August 22, 2025 • 57 mins
In the summer of 2007, two sixteen-year-old boys from Mountain View, Arkansas set out for what was supposed to be the adventure of a lifetime—three carefree weeks at a remote hunting cabin deep in the Ozark National Forest. Days of fishing, video games, and freedom quickly gave way to something far darker.What began as innocent summer fun spiraled into a nightmare that would shatter their lives forever. The boys came face to face with beings that should not exist—creatures walking upright like men, yet inhuman in every way.
Their wolf-like faces were twisted into unnatural smiles, lined with too many teeth, and their piercing, intelligent eyes carried a predatory awareness no animal should ever have.Fifteen years later, one of those boys is finally ready to speak. Haunted by the trauma that led to his best friend Tyler’s tragic death in an alcohol-related accident, the survivor reveals—for the first time—the horrifying truth of what really happened during those four nights in the cabin… and why he stayed silent until now.
While we cannot independently verify every detail of his account, the psychological trauma he describes is undeniably consistent with severe PTSD. Whether these creatures existed as reported—or represent a traumatic reinterpretation of a violent wildlife attack—the impact on both young men was catastrophic and real.
And it’s worth noting: multiple independent accounts from the Ozark region describe eerily similar encounters. Make of that what you will.
Their wolf-like faces were twisted into unnatural smiles, lined with too many teeth, and their piercing, intelligent eyes carried a predatory awareness no animal should ever have.Fifteen years later, one of those boys is finally ready to speak. Haunted by the trauma that led to his best friend Tyler’s tragic death in an alcohol-related accident, the survivor reveals—for the first time—the horrifying truth of what really happened during those four nights in the cabin… and why he stayed silent until now.
While we cannot independently verify every detail of his account, the psychological trauma he describes is undeniably consistent with severe PTSD. Whether these creatures existed as reported—or represent a traumatic reinterpretation of a violent wildlife attack—the impact on both young men was catastrophic and real.
And it’s worth noting: multiple independent accounts from the Ozark region describe eerily similar encounters. Make of that what you will.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot,
(00:23):
dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
I've never told this story in full, not to anyone,
not even to the therapist that my parents made me
(01:08):
see after that summer. But Tyler's been gone for fifteen
years now, wrapped his truck around that telephone pole on
Highway sixty five three weeks before graduation, and I think
maybe it's time someone knew what really happened in those
woods outside of Mountain View. People always assumed Tyler started
drinking because of typical teenage stuff, stress about college, maybe
(01:30):
some girl problems. Nobody knew the real reason he couldn't
sleep without a bottle.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
By his bed.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Nobody knew why he'd wake up screaming about yellow eyes
and the smell of wet dog. Nobody understood why he'd
sometimes just start shaking in the middle of class, staring
at nothing, gripping his desk until his knuckles went white.
They found him at three in the morning, blood alcohol
level twice the legal limit, ninety miles an hour on
a straight stretch of road. Everyone said it was such
(01:58):
a tragedy, such a way. They had no idea. The
tragedy started two years earlier, in the summer of two
thousand and seven. We were sixteen that June, just finished
our sophomore year at Mountain View High Tyler's uncle owned
this hunting cabin up near the Ozark National Forest, about
twenty miles north of town, where the cell towers don't
(02:19):
reach and the nearest neighbor is a forty minute drive
through logging roads that wash out every time it rains.
His uncle, Dale, was doing contract work on oil rigs
in Texas all summer told Tyler, we could use the place.
As long as we didn't burn it down and kept
the generator fueled. It seemed perfect. Two teenage boys with
a whole cabin to themselves for three weeks, no parents
(02:42):
checking on us, no rules about bedtime or screen time,
no younger siblings annoying us. We loaded Tyler's beat up
Chevy S ten with enough supplies to last us the
first week. Cases of mountain dew, bags of Doritos, frozen pizzas,
hot dogs, hamburger meat, real gourmet stuff. We had our
(03:02):
Xbox three sixty, a portable generator, since the cabin only
had basic solar for lights, and enough DVDs to keep
us entertained. When we got bored of fishing, Tyler brought
his uncle's shotgun too, a Remington eight seventy that Dale
kept at the cabin for scaring off black bears. The
drive up there took forever on those winding dirt roads.
(03:23):
Tyler kept having to slow down for washouts from the
spring rains. The trees got thicker the further we went,
pressing in on both sides, until it felt like driving
through a green tunnel. Even in the middle of the afternoon.
It was dark under that canopy The road hadn't been
graded in years, and we bottomed out twice on ruts
that looked shallow but weren't. I remember feeling excited but
(03:46):
also a little uneasy as we got deeper into the woods,
something about how the trees seemed to swallow sound. You'd
expect to hear birds, insects, something, but it was like
driving into a void. Tyler had the radio on some
rock station that kept cutting in and out with static,
and eventually we just turned it off and drove in silence.
(04:06):
The cabin sat in a small clearing, maybe two acres
of rough grass that had n't been mowed in months,
surrounded by pine and oak forest so thick you couldn't
see more than ten feet into the trees. It wasn't
much to look at, single story brown wood siding that
needed restaining, metal roof covered in pine needles and oak
leaves from who knows how many seasons. There was a
(04:29):
small porch out front with two broken rocking chairs and
a rusted wind chime that didn't move, even though I
could feel a breeze. The inside was about what you'd
expect from a hunting cabin that got used maybe three
times a year. Musty smell, mouse droppings in the corners,
a layer of dust on everything. The main room had
an old stone fireplace, a couch that had seen better days,
(04:52):
and a kitchen area with appliances from the seventies. One
bedroom with two twin beds mattresses stained with god knows what.
The bathroom was just a toilet that ran on a
septic system. The real bathroom was the outhouse out back.
That first day was everything we'd hoped for. We set
up the xbox on this ancient TV Tyler's uncle had,
(05:13):
probably from the eighties, one of those huge crt things
that weighed a ton. Spent an hour getting the generator
running and positioned far enough from the cabin that the
noise wouldn't drive us crazy. Caught some bluegill down at
the pond, about a quarter mile through the woods. There
was a trail, but it was overgrown and we had
to push through brambles to get there. The pond was murky,
(05:35):
covered in algae, but the fish were biting. That night,
we stayed up until three in the morning, playing Halo
three and eating an entire bag of pizza rolls that
we cooked on the propane stove. We felt like kings.
No one telling us to go to bed, no one's
saying we'd had enough junk food. Just two best friends
living it up in the middle of nowhere. The second day,
(05:55):
we explored more.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Of the property.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Found an old deer stand about a half mile in
to the woods that was half collapsed, the wooden steps
rotted through. There were these weird scratches on the trees
around it, too high up to be from deer rubbing
their antlers. Tyler said it was probably bears marking territory,
but the marks looked deliberate, almost like something had been
counting four parallel lines over and over all around the stand.
(06:22):
We found other weird stuff too, a clearing where all
the grass was dead in a perfect circle, maybe twenty
feet across. The soil in the middle was dark, almost black,
and nothing was growing there, even though it was the
middle of summer. Tyler kicked at the dirt and uncovered
what looked like small bones, but we couldn't tell from what.
(06:42):
Probably rabbits or squirrels, we told ourselves that second night
is when things started feeling off. I woke up around
two thirty needing to piss something awful. All that mountain.
Dew had to go somewhere. The cabin only had an
outhouse about thirty feet from the back door, through grass
that was knee high and wet with dew. I grabbed
(07:02):
the flashlight we kept by the door, one of those
heavy maglights that doubles as a weapon, and stepped outside.
The night was dead quiet. No crickets, no tree frogs,
no owl calls.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Nothing.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
If you've spent any time in the Arkansas woods, you
know that's not normal. Summer nights are supposed to be
loud with insects and animals. The silence was so complete
I could hear my own heart beat. The outhouse was
one of those old wooden jobs, basically a box with
a hole cut in a bench.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Spiders everywhere.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I did my business quick as I could, trying not
to think about what might be crawling around down in
that hole. As I was finishing up, I heard something breathing,
heavy rhythmic breathing, like a big dog panting, but deeper,
more deliberate. It was coming from right outside the outhouse door.
I froze hand on the door latch. The breathing continued,
(07:58):
and then I heard sniffing, long, deep, inhales, like something
was trying to catch a scent. The door creaked as
something pressed against it, not hard, just a gentle pressure,
like it was testing. I held my breath, flashlight gripped
so tight my hand was shaking. The sniffing moved around
the outhouse, circling it. I could track whatever it was
(08:20):
by the sound the crack of twigs under heavy feet.
It circled twice, then stopped right back at the door.
A low growl, but not like any dog I'd ever heard, deeper,
resonating in a way that seemed to come from everywhere
at once. It vibrated through the wooden walls, through my chest,
then nothing, complete silence for maybe thirty seconds that felt
(08:43):
like hours. I waited another full minute before cracking the
door open. The flashlight beam cut through the darkness, showing
nothing but grass and trees. But the smell hit me immediately,
like wet dog mixed with something else, something rotten roadkill
that's been sitting in the sun. It was strong enough
to make me gag. I ran back to the cabin.
(09:06):
I'm not ashamed to admit. It sprinted through that tall
grass like my life depended on it. Practically dove through
the door, slammed it shut and locked it. Tyler was
still passed out on the couch, Xbox controller in his hand,
drooling on himself. I thought about waking him up, but
felt stupid getting spooked by some coyote or maybe a
(09:26):
black bear. Bear smelled terrible. I told myself, that's all
it was. I laid back down on the floor in
my sleeping bag, but didn't sleep the rest of the night.
Every little sound made me jump. The cabin creaking as
it cooled, the wind in the trees, the generator humming outside,
and underneath it all I kept thinking I could hear
(09:48):
that breathing, that deliberate panting somewhere out in the darkness.
The next morning, I told Tyler about it while we
made breakfast scrambled eggs and bacon on the propane stove.
He laughed at first, called me a pussy, said I
was letting the woods get to me. But when we
went outside to check, he got quiet real fast. There
(10:09):
were tracks in the dirt around the outhouse, big tracks.
They looked like a dog's prince, but wrong somehow. The
toes were too long for one thing, spread out like fingers,
and the pad was shaped weird, elongated, like a human
foot trying to be a paw. The prints were deep,
whatever made them was heavy. We followed them around the outhouse,
(10:31):
two complete circles, just like I'd heard. Then they led
off toward the tree line. Tyler knelt down next to
one of the clearer prints, put his hand next to
it for scale. The print was bigger than his spread fingers.
He stood up, wiped his hands on his jeans, and
tried to play it off. Probably just a big coyote
with deformed feet or something, he said. But I saw
(10:53):
how he kept looking at those tracks while we ate
breakfast on the porch, and I noticed he went back
inside to get the shotgun, loaded it and kept it
leaning against the wall. We spent that day down at
the pond, trying to pretend everything was normal, but it wasn't.
The woods felt different, watchful. We kept hearing things, branches
(11:14):
breaking in the distance, rustling in the underbrush that stopped
whenever we looked. At one point, we both saw something
moving between the trees on the far side of the pond,
just a shadow there and gone, but it looked tall,
too tall to be a deer. The fish weren't biting either.
