WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.759 For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace. 2 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:10.279 Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world 3 00:00:10.359 --> 00:00:14.160 refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they 4 00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:18.679 know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we 5 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:22.839 share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot, 6 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.239 dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.280 it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because 8 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:34.640 once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the 9 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.920 woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and 10 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.840 remember some things in the woods don't want to be found. 11 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:46.240 Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, 12 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.399 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 13 00:01:02.880 --> 00:01:05.400 It's the middle of the night the summer of nineteen 14 00:01:05.480 --> 00:01:08.959 twenty four, and five men are barricaded inside a log 15 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:12.560 cabin high on the side of a mountain in southwestern Washington. 16 00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:16.719 The fires burned down to coals. They've got rifles across 17 00:01:16.760 --> 00:01:19.760 their knees, and out in the dark, out past the 18 00:01:19.799 --> 00:01:22.840 walls where they can't see a thing, something is throwing 19 00:01:22.959 --> 00:01:26.799 rocks at the cabin, heavy ones, heavy enough to shake 20 00:01:26.840 --> 00:01:29.760 the roof and crack off, the logs coming down one 21 00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:33.159 after another, hour after hour, while the men fire blind 22 00:01:33.239 --> 00:01:35.200 into the black at a thing they never once get 23 00:01:35.200 --> 00:01:38.000 a look at. And when the sun finally comes up, 24 00:01:38.359 --> 00:01:40.760 they grab what they can carry and they walk off 25 00:01:40.760 --> 00:01:43.640 that mountain, and they leave behind the gold claim they'd 26 00:01:43.640 --> 00:01:46.400 spent the whole summer working, and they don't come back. 27 00:01:47.159 --> 00:01:51.640 That's the Ape Canyon Incident, nineteen twenty four Mount Saint Helens, 28 00:01:51.920 --> 00:01:54.400 and it's one of the oldest and most famous Sasquatch 29 00:01:54.439 --> 00:01:57.640 encounters in American history. For a lot of people, it's 30 00:01:57.680 --> 00:02:00.879 the first big modern Bigfoot story that country ever told, 31 00:02:01.359 --> 00:02:05.000 the one everybody else's story gets measured against. I've spent 32 00:02:05.079 --> 00:02:07.840 close to forty years on this subject, and sixteen of 33 00:02:07.879 --> 00:02:10.319 those I spent carrying a badge. So let me tell 34 00:02:10.360 --> 00:02:13.919 you upfront how I work. I take the woods seriously. 35 00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:17.120 I've stood in remote country in the dark and felt 36 00:02:17.120 --> 00:02:19.680 the exact thing these men felt. And I'm not going 37 00:02:19.719 --> 00:02:22.120 to sit here and laugh at five working men who 38 00:02:22.159 --> 00:02:25.199 got scared out of their minds one hundred years ago. 39 00:02:25.240 --> 00:02:27.039 But I'm also not going to hand you the legend 40 00:02:27.120 --> 00:02:29.520 with a bow on it, because the legend and what 41 00:02:29.560 --> 00:02:32.360 we can actually stand behind are two very different things, 42 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:35.319 and the gap between them is the whole reason this 43 00:02:35.439 --> 00:02:38.520 case is worth an hour of your time. So let's 44 00:02:38.560 --> 00:02:40.960 go up the mountain. Let's get the war and the 45 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:43.599 wind and the who, and then let's get into that night. 