WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.480 --> 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 --> 00:00:32.320 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 00:01:02.840 --> 00:01:04.760 Before we get rolling tonight, I want to let you 14 00:01:04.799 --> 00:01:07.879 know upfront that we're doing something a little different. The 15 00:01:07.920 --> 00:01:11.840 Backwoods Cryptid road Trip is taking a short break. Don't worry. 16 00:01:12.040 --> 00:01:14.959 The truck's still running, the map's still on the dashboard, 17 00:01:15.200 --> 00:01:17.959 and we'll be back on the highway soon enough. But 18 00:01:18.040 --> 00:01:20.519 over the last several months, you've been writing to me 19 00:01:21.280 --> 00:01:24.959 every week. Emails come into the inbox at Paranormal World Productions. 20 00:01:25.519 --> 00:01:30.000 Some are short a paragraph, maybe two. Somebody saw something 21 00:01:30.040 --> 00:01:32.640 on a logging road in nineteen seventy something and they've 22 00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:35.959 been sitting on it ever since. Others run for pages 23 00:01:36.200 --> 00:01:38.599 written by people who clearly typed them late at night, 24 00:01:39.120 --> 00:01:42.920 got halfway through, deleted the whole thing, and started over. 25 00:01:43.599 --> 00:01:46.480 You can tell there's a rhythm to a story that 26 00:01:46.519 --> 00:01:49.439 somebody has been carrying around for twenty or thirty years, 27 00:01:49.799 --> 00:01:52.319 and when it finally comes out, it comes out in 28 00:01:52.439 --> 00:01:56.680 one long breath. I read all of them, every single one, 29 00:01:57.480 --> 00:01:59.040 and some of them stick with me in a way 30 00:01:59.079 --> 00:02:01.159 I have trouble explaining to people who don't do this 31 00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:04.840 for a living. I spent sixteen years in law enforcement, 32 00:02:05.359 --> 00:02:07.719 a good chunk of that with the Atlanta Police Department, 33 00:02:08.159 --> 00:02:10.159 and one thing that job teaches you is how to 34 00:02:10.199 --> 00:02:12.800 listen to a person tell you about the worst night 35 00:02:12.840 --> 00:02:16.879 of their life. You learn what embellishment sounds like, you 36 00:02:17.039 --> 00:02:20.159 learn what rehearsed sounds like, and you learn what it 37 00:02:20.199 --> 00:02:22.280 sounds like when somebody is telling you the truth and 38 00:02:22.319 --> 00:02:25.439 they're a little embarrassed about it. The five stories I'm 39 00:02:25.439 --> 00:02:29.000 sharing tonight all have that last quality. These came to 40 00:02:29.039 --> 00:02:33.080 me by email from five different people in five different states, 41 00:02:33.560 --> 00:02:37.360 describing events spread across more than two decades. None of 42 00:02:37.439 --> 00:02:40.840 these witnesses know each other. None of them asked for anything. 43 00:02:41.560 --> 00:02:43.919 A couple of them specifically asked me not to use 44 00:02:43.960 --> 00:02:47.479 their full names, and I won't. What I will do 45 00:02:47.680 --> 00:02:49.680 is tell you their stories the way they told them 46 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:53.360 to me. A quick note before we start. I haven't 47 00:02:53.360 --> 00:02:56.319 been to these locations. I haven't sat across a table 48 00:02:56.360 --> 00:02:59.479 from these witnesses. All I have is what they sent 49 00:02:59.560 --> 00:03:02.800 me and my own judgment about what rings true. After 50 00:03:02.879 --> 00:03:06.080 almost four decades of doing this, you'll have to apply 51 00:03:06.159 --> 00:03:10.159 your own judgment too. That's how this works. Our first 52 00:03:10.159 --> 00:03:12.960 story comes from a man named Dale, and it takes 53 00:03:13.039 --> 00:03:15.840 us to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in November of 54 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:19.080 nineteen ninety four. If you've never been to the up 55 00:03:19.280 --> 00:03:21.919 and deer season, it's hard to describe how empty that 56 00:03:21.960 --> 00:03:25.120 country gets once you walk away from the road. The 57 00:03:25.199 --> 00:03:28.759 Upper Peninsula has more land than several Eastern states put together, 58 00:03:29.159 --> 