The pond was dead quiet, no insects skimming the surface,
(11:36):
no frogs in the reeds. Tyler said maybe a storm
was coming, that animals go quiet before bad weather. But
the sky was clear, not a cloud anywhere. As the
sun started getting low, neither of us wanted to admit
we were nervous about another night. We packed up our
fishing gear without talking about it, and headed back early
(11:56):
on the trail back to the cabin, we found something
that made us both stop dead. A deer carcass, but
not killed like a normal predator would. It was spread
out pieces arranged almost deliberately. The head was placed on
a rock like a display. The legs were pulled off
and laid out in a line. The torso was opened up,
(12:16):
organs removed and piled neatly beside it. No animal does that.
Animals kill MESSI eat what they want, leave the rest scattered.
This was organized, Tyler threw up in the bushes. I
just stood there, staring, trying to make sense of it.
The smell was overwhelming, death and that wet dog stench
(12:37):
mixed together. There were those same strange dog like tracks
all around the carcass. We practically ran back to the
cabin after that, cooked our hot dogs inside instead of
using the fire pit outside like we'd planned. We even
moved the couch to block the back door. Told ourselves
it was to keep raccoons out, but we both knew
that was bullshit. As darkness fell, we prepared for another night.
(13:02):
Tyler showed me how to load the shotgun where his
uncle kept the extra shells. We filled every empty bottle
with water so we wouldn't have to go outside. We
even found an old metal pot to piss in if necessary.
Looking back, we should have just left packed up right
then and driven home, but we were sixteen and stupid
and didn't want to look like cowards running from what
(13:23):
was probably just a weird coyote or sick bear. That night,
I made sure to piss in a bottle instead of
going outside. Tyler did the same. We stayed up playing
video games, but neither of us was really paying attention.
We had the volume turned low so we could hear
if anything approached the cabin. Around midnight, we heard it
(13:43):
something walking through the leaves outside, slow deliberate steps, not
the random wandering of an animal. It circled the cabin
and we could track its movement by the sound clockwise,
a complete circuit. Then it stopped at the front window.
Tyler and I were frozen on the couch, controllers forgotten
in our hands. The TV cast a blue glow on
(14:06):
the window, and for a moment I thought I saw
a shadow move across it. Too tall to be a
person standing on the ground. Whatever it was would have
to be seven, maybe eight feet tall. Then came the scratching,
long slow drags across the wood siding, starting at the
window and moving toward the door. It sounded like a
knife being pulled across the grain, but deeper, multiple points
(14:30):
of contact. The sound made my teeth hurt, made something
primal in my brain scream danger. Tyler grabbed the shotgun
with shaking hands. I grabbed a baseball bat we'd found
in a closet, like that would do any good against
something that tall. The scratching stopped at the door. We waited,
barely breathing. The doorknob turned, just a little wiggle at first, testing,
(14:54):
then more aggressive rattling it. The lock held, but the
whole door frame creaked. Stay tuned for more Backwoods big
Foot stories. We'll be back after these messages. Whatever was
out there was strong. Then it knocked three deliberate knocks
like a person would That was somehow worse than anything else.
(15:16):
It knew how to knock. It understood doors, and knocking
three more knocks, harder this time, the door shook in
its frame. Tyler pumped the shotgun, the sound impossibly loud.
In the silence, the knocking stopped. We heard footsteps moving
away from the door, around to the side of the cabin.
Than nothing, complete silence for maybe five minutes. A howl
(15:41):
erupted from right outside the door, not a wolf howl,
not a dog, something in between, but way scarier, starting
low and rising to a pitch that hurt my ears.
It was so loud I felt it in my bones,
in my teeth. Tyler jerked and the shotgun went off,
blowing a hole through the door about head height. The
(16:01):
howl cut off instantly, and we heard something big crash
through the underbrush, moving fast away from the cabin. We
sat there until dawn, Tyler reloading the shotgun with trembling fingers,
me holding that stupid bat like it would protect us.
We didn't talk. We just sat and listened and waited
for the sun When morning finally came, we worked up
(16:24):
the courage to look outside. The door had deep gouges
in the wood, four parallel lines, like claw marks, but
space two wide for any bear. Each gouge was nearly
an inch deep and solid oak. There was a tuft
of coarse, dark hair caught in the splintered wood where
the shotgun blast went through. The hair was thick, almost
(16:45):
like wire. And that smell, God, that smell was everywhere, wet,
dog and death and something else, something musky and wild.
But the worst part was what we found on the porch.
Bones arranged in an a neat pile right in front
of the door, Small bones, probably from rabbits or squirrels,
(17:05):
picked clean and stacked like a little pyramid, a message
or a warning. We should have left right then. Any
sane person would have packed up, drove home, never looked back.
But we were teenage boys, and we'd already been there
three nights, and we told ourselves we'd scared it off.
Whatever it was, Tyler's shotgun blast had sent it running.
(17:28):
We convinced ourselves it was afraid of us.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Now.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
We spent the fourth day fortifying the cabin like we
were preparing for a siege, moved the refrigerator in front
of the back door, took both of us and a
furniture dolly we found in a shed to manage it.
Pushed the dresser from the bedroom against the front window.
Tyler found a box of nails and some old boards
in the shed, and we hammered boards across the other windows.
(17:53):
Looking back, we were just trapping ourselves, but at the
time it felt safer. We also explored the shed more
thoroughly and found some interesting things. There were more of
those wire thick hairs caught on nails and rough wood,
scratch marks on the inside of the door, like something
had been locked in and tried to claw its way out.
And in the back corner under a tarp, we found
(18:15):
a journal. It was Dale's, Tyler's uncle. The entries went
back two years, normal stuff at first, notes about deer movement,
weather patterns, which areas were good for hunting, But then
the tone changed. He started writing about finding tracks he
couldn't identify, hearing sounds at night that weren't like anything
he'd heard in thirty years of hunting, finding deer carcasses
(18:39):
that were killed but not eaten, just torn apart, and left.
The last entry was from the previous November, right before
he took the job in Texas. It just said they're
getting bolder. Found tracks on the porch this morning, leaving tomorrow.
Won't be back until they move on. Tyler went pale
reading that his uncle hadn't taken that job for the
(19:01):
money he'd ran. He'd known something was out here, and
he'd ran instead of facing it, and he'd let us
come up here without warning us. We spent the rest
of the day inside, reading through the journal more carefully.
Dale had theories thought maybe it was a pack of
koy wolves coyote wolf hybrids that were bigger and meaner
than either parent species, but even he didn't seem convinced.
(19:25):
One entry described seeing eyes reflecting in his flashlight beam,
but too high up, would have to be eight feet
off the ground. As the sun went down, we were ready,
or we thought we were. Tyler had the shotgun, five
shells left. I had the bat and a hunting knife
i'd found in a drawer. We'd left one small window
(19:46):
in the bedroom uncovered so we could see out, and
we took turns watching. Full dark came around. Nine clouds
had rolled in during the afternoon, so there was no moon,
no stars, just complete blackness beyond the window. We sat
in the bedroom, lights off so our eyes could adjust,
taking turns looking out into nothing. Around ten, Tyler grabbed
(20:08):
my arm. He pointed at the tree line. At first
I didn't see anything. Then I caught it, two yellow lights,
like eyes reflecting, but they were too far apart to
be from the same animal, unless it had a head
the size of a garbage can. The lights blinked out,
then appeared again, closer, then again closer.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Still.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It was at the edge of the clearing when we
finally saw it properly, silhouetted against the slightly lighter sky.
At first, my brain tried to make sense of what
I was seeing, tried to fit it into something normal,
but there was nothing normal about it. It stood upright
like a man, but hunched forward. Had to be seven
and a half maybe eight feet tall. Its body was
(20:51):
covered in dark, matted fur, but the proportions were all wrong.
The legs were bent backward at the knee like a
dog's hind legs. The arms were too long, hanging down
past where its knees should be, ending in hands that
weren't quite hands. Weren't quite paws, long fingers that ended
in claws, but with too many joints. But the head
(21:12):
was the worst part. It was shaped like a wolf's head,
but larger, sitting on shoulders that were almost human. The
snout was shorter than a normal wolf, pushed in like
someone had tried to make a wolf face more human.
The ears were pointed, but set wrong, too far forward.
And those eyes, they reflected the dim light from the cabin,
(21:33):
yellow like a cat's eyes, but brighter, and they were
looking right at the window, right at us. It tilted
its head, studying the cabin. Then it did something that
made my blood turn to ice. It smiled. The lips
pulled back, revealing rows of teeth that had no business
being in any earthly creature's mouth. Too many teeth, different sizes,
(21:56):
some flat like human molars, others sharp like a editor's fangs.
And that smile was deliberate, knowing it saw us watching,
and it smiled. Tyler made a sound, half gasp, half whimper.
The thing's head snapped toward the window, focusing on us.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
It took a step.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Forward, then another, not on all fours, like an animal
walking upright, but with that horrible backward bent leg gate
that looked like it shouldn't work, but did. That's when
we heard the howl from behind the cabin. Another one,
then another from the left side, three of them at
least they were surrounding us. Something slammed into the front door.
(22:39):
The whole cabin shook. The refrigerator we'd use to block
the back door scraped across the floor as something pushed
from the other side. We were being attacked from both directions.
The front door started splintering, wood, cracking nails, screaming as
they pulled free. Tyler fired through it pumped. The shotgun
fired again. A yelp from outside, then an angry roar
(23:01):
that sounded like a dog's bark mixed with a man's scream,
but the assault didn't stop. The refrigerator flew away from
the back door like it weighed nothing, crashing into the
kitchen counter. The door exploded inward, and one of them
forced its way inside, having to duck and twist to
fit through the doorframe. In the confined space of the cabin,
(23:22):
it seemed even bigger. The smell was overwhelming, making my
eyes water, making it.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Hard to breathe.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
It looked at Tyler with the shotgun, then at me
with my pathetic bat, and it laughed, not an animal sound,
a laugh, rough and deep, but unmistakably a laugh. Tyler
shot at point blank in the chest. It staggered back,
black blood splattering the walls, but it didn't go down.
(23:49):
It rushed forward, swiping at Tyler with those huge hands.
The claws caught his shoulder, tearing through his shirt, through
skin and muscles, spinning him around. The shotgun flew for
his hands, clattering across the floor. I swung the bat
as hard as I could at its head. The aluminum
bat connected with a solid crack and immediately bent, then
(24:09):
shattered like it was made of glass. The creature barely flinched.
It back handed me across the room. I hit the
wall hard, saw stars, tasted blood through blurred vision. I
saw it advancing on Tyler, who was crawling backward, holding
his torn shoulder with one hand, leaving a trail of blood.
The front door exploded off its hinges, and the one
(24:32):
I'd seen through the window entered. This one was bigger,
had to turn sideways to fit through the doorframe. The
two creatures looked at each other, and I swear They
communicated not with words, but with posture, with small movements
of their heads. The bigger one approached Tyler, while the
wounded one turned toward me. Up close, I could see
(24:53):
details I wish I couldn't. Its fur was matted with
dirt and what looked like dried blood scar Chris crossed
its body, old wounds that had healed badly. Its hands, God,
those hands had six fingers each, all different lengths, all
ending in yellowed claws. The smell coming off it made
(25:15):
me dry heave. It reached for me, and I knew
I was going to die. Those claws would tear through
me like paper. I closed my eyes, waiting for the pain.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
That's when we heard the truck.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Headlights flooded through the windows, an engine roaring up.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
The dirt road.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
A spotlight hit the cabin, blazingly bright after the darkness,
and someone laid on the horn. Three sharp blasts, then
the sound of doors slamming. The creatures froze, head snapping
toward the light. Then came the gunshots, not a shot gun,
a rifle, big caliber. From the sound, and whoever was
shooting knew what they were doing. The shots were measured, deliberate,
(25:57):
both creatures bolted. The wounded one went back through the
back door, moving faster than anything that sighs.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Should be able to move.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
The bigger one literally dove through the boarded up window,
taking half the wall with it. Wood and glass exploded outward.
