Speaker 1: Last week on Bigfoot's Wilderness, we stepped into a story
Speaker 1: called the Boundary. It was a tale about lines, some visible,
Speaker 1: most not, that exist between us and the wilderness. Lines
Speaker 1: we don't always see, but something out there does. Tonight's
Speaker 1: story shares some of that same blood. Just like the Boundary,
Speaker 1: this episode explores what happens when two worlds brush up
Speaker 1: against each other a little too hard, a little too suddenly.
Speaker 1: But when last week's tale was about a man defending
Speaker 1: what he believed was his, this one is about a
Speaker 1: creature defending what has always been its own. This week's episode,
Speaker 1: The Encroachment, isn't about a feud or an old grudge.
Speaker 1: It's about something deeper, about what happens when progress pushes
Speaker 1: too far, too fast, and the wild has nowhere left
Speaker 1: to go. It's about Bigfoot, not as a monster or
Speaker 1: a myth, but as something being driven out, pushed back,
Speaker 1: forced into a shocking world that no longer recognizes. Two stories,
Speaker 1: two borders crossed, two sides of the same collision. If
Speaker 1: the Boundary was the spark, the encroachment is the slow
Speaker 1: rumbling fallout. So settle in, dim the lights and ask
Speaker 1: yourself what happens when the wilderness has had enough of
Speaker 1: being moved aside. They called it the Big Woods. Though
Speaker 1: the forest never needed a name. It wasn't marked on
Speaker 1: a map, and no sign ever welcomed hikers or curious teenagers.
Speaker 1: People simply knew it was the stretch of timber that
Speaker 1: rose behind the ridge. Thick, dark, hushed, mysterious. Kids dared
Speaker 1: each other to run its trail at night. Hunters swore
Speaker 1: they heard footsteps that didn't match any known animal, and
Speaker 1: old timers, when they felt brave or foolish, hinted that
Speaker 1: something ancient lived there, something that kept its own rules.
Speaker 1: The Big Woods was one of these places every town
Speaker 1: had in every state across the country, untouched patches of
Speaker 1: forest that seemed older than the town, that hugged their edges.
Speaker 1: And then, without warning, the bulldozers came. One early fall morning,
Speaker 1: before the sun had climbed the ridge. A line of
Speaker 1: machinery rolled in like an invading army. Diesel engines coughed awake,
Speaker 1: headlights carved through the fog. Tires bit into the earth,
Speaker 1: leaving deep tracks long before the first trees came down.
Speaker 1: By noon, the sound of chainsaws echoed off the hills.
Speaker 1: By sundown, the forest wore its first open wound, But
Speaker 1: the forest wasn't watching alone. Farther back, in the deeper,
Speaker 1: older parts of the woods, two silhouettes stood still among
Speaker 1: the shadows, massive, upright silent, A bigfoot pair, cautious but curious,
Speaker 1: their dark eyes watching the destruction for hours, trying to
Speaker 1: make sense of what was happening. They didn't know what
Speaker 1: bulldozers or back hoes were. They didn't understand the roar
Speaker 1: of engines, or or the metallic grown of steel, but
Speaker 1: they understood change, and change had always been dangerous. The
Speaker 1: contractors tore through the forest until the first heavy snow arrived.
Speaker 1: The cold came early that year, thick wet flakes that
Speaker 1: clung to the machinery and swallowed the valley in white silence.
Speaker 1: The men had no choice but to leave. The equipment
Speaker 1: froze in place, captured mid motion under winter's icy breath,
Speaker 1: the Big Woods took a long deep inhale, and for
Speaker 1: a moment it felt untouched again. During the quiet months,
Speaker 1: the big foot pair crept forward, walking through the half
Speaker 1: finished roads and skeletal beams of future homes. They sniffed
Speaker 1: the cold metal, They tapped the frozen tracks. They explored
Speaker 1: the strange new shapes the appeared in their domain. They
Speaker 1: didn't feel threatened yet, only confused. But winter never stays forever.
Speaker 1: When the thaw came, it brought with it the second wave.
