Speaker 1: Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
Speaker 1: on here, something just because my dog. Something killed your dog.
Speaker 1: My dog. We're flying through the air over the tree.
Speaker 1: I don't know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm
Speaker 1: really confused. All I saw was my dog coming over
Speaker 1: the fence and he was dead. And once you hit
Speaker 1: the ground, like, I didn't see any cars. All I
Speaker 1: saw was my dog coming over the fence. What are
Speaker 1: you putting? We got some wonder or something crawling around
Speaker 1: out here. Did you see what it was?
Speaker 2: Or was it was?
Speaker 1: Standing up? I'm out here looking through the window now
Speaker 1: and I don't see anything. I don't want to go outside.
Speaker 1: Jesus Quice, you better hello, get somebody out here. What
Speaker 1: quin I'm out there?
Speaker 3: That's thought of a bitch.
Speaker 1: About sixty forty nine. I don't know. Easy announ there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I want to welcome you to the latest episode of
Speaker 2: my series, The Strange and Unexplayed Phenomena of the South
Speaker 2: Mountains of North Carolina. I love hearing and collecting the
Speaker 2: first hand accounts of people who have a witness things,
Speaker 2: especially the people who have witnessed the phenomena that are
Speaker 2: known to occur here in the South Mountains area, there's
Speaker 2: a couple of subcategories that intrigue me even more. One
Speaker 2: of those is hearing the accounts of the old timers.
Speaker 2: There's a couple of reasons for that, but one of
Speaker 2: them is it helps date this phenomena. The common myth
Speaker 2: is that all of this began in December of nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy eight, in the early part of nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: that's when all this started. That simply is not true.
Speaker 2: Talking with the old timers who tell me of their
Speaker 2: accounts when they were older, tell me accounts of their parents,
Speaker 2: their grandparents, it helps date this and it goes back
Speaker 2: decades and decades. Today I bring you the story of
Speaker 2: one of the old timers, a dear friend of mine
Speaker 2: who has since past all and I've just referred to
Speaker 2: him in this episode to Smitty, but I dedicate this
Speaker 2: to Smitty. May you rest in peace. Brother Smitty was
Speaker 2: a hardcool country boy, outdoorsman, fisherman, haunter, camper, hiker. He
Speaker 2: knew these South Mountains like the back of his hand.
Speaker 2: The only time that he didn't live here in this
Speaker 2: area is when the United States Army drafted him and
Speaker 2: sent him to Vietnam. The year was nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: He had just finished his two year stint in United
Speaker 2: States Army. He was home back in his beloved South
Speaker 2: Mountains and was just readjusting. And he had an offul
Speaker 2: with whom he was particularly close and his uncle again
Speaker 2: rekindled their relationship. On a certain day, he suggested going
Speaker 2: squirrel honey, but he suggested that they visit an area
Speaker 2: that was particularly rich in squirrels. The day that I
Speaker 2: interviewed Smitty about this, he said, I didn't want to go,
Speaker 2: and I asked him why, and he said, because that
Speaker 2: area is further back inside the South Mountains. He said,
Speaker 2: we were always uncomfortable there. We felt like we were
Speaker 2: being watched. Many times we heard strange noises, especially when
Speaker 2: it was close to sundown. But on this occasion, he said,
Speaker 2: he agreed the idea of an area plenty full and
Speaker 2: squirrel And you got to remember, to this day, there's
Speaker 2: people here in this area that are poverty stricken, but
Speaker 2: even more in this area's history and back in the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, and the idea of putting some food on
Speaker 2: the table wasn't just as for it, it was a necessity.
Speaker 2: So they went, he and his uppel. This particular area,
Speaker 2: as I said, was deeper into the South Mountains, on
Speaker 2: the Cleveland County, North Carolina side of the South Mountains,
Speaker 2: so it required a hike. They began their journey about
Speaker 2: ten that morning, wanting to get there and do early
Speaker 2: afternoon and early evening journey. They begin their journey that day,
Speaker 2: and it required them to ascend one of the small
Speaker 2: mountains on the south side of the South Mountains and
Speaker 2: then from there they would have to descend back into
Speaker 2: a creek bottle go partially upward up the next mountain
Speaker 2: to this area that was rich in squirrel, rich in
Speaker 2: hickory trees, rich in oak trees, with the acorns and
Speaker 2: the hickory nuts particularly concentrated in those trees. As they
Speaker 2: reached the peak of the first mountain that they needed
Speaker 2: to cross, they stopped for rest. Smitty, freshome from the
Speaker 2: Jungles of Vietnam, was still in a state of hyper observance.
Speaker 2: He said, as he looked around. He looked downhill in
Speaker 2: approximately three hundred yards away there was a large hair
Speaker 2: covered creature kind of laying on a large log, and
Speaker 2: Smitty told me, he said, I actually thought I was
Speaker 2: seeing things, he said. He questioned what he was seeing,
Speaker 2: so he pointed out to his uncle, who verified that's
Speaker 2: what they were seeing. And I asked him to describe it.
