WEBVTT 1 00:00:02.480 --> 00:00:05.759 For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace. 2 00:00:06.519 --> 00:00:10.279 Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world 3 00:00:10.359 --> 00:00:14.160 refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they 4 00:00:14.199 --> 00:00:18.679 know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we 5 00:00:18.719 --> 00:00:22.839 share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot, 6 00:00:23.199 --> 00:00:28.239 dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make 7 00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.280 it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because 8 00:00:32.320 --> 00:00:34.640 once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the 9 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:38.920 woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and 10 00:00:39.039 --> 00:00:41.840 remember some things in the woods don't want to be found. 11 00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:46.240 Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads, 12 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:48.399 and let's head off into the woods if you dare. 13 00:01:02.600 --> 00:01:04.799 There's something you need to understand before I take you 14 00:01:04.840 --> 00:01:08.200 into these hills, before I walk you down into the deep, 15 00:01:08.319 --> 00:01:12.040 cathedral quiet of these forests. You need to understand what 16 00:01:12.120 --> 00:01:16.480 the Appalachians actually are. These are not young mountains. They're 17 00:01:16.480 --> 00:01:20.480 not dramatic, jagged things like the Rockies, thrust up out 18 00:01:20.480 --> 00:01:24.599 of the earth in some violent geological tantrum. The Appalachians 19 00:01:24.640 --> 00:01:29.040 are old, ancient in a way that defies easy comprehension. 20 00:01:29.760 --> 00:01:32.439 They were already worn and rounded and moss covered when 21 00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:36.000 the dinosaurs were walking the earth. When the first human 22 00:01:36.040 --> 00:01:38.719 beings set foot on this continent and looked out at 23 00:01:38.760 --> 00:01:42.519 this long green spine of ridgeline stretching from Alabama all 24 00:01:42.560 --> 00:01:46.000 the way up to Maine, these mountains were already old. 25 00:01:46.400 --> 00:01:50.159 The Cherokee called them home for thousands of years, the Shawnee, 26 00:01:50.680 --> 00:01:56.000 the Creek, the Cataba. Generation after generation of people who understood, 27 00:01:56.319 --> 00:01:59.799 in a way, we've largely forgotten that these mountains were alive, 28 00:02:00.680 --> 00:02:04.000 that the land itself had a memory, that the forests 29 00:02:04.079 --> 00:02:07.840 held things, and they were right. I've spent the better 30 00:02:07.879 --> 00:02:12.280 part of my life collecting stories, listening, driving back roads 31 00:02:12.319 --> 00:02:15.560 and sitting on porches and leaning across diner tables in 32 00:02:15.639 --> 00:02:19.439 small towns from Georgia to Pennsylvania, letting people tell me 33 00:02:19.479 --> 00:02:22.520 what they've seen out there in the trees, what they've heard, 34 00:02:23.280 --> 00:02:26.479 what followed them home. Most of those people weren't looking 35 00:02:26.479 --> 00:02:30.319 for trouble. They weren't thrill seekers. They were loggers and 36 00:02:30.400 --> 00:02:34.759 farmers and school teachers and veterans and grandmothers, ordinary people 37 00:02:34.759 --> 00:02:38.919 who encountered something in the Appalachian forests that changed them 38 00:02:39.039 --> 00:02:42.360 something that reminded them the hard way that we are 39 00:02:42.400 --> 00:02:45.599 not the apex of anything out here. We are guests, 40 00:02:46.360 --> 00:02:49.560 and sometimes the host reminds you of that fact. The 41 00:02:49.599 --> 00:02:51.800 stories I'm going to share with you tonight are rooted 42 00:02:51.840 --> 00:02:55.520 in real places, real traditions, and real accounts that have 43 00:02:55.560 --> 00:02:58.599 been passed down through the communities of the Appalachian region 44 00:02:58.879 --> 00:03:03.039 for generations. Some of them go back centuries, some are 45 00:03:03.080 --> 00:03:06.159 more recent. All of them have one thing in common, 46 00:03:06.639 --> 00:03:10.159 the forest. Because in the Appalachians, the forest is where 47 00:03:10.199 --> 00:03:13.319 it happens. The trees are so old and so dense 48 00:03:13.360 --> 00:03:17.240 in places that the canopy closes overhead like a cathedral ceiling, 49 00:03:17.759 --> 00:03:20.000 and the light that filters down to the ground is 50 00:03:20.039 --> 00:03:23.599 green and dim and ancient feeling. And you can walk 51 00:03:23.599 --> 00:03:25.960 one hundred yards off a trail and feel like the 52 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:30.280 twenty first century simply doesn't exist. There's no cell service, 53 00:03:30.879 --> 00:03:34.719 no ambient hum of traffic, just the creek sounds, the 54 00:03:34.719 --> 00:03:37.919 bird sounds, and the wind moving through leaves that have 55 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:41.000 been rustling in the same holler for ten thousand years. 