Speaker 1: I started coon hunting with hounds about twenty five years ago.
Speaker 1: I used to hunt in a lot of places I
Speaker 1: had never been to during the daylight. I used to
Speaker 1: hunt by myself, but sometimes I would ride four wheelers
Speaker 1: with a couple of old men who couldn't get around
Speaker 1: too good anymore. Occasionally I would have to leave them
Speaker 1: and walk to the dogs if we couldn't get the
Speaker 1: four wheelers to the tree. On this particular night, the
Speaker 1: dogs treed in an area we didn't usually wind up in.
Speaker 1: We don't have vast tracks of wilderness down here, but
Speaker 1: this place is about two miles from any road, though
Speaker 1: the railroad tracks do run through it. At the time
Speaker 1: this happened, logging had just started, so most of this
Speaker 1: area was still covered in big hardwood timber that's all
Speaker 1: gone now. Me and the old boys went to get
Speaker 1: the dogs, and in the process I got us turned around.
Speaker 1: It was summertime and most of the slews were almost dry.
Speaker 1: They were just heavy and thick mud. I found one
Speaker 1: that was heading in the directions that I wanted to go,
Speaker 1: so I took it. Almost immediately. I noticed a set
Speaker 1: of large barefoot tracks that had been made not too
Speaker 1: long ago. Sunk deep into the ground. I can't say
Speaker 1: one hundred percent for sure that Bigfoot made them, but
Speaker 1: who would be walking barefoot in a cottonmouth infested river bottom.
Speaker 1: After a little while, I knew where I was, and
Speaker 1: I stayed in the old slow bed. We followed the
Speaker 1: tracks right up to the gas line that ran through
Speaker 1: the bottoms, which is about seventy five yards wide. The
Speaker 1: tracks didn't lead into the gas line, which told me
Speaker 1: that whatever had made them had left the slow bed
Speaker 1: and stayed in the woods. When we made it back
Speaker 1: to the truck, I asked one of the old boys
Speaker 1: what he thought of the tracks. He said, it was
Speaker 1: just some dope d during around. I said the hell
Speaker 1: it was, They replied, now, don't you go start bogger
Speaker 1: hunting on me. Well, I never mentioned it again. I
Speaker 1: still hunt and trap in that area, and I haven't
Speaker 1: seen anything else. But I've been hunting a few times
Speaker 1: when what I'll describe is a feeling of dread would
Speaker 1: come over me. Both times I tailed it out of
Speaker 1: there and I left. So I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was my imagination or what. I have some friends who
Speaker 1: used to hunt some hardwood over by the river. One
Speaker 1: day one of them asked me if I'd ever heard
Speaker 1: crows call after dark. I said I hadn't ever heard that.
Speaker 1: He said every time they turned their dogs loose, when
Speaker 1: they would strike and start working in a track, the
Speaker 1: crows would start calling back and forth, pitch black dark.
Speaker 1: Here in Arkansas, timber is a big deal. I can
Speaker 1: tell you lots of coon hunters have had encounters, but
Speaker 1: none of them would ever admit to it. I've known
Speaker 1: guys who refuse to go coon hunting alone. They'll never
Speaker 1: say why, but I have a good idea why they
Speaker 1: don't go. This is a horned house story, and it's
Speaker 1: pretty good. My mother's family has had a farm for
Speaker 1: over two hundred years. In the original will, it states
Speaker 1: that the property can be added to, but it cannot
Speaker 1: be sold. It has passed from family member to family
Speaker 1: member and can only go to those in my mother's bloodline.
