Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy nine, I went to a family reunion
Speaker 1: with my aunt and uncle in Middle Tennessee. On the
Speaker 1: way there, we talked a little about a strange thing
Speaker 1: that happened to us while we were out hunting frogs
Speaker 1: one night. We heard chatter and huffing, and then it
Speaker 1: paced us out of the woods whatever it was. With
Speaker 1: that on our minds, we joined the rest of the
Speaker 1: men sitting around the front yard at my great uncle's
Speaker 1: house where the reunion was taking place. My uncle turned
Speaker 1: to my great uncle and he said, tell us about
Speaker 1: what you saw that night you were out raccoon hunting.
Speaker 1: Right away, my great uncle got a look on us
Speaker 1: face that I'd never seen before. It was a mix
Speaker 1: of bewilderment and fear, and he turned away like he
Speaker 1: didn't hear what my uncle asked him. And then his
Speaker 1: son said, go ahead, Dad, tell him what we saw.
Speaker 1: You tell them. My great uncle said under his breath,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll tell the story, his son said, and
Speaker 1: he began. At that time, my dad was sixty seven
Speaker 1: years old. He'd spent his whole life out in the woods,
Speaker 1: hunting mostly quail and raccoons. That night they were headed
Speaker 1: out to the land behind their house, and the property
Speaker 1: had recently been sold and the new owner had bulldozed
Speaker 1: the old fence line and put in a new wire fence.
Speaker 1: They had three dogs, two walkers, and a red bone.
Speaker 1: The fence was on an incline that the dogs couldn't
Speaker 1: get over, so they had to put them over. The
Speaker 1: son handed the twenty two rifle to his dad and
Speaker 1: he crossed the fence, and then my great uncle handed
Speaker 1: the rifle over and he crossed. Two Up the hill,
Speaker 1: twenty five yards from the old fence was a brush pile.
Speaker 1: They walked in that direction and then let the dogs
Speaker 1: off the leaves, and they began sniffing around the pile.
Speaker 1: They had only just begun to smell the awful stench
Speaker 1: coming from it when something stood up up in the
Speaker 1: middle of that pole and let out a scream so
Speaker 1: loud that it knocked them over. It was reddish brown.
Speaker 1: It stood eight or nine feet tall, and it was
Speaker 1: four feet wide, and the dogs ran right back past them,
Speaker 1: and this time they didn't have any trouble clearing that fence.
Speaker 1: My uncle and his son stood there face to face
Speaker 1: with it for two or three seconds until it quit screaming,
Speaker 1: and then it jumped up on top of the wood
Speaker 1: pole and it leaped off and it ran up the hill.
Speaker 1: They turned and ran in the opposite direction back down
Speaker 1: the hill. They didn't have much trouble getting over the
Speaker 1: fence either. It was three hundred yards from that fence
Speaker 1: back to the house, and neither one stopped running until
Speaker 1: they got there, and my uncle said he felt like
Speaker 1: his heart was going to explode from the effort. When
Speaker 1: they got back to the house, my uncle asked his
Speaker 1: son where the rifle was. Well, he didn't know. He
Speaker 1: thought maybe he'd dropped it. The next morning, they took
Speaker 1: a shotgun and a thirty all six and went back
Speaker 1: out to where they crossed the fence, and they found
Speaker 1: the twenty two and they got the hell out of there.
Speaker 1: Shortly after that, my uncle sold his hounds and he
Speaker 1: never went hunting again. Now, I talked to his son
Speaker 1: several times after that reunion. I'd always ask him if
Speaker 1: they'd ever seen that thing since that night. He said no,
Speaker 1: they'd never seen anything, but they did hear that exact
Speaker 1: same scream on two different occasions after my great uncle
Speaker 1: passed away in nineteen eighty eight, except to go back
Speaker 1: to get the rifle the next morning. He never stepped
Speaker 1: foot on that property again, and after his death, his
Speaker 1: wife sold their place, and his son said he never
Speaker 1: went back there again either. My great uncle never liked
Speaker 1: to talk about it. He didn't like for people to
Speaker 1: know about it. He was always afraid that they would
Speaker 1: think he was crazy or that he was a liar.
