October 27, 2025 • 49 mins
In the summer of 2005, six fourteen-year-old Boy Scouts from South Carolina set out to prove they were ready for anything. It was supposed to be their final challenge before aging out of the troop—a week-long wilderness survival test in the Francis Marion National Forest, just northeast of Charleston.
Their scoutmaster dropped them at a remote trailhead with only the essentials: a map, a compass, and an emergency radio. No adults. No safety nets. Just a simple plan—hike eight miles into the backcountry, set up a primitive camp, and spend a week living off the skills they'd spent years developing. For the first day or so, everything went according to plan. The boys found a quiet clearing by a creek—secluded, serene, and perfect.
They pitched their tents, made camp, and laughed about how easy this was going to be.Then came the second night. The woods fell silent—eerily silent. Then came the howls. Deep, resonant, impossible to place. What began as strange noises quickly escalated into something far more sinister. Over the next two nights, the scouts endured a terrifying series of events that shook their confidence and stripped away any sense of safety. Footsteps circled their tents after midnight—heavy, deliberate.
Their food bag, strung high in a tree for bear safety, was ripped down like it was nothing. One tent was pushed in by something large enough to leave massive handprints in the fabric. Rocks the size of baseballs were hurled at them from the darkness with enough force to strip bark from nearby trees. A thick, musky odor hung in the air. And through it all, they saw them—huge, hair-covered figures moving just beyond the tree line.
The breaking point came on the third night. Seven pairs of glowing eyes appeared around the campfire—eyes at least eight feet off the ground, unmoving, unblinking, and far too intelligent to be mistaken for animals. The message was clear: you don’t belong here.
At first light, the boys made the call to leave—three days early. But getting out wasn’t simple. Whatever was out there followed them the entire hike back. One scout saw a massive figure standing in broad daylight in the middle of a creek—impossible to mistake or explain away. Later, their path was blocked entirely by the largest creature yet, forcing them to cut through dense brush to escape.
This is a firsthand account from one of those scouts—now in his thirties—finally breaking the silence on an experience that’s haunted all six of them for nearly two decades. Officially, it was just another uneventful primitive campout. But unofficially? It was three days of something stalking them. Watching them. Controlling whether they left… or didn’t.They made a pact to keep it quiet, afraid of being laughed at or called liars.
But now, for the first time, one of them is telling the truth about what really happened in those woods.This is the real story of what drove six confident Boy Scouts out of the forest—early, terrified, and forever changed.
Their scoutmaster dropped them at a remote trailhead with only the essentials: a map, a compass, and an emergency radio. No adults. No safety nets. Just a simple plan—hike eight miles into the backcountry, set up a primitive camp, and spend a week living off the skills they'd spent years developing. For the first day or so, everything went according to plan. The boys found a quiet clearing by a creek—secluded, serene, and perfect.
They pitched their tents, made camp, and laughed about how easy this was going to be.Then came the second night. The woods fell silent—eerily silent. Then came the howls. Deep, resonant, impossible to place. What began as strange noises quickly escalated into something far more sinister. Over the next two nights, the scouts endured a terrifying series of events that shook their confidence and stripped away any sense of safety. Footsteps circled their tents after midnight—heavy, deliberate.
Their food bag, strung high in a tree for bear safety, was ripped down like it was nothing. One tent was pushed in by something large enough to leave massive handprints in the fabric. Rocks the size of baseballs were hurled at them from the darkness with enough force to strip bark from nearby trees. A thick, musky odor hung in the air. And through it all, they saw them—huge, hair-covered figures moving just beyond the tree line.
The breaking point came on the third night. Seven pairs of glowing eyes appeared around the campfire—eyes at least eight feet off the ground, unmoving, unblinking, and far too intelligent to be mistaken for animals. The message was clear: you don’t belong here.
At first light, the boys made the call to leave—three days early. But getting out wasn’t simple. Whatever was out there followed them the entire hike back. One scout saw a massive figure standing in broad daylight in the middle of a creek—impossible to mistake or explain away. Later, their path was blocked entirely by the largest creature yet, forcing them to cut through dense brush to escape.
This is a firsthand account from one of those scouts—now in his thirties—finally breaking the silence on an experience that’s haunted all six of them for nearly two decades. Officially, it was just another uneventful primitive campout. But unofficially? It was three days of something stalking them. Watching them. Controlling whether they left… or didn’t.They made a pact to keep it quiet, afraid of being laughed at or called liars.
But now, for the first time, one of them is telling the truth about what really happened in those woods.This is the real story of what drove six confident Boy Scouts out of the forest—early, terrified, and forever changed.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot,
(00:23):
dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
If you dare.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Looking back now, more than two decades later, I can
still feel the weight of that backpack cutting into my
shoulders as we hiked deeper into the Francis Maryan National
Forest that June morning in two thousand and five. I
was fourteen years old, pumped full of confidence and teenage invincibility,
convinced that spending a week in the woods without adults
(01:23):
was going to be the adventure of a lifetime. I
had no idea, how right I was, or how badly
I would come to regret that eagerness. There were six
of us making that trek into the back country. Our
scout master, mister Henderson, had dropped us off at a
trailhead about fifteen miles northeast of Charleston, given us a map,
a compass, and a radio for emergencies, only then driven
(01:46):
away with a wave and instructions to meet us back
at the same spot in seven days. This was supposed
to be our final test before aging out of the troop,
a primitive camping experience that would prove we could handle
ourselves in the wilderness without supervision. We'd all completed our
wilderness survival merit badges, We'd done dozens of campouts. We
(02:07):
thought we knew what we were doing. The plan was
simple enough. We'd hike about eight miles into a remote
section of the forest where the trails petered out into nothing,
set up a base camp, and spend the week practicing
primitive skills. No modern camping gear except our tents and
sleeping bags, no coolers full of hot dogs and sodas.
(02:27):
We'd be purifying water from streams, building fires without matches,
constructing shelters from natural materials, and generally proving we could
survive with minimal resources. It sounded like the kind of
challenge that would make for great stories. When we got
back home, I remember the forest felt different the moment
we left the main trail. The canopy closed in overhead,
(02:50):
thick with Spanish moss that hung from the live oaks
like gray curtains. Palmetto fronds scraped against our legs as
we pushed through the undergrowth, following the game trail that
barely qualified as a path. The air was heavy and wet,
the kind of humidity that makes your clothes stick to
your skin and your lungs work harder with every breath.
(03:11):
Cicadas droned in the trees, a constant buzz that seemed
to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. We'd been
walking for about three hours when Tyler, who was leading
our group, stopped at a small clearing near a creek.
The water was dark and slow moving, stained brown from
tannins leeching out of the cypress roots, but it was
flowing and we could purify it. The clearing was maybe
(03:34):
thirty yards across, surrounded by dense forest on all sides.
With enough open space for our tents and a fire ring.
Tyler turned to look at us, grinning that cocky grin
he always had. This was perfect, he said, Remote enough
that we wouldn't see another soul all week, private enough
that we could make as much noise as we wanted.
(03:55):
We all dropped our packs and started setting up camp,
too tired and hot to think much beyond getting the
tents up and getting some.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Water in us.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
The first day passed without incident. We got camp, established,
purified water from the creek, gathered firewood, and built a
proper fire ring using rocks from the stream bed. By
the time the sun started going down, we had a
decent fire going, and we're heating up some of the
dehydrated camping meals we'd brought along. We sat around the
fire as darkness fell, congratulating ourselves on how well we'd done,
(04:27):
how easy this was all going to be. That first night,
none of us noticed anything unusual. We were exhausted from
the hike, stuffed from dinner, and ready to crash. I
fell asleep in my tent, listening to the creek burbling
and the fire popping, and the constant chorus of frogs
and insects that filled the South Carolina night. If I'd
known what was coming, I never would have closed my eyes.
(04:50):
The second day started out fine. We spent the morning
working on a lean to shelter made from fallen branches
and palmetto fronds, the kind of primitive structure that he
had shown us how to build in our survival training.
It was hot, sweaty work, and by noon we were
all ready for a break. We ate lunch by the creek,
soaked our feet in the cool water, and talked about
(05:11):
how we'd spend the rest of the week. Someone suggested
we should try to catch some fish. Someone else wanted
to practice making cordage from plant fibers, normal camping stuff.
It was that afternoon when I first felt like something
was off. I can't really explain it better than that
I was gathering firewood, maybe fifty yards from camp, working
(05:32):
my way through a stand of pines, when I got
this sudden feeling that I was being watched. You know
that sensation where the hair on the back of your
neck stands up and your stomach does a little flip.
It was like that, except stronger, more insistent. I stopped
what I was doing and looked around, scanning the forest,
but I didn't see anything, just trees and shadows and undergrowth.
(05:56):
But the feeling didn't go away.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I hurried back to.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Camp with my armload of wood, and I noticed Marcus
was standing near the fire looking out into the trees
with a weird expression on his face. When I asked
him what was wrong, he shook his head and said
he didn't know, said he just felt strange, like something
wasn't right. I told him I'd felt the same thing
while I was getting firewood, and we both kind of
(06:20):
laughed it off as being paranoid. We were city kids, really,
despite all our camping experience. Maybe we were just spooked
by how remote and quiet it was out here. But
that feeling never quite went away. It hung over the
camp like a cloud, subtle but persistent. The other guy
seemed to feel it too, though nobody wanted to say anything.
(06:42):
We were fourteen year old boys trying to prove how
tough we were. Admitting you were scared wasn't an option.
That night, after we'd eaten dinner and were sitting around
the fire, the forest went quiet. It happened suddenly, like
someone had flipped a switch. One moment the usual nighttime
symphony of and insects was going strong, and the next
(07:03):
moment it just stopped, complete silence except for the crackling
fire and the creek. Tyler made a joke about it, said,
we must have scared all the animals away with our cooking,
but his voice sounded strained. We all felt it that
silence was wrong, unnatural. We sat there for maybe ten minutes,
not talking much, just staring into the fire and listening
(07:26):
to the nothing. Then, from somewhere out in the darkness
beyond our camp, we heard something that.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Scared us all.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
It started as a low moan, deep and resonant, almost
like a horn or a fog horn, but clearly organic.
