Speaker 1: Today, I want to tell you about a journey that
Speaker 1: I've been on for most of my life. Ever since
Speaker 1: I was a kid, I've heard tales of bigfoot and
Speaker 1: wild men while spending time with my friends and family.
Speaker 1: As I grew older and read more about the paranormal,
Speaker 1: my interest in encryptids and other things strange only deepened.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm so excited to share with you what
Speaker 1: I've personally become involved with the Untold Radio Network. The
Speaker 1: Untold Radio Network is a live streaming podcast network that
Speaker 1: airs a new show every day across all podcast platforms, YouTube,
Speaker 1: and more. They have eight different shows on all sorts
Speaker 1: of exciting topics such as bigfoot, cryptids, UFOs, aliens, and
Speaker 1: much more. I even have my own show called Weird Encounters,
Speaker 1: where I talk about all things strange. This is more
Speaker 1: than just a podcast network. It's a community that allows
Speaker 1: me to meet so many amazing people who share their
Speaker 1: stories and experiences with strange. If you're interested in hearing
Speaker 1: more of these stories and learning more about the paranormal
Speaker 1: and encryptids, make sure you check out the Untold Radio
Speaker 1: Network for all kinds of exciting shows. It's free to subscribe.
Speaker 1: So what are you waiting for visit www dot untold
Speaker 1: radionetwork dot com today.
Speaker 2: Now, what are your reporting? I got a screen going
Speaker 2: on here. Something just kid with my dog, something to
Speaker 2: kill your dog? My dog. We're flying through there over
Speaker 2: the tree. I don't know how it did it? Okay, Damn,
Speaker 2: I'm really confused. All I saw was my dog coming
Speaker 2: over the fence, and name was dead once you hit
Speaker 2: the grill. I didn't see any cars. All I saw
Speaker 2: was my dog coming over the fence. Sat, what are
Speaker 2: you reporting? We got some wonder or something crawling around
Speaker 2: out here? Did you see what it was? It was
Speaker 2: enough out here looking him. Knew the one down now
Speaker 2: and I don't need anything. I don't want to go outside. Hello,
Speaker 2: hit the boddy out here?
Speaker 3: What quin?
Speaker 2: I'm out there? I thought of a venus about te nine.
Speaker 2: I don't know easy ann out there? Yeah, I'm walking
Speaker 2: right heady.
Speaker 1: You know that feeling when someone's about to tell you
Speaker 1: something that's going to change how you see the world,
Speaker 1: That moment right before they open their mouth, when you
Speaker 1: can still pretend that everything you think you know about
Speaker 1: reality is actually true.
Speaker 4: This is that moment.
Speaker 1: The email arrived on a Monday, morning, buried in my
Speaker 1: inbox between a spam message about miracle weight loss and
Speaker 1: a reminder about my car's extended warranty. The subject line
Speaker 1: was simple, you wanted the truth about the strange stuff
Speaker 1: here it is. It came from someone calling himself Jeremiah,
Speaker 1: though I suspect that's not his real name. I'd never
Speaker 1: heard from him before, but somehow he knew about the show,
Speaker 1: knew about the books I'd written, knew that I was
Speaker 1: someone who took these stories seriously, someone who wouldn't laugh
Speaker 1: or dismiss what.
Speaker 4: He had to say.
Speaker 1: The message was long, longer than most people have the
Speaker 1: patience to write these days, and it started with what
Speaker 1: seemed like a pretty ordinary story about a middle aged
Speaker 1: guy going through a divorce, losing his job, escaping to
Speaker 1: the mountains to build a cabin and start over, the
Speaker 1: kind of midlife crisis story we've all heard a hundred
Speaker 1: times before. I almost deleted it, but something in the tone,
Speaker 1: in the careful way he laid out the details, made
Speaker 1: me keep reading. And I'm glad I did, because what
Speaker 1: starts as a simple tale of a man seeking solitude
Speaker 1: in the Georgia Mountains becomes something else. Entirely, something that
Speaker 1: will make you think twice about those dark spaces between
Speaker 1: the trees, about what might be watching from the shadows
Speaker 1: when you're alone in the wilderness. Jeremiah takes his time
Speaker 1: getting to the scary parts. He wants you to understand
Speaker 1: who he was before, what drove him to seek isolation
Speaker 1: in the remote mountains of North Georgia. He wants you
Speaker 1: to know about the cabin he built with his own hands,
Speaker 1: about the peace he found in that clearing by the creek,
Speaker 1: About the simple life he thought he was creating for himself.
Speaker 1: Because context matters when someone's about to tell you that
Speaker 1: everything you think you know about the natural world is wrong.
Speaker 1: The story he's about to share doesn't start with monsters.
Speaker 1: It starts with divorce papers and panic attacks and the
Speaker 1: soul crushing realization that the American dream had become a nightmare.
Speaker 1: It starts with a man so desperate for peace that
Speaker 1: he was willing to disappear into the wilderness to cut
Speaker 1: himself off from civilization Entirely, it starts normal, human, relatable,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't stay that way. What Jeremiah encountered in
Speaker 1: those remote mountains challenges everything we think we know about
Speaker 1: what lurks in the deep woods, about intelligence and intention,
Speaker 1: and the things that go bump in the night, about
Speaker 1: preachers that understand psychology, that can wage systematic campaigns of terror,
Speaker 1: that can drive a rational man to the edge of
Speaker 1: sanity and beyond. He's careful to give you all the details,
Speaker 1: all the context you need to understand what happened. But
Speaker 1: fair warning, once you hear this story, you can't unhear it.
Speaker 1: Once you know what he knows, the wilderness will never
Speaker 1: look the same. So settle in, get comfortable, and prepare
Speaker 1: to learn why some places in this world are better
Speaker 1: left unexplored, why some secrets are better left buried in
Speaker 1: the darkness between the trees. This is Jeremiah's story, told
Speaker 1: in his own words. He sent it to me with
Speaker 1: the understanding that I would share it, that people needed
Speaker 1: to know what's really out there. But he also made
Speaker 1: it clear that this is the only time he's ever
Speaker 1: going to talk about what happened to him in those mountains.
Speaker 1: After you hear it, you'll understand why. The story begins
Speaker 1: with a man running away from his old life, but
Speaker 1: what he found waiting for him in the wilderness was
Speaker 1: worse than anything he'd left behind much worse. I've been
Speaker 1: a listener for years and I've read both your books.
Speaker 4: One thing I've.
Speaker 1: Always respected is how you talk about the strange stuff
Speaker 1: straight up, no hype, just honest.
Speaker 4: That's why I'm writing.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to get attention, and I'm not looking
Speaker 1: for anyone to feel sorry for me. I just think
Speaker 1: people need to know this kind of thing is real.
Speaker 1: It happened to me, and if telling my story helps
Speaker 1: someone stay safe, then it's worth it.
Speaker 4: So here it is, all of it.
Speaker 1: Just know, once you hear this, you can't unhear it,
Speaker 1: and I won't be talking about it again. I guess
Speaker 1: I should start with why I went up there in
Speaker 1: the first place. The divorce had just gone through after
Speaker 1: two years of legal hell. Sarah took pretty much everything,
Speaker 1: the house we'd bought when we were still stupid enough
Speaker 1: to believe in forever, the kids half the time, which
Speaker 1: meant I got to be a weekend dad to my
Speaker 1: own children, and most of our savings, which had taken
Speaker 1: me fifteen years to build up. I was working sixty
Speaker 1: hour weeks at the caterpillar plant, coming home to an
Speaker 1: empty apartment that smelled like takeout containers and regret. The
Speaker 1: place had beige walls and beige carpet and beige everything,
Speaker 1: like they designed it specifically to suck the life out
Speaker 1: of whoever was unlucky enough to live there. My blood
Speaker 1: pressure was through the roof one forty over ninety on
Speaker 1: a good day. I was popping antacids like they were candy,
Speaker 1: going through a bottle of thumbs every week. My doctor
Speaker 1: kept telling me I needed to reduce stress. But how
Speaker 1: do you reduce stress when everything in your life is stress?
Speaker 1: I couldn't sleep more than three hours at a time
Speaker 1: without waking up in a cold sweat, thinking about bills
Speaker 1: and court dates and how I'd somehow become this hollow
Speaker 1: shell of a man who didn't recognize himself.
Speaker 4: In the mirror anymore.
Speaker 1: The thing that really broke me was sitting in traffic
Speaker 1: one morning on I two eighty five, watching all these
Speaker 1: people in their cars, looking as miserable as I felt.
Speaker 1: Thousands of us, all stuck in the same metal boxes,
Speaker 1: breathing the same exhaust fumes, all heading to jobs we
Speaker 1: hated to make money for things we didn't really want.
Speaker 1: All of us just rats in a maze, running the
Speaker 1: same path every day getting nowhere, I realized I'd been
Speaker 1: doing it for twenty three years. The same commute, the
Speaker 1: same cubicle under fluorescent lights that gave me headaches, the
Speaker 1: same meetings about meetings where nothing ever got decided for what,
Speaker 1: A pension that might not even exist when I retired,
Speaker 1: assuming the company didn't move all the jobs to Mexico. First,
Speaker 1: a four to oh one k that lost half its
Speaker 1: value every time the market hiccuped. A gold watch after
Speaker 1: forty years of service, if I was lucky enough to
Speaker 1: live that long. I started having panic attacks at work,
Speaker 1: real ones, not just feeling stressed. My heart would start
Speaker 1: racing for no reason. My hands would shake, and I'd
Speaker 1: feel like I couldn't breathe. I'd have to lock myself
Speaker 1: in the bathroom until it passed, splashing cold water on
Speaker 1: my face and trying to remember how to breathe normally.
Speaker 1: My supervisor started making comments about my performance, about maybe
Speaker 1: I wasn't cut out for the increased responsibilities they'd been
Speaker 1: piling on me since the last round of layoffs. That's
Speaker 1: when I started looking at land, not vacation property like
Speaker 1: some rich guy's hunting cabin, I mean real land. Somewhere
Speaker 1: I could disappear completely, Somewhere I could build something with
Speaker 1: my own hands and not have to answer to anybody
Speaker 1: ever again. The idea started as just a fantasy, something
Speaker 1: to think about during those endless meetings, but it grew
Speaker 1: into an obsession. I'd always been handy with tools, learned
Speaker 1: carpentry from my dad when I was young, back before
Speaker 1: he started drinking heavy and we stopped talking. He taught
Speaker 1: me to measure twice and cut once, to respect the
Speaker 1: wood and let it tell you what it wanted to be.
Speaker 1: Those were some of the few good memories I had
Speaker 1: of him, standing in his garage workshop, watching him turn
Speaker 1: rough lumber into something beautiful and useful. The idea of
Speaker 1: cutting my own timber and building my own place from
Speaker 1: scratch started eating at me in a good way. For
Speaker 1: the first time in years. I'd lie awake at night
Speaker 1: planning it out. Where I'd put the cabin, how big
Speaker 1: it would be, what kind of roof would shed snow best.