Speaker 1: If we hadn't had our encounter while out hunting frogs,
Speaker 1: and my uncle hadn't shared the story with his cousin
Speaker 1: uncle's son, who then told them about their incident, he
Speaker 1: might have got his wish and taken the story to
Speaker 1: his grave. Here's my story, which happened when I was
Speaker 1: sixteen years old. Our neighborhood backed onto a large forest
Speaker 1: which led right up to the I'm not even going
Speaker 1: to try to pronounce this zekea zeka swamp z e kiah,
Speaker 1: which we used to explore up to the point back
Speaker 1: along the woodlands. I had three brothers, all of whom
Speaker 1: lived in the woods, and being the only girl, I
Speaker 1: tagged along like a tomboy as best I could. My
Speaker 1: oldest brother and three of his friends decided to put
Speaker 1: their carpentry skills into practice and spent several weeks building
Speaker 1: a treehouse deep in the forest, two miles back from
Speaker 1: our neighborhood. All the materials were hauled in by hand
Speaker 1: or loaded on motorcycles. I was impressed with a instruction project,
Speaker 1: but I was disappointed that it was so high off
Speaker 1: the ground. I was afraid of heights. They hammered horizontal
Speaker 1: steps going up the tree, and the floor hatch door
Speaker 1: was a bit awkward to access, which made entering and
Speaker 1: exiting the treehouse a challenge. This was no treehouse for sissies.
Speaker 1: It was built solid and even had a small locking
Speaker 1: sliding window to block out critters from getting in. Back
Speaker 1: in those days, this was the nineteen eighties, all the
Speaker 1: young people seemed to roam wild with little or no supervision.
Speaker 1: I have no idea how we kept this treehouse a
Speaker 1: secret from our parents for so long, but it was
Speaker 1: where we all went to smoke cigarettes and drink Boone's
Speaker 1: farm or beer. Don't forget the Mad Dog twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: MD twenty Mogan David twenty twenty. We called it mad Dog.
Speaker 1: Lot of people my age will remember that. Anyway. One
Speaker 1: of my friends hear was Debbie. She got the idea
Speaker 1: that it might be fun to spend the night in
Speaker 1: the treehouse. Besides being afraid of heights, I wasn't overly
Speaker 1: king on pitch black woods either, but hey, you're only
Speaker 1: a teen once, so I agreed it might be fun.
Speaker 1: We lied to our parents and we told them we
Speaker 1: were spending the night at the other person's house, and
Speaker 1: we packed what we needed for the night to stay
Speaker 1: in the treehouse, including sleeping bags, candles, magazines, and food.
Speaker 1: We hiked into the woods and settled into the treehouse
Speaker 1: before dark. We were grubbing on junk food and talking
Speaker 1: about school and things that girls talk about at sixteen,
Speaker 1: and we didn't tell anyone we were going to sleep
Speaker 1: in the treehouse for fear that someone would try to
Speaker 1: spoil the fun for us. We settled in for the night.
Speaker 1: It was quiet in the woods, unusually quiet up until
Speaker 1: something struck the side of the treehouse. We both stopped
Speaker 1: talking and we noticed the smell. All it was like
Speaker 1: rotting trash. Oh, you guys, I just have the best
Speaker 1: imaginations for a riting trash. Isn't that funny? But I
Speaker 1: think when I come up on smells, I always just
Speaker 1: naturally laughed. Anyway, She writes, I looked at Debbie and
Speaker 1: I wondered what she ate earlier that day, and then
Speaker 1: she pinched her nose, and I knew the smell was
Speaker 1: coming from outside. And then bang, something hit the treehouse again,
Speaker 1: but it was much bigger. We were both very frightened,
Speaker 1: and we heard grunting sounds and scraping at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the treehouse. We locked the hatch, which was made
Speaker 1: of wood and was almost invisible to the eye from outside,
Speaker 1: as the boys had made it look like a part
Speaker 1: of the flooring from underneath. But the thing wasted no
Speaker 1: time in finding it, and it tried to slide it open,
Speaker 1: or so it seemed to us. I said directly on
Speaker 1: top of the hatch, and Debbie was in a panic.
Speaker 1: I was too scared to be in a panic, and
Speaker 1: I sat frozen like a statue, and I prayed with
Speaker 1: all my heart for this thing to go away. I
Speaker 1: kept thinking that we were going to die. This thing
Speaker 1: was way too determined to figure out how to get inside.
Speaker 1: The trees that supported the treehouse were very substantial, and
Speaker 1: you could never imagine someone could actually shake them, and
Speaker 1: I could barely get my arms around them, but the
Speaker 1: treehouse shook slightly, and then we heard funny sounds. I
Speaker 1: don't remember exactly what they were, but they sounded like gibberish.
