WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.759 For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace. 2 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:10.279 Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world 3 00:00:10.359 --> 00:00:14.160 refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they 4 00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:18.679 know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we 5 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:22.839 share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot, 6 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.239 dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.280 it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because 8 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:34.640 once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the 9 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.920 woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and 10 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.840 remember some things in the woods don't want to be found. 11 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:46.240 Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, 12 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.399 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 13 00:01:02.920 --> 00:01:05.920 The Backwoods Cryptid road trip is taking a short break. 14 00:01:06.480 --> 00:01:09.640 Don't worry. The road trip isn't over, not even close. 15 00:01:10.280 --> 00:01:12.400 We've still got plenty of states left on the map 16 00:01:12.439 --> 00:01:14.959 and plenty of monsters waiting in them, and we'll be 17 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:17.760 back on the highway soon enough. But every once in 18 00:01:17.840 --> 00:01:20.239 a while, a story comes along that doesn't fit neatly 19 00:01:20.280 --> 00:01:22.640 into the route, and it pulls at you until you 20 00:01:22.719 --> 00:01:26.120 finally give in and tell it this is one of 21 00:01:26.120 --> 00:01:29.840 those stories. Tonight, we're heading deeper into the wilderness than 22 00:01:29.879 --> 00:01:33.439 this show has ever gone, up into the North Main Woods, 23 00:01:33.879 --> 00:01:36.959 to a chain of black lakes and unbroken timber, where 24 00:01:37.000 --> 00:01:40.640 the roads quit and the floatplanes take over, and the 25 00:01:40.680 --> 00:01:43.120 thing waiting out there isn't leaving tracks in a creek 26 00:01:43.200 --> 00:01:46.400 bed or screaming from a ridgeline. It doesn't walk the 27 00:01:46.400 --> 00:01:49.239 woods at all. It comes down out of the sky. 28 00:01:50.239 --> 00:01:53.760 In August of nineteen seventy six, four young men paddled 29 00:01:53.799 --> 00:01:57.120 into the Alligash Wilderness Waterway for two weeks of fishing. 30 00:01:57.760 --> 00:02:00.239 What found them on Eagle Lake one night, and what 31 00:02:00.319 --> 00:02:02.719 they say happened inside a beam of light while their 32 00:02:02.719 --> 00:02:06.120 bonfire burned down to coals on the shore became one 33 00:02:06.159 --> 00:02:09.120 of the most famous and most fiercely argued cases in 34 00:02:09.159 --> 00:02:14.319 American history. Four witnesses, one story, and fifty years later, 35 00:02:14.759 --> 00:02:18.879 no explanation that holds so settle in because we're leaving 36 00:02:18.919 --> 00:02:23.560 the pavement behind either way, same deep woods, same dark, 37 00:02:24.199 --> 00:02:27.039 just a different kind of visitor. This is the story 38 00:02:27.080 --> 00:02:30.400 of the Aligaish abductions. The fire was the whole plan. 39 00:02:31.039 --> 00:02:33.479 Four young guys on the edge of a wilderness lake 40 00:02:33.520 --> 00:02:36.280 in northern Maine about to paddle out into the kind 41 00:02:36.280 --> 00:02:38.919 of darkness that erases the line between the water and 42 00:02:38.960 --> 00:02:42.439 the sky, and their entire safety net was a bonfire. 43 00:02:43.080 --> 00:02:45.479 They dragged heavy logs into a pile on the bank 44 00:02:45.560 --> 00:02:48.840 at a spot called smith Brook, stacked it tall and 45 00:02:48.919 --> 00:02:52.039 lit it up. Chuck Rack figured the flame stood about 46 00:02:52.039 --> 00:02:55.120 ten feet high. Jim Winer set a fire like that 47 00:02:55.159 --> 00:02:57.520 would burn for a good two or three hours, and 48 00:02:57.560 --> 00:02:58.319 that was the point. 