Speaker 1: All right, I want to talk to you for a minute,
and I need you to hang around and listen because
this is important, very important. I'm not bragging, but I
did get invited to do a Massy Oak properties podcast.
The name of the podcast is A Fist Full of
Dirt and it is hosted by a guy that I've
watched on television and in videos, and just in the
last year or so have seen some of his videos
from old. His name is Ronnie cuz Strickland. And I
got to drive down to West Point, Mississippi, where the
headquarters of massioak is sit in their studio, and they
asked me all kinds of questions about my podcast and
all that stuff. You all know how I am. I
don't really like talking about myself. I had so many
questions for them, but I had to bite my tongue
because it's their show. They wanted me to talk about
the podcast, and so I did that. I'm going to
put a link in the description for the Fistful of
Dirt Halloween episode, which they uploaded yesterday it would have
been October twenty ninth. It's called a Redneck Telling Monster Stories.
It's a pretty good podcast. Not because I'm in it
because these people really know how to put on a
good podcast. There'll be a link that they're not on YouTube,
they're out on the podcast networks, so they're on Apple, Spotify,
all the podcast apps that you use out there. Just
do a search for a fist full of dirt. You
might want to put mossy oak behind that. It'll be
right up there at the top. The episode I'm in
is called a Redneck Telling Monster Stories. It's their first
Halloween episode. They're uploading another Halloween episode to tomorrow or Friday.
I'm not sure. I think it's Thursday the thirtieth or
the Thursday the thirty first, actually on Halloween, and it
should be a good one. But you all looked them up.
Listen to their podcast. It's really good. One thing that
happened when I walked into their studio first was I
got to meet two really nice people. I got to
meet Cuz Strickland. He's a legend, an absolute legend in
hunting circles. Everybody knows who Cuz Strickland is. If you've
ever watched a hunting show. If you don't remember his name,
when you see his face, you'll remember it. And then
I met his daughter, Lauren, and they're the producers of
a fist full of Dirt podcasts. But he handed me
a book, which I didn't say this when I sat
down with him, but I had actually read it a
few years ago. A buddy of mine had it sitting
on his desk. I said, let me borrow that book,
and I read the book. It's called Ain't Nothing but
the Truth about Spring Turkey Hunting. According to cuz Now,
this book is not a strategy type tactics kind of book.
It's his commentary on turkey hunting and in modern culture,
and it is full of unbelievably great stories. I don't
know where to buy this book. I'm gonna check with
them before I upload this podcast and see if it's
on Amazon or wherever. But I called Lauren yesterday and
I asked her if her dad wouldn't mind if I
read a chapter out of this book, and she said,
I think that'd be great. So that's what you're about
to hear. So I wanted to announce that I'm on
that podcast and I want you to stick around and
listen to this story. It's one chapter out of Ain't
Nothing but the Truth about Spring Turkey Hunting. According to
Cudz Strickland, the title of the chapter is Hexes and
Haints or Haints and Hexes. I thought it was fitting
for this channel. Its close to Halloween, it's about superstitions,
and I think you will enjoy it, So hang on
and listen to that. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Hanks
and Hexes. Most people will not admit in public, or
even out loud, that they are superstitious. Some consider it
a sign of a weak mind or lack of education.
Well that's fine, but I say why I take chances.
Baseball players as a group may be the most superstitious
of all, but I think hunters would be a close second.
I have always been deathly scared of snakes, but not
too much else. I'm good to round most other things
that can make folks uneasy, stuff like spiders and haunted
houses and the dark and electricity. But you could still
describe me as jumpy. Even though I'm not afraid of spiders,
I don't pick them up and play with them, and
I might jump if one land in my lap. It's
the same with superstitions. I don't go asking for trouble.
I don't pick up spiders. I don't throw my hat
on the bed or look at a new moon over
my left shoulder. For me, it's all about the odds.
If I feel my odds are better if I don't
step on a crack in the sidewalk, then I will
step over the cracks. Now call me uneducated or weak
mind at all you want. Most people find my superstitions
funny or at best interesting, But for me, it's just
part of my routine. I'm not trying to be different
or make a statement of any kind. I'm just being careful.
Back in the mid nineteen eighties, I was hunting outdoor
writers out of my house in Natchez, Mississippi. My wife
Pam and I, along with both of our girls, would
bring in dozens of writers each year and hunt them
around Natchez for primos and mascio in hopes of getting
mentions or photos in hunting magazines. One of my favorite
writers to visit our home was Nick Sisley. Nick and
I hit it off really fast, even though he was
a highly intelligent professional writer and a Pennsylvania Yankee who
had traveled the world and seen and done way more
than I had. By being a simple, laid back redneck
from South Mississippi. Nick liked real people who hunted in
real places, under real conditions and did it really hard,
so we actually had lots in common. He didn't want
some plush wine and cheese hunt where he didn't have
to walk too far or wait too long, so hunting
with me out of our house was right up his alley.
On the first morning of next turkey hunt, we were
running about ten minutes late leaving my house. I was
heavy on the gas most of the way to our
hunting ground and had made up for most of the
ten minutes and felt good about being in our spot
to listen for gobbles on time. And then it happened
A damn black cat ran across the road right in
front of us. There are a few actions you can
take in this situation. For instance, you can pull over
and wait for another vehicle to cross the path first.
