WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.520 --> 00:00:05.759 For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace. 2 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:10.279 Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world 3 00:00:10.359 --> 00:00:14.160 refuses to believe in, but those who have survived they 4 00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:18.679 know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we 5 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:22.839 share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot, 6 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.239 dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.320 it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because 8 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:34.640 once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the 9 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.920 woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and 10 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.840 remember some things in the woods don't want to be found. 11 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:46.240 Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, 12 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.640 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 13 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:03.520 Van Meter. 14 00:01:04.560 --> 00:01:07.040 The autumn of nineteen o three, a little town and 15 00:01:07.079 --> 00:01:09.200 a bend of the Raccoon River woke up to find 16 00:01:09.239 --> 00:01:12.439 something walking its rooftops at one in the morning, a 17 00:01:12.480 --> 00:01:16.000 winged thing tall as a barn door, with a horn 18 00:01:16.040 --> 00:01:18.599 on its forehead that threw a beam of light bright 19 00:01:18.719 --> 00:01:21.680 enough to blind a man through his own window. The 20 00:01:21.680 --> 00:01:24.680 town doctor put five bullets into it, and it didn't 21 00:01:24.719 --> 00:01:28.280 so much as flinch. The banker fired buckshot through his 22 00:01:28.319 --> 00:01:30.680 front glass and found a three toed track. 23 00:01:30.439 --> 00:01:30.920 In the dirt. 24 00:01:30.959 --> 00:01:33.719 The next morning, and on the last night, a whole 25 00:01:33.760 --> 00:01:36.439 posse of farmers chased it out to an abandoned coal 26 00:01:36.519 --> 00:01:39.239 mine at the edge of town, where two of the 27 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:41.799 things came up out of the dark, took a wall 28 00:01:41.799 --> 00:01:44.680 of gunfire like it was a spring rain, and walked 29 00:01:44.719 --> 00:01:48.239 back down into the shaft. The men sealed the mine, 30 00:01:48.280 --> 00:01:51.719 the visit stopped. Nobody ever explained a single second of it. 31 00:01:52.280 --> 00:01:55.159 That's the Van Meter Visitor, and it's one of the strangest, 32 00:01:55.200 --> 00:01:58.680 best documented, hardest to laugh off cases in the whole country. 33 00:01:59.239 --> 00:02:02.599 It's also a story. I've already told you the full thing, 34 00:02:02.959 --> 00:02:06.400 all five nights, every name, and every shot fired. That 35 00:02:06.519 --> 00:02:09.080 was way back in episode one seven of the show. 36 00:02:09.800 --> 00:02:12.080 So if you're new here, or if your memory of 37 00:02:12.120 --> 00:02:14.560 it is faded, go back and pull up one forty 38 00:02:14.560 --> 00:02:17.319 seven and give it a listen. It's worth your time. 39 00:02:18.120 --> 00:02:20.439 I won't do the whole thing justice in a recap, 40 00:02:20.719 --> 00:02:23.039 and I'm not going to try, because that's not what 41 00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:26.039 tonight is about. Tonight we're parked in Iowa for a 42 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:29.400 different reason, because here's the thing nobody tells you about Iowa. 43 00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:31.919 We've got the visitor, sure, the. 44 00:02:31.879 --> 00:02:34.360 Wing devil in the coal mine, the one that ends 45 00:02:34.439 --> 00:02:36.400 up on every cryptid list in America. 46 00:02:36.960 --> 00:02:40.000 But the visitor is the freak case. The visitor is 47 00:02:40.000 --> 00:02:40.719 the outlier. 