49 00:02:58.719 --> 00:02:59.479 It was a beacon. 50 00:03:00.159 --> 00:03:02.360 They'd catch some trout in the dark and then follow 51 00:03:02.439 --> 00:03:05.280 the glow home. They pushed the canoe out onto Eagle 52 00:03:05.360 --> 00:03:08.840 Lake a little after nightfall on August twenty sixth, nineteen 53 00:03:08.919 --> 00:03:12.360 seventy six. When they came back to shore, the fire 54 00:03:12.479 --> 00:03:17.680 was gone, not burning low, gone a bed of collapsed coals, 55 00:03:18.240 --> 00:03:20.280 the kind of thing you'd expect to find at dawn 56 00:03:20.360 --> 00:03:22.919 after a long night. And every one of those four 57 00:03:22.960 --> 00:03:25.199 men would have sworn on anything you put in front 58 00:03:25.199 --> 00:03:27.319 of them that they'd been on the water for maybe 59 00:03:27.360 --> 00:03:30.840 fifteen or twenty minutes. Somewhere in the gap between a 60 00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:34.120 roaring bonfire and a pile of embers, something happened to 61 00:03:34.199 --> 00:03:38.680 Jim Winer, his twin brother, Jack Charlie Foltz and Chuck Rack. 62 00:03:39.599 --> 00:03:42.039 It would take twelve years before any of them worked 63 00:03:42.080 --> 00:03:44.360 up the nerve to go looking for it, and what 64 00:03:44.439 --> 00:03:47.360 they say they found under hypnosis in a quiet office 65 00:03:47.400 --> 00:03:50.960 in Massachusetts turned into one of the most famous abduction 66 00:03:51.039 --> 00:03:56.280 accounts in American history. Four witnesses, separate sessions, and the 67 00:03:56.319 --> 00:03:59.280 same story coming out of all of them. At least, 68 00:03:59.639 --> 00:04:02.800 that's how what stood for twenty years. Then one of 69 00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:04.840 the four picked up a phone in a motel room 70 00:04:04.879 --> 00:04:07.520 in Missouri and tore the whole thing down the middle, 71 00:04:08.039 --> 00:04:11.280 and the Allagash case became something even stranger than an 72 00:04:11.280 --> 00:04:15.360 abduction story. It became a story about memory and money 73 00:04:15.919 --> 00:04:18.920 and what happens to four friendships when they get chained 74 00:04:18.959 --> 00:04:21.399 to the strangest night of their lives and can never 75 00:04:21.439 --> 00:04:24.279 put it down. So let's take it from the beginning 76 00:04:24.759 --> 00:04:29.160 Boston summer of nineteen seventy six. The country was hip 77 00:04:29.240 --> 00:04:33.160 deep in its bicentennial tall ships in the harbor, flags 78 00:04:33.160 --> 00:04:36.839 on every porch, Gerald Ford in the White House, and 79 00:04:36.879 --> 00:04:39.560 in the city's art scene. Four young men in their 80 00:04:39.560 --> 00:04:41.959 early twenties were finishing up or just coming out of 81 00:04:41.959 --> 00:04:46.199 the Massachusetts College of Art Painters and sculptors, guys who 82 00:04:46.279 --> 00:04:48.720 worked with their eyes for a living, which ends up 83 00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:51.439 mattering more to this story than almost anything. 84 00:04:51.040 --> 00:04:51.839 Else about them. 85 00:04:52.439 --> 00:04:55.720 Jim and Jack Winer were identical twins, and anybody who 86 00:04:55.800 --> 00:04:59.199 spent time around identical twins knows the shorthand They run 87 00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:03.040 on the half sentences, the arguments that start in the middle, 88 00:05:03.079 --> 00:05:06.680 because both parties already know the first half. The Winers 89 00:05:06.680 --> 00:05:09.920 had all of that. They'd also had growing up, a 90 00:05:09.959 --> 00:05:13.319 shared streak of odd experiences that neither one talked about much, 91 00:05:13.879 --> 00:05:16.639 the kind of stuff that gets filed under weird childhood 92 00:05:16.639 --> 00:05:19.959 things and left alone. Ray Fowler would go digging through 93 00:05:20.000 --> 00:05:23.120 all of it years later in seventy six. It was 94 00:05:23.240 --> 00:05:26.959 just background noise. Charlie Foltz was the steady one, a 95 00:05:27.040 --> 00:05:29.800 Navy veteran with older energy even when he wasn't the 96 00:05:29.839 --> 00:05:32.519 oldest guy in the room, the friend who checks the 97 00:05:32.560 --> 00:05:34.800 gear list twice and knows which knights hold. 98 00:05:35.399 --> 00:05:37.720 And Chuck Rack was the wild card. 99 00:05:38.160 --> 00:05:42.160 Opinionated, a little abrasive by his own admission, a painter 100 00:05:42.319 --> 00:05:46.800 with strong ideas about everything. Four personalities that didn't always 101 00:05:46.839 --> 00:05:50.120 sand smooth against each other, And honestly, that's part of 102 00:05:50.160 --> 00:05:52.439 what made them believable to me from the first time 103 00:05:52.439 --> 00:05:55.720 I read up on this case. Vacation groups that get 104 00:05:55.759 --> 00:05:59.959 along perfectly exist mostly in commercials. The plan was simple enough. 