highway nine, catatonic. His hair, the article said,
Speaker 1: had turned completely white. The family moved to Tennessee the
Speaker 1: next week. Dale Washburn never spoke again. He died in
Speaker 1: a state mental hospital three years later. The last paragraph
Speaker 1: was what made my blood run cold. The sheriff, a
Speaker 1: man named Buford Hayes, was quoted as saying, sometimes the
Speaker 1: old forest don't want neighbors. Smart folks learned to listen
Speaker 1: when they're not welcome. I was rolling through more articles
Speaker 1: when missus Henley appeared at my shoulder. Your granddaddy used
Speaker 1: to come in here, she said, same research, same articles.
Speaker 1: This was maybe fifteen years ago. He'd bought that cabin
Speaker 1: from the Tillman estate, you know, thought he could make
Speaker 1: a hunting lodge out of it. I asked her what happened.
Speaker 1: She looked at me for a long moment, and I
Speaker 1: could see her deciding whether to tell me the truth
Speaker 1: or the polite version. He lasted one summer, she finally said,
Speaker 1: never would talk about why he left. But I remember
Speaker 1: him returning those microfilms. His hands were shaking so bad
Speaker 1: he could barely hold them. You fixing to stay out there,
Speaker 1: I told her we were. She nodded slowly, like she'd
Speaker 1: expected that answer. Your granddaddy tried to burn that cabin down,
Speaker 1: she said, back in eighty five. Sheriff stopped him, said
Speaker 1: it would start a forest fire.
Speaker 2: But Roy tried.
Speaker 1: Said some things ought not to exist, said some places
Speaker 1: ought to be left alone. I thanked her and left
Speaker 1: my mind spinning. When I got back to the cabin,
Speaker 1: Sarah had dinner ready and Tyler was showing off an
Speaker 1: arrowhead he'd found by the creek. We ate and laughed
Speaker 1: and pretended everything was normal. But after Tyler went to bed,
Speaker 1: I told Sarah what I'd learned. She listened without interrupting,
Speaker 1: then asked what.
Speaker 2: I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: We had nowhere else to go, money to start over,
Speaker 1: no jobs to return to. We were trapped by poverty
Speaker 1: as surely as if we'd been chained to that cabin.
Speaker 1: We'll be careful, I said, We'll respect the forest. Maybe
Speaker 1: if we don't bother it, it won't bother us. Sarah nodded,
Speaker 1: but I could see the fear in her eyes. We
Speaker 1: both knew I was lying. Two weeks into our stay,
Speaker 1: Tyler saw it at his window. I woke to the
Speaker 1: sound of his scream, high and terrified, cutting through the night.
Speaker 2: Like a blade.
Speaker 1: Sarah and I burst into his room to find him
Speaker 1: pressed against the far wall, pointing at the window with
Speaker 1: a trembling hand. There's nothing there, I said, But even
Speaker 1: as the words left my mouth, I could smell it.
Speaker 1: A thick animal stench, like a wet dog crossed with
Speaker 1: rotting vegetation. It was seeping through the walls, so strong
Speaker 1: it made my eyes water. Tyler was sobbing, trying to
Speaker 1: explain a face, he said, massive covered in hair, with
Speaker 1: eyes that were almost human, reflecting red in the moonlight.
Speaker 1: It had been watching him sleep, just standing there, face
Speaker 1: pressed against the glass, watching. I grabbed the flashlight and
Speaker 1: the shotgun i'd started keeping by the bed. Outside. The
Speaker 1: smell was even stronger. There were tracks in the dirt
Speaker 1: beneath Tyler's window, the same massive human like prince, but
Speaker 1: deeper this time. Whatever had made them was heavy, heavier
Speaker 1: than any man could be. And there on the window glass,
Speaker 1: lit by my flashlight beam, were smudges, hand prints, and
Speaker 1: the oily impression of a face pressed against the pane,
Speaker 1: like a child at a candy store window. We moved
Speaker 1: Tyler's bed into our room.
Speaker 2: That night.
Speaker 1: None of us slept. The next day, I drove back
Speaker 1: to town and bought plywood, nails, and a rifle, a
Speaker 1: thirty six, the most powerful thing I could afford. The
Speaker 1: man at the sporting goods store, a good old boy
Speaker 1: named Rick, asked if I was planning to hunt elk
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: I told him.
Speaker 1: He gave me a long look, then threw in an
Speaker 1: extra box of ammunition.
Speaker 2: For free.
Speaker 1: You're Roy Brennan's grandson, aren't you living out at the
Speaker 1: old Tillman Place?
Speaker 2: I nodded.
