WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.480 --> 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 --> 00:00:22.879 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 --> 00:00:48.399 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 13 00:01:03.000 --> 00:01:06.519 On the morning of December twentieth, eighteen seventy nine, a 14 00:01:06.560 --> 00:01:09.519 cree trapper named swift Runner stood on a scaffold in 15 00:01:09.560 --> 00:01:12.840 Alberta and waited in the cold because the hangman had 16 00:01:12.840 --> 00:01:15.079 forgotten the straps and had to go back for them. 17 00:01:15.599 --> 00:01:18.640 He'd already confessed, he'd already walked the police out to 18 00:01:18.680 --> 00:01:20.719 a clearing in the bush and shown them what was 19 00:01:20.799 --> 00:01:24.439 left of his family. His explanation never changed through four 20 00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:27.879 months of custody. Something came into him that winter, and 21 00:01:27.920 --> 00:01:30.480 it made him hungry in a way that food couldn't answer. 22 00:01:31.319 --> 00:01:33.359 The men who tried him didn't believe in that thing, 23 00:01:33.879 --> 00:01:37.159 and the men who guarded him did, and both groups agreed. 24 00:01:37.239 --> 00:01:40.519 On the physical facts. There was a camp twenty five 25 00:01:40.599 --> 00:01:43.719 miles from a post that was handing out rations. There 26 00:01:43.799 --> 00:01:46.400 was a cooking pot, and there were bones cracked open 27 00:01:46.439 --> 00:01:49.200 at the ends. And there was one man who walked 28 00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:51.159 out of those woods in the spring heavier than he 29 00:01:51.200 --> 00:01:54.560 went in, go north out of Duluth in January, and 30 00:01:54.599 --> 00:01:57.959 the state began subtracting things from the landscape until there's 31 00:01:58.079 --> 00:02:01.359 very little left to look at. The traffic thens first, 32 00:02:01.760 --> 00:02:04.760 then the towns, which reduced to a rhythm of gas 33 00:02:04.760 --> 00:02:07.599 station and church and bar with twenty minutes of nothing 34 00:02:07.640 --> 00:02:11.199 between them. The hardwoods have already dropped everything they had, 35 00:02:11.479 --> 00:02:14.039 so the color goes next. And after that you're looking 36 00:02:14.120 --> 00:02:17.560 at jack pine and black spruce and tamarack standing dead, 37 00:02:17.560 --> 00:02:21.639 looking in the cold, which they aren't. Three million acres 38 00:02:21.639 --> 00:02:24.199 of national forests cover the top third of this state, 39 00:02:24.840 --> 00:02:27.439 and inside the superior there's a piece of country larger 40 00:02:27.479 --> 00:02:29.919 than a million acres where the law won't let you 41 00:02:30.000 --> 00:02:33.719 run a motor. Add the state land and the county land, 42 00:02:33.960 --> 00:02:36.759 and the tribal land, and the peat bog that nobody 43 00:02:36.759 --> 00:02:39.400 ever found a use for, and you've arranged a piece 44 00:02:39.439 --> 00:02:42.360 of North America where a person on foot in February 45 00:02:42.719 --> 00:02:45.719 is genuinely alone in a way that's difficult to accomplish 46 00:02:45.800 --> 00:02:49.080 anywhere else. In the lower forty eight. The record low 47 00:02:49.159 --> 00:02:52.479 here was sixty below, set at Tower in February of 48 00:02:52.599 --> 00:02:56.080 nineteen ninety six, and international falls went to the trouble 49 00:02:56.120 --> 00:03:00.199 of trademarking the phrase ice box of the nation. At 50 00:03:00.199 --> 00:03:03.759 forty below, the exposed skin on your face begins taking damage. 51 00:03:03.759 --> 00:03:07.400 Inside of ten minutes, steel turns brittle enough to snap, 52 00:03:07.800 --> 00:03:11.080 diesel thickens into jelly in the tank, and the moisture 53 00:03:11.080 --> 00:03:14.159 in your breath crystallizes in front of your face with 54 00:03:14.240 --> 00:03:17.199 a faint hiss that Arctic peoples have their own words for. 55 00:03:18.120 --> 00:03:20.759 The cold isn't the part that gets people, though. What 56 00:03:20.879 --> 00:03:24.599 gets people is what the cold does to sound. At 57 00:03:24.599 --> 00:03:27.719 that temperature, the insects are gone, and the frogs are gone, 58 00:03:28.039 --> 00:03:30.000 and most of the birds have left for the season. 