105 00:06:00.920 --> 00:06:04.519 Two weeks in the Alligash Wilderness Waterway, that great chain 106 00:06:04.560 --> 00:06:10.639 of lakes and river running up through the North main Woods. Canoes, tents, rods, coolers, 107 00:06:11.240 --> 00:06:15.439 no phones, obviously, and no radios because this was nineteen 108 00:06:15.519 --> 00:06:18.519 seventy six, and when you went into the Alligash back then, 109 00:06:19.079 --> 00:06:22.360 you were gone. The nearest real town was a long, 110 00:06:22.519 --> 00:06:26.079 rough haul away, and everything between you and it was water, 111 00:06:26.480 --> 00:06:30.680 timber and black flies. They left Boston on Friday, August 112 00:06:30.720 --> 00:06:34.399 twentieth and drove north through New Hampshire and up into Maine, 113 00:06:34.439 --> 00:06:37.040 into that country where the towns get smaller and farther 114 00:06:37.160 --> 00:06:40.279 apart until they quit all together and the logging roads 115 00:06:40.360 --> 00:06:43.920 take over. At the staging point, they hired a pontoon plane, 116 00:06:44.279 --> 00:06:46.920 one of those workhorse float planes that stitched the North 117 00:06:46.959 --> 00:06:50.360 Woods together, loaded up their canoes and gear, and flew 118 00:06:50.360 --> 00:06:52.800 into Telos Lake at the southern end of the waterway. 119 00:06:53.279 --> 00:06:55.879 From the passenger seat of a plane like that, it's 120 00:06:55.920 --> 00:06:59.319 green to every horizon, with lakes scattered through the timber 121 00:06:59.399 --> 00:07:02.160 like broken glass, and not a road worth the name 122 00:07:02.279 --> 00:07:03.160 anywhere below you. 123 00:07:04.040 --> 00:07:05.079 The pilot sets. 124 00:07:04.800 --> 00:07:07.519 You down on the water, helps you unload onto the shore, 125 00:07:07.959 --> 00:07:11.040 and then climbs back out, and the engine noise fades 126 00:07:11.079 --> 00:07:14.079 and dies, and what's left behind is a silence that 127 00:07:14.120 --> 00:07:17.959 people from cities genuinely don't believe until they've stood in it. 128 00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:22.160 That's where these four men were, and that's the stage. 129 00:07:22.199 --> 00:07:24.800 The first several days were exactly what they'd paid for. 130 00:07:25.399 --> 00:07:28.519 They worked their way north through the waterway, paddling by 131 00:07:28.600 --> 00:07:31.279 day and camping on the shores at night. And anybody 132 00:07:31.319 --> 00:07:34.360 who's done a multi day canoe trip knows the rhythm. 133 00:07:34.560 --> 00:07:36.759 Your shoulders ache for the first two days and then 134 00:07:36.839 --> 00:07:40.040 quick complaining, your hands pick up the smell of fish 135 00:07:40.079 --> 00:07:43.120 and wood smoke and never quite lose it. The group 136 00:07:43.160 --> 00:07:46.399 settles into jobs without ever discussing them, because one guy 137 00:07:46.480 --> 00:07:49.800 always ends up on fire duty, one guy cooks, and 138 00:07:49.839 --> 00:07:52.639 one guy appoints himself in charge of picking camp sites 139 00:07:52.839 --> 00:07:56.639 and defending his choices. They were also paddling through country 140 00:07:56.680 --> 00:07:59.120 with a long memory, though I doubt any of them 141 00:07:59.199 --> 00:08:02.279 was thinking about it at the time. Henry David Threau 142 00:08:02.399 --> 00:08:05.120 came through these same woods in eighteen fifty seven with 143 00:08:05.199 --> 00:08:09.279 a Panobscot guide named Joe Pollas crossing the infamous mud 144 00:08:09.319 --> 00:08:12.600 pond carry into the Chamberlain Lake country, and the account 145 00:08:12.600 --> 00:08:16.240 he left behind describes a wilderness that genuinely rattled him, 146 00:08:16.439 --> 00:08:19.040 which is saying something for the patron saint of American 147 00:08:19.120 --> 00:08:22.279 nature riding. The lumbermen came after him, and for the 148 00:08:22.279 --> 00:08:24.720 better part of a