Speaker 1: You're listening to The Missing Hunter Part three. But they
Speaker 1: found too late. Time didn't erase Wade Harlan, it softened him.
Speaker 1: That's what happens when a man disappears into the woods
Speaker 1: instead of into the ground. There's no grave to tend,
Speaker 1: no marker to visit, no final certainty to press against.
Speaker 1: Over the years, Wade became a collection of remembered gestures.
Speaker 1: A way he stood at the counter, the way he
Speaker 1: tilted his head when he listened, the way his eyes
Speaker 1: always seemed to track the tree line, even when he
Speaker 1: was indoors. In town. People spoke of him in the past, tense,
Speaker 1: but never quite as a dead man. He used to
Speaker 1: hunt up slate ridge. He liked to keep to himself.
Speaker 1: He saw things sometimes, That last line depending on who
Speaker 1: was speaking. For some, it was a joke. For others,
Speaker 1: it was a warning. The woods kept their silence. Seasons passed,
Speaker 1: Winters laid snow thick enough to smooth over ruts and
Speaker 1: tracks alike. Springs flooded the creek and rearranged the banks.
Speaker 1: Summers brought insects and growth that swallowed old paths. The
Speaker 1: logging spur faded, until only those who remembered it could
Speaker 1: find where it had once been. Slate Ridge stayed avoided
Speaker 1: but not abandoned. Hunters skirted it, Campers kept their distance,
Speaker 1: and every once in a while, usually late in the day,
Speaker 1: when light went thin, someone would report seeing a shape
Speaker 1: standing where the ridge dropped toward the creek, always still,
Speaker 1: always watching, never close enough to touch. Five years after
Speaker 1: Wade vanished, a storm changed everything. It came hard and
Speaker 1: fast in late October, the kind of storm that pulls
Speaker 1: trees up by their roots and tear's limbs loose like
Speaker 1: match sticks. Rain hammered the hills for hours, swelling the
Speaker 1: creek until it spilled over its banks and carved new
Speaker 1: channels through the bottom land. When the water finally receded,
Speaker 1: it left, the woods, rearranged, trails were gone, new ones appeared,
Speaker 1: and things that had been hidden were suddenly exposed. A
Speaker 1: week after the storm, a man named Howard Bell took
Speaker 1: his son up into the hills to check on an
Speaker 1: old fence line. Howard wasn't hunting slate ridge, not officially,
Speaker 1: but the damage had pushed him farther than he intended,
Speaker 1: and by late afternoon he found himself cutting across ground
Speaker 1: he hadn't set foot on in years. The ravine was
Speaker 1: steeper than he remembered, the soil slick with mud and
Speaker 1: fallen leaves. Howard slipped once, caught himself on a root,
Speaker 1: and cursed under his breath. That's when he saw it,
Speaker 1: something pale against the dark earth. At first he thought
Speaker 1: it was a piece of driftwood washed up by the flood.
Speaker 1: Then he realized it didn't curve right, didn't branch right.
Speaker 1: It was bone. Howard froze. He told his son to
Speaker 1: stay put and climbed carefully down into the ravine. Then,
Speaker 1: half embedded in mud and leaf litter, were more pieces,
Speaker 1: not scattered the way animals leave, things, not chewed, not
Speaker 1: dragged placed. Howard backed away slowly, his pulse loud in
Speaker 1: his ears. He didn't shout, he didn't touch anything else.
Speaker 1: He climbed back up and told his son they were
Speaker 1: leaving that night. He called the sheriff. The deputy who
Speaker 1: answered the call wasn't Finch. Finch had transferred by then,
Speaker 1: his name already fading from local memory. The new deputy
Speaker 1: was younger, sharper around the edges, and far less interested
Speaker 1: in reopening old stories. Probably just an old burial, he
Speaker 1: said at first, or maybe animal remains. Howard's voice stayed steady.
Speaker 1: You should come look, he said, and they did. By
Speaker 1: the following afternoon, the ravine was taped off with faded
Speaker 1: yellow ribbon that fluttered uselessly in the breeze. Men gathered
Speaker 1: at the edge, some curious, some uneasy, some drawn by
Speaker 1: something they didn't want to name. No forensics team arrived,
Speaker 1: No specialists drove in from the city. This was still
Speaker 1: a small county, and the budget reflected it. What they
Speaker 1: had was shovels, note books, and memories. They recovered what
Speaker 1: they could a skull, weathered and cracked but unmistakably human,
Speaker 1: long bones, bleached pale, fragments of clothing, rotted fabric, rusted snaps.
Speaker 1: Some one found a boot's sole down hill, separated from
Speaker 1: its upper, the tread worn smooth by years of weather.
Speaker 1: The sheriff, an older man who'd been on the force
Speaker 1: when Wade vanished, stood over the remains with his hat
Speaker 1: in his hands. He didn't need to ask whose they were.
Speaker 1: Everybody already knew. They laid the bones out on a
Speaker 1: tarp at the edge of the ravine. Men stood around
Speaker 1: in silence, hats off, eyes lowered, No one cracked jokes.
Speaker 1: No one speculated out loud. The woods around them felt tight,
Speaker 1: not silent exactly, but restrained, as if sound itself were
Speaker 1: waiting for permission. The sheriff cleared his throat. We'll document
Speaker 1: what we can, he asked, But after this long he
Speaker 1: didn't finish the sentence. They didn't need him to. Still,
Speaker 1: there were things that bothered him. The bones showed no
Speaker 1: sign of gnawing, no tooth marks, no scatter pattern that
Speaker 1: suggested animals had dragged them apart. Whatever had happened to Wade,
Speaker 1: it hadn't ended with his body being torn apart and
Speaker 1: fed upon. And then there were the cuts. Not every
Speaker 1: one saw them at first. You had to look closely
Speaker 1: in the right light. Shallow lines along one of the
Speaker 1: long bones, too straight to be cracks, too consistent to
Speaker 1: be weather damage. The sheriff traced one gently with a
Speaker 1: gloved finger and frowned. Could be tool marks, some one said,
Speaker 1: could be, the sheriff replied, or could be something else.
