Speaker 1: All right, how about a skunk ape story. Here we go,
Here we go. This man says, I was driving north
on Highway two fifty nine toward Diana, Texas, when I
saw a hairy creature squatting by one of the creeks
five miles south of town. I turned around and crossed over,
and I went back to investigate. I exited the highway
and took a ramp down to an area used by
a fisherman, where I was surprised to see an old
Chevy pickup truck and a guy by the water fishing
for brim. I apologized for interrupting his fishing time and
was about to leave when behind him in the woods,
I saw a large, hairy creature that I had seen
from the road. It was covered in brownish red fur,
and it was raising a rock over its head to
throw it at the fisherman. Hey man, watch out. The
man grabbed his bucket of fish and ran for his truck,
just as the rock landed in the creek with a
big splash. The creature had a dumbfounded look on its face,
like an actor and Harry and the Hendersons, and then
it ran off in the thicket. The fisherman turned to
me and he asked, what was that thing? I said, Man,
I don't know, but I was thinking it was a
skunk akee. I haven't seen this guy fishing in the
creek since then, nor have I seen the creature, but
I have smelled a pungent odor in my barn. It's
the same smell I notice that night on that creek bank. Hey, everybody,
welcome to the podcast. My name's Cam Buckner. This is
the what If It's True? Podcast. Thanks for clicking on
the podcast. And I had something I wanted to tell you,
but I can't remember what it was, so we're just
gonna forget it and move on with these stories. I
hope you enjoy this podcast. All Right, here we go.
All right, here's a black panther story. And some people
will click away because it's not a sasquat story, But
I think you're gonna find this very interesting, so hang
with it. The writer says, I am from Northwest Tennessee
and I live in a small town called Bagoda. Now
if you read that word, you might say it's bogatah.
But I lived in West Tennessee most of my life
and I'm guaranteeing you. It's called Bagoda Bogta. I'm a
law enforcement officer and I have been for the last
thirty years. My mother is the youngest of fifteen children
and my father is the oldest of five. My roots
run deep in this part of the world. Both sides
can be traced back to the eighteen nineties. Here. I'm
fifty two years old now, and I'm proud to say
that I grew up in the late seventies and eighties.
That was a great time to be alive. All kids
wanted to do was play outside, fish and hunt, and
explore and ride three wheelers. This area of the world
is the Mississippi River, bottomland and hills. We have Real
Foot Lake to our north, Fort Pillow State Park to
our south, pens and Mounds to our east, and the
Mississippi River to the west. We've had black bear sidings
along the o'biden River, and even gators and wild hogs
spotted near the Chickamauga River. There are also things that
are not discussed with out of towners, for example, the
dog Man of the Hatche Wildlife Refuge and Real Foot Lake,
and the large hery man that was spotted wading through
the cypress trees at Fort Pillow. I've done stories on
all three of those places, and they were dog man's stories,
and I also did a story at Fort Pillow. I
did a Steve Lilly story in Fort Pillow too. Anyway,
sorry to digress here. Growing up in northwest Tennessee made
boy tough. In the summer. We would get up at daylight,
we'd grab some breakfast, We'd tell Mama and Daddy where
we were going, and they would tell us to remember
to check in every four or five hours or so,
and most importantly, we had to be back home before dark.
My best friends at the time were Shane and Bryant.
We were all the same age, and we went to
the same school but go to elementary and our mascot
was the Panther. Now, Shane and I had three wheelers,
and Bryant would constantly be on the back of one
of our three wheelers. We would ride along the Old
Ye and the Mississippi Rivers. Every day. We'd fish, and
we'd build bonfires, and we'd make traps and we'd swing
from tree vines. We used to love to find black
racer snakes and have them chase us. Those things are
really fast too, and we would hop the bob wire
fence and chase the cows near the Elbow, even though
in truth they chased us more than we'd chase them now.