00:03:33.199 and fewer people than a mid sized suburb. Between Tranary 59 00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:37.039 and the Whitefish River where Dale hunted, you've got cedar swamps, 60 00:03:37.280 --> 00:03:40.840 hardwood ridges, old logging cuts grown back up in popple 61 00:03:40.919 --> 00:03:44.159 and tag Alder and miles of two track roads that 62 00:03:44.240 --> 00:03:48.599 haven't seen a greater since the Eisenhower administration. In November, 63 00:03:48.719 --> 00:03:51.560 the tourists are gone, the bugs are dead, and the 64 00:03:51.599 --> 00:03:54.639 snow comes early. It's the kind of place where a 65 00:03:54.680 --> 00:03:57.400 man can hunt all day and the only human sound 66 00:03:57.439 --> 00:04:01.039 he hears is his own. Zipper Dale was thirty one 67 00:04:01.120 --> 00:04:04.360 that fall. He'd been hunting that same forty acre since 68 00:04:04.360 --> 00:04:07.639 he was a kid. On land his uncle owned a 69 00:04:07.680 --> 00:04:11.280 long rectangle of hardwoods that ran downhill into a cedar 70 00:04:11.319 --> 00:04:14.080 swamp on its north end. He wrote me that he 71 00:04:14.120 --> 00:04:17.519 could walk it blindfolded, and I believe him because the 72 00:04:17.560 --> 00:04:19.959 way he described it had the kind of detail you 73 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:23.759 only get from years of repetition. The leaning yellow birch 74 00:04:23.800 --> 00:04:27.000 where he hung his drag rope, the rusted fence wire 75 00:04:27.079 --> 00:04:30.240 grown into a maple along the east line, the dead 76 00:04:30.279 --> 00:04:32.399 fall he used as a halfway bench when he was 77 00:04:32.480 --> 00:04:36.839 dragging a buck out. Opening day that year was November fifteenth, 78 00:04:37.120 --> 00:04:40.560 a tuesday. Dale had taken the whole week off from 79 00:04:40.560 --> 00:04:43.720 his job at a parts store in Escanaba. He drove 80 00:04:43.800 --> 00:04:46.720 up the night before, slept in his uncle's camp, and 81 00:04:46.879 --> 00:04:50.240 was in his blind well before light The blind was 82 00:04:50.240 --> 00:04:52.879 a homemade plywood box on the edge of the swamp, 83 00:04:53.319 --> 00:04:56.120 facing a runway where the deer moved between the cedars 84 00:04:56.120 --> 00:04:59.480 and the hardwoods. He had a Remington pump in thirty 85 00:04:59.480 --> 00:05:02.560 ought six, a thermos of coffee, and a paperback he 86 00:05:02.639 --> 00:05:06.360 never opened. The morning was normal. That's a detail, he 87 00:05:06.439 --> 00:05:09.079 repeated twice in his email, and I want you to 88 00:05:09.120 --> 00:05:12.800 hold on to it, because witnesses do that. They anchored 89 00:05:12.800 --> 00:05:15.319 themselves to the normal part before they tell you about 90 00:05:15.360 --> 00:05:18.279 the other part. He saw two dos and a spike 91 00:05:18.360 --> 00:05:21.199 around eight in the morning. He passed on the spike. 92 00:05:22.079 --> 00:05:26.160 Around ten, a porcupine waddled past his blind, close enough 93 00:05:26.199 --> 00:05:29.720 to hit with the thermos. Red squirrels worked the whole morning. 94 00:05:30.160 --> 00:05:33.959 Chickadees came and went, and a piliated woodpecker hammered somewhere 95 00:05:33.959 --> 00:05:36.800 off to the west. The swamp was loud, in the 96 00:05:36.800 --> 00:05:40.199 way a healthy swamp is loud. The afternoon was different. 97 00:05:41.000 --> 00:05:44.639 Dale wrote that somewhere around three o'clock the woods went quiet, 98 00:05:45.000 --> 00:05:47.680 and not the gradual quiet of animals betting down for 99 00:05:47.720 --> 00:05:51.560 the midday lull. He'd hunted enough years to know that rhythm. 100 00:05:52.240 --> 00:05:57.360 This was abrupt. The squirrel stopped. The bird stopped, he wrote, 101 00:05:57.839 --> 00:06:00.720 and I'm quoting him here. It was like somebody lifted 102 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:03.680 the needle off a record. He noticed it the way 103 00:06:03.720 --> 00:06:06.399 you notice a sound, which tells you something about how 104 00:06:06.439 --> 00:06:09.959 complete it was. Then he smelled it. He described it 105 00:06:10.040 --> 00:06:12.800 as a wet dog rolled in a deer carcass, with 106 00:06:12.879 --> 00:06:16.480 something sharp under it, like ammonia. It came to him 107 00:06:16.519 --> 00:06:19.000 on the breeze out of the swamp, faded and came 108 00:06:19.040 --> 00:06:21.959 back stronger. His first thought was a bear on a 109 00:06:22.000 --> 00:06:25.000 gut pile, because other hunters worked the country around his 110 00:06:25.120 --> 00:06:28.079 uncle's land, and somebody might have killed a deer that morning. 