Speaker 1: Maybe there was more than one, we couldn't tell. We
Speaker 1: heard the loud footsteps and undergrowth of the leaves and
Speaker 1: sticks snapping, and I decided to blow out the candle.
Speaker 1: And then I walked over to one of the small windows,
Speaker 1: which had a sliding covers, and I tried to peek out,
Speaker 1: but it was so dark that I couldn't see. And
Speaker 1: I shut the window back and I locked it, and
Speaker 1: then it or they started scraping the bottom of the
Speaker 1: treehouse again, and this went on for a long time.
Speaker 1: After a while, we were both exhausted from fear. Things
Speaker 1: started landing on the roof of the treehouse too. Debbie
Speaker 1: had big blue eyes and she kept staring at me
Speaker 1: with them wide open. We spoke with our eyes, occasionally
Speaker 1: closing them tight. We were afraid to speak, and I
Speaker 1: wanted them to think that we were asleep. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do or think. I just wanted to
Speaker 1: be in my own bed back home. After several hours
Speaker 1: of banging, things hitting the treehouse and shaking and scraping,
Speaker 1: things started to quiet down just before sunrise, and then
Speaker 1: we heard a loud, roaring growl sound, but unlike anything
Speaker 1: else we had heard before, and it felt like it
Speaker 1: could easily have pulled the treehouse down and gotten inside
Speaker 1: after hearing that, and I knew it was really big,
Speaker 1: whatever this thing was. And then it went totally quiet
Speaker 1: and everything stop. We waited for a couple of hours
Speaker 1: after they left, never speaking a word, until finally I
Speaker 1: said that we should take a look outside. By this
Speaker 1: time it was seven a m. And I whispered that
Speaker 1: we should leave very quietly and leave all of our
Speaker 1: stuff there and run like hell. Once we got down
Speaker 1: to the ground, she nodded and was softly crying, and
Speaker 1: I slid the hatch open and popped my head through
Speaker 1: to look as best as I could, and I didn't
Speaker 1: see anything, and we went for it and we ran
Speaker 1: like hell. And as soon as we got home, we
Speaker 1: woke the boys and told them all about our experience.
Speaker 1: They called their friends and went back to retrieve our
Speaker 1: stuff for us and have a look around. Two of
Speaker 1: the boys took rifles. My older brothers said that we
Speaker 1: were pretty stupid for going back there for the night,
Speaker 1: and we agreed. He was not going to get any
Speaker 1: argument from us. They said it was probably a bear
Speaker 1: or the goat man, and they teased us for months
Speaker 1: following this event, but I knew they believed us. Needless
Speaker 1: to say, Debbie and I never went back there again
Speaker 1: at night. I moved up north after high school, and
Speaker 1: I lost touch with Debbie. I found her on Facebook
Speaker 1: a few years later, and we chatted online a bit,
Speaker 1: and then one night I messaged her and asked her
Speaker 1: if she remembered that night in the treehouse, and I
Speaker 1: asked her if she would share what she remembered so
Speaker 1: I could fill in some of the blanks. She never replied.
Speaker 1: I messaged her three times and I tried to rephrase
Speaker 1: my question being careful and considerate, but I got nothing
Speaker 1: from her. She never replied back at all. Because I'm
Speaker 1: in my seventies now, long past caring about what others
Speaker 1: think of me, I'm not sure I ever did. I've
Speaker 1: lived much of my life in South Carolina, but in
Speaker 1: my forties we bought a place in New Mexico on
Speaker 1: the checkerboard, a mix of federal state and counties in
Speaker 1: Navajo Zuni and private land. Any major issue out there
Speaker 1: brought a real assortment of law enforcement officers. We were
Speaker 1: planning to build a cabin and live there for the
Speaker 1: two years that it would ultimately take to complete the
Speaker 1: renovations on our business location in Charleston. Many of my
Speaker 1: neighbors there lived by the tenant that we are all
Speaker 1: here because we are not all there. It is a
Speaker 1: land of rebels, misfits, and highly independent people. One Navajo
Speaker 1: man told me that everyone who lived out there on
Speaker 1: our patch of private land were tax dodgers, small time crooks, crazies,
Speaker 1: marijuana growers, and fugitives, and then he advised me that
Speaker 1: we should move. He was a nice man, and after
Speaker 1: that he checked on me from time to time and
Speaker 1: became a real friend. Once we settled in, I would
Speaker 1: often stay home when my husband went to grants or
Speaker 1: gallop for building supplies, so it was not unusual for
Speaker 1: me to be out exploring on my four wheeler alone.