We heard them crashing through the forest, howls fading into
the distance, but those weren't howls of pain or fear.
They sounded almost frustrated. A man appeared in what was
left of the doorway, rifle at the ready for a
(26:27):
service uniform badge, catching the light from the truck. He
was maybe forty, built, like someone who spent his life outdoors,
weathered face thousand yards stare that told me he'd seen
these things before. He swept the cabin with his rifle,
checking corners, making sure they were gone. Then he looked
at the destruction, at the blood on the walls, at
(26:49):
Tyler bleeding on the floor, and me slumped against the wall.
His expression didn't change, no surprise, no disbelief, just a
grim acceptance. Then he said the words, I'll never forget.
We need to leave now, they'll be back with the
whole pack. He didn't wait for us to respond, just
(27:10):
moved to Tyler, pulled off his own shirt and pressed
it against Tyler's shoulder to slow the bleeding. I tried
to stand and almost fell, my head spinning from the
impact with the wall. Can you walk, the ranger asked me.
I nodded, though I wasn't sure. Help me get your
friend to the truck. We've got maybe five minutes before
(27:31):
they regroup. We half carried, half dragged Tyler to the
ranger's truck, a Forest Service F twoin fifty with light
bars and a winch. The ranger went back for the
shotgun and as many shells as he could find. As
he climbed into the driver's seat, we heard howls in
the distance. Not one or two, a lot, maybe a dozen.
(27:52):
Buckle up, he said, throwing the truck in reverse. This
is going to be rough. He wasn't kidding. He drove
those logging roads like a maniac, taking turns so fast
I thought we'd flip The headlights, swept across the trees,
and more than once I saw eyes reflecting in the darkness,
pacing us. Tyler was drifting in and out of consciousness,
(28:14):
his blood soaking through the ranger's shirt. About three miles
down the road. Something slammed into the side of the truck.
We swerved tires, screaming, but the ranger kept control. Another
impact on the other side. They were trying to force
us off the road. The ranger reached for his radio
with one hand while driving with the other Unit seventeen
(28:35):
to dispatch Code black, Repeat Code black. Two civilians injured
extracting now request medical at Mountain View General. The response
was immediate copy Unit seventeen Medical en route godspeed, Code black.
They had a code for this. Another impact, this time
(28:56):
from behind. I looked back and saw one of them
in the truck bed claws digging into the medal.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
The ranger saw it.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
In the mirror, slammed on the brakes.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
The creature flew forward over.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
The cab, hit the road, hard rolled. The ranger gunned
it and I felt the bump as we ran it over.
It screamed, not a howl, a scream. We made it
to the main road and the attack stopped. Either we'd
outrun them or they wouldn't follow us onto the paved road.
The ranger didn't slow down, though, He drove straight to
(29:27):
Mountain View General, pulled right up to the emergency entrance
and started honking. The medical staff rushed out, got Tyler
on a gurney. The ranger talked to them in low tones,
and I heard him say animal attack and likely rabid.
They nodded like they understood, but I saw the looks
they exchanged. They'd seen this before too. While Tyler was
(29:49):
in surgery, the ranger sat with me in the waiting room.
That's when he told me his name, Bill Hutchinson. He'd
been a ranger in the Ozark National Forest for fifteen years.
Stay tuned from more backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back
after these messages. You boys are lucky, he said, though
nothing about what happened felt lucky. Most people who encountered
(30:11):
them don't make it out. I asked him what they were.
He was quiet for a long time before answering, we
don't know exactly. Been in these mountains longer than people
near as we can tell. The Cherokee had stories about them,
called them the Nu Nahi. The French trappers in the
seventeen hundreds wrote about the Loop Garou. In the forties,
(30:33):
folks called them the Ozark black howlers. Different names, same creatures.
He told me the Forest Service had been tracking them
for decades. Officially they didn't exist. Unofficially, there was a
whole protocol. Certain areas of the forest were off limits
during certain times of year, though they told the public
it was for wildlife management. When hikers went missing, they'd search,
(30:57):
but they knew they wouldn't find anything. Why don't you
tell people, I asked, Bill laughed, but there was no
humor in it. Tell them what that there are seven
foot tall wolf people living in the National Forest. You
think anyone would believe that? And even if they did,
what then you'd have every crypto hunter and YouTube personality
in the country up here, with thermal cameras and ar fifteens.
(31:20):
These things are smart. They'd either hide deeper or get aggressive.
Either way, more people would die. He told me they'd
been monitoring increased activity in the area for weeks, Livestock
going missing from farms on the forest edge, Strange calls
coming in from hunters who wouldn't quite say what they'd seen.
He'd been doing a night patrol when he heard Tyler's
(31:42):
shotgun from two miles away.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
That cabin.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
He said, it's in their territory, has been for years.
Dale knew that's why he left. Should have warned you boys,
but I guess he figured you'd think he was crazy.
Tyler needed forty seven stitches in his shoulder. The wounds
were deep, had torn through muscle down to the bone
in places. The doctor said he was lucky the claus
(32:06):
hadn't hit any major arteries. I had a concussion in
three cracked ribs from hitting the wall. They kept us
both for observation for three days. Bill came to see
us once more before we were discharged. He sat us
down and explained things we needed to know what you saw.
He said, it's real, but nobody's going to believe you
if you talk about it. My advice don't tell people
(32:30):
it was a bear attack. Let them think what they want.
The truth will only make your lives harder. He gave
us his card, told us to call if we ever
needed to talk. Then he said something that stuck with me.
You boys survived something most don't. That's going to be
hard to live with. The knowing, the remembering. Don't let
it destroy you. Before he left, I had to ask,
(32:55):
how many are there in that territory? Maybe thirty or
forty in the whole Ozark range. We don't know, hundreds,
maybe they're spread out territorial. The pack that hit you
is one of the more aggressive ones. We've been trying
to push them deeper into the wilderness, away from where
people go, but they're stubborn. That area has been theirs
(33:17):
for generations. Why that cabin, Tyler asked, his voice rough
from pain medication. Why did they attack us? Bill shrugged.
Could be lots of reasons. Maybe you were in their
territory during mating season. Maybe they saw you as competition.
Maybe they were just curious and it escalated. They're intelligent,
(33:37):
but they're not human, don't think like us. Sometimes they
ignore people completely. Sometimes he didn't finish. We never went
back for our stuff. Bill said he'd handle it, and
a week later, Tyler's truck showed up in his driveway
with everything packed in the back, everything except the Xbox,
which we found out later had been destroyed, along with
(33:58):
half the cabin. The insurance company paid out for storm damage.
Tyler's parents wanted to know what happened, so did mine.
We stuck to the bear attack story, but I could
tell they didn't fully believe us. Tyler's mom kept asking
why a bear would attack the cabin so aggressively, Why
we hadn't just stayed inside and waited for it to leave.
(34:20):
We didn't have good answers. The physical wounds healed, mostly
Tyler's shoulder never worked quite right again. He couldn't lift
his arm above his head, couldn't throw a football anymore.
He quit the baseball team. The coaches were disappointed. He'd
been a decent pitcher, But how could he explain that
every time he tried to wind up for a throw,
(34:40):
he'd remember those claws tearing through his shoulder. The mental
wounds were worse. We both had nightmares. I'd wake up
smelling that wet dog stench, convinced something was outside my window.
Tyler had it worse. He'd call me at three in
the morning, drunk already crying about the yellow eyes, about
how they'd looked at us like we were prey, like
(35:02):
we were nothing but meat. His grades tanked junior year,
started drinking at parties, then drinking alone. His parents tried
to get him help, took him to a therapist in
Little Rock who specialized in trauma, But what was he
going to tell her that he was traumatized by where wolves?
He went to three sessions, then refused to go back said.
(35:24):
The therapist kept trying to make him admit it was
really a bear, that his mind had exaggerated the trauma.
We'd hang out and not even need to talk about it.
Just knowing someone else knew was enough. But I could
see him deteriorating. He'd flinch at dog barks, couldn't watch
any movies with wolves or even dogs in them. Stopped
going to parties if they were anywhere near Woods. Senior
(35:47):
year was when it got really bad. He was drinking
every day by then, vodka and water bottles at school.
His parents found bottles hidden all over his room. They
tried an intervention, but what was he supposed to say
that alcohol was the only thing that made the memories
fuzzy enough to handle. He started talking about them being
out there waiting, said he could feel them sometimes, like
(36:10):
they were watching. I told him he was being paranoid,
but honestly I felt it too sometimes, that sensation of
being observed, of being marked somehow. Two weeks before graduation,
he called me at two in the morning. He was wasted, crying,
said he'd seen one. Said it was in his backyard,
(36:30):
just standing at the tree line, watching his house. I
told him it was the alcohol, that he was seeing things,
but he swore it was real, said it had smiled
at him through his bedroom window, just like that night.
I should have gone over, should have taken his keys,
should have done something. But I was tired of the
late night calls, tired of trying to hold him together
(36:53):
when I was barely holding myself together. I told him
to sleep it off, that i'd come over in the morning.
The police he said he was going ninety when he
hit that telephone pole, dead on impact, blood alcohol level
zero point one point six. His parents were devastated. Everyone
at school was shocked. Tyler had been troubled, sure, but
(37:13):
nobody saw this coming.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I knew better.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Tyler didn't crash because he was drunk. He was drunk
because he couldn't live with what we'd seen, couldn't live
with the knowledge that those things were out there. The
drinking was just how he coped until he couldn't cope anymore.
At his funeral, I wanted to tell the truth, stand
up and say that Tyler died because of what happened
in those woods, that he was a casualty of something
(37:38):
nobody would believe. But I just sat there silent while
people talked about what a tragedy it was, how he
had so much potential, how addiction had claimed another young life.
His parents gave me some of his things afterward, his
baseball glove, some video games, photos of us from better times,
(37:58):
and in a box of his stuff found a notebook.
He'd been researching them. Pages and pages of Internet printouts,
forum posts, historical accounts. He'd found stories going back hundreds
of years, Native American legends about shape shifters in the
Ozark Mountains, French trapper journals describing the Loop Garu, newspaper
(38:19):
articles from the nineteen forties about the Ozark Howler. He'd
mapped out sightings, tried to establish territory patterns, had a
theory that they moved in cycles, expanding and contracting their
range based on human activity. He'd marked our cabin with
a red ex and written ground zero next to it.
