November 2, 2025 • 50 mins
Everyone who knows about the Van Meter Visitor knows about the five nights of terror in October 1903 when a winged creature with a light-emitting horn terrorized the small Iowa town. Credible witnesses. Contemporary documentation. Physical evidence. The whole town saw it, shot at it, and eventually sealed it in an abandoned coal mine. The story became legend.But what almost nobody knows is that the Van Meter Visitor came back.
Eighty years later, in October 1983, a fifteen year old boy and his father went coon hunting in the woods near Van Meter and had an encounter that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. An encounter they never reported. An encounter they swore to keep secret. An encounter that proved the creature was never really trapped at all. This is the story of that night, told in the words of the man who lived through it.
Now fifty-five years old and finally breaking his silence after his father's death, he recounts in terrifying detail what happened when they encountered something in those dark Iowa woods that shouldn't exist. Something that matched every description from 1903. Something that took their dog Buck and nearly killed their other dog Belle.
Something that couldn't be stopped with bullets or courage or anything else they had. This isn't a vague sighting or a distant glimpse. This is a close encounter with one of America's most documented cryptids, told by someone who was there, who saw it clearly, who watched it fly away with his dog clutched in its talons. It's a story about the things that hunt in the darkness. About the creatures that exist outside our understanding of the natural world.
About the price of seeing something impossible and having to carry that knowledge for forty years.The Van Meter Visitor is real. It never left. And this is the encounter that proves it.
Eighty years later, in October 1983, a fifteen year old boy and his father went coon hunting in the woods near Van Meter and had an encounter that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. An encounter they never reported. An encounter they swore to keep secret. An encounter that proved the creature was never really trapped at all. This is the story of that night, told in the words of the man who lived through it.
Now fifty-five years old and finally breaking his silence after his father's death, he recounts in terrifying detail what happened when they encountered something in those dark Iowa woods that shouldn't exist. Something that matched every description from 1903. Something that took their dog Buck and nearly killed their other dog Belle.
Something that couldn't be stopped with bullets or courage or anything else they had. This isn't a vague sighting or a distant glimpse. This is a close encounter with one of America's most documented cryptids, told by someone who was there, who saw it clearly, who watched it fly away with his dog clutched in its talons. It's a story about the things that hunt in the darkness. About the creatures that exist outside our understanding of the natural world.
About the price of seeing something impossible and having to carry that knowledge for forty years.The Van Meter Visitor is real. It never left. And this is the encounter that proves it.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot,
(00:23):
dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
Most people who know anything about the Van Meter Visitor
know about what happened in October nineteen o three, five
(01:09):
Nights of Terror. Credible witnesses a creature with massive wings
and a horn that shot light. The whole town saw it,
They shot at it, They sealed it in an abandoned
coal mine. The story made the newspapers, it became legend.
But there's another encounter that nobody knows about, an encounter
that happened eighty years later, in the fall of nineteen
(01:31):
eighty three, and it involved a fifteen year old kid
and his father out coon hunting on October night that
should have been like any other. That kid was me,
and what happened that night, what we saw, what we experienced.
It never made any newspapers. We never told anyone outside
our family. My father made me swear i'd never speak
(01:52):
of it, and I kept that promise for forty years,
right up until he died last spring. Now I'm fifty
five years old, and I've decided that some stories need
to be told, even if nobody believes them, especially if
nobody believes them, because what happened to me and my
dad on that October night in nineteen eighty three was real,
(02:12):
as real as anything I've ever experienced. And if I
don't tell it now, if I let it die with me,
then nobody will ever know that the van meter visitor
came back, that it was never really gone, that whatever
they sealed in that mine in nineteen oh three, it
either got out or there were others. This is that story,
and I'm telling it now because my father isn't here
(02:34):
to stop me anymore, and because I think people deserve
to know that some things in this world don't fit
into neat categories. Some things exist in the spaces between
what we think we know and what we're afraid might
be true. This is what happened to us in Van Meter, Iowa,
in October of nineteen eighty three. Every word of it
is true, even though I wish to God it wasn't.
(02:56):
I need to start by telling you what kind of
kid I was at fifteen. I wasn't scared of much.
I'd been hunting since I was eight years old, tagging
along with my dad through the woods at night, learning
to read tracks, learning to listen to the dogs, learning
to move quiet through the darkness. By the time I
was fifteen, I was a pretty good hunter. Not as
(03:17):
good as my dad, not yet, but good enough that
he trusted me to handle myself in the woods, good
enough that when he suggested we go coon hunting near
Van Meter that October night, I didn't even think twice
about it. My father was a practical man, worked construction
during the day, hunted at night. Didn't have much use
for nonsense or superstition. He was the kind of man
(03:39):
who believed in what he could see and touch and understand.
If you'd asked him about ghosts or monsters or anything
like that, he would have laughed and told you to
stop wasting his time with foolishness. He was solid, dependable,
the kind of man who could fix anything with his
hands and didn't flinch at hard work or difficult situations.
(04:00):
Telling you this because you need to understand what happened later.
You need to know that we weren't the type to
imagine things or get spooked by shadows. We were hunters.
We knew the woods, we knew the sounds of the night.
We knew what belonged out there and what didn't. We
lived about thirty miles from Van Meter, in a small
town that nobody's ever heard of and probably never will.
(04:23):
But my dad knew the land around Van Meter was
good for coon hunting. Lots of timber creeks and streams
where the coons would hunt for craw edads, cornfields where
they'd raid for easy meals. He'd hunted that area a
few times before, always had good luck, always came home
with pelts to sell. The money wasn't much, but it helped,
(04:44):
and more than the money, it was about the hunt itself.
The time in the woods, the challenge of it. October,
and I was beautiful if you don't mind the cold.
The leaves are turning reds and oranges and yellows that
looked like fire in the daylight. The air gets crip clean,
the kind of cold that wakes you up instead of
making you miserable. Perfect hunting weather. The kind of night
(05:07):
where you can hear everything because the leaves are dry,
and sound carries far in the still air. We left
our house around nine o'clock that night, my dad driving
his old Ford pickup, me riding shotgun with our gear
in the back. We had two blue tickhounds with us,
Buck and Bell, best coon dogs in three counties, my
dad always said, and he was probably right. Buck was
(05:30):
eight years old, experienced, and smart Bell was younger, only three,
but she was learning fast from the old dog. They
were good dogs, loyal, fearless in the way that good
hunting dogs are willing to tree a coon twice their
size without hesitation. I remember those dogs clearly. I think
about them more often than I probably should. What happened
(05:53):
to them is part of what haunts me about that night.
The drive to van Meter took about forty minutes. We
didn't talk much. My dad wasn't much of a talker
when he was focused on hunting. He was thinking about
where we'd start, where the coons would likely be, how
the dogs would run. I was thinking about the same things,
trying to anticipate the night ahead, hoping we'd get some
(06:16):
good trees, hoping I'd make my dad proud with how
I handled myself. We pulled off the main road about
two miles outside Van meter Proper, onto a dirt track
that led back into timberland. The truck bounced over ruts
and rocks, headlights cutting through the darkness, illuminating trees that
pressed in close on both sides. We drove about a
(06:37):
half mile back before my dad found a spot he liked,
a small clearing where we could park without blocking the trail.
He killed the engine and we sat there for a
minute in the silence, listening. That's something my dad taught
me early. Before you get out, before you turn the
dogs loose, you listen, You get a feel for the night,
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You let your eyes adjust to the darkness, You prepare yourself.
The moon was about three quarters full that night, bright
enough to cast shadows, but not so bright that it
killed the mystery of the woods. Stars were out thick,
the way they only are when you're far from city lights.
The air smelled like decay, that rich smell of leaves
(07:18):
breaking down and earth preparing for winter. I could hear
an owl somewhere in the distance. Could hear small sounds
of animals moving through the underbrush, normal sounds, safe sounds.
My dad nodded, satisfied with what he heard, and we
got out of the truck. The dogs were whining and
wiggling in the back, eager to get hunting. We got
(07:40):
them out, checked their collars, made sure the tracking bells
were secure. Old Buck had a deep bell that rang
slow and steady. Bells was higher pitched, rang faster. You
could tell them apart in the dark just by listening.
Could track them through the woods by the sound of
those bells. My dad looked at me, made sure I
had my flashlight, made sure my rifle was loaded and
(08:02):
slung proper across my back. He did the same check
on himself. Then he gave me that little nod he
always did, the one that meant we were ready, And
he said the words I'd heard a hundred times before
start time. Let's hunt. We turned the dogs loose and
they were off like bullets, noses down, working the ground,
(08:22):
trying to pick up a trail. We followed at a walk,
not rushing, letting them do their job. The bells rang
through the darkness, moving away from us, spreading out as
the dogs quartered back and forth searching for scent. For
the first hour, everything was normal, perfect, even The dogs
found a trail and ran it hard for about twenty
(08:43):
minutes before they lost it at a creek. They found
another one after that, ran it up a big old oak,
and my dad got a good clean shot. One coon down.
We collected it. Praise the dogs, let them rest for
a few minutes before we moved on. This was what
we'd come for, This was what we knew, Man and
dogs in the ancient dance of the hunt played out
(09:05):
the same way it had been played out for thousands
of years. There was a rhythm to it, a rightness.
We were in our element, We belonged out there. Then
things started to change. It was subtle at first. The
dog started acting different. Buck, who normally worked with his
nose right on the ground, systematic and focused, kept lifting
(09:27):
his head and looking around. His hackles would rise for
a moment, then settle, then rise again. Bell was worse.