Speaker 1: He let the ambiguity stand, because ambiguity was safer. Word
Speaker 1: traveled fast. By the next morning, the diner buzzed with conversation.
Speaker 1: Some people cried openly Others shook their heads and said
Speaker 1: they'd known all along. A few clung to the old
Speaker 1: explanation with renewed certainty. Bear probably dragged him. Bigfoot makes sense,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. Those woods have always been wrong. The sheriff
Speaker 1: gave a statement to the local paper. It was careful measured,
Speaker 1: It used phrasing like remains consistent with prolo, long exposure,
Speaker 1: and no definitive cause of death determined. He did not
Speaker 1: mention the cuts, he did not mention the placement, and
Speaker 1: he did not mention the tracks, because tracks had appeared
Speaker 1: again that evening. Two men walking the ridge reported impressions
Speaker 1: in the damp earth near where the ravine opened, large ones,
Speaker 1: clear ones, facing outward away from the site. They told
Speaker 1: the sheriff quietly. The sheriff listened. Then he said, I
Speaker 1: don't want this turning into a circus, and just like that,
Speaker 1: the direction of the story was set. The bones were
Speaker 1: buried in a small cemetery outside town, no marker yet,
Speaker 1: a temporary wooden stake with Wade's name written in black ink.
Speaker 1: A short service followed, a few words spoken, a lot
Speaker 1: left unsaid. Afterward, people stood around awkwardly, unsure had to
Speaker 1: grieve a man who had been gone for years already.
Speaker 1: Cal Morris attended the burial. He hadn't been back to
Speaker 1: Slate Ridge since the season wade vanished. He'd aged noticeably,
Speaker 1: shoulders stooped, hair gone white, but his eyes were the same.
Speaker 1: After the service, he stood apart from the others, staring
Speaker 1: toward the hills. You think they told the whole truth,
Speaker 1: someone asked them quietly. Col didn't answer it first, Then
Speaker 1: he said they told the truth that lets them sleep.
Speaker 1: That night, Cal did something he hadn't done in years.
Speaker 1: He went back to the ridge. He didn't tell any one.
Speaker 1: He didn't bring a rifle, just a lantern and his
Speaker 1: own stubborn need to understand. The woods greeted him the
Speaker 1: way they always had. Reluctantly. He followed the old trail
Speaker 1: until the lantern light fell away behind him and the
Speaker 1: ridge opened out. The moon hung low, pale and thin,
Speaker 1: casting just enough light to make shapes deceptive. Cal stopped
Speaker 1: where the trail bent and the ravine dropped away. He waited.
Speaker 1: Minutes passed. The woods breathed around him, wind stirred leaves.
Speaker 1: Somewhere far off, an owl called, Then slowly the sounds thinned.
Speaker 1: Cal felt it in his chest before his ears caught
Speaker 1: up the stillness, and then a shape emerged at the
Speaker 1: far edge of the ridge, tall, broad, upright. It didn't rush,
Speaker 1: didn't hide, didn't announce itself. It simply stood. Cal didn't
Speaker 1: raise the lantern. He didn't step back. He stood where
Speaker 1: he was, hart pounding every instinct, screaming at him to leave,
Speaker 1: but he stayed. The figure shifted slightly, weight settling, as
Speaker 1: if it had been standing there a long time. Already
Speaker 1: Cal caught the faint outline of a shoulder, the suggestion
Speaker 1: of a head. They regarded one another across the open ground. Finally,
Speaker 1: Coal spoke, You saw it, he said, quietly. The woods
Speaker 1: didn't answer. The figure didn't move. You saw what happened
Speaker 1: to him, Cal continued, didn't you. Something in the air changed,
Speaker 1: not sound, not movement, but attention. Cal felt it settle
Speaker 1: on him, like a hand on the shoulder. I don't
Speaker 1: know why you let it happen, he said, but I
Speaker 1: know you didn't do it. The figure shifted again, not
Speaker 1: toward cow, not away, toward the ravine. Cowl swallowed. He
Speaker 1: stood there until his legs shook, then until the cold
Speaker 1: crept in deep When he finally turned to leave. The
Speaker 1: ridge was empty again, but in the deep soil near
Speaker 1: where he'd stood, a single impression had appeared, large, deep
Speaker 1: facing the ravine. Cow never told any one about that night,
Speaker 1: not the sheriff, not the paper, not even his family,
Speaker 1: because he understood something then that he hadn't before. The
Speaker 1: Woods hadn't killed Wade Harlan, but they had witnessed it.
Speaker 1: And when the truth finally surfaced, years too late, worn
Speaker 1: down by weather and silence, it was already shaped into
Speaker 1: something else, something easier. Bigfoot became the explanation that closed
Speaker 1: the case without opening wounds. The official record remained unresolved. Unofficially,
Speaker 1: people slept better believing the woods had taken Wade, rather
Speaker 1: than admitting someone they might have shared coffee with had
Speaker 1: done it instead. And somewhere on Slate Ridge, something older
Speaker 1: than all of them continued to stand watch, waiting. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to Part three of the Missing Hunter. Part four,
Speaker 1: The Story People Chose to Keep, is coming up next Sunday.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow Bigfoot's Wilderness so you don't miss
Speaker 1: next Sunday story. And if you're new here, Bigfoot's Wilderness
Speaker 1: is where eyewitness stories and history meet the camp fire,
Speaker 1: have a great night,