BWBS Ep:137 The Traverspine Gorilla

In the winter of 1913, the remote settlement of Traverspine in Labrador’s Mealy Mountains became the stage for one of Canada’s most enduring mysteries. Families living on the edge of survival reported nightly visits from a towering, white-maned creature that left enormous footprints, rattled cabins, and fought sled dogs with terrifying strength.

Known as the Traverspine Gorilla, it would haunt the region’s history for over a century. What makes this story remarkable is not just the fear it inspired, but the credibility of those who documented it. Doctors Harry Paddon and Wilfred Grenfell, wildlife biologist Bruce S. Wright, and later explorer Adam Shoalts all investigated, recording consistent testimony and baffling physical evidence. From bloodstained snow to 12-inch two-toed tracks, the case defied easy dismissal.

In this episode, we relive the Michelin family’s terrifying encounters, the hunts and ambushes that failed to corner the beast, and the theories that followed—bear, moose, exotic animal, or something science has yet to name. We’ll explore how extreme isolation and brutal frontier life shaped perception, and why credible witnesses still insisted this was no ordinary animal.

The Traverspine mystery has been retold in journals, memoirs, and books for over a hundred years. Even today, travelers to the Mealy Mountains speak of strange voices in the night and the unsettling feeling of being watched. The whisper lingers in the wilderness—reminding us that some places still hold secrets, and some stories refuse to die.

Episode Transcript

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.
The winter of nineteen thirteen came to Labrador like a predator, silent, patient,

(01:07):
and utterly without mercy. In the remote settlement of travers Spine,
where the black spruce forests pressed in from all sides
and the nearest neighbor might be twenty miles away through
trackless wilderness, the darkness fell early and stayed late here
at the edge of the world, where the Mealy Mountains
rose like ancient sentinels, and the Traverspine River cut its

(01:28):
path through endless forests. Families huddled in their log cabins
and told themselves that the sounds they heard in the
night were only the wind. But they knew better. The
dogs knew first. They always do. On those long winter nights,
when the temperature plunged to forty below and the stars
blazed like ice chips in the black vault of the sky,

(01:50):
the sled dogs would begin to growl, low, guttural sounds
that rose from somewhere primal in their throats. The hackles
would rise along their spines, their eyes eyes would fix
on the dark tree line, and they would back toward
the cabins, teeth bared, as if confronting something that violated
the very laws of nature. And then would come the

(02:10):
sound that no one in Traverspine would ever forget. A tapping, deliberate, methodical,
the sound of something moving around the perimeter of a cabin,
pausing at each window, each door, testing probing. Something that
walked on two legs but was most definitely not human,
Something that grinned with white teeth in the darkness and

(02:32):
beckoned for children to come closer. Something that left footprints
twelve inches long in the snow, footprints with only two
broad toes, pressed so deep into the frozen earth that
they seemed to belong to a creature weighing five hundred
pounds or more. Welcome to Traverspine, where, in the winter
of nineteen thirteen a family named Michelin learned that the

(02:52):
wilderness Harbor's secrets older and stranger than any tale told
around a campfire. This is their story. This is the
true history of the Traverspine Guerrilla, a mystery that would
perplex doctors, confound wildlife biologists, and eventually vanish into legend.
But legends, as you're about to discover, are often born

(03:13):
from something very very real. To understand what happened at Traverspine,
you must first understand Labrador itself, a place so remote,
so unforgiving, that it was the last region of the
entire Western Hemisphere to be settled by Europeans. This wasn't
an oversight. It was a testament to just how brutally
inhospitable this land truly is. Labrador sprawls across the northeastern

(03:38):
corner of the North American continent, a vast expanse of
rocky shores, endless forests, barren tundra, and mountains that have
stood since the dawn of geological time. The Mealy Mountains,
where our story unfolds, are among the oldest mountains on Earth,
ancient even when the dinosaurs walked. They rise from the

(03:58):
shores of Lake Mila, like the petrified bones of something
that died before history began, their glacially rounded summits reaching
heights of nearly four thousand feet. In winter, this is
a landscape of almost cosmic desolation. The temperature can drop
to fifty below zero. The wind screams across the barrens
with such force that it can strip the skin from

(04:21):
exposed flesh in minutes. Snowfalls not in gentle flakes, but
in blinding curtains that erase the world. The darkness is absolute,
no street lights, no distant glow of civilization, just an
endless black that seems to swallow sound itself. And yet
people lived here, trappers, mostly families who scratched out in existence,

(04:43):
running trap lines through the wilderness, supplementing their meager income
by working in the lumber camps that briefly scarred the
forest before moving on. These were people of extraordinary resilience Innu,
Inuit and European settlers who had intermarried over generations, creating
communities adapted to a life that would break most modern

(05:03):
humans within a week. Traverspine was one such community. It
sat near the confluence of the Traverspine River and the
Mighty Churchill River, about twenty miles upriver from the slightly
larger settlement of Northwest River. In nineteen thirteen, it consisted
of perhaps a dozen cabins scattered along the river bank,
connected by footpaths that became invisible under winter snow. The

(05:27):
nearest thing resembling a town, happy Valley Goose Bay, wouldn't
exist for decades. The nearest doctor might be fifty miles away,
the nearest police constable perhaps one hundred miles or more.
In this isolation, stories took on a life of their own,
ghost stories, the settlers called them, though they spoke of
them with a gravity that suggested they were something more

(05:49):
than mere entertainment. In a land where you might not
see another human face for weeks at a time, where
the winter night stretched for eighteen hours or more, where
every crack of a branch or cry of an animal
became magnified in the darkness, the line between the natural
and supernatural grew dangerously thin. The indigenous peoples of Labrador,

(06:10):
the Innu and the Inuit, had their own stories about
the deep wilderness. They spoke of creatures that didn't fit
neatly into the categories of known animals. The Inuit told
of the Tuna Duke, a race of primitive giants who
once lived in stone pit houses and could carry full
grown seals on their backs as if they weighed nothing.

