November 23, 2025 • 55 mins
Tonight’s episode takes us deep into the backwoods of northern Alabama, into a summer that officially never happened. In 1983, something came out of the forests around Piney Creek that permanently scarred a rural community and left behind a story still spoken only in whispers. It began with routine livestock killings that didn’t stay routine for long. A prize bull was found torn apart in ways that made no sense, surrounded by tracks that seemed to shift between animal and human.
Within weeks, farms across miles of countryside were hit, and the sightings followed. Locals described a towering figure that moved upright like a man, covered in thick fur, with a wolfish head and eyes that looked disturbingly human. Fear spread fast, especially after the creature was seen at a nursery window, staring in at an eighteen-month-old child.That moment sparked a hunt that would become one of the most controversial in Alabama history.
Dozens of armed men flooded the woods at dawn, determined to stop whatever was stalking their families and livestock. What they discovered in an abandoned storm cellar wasn’t the simple monster they expected. The creature they cornered was wounded, terrified, and shockingly aware. It spoke. It pleaded. And beneath the blood and matted fur, a silver cross hung around its neck. When the truth finally surfaced, it wasn’t a beast at all, but a missing college student who had been investigating local legends and never made it home. The government arrived within hours.
Evidence vanished, threats were made, and everyone involved was forced into silence. The official explanation blamed wild dogs and mass hysteria, but years later a different account emerged from someone who claimed to have seen the real file. According to that testimony, the military had been running biological enhancement experiments in underground facilities throughout rural Alabama since the early 1970s. Deep in limestone caves, they discovered a parasitic organism capable of rewriting human DNA and triggering violent, rapid transformations. A containment breach released infected subjects into the woods, and the organism kept spreading.
The most horrifying detail is that victims were said to remain conscious during the change, trapped inside bodies they couldn’t control, forced to witness the violence their transformed selves carried out. The missing student was one of those victims, infected during his research and turned into something caught between man and beast.
And the story doesn’t end there. Similar incidents reportedly surfaced later in nearby counties, and patterns like this have been whispered about across the country under different names. Even now, the abandoned farm where it ended remains sealed, the storm cellar periodically covered in fresh concrete by unknown hands. Locals still report strange howls, impossible tracks, and the kind of disappearances nobody wants to talk about too loudly.
This episode pieces together a chain of witnesses who risked everything to break decades of silence, revealing a picture far darker than folklore. The suggestion is simple and terrifying: this wasn’t supernatural at all, but human experimentation gone catastrophically wrong, a Cold War nightmare walking loose in the woods.
As you listen, remember that officially none of this happened. No documents exist, no agency acknowledges it, and the story is buried under denial. But in backwoods communities across the South, doors still get locked at sundown, livestock still vanish to something that tears through fencing like paper, and on quiet nights near Piney Creek, people still swear they hear the howls. Not quite wolf, not quite human, but something terrible living in the space between.
Within weeks, farms across miles of countryside were hit, and the sightings followed. Locals described a towering figure that moved upright like a man, covered in thick fur, with a wolfish head and eyes that looked disturbingly human. Fear spread fast, especially after the creature was seen at a nursery window, staring in at an eighteen-month-old child.That moment sparked a hunt that would become one of the most controversial in Alabama history.
Dozens of armed men flooded the woods at dawn, determined to stop whatever was stalking their families and livestock. What they discovered in an abandoned storm cellar wasn’t the simple monster they expected. The creature they cornered was wounded, terrified, and shockingly aware. It spoke. It pleaded. And beneath the blood and matted fur, a silver cross hung around its neck. When the truth finally surfaced, it wasn’t a beast at all, but a missing college student who had been investigating local legends and never made it home. The government arrived within hours.
Evidence vanished, threats were made, and everyone involved was forced into silence. The official explanation blamed wild dogs and mass hysteria, but years later a different account emerged from someone who claimed to have seen the real file. According to that testimony, the military had been running biological enhancement experiments in underground facilities throughout rural Alabama since the early 1970s. Deep in limestone caves, they discovered a parasitic organism capable of rewriting human DNA and triggering violent, rapid transformations. A containment breach released infected subjects into the woods, and the organism kept spreading.
The most horrifying detail is that victims were said to remain conscious during the change, trapped inside bodies they couldn’t control, forced to witness the violence their transformed selves carried out. The missing student was one of those victims, infected during his research and turned into something caught between man and beast.
And the story doesn’t end there. Similar incidents reportedly surfaced later in nearby counties, and patterns like this have been whispered about across the country under different names. Even now, the abandoned farm where it ended remains sealed, the storm cellar periodically covered in fresh concrete by unknown hands. Locals still report strange howls, impossible tracks, and the kind of disappearances nobody wants to talk about too loudly.
This episode pieces together a chain of witnesses who risked everything to break decades of silence, revealing a picture far darker than folklore. The suggestion is simple and terrifying: this wasn’t supernatural at all, but human experimentation gone catastrophically wrong, a Cold War nightmare walking loose in the woods.
As you listen, remember that officially none of this happened. No documents exist, no agency acknowledges it, and the story is buried under denial. But in backwoods communities across the South, doors still get locked at sundown, livestock still vanish to something that tears through fencing like paper, and on quiet nights near Piney Creek, people still swear they hear the howls. Not quite wolf, not quite human, but something terrible living in the space between.
Mark as Played
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.
The old timers in Limestone County still won't talk about
what happened in the summer of nineteen eighty three. They'll
(01:08):
change the subject if you bring it up, maybe stare
off into the distance for a moment, remembering things they'd
rather forget. But every now and then, usually after a
few drinks at the VFW hall, one of them might
lean in close and whisper about the time something that
wasn't quite man and wasn't quite animal came down from
the hills and turned their quiet corner of Alabama into
(01:29):
a living nightmare. The newspaper archives from that year tell
you nothing. Sure you'll find mention of livestock losses, some
vague reports about wild dogs, a hunting accident that left
two men hospitalized. But the real story, the one that
made grown men sleep with loaded shotguns beside their beds
and caused three families to pack up and leave the
(01:52):
county altogether. That story never made it to print. I
know because my grandfather was there. He was one of
them who went into those woods on that sweltering August
night hunting something that by all rights shouldn't exist. He
came back different, quieter. He sold his farm the following
spring and moved to Birmingham, never to return. But before
(02:15):
he died he told me everything, And now I'm going
to tell you. Just remember when you're lying in bed
tonight and you hear something howling in the distance, it's
probably just a dog. Probably. The trouble started on the
Watkins farm in late May of nineteen eighty three. Tom
Watkins had owned that stretch of bottom land along Piney
(02:37):
Creek for going on twenty years raising cattle and growing cotton.
Like his daddy before him, he was a practical man,
not given to flights of fancy or superstition. So when
he found his prize angus bull dead in the north
pasture on the morning of May twenty eighth, his first
thought was disease. But disease doesn't tear an animal apart
(02:58):
like that. There in the morning, missed coffee mug trembling
in his hand, staring at what was left of a
two thousand pound bull. The animal's throat had been ripped out,
its chest cavity opened up like someone had taken a
can opener to it. But the strangest part was the tracks.
They started out looking like dog prints, big ones, maybe
(03:19):
from a mastiff or Saint Bernard, But as they led
away from the carcass, they changed, got longer, started looking
almost like bare human feet, but with claw marks at
the tips of the toes. When Sarah Watkins found her
husband still standing there an hour later, she asked what
in the Lord's name had happened. Tom could barely whisper
(03:41):
that he didn't know. But whatever did this, it wasn't
no coyote. They called the sheriff, of course. Deputy Ray
Coleman drove out, took one look at the scene, and
radioed for the sheriff himself to come. Sheriff Bill Norton
had policed in Limestone County for fifteen years. I'd seen
all manner of strange things in that time, but this
(04:03):
was something new. Norton asked Tom if he was sure
he hadn't heard nothing the previous night. Tom explained that
sound don't carry too good down in the bottom, that
there could have been a whole war going on and
they might not have heard it. Up at the house.
Norton took photographs, made plaster casts of the clearest tracks.
He told Tom it was probably wild dogs, maybe a
(04:25):
pack that had gone feral, But Tom saw the doubt
in his eyes. Wild dogs don't walk on two legs.
Words spread through the county like wildfire. By noon, half
the farmers in the area had driven by to gauk
at the scene. By evening, theories were flying at the
feed store. Some said it was a bear, though nobody
(04:46):
had seen a bear in Limestone County since the nineteen forties.
Others blamed it on those hippies living in the commune.
Over in Madison County. A few of the older folks
crossed themselves and muttered about things better left unspoken. The
Watkins family didn't sleep well that night. Tom kept his
twelve gage loaded and propped against the bedroom wall. Their
(05:07):
three kids, ranging from eight to fourteen, all ended up
in their parents' bed by midnight. Every sound outside, every
creak of the old farmhouse, sent hearts racing. Around three
in the morning, their old bloodhound, Duke started howling, not
his normal baying, but a high, terrified sound that Tom
had never heard from him before. Tom grabbed the shotgun
(05:31):
and headed for the door, but Sarah caught his arm,
begging him not to go out there. He insisted he
had to check on the animals. Couldn't lose no more cattle.
He flipped on the porch light and stepped outside. Duke
was at the end of his chain, pulling so hard
against it that he was choking himself, trying to get
away from something in the darkness. Tom swept the flashlight
(05:53):
beam across the yard, the shotgun following its path. That's
when he saw the eyes. They were at the edge
of the light's reach, maybe forty yards out, yellow reflective
like a dog's eyes, but set too high off the ground.
Tom was six foot two, and those eyes looked to
be at his height or taller. They stared at each
(06:14):
other for a few long seconds, then the eyes blinked
and disappeared. Tom backed slowly into the house, never taking
his eyes off the darkness. He locked the door, then
pushed the heavy oak kitchen table against it for good measure.
They sat up the rest of the night, all five
of them huddled in the living room. When the sun
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finally came up, Tom went out to check the property.
He found tracks in the dirt near where he'd seen
the eyes, the same strange prints that changed from animal
to almost human. They led up to the fence line
where something had stood and watched the house for who
knows how long. On the fence post, about seven feet up,
there were deep claw marks in the wood. Tom called
(06:57):
his neighbors, the Hendersons, who farmed the adjacent property. Bob
Henderson answered on the first ring, which was unusual for
six thirty in the morning. Tom asked if they were
all right over there. There was a pause before Bob
explained they'd lost six chickens the previous night. Something had
torn right through the coop's wire like it was paper.
