BWBS Ep:145 Bigfoot Vs. Michael Myers

In this Halloween special from Paranormal World Productions, we head deep into the frozen wilderness of Alaska for a story where myth and terror collide.

After forty-five years of running from her murderous brother, Laurie Strode retreats to a remote cabin fifteen miles from her nearest neighbor—hoping the endless wilderness can finally offer peace. But this land holds secrets of its own.

When rocks crash against her walls in the night and haunting vocalizations echo through the valley, Laurie realizes she’s not alone. Something ancient watches from the treeline—a Sasquatch, massive and intelligent, drawn to her isolation.

An uneasy coexistence forms between two survivors the world refuses to believe in… until Michael Myers finds her again. On Halloween night, Alaska becomes a battleground between human trauma, primal instinct, and unstoppable evil. This haunting episode explores survival, isolation, and the strange kinship between beings who exist outside the normal world. When pure evil meets primal fury, the result is brutal, tragic, and unforgettable.

⚠️ This episode contains intense horror themes, violence, and adult content. Listener discretion is strongly advised.

Join us where the cold is colder, the dark is deeper, and sometimes the monsters in the wild are the only ones who can save us from the monsters that follow us home.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in, but those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot,

(00:23):
dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,

(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods. If you dare. Tonight,
we're doing something different. This is a Halloween special with

(01:07):
a story that merges two forces, one from the wild,
one from the darkness of man. We're talking Michael Myers,
the unstoppable force of evil from the Halloween franchise, going
head to head with something even more primal, even more ancient,
a sasquatch. Deep in the Alaskan wilderness and caught in

(01:27):
the middle is Laurie Strode, who spent her entire life
running from the nightmare that won't end. Now, before we
get started, I need to give you a warning. This
episode is intense. We're talking graphic violence, brutal fight scenes,
and some genuinely frightening imagery. This is not suitable for
younger listeners. If you've got kids around, maybe save this

(01:48):
one for after they've gone to bed. This is adult
horror content, plain and simple. It gets violent, it gets dark,
and it doesn't pull any punches. But if you're ready
for or a wild ride that mixes slash or horror
with cryptid encounters, if you want to hear what happens
when two monsters collide in the frozen darkness of Alaska,

(02:09):
then settle in, turn off the lights, maybe lock your doors,
and let me tell you a story about the night
that evil finally met its match. And it all starts
with a woman who just wanted to be left alone.
There are things that live in the spaces between civilization
and wilderness that we were never meant to understand. Ancient things,

(02:30):
things that existed long before we carved our towns from
the forest and pretended we had conquered the wild. The
old timers in Alaska know this. They know that when
you go deep enough into those mountains, far enough from
the lights and the roads and the sound of human voices,
you're not alone. You're never alone. But there's something else
you need to understand about the darkness. It's not just

(02:53):
one thing. It's not just the creatures that have always
lived in the wild places. Sometimes the darkness file. Sometimes
it wears a mask, and it won't stop. It can't stop,
because that's what evil does. It endures, It persists, It
finds you no matter how far you run. This is
a story about two kinds of monsters, one that belongs

(03:15):
to the wilderness and one that should have stayed dead
a long time ago. And somewhere in between those two
forces stood a woman who had spent her entire life
running from the inevitable, only to discover that sometimes salvation
comes from the most unexpected places. The locals in the
small Alaskan settlement of Coldfoot will tell you about the
Winner of twenty twenty three. If you ask them, well,

(03:38):
they'll tell you part of it. They'll mention the strange
sounds that echoed through the valley that Halloween night, sounds
that made the dogs howl, and the old folks lock
their doors and pray they'll talk about the woman who
lived in the cabin fifteen miles up the frozen creek,
the one who kept to herself and never quite met
your eyes when she came into town for supplies. And

(03:59):
if you buy them enough, if you earn their trust,
they might even mention what they found in the woods
when the snow finally melted that spring. But they won't
tell you everything. They can't because some stories are too strange,
too terrible, too impossible to believe. This is one of
those stories, and every word of it is true, well,

(04:21):
if you choose to believe it. Laurie Strode had been
running for forty five years, and she was tired, bone tired,
soul tired, the kind of tired that settles into your
marrow and makes you feel like you're a thousand years old,
even though you've only lived through fifty nine of them.
She stood at the window of her new cabin, watching

(04:42):
the snow fall in the gathering dusk, and wondered for
the millionth time if this would finally be far enough. Alaska,
the last frontier, a place where you could disappear if
you wanted to, where the wilderness was so vast and
unforgiving that a person could vanish into it like smoke
and never be seen again. That's what she'd been looking for.

(05:04):
Not peace exactly, she'd given up on peace decades ago.
But maybe distance, maybe silence, maybe a place where the
nightmares couldn't follow. The cabin was small, just two rooms
and aloft, but it was solid, built by someone who
understood the brutal winters up here, someone who knew that
when the temperature dropped to forty below and the wind

(05:27):
came howling down from the mountains, your walls better be
thick and your stove better be hot. She'd bought it
with cash from a trapper who was too old to
handle another winter, and he'd looked at her with eyes
that had seen too much and asked if she was
running from something. She'd met his gaze and told him
that everyone was running from something. He nodded like he understood,

(05:47):
and hadn't asked any more questions. That was three months ago,
late August, when the fireweed was still blooming and the
salmon were running. Now it was late October and the
world had turned to ice and darkness, and she was
starting to think maybe she'd made a terrible mistake. The
cabin sat in a small clearing, surrounded by spruce and birch,
fifteen miles from the nearest neighbor, accessible only by a

(06:11):
four wheeler trail that would be impassable once the heavy
snows came. She had six months of supplies, a satellite
phone for emergencies, and a shotgun that she knew how
to use. She had her pills for the anxiety and
the nightmares. She had her journals and her books, and
her memories, both the ones she wanted to keep and
the one she'd been trying to forget for most of

(06:32):
her life. What she didn't have was any illusions about
what she was doing here. This wasn't a fresh start,
This was a last stand. This was her version of dying,
except she'd still be breathing. She'd cut every tie, burned
every bridge, left no forwarding address. Her daughter Karen, thought
she'd finally lost her mind completely. Maybe she had. After everything,

(06:56):
after Haddenfield, after the fire, after the High Spittle, after
watching her family torn apart again and again by the
evil that refused to die, maybe going mad was the
only sane response left. The first week had been the hardest.
The silence was oppressive, almost physical. She'd spent so many
years in a state of hypervigilance, always looking over her shoulder,

(07:20):
always waiting for the other shoe to drop, that the
absence of immediate threat felt wrong. Somehow, her body didn't
know how to rest. She'd paced the cabin at night,
checking the locks on the doors and windows, peering out
into the darkness, seeing shadows that weren't there. But slowly, grudgingly,
she'd started to adapt. The rhythms of this place were

(07:42):
different from anything she'd known before. The days were getting shorter,
the sun barely clearing the mountains before it began its
descent again. The cold was a living thing, something you
had to respect and plan for. She'd learned to split wood,
to keep the fire going through the night, to read
the weather in the clouds and the behavior of the ravens.

