Speaker 1: Thomas Hale had never believed the woods were neutral. That
Speaker 1: was the mistake outsiders made, thinking the forest was passive,
Speaker 1: something that simply existed until acted upon. Hale understood better.
Speaker 1: Land responded to pressure, It noticed, patterns, it remembered. Over
Speaker 1: twenty years of patrol work along the Miller's River had
Speaker 1: taught him that much, even if he'd never put it
Speaker 1: into words. The first sign something had changed came three
Speaker 1: days before Christmas. Hale was walking a familiar stretch of
Speaker 1: river corridor north of Greyhaven, a section he'd covered dozens
Speaker 1: of times in every season. The Millers ran tighter there,
Speaker 1: constrained by rock and slope, Its banks steam enough that
Speaker 1: ice formed in ragged shelves along the edges. Snow from
Speaker 1: the previous night lay thin and honest, just enough to
Speaker 1: record what passed through. The tracks were already there when
Speaker 1: he noticed them. They didn't announce themselves. Hale saw them
Speaker 1: only because they didn't behave like anything else. Too wide,
Speaker 1: too deep, The pressure displacement suggested weight far beyond any
Speaker 1: animal common to the region. The stride length was consistent,
Speaker 1: almost measured, and the path they followed ran parallel to
Speaker 1: the river rather than toward it. Hale knelt and examined
Speaker 1: one impression closely. The shape was indistinct, softened by light snowfall,
Speaker 1: but the proportions were wrong. Not a bear, not human.
Speaker 1: He didn't reach for his camera, he didn't radio it in.
Speaker 1: He stood, brushed snow from his gloves, and followed the tracks,
Speaker 1: stayed just far enough from the trail to avoid accidental crossing.
Speaker 1: They never broke toward the water or climbed toward higher ground.
Speaker 1: They moved with purpose, but not urgency. Hale followed them
Speaker 1: for nearly a quarter mile before they stopped abruptly near
Speaker 1: a stand of old pine. That was when the smell
Speaker 1: reached him. It wasn't to kay, It wasn't animal waste.
Speaker 1: It was something heavier warmer carried on the cold air
Speaker 1: in a way that made it feel out of place.
Speaker 1: Hale breathed through his mouth and kept walking. He did
Speaker 1: not feel threatened, but he felt assessed. He marked the
Speaker 1: location in his notebook and turned back. That afternoon, Hale
Speaker 1: closed the trail. He didn't follow a report explaining why
Speaker 1: he didn't consult with the county. He simply drew a
Speaker 1: line through the access point on the map, wrote the
Speaker 1: date beside it and initialed the margin. Anyone who knew
Speaker 1: him would have recognized that as a decision he did
Speaker 1: not take. Lightly. On Christmas Eve, Hale returned. The weather
Speaker 1: had begun to shift. Wind pressed against the trees with
Speaker 1: more force than forecast it. The river sounded thicker, its movement,
Speaker 1: slowed and burdened by ice. Parked his truck farther south
Speaker 1: this time, and walked in quietly, his steps careful, deliberate.
Speaker 1: The tracks had returned. They overlapped older impressions, now compressing
Speaker 1: the snow deeply enough that the ground beneath had been disturbed.
Speaker 1: Hale followed them again, noting where they appeared, and vanished
Speaker 1: without explanation. In one place, the Prince circled the pine
Speaker 1: stand he'd noted the day before, pressing the snow flat
Speaker 1: in a wide ring before ending completely. Hale felt the
Speaker 1: sensation before he saw anything. The awareness came first, the
Speaker 1: subtle shift and pressure, the sense that the space beside
Speaker 1: him was occupied. He slowed, turning slightly, scanning laterally rather
Speaker 1: than ahead. The glimpse came, then, brief and unmistakable, tall upright,
Speaker 1: moving across his field of vision rather than toward or away.
Speaker 1: From him. The motion was smooth, controlled, almost economical. Whatever
Speaker 1: it was did not rush, it did not hide. Hale
Speaker 1: did not raise his weapon, he did not call out.
Speaker 1: He reached for his radio and turned it off. No
Speaker 1: one would ever know why he made that choice. Perhaps
Speaker 1: he understood that authorities meant nothing here. Perhaps he believed
Speaker 1: observation was safer than escalation. Perhaps he recognized intelligence when
Speaker 1: he saw it. What mattered was that he remained where
Speaker 1: he was. The encounter did not last long. There was
Speaker 1: no vocalization, no display, no warning, only proximity, weight and intent.
