September 24, 2025 • 42 mins
This episode is all about the chilling deathbed confession of Clyde, an 82-year-old West Virginia mountain man who, after forty years of silence, reveals the night he crossed paths with something ancient—and deadly. In 1983, deep on Beartown Ridge, Clyde’s life became entangled with a wounded Sasquatch whose rage and desperation had turned it from a hidden legend into a relentless predator.
Told through the lens of a lengthy, almost desperate email to a stranger, Clyde’s story weaves generations of Appalachian folklore with a harrowing first-hand account of survival. It begins with eerie tales passed down from his grandfather—stories of glowing-eyed creatures prowling the ridgelines since 1902—and builds to a terrifying truth: a bear hunter’s shot in 1981 didn’t just wound a Sasquatch, it unleashed a predator that stalked the hollows, perhaps even claiming the lives of missing children.
Clyde’s account avoids the usual Bigfoot clichés. Instead, it paints a disturbing portrait of intelligence and intent—a creature limping from an old wound, calculating every move, and watching with an almost human hunger in its eyes. His final confrontation, where he was forced to fire again and again just to survive, left more than scars. It left a lifetime of guilt.
But this is more than a survival tale. Clyde believes his actions shattered an unspoken balance between the Sasquatch and the mountain folk, triggering a wave of encounters and disappearances that still haunt the region.
His confession is not just a warning but a reckoning—one that suggests the mountains remember every trespass, and that some wounds, once inflicted, can never truly heal.
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Told through the lens of a lengthy, almost desperate email to a stranger, Clyde’s story weaves generations of Appalachian folklore with a harrowing first-hand account of survival. It begins with eerie tales passed down from his grandfather—stories of glowing-eyed creatures prowling the ridgelines since 1902—and builds to a terrifying truth: a bear hunter’s shot in 1981 didn’t just wound a Sasquatch, it unleashed a predator that stalked the hollows, perhaps even claiming the lives of missing children.
Clyde’s account avoids the usual Bigfoot clichés. Instead, it paints a disturbing portrait of intelligence and intent—a creature limping from an old wound, calculating every move, and watching with an almost human hunger in its eyes. His final confrontation, where he was forced to fire again and again just to survive, left more than scars. It left a lifetime of guilt.
But this is more than a survival tale. Clyde believes his actions shattered an unspoken balance between the Sasquatch and the mountain folk, triggering a wave of encounters and disappearances that still haunt the region.
His confession is not just a warning but a reckoning—one that suggests the mountains remember every trespass, and that some wounds, once inflicted, can never truly heal.
Get Our FREE Newsletter
Get Brian's Books
Leave Us A Voicemail
Visit Our Website
Support Our Sponsors
Visit Untold Radio AM
Mark as Played
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 don't know why I'm writing this to you. Maybe
because you're a stranger and that makes it easier. Maybe
(01:08):
because the doctors say I've got three months at best,
and carrying this for forty some years feels heavier than
the cancer eating away at my lungs. My name is Clyde.
I'm eighty two years old, born and raised in McDowell County,
West Virginia. I've been digging jen saying since I was
knee high to a grasshopper, learned from my daddy, who
learned from his But there's more to these mountains than jensing.
(01:32):
And that's what I need to tell you about before
I take this knowledge to my grave. You grow up
in these hollows, You hear things, stories that get passed
down like family recipes, each generation adding their own flavor,
but keeping the meat of it the same. My grandpa
used to tell me stories when I was young, sitting
on his porch with a jar of moonshine, watching the
(01:54):
sun disappear behind the ridges. He'd wait until the shadows
got long and the lightning bug started their dance before
he'd begin. Boy, he'd say, his voice rough as bark,
these mountains got secrets older than coal, things that was
here before the Cherokee, before anybody with sense enough to
write it down. The first story he ever told me,
(02:16):
I was maybe seven years old. This would have been
nineteen forty nine, back when half the roads in the
county were still dirt and you could walk for days
without seeing another soul. Back in nineteen o two, Grandpa began.
My uncle Harland was running a trap line up on
black Fork Ridge. He was a hard man. Harland was
fought in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt, came back missing two
(02:39):
fingers and afraid of nothing. But something happened up on
that ridge that changed him. He'd been checking his traps
for three days, working his way deeper into the mountains.
On the third night, he made camp near a grove
of hemlocks, big old trees that had probably been there
since before the revolution, built himself a good fire, cooked
some rabbit he'd snared, and settled in for the night.
(03:02):
Round about midnight, something woke him. Wasn't a sound exactly,
more like the absence of sound. You know how the
woods are at night, always something rustling or calling. But
this was dead quiet, like the whole mountain was holding
its breath. Harlan sat up, reached for his rifle. That's
when he saw the eyes, not reflecting the firelight like
(03:23):
a normal animal's would, but glowing on their own, pale
green like foxfire. They were high up, maybe eight feet
off the ground, just watching him from the edge of
the firelight. He called out, thinking maybe it was another
trapper playing games. The eyes didn't move, just kept staring.
Then another pair appeared next to the first. Then another,
(03:46):
three sets of eyes, all at the same height, all
that sickly green color. Harlan fired a shot over their heads,
trying to scare them off. The eyes vanished, but not
like they'd run away, more like someone had blown out
candles all at once. He kept that fire burning high
all night, feeding at every stick he could find. Come morning,
(04:08):
he packed up and came down off the mountain. He
never ran another trap line, took up farming in the valley.
Wouldn't even hunt deer if it meant going above the
first ridge. When people asked him what he'd seen, he'd
just shake his head and say, some things ain't meant
to be trapped. Grandpa took a long pull from his jar,
let the story sink in. Even at seven, I knew
(04:31):
better than to ask if it was true. In the mountains,
truth and story blend together like morning fog, and trying
to separate them only makes you lose both. The second
story came a few years later, when I was old
enough to help Grandpa work his Still we were up
in a hidden holler tending the mash when he told
me about the widow Thompson's encounter. This was nineteen twenty three.
(04:54):
He said, stirring the mash with a long wooden paddle.
The Thompson Place sat way back in Laurel, about as
far back as folks dared to live. She'd lost her
husband and a mind collapse, but she was a tough
woman stayed on with her three young'uns rather than move
to town. One October evening, just as the leaves were turning,
(05:14):
her oldest boy, James, didn't come home. He was twelve,
old enough to roam, but young enough to know better
than to stay out past dark. The widow waited until
full dark, then lit a pine not torch and went looking.
She found him about a half mile from the house,
standing in a clearing still as a statue. The boy
(05:34):
was staring up at something in the trees, his mouth
hanging open, his eyes wide as dinner plates. The widow
called his name, but he didn't respond. She had to
grab him by the shoulders and shake him before he
seemed to see her. Mama, he whispered, the tall man
in the trees, he's been talking to me. The widow
looked up but saw nothing except branches and shadows. She
(05:57):
dragged James home, and he came down with a fear
that lasted three days when it broke. He couldn't remember
anything about that night, but he was never the same after,
would wake up screaming about the tall man who walked
bent over, dragging something behind him. Said the tall man
wanted to take him to a special place where the
bones piled high. The widow moved her family to town
(06:19):
before the first snow. The house still stands, or what's
left of it. Nobody's lived there since. My Daddy had
his own stories, though he was less inclined to tell
them than Grandpa. Daddy was a practical man, believed in
what he could see and touch, but even he couldn't
explain everything that happened in these mountains. I remember one
(06:41):
story he told me when I was sixteen, the night
before my first solo jen saying Hunt. We were sitting
at the kitchen table, him nursing a cup of coffee
that had gone cold hours ago. This was nineteen fifty four.
He began his voice low so as not to wake Mama.
I was working timber with a crew up near Panther Creek.
(07:01):
Six of us, all mountain boys who knew our way
around an axe and a crosscut saw. We'd been cutting
virgin timber trees so big it took two men with
arms outstretched to reach around them. We had a camp
set up near the cutting site, just canvas tents and
a cook shelter. One night, our cook, an old fellow
named Earl, went to the creek to fill the water
(07:23):
buckets full moon that night, brightest day. Almost He was
gone maybe ten minutes when we heard him scream, not
a yell like he'd heard himself, but a real scream,
like a woman or a child in mortal terror. We
all grabbed lanterns and rifles and ran toward the creek.
