BWBS Ep:149 The Little People

Tonight’s episode takes us deep into the heart of Appalachia, where ancient mountains remember everything—and some doors, once opened, can never be closed again. This is the chilling account of Michael, a man forever marked by his family’s terrifying encounter with beings that shouldn’t exist, but do. In the summer of 1995, fourteen-year-old Michael and his family left suburban Cleveland for a decaying farmhouse in rural West Virginia, hoping for a fresh start. 

What they found at Black Hollow Farm defied reason. The forest seemed alive with intent, and pale figures with glowing eyes watched from the shadows. What began as strange sounds and footprints soon spiraled into a nightmare of ancestral debt and otherworldly bargaining. Michael’s first encounter with the Little People—the beings known to the Cherokee as the Yunwi Tsunsdi and to early settlers as the Moon-Eyed People—set in motion a chain of events that would unravel his family. 

These ancient, subterranean entities fed not on flesh but on human potential, their hunger stretching back thousands of years. As Michael uncovered his family’s dark history—tied to a century-old massacre—he realized the debt could only be paid through sacrifice. His search for answers led to an isolated library, an old librarian guarding forbidden knowledge, and a final descent into the caverns beneath the mountains. 

There, Michael made a desperate bargain: seven years of his life, scattered across his remaining decades, in exchange for his family’s safety. The cost bought their freedom—but bound him forever to the watchers in the dark. Today, Black Hollow Farm still stands, waiting for its next tenants, its next chapter.

Michael’s story is more than a haunting; it’s a warning about the thin places in our world where realities blur, and ancient intelligences wait for us to forget the old protections.

Because once you know the Little People are real—once you’ve seen their glowing eyes peering from the forest—you’ll never walk through the Appalachians the same way again.

Episode Transcript

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

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

(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
There are places in this world where the veil between
what we know and what we fear grows thin, places

(01:08):
where the old stories that our grandparents whispered around dying
fires aren't just stories at all their warnings. I know
this because I lived in one of those places for
three months during the summer of nineteen ninety five, when
I was fourteen years old. What happened to my family
in that old farmhouse nestled in the dark hollows of
the Appalachian Mountains still visits me in my dreams thirty

(01:31):
years later. Before I tell you what happened, I need
you to understand something. The mountains of Appalachia are ancient,
beyond comprehension. They were old when the dinosaurs walk the earth.
They've seen civilizations rise and fall, watched as peoples came
and went, leaving only whispers of their existence behind. And

(01:52):
in those mountains, in the deepest hollows, where the sun
barely reaches even at noon, things that shouldn't exist continue
to thrive life, Things that were here before us, things
that will be here long after we're gone. The Cherokee
knew about them. They called them the Yunwuitsunsdi, the little
people who lived in the caves and dark places of

(02:12):
the mountains, sometimes helpful, sometimes harmful, but always to be
respected and feared. The early European settlers had their own stories, too,
stories of the moon eyed people, pale creatures that couldn't
bear the light of day, who lived in the mountains
until they were driven underground. Some say they never left.

(02:33):
Some say they're still there, waiting in the darkness beneath
the roots of ancient trees and in caves that have
never known sunlight. I used to think these were just stories,
folk tales meant to keep children from wandering too far
into the woods. I was wrong, dead wrong, And that
summer in that cursed farmhouse my parents thought would be

(02:54):
our fresh start, I learned that some doors, once opened,
can never be closed again. My name is Michael, and
in May of nineteen ninety five, my family moved from
suburban Cleveland to a farmhouse in rural West Virginia, deep
in the heart of Appalachia. My father had lost his
job at the steel mill six months earlier, and the

(03:14):
stress of trying to maintain our middle class lifestyle on
my mother's teacher's salary had been tearing our family apart.
When my great uncle Clarence died and left us his
property in West Virginia, my parents saw it as a sign,
a chance to start over, free housing land, to grow
our own food, and a simpler life away from the
crime and decay of the rustbelt city we'd called home.

(03:38):
I remember the drive down like it was yesterday. The
further south we went, the more the landscape changed. The
flat expanses of Ohio gave way to rolling hills, and
then those hills became mountains, real mountains, not the kind
you see on postcards with snow capped peaks and ski lodges,
but ancient, worn down mountains covered in forests so thick

(04:00):
they looked black from a distance. The roads got narrower, windier,
until we were driving on what felt like a snake's
path carved into the mountain side. Black Hollow Farms sat
at the end of a dirt road that branched off
from a two lane highway, about twenty miles from the
nearest town. The GPS didn't exist back then, and even
if it had, I doubt it would have worked out there.

(04:23):
It was like driving back in time. The house itself
was older than anyone could remember. Uncle Clarence had said
it was built sometime in the eighteen seventies, but the
foundation stones looked even older than that. It was a
two story farmhouse with white clapboard siding that had long
ago faded to gray. A wraparound porch sagged under the

(04:43):
weight of years, and the tin roof was more rust
than metal. But it wasn't the house that made me
uneasy that first day. It was the woods, the forest
pressed in on all sides of the property, like it
was trying to reclaim what had been taken from it.
Ancient oaks and h krees towered over the house, their
branches intertwining overhead to create a canopy so thick that

(05:05):
even in the middle of the day, the yard was
cast in twilight shadows. And it was quiet, too quiet.
No birds singing, no insects buzzing, just the occasional creak
of wood and rustle of leaves in a breeze. I
couldn't feel. My younger sister, Sarah, who was eleven at
the time, grabbed my hand as we stood in the
front yard looking at our new home. She was always

(05:29):
sensitive to things more than the rest of us. She
knew something was off about this place before any of
us would admit it. That first night, as we unpacked
boxes and tried to make the musty old house feel
like home, I kept finding myself drawn to the windows,
staring out into the darkness of the forest. The trees
seemed to move even when there was no wind, and

(05:50):
I could have sworn I saw lights flickering between the trunks.
Not flashlights or lanterns, but something softer like fireflies. Except
fireflies don't glow white, and they don't move with purpose.
It took about a week before I saw them for
the first time, really saw them, not just glimpses from
the corner of my eye or shadows that shouldn't be there.