You can spit on your finger and put an X
on the windshield dead center. You can turn your hat
around and raise your feet off the floorboard and the
speed across. But the fastest thing to do is to
turn around and take another route. And since that was
five in the morning, I knew the chances of another
vehicle busting that path were slim. I could have turned
my hat around and picked up my feet and ex
the windshield, but I knew Nick would not do it,
and it would not help if he refused, so I
stopped and turned around. He was in shock that I
would do that. I knew another gravel road that would
not cost us much time, and it was my best option.
It would have taken way too much time to explain
to Nick all the options and possibilities we had to
cancel out that cat's mojo, so I just do it
in reverse and took off. I could tell he was
pissed off a bit, because he didn't say a word
to me until after his gun went off at five
minutes after six, when he dispatched a big old gobbler.
After the quick hunt, we talked and smiled about the
black Cat episode, which I'm sure he thought was theater
for him, but later realized it was indeed for his benefit.
No theater was involved, just scientific preemptive tactics to keep
luck on our side. Now, I'm sure there's not much
sites involved in superstitions, but there is a lot of
history that backs up at least the fact that people
have been aware of them. For example, Friday the thirteenth
has some very substantial meaning that dates back thousands of years.
The Scandinavians believed the number thirteen was unlucky because of
the twelve demic gods that were joined by the thirteenth,
who was evil. It was also said that Crass was
crucified on a Friday, and the number of people present
at the Last Supper was thirteen, the thirteenth being Judas
the Trader. If you don't believe things like that, then
a lucky penny or a four leaf clover may not
mean much to you. But I'll admit I do, especially
when biblical examples are thrown into the mix. Now, I'm
pretty sure superstitions are like being afraid of snakes. If
you look for them like I do, then you'll find them.
Maybe it's all in the mind, but I think the
mind is indeed a powerful thing and can affect outcomes
in many ways. I remember a few years back, while
at Portland Landing near Camden, Alabama, we were scouting locations
in September to hang tree stands for an upcoming mossy oakhunt.
It was so hot you could hardly breathe, and we
were covering lots of ground. I've heard the old saying
that seeing an owl in the daylight was bad luck,
but it never paid much attention to that one. The
chances of seeing an owl in the middle of the
day down south anyway are very slim. But on this day,
while scouting acorn trees for sign, I actually saw two
owls in trees and both were looking at me. I
remember thinking that it was strange, but the old bad
luck thing did not enter my mind. On one of
the last spots we checked, I was walking across a
freshly plowed food plot to look at a shady oak
tree on the other side. One of the two guys
with me jumped back and grunted, so my first reaction
was to jump also, which I did. I looked back
and saw a two foot long rattlesnake cooled up in
a strike mode right where I had just stepped. The
snake was covered in dirt, which explained why me, of
all people, did not see him. The other fellow said,
he struck your boot. By this time, I was getting
flushed and feeling sick. Now I moved away and looked down,
and sure enough, there was some type of liquid on
the lower portion of the soul of my left boot.
The snake was small, so I guess the glancing strike
just hit the harder rubber on my boot, but it
was enough to send me indoors with an ice pack
on my neck for a while to try to calm down.
Did seeing two owls in the broad daylight have anything
to do with that? Damn right? It did. If I
had been thinking and realized the owls were a sign,
I would have gone from being an active member of
the scouting party to taking more of a supervisory role
and hung around the truck again. All this could be
nothing more than chance or a combination of actions that
result in where you end up at a certain time,
but my list of examples of luck playing a part
in an outcome are numerous. I was filming turkeys in
South Dakota one spring and met this guy who some
folks might call a jinx. I was not calling that
because I don't want to say that word out loud,
but this guy certainly had some of the qualifications worthy
of that handle. If I remember right, his name was Frank.
I was not hunting with Frank, but I did visit
with him at night and some during the midday while
eating lunch. And my first introduction to Frank came on
the first morning of the hunt, when I ran into
him outside the old house where we were staying. He
was trying to fish his keys out of the cab
of his truck, and he locked them inside and had
the old bent clothes hangar in the window and was
cussing like crazy. The next time I saw him was
later that night, when he was asking if anyone had
seen a shotgun. I assumed he found it later, but
the thought came to me then that I better keep
an eye on this guy. Before I go deeper into
this encounter, let me state that all of this is true.
That night, the people who owned the house cook supper,
which turned out to be baked fish with some vegetables.
Frank said he did not eat fish, and he rode
into town and got a sandwich and chips from a
convenience store. The next morning, I was up early gathering
camera gear, and I heard a strange noise outside. Old
Frank was bent over by his truck and was sure
as hell not trying to get his keys this time.
He was sick as hell. He told me from a
distance that he thought the deli style roasted beef had
given him food poisoning. I felt bad for old Frank,
but I kept my distance just in case what he
had was contagious. That evening, Frank was looking kind of puny,
but was sitting up outside sharing some hunting tails with
some of the other fellows around a small campfire. I
listened for a while, and I heard some sad tales
of close encounters and misses and getting lost and so on,
and discovered he had never killed a long beard. Against
my better judgment, I offered to go with him to
see if I could up his odds of at least
an encounter or two with my tube call. I explained
the whole camera deal and what I needed him to do,
and he perked up big time. The next morning, I
went to Frank's room just to make sure he was
good to go, and what I saw made my knees buckle.
His hat was on the bed, and there were two
knives with the blades crossed on the night stand. He
was putting his left boot on first, and there was
a cracked mirror in plain view in his shaving kit,
and he was singing before breakfast. Just one of those
things is enough to screw your hunt for the day.
