September 9, 2025 • 27 mins
A painting crew on a municipal water tower have an unexpected visitor: Bigfoot, who can climb ladders.
If you have an encountery you'd like to share, email it to: Contact@buckeyebigfoot.com
If you've enjoyed this episode, there are hundreds more on the youTube channel.
Find us on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@BuckeyeBigfoot
If you have an encountery you'd like to share, email it to: Contact@buckeyebigfoot.com
If you've enjoyed this episode, there are hundreds more on the youTube channel.
Find us on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/@BuckeyeBigfoot
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
[music]
(00:07):
Hi there. Welcome to Buck Eyegigfoot.
Tonight's journey down in Desaskwatch Valley is actually going to take us up,
right up onto a water tower, where something was curious enough to climb the ladder up.
Are you ready? I am. And so are the horses.
So grab your snackage, get a drink, and get your booty on up in the saddle.
(00:29):
It's past time we headed down the trail into Sasquatch Valley. Let's go.
[music]
(00:50):
You can use my first name. I'm Caleb.
I paint tanks and towers for a living, city water, co-ops, those big blue bowls with the town name on them.
We chase rust for counties that can't keep up with salt and weather,
and we make old steel look young enough to pass inspection.
(01:12):
It's good, honest work, but it can be hard, and it will teach you to respect three things.
Gravity, wind, and whatever decides to share a catwalk with you after quitting time.
This was late last fall, late September, when the knights first get that little bite to them.
(01:34):
We were up on a classic single pedestal, spear-rooid water tower.
Looks like one of those big blue lollipops stuck in the clay at the edge of the city.
This is out behind a softball complex in a BFW, out on a patch that sits right on the line between
what belongs to the town and what belongs to the State Parknex door.
(01:56):
The water authority wanted that pedestal in the underside touched up,
and the catwalk railings brought back to safety yellow.
We'd spend a week washing and blasting, chasing pits,
priming with zinc, top coating with a two-part that will stick to a greased eel if you mix it just right.
I'd been on that catwalk enough times to know where every bolt head could snag your pant leg.
(02:21):
There were four of us on the job. Me, my cousin weighed, and two other hands.
Zeke and a young guy called Peanut, who carried full buckets as easily as if they were empty.
They were twelve-hour days if the wind would let us, tin if it didn't.
On the day that I'm talking about, we had wrapped up early because a line of heavy storms was coming
(02:46):
in from the west. Wade took Peanut to go get thinner and rollers, planning to beat the rain in the
morning. Zeke stayed down on the ground to coil cords and to lock the gang box. I stayed up top to
tape off a couple of nozzle plates I wanted to dry by sun up. I was alone out there on the catwalk.
(03:08):
Harness clipped into the cable. Respirator hanging off me like a bib. Knife coiled to the rail for
cutting-taped clean. If you've never been that high when the day is winding down, you really should try
it, at least once. The town suddenly seemed very small. Pick up trucks move around down there like
(03:30):
child's toys. The softball diamonds are now just chalk rings in the distance, turning invisible,
and then suddenly their lights come on, and that's all you can see.
And when the wind dies down, you hear little things up there that you would never hear out on the
street. The flag howards are clicking, bats from the cages two fields over, and someone's mom out
(03:55):
there calling them in from half a mile away. Now the kids probably couldn't hear her, but we could
for some reason. Sound is strange up there. Another thing is still kind of has its own voice.
It pings and sighs as it cools down from a hot day's heat. You get used to the sounds. It's
(04:18):
like listening to your house settle at night. So when something taps the ladder, even at the bottom,
and you're at the top, you hear it, you notice. I was up there and I heard three knocks on the steel.
Knock, knock, knock. It was a hollow sound and it came right up the ladder cage, traveling quick.
(04:41):
I looked up and over to the ladder hatch. No one should be coming up, and I had never heard any of
them bang on the ladder to say they were coming up. I thumbed my radio. Zeke, is that you coming up?
His voice crackled when he replied, "negative, I'm at the truck, sir. Why, you need a hand?"
(05:02):
No, I got a, well, something just banged on the ladder.
Well, wind can do that sometimes, he said, sounding like he didn't even believe it himself.
Then he said, "You good up there?" "Yeah," I said, lying.
I twisted and peered over the catwalk rail toward the vertical cage. The ladder ran up the pedestals
(05:29):
outside. It was old code, with a cage that's more good for pretending at being able to catch someone,
but not really good for catching. And then it ended through a circular hatch on to the catwalk.
That hatch lid was propped open with a wedge, the way we always do it when folks are coming and going,
(05:49):
so you don't have to wrestle it with both hands when you're loaded down.
From where I stood, I couldn't see more than 50 feet straight down. The curve of the tank hides
things, and that cage makes a grid that your eyes just can't see past. Here came the banging or the
knocks again. Knock, knock, knock. It was slower this time, yet it sounded closer.
