Speaker 1: I never believed the stories about the meadow monster. Kids
Speaker 1: talked about it every fall, right around the time the
Speaker 1: trees went bare and the farm fields near the mac
Speaker 1: Millan property turned silver from frost. They said something tall
Speaker 1: wandered the meadow at night. They claimed live stock went
Speaker 1: missing or feed barrels got dragged into the tree line.
Speaker 1: But to me, it sounded like the same kind of
Speaker 1: rumors that spread when people are bored. One Friday night,
Speaker 1: after the football game, my friend convinced me to cut
Speaker 1: through the mac millan farm to get home faster. We
Speaker 1: weren't a good group by adult standards. Teachers called them slackers.
Speaker 1: Parents told their kids not to hang around us. Still,
Speaker 1: these were the only guys who didn't treat me like
Speaker 1: an outsider. We walked together everywhere, and every path we
Speaker 1: took seemed to lead through the woods. The sky was
Speaker 1: clear and the moon lit the field enough that we
Speaker 1: didn't even need flashlights At first. The grass was ankle
Speaker 1: deep and wet from a light rain that had passed earlier.
Speaker 1: The air smelt like cold dirt and hay. We entered
Speaker 1: from the back surface road, hopping the fence at its
Speaker 1: lowest point, the barn was barely visible in the distance,
Speaker 1: sitting quiet and square against the tree line. Somewhere ahead
Speaker 1: of us, something cracked. It wasn't a twig. It sounded heavier,
Speaker 1: like weight shifting on a branch before it snapped. My
Speaker 1: friends stopped walking. I kept going. Probably a deer, I said.
Speaker 1: Nobody answered. I turned around and saw three faces staring
Speaker 1: into the dark. Another crack, louder this time. Then something stepped.
Speaker 1: A heavy thud reached us through the ground. One of
Speaker 1: the guys whispered, that's the meadow monster. I rolled my eyes.
Speaker 1: There's no monster. Another step closer. My heart kicked against
Speaker 1: my ribs. The sound came from the fore edge of
Speaker 1: the meadow, where the grass dipped slightly, just enough to
Speaker 1: hide anything crouched inside it. I scanned the dark and
Speaker 1: forced myself to laugh, as if a volume alone could
Speaker 1: keep the fear away. You all act like you've never
Speaker 1: heard a cow move. That's not a cow, someone said.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to show hesitation in front of them,
Speaker 1: so I bent down grabbed a broken limb off the ground.
Speaker 1: It wasn't much, just a green stick with one thick end,
Speaker 1: but it gave me something to hold without waiting for
Speaker 1: a group decision. I started walking toward the sound. My
Speaker 1: friends whispered behind me, trying to get me to stop.
Speaker 1: One even grabbed the back of my jacket, but I
Speaker 1: shook free. I wasn't afraid of a rumor. I wasn't
Speaker 1: afraid of a shadow. I told myself that whatever we
Speaker 1: were hearing had to be normal. As soon as we
Speaker 1: got closer, I noticed something strange. The sound wasn't moving
Speaker 1: away from us, It was waiting. We crossed half way
Speaker 1: into the field, and the trees ahead formed a wall
Speaker 1: of black. The smell changed too, less hay, more musky,
Speaker 1: almost like wet dog mixed with dirt. I tightened my
Speaker 1: grip around the stick and held it across my chest.
Speaker 1: My voice came out louder than I intended. Come on,
Speaker 1: show yourself. For a moment, everything went silent. Even the
Speaker 1: distant highway noise seemed to fade. Then something rose from
Speaker 1: inside the shallow dip in the grass. At first I
Speaker 1: thought it was just a shape, like a bundled tarp
Speaker 1: forgotten near the fence. Then it lifted higher and kept rising.
Speaker 1: It was standing straight up, tall, taller than any one
Speaker 1: had a right to be. When the moon cut through
Speaker 1: the clouds. The light hit it just enough for me
Speaker 1: to see the shape of a shoulder and then ahead.
Speaker 1: Every instinct I had screamed to run. Instead, I threw
Speaker 1: the stick. It sailed through the air and hit the
Speaker 1: ground short of the figure. For a heart beat, nothing happened.
Speaker 1: The thing stood still, hunched slightly forward, like a person
Speaker 1: leaning over a balance. Then it took a step up
Speaker 1: the small rise and came fully into view. It wasn't
Speaker 1: a bear. Even from a distance that was obvious. Bears
Speaker 1: have rounded shoulders, shorter necks, and move on all fours
Speaker 1: unless they're threatening. This thing was upright from the second
Speaker 1: it appeared. Its outline was thick through the upper body,
Speaker 1: broad across the back, and heavy in the arms. Its
Speaker 1: height made the fence behind it look small. Then our
Speaker 1: flashlights scattered across it, narrow beams shaking in nervous hands.
