Speaker 1: Back in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties, my mother's
Speaker 1: family lived on a small form in North Alabama. My
Speaker 1: grandfather worked in the coal mines, but he owned the farm,
Speaker 1: so they didn't have to live in the camp. A
Speaker 1: small spring fed creek that ran along the north edge
Speaker 1: of the property provided water for the family, the animals,
Speaker 1: and for washing. Sometime around the summer of nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: there was a drought, which in North Alabama means it
Speaker 1: didn't rain for two weeks and that creek almost dried up.
Speaker 1: They had to install a hand pump on the spring
Speaker 1: to get enough water to keep the farm going. Everybody
Speaker 1: and everything was hot, drumpy, and thirsty that summer. It
Speaker 1: was an area where electric lights were still considered a
Speaker 1: modern convenience and air conditioning was unheard of. With no breeze,
Speaker 1: the world baked on under a hot, still glaze of
Speaker 1: sweat and dust. To alleviate some of their misery, they'd
Speaker 1: eat dinner early and then go out and sit on
Speaker 1: the front porch to give the house time to cool off.
Speaker 1: Before bed, they drag a big oscillating floor fan up
Speaker 1: to the screen door and sit and talk while doing
Speaker 1: the sort of light chores that could be accomplished while
Speaker 1: sitting in a rocking chair. Socks and clothes were mended,
Speaker 1: and peas were shelled until the sun went down, and
Speaker 1: then it was time for bed. That's when the screaming started.
Speaker 1: Somewhere in the woods across the creek. Something was screaming
Speaker 1: like a woman who was being strangled. Those were interspersed
Speaker 1: with long, mournful howls loud enough to hurt your ear drums.
Speaker 1: In the gloom of the dusk, they could vaguely see
Speaker 1: the trees shaking in the distance and hear something stomping
Speaker 1: on what sounded like two feet through the thick growth
Speaker 1: around the spring, but they never saw an anni. As
Speaker 1: soon as the racket would start, the farm animals would
Speaker 1: stampede to the other end of the pasture as far
Speaker 1: from the spring as they could get. They wanted nothing
Speaker 1: to do with whatever was over there making that noise.
Speaker 1: Our neighbor owns six big hounds trained to hunt raccoons.
Speaker 1: Raccoon hounds can be mean, and these dogs were vicious
Speaker 1: animals that weren't afraid of anything. They tore off across
Speaker 1: the creek to hunt down and kill whatever was making
Speaker 1: the noise and shaking the trees. Six dogs went, but
Speaker 1: only four came back. Of those four, one had its
Speaker 1: back ripped open so badly they had to put it
Speaker 1: out of its misery. That was when the men knew
Speaker 1: that they had to act. My grandfather, my two oldest uncles,
Speaker 1: the neighbor, and his sons loaded their shotguns and rifles
Speaker 1: and went to see what this thing was. They found
Speaker 1: the two dead dogs ripped into pieces and thrown up
Speaker 1: into the tree, but they didn't find what killed them.
Speaker 1: The next night, the screaming returned with a vengeance. The
Speaker 1: dogs were put on chains and the children were kept inside.
Speaker 1: It screamed until after midnight, while everyone stayed in their
Speaker 1: homes and hoped that whatever it was would eventually go
Speaker 1: back to where it came from. The men didn't want
Speaker 1: to see if it was going to return. The following night,
Speaker 1: they were already in the woods with their guns loaded
Speaker 1: for bore and waiting for it. That night, they stalked
Speaker 1: that thing and hunting it down, and they killed it
Speaker 1: and buried it somewhere in the woods. Everyone in that
Speaker 1: hunting party is dead now. When I was a child,
Speaker 1: I asked, but none of them ever told me what
Speaker 1: they killed that night. It is conceivable that it was
Speaker 1: a panther. Panthers, or so i've read, can sound like
Speaker 1: a woman screaming, and since panthers or a protected species,
Speaker 1: shooting one would have been illegal, they would have had
Speaker 1: a good reason to shoot it. Shovel and shut up
Speaker 1: about it. But do panthers shake trees when they walked?