Speaker 2: He said. It was very large, completely covered in hair,
Speaker 2: with a pointed head. The whole back of its head
Speaker 2: was covered in hair, and you couldn't even see ears.
Speaker 2: They never saw the front at that time, and they
Speaker 2: watched it in shock, And as though this creature knew
Speaker 2: that it was being watched, it suddenly got up and
Speaker 2: didn't turn all the way around, but turned slightly and
Speaker 2: then proceeded north in the opposite direction downhill, which was
Speaker 2: the direction they were headed. They discussed the matter. They
Speaker 2: knew of the phenomena in this area, the old phenomena,
Speaker 2: but they decided to continue anyway, part out of curiosity
Speaker 2: and of course part out of wanting to get a
Speaker 2: good hunt that day, And so they proceeded. They began
Speaker 2: to ascend from that peak they had previously occupied. They
Speaker 2: got down to that next creek bottom. They ascended up
Speaker 2: the next mountain partially to the area in question, and
Speaker 2: they begin their swirl. But to their surprise, that day,
Speaker 2: they all not one squirrel. Very unusual, extremely unusual. Never before,
Speaker 2: said Smitty, had they not left there with less than
Speaker 2: a dozen squirrel But that day they saw neary a squirrel.
Speaker 2: As it came close to time to pack it in
Speaker 2: and leave, they heard what Smitty described as a deep hollor,
Speaker 2: like something was mad at them. They said it was
Speaker 2: very close, but they could not see it, and they
Speaker 2: froze in place and watched. And as they watched, they
Speaker 2: soon began hearing footsteps. The footsteps were getting closer to them.
Speaker 2: The problem was that the footsteps was coming from the
Speaker 2: direction they needed to go, and they didn't know what
Speaker 2: to do. They didn't want to go the opposite direction
Speaker 2: because that led further into the interior of the South Mountains.
Speaker 2: Then suddenly they saw it. The sun wasn't set yet,
Speaker 2: but it was getting close. They saw what Smitty described
Speaker 2: as a giant Harry booger. Now booger is a Southern
Speaker 2: term for a monster. I asked him to describe it.
Speaker 2: He said it went five six hundred pounds easy seven
Speaker 2: feet taller, covered in hair except for its eye area,
Speaker 2: its nose area, in its mouth area, and that it
Speaker 2: was a dark reddish brown hair. It came closer and
Speaker 2: then it stopped. The men were completely shocked and terrorized,
Speaker 2: and for good reason. They were only armed with sixteen
Speaker 2: gage shotguns, and those shotguns they had bird shot, not
Speaker 2: a very effective thing to defend yourself with, and they
Speaker 2: were just unsure what to do. But it began to
Speaker 2: move closer, and it would stop and do another one
Speaker 2: of those yells, a showling growl, and on several occasions
Speaker 2: they saw it show its teeth. It would stop and
Speaker 2: put on this display of aggression, And so they decided
Speaker 2: to had the opposite direction of the way they actually
Speaker 2: needed to go, and to go up that hill to
Speaker 2: the top of that mountain, and it pursued them the
Speaker 2: whole way. They would to get a breather. At one
Speaker 2: point the awful fail and Smitty had to help him up,
Speaker 2: but they got to the peak and it was still coming.
Speaker 2: They descended back down that peak, heading toward the creek
Speaker 2: bottom that Smitty knew would take them to a road,
Speaker 2: and as they got halfway down that other side of
Speaker 2: that small mountain, they heard that yelling, growling howl once again,
Speaker 2: and they looked up and this creature that they reported
Speaker 2: was standing there, putting on the biggest aggressive display yet
Speaker 2: repeatedly yelling in the manner that had been yelling and
Speaker 2: showing its teeth, was rocking back and forth and back
Speaker 2: and forth, and then would start yelling again. They kept going.
Speaker 2: They reached the creek bottom. By then it was dark
Speaker 2: down there in these woods at night, and at dark
Speaker 2: that's not a fun place to be. They reached the
Speaker 2: creek bottom, they made the road, they got out of there.
Speaker 2: My friend Smitty said, Jerry, I never went back to
Speaker 2: that area again, And he said, I never went hunting
Speaker 2: again without also being armed with a forty four magnum pistol.
Speaker 2: And the man was terrified when he told me. The
Speaker 2: story tonight's episode involves, like last week, a uncle and
Speaker 2: nephew duo. I'm not using the real names here, but
Speaker 2: we'll start off with uncle death. Uncle Jeff lives in
Speaker 2: this area here south of the South Mountains mountain chain,
Speaker 2: just a few miles from the southern border of the
Speaker 2: state park, a country boy, outdoorsman, hunter, fisher, camp or hiker,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And then his nephew Jake, who
Speaker 2: lives about an hour east of here. Now, there was
Speaker 2: a certain period of time that young Jake would travel
Speaker 2: up here on Thursdays to spend time with his uncle.
Speaker 2: And on those Thursdays they would attend the local bluegrass church,
Speaker 2: which is a regular church. They just do bluegrass music.