But he was a virtual buffet of bad mojo. I
expected his head to spend around in puke pea soup
at any minute. I started grabbing hats and knives and
such and gave him a quick rundown on just what
I could see and how it could affect his hunt,
not to mention his day to day life. Well. Frank
was shocked but listened while I made a few more
adjustments in the room. Once I made him get his
boots on correctly and checked him for other land. Once
I made him get his boots on correctly and I
checked him for other land minds, we headed to the
woods and I told Frank to relax and just think
positive thoughts and we would have a good day of hunting.
Lord knows he was do one. Around ten am, after
some far off gobbles and a couple of sightings, we
had a gobbler responding and closing in fast. I had
Frank set up in front of me, gun ready and
still as a rock. The gobbler closed the distance, and
just as he appeared a little to our left, my
camera shut off. I knew it was a dead battery,
but I had just put a fresh one in before
we left camp. I thought about trying to reach into
my vest to grab a backup, but I had tried
this move the spring before on a hunt with my
youngest daughter and had screwed up the whole deal. I
told Frank to shoot, and he smacked the merry im
upside the head, and the celebration was on. I felt
worse about missing his reaction with the camera than I
did missing the kill shot. He was fired up. On
the ride back to camp, Frank quizmy on all the
superstitions I knew, and he took notes as though he
was going to be tested the next day. Now, looking back,
I think the mysterious dead battery was a result of
me touching too many bad things in Frank's room. I
moved the mirror, took the hat off the bed, and
uncrossed the knife blades. I am convinced some of his
bad mojo got on me. And just so you'll know,
whether you believe it or not, here are some things
to avoid in the future. The order is of my choosing,
beginning with the worst hat on the bed, black cat
crossing your path, crossed, now walking under a lighter anything
yellow spilled salt, singing an owl in the daylight, and
hearing a rooster crow at night, singing before breakfast, putting
your left boot on before the right, sitting on a table,
passing someone on a staircase, and last cleaning out a
fireplace and leaving no embers. Okay, thanks for listening to that.
Now we're going to get on with our regularly scheduled regularly.
Did I say that right? You know I live in Mississippi.
We it's hard to say words that are longer than
two syllables. I don't know why that is. I got.
I got an email the other day from a lady.
I'm gonna read that email to y'all. I want y'all
to see how nasty people can be when you put
yourself out there, like on the internet or in public view,
how filthy and nasty people can be. Let me find
this email all right here. It is here, It is here,
it is Okay. I got this email back on October
twenty seventh, just a few days ago. I want you
all to listen to this. Your idiocy and ignorance about
being a brother in Christ are bad enough, as are
your like of beer, motorcycles and pit bulldogs, all three
or garbage, and you're continuing to I won't say the
word if up. How words should be said in your
abuse of grammar are just as bad. Stop saying laying
when you should be saying lying, and further for farther
and there is there are theres at any time. I
don't even know what that means. I am really beginning
to wonder about your intelligence level. Any of people in
Mississippi are smart, so don't be so don't so don't
use being a Mississippian as an excuse to talk like
a dumbass. And bipedal is pronounced by pedal, not by pedal.
Ge damn it, get a brain, man, I'm sorry, excuse me.
I got this email, and I get these. I don't
get these often, but I bet I've gotten two or
three dozen of these through the years. Normally I just
delete them because there's something wrong with this person. I
don't what makes these people so angry, So I responded with,
I'm sorry that you think so poorly of me. I'm
just having fun. You certainly don't have to watch the videos.
I actually corrected some of her spelling in a first response,
because she spelled a couple of words incorrectly, which you know,
I thought would be a fine comeback. She responded with,
something is nasty anyway. I don't know. I don't normally
do this. I don't normally read these kind of emails,
but I do get them, not very often, but I'll
get a dozen a year. Let's let's say it that way.
I'll get a dozen of those a year. But I
am just having fun. I know I don't have good
command of the English language, and I have trouble pronouncing
some things because I'm just not used to pronouncing some things.
And bipedal is by pedal. I don't give a crap
what this lady says. Anybody you run into that says
that word will generally, ninety nine percent of the time
say by pedal. But if you like to say bipedal,
you say by pedal, everybody will know what you mean.
You know, she said, get a brain, man, I don't,
you don't. I don't know why these people are so angry.
I'm just having fun. I love these stories, and I
want you all to enjoy them. All right, I'm gonna
quit talking about that. I want to thank you for
listening to cuz Strickland's that chapter out of his book.
I want you to look up a fist full of Dirt,
and I want you to listen to their podcast. It
is a relaxing, good podcast. Couzin and Lauren are such
good storytellers, and I think you'd love it and all
the stories in this book that he wrote. I'm sure
if you go back through their podcast for years, you'll
hear these stories all over again, or you can buy
the book. All right, enough of that, appreciate y'all clicking
on the video. I've got five or six stories in
this one. That's gonna be a long podcast, and I
hope you all enjoy it. All Right, here we go.
This could be a bigfoot creature. I'm not sure, but
this is a great story. The writer says, Hello, Cam,
this story may interest you because I know how much
you love dogs. I've never seen a dog behave in
this manner before or since this incident. It happened in
the autumn of nineteen seventy one in East Texas and
the river bottom land of the Trinity River. My family
owns a ranch that raises cattle, but we used dogs
to help us round up and pen the herds. We
had at least three to six dogs specifically used for
that purpose, and one or two dogs for security on
the homestead, and throughout the years we've had the occasional
hunting dog too, And as you can guess, our family
well understands the behaviors and mannerisms of man's best friend.
My father was good friends with a man named mister Jim,
who has since passed away, and he was a gruff
wiry man who loved to raccoon hunt. He was getting
older and he needed someone to accompany him on the
hunts for safety reasons. This wasn't a blood sport, but
a side income and a love of hunting. He sold
the pelps to one and the meat to local families.