Found Earl standing knee deep in the water, the buckets
(07:43):
floating away downstream. He was pointing at the far bank,
shaking so hard he couldn't speak. We looked where he
was pointing, but didn't see nothing at first. Then one
of the boys held his lantern higher and we saw
the tracks. They came out of the woods to the
creek edge, then followed the bank up stream. But these
weren't bear tracks or human tracks. They were wrong, too
(08:07):
big for one thing. But it was the shape that
bothered me, like a man's foot but stretched out with
toes that were too long, too spread apart, and every
other track was dragged like whatever made them couldn't lift
its left foot proper. We got Earl back to camp,
gave him some whiskey to calm his nerves. When he
could talk, he said he'd seen it. Said it had
(08:28):
been crouching by the water when he came up, drinking
like an animal. When it hurt him, it stood up
and up and up, eight nine feet tall, covered in
dark hair, with arms that hung down past its knees.
But it was the face that got him. Almost human,
he said, but with eyes that reflected the moonlight like
(08:48):
a cat's, And when it looked at him, it smiled,
not a friendly smile, but the way a fox smiles
at a rabbit. It walked away, he said, dragging that
left leg, following the creek upstream toward the high country.
We broke camp the next morning. The timber company sent
another crew, but they only lasted three days before they
pulled out too. Said tools went missing, Said they heard
(09:12):
things at night, said they found more tracks. Daddy paused,
stared into his cold coffee. I never told your mama
this part, but I went back up there alone a
week later. Don't know why. Maybe I didn't believe what
I'd seen. Maybe I needed to prove to myself there
was an explanation. I found our old camp site, found
(09:33):
the creek where Earl had his scare, and I found
something else. About one hundred yards upstream from where we'd
seen the tracks, there was a pile of bones, deer mostly,
but some bear too, all cracked open, the marrow sucked out,
and in the middle of the pile a timber cruiser's compass.
One had gone missing from our equipment the night before
(09:54):
Earl's encounter. I got out of there fast and never
went back, never told the other boys what I'd found.
Some knowledge is too heavy to share. These stories were
just the background music of growing up in the mountains.
Every family had them, every holler had its history. But
it wasn't until I had my own encounter that I
(10:15):
started paying real attention to the patterns. After what happened
to me in nineteen eighty three, I became something of
a collector of these stories. Not officially, mind you, but
i'd listen closer when the old timers talked. Buy a
few extra drinks at the VFW to loosen tongues. What
I learned painted a picture I wish I'd never seen.
(10:35):
Take Luther for instance. Luther was a bear hunter, one
of the best in three counties, ran hounds that could
track a ghost through a thunderstorm. In November of nineteen
eighty one, two years before my encounter, he was running
a bear that his dogs had jumped near Elkhorn Creek.
The dogs were on a hot trail, their voices echoing
(10:56):
through the hollows like a church choir. Luther was following
on foot, his rifle ready, when the dog's voices changed,
went from that eager hunting cry to something else fear, pure,
primal fear. Then they went silent, all six of them
at once. Luther found them huddled together in a laurel thicket,
(11:17):
shaking like leaves, their tails tucked so far under they
were touching their bellies. These were dogs that would face
down a five hundred pound bare without blinking, and here
they were terrified of something. He was trying to coax
them out when he heard the breathing, slow, deep rhythmic
coming from somewhere above him. He looked up and saw
(11:39):
it perched in a massive oak, like some nightmare bird.
It was huge, covered in dark hair, with arms wrapped
around the trunk, but it was looking down at him
with eyes that caught the light like copper pennies. Luther
raised his rifle and fired without thinking, hid it square
in the left thigh, saw the blood spray, heard it roar,
(12:00):
not like a bear or a big cat, but something
almost human. It dropped from the tree, landing hard, and
took off through the laurel. But that left leg wasn't
working right. It dragged behind, leaving a blood trail in
those strange wrong tracks. Luther's dogs wouldn't track it, wouldn't
even leave the thicket until he physically carried them out
(12:22):
one by one. He never hunted that section again, and
his dogs were never quite the same, would start whimpering
for no reason, refused to cross certain creeks. I know
I hit it good, Luther told me one night, drunk
on my whiskey and his own memories, that leg was ruined.
If it was a normal animal, it would have died
(12:42):
from blood loss or infection. But maybe it wasn't normal.
Maybe it was something else, something that don't die easy.
This was the thing I couldn't stop thinking about. The
creature I shot in nineteen eighty three had a bad
left leg, dragged it just like the one Luther shot
in nineteen eighty one, same area too, just different ridges
(13:02):
of the same mountain system. Could it have been the
same one? Living with that injury for two years, getting hungrier,
more desperate. And then there were the missing kids. The
first was in nineteen seventy nine, before Luther's encounter, the
poly twins Bobby and Brian, age nine. They'd gone out
to pick blackberries on a July morning, just up the
(13:24):
slope from their family's trailer. Their mama could see the
berry patch from the kitchen window, but when she looked
up from her dishes, the boys were gone. The whole
community searched for three days. Found one bucket, still half
full of berries, sitting neat as you please on a log.
No sign of struggle, no blood, no tracks except the
(13:45):
boy's own. It was like they'd just vanished into the air.
Most folks figured they'd gotten turned around, died of exposure somewhere,
but a few of the searchers mentioned finding other tracks,
big ones that the Sheriff's department dismissed as bear sign. Then,
in spring of nineteen eighty two, six months after Luther shot,
whatever he shot. Little Sarah Morrison went missing. She was seven,
(14:09):
playing in her backyard while her daddy worked on his truck.
He heard her laughing talking to someone. When he looked up,
she was walking into the woods, looking up at something tall,
like she was following a grown up. He called out,
but she didn't turn around. By the time he reached
the woodline, she was gone. They found her shoe three
miles away, up near the ridge line, just one shoe,
(14:32):
sitting on a rock like it had been placed there,
nothing else. Her daddy swore until his dying day that
she'd been talking to someone. That he'd seen a shadow
moving between the trees, too tall and wrong shape to
be human. But the worst came after my encounter, which
makes me wonder if I only wounded it made it meaner.
(14:53):
In the summer of nineteen eighty four, not even a
year after i'd shot it, the Stapleton Boy vanished. Stay
tuned for more bad back Woods bigfoot stories. We'll be
back after these messages. Tommy Stapleton, age eleven, experienced in
the woods. He'd gone squirrel hunting early on a Saturday morning,
taking the trail up toward Beartown Ridge. Yes, the same
(15:16):
ridge where I'd had my encounter. His daddy found his
twenty two rifle at the base of a cliff. The
barrel bent nearly in half. There were tracks in the
soft earth, Tommy's boots and something else. Those wrong dragging tracks,
one foot normal, one sliding through the leaves. They led
up to the cliff edge and just stopped. They never
(15:38):
found Tommy, but hikers reported finding strange things over the years.
A child's torn shirt hung high in a tree, small
bones arranged in patterns, toys left on stumps like offerings.
Old Mary, who lived at the mouth of the holler
and knew things about these mountains that nobody else remembered.
She told me something that chilled me worse than any winter.
(15:59):
When this was in nineteen eighty five, when I finally
got the courage to ask her about what I'd seen.
There's always been something up there, she said, her voice
like dry leaves my grannies. Granny knew about it. Said
the Cherokee wouldn't hunt those ridges. Said something walked there
that wasn't man nor beast, but something caught between. Said
(16:21):
it had been there since before the tribes, since the
world was young and different. They live a long time.
These things, maybe forever if nothing kills them. But they
get hurt like anything else, and hurt makes them dangerous,
makes them forget the old agreements, the boundaries. A hurt
one is a rogue one, and a rogue one needs
(16:42):
to eat. She looked at me with eyes clouded by cataracts,
but somehow still sharp. You shot it, didn't you? Up
on Beartown Ridge. I can see it on you, like
mud on your shoes. I couldn't answer, but she nodded
like I had. It's still up there, worse now, hungrier,
those children. It's trying to heal, trying to get strong again,
(17:06):
young blood, young bones. The old ways, the bad ways.