Speaker 1: Hale's injuries would later tell the story. His mouth never
Speaker 1: could compression across the shoulders, bruising consistent with restraint. Force
Speaker 1: applied with precision rather than chaos. He was not attacked
Speaker 1: in panic. He was controlled. When Hale's body was found
Speaker 1: hours after Christmas ended, it was placed near a widening
Speaker 1: bend of the Miller's River, where the bank sloped gently
Speaker 1: and the water slowed. There were no drag marks, no
Speaker 1: sign of a fall. The snow around him lay smooth,
Speaker 1: as if nothing had disturbed it. The positioning was deliberate.
Speaker 1: After Eleanor Price disappeared days later, the meaning of Hale's
Speaker 1: death changed. Investigators revisiting the scene no longer viewed it
Speaker 1: as an accident shaped by weather. The parallels were too strong.
Speaker 1: Eleanor had not been chased, she had not fled. Her
Speaker 1: remains told a story of intention rather than violence. For
Speaker 1: its own sake. The ear left behind was not evidence
Speaker 1: of feeding. It was a symbol a peace taken and returned.
Speaker 1: Among older residents and hunters, the stories resurfaced quietly, not folklore,
Speaker 1: not campfire tales, but recollections that had never been given
Speaker 1: language before. Shapes seen near the river decades earlier, Tracks
Speaker 1: that vanished where they shouldn't, have a smell that lingered
Speaker 1: after everything else moved on. One man used the old
Speaker 1: term his grandfather had taught him. People stealer. Not always,
Speaker 1: he said, not without reason. The distinction between Hale and
Speaker 1: Eleanor became the unspoken center of every conversation. Hale represented authority, boundaries, enforcement.
Speaker 1: He interrupted something that had been allowed to exist without interference.
Speaker 1: Eleanor represented curiosity, reverence, a willingness to enter without demanding control.
Speaker 1: The Sasquatch recognized the difference, removed because he threatened balance.
Speaker 1: Eleanor was taken because she crossed a line she didn't
Speaker 1: know existed. By the time New Year's Eve arrived, gray
Speaker 1: Haven no longer cared what might happen when the clock
Speaker 1: struck midnight. Computers worked, lights stayed on. The world did
Speaker 1: not end, but the town understood something it hadn't before.
Speaker 1: The woods did not negotiate, and they did not forget.
Speaker 1: After the storm that followed Eleanor Price's disappearance, gray Haven
Speaker 1: changed in ways that were difficult to quantify but impossible
Speaker 1: to miss. There was no announcement, no shared acknowledgment that
Speaker 1: something fundamental had shifted. The change lived in habits, in
Speaker 1: the way doors were locked earlier, in how people avoided
Speaker 1: the north end of town without discussing it. In the
Speaker 1: way the Miller's River was no longer treated as scenery.
Speaker 1: The investigation moved forward in fragments. Officially, Thomas Hale's death
Speaker 1: remained categorized as weather related, pending further review. The paperwork
Speaker 1: used careful language that avoided conclusions exposure complicated by environmental factors,
Speaker 1: possible disorientation contributing to rain hazards. It was the sort
Speaker 1: of phrasing designed to settle into files and never be
Speaker 1: disturbed again. Unofficially, no one believed it any more. The
Speaker 1: photographs from the recovery were reviewed again, this time without
Speaker 1: the assumption of acts accident. The pattern of bruising across
Speaker 1: Hale's upper body stood out when seen through a different lens.
Speaker 1: The spacing was too consistent, the depth to uniform. His
Speaker 1: shoulders bore compression marks that suggested hands, not impact points.
Speaker 1: There were no fractures that aligned with a fall from
Speaker 1: standing height, no evidence of a slide down the embankment.
Speaker 1: Hale had not been struck, he had not lost his footing,
Speaker 1: he had been restrained. The decision to re examine his
Speaker 1: patrol notes came quietly. A deputy who had worked with
Speaker 1: Hale long enough to know his habits, pulled the notebook
Speaker 1: from evidence and read through it slowly. Most of the
Speaker 1: entries were routine trail conditions, weather changes, minor infractions resolved
Speaker 1: without escalation. Then came the closure notation, no explanation, just
Speaker 1: a date, a location, and Hale's initials. That was the
Speaker 1: moment the timeline shifted. Search crews returned to the closed
Speaker 1: section of trail with different eyes. The snow had erased
Speaker 1: most surface details by then, but it shaded areas along
Speaker 1: the river bank. Impressions lingered where the ground had been
Speaker 1: compressed deep enough to resist weather. Trackways appeared intermittently, wide
Speaker 1: and heavy, pressing straight down rather than sliding or scuffing.
Speaker 1: They did not converge on the trail. They paralleled it,
Speaker 1: sometimes for hundreds of yards at a time. The behavior
Speaker 1: bothered the men examining them. Animals cross trails, people cross trails.
