Speaker 1: It was just after dark in two thousand and eight,
and I think it was July. My nephew and I
had spent the day swimming at the stream just at
the edge of the campground that backed up next to
the river here in the Ozarks. About half an hour
before dark, we decided to start fishing. We fished in
peace with the noise of the campground behind us for
about an hour or so, and by the time all
the daylight faded and night took over, I was finally
starting to get some nibbles from the fish. I had
my swim trunk still on, so I decided to wait
across the shallow stream. I had an led headlight that
could change the three different colors. I had the white
light on as I crossed the stream, and I found
a little sandbar to stand about knee deep in the water.
Was about twenty five feet from the far side of
the river bank, which was nothing but thick forest and
a steep hillside. I settled into my little spot and
I flipped my headlight to the red led light, and
I cast my line into the water near some logs
I had noticed on the other side of the river bank.
As soon as my bait hit the water with no
warning at all. Something smacked the water three feet in
front of me. It could have been closer, so close
that I felt a hard thud on the river bottom
with my feet, and I turned my head to look
back at my nephew, only to see him drop his
pole and start running back to his mother at the campsite.
I snapped my head back towards the direction from whatever
this thing was had come from. Hey, I shouted into
the trees, and I flipped my headlight onto the bright
white setting and grabbed my hand held flashlight, dashed in
my front pocket of my swim trunks, and drowned the
trees with light, trying to get a glimpse of what
had thrown such a hit heavy object at me. I
was scanning the woods and was overcome with the distinct
feeling that I was very vulnerable, that I was being watched,
and I decided that I didn't want to stand there
alone any longer. And I have to say that that
has never happened to me. And I grew up in
Saint Louis. It can be a violent city to live in,
and I was kind of a rough kid. I never
backed down from a confrontation, so I quickly waded back
across the river bank, making sure not to turn my
back on the direction I thought it had come from.
Later that night, we heard a pack of wolves tear
through the night with their howls. It was close enough
to make your skin crawl. Then we heard the coyotes,
and I mean we heard tons of them, and it
sounded like they were following the wolves. I mentioned this
because I have heard people discuss that wolves follow bigfoots
and coyotes follow wolves. All I know is that I
have camped all over these Missouri woods. There are some
spots down here in these Oozar Kills that seemed mysterious
as all get out, and there's no telling what's yet
to be found. We all have those friends that we
would be better off without, and my friend Charlie was
that friend. To be fair, I was that friend to
him too. The adrenaline Russian excitement that we brought to
each other's lives were too fun to resist. We were
usually in trouble one way or the other when we
were together. In fact, after some of the hot water
we got ourselves into it's a miracle that I'm still
on this side of the grass. We were best friends
for almost thirty years. Our favorite pastimes were fishing, hunting,
and shooting anything from bows and arrows to guns to
homemade spud launchers which made great mortars for boats on
a lake. We used giant slingshots to launch water balloons
at water skiers, and we put open cans of cat
food in the cars of people we did not like man.
That is one of the foulest odors to ever get
sucked into a person's nose, especially on a hot summer day.
We love turkey and deer hunting, and Charlie's mother and
stepfather owned sixty acres in Kentucky and we got to
use that land. And on top of that, we had
permission to hunt almost all the properties surrounding that form,
which was almost two thousand acres. We both had three
wheelers to start with, but later in life we graduated
to quads. Those Honda two fifties were awesome to play on.
There was one form we were prohibited from hunting. It
was the Sherman Farm. It was on the other side
of the highway. But Charlie had a different take on
that property, as it once belonged to his grandfather and
when the government cut the highway through the county, they
divided his grandfather's farm, which resulted in two thirds of
the property because coming inaccessible. In order to access it,
his grandfather needed to cross the land of the Sherman family,
but Sherman Senior would not allow it. Well, it didn't
take long before Charlie's grandfather started to struggle, and soon
after that he had to sell his land to the Shermans,
the family who cut him off from his own property.
He was offered ten cents on the dollar, but not
having any other options, he took the deal just to survive.
In turn, some twenty plus years later, along came to
yahoos As Charlie and I were often called running carefree
all over the county, and as you can probably guess,
we did not respect the boundaries of the Sherman family farm.
