Speaker 1: My grandmother was a god fearing woman. She was in
Speaker 1: her late eighties when she told me this story, and
Speaker 1: she swore on the Bible that it was true. My
Speaker 1: grandmother and grandfather were newlyweds. They had spent the first
Speaker 1: few months living with her parents until they could find
Speaker 1: a home to rent. My grandfather was the pastor of
Speaker 1: a small country church down Sycamore Avenue. He didn't make
Speaker 1: much money preaching, and many of his congregation members couldn't
Speaker 1: give money to the church, so they brought chickens and
Speaker 1: corn on the cob and eggs to the preacher. We
Speaker 1: limited income, finding a home was challenging. One Sunday, a
Speaker 1: church member came up to my grandfather after church and
Speaker 1: told him that his aunt had a house that she
Speaker 1: was trying to rent. Wanted to know if he wanted
Speaker 1: to rent it. The house was a two story white
Speaker 1: home with a big picture window in the living room.
Speaker 1: The kitchen was on the main floor, the two bedrooms
Speaker 1: were upstairs. The house was nice and it was cheap,
Speaker 1: only ten dollars a month. Well why is it so cheap,
Speaker 1: my grandmother asked the owner of the home. Well, I
Speaker 1: can't lie to a preacher, but the house is haunted.
Speaker 1: He said. Well, my grandparents were shocked and shook their
Speaker 1: heads because they didn't believe in ghosts. The only ghost
Speaker 1: that we believe in is the Holy ghost, said my grandfather. Okay,
Speaker 1: said the owner, But I warned you. He said this
Speaker 1: with a nervous laugh. My grandparents moved in all day
Speaker 1: and finally got settled. Nothing happened the first night, but
Speaker 1: that was the last peaceful night's sleep they would have
Speaker 1: in that house. The next night began normal. Grandpa and
Speaker 1: Grandma went up to the bedroom and went to sleep.
Speaker 1: At two am, they heard people talking down in the kitchen,
Speaker 1: several people in fact. They heard the cabinets being opened
Speaker 1: and dishes being set on the table, and chairs were
Speaker 1: heard moving across the floor. My grandfather got a shotgun
Speaker 1: and quietly walked down to the stairs. He turned on
Speaker 1: the light and there was nothing, nothing out of place.
Speaker 1: The kitchen was perfectly clean and in order, just like
Speaker 1: Grandma left it. Grandpa searched the house and he still
Speaker 1: found nothing. And then he remembered the owner's words, it's haunted.
Speaker 1: A cold chill came over him. He quickly prayed the
Speaker 1: Lord's prayer and checked both the front and back doors
Speaker 1: to see that they were locked. He then went up
Speaker 1: to bed and only to have the same thing happen.
Speaker 1: The voices started and the dishes started to be moved
Speaker 1: about the kitchen. Grandpa finally went to the kitchen and
Speaker 1: turned the light on. Everything stopped. He put his Bible
Speaker 1: open to Psalm Nighty and went on the table, and
Speaker 1: he went to sleep with his head resting on the book.
Speaker 1: The next morning, my grandmother told him she wanted to leave.
Speaker 1: She didn't want to live in a haunted house. Grandpa
Speaker 1: told her they would pack up and leave, and they
Speaker 1: did just that. It took most of the day, but
Speaker 1: with the help of family members, they had everything out
Speaker 1: of the house in one day. My grandparents shut the
Speaker 1: curtains on the massive front picture window in the living
Speaker 1: room and quietly looked left and right, and again they
Speaker 1: felt a cold chill come into the room. They quickly
Speaker 1: walked out the front door and locked it. As they
Speaker 1: slowly pulled out of the driveway, my grandmother yelled stop.
Speaker 1: My grandfather stopped, and they looked at the house and
Speaker 1: the curtains they had closed upon leaving were slowly opening.
Speaker 1: My grandparents looked at each other and said it's haunted.
Speaker 1: They left, and the house sat empty for many years
Speaker 1: after that. It may sound strange that a skeptic like
Speaker 1: me would write to you about an exp xperience that
Speaker 1: could have been a sisquatch. Regarding my skepticism, I can't
Speaker 1: help but feel that a complete lack of concrete, irrefutable
Speaker 1: physical evidence is suspicious. Now, don't get me wrong, I
Speaker 1: would be thrilled to learn that we shared this earth
Speaker 1: with another mysterious primate. But again I have serious doubts.