46 00:02:44.159 --> 00:02:47.120 And before we climb one piece of context. I want 47 00:02:47.159 --> 00:02:50.039 you carrying the whole way, because it changes how you 48 00:02:50.080 --> 00:02:53.120 hear all of this. In nineteen twenty four, the word 49 00:02:53.159 --> 00:02:57.080 bigfoot did not exist. Nobody had it. That name doesn't 50 00:02:57.080 --> 00:02:59.919 get coined until the late nineteen fifties down in north 51 00:03:00.080 --> 00:03:03.599 in California and the famous film the Patterson and Gimlin 52 00:03:03.639 --> 00:03:06.560 footage that put the creature on every television in the country. 53 00:03:07.080 --> 00:03:10.639 That's nineteen sixty seven, more than forty years after these 54 00:03:10.680 --> 00:03:14.000 men came off this mountain. So when this happened, there 55 00:03:14.039 --> 00:03:17.520 was no sasquatch craze to slide it into, no shelf 56 00:03:17.560 --> 00:03:22.080 of paperbacks, no framework at all. The newspapers reached for 57 00:03:22.120 --> 00:03:25.960 the only word they had, which was apes, mountain devils, 58 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:29.759 some of them said gorillas. These men weren't repeating a 59 00:03:29.800 --> 00:03:33.159 story they'd grown up on because the story didn't exist yet. 60 00:03:33.639 --> 00:03:37.360 If anything, they helped start it. That's worth remembering when 61 00:03:37.360 --> 00:03:40.960 somebody tells you they only saw what they expected to see. 62 00:03:41.080 --> 00:03:45.039 In nineteen twenty four, nobody expected this. You find Mount 63 00:03:45.080 --> 00:03:48.280 Saint Helens in the southwest corner of Washington State, in 64 00:03:48.319 --> 00:03:51.000 the Cascades, and the first thing you have to know 65 00:03:51.039 --> 00:03:53.960 about it is that the mountain those men knew doesn't 66 00:03:54.000 --> 00:03:58.000 exist anymore. On the morning of May eighteenth, nineteen eighty, 67 00:03:58.240 --> 00:04:00.759 Mount Saint Helens blew its own Norse face off in 68 00:04:00.840 --> 00:04:04.680 one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in American history. Flattened 69 00:04:04.680 --> 00:04:09.039 the forest for miles. Buried Spirit Lake took that picture 70 00:04:09.080 --> 00:04:12.400 perfect snow capped cone, the kind of mountain a kid draws, 71 00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:14.919 and turned it into a gray crater that looked like 72 00:04:14.919 --> 00:04:17.839 the surface of the moon. So when I described the 73 00:04:17.839 --> 00:04:21.199 country these miners were working, understand that I'm describing a 74 00:04:21.199 --> 00:04:25.519 place that erased itself inside living memory. The ground this 75 00:04:25.600 --> 00:04:29.199 story happened on is mostly gone, scoured off, or buried. 76 00:04:29.560 --> 00:04:31.720 And there are people still alive who picnicked on the 77 00:04:31.759 --> 00:04:35.040 old mountain and then watched the new one tear itself apart. 78 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:37.839 And the canyon at the center of all this is 79 00:04:37.879 --> 00:04:41.240 a real and specific piece of ground, not just a name. 80 00:04:41.879 --> 00:04:44.319 It sits over on the southeast side of the mountain, 81 00:04:44.839 --> 00:04:47.160 a deep cut in the rock, with the timber crowding 82 00:04:47.199 --> 00:04:50.079 the rim, the kind of place where the bottom stays 83 00:04:50.120 --> 00:04:52.439 in shadow long after the tops of the trees have 84 00:04:52.519 --> 00:04:55.680 gone gold in the evening. Down below it, in those 85 00:04:55.759 --> 00:04:59.720 years lay Spirit Lake, cold and clear and ringed with 86 00:04:59.759 --> 00:05:02.800 old growth, a postcard of a place that people came 87 00:05:02.839 --> 00:05:06.040 from miles around just to look at. That's the country 88 00:05:06.079 --> 00:05:09.040 these men were camped in, beautiful in the daylight, and 89 00:05:09.120 --> 00:05:13.079 absolutely without mercy after dark. A few acres of human work, 90 00:05:13.439 --> 00:05:16.720 a cabin and a claim and a cook fire, sat 91 00:05:16.759 --> 00:05:18.879 down in the middle of more wilderness than a person 92 00:05:18.920 --> 00:05:21.759 today can really picture. You could stand at the edge 93 00:05:21.800 --> 00:05:24.000 of that gorge at noon and feel like the luckiest 94 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:27.199 man in Washington. You could stand at the same spot 95 00:05:27.240 --> 00:05:29.879 at midnight and feel like the last man on Earth. 