Speaker 1: For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Speaker 1: Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
Speaker 1: refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
Speaker 1: know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
Speaker 1: share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot,
Speaker 1: dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
Speaker 1: it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
Speaker 1: once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
Speaker 1: woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
Speaker 1: remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Speaker 1: Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
Speaker 1: and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
Speaker 1: I want to tell you something before we get started tonight,
Speaker 1: and I want you to really hear me on this
Speaker 1: because what I'm about to share with you over the
Speaker 1: next five episodes is unlike anything we've done on this show.
Speaker 1: About eight months ago, I started getting submissions. Now that's
Speaker 1: nothing new. We get stories all the time, good ones,
Speaker 1: strange ones, some that keep me up at night. But
Speaker 1: these were different, not because any single one of them
Speaker 1: was the most dramatic encounter I'd ever heard, that, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: What made them different was something I didn't even notice
Speaker 1: at first, something I didn't catch until the third story
Speaker 1: landed in my inbox and I happened to pull up
Speaker 1: a map. Five people, five completely separate submissions, different names,
Speaker 1: different states, different decades, one from the late seventies, one
Speaker 1: from ninety four, two thousand and three, twenty eleven, and
Speaker 1: one from just last year. None of these people know
Speaker 1: each other. No connection between them, no shared hunting clubs,
Speaker 1: no overlapping social circles, no online groups where they might
Speaker 1: have compared notes. Nothing. But here's the thing. Every single
Speaker 1: one of their stories takes place along the same ridge line,
Speaker 1: a north south ridge line that runs from the upper
Speaker 1: edge of the Kohoudah Wilderness in northern Georgia up through
Speaker 1: the mountains of eastern Tennessee, roughly forty miles of unbroken,
Speaker 1: heavily forested high ground, and cutting through the middle of it,
Speaker 1: running between two parallel ridges, is a valley, narrow, deep,
Speaker 1: the kind of place that doesn't get a lot of
Speaker 1: sunlight even in the middle of summer, the kind of
Speaker 1: place that goes quiet in a way that feels wrong,
Speaker 1: not peaceful, not calm, but absent, like the sound has
Speaker 1: been pulled out of the air. Every one of these
Speaker 1: five people described that valley, not in the same words,
Speaker 1: not using the same landmarks. But when you line up
Speaker 1: what they're saying, the terrain, the elevation, the way the
Speaker 1: forest changes as you move into it, They're all talking
Speaker 1: about the same corridor, the same passage through the mountains,
Speaker 1: and every one of them encountered something in it. Now,
Speaker 1: I've been doing this a long time. I've been in
Speaker 1: the field myself for close to four decades. I know
Speaker 1: what confirmation bias looks like, and I know how easy
Speaker 1: it is to draw lines between dots that don't actually connect.
Speaker 1: I'm not here to sell you on a theory. That's
Speaker 1: not what this is. What I am going to do
Speaker 1: is lay out these five stories in order exactly the
Speaker 1: way they were told to me, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: let you hear the details, the specific, concrete, verifiable details,
Speaker 1: because once you hear all five of them, once you
Speaker 1: see where they happened and when and what was described,
Speaker 1: You're going to start asking the same question I did,
Speaker 1: What is it about this place? What's been moving through
Speaker 1: that corridor and for how long. I don't have an answer,
Speaker 1: not a clean one, but I think by the end
Speaker 1: of this series you'll understand why I believe the question matters.
Speaker 1: So let's start at the beginning, or at least the
Speaker 1: earliest story I have. It's nineteen seventy eight. A man
Speaker 1: named Herschel and three of his buddies Lisa hunting parcel
Speaker 1: deep in the Khuda, and on their third night out there,
Speaker 1: they wake up to find that something has come into
Speaker 1: their camp and rearranged it. Not destroyed it, not rated it,
Speaker 1: rearranged it. I got Herschel's story by mail, actual mail,
Speaker 1: A handwritten letter, six pages front and back on yellow
Speaker 1: legal pad paper. Neat handwriting, the kind you don't see
Speaker 1: much anymore, deliberate, slightly slanted to the right. Every letter
Speaker 1: formed like he was taught in a school room where
Speaker 1: that sort of thing mattered. He included a stamped return envelope,
Speaker 1: which I thought was a nice touch old school. There
Speaker 1: was a notepaper clip to the first page. It said,
Speaker 1: I heard your show from my grandson. He plays it
Speaker 1: on his phone when he comes to visit. I don't
Speaker 1: have a computer. If you want to call me here's
Speaker 1: my number, but please call before eight because I go
Speaker 1: to bed early. Herschel's eighty eight now. He retired from
Speaker 1: the carpet mill in Dalton, Georgia in two thousand and four,
Speaker 1: after thirty.
Speaker 2: One years on the line.
Speaker 1: He told me in his letter that he'd never submitted
Speaker 1: his story to anyone before, not a podcast, not a website,
Speaker 1: not a newspaper. He said he'd told it exactly four
Speaker 1: times in his life. Once to his wife Martha, about
Speaker 1: a year after it happened, Once to his pastor at
Speaker 1: Tunnel Hill Baptist, who listened politely and then changed the subject.
Speaker 1: Once to a man at a gas station in elj
Speaker 1: who'd brought it up first. Herschel didn't tell me how
Speaker 1: that conversation started, only that the man had seen something too,
Speaker 1: and they'd stood by the pump for twenty minutes talking
Speaker 1: about it, like two strangers sharing a secret neither one
Speaker 1: of them had asked to carry. And once to his
Speaker 1: oldest grandson, Tyler, who he said was the only person
Speaker 1: in his family who didn't look at him like he'd
Speaker 1: lost his mind. When I called him to follow up,
Speaker 1: his voice was steady, measured. He speaks the way a
Speaker 1: lot of men from that part of North Georgia speak unhurried,
Speaker 1: but not slow. There's a difference. He doesn't waste words,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't clip them either. He lets his sentences finish,
Speaker 1: and there's a gravity to the way he talks about
Speaker 1: this that I recognized right away because I've heard it before,
Speaker 1: not often, but enough to know what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: It's the sound of someone who's been carrying a story
Speaker 1: for a very long time and still isn't sure anyone's
Speaker 1: going to believe it. We talked for about two hours
Speaker 1: that first call. He had to stop a couple times
Speaker 1: to get water. He told me his voice wasn't what
Speaker 1: it used to be, and he appreciated my patience. I
Speaker 1: told him to take all the time he needed. I
Speaker 1: asked him why he decided to write it down now,
Speaker 1: after all these years. He was quiet for a moment.
Speaker 1: Then he said, because I'm not going to be around
Speaker 1: much longer, and I don't want it to die with me.
Speaker 1: He let that sit for a beat, then he added,
Speaker 1: and because I want somebody to go back out there
Speaker 1: and see if it's still happening. That line struck me
Speaker 1: a bit funny. Not see if it's still out there.
Speaker 1: Not see if anyone else has seen it, He said,
Speaker 1: see if it's still happening. Like what he experienced wasn't
Speaker 1: an encounter. It was a process, something ongoing, something with
Speaker 1: a pattern to it. That distinction matters. You'll understand why
Speaker 1: as we go. Before I get into what happened at
Speaker 1: that camp, I want you to know who was there,
Speaker 1: because context matters. The kind of men they were matters.
Speaker 1: When I tell you what they experienced, I want you
Speaker 1: to have a picture in your mind of the people
Speaker 1: doing the experiencing. These weren't thrill seekers. They weren't out
Speaker 1: there looking for anything other than deer. Herschel was forty
Speaker 1: years old in the fall of nineteen seventy eight. He'd
Speaker 1: been at the mill since he was twenty two. He
Speaker 1: ran a tufting machine, which, if you don't know the
Speaker 1: carpet industry, is one of the louder and more physically
Speaker 1: demanded positions on the floor. He had thick hands, the
Speaker 1: kind that don't fully close anymore after decades of repetitive work.
Speaker 1: He grew up on a small farm outside of Varnell,
Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes north of Dalton, and he'd been hunting
Speaker 1: since he was old enough to carry a gun. His
Speaker 1: father hunted, his uncle's hunted. It was part of how
Speaker 1: they ate, not a hobby. He took it seriously. Dale
Speaker 1: was a year older. He ran the parts counter at
Speaker 1: a tractor dealership in Chatsworth. Big Man wide across the shoulders.