56 00:03:41.879 --> 00:03:44.680 That's where these stories live out there, in what the 57 00:03:44.719 --> 00:03:48.319 old timers called the old green dark. So get comfortable, 58 00:03:48.840 --> 00:03:51.680 turn up the volume and try to remember as we 59 00:03:51.759 --> 00:03:54.280 go that every person who told me one of these 60 00:03:54.319 --> 00:03:58.199 stories swore it was true. Let's go into the mountains. 61 00:03:58.560 --> 00:04:00.800 I want to start in Tennessee in a place that 62 00:04:00.879 --> 00:04:03.400 most people have never heard of, and that the people 63 00:04:03.439 --> 00:04:06.199 who live there are generally okay with keeping that way. 64 00:04:07.159 --> 00:04:10.159 Hancock County, up in the northeastern corner of the state, 65 00:04:10.439 --> 00:04:13.639 sits hard against the Virginia Line, tucked up into a 66 00:04:13.680 --> 00:04:16.439 fold of the Clinch Mountain Range, where the hollers run 67 00:04:16.519 --> 00:04:19.040 deep and the communities are tight knit in the way 68 00:04:19.079 --> 00:04:22.240 that only comes from generations of families living in the 69 00:04:22.279 --> 00:04:26.399 same few square miles, going back to before the Revolutionary War. 70 00:04:27.279 --> 00:04:30.120 In nineteen twenty three, a man named Elias Combs was 71 00:04:30.160 --> 00:04:32.319 living on a small farm at the head of one 72 00:04:32.360 --> 00:04:35.519 of those hollers, farming tobacco and running a trap line 73 00:04:35.519 --> 00:04:38.800 through the Laurel thickets above his property. He was sixty 74 00:04:38.800 --> 00:04:41.879 one years old, had lived his entire life in that holler, 75 00:04:42.279 --> 00:04:44.920 and he was not, by any account his neighbors gave 76 00:04:45.360 --> 00:04:49.720 a man given to exaggeration or fancy. When Elias Combs 77 00:04:49.759 --> 00:04:53.160 told you something, you believed it. What he told them. 78 00:04:53.319 --> 00:04:56.160 In the autumn of nineteen twenty three was that he'd 79 00:04:56.199 --> 00:04:59.319 seen the wampus cat. Now, before I go any further, 80 00:04:59.360 --> 00:05:02.120 I need to give you some context, because the wampus 81 00:05:02.160 --> 00:05:04.720 cat is one of those pieces of Appalachian lore that 82 00:05:04.839 --> 00:05:08.480 gets dismissed too quickly as a regional tall tale, a 83 00:05:08.519 --> 00:05:12.120 campfire story to scare children. But the Cherokee had a 84 00:05:12.199 --> 00:05:15.639 name for this creature long before European settlers ever arrived 85 00:05:15.680 --> 00:05:19.279 in these mountains. They called it Oa, and the story 86 00:05:19.319 --> 00:05:21.600 attached to that name is one of the darkest and 87 00:05:21.680 --> 00:05:25.680 most haunting origin stories in the Cherokee tradition. The way 88 00:05:25.720 --> 00:05:29.519 the story goes, and there are variations, as there always 89 00:05:29.560 --> 00:05:33.120 are with oral traditions, a young Cherokee woman followed her 90 00:05:33.199 --> 00:05:36.480 husband into the sacred hunting grounds one night to spy 91 00:05:36.560 --> 00:05:39.800 on a ritual that women were forbidden to witness. The 92 00:05:39.839 --> 00:05:43.399 medicine men discovered her hiding there beneath an animal skin, 93 00:05:44.079 --> 00:05:47.959 watching what she should never have seen. As punishment, they 94 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:51.560 bound her to that animal skin forever, transforming her into 95 00:05:51.600 --> 00:05:55.800 something caught between worlds, neither fully woman nor fully beast, 96 00:05:56.319 --> 00:06:00.560 but something worse than either, something that was both something 97 00:06:00.600 --> 00:06:03.959 that could not rest, could not die, and could not 98 00:06:04.040 --> 00:06:07.639 be consoled, and she's been walking these mountains ever since. 