Speaker 1: For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Speaker 1: Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
Speaker 1: refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
Speaker 1: know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
Speaker 1: share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot,
Speaker 1: dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
Speaker 1: it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
Speaker 1: once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
Speaker 1: woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
Speaker 1: remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Speaker 1: Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
Speaker 1: and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
Speaker 1: There's something I've learned, after nearly four decades of doing this,
Speaker 1: after all the interviews, the field research, the late nights,
Speaker 1: sitting in places most people wouldn't go in broad daylight,
Speaker 1: I've learned that the stories that stick with you, the
Speaker 1: ones that burrow in and won't let go, They aren't
Speaker 1: the dramatic ones. They aren't the stories where somebody saw
Speaker 1: something for half a second through the trees and went
Speaker 1: home with a good campfire tale. The ones that keep
Speaker 1: me up at night are the quiet ones, the slow ones,
Speaker 1: the encounters where something took its time, where it watched,
Speaker 1: where it made a decision about whether or not to
Speaker 1: let you leave. That's what you're about to hear. I've
Speaker 1: been collecting accounts like these for a long time. People
Speaker 1: send them to me, They call, they write long emails
Speaker 1: at two in the morning because they can't sleep, and
Speaker 1: they've never told anyone the full story. And I can
Speaker 1: always tell the difference between someone who's embellishing and someone
Speaker 1: who's still shaking. The people in these accounts still shaking,
Speaker 1: some of them decades later. What I've put together here
Speaker 1: are five encounters, five separate people, five different parts of
Speaker 1: this country, five different decades, and every single one of
Speaker 1: them shares something in common. Not the details. The details
Speaker 1: are all different. What they share is the aftermath. Every
Speaker 1: one of these people changed the way they lived because
Speaker 1: of what happened to them. They stopped going to places
Speaker 1: they'd gone.
Speaker 2: Their whole lives.
Speaker 1: They gave up hobbies they'd built their identities around. They
Speaker 1: rearranged their entire relationship with the outdoors because something out
Speaker 1: there showed them in no uncertain terms that they were
Speaker 1: not at the top of the food chain. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to tell you what to believe. That's never been
Speaker 1: what this show is about. What I am going to
Speaker 1: tell you is that these people believe it. And after
Speaker 1: you hear what they went through, I think you'll understand why.
Speaker 1: Some of these came to me directly emails mostly. One
Speaker 1: of them came secondhand from a nephew telling me about
Speaker 1: his uncle. I've changed some minor details to protect privacy,
Speaker 1: but the core of every account is exactly as it
Speaker 1: was shared with me. First names only, locations are as
Speaker 1: specific as the witnesses were comfortable with. And I want
Speaker 1: to say this upfront because it matters. None of these
Speaker 1: people came to me looking for attention. Most of them
Speaker 1: specifically asked me not to use their last names. A
Speaker 1: couple of them took months to even agree to let
Speaker 1: me share their stories at all. These aren't people chasing
Speaker 1: cliques or trying to sell a book. These are people
Speaker 1: who went through something they can't explain, and they've been
Speaker 1: carrying it alone for a long time. So let's get
Speaker 1: into it. Our first account comes from a man named
Speaker 1: Dale out of Sequem, Washington. Dale grew up hunting the
Speaker 1: Olympic Peninsula. He'd been in those mountains his entire life,
Speaker 1: and one morning in the fall of nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 1: everything he thought he knew about those woods changed in
Speaker 1: about thirty seconds. Here's Dale. I've gone back and forth
Speaker 1: on whether to send this probably one hundred times over
Speaker 1: the last year and a half. My name's Dale. I'm
Speaker 1: seventy one now. I live in Sequin, Washington, and I've
Speaker 1: been here most of my life. I grew up hunting
Speaker 1: these mountains. My father taught me. His father taught him.
Speaker 1: That's just what you did out here. I started tagging
Speaker 1: along when I was eight years old, and by the
Speaker 1: time I was sixteen, I was going out on my own.
Speaker 1: I knew those woods. I'm not saying that to sound tough.
Speaker 1: I'm saying it because I need you to understand that
Speaker 1: what happened to me in October of nineteen seventy eight
Speaker 1: wasn't the result of some greenhorn wandering into the timber
Speaker 1: and getting spooked by a bear. I was twenty three.
Speaker 1: It was the second week of October elk season. I'd
Speaker 1: gone out alone, which wasn't unusual for me. I preferred it. Actually,
Speaker 1: I was hunting a drainage off the dozed wallops up
Speaker 1: above a creek bottom where I'd seen sign earlier that week.
Speaker 1: There'd been fresh rubs on the alders and some good
Speaker 1: tracks in the mud along the water. I figured i'd
Speaker 1: get up and to a good spot before light and wait.
Speaker 1: I drove in before dawn, parked at a pull off
Speaker 1: i'd used a dozen times, grabbed my rifle, my pack
Speaker 1: and a thermous and started hiking in. It was cold,
Speaker 1: low forties, maybe fog Sitting in the valley like it
Speaker 1: always does that time of year. You couldn't see more
Speaker 1: than forty or fifty yards in front of you, and
Speaker 1: even that was fuzzy. I remember thinking it was going
Speaker 1: to be one of those mornings where you just sit
Speaker 1: there and listen because the visibility wasn't going to do
Speaker 1: you any favors. I got up to my spot about
Speaker 1: an hour before first light. It was a little bench
Speaker 1: above the creek, with some big furs behind me and
Speaker 1: a good view down into the drainage. I sat down
Speaker 1: against a tree, settled in and poured a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1: Everything was quiet, normal, quiet, the kind where you hear
Speaker 1: the creek and the drip off the branches and nothing else.
Speaker 1: I sat there for maybe forty five minutes. The sky
Speaker 1: started getting gray, just barely. You know that moment where
Speaker 1: it's not really daylight yet, but you can start to
Speaker 1: make things out, Trees take shape, you can see the ground.
Speaker 1: That's where I was when I heard something moving below me.
Speaker 2: It was heavy.
Speaker 1: That was the first thing I noticed. Not a deer,
Speaker 1: not even an elk. The sound of it was wrong.
Speaker 1: I've heard elk moving through brush a thousand times. They
Speaker 1: cracked through it, they snapped things. This was different. Whatever
Speaker 1: was down there was pushing through thick stuff, and it
Speaker 1: sounded like it was doing it slowly, deliberately, like it
Speaker 1: was trying not to make noise, but couldn't avoid it
Speaker 1: because of how big it was. I put my coffee
Speaker 1: down and brought the rifle up across my knees. I
Speaker 1: wasn't alarmed, not yet. I figured it might be a bear.
Speaker 1: We've got black bears all through that country, and they'll
Speaker 1: move through the bottoms early in the morning. I just
Speaker 1: sat there, watching the fog, waiting for whatever it was
Speaker 1: to come into view, and then the smell hit me.
Speaker 1: I've cleaned more elk and deer than I could ever count.
Speaker 1: I've been around dead animals in various states of decay.
Speaker 1: I've smelled bear dens. This wasn't any of that. It
Speaker 1: was something else entirely. It was sharp, organic, almost chemical,
Speaker 1: like if you took the worst body odor you've ever
Speaker 1: encountered and mixed it with wet dog and rotten vegetation.
Speaker 1: It was so strong my eyes watered. I remember pulling
Speaker 1: my collar up over my nose. That's how bad it was.
Speaker 1: Whatever was down there had stopped moving. I couldn't hear
Speaker 1: it anymore, but the smell was getting stronger, which told
Speaker 1: me it hadn't left. It was close, and it was still.
Speaker 1: Then the fog shifted just enough and I saw it.
Speaker 1: It was standing at the base of the slope, maybe
Speaker 1: sixty yards below me, partially behind a big hemlock. At
Speaker 1: first I thought I was looking at a man. My first,
Speaker 1: honest to God thought was that some other hunter had
Speaker 1: come in on the same drainage and was standing there
Speaker 1: in a dark coat. Because the shape was upright, two legs,
Speaker 1: two arms, shoulders, but the proportions were wrong. I could
Speaker 1: see that even through the fog. The shoulders were too wide,
Speaker 1: way too wide, and the arms hung too far down.
Speaker 1: They hung almost to the knees. The whole body was
Speaker 1: thick in a way that a human body isn't, not fat,
Speaker 1: not muscular in the way you'd think of a bodybuilder,
Speaker 1: just dense, packed, like every part of it was built
Speaker 1: heavier than it had any right to be. The way
Speaker 1: it stood was wrong too. A man standing still in
Speaker 1: the cold shifts his weight, he moves, he adjusts. This
Speaker 1: thing was rooted, absolutely motionless from the waist down. The
Speaker 1: stillness of it was unnatural. It was the kind of
Speaker 1: stillness that takes effort, or that comes naturally to something
Speaker 1: that's used to standing still for a very long time,
Speaker 1: waiting watching. It was covered in hair, dark brown, almost black,
Speaker 1: and it was matted in places, clumped, wet looking. The
Speaker 1: hair on the shoulders was longer than on the arms.