Speaker 1: I started buying carpentry magazines and reading books about off
Speaker 1: grid living, about people who'd walked away from civilization and
Speaker 1: built their own little piece of paradise. I found the
Speaker 1: property online in March of twenty twenty, right when everything
Speaker 1: was shutting down because of COVID. The listing was on
Speaker 1: some backwoods real estate site that specialized in raw land
Speaker 1: and hunting properties. Forty seven acres way up in the
Speaker 1: mountains near the Tennessee border. The pictures showed thick forest,
Speaker 1: a creek running through the middle, and terrain that rolled
Speaker 1: from gentle slopes to steep ridges. The listing said it
Speaker 1: was remote and secluded, which was exactly what I wanted.
Speaker 1: No neighbors for miles, no cell service, no internet, no
Speaker 1: power lines, just me in the woods and the silence
Speaker 1: I'd been craving for so long I'd forgotten what it
Speaker 1: sounded like. The land was cheap because nobody else wanted it.
Speaker 1: Too far from civilization for most people's taste, twelve miles
Speaker 1: from the nearest paved road, accessible only by a logging
Speaker 1: road that turned into barely more than a deer path
Speaker 1: for the last few miles, too steepened places for conventional building,
Speaker 1: too wild, the realtor admitted when I called him, perfect
Speaker 1: for what I had in mind. I drove up to
Speaker 1: see it on a Saturday in late March. Took me
Speaker 1: four hours from Atlanta the last hour on increasingly rough
Speaker 1: roads that made my truck groan and complain. When I
Speaker 1: finally reached the property, I sat in the cab for
Speaker 1: a long time, just listening to the silence. Real silence,
Speaker 1: not the kind you get in the suburbs, where there's
Speaker 1: always some background hum of traffic or air conditioners or lawnmowers.
Speaker 1: This was the kind of quiet that makes your ears
Speaker 1: ring at first, until you adjust to it. I hiked
Speaker 1: the property for three hours that day, following the creek
Speaker 1: up through stands of oak and pine and rhododendron. There
Speaker 1: were deer trails everywhere, and I saw fresh bear scat
Speaker 1: near the water. The creek was clear and cold, running
Speaker 1: fast with snow melt. From higher up the mountain. I
Speaker 1: found a natural clearing about two acres in size, perfect
Speaker 1: for a cabin site, with good drainage and southern exposure
Speaker 1: for solar panels. Standing in that clearing, I felt something
Speaker 1: I hadn't felt in years. Peace, Real peace, not the
Speaker 1: exhausted numbness i'd been calling peace. For the first time
Speaker 1: since the divorce started, I could breathe all the way
Speaker 1: down to the bottom of my lungs. The stress that
Speaker 1: had been living in my shoulders for months just melted away.
Speaker 1: I used what was left of my savings for the
Speaker 1: down payment and signed the papers the following week. Forty
Speaker 1: seven acres of Georgia Mountain forest for less than what
Speaker 1: most people spend on a car. The loan payments were
Speaker 1: manageable even on my reduced income. I'd taken a pay
Speaker 1: cut when the plant downsized, but up there it wouldn't matter.
Speaker 1: I'd be living on almost nothing. I gave my two
Speaker 1: weeks notice at Caterpillar on April first. My supervisor acted
Speaker 1: like I was having a nervous breakdown, kept asking if
Speaker 1: I'd thought this through, if I understood what I was
Speaker 1: giving up, pension, health, insurance, steady income, the respective working
Speaker 1: for a major corporation. I told him I understood perfectly,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly why I was leaving. My coworkers threw
Speaker 1: me a going away party at a sports bar near
Speaker 1: the plant. Everyone got drunk and told me how much
Speaker 1: they envied me, how they wished they had the guts
Speaker 1: to do what I was doing. But I could see
Speaker 1: in their eyes that they thought I was crazy, walking
Speaker 1: away from a secure job in uncertain times, going off
Speaker 1: to live in the woods like some kind of hermit.
Speaker 1: Maybe they were right, maybe I was crazy, but I
Speaker 1: was also done pretending that the life I'd been living
Speaker 1: was worth living. I sold everything I couldn't fit in
Speaker 1: my truck, an tools I wouldn't need, books i'd never
Speaker 1: read again, kept the essentials, and donated the rest to goodwill.
Speaker 1: Sarah got mad when she found out. Said I was
Speaker 1: having a midlife crisis and abandoning my responsibilities. But my
Speaker 1: child's support was automatically deducted from my bank account, and
Speaker 1: I'd be making enough from some freelance carpentry work to
Speaker 1: cover my few expenses. The kids could visit during school
Speaker 1: breaks if they wanted, though I suspected Sarah would find
Speaker 1: reasons why that wasn't practical. By the middle of April,
Speaker 1: I was living in a tent on my own land.
Speaker 1: I'd never been so happy to wake up in my life.
Speaker 1: Those first few months were like being reborn. I'd wake
Speaker 1: up with the sun, no alarm clock, just natural light
Speaker 1: filtering through the tent fabric. The air was clean and
Speaker 1: cold and tasted like pine needles and running water. I'd
Speaker 1: make coffee on a camp stove and sit by the creek,
Speaker 1: listening to the water flow over the rocks, watching mist
Speaker 1: rise from the surface as the sun warmed it. I
Speaker 1: spent the first month just learning the land. I walked
Speaker 1: every acre, following deer trails and old logging roads, mapping
Speaker 1: it all in my head. I found the best spots
Speaker 1: for a garden, identified which trees i'd harvest for lumber,
Speaker 1: located natural springs that bubbled up from underground and flowed
Speaker 1: into the creek. There were wild BlackBerry patches and stands
Speaker 1: of young chestnut trees, apple trees gone wild from some
Speaker 1: long abandoned homestead, still bearing fruit. The work was hard,
Speaker 1: but satisfying in a way i'd forgotten work could be.
Speaker 1: I cleared the cabin site by hand, cutting and removing
Speaker 1: trees with a chainsaw, pulling stumps with a come.
Speaker 4: Along and a lot of sweat.
Speaker 1: I leveled the ground with a mattock and shovel, building
Speaker 1: up the low spots with rocks from the creek. Every
Speaker 1: muscle in my body ached at the end of each day,
Speaker 1: but it was good pain, honest pain from honest work.
Speaker 1: I lost thirty pounds that first summer without even trying.
Speaker 1: The combination of physical labor and simple food, mostly canned goods,
Speaker 1: and what I could catch or forage, stripped away the
Speaker 1: soft layer of middle aged fat i'd been carrying. My
Speaker 1: hands got calloused again, the way they'd been when I
Speaker 1: was young and still believed that working with your hands
Speaker 1: was something to be proud of. Stay tuned for more
Speaker 1: sasquatch ot to see.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: After these messages, I built the cabin slow and careful,
Speaker 1: the way my dad had taught me. Started with the
Speaker 1: foundation concrete piers set deep enough to get below the
Speaker 1: frost line, level and square and built to last. Then
Speaker 1: the floor joists and subflooring, checking and rechecking every measurement.
Speaker 1: I was in no hurry. This wasn't a weekend project
Speaker 1: or something I was doing to save money. This was
Speaker 1: my life. I was building board by board. The lumber
Speaker 1: came from my own land. I hired a guy with
Speaker 1: a portable sawmill to come up and cut the trees
Speaker 1: i'd marked, mostly oak and pine, with some poplar for
Speaker 1: interior work.
Speaker 4: The mill operator was.
Speaker 1: A mountain guy named Earl who'd been doing this for
Speaker 1: thirty years. He looked at my plans and nodded approvingly,
Speaker 1: said it looked like a house that would stand long
Speaker 1: after we were both dead. Eighteen by twenty four feet
Speaker 1: with a steep metal roof and a stone chimney, I
Speaker 1: planned to lay myself big enough for one person to
Speaker 1: live comfortably, small enough to heat with a single wood stove.
Speaker 1: The design was simple and functional, no wasted space, no
Speaker 1: unnecessary decoration, just a solid, well built cabin that would
Speaker 1: shelter me from whatever the mountains could throw at it.
Speaker 1: I framed the walls with two by eights on sixteen
Speaker 1: inch centers, using traditional joinery where I could mortise, and
Speaker 1: tenin joints for the major connections. Everything fitted together like
Speaker 1: a puzzle. I'd work from first light until my hands
Speaker 1: were too tired to hold a hammer safely, then sit
Speaker 1: by the campfire, eating beans from a can and planning
Speaker 1: the next day's work. The chimney was the hardest part.
Speaker 1: I'd never laid stone before, but I found an old
Speaker 1: timer named claud who lived about ten miles down the mountain.
Speaker 1: He came up on weekends and taught me how to
Speaker 1: read the stone, how to find the face that wanted
Speaker 1: to show and the side that wanted to carry weight.
Speaker 1: We built that chimney one rock at a time, mixing
Speaker 1: mortar by hand and checking every course with a level.
Speaker 1: Claud was probably seventy years old, but he could work
Speaker 1: circles around me. He'd grown up in these mountains when
Speaker 1: people still built their own houses and grew their own
Speaker 1: food and fixed their own trucks. He told me stories
Speaker 1: while we worked, about the old days, when every hollow
Speaker 1: had a family in it, when people knew how to
Speaker 1: live off the land and take care of themselves. He
Speaker 1: also told me other stories about things he'd seen in
Speaker 1: the deep woods when he was hunting or cutting timber.
Speaker 1: Tracks that didn't match any animal. He knew, sounds that
Speaker 1: came from no creature in any book. Trees broken off
Speaker 1: eight feet above the ground, snapped clean like toothpicks. He'd
Speaker 1: tell these stories in a matter of fact way, like
Speaker 1: he was talking about the weather, but something in his
Speaker 1: eyes suggested he wasn't joking. I didn't pay much attention
Speaker 1: to those stories at the time. Claude was old, and
Speaker 1: old mountain people were known for their tall tails. Besides,
Speaker 1: I was too busy and too happy to worry about
Speaker 1: whatever might be lurking in the forest. I was building
Speaker 1: my dream, and nothing was going to interfere with that.
Speaker 1: By October I had the walls up and the roof on,
Speaker 1: the chimney was drawing clean, and the wood stove was
Speaker 1: keeping the place warm. I'd put in a hand pumped
Speaker 1: well using a kit i'd ordered online, and after three
Speaker 1: days of hard digging, I hit water at thirty five feet,
Speaker 1: sweet cold water that tasted better than anything I'd ever
Speaker 1: gotten from a tap. I built an outhouse using plans
Speaker 1: from a nineteen forties homesteading guide, positioning it downhill from
Speaker 1: the well in the cabin. It wasn't glamorous, but with
Speaker 1: lime and proper ventilation, it didn't smell too bad. I
Speaker 1: was prouder of that simple toilet than i'd ever been
Speaker 1: of the marble bathroom and the house Sarah got in
Speaker 1: the divorce. The solar system was more complicated than I'd expected,
Speaker 1: but I figured it out through trial and error. Four
Speaker 1: panels on the south facing roof connected to a charge
Speaker 1: controller and a bank of deep cycle batteries, enough power
Speaker 1: for LED lights and a radio, maybe a laptop computer
Speaker 1: if I ever decided I needed one.