The Elbow is the name of an ox bow lake
that was left after the Army Corps of Engineers changed
the course of the Obion River for a few miles
to assist with flood control. It was close enough to
home that we could be there in just a few minutes,
and checking in at home was easy. Many days were
spent at the Elbow, fishing, hunting, and enjoying the freedom
that only country folks can relate to. Our neighborhood consisted
of three blocks of houses. There was a general store
that was also a place for the older gentlemen to
play dominoes, and there was a small post office built
into the side of the cafe. It was safe, and
it offered a feeling of protection. Small town warmth and
carrying that helped shape some good men and women. We
are a large farming community, and the older men would
always be at the store before the sun came up
to have coffee before going to the field. At lunchtime,
they would gather at the store for something to eat
and some ice for their coolers before riding back to
the fields to get to work. When the weather was
bad or the ground was wet, the farmers and the
older men would gather at the store and spend some
of the best tales you have ever heard. Most stores
would be about hunting and fishing. They talk about politics
and who won the pool tournament or the card game.
But on rare occasions there would be stories of the
Great flood and the war, and someone who came up missing,
or the panther in the woods. You always knew when
one of those stories was being told just by how
quiet and serious the tone was of the storyteller. If
an out of towner stopped in to pay for gas,
not a word would be said until the stranger left,
and when the story resumed, everyone in the building would
remain as still as a church mouse until it was finished.
Those stories were told by serious salt of the earth men,
men who had lived through hard times, who'd had hard
lives and survived to share their experiences with neighbors and family.
Now I remember one of those stories told by mister Don.
Mister Don was a farmer. He had a large family
and he was telling how he and his boys were
working the field on the backside of four Corners. They
had finished reaping wheat and getting ready to burn the
fields so that they could plant beans, and the boys
were moving the combines and the bob trucks back to
the gravel road. He was on the Obion riverside and
moving toward four corners in the field was burning nicely.
He watched a good size of dough jump from the
field and began to run toward the tree line, when
a big black animal jumped from a large white oak
tree and tackled it. And then this black figure walked
off with the dough in its teeth, and it disappeared
into the treeline. Right when it disappeared, he heard screaming,
and it made all the hairs on his arms stand up.
After that he left, and neither here the boys came
back to the field until daylight or the next day.
Now we were all watching mister John, our jaws open
at his tail. When he looked me in the iron
and he said, you stay out of those woods around
here at night. It's out there and it's big, and
it'll get you. One summer on a Friday, Shane Bright
and I decided to spend all day at the elbow.
Now those days seemed to last forever. The sun was
up before six and it wasn't dark until nine, and
we fished that morning and we did pretty good. We
had caught some crappie and some brim, and we cleaned
them up and we went to my house for lunch.
We showed off our catch to my parents, and then
we cleaned up and we ate, and when we were done,
we went back and built a fire and cooked our fish.
Shane had a machete wrapped around the handlebars of his
Honda big red three wheeler, and as the fish was cooking,
we went to the edge of the field and began
to cut cane stalks to make fishing poles. We were
only there for a few minutes when the most blood
curdling scream we have ever heard carried across the countryside.
I looked over at Shane, thinking that he had cut
himself with a machete, and he was looking at me
like I was in pain. And then Bright yelled, hey,
are y'all okay? And then we heard it again. We
looked south where the scream had come from, and couldn't
believe what we were seeing. It was a big, black,
sleek animal moving faster than anything we'd ever seen. Well,
we ran to the three wheelers like the devil themselves
was after us, and we cranked on the first try,
and we were kicking up rooster tails of dust as
we headed out of there. We hit the gravel road
without slowing down and sliding and fish tailing, and we
turned into my driveway and jumped off the three wheelers
before they even stopped. And my mother was cooking some
fried chicken and taters in the kitchen and she saw
us and immediately ran over to check on us. She
felt and she patted us all over looking for some
type of injury, and when she couldn't find any, she said,
all right, what kind of trouble are you boys into now? Well,
then Dad came into the kitchen and we told them
both what had happened. Dad looked at Mama and he
didn't say a word. He didn't have to. Mama looked
at us and said, y'all go wash up and get
ready for supper. We didn't have to be told twice.
Chicken and fried taters were amazing, and we ate like
we were going to the electric chair. Bright and Shane
were out to stay the night, and the next morning
we were up at dawn. Daddy was already up and
drinking coffee in the kitchen, and we each grabbed a
biscuit and slapped some jelly on it and we started eating. Now,
I want you boys to ride up to the store
with me so I can get you some gas for
you three wheelers. He told us. Yes, sir, we said,
free gas for the day's adventure. Heck you, this was
going to be a good day, and we couldn't wait
to get back fishing. We got our gas tanks filled up,
and we went inside the store where Daddy was waiting
for us. The place was quiet as a cemetery. Every
farmer where tyree and fishermen and hunter and family man
was inside and they were waiting on us. The mood
was very ominous, and we knew that something bad had
happened and that we must be in some kind of trouble.