You opened a door that should have stayed closed. I
wanted to tell her she was crazy, but the words
wouldn't come, because deep down I knew she was right.
The thing i'd shot wasn't dead. It was up there,
dragging that ruined leg through the hollows, taking children to
(17:29):
some hidden place where bones piled high, just like the
tall man in Young James Thompson's Nightmares. Let me tell
you about my encounter now, the one that connects all
these threads. It was September of nineteen eighty three. I
remember because Reagan was president and my youngest boy had
just started high school. I was up on Beartown Ridge,
(17:49):
way back in the hollows where even the old timers
don't venture much. That was my secret spot. You understand.
Five generations of my family had worked those slopes, and
I'd found patches there that make your eyes water. Roots
thick as a man's thumb, some older than the Civil War.
I'd been up there three days, camping rough like I
(18:09):
always did, had my tent pitched near a little spring,
maybe four miles from where I'd left my truck. The
weather had been perfect for digging, cool mornings, warm afternoons,
the kind of September that makes you forget winters. Coming
on the third evening, something changed. I can't say exactly what.
At first, you spend enough time in the woods, you
(18:32):
develop a sense for things. The jays had gone quiet,
the squirrels weren't chattering. Even the creek seemed to run softer.
I was cleaning roots by my tent when I noticed it,
and the hair on my neck stood up like I'd
touched a live wire. I kept working, but my eyes
were moving scanning the tree line. Nothing just shadows getting
(18:53):
longer as the sun dropped behind the ridge. I had
my thirty thirty leaning against a log nearby, always did
when I was that far back. Bears, mostly, though I'd
never had to use it. That's when I saw it move,
maybe seventy yards up the slope between two big oaks,
just a shape at first, dark against the darker woods.
(19:16):
Too big for a bear, wrong shape for a man.
It stepped out from behind one of the trees, and
I got my first clear look. Lord help me. I
wish I hadn't. It was massive, eight feet tall, maybe more,
covered in dark hair that looked almost black in the
fading light. But it was the way it moved that
(19:36):
stuck out. It dragged its left leg, pulling it along
like dead weight. Each step was deliberate, calculated, and it
was watching me. Even at that distance, I could feel
its eyes on me the left thigh. Even through the hair,
I could see it was wrong, twisted, scarred. Luther's shot
(19:57):
from two years before had to be. This thing had
been living with that injury, and now it was here,
watching me with eyes that held too much intelligence for
an animal. I reached for my rifle, slow as molasses,
never taking my eyes off the thing. My hands were
shaking so bad I could barely work the lever. The
creature took another step down the slope, then another. That
(20:20):
dragging leg made a sound like somebody pulling a sack
of feed through dry leaves. It stopped, maybe forty yards out,
partially hidden behind a maple. I could see its chest
rising and falling, see the way its head tilted as
it studied me. The light was almost gone, but I
could make out the shape of its face, almost human,
(20:40):
but wrong in every way that mattered. The eyes were
too deep set, the jaw too heavy, and there was
something in its expression not curiosity, not fear, hunger, the
kind of desperate hunger that makes animals do things they
normally wouldn't. I stood up, real slow, rifle in my
mind hands, Get on out of here, I said, Surprise,
(21:03):
my voice worked at all. Go on now. It made
a sound then, not a roar or a howl like
you'd expect, more like a long, low moan that seemed
to come from somewhere deep in its chest, the sound
to hurt animal makes. But there was something else in
it too, something that made me take a step back
toward my tent. Pain, yes, but also rage, old rage,
(21:28):
the kind that ferments over time. That's when I remembered
the stories, the missing kids, the strange tracks, Luther's shot.
This wasn't just some animal protecting its territory. This was
something that had been hurt, had been hungry for two years,
had maybe taken children to sustain itself, and now it
was looking at me like I was the next meal.
(21:51):
It shifted its weight and I saw its hands clearly
for the first time too long, the fingers like pale
spiders against its dark fur. One hand gripped the maple trunk,
and I watched the bark crumble under its grasp. The
other hand hung at its side, clenching and unclenching. I
know what you are, I heard myself say, I know
(22:11):
what you've done. Something changed in its face. Then the
lips pulled back, showing teeth that were almost human but
too large, too sharp. Not a smile, not a snarl,
but something between an acknowledgment, maybe like it understood me
and wanted me to know it understood. It came at me,
(22:33):
not charging wild like a bear, but purposeful, deliberate. Even
with that ruined leg. It moved with terrible grace. It
used the trees, swinging from trunk to trunk with its
long arms, the bad leg dragging but not slowing it
as much as I'd hoped. I fired when it was
thirty yards out. The rifle kicked against my shoulder, the
(22:54):
shot echoing off the ridges. I saw the impact, saw
it stagger, but it kept coming. I worked the lever,
fired again. This time it roared a sound that was
almost words, almost human, screaming twenty yards. I could see
its eyes clearly now that copper reflection, the intelligence and
(23:14):
hunger and pain all mixed together. I fired a third time,
backing up my foot, catching on a root. I went
down hard, the rifle flying from my hands. When I
looked up, it was right there, ten feet away, reaching
for me with those spider fingers. Blood was running from
its shoulder, where one of my shots had hit, more
(23:35):
blood from its side. The wounds would have dropped a bear,
but this thing was still coming. I scrambled backward, my
hand finding a broken branch, not much of a weapon,
but I held it out anyway. The creature stopped, tilted
its head like a dog, hearing a strange sound. Then
it made that moaning sound again, lower this time, and
(23:57):
I realized it was trying to speak, trying to form
words with a throat and mouth not quite made for
human speech. Hurt, it said, or something like it hurt
long time. My hand found the rifle I'd landed, almost
on top of it. As I brought it up, the
creature lunged. I fired point blank, saw the impact knock
(24:20):
it backward. It fell hard, that broken leg twisting under
it at an angle that made me sick to see.
But it wasn't done. It tried to rise, pushing itself
up with those long arms. Blood was pooling beneath it,
more running from its mouth. It looked at me, and
for just a moment, I saw something in its eyes
that wasn't hunger or rage, understanding maybe, or just the
(24:44):
recognition that one of us was about to die. I
fired one more time. The sound echoed forever, bouncing from
ridge to ridge until it faded into the coming darkness.
The creature fell back and was still. I waited, rifle ready.
When it didn't move, I grabbed my pack, left everything
else and ran. I ran through the dark woods like
(25:06):
hell itself was chasing me. Branches tore at my clothes,
roots tried to trip me, but I kept running behind me.
I thought I heard sounds, not footsteps, but voices calling,
like the woods themselves were mourning. I made it to
my truck just as the moon was rising, started it
on the third try, and drove out of there without
(25:27):
looking back. When I got home, my wife took one
look at me and knew something had happened. But she
never asked, and I never told. But that wasn't the
end of it. Three days later, I drove back to
the trailhead. Don't ask me why. Maybe I needed to
know if it was real. Maybe I needed to know
if it was dead. I didn't go up to my campsite,
(25:50):
just walked a little way up the trail, listening. The
woods were normal, birds singing, squirrels chattering. But there was
something else too, A smell on the wind, like copper
and old leaves, and tracks in the mud. Not the
dragging tracks I'd learned to fear, but others, similar but different, Smaller,
(26:11):
some of them like juveniles, larger others massive prints that
sank deep in the soft earth. They'd come for their dead,
or they're wounded. Because when I asked around, casual like
nobody had found any strange bodies up on Beartown Ridge.
No bones, no blood except what the rain hadn't washed away.
(26:33):
Whatever I'd shot, Others of its kind had taken it away.
That's when I understood what Old Mary had meant about
opening doors. I'd hurt one of them, maybe killed it,
and they knew, They all knew. The disappearances continued, but
different now, not just children, hikers who ventured too far
from the trails, hunters who stayed out past dark, a
(26:56):
whole family, the Washburns, who went camping up near the
room in nineteen eighty seven and never came back, found
their tent shredded, their car still parked at the trailhead.