59 00:03:30.280 --> 00:03:33.000 The leaves came down months ago, so there's nothing left 60 00:03:33.039 --> 00:03:35.319 on the branches for the wind to move, and on 61 00:03:35.360 --> 00:03:40.000 a still night, the wind itself lies down. What remains 62 00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:44.080 isn't silence in the ordinary sense, because ordinary silence still 63 00:03:44.120 --> 00:03:47.479 has a floor of small noises underneath it. This is 64 00:03:47.520 --> 00:03:50.800 closer to a pressure against the ear, an absence you 65 00:03:50.840 --> 00:03:54.080 can feel physically, and it does something to a person's 66 00:03:54.120 --> 00:03:57.080 hearing that anybody who stood in it will describe the 67 00:03:57.080 --> 00:04:00.639 same way. Then a tree cracks somewhere out in the dark, 68 00:04:00.919 --> 00:04:03.800 hard and flat, like a rifle shot, which is nothing 69 00:04:03.840 --> 00:04:06.199 more than the sap freezing and splitting the trunk from 70 00:04:06.240 --> 00:04:09.240 the inside, and every single person who's ever stood in 71 00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:12.960 that turns toward the sound before they've decided to. That 72 00:04:13.039 --> 00:04:16.120 reflex is where this whole subject begins. And the people 73 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:18.759 who lived in this country for thousands of years before 74 00:04:18.839 --> 00:04:22.800 us built something enormous on top of it. The Windigo 75 00:04:22.839 --> 00:04:25.680 doesn't belong in a cryptid roundup. It comes out of 76 00:04:25.720 --> 00:04:29.439 the traditions of living Algonquian speaking peoples, and in northern 77 00:04:29.480 --> 00:04:34.000 Minnesota that means primarily the Anishinabe, the people also called 78 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:38.040 Ojibwe or Chippewa, who have seven federally recognized nations inside 79 00:04:38.040 --> 00:04:42.399 this state at Red Lake, White Earth, Leech Lake, bois Fort, 80 00:04:42.879 --> 00:04:47.680 Grand Portage, Fondu Loc, and Millilocks. Those are governments with 81 00:04:47.759 --> 00:04:50.600 citizens who are alive right now, and the being we're 82 00:04:50.600 --> 00:04:53.079 discussing is part of a body of teaching that some 83 00:04:53.160 --> 00:04:57.519 of those citizens take entirely seriously. What the old accounts 84 00:04:57.560 --> 00:05:00.879 described bears almost no resemblance to what we see today. 85 00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:05.120 Basil Johnston, the Ajibwe writer who spent his life putting 86 00:05:05.120 --> 00:05:08.800 this material into English so that it would survive, described 87 00:05:08.839 --> 00:05:12.839 something starving rather than something bloated. The skin is drawn 88 00:05:12.879 --> 00:05:15.240 tight over the bones, and the complexion has gone the 89 00:05:15.279 --> 00:05:18.399 gray of a corpse. The eyes have sunk back into 90 00:05:18.480 --> 00:05:21.800 the sockets. The lips are ragged and bloody because the 91 00:05:21.839 --> 00:05:24.920 thing has been chewing them. The flesh is breaking down 92 00:05:24.959 --> 00:05:27.839 while it walks, and the smell of that moves with it. 93 00:05:28.759 --> 00:05:32.120 There are no antlers in any of it. The antlered 94 00:05:32.279 --> 00:05:35.600 deer skull that appears on merchandise and in horror films 95 00:05:36.079 --> 00:05:39.720 and in a certain very popular survival video game came 96 00:05:39.759 --> 00:05:42.800 out of concept art produced within the last twenty years, 97 00:05:43.199 --> 00:05:46.560 and it's almost completely buried the older description in the 98 00:05:46.560 --> 00:05:50.480 public imagination, which is a shame because what's underneath the 99 00:05:50.480 --> 00:05:54.360 antlers is considerably worse. The reason it's worse comes down 100 00:05:54.399 --> 00:05:56.839 to how the thing is built. This is a monster 101 00:05:56.879 --> 00:06:00.600 whose entire nature is hunger, and rather than making it fat, 102 00:06:01.000 --> 00:06:04.360 the tradition made it a skeleton. A number of Ojibwe 103 00:06:04.480 --> 00:06:07.360 and cretellings add a detail that locks the whole idea 104 00:06:07.399 --> 00:06:10.279 into place, which is that it grows in proportion to 105 00:06:10.319 --> 00:06:13.959 whatever it consumes. It kills a man and becomes larger 106 00:06:14.000 --> 00:06:17.319 by exactly the amount that man would have satisfied. The 107 00:06:17.399 --> 00:06:21.120 ratio never improves, and the arithmetic never breaks in its favor. 