(06:16):
Every third knock, there was the tiniest shiver through the steel into the meat of my bootsoles.
"Wade?" I said out loud as a last hope. There was no answer. I looked across the parking lot,
and I saw that Wade's F-150 was already gone, presumably with peanut in it.
(06:37):
Then a smell rose up the ladder. Not sewer smell exactly, not dead animal.
Damn pennies and moss kind of smell. Hot and wet. Like someone had bathed a really stinky dog
in a copper tub. Then left the dirty water out in the hot sun all day. This smell came in humid waves.
(07:00):
"Now I've been pranked," I thought. A lot of the guys I knew could be stupid pranksters.
Though I hadn't had anything on this scale from any of the guys before.
Oh, I mean once they taped my hands to a rail. One time they swapped my coffee out with muddy water.
I tied a zip tie once through peanuts harness D-ring so he couldn't unhook himself.
(07:23):
I mean that's the kind of stuff we do to each other. But there wasn't a man on that crew,
or come to think of it, any crew I've ever worked, that could throw smell like that without a bucket.
And I don't think any of them could or would have dealt with that smell for that long.
I was waiting and counting those knocking bangs. And then they stopped. I waited several more seconds.
(07:48):
I set my tape roller down. You know, you make sure you never drop anything off a tank.
It stops being your problem and will suddenly become part of somebody's skull if you do.
Well anyway, I set that down and I walked the catwalk toward the hatch.
My lanyard slid along the lifeline with a lazy little chick, chick, chick, chick.
(08:10):
Anybody down there coming up? I called out because I was going to say it out loud before I looked down.
That way if it was one of the guys, they wouldn't say I was scared or being cowardly.
But no voice answered. I leaned over the hatch one boot against the hinge, one arm on the rail,
(08:32):
body weight in the harness. It wasn't dark yet. Just getting dark and dusky,
more dark blue gray hazy, the color of old blue jeans. But I saw something dark down below,
a definitive shape yet shapeless. It was a dark blob at first, but it was there.
(08:53):
I stared long and hard, and then I saw something that I recognized and was unmistakable.
A hand, coming up and curling around a rung. That hand was no glove, though I told myself it was
for just one or two heartbeats. It was dark and wide across the palm with a pad that seemed
(09:16):
to swallow half the width of the rung. The fingers curled around the rung slowly, like they really
didn't need the structure of the rung to climb, so much as they just wanted to test it out.
I saw hair on it, it seemed short along the back of the hand, yet longer at the wrist.
I saw it stir with the faint up-draft coming off the shell of the tank.
(09:39):
I have trained myself over the years, not to jump, to not be startled. No matter what,
you cannot be jumpy on a catwalk up there. Harnas' can fail, and I've seen enough bad things
happen through the years that I'm always conscious of it. But being startled and jumping on a catwalk,
(10:01):
that's how you go over. That's how you can end. But seeing that hand on the rung,
I came as close to jumping back on a catwalk as I ever have since my very first week on the job,
right after high school graduation. But I didn't jump. My stomach, however,
(10:22):
moved around inside into places that it really didn't belong.
Whoever owned that hand did not care if I saw it.
Jumping Jehosa fat I yelled. I was seeing, and I was still not believing.
I yelled, and then instantly, as I looked down, I saw the impression of a dark face as it leaned
(10:45):
its whole body back against the cage away from the ladder to look up at me. It couldn't
bend its neck. I brought the hatch lid down with one hand, not with a slam, but I did close it down
firmly. I set the wedge aside and twisted the dog latch tight. Then I backed away from the hatch.
(11:07):
I looked over the catwalk railing, but the curve and the darkness didn't allow me to see much of
anything. Suddenly my radio popped and crackled. "You still up there, Caleb?" "Yeah," I said, and then I said,
"Hey, Zeke, check the lock on the anti-clim at the base. Would you?"
(11:27):
"Oh, it's locked," he said, "been locked all day. I checked it when you said you heard some banging
on that ladder." I thought for a second, and then I asked him, "What about somebody inside? Could
they be inside?" I knew that some older towers have interior ladders of the pedestal. "Nah,
(11:49):
he said, doors chained. I got the key on me. Ain't nobody inside that tank, nothing but water."
I looked west, and the sky out there flickered rapidly with heat lightning. Voices from the ballfield
suddenly drifted up to my hearing. "Do me a favor," I said. "Walk to the base. Don't go under the
(12:12):
cage. Just go have a look." "You got it, boss." I heard his boots on the gravel while I stood with my
palm flat on the hatch lid, like a man feeling the hood of a truck to see if it's hot. The steel under
my hand felt occupied. I know that sounds crazy, but that's how it felt. After a few more seconds,
(12:37):
Zick came on the radio. "I'm at the pedestal," he paused, and suddenly his tone changed.
"I—hey, I can smell something. You cooking something up there?"
"No," I said. "What's the anticlimel look like?" "Chainson?" "Lockson," he said.