The last entry was from the night before he died,
(38:41):
just one line, They're coming closer. I left Arkansas after graduation,
went to college in Colorado, about as far from those
woods as I could get. Studied computer science. Got a
job in Denver after graduation, built a life that had
nothing to do with forests, or camping or anything that
might remind me of that summer, but I couldn't escape
(39:02):
it entirely. I'd see new stories about missing hikers and
national forests and wonder read about bear attacks that didn't
quite add up. Found online communities of people claiming to
have seen similar creatures, though most of them were clearly
fake or misidentified animals. Sometimes I'd find one that rang true, though,
(39:23):
details that matched what we'd seen. The wrong jointed legs,
the two long arms, the smile.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
When I found.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Those, i'd reach out privately, tell them they weren't crazy,
that I'd seen them too. Five years after Tyler died,
I looked up Bill Hutchinson. He'd retired early moved to Florida.
We talked on the phone for an hour. He told
me there had been three more attacks since hours, all fatalities.
The Forest Service had a task force now trying to
(39:52):
track the creatures with thermal drones and genetic sampling. Still
keeping it quiet, though we found something interesting, he said,
Remember that blood in your cabin. We had it analyzed.
It's complicated canine DNA, but also primate markers and some
sequences we can't identify at all. Whatever these things are.
(40:13):
They're not natural, not anymore anyway. He had a theory
that they were an evolutionary offshoot, something that developed in
isolation in the Ozark Mountains, maybe started as wolves or
early humans or something in between, then changed over millennia
into what they are now. Or maybe they were always
here and we're the invaders in their territory. The scary part,
(40:37):
he said, is how smart they are. They learn after
your encounter. They changed tactics, stopped attacking cabins directly. Now
they pick off loan hikers. Make it look like accidents,
falls from cliffs, drownings, exposure. They're adapting to avoid detection.
He asked about Tyler. When I told him, he went
(40:58):
quiet for a long time. Then he said, I'm sorry, son,
I've seen what knowing does to people. Your friend isn't
the first to crack under that weight. Won't be the
last either. Ten years after that summer, I made a mistake.
I'd been dating a woman named Sarah and things were
getting serious. She wanted to go camping for her birthday.
(41:19):
Said she'd found this perfect spot in Rocky Mountain National Park.
I tried to suggest other trips Vegas, the Beach anywhere
but the woods, but she had her heart set on it.
I thought I could handle it. It had been over
a decade, different state, different mountains. What were the odds.
The first night was fine, We had a nice campfire,
(41:42):
roasted marshmallows, looked at stars. I started to relax, thinking
maybe I was over it. Then around midnight I heard it,
that deliberate breathing outside the tent, that sniffing. I grabbed Sarah,
covered her mouth before she could speak, and held absolutely still.
The breathing circled our tent twice, then stopped. I waited,
(42:05):
every muscle tensed, ready to run, but after a few
minutes I heard it moving away through the underbrush. I
told Sarah we had to leave now. We packed up
in the dark, through everything in the car, drove out
of their doing sixty on mountain roads. She thought I'd
lost my mind. I told her about bears, made up
something about hearing on the radio that there had been
(42:26):
attacks in the area. She didn't believe me. We broke
up a month later. She said I'd changed after that
camping trip, become paranoid and distant.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
She wasn't wrong.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
The knowledge that they weren't just in Arkansas that they
were here too in Colorado. It broke something in me.
I did more research after that found similar accounts from
the Rockies, the Cascades, the Appalachians. Different names windi go,
skin walkers, dog men, but the same basic description. They're
not just in the Ozarks. They're everywhere. There are deep
(43:00):
woods and mountains. We just don't see them because they
don't want to be seen. Fifteen years have passed now.
I'm thirty three, working as a software developer for a
tech company in Denver. I live in a high rise
apartment in the middle of the city, as far from
wilderness as I can get. I haven't been camping since
that night with Sarah, haven't even been hiking, but I
(43:22):
can't escape the knowledge. When people talk about their weekend
camping trips, I want to grab them and scream, don't
you know what's out there? When I see missing hiker
reports on the news, I know what probably happened to them.
When people joke about Bigfoot or cryptids, I stay silent
because the truth isn't funny. I still have nightmares, not
(43:42):
every night anymore, but often enough. In them, I'm back
in that cabin, but this time Bill doesn't come this time.
Those things get inside and I watch them tear tiler
apart while I hide in the corner like a coward.
I wake up, gasping, drenched in sweat, checking the locks
on my apartment door, even though I'm fifteen floors up.
(44:03):
I've thought about going public with the story, writing a book,
doing a podcast, something to warn people, But who would
believe me? And according to Bill, the ones who do believe,
the ones who go looking for proof, they're the ones
who don't come back. The creatures don't like being hunted.
They're territorial protective of their secret. Sometimes I think about
(44:25):
Tyler's research, his maps and patterns. He was trying to
understand them, maybe trying to find a way to fight
back or at least predict their movements. But in the
end the knowledge just drove him crazy. Or maybe not crazy.
Maybe he saw things clearer than I did. Maybe he
understood that knowing about them means you're never really safe again.
(44:47):
I've kept tabs on the area around Mountain View. There
have been twelve disappearances in the National Forest in the
last fifteen years. Officially they're all accidents or people getting lost,
but I know better stay tuned from more Backwoods Bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. The pattern Tyler identified
(45:08):
as holding, they're expanding their territory gradually getting bolder. Bill
sends me updates occasionally. The Forest Service task Force has
made some progress. They've identified three distinct packs in the Ozarks,
possibly more. They've gotten better at predicting their movements can
sometimes warn people away from dangerous areas without explaining why.
(45:30):
But they're no closer to understanding what the creatures actually
are or where they came from. The latest theory is
that there's some kind of hybrid species may be created
by isolated breeding populations of wolves and early hominids, but
that doesn't explain the intelligence, the deliberate way they arrange kills,
the way they smiled at us. Animals don't smile like that.
(45:53):
Animals don't understand doors and windows. Animals don't leave warning
displays of bones. There's a researcher at the University of
Arkansas who's been studying unexplained disappearances in the Ozarks for
twenty years. She reached out to me through one of
the online forums where I'd shared part of my story.
She's collecting accounts from survivors trying to build a database
(46:15):
of encounters. She told me something that chilled me. The
encounters are increasing, not just in Arkansas but nationwide. More sightings,
more disappearances, more bear attacks that don't match bare behavior.
She thinks something is causing them to expand their territories
to take more risks, climate change maybe, or human encroachment
(46:37):
on their habitat, or something else.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Entirely.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
They're getting desperate, she said, or they're getting ready for something.
I asked her what she meant by that, but she
wouldn't elaborate, just said that several Native American tribes have
prophecies about the old ones returning when the balance is broken,
that they'll reclaim what was theirs before humans arrived. I
don't know if if I believe in prophecies, but I
(47:02):
know what I saw. I know what killed Tyler, even
if it was indirectly. I know what's out there in
the dark spaces on the map, the places we've convinced
ourselves are empty wilderness. Last month was the fifteenth anniversary
of Tyler's death. I went back to Arkansas for the
first time since high school, not to the woods. I'm
(47:22):
not that stupid or brave, just to Mountain View to
visit his grave. His parents moved away years ago, but
they still maintained the headstone. Tyler James Morrison nineteen ninety
one to twenty ten, forever young. I stood there for
a long time, talking to him like he could hear me.
Told him about my life, about the apartment in Denver,
(47:45):
about the nightmares that won't stop. Told him I was
sorry I didn't come that last night. Sorry I couldn't
save him from the weight of what we knew. As
I was leaving the cemetery, I saw Bill Hutchinson. He
was older, grayer, but still had that sin steady presence.
He was visiting another grave, a Forest Service ranger who
(48:05):
died the previous year. Animal attack was the official cause.
We went for coffee, talked about the old days and
the new realities. He told me the situation was getting worse.
The creatures were appearing in places they'd never been before.
Trail cameras were catching glimpses, Hikers were reporting encounters. The
Forest Service was running out of ways to keep it quiet.
(48:28):
It's going to come out eventually, he said. Too many smartphones,
too many cameras, too many people going into the woods.
Someday someone's going to get clear footage. And then what
panic hunting parties, military involvement. I asked him what he
thought would happen war. He said, simply, they've been here
(48:48):
longer than us. This is their land. If we threaten
them seriously, they'll fight back, and based on what I've seen,
I'm not sure we'd win. Before we parted, he gave
gave me something, a flash drive with all his documentation
from the last twenty years, reports, photos, DNA analyzes, territorial maps.
(49:10):
Someone should have this, he said, someone who understands, just
in case. I've been going through the files for weeks now.
There are hundreds of incidents, thousands of photos of tracks
and claw marks, and devastation, videos of eyewitness testimonies from
people too traumatized to lie, scientific analyzes that don't make sense,
that suggest something impossible. And maps, So many maps, not
(49:36):
just of Arkansas, but of the entire United States marked
with sightings, disappearances, territorial boundaries. The creatures aren't random. They
have territories, migration patterns, seasonal behaviors. They're organized in ways
were only beginning to understand the most Terrifying File is
the population estimate based on sightings, territorial ranges, and resource availability.
(50:00):
The task Force estimates there could be between five thousand
and ten thousand of these creatures in North America. They've
been here all along, hidden, watching, occasionally taking someone who
wandered too far into their domain. But now they're moving, expanding,
getting bolder. I think about Tyler's last words, they're coming closer.
(50:23):
He was right, they are, and we're not ready. I'm
writing this all down now because I think people need
to know. Not the general public, they wouldn't believe it,
and mass panic wouldn't help anyone, but people like me,
people who've seen them and survived, people who carry this
terrible knowledge. You're not crazy. They're real, and you're not
(50:44):
alone in knowing that. If you've seen them, if you've
survived an encounter, be careful who you tell. The disbelief
is bad enough, but the wrong kind of belief is worse.
Don't go looking for them, don't try to prove they exist.
Just live your life life as far from the wild
places as you can and hope they stay in the
shadows where they've hidden for so long. And if you're
(51:06):
ever in the woods and you smell wet dog mixed
with death. If you hear something too big walking on
two legs, if you see yellow eyes reflecting at the
wrong height, run, don't investigate, don't try to be brave,
don't assume it's a bear or your imagination. Run and
don't stop until you're somewhere with walls and lights and people.
(51:29):
Because Tyler and I learned the hard way that some
knowledge comes with a price, some truths are too heavy
to carry, and some things in the dark are better
left unseen. The creatures are still out there in the Ozarks,
in the Rockies, in every wilderness we foolishly thought was ours.
They're waiting, watching, adapting. They remember us, I'm sure of it,
(51:53):
remember our faces, our scent, our fear. Sometimes on quiet
nights in my Denver apart, and I stand at the
window and look out at the distant mountains. I know
they're out there, possibly looking back. The barrier between our
world and theirs is thinner than we think. It's just
distance and denial and their choice to remain hidden.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
For now.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Tyler couldn't live with that knowledge. Most days I barely can.
But I keep going, keep living this careful life away
from the woods, away from their domain. It's not much
of a life, no camping trips, no hiking, no enjoying
nature like normal people.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
But it's a life.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
And every day I don't end up like Tyler, drunk
and desperate and driving into a telephone pole is a
small victory against the weight of knowing what lurks in
the darkness between the trees. This is our story, Tyler's
and mine, the story of two stupid kids who went
into the woods looking for a fun summer and found
something that shouldn't exist. One of us didn't survive the knowledge.