But no bodies, no blood, just those tracks everywhere, like
a gathering, like a council of war. My cousin Derek
had his own encounter in nineteen ninety one. He was
(27:18):
deer hunting, had a stand up in a white oak
about two miles from where I'd shot the creature. Just
as the light was fading, he heard something big moving
through the laurel below his stand. Figured it was the
ten point buck he'd been after, But what emerged from
the laurel. Wasn't a deer. It was one of them,
a female, he thought, smaller than what I'd described, but
(27:40):
still massive. She was carrying something, cradling it like a baby.
As she passed under his tree. She looked up right
at him, like she'd known he was there all along.
Her eyes, Derek told me later, whiskey, brave, but still shaking.
They were almost human, sad like she was grieving, and
what she was carrying christ Clyde. It was wrapped in
(28:03):
what looked like a burial shroud, but I could see
a hand sticking out, a hand with those long, wrong fingers,
but smaller like a child. She didn't threaten him, just
looked at him for a long moment before continuing up
the ridge. Derek waited until full dark before climbing down
and getting out of there. He never hunted that area again,
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never told anyone but me what he'd seen. You started something,
he said, when you shot that one. They're different now, bolder, angrier.
It's like you broke a treaty nobody knew existed. He
was right. The patterns changed after nineteen eighty three, before
encounters were rare, separated by years or decades after, they
(28:47):
became almost common. Not that anyone talked about them openly,
but if you knew how to listen, the stories were there,
Like the group of college kids who went camping in
nineteen ninety four came back missing one of their friends
and refusing to say what happened. Or the forest service
crew that quit en Mass in nineteen ninety seven, leaving
thousands of dollars of equipment behind. Or the developer who
(29:10):
tried to build vacation homes up there in two thousand
and one found his bulldozers flipped over and his survey
stakes arranged in patterns that hurt to look at. My
own son, though he don't know, I know, had a
run in in two thousand and five. He'd taken his boy,
my grandson, fishing up at beaver Dam Creek. They were
packing up to leave when my grandson pointed at the
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woods and said, Papa, why is that tall man watching us?
My son looked and saw nothing, but he knew the
stories had grown up. Hearing whispers of them. He grabbed
the boy and their gear and left quick. On the
drive out, my grandson kept looking back, waving at something
only he could see. The tall man is sad. The
(29:53):
boy said he walks funny because his leg hurts. He
wanted to show me where the special bones are hidden,
but I told him we had to go home. Stay
tuned for more backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after
these messages. My son never took him fishing there again.
The boy, he's grown now, doesn't remember any of it.
(30:14):
But sometimes I catch him staring at the tree line,
head tilted, like he's listening to something the rest of
us can't hear. I think about that creature I shot
more than I should dream about it. Sometimes in my dreams,
it's still alive, still up there, dragging that ruined leg
through the hollows, still hungry, still hunting. And sometimes in
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those dreams, it speaks clear, tells me about the pain
that never stops, about the hunger that can't be filled,
about the children it took trying to heal itself. You
did this, it says in my dreams, you and the
other one. The hunter broke the old ways, made us desperate,
made us dangerous. The children we needed. The children, blood
(31:00):
for old wounds, young bones for ancient hunger. I wake
from those dreams gasping, reaching for a rifle. I don't
keep by the bed anymore. My wife, God rest her soul.
She knew something was wrong all those years, but never pushed.
Maybe she had her own suspicions. Mountain women know to
leave some questions unasked. But now she's gone, and I'm dying,
(31:24):
and I can't take this to my grave alone. Someone
needs to know, Someone needs to understand that there are
boundaries in this world, lines that shouldn't be crossed, treaties
written in shadow and silence that we break at our peril.
I killed something on Beartown Ridge in September of nineteen
eighty three, or maybe I only wounded it worse. Either way,
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I change things. The old balance was broken. The things
that walk those high ridges, that have walked them since
before memory, they're different, now, hungrier, bolder, less willing to
keep to their ANIMs places. If you're ever in the
deep mountains past, where the cell phones work and the
trails peter out, be careful. Watch for tracks that drag,
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Listen for voices that almost form words. And if you
see eyes watching from the trees, eyes too high and
too intelligent to be animal, don't shoot. Don't break the treaties.
You don't understand, because they remember every wound, every broken promise,
every bullet fired in fear. They remember, and they hunger
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and they wait, and sometimes, when the moon is dark
and the mist rises from the hollows, they come down
from the high places, looking for what was taken from them,
looking for healing, looking for revenge. The children who vanish,
the hikers who don't come home, the hunters who leave
their rifles and swear off the woods forever. They're all
(32:53):
part of a price being paid for wounds that won't heal,
for a balance that can't be restored. I'm the one
who pulled the trigger, who drew blood on Beartown Ridge,
But Luther started it with his shot in nineteen eighty one,
turned a creature that might have been content to remain
hidden into something desperate and dangerous. And I finished it,
(33:13):
or tried to. Sometimes I think I can feel it still,
not just in dreams, but in waking moments, a presence
at the edge of consciousness, a weight on my chest
that isn't just the cancer. It's waiting for me, maybe
waiting on the other side of whatever comes next. The
tall man with the ruined leg, still hungry, still hunting.
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My grandson, the one who saw it that day, fishing.
He's got children of his own now. Sometimes I want
to warn him, tell him to keep them away from
the deep woods, away from the ridges where the mist
hangs too long. But what would I say? How do
you explain a treaty written in fear and blood? How
do you describe the hunger of something ancient and wounded?
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You can't. All you can do is hope the boundaries hold,
Hope the old agreement still means something. Hope that what
Luther and I broke can somehow be mended by time
and distance and silence. But I don't think it can.
The disappearances continue, not often, not enough to make the news,
but enough. A child here, a hiker there, always near
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the old places, always leaving those dragging tracks that the
Sheriff's department won't acknowledge. Last month, my nephew called, said
he'd been squirrel hunting up near Panther Creek, same area
where Daddy saw the tracks back in fifty four. Said
he'd found something I should know about. He'd followed what
he thought was a game trail, ended up in a
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hollow he'd never seen before. There was a cave there,
hidden behind a fall of rocks, the entrance almost invisible
unless you knew where to look. The smell coming from
it was wrong, he said, like copper and old death
and something else, something alive but ancient. He didn't go in.
Something about the darkness beyond that entrance, the way it
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seemed to swallow light, made him back away. But as
he left he saw them tracks in the soft earth
near the entrance, dozens of them, all different sizes, some dragged,
some didn't, like a family group like a clan, and
arranged on a flat rock near the cave, like an
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offering or a warning. Were three things, a child's shoe,
faded and weather worn, a hunter's compass, the brass green
with age, and a piece of cloth that might have
been from a burial shroud stained with something dark. He
left them there, left the whole hollow, and hasn't been back.
But he told me because he knew i'd understand, knew
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i'd recognize the message in those objects. The shoe from
one of the taking children, the compass, maybe from Daddy's
crew or some other vanished hunter. The burial cloth from
whatever ceremony they'd held for the one eye shot. They're
still there, still waiting, still remembering. That's all I wanted
to say. You can believe it or not, doesn't matter
(36:07):
to me anymore. But if you ever find yourself in
the deep hollows of the Appalachians, past where the trails
end and the old folks won't go, you be careful.
There are things in those mountains that don't belong in
this world, and they're hungry, hungry and hurt, and holding
grudges that span generations. I wouldn't go up there if
I was you. Some places are better left alone. The
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cancer will take me soon, three months, the doctors say,
maybe less. Sometimes I think that's mercy. I won't have
to dream about those copper eyes anymore, won't have to
wonder if the next missing child is somehow my fault.
Won't have to feel the weight of that creature's dying gaze,
the almost human recognition in its face as my bullet
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found its mark. But sometimes, on nights, when the moon
is dark and the wind moves through the trees outside
my window, I think I can hear them calling to
each other across the ridges, and voices that almost make
words mourning. They're dead, planning, their revenge, waiting for the
right moment to come down from the high places and
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collect what's owed. I pray I'm gone before that happens.