108 00:06:21.759 --> 00:06:24.399 It's never one bite closer to full than it was 109 00:06:24.480 --> 00:06:27.519 when it started, and it will never be for as 110 00:06:27.600 --> 00:06:30.680 long as it exists. The part of the teaching that 111 00:06:30.800 --> 00:06:33.000 changes how those woods feel at night is that the 112 00:06:33.040 --> 00:06:35.639 wind to go isn't only something out there in the timber. 113 00:06:36.279 --> 00:06:40.000 It is something A person can become starve long enough 114 00:06:40.040 --> 00:06:43.199 in a closed camp in February, put yourself ahead of 115 00:06:43.240 --> 00:06:46.519 the people around you. Often enough, eat the wrong thing 116 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:49.879 when there's nothing else, And the tradition holds that you're 117 00:06:49.920 --> 00:06:53.439 already walking that road, and the road runs one direction 118 00:06:53.560 --> 00:06:56.600 only nobody in that country has ever been afraid of 119 00:06:56.639 --> 00:06:59.720 a costume. What they were afraid of was a process, 120 00:07:00.240 --> 00:07:03.519 and they'd watched it work. The oldest complaint out of 121 00:07:03.519 --> 00:07:06.639 the Northern Woods, older than any written record of it, 122 00:07:06.680 --> 00:07:10.079 is that something out there knows your name. Ray ran 123 00:07:10.120 --> 00:07:12.519 a trap line in Kochichin County for the better part 124 00:07:12.519 --> 00:07:15.480 of thirty years, and the February that ended his use 125 00:07:15.519 --> 00:07:19.519 of one particular section came somewhere in the middle nineteen seventies. 126 00:07:20.120 --> 00:07:22.839 He was working by snowshoe, about four miles in from 127 00:07:22.879 --> 00:07:25.800 the nearest road, on a line nobody ran but him. 128 00:07:26.120 --> 00:07:29.079 When somebody said his name out through the spruce. It 129 00:07:29.160 --> 00:07:31.879 wasn't shouted. It arrived at the volume of a man 130 00:07:31.959 --> 00:07:34.800 standing one hundred yards off talking to someone next to him, 131 00:07:35.160 --> 00:07:38.360 and after a few seconds it came again. Ray answered 132 00:07:38.399 --> 00:07:41.480 out loud, and he was already moving toward it before 133 00:07:41.480 --> 00:07:44.079 any part of his brain had signed off on that decision. 134 00:07:45.040 --> 00:07:47.680 He covered forty yards through knee deep snow before he 135 00:07:47.720 --> 00:07:50.680 stopped because a question had finally caught up to him, 136 00:07:51.079 --> 00:07:54.160 and the question was who out here could possibly know 137 00:07:54.279 --> 00:07:58.079 his name. He turned around, finished his sets in the dark, 138 00:07:58.399 --> 00:08:00.519 and never worked that section of line and again in 139 00:08:00.600 --> 00:08:04.639 the remaining years he trapped. Marlus grew up outside Black 140 00:08:04.720 --> 00:08:07.720 Duck and was nineteen the January she cut the corner 141 00:08:07.759 --> 00:08:10.439 of a tamarack swamp on a shortcut she'd been using 142 00:08:10.480 --> 00:08:12.839 since she was small enough to need help over the fence. 143 00:08:13.680 --> 00:08:16.399 Somewhere ahead of her in the tamarak, a child was crying. 144 00:08:17.079 --> 00:08:19.720 It wasn't screaming, but the worn out, hitching sound a 145 00:08:19.800 --> 00:08:22.040 kid makes after they've been at it a long time, 146 00:08:22.360 --> 00:08:25.000 and a running out of air, and Marley's went in 147 00:08:25.079 --> 00:08:28.519 after it without hesitating. She got sixty yards before the 148 00:08:28.519 --> 00:08:31.040 ground softened under the snow and she had to start 149 00:08:31.120 --> 00:08:34.559 choosing her footing. And in all that distance, the crying 150 00:08:34.600 --> 00:08:38.039 never came one foot closer. It held the same volume 151 00:08:38.080 --> 00:08:40.440 and the same bearing ahead of her the entire time, 152 00:08:41.080 --> 00:08:45.080 and when she moved, it moved. She stopped walking, and 153 00:08:45.159 --> 00:08:48.080 it cried for another ten seconds and then quit. In 154 00:08:48.120 --> 00:08:51.039 the middle of a breath. She backed out of that swamp, 