She kept circling back to us, whining low in her throat,
pressing against our legs like she wanted reassurance. My dad
noticed it too. He stopped walking, stood still, listening hard.
(09:48):
I did the same. That owl we'd heard earlier had
gone quiet. In fact, all the little background sounds of
the woods had stopped. No rustling leaves, no small animals
moving through the no insects, just silence, thick and heavy.
The dogs refused to go forward. Buck planted his feet
(10:08):
and wouldn't budge no matter how much my dad urged
him on. Bell was shaking, actually shaking like she was cold.
But it wasn't that cold out. Something had spooked them bad.
And if you know anything about coon dogs, you know
they don't spook easy. These dogs would charge into a
hollow log after a coon, without hesitation, would face down
(10:29):
a badger or a porcupine without backing off. But now
they were terrified. My dad pulled out his flashlight and
started scanning the woods around us. I did the same.
Our beams cut through the darkness, illuminating tree trunks and
undergrowth and nothing else, Nothing that should have caused that
kind of reaction in the dogs. Nothing that explained the silence.
(10:51):
Then Buck started growling, low and continuous, a sound I'd
never heard him make before. Not the kind of growl
a dog makes when it's found something to hunt. This
was different. This was a warning. This was a sound
that said something was very wrong and we needed to
leave now. My dad must have felt it too, because
he reached over and put his hand on my shoulder.
(11:13):
Didn't say anything, but I understood. We were going back
to the truck. The hunt was over. We turned around
and started walking back the way we'd come. The dogs
pressed close against our legs. My Dad kept his flashlight moving,
scanning constantly. I did the same with mine. We'd gone
maybe fifty yards when Bell stopped dead and looked up
(11:34):
at the trees to our right. That's when I saw
something that I will never forget. At first, I thought
it was just a thick branch, something dark against the
slightly lighter darkness of the sky beyond the canopy. But
then it moved, shifted position, and I realized it wasn't
a branch at all. It was perched there, sitting on
a thick limb about twenty feet up watching us. I
(11:58):
couldn't make out details. My flashlight beam didn't reach that high,
not with enough strength to light it up clearly. But
I could see the shape, huge, bigger than any animal
I'd ever seen in the woods, too tall to be
a bear, even if bears climb trees that high, which
they don't, Not shaped like any bird, though there was
(12:18):
something about the outline that looked like wings. My dad
saw it too. I heard him suck in a breath,
felt his grip tighten on my shoulder. The dog saw
it and went absolutely silent, not whining anymore, not growling,
just frozen in place, staring up at that thing in
the tree. We stood there, nobody moving, nobody breathing, just
(12:42):
staring at this thing that shouldn't exist, but was there anyway,
perched in that tree, watching us with an intensity I
could feel, even though I couldn't see its eyes. Then
my dad made a decision. He pushed me forward, not hard,
but firm, and we started walking, not running, walking with
deliberate steps, trying to keep calm, trying not to provoke
(13:05):
whatever that thing was. The dogs moved with us, still
pressed close, still silent. We'd gone maybe ten steps when
I heard it, a sound like nothing I'd ever heard
before or since. It started low, almost a rumble, then
climbed higher into a screech that made my teeth hurt.
It wasn't an animal sound. It wasn't a human sound.
(13:28):
It was something else, entirely, something that bypassed my brain
and spoke directly to the ancient part of my nervous
system that still remembered when humans were prey. And then
it came down from the tree. I didn't see it jump,
didn't see it spread whatever wings it might have had.
One second it was in the tree. The next second
it was on the ground behind us, and I heard
(13:49):
the impact, heard branches breaking, heard leaves scattering, and then
I heard another sound, a clicking sound, fast and rhythmic,
like someone rapidly tapping a stick against wood. My dad
grabbed my arm and we ran. I'm not proud of running.
Hunters don't run, men don't run. But whatever was behind us,
(14:10):
whatever had made that sound, it wasn't something you stood
and faced. Every instinct in my body was screaming at
me to move, to get away, to put distance between
me and that thing. The dogs ran with us. I
could hear their bells ringing frantically as they crashed through
the underbrush alongside us. Could hear my dad's breathing harsh
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and fast. Could hear my own heart pounding so hard
it felt like it was going to burst through my chest.
And behind us, I could hear it following, not chasing,
not exactly. It was moving parallel to us, staying in
the trees to our left, keeping pace easily, even though
we were running as fast as we could through rough
terrain in the dark. I could hear it moving through
(14:54):
the branches. Could hear that clicking sound it made. Could
hear something else, a rustling sound, big, like enormous sheets
of leather being shaken out. Stay tuned for more Backwoods
big Foot stories. We'll be back after these messages. My
dad's flashlight was bouncing all over the place as we ran,
(15:15):
creating crazy shadows that made everything worse. My own light
wasn't much better. We were just trying to keep from
running face first into a tree, trying to keep moving
in what we hoped was the right direction, back toward
the truck, back towards safety. Then Belle screamed, dogs don't scream,
they bark. They howl, they whine, they growl. But Belle
(15:38):
screamed a sound of pure terror and agony that cut
through the night like a knife. And then the scream
cut off, suddenly replaced by thrashing sounds and that horrible clicking.
My dad stopped running. I almost crashed into him. He
spun around, bringing his flashlight up, and I did the same.
Our beams found Bell about thirty feet behind, and what
(16:00):
I saw in that moment is burned into my memory forever.
The creature had her, It was on the ground, hunched
over her, and for the first time I got a
clear look at it in the combined glow of our flashlights.
What I saw made no sense. My brain tried to
categorize it, tried to fit it into some framework of
known animals, and failed completely. It was huge, had to
(16:24):
be eight or nine feet tall, even in its hunched position.
The body was covered in what looked like smooth, dark skin,
almost like leather. The legs were bent backward like a
bird's legs, ending in feet with long toes that gripped
the ground. Three toes, I remember counting them, three toes
with what looked like talons. The arms, if you could
(16:46):
call The marms were impossibly long. They reached down to
grab Bell, and I saw they ended in hands that
had too many fingers or maybe claws. In the bouncing
flashlight beams, it was hard to tell, but they were
wrapped around my dog, and Bell was thrashing, trying to
get free, her bell ringing frantically. But it was the
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wings that made me understand we were dealing with something
from the old stories. They were folded against its back,
but I could see their size, could see the membranous structure,
could see the way they moved slightly, as if the
creature was preparing to spread them. They looked like bat wings,
but massive, big enough to lift something that size into
(17:28):
the air. And then there was the horn, growing from
the forehead, thick at the base and tapering to a
blunt point. In the beam of my flashlight, I saw
something at the tip of that horn starting to glow,
faint at first, then brighter, a sick green color that
made me think of rot and disease. My dad raised
(17:49):
his rifle. I heard him chamber around, heard him shouting
something that might have been his dog's name, or might
have been a curse. I was frozen, unable to move,
unable to think just watching this impossible thing hurt my dog.
Then Buck attacked the old hound, launched himself at the
creature from the side, barking furiously, all his fear forgotten
(18:11):
in the need to protect his pack mate. He got
his teeth into the creature's leg or sidhe or something.
I saw him latch on, saw him shaking his head
the way dogs do when they've got a good hold.
The creature made that screeching sound again and released Bell.
The younger dog scrambled away, limping badly whimpering. The creature
(18:31):
turned its attention to Buck, and I finally saw its
face clearly. I wish I hadn't. It wasn't a human face,
but it wasn't an animal face either. It was something
in between or something else entirely. The eyes were too large,
and they reflected our flashlight beams with a greenish shine.
The nose was flat, almost flushed with the face. The mouth,
(18:54):
when it opened, showed teeth that looked sharp and numerous,
too many teeth in a jaw that seemed to unhinge slightly,
opening wider than should have been possible. It grabbed Buck
with those long arms and pulled him free, lifted him
into the air like he weighed nothing, old buck who
must have weighed sixty pounds, easy, dangling in the creature's grip,
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still barking, still fighting, brave and foolish and doomed. My
dad fired. The shot was deafening in the quiet woods.
I saw the muzzle flash, saw the creature jerk slightly
from the impact, but it didn't drop, didn't release my dog,
didn't fall. It turned its head to look at us,
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those two large eyes fixing on my father, and the
light from the horn grew brighter, bright enough that I
had to squint, bright enough that it cast shadows in
the woods around us, turned everything into harsh contrast of
light and dark. My dad fired again and again, three shots,
four five. I lost count. He was unloading on that thing,
(20:00):
hitting it each time because at that range you couldn't miss.
But the creature didn't fall, didn't even slow down. It
just stood there, holding my dog, staring at my father
with those impossible eyes, that light growing brighter and brighter
from its horn. Then it moved, not toward us, but up.
It spread those massive wings and jumped, launching itself into
(20:24):
the air with a power that seemed to defy physics.
I felt the wind from its takeoff, felt leaves and
debris hitting my face. The light from its horn was blinding,
now bright as a spotlight, brighter than our flashlights, brighter
than the moon. In that terrible light, I could see
every detail of buck struggling in its grip, could see
(20:44):
his fur and his collar, and his eyes wide with fear.
And then it was gone, flapping away into the darkness,
the light fading as it flew, the sound of those
wings like thunder in my ears. It flew low over
the canopy, weaving between the trees, moving with an agility
that something that large shouldn't possess. I watched it go,
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watched the light disappear, watched my dog disappear with it,
and I couldn't make a sound, couldn't scream, couldn't cry,
could only stand there with my mouth open and my
flashlight shaking in my hand. Belle was whimpering at our feet,
trying to crawl toward us. My dad snapped out of
his shock. First. He dropped down beside her, his hands
(21:27):
moving over her body, checking for injuries. I could see
blood on her fur, could see she was hurt. Bad,
deep cuts along her ribs, bite marks on her neck.
