BWBS Ep:156 Wood Boogers

In this episode, we head deep into the Appalachian spine to uncover one of America’s most enduring mountain mysteries: the Wood Booger. Known across Southwest Virginia and neighboring highland communities, this legend reaches back long before European settlers ever set foot on these ridges.

Indigenous nations carried generations of warnings about wild men in the forest—the Monacan and Mannahoac spoke of untamed beings in the woods, and Cherokee stories told of Tsul ‘Kalu, the slant-eyed giant who watched from the highest places. These accounts weren’t bedtime tales. They were cautionary history.We open with a startling story tied to the final chapter of Daniel Boone’s life. In his last year, Boone reportedly confided a secret he’d kept for decades: an encounter with a ten-foot-tall, hair-covered creature he called a “Yahoo.” We dig into the historical trail behind this claim, drawing from John Mack Faragher’s landmark Boone biography and Theodore Roosevelt’s writings on Boone’s Kentucky expeditions to weigh what’s legend, what’s record, and what still refuses to fit neatly into either. From there, we travel to Norton, Virginia—modern ground zero for Wood Booger research. 

This tiny mountain city, the smallest independent city in the state, has built a surprising identity around the creature. We explore the region’s coal-mining roots and the eerie stories miners carried out of the tunnels beneath these ancient mountains. We also visit nearby Saltville, where humans have mined salt for thousands of years—and where reports of something unexplainable have echoed just as long. The investigation then turns to one of the most talked-about pieces of evidence in recent memory: the 2009 Beast of Gum Hill video.

 When Chuck Newton captured footage of a massive biped stepping out of the Washington County treeline, the clip drew national attention—and eventually brought the Finding Bigfoot television crew to Southwest Virginia. We revisit the town hall they hosted at the Palmer Grist Mill in Saltville, where the turnout stunned everyone: hunters, hikers, families, and a teenager who described being struck by a rock moments after locking eyes with a dark figure on a hillside. We break down decades of witness descriptions to build a composite profile of the Wood Booger—its reported height and muscular build, the powerful odor so often mentioned in sightings, and the vocalizations that roll through hollows at night.

You’ll hear accounts from hunters encountering something impossibly close in tree stands, truck drivers watching a hulking form cross Route 23 at three in the morning, and a woman outside Bristol who met the creature in her headlights on a quiet back road near Mendota. The scientific discussion brings us to the work of the late Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, who examined hundreds of footprint casts and argued that certain evidence was extraordinarily difficult to dismiss. 

We look at reported dermal ridges, the mid-tarsal break that doesn’t match human foot anatomy, and hair samples that have resisted definitive identification while showing traits consistent with primates.We also ask the bigger question: why Appalachia? With landscapes over 400 million years old, heavily forested terrain (West Virginia alone is nearly 80% woodland), and massive networks of caves and underground passages, this region offers remoteness in plain sight.

Add abundant food sources, low population density, and a deep culture of silence, and you get a place where encounters could remain unreported for generations.Some of the most powerful moments come from childhood witnesses—people who saw something before they had words for fear or disbelief. One woman recounts being eight years old when she locked eyes with a creature across a creek behind her grandparents’ home. Instead of dismissing her, her grandmother sat her down and told her about the hairy man who had lived in these mountains longer than anyone could remember.

We close in Norton, where the city has openly embraced its Wood Booger heritage: a council resolution declaring Norton a Wood Booger sanctuary, a seven-foot statue at Flag Rock Recreation Area, the Wood Booger Grill on Park Avenue, and an annual festival that brings visitors from across the country. What was once a struggling coal town has reinvented itself around a legend many locals never doubted was real.

This episode is dedicated to the witnesses who carried their encounters in silence—afraid of ridicule, isolation, or being labeled crazy. The hunters who came home shaken and quiet. The hikers who saw something on the trail they could never unsee. The kids who weren’t believed when they tried to tell the truth. You’re not alone. You’re not imagining things. And your story matters.

Episode Transcript

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

(00:22):
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.
I live in the Appalachian Mountains, and let me tell
you something that every mountain person knows in their bones

(01:08):
but rarely speaks aloud. These ancient hills hold secrets, secrets
older than memory, secrets older than the Cherokee who first
walked these ridges. Secrets that make the hair stand up
on the back of your neck when you're alone in
the woods after dark. If you've never stood in the
deep quiet of an Appalachian hollow at twilight. Then you

(01:30):
can't fully understand what I'm about to tell you. The
silence here is different. It's not empty, it's watchful. The
shadows between the rhododendron seem to breathe. The fog that
creeps up from the creek bottoms moves with purpose, And
sometimes when the wind dies down and the birds go silent,
you get the unmistakable feeling that something out there is

(01:52):
watching you. Now. I know what some of you are thinking.
You're thinking this is just another Bigfoot story, another tall
tail from some mountain man who had too much moonshine
and saw a bear standing on its hind legs. But
I want you to understand something right from the start.
What I'm about to share with you goes far deeper

(02:12):
than the creature that the rest of America calls Bigfoot.
What we're talking about here is something that predates the
Patterson Gimlin film by centuries, something that was terrifying Appalachian
settlers long before anyone had ever heard the word sasquatch,
something that the Cherokee and Monican tribes spoke of in
hushed tones around their campfires. We call it the wood booger,

(02:37):
and in these mountains it is very, very real. The
Appalachian Mountains are among the oldest mountain ranges on the planet.
Scientists tell us they formed over four hundred and eighty
million years ago. To put that in perspective, these peaks
were ancient when the Rocky Mountains were nothing but flat plains.
They were weathered and worn when the Himalayas first began

(02:58):
to rise. The Appalais have witnessed the birth and extinction
of countless species. They have watched ice ages come and go.
They have endured while continents drifted and oceans rose and fell.
And throughout all that time, something has lived in the
darkest hollows and most remote ridges of these mountains. Something

(03:18):
that has learned to survive by staying hidden. Something that
has watched the Cherokee build their villages. Something that observed
the Scots Irish settlers carved their homesteads into the wilderness.
Something that remains here to this day, lurking in the
shadows of the oldest forest east of the Mississippi. I
have been researching cryptid encounters for close to forty years now.

(03:41):
I have interviewed nearly a thousand people about their experiences
with things they cannot explain. And I can tell you
without hesitation that the wood Booger stories from these mountains
are among the most consistent, most detailed, and most terrifying
accounts I have ever documented. So settle in, turn down
the lights if you dare, and let me take you

(04:02):
deep into the heart of Appalachian darkness, where the legend
of the wood Booger has haunted these hills for generations.
The name Woodbooger carries weight in these mountains. It's not
a cute nickname. It's not a marketing gimmick. It's a
term that has been used for over one hundred and
thirty years to describe something that parents warned their children about,

(04:23):
long before television brought Bigfoot into American living rooms. According
to an article published in the Old Post newspaper on
November twenty fourth, eighteen ninety two, the creature was given
the name wood Booger after the Boogeyman. Why because it
was rumored to carry off children who wandered into the
woods at night. Let that sink in for a moment.

(04:45):
More than a century ago, the people of southwest Virginia
were already so convinced of this creature's existence, and so
terrified of its predatory behavior that they named it after
the monster that haunts children's nightmares. The term booger itself
come from the Scot's Irish settlers, who made up a
large portion of the Appalachian population. In their ancestral tongue,

(05:07):
a booger was a malevolent spirit or beast, something that
lurked in the darkness, something that meant you harm. When
they arrived in these mountains and began hearing tales of enormous,
hairy creatures stalking the hollows, they reached for the most
terrifying word they knew. Some folklorets believe the name also
refers to the creature's habit of boogering off with things.