On many occasions, my dad took me and my sister
with them on the outings. It was our job to
kill the raccoons with a shot to the head so
as not to destroy the pelt. Once the dogs treed
the raccoons, their eyes shine from the flashlight would give
away their location in a tree. The kill was done
with a twenty two rifle with open sights and my
dad holding a flashlight behind us, illuminating the gun barrel
in the eyes of the raccoon. At the same time,
us girls were competitive and we would try to get
the kill shot in one attempt. We were pretty good
at it, being only eleven and nine years old at
that time. That night, mister Jim had brought his best dog, Bonnie,
instead of the usual two or three that he would
bring when we hunted. Bonnie had the traditional white, brown
and black markings of a treeing walker hound, which is
also known as a coon hound. We met mister Jim
I'm at the entrance of the private property, and we
drove into the pasture on a dirt road that hugged
along a thick stand of timber on the left. A
field spread out to the right about seventy yards wide
and met the border of thick timber. Again, this field
was long and narrow, the road continuing for about a
half a mile and ending at a barn and cattle pins.
We stopped and parked the vehicles approximately twenty yards from
the gate. We got our gear out and mister Jim
released Bonnie. She shot off like a bullet across the
pasture and disappeared into the woods. Occasionally we could hear
her sound off with some excited yelps. We waited quietly
in the dark, following her movements and listening for her
to stop and begin barking incessantly. This would be the
signal that she had treed a raccoon, and then we
would go find her. She was moving down the property
toward the barn, all the while staying in the woods,
and then everything got quiet. I remember waiting by our car,
looking at the dark woods where Bonnie entered the timber,
when a foreboding feeling came over me. And I had
never felt that before. I was always excited to go
raccoon hunting and never afraid of anything in the woods.
But as we stood there waiting in silence, I heard
a voice in my head say, we don't belong here.
I promptly dismissed it, thinking it was just a weird
thing to be feeling and thinking. Some time passed and
we still had not heard from Bonnie, and then suddenly,
in the darkness, we heard her running toward us. She
burst out of the woods and ran straight to mister
Jim's shaking and trying to get between the safety of
his legs. She almost tripped him as she tried to
cling onto him, looking up at him with these terrified eyes,
without making a sound. I couldn't tell if she was
warning him to hide or begging him to get out
of there. We were all shocked, and we stood there
staring at her until mister Jim abruptly called it a night.
We're done, he said, and with that we began to
load everything back into the trucks without argument. We all
knew something had traumatized that poor dog, but we didn't
know what. Could this night get any more weirder? Well,
it sure did. Mister Jim loaded Bonnie on the truck
and tied her up and said he wanted to go
to the barn to look at some equipment. My dad
followed behind him in our car, and when we pulled
up at the barn, he told us girls to stay
put and that they would be right back. When he
got out of the car and walked a few steps,
something came flying through the air and hit the car
in ten and next to him. It was so big
and loud that my dad ducked and covered his head.
What was that? He shouted. We sat there frozen. We
didn't see or hear anything. My father composed himself and
said it must have been a bat. Well, it must
have been the biggest bat in Texas because it almost
snapped the antenna off. Dad mister Jim walked onto the
barn and looked at some equipment that was illuminated by
the car headlights. As my sister and I waited quietly,
still disturb by the antenna incident. In Bonnie's behavior, that
foreboding feeling came over me, and once again I heard
the words we do not belong here in my head.
I was relieved when my dad got back in the car.
I didn't want to be there A minute longer. I
got the point though, because we did not belong there,
and she signs off. She put a name on this email.
It's Raccoon Annie. I don't suspect she didn't say whether
to use that name or not, So anyway, I thought
it was such a cool name. I thought I'd just
say it. But this is one of those stories where
someone has a bit of a premonition or a feeling,
or a sixth sense or a I guess that's all
the words I can think of to call it. But
then it's proven true by a dog that is probably
hunted for years and knows the woods and it's not
scared of anything, comes running out of the woods and
hides behind its owner. Usually you turn some raccoon dogs out, man,
they want to run all night long. You have to
you have to drag them out of the woods to
keep them to stop, to make them stop hunting. And
this dog just comes out of nowhere and then something
is thrown at them at the barn. I don't know
what that was. This was a great story. It's one
of those creepy, kind of subtle all the scary things
or things that you can't see but you know are there.
It was perfect, perfect story. Thank you Raccoon Annie for
sending this. I loved it. This is really not an
encounter story, I guess, but some strange experiences that I've had.
We lived in Florida and we bought a mobile home
and we put it on a rental piece of land.
A little while after we moved in, I started feeling
really creeped out. At one end of the trailer, there
were two bedrooms in a bathroom, and right outside the bathroom,
the carpet was always wet to me, but there were
no water leaks. And when I asked my husband if
he felt it too, he said, now it doesn't feel
wet to me. That certainly didn't make me feel any better.
I knew what I felt, and I knew it wasn't
just in my head. The carpet was wet, and something
strange was going on. But as it does, life goes on,
and I learned to live a new normal of seeing
the ghostly water leak and not letting it ruin my day.
A few years later, we pulled up the carpet to
put down wood flooring, and in that same spot, right
where I felt the water, it was black and wet,
and I pointed at it and I told my husband,
see it's right there. But to my dismay, that man
didn't see anything at all. It was the strangest thing.