Speaker 2: They don't have a piano. They got a banger. They
Speaker 2: got to get to our dog house base, a mantlin,
Speaker 2: a fiddle, a doughbro. But Jeff and his nephew, Jake,
Speaker 2: had that in common. They were both blue grass musicians,
Speaker 2: Jeff's bluegrass vocalists that were both heavily in the bluegrass,
Speaker 2: So they had that link and they had a really
Speaker 2: good relationship for an awful and a nephew. And then
Speaker 2: after each service, Jake would follow his uncle home endings
Speaker 2: stay another couple hours, sometimes on up into the night,
Speaker 2: just hanging around, maybe picking cutting up, talking that kind
Speaker 2: of thing. But on one particular cold November night in
Speaker 2: twenty eighteen, things happened as I described. They went to
Speaker 2: the service, Jake followed his uncle back to the house
Speaker 2: and they spent some time together and a little after
Speaker 2: eleven o'clock, Jake said, I'm going to have to go.
Speaker 2: Uncle Jeff walket him to the door and they said
Speaker 2: they're goodbyes. Jeff started the process of getting ready for bed.
Speaker 2: He went to plug his phone up to charge it
Speaker 2: in at rank it was his nephew who, in a
Speaker 2: very frightened and anxious voice, simply said, I need you
Speaker 2: to get out here right now, and he hung up.
Speaker 2: Jeff had fortunately not shed his boots, she had grabbed
Speaker 2: the coat, and he got outside, not having a clue
Speaker 2: what to expect, and he found his nephew to simply
Speaker 2: be standing over in the yard, which is on high ground.
Speaker 2: And he walked up to him and said, what's going on?
Speaker 2: And his nephew said, pointed across the way, and he said, listen,
Speaker 2: something is over there. Sure enough, in a few seconds,
Speaker 2: Jeff heard the distinct sound of something walking in those
Speaker 2: woods across the way from them. Now they were on
Speaker 2: high ground. And then that went down to a little
Speaker 2: country road that's the dead end road, and then a fence,
Speaker 2: and then about ten yards past that fence was the woodline.
Speaker 2: And this woodline was the starting area of a higher
Speaker 2: or what in other parts of the country you might
Speaker 2: call it a drawl or a valley, but it was
Speaker 2: the starting point of a hollow that was very deep
Speaker 2: and run all the way to a major creek. Here
Speaker 2: in northern Cleveland County called Wards Creek. So they listened,
Speaker 2: and they kept hearing the sound of something moving, and
Speaker 2: it was clear to Jail that it was something walking
Speaker 2: on two feet. He made a mental note at the
Speaker 2: time that it was heavy footed, that it seemed to
Speaker 2: be walking slow and deliberately, and all the while getting
Speaker 2: closer and closer to them, And he told Jake, he said,
Speaker 2: I've got to run inside and get my spotlight. And
Speaker 2: he left Jake there for just a couple of minutes,
Speaker 2: and he run in and found the spotlight, came back outside,
Speaker 2: and the sound of the footfalls continued, and he began
Speaker 2: to spotlight those woods. Now, keep in mind, though this
Speaker 2: is November when this happened, and the leaves were off
Speaker 2: the trees, it's still so thick in some of these
Speaker 2: parts of these woods, with the big trees, medium trees, saplings,
Speaker 2: the undergrowth, you can't see far into them at night,
Speaker 2: even with the flashlight. So he just continued to scan
Speaker 2: with spotlight, trying to hone in on the source of
Speaker 2: the sound. It had stopped getting closer, but it had
Speaker 2: not stopped. It sounded as though it was pacing back
Speaker 2: and forth just inside the woodline, and as he spotlighted.
Speaker 2: He stopped because he thought he saw movement, and he
Speaker 2: concentrated any focus and was trying to figure out what,
Speaker 2: if anything, he was looking at, and then without warning,
Speaker 2: there was this angry sounding guttural, low based yell or shout,
Speaker 2: followed by what was described as an ape like sound.
Speaker 2: Rather than describe it, I'll just try to mimic it
Speaker 2: the way that they mimicked it to me, and it
Speaker 2: sounded something like this. They stopped. He didn't see anything.
Speaker 2: He didn't see any movement. Now, we all face points
Speaker 2: in life on when we have the fight or flight reaction,
Speaker 2: and young Jake had the flight reaction, and he broke
Speaker 2: out and ran toward the house. Now, Jeb being an
Speaker 2: old country boy, he knows if you're out in the
Speaker 2: woods or something in some situation like that and your
Speaker 2: buddy runs, the best thing to do is follow him
Speaker 2: and ask questions later, and that's what he did. So
Speaker 2: they got into the house and they were talking to
Speaker 2: each other for what was that. Now they were both
Speaker 2: well aware of the Lord. Jeff had actually had some
Speaker 2: experiences in the past, and curiosity got the best of them.
Speaker 2: If you haven't experienced that, curiosity bug is gonna bite you.