Speaker 1: The house was built in eighteen sixty. It's a brick
Speaker 1: structure and it has three stories. Through the front door
Speaker 1: is a large entry way in an oak stairway, and
Speaker 1: past that as a long haul with rooms on each
Speaker 1: side and a kitchen at the end. The second floor
Speaker 1: is full of bedrooms and The third floor used to
Speaker 1: be an old ballroom. Every room has a fireplace, though
Speaker 1: over the years, as electricity and farnesses and plumbing were installed,
Speaker 1: they'd been blocked off with decorative iron plates. There's a
Speaker 1: wrap around porch and a large summer kitchen on the
Speaker 1: back of the house. Six spirits still call this beautiful
Speaker 1: historical house home, and with the exception of two of them,
Speaker 1: they are all relatives. Of the two that are not.
Speaker 1: One was a wagon accident survivor and brought to the
Speaker 1: house where he died, and the other was a visitor
Speaker 1: who had suddenly dropped dead from what was suspected to
Speaker 1: be a heart attack. One of the spirits in this
Speaker 1: house is my maternal grandfather, and although Grandpa chewed tobacco,
Speaker 1: he did not like smoking. He especially disliked it when
Speaker 1: women smoked. He was old fashioned that way. My mother,
Speaker 1: who used to smoke even as an adult, would never
Speaker 1: smoke in front of him, and never did until the
Speaker 1: day he died in this house. After he passed away,
Speaker 1: she decided to keep the place rather than pass a
Speaker 1: along to another relative. Since she and my dad did
Speaker 1: not have any sons, it was mostly me and my mother,
Speaker 1: My dad and a couple of hired hands who worked
Speaker 1: it and kept it in shape. My sisters were not
Speaker 1: interested in staying at the house and could not wait
Speaker 1: until they could leave and move to town. Two thousand
Speaker 1: and five, my dad passed away. My oldest sister decided
Speaker 1: to take mom to her house for a few days,
Speaker 1: and my two younger sisters were all staying with friends,
Speaker 1: so that left me alone. Now, I've never been afraid
Speaker 1: to stay there by myself, even to this day, but
Speaker 1: I decided to call some friends to come and maybe
Speaker 1: play cards and watch movies with me. That night, four
Speaker 1: of us were sitting around the kitchen table, and at
Speaker 1: that time we all smoked. We were playing cards, talking
Speaker 1: and smoking when suddenly the cigarette was slapped out of
Speaker 1: my hand by something unseen. Not a second later, across
Speaker 1: the table, my friend's cigarette went flying from her hand too,
Speaker 1: and an ashtray flew off the table. My friends were
Speaker 1: completely stunned, and the look on their faces was one
Speaker 1: of horror. I jumped up, picked up cigarettes, and I
Speaker 1: put them in the sink, while my friend screamed and
Speaker 1: ran out the door. My friend, who had her cigarette
Speaker 1: slapped away, had a red mark on her cheek. She
Speaker 1: said that she felt the hand slap her. She was
Speaker 1: in hysterics. I got her to calm down and told
Speaker 1: her that we could play cards in the summer kitchen,
Speaker 1: but they wanted nothing to do with that, and they
Speaker 1: got in their cars and left. I walked back into
Speaker 1: the house and said, loudie, thanks like grandpa. I swear
Speaker 1: I heard him laughing. And to this day, no one
Speaker 1: has smoked in this house since. And when those same
Speaker 1: friends stopped by, it's only during the daytime, and they
Speaker 1: refused to come inside. My wife and I started spending
Speaker 1: the weekends with her father after her mother passed away.
Speaker 1: My wife had told me in the past that she
Speaker 1: had experiences with bigfoot on her parents' property, but I
Speaker 1: told her that she was full of it. But the
Speaker 1: more time we spent there, the more I started talking
Speaker 1: to the locals, and it was apparently common knowledge that
Speaker 1: a family of bigfoot was living in the woods, and
Speaker 1: it was a hush hush subject. At night, I sit
Speaker 1: outside on the back porch and listened to the sounds
Speaker 1: of the woods. Between the frogs and the toads and
Speaker 1: crickets and other wildlife, it's pretty noisy. I noticed that
Speaker 1: every night around nine thirty, I hear what sounds like
Speaker 1: a drum roll on the trees, followed by a series
Speaker 1: of tree knockings that comes in threes. As soon as
Speaker 1: the knocking comes, the wildlife goes quiet. It's too quiet.