(05:31):
Chickens would disappear from coops, Apples would vanish from orchards.
Camp supplies left unattended would be found scattered or missing entirely.
The wood booger was not just a passive observer of
human settlement. It was an active participant in the ecosystem
of fear that surrounded these early communities. But make no mistake,

(05:53):
the wood booger legend predates the Scot's Irish settlers by
thousands of years. The Monikin and Manihoaq tra tribes who
inhabited the Shenandoah Valley had their own names for the creature.
Their oral traditions spoke of wild men of the forest,
beings that were neither fully human nor fully animal, creatures
that possessed a terrible strength and an uncanny intelligence. The

(06:16):
Cherokee to the south told similar tales of the zul Collu,
which translates roughly to the slant eyed giant. This being
was described as enormously tall, covered in hair, and having
eyes that seemed to see into your very soul. When
the European settlers arrived and began interacting with these tribes,
they discovered something remarkable. The native peoples weren't telling fairy tales,

(06:42):
They were issuing warnings. They spoke of these creatures with
the same matter of fact tone that you or I
might use when discussing bears or mountain lions. The wood
booger was simply another dangerous predator that shared the mountains,
one that you learned to avoid if you wanted to survive.
Before we dive into the modern encounters, I need to

(07:02):
take you back to the late seventeen hundreds to a
time when the wilderness of Kentucky and Appalachia was almost
incomprehensibly vast and dangerous and to a man whose name
is synonymous with the American frontier Daniel Boone. Now Daniel
Boone needs no introduction. He was born on November two,

(07:22):
seventeen thirty four, near Reading, Pennsylvania. He went on to
become one of the most famous explorers, hunters, and frontiersmen
in American history. The man spent eighty five years traversing
the wilderness from Michigan to Florida and from Missouri to Montana.
He saw things that most of us can't even imagine.
But there was one encounter that haunted him until the

(07:45):
end of his days, an encounter that he rarely spoke
of because the one time he tried to share it publicly,
he was laughed at and called a liar, an encounter
with something he called a yahoo. According to John mac Farriger,
who wrote the definitive Boone biography in nineteen ninety two,
titled Daniel Boone, The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer,

(08:07):
there's a remarkable account from the final year of Boone's life.
Late in eighteen nineteen, the elderly frontiersman was attending a
dinner held in his honor at an inn in Missouri.
After the meal, one of the distinguished guests asked Boone
for a story. Boone began to tell a tale from
his years exploring the wilderness that would become Kentucky, but

(08:28):
he didn't get very far. One of the men in
attendants laughed out loud and declared the story impossible. According
to the accounts, Boone was deeply offended. He shut his
mouth and refused to continue, despite the pleading of the
others present. Later that evening, when Boone had retired to
his room, he shared the quarters with the young son
of the tavern keeper. The boy pressed the old frontiersman

(08:51):
to finish his tale. You shall have it, said Boone,
who had taken a liking to the lad. Then Boone,
the most famous woodsman in American history, described killing a
ten foot tall, hairy giant that he called a yahoo.
Now the term yahoo deserves some explanation. Boone and his
fellow frontiersmen were great admirers of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.

(09:14):
In that book, Gulliver encounters a race of primitive hairy
humanoids called Yahoos. But here's what's fascinating. Boone didn't invent
this term. The word yahoo was already being used by
settlers in Appalachia and Kentucky to describe the large, hairy
creatures they were encountering in the wilderness. Some researchers believe

(09:35):
the term actually predates swift and may have originated with
Native American languages. Areas of Kentucky and West Virginia still
refer to their local bigfoot like creatures as yahoos or
yahoe's to this day. Fariger notes that Boone repeated this
story of killing a Yahoo to a number of people
during his last year of life. It's almost as if

(09:56):
the old man, who was approaching death finally felt free
to speak the true truth without fear of ridicule. He'd
carried this secret for decades. He'd kept quiet because he
knew no one would believe him, But in his final
months he wanted the world to know what he'd seen.
Theodore Roosevelt also wrote about Boone and the Yahoos in
his eighteen ninety seven book Daniel Boone's Moved to Kentucky.

(10:20):
Roosevelt noted that Boone was encamped with five other men
on Red River when strange events began to occur. The
men had brought along a copy of Gulliver's Travels for entertainment.
They jokingly began using terms from the book to describe
the unusual things they were encountering, but the joke became
terrifyingly real when they actually came face to face with

(10:41):
something that matched Swift's description of the Yahoos. Skeptics will
say that Boone was simply telling tall tales that he
was entertaining his audiences with frontier yarns, but those who
knew Boone described him as honest, almost to a fault.
He wasn't known for exaggeration, and the consistent of his accounts,
along with the fact that he only shared them privately

(11:03):
after being publicly humiliated, suggests that this wasn't a performance.
This was a confession. To understand why the wood booger
has thrived in these mountains, you need to understand the
landscape itself. The Appalachian region isn't like the open plains
of the Midwest or the manicured forests of New England.
This is some of the most rugged, inaccessible terrain in

(11:25):
North America. Southwest Virginia, where the wood booger legend is
strongest is a maze of steep ridges, deep hollows, and
seemingly endless forest Wise County, Norton City, Smith County, Washington County.
These are places where you can walk for miles without
seeing another human being, Places where the tree canopy is

(11:49):
so thick that sunlight barely reaches the forest floor. Places
where a creature that wanted to remain hidden could do
so for a lifetime. The town of Norton, Virginia, has
become ground zero for modern wood booger research. With a
population of just under four thousand people, Norton is the
smallest independent city in Virginia. It sits in the shadow

(12:11):
of High Knob, one of the highest peaks in the region,
and it's surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of
nearly impenetrable forest. Historically, Norton's economy relied on the coal industry.
Miners work the dark tunnels beneath these mountains for generations,
but mining is dangerous work that takes men deep underground

(12:32):
into places that rarely see human activity, and many of
those miners came back with stories. Stories of strange sounds
echoing through abandoned shafts, stories of enormous footprints in the
mud near mine entrances, Stories of a terrible smell like
rotting garbage mixed with wet animal fur that would suddenly
fill a tunnel for no apparent reason. Nearby Saltville has

(12:54):
its own rich history of encounters. This small town in
Smith County gets its name from the salt marshes that
dot the region. Native American tribes mine salt here for
thousands of years before European contact. The area has been
continuously inhabited longer than almost anywhere else in Virginia, and
for all of that time, people have been seeing things

(13:16):
in the surrounding forests that they can't explain. The terrain
around Saltville is particularly suited to hiding large animals. Clinch
Mountain rises to the north, the Holston River winds through
valleys to the south. In between are countless hollows, ravines,
and cave systems that have never been fully explored. A

(13:36):
population of large primates could theoretically survive in this region
for generations without ever being definitively documented. West Virginia to
the north, has over one hundred documented Bigfoot sidings. According
to the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, Pendleton County alone has
fourteen reports, Randolph County has ten, Pocahontas County has eight.

(14:00):
The southern third of the state, particularly around the New
River Gorge, appears to be a major hot spot. Researcher
Les Odell, who published the book Old Man of the
Mountain the West Virginia Bigfoot, has documented over sixty first
hand accounts from the region dating back to nineteen twenty one.
What connects all of these areas dense forest, rugged terrain,

(14:23):
low human population, and a culture of people who've learned
to respect the mysteries of the mountains rather than dismissing them.
In the spring of two thousand and nine, something happened
near Gum Hill in Washington County, Virginia that would change
the trajectory of wood Booger research forever. A man named
Chuck Newton was riding his all terrain vehicle through a

(14:44):
rocky river bed. His friend Eric was following behind, filming
the ride on a handheld camera. It was supposed to
be a normal afternoon of trail riding, the kind of
thing that locals do all the time in these mountains.
Nobody expected anything on you us usual to happen. Then
something walked out of the tree line. Stay tuned for
more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.

(15:10):
In the video, which was uploaded to YouTube on April fifth,
two thousand and nine, you can see Chuck stop his
all terrain vehicle. He points at something off camera. The
figure is partially obscured by trees, but what you can
make out is disturbing. It appears to be an enormous
bipedal creature, dark in color, moving with a strange gliding gait.