Speaker 1: It didn't look like fur, not the way a bear's
Speaker 1: coat looks uniform and groomed. This was more like the
Speaker 1: hair on a neglected animal, uneven, patchy in some spots,
Speaker 1: thick in others. I couldn't see the face clearly, not
Speaker 1: at that distance, not in that fog, but I could
Speaker 1: see the head and the head is what made my
Speaker 1: hand start shaking, because it wasn't round, it wasn't shaped
Speaker 1: like a bear's head. It came up to a slight point,
Speaker 1: like the top of the skull was ridged, and the
Speaker 1: head sat right on the shoulders. There was no neck,
Speaker 1: or if there was, it was so thick and short
Speaker 1: that it just blended into the shoulders like they were
Speaker 1: one piece. I sat there with the rifle across my
Speaker 1: knees and I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I'm not
Speaker 1: exaggerating when I tell you that my body wouldn't respond.
Speaker 1: It was like everything below my neck just locked up.
Speaker 1: I've never felt anything like it. I've been in tight spots.
Speaker 1: I've had close calls in the woods. I fell off
Speaker 1: a cliff face when I was nineteen and broke my
Speaker 1: collar bone, but nothing has ever produced the kind of
Speaker 1: fear I felt in that moment. It was primal. That's
Speaker 1: the only word for it. Something in my brain was
Speaker 1: screaming at me to be steel, be invisible, don't let
Speaker 1: it know you're here. It turned its head, not toward me,
Speaker 1: off to the left, and when it turned I saw
Speaker 1: the profile of the face. The jaw was massive, just enormous.
Speaker 1: It jutted forward, not like an ape exactly, but close.
Speaker 1: The brow was heavy and sloped, and the skin on
Speaker 1: the face, the parts that weren't covered in hair, was gray,
Speaker 1: not dark gray, not pale, just gray, like old concrete,
Speaker 1: like something that hadn't seen sun in its life. It
Speaker 1: stood there for maybe ten more seconds.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Time didn't work right. It could have been thirty seconds,
Speaker 1: or it could have been five. Then it turned and
Speaker 1: walked into the fog and the brush, and it was gone,
Speaker 1: just like that, no hurry, no sound at all this time,
Speaker 1: it just walked away and disappeared. I didn't move for
Speaker 1: another twenty minutes. I'm not proud of that. I sat
Speaker 1: there with my rifle in my lap, and I shook.
Speaker 1: My legs were shaking, my hands were shaking. My jaw
Speaker 1: was clinched so tight that when I finally forced myself
Speaker 1: to relax, my teeth ached. When I finally stood up,
Speaker 1: I didn't go down the slope. I didn't track it.
Speaker 1: I turned around and walked straight back to my truck.
Speaker 1: I didn't run, but I wanted to. Every cell in
Speaker 1: my body wanted to. I kept looking over my shoulder
Speaker 1: the whole way back. I'd take ten steps and stop
Speaker 1: and listen. Ten more steps, stop, listen. It took me
Speaker 1: twice as long to hike out as it did to
Speaker 1: hike in. I got to the truck and sat there
Speaker 1: with the engine running and my hands on the steering wheel.
Speaker 1: Couldn't stop looking at the tree line. I kept expecting
Speaker 1: to see it again. Every shadow between the firs looked
Speaker 1: like shoulders. Every dark stump looked like something crouching. I
Speaker 1: sat there for at least ten minutes before I could
Speaker 1: bring myself to put the truck in gear. I drove home,
Speaker 1: and I didn't tell my wife what happened. I didn't
Speaker 1: tell my father, I didn't tell anyone. I put the
Speaker 1: rifle in the safe, and I told everyone I was
Speaker 1: done hunting. My dad thought I'd lost my mind. My
Speaker 1: buddies gave me grief about it for years. I left them.
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to explain myself because I knew how
Speaker 1: it would sound. I knew exactly how it would sound.
Speaker 1: I didn't go back into those woods for twenty six years.
Speaker 1: Twenty six years, Brian, I'm not talking about that specific drainage.
Speaker 1: I mean any woods. I didn't hunt I didn't hike.
Speaker 1: I didn't go on camping trips with my kids. My
Speaker 1: wife would want to do a weekend at a campground somewhere,
Speaker 1: and I'd find a reason not to go. She thought
Speaker 1: I just didn't enjoy it anymore more. I let her
Speaker 1: think that. The truth is, I was afraid, a twenty
Speaker 1: three year old man who'd spent his whole life in
Speaker 1: the mountains, and I was afraid to go back because
Speaker 1: I'd seen something standing in that fog that should not
Speaker 1: have been there, something that wasn't a bear, wasn't a man,
Speaker 1: wasn't anything I could make sense of then, and honestly
Speaker 1: I still can't. I finally went on a walk in
Speaker 1: the woods again when my granddaughter was four. She wanted
Speaker 1: to go on a nature walk. She was tugging on
Speaker 1: my hand, and I did it for her. But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you this, it wasn't peaceful, it wasn't fun. I
Speaker 1: spent the whole time watching the trees, listening. My granddaughter
Speaker 1: was pointing at birds and picking up rocks, and I
Speaker 1: was scanning the timber like I was on patrol. I'm
Speaker 1: seventy one years old, and I still don't like being
Speaker 1: in the woods.
Speaker 2: After dark.
Speaker 1: I've had a good life, raised two kids, had a career,
Speaker 1: built a house with my own hands. But there's this
Speaker 1: one thing sitting in the back of everything, this one
Speaker 1: morning in nineteen seventy eight that I've never been able
Speaker 1: to put down. I've tried, Lord knows, I've tried. I've
Speaker 1: told myself it was a bear on its hind legs.
Speaker 1: I've told myself the fog was playing tricks. But I
Speaker 1: know what I saw. I saw a face. I saw
Speaker 1: a gray skin and a jaw that could have crushed
Speaker 1: a fence post. I saw something that looked almost human
Speaker 1: but wasn't. And the way it moved when it left, unhurried, casual,
Speaker 1: like it had somewhere to be, and I was beneath
Speaker 1: its Notice, that's the part that haunts me most. It
Speaker 1: wasn't afraid of me, not even a little bit. Whatever
Speaker 1: I saw that morning was real, It was solid, it
Speaker 1: was alive, and it was something that made me, a
Speaker 1: man who grew up in those mountains, feel like prey.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you do with that.
Speaker 2: Dale.
Speaker 1: Twenty six years, that's how long Dale stayed out of
Speaker 1: the woods. A man who grew up in those mountain
Speaker 1: who learned to hunt before he could drive, and one
Speaker 1: encounter took all of it away from him. Stay tuned
Speaker 1: for more Backwoods bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
Speaker 1: That's not somebody telling a story for fun. That's somebody
Speaker 1: describing a wound. Our next account takes us across the
Speaker 1: country to the mountains of West Virginia. A woman named
Speaker 1: Karen was twenty four years old in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: camped alone on a trail she'd hiked dozens of times.
Speaker 1: What happened to her that night and what she saw
Speaker 1: the next morning ended her relationship with the outdoors permanently.
Speaker 1: Here's Karen. I'm writing this because my therapist told me
Speaker 1: it might help. I know that probably sounds dramatic, but
Speaker 1: I've been dealing with this for over thirty years, and
Speaker 1: I'm tired of it living only in my head. I
Speaker 1: found your show about six months ago, and I listened
Speaker 1: to most of your episodes in about two weeks. Some
Speaker 1: of them scared me so badly I had to turn
Speaker 1: them off and come back the next day. But I
Speaker 1: kept coming back because these people were describing things I recognized,
Speaker 1: not the exact same thing, but the feeling, the way
Speaker 1: it sits in your chest afterward, the way you can't
Speaker 1: explain it to anyone without feeling like you're losing credibility.
Speaker 1: My name's Karen. I'm fifty seven. I live in Virginia now,
Speaker 1: but I grew up in Elkins, West Virginia, right on
Speaker 1: the edge of the Monongahela National Forest. My family wasn't
Speaker 1: what you'd call outdoorsy, but you didn't have to be.
Speaker 1: The forest was just there. You'd drive ten minutes in
Speaker 1: any direction and you were in it. I started hiking
Speaker 1: in college. I went to Davis and Elkins, so I
Speaker 1: was right there and it became my thing. It was
Speaker 1: how I dealt with stress. I'd load up a pack
Speaker 1: and head out on one of the trails for a
Speaker 1: few hours. Sometimes i'd go for a full weekend. In
Speaker 1: September of nineteen ninety three, I was twenty four. I'd
Speaker 1: graduated and was working at a physical therapy clinic in town.
Speaker 1: I decided to do a solo overnight on a trail
Speaker 1: i'd done several times before. It was a loop that
Speaker 1: took you up into some older timber, across a couple
Speaker 1: of ridges, and back down along a creek. Nothing crazy,
Speaker 1: maybe twelve miles total. I'd always felt safe on it.
Speaker 1: I hiked in on a Saturday morning and set up
Speaker 1: camp in a spot I liked, a flat area back
Speaker 1: in some hard woods, about thirty yards off the trail.
Speaker 1: I spent the afternoon reading and walking around, had a
Speaker 1: fire that night, ate dinner. Everything was completely normal. I
Speaker 1: woke up at around two in the morning, and I
Speaker 1: don't know why. I wasn't cold. I didn't have to
Speaker 1: use the bathroom. My eyes just opened and I was
Speaker 1: immediately wide awake, which is unusual for me. I'm a
Speaker 1: heavy sleeper, always have been. But I was awake, like
Speaker 1: someone had flipped a switch. The first thing I noticed
Speaker 1: was the silence. And I know people say that all
Speaker 1: the time in these stories, so let me be specific.