Some time later, after that floor was finished, that black
spot bled through the wood floor. Each time I went
or looked down the hallway, I could see it, and
when I brought it up to my husband, he still
didn't know what I was talking about. As frustrated as
I was, I accepted that he didn't have whatever gift
that I had suddenly developed, and I let it go,
and again, as it does, life went on. Two years later,
our daughter had a baby girl, and when I took
her to the bedroom at the end of the hall,
the baby would cry right at that spot. If I
took her into the bedroom next to the spot, she
would fuss in there too. When our granddaughter was two
years old, she told her mom to tell the little
girl playing in her kitchen outside to even alone. My
daughter looked outside, trying to figure out who she was
talking about, but even though she saw no one, my
granddaughter insisted that there was someone there. Two days later,
I was home alone, just me and my cat. We
were in my bedroom with the door closed, when all
of a sudden, we heard running coming toward the bedroom.
A second later, something banged on the bedroom door. I
know my cat heard it too, but he tendsed up
and looked right at the door when it happened. I
remember looking at him and saying, yeah, buddy, I heard
it too. But unfortunately, we had experiences like that quite
a bit. Another strange thing that started to happen was
that I began to have a prophetic dream, as in
I would dream about something only for it to come
true in real life. And not long after, it started
to happen so frequently that if I had a dream.
We would all count the hours or days until it
came true. And after a while, all of this happening repeatedly.
I dreamt that my son was in an accident with
his truck, and the sheriff's officer was telling me that
he had died. Immediately the next day, I call my
son and I told him about it. He knew all
about my dreams coming true. And you better believe that
that boy couldn't get rid of his truck fast enough.
I have more experiences that I can share with you,
but i'll stop for now. I don't know if the
trailer we bought was haunted, but I sometimes wonder if
something dreadful happened there and the spirit hasn't found a
way out to let go yet. Or maybe I developed
a gift later in life and seeing this, spirits have
found their way to me, hoping someone will notice them
who can be sure. Thank you for reading our stories,
mine and the rest of your listeners. I can relate
to many of them, and with plenty of the bizarre
experiences under my belt, and I believe the world is
much stranger than many people realize. It's a curious thing
to sense things no one else can and to know
we are surrounded by things that we cannot see. But
even for those of us who have developed those involuntary gifts,
as it does, life goes on. Oh that's cool. I
mean that's scary. You know. I read these stories and
sometimes I think, I mean, I like the story and
I'm like, oh, that's a great story. But actually for
this woman it was a traumatic story or traumatic set
of events, especially dreaming that her son is going to die.
Obviously he didn't die, but he got rid of the
truck because apparently they thought the truck was the way,
was that specific vehicle was the vehicle he was going
to have an accident in, and they got rid of
the truck. I don't know what to think about a
lot of these things. I'll tell you this. I've had
a dreamer too in my life of a totally off
the wall traumatic event that one and I woke up.
I felt so horrible after dreaming. You know what happened,
And I swear to you those dreams came true. They
didn't happen to me, and it was not any well,
they did kind of happen to me, I guess, but
it's not worth going into. But I've had two two
of those dreams. And the first one I was in
my thirties and I dreamed this terrible, heartbreaking thing and
it eventually came true, probably if I remember right, within
like a year it came true, and I connected it
with the dream. How does that happen? I have no idea.
The other one was a little more subtle, it wasn't
quite as traumatic, but it's not happened since I'm sixty
two now, and they both I think they both happened
in my thirties or forties, and I haven't had anything
like that since, Thank goodness. I don't want to know.
I don't want to know what's coming. I don't know
about y'all. But unless it's good, you know, unless I'm gonna,
you know, land a really good, profitable job, or if
I'm gonna one of my kids is going to be
I don't know, you know, discover the cure for cancer
or whatever it is. I don't really want to know
if it's bad. It is a strange story. I've asked
for these stories. This woman sent me the story and
I read it. I've had it for a long time,
and I'm glad I got to put it out now,
so that was wonderful. Thank you, ma'am for sending it all. Right,
here's a Bigfoot story. My name is Renee, and you
can use my name if you'd like. I grew up
in the nineteen seventies in a very small place called Pelican, Louisiana,
at a time when you didn't have to lock your
windows or doors. My family and I lived way back
in the country. It was so far back that if
someone was coming to your house, you knew it because
there was only one way in and one way out.
One day, my mom got a message to call her uncle. Heck,
I never knew she had one because I'd never met him.
The next day, we were told to pack our stuff
because we were moving to Converse, Louisiana, about thirty miles
from where we lived. We were moving in with Uncle
Willy to take care of him. Uncle Willy was an
older man who wore overalls and dip snuffed, and he
smelled like an alcoholic. He would get drunk every night
and sit outside and sing and peel on himself before
going to bed and passing out. Oh my gosh. My
mom and dad, on the other hand, were respectable folks.
They loved to go fishing almost every day. It wasn't
until years later that I understood why there were nine
of us kids to feed and my dad was disabled
from his hands being frozen to the handlebars on a
motorcycle in Germany during World War II. One day, my
mother wanted to find a creek and go fishing. Uncle
Willy told her about a creek way back in the
woods with a good road leading to it, because they
had been drilling for oil down there. We loaded up
our dark green station wagon, the green Machine as we
called it. My older brothers drove our other vehicles, a
green van, and we took off. It was a beautiful
day and the sun was shining and the weather was warm,
and we drove ten to fifteen miles down dirt roads,
and by the time we got there we were all
dusted out. We made it down this sandy, dusty road
and got out and started down to the woods to
the creek Uncle Willy had told us about. There was
a tree lying across the creek and it had a
nice cool place for us younger ones to play away
from the water. I remember watching my dad and two
of my brothers crossed the fallen tree across the creek
when my dad suddenly put his hand in the air
and made everyone stop. Hold up, boys, you boys, don't move,
I heard him say. I remember the look on my
mother's face as a foul smell crept into the area.