(12:58):
"Then metal on metal tapped and banged, then stopped." "Hold up," he said. "What? What?" I asked.
Something is there—hey, is there someone else up there with you? Is there someone else on the ladder?
Now by this time Dusk had turned to almost complete darkness, with only vague shapes, shadows,
(13:23):
and movements visible. "I don't know," I said honestly. "Nither of us have lighting that would
cover a hundred feet or more of darkness." "We were quiet together a second," then he said. "You want
me to come up there? You know, meet you halfway?" "I swear, I heard a big swallow after he said
(13:44):
that, a big gulp, kind of like Shaggy on Scooby-Doo." "No," I said, and then took a breath.
"No, you stay put. I'm coming down. Just—just stay clear the landing. Just in case,
I pause, not sure what to say here, and then I said, "Just in case I force someone back down."
(14:09):
Up top I clipped into the lifeline and I walked the catwalk slow. I set my toes, looked out
over the dark and parking lot. The wind came in a little from the west, a little more strongly now,
fluttering the caution tape that we tied to the rail where we didn't want folk stepping down below.
The tape snapped and crinkled as it fluttered, and on the wind was the unmistakable smell of wet dirt
(14:35):
and rain. Down the ladder, something in the darkness moved. I felt the vibration in the steel
where my hand held the railing. This wasn't knocking or banging exactly. It was—it was bumping,
and there's a crucial difference there." "All right," I said, preparing to go down the ladder.
(14:57):
I suddenly knew and understood how my dad must have felt in Vietnam. My dad was a small
guy, barely five foot four, so they used him as a tunnel rat. I remember once overhearing him talking
with my uncles, and he said that he wants you to stand near the cave entrances, and he would be
(15:18):
scared out of his wits before going in. But he would say some prayers and he would talk to himself,
and then he got on with it, because it was all right. "Yeah," I said, "I'll just say a prayer and
talk to myself a bit, and it will be all right." I pulled my knife from the tape on the railing,
and I slid it into my pocket. I took the wedge off the hatch dog where I'd set it, and tucked it
(15:42):
under the rail, getting ready. There were a few more bumps that came up the steel. Then a ladder bump,
and I heard a distinctive muffled sound of light pain. If I was a guessing man, I would guess whoever
or whatever it was down there cracked their shin bones on a rung on the ladder. I tried to mark how far
(16:05):
the sound was down the ladder in my head. Twenty feet? Forty feet? Fifty feet? But I knew it didn't matter.
The impression I saw that face in the darkness, if it was what I thought it was, no hatch dog would
keep it from getting up here. I waited several more minutes, listening to the bangs as they
(16:28):
got fainter and fainter. I radioed down to seek. You see anything? No, but I'm by my truck.
You told me to stay clear. I thought that if he was at his truck, he probably wouldn't be able to
see anything. I thought about telling him to drive his truck over, put his brights on the bottom of
(16:50):
the ladder until I got down, but I didn't. I took another breath and then said, "I'm coming down.
Now listen, I'm going to stay clipped in to my feet, hit the gravel. Get in your truck,
get it running, and if I say go, you go, you get on out of here. And if I say, pick me up,
(17:12):
you drive right up here and you pick me up as close to the ladder as you can. You got me?
I got you," he said, just a little too fast. I said, "Say it again like you're not scared,
and that you understand me."
"I got you," he said, and came out sounding like a man.
(17:33):
I popped the hatch and lifted it slowly. The smell came up like sewage gas from old pipes.
The ladder rungs were black in the light, and my headlamp put only a little cone of nothing out,
and that didn't help much. I put my boot on the first rung down and listened for anything that wasn't me.
(17:55):
"Coming down," I said softly. "Not into the radio, not for Zik, not so much as for whoever
might have ears down there."
Through the years I've descended ladders with lightning threatening to fry me like strips of bacon
and a cast iron skillet. With tornadoes dropping down from the clouds close enough, I could almost touch them.
(18:19):
I've climbed with both hands so numb from cold and ice that I have to look at them to make sure
they're really gripping the ladder rungs. But I have never, and I mean never, grabbed that ladder so tight,
and put my feet on rungs oh so carefully as I did then.
(18:40):
My lanyard traveler ran on the lifeline cable with a chick, chick, chick, the sound of assurance
clicking itself into my blood. 15 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet, 50 feet. The smell grew stronger and then thinned.
Twice a little sound bumping steel ticked in the cage somewhere below me, and my lungs felt like they
(19:06):
were going to burst from holding my breath. Halfway down the ladder, the cage blocks your view of the sky.
You're inside the steel, and the world turns into a tunnel with just a square of evening at the
top, and the promise of ground under your boots if you keep your head. I kept my head. I counted,
(19:28):
one Mississippi, two Mississippi, like some kid counting himself to sleep.
At 70 feet, I stopped and listened. Something, and there was no getting around it.