(06:31):
The Innu whispered of things that walked like men but
were most definitely not men, beings that inhabited the most
remote valleys of the Mealy Mountains, where no human trap
line had ever penetrated. The European settlers laughed at these
stories at first. Then came the autumn of nineteen thirteen,
and nobody in travers Spine was laughing anymore. Her name

(06:53):
has been lost to history, but let's honor her courage
by telling her story anyway. She was a daughter of
the Michelin Fanly Joe and his wife, and on that
particular autumn afternoon, she was playing in a meadow near
the family cabin. The exact date is uncertain, sometime between
nineteen o three and nineteen thirteen, though most accounts place

(07:13):
it firmly in nineteen thirteen. What is certain is what
happened next. The girl was perhaps eight or nine years old,
playing in the tall grass, not far from where the
forest began. It was late afternoon, that peculiar time of
day when the light takes on a golden quality and
shadows began to stretch long across the ground. The cabin

(07:34):
stood perhaps one hundred yards away, smoke rising lazily from
its chimney. Her mother was inside preparing the evening meal.
Her father and the other men of Travers Spine were
elsewhere checking trap lines or working at the lumber camp
at Mud Lake. The girl was alone. She heard it
before she saw it, the sound of something large moving

(07:55):
through the underbrush at the forest's edge. At first, she
thought nothing of it. Black bears were common in this country,
and while they commanded respect, they rarely bothered humans unless provoked. Moose, too,
were frequent visitors to the river valley. The sound of
a large animal in the woods was about as remarkable
as the sound of wind in the trees. But then

(08:15):
the sound changed. The footfalls became more deliberate, heavier, and
they were approaching the meadow with what seemed like purpose.
The girl looked up from her play and saw the
forest itself seemed to darken, as if a shadow had
detached itself from the trees. She stood curiosity warring with
the first tendrils of unease. The sound grew louder, closer,

(08:39):
and then the bushes at the forest edge began to move.
What emerged from the tree line defied everything the girl
knew about the natural world. It came out on all
fours at first, its massive body covered in dark hair
or fur. But this was no bear. No bear moved
like this, No bear had proportions like this. As the

(09:00):
creature cleared the underbrush and entered the meadow, it rose
to its hind legs with an ease that suggested this
was its natural posture. The girl found herself staring at
something approximately seven feet tall. Its body was powerfully built,
with long arms that hung almost to its knees. The
entire form was covered in dark, matted hair or fur.

(09:21):
But what seized the girl's attention, what would haunt her
nightmares for the rest of her life, was the creature's head.
It had a mane of white hair that ran across
the crown of its skull like the crest of a
Roman soldier's helmet. The face beneath was almost human in
its expressiveness, but twisted into something that belonged in fever dreams,

(09:42):
and it was grinning at her, actually grinning, displaying rows
of white teeth in what might have been mistaken for
a smile if not for the predatory intelligence in its eyes.
The creature stopped perhaps thirty yards from where the girl stood,
frozen for a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity.
They regarded each other, the small human child and this

(10:03):
impossible thing that had walked out of the deepest wilderness.
Then the creature did something that transformed the girl's curiosity
into pure liquid terror. It beckoned to her. The gesture
was unmistakable, a deliberate motion of one long arm, calling
her forward, inviting her to approach. There was something obscene

(10:24):
about the familiarity of that gesture, as if the creature
was mimicking human behavior in a way that highlighted just
how inhuman it truly was. The spell broke, the girl's
paralysis shattered. She screamed, a high, piercing sound that cut
through the afternoon, quiet like a knife, and ran, her
legs pumped beneath her. As she tore across the meadow

(10:46):
toward the cabin, that grinning face burned into her mind,
the sound of her own breathing and her pounding feet
filling her ears. Behind her, she heard something else, a
sound that would be described later as something between a
growl and a light, a vocalization that suggested intelligence and
amusement in equal measure. The girl burst through the cabin door,

(11:07):
slamming it behind her, her chest, heaving, tears streaming down
her face. Her mother, Missus Michelin, immediately knew something was
gravely wrong. As the girl babbled out her story between sobs,
Missus Michelin did what frontier women did. She reached for
the shotgun that hung above the door. By the time
Missus Michelin had loaded the weapon and rushed outside, the

(11:30):
creature was gone. The meadow stood empty in the fading light.
But Missus Michelin was a woman who had killed twelve
bears in her life. She knew the wilderness, She knew
how to read sign and what she saw in the
earth at the forest's edge stopped her in her tracks.
Footprints not paw prints, not hoofprints, but something that looked

(11:51):
disturbingly like the print of a human foot, if that
foot was twelve inches long, narrow at the heel, and
terminated not in five toes but in two broad, round
ended appendages. Missus Michelin stood at the edge of the meadow,
shot gun in hand, staring at those impossible tracks, as
the sun began to set behind the mountains. Whatever had

(12:12):
visited Travers Spine that afternoon, it was unlike anything in
her considerable experience of the Labrador wilderness. She had no
name for it. She had no explanation for it, but
she knew, with the certainty that comes from decades of
living on the edge of survival, that it would be back.
Missus Michelin was right the creature, and that night they

(12:33):
began calling it the Travers Spine gorilla, though it resembled
no gorilla any of them had ever seen in pictures.
Returned with the darkness that first night, the Michelin family
barricaded themselves in their cabin. The door was secured with
a heavy wooden beam, the windows were shuttered. Joe Michelin
had returned from the trap line, and he sat with

(12:54):
his rifle across his lap, his wife's shot gun within
easy reach. The children were sent upstairs with strict instructions
to be silent. The family sled dogs, tough, battle scarred
animals bred for survival in the harshest conditions, were brought inside,
where they paced nervously. Their hackles raised, low growls rumbling

(13:15):
in their throats. The moon rose over the spruce forest,
casting the snow in shades of silver and shadow. The
temperature dropped towards zero, and then around midnight, the tapping began.
It started at the back of the cabin, a methodical sound,
like someone testing the logs with a stick, tap, tap, tap.

(13:38):
The sound moved along the back wall, paused at the corner,
then continued along the side. Inside, the family sat frozen,
hardly daring to breathe. The dog's growls intensified. One of them,
a large male named Ranger, began to bark, deep, aggressive
barks that spoke of fear and fury combined. Joe Michelin

(14:00):
moved to the window, carefully cracking the shutter to peer outside.
What he saw would be seared into his memory forever.
In the moonlight, he could make out a massive shape
moving along the side of the cabin. It walked upright,
its gait oddly smoothed despite its size. In one hand,
and yes, it appeared to have hands. Rather than pause,

(14:21):
it held what looked like a thick branch, which it
used to tap against the logs of the cabin wall.
The creature moved with a deliberate quality that suggested intelligence.
It wasn't simply wandering. It was investigating the cabin, systematically,
learning its dimensions, testing its structure. At one point, it
paused at a window and seemed to peer inside, though

(14:44):
the shutters prevented it from seeing anything. Joe Michelin found
himself staring into shadow, where he knew a face must
be separated from this thing by only a few inches
of wood and glass. Then the creature moved to the
front of the cabin and did something that made every
hair on Joe Micheleran's body stand on end. Stay tuned
for more Backwoods big Foot stories. We'll be back after

(15:05):
these messages. It struck the corner of the cabin with
such tremendous force that the entire structure shook. The beams, trembled,
cups rattled on their shelves. One of The children upstairs
began to cry. The attack, for that's surely what it was,
seemed to satisfy the creature. The tapping stopped. Joe Michelin

