Speaker 1: It was in the mid nineteen nineties in Georgetown, Kentucky,
Speaker 1: and I walked or rode my bike everywhere. Near the
Speaker 1: center of town was a beautifully maintained, wooded cemetery that
Speaker 1: I walked through almost daily to get from one place
Speaker 1: to another. One evening, around dusk, I was running late
Speaker 1: for my karate class, and I took a shortcut through
Speaker 1: that cemetery, as I always did. As soon as I entered,
Speaker 1: I felt something walking along the path with me, but
Speaker 1: staying just far enough behind that I would have to
Speaker 1: turn my head to see it. The strangest thing of
Speaker 1: all was that I was overcome with peace and calm,
Speaker 1: and despite the urge to turn my head and look,
Speaker 1: I couldn't do it. I could hear heavy footsteps, but
Speaker 1: there was no bad smell, just the sense that I
Speaker 1: was not alone, that I was eighth, and whatever it
Speaker 1: was didn't mean to harm me. I continued to walk
Speaker 1: through the cemetery. I felt this thing get close enough
Speaker 1: that I could have reached out and touched it, but
Speaker 1: I felt no urge to do that. I felt as
Speaker 1: if my body was on autopilot and I had no
Speaker 1: real control over what I was doing. As I neared
Speaker 1: the exit of the cemetery. Whatever this thing was seemed
Speaker 1: to back off and was completely gone by the time
Speaker 1: I got to the gate, and then, and only then
Speaker 1: was I able to turn around and look behind me.
Speaker 1: I wish I could say I saw it run behind
Speaker 1: a tree or something like that, but I didn't see anything. Well.
Speaker 1: I got to my karate class just a few minutes later,
Speaker 1: only to find that I was nearly half an hour late.
Speaker 1: The walk that only took me ten minutes had taken
Speaker 1: twice that I couldn't make sense of the lost time.
Speaker 1: I kept walking through the cemetery often for the rest
Speaker 1: of my youth years in that town, and only one
Speaker 1: other time did I feel anything a sensation of being
Speaker 1: watched as I walked home one evening. To this day,
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened that night. I know something
Speaker 1: was there. I could feel it, I could hear it
Speaker 1: walking behind me, But I cannot explain the missing time
Speaker 1: or why I couldn't make myself look behind me at
Speaker 1: what was following. I just hope that whatever it was
Speaker 1: continues to watch after those who walk through that place.
Speaker 1: I hope that those who walk through there are respectful
Speaker 1: enough not to earn its Anger. I live in northwest
Speaker 1: Arkansas near Beaver Lake, and I have been an avid
Speaker 1: hunter since I was eight years old, and I've experienced
Speaker 1: everything my area has to offer for over four decades.
Speaker 1: In my passion for the outdoors, I've encountered nearly every
Speaker 1: creature native to this region, but this one has gotten
Speaker 1: me scratching my head. In twenty seventeen, I was hunting
Speaker 1: behind my house for deer in a small wooded lot
Speaker 1: that runs down to the lake a few miles away.
Speaker 1: The area I live in has houses mixed with fields
Speaker 1: and small patches of woods just one hundred yards outside
Speaker 1: the city limits. There are deer in the area, but
Speaker 1: it's by no means isolated, certainly not enough for a
Speaker 1: bigfoot encounter, or so I thought. I stayed in my
Speaker 1: tree stand until it was too dark to shoot. I
Speaker 1: finally gave up and headed back to my house. Just
Speaker 1: four hundred yards away between me and my house was
Speaker 1: a deep valley. Now, I approached the slight rise before
Speaker 1: the valley and something was on the other side, and
Speaker 1: it started making a sound I'd never heard before. It
Speaker 1: started in a low half growl and ended in a
Speaker 1: high pitched screen that lasted nearly ten seconds. It repeated
Speaker 1: this cost several times, as if to let me know
Speaker 1: it was there and it was not happy. I'd walked
Speaker 1: up on it a frozen place, trying to see what
Speaker 1: was making the sound, but I couldn't lay eyes on it.
Speaker 1: After a minute of this thing screaming at me, it
Speaker 1: broke and ran to my left down the valley. I
Speaker 1: could hear its heavy footsteps, rocks being kicked and disturbed,
Speaker 1: and large branches snapping and breaking as it ran off.
