Speaker 1: All right, here's a story, and it's one that I
Speaker 1: never do. Let me explain. When someone sends me an
Speaker 1: email and they say, well, I've already submitted this to
Speaker 1: so and so so and so, so and so, and
Speaker 1: I'm submitting it to you right now, I usually just
Speaker 1: delete the email. We don't. None of us out here
Speaker 1: who do this want to duplicate stories. So that's a
Speaker 1: little hint for people. If you've already submitted your story
Speaker 1: to another channel and they've done it, especially if they've
Speaker 1: done it, or even if they haven't done it, you
Speaker 1: picked who you wanted to send it to and leave
Speaker 1: it at that, don't send it to me. That's not
Speaker 1: really fair. I know people want to get their story
Speaker 1: heard all over the place, but it's anyway. It kind
Speaker 1: of annoys me, is what I'm saying, and when I
Speaker 1: see that, I delete them. However, this story that I'm
Speaker 1: about to share with you was actually shared on another channel.
Speaker 1: It was shared on or narrated on Carrie Arnold's Excuse Me,
Speaker 1: Carrie Arnold's channel The Shutter. He did a storytelling channel
Speaker 1: at one time during the COVID shutdown. He didn't have
Speaker 1: much to do, He wasn't working. He actually called me
Speaker 1: and he said, I want to do this. I'm like,
Speaker 1: you should do it. You've got a great voice, and
Speaker 1: you know you read really well, and you should be
Speaker 1: able to do it. Just in honor of Carrie. I
Speaker 1: wanted to redo this story. It's pretty good. It's a
Speaker 1: pretty good story. The title of the story is twelve
Speaker 1: Big Creature. It's written by Daniel McCall and this was
Speaker 1: posted on Facebook, so I'm assuming he posted it on
Speaker 1: his Facebook channel under his name, so I don't mind
Speaker 1: saying his full name because he's taken full credit for this.
Speaker 1: He writes. My maternal grandfather, d Calvin Howell was born
Speaker 1: in Jefferson County, Florida, in eighteen eighty six and grew
Speaker 1: up in I can't pronounce this town name Willkissa w
Speaker 1: wasisa Wacissa and the Cody area, hunting, fishing, and roaming
Speaker 1: the local woods. When as a teenage boy he was
Speaker 1: old enough to go to work, he began working in
Speaker 1: logging camps which were all deep in the woods, accessible
Speaker 1: only by rail that was laid to access in haul
Speaker 1: out the timber. He was an excellent woodsman. He was
Speaker 1: a hunter and he was an expert with firearms. It
Speaker 1: was generally well known in the area that the men
Speaker 1: of the Howell family would not back down from a confrontation.
Speaker 1: Calvin Howell was not a big man, but in that
Speaker 1: respect he was very much like the rest of his
Speaker 1: Howell relatives. He married my grandmother in nineteen twelve and
Speaker 1: continued working and living in logging camps until nineteen twenty nine,
Speaker 1: when his employer, Standard Lumber Company went broke as a
Speaker 1: result of the stock market crash and left him and
Speaker 1: his family stranded in a logging camp in Lofayette County, Florida.
Speaker 1: When he managed to get his family out of the
Speaker 1: logging camp, he became a sharecropper farmer in the area
Speaker 1: of Mayo, Loafayette County, Florida. In nineteen thirty eight, when
Speaker 1: he bought his own farm in Leon County, Florida. He
Speaker 1: died in nineteen fifty one when I was thirteen years old.
Speaker 1: A few months after my grandfather died, I came to
Speaker 1: live with my grandmother and I lived with her until
Speaker 1: I graduated from high school and joined the Army in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty five. When I was growing up, one of
Speaker 1: the family stories I heard from my mother and grandmother
Speaker 1: was about an encounter my grandfather had one night during
Speaker 1: the years that he was sharecropping in Lofayette County. This
Speaker 1: was during the Great Depression and the family was struggling
Speaker 1: to survive. Their only means of transportation was a mule
Speaker 1: and a wagon or walking. One night, my grandfather was
Speaker 1: walking home from a place I no longer remember. It
Speaker 1: was after dark, but it was a clear night, and
Speaker 1: there was enough light from the moon or the stars
Speaker 1: for him to be able to see the road for
Speaker 1: a little way ahead. He was walking along a dirt
Speaker 1: road in a wooded area that was sparsely populated with
Speaker 1: no houses. When he approached an intersection in the dirt road,
Speaker 1: he saw what appeared to him to be a large
Speaker 1: man standing erect and silent in the intersection. He couldn't
Speaker 1: see it well enough to tell if it was a
Speaker 1: big man or something else. Being a lifelong woodsman and hunter,
Speaker 1: he was well aware of all the animals that lived
Speaker 1: in the area, including the black bear. He was also
Speaker 1: aware of all the domestic animals, which at that time
Speaker 1: were allowed to roam free on the open range, and
Speaker 1: he knew most, if not all, of the men who
Speaker 1: lived in the area, but he didn't know anyone that large.