(06:12):
I had been exploring the property, which covered about forty acres,
most of it forested. There was an old barn that
had partially collapsed, a chicken coop that hadn't seen chickens
in decades, and several outbuildings in various states of decay.
Behind the house, maybe two hundred yards into the woods,
I found the remnants of what might have been an
even older homestead, just a foundation of stacked stones and

(06:36):
what looked like a root cellar carved into the hillside.
The root cellar fascinated me. The entrance was low, maybe
four feet high, framed with stones that had been fitted
together without mortar. The precision of the construction was remarkable.
Each stone had been chosen and placed with such care that,
even after what must have been over a century, the

(06:57):
archway was still perfectly intact. Inside the cellar extended back
into the hill further than my flashlight beam could reach.
I was standing at the entrance, debating whether to go
inside when I heard it giggling like children playing. But
something was off about it. The pitch was off, too
high and too low at the same time, if that

(07:19):
makes any sense. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere,
echoing off the trees in a way that made it
impossible to pinpoint the source. Then I saw a movement
in the cellar, just a flash of something pale, darting
deeper into the darkness. My rational mind said it was
probably an animal, a possum or raccoon. But animals don't giggle,

(07:41):
and animals don't have eyes that glow with their own light,
not reflected light like a cat's eyes and headlights, but
actual luminescence, like deep sea creatures that have never known
the sun. I should have run. Every instinct in my
body was screaming at me to get away from that cellar,
to run back to these and never come near this
place again. But I was fourteen, and fourteen year old

(08:05):
boys are curious and stupid in equal measure. So I
clicked off my flashlight and waited for my eyes to
adjust to the darkness. That's when I saw them clearly
for the first time. There were three of them at
the entrance to the cellar, watching me. They were small,
maybe three feet tall, with proportions that were almost but
not quite human. Their arms were too long, their fingers

(08:27):
too thin, Their heads were slightly too large for their bodies,
and their eyes, their eyes were enormous, taking up nearly
a third of their faces. In the darkness, those eyes
glowed with a soft, pearl like luminescence. Their skin was pale,
not white like a Caucasian person, but pale like something

(08:47):
that had never seen sunlight, like cavefish or those blind
salamanders that live in underground rivers. I could see the
blue veins beneath their translucent skin pulsing with each heart beat.
They didn't move like humans either, They sort of flowed,
their movements too smooth, too coordinated, like they were all

(09:08):
part of the same organism. And they were smiling. All
three of them wore identical smiles that were too wide,
showing too many teeth, human teeth, but in mouths that
weren't quite human. We stared at each other for what
felt like hours but was probably only seconds. Then one
of them raised its hand and beckoned to me, a

(09:29):
simple gesture just a curl of those two long fingers,
inviting me to follow them into the cellar. The giggling
started again, and this time I could see it was
coming from them, Even though their mouths never moved from
those horrible smiles, the sound seemed to emanate from their
entire beings, vibrating through the air in a frequency that

(09:49):
made my teeth ache. That broke the spell. I ran.
I turned and ran through the woods faster than I'd
ever run before, Branches tearing at my clothes, roots trying
to trip me. Behind me, the giggling grew louder, multiplying
as if dozens of them had joined in. I could
hear them following, not footsteps exactly, but a rustling, flowing

(10:12):
sound like water over rocks. I burst out of the
tree line and didn't stop until I was inside the house,
with the door locked behind me. My mother asked what
was wrong. Why I was out of breath and bleeding
from dozens of small scratches. I told her I'd gotten
turned around in the woods and panicked. She believed me,
or at least pretended to. But that night, at dinner,

(10:33):
I noticed my father had brought a shotgun in from
the truck and placed it by the back door. After
that first encounter, things escalated quickly. It started with small
things that could be explained away. Items would go missing
from my room, only to turn up in strange places.
My baseball glove was found in the chicken coop. My
walkman appeared in the root cellar, still playing the mixtape

(10:56):
i'd been listening to the night before. My parents blamed
me for being careless, but I knew better. Then came
the gifts. I'd wake up to find things on my
window sill that hadn't been there the night before, pretty
rocks that seemed to glow in the moonlight, Flowers that
I'd never seen before and couldn't identify in any of
my mother's gardening books. Once a small wooden figure carved

(11:19):
with incredible detail, depicting what looked like a boy following
the line of small figures into a cave. The worst
part was that my window was on the second floor
and there were no trees close enough to climb. Whatever
was leaving these gifts was either incredibly agile or it
didn't need to climb at all. The giggling became a
nightly occurrence. It would start around midnight, always from the woods,