She was trembling all over, her eyes rolling back, white
with pain and fear. My dad looked up at me
in the beam of my flashlight. His face was white
(21:47):
as paper. His hands were shaking. This man, who never
showed fear, who I'd seen handle every kind of crisis
without flinching, was shaking like a leaf. We have to go,
he said, His voice was hoarse. We have to go
right now. He scooped Bell up in his arms, careful
of her injuries, and started moving toward where we'd left
(22:08):
the truck. I followed, my rifle held in front of
me like a talisman, my flashlight beams sweeping the trees,
constantly looking for any sign that the creature was coming back.
The walk back to the truck was the longest walk
of my life. Every shadow was a threat. Every sound
was that clicking noise. Every rustle of leaves was wings
(22:29):
preparing to descend on us. I kept waiting for that
green light to appear again, kept waiting to feel talons
in my back, kept expecting to be lifted into the
air like buck, carried off into the darkness to whatever
fate awaited My dog, but we made it somehow, We
made it back to the truck. My dad laid Bell
(22:50):
gently in the bed, then we both jumped in the cab.
He started the engine, and we were moving before my
door was even fully closed. He drove fast, probably too
fast for that rough trail, branches scraping the sides of
the truck, the whole vehicle, bouncing over ruts, hard enough
that my head hit the roof a couple times. We
didn't speak, didn't talk about what we'd seen, didn't acknowledge
(23:13):
what had just happened. My dad just drove his knuckles
white on the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the
trail ahead. I sat beside him, my rifle across my lap,
my hands still shaking, my mind trying and failing to
process what I'd witnessed. When we hit the main road,
my dad turned toward home instead of toward Van Meeter.
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I understood. We weren't going to report this, weren't going
to tell anyone who would believe us. What would we
even say that we'd been attacked by a monster, that
something had taken our dog, that we'd shot at it
five times with a rifle, and the bullets had done nothing.
The drive home was silent except for bells whimpering from
the truck bed. I wanted to check on her, wanted
(23:58):
to comfort her, but I was too scared to get
out of the cab, too scared that if I opened
the door, something might grab me, pull me out, carry
me away. We pulled into our driveway around midnight. The
house lights were on. My mother was waiting up, probably
wondering why we were back so early, probably worried. When
(24:18):
she heard the truck coming fast up the gravel drive,
she came out on the porch and took one look
at us and knew something was very wrong. My dad
got out first, went to the back and carefully lifted Bell.
I could see he was trying to be gentle, but
the dog yelped anyway. My mother gasped when she saw
the blood. What happened? She asked, accident? My dad said,
(24:40):
Bell got hurt. I need to take her to the
emergency VET. He carried the dog to his truck, got
back in, and drove off without another word. I stood
there in the driveway with my mother, still holding my rifle,
still shaking. She looked at me, looked at my face,
looked at the state I was in happened? She asked again,
(25:01):
what really happened. I couldn't tell her, couldn't find the words,
couldn't even begin to explain what we'd seen. So I
did what my father had done. I lied accident. I
said Belle got hurt, honting. Dad's taking her to get
fixed up. My mother knew I was lying. I could
see it in her eyes, but she didn't push. She
(25:24):
just nodded, put her arm around me, and led me inside.
She made me hot chocolate, which was something she hadn't
done since I was a little kid. I sat at
the kitchen table and drank it, not tasting it, not
feeling the warmth, just sitting there while my mind replayed
the encounter over and over again. My dad came home
around three in the morning. I heard the truck in
(25:46):
the driveway, heard the door open and close, heard his footsteps,
slow and heavy, coming into the house. He came into
the kitchen where I was still sitting, unable to sleep,
unable to do anything but sit and remember. He looked
at me for a long moment. Then he pulled out
a chair and sat down across from me. Bell's going
(26:06):
to be okay, he said, Vet stitched her up, lost
a lot of blood. Infection's a risk, but she'll live.
I nodded, didn't trust myself to speak. My dad leaned forward,
his hands clasped on the table. His face was serious,
more serious than I'd ever seen it. We're not telling
anyone about this, he said. Do you understand me? Not
(26:29):
your friends, not your uncle's, not anyone. What happened tonight.
It stays between us. If people find out, if we
start talking about what we saw, they'll think we're crazy.
They'll laugh at us, Your mother will worry. The whole
town will know. It'll follow you your whole life. I know,
I said, I mean it. He pressed. I know you're fifteen.
(26:53):
I know you want to tell your buddies about the
crazy thing you saw, but you can't. This is not
a story you tell. This is not something we talk about.
Do you understand, yes, sir, I said. He stared at
me a moment longer, making sure I got it, making
sure I understood the weight of what he was saying.
Then he nodded, satisfied. We never went coon hunting again
(27:15):
after that night. My dad sold Buck's collar and Bell's
collar to someone who asked about them at a farm auction.
Never explained why, never said what happened to Buck, just
said he was gone and left it at that. Bell
recovered from her physical injuries, but she was never the same.
She'd flinch at shadows, refused to go outside after dark,
(27:36):
would whine and tremble if you tried to take her
into the woods. The hunting dog in her was broken.
Whatever she'd experience that night, whatever she'd felt when that
creature grabbed her, it had changed something fundamental in her.
I understood how she felt. I was changed too. I
started having nightmares, still have them sometimes even now, forty
(27:57):
years later. In the dreams, I'm back in those woods,
back in the darkness, with the flashlight and the rifle
that doesn't work, and I hear that clicking sound, hear
those wings, see that green light starting to glow, feel
something grabbing me from behind, lifting me, carrying me away.
I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding,
(28:20):
my hands shaking, just like they did that night. My wife,
when I was married, used to ask me what the
nightmares were about. I never told her, kept my promise
to my father, told her it was just stress, just
random bad dreams, nothing to worry about. But they weren't random.
They were memories, memories my subconscious wouldn't let me forget,
(28:42):
no matter how much I wanted to. I went back
to Van Meter once, about ten years after that night.
Couldn't help myself. I had to see the place in daylight,
had to prove to myself that it was just a
normal town, just normal woods, that what happened couldn't happen again.
I drove, looked at the quiet streets and the old
(29:02):
buildings and the normal people going about their normal lives.
Drove out to where my dad and I had parked
that night. The dirt trail was still there, but it
looked different in daylight, smaller, less threatening, just a trail
into the woods like a thousand other trails. I got
out of my car and stood there at the edge
of the tree line, trying to work up the courage
(29:23):
to walk back in, to retrace our steps, to find
where it happened. But I couldn't do it. Stood there
for twenty minutes, telling myself it was stupid to be scared,
telling myself it was daylight and nothing could hurt me.
But my body wouldn't move, my feet wouldn't take that
first step into the woods, because I knew it was
still in there, maybe not in those specific woods, maybe
(29:47):
not hunting during the day, but somewhere nearby, in a
cave or an old mine shaft, or some dark place
we don't know about, sleeping, maybe waiting. Stay tuned for
more backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages,
the same way it had waited since nineteen o three,
since the people of van Meter sealed up that mine
(30:09):
and thought they'd trapped it forever. They hadn't trapped it,
or they'd only trapped some of them. Because the one
I saw, the one that took Buck, it was real
and it was free, and it was hunting in those
woods like it owned them. I got back in my
car and drove away and never went back. Over the years,
I started researching the van Meter Visitor. Read everything I
(30:32):
could find about the nineteen o three sightings, Read about
the witnesses and their accounts, Read about how they'd sealed
the mine, read the theories about what it might have been.
And the more I read, the more I realized that
what my father and I had encountered was exactly what
those people had seen eighty years earlier, same size, same wings,
(30:54):
same horn, same resistance to bullets, same terrible presence that
made you understand deep in your bones that you were
in the presence of something that shouldn't exist. The accounts
from nineteen oh three mentioned the creature taking off into
the sky with incredible speed, that's what it did with Buck,
mentioned the clicking sounds i'd heard them, mentioned the terrible stench.
(31:17):
I hadn't smelled it, but then again, we'd been running,
adrenaline pumping, focused on getting away. Maybe I'd missed it,
or maybe the smell came later after the creature had
been active for a while. Everything matched every detail, and
that terrified me more than anything, because it meant I
hadn't imagined it, meant I wasn't crazy, meant that what
(31:39):
I'd seen was real and documented and had a history,
meant it was still out there. I tried to find
other accounts from after nineteen oh three, searched old newspapers,
asked around carefully, without revealing why I was asking. Found
a few mentions a siding in the nineteen eighties, which
might have been around the sun same time as my encounter.
(32:02):
Someone seeing a giant bat thing near the old mind location.
A pastor in two thousand and six reporting something dragon
like in the sky. Not many accounts, not well documented,
easy to dismiss as misidentifications or hoaxes. But I knew
they weren't. Knew those people had seen what I'd seen,
maybe not as close, maybe not with the same level
(32:24):
of terror, but they'd seen it, and like me, most
of them had probably learned to keep quiet about it.
That's the thing about seeing something impossible. You learn real
quick that people don't want to hear about it. They
want the world to make sense, want things to fit
into categories known animals or misidentifications or lies. They don't
(32:44):
want to believe that there are things in the dark
that science hasn't cataloged, things that should be extinct or
should never have existed in the first place, things that hunt.