111 00:06:28.839 --> 00:06:31.199 But the wind was steady out of the north, out 112 00:06:31.199 --> 00:06:34.560 of the cedars, and the smell kept getting stronger, which 113 00:06:34.600 --> 00:06:38.160 meant whatever was making it was getting closer. Then he 114 00:06:38.160 --> 00:06:41.720 heard it walking. Dale was very careful in his email 115 00:06:41.759 --> 00:06:43.959 about this part, and the care is one of the 116 00:06:43.959 --> 00:06:47.079 reasons I trust him. He didn't say he heard a monster. 117 00:06:47.680 --> 00:06:51.480 He said he heard footsteps and standing water evenly spaced 118 00:06:51.639 --> 00:06:57.279 two beats, like a man waiting, slosh, slosh. He said. 119 00:06:57.279 --> 00:07:00.879 A deer in water is distinctive four feet a lighter 120 00:07:00.920 --> 00:07:03.879 and busier sound, and a bear is heavier, but also 121 00:07:04.040 --> 00:07:07.639 four beat and tends to pause and root around. This 122 00:07:07.759 --> 00:07:11.439 didn't pause. It came on at a steady walk, somewhere 123 00:07:11.439 --> 00:07:13.319 back in the cedars where he couldn't see more than 124 00:07:13.319 --> 00:07:16.759 fifteen or twenty yards, and it was paralleling the edge 125 00:07:16.759 --> 00:07:19.959 of the swamp, moving east to west across his front. 126 00:07:20.720 --> 00:07:22.759 He sat with his rifle across his knees and his 127 00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:25.160 thumb on the hammer of his own heart beat, and 128 00:07:25.240 --> 00:07:27.600 he listened to it passed within what he estimated was 129 00:07:27.639 --> 00:07:31.240 forty yards of his blind. He never saw it, the 130 00:07:31.240 --> 00:07:34.120 cedars were too thick, but at the closest point he 131 00:07:34.120 --> 00:07:36.879 heard it stop, and then he heard a single exhale. 132 00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:39.920 He wrote that it was like a horse blowing a 133 00:07:39.959 --> 00:07:43.480 big chest pushing air out through its nose, except deeper, 134 00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:47.680 and it only happened once. Then the footsteps started again 135 00:07:47.720 --> 00:07:51.399 and faded off to the west until the swamp swallowed them. 136 00:07:51.720 --> 00:07:54.439 Dale stayed in his blind until the end of legal light, 137 00:07:54.800 --> 00:07:57.600 which up there in mid November is around five point fifteen. 138 00:07:58.519 --> 00:08:00.639 He told me he stayed partly because he didn't want 139 00:08:00.639 --> 00:08:03.879 to walk past whatever that was, and partly because some 140 00:08:03.959 --> 00:08:06.160 stubborn part of him refused to get run off his 141 00:08:06.160 --> 00:08:09.959 own family's land by a smell and a sound. I 142 00:08:10.040 --> 00:08:12.720 understand that part of him. I've met a lot of 143 00:08:12.759 --> 00:08:16.240 men like Dale. Pride keeps them in the blind, and 144 00:08:16.279 --> 00:08:19.279 pride is also what keeps them from telling anyone afterward. 145 00:08:20.199 --> 00:08:22.720 The walkout is where this story earns its place in 146 00:08:22.720 --> 00:08:26.000 tonight's episode from the Blind to the two Track. Where 147 00:08:26.040 --> 00:08:30.240 he parked was about six hundred yards uphill through open hardwoods, 148 00:08:30.800 --> 00:08:33.120 a walk he'd made hundreds of times in the dark 149 00:08:33.159 --> 00:08:36.879 without a second thought. He had a small flashlight, one 150 00:08:36.919 --> 00:08:39.240 of those plastic jobs from the eighties that threw a 151 00:08:39.279 --> 00:08:42.679 beam about as strong as a birthday candle. He unloaded 152 00:08:42.679 --> 00:08:45.440 his rifle because that's how he was raised, slung it 153 00:08:45.639 --> 00:08:48.240 and started up the hill. He made it maybe one 154 00:08:48.320 --> 00:08:51.919 hundred yards before he heard the footsteps again, not in water, 155 00:08:52.000 --> 00:08:56.919 