And it kind of looked like a courtroom with the
judge and the jury sitting there waiting to render our
guilty verdict. Now, you boys, come on over here for
a minute, my dad told us. We sat down in
the three empty chairs in the middle of the neighborhood men,
and we looked at mister don Now, I want you
boys to stay away from the elbow for a week
or so. We have some things that we need to
take care of down there. Your daddy'll tell you when
you can go back. Now, do you all understand me? Yes, sir,
we said. We did not dare ask any questions. We
were just glad we weren't in any trouble. Why don't
y'all ride around a barbed wire and miss him for
about a week and just stay out of the fields
and crops? Okay, Dad told us again. There was a
big yes, sir from all three of us. We ran
out of the store and away from those men like
the building was on fire. Then we went over to
the barbed wire and missed him for the next week.
There were some nights that Dad didn't come home until
real late, but I never asked any questions. I think
it was around ten days later he took us back
up to the store for more gas, and when we
walked in every he was there again this time, only
this time the store was normal and folks were playing
dominoes and farmers were eating and spinning yarns, and Neil
was even playing the pinball machine, and mister Don was
there too. All right, boys, y'all can go back to
the elbow again. Same rules as before. No hunting, and
stay out of my fields and don't be out after dark,
he told us. Yes, sir, we said, and straight to
the elbow we went. We didn't ask what they had
been doing there for the last ten days. We didn't
ask about the black panther that we all saw. It
was a need to know type of thing, and we
did not need to know, apparently, Besides, we had other
things on our minds. There were fish to be caught
and cane poles to be cut. Here's another sysquatch story.
This is a pretty good one. Around nineteen eighty eight,
it was very hot and humid. It was typical for
that time of year. I was twenty years old and
I lived in Huntsville, Alabama. It was cool to live
there because I got to meet so many neat and
interesting people, especially the military types, since we had the
Red Stone Arsenal nearby. I've always been a weapons and
a survival enthusiasts, so it was a given that I
enjoyed hanging out with the military guys. One of my
friends was an Army ranger named Raymond. Another was named Shepherd.
He was a Green Beret. And I had also become
good friends with a guy who ran of this and
that army surplus store in town. I just happened to
be in this in that store when the news came
on the TV about two guys from the Grant Mountain
area escaping from prisons somewhere up north. They were considered
armed and dangerous, and they had carjacked and killed a
couple of people who owned the VA. There was a
twenty five thousand dollars reward for their capture, dead or alive.
The news switched to another story, and the old Vietnam
vet who ran the store told me that he had
heard that those two escapees were holed up at the
closed Cathedral caverns in Marshall County, Alabama. Now that wasn't
very far from Huntsville, and I got to thinking, and boy,
that twenty five thousand dollars sure was calling my name. There.
I was twenty years old, full of enthusiasm, and I
was already spending that reward money. I started to make
a plan. I called Ship and Raymond and I told
him about the two men and the bigger reward, and
they were on board in a blink. By that time,
I had figured it out in my head like this.
I would get Ship and Raymond to go along. I'd
get them to do the physical work, and they would
capture these two guys. Meanwhile, I would give them the
intel AKA, I would tell them what the Vietnam vet
told me. And hey, all three of us gets a
fair cut, right, All I had to do was go
along for the ride and lead them to the bad guys.
How much simpler could that be? We gathered up what
supplies we thought that we would need, and we left
next of ken names and phone numbers at Shep's place
in case the worst case scenario happened, and we headed
out fully dressed in camo and face paint and armed
to the teeth with the knives. You heard me, we
had knives. It turned out neither of my buddies owned
a gun. While shocked and worried at the same time,
but male pride being what it is, and greed being
even more of a burden on common sense, I figured
these guys were trained in hand to hand combat and
lethal weapons with their very bodies. We got to the
main road leading into the park and we stopped about
a half mile from the end entrance, which was closed
with a steel gate. The old caretaker kept a pack
of dogs at his house near the park's entrance. If
he heard any noises, he would release those mean junkyard
dogs to chase off anyone sneaking up. Shep and Raymond
had done recon on this place. It was a little
bit up in a wooded area, and we thought we
could sneak past without him ever knowing we were there.
