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. Sat, what
Speaker 1: are you putting? We got some wonder or something crawling
Speaker 1: around out here? Did you see what it was or
Speaker 1: was it was? Standing enough. I'm out here looking through
Speaker 1: the window now and I don't see anything. I don't
Speaker 1: want to go outside. Jesus Quice, you better hello, get
Speaker 1: somebody out here when I'm out there. I thought of
Speaker 1: Amna about Tech forty nine. I don't know easy annount there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm walking rite hey.
Speaker 2: I recently received a voicemail from a long time listener
Speaker 2: named Heather. She's been listening to the show since twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, and she was having a hard time with
Speaker 2: the story from the old timer who shared his deathbed confession.
Speaker 2: She questioned whether these stories were real or if I
Speaker 2: was embellishing them for entertainment. I've always thought I'd made
Speaker 2: it clear, but let me state it plainly. I do
Speaker 2: rewrite every story I've ever shared.
Speaker 3: On this show.
Speaker 2: I have to anyone who narrates any story on any
Speaker 2: Bigfoot podcast does, or at least they should. If they
Speaker 2: say they don't, they're most likely lying. These stories come
Speaker 2: from a myriad of places. Some arrive as barely legible
Speaker 2: emails written in broken English. Others are voicemails where the
Speaker 2: witness rambles for twenty minutes without ever just describing what
Speaker 2: they actually saw. Some come from old forum posts, newspaper clippings,
Speaker 2: or accounts passed down through families. They are almost never
Speaker 2: written well. Some have no backstory, some have no middle,
Speaker 2: and many have no end. They would be useless to you,
Speaker 2: the listener, if I didn't have all the pieces to
Speaker 2: offer you a complete story. So yes, I sometimes have
Speaker 2: to get creative, not to change the story, but to
Speaker 2: complete it, to make it entertaining, to paint a clear
Speaker 2: picture of the experiences. I fill in the gaps with
Speaker 2: plausible details. I create dialogue from described conversations. I add
Speaker 2: the emotional context that witnesses often leave out when they're
Speaker 2: focused on just getting through the facts I craft beginnings
Speaker 2: that draw you in and endings that leave you thinking.
Speaker 2: It's interesting that Heather mentioned how much she enjoys Fred
Speaker 2: from Alaska and that she believes every story he shares. Frankly,
Speaker 2: these stories are no different. Fred's stories go through the
Speaker 2: same process. Every compelling encounter you've heard on any podcast
Speaker 2: has been shaped by someone who understands narrative, who knows
Speaker 2: how to build tension, who can transform a jumbled account
Speaker 2: into something that keeps you listening. Even the witnesses I
Speaker 2: interviewed directly, the ones who share their stories on the show,
Speaker 2: they require a decision from you at the end of
Speaker 2: every episode. Was I entertained, was the person believable? And ultimately,
Speaker 2: what do I choose to believe? The story you're about
Speaker 2: to hear came to me through multiple sources. Sarah not
Speaker 2: her real name, initially reached out through a mutual acquaintance
Speaker 2: who knew about my research. She was reluctant to share
Speaker 2: her experience, worried about being judged or disbelieved. Her first
Speaker 2: account was fragmented, jumping around in time, leaving out crucial
Speaker 2: details she found too painful to revisit. It took several
Speaker 2: conversations to piece together the full narrative. I've taken her
Speaker 2: experiences and after them into something coherent, something that captures
Speaker 2: not just what happened, but how it felt, the fear,
Speaker 2: the confusion, the terrible realization that the world contains things
Speaker 2: we don't understand. Every major event she described is here,
Speaker 2: but I've built the connective tissue that makes it a
Speaker 2: story rather than a series of disconnected incidents. So as
Speaker 2: you listen, remember this is Sarah's truth, filtered through her memory,
Speaker 2: processed through her trauma, and shaped by my hand into
Speaker 2: something you can experience. Whether you believe it happened exactly
Speaker 2: as presented, or whether you think some details have been
Speaker 2: unconsciously embellished by time and fear, or whether you think
Speaker 2: it's all fiction, that's your decision to make. All I
Speaker 2: can tell you is that Sarah believes every word. And
Speaker 2: after hearing her voice break when she described the sound
Speaker 2: of her own voice calling her child into the darkness,
Speaker 2: after seeing her hands shake when she showed me the
Speaker 2: photos that came out to blurry to prove anything, after
Speaker 2: watching her check the locks on her windows three times
Speaker 2: during our conversation, I believe her too. But what you believe,
Speaker 2: that's entirely up to you. I never believed in monsters
Speaker 2: until I lived through something that still wakes me up
Speaker 2: at night three years later. My name is Sarah, and
Speaker 2: I need to tell someone what happened when I took
Speaker 2: my boys to that cabin in Alabama. We left Birmingham
Speaker 2: on a Tuesday morning in March. The divorce had just
Speaker 2: been finalized after eighteen months of hell. My ex husband
Speaker 2: had broken my ribs twice, dislocated my shoulder once, and
Speaker 2: left bruises on my boys that I had to explain
Speaker 2: away to teachers. Tyler, my twelve year old, had stopped
Speaker 2: talking about his father entirely. Ben, only ten, still flinched
Speaker 2: when anyone raised their voice. The restraining order was supposed
Speaker 2: to keep us safe, but paper doesn't stop a man
Speaker 2: who thinks he owns you. So when my great aunt
Speaker 2: Martha died and left me her cabin in the middle
Speaker 2: of nowhere, I saw it as a gift from God.