(52:58):
The other is still trying to. If you've read this far,
you probably think I'm delusional, traumatized by a bear attack
and unable to accept reality. That's fine, it's safer if
you believe that. But if you know better, if you've
seen them too, then you understand. You understand the weight
of this secret, the burden of this knowledge. You understand
(53:19):
why Tyler chose the path he did, and why every
day I don't follow him is both a blessing and
a curse. Stay out of the deep woods, stay in
the light, lock your doors, and if you hear something
walking on two legs that shouldn't be, something breathing outside
your window, something scratching at your door. Don't look, don't
(53:40):
ever look, because once you see them, really see them,
you can never unsee them, and they'll never let you
forget that they saw you too.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
Tyler knew that. In the end, it.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
Killed him, just as surely as if those claws had
found their mark that night in the cabin. I know
it too, but I'm still here, still fire, still warning
anyone who will listen. The monsters are real. They're out there,
and they're coming closer. Don't let them find you. The
(57:18):
Ma
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot,
(00:23):
dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
I've never told this story in full, not to anyone,
not even to the therapist that my parents made me
(01:08):
see after that summer. But Tyler's been gone for fifteen
years now, wrapped his truck around that telephone pole on
Highway sixty five three weeks before graduation, and I think
maybe it's time someone knew what really happened in those
woods outside of Mountain View. People always assumed Tyler started
drinking because of typical teenage stuff, stress about college, maybe
(01:30):
some girl problems. Nobody knew the real reason he couldn't
sleep without a bottle.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
By his bed.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Nobody knew why he'd wake up screaming about yellow eyes
and the smell of wet dog. Nobody understood why he'd
sometimes just start shaking in the middle of class, staring
at nothing, gripping his desk until his knuckles went white.
They found him at three in the morning, blood alcohol
level twice the legal limit, ninety miles an hour on
a straight stretch of road. Everyone said it was such
(01:58):
a tragedy, such a way. They had no idea. The
tragedy started two years earlier, in the summer of two
thousand and seven. We were sixteen that June, just finished
our sophomore year at Mountain View High Tyler's uncle owned
this hunting cabin up near the Ozark National Forest, about
twenty miles north of town, where the cell towers don't
(02:19):
reach and the nearest neighbor is a forty minute drive
through logging roads that wash out every time it rains.
His uncle, Dale, was doing contract work on oil rigs
in Texas all summer told Tyler, we could use the place.
As long as we didn't burn it down and kept
the generator fueled. It seemed perfect. Two teenage boys with
a whole cabin to themselves for three weeks, no parents
(02:42):
checking on us, no rules about bedtime or screen time,
no younger siblings annoying us. We loaded Tyler's beat up
Chevy S ten with enough supplies to last us the
first week. Cases of mountain dew, bags of Doritos, frozen pizzas,
hot dogs, hamburger meat, real gourmet stuff. We had our
(03:02):
Xbox three sixty, a portable generator, since the cabin only
had basic solar for lights, and enough DVDs to keep
us entertained. When we got bored of fishing, Tyler brought
his uncle's shotgun too, a Remington eight seventy that Dale
kept at the cabin for scaring off black bears. The
drive up there took forever on those winding dirt roads.
(03:23):
Tyler kept having to slow down for washouts from the
spring rains. The trees got thicker the further we went,
pressing in on both sides, until it felt like driving
through a green tunnel. Even in the middle of the afternoon.
It was dark under that canopy The road hadn't been
graded in years, and we bottomed out twice on ruts
that looked shallow but weren't. I remember feeling excited but
(03:46):
also a little uneasy as we got deeper into the woods,
something about how the trees seemed to swallow sound. You'd
expect to hear birds, insects, something, but it was like
driving into a void. Tyler had the radio on some
rock station that kept cutting in and out with static,
and eventually we just turned it off and drove in silence.
(04:06):
The cabin sat in a small clearing, maybe two acres
of rough grass that had n't been mowed in months,
surrounded by pine and oak forest so thick you couldn't
see more than ten feet into the trees. It wasn't
much to look at, single story brown wood siding that
needed restaining, metal roof covered in pine needles and oak
leaves from who knows how many seasons. There was a
(04:29):
small porch out front with two broken rocking chairs and
a rusted wind chime that didn't move, even though I
could feel a breeze. The inside was about what you'd
expect from a hunting cabin that got used maybe three
times a year. Musty smell, mouse droppings in the corners,
a layer of dust on everything. The main room had
an old stone fireplace, a couch that had seen better days,
(04:52):
and a kitchen area with appliances from the seventies. One
bedroom with two twin beds mattresses stained with god knows what.
The bathroom was just a toilet that ran on a
septic system. The real bathroom was the outhouse out back.
That first day was everything we'd hoped for. We set
up the xbox on this ancient TV Tyler's uncle had,
(05:13):
probably from the eighties, one of those huge crt things
that weighed a ton. Spent an hour getting the generator
running and positioned far enough from the cabin that the
noise wouldn't drive us crazy. Caught some bluegill down at
the pond, about a quarter mile through the woods. There
was a trail, but it was overgrown and we had
to push through brambles to get there. The pond was murky,
(05:35):
covered in algae, but the fish were biting. That night,
we stayed up until three in the morning, playing Halo
three and eating an entire bag of pizza rolls that
we cooked on the propane stove. We felt like kings.
No one telling us to go to bed, no one's
saying we'd had enough junk food. Just two best friends
living it up in the middle of nowhere. The second day,
(05:55):
we explored more.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Of the property.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Found an old deer stand about a half mile in
to the woods that was half collapsed, the wooden steps
rotted through. There were these weird scratches on the trees
around it, too high up to be from deer rubbing
their antlers. Tyler said it was probably bears marking territory,
but the marks looked deliberate, almost like something had been
counting four parallel lines over and over all around the stand.
(06:22):
We found other weird stuff too, a clearing where all
the grass was dead in a perfect circle, maybe twenty
feet across. The soil in the middle was dark, almost black,
and nothing was growing there, even though it was the
middle of summer. Tyler kicked at the dirt and uncovered
what looked like small bones, but we couldn't tell from what.
(06:42):
Probably rabbits or squirrels, we told ourselves that second night
is when things started feeling off. I woke up around
two thirty needing to piss something awful. All that mountain.
Dew had to go somewhere. The cabin only had an
outhouse about thirty feet from the back door, through grass
that was knee high and wet with dew. I grabbed
(07:02):
the flashlight we kept by the door, one of those
heavy maglights that doubles as a weapon, and stepped outside.
The night was dead quiet. No crickets, no tree frogs,
no owl calls.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Nothing.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
If you've spent any time in the Arkansas woods, you
know that's not normal. Summer nights are supposed to be
loud with insects and animals. The silence was so complete
I could hear my own heart beat. The outhouse was
one of those old wooden jobs, basically a box with
a hole cut in a bench.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Spiders everywhere.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
I did my business quick as I could, trying not
to think about what might be crawling around down in
that hole. As I was finishing up, I heard something breathing,
heavy rhythmic breathing, like a big dog panting, but deeper,
more deliberate. It was coming from right outside the outhouse door.
I froze hand on the door latch. The breathing continued,
(07:58):
and then I heard sniffing, long, deep, inhales, like something
was trying to catch a scent. The door creaked as
something pressed against it, not hard, just a gentle pressure,
like it was testing. I held my breath, flashlight gripped
so tight my hand was shaking. The sniffing moved around
the outhouse, circling it. I could track whatever it was
(08:20):
by the sound the crack of twigs under heavy feet.
It circled twice, then stopped right back at the door.
A low growl, but not like any dog I'd ever heard, deeper,
resonating in a way that seemed to come from everywhere
at once. It vibrated through the wooden walls, through my chest,
then nothing, complete silence for maybe thirty seconds that felt
(08:43):
like hours. I waited another full minute before cracking the
door open. The flashlight beam cut through the darkness, showing
nothing but grass and trees. But the smell hit me immediately,
like wet dog mixed with something else, something rotten roadkill
that's been sitting in the sun. It was strong enough
to make me gag. I ran back to the cabin.
(09:06):
I'm not ashamed to admit. It sprinted through that tall
grass like my life depended on it. Practically dove through
the door, slammed it shut and locked it. Tyler was
still passed out on the couch, Xbox controller in his hand,
drooling on himself. I thought about waking him up, but
felt stupid getting spooked by some coyote or maybe a
(09:26):
black bear. Bear smelled terrible. I told myself, that's all
it was. I laid back down on the floor in
my sleeping bag, but didn't sleep the rest of the night.
Every little sound made me jump. The cabin creaking as
it cooled, the wind in the trees, the generator humming outside,
and underneath it all I kept thinking I could hear
(09:48):
that breathing, that deliberate panting somewhere out in the darkness.
The next morning, I told Tyler about it while we
made breakfast scrambled eggs and bacon on the propane stove.
He laughed at first, called me a pussy, said I
was letting the woods get to me. But when we
went outside to check, he got quiet real fast. There
(10:09):
were tracks in the dirt around the outhouse, big tracks.
They looked like a dog's prince, but wrong somehow. The
toes were too long for one thing, spread out like fingers,
and the pad was shaped weird, elongated, like a human
foot trying to be a paw. The prints were deep,
whatever made them was heavy. We followed them around the outhouse,
(10:31):
two complete circles, just like I'd heard. Then they led
off toward the tree line. Tyler knelt down next to
one of the clearer prints, put his hand next to
it for scale. The print was bigger than his spread fingers.
He stood up, wiped his hands on his jeans, and
tried to play it off. Probably just a big coyote
with deformed feet or something, he said. But I saw
(10:53):
how he kept looking at those tracks while we ate
breakfast on the porch, and I noticed he went back
inside to get the shotgun, loaded it and kept it
leaning against the wall. We spent that day down at
the pond, trying to pretend everything was normal, but it wasn't.
The woods felt different, watchful. We kept hearing things, branches
(11:14):
breaking in the distance, rustling in the underbrush that stopped
whenever we looked. At one point, we both saw something
moving between the trees on the far side of the pond,
just a shadow there and gone, but it looked tall,
too tall to be a deer. The fish weren't biting either.
The pond was dead quiet, no insects skimming the surface,
(11:36):
no frogs in the reeds. Tyler said maybe a storm
was coming, that animals go quiet before bad weather. But
the sky was clear, not a cloud anywhere. As the
sun started getting low, neither of us wanted to admit
we were nervous about another night. We packed up our
fishing gear without talking about it, and headed back early
(11:56):
on the trail back to the cabin, we found something
that made us both stop dead. A deer carcass, but
not killed like a normal predator would. It was spread
out pieces arranged almost deliberately. The head was placed on
a rock like a display. The legs were pulled off
and laid out in a line. The torso was opened up,
(12:16):
organs removed and piled neatly beside it. No animal does that.
Animals kill MESSI eat what they want, leave the rest scattered.
This was organized, Tyler threw up in the bushes. I
just stood there, staring, trying to make sense of it.
The smell was overwhelming, death and that wet dog stench
(12:37):
mixed together. There were those same strange dog like tracks
all around the carcass. We practically ran back to the
cabin after that, cooked our hot dogs inside instead of
using the fire pit outside like we'd planned. We even
moved the couch to block the back door. Told ourselves
it was to keep raccoons out, but we both knew
that was bullshit. As darkness fell, we prepared for another night.