(11:44):
always moving closer to the house as the night progressed.
By three in the morning, it would be right outside
my window. I'd lie in bed, covers pulled up to
my chin, watching shadows move across my curtains, shadows that
had too many limbs and moved in ways that defy physics.
Sarah started having nightmares. She'd wake up screaming about the

(12:04):
pale children who wanted to play with her, who promised
to show her wonderful things if she'd just come outside.
My parents took her to a doctor in town who
prescribed sleeping pills, but they didn't help. If anything, they
made it worse. She'd sleep walk and we'd find her
at the back door, fumbling with the locks, mumbling about
how the little friends were waiting for her. One night,

(12:27):
about three weeks after my first encounter, I woke to
find one of them in my room. It was standing
at the foot of my bed, watching me with those
enormous glowing eyes. This one was different from the ones
I'd seen before. Older somehow, though I couldn't explain how,
I knew that its features were more defined, less childlike,

(12:47):
and its smile was knowing rather than manic. It didn't giggle. Instead,
it spoke, though its mouth never moved. The voice appeared
directly in my head, not heard, but felt like thoughts
that weren't my own being inserted into my consciousness. The
words weren't English or any language I recognized, but somehow

(13:09):
I understood them. It was telling me about the old times,
before the Europeans came, before even the Cherokee times, when
it's kind and humans lived closer together, when the veil
between worlds was gossamer thin. It showed me images, not
with its hands or any tool, but directly into my mind.

(13:30):
I saw the mountains when they were young, saw civilizations
rise and fall, saw its people driven underground by newcomers
who feared what they didn't understand. But mostly it spoke
of loneliness, centuries of loneliness, and how I could help
end that loneliness if I would just come with them,
just follow them into the deep places where the sun

(13:52):
never shines and time moves differently. It promised me. Knowledge
showed me glimpses of impossible cities carved into living rock,
of libraries filled with the wisdom of ages of power
that humans had forgotten existed. All I had to do
was come willingly. The thing reached out one of those

(14:12):
impossibly long arms, extending its hand toward me. Its fingers
were inches from my face when the spell broke. Maybe
it was the smell that did it, a smell like
deep caves and stagnant water and things that grow in
the dark. Or maybe it was survival instinct finally overriding
the hypnotic effect of its presence. I screamed, screamed louder

(14:33):
than I'd ever screamed in my life. The thing recoiled,
its features, twisting into something that might have been disappointment
or anger. The lights came on in the hallway, and
I heard my father's heavy footsteps running toward my room.
When the door burst open and my parents rushed in,
the creature was gone, but the window was open, the

(14:54):
curtains billowing in a breeze that smelled of deep earth
and decay. Stay tuned for more Backwoods big Foot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. My parents wanted to
believe it was a dream, a nightmare brought on by
stress and the adjustment to our new home, but the
open window troubled them. I'd been complaining about the heat,

(15:16):
so they assumed I'd opened it myself and forgotten. Still,
that night marked a change. My father started checking all
the locks twice before bed, my mother hung crosses in
every room, even though we weren't particularly religious, and Sarah
refused to sleep alone, camping out on my bedroom floor
with a sleeping bag. I started researching, spending my days

(15:38):
at the tiny library in town, reading everything I could
find about local folklore and history. The librarian, an ancient
woman named missus Edith, seemed to know what I was
looking for without my asking. She brought me books that
weren't on the shelves, old journals, and handwritten accounts that
she kept in a locked cabinet in the back room.

(15:58):
One journal, written by missionary in the eighteen hundreds described
encounters with what he called the pale devils of the mountain.
He wrote about how they would try to lure children
away from the settlements, promising them treasures and knowledge. Most
who followed were never seen again. Those few who returned
were changed, their minds broken, babbling about cities under the

(16:21):
mountains and the terrible price of ancient knowledge. Another account,
this one from a Cherokee elder, transcribed by an anthropologist
in the nineteen twenties, spoke of the yunheitt Sun's d
with more nuance. According to this source, they weren't evil exactly,
but operated according to rules and morality completely alien to humans.

(16:42):
They were older than humans, older than the Cherokee, perhaps
older than any current life on Earth. They had their
own needs and desires, and humans were just tools to
fulfill those needs. The pattern was always the same. They
would focus on a young person, usually between the ages
of ten and sixteen. They would court them with gifts

(17:03):
and visions, slowly breaking down their resistance. Eventually, the child
would either disappear entirely or would be found days later,
miles from home, with no memory of where they'd been,
but changed in subtle, disturbing ways. Missus Edith finally showed
me the records. I think she'd been holding back newspaper
clippings from the nineteen fifties, the last time Black Hollow

(17:26):
Farm had been occupied. A family of five had lived
there for less than six months. Their eldest son, age fifteen,
had disappeared one night. He was found three weeks later
in a cave system twenty miles away, catatonic and malnourished.
He never spoke again and died in a psychiatric hospital
two years later. The family abandoned the farm immediately, and

(17:49):
it had sat empty until Uncle Clarence bought it in
the seventies. He'd used it as a hunting cabin, never
staying more than a few days at a time. When
I asked Missus Edith why she was showing me this, she
looked at me with eyes that had seen too much,
and said simply that some families were marked, that the
little people remembered across generations, and that the sins of

(18:10):
the great great grandfather might be visited upon the great
great grandson. She wouldn't elaborate, but she did give me
a small iron horseshoe and told me to keep it
under my pillow. By the fourth week, the activity had
become constant. They no longer limited themselves to night visits.
I'd see them in broad daylight, always at the edge
of the forest, always watching. They didn't hide anymore. Sometimes

(18:35):
there would be dozens of them, standing perfectly still among
the trees, like pale sentinels. The house itself began to
feel wrong. Cold spots would appear randomly, even in the
heat of summer, electronics would malfunction. The TV would turn
on by itself, always to static, But if you looked
closely at the static, you could see patterns, shapes that

(18:57):
almost made sense, but would give you a migraine if
you stared too long. Our dog, a usually brave German
shepherd named Max, refused to go outside after dark. He
would whine and pace by the doors, his fur standing
on end, growling at things we couldn't see. One morning,
we found him hiding under my parents' bed, shaking uncontrollably.