(08:03):
She was learning to be alone with herself, and it
was harder than she'd ever imagined. By the end of September,
she'd fallen into a routine up before dawn, which came
late up here, coffee and oatmeal, tend the fire, paul
water from the creek while it was still flowing. She'd
spent weeks preparing for winter, cutting firewood until her hands

(08:24):
were covered in blisters and calluses, reinforcing the cabin's chinking,
organizing her supplies. Physical labor helped it kept her mind occupied,
kept the memories at bay. It was early October when
things started getting strange. The first incident was the rocks.
She'd been inside reading when she heard a heavy thump
against the cabin's north wall. She'd grabbed the shotgun and

(08:47):
gone out to investigate, thinking maybe a branch had fallen,
but there was no branch. There was a rock about
the size of a softball sitting in the snow, about
three feet from the cabin. She'd looked up at the roof,
thinking maybe it had slid off, but that didn't make sense.
The rock hadn't fallen, it had been thrown. The trajectory

(09:07):
was all wrong for anything else. She'd scanned the tree line,
her heart pounding, her finger resting lightly on the shotgun's
trigger guard. Nothing moved. The forest was silent, except for
the whisper of wind through the spruce branches. She'd called
out into the emptiness, her voice sounding thin and small
in the vastness. No answer, just the wind, and her

(09:29):
own breathing visible in the cold air. She'd gone back
inside and told herself it was nothing. Maybe a snowslide
from a tree, maybe thermal expansion in a rock near
the cabin, maybe anything other than what her instincts were
screaming at her, which was that someone or something had
deliberately thrown that rock at her cabin. Three days later,

(09:50):
it happened again. This time she was outside splitting wood
when a rock sailed over her head and crashed into
the woodpile. She spun around, raising the ap act defensively,
and saw nothing but trees and shadows. But she'd seen
the trajectory this time. Whoever or whatever had thrown that
rock had done it from a position about thirty yards
into the forest, and they'd thrown it hard, strong, very strong.

(10:16):
She shouted into the forest that she was armed and
didn't want trouble, but would defend herself if she had to.
Silence answered her, and then, from somewhere in the trees
a sound she'd never heard before, low and deep, almost subsonic,
more felt than heard, not quite a growl, not quite
a vocalization, something in between. It made the hair on

(10:40):
the back of her neck stand up and triggered some
primal instinct that screamed at her to run, to get inside,
to hide. She'd back toward the cabin, keeping her eyes
on the forest, and once inside, she'd locked the door
and sat with the shotgun across her lap until her
hand stopped shaking. That night, she didn't sleep. She sat

(11:00):
at the window and watched the darkness and wondered what
the hell was out there. The vocalization started after that,
At first, just at night, that same deep, resonant sound,
but sometimes it would change in pitch and tone. Sometimes
it sounded almost curious. Sometimes it sounded like a warning.
She'd lie in her sleeping loft and listen to it

(11:21):
echoing through the valley, and she'd think about all the
stories she'd read about Alaska, about the things that lived
in the deep wilderness, bears, wolves, moose, But this didn't
sound like any animals she'd ever heard of. She drove
into Coldfoot on a supply run and casually asked the
woman at the general store if there were bears still

(11:42):
active this late in the season. The woman, whose name
was Maggie and who looked like she'd been born with
callouses and a scowl, gave her a long look. You're
hearing something up at your place. Laurie kept her voice neutral,
just curious. Maggie leaned forward and lowered her voice, even
though they were alone in the store. You up on

(12:02):
the old Henderson property past Miny Creek, Laurie nodded. That's
wild country up there, real wild. You get all kinds
of things moving through bear sure, but they should be
denning up by now. Maggie paused, You're hearing something else.
Laurie hesitated, then decided to be honest. Deep vocalizations rocks

(12:26):
being thrown at the cabin. Maggie nodded slowly, like she'd
expected this. How long you've been up there, three months
and you're just now mentioning this. Maggie smiled, but it
wasn't friendly. It was the smile of someone who knew
a secret and wasn't sure whether to share it. I'm
not going to tell you what to think, but there

(12:47):
are things in these mountains that don't show up in
any wild life guide. Things that the old timers, the
native folks especially, they know about. They have names for them,
the hairy man, the tall one bush, Indian bigfoot. Laurie
said flatly, call it what you want. Point is, if
something's taking an interest in your place, best thing you

(13:09):
can do is show respect. Don't threaten it, don't try
to shoot it. Leave it be, and maybe it'll leave
you bee. Laurie wanted to laugh. She'd fled across a
continent to escape one monster, she didn't need to worry
about another one. But Maggie's expression was dead serious, and
Laurie spent too many years learning to trust her instincts

(13:29):
to dismiss it out of hand. What happens if it
doesn't leave me be? Maggie shrugged. I guess you'll find
out what you're made of, though from the look of you,
I'd say you already know. That conversation was a week ago.
Since then, Laurie saw it just once, just for a moment,
but it was enough. She was coming back from the

(13:51):
creek with water buckets, taking the long way around because
she'd seen moose tracks and wanted to avoid any confrontation.
The sun was setting brief twilight period when the light
goes strange and everything is cast in shades of gold
and purple. She was tired not paying as much attention
as she should have been. When movement caught her eye.
There at the edge of the clearing, partially obscured by

(14:14):
a thick spruce, stood something that made her stop dead
in her tracks and forget how to Breathe tall, very tall,
at least eight feet maybe more, covered in dark reddish
brown hair that seemed to blend with the shadows. It
stood upright like a man, but it was too broad,
too massive, too wrong to be human. She could see