Pray my children and grandchildren have sense enough to stay
away from the deep woods. Pray the old boundaries hold
a little longer. But I don't think they will. I
think Luther and I broke something that can't be fixed,
opened a door that can't be closed, change the rules
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of a game we didn't even know we were playing. God,
forgive me, And if you're smart, you'll delete this email
and forget you ever read it. Some knowledge is too
heavy to carry. Some truths are better left in the
shadows where they belong. But I had to tell someone,
had to pass this burden on before it drags me
down into whatever darkness waits beyond. Maybe that makes me selfish,
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Maybe that makes me weak, But I'm old and dying
and tired of carrying this alone. Be careful out there,
watch the tree line, listen to the silence, and whatever
you do, whatever you see, don't shoot. The mountains have
a long memory, and they're still counting the cost of
what we've done. Ps If you do go up there,
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despite everything I've said, leave an offering at the cave.
Food maybe, or something shiny. They like shiny things always have.
Maybe it'll buy you safe passage. Maybe it'll just make
you easier to track. I don't know anymore. I don't
know anything except that I should have listened to the
old stories, should have respected the boundaries, should have left
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that wounded thing alone to heal or die in peace.
But I didn't, And now the debt keeps growing, pain
in blood and sorrow, and children who never come home.
(40:42):
Pat Pat, Pat, Pat,
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 don't know why I'm writing this to you. Maybe
because you're a stranger and that makes it easier. Maybe
(01:08):
because the doctors say I've got three months at best,
and carrying this for forty some years feels heavier than
the cancer eating away at my lungs. My name is Clyde.
I'm eighty two years old, born and raised in McDowell County,
West Virginia. I've been digging jen saying since I was
knee high to a grasshopper, learned from my daddy, who
learned from his But there's more to these mountains than jensing.
(01:32):
And that's what I need to tell you about before
I take this knowledge to my grave. You grow up
in these hollows, You hear things, stories that get passed
down like family recipes, each generation adding their own flavor,
but keeping the meat of it the same. My grandpa
used to tell me stories when I was young, sitting
on his porch with a jar of moonshine, watching the
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sun disappear behind the ridges. He'd wait until the shadows
got long and the lightning bug started their dance before
he'd begin. Boy, he'd say, his voice rough as bark,
these mountains got secrets older than coal, things that was
here before the Cherokee, before anybody with sense enough to
write it down. The first story he ever told me,
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I was maybe seven years old. This would have been
nineteen forty nine, back when half the roads in the
county were still dirt and you could walk for days
without seeing another soul. Back in nineteen o two, Grandpa began.
My uncle Harland was running a trap line up on
black Fork Ridge. He was a hard man. Harland was
fought in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt, came back missing two
(02:39):
fingers and afraid of nothing. But something happened up on
that ridge that changed him. He'd been checking his traps
for three days, working his way deeper into the mountains.
On the third night, he made camp near a grove
of hemlocks, big old trees that had probably been there
since before the revolution, built himself a good fire, cooked
some rabbit he'd snared, and settled in for the night.
(03:02):
Round about midnight, something woke him. Wasn't a sound exactly,
more like the absence of sound. You know how the
woods are at night, always something rustling or calling. But
this was dead quiet, like the whole mountain was holding
its breath. Harlan sat up, reached for his rifle. That's
when he saw the eyes, not reflecting the firelight like
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a normal animal's would, but glowing on their own, pale
green like foxfire. They were high up, maybe eight feet
off the ground, just watching him from the edge of
the firelight. He called out, thinking maybe it was another
trapper playing games. The eyes didn't move, just kept staring.
Then another pair appeared next to the first. Then another,
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three sets of eyes, all at the same height, all
that sickly green color. Harlan fired a shot over their heads,
trying to scare them off. The eyes vanished, but not
like they'd run away, more like someone had blown out
candles all at once. He kept that fire burning high
all night, feeding at every stick he could find. Come morning,
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he packed up and came down off the mountain. He
never ran another trap line, took up farming in the valley.
Wouldn't even hunt deer if it meant going above the
first ridge. When people asked him what he'd seen, he'd
just shake his head and say, some things ain't meant
to be trapped. Grandpa took a long pull from his jar,
let the story sink in. Even at seven, I knew
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better than to ask if it was true. In the mountains,
truth and story blend together like morning fog, and trying
to separate them only makes you lose both. The second
story came a few years later, when I was old
enough to help Grandpa work his Still we were up
in a hidden holler tending the mash when he told
me about the widow Thompson's encounter. This was nineteen twenty three.
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He said, stirring the mash with a long wooden paddle.
The Thompson Place sat way back in Laurel, about as
far back as folks dared to live. She'd lost her
husband and a mind collapse, but she was a tough
woman stayed on with her three young'uns rather than move
to town. One October evening, just as the leaves were turning,
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her oldest boy, James, didn't come home. He was twelve,
old enough to roam, but young enough to know better
than to stay out past dark. The widow waited until
full dark, then lit a pine not torch and went looking.
She found him about a half mile from the house,
standing in a clearing still as a statue. The boy
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was staring up at something in the trees, his mouth
hanging open, his eyes wide as dinner plates. The widow
called his name, but he didn't respond. She had to
grab him by the shoulders and shake him before he
seemed to see her. Mama, he whispered, the tall man
in the trees, he's been talking to me. The widow
looked up but saw nothing except branches and shadows. She
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dragged James home, and he came down with a fear
that lasted three days when it broke. He couldn't remember
anything about that night, but he was never the same after,
would wake up screaming about the tall man who walked
bent over, dragging something behind him. Said the tall man
wanted to take him to a special place where the
bones piled high. The widow moved her family to town
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before the first snow. The house still stands, or what's
left of it. Nobody's lived there since. My Daddy had
his own stories, though he was less inclined to tell
them than Grandpa. Daddy was a practical man, believed in
what he could see and touch, but even he couldn't
explain everything that happened in these mountains. I remember one
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story he told me when I was sixteen, the night
before my first solo jen saying Hunt. We were sitting
at the kitchen table, him nursing a cup of coffee
that had gone cold hours ago. This was nineteen fifty four.
He began his voice low so as not to wake Mama.
I was working timber with a crew up near Panther Creek.
(07:01):
Six of us, all mountain boys who knew our way
around an axe and a crosscut saw. We'd been cutting
virgin timber trees so big it took two men with
arms outstretched to reach around them. We had a camp
set up near the cutting site, just canvas tents and
a cook shelter. One night, our cook, an old fellow
named Earl, went to the creek to fill the water
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buckets full moon that night, brightest day. Almost He was
gone maybe ten minutes when we heard him scream, not
a yell like he'd heard himself, but a real scream,
like a woman or a child in mortal terror. We
all grabbed lanterns and rifles and ran toward the creek.
Found Earl standing knee deep in the water, the buckets
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floating away downstream. He was pointing at the far bank,
shaking so hard he couldn't speak. We looked where he
was pointing, but didn't see nothing at first. Then one
of the boys held his lantern higher and we saw
the tracks. They came out of the woods to the
creek edge, then followed the bank up stream. But these
weren't bear tracks or human tracks. They were wrong, too
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big for one thing. But it was the shape that
bothered me, like a man's foot but stretched out with
toes that were too long, too spread apart, and every
other track was dragged like whatever made them couldn't lift
its left foot proper. We got Earl back to camp,
gave him some whiskey to calm his nerves. When he
could talk, he said he'd seen it. Said it had
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been crouching by the water when he came up, drinking
like an animal. When it hurt him, it stood up
and up and up, eight nine feet tall, covered in
dark hair, with arms that hung down past its knees.
But it was the face that got him. Almost human,
he said, but with eyes that reflected the moonlight like
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a cat's, And when it looked at him, it smiled,
not a friendly smile, but the way a fox smiles
at a rabbit. It walked away, he said, dragging that
left leg, following the creek upstream toward the high country.