155 00:08:51.080 --> 00:08:54.759 facing the direction she'd come from. She's in her sixties now, 156 00:08:55.039 --> 00:08:58.240 and she's never used the shortcut since. Two men named 157 00:08:58.320 --> 00:09:01.159 Dale and Ron trapped together up near Little Fork through 158 00:09:01.200 --> 00:09:03.799 the eighties and theirs is the account that gives me 159 00:09:03.840 --> 00:09:06.679 the most difficulty, Because there were two of them and 160 00:09:06.759 --> 00:09:09.879 four inches of new snow on the ground. They'd split 161 00:09:09.919 --> 00:09:12.240 it a fork and were working parallel sets a quarter 162 00:09:12.279 --> 00:09:15.120 mile apart when Dale heard his brother calling him and 163 00:09:15.200 --> 00:09:18.799 started over, and Ron heard Dale calling him and did 164 00:09:18.840 --> 00:09:21.320 the same. They met in the middle of the timber 165 00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:23.559 and stood there, asking each other what the matter was. 166 00:09:24.080 --> 00:09:26.399 And then they looked down at the ground, which held 167 00:09:26.399 --> 00:09:29.399 nothing at all in any direction except the two trails 168 00:09:29.440 --> 00:09:32.559 they'd just made walking in. They pulled the line and 169 00:09:32.600 --> 00:09:35.600 went home a day early. It wasn't two men hearing 170 00:09:35.679 --> 00:09:38.360 one sound out in that timber. It was two men, 171 00:09:38.440 --> 00:09:40.559 each hearing a different name and a voice each of 172 00:09:40.600 --> 00:09:44.240 them had known his whole life. They spent every Christmas 173 00:09:44.279 --> 00:09:46.600 break of her childhood at a family cabin on the 174 00:09:46.600 --> 00:09:49.919 Big Fork River, which meant long, empty days with very 175 00:09:49.960 --> 00:09:52.919 little to do outdoors. And she was eleven the winter 176 00:09:53.320 --> 00:09:56.679 somebody started calling her in from the yard. It was 177 00:09:56.720 --> 00:09:59.159 her mother's voice coming from the direction of the cabin, 178 00:09:59.600 --> 00:10:02.639 using her name, telling her to come inside. And it 179 00:10:02.720 --> 00:10:06.440 happened twice in a single week. Both times she went in, 180 00:10:06.879 --> 00:10:09.039 and both times her mother was sitting at the table 181 00:10:09.080 --> 00:10:12.039 with a book and hadn't spoken. The second time, her 182 00:10:12.039 --> 00:10:14.360 mother put the book down and asked exactly where in 183 00:10:14.399 --> 00:10:17.360 the yard Fay had been standing, and then went out 184 00:10:17.720 --> 00:10:20.360 and stood in that spot herself for a while with 185 00:10:20.440 --> 00:10:24.759 her arms crossed. Fay watched her through the window. Nothing 186 00:10:24.840 --> 00:10:27.480 was ever said about it afterward, and the family kept 187 00:10:27.480 --> 00:10:30.120 going out there every December until the place was sold. 188 00:10:30.960 --> 00:10:33.440 She's in her fifties now with the family of her own, 189 00:10:33.919 --> 00:10:35.759 and what she will point out is that she wasn't 190 00:10:35.799 --> 00:10:39.120 frightened at the time, not once, because it was her 191 00:10:39.120 --> 00:10:42.799 mother's voice and she was eleven years old. The fear 192 00:10:42.840 --> 00:10:45.559 showed up about thirty years late, and it hasn't gone 193 00:10:45.639 --> 00:10:50.039 anywhere since. Joel snowmobiles out of the Bamigi area and 194 00:10:50.080 --> 00:10:52.799 what happened to him happened inside a wall of engine 195 00:10:52.799 --> 00:10:56.159 noise rather than in the silence where these things usually arrive. 196 00:10:57.080 --> 00:11:00.399 He was running a groom trail at night, alone machine 197 00:11:00.399 --> 00:11:03.519 at speed, helmet on when somebody spoke to him close 198 00:11:03.559 --> 00:11:05.679 off his right shoulder, and he couldn't make out a 199 00:11:05.720 --> 00:11:08.320 word of it. The thing he keeps returning to is 200 00:11:08.320 --> 00:11:10.919 that it didn't come over the engine noise it came 201 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:13.679 through it. He shut the machine down in the middle 202 00:11:13.679 --> 00:11:16.120 of the trail and pulled the helmet off and stood 203 00:11:16.120 --> 00:11:18.080 there in the dark for a full minute with his 204 00:11:18.159 --> 00:11:21.960 ears still ringing, and there