Speaker 1: In the darkness, he could not identify this person or
Speaker 1: animal or creature or object standing in the intersection. He
Speaker 1: couldn't pass through the intersection without walking close to the
Speaker 1: unidentified manner object in the intersection. Being very apprehensive about
Speaker 1: approaching an unknown person or animal under those circumstances, he
Speaker 1: stopped twenty yards short of the intersection and challenged what
Speaker 1: he thought was probably a large man to identify himself,
Speaker 1: and he received no response. After challenging the man or
Speaker 1: the creature several more times and receiving no response, he
Speaker 1: eventually said something to the effect of you're going to
Speaker 1: speak up now, I'm gonna shoot you. After receiving no
Speaker 1: response once again, he fired two shots from his Smith
Speaker 1: and Wesson thirty eight special revolver into the center chest
Speaker 1: area of the object. Considering his expertise with the revolver
Speaker 1: and the close range, it is not likely that he
Speaker 1: missed his mark. After he shot the creature, it moved
Speaker 1: off into the woods in an upright position without making
Speaker 1: a sound. After a few minutes, my grandfather continued on
Speaker 1: his way home. The next morning, He and others, who
Speaker 1: were all well armed went back to the intersection in
Speaker 1: the daylight to find the creature, or at least find
Speaker 1: its tracks and determine what it was. They didn't find
Speaker 1: the creature, nor did they identify any tracks. No man
Speaker 1: or animal was ever reported as having been shot or
Speaker 1: seen at that time in location. Could this have been
Speaker 1: a bear, maybe, but there are some things that seemed
Speaker 1: to indicate that it was not a bear. He was
Speaker 1: a woodsman, and my grandfather knew what black bears looked like.
Speaker 1: And also, a black bear will generally run away when
Speaker 1: approached and verbally challenged by a human. And it's also
Speaker 1: unlikely that a black bear would walk away on its
Speaker 1: hind legs after being shot twice in the chest by
Speaker 1: thirty eight special Normally, in either case, a black bear
Speaker 1: would run away on all four legs. The creature was
Speaker 1: never identified in the mystery was never solved. Recent stories
Speaker 1: about people's encounters with bigfoot type creatures made me remember
Speaker 1: the story and wonder if it may be what my
Speaker 1: grandfather encountered back in the nineteen thirties. I was allowed
Speaker 1: to begin hunting squirrels with a single shot twenty two
Speaker 1: when I was ten years old, and I grew to
Speaker 1: love hunting wood ducks and turkeys and deer, and I
Speaker 1: hunted them until twenty fourteen. During the sixty plus years
Speaker 1: that I hunted in North Florida, I never saw an
Speaker 1: animal or a track that I could not identify. I
Speaker 1: did hear an occasional strange noise, but I attributed those
Speaker 1: to hogs that were always in the areas where I hunted.
Speaker 1: I had asked many questions and written down the story
Speaker 1: back when I first heard it, and I was young
Speaker 1: and thought I would remember everything. And that's the end
Speaker 1: of the story. And again, this story has been recorded before.
Speaker 1: Carrie Arnold did it on his channel, The Shutter. There'll
Speaker 1: be a link in the description, and I miss Carry Arnold.
Speaker 1: I did this story kind of in his honor. It's
Speaker 1: not a big tribute to Carrie. But when I saw
Speaker 1: at the end that the man had said he sent
Speaker 1: it to Carrie, and Carrie did it on his channel,
Speaker 1: it just felt right to do it. This story is
Speaker 1: true by all that is holy, and I'm not kidding.
Speaker 1: I would prefer to keep my name out of this,
Speaker 1: but feel free to use it, not use it, do
Speaker 1: whatever you want to do with it. I finished it
Speaker 1: a couple of hours ago, and I feel like a
Speaker 1: whole lot of weight is off my shoulders now. It's
Speaker 1: taken me decades to be able to relate the events here,
Speaker 1: and I'm still not certain that I'm all that ready.