(15:33):
Chuck later estimated that it stood at least seven feet
tall and weighed over three hundred and fifty pounds. What
makes this video remarkable isn't just what it shows, but
what happened afterward. Chuck Newton didn't run to the media,
He didn't try to cash in on his footage. In fact,
he was reluctant to even discuss it publicly. When investigators

(15:54):
finally spoke with him, he revealed something chilling. This wasn't
his first encounter. He'd seen the same creature before in
the same area. And he wasn't surprised that it had
shown itself again. The Beast of Gum Hill video caught
the attention of the producers at Animal Planet. They were
working on a show called Finding Bigfoot, and they decided

(16:16):
to send a crew to southwest Virginia to investigate what
they found. Surprised everyone involved. When the Finding Bigfoot team
held a town hall meeting at the Palmer grist Mill
in Saltville, they expected maybe a handful of locals to
show up. After all, this was a small rural community.
Surely there couldn't be that many people with Bigfoot stories

(16:38):
to tell they were wrong. The room filled up quickly.
People lined up to share their stories, hunters, hikers, children
who'd seen things while playing near the woods, even a
teenager from Saltville who described making eye contact with a large,
dark figure on a hillside outside her home. She said

(16:59):
that immediately after their eyes met, she was struck in
the leg by a rock thrown hard enough to leave
a bruise. Cliff Barrockman, one of the show's investigators and
good friend of mine, noted that the accounts were remarkably consistent.
Witnesses described a bulky, humanoid creature standing seven to eight
feet tall, covered in brown or black fur as an

(17:20):
overpowering odor, and eyes that reflected light like an animal's
eyes at night. One hunter from Piney Flats, Tennessee, told
a detailed story of a large, dark figure with long
matted hair walking up to him, looking at him for
a moment, and then walking away in a strange zigzag
motion with my hand up to Heaven. I know what

(17:40):
I saw, the man said. A man from Bristol described
encountering something while hunting for Jensen near Gum Hill. He
and his friend came across a large figure sitting on
a rock. When they approached, it stood up and began
whistling and making strange noises. Before they could get close
enough to make out details, it ran away, but he

(18:01):
described its face as looking Neanderthal. Later he found a
dead deer nearby with its backside ripped off. The Finding
Bigfoot episode Virginia's for Bigfoot Lovers aired in October twenty eleven,
and it put Norton in the Woodbooger legend on the
national map. But for the locals, nothing had really changed.

(18:22):
They'd known about the creature all along, they just hadn't
been talking to outsiders about it. After decades of collecting
accounts from across Appalachia, a remarkably consistent picture of the
wood Booger has emerged. These aren't vague descriptions, they're detailed
observations from people who often had the creature in view
for extended periods of time. The Woodbooger typically stands between

(18:46):
six and nine feet tall. Some accounts describe even larger specimens,
with heights approaching ten feet. The body is massive and muscular,
broad shoulders, a barrel chest arms. It seemed disproportionately long,
often reaching below the knees. The overall builds suggests tremendous strength.

(19:07):
The entire body is covered in thick hair. Color varies
from dark brown to reddish to jet black. Many witnesses
note that the hair appears matted and unkempt. Some describe
it as looking wet even when no rain has fallen.
The hair around the face is often lighter in color
or has a different texture than the rest of the body.

(19:27):
The face is perhaps the most disturbing feature. It's described
as human like but wrong. The brow ridge is pronounced
and heavy, The nose is flat and wide, The mouth
is large, The eyes are often described as intelligent and aware.
Witnesses consistently report feeling that the creature was studying them

(19:48):
just as intently as they were studying it. One of
the most commonly reported characteristics is the smell. Nearly every
close encounter includes a description of an overwhelming stench. The
odour's been compared to rotting garbage, to a wet dog,
to a skunk, to sulfur. Some witnesses describe it as

(20:09):
the worst thing they've ever smelled. This distinctive odor often
proceeds or follows sighting, suggesting that the creatures may mark
their territory with scent. The vocalizations are equally memorable. Witnesses
describe deep guttural growls, high pitched screams that sound almost human,
howls that echo through the hollows at night, wood knocking

(20:32):
sounds created by striking trees with branches or rocks, and
a strange whooping call that seems designed to communicate across
long distances. Movement patterns are fascinating. The wood booger walks
upright like a human, but with a distinctive gait. Some
witnesses describe a gliding motion, as if the creature isn't

(20:53):
fully lifting its feet off the ground. Others note a
side to side sway when running. The creature can re
each impressive speeds despite its bulk, and it seems to
move through dense forest with supernatural silence. Most encounters occur
at dawn or dusk. This suggests that the wood booger
may be crepuscular, meaning most active during twilight hours. However,

(21:17):
there are plenty of daytime sightings and even more reports
of nighttime activity. The creatures appear to be adaptable, adjusting
their schedule based on human activity in the area. Behavioral
patterns show a complex and intelligent animal. The wood booger
typically avoids direct confrontation with humans. When surprised, it'll usually
retreat into the forest. However, there are accounts of more

(21:40):
aggressive behavior. Rock throwing is commonly reported, bluff charges where
the creature runs toward a witness and then veers away
at the last moment, and territorial displays involving loud vocalizations
and tree shaking. I want to share some specific encounters
that have been documented in recent decades. These aren't secondhand stories.

(22:01):
These are first hand accounts from people who had their
worlds turned upside down by what they witnessed. In the
summer of nineteen eighty seven, three friends were fishing near
the Crawford Hole on the Gauley River in Nicholas County,
West Virginia. The area is remote and heavily forested, perfect
Bigfoot habitat. As they worked their way along the river bank,

(22:23):
something emerged from the tree line. One of the witnesses
later described it to investigators from the big Foot Field
Researchers Organization. I estimated by the tree limbs that it
had to be over seven feet tall. He said it
was a hairy, brown animal walking on two legs. It
looked at us for a moment and then just walked
back into the woods. I'm a believer now and I'll

(22:45):
always be. In November two thousand and seven, a deer
hunter positioned himself near the New River Gorge Bridge in
Fayette County, West Virginia. He was using a rifle scope
to scan the tree line when he spotted movement. What
he saw through the magnified optic left him speechless. Approximately
sixty yards away, a massive creature stood among the trees.

(23:08):
It was at least eight feet tall, covered in dark
fur and watching the hunter with apparent curiosity. The man
had a clear shot, his finger was on the trigger,
but he couldn't bring himself to fire. Something about the
way the creature looked at him made him feel that
pulling the trigger would be wrong, like shooting a person.

(23:28):
The creature eventually turned and walked away, moving through the
forest with barely a sound. The hunter later said that
his hair stood on end when he realized he'd have
to walk past that same spot to get out of
the woods. In twenty nineteen, Billy and Sheena Humphrey had
an encounter near their home in Fayette County that made
national news. They claimed to have seen and photographed a

(23:51):
massive creature standing eight to nine feet tall, with a
cone shaped head, a barrel chest, and lighter hair around
its eyes. The description matched the famous Patterson Gimlin film
almost perfectly. What made the Humphrey case particularly compelling was
that Sheena had experienced encounters before, This wasn't her first
time seeing something unexplainable in the West Virginia woods, and

(24:14):
the fact that two witnesses could corroborate each other's accounts
added weight to their testimony. Near Norton, Virginia, local hikers
on the chief bene Scout Trail reported finding enormous footprints
nearly sixteen inches long crossing a muddy stream bed. The
stride length between the prints was far too long for
any human to have made, and the weight behind each

(24:36):
step had pressed the mud down several inches A hundred
Near High Knob had his own terrifying experience. He was
sitting in a tree stand around dusk when everything in
the forest suddenly went dead quiet, no bird calls, no
squirrel chatter, nothing. Then he heard something large moving through
the brush below him. Whatever it was stopped directly beneath

(24:58):
his stand. He could hear it breathing, slow, deep breaths.
He was too afraid to look down, too afraid to move.
He sat frozen in his stand until full darkness fell
and whatever had been beneath him finally moved away. He
never went back to those woods. One of the most