It rose in pitch and volume, becoming a howl that
seemed to echo through the trees, then cut off abruptly.
None of us moved, none of us breathed. We just
sat there, frozen, listening, waiting when nothing else happened. Danny
(07:57):
tried to laugh it off, said it was probably just
a deep or maybe a fox, But I'd heard foxes
before and this wasn't anything like that. This was bigger, deeper.
It had a quality to it that I can't quite
describe something that reached into your chest and squeezed your heart,
something that triggered every prey instinct you have buried in
(08:18):
your DNA. We heard it again about twenty minutes later,
same sound, but from a different direction. Then maybe half
an hour after that, we heard it a third time,
and this time it seemed closer, much closer, close enough
that I could feel it vibrating in my chest. We
all looked at each other across the fire, and I
(08:39):
could see my own fear reflected in their faces. Whatever
was making that sound, it was circling our camp. Tyler
suggested we should probably get in our tents for the night.
Nobody argued. We doused the fire, carefully, making sure every
ember was dead, then retreated to our tents. I was
sharing with Marcus, and once we were zipped inside, I
(09:00):
could hear him breathing fast and shallow in the darkness.
I wanted to say something reassuring, but I couldn't think
of anything that wouldn't sound like a lie. We lay
there in the dark, listening for a long time. There
was nothing but the normal sounds of the creek and
the forest, and I started to think maybe we'd overreacted.
Maybe it really had been just some animal we didn't recognize.
(09:23):
I was almost asleep when I heard footsteps outside the tent.
They were heavy, deliberate, not the light patter of a
deer or the scurrying of a raccoon. These were footsteps
with weight behind them, like a person walking, but the
rhythm was slightly off, the stride was too long. I
felt Marcus go rigid next to me, and I knew
(09:44):
he heard it too. The footsteps moved around the perimeter
of our camp, slow and steady, and then they stopped
right outside our tent. I don't know how long we
lay there, perfectly still, barely breathing. Then whatever it was
moved on and the footsteps faded back into the forest.
(10:05):
I didn't sleep at all that night. Every time I
started to drift off, i'd hear something that snapped me
back awake. A twig, breaking, leaves, rustling, the sense of
something large moving through the darkness just beyond the thin
nylon walls of our tent. When morning finally came, I
was exhausted and jumpy.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
We all were.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
We gathered around the fire ring, looking haggard and nervous,
and it quickly became clear that none of us had
slept well. Tyler had heard the footsteps too, so had
Chris and Danny in their tent. Jake and Bobby, who
were sharing the third tent on the opposite side of camp,
said they'd heard something moving around for hours, sometimes coming
right up to their tent and then moving away. We
(10:48):
spent the morning trying to rationalize it. Maybe it had
been a bear, even though bears weren't common in this
part of South Carolina. Maybe it had been a person,
some other hiker who'd wandered into our area and then left.
Maybe we'd all just psyched each other out and imagine
things in the dark. But none of these explanations felt right.
A bear would have gone for our food, another person
(11:10):
would have announced themselves, and all six of us imagining
the same things at the same time seemed like too
much of a coincidence. Tyler suggested we break camp and
move to a different spot, but nobody wanted to admit
we were scared enough to do that. We told mister
Henderson we'd be at this location. If we moved and
there was an emergency, nobody would know where to find us.
(11:32):
Plus we only had three days left we could tough
it out.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
We were boy scouts.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
We'd dealt with worse than some weird noises in the night.
That decision to stay put instead of leaving is something
I've regretted ever since. The third day was tense. We
went through the motions of our primitive camping activities, but
our hearts weren't in it. We were all tired from
lack of sleep, and we kept glancing at the tree
(11:58):
line like we expected something to urge. The feeling of
being watched had intensified. It was constant, now, pressing down
on us like a physical weight, even in broad daylight.
I felt exposed and vulnerable. It was late afternoon when
Jake saw it. We were all at the creek filling
our water containers when Jake suddenly stood up and pointed
(12:19):
toward the far side of the clearing. His hand was shaking.
He said there was something standing in the trees watching us.
We all looked, but I didn't see anything at first,
just shadows and foliage. Then it moved and I caught
a glimpse of something tall and dark shifting behind a
screen of palmetto fronds, something that was definitely not a
(12:40):
tree or a shadow. Or a trick of the light.
It was there for maybe three seconds, long enough for
me to register the shape of it, the size of it,
and then it melted back into the forest like it
had never been there at all. We stood there in
shocked silence, water bottles forgotten, staring at the spot where
it had been. Danny was the first to speak. He
(13:02):
asked if we'd all seen that. We all nodded, we'd
all seen it. Tyler tried to describe what he'd seen. Tall,
he said, maybe seven feet or more, broad shoulders covered
in dark hair or fur, bipedal, standing upright like a person,
but too big to be a person. The shape was
(13:22):
all wrong for a bear, even if a bear could
stand on its hind legs for that long. We all
agreed on these basic details. We'd all seen the same thing,
which meant it was real. Whatever was out there with
us in these woods, it was real. That realization hit
us like a punch to the gut. This wasn't some
scary story we were telling ourselves. This wasn't imagination or paranoia.
(13:47):
There was something in the forest with us, something large
and unknown, and it had been circling our camp for
the past two nights. Suddenly, the footsteps and the howls
and the feeling of being watched all made horrible. Since
we retreated to our camp and built up the fire
even though it was still daylight. Being near the flames
made us feel safer, even though logically we knew a
(14:10):
fire wouldn't do much good against something that size if
it decided to come into camp. We talked about using
the emergency radio to call mister Henderson tell him to
come get us early. But what would we tell him
that we saw something in the woods, that we heard
weird noises. He'd think we were being cowards, or worse,
that we were making it up to get out of
(14:30):
the trip early. We'd never live it down, so we
decided to stick it out, just two more nights. We
told ourselves we could handle two more nights.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
We'd keep the.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Fire going all night, take turns on watch stick together.
Whatever this thing was, it clearly didn't want to get
too close to us, or it would have done so already.
It was probably just curious, probably just passing through. We'd
be fine. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll
be back after these messages. That third night was when
(15:04):
things got worse. We were all sitting around the fire
as darkness fell, nobody willing to go to their tents yet,
when we heard the vocalizations again, but this time there.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Were multiple sources.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
One would call from the north that same deep howling sound,
and another would answer from the south, then a third
from the east. They were all around us, communicating with
each other, and we were in the middle of it.
The calls went on for almost an hour, back and forth,
sometimes overlapping, sometimes in perfect call and response patterns. It
(15:35):
sounded organized, coordinated, like they were talking to each other
planning something. The hair on my arms was standing straight up.
Marcus was crying quietly, trying to hide it, and I
couldn't blame him. I wanted to cry too.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
We all did.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Then they started adding new sounds, not just the howls,
but also whooping calls that rose and fell in pitch,
and the strange chattering sounds that almost sounded like laughter,
but wrong, distorted, and underneath it all. Every now and
then I'd hear something that sounded almost like words, like
someone trying to mimic human speech but not quite getting
(16:14):
it right. That was, somehow the worst part the idea
that these things were intelligent enough to try to copy
our sounds, made them infinitely more terrifying. Around midnight, Jake's
tent started shaking. He and Bobby were the only ones
who'd been brave enough to try sleeping, and suddenly we
heard Jake yelling his tent was being pushed shoved from
(16:35):
the outside, the poles bending and the fabric collapsing inward.
Bobby came scrambling out of the tent, wild eyed and panicked,
and Jake wasn't far behind him. They said something had
pressed against the tent from outside, something big and heavy,
and they'd felt hands or pause or something pushing through
the fabric, shoving the tent down on top of them.
(16:57):
We all ran over with flashlights, but there was nothing there.
The tent was collapsed on one side, the stakes pulled
out of the ground, but whatever had done it was gone.
We could hear crashing in the undergrowth, something large moving
away at high speed, but we couldn't see anything beyond
the ring of firelight. Jake was shaking so badly he
(17:17):
could barely stand. He kept saying he'd felt it touching
him through the tent, fabric, pressing down on him, and
he'd been sure it was going to rip through the
nylon and grab him. The most disturbing part was when
we examined the collapsed tent more carefully. There were marks
in the fabric, impressions left by whatever had pushed against it.
You could see the outline clearly where something had pressed
(17:40):
from the outside. The marks were huge, bigger than any
human hand. The fingers, if that's what they were, had
left distinct indentations, and you could see where they'd gripped
the tent fabric before shoving it inward. Bobby kept saying
he'd felt those fingers moving across his sleeping bag while
he was inside, searching, probing, like whatever it was had
(18:02):
been trying to figure out what was in the tent.
We tried to set the tent back up, but our
hands were shaking too badly and we kept fumbling with
the poles. Eventually we gave up and just dragged the
collapsed tent over near the fire with the others. Jake
and Bobby weren't going back inside it anyway. None of
us were going inside our tents. We were staying right
(18:23):
here by the fire together where we could see each
other and watch each other's backs. The temperature had dropped
as the night went on, and even in June, the
South Carolina woods can get surprisingly cool. After midnight, we
were all shivering, partly from cold and partly from fear,
huddling close to the flames and feeding the fire constantly
to keep it roaring. We'd had enough firewood to last
(18:46):
us the whole week if we used it sparingly, but
we were burning through it fast.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
We didn't care. The fire was the.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Only thing keeping us sane, the only barrier between us
and whatever was out there in the darkness. It was
Chris who first noticed the smell, a thick, musky odor
that seemed to roll into camp on the night breeze, heavy,
organic and disgusting. It smelled like a wet dog that
had been rolling in, something dead, mixed with the stench
(19:14):
of body odor, something primal and animal, but also disturbingly familiar,
like a corrupted version of human sweat. The smell was
so strong it made my eyes water, and Danny actually
gagged and had to turn away from the fire. The
smell would come and go throughout the night, getting stronger
sometimes and then fading, as if whatever was producing it
(19:36):
was moving around us. Circling at different distances. When the
smell was strongest, we'd hear movement in the undergrowth, branches snapping, leaves, rustling.