(07:18):
Julie was pretty shook up, claiming she saw something walking
through the yard on its hind legs like a man,
but covered in fur. Bob had told her she was
seeing things. He asked Tom what the hell was going on.
By the first week of June, every farm within five
miles of Piney Creek had lost livestock. The Hendersons lost
(07:39):
more chickens. The Mitchells found three goats dead, torn apart,
just like Tom's bull. Old Man Patterson's prized hunting dogs
disappeared one night, nothing left but blood and patches of fur.
The story started piling up two Julie Henderson wasn't the
only one who'd seen it. Fourteen year old Jimmy Mitchell
(08:00):
claimed he saw something tall and hairy crossing the road
one night when he was biking home from his girlfriend's house.
It ran on two legs, he said, but hunched over
like it wasn't quite comfortable being upright. When it turned
to look at him, its face scared him worse than
anything he'd ever seen. It had what looked like a
dog snout, but with human eyes. Martha Coleman, who ran
(08:22):
the General store said her cousin down in Morgan County
had been dealing with something similar, cattle mutilations, strange tracks,
glimpses of something that shouldn't exist. He'd called it a
dog man, said the Cherokee had legends about such things,
creatures that were neither man nor beast, but something caught between.
The Sheriff's department was overwhelmed with calls. Norton brought in
(08:46):
a tracker from Tennessee, an old mountain man named Elijah Cooper,
who claimed he could track anything that walked on legs.
Cooper spent three days following trails through the woods along
Piney Creek. When he came back, he was pale and shaky.
Cooper told the sheriff he'd tracked bear, cougar, wild boar,
and once even an escaped circus tiger, but he ain't
(09:08):
never seen nothing like what made them tracks. They start
as dog, then changed to something else, then back to dog,
like it can't decide what it wants to be, and
the smell was like wet dog mixed with something rotten,
like death. Norton tried to keep a lid on things,
but panic was starting to set in. Families were keeping
(09:30):
their kids home from school. Farmers were bringing their livestock
into their barns at night, some even bringing smaller animals
into their houses. Gun sales at Henderson's Hardware tripled in
two weeks. Then came the night of June fifteenth, when
things went from bad to worse. The Johnsons lived on
a small farm about two miles from the Watkins place.
(09:52):
They had four kids, the youngest just eighteen months old.
Around midnight, Lisa Johnson woke to the sound of her
baby crime. She nudged her husband Mark, but he just
mumbled and rolled over. She got up and made her
way down the hallway to the nursery. The window was open.
She knew she'd closed and locked it before bed. The
(10:13):
curtains moved in the breeze and moonlight spilled across the floor.
The baby was standing in his crib, tears streaming down
his face, reaching toward the window. That's when she saw it.
The thing was crouched on the windowsill, half in and
half out of the room. In the moonlight, she could
see its huge shape. It had the body of a man,
(10:33):
but covered in dark fur. Its head was elongated like
a wolf's, but its eyes were human intelligent. It looked
at her with what almost seemed like curiosity. Lisa screamed,
the kind of scream that comes from the very depths
of maternal terror. The creature jerked back, snarling, and disappeared
(10:54):
into the night. Mark burst into the room with a
baseball bat, the other children crying in the hallway behind him.
They found muddy prints on the nursery floor, handprints on
the windowsill, but with claws. The baby's crib had scratch
marks on the rails, as if something had been trying
to figure out how to open it. The Johnsons packed
(11:15):
up that very night and went to stay with relatives
in Huntsville. They never came back for their things. After
the Johnson incident, Sheriff Norton called a town meeting. The
Limestone County Courthouse was packed to capacity on the evening
of June twentieth. Farmers, their wives, their children all crammed
into the old building. The air was thick with cigarette
(11:37):
smoke and fear. Norton stood at the podium, looking older
than his fifty three years. He told the crowd he
wasn't going to sugarcoat this. They had a problem. Something
was out there killing livestock and threatening their families. He'd
contacted the state police, Fish and Game, even the university.
Nobody knew what they were dealing with, and shouted from
(12:00):
the back that it was a damn werewolf. A few
nervous laughs, but not many. Norton continued that he didn't
care what they called it. What mattered was stopping it.
He was forming a hunting party. They were going into
those woods and they were going to find this thing
and kill it. Tom Watkins stood up and declared he
was in. Bob Henderson stood next. One by one, men
(12:24):
throughout the courthouse stood by the end. Norton had forty
two volunteers. They agreed to meet at dawn the next day,
armed and ready. That night, as the men prepared for
the hunt, the creature struck again, this time at the
Sawyer Place, five miles on the other side of Piney Creek.
Dan Sawyer was a Vietnam veteran, tough as nails and
(12:46):
not easily rattled. He heard his horses screaming around two
in the morning and grabbed his M fourteen rifle, a
souvenir he'd managed to bring back from the war. The
thing was in the corral with his horses. In the moonlight,
could see it clearly for the first time. It stood
nearly seven feet tall, covered in dark brown fur. Its
(13:07):
legs were bent wrong like a dog's hind legs, but
stretched to support an upright posture. Its arms were too long,
hanging almost to its knees, ending in hands that were
nearly human but tipped with black claws. But it was
the head that would haunt Dan's dreams for the rest
of his life. The skull was elongated like a wolf's,
(13:28):
covered in fur, with a long snout full of teeth,
but the eyes. The eyes were human, brown, intelligent, almost sad.
Dan raised the rifle and fired. The creature howled a
sound that was part human scream and part animal roar.
The horses went crazy, kicking at their stalls trying to escape.
(13:51):
Dan fired again, and he knew he hit it because
he saw the impact saw it stagger, but instead of falling,
it turned and looked at him, just looked at him
with those human eyes. Then it leaped over the six
foot corral fence like it was nothing and disappeared into
the darkness. Dan found blood on the ground black in
(14:12):
the moonlight. He followed the trail for a few yards,
but his courage failed him. Whatever that thing was wounded
or not, he didn't want to face it in the
dark woods alone. Dawn came gray and humid. On June
twenty first, forty two men gathered at the Sheriff's station,
armed with everything from hunting rifles to shotguns to a
few military weapons that may or may not have been
(14:34):
entirely legal. Norton didn't ask questions. They were going to
need all the firepower they could get. They split into
four groups. Norton would lead one, Tom Watkins another, Bob
Henderson the third, and Dan Sawyer, despite his encounter the
night before, insisted on leading the fourth. Each group had
ten to twelve men and a couple of tracking dogs,
(14:57):
though the dog seemed nervous and reluctant. Stay tuned for
more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
Tom's group included his neighbor Bob Mitchell, the store owner's son,
Dave Coleman, and my grandfather, Jack Turner. Grandpa was thirty five,
then in his prime, strong from years of farm work.
(15:19):
He carried his daddy's old thirty ought to six, the
one that had taken down dozens of deer over the years.
He told me later that he'd never been so scared
in his life as he was that morning walking into
those woods. The plan was simple. Each group would enter
the woods from a different direction, driving toward the center,
where Piney Creek formed a natural bottleneck. Whatever this thing was,
(15:43):
they'd flush it out and corner it. Tom's group entered
from the north, following an old logging road that hadn't
been used in years. The woods were thick, here a
tangle of kudzu and BlackBerry thorns. The dogs whined and
pulled back on their leashes, not wanting to go forward.
They'd been walking for about an hour when they found
the den. It was hidden in a hollow between two
(16:05):
fallen trees, covered with branches and leaves, but the smell
gave it away, that same sick, rotten smell mixed with
wet dog that Cooper had described. Dave Coleman pulled back
the branches and immediately wished he hadn't. Inside were bones,
dozens of them, cowbones, pig bones, chicken bones, all mixed together.
(16:29):
But there were other things too, a collar from one
of Patterson's hunting dogs, a piece of cloth that looked
like it came from a dress, and in the corner
something that made them all step back, a pile of
what looked like hair or fur, but mixed with it
were human clothes, shredded and torn, but definitely human clothes.
(16:50):
Bob Mitchell whispered his fear that maybe it was killing
people too. Before anyone could respond, they heard the howl.
It started low, almost like a moan, then rose to
a pitch that made every man there grip his weapon tighter.
It was close, maybe one hundred yards away. Tom commanded
them to form up, trying to keep his voice steady.
(17:12):
He told them safeties off, nobody shoots unless they got
a clear target. They moved forward in a line, weapons raised.
The woods had gone completely silent. No birds, no insects, nothing,
just their own breathing and the crunch of leaves under
their boots. Grandpa saw it first, just a glimpse through
(17:32):
the trees, dark fur, moving too fast to be a bear,
too big to be a dog. He raised his rifle
but didn't have a shot. They all turned weapons tracking
the movement. The thing was circling them, staying just out
of clear sight. Every now and then they'd catch a
flash of fur, the glint of an eye. Then Dave
(17:53):
Coleman screamed. The thing had come up behind him, silent
as death. It grabbed him by the shoulder, claws sinking deep,
and yanked him backward off his feet. Dave's shot gun
went off, blowing the hole in the canopy above. The
others spun around, but they couldn't shoot without hitting Dave.
The creature had him on the ground, those massive jaws
(18:14):
going for his throat. Tom stepped forward and shoved the
barrel of his twelve gage against its ribs and pulled
the trigger. The blast knocked the thing sideways off of Dave.
It rolled, came up on all fours, then rose to
its hind legs. Blood matted the fur on its side,
but it didn't go down. Everyone opened fire. The woods
(18:36):
exploded with gunfire. Grandpa said it was like being back
in Korea, just chaos and noise and the smell of gunpowder.
The thing took hit after hit, staggering but not falling.
Then impossibly it charged. It moved faster than anything that
sighs should be able to move. It bowled Tom over,
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sending him flying into a tree. Bob Mitchell got off
one shot before those claws raked across his chest, sending
him spinning to the ground. Grandpa tried to get a
beat on it, but it was moving too fast. A
blur of fur and teeth and rage. Then they heard
more gunfire. Norton's group had heard the commotion and was
coming fast. The creature heard it too. It looked around
(19:21):
at the men, some down, some still standing with shaking weapons,
pointed at it. For just a moment, Grandpa swore it
looked almost human, scared, confused, like it didn't understand what
was happening. Then it ran, crashed through the underbrush, and
was gone before Norton's men arrived. Dave Coleman was alive,
(19:43):
but badly hurt, deep puncture wounds in his shoulder. Bob
Mitchell had three parallel gashes across his chest but would survive.