Speaker 1: Rick leaned in close, dropping his voice, even though we
Speaker 1: were alone in the store. My uncle lived out that
Speaker 1: way in the fifties. Said there were things in those
Speaker 1: woods that ain't got no business existing. Said, they mostly
Speaker 1: leave folks alone, if folks leave them alone, but sometimes
Speaker 1: they take a dislike to someone.
Speaker 2: And when that happens.
Speaker 1: He trailed off, shaking his head. You got family, wife
Speaker 1: and kids, I nodded again. Get them out of there,
Speaker 1: he said, whatever it costs, whatever you have to do,
Speaker 1: get them out. Some places ain't meant for people. But
Speaker 1: I couldn't. We had nowhere to go, no money for rent,
Speaker 1: no job prospects, no family willing to take us in.
Speaker 1: We were stuck. That night, I boarded up Tyler's window
Speaker 1: from the inside. It didn't matter. The thing came anyway.
Speaker 1: This time, it didn't just watch. It knocked three deliberate
Speaker 1: raps on the wall beside Tyler's window, like a visitor
Speaker 1: announcing their presence. When no one answered, it knocked again harder.
Speaker 1: The whole wall shook, Then it spoke. The sound was
Speaker 1: like nothing I'd ever heard, deep enough to vibrate in
Speaker 1: your chest, but with an almost plaintive quality. It wasn't English,
Speaker 1: wasn't any language I recognized, but somehow the meaning was clear.
Speaker 2: Let me in.
Speaker 1: Tyler was screaming, Sarah was praying, clutching her rosary so
Speaker 1: tight the bead's left marks on her palms. And I
Speaker 1: sat there with that rifle across my lap, knowing with
Speaker 1: absolute certainty that if I opened that door, if I
Speaker 1: confronted whatever was out there, I would end up like
Speaker 1: Dale Washburn, catatonic, white haired, lost. The knocking continued for
Speaker 1: an hour, sometimes at the boarded window, sometimes at the door,
Speaker 1: sometimes on the roof directly above us. Each knock was massive,
Speaker 1: powerful enough to shake dust from the rafters, and between
Speaker 1: the knocks that horrible voice speaking in syllables that human
Speaker 1: throats were never meant to form. Then, as suddenly as
Speaker 1: it had started, it stopped. The silence was somehow worse
Speaker 1: than the noise. We stayed huddled together until dawn, when
Speaker 1: the first rays of sunlight made the world seem possible again.
Speaker 2: But we all knew the truth.
Speaker 1: We were being hunted, studied, evaluated, and whatever was out
Speaker 1: there in the woods had decided we didn't belong. By
Speaker 1: the third week we were prisoners. None of us would
Speaker 1: go outside after dark. I'd reinforced all the windows with plywood,
Speaker 1: turning our cabin into a fortress or a tomb, depending
Speaker 1: on how you looked at it. During the day, we
Speaker 1: went about our business, but there was a brittle quality
Speaker 1: to our normal. We were actors playing the parts of
Speaker 1: a happy family, and we all knew it. Tyler had
Speaker 1: stopped playing by the creek. He wouldn't go more than
Speaker 1: twenty feet from the cabin, and even then he was
Speaker 1: constantly looking over his shoulder. Sarah had abandoned her garden.
Speaker 1: The vegetables were already being choked by weeds, but she
Speaker 1: wouldn't go out there alone, and I couldn't blame her.
Speaker 1: We were all losing weight. Sleep was nearly impossible. The
Speaker 1: things in the woods came every night, now, sometimes just one,
Speaker 1: sometimes what sounded like three or four. They would circle
Speaker 1: the cabin, knocking on the walls, speaking in their terrible language,
Speaker 1: testing the doors and windows for weakness, and they were
Speaker 1: getting bolder. One night I woke to the sound of
Speaker 1: splintering wood. One of them had torn a board off
Speaker 1: Tyler's window and was reaching inside. The arm was covered
Speaker 1: in dark, coarse hair, impossibly long, with fingers that seemed
Speaker 1: to go on forever. It was feeling around, searching, and
Speaker 1: I realized with horror that it was trying to unlock
Speaker 1: the window from the inside. I grabbed the rifle and
Speaker 1: fired through the wall. The sound was deafening in the
Speaker 1: small space. Sarah screamed. Tyler was sobbing, but the arm
Speaker 1: withdrew and I heard something crash through the underbrush outside,
Speaker 1: moving faster than anything that size should be able to move.
Speaker 1: There was blood on the windowsill, dark almost black, with
Speaker 1: an oily consistency. It smelled like copper and rotting meat.
Speaker 1: I'd heard it. That should have made me feel better.