When it faded, everything would go quiet again except for
the fire and our own ragged breathing. They were playing
with us, I realized, taking turns, getting close, testing us, seeing.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
How we'd react.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Around two in the morning, our food supplies were raided.
We'd hung our food bag from a tree branch about
fifteen feet off the ground, following proper bear safety protocols,
tying it off to a trunk twenty yards from camp
standard procedure to keep animals away from your camp site.
But when Tyler went to check on it with his flashlight,
the bag was gone. The rope was still there, still
(20:21):
tied to the branch and the trunk, but it had
been snapped clean through in the middle, not cut, not untied,
snapped like someone had just grabbed it and pulled until
it broke. Tyler followed the rope to where it ended
in a frayed mess, about halfway between the branch and
the ground below it. Scattered across the forest floor were
(20:41):
the remains of our food supplies, torn packages of trail
mix and energy bars, smashed bags of beef jerky, crushed
boxes of crackers. Everything had been ripped open and the
contents taken or scattered. Whatever had done this had incredible
reach to grab a bag that high off, then an
incredible strength to snap a half inch rope like it
(21:03):
was thread. But the scariest part was that we hadn't
heard a thing. With all of us sitting around the fire,
wide awake and on high alert, these creatures had moved
into our camp, torn down our food bag, and rifled
through our supplies without making enough noise to alert us.
They'd done it right under our noses, and we'd been
completely unaware until Tyler went to check. That realization hit
(21:26):
me like a physical blow. If they could get that
close without us knowing, they could get close enough to
touch us, close enough to grab us, close enough to
drag one of us off into the woods before the
others even realized what was happening. Tyler came back to
the fire, looking pale and shaken. He told us what
he'd found, and we all sat there and stunned silence,
(21:48):
trying to process it.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
We had maybe two days worth.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Of food left now, all of it in our backpacks
near the fire.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Everything we'd hung.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
In that bag to keep it safe was gone. We
were running on supplies, running low on firewood, running low
on sleep, and running out of courage fast. Danny suggested
again that we should call mister Henderson on the radio.
This was an emergency, he said, this was exactly the
kind of situation the radio was four.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
But Tyler shook his head.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
He said, if we called now in the middle of
the night, we'd have to wait here until morning anyway,
because mister Henderson wouldn't be able to find us in
the dark. And if we were going to wait until morning,
we might as well start hiking out at first light ourselves.
We could make it to the trailhead in four or
five hours if we pushed hard. We didn't need a rescue.
We just needed to get out of here. The rest
(22:39):
of us agreed, though I'm not sure any of us
really believed we'd make it through the night. Every sound
from the forest made us jump. Every shift in the
shadows made us grab our flashlights and scan the darkness.
The calls had stopped, but somehow the silence was worse.
At least when they were howling, we knew where they
were now. They could be any doing anything, and we
(23:02):
had no way to know. It was maybe three point
thirty in the morning when I saw the eyes. I'd
been staring into the darkness beyond the fire. My vision
blurred from exhaustion and smoke when I noticed two points
of light about eight feet off the ground, maybe thirty
yards from camp. At first, I thought they were reflecting
our firelight, the way a deer's eyes or a raccoon's
(23:24):
eyes will shine when light hits them. But these eyes
weren't moving like an animal's eyes. They were steady, focused,
locked onto us with an intensity that made my skin crawl.
I grabbed Marcus's arm and pointed, and he saw them too.
Then Tyler and Chris and Danny and Bobby all saw them.
We all sat there frozen, watching those eyes watching us.
(23:48):
They were too high off the ground to be anything normal,
too far apart, too large, and there was an intelligence
in them that went beyond animal awareness. These weren't the
eyes of something else operating on instinct. These were the
eyes of something that could think, that could plan, that
could make decisions and judgments and choices. We stared at
(24:09):
those eyes for what felt like an eternity. Nobody moved,
nobody spoke. We barely breathed, and then, slowly, deliberately, a
second pair of eyes appeared next to the first, then
a third pair off to the left, then a fourth
to the right.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
They were all.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Around us, standing just beyond the firelight, watching us with
those unblinking, reflective eyes. I counted seven pairs total before
I stopped counting. Tyler reached down slowly and grabbed a
burning branch from the fire, holding it up like a torch.
The movement caused the nearest pair of eyes to shift slightly,
but they didn't retreat. They just adjusted their position and
(24:49):
kept watching. Tyler stood up, holding the torch in front
of him and took a single step forward. The eyes
closest to him took a step back, maintaining their distance,
but they didn't leave. They were letting us know they
were there. They were making sure we understood we were surrounded.
They were demonstrating in the clearest possible way that we
(25:11):
were completely at their mercy. Marcus started crying again, and
this time he didn't try to hide it. He just
sat there with tears running down his face, staring at
those eyes. His whole body shaking. Danny was praying under
his breath words I couldn't quite make out, but could
feel the desperation in Jake had his arms wrapped around himself,
(25:33):
rocking slightly. Chris and Bobby had moved so close together
they were practically sitting in the same space. And Tyler
just stood there with his torch, slowly turning in a circle,
counting the eyes that surrounded us. We'd lost, that was
what those eyes were telling us. We'd ventured into territory
that wasn't ours, set up camp in a place we
(25:54):
had no right to be, and now we were surrounded
by creatures that could end us whenever they chose. They'd
tried to scare us away with sounds and rocks and
tent pushing, but we'd been too stubborn or too stupid
to leave. So now they were escalating. They were showing themselves,
making their presence undeniable, giving us one last chance to
(26:15):
get out before things got even worse. The eyes stayed
there for maybe fifteen minutes, just watching us, studying us,
making their point. Then one by one they blinked out,
disappearing back into the darkness as silently as they'd appeared,
but we all knew they were still there. Just because
we couldn't see them anymore didn't mean they'd gone away.
(26:37):
They were still watching, still waiting, still surrounding us in
the dark. None of us closed our eyes. For the
rest of that night, we sat around the fire as
the temperature dropped and the wood supply dwindled, feeding the
flames with anything we could find, keeping them high and bright.
We watched the darkness and listened to the silence, and
waited for dawn with a desperation I'd never felt before
(27:00):
and haven't felt since. Every minute felt like an hour,
Every hour felt like an eternity. Time became elastic and meaningless,
measured only by the slow rotation of stars overhead and
the gradual lightning of the sky to the east. Soon
as we could see even a little bit of gray light,
we started packing up. Didn't wait for the sun to
(27:22):
actually come up, didn't eat anything. Hell, we didn't even
talk about whether we were leaving or not.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
We just knew.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
We threw everything in our packs, knocked down the tents,
kicked dirt on what was left of the fire. Twenty
minutes later, we were standing there with our packs on,
staring at that game trail, ready to get the hell out.
I looked back at the clearing one last time before
we left. Sun was just starting to come up, and
you could see everything that had happened. Food wrappers everywhere,
(27:52):
packages ripped to shreds, those huge footprints in the mud
by the creek, branches, busted off trees from where the
rocks had hit. Jake's tent was still half collapsed with
those handprints pressed into it. The whole place felt wrong now,
like something bad had marked it, and it was never
going to feel right again. Tyler checked his compass, figured
(28:13):
out which way we needed to go, and just started walking.
Rest of us bunched up tight behind him. Nobody wanted
to be in the back. Nobody wanted to be more
than a couple feet away from anybody else. We hauled
ass right from the start. Only thing on our minds
was getting as far from that clearing as fast.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
As we could.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
The woods felt weird in the morning. Trees looked like
they were closing in on us, Shadows everywhere, even though
it was getting light out. Every little noise made us jump.
Every time something moved in the bushes, we'd all stop
and whip around. We were running on nothing but fear
and adrenaline. At that point should have been too tired
to move, but somehow we kept going. Maybe an hour
(28:54):
in we heard them again, started back at our camp,
that same howl we'd been hearing long and low, and
it just.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Echoed through the fog.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Then another one answered from somewhere west of us, then
another from up north. They were talking to each other,
telling each other we were moving. Hearing it in daylight
was worse. Somehow at night you could almost tell yourself
you were imagining it or making it worse than it was.
But hearing it clear as day like that, there was
no way to pretend it wasn't real.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
We started almost jogging.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Tyler was moving so fast we could barely keep up,
and none of us said a word about it. We
just followed him, breathing hard, sweating our asses off, even
though it wasn't that warm yet. All we could think
about was just keep moving, keep going forward, get out.
Around the middle of the morning, we had to stop
at this creek to get water. We were so thirsty
(29:47):
we just scooped it up.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
And drank it.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Didn't even bother with the purification tablets. Didn't care about
getting sick. Later, while we were there getting water, Chris
pointed upstream and we all looked. Stay tuned for more
Backwoods bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. One
of them was standing right there in the creek, maybe
fifty yards away. This one was even bigger than what
(30:11):
we'd seen the night before, had to be eight feet tall, easy,
reddish brown hair all over it, darker on its face
and chest, just standing there.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
In the water watching us.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Wasn't moving at all, just had its arms hanging down.
Sun was shining right on it, and there was no
way to tell yourself it was anything else. This was
a real living thing standing there looking at us with
eyes that looked almost human but not quite. We all froze.
Must have been five seconds that felt like forever. Nobody moved.
(30:44):
Then Tyler whispered, we had to go, had to go now,
and we scrambled up and took off again. I looked
back once and it was still just standing there watching us.