96 00:05:30.480 --> 00:05:33.360 And Spirit Lake itself, that postcard at the bottom of 97 00:05:33.399 --> 00:05:37.800 all the beauty, didn't survive either. When the north face slid, 98 00:05:38.079 --> 00:05:40.199 it poured into that lake and heaved it up and 99 00:05:40.279 --> 00:05:43.759 choked it with shattered timber. Thousands of dead trees that 100 00:05:43.800 --> 00:05:46.399 still float on the surface in great gray rafts to 101 00:05:46.480 --> 00:05:49.480 this day. So even the calm water these men would 102 00:05:49.480 --> 00:05:51.079 have looked down on at the end of a day 103 00:05:51.199 --> 00:05:54.079 is not the water sitting there now. I find that 104 00:05:54.199 --> 00:05:56.920 genuinely hard to hold in my head, that you can 105 00:05:57.000 --> 00:05:59.240 lose not just a cabin and a trail, but a 106 00:05:59.279 --> 00:06:02.240 whole mountain and a whole lake, the entire stage a 107 00:06:02.319 --> 00:06:06.920 story was set on inside one ordinary spring morning. The 108 00:06:07.000 --> 00:06:09.480 land where Ape Canyon happened took the secret with it, 109 00:06:09.800 --> 00:06:13.399 and then it took itself back. In nineteen twenty four, though, 110 00:06:13.800 --> 00:06:16.279 it was about as wild and remote as country got 111 00:06:16.319 --> 00:06:20.199 in the Lower States. Old growth timber running up the slopes, 112 00:06:20.519 --> 00:06:23.720 furs and cedars and hemlocks so thick and so tall 113 00:06:23.800 --> 00:06:26.959 that the light barely reached the ground at noon. Deep 114 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:29.560 gorges cut into the side of the mountain where old 115 00:06:29.639 --> 00:06:32.920 lava and older water had carved them, and no roads, 116 00:06:33.519 --> 00:06:36.319 none that counted. If you wanted to work a claim 117 00:06:36.439 --> 00:06:38.759 up there, you walked in or you took a mule, 118 00:06:39.240 --> 00:06:41.360 and once you got where you were going, you were 119 00:06:41.360 --> 00:06:44.399 on your own. In a way that's genuinely hard to 120 00:06:44.439 --> 00:06:47.759 wrap your head around. Now, no phone, no way to 121 00:06:47.800 --> 00:06:51.160 call for help, and no help to call if something 122 00:06:51.199 --> 00:06:53.600 went wrong, if a man broke a leg or took 123 00:06:53.600 --> 00:06:55.920 a fever or got into trouble he couldn't get out of. 124 00:06:56.680 --> 00:06:59.480 It was him, the men with him, and a long 125 00:06:59.560 --> 00:07:03.199 walk down. And that's not a small detail. It's the 126 00:07:03.240 --> 00:07:07.079 foundation the whole thing sits on, because fear works differently 127 00:07:07.079 --> 00:07:10.480 when you know for a fact that nobody's coming. A 128 00:07:10.519 --> 00:07:13.199 weird noise near a campground with a ranger station down 129 00:07:13.240 --> 00:07:16.439 the road is a curiosity. The same noise a hard 130 00:07:16.480 --> 00:07:19.360 day's walk from another living soul with no way to 131 00:07:19.360 --> 00:07:22.160 reach anybody and no way for anybody to reach you, 132 00:07:22.240 --> 00:07:26.800 gets into you. It stacks up, it compounds. By the 133 00:07:26.839 --> 00:07:29.439 third night, it isn't a noise anymore. It's a presence, 134 00:07:29.879 --> 00:07:32.319 and your mind has already half decided what it is 135 00:07:32.680 --> 00:07:35.519 before your eyes ever get a vote. And the work 136 00:07:35.519 --> 00:07:37.879 that pulled men up into that country was hard and 137 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:41.639 dangerous all on its own, long before anything strange came 138 00:07:41.639 --> 00:07:46.360 into it. These were prospectors chasing gold, or chasing the 139 00:07:46.360 --> 00:07:49.680 belief in gold, which has pulled a certain stubborn kind 140 00:07:49.720 --> 00:07:53.160 of man into hard country since the beginning. They work 141 00:07:53.240 --> 00:07:56.000 to claim the way it got worked back then hauling 142 00:07:56.040 --> 00:07:59.480 tools and timber, digging and blasting and shoring up what 143 00:07:59.560 --> 00:08:02.560 they doesug living rough for weeks at a stretch, on 144 00:08:02.600 --> 00:08:05.079 what they could carry in and what they could shoot, 145 00:08:05.680 --> 00:08:08.199 sleeping in a cabin they'd built with their own hands 146 00:08:08.279 --> 00:08:11.639 out of the trees standing around them. The claim in 147 00:08:11.720 --> 00:08:14.879 the tellings gets called the vander White and it was 148 00:08:14.920 --> 00:08:17.480 the kind of long