99 00:06:08.439 --> 00:06:11.600 European settlers added their own layers to the legend over 100 00:06:11.639 --> 00:06:14.839 the two centuries of their presence in these hills. By 101 00:06:14.839 --> 00:06:17.040 the time the Scots Irish had been in Clinch Mountain 102 00:06:17.040 --> 00:06:20.560 Country for a few generations, the Wampa's cat had absorbed 103 00:06:20.600 --> 00:06:24.800 their fears and their superstitions too. The mountain people gave 104 00:06:24.839 --> 00:06:27.639 her new details and new fears, and made her part 105 00:06:27.639 --> 00:06:31.439 of their own tradition, the way mountain people have always done, 106 00:06:31.560 --> 00:06:35.160 by grafting new growth onto old roots. They said she 107 00:06:35.199 --> 00:06:38.519 smelled like death and sulfur. They set Her eyes were 108 00:06:38.560 --> 00:06:42.199 the yellow green of a lantern seen through fog. They said. 109 00:06:42.240 --> 00:06:45.879 She moved through the laurel hell, those dense, chest high 110 00:06:45.959 --> 00:06:48.759 thickets of mountain laurel and rhododendron that grow in the 111 00:06:48.839 --> 00:06:51.759 drainages of the Clinch Mountain country, and that are so 112 00:06:51.959 --> 00:06:55.079 thick and twisted you genuinely can't see through them more 113 00:06:55.120 --> 00:06:58.240 than a few feet in any direction, so fast and 114 00:06:58.319 --> 00:07:01.480 so silent that you'd hear her scream from one ridge, 115 00:07:01.800 --> 00:07:03.839 and then hear it again from a ridge half a 116 00:07:03.879 --> 00:07:07.000 mile away. Before the echo of the first scream had 117 00:07:07.040 --> 00:07:10.319 even died, and they said, this is the part that 118 00:07:10.399 --> 00:07:13.319 always gets me. They said that if you locked eyes 119 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:16.399 with the wampus cat, you would lose your mind, not 120 00:07:16.480 --> 00:07:20.560 your life, your mind. You'd be left wandering and muttering, 121 00:07:20.959 --> 00:07:24.399 unable to form sentences or remember your own name, like 122 00:07:24.480 --> 00:07:27.360 whatever was behind those yellow green eyes had reached right 123 00:07:27.399 --> 00:07:30.360 in through your pupils and pulled something essential out of you. 124 00:07:31.399 --> 00:07:34.680 There are accounts from the late eighteen hundreds documented by 125 00:07:34.680 --> 00:07:38.360 folkloris working in Hancock County of men found wandering on 126 00:07:38.439 --> 00:07:42.120 mountain trails in a state of complete dissociation, couldn't say 127 00:07:42.160 --> 00:07:46.199 their own name, couldn't recognize their families, just walking and 128 00:07:46.279 --> 00:07:49.199 muttering with their eyes fixed on something that wasn't there. 129 00:07:50.040 --> 00:07:52.920 In almost every case, the family eventually put those men 130 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:56.360 in the category of having had the encounter of having 131 00:07:56.439 --> 00:07:58.879 looked at the wrong thing and the wrong laurel thicket 132 00:07:58.920 --> 00:08:02.279 at the wrong hour. Elias Combs had his encounter on 133 00:08:02.319 --> 00:08:05.240 a Tuesday morning in late October. He'd gone up to 134 00:08:05.319 --> 00:08:08.560 check his trap sets before dawn, the way he always did, 135 00:08:08.920 --> 00:08:12.319 with a lantern and his old winchester. The traps were 136 00:08:12.319 --> 00:08:14.959 set along a creek drainage about half a mile above 137 00:08:14.959 --> 00:08:18.160 his farm, in a stretch of mixed hardwoods that his 138 00:08:18.240 --> 00:08:21.759 family had been working for decades. He knew every rock 139 00:08:21.800 --> 00:08:25.360 and route along that path. He could have walked it blindfolded. 140 00:08:25.879 --> 00:08:29.079 He'd walked it in all conditions, in all seasons for 141 00:08:29.160 --> 00:08:32.200 more than twenty years. He was about as comfortable in 142 00:08:32.200 --> 00:08:35.240 that piece of forest as a man can be comfortable anywhere. 143 00:08:35.960 --> 00:08:38.879 He told his neighbors, and later told his son, who 144 00:08:38.919 --> 00:08:42.120 told his grandson, who told the man, who eventually told 145 00:08:42.200 --> 00:08:45.159 me that the trouble started before he even got to 146 00:08:45.200 --> 00:08:48.879 the first trap. He said, the woods went wrong. That's 147 00:08:48.919 --> 00:08:52.320 the phrase that got used across every retelling of this 148 00:08:52.440 --> 00:08:55.200 story I've encountered, and I've heard it told maybe a 149 00:08:55.200 --> 00:08:59.159 dozen times over the years, the woods went wrong. What 150 00:08:59.240 --> 00:09:01.919 he meant by that was that everything got quiet in 151 00:09:01.960 --> 