Speaker 1: I've told only my wife about the event, and she
Speaker 1: did not want to deal with it, so I figured
Speaker 1: that it was a story that just shouldn't be told. However,
Speaker 1: my life was forever changed by what happened to me,
Speaker 1: and others were impacted even more so I'm hoping that
Speaker 1: putting this story out will help get fully past it.
Speaker 1: When I was young, I had fears of being taken, assaulted,
Speaker 1: or abducted. Whatever words you may choose for characterizing a
Speaker 1: child that had these fears is okay with me. It's
Speaker 1: the fact that it happened that counts. The image of
Speaker 1: big eyed pictures of children or owls always freaked me
Speaker 1: out and I couldn't deal with them. I'll begin by
Speaker 1: relating what happened when I was twelve. I lived with
Speaker 1: my mother and older brother, and we had a really loving,
Speaker 1: secure home. She worked hard to keep a roof over
Speaker 1: our heads, and she was worn out and napping after
Speaker 1: work whenever possible. Soon after this event, she remarried a
Speaker 1: good guy that paid the bills, so she didn't have
Speaker 1: to work anymore. My mother was blessed in life, and
Speaker 1: my stepfather was all of our blessing from God. This
Speaker 1: story is prior to that happening. My mother decided to
Speaker 1: send us away to visit her family out in Illinois
Speaker 1: for summer vacation so we could get to know them
Speaker 1: better and vice versa. We were living in a city
Speaker 1: back in Ohio and hardly knew her family. We stayed
Speaker 1: for a while with my uncle, who had a small
Speaker 1: grocery store with a home above it on the second floor.
Speaker 1: And after we arrived there, my night fares became more intense.
Speaker 1: I noticed that he had an old refrigerator case out
Speaker 1: in the garage that he was going to get rid of.
Speaker 1: It was still plugged in, and though it wouldn't cool anymore,
Speaker 1: the fan motor in it was still working. I was
Speaker 1: an industrious little pest of a kid, and I asked
Speaker 1: him if I could have the fan motor, and he said,
Speaker 1: have at it. An hour later, it was in my hands.
Speaker 1: It had no protective screen around it, and it needed
Speaker 1: a plug, all of which didn't bother me. When I
Speaker 1: returned home, I attached a new plug to the wires
Speaker 1: and bolted it to the headboard of my metal frame
Speaker 1: bunk bed, and with an extension cord, it worked fine.
Speaker 1: The humming helped me sleep, provided I didn't bump into
Speaker 1: those fan blades. Everyone thought I needed the breeze at night,
Speaker 1: but my needs were not about more air. What I
Speaker 1: was hoping was that fan would prevent whatever was bothering
Speaker 1: me at night from ever returning out of fear that
Speaker 1: they would be cut to pieces. That is the way
Speaker 1: it was for me as a kid, loving the world,
Speaker 1: curious and scared sometimes. At the age of thirty eight,
Speaker 1: I had just remarried. I had joint custody of my
Speaker 1: two children, and I was living with my new wife
Speaker 1: in a ranch house on the outskirts of the city
Speaker 1: on a rural wooded light. The house wasn't much, but
Speaker 1: I liked the location and the acreage and the trees
Speaker 1: that surrounded the house. It sort of shielded the ground
Speaker 1: from the light, so we didn't have to cut grass
Speaker 1: very much. Plus, because the trees had few low branches,
Speaker 1: so you could see the other homes one hundred yards
Speaker 1: or so in every direction around us during that first spring.
Speaker 1: We seemed to be unnaturally surrounded with wildlife night and
Speaker 1: day in that house, and it was a little unnerving
Speaker 1: for a city boy like Meat. If you walked outside
Speaker 1: at night, there were always deer staring at you or
Speaker 1: running around scaring you, or even raccoons or birds. Owls
Speaker 1: seemed to hang out there too. Especially weird was the
Speaker 1: big hawk that would land on the branch in front
Speaker 1: of the living room picture window, causing the branch to
Speaker 1: drop down just low enough where the hawk could peer
Speaker 1: into our window, and he did all the time. Many
Speaker 1: times I'd just sit and we would stare at one
Speaker 1: another over my morning coffee. One day I found him
Speaker 1: in another branch looking into the breakfast room window. Seems
Speaker 1: like we were just never alone there. I had just
Speaker 1: gotten married to my second wife, who was twenty seven
Speaker 1: at the time, and she had moved with me into
Speaker 1: this place. She was trying to fit in, and things
Speaker 1: were a little dicey still with her relationship with my
Speaker 1: ex and kids, but that is the way it is
Speaker 1: with blended families. One morning, something happened that I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you about because it was really strange and inexplicable.