Speaker 1: I've heard howling and screaming, and one night, right on
Speaker 1: the other side of the tree line, I heard a
Speaker 1: whooping sound and multiple other strains vocalizations. I became curious
Speaker 1: about this because I always listened to your stories. I
Speaker 1: wanted to see a bigfoot. So one weekend, my friend
Speaker 1: Richie and I decided to go camping and see what
Speaker 1: we could find. And as soon as we got into
Speaker 1: the woods, we noticed tree brakes wooden structures, which excited us.
Speaker 1: We set up our camp and decided to explore. We
Speaker 1: followed the directions that the tree breaks pointed to, and
Speaker 1: it led us deep into the woods, farther than I
Speaker 1: had ever been. Eventually we came across the fallen tree
Speaker 1: with a bundle of jagged stems that were about two
Speaker 1: foot long. They were all equal in length, and they
Speaker 1: were lying neatly pointing to the left. There were no
Speaker 1: people out there, so who would put the stems there?
Speaker 1: We went in the direction they pointed, and we ended
Speaker 1: up in a ravine with a stream running through it.
Speaker 1: The next sign we found was a big X. Now
Speaker 1: I don't know what this means, but that's where we
Speaker 1: found the tracks. They were almost human, measuring thirteen inches.
Speaker 1: And as soon as we found the tracks, we started
Speaker 1: hearing crunching in the earth and the branches breaking. We
Speaker 1: didn't see what was making the sound, but it sounded big.
Speaker 1: We picked up our pace, chopping through the thick vegetation
Speaker 1: with our machetes, and eventually we found our camp and
Speaker 1: everything was good, but we felt like we were being watched.
Speaker 1: Forty yards away, we noticed something crouched down in the
Speaker 1: bushes and it was watching us, and we pretended not
Speaker 1: to notice it. Nighttime came and we heard walking in
Speaker 1: the woods around the perimeter of our camp from four
Speaker 1: different positions, and then we heard a loud whoop followed
Speaker 1: by a tree knock. It was too close for comfort.
Speaker 1: I turned on my night vision binoculars and I scanned
Speaker 1: the area and I noticed something was peaking around a
Speaker 1: tree at me. It would look and hide, and then
Speaker 1: look and hide. This went on for an hour and
Speaker 1: then it was gone all night. We heard by Peter
Speaker 1: footsteps all around our camp. As you can guess, we
Speaker 1: didn't sleep that night, and when the sun came up,
Speaker 1: everything was normal again, and we got even more curious.
Speaker 1: We went to the tree where the thing had been
Speaker 1: watching us and found footprints just like the ones we
Speaker 1: saw the day before. There was a little hole where
Speaker 1: it looked like it was digging for some reason, but
Speaker 1: we didn't know why. We jumped into our hammocks when
Speaker 1: it got dark, and we waited, and once again, footsteps
Speaker 1: were all around our camp. And then I heard a
Speaker 1: rabbit scream. I thought maybe an owl had gotten it,
Speaker 1: so I shrugged it off. And then around three thirty am,
Speaker 1: I heard footsteps in the camp and then I heard
Speaker 1: the sound of someone urinating. It was the longest pea
Speaker 1: I'd ever heard. Richie, is that you? I whispered no reply,
Speaker 1: so I asked a little louder, and I heard him
Speaker 1: move into his sleeping bag. He was silent and frozen
Speaker 1: in fear. I turned my night vision on to see
Speaker 1: what scared him, and I couldn't believe my eyes. There
Speaker 1: were five of them right there in our camp, less
Speaker 1: than twenty feet away from us. A female was lying
Speaker 1: on the ground eating the giant millipedes that infested the
Speaker 1: woods there, and the smaller one was crouched down next
Speaker 1: to her, And on the hill were three big males,
Speaker 1: one of whom was holding a rabbit by its head.