00:09:05.759 the wrong way. Not the quiet of early morning, which 152 00:09:05.799 --> 00:09:09.480 is a living quiet, full of small sounds and subtle movements, 153 00:09:10.200 --> 00:09:12.960 the rustle of a squirrel in the leaves, the drip 154 00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:16.639 of dew off branches, the soft, irregular percussion of a 155 00:09:16.639 --> 00:09:20.399 woodpecker somewhere in the middle distance. This was the quiet 156 00:09:20.480 --> 00:09:24.200 of something large and patient, holding its breath. The creek 157 00:09:24.279 --> 00:09:27.600 still made it sound, because water doesn't defer to anything 158 00:09:28.080 --> 00:09:32.919 but everything else. Every bird, every rustling leaf, every distant 159 00:09:33.000 --> 00:09:36.759 coyote went silent, all at once, like a switch had 160 00:09:36.799 --> 00:09:40.919 been thrown. And the silence wasn't empty. That's the thing 161 00:09:40.960 --> 00:09:43.120 he kept coming back to when he tried to describe 162 00:09:43.120 --> 00:09:48.080 it afterward. The silence was full, occupied, the way a 163 00:09:48.159 --> 00:09:50.159 room is full when someone is standing in it in 164 00:09:50.200 --> 00:09:53.440 the dark, even if you can't see or hear them. 165 00:09:53.799 --> 00:09:57.440 Elias stopped walking. He held up his lantern. The light 166 00:09:57.519 --> 00:10:00.440 pushed back the dark maybe twenty feet in every direction, 167 00:10:01.039 --> 00:10:04.120 and beyond that edge was solid black, the way the 168 00:10:04.159 --> 00:10:06.799 forest gets in the mountains before any hint of dawn. 169 00:10:07.600 --> 00:10:10.559 He stood perfectly still and listened with everything he had, 170 00:10:11.120 --> 00:10:13.320 the way a man listens when he knows something is 171 00:10:13.360 --> 00:10:17.240 listening back. And then he smelled it. He described it 172 00:10:17.279 --> 00:10:20.600 as the smell of something long dead, not fresh dead, 173 00:10:20.919 --> 00:10:24.279 but long dead, the deep organic rot of something that 174 00:10:24.320 --> 00:10:27.399 had been lying in the wet leaves for weeks, mixed 175 00:10:27.440 --> 00:10:31.000 with something musky and animal and alive, and underneath all 176 00:10:31.039 --> 00:10:34.519 of that something else. He said he couldn't name something 177 00:10:34.559 --> 00:10:37.399 wrong at a chemical level, the way the air smells 178 00:10:37.440 --> 00:10:42.480 before a lightning strike, metallic and sharp and charged. He said. 179 00:10:42.480 --> 00:10:45.039 The hair on his arm stood up inside his coat sleeves. 180 00:10:45.559 --> 00:10:47.759 He said, his mouth went dry so fast it was 181 00:10:47.799 --> 00:10:50.440 like someone had reached in and pulled every drop of 182 00:10:50.480 --> 00:10:53.360 moisture out of it in an instant. He didn't run, 183 00:10:54.039 --> 00:10:57.000 which I certainly give the old man credit for. He 184 00:10:57.039 --> 00:10:59.480 stood there with his winchester in one hand and his 185 00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:02.080 lantern in the other, and he turned in a slow 186 00:11:02.120 --> 00:11:06.360 circle because whatever this was, it was moving around him. 187 00:11:06.559 --> 00:11:08.559 He could feel it moving, even though he couldn't see 188 00:11:08.559 --> 00:11:11.159 it or hear it. He could feel it the way 189 00:11:11.200 --> 00:11:14.440 you can feel someone standing behind you in a dark room, 190 00:11:14.679 --> 00:11:16.919 that certainty that is not based on any of the 191 00:11:17.039 --> 00:11:21.240 usual five senses, that pre rational alarm that fires somewhere 192 00:11:21.279 --> 00:11:26.559 deep below conscious thought. Something was circling him, slowly, methodically, 193 00:11:27.279 --> 00:11:30.519 the way a predator circles when it's still deciding. He 194 00:11:30.559 --> 00:11:33.440 saw the eyes first. They were up on the slope 195 00:11:33.440 --> 00:11:36.480 above him, about thirty yards away, in the laurel thickets, 196 00:11:37.000 --> 00:11:39.240 and they were the color of a gas light flame, 197 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:43.000 that particular yellow green that doesn't occur naturally in the 198 00:11:43.039 --> 00:11:45.840 eye shine of any creature. He'd ever encountered in forty 199 00:11:45.879 --> 00:11:49.879 plus years of hunting these mountains, not the reflective eye 200 00:11:49.919 --> 00:11:52.559 shine of a deer or a cat, not the red 201 00:11:52.600 --> 00:11:56.039 glow of a bear, something that generated its own light 202 00:11:56.200 --> 00:12:00.279 