So there we went, the three of us, heading into
the park. It was cloudy with a full moon, and
we got maybe a quarter of a mile in when
suddenly we heard the bang of a pack of dogs.
The old man had set his hell hands loose after us.
I was about to freak out of my mind. A
few years later, I had been attacked by neighbors. Rotweler
and I spent the best part of a night in
the er, having hundreds of dog bites sewn up. Shep
and Raymond had told me the caretaker had two Doberman's
and a couple of mixed pits I had already found
out the hard way what one dog could do, and
I did not want to learn what five dogs could do.
And I was not exactly a lightweight. I was not
in shape, even for a young man of twenty No, sir,
I weighed about two hundred and forty pounds of good
old fashioned, over indulgent, fluffy twenty year old. And I
was going to be a buffet for these dogs. Now
these dogs were charging. Time was running out, and panic
was rising, and my dreams of splitting that twenty five
thousand dollars were gone. Raymond whispered loudly to us that
there was a fallen tree off the side of the
road inside the woods, and he added, remember the Alamo,
and he took off. That didn't make me feel any better,
but Raymond always did have a very dark sense of humor.
We got settled quickly behind the fallen tree, and we
drew our knives, and we waited for the approaching hounds
from Hell. And as the dogs neared our position behind
the tree, I was terrified. I couldn't help thinking that
I was about to die a horrible death, being torn
apart by this rabid pack of dogs. I was so
terrified that I had tonal vision, and it was almost
like slow motion, and I swear those dogs looked like
they had slobber trails behind them on the ground, and
fur bristling a foot into the air and teeth six
inches long. I realized my imagination may have gotten away
from me in my moment of terror, but it sure
as hell felt real to me. The dogs got about
thirty feet from our tree, and over my left shoulder,
I heard a sound unlike anything I'd ever heard before.
I can't even begin to describe it. It was a
cross between a scream and a growl and a howl,
and it was just a few feet behind us. The
instant this thing bellowed out that god awful sound, all
five of the on rushing dogs stopped dead in their tracks.
They started whimpering and turning around in the circles in
the road right in front of us. I heard heavy
footsteps behind me. I heard it step on dead limbs,
and then it bellowed again, directly behind me. This time
all five dogs took off, yelping, probably scared worse than
I was. And then I heard more heavy footsteps moving
to my right, and then one last lesser growl, and
then everything went silent. I was so scared that I
couldn't move. I finally broke out of the tunnel vision
and I turned to my left to ask Raymond what
we should do. But Raymond was gone, and I whip
my head to the right. The sheph was gone too.
I had no idea where they were, and I couldn't
find them. And I finally looked back toward the dogs,
and I saw both of my best friends deserting me,
leaving me alone with a big foot following those dogs
out of the park and tales of five hounds and
two grown men tucked under. I finally came to my
senses and I took off after them. I've never been
much of a runner, but my goodness, you bet I
ran faster that night than I ever had in my life.
And when I finally got to the car, Shep was
sitting behind the wheel. He was pale as a sheet
and he was shaken. Raymond was in the back seat,
curled up in a fetal position, mumbling to himself over
and over about a SI squatch. Now I have told
this story many many times since it happened, and I
tell it in a way to make it funny, but
in all seriousness, it was one of the scariest things
I have ever experienced. I never really thought about it much,
but looking back, that sasquatch saved our lives. I've been
laughed at, I've been called a liar, and I've been ridiculed.
And there are a few out there who actually believe
my story. Yeah, I can't imagine why. It's kind of
a wild story. I'm not saying I believe it or
I don't, but it is one hell of a good story.
Thanks to the man for writing it. I really appreciate it.
That's a good story. Okay, here's a bigfoot story I
thought was really good. Nine years ago. I was living
in North Carolina, out in the middle of nowhere, in
an area all grown over with pines. One day I
went to the creek to look for some flint for arrowheads,
and while I was there, I noticed some tree structures,
but I didn't realize what they were. Sometimes I heard
things that didn't seem to belong, but with the noise
of the creek, I didn't pay it much mine. I
was finding a lot of stuff, but it caught my
attention that what I was seeing the most was clothes.
There was a boot, there was a shirt, there was
a pair of shorts and a backpack. Around five that
after and it started getting dark, and not knowing the
woods very well, I started back to the house. Halfway there,
I heard something thud. There thirty yards from me, a
tree fell across the pathway, and then everything got deathly quiet.