(13:02):
Tyler showed me how to load the shotgun where his
uncle kept the extra shells. We filled every empty bottle
with water so we wouldn't have to go outside. We
even found an old metal pot to piss in if necessary.
Looking back, we should have just left packed up right
then and driven home, but we were sixteen and stupid
and didn't want to look like cowards running from what
(13:23):
was probably just a weird coyote or sick bear. That night,
I made sure to piss in a bottle instead of
going outside. Tyler did the same. We stayed up playing
video games, but neither of us was really paying attention.
We had the volume turned low so we could hear
if anything approached the cabin. Around midnight, we heard it
(13:43):
something walking through the leaves outside, slow deliberate steps, not
the random wandering of an animal. It circled the cabin
and we could track its movement by the sound clockwise,
a complete circuit. Then it stopped at the front window.
Tyler and I were frozen on the couch, controllers forgotten
in our hands. The TV cast a blue glow on
(14:06):
the window, and for a moment I thought I saw
a shadow move across it. Too tall to be a
person standing on the ground. Whatever it was would have
to be seven, maybe eight feet tall. Then came the scratching,
long slow drags across the wood siding, starting at the
window and moving toward the door. It sounded like a
knife being pulled across the grain, but deeper, multiple points
(14:30):
of contact. The sound made my teeth hurt, made something
primal in my brain scream danger. Tyler grabbed the shotgun
with shaking hands. I grabbed a baseball bat we'd found
in a closet, like that would do any good against
something that tall. The scratching stopped at the door. We waited,
barely breathing. The doorknob turned, just a little wiggle at first, testing,
(14:54):
then more aggressive rattling it. The lock held, but the
whole door frame creaked. Stay tuned for more Backwoods big
Foot stories. We'll be back after these messages. Whatever was
out there was strong. Then it knocked three deliberate knocks
like a person would That was somehow worse than anything else.
(15:16):
It knew how to knock. It understood doors, and knocking
three more knocks, harder this time, the door shook in
its frame. Tyler pumped the shotgun, the sound impossibly loud.
In the silence, the knocking stopped. We heard footsteps moving
away from the door, around to the side of the cabin.
Than nothing, complete silence for maybe five minutes. A howl
(15:41):
erupted from right outside the door, not a wolf howl,
not a dog, something in between, but way scarier, starting
low and rising to a pitch that hurt my ears.
It was so loud I felt it in my bones,
in my teeth. Tyler jerked and the shotgun went off,
blowing a hole through the door about head height. The
(16:01):
howl cut off instantly, and we heard something big crash
through the underbrush, moving fast away from the cabin. We
sat there until dawn, Tyler reloading the shotgun with trembling fingers,
me holding that stupid bat like it would protect us.
We didn't talk. We just sat and listened and waited
for the sun When morning finally came, we worked up
(16:24):
the courage to look outside. The door had deep gouges
in the wood, four parallel lines, like claw marks, but
space two wide for any bear. Each gouge was nearly
an inch deep and solid oak. There was a tuft
of coarse, dark hair caught in the splintered wood where
the shotgun blast went through. The hair was thick, almost
(16:45):
like wire. And that smell, God, that smell was everywhere, wet,
dog and death and something else, something musky and wild.
But the worst part was what we found on the porch.
Bones arranged in an a neat pile right in front
of the door, Small bones, probably from rabbits or squirrels,
(17:05):
picked clean and stacked like a little pyramid, a message
or a warning. We should have left right then. Any
sane person would have packed up, drove home, never looked back.
But we were teenage boys, and we'd already been there
three nights, and we told ourselves we'd scared it off.
Whatever it was, Tyler's shotgun blast had sent it running.
(17:28):
We convinced ourselves it was afraid of us.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Now.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
We spent the fourth day fortifying the cabin like we
were preparing for a siege, moved the refrigerator in front
of the back door, took both of us and a
furniture dolly we found in a shed to manage it.
Pushed the dresser from the bedroom against the front window.
Tyler found a box of nails and some old boards
in the shed, and we hammered boards across the other windows.
(17:53):
Looking back, we were just trapping ourselves, but at the
time it felt safer. We also explored the shed more
thoroughly and found some interesting things. There were more of
those wire thick hairs caught on nails and rough wood,
scratch marks on the inside of the door, like something
had been locked in and tried to claw its way out.
And in the back corner under a tarp, we found
(18:15):
a journal. It was Dale's, Tyler's uncle. The entries went
back two years, normal stuff at first, notes about deer movement,
weather patterns, which areas were good for hunting, But then
the tone changed. He started writing about finding tracks he
couldn't identify, hearing sounds at night that weren't like anything
he'd heard in thirty years of hunting, finding deer carcasses
(18:39):
that were killed but not eaten, just torn apart, and left.
The last entry was from the previous November, right before
he took the job in Texas. It just said they're
getting bolder. Found tracks on the porch this morning, leaving tomorrow.
Won't be back until they move on. Tyler went pale
reading that his uncle hadn't taken that job for the
(19:01):
money he'd ran. He'd known something was out here, and
he'd ran instead of facing it, and he'd let us
come up here without warning us. We spent the rest
of the day inside, reading through the journal more carefully.
Dale had theories thought maybe it was a pack of
koy wolves coyote wolf hybrids that were bigger and meaner
than either parent species, but even he didn't seem convinced.
(19:25):
One entry described seeing eyes reflecting in his flashlight beam,
but too high up, would have to be eight feet
off the ground. As the sun went down, we were ready,
or we thought we were. Tyler had the shotgun, five
shells left. I had the bat and a hunting knife
i'd found in a drawer. We'd left one small window
(19:46):
in the bedroom uncovered so we could see out, and
we took turns watching. Full dark came around. Nine clouds
had rolled in during the afternoon, so there was no moon,
no stars, just complete blackness beyond the window. We sat
in the bedroom, lights off so our eyes could adjust,
taking turns looking out into nothing. Around ten, Tyler grabbed
(20:08):
my arm. He pointed at the tree line. At first
I didn't see anything. Then I caught it, two yellow lights,
like eyes reflecting, but they were too far apart to
be from the same animal, unless it had a head
the size of a garbage can. The lights blinked out,
then appeared again, closer, then again closer.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Still.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
It was at the edge of the clearing when we
finally saw it properly, silhouetted against the slightly lighter sky.
At first, my brain tried to make sense of what
I was seeing, tried to fit it into something normal,
but there was nothing normal about it. It stood upright
like a man, but hunched forward. Had to be seven
and a half maybe eight feet tall. Its body was
(20:51):
covered in dark, matted fur, but the proportions were all wrong.
The legs were bent backward at the knee like a
dog's hind legs. The arms were too long, hanging down
past where its knees should be, ending in hands that
weren't quite hands. Weren't quite paws, long fingers that ended
in claws, but with too many joints. But the head
(21:12):
was the worst part. It was shaped like a wolf's head,
but larger, sitting on shoulders that were almost human. The
snout was shorter than a normal wolf, pushed in like
someone had tried to make a wolf face more human.
The ears were pointed, but set wrong, too far forward.
And those eyes, they reflected the dim light from the cabin,
(21:33):
yellow like a cat's eyes, but brighter, and they were
looking right at the window, right at us. It tilted
its head, studying the cabin. Then it did something that
made my blood turn to ice. It smiled. The lips
pulled back, revealing rows of teeth that had no business
being in any earthly creature's mouth. Too many teeth, different sizes,
(21:56):
some flat like human molars, others sharp like a editor's fangs.
And that smile was deliberate, knowing it saw us watching,
and it smiled. Tyler made a sound, half gasp, half whimper.
The thing's head snapped toward the window, focusing on us.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
It took a step.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Forward, then another, not on all fours, like an animal
walking upright, but with that horrible backward bent leg gate
that looked like it shouldn't work, but did. That's when
we heard the howl from behind the cabin. Another one,
then another from the left side, three of them at
least they were surrounding us. Something slammed into the front door.
(22:39):
The whole cabin shook. The refrigerator we'd use to block
the back door scraped across the floor as something pushed
from the other side. We were being attacked from both directions.
The front door started splintering, wood, cracking nails, screaming as
they pulled free. Tyler fired through it pumped. The shotgun
fired again. A yelp from outside, then an angry roar
(23:01):
that sounded like a dog's bark mixed with a man's scream,
but the assault didn't stop. The refrigerator flew away from
the back door like it weighed nothing, crashing into the
kitchen counter. The door exploded inward, and one of them
forced its way inside, having to duck and twist to
fit through the doorframe. In the confined space of the cabin,
(23:22):
it seemed even bigger. The smell was overwhelming, making my
eyes water, making it.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Hard to breathe.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
It looked at Tyler with the shotgun, then at me
with my pathetic bat, and it laughed, not an animal sound,
a laugh, rough and deep, but unmistakably a laugh. Tyler
shot at point blank in the chest. It staggered back,
black blood splattering the walls, but it didn't go down.
(23:49):
It rushed forward, swiping at Tyler with those huge hands.
The claws caught his shoulder, tearing through his shirt, through
skin and muscles, spinning him around. The shotgun flew for
his hands, clattering across the floor. I swung the bat
as hard as I could at its head. The aluminum
bat connected with a solid crack and immediately bent, then
(24:09):
shattered like it was made of glass. The creature barely flinched.
It back handed me across the room. I hit the
wall hard, saw stars, tasted blood through blurred vision. I
saw it advancing on Tyler, who was crawling backward, holding
his torn shoulder with one hand, leaving a trail of blood.
The front door exploded off its hinges, and the one
(24:32):
I'd seen through the window entered. This one was bigger,
had to turn sideways to fit through the doorframe. The
two creatures looked at each other, and I swear They
communicated not with words, but with posture, with small movements
of their heads. The bigger one approached Tyler, while the
wounded one turned toward me. Up close, I could see
(24:53):
details I wish I couldn't. Its fur was matted with
dirt and what looked like dried blood scar Chris crossed
its body, old wounds that had healed badly. Its hands, God,
those hands had six fingers each, all different lengths, all
ending in yellowed claws. The smell coming off it made
(25:15):
me dry heave. It reached for me, and I knew
I was going to die. Those claws would tear through
me like paper. I closed my eyes, waiting for the pain.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
That's when we heard the truck.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Headlights flooded through the windows, an engine roaring up.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
The dirt road.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
A spotlight hit the cabin, blazingly bright after the darkness,
and someone laid on the horn. Three sharp blasts, then
the sound of doors slamming. The creatures froze, head snapping
toward the light. Then came the gunshots, not a shot gun,
a rifle, big caliber. From the sound, and whoever was
shooting knew what they were doing. The shots were measured, deliberate,
(25:57):
both creatures bolted. The wounded one went back through the
back door, moving faster than anything that sighs.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Should be able to move.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
The bigger one literally dove through the boarded up window,
taking half the wall with it. Wood and glass exploded outward.
We heard them crashing through the forest, howls fading into
the distance, but those weren't howls of pain or fear.
They sounded almost frustrated. A man appeared in what was
left of the doorway, rifle at the ready for a
(26:27):
service uniform badge, catching the light from the truck. He
was maybe forty, built, like someone who spent his life outdoors,
weathered face thousand yards stare that told me he'd seen
these things before. He swept the cabin with his rifle,
checking corners, making sure they were gone. Then he looked
at the destruction, at the blood on the walls, at
(26:49):
Tyler bleeding on the floor, and me slumped against the wall.