Speaker 1: Wore the same style of red wing boots every day
Speaker 1: of his life. Herschel described him as dependable. If Dale
Speaker 1: told you he'd be somewhere at six, he was there
Speaker 1: at five point forty five. Every time. Dale was the
Speaker 1: practical one in the group. He didn't have much patience
Speaker 1: for anything. He couldn't see, touch, or measure. If you
Speaker 1: told Dale a ghost story, he'd ask you what kind
Speaker 1: of insulation your house had. Pete was the quiet one.
Speaker 1: He'd serve two tours in Vietnam, came home in seventy
Speaker 1: one and went to work operating heavy equipment for Murray County. Graters, dozers, excavators,
Speaker 1: anything with tracks or hydraulics. He was the most physically
Speaker 1: capable of the four of them, but you'd never know
Speaker 1: it from how he carried himself. He moved through the
Speaker 1: world like he was trying not to take up too
Speaker 1: much space. Herschel told me, Pete rarely talked about the war.
Speaker 1: The only time he'd ever brought it up was to
Speaker 1: say that the jungle taught him how to listen, and
Speaker 1: he never forgot how Pete could hear a squirrel crack
Speaker 1: a nut from two hundred yards, Herschel said, and he
Speaker 1: could tell you which tree it was sitting in. And
Speaker 1: then there was Jimbo. Herschel never told me Jimbo's real name,
Speaker 1: and I didn't press him on it. Jimbo was a plumber,
Speaker 1: self employed, ran his own truck, worked all over the county.
Speaker 1: He was the talker of the group, the storyteller, the
Speaker 1: one who kept the fire going and the conversation moving.
Speaker 1: Herschel said, Jimbo could talk to a fence post and
Speaker 1: the fence post would talk back. He was the social glue,
Speaker 1: the one who made the camp feel like a camp,
Speaker 1: and not just four men sitting in the woods. These
Speaker 1: four had been hunting together since the early seventies. They
Speaker 1: knew each other's habits, each other's tales, each other's tolerance
Speaker 1: for discomfort. They'd sat through rain, sat through freezing mornings,
Speaker 1: sat through busted trucks, empty tags, and long drives home
Speaker 1: with nothing in the cooler. They trusted each other the
Speaker 1: way men do when they've shared enough cold mornings and
Speaker 1: bad coffee and honest silence. None of them had any
Speaker 1: interest in the paranormal. None of them had read anything
Speaker 1: about Bigfoot or had any opinion on it whatsoever. They
Speaker 1: were deer hunters. That's what they went out there to do.
Speaker 1: Keep that in mind. The year was nineteen seventy eight October.
Speaker 1: The parcel they least sat at about twenty eight hundred
Speaker 1: feet on the eastern slope of a ridge that ran
Speaker 1: roughly north south in the southern Khudah. This was before
Speaker 1: the Kohudah got its formal wilderness designation. That didn't happen
Speaker 1: until eighty six, so at that point there was still
Speaker 1: some limited vehicle access.
Speaker 2: On old logging roads.
Speaker 1: You could get a truck in part way if you
Speaker 1: knew the roads and didn't mind losing a mirror to
Speaker 1: a laurel thicket. The timber company that held the cutting
Speaker 1: rights least hunting parcels to groups like Herschel's for a
Speaker 1: seasonal fee. It was common practice back then. The hunting
Speaker 1: groups kept an eye on the property, reported trespassers watched
Speaker 1: for fires. In exchange, they got access to land that
Speaker 1: nobody else could reach. Their camp was set up on
Speaker 1: a small bench, a natural flat spot on the slope,
Speaker 1: maybe a quarter acre of relatively level ground, about two
Speaker 1: hundred yards above the valley floor. They'd been using this
Speaker 1: spot for three seasons already. They'd carried in creekstones one
Speaker 1: trip and built a proper fire ring. They'd strung a
Speaker 1: hanging pole between two white oaks for dressing game, heavy
Speaker 1: rope over a crossbar strong enough to hold a buck.
Speaker 1: They had two canvas wall tents, the old style kind
Speaker 1: with the center pole and the canvas flap door, a
Speaker 1: folding table for the cook area. Two coalman coolers, the
Speaker 1: big steel belted ones, the kind that weighed thirty pounds,
Speaker 1: empty camp chairs, a lantern, a deck of cards. It
Speaker 1: was a hunting camp the way hunting camps are supposed
Speaker 1: to be. Functional, comfortable enough, nothing fancy, the kind of
Speaker 1: place where you wake up cold, drink bad coffee, and
Speaker 1: feel grateful for every.
Speaker 2: Minute of it.
Speaker 1: Below the bench, to the east, the slope dropped off
Speaker 1: steeply toward the valley floor. The drainage down there was
Speaker 1: heavy with hemlock, and white pine, big trees, old growth
Speaker 1: that the timber company hadn't gotten to yet. A creek
Speaker 1: ran the length of the valley north to south, fed
Speaker 1: by seeps and springs along both ridges. The valley itself
Speaker 1: was narrow, maybe three hundred yards across at the widest point,
Speaker 1: steep walls on both sides rising up to the ridge lines.
Speaker 1: Herschel told me the first time he walked down into
Speaker 1: that valley to look for deer sign, he stopped and
Speaker 1: took his hat off, not because he saw anything, because
Speaker 1: of the quiet.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 1: It was the stillest place he'd ever stood in his life.
Speaker 1: Not just the absence of noise. He was used to
Speaker 1: quiet woods.
Speaker 2: This was different.
Speaker 1: This was a density to the silence, like the air
Speaker 1: itself was thicker down there, like sound couldn't carry the
Speaker 1: way it was supposed to. It felt like being inside
Speaker 1: a church, he said, a church with nobody in it.
Speaker 1: You could feel the size of the quiet. He found
Speaker 1: good deer sign in the valley, rubs, scrapes and trails
Speaker 1: worn into the hillside. Acorn masted everywhere. The deer were
Speaker 1: using it heavily. So they set up the camp on
Speaker 1: the bench above and settled in the first two nights
Speaker 1: were normal, good hunting weather, clear skies, temperatures dropping into
Speaker 1: the low forties at night. Herschel sat a stand on
Speaker 1: the south end of the bench. In the mornings, Dale
Speaker 1: hunted a ground blind about a quarter mile north. Pete
Speaker 1: and Jimbo worked the ridge to the west, where they'd
Speaker 1: found a well used trail crossing between two saddles. In
Speaker 1: the evenings, they'd come back to camp, compare notes, eat
Speaker 1: whatever Jimbo had cooked. He was the designated camp cook
Speaker 1: and took the job seriously. Always brought fresh onions and
Speaker 1: peppers and good sausage from Chatsworth and sit around the fire.
Speaker 1: Pete would smoke his pipe, Jimbo would tell stories. Dale
Speaker 1: would play solitaire on the folding table by lantern light.
Speaker 1: Herschel would sit with his coffee and listen to the
Speaker 1: woods go dark around them. He said, those first two nights,
Speaker 1: the valley sounded normal owls, the creek a coyote way
Speaker 1: off to the south, ordinary mountain sounds. Nothing that raised
Speaker 1: a hair on the back of his neck. He slept well,
Speaker 1: and then the third night happened. Herschel woke up at
Speaker 1: about five point fifteen in the morning. He was always
Speaker 1: the first one up. He liked to get the fire
Speaker 1: going before anyone else rolled out, get the coffee started,
Speaker 1: and Joly a few minutes of quiet before the camp
Speaker 1: came alive. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll
Speaker 1: be back after these messages. That was his routine. He'd
Speaker 1: been doing it for years. He kept a tin of
Speaker 1: folgers and an old percolator next to his cot so
Speaker 1: he could start moving without thinking about it. He unzipped
Speaker 1: his tent, stepped out into the dark and stopped. Something
Speaker 1: was wrong, he said, he felt it.
Speaker 2: Before he saw it. That's the word he used.
Speaker 1: Felt like walking into a room where someone's been arguing,
Speaker 1: even though nobody's talking anymore. The air was different, the
Speaker 1: camp was different. He stood in front of his tent
Speaker 1: for maybe ten seconds, not moving, just letting his eyes adjust.
Speaker 1: That thin gray light you get forty minutes before sunrise
Speaker 1: was just starting to bleed into the sky above the
Speaker 1: Eastern Ridge. Not enough to see details, just enough to
Speaker 1: see shapes, and the shapes were wrong. He walked to
Speaker 1: the fire ring and stopped again. The Coleman coolers, both
Speaker 1: of them had been picked up and set down about
Speaker 1: fifteen feet from where they'd been the night before, not dragged,
Speaker 1: not knocked over, moved, set upright, lids still latched in
Speaker 1: a spot where no one had put them. The big one,
Speaker 1: the food cooler, weighed close to eighty pounds full ice, meat, eggs, bread,
Speaker 1: cans of beans.