Speaker 4: I didn't.
Speaker 1: The whole point was to get away from screens and
Speaker 1: constant connectivity. I had running water gravity fed from a
Speaker 1: tank I'd installed in the loft, filled by the hand pump,
Speaker 1: a propane refrigerator in stove i'd bought used from a
Speaker 1: dealer who specialized in off grid appliances, enough firewood stacked
Speaker 1: under a lean to to last through the winter, everything
Speaker 1: I needed and nothing I didn't. Winter was hard but good.
Speaker 1: I'd stockpiled food and supplies, but i still had to
Speaker 1: work for everything. Water froze in the line sometimes, and
Speaker 1: I'd have to thaw them out with a hair dryer powered.
Speaker 4: By the solar batteries.
Speaker 1: The woodstove needed feeding every few hours day and night
Speaker 1: to keep the cabin warm. Snow made the access road
Speaker 1: impassable for weeks at a time, which meant hiking out
Speaker 1: to my truck when I needed supplies.
Speaker 4: But I loved it.
Speaker 1: Loved the simplicity of it, the way every task had
Speaker 1: a clear purpose. Loved the silence of snow falling in
Speaker 1: the forest, the way it muffled every sound until the
Speaker 1: whole world seemed wrapped in cotton. I read books I'd
Speaker 1: been meaning to get to for years, The Row and
Speaker 1: Abby and Annie Dillard, writers who understood what I was
Speaker 1: trying to do. I wrote in a journal, recording the
Speaker 1: small details of each day, what I saw, what I built,
Speaker 1: how I felt. I was sleeping eight hours a night
Speaker 1: for the first time since college, waking up refreshed instead
Speaker 1: of groggy. My blood pressure dropped to normal levels. The
Speaker 1: constant anxiety that had been my companion for so many.
Speaker 4: Years just evaporated.
Speaker 1: Felt like I'd found myself again, like I'd remembered who
Speaker 1: I was before life ground me down into something I
Speaker 1: didn't recognize. The kids came to visit over Christmas break.
Speaker 1: It was awkward at first. They were used to central
Speaker 1: heating and flush toilets and high speed internet, but after
Speaker 1: a day or two they started to get it. We
Speaker 1: hiked the property and I showed them how to split
Speaker 1: wood and tend the fire. Emma, who was fourteen, said
Speaker 1: it was like living in a story book. Jake, who
Speaker 1: was twelve, wanted to know if he could come live
Speaker 1: with me permanently. I had to explain that it wasn't
Speaker 1: that simple, that their mother would never agree to it,
Speaker 1: that they needed to finish school and think about college.
Speaker 1: But part of me wondered what it would be like
Speaker 1: to raise them here, away from the constant pressure and
Speaker 1: competition and digital noise, to teach them how to work
Speaker 1: with their hands and think for themselves and find peace
Speaker 1: in simple things. Sarah came to pick them up after
Speaker 1: a week, driving as far as the main road and
Speaker 1: making me hike out to meet her.
Speaker 4: She took one look at.
Speaker 1: Me, tanned and lean and healthier than I'd been in years,
Speaker 1: and I could see something like regret in her eyes,
Speaker 1: but she covered it with irritation, complained about the inconvenience
Speaker 1: of the drive and how the kids were behind on
Speaker 1: their homework. The kids hugged me goodbye and promised to
Speaker 1: come back for spring break. I watched their headlights disappear
Speaker 1: down the mountain and felt a loneliness I hadn't experienced
Speaker 1: since moving up here.
Speaker 4: But it passed quickly.
Speaker 1: The silence and the stars and the knowledge that I
Speaker 1: was exactly where I belonged filled the empty spaces. Spring
Speaker 1: came early that year, and with it a sense that
Speaker 1: something was changing, not just the season, something deeper. I
Speaker 1: noticed it first in the behavior of the wildlife. The
Speaker 1: deer that had been coming to drink from the creek
Speaker 1: every morning stopped showing up. The birds that had been
Speaker 1: regular visitors to the clearing. Cardinals and blue jays and
Speaker 1: woodpeckers seemed to have moved on to other territories. I
Speaker 1: told myself it was just the natural cycle of things.
Speaker 1: Animals move around following food sources and seasonal patterns. But
Speaker 1: the absence felt different, deliberate, like something had worn them away.
Speaker 1: The first sign that something was actively wrong came in
Speaker 1: late February. I was splitting wood behind the cabin, working
Speaker 1: through a pile of oak rounds I'd cut the previous fall.
Speaker 1: The wood was well seasoned and splitting clean, the satisfying
Speaker 1: thunk of the mall, connecting just right to open each
Speaker 1: piece along its grain. That's when I heard the sound,
Speaker 1: not quite a scream, not quite a roar. It was
Speaker 1: deep and loud and seemed to come from everywhere at once,
Speaker 1: echoing off the ridges and rolling through the valley like thunder,
Speaker 1: But there were no clouds in the sky, and thunder
Speaker 1: doesn't have that quality of voice behind it. This was
Speaker 1: something alive making that sound, something with lungs and vocal
Speaker 1: cords and intention. It made the hair on my arms
Speaker 1: stand up and sent a chill down my spine that
Speaker 1: had nothing.
Speaker 4: To do with the February cold.
Speaker 1: Every instinct I had screamed that this was a sound
Speaker 1: no human should ever have to hear a sound from
Speaker 1: some primal nightmare our ancestors had learned to fear. I
Speaker 1: stopped splitting and listened, gripping the mall handle so tight
Speaker 1: my knuckles went white. The sound came again, closer this time,
Speaker 1: and I realized it was moving. Whatever was making it
Speaker 1: was traveling through the forest, calling as it went. Then
Speaker 1: everything went quiet, not just quiet, dead silent, the kind
Speaker 1: of silence that presses against your ear drums and makes
Speaker 1: you question whether you've gone death. No birds, no squirrels
Speaker 1: chattering in the trees, no wind rustling the leaves. Even
Speaker 1: the creek seemed to be flowing more quietly, like the
Speaker 1: water itself was afraid to make noise. I'd been in
Speaker 1: the woods long enough to know that kind of silence
Speaker 1: meant predator. When every small creature in the forest suddenly
Speaker 1: stops making noise, it's because something dangerous is nearby, something
Speaker 1: they do I don't want to attract the attention of
Speaker 1: I grabbed the split wood i'd already stacked, and carried
Speaker 1: it inside, making three trips and trying to look casual
Speaker 1: about it. But my eyes were constantly scanning the tree line,
Speaker 1: looking for movement, for any sign of what had made
Speaker 1: that sound.
Speaker 4: I saw nothing, but the.
Speaker 1: Feeling of being watched was so strong I could almost
Speaker 1: feel eyes on me. I went inside and locked the
Speaker 1: door behind me, which I'd never done during the day.
Speaker 1: I told myself I was being paranoid, that it was
Speaker 1: probably just a bear waking up early from hibernation. Bears
Speaker 1: can make loud noises when they're agitated or marking territory,
Speaker 1: but I'd heard bears before and this wasn't that. I
Speaker 1: spent the rest of the day inside, jumping at every
Speaker 1: small sound. When evening came, I didn't go out to
Speaker 1: get more firewood like I usually did. I just fed
Speaker 1: the stove with what I had inside and went to
Speaker 1: bed early, though sleep was a long time coming. That night,
Speaker 1: I heard it again around two in the morning. It
Speaker 1: woke me from restless dreams I couldn't quite remember. This time,
Speaker 1: the sound was much closer, maybe fifty yards from the cabin,
Speaker 1: close enough that I could hear the depth and power
Speaker 1: behind it, the way it seemed to vibrate through the
Speaker 1: ground and into the cabin walls. I got up and
Speaker 1: looked out the window, but the moon was dark and
Speaker 1: I couldn't see anything beyond the immediate clearing, just black
Speaker 1: trees against a black sky, shadows that could hide anything.
Speaker 1: But I knew something was out there. I could feel
Speaker 1: it the way you feel a storm coming, some primitive
Speaker 1: part of my brain that evolution had programmed to recognize danger.
Speaker 1: I had a thirty out six rifle that I'd brought
Speaker 1: for deer hunting, though I hadn't had much luck with it.
Speaker 1: Deer seemed to sense my presence long before I saw them,
Speaker 1: and by the time I got a shot lined up,
Speaker 1: they were already bounding away through the trees. I checked
Speaker 1: to make sure the rifle was loaded and kept it
Speaker 1: within reach. I sat in a chair by the window
Speaker 1: for the rest of the night, watching and listening. The
Speaker 1: sounds didn't come again, but I could feel something moving
Speaker 1: out there in the darkness. Not see it, not hear it,
Speaker 1: just feel it, like a pressure in the air, a
Speaker 1: disturbance in the natural rhythm of the forest. Around dawn,
Speaker 1: I heard something moving through the brush behind the cabin.
Speaker 1: Footsteps but not quite right, too slow and deliberate to
Speaker 1: be a bear, too heavy to be a deer, something
Speaker 1: walking on two legs, but with a gait that wasn't
Speaker 1: quite human. The steps were spaced too far apart, like
Speaker 1: whatever was making them had longer legs than any person.
Speaker 1: I waited until there was enough light to see clearly
Speaker 1: before going outside. I wanted to find tracks, some kind
Speaker 1: of evidence of what had been prowling around my home.
Speaker 1: There were footprints by the creek, about thirty yards from
Speaker 1: my cabin. But these weren't bear tracks, or deer tracks,
Speaker 1: or anything else I'd ever seen in my forty six
Speaker 1: years of life. They were shaped like human feet, but enormous,
Speaker 1: at least eighteen to nineteen inches long and maybe seven
Speaker 1: inches wide at the ball of the foot. The toes
Speaker 1: were clearly defined, five of them, arranged like a human's,
Speaker 1: but thicker and longer. The heel had pressed deep into
Speaker 1: the mud, deeper than my own tracks, even when I
Speaker 1: was carrying a heavy load. Whatever had made these prints
Speaker 1: was massive, much heavier than any human, but the shape
Speaker 1: was unmistakably that of a foot, not a paw or
Speaker 1: hoof something that walked upright on two legs like a person.