We broke camp the next morning. The timber company sent
another crew, but they only lasted three days before they
pulled out too. Said tools went missing, Said they heard
(09:12):
things at night, said they found more tracks. Daddy paused,
stared into his cold coffee. I never told your mama
this part, but I went back up there alone a
week later. Don't know why. Maybe I didn't believe what
I'd seen. Maybe I needed to prove to myself there
was an explanation. I found our old camp site, found
(09:33):
the creek where Earl had his scare, and I found
something else. About one hundred yards upstream from where we'd
seen the tracks, there was a pile of bones, deer mostly,
but some bear too, all cracked open, the marrow sucked out,
and in the middle of the pile a timber cruiser's compass.
One had gone missing from our equipment the night before
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Earl's encounter. I got out of there fast and never
went back, never told the other boys what I'd found.
Some knowledge is too heavy to share. These stories were
just the background music of growing up in the mountains.
Every family had them, every holler had its history. But
it wasn't until I had my own encounter that I
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started paying real attention to the patterns. After what happened
to me in nineteen eighty three, I became something of
a collector of these stories. Not officially, mind you, but
i'd listen closer when the old timers talked. Buy a
few extra drinks at the VFW to loosen tongues. What
I learned painted a picture I wish I'd never seen.
(10:35):
Take Luther for instance. Luther was a bear hunter, one
of the best in three counties, ran hounds that could
track a ghost through a thunderstorm. In November of nineteen
eighty one, two years before my encounter, he was running
a bear that his dogs had jumped near Elkhorn Creek.
The dogs were on a hot trail, their voices echoing
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through the hollows like a church choir. Luther was following
on foot, his rifle ready, when the dog's voices changed,
went from that eager hunting cry to something else fear, pure,
primal fear. Then they went silent, all six of them
at once. Luther found them huddled together in a laurel thicket,
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shaking like leaves, their tails tucked so far under they
were touching their bellies. These were dogs that would face
down a five hundred pound bare without blinking, and here
they were terrified of something. He was trying to coax
them out when he heard the breathing, slow, deep rhythmic
coming from somewhere above him. He looked up and saw
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it perched in a massive oak, like some nightmare bird.
It was huge, covered in dark hair, with arms wrapped
around the trunk, but it was looking down at him
with eyes that caught the light like copper pennies. Luther
raised his rifle and fired without thinking, hid it square
in the left thigh, saw the blood spray, heard it roar,
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not like a bear or a big cat, but something
almost human. It dropped from the tree, landing hard, and
took off through the laurel. But that left leg wasn't
working right. It dragged behind, leaving a blood trail in
those strange wrong tracks. Luther's dogs wouldn't track it, wouldn't
even leave the thicket until he physically carried them out
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one by one. He never hunted that section again, and
his dogs were never quite the same, would start whimpering
for no reason, refused to cross certain creeks. I know
I hit it good, Luther told me one night, drunk
on my whiskey and his own memories, that leg was ruined.
If it was a normal animal, it would have died
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from blood loss or infection. But maybe it wasn't normal.
Maybe it was something else, something that don't die easy.
This was the thing I couldn't stop thinking about. The
creature I shot in nineteen eighty three had a bad
left leg, dragged it just like the one Luther shot
in nineteen eighty one, same area too, just different ridges
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of the same mountain system. Could it have been the
same one? Living with that injury for two years, getting hungrier,
more desperate. And then there were the missing kids. The
first was in nineteen seventy nine, before Luther's encounter, the
poly twins Bobby and Brian, age nine. They'd gone out
to pick blackberries on a July morning, just up the
(13:24):
slope from their family's trailer. Their mama could see the
berry patch from the kitchen window, but when she looked
up from her dishes, the boys were gone. The whole
community searched for three days. Found one bucket, still half
full of berries, sitting neat as you please on a log.
No sign of struggle, no blood, no tracks except the
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boy's own. It was like they'd just vanished into the air.
Most folks figured they'd gotten turned around, died of exposure somewhere,
but a few of the searchers mentioned finding other tracks,
big ones that the Sheriff's department dismissed as bear sign. Then,
in spring of nineteen eighty two, six months after Luther shot,
whatever he shot. Little Sarah Morrison went missing. She was seven,
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playing in her backyard while her daddy worked on his truck.
He heard her laughing talking to someone. When he looked up,
she was walking into the woods, looking up at something tall,
like she was following a grown up. He called out,
but she didn't turn around. By the time he reached
the woodline, she was gone. They found her shoe three
miles away, up near the ridge line, just one shoe,
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sitting on a rock like it had been placed there,
nothing else. Her daddy swore until his dying day that
she'd been talking to someone. That he'd seen a shadow
moving between the trees, too tall and wrong shape to
be human. But the worst came after my encounter, which
makes me wonder if I only wounded it made it meaner.
(14:53):
In the summer of nineteen eighty four, not even a
year after i'd shot it, the Stapleton Boy vanished. Stay
tuned for more bad back Woods bigfoot stories. We'll be
back after these messages. Tommy Stapleton, age eleven, experienced in
the woods. He'd gone squirrel hunting early on a Saturday morning,
taking the trail up toward Beartown Ridge. Yes, the same
(15:16):
ridge where I'd had my encounter. His daddy found his
twenty two rifle at the base of a cliff. The
barrel bent nearly in half. There were tracks in the
soft earth, Tommy's boots and something else. Those wrong dragging tracks,
one foot normal, one sliding through the leaves. They led
up to the cliff edge and just stopped. They never
(15:38):
found Tommy, but hikers reported finding strange things over the years.
A child's torn shirt hung high in a tree, small
bones arranged in patterns, toys left on stumps like offerings.
Old Mary, who lived at the mouth of the holler
and knew things about these mountains that nobody else remembered.
She told me something that chilled me worse than any winter.
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When this was in nineteen eighty five, when I finally
got the courage to ask her about what I'd seen.
There's always been something up there, she said, her voice
like dry leaves my grannies. Granny knew about it. Said
the Cherokee wouldn't hunt those ridges. Said something walked there
that wasn't man nor beast, but something caught between. Said
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it had been there since before the tribes, since the
world was young and different. They live a long time.
These things, maybe forever if nothing kills them. But they
get hurt like anything else, and hurt makes them dangerous,
makes them forget the old agreements, the boundaries. A hurt
one is a rogue one, and a rogue one needs
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to eat. She looked at me with eyes clouded by cataracts,
but somehow still sharp. You shot it, didn't you? Up
on Beartown Ridge. I can see it on you, like
mud on your shoes. I couldn't answer, but she nodded
like I had. It's still up there, worse now, hungrier,
those children. It's trying to heal, trying to get strong again,
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young blood, young bones. The old ways, the bad ways.
You opened a door that should have stayed closed. I
wanted to tell her she was crazy, but the words
wouldn't come, because deep down I knew she was right.
The thing i'd shot wasn't dead. It was up there,
dragging that ruined leg through the hollows, taking children to
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some hidden place where bones piled high, just like the
tall man in Young James Thompson's Nightmares. Let me tell
you about my encounter now, the one that connects all
these threads. It was September of nineteen eighty three. I
remember because Reagan was president and my youngest boy had
just started high school. I was up on Beartown Ridge,
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way back in the hollows where even the old timers
don't venture much. That was my secret spot. You understand.
Five generations of my family had worked those slopes, and
I'd found patches there that make your eyes water. Roots
thick as a man's thumb, some older than the Civil War.
I'd been up there three days, camping rough like I
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always did, had my tent pitched near a little spring,
maybe four miles from where I'd left my truck. The
weather had been perfect for digging, cool mornings, warm afternoons,
the kind of September that makes you forget winters. Coming
on the third evening, something changed. I can't say exactly what.
At first, you spend enough time in the woods, you
(18:32):
develop a sense for things. The jays had gone quiet,
the squirrels weren't chattering. Even the creek seemed to run softer.