Speaker 2: It was heavy.
Speaker 1: You'd need two hands and a good grip to move it,
Speaker 1: and you'd make noise doing it. The second cooler was lighter,
Speaker 1: drinks and bait, maybe forty pounds. Both of them were
Speaker 1: sitting neatly upright, side by side, near the base of
Speaker 1: an oak on the far side of the fire ring.
Speaker 1: He looked at the hanging pole next. The night before
Speaker 1: they'd hung a dough that Dale had taken that afternoon,
Speaker 1: a nice one, field dressed maybe one hundred and ten pounds.
Speaker 1: Dale had done a clean job on her. They'd run
Speaker 1: the gambrels through the hind legs, hoisted her up with
Speaker 1: the rope and tied it off standard procedure. She was
Speaker 1: hanging five feet off the ground when they went to bed,
Speaker 1: high enough that nothing would bother her. The deer was
Speaker 1: gone from the pole, the rope was still there, still
Speaker 1: looped over the crossbar, and tied off to the trunk,
Speaker 1: but the gambrels had been pulled free and the carcass
Speaker 1: had been taken down. He found the deer in the
Speaker 1: fire ring, not torn apart, not fed on, not even disturbed,
Speaker 1: laid on its side in the center of the ring,
Speaker 1: on top of the cold ash, like someone had carried
Speaker 1: it over from the pole and set it down with
Speaker 1: both hands, gently deliberately. The gambrels were still attached to
Speaker 1: the hind legs, no claw marks on the hide, no
Speaker 1: teeth marks, no blood beyond what had already drained during
Speaker 1: the field dressing. The deer had been placed there the
Speaker 1: way you'd lay something down on a table. Herschel stood
Speaker 1: there looking at it for a long time. He told
Speaker 1: me he wasn't scared yet. He was confused. The scene
Speaker 1: didn't compute. His first thought was that one of the
Speaker 1: other guys was pulling something, that Dale or Jimbo had
Speaker 1: gotten up in the night and done all of this
Speaker 1: as some kind of elaborate joke. But even as the
Speaker 1: thought formed, he was already rejecting it. Moving those coolers
Speaker 1: would have made noise. Taking a deer down from a
Speaker 1: hanging pole in the dark untying the rope, lowering one
Speaker 1: hundred and ten pounds of dead weight carrying it across camp.
Speaker 1: That's not a quiet operation, and it's not something one
Speaker 1: person does casually. Beyond that, it just wasn't their kind
Speaker 1: of humor. These weren't frat boys. They were grown men
Speaker 1: in their forties who got up before dawn and sat
Speaker 1: in the cold for hours at a stretch. Practical jokes
Speaker 1: weren't part of the vocabulary. He went to Dale's tent
Speaker 1: and woke them up. Dale came out, pulling on his coat,
Speaker 1: walked to the fire ring, squatted down next to the deer,
Speaker 1: and examined it the way Dale examined everything carefully, methodically,
Speaker 1: like he was reading a part's diagram. He checked the
Speaker 1: hide from Marx, he checked the ground around it. He
Speaker 1: walked to the coolers and inspected of the latches. Then
Speaker 1: he stood up and said one word bear. Herschel said,
Speaker 1: a bear didn't do this, Dale, well, something did. They
Speaker 1: woke Pete and Jimbo. All four of them walked the camp.
Speaker 1: They checked the ground for tracks, but the bench was
Speaker 1: mostly hard packed red clay covered in leaf litter, not
Speaker 1: great tracking surface. You could see scuff marks near the
Speaker 1: coolers that could have been anything. Bootprints from the day before,
Speaker 1: drag marks from gear, nothing definitive, No clear animal tracks,
Speaker 1: no claw marks on the coolers, no scat, no fur
Speaker 1: Dale held firm on the bear theory. He dealt with
Speaker 1: bears at camps before. They're curious, he said, they'll pick
Speaker 1: things up. I've seen a bear open a truck door.
Speaker 1: Herschel didn't argue out loud, but he didn't agree either.
Speaker 1: He dealt with bears too. Bears get into food, Bears
Speaker 1: rip things open, Bears leave a mess.
Speaker 2: This wasn't a mess. This was tidy.
Speaker 1: Whatever had done this moved through the camp with intention,
Speaker 1: handled objects without damaging them, and carried one hundred and
Speaker 1: ten pound deer carcass from the hanging pole to the
Speaker 1: fire ring without so much as a blood smear on
Speaker 1: the ground. Between the two points, Pete walked the perimeter
Speaker 1: with his flashlight, studying the ground in the trees, not
Speaker 1: weighing in. Jimbo made breakfast, scrambled eggs, sausage biscuits from
Speaker 1: a can, and kept up a running commentary about the
Speaker 1: weather and the rut and anything at all that wasn't
Speaker 1: the deer lying in the fire ring.
Speaker 2: He was rattled.
Speaker 1: You could hear it in the way he talked faster
Speaker 1: than usual, filling every silence. Before it could settle, They rehung,
Speaker 1: the deer moved, the cooler's back went honey. But Herschel
Speaker 1: told me something that stayed with me. He said that
Speaker 1: for the rest of that day, sitting in his stand,
Speaker 1: he couldn't stop turning it over. He sat in that
Speaker 1: tree for six hours and thought about it the whole time.
Speaker 1: The coolers set upright and latched, the deer unharmed, placed,
Speaker 1: not dropped, not dragged, in the center of the fire ring.
Speaker 1: The absence of damage, the absence of tracks, the precision.
Speaker 1: A bear comes into camp. It tears stuff up, he said.
Speaker 1: It gets into your food, It knocks things over. You
Speaker 1: come out in the morning and it looks like a
Speaker 1: tornado hit.
Speaker 2: This wasn't that.
Speaker 1: This was organized. Whatever did this pick things up, carried
Speaker 1: them and set them down. It moved through our camp
Speaker 1: like it was taking inventory, and it put that deer
Speaker 1: in the fire ring, like it was making a point.
Speaker 1: I asked him what kind of point. He was quiet
Speaker 1: for a few seconds, then he said, like it was
Speaker 1: saying I was here. I could reach anything I wanted
Speaker 1: and you didn't even know it. They decided to keep
Speaker 1: a watch that night. Took it in shifts, two hours each,
Speaker 1: sitting by the fire with a flashlight and a rifle.
Speaker 1: Dale set the rotation, Herschel first, then Dale, then Pete,
Speaker 1: then Jimbo sun down to sun up. Herschel pulled his
Speaker 1: shift from ten to midnight. He sat in a camp
Speaker 1: chair by the fire, kept the flames low, just coals
Speaker 1: and a small yellow tongue of flame, enough to see
Speaker 1: by without killing his night vision. He laid his thirty
Speaker 1: out six across his knees and rested the foresail maglite
Speaker 1: on the arm rest. The air was cold, mid forties,
Speaker 1: maybe lower. He could see his breath hanging in front
Speaker 1: of him for a moment before it dissolved. For the
Speaker 1: first hour, nothing the woods sounded the way they should.
Speaker 1: The creek was running down in the valley, A steady,
Speaker 1: soft noise, almost like white noise. A barred owl called
Speaker 1: from somewhere to the south that eight note cadence, Everyone
Speaker 1: who spent a night in the Southern Appalachian's nose by heart,
Speaker 1: who cooks for you, who cooks for you? All he
Speaker 1: heard a mouse rustling in the leaf litter near the
Speaker 1: cook table. A small branch fell somewhere in the camp enepy,
Speaker 1: a soft crack, then a papery flutter of leaves, normal
Speaker 1: sounds October in the mountains. He drank coffee from a thermos.
Speaker 1: He listened. About eleven o'clock, the owl stopped calling. He
Speaker 1: noticed it because it had been going off regularly every
Speaker 1: few minutes, and then it simply quit, like someone had
Speaker 1: flipped a switch on it. He waited for it to
Speaker 1: start again.
Speaker 2: It didn't.
Speaker 1: Around eleven twenty, the creek sound changed. He struggled to
Speaker 1: explain this to me, and he tried more than once.
Speaker 1: The best he could do was to say the volume dropped,
Speaker 1: not all at once, gradually over a couple of minutes,
Speaker 1: like someone slowly turning a dial. The creek was still there.
Speaker 1: He could still hear water, but the sound of it retreated,
Speaker 1: pulled back, became muffled and distant, even though the creek
Speaker 1: itself was only two hundred yards.
Speaker 2: Away and hadn't moved.