(15:28):
watched as the massive form loped away from the cabin
on all fours, moving with a fluid grace that seemed
impossible for something of its size. It headed toward the
Traverspine River and disappeared into the darkness. The family sat
awake until dawn, weapons at hand, listening to every sound.
The dogs remained on high alert. Sleep was impossible, and

(15:50):
when the sun finally rose, painting the snow and shades
of pink and gold, Joe Michelin ventured outside to examine
the damage. The corner of the cabin bore a mass,
massive dent where the creature had struck it. Splinters of
wood lay scattered in the snow, But what truly caught
Joe's attention were the footprints that circled the cabin in
an almost perfect perimeter. They were everywhere, pressed deep into

(16:13):
the snow, clear and unmistakable, twelve inches long, narrow at
the heel, two broad toes. The stride between prints was enormous,
suggesting a creature of tremendous size and power. Joe Michelin
bent down and carefully measured several of the clearest prints.
He traced their outline on paper, creating a record that

(16:34):
would eventually find its way into the journals of no
fewer than three medical doctors. The depth of the prince
suggested incredible weight. If these were indeed footprints, the creature
that made them must weigh at least five hundred pounds.
But five hundred pounds of what Word of the creature's
visits spread through travers spine with the speed that news

(16:55):
travels in isolated communities, which is to say, everyone knew
by news n The men gathered at the Michelin cabin,
examining the prints, discussing what should be done. These were
not men given to panic or superstition. They were trappers, loggers, hunters,
men who spent their lives in the wilderness and knew

(17:15):
every animal that called Labrador home. And not one of
them could identify what had visited the Michelins. It wasn't
a bear. Every man present had killed bears, skinned bears,
eaten bears. They knew bear tracks as well as they
knew their own signatures. These prints were nothing like bear tracks.
It wasn't a moose or caribou. The hoof structure was

(17:38):
entirely wrong, and besides, no hoofed animal moved with the
kind of intelligence suggested by the creature's systematic investigation of
the cabin. It wasn't a wolf. The size alone eliminated
that possibility, not to mention the bipedal stands and the
use of a club as a weapon. The French agent
from Revillon Frere, the Fur Trading Company, traveled the twenty

(18:01):
miles from his post to examine the evidence. He was
a man of considerable wilderness experience, someone who had seen
the full spectrum of northern wildlife. He stood in the
snow outside the Michelin cabin, staring at the tracks, and
could offer no explanation. The lumbermen working at mud Lake
heard the story, and some of them joined in what
became an organized hunt. Bear traps were set near the

(18:24):
cabin and along likely paths through the forest. Men took
positions in the trees, rifles at the ready, prepared to
spend cold nights waiting for a shot at this mystery creature.
Others attempted to track it through the snow. Following the
distinctive two toed prints deep into the forest. The creature, however,
proved to be far more cunning than they anticipated. It

(18:47):
avoided every trap, steering clear of them with a precision
that suggested it understood exactly what they were. The men
waiting in ambush heard sounds in the darkness, branches breaking,
the occasional grunt or vocation that sounded disturbingly human, but
never got a clear shot. Those who attempted to track
it found that the trail inevitably led to the Traverspine River,

(19:09):
where it disappeared. Either the creature was comfortable in near
freezing water, or it was using the river deliberately to
break its trail. Evidence of its presence, however, was everywhere.
Trappers reported finding places deep in the forest where logs
had been torn apart, the bark ripped away as if
the creature was searching for insects beneath trees, showed claw

(19:31):
marks at heights that seemed impossible for any local animal.
And always there were the tracks, those strange two toed
prints that appeared in the most remote locations, far from
any human settlement. One trapper claimed to have seen it
at a distance, standing at the crest of a ridge,
back lit by the setting sun. He described it as

(19:52):
easily seven feet tall when fully upright, with arms that
seemed disproportionately long, and a distinctive white mane visible even silhouette.
When he raised his rifle to take a shot, the
creature dropped to all fours and vanished into the undergrowth
with shocking speed. The hunt continued for weeks. The men
of travers Spine were determined to solve this mystery, to

(20:14):
either kill the creature or at least get close enough
to identify what it was, but the creature seemed to
possess an almost preternatural awareness of their efforts. It remained
always just out of sight, just out of range, a
phantom that left only tracks and destruction in its wake,
and all the while it continued to visit the Michelin

(20:35):
cabin at night. The second major encounter came on an afternoon,
perhaps two weeks after the initial sighting. Joe Michelin was
away again working at the lumber camp. Missus Michelin was
in the cabin with her children, going about the daily
tasks of frontier life, cooking, mending clothes, tending to the
endless chores that kept a family alive in this unforgiving land.

(20:59):
One of the chill accounts don't specify which one happened
to glance out the window and froze there. Not more
than twenty feet from the cabin, standing at the edge
of a clump of willows, was the creature. In daylight,
it was even more imposing than it had seemed in darkness.
The child could see the powerful musculature beneath the dark fur,

(21:20):
the way its chest rose and fell with breath, the
disturbing near humanity of its posture. It was watching the
cabin with what seemed like intense concentration. Its head cocked
slightly to one side, as if listening. Mother, the child hollered,
it's here, missus. Michelin didn't hesitate. In the seconds it
took her to grab the shotgun and burst out the door,

(21:43):
she experienced no doubt, no fear, only the fierce protective
rage that comes to mothers defending their young. She rounded
the corner of the cabin, the shotgun already rising to
her shoulder, and caught a glimpse of movement in the willows.
All she could see was the white mane, that distinctive
crest of pale hair atop the creature's head, and the

(22:04):
shape of something massive trying to disappear into the underbrush.
She didn't pause to aim carefully. She simply pointed the
shotgun in the direction of that white flash and pulled
both triggers. The report echoed across the valley like thunder
Birds erupted from the trees, and from the willows came
a sound that made Missus Michelin's skin crawl, a cry

(22:26):
that was neither human nor animal, but something in between.
It was a sound of pain, certainly, but also of rage,
and beneath it all something that sounded almost like speech.
Then came the sound she would later describe to investigators,
the distinctive, meaty thud of buckshot hitting flesh. She had

(22:46):
scored a hit. Missus Michelin advanced toward the willows. The
shotgun broken open as she fumbled to reload with shaking hands.
The dogs, which had burst from the cabin behind her,
rushed past, barking furiously. They reached the willows and stopped.
Hackles raised, growling at something she couldn't see. She found blood,

(23:06):
not much, but definitely blood, dark against the snow. The
trail led away from the cabin toward the river, marked
by both blood spots and those now familiar too toad prints.
The dogs refused to follow their courage. Apparently exhausted, Missus Michelin,
alone and armed with a weapon that had already proven