this time in leaves off to his left, downhill between 156 00:08:57.039 --> 00:09:01.360 him and the swamp. When he walked, it walked. When 157 00:09:01.399 --> 00:09:04.840 he stopped, it stopped. And he wrote that the gap 158 00:09:04.919 --> 00:09:08.759 between his last step and its last step got shorter 159 00:09:08.840 --> 00:09:11.360 every time he tested it, like it was getting better 160 00:09:11.399 --> 00:09:13.919 at the game. Now, I want to put my old 161 00:09:13.960 --> 00:09:16.559 cop hat on for a second, because this is the 162 00:09:16.600 --> 00:09:19.799 point in any account where I start asking the boring questions. 163 00:09:20.600 --> 00:09:23.679 Deer will absolutely shadow a hunter in the dark, and 164 00:09:23.720 --> 00:09:27.840 a curious deer, and dry leaves can sound enormous. Coyotes 165 00:09:27.879 --> 00:09:30.879 will pace a man. Even a fisher or a raccoon 166 00:09:30.919 --> 00:09:33.039 can sound bigger than it is when it's close and 167 00:09:33.080 --> 00:09:36.879 you're scared. Dale knew all that too. He's the one 168 00:09:36.919 --> 00:09:39.879 who raised those possibilities in his own email, and he 169 00:09:39.960 --> 00:09:42.360 knocked them down one at a time with the same answer. 170 00:09:43.120 --> 00:09:46.559 The footsteps were two beat heel strikes in rhythm with 171 00:09:46.600 --> 00:09:50.039 his own in long strides, he said. At one point 172 00:09:50.080 --> 00:09:53.799 he deliberately broke his pace, took three quick steps and stopped, 173 00:09:54.279 --> 00:09:56.440 and the thing in the dark did the same, and 174 00:09:56.480 --> 00:10:01.720 then added one more step, one like a That extra 175 00:10:01.759 --> 00:10:06.039 step is the detail that got me. It's small, it's specific, 176 00:10:06.600 --> 00:10:09.639 and it's not the kind of thing people invent. People 177 00:10:09.639 --> 00:10:12.440 who make stories up give you glowing eyes and roars. 178 00:10:13.080 --> 00:10:15.360 They don't give you one extra footstep in the leaves. 179 00:10:16.200 --> 00:10:19.399 Dale stopped pretending he wasn't scared. At that point, he 180 00:10:19.480 --> 00:10:22.519 loaded the rifle back up, which he admitted with some shame. 181 00:10:23.120 --> 00:10:25.799 Walking with a loaded firearm in the dark being a 182 00:10:25.840 --> 00:10:28.720 thing his father would have whipped him for. He kept 183 00:10:28.759 --> 00:10:32.840 moving faster now, the flashlight beam bouncing off tree trunks, 184 00:10:33.120 --> 00:10:35.480 and the thing on his left flank kept station with 185 00:10:35.559 --> 00:10:38.879 him the whole way, never closer than maybe thirty yards, 186 00:10:39.440 --> 00:10:42.080 never farther than fifty all the way up the hill. 187 00:10:42.919 --> 00:10:45.159 When he broke out of the timber onto the two track, 188 00:10:45.200 --> 00:10:47.360 he could see his pick up about eighty yards down 189 00:10:47.360 --> 00:10:51.080 the road, a pale shape in the dark. He wrote 190 00:10:51.120 --> 00:10:53.799 that the moment his boots hit the road, the footsteps 191 00:10:53.840 --> 00:10:56.759 behind him stopped, and the silence was worse than the 192 00:10:56.799 --> 00:10:59.639 sound had been, because now he had no idea where 193 00:10:59.639 --> 00:11:02.960 it was. He covered those eighty yards at a dead run. 194 00:11:03.679 --> 00:11:06.480 He got the door open, got in, got the key 195 00:11:06.519 --> 00:11:09.279 in on the second try, and as the engine caught 196 00:11:09.679 --> 00:11:12.840 something hit the side of the truck bed, one impact 197 00:11:13.200 --> 00:11:16.000 hard enough to rock the vehicle on its springs. He 198 00:11:16.120 --> 00:11:18.919 dropped it into gear and left fishtailing in the snow. 199 00:11:19.440 --> 00:11:21.399 And he did not look in the mirror because, in 200 00:11:21.440 --> 00:11:24.440 his words, I had decided I didn't want to know. 201 00:11:25.759 --> 00:11:27.960 The next morning, in daylight, with his uncle and his 202 00:11:28.080 --> 00:11:31.840 uncle's dog along, Dale went back. There was a dent 203 00:11:31.960 --> 00:11:34.320 in the driver's side of the truck bed above the 204 00:11:34.320 --> 00:11:37.759 wheel well, about the size of a dinner plate. They 205 00:11:37.759 --> 00:11:41.360 found his blind undisturbed, and