Speaker 1: Do they sound like someone stomping around on two legs?
Speaker 1: Do they throw bodies of dogs into the trees? Honestly,
Speaker 1: have no idea what those men killed that night, and
Speaker 1: now that they're all gone, we'll probably never know.
Speaker 2: The rescue, the jogger ran into the road just a
Speaker 2: few yards in front of her car. If she'd been
Speaker 2: on the highway, she'd have never been able to stop
Speaker 2: in time. Fortunately, she wasn't traveling very fast on the
Speaker 2: gravel and managed to avoid him. A quick glance across
Speaker 2: the field from whence he came revealed the source of
Speaker 2: his panic. A massive doglike creature was running straight for them.
Speaker 2: She recognized it immediately. The man opened the passenger door
Speaker 2: and was sliding into the seat next to her. Even
Speaker 2: as she was saying, get in, mister tailed from her
Speaker 2: rear tires. As the creature hit the road, a long,
Speaker 2: ear shattering screech echoed through the cars. The thing's claws
Speaker 2: left four deep trails down the back quarter panel. It's
Speaker 2: following us, she said, looking in a rear view mirror.
Speaker 2: Reaching down, she pulled an air horn from under her seat,
Speaker 2: rolled down her window, stuck it out, and squeezed the trigger. Ah.
Speaker 2: The jogger moaned at the sound. Sorry, she muttered, it's
Speaker 2: just that they hate loud noises. Taking advantage of her
Speaker 2: captive audience and the fact that he had to be
Speaker 2: a believer, she went on, I suggest, if you plan
Speaker 2: on continuing to jog, you get yourself one of these
Speaker 2: and take it with you. And get a flashlight too.
Speaker 2: It has to be a bright one, at least fifteen
Speaker 2: hundred lumens. They hate bright light as much as they
Speaker 2: hate loud noises. Using them could give you the chance
Speaker 2: you need to get away. She checked the rear view
Speaker 2: mirror again. Inside it looks like he's gone, she said, reassuringly.
Speaker 2: Another thing, though, she thought to add, they can disguise
Speaker 2: themselves as humans. She didn't bother to look at her
Speaker 2: passenger when she said that, she knew she sounded crazy,
Speaker 2: but when he said nothing, she continued, Look as crazy
Speaker 2: as that sounds, these things are smart. I've seen them
Speaker 2: dressed in human clothing before. Sometimes if you don't look
Speaker 2: directly at them, or if you only get a glimpse,
Speaker 2: they actually look like people. I swear you could walk
Speaker 2: right past one on the street, and maybe only for
Speaker 2: a minute or two, they look completely human. As she spoke,
Speaker 2: she saw it out of the corner of her eye.
Speaker 2: It was too late, but she flinched anyway as the
Speaker 2: long hair covered arm reached across her face, grabbed her
Speaker 2: head by the other side, and quickly snapped her neck.
Speaker 2: The car careened out of control, spun rolled, landed on
Speaker 2: its side, and slid for several yards along the ditch
Speaker 2: before coming to rest on its roof. The creature in
Speaker 2: jogger's apparel quickly kicked out the front windshield, and, dragging
Speaker 2: the body behind it, ran into the field where the
Speaker 2: other one was waiting somewhere off in the woods. They
Speaker 2: had their meal, reveling and a feeling of intense satisfaction
Speaker 2: at the knowledge that this woman would never sound one
Speaker 2: of those horns or shine one of her flashlights at
Speaker 2: them again. Yeah. You can laugh at my story if
Speaker 2: you want. But I've been a deputy in this county
Speaker 2: for thirty years, and all the craziest calls I ever
Speaker 2: took were at that woman's house in the last five.