(23:27):
it could hurt the creature, made the difficult decision not
to pursue. When Joe Michelin returned that evening with other
men from the settlement, they followed the blood trail. It
led a quarter mile through the forest before the blood
stopped appearing. Either the wound was superficial or the creature
had managed to staunch the bleeding. The tracks continued toward

(23:48):
the river, but as always, disappeared at the water's edge.
But something had changed. From that day forward. The creature
seemed more wary of the Michelin cabin. It no longer
approached as boldly. Its nighttime visits, while they continued, became
less frequent. Missus Michelin had proven that the creature was vulnerable,

(24:09):
that it could be hurt, potentially killed. This knowledge spread
through Traverspine, providing some measure of comfort. The creature was
not invincible. It could bleed. As autumn gave way to
the full grip of winter, the encounters took on a
new pattern. The creature, perhaps made cautious by Missus Michelin's shot,
stopped approaching the cabin so directly. Instead, it began to

(24:33):
focus its attention on something else, the sled dogs. The
dogs of Traverspine were not pets in any modern sense.
They were working animals, bread for strength and endurance, capable
of pulling sleds for hours through sub zero temperatures. They
were tough, aggressive when needed, and bonded to their human
families with a loyalty that went beyond mere training. These

(24:56):
were animals that thought nothing of standing their ground against
wolves or bears, but something about the Traverspine guerrilla drove
them to absolute frenzy. The creature would approach the settlements
at night and deliberately harass the dogs, staying just out
of reach, seemingly taunting them. The animals would bark themselves,
horse lunging against their chains, desperate to either flee or attack.

(25:19):
It was often hard to tell which. The sound of
an entire settlement's dogs barking in terror became a regular
feature of winter nights in travers Spine. Then came the
night when the creature's harassment turned to something more aggressive.
It was early December and the temperature had plunged to
thirty below zero. Joe Michelin had his dogs tied outside

(25:39):
the cabin, as was normal. They were northern animals, comfortable
in temperatures that would kill a human in minutes. The
family was preparing for bed when the barking began, but
this was different from the usual alarm barking. This was
the sound of dogs in battle. Joe Michelin grabbed his
rifle and rushed outside, followed by his wife the shotgun.

(26:01):
What they witnessed would be recounted in at least three
separate written accounts over the following decades. Their two best dogs,
Ranger and Duke, were locked in combat with something that
moved through the darkness like a living shadow. The creature
had apparently ventured close enough that the dogs, driven past
their fear by territorial instinct, had broken their chains and attacked.

(26:24):
In the light spilling from the cabin door, Joe Michelin
could see the creature rearing up on its hind legs,
towering over the dogs, which came only to its mid thigh.
The thing was swinging its arms with tremendous force, batting
at the attacking dogs like a person might swat at
large insects. One of those blows caught Duke and sent
him flying ten feet through the air to land with

(26:46):
a yelp in the snow. Ranger, the larger of the
two dogs, had managed to get hold of something leg
or arm it was impossible to tell in the darkness,
and was holding on with grim determination despite the creature's
attempts to shake him loose. Goose Joe tried to get
a clear shot, but the dogs in the creature were
too close together. He shouted, hoping to drive the thing away,

(27:08):
but his voice seemed to have no effect. Then, in
a display of strength that defied belief, the creature simply
reached down, grabbed Ranger, an eighty pound dog, by the
scruff of his neck, and hurled him away. Both dogs
landed in the vicinity of the travers Pine River. There
was a tremendous splash as one or both of them
hit the water. The creature, perhaps finally recognizing the threat

(27:31):
posed by the humans with guns, dropped to all fours
and bounded away into the darkness with a speed that
seemed impossible for something of its bulk. Joe and Missus
Michelin rushed to the river, calling for their dogs. The
weight was agonizing. Had the dogs been killed, had they
drowned in the freezing water. The river here ran swift
even in winter, and the cold would be lethal within minutes.

(27:55):
Then from the darkness downstream came the sound of scrabbling
and the distinctive panting of dogs. Ranger and Duke emerged
from the darkness, soaking, wet, shivering, but alive. They both
bore scratches and bruises, and Duke had a nasty gash
across his shoulder, but they had survived. Joe brought both
dogs inside the cabin that night, an unprecedented move, and

(28:18):
they huddled by the fire, still trembling. Whether they shook
from cold or from fear, no one could say. The
creature didn't return to the Michelin cabin that night, but
the message was clear. It was powerful enough to fight
off their best dogs, smart enough to use the river
as both a weapon and an escape route, and bold
enough to approach within feet of armed humans. From that

(28:41):
night forward, the dogs of Traverspine slept indoors as winter
deepened and January nineteen fourteen arrived, the nature of the
encounters changed again. The creature seemed to have withdrawn to
the deeper wilderness, perhaps driven back by the increasingly aggressive
response from the humans of Traverspine. Sightings became less frequent,

(29:02):
though tracks continued to appear in unlikely places, on ridges
in remote valleys far from any human habitation. But then
the trappers began reporting something new double tracks. Not the
single trail of one creature, but two sets of prints,
often walking side by side, sometimes appearing to be following

(29:23):
each other. The prints were slightly different in size, suggesting
a larger and a smaller individual. The Traverspine guerrilla, it seemed,
had found a mate, and with that came sounds that
added a whole new dimension to the mystery. Trappers working
their distant lines began to report hearing vocalizations from the
deepest parts of the forest, sounds unlike anything they had

(29:45):
encountered before. These weren't the simple howls of wolves or
the bugling of moose. They were complex vocalizations that rose
and fell with what seemed like emotional content. Some described
it as similar to human speech, but in a language
no one could understand. Stay tuned for more backwoods bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. Others compared it to

(30:10):
the calls of primates they had heard described by sailors
who had visited Africa. Most disturbing were the sounds that
doctor Harry Padden would later describe in his journals as
sounds of domestic strife. The trappers reported hearing what could
only be described as arguments. Two distinct voices, one deeper
and louder, the other higher pitched, exchanging what sounded like

(30:33):
angry calls back and forth. These exchanges could last for minutes,
echoing through the valleys, before culminating in what one trapper
described as loud lamentations from the weaker member. It was
almost human in its familiarity, the sound of a couple
in conflict, yet utterly alien in its execution. These sounds

(30:53):
were heard most frequently in the area between Travers Spine
and Mud Lake, in a region of particularly rugged terrain
where the foothills of the Mealy Mountains created a labyrinth
of valleys and ridges. This was country that even the
most experienced trappers approached with caution. It was easy to
become lost in the maze of similar looking valleys, and

(31:13):
the cliffs and ravines made for dangerous going, even in
good weather. The double tracks suggested that the creatures, and
now everyone accepted that there were at least two, had
established a territory in this remote region. Perhaps they had
always been there, living in the most inaccessible parts of
the Mealy Mountains, and the logging operations at mud Lake

(31:34):
had disturbed them, driven them closer to human habitation. Or
perhaps they were migrants traveling through Labrador on some unknowable route.
No one could say for certain. What was clear was
that these were not mindless animals. The systematic way they
investigated human habitations, their ability to avoid traps, their use

(31:55):
of tools, even if those tools were just clubs and branches,
and now these complex vocalizations. All of it pointed to
intelligence of a fairly high order. Yet they weren't human.
No human could survive in the deep wilderness through a
Labrador winter without shelter, fire, or clothing. No human had
feet like that, or could move with such speed and power.