My father and I never talked about that night again,
not directly, but sometimes late at night when it was
just the two of us, he'd get a look in
his eyes, distant, haunted, and I knew he was thinking
(33:08):
about it, thinking about Buck, thinking about the shots he'd
fired that did nothing, thinking about the thing that had
looked at him with those terrible eyes while his bullets
passed through it, or bounced off it, or whatever they did.
The not knowing was almost worse than the knowing. If
it had been a bear, we'd have understood. Bears are dangerous,
but they're known, they're cataloged, they're part of the natural order.
(33:32):
What we encountered wasn't part of any order I understood.
It was other. It was something that existed outside the
rules I'd been taught governed the world. Bill lived for
another five years after that night, never hunted again, never
went into the woods. My dad kept her as a pet,
let her sleep in the house, which was something he'd
(33:52):
never allowed with the hunting dogs before. I think he
felt guilty, felt responsible for what happened to her, like
he'd failed her somehow by taking her out there, by
putting her in danger, by not being able to protect
her from something that couldn't be fought with guns or
knowledge or courage. When Bell finally died, my dad buried
her in the backyard under an oak tree, put up
(34:15):
a little marker. I asked him if he wanted to
put Buck's name on there too, even though we didn't
have Buck's body to bury. He thought about it for
a long time, then shook his head. Buck's not dead,
he said quietly. I don't know what happened to him,
but I don't think he's dead. That thing took him
for a reason, took him somewhere. That thought haunted me
(34:38):
still does. What did the creature want with my dog?
Why take him instead of killing him? There where? Did
it carry him to the mind, to some other layer?
And what happened after? Did Buck die quickly or did
he suffer? Did he die at all? Or is there
something worse I'm not imagining. These are the questions that
(35:00):
keep me up at night, the questions that have no answers,
because the only one who knows is that thing in
the woods, and I pray I never see it again
to be able to ask. My father died last spring
lung cancer. Had been a smoker most of his life,
and it finally caught up with him. I was with
him at the end, holding his hand in the hospital room,
(35:22):
watching him struggle for each breath. In those last few
days when the morphine had him drifting in and out
of consciousness. He talked, said things he'd kept inside for years,
told stories I'd never heard, apologized for mistakes he thought
he'd made as a father, and one night, when it
was just the two of us and the machines beeping
(35:43):
softly and the hospital quiet around us, he brought it up.
I'm sorry, he whispered. His voice was weak, barely audible.
I'm sorry about that night. Sorry I took you there,
Sorry about what you saw. Sorry you've had to carry
that your whole life. I squeezed his hand, told him
it wasn't his fault, told him he'd done his best.
(36:05):
Told him we'd survived, and that's what mattered. He looked
at me with eyes that were clearer than they'd been
in days. I failed you, he said, failed. Buck should
have protected you better, should have known something was wrong,
should have turned back sooner. You couldn't have known. I said,
there was no way to know. He shook his head slightly.
(36:27):
I felt it, he said, felt something wrong in those
woods before we ever saw it, that silence, the way
the dogs were acting. I felt it, and I ignored
it because I wanted to hunt, wanted to teach you,
wanted one more good night before winter came. And because
I ignored it, Buck died and Bell was hurt, and
you had to see that thing. It's okay. I told
(36:50):
him it's okay. But it wasn't okay, not really, and
we both knew it. The night before he died, when
the cancer had eaten away so much of him that
he was barely there anymore. He suddenly gripped my hand
with surprising strength. His eyes opened wide, focused on something
I couldn't see. Something over my shoulder, Something in the
(37:11):
corner of the room. Do you see it, he whispered,
Do you see the light? I turned around, saw nothing
but the dark window and the reflection of the room
and the glass. What light, Dad, there's no light, green,
he said, green light from the horn. It's coming, it's here.
(37:32):
I felt ice run down my spine, felt all the
fear from that night forty years ago come flooding back.
I looked around the room wildly, half expecting to see
those wings, that terrible face, those two long arms reaching
from my father. There's nothing here, I said, you're safe.
It's just the medication. You're seeing things. But he wouldn't
(37:54):
let go of my hand, wouldn't stop staring at that
corner of the room. It came for Buck, he said,
Now it's coming for me. Should have killed it, should
have found a way. But we can't kill them. They
can't be killed. They just wait. They just wait in
the dark and come for us when it's time. Dad, Please,
I said, there's nothing there. You're scaring me. He finally
(38:19):
looked at me, really looked at me, and his eyes
were clear and sane and full of knowledge. I didn't
want to acknowledge. Promise me something, he said anything. Don't
go back there, don't ever go back to van Meter,
don't go into those woods, don't try to find answers.
Just live your life and forget what we saw, and
(38:39):
don't ever go back. I promise, I told him. He relaxed,
then his grip loosened, his eyes closed, he drifted off
into sleep or unconsciousness, or whatever state exists right before death.
He died the next morning without waking up again, without
any last words or meaningful goodbyes. Away while I was
(39:00):
getting coffee from the cafeteria, I think about those last
words a lot, about what he saw or thought he
saw in that corner of the room, About whether the
creature really was there waiting for him, come to collect
him the way it had collected Buck, About whether it
was coincidence that he saw that green light right before
(39:21):
he died. I don't know. I'll never know. And that's
the worst part of this whole story, the not knowing,
the questions that can't be answered, the mystery that has
no solution. What I do know is this, The Van
Meter Visitor is real. It exists. It's not a hoax
or a misidentification or a legend. It's flesh and blood
(39:44):
and bone and something else, something that doesn't follow the
rules we think govern reality. It hunts in the woods
around Van Meter. It has for over one hundred years,
probably longer. It takes what it wants. It can't be
stopped with bullets or bravery or anything else we've got
in our arsenal. And if you're smart, if you value
(40:04):
your life and your sanity, you'll stay away from there.
You'll stay out of those woods. You'll stay away from
abandoned minds and dark places and anywhere you hear clicking
sounds in the night. You'll trust your instincts when they
tell you something's wrong. You'll turn around and go home.
When the dogs start acting strange and the woods go silent,
because that thing is out there, still honting, still waiting,
(40:27):
still taking what it wants from anyone foolish enough or
unlucky enough to cross its path. I'm telling this story now,
forty years later because I kept my promise to my father.
I stayed quiet while he was alive. But he's gone now,
and I'm getting old myself, and I think people deserve
to know, deserve to be warned, deserve to understand that
(40:49):
the Van Meter Visitor isn't just a legend from nineteen
oh three. It's real, it's active, and it's still in
those woods. Maybe telling this story is a mistake. Maybe
the creature will hear about it somehow. Well know I
broke the silence will come for me the way it
came for Buck, the way it may be came for
my father. Maybe I'm signing my own death warrant by
(41:12):
putting these words down. But I don't care anymore. I'm
tired of carrying the secret, tired of the nightmares, tired
of living with the knowledge of what's out there while
everyone else goes about their lives thinking the world is
safe and understood and mapped. The world isn't safe, It
isn't fully understood. There are things in it that science
(41:33):
can't explain and reason can't grasp. And weapons can't stop.
I know because I've seen one. I've looked into its eyes,
I've heard its wings, I've watched it take my dog
and fly away into the darkness, and I've spent forty
years wishing I hadn't. So if you're hearing this, if
you're thinking about going to Van Meter, if you're curious
(41:54):
about the legend, or want to investigate, or think you're
brave enough to face whatever's out there, yourself a favor,
stay home, keep your dog safe, keep yourself safe. Don't
go into those woods, don't go at night, don't ignore
the warning signs when everything goes quiet and the animals
start acting strange. Because the van Meter Visitor is real,
(42:17):
and if you see it, if you encounter it the
way my father and I did, you'll never be the same.
You'll carry it with you for the rest of your life.
It'll haunt your dreams and color your waking hours and
make you question everything you thought you knew about reality.
I know because I've been carrying it for forty years.
Every day, every night, that clicking sound, those wings, those eyes,
(42:42):
that green light starting to glow, my dog's collar jingling
frantically as he's carried away into the darkness. My father's
bullet's doing nothing, nothing at all, against something that shouldn't exist,
but does. The Van Meter Visitor October nineteen eighty three.
A night that was supposed to be about coon hunting
(43:03):
and father son bonding and simple pleasures, A night that
turned into a nightmare I've never woken up from. That's
my story. That's what happened. And I swear on my
father's grave, on Buck's memory, on everything I hold sacred.
It's all true, every word, every detail, every terrible moment.
(43:24):
The creature is real. It's out there, and if you're smart,
you'll make sure you never meet it. Because some things
are worse than death. Some things, once seen, can never
be unseen. Some encounters leave scars that never heal. And
the Van Meter Visitor is all of those things and more.
I was fifteen years old when I learned that monsters
(43:45):
are real. I'm fifty five now and I've never forgotten,
never will forget. The memory is as clear today as
it was that night, preserved in perfect detail by trauma
and terror and the absolute certainty that what I witness
was impossible and yet happened anyway. That's what I have
to live with what I've been living with, what I'll
(44:07):
keep living with until the day I die. And when
I do die, when my time comes and I'm lying
in a hospital bed like my father was, I wonder
if I'll see it too, that green light, those wings
coming to collect me at last. I hope not. God,
I hope not. But if it does come, if that's
(44:28):
what waits for people like me who've seen it and survived,
then I guess I'll face it. What choice do I have.
You can't run forever, can't hide from something that's been
hunting these woods for over a century, can't escape what's
already written in whatever dark book records the fates of
those who cross paths with things that shouldn't be. All
(44:48):
I can do is tell this story, warn whoever will listen,
and hope that somewhere someone takes it seriously, stays out
of those woods, keeps their dogs safe, avoids the fate
that Buck suffered and that might still be waiting for me.