Speaker 1: I rode all over our fifty acres and out onto
Speaker 1: the state and federal land. I was in the woods
Speaker 1: a lot by myself, learning the area and getting acquainted
Speaker 1: with the flora and the fauna. We do have both
Speaker 1: black bears and mountain lions, but I have only seen
Speaker 1: mountain lions from time to time. I haven't thought about
Speaker 1: these incidents since two thousand and three, but your stories
Speaker 1: brought them back to me. It all seems just as
Speaker 1: surreal now as it did back then. It was on
Speaker 1: one of those occasions undes, when I was home alone,
Speaker 1: that it all began. I was clearing brush from around
Speaker 1: our camping trailer building a fire pit one day with
Speaker 1: my cattle dog. I was quite focused on what I
Speaker 1: was doing when I was suddenly overcome by a sense
Speaker 1: that I was being watched. I looked around me, but
Speaker 1: I saw nothing. We are on a high plateau and
Speaker 1: our land is pretty flat, with sparse trees and almost
Speaker 1: no bushes. Because at that time cattle grazed on the
Speaker 1: subdivided ranch our place was part of, it was reasonable
Speaker 1: that I would have been able to see anything out
Speaker 1: of place nearby, and I continued working for a few
Speaker 1: minutes until an odor came over me. It was a
Speaker 1: smell of a poorly tinded garbage dump, with overtones of
Speaker 1: dead things and a touch of heaven only knows what else.
Speaker 1: I paused at what I was doing and looked at
Speaker 1: my dog to see if she was reacting to anything
Speaker 1: she could not have done a better point had she
Speaker 1: been trained to do it. Now, this was a dog
Speaker 1: who regularly chased cows away from our place and had
Speaker 1: no fear of large animals. She was, after all, a
Speaker 1: blue healer. Her reactions put my senses on high alert,
Speaker 1: and I looked around me. First, I looked at our
Speaker 1: camper trailer and decided that anything that wanted to get
Speaker 1: into it would have no trouble. I then turned to
Speaker 1: my old Dodge truck, and I decided that it was
Speaker 1: a better choice. When I opened the door, my dog
Speaker 1: practically ran over me to get in the truck. That
Speaker 1: was not terribly alarming. She loved to drive in the truck,
Speaker 1: but she didn't stop there. She got onto the floorboard
Speaker 1: and curled up into a tight little ball well. I
Speaker 1: was inspired to join her as quickly as possible, and
Speaker 1: I locked the doors behind me. I was living in
Speaker 1: the hope that the truck would be more secure than
Speaker 1: the camper. Also, at that moment, I vowed to carry
Speaker 1: a truck key with me from now on, as it
Speaker 1: was I was going nowhere. We sat there for ten
Speaker 1: minutes before I rolled down the window enough to tell
Speaker 1: that the smell was gone, and I got out and
Speaker 1: blithely went back to work. My dog chose to stay
Speaker 1: in the truck, so I left the door open for her,
Speaker 1: and by the time my husband got home, I had
Speaker 1: pretty much forgotten about it, and I felt pretty silly
Speaker 1: for hiding in the truck just because I smelled something stinky.
Speaker 1: After that, my life went back to normal. I still
Speaker 1: rode my four wheeler and I hiked all over the
Speaker 1: place by myself. I was just happy to be outdoors
Speaker 1: and free to roam. My dog had evidently forgotten about
Speaker 1: it as well. She was always the first one on
Speaker 1: the four wheeler when I would go for a ride,
Speaker 1: and always on my heels when I went for a hike.
Speaker 1: Five years later, I was heading to a potline at
Speaker 1: a friend's place. I was about two miles from my
Speaker 1: turn when I came to a curve known for the
Speaker 1: seasonal build up of mud or snow. If we made
Speaker 1: it through the curve without getting stuck, we'd always give
Speaker 1: a short prayer of thanks for doing so. As I
Speaker 1: came out of the curve, I saw a large dark
Speaker 1: form that my brain tried to twist into the form
Speaker 1: of a cow flailing miserably I was unable to accept
Speaker 1: that realization, and my mind went to a black bear.