We discovered that we could ride our hon to two
fifty three wheelers under the highway through a drain culvert
and pop out on the creek on the other side,
giving us a route into two hundred acres of some
of the most adrenaline to off road trails we could find.
The property also held a good population of bucks and gobblers,
but when we hunted that farm, we would cross the
highway by foot right over the top so our rides
wouldn't be found. It was during turkey season and we
had already hunted quite a bit that week, and we
decided to sneak into the Sherman family's land anyway to
fill up a couple of bread bags with some spike
mushrooms and others that grew over on that side a
lot better than around Charlie's mom's place. And while we
were there, we decided that we would try to call
in a tom or two with some words of love
from our turkey callers. The next morning, we snuck over
the highway and into the woods. Almost like clockwork, the
gobblings started. But the bad thing was that the gobblers
were on the other ridge and we had to cross
an open bottom to get there. We slipped into ninja
mode and got our outlaw butts into gear and ran
over to where the birds were calling, and by the
time we got there everything was quiet. We knew we
had to get them worked up and excited, so we
put out three decoys on an old logging road and
we hunkered down against a couple of trees. We slipped
a couple of callers under our mouths and fired up
some love songs and promised those times the time of
their lives. But the reply was not what we expected.
A couple of seconds after we finished our calls, six
bullets of flu right past our heads. Charlie and I
looked at each other with wide eyes and pale faces,
and sat as still as we could, letting our camo
do its job, and not wanting to give away our position.
We were turkey hunters and woodsmen, and I cannot tell
you how many times I have called other hunters to
me and had them within arms reached before I said
something to them, just to scare them into learning a
lesson about the difference between a real gobble and a
turkey callar. But this time was different, though, this was
about survival. I looked over at Charlie and I wondered
if we should make ourselves known, when from behind us,
in about half the distance as before, came six more shots.
They whizzed past our heads again and sent us both
to our feet, tearing down the old logging road, and
we ran as hard as we could go, and we
got around the ridge, and we stopped to catch our breath,
but whoever it was, caught up to us in no time,
and since six more shots flying right past us, we
were off again, running for our lives. The highway was
only one hundred and fifty yards away, and if we
reached it we would be home free. But as we ran,
we looked to our left and saw an old man
dashing between the trees. He was keeping up with us.
We knew it must have been the Sherman senior and
that he would cut us down if he got the chance.
With a last ditch effort, we tore down the ridge
and right up to the fence and over to a
large drop off alongside the highway. We had never come
out of that area before, but six more shots rang
out from behind us, and we didn't get a chance
to even think about it, And so we took a
leap of faith and we jumped, and we slid down
that rock cliff on our asses right to the shoulder
of the highway, and without so much as looking for
oncoming traffic, we ran across all four lanes to the
concrete runoff that ran next to the porch of Charlie's
mom's farmhouse. We told her what happened, assuming that Sherman's
Senior had probably already called the sheriff on us and
expecting him to roll up any minute. And we begged
her to say that we had been sitting on the
porch all morning with her, but instead she tilted her
head and she looked confused. You ought to go talk
to the fellow who was just here. He left just
a minute ago. She said, what do you mean, who
was it? Charlie asked, it was Sherman Junior. She said,
matter of factly, he came to talk to me. Well,
our hearts fell out of our chests. We knew we
were in for it, thinking that he wanted to confront
us about our trespassing. But Charlie's mom said that the
man was running for office and he had come by
to try to earn her vote, and she told him
that she could not vote for a man whose family
wouldn't even allow her son to hunt their property. In return,
Sherman Junior looked at Charlie's mother in the eye and
apologized for his father's stubbornness. He said that since the
farm was now his, we would be happily given permission
written permission to hunt the property, and Charlie's mother asked
him if something happened to Sherman's Senior, and Junior replied
that he had passed on just a week ago, and
then she handed us a piece of paper with the
written permission to hunt the land we had just been
chased off of. Charlie and I looked at each other.
Neither of us wanted to say it out loud, but
we were both thinking it. The ghost of Sherman ran
us off his property. Since that day, Charlie and I
only ventured over the highway a few more times. There
were never many birds to speak of over there, and
the mushrooms had all vanished. The Shermans pushing dead trees
and brush up along the creek to keep the ATVs
out of the property, and we stopped sneaking over there
and instead hunted birds on our side of the line.