Speaker 1: The head shape stopped me cold. The hair on top
Speaker 1: looked shorter than the rest of its body, almost cropped flat.
Speaker 1: The skull underneath looked elongated in a way that belonged
Speaker 1: to neither a person nor any animal I know, almost
Speaker 1: like the shape of a football. Standing upright, the creature's
Speaker 1: chest expanded once, deep and deliberate. Then it moved, not slowly,
Speaker 1: not cautiously, two explosive steps forward, a bluff charge. The
Speaker 1: ground trembled. My friends screamed and grabbed me at the
Speaker 1: same time. The creature stopped just short of the half
Speaker 1: way point between us, then leaned forward and let out
Speaker 1: a roar that tore through the field. The sound was low, powerful,
Speaker 1: and deep enough that I felt it inside my chest
Speaker 1: instead of hearing it in my ears. The roar didn't
Speaker 1: say I'm going to kill you. It said leave. My
Speaker 1: friends didn't have to tell me twice. We turned and ran,
Speaker 1: every one of us sprinting toward the opposite fence. I
Speaker 1: could barely feel the ground beneath my shoes. The cold
Speaker 1: air scarred my lungs. I didn't dare look behind me.
Speaker 1: The footsteps came again, massive, heavy, closing the distance between us,
Speaker 1: and then, just as suddenly as it happened, the sound stopped.
Speaker 1: The footsteps faded. It had chosen not to follow. We
Speaker 1: didn't stop running until we reached the barn and collapsed
Speaker 1: behind it, gasping and shaking. Nobody spoke, nobody needed to.
Speaker 1: We all knew something impossible had stood in that meadow
Speaker 1: and that it had spared us. We didn't talk about
Speaker 1: what happened on the run back to the barn. There
Speaker 1: was no breath for talking, no room for anything except survival.
Speaker 1: When we finally stopped, we collapsed behind the building on
Speaker 1: the hard, padded packed dirt. Nobody coughed or gasped or spoke.
Speaker 1: We just lay there with our backs against the cold wall,
Speaker 1: letting our hearts try to pound their way out of
Speaker 1: our ribs. It felt like everything inside me was vibrating
Speaker 1: from the roar still echoing in my bones. After several minutes,
Speaker 1: one of my friends whispered, what was that? Nobody answered.
Speaker 1: We were thinking the same thing, but none of us
Speaker 1: wanted to be the first to admit it. Saying it
Speaker 1: out loud would make it real. I stared at the
Speaker 1: barn door instead, focusing on the chipped red paint and
Speaker 1: the rusty hinge so I wouldn't have to replay the
Speaker 1: moment that creature stepped up out of that dip in
Speaker 1: the meadow. Eventually, our breathing steadied, and we knew we
Speaker 1: had to leave before someone spotted us. The mcmillans had
Speaker 1: a reputation for running trespassers off their property and explaining
Speaker 1: why we were there wasn't something any of us wanted
Speaker 1: to attempt. We slipped out around the barn, keeping close
Speaker 1: enough to cast shadows on its wall, as if proximity
Speaker 1: to a building could protect us from something capable of
Speaker 1: shaking the earth. There was an open gate near the driveway,
Speaker 1: and we aimed for it. Walking felt strange after running
Speaker 1: for our lives. Every sound made us flinch. A dog
Speaker 1: barked somewhere near the farm house, and we all jumped.
Speaker 1: None of us were in the mood for another confrontation
Speaker 1: with anything human or otherwise, so we cut toward the
Speaker 1: far fence, planning to climate and drop into the drainage ditch.
Speaker 1: Beyond the ditch, emptied into a small path that led
Speaker 1: straight to the road, safe predictable ground. Once we reached
Speaker 1: the fence, we froze again. In the soft dirt beneath it.
Speaker 1: Something had stepped. The impression wasn't perfect, not like the
Speaker 1: plaster casts you see in documentaries, but the size was unmistakable.
Speaker 1: It stretched longer than any bootprint, wider than any work boot, broad,
Speaker 1: very broad to be a barefoot human. The loose soil
Speaker 1: caught only part of the detail, but there was enough
Speaker 1: to see the arch, the forefoot, and the strange shape
Speaker 1: of something too large to explain. One of my friends whispered,
Speaker 1: tell me, that's not what I think it is. I
Speaker 1: didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. We climbed
Speaker 1: the fence, We didn't speak. The night swallowed us as
Speaker 1: we escaped the property. I didn't sleep much after I
Speaker 1: got home. I lay in bed, replaying the moment the
Speaker 1: creature rose, how the shoulders broadened as it straightened, how
Speaker 1: the hair along the top of its head was shorter,
Speaker 1: almost trimmed, giving it that strange, elongated silhouette, and the
Speaker 1: scar across the lower back wide healed old, a mark
Speaker 1: of something that had tried to harm it before and failed.