Speaker 2: The drive took four hours into the deepest part of
Speaker 2: Alabama I'd ever been. The roads got narrower with each turn,
Speaker 2: civilization falling away mile by mile. First, the interstate gave
Speaker 2: way to state highways, then county roads, and finally a
Speaker 2: dirt track that hadn't seen a greater in years. My
Speaker 2: old suburban groaned over potholes deep enough to swallow a tire.
Speaker 2: The GPS signal died thirty minutes before we arrived. I
Speaker 2: had to navigate using Aunt Martha's hand drawn map, her
Speaker 2: shaky handwriting barely legible in the fading afternoon light. The
Speaker 2: cabin sat on forty acres of pine forest that backed
Speaker 2: up to the Bankhead National Forest. No neighbors for three miles,
Speaker 2: the nearest town fifteen miles away. Perfect isolation. That's what
Speaker 2: I thought I needed. Distance from my ex from the
Speaker 2: court system, from everyone who knew our story, a place
Speaker 2: where my boys could heal without judgment or pity. The
Speaker 2: cabin was smaller than I expect did, but solid, real
Speaker 2: log construction from the nineteen sixties, not that fake siding
Speaker 2: you see now. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen that
Speaker 2: opened into a living room dominated by a stone fireplace. Someone,
Speaker 2: maybe Aunt Martha or a previous owner, had installed serious
Speaker 2: locks and thick windows hurricane glass, I learned later from
Speaker 2: paperwork in a drawer. Those windows were rated to withstand
Speaker 2: impacts at ninety miles per hour, that detail would matter
Speaker 2: more than I could have imagined. For the first week,
Speaker 2: it felt like we'd found paradise. My boys transformed before
Speaker 2: my eyes. They explored the woods from sunrise to sunset,
Speaker 2: coming home covered in dirt and scratches, but grinning like
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen in two years. Tyler discovered a creek
Speaker 2: about a quarter mile east full of craw dads and minnows,
Speaker 2: been built elaborate stick forts, and declared himself King of
Speaker 2: the forest. I spent hours on the porch with coffee,
Speaker 2: watching them play, feeling knots in my chest, finally loosening
Speaker 2: for the first time in years. I wasn't looking over
Speaker 2: my shoulder, I wasn't planning escape routes. I wasn't sleeping
Speaker 2: with my car keys in my hand. The forest around
Speaker 2: us felt ancient and peaceful. Massive pines stretched up so
Speaker 2: high I couldn't see their tops. The undergrowth was thick
Speaker 2: enough that visibility ended about thirty feet in any direction.
Speaker 2: The silence was profound, not empty, but layered with small sounds,
Speaker 2: birds calling, insects, buzzing, branches, creaking in the wind. It
Speaker 2: felt alive and welcoming. I should have noticed when that changed.
Speaker 2: About five days in the birds went quiet around the cabin,
Speaker 2: not suddenly, but gradually, like someone slowly turning down nature's volume.
Speaker 2: I mentioned it to Tyler, who just shrugged and suggested
Speaker 2: it might rain soon. But the weather stayed clear and
Speaker 2: warm for early spring. The silence felt different from a
Speaker 2: coming storm. Ben started telling me about what he called
Speaker 2: the hide and seek animals. He said they were really
Speaker 2: good at hiding, that he could never quite see them,
Speaker 2: but he knew they were there. They made funny sounds,
Speaker 2: he said, like someone clearing their throat, but deeper, and
Speaker 2: sometimes they whistled. I dismissed it as childhood imagination mixed
Speaker 2: with the novelty of being in real wilderness for the
Speaker 2: first time. But that night, lying in bed, I heard
Speaker 2: exactly what he described, a low rumbling sound from somewhere
Speaker 2: in the forest, like someone clearing their throat, if that
Speaker 2: someone had a chest cavity the size of a barrel.
Speaker 2: Then a whistle, not a bird's whistle, but human, like
Speaker 2: the kind you'd use to get someone's attention, except it
Speaker 2: was wrong, somehow, too perfect, like a recording played back
Speaker 2: at the wrong speed. I got up and checked both boys.
Speaker 2: They were asleep. I made sure all the doors and
Speaker 2: windows were locked, even though the night was warm. I
Speaker 2: told myself it was just an animal I wasn't familiar with.
Speaker 2: The woods were full of creatures that made st sounds.
Speaker 2: The next day I found the first footprint. I was
Speaker 2: checking the old shed behind the cabin to see what
Speaker 2: tools Aunt Martha had left there. In the mud beside
Speaker 2: the shed door was a print that made me stop cold.
Speaker 2: It looked human at first glance, five toes a heel
Speaker 2: an arch, but the proportions were all wrong. It had
Speaker 2: to be sixteen inches long and eight inches wide. The
Speaker 2: toes were too long, almost like fingers, with too much
Speaker 2: space between them. I stood there staring at it, my
Speaker 2: mind trying to make sense of what I was seeing.
Speaker 2: I took a photo with my phone, but when I
Speaker 2: looked at it later, the image was blurry and useless,
Speaker 2: like the camera couldn't properly focus on it. That afternoon,
Speaker 2: Tyler dragged me into the woods to show me something
Speaker 2: he'd found. About fifty yards from the house was a
Speaker 2: small clearing where someone had arranged hundreds of stones in
Speaker 2: a perfect spiral pattern, starting small in the center and
Speaker 2: growing larger as it wound outward. Each stone was carefully placed,
Speaker 2: touching the next. It must have taken hours to create.