(25:19):
important aspects of the wood booger legend is its deep
roots in Native American tradition. These stories didn't begin with
European settlers. They go back thousands of years. There are
over sixty different names for bigfoot like creatures in Native
American cultures. The word Sasquatch itself comes from the Halcomalum
language of the coast stylish people, where it translates roughly

(25:42):
to wild man. But the Appalachian tribes had their own
names and their own stories. The Cherokee spoke of Sulkalu,
a powerful hairy figure known as the lord of the
game who oversees the animals of the forest. This being
was described as a giant with slanted eyes who lived
in the high mountains. He was considered a protector of

(26:03):
wildlife and would punish hunters who took more than they needed.
The Choctaw told stories of the Champay, a giant, hairy
monster whose most notable characteristic was its overwhelming smell. The
stench of a champe was so powerful that people couldn't
bear to be near it, making the creature difficult to
fight or capture. The Chickasaw had their lofa whose name

(26:25):
literally means flare or skinner. This was a more malevolent
version of the Bigfoot legend, a creature that was said
to flay the skin from its victims. Some stories describe
it attempting to abduct women from villages. The Iroquois of
the northeast had perhaps the most fearsome version, They spoke
of the Genoskua, or stone giant. This was a massive,

(26:48):
hairy humanoid with skin as hard as rock. It was aggressive, territorial,
and would attack humans who ventured into its domain. What's
remarkable about these Native American traditions is their consistency. Tribes
that had little or no contact with each other developed
nearly identical legends about large, hairy humanoids living in the wilderness.

(27:10):
The physical descriptions match, the behavioral patterns match. The sense
of danger and respect that these creatures inspired matches For
many Native American peoples. These weren't mythological creatures. They were
real beings that shared the land, dangerous neighbors that required
caution and respect. Children were warned not to go into

(27:32):
the deep forest alone, not because of imaginary monsters, but
because of very real dangers that the elders knew from experience. Today,
many Native American researchers are reclaiming these traditions. They argue
that the creature White America calls Bigfoot has always been
known to their people, that the sightings that began making

(27:53):
national news in the nineteen fifties and sixties were simply
white Americans finally encountering something that indeed pgenous people had
known about for millennia. One of the most striking things
I've discovered in my decades of research is how many
encounters go unreported. For every person who contacts an organization
like the Bigfoot Field Researchers organization, there are probably ten

(28:15):
or twenty who never say a word to anyone outside
their immediate family. This culture of silence is particularly strong
in Appalachia. Mountain people are proud, independent, they don't like
to be laughed at, and they know from bitter experience
that telling people you saw a giant, hairy monster in
the woods is a good way to get labeled crazy.

(28:37):
The Finding Bigfoot town hall meeting in Saltville revealed just
how deep this silence runs. The show's producers had expected
minimal turnout. Instead, they found themselves overwhelmed with witnesses who'd
been sitting on their stories for years decades. In some cases,
these were respected members of the community, hunters, farmers, business owners,

(29:00):
people who had everything to lose by coming forward and
nothing to gain. Louis Pedolchio, who helped found the West
Virginia Bigfoot Museum in Sutton made an observation that I
think captures this phenomenon perfectly. There are farmers and hunters
who will tell you that they believe in bigfoot, and
that they've seen it, or heard it, or have seen
signs of it, he said, And I believe them. These

(29:22):
aren't crazy people. These are serious people and respected members
of the community. The museums become a gathering place for
people who want to share their experiences without fear of ridicule.
It houses nearly forty foot print casts, replica skulls of
primates like Gigantapithecus, and a detailed map showing reported sightings

(29:43):
across the state. The annual West Virginia Bigfoot Festival draws
nearly ten thousand attendees. Phil Smith of Gate City, Virginia
is co founder of the Blue Ridge Monsters in Legends
Facebook group, where members share their unexplained encounters. Had an
experience as a child that he's never forgotten. Stay tuned
for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.

(30:09):
He was riding his bike homb after dark one cold
November night when a friend ran up behind him, clearly frightened.
The friend said something was following him. When he moved,
it moved. When he stopped, it stopped. Smith took a
shortcut through his grandparents' backyard to get home faster. As
he rode past the grapevines, he heard something moving in

(30:31):
the brush. He turned to look. Standing beside the grapevines
was a creature at least seven feet tall. It was
leaning forward, creating a hump where its neck and back joined.
Smith didn't wait to see more. He pedaled home as
fast as he could and never forgot what he saw.
Stories like this are common in Appalachia. Almost every family

(30:52):
has one if you ask the right questions. A grandfather
who saw something strange while hunting, an aunt who heard
unexplainable sounds while camping, a cousin who found footprints that
couldn't have been made by any known animal. These stories
are passed down at family gatherings, whispered around campfires, and
rarely shared with outsiders. In the years following the finding

(31:15):
Bigfoot episode, something remarkable happened in Norton, Virginia. Instead of
running from its reputation as wood booger country, the city
decided to embrace it. It started small. Two employees at
a local hardware store named big O and Pickle began
printing and selling wood Booger t shirts. The shirts sold,
people wanted them. They wanted to show their connection to

(31:38):
the legend. Then the city got involved. Fred Ramie, the
Norton City manager, recognized an opportunity. With a population of
three thousand, nine hundred, were the smallest independent city in Virginia.
He said, Historically, Norton's economy has relied on service industries
for nearby coal counties, but when Cole started taking a

(31:59):
hit about a decad d Togo, we soon realized we'd
better start capitalizing on our natural assets and tourism. In
October twenty fourteen, Norton City Council passed a resolution declaring
the city a wood Booger Sanctuary. It became officially illegal
to hunt, trap, or harm a wood booger within city limits.

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The sanctuary designation was tongue in cheek, of course, but
it was also a statement Norton was claiming the wood
booger as its own. The following year, the city erected
a massive statue of the creature at Flag Rock Recreation Area.
The seven foot tall figure stands just beyond the parking
area on the path to flag Rock Overlook. It's become

(32:42):
one of the most photographed landmarks in Southwest Virginia. Visitors
pose with it and take selfies to post on their
social media. The free advertising has been invaluable. Since the
statue dedication, the attendance at flag Rock has increased tenfold,
according to Vice Mayor Joe Bush. The Woodbooger Grill opened

(33:03):
on Park Avenue in downtown Norton. It features the wood
Booger's Super wood Burger Challenge, one pound of beef with barbecue, pork, bacon,
and multiple types of cheese. Conquer the burger and you
win a T shirt. The restaurants become a destination for
cryptid enthusiasts from across the country. Every fall, Norton hosts

(33:24):
the wood Booger Festival at flag Rock Recreation Area. The
event includes live music, food vendors, craft booths, and presentations
by Bigfoot researchers, but the highlight is the wood Booger
Night Search, guided hikes into the surrounding forest after dark,
where participants make Bigfoot calls and hope for a response.

(33:45):
The festival draws visitors from across the country. People have
come from Canada, the Carolinas, Georgia and beyond. Some are
true believers hoping for an encounter. Others are skeptics who
just want to enjoy the atmosphere and maybe have their
minds changed. All of them are contributing to Norton's economy
and helping to keep the legend alive. We want a safe,

(34:07):
family friendly event, said festival organizers, Free of a carnival
atmosphere with emphasis on outdoor recreation. Listen to the guides
tell of how Norton, flag Rock and the wood Booger
came to be. Characters along the walk will tell their
experiences with the wood Booger, how to attract him and
protect him. The transformation has been remarkable. A small, struggling

(34:30):
mountain town has reinvented itself around a legend that many
locals never doubted was real, and in doing so, they've
created something that transcends mere tourism. They've built a community
identity around a creature that their ancestors feared and respected.
Skeptics often ask where the hard evidence is. If the
wood Booger is real, why hasn't anyone captured definitive proof?