(32:18):
Whatever these creatures were, they occupied some middle ground between
human and animal, a category that didn't exist in anyone's
conception of the natural world. The sounds continued sporadically through
the rest of the winter. Sometimes they seemed to come
from very close to the settlement, close enough that people
would bar their doors and sit awake with weapons ready,

(32:39):
waiting for an attack that never came. Other times, the
calls echoed from miles away, faint and ghostly, reminding everyone
in Traverspine that somewhere out in the darkness, in the
ancient forests of the Mealy Mountains, something strange and powerful
had made its home. News of the Traverspine encounters didn't
stay confined to the remote Sene settlement for long. Labrador

(33:02):
in nineteen thirteen was isolated, but it wasn't completely cut
off from the outside world. The Grenfell Mission, founded by
the legendary doctor Wilfrid Grenfell, operated hospitals and medical stations
throughout Labrador, and the doctors and nurses of the mission
moved between communities, bringing not just medical care, but news
and letters from the broader world. When word of the

(33:24):
strange creature reached these medical professionals, several of them decided
to investigate personally. These weren't credulous frontier folk trading ghost stories.
They were educated, scientifically minded individuals who approached the tale
with appropriate skepticism. The first to examine the evidence in
detail was doctor Harry Padden, a British physician who operated

(33:46):
a hospital at Northwest River. Padden was a meticulous observer
who kept detailed journals of his experiences in Labrador. In
the winter of nineteen thirteen, he visited Traverspine specifically to
interview the Michelin family and examined the physical evidence. What
he found impressed him enough to record it in his
journals for posterity. Padden interviewed each member of the Michelin

(34:09):
family separately. Their accounts matched in all essential details. The
creature was approximately seven feet tall when upright, covered in
dark hair or fur with the distinctive white mane. It
had a face that was almost human in some respects,
capable of expressions, including that disturbing grin. It could move

(34:29):
both on two legs and on all fours. It demonstrated
intelligence in its actions, testing the cabin, using a club
as a weapon, avoiding traps, using the river to escape.
Padden examined the footprint cast that Joe Michelin had made.
He measured them carefully, noting the twelve inch length, the
narrow heel, and the two broad toes. He noted that

(34:52):
the depth of the prints in snow and soft earth
suggested an animal of tremendous weight, perhaps four hundred to
five hundred pounds. He also examined the corner of the
cabin that the creature had struck with such force the
damage was real, not something that could have been faked.
Something large and powerful had delivered a blow that had
made the entire structure shake. In his journal, doctor Padden

(35:15):
admitted that he could offer no explanation for what the
Michelins had encountered. He wrote of how the children, even
weeks after the initial encounter, remained frightened and insisted on
sleeping upstairs together. He noted that Joe and Missus Michelin
both experienced wilderness people, were unshakable in their accounts and
showed no signs of fabrication or embellishment. Perhaps most significantly,

(35:39):
Padden noted that other families in the area had reported
similar experiences. The Michelins were not alone in their encounters.
Something was definitely moving through the forests around Traverspine, something
that didn't match any known species. The second medical professional
to investigate was doctor Wilfrid Grenfell himself the founder of
the mission that bore his non name. Grenfell was a

(36:02):
towering figure in Labrador, a man who had dedicated his
life to serving the remote communities of the coast and interior.
In his nineteen nineteen autobiography A Labrador Doctor, he devoted
a section to the strange tale from Traverspine. Grenfell interviewed
Joe Michelin personally, and his account adds important details. He

(36:23):
noted that the French agent from Revillanfrere had not only
examined the tracks, but had measured the footmarks in the
mud and even fenced some of them around to preserve
them for future examination. He recorded that the stride of
the creature was approximately eight feet longer than any human
could manage and longer than any bear would typically step. Crucially,

(36:44):
Grenfell noted that Michelin told him the creature had been
seen by multiple children several times disappearing into the trees,
and that the dogs had been driven growling from the
house into the water on multiple occasions. This established that
the encounters were numerous and witnessed by many members of
the community. The third major investigation came in nineteen forty seven,

(37:05):
more than thirty years after the initial encounters when Bruce S. Wright,
director of the Northeastern Wildlife Station of the University of
New Brunswick, traveled to Labrador specifically to interview survivors of
the original events. Wright was a professional wildlife biologist with
a master's degree in wildlife management from the University of Wisconsin,

(37:27):
where he had studied under the legendary Aldo Leopold. Wright
sought out Missus Micheline, who was still alive in nineteen
forty seven and still living in the Labrador region. Her account,
given three decades after the events, remained remarkably consistent with
the original reports. Wright recorded her words directly, it was

(37:47):
no bear. I have killed twelve myself, and I know
their tracks well, and I saw enough of this thing
to be sure of that. I fired a shotgun at
it and heard the shot hit. My little girl was
playing behind the house, and she came running in, saying
it was chasing her. I grabbed the shotgun and went outside,
just in time to get a glimpse of it disappearing
in the bush. When Wright suggested that the creature might

(38:10):
have been a barren ground grizzly, a rare subspecies of
grizzly bear, from the far north. The Labrador locals all
laughed at that, as they were all very familiar with
bear tracks. These were people who lived alongside bears, who
hunted them, trapped them, and knew their behavior. Intimately, they
were unanimous in their insistence that this was not a bear.