Speaker 1: The creek I was camped near was still running. I
Speaker 1: could hear that, but there were no insects, no frogs,
Speaker 1: nothing in the underbrush, nothing in the canopy. It was
Speaker 1: September in West Virginia, Brian. The woods at night in
Speaker 1: September are loud. Crickets, katie DIDs, tree frogs, all of it.
Speaker 1: That constant chorus that you stop hearing after a while
Speaker 1: because it's just background noise. It was gone, all of it.
Speaker 1: It was like someone had muted every living thing within
Speaker 1: a quarter mile. I lay there in my sleeping bag
Speaker 1: and I listened. My heart was beating hard, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know why yet. I just had this overwhelming feeling
Speaker 1: that something was wrong. Not vague, not gradual. It was
Speaker 1: instant and absolute, like my body knew something my brain
Speaker 1: hadn't caught up to. Then I heard breathing, not mine,
Speaker 1: outside the tent, close so close that at first I
Speaker 1: thought an animal was pressed right up against the rainfly.
Speaker 1: It was deep, slow breathing in and out, in and out,
Speaker 1: and I could hear a slih wheeze on the exhl,
Speaker 1: like air passing through a restricted space. It was rhythmic, patient.
Speaker 1: There was no urgency in it. Whatever was out there
Speaker 1: wasn't winded, wasn't stressed. It was just standing there, breathing
Speaker 1: like it had all the time in the world. And
Speaker 1: the smell came with it, thick sour like body odor
Speaker 1: and rotting leaves and something else underneath, something animal that
Speaker 1: I couldn't place. It came through the tent fabric. It
Speaker 1: was inside with me. I was breathing it. I stopped
Speaker 1: breathing myself. I put my hand over my mouth because
Speaker 1: I was terrified it could hear me. I lay there,
Speaker 1: completely rigid, staring up at the inside of the tent,
Speaker 1: and I listened to that breathing for what felt like forever.
Speaker 1: My whole body was locked up, every muscle tight. I
Speaker 1: could feel my pulse in my throat, in my wrists,
Speaker 1: behind my eyes. Then something touched the tent, not bumped,
Speaker 1: it touched it. I watched the fabric press inward near
Speaker 1: the top, on the side closest to my head, slowly,
Speaker 1: like a hand pressing against it from the outside. The
Speaker 1: shape of it was clear against the nylon. It was
Speaker 1: a hand, a huge hand, fingers spread wide. It pressed
Speaker 1: in far enough that the fabric was almost touching my face,
Speaker 1: and I could feel the heat coming off of whatever
Speaker 1: was on the other side. That's the detail that gets
Speaker 1: me the most even now. The heat, whatever was touching
Speaker 1: my tent was radiating warmth through the nylon, like standing
Speaker 1: next to a wood stove. It was alive. It was
Speaker 1: right there, inches from my face, with nothing but a
Speaker 1: thin sheet of nylon between us. Then the hand moved,
Speaker 1: It slid downward along the wall, slowly. I could hear
Speaker 1: the fabric whispering under the pressure, like something feeling the
Speaker 1: shape of what it had found, not trying to get in,
Speaker 1: not tearing at it, just exploring. That realization hit me
Speaker 1: in real time, and it made everything worse, because it
Speaker 1: meant this thing was curious. It meant it was thinking.
Speaker 1: I didn't scream, I didn't move, I just lay there.
Speaker 1: The hand pulled away, the fabric settled back into place.
Speaker 1: I heard movement outside, not footsteps exactly, more like a shuffling,
Speaker 1: a shifting of weight than nothing. Silence again. I don't
Speaker 1: know how long I waited, an hour, maybe maybe longer.
Speaker 1: Eventually the insects started up again, slowly, at first, a
Speaker 1: cricket here, a frog there. The woods came back to life,
Speaker 1: and I took that as a sign that whatever had
Speaker 1: been out there was gone. I waited until gray light,
Speaker 1: and then I got out of the tent. I won't
Speaker 1: pretend I wasn't shaking, because I was. My hands were
Speaker 1: trembling so badly I could barely work the zipper. I
Speaker 1: stepped outside and looked around, and everything looked normal. Trees, leaves, morning, fog,
Speaker 1: nothing out of place except the ground about five feet
Speaker 1: from my tent. There were impressions in the leaf litter,
Speaker 1: two of them side by side, where something had been standing,
Speaker 1: and they were enormous. Not prints exactly, not in the
Speaker 1: way you'd see in mud, but compressions, like something incredibly
Speaker 1: heavy had stood in that one spot for a long
Speaker 1: time and packed the leaves and dirt down under its weight.
Speaker 1: I packed up faster than I've ever packed in my life.
Speaker 1: I stuffed everything into my bag, without organizing it, without
Speaker 1: folding anything. I was on the trail within ten minutes.
Speaker 1: I made it about a quarter mile before I saw it.
Speaker 1: It was off to my right upslope, maybe eighty yards away,
Speaker 1: standing between two trees watching me. I stopped walking. My
Speaker 1: feet just stopped, like my legs decided independently of the
Speaker 1: rest of me that this was as far as we
Speaker 1: were going. It was tall, very tall. I'm five six,
Speaker 1: and I'm used to men being taller than me, but
Speaker 1: this was a different skin. It was easily seven feet
Speaker 1: probably more. It was hard to judge from that distance,
Speaker 1: and at that angle uphill. The build was what got me.
Speaker 1: It looked like a man, but a man who'd been
Speaker 1: scaled up and thickened in every dimension. The chest was
Speaker 1: barrel shaped, the stomach wide, the legs like tree trunks.
Speaker 1: There was no definition the way a human body has definition,
Speaker 1: no visible waist, no tapering. It was just massive, from
Speaker 1: shoulders to hips. It was covered in reddish brown hair,
Speaker 1: not long, flowing hair, short and dense, like the coat
Speaker 1: on a chow. It covered everything except the face. And
Speaker 1: the face. The face is what I can't get away from.
Speaker 1: It was broad, flat. The nose was wide and pushed in,
Speaker 1: not like an ape's nose, more like a man's nose
Speaker 1: that had been broken badly and never set right. The
Speaker 1: mouth was a thin line, no lips to speak of,
Speaker 1: just a slit. But the eyes are what held me.
Speaker 1: They were dark, very dark, sat deep under that heavy brow,
Speaker 1: and they were looking right at me, not through me,
Speaker 1: at me. There was something behind those eyes. I don't
Speaker 1: mean intelligence exactly, though I think there was intelligence there.
Speaker 1: I mean awareness, recognition. It knew what I was, It
Speaker 1: understood what it was looking at. We stared at each
Speaker 1: other for probably fifteen seconds, maybe twenty, And in those
Speaker 1: seconds I felt something I've never felt before or since.
Speaker 1: I felt observed, not watched, observed, the way a person
Speaker 1: looks at something they're studying. It wasn't aggressive, it wasn't
Speaker 1: curious the way a dog is curious. It was something else,
Speaker 1: something deliberate, something that made me feel very small and
Speaker 1: very exposed. Then it turned, It turned away from me
Speaker 1: and walked uphill into the timber, and it moved with
Speaker 1: a fluidity that didn't match its size. Nothing that big
Speaker 1: should move that smoothly. It was like watching a shadow
Speaker 1: slide between the trees, three or four strides, and it
Speaker 1: was out of sight, and the only proof it had
Speaker 1: been there was the faint sound of brush snapping higher.
Speaker 2: On the ridge.
Speaker 1: I ran, I'm not going to dress it up. I
Speaker 1: ran the rest of the way back to my car.
Speaker 1: I fell twice, cut my knee open on a rock
Speaker 1: the second time. I didn't stop. I threw my pack
Speaker 1: in the trunk and drove home, doing seventy on roads
Speaker 1: that were meant for forty five. When I got home,
Speaker 1: I sat in the shower for over an hour. I
Speaker 1: scrubbed my arms and hands like I was trying to
Speaker 1: wash something off me that wouldn't come off. I cried.
Speaker 1: I cried hard, not because I was hurt, because I
Speaker 1: was so relieved to be inside four walls, and because
Speaker 1: I knew deep down that I'd never feel the same
Speaker 1: way about being outside again, I didn't tell anyone what
Speaker 1: happened for almost five years. The first person I told
Speaker 1: was a boyfriend who laughed at me, and that was
Speaker 1: the last time I mentioned it for another decade. After that,
Speaker 1: I learned to keep it to myself. You learn quickly
Speaker 1: who you can talk to about something like this. The
Speaker 1: answer for most of my life has been nobody. I
Speaker 1: haven't camped, since, I haven't hiked alone, since I live
Speaker 1: in Northern Virginia, now near the suburbs, and even here,
Speaker 1: when I drive past a tree line at dusk, my
Speaker 1: hands tightened on the steering wheel and something in my
Speaker 1: chest constricts.
Speaker 2: I hate that.
Speaker 1: I hate that something took the woods away from me.