The van Meter visitor. It's real. It hunts, and it
never forgets. I know, because I've never forgotten either. How
(45:12):
could I That night has burned into my soul. Every
sound every smell, every moment of terror, every second of
watching something impossible become real right in front of my eyes.
Forty years, forty years of carrying the secret, forty years
of nightmares, forty years of looking over my shoulder in
(45:33):
the dark, forty years of listening for clicking sounds and
watching for green light, and feeling that primal fear that
comes from knowing you're not at the top of the
food chain, that there are things out there that see
you as prey. My father understood that, lived with it
the same way I did, and in the end, when
death came for him, he saw it again, saw the creature,
(45:56):
saw the light, and whether that was the morphine or
the cancer or something real doesn't matter. He believed it
was there. He died believing the van Meter Visitor had
come back for him. And maybe it had. Maybe it
does that. Maybe it marks the people who see it,
who encounter it, who escape, Maybe it remembers, Maybe it waits.
(46:17):
Maybe my father was right, and it's just a matter
of time before it comes from me too. If that's true,
If that day comes, I'll face it the same way
I faced it when I was fifteen, with fear, yes,
with terror, but also with the knowledge that I survived.
Once I escaped, I lived to tell the story, even
(46:38):
if I had to wait forty years to tell it.
That's my legacy, my father's legacy. The truth about what's
in the woods around Van Meter, Iowa. The truth about
what hunts there, the truth about the creature that took
my dog and changed my life and proved that the
world is stranger and more terrible than we want to believe.
(46:58):
The Van Meter Visitor is real. I know I was there,
and I'll never forget.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Don't work
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Do
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.
Most people who know anything about the Van Meter Visitor
know about what happened in October nineteen o three, five
(01:09):
Nights of Terror. Credible witnesses a creature with massive wings
and a horn that shot light. The whole town saw it,
They shot at it, They sealed it in an abandoned
coal mine. The story made the newspapers, it became legend.
But there's another encounter that nobody knows about, an encounter
that happened eighty years later, in the fall of nineteen
(01:31):
eighty three, and it involved a fifteen year old kid
and his father out coon hunting on October night that
should have been like any other. That kid was me,
and what happened that night, what we saw, what we experienced.
It never made any newspapers. We never told anyone outside
our family. My father made me swear i'd never speak
(01:52):
of it, and I kept that promise for forty years,
right up until he died last spring. Now I'm fifty
five years old, and I've decided that some stories need
to be told, even if nobody believes them, especially if
nobody believes them, because what happened to me and my
dad on that October night in nineteen eighty three was real,
(02:12):
as real as anything I've ever experienced. And if I
don't tell it now, if I let it die with me,
then nobody will ever know that the van meter visitor
came back, that it was never really gone, that whatever
they sealed in that mine in nineteen oh three, it
either got out or there were others. This is that story,
and I'm telling it now because my father isn't here
(02:34):
to stop me anymore, and because I think people deserve
to know that some things in this world don't fit
into neat categories. Some things exist in the spaces between
what we think we know and what we're afraid might
be true. This is what happened to us in Van Meter, Iowa,
in October of nineteen eighty three. Every word of it
is true, even though I wish to God it wasn't.
(02:56):
I need to start by telling you what kind of
kid I was at fifteen. I wasn't scared of much.
I'd been hunting since I was eight years old, tagging
along with my dad through the woods at night, learning
to read tracks, learning to listen to the dogs, learning
to move quiet through the darkness. By the time I
was fifteen, I was a pretty good hunter. Not as
(03:17):
good as my dad, not yet, but good enough that
he trusted me to handle myself in the woods, good
enough that when he suggested we go coon hunting near
Van Meter that October night, I didn't even think twice
about it. My father was a practical man, worked construction
during the day, hunted at night. Didn't have much use
for nonsense or superstition. He was the kind of man
(03:39):
who believed in what he could see and touch and understand.
If you'd asked him about ghosts or monsters or anything
like that, he would have laughed and told you to
stop wasting his time with foolishness. He was solid, dependable,
the kind of man who could fix anything with his
hands and didn't flinch at hard work or difficult situations.
(04:00):
Telling you this because you need to understand what happened later.
You need to know that we weren't the type to
imagine things or get spooked by shadows. We were hunters.
We knew the woods, we knew the sounds of the night.
We knew what belonged out there and what didn't. We
lived about thirty miles from Van Meter, in a small
town that nobody's ever heard of and probably never will.
(04:23):
But my dad knew the land around Van Meter was
good for coon hunting. Lots of timber creeks and streams
where the coons would hunt for craw edads, cornfields where
they'd raid for easy meals. He'd hunted that area a
few times before, always had good luck, always came home
with pelts to sell. The money wasn't much, but it helped,
(04:44):
and more than the money, it was about the hunt itself.
The time in the woods, the challenge of it. October,
and I was beautiful if you don't mind the cold.
The leaves are turning reds and oranges and yellows that
looked like fire in the daylight. The air gets crip clean,
the kind of cold that wakes you up instead of
making you miserable. Perfect hunting weather. The kind of night
(05:07):
where you can hear everything because the leaves are dry,
and sound carries far in the still air. We left
our house around nine o'clock that night, my dad driving
his old Ford pickup, me riding shotgun with our gear
in the back. We had two blue tickhounds with us,
Buck and Bell, best coon dogs in three counties, my
dad always said, and he was probably right. Buck was
(05:30):
eight years old, experienced, and smart Bell was younger, only three,
but she was learning fast from the old dog. They
were good dogs, loyal, fearless in the way that good
hunting dogs are willing to tree a coon twice their
size without hesitation. I remember those dogs clearly. I think
about them more often than I probably should. What happened
(05:53):
to them is part of what haunts me about that night.
The drive to van Meter took about forty minutes. We
didn't talk much. My dad wasn't much of a talker
when he was focused on hunting. He was thinking about
where we'd start, where the coons would likely be, how
the dogs would run. I was thinking about the same things,
trying to anticipate the night ahead, hoping we'd get some
(06:16):
good trees, hoping I'd make my dad proud with how
I handled myself. We pulled off the main road about
two miles outside Van meter Proper, onto a dirt track
that led back into timberland. The truck bounced over ruts
and rocks, headlights cutting through the darkness, illuminating trees that
pressed in close on both sides. We drove about a
(06:37):
half mile back before my dad found a spot he liked,
a small clearing where we could park without blocking the trail.
He killed the engine and we sat there for a
minute in the silence, listening. That's something my dad taught
me early. Before you get out, before you turn the
dogs loose, you listen, You get a feel for the night,
(06:57):
You let your eyes adjust to the darkness, You prepare yourself.
The moon was about three quarters full that night, bright
enough to cast shadows, but not so bright that it
killed the mystery of the woods. Stars were out thick,
the way they only are when you're far from city lights.
The air smelled like decay, that rich smell of leaves
(07:18):
breaking down and earth preparing for winter. I could hear
an owl somewhere in the distance. Could hear small sounds
of animals moving through the underbrush, normal sounds, safe sounds.
My dad nodded, satisfied with what he heard, and we
got out of the truck. The dogs were whining and
wiggling in the back, eager to get hunting. We got
(07:40):
them out, checked their collars, made sure the tracking bells
were secure. Old Buck had a deep bell that rang
slow and steady. Bells was higher pitched, rang faster. You
could tell them apart in the dark just by listening.
Could track them through the woods by the sound of
those bells. My dad looked at me, made sure I
had my flashlight, made sure my rifle was loaded and
(08:02):
slung proper across my back. He did the same check
on himself. Then he gave me that little nod he
always did, the one that meant we were ready, And
he said the words I'd heard a hundred times before
start time. Let's hunt. We turned the dogs loose and
they were off like bullets, noses down, working the ground,
(08:22):
trying to pick up a trail. We followed at a walk,
not rushing, letting them do their job. The bells rang
through the darkness, moving away from us, spreading out as
the dogs quartered back and forth searching for scent. For
the first hour, everything was normal, perfect, even The dogs
found a trail and ran it hard for about twenty
(08:43):
minutes before they lost it at a creek. They found
another one after that, ran it up a big old oak,
and my dad got a good clean shot. One coon down.
We collected it. Praise the dogs, let them rest for
a few minutes before we moved on. This was what
we'd come for, This was what we knew, Man and
dogs in the ancient dance of the hunt played out
(09:05):
the same way it had been played out for thousands
of years. There was a rhythm to it, a rightness.
We were in our element, We belonged out there. Then
things started to change. It was subtle at first. The
dog started acting different. Buck, who normally worked with his
nose right on the ground, systematic and focused, kept lifting
(09:27):
his head and looking around. His hackles would rise for
a moment, then settle, then rise again. Bell was worse.
She kept circling back to us, whining low in her throat,
pressing against our legs like she wanted reassurance. My dad
noticed it too. He stopped walking, stood still, listening hard.
(09:48):
I did the same. That owl we'd heard earlier had
gone quiet. In fact, all the little background sounds of
the woods had stopped. No rustling leaves, no small animals
moving through the no insects, just silence, thick and heavy.
The dogs refused to go forward. Buck planted his feet
(10:08):
and wouldn't budge no matter how much my dad urged
him on. Bell was shaking, actually shaking like she was cold.
But it wasn't that cold out. Something had spooked them bad.
And if you know anything about coon dogs, you know
they don't spook easy. These dogs would charge into a
hollow log after a coon, without hesitation, would face down
(10:29):
a badger or a porcupine without backing off. But now
they were terrified. My dad pulled out his flashlight and
started scanning the woods around us. I did the same.