Speaker 1: I knelt down beside the clearest print and tried to
Speaker 1: process what I was seeing. The track was so fresh
Speaker 1: that water was still seeping into the depression from the
Speaker 1: saturated ground. Whatever had made it had been here while
Speaker 1: I was sitting by the window, watching and listening. It
Speaker 1: had been close enough to throw a rock and hit me.
Speaker 1: I followed the tracks as far as I could, but
Speaker 1: they led up onto rocky ground, where the trail disappeared.
Speaker 1: There were maybe a dozen clear prints, all heading in
Speaker 1: the same direction, toward the densest part of the forest,
Speaker 1: where the trees grew so thick that daylight barely penetrated
Speaker 1: even at noon. I spent the rest of the morning
Speaker 1: trying to convince myself there was a logical explanation. Maybe
Speaker 1: it was a bear walking on its hind legs. I'd
Speaker 1: heard they could do that sometimes. Maybe it was someone
Speaker 1: playing an elaborate prank, though I couldn't imagine who would
Speaker 1: hike five miles through rough terrain just to mess with me.
Speaker 1: Maybe I was losing my mind from too much isolation,
Speaker 1: hallucinating things that weren't there. But deep down in the
Speaker 1: part of my brain that remembers when humans were prey
Speaker 1: animals hiding from things in the dark, I knew what
Speaker 1: I'd seen, and I knew it wasn't anything that should
Speaker 1: exist in the modern world. I took pictures of the
Speaker 1: tracks with a digital camera i'd brought but rarely used.
Speaker 1: The photos didn't do them justice. The scale was hard
Speaker 1: to judge without something for reference, and the subtle details
Speaker 1: that made them so unsettling didn't show up clearly. But
Speaker 1: I had them evidence that I wasn't completely losing my mind.
Speaker 1: The next few days were quiet, and I started to relax.
Speaker 1: I told myself i'd imagined the whole thing, that living
Speaker 1: alone in the woods was making me jumpy and paranoid.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned for more Sasquatch ott to see. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back after these messages. The human mind is capable
Speaker 1: of creating all kinds of illusions when it's under stress
Speaker 1: or isolation. Maybe I'd misidentified some perfectly normal animal tracks.
Speaker 1: Let my imagination run wild with stories Claude had told
Speaker 1: me about mysterious creatures in the forest. I went back
Speaker 1: to my routine, chopping wood, maintaining the cabin, reading by
Speaker 1: the fire in the evenings, but I kept the rifle
Speaker 1: closer than before, and I found myself checking the windows
Speaker 1: more often than I like to admit. Every sound from
Speaker 1: outside got my full attention. Every shadow seemed to move
Speaker 1: when I wasn't looking directly at it. Then Rex went missing.
Speaker 1: I'd gotten Rex from the animal shelter in Gainesville before
Speaker 1: I moved up to the mountains. He was a good dog,
Speaker 1: part German shepherd and part something else, maybe Rottweiler or lab.
Speaker 1: It was hard to tell. Big and solid about eighty pounds,
Speaker 1: with intelligent brown eyes and a protective instinct that made
Speaker 1: him perfect for life in the wilderness. He'd been with
Speaker 1: me through the whole build, always staying close, always alert
Speaker 1: to sounds and movements in the forest. He wasn't the
Speaker 1: kind of dog that would chase after every squirrel or rabbit.
Speaker 1: He was too well trained for that, too focused on
Speaker 1: his job of watching over me in the cabin, and
Speaker 1: he never ever wandered off at night. Rex slept by
Speaker 1: the wood stove every night, positioned where he could see
Speaker 1: both the door and the windows. If anything approached the
Speaker 1: cabin after dark, he'd know about it long before I would.
Speaker 1: His hearing was sharp enough to pick up sounds I
Speaker 1: couldn't detect, and his nose could identify sins from hundreds
Speaker 1: of yards away. That's why I knew something was wrong
Speaker 1: when I woke up one morning and he wasn't there.
Speaker 1: I called for him as soon as I realized he
Speaker 1: was gone, stepping outside into the gray pre dawn light
Speaker 1: and whistling the way I always did when I wanted
Speaker 1: him to come. Rex always responded to that whistle, even
Speaker 1: if he was investigating something interesting in the woods. But
Speaker 1: this time there was nothing. No bark, no sound of
Speaker 1: paws running through the underbrush, no sign that he'd heard
Speaker 1: me at all. I spent the whole day looking for him,
Speaker 1: following every trail and checking every hollow within a mile
Speaker 1: of the cabin. I called his name until my voice
Speaker 1: was hoarse, listening for any response, any sign that he
Speaker 1: was hurt or trapped somewhere. I found old deer tracks
Speaker 1: and rabbit droppings, and the scattered feathers where a hawk
Speaker 1: had killed something, but no trace of Rex. The thing
Speaker 1: that really worried me was the lack of tracks. Rex
Speaker 1: was a big dog with big paws, and he usually
Speaker 1: left clear prints in the soft earth around the cabin,
Speaker 1: But I couldn't find a single track leading away from
Speaker 1: the clearing, as if he'd simply vanished into thin air.
Speaker 1: I told myself he'd probably picked up the scent of
Speaker 1: a female dog in heat somewhere and would come back
Speaker 1: when he got hungry. Dogs do that sometimes, even well
Speaker 1: trained ones. Their instincts override their training and they followed
Speaker 1: their nose wherever it leads them. But Rex had been neutered,
Speaker 1: and besides, there weren't any other dogs for miles around.
Speaker 1: As the sun started to set and Rex still hadn't returned,
Speaker 1: I had to accept that something had happened to him,
Speaker 1: something bad. Dogs don't just disappear without a trace, especially
Speaker 1: not dogs like Rex, who were bonded to their owners.
Speaker 4: And knew their territory.
Speaker 1: That night, I heard the sound again, the same deep,
Speaker 1: echoing call that had first alerted me that something was
Speaker 1: wrong in my peaceful mountain world, But this time it
Speaker 1: was answered from the other side of the valley. Another
Speaker 1: voice called back, similar but not identical, like a conversation
Speaker 1: in a language I couldn't understand. Then another voice joined
Speaker 1: and in from a different direction entirely, and another. They
Speaker 1: were communicating, these things, calling to each other across the darkness,
Speaker 1: coordinating something. The calls went on for maybe an hour,
Speaker 1: sometimes close, sometimes far away. It sounded like they were moving,
Speaker 1: circling the valley, taking positions around my cabin. I sat
Speaker 1: by the window with my rifle, watching and listening and
Speaker 1: trying not to panic. The logical part of my mind
Speaker 1: was still trying to find rational explanations. Wolves maybe, though
Speaker 1: there weren't supposed to be wolves in Georgia. Coyotes though
Speaker 1: they didn't usually make sounds like that. Bears though bears
Speaker 1: don't coordinate their activities like pack animals. But the primitive
Speaker 1: part of my brain, the part that remembered when humans
Speaker 1: lived in caves and feared the things that hunted in
Speaker 1: the dark, knew exactly what I was hearing. Predators, intelligent predators,
Speaker 1: and they were planning something. The last call came from
Speaker 1: directly behind the cabin, so close it seemed to shake
Speaker 1: the walls, so close that whatever made it had to
Speaker 1: be standing just yards from where I sat. The sound
Speaker 1: was deeper than the others, more authoritative, like the leader
Speaker 1: of the pack giving orders to his subordinates, than silence,
Speaker 1: complete absolute silence that pressed against my ear drums and
Speaker 1: made me strain to hear anything at all. I didn't
Speaker 1: sleep that night, couldn't sleep. Every shadow looked like movement.
Speaker 1: Every sound made my heart race. I kept thinking about Rex,
Speaker 1: wondering what had happened to him, wondering if the same
Speaker 1: thing was going to happen to me. The harassment started
Speaker 1: the next week, and it was clear from the beginning
Speaker 1: that it was deliberate. These things, whatever they were, wanted
Speaker 1: me gone, and they were smart enough to understand that
Speaker 1: psychological pressure might be more effective than direct confrontation.
Speaker 4: At first, it was subtle.
Speaker 1: I'd hear something walking around the cabin at night, but
Speaker 1: when I looked out the windows, I never saw anything.
Speaker 1: The footsteps were heavy and deliberate, circling the building, like
Speaker 1: someone conducting an inspection. They'd stop directly outside whatever window
Speaker 1: I was looking through, as if they knew I was watching.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'd find my firewood scattered in the morning, like
Speaker 1: something had been digging through the pile. My trash can
Speaker 1: was knocked over more than once, the contents strewn across
Speaker 1: the clearing and patterns that looked almost intentional. Tools I'd
Speaker 1: left outside would be moved, not stolen, just relocated to
Speaker 1: places where I'd be sure to notice they weren't where
Speaker 1: I'd left them. I tried to tell myself.
Speaker 4: It was bears.
Speaker 1: Black bears are common in North Georgia, and they're notorious
Speaker 1: for getting into garbage and making messes. They're also smart
Speaker 1: enough to learn patterns and return to places where they
Speaker 1: found food before. But bears don't stack firewood into neat
Speaker 1: piles twenty feet from where they found it. Bears don't
Speaker 1: move tools. Bears don't move things around just to prove
Speaker 1: they can. What I was finding every morning were signs
Speaker 1: that something with intelligence and purpose had been there, something
Speaker 1: that understood cause and effect, that knew its actions would
Speaker 1: be noticed and interpreted. It wasn't just scavenging or exploring.
Speaker 1: It was sending a message. The message was clear, you
Speaker 1: don't belong here. I started keeping a journal of the incidents,
Speaker 1: thinking maybe I could find a pattern or figure out
Speaker 1: what was triggering them. But the more I wrote down,
Speaker 1: the more disturbed I became. The activities were escalating, becoming
Speaker 1: bolder and more frequent. Whatever was out there was getting
Speaker 1: comfortable being close to my home. One morning I found
Speaker 1: handprints on the outside of my cabin windows. Not human handprints.
Speaker 1: These were huge, with fingers that seemed too long and
Speaker 1: too thick. The palms were at least twice the size
Speaker 1: of mine, and the fingerspan was wider than I could
Speaker 1: stretch my own hand. They were pressed into the glass,
Speaker 1: like something had been peering inside, watching me while I slept.
Speaker 1: There was a strain, sticky white substance on the prints.
Speaker 1: I think it's the sebum stuff I've heard you talk
Speaker 1: to people about on your show. The thought of those
Speaker 1: eyes studying me in the darkness made my skin crawl.
Speaker 1: I tried to imagine what kind of creature could leave
Speaker 1: prints that size, but my mind shied away from the possibilities.
Speaker 1: I cleaned the windows with glass cleaner and paper towels,
Speaker 1: trying to remove the evidence of the intrusion. But the
Speaker 1: next morning there were more prints, this time on the door.