rather than reflecting his. They were set wide apart, high 203 00:12:00.279 --> 00:12:03.279 off the ground, higher than a mountain lion's eyes would 204 00:12:03.320 --> 00:12:07.080 sit higher than a standing bears even. He said, they 205 00:12:07.080 --> 00:12:10.600 were as big around as silver dollars, and they didn't blink, 206 00:12:11.399 --> 00:12:15.559 just held steady and watched him burning with that cold, terrible, 207 00:12:15.600 --> 00:12:19.679 self generated light. He raised the winchester. He was a 208 00:12:19.679 --> 00:12:22.360 good shot, and he knew it, had been hunting these 209 00:12:22.440 --> 00:12:24.519 mountains since he was old enough to carry a gun. 210 00:12:25.440 --> 00:12:27.159 He said he had a clear sight picture in the 211 00:12:27.240 --> 00:12:29.480 lantern light, that he could see the shape of the 212 00:12:29.519 --> 00:12:33.240 thing in the laurel. Low slung and massive, bigger than 213 00:12:33.279 --> 00:12:36.480 any mountain lion, bigger than any bear he'd ever set 214 00:12:36.480 --> 00:12:39.840 eyes on, moving with a fluid, slow patience that he 215 00:12:39.879 --> 00:12:43.200 said reminded him of water finding its way through stones. 216 00:12:43.919 --> 00:12:46.039 He had the front sight on the center of mass 217 00:12:46.039 --> 00:12:50.000 between those eyes. He pulled the trigger. The shot echoed 218 00:12:50.039 --> 00:12:53.080 off the ridge line, rolled down the holler and faded 219 00:12:53.080 --> 00:12:57.039 into the dark, and the eyes didn't move, didn't blink, 220 00:12:57.600 --> 00:13:00.360 didn't drop to the ground the way a struck animal dropps, 221 00:13:00.759 --> 00:13:03.960 didn't bolt into the brush the way a misted animal bolts. 222 00:13:04.360 --> 00:13:08.320 They just stayed there, fixed on him, unwavering. After the 223 00:13:08.399 --> 00:13:11.120 muzzle flash had died and the powder smoke had drifted 224 00:13:11.159 --> 00:13:14.120 away on the still morning air, like he'd thrown a 225 00:13:14.159 --> 00:13:17.279 pebble at a stone wall, like the bullet had passed 226 00:13:17.279 --> 00:13:20.440 through something that wasn't concerned with bullets, he said. He 227 00:13:20.519 --> 00:13:25.279 fired twice more, same result each time. Three shots, three 228 00:13:25.320 --> 00:13:28.399 clear sight pictures, three muzzle blasts that lit up the 229 00:13:28.440 --> 00:13:31.159 laurel for a fraction of a second, and the eyes 230 00:13:31.200 --> 00:13:34.600 stayed exactly where they'd been, burning with that cold light, 231 00:13:35.080 --> 00:13:37.200 and the thing behind them didn't move so much as 232 00:13:37.240 --> 00:13:40.399 a hair. And then, and this is the part that 233 00:13:40.480 --> 00:13:43.840 kept Elias Combs from sleeping soundly for the remaining fourteen 234 00:13:43.919 --> 00:13:47.639 years of his life, the thing stood up. It rose 235 00:13:47.679 --> 00:13:49.879 out of the laurel on its hind legs, the way 236 00:13:49.919 --> 00:13:53.639 a bear will sometimes do, and it kept rising, taller 237 00:13:53.679 --> 00:13:56.879 than a man by a significant margin, tall enough that 238 00:13:56.919 --> 00:13:59.679 the top of its silhouette disappeared into the canopy above 239 00:13:59.720 --> 00:14:03.720 the low thicket, and when it rose, Elias said, the 240 00:14:03.759 --> 00:14:06.519 smell that had already been almost more than he could stand, 241 00:14:06.799 --> 00:14:10.720 intensified into something practically physical, something that hit the back 242 00:14:10.759 --> 00:14:14.039 of the throat and the eyes simultaneously. And it made 243 00:14:14.080 --> 00:14:16.039 a sound that, he said he had no word for. 244 00:14:16.799 --> 00:14:19.840 Not a scream exactly, though there was screaming in it, 245 00:14:20.519 --> 00:14:23.000 not a growl, though there was rumbling in it too. 246 00:14:23.960 --> 00:14:26.399 He said, it was most like a woman crying, but 247 00:14:26.480 --> 00:14:28.559 the way a woman might cry, if crying had been 248 00:14:28.559 --> 00:14:31.759 invented by something that had never, in its existence possessed 249 00:14:31.799 --> 00:14:35.879 any capacity for comfort or mercy. Raw and ragged, and 250 00:14:35.919 --> 00:14:38.960 somehow knowing, like the sound was directed at him in 251 00:14:39.000 --> 00:14:42.600 a personal way, like whatever was producing it understood something 252 00:14:42.600 --> 00:14:45.960 about him specifically, and was communicating something he did not 253 00:14:46.080 --> 00:14:50.279 want to understand. He ran, He's not ashamed to admit 254 00:14:50.320 --> 00:14:53.559 it in any