I was cleaning roots by my tent when I noticed it,
and the hair on my neck stood up like I'd
touched a live wire. I kept working, but my eyes
were moving scanning the tree line. Nothing just shadows getting
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longer as the sun dropped behind the ridge. I had
my thirty thirty leaning against a log nearby, always did
when I was that far back. Bears, mostly, though I'd
never had to use it. That's when I saw it move,
maybe seventy yards up the slope between two big oaks,
just a shape at first, dark against the darker woods.
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Too big for a bear, wrong shape for a man.
It stepped out from behind one of the trees, and
I got my first clear look. Lord help me. I
wish I hadn't. It was massive, eight feet tall, maybe more,
covered in dark hair that looked almost black in the
fading light. But it was the way it moved that
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stuck out. It dragged its left leg, pulling it along
like dead weight. Each step was deliberate, calculated, and it
was watching me. Even at that distance, I could feel
its eyes on me the left thigh. Even through the hair,
I could see it was wrong, twisted, scarred. Luther's shot
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from two years before had to be. This thing had
been living with that injury, and now it was here,
watching me with eyes that held too much intelligence for
an animal. I reached for my rifle, slow as molasses,
never taking my eyes off the thing. My hands were
shaking so bad I could barely work the lever. The
creature took another step down the slope, then another. That
(20:20):
dragging leg made a sound like somebody pulling a sack
of feed through dry leaves. It stopped, maybe forty yards out,
partially hidden behind a maple. I could see its chest
rising and falling, see the way its head tilted as
it studied me. The light was almost gone, but I
could make out the shape of its face, almost human,
(20:40):
but wrong in every way that mattered. The eyes were
too deep set, the jaw too heavy, and there was
something in its expression not curiosity, not fear, hunger, the
kind of desperate hunger that makes animals do things they
normally wouldn't. I stood up, real slow, rifle in my
mind hands, Get on out of here, I said, Surprise,
(21:03):
my voice worked at all. Go on now. It made
a sound then, not a roar or a howl like
you'd expect, more like a long, low moan that seemed
to come from somewhere deep in its chest, the sound
to hurt animal makes. But there was something else in
it too, something that made me take a step back
toward my tent. Pain, yes, but also rage, old rage,
(21:28):
the kind that ferments over time. That's when I remembered
the stories, the missing kids, the strange tracks, Luther's shot.
This wasn't just some animal protecting its territory. This was
something that had been hurt, had been hungry for two years,
had maybe taken children to sustain itself, and now it
was looking at me like I was the next meal.
(21:51):
It shifted its weight and I saw its hands clearly
for the first time too long, the fingers like pale
spiders against its dark fur. One hand gripped the maple trunk,
and I watched the bark crumble under its grasp. The
other hand hung at its side, clenching and unclenching. I
know what you are, I heard myself say, I know
(22:11):
what you've done. Something changed in its face. Then the
lips pulled back, showing teeth that were almost human but
too large, too sharp. Not a smile, not a snarl,
but something between an acknowledgment, maybe like it understood me
and wanted me to know it understood. It came at me,
(22:33):
not charging wild like a bear, but purposeful, deliberate. Even
with that ruined leg. It moved with terrible grace. It
used the trees, swinging from trunk to trunk with its
long arms, the bad leg dragging but not slowing it
as much as I'd hoped. I fired when it was
thirty yards out. The rifle kicked against my shoulder, the
(22:54):
shot echoing off the ridges. I saw the impact, saw
it stagger, but it kept coming. I worked the lever,
fired again. This time it roared a sound that was
almost words, almost human, screaming twenty yards. I could see
its eyes clearly now that copper reflection, the intelligence and
(23:14):
hunger and pain all mixed together. I fired a third time,
backing up my foot, catching on a root. I went
down hard, the rifle flying from my hands. When I
looked up, it was right there, ten feet away, reaching
for me with those spider fingers. Blood was running from
its shoulder, where one of my shots had hit, more
(23:35):
blood from its side. The wounds would have dropped a bear,
but this thing was still coming. I scrambled backward, my
hand finding a broken branch, not much of a weapon,
but I held it out anyway. The creature stopped, tilted
its head like a dog, hearing a strange sound. Then
it made that moaning sound again, lower this time, and
(23:57):
I realized it was trying to speak, trying to form
words with a throat and mouth not quite made for
human speech. Hurt, it said, or something like it hurt
long time. My hand found the rifle I'd landed, almost
on top of it. As I brought it up, the
creature lunged. I fired point blank, saw the impact knock
(24:20):
it backward. It fell hard, that broken leg twisting under
it at an angle that made me sick to see.
But it wasn't done. It tried to rise, pushing itself
up with those long arms. Blood was pooling beneath it,
more running from its mouth. It looked at me, and
for just a moment, I saw something in its eyes
that wasn't hunger or rage, understanding maybe, or just the
(24:44):
recognition that one of us was about to die. I
fired one more time. The sound echoed forever, bouncing from
ridge to ridge until it faded into the coming darkness.
The creature fell back and was still. I waited, rifle ready.
When it didn't move, I grabbed my pack, left everything
else and ran. I ran through the dark woods like
(25:06):
hell itself was chasing me. Branches tore at my clothes,
roots tried to trip me, but I kept running behind me.
I thought I heard sounds, not footsteps, but voices calling,
like the woods themselves were mourning. I made it to
my truck just as the moon was rising, started it
on the third try, and drove out of there without
(25:27):
looking back. When I got home, my wife took one
look at me and knew something had happened. But she
never asked, and I never told. But that wasn't the
end of it. Three days later, I drove back to
the trailhead. Don't ask me why. Maybe I needed to
know if it was real. Maybe I needed to know
if it was dead. I didn't go up to my campsite,
(25:50):
just walked a little way up the trail, listening. The
woods were normal, birds singing, squirrels chattering. But there was
something else too, A smell on the wind, like copper
and old leaves, and tracks in the mud. Not the
dragging tracks I'd learned to fear, but others, similar but different, Smaller,
(26:11):
some of them like juveniles, larger others massive prints that
sank deep in the soft earth. They'd come for their dead,
or they're wounded. Because when I asked around, casual like
nobody had found any strange bodies up on Beartown Ridge.
No bones, no blood except what the rain hadn't washed away.
(26:33):
Whatever I'd shot, Others of its kind had taken it away.
That's when I understood what Old Mary had meant about
opening doors. I'd hurt one of them, maybe killed it,
and they knew, They all knew. The disappearances continued, but
different now, not just children, hikers who ventured too far
from the trails, hunters who stayed out past dark, a
(26:56):
whole family, the Washburns, who went camping up near the
room in nineteen eighty seven and never came back, found
their tent shredded, their car still parked at the trailhead.
But no bodies, no blood, just those tracks everywhere, like
a gathering, like a council of war. My cousin Derek
had his own encounter in nineteen ninety one. He was
(27:18):
deer hunting, had a stand up in a white oak
about two miles from where I'd shot the creature. Just
as the light was fading, he heard something big moving
through the laurel below his stand. Figured it was the
ten point buck he'd been after, But what emerged from
the laurel. Wasn't a deer. It was one of them,
a female, he thought, smaller than what I'd described, but
(27:40):
still massive. She was carrying something, cradling it like a baby.
As she passed under his tree. She looked up right
at him, like she'd known he was there all along.
Her eyes, Derek told me later, whiskey, brave, but still shaking.
They were almost human, sad like she was grieving, and
what she was carrying christ Clyde. It was wrapped in
(28:03):
what looked like a burial shroud, but I could see
a hand sticking out, a hand with those long, wrong fingers,
but smaller like a child. She didn't threaten him, just
looked at him for a long moment before continuing up
the ridge. Derek waited until full dark before climbing down
and getting out of there. He never hunted that area again,
(28:25):
never told anyone but me what he'd seen. You started something,
he said, when you shot that one. They're different now, bolder, angrier.