(34:54):
Where are the bodies? Where are the bones? Where's the DNA.
These are fair questions and they deserve honest answers. First,
let me acknowledge that there's no smoking gun. No one's
produced a wood booger body for scientific examination, no one's
captured a living specimen. The evidence that exists is circumstantial footprints,

(35:20):
hair samples, audio recordings, video footage, thousands of eyewitness accounts.
But absence of proof isn't proof of absence. Consider this,
new species are discovered every year. In twenty nineteen, scientists
documented over seventy one new species in a single year.

(35:41):
Many of these were small insects or fish, but some
were mammals. Some were primates, animals that had successfully avoided
detection by science for thousands of years. The late doctor
Jeffrey Mildrum, an associate professor of anatomy and anthropology at
Idaho State University, was one of the most respected academics

(36:01):
studying the big Foot phenomenon. He examined hundreds of footprint
casts from across North America. His conclusion was striking, The
footprint evidence alone that I've examined is extremely convincing. Meldrum said,
there's something out there leaving tracks and very distinct ones.
What makes these tracks convincing several factors. First, their size.

(36:27):
Authentic big foot tracks are typically fourteen to eighteen inches long,
far larger than any human foot. Second, their consistency. Tracks
found thousands of miles apart show similar characteristics, including a
distinctive mid tarsal break that differs from human foot anatomy. Third,
the dermal ridges. Some casts show skin patterns similar to

(36:50):
human fingerprints, but with a completely different configuration. Air samples
have been collected from alleged encounter sites. Most turn out
to be from animals bears, horses, humans, but some samples
have defied identification. They show primate characteristics but don't match

(37:11):
any known species in DNA databases. Audio recordings are perhaps
the most compelling category of evidence. The Bigfoot Field Researchers
organization has documented vocalizations that don't match any known animal,
deep whooping calls that carry for miles, screams that start
low and rise to almost ultrasonic frequencies, complex patterns that

(37:34):
suggest communication rather than random noise. During the Finding Bigfoot
investigation near Norton, the crew recorded unexplained vocalizations near Flag Rock.
The sounds were captured on multiple recording devices ruling out
equipment malfunction. Audio analysis revealed characteristics inconsistent with any known

(37:54):
wildlife in the area. As for why no bodies have
been found, consider this, how often do you find the
body of a bear in the woods, or a mountain lion,
or even a deer. Large animals that die in the
wilderness are quickly scavenged, bones are scattered and consumed. Nature
is efficient at recycling its dead. If the wood booger

(38:18):
population is small and the creatures are intelligent enough to
avoid humans, they're also likely intelligent enough to avoid dying
in places where their remains would be discovered. I want
to address something that often gets lost in the commercialization
and pop culture treatment of bigfoot. For many of the
people who've actually encountered these creatures, the experience wasn't fun,

(38:40):
It wasn't exciting. It was terrifying. An Appalachian trail hiker
from Mitchell County, North Carolina, described an encounter that left
him shaken for months. He was walking a remote stretch
of trail heading toward Irwin, Tennessee, when he came around
a corner and found himself face to face with something
impossible about ten feet in front of me stood this

(39:01):
hairy being. He reported around eight to nine feet tall
and about four to five feet wide at the shoulders.
This thing was buff. Its left hand and arm were
so long that it reached its knees. The creature was
looking at something in its right hand, and had it
noticed the hiker's approach. The man froze. Not from fear,

(39:22):
he said, but from confusion. His brain couldn't process what
his eyes were seeing. Then the creature looked up. He
never saw its face. It was looking away from him,
but that glimpse of its profile was enough. The muscular build,
the impossible proportions, the casual way it handled something in

(39:43):
its hands like a person examining an interesting rock. This
wasn't a bear. This wasn't a person in a costume.
This was something else entirely. The hiker backed away slowly
and took a different route to his destination. He hasn't
returned to that section of trail. Another witness from Fayette County,
West Virginia, described the psychological aftermath of his encounter. For

(40:08):
weeks after seeing the creature, he couldn't sleep through the night.
Every sound outside his window made him jump. He installed
motion sensor lights around his property. He started carrying a
firearm whenever he went outdoors after dark. The thing is,
he said, I never felt threatened. It just looked at
me and walked away. But knowing that something like that exists,

(40:32):
knowing that it's out there in the woods, knowing that
it was watching me before I ever saw it, that
changes you. This is the reality that gets lost in
the tourist t shirts and festival atmosphere. The wood Booger
isn't a mascot. For the people who've encountered it. The
creature represents a fundamental challenge to their understanding of the world.

(40:54):
It's proof that there are things in these mountains that
we don't fully understand, things that are watching us even
when we don't know it. Why would Appalachia be home
to creatures like the wood Booger? What makes these mountains
different from other wilderness areas in North America? Several factors
combined to make this region ideal habitat for a large,

(41:16):
intelligent primate. First, the age of the landscape. The Appalachian
Mountains have been here for over four hundred million years.
They've provided continuous habitat through ice ages, climate shifts, and
mass extinctions. A species that established itself here millions of
years ago would have had an unbroken chain of suitable

(41:37):
environment right up to the present day. Second, the terrain
West Virginia alone is nearly eighty percent forested. The region
is riddled with caves, sinkholes, and underground passages. The hollows
between ridges create isolated micro environments that could support small
populations of large animals. You could hide an army in

(41:58):
these mountains. The food sources Appalachian forests are rich in
the resources that would support a large omnivore. Deer are abundant,
Small mammals are everywhere. Berries, nuts, and edible plants grow
throughout the understory. Streams and rivers provide fish and crayfish.
A creature with the intelligence to exploit all of these

(42:21):
resources would never go hungry. Despite being in the eastern
United States, much of Appalachia remains remarkably unpopulated. Entire counties
have population densities of less than twenty people per square mile.
The ratio of wilderness to human settlement is far more
favorable here than in most of the country. Appalachian people

(42:41):
have traditionally been private and skeptical of outsiders. They don't
run to the media when they see something strange. They
talk among themselves. They keep secrets. This cultural tendency towards
silence has allowed encounters to go unreported and has prevented
the kind of organized hunting expeditions that might have eliminated

(43:01):
a vulnerable population. Finally, consider the history. The Scots Irish
settlers who populated these mountains brought with them a tradition
of wild man legends from their homeland. The Cherokee and
other native peoples had been telling similar stories for thousands
of years. When these traditions met and merged, they created

(43:22):
a cultural framework that accepted the existence of the wood
booger as simply part of the natural world. Some researchers
have speculated about a connection between the Scottish Highlands and
the Appalachian Mountains that goes beyond culture. These two mountain
ranges were once connected millions of years ago, before the
Atlantic Ocean opened up. They were part of the same

(43:44):
chain of peaks called the Central Pangaean Mountains. Could a
species have survived in both locations. Could the wild men
of Scottish folklore and the wood boogers of Appalachia be
distant cousins. If there's one group of people in Apalachia
who've had more encounter with the wood bogoger than any other,
it's hunters. These men and women spend countless hours in

(44:05):
the deep woods. They know the patterns of wild life
better than anyone. They can tell you what species made
a track just by glancing at it, and many of
them have seen things that they can explain. A deer
hunter from Wise County, Virginia told me about an experience
that still gives him nightmares. He'd been hunting the same
stretch of mountain for over twenty years. He knew every trail,

(44:29):
every creek crossing, every good place to set up a stand.
One November morning, he climbed into his tree stand well
before dawn and waited for first light. As the sky
began to lighten, he noticed that the forest seemed unusually quiet.
No bird song, no squirrel chatter, just an oppressive silence

(44:49):
that seemed to press in on him from all sides.
Then he heard something moving through the leaves below. The
footsteps were heavy and deliberate, much heavier than a deer.
Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back
after these messages. He slowly raised his rifle and peered
through the scope. What he saw made his blood run cold.