Speaker 1: It didn't. The next night, they didn't come to the cabin. Instead,
Speaker 1: they destroyed everything outside it. The truck's windows were smashed,
Speaker 1: the tires slashed, the hood crushed like something massive had
Speaker 1: sat on it. The shed was torn apart, tools scattered
Speaker 1: and broken. Sarah's garden was obliterated. The plants not just
Speaker 1: pulled up, but shredded, scattered like confetti, and their footprints
Speaker 1: were everywhere, hundreds of them in the dirt in the
Speaker 1: mud by the creek, pressed into the middle of our
Speaker 1: ruined truck, a message clear as day. You hurt us,
Speaker 1: now we hurt you. That's when Sarah broke. I found
Speaker 1: her in the bedroom, packing what little we had of
Speaker 1: value into a suitcase. Tears were streaming down her face,
Speaker 1: but her movements were determined, methodical. We're leaving, she said.
Speaker 1: I don't care if we have to walk, I don't
Speaker 1: care if we have to live in a homeless shelter.
Speaker 1: We're leaving. I tried to explain that the truck was destroyed,
Speaker 1: that we were twenty miles from town, that we had
Speaker 1: no way to transport our things. She just kept packing.
Speaker 1: Then Tyler spoke from the doorway. They don't want us
Speaker 1: to leave, he said. We both turned to look at him.
Speaker 1: He was pale, hollow eyed, looking far older than his
Speaker 1: twelve years. I've been watching them, he continued, from my
Speaker 1: window before you boarded it up. They're not animals, they're
Speaker 1: not stupid. They understand things. They know we're trapped here.
Speaker 1: I asked him what he meant. Tyler walked to the
Speaker 1: living room window, the one that still had glass, and
Speaker 1: pointed to the tree line they're out there right now,
Speaker 1: he said, watching, waiting. If we try to leave on foot,
Speaker 1: they'll follow us. They'll wait until we're far from the cabin,
Speaker 1: far from shelter. And then he didn't finish the sentence.
Speaker 1: He didn't need to. I looked out the window, scanning
Speaker 1: the forest. At first I saw nothing. Then gradually my
Speaker 1: eyes began to pick out the shapes. They were standing
Speaker 1: perfectly still among the trees, their dark hair blending with
Speaker 1: the shadows. One, two, five, eight of them that I
Speaker 1: could see, maybe more. They weren't hiding. They wanted us
Speaker 1: to know they were there. That's when I understood we
Speaker 1: weren't just unwelcome. We were entertainment, toys to be played with, terrorized, broken,
Speaker 1: They were enjoying this. The full siege began on our
Speaker 1: twenty third night in the cabin. It started differently this time,
Speaker 1: no rocks, no knocking, just voices. They surrounded the cabin,
Speaker 1: all of them, and began to speak in unison, that terrible,
Speaker 1: deep sound, rising and falling in what might have been
Speaker 1: a chant, or a song or a prayer. The walls
Speaker 1: vibrated with it, the windows rattled in their frames. Tyler
Speaker 1: was curled in a ball on our bed, hands.
Speaker 2: Over his ears.
Speaker 1: Sarah was sitting in the corner holding her rosary lips,
Speaker 1: moving in silent prayer, and I stood at the window
Speaker 1: with the rifle watching them. They weren't hiding anymore. They
Speaker 1: stood in a rough circle around the cabin, maybe fifteen
Speaker 1: of them, swaying slightly as they voiced their awful chorus.
Speaker 1: In the moonlight, I could see them clearly for the
Speaker 1: first time. They were massive, seven or eight feet tall,
Speaker 1: covered in dark hair that seemed to absorb light. Their
Speaker 1: bodies were humanoid, but different, arms way longer than they
Speaker 1: should be, shoulders impossibly broad. Stay tuned for more Backwoods
Speaker 1: bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. Their faces
Speaker 1: were the worst part, neither human nor ape, but something
Speaker 1: caught between, with deep set eyes that glowed with an
Speaker 1: intelligence that was unmistakably malevolent. The chanting went on for hours.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it would rise to a crescendo that made.
Speaker 2: My teeth ache.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it would drop to a whisper that was somehow worse.
Speaker 1: And underneath it all was a rhythm, a pulsing beat
Speaker 1: that seemed to match my heart beat, seemed to be
Speaker 1: pulling at something deep in my chest. Then, just before dawn,
Speaker 1: they stopped.
Speaker 2: One of them, the.
Speaker 1: Largest, stepped forward. It stood directly in front of the
Speaker 1: main door, not moving, just standing there waiting. I knew
Speaker 1: what it wanted. It wanted me to come out to
Speaker 1: confront it, to end this one way or another. I
Speaker 1: almost did it. My hand was on the doorknob, the
Speaker 1: rifle in my other hand, when Sarah grabbed my arm.