Speaker 1: To this day, I still don't have an explanation for
Speaker 1: what it was. We don't have wild hogs in this area,
Speaker 1: and I know it wasn't a bear. It was far
Speaker 1: too heavy to be a fox, and its call was
Speaker 1: completely different. I'm not saying this was a bigfoot, but
Speaker 1: I'm left with little elks to consider. I just know that,
Speaker 1: even with my forty plus years of hunting, that experience
Speaker 1: leaves me stump. Keep up the good work. I love
Speaker 1: the channel sign, Dennis. I've been rigging in installing twenty
Speaker 1: four thousand pound, five million dollar radiation therapy machines for
Speaker 1: twelve years now. One night I had just finished installing
Speaker 1: an upgrade on a machine in Montgomery, Alabama, and I
Speaker 1: was planning to drive all the way home north of
Speaker 1: Atlanta late that night. But as luck would have it,
Speaker 1: when I finished the installation, the owner of our company
Speaker 1: call me directly saying he needed my partner in me
Speaker 1: to head straight to pick a Une, Mississippi. So there
Speaker 1: we were driving the six hours to Mississippi with my
Speaker 1: partner asleep in the seat next to me. Around three am,
Speaker 1: my GPS re routed us off of Highway ten onto
Speaker 1: a parallel route through the Pascagoula National Forest. Things felt
Speaker 1: strange as soon as I got onto this tiny road,
Speaker 1: with swamps all around us in nurald old trees casting
Speaker 1: eerie shadows, my eyes darting all around, taking in all
Speaker 1: the creepiness. About halfway through the forest, I came to
Speaker 1: a complete stop and I looked to my right. There
Speaker 1: in a cove was a round dark craft hovering at
Speaker 1: the top of the tree line, buzzing like a giant
Speaker 1: electric box, and it was emitting a glowing green light
Speaker 1: down to the ground. Well. I was in shock. I
Speaker 1: finally spoke up, my eyes glued to this thing, poking
Speaker 1: my partner until he woke up. He looked at me,
Speaker 1: frowning and confused. I pointed out the window and I said,
Speaker 1: tell me what that is. He frowned again, looked out
Speaker 1: his window, and he gasped at the thing. He finally
Speaker 1: turned away from it and yelled to me to get
Speaker 1: us out of there. Well. I snapped out of my
Speaker 1: trance and drove away, relieved that he had seen it
Speaker 1: too and that I wasn't going insane. I don't know
Speaker 1: what we encountered, but it was definitely a flying object
Speaker 1: that I could not identify. I grew up in a
Speaker 1: town on the south coast of Maine, in a little
Speaker 1: place called Bath, known for the Navy shipyard. My family
Speaker 1: and I lived in a small house in the woods,
Speaker 1: and come sunrise, we kids did the chores and we
Speaker 1: were kicked out of the house until sundown. As I
Speaker 1: got older, my parents let me pack out and go
Speaker 1: on two or three day camping trips on my own.
Speaker 1: I love being in nature every chance I got. If
Speaker 1: I wasn't in school or the house, you could bet
Speaker 1: the farm that I was out there in the woods.
Speaker 1: One morning, I sweet taught my mother into letting me
Speaker 1: go on a four day camping trip. She agreed so
Speaker 1: long as I took my hunting dog, Sparky with me.
Speaker 1: Sparky and I made it two and a half miles
Speaker 1: away from the house when I decided to camp alongside
Speaker 1: a creek that i'd been following. I set up my
Speaker 1: tent and I started gathering food for the night. In Maine,
Speaker 1: there's food everywhere if you know how to look for it.
Speaker 1: Berries and small game, that sort of thing. I found
Speaker 1: a large patch of blackberries, shot two plump gray squirrels,
Speaker 1: and caught some fish in a nearby lake. I brought
Speaker 1: my bounty back to camp. My backpack was full of
Speaker 1: fish and my pockets were full of berries. One squirrel
Speaker 1: in one hand and the other clenched in Sparky's jaw,
Speaker 1: and we ate like kings of the forest that night.
Speaker 1: The next day we did the same thing, hunting, forge
Speaker 1: in and exploring. At one point Sparky got awful interested
Speaker 1: in something. I followed him, knowing it would lead to
Speaker 1: more fat squirrels or some other critter that we could
Speaker 1: have for dinner. We came across some tracks that I
Speaker 1: could not identify. Maybe it was a large fox or
Speaker 1: a coyote, I thought, but it ended up in a
Speaker 1: strange den in the side of a hill, and there
Speaker 1: were small game bones lying around the outside. I got
Speaker 1: close enough to look at the opening and immediately got
Speaker 1: a bad feeling. I couldn't say what it was, but
Speaker 1: something wasn't right about that place. At night, I woke
Speaker 1: to the sound of shuffling outside the tent. Sparky was
Speaker 1: on his feet, his ears were perked up, and his
Speaker 1: tail was down, and he was sniffing back and forth
Speaker 1: across the bottom of the tent door. I couldn't hear anything,
Speaker 1: no crickets or frogs, not even the occasional hoot of
Speaker 1: an owl. Now I wasn't afraid of what it might be,
Speaker 1: even if it was a black bear or a moose.