His expression didn't change, no surprise, no disbelief, just a
grim acceptance. Then he said the words, I'll never forget.
We need to leave now, they'll be back with the
whole pack. He didn't wait for us to respond, just
(27:10):
moved to Tyler, pulled off his own shirt and pressed
it against Tyler's shoulder to slow the bleeding. I tried
to stand and almost fell, my head spinning from the
impact with the wall. Can you walk, the ranger asked me.
I nodded, though I wasn't sure. Help me get your
friend to the truck. We've got maybe five minutes before
(27:31):
they regroup. We half carried, half dragged Tyler to the
ranger's truck, a Forest Service F twoin fifty with light
bars and a winch. The ranger went back for the
shotgun and as many shells as he could find. As
he climbed into the driver's seat, we heard howls in
the distance. Not one or two, a lot, maybe a dozen.
(27:52):
Buckle up, he said, throwing the truck in reverse. This
is going to be rough. He wasn't kidding. He drove
those logging roads like a maniac, taking turns so fast
I thought we'd flip The headlights, swept across the trees,
and more than once I saw eyes reflecting in the darkness,
pacing us. Tyler was drifting in and out of consciousness,
(28:14):
his blood soaking through the ranger's shirt. About three miles
down the road. Something slammed into the side of the truck.
We swerved tires, screaming, but the ranger kept control. Another
impact on the other side. They were trying to force
us off the road. The ranger reached for his radio
with one hand while driving with the other Unit seventeen
(28:35):
to dispatch Code black, Repeat Code black. Two civilians injured
extracting now request medical at Mountain View General. The response
was immediate copy Unit seventeen Medical en route godspeed, Code black.
They had a code for this. Another impact, this time
(28:56):
from behind. I looked back and saw one of them
in the truck bed claws digging into the medal.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
The ranger saw it.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
In the mirror, slammed on the brakes.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
The creature flew forward over.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
The cab, hit the road, hard rolled. The ranger gunned
it and I felt the bump as we ran it over.
It screamed, not a howl, a scream. We made it
to the main road and the attack stopped. Either we'd
outrun them or they wouldn't follow us onto the paved road.
The ranger didn't slow down, though, He drove straight to
(29:27):
Mountain View General, pulled right up to the emergency entrance
and started honking. The medical staff rushed out, got Tyler
on a gurney. The ranger talked to them in low tones,
and I heard him say animal attack and likely rabid.
They nodded like they understood, but I saw the looks
they exchanged. They'd seen this before too. While Tyler was
(29:49):
in surgery, the ranger sat with me in the waiting room.
That's when he told me his name, Bill Hutchinson. He'd
been a ranger in the Ozark National Forest for fifteen years.
Stay tuned from more backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back
after these messages. You boys are lucky, he said, though
nothing about what happened felt lucky. Most people who encountered
(30:11):
them don't make it out. I asked him what they were.
He was quiet for a long time before answering, we
don't know exactly. Been in these mountains longer than people
near as we can tell. The Cherokee had stories about them,
called them the Nu Nahi. The French trappers in the
seventeen hundreds wrote about the Loop Garou. In the forties,
(30:33):
folks called them the Ozark black howlers. Different names, same creatures.
He told me the Forest Service had been tracking them
for decades. Officially they didn't exist. Unofficially, there was a
whole protocol. Certain areas of the forest were off limits
during certain times of year, though they told the public
it was for wildlife management. When hikers went missing, they'd search,
(30:57):
but they knew they wouldn't find anything. Why don't you
tell people, I asked, Bill laughed, but there was no
humor in it. Tell them what that there are seven
foot tall wolf people living in the National Forest. You
think anyone would believe that? And even if they did,
what then you'd have every crypto hunter and YouTube personality
in the country up here, with thermal cameras and ar fifteens.
(31:20):
These things are smart. They'd either hide deeper or get aggressive.
Either way, more people would die. He told me they'd
been monitoring increased activity in the area for weeks, Livestock
going missing from farms on the forest edge, Strange calls
coming in from hunters who wouldn't quite say what they'd seen.
He'd been doing a night patrol when he heard Tyler's
(31:42):
shotgun from two miles away.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
That cabin.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
He said, it's in their territory, has been for years.
Dale knew that's why he left. Should have warned you boys,
but I guess he figured you'd think he was crazy.
Tyler needed forty seven stitches in his shoulder. The wounds
were deep, had torn through muscle down to the bone
in places. The doctor said he was lucky the claus
(32:06):
hadn't hit any major arteries. I had a concussion in
three cracked ribs from hitting the wall. They kept us
both for observation for three days. Bill came to see
us once more before we were discharged. He sat us
down and explained things we needed to know what you saw.
He said, it's real, but nobody's going to believe you
if you talk about it. My advice don't tell people
(32:30):
it was a bear attack. Let them think what they want.
The truth will only make your lives harder. He gave
us his card, told us to call if we ever
needed to talk. Then he said something that stuck with me.
You boys survived something most don't. That's going to be
hard to live with. The knowing, the remembering. Don't let
it destroy you. Before he left, I had to ask,
(32:55):
how many are there in that territory? Maybe thirty or
forty in the whole Ozark range. We don't know, hundreds,
maybe they're spread out territorial. The pack that hit you
is one of the more aggressive ones. We've been trying
to push them deeper into the wilderness, away from where
people go, but they're stubborn. That area has been theirs
(33:17):
for generations. Why that cabin, Tyler asked, his voice rough
from pain medication. Why did they attack us? Bill shrugged.
Could be lots of reasons. Maybe you were in their
territory during mating season. Maybe they saw you as competition.
Maybe they were just curious and it escalated. They're intelligent,
(33:37):
but they're not human, don't think like us. Sometimes they
ignore people completely. Sometimes he didn't finish. We never went
back for our stuff. Bill said he'd handle it, and
a week later, Tyler's truck showed up in his driveway
with everything packed in the back, everything except the Xbox,
which we found out later had been destroyed, along with
(33:58):
half the cabin. The insurance company paid out for storm damage.
Tyler's parents wanted to know what happened, so did mine.
We stuck to the bear attack story, but I could
tell they didn't fully believe us. Tyler's mom kept asking
why a bear would attack the cabin so aggressively, Why
we hadn't just stayed inside and waited for it to leave.
(34:20):
We didn't have good answers. The physical wounds healed, mostly
Tyler's shoulder never worked quite right again. He couldn't lift
his arm above his head, couldn't throw a football anymore.
He quit the baseball team. The coaches were disappointed. He'd
been a decent pitcher, But how could he explain that
every time he tried to wind up for a throw,
(34:40):
he'd remember those claws tearing through his shoulder. The mental
wounds were worse. We both had nightmares. I'd wake up
smelling that wet dog stench, convinced something was outside my window.
Tyler had it worse. He'd call me at three in
the morning, drunk already crying about the yellow eyes, about
how they'd looked at us like we were prey, like
(35:02):
we were nothing but meat. His grades tanked junior year,
started drinking at parties, then drinking alone. His parents tried
to get him help, took him to a therapist in
Little Rock who specialized in trauma, But what was he
going to tell her that he was traumatized by where wolves?
He went to three sessions, then refused to go back said.
(35:24):
The therapist kept trying to make him admit it was
really a bear, that his mind had exaggerated the trauma.
We'd hang out and not even need to talk about it.
Just knowing someone else knew was enough. But I could
see him deteriorating. He'd flinch at dog barks, couldn't watch
any movies with wolves or even dogs in them. Stopped
going to parties if they were anywhere near Woods. Senior
(35:47):
year was when it got really bad. He was drinking
every day by then, vodka and water bottles at school.
His parents found bottles hidden all over his room. They
tried an intervention, but what was he supposed to say
that alcohol was the only thing that made the memories
fuzzy enough to handle. He started talking about them being
out there waiting, said he could feel them sometimes, like
(36:10):
they were watching. I told him he was being paranoid,
but honestly I felt it too sometimes, that sensation of
being observed, of being marked somehow. Two weeks before graduation,
he called me at two in the morning. He was wasted, crying,
said he'd seen one. Said it was in his backyard,
(36:30):
just standing at the tree line, watching his house. I
told him it was the alcohol, that he was seeing things,
but he swore it was real, said it had smiled
at him through his bedroom window, just like that night.
I should have gone over, should have taken his keys,
should have done something. But I was tired of the
late night calls, tired of trying to hold him together
(36:53):
when I was barely holding myself together. I told him
to sleep it off, that i'd come over in the morning.
The police he said he was going ninety when he
hit that telephone pole, dead on impact, blood alcohol level
zero point one point six. His parents were devastated. Everyone
at school was shocked. Tyler had been troubled, sure, but
(37:13):
nobody saw this coming.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
I knew better.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Tyler didn't crash because he was drunk. He was drunk
because he couldn't live with what we'd seen, couldn't live
with the knowledge that those things were out there. The
drinking was just how he coped until he couldn't cope anymore.
At his funeral, I wanted to tell the truth, stand
up and say that Tyler died because of what happened
in those woods, that he was a casualty of something
(37:38):
nobody would believe. But I just sat there silent while
people talked about what a tragedy it was, how he
had so much potential, how addiction had claimed another young life.
His parents gave me some of his things afterward, his
baseball glove, some video games, photos of us from better times,
(37:58):
and in a box of his stuff found a notebook.
He'd been researching them. Pages and pages of Internet printouts,
forum posts, historical accounts. He'd found stories going back hundreds
of years, Native American legends about shape shifters in the
Ozark Mountains, French trapper journals describing the Loop Garu, newspaper
(38:19):
articles from the nineteen forties about the Ozark Howler. He'd
mapped out sightings, tried to establish territory patterns, had a
theory that they moved in cycles, expanding and contracting their
range based on human activity. He'd marked our cabin with
a red ex and written ground zero next to it.
The last entry was from the night before he died,
(38:41):
just one line, They're coming closer. I left Arkansas after graduation,
went to college in Colorado, about as far from those
woods as I could get. Studied computer science. Got a
job in Denver after graduation, built a life that had
nothing to do with forests, or camping or anything that
might remind me of that summer, but I couldn't escape
(39:02):
it entirely. I'd see new stories about missing hikers and
national forests and wonder read about bear attacks that didn't
quite add up. Found online communities of people claiming to
have seen similar creatures, though most of them were clearly
fake or misidentified animals. Sometimes I'd find one that rang true, though,
(39:23):
details that matched what we'd seen. The wrong jointed legs,
the two long arms, the smile.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
When I found.
Speaker 1 (39:30):
Those, i'd reach out privately, tell them they weren't crazy,
that I'd seen them too. Five years after Tyler died,
I looked up Bill Hutchinson. He'd retired early moved to Florida.
We talked on the phone for an hour. He told
me there had been three more attacks since hours, all fatalities.
The Forest Service had a task force now trying to
(39:52):
track the creatures with thermal drones and genetic sampling. Still
keeping it quiet, though we found something interesting, he said,
Remember that blood in your cabin. We had it analyzed.
It's complicated canine DNA, but also primate markers and some
sequences we can't identify at all. Whatever these things are.