Speaker 1: He thought maybe the wind had shifted and was carrying
Speaker 1: the sound away from him, but there was no wind.
Speaker 1: The canopy above him wasn't moving. His fire wasn't flickering.
Speaker 1: He sat up straighter in his chair, and then right
Speaker 1: at eleven thirty he heard it, coming from down in
Speaker 1: the valley, maybe two or three hundred yards below the bench.
Speaker 1: A sharp, percussive sound, wood on wood, like someone taking
Speaker 1: a thick branch, not a twig, something with substance and heft,
Speaker 1: and striking it hard against a tree trunk. A clean,
Speaker 1: solid crack that carried through the still air like a gunshot,
Speaker 1: but lower and deader.
Speaker 2: No echo. The valley swallowed it. One hit, then silence.
Speaker 1: He waited ten seconds, fifteen another hit, same sound, same location,
Speaker 1: same force. He sat absolutely still. His hand was on
Speaker 1: the maglight, but he didn't switch it on. He didn't
Speaker 1: want to renounce himself. He just listened. It went on
Speaker 1: for about five minutes, always the same cadence. One knock,
Speaker 1: then a pause of roughly ten seconds, then another, steady, measured, unhurried,
Speaker 1: like a clock, like something keeping time. Then it stopped.
Speaker 1: Whatever was making the sound either quit or moved off.
Speaker 1: The valley went silent again, not the normal quiet of
Speaker 1: a sleeping forest, but that thick, dampened silence. Herschel had
Speaker 1: noticed on his first walk down there, that church silence,
Speaker 1: that absence. He sat there for another thirty minutes, hardly breathing,
Speaker 1: scanning the dark with his eyes. Nothing else happened. At midnight,
Speaker 1: he woke Dale and told him what he'd heard. Dale listened, nodded,
Speaker 1: and said, probably a dead limb cracking in the cold.
Speaker 1: He said it in the tone of a man who
Speaker 1: wanted that to be true and was asking Herschel not
Speaker 1: to make it harder. Herschel went to his tent. He
Speaker 1: didn't sleep. He lay on his cot fully dressed, boots
Speaker 1: unlaced beside him, staring at the canvas ceiling. He could
Speaker 1: hear Dale add a log to the fire around one o'clock.
Speaker 1: Beyond that, Dale's shift was quiet, so were Pete's and Jimbo's.
Speaker 1: Nothing else happened that night. In the morning, Herschel walked
Speaker 1: down to the valley floor. He followed the creek south
Speaker 1: for about a quarter mile, moving carefully, checking the soft
Speaker 1: ground along the banks for tracks. He found deer prints, raccoon,
Speaker 1: some turkey scratchings in the leaves on the south facing slope.
Speaker 1: Nothing unusual. But he told me something about that walk
Speaker 1: that he kept coming back to in every conversation we had,
Speaker 1: he said, the valley felt different than it had during
Speaker 1: his earlier scouting trips. The light was the same, the
Speaker 1: trees were the same, but something in the air had changed.
Speaker 1: There was a quality to it that he couldn't name.
Speaker 1: Only feel a watchfulness, not threatening, not hostile, just aware,
Speaker 1: like the space itself was paying attention to him. I've
Speaker 1: been a hunter my whole life, he said, forty years.
Speaker 1: I've been sitting in trees, glassing ridge lines, watching animals
Speaker 1: that don't know I'm there. I understand that dynamic from
Speaker 1: the hunter's side. This was the other side of it.
Speaker 1: Something was watching me the way I watch a deer. Patient,
Speaker 1: absolutely still just observing. And the thing that really got
Speaker 1: under my skin was that I couldn't find it. I looked,
Speaker 1: I glassed the far ridge, I scanned the canopy. I
Speaker 1: watched for any movement at all, nothing, whatever it was,
Speaker 1: it was better at this game than I was. And
Speaker 1: I don't say that lightly. He went back to camp.
Speaker 1: He didn't tell the others what he'd felt down there.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to be the one who spooked everybody.
Speaker 1: These were men he respected, men he'd hunted with for years.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to be the one who said the
Speaker 1: thing out loud that changed the nature of the trip,
Speaker 1: so he kept it to himself. They kept the watch
Speaker 1: rotation going. Jimbo took the first shift, Pete took the second.
Speaker 1: Herschel was scheduled for third two to four am. He
Speaker 1: was in his tent during pete shift, lying on his cot,
Speaker 1: not sleeping, just listening. The fire was popping softly outside.
Speaker 1: He could hear Pete shift in the camp chair every
Speaker 1: now and then. Everything sounded ordinary until Pete called out,
Speaker 1: not a whistle, not a low voice, a full shout, Hey,
Speaker 1: get out here now. All three of them were out
Speaker 1: of their tents within seconds. Herschel had his boots on
Speaker 1: before he was fully upright. He'd been sleeping with them unlaced,
Speaker 1: right next to his cot since night three. Ready to go,
Speaker 1: he grabbed the maglight and his rifle and shoved through
Speaker 1: the tent flap. Pete was standing about twenty feet from
Speaker 1: the fire ring at the north edge of camp, aiming
Speaker 1: his flashlight into the trees uphill. His rifle was in
Speaker 1: his other hand, held low against his right leg, not shouldered,
Speaker 1: not aimed, just there, almost forgotten, held by reflex rather
Speaker 1: than in ten. Something just walked through camp. Pete said.
Speaker 1: His voice was flat, controlled, the way Pete always sounded,
Speaker 1: but there was a current underneath it that Herschel recognized.
Speaker 1: He'd heard it once before, years ago, when Pete had
Speaker 1: mentioned a night ambush near Kuang Tree. It was the
Speaker 1: sound of a man managing real fear through the force
Speaker 1: of his own discipline. Pete described what happened carefully. He'd
Speaker 1: been sitting by the fire facing south, watching the tree
Speaker 1: line below the bench. The fire was at his back
Speaker 1: and to his left. At about one point thirty, he
Speaker 1: heard footsteps behind him to the north, coming from the
Speaker 1: uphill side of the camp, moving through the trees, thirty
Speaker 1: or forty feet from the fire ring. Not four legged,
Speaker 1: two legged. The cadence was unmistakable, slow and deliberate, like
Speaker 1: a man walking at a comfortable pace, but heavier than
Speaker 1: a man, much heavier. Each footfall had a depth to it,
Speaker 1: a base quality, a low frequency. It's the impact, like
Speaker 1: something with serious mass was compressing the forest floor. Stay
Speaker 1: tuned for more Backwoods big Foot stories. We'll be back
Speaker 1: after these messages. Pete froze for about two seconds, then
Speaker 1: he grabbed the flashlight and spun around nothing. Whatever was
Speaker 1: there had stopped the instant the light came on, he
Speaker 1: swept the beam through the trees left to right, low
Speaker 1: to high, covering every angle he could reach. The woods
Speaker 1: were absolutely steel, not a branch moving, not a leaf shifting.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 1: It was like pointing a flashlight into a painting. Nothing
Speaker 1: responded to the light. Everything was frozen. He stood there
Speaker 1: for a full minute, panning the beam slowly, not breathing,
Speaker 1: just looking. Then, from uphill, maybe seventy or eighty yards
Speaker 1: above the camp, a sound of vocalization, low and resonant,
Speaker 1: coming from the chest of whatever produced it. Not a growl,
Speaker 1: not a grunt, something between the two, but unlike either one.
Speaker 1: It had a vibrato to it, a texture, like a
Speaker 1: large volume of air being pushed through a constricted space.
Speaker 1: And it was loud, not shouting loud, naturally loud the
Speaker 1: way thunder is not from effort, but from sheer physical scale.
Speaker 2: Pete said.
Speaker 1: The sound came from chest level, not from the ground,
Speaker 1: not from something crouching or lying down, from something standing
Speaker 1: upright with its chest at roughly his own head height,
Speaker 1: maybe higher. It lasted about two seconds than nothing by
Speaker 1: the time the others got out there, whatever had made
Speaker 1: it was gone. All four of them searched the perimeter
Speaker 1: with flashlights, working in a circle around the camp. They
Speaker 1: found no tracks, no broken branches, no eye shine, nothing
Speaker 1: but dark trees and cold air and that heavy, loaded silence.