version of this story I've heard. He 255 00:14:53.639 --> 00:14:56.159 ran back down that trail in the dark, without the lantern, 256 00:14:56.480 --> 00:14:58.840 which he dropped somewhere in the first fifty yards, and 257 00:14:58.919 --> 00:15:03.039 never recovered a tune. For more backwoods bigfoot stories, We'll 258 00:15:03.039 --> 00:15:07.840 be back after these messages. He ran by feel and 259 00:15:07.919 --> 00:15:11.399 memory through the black forest, crashing through brush and stumbling 260 00:15:11.399 --> 00:15:13.919 on roots, and he didn't stop running until he hit 261 00:15:13.960 --> 00:15:16.240 his own farmyard and got the door of his house 262 00:15:16.279 --> 00:15:19.639 shut and latched behind him. He sat at his kitchen 263 00:15:19.639 --> 00:15:21.919 table until his wife got up at sunrise and found 264 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:25.799 him there, still in his coat, still holding the empty Winchester, 265 00:15:26.240 --> 00:15:28.799 staring at the kitchen wall, with the expression she later 266 00:15:28.879 --> 00:15:31.879 described to her children as the face a man makes 267 00:15:31.919 --> 00:15:35.360 when he's seen the edge of something he can't unsee. 268 00:15:35.440 --> 00:15:38.360 He never ran that trap line again. He sold the 269 00:15:38.399 --> 00:15:40.720 traps to a neighbor within the week, and didn't set 270 00:15:40.720 --> 00:15:42.879 foot in those woods above the farm for the remaining 271 00:15:42.919 --> 00:15:46.679 fourteen years of his life. What I find most interesting 272 00:15:46.679 --> 00:15:50.159 about Elias Combs, what makes this story stick with me 273 00:15:50.360 --> 00:15:53.039 all these years after I first heard it, is what 274 00:15:53.200 --> 00:15:56.279 happened to the neighbor who bought the traps. I'm not 275 00:15:56.279 --> 00:15:58.559 going to share his name out of respect for the family, 276 00:15:59.000 --> 00:16:00.799 but I'll tell you that he wan up into those 277 00:16:00.840 --> 00:16:05.080 same Laurel thickets about two weeks after Elias's encounter running 278 00:16:05.120 --> 00:16:08.559 those very same trap sets. He came back down before 279 00:16:08.600 --> 00:16:11.519 noon on the first day white as Chalk, and he 280 00:16:11.559 --> 00:16:14.240 told his wife that he'd found all of Elias's traps 281 00:16:14.279 --> 00:16:17.799 sprung and turned upside down, every single one of them 282 00:16:18.120 --> 00:16:21.080 down the whole line, not tripped by an animal, and 283 00:16:21.159 --> 00:16:24.240 left where they fell, turned upside down and placed back 284 00:16:24.279 --> 00:16:28.919 on the ground, neatly, methodically, one after another, like something 285 00:16:28.960 --> 00:16:31.960 had walked the line ahead of him, examined each trap, 286 00:16:32.320 --> 00:16:35.679 understood what it was, and deliberately flipped it over and 287 00:16:35.720 --> 00:16:40.159 set it back down a message, a demonstration of comprehension. 288 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:44.799 Neither man ever went back, neither man ever publicly speculated 289 00:16:44.840 --> 00:16:47.840 about what had walked that trap line. But the people 290 00:16:47.879 --> 00:16:51.440 of that holler understood, and they passed the understanding down, 291 00:16:51.799 --> 00:16:54.440 and the drainage above the old Combs Farm still is 292 00:16:54.440 --> 00:16:57.039 in a place where sensible people run trap sets after 293 00:16:57.159 --> 00:17:01.399 dark some doors the old time the Clinch Mountain Country 294 00:17:01.440 --> 00:17:04.960 will tell you you don't open twice. Hold on to 295 00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:06.880 what I just told you about things that can't be 296 00:17:06.960 --> 00:17:10.319 explained with the tools we usually reach for, because we're 297 00:17:10.359 --> 00:17:13.559 going to need that mindset for this next one. We're 298 00:17:13.599 --> 00:17:16.960 moving east and a little south now, crossing over into 299 00:17:17.000 --> 00:17:21.000 the North Carolina Mountains into Burke County, where the Lynnville 300 00:17:21.079 --> 00:17:23.519 Gorge cuts its way through the earth like a wound 301 00:17:23.599 --> 00:17:26.759 that never fully healed and up on the ridge line. 302 00:17:26.759 --> 00:17:30.839 Above that gorge sits Brown Mountain, a long, low forested 303 00:17:30.920 --> 00:17:33.599 ridge that has been making people uncomfortable for a very, 304 00:17:33.759 --> 00:17:37.200 very long time. Most people who've heard of Brown Mountain 305 00:17:37.200 --> 00:17:39.799 have heard