48 00:02:41.599 --> 00:02:44.800 The thing Iowa actually reports, the thing it's been reporting 49 00:02:44.879 --> 00:02:47.879 quietly for one hundred years and more. All over the state, 50 00:02:48.400 --> 00:02:50.719 in the corn and the river timber and the wooded 51 00:02:50.719 --> 00:02:54.000 bluffs along the Mississippi, is something a lot heavier and 52 00:02:54.080 --> 00:02:56.919 a lot quieter, and to a man like me, a 53 00:02:56.919 --> 00:03:02.199 whole lot more believable. Big dark, covered in hair, walking 54 00:03:02.240 --> 00:03:05.319 on two legs. So forget the wing thing for tonight. 55 00:03:05.759 --> 00:03:08.759 We're going sasquatch hunting in the Hawkeye State, and we're 56 00:03:08.759 --> 00:03:11.360 going to take the long way, because Iowa's got more 57 00:03:11.439 --> 00:03:12.840 dark corners than the postcards. 58 00:03:12.919 --> 00:03:13.240 Let on. 59 00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:17.120 People hear Iowa, and they picture corn to the horizon, 60 00:03:17.719 --> 00:03:21.960 flat open tame, nowhere for anything bigger than a pheasant 61 00:03:22.039 --> 00:03:24.919 to hide. And if you only ever see Iowa from 62 00:03:24.960 --> 00:03:27.960 the interstate at seventy miles an hour, you'd believe that. 63 00:03:28.639 --> 00:03:30.719 You'd be wrong, but you'd believe it. 64 00:03:31.479 --> 00:03:34.120 The states cut through with river valleys, the des Moines, 65 00:03:34.159 --> 00:03:36.680 and the raccoon, and the skunk and the cedar, and 66 00:03:36.759 --> 00:03:40.159 the big Mississippi running the whole eastern edge, and where 67 00:03:40.159 --> 00:03:43.520 there's river there's bottom land timber thick as a wall, 68 00:03:43.879 --> 00:03:45.800 the kind of cover you can stand ten feet from 69 00:03:45.800 --> 00:03:48.360 a man in and never see him. Up in the 70 00:03:48.400 --> 00:03:52.240 northeast corner, the part folks called the driftless, the glaciers 71 00:03:52.280 --> 00:03:54.960 that flatten the rest of the state just missed entirely, 72 00:03:55.520 --> 00:03:58.400 and the country there stayed wild and folded and steep, 73 00:03:59.039 --> 00:04:02.639 all wooded bluff and hidden draws and cold trout streams 74 00:04:02.680 --> 00:04:06.719 running through hardwood that's never seen a plow. Yellow River 75 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:11.520 State forest, effigy mounds miles of it, and scattered all 76 00:04:11.560 --> 00:04:14.199 across the rest of the state. In the seams between 77 00:04:14.199 --> 00:04:17.560 the cornfields are sleughs and creek bottoms and woodlights and 78 00:04:17.639 --> 00:04:20.319 old quarry ground that nobody walks from one year to 79 00:04:20.399 --> 00:04:24.000 the next. There's more cover in Iowa than the postcards admit. 80 00:04:24.439 --> 00:04:27.519 There's more room to hide than anybody driving through would 81 00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:30.680 ever guess. And in that cover, for as long as 82 00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:34.439 anybody's kept track, people have been seeing something they can't explain. 83 00:04:35.439 --> 00:04:38.600 The researchers who catalog these things have logged somewhere around 84 00:04:38.639 --> 00:04:42.399 seventy eight credible bigfoot reports out of Iowa. That puts 85 00:04:42.399 --> 00:04:45.120 a flat farm state of all places up in the 86 00:04:45.160 --> 00:04:49.240 same conversation as Washington and Oregon in California, which is 87 00:04:49.240 --> 00:04:52.279 not where you'd expect to find it. The reports aren't 88 00:04:52.279 --> 00:04:55.439 bunched up in one weird county either, They're spread the 89 00:04:55.480 --> 00:04:58.959 whole width of the state. Humboldt County up in the 90 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:02.480 north central part. The pack with nine of them, dubook 91 00:05:02.720 --> 00:05:06.279 Over on the Mississippi has half a dozen. Dallas County, 92 00:05:06.480 --> 00:05:09.319 Van Meter's own county, the same ground that gave us 93 00:05:09.360 --> 00:05:12.079 the wing thing in the mine, has logged its share 94 00:05:12.120 --> 00:05:16.480 of the tall hairy ones too, same dirt, two different monsters, 95 00:05:17.040 --> 00:05:20.519 one I'm hard pressed to believe and one I can't shake. 