(19:20):
He never recovered from whatever he'd experienced. We had to
put him down a week later when he stopped eating
and drinking, choosing to waste away rather than face whatever
was out there. My mother started having episodes. She would
stop in the middle of whatever she was doing and
stare into space, her lips moving soundlessly. When she came
back to herself, she couldn't remember what had happened. My

(19:43):
father found her one night, standing in the backyard in
her nightgown, arms outstretched toward the forest, tears streaming down
her face. She said, they were so beautiful, so sad,
and they just wanted to go home. Sarah had stopped
speaking altogether. She would draw instead, filling notebook after notebook
with pictures of pale figures with large eyes, of vast

(20:05):
underground cities, of children playing in caves lit by phosphorescent
fung guy. The detail in her drawings was impossible for
an eleven year old. When asked about them, she would
just point to the woods and nod. The turning point
came on a humid Thursday night in late June. I
woke to find my room full of them, not one

(20:26):
or two, but at least a dozen, standing around my bed,
their glow providing the only light. Sarah was with them,
holding the hand of one of the smaller creatures, smiling
that same, too wide smile i'd seen on their faces.
They didn't speak this time, not even telepathically. Instead, they
showed me what they wanted. The visions came in a flood,

(20:48):
overwhelming my senses. I saw myself leading my family into
the woods, down into the caves, into their realm. I
saw us transformed, made into something between hum human and
whatever they were. I saw sentries passing in moments, saw
the outside world forget we ever existed, while we lived
forever in the darkness below neither human nor inhuman, but

(21:12):
something in between. They showed me what would happen if
I refused. The visions turned dark. I saw my family
torn apart, not physically, but mentally and spiritually. I saw
my mother's sanity shatter completely, saw my father put a
gun to his head to escape the whispers. Saw Sarah
disappear one night and never return. They showed me that

(21:34):
they were patient, that they had all the time in
the world, and that one way or another, they would
have what they wanted. When the visions ended, I was
alone except for Sarah, who stood at my bedroom door.
When she spoke, it was in a voice that wasn't
quite hers older and younger simultaneously. She told me I
had three days to decide. Three days to choose between

(21:57):
joining them willingly or watching my family destroy it piece
by piece. Then she walked back to her room and
climbed into bed as if nothing had happened. In the morning,
she didn't remember any of it. I didn't sleep for
the next two days. I couldn't. Every time I closed
my eyes, I saw those visions, felt the weight of
the choice crushing down on me. My parents noticed something

(22:19):
was wrong, but they had their own problems. My mother
was having episodes every few hours now, and my father
had stopped going to work, spending his days sitting on
the porch with his shotgun watching the tree line. On
the second night, missus Edith appeared at our door. She
didn't explain how she knew where we lived or why
she'd come. She just walked in like she owned the place,

(22:40):
carrying a bag full of items that looked like they
belonged in a museum, iron implements, bundles of dried plants,
stones with holes worn through them by water. She took
one look at our family and shook her head sadly.
She told us the truth, then, the truth she'd only
hinted at in the library. Our family had a history
with the little people that went back generations. My great

(23:03):
great great grandfather had been part of a group of
settlers who had dynamited a cave system in these mountains,
trying to force out what they thought were indigenous people
hiding from the government. They weren't indigenous people. They were
the pale ones, the moon eyed people, the yunwitsunsdi. Hundreds
of them were killed, maybe thousands. The survivors retreated deeper

(23:26):
into the mountains into cave systems that no human had
ever mapped, but they remembered, They always remembered, and every
few generations they would call in that debt a life
for a life. Missus Edith said there was a way
to break the cycle, but it required confronting them directly,
going to their place of power, and making a different bargain.

(23:49):
She'd seen it done once before, when she was young.
A man had traded his remaining years for his children's freedom.
He'd walked into the caves an old man of forty
and come out looking ninety, but his children were free.
She offered to take us to the place, an old
cave entrance that most people had forgotten existed. She said

(24:09):
it had to be done on the third night, when
their power was focused on claiming what they saw as theirs.
My parents were horrified, ready to pack up and leave immediately,
but missus Edith stopped them with a single question. Did
they really think they could run from something that had
waited over a century for revenge. The cave entrance was
hidden behind a waterfall about five miles from our farm,

(24:32):
accessible only by a deer path that seemed to disappear
and reappear.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
As we walked.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
Missus Edith led the way, carrying an old mining lantern
that burned with a flame that seemed too bright for
its size. My father followed with his shotgun, though we
all knew it would be useless against what we were facing.
My mother held Sarah's hand, whispering prayers under her breath.
I walked at the rear, carrying the bag of iron
and herbs missus Edith had brought. The sun was as