(38:33):
Wright documented his findings in a letter to Canadian folkloris
Philip Godseill, and his conclusion was cautious but significant. Something
genuinely unusual had been witnessed at travers Pine. Whether it
was a known species appearing out of its normal range,
a misidentified animal scene under unusual circumstances, or something more mysterious,

(38:55):
he couldn't say, but he believed the witnesses were credible
and their accounts deserve irving of serious consideration. A fourth
medical professional, doctor C. Hogarth Forsyth, an English American physician
who operated a hospital in Cartwright, Labrador, also weighed in
on the mystery. In a newspaper interview conducted about six

(39:16):
months before Write's investigation, doctor Forsyth discussed the strange two
toed footprints that had been found throughout the Labrador wilderness.
While he didn't investigate the Traverspind case directly, his comments
suggested that unusual tracks and sightings were not as rare
as might be expected in the region. The story might
have remained a local legend known only to the people

(39:38):
of Labrador if not for a young American writer named
Elliot Merrick. In September nineteen thirty. Merrick arrived in Labrador
at the age of twenty four, seeking escape from his
job in New Jersey and drawn by wanderlust to one
of the most remote regions of North America. He worked
as an unpaid volunteer for the Grenfell Mission, living among

(39:58):
trappers and traders, experiencing firsthand the brutal beauty and isolation
of the Labrador wilderness. Merek was a natural storyteller with
an eye for compelling narrative. During his time in Labrador,
he collected stories from the people he met, tales of survival,
of strange occurrences, of life at the absolute edge of civilization,

(40:20):
and one story in particular caught his attention, the tale
of the Traverspine Guerrilla. By the time Marek heard the story,
it was already nearly twenty years old, but the people
who had experienced it were still alive, still willing to
talk about those terrifying months in nineteen thirteen and nineteen fourteen,
Marek sought them out, interviewed them, and listened as they

(40:42):
recounted their encounters with something that defied explanation. What struck
Merik was the consistency of the accounts and the credibility
of the witnesses. These weren't people prone to flights of fancy.
They were pragmatic, experienced wilderness dwellers who approached the unknown
with caution and skepticism. Yet they were unanimous in their

(41:02):
descriptions of the creature and unwavering in their insistence that
what they had seen was real. In nineteen thirty three,
Merrick published True North, A Journey into Unexplored Wilderness, an
autobiography of his time in Labrador. The book was well received,
praised for its vivid descriptions of northern life and its
honest portrayal of both the beauty and brutality of the wilderness.

(41:26):
Among its many stories was the account of the Traverspine Guerrilla.
Merrick's telling of the tale was atmospheric and compelling. He
understood that the isolation of places like Traverspine was not
just geographic, but psychological. Ghost stories are very real in
this land of scattered, lonely homes and primitive fears. He wrote,

(41:47):
capturing the mental state of people who might go weeks
without seeing another human face, who endured six month winters
in near total darkness, who lived always on the edge
between survival and death. His account included all the major details,
the little girl's initial encounter, the white manned creature that
grinned and beckoned, the nighttime harassment of the cabin missus

(42:10):
Michelin shot, the battles with the dogs, and the strange
double tracks suggesting a pair of creatures. He described the
footprints in detail. It is a strange looking foot, about
twelve inches long, narrow at the heel and forking at
the front into two broad, round ended toes. Sometimes its
print was so deep it looked to weigh five hundred pounds.

(42:32):
Perhaps most importantly, Merrick gave the creature a name that
would stick. He called it the Traverspine gorilla, despite acknowledging
that it bore little resemblance to actual gorillas. The name
was catchy, memorable, and it ensured that the story would
be remembered and retold. The publication of True North brought
the Traverspine story to a much wider audience. The book

(42:55):
sold well in both Canada and the United States, and
the tale of the strange creature in Labrador became part
of the broader folklore of the North. Other writers picked
up the story, embellishing it theorizing about it, adding it
to collections of unexplained phenomena and cryptid sightings, but Merrick's
account remained the definitive version, the one closest to the

(43:17):
original witnesses, the one that treated the story with respect
rather than sensationalism. His book ensured that even as the
original witnesses died and Traverspine itself faded into obscurity, the
story would survive. The encounters at Traverspine didn't end with
a dramatic climax. There was no final confrontation, no dead

(43:38):
creature dragged from the forest to be examined and identified. Instead,
the story ended the way many true mysteries do, gradually, ambiguously,
with more questions than answers. Through the winter of nineteen
thirteen and nineteen fourteen, the creature or creatures remained in
the area. Sightings became less frequent as the humans of

(43:59):
Travis took precautions, but evidence of the thing's presence continued.
Tracks appeared regularly, dogs continued to react with fear and
aggression to something in the darkness. Distant vocalizations echoed through
the valleys. But as winter gave way to spring and
spring turned to summer, the encounters tapered off. The tracks

(44:20):
stopped appearing, The nighttime disturbances ceased. The strange calls from
the deep forest fell silent. It was as if the
creatures had simply moved on, traveling deeper into the Mealy Mountains,
or perhaps migrating elsewhere entirely. The wilderness of Labrador is vast,
tens of thousands of square miles of largely unexplored forest,

(44:42):
mountains and tundra. A creature could exist in that immensity
for a lifetime and never be seen by human eyes.
By the winter of nineteen fourteen and nineteen fifteen, the
Traverspine Guerrilla had become a story people told, a chapter
in the community's history that had seemingly closed. Stay tuned
for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back. After these messages,

(45:08):
life returned to normal, or as normal as life ever
was in such an isolated place. Joe and Missus Michelin
continued their work as trappers. Their children grew up carrying
memories of those terrifying months, but eventually left Traverspine for
larger settlements and opportunities elsewhere. Traverspine itself began a slow decline.

(45:29):
Logging operations moved to other areas, young people left for
places with more opportunities. By the mid twentieth century, Traverspine
was barely a settlement at all, just a few cabins
scattered along the river, most of them abandoned or used
only seasonally. Today, Traverspine doesn't appear on most maps. The
site of the old settlement has been almost entirely reclaimed

(45:51):
by the forest. If you were to travel there, and
you would need to cannoe up the Churchill River and
then hike through trackless wilderness to do so, you would
find little evidence that humans ever lived there at all.
A few collapsed cabins, some rusting equipment, stumps where trees
were cut long ago. The forest has swallowed everything else,

(46:12):
but the story survived. It survived in the journals of
doctor Harry Patten, in the autobiography of doctor Wilfrid Grenfell,
in Elliot Merrick's book, and in Bruce Wright's careful investigation.
It survived in the memories passed down through Labrador families,
becoming part of the region's folklore, a tale told and
retold around campfires and kitchen tables, and occasionally, very occasionally,

(46:37):
it survived in new reports. Over the decades that followed,
there were sporadic sightings of strange creatures in the Labrador wilderness.
Things that walked on two legs but weren't human, Things
that left tracks that didn't match any known animal. None
of these later reports achieved the same level of documentation
as the original travers Pine encounters, but they suggested that

(46:59):
what ever had visited that remote settlement in nineteen thirteen
might not have been an isolated incident. The indigenous peoples
of Labrador, the Innu and the Inuit, maintained that such
things had always existed in the deep wilderness. The Europeans
had simply been too confident in their understanding of nature
to believe it until confronted with undeniable evidence. In twenty nineteen,