century, the Alligash was a working 149 00:08:24.759 --> 00:08:28.319 forest that got driven hard. There was a steam tramway 150 00:08:28.399 --> 00:08:32.639 hauling logs between the watersheds, and when the timber economy shifted, 151 00:08:32.919 --> 00:08:36.799 the machinery just got walked away from boilers left standing 152 00:08:36.799 --> 00:08:40.919 in the trees, cables sinking into the moss, not far 153 00:08:40.960 --> 00:08:43.960 from where our four men would eventually camp. Two full 154 00:08:44.000 --> 00:08:47.320 sized steam locomotives still sit rusting in the woods near 155 00:08:47.360 --> 00:08:50.039 Eagle Lake, hauled in over the winter ice back in 156 00:08:50.080 --> 00:08:53.480 the nineteen twenties to pull pulp wood, and abandoned in 157 00:08:53.519 --> 00:08:55.960 the early thirties because there was no longer any way 158 00:08:56.000 --> 00:08:59.240 to get them out. The wilderness took its railroad back 159 00:08:59.519 --> 00:09:02.639 the way it takes everything back, and by nineteen sixty 160 00:09:02.679 --> 00:09:05.279 six the state had drawn a protective line around the 161 00:09:05.320 --> 00:09:09.960 whole corridor and named it the Aligish Wilderness Waterway. No development, 162 00:09:10.279 --> 00:09:13.840 no lights, close to one hundred miles of dark. The 163 00:09:13.879 --> 00:09:16.399 fishing on the trip was hit and miss, which is 164 00:09:16.440 --> 00:09:18.840 normal for late August, when the hot days pushed the 165 00:09:18.879 --> 00:09:21.840 trout down deep. So the men started thinking the way 166 00:09:21.840 --> 00:09:25.679 fishermen think about going out after dark instead, when the 167 00:09:25.679 --> 00:09:27.960 fish come up and the bugs die down, and the 168 00:09:28.039 --> 00:09:31.480 lake belongs to whoever's on it, and the Aligish at 169 00:09:31.559 --> 00:09:34.879 night is its own subject. There's no ambient light. 170 00:09:34.720 --> 00:09:36.679 Out there, none, And. 171 00:09:36.679 --> 00:09:39.200 On a clear, moonless night, the Milky Way comes down 172 00:09:39.320 --> 00:09:42.159 so hard and close that first timers have been known 173 00:09:42.200 --> 00:09:45.039 to get uneasy about it, like the sky is standing 174 00:09:45.080 --> 00:09:48.919 too near. Sound carries for miles across the water, so 175 00:09:49.039 --> 00:09:51.120 a loon calling from the far end of a lake 176 00:09:51.399 --> 00:09:53.240 sounds like it's sitting in the canoe with you. 177 00:09:53.919 --> 00:09:55.399 It's beautiful, and it. 178 00:09:55.399 --> 00:09:58.879 Also strips away every comfortable illusion you carry around about 179 00:09:58.919 --> 00:10:02.120 being at the top of the food chain. Out there 180 00:10:02.159 --> 00:10:05.679 after dark, you're small, and the dark doesn't care about 181 00:10:05.679 --> 00:10:08.799 you one way or the other. Two nights before the 182 00:10:08.840 --> 00:10:11.919 main event camped along Chamberlain Lake, they got their first 183 00:10:11.960 --> 00:10:14.960 look at it a light, bright and round, hanging in 184 00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:18.000 the night sky where no light had any business being. 185 00:10:18.879 --> 00:10:22.720 It wasn't running an aircraft pattern, no red and green wingtips, 186 00:10:23.120 --> 00:10:27.080 no strobe, and no engine sound crossing the water, just 187 00:10:27.159 --> 00:10:29.559 a luminous something that held there long enough for the 188 00:10:29.600 --> 00:10:32.519 men to stand and stare at it, roughly half a 189 00:10:32.559 --> 00:10:35.480 minute by their later estimates. And then it was gone. 190 00:10:36.159 --> 00:10:39.240 Not gone like it flew away, gone like somebody threw 191 00:10:39.279 --> 00:10:42.399 a switch. They kicked it around for a few minutes, 192 00:10:42.759 --> 00:10:47.360 tossed out the usual candidates, a satellite, something military, some 193 00:10:47.559 --> 00:10:51.120 atmospheric oddity none of them could name, and when nothing stuck, 194 00:10:51.399 --> 00:10:52.159 they went to bed. 195 00:10:53.200 --> 00:10:54.159 That was the whole event. 196 00:10:54.919 --> 00:10:57.879 Four guys saw a strange light, shrugged at each other 197 00:10:57.919 --> 00:10:59.919 and went to sleep, and nobody. 198 00:10:59.519 --> 00:11:01.120 Lost a mint of rest over it. 199 00:11:02.039 --> 00:11:05.480 They kept paddling north, and on Thursday, August twenty sixth 200 00:11:05.600 --> 00:11:08.039 they reached Eagle Lake and put their camp at Smith Brook. 