of the lights. The Brown Mountain lights are 306 00:17:39.839 --> 00:17:43.839 one of the most thoroughly documented and persistently inexplicable phenomena 307 00:17:44.160 --> 00:17:48.000 in the entire country. They've been officially observed, studied, and 308 00:17:48.119 --> 00:17:51.680 reported since at least nineteen thirteen, when the United States 309 00:17:51.720 --> 00:17:55.640 Geological Survey sent a man named George Rogers Ashley to 310 00:17:55.720 --> 00:17:59.559 investigate after widespread accounts of mysterious lights appearing above the 311 00:17:59.599 --> 00:18:05.240 mountain ridge line. The lights are typically described as orbs, round, glowing, 312 00:18:05.559 --> 00:18:10.279 sometimes red, sometimes white, sometimes orange or yellow, ranging in 313 00:18:10.359 --> 00:18:14.400 apparent size from that of a basketball to something considerably larger. 314 00:18:15.119 --> 00:18:17.400 They appear above the tree line on Brown Mountain and 315 00:18:17.440 --> 00:18:22.559 the surrounding ridges, sometimes singly, sometimes in clusters. They move 316 00:18:22.599 --> 00:18:25.960 in ways that don't correspond to aircraft or headlights. They 317 00:18:26.079 --> 00:18:30.400 change color, they appear and disappear without any identifiable source, 318 00:18:30.880 --> 00:18:33.000 and they've been doing this for as long as anyone 319 00:18:33.039 --> 00:18:37.039 has kept records of them. What makes the lights scientifically 320 00:18:37.079 --> 00:18:41.559 maddening is that the convenient explanations keep getting eliminated. The 321 00:18:41.640 --> 00:18:46.319 geological survey initially attributed the lights to locomotive headlights reflected 322 00:18:46.359 --> 00:18:48.640 off the mountain, and was forced to walk back that 323 00:18:48.759 --> 00:18:51.519 explanation when it was established that the lights had been 324 00:18:51.559 --> 00:18:55.559 reported long before the railroad in question was built. When 325 00:18:55.599 --> 00:18:59.119 a massive flood in nineteen sixteen knocked out electrical power 326 00:18:59.160 --> 00:19:04.119 to the entire region, the lights continue to appear. Multiple 327 00:19:04.160 --> 00:19:07.839 formal federal investigations over the following decades have failed to 328 00:19:07.839 --> 00:19:13.240 produce a satisfactory explanation. The lights predate every convenient answer, 329 00:19:13.480 --> 00:19:16.160 and they keep showing up, and the best minds who've 330 00:19:16.160 --> 00:19:19.000 been applied to the question have ultimately come away with 331 00:19:19.079 --> 00:19:23.599 nothing definitive. But here's what the geological surveys don't talk about. 332 00:19:24.119 --> 00:19:27.759 Here's what the official reports leave out entirely. Here's what 333 00:19:27.799 --> 00:19:30.759 the people who live in the communities around the Lynville Gorge, 334 00:19:31.119 --> 00:19:33.480 the families who've been in Burke County since before there 335 00:19:33.519 --> 00:19:35.799 was a Burke County, will tell you, if you sit 336 00:19:35.839 --> 00:19:38.279 with them long enough and earn some measure of trust, 337 00:19:39.119 --> 00:19:40.960 they'll tell you that the lights aren't the thing to 338 00:19:41.000 --> 00:19:44.839 be afraid of. The lights are just the sign, the marker, 339 00:19:45.519 --> 00:19:48.119 the warning that something else is moving on that mountain, 340 00:19:48.920 --> 00:19:51.799 something that walks below the lights in the deep old 341 00:19:51.839 --> 00:19:54.920 timber of the gorge, on paths that don't appear on 342 00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:58.359 any map, and creak drainages that drop down into darkness 343 00:19:58.759 --> 00:20:01.799 so complete it's it swallows a flashlight beam before it 344 00:20:01.880 --> 00:20:05.400 travels ten feet. The Cherokee have known about the Brown 345 00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:09.160 Mountain lights longer than anyone. Their tradition holds that the 346 00:20:09.240 --> 00:20:12.680 lights are the spirits of Cherokee women carrying torches through 347 00:20:12.680 --> 00:20:15.720 the dark, searching for their husbands and sons who died 348 00:20:15.759 --> 00:20:18.200 in an ancient battle fought on those ridges against a 349 00:20:18.240 --> 00:20:22.119 Cataba war party. It's a story of grief so enormous 350 00:20:22.119 --> 00:20:24.640 and so enduring that it became a permanent feature of 351 00:20:24.680 --> 00:20:28.119 the landscape, a sorrow so deep it lit itself on 352 00:20:28.200 --> 00:20:31.960 fire and refused to stop burning across the centuries. I 353 00:20:32.000 --> 00:20:35.759 find that account extraordinarily moving, and I believe it contains 354 00:20:35.759 --> 00:20:38.759 a truth about this place, even if the specifics belong 355 00:20:38.839 --> 00:20:43.440 to a tradition that isn't mine. There's something correct emotionally 356 00:20:43.480 --> 00:20:46.440 and perhaps literally about the idea that this kind of 357 00:20:46.519 --> 00:20:50.240 grief leaves a permanent mark on the land that love 358 00:20:50.279 --> 00:20:54.200 and loss of that magnitude doesn't just evaporate, that it stays. 