(14:37):
the shape of its head, conical and powerful, and she
could see its eyes catching the last of the daylight.
Dark eyes, intelligent eyes, eyes that were watching her with
what looked like curiosity. They stared at each other for
what felt like an eternity but was probably only ten seconds.
Laurie's mind went completely blank. All her training, all her preparation,

(15:01):
all her years of paranoia and self defense, and she
just stood there, frozen like a deer in headlights. Then
it moved, not toward her, thank god. It simply took
a step backward, moving with a fluid grace that something
that large shouldn't possess, and melted into the forest like
it never existed at all, no sound, no crashing through brush,

(15:24):
just there one moment and gone. The next stay tuned
for more backwoods bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
Laurie stood there until the water buckets got so heavy
her arms shook, and then she walked very carefully back
to the cabin, locked herself inside, and poured three fingers
of whiskey with trembling hands. A sasquatch, Are you kidding me?

(15:48):
A freaking sasquatch? Really? After everything she'd been through, after
all the human monsters and the knives and the fires
and the fear, she ended up in a cabin being
watched by a creature that wasn't supposed to exist. She
should have been terrified, should have packed her bags and
driven straight back to civilization, But instead, lying in her

(16:09):
loft that night, listening to the deep vocalizations echoing through
the valley, she felt something unexpected. She felt less alone.
Maggie's advice finally made Laurie decide to try something different,
show respect, leave it be. So she started doing research,
pulling up what she could on the satellite internet about
sasquatch behavior, habituation situations, people who claimed to have ongoing encounters.

(16:35):
Most of it was probably nonsense, but some of it
rang true. The stories about rocks being thrown as territorial
markers or attempts at communication, the vocalizations, the way they'd
watch human habitations from a distance, curious but cautious. One
thing kept coming up in the accounts. Food. People who'd

(16:56):
had extended contact often reported that leaving food out seemed
to ease tensions, to transform the dynamic from confrontational to
something more like coexistence. So three days after her sighting,
Laurie took a bucket of apples she bought in cold foot,
walked to the edge of the clearing where she saw it,
and placed them on a flat rock. She stood there

(17:17):
for a moment, feeling ridiculous, and then spoke to the
empty forest. I don't know if you can understand me.
Don't know what you want, but I'm not here to
hurt you, not here to prove you exist or take
pictures or do any of that nonsense. I just want
to be left alone. Figure you probably want the same thing,
So here's some apples. Consider it a peace offering from

(17:38):
one refugee to another. She walked back to the cabin,
feeling like an idiot, but that night she slept better
than she did in weeks. The next morning, the apples
were gone, all of them, and in their place, arranged
in a neat little pile, were four pine cones. Laurie
stood there looking at those pine cones for a long time,

(17:59):
a gift or a response, or something, an acknowledgment. She
picked them up carefully, like they were precious, and set
them on her windowsill. That night she left more apples
and some smoked salmon she bought from a local fisherman.
The next morning those were gone too, and there was
a dear antler placed carefully by her door, not dropped

(18:20):
or tossed there, placed there deliberately. And that's how it started.
That's how Laurie Strode, survivor of Michael Myers, veteran of
forty five years of running and fighting in trauma, ended
up in a gift exchange with a sasquatch in the
Alaskan wilderness. She learned its patterns over the next few weeks.
It would come at dusk, moving through the trees with

(18:41):
remarkable silence for something so large. She'd see glimpses of
it shadows at the edge of the clearing. Sometimes she'd
hear it moving around the cabin, testing things. Curious It
never tried to break in, never acted aggressive, more like
it was trying to figure her out, trying to under
understand what this strange human woman was doing in its territory.

(19:04):
The vocalizations changed, They became softer, almost conversational. Sometimes she'd
be inside and hear that deep sound, and she'd walk
to the window and see it standing at the tree line,
just watching. She'd wave, feeling absurd, and it would shift
its weight from foot to foot, a gesture that looked
almost bashful, before melting back into the forest. She started

(19:27):
leaving better food. She'd cook extra portions of whatever she
was making and leave them out, stew bread. Once, she
made a barry cobbler and left half of it out,
wondering if sasquatches had a sweet tooth. It was gone.
The next morning, the pan licked clean, and she laughed
for the first time in months. She started talking to it,

(19:47):
even though she never knew if it was listening. She'd
be outside chopping wood and she'd just start talking, telling
stories about her life, about Karen, about the grandchildren she'd
never see again. She talked about Haddenfield, about that first
night forty five years ago, when she was a teenage babysitter,
and her life turned into a nightmare. She talked about Michael,

(20:09):
about the shape that refused to die, about how many
times she thought it was over, only to discover it
never was. You're probably the only one who could understand
what it's like to be something people don't believe in,
she told the forest, something that gets written off as
legend or delusion. They made movies about what happened to me,
made me into a character in their horror stories. But

(20:32):
we know the truth. Monsters are real. They walk among us,
and sometimes they wear masks, and sometimes they're covered in hair,
and sometimes they're just your brother who won't stop trying
to kill you. The sasquatch vocalized then, that deep, resonant sound,
and she felt like somehow it understood. The creature started

(20:53):
leaving her gifts, more frequently, interesting rocks, feathers, once a
perfectly intact wolverine skull that she kept on her mantle.
The arrangement seemed to work. The sasquatch kept its distance,
but stayed close a presence in the forest. Laurie went
about her business preparing for winter, and felt something she

(21:13):
hadn't felt in decades. She felt safe. That should have
been her first warning. Laurie Strode should have known better
than to feel safe. She learned that lesson over and
over again throughout her life. Safety was an illusion. Security
was a lie. And the moment you let your guard down,
the moment you started to believe that, maybe, just maybe

(21:35):
you'd finally escaped, that's when it came for you. The
calendar pages turned, October deepened, the temperatures dropped, snow fell
more frequently, beginning to pile up around the cabin. She
talked to Karen on the satellite phone, a brief, awkward
conversation where her daughter asked if she was okay, and
Laurie lied and said yes. She didn't mention the sasquatch.