in the swamp. In the 206 00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:44.480 muck along the runway the deer used. They found a 207 00:11:44.519 --> 00:11:48.799 line of impressions heading west. The dog wouldn't go near them. 208 00:11:49.120 --> 00:11:51.519 His uncle, a man in his sixties who had logged 209 00:11:51.519 --> 00:11:54.240 and hunted that country his whole life, looked at them 210 00:11:54.279 --> 00:11:56.279 for a long time and then said they should head 211 00:11:56.279 --> 00:11:58.559 back to camp. And the two of them never spoke 212 00:11:58.600 --> 00:12:02.039 about it again, not once, Dale wrote in the eleven 213 00:12:02.120 --> 00:12:06.639 years before his uncle passed. The impressions themselves deserve a minute, 214 00:12:06.879 --> 00:12:09.240 because Dale's description of them is the kind of thing 215 00:12:09.279 --> 00:12:11.360 you only get from a man who is tracked deer 216 00:12:11.440 --> 00:12:14.679 his whole life. There were nine of them visible before 217 00:12:14.679 --> 00:12:18.080 the line went into standing water, in a nearly straight walk, 218 00:12:18.480 --> 00:12:20.639 none of the straddle you see in a bear's trail. 219 00:12:21.519 --> 00:12:24.440 His uncle paced the distance between them, healed a heel, 220 00:12:25.039 --> 00:12:27.679 and Dale watched the old man stretch his stride to 221 00:12:27.720 --> 00:12:30.639 match it and come up short, and then watched him 222 00:12:30.679 --> 00:12:33.320 do it again, like the first time had been a mistake. 223 00:12:34.279 --> 00:12:36.600 The prints were pressed down through the muck into the 224 00:12:36.639 --> 00:12:40.679 firm clay underneath. Dale stepped beside one and bounced his 225 00:12:40.720 --> 00:12:44.360 full weight, and his boot didn't reach clay. He waghed 226 00:12:44.360 --> 00:12:47.679 about one ninety that fall. He's done that arithmetic in 227 00:12:47.720 --> 00:12:49.960 his head for thirty years, and he doesn't like the 228 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:53.240 answer any better now than he did. Then. One more 229 00:12:53.279 --> 00:12:56.080 thing came out later that week, and Dale only learned 230 00:12:56.120 --> 00:12:59.320 it second hand. A camp two miles east of his 231 00:12:59.399 --> 00:13:02.960 uncle's play on the same swamp system packed up and 232 00:13:03.039 --> 00:13:06.720 left three days early that season. The story that filtered 233 00:13:06.720 --> 00:13:09.519 back through the gas station in Tranary was that something 234 00:13:09.600 --> 00:13:12.720 had screamed near their camp two nights running, and one 235 00:13:12.720 --> 00:13:16.679 of the men, a retired meal right nobody described as imaginative, 236 00:13:17.240 --> 00:13:20.080 refused to take his turn walking out to the woodpile 237 00:13:20.159 --> 00:13:24.039 after dark. Dale never talked to those men. He just 238 00:13:24.080 --> 00:13:26.600 stopped being surprised by the story when he heard it. 239 00:13:27.519 --> 00:13:30.279 Dale measured one of the clearest impressions against his own 240 00:13:30.320 --> 00:13:33.360 boot before they left. His boot was a size ten. 241 00:13:34.200 --> 00:13:36.679 The impression ran past it by the length of his hand, 242 00:13:37.039 --> 00:13:39.360 and it was pressed into muck that his own boots 243 00:13:39.399 --> 00:13:43.559 barely marked. He still hunts. He told me that almost 244 00:13:43.559 --> 00:13:46.879 defiantly at the end of the email. He still hunts 245 00:13:46.879 --> 00:13:49.879 the up every November, but he sold his interest in 246 00:13:49.919 --> 00:13:52.399 his uncle's forty to a cousin in two thousand and one, 247 00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:56.039 and he hunts state land near gwyn Now. And when 248 00:13:56.039 --> 00:13:58.200 somebody at deer camp asked why he gave up a 249 00:13:58.200 --> 00:14:01.799 family property with a proven and a perfectly good blind, 250 00:14:02.360 --> 00:14:04.840 he tells them the swamp got too wet to drag 251 00:14:04.879 --> 00:14:08.440 a deer out of thirty years and that dent never 252 00:14:08.519 --> 00:14:10.399 did come out of the truck. Before he sold it. 253 00:14:11.159 --> 00:14:12.720 He said he used to see it every time he 254 00:14:12.799 --> 00:14:16.200 