(47:23):
more than a century after the original encounters, modern explorer
Adam Schultz decided to investigate the Traverspine mystery. Schultz was
no amateur. He was a professional explorer and an expert
on Canadian wilderness, serving as Explorer in residence for the
Royal Canadian Geographical Society. He had read all the original

(47:43):
accounts and was struck by a crucial detail. Unlike most
cryptid stories, the Traverspine encounters had been documented by credible,
educated witnesses, including three medical doctors and a wildlife biologist.
Schultz recognized that something real had happened at Traverspine, even
if the interpretation of those events might have been influenced

(48:03):
by fear, isolation, and the psychological pressures of frontier life.
He decided to mount an expedition to the site of
the abandoned settlement to search for clues that might solve
the century old mystery. Accompanied by Zach Junkin, a mixed
martial arts fighter with extensive wilderness experience, Schultz traveled to

(48:24):
Labrador in the summer of twenty nineteen. The journey was
extraordinarily difficult. They canowed up the Churchill River, then had
to bushwhack through dense forest, cross swamps, climb mountains, and
navigate through terrain that seemed designed to resist human passage.
The Mealy Mountains they discovered fully lived up to their
reputation as one of the most remote and mysterious places

(48:47):
in North America. These ancient mountains, worn down by time
but still formidable, created a landscape of endless valleys and ridges,
all of them covered in dense spruce forest or exposed
beasts rock. It was easy to see how something could
exist here unknown to science. The region was vast, difficult

(49:07):
to access and largely unexplored. As they approached the site
of Old Travers Pine, both men experienced something that gave
them insight into the psychological state of the original witnesses.
At night in their tents, they heard sounds. Some were identifiable,
the call of owls, the rustle of small animals, the
whisper of wind through the trees, But others defied identification,

(49:32):
strange vocalizations that might have been animals they couldn't identify,
or might have been the wind playing tricks, or might
have been something else Entirely. They found the sensation deeply unsettling,
even as modern men with scientific education and good equipment,
they felt the isolation and the sense that the wilderness
around them held secrets. They slept poorly, often waking at

(49:55):
sounds in the night, hands reaching for bare spray and knives.
Sho would later write, My strangest, most uncanny journey by
far is my recent one in Labrador's Mealy Mountains, which
are among the oldest mountains on Earth. There are many
strange legends connected with them, and after venturing far off
the beaten path there I could certainly appreciate why. After

(50:18):
extensive research in the abandoned settlement and the surrounding wilderness,
Schultz came to a conclusion about what had likely terrorized
Traverspine in nineteen thirteen. His explanation detailed in his twenty
twenty one book The Whisper on the Night Wind. The
True History of a Wilderness Legend provides a rational answer
to the mystery, one based in biology and animal behavior

(50:41):
rather than the supernatural. However, Schultz was careful to note
that his conclusion, while satisfying from a scientific standpoint, couldn't
fully capture the terror experienced by the original witnesses. Whatever
the Traverspine guerrilla actually was, it had been real enough
to traumatize families, real enough to be shot at, real

(51:01):
enough to leave physical evidence that multiple trained professionals examined
and could not explain at the time. The question that
has haunted researchers for over a century remains. What was
the traverspine gorilla? What creatures could account for the evidence
and the experiences of those witnesses. Let's consider the facts
we know with certainty. Multiple credible witnesses, including children, experienced trappers,

(51:26):
and visiting professionals, reported seeing a large, hair covered creature
approximately seven feet tall. When upright, the creature had a
distinctive white mane or crest of pale hair on its head.
It could move both bipedally and on all fours with
considerable speed and agility. It left footprints approximately twelve inches long,

(51:48):
with two broad, round ended toes and a narrow heel.
It demonstrated intelligence, investigating structures, systematically avoiding traps, using clubs
as weapons, using water to break its trail. It showed
aggression toward dogs, but generally avoided direct confrontation with armed humans.
It was powerful enough to shake a cabin with a

(52:09):
single blow and to throw an eighty pound dog through
the air. Two creatures appeared to be present based on
double tracks and vocalizations that suggested communication or conflict between individuals. Now,
let's examine the theories. Theory number one is that it
was a misidentified bear. This was Bruce Wright's initial hypothesis,

(52:30):
perhaps a barren ground grizzly far out of its normal range,
or a black bear behaving unusually. The problems with this
theory are numerous. The witnesses were intimately familiar with bears.
Missus Michelin had killed twelve bears herself and was adamant
this was not a bear. The footprints were completely unlike
bear tracks. Bears have five toes, not two, and their

(52:54):
prints are distinctive and unmistakable to anyone who has seen them.
The bipedal stamp and gait were wrong for a bear.
While bears can stand on hind legs briefly, they don't
walk upright with the fluid, comfortable gait described by witnesses.
The use of clubs and the systematic investigation of structures
suggests a higher level of intelligence than bears typically demonstrate.

(53:18):
The white mane is not a feature of any bear species.
The locals dismiss this theory immediately, and their expertise in
identifying bears must be respected. Theory number two is that
it was a misidentified moose or cariboo. Some have suggested
that a moose or cariboo seen under unusual circumstances or
at night might have been misidentified. This theory also has problems.

(53:42):
Moose and cariboo have hoofs, not two toed feet. The
tracks don't match at all. Neither species uses their front
legs to manipulate objects or knock on structures. Neither species
is covered in the kind of fur described, or has
a white mane in the location described. The size and
build are wrong. Moose are tall but not built like

(54:03):
the creature described. Theory number three is that it was
a wolverine or wolverines. Some researchers have suggested that wolverines,
perhaps a mating pair, might explain some of the evidence.
Wolverines are powerful, aggressive animals, capable of driving off much
larger predators. They can be dark in coloration, and some
individuals show pale markings. This theory is more plausible than

(54:27):
the others, but still has issues. Wolverines are much smaller
than the creature described, perhaps forty pounds versus the five
hundred pounds estimated for the traverspine creature. Wolverines have normal
paw prints with five toes and claws, not the two
toed prints described. The bipedal stance doesn't fit. Wolverines are quadrupeds.