Speaker 1: Hiking was my peace. It was the thing that kept
Speaker 1: me balanced. It was where I went when the rest
Speaker 1: of the world felt like too much. And one night
Speaker 1: in September of ninety three, that was over, just like that,
Speaker 1: one encounter, one face looking at me through the trees,
Speaker 1: and a piece of who I was got left behind
Speaker 1: on that ridge in West Virginia. My therapist says, writing
Speaker 1: this might give me some closure. I don't know about that,
Speaker 1: but I do know that it happened.
Speaker 2: It was real.
Speaker 1: It's the most real thing that's ever happened to me,
Speaker 1: and I've spent thirty years wishing it wasn't. Thank you
Speaker 1: for giving people a place to say these things, Karen,
Speaker 1: I want to sit with that for a second. The
Speaker 1: hand on the tent, the heat coming through the nylon,
Speaker 1: and then seeing it the next morning standing in the trees,
Speaker 1: watching her with a look she describes as observation, not aggression,
Speaker 1: not curiosity. Observation. That word keeps coming back to me.
Speaker 1: Karen didn't describe something that was startled by a hiker.
Speaker 1: She described something that was studying one. Our third account
Speaker 1: comes from Minnesota. A man named Marcus and his buddy
Speaker 1: Travis were on a canoe trip in the Boundary Waters
Speaker 1: in the summer of two thousand and four. Something circled
Speaker 1: their camp in the middle of the night, and what
Speaker 1: they saw the next morning from the water in broad
Speaker 1: daylight is something neither of them has been able to shake.
Speaker 1: Here's Marcus. My name's Mark, and I live in Duluth.
Speaker 1: I'm forty eight, I'm a high school shop teacher, and
Speaker 1: I've been fishing and hunting in northern Minnesota since I
Speaker 1: was a kid. I want to start by saying I
Speaker 1: don't have a history of seeing things. I'm not someone
Speaker 1: who's into paranormal stuff. My wife listens to your show
Speaker 1: and she forwarded me a few episodes and I told
Speaker 1: her it sounded like entertainment. She told me to write
Speaker 1: to you and tell you what happened, because she says
Speaker 1: I turn into a different person when I talk about it,
Speaker 1: and she thinks I need to stop carrying it alone.
Speaker 1: So here goes. August of two thousand and four, I
Speaker 1: was twenty six. My buddy Travis and I went into
Speaker 1: the Boundary Waters Canoe area for a five day trip.
Speaker 1: We've done it before a handful of times. We had
Speaker 1: our route, planned, our permits, all the gear. We were experienced,
Speaker 1: not guides or anything, but we knew what we were doing.
Speaker 1: The first three days were great, good weather, good fishing,
Speaker 1: no bugs to speak of, which is rare up there
Speaker 1: in August. On the third night, we were camped on
Speaker 1: a point that stuck out into one of the bigger lakes.
Speaker 1: Good sight, flat ground, good fire, ring, some big pines
Speaker 1: around the perimeter. We had dinner sat by the fire
Speaker 1: for a while and turned in around ten. I woke
Speaker 1: up sometime after midnight. I know it was after midnight
Speaker 1: because I checked my watch when I heard Travis whisper
Speaker 1: my name. He said, Marcus, that's it, just my name,
Speaker 1: but the way he said it. I'd known Travis since
Speaker 1: middle school. I'd been in a lot of situations with him.
Speaker 1: I'd never heard his voice sound like that then, controlled
Speaker 1: like he was trying very hard to not raise it
Speaker 1: above a whisper. I said what he said, something's walking
Speaker 1: around the camp.
Speaker 2: Listen.
Speaker 1: I listened, and I heard it footsteps, heavy ones, not
Speaker 1: on the trail, in the brush off the back of
Speaker 1: the camp site, in the timber. Something was circling slowly,
Speaker 1: like it was taking its t like it was walking
Speaker 1: the perimeter. Stay tuned for more Backwoods big Foot stories.
Speaker 1: We'll be back after these messages. Travis had his head
Speaker 1: lamp in his hand, but he hadn't turned it on.
Speaker 1: I could see a silhouette in the tent, sitting up
Speaker 1: completely rigid. I sat up too, and we just listened.
Speaker 1: It circled the camp for at least ten minutes. I'm
Speaker 1: not guessing at that. I watched the minutes tick on
Speaker 1: my watch, ten full minutes of something walking around us
Speaker 1: in the dark, And each time it completed what seemed
Speaker 1: like a full circuit, it got a little closer. The
Speaker 1: footsteps got a little louder, the brush it was pushing
Speaker 1: through was closer to the edge of the camp. I
Speaker 1: could feel it tightening the circle, like it was testing
Speaker 1: how close it could get. At one point, the footsteps
Speaker 1: stopped directly behind the tent, six feet away, maybe less.
Speaker 1: I could hear it breathing deep, slow breaths. Each exhale
Speaker 1: had a rasp to it, like air moving over gravel.
Speaker 1: Travis grabbed my arm. He didn't say a word, He
Speaker 1: just grabbed my arm and squeezed, and his hand was trembling.
Speaker 1: Then it stopped on the side closest to the lake
Speaker 1: and we heard something else, a sound I've never been
Speaker 1: able to describe adequately to anyone. It was low, so
Speaker 1: low it was almost more vibration than sound, like a
Speaker 1: hum that you feel in your sternam before you hear
Speaker 1: it in your ears.
Speaker 2: It pulsed.
Speaker 1: It would build up and then drop off and then
Speaker 1: build up again, and the water reacted to it. I
Speaker 1: could hear the lake the surface was doing something sloshing
Speaker 1: lapping against the shore irregularly, like something was disturbing it.
Speaker 1: That sound went on for maybe thirty seconds, then it stopped.
Speaker 1: Then silence, complete silence. Travis and I didn't sleep. We
Speaker 1: sat up in that tent until dawn. We didn't talk much.
Speaker 1: A few whispered exchanges about what to do, stay put,
Speaker 1: wait for light, don't go outside. At one point Travis
Speaker 1: whispered that he wanted to look outside, and I told
Speaker 1: him absolutely not. I don't know what I thought would
Speaker 1: happen if he unzipped that tent, but I knew with
Speaker 1: every fiber of my being that we needed to stay inside.
Speaker 1: We needed to be small and invisible and still. When
Speaker 1: the sun came up, we unzipped the tent and got out.
Speaker 1: The first thing I noticed was the smell lingering, faint,
Speaker 1: but there sour like old sweat mixed with something spoiled.
Speaker 1: Travis smelled it too. He looked at me and I
Speaker 1: could see it in his face.
Speaker 2: He was scared.
Speaker 1: Travis was a big guy six' two two twenty played
Speaker 1: football in.
Speaker 2: College he was.
Speaker 1: Scared we walked the perimeter of the camp and found
Speaker 1: where it had been moving broken branches about chest, height
Speaker 1: not snapped cleanly, either twisted like something had grabbed them
Speaker 1: and wrenched them aside while it. Walked and on the
Speaker 1: ground in a patch of exposed dirt near the, shore
Speaker 1: we found a, print one clear, print, barefoot roughly seventeen
Speaker 1: to eighteen inches, long five. Toes but the toes were
Speaker 1: different than a human. Foot they were shorter and, wider
Speaker 1: and they were splayed, out more like the foot had
Speaker 1: spread under enormous. Weight we packed. Up we broke camp
Speaker 1: in about fifteen, minutes which is fast when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with canoes and portage. Gear we were on the water
Speaker 1: as soon as we could. Manage neither of us said
Speaker 1: what we were. Thinking we didn't name, it we didn't
Speaker 1: try to explain.
Speaker 2: It we just.
Speaker 1: MOVED i remember the sound of the paddles hitting the
Speaker 1: water felt too, loud like we were announcing ourselves to
Speaker 1: whatever was out. There travis kept looking over his shoulder
Speaker 1: at the tree line behind the, campsite AND i caught
Speaker 1: myself doing the same. Thing every shadow between the pines
Speaker 1: looked like something. Standing it was maybe an hour, later mid,
Speaker 1: morning full, daylight WHEN i saw. It we were paddling
Speaker 1: along the north shore of the, lake heading for the
Speaker 1: portage trail to the next lake. South the shore was,
Speaker 1: rocky with pines growing right up to the water's, edge
Speaker 1: and standing on a rock shell partially hidden by the
Speaker 1: trunks was Something i've been trying to make sense of
Speaker 1: for over twenty. YEARS i saw it from maybe one
Speaker 1: hundred yards. OUT i tapped my paddle on the gun
Speaker 1: or to Get travis's attention and pointed he saw it.
Speaker 1: Too we both stopped paddling and just. DRIFTED i Heard
Speaker 1: travis say something under his. BREATH i don't know what it.
Speaker 1: Was it might have been a. Prayer whatever it, was
Speaker 1: his voice was. Shaking it was standing, upright completely, still
Speaker 1: like a. Statue the first THING i registered was the.
Speaker 1: Color it was, dark not, black but very dark, brown almost.
Speaker 1: Mahogany the hair was, thick and it hung, slightly especially
Speaker 1: on the forearms and the sides of the torso not
Speaker 1: long like you'd picture on a movie, costume just hanging
Speaker 1: enough to have a little movement in the. Breeze the
Speaker 1: body was unlike ANYTHING i can compare it to. Accurately
Speaker 1: it looked, human but only in the way that a
Speaker 1: rough sketch of a person looks. Human the torso was too,
Speaker 1: long the legs were shorter in proportion than they should have,
Speaker 1: been and they were bent slightly at the knees even
Speaker 1: while it stood, still like it was always ready to.