was nothing. He started up 205 00:11:22.200 --> 00:11:25.320 when another mile and it happened again. He finished that 206 00:11:25.440 --> 00:11:29.080 ride wide open and didn't stop for anything. Owen guides 207 00:11:29.080 --> 00:11:31.200 fishing in the summer and does close to nothing in 208 00:11:31.200 --> 00:11:33.159 the winter, which is how he came to be walking 209 00:11:33.200 --> 00:11:36.080 a section line off a county road in January with 210 00:11:36.200 --> 00:11:40.000 no particular destination. Something said a word to him that 211 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:43.320 he couldn't identify, and when he tries to describe the voice, 212 00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:46.840 the word he lands on is trying. It didn't sound 213 00:11:46.879 --> 00:11:49.480 like a person, and it didn't sound like an animal either. 214 00:11:50.000 --> 00:11:52.879 It sounded like something doing and impression of a person 215 00:11:52.960 --> 00:11:55.279 and not being very good at it, the way a 216 00:11:55.320 --> 00:11:57.720 parrot can catch the shape and rhythm of a sentence, 217 00:11:57.720 --> 00:12:02.360 while every individual sound inside it comes out wrong. He 218 00:12:02.360 --> 00:12:04.600 stood in that section line and waited for it to 219 00:12:04.679 --> 00:12:08.159 try again, and it never did, and he walked back 220 00:12:08.200 --> 00:12:10.279 to the road at a pace he isn't proud of. 221 00:12:11.559 --> 00:12:13.679 Wayne fished a dark house on a lake. I'm not 222 00:12:13.720 --> 00:12:16.960 going to name alone out on the ice at night, 223 00:12:17.480 --> 00:12:20.639 jigging pike through a square hole, cutting the floor, when 224 00:12:20.679 --> 00:12:24.440 somebody outside the shack said the words come here. It 225 00:12:24.519 --> 00:12:26.799 was clear enough to carry over the water noise coming 226 00:12:26.879 --> 00:12:29.080 up through the hole, and it was close enough that 227 00:12:29.159 --> 00:12:31.519 his first thought was one of the three or four 228 00:12:31.559 --> 00:12:34.759 neighbors who had houses out on that ice. The word 229 00:12:34.799 --> 00:12:38.600 he uses about it's polite. It sounded polite to him. 230 00:12:39.080 --> 00:12:41.720 He opened the door onto open snow under a moon, 231 00:12:42.200 --> 00:12:44.200 which up there gives you a very long way to 232 00:12:44.240 --> 00:12:47.039 see in every direction. And there was nobody out there 233 00:12:47.080 --> 00:12:51.039 at all, no shack door swinging shut, no boot track 234 00:12:51.080 --> 00:12:54.600 anywhere between him and the far shore. Wayne fished another 235 00:12:54.639 --> 00:12:58.559 twenty minutes on principle, and nothing else happened. He's been 236 00:12:58.600 --> 00:13:01.279 going out on that same lake for forty years and 237 00:13:01.320 --> 00:13:05.000 it's never happened again. Lonnie kept a wheelhouse on a 238 00:13:05.080 --> 00:13:07.320 lake north of Deer River and was sleeping out there 239 00:13:07.360 --> 00:13:09.720 alone in the middle of January when he woke around 240 00:13:09.759 --> 00:13:12.679 two in the morning because something was walking on the ice. 241 00:13:13.559 --> 00:13:16.000 Anybody who spent a night on a frozen lake knows 242 00:13:16.039 --> 00:13:19.039 that sound and can't mistake it. A crunch of snow 243 00:13:19.159 --> 00:13:21.919 over ice with a hollow underneath it, and this came 244 00:13:21.960 --> 00:13:25.080 from the east side, passed the shack about forty feet out, 245 00:13:25.399 --> 00:13:28.639 and continued west. What he did while it went by 246 00:13:28.840 --> 00:13:31.159 is the detail that convinces me he was awake and 247 00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:35.000 paying attention, because he counted the steps and he noted 248 00:13:35.039 --> 00:13:38.120 that the interval between them was long. In the morning, 249 00:13:38.159 --> 00:13:40.519 he walked the same line and counted his own stride 250 00:13:40.559 --> 00:13:43.360 against it to be sure. The wind had come up 251 00:13:43.360 --> 00:13:46.600 overnight and put drift across everything, and there was no 252 00:13:46.759 --> 00:13:49.120 track to be found on that whole side of the lake. 253 00:13:50.039 --> 00:13:53.000 Everything in that catalog, the voices and the names, and 254 00:13:53.039 --> 00:13:55.600 the thing walking past a shack at two in the morning, 255 00:13:56.200 --> 00:13:59.279 has a much older and much heavier case sitting underneath it, 256 00:13:59.759 --> 00:14:02.600 and that case ended on the scaffold. At Fort Saskatchewan. 