Speaker 1: Something had been standing right outside, maybe just inches from
Speaker 1: where I slept, close enough to hear me breathing. I
Speaker 1: could see the perfect impression of a palm and five fingers,
Speaker 1: each one bigger than my whole hand. The thumb print
Speaker 1: was positioned where a human thumb would be, but it
Speaker 1: was massive, nearly four inches long and two inches wide.
Speaker 1: I cleaned those prints, too, but they kept appearing on
Speaker 1: the windows, on the door, even on the walls.
Speaker 4: Of the cabin.
Speaker 1: Something was touching my home, investigating it, learning about it,
Speaker 1: and it was doing so while I was inside, unaware
Speaker 1: and vulnerable. I started sleeping with the rifle across my
Speaker 1: chest and a flashlight within easy reach, but sleep was
Speaker 1: becoming impossible anyway. Every sound from outside got my full attention.
Speaker 1: Every shadow seemed to move when I wasn't looking directly
Speaker 1: at it. I'd lie awake listening to the silence, knowing
Speaker 1: that the absence of normal forest sounds meant something was wrong.
Speaker 1: The worst part was the feeling of being hunted. I
Speaker 1: couldn't shake the sense that I was being studied, evaluated,
Speaker 1: stalked like prey. When I went outside to chop wood
Speaker 1: or tend to the solar panels, I felt exposed and vulnerable.
Speaker 1: I was certain that eyes were watching me from the forest,
Speaker 1: calculating my movements, learning my routines. I'd catch myself constantly
Speaker 1: looking over my shoulder, scanning the tree line for movement.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I thought I saw shapes between the trees, dark
Speaker 1: forms that were too tall and too broad to be
Speaker 1: anything I could identify. But when I looked directly at them,
Speaker 1: they'd be gone, leaving me to wonder if I'd imagine them.
Speaker 1: I found more tracks, always in different places near the
Speaker 1: well where I pumped water, around the outhouse, where I
Speaker 1: was most vulnerable, leading right up to the cabin walls,
Speaker 1: and then back into the forest. Whatever was making them
Speaker 1: was getting comfortable being close to my home, maybe even
Speaker 1: comfortable enough to approach while I was inside. The tracks
Speaker 1: showed variations in size and depth, suggesting more than one individual.
Speaker 1: Some were smaller, maybe sixteen inches long, others were massive
Speaker 1: twenty inches or more. I was dealing with a group
Speaker 1: of something that lived in the deep woods and had
Speaker 1: decided I was a problem that needed to be solved.
Speaker 1: I measured the tracks carefully and tried to estimate the
Speaker 1: weight of whatever was making them based on how deeply
Speaker 1: they pressed into the soil. My best guess was somewhere
Speaker 1: between four and six hundred pounds for the largest ones.
Speaker 1: For compare Garrison, a large black bear might weigh three
Speaker 1: hundred pounds. These things were substantially bigger than any bear
Speaker 1: I'd ever heard of. The smell started around the third
Speaker 1: week of March. It was unlike anything I'd ever encountered
Speaker 1: in my life. A mix of wet animal fur, rotting meat,
Speaker 1: and something else I couldn't identify, something wild and alien
Speaker 1: and wrong on a level that made my stomach turn.
Speaker 1: It would drift through the clearing on still nights, so
Speaker 1: strong it made my eyes water and my throat close up.
Speaker 1: The smell was worse on humid nights, when the air
Speaker 1: was heavy and still. It would seep through every crack
Speaker 1: and gap in the cabin walls. No matter how well
Speaker 1: I tried to seal them. I'd wake up gagging, rushing
Speaker 1: outside to breathe clean air, only to find that the
Speaker 1: source of the stench was somewhere nearby in the darkness.
Speaker 1: I tried to identify what could produce such an odor.
Speaker 1: Dead animals smell bad, but this was different, more complex,
Speaker 1: like the scent of something that was alive but wrong,
Speaker 1: something that didn't fit into the natural order of things.
Speaker 1: It reminded me of the zoo, but worse, like the
Speaker 1: smell of the big cat house, mixed with a morgue
Speaker 1: and something else that made my primitive brain scream warnings.
Speaker 1: I'd smell it and know they were close. The odor
Speaker 1: was a warning, a sign that something was watching me
Speaker 1: from just beyond the circle of light cast by my windows.
Speaker 1: On nights when the smell was strongest, I'd see shapes
Speaker 1: moving at the edge of the clearing dark forms that
Speaker 1: were too tall to be bears, too broad to be deer,
Speaker 1: too purposeful in their movements to be anything I wanted
Speaker 1: to identify. One night in late March, I woke up
Speaker 1: to the sound of my metal roof being pounded from above.
Speaker 1: Something heavy was walking on the roof, and I could
Speaker 1: hear its footsteps moving from one end of the cabin
Speaker 1: to the other. The sound was rhythmic and deliberate, like
Speaker 1: it was testing the structure, looking for weak points. The
Speaker 1: metal roofing amplified every footstep, turning my cabin into a
Speaker 1: drum that whatever was up there was beating with its feet.
Speaker 1: The sound was deafening inside the small space, and it
Speaker 1: went on for what felt like hours, step by step,
Speaker 1: methodically covering every square foot of the roof surface. I
Speaker 1: grabbed my rifle and went outside, but as soon as
Speaker 1: I opened the door, the pounding stopped. I shined my
Speaker 1: flashlight up at the roof, scanning the entire surface, but
Speaker 1: there was nothing there, no sign that anything had been
Speaker 1: walking on it, no indication that I hadn't imagined the
Speaker 1: whole thing, but I knew what I'd heard. The sound
Speaker 1: had been too real, too immediate, to be a hallucination.
Speaker 1: Something had been up there, something heavy enough to make
Speaker 1: the metal ring with each step, Something that had disappeared
Speaker 1: the instant I came outside to investigate. I went back
Speaker 1: inside and sat by the window, watching the roofline and
Speaker 1: waiting for it to start again. After about an hour,
Speaker 1: I saw something moving along the edge of the roof,
Speaker 1: a shadow darker than the night sky, too big to
Speaker 1: be a rack, coon or possum. It moved with purpose,
Speaker 1: like it was examining the construction, checking the attachment points
Speaker 1: where the metal sheets were screwed to the roof decking.
Speaker 1: I raised the rifle and aimed at the shadow, but
Speaker 1: before I could fire, it was gone, just melted back
Speaker 1: into the darkness like it had never been there. I
Speaker 1: sat there for the rest of the night, rifle ready,
Speaker 1: but nothing else happened. Whatever had been on my roof
Speaker 1: had learned what it wanted to know. The next morning
Speaker 1: I found deep gouges in the metal roofing. Four parallel scratches,
Speaker 1: each about three inches long, cut right through the metal
Speaker 1: like it was aluminum foil. Something with claws had been
Speaker 1: up there, and it had left its mark to make
Speaker 1: sure I knew it. The gouges were positioned over my bedroom,
Speaker 1: directly above where I slept. Whatever had made them could
Speaker 1: have easily torn through the roof and gotten to me
Speaker 1: if it had wanted to. The scratches were a message,
Speaker 1: a demonstration of power, a reminder of how vulnerable I was.
Speaker 1: That's when I knew I was in real trouble. This
Speaker 1: wasn't random animal behavior or a series of unfortunate coincidences.
Speaker 1: I was being systematically intimidated by something that understood psychology,
Speaker 1: something that knew exactly how to apply pressure to break
Speaker 1: down my defenses. Stay tuned for more sasquatch oat to see.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: After these messages, I started thinking seriously about leaving. The
Speaker 1: rationale part of my mind was screaming that I should
Speaker 1: pack up and get out while I still could. I'd
Speaker 1: built something beautiful here, created the life I'd always dreamed of.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't worth dying for. No piece of land
Speaker 1: was worth that. But the stubborn part of me, the
Speaker 1: part that had walked away from everything I'd known to
Speaker 1: build this place with my own hands.
Speaker 4: Refused to be driven away.
Speaker 1: I'd put two years of my life into this cabin
Speaker 1: and this land. I'd invested everything I had financially, emotionally, spiritually.
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to let some unknown creature scare me
Speaker 1: off my own property. I decided to fight back, to
Speaker 1: take some kind of action instead of just hiding in
Speaker 1: my cabin and waiting for whatever was going to happen. Next,
Speaker 1: I drove to town and bought motion activated trail cameras,
Speaker 1: the kind hunters used to monitor game trails. I also
Speaker 1: picked up some early warning systems, basically tin cans filled
Speaker 1: with rocks, hung from fishing line and positioned around the clearing.
Speaker 1: If something big moved through the area, the cans would
Speaker 1: rattle and wake me up. The cameras were a waste
Speaker 1: of money. I set them up in strategic locations around
Speaker 1: the cabin, positioning them to cover all the approaches and
Speaker 1: hoping to get photographic evidence of what was harassing me.
Speaker 1: But every morning I'd checked them and they'd either be
Speaker 1: missing or destroyed. The first camera I found torn from
Speaker 1: its tree and smashed against a rock about fifty yards away.
Speaker 1: The case was cracked open and the internal electronics were
Speaker 1: scattered across the ground, like someone had taken it apart
Speaker 1: to see how it worked. The second camera simply disappeared,
Speaker 1: along with the steel cable i'd.
Speaker 4: Use to secure it to the tree.
Speaker 1: The third camera I found the next morning, but it
Speaker 1: had been repositioned. Instead of pointing at the trail, it
Speaker 1: was aimed directly at my cabin, specifically at the window
Speaker 1: of my bedroom. Something had not only found the camera,
Speaker 1: but had turned it around to watch me instead of
Speaker 1: being watched by me. I checked the memory card, hoping
Speaker 1: maybe it had captured images of whatever had moved it,
Speaker 1: but the card had been removed taken. Whatever was out
Speaker 1: there understood technology well enough to know that the cameras
Speaker 1: were recording them, and they knew how to disable the
Speaker 1: devices or remove the evidence. The warning system worked better,
Speaker 1: but not in the way i'd hoped. Instead of alerting
Speaker 1: me to intruders, it told me just how often I
Speaker 1: was being watched. Those cans rattled constantly, not just at night,
Speaker 1: but during the day too, sometimes for hours at a time,
Speaker 1: like something was deliberately triggering them to keep me on edge.
Speaker 1: I'd hear the rattle and grab my rifle, but by
Speaker 1: the time I got outside to investigate. There would be
Speaker 1: nothing to see, just the cans swaying gently in the breeze,
Speaker 1: and that feeling of being watched from the safety of
Speaker 1: the forest shadows. The pattern was always the same. The
Speaker 1: cans would rattle, I'd go outside to check, and everything
Speaker 1: would be quiet, but I could feel eyes on me,
Speaker 1: studying my response, learning my behavior. It was like being
Speaker 1: a lab rat in an experiment with something intelligent monitoring
Speaker 1: my reactions to stimuli. I stopped going outside after dark
Speaker 1: unless absolutely necessary. I'd learned that was when they were
Speaker 1: most active, when they felt bold enough to come close
Speaker 1: to the cabin. During the day, I'd do my chores
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible, always staying alert, always ready to
Speaker 1: run back inside if something went wrong. But they were
Speaker 1: adapting to my habits, learning my routines, and adjusting the
Speaker 1: their own behavior Accordingly. They started showing up during daylight hours,
Speaker 1: becoming bolder and more aggressive in their harassment. I was
Speaker 1: splitting wood one afternoon in early April when I heard
Speaker 1: a branch break in the forest behind me. I turned
Speaker 1: around and saw something watching me from the tree line.