96 00:05:21.560 --> 00:05:25.040 Almost every one of these sightings happens near water, the rivers, 97 00:05:25.240 --> 00:05:29.079 the reservoirs, the creek bottoms, which makes sense if you're 98 00:05:29.079 --> 00:05:32.079 talking about a real animal. A big animal needs to 99 00:05:32.160 --> 00:05:35.800 drink and needs cover and needs to move without being seen, 100 00:05:36.480 --> 00:05:38.720 and a river valley gives it all three and one 101 00:05:38.800 --> 00:05:41.879 ribbon running clear across the state. And none of this 102 00:05:42.000 --> 00:05:45.800 is new. That's the part people forget the hairy man, 103 00:05:45.800 --> 00:05:48.040 and the timber didn't show up when somebody coined the 104 00:05:48.079 --> 00:05:51.560 word bigfoot back in the nineteen fifties. The settlers who 105 00:05:51.560 --> 00:05:54.399 broke this ground in the eighteen hundreds carried the same 106 00:05:54.439 --> 00:05:57.800 stories west with them, tales of a wild man in 107 00:05:57.839 --> 00:06:00.839 the river bottoms, a thing that walked like a person 108 00:06:00.920 --> 00:06:04.079 and wasn't one, and the native peoples who were here 109 00:06:04.160 --> 00:06:06.879 long before the settlers had their own names for the 110 00:06:06.920 --> 00:06:10.439 same shape in the same woods. There's an old account 111 00:06:10.439 --> 00:06:13.720 out of Southeast Iowa an early settler woman who said 112 00:06:13.720 --> 00:06:15.920 that when she first came to the country as a girl, 113 00:06:16.240 --> 00:06:19.160 the hunters and trappers already talked about animals that walked 114 00:06:19.240 --> 00:06:23.279 upright like men deep back in the timber, already talked 115 00:06:23.279 --> 00:06:27.079 about it before there were towns, before there were newspapers 116 00:06:27.079 --> 00:06:30.240 to put it in. Whatever this thing is, it was 117 00:06:30.279 --> 00:06:33.240 here before we were, and it was being reported before 118 00:06:33.279 --> 00:06:33.839 any of us. 119 00:06:33.839 --> 00:06:34.759 Had a word for it. 120 00:06:35.120 --> 00:06:37.720 So let's go to the most famous one, down in 121 00:06:37.759 --> 00:06:41.040 the southeast corner where it really started, the fall of 122 00:06:41.160 --> 00:06:45.199 nineteen seventy five, a little town called Lockridge, down in 123 00:06:45.279 --> 00:06:50.040 Jefferson County, Southeast Iowa, about sixty miles south of Iowa City, 124 00:06:50.800 --> 00:06:54.600 farm country, gentle hills, wood lots and creek beds, and 125 00:06:54.600 --> 00:06:58.800 turkey ground. It started with the turkeys. A hunter named 126 00:06:58.879 --> 00:07:02.279 Lowell Adkins was one chilly October morning and came across 127 00:07:02.319 --> 00:07:07.000 a scene that didn't add up. Four turkeys dead, partially eaten, 128 00:07:07.319 --> 00:07:11.439 torn into and left and around them in the dirt tracks, 129 00:07:11.839 --> 00:07:15.399 big ones roughly ten inches long, from something that walked 130 00:07:15.399 --> 00:07:18.800 on two feet something that wasn't a coyote and wasn't 131 00:07:18.800 --> 00:07:21.639 a dog, and wasn't anything Adkins could put a name to. 132 00:07:22.800 --> 00:07:23.000 Now. 133 00:07:23.040 --> 00:07:25.040 Four dead turkeys is the kind of thing a man 134 00:07:25.079 --> 00:07:27.920 could explain a dozen ways if that was all there was. 135 00:07:28.680 --> 00:07:31.920 But that wasn't all there was. Right around the same time, 136 00:07:32.000 --> 00:07:34.920 a farmer named Herb Peefer was out at dusk checking 137 00:07:34.959 --> 00:07:38.240 his birds, and his tractor headlights swung across the edge 138 00:07:38.279 --> 00:07:41.319 of the woods and lit up something standing there. It 139 00:07:41.439 --> 00:07:45.360 was harry, it was dark. It walked upright like a man, 140 00:07:45.959 --> 00:07:49.120 but its face was flat and semient, an ape's face 141 00:07:49.240 --> 00:07:51.920 on a body Peef put at around five feet tall. 142 00:07:52.639 --> 00:07:55.439 He didn't stay to study it. He backed off to 143 00:07:55.480 --> 00:07:58.160 the farmhouse and called the law, and by the time a. 144 00:07:58.120 --> 00:07:59.120 Deputy rolled out. 145 00:07:59.360 --> 00:08:02.120 Whatever it was had melted back into the timber and 146 00:08:02.279 --> 00:08:06.600 was gone. Then it kept happening. Another farmer in the area, 147 00:08:06.879 --> 00:08:10.879 a woman named Gloria Olsen, started seeing it