257 00:14:03.279 --> 00:14:05.639 Swift Runner was a large man and a cree hunter, 258 00:14:05.919 --> 00:14:08.519 and the mounted police knew his face because he'd guided 259 00:14:08.519 --> 00:14:11.799 for them at one point. By eighteen seventy eight, that 260 00:14:11.879 --> 00:14:15.120 relationship had come apart, and the accounts from the period 261 00:14:15.159 --> 00:14:18.320 describe heavy drinking and violence and say that the police 262 00:14:18.399 --> 00:14:20.799 let him go and that his own people pushed him 263 00:14:20.799 --> 00:14:24.360 out as well. Those accounts are the impressions of colonial 264 00:14:24.399 --> 00:14:27.519 officers written down about a man they later hanged, and 265 00:14:27.559 --> 00:14:32.240 they should be weighed accordingly. But there what survives that fall. 266 00:14:32.279 --> 00:14:34.559 He took his family into the bush north of Fort 267 00:14:34.600 --> 00:14:37.720 Saskatchewan to winter, and the sources can't agree on who 268 00:14:37.759 --> 00:14:40.759 went with him. There was a wife, there was either 269 00:14:40.799 --> 00:14:44.039 his mother or his mother in law. There was a brother, 270 00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:47.200 and there were five children or six, depending on which 271 00:14:47.200 --> 00:14:51.240 account you're reading. Most summaries settle on eight people in total. 272 00:14:52.240 --> 00:14:55.080 In the spring, one man walked out. He came into 273 00:14:55.080 --> 00:14:57.360 the mission at Saint Albert and reported that his family 274 00:14:57.399 --> 00:15:00.639 had starved, and what ruined him was his his own body, 275 00:15:00.879 --> 00:15:05.000 because he wasn't starved. Stay tuned for more backwoods Bigfoot stories. 276 00:15:05.320 --> 00:15:10.159 We'll be back after these messages. He was in good condition, 277 00:15:10.639 --> 00:15:13.000 and every man at that mission had seen what people 278 00:15:13.039 --> 00:15:15.759 look like coming off a hard winter in that country. 279 00:15:16.480 --> 00:15:19.519 Somebody then worked out the second problem with his account, 280 00:15:19.600 --> 00:15:22.200 which was that his camp had been twenty five miles 281 00:15:22.200 --> 00:15:24.600 from a post that had food in it and was 282 00:15:24.679 --> 00:15:28.799 actively issuing rations. Twenty five miles through that country and 283 00:15:28.879 --> 00:15:32.399 winter is a serious undertaking and not something to dismiss, 284 00:15:32.960 --> 00:15:35.919 but for a man of his reputation on snowshoes. It 285 00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:39.360 was a trip rather than a wall. They arrested him 286 00:15:39.360 --> 00:15:41.159 in May, and he took a police party back to 287 00:15:41.200 --> 00:15:44.759 the site himself. What came out of that clearing included 288 00:15:44.840 --> 00:15:47.919 human bones with the ends broken open, which is what 289 00:15:48.000 --> 00:15:50.480 a person does to get at the marrow, along with 290 00:15:50.600 --> 00:15:53.519 hair and a cooking pot and remains in and around 291 00:15:53.519 --> 00:15:56.720 the fire. He never fought the charge at any point. 292 00:15:57.240 --> 00:15:59.399 What he told them was that something had entered him 293 00:15:59.480 --> 00:16:02.639 during that one, that it hadn't been swift Runner doing 294 00:16:02.679 --> 00:16:05.519 those things, and that once it had hold of him, 295 00:16:05.639 --> 00:16:09.440 the hunger didn't stop. The court had no framework for 296 00:16:09.480 --> 00:16:12.279 a statement like that, and made no attempt to build one. 297 00:16:12.879 --> 00:16:15.879 He was convicted in August and sentenced to hang in December. 