Speaker 2: Tyler was excited about his discovery, but I felt uneasy.
Speaker 2: The trees around the clearing seemed to lean in, and
Speaker 2: that unnatural silence was complete. There no birds, no insects, nothing.
Speaker 2: I told Tyler we needed to go back to the
Speaker 2: house immediately. Something in my voice must have scared him,
Speaker 2: because he didn't argue. The rock throwing started that night.
Speaker 2: I was washing dishes after dinner when something struck the
Speaker 2: side of the house hard enough to rattle the windows.
Speaker 2: I went outside with a flashlight, expecting to find a
Speaker 2: fallen branch. Instead, I found a white mark on the
Speaker 2: wood siding at head height rock dust. I called out,
Speaker 2: asking if anyone was there, but got only silence and response.
Speaker 2: Yet I felt watched that crawling sensation on your neck
Speaker 2: when you know eyes are on you. My flashlight beams
Speaker 2: seemed to die just a few feet into the forest,
Speaker 2: swallowed by the darkness between the trees. The next night
Speaker 2: brought three impacts in quick succession, hard throws that would
Speaker 2: have required real strength. Tyler came out of his room,
Speaker 2: eyes wide, asking what was happening. I told him it
Speaker 2: was probably local kids playing pranks, though I knew no
Speaker 2: kids would drive fifteen miles down abandon dirt roads just
Speaker 2: to throw rocks at an old cabin. Tyler was too
Speaker 2: smart to believe me. He pointed out we hadn't seen
Speaker 2: another person since we'd arrived. The rocks became our nightly routine,
Speaker 2: sometimes just one or two, sometimes a barrage lasting several minutes,
Speaker 2: always from different directions, never the same pattern. Twice, after
Speaker 2: a particularly bad night, I found one of the rocks.
Speaker 2: It was the size of a softball, and it hit
Speaker 2: hard enough to crack the siding. I called the Sheriff's department.
Speaker 2: After a week of this, they sent Deputy Collins, a
Speaker 2: young man who clearly thought I was wasting his time.
Speaker 2: He suggested we had a bear problem. When I pointed
Speaker 2: out that bears don't throw rocks, he gave me a
Speaker 2: com descending look and said I'd be surprised what bears
Speaker 2: could do. He suggested they might be knocking rocks off
Speaker 2: our roof. When I showed him our secured garbage cans
Speaker 2: and the complete absence of any food waste outside, he
Speaker 2: shrugged and said to call if it continued. I knew
Speaker 2: he wouldn't come back even if I did call. Three
Speaker 2: weeks in, the screaming started. I woke at two a m.
Speaker 2: Not to a sound, but to its absence, that complete,
Speaker 2: unnatural silence that meant something was wrong. Then it came
Speaker 2: a scream that wasn't quite a scream, deep and guttural
Speaker 2: and impossibly loud. It seemed to come from everywhere at once,
Speaker 2: vibrating through the cabin walls. It lasted maybe ten seconds,
Speaker 2: but felt like forever. Both boys ran to my room,
Speaker 2: Ben crying, Tyler trying to act brave but shaking uncontrollably.
Speaker 2: I told them it was just an animal, maybe a bobcat,
Speaker 2: that they make strange sounds. But I'd heard bobcats before.
Speaker 2: This was something with much larger lungs, something that could
Speaker 2: produce volume that didn't make sense for any animal. I knew.
Speaker 2: The screams became another part of our routine. Some nights
Speaker 2: they came from far off, echoing through the pines. Other
Speaker 2: nights they were so close it seemed like whatever made
Speaker 2: them was on our porch. They varied, too, Sometimes that deep,
Speaker 2: reverberating scream sometimes a series of whoops that climbed in pitch,
Speaker 2: sometimes something that almost sounded like speech, but not quite,
Speaker 2: like someone trying to talk with the wrong kind of throat.
Speaker 2: I stopped letting the boys play outside after dark, started
Speaker 2: putting chairs under the doorknobs. The boys noticed the changes.
Speaker 2: Tyler asked if we were safe. I lied and said,
Speaker 2: of course we were, that I was just being careful
Speaker 2: like moms do. But I could see he didn't believe me.
Speaker 2: One morning, about a month in I found every pine
Speaker 2: cone from the large tree in our front yard arranged
Speaker 2: in a perfect circle around Tyler's bike, hundreds of them,
Speaker 2: each one carefully placed to touch the next, all oriented
Speaker 2: with their points facing outward, like some kind of barrier
Speaker 2: or warning. And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. After these messages, when I showed Tyler,
Speaker 2: his face went pale. He admitted he'd been hearing something
Speaker 2: outside his window at night, breathing and tapping, like something
Speaker 2: trying to get his attention. He'd been too scared to
Speaker 2: move or call for me. That confession from my brave boy,
Speaker 2: who stood between his father and his little brother more
Speaker 2: than once terrified me more than anything else that had happened.