Speaker 1: That week, a black bear had broken into a woman's
Speaker 1: kitchen and killed her. So black bears was already on
Speaker 1: my mind, except bears don't run on three legs, and
Speaker 1: this thing did. It loped along beside me between one
Speaker 1: hundred and two hundred feet to my left. I couldn't
Speaker 1: go any faster than about ten miles per hour on
Speaker 1: that road, so it had no trouble pacing me. It
Speaker 1: stayed with me until the last thousand feet or so
Speaker 1: of gravel. It didn't feel threatening, and it didn't seem
Speaker 1: to tire. It just loped along beside me. I told
Speaker 1: the woman that the pot luck about it, and one
Speaker 1: of them, who had lived out there for decades, called
Speaker 1: me several days later and asked me to come over.
Speaker 1: She had a medicine man at her place and she
Speaker 1: wanted us to talk. He listened to my story, and
Speaker 1: he told me that it was one of the elder
Speaker 1: brothers and that I need not be afraid of it.
Speaker 1: My friend paid him the customary gift of tobacco, and
Speaker 1: he went on his way. We'll be going back to
Speaker 1: New Mexico in a month or so, and this memory
Speaker 1: will not keep me out of the woods. Sadly, my
Speaker 1: dog has been gone for years. My walks will be solitary,
Speaker 1: and there will be more seat room in the four
Speaker 1: wheeler without her. And now I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: go have a good cry over my long lost cattle
Speaker 1: dog her. That's not the end of the story. But
Speaker 1: she's the name of her cattle dog, and I don't
Speaker 1: want her to hear this and not think that I
Speaker 1: at least attempted to pronounce the name of the cattle dog.
Speaker 1: But the name of her dog is I think pittile
Speaker 1: a pitie. I'm trying to find it here, p I
Speaker 1: T A l e a h. Anybody know what that says.
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I didn't want to mispronounce it.
Speaker 1: But now that I've gotten to this point in the
Speaker 1: story and she has very fond memories of her dog, ma'am,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm just I don't want you to feel insulted.
Speaker 1: I didn't pronounce your dog's name, or say your dog's name,
Speaker 1: but I just don't think I'm pronouncing it right, So
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. But the dog's name is Pittile a pital
Speaker 1: pittlee okay on with the story. If you're still with me,
Speaker 1: I have also seen a UFO. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Charleston was ravaged by Hurricane Hugo. The path of the
Speaker 1: storm left a wound that would take years to heal.
Speaker 1: I was a part of a group of people that
Speaker 1: were seekers. The seeking led us to a healing tradition
Speaker 1: that has its roots in antiquity, and in parentheses, she says,
Speaker 1: it's called reiche r e I k I riky reiki
Speaker 1: I don't know. We came together one night to receive
Speaker 1: an invitation into the healing form. We met at a
Speaker 1: hairdresser's shop to take the class. In the middle of
Speaker 1: the evening, I can't remember the hour. We took a
Speaker 1: break and we were told to go sit and think
Speaker 1: about what we had been told and to make sure
Speaker 1: that we wanted to continue. There wasn't a lot of
Speaker 1: space for us to spread out inside the shop, and
Speaker 1: it was a beautiful, starry night, so my friend and
Speaker 1: I went to sit in her car. We'd been sitting
Speaker 1: there talking a little and thinking a lot, and when
Speaker 1: she said what is that? She was leaning over her
Speaker 1: steering wheel, looking up while leaned forward as well, and
Speaker 1: I saw nothing. And then I remembered that it was
Speaker 1: a beautiful story night, I should at least be able
Speaker 1: to see the stars. In fact, they were all around us,
Speaker 1: just not directly over us. We got out of the
Speaker 1: car and watched as a massive triangular shaped object passed overhead.
Speaker 1: And then we got back in the car and we
Speaker 1: sat there stunned. Later that evening we checked in on
Speaker 1: each other just to make sure we saw what we
Speaker 1: thought we saw. The following day, there was an article
Speaker 1: in the news and courier about a UFO that had
Speaker 1: been seen on a path from Charleston to Columbia. And
Speaker 1: beyond the whole experience of seeing something by virtue of
Speaker 1: not seeing the stars, something that must have been an
Speaker 1: acre in size, still leaves me speechless. My friend and
Speaker 1: I talk about this incident once in a while, just
Speaker 1: to check in and validate our sanity. Well, those are
Speaker 1: my story reason. Thanks for listening, MHM.