298 00:16:16.600 --> 00:16:19.879 Nobody at that fort had ever conducted an execution, and 299 00:16:19.960 --> 00:16:22.600 the old army pensioner they hired for it forgot the 300 00:16:22.600 --> 00:16:25.519 straps needed to pinion the prisoner's arms and had to 301 00:16:25.519 --> 00:16:28.559 go back for them, which left swift Runner standing on 302 00:16:28.600 --> 00:16:31.360 the trap in the December cold, with nothing to do 303 00:16:31.480 --> 00:16:35.120 but wait. Offered a chance to speak, he admitted his guilt, 304 00:16:35.519 --> 00:16:38.799 thanked his jailers for having treated him decently and complained 305 00:16:38.799 --> 00:16:42.159 about being made to stand out there. That last piece 306 00:16:42.240 --> 00:16:44.679 is the one I can't put down, because it's not 307 00:16:44.759 --> 00:16:47.840 the behavior of a man performing a legend for an audience. 308 00:16:48.519 --> 00:16:52.080 It's the behavior of a man who's cold. Sound is 309 00:16:52.120 --> 00:16:54.279 only half of what people bring out of that country. 310 00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:58.840 The other half arrives without any sound at all. Delores 311 00:16:58.879 --> 00:17:01.679 grew up on the Red Lake, and what happened to 312 00:17:01.679 --> 00:17:04.640 her at fourteen was ordinary enough in her family that 313 00:17:04.799 --> 00:17:07.319 nobody in it ever treated the event as a story 314 00:17:07.359 --> 00:17:10.680 worth telling. She was walking a plowed road about a 315 00:17:10.680 --> 00:17:13.559 mile from her aunt's place in late December, in that 316 00:17:13.640 --> 00:17:16.079 flat three in the afternoon light, where the sun has 317 00:17:16.119 --> 00:17:18.759 already given up for the day, and across a field 318 00:17:18.759 --> 00:17:21.400 of unbroken snow. Off her right side there was a 319 00:17:21.440 --> 00:17:24.160 tree line, and something in that tree line had her. 320 00:17:24.680 --> 00:17:27.319 She didn't look at it. She'd been taught not to look, 321 00:17:27.359 --> 00:17:30.480 and not to run, to hold exactly the same walking 322 00:17:30.519 --> 00:17:33.599 pace she'd been holding, to get inside, and then to 323 00:17:33.599 --> 00:17:36.079 say out loud to an adult what had happened. And 324 00:17:36.119 --> 00:17:39.160 she did all four of those things in order. Asked 325 00:17:39.240 --> 00:17:42.200 much later what she believed had been standing there, she 326 00:17:42.279 --> 00:17:44.119 said that her grandmother would have told her not to 327 00:17:44.160 --> 00:17:47.119 ask that question out of doors, and she left it there. 328 00:17:48.119 --> 00:17:51.640 Anski's a groomed loop in the Chippewa National Forest most 329 00:17:51.680 --> 00:17:54.279 weekends of the winter, and her version of the same 330 00:17:54.359 --> 00:17:58.240 experience is entirely modern. She came around a bend into 331 00:17:58.279 --> 00:18:00.759 a long, straight section of trail and found that she 332 00:18:00.759 --> 00:18:04.319 couldn't make herself continue down, with no sound anywhere and 333 00:18:04.400 --> 00:18:07.839 nothing visible in the timber. The comparison she reaches for 334 00:18:08.039 --> 00:18:10.559 is skiing into a room where an argument stopped half 335 00:18:10.599 --> 00:18:13.440 a second before the door opened. She stood in her 336 00:18:13.480 --> 00:18:16.440 own tracks long enough to feel ridiculous about it, and 337 00:18:16.480 --> 00:18:20.240 then skied the section anyway, and the feeling ended abruptly 338 00:18:20.279 --> 00:18:23.279 about two hundred yards along the way it would if 339 00:18:23.279 --> 00:18:26.279 she'd crossed a chalk line drawn on the ground. She's 340 00:18:26.279 --> 00:18:29.559 done that loop something over one hundred times since it's 341 00:18:29.599 --> 00:18:33.799 happened twice more in the same stretch, both times. In February, 342 00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:37.319 Tom hunts near Effie and spent forty minutes one afternoon 343 00:18:37.319 --> 00:18:40.519 in a stand unable to make himself turn around, which 344 00:18:40.559 --> 00:18:42.519 is a difficult thing for a grown man with a 345 00:18:42.599 --> 00:18:46.400 rifle across his lap to admit to anybody he worked 346 00:18:46.400 --> 00:18:48.680 at it the entire time and couldn't get his own 347 00:18:48.720 --> 00:18:51.160 neck to do it. And when he finally managed it, 348 00:18:51.319 --> 00:18:55.000 there was nothing behind him but timber. He climbed down 349 00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:57.119 and walked out in the dark, and he says the 350 00:18:57.160 --> 00:19:00.920 walkout was worse than the forty minutes intruction Dolores was 351 00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:03.680 given as a small child. Are the same instruction that 352 00:19:03.759 --> 00:19:06.839 turn up in communities from Manitoba to Michigan that had 353 00:19:06.839 --> 00:19:09.319 no way at all of comparing notes with one another. 