Speaker 1: Don't she whispered, please, That's what happened to the others,
Speaker 1: the ones in the newspapers. They went outside.
Speaker 2: She was right.
Speaker 1: I backed away from the door, and the thing outside
Speaker 1: made a sound that might have been laughter, deep rumbling, utterly,
Speaker 1: without humor. For a long moment, it just stood there, massive, silent,
Speaker 1: almost human in its stillness, and somehow, without a sound,
Speaker 1: something passed between us. It didn't speak, not in any
Speaker 1: language we know, but in that instant I understood a thought,
Speaker 1: A warning pressed into my mind so clearly I couldn't
Speaker 1: deny it, even though I can't explain how I knew
Speaker 1: three days that's what it meant, three days before they
Speaker 1: would come in. Then it turned and walked back into
Speaker 1: the forest, its shaped, dissolving into the mist. The others followed,
Speaker 1: melting into the shadows like smoke.
Speaker 2: Three days.
Speaker 1: The first day we tried to prepare, I used what
Speaker 1: tools had survived to reinforce the doors, nailing boards across them,
Speaker 1: pushing furniture against them. It was pathetic, really, If those
Speaker 1: things wanted in, truly wanted in, no amount of plywood
Speaker 1: would stop them. Sarah spent the day praying and writing.
Speaker 1: She filled a notebook with letters to her family, to
Speaker 1: her mother, to siblings and cousins, goodbye letters. She made
Speaker 1: me promise that if something happened to her, I would
Speaker 1: make sure they got the letters. I promised, knowing it
Speaker 1: was a lie. If something happened to her, it would
Speaker 1: happen to all of us. Tyler surprised me. He spent
Speaker 1: the day studying. He'd found some of Grandpa Roy's old
Speaker 1: journals in a trunk in the bedroom closet. They were
Speaker 1: from his time at the cabin before he'd fled. Tyler
Speaker 1: read them with an intensity I'd never seen from him before,
Speaker 1: taking notes, cross referencing entries Dad. He said that evening,
Speaker 1: I think I know what they are. I sat beside him,
Speaker 1: looking at the journals. Roy's handwriting was cramped, urgent, filling
Speaker 1: page after page with observations, theories, desperate attempts to understand.
Speaker 1: He called them the old ones, Tyler said, pointing to
Speaker 1: an entry, said the Cherokee had stories about them from
Speaker 1: before white people came. They were here first. The forest
Speaker 1: belongs to them. I read the passage. Tyler indicated. Roy
Speaker 1: had written about finding cave paintings in a hollow deeper
Speaker 1: in the woods, ancient things showing tall hair covered figures
Speaker 1: standing among trees, with smaller human figures bowing before them.
Speaker 1: They're not animals, Tyler continued, They're people, different people, but people,
Speaker 1: and we're in their territory. So we leave, I said,
Speaker 1: as soon as we can, we leave. Tyler shook his head.
Speaker 1: That's just it. Grandpa tried to leave. Look, he showed
Speaker 1: me an entry from July nineteen eighty. Roy had attempted
Speaker 1: to hike out to reach the road and escape, but
Speaker 1: they had followed him, herded him back, played with him
Speaker 1: like cats with a mouse. He'd barely made it back
Speaker 1: to the cabin alive. They don't let people leave, Tyler said,
Speaker 1: not once they've decided you don't belong. The only reason
Speaker 1: Grandpa got out was because the sheriff came looking for him.
Speaker 1: They don't like groups, they don't like witnesses. I felt
Speaker 1: the weight of that settle on my shoulders. We were alone.
Speaker 1: No one was coming for us, No one even knew
Speaker 1: we were in trouble. The second day, we tried to
Speaker 1: make weapons. I had the rifle and a box and
Speaker 1: a half of ammunition. Sarah found a hatchet in what
Speaker 1: was left of the shed. Tyler fashioned spears from broken
Speaker 1: tool handles, sharpening the ends with a kitchen knife. It
Speaker 1: was almost comically inadequate, but it was something. It gave
Speaker 1: us the illusion of being able to fight back. That night,
Speaker 1: they came to every window, pressing their faces against the boards,
Speaker 1: breathing so heavily we could hear it.
Speaker 2: Inside.
Speaker 1: The smell was overwhelming, that wet dog and rot stench
Speaker 1: that made us gag. They didn't speak, didn't knock, just breathed,
Speaker 1: letting us know they were there, letting us know they
Speaker 1: were coming. The third day dawned gray and drizzly. The
Speaker 1: forest was shrouded and missed visibility down to maybe thirty feet.
Speaker 1: We couldn't see them, but we knew they were there, waiting, watching.