Tom had a concussion from hitting the tree. They called
for medical evacuation, got the wounded out, but the hunt
wasn't over. The blood trail led south toward the creek.
Whatever this thing was, it was hurt bad. The amount
(20:07):
of blood on the leaves and ground suggested it should
have been dead, but the tracks kept going, sometimes on
four legs, sometimes on two, always moving toward water. Sheriff
Norton regrouped the hunting parties. They were down to thirty
men now, between the wounded and those who lost their
nerve after seeing the thing up close. Can't say I
(20:27):
blame the ones who left. Grandpa said, Facing that creature
was like staring into something ancient and wrong, something that
shouldn't exist in the rational world. They followed the blood
trail for two miles. The sun was high now, the
June heat oppressive under the canopy. Sweats stung their eyes.
Mosquitoes buzzed around their heads, but nobody complained. They were
(20:51):
too focused, too scared. Dan Sawyer's group found where it
had stopped to rest. There was a depression in the leaves,
soaked with blood. Strips of what looked like flesh or
fur were stuck to nearby thorns, like it had been
thrashing around in pain. Norton figured that it was heading
for the old Garrison place. The Garrison farm had been
(21:12):
abandoned for twenty years, ever since the family died in
that fire. The house still stood barely, a collapsing ruin
of blackened timbers and memories Someone asked why there, and
Norton shrugged. Maybe it knew the area. Maybe it had
been using the old buildings as shelter. Maybe it was
just running and that's where it ended up. Didn't matter.
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They had it cornered. The creek formed a horseshoe around
that property. Unless it could swim upstream, there was only
one way out, and that was through them. They approached
the abandoned farm as the sun started its descent toward
the horizon. The old house stood in the middle of
an overgrown field, kudzu covering most of the structure. The
(21:56):
barn had collapsed years ago, just a pile of rotted
wood and rusted metal, but the storm cellar was still intact.
Fresh blood led to the cellar doors. Nobody wanted to
go down those steps into the darkness. Nobody wanted to
face that thing in a confined space. But they couldn't
just leave it there. Come nightfall, it might recover enough
(22:17):
to escape, or worse, go on another rampage. Dan Sawyer
suggested they smoke it out, pour gasoline down there, and
light it up, but Tom Watkins, who had rejoined them
with his head wrapped in a bandage, was determined to
see this through. He insisted they needed to be sure
it was dead. They needed to see the body. Norton
(22:39):
agreed they would go in, but smart, four men at
a time. The rest would cover the exits. Grandpa volunteered
to go in the first group, along with Tom Norton
and Dan Sawyer. They had flashlights duct taped to their weapons.
Norton had brought tear gas grenades from the station, though
nobody knew if they'd work on this thing. The cellar
(23:02):
doors were old wood, hanging off rusted hinges. Blood smeared
the handles. Norton counted to three, then yanked them open.
The smell that came out was overwhelming, death and rot
and that wet dog stench, all mixed together. Dan threw
a flare down the steps. Movement something big shifting in
(23:23):
the darkness. They descended slowly, weapons leading. The cellar was
bigger than expected, extending back under where the house used
to sit. Old shelves lined the walls, filled with mason
jars of things that had long since rotted. The floor
was disturbed, like something had been digging. The flare light
caught eyes in the back corner. The thing was pressed
(23:46):
against the wall, breathing, heavy and ragged blood pooled beneath it.
In the red light, they could see it clearly for
the first time. It was dying. Multiple gunshot wounds covered
its body. Part of its jaw was blown off, one
arm hung useless at its side. But those eyes, those
(24:06):
human eyes, tracked their movement. Norton raised his shotgun, ready
to end it. That's when the creature did something none
of them expected. It spoke. The words were garbled, distorted
by its injured jaw and inhuman throat, but they were
definitely words. It said, please help me. Everyone froze. Grandpa said,
(24:31):
you could have heard a pin drop in that cellar.
The thing that had terrorized the county for weeks, that
had killed livestock and attacked people, was begging for help.
The creature tried to speak again, blood bubbling from its wounds,
it struggled to say, not want this, not my fault.
Tom stepped closer, though every instinct screamed at him to
(24:53):
stay back. In the flarelight, he could see something around
the creature's neck, a chain almost invisible under the matted fur,
a silver chain with a cross on it. Tom breathed
an oath. It was wearing a cross. The creature's eyes
focused on Tom, more human than animal, now full of
pain and something else, regret maybe, or relief that it
(25:18):
was almost over. Norton demanded to know its name. The
creature's mouth moved, struggling to form words through its ruined jaw.
It managed to say Car, Car Carter. Norton's face went white.
He asked if it meant Benjamin Carter. Tom asked who
Benjamin Carter was. Norton's voice was hollow as he explained
(25:40):
it was a missing person case from last month, a
college kid from Auburn who was visiting family in the county.
He disappeared after going for a hike in these very woods.
They all stared at the dying creature. Was this really
a person? Had this thing that had terrorized them for
weeks been human? Once the creature, Carter whatever it was, coughed,
(26:04):
spraying blood. Its breathing was getting shallower. It managed to say,
kill me, Please kill me. Norton looked at the others.
Nobody said anything, but the decision was made. He raised
his shotgun, aimed at the creature's head. He said, May
God have mercy on your soul son. The blast echoed
(26:27):
in the confined space. The creature slumped forward, finally still,
finally dead. They brought the body out, wrapped in a
tarp in death. Something strange happened. The fur began to
fall out. The elongated skull seemed to shrink. Within an hour.
It looked more human than creature, though still distorted, like
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someone had tried to stretch a human body into an
animal shape and got stuck halfway. Sheriff Norton made some calls.
By nightfall, men in black Sedan's had arrived in Birmingham.
Federal types, though they never said which agency they took
the body, took all the evidence, took statements from everyone involved.
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They were polite but firm. This never happened, mass hysteria
brought on by a rabid bear or pack of wild dogs.
That was the official story. Everyone who'd been part of
the hunting party had to sign papers national security. They said,
don't talk about this, don't write about this, forget it happened.
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But you can't forget something like that. The federal agents
poked around for a week. They went through the old
Garrison property with a fine toothcomb. Found things in that
cellar that Norton wasn't allowed to talk about they visited.
Benjamin Carter's family told them he died in a hiking accident.
Closed casket, funeral, no questions, but the story leaked out
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in whispers. Benjamin Carter had been a graduate student at
Auburn studying by He'd been particularly interested in genetic mutations
and viral infections that could alter DNA. He'd come to
Limestone County to visit his grandmother, but also to investigate
local legends about strange animals in the woods. Some said
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he'd been experimenting on himself, trying to prove some theory
about human evolution. Others thought he'd encountered something in those woods,
been infected by something. A few whispered about government experiments,
secret labs, conspiracy theories that grew wilder with each telling
the truth if anyone knew it was buried with Benjamin
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Carter in a sealed casket and Auburn cemetery. The farms
around Piney Creek returned to normal mostly, no more livestock killings,
no more strange tracts, no more yellow eyes watching from
the darkness. But the people who'd live through it were changed.
Tom Watkins started drinking, something he'd never done before. Sarah
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would find him on the porch at night, shot gun
across his lap, staring into the darkness. They sold the
farm two years later, moved to mobile. Bob Henderson's wife,
Julie never got over what she'd seen. She'd have panic
attacks whenever she heard dogs howling. They eventually divorced. Dave
Coleman recovered from his wounds, but never went into the
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woods again. Wouldn't even drive down tree lined roads after dark.
Dan Sawyer threw himself into his work, rarely talking about
that night, but he told me once that Vietnam had
been easier to process than what happened in Limestone County.
At least in war, you knew what you were fighting.
My grandfather, Jack Turner, handled it better than most, but
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he never hunted again. Sold all his guns except that
thirty ought six, which he kept locked in a safe.
He'd take it out sometimes, clean it, stare at it
like it held memories he couldn't quite process. The official
story held for a while, bear attack mass hysteria case closed.
(30:03):
Stay tuned for more Backwoods bigfoot stories. We'll be back
after these messages. But those who were there, knew better,
and occasionally, very occasionally, something would happen that would bring
it all back. About three months after the hunt, a
trucker passing through the county late at night swore he
saw something run across Interstate sixty five on two legs,
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something too big to be a person, too upright to
be a bear. His cbee radio chatter about it was
picked up by locals, but nothing ever came of it.
Six months later, a family camping in the state forest
twenty miles away reported strange howling that didn't sound like
any animal they knew. They packed up and left in
the middle of the night. A year after the events,
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Sheriff Norton retired, just up and quit one day, no explanation.
His deputy, Ray Coleman, took over. Ray had been there
for some of it, had seen the evidence. He kept
a file off the books of similar incidents from around
the southeast. Dog Man sidings in Georgia, were wolf attacks
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in Mississippi, things that walked upright in the Louisiana Bayous.
Ray told my grandfather once that there's more out there
than we know, more than we want to know. The
abandoned Garrison Farm became a local legend. Teenagers would dare
each other to go there at night. Most wouldn't even
get close. Those that did reported feeling watched, hearing things
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that didn't sound right. The county eventually had the remaining
structures demolished, but people still avoided the area. I asked
my grandfather once, years later, what he really thought had happened.
Was Benjamin Carter somehow infected with something? Was it a mutation,
a curse, some kind of genetic experiment gone wrong. Grandpa
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thought for a long time before answering. He said he
didn't know what turned that boy way into that thing,
But what haunted him wasn't the creature itself. It was
those moments in the cellar when it spoke, when it
begged for help, because that means it was aware all
that time it was killing it, knew what it was doing,
but couldn't stop. He paused, staring off into the distance.
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He asked me to imagine that, being trapped in a
body that's not your own, watching yourself do terrible things,
and not being able to control it. He called it
a special kind of hell. There were other questions, too,
ones nobody wanted to ask, too loudly if Benjamin Carter
had been turned into that thing, how, and more importantly,
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by what The federal agents had been very interested in
his research, in what he might have encountered in those woods.
They'd taken soil samples, water samples, even captured and tested
local wildlife. Some folks noticed that after their visit there
were occasionally helicos flying over the forest at night, black
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helicopters with no markings. They'd hover over certain areas, spotlight
sweeping the trees, then move on. This went on for
about two years before stopping. Old timers who knew the
woods well said there were places now that animals avoided,
clearings where nothing grew quite right, caves that had been
sealed with concrete for no apparent reason. The official explanation
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was environmental protection, but nobody really believed that. About five
years after the hunt, my grandfather got an unexpected visitor.