Speaker 2: She wasn't from around here. She was one of those
Speaker 2: city people looking for an escape. Thought she'd found it too,
Speaker 2: Just her and her dogs, a lazy old fat cat
Speaker 2: that spent all its time sitting in her front living
Speaker 2: room window, and a dozen or so chickens. But things
Speaker 2: started happening, and I started getting called out there pretty regular.
Speaker 2: The last time I was there, she told me she'd
Speaker 2: figured out how to keep them away. And when we
Speaker 2: found her car out there in the gravel road, the
Speaker 2: airhorn was lying in the ditch by it, and her
Speaker 2: flashlight was still sitting between the seats. Her front window
Speaker 2: was broken out. We never did find the body, but
Speaker 2: the drag mark's clearly indicated someone or something had taken her.
Speaker 2: So this is what I think happened. Maybe I'm wrong,
Speaker 2: but maybe I'm right. The wife and I put a
Speaker 2: bit on her farmhouse just the other day. It's prime
Speaker 2: property and worth a lot more than it's being sold for.
Speaker 2: I couldn't pass up the opportunity. That's why I'm on
Speaker 2: my way to the store right now to get myself
Speaker 2: an airhorn in a good bright flashlight. Fifteen hundred lumens
Speaker 2: are better, I think she told me.
Speaker 1: Okay, one last story. Hey, before I get into this story,
Speaker 1: I got in trouble last night. I'll put out a
Speaker 1: podcast yesterday and I spent ten or fifteen minutes talking
Speaker 1: about how great the Smoky Mountain Bigfoot conference was, and
Speaker 1: apparently my wife listened to it and mentioned to me
Speaker 1: last night that you didn't even mention me, And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you really don't. You know, you kind of like to
Speaker 1: be behind the scenes. I know, but I wanted you
Speaker 1: to tell everybody how nice they were and how much
Speaker 1: I appreciated them coming to talk to me and my wife.
Speaker 1: April says thank you to everyone that visited our booth
Speaker 1: and was so nice to her. She was the little, short,
Speaker 1: gray headed girl in the middle between Naoma and Nance.
Speaker 1: If you guys didn't know who she was, I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people thought she was Nioma, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people thought Naoma was my wife, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people thought Nance was my wife. But no,
Speaker 1: it was the girl in the middle with the black
Speaker 1: T shirt on and the totally gray hair, which I
Speaker 1: absolutely love. Heck, I'm just glad that woman likes me.
Speaker 1: I'm a lucky man. Okay, let's get into this story.
Speaker 1: This person wants to be anonymous. Here's what they write.
Speaker 1: My first encounter with what I respectfully call the old
Speaker 1: Ones occurred in nineteen eighty one, when I was sixteen
Speaker 1: years old. I've always loved driving onto our farm and
Speaker 1: parking the truck and taking long hikes through the woods.
Speaker 1: On this occasion, I came to a wide intersection of
Speaker 1: two of our farm roads. I turned on to the
Speaker 1: left fork to get a drink from the spring thirty
Speaker 1: yards down the path. As I headed down to the ford,
Speaker 1: I noticed footprints. My first thought was, now, who in
Speaker 1: the thundered nation is down here barefoot? And then I
Speaker 1: realized two things. First was the size I've worn the
Speaker 1: same size eleven and a half shoes since I was
Speaker 1: twelve years old. These prints were half again as big,
Speaker 1: easily eighteen or twenty. The second was the gate from
Speaker 1: the heel of one print to the toe of the
Speaker 1: opposite print was nearly six feet. I followed them down
Speaker 1: to the water and stopped. They continued in the same
Speaker 1: unbroken gate up the opposite side, and disappeared where the
Speaker 1: road leveled off again. I got my water and then
Speaker 1: debated whether or not to follow. My better judgment said no,
Speaker 1: and I returned to my trek back to the truck.