Speaker 1: I made a decision. I told Sarah and Tyler to
Speaker 1: barricade themselves in the bedroom, push everything against the door,
Speaker 1: and no matter what they heard, don't come out. Sarah argued,
Speaker 1: But I could see the relief in her eyes. She
Speaker 1: didn't want to face what was coming. Neither did I,
Speaker 1: but someone had to. As the sun set on that
Speaker 1: third day, I took position in the main room, rifle
Speaker 1: loaded extra ammunition within reach, hatchet on the table beside me.
Speaker 1: I'd pushed the couch against the front door and the
Speaker 1: kitchen table against the back. The windows were all boarded.
Speaker 1: There was only one way this could end, but I
Speaker 1: was going to make them work for it. Full dark came,
Speaker 1: and with it silence, no insects, no wind, no creak, babble,
Speaker 1: just my breathing and the pounding of my heart. Then
Speaker 1: at exactly midnight they announced themselves. The front door exploded inward,
Speaker 1: not opened, not broken, exploded. The couch I'd pushed against
Speaker 1: it flew across the room, slamming into the far wall.
Speaker 1: Splinters of wood filled the air like shrapnel, and through
Speaker 1: the destroyed doorway came something out of a nightmare. It
Speaker 1: had to duck to get through, folding its massive frame
Speaker 1: almost in half. Once inside, it stood to its full height,
Speaker 1: and its head nearly touched the eight foot ceiling. Its
Speaker 1: eyes reflected the coalman lantern light, glowing like hot coals.
Speaker 1: The smell that came with it was overwhelming, a physical
Speaker 1: presence that made me gag. I shot its center mass.
Speaker 1: The rifle kicked against my shoulder, the sound deafening in
Speaker 1: the enclosed space. The creature staggered back a step, looked
Speaker 1: down at the spreading dark stain on its chest, then
Speaker 1: looked back at me, and it smiled a very human
Speaker 1: expression on that inhuman face. Then it came for me.
Speaker 1: I got off two more shots before it reached me.
Speaker 1: One hit its shoulder, spinning it slightly. The other went wild,
Speaker 1: punching a hole in the wall. Then its hand, impossibly
Speaker 1: large and impossibly strong, wrapped around the rifle barrel and
Speaker 1: yanked it from my grasp, bending it like a pretzel
Speaker 1: and tossing it aside. I grabbed the hatchet and swung
Speaker 1: with everything I had. The blade bit into its arm,
Speaker 1: drawing more of that black blood. It howled a sound
Speaker 1: that made my ears ring, and back handed me across
Speaker 1: the room. I hit the wall hard enough to punch
Speaker 1: a hole in the dry wall. Stars exploded across my vision.
Speaker 1: When I could focus again, the creature was standing over me,
Speaker 1: studying me with those terrible eyes. Up close, I could
Speaker 1: see they weren't animal eyes at all. There was intelligence there, calculation,
Speaker 1: and something that might have been amusement. It reached down
Speaker 1: with one massive hand, fingers wrapping around my throat, and
Speaker 1: lifted me off the ground like I weighed nothing. My
Speaker 1: feet dangled kicking uselessly. Black spots began to dance at
Speaker 1: the edges of my vision. Then Tyler screamed, not a
Speaker 1: scream of fear, but a war cry. He came charging
Speaker 1: out of the bedroom with one of his makeshift spears,
Speaker 1: all twelve years and ninety pounds of him, and drove
Speaker 1: it into the creature's side. The thing dropped me and
Speaker 1: spun toward Tyler, moving faster than something that large should
Speaker 1: be able to move. But Tyler was already backing away,
Speaker 1: and Sarah was beside him with the only ammunition we
Speaker 1: had left, the pot of boiling water she'd been heating
Speaker 1: on the propane stove. She threw it full in the
Speaker 1: creature's face. The howl it made shook dust from the
Speaker 1: rafters It clawed at its face, stumbling backward, and in
Speaker 1: that moment of distraction, I found the hatchet and buried
Speaker 1: it in the back.
Speaker 2: Of its knee.
Speaker 1: The creature went down, crashing to the floor with enough
Speaker 1: force to crack the boards. It tried to rise, but
Speaker 1: the damaged knee wouldn't support its weight. It looked at us,
Speaker 1: all three of us, and for the first time, I
Speaker 1: saw something like respect in its eyes. Then, without sound,
Speaker 1: without speech, the message hit me like a pulse of
Speaker 1: cold air through my chest. Others coming, and I understood
Speaker 1: this wasn't over, It was only beginning, As if on cue,
Speaker 1: I heard them outside, multiple footsteps on the porch surrounding
Speaker 1: the cabin. We'd fought off one, but there were so
Speaker 1: many more. I looked at Sarah and Tyler, my wife,
Speaker 1: my son. We were going to die here in this cabin,
Speaker 1: twenty miles from nowhere. But at least we die together.