shot dream that kept men up 149 00:08:17.560 --> 00:08:20.279 on a mountain past the point where a sensible person 150 00:08:20.319 --> 00:08:23.160 would have quit. Bodies that did that work in that 151 00:08:23.240 --> 00:08:26.480 place did not belong to soft men, and that matters 152 00:08:26.839 --> 00:08:30.199 as this story gets darker, because whatever happened up there 153 00:08:30.480 --> 00:08:32.600 did not happen to a bunch of green horns who'd 154 00:08:32.600 --> 00:08:36.240 never spent a night outdoors. The men were gold miners then, 155 00:08:36.639 --> 00:08:40.519 and the one name everybody knows is Fred Beck. That's 156 00:08:40.519 --> 00:08:43.720 because Beck is the one who, decades later finally sat 157 00:08:43.759 --> 00:08:45.759 down and told the whole thing and put his name 158 00:08:45.799 --> 00:08:49.960 on it. Almost everything we've got, the detail, the play 159 00:08:49.960 --> 00:08:52.679 by play, the part where it surfaces, and the part 160 00:08:52.679 --> 00:08:56.360 where they shoot comes from Fred Beck. The other men 161 00:08:56.399 --> 00:08:59.399 have come down to us a lot thinner. The names 162 00:08:59.399 --> 00:09:02.279 you'll usually we see are Marion Smith and his son 163 00:09:02.399 --> 00:09:05.519 Roy and a couple of others, Gabe la Fever and 164 00:09:05.600 --> 00:09:08.799 John Peterson, five of them, give or take depending on 165 00:09:08.840 --> 00:09:12.600 which version you're reading. And that wobble right there, the 166 00:09:12.600 --> 00:09:15.240 fact that the tellings don't even fully agree on who 167 00:09:15.399 --> 00:09:18.000 was in the cabin, that's your first clue about how 168 00:09:18.080 --> 00:09:21.320 secondhand all of this is. We're not reading a police 169 00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:24.240 report filed the next morning. We're reading a story that 170 00:09:24.320 --> 00:09:28.519 lived in people's mouths for decades before anybody wrote it down. Careful, 171 00:09:29.080 --> 00:09:30.840 here's what I want you to know about these men, 172 00:09:31.399 --> 00:09:34.360 because the legend turns them into extras, and that's not 173 00:09:34.519 --> 00:09:37.919 fair to them. They weren't tender feet. They weren't city 174 00:09:37.960 --> 00:09:40.279 folks on a camping trip who heard an owl and 175 00:09:40.320 --> 00:09:43.480 lost it. They were working men who lived in that country, 176 00:09:43.879 --> 00:09:46.480 who knew the difference between a deer in the brush 177 00:09:46.559 --> 00:09:49.039 and a bear in the brush, who kept a rifle 178 00:09:49.080 --> 00:09:52.240 close and a door barred at night, because that's just 179 00:09:52.279 --> 00:09:55.480 what you did up there. They knew those woods cold. 180 00:09:55.679 --> 00:09:58.879 Their lives depended on knowing them. And that's exactly what 181 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:02.159 makes this thing sit so strange for me, because whatever 182 00:10:02.200 --> 00:10:06.039 scared these men, it scared men who didn't scare easy men. 183 00:10:06.080 --> 00:10:08.200 Who's read on the woods. You'd have trusted on any 184 00:10:08.200 --> 00:10:11.759 other subject without a second thought. If five guys like 185 00:10:11.799 --> 00:10:13.679 that had come down off the mountain and told me 186 00:10:13.720 --> 00:10:17.440 a deer spook them, I'd have laughed too. They didn't 187 00:10:17.480 --> 00:10:20.759 say that, They said something walked upright and threw rocks 188 00:10:20.759 --> 00:10:23.960 at their cabin all night long. And here's something worth 189 00:10:24.000 --> 00:10:27.960 putting on the table. Because it cuts both ways. These 190 00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:30.559 mountains weren't a blank slate when it came to big, 191 00:10:30.600 --> 00:10:33.759 hairy things in the timber. The native peoples of the 192 00:10:33.799 --> 00:10:37.320 Pacific Northwest had told stories about giant wild men in 193 00:10:37.360 --> 00:10:41.399 the high country for generations, long before any prospector ever 194 00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:45.200 sank a shovel up. There mountain beings hairy and huge 195 00:10:45.559 --> 00:10:48.480 that you did not go looking for. Some of those 196 00:10:48.480 --> 00:10:52.080 traditions are old, older than the towns, older than the 197 00:10:52.159 --> 00:10:55.840 territory itself. Now a skeptic has to handle that carefully 198 00:10:56.279 --> 00:11:00.639 because it runs two directions at once. One reading says, look, 199 00:11:01.120 --> 00:11:04.000 people have been seeing something up in these mountains for centuries. 