Speaker 1: I need to tell you something about Pete here. Pete
Speaker 1: was not a man who rattled. He had walked point
Speaker 1: in triple Canopy Jung in Vietnam. He had been in
Speaker 1: firefights at night in the rain, in conditions that would
Speaker 1: break most people's ability to function. He came home from
Speaker 1: that war and spent the next twenty plus years operating
Speaker 1: heavy equipment in every kind of weather, in every condition,
Speaker 1: without complaint, Steady hands, quiet presence, the kind of man
Speaker 1: you want beside you when things go wrong, because his
Speaker 1: heart rate doesn't change. That night, sitting by the fire
Speaker 1: after the search came up empty, Pete tried to light
Speaker 1: a cigarette. His hands were shaking, not a lot, just
Speaker 1: enough that the match wabbled on the first strike. Herschel noticed.
Speaker 1: He didn't say anything. He just watched Pete light the
Speaker 1: match on the second try and bring it to the
Speaker 1: cigarette with a hand that wasn't quite steady. Pete took
Speaker 1: a long drag, exhaled slowly, and said something Herschel told
Speaker 1: me he's carried in his head ever since. I could
Speaker 1: feel how big it was when it walked past me,
Speaker 1: before I turned around. I could feel the weight of
Speaker 1: it in the ground through my boots, through the legs
Speaker 1: of the chair. Whatever that thing was, it was right there,
Speaker 1: thirty feet from me, in the dark, and I didn't
Speaker 1: see it, not a glimpse. I didn't see a damn thing.
Speaker 1: I want you to sit with that detail. Feeling the
Speaker 1: footfall through the ground, not hearing it, feeling it physically.
Speaker 2: Through the soles of his boots, through.
Speaker 1: The aluminum frame of the camp chair, up into his body.
Speaker 1: That is a specific sensory detail I have heard from
Speaker 1: other credible witnesses in other locations, in other states, across
Speaker 1: other decades. It is not the kind of thing people
Speaker 1: tend to invent. It's not something that occurs to you
Speaker 1: to include. If you're making a story up. You don't
Speaker 1: sit down to fabricate an encounter and think, I'll say
Speaker 1: I felt the vibration through the ground. That detail comes
Speaker 1: from experience, from actually being there when something very large
Speaker 1: and very heavy walked past you in the dark. They
Speaker 1: didn't sleep the rest of that night. All four of
Speaker 1: them sat around the fire until dawn. Jimbo tried to
Speaker 1: make conversation a couple of times and let it die.
Speaker 2: Dale stared at.
Speaker 1: The coals, Pete smoked. Nobody said what they were thinking.
Speaker 1: Nobody suggested leaving, not yet, but the trip had become
Speaker 1: something else. They could all feel it. They just hadn't
Speaker 1: named it yet. The next morning, herschel went uphill. He
Speaker 1: told the others he was checking the ridge for deer sign.
Speaker 1: That was half true. What he really wanted was to
Speaker 1: follow the path Pete had described the direction the footsteps
Speaker 1: had been traveling. When they passed through camp north and
Speaker 1: uphill toward the crest, he took his rifle. He moved slowly,
Speaker 1: not just out of caution, but because the terrain demanded it.
Speaker 1: The slope above the bench steepened fast, and the understory
Speaker 1: was a wall of mountain laurel and rhododendron thick tangled
Speaker 1: head high in places. He pushed through gaps where he
Speaker 1: could find them, ducked under branches, pulled himself uphill by
Speaker 1: root holds and rock ledges. About three hundred yards above camp,
Speaker 1: the understory opened up. The laurel gave way to mature
Speaker 1: hard woods, big oaks, hickory, a few tulip poplars with
Speaker 1: trunks as wide as oil drums. The canopy was dense
Speaker 1: enough to shade out most of the brush, so the
Speaker 1: forest floor was clean, leaf litter and duff open sightlines.
Speaker 1: You could see fifty or sixty yards in most directions.
Speaker 1: That's where he found the first tree, a sour wood
Speaker 1: maybe five or six inches in diameter at breast height,
Speaker 1: snapped off about seven feet above the ground. Not cut,
Speaker 1: not rotted through, not wind blown. The root system was intact.
Speaker 1: The trunk below the break was solid and healthy, still growing.
Speaker 1: The tree had simply been broken, snapped clean like a
Speaker 1: green stick bent past its limit. The fracture was fresh
Speaker 1: white heartwood, raw fibers, exposed sap woods still wet with sap,
Speaker 1: but the broken off section wasn't on the ground. The
Speaker 1: top half of the sour wood crown branches leaves had
Speaker 1: been picked up and wedged into the fork of a
Speaker 1: white oak about ten feet away, horizontal parallel to the ground.
Speaker 1: Jammed into the fork like a crossbar between two uprights.
Speaker 1: Someone had broken the tree off, lifted the top section,
Speaker 1: carried it to the nearest large tree, and cranked it
Speaker 1: into place at shoulder height. Herschel reached up and tried
Speaker 1: to pull it free.
Speaker 2: He couldn't.
Speaker 1: The thing was jammed in tight. He's not a small man,
Speaker 1: six' one in his, prime two hundred and ten, pounds
Speaker 1: thirty years of physical work behind. Him he put his
Speaker 1: full weight on, it and it wouldn't. Move he kept
Speaker 1: climbing over the next quarter, mile heading north along the
Speaker 1: upper slope toward the ridge, crest he found three more
Speaker 1: three more, trees all in similar, condition all small diameter hard,
Speaker 1: woods sour, wood, dogwood one young, hickory about four four inches,
Speaker 1: thick all snapped between six and eight, feet all fresh,
Speaker 1: breaks the exposed.
Speaker 2: Wood raw and.
Speaker 1: Damp two of them were leaning against adjacent trees at
Speaker 1: angles that weren't, natural propped, up, balanced placed rather than.
Speaker 1: Fallen the third was on the, ground but pointed in
Speaker 1: the same direction as the, others north up the. Ridge
Speaker 1: the fourth tree stopped. Him it was a dog, wood
Speaker 1: maybe four inches in. Diameter it hadn't been, snapped it
Speaker 1: had been. Twisted the trunk had been torqued wrung like a,
Speaker 1: rag and the wood fibers had separated in a spiral.
Speaker 1: Pattern the bark was stripped where something had gripped, it
Speaker 1: and the exposed wood underneath showed a clean helical, fracture
Speaker 1: the fibers twisting around each other like a braided rope coming.
Speaker 1: Apart whatever had grabbed that tree had held it with
Speaker 1: both hands and rotated them in opposite. DIRECTIONS i Asked
Speaker 1: herschel if storm damage could produce something like. That storm
Speaker 1: damage doesn't twist a, tree he, Said i've seen plenty
Speaker 1: of wind damage and ice damage in these. Mountains wind snaps,
Speaker 1: trees ice loads bend them and crack. Them tornadoes uproot.
Speaker 1: Them none of that produces a spiral fracture in the.
Speaker 1: Wood whatever did this wrapped its hands around that trunk and.
Speaker 1: Turned that takes. Grip that takes. Hands he, paused AND
Speaker 1: i could hear him choosing his next words. CAREFULLY a
Speaker 1: bear doesn't have the grip structure to twist a tree like.
Speaker 1: THAT a bear has. Claws it, rakes it, pulls it.
Speaker 1: Bends WHAT i was looking at required a posable, grip,
Speaker 1: fingers long fingers strong enough to hold wood and torque
Speaker 1: it in two directions at. Once he didn't continue past the.
Speaker 1: Ridgeline not that. Morning he got within about one hundred
Speaker 1: yards of the crest and. Stopped not because he was,
Speaker 1: tired not because the terrain got, worse because the feeling came,
Speaker 1: back that watchfulness from the, valley that sense of being,
Speaker 1: Observed but here it was, different. Stronger it hit him
Speaker 1: like stepping into cold. Water sudden physical overwhelmed. Me the
Speaker 1: hair on his arm stood, up his mouth went, dry
Speaker 1: his heart rate, jumped and he could feel his pulse
Speaker 1: hammering in his. Neck i've had a rifle pointed at
Speaker 1: me once in my, life he. Said he was talking
Speaker 1: about a property dispute years, earlier a neighbor who'd been
Speaker 1: drinking and came out to the fence line with a twelve.
Speaker 2: Gage the way.
Speaker 1: My body reacted that morning on the ridge was exactly the.
Speaker 1: Same every ALARM i have was going. Off my legs
Speaker 1: were telling me to, run my hands were telling me
Speaker 1: to get the rifle. Up everything in my body was
Speaker 1: telling ME i was in immediate.
Speaker 2: Danger i've learned over.
Speaker 1: A very long life to listen when my body tells me.
Speaker 1: That he turned, around went back down the slope through the,
Speaker 1: laurel back to the, bench back to. Camp he sat
Speaker 1: down at the folding table and drank a glass of
Speaker 1: water and waited for the trembling in.