Speaker 2: I started sleeping in the living room, where I could
Speaker 2: watch both bedroom doors and the front entrance. I kept
Speaker 2: my grandfather's shotgun beside me, loaded with buckshot. I'd never
Speaker 2: fired it, but I hoped the sound alone might scare
Speaker 2: off whatever was out there. One night, I woke to
Speaker 2: find Ben standing at the front door, his hand on
Speaker 2: the dead bolt. He was sleepwalking, his eyes vacant. He
Speaker 2: kept saying he'd heard me calling him from outside, that
Speaker 2: I told him to come out, that I'd said it
Speaker 2: was important. He said the voice sounded exactly like mine,
Speaker 2: calling from right outside his window, telling him I needed
Speaker 2: to show him something. My blood turned to ice. I
Speaker 2: hadn't called him, I'd been asleep on the couch. I
Speaker 2: made him promise that if he ever heard my voice
Speaker 2: outside when I was inside, or inside when I was outside,
Speaker 2: he wouldn't listen. He had to come find me first.
Speaker 2: The confusion in his eyes broke my heart. How could
Speaker 2: something sound exactly like his mother but not be his mother.
Speaker 2: That's when I started seeing them. The first time was
Speaker 2: at dusk. I was calling the boys in when I
Speaker 2: saw a movement at the forest edge. Something tall, much
Speaker 2: taller than any person, stepped behind a tree, but the
Speaker 2: way it moved was wrong, too smooth, too quick for
Speaker 2: something that size, like it was gliding rather than walking.
Speaker 2: I stood frozen, waiting for it to show itself again.
Speaker 2: It didn't, but I could feel it watching me. After that,
Speaker 2: I saw them regularly, always at the edge of vision,
Speaker 2: always just for a second, dark shapes that didn't belong,
Speaker 2: moving through the trees with impossible silence. Sometimes I could
Speaker 2: make out details, arms that hung past where knees should be,
Speaker 2: a massive frame with wrong proportions, a face that was
Speaker 2: almost human but not quite. Then I'd blink and see
Speaker 2: nothing but shadows and trees. The boys saw them, too,
Speaker 2: though they pretended otherwise. I'd catch Ben staring at his
Speaker 2: window at night. Transfixed, Tyler started having nightmares about tall
Speaker 2: people in the woods. He'd wake up describing dreams where
Speaker 2: they stood in a circle around the cabin, just watching,
Speaker 2: waiting for something. In his dreams, they had faces, but
Speaker 2: he could never remember what they looked like when he
Speaker 2: woke One afternoon, I was hanging laundry when I heard
Speaker 2: Ben laughing in the front yard, but it wasn't his
Speaker 2: normal laugh. It was forced the way he laughed when
Speaker 2: he was nervous but trying to be polite. I found
Speaker 2: him standing at the edge of the yard, about ten
Speaker 2: feet from the forest line, looking up and nodding like
Speaker 2: he was having a conversation. But nothing was there, just trees.
Speaker 2: When I called his name, he turned to me, smiling
Speaker 2: and said the mommy was funny that she made silly sounds.
Speaker 2: He pointed at the trees and said she was right there,
Speaker 2: and he wanted to know if I could see her.
Speaker 2: He said she wasn't a stranger because she knew his name,
Speaker 2: knew all about us. I grabbed him and pulled him
Speaker 2: back to the house. As I did, I saw something
Speaker 2: move back into the deeper forest, something dark and massive
Speaker 2: with a strange loping gait. That night, I called my
Speaker 2: sister in Birmingham, desperate to hear a normal voice. She
Speaker 2: asked how country life was treating us, said it must
Speaker 2: be wonderful for the boys to have all that fresh
Speaker 2: air and nature. I wanted to tell her everything, wanted
Speaker 2: to pack up and to her house that minute, but
Speaker 2: what would I say that I thought we were being
Speaker 2: stalked by something that wasn't quite human, That something in
Speaker 2: the woods wanted my son instead. I said everything was
Speaker 2: great and hung up. After the call, I found Tyler
Speaker 2: sitting on Ben's bed. He looked at me with eyes
Speaker 2: that looked like they belonged to someone way beyond his
Speaker 2: twelve years. He said we needed to leave. He said
Speaker 2: Ben didn't understand that. Ben thought they were friendly. When
Speaker 2: I asked what he meant by they, he said I
Speaker 2: knew there was more than one. He'd been watching them too.
Speaker 2: He said there were at least three, maybe four, one
Speaker 2: bigger than the others that did most of the screaming,
Speaker 2: a female with long hair who watched Ben's window, and
Speaker 2: one or two others he'd only seen moving through the trees.
Speaker 2: He told me about seeing the female in the moonlight
Speaker 2: the week before, standing just inside the tree line watching
Speaker 2: Ben's window. She had hair down to her waist. He
Speaker 2: hadn't told me because he didn't want to scare meteive boy,
Speaker 2: trying to shield me from the horror. About six weeks in,
Speaker 2: the mimicry got worse. One evening, I heard Tyler calling
Speaker 2: Ben from outside, telling him to come see something cool.
Speaker 2: But Tyler was in the shower. I could hear the
Speaker 2: water running. I caught Ben heading for the door and
Speaker 2: had to explain that it wasn't really Tyler, even though
Speaker 2: it sounded exactly like him. Ben's eyes went wide as
Speaker 2: he realized his brother was in two places at once.
Speaker 2: The voice outside called three more times, getting more insistent,
Speaker 2: before finally stopping. When Tyler got out of the shower
Speaker 2: and I told him what happened, he went pale and
Speaker 2: said it was learning, learning how to be us. They
Speaker 2: started using our voices regularly after that, always trying to
Speaker 2: lure one of us outside, always when the person they
Speaker 2: were mimicking was clearly somewhere else. It would have been
Speaker 2: almost funny if it wasn't so terrifying, this thing that
Speaker 2: could perfectly copy our voices but didn't understand that we
Speaker 2: knew where each other were. One night, I woke to
Speaker 2: Ben's voice outside my window. It said, Mommy, I'm scared.