200 00:11:04.360 --> 00:11:09.480 That's corroboration that crosses cultures and generations. The other reading, 201 00:11:09.840 --> 00:11:12.679 the one I lean toward, says the region already had 202 00:11:12.679 --> 00:11:15.720 a deep groove worn into it for exactly this kind 203 00:11:15.759 --> 00:11:19.240 of story, a shape sitting there ready and waiting for 204 00:11:19.320 --> 00:11:22.879 a frightened man's mind to pour itself into. I don't 205 00:11:22.879 --> 00:11:26.000 think these particular miners were sitting around the fire reciting 206 00:11:26.039 --> 00:11:28.919 old legends. But the legends were in the air of 207 00:11:28.919 --> 00:11:31.279 that country the way they're in the air of a 208 00:11:31.320 --> 00:11:33.960 lot of wild country. And a story like that has 209 00:11:33.960 --> 00:11:35.879 a way of being available to you in the dark, 210 00:11:36.120 --> 00:11:38.679 whether you grew up on it or not. It didn't 211 00:11:38.679 --> 00:11:41.799 start with the attack the way Beck told it. It 212 00:11:41.879 --> 00:11:45.480 started small, the way these things almost always seemed to 213 00:11:46.519 --> 00:11:50.840 first the tracks, big ones pressed deep into the soft ground, 214 00:11:51.200 --> 00:11:53.080 and to men who read the ground for a living, 215 00:11:53.720 --> 00:11:56.559 a track you can't account for isn't a thrill, it's 216 00:11:56.600 --> 00:11:59.759 a problem. It's the woods telling you something's here that 217 00:11:59.759 --> 00:12:04.200 shouldn't be. Then the sounds, a thumping that carried across 218 00:12:04.240 --> 00:12:07.679 the canyon in the long evenings, like something heavy hitting 219 00:12:07.720 --> 00:12:12.840 wood or hitting the ground, whistling, by some accounts, a call, 220 00:12:12.919 --> 00:12:16.080 and then an answer back from somewhere across the gorge, 221 00:12:16.559 --> 00:12:18.720 like there was more than one of whatever it was 222 00:12:19.320 --> 00:12:22.080 talking to each other in the dusk. And then the 223 00:12:22.080 --> 00:12:25.120 feeling the one every one of you who spent real 224 00:12:25.159 --> 00:12:28.480 time alone in the deep woods already knows the feeling 225 00:12:28.559 --> 00:12:32.639 of being watched. No proof behind it, none, just the 226 00:12:32.679 --> 00:12:35.440 certainty climbing a little higher every day that something out 227 00:12:35.440 --> 00:12:37.879 there had its eyes on the camp and wasn't leaving. 228 00:12:38.720 --> 00:12:40.559 And here's the thing I've learned from talking to a 229 00:12:40.559 --> 00:12:42.679 whole lot of people who've had a bad experience in 230 00:12:42.720 --> 00:12:46.639 the woods. The fear almost never lands all at once. 231 00:12:47.159 --> 00:12:51.879 It builds, It comes in little deposits, a track, a sound, 232 00:12:52.480 --> 00:12:54.120 a prickle on the back of the neck that you 233 00:12:54.159 --> 00:12:57.120 talk yourself out of in the daylight. And each one 234 00:12:57.159 --> 00:13:01.120 alone is nothing easy to wave off. But they stack, 235 00:13:01.879 --> 00:13:03.960 and there comes a point where your mind just can't 236 00:13:04.039 --> 00:13:07.480 keep filing them under coincidence anymore, where the weight of 237 00:13:07.519 --> 00:13:10.639 all the small stuff tips over into one big certainty. 238 00:13:11.519 --> 00:13:14.080 That's the slope these men were sliding down across those 239 00:13:14.120 --> 00:13:18.639 summer days, not one shock, a gathering. And it's worth 240 00:13:18.679 --> 00:13:21.200 being precise about what Beck said they were dealing with, 241 00:13:21.720 --> 00:13:24.039 because the modern picture wants to fill in a lot 242 00:13:24.279 --> 00:13:28.080 that the old account leaves blank. He described big, dark, 243 00:13:28.240 --> 00:13:32.519 upright shapes, hair all over them, man like, but not 244 00:13:32.679 --> 00:13:37.440 men He described the sounds carrying across the canyon, that thumping, 245 00:13:38.039 --> 00:13:41.080 the whistling, calls, and the answers, which is the detail 246 00:13:41.159 --> 00:13:43.919 that put the idea of more than one into their heads, 247 00:13:44.799 --> 00:13:47.679 not a lone animal, but a group working the ridges, 248 00:13:47.759 --> 00:13:51.240 calling back and forth. Now, every one of those details 249 00:13:51.279 --> 00:13:53.799 is interesting, and not one of them is something you 250 00:13:53.840 --> 00:13:57.320 can hang A species on. A whistle in the dark 251 00:13:57.360 --> 00:14:00.559 across a gorge could be a lot of things. A dark, 252 00:14:00.720 --> 00:14:03.759 upright shape at dusk could be a lot of things. 