Something shifted its weight below. I felt it on the steel. Then I heard a sound that I had heard
(19:50):
thousands of times in my career, the unmistakable warmth, the sound of feet hitting the gravel on the
pad below. I stopped, and I hung onto the ladder for several seconds, listening.
I then heard the gravel crunch as footsteps led away. I waited 30 seconds more,
then quickly moved further down the ladder.
(20:13):
Twelve feet from the concrete pad, the cage opens lower, so a man can step off without cracking
his shins on a ring. Once there I told Zeke to come pick me up, then I went down a few more
rungs, then jumped down to the gravel from a few rungs up. That's when I saw the truck's headlights.
(20:34):
That strange smell still lingered at the bottom of the pad.
I got into Zeke's truck, and we took off down to the main parking lot.
I was almost shaking with relief. Well, I wasn't shaking exactly, but I felt like I was.
I kept looking through the back window in my side mirror, but all I saw was the ground lit
(20:58):
up from the glow from the truck's headlights. Zeke pulled up right next to my truck.
I opened his truck door getting ready to get out, but before I got out he said, "Hey,
did you, did you see it? Please tell me you saw it."
I don't think he was scared exactly. Maybe more surprised. His eyes were big and intense looking
(21:24):
under the truck's dome light as he looked at me questioningly. "No," I said. "Well,
I don't think I did. Well, not so clear anyway. I mean, I saw something."
I trailed off here. It was just hard to know what to say.
"I saw something. That was true." But I didn't have a clear thought on what it was.
(21:46):
Not right then. I would later. Just not right then. It was all so fast and so confusing.
"Tell me, though. What did you see that wasn't clear? Tell me they're not clear part."
Zeke was serious. He wanted me to say it.
I saw something that was hairy and big, but it was getting dark so fast.
(22:13):
Well, that was enough for Zeke. He nodded and he said, "Yeah, yeah it was." And it was tall and heavy
and fast. It was gone out into the woods before I even knew what I was looking at.
Zeke stopped there and looked at me helplessly. I decided, "Let's change course."
"You'll be here tomorrow?" I asked, because I wasn't sure he would be.
(22:36):
"He nodded?" "Yeah, I'll be here. I'll be here," he said.
Then he said, "Hey, what's your call on how to handle this?"
I thought for a second then said, "My call is, we put the lock through the hatch dog when we leave
from now on. My call is, we're not shutting this job down over something that didn't even lay
(23:00):
a hand on us." And my further call is, "We don't work past dusk again."
Zeke looked at me thoughtfully and nodded in agreement. We both breathed like we knew we were finally
allowed to. I got into my truck, we nodded each other and we pulled away. In my rear-view mirror,
(23:23):
the west storm was coming in hot. Heat lightning was backlighting the tower as I drove out.
And for just a split second, my eyes played tricks on me, and I had to do a double take because
I thought I saw the outline of a large human form with lightning behind it, standing off just to the
side of the tank area. But then it was gone. I looked again, and I put my eyes forward just as the
(23:48):
rain cut loose and thunder rolled. I did not dream that night. I lay there instead and counted
rungs on a ladder. The next morning, do sat heavy on everything. We rolled in at sun-up with coffee
and poor opinions, and while the others fired up the compressor, I walked to the pedestal by myself.
(24:11):
The smell was gone. That was all the rain we had overnight. I expected that. If there were any other
traces, the rain took care of those, too. We finished that tower. I won't tell you where it is because,
well, I don't want some stupid men with no harnesses throwing themselves up at it in the middle of
(24:32):
the night trying to find something. We set two more coats on it, lettered the town name back on it
in a better font than they had before, and then we put a fresh gloss on the rails so they shouted
safety even on a dark cloudy day. We left the place neater than we found it, trash-bagged, all the
(24:52):
plastic out, grass not cut up with truck ruts because, you know, that's kind of a respect that you
pay, and that's how you buy your repeat business. When folks ask me if I saw a big foot, I say,
well, I saw a hand, I smelled something that didn't belong to a dog or a man, or a dead skunk
(25:14):
in a ditch, and I saw a dark shape on a ladder, and the impression of a large face looking up at me.
They pressed me for more info, they always pressed me for more. I tell them, listen, I don't climb at dusk
anymore if someone isn't at the bottom guarding my ladder, and that's all I can say.
(25:37):
Every time now that we pull into a town with a blue bowl on stilts, I look at the ladder cage
without meaning to. I scan the nearby area to see how close it is to woods. If it's close,
even during the day, I always put someone on ladder watch. That's just color to safety measure,
(25:59):
that's all. Not every encounter is up close and personal. Summer vague, shadowy, but nonetheless,
it can change the perception for someone forever. Caleb knows what he saw, so to zik,
but they don't have to say it, do they? They just believe each other because they both know.
(26:24):
They both saw, and that's enough. I do hope you enjoyed tonight's ride down into Sasquatch Valley.