Speaker 2: I'm outside and can't get back in. Please help me.
Speaker 2: The voice was perfect Ben's slight lisp, the way he
Speaker 2: still called me mommy when frightened. But I could see
Speaker 2: Ben's door from the couch, still closed, with the chair
Speaker 2: wedged under from inside, like I'd taught him. The voice
Speaker 2: got more desperate, said something was out there with him.
Speaker 2: It was so convincing I actually got up to check
Speaker 2: on Ben, just to be sure he was in his bed,
Speaker 2: fast asleep. When I came back to the living room,
Speaker 2: a shadow blocked the moonlight at the window. I watched
Speaker 2: it raise what might have been a hand and tap
Speaker 2: on the glass three times, slow deliberate. Then it spoke
Speaker 2: in Ben's voice and said it knew I was in there,
Speaker 2: that it could smell me. The shadow moved away, but
Speaker 2: I didn't sleep the rest of the night. The next
Speaker 2: morning I found those handprints on the window, not quite hands,
Speaker 2: too long wide, with a thumb that bent the wrong way.
Speaker 2: In the dirt. Below were footprints leading to and from
Speaker 2: the forest. Those same massive prints seventeen inches long eight
Speaker 2: inches wide. Whatever made them had to be at least
Speaker 2: eight feet tall. That afternoon, while the boys were reading,
Speaker 2: I walked the property perimeter. I found trails through the
Speaker 2: underbrush where something large moved regularly, Trees with bark rubbed
Speaker 2: off at eight feet high, more stone arrangements, circles, spirals,
Speaker 2: lines pointing toward the cabin, and on a flat rock
Speaker 2: about one hundred yards from the house, I found bones,
Speaker 2: small animals, rabbits, squirrels, birds picked clean and arranged in
Speaker 2: patterns that almost looked like riding, like someone trying to
Speaker 2: use an alphabet. They didn't understand. I took photos of everything,
Speaker 2: thinking maybe I could get help. But every picture came
Speaker 2: out blurry, oversaturated, or showing nothing but trees where I
Speaker 2: knew i'd photographed something else. The camera couldn't capture what
Speaker 2: was really there. About ten weeks in, Ben woke me
Speaker 2: saying the tall Mommy was at his window. I grabbed
Speaker 2: the shotgun and rushed to his room. Through the curtains,
Speaker 2: I could see a massive shadow, swaying slightly. Ben whispered
Speaker 2: that she wanted him to come outside, that she had
Speaker 2: babies who wanted to play. She was making a low,
Speaker 2: mournful sound that did sound like grief. It was answered
Speaker 2: by other calls from deeper in the forest. Tyler appeared
Speaker 2: in the doorway with the baseball bat I'd given him,
Speaker 2: knuckles white around the handle. He counted three of them
Speaker 2: out there. We could hear them walking around the cabin,
Speaker 2: those heavy footsteps making the porch boards creak. They circled
Speaker 2: us three times, making low vocalizations to each other. Almost conversational,
Speaker 2: like they were discussing something. Then I heard my own
Speaker 2: voice from outside, clear as day, telling the boys it
Speaker 2: was okay to come out, that I was out there
Speaker 2: and everything was fine. Then Tyler's voice calling Ben buddy,
Speaker 2: saying he needed help with something. Then my panicked voice
Speaker 2: saying there'd been an accident and I needed them both
Speaker 2: outside immediately. The mimicry continued for hours, trying different approaches.
Speaker 2: My angry mom voice demanding Tyler come out right now,
Speaker 2: Tyler's brotherly tone asking Ben for help, my scared voice
Speaker 2: saying something was wrong. They were experimenting, seeing what would work.
Speaker 2: We huddled together in my room until four am, when
Speaker 2: everything went silent, that complete, unnatural silence. Then came the
Speaker 2: breathing outside my bedroom window, deep rhythmic breathing through the curtains.
Speaker 2: I could see multiple shadows. The breathing went on for hours.
Speaker 2: Then came a voice that wasn't quite a voice, something
Speaker 2: between human speech and animal vocalization, forming words with a
Speaker 2: throat not designed for human language. It called Ben's name
Speaker 2: over and over, saying he should come, that someone was
Speaker 2: lonely wanted to play. Ben sat up, eyes unfocused, and
Speaker 2: started climbing over me toward the door. I had to
Speaker 2: physically restrain him while he struggled, saying in a monotone
Speaker 2: voice that she needed him, that her baby was gone
Speaker 2: and she needed a new one. Tyler was crying, but
Speaker 2: helped me hold his brother back. The thing at the
Speaker 2: window made a sound of frustration or anger. The whole
Speaker 2: wall shook as something struck it. The window cracked but
Speaker 2: didn't break. Thank God for that hurricane glass. More impacts
Speaker 2: followed all around the house. The wall shook, picture frames fell,
Speaker 2: and in the living room I heard wood splinter as
Speaker 2: the doorframe cracked under assault. I remembered the shotgun. I'd
Speaker 2: never fired it, but maybe the sound would scare them.
Speaker 2: I pointed it at the ceiling and pulled the trigger.
Speaker 2: The blast was deafening, plaster rained down, My ears rang,
Speaker 2: but it worked. The pounding stopped. I heard those two heavy,
Speaker 2: two fast footsteps moving away. Stayed huddled together until dawn.