253 00:14:04.200 --> 00:14:06.639 The men weren't lying about hearing and seeing what they 254 00:14:06.720 --> 00:14:09.840 heard and saw. They just couldn't tell you what made it, 255 00:14:10.320 --> 00:14:13.639 And to their credit in the raws tellings, they didn't 256 00:14:13.679 --> 00:14:17.080 pretend to. And then a day or two before the 257 00:14:17.120 --> 00:14:19.879 big night comes the part that probably lit the fuse 258 00:14:19.960 --> 00:14:23.200 on everything else. Beck said he and Mary and Smith 259 00:14:23.240 --> 00:14:25.240 were out near the canyon when they saw one of 260 00:14:25.240 --> 00:14:28.919 them across a distance, out in the open, a big, 261 00:14:29.039 --> 00:14:33.039 upright thing, dark, covered in hair. And the men did 262 00:14:33.080 --> 00:14:35.720 what men in that time and that place did when 263 00:14:35.759 --> 00:14:38.919 something they couldn't explain turned up near their camp. They 264 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:41.919 raised their rifles and they fired, and Beck believed he 265 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:45.600 hit it, said he saw it drop or stagger fall 266 00:14:45.639 --> 00:14:48.480 away down into the gorge. Now I've got to slow 267 00:14:48.519 --> 00:14:50.759 down here because this is where i earn my keep. 268 00:14:51.360 --> 00:14:53.480 We don't know what they saw. We don't know if 269 00:14:53.480 --> 00:14:57.480 anything got hit, because nobody ever turned up, no bones, 270 00:14:58.120 --> 00:15:01.120 nothing anybody could put on a table point at. Stay 271 00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:04.679 tuned for more Backwoods bigfoot stories. We'll be back after 272 00:15:04.720 --> 00:15:09.519 these messages. What we've got is one man's memory of 273 00:15:09.559 --> 00:15:12.879 believing he shot at something, written down more than forty 274 00:15:12.960 --> 00:15:16.039 years after the fact. And I've taken enough statements in 275 00:15:16.080 --> 00:15:18.720 my life to tell you that sincere and accurate are 276 00:15:18.759 --> 00:15:22.639 not the same word. I've watched good, honest people describe 277 00:15:22.639 --> 00:15:26.080 something they were terrified by with total conviction and still 278 00:15:26.120 --> 00:15:29.759 get the plain details wrong. So here's what I'll stand behind. 279 00:15:30.600 --> 00:15:34.600 The men claimed they found strange tracks, heard strange sounds, 280 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:38.120 felt watched, and finally fired on a big creature they 281 00:15:38.159 --> 00:15:41.480 couldn't name. Whether that was a sasquatch or a bear 282 00:15:41.519 --> 00:15:44.879 stood up in bad light, or something else entirely, I 283 00:15:44.919 --> 00:15:48.480 can't tell you, and the honest truth is nobody can. 284 00:15:49.039 --> 00:15:51.679 But I'll give the men this much. People who set 285 00:15:51.679 --> 00:15:54.240 out to invent a monster usually invent a clean one. 286 00:15:54.600 --> 00:15:58.159 A good look, a clear description. What these men gave 287 00:15:58.360 --> 00:16:01.799 was glimpses bad luck, and they weren't even sure what 288 00:16:01.840 --> 00:16:05.600 they'd hit. That's the texture of real confusion, not the 289 00:16:05.639 --> 00:16:08.200 shape of a tall tail somebody cooked up to impress 290 00:16:08.200 --> 00:16:10.879 the boys at the store. And then came the night, 291 00:16:11.279 --> 00:16:14.120 and the night is the whole reason we're here. The 292 00:16:14.159 --> 00:16:18.000 cabin was solid. These men built it to last, logs 293 00:16:18.080 --> 00:16:22.039 chinked tight against the weather, a door that barred, walls 294 00:16:22.039 --> 00:16:25.360 thick enough to keep the mountain cold out. On any 295 00:16:25.360 --> 00:16:28.159 normal night, it was a good place to be, a warm, 296 00:16:28.240 --> 00:16:30.919 lit box of human order set down in the middle 297 00:16:30.919 --> 00:16:33.600 of a whole lot of dark. On this one, it 298 00:16:33.639 --> 00:16:36.360 turned into something closer to a box with the lid 299 00:16:36.440 --> 00:16:39.639 held down, because the same walls that kept them safe 300 00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:43.559 also kept them blind. Whatever was out there, they could 301 00:16:43.600 --> 00:16:46.000 hear it and they could feel it, but they could 302 00:16:46.039 --> 00:16:50.159 not see it, not once, not all night long. And 303 00:16:50.200 --> 00:16:53.120 there's something about that. I keep turning over, the idea 304 00:16:53.200 --> 00:16:55.879 that the thing protecting you is the exact same thing 305 00:16:56.039 --> 00:16:58.320 keeping you from the truth of what you're up against. 