We'll be meeting up again soon, until then. Keep your coffee hot, your snackage plentiful,
and you keep your eyes and your ears open to all the things around you,
and always, always remember absence of proof is not proof of absence. Thanks for listening.
(26:58):
(music)
(upbeat music)
[music]
(00:07):
Hi there. Welcome to Buck Eyegigfoot.
Tonight's journey down in Desaskwatch Valley is actually going to take us up,
right up onto a water tower, where something was curious enough to climb the ladder up.
Are you ready? I am. And so are the horses.
So grab your snackage, get a drink, and get your booty on up in the saddle.
(00:29):
It's past time we headed down the trail into Sasquatch Valley. Let's go.
[music]
(00:50):
You can use my first name. I'm Caleb.
I paint tanks and towers for a living, city water, co-ops, those big blue bowls with the town name on them.
We chase rust for counties that can't keep up with salt and weather,
and we make old steel look young enough to pass inspection.
(01:12):
It's good, honest work, but it can be hard, and it will teach you to respect three things.
Gravity, wind, and whatever decides to share a catwalk with you after quitting time.
This was late last fall, late September, when the knights first get that little bite to them.
(01:34):
We were up on a classic single pedestal, spear-rooid water tower.
Looks like one of those big blue lollipops stuck in the clay at the edge of the city.
This is out behind a softball complex in a BFW, out on a patch that sits right on the line between
what belongs to the town and what belongs to the State Parknex door.
(01:56):
The water authority wanted that pedestal in the underside touched up,
and the catwalk railings brought back to safety yellow.
We'd spend a week washing and blasting, chasing pits,
priming with zinc, top coating with a two-part that will stick to a greased eel if you mix it just right.
I'd been on that catwalk enough times to know where every bolt head could snag your pant leg.
(02:21):
There were four of us on the job. Me, my cousin weighed, and two other hands.
Zeke and a young guy called Peanut, who carried full buckets as easily as if they were empty.
They were twelve-hour days if the wind would let us, tin if it didn't.
On the day that I'm talking about, we had wrapped up early because a line of heavy storms was coming
(02:46):
in from the west. Wade took Peanut to go get thinner and rollers, planning to beat the rain in the
morning. Zeke stayed down on the ground to coil cords and to lock the gang box. I stayed up top to
tape off a couple of nozzle plates I wanted to dry by sun up. I was alone out there on the catwalk.
(03:08):
Harness clipped into the cable. Respirator hanging off me like a bib. Knife coiled to the rail for
cutting-taped clean. If you've never been that high when the day is winding down, you really should try
it, at least once. The town suddenly seemed very small. Pick up trucks move around down there like
(03:30):
child's toys. The softball diamonds are now just chalk rings in the distance, turning invisible,
and then suddenly their lights come on, and that's all you can see.
And when the wind dies down, you hear little things up there that you would never hear out on the
street. The flag howards are clicking, bats from the cages two fields over, and someone's mom out
(03:55):
there calling them in from half a mile away. Now the kids probably couldn't hear her, but we could
for some reason. Sound is strange up there. Another thing is still kind of has its own voice.
It pings and sighs as it cools down from a hot day's heat. You get used to the sounds. It's
(04:18):
like listening to your house settle at night. So when something taps the ladder, even at the bottom,
and you're at the top, you hear it, you notice. I was up there and I heard three knocks on the steel.
Knock, knock, knock. It was a hollow sound and it came right up the ladder cage, traveling quick.
(04:41):
I looked up and over to the ladder hatch. No one should be coming up, and I had never heard any of
them bang on the ladder to say they were coming up. I thumbed my radio. Zeke, is that you coming up?
His voice crackled when he replied, "negative, I'm at the truck, sir. Why, you need a hand?"
(05:02):
No, I got a, well, something just banged on the ladder.
Well, wind can do that sometimes, he said, sounding like he didn't even believe it himself.
Then he said, "You good up there?" "Yeah," I said, lying.
I twisted and peered over the catwalk rail toward the vertical cage. The ladder ran up the pedestals
(05:29):
outside. It was old code, with a cage that's more good for pretending at being able to catch someone,
but not really good for catching. And then it ended through a circular hatch on to the catwalk.
That hatch lid was propped open with a wedge, the way we always do it when folks are coming and going,
(05:49):
so you don't have to wrestle it with both hands when you're loaded down.
From where I stood, I couldn't see more than 50 feet straight down. The curve of the tank hides
things, and that cage makes a grid that your eyes just can't see past. Here came the banging or the
knocks again. Knock, knock, knock. It was slower this time, yet it sounded closer.
(06:16):
Every third knock, there was the tiniest shiver through the steel into the meat of my bootsoles.
"Wade?" I said out loud as a last hope. There was no answer. I looked across the parking lot,
and I saw that Wade's F-150 was already gone, presumably with peanut in it.