(22:00):
How do you explain something like that? She couldn't very
well tell her daughter she was living in the woods
and befriended. A cryptid Halloween was approaching October thirty first.
That date defined her existence for so long. She tried
not to think about it, tried to tell herself that
up here, thousands of miles from Haddenfield, that date didn't matter,

(22:21):
just another day, just another rotation of the earth. But
deep down in the place where instinct lives. She knew better.
She always knew better. October thirtieth dawned clear and cold,
the sky that impossible blue you only see in the north.
Laurie was outside splitting wood when the sasquatch appeared at
the tree line. Unusual, it rarely showed itself during the day.

(22:46):
It stood there, visible for once in full sunlight, and
Laurie got her first really good look at it. Massive,
at least eight and a half feet tall, probably heavier
than three men combined, dark reddish brown hair covering its
entire body except for its face, which was dark and leathery,
more human than ape, but not quite either. Its eyes

(23:09):
were deep set and intelligent, Watching her with obvious concern,
It shifted from foot to foot, making low vocalizations that
sounded agitated. What's wrong. Laurie set down the axe. The
sasquatch lifted one long arm and pointed toward the trail
that led away from the cabin, the trail that connected
her property to the access road miles away. Then it

(23:31):
vocalized again, louder, this time more insistent. It was trying
to warn her about something. Is someone coming? Ice water
flooded her veins. Someone on the trail. The sasquatch beat
its chest once hard, the sound echoing through the clearing
like a drum, and then it bounded into the forest

(23:51):
with shocking speed, disappearing into the trees. Laurie stood there
for a long moment, her heart hammering, and then she
walked quickly to the cab. Inside, she locked the doors
and loaded the shotgun. She sat at the window and
watched the trail until the sun set and darkness fell,
but no one came. That night, she didn't sleep. She

(24:12):
sat in a chair by the door with the shotgun
across her lap, and watched and waited, and felt something
she'd been trying to escape creeping up her spine. Fear,
the old, familiar fear, the knowledge that he was coming.
Because she knew, even without proof, even without evidence, Michael
was coming. He found her somehow, impossibly, he tracked her

(24:35):
across thousands of miles to this remote cabin in the
Alaskan wilderness. That's what the sasquatch was warning her about.
That's what the creature sensed, evil, recognizes evil. October thirty
first arrived with a white out blizzard. By noon, the
world disappeared into a wall of white snowfalling so thick
you couldn't see ten feet in any direction. The wind

(24:58):
howled around the cabin like something alive and angry. Laurie
prepared for this. She had supplies, heat, light, but she
also had something else. Now she had certainty he was coming.
Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, but he was coming, and this
time she was ready. Laurie spent Halloween Day turning her

(25:20):
cabin into a fortress. She learned over the years that
you couldn't kill Michael Myers through conventional means. She shot him,
stabbed him, burned him, watched him fall from heights that
should have killed him, and still he kept coming. He
was the shape the Boogeyman, the embodiment of pure evil,
and evil didn't die easy. But you could slow him down,

(25:42):
you could hurt him, You could make him work for it.
And if you were smart, if you were prepared, if
you spent forty five years learning how predators think, you
could maybe just maybe survive long enough to find a
way to end it. The cabin had two doors, front
and back, and four windows. She barricaded the back door completely,

(26:03):
nailing boards across it and piling her heaviest furniture against it.
That left the front door as the only way in
or out. She reinforced it with a heavy beam that
dropped into brackets she installed, making it strong enough to
withstand significant force. The windows were the weak points. She
couldn't board them all up without trapping herself inside, so

(26:24):
she compromised. She reinforced them with additional latches and prepared
piles of furniture that could be quickly shoved against them
if needed. She placed her heaviest cast iron skillet on
the sill of each window, ready to be used as
a weapon. Then she started on the traps. She learned
a lot about survival in Alaska, about the old ways
of hunting and trapping. She applied those lessons now outside

(26:48):
the front door. She dug a pit, covering it with
branches and snow, making it look like solid ground. It
wouldn't stop him, but it might slow him down, might
give her a few extra seconds. She strung wire at
ankle height across the porch, nearly invisible in the darkness.
She rigged a bucket of boiling water over the door,
ready to be tipped on anyone who broke through. She

(27:11):
scattered cowtrips she made from nails and wood on the
approaches to the cabin, hiding them under a light dusting
of snow. Inside, she prepared stations. The shotgun by the
front window with extra shells, a fire axe by the door,
knives within reach wherever she might need them. She learned
from her last encounters with Michael that fire was one

(27:32):
of the few things that could genuinely hurt him, so
she prepared accelerants, bottles of lamp oil and grain alcohol
that could be lit and thrown. She thought about the
sasquatch out there in the storm somewhere. The creature hadn't
shown itself since yesterday's warning, and Laurie felt a pang
of worry. Was it hiding from what was coming or
was it preparing to Either way, she couldn't count on help.

(27:56):
This was her fight, It always was her fight. As
the short winter day faded into the long winter night,
Laurie sat by the window and thought about her life,
About the girl she was before Haddenfield, before Michael, before everything.
That girl was long gone, burned away by trauma and terror.

(28:16):
But maybe that was okay. Maybe that girl needed to
die so this woman could be born, this survivor who
learned to stand her ground and fight back. She thought
about Karen and her grandchildren. She left them a letter
with her lawyer, to be opened only if she died
in it. She tried to explain everything, tried to tell
them she loved them, tried to make them understand why

(28:39):
she chose this isolation overstaying with them and putting them
at risk. She hoped they'd forgive her. She hoped they'd understand. Mostly,
she hoped they'd live long, happy lives without ever having
to know the kind of fear she lived with. The
wind died around nine o'clock, the storm suddenly ceasing, as
winter storms sometimes do. The silence afterward was profound, absolute.

(29:04):
Laurie stood at the window and looked out at a
world transformed. Everything was buried under two feet of fresh snow,
The clearing a perfect white expanse, broken only by the
dark line of trees. And there, at the edge of
the clearing, a shape moved. Not the sasquatch. She knew
the creature's profile, its movements. This was different. This was human.

(29:28):
This was a man walking, slowly, deliberately, wading through the
deep snow toward her cabin. He wore coveralls, and boots.
His face was obscured by a white mask, pale and
expressionless in the darkness. He moved with mechanical purpose, not hurrying,
not hesitating, just walking forward with the inevitability of a glacier.

(29:50):
Michael Laurie felt her hand start to shake and force
them to be still. She knew he was coming, She
prepared for this, but knowing and seeing were two different things.
Stay tuned for more Backwoods big foot stories. We'll be
back after these messages, after everything, after all this time.