306 00:16:59.120 --> 00:17:01.279 It started the way it's started, in our cold open 307 00:17:01.759 --> 00:17:03.679 with a rock on the roof in the dead middle 308 00:17:03.720 --> 00:17:07.559 of the night, then another, then one off the wall, 309 00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:11.799 a hard, flat crack of stone on log, And then 310 00:17:11.839 --> 00:17:15.079 they came faster, a rain of rocks against the shakes, 311 00:17:15.119 --> 00:17:18.359 and the timber thudding into the dirt outside and rolling 312 00:17:18.720 --> 00:17:22.839 and woven all through it, the sound of something moving, weight, 313 00:17:23.519 --> 00:17:27.359 brush breaking and springing back, something big working its way 314 00:17:27.359 --> 00:17:30.359 around the cabin in the dark. And then the way 315 00:17:30.400 --> 00:17:34.400 Beck told it, the pounding started, not throwing rocks anymore, 316 00:17:34.400 --> 00:17:38.240 but blows something hitting the logs in the door, leaning 317 00:17:38.240 --> 00:17:41.119 on it, testing it the way you'd test a thing 318 00:17:41.200 --> 00:17:43.960 for the place where it gives. And at one point 319 00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:47.519 something struck at or reached through the chinking between the logs, 320 00:17:47.759 --> 00:17:50.519 and the men fired right at it. They fired a 321 00:17:50.559 --> 00:17:53.279 lot that night. And think for a second about what 322 00:17:53.319 --> 00:17:56.599 that's like inside a small log room, the crack of 323 00:17:56.640 --> 00:18:00.519 a rifle in a closed space, deafening the flat, lighting 324 00:18:00.559 --> 00:18:02.920 the whole place up white for half a second, and 325 00:18:02.960 --> 00:18:05.759 then dropping it back into a dark that's somehow worse 326 00:18:05.799 --> 00:18:09.799 than before, the smoke building with nowhere to go, until 327 00:18:09.880 --> 00:18:12.599 every breath is full of it, and your eyes sting 328 00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:15.559 in the back of your throat goes raw, and they 329 00:18:15.559 --> 00:18:19.359 couldn't aim, because you can't aim at what you can't see. 330 00:18:19.400 --> 00:18:23.240 They were firing it sound at a guess at the 331 00:18:23.279 --> 00:18:26.279 spot the last blow came from, and the dark just 332 00:18:26.359 --> 00:18:30.400 swallowed every shot and gave them back more rocks. And 333 00:18:30.440 --> 00:18:33.319 don't forget the other stuff, the stuff that doesn't make 334 00:18:33.359 --> 00:18:37.559 it into the quick version. The cold, for one, a 335 00:18:37.599 --> 00:18:40.400 mountain night gets into your bones, and a cabin with 336 00:18:40.480 --> 00:18:43.839 the fire let die holds almost nothing against it. And 337 00:18:43.880 --> 00:18:46.039 by now these men had no thought to spare for 338 00:18:46.079 --> 00:18:49.200 the fire, so they were cold on top of everything. 339 00:18:49.720 --> 00:18:52.640 Cold and stiff and shaking, and a shaking hand is 340 00:18:52.680 --> 00:18:55.000 a poor thing to load a rifle with in the dark, 341 00:18:55.839 --> 00:19:00.039 and the not knowing always underneath all of it. We 342 00:19:00.160 --> 00:19:04.519 were out there one three. A man hears movement on 343 00:19:04.519 --> 00:19:06.720 one wall and a stone strikes the other, and his 344 00:19:06.759 --> 00:19:09.279 mind does the math and lands on more than one 345 00:19:09.599 --> 00:19:12.359 on something that's working together, and there's no way to 346 00:19:12.400 --> 00:19:14.880 confirm it and no way to deny it, so it 347 00:19:14.960 --> 00:19:18.799 just sits in it hour after hour with no answer coming. 