It was a woman in her sixties, well dressed but tired,
looking like she'd been carrying a weight for too long.
She introduced herself as Margaret Carter, Benjamin's mother. She'd tracked
down everyone who'd been part of the hunting party. Most
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wouldn't talk to her, but Grandpa, maybe feeling guilty about
keeping silent, invited her in for coffee. She told him
she knew the official story, she knew what the government
had told them, but she also knew her son. He
didn't die in a hiking accident. Something happened to him,
something they're covering up. Grandpa struggled with what to tell her.
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The papers he'd signed, the warnings he'd received, all said
to keep quiet, but this woman deserved something. He finally
told her that her son was sick, real sick. They
tried to help him, but it was too late. She
studied his face for a long moment. Then she revealed
that Benjamin had called her three days before he disappeared.
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He said he'd found something amazing in his research, something
that could change how we understand human evolution. He was excited,
but also scared. He said there were things in those woods,
old things. She pulled out a notebook, Benjamin's research journal.
She explained most of it was technical stuff, genetic sequences
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and biological theories that went over Grandpa's head, but there
were others entries, notes about local legends, stories from Cherokee
folklore about shape shifters, references to something called the cursed
ground deep in the forest. She showed him the last
entry from the day Benjamin disappeared. The handwriting was rushed, agitated.
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It described finding the site soil samples showing unusual bacterial
presence similar to Ti Gandhi, but more complex, affecting mammalian DNA,
causing rapid mutation. Benjamin thought this could be it, the
missing link. He was going back that night for live specimens.
His final words in the journal were that if something happens,
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tell mom, I love her. Margaret Carter looked at my
grandfather with tears in her eyes. She wasn't asking him
to break any laws or violate any agreements he'd signed.
She was just asking if her son suffered. Grandpa took
her hands in his, He lied and told her no.
It was quick, and at the end he was himself again.
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He was at peace. She left shortly after, but not
before giving him a warning. She said, whatever killed her son,
it's still out there. The government knows it. That's why
they're watching. That's why they covered it up. This isn't over.
She was right. It wasn't over. Seven years after the hunt,
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in the summer of nineteen ninety it started again, not
in Limestone County this time, but one county over in Madison.
Same pattern, livestock killings, strange tracks, glimpses of something that
shouldn't exist. Ray Coleman, now Sheriff Coleman, called my grandfather.
He said they had a problem. It was happening again.
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This time the response was different. Within hours of the
first report, those black sedans were back, but now there
were more of them, and they brought equipment trucks full
of electronic gear, men in hazmat suits. They set up
a command post at the Madison County Airport and locked
down the area. No hunting parties this time, no local
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involvement whatever was out there. They wanted it alive. The
lockdown lasted two weeks. Nobody was allowed in or out
of a five mile radius. The official story was a
chemical spill from a train derailment, but there hadn't been
any trains. Helicopters flew day and night. Sometimes you'd hear
gunfire in the distance, once a sound that wasn't quite
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human and wasn't quite animal, screaming in the darkness. Then
as suddenly as it started, it was over. The trucks
left the helicopters stopped. Life returned to normal except for
the families who'd lost livestock. They were compensated generously by
the government as long as they signed the papers, as
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long as they stayed quiet. But things leak out. A
nurse at Huntsville Hospital whispered about a patient brought in
under heavy guard. She described massive injuries that were healing
impossibly fast, body temperature that should have killed him, and
when he opened his eyes they were human, but wrong,
like something else was looking out through them. A truck
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driver claimed he saw them loading something into an unmarked
aircraft at the airport, something big in a metal cage
covered with a tarp. It was thrashing and making sounds
that gave him nightmares. Ray Coleman, through careful investigation and
contacts he'd developed, learned that there had been another missing person,
a vagrant named Thomas Wells, who'd been camping in the woods,
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never reported missing because nobody knew he was there, never
found because officially he never existed. Ray told my grandfather
that it's spreading. Whatever this is, it's not isolated. There
are cases all over the South, now, different states, different circumstances,
but the same result. People go missing, creatures appear, government
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swoops in. He showed Grandpa a map he'd been keeping,
red pins for confirmed incidents, yellow for suspected. The pattern
was spreading outward from northern Alabama like a disease. Ray
believed Benjamin Carter wasn't the first. He thought. Carter encountered
something that had already been changed, got infected by it,
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and now it's spreading. The government knows, but can't stop it.
Best they can do is contain it when it pops up.
In nineteen ninety five, my grandfather got cancer, lung cancer
from years of smoking. During his treatment at UAB Hospital
in Birmingham, he met a man named doctor Eugene Marsh.
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Marsh was a researcher, but not the medical kind. He
was interested in Grandpa's story. Turned out Marsh had been
one of those federal agents who'd come to Limestone County
back in eighty three. Now retired, or so, he claimed,
he was will to talk. Maybe it was guilt, maybe
he just needed to tell someone, but he told my
grandfather things that changed everything. Marsh explained that what they
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encountered wasn't supernatural, It was very much scientific in origin.
Though the science involved was complicated. According to Marsh, in
the early seventies, the military had been experimenting with biological weapons,
not the killing kind, but the kind that could enhance soldiers,
make them stronger, faster, more resistant to damage. They'd set
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up a research facility in rural Alabama, hidden in the
forest underground. Marsh explained the location was chosen for its
isolation and its geology, limestone caves that went deep natural containment.
If something went wrong, which of course it did. The
experiments had focused on a parasitic organism found in those caves,
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something ancient, prehistoric. Maybe it could alter its host's DNA,
trigger rapid evolution in controlled conditions. With the right modifications,
it could theoretically create super soldiers. But Marsh explained that
you can't control evolution. The organism didn't just enhance, it
transformed and worse. It was contagious, not airborne, thank god,
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but through bodily fluids, blood saliva. There had been an
incident in seventy four, a containment breach. Several test subjects
had escaped. The military had hunted them down, but not
before they'd infected local wildlife. The facility was shut down,
sealed the area quarantined, but you can't quarantine nature. Marsh
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continued that the organism survived in the ecosystem, dormant most
of the time, but occasionally it would find a suitable host,
usually animals, but sometimes people. Benjamin Carter had been unfortunate
enough to encounter and infected animal. Maybe he was bitten,
maybe scratched. The organism had entered his system and begun
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the transformation. Marsh described the process as horrific. The host
remains conscious as their body changes. They're trapped inside, watching
as instincts override rational thought. The hunger becomes overwhelming. They
know what they're doing is wrong, but can't stop. Grandpa
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asked the question that had haunted him for years. Was
there a cure? Marsh shook his head. Once the transformation begins,
it's irreversible. The best they can do is contain it,
track the infected, eliminate them before they spread it further.
It's brutal, but necessary. Grandpa asked how many are out there?
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Marsh admitted more every year. They've gotten better at tracking
them responding quickly, but the organism is evolving too, becoming
harder to detect more adapt Sometimes the infected can maintain
human form for weeks before the change becomes apparent. Marsh
pulled out a business card, plain white, with just a
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phone number. He told Grandpa that if he ever sees
or hears anything unusual, call this number day or night.
They'll respond. He left Grandpa with one final warning. The
official denial isn't just about avoiding panic. If our enemies
knew we'd created this accidentally or not, the political ramifications
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would be catastrophic. So it never happened. It will never
be acknowledged, But we're watching, always watching. My grandfather passed
away in ninety seven. Before he died, he told me
this whole story, made me promise to remember it, even
if I could never prove it. He gave me that
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business card, which I still have, though I've never called
the number. The events in Limestone County became local legend,
despite the official denials. Every few years someone claims to
see something in those woods. Hunters report finding tracks they
can't explain. Livestock occasionally disappears without explanation. The old timers
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who lived through it are mostly gone now. Tom Watkins
died in two thousand and three, took his secrets to
the grave. Bob Henderson passed in two thousand and nine,
Sheriff Bill Norton in twenty twelve. Each death takes a
piece of the truth with it, but the incidents haven't stopped.
In two thousand and eight, a family camping and Bankhead
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National Forest reported being stalked by something large and bipedal.
Their description matched the creature from eighty three perfectly. The
ranger who took their report filed it and forgot about it,
but copies circulate among those who know. In twenty fifteen,
a trail camera in Cherokee County captured something that shouldn't exist.
(44:56):
The image, grainy and unclear, shows a figure that's neither
man nor animal. Stay tuned for more Backwoods bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. The hunter who owned
the camera turned it over to authorities and got a
visit from men in suits. The camera was returned wiped clean.
(45:17):
In twenty eighteen, a teenager in Marshall County claimed to
have hit something with his car late at night, something
that walked on two legs but wasn't human. When police arrived,
they found blood and hair samples, but the test results
were classified. The kid was told he hit a bear.
Ray Coleman, retired now but still investigating, maintains his map.
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The incidents are spreading, becoming more frequent. He believes the
organism is adapting, becoming more successful at spreading. He's compiled
reports from across the country, similar creatures with different names.
Dog Men in Michigan, were wolves in Wisconsin, skin walkers
in the Southwest. Told me recently that it's the same thing,
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different regions, different names, but the same source. That research
facility in Alabama wasn't the only one. They were experimenting
with this stuff all over the country, and now we're
dealing with the consequences. He showed me classified documents he'd
somehow obtained, references to project like aanthropy test sites in
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multiple states, containment protocols that failed, cover ups that go
all the way to the top. The scariest part Ray
said is that they're still experimenting, still trying to weaponize it.
They think they can control it. This time they're wrong.
Last summer, I returned to Limestone County. Don't know why.
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Maybe I needed to see the place's grandpa had described.
Maybe I needed to prove to myself it was real.
The Watkins Farm is subdivided, now houses where cattle used
to graze. The Henderson Place is a shopping center. Progress
has erased most of the physical evidence, but the woods
along Piney Creek remain unchanged, too swampy for development, too
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tangled for logging. I hiked in, following old deer trails,
trying to find the place as Grandpa had described. I
found the hollow where they discovered the den. Nothing there
now but leaves and rotting wood, but the smell faint
but unmistakable, wet, dog and decay. I found tracks, fresh ones.