What's that smell? She said, something's dead over here. Let's
find it and bury it. And all of a sudden,
my dad told my brothers to turn around and get
over the tree and get back on the other side
of the creek again, and he told the rest of
us to get in the car. Then I saw a
look on his face that I will never forget. My
dad may not have been a big man, but he
wasn't scared of anything. But right then that was the
first time I had ever seen him scared. We did
what he told us to do when we got back
in the car, and I remember what my dad told
my brothers when they got in the van. Don't stop
until you get out of here. I don't care what
you have to do. Go fast, he said, and then
quickly got into the green machine with the rest of us.
Buckle up, he said, And he never said that. Buckle up,
roll up the windows, and lock the doors. You can
believe that we did what Dad told us to do,
and then he looked at my mom and said, Katie,
floor it and do not stop. The whole time this
was happening, we could hear a growl and something yelling
from the creek, and when we got home, my dad
was shaken up. We were all sitting in the living
room wondering what it was that made him so scared.
He didn't tell us everything right then, but he did
tell us to look up every animal with five toes.
Years later, my dad finally told us what he saw.
When he and my brothers went across that tree to
the other side of the water, he saw huge barefoot
tracks and handprints, and while he and my brothers were
looking at them, he had a funny feeling that something
wasn't right. And when he looked up there, it was
the meanest, ugliest creature he had ever seen. It had
hair all over its body and big eyes and yellow teeth,
and it looked mad. And he said it was watching
us kids playing on the creek bank like we were
going to be at next meal. That's when Dad made
us get out of there. He said he didn't believe
in bigfoot until that day. If you have a guessed already.
That was the last time we went to the creek
bank again. And it was the last time my parents
took advice from Uncle Willy on where to go fishing.
Oh man, that is terrifying. That is a scary story.
And why would you take advice from uncle Willy? Anyway,
When he sits out on the porch and drink, gets
drunk and sings and peas on himself, that was a
funny part of the story. But that was man. Can
you imagine being a child. You don't see what your
dad has seen, but he's telling us. He's getting everybody together.
Get him in the car, get him down the road,
get him out of the woods. You knew these folks
had to know something was good. And it's great. The
dad told him the story later on in life. This
is really, really a good story. Thank you Renee for
sending this. Okay, here's a story. Let me move the
mic a little closer here. This is a story that's
really different than a lot of the stories I do,
but it is so good. I hope you all enjoy this.
I sure enjoyed reading this. The man writes, I am
writing to you because I believe people need to know
there is much more to this life than the eye meets.
My story is proof of that. In nineteen ninety five,
I was living in Rhode Island with my lovely wife
and our three year old son. My wife told me
about a new non denominational church called Word of Life
that was opening around the corner from us, and we
decided to check it out. One afternoon. We took a
walk over and we entered the nicely renovated lobby just
as a woman came out of the church office. She
and I looked at each other and we stopped. We
had in our tracks. It was a friend of mine
from art school named Annabelle, whom I had lost touch with.
It turned out that she and her husband were starting
the church, and her husband, Lance was the pastor. Well,
Lance and I became fast friends. In addition to the
Sunday service, Lance encouraged Tuesday night Bible studies and he
offered a Thursday night service as well. Word of Life
became our church home for several years. I grew in
my faith and I started leading a Bible study group
at a friend's house on Tuesday nights. A couple of
families and singles attended the Bible study. People brought their children,
who were all around the ages of three to five,
except for one. Matt was ten or eleven. He was
quiet and somewhat withdrawn. He's a good kid, just trying
to make sense of life. One night, instead of leading
the Bible study, I decided to sit and talk with him.
Maybe because I was an only child raised by a
single mother who often dragged me to boring events, I
guess I felt a connection with him. He lit up
when I asked him about his hobbies. He loved video
games and electronics. He liked taking things apart and tinkering
with stuff like broken radios. Later, when I shared the
conversation with his mom, she told me that he played
around with stuff but had never fixed a darn thing.
I told her that she might want to encourage him.
My mom let me draw as a kid, and it
was a hobby that turned into a successful career. On
the night of the encounter, I entered the church sanctuary
for a Thursday night service. Lance was big on media
even back then in nineteen ninety five, and he recorded
every service with two video cameras. One was close to
the platform on a tripod with a cameraman recording him
in the message, and the other camera was on a
tripod alcove at the back of the church to get
a long shot. Lo and behold, Little Matt from the
Bible Study was manning the rear camera, which made me smile.
I guess his mother must have taken the advice and
encouraged him. That night, one hundred people gathered near the
front to be close to the platform so they could
hear better. As we entered the church, my wife took
our son and sat with everyone filing in, while I
went to sit with Matt in the alcove. When the
church band wrapped up, Lance took the podium and Little
Matt sat to the left of the camera, beaming happily,
ready to pop in another cassette when needed. I sat
to the right of the camera and decided to stay there.