There were no birds singing, no animal sounds. Nothing moved
at all. I smelled a stink like a sewer filled
with rotten meat, and off to my right I heard
something big and heavy moving around, so I froze. Honestly,
I couldn't move. I turned and tried to holler for
my friend at the house, but I knew that he
would not hear me. And when I turned back, right
there in front of me, close enough that I could touch,
it was the biggest harrius brown creature I have ever seen.
I think it had to be eight feet tall. I
was so scared that my knees gave out on me,
and it was so nasty looking and so nasty smelling
that I actually vomited. It looked down at me, and
it got down on one knee and screamed inches from
my face, and then it laughed. It was an evil, deep,
roaring laugh, and he pushed me to the ground and
put his foot on my head. I said, well, this
is it. I'm going to die right here, just a
half a mile from my house, and nobody even knows
where I am. All I could do was wait for
him to do it. And I thought about the clothing
that I had found earlier, and maybe it had belonged
to someone else who encountered this creature too, And now
someone else was going to find my clothes and mine
shoes after this thing killed me. And then I heard
something else in the woods, and another creature came out.
It was a female, and she came bursting out through
the trees, talking with whistles and clicks. The male took
his foot off my head and got into it with
her and having some sort of altercation I guess. Started
crawling away when I heard another roar, and the next
thing I knew, I was swept off the ground by
the female. She was running so fast that I got
dizzy watching the trees go by. It seemed like just
a few seconds, and then she put me down by
the side of my house. I lay there a minute
in shock, afraid the male was going to show up
again and come after me and kill me. And then
nothing happened, and I took off my clothes and I
tossed them into the fire barrel. The next morning, at light,
I left and didn't never go back. And I have
not told anyone what had happened. It was all too traumatic. Okay,
I got you a pretty good story. I love the story.
It's an awesome story. That's all I'm gonna say about it.
But I really appreciate the writer sending it. It was
very entertaining. Thank you. Okay. Gonna drop a couple of
stories from the vault, done four or five years ago.
Some people may not have heard them. If you and
I hope you enjoy. If you have heard him, maybe
you can enjoy him again. All right, here we go
with two archive stories from the Vault. Hey, y'all, Steve
Lily has been spotted. Thought i'd share this email with
you that a truck driver sent me. Here's what he writes.
I'm an over the road truck driver with a dedicated
route from York, Pennsylvania to Miami, Florida that I run
twice a week. Normally, I leave out with my first load.
Around two thirty am on Mondays and I head south
for nine hours before stopping for fuel and a bike
to eat at the Flying Jay just south of Rocky Mountain,
North Carolina. On this occasion, I didn't need to fuel
up at that point, so I kept going until I
hit South Carolina, by which time both my truck and
my belly needed to be filled. I found a nice
little truck stop with the Dennis within walking distance, so
I topped off and swung my rig around to the
truck parking area. I combed my hair and put on
a clean shirt and headed over to Denny's. The moon over,
my hammy Special, and a cup of black coffee were
calling my name. I got a booth by the window
where I could see easily who was coming and going,
and more importantly, I could see the station where my
rig was parked. Once I placed my order, I started
staring out the window, not really thinking much of anything
except the road ahead and how long it would be
before I was back in my own bed. And as
luck would have it, I ran into a friend that
I had met on the road. I saw this guy
maybe twice a year. At this Denny's, we struck up
a friendship, and the topic of conversation were podcasts and
audio books that we enjoyed while cranking out the miles. Well,
our food arrived and we started comparing notes on the
podcast and audio books that we have in common, and
we talked about our favorite episodes. About that time, an
excursion pulled in that wouldn't have drawn my attention for
a minute if not for all the extra lights and
hardware on it. What in the hell, billy heaven is that,
I thought with a chuckle. I hadn't even finished the
thought when three men crawled out of it. That sent
a chill down my spine. I'm not a small man.
I can handle just about anything that comes my way.
But what stepped out of that truck were three guys
that tough guys talk about. They were the kind of
men who wear their denims out from the inside. Well,
my blood ran cold as I watched them cross the
parking lot. Now, I turned my attention back to my
friend and he looked at me without saying a word,
but I could see by him rolling his eyes that
he noticed the men walking in through the parking lot.