Speaker 1: Spring returned with twice as many vehicles, twice as many workers,
Speaker 1: and ten times the noise. The contractors were behind schedule,
Speaker 1: and it showed. Engines roared day and night. The ground trembled.
Speaker 1: The scent of gasoline and fresh cut timber ran thick
Speaker 1: through the air. Then one morning, a group of workers,
Speaker 1: barely adults, loud and careless, decided to burn a pile
Speaker 1: of brush behind the equipment line. A small fire, a
Speaker 1: stupid mistake, a gust of wind, and everything changed. The
Speaker 1: flames leaped into winter's leftover debris, racing across the forest
Speaker 1: floor with terrific speed. Branches snapped in the heat, Sap
Speaker 1: hissed from bursting bark. Smoke rose in swirling black columns
Speaker 1: that darkened the sky. The Bigfoot pair didn't run. They fled,
Speaker 1: sprinting deeper into the ancient ravines they'd known since birth.
Speaker 1: Fire meant danger, fire meant run. Fire was the one
Speaker 1: thing even their greatest strength couldn't stop. By the time
Speaker 1: sirens pierced the valley and the fire department arrived, several
Speaker 1: acres were scorched, blackened, ruined, But something far more important
Speaker 1: burned that day. Trusted the Bigfoot no longer watched out
Speaker 1: of curiosity. They watched out of fear, and that fear
Speaker 1: hardened into something darker, something closer to anger. The forest
Speaker 1: had been violated, and they would remember. Despite the destruction,
Speaker 1: the development pressed forward. By late summer, a neat semicircle
Speaker 1: of new homes stood where the ridge once rose, wild
Speaker 1: and unbroken, perfect yards, fresh driveways, the clean geometry of
Speaker 1: suburbia replacing the crooked lines of the woods. Families arrived quickly.
Speaker 1: Boxes were unpacked, Dogs explored back yards, children ran in
Speaker 1: and out of sprinklers, But the forest watched them all
Speaker 1: with eyes that had lived in the darkness long before
Speaker 1: any house stood there. At first, the disturbances were small. Tools, vanished,
Speaker 1: garden decorations shifted over night. Trash cans were dragged into
Speaker 1: the woods. A lawn chair disappeared, then turned up two
Speaker 1: days later, wedged into a fork of a tree. The
Speaker 1: neighbors blamed raccoons or teenagers, or the wind. But then
Speaker 1: the vandalism escalated. Playground slides cracked in two sandboxes, overturned
Speaker 1: fences splintered under immense force. Sheds shifted off their foundations,
Speaker 1: swing sets twisted like soft metal. The damage was deliberate, powerful,
Speaker 1: and emotional. The bigfoot weren't trying to hurt or stalk.
Speaker 1: They were expressing something frustration, confusion, fear, anger. They didn't
Speaker 1: understand the world that replaced their own, and sometimes when
Speaker 1: creatures don't understand, they lash out. As summer deepened, a
Speaker 1: new kind of disturbance emerged, something far more unnerving than
Speaker 1: broken fences or stolen tools. Homeowners began reporting impacts on
Speaker 1: their houses, not taps, not knocks, slaps, hard, heavy, open
Speaker 1: handed WAPs that hit the siding with enormous force, and
Speaker 1: that rattled picture frames inside. The strange part, they always
Speaker 1: happened the same way, between two thirty and four a
Speaker 1: m never more than one strike, never in the same spot. Twice.
Speaker 1: Dogs would bark seconds before the impact, their instincts picking
Speaker 1: up something humans couldn't see. Motion lights flickered on just afterward,
Speaker 1: glowing across empty yards. By the time a homeowner reached
Speaker 1: the window, nothing moved. One neighbor described the sound as
Speaker 1: a hand the size of a picnic plate slamming the siding.
Speaker 1: Another said it felt like someone slapped the house on purpose.
Speaker 1: The sheriff blamed teenagers, the parents blamed storms, but those
Speaker 1: who lived close to the tree line, they didn't blame
Speaker 1: anything at all. They knew the slaps weren't attacks. They
Speaker 1: were warnings, expressions, outbursts from something pushed too far, and
Speaker 1: the Bigfoot, confused and displaced, were trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of their shrinking home the only way they could by
Speaker 1: reminding the newcomers that the forest still had a voice.