Speaker 1: One of the males saw me looking at them and
Speaker 1: made a come on motion with his arm, as if
Speaker 1: he was rushing the female to leave. I turned around
Speaker 1: in my hammock, and I hoped that they would not
Speaker 1: kill us. They hung around the camp until sun came up.
Speaker 1: I stayed in fear all night. Richie crapped on himself.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back again and offer them some
Speaker 1: food to see if they're peace or not. I know
Speaker 1: I'm taking a chance in doing this, but I'm a
Speaker 1: thrill seeker. I served six years in the seventh Special Forces,
Speaker 1: in three and a half years in Afghanistan. I've never
Speaker 1: felt the sensation I felt in those woods, not even
Speaker 1: in a firefight. I have to go back, oh man.
Speaker 1: I think it's a pretty good conclusion that they're not
Speaker 1: They're not aggressive or violent. They were right there besides you,
Speaker 1: and they didn't do anything to you. I hear you.
Speaker 1: If you want to go back, go back. If You're
Speaker 1: a thrill seeker and adrenaline junkie, and if that was
Speaker 1: more excitement than an actual firefight and combat, dude, you
Speaker 1: have a high threshold for excitement. But I thought this
Speaker 1: was a great story. And I know it may sound strange,
Speaker 1: but there are you know, there's only about twenty percent
Speaker 1: of the stories I get where people actually see them
Speaker 1: have an encounter, a visual encounter. It's like they're within
Speaker 1: eyesight and they can see. So's It's very interesting. It's
Speaker 1: a unique story, and I appreciate the writer for sending it.
Speaker 1: This story was told to me in a smoky little
Speaker 1: bar in Nashville, Tennessee, by an old man. His name
Speaker 1: was Samuel, and he appreciated the beer that I bought him.
Speaker 1: I could tell by his old, worn hat and tattered
Speaker 1: flannel shirt scuffed up shoes that he was barely getting by.
Speaker 1: I left him sitting at the bar and found a
Speaker 1: table in the back. I was hungry and I wanted
Speaker 1: to get something to eat, maybe a burger, since there
Speaker 1: weren't a lot of choices in that type of place.
Speaker 1: The waitress soon came over to take my order. She
Speaker 1: was a portly but pleasant woman with a great smile.
Speaker 1: Before I ordered, I asked her what the story was
Speaker 1: on the old gent sitting at the bar. She told
Speaker 1: me that Samuel was a once a month regular, coming
Speaker 1: in a few days after he had gotten a Social
Speaker 1: Security check and had paid his bills. She explained that
Speaker 1: he lived in a rooming house up the road a
Speaker 1: piece and didn't have a pot to piss in. When
Speaker 1: Samuel came in each month, he would only order one
Speaker 1: beer and snack on the free peanuts if they were
Speaker 1: out on the bar. Ill ordered some burgers and fries
Speaker 1: and another beer. Now she was turning to walk away,
Speaker 1: I asked her to get Samuel whatever he wanted to
Speaker 1: eat and another beer. She smiled and then turned and
Speaker 1: went to the bar, where she talked softly to the
Speaker 1: old man. After she left to go to the kitchen,
Speaker 1: Samuel got off his stool and walked back to my
Speaker 1: table to thank me again. I told him it was
Speaker 1: no problem, and I asked him to join me. He
Speaker 1: nodded and smiled. I noticed that he had a sparkle
Speaker 1: in his eyes, unlike most his age. My guess was
Speaker 1: that he was as hungry as I was, because we
Speaker 1: both sat eating in silence. After whard. We sipped on
Speaker 1: our beers, and I told him that my name was
Speaker 1: Jim and that I was from Louisville. I had just
Speaker 1: returned from Florida after working six months on hurricane damaged houses.
Speaker 1: Samuel told me that he was born and raised in
Speaker 1: the hills of North Carolina until he was twenty one.
Speaker 1: He said that he would love those mountains until his
Speaker 1: last breath. The most beautiful wild place on earth, he said.