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They started as dog prints, but changed as I followed them,
became longer, more human like. They led to the old
garrison property, or where it used to be. The land
is overgrown, no sign of the buildings that once stood there,
but the storm cellar is still there, sealed with concrete
and rebar, fresh concrete, maybe a year old. Someone's maintaining
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the seal as the sun's guarded setting. I heard it,
distant but clear, a howl that wasn't quite wolf, wasn't
quite human. It was answered by another, from a different
direction than another. They're still out there. Whatever Benjamin Carter became,
whatever the military created and lost control of It's still spreading,
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still hunting, still transforming innocent people into monsters. I left
those woods faster than I cared to admit, But as
I reached my car, I found something tucked under the
windshield wiper, A plain white card with a phone number
different from the one Marsh had given my grandfather. But
the message was clear. They're still watching. They know I
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was there. So that's the story, the one they don't
want told, the one that officially never happened. Forty two
men went into those woods in June of eighty three
to hunt a monster. They found something worse. They found
a victim, trapped in a nightmare of transformation and instinct.
The Famili's torn apart, the lives, destroyed, the cover ups
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and lies, all to hide a truth that's still spreading
through our forests and towns. The monsters are real, but
they're not supernatural. They're man made, created by ambition and arrogance,
unleashed by accident, and now unstoppable. Every time you hear
about a mysterious animal attack, every time someone reports seeing
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something impossible in the woods, every time the government swoops
in with explanations that don't quite make sense. Remember Limestone County.
Remember Benjamin Carter. Remember that somewhere out there people are changing, transforming,
becoming something that shouldn't exist. And if you ever find
yourself in the woods of northern Alabama, especially near Piney Creek,
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and you hear something howling in the distance, don't investigate,
don't be curious, run because the thing what about monsters
is they're not born, They're made, and anyone can become one.
My grandfather's generation tried to protect us by staying silent,
but silence hasn't stopped it. The infected are out there
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spreading their curse, one bite, one scratch at a time.
The government contains what it can, but it's a losing battle.
I still have that phone number, the one they left
on my windshield. Sometimes I think about calling it, asking questions,
demanding answers, but I know what would happen. Men in
suits would arrive, papers would need signing, Another story would
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be buried. So instead I tell this story, change the names,
alter the details just enough. Call it fiction because fiction
can carry truth in ways that facts cannot. Fiction can
warn without proof. Fiction can prepare people for the impossible.
And maybe, just maybe, if you and counter something in
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the woods that shouldn't exist, something that walks like a
man but isn't. Something with human eyes and an inhuman face.
Maybe you'll remember this story, Maybe you'll not to run,
Maybe you'll survive, because they're out there in Alabama, in
your state, maybe in your own backyard, the products of
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human ambition and scientific overreach. The infected, the transformed. The
monsters we made, and they're spreading. The old timers in
Limestone County were right to stay quiet, not because the
truth shouldn't be told, but because the truth is too
terrible to believe. We want to think monsters are myth,
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that the government protects us, that science has limits. But
on hot summer nights, when the moon is full and
the woods are dark, sometimes you can still hear them
howling in the distance, calling to each other, hunting, growing
in number, waiting
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness bigfoot,
(00:23):
dog man UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,
(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
The old timers in Limestone County still won't talk about
what happened in the summer of nineteen eighty three. They'll
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change the subject if you bring it up, maybe stare
off into the distance for a moment, remembering things they'd
rather forget. But every now and then, usually after a
few drinks at the VFW hall, one of them might
lean in close and whisper about the time something that
wasn't quite man and wasn't quite animal came down from
the hills and turned their quiet corner of Alabama into
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a living nightmare. The newspaper archives from that year tell
you nothing. Sure you'll find mention of livestock losses, some
vague reports about wild dogs, a hunting accident that left
two men hospitalized. But the real story, the one that
made grown men sleep with loaded shotguns beside their beds
and caused three families to pack up and leave the
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county altogether. That story never made it to print. I
know because my grandfather was there. He was one of
them who went into those woods on that sweltering August
night hunting something that by all rights shouldn't exist. He
came back different, quieter. He sold his farm the following
spring and moved to Birmingham, never to return. But before
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he died he told me everything, And now I'm going
to tell you. Just remember when you're lying in bed
tonight and you hear something howling in the distance, it's
probably just a dog. Probably. The trouble started on the
Watkins farm in late May of nineteen eighty three. Tom
Watkins had owned that stretch of bottom land along Piney
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Creek for going on twenty years raising cattle and growing cotton.
Like his daddy before him, he was a practical man,
not given to flights of fancy or superstition. So when
he found his prize angus bull dead in the north
pasture on the morning of May twenty eighth, his first
thought was disease. But disease doesn't tear an animal apart
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like that. There in the morning, missed coffee mug trembling
in his hand, staring at what was left of a
two thousand pound bull. The animal's throat had been ripped out,
its chest cavity opened up like someone had taken a
can opener to it. But the strangest part was the tracks.
They started out looking like dog prints, big ones, maybe
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from a mastiff or Saint Bernard, But as they led
away from the carcass, they changed, got longer, started looking
almost like bare human feet, but with claw marks at
the tips of the toes. When Sarah Watkins found her
husband still standing there an hour later, she asked what
in the Lord's name had happened. Tom could barely whisper
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that he didn't know. But whatever did this, it wasn't
no coyote. They called the sheriff, of course. Deputy Ray
Coleman drove out, took one look at the scene, and
radioed for the sheriff himself to come. Sheriff Bill Norton
had policed in Limestone County for fifteen years. I'd seen
all manner of strange things in that time, but this
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was something new. Norton asked Tom if he was sure
he hadn't heard nothing the previous night. Tom explained that
sound don't carry too good down in the bottom, that
there could have been a whole war going on and
they might not have heard it. Up at the house.
Norton took photographs, made plaster casts of the clearest tracks.
He told Tom it was probably wild dogs, maybe a
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pack that had gone feral, But Tom saw the doubt
in his eyes. Wild dogs don't walk on two legs.
Words spread through the county like wildfire. By noon, half
the farmers in the area had driven by to gauk
at the scene. By evening, theories were flying at the
feed store. Some said it was a bear, though nobody
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had seen a bear in Limestone County since the nineteen forties.
Others blamed it on those hippies living in the commune.
Over in Madison County. A few of the older folks
crossed themselves and muttered about things better left unspoken. The
Watkins family didn't sleep well that night. Tom kept his
twelve gage loaded and propped against the bedroom wall. Their
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three kids, ranging from eight to fourteen, all ended up
in their parents' bed by midnight. Every sound outside, every
creak of the old farmhouse, sent hearts racing. Around three
in the morning, their old bloodhound, Duke started howling, not
his normal baying, but a high, terrified sound that Tom
had never heard from him before. Tom grabbed the shotgun
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and headed for the door, but Sarah caught his arm,
begging him not to go out there. He insisted he
had to check on the animals. Couldn't lose no more cattle.
He flipped on the porch light and stepped outside. Duke
was at the end of his chain, pulling so hard
against it that he was choking himself, trying to get
away from something in the darkness. Tom swept the flashlight
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beam across the yard, the shotgun following its path. That's
when he saw the eyes. They were at the edge
of the light's reach, maybe forty yards out, yellow reflective
like a dog's eyes, but set too high off the ground.
Tom was six foot two, and those eyes looked to
be at his height or taller. They stared at each
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other for a few long seconds, then the eyes blinked
and disappeared. Tom backed slowly into the house, never taking
his eyes off the darkness. He locked the door, then
pushed the heavy oak kitchen table against it for good measure.
They sat up the rest of the night, all five
of them huddled in the living room. When the sun
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finally came up, Tom went out to check the property.
He found tracks in the dirt near where he'd seen
the eyes, the same strange prints that changed from animal
to almost human. They led up to the fence line
where something had stood and watched the house for who
knows how long. On the fence post, about seven feet up,
there were deep claw marks in the wood. Tom called
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his neighbors, the Hendersons, who farmed the adjacent property. Bob
Henderson answered on the first ring, which was unusual for
six thirty in the morning. Tom asked if they were
all right over there. There was a pause before Bob
explained they'd lost six chickens the previous night. Something had
torn right through the coop's wire like it was paper.
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Julie was pretty shook up, claiming she saw something walking
through the yard on its hind legs like a man,
but covered in fur. Bob had told her she was
seeing things. He asked Tom what the hell was going on.
By the first week of June, every farm within five
miles of Piney Creek had lost livestock. The Hendersons lost
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more chickens. The Mitchells found three goats dead, torn apart,
just like Tom's bull. Old Man Patterson's prized hunting dogs
disappeared one night, nothing left but blood and patches of fur.
The story started piling up two Julie Henderson wasn't the
only one who'd seen it. Fourteen year old Jimmy Mitchell
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claimed he saw something tall and hairy crossing the road
one night when he was biking home from his girlfriend's house.
It ran on two legs, he said, but hunched over
like it wasn't quite comfortable being upright. When it turned
to look at him, its face scared him worse than
anything he'd ever seen. It had what looked like a
dog snout, but with human eyes. Martha Coleman, who ran
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the General store said her cousin down in Morgan County
had been dealing with something similar, cattle mutilations, strange tracks,
glimpses of something that shouldn't exist. He'd called it a
dog man, said the Cherokee had legends about such things,
creatures that were neither man nor beast, but something caught between.
The Sheriff's department was overwhelmed with calls. Norton brought in
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a tracker from Tennessee, an old mountain man named Elijah Cooper,
who claimed he could track anything that walked on legs.
Cooper spent three days following trails through the woods along
Piney Creek. When he came back, he was pale and shaky.
Cooper told the sheriff he'd tracked bear, cougar, wild boar,
and once even an escaped circus tiger, but he ain't
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never seen nothing like what made them tracks. They start
as dog, then changed to something else, then back to dog,
like it can't decide what it wants to be, and
the smell was like wet dog mixed with something rotten,
like death. Norton tried to keep a lid on things,
but panic was starting to set in. Families were keeping
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their kids home from school. Farmers were bringing their livestock
into their barns at night, some even bringing smaller animals
into their houses. Gun sales at Henderson's Hardware tripled in
two weeks. Then came the night of June fifteenth, when
things went from bad to worse. The Johnsons lived on
a small farm about two miles from the Watkins place.
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They had four kids, the youngest just eighteen months old.
Around midnight, Lisa Johnson woke to the sound of her
baby crime. She nudged her husband Mark, but he just
mumbled and rolled over. She got up and made her
way down the hallway to the nursery. The window was open.
She knew she'd closed and locked it before bed. The
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curtains moved in the breeze and moonlight spilled across the floor.
