Speaker 1: I'm from south central Kentucky. When I was twelve years old,
Speaker 1: we lived on a dairy farm across a gravel road
Speaker 1: from my cousin's house. At the time, I was raising
Speaker 1: some baby chicks that I kept on a high shelf
Speaker 1: and a tall shed that paralleled the back of my
Speaker 1: cousin's house, and I kept them there to keep any
Speaker 1: animals from getting to them. One night, my cousin was
Speaker 1: over and we were watching TV when I suddenly realized
Speaker 1: I had forgotten to feed my chicks. My mom handed
Speaker 1: me a mostly empty box of Quaker oats, and my cousin,
Speaker 1: my little sister, who was three years younger than us,
Speaker 1: and I went out to feed the chicks. My cousin's
Speaker 1: driveway had just recently had a new load of white
Speaker 1: gravel poured on it, and the moon was full that
Speaker 1: night and we could see just fine without the flashlight,
Speaker 1: but I took one with me anyway, so I could
Speaker 1: see inside the shed. The shed door was standing half open,
Speaker 1: so we walked inside and I flipped on the flashlight.
Speaker 1: The shelf where the chicks were on was six feet up.
Speaker 1: I had to use the ladder to reach them, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to make sure they were out of harm's way,
Speaker 1: and as I swung the beam around to face the shelf,
Speaker 1: I got the shock of my life. Standing there on
Speaker 1: its hind legs with its front paws on the shelf
Speaker 1: was a huge white dog like animal, well one of
Speaker 1: a screened I couldn't tell which one of us it was,
Speaker 1: but that prompted the dog thing to drop down on
Speaker 1: all fours. My sister and my cousin took off running
Speaker 1: for the house, but I was frozen in place. This
Speaker 1: thing was hunched in its back, and it started moving
Speaker 1: toward me with one of my baby chicks still in
Speaker 1: its mouth. Its face was covered in blood and it snarled,
Speaker 1: showing me its teeth. As it moved closer, I could
Speaker 1: see red eyes glaring at me, and I knew it
Speaker 1: was going to pounce on me, but still I couldn't move. Please,
Speaker 1: dear Lord, let me move, my mind, cried, as it
Speaker 1: got within five feet of me. Instantly I felt myself
Speaker 1: spring into action. My sister and cousin had already reached
Speaker 1: the house when I broke into a hard sprint. The
Speaker 1: new gravel pulled my feet out from under me, and
Speaker 1: I found myself spilling across my cousin's driveway. As I
Speaker 1: tried to get up, I looked back and saw that thing,
Speaker 1: that monster, standing on its back legs in the moonlight.
Speaker 1: It reared its head and screamed a terrifying howl, like
Speaker 1: a dying woman, and then it looked at me, and
Speaker 1: by then I was back on my feet, and I
Speaker 1: took off for the house. I bolted through the screen
Speaker 1: door to find my cousin and my sister trying to
Speaker 1: explain to my dad what had happened what they saw,
Speaker 1: and I tried to tell him too. We wanted him
Speaker 1: to go check, but he wouldn't go outside. He insisted
Speaker 1: that we didn't see anything, and to tell you the truth,
Speaker 1: I think he was afraid. I heard a lot of
Speaker 1: stories about men out raccoon hunting when their dogs wouldn't
Speaker 1: leave the campfire, and maybe that's what my dad was
Speaker 1: thinking of that moment. I don't know what I saw
Speaker 1: that night, but if that was what kept good hunting
Speaker 1: dogs from leaving the safety of a roaring campfire, it
Speaker 1: made perfect sense to me. Two years later, we moved
Speaker 1: five miles down the road. We had a big Collie.
Speaker 1: Then that dog wasn't afraid of anything, or so we thought.
Speaker 1: One summer night, when the moon was full, we heard
Speaker 1: it scratching at the door trying to get inside. Daddy
Speaker 1: opened the door and that dog almost knocked him down
Speaker 1: trying to get past him. About that time, we all
Speaker 1: heard the same ungodly scream I recognized from that night
Speaker 1: in the shed, and my dad and I stepped outside
Speaker 1: to see what it was. The field next to the
Speaker 1: house was that same white doglike creature standing on its
Speaker 1: hind legs in the moonlight. Dad ushered me inside, where
Speaker 1: we watched from the window as that thing dropped down
Speaker 1: on all fours and walked away. And the next day
Speaker 1: we went to the field to look around. We found
Speaker 1: some white hair in the barbed wire fence around it,
Speaker 1: but we never saw the creature again. I've since heard
Speaker 1: stories of others who have seen it. Though to this
Speaker 1: day I think about that monster that killed all of
Speaker 1: my baby chicks that night, and it ate most of them.