(25:00):
we reached the waterfall, painting the sky the color of blood.
Behind the cascade of water was an opening in the
rock face, perfectly round, about six feet in diameter. The
edges were smooth, worn by centuries of water or perhaps
something else. Cold air flowed from the opening, carrying that
same smell of deep earth and ancient things. Missus Edith

(25:23):
turned to us before we entered. She explained that once
we crossed the threshold, we would be in their domain.
The rules of our world wouldn't apply, Time would move differently,
distance would become meaningless. The only way out was through,
and the only protection we had was our will and
the iron we carried. She gave each of us an
iron nail to hold and told us that no matter

(25:45):
what we saw or heard, we must not let go
of them. The iron would anchor us to the human world,
keep us from being absorbed completely into theirs. Then she
lit herbs in a small bronze bowl, filling the air
with acrid smoke made my eyes water but also seemed
to sharpen my vision. We entered the cave in single file,

(26:06):
the sound of the waterfall fading impossibly quickly behind us.
The tunnel should have been dark, but it wasn't. The
walls themselves seemed to emit a faint phosphorescence, just enough
to see by. The rock was smooth, almost organic, with
veins of some crystalline material that pulsed with a rhythm,
like a heartbeat. We walked for what felt like hours.

(26:29):
The tunnel branched and twisted, leading always downward. Sometimes we
passed through chambers so vast our lights couldn't find the ceiling.
Other times the passage narrowed so much we had to crawl,
And always, always, we could feel them watching us. They
didn't hide here. This was their place, and they moved

(26:49):
through the shadows openly, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, their
glowing eyes creating constellations in the darkness. They didn't approach us,
not yet. They were waiting for something. Finally, we emerged
into a cathedral sized cavern. The walls were covered with
carvings that hurt to look at, geometric patterns that seemed

(27:10):
to move and shift when you weren't looking directly at them.
In the center of the cavern was a pool of
water so perfectly still it looked like black glass. And
around the pool, arranged in concentric circles, were the little people.
These weren't like the ones I'd seen before. These were ancient,
their features more alien, their forms less stable. They flickered

(27:32):
between solid and translucent, between humanoid and something else entirely,
and at the very edge of the pool, standing on
a raised platform of stone, was their leader, or at
least the one who spoke for them. It was taller
than the others, maybe four and a half feet, and
its features were more defined. It could almost pass for

(27:53):
human if you didn't look too closely, if you ignored
the eyes that held the weight of millennia, if you
overlook the way it's seemed to exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously.
When it spoke, its voice resonated through the stone itself,
through our bones, through the very air we breathed. It
spoke of the debt, ode, of the blood spilled, of

(28:15):
the balance that must be restored. It showed us, all
of us, the massacre our ancestor had participated in. We
experienced it from their perspective, felt their terror and pain
as the dynamite brought the mountain down on their ancient home,
crushing their children, their elders, everyone who couldn't flee in time.

(28:36):
The leader pointed at me and spoke directly into my mind.
I was the one they had chosen, the one who
carried the bloodline most strongly. I could end this now,
It said, come willingly and my family would be free. Refuse,
and they would take all of us, one by one,
over years if necessary. They had waited over a century.

(28:58):
They could wait longer. Missus Edith stepped forward, then, speaking
in a language I didn't recognize, but somehow understood. She
wasn't pleading or begging. She was negotiating, laying out terms
like a lawyer in some cosmic court. She spoke of
the old laws, the agreements made before humans walked upright,
the rules that even beings as ancient as these were

(29:20):
bound by The Leader listened, its expression unreadable, then it responded,
and they went back and forth for what felt like days.
The rest of us stood frozen, afraid to move, afraid
to break whatever spell was allowing this negotiation to happen. Finally,
missus Edith turned to us. There was a way, she said,

(29:41):
but it required sacrifice, not of life, but of something
perhaps more precious. The little people fed on human potential,
on the possibilities inherent in our short lives. They wanted
to taste experience through us, to remember what it was
like to feel time passing to no mortality. Someone would

(30:02):
have to give them that, not by dying, but by
sharing their remaining years, letting the little people experience life
through their senses, their memories, their dreams. Stay tuned for
more backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
It would age the person, rapidly, burning through decades in moments,

(30:24):
but it would satisfy the debt. My father stepped forward immediately,
but the Leader shook its head. It had to be
someone of the bloodline, someone who carried the guilt of
the ancestor. That meant me or Sarah. The choice was
no choice.

Speaker 2 (30:39):
At all.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
I couldn't let my eleven year old sister pay for
crimes committed before she was born. I stepped forward, still
clutching the iron nail so tight it cut into my palm.
I said I would do it. The Leader smiled then,
that terrible, too wide smile. But missus Edith wasn't done.
She produced something from bag, a leather journal, yellow with age.