We went back to eating and talking, and the conversation
turned to the recent Steve Lily podcast. Well, the conversation
became lively as we laughed at Steve Lily's crew's antics. Apparently,
the men who had just walked in overheard us, and
I could see them looking over at our table and
then leaning closer to talk so that no one would
hear them. The largest of the three caught me staring
at them, and he made a motion to his buddies,
letting them know that they were being watched. Again. I'm
six foot three and I weighed two hundred and forty
five pounds, and I'm pretty solid, but this enormous black
man that was looking at me made me feel like
a little kid. Well, I dropped my eyes to the table, thinking,
oh man, this isn't good. I put my head down
and I started eating, hoping they would see that I
was minding my own business. My friend, whose back was
to their table, turned to see what had shut me up.
I hadn't taken three bites. When one of them walked
over to our table, I got the idea that he
was their leader. My eyes moved up his frame until
the bill of my ball cap forced my head up.
I don't know what I was exp at that point,
you mind if I sit with you for a minute,
he asked. I wasn't about to say no. My name's Steve,
he said, with a slow Southern drawl. Are you a
truck driver? My company's logo is blazed across the front
of my ball cap. Even if I wanted to, I
don't think I could have said no. A lump in
my throat that I was pretty sure wasn't food kept
me from talking, so I just nodded, yes, you over
the road are local? I swallowed hard again and said,
now I drive from Pennsylvania to Florida twice a week.
He studied me for a second, as visions of my
dead body being dragged out of some nameless swamp danced
through my mind. Well, I stared back into his face,
and I saw intelligence behind that good old boy demeanor,
another cold wave, of course through my veins. You ever
see anything strange while you had in these roads, he asked, nonchalantly. Yeah,
I see all kind of weird and strange people. I said,
not quite understanding yet what he meant. No, I mean
strange things, he repeated, with deliberate emphasis on the words strange,
like things you wouldn't tell anyone for fear of being
carted off to the funny farm. That kind of strange.
The light in my brain clicked on, and I suddenly
knew what he was asking. Well, yeah, I said, looking
around a little self consciously, I glanced over to where
the other two men were seated. They weren't looking directly
at me, but I had no doubt that they were
studying me. I've seen lots of things at night over
the years, I said. My voice broke a little as
I spoke. I hoped he didn't take that as a
sign of weakness. All right, you see anything recent, say,
within the last six months, he asked, Now, nothing recent,
I said. I was doing my best to sound relaxed
and comfortable with our conversation, but I suspected that I
was failing miserably. Steve sat quietly for a minute or so,
studying some more, and then stood up and handed me
his card and said, well, I'm Steve Lily, and over
there that's Lewis and Hook. I looked back across the restaurant,
and I saw the other two smiling openly at me.
It did nothing to alleviate my fears. Then he dropped
a card on the table and he went back over
to join his friends. Apparently they had ordered their food
to go, and they walked out and headed for their vehicle.
After they left, I picked up the card. The front
of it said Steve Lily, had a phone number printed
underneath it, and on the back of the card were
a pair of footprints. I looked across the table to
my brother driver and I said, this guy's for real.
Look at this card. Now, what are the chances and
how random could this be that a man would show
up here and introduce himself like he did as Steve
Lily and then just hand me this card. Well, my
buddy fiddled with a card and he handed it back
to me. Well it looks legit to me, he said,
Holy shit, we just met Steve Lily. As I walked
back to my rig, and thinking about those three guys,
I gave a low whistle and I thought, man, I'd
hate to be a sasquatch, knowing those three guys are
looking for me. I live in Maine. I'm a forty
two plus year registered master main guide whose license includes mountaineering,
open ocean and blue water canoeing and kayaking. In addition,
I'm a wilderness emergency medical instructor. I've shared my expertise
with many people from Maine to Antarctica. Now include this
information only to validate that I'm very comfortable in that
out door. I've never had a reason to be afraid.
A bit concern at times, but never afraid. My story
takes place in Maine, along where two rivers meet and
merge with the Umbagog Lake, on the western border of
Maine and New Hampshire. The area is known as the
Umbagog Wildlife Sanctuary. My ancestors migrated to the region in
seventeen forty two from Ireland. Back in the nineteen thirties,
a woman named Louise Rich wrote a book about growing
up in the area called We Took to the Woods.