Speaker 1: Move the arms were long and, thick and the hands
Speaker 1: hung below the. Knees and the hands were what struck me.
Speaker 1: Most they were, massive whiter than a human hand should.
Speaker 1: Be the fingers were thick and curled, slightly like a
Speaker 1: person who's been doing, hard manual labor their whole. Life
Speaker 1: the head was the part that stays with. Me it was,
Speaker 1: conical not, dramatically but. Noticeably the crown came up to
Speaker 1: a slight ridge or, crest and the whole skull seemed
Speaker 1: to slope back from the. Brow the brow itself was
Speaker 1: pronounced a solid ridge of bone above the, eyes and
Speaker 1: below that, BROW i could see the. Face the skin was, dark,
Speaker 1: weathered looking like tanned leather that had been left out for.
Speaker 1: Decades the cheekbones were high and, wide the jaw was.
Speaker 1: Heavy the mouth was, closed and it was just a flat,
Speaker 1: line no expression at. All the eyes were the worst.
Speaker 1: Part they weren't just looking in our, direction they were
Speaker 1: locked on, us on. ME i was in the front
Speaker 1: of the, canoe AND i was, closest and those eyes tracked.
Speaker 1: Me when the canoe drifted slightly to the, left the
Speaker 1: head turned slightly to keep me. CENTERED i felt that
Speaker 1: in a WAY i can't. EXPLAIN i felt watched the
Speaker 1: way an animal must feel watched when it doesn't know
Speaker 1: if it's about to be. Killed we drifted for maybe
Speaker 1: forty five. Seconds nobody, spoke nobody. Moved then it, turned
Speaker 1: stepped off the rock, shelf and was gone into the.
Speaker 1: Trees not, fast not, slow just. Gone travis AND i
Speaker 1: paddled to that portage in total. Silence we portaged to
Speaker 1: the next, lake and then we looked at each, other
Speaker 1: and without saying a, word we turned south back toward
Speaker 1: our entry. Point we cut a five day trip down
Speaker 1: to three and a. Half we paddled harder than we needed,
Speaker 1: To we portaged faster than we needed. To we didn't
Speaker 1: stop for, lunch we didn't. Fish we moved like men
Speaker 1: trying to outrun something they knew they couldn't. Outrun when
Speaker 1: we got back to the, TRUCK i Remember travis stood
Speaker 1: by the tailgate with his hands on the canoe and
Speaker 1: his head. Down he stood like that for a long.
Speaker 1: TIME i didn't say. ANYTHING i loaded the gear around
Speaker 1: him and. Waited when he finally looked, up his eyes were.
Speaker 1: Red he wasn't. Crying it was something, else something that
Speaker 1: looked like, exhaustion but. Deeper he looked like a man
Speaker 1: who'd used up something he wasn't going to get. Back
Speaker 1: we drove home and didn't speak about what happened for
Speaker 1: the entire four hour. Drive the radio was, off the
Speaker 1: windows were, up four hours of nothing but engine noise
Speaker 1: and the sound of our own. Thoughts that, Night travis called.
Speaker 1: Me he said that was, real, RIGHT i said, Yes
Speaker 1: he said, okay good, night and he hung.
Speaker 2: Up that was.
Speaker 1: It that was the whole, conversation and somehow it was.
Speaker 1: Enough we'd both confirm to each other that had, happened
Speaker 1: and that was all we needed to. Say we've talked
Speaker 1: about it a few times since, then not. Many travis
Speaker 1: doesn't like bringing it. Up he's told me he doesn't
Speaker 1: think about, it BUT i know he does because his
Speaker 1: wife told my wife that he has nightmare sometimes about
Speaker 1: something circling in the. DARK i still. FISH i still
Speaker 1: go up, north BUT i don't do overnights. Anymore day
Speaker 1: trips only And i'm always back at the truck before
Speaker 1: the sun gets. Low my wife thinks that's the result
Speaker 1: of getting. Older she THINKS i just don't want to
Speaker 1: sleep on the ground. Anymore i've let her believe. THAT
Speaker 1: i tried to camp again, once five maybe six years
Speaker 1: after it, happened a different, lake farther, south with a bigger.
Speaker 1: GROUP i lasted until about nine at. Night the sun
Speaker 1: went down and the woods got, dark and something in
Speaker 1: my chest started. TWISTING i couldn't sit, still couldn't focus
Speaker 1: on the conversation around the. Fire every sound in the
Speaker 1: trees was something, circling every breeze was. BREATH i told
Speaker 1: the GROUP i wasn't feeling, well AND i paddled back
Speaker 1: to the trailhead in the, dark alone on the. Water
Speaker 1: and the crazy thing, IS i felt safer out there
Speaker 1: on that black lake by myself THAN i did sitting
Speaker 1: at a campfire surrounded by six other, people because the
Speaker 1: campfire reminded me of that night of lying in the,
Speaker 1: dark knowing that something was right there right, outside, patient
Speaker 1: taking its. Time that's not something you get, over that's
Speaker 1: something you learned to live. Around but that's not. It
Speaker 1: AND i think you know That. Marcus two witnesses on that,
Speaker 1: one two grown men who both saw the same thing
Speaker 1: in broad daylight from one hundred yards. Away and the
Speaker 1: detail that stays with me From marcus's account is the.
Speaker 1: Eyes the way they tracked him as the canoe. Drifted
Speaker 1: that's not a bear standing on a. Rock that's not
Speaker 1: a trick of the. Light that's something locked onto a
Speaker 1: target and making sure it knew where that target was
Speaker 1: at every. Moment our fourth account is a little. Different
Speaker 1: this one didn't come from the person who had the.
Speaker 1: Encounter it came from his, nephew a man Named, michael
Speaker 1: who's telling me about something that happened to his Uncle
Speaker 1: jesse in the fall of nineteen eighty. Five jesse was
Speaker 1: a logger in Southern. Oregon he went to work early
Speaker 1: one morning and found something waiting for. Him jesse told
Speaker 1: this story exactly three times before he, died And michael
Speaker 1: is the last person alive who heard it in. Full Here's.
Speaker 1: MICHAEL i want to be upfront that this didn't happen to.
Speaker 1: Me this happened to my Uncle jesse in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: five in Southern. Oregon he told this story exactly three,
Speaker 1: times once to my, grandmother once to my, father and
Speaker 1: once to me WHEN i was seventeen and he'd had
Speaker 1: a few beers At. Thanksgiving he passed in twenty, nineteen
Speaker 1: And i'm the only person left in my family who
Speaker 1: heard the whole thing in his own. WORDS i don't
Speaker 1: want it to disappear with. ME i should tell you
Speaker 1: about That. Thanksgiving it was two thousand and. One my
Speaker 1: uncle hadn't had a drink in a few, years AND
Speaker 1: i think the beers loosened something he'd been keeping clamp down.
Speaker 1: Tight everyone else was in the living room watching. FOOTBALL
Speaker 1: i was in the kitchen getting another, plate And jesse
Speaker 1: was sitting at the table by, himself just staring at his.
Speaker 1: Beer he looked up at me and, said sit, Down,
Speaker 1: MICHAEL i got SOMETHING i want to tell, you And
Speaker 1: i'm only going to say at. ONCE i sat, down
Speaker 1: and for the next forty minutes he told me everything,
Speaker 1: quietly never raised his, voice never got. Dramatic he told
Speaker 1: it like he was reading a report and his hands
Speaker 1: were shaking the entire. Time this was a man with
Speaker 1: four arms like fence, posts and his hands were shaking
Speaker 1: around A budweiser. Can my uncle was a. Log he
Speaker 1: spent his twenties and thirties in the woods of Southern
Speaker 1: oregon and Northern. California he wasn't a small. Man he
Speaker 1: was six three two, forty most of it in his
Speaker 1: shoulders and. Forearms he was strong in the way that
Speaker 1: people who do physical labor for a living are. Strong
Speaker 1: Not jim, strong work, strong and he wasn't afraid of.
Speaker 1: Much my father always Said jesse was the kind of
Speaker 1: guy who'd walked toward a problem while everyone else was
Speaker 1: walking away from. It in the fall of eighty, Five
Speaker 1: jesse was working a cut on some private timber land
Speaker 1: east of The Rogue. River he was running a saw
Speaker 1: on a crew of about eight. Guys they'd been out
Speaker 1: there for a couple of weeks and the work was
Speaker 1: going fine. Routine one, Morning jesse went in. Early he
Speaker 1: liked to be the first one on. Site he told
Speaker 1: me he'd get there at least an hour before the
Speaker 1: rest of the. Crew walk the, cut checked the equipment
Speaker 1: plan out the. Day it was still dark when he
Speaker 1: pulled in that. Morning he parked his truck and walked
Speaker 1: toward the, landing which was a clear area at the
Speaker 1: edge of the cut where they'd stage the.
Speaker 2: Logs he.
