December 3, 2025 • 48 mins
Deep in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, there’s a quiet little valley where three creeks meet and cross like a natural X. Long before settlers built homes there, the Cherokee knew the place well—and they didn’t trust it after dark. They warned their people to stay away, calling it a place where something shadowy moved through the night.
Later, missionaries arrived, saw the crossing waters as a holy sign, and named the area Valle Crucis: the Valley of the Cross. They built St. John’s Episcopal Church beside that old meeting of waters, never realizing what the land had already been known for.In this special episode of Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, we step outside Sasquatch territory for something darker, older, and harder to shake. What you’re about to hear isn’t a Bigfoot encounter.
It’s a story that’s been whispered around western North Carolina for generations—one that comes with a body count and a warning baked into the ground itself. The legend of the Demon Dog of Valle Crucis goes back at least to the mid-1800s, when a Methodist circuit rider claimed he saw a massive black hound standing among the cemetery stones. He wrote about its size, its unnatural stillness, and those eyes—glowing red like coals. Since then, the sightings have never really stopped.
They just surface every so often, always describing the same impossible thing: a dog too big to be real, fur black enough to swallow moonlight, and a stare that feels human in the worst way. But it’s not the sightings that made this creature infamous. It’s what followed them.
Hunting dogs found torn apart with wounds that didn’t match any known predator. Livestock killed in ways locals couldn’t explain. And nearly every time, the trail led back to the old cemetery—back to the crossing waters—back to the place people were told not to go.At the center of this episode is a listener account from Dale, now in his late fifties, who has carried what happened to him for more than forty years.
In the fall of 1975, Dale and his best friend Curtis were fourteen—two mountain kids determined to prove they were grown enough to coon hunt on their own. They headed into the woods with three dogs, including Dale’s prized Bluetick, Jessie. They didn’t realize they were drifting toward Valle Crucis. They didn’t know what the old stories were really warning about.What happened that night near the cemetery changed Dale for good.
He describes something huge stepping out of the darkness. Sounds no normal dog could make. A chase that didn’t feel like a chase—more like something playing with them. And a split-second sacrifice he still hasn’t forgiven himself for. Dale doesn’t try to sell you a theory. He doesn’t dress it up. He just tells you what he saw, what he heard, and what he lost. And the grief in his voice makes it clear: this isn’t a campfire tale.
This is a scar. We’re honored that Dale trusted us with it. Some stories don’t fade with time—they just get heavier. And this one comes with a warning that’s echoed through generations: there are places in these mountains you don’t push your luck in.
Not because you’re superstitious. Because sometimes the old folks were right.So settle in, keep your senses sharp, and walk with us into the Valley of the Cross—where the creek waters meet, the graveyard waits, and something out there still doesn’t want company after dark.
Later, missionaries arrived, saw the crossing waters as a holy sign, and named the area Valle Crucis: the Valley of the Cross. They built St. John’s Episcopal Church beside that old meeting of waters, never realizing what the land had already been known for.In this special episode of Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, we step outside Sasquatch territory for something darker, older, and harder to shake. What you’re about to hear isn’t a Bigfoot encounter.
It’s a story that’s been whispered around western North Carolina for generations—one that comes with a body count and a warning baked into the ground itself. The legend of the Demon Dog of Valle Crucis goes back at least to the mid-1800s, when a Methodist circuit rider claimed he saw a massive black hound standing among the cemetery stones. He wrote about its size, its unnatural stillness, and those eyes—glowing red like coals. Since then, the sightings have never really stopped.
They just surface every so often, always describing the same impossible thing: a dog too big to be real, fur black enough to swallow moonlight, and a stare that feels human in the worst way. But it’s not the sightings that made this creature infamous. It’s what followed them.
Hunting dogs found torn apart with wounds that didn’t match any known predator. Livestock killed in ways locals couldn’t explain. And nearly every time, the trail led back to the old cemetery—back to the crossing waters—back to the place people were told not to go.At the center of this episode is a listener account from Dale, now in his late fifties, who has carried what happened to him for more than forty years.