Wasn't following, but it damn sure wanted us to know
it was there, wanted us to know they were letting
us leave. Rest of the morning is kind of a blur,
just exhausted and terrified. The whole time. We kept hearing
(31:06):
stuff moving around us in the woods, branches, breaking heavy footsteps, keeping.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Pace with us through the trees.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Every now and then we'd see something big and dark
moving through the forest, but it had disappeared before you
could really see it. They were tracking us, making sure
we actually left. Around noon, Marcus twisted his ankle pretty
bad and we had to stop for a minute, found
a log to sit on, split up the last energy
bars we had. My legs were shaking, feet hurt like
(31:36):
hell from blisters, shoulders were killing me from the pack,
but none of that mattered. We just had to keep moving.
Bobby noticed these marks on the trees while we were
sitting there, scratches in the bark way up high, like
seven or eight feet up, parallel lines, like something dragged
its claws down the wood.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Fresh too.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
The wood was still light colored and had sap coming out.
Hadn't been there when we hiked in, could have been
from that morning. Even Tyler figured maybe they were marking territory.
Jake thought maybe they were warnings. Either way, it made
the whole thing even more real. These things weren't just animals.
They had some kind of system, some way of communicating
(32:17):
and marking their area. We got mark us up and
moving again. He was limping bad, but didn't slow us down.
Heat was brutal by then, and the humidity made it
hard to breathe. Sweat was pouring off all of us.
We were drinking water constantly, but still getting dehydrated, starting
to feel dizzy and weak from not eating enough, but
(32:38):
stopping wasn't an option. Early afternoon, Tyler said we were
maybe three hours from the parking lot. We were going
through this really thick part of the forest, walking single
file on this narrow trail. When Tyler stopped so fast,
Chris ran right into him. We all stopped and looked
where he was looking. There was one blocking the trail
ahead of us, maybe thirty feet away. The biggest one
(33:00):
yet had to be nine feet tall, shoulders so wide
it looked ridiculous. Hair was almost black, face was all
wrinkled like it was old. This wasn't just another one.
This was the big boss of whatever group lived out here.
It was just standing there with its arms crossed blocking
the path. Message was pretty clear we weren't going that way,
(33:22):
had to find another route. It was showing us who
was in charge. Tyler backed up slow, and we all
backed up with him. When we'd gotten back far enough,
Tyler pointed for us to go left off the trail
into the thick stuff. So we did, pushing through all
this undergrowth, getting scratched up by thorns, climbing over logs.
(33:43):
It was exhausting and slowing us way down, but nobody
suggested going back to the easier trail.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
After maybe half.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
An hour of that, we found another trail going sort
of the right direction. But that encounter had really shaken
us up. The thing hadn't actually done anything to us,
just by standing there, it controlled where we could go.
That was somehow worse. We kept pushing through the afternoon.
Gradually things started feeling a little different. Trees weren't quite
(34:11):
as thick, that feeling of being watched wasn't as strong.
We were getting close to the edge of their area.
Maybe four in the afternoon, we finally saw the parking
lot through the trees. That pavement looked like the most
beautiful thing I'd ever seen. We practically ran the last bit,
crashed out of the woods into the open, and as
soon as we hit that parking lot, everything changed. The
(34:34):
pressure lifted, the feeling of eyes on us disappeared. Birds
started singing again. It was like stepping into a different world.
Mister Henderson's truck was sitting right there, but he wasn't
in it. Truck was locked empty. He wasn't supposed to
get us for three more days. We'd have to call
him on the radio. Tyler pulled out the radio battery
(34:56):
was almost dead, but it still worked. He called mister Henderson,
told him where we were and that we needed him
to come get us now. Radio crackled for a second
and I thought it was going to die. Then mister
Henderson came through, asking if anyone was hurt. Tyler said no,
but we needed to come back early. Mister Henderson said
he'd be there in forty five minutes. Those forty five
(35:19):
minutes felt like forever. We sat on the curb as
far from the trees as we could get, didn't talk much,
just sat there, completely wiped out. A few times I
looked back at the forest and just shuddered thinking about
what was still in there. When mister Henderson finally showed up,
I can't even describe the relief. He got out, looking confused,
(35:39):
trying to figure out why we'd called early started asking questions,
but Tyler cut him off, said we'd talk later. Right now,
we just needed to load up and go. Mister Henderson
looked at our faces and I guess he got it.
He just nodded and helped us throw our stuff in
the truck. The drive back was quiet. We sat in
the truck bed, watching the Orris disappear behind us. I
(36:02):
kept thinking I'd see something at the tree line, but
never did. They were done with us. We'd left like
they wanted back in town. Mister Henderson took us to
the scout hall and called our parents. I remember sitting
there looking at all the posters about camping skills and
thinking how useless all that training had been for what
we'd just been through. My parents showed up, and my
(36:22):
mom started freaking out, asking what happened. I just said
we had some problems with wildlife and decided to come back.
She kept asking questions, but I didn't know how to
explain it. How do you tell your parents you spent
three days being harassed by bigfoot without sounding crazy? So
I kept it vague, said we felt unsafe and left.
(36:43):
She seemed okay with that answer, at least for the moment,
got home and took the longest shower of my life,
stood there scrubbing off three days of sweat and dirt
and fear, watching it all go down the drain. That night,
I couldn't sleep, kept seeing those eyes, kept here, hearing
those howls, kept feeling like something was outside my window.
(37:04):
My room felt too quiet, too normal, after what I'd
been through. Next day, Tyler called us all and we
met up at the park. First time we really talked
about it.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
All.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Sat there going through everything that happened, making sure we'd
all seen and heard the same stuff. We had every
detail matched up, which meant it was all real. Danny
wanted to report it. Tyler asked who we'd tell. What
would we even say. We had no proof, no pictures,
no video, just our word. People would think we made
(37:37):
it up, so we decided to keep it to ourselves
at least for now. Tell people we had a good trip,
but came back a little early, don't make a big
deal out of it. Looking back, I think that was
the right call. Some things are just too big and
too strange to share. Over the next few weeks, I
got obsessed with reading bigfoot reports online. Read everything I
(37:58):
could find. I was looking for proof that we weren't
the only ones, that other people had seen what we saw,
and I found it. Hundreds of reports from South Carolina,
thousands from all over, people describing the exact same things.
The more I read, the more convinced I got that
these things are real and have been around forever. They've
(38:19):
just learned to stay hidden to avoid us, only show
themselves when they feel threatened or when someone gets too
far into their territory. I also noticed the reports all
followed the same pattern. We went through weird sounds, first,
feeling watched, then glimpses of them, then aggressive stuff like
rock throwing, then direct encounters. We'd gotten out before it
(38:42):
got to actual violence. Some people in the reports weren't
so lucky. The six of us stayed close through high school.
Didn't talk about the trip much, but it was always there.
We camped together more times, but always in regular campgrounds,
never deep in the wilderness again. Jake went to college
and Ohio, and we lost touch. Bobby joined the Marines,
(39:03):
Chris became a teacher in Colorado. Marcus works for his
dad's construction company here. Danny's a state trooper. Tyler and
I both stayed in Charleston, still grabbed beers every couple months.
We're the only ones who still talk about what happened sometimes.
Tyler told me a few years back he went back
to the Francis Marion, not to our exact spot, but
(39:25):
that general area. He wanted to prove to himself it
was real that he hadn't imagined it. Hiked in during
the day, didn't camp, He said, the feeling was still
there that since you're not the top dog out there,
didn't see any creatures, but found tree breaks, footprints, those
territorial markers. He left before dark, never went back. I've
(39:48):
thought about going back myself. Sometimes part of me wants
to face it again, proved to myself it happened.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
But I know that'd be stupid.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
We got a warning that week, got shown very clearly
we weren't well. Going back would be asking for trouble.
The thing that sticks with me the most after all
these years isn't even the fear or the exhaustion. It's
the intelligence I saw in those eyes when they surrounded us,
The way they planned it all out, escalated things work together.
(40:17):
These weren't dumb animals. These were thinking creatures with some
kind of social structure and communication. They were more like
us than like animals. That's what makes it so terrifying.
I get why people spend their whole lives trying to
prove Bigfoot is real, setting up cameras, spending years in
the woods looking for evidence. I understand it, But there's
(40:38):
a reason that evidence is so hard to find. They
don't want to be found. They're smart enough to avoid
our cameras, to recognize researchers, and they're strong enough to
drive away anyone who gets too close to where they
actually live. I think we got lucky because we were
just kids, fourteen year old boys on.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
A camping trip. Weren't a real threat.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
We got pushed, but not hurt because we didn't know better.
But if we'd been adults, researchers, hunters, people who could
come back with weapons or better equipment, I think it
would have gone very differently. My wife knows something happened
on that trip, even though I've never told her the
whole story. She knows I don't like camping in remote places,
knows I get uncomfortable in heavy woods, especially at night.
(41:23):
She stopped asking about it. Mostly she knows I saw
something that changed me, and she's learned to live with
not knowing the details. My kids asked me to take
them camping. Sometimes I do, but only at established campgrounds,
state parks with rangers, KOA, places with bathrooms and other
families around. I teach them how to build fires and
(41:44):
read a compass, all that stuff. But I also teach
them that nature needs to be respected, that there are
places humans shouldn't go, that not every wild place needs
to be explored. I don't tell them why I feel
so strongly about it. Maybe when they're older, maybe I'll
figure out how to explain it without sounding crazy. Or
maybe I'll never tell them. Some things might be better
(42:06):
kept private. What I know for sure is the world
is stranger than most people think. The forests that still
cover huge parts of this country have things in them
that science hasn't found yet, things that have learned to
stay hidden from us. And sometimes when people go too
far into places they shouldn't, those things let themselves be seen.
(42:27):
I was fourteen when I learned that. I'm thirty four now.
The memories aren't quite as sharp as they used to be,
but I still know what happened. I know what I
saw and heard and felt, and I know that somewhere
in the Francis Marion National Forest, in that clearing by
the creek, there are still huge footprints in the mud,
still creatures moving through the dark, calling to each other,
(42:49):
still eyes watching from the shadows. And you know what,
I'm okay with that. Not everything needs to be explained,
Not every creature needs to be caught and studied. Not
every wild place needs to be made safe and accessible.
