Speaker 1: Winter is supposed to loosen its grip this time of year.
Across much of the country, the snow has begun to melt,
rivers have started moving again, and the woods are slowly
waking from that long seasonal silence. According to tradition, we
were promised six more weeks of winter, but in many
places the season seems ready to move on. Still, winter
doesn't surrender quietly. In parts of the United States, storms
continue to roll through the mountains and river valleys, blowing snow,
temperature drops, and in some regions travelers are still hearing
a phrase that carries a particular kind of warning whiteout conditions,
the kind of weather where the land disappears, where distance collapses,
where the world shrinks to the narrow reach of your headlights.
It's during moments like that, when visibility fades and the
wilderness feels suddenly larger, that strange things have a way
of appearing. Tonight's story is the beginning of a three
part series called white Out Warning. It takes us back
to the winter of nineteen ninety nine in a small
town called gray Haven, where the end of the century
arrived under heavy skies and deepening snow. A game Warden
was found dead beside the Ashkeen River. A storm closed
the roads, and somewhere in the woods upriver, something large
was moving through the snow. The people of grey Haven
would later realize that the storm wasn't the only thing
moving through those woods, and when the snow finally stopped falling,
it revealed tracks. No one in town was ready to
explain this is white out Warning Chapter one, The Last
Christmas of the old World. Grey Haven, Massachusetts had always
existed slightly out of step with the rest of the world,
but in the final weeks of nineteen ninety nine that
feeling sharpened into something harder to ignore. Christmas had passed quietly,
almost reluctantly, as if the town did want to admit
it was finished. Lights still hung from porches and storefronts,
blinking through the gray, but the cheer behind them had thinned.
People spoke about the date more than the holiday. December
twenty sixth, the last Christmas of the twentieth century already
behind them, the last days of the year stretching ahead
like a narrow bridge. Snow fell over night light, but deliberate.
It softened the roads without hiding them, and pressed into
the ground just enough to make footprints hold their shape.
The Ashkeen River ran dark and steady through the northern
edge of town, its surface steaming faintly where the current
resisted freezing. Sixty miles inland from the ocean, the river
still carried a hint of something mineral and old. The
mills that once relied on it had collapsed decades earlier,
brick walls bowing inward, roofs caving under their own weight.
Trees had moved where men once stood, patient and thorough.
At six fourteen a m a County snowplow rounded the
bend along river access road. The driver had already cleared
two miles without incident when something near the tree line
caught his eye. It wasn't the way it lay that
drew him in, but the way the snow seemed to
have settled around it. Careful, almost respectful. He slowed, then stopped,
the plow, blades scraping once before going silent. He stepped
out into the cold. The woods stood close behind the
river bank, pines, tall and rigid, bare, hardy woods rising
like pale bones against the sky. The man lay just
beyond the plow's edge on his side, one arm folded
beneath him at an angle that immediately told the driver
this wasn't a matter of sleep or collapse. Snow dusted
the coat and hair, His hat was gone, his jacket
hung open, as if he'd never had time to close it.
The driver recognized him before he reached the body. Game
Warden Thomas Hale. Hale was a fixture in gray Haven.
He'd worked the Ashkeen Corridor and the surrounding woods for
nearly twenty years, long enough to know which trails people
respected and which they ignored. When hunters crossed lines, Hale
handled it. When hikers didn't return on time, Hale went looking.
He wasn't a man who speculated or exaggerated. He trusted
the land, and the land had always answered him in
ways he understood. Seeing him there felt wrong, in a
way that the driver couldn't articulate. First responders arrived quickly,
a deputy, a volunteer, E m t later, the County sheriff.
Radios murmured and fell quiet, breath fogged and drifted away.
No one rushed forward. The scene resisted haste. The snow
around hail lay smooth and undisturbed, no scuffing, no drag darcs,
no obvious approach or departure. The river moved beside him indifferent.
Up close, the injuries made less sense, not more. There
was no clear head wound, no broken limbs consistent with
a fall. Bruising spread across the torso in patterns that
suggested pressure rather than impact. The shoulders bore deep marks
thumb with impressions that looked less like blows and more
like grips. Someone knelt and examined the snow again, frowning.
It's like he was set down, the empty said, then
he stopped talking. Hale's service radio remained clipped to his belt.
The deputy checked it out of habit and found it
powered off. He said nothing, but the detail lodged itself
quickly in the mind of everyone standing there. Hale didn't
turn his radio off without reason. The county medical examiner
arrived later in the morning and chose his words carefully.