359 00:20:55.200 --> 00:20:58.079 But the European settlers who moved into the Lynnville Gorge 360 00:20:58.079 --> 00:21:01.480 country in the early eighteen hundreds brought their own encounters 361 00:21:01.519 --> 00:21:04.319 with the mountain, and those encounters had a quality that 362 00:21:04.400 --> 00:21:08.759 was darker and more immediately threatening than ancestral grief. What 363 00:21:08.880 --> 00:21:12.079 they described encountering in the forest below the lights was 364 00:21:12.119 --> 00:21:15.680 something that used the lights as a distraction, something that 365 00:21:15.759 --> 00:21:19.920 had learned or perhaps had always known that the lights 366 00:21:19.920 --> 00:21:22.519 would pull a person's eyes upward and hold them there, 367 00:21:23.039 --> 00:21:25.480 staring at the ridge line with their attention fixed on 368 00:21:25.559 --> 00:21:29.279 the spectacle above, while something moved in close behind them 369 00:21:29.319 --> 00:21:33.559 in the timber below. There was a family, the Perkins family. 370 00:21:34.079 --> 00:21:37.319 This was roughly eighteen fifty and their account has been 371 00:21:37.319 --> 00:21:41.039 preserved in Burke County oral tradition ever since, who were 372 00:21:41.079 --> 00:21:44.200 driving a small cattle herd through the Lynnville Gorge in 373 00:21:44.279 --> 00:21:48.000 late September, moving the animals down from summer pasture before 374 00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:52.680 the first hard freeze. Thomas Perkins, his teenage son William, 375 00:21:52.839 --> 00:21:55.599 and a hired hand whose name varies across the different 376 00:21:55.680 --> 00:21:59.319 versions of the account, which is itself interesting that the 377 00:21:59.359 --> 00:22:02.559 tradition ever quite settled on his name, as if some 378 00:22:02.680 --> 00:22:06.359 part of the community telling this story over generations understood 379 00:22:06.400 --> 00:22:09.200 that he was about to become someone who needed protecting, 380 00:22:09.279 --> 00:22:12.400 even in memory. They were making camp on the east 381 00:22:12.440 --> 00:22:14.519 side of the gorge when the lights appeared above the 382 00:22:14.559 --> 00:22:18.599 far Ridge line. Thomas had seen the lights before. Most 383 00:22:18.599 --> 00:22:20.880 people who'd lived in that country any length of time 384 00:22:20.920 --> 00:22:23.440 had seen them, and had learned to regard them as 385 00:22:23.480 --> 00:22:27.519 a strange but essentially harmless feature of the landscape, like 386 00:22:27.599 --> 00:22:32.559 an unusual rock formation or a particularly loud waterfall. He 387 00:22:32.640 --> 00:22:34.960 told William and the hired man that they were nothing 388 00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:41.279 to worry about, electrical, maybe atmospheric. He preferred a practical explanation, 389 00:22:41.680 --> 00:22:45.720 even when the practical explanation didn't quite hold together. What 390 00:22:45.799 --> 00:22:49.200 he could not explain was the cattle. The animals were 391 00:22:49.240 --> 00:22:53.319 agitated in the specific, unmistakable way that tells any experienced 392 00:22:53.359 --> 00:22:57.759 stockman that a predator is nearby, pressing together into a tight, 393 00:22:57.920 --> 00:23:01.720 miserable mass, rolling their eyes to show the white lowing 394 00:23:01.759 --> 00:23:04.599 in that low and hopeless register that sounds like an 395 00:23:04.640 --> 00:23:08.480 animal reporting to anything that might listen that it has 396 00:23:08.559 --> 00:23:12.000 run out of options, Thomas and the hired man took 397 00:23:12.079 --> 00:23:15.279 turns walking the perimeter of the camp with lanterns held high, 398 00:23:15.599 --> 00:23:19.759 listening to the gorge. They heard nothing unusual. The lights 399 00:23:19.839 --> 00:23:22.960 moved and pulsed above the far ridge. The cattle kept 400 00:23:23.000 --> 00:23:26.519 pressing together. William sat by the fire and worked at 401 00:23:26.519 --> 00:23:30.240