Speaker 1: My wife and I had a sleep routine in her
Speaker 1: habit where she would always wear my pajama top and
Speaker 1: her own shorts to bed, and I would wear the
Speaker 1: matching pajama bottoms and a T shirt. She was a
Speaker 1: fitful sleeper and I was a sound sleeper. In the mornings,
Speaker 1: her side of the bed was a mess. Blankets were everywhere,
Speaker 1: but on my I just slip out of and never
Speaker 1: even had to make the bed, so I never did. So, okay,
Speaker 1: we were lazy about making the bed. Big deal. Well,
Speaker 1: this one morning, I woke to light coming in all
Speaker 1: the windows as if I'd been sleeping for days. It
Speaker 1: was ten am, and I had never slept past seven
Speaker 1: am in my life. Kids weren't with us that night,
Speaker 1: and the wife started to stir in bed at the
Speaker 1: same time as I did. I remember looking at her
Speaker 1: and she looking at me, saying to one another, what
Speaker 1: happened last night? We had gone to bed uneventfully very early,
Speaker 1: and both of us had no recollection of getting up
Speaker 1: at all, no watching the TV in the room, no
Speaker 1: bathroom visits all night long, nothing, which was very strange.
Speaker 1: We laid there in bed feeling like we were sleeping.
Speaker 1: Something off but we weren't drinkers and hadn't had a
Speaker 1: thing the day or night before. As I tried to
Speaker 1: turn over and get out of the bed, I realized
Speaker 1: I couldn't move very well, and it took me a
Speaker 1: few moments to figure out why. It turns out that
Speaker 1: our blankets and bedspread had been pulled tightly and tucked
Speaker 1: in all around the sides of the bed, so securely
Speaker 1: that we had difficulty kicking them loose to get out
Speaker 1: of the bed. It was as if we had been
Speaker 1: deliberately secured into our own bed. Furthermore, she had on
Speaker 1: my T shirt and I had on the pajama top
Speaker 1: she wore to bed, which I hate wearing, and the
Speaker 1: top was buttoned. Who does that. We were both groggy
Speaker 1: and unable to focus very well and were freaked out
Speaker 1: about what had just happened. Months later, my memories began
Speaker 1: to return a little at a time, and I remembered
Speaker 1: what had happened. She never did. We were taken to
Speaker 1: a place that I was familiar with, but she was
Speaker 1: new to and she was in a complete panic, and
Speaker 1: neither of us could move. That was making me angry,
Speaker 1: which is why I think I remembered what had happened.
Speaker 1: There were other people there, and I used the term
Speaker 1: people loosely because what I really saw weren't people like
Speaker 1: you and I. However, I seemed to be familiar with them,
Speaker 1: and they were with me as if we knew each other.
Speaker 1: This had happened to me before, but this time it
Speaker 1: was different. I insisted that they stopped doing what they
Speaker 1: were doing to us, and they just continued on with
Speaker 1: their task, as if my words or her fears were
Speaker 1: unimportant to whatever task they were intent on completing on us.
Speaker 1: I remember being emphatic and unrelenting, as I was not
Speaker 1: concerned about myself but my new wife, and what I
Speaker 1: perceived was an attack on someone who was innocent. My
Speaker 1: own personal experience was one of passivity, except for defending
Speaker 1: her in this heated moment. Then, out of desperation, I
Speaker 1: remember yelling these words words in the name of Jesus,
Speaker 1: the Father and the Spirit of God, I demand that
Speaker 1: you stop doing this to her immediately. For the first time,
Speaker 1: they all sort of stopped all at once, and a
Speaker 1: few of them actually turned their heads towards me, then
Speaker 1: to one another, and without speaking or using any obvious
Speaker 1: other form of communication, which I still don't exactly understand.
Speaker 1: They simply stopped. They seemed stunned or disappointed, or maybe
Speaker 1: even angry. I remember being carried or floated quickly back
Speaker 1: to the bed. She was carried to the other side
Speaker 1: of the bed. We were both hurriedly tucked in and
Speaker 1: put to sleep. The memories were never fully completed, just
Speaker 1: the ability for me to resolve it well enough to
Speaker 1: move past it. Things were never the same after that morning.