Our beams cut through the darkness, illuminating tree trunks and
undergrowth and nothing else, Nothing that should have caused that
kind of reaction in the dogs. Nothing that explained the silence.
(10:51):
Then Buck started growling, low and continuous, a sound I'd
never heard him make before. Not the kind of growl
a dog makes when it's found something to hunt. This
was different. This was a warning. This was a sound
that said something was very wrong and we needed to
leave now. My dad must have felt it too, because
he reached over and put his hand on my shoulder.
(11:13):
Didn't say anything, but I understood. We were going back
to the truck. The hunt was over. We turned around
and started walking back the way we'd come. The dogs
pressed close against our legs. My Dad kept his flashlight moving,
scanning constantly. I did the same with mine. We'd gone
maybe fifty yards when Bell stopped dead and looked up
(11:34):
at the trees to our right. That's when I saw
something that I will never forget. At first, I thought
it was just a thick branch, something dark against the
slightly lighter darkness of the sky beyond the canopy. But
then it moved, shifted position, and I realized it wasn't
a branch at all. It was perched there, sitting on
a thick limb about twenty feet up watching us. I
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couldn't make out details. My flashlight beam didn't reach that high,
not with enough strength to light it up clearly. But
I could see the shape, huge, bigger than any animal
I'd ever seen in the woods, too tall to be
a bear, even if bears climb trees that high, which
they don't, Not shaped like any bird, though there was
(12:18):
something about the outline that looked like wings. My dad
saw it too. I heard him suck in a breath,
felt his grip tighten on my shoulder. The dog saw
it and went absolutely silent, not whining anymore, not growling,
just frozen in place, staring up at that thing in
the tree. We stood there, nobody moving, nobody breathing, just
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staring at this thing that shouldn't exist, but was there anyway,
perched in that tree, watching us with an intensity I
could feel, even though I couldn't see its eyes. Then
my dad made a decision. He pushed me forward, not hard,
but firm, and we started walking, not running, walking with
deliberate steps, trying to keep calm, trying not to provoke
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whatever that thing was. The dogs moved with us, still
pressed close, still silent. We'd gone maybe ten steps when
I heard it, a sound like nothing I'd ever heard
before or since. It started low, almost a rumble, then
climbed higher into a screech that made my teeth hurt.
It wasn't an animal sound. It wasn't a human sound.
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It was something else, entirely, something that bypassed my brain
and spoke directly to the ancient part of my nervous
system that still remembered when humans were prey. And then
it came down from the tree. I didn't see it jump,
didn't see it spread whatever wings it might have had.
One second it was in the tree. The next second
it was on the ground behind us, and I heard
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the impact, heard branches breaking, heard leaves scattering, and then
I heard another sound, a clicking sound, fast and rhythmic,
like someone rapidly tapping a stick against wood. My dad
grabbed my arm and we ran. I'm not proud of running.
Hunters don't run, men don't run. But whatever was behind us,
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whatever had made that sound, it wasn't something you stood
and faced. Every instinct in my body was screaming at
me to move, to get away, to put distance between
me and that thing. The dogs ran with us. I
could hear their bells ringing frantically as they crashed through
the underbrush alongside us. Could hear my dad's breathing harsh
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and fast. Could hear my own heart pounding so hard
it felt like it was going to burst through my chest.
And behind us, I could hear it following, not chasing,
not exactly. It was moving parallel to us, staying in
the trees to our left, keeping pace easily, even though
we were running as fast as we could through rough
terrain in the dark. I could hear it moving through
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the branches. Could hear that clicking sound it made. Could
hear something else, a rustling sound, big, like enormous sheets
of leather being shaken out. Stay tuned for more Backwoods
big Foot stories. We'll be back after these messages. My
dad's flashlight was bouncing all over the place as we ran,
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creating crazy shadows that made everything worse. My own light
wasn't much better. We were just trying to keep from
running face first into a tree, trying to keep moving
in what we hoped was the right direction, back toward
the truck, back towards safety. Then Belle screamed, dogs don't scream,
they bark. They howl, they whine, they growl. But Belle
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screamed a sound of pure terror and agony that cut
through the night like a knife. And then the scream
cut off, suddenly replaced by thrashing sounds and that horrible clicking.
My dad stopped running. I almost crashed into him. He
spun around, bringing his flashlight up, and I did the same.
Our beams found Bell about thirty feet behind, and what
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I saw in that moment is burned into my memory forever.
The creature had her, It was on the ground, hunched
over her, and for the first time I got a
clear look at it in the combined glow of our flashlights.
What I saw made no sense. My brain tried to
categorize it, tried to fit it into some framework of
known animals, and failed completely. It was huge, had to
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be eight or nine feet tall, even in its hunched position.
The body was covered in what looked like smooth, dark skin,
almost like leather. The legs were bent backward like a
bird's legs, ending in feet with long toes that gripped
the ground. Three toes, I remember counting them, three toes
with what looked like talons. The arms, if you could
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call The marms were impossibly long. They reached down to
grab Bell, and I saw they ended in hands that
had too many fingers or maybe claws. In the bouncing
flashlight beams, it was hard to tell, but they were
wrapped around my dog, and Bell was thrashing, trying to
get free, her bell ringing frantically. But it was the
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wings that made me understand we were dealing with something
from the old stories. They were folded against its back,
but I could see their size, could see the membranous structure,
could see the way they moved slightly, as if the
creature was preparing to spread them. They looked like bat wings,
but massive, big enough to lift something that size into
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the air. And then there was the horn, growing from
the forehead, thick at the base and tapering to a
blunt point. In the beam of my flashlight, I saw
something at the tip of that horn starting to glow,
faint at first, then brighter, a sick green color that
made me think of rot and disease. My dad raised
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his rifle. I heard him chamber around, heard him shouting
something that might have been his dog's name, or might
have been a curse. I was frozen, unable to move,
unable to think just watching this impossible thing hurt my dog.
Then Buck attacked the old hound, launched himself at the
creature from the side, barking furiously, all his fear forgotten
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in the need to protect his pack mate. He got
his teeth into the creature's leg or sidhe or something.
I saw him latch on, saw him shaking his head
the way dogs do when they've got a good hold.
The creature made that screeching sound again and released Bell.
The younger dog scrambled away, limping badly whimpering. The creature
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turned its attention to Buck, and I finally saw its
face clearly. I wish I hadn't. It wasn't a human face,
but it wasn't an animal face either. It was something
in between or something else entirely. The eyes were too large,
and they reflected our flashlight beams with a greenish shine.
The nose was flat, almost flushed with the face. The mouth,
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when it opened, showed teeth that looked sharp and numerous,
too many teeth in a jaw that seemed to unhinge slightly,
opening wider than should have been possible. It grabbed Buck
with those long arms and pulled him free, lifted him
into the air like he weighed nothing, old buck who
must have weighed sixty pounds, easy, dangling in the creature's grip,
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still barking, still fighting, brave and foolish and doomed. My
dad fired. The shot was deafening in the quiet woods.
I saw the muzzle flash, saw the creature jerk slightly
from the impact, but it didn't drop, didn't release my dog,
didn't fall. It turned its head to look at us,
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those two large eyes fixing on my father, and the
light from the horn grew brighter, bright enough that I
had to squint, bright enough that it cast shadows in
the woods around us, turned everything into harsh contrast of
light and dark. My dad fired again and again, three shots,
four five. I lost count. He was unloading on that thing,
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hitting it each time because at that range you couldn't miss.
But the creature didn't fall, didn't even slow down. It
just stood there, holding my dog, staring at my father
with those impossible eyes, that light growing brighter and brighter
from its horn. Then it moved, not toward us, but up.
It spread those massive wings and jumped, launching itself into
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the air with a power that seemed to defy physics.
I felt the wind from its takeoff, felt leaves and
debris hitting my face. The light from its horn was blinding,
now bright as a spotlight, brighter than our flashlights, brighter
than the moon. In that terrible light, I could see
every detail of buck struggling in its grip, could see
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his fur and his collar, and his eyes wide with fear.
And then it was gone, flapping away into the darkness,
the light fading as it flew, the sound of those
wings like thunder in my ears. It flew low over
the canopy, weaving between the trees, moving with an agility
that something that large shouldn't possess. I watched it go,
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watched the light disappear, watched my dog disappear with it,
and I couldn't make a sound, couldn't scream, couldn't cry,
could only stand there with my mouth open and my
flashlight shaking in my hand. Belle was whimpering at our feet,
trying to crawl toward us. My dad snapped out of
his shock. First. He dropped down beside her, his hands
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moving over her body, checking for injuries. I could see
blood on her fur, could see she was hurt. Bad,
deep cuts along her ribs, bite marks on her neck.
She was trembling all over, her eyes rolling back, white
with pain and fear. My dad looked up at me
in the beam of my flashlight. His face was white
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as paper. His hands were shaking. This man, who never
showed fear, who I'd seen handle every kind of crisis
without flinching, was shaking like a leaf. We have to go,
he said, His voice was hoarse. We have to go
right now. He scooped Bell up in his arms, careful
of her injuries, and started moving toward where we'd left
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the truck. I followed, my rifle held in front of
me like a talisman, my flashlight beams sweeping the trees,
constantly looking for any sign that the creature was coming back.
The walk back to the truck was the longest walk
of my life. Every shadow was a threat. Every sound
was that clicking noise. Every rustle of leaves was wings
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preparing to descend on us. I kept waiting for that
green light to appear again, kept waiting to feel talons
in my back, kept expecting to be lifted into the
air like buck, carried off into the darkness to whatever
fate awaited My dog, but we made it somehow, We
made it back to the truck. My dad laid Bell
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gently in the bed, then we both jumped in the cab.