Speaker 1: Said the first thing he noticed was that something had
Speaker 1: been in the landing. OVERNIGHT a stack of logs that
Speaker 1: had been decked the day, before cut sections probably eighteen
Speaker 1: inches in diameter and eight feet, long had been, moved.
Speaker 1: Scattered some of them had been. Thrown one of them
Speaker 1: was thirty feet from where it had been, stacked And
Speaker 1: jesse told me that log weighed at least four hundred
Speaker 1: pounds and it had been thrown like a piece of.
Speaker 1: Kindling he stood there trying to make sense of. It
Speaker 1: his first thought was. Vandals his second thought was a.
Speaker 1: Bear but bears don't throw. Logs they might roll, them
Speaker 1: they might drag them looking for. Grubs they don't pick
Speaker 1: them up and throw them thirty. Feet he walked past
Speaker 1: the scattered logs toward the tree line where they'd been.
Speaker 1: Cutting he had a flashlight and he was sweeping it
Speaker 1: ahead of. Him the ground was torn, up deep gouges
Speaker 1: in the, dirt like something with enormous strength had been
Speaker 1: ripping at the, earth not digging with. Purpose jesse, said
Speaker 1: it was more like, rage like something had been angry
Speaker 1: and had taken it out on the, ground the way
Speaker 1: a person might punch a. Wall and then he found the,
Speaker 1: tree a hemlock maybe ten inches in. Diameter at the
Speaker 1: edge of the, cut it had been snapped off about
Speaker 1: four feet from the. Ground not, cut not knocked down
Speaker 1: by a falling, tree. Snapped the brake was, splintered raw,
Speaker 1: fresh and the top of the tree had been dragged
Speaker 1: about twenty yards and left in the. Brush jesse told
Speaker 1: me he put his hand on that broken stump and
Speaker 1: felt the. Fibers they were. Twisted whatever broke that tree
Speaker 1: hadn't just pushed it, Over it had wrenched, it torked
Speaker 1: it until the wood gave. Way jesse had been felling
Speaker 1: timber for, years and he told me that the force
Speaker 1: required to do that to a green ten inch hemlock
Speaker 1: was something he couldn't wrap his head. Around you couldn't
Speaker 1: do it with your, Hands you couldn't do it with a.
Speaker 1: Truck jesse told me that he stood there looking at
Speaker 1: that broken, tree and for the first time in his adult,
Speaker 1: life he felt a chill run through him that had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the. Temperature he told, Me, michael
Speaker 1: it was like my body was telling me to, leave
Speaker 1: but my brain hadn't figured out why. Yet then he
Speaker 1: heard it behind. Him stay tuned for More backwoods bigfoot.
Speaker 1: Stories we'll be back after these. Messages in the timber
Speaker 1: on the opposite side of the landing a sound he
Speaker 1: described as a grunting, exhalation like a person clearing their,
Speaker 1: throat but deeper than any human chest could. Produce he
Speaker 1: said it. Resonated he said you could feel it in the.
Speaker 1: Ground he said it wasn't, loud but it carried it
Speaker 1: moved through the trees like it didn't need, volume it just.
Speaker 1: Was he spun around and put his flashlight on the tree,
Speaker 1: line and for just a, moment maybe two or three,
Speaker 1: seconds the beam caught something standing at the edge of the.
Speaker 1: Trees jesse was not a man who. Embellished he was, dry,
Speaker 1: straightforward didn't care about impressing. Anyone so when he described
Speaker 1: what he, saw it was, plain matter of, fact and
Speaker 1: that's what made it so. Unsettling he. Said it was
Speaker 1: shaped like a, man a very large.
Speaker 2: Man he.
Speaker 1: Said it was at least his, height but much. Wider
Speaker 1: the shoulders were broader than any. Humans the body was
Speaker 1: covered in dark, hair he said, black or very close to,
Speaker 1: it and the hair was, coarse not. Smooth he said
Speaker 1: it looked like the wire brush he used to clean
Speaker 1: rust off. Equipment that was his. Comparison he. Said the
Speaker 1: chest was, massive like a barrel set on. End the
Speaker 1: stomach was, flat not. Rounded the arms were long and
Speaker 1: the hands were hanging at the, sides and the fingers
Speaker 1: were curled like a person making a loose. Fist the
Speaker 1: legs were shorter than you'd expect for the, size and
Speaker 1: they were thick from the hip to the knee in
Speaker 1: a way that made the thing look, planted. Immovable but
Speaker 1: the face is what he talked about. Most he said
Speaker 1: it looked, old not elderly. Ancient the skin was, dark
Speaker 1: increased deep creases around the eyes and across the forehead
Speaker 1: and along the. Jaw he said it reminded him of
Speaker 1: leather that had been left in the weather for. Years
Speaker 1: the nose was wide and, flat with nostrils that flared
Speaker 1: visibly even in the flashlight. Beam the mouth was partially,
Speaker 1: open and he could see, teeth not, fangs teeth flat
Speaker 1: teeth like a, human's but. Larger and the. Eyes jesse
Speaker 1: said the eyes reflected the flashlight the way a dog's eyes.
Speaker 1: DO a tapatum layer that, shine but the color of
Speaker 1: the reflection was reddish, orange not bright. Red a, deep,
Speaker 1: dull reddish, amber and behind that reflective, shine he said
Speaker 1: there was something, aware something watching him with. Intent he
Speaker 1: said it didn't look scared of the. Light it didn't look.
Speaker 1: Curious it looked, annoyed like he'd walked into its living.
Speaker 1: Room the beam was on it for two maybe three.
Speaker 1: Seconds then it, toned and when it, Turned jesse, said
Speaker 1: the speed of it was what almost broke. Him something
Speaker 1: that large should not be able to move that. Fast
Speaker 1: it was there and then it, wasn't just a crash
Speaker 1: of brush and then. Silence jesse walked back to his.
Speaker 1: Truck he didn't, Run he told me that. Specifically he,
Speaker 1: SAID i didn't run BECAUSE i didn't want it to.
Speaker 1: KNOW i was. AFRAID i don't know if that made any,
Speaker 1: sense but that's what was in my. Head don't. Run,
Speaker 1: Walk walk like you belong, Here walk like you're not,
Speaker 1: scared even though every step felt like it took a.
Speaker 1: Year he sat in the cab with the doors locked
Speaker 1: and the engine, running until the rest of the crew
Speaker 1: showed up an hour. Later he said that hour was
Speaker 1: the longest of his. Life he kept the headlights, on
Speaker 1: pointed at the tree. Line he said he watched the
Speaker 1: edge of those woods the entire, time and twice he
Speaker 1: thought he saw movement back in the. Shadows he couldn't be,
Speaker 1: sure but he thought something was still, there watching him
Speaker 1: from the, dark waiting for him to, leave or waiting
Speaker 1: for something. Else he didn't know. Which he told the
Speaker 1: foreman that the landing had been vandalized overnight and they
Speaker 1: should be. Cautious he didn't say what he. Saw he,
Speaker 1: finished the, day he, finished the week he finished the.
Speaker 1: Job jesse never talked about it, Publicly he never reported.
Speaker 1: It he kept logging for another twelve years before his
Speaker 1: back gave, out and as far AS i, know he
Speaker 1: never saw anything like it. Again but my father told
Speaker 1: me that after eighty, Five jesse always carried a side
Speaker 1: arm in the, woods a forty four. Magnum he'd never
Speaker 1: carried one, Before and when my father asked him, Why
Speaker 1: jesse just, said because NOW i know what's out. There
Speaker 1: there was one more detail he told me That thanksgiving
Speaker 1: night THAT i haven't shared with anyone until. Now he
Speaker 1: said that when the thing turned and moved into the,
Speaker 1: trees he heard it make a, sound not the grunt from,
Speaker 1: earlier something. Different he. Said it was almost like a,
Speaker 1: word like it was, speaking Not, english not any language he,
Speaker 1: recognized but, structured a, short low vocalization that had what
Speaker 1: he called intent behind, it like it said something to
Speaker 1: him or to something else in the woods before it.
Speaker 1: Left he said that was the detail that haunted him
Speaker 1: more than, anything more than the, face more than the,
Speaker 1: eyes because it meant this thing. Communicates it means there
Speaker 1: might be more than. One my uncle passed from cancer
Speaker 1: four years. Ago he was seventy, one tough right to the.
Speaker 1: End at his, FUNERAL i thought about telling the other
Speaker 1: family members what he told. ME i, didn't BUT i
Speaker 1: think about it all the. TIME i think about that,
Speaker 1: landing those scattered, logs that snap. TREE i think about
Speaker 1: a wire brush haired thing with an old face standing
Speaker 1: at the edge of a flashlight beam in Southern, organ
Speaker 1: looking annoyed that someone had shown up. EARLY i think
Speaker 1: About jesse sitting at that kitchen table with his hand,
Speaker 1: shaking trusting me with something he'd barely told a soul
Speaker 1: in sixteen. YEARS i think about the way he looked
Speaker 1: when he was finished. Talking he took a long drink
Speaker 1: of his, beer and he looked at me and, said
Speaker 1: now you, know don't tell your, Mother and then he
Speaker 1: got up and went to watch football like nothing had.
Speaker 1: HAPPENED i Think jesse would be okay with me sending.