(54:50):
The height is completely wrong. A wolverine standing on hind
legs might reach two feet, not seven. Theory number four
is that it was an escaped exotic animal. Could the
creature have been an escaped or released exotic animal, perhaps
something from a ship or trading post, a primate of
some kind. This theory requires several unlikely circumstances. There's no

(55:14):
record of any exotic animals being present in Labrador at
the time. A tropical or temperate primate couldn't survive a
Labrador winter outdoors without shelter or fire. The footprints don't
match those of known primates. How would such an animal
have gotten to one of the most remote parts of
North America. Theory number five is that it was a

(55:34):
surviving archaic human or unknown hominid. Some cryptozoologists have suggested
that the creature might have been a surviving population of
Neanderthals or some other archaic human species, or perhaps an
unknown hominid related to the sasquatch or bigfoot phenomenon. This
is the theory that captures the imagination but faces severe

(55:56):
scientific objections. There's no fossil evidence for large hominids in
North America except humans. A viable breeding population would require
dozens or hundreds of individuals, and no such population has
been verified. The creature's apparent lack of clothing, fire, or
shelter is inconsistent with any known hominid behavior. The footprints

(56:19):
don't match those of any known hominid fossil or living.
Theory Number six is that it was mass hysteria or
a hoax. Could the entire thing have been fabricated or
the result of mass hysteria. This theory must be considered,
but doesn't fit the facts well. Multiple independent witnesses over
a two year period reported consistent details. Physical evidence existed tracks,

(56:43):
damage to structures, blood from Missus Michelin shot. The witnesses
included educated medical professionals who examined the evidence skeptically. There
was no apparent motive for a hoax, and the story
brought unwonted attention to the remote community. The accounts remained
distant over decades, with witnesses like Missus Michelin maintaining their

(57:04):
story until death. Adam Schultz, after his Modern investigation, proposed
a solution that involved a combination of factors. While he
doesn't definitively identify the creature in his public writings, saving
that for his book, his research suggests that the encounters
may have involved a known animal behaving in unusual ways,

(57:24):
seen under conditions that distorted perception and exaggerated certain features.
The psychological context is crucial to understanding what happened. The
people of travers Spine lived in extreme isolation. Winners brought
not just cold, but near total darkness, with the sun
barely rising above the horizon for months. This darkness, combined

(57:47):
with the sensory deprivation of isolation, can create conditions where
perception is altered. A known animal, perhaps acting unusually due
to injury, rabies, or other factors, might appear monstrous under
these conditions. The white mane is a key detail that
several researchers have focused on Some animals. In winter, coats

(58:07):
show pale coloration, and snow or frost caught in an
animal's fur could create the appearance of a white crest.
The two toed foot prints remain the most puzzling element.
Some researchers have suggested that certain animals, when their tracks
partially overlap or are distorted by melting snow can create
prints that don't look like their normal tracks. Others have

(58:30):
noted that prints in deep snow where the animal is postholing,
sinking deeply with each step, can look very different from
prints on solid ground. The human mind is also extraordinarily
good at finding patterns and assigning human characteristics to animals,
a phenomenon called paridolia. In conditions of fear and darkness,

(58:51):
this tendency would be amplified. An animal's normal features might
be interpreted as a grin natural behaviors might seem purposeful
or intelligent. Over a century has passed since those terrifying
months when something stalked the perimeter of the Michelin cabin
in Traverspine. The original witnesses are all dead, now taking

(59:12):
their memories and their terror to their graves. The settlement
itself has vanished, reclaimed by the wilderness that briefly retreated
before human habitation. Even the name Traverspine has faded from
common use, appearing only in old documents and historical accounts,
But the mystery refuses to die. The Traverspine Guerrilla has

(59:33):
become part of the larger mythology of the North American wilderness,
taking its place alongside other unexplained encounters and mysterious creatures.
The story is retold in books about cryptozoology, in collections
of Canadian folklore, in documentaries about unexplained phenomena. Every few years,
someone new discovers the tale and becomes fascinated by it,

(59:56):
Drawn in by the combination of credible witnesses, documented evidence,
and the tantalizing possibility that something strange and wonderful might
exist in the world, The Mellly Mountains still stand where
they've stood for hundreds of millions of years, largely unexplored,
mostly uninhabited. In twenty fifteen, much of the region was

(01:00:17):
designated as Mealy Mountains National Park Reserve, ensuring that it
will remain wild and protected. It's now the largest national
park in Eastern Canada, encompassing over ten thousand, seven hundred
square kilometers of boreal forest, tundra, mountains and rivers. If
you were to visit this park today, and few people do,

(01:00:37):
given its extreme remoteness, you would find a landscape that
looks much as it did in nineteen thirteen. The same
ancient mountains, the same endless forests, the same sense of
being at the edge of the world, And if you
camp there overnight, as Adam Schultz and Zach Junkin did,
you might hear sounds in the darkness that you couldn't
quite identify, sounds that might be wild life or wind

(01:01:00):
or something else. Entirely, the truth about the Traverspine Guerrilla
may never be known with absolute certainty. Science requires reproducible evidence,
and the creature, whatever it was, appeared for a brief
time and then vanished, leaving only stories and a few
preserved footprint casts. Without a body, without clear photographs, without

(01:01:22):
DNA evidence, no definitive identification can be made. But perhaps
that's appropriate. Perhaps some mysteries are meant to remain mysteries.
Perhaps the value of the Traverspine story isn't in solving it,
but in what it tells us about the human experience
at the edges of the known world. The people of
Traverspine in nineteen thirteen lived lives we can barely imagine today.

(01:01:45):
They existed in isolation so complete that the nearest neighbor
might be miles away, the nearest doctor fifty miles or more.
They endured winters of soul crushing darkness and cold. They
faced daily the possibility of death from exposure, starvation, or accident.
In such an environment, the boundary between the natural and
the supernatural, the known and the unknown, becomes permeable in

(01:02:09):
ways that those of us in the comfortable modern world
can't fully understand. What they experienced. May have had a
rational explanation, or it may have been something science hasn't
yet discovered. Either way, their terror was real, their courage
in the face of the unknown was real. And the
mystery they left behind of strange tracks in the snow,

(01:02:31):
of a grinning creature with a white mane, of sounds
in the darkness that might have been speech, continues to
capture our imagination because it speaks to a fundamental truth.
The world is larger and stranger than we think we know.
The Traverse spine gorilla, whatever it was, reminds us that
mysteries still exist, that for all our technology and scientific knowledge,

(01:02:53):
there are still dark corners of the earth where the
unknown lurks. That the wilderness, if we venture deep enough
into it, can still surprise us, still frighten us, still
humble us, with the reminder that we don't have all
the answers. And somewhere in the Mealy Mountains in valleys
where no human foot has stepped in decades, or perhaps ever.

(01:03:14):
In forests where the only sounds are wind and wildlife,
there might be tracks in the mud near a stream,
Tracks that don't match any creature in our field guides,
Tracks that would make us stop and stare and wonder,
just as Joe Michelin did on that long ago autumn
day when the nightmare began. The whisper on the night
wind continues, and the wilderness keeps its secrets. The