201 00:11:08.799 --> 00:11:11.840 Eagle Lake is big water by canoe standards, and the 202 00:11:11.879 --> 00:11:15.039 locals sometimes call it Big Eagle to keep it separate 203 00:11:15.240 --> 00:11:17.759 from the other Eagle Lake up in a Roostook County, 204 00:11:18.600 --> 00:11:22.559 miles of open surface ringed by unbroken forest, with the 205 00:11:22.679 --> 00:11:25.919 drowned history of the logging days scattered around its edges, 206 00:11:25.960 --> 00:11:29.279 and those two dead locomotives sitting in the trees like 207 00:11:29.320 --> 00:11:32.159 the set of a dream. It's the kind of place 208 00:11:32.159 --> 00:11:35.480 where things get left behind and swallowed. And I don't 209 00:11:35.480 --> 00:11:38.519 think I'm reaching when I say the lake earned this story. 210 00:11:39.360 --> 00:11:42.320 The daytime fishing on the twenty sixth was poor, so 211 00:11:42.399 --> 00:11:44.600 that evening they made the call that put them in 212 00:11:44.639 --> 00:11:48.159 the history books. Night fishing and a bonfire on the 213 00:11:48.159 --> 00:11:49.279 beach to guide them home. 214 00:11:50.039 --> 00:11:50.559 They built the. 215 00:11:50.559 --> 00:11:53.240 Fire at dusk, and it wasn't a cook fire, it 216 00:11:53.279 --> 00:11:57.000 was a navigation aid. Once full dark came down, the 217 00:11:57.039 --> 00:12:00.000 shoreline of Eagle Lake would turn into a single, unbroken 218 00:12:00.240 --> 00:12:03.440 wall of black, where every cove looks like every other cove, 219 00:12:03.759 --> 00:12:06.240 and without a fixed light, four men in a canoe 220 00:12:06.240 --> 00:12:09.120 could paddle right past their own camp fifty feet out 221 00:12:09.399 --> 00:12:12.480 and never know it. So they hauled big pieces of 222 00:12:12.519 --> 00:12:15.639 wood for this thing, heavy logs banked to burn for 223 00:12:15.799 --> 00:12:19.559 hours ten feet of flame by rax estimate, And when 224 00:12:19.600 --> 00:12:22.080 it was roaring, they climbed into the canoe and pushed 225 00:12:22.120 --> 00:12:25.519 off into the dark to find some trout. It was 226 00:12:25.559 --> 00:12:28.240 a good night to be out there. The canoe rode 227 00:12:28.279 --> 00:12:31.559 low with four grown men aboard, rocking gently while the 228 00:12:31.600 --> 00:12:34.879 reels clicked and the lures plopped somewhere out in the black. 229 00:12:35.840 --> 00:12:39.039 The stars ran bank to bank overhead and reflected right 230 00:12:39.080 --> 00:12:41.960 back up off the still water, so the canoe seemed 231 00:12:41.960 --> 00:12:43.799 to float in the middle of a sphere of them, 232 00:12:44.240 --> 00:12:46.480 and behind the men on the beach, the fire snapped 233 00:12:46.480 --> 00:12:50.519 away their one warm anchor to the world. They were 234 00:12:50.519 --> 00:12:54.840 twenty two, twenty three years old, strong, a little sunburned, 235 00:12:55.279 --> 00:12:58.320 a week of wilderness already behind them, and there wasn't 236 00:12:58.320 --> 00:13:00.879 one reason on earth to think this was different from 237 00:13:00.919 --> 00:13:04.440 the last five. Chuck Rack felt it before he saw it. 238 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:07.559 That's his account, and it's a piece of the story 239 00:13:07.720 --> 00:13:11.120 he never backed away from, even decades later, when he 240 00:13:11.159 --> 00:13:14.240 walked away from everything else. He was sitting in the 241 00:13:14.279 --> 00:13:17.000 stern when he got the feeling of being watched, that 242 00:13:17.120 --> 00:13:19.519 pressure on the back of the neck that every hunter knows, 243 00:13:19.840 --> 00:13:22.559 and everybody who's ever crossed a dark parking lot alone 244 00:13:22.639 --> 00:13:26.639 knows too. It's the oldest alarm system we own, and 245 00:13:26.679 --> 00:13:31.279 it predates language. Rack turned around, rising over the tree 246 00:13:31.320 --> 00:13:34.039 line behind them, out where nothing but forest ran for 247 00:13:34.200 --> 00:13:38.080 miles was a sphere of light, a big one. The 248 00:13:38.120 --> 00:13:41.240 men would later put its size at around eighty feet across, 249 00:13:41.679 --> 00:13:44.159 which is a four story building turned on its side, 250 00:13:44.679 --> 00:13:47.480 and it made no sound at all, and its surface 251 00:13:47.480 --> 00:13:50.080 didn't behave like anything with a bulb and a housing. 