(30:11):
There he was her brother, her tormentor the shape that
defined her life. It's okay, she whispered to herself, We're
going to finish this. She watched him approach the cabin,
watched him step onto the approach and trigger the first trap.
His foot came down on a cow trip and he paused,
looking down. In anyone else, that would have been a

(30:33):
moment of pain, of shock. In Michael, it was just
a moment of curiosity. He pulled his foot up the nail,
pulling free, and continued forward without any sign of distress.
The ankle wire caught him next. He stumbled, his momentum
carrying him forward, and crashed into the snow. For a moment,
Laurie felt a surge of hope, maybe the fall would

(30:56):
disorient him, give her more time. But Michael pushed himself up, slowly, methodically,
and continued forward. Nothing stopped him, nothing ever stopped him.
He reached the pit trap and fell through, disappearing from view.
Laurie ran to the door. Peering out through the reinforced window,
she could hear him down there, moving around in the

(31:18):
six foot deep hole. She dug. Then she saw his
hands appear on the edge, impossibly strong, and he hauled
himself up and out, like the pit was nothing more
than a minor inconvenience. He stood at the base of
the porch steps, snow covered, and tilted his head in
that characteristic gesture, looking at the cabin, looking at her.

(31:39):
She could feel his eyes on her, even through the
mask and the distance. You're not getting in, she shouted,
not this time, not ever again. He took another step
forward and triggered the bucket trap. Boiling water cascaded down
on him, steam rising into the cold air. Any normal
person would have screamed, would have fallen back. Michael just

(32:00):
stood there and took it, the water soaking into his coveralls,
and then he reached for the door. The door held
the reinforced frame and the heavy beam did their job.
He pulled on it, shook it, and when it didn't open,
he stopped and looked at it, studying it problem solving.
Then he raised his fist and started to punch through it.

(32:21):
The door was solid wood, thick and heavy, but under
Michael's assault, it began to splinter. Each blow landed with
mechanical precision, the sound echoing through the small cabin. Laurie
grabbed the shotgun and aimed it at the door, her
finger on the trigger, waiting. The door cracked, splintered, the
hole appeared, and Michael's hand thrust through, groping for the latch.

(32:45):
Laurie fired the shotgun directly at the opening. The blast
was deafening in the enclosed space, and she saw Michael's
hand jerk back. She pumped another shell into the chamber
and fired again and again, blowing chunks out of the door,
trying to drive him back. She heard him fall from
the porch, and for a moment there was silence. She
ejected the empty shells and reloaded with shaking hands, her

(33:09):
ears ringing from the shots. The smell of gunpowder filled
the air acrid and bitter. A window shattered. She spun
around and saw Michael's arm reaching through, sweeping aside the curtains.
Finding the latch, she ran across the room and brought
the fire axe down on his forearm with all her strength.
The blade bit deep and she felt it hit bone,

(33:30):
but Michael didn't react. He just kept reaching, kept moving,
mechanical and unstoppable. She wrenched the axe free and swung again,
and this time he pulled his arm back. She grabbed
the heavy cast iron skillet from the windowsill and smashed
it against his hand as he reached through again. The
window frame was too small for him to fit through,

(33:51):
but he was tearing at it, enlarging it, making an opening.
Laurie ran back to the other side of the cabin.
The door was barely hanging on now, just splinters and
nails holding it together. She grabbed one of her prepared bottles,
lit the rag stuffed in its neck with a lighter
and threw it at the door. As Michael's hand came
through again. The bottle shattered and liquid fire spread across

(34:13):
the porch. Through the damaged door, she could see Michael
standing in the flames, his coveralls starting to burn. He
looked down at the fire, almost curious, and then he
stepped through it and slammed his full weight against what
was left of the door. It gave way, the beam cracked,
the hinges tore free, and suddenly Michael was inside the cabin,

(34:35):
burning and relentless. Laurie screamed and swung the axe. It
caught him in the chest and stuck there. He looked
down at it, reached up and pulled it free like
it was a splinter. Blood was soaking through his coveralls,
now mixing with the water and the fire, but he
kept coming. She threw another Molotov cocktail and it shattered
against his chest, igniting the oil soaked coveralls. Michael was

(34:59):
fully of a blo a walking inferno, and still he advanced.
She backed toward the ladder to the loft, firing the
shotgun point blank into his midsection. The blast knocked him
back a step, maybe two, but he just kept coming.
Her heel hit the bottom of the ladder and she
made a decision. She dropped the shotgun and scrambled up

(35:20):
to the loft as fast as she could, hearing Michael's
footsteps behind her. The loft was a dead end, she
knew that, but it would give her a few more
seconds to plan, to think, to find a way out
of this. Michael reached the ladder and started to climb,
methodical as always. Laurie grabbed her sleeping bag and lit
it with her lighter, then threw it down on top

(35:41):
of him. More fire, more smoke. The cabin was filling
with it. Now the heat was overwhelming, and she was choking.
She could barely see, barely breathe. Michael reached the top
of the ladder, fully engulfed in flames, now a burning
figure of death, and grabbed for her ankle. She kicked
at his face, her boot heel connecting with that white mask,

(36:03):
and he lost his grip on the ladder. He fell backward,
crashing down to the main floor, taking the ladder with him.
Laurie coughed her lungs, burning from the smoke. The loft
was filling up fast, heat rising, and she realized with
horror that she trapped herself. The cabin was burning, Michael
was down there somewhere in the smoke and flames, and

(36:25):
she had nowhere to go. She crawled to the loft window,
the one she kept clear for ventilation, and kicked it open.
Cold air rushed in, making the fire roar louder. She
looked down about a twelve foot dropped to the snow below,
and she had no choice. She heard Michael moving below,
climbing through the wreckage, coming for her. She didn't look back,

(36:48):
She just jumped. The landing knocked the wind out of her,
driving her deep into the snow. She lay there, gasping,
trying to get air back into her lungs, trying to
make her body move. The cabin was fully involved now,
flames shooting through the roof, lighting up the clearing like
a beacon. She could see her shadow cast stark and
black against the snow movement in the doorway. Michael emerged