Speaker 1: I had to ask him, if he loved it so much,
Speaker 1: why he left off to war. Maybe no work there.
Speaker 1: His posture changed. He bowed his head slightly and slowly
Speaker 1: shook it. No. I saw his new demeanor, and I
Speaker 1: knew I should have left the subject alone, but I
Speaker 1: didn't ask him why. Samuel laid his hands down on
Speaker 1: the table to stop them from shaking. As he began
Speaker 1: to speak. He said he had not told anyone the
Speaker 1: reason he left, but since he was old now and
Speaker 1: I had been kind to him, he would share a
Speaker 1: story with me. His words came softly, well thought out.
Speaker 1: I could tell that there was something that weighed deeply
Speaker 1: on his mind, if not also in his heart. His
Speaker 1: family had a farm at the bottom of the hollow,
Speaker 1: about ten miles out of Greenville. There were three kids.
Speaker 1: They were all boys who worked alongside mom and pop
Speaker 1: in the fields and gardens and with the livestock. They
Speaker 1: never had a lot, but they didn't know it. They
Speaker 1: hardly ever missed church or twice a month visit to
Speaker 1: their grandparents several ridges over. They hunted and fished and
Speaker 1: trapped to help put food on the table. Jobs were
Speaker 1: scarce back then, so when a neighbor boy from two
Speaker 1: hollows over told Samuel that an out of town logging
Speaker 1: company was hiring, he was all for it. So he
Speaker 1: told his family of his plans, and he promised to
Speaker 1: send money if they hired him. He was hired on
Speaker 1: and jumped onto the old flatbed truck with a couple
Speaker 1: of other fellas. He was no experienced logger, but he
Speaker 1: was good with firearms. One day, the foreman was target
Speaker 1: practicing with his twelve gauge double barrel he had. Samuel
Speaker 1: tossed short sticks in the air as far as he could,
Speaker 1: and then he tried to blow them apart. The foreman
Speaker 1: caught Samuel with his head turned slightly snickering, and raised
Speaker 1: his voice and asked him if he thought he could
Speaker 1: do better. The foreman reloaded handed Samuel the gun after
Speaker 1: five blown apart sticks. He had had enough of Samuel
Speaker 1: not missing, and he told him to be at his
Speaker 1: office in the morning, that he had another job waiting
Speaker 1: for him, because he was definitely not a logger. It
Speaker 1: turned out that the new job was as deputy for
Speaker 1: the company, essentially providing armed security when needed. Samuel was
Speaker 1: happy with the new position, but he was also gullible.
Speaker 1: He found himself, along with other armed deputies, assisting the
Speaker 1: bosses with the removal of folks from the mountains who
Speaker 1: refused to move, even though the company held the deeds
Speaker 1: to their land. Word had a way of soaring through
Speaker 1: the ridges and hollows like a swift winged sparrow, and
Speaker 1: people quit talking to Samuel. His own family asked him
Speaker 1: to not return to the farm. If he saw someone
Speaker 1: he knew, they would cross to the other side of
Speaker 1: the road. It was shunning mountain style. Way up in
Speaker 1: the mountains. In a very secluded hollow about five miles
Speaker 1: from his parents lived the Praders. The clan was run
Speaker 1: by an elderly woman known as Mammy Prader. There were
Speaker 1: no roads to their cabin only mule trails. People guessed
Speaker 1: that there were fourteen or more of them living in
Speaker 1: that one big cabin that hardly came down off the
Speaker 1: mountain except to get things that they could not make
Speaker 1: or hunt things like cloth and salt and snuff for
Speaker 1: old Mammy. The Praders had owned those eighteen hundred acres
Speaker 1: since before the Civil War, was uncut forest with trees
Speaker 1: so tall, some six or seven feet through the trunks.
Speaker 1: It was the boss's third attempt to evict them. The
Speaker 1: last two attempts ended with deputies taking fire from all directions,
Speaker 1: but that day the Boss came with a big crew.