(06:37):
Then a smell rose up the ladder. Not sewer smell exactly, not dead animal.
Damn pennies and moss kind of smell. Hot and wet. Like someone had bathed a really stinky dog
in a copper tub. Then left the dirty water out in the hot sun all day. This smell came in humid waves.
(07:00):
"Now I've been pranked," I thought. A lot of the guys I knew could be stupid pranksters.
Though I hadn't had anything on this scale from any of the guys before.
Oh, I mean once they taped my hands to a rail. One time they swapped my coffee out with muddy water.
I tied a zip tie once through peanuts harness D-ring so he couldn't unhook himself.
(07:23):
I mean that's the kind of stuff we do to each other. But there wasn't a man on that crew,
or come to think of it, any crew I've ever worked, that could throw smell like that without a bucket.
And I don't think any of them could or would have dealt with that smell for that long.
I was waiting and counting those knocking bangs. And then they stopped. I waited several more seconds.
(07:48):
I set my tape roller down. You know, you make sure you never drop anything off a tank.
It stops being your problem and will suddenly become part of somebody's skull if you do.
Well anyway, I set that down and I walked the catwalk toward the hatch.
My lanyard slid along the lifeline with a lazy little chick, chick, chick, chick.
(08:10):
Anybody down there coming up? I called out because I was going to say it out loud before I looked down.
That way if it was one of the guys, they wouldn't say I was scared or being cowardly.
But no voice answered. I leaned over the hatch one boot against the hinge, one arm on the rail,
(08:32):
body weight in the harness. It wasn't dark yet. Just getting dark and dusky,
more dark blue gray hazy, the color of old blue jeans. But I saw something dark down below,
a definitive shape yet shapeless. It was a dark blob at first, but it was there.
(08:53):
I stared long and hard, and then I saw something that I recognized and was unmistakable.
A hand, coming up and curling around a rung. That hand was no glove, though I told myself it was
for just one or two heartbeats. It was dark and wide across the palm with a pad that seemed
(09:16):
to swallow half the width of the rung. The fingers curled around the rung slowly, like they really
didn't need the structure of the rung to climb, so much as they just wanted to test it out.
I saw hair on it, it seemed short along the back of the hand, yet longer at the wrist.
I saw it stir with the faint up-draft coming off the shell of the tank.
(09:39):
I have trained myself over the years, not to jump, to not be startled. No matter what,
you cannot be jumpy on a catwalk up there. Harnas' can fail, and I've seen enough bad things
happen through the years that I'm always conscious of it. But being startled and jumping on a catwalk,
(10:01):
that's how you go over. That's how you can end. But seeing that hand on the rung,
I came as close to jumping back on a catwalk as I ever have since my very first week on the job,
right after high school graduation. But I didn't jump. My stomach, however,
(10:22):
moved around inside into places that it really didn't belong.
Whoever owned that hand did not care if I saw it.
Jumping Jehosa fat I yelled. I was seeing, and I was still not believing.
I yelled, and then instantly, as I looked down, I saw the impression of a dark face as it leaned
(10:45):
its whole body back against the cage away from the ladder to look up at me. It couldn't
bend its neck. I brought the hatch lid down with one hand, not with a slam, but I did close it down
firmly. I set the wedge aside and twisted the dog latch tight. Then I backed away from the hatch.
(11:07):
I looked over the catwalk railing, but the curve and the darkness didn't allow me to see much of
anything. Suddenly my radio popped and crackled. "You still up there, Caleb?" "Yeah," I said, and then I said,
"Hey, Zeke, check the lock on the anti-clim at the base. Would you?"
(11:27):
"Oh, it's locked," he said, "been locked all day. I checked it when you said you heard some banging
on that ladder." I thought for a second, and then I asked him, "What about somebody inside? Could
they be inside?" I knew that some older towers have interior ladders of the pedestal. "Nah,
(11:49):
he said, doors chained. I got the key on me. Ain't nobody inside that tank, nothing but water."
I looked west, and the sky out there flickered rapidly with heat lightning. Voices from the ballfield
suddenly drifted up to my hearing. "Do me a favor," I said. "Walk to the base. Don't go under the
(12:12):
cage. Just go have a look." "You got it, boss." I heard his boots on the gravel while I stood with my
palm flat on the hatch lid, like a man feeling the hood of a truck to see if it's hot. The steel under
my hand felt occupied. I know that sounds crazy, but that's how it felt. After a few more seconds,
(12:37):
Zick came on the radio. "I'm at the pedestal," he paused, and suddenly his tone changed.
"I—hey, I can smell something. You cooking something up there?"
"No," I said. "What's the anticlimel look like?" "Chainson?" "Lockson," he said.
(12:58):
"Then metal on metal tapped and banged, then stopped." "Hold up," he said. "What? What?" I asked.
Something is there—hey, is there someone else up there with you? Is there someone else on the ladder?