(37:12):
from the inferno, still burning, pieces of his coveralls falling
away as charred debris. How was he still moving? How
was any of this possible? But she knew the answer,
She always knew. Michael Myers wasn't human anymore. If he
ever was, he was something else, something that wouldn't stop,
couldn't stop. He started walking toward her through the snow,

(37:36):
leaving a trail of fire and smoke in his wake.
Laurie tried to crawl away, but her body wouldn't cooperate.
The fall injured something. Ribs are back, and every movement
was agony. This was it. After forty five years of running,
forty five years of fighting, it was going to end
here in the snow, far from home, far from everyone

(37:58):
she loved. Reached down and grabbed her by the throat,
lifting her effortlessly. His hands were charred, the flesh burned
and cracked, but his grip was iron. He held her
up so she could see his mask, so she could
look into those empty eyes one last time. She tried
to speak but couldn't. Tried to fight, but had no

(38:18):
strength left. The world was going dark at the edges,
her vision tunneling down to just that white mask and
those dead eyes. Then something hit Michael from the side
with the force of a freight train, and suddenly Laurie
was flying through the air. Released from his grip, she
hit the snow hard and lay there, gasping, trying to
understand what just happened. It was the sasquatch. The creature

(38:42):
stood between Laurie and Michael, and in that moment, Laurie
understood why people told stories about these beings for thousands
of years. He was magnificent and terrifying in equal measure.
A force of nature given flesh and hair. It stood
at its full height, easily eight and a half feet
of cordid muscle and primal power. Its chest thrust out,

(39:04):
arms spread wide, making itself as large and intimidating as possible.
It beat its chest with both massive hands, The sound
like thunder rolling across the clearing, reverberating off the trees,
and echoing back from the mountains. The vocalization that followed
was something Laurie felt in her bones, in her teeth,
in the cavity of her chest. It was deeper than sound,

(39:28):
more vibration than noise, a challenge that spoke to something
ancient and instinctual. This is my territory, This human is
under my protection. Back off. Michael, still burning, still bleeding,
turned to face this new threat. He tilted his head,
studying the sasquatch like he might study an interesting puzzle.

(39:49):
There was no fear in his posture, no hesitation. He
simply processed this new variable in his mechanical, inhuman way.
Then he took a step forward. The sasquet watch didn't
back down. It roared again, even louder this time, and charged.
The collision was cataclysmic, eight and a half feet of
pure muscle and primal fury meeting the unstoppable force of

(40:13):
evil incarnate. The impact when they came together sounded like
a car crash, like two bull moose, and rut like
the end of the world. They went down together in
the snow, rolling and grappling, and Laurie could only watch
in horror and awe. The sasquatch was stronger than Michael,
much stronger. Where Michael had inhuman resilience and mechanical determination,

(40:37):
the creature had raw physical power that defied comprehension. It
got its arms around Michael's torso and lifted him off
the ground, spinning with terrifying speed, before hurling him across
the clearing like he was made of straw. Michael's body
sailed through the air in an arc of flame and blood,
covering at least twenty feet before he hit a thick
spruce tree. The impact was devastation. The tree trunk easily

(41:02):
two feet in diameter, cracked audibly, snow cascaded down from
the branches in a white avalanche. Any normal person would
have been killed instantly, their spine shattered, their organs ruptured.
Michael hit the snow at the base of the tree.
His body bent at an unnatural angle, and then he
stood up. He rose slowly, methodically, pieces of burning fabric

(41:26):
falling from his body like molting skin. His coveralls were
mostly gone, now burned away, revealing the scarred flesh beneath,
flesh that should have been dead long ago, but somehow
kept moving, kept functioning, driven by something that existed beyond
the realm of biology or reason. He had a knife, now,

(41:46):
that knife, the one he used for so many kills
over so many years. He pulled it from somewhere in
what remained of his clothing, and the blade caught the
firelight from the burning cabin, glinting orange and red like
it was already covered in blood. The sasquatch circled him warily,
now its initial charge spent assessing this opponent that refused

(42:06):
to stay down. The creature's dark eyes narrowed, intelligence and
calculation visible in its gaze. It dealt with bears, with wolves,
with all manner of predators in these mountains, But this
was different, this thing that looked like a man, but
moved like a machine that burned but didn't die, that

(42:26):
took punishment that would kill any living thing, but kept coming.
Michael lunged with the knife, faster than something so damaged
should have been able to move. The blade arked through
the air, aimed at the Sasquatch's throat, but the creature
was faster. It caught Michael's wrist in one massive hand,
fingers wrapping completely around his forearm. The Sasquatch's other hand

(42:49):
shot out and grabbed Michael by the throat, lifting him
off the ground with terrible ease. For a moment, they
were frozen there, a tableau of two monsters locked in combat.
Michael dangled in the air, held at arm's length by
the creature's massive hands, still trying to drive the knife
forward even as his windpipe was being crushed. The Sasquatch's

(43:10):
muscles bulged cords standing out beneath its hair as it squeezed,
But Michael was still burning. The fire that covered his body,
fed by the accelerant, soaked into his flesh, and the
remaining tatters of his coveralls was spreading to the Sasquatch's hair,
where they made contact The smell of burning hair filled
the air, acrid and nauseating. The creature's hand wrapped around

(43:34):
Michael's burning throat, began to smoke. The sasquatch made a
sound of pain, a vocalization unlike anything Laurie heard from
it before. It was a sound of surprise and agony,
high pitched and terrible. The creature released Michael and stumbled backward,
its hand already blistering patches of fur on its arm.

(43:54):
Blackened and smoking, it beat at the burning spots, frantically,
slapping them with its other hand, rolling patches of snow
over its arm to extinguish the flames. Michael hit the
ground and came at the sasquatch again, immediately, relentless as
a machine, giving no quarter for the creature's pain, He
drove the knife forward in a straight thrust, putting his

(44:16):
full weight behind it. The blade caught the sasquatch in
the left shoulder, sinking deep into muscle and tissue. The
creature roared and swung back handed, catching Michael across the
face with enough force to snap a normal person's neck.
Michael's head snapped to the side, the white mask finally
cracking down the middle but he didn't go down. He

(44:37):
twisted with the momentum of the blow, using it to
drive the knife in deeper, wrenching its sideways. The sasquatch
bellowed in pain and rage, a sound that shook snow
from the trees and set Laurie's ears ringing. The creature
grabbed Michael with both hands, one on his arm, one
on his torso, and pulled. Stay tuned for more Backwoods

(44:58):
big Foot stories. We'll be back after these messages. Laurie
heard Michael's shoulder dislocate with a wet pop that carried
across the clearing. The sasquatch lifted him overhead like a
wrestler performing a power slam, holding him there for a moment,
silhouetted against the burning cabin and the star strewn sky beyond.