(31:03):
She opened it and began to read. It was a
confession written by my ancestor, detailing not just the massacre,
but the reason for it. The little people hadn't been
innocent victims. They had been taking children from the settlement,
transforming them into something neither human nor other, creating hybrids
that existed in agony between worlds. The massacre had been wrong,

(31:25):
missus Edith said, but it had been provoked. The dead existed,
but it was not one sided. The old laws spoke
of balance, not vengeance. What was required was not the
full measure of my years, but a portion equal to
what had been taken. The Leader considered this for a
long moment. Around us, the little people began to whisper

(31:47):
among themselves, their voices creating a sound like wind through
dry leaves. Finally it nodded. The bargain was struck. Seven years.
I would give them seven years of my life, not
all at once, but spread throughout my lifetime, seven years
during which they could see through my eyes, experience through
my senses, know what it was like to be human

(32:09):
and mortal. In exchange, the debt would be paid and
my family would be free. The ritual was unlike anything
I could have imagined. I was told to wade into
the blackpool at the center of the cavern. The water
was neither hot nor cold, but it felt alive, like
it was conscious in examining me. As I stood waste

(32:30):
deep in that impossible water, the little people began to sing.
It wasn't singing in any human sense. It was a
vibration that seemed to come from the rock itself, from
the water, from realities foundation. The carvings on the walls
began to glow and move, telling stories of civilizations that
rose and fell before humans discovered fire, of wars fought

(32:53):
in dimensions. We couldn't perceive of the slow decline of
magic as the world grew more rational and defined. The
leader approached me, gliding across the water's surface without creating
a ripple. It pressed its hand to my forehead, and
I felt something fundamental inside me shift. It wasn't painful, exactly,
but it was violating in a way that transcended physical sensation.

(33:17):
I could feel them entering me, not possessing me, but
creating a connection that would last the rest of my life.
Images flooded my mind. I saw the world through their eyes,
understood their hunger for sensation, their addiction to the intensity
of mortal existence. They had lived so long that they
had forgotten what it meant to truly experience. They were

(33:39):
like addicts, and human experience.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
Was their drug.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
But I also felt their sadness, their genuine grief for
what they had become. They hadn't always been like this. Once.
They had been something else, something closer to what we
would call angels or spirits, But time had corrupted them,
twisted them into parasites, feeding on human potential. The ritual

(34:04):
lasted until dawn, though in that place dawn was just
a concept. When it was over, I collapsed in the
shallow water and my father had to carry me out.
As we left, I looked back to see the leader
watching us. It raised one hand in what might have
been farewell or warning. The journey out of the caves
took minutes rather than hours. We emerged into brilliant sunlight

(34:29):
that felt like knives in my eyes after so long
in the darkness. I looked at my hands and saw
they were older, the skin slightly looser, the veins more prominent.
Not drastically aged, but different. I would learn later that
I'd aged about six months in that single night, the
first payment on my seven year debt. We left Black

(34:49):
Hollow Farm that very day. My parents packed what they
could fit in the truck and abandon the rest. We
drove north without stopping until we crossed the Pennsylvania border,
and even then my father kept checking the rear view
mirror as if expecting to see pale figures following us.
The immediate effects of the bargain became apparent quickly. Every
few months, I would have episodes where I would age

(35:12):
rapidly over the course of a few days. Not enough
for others to notice unless they were paying close attention,
but enough that by the time I graduated high school,
I looked like I was in my mid twenties rather
than eighteen. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst
part was the connection. True to the bargain, they could
experience life through me. During important moments, moments of intense

(35:35):
emotion or sensation, I would feel them there, riding along
behind my eyes. My first kiss, my graduation, my wedding day,
the birth of my children. They were there for all
of it, feeding on the intensity of human experience. Sometimes,
late at night, I could hear their whispers in my mind.

(35:55):
They would tell me things, share knowledge that humans weren't
meant to have, learned about civilizations that existed before the
Last Ice Age, about the true nature of what we
call reality, about the thin barriers that separate our world
from others. This knowledge was a burden that grew heavier
with each passing year. Sarah recovered. Mostly the connection the

(36:17):
Little people had established with her faded after we left,
though she never forgot what she had seen. She grew
up to become a folklore professor specializing in Appalachian mythology.
She never returned to West Virginia, but she spent her
career documenting stories of encounters with the little People, building
an archive that she says will one day help others

(36:38):
who find themselves marked by ancient debts. My mother's episode
stopped once we left the farm, but she was never
quite the same. She would have moments where she would
stop and stare at nothing, and when asked what she
was looking at, she would say she was making sure
they weren't there. She died ten years later, peacefully in
her sleep, but her last words were about the beautiful,

(37:00):
pale children who were waiting for her. My father threw
himself into normalcy with an almost manic intensity. He got
a job at a factory, bought a house in the suburbs,
and never spoke of what happened at Black Hollow Farm.
But I would catch him sometimes staring at shadows, his
hand moving unconsciously to where he used to keep his shotgun.

(37:21):
He died of a heart attack five years ago, and
I found dozens of journals in his desk, all filled
with the same phrase written over and over. They are
still watching. As for me, I've lived with the bargain
for thirty years now. I felt myself age and bursts
payment on a debt I didn't create, but inherited. Nonetheless,

(37:41):
by my calculation, I have about two more years of
debt to pay, two more years of rapid aging, of
feeling them behind my eyes of carrying knowledge that pulls
at the edges of sanity. But I also carry the
knowledge that the debt will be paid in full, My
children will be free of it. The Michael that started
with violence over a century ago will end with me.