too, out 148 00:08:10.879 --> 00:08:13.759 in her cornfields at night, a hairy thing with a 149 00:08:13.759 --> 00:08:17.759 monkey's face, eyes throwing back the light, prowling the edges 150 00:08:17.800 --> 00:08:20.759 of her property in the dark. And as the word spread, 151 00:08:21.120 --> 00:08:24.879 more folks came forward, hunters finding the same odd tracks 152 00:08:24.879 --> 00:08:28.519 along creek beds, drivers catching a shape crossing a rural 153 00:08:28.600 --> 00:08:32.120 road in the headlights, the descriptions lining up close enough 154 00:08:32.159 --> 00:08:35.879 that the thing earned a name, the Lockridge Monster. It 155 00:08:35.960 --> 00:08:38.960 made the papers, It even found its way into the 156 00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:43.399 national papers. For one strange autumn, Southeast Iowa had its 157 00:08:43.440 --> 00:08:47.720 own homegrown sasquatch, and the whole country was watching. Here's 158 00:08:47.759 --> 00:08:50.320 the part I find the most interesting about it. The 159 00:08:50.360 --> 00:08:52.840 Lockridge thing didn't fit the mold of what others had 160 00:08:52.840 --> 00:08:56.879 reported seeing. It was small for a bigfoot, five feet 161 00:08:57.159 --> 00:08:59.919 not eight, and the tracks were on the small side too, 162 00:09:00.519 --> 00:09:03.399 maybe half what you'd expect off a full grown sasquatch 163 00:09:03.440 --> 00:09:07.440 out west. And it ate those turkeys tore into them, 164 00:09:07.639 --> 00:09:09.960 which doesn't square with the usual idea of a big 165 00:09:10.000 --> 00:09:12.679 plant eating epe, minding its own business in the brush. 166 00:09:13.480 --> 00:09:15.600 One researcher who looked at it said flat out that 167 00:09:15.639 --> 00:09:17.960 the foot was too small and the killing two. 168 00:09:17.759 --> 00:09:20.840 Out of character to call it bigfoot at all. So 169 00:09:20.919 --> 00:09:21.480 what was it? 170 00:09:21.919 --> 00:09:24.120 I don't know, and I like that I don't know 171 00:09:24.399 --> 00:09:26.840 because it means nobody was forcing the evidence to fit 172 00:09:26.879 --> 00:09:29.720 a story. Maybe it was a young one, maybe it 173 00:09:29.759 --> 00:09:32.639 was something else entirely, some other animal we don't have 174 00:09:32.679 --> 00:09:37.360 a slot for. But you've got multiple farmers separately describing 175 00:09:37.399 --> 00:09:40.759 the same hairy, upright ape faced thing, and a hunter 176 00:09:40.879 --> 00:09:43.759 with four dead birds and a line of two footed tracks, 177 00:09:44.200 --> 00:09:46.320 and a whole town that hung onto the name for 178 00:09:46.360 --> 00:09:51.440 fifty years. That's not nothing. Towns forget things fast. For 179 00:09:51.480 --> 00:09:53.759 a piece of country to keep a monster's name alive 180 00:09:53.840 --> 00:09:56.639 that long enough, people had to see enough of something 181 00:09:56.679 --> 00:10:00.519 to keep the story warm, and Lockridge wasn't a one thing. 182 00:10:01.320 --> 00:10:03.519 Folks down in that part of the state, around the 183 00:10:03.559 --> 00:10:08.399 Skunk River Valley especially, have been telling wildman stories for generations. 184 00:10:08.840 --> 00:10:13.039 Seven eight feet tall, covered in dark, shaggy hair, walking 185 00:10:13.039 --> 00:10:16.480 the dense river timber. An old newspaper clipping out of 186 00:10:16.480 --> 00:10:18.799 that country, described it about as plain as you can 187 00:10:18.799 --> 00:10:22.519 put it, a furry, scary thing that stands like a man, 188 00:10:23.080 --> 00:10:25.720 something the locals had been hearing about for fifty years 189 00:10:25.759 --> 00:10:29.240 before the clipping was ever printed. The sightings down there 190 00:10:29.279 --> 00:10:32.320 never really stopped. They were still coming in well past 191 00:10:32.399 --> 00:10:36.200 twenty ten, enough of them that the county conservation man 192 00:10:36.240 --> 00:10:39.120 went on the record, and even he, a fellow whose 193 00:10:39.159 --> 00:10:42.360 whole job was to have a sensible explanation, admitted he 194 00:10:42.399 --> 00:10:45.679 didn't have one. He figured most folks saw something at 195 00:10:45.679 --> 00:10:48.240 a bad angle and a bad light, but he wouldn't 196 00:10:48.279 --> 00:10:49.240 say they saw nothing. 