Speaker 1: This encounter took place on October sixth, two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: in the desolate desert of southern Utah. My late wife
Speaker 1: and I were to meet some friends for a multi
Speaker 1: day hiking trip through some slot canyons. For those who
Speaker 1: are not familiar with what a slot canyon is, it's
Speaker 1: a narrow sandstone canyon formed by water runoff with vertical sides.
Speaker 1: By narrow, I mean some areas are several feet wide,
Speaker 1: and while others are barely large enough to fit yourself through.
Speaker 1: It's common to crawl, climb, and repel your way through,
Speaker 1: and sometimes swim scattered pools of standing cold water left
Speaker 1: over from the storms. This particular hike we were doing
Speaker 1: is well known for having these cold pools of water.
Speaker 1: My wife wasn't keen on that part, so she and
Speaker 1: I opted to hike in a different way and join
Speaker 1: the rest of the group halfway and hike out together.
Speaker 1: The very nature of how these canyons are formed is
Speaker 1: why you do not want to be in them when
Speaker 1: it's raining. Storm water moves swiftly through these canyons and
Speaker 1: immediately becomes a deadly flash flood. Often the walls are
Speaker 1: sheer and vertical, so there's no climbing out for escape.
Speaker 1: In fact, every year people die when entering these places
Speaker 1: without concern for the weather. For this, the weather had
Speaker 1: been clear for days leading up to our planned departure
Speaker 1: and was predicted to be a storm free night. Also,
Speaker 1: there is no self service in much of this area,
Speaker 1: so you're on your own. Self sufficiency is expected. Our
Speaker 1: original route traveled through one slot canyon and met up
Speaker 1: with another slot canyon, and carried on further south as
Speaker 1: a tributary to a larger reservoir downstream. Looking at a map,
Speaker 1: it would look like a capital y where these two
Speaker 1: canyons came together. The west entrance is more technical and
Speaker 1: takes more time to traverse, while the east entrance is
Speaker 1: largely a sandy wash bottom and can be traveled much easier. Basically,
Speaker 1: it's like walking on a beach. Just upstream of where
Speaker 1: both canyons meet is a clearing wide enough to camp
Speaker 1: away from the wash. That was the place where we
Speaker 1: planned to meet the others. The main group set off
Speaker 1: on October the fifth, with plans to meet us either
Speaker 1: late on the sixth or early on the seventh. My
Speaker 1: wife and I planned to leave our home and get
Speaker 1: to our meeting point all in the same day, so
Speaker 1: we set off on the sixth. Getting to the trailhead
Speaker 1: for us required a six hour drive, then about eight
Speaker 1: miles of hiking. As usual, we were running late, so
Speaker 1: By the time we were on foot with our gear
Speaker 1: and in motion, it was three o'clock in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: The hike was incredible. The two hundred foot wide wash
Speaker 1: slowly narrowed as the miles went by, and halfway we
Speaker 1: were walking through areas where we could almost touch both sides.
Speaker 1: The colors would glow especially strong as the sun lowered,
Speaker 1: making some of the hallways glow in ways not thought possible.
Speaker 1: It was the golden hour. We were progressing well, spirits
Speaker 1: were up, the map had us just about to the confluence.
Speaker 1: Suddenly we were rocked by the awful stench of death.
Speaker 1: The canyon walls were over four hundred feet tall and
Speaker 1: the canyon was ten to fifteen feet wide, and that
Speaker 1: stench was so concentrated you could almost feel it. Yet
Speaker 1: there was no sign of where it was coming from.
Speaker 1: Nothing nothing in sight on the ground up or down
Speaker 1: the canyon, and with near vertical walls, we were really confused.