loaded firewood, and he'd think about that one extra footstep 255 00:14:16.240 --> 00:14:19.519 in the dark, the correction, the thing in the leaves 256 00:14:19.559 --> 00:14:23.279 matching him, and then showing him just barely that it 257 00:14:23.279 --> 00:14:28.200 could do better. That's Michigan, nineteen ninety four. Our second 258 00:14:28.240 --> 00:14:30.759 story comes from the other side of the country, and 259 00:14:30.879 --> 00:14:33.399 unlike Dale, the woman who sent it to me wasn't 260 00:14:33.440 --> 00:14:36.720 out looking for deer or anything else. She was home, 261 00:14:37.159 --> 00:14:41.120 and that's exactly what makes her story worse. Our second 262 00:14:41.120 --> 00:14:43.759 story comes from a woman I'll call Karen, and it 263 00:14:43.799 --> 00:14:46.200 takes us to the coast range of Oregon in the 264 00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:49.600 fall of two thousand and eight, the Oregon coast range 265 00:14:49.639 --> 00:14:53.440 doesn't get the attention the Cascades do. It's lower, wetter, 266 00:14:53.720 --> 00:14:57.159 and closer to people, which fools folks into thinking it's tame. 267 00:14:57.960 --> 00:15:00.399 It isn't stay tuned for more back woods. It's big 268 00:15:00.440 --> 00:15:06.120 foot stories. We'll be back after these messages. Between Highway 269 00:15:06.159 --> 00:15:09.240 twenty six and Highway six west of Portland, you've got 270 00:15:09.240 --> 00:15:12.799 the Tillamook State Forest, hundreds of square miles of second 271 00:15:12.879 --> 00:15:15.279 growth Douglas fir growing out of the scar of the 272 00:15:15.279 --> 00:15:19.639 Tillamook Burn, cut through with logging roads, salmon creeks, and 273 00:15:19.720 --> 00:15:22.919 canyons so choked with sword fern and Devil's Club that 274 00:15:23.000 --> 00:15:25.639 a search party can walk past a downed aircraft at 275 00:15:25.679 --> 00:15:29.879 fifty feet. People go missing in that country. Elk herds 276 00:15:29.919 --> 00:15:33.240 live whole lives in it without being seen. It rains 277 00:15:33.240 --> 00:15:36.279 about ninety inches a year, and from October to May 278 00:15:36.559 --> 00:15:39.279 the clouds sit down on the ridgetops like they pay rent. 279 00:15:40.240 --> 00:15:43.720 In two thousand and eight, Cairn was forty three, recently divorced, 280 00:15:43.960 --> 00:15:46.279 and renting a cabin off a gravel spur near the 281 00:15:46.320 --> 00:15:49.519 Wilson River, a few miles from the nearest paved road. 282 00:15:50.360 --> 00:15:52.480 She described the place as the kind of rental you 283 00:15:52.559 --> 00:15:55.360 find on a cork board at a feed store, eight 284 00:15:55.440 --> 00:15:59.360 hundred square feet, a wood stove, a propane range, a 285 00:15:59.399 --> 00:16:02.600 covered port, and a landlord who lived in Forest Grove 286 00:16:02.639 --> 00:16:05.759 and came out twice a year. Her nearest neighbor was 287 00:16:05.799 --> 00:16:08.240 an older couple about three quarters of a mile back 288 00:16:08.240 --> 00:16:11.759 toward the highway. She had a dog, a sixty pound 289 00:16:11.799 --> 00:16:14.679 Shepherd mix named Guss, and she had taken the place 290 00:16:14.720 --> 00:16:18.960 specifically because it was remote. After the divorce. She wrote 291 00:16:19.200 --> 00:16:22.559 she wanted somewhere nobody could just drop by. I want 292 00:16:22.559 --> 00:16:25.320 to point out something about Karen's email before we go further. 293 00:16:25.960 --> 00:16:28.840 It ran almost four pages, and the first page and 294 00:16:28.879 --> 00:16:30.720 a half was her trying to talk me out of 295 00:16:30.759 --> 00:16:34.720 believing her. She gave me every alternative explanation before she 296 00:16:34.799 --> 00:16:39.399 gave me the events. Elk bear, a transient camping in 297 00:16:39.440 --> 00:16:43.159 the timber, a neighbor kid messing with her. She'd spent 298 00:16:43.240 --> 00:16:46.600 fifteen years arguing with herself, and the email read like 299 00:16:46.639 --> 00:16:49.039 the closing statement of a trial she'd been holding in 300 00:16:49.080 --> 00:16:52.840 her own head. In my experience, liars don't do that. 301 00:16:53.600 --> 00:16:56.759 Liars want you to believe them. Karen seemed to want 302 00:16:56.759 --> 00:16:58.679 me to give her a