Speaker 1: Always stayed cool in nature, knowing that keeping a level
Speaker 1: head was the best way to keep us safe. I
Speaker 1: put my hand on my dog to calm him down,
Speaker 1: and I held my breath and I listened for a while.
Speaker 1: Whatever was shuffling around out there had a strange, scratchy
Speaker 1: kind of breathing. I ran through a mental checklist that
Speaker 1: didn't leave any berries out, and Sparky had finished all
Speaker 1: of his dog food. I brought his bowl into the
Speaker 1: tent along with my backpack, which I had my other supplies.
Speaker 1: And then it hit me. I left the fishbones out
Speaker 1: by the fire. There's a big rookie mistake. And I
Speaker 1: cursed myself, and I guessed it was a black bear
Speaker 1: sniffing around out there, and I wondered how big It was.
Speaker 1: Still Sparky and I remained calm. Most of the time,
Speaker 1: black bears will just take off running when they see people,
Speaker 1: but they are known to attack and mall in some cases.
Speaker 1: I sat there a minute, weighing my options, and in
Speaker 1: the end, I quietly unzipped the window flap and I
Speaker 1: peeked out with one eye. The moonlight was good enough
Speaker 1: that I could see everything around my camp, including what
Speaker 1: was sniffing around. And what I saw shocked me so
Speaker 1: badly that I couldn't even gasp. I had never been
Speaker 1: afraid of any kind of wildlife, no matter how big,
Speaker 1: but that all changed that night. Right then and there.
Speaker 1: Fear took hold of me and I couldn't breathe. The
Speaker 1: Sparky was frozen too. I was looking at a bonafide Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to say this, lunk SEUs and
Speaker 1: the Indian devil. I was looking at a bonafide lunk
Speaker 1: Seuss and the Indian devil. It was a cross between
Speaker 1: a cougar, a bear, and a coyote. In New England folklore,
Speaker 1: old loggers told stories about them. My grandparents even used
Speaker 1: to talk about them around the campfire. According to legend,
Speaker 1: they were extremely fast and stealthy. They were about four
Speaker 1: feet long with wider brown fur, and they had a
Speaker 1: nasty scent, and they had sharp claws. Because they were
Speaker 1: so fast, it was nearly impossible to kill them. They
Speaker 1: weren't afraid of humans, and at night they would creep
Speaker 1: into camps to steal food and sabotag anything they pleased.
Speaker 1: It was down on all fours with its face pressed
Speaker 1: into the fish, and it stink like death and musk.
Speaker 1: My jaw was on the ground. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do. And then my dog started whining and making noise,
Speaker 1: and that startled it. Its head snapped toward the tent,
Speaker 1: and in an instant it was gone. I couldn't even
Speaker 1: tell in which direction it had gone. It was just
Speaker 1: a blur of movement, and then there was nothing. I
Speaker 1: still couldn't move. I just sat there listening. There still
Speaker 1: wasn't a single sound just my heart pounding and Sparky's
Speaker 1: quick breathing. Somehow I knew this wasn't over. Sparky slowly
Speaker 1: cocked his head and perked his ears up, tracking something
Speaker 1: neither of us could see, and as quietly as I could,
Speaker 1: I dug my filet knife from my bag and held
Speaker 1: my breath. And then suddenly it charged the tent, heavy footfalls,
Speaker 1: shaking the ground. Sparky exploded, barking and snarling like I'd
Speaker 1: never seen him do before. Our tent was blasted off,
Speaker 1: and Sparky emptied his blidder all over me as this
Speaker 1: thing trampled over us and it kept running, leaving me
Speaker 1: with a bloody lip. For the rest of that night,
Speaker 1: I held my trembling dog close to my chest. Both
Speaker 1: of us were wide awake and terrified. It's sun up.
Speaker 1: We were out of there, Sparky in the lead, both
Speaker 1: of our tails tucked. I did a lot less solo
Speaker 1: camping after that, and I always stayed closer to home.
Speaker 1: Thanks for reading my story. I've been a fan for
Speaker 1: a long time, and I finally worked up the courage
Speaker 1: to share it with you. Keep doing what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and thank you for all that you do. Thank you sir,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining me on this podcast. I'm working
Speaker 1: on a Steve Lilly's story right now, so some of
Speaker 1: these may be a little shorter, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: keep cranking them out about every three or four days.
Speaker 1: Thank you again for listening, and we'll see you guys
Speaker 1: on the next one MM