197 00:10:49.799 --> 00:10:51.840 That's southeast Iowa, and. 198 00:10:51.879 --> 00:10:54.759 Noticed the river timber running through all of it, because 199 00:10:54.799 --> 00:10:58.279 that piece keeps turning up valley after valley the whole. 200 00:10:58.080 --> 00:10:58.799 Rest of the night. 201 00:11:00.120 --> 00:11:03.480 Summer in nineteen seventy six, the track started showing up north, 202 00:11:04.320 --> 00:11:07.159 up by a town called Dumont. A man came across 203 00:11:07.159 --> 00:11:10.200 something that stops you when you read it. Big footprints 204 00:11:10.279 --> 00:11:13.639 running along a gravel road, not one or two, a 205 00:11:13.639 --> 00:11:17.320 half mile of them, tracks twelve to thirteen inches long, 206 00:11:17.679 --> 00:11:20.519 five inches wide, with a stride of about six feet 207 00:11:20.559 --> 00:11:23.440 between them, the kind of stride you can't fake walking 208 00:11:23.480 --> 00:11:26.080 and can't make running unless your legs are built. 209 00:11:25.879 --> 00:11:27.240 Different than a man's. 210 00:11:27.600 --> 00:11:29.840 They came in out of the open country, ran that 211 00:11:29.919 --> 00:11:32.559 gravel road, and then cut off toward a stretch of 212 00:11:32.559 --> 00:11:36.080 woods that ran alongside the West Fork River, toward the water, 213 00:11:36.679 --> 00:11:41.000 toward the cover same pattern, and that August, over by 214 00:11:41.039 --> 00:11:43.840 the o chay Edden River, a thirteen year old boy 215 00:11:43.919 --> 00:11:47.759 got a daylight look. It was morning, around nine thirty, 216 00:11:48.200 --> 00:11:51.120 full light. The boy saw it down at the river, 217 00:11:51.399 --> 00:11:54.399 a hairy black thing about six feet tall. And the 218 00:11:54.480 --> 00:11:57.159 detail that stuck with me is what it was doing. 219 00:11:57.960 --> 00:12:00.320 It had its hands cup together and it was drinking 220 00:12:00.399 --> 00:12:03.559 from them, lifting water to its mouth with its hands 221 00:12:03.600 --> 00:12:05.759 the way you or I would at a cold spring, 222 00:12:06.679 --> 00:12:10.960 not lapping like an animal, drinking like a person. The 223 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:13.679 boy left, and when he came back later with his family, 224 00:12:14.039 --> 00:12:18.080 they found the prince fourteen inches long, narrow at the heel, 225 00:12:18.440 --> 00:12:21.360 seven inches across the front where the five toes spread, 226 00:12:22.039 --> 00:12:26.320 a foot shaped like hours, only huge. A boy doesn't 227 00:12:26.399 --> 00:12:29.919 usually invent the small stuff. He'd have told you it roared, 228 00:12:30.320 --> 00:12:33.639 it charged, it had red eyes, if he were making 229 00:12:33.679 --> 00:12:36.519 it up to scare his sister. Instead, he told you 230 00:12:36.600 --> 00:12:38.679 it cupped its hands and drank from the river on 231 00:12:38.720 --> 00:12:42.799 a sunny morning. That's not a monster story detail. That's 232 00:12:42.840 --> 00:12:45.799 a saw an animal detail. And those are the ones 233 00:12:45.840 --> 00:12:48.879 I leaned toward. And it never stayed in one corner 234 00:12:49.399 --> 00:12:53.320 or one decade. That's worth saying, plainly, because the easy 235 00:12:53.320 --> 00:12:55.480 way to dismiss all this is to call it one 236 00:12:55.559 --> 00:13:00.159 weird town's one weird year. Iowa won't let you. Go 237 00:13:00.200 --> 00:13:03.639 back to the early seventies, before Lockridge was ever a headline, 238 00:13:04.039 --> 00:13:06.519 and there's a hunter named Gary who was deep in 239 00:13:06.600 --> 00:13:09.200 heavy woods and brush near a state park when he 240 00:13:09.240 --> 00:13:12.080 spotted a strange animal off at about one hundred yards, 241 00:13:12.639 --> 00:13:14.840 a thing that didn't move or looked like anything he 242 00:13:14.879 --> 00:13:18.600 could name. Go north and west up to Humboldt County 243 00:13:18.600 --> 00:13:20.799 in the north central part of the state, and you 244 00:13:20.879 --> 00:13:23.519 find the county that's logged more of these than any 245 00:13:23.559 --> 00:13:26.879 other in Iowa. Nine of them in county, in flat 246 00:13:26.919 --> 00:13:29.720 farm country, where the books say there's nowhere for a 247 00:13:29.759 --> 00:13:33.080 thing like that to live. Come forward to two thousand 248 00:13:33.080 --> 00:13:36.200 and six, near a little