Speaker 2: When I finally looked outside, the house was surrounded by
Speaker 2: those strange handprints in the dirt on the walls, on
Speaker 2: the windows. The front door frame was splintered, the door
Speaker 2: hanging at an angle. Deep gouges ran along the exterior walls,
Speaker 2: like claw marks, but too deliberate, too patterned, and carved
Speaker 2: into the big pine tree and letters three feet tall
Speaker 2: was one word, so n I started packing immediately. The
Speaker 2: boys helped without asking why. But that night, our last night,
Speaker 2: they came back with a vengeance. The rocks were constant
Speaker 2: and harder than ever. The kitchen windows shattered, the screams
Speaker 2: came from all directions, and the mimicry was horrible. Not
Speaker 2: just our voices now, but others. My ex husband's voice
Speaker 2: which made my blood freeze, my sister's voice, my mother's voice,
Speaker 2: though she'd been dead for five years. Around midnight, everything
Speaker 2: went quiet. Then Ben stood up, eyes vacant, and walked
Speaker 2: to his bedroom. I followed and found him trying to
Speaker 2: open the window I'd nailed shut that afternoon. He kept
Speaker 2: saying she was calling him, that the mommy needed him
Speaker 2: because her baby was gone and she needed him, that
Speaker 2: he could be her baby Tyler, and I had to
Speaker 2: physically restrain him. Outside Ben's window, that massive shadow appeared again.
Speaker 2: This time I could see more details through the curtain,
Speaker 2: A huge head covered in hair, arms that reached almost
Speaker 2: to the ground, something like a face pressed against the glass.
Speaker 2: It spoken that horrible approximation of human speech, saying to
Speaker 2: give him that Ben was hers, now screaming mine with
Speaker 2: a roar that shook the whole cabin. Then it did
Speaker 2: something that still haunts me. It spoke in a child's voice,
Speaker 2: a young boy, maybe five or six years old, saying, Mama,
Speaker 2: where are you? I'm scared the humans took me. Please
Speaker 2: come get me. The creature outside I'd made sounds like crying,
Speaker 2: like grieving, and I understood with horrible clarity it had
Speaker 2: lost a child somehow and wanted Ben as a replacement.
Speaker 2: I said out loud that I was sorry for its loss,
Speaker 2: but it couldn't have my son. The shadow pulled back,
Speaker 2: and for a moment I thought it might leave. Then
Speaker 2: the entire wall exploded inward. The hurricane glass held for
Speaker 2: half a second before shattering. The wooden frame splintered like
Speaker 2: match sticks, and through the hole I saw it clearly
Speaker 2: for the first time. It was massive, at least eight
Speaker 2: feet tall, covered in dark brown, matted hair. Its face
Speaker 2: was almost human, but the proportions off its arms hung low,
Speaker 2: ending in hands twice the size of mine with those
Speaker 2: terrible long fingers. It looked at me with eyes that
Speaker 2: held intelligence, alien but undeniable intelligence. And in those eyes
Speaker 2: I saw grief, real profound grief. It reached for Ben.
Speaker 2: I didn't think. I brought the shotgun up and fired
Speaker 2: directly at it. The blast hit its center mass. It screamed,
Speaker 2: not roared, but screamed and stumbled backward. Dark fluid splattered
Speaker 2: the destroyed wall, but it didn't fall. It clutched its
Speaker 2: chest and looked at me with something like surprise. Then
Speaker 2: the others came. Three more shapes appeared at the hole
Speaker 2: in the wall, all massive, all covered in hair, all
Speaker 2: moving with that strange gliding gait. One was even larger,
Speaker 2: had to be nine feet tall. They looked at their
Speaker 2: injured companion, then at us. The huge one let out
Speaker 2: a roar of pure rage. I pumped the shotgun, chambering
Speaker 2: another round, my hands shaking so badly I could barely
Speaker 2: hold it. But they didn't attack. They grabbed their injured
Speaker 2: companion and supported it between them. The one eyed shot
Speaker 2: looked back at Ben one more time and spoke in
Speaker 2: that broken English, saying he was hers that he would
Speaker 2: come back. Stay tuned for more sasquatchy oat to see.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after these messages. Then they melted
Speaker 2: back into the forest with impossible speed and silence. We
Speaker 2: didn't wait for dawn. I threw the boys in the
Speaker 2: car with whatever I could grab in five minutes. As
Speaker 2: we drove away, I saw them in the rear view mirror,
Speaker 2: all four standing at the forest edge, watching us leave.
Speaker 2: The one eyed shot held its chest, dark stains covering
Speaker 2: its hair. We drove straight through to Birmingham, stopping only
Speaker 2: for gas. The boys slept most of the way, exhausted.
Speaker 2: When we stopped at a well lit station just outside
Speaker 2: the city, Ben woke and asked where the forest mommy went.
Speaker 2: He said she'd been following us for a while, but
Speaker 2: stopped at the big road the interstate. We stayed with
Speaker 2: my sister for a week while I found an apartment
Speaker 2: third floor, center of the city, as far from forests
Speaker 2: as possible. The boys never talked about those two months
Speaker 2: in detail. It was like the memories just faded. Maybe
Speaker 2: that was for the best, but there were signs they
Speaker 2: remembered something. Tyler became hypervigilant, never letting Ben out of
Speaker 2: his sight, walking him to and from school, sleeping with
Speaker 2: that baseball bat beside his bed, for months, he never
Speaker 2: wanted to go camping or hiking or anywhere near woods.