Speaker 1: It took a couple of months for the reality of
Speaker 1: what happened that night to reveal itself, but from then
Speaker 1: on she was not interested in living in that house
Speaker 1: or even on that side of town. We argued about moving,
Speaker 1: and then one day a couple of months later, we
Speaker 1: found a lump in her breast. The doctor said she
Speaker 1: needed surgery right away and began to treat her with
Speaker 1: radiation and chemotherapy. She was determined to move somewhere else
Speaker 1: and went looking for a place as far away as
Speaker 1: she could find. During this time, I was dealing with
Speaker 1: my own trauma, as I was having one dream after another,
Speaker 1: one building on top of the memory of the one before,
Speaker 1: over and over, gradually revealing to me what had happened
Speaker 1: that one strange night we had somehow as a couple
Speaker 1: been moved to another location, and I remember seeing her
Speaker 1: on her back being moved as I was on my back,
Speaker 1: both being transported through the air. We were renting this
Speaker 1: house and I had a lease, and I wasn't interested
Speaker 1: in moving to the other side of the town because
Speaker 1: my business, kids and friends, her doctor's everything was nearby
Speaker 1: and very convenient. Nevertheless, she decided to get out on
Speaker 1: her own and rented an apartment and moved out. She
Speaker 1: was scared and legitimately frightened about the possibility of the
Speaker 1: spread of her cancer. It was beyond my ability to
Speaker 1: understand how to help her. Once she moved out, she
Speaker 1: was resolute, and I understood and accepted her decision. I
Speaker 1: also got out of that house. A month later, I
Speaker 1: broke the lease and rented a place nearer to my kids,
Speaker 1: and I felt safer there. My wife was getting treated
Speaker 1: and she became more and more emotionally and mentally stressed,
Speaker 1: and I offered for her to move back in with me,
Speaker 1: which she accepted. None of the treatments or therapy slowed
Speaker 1: her cancer down. I even paid out of my pocket
Speaker 1: for a bone marrow transplant, and while she was in
Speaker 1: the hospital, the cancer spread everywhere. Within three months, she
Speaker 1: was diagnosed as terminal, and she decided to leave the
Speaker 1: country and move to Europe. She was a sad, loss confused,
Speaker 1: frightened woman who just wanted to live. Ultimately, she ended
Speaker 1: up returning from Europe and we divorced on good terms,
Speaker 1: and I kept her medical coverage intact and offered for
Speaker 1: her to move back in with me to continue her treatments.
Speaker 1: I never discussed that strange night of the year prior
Speaker 1: ever again, except for her to say that she never
Speaker 1: wanted to hear me speak of it again. So I
Speaker 1: was never able to reveal what I had eventually remembered,
Speaker 1: and I always wondered what she remembered, if anything, and
Speaker 1: if those memories possibly contributed to her belief that the
Speaker 1: events of that previous year with me had caused her cancer,
Speaker 1: a belief which I heard almost daily without details, which
Speaker 1: she could not bear to engage in. After a few months,
Speaker 1: she moved back to her mother home eight hundred miles away,
Speaker 1: and then to a hospice, and then a year later
Speaker 1: she passed away. It has been almost twenty five years
Speaker 1: since then, and I've since remarried for twenty three of
Speaker 1: those years now, and these events still affect me on
Speaker 1: a regular basis. I'm not certain there is any way
Speaker 1: to resolve things like this unless you talk about them. However,
Speaker 1: I'm certain that my demand, backed by my statement of
Speaker 1: faith that night, completely stopped any other event from happening
Speaker 1: ever again. At one point, though, about five years later,
Speaker 1: my twelve year old son had something happen. One day,
Speaker 1: when I was cleaning his room, which was in the
Speaker 1: third floor loft looking out over the little acreage of trees,
Speaker 1: I found a crudely drawn picture of what appeared to
Speaker 1: be a bird with huge eyes. When I questioned him
Speaker 1: about it, he very calmly said that at night, something
Speaker 1: like a dove was tapping at his window and even
Speaker 1: waking him too early in the morning, which would have
Speaker 1: been impossible based upon where his room was situated, and
Speaker 1: that he drew the picture of this hawk and taped
Speaker 1: it to the glass looking outwards because he had heard
Speaker 1: that other birds were afraid of hawks, and he hoped
Speaker 1: the picture would stop them from bothering him at night.
Speaker 1: We moved again after that, and my son has had
Speaker 1: no more experiences, though truthfully, we don't speak about it.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should