Speaker 1: At least we'd die fighting. That's when we heard the engines.
Speaker 1: Headlights cut through the darkness outside, multiple vehicles, engines roaring
Speaker 1: as they came up the logging road. Doors slammed, voices, shouted,
Speaker 1: human voices. The creature on our floor made a sound
Speaker 1: of frustration and began dragging itself toward the door, leaving
Speaker 1: a trail of black blood outside. I could hear the
Speaker 1: others retreating, crashing through the underbrush, their heavy footfalls fading
Speaker 1: into the distance. A spotlight hit the cabin, so bright
Speaker 1: it hurt to look at. Then a voice amplified by
Speaker 1: a megaphone. This is Sheriff Hayes. Anyone in the cabin,
Speaker 1: come out with your hands visible. I helped Sarah and
Speaker 1: Tyler over the wreckage of our front door. The front
Speaker 1: yard was full of vehicles, Sheriff's department SUVs, their lights
Speaker 1: painting the clearing and reds and blues. There were at
Speaker 1: least six deputies, all armed with rifles, all scanning the
Speaker 1: tree line nervously. Sheriff Hayes was a small, compact man
Speaker 1: with gray hair and eyes that had seen too much.
Speaker 1: He took one look at us, covered in blood some hours, someknot,
Speaker 1: shaking with adrenaline and fear, and made a quick decision.
Speaker 1: Get them in the vehicles, he barked, Now we're leaving.
Speaker 1: One of the deputies started to ask about the scene,
Speaker 1: about evidence, but Hayes cut him off. There is no scene.
Speaker 1: There is no evidence we were never here. Move They
Speaker 1: bundled us into separate vehicles. I ended up in Hayes's
Speaker 1: suv in the back behind the cage. As we started
Speaker 1: down the logging road, I looked back and saw the
Speaker 1: cabin one last time, lit by the headlights of the
Speaker 1: vehicles behind us. Something massive stood in the doorway, watching
Speaker 1: us leave. Even from that distance, I could feel its
Speaker 1: eyes on me. Then the road curved and it was gone.
Speaker 1: Hayes drove in silence for a few minutes, navigating the
Speaker 1: rough road with practiced ease. Finally he spoke your neighbor, Missus.
Speaker 2: Watson, and called us.
Speaker 1: Said she hadn't seen any lights from your place in
Speaker 1: three days.
Speaker 2: Got worried.
Speaker 1: We get calls like that sometimes about the old places
Speaker 1: in these woods. Usually it's nothing. Sometimes he trailed off,
Speaker 1: shaking his head. My grandfather was sheriff back in the seventies.
Speaker 1: He continued, he had a rule about these woods. If
Speaker 1: someone goes missing out here, you've got three days to
Speaker 1: find them. After that, you're not finding them alive. Don't
Speaker 1: know how he knew that, but he was never wrong.
Speaker 1: I asked him what those things were. He was quiet
Speaker 1: for a long moment, then glanced at me in the
Speaker 1: rear view mirror. Officially, nothing black bears. Maybe bunch of
Speaker 1: city folks getting spooked by the woods. That's what the
Speaker 1: report will say. Unofficially, he shrugged. My grandmother was Cherokee.
Speaker 1: She had stories about the tall people who lived in
Speaker 1: the deep woods before humans came. Said they were here, first,
Speaker 1: said they'd be here last, had wise men knew to
Speaker 1: leave certain places alone. But the cabin, I said, my
Speaker 1: grandfather's cabin. Hayes nodded, the Tillman place. Yeah, that's one
Speaker 1: of the bad ones, has been as long as anyone
Speaker 1: can remember. Your grandfather found that out the hard way.
Speaker 1: Surprised he didn't burn it down, he tried, I said.
Speaker 1: Hayes actually smiled at that. Good for him, Maybe I'll
Speaker 1: have better luck. Two days later, the cabin did burn
Speaker 1: down electrical fire, according to the report, faulty wiring in
Speaker 1: an old generator. The Forest Service decided not to investigate
Speaker 1: too thoroughly. Lightning strikes, they said, happens all the time
Speaker 1: in these old woods. We stayed with Sarah's mother in
Speaker 1: Birmingham for three months while I looked for work. I
Speaker 1: found a job at a steel mill, hard work, but honest.
Speaker 1: We rented a small apartment in the suburbs, as far
Speaker 1: from any forest as we could get. Tyler had nightmares
Speaker 1: for years. Sarah slept with the lights on. I couldn't
Speaker 1: stand to have my back to a window. We never
Speaker 1: talked about it, not to each other, not to anyone.