Speaker 1: Whatever made these prints moved as if it understood paths
Speaker 1: without using them. The smell was noted again during the search,
Speaker 1: not constant, not overpowering, but present enough that several people
Speaker 1: commented on it independently, damp, musky, something that did not
Speaker 1: belong to winter. No one recorded that observation in the
Speaker 1: official report. The difference between Hale's death and Eleanor's disappearance
Speaker 1: became clearer with each passing day. Eleanor had not been
Speaker 1: found where she fell. The sight where her ear was
Speaker 1: recovered showed no signs of a struggle, no torn vegetation,
Speaker 1: no chaotic movement. The blood suggested injury, not prolonged violence.
Speaker 1: The locket left behind rested on top of the snow, undisturbed,
Speaker 1: as if placed rather than dropped. That detail unsettled investigators
Speaker 1: more than any other. People did not leave objects behind
Speaker 1: neatly in moments of panic. The cloth pouches Eleanor carried
Speaker 1: were never recovered, neither was her pack. Whatever took her
Speaker 1: had not taken everything, only what mattered to it. Conversations
Speaker 1: with long time residence began cautiously and ended quickly. People
Speaker 1: did not like being asked direct questions about the woods. Answers,
Speaker 1: when they came, were framed as anecdotes rather than beliefs.
Speaker 1: A story a grandfather used to tell something some one
Speaker 1: had seen once years ago that didn't fit anywhere else.
Speaker 1: Warnings passed down without explanation. Eventually a word surfaced, sasquatch.
Speaker 1: It was spoken quietly, without drama. No one laughed, no
Speaker 1: one challenged it outright. The words settled into the room
Speaker 1: like a piece that had been missing. One hunter older
Speaker 1: than most explained that distinction that mattered. They're not all
Speaker 1: the same, he said, Most of them want nothing to
Speaker 1: do with us, but some some remember remember what. No
Speaker 1: one asked. The term people steeler came up next, not
Speaker 1: as a threat, not as a myth, but as a
Speaker 1: category a behavior, something that happened rarely enough to be doubted,
Speaker 1: but often enough to be remembered. The stories were consistent
Speaker 1: in one way. Those taken were usually alone, usually attentive
Speaker 1: to the land, usually unaware they had crossed into something claimed.
Speaker 1: The marking was what separated rumor from warning. Taking a
Speaker 1: piece and leaving it behind was not about feeding. It
Speaker 1: was about a communication, a way of saying that the
Speaker 1: removal was intentional, that the boundary existed, whether people acknowledged
Speaker 1: it or not. Hale's roll and that context became clear.
Speaker 1: He had not been taken because he wandered too far.
Speaker 1: He had been confronted because he represented enforcement. His presence
Speaker 1: threatened to alter something that had been allowed to persist quietly.
Speaker 1: He had not backed away, He had not escalated. He
Speaker 1: had chosen to remain. That choice had consequences. Eleanor's role
Speaker 1: was different. She had not earned authority or intent to control.
Speaker 1: She carried symbols sand from another place, pieces of an
Speaker 1: ancient tree, a way of listening that did not demand answers.
Speaker 1: That curiosity may have delayed what happened to her. It
Speaker 1: may have made her interesting rather than immediately threatening, But
Speaker 1: curiosity did not grant permission. By the time the calendar
Speaker 1: turned to January, gray Haven had abandoned any lingering concern
Speaker 1: about y two K. Midnights passed without incident. Computers worked
Speaker 1: like stayed on. Nothing external failed. What had failed was
Speaker 1: the town's assumption that the woods were passive. The closed
Speaker 1: trail remained closed. No one challenged the restriction, no one
Speaker 1: asked when it might reopen. The river corridor north of
Speaker 1: town fell quiet in a way it had not been before.
Speaker 1: Hunters state south hikers chose other routes. Even fishermen avoided
Speaker 1: the bend where Hale had been found. The forest did
Speaker 1: not reclaim that space because it had never lost it.
Speaker 1: Gray Haven learned slowly and without ceremony, that coexistence depended
Speaker 1: on recognition. Some boundaries could not be negotiated. Some warnings
Speaker 1: were issued only once, and whatever had been interrupted before
Speaker 1: the end of the century had made itself known clearly
Speaker 1: enough that no one felt compelled to test it again.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Bigfootswilker. That was white Out Warning
Speaker 1: Part two. And if you thought things were starting to
Speaker 1: make sense, you might want to think again. The storm
Speaker 1: isn't finished, and neither is what's moving inside it. Be
Speaker 1: sure to tune in for part three, where the truth
Speaker 1: begins to surface, and not everyone makes it out of
Speaker 1: the snow. Until then, stay aware of your surroundings, trust
Speaker 1: what you feel more than what you see, and remember
Speaker 1: out there in the quiet, in the cold, you're never
Speaker 1: as alone as you think. This is Bigfoots Wilderness. We'll
Speaker 1: see you in the next episode.