Speaker 2: Trust me, it will change things, and that curiosity bug
Speaker 2: will get you. They elected to come back outside. Jake said,
Speaker 2: let me grab my piece out of my vehicle. He
Speaker 2: grabbed a handgun, so at that point in time they
Speaker 2: did have some protection. Jeff resumed spotlighting and they could
Speaker 2: hear the source of this continuing to walk, pacing back
Speaker 2: and forth, and it stopped, and after a few minutes
Speaker 2: they decided to go downhill, cross that road and go
Speaker 2: to that fence. And they still had the relative safety
Speaker 2: of about ten yards of clear area between that fence
Speaker 2: and the woods. And they got down to the fence.
Speaker 2: The walking resumed, except now it was walking away from them,
Speaker 2: and it was clear to them that it was descending
Speaker 2: back down into the depths of that holler, and it
Speaker 2: continued to get more distant. But then they could tell
Speaker 2: that it was not moving away from them anymore, and
Speaker 2: it was pacing back and forth and back and forth.
Speaker 2: They would hear more of the sounds, and then it
Speaker 2: all stopped. And stay tuned for more sasquatch hot to see.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. After these messages, Jeff and Jake,
Speaker 2: after a few minutes, decided to go back up into
Speaker 2: the yard on high ground, and they heard the steps
Speaker 2: coming back up out of the holler toward them, closer
Speaker 2: and closer. They knew at that point that it was
Speaker 2: as close as it had been yet. Jeff was faithfully
Speaker 2: spotlighting those woods, trying to hone in to see anything
Speaker 2: that he could see, and finally it happened. He testifies
Speaker 2: that he clearly saw a mouth and an upper chest,
Speaker 2: and that the only thing that wasn't covered by hair
Speaker 2: was the mouth. To the best of his knowledge, it
Speaker 2: was a reddish brown colored hair, and he was mesmerized
Speaker 2: by it, caught up in a moment again and looking,
Speaker 2: and suddenly the shout, these guttural yells started again with
Speaker 2: those a black noises. They clearly heard stomping and the
Speaker 2: yelling and the stomping, and then he saw what the
Speaker 2: spotlight that one of the trees was shaking violently back
Speaker 2: and forth. And they felt relatively safe, they had protection,
Speaker 2: they had a lot of distance, but both were very uneasy,
Speaker 2: and both were very frightened. And that continued for several minutes,
Speaker 2: and then finally it stopped. They heard the footsteps. They
Speaker 2: heard the footsteps getting more distant and more distant until
Speaker 2: finally they didn't hear them anymore. So they were just
Speaker 2: standing there wandering what just happened? Whatever this was, what
Speaker 2: was it doing. Was it toying with them? Was it
Speaker 2: sending out a clear message this is my area you
Speaker 2: need to leave. But to this day both men are
Speaker 2: deeply affected. As a matter of fact, that night, Jake said,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if I want to drive out of here.
Speaker 2: The rock going to come out of the woods. It's
Speaker 2: something going to step out in the road, and said
Speaker 2: I'll provide over watch with the spotlight. And Jake was
Speaker 2: able to safely leave. But to this day they were
Speaker 2: both deeply assafted that And so would you. An elderly
Speaker 2: couple came to me in the winter of twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two and said that they had an encounter that night before.
Speaker 2: This was a November of twenty twenty two, and that
Speaker 2: they was riding up a road here in this area
Speaker 2: north of Kayser. As they went up a hill off
Speaker 2: to the right, he said he noticed this large person.
Speaker 2: But he said as he got closer, he said it
Speaker 2: was way too large to be a man. And he said,
Speaker 2: I've seen that it was covered in the hair. He
Speaker 2: had slowed down because I was afraid it was going
Speaker 2: to step out in front of him. But as they
Speaker 2: approached it, it turned its head and looked at them,
Speaker 2: and when the lights hid its eyes that they shone
Speaker 2: red and him and his wife were both shaken and said,
Speaker 2: we'll never go out after dark again. But it's some
Speaker 2: events that spend the time period from November twenty eighteen
Speaker 2: until August of this year. Are they trying to herd us?
Speaker 2: In the fourth week of November of twenty eighteen, a
Speaker 2: father son duo ascended a ridge and separated and went
Speaker 2: to their respective deer stands. Well, we're going to focus
Speaker 2: on the sun. Young Calvin is very experienced, mature for
Speaker 2: his age, old man who had hunted since he was
Speaker 2: very small, and was a very capable of pondering outdoorsman.
Speaker 2: But he got into his tree stand at four thirty
Speaker 2: that morning and simply began to wait for slom. And
Speaker 2: he said that about four forty five he heard the
Speaker 2: distinct sound of footsteps, and as an experienced hunter, he
Speaker 2: said that he knew that it was something walking on
Speaker 2: two feet, and the footsteps got closer and closer, and
Speaker 2: suddenly the footsteps became slower and more deliberate, and it
Speaker 2: put him in mind, and I agree with him that
Speaker 2: his position was being stalked by something. And then the
Speaker 2: footsteps stopped. Within a few minutes, he heard what he described
Speaker 2: as so ape like whooping went on just for a
Speaker 2: minute or two, and by then he was frightened, according
Speaker 2: to his testimony, but just being on Hiler and the
Speaker 2: listening and intently watching into the darkness, it suddenly heard
Speaker 2: the sound of something crashing through the tree limbs, and
Speaker 2: he said that he just instinctively knew something had been thrown.