Some things should stay hidden. I learned that in the
summer of two thousand and five. I've stayed out of
deep wilderness since then, kept my distance from places like that,
(43:13):
kept my secrets and my certainty that were not alone
on this planet, that we share it with things we
don't understand. Some nights, when the wind's blowing through the
trees outside my house and the shadows look a little
darker than usual, I hear those howls in my head,
see those eyes, feel that terror of being surrounded by
something bigger and stronger than me, something that could have
(43:35):
killed me but didn't, something that just wanted me gone.
I left, never went back, never will. That's what happened
to six boy scouts in the Francis Marion National Forest
in June two thousand and five. That's why we came
out of those woods three days early, looking like we'd
aged ten years. That's why none of us ever talked
(43:56):
about it publicly. The official record says it was a
successful trip with no problems. We kept quiet about it,
honored the boundary they set. We'd gone into territory that
wasn't ours and paid for it with three nights of
pure terror and memories that'll never go away. In return,
they let us leave alive. Fair trade. I guess silence
(44:18):
for survival, some kind of understanding between us and them,
two species sharing the same woods but living in different
worlds that shouldn't really cross paths. We learned where we
stood in things, and they went back to their darkness
and their old ways that were here before us, and
we'll probably be here after we're gone. I've made peace
with it, Accepted that some things can't be explained to
(44:41):
people who weren't there, Learned to live with knowing what's
in those South Carolina woods, even though most people would
never believe me, but I know the six of us
who were there no, And it's changed our lives in
ways big and small. Changed how we think about the
world and our place in it. So when people I
ask if I believe in Bigfoot, I give them some
(45:02):
generic answer, say it's interesting that there are some good
reports out there that I keep an open mind. I
don't tell them about the clearing, don't tell them about
the eyes or the howls or the thing blocking the trail.
Don't tell them about the footprints or the rocks or
the tent getting pushed in. I keep it to myself,
keep it locked away where it won't disturb the comfortable
(45:24):
version of reality. Most people live in a reality where
the woods are safe and humans are in charge, and
science has explained everything. Most people need that reality to
get through their day. But it's not the truth. I
know it's not, and that knowledge, that certainty from living
through it is something I'll carry until I die.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Didn't p
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.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
If you dare.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
Looking back now, more than two decades later, I can
still feel the weight of that backpack cutting into my
shoulders as we hiked deeper into the Francis Maryan National
Forest that June morning in two thousand and five. I
was fourteen years old, pumped full of confidence and teenage invincibility,
convinced that spending a week in the woods without adults
(01:23):
was going to be the adventure of a lifetime. I
had no idea, how right I was, or how badly
I would come to regret that eagerness. There were six
of us making that trek into the back country. Our
scout master, mister Henderson, had dropped us off at a
trailhead about fifteen miles northeast of Charleston, given us a map,
a compass, and a radio for emergencies, only then driven
(01:46):
away with a wave and instructions to meet us back
at the same spot in seven days. This was supposed
to be our final test before aging out of the troop,
a primitive camping experience that would prove we could handle
ourselves in the wilderness without supervision. We'd all completed our
wilderness survival merit badges, We'd done dozens of campouts. We
(02:07):
thought we knew what we were doing. The plan was
simple enough. We'd hike about eight miles into a remote
section of the forest where the trails petered out into nothing,
set up a base camp, and spend the week practicing
primitive skills. No modern camping gear except our tents and
sleeping bags, no coolers full of hot dogs and sodas.
(02:27):
We'd be purifying water from streams, building fires without matches,
constructing shelters from natural materials, and generally proving we could
survive with minimal resources. It sounded like the kind of
challenge that would make for great stories. When we got
back home, I remember the forest felt different the moment
we left the main trail. The canopy closed in overhead,
(02:50):
thick with Spanish moss that hung from the live oaks
like gray curtains. Palmetto fronds scraped against our legs as
we pushed through the undergrowth, following the game trail that
barely qualified as a path. The air was heavy and wet,
the kind of humidity that makes your clothes stick to
your skin and your lungs work harder with every breath.
(03:11):
Cicadas droned in the trees, a constant buzz that seemed
to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. We'd been
walking for about three hours when Tyler, who was leading
our group, stopped at a small clearing near a creek.
The water was dark and slow moving, stained brown from
tannins leeching out of the cypress roots, but it was
flowing and we could purify it. The clearing was maybe
(03:34):
thirty yards across, surrounded by dense forest on all sides.
With enough open space for our tents and a fire ring.
Tyler turned to look at us, grinning that cocky grin
he always had. This was perfect, he said, Remote enough
that we wouldn't see another soul all week, private enough
that we could make as much noise as we wanted.
(03:55):
We all dropped our packs and started setting up camp,
too tired and hot to think much beyond getting the
tents up and getting some.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Water in us.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
The first day passed without incident. We got camp, established,
purified water from the creek, gathered firewood, and built a
proper fire ring using rocks from the stream bed. By
the time the sun started going down, we had a
decent fire going, and we're heating up some of the
dehydrated camping meals we'd brought along. We sat around the
fire as darkness fell, congratulating ourselves on how well we'd done,
(04:27):
how easy this was all going to be. That first night,
none of us noticed anything unusual. We were exhausted from
the hike, stuffed from dinner, and ready to crash. I
fell asleep in my tent, listening to the creek burbling
and the fire popping, and the constant chorus of frogs
and insects that filled the South Carolina night. If I'd
known what was coming, I never would have closed my eyes.
(04:50):
The second day started out fine. We spent the morning
working on a lean to shelter made from fallen branches
and palmetto fronds, the kind of primitive structure that he
had shown us how to build in our survival training.
It was hot, sweaty work, and by noon we were
all ready for a break. We ate lunch by the creek,
soaked our feet in the cool water, and talked about
(05:11):
how we'd spend the rest of the week. Someone suggested
we should try to catch some fish. Someone else wanted
to practice making cordage from plant fibers, normal camping stuff.
It was that afternoon when I first felt like something
was off. I can't really explain it better than that
I was gathering firewood, maybe fifty yards from camp, working
(05:32):
my way through a stand of pines, when I got
this sudden feeling that I was being watched. You know
that sensation where the hair on the back of your
neck stands up and your stomach does a little flip.
It was like that, except stronger, more insistent. I stopped
what I was doing and looked around, scanning the forest,
but I didn't see anything, just trees and shadows and undergrowth.
(05:56):
But the feeling didn't go away.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I hurried back to.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Camp with my armload of wood, and I noticed Marcus
was standing near the fire looking out into the trees
with a weird expression on his face. When I asked
him what was wrong, he shook his head and said
he didn't know, said he just felt strange, like something
wasn't right. I told him I'd felt the same thing
while I was getting firewood, and we both kind of
(06:20):
laughed it off as being paranoid. We were city kids, really,
despite all our camping experience. Maybe we were just spooked
by how remote and quiet it was out here. But
that feeling never quite went away. It hung over the
camp like a cloud, subtle but persistent. The other guy
seemed to feel it too, though nobody wanted to say anything.
(06:42):
We were fourteen year old boys trying to prove how
tough we were. Admitting you were scared wasn't an option.
That night, after we'd eaten dinner and were sitting around
the fire, the forest went quiet. It happened suddenly, like
someone had flipped a switch. One moment the usual nighttime
symphony of and insects was going strong, and the next
(07:03):
moment it just stopped, complete silence except for the crackling
fire and the creek. Tyler made a joke about it, said,
we must have scared all the animals away with our cooking,
but his voice sounded strained. We all felt it that
silence was wrong, unnatural. We sat there for maybe ten minutes,
not talking much, just staring into the fire and listening
(07:26):
to the nothing. Then, from somewhere out in the darkness
beyond our camp, we heard something that.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Scared us all.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
It started as a low moan, deep and resonant, almost
like a horn or a fog horn, but clearly organic.
It rose in pitch and volume, becoming a howl that
seemed to echo through the trees, then cut off abruptly.
None of us moved, none of us breathed. We just
sat there, frozen, listening, waiting when nothing else happened. Danny
(07:57):
tried to laugh it off, said it was probably just
a deep or maybe a fox, But I'd heard foxes
before and this wasn't anything like that. This was bigger, deeper.
It had a quality to it that I can't quite
describe something that reached into your chest and squeezed your heart,
something that triggered every prey instinct you have buried in
(08:18):
your DNA. We heard it again about twenty minutes later,
same sound, but from a different direction. Then maybe half
an hour after that, we heard it a third time,
and this time it seemed closer, much closer, close enough
that I could feel it vibrating in my chest. We
all looked at each other across the fire, and I
(08:39):
could see my own fear reflected in their faces. Whatever
was making that sound, it was circling our camp. Tyler
suggested we should probably get in our tents for the night.
Nobody argued. We doused the fire, carefully, making sure every
ember was dead, then retreated to our tents. I was
sharing with Marcus, and once we were zipped inside, I
(09:00):
could hear him breathing fast and shallow in the darkness.
I wanted to say something reassuring, but I couldn't think
of anything that wouldn't sound like a lie. We lay
there in the dark, listening for a long time. There
was nothing but the normal sounds of the creek and
the forest, and I started to think maybe we'd overreacted.
Maybe it really had been just some animal we didn't recognize.
(09:23):
I was almost asleep when I heard footsteps outside the tent.
They were heavy, deliberate, not the light patter of a
deer or the scurrying of a raccoon. These were footsteps
with weight behind them, like a person walking, but the
rhythm was slightly off, the stride was too long. I
felt Marcus go rigid next to me, and I knew
(09:44):
he heard it too. The footsteps moved around the perimeter
of our camp, slow and steady, and then they stopped
right outside our tent. I don't know how long we
lay there, perfectly still, barely breathing. Then whatever it was
moved on and the footsteps faded back into the forest.