252 00:13:50.960 --> 00:13:54.759 They described colors moving on it, liquid and slow, like 253 00:13:54.799 --> 00:13:57.519 the whole thing was wrapped in glowing gas that swirled 254 00:13:57.519 --> 00:14:01.080 and shifted while they watched red flowing into green, flowing 255 00:14:01.120 --> 00:14:05.080 into yellow, never still. The other three turned and the 256 00:14:05.080 --> 00:14:07.399 fishing stopped. For a moment. 257 00:14:07.440 --> 00:14:08.559 It was pure spectacle. 258 00:14:08.960 --> 00:14:11.600 Four artists in a canoe staring at something none of 259 00:14:11.600 --> 00:14:14.879 their training could sort into a category. It just hung 260 00:14:14.919 --> 00:14:18.360 there over the trees, silent and immense and alive with 261 00:14:18.480 --> 00:14:21.480 moving color. And Jim Winer said later that his mind 262 00:14:21.559 --> 00:14:25.840 kept reaching for explanations and coming back with nothing. It 263 00:14:25.879 --> 00:14:29.159 wasn't a helicopter because helicopters are the loudest things in 264 00:14:29.159 --> 00:14:33.200 a quiet wilderness. It wasn't a plane because planes cross 265 00:14:33.279 --> 00:14:36.399 the sky, they don't perch on it. It wasn't a 266 00:14:36.399 --> 00:14:40.120 flare or a balloon or the moon behind haze. The 267 00:14:40.200 --> 00:14:43.480 catalog just ran out. Then Charlie Folts did the thing 268 00:14:43.559 --> 00:14:46.639 everybody always asks about He picked up his flashlight and 269 00:14:46.679 --> 00:14:50.639 blinked an sos at it dot dot dot dash dash 270 00:14:50.720 --> 00:14:54.879 dash dot dot dot. He was a navyman, and signaling 271 00:14:54.919 --> 00:14:59.240 an unidentified light is practically reflex for a navyman. I'd 272 00:14:59.279 --> 00:15:01.240 also bet that, And in the half second before he 273 00:15:01.279 --> 00:15:04.000 thumbed that button, some part of him still believed the 274 00:15:04.039 --> 00:15:07.080 boring explanation was on its way, that the light was 275 00:15:07.120 --> 00:15:09.799 about to resolve into something with the tail number and 276 00:15:09.879 --> 00:15:12.679 a board pilot at the stick. Stay tuned for more 277 00:15:12.759 --> 00:15:16.360 Backwoods big Foot stories. We'll be back after these messages. 278 00:15:18.240 --> 00:15:21.600 The object answered. It came off the tree line and 279 00:15:21.639 --> 00:15:24.799 moved out over the water, straight toward the canoe, still 280 00:15:24.799 --> 00:15:28.200 without a sound. A beam came on from its underside, 281 00:15:28.519 --> 00:15:30.600 a cone of light that dropped to the surface of 282 00:15:30.639 --> 00:15:33.080 the lake and lit the water up, and then the 283 00:15:33.120 --> 00:15:37.840 beam started to travel toward them. Whatever curiosity had been 284 00:15:37.879 --> 00:15:40.960 holding those four in place burned off in about a second. 285 00:15:41.559 --> 00:15:44.600 Somebody yelled to paddle, and four paddles hit the water, 286 00:15:44.679 --> 00:15:47.720 and that canoe surged for the shoreline with everything four 287 00:15:47.759 --> 00:15:51.360 scared young men could put into it. Jack Winer glanced 288 00:15:51.399 --> 00:15:53.480 back as they ran for the beach, and what he 289 00:15:53.519 --> 00:15:55.240 saw stayed with him for the rest. 290 00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:56.399 Of his life. 291 00:15:56.440 --> 00:15:59.320 The beam was eating up the distance behind them faster 292 00:15:59.399 --> 00:16:02.360 than they were closing, and the thought landed in his 293 00:16:02.440 --> 00:16:05.039 head with total clarity, that they were never going to 294 00:16:05.080 --> 00:16:05.679 outrun it. 295 00:16:06.240 --> 00:16:06.840 He was right. 296 00:16:07.399 --> 00:16:11.159 The light swallowed the canoe, and right there the tape cuts. 297 00:16:12.120 --> 00:16:15.519 That phrase, the tape cuts is the closest I can 298 00:16:15.559 --> 00:16:18.519 get to what all four men described, because there was 299 00:16:18.559 --> 00:16:24.480 no transition, no fade, no blur, nothing. One instant they 300 00:16:24.480 --> 00:16:27.639 were paddling for their lives with light flooding over the gunwales, 301 00:16:27.960 --> 00:16:30.960 and the next instant with no sense of anything in between, 302 00:16:31.519 --> 00:16:35.279 they were at the shore, calm, the panic gone, like 303 00:16:35.360 --> 00:16:38.360 somebody had unplugged it. The canoe was near the beach 304 00:16:38.399 --> 00:16:41.240 and the men were climbing out of it in a slow, dazed, 305 00:16:41.360 --> 00:16:44.679 underwater sort of way, and the object was still there. 