Speaker 2: What was there to say? Who would believe us?
Speaker 1: We'd survived something impossible, something that couldn't exist in the
Speaker 1: rational world. So we pretended it hadn't happened.
Speaker 2: But it had.
Speaker 1: Happened, and it changed us. Tyler grew up quiet, studious.
Speaker 1: He became a software engineer, builds programs for banks and
Speaker 1: insurance companies. Lives in Manhattan now in a high rise
Speaker 1: apartment where you can't even see a tree from his window.
Speaker 1: He's never been camping, never been hiking, never set foot
Speaker 1: in a forest. Since that summer, he says, he's just
Speaker 1: not outdoorsy. We both know better. Sarah found religion, not
Speaker 1: the casual Sunday morning kind, but deep, desperate faith. She
Speaker 1: goes to Mass every day, sometimes twice. She wears a
Speaker 1: silver cross that she never takes off, even in the shower.
Speaker 1: She prays for protection, for forgiveness, for things she can't
Speaker 1: name out loud. The priest thinks she's devoted. I know
Speaker 1: she's terrified. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll
Speaker 1: be back after these messages. We divorced eight years ago,
Speaker 1: not because we didn't love each other, but because we
Speaker 1: couldn't look at each other without remembering. Every time I
Speaker 1: saw her face, I saw it twisted in terror as
Speaker 1: that thing came through our door. Every time she looked
Speaker 1: at me, she saw the man who'd almost gotten her
Speaker 1: and her son killed for the sake of forty acres
Speaker 1: of cursed land. She remarried a nice man named Frank,
Speaker 1: who sells insurance and doesn't understand why she won't go
Speaker 1: on their company camping retreats. They live in Phoenix, now
Speaker 1: about as far from the Alabama woods as you can
Speaker 1: get and still be in America. And me, I never remarried.
Speaker 1: I work, I come home, I watch TV with all
Speaker 1: the lights on. I live in a second floor apartment
Speaker 1: with good locks and a clear view of the parking lot.
Speaker 1: I keep a loaded shotgun in the closet, though I
Speaker 1: know it won't help if they ever come for me,
Speaker 1: because that's the thing I haven't told you the thing
Speaker 1: I've never told anyone.
Speaker 2: They let us go.
Speaker 1: That creature I injured, the one that could have killed
Speaker 1: me with one hand.
Speaker 2: It let me go.
Speaker 1: When Tyler stabbed it, it could have torn him apart,
Speaker 1: it didn't. When Sarah threw that water, it could have
Speaker 1: charged through the pain and destroyed her.
Speaker 2: It didn't.
Speaker 1: They were toying with us, the whole thing, the siege,
Speaker 1: the terror, the attack. It was all a game to them.
Speaker 1: And when we'd provided enough entertainment, when we'd proven ourselves
Speaker 1: worthy opponents, or at least amusing ones, they let us leave.
Speaker 1: But I see them sometimes, not in the flesh, not anymore,
Speaker 1: but in dreams, in shadows, in the corner of my eye,
Speaker 1: when I'm walking past a park at dusk, I know
Speaker 1: they're watching, not hunting, not threatening, just watching, checking in
Speaker 1: on their favorite toy. Because that's what haunts me most,
Speaker 1: not that they exist, not that they terrorized us, but
Speaker 1: that we survived because they chose to let us survive.
Speaker 1: We didn't escape, we were released. And sometimes on quiet nights,
Speaker 1: when I can't sleep, I wonder if they're done with us,
Speaker 1: or if someday when they're bored, when the deep woods
Speaker 1: get too quiet, They'll come to collect what they consider theirs.
Speaker 1: I live in Orlando now, in a studio apartment near
Speaker 1: the airport. The constant sound of planes taking off and
Speaker 1: landing helps me sleep. It drowns out the other sounds,
Speaker 1: the ones that might or might not be my imagination,
Speaker 1: the scratching at windows, the heavy footfalls on the stairs,
Speaker 1: the breathing just outside my door. Last week, I found
Speaker 1: a handprint on my bathroom mirror, too large to be human.
Speaker 1: I told myself it was a trick of the steam,
Speaker 1: a pattern in the condensation that just looked like fingers
Speaker 1: in a palm. I've told myself that every night since.
Speaker 1: But I've started looking for a new apartment, maybe further south,
Speaker 1: maybe the Keys, where there's nothing but ocean and sky.
Speaker 1: It won't help.
Speaker 2: I know that they.
Speaker 1: Found us once, three states away from those Alabama woods.