Speaker 2: Ben was different. He'd stare out windows looking for something.
Speaker 2: He'd draw pictures, tall, dark figures among trees, a female
Speaker 2: figure with long hair reaching toward a small boy. When
Speaker 2: I asked about the drawings, he'd look confused and say
Speaker 2: he didn't know why he drew them, that he just
Speaker 2: saw them in dreams. Sometimes he said the forest mommy
Speaker 2: was always crying in his dreams, that she'd lost her
Speaker 2: baby and was looking for him. Six months later, I
Speaker 2: went back in broad daylight with two armed friends to
Speaker 2: get important documents we'd left behind. The cabin was destroyed,
Speaker 2: walls caved in, roof partially collapsed, everything inside shredded and scattered.
Speaker 2: Every remaining wall had words carved deep into the wood.
Speaker 2: Come back, bring Ben, He's mine, my baby, And in
Speaker 2: Ben's room painted in what looked like mud but smelled
Speaker 2: like copper. Still waiting. I had the cabin demolished, told
Speaker 2: insurance it was storm damage. They didn't investigate closely. The
Speaker 2: adjuster seemed spooked by the location. The land is still mine,
Speaker 2: but I'll never go back. When Hunter's call asking permission
Speaker 2: to use it. I always say no, that land belongs
Speaker 2: to something else now, or maybe it always did. Last month,
Speaker 2: at a cousin's birthday party, there was a small patch
Speaker 2: of woods at the park's edge. Ben wandered over and
Speaker 2: stood staring into the shadows between the trees. When I
Speaker 2: found him ten minutes later, he was completely still. He
Speaker 2: turned to me with vacant eyes for just a second,
Speaker 2: then said he thought he'd heard the forest. Mommy, but
Speaker 2: it was just the wind. He said, she was still
Speaker 2: out there, still sad, still looking for her baby. He
Speaker 2: said he dreamed about her sometimes, that she showed him
Speaker 2: her baby, who looked like her, but smaller. Then the
Speaker 2: baby was gone, and she was alone and so sad.
Speaker 2: He said. He felt bad for her, even though she'd
Speaker 2: scared us, that she was just lonely. That night, I
Speaker 2: researched old newspaper archives from Alabama. I found articles dating
Speaker 2: back to nineteen fifty two children who'd vanished in or
Speaker 2: near Bankhead Forest, A five year old boy in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty two, a three year old girl in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: twin boys in nineteen seventy four, more in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one, All disappeared without a trace, leaving only
Speaker 2: unusual footprints that were dismissed as bear tracks. The most
Speaker 2: recent was from two thousand and one. Four year old
Speaker 2: Michael vanished while hiking with his family. His mother swore
Speaker 2: she heard him calling for her from the woods for
Speaker 2: hours after he disappeared, but searchers found nothing. She insisted
Speaker 2: something in the forest took him, that she saw tall,
Speaker 2: dark figures watching the search parties. No one believed her.
Speaker 2: Michael would be about Ben's age now, if he'd lived,
Speaker 2: if he'd stayed human, I'll never know the truth. Was
Speaker 2: one of those missing children, somehow one of them?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: Had the creature lost a human child it had taken?
Speaker 2: Was it mourning a child that had once been human?
Speaker 2: Or its own offspring? The not knowing is its own horror. Sometimes,
Speaker 2: on quiet nights, I swear I can still hear it calling,
Speaker 2: not with my ears, but with something deeper, a pull
Speaker 2: I can't explain. Ben feels it too. I see it
Speaker 2: in the way he sometimes stops mid sentence, head tilted,
Speaker 2: listening to something only he can hear. We're safe now,
Speaker 2: I tell myself. We're in the city, surrounded by lights
Speaker 2: and people and noise. But safety is an illusion when
Speaker 2: you know what's out there in the forests, when you
Speaker 2: know there are things that can learn our voices, that
Speaker 2: can call our children in the night, that can grieve
Speaker 2: and rage and want with an intelligence that's almost human
Speaker 2: but not quite. The story doesn't have an ending, because
Speaker 2: it's not over. Every time Ben stares into trees, every
Speaker 2: time Tyler jumps at shadows, every time I wake to
Speaker 2: sounds that might be wind or might be something else,
Speaker 2: we're back in that cabin. We're always back there in
Speaker 2: the dark, listening to something breathe outside our window, listening
Speaker 2: to our own voices calling us into the night. That's
Speaker 2: the real horror, Not the creatures themselves, but knowing they exist,
Speaker 2: knowing the woods aren't empty, that some things want our
Speaker 2: children for reasons will never understand, and all we can
Speaker 2: do is hold them tight, lock our doors, and hope
Speaker 2: that whatever they are, whatever they want, they'll wait a
Speaker 2: little longer. Sarah's account ended there, but her story haunts
Speaker 2: me in ways that other encounters haven't. I've been researching
Speaker 2: and documenting sasquatch encounters for years now. I've interviewed dozens
Speaker 2: of witnesses who've heard. These creatures mimic human voices, usually
Speaker 2: simple words or phrases, sometimes the voices of loved ones.
Speaker 2: It's a detail that comes up more often than you
Speaker 2: might think, always delivered with that same mix of confusion
Speaker 2: and terror. But Sarah's experience feels different, more deliberate, more intelligent,
Speaker 2: more calculated. The creatures she described didn't just mimic voices.