(38:04):
That's worth seven years. That's worth the price. I'm telling
this story now because Black Hollow Farm is for sale again.
I saw the listing online last week, marketed as a
historic property with original eighteen seventies construction, forty acres of
pristine wilderness, perfect for a family looking to escape the
chaos of modern life. The pictures show the house repainted,

(38:27):
the porch repaired, looking almost inviting in the carefully edited photos.
But I know better. I've driven by the property several
times over the years, always careful not to stop, never
getting close enough to trigger whatever still resides in those woods.
The house never stays occupied for long. Families move in,
optimistic and leave broken. If they leave it all the

(38:50):
locals won't talk about it directly, but they know they remember.
I've tried to have the property condemned, but the paperwork
always gets lost. I've tried to buy it myself, just
to tear it down, but my offers are always refused
by owners I can never quite contact directly. It's as
if the land itself wants to remain accessible, wants to

(39:11):
keep drawing in new families, new possibilities for the little
people to exploit. Because that's the thing I've learned through
my connection with them. The bargain I made satisfied the
specific debt my family owed, but it didn't banish them.
They're still there in the caves beneath the mountains, in
the dark hollows where the sun never quite reaches. They're

(39:33):
waiting for the next family to move in, the next
child to wander too close to the root, seller, the
next person to be curious enough to follow the pale
lights into the forest. They've adapted to the old rules
that missus Edith knew, the ancient laws that allowed us
to bargain our way free. Those are fading from human memory.
She died five years after our encounter, taking much of

(39:56):
that knowledge with her. The books and journals she showed
me have vanished from the library. The new librarian, a
young woman from outside the county, looks at me blankly
when I ask about the locked cabinet in the back room.
The little people are patient They've waited thousands of years,
and they'll wait thousands more. As humanity forgets the old stories,

(40:18):
forgets the warnings, forgets that some doors should never be opened,
the little people grow stronger. They're not evil. I've come
to understand they're simply alien, operating by rules and needs
we can't fully comprehend. But that doesn't make them less dangerous.
Through my connection with them, I've learned things about the
Appalachian Mountains that would terrify most people. These mountains are

(40:41):
honeycombed with cave systems that don't appear on any geological survey.
Some of these caves exist partially outside our dimension, connecting
to places that our physics says shouldn't exist. The little
people use these passages to move not just through space,
but through time, through realities adjacent to our own. They're

(41:02):
not the only things living in those deep places. There
are other entities, things that make the little people seem
almost human by comparison, ancient things that were here before
the earth cooled, things that exist in states of matter
we haven't discovered yet. The little people sometimes serve as
a buffer between our world and these deeper horrors, though,

(41:23):
whether intentionally or just by their presence. I'm not sure
the Cherokee knew some of this. Their stories of the
yunued Sunsdy were warnings, but they were also instructions for coexistence.
There were protocols, proper ways to interact with the little
people that maintained balance, Gifts left at certain stones, words

(41:44):
spoken at specific times. Children taught from birth to recognize
the signs and know when to look away. But that
knowledge was scattered when the Cherokee were forced from their lands,
and the European settlers who replaced them brought their own
fears and violent solutions. Mun eyed people the settlers described
were likely a different group, perhaps humans who had been

(42:04):
changed by too much contact with the little people transformed
into something between species. These hybrids, I've learned, were the
real tragedy, caught between worlds, belonging to neither. They existed
in constant agony. The little people saw them as failures
and humans saw them as abominations. Most didn't survive long,

(42:27):
but their brief existence terrified both populations. This is still happening.
Through my connection. I sometimes catch glimpses of other humans
who have made bargains or been taken. They exist in
the cave cities, neither fully human nor fully other, serving purposes.
I don't understand. Some seem content, having found a kind

(42:48):
of peace in the alienness. Others are clearly insane, their
minds shattered by exposure to realities human consciousness wasn't meant
to process. I've seen the city they've built in those
impossible caves, Vast structures carved from living rock, geometries that
shouldn't be able to exist in three dimensional space. Libraries

(43:10):
filled with knowledge written in languages that predate human speech.
Galleries of art that tells the history of the Earth
from perspectives we can't imagine. It's beautiful and terrible. A
testament to intelligence is so far beyond human that we're
like ants trying to understand a symphony. But here's what
truly haunts me. The little people aren't dying out. They're

(43:33):
not retreating further into the mountains. They're adapting, evolving, learning
to navigate our modern world. The old barriers that kept
them at bay, iron and running water and certain herbs,
these are becoming less effective. They're learning to use our technology,
our interconnectedness, our skepticism of the supernatural. I felt them

(43:56):
testing the boundaries of our bargain, pushing to see more,
experience more. They're fascinated by our digital world, by the
Internet and virtual reality. They see these as bridges, ways
to interact with humanity without the physical limitations that once
constrain them. Sometimes, when I'm online late at night, I

(44:16):
feel them there, using my eyes to read my consciousness
to understand they're planning something. I can feel it in
the connection, a building excitement, a sense of anticipation. They
whisper about a convergence, a time coming soon when the
barriers between worlds will be at their thinnest. They show

(44:36):
me visions, sometimes fragments, of possible futures. In some humanity
and the little people achieve a symbiosis, each species benefiting
from the other. In others, the boundaries dissolve entirely, and
our reality is fundamentally changed, transformed into something unrecognizable. Last
night I felt the final payment begin. I've been expecting

(45:00):
it for months, feeling the debt drawing to a close,
like a timer counting down in my bones. Stay tuned
for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
The aging came faster, this time, more intense. I watched
in the mirror as years passed in hours, my hair
graying and thinning, lines deepening on my face, my joint

(45:24):
stiffening with arthritis that developed in real time. But with
this final payment came clarity, a lifting of veils I
didn't know existed. I saw the full truth of my
family's history with the Little People. The massacre my ancestor
participated in wasn't the beginning. The connection went back further,
much further. One of my ancestors, ten generations back, had

(45:47):
been one of the first European settlers to make contact
with them. He had made a deal, trading his daughter
for knowledge of where to find gold in the mountains.
That daughter became one of the first hybrids, and her
anguish had echoed through the generations, creating a resonance that
drew my family and the Little People together again and again.