354 00:19:10.200 --> 00:19:13.440 Don't look at it, don't run from it, keep your pace, 355 00:19:13.799 --> 00:19:16.759 get indoors, and tell somebody out loud what happened to you. 356 00:19:17.799 --> 00:19:19.759 Del ran a beagle out of a place near keller 357 00:19:19.799 --> 00:19:22.359 Her for nine years and had never once had that 358 00:19:22.440 --> 00:19:26.079 dog refuse him anything. On a cold December morning, at 359 00:19:26.079 --> 00:19:28.839 the edge of a cutover, the dog came off the tailgate, 360 00:19:29.160 --> 00:19:31.880 took about four steps toward the tree line, put its 361 00:19:31.920 --> 00:19:35.200 ears down, backed up, and got underneath the truck where 362 00:19:35.200 --> 00:19:38.759 it stayed. Dell walked that tree line himself and found 363 00:19:38.839 --> 00:19:41.680 nothing at all, no tracks and no blood, and no 364 00:19:41.799 --> 00:19:44.440 bed and no carcass, and nothing on the wind he 365 00:19:44.480 --> 00:19:47.079 could pick up. He stood out there in the cold 366 00:19:47.119 --> 00:19:50.160 for a couple of minutes, loaded the dog, and drove home. 367 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:53.920 That beagle worked another five seasons and never did it again. 368 00:19:54.400 --> 00:19:56.599 And in the nine years before that morning, it had 369 00:19:56.680 --> 00:19:59.559 run bear wolf and everything else that country had to 370 00:19:59.599 --> 00:20:03.119 offer with without once putting its ears down. Gordon hunted 371 00:20:03.119 --> 00:20:05.160 out of a shack near Big Fork with his brother 372 00:20:05.200 --> 00:20:08.279 and his brother's boys, and the morning in question fell 373 00:20:08.319 --> 00:20:11.079 in the second week of November, sometime in the late 374 00:20:11.200 --> 00:20:14.039 nineteen nineties, with eight inches on the ground and the 375 00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:17.839 nights running below zero. He was up before light, standing 376 00:20:17.880 --> 00:20:20.200 outside in the cold with a cup of coffee, when 377 00:20:20.200 --> 00:20:21.960 he saw a figure at the edge of the yard, 378 00:20:22.319 --> 00:20:26.000 past the woodpile, thirty five yards off, in that gray 379 00:20:26.039 --> 00:20:29.400 that's neither dark nor morning. At first he thought it 380 00:20:29.440 --> 00:20:33.240 was a man, a very tall, very thin man, and 381 00:20:33.279 --> 00:20:36.079 what bothered him was the proportion of the thing, because 382 00:20:36.079 --> 00:20:38.440 the arms hung too low, and the head sat forward 383 00:20:38.480 --> 00:20:41.000 on the shoulders instead of stacked on top of them. 384 00:20:41.640 --> 00:20:45.039 He never saw a face, and says he didn't want one. 385 00:20:45.079 --> 00:20:47.559 He went inside for a rifle, which took eight or 386 00:20:47.640 --> 00:20:50.119 nine seconds, and when he came back out, the yard 387 00:20:50.200 --> 00:20:53.079 was empty and he couldn't find a track. Though four 388 00:20:53.160 --> 00:20:55.480 hunters had been walking through that snow for a week 389 00:20:55.799 --> 00:20:58.960 and had beaten it to slush. He's never once claimed 390 00:20:58.960 --> 00:21:02.240 it was anything in particular, and he doesn't enjoy being asked. 391 00:21:02.799 --> 00:21:05.359 He simply never hunted out of that camp again, and 392 00:21:05.400 --> 00:21:07.799 when his brother's boys were old enough to take it over, 393 00:21:08.119 --> 00:21:10.559 he signed his share to them and didn't explain himself. 394 00:21:11.440 --> 00:21:13.599 Lyle drove a log truck for years on a hall 395 00:21:13.720 --> 00:21:16.279 road out of the Big Fork Country, and one morning, 396 00:21:16.319 --> 00:21:18.480 at the top of a shift, his headlights put a 397 00:21:18.480 --> 00:21:21.240 figure in the ditch line ahead of him. What he 398 00:21:21.319 --> 00:21:24.200 registered first wasn't the shape of it, but the height 399 00:21:24.240 --> 00:21:26.960 against the brush, because he knew that ditch, and he 400 00:21:27.039 --> 00:21:29.759 knew exactly what four feet of aldar looked like from 401 00:21:29.759 --> 00:21:32.880