As Lance started his message that night, he was preaching
on demons in spiritual warfare and Smith Wigglesworth, the great
evangelist who was known for his great faith, courage, and
deliverance of people from demonic possession. As Lance spoke about
Wiggleworth's encounters with the supernatural and the demonic powers, Matt
and I were alone at the back of the church,
with the exception of an usher seated in front of
us across the aisle. Now, I'm not a person who
frightens easily. I once had a huge Doberman charge me
and run circles around me, jaws snapping, slinging, spit and
barking and snarling until the owner took a sweet time
to call them off. And while that was alarming, I
could see it coming, and I could prepare myself. I
can tell you there was no way to prepare for
the bizarre encounter that was about to happen there. Matt
and I were sitting quietly as Lance spoke, when a
sudden and terrifying sound erupted behind us in the alcove.
Within a second, an invisible beast let out two furious
and hateful roars. The first was like it was gathering
itself to launch, and the second was like it was
on full on attack mode. I will never forget the
spirit of the thing and the terrible sensation it projected.
It was pure hatred, rage, evil, and savagery all in one.
The sound was so loud and so real and so
powerful that Mitt and I dove out of our seats
and onto the floor to escape whatever it was that
was coming at us. I was sure it was going
to kill us, and as I hit the floor, I
threw my arm up to fend it off, knowing its
teeth and claws were coming and I was about to
be mauled. I even remember thinking, say goodbye to your arm.
When nothing tore into me. I hisstantly looked up, fully
expecting to see some monstrous beast, but there was nothing there,
and I lay there staring up at the blank wall,
my arm in the air, my heart racing and my
mind reeling. I looked over to see little Matt mirroring
my position, staring at the back wall with his arm
up in the error protectively too. Did you hear that?
I whispered. He looked at me like it was the
dumbest question he had ever heard. Yes, he gasped, His
eyes were bulging. We sat up cautiously and looked around
for some sign of this invisible, hateful beast when I
noticed the usher scowling at us with the what the
hell are you two doing? Look on his face. Apparently
no one else heard it but me and Matt. As
Lance continued the service, uninterrupted. We got back to our
seats and awkwardly tried to compose ourselves. It wasn't only
alarming because of the sound and the sensation it gave off,
but also because it didn't make any sense where it
came from. It would have had to come through the
wall or manifest in a few inches of space right
behind us. I saw the construction of that area, and
there weren't any hidden doors or windows or vents or
openings or something to sneak in. It was just the
back of the alcove. I was impressed when later on
Little Matt had the presence of mind to replace the
tape when it ran out and the service ended, and
I rushed to tell Lance what had happened. My wife
and Annabelle listened as I tried to explain, and I
could see they were all totally taken off guard and
didn't know what to say. So I told Lance the
camera was right there and it was running, and I'm
sure it recorded the noise. He said, Unfortunately, the audio
was off on that camera, but if it was loud enough,
the mic on the camera up front may have picked
it up. Sure enough, A couple of days later, Lance
called me into his office. He had found the spot
on the video where you could clearly hear the faint
but distinct double roar in the background. He was amazed,
and I was relief someone else heard it too, so
I didn't feel like a raving lunatic. This experience was
so intense that afterward whatever doubt I had in my
mind about the existence of God and the angelic realm
was totally dispelled. I'm convinced it was some sort of
demonic manifestation, perhaps somehow provoked by Lance's message that night.
It is by far the most bizarre thing that has
ever happened to me, And as I said, I will
never forget it. Thanks Cam and keep up the good work.
And he signs off. That's like the second story of
some people seeing and hearing things and other people not.
I just picked these stories at random. I don't pick
them because they have a specific theme unless I'm trying
to do one with a specific theme. I just picked
these at random and put them out there. And there's
two stories in a row of people dealing with what
they think could be some kind of paranormal or demonic thing.
I'll tell you something about this writer, though I'm a
read you note that he wrote. He says, and I
appreciate him writing this. It says you are such an
inspiration to me that I started my own little podcast.
It's called The Brave Traveler Podcast. It's basically me reading
a book I wrote years ago entitled Majesty, about two
kids who go off in search of the White Horse
of Revelation. Check it out when you get the chance.
The Brave Traveler Podcast, Majesty Marathon. I'm going to find
that and put a link in the description below so
you guys can go check his podcast out. I assume
it's on YouTube. Yeah, it's on YouTube, and you guys
can listen to it. I got this story a long
time ago. Here's the thing with these stories. There was
a point in time, back in twenty to twenty twenty two,
a two year period where I was getting ten or
fifteen stories, oh more than that, twenty or thirty stories
from viewers a week. Now I'm not getting I might
get three or four a week. It's really gone down
in volume. I still have all these stories in my
inbox to pull up and read to you, and that's
what I'm doing. But so his YouTube channel might be
a couple of years old, so he might be interested
to hear from you in the comments section and telling
him that you heard his story on the Dixon on
the Dixie Crypti Channel and that's why you came over.
Otherwise you wouldn't have known about it. Anyway. This was
a great story. I appreciate the writer sending it. Man,
it's really kind of weird, kind of a weird story
that happened in a church. I'm gonna have to think
about this one. This is really interesting. Okay, thanks to
the writer. Let's go to another one. I've been listening
to your stories for a long time, and I've heard
you say many times about being a skeptic of the
existence of these entities. I'm actually glad this is the case.
I was a skeptical person myself for a long time,
and I always enjoyed listening to the stories. And that
was that until one night six years ago. I had
purchased three acres of land outside of Atlanta in a
rural community. It was surrounded by thousands of acres of
farms and forested areas. There were natural creeks and other
waterways nearby, and it was full of deer and coyotes
and bobcats and rabbits. I'd been pretty busy clearing the
land and cutting down trees and burning the brush and
left over debris. This was kind of a nightly routine.