Speaker 1: They can find us anywhere. But the illusion of safety
Speaker 1: is all I have left, and I cling to it
Speaker 1: like Sarah clings to her cross. That's my story, all
Speaker 1: of it. Every detail I can remember, and many I've
Speaker 1: tried to forget. I know how it sounds. I know
Speaker 1: what you're thinking, old man telling tall tales. Too many beers.
Speaker 1: Too many years, too much time to let a simple
Speaker 1: bear encounter grow into something monstrous in his memory. But
Speaker 1: I have proof, not the kind that would hold up
Speaker 1: in court. Not photographs or video or plaster casts of footprints.
Speaker 1: Those things can be faked, dismissed, explained away. No, my
Speaker 1: proof is simpler than that. The cabin is gone, but
Speaker 1: the land remains. Forty acres of Brennan family property in
Speaker 1: Cleborn County, Alabama. It's mine, technically has been for twenty
Speaker 1: seven years. Never sold it, never could bring myself to
Speaker 1: sign the papers. It just sits there, empty, returning to wilderness.
Speaker 1: And in all those years, with all the development that's
Speaker 1: happened in Alabama, with all the urban sprawl and suburban expansion,
Speaker 1: no one has ever made an offer on it. No developers,
Speaker 1: no hunting clubs, no timber companies. Forty acres of prime woodland,
Speaker 1: and no one wants it.
Speaker 2: The locals know.
Speaker 1: They don't talk about it, not directly, but they know.
Speaker 1: There are places in this world that belong to something
Speaker 1: older than us, something that was here before we came
Speaker 1: down from the trees, before we learned to use tools,
Speaker 1: before we forgot what it meant to be prey. Most
Speaker 1: of those places are gone, now paved over or clearcut
Speaker 1: or developed into subdivisions with names like Whispering Pines and
Speaker 1: Forest Glen, and some remain hidden pockets of the old
Speaker 1: world where the original inhabitants still hold court. If you
Speaker 1: inherit land in the deep woods, if a distant relative
Speaker 1: leaves you a cabin or a homestead that's been in
Speaker 1: the family for generations, ask yourself why it's been empty,
Speaker 1: Ask yourself why they left, Ask yourself why no one
Speaker 1: else wanted it. And if you start finding massive footprints
Speaker 1: around your property, if rocks begin hitting your roof at night,
Speaker 1: if you smell that thick animal stench and hear voices
Speaker 1: that shouldn't exist, don't try to fight, don't try to understand,
Speaker 1: don't try to make friends with the forest. Just leave,
Speaker 1: walk away, run away, crawl. If you have to leave
Speaker 1: everything behind, your possessions can be replaced. Your pride will
Speaker 1: heal your life. Once lost is gone forever. The old ones,
Speaker 1: the tall people, the sasquatch, bigfoot, whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call them, they're They're out there in the deep woods,
Speaker 1: in the places we've forgotten to fear. They were here first,
Speaker 1: they'll be here last, and they don't like visitors. Some
Speaker 1: will say I'm crazy, some will say I'm lying. Some
Speaker 1: will say I'm just an old man trying to make
Speaker 1: sense of a trauma I can't fully remember. Maybe they're right.
Speaker 1: Maybe all of this is just the fantasy of a
Speaker 1: frightened mind trying to explain something unexplainable. But I know
Speaker 1: what I saw, I know what I felt, I know
Speaker 1: what I survived, and I know that somewhere in the
Speaker 1: dark woods of Alabama, they're still out there, watching, waiting,
Speaker 1: playing their ancient games with anyone foolish enough to enter
Speaker 1: their domain. My grandfather tried to warn us in his way.
Speaker 1: He left us the cabin, yes, but he also left
Speaker 1: us the story of why he'd abandoned it. We just
Speaker 1: chose not to listen. We saw opportunity where we should
Speaker 1: have seen danger. We saw salvation where we should have
Speaker 1: seen damnation. Don't make our mistake. When the forest tells
Speaker 1: you to leave, leave when the darkness has eyes. Don't
Speaker 1: look back. When something knocks at your door in the
Speaker 1: dead of night, don't answer. Because sometimes the old stories
Speaker 1: are true, sometimes the monsters are real, and sometimes the
Speaker 1: only reason you survive is because something much older and
Speaker 1: much more powerful than you decided, for reasons you'll never understand,
Speaker 1: to let you go. That's all I have to say.
Speaker 1: That's my testimony, my confession, my warning. Do with it
Speaker 1: what you will, believe it or don't. But if you
Speaker 1: ever find yourself in the deep woods of Alabama or
Speaker 1: anywhere else where the trees grow thick and the darkness
Speaker 1: seems alive, remember this story. Remember what happened to us
Speaker 1: in the summer of nineteen ninety five. Remember and be warned.
Speaker 3: S Pat Pat Pat