Now by this time Dusk had turned to almost complete darkness, with only vague shapes, shadows,
(13:23):
and movements visible. "I don't know," I said honestly. "Nither of us have lighting that would
cover a hundred feet or more of darkness." "We were quiet together a second," then he said. "You want
me to come up there? You know, meet you halfway?" "I swear, I heard a big swallow after he said
(13:44):
that, a big gulp, kind of like Shaggy on Scooby-Doo." "No," I said, and then took a breath.
"No, you stay put. I'm coming down. Just—just stay clear the landing. Just in case,
I pause, not sure what to say here, and then I said, "Just in case I force someone back down."
(14:09):
Up top I clipped into the lifeline and I walked the catwalk slow. I set my toes, looked out
over the dark and parking lot. The wind came in a little from the west, a little more strongly now,
fluttering the caution tape that we tied to the rail where we didn't want folk stepping down below.
The tape snapped and crinkled as it fluttered, and on the wind was the unmistakable smell of wet dirt
(14:35):
and rain. Down the ladder, something in the darkness moved. I felt the vibration in the steel
where my hand held the railing. This wasn't knocking or banging exactly. It was—it was bumping,
and there's a crucial difference there." "All right," I said, preparing to go down the ladder.
(14:57):
I suddenly knew and understood how my dad must have felt in Vietnam. My dad was a small
guy, barely five foot four, so they used him as a tunnel rat. I remember once overhearing him talking
with my uncles, and he said that he wants you to stand near the cave entrances, and he would be
(15:18):
scared out of his wits before going in. But he would say some prayers and he would talk to himself,
and then he got on with it, because it was all right. "Yeah," I said, "I'll just say a prayer and
talk to myself a bit, and it will be all right." I pulled my knife from the tape on the railing,
and I slid it into my pocket. I took the wedge off the hatch dog where I'd set it, and tucked it
(15:42):
under the rail, getting ready. There were a few more bumps that came up the steel. Then a ladder bump,
and I heard a distinctive muffled sound of light pain. If I was a guessing man, I would guess whoever
or whatever it was down there cracked their shin bones on a rung on the ladder. I tried to mark how far
(16:05):
the sound was down the ladder in my head. Twenty feet? Forty feet? Fifty feet? But I knew it didn't matter.
The impression I saw that face in the darkness, if it was what I thought it was, no hatch dog would
keep it from getting up here. I waited several more minutes, listening to the bangs as they
(16:28):
got fainter and fainter. I radioed down to seek. You see anything? No, but I'm by my truck.
You told me to stay clear. I thought that if he was at his truck, he probably wouldn't be able to
see anything. I thought about telling him to drive his truck over, put his brights on the bottom of
(16:50):
the ladder until I got down, but I didn't. I took another breath and then said, "I'm coming down.
Now listen, I'm going to stay clipped in to my feet, hit the gravel. Get in your truck,
get it running, and if I say go, you go, you get on out of here. And if I say, pick me up,
(17:12):
you drive right up here and you pick me up as close to the ladder as you can. You got me?
I got you," he said, just a little too fast. I said, "Say it again like you're not scared,
and that you understand me."
"I got you," he said, and came out sounding like a man.
(17:33):
I popped the hatch and lifted it slowly. The smell came up like sewage gas from old pipes.
The ladder rungs were black in the light, and my headlamp put only a little cone of nothing out,
and that didn't help much. I put my boot on the first rung down and listened for anything that wasn't me.
(17:55):
"Coming down," I said softly. "Not into the radio, not for Zik, not so much as for whoever
might have ears down there."
Through the years I've descended ladders with lightning threatening to fry me like strips of bacon
and a cast iron skillet. With tornadoes dropping down from the clouds close enough, I could almost touch them.
(18:19):
I've climbed with both hands so numb from cold and ice that I have to look at them to make sure
they're really gripping the ladder rungs. But I have never, and I mean never, grabbed that ladder so tight,
and put my feet on rungs oh so carefully as I did then.
(18:40):
My lanyard traveler ran on the lifeline cable with a chick, chick, chick, the sound of assurance
clicking itself into my blood. 15 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet, 50 feet. The smell grew stronger and then thinned.
Twice a little sound bumping steel ticked in the cage somewhere below me, and my lungs felt like they
(19:06):
were going to burst from holding my breath. Halfway down the ladder, the cage blocks your view of the sky.
You're inside the steel, and the world turns into a tunnel with just a square of evening at the
top, and the promise of ground under your boots if you keep your head. I kept my head. I counted,
(19:28):
one Mississippi, two Mississippi, like some kid counting himself to sleep.
At 70 feet, I stopped and listened. Something, and there was no getting around it.
Something shifted its weight below. I felt it on the steel. Then I heard a sound that I had heard
(19:50):
thousands of times in my career, the unmistakable warmth, the sound of feet hitting the gravel on the
pad below. I stopped, and I hung onto the ladder for several seconds, listening.