way out, and I'll be 303 00:16:58.720 --> 00:17:00.799 honest with you. By the end end of her account, 304 00:17:01.120 --> 00:17:05.680 I couldn't. It started with Gus in late September. Gus 305 00:17:05.759 --> 00:17:09.359 was an outside at bedtime dog. Last thing every night, 306 00:17:09.480 --> 00:17:12.039 Karen opened the door, Gus did his business off the 307 00:17:12.119 --> 00:17:14.920 end of the porch, nosed around the woodpile, and came 308 00:17:14.960 --> 00:17:17.680 back in. That was the routine for the year and 309 00:17:17.720 --> 00:17:20.480 a half she'd lived there. Then one night toward the 310 00:17:20.559 --> 00:17:23.640 end of September, she opened the door and Gus wouldn't go. 311 00:17:24.559 --> 00:17:27.160 He stood on the threshold with his head low, looking 312 00:17:27.200 --> 00:17:29.319 out at the dark, and the hair stood up in 313 00:17:29.359 --> 00:17:32.160 a ridge from his collar to his tail. She pushed 314 00:17:32.200 --> 00:17:35.240 him gently with her knee. He braced all four legs 315 00:17:35.240 --> 00:17:39.519 and growled, not at her passed her. She wrote that 316 00:17:39.559 --> 00:17:42.240 she stood there in the doorway in her socks, feeling 317 00:17:42.279 --> 00:17:46.119 the cold air come in, listening, and the night was silent. 318 00:17:46.960 --> 00:17:49.519 And then she made herself notice what kind of silent. 319 00:17:50.279 --> 00:17:53.960 No frogs from the creek, no owls, nothing moving in 320 00:17:54.000 --> 00:17:57.720 the brush, just the creek itself, and even that seemed 321 00:17:57.759 --> 00:18:01.319 lower than usual, the way sound it's muffled before snow. 322 00:18:02.400 --> 00:18:05.039 Gus didn't go out that night, He did his business 323 00:18:05.079 --> 00:18:08.240 at six the next morning, in daylight, about four feet 324 00:18:08.279 --> 00:18:10.960 from the porch, watching the tree line the whole time. 325 00:18:11.839 --> 00:18:14.839 Over the next three weeks, the routine fell apart. Some 326 00:18:14.960 --> 00:18:18.200 nights Gus went out like nothing was wrong. Other nights 327 00:18:18.200 --> 00:18:21.400 he refused, and Karen started keeping track because she was 328 00:18:21.400 --> 00:18:24.559 a bookkeeper by trade, and keeping track is what she did. 329 00:18:25.400 --> 00:18:27.440 She wrote the dates on the kitchen calendar with a 330 00:18:27.440 --> 00:18:30.279 little X. When she looked at the calendar at the 331 00:18:30.359 --> 00:18:33.960 end of October, the exes were clustered, three or four 332 00:18:34.079 --> 00:18:36.720 nights in a row, then a week of nothing, then 333 00:18:36.759 --> 00:18:40.960 another cluster. Whatever was bothering the dog, It wasn't living there, 334 00:18:41.480 --> 00:18:45.200 It was coming through other things, stacked up, the kind 335 00:18:45.200 --> 00:18:48.279 of things that mean nothing by themselves. A smell on 336 00:18:48.319 --> 00:18:51.480 the trail to the creek, skunky and sour. There one 337 00:18:51.559 --> 00:18:54.839 walk and gone the next. Her garbage cans, which were 338 00:18:54.839 --> 00:18:57.839 in a latched wooden bin her landlord had built bear proof, 339 00:18:58.200 --> 00:19:01.839 found tipped over inside the bin, lid still latched like 340 00:19:01.880 --> 00:19:05.039 the whole ben had been picked up and shaken. A whistle. 341 00:19:05.400 --> 00:19:07.960 Two notes that she heard twice in one week from 342 00:19:08.039 --> 00:19:10.559 up the slope behind the cabin. That she told herself 343 00:19:10.640 --> 00:19:13.480 was a varied thrush, even though she knew thrushes go 344 00:19:13.599 --> 00:19:17.519 quiet in the fall, And once in early October, every 345 00:19:17.640 --> 00:19:20.160 coyote in the valley going off at two in the morning, 346 00:19:20.680 --> 00:19:24.079 a full chorus that cut off all at once mid howl, 347 00:19:24.440 --> 00:19:27.359 like a door slamming on it. Then came the night 348 00:19:27.400 --> 00:19:30.240 of November eighth. She was sure of the date because 349 00:19:30.240 --> 00:19:32.880 it was a Saturday, and she'd driven into Tillamook that 350 00:19:32.960 --> 00:19:35.400 day for groceries, and her receipt was still on the 351 00:19:35.400 --> 00:19:38.279 counter for weeks after, and she couldn't bring herself to 352 00:19:38.279 --> 