Speaker 1: We kept on using our shirts and whatever else to
Speaker 1: filter the air as the canyon continued to twist and turn,
Speaker 1: and then there it was a full size adult mountain
Speaker 1: sheep or ram just a few days dead. I say
Speaker 1: a few days because that was the time since the
Speaker 1: last storm flooding in this canyon, and the carcass wasn't
Speaker 1: covered with runoff debris. It was obvious it had showed
Speaker 1: up afterward. Our suspicion was it slipped and fell down
Speaker 1: into the canyon from above. The gender was impossible to
Speaker 1: determine because the entire abdominal area ribs to pelvis and
Speaker 1: all the way to the spine was missing. Not to
Speaker 1: say the introls were strewn about in the process of
Speaker 1: being devoured or in decomposition. It was outright missing all
Speaker 1: of it. The head was turned away and down into
Speaker 1: the crevice between the ground and the wall. Once we
Speaker 1: identified the source of the stench, we quickly ran past
Speaker 1: it to get to fresher air. Just as we were
Speaker 1: clear of the odor, we walked right into the confluence.
Speaker 1: The joining of three four hundred foot tall large sandstone
Speaker 1: hallways was an awesome sight. I stood in the center,
Speaker 1: and I looked straight up to see the sky in
Speaker 1: the shape of a wy, and I could tell that
Speaker 1: we needed to find a spot to camp soon. Luckily,
Speaker 1: the clearing where we were camping was just a few
Speaker 1: hundred feet away up the west canyon to our surprise,
Speaker 1: the West Canyon was wet, meaning it had a small
Speaker 1: amount of water flowing through it, so much so that
Speaker 1: we were jumping from sand mound to sand mound trying
Speaker 1: to keep our feet dry. We weren't concerned with flooding
Speaker 1: because we were confident with our weather forecasts, and it's
Speaker 1: also common to have water springs or seeps in the
Speaker 1: desert canyons. As we walked through a particularly narrow section
Speaker 1: along the way, the walls gradually widening to around two
Speaker 1: hundred feet with large sandy banks on both sides, and
Speaker 1: they were gaining elevations safely away from the wash bottom.
Speaker 1: We chose to stay left as we hiked up stream
Speaker 1: and found a clearing large enough to camp for the night.
Speaker 1: It was about twenty or so feet up from the
Speaker 1: wash bottom and about thirty feet away, with small trees
Speaker 1: and bushes between to give us a little privacy. After
Speaker 1: setting up camp, we had just enough light left to
Speaker 1: look around a little. I personally wanted to see if
Speaker 1: anyone else was around that we should be aware of,
Speaker 1: and just as I hoped, we were alone. It soon
Speaker 1: got dark, so we started back to our tent. It
Speaker 1: was then we took notice that as we walked along
Speaker 1: the wash, our footsteps sounded like a splat splat as
Speaker 1: we stepped. I remember jokingly telling my wife that it
Speaker 1: would likely wake us up should our friends arrive before
Speaker 1: we got up the next morning. Before long, we were
Speaker 1: zipped in our tent and down for the night, when
Speaker 1: just minutes later, out of the pitch black night, we
Speaker 1: were met with an absolutely insane roar coming down through
Speaker 1: the canyon. It was of such volume and force that
Speaker 1: we were instantly beside ourselves with fear bordering on outright panic.
Speaker 1: Everything about it seemed impossible. The sheer capacity to create
Speaker 1: such a sustained volume was outside my understanding. Out there.
Speaker 1: At worst, maybe you would see a mountain lion or
Speaker 1: a black bear on a very rare occasion, but nothing
Speaker 1: that would come to the combined guttural roar of an
Speaker 1: African lion mixed with that of a silver backed guerrilla.
Speaker 1: What still has my head spinning is the duration. It spanned,
Speaker 1: almost ten full seconds, with no change and intensity throughout.
Speaker 1: Instantly we knew first we were not alone as previously thought,
Speaker 1: and second we were definitely not on top of the
Speaker 1: food chain. It was then that I took notice of
Speaker 1: my wife, who at the time was having an absolute
Speaker 1: melt down. She was yelling and squirming around in her
Speaker 1: sleeping bag as if she was possessed. It was everything
Speaker 1: I could do to get her to try to be silent,
Speaker 1: and as I held her down with both arms and
Speaker 1: a leg so we could hear. Easier said than done,
Speaker 1: but done nonetheless. And there we sat, holding each other
Speaker 1: in our tent, whispering and wondering what the hell was happening.
Speaker 1: My wife, having grown up on a farm, told me
Speaker 1: she had never heard or known of any animal that
Speaker 1: could make that kind of sound, except on television. I'm
Speaker 1: a city boy, having spent most of my youth mountaineering,
Speaker 1: and I've met up with mountain lions, black and brown bear, moose,
Speaker 1: wolves and whatnot. And I was absolutely stumped. Neither of
Speaker 1: us had a clue what could have made that sound.