Speaker 1: I spent my childhood enchanted by stories of the unknown,
Speaker 1: and I cut my teeth on Sunday afternoon reruns of
Speaker 1: In Search of And I had seen the Patterson Gimlin
Speaker 1: film dozens of time by my fifth birthday, Having learned
Speaker 1: to read at an early age, I was even aware
Speaker 1: of the Baumanns story at that age. I bear in
Speaker 1: mind that I grew up in the seventies when the
Speaker 1: Bigfoot phenomenon was hitting its stride. Bigfoot was everywhere. I
Speaker 1: even saw him fight the six million dollar Man. I
Speaker 1: suppose years spent in the woods with no experiences of
Speaker 1: my own allowed my grown up common sense to overtake
Speaker 1: my sense of wonder, and I hadn't thought about this
Speaker 1: subject for years until I found your channel a few
Speaker 1: days ago. After watching several episodes of your podcast, my
Speaker 1: wife and I began to talk about weird experiences from
Speaker 1: our past. It was during this talk that memory came
Speaker 1: flooding back, and I related a story to my wife
Speaker 1: that astonished her. We've been together more than fifteen years
Speaker 1: and this was the first time she had ever heard
Speaker 1: anything about it from me or my family. I almost
Speaker 1: think that somehow this memory was being blocked from my
Speaker 1: conscious mind to some degree. So enough about me, let's
Speaker 1: get on with my story. I was born and raised
Speaker 1: in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky. If that sounds familiar, you may
Speaker 1: know it from the John Prime classic about a small
Speaker 1: town named Paradise that was turned upside down by strip mining.
Speaker 1: I lived most of my childhood a few miles down
Speaker 1: the Green River from Paradise, on the edge of a
Speaker 1: small town called Martwick. It was also displaced by strip mining.
Speaker 1: I lived in a rural, heavily wooded area that was
Speaker 1: adjacent to hundreds of acres of desolate and uninhabited minelands.
Speaker 1: It was like paradise to a young kid like me,
Speaker 1: I spent countless days trekking across this rural wonderland. We
Speaker 1: got to the back porch and Mom and Dad were
Speaker 1: sitting there waiting for us. We walked up the backsteps
Speaker 1: and showed off the projects that we had worked on
Speaker 1: during the week, and we sat down to join them.
Speaker 1: After a few minutes, Dad stated that he was going
Speaker 1: to slop the hogs that we were raising at the
Speaker 1: edge of the woods behind the house. We didn't have
Speaker 1: a huge piece of property and we didn't necessarily need
Speaker 1: it for meat, but Dad liked to expose the kids
Speaker 1: to different ways of life that he remembered from his youth.
Speaker 1: Mom or I took to this chore, but probably due
Speaker 1: to my wearing my Sunday best clothes in it being
Speaker 1: so dark, Dad decided that he was going to do
Speaker 1: the task this evening. He grabbed up a five gallon
Speaker 1: bucket and he headed toward the woods. And the woodline
Speaker 1: started thirty yards from the back porch and fell into
Speaker 1: a steep ravine. The pigpen was about twenty feet into
Speaker 1: the woods, situated right where the hill began to descend,
Speaker 1: and as the edge of the woods was grown up
Speaker 1: into a thicket. One had to go several yards left
Speaker 1: to the edge of our property to enter the woods
Speaker 1: where the undergrowth was thinner, and then we went back
Speaker 1: to the right to get to the pigpen. We watched
Speaker 1: Dad walk down the backyard and disappear into the woods,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't long before we heard petunias starting to
Speaker 1: oink and even squeal a little. My sister and I
Speaker 1: had named the hog and we were playing with it,
Speaker 1: much to Dad's disapproval. Like most animals, it wasn't unusual
Speaker 1: for her to get excited at feeding time. However, the
Speaker 1: intensity of it seemed unusual to us back on the porch.
Speaker 1: The squealing stopped shortly, and we imagined that she must
Speaker 1: be in hog heaven ears deep in putrid leftovers. A
Speaker 1: moment later, we could hear the most got awful thrashing
Speaker 1: of something or something coming right through the thicket, not
Speaker 1: far from the pigpen, and to our utter disbelief, the
Speaker 1: figure of my father came bursting from the thicket at
Speaker 1: a dead sprint, heading back to the porch well. All
Speaker 1: three of us on the porch were watching this in
Speaker 1: slack jawed shock. My father is not a particularly excitable man,
Speaker 1: nor was he ever one to adopt an overly macho persona.
Speaker 1: He was just a plain, ordinary man from ordinary country
Speaker 1: stock who just seemed to have that John Wayne, a
Speaker 1: man's got to do what he's got to do sort
Speaker 1: of attitude. My dad had been a star athlete high school,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I had ever seen him run before.
Speaker 1: He'd worked all day and at his own pace if
Speaker 1: something needed to be done, but he wasn't into exercise.
Speaker 1: Well now here, he was running so fast that he
Speaker 1: was tripping over his own feet coming up the backyard,
Speaker 1: and as he drew near the porch, we could see
Speaker 1: his face. It was as white as a sheet, and
Speaker 1: we were freaking out. Mom started calling out to him,
Speaker 1: asking him what was going on, but he never answered.