(45:14):
Standing about forty yards away was a massive, upright figure.
It was at least seven feet tall and covered in
dark reddish brown hair. Its back was to him, so
he couldn't see its face, but he could see the
muscles in its shoulders rippling as it reached up to
grab a branch. The creature pulled the branch down and
appeared to be eating something from it, berries perhaps, or

(45:36):
some kind of nut. It moved with complete confidence, as
if it owned the forest and had nothing to fear.
The hunter sat frozen in his stand. His finger was
on the trigger, but he couldn't bring himself to shoot.
He told me later that something about the creature seemed
too human, the way it moved, the way it examined

(45:57):
the branch before eating. He felt like he'd be committing
murder if he pulled the trigger. After what felt like
an eternity, the creature released the branch and began walking away.
It moved through the forest with surprising grace for something
so large, and then it was gone, vanished into the
shadows as if it had never been there. At all.

(46:18):
The hunter climbed down from his stand and went home.
He didn't tell anyone what he'd seen for over a decade.
When he finally shared the story with me, he was
visibly shaking. That was ten years ago, he said, and
I still think about it every single day. Another hunter
from Nicholas County, West Virginia had a different kind of encounter.

(46:40):
He was tracking a wounded deer through thick brush when
he came across a set of footprints that stopped him
in his tracks. The prints were enormous, at least sixteen
inches long and deeply pressed into the soft earth. Whatever
had made them was incredibly heavy. He followed the trail
for about one hundred yards until it reached a creek.

(47:00):
The prince went into the water, but didn't come out
on the other side. Whatever had made them had either
walked downstream in the creek or had climbed the rocky
bank without leaving a trace. He never found his wounded deer,
He told me he suspects that something else found at first.
Perhaps the most disturbing hunting story I've collected came from
a man in Pendleton County, West Virginia. He was bow

(47:23):
hunting during archery season when he had an experience that
defies easy explanation. He positioned himself in a ground blind
overlooking a deer trail. As the sun began to set,
he heard something approaching from behind him, something big. He
could hear branches snapping and leaves crunching under enormous feet.
He was afraid to turn around. He sat motionless as

(47:46):
the footsteps came closer and closer. Then they stopped right
behind his blind. He could hear breathing, slow, deep breaths
that seemed to come from several feet above his head.
Then he smelled it, a stench so overwhelming that he
nearly gagged. It smelled like a dead animal, mixed with

(48:06):
sulfur and something else he couldn't identify. He sat there
for a few minutes. Then the breathing stopped. The footsteps resumed,
heading away from his position. When he finally worked up
the courage to look, he saw nothing. The forest was empty.
He packed up his gear and left as fast as
he could. He hasn't been back to that spot since.

(48:27):
Some of the most dramatic wood booger encounters happen on
the roads that whind through these mountains. Late at night,
when traffic is sparse, something occasionally crosses the pavement in
front of stunned drivers. A truck driver hauling coal from
a mine in Wise County had an encounter that he
reported to multiple investigators. It was around three in the
morning on a stretch of Route twenty three that cuts

(48:50):
through dense forest. His headlights illuminated something standing on the
shoulder of the road. At first, he thought it was
a person, maybe a hitchhiker or someone who car had
broken down, but as he got closer he realized that
no person could be that tall. The figure stood at
least eight feet high, with arms that hung down past

(49:10):
its knees. It was covered in dark hair and seemed
to be staring directly at his approaching truck. He slowed down,
and the creature turned and walked into the woods, not running,
not panicking, just a casual walk, as if it had
somewhere to be and wasn't concerned about the massive truck
rumbling past. The truck driver pulled over and grabbed his flashlight.

(49:34):
He shinded into the trees where the creature had disappeared,
but saw nothing, just darkness and the silent forest. A
woman from Bristol, Virginia, had an even closer encounter on
a back road near Mendoda. She was driving home from
a late shift when something stepped into the road directly
in front of her car. She slammed on her brakes

(49:55):
and came to a stop just feet from the creature.
In her headlights, she could see it clearly. It was massive,
at least seven feet tall, with shoulders so broad they
seemed impossible. Its entire body was covered in dark, matted hair,
and its eyes, she told me, the eyes were what
she remembered most. They reflected her head lights with a

(50:17):
red orange glow, like an animal's eyes at night. For
several seconds, they stared at each other. The creature didn't move,
She didn't move. Then it turned its head, looked at
something in the woods on the other side of the road,
and crossed in front of her car with two enormous strides.
She didn't wait to see where it went. She floored

(50:38):
the gas pedal and drove home as fast as her
car would carry her. She was so shaken that she
had to pull over twice to compose herself before making
it to her house. Road crossing accounts are particularly valuable
to researchers because they often provide clear views of the creature,
unlike encounters deep in the forest, where lighting is poor
and visibility is limited. Road crossings happen in the illumination

(51:01):
of headlights, witnesses can see details that would otherwise be
impossible to make out. A delivery driver working a rural
route in Smith County had a road crossing encounter that
included something unusual. The creature wasn't alone. He spotted not one,
but two figures crossing the road ahead of him, a
large one and a smaller one that appeared to be

(51:23):
following behind a mother and child. He told me, I
know what I saw. There was a big one and
a little one. They were walking across the road just
like people would, but they weren't people. The implication of
this sighting is significant. If there are family groups, then
these creatures are reproducing. They're not remnant survivors of a

(51:46):
dying species. They're an active population maintaining their numbers in
the deep forests of Appalachia. Not every encounter involves actually
seeing the wood booger. Many witnesses describe only hearing the creature,
and the sounds they describe are unlike anything else. In
the Appalachian Wilderness, the most commonly reported vocalization is a howl,

(52:09):
not like a coyote, not like a wolf, something deeper
and more resonant. Witnesses describe it as starting low and
building to an almost unbearable volume. Some say it sounds mournful,
others say it sounds angry. All of them say it
raises the hair on the back of their necks. A
family camping in the Monongahela National Forest had an experience

(52:33):
with these sounds that they'll never forget. They'd set up
camp in a remote area far from other campers. The
first night was uneventful. The second night, everything changed. Around
two in the morning, they were awakened by a sound
that the father described as the most terrifying thing he'd
ever heard. It was a scream, high pitched and ragged,

(52:55):
like a woman being murdered, he said, But there was
something wrong with it, something inhuman. The scream came from
somewhere in the forest, maybe a quarter mile away. Then
another scream answered from a different direction, and then another.
The family huddled in their tent as screams echoed back
and forth through the darkness. The screaming continued for nearly

(53:17):
an hour, then as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.
The forest went silent. The family packed up and left
before dawn. They haven't been camping since. Wood knocking is
another commonly reported sound. Witnesses describe hearing loud, banging noises,
as if someone striking a tree with a heavy branch.

(53:40):
The knocks often come in patterns three knocks followed by
a pause, then three more knocks from a different direction.
The behavior suggests communication between multiple creatures. A researcher working
in Fayette County, West Virginia, recorded a sequence of wood
knocks that was later analyzed by audio experts. The force

(54:00):
required to produce the recorded sounds would have been beyond
the capability of any known animal in the region. Even
a human with a baseball bat couldn't have generated impacts
of that magnitude. Perhaps the most unsettling sounds are the
ones that almost sound human. Witnesses have reported hearing what
sounds like mumbling voices, laughing, crying, even what sounds like language,

(54:24):
though no words can be made out. A woman living
in a remote cabin in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, reported
hearing voices outside her home late at night. At first,
she thought someone was in trouble and needed help, But
when she listened more carefully, she realized the voices weren't
speaking English. They weren't speaking any language. She recognized they

(54:45):
were just making sounds, sounds that were structured like speech,
but carried no meaning she could understand. She never saw
what was making the sounds, but she heard them on
multiple occasions over the course of several months. Eventually she
moved away. She told me she loved that cabin, she'd
lived there for fifteen years, but she couldn't take the

(55:07):
sounds anymore. They made her feel like she was being watched,
like something was learning about her. She said. It felt
like the creatures were studying her the way a scientist
might study an animal in a laboratory. I'd be remiss
if I didn't address the skeptical perspective on the wood
booger phenomena. There are many intelligent people who believe that