306 00:16:45.679 --> 00:16:48.080 It hung over the lake, maybe fifty to seventy five 307 00:16:48.159 --> 00:16:51.200 yards out twenty or thirty feet above the surface by 308 00:16:51.279 --> 00:16:54.960 Jack's estimate, and the beam now pointed straight down beneath it, 309 00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:57.360 so that the whole silent mass looked like it was 310 00:16:57.399 --> 00:17:00.759 resting on a column of light. Stood on the beach 311 00:17:00.799 --> 00:17:05.240 and watched it, and nobody ran and nobody spoke. Jim 312 00:17:05.279 --> 00:17:07.440 described the group as being in a state of shock, 313 00:17:07.920 --> 00:17:11.119 unable to move or talk, and Chuck Rack never even 314 00:17:11.160 --> 00:17:13.680 got out of the canoe. He sat in the stern 315 00:17:13.759 --> 00:17:17.480 with the paddle still in his hands, staring. Charlie raised 316 00:17:17.480 --> 00:17:20.640 his flashlight and signaled again, and this time the answer 317 00:17:20.720 --> 00:17:24.039 was departure. The beams swung up off the water and 318 00:17:24.079 --> 00:17:27.519 pointed at the sky, and the object rose, slid away 319 00:17:27.559 --> 00:17:30.559 toward the southwest, and then accelerated in a way that 320 00:17:30.680 --> 00:17:34.799 nothing airborne in nineteen seventy six could accelerate a standing 321 00:17:34.839 --> 00:17:37.799 start to a vanishing point among the stars in about 322 00:17:37.799 --> 00:17:42.119 a second. The strange anesthetic calm let go of them, slowly, 323 00:17:42.880 --> 00:17:46.640 like cold water draining out of clothing. Chuck finally climbed 324 00:17:46.640 --> 00:17:48.359 out of the canoe, and the four of them walked 325 00:17:48.400 --> 00:17:51.240 up the beach toward their camp site, and Jim used 326 00:17:51.240 --> 00:17:55.039 the word dreamily to describe that walk. Four men moving 327 00:17:55.039 --> 00:17:59.119 through their own camp like sleepwalkers. Then they saw the fire, 328 00:17:59.480 --> 00:18:02.119 the bonfire they'd built to burn for two or three hours, 329 00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:04.960 The ten foot beacon of heavy logs they'd lit right 330 00:18:04.960 --> 00:18:09.680 before shoving off, was a bed of embers collapsed, smoldering, 331 00:18:10.039 --> 00:18:12.400 burned all the way down and through the way a 332 00:18:12.440 --> 00:18:15.400 big fire looks after a long night when nobody's fed it. 333 00:18:15.799 --> 00:18:18.400 And when they added up their own evening, the fishing 334 00:18:18.440 --> 00:18:20.960 and the siding and the chase and the shore, they 335 00:18:20.960 --> 00:18:25.079 got fifteen or twenty minutes of experience. The fire set hours. 336 00:18:25.640 --> 00:18:27.880 And here's the part of that night I find stranger 337 00:18:27.920 --> 00:18:31.720 than the object itself. They went to bed. They didn't 338 00:18:31.720 --> 00:18:34.559 sit up dissecting it. They didn't break camp in a 339 00:18:34.599 --> 00:18:37.200 panic and paddle for the ranger station. At first light, 340 00:18:38.000 --> 00:18:40.119 four men stood in front of physical evidence that a 341 00:18:40.119 --> 00:18:43.559 piece of their evening had gone missing, registered it, said 342 00:18:43.599 --> 00:18:47.119 almost nothing about it, and crawled into their tents and slept. 343 00:18:47.920 --> 00:18:51.000 Jim remembered thinking the fire was odd, and then just 344 00:18:51.039 --> 00:18:54.119 not thinking about it anymore, his mind sliding off the 345 00:18:54.119 --> 00:18:56.920 subject the way your eyes slide off a bright light. 346 00:18:57.799 --> 00:18:59.680 The next morning tells you nearly as much as the 347 00:18:59.759 --> 00:19:03.960 night did. There was no council of war over the coffee. 