town called Wellman, where somebody 249 00:13:36.240 --> 00:13:39.679 reported one out on a dried up riverbank plain daylight, 250 00:13:40.080 --> 00:13:42.559 walking the cracked mud where the water used to run. 251 00:13:43.320 --> 00:13:47.120 Every corner of the state. Every decade, anybody's been keeping 252 00:13:47.159 --> 00:13:52.080 count the same animal over and over. Down in Lee County, 253 00:13:52.159 --> 00:13:54.720 in the far southeast corner, there's a piece of public 254 00:13:54.759 --> 00:13:59.600 ground called Shaimeck Forest, thick hardwood, turkey country, the kind 255 00:13:59.600 --> 00:14:02.480 of woods a man can disappear into, and there's a 256 00:14:02.519 --> 00:14:04.600 story out of there. I think about more than i'd 257 00:14:04.639 --> 00:14:07.200 like to. A hunter was out one morning in the 258 00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:11.399 early season, sitting still waiting, the woods just starting to 259 00:14:11.440 --> 00:14:14.559 gray up with dawn. The fog was hanging low, the 260 00:14:14.559 --> 00:14:16.840 way it does and river bottom that time of year, 261 00:14:17.600 --> 00:14:19.600 and a tall figure came walking out of. 262 00:14:19.559 --> 00:14:21.039 That fog toward him. 263 00:14:21.360 --> 00:14:24.120 His first thought was another hunter, a man in a 264 00:14:24.159 --> 00:14:27.559 gilly suit, one of those camouflage rigs, all hung with 265 00:14:27.600 --> 00:14:30.720 strips of cloth to break up your outline, because that's 266 00:14:30.759 --> 00:14:33.879 what it looked like at first, a shaggy man shape 267 00:14:33.919 --> 00:14:37.320 moving through the trees, A natural enough thing to think 268 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:40.159 right up until it got close enough that it stopped 269 00:14:40.159 --> 00:14:43.639 being a man. It was too big, it was covered 270 00:14:43.919 --> 00:14:47.879 head to foot in hair, not cloth, and it was 271 00:14:47.919 --> 00:14:51.960 looking right at him. They locked eyes, both of them froze, 272 00:14:52.480 --> 00:14:55.799 the hunter and the thing, neither one moving the way 273 00:14:55.840 --> 00:14:58.559 two animals do when they've surprised each other, and neither 274 00:14:58.639 --> 00:15:01.200 knows yet how it's going to go. Stay tuned for 275 00:15:01.279 --> 00:15:05.120 more Backwoods bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. 276 00:15:07.480 --> 00:15:11.600 And the hunter scared, now really scared, brought his gun 277 00:15:11.679 --> 00:15:14.759 up and worked the safety off, and the thing moved. 278 00:15:15.279 --> 00:15:18.159 It took a step toward him, one lunge, and the 279 00:15:18.240 --> 00:15:21.240 hunter's heart must have come up in his throat. But 280 00:15:21.279 --> 00:15:24.960 then it stopped itself. It turned and it walked away 281 00:15:25.000 --> 00:15:29.320 into the timber, slow, deliberate, looking back over its shoulder 282 00:15:29.320 --> 00:15:32.080 at him the whole way, never once taking its eyes 283 00:15:32.120 --> 00:15:34.559 off the man until the fog closed up and it 284 00:15:34.600 --> 00:15:38.240 was gone. It chose not to That's what gets me 285 00:15:38.279 --> 00:15:39.399 about that one. 286 00:15:39.519 --> 00:15:40.360 It had the man. 287 00:15:40.279 --> 00:15:43.639 Dead to rights, closed the distance, and then thought better 288 00:15:43.679 --> 00:15:47.679 of it and left. That's not a movie monster. That's 289 00:15:47.720 --> 00:15:50.360 an animal making a decision. Now, let me take you 290 00:15:50.440 --> 00:15:53.159 up to the eastern edge to Dubuke County and a 291 00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:56.279 young fellow I'll call Cody, because his is the longest 292 00:15:56.320 --> 00:15:59.080 run of encounters I've come across out of Iowa, and 293 00:15:59.120 --> 00:16:01.120 because it's the kind of thing that happens to one 294 00:16:01.159 --> 00:16:04.080 person on one piece of land over and over until 295 00:16:04.080 --> 00:16:05.799 they can't tell themselves it was nothing. 296 00:16:06.639 --> 00:16:07.399 Five times. 