Speaker 1: In the ensuing years, there have been several incidents, particularly
Speaker 1: when walking out on an afternoon of deer hunting at
Speaker 1: what we call good dark. Several times, when leaving my stand,
Speaker 1: I knew I was being followed. Whatever it was, it
Speaker 1: stayed far enough away to be disguised by the dusk,
Speaker 1: but close enough to be felt. I detected no hostility
Speaker 1: towards me, just as presence and an overwhelming sense of
Speaker 1: you've had your fun and now it's time to leave.
Speaker 1: In January of twenty and thirteen, I was forty eight
Speaker 1: years old, married and we had kids, and I was
Speaker 1: living and working eighty miles from my hometown. I had
Speaker 1: been to visit my mother and was driving back home
Speaker 1: as the daylight was just beginning to fade. As I
Speaker 1: rounded a curve, I saw about one hundred yards in
Speaker 1: front of me a massive dark object crouched in the road,
Speaker 1: right on the double yellow line. It moved to my
Speaker 1: right about thirty feet in three steps, and was against
Speaker 1: a brush line, trying to blend in. I watched it
Speaker 1: in amazement. It was approximately nine feet tall, with at
Speaker 1: least four foot shoulder span. It was covered in dark hair,
Speaker 1: and I estimated it to weigh around nine hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: Its face was very much like a gorilla. It was
Speaker 1: dark and leathery, with a broad, flat nose. Its eyes
Speaker 1: were the most intense yellow green I've ever seen, and
Speaker 1: were space six inches apart. As I approached him, he
Speaker 1: threw his left arm across his chest, as if to
Speaker 1: instinctively ward off a blow. I suppose he believed I
Speaker 1: was about to hit him. I rounded the curve and
Speaker 1: kept going, passing within thirty feet of him. By the
Speaker 1: spring of twenty sixteen, we have moved back to our hometown,
Speaker 1: and the kids were all familiar with my encounter. One
Speaker 1: Saturday afternoon in April or May, my youngest son came
Speaker 1: to the house, ashing and shaking all over. I saw it, Dad,
Speaker 1: I really saw it, he exclaimed. I asked him what
Speaker 1: he had seen, and with eyes wide and full of wonder,
Speaker 1: he said, I saw the bigfoot. I asked him to
Speaker 1: show me where, and so we went into the backyard
Speaker 1: and he showed me the tree the creature had peered around.
Speaker 1: We estimated it to be around nine feet tall. We
Speaker 1: also found and took pictures of several very large footprints.
Speaker 1: Since then, my son has seen what he calls Rocky
Speaker 1: several times in the backyard. In February of last year,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, my friend Mike and I were in my
Speaker 1: backyard and found tracks. They came across the face of
Speaker 1: the tree line, stopped, and then faced to my house.
Speaker 1: They then turned and went into the bushes. After Mike left,
Speaker 1: I went inside and told my son and daughter about
Speaker 1: seeing the tracks, without the least prompting. My son smiled
Speaker 1: and said, yeah, I saw Rocky yesterday. I was playing
Speaker 1: in the sideyard and bent over to pick up a stick,
Speaker 1: and as I stood up, there were two fur covered
Speaker 1: tree trunks in front of me. When I straightened up,
Speaker 1: there was Rocky facing me twenty feet away. He chuffed
Speaker 1: at me and stepped into the bushes. Well. I was
Speaker 1: amazed I had gotten into my story only far enough
Speaker 1: to say Mike and I found tracks. He had described
Speaker 1: what we had seen to the last detail. Mike and
Speaker 1: I have been chuffed at several times on the farm.
Speaker 1: In March, we had a visual of what I believed
Speaker 1: to be a mated couple on the shoreline of a
Speaker 1: large pond. Within a few yards of where they were standing,
Speaker 1: we found two bedding sites where they had slept. A
Speaker 1: few weeks later we had another sighting of the same
Speaker 1: pair about a quarter mile away, standing in a tree
Speaker 1: line watching us. It's now mid June and I must
Speaker 1: admit i'd like to see them again. I'd like to
Speaker 1: see them soon.