Speaker 1: This he was, private but he also wanted people to
Speaker 1: understand that The woods aren't always what they. Seem he
Speaker 1: said that to me once years. Later he, said The
Speaker 1: woods have their own, Rules, michael and we don't know
Speaker 1: half of. THEM i believe, Him, michael The woods have
Speaker 1: their own, rules and we don't know half of. Them
Speaker 1: jesse said, That AND i think about the Detail michael
Speaker 1: shared at the, end about the, vocalization the thing that
Speaker 1: sounded almost like a, word almost like. Language that changes
Speaker 1: the calculus on all of this if you really sit with.
Speaker 1: IT a large unidentified animal is one. THING a large
Speaker 1: unidentified animal that communicates is something else, entirely And jesse
Speaker 1: carried that knowledge with a forty four magnum on his
Speaker 1: hip for the rest of his. Life our fifth and
Speaker 1: final account comes From. ARKANSAS a woman Named tomorrow was
Speaker 1: twenty eight years old and twenty sixteen training for one
Speaker 1: hundred mile Trail. Ultra she was deep into a long
Speaker 1: run on The Buffalo river when something stepped into a
Speaker 1: gap in the canopy and looked at her and the
Speaker 1: way she describes what she, saw particularly the face is
Speaker 1: unlike Anything i've heard in almost forty years of collecting these.
Speaker 1: Accounts Here's. TOMORROW i almost didn't write. THIS i started
Speaker 1: it twice and deleted at both. Times i'm not a
Speaker 1: person who shares things like. THIS i don't post about it.
Speaker 1: ONLINE i don't go to. CONFERENCES i don't even know
Speaker 1: what i'd call WHAT i, saw because every name people
Speaker 1: use for it sounds ridiculous when you say it out.
Speaker 1: Loud So i'll just tell you what, happened and you
Speaker 1: can call it whatever you. Want my Name's. Tomorrow i'm thirty.
Speaker 1: EIGHT i live In, Fayetteville. Arkansas in the fall of twenty,
Speaker 1: SIXTEEN i was twenty eight AND i was training for
Speaker 1: a trail. ULTRA i was running sixty to seventy miles
Speaker 1: a week and doing most of my long runs on
Speaker 1: trails in and around The Buffalo River. CORRIDOR i knew
Speaker 1: those trails. Well i'd been running them for three years
Speaker 1: by that. POINT i felt at home on. Them on
Speaker 1: A saturday in Late, OCTOBER i did a long run
Speaker 1: on a trail section that follows the river through a canyon,
Speaker 1: area lots of, bluffs big, timber dense understory in the,
Speaker 1: bottoms beautiful. Country i'd started, early around six and was
Speaker 1: planning on twenty two miles out and. Back the first
Speaker 1: half went, fine, cool, morning, light, wind the. USUAL i
Speaker 1: hit my turnaround point and started heading. BACK i was feeling,
Speaker 1: good moving. WELL i had my earbuds in listening to a,
Speaker 1: podcast not paying much attention to anything except the trail
Speaker 1: and my. Footing around mile, SIXTEEN i pulled my earbuds.
Speaker 1: OUT i don't know why something made me do. It
Speaker 1: it's the same instinct you get when you're driving and
Speaker 1: you turn the radio down because you need to, concentrate
Speaker 1: even though the music has nothing to do with. Driving
Speaker 1: something in me wanted to hear what was around. Me
Speaker 1: the first THING i noticed was THAT i couldn't hear.
Speaker 1: Birds i'd heard them all, morning, Cardinals jay's, woodpeckers but
Speaker 1: now there was. Nothing just the, river which was off
Speaker 1: to my. Left about one hundred yards through the, TREES
Speaker 1: i slowed to a. WALK i was in a stretch
Speaker 1: where the trail cuts through thick timber with a lot
Speaker 1: of dead fall on both, sides not great, visibility maybe
Speaker 1: forty yards in any direction before the woods got too
Speaker 1: dense to see. Through i've been asked IF i was
Speaker 1: scared at that point BEFORE i saw, anything and the
Speaker 1: answer is. Yes but it wasn't a rational. Fear nothing
Speaker 1: had happened, yet no, sound no, movement nothing. Concrete it
Speaker 1: was something deeper than, that something. Physical my skin felt,
Speaker 1: Wrong the hair on my arms was standing, up AND
Speaker 1: i had this crawling sensation across the back of my,
Speaker 1: neck like someone had their hand hovering an inch from my.
Speaker 1: Skin my body was reacting to something my brain hadn't registered.
Speaker 1: Yet i've talked to other runners about, this about those
Speaker 1: moments where your instinct fires before your senses catch. Up
Speaker 1: this was, that but dialed up to a Level i've
Speaker 1: never experienced before or. SINCE i smelled it BEFORE i saw,
Speaker 1: anything AND i need to explain this Because i've read
Speaker 1: people describe the smell AND i always thought they were being.
Speaker 1: Dramatic they're. Not it was like someone had taken a
Speaker 1: dumpster full of wet garbage and left it in the
Speaker 1: sun for a. Week it was, powerful and it was,
Speaker 1: sudden LIKE i walked through a wall of. It one
Speaker 1: second it wasn't, there and the next second it was.
Speaker 1: Everywhere my eyes WATERED i. GAGGED i actually put my
Speaker 1: hand over my mouth and nose and stood there trying
Speaker 1: not to. COUGH i stopped. WALKING i stood on the
Speaker 1: trail AND i slowly turned in a, circle looking into the.
Speaker 1: Trees nothing just. Woods but the smell was getting. Stronger
Speaker 1: whatever was producing it was getting closer to, me OR
Speaker 1: i was standing in the middle of its. Path THEN
Speaker 1: i heard a branch, break not a, twig a, branch
Speaker 1: a thick. One the sound was like a gunshot in the.
Speaker 1: Silence it came from my right, uphill maybe sixty yards.
Speaker 1: AWAY i turned toward the, sound AND i saw a,
Speaker 1: movement something, large moving between the, trees not, running walking.
Speaker 1: Deliberately it stepped into a gap in the canopy where
Speaker 1: the sun was coming, through AND i saw it clearly
Speaker 1: for about four or five. SECONDS i wanted to describe
Speaker 1: this carefully BECAUSE i thought about it almost every day
Speaker 1: for the last ten, years AND i want to get it.
Speaker 1: Right it was walking on two legs. Upright the posture
Speaker 1: wasn't perfectly, vertical. Though it was leaned slightly forward at the,
Speaker 1: hips and the arm swung as it, walked but they
Speaker 1: swung wider and more loosely than a human's arms do
Speaker 1: like the shoulder joints had more range of, motion like
Speaker 1: the arms were attached. Differently it was. Tall i'm five
Speaker 1: to eight And i'm telling you this thing was at
Speaker 1: least two feet taller than, me probably. More but the
Speaker 1: height wasn't what struck me. First it was the. Proportion
Speaker 1: everything about it was. Thick the thighs were. Enormous each
Speaker 1: thigh was probably the diameter of my. Waist the hips were,
Speaker 1: wide whiter than the, shoulders which made me think, immediately almost,
Speaker 1: clinically that it was. Female that thought came, unbidden and
Speaker 1: it shocked. ME i didn't think creature. FIRST i didn't
Speaker 1: think monster. FIRST i thought female because the proportions told
Speaker 1: me that wide, hips heavy, thighs a thick torso that
Speaker 1: tapered slightly at the. Shoulders there was mass around the
Speaker 1: chest and mid, section but it was distributed differently than
Speaker 1: a male body would carry. It the hair was reddish,
Speaker 1: brown auburn, on almost like fall, leaves and it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Uniform it was thinner on the inner, arms thicker on
Speaker 1: the shoulders and back on the. Head it was longer
Speaker 1: hanging past the, ears and it was, tangled matted in.
Speaker 1: Places there were spots where it looked like it had
Speaker 1: been rubbed off or worn away on the. Elbows particularly the,
Speaker 1: face it was. Expressive that's the thing nobody prepares you.
Speaker 1: For it wasn't a blank animal. Stare it turned its
Speaker 1: head toward, me and its face. Changed the brow, furrowed
Speaker 1: the lips pressed, together the nostrils. Widened it looked at
Speaker 1: me the way a person looks at something. Unexpected it looked,
Speaker 1: surprised and underneath the surprise there was something, else, displeasure
Speaker 1: maybe Like i'd interrupted something and it wasn't happy about.
Speaker 1: It the skin on the face was, dark not quite,
Speaker 1: brown not quite, gray something in, between weathered creased around the.
Speaker 1: Eyes the eyes themselves were, brown dark, brown and they
Speaker 1: were proportionally small for the size of the. Face set,
Speaker 1: deep the nose was broad and slightly, upturned with wide.
Speaker 1: Nostrils the jaw was, heavy and the chin was almost non.
Speaker 1: Existent the forehead sloped back dramatically under that ridge of.
Speaker 1: Brow it looked at me for maybe three. Seconds its
Speaker 1: head was turned toward, me but its body was still
Speaker 1: oriented in the direction it had been, walking like it
Speaker 1: had only bothered to glance at, me LIKE i wasn't
Speaker 1: important enough to stop. For then it kept. Walking it
Speaker 1: turned its head forward and continued through the, trees and
Speaker 1: within maybe four, strides it was behind dense timber and.