297 00:16:08.080 --> 00:16:11.039 Cody had five encounters on his own family's ground over 298 00:16:11.080 --> 00:16:13.399 the better part of a year, and the first one 299 00:16:13.480 --> 00:16:16.440 was the one that nearly broke him. He was bowhunting 300 00:16:17.039 --> 00:16:19.799 up in a tree stand and something came up out 301 00:16:19.799 --> 00:16:21.919 of the timber and sat down at the base of 302 00:16:21.919 --> 00:16:26.159 his tree, right under him. A big, hairy man shaped 303 00:16:26.159 --> 00:16:29.120 thing easing itself down at the foot of his stand, 304 00:16:29.440 --> 00:16:32.320 close enough that Cody, with a drawn bow and a 305 00:16:32.360 --> 00:16:35.519 clear shot straight down, sat there and thought about loosing 306 00:16:35.519 --> 00:16:38.840 an arrow into it. He didn't, and when he tells it, 307 00:16:39.159 --> 00:16:41.279 the reason he didn't is the part that raises the 308 00:16:41.360 --> 00:16:44.360 hair on your neck. He didn't shoot because the thing 309 00:16:44.440 --> 00:16:46.759 under his tree was too much like a man to shoot. 310 00:16:47.399 --> 00:16:50.360 It left on its own. He climbed down on shaking 311 00:16:50.440 --> 00:16:53.320 legs and didn't tell a soul. But it wasn't done 312 00:16:53.360 --> 00:16:56.240 with him. A few months on, he was out crossing 313 00:16:56.240 --> 00:16:58.799 the property on his four wheeler and rode past a 314 00:16:58.840 --> 00:17:01.720 thick patch of timber, and the thing was standing at 315 00:17:01.720 --> 00:17:04.319 the edge of it, watching him go by the way 316 00:17:04.359 --> 00:17:06.759 a man watches a car pass on a back road. 317 00:17:07.640 --> 00:17:10.599 Another evening, driving home from work, he caught it slipping 318 00:17:10.640 --> 00:17:13.480 back into the woods by a telephone pole, and then 319 00:17:13.519 --> 00:17:16.440 there was the barn. Cody was sitting on his porch 320 00:17:16.480 --> 00:17:19.720 one evening, just sitting, and he watched the thing walk 321 00:17:19.759 --> 00:17:22.880 straight through one of the old knockdown barns on the place, 322 00:17:23.680 --> 00:17:27.839 out in the open, unhurried, and it noticed him sitting there. 323 00:17:28.519 --> 00:17:30.480 It turned its head and gave him a long look 324 00:17:30.480 --> 00:17:32.559 across the yard man to think. 325 00:17:33.160 --> 00:17:33.920 And then it ran. 326 00:17:34.880 --> 00:17:37.839 And when it ran, it came to a barbed wire fence, 327 00:17:38.599 --> 00:17:41.200 a five foot fence, the kind you and I would 328 00:17:41.240 --> 00:17:43.240 have to climb, careful so as not to leave skin 329 00:17:43.319 --> 00:17:46.880 and trouser on the wire. It cleared it in stride, 330 00:17:47.440 --> 00:17:49.960 hurtled a five foot fence at a dead run without 331 00:17:49.960 --> 00:17:53.799 breaking step, and vanished into the trees. I've stood at 332 00:17:53.799 --> 00:17:56.319 a lot of barbed wire fences in my life. I 333 00:17:56.359 --> 00:17:58.079 know what it takes to get a body over one 334 00:17:58.119 --> 00:18:00.960 in a hurry. I've watched deer jumped them, and I've 335 00:18:00.960 --> 00:18:05.440 watched men try to What Cody describes is neither. It's 336 00:18:05.480 --> 00:18:08.799 something built different, something with the spring and the casual 337 00:18:08.839 --> 00:18:10.920 power to take five feet a fence the way we'd 338 00:18:10.920 --> 00:18:15.000 step off a curb. No light, no horn, no beam 339 00:18:15.039 --> 00:18:17.680 in the eyes, just a big animal doing a big 340 00:18:17.720 --> 00:18:19.640 animal thing in front of a kid who'd have rather 341 00:18:19.680 --> 00:18:24.160 seen anything else on God's Earth. Over in Keokuk County 342 00:18:24.279 --> 00:18:27.160 in the summer of twenty ten, a woman got a 343 00:18:27.279 --> 00:18:29.920 nighttime look that came with its own little detail of 344 00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:33.119 local color. She was home one evening with a friend 345 00:18:33.119 --> 00:18:36.839 when the dogs went off, not the usual barking, loud 346 00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:39.880 and frantic. She looked out the window and saw her 347 00:18:39.920 --> 00:18:43.160 dogs tearing up the long gravel driveway away from the road, 348 00:18:43.759 --> 00:18:47.039 running like they wanted no part of whatever was behind them. 349 00:18:47.279 --> 00:18:50.960 And behind them, coming up that same driveway was a tall, 350 00:18:51.079 --> 00:18:54.400 dark figure. She couldn't put a size to it exactly, 351 00:18:54.880 --> 00:18:57.160 only that it was bigger than a man, and the 352 00:18:57.200 --> 00:18:58.680 way she described. 