The baby was standing in his crib, tears streaming down
his face, reaching toward the window. That's when she saw it.
The thing was crouched on the windowsill, half in and
half out of the room. In the moonlight, she could
see its huge shape. It had the body of a man,
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but covered in dark fur. Its head was elongated like
a wolf's, but its eyes were human intelligent. It looked
at her with what almost seemed like curiosity. Lisa screamed,
the kind of scream that comes from the very depths
of maternal terror. The creature jerked back, snarling, and disappeared
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into the night. Mark burst into the room with a
baseball bat, the other children crying in the hallway behind him.
They found muddy prints on the nursery floor, handprints on
the windowsill, but with claws. The baby's crib had scratch
marks on the rails, as if something had been trying
to figure out how to open it. The Johnsons packed
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up that very night and went to stay with relatives
in Huntsville. They never came back for their things. After
the Johnson incident, Sheriff Norton called a town meeting. The
Limestone County Courthouse was packed to capacity on the evening
of June twentieth. Farmers, their wives, their children all crammed
into the old building. The air was thick with cigarette
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smoke and fear. Norton stood at the podium, looking older
than his fifty three years. He told the crowd he
wasn't going to sugarcoat this. They had a problem. Something
was out there killing livestock and threatening their families. He'd
contacted the state police, Fish and Game, even the university.
Nobody knew what they were dealing with, and shouted from
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the back that it was a damn werewolf. A few
nervous laughs, but not many. Norton continued that he didn't
care what they called it. What mattered was stopping it.
He was forming a hunting party. They were going into
those woods and they were going to find this thing
and kill it. Tom Watkins stood up and declared he
was in. Bob Henderson stood next. One by one, men
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throughout the courthouse stood by the end. Norton had forty
two volunteers. They agreed to meet at dawn the next day,
armed and ready. That night, as the men prepared for
the hunt, the creature struck again, this time at the
Sawyer Place, five miles on the other side of Piney Creek.
Dan Sawyer was a Vietnam veteran, tough as nails and
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not easily rattled. He heard his horses screaming around two
in the morning and grabbed his M fourteen rifle, a
souvenir he'd managed to bring back from the war. The
thing was in the corral with his horses. In the moonlight,
could see it clearly for the first time. It stood
nearly seven feet tall, covered in dark brown fur. Its
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legs were bent wrong like a dog's hind legs, but
stretched to support an upright posture. Its arms were too long,
hanging almost to its knees, ending in hands that were
nearly human but tipped with black claws. But it was
the head that would haunt Dan's dreams for the rest
of his life. The skull was elongated like a wolf's,
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covered in fur, with a long snout full of teeth,
but the eyes. The eyes were human, brown, intelligent, almost sad.
Dan raised the rifle and fired. The creature howled a
sound that was part human scream and part animal roar.
The horses went crazy, kicking at their stalls trying to escape.
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Dan fired again, and he knew he hit it because
he saw the impact saw it stagger, but instead of falling,
it turned and looked at him, just looked at him
with those human eyes. Then it leaped over the six
foot corral fence like it was nothing and disappeared into
the darkness. Dan found blood on the ground black in
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the moonlight. He followed the trail for a few yards,
but his courage failed him. Whatever that thing was wounded
or not, he didn't want to face it in the
dark woods alone. Dawn came gray and humid. On June
twenty first, forty two men gathered at the Sheriff's station,
armed with everything from hunting rifles to shotguns to a
few military weapons that may or may not have been
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entirely legal. Norton didn't ask questions. They were going to
need all the firepower they could get. They split into
four groups. Norton would lead one, Tom Watkins another, Bob
Henderson the third, and Dan Sawyer, despite his encounter the
night before, insisted on leading the fourth. Each group had
ten to twelve men and a couple of tracking dogs,
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though the dog seemed nervous and reluctant. Stay tuned for
more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
Tom's group included his neighbor Bob Mitchell, the store owner's son,
Dave Coleman, and my grandfather, Jack Turner. Grandpa was thirty five,
then in his prime, strong from years of farm work.
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He carried his daddy's old thirty ought to six, the
one that had taken down dozens of deer over the years.
He told me later that he'd never been so scared
in his life as he was that morning walking into
those woods. The plan was simple. Each group would enter
the woods from a different direction, driving toward the center,
where Piney Creek formed a natural bottleneck. Whatever this thing was,
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they'd flush it out and corner it. Tom's group entered
from the north, following an old logging road that hadn't
been used in years. The woods were thick, here a
tangle of kudzu and BlackBerry thorns. The dogs whined and
pulled back on their leashes, not wanting to go forward.
They'd been walking for about an hour when they found
the den. It was hidden in a hollow between two
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fallen trees, covered with branches and leaves, but the smell
gave it away, that same sick, rotten smell mixed with
wet dog that Cooper had described. Dave Coleman pulled back
the branches and immediately wished he hadn't. Inside were bones,
dozens of them, cowbones, pig bones, chicken bones, all mixed together.
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But there were other things too, a collar from one
of Patterson's hunting dogs, a piece of cloth that looked
like it came from a dress, and in the corner
something that made them all step back, a pile of
what looked like hair or fur, but mixed with it
were human clothes, shredded and torn, but definitely human clothes.
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Bob Mitchell whispered his fear that maybe it was killing
people too. Before anyone could respond, they heard the howl.
It started low, almost like a moan, then rose to
a pitch that made every man there grip his weapon tighter.
It was close, maybe one hundred yards away. Tom commanded
them to form up, trying to keep his voice steady.
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He told them safeties off, nobody shoots unless they got
a clear target. They moved forward in a line, weapons raised.
The woods had gone completely silent. No birds, no insects, nothing,
just their own breathing and the crunch of leaves under
their boots. Grandpa saw it first, just a glimpse through
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the trees, dark fur, moving too fast to be a bear,
too big to be a dog. He raised his rifle
but didn't have a shot. They all turned weapons tracking
the movement. The thing was circling them, staying just out
of clear sight. Every now and then they'd catch a
flash of fur, the glint of an eye. Then Dave
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Coleman screamed. The thing had come up behind him, silent
as death. It grabbed him by the shoulder, claws sinking deep,
and yanked him backward off his feet. Dave's shot gun
went off, blowing the hole in the canopy above. The
others spun around, but they couldn't shoot without hitting Dave.
The creature had him on the ground, those massive jaws
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going for his throat. Tom stepped forward and shoved the
barrel of his twelve gage against its ribs and pulled
the trigger. The blast knocked the thing sideways off of Dave.
It rolled, came up on all fours, then rose to
its hind legs. Blood matted the fur on its side,
but it didn't go down. Everyone opened fire. The woods
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exploded with gunfire. Grandpa said it was like being back
in Korea, just chaos and noise and the smell of gunpowder.
The thing took hit after hit, staggering but not falling.
Then impossibly it charged. It moved faster than anything that
sighs should be able to move. It bowled Tom over,
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sending him flying into a tree. Bob Mitchell got off
one shot before those claws raked across his chest, sending
him spinning to the ground. Grandpa tried to get a
beat on it, but it was moving too fast. A
blur of fur and teeth and rage. Then they heard
more gunfire. Norton's group had heard the commotion and was
coming fast. The creature heard it too. It looked around
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at the men, some down, some still standing with shaking weapons,
pointed at it. For just a moment, Grandpa swore it
looked almost human, scared, confused, like it didn't understand what
was happening. Then it ran, crashed through the underbrush, and
was gone before Norton's men arrived. Dave Coleman was alive,
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but badly hurt, deep puncture wounds in his shoulder. Bob
Mitchell had three parallel gashes across his chest but would survive.
Tom had a concussion from hitting the tree. They called
for medical evacuation, got the wounded out, but the hunt
wasn't over. The blood trail led south toward the creek.
Whatever this thing was, it was hurt bad. The amount
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of blood on the leaves and ground suggested it should
have been dead, but the tracks kept going, sometimes on
four legs, sometimes on two, always moving toward water. Sheriff
Norton regrouped the hunting parties. They were down to thirty
men now, between the wounded and those who lost their
nerve after seeing the thing up close. Can't say I
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blame the ones who left. Grandpa said, Facing that creature
was like staring into something ancient and wrong, something that
shouldn't exist in the rational world. They followed the blood
trail for two miles. The sun was high now, the
June heat oppressive under the canopy. Sweats stung their eyes.
Mosquitoes buzzed around their heads, but nobody complained. They were
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too focused, too scared. Dan Sawyer's group found where it
had stopped to rest. There was a depression in the leaves,
soaked with blood. Strips of what looked like flesh or
fur were stuck to nearby thorns, like it had been
thrashing around in pain. Norton figured that it was heading
for the old Garrison place. The Garrison farm had been
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abandoned for twenty years, ever since the family died in
that fire. The house still stood barely, a collapsing ruin
of blackened timbers and memories Someone asked why there, and
Norton shrugged. Maybe it knew the area. Maybe it had
been using the old buildings as shelter. Maybe it was
just running and that's where it ended up. Didn't matter.
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They had it cornered. The creek formed a horseshoe around
that property. Unless it could swim upstream, there was only
one way out, and that was through them. They approached
the abandoned farm as the sun started its descent toward
the horizon. The old house stood in the middle of
an overgrown field, kudzu covering most of the structure. The
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barn had collapsed years ago, just a pile of rotted
wood and rusted metal, but the storm cellar was still intact.
Fresh blood led to the cellar doors. Nobody wanted to
go down those steps into the darkness. Nobody wanted to
face that thing in a confined space. But they couldn't
just leave it there. Come nightfall, it might recover enough
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to escape, or worse, go on another rampage. Dan Sawyer
suggested they smoke it out, pour gasoline down there, and
light it up, but Tom Watkins, who had rejoined them
with his head wrapped in a bandage, was determined to
see this through. He insisted they needed to be sure
it was dead. They needed to see the body. Norton
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agreed they would go in, but smart, four men at
a time. The rest would cover the exits. Grandpa volunteered
to go in the first group, along with Tom Norton
and Dan Sawyer. They had flashlights duct taped to their weapons.
Norton had brought tear gas grenades from the station, though
nobody knew if they'd work on this thing. The cellar
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doors were old wood, hanging off rusted hinges. Blood smeared
the handles. Norton counted to three, then yanked them open.