(46:08):
The massacre had been an attempt to sever that connection,
to end the cycle through violence, but violence only deepened
the debt, created new obligations, new chains binding us together.
My bargain hadn't ended anything, It had simply transformed the connection,
made it more subtle, more complex. As the final payment completed,

(46:30):
as I felt the last of those seven years drained
from me. The leader of the little people appeared to
me one last time, not in the flesh, but in
a vision so vivid it might as well have been real.
It stood in my bedroom, glowing with that soft pearl light,
its features almost sympathetic. It spoke to me directly, not

(46:50):
in images or inserted thoughts, but in actual words, though
its mouth never moved. It thanked me for the years
I had given, for the experience as I had shared
through me. It said they had remembered what they had lost,
remembered why they had once been fascinated by humanity. But
more importantly, through our connection, something unexpected had happened. They

(47:14):
had begun to change, to evolve in a new direction.
The symbiosis they had forced upon me had affected them
as much as it had affected me. They had tasted
mortality again, felt the urgency of a limited lifespan, the
intensity that comes from knowing time is finite. Some of
them wanted more of this feeling. They were considering a

(47:35):
new kind of bargain, not taking human years, but trading
immortality for the ability to truly live, to experience, rather
than just observe. It told me that Black Hollow Farm
would soon have new occupants. A family was already in
the process of buying it, drawn by the same economic
pressures that had brought my family there thirty years ago.

(47:57):
But this time would be different. People would make them
an offer, not a threat, a true exchange knowledge and
longevity for experience and sensation. Some would accept, some would refuse,
but the choice would be genuine before it faded. The
leader told me one last thing, The connection between us

(48:18):
would never fully sever, even with the debt paid. I
would carry a piece of them with me for the
rest of my days, and they would carry a piece
of me into their eternity. We were bound now, not
by debt, but by experience, by the years we had shared.
In a way, I was now part of their history,
their mythology, just as they had become part of mine.

(48:40):
I'm writing this down because someone needs to know the truth.
Not the folklore, not the legends, but the reality of
what lives in those mountains. They're not monsters, but they're
not angels either. They're something else, something that exists parallel
to humanity, occasionally intersecting with our world in ways that
can be beautiful or terrible, depending on how we approach them.

(49:04):
If you find yourself in the Appalachian Mountains, if you
see lights in the forest that shouldn't be there, if
you hear giggling that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere,
remember this story. Remember that curiosity can be a door that,
once opened, can never be fully closed. Remember that some
debts pass through generations and some bargains echo through centuries.

(49:28):
But also remember that fear and violence are not the answer.
The little people respond to respect, to acknowledgment of the
old laws, to bargains made in good faith. They're changing, evolving,
possibly becoming something new. What that means for humanity, I
don't know, but I do know that the old ways
of dealing with them, either through violence or superstition, no

(49:51):
longer work. The mountains keep their secrets, but sometimes, in
the right circumstances, they share them with those brave or
foolish enough to listen. I've been both brave and foolish,
and I've paid the price for that knowledge, seven years
of my life gone. But in exchange, I've seen wonders
and horrors that few humans ever experience. I've touched the

(50:13):
infinite and survived, changed, but intact was it worth it.
Ask me when I'm on my deathbed years earlier than
I should be. Ask me when I wake at night
feeling them behind my eyes, experiencing my dreams. Ask me
when I look at my children, knowing they're free from
a debt that could have destroyed them. The answer changes

(50:36):
depending on when you ask, but one thing remains constant.
I survived Black Hollow Farm. I faced the little people
and found a way through the darkness, and because of that,
because of the price I paid, my family is free.
But Black Hollow Farm remains waiting for its next victims
or partners, depending on how you look at it. The

(50:57):
little people remain ancient and pay and evolving. The mountains
remain holding secrets older than human memory, and doorways to
worlds were not meant to know. This is my warning.
The little people are real. They're waiting in the dark
places of the world, in the spaces between what we
know and what we fear. They're not going away. If anything,

(51:20):
they're growing stronger, more present, more interested in our world
as it changes and develops. Be careful in the old places,
be respectful of the ancient things, And if you ever
find yourself faced with pale children with glowing eyes, who
giggle without moving their mouths, who offer you wonders in
exchange for just a little of your time. Remember my story.

(51:42):
Remember that some prices are worth paying, but only if
you understand what you're buying. Remember that violence only deepens debts.
And remember that sometimes the monsters in the dark are
just lonely alien things trying to understand what it means
to be alive in a universe that has forgotten them.
The mountains remember everything, The little people remember everything, and

(52:05):
now through this story, you will remember too. The debt
is paid, the cycle is broken, but the story, the
story continues, waiting for the next family to move into
Black Hollow Farm, waiting for the next child to wander
too close to the root cellar, waiting for the next
bargain to be struck in the darkness beneath the ancient mountains.

(52:27):
May they choose more wisely than we did. May they
find a better path than violence or surrender. And may
the little people, in their slow evolution towards something new,
find what they're looking for without destroying the humanity in
those they touch. This is my testimony, This is my warning,
This is the truth about the little people of Black Hollow.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
Farm s PA,