353 00:18:58.160 --> 00:18:59.359 It has stayed with me. 354 00:19:00.359 --> 00:19:02.680 She said it was a shadow darker than the shadow 355 00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:05.240 of a tree, a piece of the dark moving up 356 00:19:05.240 --> 00:19:08.240 her driveway in the night, blacker than the night around it. 357 00:19:09.240 --> 00:19:11.160 The next day, she and her friend walked the farm 358 00:19:11.160 --> 00:19:14.039 and found a footprint, the kind of print that doesn't 359 00:19:14.039 --> 00:19:16.920 belong to anything that ought to be walking in Iowa farm. 360 00:19:17.559 --> 00:19:19.799 There's a spot near where she lived that the old 361 00:19:19.799 --> 00:19:23.240 timers have been calling for longer than anybody can remember. 362 00:19:23.799 --> 00:19:28.640 Monkey's Den. Nobody put that name there last week. Somebody 363 00:19:28.720 --> 00:19:32.400 named that ground a long time ago after something, and 364 00:19:32.480 --> 00:19:35.119 the name stuck the way names only stick when there's 365 00:19:35.119 --> 00:19:38.480 a reason underneath them. Most of these stories are old, 366 00:19:38.960 --> 00:19:41.119 or they happened to one person with nothing to show 367 00:19:41.160 --> 00:19:43.880 for it but a footprint and a bad night's sleep. 368 00:19:44.599 --> 00:19:47.960 The summer of twenty twenty one was different because somebody 369 00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:51.359 had a camera. A man named Jeremy was out walking 370 00:19:51.359 --> 00:19:53.680 with his sister one July morning in a place called 371 00:19:53.720 --> 00:19:57.599 Whitewater Canyon near the little town of Bernard, over into 372 00:19:57.640 --> 00:20:02.440 Butte County, rough wooded canyon country, and in the shadows 373 00:20:02.440 --> 00:20:05.279 of the trees, they saw a big, dark, ape like figure, 374 00:20:05.759 --> 00:20:08.640 and Jeremy got pictures of it. The photos went up 375 00:20:08.680 --> 00:20:12.480 online and they went everywhere. Cryptid people and skeptic people 376 00:20:12.720 --> 00:20:16.160 both poured over them the way they always do, arguing 377 00:20:16.200 --> 00:20:20.160 pixel by pixel. The image wasn't crisp enough to settle anything, 378 00:20:20.640 --> 00:20:23.200 and the researchers logged it as the lesser grade of 379 00:20:23.279 --> 00:20:27.000 report for exactly that reason, a citing they couldn't fully 380 00:20:27.039 --> 00:20:29.799 stand behind because the picture left a room for doubt 381 00:20:30.839 --> 00:20:33.440 a man in a suit, some said, A bear at 382 00:20:33.480 --> 00:20:36.440 a bad angle, said others. Though black bears are about 383 00:20:36.480 --> 00:20:40.079 as rare as hen's teeth in that part of Iowa. Jeremy, 384 00:20:40.319 --> 00:20:43.359 by every account, a skeptic himself right up until that morning, 385 00:20:43.720 --> 00:20:46.640 never backed off it. He knew what he saw, he 386 00:20:46.720 --> 00:20:49.759 said so, and kept saying so. I can't tell you 387 00:20:49.839 --> 00:20:53.559 what's in those pictures. Nobody can't, and anybody who says 388 00:20:53.599 --> 00:20:57.039 different is selling you their certainty. What I can tell 389 00:20:57.079 --> 00:20:59.640 you is that the canyon he was standing in is 390 00:20:59.680 --> 00:21:02.599 exact actly the kind of rough wooded river country these 391 00:21:02.599 --> 00:21:06.440 things turn up in over and over all across this state. 392 00:21:07.240 --> 00:21:09.839 This next one comes out of that same southeast corner 393 00:21:10.119 --> 00:21:13.559 near Lockridge, and it's a family story, the kind that 394 00:21:13.680 --> 00:21:17.680 runs across generations. On one piece of land, a woman 395 00:21:18.079 --> 00:21:20.960 I'll call her Connie, whose family had been having run 396 00:21:21.039 --> 00:21:24.200 ends with the same thing or things on their farm 397 00:21:24.240 --> 00:21:27.119 for decades. They had a name for the big one. 398 00:21:27.440 --> 00:21:29.960 They called it Big Red. Back in the early to 399 00:21:29.960 --> 00:21:33.559 middle eighties. Her daughter, I'll call her Tracy, had felt 400 00:21:33.559 --> 00:21:35.839 for a while like something was keeping tabs on her 401 00:21:35.920 --> 00:21:38.839