(10:05):
I didn't sleep at all that night. Every time I
started to drift off, i'd hear something that snapped me
back awake. A twig, breaking, leaves, rustling, the sense of
something large moving through the darkness just beyond the thin
nylon walls of our tent. When morning finally came, I
was exhausted and jumpy.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
We all were.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
We gathered around the fire ring, looking haggard and nervous,
and it quickly became clear that none of us had
slept well. Tyler had heard the footsteps too, so had
Chris and Danny in their tent. Jake and Bobby, who
were sharing the third tent on the opposite side of camp,
said they'd heard something moving around for hours, sometimes coming
right up to their tent and then moving away. We
(10:48):
spent the morning trying to rationalize it. Maybe it had
been a bear, even though bears weren't common in this
part of South Carolina. Maybe it had been a person,
some other hiker who'd wandered into our area and then left.
Maybe we'd all just psyched each other out and imagine
things in the dark. But none of these explanations felt right.
A bear would have gone for our food, another person
(11:10):
would have announced themselves, and all six of us imagining
the same things at the same time seemed like too
much of a coincidence. Tyler suggested we break camp and
move to a different spot, but nobody wanted to admit
we were scared enough to do that. We told mister
Henderson we'd be at this location. If we moved and
there was an emergency, nobody would know where to find us.
(11:32):
Plus we only had three days left we could tough
it out.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
We were boy scouts.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
We'd dealt with worse than some weird noises in the night.
That decision to stay put instead of leaving is something
I've regretted ever since. The third day was tense. We
went through the motions of our primitive camping activities, but
our hearts weren't in it. We were all tired from
lack of sleep, and we kept glancing at the tree
(11:58):
line like we expected something to urge. The feeling of
being watched had intensified. It was constant, now, pressing down
on us like a physical weight, even in broad daylight.
I felt exposed and vulnerable. It was late afternoon when
Jake saw it. We were all at the creek filling
our water containers when Jake suddenly stood up and pointed
(12:19):
toward the far side of the clearing. His hand was shaking.
He said there was something standing in the trees watching us.
We all looked, but I didn't see anything at first,
just shadows and foliage. Then it moved and I caught
a glimpse of something tall and dark shifting behind a
screen of palmetto fronds, something that was definitely not a
(12:40):
tree or a shadow. Or a trick of the light.
It was there for maybe three seconds, long enough for
me to register the shape of it, the size of it,
and then it melted back into the forest like it
had never been there at all. We stood there in
shocked silence, water bottles forgotten, staring at the spot where
it had been. Danny was the first to speak. He
(13:02):
asked if we'd all seen that. We all nodded, we'd
all seen it. Tyler tried to describe what he'd seen. Tall,
he said, maybe seven feet or more, broad shoulders covered
in dark hair or fur, bipedal, standing upright like a person,
but too big to be a person. The shape was
(13:22):
all wrong for a bear, even if a bear could
stand on its hind legs for that long. We all
agreed on these basic details. We'd all seen the same thing,
which meant it was real. Whatever was out there with
us in these woods, it was real. That realization hit
us like a punch to the gut. This wasn't some
scary story we were telling ourselves. This wasn't imagination or paranoia.
(13:47):
There was something in the forest with us, something large
and unknown, and it had been circling our camp for
the past two nights. Suddenly, the footsteps and the howls
and the feeling of being watched all made horrible. Since
we retreated to our camp and built up the fire
even though it was still daylight. Being near the flames
made us feel safer, even though logically we knew a
(14:10):
fire wouldn't do much good against something that size if
it decided to come into camp. We talked about using
the emergency radio to call mister Henderson tell him to
come get us early. But what would we tell him
that we saw something in the woods, that we heard
weird noises. He'd think we were being cowards, or worse,
that we were making it up to get out of
(14:30):
the trip early. We'd never live it down, so we
decided to stick it out, just two more nights. We
told ourselves we could handle two more nights.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
We'd keep the.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Fire going all night, take turns on watch stick together.
Whatever this thing was, it clearly didn't want to get
too close to us, or it would have done so already.
It was probably just curious, probably just passing through. We'd
be fine. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll
be back after these messages. That third night was when
(15:04):
things got worse. We were all sitting around the fire
as darkness fell, nobody willing to go to their tents yet,
when we heard the vocalizations again, but this time there.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Were multiple sources.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
One would call from the north that same deep howling sound,
and another would answer from the south, then a third
from the east. They were all around us, communicating with
each other, and we were in the middle of it.
The calls went on for almost an hour, back and forth,
sometimes overlapping, sometimes in perfect call and response patterns. It
(15:35):
sounded organized, coordinated, like they were talking to each other
planning something. The hair on my arms was standing straight up.
Marcus was crying quietly, trying to hide it, and I
couldn't blame him. I wanted to cry too.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
We all did.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Then they started adding new sounds, not just the howls,
but also whooping calls that rose and fell in pitch,
and the strange chattering sounds that almost sounded like laughter,
but wrong, distorted, and underneath it all. Every now and
then I'd hear something that sounded almost like words, like
someone trying to mimic human speech but not quite getting
(16:14):
it right. That was, somehow the worst part the idea
that these things were intelligent enough to try to copy
our sounds, made them infinitely more terrifying. Around midnight, Jake's
tent started shaking. He and Bobby were the only ones
who'd been brave enough to try sleeping, and suddenly we
heard Jake yelling his tent was being pushed shoved from
(16:35):
the outside, the poles bending and the fabric collapsing inward.
Bobby came scrambling out of the tent, wild eyed and panicked,
and Jake wasn't far behind him. They said something had
pressed against the tent from outside, something big and heavy,
and they'd felt hands or pause or something pushing through
the fabric, shoving the tent down on top of them.
(16:57):
We all ran over with flashlights, but there was nothing there.
The tent was collapsed on one side, the stakes pulled
out of the ground, but whatever had done it was gone.
We could hear crashing in the undergrowth, something large moving
away at high speed, but we couldn't see anything beyond
the ring of firelight. Jake was shaking so badly he
(17:17):
could barely stand. He kept saying he'd felt it touching
him through the tent, fabric, pressing down on him, and
he'd been sure it was going to rip through the
nylon and grab him. The most disturbing part was when
we examined the collapsed tent more carefully. There were marks
in the fabric, impressions left by whatever had pushed against it.
You could see the outline clearly where something had pressed
(17:40):
from the outside. The marks were huge, bigger than any
human hand. The fingers, if that's what they were, had
left distinct indentations, and you could see where they'd gripped
the tent fabric before shoving it inward. Bobby kept saying
he'd felt those fingers moving across his sleeping bag while
he was inside, searching, probing, like whatever it was had
(18:02):
been trying to figure out what was in the tent.
We tried to set the tent back up, but our
hands were shaking too badly and we kept fumbling with
the poles. Eventually we gave up and just dragged the
collapsed tent over near the fire with the others. Jake
and Bobby weren't going back inside it anyway. None of
us were going inside our tents. We were staying right
(18:23):
here by the fire together where we could see each
other and watch each other's backs. The temperature had dropped
as the night went on, and even in June, the
South Carolina woods can get surprisingly cool. After midnight, we
were all shivering, partly from cold and partly from fear,
huddling close to the flames and feeding the fire constantly
to keep it roaring. We'd had enough firewood to last
(18:46):
us the whole week if we used it sparingly, but
we were burning through it fast.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
We didn't care. The fire was the.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Only thing keeping us sane, the only barrier between us
and whatever was out there in the darkness. It was
Chris who first noticed the smell, a thick, musky odor
that seemed to roll into camp on the night breeze, heavy,
organic and disgusting. It smelled like a wet dog that
had been rolling in, something dead, mixed with the stench
(19:14):
of body odor, something primal and animal, but also disturbingly familiar,
like a corrupted version of human sweat. The smell was
so strong it made my eyes water, and Danny actually
gagged and had to turn away from the fire. The
smell would come and go throughout the night, getting stronger
sometimes and then fading, as if whatever was producing it
(19:36):
was moving around us. Circling at different distances. When the
smell was strongest, we'd hear movement in the undergrowth, branches snapping, leaves, rustling.
When it faded, everything would go quiet again except for
the fire and our own ragged breathing. They were playing
with us, I realized, taking turns, getting close, testing us, seeing.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
How we'd react.
Speaker 1 (19:59):
Around two in the morning, our food supplies were raided.
We'd hung our food bag from a tree branch about
fifteen feet off the ground, following proper bear safety protocols,
tying it off to a trunk twenty yards from camp
standard procedure to keep animals away from your camp site.
But when Tyler went to check on it with his flashlight,
the bag was gone. The rope was still there, still
(20:21):
tied to the branch and the trunk, but it had
been snapped clean through in the middle, not cut, not untied,
snapped like someone had just grabbed it and pulled until
it broke. Tyler followed the rope to where it ended
in a frayed mess, about halfway between the branch and
the ground below it. Scattered across the forest floor were
(20:41):
the remains of our food supplies, torn packages of trail
mix and energy bars, smashed bags of beef jerky, crushed
boxes of crackers. Everything had been ripped open and the
contents taken or scattered. Whatever had done this had incredible
reach to grab a bag that high off, then an
incredible strength to snap a half inch rope like it
(21:03):
was thread. But the scariest part was that we hadn't
heard a thing. With all of us sitting around the fire,
wide awake and on high alert, these creatures had moved
into our camp, torn down our food bag, and rifled
through our supplies without making enough noise to alert us.
They'd done it right under our noses, and we'd been
completely unaware until Tyler went to check. That realization hit
(21:26):
me like a physical blow. If they could get that
close without us knowing, they could get close enough to
touch us, close enough to grab us, close enough to
drag one of us off into the woods before the
others even realized what was happening. Tyler came back to
the fire, looking pale and shaken. He told us what
he'd found, and we all sat there and stunned silence,
(21:48):
trying to process it.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
We had maybe two days worth.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
Of food left now, all of it in our backpacks
near the fire.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Everything we'd hung.
Speaker 1 (21:56):
In that bag to keep it safe was gone. We
were running on supplies, running low on firewood, running low
on sleep, and running out of courage fast. Danny suggested
again that we should call mister Henderson on the radio.