Speaker 2: He heard a thud, and the tree in which he
Speaker 2: was in vibrated. It struck the tree in which it
Speaker 2: was sitting, And by then he was ready to go,
Speaker 2: but he did not want to descend out of the
Speaker 2: tree stand And I think that was a very wise move.
Speaker 2: It's better to stay twenty four feet up than down
Speaker 2: on the forest floor and you don't know what's going on.
Speaker 2: The next morning they got out of the tree stands
Speaker 2: and he fell a large rock a little smaller than
Speaker 2: a volleyball, had hit the tree that he was in.
Speaker 2: It had knocked bark off the tree, which was a
Speaker 2: large tree, and also dended the wood underlying the bark,
Speaker 2: so it was thrown a tremendous force. Not only did
Speaker 2: they not harvest the deer that morning, but he and
Speaker 2: his father said that they saw nothing. No deer, no raccoons,
Speaker 2: no skunks, nothing, which is very unusual for this area.
Speaker 2: I allow looked. The retired deputy sheriff from Burke County
Speaker 2: investigated this. We saw the rock, the damage tree, and
Speaker 2: we found about thirty five yards from where his tree
Speaker 2: stand was, something very large had been bedding down there.
Speaker 2: You old Calvin nasty, he said, are they trying to
Speaker 2: hurt us? And we both agreed it. It's just probably
Speaker 2: not a good idea to ever go into these woods
Speaker 2: after dark by yourself. The second event I want to
Speaker 2: tell you about was a group of hikers, not hikers,
Speaker 2: and they were hiking a high ridge not far from
Speaker 2: where I am right now as I record this. They
Speaker 2: were doing it for fun. They were talking, laughing, no
Speaker 2: reason to be quiet or not use their flashlights, And
Speaker 2: as they descended the end of the ridge, the group
Speaker 2: was caught by surprise by again the sound of something
Speaker 2: crashing through the trees. A large rock came in from
Speaker 2: their right and impacted, almost hitting one of the members
Speaker 2: of the hiking party, and there were five of them.
Speaker 2: They stopped, certainly, not expecting that, and they listened and observe,
Speaker 2: and nothing else happened, and they went back to their camp.
Speaker 2: Nothing else of note happened the rest of the night,
Speaker 2: except to say that at about three point thirty in
Speaker 2: the morning, from several locations around them, they heard the
Speaker 2: sound of a low frequency growling howl, and they felt
Speaker 2: as though they were surrounded. And that's horrifying. I've been
Speaker 2: in that position, and it is truly horrifying. Two of
Speaker 2: the members of the group has not been back since
Speaker 2: the third event. I want to tell you about two people,
Speaker 2: and one of those people was me. We were out
Speaker 2: scouting areas along creeks and along the Broad River looking
Speaker 2: for footprints, and we came to a bridge on a
Speaker 2: dirt road, and underneath it we failed one single print
Speaker 2: on a sand bar in the middle of the river,
Speaker 2: and the print was three and a half inches d
Speaker 2: From the water line to the print it was four feet,
Speaker 2: and from the print to the other water line in
Speaker 2: the direction of travel, it was four feet, meaning whatever
Speaker 2: made that print and the weight sufficient to depress its
Speaker 2: foot three and a half inches into hard packed rocky
Speaker 2: sind and it had a stride of four feet at least.
Speaker 2: We took pictures of it. We got in my friend's
Speaker 2: brand new jeep and we commenced to driving up the
Speaker 2: dirt road in about one hundred and fifty two hundred
Speaker 2: feet away. Suddenly something hit the jeep. I thought that
Speaker 2: one of the windows had been blowing down. I thought
Speaker 2: that we had been shot at. But the driver, my friend,
Speaker 2: said that it hit the roof above his head and
Speaker 2: it was apparent to him something had been thrown. And
Speaker 2: I said, do you want to go back and look
Speaker 2: for the rock or check the damage? He said no.
Speaker 2: So we got back to my place and in the
Speaker 2: top of his jeep was a very large gouge. The rock,
Speaker 2: which we never foiled because it had gone off the
Speaker 2: jeep into the woods down a hill, was large and
Speaker 2: headed hard enough to damage his new jeep. He wasn't mad.
Speaker 2: He said that was a pretty good way to damage
Speaker 2: a jeep if you're going to damage a jeep, and
Speaker 2: he has not been back on those excursions with me.
Speaker 2: The fourth and final event that I want to tell
Speaker 2: you about is probably the most horrifying. Two people, Ray
Speaker 2: who we've talked about before, and his friend Vera, were
Speaker 2: creek walking. Now, creek walking is simply where you walk
Speaker 2: in the creek rather than hiking along the sides of
Speaker 2: the creek, and the advantage to that is that you
Speaker 2: don't have to negotiate the thick foliage of the creek bottom.