Speaker 1: It was standing between two large pines, maybe sixty yards away,
Speaker 1: but I could see it clearly enough to know that
Speaker 1: my worst fears were real. It was enormous, at least
Speaker 1: eight feet tall, maybe closer than nine. Its body was
Speaker 1: covered in dark hair that looked coarse and thick, like
Speaker 1: a bear's.
Speaker 4: But longer.
Speaker 1: The proportions were almost human, but wrong and subtle ways
Speaker 1: that made my brain refuse to process what I was seeing.
Speaker 1: The arms were too long, the shoulders were too broad,
Speaker 1: the chest too barrel shaped. But it was the face
Speaker 1: that really got to me. It was visible enough that
Speaker 1: I could make out the basic features, and it was
Speaker 1: like looking at humanity's worst nightmare, almost human, but twisted
Speaker 1: into something that belonged in the uncanny valley between human
Speaker 1: and animal. The huge eyes were deep set, reflecting the
Speaker 1: afternoon sunlight, like an animal's. The nose was flat and wide,
Speaker 1: like a gorilla's. The mouth was hidden behind hair, but
Speaker 1: I could see the outline of something too large for
Speaker 1: a human face. We stared at each other. I was
Speaker 1: too shocked to move, too scared to breathe. This was
Speaker 1: the first time I'd seen one of them clearly in
Speaker 1: full daylight, and it was worse than i'd imagined. Every
Speaker 1: detail confirmed that this wasn't some misidentified bear or elaborate hoax.
Speaker 1: This was something that shouldn't exist, something that violated every
Speaker 1: rule of biology and evolution I'd learned in school. The
Speaker 1: creature wasn't moving, just standing there, watching me work, studying me,
Speaker 1: learning about me. The intelligence I saw in those eyes
Speaker 1: was unmistakable. This wasn't some mindless beast acting on instinct.
Speaker 1: It was thinking, planning, evaluating. It looked at me like
Speaker 1: I was a problem to be solved, an obstacle to
Speaker 1: be removed. Then it stepped back into the trees and
Speaker 1: was gone, just melted into the forest like it had
Speaker 1: never been there. I stood there with the axe in
Speaker 1: my hands, trembling like a leaf, wondering if I'd really
Speaker 1: seen what I thought i'd seen. But the smell lingered
Speaker 1: in the air, that same foul stench that had been
Speaker 1: haunting my nights. I went inside and locked the door,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't stop shaking. The thing had been watching
Speaker 1: me work, studying my routines, learning my vulnerabilities. How long
Speaker 1: had it been there? How many times had they observed
Speaker 1: me without my knowledge?
Speaker 4: The thought of those.
Speaker 1: Intelligent eyes cataloging my every move made me sick with fear.
Speaker 1: I tried calling my brother in Atlanta, thinking maybe I
Speaker 1: needed to talk to someone about what was happening, but
Speaker 1: my cell phone had no signal. It never did up here,
Speaker 1: which had been one of the attractions of the place.
Speaker 1: The isolation that had once felt like freedom now felt
Speaker 1: like a trap. That night, they came closer than ever before.
Speaker 1: I could hear them moving around the cabin, sometimes brushing
Speaker 1: against the walls. The sound of their breathing was audible
Speaker 1: through the thin cabin walls, deep rhythmic, controlled. They were
Speaker 1: taking their time, investigating every inch of my home, looking
Speaker 1: for weaknesses. I heard scratching at the door, like something
Speaker 1: was testing the wood, seeing how strong it was, then
Speaker 1: the same sound at the windows. They were probing my defenses,
Speaker 1: figuring out how to get inside if they decided that's
Speaker 1: what they wanted to do. I sat in the corner
Speaker 1: with my rifle, watching the door and windows, waiting for
Speaker 1: something to break through. But they didn't try to force.
Speaker 4: Their way in.
Speaker 1: They just wanted me to know they could if they
Speaker 1: chose to. They wanted me to understand how helpless I was,
Speaker 1: how completely at their mercy. The psychological warfare was worse
Speaker 1: than any physical attack could have been. They were breaking
Speaker 1: me down night by night, eroding my sanity and my confidence.
Speaker 1: I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't think about anything except
Speaker 1: the creatures that were slowly closing in on me. I
Speaker 1: started finding what I can only describe as offerings around
Speaker 1: the cabin. Dead animals arranged in neat piles, sometimes still
Speaker 1: warm from recent kills. Rabbits, squirrels, a young fox once.
Speaker 1: They were all killed the same way, neck snapped cleanly,
Speaker 1: no blood, no signs of struggle, just perfect, clinical kills
Speaker 1: that showed an understanding of anatomy and a precision that
Speaker 1: was deeply disturbing. The animals were always placed where I'd
Speaker 1: be sure to find them, by the door near the
Speaker 1: well in the middle of the clearing where I split wood.
Speaker 1: They were arranged carefully, almost ceremonially, like some kind of
Speaker 1: primitive altar or offering to an unknown god. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what to make of these grisly gifts. Maybe they
Speaker 1: were trying to communicate with me in their own way.
Speaker 1: Maybe the offerings were meant to be some kind of
Speaker 1: peace gesture, an attempt to establish a relationship. But to me,
Speaker 1: they looked like threats, evidence of what they could do
Speaker 1: to any living thing that got in their way. I
Speaker 1: found Rex in mid April. I was checking the solar
Speaker 1: panels one morning when I smelled something putrid coming from
Speaker 1: the direction of the creek. It was worse than the
Speaker 1: usual stench that announced their presence. This was the smell
Speaker 1: of death, of decomposition, of something that had been dead
Speaker 1: for a long time. I followed the odor to a
Speaker 1: pile of rocks about one hundred yards from the cabin,
Speaker 1: near a bend in the creek where the water ran
Speaker 1: deep and quiet. The rocks had been carefully arranged in
Speaker 1: a mound about four feet high and six feet across.
Speaker 1: It looked like a cairn, the kind of stone marker
Speaker 1: that hikers build to mark trails or commemorate significant locations.
Speaker 1: But this wasn't marking a trail. Rex was underneath. I
Speaker 1: moved the rocks one by one, dreading what I was
Speaker 1: going to find, but needing to know. Rex had been
Speaker 1: dead for weeks, but the cold mountain air and the
Speaker 1: protection of the rocks had preserved him enough that I
Speaker 1: could see what had been done to him. His neck
Speaker 1: was broken, just like all the other animals i'd been
Speaker 1: finding a clean snap that would have killed him instantly,
Speaker 1: without pain or struggle. But this felt different, more personal.
Speaker 1: They'd taken my dog, my companion, my only friend, in
Speaker 1: this isolated place, and they'd kept him, and then they'd
Speaker 1: left him for me to find, arranged under a pile
Speaker 1: of stones, like some kind of monument to their power.
Speaker 1: I buried Rex properly, in a spot overlooking the creek
Speaker 1: where he'd like to drink. I dug the grave by hand,
Speaker 1: three feet deep in rocky soil, and said a few
Speaker 1: words over him before filling it in. He'd been a
Speaker 1: good dog, loyal and protective and trusting. He died because
Speaker 1: I'd brought him to a place where he didn't belong,
Speaker 1: where things lived that didn't want us there. The guilt
Speaker 1: was almost as bad as the fear. Rex had depended
Speaker 1: on me to keep him safe, and I'd failed him.
Speaker 1: I'd let my own selfish desire for isolation put him
Speaker 1: in danger, and now he was dead because of my choices.
Speaker 1: That night, I heard them howling, not the deep calls
Speaker 1: I'd grown accustomed to, but something that sounded almost like laughter,
Speaker 1: cruel and mocking, and meant for me to hear multiple
Speaker 1: voices joining in a chorus that echoed off the mountains
Speaker 1: and filled the valley. They knew I'd found Rex, and
Speaker 1: they were celebrating. They'd sent me a message, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure I understood it. This was what
Speaker 1: happened to things that didn't belong in their territory. This
Speaker 1: was what would happen to me if I didn't leave.
Speaker 1: I realized then that this was never going to end peacefully.
Speaker 1: They weren't going to get bored and move on to
Speaker 1: other territory. They weren't going to accept my presence, no
Speaker 1: matter how small and unobtrusive I tried to make myself.
Speaker 1: They were going to keep escalating, keep applying pressure until
Speaker 1: I was dead or go on. I should have left then,
Speaker 1: should have packed up my truck and driven away and
Speaker 1: never looked back. But I was stubborn and stupid, and
Speaker 1: too proud to admit I'd been beaten. I'd put two
Speaker 1: years of my life into this place, had built it
Speaker 1: with my own hands, had found peace and purpose here.
Speaker 1: I wasn't ready to give that up. I was going
Speaker 1: to make a stand. I was going to fight for
Speaker 1: what was mine. I was an idiot. I drove to
Speaker 1: town and bought supplies for a siege, more ammunition for
Speaker 1: the rifle, enough food to last a month, batteries from
Speaker 1: my flashlights. I reinforced the cabin door with steel plates
Speaker 1: and lag bolts, turning it into something that could withstand
Speaker 1: considerable force. I added bars to the windows, steel rods
Speaker 1: welded to frames, and bolted to the cabin walls. I
Speaker 1: was turning my dream home into a fortress. But I
Speaker 1: told myself it was temporary. Once I proved that I
Speaker 1: couldn't be intimidated. Once I showed them that I was
Speaker 1: going to stay, regardless of what they did, they'd move
Speaker 1: on to easier tark targets. They'd find some other territory
Speaker 1: to defend and leave me alone. I was wrong about everything.
Speaker 1: The siege began three days later. On a Tuesday morning
Speaker 1: in late April. I woke up to find the cabin surrounded.