He started the engine, and we were moving before my
door was even fully closed. He drove fast, probably too
fast for that rough trail, branches scraping the sides of
the truck, the whole vehicle, bouncing over ruts, hard enough
that my head hit the roof a couple times. We
didn't speak, didn't talk about what we'd seen, didn't acknowledge
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what had just happened. My dad just drove his knuckles
white on the steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the
trail ahead. I sat beside him, my rifle across my lap,
my hands still shaking, my mind trying and failing to
process what I'd witnessed. When we hit the main road,
my dad turned toward home instead of toward Van Meeter.
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I understood. We weren't going to report this, weren't going
to tell anyone who would believe us. What would we
even say that we'd been attacked by a monster, that
something had taken our dog, that we'd shot at it
five times with a rifle, and the bullets had done nothing.
The drive home was silent except for bells whimpering from
the truck bed. I wanted to check on her, wanted
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to comfort her, but I was too scared to get
out of the cab, too scared that if I opened
the door, something might grab me, pull me out, carry
me away. We pulled into our driveway around midnight. The
house lights were on. My mother was waiting up, probably
wondering why we were back so early, probably worried. When
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she heard the truck coming fast up the gravel drive,
she came out on the porch and took one look
at us and knew something was very wrong. My dad
got out first, went to the back and carefully lifted Bell.
I could see he was trying to be gentle, but
the dog yelped anyway. My mother gasped when she saw
the blood. What happened? She asked, accident? My dad said,
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Bell got hurt. I need to take her to the
emergency VET. He carried the dog to his truck, got
back in, and drove off without another word. I stood
there in the driveway with my mother, still holding my rifle,
still shaking. She looked at me, looked at my face,
looked at the state I was in happened? She asked again,
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what really happened. I couldn't tell her, couldn't find the words,
couldn't even begin to explain what we'd seen. So I
did what my father had done. I lied accident. I
said Belle got hurt, honting. Dad's taking her to get
fixed up. My mother knew I was lying. I could
see it in her eyes, but she didn't push. She
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just nodded, put her arm around me, and led me inside.
She made me hot chocolate, which was something she hadn't
done since I was a little kid. I sat at
the kitchen table and drank it, not tasting it, not
feeling the warmth, just sitting there while my mind replayed
the encounter over and over again. My dad came home
around three in the morning. I heard the truck in
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the driveway, heard the door open and close, heard his footsteps,
slow and heavy, coming into the house. He came into
the kitchen where I was still sitting, unable to sleep,
unable to do anything but sit and remember. He looked
at me for a long moment. Then he pulled out
a chair and sat down across from me. Bell's going
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to be okay, he said, Vet stitched her up, lost
a lot of blood. Infection's a risk, but she'll live.
I nodded, didn't trust myself to speak. My dad leaned forward,
his hands clasped on the table. His face was serious,
more serious than I'd ever seen it. We're not telling
anyone about this, he said. Do you understand me? Not
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your friends, not your uncle's, not anyone. What happened tonight.
It stays between us. If people find out, if we
start talking about what we saw, they'll think we're crazy.
They'll laugh at us, Your mother will worry. The whole
town will know. It'll follow you your whole life. I know,
I said, I mean it. He pressed. I know you're fifteen.
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I know you want to tell your buddies about the
crazy thing you saw, but you can't. This is not
a story you tell. This is not something we talk about.
Do you understand, yes, sir, I said. He stared at
me a moment longer, making sure I got it, making
sure I understood the weight of what he was saying.
Then he nodded, satisfied. We never went coon hunting again
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after that night. My dad sold Buck's collar and Bell's
collar to someone who asked about them at a farm auction.
Never explained why, never said what happened to Buck, just
said he was gone and left it at that. Bell
recovered from her physical injuries, but she was never the same.
She'd flinch at shadows, refused to go outside after dark,
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would whine and tremble if you tried to take her
into the woods. The hunting dog in her was broken.
Whatever she'd experience that night, whatever she'd felt when that
creature grabbed her, it had changed something fundamental in her.
I understood how she felt. I was changed too. I
started having nightmares, still have them sometimes even now, forty
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years later. In the dreams, I'm back in those woods,
back in the darkness, with the flashlight and the rifle
that doesn't work, and I hear that clicking sound, hear
those wings, see that green light starting to glow, feel
something grabbing me from behind, lifting me, carrying me away.
I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding,
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my hands shaking, just like they did that night. My wife,
when I was married, used to ask me what the
nightmares were about. I never told her, kept my promise
to my father, told her it was just stress, just
random bad dreams, nothing to worry about. But they weren't random.
They were memories, memories my subconscious wouldn't let me forget,
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no matter how much I wanted to. I went back
to Van Meter once, about ten years after that night.
Couldn't help myself. I had to see the place in daylight,
had to prove to myself that it was just a
normal town, just normal woods, that what happened couldn't happen again.
I drove, looked at the quiet streets and the old
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buildings and the normal people going about their normal lives.
Drove out to where my dad and I had parked
that night. The dirt trail was still there, but it
looked different in daylight, smaller, less threatening, just a trail
into the woods like a thousand other trails. I got
out of my car and stood there at the edge
of the tree line, trying to work up the courage
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to walk back in, to retrace our steps, to find
where it happened. But I couldn't do it. Stood there
for twenty minutes, telling myself it was stupid to be scared,
telling myself it was daylight and nothing could hurt me.
But my body wouldn't move, my feet wouldn't take that
first step into the woods, because I knew it was
still in there, maybe not in those specific woods, maybe
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not hunting during the day, but somewhere nearby, in a
cave or an old mine shaft, or some dark place
we don't know about, sleeping, maybe waiting. Stay tuned for
more backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages,
the same way it had waited since nineteen o three,
since the people of van Meter sealed up that mine
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and thought they'd trapped it forever. They hadn't trapped it,
or they'd only trapped some of them. Because the one
I saw, the one that took Buck, it was real
and it was free, and it was hunting in those
woods like it owned them. I got back in my
car and drove away and never went back. Over the years,
I started researching the van Meter Visitor. Read everything I
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could find about the nineteen o three sightings, Read about
the witnesses and their accounts, Read about how they'd sealed
the mine, read the theories about what it might have been.
And the more I read, the more I realized that
what my father and I had encountered was exactly what
those people had seen eighty years earlier, same size, same wings,
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same horn, same resistance to bullets, same terrible presence that
made you understand deep in your bones that you were
in the presence of something that shouldn't exist. The accounts
from nineteen oh three mentioned the creature taking off into
the sky with incredible speed, that's what it did with Buck,
mentioned the clicking sounds i'd heard them, mentioned the terrible stench.
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I hadn't smelled it, but then again, we'd been running,
adrenaline pumping, focused on getting away. Maybe I'd missed it,
or maybe the smell came later after the creature had
been active for a while. Everything matched every detail, and
that terrified me more than anything, because it meant I
hadn't imagined it, meant I wasn't crazy, meant that what
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I'd seen was real and documented and had a history,
meant it was still out there. I tried to find
other accounts from after nineteen oh three, searched old newspapers,
asked around carefully, without revealing why I was asking. Found
a few mentions a siding in the nineteen eighties, which
might have been around the sun same time as my encounter.
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Someone seeing a giant bat thing near the old mind location.
A pastor in two thousand and six reporting something dragon
like in the sky. Not many accounts, not well documented,
easy to dismiss as misidentifications or hoaxes. But I knew
they weren't. Knew those people had seen what I'd seen,
maybe not as close, maybe not with the same level
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of terror, but they'd seen it, and like me, most
of them had probably learned to keep quiet about it.
That's the thing about seeing something impossible. You learn real
quick that people don't want to hear about it. They
want the world to make sense, want things to fit
into categories known animals or misidentifications or lies. They don't
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want to believe that there are things in the dark
that science hasn't cataloged, things that should be extinct or
should never have existed in the first place, things that hunt.
My father and I never talked about that night again,
not directly, but sometimes late at night when it was
just the two of us, he'd get a look in
his eyes, distant, haunted, and I knew he was thinking
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about it, thinking about Buck, thinking about the shots he'd
fired that did nothing, thinking about the thing that had
looked at him with those terrible eyes while his bullets
passed through it, or bounced off it, or whatever they did.
The not knowing was almost worse than the knowing. If
it had been a bear, we'd have understood. Bears are dangerous,
but they're known, they're cataloged, they're part of the natural order.
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What we encountered wasn't part of any order I understood.
It was other. It was something that existed outside the
rules I'd been taught governed the world. Bill lived for
another five years after that night, never hunted again, never
went into the woods. My dad kept her as a pet,
let her sleep in the house, which was something he'd
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never allowed with the hunting dogs before. I think he
felt guilty, felt responsible for what happened to her, like
he'd failed her somehow by taking her out there, by
putting her in danger, by not being able to protect
her from something that couldn't be fought with guns or
knowledge or courage. When Bell finally died, my dad buried
her in the backyard under an oak tree, put up
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a little marker. I asked him if he wanted to
put Buck's name on there too, even though we didn't
have Buck's body to bury. He thought about it for
a long time, then shook his head. Buck's not dead,
he said quietly. I don't know what happened to him,
but I don't think he's dead. That thing took him
for a reason, took him somewhere. That thought haunted me
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still does. What did the creature want with my dog?
Why take him instead of killing him? There where? Did
it carry him to the mind, to some other layer?
