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