Speaker 1: So we lay there in dead pitch black silence for
Speaker 1: around ten minutes, when I eventually mustard up the nerve
Speaker 1: to sit up. Very slowly. My mind kept racing around
Speaker 1: for anything that we may have had with us that
Speaker 1: could be converted to a weapon of defense. The two
Speaker 1: metal bars in my internal frame pack A three inch
Speaker 1: pocket knife, tent, poles, a rock. I didn't find anything
Speaker 1: that I thought would keep whatever this was off of
Speaker 1: us if it attacked. Suddenly, whatever this thing was showed up.
Speaker 1: As I sat in the dark, something very large and
Speaker 1: very fast ran down the wash toward us from the
Speaker 1: upstream at my left, passing in front of us, and
Speaker 1: to my right, out and down toward the confluence. And
Speaker 1: it did it in seven unmistakable bipedal steps. It was
Speaker 1: pitch black, and I stereophonically heard the splights of the
Speaker 1: steps that had to have been more than fifteen feet
Speaker 1: apart as it ran past me, no more than thirty
Speaker 1: feet in front of where I was seated. The creature
Speaker 1: made a breathy, gruntle sound, almost matching the pace of
Speaker 1: its steps, and had passed through the one hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty foot clearing and under three seconds. If we were
Speaker 1: scared before, it was nothing compared to how we felt now.
Speaker 1: All we could do was sit and wait and wait,
Speaker 1: and that is what we did for hours. I don't
Speaker 1: remember when we finally fell asleep, but I was sure
Speaker 1: wide awake when my wife started packing to leave at
Speaker 1: first light. I spent a few minutes looking around in
Speaker 1: the daylight, trying to find anything that would give me
Speaker 1: an indication of what it could have been. But I
Speaker 1: didn't find any footprints, and my wife was making it
Speaker 1: clear she was leaving with or without me. I think
Speaker 1: it either climbed out of the canyon or it was
Speaker 1: stepping in water the entire time. I don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm confident with. However, while not having seen anything, I
Speaker 1: know what I heard, and that is enough for me
Speaker 1: and our friends that we were to meet up with.
Speaker 1: They were delayed with minor injuries. There was absolutely no
Speaker 1: keeping my wife there a single minute longer than necessary,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't about to let her walk out alone.
Speaker 1: I left markings in the sand washbottom and put a
Speaker 1: note for our friends in the hiking register before informing
Speaker 1: the ranger at his station that our friends were still
Speaker 1: out there. He said another ranger was making the track
Speaker 1: that day and he'd let him know to keep an
Speaker 1: eye out. It turned out that our friends were around
Speaker 1: six hours behind us when they called. They claimed they
Speaker 1: neither heard nor saw anything out of the ordinary during
Speaker 1: their entire trip, and that a few nasty blisters were
Speaker 1: the reason they decided to leave early. Strangers still They
Speaker 1: all say they didn't see any dead animals along the
Speaker 1: way either, while I clearly remember taking notice that the
Speaker 1: sheep had not changed in any way when we ran
Speaker 1: past it again on our way out. We still haven't
Speaker 1: told those guys anything about our experience that night. My
Speaker 1: father was a logger, a for a stranger, a mechanic,
Speaker 1: an iron worker, and a welder. He and I spent
Speaker 1: a great deal of time in the woods together. My
Speaker 1: father was no stranger to the wilderness. My paternal grandfather
Speaker 1: had been a fisherman until he enlisted and went to
Speaker 1: fight the Kaiser in World War One. A short time
Speaker 1: after arriving in Belgium, a shell explode did three feet
Speaker 1: from him and practically ripped him to shreds. But he survived,
Speaker 1: and he spent about a year in the hospital in
Speaker 1: England until the doctor sent him home to Newfoundland, telling
Speaker 1: him that he would never fish again and probably never
Speaker 1: work again. He went home and proved the doctors both
Speaker 1: right and wrong. He never did fish again. Instead, he
Speaker 1: chose to start logging and sawing lumber with the assistance
Speaker 1: of his sons. My grandfather's mill was located at the
Speaker 1: mouth of a short heavily timbered valley, where they cut
Speaker 1: about fifteen to twenty percent of their lumber. They practiced
Speaker 1: selective cutting and did a five or six year rotation,
Speaker 1: moving to a new area each year. As each son
Speaker 1: came of age to work in the mill or the woods.