(55:28):
every sighting can be explained through misidentification, hoaxes, or imagination.
The most common skeptical explanation is that witnesses are seeing bears.
Black bears are common throughout Appalachia, and they occasionally walk
on their hind legs. A bear standing upright in poor
lighting could certainly be mistaken for something else. This explanation

(55:50):
has some merit. Bears do walk on two legs sometimes,
but it fails to account for several aspects of the
witness descriptions. Bears that walk upright typically do so for
short distances, and they walk awkwardly. The woodbooger is described
as walking with a fluid, confident gait. Bears standing upright

(56:10):
are at most six feet tall. Many woodbooger witnesses describe
creatures approaching nine or ten feet. Bears have distinctive snouts
and ears. Witnesses consistently describe flat, human like faces. Another
common explanation is that witnesses are seeing humans homeless people
living in the woods, hunters dressed in Gillie suits, people

(56:33):
pulling pranks. Again, this explanation has some plausibility. There have
certainly been hoaxes over the years. The infamous Beast of
Gum Hill video has been questioned by some researchers, who
note that the filmmaker Chuck Newton also has a joke
video featuring a man in a gorilla costume, but the
human explanation fails to account for the sheer number and

(56:54):
consistency of reports. It would require a coordinated conspiracy spanning
decade aid involving hundreds of independent witnesses across multiple states.
It would require hoaxers operating in remote wilderness areas where
they'd never be discovered. It would require people risking their
lives in dangerous terrain for nothing more than the chance

(57:15):
to fool a random hiker. The scientific community remains largely
dismissive of the Bigfoot phenomenon. Most mainstream scientists won't even
discuss the possibility of an undiscovered primate in North America.
The topic is considered career poison. Researchers who take it
seriously risk losing funding, grants, and professional standing. There are exceptions.

(57:39):
The late doctor Jeffrey Meldrum at Idaho State University built
a career studying the evidence for sasquatch. He examined hundreds
of footprint casts and published peer reviewed papers on the
anatomical characteristics they displayed. His work was rigorous and methodical,
but he was often dismissed by colleagues who refused to
engage with his fine. The problem with scientific investigation of

(58:03):
the wood booger is that science requires repeatable observations and
physical evidence. The creatures are elusive. They don't appear on demand.
They leave behind tantalizing traces, but never definitive proof. This
puts the phenomenon outside the normal methods of scientific inquiry,
but I'd argue that the eyewitness evidence deserves more serious consideration.

(58:27):
When thousands of people across multiple generations describe encountering the
same type of creature with the same physical characteristics and
the same behavioral patterns, that's data. It may not be
the kind of data that fits neatly into a laboratory study,
but it's data, nonetheless, and dismissing it without investigation isn't science,

(58:50):
it's dogma. Some of the most compelling and heartbreaking accounts
I've collected come from children. Children who saw something in
the woods that forever changed how they viewed the world.
Children who weren't believed by their parents or teachers. Children
who learned at a young age that some truths are
too strange to share. A woman now in her fifties

(59:10):
told me about an experience she had as an eight
year old growing up in Wise County, Virginia. She was
playing in the creek behind her grandparents' house when she
looked up and saw a creature watching her from the
opposite bank. It was big, she told me, really really big,
and it was harry all over. But what I remember
most was its face. It looked almost like a person, almost,

(59:36):
but its eyes were different. They were too deep, too, knowing,
like it understood everything about me just by looking. The
creature watched her for several seconds, then it turned and
walked into the forest. The little girl ran back to
the house and told her grandmother what she'd seen. Her
grandmother didn't dismiss her, didn't laugh at her, didn't tell

(59:59):
her she had an over active imagination. Instead, she sat
the child down and told her something that the woman
still remembers word for word. Stay tuned for more Backwoods
bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. That was
the hairy man child. He's been in these mountains longer
than anyone, longer than our family, longer than the Cherokee.

(01:00:23):
You leave him alone, and he'll leave you alone. But
never ever go into the deep woods by yourself. Do
you understand? The woman told me. She never forgot that conversation.
It was the way her grandmother spoke that stuck with her.
There was no surprise, no disbelief, just matter of fact

(01:00:45):
acceptance that the creature was real and that certain precautions
needed to be taken. Another account came from a man
who had his encounter as a teenager in Nicholas County,
West Virginia. He was camping with friends near a remote
lake when one of the boys needed to relave himself
in the middle of the night. He walked about fifty
yards from the campsite, and that's when he saw it.

(01:01:07):
The creature was standing near the water, drinking or perhaps
looking at its reflection in the moonlight. The boy could
see its massive silhouette, the hunched shoulders, the long arms,
the way its back curved in a shape that wasn't
quite human. He didn't scream, he didn't run. He stood frozen,

(01:01:28):
watching as the creature finished whatever it was doing, and
then slowly walked away along the shore of the lake.
The boy went back to camp and didn't sleep for
the rest of the night. He didn't tell his friends
what he'd seen. He didn't tell anyone for over thirty years.
When he finally shared the story with me, his hands
were shaking He told me that for decades he'd wondered

(01:01:49):
if he'd imagined the whole thing, if his teenage brain
had played tricks on him in the darkness, But the
memory was too vivid, too detailed. He knew what he saw,
and he'd carried that knowledge alone for most of his
adult life. These childhood encounters are particularly important because children
have no preconceptions about bigfoot or sasquatch. They haven't been

(01:02:12):
exposed to the movies and television shows that shape adult expectations.
When a child describes seeing a large, hairy creature in
the woods, they're reporting exactly what their eyes observed, unfiltered
by popular culture, uncolored by what they think they should
have seen. The consistency of these childhood accounts across different

(01:02:33):
decades and different locations suggests something real. Children in the
nineteen fifties described the same type of creature as children
in the nineteen nineties. Children in Virginia described the same
thing as children in West Virginia and Kentucky. Unless we're
prepared to believe in a conspiracy of lying children spanning
generations and state lines, we have to take these accounts seriously.

(01:02:57):
As we move deeper into the twenty first century, the
relationship between humans and the wood booger continues to evolve.
Development is creeping further into the Appalachian wilderness. Roads are
being built into areas that were once completely inaccessible. Cell
phone towers are providing coverage to remote hollows that previously

(01:03:17):
had no connection to the outside world. Some researchers worry
that this encroachment will drive the wood booger population into
smaller and smaller pockets of remaining wilderness. If the creatures exist,
they require large territories to sustain themselves. As those territories shrink,
encounters may become more frequent simply because the animals have

(01:03:39):
nowhere left to go. Others believe that the wood booger
has adapted to human presence and will continue to do so.
These creatures, whatever they are, have survived alongside humans for
thousands of years. They've learned to avoid us. They've learned
where the dangerous areas are and where safety can be found.

(01:04:00):
Knowledge won't disappear just because we build a few more roads.
Technology is also changing the landscape of cryptid research. Trail
cameras are cheaper and more widely available than ever before.
Drones can cover territory that would take humans days to
traverse on foot. Thermal imaging equipment that was once limited

(01:04:20):
to military applications is now available to civilian researchers. Despite
all of this technology, definitive proof remains elusive. Trail cameras
capture thousands of hours of footage, but the wood booger
never seems to walk in front of one. Drones survey
vast stretches of forest, but the creatures apparently know to
take cover when they hear the buzzing of rotors. Thermal

(01:04:43):
cameras reveal heat signatures in the trees, but by the
time researchers arrive, whatever made the signature is gone. This
technological cat and mouse game has led some researchers to
propose a disturbing hypothesis. What if the wood booger is
intelligent enough to understand and avoid our technology. What if
these creatures have been watching our cameras and drones and

(01:05:06):
have learned exactly how to evade detection. The implications of
that hypothesis are profound. We're not dealing with a simple
animal that blunders around the forest, leaving evidence wherever it goes.
We're dealing with something that actively works to remain hidden,
Something that studies our methods and adapts its behavior accordingly,