Speaker 1: I could see them through the barred windows, dark shapes,
Speaker 1: moving between the trees, always staying just out of clear sight,
Speaker 1: but close enough that their presence was unmistakable. There were
Speaker 1: more of them than I'd thought. I counted at least
Speaker 1: five distinct figures, maybe more. They ranged in size from
Speaker 1: what might have been juveniles to massive adults that had
Speaker 1: to duck to move under the lower tree branches. They
Speaker 1: were coordinating their movements, taking positions around the cabin like
Speaker 1: a military unit preparing for an assault, but they didn't
Speaker 1: try to attack the cabin directly. That would have been
Speaker 1: almost a relief, a straightforward confrontation that I could respond
Speaker 1: to with my rifle. Instead, they began a campaign of
Speaker 1: terror that lasted for six days and nearly drove me
Speaker 1: completely insane. They started by cutting off my water. I
Speaker 1: discovered this when I went to pump water from the
Speaker 1: well and found that the handle had been broken off,
Speaker 1: not rusted through or worn out, snapped off cleanly, like
Speaker 1: someone with enormous strength had simply twisted it until the
Speaker 1: metal gave way. Without the pump handle, I couldn't access
Speaker 1: the well water. I had maybe two days worth of
Speaker 1: water stored in the cabin, plus what was in the
Speaker 1: elevated tank that fed my indoor plumbing. After that, I'd
Speaker 1: have to venture outside to the creek, exposing myself to
Speaker 1: whatever they had planned. Next came the psychological torture. They
Speaker 1: would pound on the walls at random intervals, sometimes for
Speaker 1: hours at a time. The sound was deafening inside the
Speaker 1: small cabin, like being trapped inside a drum while someone
Speaker 1: beat it with sledgehammers. It never followed a pattern I
Speaker 1: could predict or prepare for. Just when I thought it
Speaker 1: had stopped, when my nerves had started to settle, it
Speaker 1: would start again from a different direction. The pounding came
Speaker 1: from all sides, the walls, the roof, even what sounded
Speaker 1: like impacts against the foundation. Sometimes it was rhythmic, like
Speaker 1: multiple individuals taking turns. Sometimes it was chaotic, like a
Speaker 1: whole group attacking at once. The metal roofing amplified every impact,
Speaker 1: turning the cabin into a resonating chamber that made thought impossible.
Speaker 4: And stay tuned for.
Speaker 1: More sasquatch otta see, We'll be right back. After these messages,
Speaker 1: they threw things at the roof constantly, rocks, branches, what
Speaker 1: sounded like entire tree trunks. The metal would ring like
Speaker 1: a bell with each impact, and I was sure they
Speaker 1: were going to carve it in. The sound of something
Speaker 1: heavy hitting the roof would be followed by the scraping
Speaker 1: noise of whatever it was sliding off and hitting the ground.
Speaker 1: But they never quite did enough damage to actually breach
Speaker 1: the roof. The impacts were precisely calculated to be just
Speaker 1: short of catastrophic. They could have torn through the metal
Speaker 1: if they'd wanted to. The scratches I'd found earlier proved
Speaker 1: they had the strength, but they were more interested in
Speaker 1: psychological damage than physical destruction. The smell became constant, so
Speaker 1: thick I could taste it. It seeped through every crack
Speaker 1: and gap in the cabin walls, no matter how well
Speaker 1: I tried to seal them with rags and tape. The
Speaker 1: stench was nauseating, making me gag and rich until my
Speaker 1: stomach was empty and I was dry heaving over the sink.
Speaker 1: I tried breathing through my mouth, but that just made
Speaker 1: it worse. I could taste the foulness on my tongue,
Speaker 1: coating my throat and making me feel like I was
Speaker 1: drowning in the smell of decay and wrongness. The odor
Speaker 1: became part of the air I breathed, inescapable and overwhelming.
Speaker 1: They screamed at night, not the deep calls I'd heard before,
Speaker 1: but high pitched shrieks that sounded like agony or rage
Speaker 1: or something else I didn't want to identify. The sound
Speaker 1: would echo off the mountains and come back distorted, multiplied,
Speaker 1: like the valley itself was screened. The screams would start
Speaker 1: just after dark and continue for hours. Sometimes they seemed
Speaker 1: to come from all directions at once, like I was
Speaker 1: surrounded by a choir of the damned. Other times they
Speaker 1: would move, traveling around the cabin in a circle, always
Speaker 1: staying the same distance away. I'd cover my ears with pillows,
Speaker 1: but the sound penetrated everything. It seemed to vibrate through
Speaker 1: the ground and into the cabin structure, making the walls
Speaker 1: themselves carry the noise. I could feel it in my bones,
Speaker 1: in my teeth, in the base of my skull, where
Speaker 1: primitive fear lives. The screams were meant to break me,
Speaker 1: and they were working. I ran out of food on
Speaker 1: the fourth day. I'd been too scared and too nauseated
Speaker 1: to eat much, and stress had killed my appetite anyway.
Speaker 1: But even hunger was better than the thought of going
Speaker 1: outside to get more supplies from the truck. I was
Speaker 1: sure they were waiting for me to expose myself, to
Speaker 1: give them an opportunity to end this siege in the
Speaker 1: most direct way possible. I drank water sparingly, knowing that
Speaker 1: once it was gone, i'd have to venture.
Speaker 4: Outside to the creek.
Speaker 1: The elevated tank that fed my indoor plumbing was getting low,
Speaker 1: and I could hear air entering the system when I
Speaker 1: turned on the taps, maybe another day before it was
Speaker 1: completely empty. I was getting weaker, both physically and mentally.
Speaker 1: The constant noise and stress and lack of food were
Speaker 1: taking their toll. I'd catch myself nodding off in the
Speaker 1: chair by the window, only to jerk awake when something
Speaker 1: hit the roof or walls.
Speaker 4: Sleep deprivation was.
Speaker 1: Making me paranoid and jumpy, seeing movement and shadows that
Speaker 1: might or might not be there.
Speaker 4: On the fifth day, they.
Speaker 1: Escalated to biological warfare. I woke up to find that
Speaker 1: they'd been throwing feces at the cabin during the night.
Speaker 1: Not just any feces, waste that looked almost human, but
Speaker 1: was produced in quantities that no human could manage. Massive
Speaker 1: amounts of it splattered against the windows and walls like
Speaker 1: some kind of horrific painting. The smell was indescribable, worse
Speaker 1: than anything I'd experienced in my life, including the time
Speaker 1: I'd had to clean out a septic tank. That had
Speaker 1: been backing up for months. This was concentrated disgust biological
Speaker 1: warfare designed to make the cabin uninhabitable through sheer revulsion.
Speaker 1: They targeted the windows, specifically coating them with a thick
Speaker 1: layer of waste that blocked out most of the light.
Speaker 1: I was trapped in a dim, stinking tomb, unable to
Speaker 1: see outside, clearly, breathing air that made me vomit repeatedly
Speaker 1: until my stomach was empty and my throat was raw.
Speaker 1: I realized they were trying to make the cabin uninhabitable
Speaker 1: to force me out through sheer, disgust and biological necessity.
Speaker 1: They understood that humans have limits to what they can tolerate,
Speaker 1: and they were systematically pushing me past those limits. The
Speaker 1: water ran out that evening. I turned on the tap
Speaker 1: and got a few drops than nothing. The elevated tank
Speaker 1: was empty and I was down to maybe half a
Speaker 1: bottle of drinking water. I was going to have to
Speaker 1: go outside, and they knew it. I waited until what
Speaker 1: I hoped was the darkest part of the night, around
Speaker 1: three in the morning. I grabbed my rifle and the
Speaker 1: empty water containers and slowly opened the cabin door. The
Speaker 1: smell hit me like a physical blow, not just the
Speaker 1: waste they'd been throwing, but their natural odor amplified to
Speaker 1: nauseating levels. I could see shapes moving in the darkness
Speaker 1: beyond the clearing, waiting watching. They knew I'd have to
Speaker 1: come out eventually, and they were ready for me. I
Speaker 1: made it to the creek, moving as quietly as I
Speaker 1: could rifle ready. The water was cold and clean and
Speaker 1: tasted like salvation after the foulness i'd been breathing for days.
Speaker 1: I filled the containers as quickly as possible, but I
Speaker 1: could feel eyes on me the entire time. I made
Speaker 1: it back to the cabin without incident, but I knew
Speaker 1: they'd let me go. They could have taken me easily
Speaker 1: while I was exposed at the creek, but they'd chosen
Speaker 1: not to. They were still playing with me, still applying
Speaker 1: cycle logical pressure. They wanted me to break mentally before
Speaker 1: they finished me physically. On the sixth day, I saw
Speaker 1: one of them clearly for the second time, and this
Speaker 1: time I understood that I was never going to win
Speaker 1: this fight. I was sitting by the window, trying to
Speaker 1: see through the waistcovered glass, when something moved just at
Speaker 1: the edge of the clearing, I found a tiny clean
Speaker 1: spot in the glass and looked out to see one
Speaker 1: of the creatures standing maybe thirty yards away. It was
Speaker 1: the largest one i'd seen, probably close to nine feet
Speaker 1: tall and built like a linebacker. But it was the
Speaker 1: intelligence in its eyes that really terrified me. It wasn't
Speaker 1: looking at the cabin. It was looking directly at me,
Speaker 1: even though I was mostly hidden behind the window frame.
Speaker 1: It tilted its head slightly like it was studying me,
Speaker 1: evaluating my condition. It was telling me that it knew
Speaker 1: exactly how close I was to breaking, and it was
Speaker 1: enjoying my suffering. We stared at each other for maybe
Speaker 1: a minute, predator in prey, hunter and hunt. Then it
Speaker 1: turned and walked away, disappearing into the forest with movements
Speaker 1: that were too fluid and controlled for something that large.
Speaker 1: I knew then that I was going to die if
Speaker 1: I stayed. These things weren't just animals defending territory. They
Speaker 1: were intelligent, patient, and completely without mercy. They were going
Speaker 1: to keep escalating until I was dead or insane, and
Speaker 1: they were going to enjoy every minute of it. I
Speaker 1: started packing immediately. I threw my essential belongings into a
Speaker 1: duffel bag, clothes, important documents, the photos of my kids,
Speaker 1: my grandfather's watch. I didn't bother with most of my possessions,
Speaker 1: the furniture i'd built by hand, the books i'd collected,
Speaker 1: the tools I'd used to construct my dream life. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to get out alive. The creatures watched me
Speaker 1: pack through the fouled windows. I could see their shapes
Speaker 1: moving in the forest, observing my preparations, making sure I
Speaker 1: was really leaving. When I started loading things into my truck,
Speaker 1: I heard them calling to each other from different positions
Speaker 1: around the clearing. It sounded like communication, like they were
Speaker 1: coordinating something, maybe making sure I understood that this was permanent,
Speaker 1: that I was never to come back, Maybe just confirming
Speaker 1: among themselves that their campaign of terror had been successful.