And I must conclude that ultimately Sherman Senior's ghost won
in the end. I guess the reputation of the two
yahos was so bad that even in death, that old
crow didn't want us out there. Something happened on a
fishing weekend that I went on with two of my
friends that we have never been able to explain. We
were camping in the woods alone. The sand was Sincto
River at a place my friend Bobby Sea called Van Lakes.
It was a property owned by Louis Berger that was
pretty creepy at night. It reminded me of a Louisiana
swamp with birds and cypress sneeze and blackwater and unidentified noises.
That was the first thing that set us on the edge.
It was an unidentified tree knocking somewhere in the woods,
and there would be two or three knocks, then there'd
be a long pause and there'd be three more knocks.
Nobody lives out here, Bobby said, ominously. I don't know
who could be doing that. By the end of the day,
we were running out of bait, and we were a
twenty minute drive from the closest bait store. Me and
Joe take the truck and go for more bait. Bobby
said we should be back in forty five minutes or so.
It was my job to stay and keep fishing. We
had seven poles out, so it was going to be
a big job. Ten minutes minutes after they left, it
got quiet. I didn't mean in things quiet down and
got peaceful. It got so quiet I could hear my
own heart beating, and it stayed so quiet that my
heart went from beating to pounding. And then the hares
began to stand up on the back of my neck.
And then I heard something moving in the woods around me,
and I told myself it was Bobby messing with me.
They probably set the whole thing up. That's what I figured.
They'd pretend to go off and buy more baits so
they could jump out of the woods and scare me,
and I figured i'd get them before they got me.
I moved out a little ways as quietly as I could.
Hidden as I was in the shadows of the trees,
they wouldn't have been able to see me. And I
stopped and stood there for a minute and I listened.
I was barely allowing myself to breathe at this point,
trying to figure out where they were hiding and how
they were going to jump out at me. And then
I began to hear something up in the trees moving around.
I could tell it big, but I couldn't quite pinpoint
where it was at, and I couldn't see a thing.
And at that moment, one of the fishing poles got hit,
so I eased back over to it and I reeled
it in. There was nothing on the line, but as
I stood there baiting the hook, I noticed that everything
went back to normal. All the normal sounds of the
night were back, and I was thinking to myself, what
the heck, while simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief. So
whatever it was, it was gone, and I was just
getting comfortable with the idea when it all went quiet again.
That was enough to get me moving, and I started
reeling in the lines as quickly as I could and
gathering up the poles. I wanted out of there so
badly that I didn't even notice when the normal sounds
came back again. I was picking up the last poll
when Bobby and Joe came walking back up and started
asking why I had stopped fishing, So I told him why.
About the time that Bobby started telling that there was
nothing in these woods to be afraid of, it got
quiet again. We all felt it. Our heads were spinning
as we all looked in every direction, trying to figure
out what kind of predator was out there scaring nature
into silence. Now, Joe, who was a natural born Chicken
was the first one to start insisting that we all
get the heck out of there. I was in total
agreement with him. Something was out there, and every sense
I had was telling me that I didn't want to
meet it. Bobby wasn't convinced until we heard what sounded
like a big tree being pushed over. Trees get old
and they do fall, but generally the falling part doesn't
happen until the wind blows, but there wasn't any wind.
There was just this long, creaking, sighing sound of breaking wood,
and then it fell over with a crash. Well, that
was the last straw, and we all broke and round,
leaving our poles behind. The truck was one hundred yards away,
and we climbed over each other getting in and screaming
go go, go, go go, and the tires reoster tailed
dirt and gravel behind us as we fishtailed into motion.
No one said another word until we got back to
the main road, and Bobby and Joe wanted to know
more about what happened while they were gone, So I
repeated my story, and I tried to add any details
that I might have missed earlier, and then I asked
them flat out if it was them messing with me.
Of course, both of them denied it. Would they have
left their poles behind if it was all a joke.
A couple of days later, when the sun was shining,
Bobby and I went back to get those poles. Oh,
Joe didn't go with us. It's been forty five years
since that day. We've never told our story to anyone.