I then heard the gravel crunch as footsteps led away. I waited 30 seconds more,
then quickly moved further down the ladder.
(20:13):
Twelve feet from the concrete pad, the cage opens lower, so a man can step off without cracking
his shins on a ring. Once there I told Zeke to come pick me up, then I went down a few more
rungs, then jumped down to the gravel from a few rungs up. That's when I saw the truck's headlights.
(20:34):
That strange smell still lingered at the bottom of the pad.
I got into Zeke's truck, and we took off down to the main parking lot.
I was almost shaking with relief. Well, I wasn't shaking exactly, but I felt like I was.
I kept looking through the back window in my side mirror, but all I saw was the ground lit
(20:58):
up from the glow from the truck's headlights. Zeke pulled up right next to my truck.
I opened his truck door getting ready to get out, but before I got out he said, "Hey,
did you, did you see it? Please tell me you saw it."
I don't think he was scared exactly. Maybe more surprised. His eyes were big and intense looking
(21:24):
under the truck's dome light as he looked at me questioningly. "No," I said. "Well,
I don't think I did. Well, not so clear anyway. I mean, I saw something."
I trailed off here. It was just hard to know what to say.
"I saw something. That was true." But I didn't have a clear thought on what it was.
(21:46):
Not right then. I would later. Just not right then. It was all so fast and so confusing.
"Tell me, though. What did you see that wasn't clear? Tell me they're not clear part."
Zeke was serious. He wanted me to say it.
I saw something that was hairy and big, but it was getting dark so fast.
(22:13):
Well, that was enough for Zeke. He nodded and he said, "Yeah, yeah it was." And it was tall and heavy
and fast. It was gone out into the woods before I even knew what I was looking at.
Zeke stopped there and looked at me helplessly. I decided, "Let's change course."
"You'll be here tomorrow?" I asked, because I wasn't sure he would be.
(22:36):
"He nodded?" "Yeah, I'll be here. I'll be here," he said.
Then he said, "Hey, what's your call on how to handle this?"
I thought for a second then said, "My call is, we put the lock through the hatch dog when we leave
from now on. My call is, we're not shutting this job down over something that didn't even lay
(23:00):
a hand on us." And my further call is, "We don't work past dusk again."
Zeke looked at me thoughtfully and nodded in agreement. We both breathed like we knew we were finally
allowed to. I got into my truck, we nodded each other and we pulled away. In my rear-view mirror,
(23:23):
the west storm was coming in hot. Heat lightning was backlighting the tower as I drove out.
And for just a split second, my eyes played tricks on me, and I had to do a double take because
I thought I saw the outline of a large human form with lightning behind it, standing off just to the
side of the tank area. But then it was gone. I looked again, and I put my eyes forward just as the
(23:48):
rain cut loose and thunder rolled. I did not dream that night. I lay there instead and counted
rungs on a ladder. The next morning, do sat heavy on everything. We rolled in at sun-up with coffee
and poor opinions, and while the others fired up the compressor, I walked to the pedestal by myself.
(24:11):
The smell was gone. That was all the rain we had overnight. I expected that. If there were any other
traces, the rain took care of those, too. We finished that tower. I won't tell you where it is because,
well, I don't want some stupid men with no harnesses throwing themselves up at it in the middle of
(24:32):
the night trying to find something. We set two more coats on it, lettered the town name back on it
in a better font than they had before, and then we put a fresh gloss on the rails so they shouted
safety even on a dark cloudy day. We left the place neater than we found it, trash-bagged, all the
(24:52):
plastic out, grass not cut up with truck ruts because, you know, that's kind of a respect that you
pay, and that's how you buy your repeat business. When folks ask me if I saw a big foot, I say,
well, I saw a hand, I smelled something that didn't belong to a dog or a man, or a dead skunk
(25:14):
in a ditch, and I saw a dark shape on a ladder, and the impression of a large face looking up at me.
They pressed me for more info, they always pressed me for more. I tell them, listen, I don't climb at dusk
anymore if someone isn't at the bottom guarding my ladder, and that's all I can say.
(25:37):
Every time now that we pull into a town with a blue bowl on stilts, I look at the ladder cage
without meaning to. I scan the nearby area to see how close it is to woods. If it's close,
even during the day, I always put someone on ladder watch. That's just color to safety measure,
(25:59):
that's all. Not every encounter is up close and personal. Summer vague, shadowy, but nonetheless,
it can change the perception for someone forever. Caleb knows what he saw, so to zik,
but they don't have to say it, do they? They just believe each other because they both know.
(26:24):
They both saw, and that's enough. I do hope you enjoyed tonight's ride down into Sasquatch Valley.
We'll be meeting up again soon, until then. Keep your coffee hot, your snackage plentiful,
and you keep your eyes and your ears open to all the things around you,
and always, always remember absence of proof is not proof of absence. Thanks for listening.
(26:58):
(music)
(upbeat music)
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