(01:05:27):
something that's smart enough to have avoided definitive documentation despite
over a century of active searching. Perhaps that's the most
terrifying thing about the wood Boger. Not its size, not
its strength, not its ability to appear and disappear like
smoke in the forest, but its intelligence. The idea that

(01:05:48):
something out there in the darkness is watching us, learning
from us, studying our patterns and our behaviors, and staying
one step ahead of every attempt we make to prove
its existence. Until that proof comes, the legend will continue.
Witnesses will continue to come forward with their accounts, researchers

(01:06:08):
will continue to tramp through the forests with their cameras
and recording equipment, and the people of Appalachia will continue
to pass down the stories that have been told in
these mountains for generations. The wood Booger is patient. It's
been here for a very long time, and if the
past is any indication, it'll be here long after the
current generation of investigators has given up the search. As

(01:06:32):
I sit here looking out at the mountains I've called
home for most of my life. I find myself thinking
about all the people who've shared their stories with me
over the years. The hunters who saw things they couldn't explain,
the hikers who heard sounds that made their blood run cold,
the children who glimpsed something in the shadows and were
never quite the same afterward. These aren't crazy people. They

(01:06:54):
aren't attention seekers. Their ordinary Appalachian folks who had extraordinary
excps experiences. Many of them never told anyone outside their families.
Many of them have gone to their graves caring secrets
that would have changed how we understand the natural world.
I think about the old timers I've interviewed over the years,
men and women in their eighties and nineties who grew

(01:07:16):
up in these mountains when they were even more wild
and remote than they are today. They remember a time
before paved roads and electricity reached the hollows. They remember
hearing their grandparents talk about the wood booger as just
another fact of mountain life, something to be respected and avoided,
something that had always been here and would always be here.

(01:07:39):
One elderly woman I spoke with in Wise County told
me something that stayed with me ever since. She was
nearly ninety years old when we talked. She'd lived her
entire life within twenty miles of where she was born,
and she told me that as a child in the
nineteen thirties, her grandmother had a rule the children were
never allowed to go into the forest alone, not because

(01:08:01):
of bears, not because of snakes, because of what grandmother
called the hairy man. Grandmother had seen him, She told
me just once, when she was a young woman walking
home from church, he was standing in the tree line
watching her. She never forgot those eyes, she said, they
looked almost human, almost but not quite. That story was

(01:08:26):
passed down through three generations before it reached me. How
many other families in these mountains have similar stories? How
many encounters were never recorded, never shared, never documented. The
truth is that most encounters are never reported. Most witnesses
keep their silence. They don't want to be laughed at,

(01:08:46):
they don't want to be called crazy. They just want
to forget what they saw and move on with their lives.
But the memories stay with them, the fear stays with them,
and when they finally do share their stories, the motion
in their voices tells you that what they experienced was real.
The wood Booger remains an enigma. We have footprints, but

(01:09:08):
no feet. We have hair samples but no bodies. We
have thousands of eyewitness accounts, but no specimen to examine.
The creature seems to exist in a twilight zone between
myth and reality, always just out of reach, always one
step ahead of the camera. But I'll tell you this,

(01:09:29):
after decades of research and close to a thousand interviews,
I believe that something extraordinary lives in these mountains. I
believe that the Cherokee knew what they were talking about
when they spoke of the zul Calu. I believe that
Daniel Boone really did encounter a Yahoo in the Kentucky Wilderness.
I believe that the people of Norton and Saltville, Virginia,

(01:09:50):
the New River Gorge, and countless other Appalachian communities have
been living alongside something that science has yet to acknowledge.
Does that make me a true bl lever? Maybe, But
I prefer to think of myself as someone who takes
the evidence seriously, who listens to the witnesses without judgment,
who recognizes that these ancient mountains might hold secrets that

(01:10:13):
our modern world isn't yet ready to accept. I've walked
these trails at night. I've sat in the darkness of
a remote hollow and listened to the sounds of the forest.
I felt that unmistakable feeling of being watched, and I've
come away convinced that we don't know everything about what
lives in these woods. The world of the twenty first

(01:10:34):
century likes to think that we've mapped every corner of
the planet, that we've cataloged every species, that there are
no mysteries left. But the people of Appalachia know better.
They know that the maps show roads and towns, but
they don't show the deep places, the hidden hollows, the
unexplored caves, the vast stretches of wilderness where no human

(01:10:56):
foot has tread in decades. In those places, anything could survive,
anything could hide, anything could watch and wait and occasionally
reveal itself to the unlucky traveler who ventures too far
from the beaten path. I think about the young people
who are growing up in these mountains today. Many of
them will never hear the old stories. They won't sit

(01:11:19):
on their grandparents' porches and listen to tales of the
hairy man in the woods. They won't be warned about
going into the forest after dark. They'll grow up believing
that the wilderness is safe and known and predictable. And
perhaps that's for the best. Perhaps the old fears should
be left in the past. Perhaps the modern world has

(01:11:39):
no room for creatures that lurk in the shadows and
watch from the tree line. But I suspect those young
people will learn the truth eventually. Some of them will
have their own encounters. Some of them will see something
in the forest that they can't explain, and when they do,
they'll remember the stories they dismissed as superstition and folklore.

(01:12:00):
They'll realize that their ancestors knew something that the modern
world has forgotten. The Appalachian Mountains were here before us,
they'll be here long after we're gone, And whatever lurks
in the deepest hollows and most remote ridges will continue
to watch and wait and occasionally make itself known to
those who venture too far into the wild. If you

(01:12:21):
ever find yourself hiking the trails around Flag Rock Recreation Area,
or camping in the back country of West Virginia, or
exploring the old mining roads of eastern Kentucky, remember the
words that Appalachian parents have been telling their children for generations.
Don't go into the woods after dark, don't whistle on
the trail at night. If you smell something foul in

(01:12:42):
the forest, don't investigate. If you hear wood knocking or
strange screams, don't answer. And if you hear something moving
through the trees that sounds too big to be a
deer and too quiet to be a bear, don't go
looking for it, because the wood Booger isn't looking to
be found, and if you do find it, you might
not like what happens next. I've spent most of my

(01:13:04):
adult life collecting these stories, interviewing witnesses, walking the trails
where encounters occurred, and I can tell you that the
wood Booger isn't going away. New sightings are reported every year.
New witnesses come forward to share their experiences. The legend
continues to grow because the creature continues to reveal itself.

(01:13:25):
Maybe someday we'll have definitive proof, maybe a body will
be found, maybe a clear video will emerge, Maybe DNA
evidence will finally convince the scientific establishment that something extraordinary
has been living among us all along. Or maybe the
wood Booger will continue to elude us, staying just beyond

(01:13:45):
the reach of our cameras and our technology, watching from
the shadows as we blunder through the forest, making noise
and leaving traces of our presence everywhere we go. Either way,
the legend will endure because legends and when they contain
a kernel of truth, and the people of Appalachia knowing
their bones that this particular legend is more than just

(01:14:07):
a story. These mountains keep their secrets. The wood Booger
is one of them, and I, for one hope it
stays that way, because some mysteries are worth preserving, some
secrets are worth keeping, and some creatures are worth protecting,
even if we never fully understand them. I've been doing
this work for years now. I've interviewed nearly a thousand witnesses,

(01:14:31):
I've walked countless miles of trail and spent more nights
in the deep woods than I can remember. And if
there's one thing I've learned, it's this. The people of
Appalachia aren't liars, they aren't attention seekers, they aren't crazy.
There's simply people who've seen something that defies easy explanation,
and they deserve to be heard. So this show is

(01:14:53):
for them, For the hunters who came home shaken and silent,
For the hikers who saw something on the trail that
they could never forget, For the children who weren't believed
by their parents, For all the people who've carried their
encounters in secret for fear of ridicule. You aren't alone,
you aren't crazy, and what you saw was real. Thank

(01:15:15):
you for listening. Stay safe out there, and remember when
you're in the Appalachian Wilderness you're never truly alone. Did

(01:16:21):
the game in