The smell that came out was overwhelming, death and rot
and that wet dog stench, all mixed together. Dan threw
a flare down the steps. Movement something big shifting in
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the darkness. They descended slowly, weapons leading. The cellar was
bigger than expected, extending back under where the house used
to sit. Old shelves lined the walls, filled with mason
jars of things that had long since rotted. The floor
was disturbed, like something had been digging. The flare light
caught eyes in the back corner. The thing was pressed
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against the wall, breathing, heavy and ragged blood pooled beneath it.
In the red light, they could see it clearly for
the first time. It was dying. Multiple gunshot wounds covered
its body. Part of its jaw was blown off, one
arm hung useless at its side. But those eyes, those
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human eyes, tracked their movement. Norton raised his shotgun, ready
to end it. That's when the creature did something none
of them expected. It spoke. The words were garbled, distorted
by its injured jaw and inhuman throat, but they were
definitely words. It said, please help me. Everyone froze. Grandpa said,
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you could have heard a pin drop in that cellar.
The thing that had terrorized the county for weeks, that
had killed livestock and attacked people, was begging for help.
The creature tried to speak again, blood bubbling from its wounds,
it struggled to say, not want this, not my fault.
Tom stepped closer, though every instinct screamed at him to
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stay back. In the flarelight, he could see something around
the creature's neck, a chain almost invisible under the matted fur,
a silver chain with a cross on it. Tom breathed
an oath. It was wearing a cross. The creature's eyes
focused on Tom, more human than animal, now full of
pain and something else, regret maybe, or relief that it
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was almost over. Norton demanded to know its name. The
creature's mouth moved, struggling to form words through its ruined jaw.
It managed to say Car, Car Carter. Norton's face went white.
He asked if it meant Benjamin Carter. Tom asked who
Benjamin Carter was. Norton's voice was hollow as he explained
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it was a missing person case from last month, a
college kid from Auburn who was visiting family in the county.
He disappeared after going for a hike in these very woods.
They all stared at the dying creature. Was this really
a person? Had this thing that had terrorized them for
weeks been human? Once the creature, Carter whatever it was, coughed,
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spraying blood. Its breathing was getting shallower. It managed to say,
kill me, Please kill me. Norton looked at the others.
Nobody said anything, but the decision was made. He raised
his shotgun, aimed at the creature's head. He said, May
God have mercy on your soul son. The blast echoed
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in the confined space. The creature slumped forward, finally still,
finally dead. They brought the body out, wrapped in a
tarp in death. Something strange happened. The fur began to
fall out. The elongated skull seemed to shrink. Within an hour.
It looked more human than creature, though still distorted, like
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someone had tried to stretch a human body into an
animal shape and got stuck halfway. Sheriff Norton made some calls.
By nightfall, men in black Sedan's had arrived in Birmingham.
Federal types, though they never said which agency they took
the body, took all the evidence, took statements from everyone involved.
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They were polite but firm. This never happened, mass hysteria
brought on by a rabid bear or pack of wild dogs.
That was the official story. Everyone who'd been part of
the hunting party had to sign papers national security. They said,
don't talk about this, don't write about this, forget it happened.
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But you can't forget something like that. The federal agents
poked around for a week. They went through the old
Garrison property with a fine toothcomb. Found things in that
cellar that Norton wasn't allowed to talk about they visited.
Benjamin Carter's family told them he died in a hiking accident.
Closed casket, funeral, no questions, but the story leaked out
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in whispers. Benjamin Carter had been a graduate student at
Auburn studying by He'd been particularly interested in genetic mutations
and viral infections that could alter DNA. He'd come to
Limestone County to visit his grandmother, but also to investigate
local legends about strange animals in the woods. Some said
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he'd been experimenting on himself, trying to prove some theory
about human evolution. Others thought he'd encountered something in those woods,
been infected by something. A few whispered about government experiments,
secret labs, conspiracy theories that grew wilder with each telling
the truth if anyone knew it was buried with Benjamin
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Carter in a sealed casket and Auburn cemetery. The farms
around Piney Creek returned to normal mostly, no more livestock killings,
no more strange tracts, no more yellow eyes watching from
the darkness. But the people who'd live through it were changed.
Tom Watkins started drinking, something he'd never done before. Sarah
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would find him on the porch at night, shot gun
across his lap, staring into the darkness. They sold the
farm two years later, moved to mobile. Bob Henderson's wife,
Julie never got over what she'd seen. She'd have panic
attacks whenever she heard dogs howling. They eventually divorced. Dave
Coleman recovered from his wounds, but never went into the
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woods again. Wouldn't even drive down tree lined roads after dark.
Dan Sawyer threw himself into his work, rarely talking about
that night, but he told me once that Vietnam had
been easier to process than what happened in Limestone County.
At least in war, you knew what you were fighting.
My grandfather, Jack Turner, handled it better than most, but
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he never hunted again. Sold all his guns except that
thirty ought six, which he kept locked in a safe.
He'd take it out sometimes, clean it, stare at it
like it held memories he couldn't quite process. The official
story held for a while, bear attack mass hysteria case closed.
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Stay tuned for more Backwoods bigfoot stories. We'll be back
after these messages. But those who were there, knew better,
and occasionally, very occasionally, something would happen that would bring
it all back. About three months after the hunt, a
trucker passing through the county late at night swore he
saw something run across Interstate sixty five on two legs,
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something too big to be a person, too upright to
be a bear. His cbee radio chatter about it was
picked up by locals, but nothing ever came of it.
Six months later, a family camping in the state forest
twenty miles away reported strange howling that didn't sound like
any animal they knew. They packed up and left in
the middle of the night. A year after the events,
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Sheriff Norton retired, just up and quit one day, no explanation.
His deputy, Ray Coleman, took over. Ray had been there
for some of it, had seen the evidence. He kept
a file off the books of similar incidents from around
the southeast. Dog Man sidings in Georgia, were wolf attacks
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in Mississippi, things that walked upright in the Louisiana Bayous.
Ray told my grandfather once that there's more out there
than we know, more than we want to know. The
abandoned Garrison Farm became a local legend. Teenagers would dare
each other to go there at night. Most wouldn't even
get close. Those that did reported feeling watched, hearing things
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that didn't sound right. The county eventually had the remaining
structures demolished, but people still avoided the area. I asked
my grandfather once, years later, what he really thought had happened.
Was Benjamin Carter somehow infected with something? Was it a mutation,
a curse, some kind of genetic experiment gone wrong. Grandpa
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thought for a long time before answering. He said he
didn't know what turned that boy way into that thing,
But what haunted him wasn't the creature itself. It was
those moments in the cellar when it spoke, when it
begged for help, because that means it was aware all
that time it was killing it, knew what it was doing,
but couldn't stop. He paused, staring off into the distance.
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He asked me to imagine that, being trapped in a
body that's not your own, watching yourself do terrible things,
and not being able to control it. He called it
a special kind of hell. There were other questions, too,
ones nobody wanted to ask, too loudly if Benjamin Carter
had been turned into that thing, how, and more importantly,
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by what The federal agents had been very interested in
his research, in what he might have encountered in those woods.
They'd taken soil samples, water samples, even captured and tested
local wildlife. Some folks noticed that after their visit there
were occasionally helicos flying over the forest at night, black
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helicopters with no markings. They'd hover over certain areas, spotlight
sweeping the trees, then move on. This went on for
about two years before stopping. Old timers who knew the
woods well said there were places now that animals avoided,
clearings where nothing grew quite right, caves that had been
sealed with concrete for no apparent reason. The official explanation
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was environmental protection, but nobody really believed that. About five
years after the hunt, my grandfather got an unexpected visitor.
It was a woman in her sixties, well dressed but tired,
looking like she'd been carrying a weight for too long.
She introduced herself as Margaret Carter, Benjamin's mother. She'd tracked
down everyone who'd been part of the hunting party. Most
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wouldn't talk to her, but Grandpa, maybe feeling guilty about
keeping silent, invited her in for coffee. She told him
she knew the official story, she knew what the government
had told them, but she also knew her son. He
didn't die in a hiking accident. Something happened to him,
something they're covering up. Grandpa struggled with what to tell her.
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The papers he'd signed, the warnings he'd received, all said
to keep quiet, but this woman deserved something. He finally
told her that her son was sick, real sick. They
tried to help him, but it was too late. She
studied his face for a long moment. Then she revealed
that Benjamin had called her three days before he disappeared.
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He said he'd found something amazing in his research, something
that could change how we understand human evolution. He was excited,
but also scared. He said there were things in those woods,
old things. She pulled out a notebook, Benjamin's research journal.
She explained most of it was technical stuff, genetic sequences
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and biological theories that went over Grandpa's head, but there
were others entries, notes about local legends, stories from Cherokee
folklore about shape shifters, references to something called the cursed
ground deep in the forest. She showed him the last
entry from the day Benjamin disappeared. The handwriting was rushed, agitated.
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It described finding the site soil samples showing unusual bacterial
presence similar to Ti Gandhi, but more complex, affecting mammalian DNA,
causing rapid mutation. Benjamin thought this could be it, the
missing link. He was going back that night for live specimens.
His final words in the journal were that if something happens,
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tell mom, I love her. Margaret Carter looked at my
grandfather with tears in her eyes. She wasn't asking him
to break any laws or violate any agreements he'd signed.
She was just asking if her son suffered. Grandpa took
her hands in his, He lied and told her no.
It was quick, and at the end he was himself again.
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He was at peace. She left shortly after, but not
before giving him a warning. She said, whatever killed her son,
it's still out there. The government knows it. That's why
they're watching. That's why they covered it up. This isn't over.
She was right. It wasn't over. Seven years after the hunt,
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in the summer of nineteen ninety it started again, not
in Limestone County this time, but one county over in Madison.
Same pattern, livestock killings, strange tracks, glimpses of something that
shouldn't exist. Ray Coleman, now Sheriff Coleman, called my grandfather.
He said they had a problem. It was happening again.