Speaker 2: And this was in August of this year. But they
Speaker 2: were creek walking for fun, but they were aware of
Speaker 2: the reputation of this area and had some experiences. And
Speaker 2: as they acting in the creek, they came to a
Speaker 2: point to stop to take a water break, and Rist
Speaker 2: and Ray, being somewhat mischievous enjoying the prospect of aggravating Vera,
Speaker 2: picked up a stick and swatted a tree twice, mimicking
Speaker 2: a woodknock, which we've talked about old previous episodes. This
Speaker 2: was at four o'clock broad daylight. Now I can tell
Speaker 2: you from my experience, you don't hear many sounds or
Speaker 2: vocalizations before dark. I've heard five vocalizations in ten years
Speaker 2: or wooden knocks combination thereof before dark in ten years.
Speaker 2: But immediately after hit that tree off to their right,
Speaker 2: which had been to their east, something hit a tree
Speaker 2: and it hit it with a large piece of wood
Speaker 2: ray pictured maybe a semi rotted log to hit the tree,
Speaker 2: and it could hear the sound of what hit the
Speaker 2: tree breaking, and that it was very close. He felt
Speaker 2: that it was one hundred feet or less. Now one
Speaker 2: hundred feet might as well be a mile in the
Speaker 2: foliage of these creek bottoms during the cellar. But immediately
Speaker 2: within a couple of seconds after that, one on the
Speaker 2: opposite side of the creek heard another sharp, very sharp,
Speaker 2: distinct wooden knock, and he reported that one too, was
Speaker 2: also very close to them. So he convinced his friend
Speaker 2: to just stop, and they wanted to watch and observe
Speaker 2: and listen, and nothing else occurred, and they begin walking again,
Speaker 2: and roughly about five minutes later, without warning, without any
Speaker 2: of the pre cursory sounds, a rock was thrown, narrowly
Speaker 2: missing Vera's head by inches. It was throw from their
Speaker 2: left went over her head and impacted the creek next
Speaker 2: to them, and it was a piece of quartz slightly
Speaker 2: smaller than a softball and had to hit her in
Speaker 2: the head or him. It would have sent them to
Speaker 2: the hospital seriously hurt them if not kill them. They
Speaker 2: didn't stop and observe or listen. They kept going and
Speaker 2: as they were moving along at a hurried pace, they
Speaker 2: began to hear the distinct sound of whooping and unmow
Speaker 2: frequency growling. How that was very close to them and
Speaker 2: they have not been back.
Speaker 4: Since approximately a year ago. We had an expedition that
Speaker 4: took place down in South Carolina at a hunting reservation.
Speaker 4: On that day, we were very fortunate because this area
Speaker 4: is a lowland area, very swampy, a lot of water,
Speaker 4: a lot of standing water year round. However, last summer
Speaker 4: it was a very dry summer, so we were able
Speaker 4: to access this one area where normally you can't walk
Speaker 4: into without chest waiters. So Dwight and I took off
Speaker 4: and we start walking down through the swamp. He had
Speaker 4: his dog, Fendy with him, and they were to my
Speaker 4: left and I was to the right. And as we
Speaker 4: were making distance down through the swamp, Dwight and I separated.
Speaker 4: He was about fifty yards away from me. He dropped
Speaker 4: back behind me for a little ways, then I'd move forward.
Speaker 4: I was specifically looking for footprints or any type of
Speaker 4: structures I could run across. I happened to run across
Speaker 4: a print. That print was the first one that I
Speaker 4: had found down in South Carolina, and I was extremely
Speaker 4: excited about it. So what I did was I took
Speaker 4: some red flagging tape and I flagged a tree with it.
Speaker 4: It was still earlier in the afternoon, and I wanted
Speaker 4: to keep moving forward to see if I I could
Speaker 4: find more prints or more evidence, hopefully a squatch or
Speaker 4: a dog man or something along those lines, some type
Speaker 4: of creature. I kept pressing forward, and then Dwight. I
Speaker 4: could hear him. Every once in a while, we'd let
Speaker 4: out a little whoop to each other, just to let
Speaker 4: each other know our general location. I had taken my
Speaker 4: audio recorder and placed it on a stump about halfway
Speaker 4: into my walt, hoping to catch something on.
Speaker 3: The audio recorder.
Speaker 4: So I leave my audio recorder on the stump and
Speaker 4: I keep pressing forward deeper in the woods. I'm going deeper,
Speaker 4: and I'm going deeper.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 4: I was walking for what felt like a good solid
Speaker 4: thirty forty five minutes. I had basically gotten to the
Speaker 4: point of where I was a long way from base camp.
Speaker 3: I knew that at that.
Speaker 4: Point I hadn't heard Dwighte in thirty minutes. There was
Speaker 4: no interaction with me and him. Come to find out,
Speaker 4: he and Findy at that point had turned around and
Speaker 4: started going back to base camp.