(40:13):
They're not natural, not anymore anyway. He had a theory
that they were an evolutionary offshoot, something that developed in
isolation in the Ozark Mountains, maybe started as wolves or
early humans or something in between, then changed over millennia
into what they are now. Or maybe they were always
here and we're the invaders in their territory. The scary part,
(40:37):
he said, is how smart they are. They learn after
your encounter. They changed tactics, stopped attacking cabins directly. Now
they pick off loan hikers. Make it look like accidents,
falls from cliffs, drownings, exposure. They're adapting to avoid detection.
He asked about Tyler. When I told him, he went
(40:58):
quiet for a long time. Then he said, I'm sorry, son,
I've seen what knowing does to people. Your friend isn't
the first to crack under that weight. Won't be the
last either. Ten years after that summer, I made a mistake.
I'd been dating a woman named Sarah and things were
getting serious. She wanted to go camping for her birthday.
(41:19):
Said she'd found this perfect spot in Rocky Mountain National Park.
I tried to suggest other trips Vegas, the Beach anywhere
but the woods, but she had her heart set on it.
I thought I could handle it. It had been over
a decade, different state, different mountains. What were the odds.
The first night was fine, We had a nice campfire,
(41:42):
roasted marshmallows, looked at stars. I started to relax, thinking
maybe I was over it. Then around midnight I heard it,
that deliberate breathing outside the tent, that sniffing. I grabbed Sarah,
covered her mouth before she could speak, and held absolutely still.
The breathing circled our tent twice, then stopped. I waited,
(42:05):
every muscle tensed, ready to run, but after a few
minutes I heard it moving away through the underbrush. I
told Sarah we had to leave now. We packed up
in the dark, through everything in the car, drove out
of their doing sixty on mountain roads. She thought I'd
lost my mind. I told her about bears, made up
something about hearing on the radio that there had been
(42:26):
attacks in the area. She didn't believe me. We broke
up a month later. She said I'd changed after that
camping trip, become paranoid and distant.
Speaker 2 (42:35):
She wasn't wrong.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
The knowledge that they weren't just in Arkansas that they
were here too in Colorado. It broke something in me.
I did more research after that found similar accounts from
the Rockies, the Cascades, the Appalachians. Different names windi go,
skin walkers, dog men, but the same basic description. They're
not just in the Ozarks. They're everywhere. There are deep
(43:00):
woods and mountains. We just don't see them because they
don't want to be seen. Fifteen years have passed now.
I'm thirty three, working as a software developer for a
tech company in Denver. I live in a high rise
apartment in the middle of the city, as far from
wilderness as I can get. I haven't been camping since
that night with Sarah, haven't even been hiking, but I
(43:22):
can't escape the knowledge. When people talk about their weekend
camping trips, I want to grab them and scream, don't
you know what's out there? When I see missing hiker
reports on the news, I know what probably happened to them.
When people joke about Bigfoot or cryptids, I stay silent
because the truth isn't funny. I still have nightmares, not
(43:42):
every night anymore, but often enough. In them, I'm back
in that cabin, but this time Bill doesn't come this time.
Those things get inside and I watch them tear tiler
apart while I hide in the corner like a coward.
I wake up, gasping, drenched in sweat, checking the locks
on my apartment door, even though I'm fifteen floors up.
(44:03):
I've thought about going public with the story, writing a book,
doing a podcast, something to warn people, But who would
believe me? And according to Bill, the ones who do believe,
the ones who go looking for proof, they're the ones
who don't come back. The creatures don't like being hunted.
They're territorial protective of their secret. Sometimes I think about
(44:25):
Tyler's research, his maps and patterns. He was trying to
understand them, maybe trying to find a way to fight
back or at least predict their movements. But in the
end the knowledge just drove him crazy. Or maybe not crazy.
Maybe he saw things clearer than I did. Maybe he
understood that knowing about them means you're never really safe again.
(44:47):
I've kept tabs on the area around Mountain View. There
have been twelve disappearances in the National Forest in the
last fifteen years. Officially they're all accidents or people getting lost,
but I know better stay tuned from more Backwoods Bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. The pattern Tyler identified
(45:08):
as holding, they're expanding their territory gradually getting bolder. Bill
sends me updates occasionally. The Forest Service task Force has
made some progress. They've identified three distinct packs in the Ozarks,
possibly more. They've gotten better at predicting their movements can
sometimes warn people away from dangerous areas without explaining why.
(45:30):
But they're no closer to understanding what the creatures actually
are or where they came from. The latest theory is
that there's some kind of hybrid species may be created
by isolated breeding populations of wolves and early hominids, but
that doesn't explain the intelligence, the deliberate way they arrange kills,
the way they smiled at us. Animals don't smile like that.
(45:53):
Animals don't understand doors and windows. Animals don't leave warning
displays of bones. There's a researcher at the University of
Arkansas who's been studying unexplained disappearances in the Ozarks for
twenty years. She reached out to me through one of
the online forums where I'd shared part of my story.
She's collecting accounts from survivors trying to build a database
(46:15):
of encounters. She told me something that chilled me. The
encounters are increasing, not just in Arkansas but nationwide. More sightings,
more disappearances, more bear attacks that don't match bare behavior.
She thinks something is causing them to expand their territories
to take more risks, climate change maybe, or human encroachment
(46:37):
on their habitat, or something else.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Entirely.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
They're getting desperate, she said, or they're getting ready for something.
I asked her what she meant by that, but she
wouldn't elaborate, just said that several Native American tribes have
prophecies about the old ones returning when the balance is broken,
that they'll reclaim what was theirs before humans arrived. I
don't know if if I believe in prophecies, but I
(47:02):
know what I saw. I know what killed Tyler, even
if it was indirectly. I know what's out there in
the dark spaces on the map, the places we've convinced
ourselves are empty wilderness. Last month was the fifteenth anniversary
of Tyler's death. I went back to Arkansas for the
first time since high school, not to the woods. I'm
(47:22):
not that stupid or brave, just to Mountain View to
visit his grave. His parents moved away years ago, but
they still maintained the headstone. Tyler James Morrison nineteen ninety
one to twenty ten, forever young. I stood there for
a long time, talking to him like he could hear me.
Told him about my life, about the apartment in Denver,
(47:45):
about the nightmares that won't stop. Told him I was
sorry I didn't come that last night. Sorry I couldn't
save him from the weight of what we knew. As
I was leaving the cemetery, I saw Bill Hutchinson. He
was older, grayer, but still had that sin steady presence.
He was visiting another grave, a Forest Service ranger who
(48:05):
died the previous year. Animal attack was the official cause.
We went for coffee, talked about the old days and
the new realities. He told me the situation was getting worse.
The creatures were appearing in places they'd never been before.
Trail cameras were catching glimpses, Hikers were reporting encounters. The
Forest Service was running out of ways to keep it quiet.
(48:28):
It's going to come out eventually, he said. Too many smartphones,
too many cameras, too many people going into the woods.
Someday someone's going to get clear footage. And then what
panic hunting parties, military involvement. I asked him what he
thought would happen war. He said, simply, they've been here
(48:48):
longer than us. This is their land. If we threaten
them seriously, they'll fight back, and based on what I've seen,
I'm not sure we'd win. Before we parted, he gave
gave me something, a flash drive with all his documentation
from the last twenty years, reports, photos, DNA analyzes, territorial maps.
(49:10):
Someone should have this, he said, someone who understands, just
in case. I've been going through the files for weeks now.
There are hundreds of incidents, thousands of photos of tracks
and claw marks, and devastation, videos of eyewitness testimonies from
people too traumatized to lie, scientific analyzes that don't make sense,
that suggest something impossible. And maps, So many maps, not
(49:36):
just of Arkansas, but of the entire United States marked
with sightings, disappearances, territorial boundaries. The creatures aren't random. They
have territories, migration patterns, seasonal behaviors. They're organized in ways
were only beginning to understand the most Terrifying File is
the population estimate based on sightings, territorial ranges, and resource availability.
(50:00):
The task Force estimates there could be between five thousand
and ten thousand of these creatures in North America. They've
been here all along, hidden, watching, occasionally taking someone who
wandered too far into their domain. But now they're moving, expanding,
getting bolder. I think about Tyler's last words, they're coming closer.
(50:23):
He was right, they are, and we're not ready. I'm
writing this all down now because I think people need
to know. Not the general public, they wouldn't believe it,
and mass panic wouldn't help anyone, but people like me,
people who've seen them and survived, people who carry this
terrible knowledge. You're not crazy. They're real, and you're not
(50:44):
alone in knowing that. If you've seen them, if you've
survived an encounter, be careful who you tell. The disbelief
is bad enough, but the wrong kind of belief is worse.
Don't go looking for them, don't try to prove they exist.
Just live your life life as far from the wild
places as you can and hope they stay in the
shadows where they've hidden for so long. And if you're
(51:06):
ever in the woods and you smell wet dog mixed
with death. If you hear something too big walking on
two legs, if you see yellow eyes reflecting at the
wrong height, run, don't investigate, don't try to be brave,
don't assume it's a bear or your imagination. Run and
don't stop until you're somewhere with walls and lights and people.
(51:29):
Because Tyler and I learned the hard way that some
knowledge comes with a price, some truths are too heavy
to carry, and some things in the dark are better
left unseen. The creatures are still out there in the Ozarks,
in the Rockies, in every wilderness we foolishly thought was ours.
They're waiting, watching, adapting. They remember us, I'm sure of it,
(51:53):
remember our faces, our scent, our fear. Sometimes on quiet
nights in my Denver apart, and I stand at the
window and look out at the distant mountains. I know
they're out there, possibly looking back. The barrier between our
world and theirs is thinner than we think. It's just
distance and denial and their choice to remain hidden.
Speaker 2 (52:14):
For now.
Speaker 1 (52:16):
Tyler couldn't live with that knowledge. Most days I barely can.
But I keep going, keep living this careful life away
from the woods, away from their domain. It's not much
of a life, no camping trips, no hiking, no enjoying
nature like normal people.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
But it's a life.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
And every day I don't end up like Tyler, drunk
and desperate and driving into a telephone pole is a
small victory against the weight of knowing what lurks in
the darkness between the trees. This is our story, Tyler's
and mine, the story of two stupid kids who went
into the woods looking for a fun summer and found
something that shouldn't exist. One of us didn't survive the knowledge.
(52:58):
The other is still trying to. If you've read this far,
you probably think I'm delusional, traumatized by a bear attack
and unable to accept reality. That's fine, it's safer if
you believe that. But if you know better, if you've
seen them too, then you understand. You understand the weight
of this secret, the burden of this knowledge. You understand
(53:19):
why Tyler chose the path he did, and why every
day I don't follow him is both a blessing and
a curse. Stay out of the deep woods, stay in
the light, lock your doors, and if you hear something
walking on two legs that shouldn't be, something breathing outside
your window, something scratching at your door. Don't look, don't
(53:40):
ever look, because once you see them, really see them,
you can never unsee them, and they'll never let you
forget that they saw you too.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
Tyler knew that. In the end, it.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
Killed him, just as surely as if those claws had
found their mark that night in the cabin. I know
it too, but I'm still here, still fire, still warning
anyone who will listen. The monsters are real. They're out there,
and they're coming closer. Don't let them find you. The
(57:18):
Ma
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