Speaker 1: One afternoon, a seven year old boy ran screaming into
Speaker 1: his home, Pale with terror. He claimed a hairy giant
Speaker 1: had walked through their back yard. His parents dismissed it
Speaker 1: until they went outside. Their six foot stockade fence wasn't
Speaker 1: just broken. It was destroyed, Shattered boards, splintered rails, a
Speaker 1: section caved inward where something massive had walked straight through
Speaker 1: it without slowing down. The boy insisted the creature had
Speaker 1: looked right at him, raised its arms and made a silent,
Speaker 1: furious gesture, as if frustrated by the fence. The yard
Speaker 1: everything new and foreign. He said, it wasn't trying to
Speaker 1: hurt him, just trying to move to get where it
Speaker 1: used to go. The story was dismissed, but the evidence
Speaker 1: stood tall and undeniable. Something had been there, something powerful,
Speaker 1: something intelligent. As the weeks passed, the vandalism slowed, the
Speaker 1: house slaps became less frequent, the missing objects dwindled, but
Speaker 1: a new kind of activity emerged. Quieter, subtler, far more chilling.
Speaker 1: Homeowners started seeing shapes, huge shapes, tall shapes, Silhouettes that
Speaker 1: stood still in the tree line, watching motion. Lights flickered
Speaker 1: on without explanation. Dogs barked at corners of the yard
Speaker 1: no one could see. Porch cameras caught brief flickers of movement,
Speaker 1: something stepping just out of the frame with a deliberate,
Speaker 1: heavy stride. The big foot pair had learned the boundaries.
Speaker 1: They understood the lights, the barking, the fences. They weren't leaving,
Speaker 1: but they weren't lashing out anymore either. They were simply watching, learning, waiting.
Speaker 1: The forest had shrunk, but their presence had not. They
Speaker 1: had just changed how they moved through it. One morning,
Speaker 1: near dawn, a homeowner let his dog out fog hung
Speaker 1: low across the grass. The air felt cold and unnerving.
Speaker 1: The dog froze half way into the yard, ears up,
Speaker 1: tails stiff, a growl rumbling deep in its chest. The
Speaker 1: man stepped forward. The motion light flickered ice. Then he
Speaker 1: heard it, a slow, heavy exhale coming from the tree line,
Speaker 1: the kind of exhale that only a massive chest could produce.
Speaker 1: The dog backed up, trembling. The man felt something ancient
Speaker 1: stir in his nerves, a primal instinct humans once lived by,
Speaker 1: long before fences and door bells and porch lights, the
Speaker 1: instinct of being watched, not by a deer, not by
Speaker 1: a bear, by something intelligent, something aware, something deciding. He
Speaker 1: stepped back slowly. When the sun finally rose, he walked
Speaker 1: to the edge of the yard, and there in the
Speaker 1: soft earth lay a single footprint, huge, deep, unmistakably fresh,
Speaker 1: left not by accident but choice, a message, a reminder.
Speaker 1: We're still here. The big woods are smaller, now, home fills,
Speaker 1: the ridge kids ride bikes where deer once crossed. Dogs
Speaker 1: barket shadows, Lights flicker at nothing, or so the homeowners
Speaker 1: tell themselves, But the forest remembers, and the watchers remain
Speaker 1: on quiet nights, when the air hangs heavy and the
Speaker 1: moon glows low. Some residents swear they hear footsteps pacing
Speaker 1: the tree line, slow, deliberate, rhythmic, not stalking, not hunting,
Speaker 1: just keeping watch over a world that was theirs long
Speaker 1: before the first house was built. The encroachment may be complete,
Speaker 1: but the watchers have never left.
Speaker 2: Is uh?
Speaker 1: You have, absolutely that is it. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: big foots wilderness, where stories, legends, and encounters live on
Speaker 1: in the shadows of the woods. Until next time, keep
Speaker 1: your eyes open, stay curious, and remember the forest is
Speaker 1: never as empty as it seems.