Speaker 3: So I get to the end of my walk and.
Speaker 4: I'm feeling solid about the footprint that I've already captured.
Speaker 3: I've got it flagged.
Speaker 4: All I've got to do is retrack my steps back
Speaker 4: to it, picked my audio recorder up if I don't
Speaker 4: get something, and then go check my track. So I'm
Speaker 4: at the end of my walk. This was when I
Speaker 4: first started researching, and I was in an environment by myself.
Speaker 4: I had seen all these other people, all these other researchers.
Speaker 4: They were doing the whoops, they were doing the calls,
Speaker 4: and I thought I'd give it a try. I figured,
Speaker 4: what the hey, I'm by myself, there's nobody around.
Speaker 3: I can make a complete fool out of myself.
Speaker 4: So I picked a branch up that was broken on
Speaker 4: the ground, and it was about a good three inches
Speaker 4: in diameter. Mind you, it was completely so it was
Speaker 4: not a dry stick. And so I grabbed the stick.
Speaker 4: I hit the tree with it and it made just
Speaker 4: a thud, nothing loud. The sound didn't really carry. I
Speaker 4: wasn't happy with it, so I was like, screw that,
Speaker 4: I'll give it another go. So I took the tree
Speaker 4: land this time, and I hauled off and swung it
Speaker 4: as hard as I could to try to get a
Speaker 4: noise out of it. And I got a great noise
Speaker 4: out of that one. So I'm standing there and I'm
Speaker 4: happy with that result, and I'm like, okay, waiting on
Speaker 4: a reply, waiting on possibly another wood knock. I hear
Speaker 4: absolutely nothing, dead quiet in the swamp. Mind you, I'm
Speaker 4: still standing there in this location and my feet are
Speaker 4: maybe two inches in the mud. That's what I was
Speaker 4: standing in. So walking through the swamp made no noise.
Speaker 3: It was just silence. It was easy to navigate, very
Speaker 3: quiet and.
Speaker 2: Stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see we're right
Speaker 2: back after these messages.
Speaker 4: So as I'm standing there, still beside the tree that
Speaker 4: I just did the two wood knocks on, what I
Speaker 4: did next was I said, I'm gonna let out a yell.
Speaker 4: I gave one of the kind of a reserved woo,
Speaker 4: stood there for a moment, had nothing reply back, and
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, come on, I've gone this far
Speaker 4: I've done tree knocks, I've done a yell.
Speaker 3: I'm going to do another yell.
Speaker 4: So that's when I let out the best yell, of
Speaker 4: the loudest, most vocalization that I could throw out. So
Speaker 4: I do that, nothing happens, and I'm like, Okay, that's fine,
Speaker 4: I'll just turn around and go back.
Speaker 3: That's the end of this. Just as I was about to.
Speaker 4: Turn around and retrace my footprints out of there, that's
Speaker 4: when I got screamed at. The scream came from the
Speaker 4: left hand side of me, and the tree was directly
Speaker 4: still to my left, and when it screamed, I completely froze.
Speaker 4: I just completely tensed up. My body was just tight.
Speaker 4: I shut my eyes, and I was just standing there.
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh my god, what was that? Because I've
Speaker 4: heard Dwight call, and I've heard Dwight do hollers in
Speaker 4: the past, and this was not anywhere even remotely close
Speaker 4: to what a human could let out. Matter of fact,
Speaker 4: Bob our other investigator in Sasquatch recn he probably lets
Speaker 4: out the loudest yell that I'd heard. This tripled what
Speaker 4: he could do. So once I heard it and the
Speaker 4: shock set in, I was just like, oh hell, this
Speaker 4: is not from the guys. This is from a creature,
Speaker 4: an animal, a being, a something. There's something out here,
Speaker 4: and it just completely floored me. So I opened my
Speaker 4: eyes up and I'm just looking straight out ahead of me,
Speaker 4: and this tree is still to my left, and I
Speaker 4: just said to myself, Okay, Chris, now is your time
Speaker 4: to prove to these guys.
Speaker 3: That you're not scared. You're not a freddy cat.
Speaker 4: You're not going to be talked about if you don't
Speaker 4: move forward on this sound.
Speaker 3: And that's what I did. I told myself.
Speaker 4: I said, Okay, I'm going to take two more steps
Speaker 4: and look at see if I can see what it
Speaker 4: is that made that sound that scared me so badly.
Speaker 4: And I had a firearm on me at the side,
Speaker 4: and I remember doing this. I put my hand on
Speaker 4: my firearm and I said, Okay, I'm going to see
Speaker 4: what's out there, and I took two steps forward. And
Speaker 4: as I took two steps forward, that's when I told myself,
Speaker 4: there's no way I'm making another step towards this thing.
Speaker 3: There's no way.
Speaker 4: All I wanted to do is get back to base camp.