348 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:06.359 By every account we have, the four of them worked 349 00:19:06.400 --> 00:19:08.839 around the subject the way you'd work around a down 350 00:19:09.000 --> 00:19:12.839 power line, aware of it, giving it room, not touching it. 351 00:19:13.599 --> 00:19:17.079 They cooked, They broke camp on schedule. Somebody probably made 352 00:19:17.119 --> 00:19:19.799 a joke, because somebody always makes a joke, and it 353 00:19:19.880 --> 00:19:23.079 probably didn't land. When the thing did come up in 354 00:19:23.119 --> 00:19:25.680 the days that followed, it came up small and got 355 00:19:25.720 --> 00:19:28.960 put away fast. Four men who between them could talk 356 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:32.440 for hours about paint and politics and fishing had found 357 00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:35.759 the one topic none of them could hold. The trip 358 00:19:35.799 --> 00:19:39.960 didn't end that night, which surprises people. They had days 359 00:19:40.039 --> 00:19:43.039 left on their itinerary, and they used them, paddling and 360 00:19:43.079 --> 00:19:46.359 camping their way onward through the waterway, and the object 361 00:19:46.400 --> 00:19:49.759 never came back. By the time the logging roads gave 362 00:19:49.799 --> 00:19:52.920 way to pavement and they rolled south toward Boston, the 363 00:19:52.960 --> 00:19:57.000 whole event had already started its long burial. They told family, 364 00:19:57.279 --> 00:20:00.640 and they told friends, and they got the reaction you expect, 365 00:20:01.160 --> 00:20:04.880 the raised eyebrows, the jokes about what was in the canteen. 366 00:20:05.839 --> 00:20:08.319 Each man learned the same lesson at the same speed, 367 00:20:08.920 --> 00:20:11.680 that this story cost you something every time you told it, 368 00:20:12.400 --> 00:20:15.880 so they mostly stopped telling it. It didn't vanish completely, 369 00:20:16.119 --> 00:20:19.160 because stories like this never do. It lived on in 370 00:20:19.200 --> 00:20:21.960 a couple of diaries from the trip. The once Fowler's 371 00:20:21.960 --> 00:20:25.160 team would eventually collect and comb through It came up 372 00:20:25.200 --> 00:20:27.920 at the occasional family dinner when somebody's cousin wanted to 373 00:20:27.960 --> 00:20:31.200 hear the flying saucer thing again, and each man developed 374 00:20:31.200 --> 00:20:33.920 his own way of handling that moment. You give the 375 00:20:33.960 --> 00:20:36.960 short version, you keep your voice flat, you let the 376 00:20:37.039 --> 00:20:40.599 laughter happen, and you change the subject. The twins at 377 00:20:40.680 --> 00:20:43.319 least had each other one person on earth who nod 378 00:20:43.400 --> 00:20:47.480 instead of smirk. Charlie had his Navy issue stoicism, and 379 00:20:47.599 --> 00:20:50.519 Chuck had his contrarian streak, which let him treat the 380 00:20:50.519 --> 00:20:53.519 whole thing as one more subject he had strong opinions about, 381 00:20:54.160 --> 00:20:56.759 but none of them had an explanation, and a story 382 00:20:56.759 --> 00:20:59.519 without an explanation is a heavy thing to carry around, 383 00:21:00.160 --> 00:21:02.319 So mostly they set it down and left it there, 384 00:21:03.119 --> 00:21:06.680 And for twelve years that's where it sat. A weird 385 00:21:06.799 --> 00:21:10.000 night in Maine, a fire that burned too fast, a 386 00:21:10.079 --> 00:21:12.960 thing none of them could name, folded up small and 387 00:21:13.000 --> 00:21:16.519 stored in the attic of four separate lives. The twins 388 00:21:16.559 --> 00:21:20.559 pursued their art. Charlie settled into his work, Chuck painted, 389 00:21:20.839 --> 00:21:24.519 and the seventies became the eighties. Then the way buried 390 00:21:24.559 --> 00:21:28.200 things do it started coming back up. It came back 391 00:21:28.240 --> 00:21:33.480 first through Jim Winer's skull. Literally around nineteen seventy nine, 392 00:21:33.559 --> 00:21:35.960 Jim took a serious fall and suffered a bad head 393 00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:40.960 injury damage that would eventually be diagnosed as temporolmbic epilepsy. 394 00:21:41.680 --> 00:21:44.799 If you're not familiar with it, that seizure activity rooted 395 00:21:44.839 --> 00:21:47.920 in the temporal lobe and the limbic structures, the deep 396 00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:51.559 machinery of memory and emotion, and it's a condition with 397 00:21:51.599 --> 00:21:56.599 a documented talent for producing strange experiences, vivid deja vous 398 00:21:57.039 --> 00:22:00.880 dream like states, and that powerful, crawling sin of a presence, 399 00:22:01.440 --> 00:22:04.599 the certainty that someone's in the room with you. Jim 400 00:22:04.680 --> 00:22:07.720 was treated in Boston, and his doctors did something perfectly 401 00:22:07.759 --> 00:22:12.599