Speaker 1: Gone the only sound was the faint crunch of leaves
Speaker 1: getting quieter and. QUIETER i stood on that trail AND
Speaker 1: i didn't move for at least two. Minutes my legs were,
Speaker 1: trembling which is something BECAUSE i was sixteen miles into
Speaker 1: a run and my legs should have already been. Tired
Speaker 1: but this was a different kind of. Trembling it was a,
Speaker 1: adrenaline pure cold. Adrenaline my hands were, shaking my vision had.
Speaker 1: NARROWED i could hear my heart beat in my. Ears
Speaker 1: stay tuned for More Backwoods bigfoot. Stories we'll be back
Speaker 1: after these. MESSAGES i turned around and, ran not back
Speaker 1: toward my, car because the thing had been moving roughly
Speaker 1: in that. DIRECTION i ran in the direction i'd come.
Speaker 1: FROM i ran, hard ultra training pace out the. WINDOW
Speaker 1: i sprinted sections of that trail that you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to sprint because of the roots and rocks and drop.
Speaker 1: OFFS i didn't. CARE i ran UNTIL i hit a
Speaker 1: section near a trailhead where there were other. PEOPLE a
Speaker 1: family having a picnic near the, river AND i stopped
Speaker 1: and put my hands on my knees and tried to.
Speaker 1: Breathe the family looked at me LIKE i was. CRAZY
Speaker 1: a woman asked IF i was. OKAY i SAID i was.
Speaker 1: FINE i was not. FINE i sat at that picnic
Speaker 1: area for over an. HOUR i couldn't make myself go
Speaker 1: back to the trail to get to my. Car EVENTUALLY
Speaker 1: i called a friend and asked her to pick me.
Speaker 1: UP i told Her i'd rolled my ankle and couldn't
Speaker 1: finish the. RUN i sat in her car and stared
Speaker 1: out the window the whole drive. BACK i went back
Speaker 1: the next day with two friends to get my car
Speaker 1: from the. TRAILHEAD i didn't go. ALONE i wouldn't go.
Speaker 1: Alone one of them asked me what, happened AND i
Speaker 1: Said i'd gotten dizzy from low blood sugar on the
Speaker 1: trail and wanted to be. Careful another. Lie here's WHAT
Speaker 1: i need you to, Understand. BRIAN i was a trail.
Speaker 1: Runner that was my. IDENTITY i was training for an.
Speaker 1: ULTRA i was going to run one hundred. Miles that
Speaker 1: was my dream AND i was close to making it.
Speaker 1: Happen and after that day In. OCTOBER i never ran another,
Speaker 1: trail not ONCE i switched to road. RUNNING i run
Speaker 1: on pavement, now in neighborhoods where there are houses and
Speaker 1: cars and. PEOPLE i tried going back to the. Trails
Speaker 1: about six months. LATER i drove to the, trailhead, parked
Speaker 1: looked at the tree, line and drove. Home people in
Speaker 1: my life THINK i just changed my. Preference they THINK
Speaker 1: i REALIZED i liked road running. Better my running partner
Speaker 1: from back then still gives me grief about. It she
Speaker 1: calls me a. CONVERT i smile and go along with.
Speaker 1: It i've thought about telling. Her i've thought about it
Speaker 1: one hundred. Times we'll be running a neighborhood loop on
Speaker 1: A saturday, morning and she'll say something about how she
Speaker 1: misses the trails and how we should go do a
Speaker 1: long run on The Buffalo river, sometime And i'll feel
Speaker 1: this wave of nausea hit, me And i'll change the.
Speaker 1: Subject she doesn't. Know she doesn't have any idea WHY i.
Speaker 1: Stopped nobody. Does my husband knows something happened out, there
Speaker 1: because he's seen me freeze up when we're driving through wooded,
Speaker 1: areas and something about the light or the density of
Speaker 1: the trees triggers. Me he's, Asked i've told Him i'm.
Speaker 1: Fine he doesn't push. It but the truth is THAT
Speaker 1: i saw something in those woods that broke something in.
Speaker 1: Me not broke in a dramatic, way broke in a quiet,
Speaker 1: way like a bone that heals wrong and you can
Speaker 1: still walk on. It but its when the weather changes
Speaker 1: the woods make me. Ache NOW i see a trail
Speaker 1: disappearing into the, trees and my chest tightens and my
Speaker 1: hands go, cold and every cell in my body, says,
Speaker 1: no not, again not in. THERE i want to say
Speaker 1: one more. Thing the expression on its. Face that's the
Speaker 1: THING i keep coming back. To it wasn't, Fear it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Aggression it was something more unsettling than either of. Those
Speaker 1: it was recognition without. Concern it saw me the WAY
Speaker 1: i might see a squirrel on the. Sidewalk it acknowledged
Speaker 1: THAT i, existed and then it DECIDED i didn't. Matter
Speaker 1: and in that split second of eye, CONTACT i understood
Speaker 1: something about myself and about the world That i'd never considered.
Speaker 1: BEFORE i understood that there are things out there that
Speaker 1: are bigger than, us older than, us and completely indifferent to,
Speaker 1: us and that understanding changed something fundamental in the WAY
Speaker 1: i moved through the. World WHAT i saw was, real
Speaker 1: it was a Live it was aware of, me and
Speaker 1: the look it gave, me that, brief, dismissive almost irritated,
Speaker 1: glance told me EVERYTHING i needed to know about WHERE
Speaker 1: i fall on the hierarchy of things that live in those.
Speaker 1: Woods i'm not at the, top and neither are you.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow five, people five different, decades five different places across this.
Speaker 1: COUNTRY a hunter in the fog of The Olympic, peninsula
Speaker 1: a young woman alone in a tent In West. Virginia
Speaker 1: two friends on a canoe trip in The Boundary. Waters
Speaker 1: a logger standing in e wrecked landing before dawn in Southern.
Speaker 1: OREGON a trail runner on The Buffalo river In. Arkansas
Speaker 1: none of them know each, other none of them were
Speaker 1: looking for, this none of them wanted, it and every
Speaker 1: single one of them described something that if you line
Speaker 1: the accounts up side by, side share certain qualities that
Speaker 1: are hard to explain. Away the, size the, build the
Speaker 1: way it, moved the intelligence behind the, eyes the smell,
Speaker 1: well and that, feeling the one they all describe in
Speaker 1: their own way of being in the presence of something
Speaker 1: that understood exactly what they were and made a choice
Speaker 1: about what to do with that. Information that's the part
Speaker 1: that gets, me the. Choice these weren't accounts of something
Speaker 1: charging out of the brush and. Attacking these were encounters
Speaker 1: where something looked at a human, being considered, them and
Speaker 1: either walked away or stood there long enough to make
Speaker 1: its presence. Known that speaks to. SOMETHING i don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what it speaks, to but it's not the behavior
Speaker 1: of a mindless. Animal it's the behavior of something that's,
Speaker 1: aware something that has, boundaries something that on these particular
Speaker 1: nights and mornings decided to let these particular people walk
Speaker 1: away with a story they'd carry for the rest of their.
Speaker 1: LIVES i think About dale sitting in his truck with
Speaker 1: his hands on the, wheel staring at the tree. LINE
Speaker 1: i think About karen shaking so badly she couldn't work
Speaker 1: the zipper on her. TENT i think About Mark arcus
Speaker 1: And travis paddling in silence for four, hours unable to
Speaker 1: say out loud what they'd both just. SEEN i think
Speaker 1: About jesse carrying a forty four magnum for the rest
Speaker 1: of his working life because of three seconds in a flashlight,
Speaker 1: beam AND i think about, tomorrow a woman who was
Speaker 1: weeks away from running one hundred, miles who hasn't set
Speaker 1: foot on a trail in ten years because of one
Speaker 1: dismissive glance from something she doesn't have a name. For
Speaker 1: these are the accounts that sit with, me the ones
Speaker 1: where the aftermath tells you everything you need to know
Speaker 1: about the encounter. Itself you don't have to believe what
Speaker 1: these people, Saw you don't have to accept any of.
Speaker 1: It but what you can't, do WHAT i don't think
Speaker 1: any honest person can, do is listen to the way
Speaker 1: these five people describe the way their lives changed and
Speaker 1: walk away thinking they're making it. Up there's a cost
Speaker 1: to these, experiences a, real measurable, cost and you can
Speaker 1: hear it in every. Word if you've had an experience like,
Speaker 1: these if you've been carrying something and you've never had
Speaker 1: a place to put it. DOWN i want you to
Speaker 1: know that this is that. Place you can reach me
Speaker 1: through the website or at my. Email, brian that's a
Speaker 1: n At paranormalworldproductions dot. Com first names only is fine
Speaker 1: as much or as little detail as you're comfortable, Sharing
Speaker 1: AND i promise. You whatever you send, me it won't
Speaker 1: be met with, laughter it won't be met with. Skepticism
Speaker 1: it'll be met with the respect that it, deserves BECAUSE
Speaker 1: i know what it costs to tell these. Stories i've
Speaker 1: been in this field long enough to. Know until next,
Speaker 1: time stay safe out. There and if you're in the
Speaker 1: woods after dark and something tells you to pay, attention pay.
Speaker 1: Attention these five people will tell you.
Speaker 2: Why didn' ah pa