(45:19):
Then it brought Michael down across its knee. The sound
of Michael's spine bending cracking was like green wood breaking.
The sasquatch held him there for a moment, bent backward
over its knee in a position that should have paralyzed
him instantly. Then it threw him aside like garbage, and
he tumbled through the snow, leaving a trail of blood
and ash. Laurie dragged herself to the base of a tree,

(45:43):
using it for support, trying to stay conscious through the
pain in her ribs and the horror of what she
was witnessing. She watched the sasquatch lumber toward where Michael fell,
its left arm hanging useless at its side, blood streaming
from the knife wound in its shoulder. The creature was
favoring that side, its movements less fluid, now pain evident

(46:04):
in every step. But Michael wasn't finished. He never was.
He rose from the snow like a revenant, like something
that already died, but refused to accept it. His body
was broken, now truly broken. His left arm hung at
an impossible angle, the shoulder destroyed, his spine had to
be fractured, damaged beyond any reasonable hope of function. But

(46:28):
still he stood still. He moved toward the sasquatch with
mechanical determination. They came together again, and this time there
was no grace to it, no display of strength. It
was ugly and brutal, two damaged monsters trying to destroy
each other through sheer attrition. The Sasquatch swung its good
arm and a haymaker that caught Michael in the ribs.

(46:50):
Laurie heard bones crack, saw Michael's torso compress from the impact.
He staggered but didn't fall, driving forward inside the creature's reach,
bunching at its wounded side with his one functioning arm.
They grappled crashed through the underbrush, destroying young trees and
churning up the snow. The sasquatch got its good arm

(47:10):
around Michael's waist and squeezed a crushing bear hug that
should have pulverized his internal organs. Michael's mask fell away completely,
now revealing his face. Laurie could see it in the firelight,
that face she knew since childhood, transformed by evil and
damage into something barely recognizable as human. Burns and scars

(47:32):
covered his features. One eye was clouded and dead. His
mouth was fixed in a permanent rictus that might have
been a snarl, or might have just been the way
his damaged facial muscles naturally rested. He drove his thumb
into the sasquatch's eye. The creature shrieked and released him,
Staggering backward, one hand going to its face. Michael fell

(47:52):
to his knees, but didn't stop. Even on his knees,
even with his broken body. He lunged forward and grabbed
the knife that was still sticking out off the sasquatch's shoulder.
He wrenched it free and drove it into the creature's chest,
just below the sternum. Angling upward, the sasquatch stumbled backward,
blood pumping from the new wound, dark blood, almost black

(48:14):
in the firelight, steaming in the cold air. The creature's
hand went to the knife handle, wrapped around it and
pulled it free with the sound that Laurie would hear
in her nightmares for the rest of her life. The
knife came out, followed by a gush of blood that
told Laurie everything she needed to know. That wound was mortal, deep,
and mortal. But the sasquatch wasn't done fighting. It lurched forward,

(48:39):
using its good arm to grab Michael by the head.
Michael tried to twist away, but his damaged body couldn't
move fast enough. The creature's massive hand wrapped around Michael's skull,
fingers digging in, and it began to squeeze. Michael drove
his fist into the Sasquatch's wounded chest again and again,
each blow sending fresh gouts of blood streaming down the

(49:01):
creature's torso, but the Sasquatch held on its hand, tightening
more and more. Laurie heard Michael's skull beginning to crack,
small popping sounds, like ice breaking on a frozen lake.
They stood there, locked together, each dealing death to the other,
both refusing to fall. Michael's fists pummeled the Sasquatch's chest, cavity,

(49:23):
breaking ribs, rupturing organs. The Sasquatch's hand compressed Michael's skull,
fracturing bone, crushing the tissue beneath, and then the Sasquatch
got its other arm, working the wounded one, and brought
it up, despite the pain, despite the damage, both hands
now on Michael's head, the creature roared one final time,

(49:44):
a sound of triumph and agony combined and twisted. The
crack echoed across the clearing like a rifle shot. Michael's
body went limp instantly completely, his arms dropping to his sides.
The Sasquatch held him there for a moment long, making sure,
then released him. Michael Myers collapsed into the snow face first,

(50:05):
and didn't move. His head lay at an angle that
was not compatible with life, with consciousness, with anything except death.
The shape was finally still. The sasquatch stood over Michael's body,
swaying slightly, blood pouring from its chest wound. It looked
down at the dead man for a long moment, as
if making certain the threat was truly ended. Then it

(50:28):
turned its gaze to Laurie. Their eyes met across the clearing,
across the burning cabin and the churned snow and the
blood soaked battlefield. Laurie saw intelligence in those dark eyes.
She saw pain, she saw recognition, and she saw something
that might have been a question, or might have been goodbye.
She tried to speak to thank this impossible being that

(50:52):
saved her life, but her voice wouldn't work. She could
only watch as the sasquatch took a step toward her,
then stumbled. Its hand went to the wound in its chest,
and came away, dark with blood. The creature looked at
its own hand, seemed to understand what that meant, and
turned away. It limped toward the tree line, toward the

(51:12):
deep forest, leaving a trail of blood, black and stark
against the white snow, Laurie found her voice. Wait, but
the sasquatch didn't stop. It moved with painful determination into
the shadows between the trees, moving towards some destination only
it new, someplace it chose to die. And then it

(51:32):
was gone, swallowed by the darkness and the vast wilderness,
leaving only that trail of blood, disappearing into the forest.
Laurie sagged against the tree, tears streaming down her face,
mixing with the smoke and the blood and the snow.
She looked at Michael's body, lying motionless in the clearing.
The fire from the cabin was beginning to die down now,

(51:54):
the structure collapsing in on itself. The clearing was lit
by dying flames and starlight, and in that light she
could see clearly that Michael Myers was finally truly dead.
After forty five years, the nightmare was over, but the
cost was terrible. The creature that showed her kindness, that
became her unlikely companion in this remote place, gave its

(52:17):
life to end the evil that pursued her across a continent.
She knelt there in the snow beside Michael's corpse and
wept for the sasquatch, for herself, for all the years
of fear and trauma, for the impossible price of her survival.
The cold bit into her damaged body, and she knew
she couldn't stay here much longer. She would freeze to

(52:37):
death if she didn't find shelter, get warm, call for help.
But for now, for just a few more moments, she
let herself cry, She let herself mourn, and she looked
at the forest where the creature disappeared, and whispered words
of gratitude that the wind carried away into the vast
Alaskan night. They found Laurie three days later, half frozen

(53:00):
delirious in the burned remains of her cabin. A passing
bush pilot saw the smoke and called it in. The
state troopers came, and then the medics, and they airlifted
her to the hospital and Fairbanks, where she spent two
weeks recovering from broken ribs, frostbite, smoke inhalation, and severe hypothermia.
They found Michael's body, too, or what was left of it.