Speaker 4: And I turned around and did a three sixty in
Speaker 4: the mud right there and started stepping back in my
Speaker 4: footprints that I had made because I could vividly see him,
Speaker 4: and I was looking down. Because one of our fellow researchers,
Speaker 4: Tim Dills, I had asked him in the past. I said, man,
Speaker 4: when you saw your first bigfoot, I said, what advice
Speaker 4: would you give someone? Tim told me to drop your head,
Speaker 4: don't make eye contact, look at the direction you're wanting
Speaker 4: to travel into, and don't take your eyes off of it,
Speaker 4: and just walk slowly.
Speaker 3: Out of the woods. And that's exactly what I did.
Speaker 4: What I feel like happened was I was so deep
Speaker 4: in the woods by myself alone that when I did
Speaker 4: the two tree knocks that got its attention, and then
Speaker 4: when I did the yell with no reply back that
Speaker 4: after I did that second yell, apparently I upset it.
Speaker 4: It screamed at me with such a vibrating scream that
Speaker 4: it vibrated my chest and the hairs on my arms
Speaker 4: and my neck stood up, and I was just goosebumped
Speaker 4: from head to toe. I've told this story a couple
Speaker 4: of times, and a couple of people that I told
Speaker 4: it to said, you possibly were zapped.
Speaker 3: I didn't know what ZAPP was. I knew I was shocked.
Speaker 4: I knew that I was scared, and I knew that
Speaker 4: I was being honest with myself by wanting to get
Speaker 4: the hell out of there in one piece, because whatever
Speaker 4: creature this vocalization came out of it had to have volume,
Speaker 4: it had to be big, and it had to have
Speaker 4: one heck of a set of lungs on it to
Speaker 4: get that type of velocity to come through the woods
Speaker 4: or the swamp.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was basically scared shitless. So from that point I
Speaker 4: just started walking back. And as I was walking back,
Speaker 4: I walked back over and I found my audio recorders
Speaker 4: where I'd left it.
Speaker 3: I grabbed it.
Speaker 4: Then I kept walking and I walked to the spot
Speaker 4: where I found the footprint because my flagging tape, so
Speaker 4: I knew exactly where it was at. And I'm like, okay,
Speaker 4: I'm going back to base camp. Now, I'm going to
Speaker 4: get the guys. We're going to come back out here
Speaker 4: and we're going to cast this. And as I was walking,
Speaker 4: it probably was another forty five minute walk because I
Speaker 4: was moving slow. I was completely exhausted. When I came
Speaker 4: out on the long road back to our base camp.
Speaker 3: I came out.
Speaker 4: Maybe six seven hundred yards up the road from where
Speaker 4: I had entered, because I knew basically my direction, so
Speaker 4: I was staring at my footprints. I was more concerned
Speaker 4: with just getting back. That's all I really wanted to
Speaker 4: do at that point was just get back. In the meantime,
Speaker 4: I had composed myself to where I wasn't gonna just
Speaker 4: come walking up to the guys that waving my arms
Speaker 4: and going, guys, you're not gonna believe what happened. You
Speaker 4: have no idea what happened to me or anything like that.
Speaker 4: I just said, I'm going to tell them what happened,
Speaker 4: and I'm just gonna try to take it nice and cool.
Speaker 4: As soon as I walked back up to base camp,
Speaker 4: Bob and Dwight asked me. They said, to how did
Speaker 4: your walk go? And I said, I think it went
Speaker 4: really good. I said, I think I found a legitimate footprint.
Speaker 4: That's when Bob said, did you hear that scream or
Speaker 4: that yell? And I said, oh, yeah, I heard it.
Speaker 4: I said it was like thirty forty yards from me
Speaker 4: when I heard it. We caught the audio pretty good
Speaker 4: on my audio recorder, even though my audio recorder was
Speaker 4: probably a quarter mile I will guess a quarter mile
Speaker 4: from where I ended up at and it got screamed at.
Speaker 4: But from where base camp was to where it screamed
Speaker 4: at me was comfortably three quarters of a mi all
Speaker 4: I would say comfortably. And that's when Bob said, yeah,
Speaker 4: he said, I heard it all the way back here.
Speaker 4: So if that tells you anything, this was a very loud,
Speaker 4: very dominating sound that came out of the forest.
Speaker 3: I never got to see it.
Speaker 4: And Bob and I came back down a few months
Speaker 4: ago to the exact same location and we tried to
Speaker 4: recreate our steps to go back out there, and unfortunately
Speaker 4: we couldn't do so because the water level was so high.
Speaker 4: It was knee high in places, and we didn't bring
Speaker 4: chest waiters with us. We weren't anticipating that much water
Speaker 4: level to be there. We had much on and that
Speaker 4: type of thing, but we were specifically going out there,
Speaker 4: or at least I was specifically going to retrace my
Speaker 4: tracks and then hopefully see some more activity or see
Speaker 4: if there's anything else going on out there. But the
Speaker 4: swamp had turned back into the swamp. But that was
Speaker 4: the scariest that I've ever been in my entire life,
Speaker 4: and I've had some scary instances, but this time it
Speaker 4: was beyond scary for me.
Speaker 3: That's my story.