There are a few roads, mostly rough logging trails, and
canoeing is the best way to see all the wonders
of this beautiful and pristine area. Umbagog is teeming with
wildlife bears, moose, bald eagles, and common loons. Around here,
I've even seen mountain lions and at night, I have
heard many strange sounds around camp, but most of those
are identifiable. It may come as a surprise to many
listeners of your podcast, but I have never carried a
gun in my career as a guide, even though I
grew up in the gun culture, where I was taught
the skills by my father and uncles. But I choose
not to carry. The way I see it is I
work with nature now. I've learned to pay attention, and
I know my wild neighbors, and yes, I have been
ten feet from black bears. I even stood my ground
while a one thousand pound twenty four point bull moose
and rut stood his ground at twenty five feet of distance.
I don't advise this for your listeners. They will kill
you twice and you have to stay still. It is
said that a bull moose is the most dangerous animal
in the forest. One roll to Volkswagen bug over fourteen
times was sixteenagers trapped inside. My story goes back to
nineteen ninety one. My girlfriend and I were canoe camping
along the mc galloway River. Guys, on these pronunciations, I've
just quit caring if I get them right, because I
know five hundred people are going to correct me in
the comment section. But I'm pretty sure that means that
word is mcgalloway. We made camp and cooked a great
meal and settled in for a nice day. We were
waiting for the evening before we paddled onto the outlet
of the Umbagog Lake for some stargazing. There would be
a full moon that night. There is no light pollution there.
The water is calm, and if we sat still, we
could see the heavens above and below reflected on the lake.
It was as if we were floating in the sky
in our tiny watercraft. I call that awesomeness. We continued
paddling as the moon rose over the horizon, lighting the
shoreline as it climbed into the starry sky, and we
paddled close to the shore to see if any ducks
were nesting what ducks loved this area, as there are
many nesting boxes placed for them by the wildlife management.
As we neared the shoreline, we were startled when we
suddenly were showered by a barrage of rocks and sand,
and my girlfriend thought she saw a shadowy figure on
the shore. She started freaking out and I spun my
canoe around to get a better look at what was
throwing rocks at us. I saw what I thought was
a bear, but then it stood up, and I've seen
bears stand on their hind legs as they sniff out
an area. But this bear, when it stepped toward the
forest edge and did not drop down on all fours,
both of us heard a deep guttural growl. My girlfriend
was going into hysterics, demanding that we leave now. I
pulled on my paddle, propelling the canoe away from the shore,
and as soon as we were in motion, everything went quiet.
We paddled back to camp and left that night, and
as we drove, my girlfriend seemed to be cursed with
a case of fear induced insanity. I called her crazy,
which didn't help matters, and she told me that I
was a crazy one for night carrying a gun, and
things between us got so heated that we broke up
that night. I took her home and went back to
my place, and after a bad night's sleep, I decided
that I needed answers. I had just lost my girlfriend
and I had to know what we experience. So I
drove back to the Umbigogue, where our campsite was still
reserved for one more day. I paddled back to where
our encounter took place and a anchor just off the bank.
As evening came and darkness fell. I sat waiting for
whatever we saw to come back. At some point I
began to hear a buzzing, a metallic sound above me.
The air seemed electrified. I felt a migraine coming on,
and I started to go into what felt like some
sort of a seizure. When I came out of it,
I didn't remember much afterward. The sun was lighting up
the eastern skies. I pulled on my paddle and headed
back to camp. My mind was preoccupied with strange images
of things that I did not understand, and after an
hour or so I saw my campsite come into view
and there were people milling around, and I thought, how
rude they were messing with my stuff. A main game
warden pulled the bow of my canoe onto the shore
as he asked me for my name. I still didn't
grasp this situation. His fellow officer swarmed around me with
communication devices, and when I asked what the fuss was
all about, it was revealed that the officers were in
search and rescue, and that they had been looking for
me for the past two days. I have no recollection
of those supposed lost days. And when the warden took
my statement. I couldn't tell if he believed me or not.
I'm not sure I believe what happened. Since then, I
have only fleeting memory flashes of strange images and sounds.
I still don't carry a weapon that would not have
changed a thing. Thank you for listening to this podcast.
I appreciate the fact that you stayed this long, and
if you're hearing this, you have listened to the whole podcast.
I really appreciate you, and we will see you guys
on the next one. Thank you.