Speaker 1: Grandfather warned them to never, under any circumstances, be caught
Speaker 1: in the valley after dark. He never did give a reason,
Speaker 1: but Grandfather was star enough in his warning that none
Speaker 1: of the brothers ever disregarded his advice. My father told
Speaker 1: me that sometimes late in the evening, when they were
Speaker 1: doing their post work day maintenance by lantern light, they
Speaker 1: would hear strange sounds coming from the valley. There would
Speaker 1: be wood knocks and growls and screams, and owl hoots
Speaker 1: and whistles, and brush breaking, and occasionally the sound of
Speaker 1: an animal dying. None of the brothers ever saw anything,
Speaker 1: and Grandfather never admitted to seeing anything, but they all
Speaker 1: knew that there was something terrifying in those woods. The
Speaker 1: neighbors nearby and in surrounding villages knew that the valley
Speaker 1: was occupied by demons, and nobody went there after dark.
Speaker 1: The fear lasted up until the nineteen sixties, when I
Speaker 1: was a boy, and it was my father who delivered
Speaker 1: my warning. The mill had been shut down in nineteen
Speaker 1: forty nine due to political issues, and everyone found alternative employment,
Speaker 1: but the brothers and grandfather still operated it now and
Speaker 1: then for personal use. One day in the early nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: a friend of my grandfather's arrived at the mill with
Speaker 1: his horse and slay to go into the valley to
Speaker 1: cut some firewood. Well, grandfather was there at that time,
Speaker 1: and since it was late in the day, he reminded
Speaker 1: his friend to be out of the valley before it
Speaker 1: got dark. The friend scoffed at the advice and headed
Speaker 1: out anyway. Grandfather finished sawing his lumber around dusk, and
Speaker 1: he loaded his trailer and began oiling and greasing the
Speaker 1: bearings in the mill, and all of a sudden his
Speaker 1: ears picked up the sound of pounding hoofs and a
Speaker 1: voice yelling at the horse to go faster. Grandfather looked
Speaker 1: up in time to see his friend and the horse
Speaker 1: coming tearing out of the valley towing an empty sleigh,
Speaker 1: and grandfather intercepted the horse and managed to bring it
Speaker 1: to a halt. Both man and horse looked wild, and
Speaker 1: it took a while for grandfather to calm them both down.
Speaker 1: When his friend regained enough of his composure to speak,
Speaker 1: his first words were, I should have listened to you.
Speaker 1: He had gotten about halfway through the valley when he
Speaker 1: saw an ideal spot for cutting. He gave the horse
Speaker 1: some feed and water, and then he went to work.
Speaker 1: A couple of times he noted that the horse had
Speaker 1: seemed fidgety. He couldn't see anything wrong, so he returned
Speaker 1: to his work. He recalled several times hearing something moving
Speaker 1: around in the brush, but passed it off as being
Speaker 1: a moose or some other form of wildlife, and he
Speaker 1: ignored it. By dark, he had a load cut and
Speaker 1: was almost ready to head home. He picked up his
Speaker 1: gear and was about to secure it with the load
Speaker 1: ropes when all hell broke loose. A huge, hairy, manlike
Speaker 1: creature burst out of the trees. It was a giant.
Speaker 1: It was eight feet tall and probably weighed five hundred pounds, said,
Speaker 1: and it was screaming and gnashing its teeth and breaking
Speaker 1: off trees as it rushed forward. According to the man,
Speaker 1: it probably broke off more wood in a few seconds
Speaker 1: than he had cut all afternoon. What scared him. Most
Speaker 1: were its eyes. They were glowing red and contained more
Speaker 1: pure evil than he had ever encountered in his life.
Speaker 1: I'm never going back into that valley again, he swore
Speaker 1: to my grandfather, and with that he snapped his reins
Speaker 1: and headed home as fast as he could, And he
Speaker 1: kept his vow, and he never returned. As a child,
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, we used to ride our bicycles
Speaker 1: near the mill to play in the shavings and saw
Speaker 1: dust in the nearby river. We always had fun, but
Speaker 1: we never felt comfortable there. In the evenings, we always
Speaker 1: felt like we were being watched, and we always made
Speaker 1: sure to be home after dark.