Speaker 1: I loaded the truck as quickly as possible, my hand
Speaker 1: shaking with exhaustion and fear. Every instinct I had was
Speaker 1: screaming at me to get out, to put as much
Speaker 1: distance as possible between myself and this place where nightmares
Speaker 1: lived in the deep woods. When I started the engine,
Speaker 1: the calling stopped. The forest went completely silent. I put
Speaker 1: the truck in gear and began the long drive down
Speaker 1: the mountain, not looking back even once. I was afraid
Speaker 1: that if I saw them watching me go, I might
Speaker 1: lose my nerve and try to turn around, or worse,
Speaker 1: I might see something in their faces that would haunt
Speaker 1: me for the rest of my life. It took me
Speaker 1: three hours to reach the main highway, driving slow on
Speaker 1: the rough mountain roads with my headlights cutting through the darkness.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel safe until I was surrounded by traffic
Speaker 1: and street lights and the blessed normalcy of civilization. I
Speaker 1: checked into a motel in Gainesville that night. I laid
Speaker 1: there thinking that maybe I was having a nervous breakdown.
Speaker 1: Maybe I was maybe isolation and stress had finally pushed
Speaker 1: me over the edge, and I'd imagined the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Maybe there was a perfectly rational explanation for everything that
Speaker 1: had happened, and I'd just been too paranoid and sleep deprived.
Speaker 4: To see it.
Speaker 1: But I knew better, deep down, I knew exactly what
Speaker 1: I'd encountered up there in the mountains. That was three
Speaker 1: months ago. I've been living in a rented apartment in
Speaker 1: Gainesville ever since, trying to put my life back together
Speaker 1: piece by piece. I've been to doctors and therapists trying
Speaker 1: to deal with the nightmares and the anxiety attacks that
Speaker 1: still wake me up in a cold sweat. The nightmares
Speaker 1: are always the same. I'm back in the cabin, trapped
Speaker 1: and surrounded, listening to something pounding on the walls while
Speaker 1: the smell of decay seeps through every crack. I wake
Speaker 1: up checking the locks on my apartment door and windows,
Speaker 1: even though I know the things that haunted me are
Speaker 1: still up there in the mountains where I left them.
Speaker 1: Some days are better than others. I found work doing
Speaker 1: carpentry for a construction company, which helps keep my hands
Speaker 1: busy and my mind occupied. The physical labor is familiar
Speaker 1: and comforting, a reminder that I can still build things,
Speaker 1: still create something useful with my own hands. But I'm
Speaker 1: not the same person who went up into those mountains
Speaker 1: looking for peace and solitude. The experience changed something fundamental
Speaker 1: in me, broke something that I don't think will ever
Speaker 1: fully heal. I used to believe that humans were the
Speaker 1: apex predators, that intelligence and tools made us masters of
Speaker 1: our environment. Now I know better. There are things in
Speaker 1: the deep woods that are older, and stronger and smarter
Speaker 1: than we are. Things that see us as intruders in
Speaker 1: their domain, things that are perfectly willing to defend their
Speaker 1: territory through methods that would drive a rational person insane.
Speaker 1: I've thought about going back, just to see if the
Speaker 1: cabin is still standing, maybe to retrieve some of the
Speaker 1: belongings I left behind, the handbuilt furniture and tools that
Speaker 1: represented years of work. But I know I never will.
Speaker 1: Some nights I still wake up thinking I hear those
Speaker 1: deep calls echoing through the darkness, and I have to
Speaker 1: remind myself that I'm safe in town, surrounded by lights
Speaker 1: and people and the comforting noise of civilization. The cabin
Speaker 1: is still there, as far as I know, forty seven
Speaker 1: acres of beautiful mountain land, with a hand built home
Speaker 1: and a solar power system and a well that pumps
Speaker 1: clean water. Everything I ever wanted, everything I'd worked and
Speaker 1: saved and dreamed about for years, and I'll never set
Speaker 1: foot on it again. I've wondered sometimes if I should
Speaker 1: warn people about what's up there, post something online maybe,
Speaker 1: or contact the state Wildlife Agency. But who would believe me?
Speaker 1: And what would I tell them? That there are unknown
Speaker 1: creatures living in the Georgia mountains, creatures that are intelligent
Speaker 1: enough to wage psychological warfare against human intruders. They'd think
Speaker 1: I was crazy. Hell, I think I'm crazy most days.
Speaker 1: But the evidence is there for anyone who wants to
Speaker 1: look for it. The tracks by the creek, the gouges
Speaker 1: and the metal roofing, the carefully arranged cairn where Rex
Speaker 1: is buried, and the smell. God, the smell. Sometimes I
Speaker 1: catch a whiff of something in the wind that reminds
Speaker 1: me of that fouled clearing, and I have to stop
Speaker 1: whatever I'm doing and focus on breathing until the panic passes.
Speaker 1: I hope whoever buys that land next is smarter than
Speaker 1: I was. I hope they'll recognize the warning signs and
Speaker 1: leave before it's too late. I hope they won't be
Speaker 1: too proud or too stubborn to accept that they're not
Speaker 1: welcome in that particular piece of the wilderness. Because those
Speaker 1: things are still up there, waiting in the deep woods
Speaker 1: where the sun doesn't reach and the normal rules don't apply.
Speaker 1: They're patient and intelligent and completely without mercy, and they
Speaker 1: don't like visitors. That's what happened up there, And this
Speaker 1: is the last time I'm ever going to talk about it.
Speaker 1: I've told you everything. The rest is going to stay buried,
Speaker 1: along with all the dreams I had about living free
Speaker 1: in the mountains. I'm back in the rat race, now,
Speaker 1: back to the grind and the stress and the sleepless nights.
Speaker 1: But at least the nightmares I have now are about
Speaker 1: deadlines and performance reviews and office politics. Those are monsters
Speaker 1: I understand, monsters with rules I can learn and weaknesses
Speaker 1: I can exploit. The other kind, the kind that live
Speaker 1: in the deep woods and hunt anything that doesn't belong.
Speaker 1: Those are monsters I never want to face again. Don't
Speaker 1: try to contact me about this email. Don't ask me
Speaker 1: for more details or want to know the exact location
Speaker 1: of the property. I've said all I'm going to say,
Speaker 1: and I'm done thinking about it. Some things are better
Speaker 1: left alone, and some places are better left unexplored. The
Speaker 1: mountains keep their secrets for a reason. That's where Jeremiah's
Speaker 1: story ends, with a man broken by something that shouldn't exist,
Speaker 1: living in a rented apartment in Georgia, jumping at shadows
Speaker 1: and checking locks that don't need checking. Part of me
Speaker 1: wonders if he's still down there in Gainesville, doing carpentry
Speaker 1: work and trying to forget what he saw. Part of
Speaker 1: me wonders if he eventually found some measure of peace,
Speaker 1: or if those creatures he encountered left wounds that never
Speaker 1: fully healed. But mostly I think about that cabin, forty
Speaker 1: seven acres of pristine Georgia mountain forest, with a hand
Speaker 1: built home slowly being reclaimed by the wilderness, Solar panels
Speaker 1: gathering dust, a well pumped with a broken handle, rooms
Speaker 1: that echo with nothing but silence, and the memories of
Speaker 1: what drove a good man away from his dream. The
Speaker 1: land is probably still for sale. Maybe it's been sold
Speaker 1: and resold, passed from one unsuspecting buyer to the next.
Speaker 1: Maybe others have tried to build their own escapes up there,
Speaker 1: seeking the same peace and solitude that drew Jeremiah to
Speaker 1: those remote mountains. I hope they were smarter than he was.
Speaker 1: I hope they recognized the warning signs and left before
Speaker 1: it was too late, Because if Jeremiah's story is true,
Speaker 1: and every instinct I have tells me it is, then
Speaker 1: those things are still up there, still waiting in the
Speaker 1: deep woods where the sun doesn't penetrate and the normal
Speaker 1: rules don't apply, still defending their territory with methods that
Speaker 1: blur the line between animal cunning and deliberate cruelty. But
Speaker 1: they're patient, he said, intelligent and completely without mercy. The
Speaker 1: skeptic in me wants to find rational explanations stress induced
Speaker 1: hallucinations brought on by isolation and the trauma of divorce,
Speaker 1: misidentified wild life behaving in unusual but ultimately explainable ways,
Speaker 1: the human mind's tendency to see patterns and intentions where
Speaker 1: none exist, especially when pushed to its breaking point. But
Speaker 1: the believer in me, the part that spent years collecting
Speaker 1: stories like this one, knows better. There are too many
Speaker 1: details that ring true, too many elements that match other
Speaker 1: accounts from other witnesses who never had contact with each other.
Speaker 1: The intelligence behind the harassment, the systematic escalation, the way
Speaker 1: these creatures seem to understand human psychology better than we
Speaker 1: understand theirs. And then there's the silence. Jeremiah made it
Speaker 1: clear he was never going to talk about this again.
Speaker 1: He told his story once completely, and then he was done.
Speaker 1: That's not the behavior of someone seeking attention or trying
Speaker 1: to perpetuate a hoax. That's the behavior of someone who's
Speaker 1: been broken by an experience so far outside normal human
Speaker 1: understanding that simply talking about it requires enormous courage. He said,
Speaker 1: the mountains keep their secrets.
Speaker 4: For a reason. Maybe he's right.
Speaker 1: Maybe some things are better left alone, some places left unexplored. Hee,
Speaker 1: the smart thing is to stay in our cities and suburbs,
Speaker 1: surrounded by lights and people and the comforting illusion that
Speaker 1: we're the apex predators on this planet. But stories like
Speaker 1: Jeremiah's serve a purpose beyond entertainment. They remind us that
Speaker 1: the world is still full of mysteries, that there are
Speaker 1: vast wildernesses where ancient things follow ancient rules we don't understand.
Speaker 1: They remind us to be humble in the face of
Speaker 1: the unknown, to respect the boundaries we can't see. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: they remind us to listen when the forest goes quiet,
Speaker 1: when the animals disappear, when every instinct we have screams
Speaker 1: that something is wrong, Maybe we should pay attention. Maybe
Speaker 1: we should remember that we're visitors and places that were
Speaker 1: wild long before we existed and will be wild long
Speaker 1: after we're gone. Jeremiah learned that lesson the hard way
Speaker 1: he paid for his education, with his peace of mind,
Speaker 1: his sense of safety, and his dreams of a simpler life.
Speaker 1: He came back from those mountains a different man, changed, damaged,
Speaker 1: but alive. Not everyone is so fortunate. So the next
Speaker 1: time you're in the deep woods and you hear something
Speaker 1: that doesn't belong, remember Jeremiah's story. When the silence presses
Speaker 1: against your ears and makes you feel like you're being watched,
Speaker 1: trust that feeling. When every primitive instinct you have tells
Speaker 1: you to leave, don't ignore it. Thanks for listening, and
Speaker 1: remember some places are better left unexplored. Some secrets are
Speaker 1: better left in the darkness where they belong.
Speaker 3: They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
Speaker 3: I don't want to be out step step child, this child,
Speaker 3: that child everything. Can you ride back right back for joy,
Speaker 3: for me, joy staying right? You come it right away?
Speaker 5: Still step step, steps down, knocking down doubts, still stassssst
Speaker 5: used these