After listening to your channel for a while, I started
to think that we dodged a bullet that night. Now
I didn't see what it was. None of us did,
But these days I'm kind of glad that I didn't
see it. I grew up in Maryland. Now I'm not
a great storyteller, but there were a couple of things
that happened in my past that took me from skeptic
to believer, and I'd like to share them with you now.
The closets in my bedroom had louvered doors. That wall
was opposite of my bed at the foot, so I
faced them when I laid there at night. It wasn't
until I was sixteen that I noticed anything strange about them.
It all started one night, just out of the blue.
I began to feel like I was being watched through
the slights in those doors. I'd be lying in bed,
reading or listening to music, and the hairs would stand
up on the back of my neck that since you
get when you know someone's watching you. It would wash
over me and I would find myself wanting to turn
and look at the doors. In my head, I would
argue with myself that no one was there, how could
anyone be there? But that feeling would not go away.
Sometimes it would be so strong that I couldn't even
force myself to look at those doors. This went on
for several nights, and I finally got some posters and
I hung them over the louvered part of the doors.
I thought the problem was solved, but I wish it
had been that simple. Right after I covered the doors
and the posters, I began to wake up each morning
to find them open. They weren't standing wide open, they
were just cracked, but it was enough to make me
aware that someone had opened them. The doors were solid,
and I tested them out on several occasions, and no
matter how hard I pulled, once they were light, they
would not open unless I turned the handles. To make
matters worse, my dog chesters stopped going into the room
at all. Even if I tried to force him in,
he'd fight and struggle against me the rest of the day.
Anywhere else he was fine with me. It was only
when I tried to get him to go into the
bedroom that he fought me. And it started only after
the closet doors started opening on their own in the night.
This went on for about a month before my brother
moved out on his own and I jumped at the
chance to move into his bedroom. I can't tell you
how excited I was to get away from that bedroom
and those closet doors. Except now. Chester was fine with
my old room, but he wouldn't go into my new room.
And dogs have instincts about these things, and I trusted
Chester's instincts. The closet doors in the new room were
solid wood, there were no lovers, and again I tested
them and they could not be open without turning the knobs,
and it didn't stop them from opening on their own
every night. No one believed me about the closed doors
until my girlfriend, who would eventually become my wife, stayed over.
She woke me up in the middle of the night
frantically saying, it's open. I just watched it open. Whatever
followed me from one bedroom to the other at my
father's house stayed there when I eventually moved out, and
then I had my own place and it never happened again.
I had another incident, and it happened when I was eighteen,
and it was an actual ghost sighting. I was driving
to my friend's house in my nineteen ninety four Chevy pickup.
Not of nowhere, my passenger seat headrest cover flew off
and hit my windshield. At the same time, a ghostly
figure of a woman appeared in the crosswalk directly in
front of me. She had no feet, but she was
wearing a dress and was completely white, and I could
see right through her. So I slammed on my brakes
and then she was gone. It was a long time
before anything strange happened to me again, but lately I've
had an ongoing experience that I don't know what to
do about it. We have three kids who all sleep
up stairs, and my wife often works from home. She
tells me that she hears footsteps upstairs when the kids
are all at school. Now I have to admit that
I've heard them too. It isn't your typical house creeks
and groans. It sounds like a grown man walking from
room to room. And on top of this, on most nights,
my kids will come downstairs because they claim they can
hear someone breathing up there. Well, I hate telling my
kids that there's nothing to be afraid of, but I
don't want them to be scared. But I have seen things,
so for me to say that would be lying to them.
I'm a thirty one year old Army veteran and I'm
an avid hunter and fisherman. I walk around in the
woods at night for fun with no fear at all.
But when I think about what's going on in my house,
the hairs start standing up all over my body and
I get a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Some things in this world can't be explained and they
should not be messed with. All right, I appreciate you
all listening and joining me on this podcast. I've been
busy the last week. This is I've missed about seven
days of putting a podcast out because I've been working
on other things. But I'm trying to get these done
as quickly as possible. It actually get a few done
in a row so that I can upload those more
consistently through the next few weeks, so there's no commentary.
You don't get to hear me run in my mouth,
which is fine. I'll keep doing that at some point
when I have time, but on this one it wasn't.
I just want to read the stories so that you
could enjoy them. And that'll do it for now, and
I'll see you guys on the next podcast. I sure
do appreciate you. Thank you.