I would grab a cold beer and chair and throw
a bit of diesel fuel on the pile and light
it up, and I would sit there and just enjoy
the end of the day with a nice fire and
think about what I would do the next day. It
went on like this for a while until the night
I heard something on the other side of my fire.
I couldn't see anything, so I grabbed a flashlight, lit
up the area, and I caught some ice on the
other side of another brush pile I had not burned yet.
I threw a rock at the pile in the hopes
of scaring off whatever it was, But to my surprise,
whatever it was just stayed there. This spoke to me
a little, and I figured it was better to call
it an early night. This happened a few more times,
to the conclusion of no surprise or excitement. It just
left me with questions about what it was and why
it wouldn't go away, even after I tossed rocks at it.
I had a lot to do on the land still,
and not too much time to spend thinking about that,
so I just let it go. At the end of
the summer, I needed to get my garage and closed
in preparation for the coming winter, and I was working
late hanging plywood and making all kinds of racket hammering
and nailing it all down. I was up on the
ladder doing my thing, just banging away at these nails,
when all of a sudden, I heard a tree hit
the ground behind me with a crash. I stopped for
a second, and I knew it had not been raining
or windy, and that this was a strange and random
thing to happen. But I went back to work on
those nails, pounding them down flush, and I continued working
for another half an hour, and then bam and a
crash and another tree came down in the same area.
Now that got my attention. As my skin filled up
with goosebumps, I got off that ladder and wrapped it
up for the night. I knew something strange was going on,
but I had no idea what it could be. I
had always thrown out a coffee can or so of
apple scent in corn to bring in the deer. They
would usually move in just before dark, and I enjoyed
watching them. Their visits became predictable to the point of
several times a week. Early one morning, I took a
visit to the Port of John when it was still
dark out. I headed down the driveway and just as
I got close to the door, I heard a short
and deep growl. Well this caught me so off guard
that it shook my entire stomach area and brought me
to a standstill in midstep. The hair went up on
my neck and a cold chill ran down my spine.
I just stood there, frozen in place, thinking what the
f was this? When nothing attacked me, I continued onto
the toilet, I did my business, and made a beeline
back inside afterward. Two days later, early Saturday morning, I
couldn't sleep, so I stepped outside to have a cigarette,
and while I was sitting there, I heard some noises
coming from the far side of my garage. So I
grabbed a flashlight and lit up the area, and I
saw some deer backed up to my fence line. They
were acting nervous and excited. Their heads were moving left
to right, and their ears were moving this way and that.
So I moved the light around and caught some eyeshine
on the far side of them, and I decided to
get a better look at what it could be. I
moved around to the front of the garage and started
panning the light around. The deer were still there, acting
the same, and I couldn't figure out why they didn't
just run off. As I moved the light, I noticed
more eyes shine next to a large pine tree. This
time it was just a single lie, but as I
started at it, that thing moved its head until both
eyes stared right at me in the light. The worst
sinking feeling I ever felt filled my stomach, and I
realized that not only had I gotten in the way
of these things hunting the deer, but now its attention
was on me. I made a straight shot back inside,
and I locked the door, and I grabbed my handgun,
and I made sure my shotgun was close too. I
don't know if I slept the rest of the night
or not, and the next morning, still nervous as I
could be, I went out looking around for footprints or
whatever I could find. I did find a track, but
strangely only one. A short time later, I moved to Atlanta.
I was a wreck for a long time after that experience.
I guess that would be the PTSD that they talk about. Well,
now time has passed and I've come to terms with it.
If it wanted me, there wasn't much I could have
done to stop it. So when you have an encounter,
your view of the world changes and you begin to
question everything you thought you knew. Your head is always
on a pivot looking around, and you never relax again.
My hope to those listening is that you don't ever
have an encounter of your own. No matter how interesting
some of these encounter stories may seem, it will unwind
your view of reality and life won't ever be the
same in the worst possible way. Well, that is true,
you know. I think PTSD is at certain levels with
certain you know, with different people. I would say this
would bother me a little bit. We live out in
the country and it's really dark. I could have had
some you know, these street lights put up on a
couple of polls around. I think it's like seven dollars
a month to rent those from the utility company. But
I kind of like it dark out here. I wear
a head lamp everywhere I go when I'm out at
night to lock the birds up, or I don't know,
go find a dog or whatever, and I never see anything,
never hear anything. It's always quiet, the stars are pretty.
But I guess if these things are in your neighborhood
or in your area, you could be in for some trouble.
But I'll say this, I read a lot of these
bigfoot type stories, and it's very rare that anyone gets
attacked or even hurt. I mean, we have had stories
where they the video I put up last week, the
bigfoot was break trying to break in two people's houses.
I mean, that would be terrifying, slapping on the pushing
trees over on the house. But they never actually I
guess if bigfoot are as smart and as strong and
as stealthy as people make them out to be, which
I don't doubt, why wouldn't they just come in and
grab people out of the house and drag them out
in the woods and kill them and eat them or
whatever they do with people. I don't know. It's pretty
rare that people get injured by these mythical creatures. Matter
of fact, I don't remember. I think I remember one
where a guy was killed. He was writing a story
about his grandfather, but he didn't see it happen. He's
just assuming it was a bigfoot. I don't know. The
guy could have fell out of a tree stand, but
I'm not doubting the story. I'm just saying there's always
other explanations. But this story kind of creeped me out,
kind of made kind of gave me goosebumps. It was
kind of creepy. That's why I like these stories are scary.
Thank you to the writer for sending it. It was awesome. Okay,
thank you all for following along all the way to
the end of the podcast. I really appreciate that, and
we will see you on the next one. Thank you.