This was an emergency, he said, this was exactly the
kind of situation the radio was four.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
But Tyler shook his head.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
He said, if we called now in the middle of
the night, we'd have to wait here until morning anyway,
because mister Henderson wouldn't be able to find us in
the dark. And if we were going to wait until morning,
we might as well start hiking out at first light ourselves.
We could make it to the trailhead in four or
five hours if we pushed hard. We didn't need a rescue.
We just needed to get out of here. The rest
(22:39):
of us agreed, though I'm not sure any of us
really believed we'd make it through the night. Every sound
from the forest made us jump. Every shift in the
shadows made us grab our flashlights and scan the darkness.
The calls had stopped, but somehow the silence was worse.
At least when they were howling, we knew where they
were now. They could be any doing anything, and we
(23:02):
had no way to know. It was maybe three point
thirty in the morning when I saw the eyes. I'd
been staring into the darkness beyond the fire. My vision
blurred from exhaustion and smoke when I noticed two points
of light about eight feet off the ground, maybe thirty
yards from camp. At first, I thought they were reflecting
our firelight, the way a deer's eyes or a raccoon's
(23:24):
eyes will shine when light hits them. But these eyes
weren't moving like an animal's eyes. They were steady, focused,
locked onto us with an intensity that made my skin crawl.
I grabbed Marcus's arm and pointed, and he saw them too.
Then Tyler and Chris and Danny and Bobby all saw them.
We all sat there frozen, watching those eyes watching us.
(23:48):
They were too high off the ground to be anything normal,
too far apart, too large, and there was an intelligence
in them that went beyond animal awareness. These weren't the
eyes of something else operating on instinct. These were the
eyes of something that could think, that could plan, that
could make decisions and judgments and choices. We stared at
(24:09):
those eyes for what felt like an eternity. Nobody moved,
nobody spoke. We barely breathed, and then, slowly, deliberately, a
second pair of eyes appeared next to the first, then
a third pair off to the left, then a fourth
to the right.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
They were all.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Around us, standing just beyond the firelight, watching us with
those unblinking, reflective eyes. I counted seven pairs total before
I stopped counting. Tyler reached down slowly and grabbed a
burning branch from the fire, holding it up like a torch.
The movement caused the nearest pair of eyes to shift slightly,
but they didn't retreat. They just adjusted their position and
(24:49):
kept watching. Tyler stood up, holding the torch in front
of him and took a single step forward. The eyes
closest to him took a step back, maintaining their distance,
but they didn't leave. They were letting us know they
were there. They were making sure we understood we were surrounded.
They were demonstrating in the clearest possible way that we
(25:11):
were completely at their mercy. Marcus started crying again, and
this time he didn't try to hide it. He just
sat there with tears running down his face, staring at
those eyes. His whole body shaking. Danny was praying under
his breath words I couldn't quite make out, but could
feel the desperation in Jake had his arms wrapped around himself,
(25:33):
rocking slightly. Chris and Bobby had moved so close together
they were practically sitting in the same space. And Tyler
just stood there with his torch, slowly turning in a circle,
counting the eyes that surrounded us. We'd lost, that was
what those eyes were telling us. We'd ventured into territory
that wasn't ours, set up camp in a place we
(25:54):
had no right to be, and now we were surrounded
by creatures that could end us whenever they chose. They'd
tried to scare us away with sounds and rocks and
tent pushing, but we'd been too stubborn or too stupid
to leave. So now they were escalating. They were showing themselves,
making their presence undeniable, giving us one last chance to
(26:15):
get out before things got even worse. The eyes stayed
there for maybe fifteen minutes, just watching us, studying us,
making their point. Then one by one they blinked out,
disappearing back into the darkness as silently as they'd appeared,
but we all knew they were still there. Just because
we couldn't see them anymore didn't mean they'd gone away.
(26:37):
They were still watching, still waiting, still surrounding us in
the dark. None of us closed our eyes. For the
rest of that night, we sat around the fire as
the temperature dropped and the wood supply dwindled, feeding the
flames with anything we could find, keeping them high and bright.
We watched the darkness and listened to the silence, and
waited for dawn with a desperation I'd never felt before
(27:00):
and haven't felt since. Every minute felt like an hour,
Every hour felt like an eternity. Time became elastic and meaningless,
measured only by the slow rotation of stars overhead and
the gradual lightning of the sky to the east. Soon
as we could see even a little bit of gray light,
we started packing up. Didn't wait for the sun to
(27:22):
actually come up, didn't eat anything. Hell, we didn't even
talk about whether we were leaving or not.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
We just knew.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
We threw everything in our packs, knocked down the tents,
kicked dirt on what was left of the fire. Twenty
minutes later, we were standing there with our packs on,
staring at that game trail, ready to get the hell out.
I looked back at the clearing one last time before
we left. Sun was just starting to come up, and
you could see everything that had happened. Food wrappers everywhere,
(27:52):
packages ripped to shreds, those huge footprints in the mud
by the creek, branches, busted off trees from where the
rocks had hit. Jake's tent was still half collapsed with
those handprints pressed into it. The whole place felt wrong now,
like something bad had marked it, and it was never
going to feel right again. Tyler checked his compass, figured
(28:13):
out which way we needed to go, and just started walking.
Rest of us bunched up tight behind him. Nobody wanted
to be in the back. Nobody wanted to be more
than a couple feet away from anybody else. We hauled
ass right from the start. Only thing on our minds
was getting as far from that clearing as fast.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
As we could.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
The woods felt weird in the morning. Trees looked like
they were closing in on us, Shadows everywhere, even though
it was getting light out. Every little noise made us jump.
Every time something moved in the bushes, we'd all stop
and whip around. We were running on nothing but fear
and adrenaline. At that point should have been too tired
to move, but somehow we kept going. Maybe an hour
(28:54):
in we heard them again, started back at our camp,
that same howl we'd been hearing long and low, and
it just.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
Echoed through the fog.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Then another one answered from somewhere west of us, then
another from up north. They were talking to each other,
telling each other we were moving. Hearing it in daylight
was worse. Somehow at night you could almost tell yourself
you were imagining it or making it worse than it was.
But hearing it clear as day like that, there was
no way to pretend it wasn't real.
Speaker 2 (29:25):
We started almost jogging.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Tyler was moving so fast we could barely keep up,
and none of us said a word about it. We
just followed him, breathing hard, sweating our asses off, even
though it wasn't that warm yet. All we could think
about was just keep moving, keep going forward, get out.
Around the middle of the morning, we had to stop
at this creek to get water. We were so thirsty
(29:47):
we just scooped it up.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
And drank it.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Didn't even bother with the purification tablets. Didn't care about
getting sick. Later, while we were there getting water, Chris
pointed upstream and we all looked. Stay tuned for more
Backwoods bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. One
of them was standing right there in the creek, maybe
fifty yards away. This one was even bigger than what
(30:11):
we'd seen the night before, had to be eight feet tall, easy,
reddish brown hair all over it, darker on its face
and chest, just standing there.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
In the water watching us.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Wasn't moving at all, just had its arms hanging down.
Sun was shining right on it, and there was no
way to tell yourself it was anything else. This was
a real living thing standing there looking at us with
eyes that looked almost human but not quite. We all froze.
Must have been five seconds that felt like forever. Nobody moved.
(30:44):
Then Tyler whispered, we had to go, had to go now,
and we scrambled up and took off again. I looked
back once and it was still just standing there watching us.
Wasn't following, but it damn sure wanted us to know
it was there, wanted us to know they were letting
us leave. Rest of the morning is kind of a blur,
just exhausted and terrified. The whole time. We kept hearing
(31:06):
stuff moving around us in the woods, branches, breaking heavy footsteps, keeping.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Pace with us through the trees.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
Every now and then we'd see something big and dark
moving through the forest, but it had disappeared before you
could really see it. They were tracking us, making sure
we actually left. Around noon, Marcus twisted his ankle pretty
bad and we had to stop for a minute, found
a log to sit on, split up the last energy
bars we had. My legs were shaking, feet hurt like
(31:36):
hell from blisters, shoulders were killing me from the pack,
but none of that mattered. We just had to keep moving.
Bobby noticed these marks on the trees while we were
sitting there, scratches in the bark way up high, like
seven or eight feet up, parallel lines, like something dragged
its claws down the wood.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Fresh too.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
The wood was still light colored and had sap coming out.
Hadn't been there when we hiked in, could have been
from that morning. Even Tyler figured maybe they were marking territory.
Jake thought maybe they were warnings. Either way, it made
the whole thing even more real. These things weren't just animals.
They had some kind of system, some way of communicating
(32:17):
and marking their area. We got mark us up and
moving again. He was limping bad, but didn't slow us down.
Heat was brutal by then, and the humidity made it
hard to breathe. Sweat was pouring off all of us.
We were drinking water constantly, but still getting dehydrated, starting
to feel dizzy and weak from not eating enough, but
(32:38):
stopping wasn't an option. Early afternoon, Tyler said we were
maybe three hours from the parking lot. We were going
through this really thick part of the forest, walking single
file on this narrow trail. When Tyler stopped so fast,
Chris ran right into him. We all stopped and looked
where he was looking. There was one blocking the trail
ahead of us, maybe thirty feet away. The biggest one
(33:00):
yet had to be nine feet tall, shoulders so wide
it looked ridiculous. Hair was almost black, face was all
wrinkled like it was old. This wasn't just another one.
This was the big boss of whatever group lived out here.
It was just standing there with its arms crossed blocking
the path. Message was pretty clear we weren't going that way,
(33:22):
had to find another route. It was showing us who
was in charge. Tyler backed up slow, and we all
backed up with him. When we'd gotten back far enough,
Tyler pointed for us to go left off the trail
into the thick stuff. So we did, pushing through all
this undergrowth, getting scratched up by thorns, climbing over logs.