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This time the response was different. Within hours of the
first report, those black sedans were back, but now there
were more of them, and they brought equipment trucks full
of electronic gear, men in hazmat suits. They set up
a command post at the Madison County Airport and locked
down the area. No hunting parties this time, no local
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involvement whatever was out there. They wanted it alive. The
lockdown lasted two weeks. Nobody was allowed in or out
of a five mile radius. The official story was a
chemical spill from a train derailment, but there hadn't been
any trains. Helicopters flew day and night. Sometimes you'd hear
gunfire in the distance, once a sound that wasn't quite
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human and wasn't quite animal, screaming in the darkness. Then
as suddenly as it started, it was over. The trucks
left the helicopters stopped. Life returned to normal except for
the families who'd lost livestock. They were compensated generously by
the government as long as they signed the papers, as
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long as they stayed quiet. But things leak out. A
nurse at Huntsville Hospital whispered about a patient brought in
under heavy guard. She described massive injuries that were healing
impossibly fast, body temperature that should have killed him, and
when he opened his eyes they were human, but wrong,
like something else was looking out through them. A truck
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driver claimed he saw them loading something into an unmarked
aircraft at the airport, something big in a metal cage
covered with a tarp. It was thrashing and making sounds
that gave him nightmares. Ray Coleman, through careful investigation and
contacts he'd developed, learned that there had been another missing person,
a vagrant named Thomas Wells, who'd been camping in the woods,
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never reported missing because nobody knew he was there, never
found because officially he never existed. Ray told my grandfather
that it's spreading. Whatever this is, it's not isolated. There
are cases all over the South, now, different states, different circumstances,
but the same result. People go missing, creatures appear, government
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swoops in. He showed Grandpa a map he'd been keeping,
red pins for confirmed incidents, yellow for suspected. The pattern
was spreading outward from northern Alabama like a disease. Ray
believed Benjamin Carter wasn't the first. He thought. Carter encountered
something that had already been changed, got infected by it,
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and now it's spreading. The government knows, but can't stop it.
Best they can do is contain it when it pops up.
In nineteen ninety five, my grandfather got cancer, lung cancer
from years of smoking. During his treatment at UAB Hospital
in Birmingham, he met a man named doctor Eugene Marsh.
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Marsh was a researcher, but not the medical kind. He
was interested in Grandpa's story. Turned out Marsh had been
one of those federal agents who'd come to Limestone County
back in eighty three. Now retired, or so, he claimed,
he was will to talk. Maybe it was guilt, maybe
he just needed to tell someone, but he told my
grandfather things that changed everything. Marsh explained that what they
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encountered wasn't supernatural, It was very much scientific in origin.
Though the science involved was complicated. According to Marsh, in
the early seventies, the military had been experimenting with biological weapons,
not the killing kind, but the kind that could enhance soldiers,
make them stronger, faster, more resistant to damage. They'd set
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up a research facility in rural Alabama, hidden in the
forest underground. Marsh explained the location was chosen for its
isolation and its geology, limestone caves that went deep natural containment.
If something went wrong, which of course it did. The
experiments had focused on a parasitic organism found in those caves,
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something ancient, prehistoric. Maybe it could alter its host's DNA,
trigger rapid evolution in controlled conditions. With the right modifications,
it could theoretically create super soldiers. But Marsh explained that
you can't control evolution. The organism didn't just enhance, it
transformed and worse. It was contagious, not airborne, thank god,
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but through bodily fluids, blood saliva. There had been an
incident in seventy four, a containment breach. Several test subjects
had escaped. The military had hunted them down, but not
before they'd infected local wildlife. The facility was shut down,
sealed the area quarantined, but you can't quarantine nature. Marsh
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continued that the organism survived in the ecosystem, dormant most
of the time, but occasionally it would find a suitable host,
usually animals, but sometimes people. Benjamin Carter had been unfortunate
enough to encounter and infected animal. Maybe he was bitten,
maybe scratched. The organism had entered his system and begun
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the transformation. Marsh described the process as horrific. The host
remains conscious as their body changes. They're trapped inside, watching
as instincts override rational thought. The hunger becomes overwhelming. They
know what they're doing is wrong, but can't stop. Grandpa
(42:26):
asked the question that had haunted him for years. Was
there a cure? Marsh shook his head. Once the transformation begins,
it's irreversible. The best they can do is contain it,
track the infected, eliminate them before they spread it further.
It's brutal, but necessary. Grandpa asked how many are out there?
(42:49):
Marsh admitted more every year. They've gotten better at tracking
them responding quickly, but the organism is evolving too, becoming
harder to detect more adapt Sometimes the infected can maintain
human form for weeks before the change becomes apparent. Marsh
pulled out a business card, plain white, with just a
(43:09):
phone number. He told Grandpa that if he ever sees
or hears anything unusual, call this number day or night.
They'll respond. He left Grandpa with one final warning. The
official denial isn't just about avoiding panic. If our enemies
knew we'd created this accidentally or not, the political ramifications
(43:31):
would be catastrophic. So it never happened. It will never
be acknowledged, But we're watching, always watching. My grandfather passed
away in ninety seven. Before he died, he told me
this whole story, made me promise to remember it, even
if I could never prove it. He gave me that
(43:52):
business card, which I still have, though I've never called
the number. The events in Limestone County became local legend,
despite the official denials. Every few years someone claims to
see something in those woods. Hunters report finding tracks they
can't explain. Livestock occasionally disappears without explanation. The old timers
(44:14):
who lived through it are mostly gone now. Tom Watkins
died in two thousand and three, took his secrets to
the grave. Bob Henderson passed in two thousand and nine,
Sheriff Bill Norton in twenty twelve. Each death takes a
piece of the truth with it, but the incidents haven't stopped.
In two thousand and eight, a family camping and Bankhead
(44:36):
National Forest reported being stalked by something large and bipedal.
Their description matched the creature from eighty three perfectly. The
ranger who took their report filed it and forgot about it,
but copies circulate among those who know. In twenty fifteen,
a trail camera in Cherokee County captured something that shouldn't exist.
(44:56):
The image, grainy and unclear, shows a figure that's neither
man nor animal. Stay tuned for more Backwoods bigfoot stories.
We'll be back after these messages. The hunter who owned
the camera turned it over to authorities and got a
visit from men in suits. The camera was returned wiped clean.
(45:17):
In twenty eighteen, a teenager in Marshall County claimed to
have hit something with his car late at night, something
that walked on two legs but wasn't human. When police arrived,
they found blood and hair samples, but the test results
were classified. The kid was told he hit a bear.
Ray Coleman, retired now but still investigating, maintains his map.
(45:39):
The incidents are spreading, becoming more frequent. He believes the
organism is adapting, becoming more successful at spreading. He's compiled
reports from across the country, similar creatures with different names.
Dog Men in Michigan, were wolves in Wisconsin, skin walkers
in the Southwest. Told me recently that it's the same thing,
(46:02):
different regions, different names, but the same source. That research
facility in Alabama wasn't the only one. They were experimenting
with this stuff all over the country, and now we're
dealing with the consequences. He showed me classified documents he'd
somehow obtained, references to project like aanthropy test sites in
(46:23):
multiple states, containment protocols that failed, cover ups that go
all the way to the top. The scariest part Ray
said is that they're still experimenting, still trying to weaponize it.
They think they can control it. This time they're wrong.
Last summer, I returned to Limestone County. Don't know why.
(46:46):
Maybe I needed to see the place's grandpa had described.
Maybe I needed to prove to myself it was real.
The Watkins Farm is subdivided, now houses where cattle used
to graze. The Henderson Place is a shopping center. Progress
has erased most of the physical evidence, but the woods
along Piney Creek remain unchanged, too swampy for development, too
(47:10):
tangled for logging. I hiked in, following old deer trails,
trying to find the place as Grandpa had described. I
found the hollow where they discovered the den. Nothing there
now but leaves and rotting wood, but the smell faint
but unmistakable, wet, dog and decay. I found tracks, fresh ones.
(47:33):
They started as dog prints, but changed as I followed them,
became longer, more human like. They led to the old
garrison property, or where it used to be. The land
is overgrown, no sign of the buildings that once stood there,
but the storm cellar is still there, sealed with concrete
and rebar, fresh concrete, maybe a year old. Someone's maintaining
(47:57):
the seal as the sun's guarded setting. I heard it,
distant but clear, a howl that wasn't quite wolf, wasn't
quite human. It was answered by another, from a different
direction than another. They're still out there. Whatever Benjamin Carter became,
whatever the military created and lost control of It's still spreading,
(48:22):
still hunting, still transforming innocent people into monsters. I left
those woods faster than I cared to admit, But as
I reached my car, I found something tucked under the
windshield wiper, A plain white card with a phone number
different from the one Marsh had given my grandfather. But
the message was clear. They're still watching. They know I
(48:44):
was there. So that's the story, the one they don't
want told, the one that officially never happened. Forty two
men went into those woods in June of eighty three
to hunt a monster. They found something worse. They found
a victim, trapped in a nightmare of transformation and instinct.
The Famili's torn apart, the lives, destroyed, the cover ups
(49:07):
and lies, all to hide a truth that's still spreading
through our forests and towns. The monsters are real, but
they're not supernatural. They're man made, created by ambition and arrogance,
unleashed by accident, and now unstoppable. Every time you hear
about a mysterious animal attack, every time someone reports seeing
(49:28):
something impossible in the woods, every time the government swoops
in with explanations that don't quite make sense. Remember Limestone County.
Remember Benjamin Carter. Remember that somewhere out there people are changing, transforming,
becoming something that shouldn't exist. And if you ever find
yourself in the woods of northern Alabama, especially near Piney Creek,
(49:51):
and you hear something howling in the distance, don't investigate,
don't be curious, run because the thing what about monsters
is they're not born, They're made, and anyone can become one.
My grandfather's generation tried to protect us by staying silent,
but silence hasn't stopped it. The infected are out there
(50:14):
spreading their curse, one bite, one scratch at a time.
The government contains what it can, but it's a losing battle.
I still have that phone number, the one they left
on my windshield. Sometimes I think about calling it, asking questions,
demanding answers, but I know what would happen. Men in
suits would arrive, papers would need signing, Another story would
(50:39):
be buried. So instead I tell this story, change the names,
alter the details just enough. Call it fiction because fiction
can carry truth in ways that facts cannot. Fiction can
warn without proof. Fiction can prepare people for the impossible.
And maybe, just maybe, if you and counter something in
(51:00):
the woods that shouldn't exist, something that walks like a
man but isn't. Something with human eyes and an inhuman face.
Maybe you'll remember this story, Maybe you'll not to run,
Maybe you'll survive, because they're out there in Alabama, in
your state, maybe in your own backyard, the products of
(51:22):
human ambition and scientific overreach. The infected, the transformed. The
monsters we made, and they're spreading. The old timers in
Limestone County were right to stay quiet, not because the
truth shouldn't be told, but because the truth is too
terrible to believe. We want to think monsters are myth,
(51:42):
that the government protects us, that science has limits. But
on hot summer nights, when the moon is full and
the woods are dark, sometimes you can still hear them
howling in the distance, calling to each other, hunting, growing
in number, waiting
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