(53:22):
The official report said it was a home invader, probably
someone high on drugs, who attacked her and whom she killed.
In self defense. The burned condition of the body made
identification difficult. They checked dental records and DNA, but the
samples were so degraded that they came back inconclusive. Eventually,
they listed him as John Doe and cremated the remains.

(53:45):
Laurie didn't correct them. What would she have said, that
was my brother, the serial killer who was supposed to
be dead thirty years ago. They'd have put her in
a psychiatric ward. She told them someone helped her, a
large man who lived in the woods. But the troopers
never found any evidence of anyone else being there, just
animal tracks in the snow. They said, probably a bear.

(54:09):
Laurie didn't argue. Some things were better left unsaid. Karen
flew up as soon as she heard. They had a long,
tearful reunion in the hospital, and Laurie tried to explain
why she came here, why she ran. Karen didn't understand,
not really, but she stopped arguing. Maybe she could see
something in her mother's eyes, some fundamental change, some burden

(54:31):
that finally lifted. It's over now, Laurie told her daughter,
really over. He's gone forever this time. Are you sure,
Karen asked, and Laurie heard all the years of fear
in that question. I'm sure I watched him die. I
saw it end. Spring came to Alaska like it always does,

(54:52):
sudden and overwhelming. After the long winter, the snow melted
and the rivers ran high, and the tundra exploded with flowers.
Laurie bought a new cabin, smaller, this time closer to Coldfoot,
where neighbors could check on her. She was healing both
physically and mentally, going to therapy for the first time
in her life, and actually talking about everything she'd been through,

(55:15):
but she couldn't stop thinking about the Sasquatch. On a
warm day in May, when the fireweed was starting to bloom,
she made a trip back to the old property. The
burned remains of her original cabin were still there, black
and skeletal against the new green growth. She walked past
them into the forest, following paths she remembered, looking for
something she knew she probably wouldn't find. She found it anyway.

(55:39):
The skeleton was laid out in a small clearing, covered
in moss and new vegetation, already being reclaimed by the forest.
It was massive, the bones thick and heavy, The skull,
unlike anything in any anatomy textbook, sasquatch, real, undeniable proof
of something that wasn't supposed to exist. Laurie stood there

(56:01):
for a long time, looking at all that remained of
the creature that saved her life. Then she knelt down
and placed her hand on the skull, feeling the bone
solid and real under her palm. Thank you, she whispered
to the empty air. I wish I could have saved
you too. I wish you could have lived to see
another spring. A raven called somewhere in the trees, its

(56:23):
voice harsh and clear. The wind rustled through the birch leaves.
Life continued as it always did, indifferent to the small
tragedies and victories that played out beneath its green canopy.
Laurie stood and looked around the clearing. This was where
it happened. This was where two monsters fought, and evil
was finally defeated, not by fire or bullets or traps,

(56:46):
but by something far more primal, by a creature defending
its territory, protecting something it cared about. She pulled out
her satellite phone and made a call. It took a
few tries to get through, but eventually she heard Maggie's
voice on the other end. I need help with something,
and I need you to promise to keep it quiet.

(57:07):
An hour later, Maggie arrived on her four wheeler with
shovels and heavy duty trash bags. She looked at the skeleton.
You weren't kidding, were you, No, Laurie said quietly, I wasn't.
They worked together in silence, carefully bagging the bones, handling
them with respect. Maggie knew people, native elders who understood

(57:27):
these things, who would know what to do with the remains,
how to honor them properly. The bones would be hidden away, protected,
kept safe from trophy hunters and scientists and all the
people who would want to prove something or make money
off the discovery. Some secrets were meant to stay secret.
Some stories weren't meant to be told to everyone. As

(57:48):
they loaded the last of the bags onto the four wheeler,
Maggie put a hand on Laurie's shoulder. You okay, yeah,
Laurie said, and she meant it. For the first time
in a very long time, she thought she actually was.
What are you going to do now? Laurie looked back
at the forest at the clearing where the sasquatch made
its last stand. She thought about all the years she

(58:11):
spent running, all the fear and trauma and sleepless nights.
She thought about her family, about the life she'd been
too afraid to live. I think I'm going to go home,
going to see my grandchildren, going to stop running and
start living. He's dead, it's over, and I'm still here.
That's good, Maggie said, that's real good. They drove back

(58:34):
to Coldfoot together, the bones of a legend secured on
the four wheeler, a secret that would be kept. Laurie
looked back one last time as they crested a hill,
seeing her old property disappearing behind them, the burned cabin
and the clearing and the forest that briefly was home. Goodbye,
she whispered into the wind, Thank you for giving me

(58:55):
back my life. That night, in her new cabin, Laurie
slept without nightmares for the first time in forty five years.
And far away in the mountains, in the deep places
where humans rarely go, something moved through the trees, something
large and quiet and impossible. Because legends don't die easily,
and the wild places always keep their secrets. The sasquatch

(59:19):
that saved her was gone, yes, but the forest was
full of mysteries, full of things that watched from the
shadows and left no trace. And maybe, just maybe that
creature wasn't alone. Maybe there were others out there, moving
through the darkness, living their ancient lives far from human eyes.
Some stories end, some monsters die, but the wilderness endures,

(59:44):
vast and unknowable, full of wonders were not meant to understand.
And sometimes when the wind is right and the night
is dark, people in the remote parts of Alaska hear
sounds echoing through the valleys, deep vocalizations, calls that might
be bare or wolf or wand or might be something
else entirely