Speaker 2: His hands to.
Speaker 1: Stop he didn't tell the others about the, trees not,
Speaker 1: yet he told. Me he was still fighting with, himself
Speaker 1: still trying to find the ordinary, explanation still trying to
Speaker 1: talk himself back into the world where things made. Sense black,
Speaker 1: bears maybe they can snap small. Trees wind sheer at,
Speaker 1: elevation old ice damage from the previous. Winter finally letting.
Speaker 2: Go but he.
Speaker 1: Knew he'd known since the morning After night, three when
Speaker 1: he'd stood over that deer in the fire ring and
Speaker 1: felt the wrongness of. It he'd known when he heard
Speaker 1: the knock and keep time like a. Metronome he'd known
Speaker 1: When pete's hand. Shook and now he was standing in
Speaker 1: a corridor of broken trees that something had snapped and
Speaker 1: twisted and arranged like trail, markers and the forest around
Speaker 1: him was screaming at him to, leave and he still
Speaker 1: couldn't say it out. Loud so he went back to,
Speaker 1: camp and he waited for Night night. SIX i want
Speaker 1: to be careful about HOW i tell you this part
Speaker 1: Because herschel was careful about how he told it to.
Speaker 1: Me he didn't dramatize, it he didn't. Embellish he told
Speaker 1: it the way he told everything. Else steady measured complete
Speaker 1: sentences like a man giving testimony under, oath like the
Speaker 1: facts were enough and they didn't need anything added to.
Speaker 1: Them they'd argued that afternoon about whether to stay or.
Speaker 1: Go it was the first real argument of the. Trip
Speaker 1: dale wanted to. Stay they'd paid for the, lease they
Speaker 1: had tags to, fill they'd driven three hours to get out,
Speaker 1: here and they'd only been hunting for three full. Days
Speaker 1: as far As dale was, concerned they were dealing with
Speaker 1: a bold, bear maybe a sow protecting cubs. Nearby maybe
Speaker 1: an old boar with no fear of. Humans it was.
Speaker 1: Wildlife it was. Manageable jimbo was on the. Fence he
Speaker 1: didn't like what was, happening but he Trusted dale's. Judgment
Speaker 1: If dale said, bear maybe it was a. Bear pete
Speaker 1: didn't participate in the. Argument he'd been sitting at the
Speaker 1: camp table since lunchtime field stripping and reassembled his side,
Speaker 1: arm A Ruger blackhawk forty four, magnum the big single
Speaker 1: action with the six and a half inch. Barrel he'd cleaned,
Speaker 1: it oiled, it checked the, cylinder reloaded, it and then
Speaker 1: started the whole process. Over herschel watched him do this without.
Speaker 1: Comment he knew what it. Meant pete wasn't debating. Logistics
Speaker 1: pete was preparing for a close range situation with something
Speaker 1: he didn't have a name. For that Told herschel everything
Speaker 1: he needed to. Know they compromised one more night. Hunt the,
Speaker 1: morning break camp after, lunch be on the paved. Road by,
Speaker 1: sundown whatever was out, there they'd be gone. Soon this,
Speaker 1: time the watch was, doubled two men at a, Time
Speaker 1: herschel And dale from ten to, Two pete And jimbo
Speaker 1: from two to. Six four eyes on the perimeter instead of.
Speaker 1: Two the night started. Wrong herschel knew it. Immediately no creak,
Speaker 1: sound no, owl no, insects. Nothing from the, moment full
Speaker 1: dark ark settled in the woods were dead, silent not
Speaker 1: sleeping forest, quiet not late night in the mountains quiet.
Speaker 1: Silent the air was thick with. It the silence had,
Speaker 1: weight had, presence like a fifth person sitting at the
Speaker 1: edge of the. Firelight herschel And dale sat in their,
Speaker 1: chairs facing opposite. Directions herschel watched south and east toward the.
Speaker 1: Valley dale watched north and west toward the uphill. Slope
Speaker 1: they had their rifles across their, laps flashlights in. Hand
Speaker 1: they didn't. Talk there was nothing left to. Say about eleven,
Speaker 1: thirty the knocking, started same as, before wood on, wood
Speaker 1: percussive and, clean coming from the valley below the. Bench
Speaker 1: herschel Tapped dale's boot with his.
Speaker 2: Own dale.
Speaker 1: Nodded the knocking, continued one strike every eight or ten, seconds, deliberate.
Speaker 1: Patient then something answered from behind them uphill north on the,
Speaker 1: ridge the same, pattern the same, cadence a second source
Speaker 1: responding to the. First herschel looked At dale in the low.
Speaker 1: Firelight he watched the color Leave dale's. Face there's two of,
Speaker 1: Them dale, said almost a. Whisper they. Listened the knocking
Speaker 1: went back and, forth valley to, ridge ridge to, valley
Speaker 1: call and. Response five, exchanges maybe six, each one, clean, distinct.
Speaker 1: Unmistakable there was no way to explain this as a
Speaker 1: dead branch. Falling dead branches don't take. Turns then both
Speaker 1: sources stopped at the same, time like the conversation was.
Speaker 1: Over the silence that followed was the worst of. It
Speaker 1: herschel told me that he said the knocking was, frightening
Speaker 1: but the silence after was. Worse it was a loaded, silence,
Speaker 1: charged the kind of quiet that comes right before something.
Speaker 1: Happens the woods weren't. Sleeping the woods were. Waiting t
Speaker 1: tune for More backwoods Big foot. Stories we'll be back
Speaker 1: after these. Messages then they heard the footsteps from two
Speaker 1: directions at, Once one set coming up from the valley
Speaker 1: from the, south heavy crashing through brush on the steep
Speaker 1: slope below the, bench branches, snapping, leaf litter, crunching the
Speaker 1: sound of real weight displacing. Earth the other set coming
Speaker 1: down from the ridge above from the, north moving through the.
Speaker 1: Hardwoods lighter footfalls on the cleaner ground up, there but still,
Speaker 1: heavy still bipedal left, right, left, right converging on the.
Speaker 1: Camp pete And jimbo came out of their tents without being.
Speaker 2: Called the noise was.
Speaker 1: Enough all four men stood around the fire, ring facing,
Speaker 1: outward rifles. Up herschel had his remington at his, Shoulder
Speaker 1: dale had His pete had the Black hawk and a
Speaker 1: two handed grip hammer. Cocked the footsteps from below reached
Speaker 1: the edge of the bench First they, slowed then stopped
Speaker 1: sixty feet, away maybe, less in the hemlocks where the
Speaker 1: slope leveled, off just past the reach of the. Firelight
Speaker 1: herschel raised his maglight and pressed the. Switch two points
Speaker 1: of light reflected back eyes, shine but not the green
Speaker 1: gold of a white, tail not the amber of a.
Speaker 1: Coyote these were, reddish, deep, dull, red like old brick
Speaker 1: or dried, clay and they were set wide, apart whiter
Speaker 1: than any Animal herschel had ever seen in forty years of.
Speaker 1: Hunting the spacing was roughly the width of a dinner,
Speaker 1: plate maybe, wider and they were high off the. Ground
Speaker 1: he tried to gauge the. Height he's a. Hunter he
Speaker 1: spent his life estimating height and distance by reading terrain
Speaker 1: and tree trunks and the proportions of the things around.
Speaker 1: Him those eyes were at least seven and a half
Speaker 1: feet off the, ground possibly, eight well above his own head,
Speaker 1: height and he was standing on the level. Bench he
Speaker 1: held the flashlight beam on. Them they didn't, blink they
Speaker 1: didn't shift or. Waver whatever was behind those eyes was
Speaker 1: standing absolutely, still just outside the, light staring directly at,
Speaker 1: him not in his general, direction at, him he, said
Speaker 1: he could feel the focus of that, gaze the way
Speaker 1: you feel the sun on your. Face it had, weight
Speaker 1: it had. Intention then from behind, them from, uphill from the,
Speaker 1: ridge from the, north a sound that, vocalization the One
Speaker 1: pete had described the night, before but, louder now much,
Speaker 1: LOUDER a, deep resonant chest sound sustained for maybe three full.
Speaker 1: Seconds not a, roar not a, scream something between a
Speaker 1: hum and a, GROWL a, low sustained vibration that rose
Speaker 1: slightly in pitch at the, end just, slightly like a
Speaker 1: question being, asked like Well, herschel's he. Said the vibration
Speaker 1: of it traveled through the, ground up through his boot,
Speaker 1: soles through his, ankles into his. Shins he felt it
Speaker 1: in his knee, Caps he felt it in his. Sternum
Speaker 1: it was a sound that didn't just.