Speaker 2: They understood family dynamics. They knew when to use which voice.
Speaker 2: They attempted psychological manipulation, trying different emotional approaches, like a
Speaker 2: predator learning the weak points in its praise defenses. That
Speaker 2: level of sophistication goes beyond anything I've encountered in other
Speaker 2: witness testimonies. I've interviewed other people who've reported sasquatch creatures
Speaker 2: watching them through windows, especially at night. Usually it's described
Speaker 2: as curiosity, a face appearing briefly at the glass before
Speaker 2: disappearing back into darkness. But what Sarah described was surveillance, studying, planning.
Speaker 2: These creatures watched her family for weeks, learning their routines,
Speaker 2: their voices, their relationships. They identified the most vulnerable member,
Speaker 2: young Ben, and specifically targeted him, which raises the question
Speaker 2: that keeps me awake at night. What did they actually
Speaker 2: want with that child? Sarah believes the female creature had
Speaker 2: lost its own offspring and wanted Ben as a replacement.
Speaker 2: It's a disturbingly human motivation, grief driving a mother to
Speaker 2: desperate actions. But is that really what was happening? Do
Speaker 2: these creatures experience emotions the way we do? Can they
Speaker 2: form parental bonds with human children? Or is it something
Speaker 2: far more nefarious that we can't even comprehend. The pattern
Speaker 2: is undeniable children vanishing for decades. There are occasional reports,
Speaker 2: usually dismissed as hysteria or misidentification, of people seeing unusually tall,
Speaker 2: hair covered figures accompanied by smaller ones, and sometimes witnesses
Speaker 2: describe the smaller ones as looking almost human, but not quite.
Speaker 2: I don't want to think about the implications of that.
Speaker 2: I don't want to consider what might happen to a
Speaker 2: human child raised by something that can walk upright and
Speaker 2: use tools and mimic speech but isn't human, Whether they
Speaker 2: would still be human after years in the deep forest,
Speaker 2: or if they would become something else, something in between.
Speaker 2: Sarah's story also makes me reconsider other encounters I've documented.
Speaker 2: The voice mimicry that I used to think was simple parroting.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's actually sophisticated hunting behavior. The window watching that always,
Speaker 2: at face value, seemed like curiosity, but maybe it's selection.
Speaker 2: The rock throwing that appears aggressive. Maybe it's testing our defenses.
Speaker 2: What if we've been misunderstanding these creatures entirely. What if
Speaker 2: there not the gentle giants some researchers believe, or the
Speaker 2: territorial animals others claim. What if there's something more complex
Speaker 2: and more dangerous, intelligent enough to want things from us,
Speaker 2: but alien enough that we can't understand what those things are.
Speaker 2: I reached out to Sarah recently to follow up on
Speaker 2: her story. She was reluctant to talk, but finally agreed
Speaker 2: to a brief conversation. Ben is sixteen now. She told
Speaker 2: me he still has the dream, sometimes still draws those
Speaker 2: figures without meaning to, and sometimes when they're driving and
Speaker 2: pass a heavily wooded area, he'll suddenly go quiet and
Speaker 2: press his face against the window, watching the tree line
Speaker 2: with an expression she can't read. She also told me
Speaker 2: something she hadn't included in her original account. Last year,
Speaker 2: Ben's class went on a camping trip. His first time
Speaker 2: back in the real wilderness since the cabin. The teachers
Speaker 2: found him at three am, standing at the edge of
Speaker 2: their campsite, staring into the forest. He was wide awake,
Speaker 2: fully conscious, not sleep walking. When they asked what he
Speaker 2: was doing, he said he was listening to someone calling him,
Speaker 2: someone who sounded sad, someone who'd been waiting a long time.
Speaker 2: They brought him back to his tent, but he didn't
Speaker 2: sleep the rest of the night, and in the morning
Speaker 2: the teachers found footprints around the campsite, large barefoot prints
Speaker 2: that the park rangers dismissed as a hoax. Sarah pulled
Speaker 2: Ben out of school for a week after that. They've
Speaker 2: moved twice since then, each time farther from any wilderness.
Speaker 2: But she knows, and I think Ben knows too, that
Speaker 2: distance might not matter. Whatever connection was formed during those
Speaker 2: two months in Alabama, it's still there waiting. This is
Speaker 2: what truly disturbs me about Sarah's story. It suggests these
Speaker 2: creatures can form attachments to specific humans that they can
Speaker 2: remember and wait and perhaps even track someone across years
Speaker 2: and miles that they're patient in ways we can't fathom,
Speaker 2: operating on time scales that make our human urgency seem fleeting.
Speaker 2: So I leave you with this thought and this warning.
Speaker 2: The next time you're in the woods and you hear
Speaker 2: a familiar voice calling from the darkness, pause before you answer.
Speaker 2: If your child or loved one claims to hear you
Speaker 2: calling when you know you haven't spoken, believe them. And
Speaker 2: if you ever feel watched from the forest's edge, trust
Speaker 2: that instinct, because it may not be who or what
Speaker 2: it seems. And some things, once they notice you never
Speaker 2: truly stop watching.
Speaker 3: They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
Speaker 4: I don't want to be.
Speaker 3: Out.
Speaker 5: Step child, this child, that child, everything.
Speaker 3: Can you ride back right back? Joy for me, joy
Speaker 3: staying right? You come it right away?
Speaker 4: Still, step steps.
Speaker 6: Down, knocking down, dotsssstssssss
Speaker 4: Used thess