Speaker 1: That detail haunted me more than anything. Something had tried
Speaker 1: to fight that thing and lost. School the next day
Speaker 1: felt surreal. Teachers talked, bells rang, people laughed in the hallway.
Speaker 1: The world moved on like nothing had happened. But every
Speaker 1: room I walked into felt too bright, too safe, too
Speaker 1: much like a place where the impossible couldn't exist. During lunch,
Speaker 1: one of the guys from last night nudged me and
Speaker 1: jerked his chin toward a table. Two rows away. Two
Speaker 1: students were whispering about the McMillan farm. Dad found another
Speaker 1: feed barrel gone this morning, one said, gone, dragged off,
Speaker 1: same as before. None of us looked at each other.
Speaker 1: We didn't need to. The meadow monster was still out there.
Speaker 1: Later that week, as sunset dropped behind the pines, the
Speaker 1: four of us met again, drawn together by something unspoken.
Speaker 1: We weren't planning on going back. We weren't that reckless,
Speaker 1: but we needed proof we hadn't lost our minds. We
Speaker 1: biked into the far end of the service road and
Speaker 1: stopped where the fence dipped low. A dry breeze pushed
Speaker 1: through the grass, flattening patches and making others ripple. The
Speaker 1: field looked harmless. For a moment, I convinced myself we
Speaker 1: had exaggerated what we saw, fear plays, tricks, the dark lies.
Speaker 1: Then we heard it, not a roar, not footsteps, a
Speaker 1: slow exhale, slow controlled, measured. We looked toward the meadow.
Speaker 1: There on the far side, something moved. A dark, upright
Speaker 1: shape slipped past the hay bales and into the tree line,
Speaker 1: not rushing, not disturbed, just moving the same way a
Speaker 1: person leaves a room they don't care about. We stayed
Speaker 1: until the dark eased into the last visible thing. Then
Speaker 1: we left, silent all the way home. No one pushed
Speaker 1: for adventure, no one dared anyone else. The story wasn't
Speaker 1: fun anymore. It was real. In the weeks that followed,
Speaker 1: sightings popped up, like scattered sparks, something tall crossing a
Speaker 1: road at dusk, a shape watching from behind a tree,
Speaker 1: more barrels missing, always nearer, the McMillan farm, always quiet,
Speaker 1: always leaving just enough evidence. We never saw it roar again.
Speaker 1: We never heard the heavy footsteps behind us like we
Speaker 1: did that night. But once you know something exists, you
Speaker 1: can't unknow it. Even years later, when I hear a
Speaker 1: branch snap in the woods, I remember how I lifted
Speaker 1: that stick like a weapon and charged forward, believing it
Speaker 1: was probably just a bear, believing nothing could be bigger
Speaker 1: than my own confidence. I was wrong. That creature could
Speaker 1: have caught us, could have crushed us, could have silenced
Speaker 1: that rumor forever. Instead, it chose to let us go.
Speaker 1: To this day, I can still picture the moment when
Speaker 1: it had held its ground instead of lunging the intelligence
Speaker 1: behind that restraint, the way it seemed to weigh our
Speaker 1: importance and decide we weren't even worth the energy. It
Speaker 1: wasn't scared of us, it wasn't startled. We were irrelevant,
Speaker 1: And somehow that realization changed more in me than fear. Ever.
Speaker 1: Could people ask, sometimes joking, sometimes serious, don't you think
Speaker 1: bigfoot is dangerous? After that night? I don't answer with
Speaker 1: facts or with explanations. I answer with this, He knew
Speaker 1: exactly what he was doing, and he chose not to
Speaker 1: hurt us. Whatever walked that meadow, whatever stood up from
Speaker 1: that dip in the grass and looked at us with
Speaker 1: a face of patience instead of violence, it wasn't a monster.
Speaker 1: It was something older, wiser, a survivor, And by sparing
Speaker 1: a group of reckless kids, it taught me something I
Speaker 1: didn't know until that moment. Power isn't proven by violence.
Speaker 1: Power is proven by restraints. Again for listening to bigfoots wilderness,
Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. If you ever find yourself walking
Speaker 1: a lonely trail through tall grass, when the weeds brush
Speaker 1: against your legs and the field feels just a little
Speaker 1: too still, remember this story, because somewhere out there in
Speaker 1: a forgotten meadow. Something may still be watching, waiting for
Speaker 1: the moment when the wind shifts and someone else becomes
Speaker 1: a part of the legend. And that is the story
Speaker 1: of the Meadow Monster.
Speaker 2: Have a great night, not n JB. Job up.