348 00:19:19.240 --> 00:19:21.960 And it didn't stop. That's the part that gets me 349 00:19:22.039 --> 00:19:24.920 every time. This wasn't a couple of bad minutes. You 350 00:19:24.960 --> 00:19:27.920 grit your teeth and ride out. It went on for hours, 351 00:19:28.680 --> 00:19:31.519 the rocks and the pounding and the circling weight, coming 352 00:19:31.559 --> 00:19:35.160 and stopping and coming again, until time quit meaning anything, 353 00:19:35.480 --> 00:19:37.720 and there was just the next sound and then the 354 00:19:37.759 --> 00:19:40.720 next one. I've tried more than once to really sit 355 00:19:40.759 --> 00:19:42.839 with what hour four of that does to a person. 356 00:19:43.680 --> 00:19:46.559 Your body's burned through its fear chemistry a long time ago, 357 00:19:46.759 --> 00:19:50.279 and it's running on fumes. Your eyes ache from straining 358 00:19:50.319 --> 00:19:54.079 at a dark that never resolves into anything. Some animal 359 00:19:54.119 --> 00:19:56.400 part of you wants nothing in the world but to 360 00:19:56.480 --> 00:19:59.039 lie down and sleep, and the rest of you knows 361 00:19:59.079 --> 00:20:01.559 that sleep might be the last call you ever make. 362 00:20:02.359 --> 00:20:04.920 So you stay up, You keep the rifle in your 363 00:20:04.920 --> 00:20:07.440 cold hands, and you wait for a morning that feels 364 00:20:07.440 --> 00:20:10.079 like it is never going to come. And the door 365 00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:12.799 is the thing I keep coming back to. As long 366 00:20:12.839 --> 00:20:15.759 as rocks are coming down on the roof. That's terrifying, 367 00:20:16.279 --> 00:20:19.480 but it's at arm's length. It's the sky falling on you. 368 00:20:20.079 --> 00:20:23.160 The moment something starts hitting the door, leaning on it, 369 00:20:23.359 --> 00:20:26.640 working at the gap between the logs, the whole math changes, 370 00:20:27.160 --> 00:20:30.000 because now the only thing between five men and whatever 371 00:20:30.039 --> 00:20:32.440 this is comes down to some timber and a bar 372 00:20:32.920 --> 00:20:35.160 and the hope that the man who built it built 373 00:20:35.160 --> 00:20:39.200 it well. Every blow is a question will it hold? 374 00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:42.519 And there's no good answer in there, just the next 375 00:20:42.519 --> 00:20:45.519 blow and the next, and a door that was built 376 00:20:45.559 --> 00:20:47.720 to keep the weather out being asked to do a 377 00:20:47.839 --> 00:20:51.039 job nobody ever designed it for. I think that's the 378 00:20:51.079 --> 00:20:54.640 part that broke whatever composure these men had left. Not 379 00:20:54.759 --> 00:20:58.880 the rocks, the door rocks. You can almost talk yourself 380 00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:02.519 into living with a thing, testing your door in the dark, 381 00:21:02.920 --> 00:21:06.359 patient coming back to it again and again. You do 382 00:21:06.440 --> 00:21:09.119 not get used to that. The men talk to each 383 00:21:09.160 --> 00:21:11.359 other in the gaps between the worst of it, and 384 00:21:11.440 --> 00:21:13.440 I think that's the one thing that got them through, 385 00:21:14.119 --> 00:21:16.440 the plain fact of four other men who could tell 386 00:21:16.480 --> 00:21:20.519 you out loud, yes, you're not losing your mind. I 387 00:21:20.559 --> 00:21:24.119 hear it too. Every rock of it, there's a kind 388 00:21:24.160 --> 00:21:27.440 of fear a person can only survive in company, and 389 00:21:27.519 --> 00:21:30.079 a man alone in that cabin might not have come 390 00:21:30.119 --> 00:21:33.079 out of it with his head right. And then, finally, 391 00:21:33.400 --> 00:21:35.640 after a stretch of hours, nobody in there could have 392 00:21:35.720 --> 00:21:39.079 measured the thing. Every cornered human being since the first 393 00:21:39.160 --> 00:21:43.200 cave has prayed for the black between the trees started 394 00:21:43.519 --> 00:21:48.160 slow by the smallest degrees to go gray morning, and 395 00:21:48.240 --> 00:21:51.359 whatever was out there went quiet, and the cabin had held, 396 00:21:51.759 --> 00:21:54.960 and the men were alive. Here's what I'll stand behind 397 00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:58.519 about that night, and here's what I want. What the 398 00:21:58.559 --> 00:22:01.119 record supports is that the men men claimed a sustained 399 00:22:01.160 --> 00:22:05.480 attack on their cabin, rocks and physical blows lasting hours, 400 00:22:05.799 --> 00:22:09.319 which they answered with gunfire. And honestly, that part's pretty 401 00:22:09.359 --> 00:22:13.200