It's like you broke a treaty nobody knew existed. He
was right. The patterns changed after nineteen eighty three, before
encounters were rare, separated by years or decades after, they
(28:47):
became almost common. Not that anyone talked about them openly,
but if you knew how to listen, the stories were there,
Like the group of college kids who went camping in
nineteen ninety four came back missing one of their friends
and refusing to say what happened. Or the forest service
crew that quit en Mass in nineteen ninety seven, leaving
thousands of dollars of equipment behind. Or the developer who
(29:10):
tried to build vacation homes up there in two thousand
and one found his bulldozers flipped over and his survey
stakes arranged in patterns that hurt to look at. My
own son, though he don't know, I know, had a
run in in two thousand and five. He'd taken his boy,
my grandson, fishing up at beaver Dam Creek. They were
packing up to leave when my grandson pointed at the
(29:32):
woods and said, Papa, why is that tall man watching us?
My son looked and saw nothing, but he knew the
stories had grown up. Hearing whispers of them. He grabbed
the boy and their gear and left quick. On the
drive out, my grandson kept looking back, waving at something
only he could see. The tall man is sad. The
(29:53):
boy said he walks funny because his leg hurts. He
wanted to show me where the special bones are hidden,
but I told him we had to go home. Stay
tuned for more backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after
these messages. My son never took him fishing there again.
The boy, he's grown now, doesn't remember any of it.
(30:14):
But sometimes I catch him staring at the tree line,
head tilted, like he's listening to something the rest of
us can't hear. I think about that creature I shot
more than I should dream about it. Sometimes in my dreams,
it's still alive, still up there, dragging that ruined leg
through the hollows, still hungry, still hunting. And sometimes in
(30:35):
those dreams, it speaks clear, tells me about the pain
that never stops, about the hunger that can't be filled,
about the children it took trying to heal itself. You
did this, it says in my dreams, you and the
other one. The hunter broke the old ways, made us desperate,
made us dangerous. The children we needed. The children, blood
(31:00):
for old wounds, young bones for ancient hunger. I wake
from those dreams gasping, reaching for a rifle. I don't
keep by the bed anymore. My wife, God rest her soul.
She knew something was wrong all those years, but never pushed.
Maybe she had her own suspicions. Mountain women know to
leave some questions unasked. But now she's gone, and I'm dying,
(31:24):
and I can't take this to my grave alone. Someone
needs to know, Someone needs to understand that there are
boundaries in this world, lines that shouldn't be crossed, treaties
written in shadow and silence that we break at our peril.
I killed something on Beartown Ridge in September of nineteen
eighty three, or maybe I only wounded it worse. Either way,
(31:46):
I change things. The old balance was broken. The things
that walk those high ridges, that have walked them since
before memory, they're different, now, hungrier, bolder, less willing to
keep to their ANIMs places. If you're ever in the
deep mountains past, where the cell phones work and the
trails peter out, be careful. Watch for tracks that drag,
(32:10):
Listen for voices that almost form words. And if you
see eyes watching from the trees, eyes too high and
too intelligent to be animal, don't shoot. Don't break the treaties.
You don't understand, because they remember every wound, every broken promise,
every bullet fired in fear. They remember, and they hunger
(32:31):
and they wait, and sometimes, when the moon is dark
and the mist rises from the hollows, they come down
from the high places, looking for what was taken from them,
looking for healing, looking for revenge. The children who vanish,
the hikers who don't come home, the hunters who leave
their rifles and swear off the woods forever. They're all
(32:53):
part of a price being paid for wounds that won't heal,
for a balance that can't be restored. I'm the one
who pulled the trigger, who drew blood on Beartown Ridge,
But Luther started it with his shot in nineteen eighty one,
turned a creature that might have been content to remain
hidden into something desperate and dangerous. And I finished it,
(33:13):
or tried to. Sometimes I think I can feel it still,
not just in dreams, but in waking moments, a presence
at the edge of consciousness, a weight on my chest
that isn't just the cancer. It's waiting for me, maybe
waiting on the other side of whatever comes next. The
tall man with the ruined leg, still hungry, still hunting.
(33:35):
My grandson, the one who saw it that day, fishing.
He's got children of his own now. Sometimes I want
to warn him, tell him to keep them away from
the deep woods, away from the ridges where the mist
hangs too long. But what would I say? How do
you explain a treaty written in fear and blood? How
do you describe the hunger of something ancient and wounded?
(33:56):
You can't. All you can do is hope the boundaries hold,
Hope the old agreement still means something. Hope that what
Luther and I broke can somehow be mended by time
and distance and silence. But I don't think it can.
The disappearances continue, not often, not enough to make the news,
but enough. A child here, a hiker there, always near
(34:20):
the old places, always leaving those dragging tracks that the
Sheriff's department won't acknowledge. Last month, my nephew called, said
he'd been squirrel hunting up near Panther Creek, same area
where Daddy saw the tracks back in fifty four. Said
he'd found something I should know about. He'd followed what
he thought was a game trail, ended up in a
(34:40):
hollow he'd never seen before. There was a cave there,
hidden behind a fall of rocks, the entrance almost invisible
unless you knew where to look. The smell coming from
it was wrong, he said, like copper and old death
and something else, something alive but ancient. He didn't go in.
Something about the darkness beyond that entrance, the way it
(35:02):
seemed to swallow light, made him back away. But as
he left he saw them tracks in the soft earth
near the entrance, dozens of them, all different sizes, some dragged,
some didn't, like a family group like a clan, and
arranged on a flat rock near the cave, like an
(35:23):
offering or a warning. Were three things, a child's shoe,
faded and weather worn, a hunter's compass, the brass green
with age, and a piece of cloth that might have
been from a burial shroud stained with something dark. He
left them there, left the whole hollow, and hasn't been back.
But he told me because he knew i'd understand, knew
(35:45):
i'd recognize the message in those objects. The shoe from
one of the taking children, the compass, maybe from Daddy's
crew or some other vanished hunter. The burial cloth from
whatever ceremony they'd held for the one eye shot. They're
still there, still waiting, still remembering. That's all I wanted
to say. You can believe it or not, doesn't matter
(36:07):
to me anymore. But if you ever find yourself in
the deep hollows of the Appalachians, past where the trails
end and the old folks won't go, you be careful.
There are things in those mountains that don't belong in
this world, and they're hungry, hungry and hurt, and holding
grudges that span generations. I wouldn't go up there if
I was you. Some places are better left alone. The
(36:30):
cancer will take me soon, three months, the doctors say,
maybe less. Sometimes I think that's mercy. I won't have
to dream about those copper eyes anymore, won't have to
wonder if the next missing child is somehow my fault.
Won't have to feel the weight of that creature's dying gaze,
the almost human recognition in its face as my bullet
(36:51):
found its mark. But sometimes, on nights, when the moon
is dark and the wind moves through the trees outside
my window, I think I can hear them calling to
each other across the ridges, and voices that almost make
words mourning. They're dead, planning, their revenge, waiting for the
right moment to come down from the high places and
(37:11):
collect what's owed. I pray I'm gone before that happens.
Pray my children and grandchildren have sense enough to stay
away from the deep woods. Pray the old boundaries hold
a little longer. But I don't think they will. I
think Luther and I broke something that can't be fixed,
opened a door that can't be closed, change the rules
(37:32):
of a game we didn't even know we were playing. God,
forgive me, And if you're smart, you'll delete this email
and forget you ever read it. Some knowledge is too
heavy to carry. Some truths are better left in the
shadows where they belong. But I had to tell someone,
had to pass this burden on before it drags me
down into whatever darkness waits beyond. Maybe that makes me selfish,
(37:56):
Maybe that makes me weak, But I'm old and dying
and tired of carrying this alone. Be careful out there,
watch the tree line, listen to the silence, and whatever
you do, whatever you see, don't shoot. The mountains have
a long memory, and they're still counting the cost of
what we've done. Ps If you do go up there,
(38:18):
despite everything I've said, leave an offering at the cave.
Food maybe, or something shiny. They like shiny things always have.
Maybe it'll buy you safe passage. Maybe it'll just make
you easier to track. I don't know anymore. I don't
know anything except that I should have listened to the
old stories, should have respected the boundaries, should have left
(38:40):
that wounded thing alone to heal or die in peace.
But I didn't, And now the debt keeps growing, pain
in blood and sorrow, and children who never come home.
(40:42):
Pat Pat, Pat, Pat,
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