Speaker 2: Reach his, Ears it reached his.
Speaker 1: Skeleton he spun around his maglight beams swept through the
Speaker 1: trees uphill and caught, movement something, large something dark brown or,
Speaker 1: black pulling back behind the trunk of a thick, oak
Speaker 1: maybe fifty yards above the. Camp he saw it for
Speaker 1: less than a, SECOND a shoulder, rounded, massive sloping into
Speaker 1: what might have been the start of an arm or upper,
Speaker 1: back covered in something that absorbed the flashlight rather than reflecting.
Speaker 1: It dense. Heavy then it was behind the tree. Gone
Speaker 1: he turned back toward the. Valley the eye shine was, gone, too.
Speaker 1: Vanished whatever had been standing in the hemlocks had either
Speaker 1: closed its eyes or stepped behind. Cover in the time
Speaker 1: it took him to look uphill and, Back dale was
Speaker 1: breathing hard beside, him short sharp breaths through his, nose
Speaker 1: the kind you take when your body is trying to
Speaker 1: outrun your. Mind herschel had stood next to this man
Speaker 1: in deer stands and duck blinds and freezing rain for
Speaker 1: over a. Decade he had never once Heard dale breathe like.
Speaker 2: That what was? That dale.
Speaker 1: Said it wasn't a, Question it was a sentence dropped
Speaker 1: into the air with no expectation of a. REPLY i don't,
Speaker 1: Know herschel, said which was a. Lie he did, know
Speaker 1: he'd known for, days but he couldn't say, it not,
Speaker 1: here not in the, dark not with those. Things and
Speaker 1: that's how he was thinking of them, Now not, bears not,
Speaker 1: animals but things still out there close.
Speaker 2: Watching the four.
Speaker 1: Of them stood around that fire for three more, hours
Speaker 1: back to, back rifles, up, flashlights making slow arcs across
Speaker 1: the tree. Line nobody, spoke nobody sat, down nobody lowered their.
Speaker 1: Weapon they stood like a squad in contact and waited
Speaker 1: for the. Sun nothing else, came no more, knocking no more,
Speaker 1: footsteps no more sounds of any. Kind just, silence absolute
Speaker 1: total biological, silence from eleven thirty pm until well past
Speaker 1: six in the, morning over six. Hours no, insects no,
Speaker 1: birds no, creak no, wind no, owl no.
Speaker 2: Mice.
Speaker 1: Nothing the wood shut, Down herschel, said like somebody flipped a.
Speaker 1: Switch every living thing in that valley went underground and
Speaker 1: stayed there until whatever was out there moved. On and
Speaker 1: the animals knew before we. Did they knew the first.
Speaker 1: Night probably they'd been trying to tell, us we just weren't.
Speaker 1: Listening they broke camp at first, light fastest tear Down
Speaker 1: herschel had ever been part. Of nobody discussed. It the
Speaker 1: debate was. Over dale packed his gear in, silence loaded
Speaker 1: his true sat behind the wheel with the engine running
Speaker 1: and the windows, up, smoking while the other three pulled
Speaker 1: steaks and strapped. Coolers herschel was pulling his last tent
Speaker 1: steak on the east side of the camp the side
Speaker 1: facing the, valley when he saw something that stopped. HIM
Speaker 1: a line of, rocks not a, scatter not a natural.
Speaker 1: FORMATION a line eight or nine creek, stones each about
Speaker 1: the size of a, softball arranged in a straight row
Speaker 1: at the very edge of the, bench evenly spaced roughly
Speaker 1: eighteen inches, apart sitting on top of the leaf, litter
Speaker 1: not pushed into the. Soil they had been placed there.
Speaker 1: Recently he was certain of. That he'd walked this edge
Speaker 1: of the bench the day, before going uphill to find
Speaker 1: the twisted. Trees these rocks had not been. Here then
Speaker 1: he Called jimbo. Over jimbo looked at the line of,
Speaker 1: rocks looked at herschel and said, QUIETLY i didn't put those,
Speaker 1: THERE i know herschel picked one. Up creek, stone smooth water,
Speaker 1: rounded the kind you'd find in the drainage two hundred yards,
Speaker 1: downhill cool to the, touch damp on the. Underside something
Speaker 1: had gone down to the, creek picked up nine, stones
Speaker 1: carried them up hill and arranged them in a deliberate
Speaker 1: row at the edge of the. Camp and the row pointed,
Speaker 1: north not east, west not random due, north straight up
Speaker 1: the slope toward the ridge, line toward the broken, trees
Speaker 1: toward where the second set of footsteps had come, from
Speaker 1: like a, marker like a, direction like a note left
Speaker 1: on a. COUNTER i Asked herschel what he thought it.
Speaker 1: Meant he didn't answer right. Away when he, did his
Speaker 1: voice was. Careful i've thought about it for forty six,
Speaker 1: years AND i come back to two. Possibilities either it
Speaker 1: was pointing us towards something it wanted us to, find
Speaker 1: or it was showing us the way it, travels like
Speaker 1: signing its, name like saying this is my. PATH i
Speaker 1: go this. Way now you know we didn't follow. It
Speaker 1: they loaded the trucks and drove out forty five minutes
Speaker 1: on the logging, roads dodging ruts and. Washouts herschel, said
Speaker 1: nobody spoke until they hit. Pavement Then dale came on
Speaker 1: THE cb and said one, sentence we don't talk about.
Speaker 2: This that was the.
Speaker 1: Pact they kept it for. Decades dale died in ninety
Speaker 1: one art. Attack pete passed in eight. Cancer jimbo's alive
Speaker 1: in a nursing home Near, ringold but he won't acknowledge
Speaker 1: any of it. Happened gets angry If herschel brings it.
Speaker 1: Up he put it in a box and nailed the lid.
Speaker 1: Shut herschel, SAID i respect that everybody handles this. Different
Speaker 1: he needs it to not be. REAL i couldn't do.
Speaker 1: That it wouldn't stay closed for. Me herschel went back
Speaker 1: alone spring of nineteen, eighty a year and a half
Speaker 1: after the hunting. Trip he told his wife he was going.
Speaker 1: Fishing he parked at the old pull off and hiked
Speaker 1: up to the. Bench ring was still. There the hanging
Speaker 1: pole was still, standing but the camp had a quality
Speaker 1: to it that he hadn't, expected a heaviness like the
Speaker 1: ground remembered what happened and hadn't finished processing. It he
Speaker 1: walked the perimeter found where the line of rocks had.
Speaker 1: Been the rocks were, gone scattered or, removed he couldn't tell,
Speaker 1: which but the ground where they'd sat was, bare a
Speaker 1: strip of exposed soil in a straight, line no leaf,
Speaker 1: litter as if something had swept the forest floor. Clean
Speaker 1: along that, track he went. Uphill the original tree breaks
Speaker 1: were still, there the sour wood and the oak, fork
Speaker 1: the twisted dog, wood but there were more, now new
Speaker 1: brakes farther up the, slope extending the line of damaged
Speaker 1: trees north along the ridge, line he counted eleven, total some,
Speaker 1: old some, FRESH a corridor of snapped and twisted wood
Speaker 1: climbing toward the crest like blazes on a. Trail he
Speaker 1: reached the ridge this, time stood on the crest and looked.
Speaker 1: North the valley stretched away below him on the east,
Speaker 1: side running between the two parallel ridges for as far
Speaker 1: as he could, see miles of unbroken, forest no, roads no,
Speaker 1: clearcuts no, structures just, timber deep and old filling the
Speaker 1: gap between the ridges like water filling a, channel and
Speaker 1: the ridges pinched together as they went. North the valley, narrowed, tightened,
Speaker 1: squeezed until at the far edge of his vision the
Speaker 1: two ridges nearly touched a. Corridor he used that word
Speaker 1: BEFORE i ever said it to, him BEFORE i told
Speaker 1: him anything about the other. Stories he stood there for ten,
Speaker 1: minutes feeling the wind come up through the, gap and
Speaker 1: on that wind from far up the valley a mile maybe,
Speaker 1: more he heard one, knock just one wood on, wood
Speaker 1: faint with distance than. Nothing he didn't go back after.
Speaker 1: That he let the lease. Expire he never hunted that
Speaker 1: part arsel, again but the memory didn't. Fade he told.
Speaker 1: Me most memories soften over, time blur at the, edges
Speaker 1: lose their sharp.
Speaker 2: Corners this one.