Exposure was the likely cause of death. Disorientation near the river,
weather related accident. It was tidy language, designed to settle
nerves and closed doors. Gray Haven accepted it outwardly because
storms were coming and unanswered questions had a way of
multiplying when people were already uneasy. But questions didn't disappear.
They spread underground. Hale hadn't been careless, he hadn't been drinking.
He hadn't been known to wander without purpose. Two days earlier,
he'd closed a stretch of trail up river without explanation,
drawing a line through the access point on his map
and dating it. That alone was unusual. Hale didn't restrict
access unless he believed it was necessary. By mid morning,
word moved through town in fragments. Conversation stalled in the diner,
Coffee went cold on counters. Some one said it was
bad timing, and someone else replied that everything felt badly
timed lately. Why two K talk crept into the margins
of those conversations. Computers crashing systems, failing, lights going out
when the clock rolled over. Some laughed it off, others didn't.
Gray Haven didn't mock superstition. It tolerated it quietly. End
of a century. An older man muttered near the window,
those always take something with them. No one contradicted him.
Snow resumed just afternoon, thicker, now more committed, The forecast
shifted again. Wind advisories followed, white out conditions were mentioned
for higher elevations along the Ashkeene corridor. The river rose slightly, ice,
knocking against the banks like dull teeth. At three forty
p m. A woman arrived at the Gray Haven Inn.
Her name was Eleanor Price. She was in her mid forties,
clean and composed, wearing a head band that held back
hair threaded lightly with gray. She carried herself with the
calm assurance of some one who believed she was exactly
where she was meant to be. A small backpack hung
from one shoulder. In her hands were two cloth pouches
tied neatly at the top. She placed them on the
counter gently, as if they deserved care. Just over night,
The innkeeper asked, just to night, Eleanor said, I'm heading
up river tomorrow to fish. The innkeeper asked, already knowing
the answer. Eleanor smiled. Her fingers drifted to her chest,
resting lightly over her heart, a gesture she repeated without
noticing to connect. She said, there's a place up there.
The innkeeper hesitated. Snow tapped against the windows, faint but persistent.
We had a warden passed this morning, she said. Elinor
listened without interrupting, her hand still pressed against her chest.
That's unfortunate, she said. Finally, thresholds can be dangerous. No
one asked her to explain what she meant. She spoke
about the pouches when asked. One held sand from a
place she once loved, a place she said had taught
her something she didn't want to forget. The other contained
clippings from a giant sequoia, folded carefully, kept dry for grounding,
She said, smiling. Gray Haven had seen people like her before, Spiritual, attentive,
operating on rules the town didn't use. No one discouraged them.
The woods usually resolved misunderstandings on their own. You'll want
to start early, the innkeeper said, weather's turning. Elinor nodded,
I'll be listening outside. The snow thickened, and the Ashkeen
River kept moving, unconcerned with calenders, warnings, or the end
of anything at all. The wind arrived some time after midnight,
not suddenly, but within. It threaded itself through grey Haven
street by street, worrying loose shutters, lifting pottery, snow off roofs,
and sending its skittering across frozen pavement. The town slept lightly,
as if it sensed that rest should not be taken
for granted. A few televisions glowed in dark living rooms,
tuned to late night shows, segments speculating about Ye t
u Q failures and far away cities. Someone laughed at
a joke about computers forgetting what year it was. Someone
else turned the volume down. The storm warnings grew more precise.
Higher elevations, river corridors, limited visibility, the kind of language
locals took seriously without dramatization. Gray Haven had lived through
enough winters to know the difference between nuisance snow and
weather that closed its hand around the land. Elinor Price
woke before dawn without alarm. She lay still for a moment,
listening to the building's sigh and the wind moved outside.
The inn was quiet, the other guests still asleep or
pretending to be. She dressed carefully, choosing layers with the
same deliberation she had shown the night before. Clean socks,
wool sweater, insulated jacket. She tucked the small cloth pouches
into her back pack, last adjusting their placement until they
sat just right. Before leaving the room, she paused, her
fingers resting against her chest, eyes closed briefly, as if
checking in with something that didn't speak back in words.
Outside the porch light cast a dull yellow cone through
blowing snow. Eleanor stepped into it and breathed in the
air felt charged tight against her lungs. She smiled faintly,
not because it was pleasant, but because it was unmistakably present.