00:19:40.799 throw it away because it was proof of the last 353 00:19:40.960 --> 00:19:44.799 normal day. That evening was hard rain. She'd had the 354 00:19:44.799 --> 00:19:48.359 wood stove going since afternoon, made dinner, and was watching 355 00:19:48.400 --> 00:19:50.279 a movie on the couch with Gus. When the dog 356 00:19:50.359 --> 00:19:54.440 sat up, she muted the television. Underneath the rain on 357 00:19:54.480 --> 00:19:59.640 the metal roof, she heard footsteps on the gravel outside, heavy, unhurried, 358 00:20:00.079 --> 00:20:02.039 coming up the side of the cabin from the direction 359 00:20:02.160 --> 00:20:05.319 of the creek. Her first thought was a person, and 360 00:20:05.400 --> 00:20:07.839 her second thought was that the first thought was terrifying 361 00:20:07.880 --> 00:20:11.079 all by itself, because nobody walks three quarters of a 362 00:20:11.119 --> 00:20:13.559 mile up a gravel spur in hard rain at ten 363 00:20:13.559 --> 00:20:16.680 o'clock at night, with good intentions. She had no gun 364 00:20:16.680 --> 00:20:19.440 in the house. The divorce had cost her that too, 365 00:20:19.960 --> 00:20:23.200 in a roundabout way she didn't explain. She took the 366 00:20:23.200 --> 00:20:26.720 fireplace poker off the stand, which she admitted felt ridiculous 367 00:20:26.759 --> 00:20:29.119 even at the time, and she stood in the middle 368 00:20:29.119 --> 00:20:31.160 of her living room and listened to the footsteps come 369 00:20:31.279 --> 00:20:34.759 level with the cabin and stop. The window over her 370 00:20:34.839 --> 00:20:37.880 kitchen sink faced that side. She had a curtain on 371 00:20:37.920 --> 00:20:41.119 a wire across it, one of those cafe style curtains 372 00:20:41.119 --> 00:20:44.279 that covered the bottom two thirds of the glass. The 373 00:20:44.319 --> 00:20:47.839 top third was bare. Karen wrote that she'd measured that 374 00:20:47.880 --> 00:20:51.119 window after the fact more than once, because she had to. 375 00:20:52.119 --> 00:20:55.359 The sill sat fifty inches off the ground outside. The 376 00:20:55.359 --> 00:20:58.119 top of the glass was just under seven feet. The 377 00:20:58.200 --> 00:21:01.079 kitchen light was off. The only light in the room 378 00:21:01.119 --> 00:21:04.240 came from the television frozen on the menu screen, and 379 00:21:04.279 --> 00:21:07.079 from the little bulb over the stove. And in the 380 00:21:07.079 --> 00:21:10.279 bare top third of that window above the curtain, she 381 00:21:10.359 --> 00:21:13.400 saw the rain on the glass change. That's how she 382 00:21:13.480 --> 00:21:16.200 described it, and I've thought about that sentence a lot. 383 00:21:16.960 --> 00:21:19.359 She didn't say she saw a face. She said the 384 00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:22.440 streaks of rain running down the glass went dark, the 385 00:21:22.440 --> 00:21:24.839 way they would if something large moved close to the 386 00:21:24.880 --> 00:21:27.079 other side and blocked the gray of the night sky. 387 00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:30.559 A shape filled the top of the window, and then 388 00:21:30.599 --> 00:21:34.279 it leaned in, and there was an eye. One eye. 389 00:21:34.839 --> 00:21:38.480 The angle only allowed one. She described it as bigger 390 00:21:38.480 --> 00:21:41.599 than a human eye, dark, with a wet shine from 391 00:21:41.640 --> 00:21:44.720 the stove light, set in skin that looked like wet leather. 392 00:21:45.480 --> 00:21:48.200 It was looking into her kitchen, and then it moved 393 00:21:48.599 --> 00:21:50.880 and it was looking at her. And she stood in 394 00:21:50.920 --> 00:21:53.799 her living room holding a fireplace poker in her pajamas, 395 00:21:54.119 --> 00:21:56.200 while something tall enough to look through the top of 396 00:21:56.200 --> 00:21:59.079 a seven foot window looked back at her through the rain. 397 00:22:00.039 --> 00:22:03.039 Gus broke first. He'd been frozen next to the couch, 398 00:22:03.240 --> 00:22:05.880 and he came apart all at once, barking with a 399 00:22:05.960 --> 00:22:09.119 violence she'd never heard from him in nine years, lunging 400 00:22:09.160 --> 00:22:12.160 at the kitchen but not entering it, holding the doorway 401 00:22:12.200 --> 00:22:14.480