Speaker 1: He never slowed down, and he jumped up onto the
Speaker 1: edge of the porch, and he continued into the house
Speaker 1: as fast as he could go. This happened so quickly
Speaker 1: that we didn't have time to react, and by the
Speaker 1: time we had started to stand up and go see
Speaker 1: what was wrong, he emerged on the back porch with
Speaker 1: a twelve gate shotgun in his hand, and by this
Speaker 1: point all four of us were terrified. Mom was pleading
Speaker 1: with him in hush tones to explain what was wrong.
Speaker 1: He just kneeling there against the porch post, shot gun
Speaker 1: across his knee, in visibly shaking and staring at the woods.
Speaker 1: Eventually she just stopped asking, and we sat there with
Speaker 1: him in silence. What else could we do? Something had
Speaker 1: happened in the woods, and he was so obviously shaken,
Speaker 1: and looking back, I don't know if he was able
Speaker 1: to form the words well. This behavior went on for
Speaker 1: several minutes until it started getting so dark that it
Speaker 1: would have been hard for us to see anything if
Speaker 1: it had emerged from the woods, and he finally seemed
Speaker 1: to ease up a tiny bit, and he started relating
Speaker 1: what had happened. He had entered the woods and cut
Speaker 1: back to the right to reach the pin. He wasn't
Speaker 1: paying that much attention to anything, and as he entered
Speaker 1: the area of the pen where the woods were thicker
Speaker 1: and the thicket grew up all around, he realized it
Speaker 1: was darker than he thought. He couldn't see much at all.
Speaker 1: At first. He had noticed the pig agitation, but he
Speaker 1: didn't think much of it. He was dumping out the
Speaker 1: slop when it occurred to him that the pig wasn't
Speaker 1: coming to the trough. It was scrunched up against the
Speaker 1: wall of the pin where he was standing. His eyes
Speaker 1: were starting to adjust to the darkness when he looked
Speaker 1: up from the trough and he saw it, and standing
Speaker 1: opposite him across the pin was a large, upright figure.
Speaker 1: It was covered in dark hair. His first thought was,
Speaker 1: it's a bear. It was common in the area for
Speaker 1: people to report seeing things that had been rendered extinct
Speaker 1: to the area for years, such as panthers and bears,
Speaker 1: and the light and things like that were generally laughed
Speaker 1: at and seldom backed by any evidence. He didn't have
Speaker 1: any better explanation. That was the first thing he thought.
Speaker 1: He stood there, frozen by fear briefly when he realized
Speaker 1: that this thing was reaching into the pin for the pig,
Speaker 1: with its arms extended toward it. At that point he
Speaker 1: turned and ran for it. We spent a very uncomfortable
Speaker 1: night at our house, and I don't think any of
Speaker 1: us slept much that night. It was weeks before I
Speaker 1: could go back into the woods to play, and I
Speaker 1: promised the hog was slopped in the daylight. From that
Speaker 1: point forward, we were going through hard financial times, and
Speaker 1: Dad was drinking a lot more than I ever had
Speaker 1: seen him drink before. He was drinking that night, but
Speaker 1: I didn't think to excess, and by the time he
Speaker 1: reached the porch there was no trace of intoxication left
Speaker 1: in him, and he didn't drink again for the rest
Speaker 1: of that night. Oddly, I don't remember Dad or Mom
Speaker 1: ever speaking of it again. I don't know if I
Speaker 1: would call it shame. He just didn't seem comfortable with
Speaker 1: the level of vulnerability he had shown in front of us.
Speaker 1: I was terrified, and I don't know what was worse,
Speaker 1: a creature in the woods out back or seeing my
Speaker 1: dad scared. The other night, as I sat with my wife,
Speaker 1: I tried to reason it out. I would love to
Speaker 1: be able to explain it away, but I can't. My
Speaker 1: wife suggested that maybe he might have staged the whole
Speaker 1: thing for me. Well, I was eating up with all
Speaker 1: things bigfoot at the time, and I was walking toward
Speaker 1: the woods with a camera seven days a week. I
Speaker 1: can't accept that either. Though first, he did seem to
Speaker 1: delight in feeding whatever curiosity was fueling my young brain
Speaker 1: at any given time. I have a hard time believing
Speaker 1: he would go to such extremes for that reason, though,
Speaker 1: And second, if he had talked to mom and my
Speaker 1: sister beforehand, I don't think all three of them could
Speaker 1: have pulled it off that seamlessly. My sister is a
Speaker 1: notoriously poor liar. The most important, I know what real
Speaker 1: fear looks like. Almost get chills now thinking about it.
Speaker 1: I had never, nor have I since, seen my father
Speaker 1: in that state. In closing, I just want to say
Speaker 1: how much I've enjoyed watching your channel on YouTube these
Speaker 1: last few days. I thought this story would fit perfectly.
Speaker 1: It does fits perfectly, honestly, if it doesn't get used,
Speaker 1: I feel better having aired these feelings after all these years.
Speaker 1: And also I love your chickens. There's some sort of
Speaker 1: strange zen I achieve watching the chickens walk around pecking
Speaker 1: for feed in the yard, and sometimes I just drift
Speaker 1: off to sleep while I'm watching