Speaker 1: Didn't forty eight years, later every detail was as clear
Speaker 1: as the morning he first stepped out of that tent
Speaker 1: and found his camp. Rearranged some things don't let you forget,
Speaker 1: them he. Said some things stay with you because they're supposed,
Speaker 1: to because you.
Speaker 2: Were meant to see.
Speaker 1: THEM i don't know. WHY i don't know what purpose it.
Speaker 1: SERVES i don't know why four men From, Dalton, georgia
Speaker 1: who were just out there trying to put meat in
Speaker 1: the freezer got chosen to see what we. Saw BUT
Speaker 1: i know what. HAPPENED i know WHAT i, HEARD i
Speaker 1: know WHAT i, felt AND i know that whatever lives
Speaker 1: in that corridor has been there a lot longer than
Speaker 1: any of, us a lot. Longer there you have. It
Speaker 1: That's herschel's. STORY i wasn't. THERE i didn't see What herschel.
Speaker 1: SAW i didn't hear What pete. HEARD i didn't stand
Speaker 1: over that deer in the fire, ring or feel the
Speaker 1: ground shake under my. Boots ALL i have is a
Speaker 1: man's voice on the phone and six pages of yellow
Speaker 1: legal paper in careful. Handwriting and the hours of conversation that.
Speaker 1: Followed that's, It that's What i'm working. With But i've
Speaker 1: been listening to people tell these kinds of stories for
Speaker 1: a long time. Now i've heard hundreds of, them maybe
Speaker 1: more than that at this, point and after a, while
Speaker 1: you start to develop a sense for what's real and what.
Speaker 1: Isn't not, Proof i'm not talking about. Proof i'm talking
Speaker 1: about the feel of a, story the texture of. It
Speaker 1: the way a person's voice changes when they're telling you
Speaker 1: something that actually happened to them versus something they heard
Speaker 1: from somebody else or something they've embellished over the.
Speaker 2: Years there's a.
Speaker 1: Difference it's, subtle but it's there if you listen for.
Speaker 1: It herschel sounds like a man telling the. Truth his
Speaker 1: details don't. Shift the story comes out the same way every,
Speaker 1: time not, rehearsed not like he's reciting a, script more
Speaker 1: like he's reading from a photograph in his. Head the
Speaker 1: sequence is the, same the sensory details are the, same
Speaker 1: the things he emphasizes are the, same and the things
Speaker 1: he's uncertain about stay. Uncertain he doesn't fill in the
Speaker 1: gaps with. Guesses he, SAYS i don't know when he
Speaker 1: doesn't know that matters to. Me people who are making
Speaker 1: things up tend to have an answer for. Everything herschel
Speaker 1: has answers for what he experienced and honest silence for
Speaker 1: what he. Didn't and then there are the details. Themselves
Speaker 1: the coordinated knocking from two, positions the deliberate manipulation of camp,
Speaker 1: objects not, destruction not, rating but. Rearrangement the total biological
Speaker 1: silence that lasted for, hours eye shine at seven to eight,
Speaker 1: feet reddish in color with wide orbital, spacing a vocalization
Speaker 1: felt through the, ground not just heard with the. Ears
Speaker 1: these aren't generic. Claims these are, specific particular, details and
Speaker 1: their Details i've heard before from other, people in other,
Speaker 1: places across other. Years people who don't Know, herschel people
Speaker 1: who couldn't have compared notes with him because they've never met,
Speaker 1: him never heard of, him and in most cases have
Speaker 1: never told their story to anyone outside their own. Family
Speaker 1: when you start hearing the same specific details from people
Speaker 1: who have no connection to each, other you have to
Speaker 1: at least ask the. Question you don't have to answer,
Speaker 1: it you don't have to commit to a, conclusion but
Speaker 1: you have to ask. It and that question is what
Speaker 1: the series is. About because here's What herschel didn't know
Speaker 1: when he sat down at his kitchen table with that
Speaker 1: yellow legal pad.
Speaker 2: And wrote me his.
Speaker 1: Letter he didn't know that four other people had written
Speaker 1: to me. Too he didn't know that their stories all
Speaker 1: described the same stretch of. Mountain he didn't know that
Speaker 1: the terrain they're talking about when you sit down with
Speaker 1: a map and start marking, locations falls along the same
Speaker 1: north south. Ridgeline his camp sat, on different, decades different,
Speaker 1: people different, circumstances but the same corridor of land running
Speaker 1: from Northern georgia up into Eastern. Tennessee he didn't know
Speaker 1: that sixteen years after his last night at that, camp
Speaker 1: a woman working a seasonal job for The United States
Speaker 1: Forest service would be assigned to a decommissioned fire road
Speaker 1: farther north along that same. Ridge over three, weeks she'd
Speaker 1: noticed things she couldn't. Explain trees snapped at the same.
Speaker 1: Height herschel described a smell that appeared at the same
Speaker 1: location every, evening like, clockwork prints in creek mud that
Speaker 1: measured nineteen. Inches and, then one, night alone on that
Speaker 1: road with a flat tire and no cell, service she
Speaker 1: heard something walking above her in the, darkness two, legs steady.
Speaker 1: Close he didn't know about the bow, hunter a competitive,
Speaker 1: archer a detail, man the kind of hunter who trust
Speaker 1: his optics the way a pilot trusts his. Instruments in
Speaker 1: two thousand and, three farther up the, corridor that man
Speaker 1: sat on a ridge saddle and watched something through a
Speaker 1: spotting scope that he has never been able to explain to.
Speaker 1: Himself something that stepped off a stump and walked upright
Speaker 1: through wasiste high brush for over two hundred. Yards he
Speaker 1: watched it for nearly four, minutes and he spent the
Speaker 1: last twenty years trying to make it fit inside the
Speaker 1: world he thought he. Understood he didn't know about the
Speaker 1: church van twenty, eleven a youth pastor driving a fifteen
Speaker 1: passenger van full of teenagers on a two lane highway.
Speaker 2: That cuts through the.
Speaker 1: Valley the thing that walked into the, road the thing
Speaker 1: that was tall enough that the headlights caught it mid,
Speaker 1: torso the van spinning into a, ditch and the thing
Speaker 1: standing at the tree line, afterward. Watching and he didn't.
Speaker 2: Know about the.
Speaker 1: Surveyor the last story in this, series a man who
Speaker 1: mapped the very ground herschel hunted on years later for
Speaker 1: a different timber, company and who has field notes and
Speaker 1: plat maps and a cassette tape of audio he recorded on,
Speaker 1: site a man who found something in the shape of
Speaker 1: the land, itself in the geology that none of the
Speaker 1: other four people could have known, about something that might
Speaker 1: explain why this particular corridor, exists why things have been
Speaker 1: moving through, it and for how. Long herschel doesn't know
Speaker 1: any of these. People he's never heard their. Names he's
Speaker 1: never read their stories or listened to them on a
Speaker 1: podcast or seen them in a. Forum he wrote his
Speaker 1: letter because his grandson played our show on his phone
Speaker 1: during a, visit And herschel heard something in these stories
Speaker 1: that he, recognized something that matched what he'd been carrying
Speaker 1: alone for forty six.
Speaker 2: Years he didn't. Know he wasn't alone in. It none
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: Did five, people five separate, lives five different. Decades one
Speaker 1: corridor of mountain running north through the oldest woods in
Speaker 1: the Eastern United, states and something moving through, It something
Speaker 1: that was there in nineteen seventy, eight something that was
Speaker 1: still there in twenty, eleven something, that if the pattern,
Speaker 1: holds is there right. Now that's what this series is,
Speaker 1: about not, answers not, conclusions just the stories laid end
Speaker 1: to end and the question they raise when you hear them.
Speaker 1: Together next, Time i'm going to take you to nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: four a woman Named karen a decommissioned fire road In Polk, County.
Speaker 1: Tennessee she wasn't looking for anything. Strange she wasn't out
Speaker 1: there chasing legends or following up on. Rumors she was
Speaker 1: doing her, job seasonal, maintenance clearing, drains cutting, brush keeping
Speaker 1: the road from disappearing back into the mountain the way
Speaker 1: old roads do when nobody tends. Them she was good at,
Speaker 1: it and she knew those, mountains she'd grown up in.
Speaker 1: Them but what she found on that road over three
Speaker 1: weeks changed the way she thought about the place she'd
Speaker 1: lived her whole. Life and the night she was out there,
Speaker 1: alone kneeling next to a flat tire on the service
Speaker 1: truck with nothing but a lug wrench and a, headlamp
Speaker 1: and she heard bipedal footsteps pacing the road above her
Speaker 1: in complete. Darkness that changed everything?
Speaker 2: Else Did Di Di Di di