Speaker 1: They had an ace in the hole. Riding in front
Speaker 1: on the mule with the deputy was a six year
Speaker 1: old girl in a plain flower sack dress. Jenny Prater
Speaker 1: had been kidnapped from the ant that she was staying
Speaker 1: with for a few days, right out of the front yard,
Speaker 1: and Jenny was Mammy's great grandchild. This bothered Samuel using
Speaker 1: a child as leverage, but the company was all that
Speaker 1: he had then and speaking up about it could cost
Speaker 1: him his job. He and his team rode their mules
Speaker 1: right up to the front porch of the cabin. The
Speaker 1: whole family was either sitting on the steps and wooden
Speaker 1: barrels or stumps. Samuel counted twelve people that he could
Speaker 1: see nodding, including Mammy, who sat in a big homemade
Speaker 1: rocking chair on the front porch. The boss pulled up
Speaker 1: some papers and waved them in front of the old lady.
Speaker 1: He told her this was company land now and that
Speaker 1: they had to leave. He reached over and rubbed little
Speaker 1: Jenny's head. She began to cry. Piercing anger shot from
Speaker 1: the old lady's eyes. She told the boss that they
Speaker 1: would leave, but he had to let them pray together
Speaker 1: once more. He told her to have at it, but
Speaker 1: don't be all damn day, he said. Before they prayed,
Speaker 1: he had the deputies collect the prader's guns and put
Speaker 1: them in a pile. The odd thing was there was
Speaker 1: no resistance. Some were even smiling. Some of them helped
Speaker 1: Mammy off the porch, and all of them stood in
Speaker 1: a half circle in unison. They tilted their heads back
Speaker 1: and the most god awful, strange cry came out of
Speaker 1: their mouths. It was a high pitched noise made using
Speaker 1: their tongue. It was almost a fast paced chant, and
Speaker 1: as quickly as it started it ended. They all sat down,
Speaker 1: each of them smiling. Out of nowhere, a pumpkin sized
Speaker 1: boulder flew into the boss's mule, and then another crashed
Speaker 1: through the tree tops and hit the officer on the
Speaker 1: far right. Samuel couldn't shoot, couldn't see anything in the
Speaker 1: dark forest. A mule braid as two large hairy arms
Speaker 1: twisted its head and broke its neck. Shots rang out
Speaker 1: from the bosses and deputies, but to no effect. Huge
Speaker 1: hairy beasts were everywhere, ripping apart men and mules. Samuel
Speaker 1: turned to look at his boss and watched as a
Speaker 1: hairy ape beast wrapped its hues hands around his neck,
Speaker 1: squeezing his head. Fell to the ground, and Samuel vomited
Speaker 1: onto the bloody earth. Samuel's turn came. He saw a
Speaker 1: beast reaching for him that stopped in its tracks, growl,
Speaker 1: and then there were clicking noises. It was coming from
Speaker 1: Old Mammy. The yard was soaked with blood. Everyone was dead,
Speaker 1: man and mule. The family had moved to the porch,
Speaker 1: and Samuel counted eleven creatures as they started carrying or
Speaker 1: dragging body parts back into the deep woods. Mammy Praterer
Speaker 1: stood up and told Samuel that he was a token.
Speaker 1: They always had to leave a token. He was to
Speaker 1: leave that country and never return or speak of what
Speaker 1: had happened. Samuel had tears in his eyes by the
Speaker 1: time he finished his story. I sat there for a time,
Speaker 1: silent and nodding. I wasn't sure what to say, but
Speaker 1: I didn't dare be respectful toward him. After a while,
Speaker 1: I thanked him for his company, and I stood up
Speaker 1: and shook his hand and left him fifty dollars. I
Speaker 1: couldn't drive fast enough to get back home to Louisville.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I believed a story or not,
Speaker 1: but that night, and for many nights after, I had
Speaker 1: nightmares about it.