The trailhead lay a short walk from the inn, already
losing definition under fresh accumulation. The path markers were still visible,
though muted, their colors dulled by frost. Eleanor adjusted her
pack straps and stepped forward without hesitation. The woods accepted
her quietly. As she moved up river. The ash keen
narrowed and bent, like banks, steepening, the sound of water
flattening into something steady and close. Old growth pressed in
pines rose straight and tall, their upper branches vanishing into
moving white. Hardwoods stood bare and pale, their limbs etched
against the low sky. The deeper she went, the less
the forest resembled anything human. The snow fell harder, now
not straight down, but driven sideways in sheets that erased
depth and distance. Eleanor slowed, not from fear but from attention.
She listened, her hand drifting again to her chest, fingers
resting there as if that was where understanding lived. The
trackways appeared, gradually, revealing themselves, not only because the snow
could not quite hide them. They ran parallel to the trail,
offset by several yards, wide and deep enough to give
her paws. The stride was wrong, too long, too Even
they did not cross her path or approach it, they
matched her pace. She noticed them and kept walking. The
smell came next, carried on a shift in the wind,
heavy organic, not decay exactly, but something warm that didn't
belong to the cold. Eleanor wrinkled her nose slightly, then relaxed.
She adjusted her headband and continued forward. Visibility collapsed faster
than she expected. The world narrowed to the sound of
her breath and the muffled resistance of snow beneath her boots.
Landmarks vanished, direction became instinctive rather than visual. She stopped once,
turning slowly listening. Something was there, not rushing, not hiding,
simply present. Eleanor's heart rate increased, but panic did not follow.
She pressed her hand to her chest again, grounding herself,
breathed slowly, the forest felt attentive, not hostile, curious. The
wind surged stronger now, and the snow thickened until the
air itself seemed solid. Eleanor turned slightly, uncertain whether she
was still on the trail or only believed she was.
She took a step, then another. The sound came then,
not a vocalization, not a footstep, but the absence of
sound where something large should have made it. The space
beside her felt occupied, close enough that distance stopped meaning
anything at all. Back in Grayhaven, the storm shut the
town down, piece by piece. Roads were closed as plows
pulled back. Power flickered twice and held whether radios advised
against travel of any kind. Search crews, already discussing the
warden's death in lowered voices, postponed plans to check the
up river trails. It'll have to wait, someone said, nothing
good comes out of going up there. In this no
one disagreed. The storm lasted longer than predicted, snow piled
wind scoured the landscape clean, and then buried it again.
When it finally broke, it did so abruptly, leaving behind
a silence that felt earned. Search teams moving upriver the
following morning. Cautious and methodical, they followed the river bend
where Hale had been found days earlier, then pressed on,
scanning the woods for any sign that didn't belong. They
found Eleanor Price's lock. At first, it lay near the
edge of the trail, clasp intact, chain, unbroken, resting on
top of the snow, rather than buried beneath it. Someone
picked it up carefully, as though it might still be warm.
There was no blood on it, no sign of struggle. Nearby,
farther on the ground told a different story. Half buried
in snow that had not fallen naturally, they found her
ear torn with surrounding flesh. The blood marked the ground heavily, unmistakably,
head wounds, blood profusely. This had not been a clean break.
This had not been an act accident. No scavenger marks,
no animal feeding patterns. The rest of her was gone.
The trackways circle the site, wide and deep, pressing into
the ground with a weight that exceeded anything human. They
did not lead away, They did not lead toward. They revolved.
The cloth pouches Eleanor carried were nowhere to be found.
Only later, as people compared notes, they hadn't meant to share.
Did the similarities emerge Hale's injuries, the compression, the absence
of struggle, the sense that both scenes had been controlled
rather than chaotic. No one said Sasquatch out loud. The
word stayed locked behind teeth and old memories. But an
older hunter standing at the edge of the trees finally spoke,
his voice, low and steady. That wasn't the weather, he said,
and it wasn't an animal. The Ashkeen River kept moving,
dark and patient, as it always had. Thank you for
listening to Bigfoot's Wilderness. This was part one of our
three part series White Out. Warning. The storm over gray
Haven is only beginning to reveal what it left behind
in the woods alongside the Ashkeen River, and what search
crews will discover upriver will raise questions the town isn't
prepared to answer. Be sure to join us for part two,
where the investigation moves deeper into the forest and the
evidence in the snow becomes much harder to explain. Until then,
stay curious out there, and thanks again for listening to
Bigfoot's Wilderness.