(33:43):
It was exhausting and slowing us way down, but nobody
suggested going back to the easier trail.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
After maybe half.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
An hour of that, we found another trail going sort
of the right direction. But that encounter had really shaken
us up. The thing hadn't actually done anything to us,
just by standing there, it controlled where we could go.
That was somehow worse. We kept pushing through the afternoon.
Gradually things started feeling a little different. Trees weren't quite
(34:11):
as thick, that feeling of being watched wasn't as strong.
We were getting close to the edge of their area.
Maybe four in the afternoon, we finally saw the parking
lot through the trees. That pavement looked like the most
beautiful thing I'd ever seen. We practically ran the last bit,
crashed out of the woods into the open, and as
soon as we hit that parking lot, everything changed. The
(34:34):
pressure lifted, the feeling of eyes on us disappeared. Birds
started singing again. It was like stepping into a different world.
Mister Henderson's truck was sitting right there, but he wasn't
in it. Truck was locked empty. He wasn't supposed to
get us for three more days. We'd have to call
him on the radio. Tyler pulled out the radio battery
(34:56):
was almost dead, but it still worked. He called mister Henderson,
told him where we were and that we needed him
to come get us now. Radio crackled for a second
and I thought it was going to die. Then mister
Henderson came through, asking if anyone was hurt. Tyler said no,
but we needed to come back early. Mister Henderson said
he'd be there in forty five minutes. Those forty five
(35:19):
minutes felt like forever. We sat on the curb as
far from the trees as we could get, didn't talk much,
just sat there, completely wiped out. A few times I
looked back at the forest and just shuddered thinking about
what was still in there. When mister Henderson finally showed up,
I can't even describe the relief. He got out, looking confused,
(35:39):
trying to figure out why we'd called early started asking questions,
but Tyler cut him off, said we'd talk later. Right now,
we just needed to load up and go. Mister Henderson
looked at our faces and I guess he got it.
He just nodded and helped us throw our stuff in
the truck. The drive back was quiet. We sat in
the truck bed, watching the Orris disappear behind us. I
(36:02):
kept thinking I'd see something at the tree line, but
never did. They were done with us. We'd left like
they wanted back in town. Mister Henderson took us to
the scout hall and called our parents. I remember sitting
there looking at all the posters about camping skills and
thinking how useless all that training had been for what
we'd just been through. My parents showed up, and my
(36:22):
mom started freaking out, asking what happened. I just said
we had some problems with wildlife and decided to come back.
She kept asking questions, but I didn't know how to
explain it. How do you tell your parents you spent
three days being harassed by bigfoot without sounding crazy? So
I kept it vague, said we felt unsafe and left.
(36:43):
She seemed okay with that answer, at least for the moment,
got home and took the longest shower of my life,
stood there scrubbing off three days of sweat and dirt
and fear, watching it all go down the drain. That night,
I couldn't sleep, kept seeing those eyes, kept here, hearing
those howls, kept feeling like something was outside my window.
(37:04):
My room felt too quiet, too normal, after what I'd
been through. Next day, Tyler called us all and we
met up at the park. First time we really talked
about it.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
All.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Sat there going through everything that happened, making sure we'd
all seen and heard the same stuff. We had every
detail matched up, which meant it was all real. Danny
wanted to report it. Tyler asked who we'd tell. What
would we even say. We had no proof, no pictures,
no video, just our word. People would think we made
(37:37):
it up, so we decided to keep it to ourselves
at least for now. Tell people we had a good trip,
but came back a little early, don't make a big
deal out of it. Looking back, I think that was
the right call. Some things are just too big and
too strange to share. Over the next few weeks, I
got obsessed with reading bigfoot reports online. Read everything I
(37:58):
could find. I was looking for proof that we weren't
the only ones, that other people had seen what we saw,
and I found it. Hundreds of reports from South Carolina,
thousands from all over, people describing the exact same things.
The more I read, the more convinced I got that
these things are real and have been around forever. They've
(38:19):
just learned to stay hidden to avoid us, only show
themselves when they feel threatened or when someone gets too
far into their territory. I also noticed the reports all
followed the same pattern. We went through weird sounds, first,
feeling watched, then glimpses of them, then aggressive stuff like
rock throwing, then direct encounters. We'd gotten out before it
(38:42):
got to actual violence. Some people in the reports weren't
so lucky. The six of us stayed close through high school.
Didn't talk about the trip much, but it was always there.
We camped together more times, but always in regular campgrounds,
never deep in the wilderness again. Jake went to college
and Ohio, and we lost touch. Bobby joined the Marines,
(39:03):
Chris became a teacher in Colorado. Marcus works for his
dad's construction company here. Danny's a state trooper. Tyler and
I both stayed in Charleston, still grabbed beers every couple months.
We're the only ones who still talk about what happened sometimes.
Tyler told me a few years back he went back
to the Francis Marion, not to our exact spot, but
(39:25):
that general area. He wanted to prove to himself it
was real that he hadn't imagined it. Hiked in during
the day, didn't camp, He said, the feeling was still
there that since you're not the top dog out there,
didn't see any creatures, but found tree breaks, footprints, those
territorial markers. He left before dark, never went back. I've
(39:48):
thought about going back myself. Sometimes part of me wants
to face it again, proved to myself it happened.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
But I know that'd be stupid.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
We got a warning that week, got shown very clearly
we weren't well. Going back would be asking for trouble.
The thing that sticks with me the most after all
these years isn't even the fear or the exhaustion. It's
the intelligence I saw in those eyes when they surrounded us,
The way they planned it all out, escalated things work together.
(40:17):
These weren't dumb animals. These were thinking creatures with some
kind of social structure and communication. They were more like
us than like animals. That's what makes it so terrifying.
I get why people spend their whole lives trying to
prove Bigfoot is real, setting up cameras, spending years in
the woods looking for evidence. I understand it, But there's
(40:38):
a reason that evidence is so hard to find. They
don't want to be found. They're smart enough to avoid
our cameras, to recognize researchers, and they're strong enough to
drive away anyone who gets too close to where they
actually live. I think we got lucky because we were
just kids, fourteen year old boys on.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
A camping trip. Weren't a real threat.
Speaker 1 (40:59):
We got pushed, but not hurt because we didn't know better.
But if we'd been adults, researchers, hunters, people who could
come back with weapons or better equipment, I think it
would have gone very differently. My wife knows something happened
on that trip, even though I've never told her the
whole story. She knows I don't like camping in remote places,
knows I get uncomfortable in heavy woods, especially at night.
(41:23):
She stopped asking about it. Mostly she knows I saw
something that changed me, and she's learned to live with
not knowing the details. My kids asked me to take
them camping. Sometimes I do, but only at established campgrounds,
state parks with rangers, KOA, places with bathrooms and other
families around. I teach them how to build fires and
(41:44):
read a compass, all that stuff. But I also teach
them that nature needs to be respected, that there are
places humans shouldn't go, that not every wild place needs
to be explored. I don't tell them why I feel
so strongly about it. Maybe when they're older, maybe I'll
figure out how to explain it without sounding crazy. Or
maybe I'll never tell them. Some things might be better
(42:06):
kept private. What I know for sure is the world
is stranger than most people think. The forests that still
cover huge parts of this country have things in them
that science hasn't found yet, things that have learned to
stay hidden from us. And sometimes when people go too
far into places they shouldn't, those things let themselves be seen.
(42:27):
I was fourteen when I learned that. I'm thirty four now.
The memories aren't quite as sharp as they used to be,
but I still know what happened. I know what I
saw and heard and felt, and I know that somewhere
in the Francis Marion National Forest, in that clearing by
the creek, there are still huge footprints in the mud,
still creatures moving through the dark, calling to each other,
(42:49):
still eyes watching from the shadows. And you know what,
I'm okay with that. Not everything needs to be explained,
Not every creature needs to be caught and studied. Not
every wild place needs to be made safe and accessible.
Some things should stay hidden. I learned that in the
summer of two thousand and five. I've stayed out of
deep wilderness since then, kept my distance from places like that,
(43:13):
kept my secrets and my certainty that were not alone
on this planet, that we share it with things we
don't understand. Some nights, when the wind's blowing through the
trees outside my house and the shadows look a little
darker than usual, I hear those howls in my head,
see those eyes, feel that terror of being surrounded by
something bigger and stronger than me, something that could have
(43:35):
killed me but didn't, something that just wanted me gone.
I left, never went back, never will. That's what happened
to six boy scouts in the Francis Marion National Forest
in June two thousand and five. That's why we came
out of those woods three days early, looking like we'd
aged ten years. That's why none of us ever talked
(43:56):
about it publicly. The official record says it was a
successful trip with no problems. We kept quiet about it,
honored the boundary they set. We'd gone into territory that
wasn't ours and paid for it with three nights of
pure terror and memories that'll never go away. In return,
they let us leave alive. Fair trade. I guess silence
(44:18):
for survival, some kind of understanding between us and them,
two species sharing the same woods but living in different
worlds that shouldn't really cross paths. We learned where we
stood in things, and they went back to their darkness
and their old ways that were here before us, and
we'll probably be here after we're gone. I've made peace
with it, Accepted that some things can't be explained to
(44:41):
people who weren't there, Learned to live with knowing what's
in those South Carolina woods, even though most people would
never believe me, but I know the six of us
who were there no, And it's changed our lives in
ways big and small. Changed how we think about the
world and our place in it. So when people I
ask if I believe in Bigfoot, I give them some
(45:02):
generic answer, say it's interesting that there are some good
reports out there that I keep an open mind. I
don't tell them about the clearing, don't tell them about
the eyes or the howls or the thing blocking the trail.
Don't tell them about the footprints or the rocks or
the tent getting pushed in. I keep it to myself,
keep it locked away where it won't disturb the comfortable
(45:24):
version of reality. Most people live in a reality where
the woods are safe and humans are in charge, and
science has explained everything. Most people need that reality to
get through their day. But it's not the truth. I
know it's not, and that knowledge, that certainty from living
through it is something I'll carry until I die.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
Didn't p
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