And what happened after? Did Buck die quickly or did
he suffer? Did he die at all? Or is there
something worse I'm not imagining. These are the questions that
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keep me up at night, the questions that have no answers,
because the only one who knows is that thing in
the woods, and I pray I never see it again
to be able to ask. My father died last spring
lung cancer. Had been a smoker most of his life,
and it finally caught up with him. I was with
him at the end, holding his hand in the hospital room,
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watching him struggle for each breath. In those last few
days when the morphine had him drifting in and out
of consciousness. He talked, said things he'd kept inside for years,
told stories I'd never heard, apologized for mistakes he thought
he'd made as a father, and one night, when it
was just the two of us and the machines beeping
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softly and the hospital quiet around us, he brought it up.
I'm sorry, he whispered. His voice was weak, barely audible.
I'm sorry about that night. Sorry I took you there,
Sorry about what you saw. Sorry you've had to carry
that your whole life. I squeezed his hand, told him
it wasn't his fault, told him he'd done his best.
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Told him we'd survived, and that's what mattered. He looked
at me with eyes that were clearer than they'd been
in days. I failed you, he said, failed. Buck should
have protected you better, should have known something was wrong,
should have turned back sooner. You couldn't have known. I said,
there was no way to know. He shook his head slightly.
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I felt it, he said, felt something wrong in those
woods before we ever saw it, that silence, the way
the dogs were acting. I felt it, and I ignored
it because I wanted to hunt, wanted to teach you,
wanted one more good night before winter came. And because
I ignored it, Buck died and Bell was hurt, and
you had to see that thing. It's okay. I told
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him it's okay. But it wasn't okay, not really, and
we both knew it. The night before he died, when
the cancer had eaten away so much of him that
he was barely there anymore. He suddenly gripped my hand
with surprising strength. His eyes opened wide, focused on something
I couldn't see. Something over my shoulder, Something in the
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corner of the room. Do you see it, he whispered,
Do you see the light? I turned around, saw nothing
but the dark window and the reflection of the room
and the glass. What light, Dad, there's no light, green,
he said, green light from the horn. It's coming, it's here.
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I felt ice run down my spine, felt all the
fear from that night forty years ago come flooding back.
I looked around the room wildly, half expecting to see
those wings, that terrible face, those two long arms reaching
from my father. There's nothing here, I said, you're safe.
It's just the medication. You're seeing things. But he wouldn't
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let go of my hand, wouldn't stop staring at that
corner of the room. It came for Buck, he said,
Now it's coming for me. Should have killed it, should
have found a way. But we can't kill them. They
can't be killed. They just wait. They just wait in
the dark and come for us when it's time. Dad, Please,
I said, there's nothing there. You're scaring me. He finally
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looked at me, really looked at me, and his eyes
were clear and sane and full of knowledge. I didn't
want to acknowledge. Promise me something, he said anything. Don't
go back there, don't ever go back to van Meter,
don't go into those woods, don't try to find answers.
Just live your life and forget what we saw, and
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don't ever go back. I promise, I told him. He relaxed,
then his grip loosened, his eyes closed, he drifted off
into sleep or unconsciousness, or whatever state exists right before death.
He died the next morning without waking up again, without
any last words or meaningful goodbyes. Away while I was
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getting coffee from the cafeteria, I think about those last
words a lot, about what he saw or thought he
saw in that corner of the room, About whether the
creature really was there waiting for him, come to collect
him the way it had collected Buck, About whether it
was coincidence that he saw that green light right before
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he died. I don't know. I'll never know. And that's
the worst part of this whole story, the not knowing,
the questions that can't be answered, the mystery that has
no solution. What I do know is this, The Van
Meter Visitor is real. It exists. It's not a hoax
or a misidentification or a legend. It's flesh and blood
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and bone and something else, something that doesn't follow the
rules we think govern reality. It hunts in the woods
around Van Meter. It has for over one hundred years,
probably longer. It takes what it wants. It can't be
stopped with bullets or bravery or anything else we've got
in our arsenal. And if you're smart, if you value
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your life and your sanity, you'll stay away from there.
You'll stay out of those woods. You'll stay away from
abandoned minds and dark places and anywhere you hear clicking
sounds in the night. You'll trust your instincts when they
tell you something's wrong. You'll turn around and go home.
When the dogs start acting strange and the woods go silent,
because that thing is out there, still honting, still waiting,
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still taking what it wants from anyone foolish enough or
unlucky enough to cross its path. I'm telling this story now,
forty years later because I kept my promise to my father.
I stayed quiet while he was alive. But he's gone now,
and I'm getting old myself, and I think people deserve
to know, deserve to be warned, deserve to understand that
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the Van Meter Visitor isn't just a legend from nineteen
oh three. It's real, it's active, and it's still in
those woods. Maybe telling this story is a mistake. Maybe
the creature will hear about it somehow. Well know I
broke the silence will come for me the way it
came for Buck, the way it may be came for
my father. Maybe I'm signing my own death warrant by
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putting these words down. But I don't care anymore. I'm
tired of carrying the secret, tired of the nightmares, tired
of living with the knowledge of what's out there while
everyone else goes about their lives thinking the world is
safe and understood and mapped. The world isn't safe, It
isn't fully understood. There are things in it that science
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can't explain and reason can't grasp. And weapons can't stop.
I know because I've seen one. I've looked into its eyes,
I've heard its wings, I've watched it take my dog
and fly away into the darkness, and I've spent forty
years wishing I hadn't. So if you're hearing this, if
you're thinking about going to Van Meter, if you're curious
(41:54):
about the legend, or want to investigate, or think you're
brave enough to face whatever's out there, yourself a favor,
stay home, keep your dog safe, keep yourself safe. Don't
go into those woods, don't go at night, don't ignore
the warning signs when everything goes quiet and the animals
start acting strange. Because the van Meter Visitor is real,
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and if you see it, if you encounter it the
way my father and I did, you'll never be the same.
You'll carry it with you for the rest of your life.
It'll haunt your dreams and color your waking hours and
make you question everything you thought you knew about reality.
I know because I've been carrying it for forty years.
Every day, every night, that clicking sound, those wings, those eyes,
(42:42):
that green light starting to glow, my dog's collar jingling
frantically as he's carried away into the darkness. My father's
bullet's doing nothing, nothing at all, against something that shouldn't exist,
but does. The Van Meter Visitor October nineteen eighty three.
A night that was supposed to be about coon hunting
(43:03):
and father son bonding and simple pleasures, A night that
turned into a nightmare I've never woken up from. That's
my story. That's what happened. And I swear on my
father's grave, on Buck's memory, on everything I hold sacred.
It's all true, every word, every detail, every terrible moment.
(43:24):
The creature is real. It's out there, and if you're smart,
you'll make sure you never meet it. Because some things
are worse than death. Some things, once seen, can never
be unseen. Some encounters leave scars that never heal. And
the Van Meter Visitor is all of those things and more.
I was fifteen years old when I learned that monsters
(43:45):
are real. I'm fifty five now and I've never forgotten,
never will forget. The memory is as clear today as
it was that night, preserved in perfect detail by trauma
and terror and the absolute certainty that what I witness
was impossible and yet happened anyway. That's what I have
to live with what I've been living with, what I'll
(44:07):
keep living with until the day I die. And when
I do die, when my time comes and I'm lying
in a hospital bed like my father was, I wonder
if I'll see it too, that green light, those wings
coming to collect me at last. I hope not. God,
I hope not. But if it does come, if that's
(44:28):
what waits for people like me who've seen it and survived,
then I guess I'll face it. What choice do I have.
You can't run forever, can't hide from something that's been
hunting these woods for over a century, can't escape what's
already written in whatever dark book records the fates of
those who cross paths with things that shouldn't be. All
(44:48):
I can do is tell this story, warn whoever will listen,
and hope that somewhere someone takes it seriously, stays out
of those woods, keeps their dogs safe, avoids the fate
that Buck suffered and that might still be waiting for me.
The van Meter visitor. It's real. It hunts, and it
never forgets. I know, because I've never forgotten either. How
(45:12):
could I That night has burned into my soul. Every
sound every smell, every moment of terror, every second of
watching something impossible become real right in front of my eyes.
Forty years, forty years of carrying the secret, forty years
of nightmares, forty years of looking over my shoulder in
(45:33):
the dark, forty years of listening for clicking sounds and
watching for green light, and feeling that primal fear that
comes from knowing you're not at the top of the
food chain, that there are things out there that see
you as prey. My father understood that, lived with it
the same way I did, and in the end, when
death came for him, he saw it again, saw the creature,
(45:56):
saw the light, and whether that was the morphine or
the cancer or something real doesn't matter. He believed it
was there. He died believing the van Meter Visitor had
come back for him. And maybe it had. Maybe it
does that. Maybe it marks the people who see it,
who encounter it, who escape, Maybe it remembers, Maybe it waits.
(46:17):
Maybe my father was right, and it's just a matter
of time before it comes from me too. If that's true,
If that day comes, I'll face it the same way
I faced it when I was fifteen, with fear, yes,
with terror, but also with the knowledge that I survived.
Once I escaped, I lived to tell the story, even
(46:38):
if I had to wait forty years to tell it.
That's my legacy, my father's legacy. The truth about what's
in the woods around Van Meter, Iowa. The truth about
what hunts there, the truth about the creature that took
my dog and changed my life and proved that the
world is stranger and more terrible than we want to believe.
(46:58):
The Van Meter Visitor is real. I know I was there,
and I'll never forget.
Speaker 2 (48:01):
Don't work
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Do
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