In the fall of 1975, Dale and his best friend Curtis were fourteen—two mountain kids determined to prove they were grown enough to coon hunt on their own. They headed into the woods with three dogs, including Dale’s prized Bluetick, Jessie. They didn’t realize they were drifting toward Valle Crucis. They didn’t know what the old stories were really warning about.What happened that night near the cemetery changed Dale for good.
He describes something huge stepping out of the darkness. Sounds no normal dog could make. A chase that didn’t feel like a chase—more like something playing with them. And a split-second sacrifice he still hasn’t forgiven himself for. Dale doesn’t try to sell you a theory. He doesn’t dress it up. He just tells you what he saw, what he heard, and what he lost. And the grief in his voice makes it clear: this isn’t a campfire tale.
This is a scar. We’re honored that Dale trusted us with it. Some stories don’t fade with time—they just get heavier. And this one comes with a warning that’s echoed through generations: there are places in these mountains you don’t push your luck in.
Not because you’re superstitious. Because sometimes the old folks were right.So settle in, keep your senses sharp, and walk with us into the Valley of the Cross—where the creek waters meet, the graveyard waits, and something out there still doesn’t want company after dark.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
For decades, people have disappeared in the woods without a trace.
Some blame wild animals, others whisper of creatures the world
refuses to believe in. But those who have survived they
know the truth. Welcome to Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, where we
share real encounters with the things lurking in the darkness Bigfoot,
(00:22):
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
deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where
the mist clings to the hollows like a burial shroud,
(01:08):
and the ridge lines cut jagged silhouettes against the evening sky,
there exists a small community that time seems to have forgotten.
The name itself carries weight, spoken in hush tones by
those who know the old stories. Valle crusis the Valley
of the Cross. The origins of that name stretch back
to the eighteen forties, when Episcopal missionaries first ventured into
(01:32):
these remote highlands and noticed something peculiar about the landscape.
Three creeks converge in this valley, their waters meeting at
angles that form what appears to be a natural cross
when viewed from the surrounding peaks. To the missionaries, this
seemed like a sign from God himself, a holy marking
upon the land that beckoned them to establish their mission. There.
(01:54):
They built their church, they ministered to the mountain people,
and they believed they had found sacred ground. But the Cherokee,
who had walked these valleys for countless generations before the
missionaries arrived, they knew different. They knew that certain places
carry energy that predates any religion brought by settlers. They
(02:15):
knew that some ground holds memory, holds power, holds things
that should not be disturbed. And they knew that the
valley where those three creeks crossed was one such place.
The Cherokee called this region by another name, a name
that roughly translates to the place where the shadow walks.
Their stories spoke of something that guarded the crossing of waters,
(02:38):
something ancient and territorial, something that took the form of
a great black beast with eyes like burning coals. The
elders warned their young hunters to avoid that valley after dark,
to never camp near where the waters met, and above all,
to never bring dogs into that territory, because whatever lurked there,
it had a particular hatred for dogs. When European settlers
(03:02):
moved into the region in the late seventeen hundreds and
early eighteen hundreds, they brought their own folklore with them.
The Scots Irish immigrants who populated these Appalachian highlands carried
tales of black dogs from the old country, spectral hounds
that haunted crossroads and graveyards, harbingers of death that appeared
to those whose time was running short. They called these
(03:24):
creatures by many names, church grims, bar guests, black shuck.
The stories varied from village to village, but the core
remained the same. A massive black dog with glowing eyes
that appeared at places of death, that guarded the boundary
between this world and the next. When these settlers encountered
(03:46):
the Cherokee warnings about the Valley of the Crossing Waters,
something clicked into place. The old stories they had carried
across the ocean suddenly felt less like superstition and more
like confirmation. Whatever haunted the moor and churchyards of their
ancestral homeland, it had a cousin here in these ancient mountains.
The first documented sighting of what locals would eventually call
(04:09):
the demon dog of vale Crusis came in eighteen fifty three.
A Methodist circuit rider named Reverend Thomas was traveling through
the valley after sundown, making his way to a homestead
where a family had requested prayer for their dying patriarch.
The reverend's journal, preserved to this day in the archives
of Appalachian State University, contains an entry that still raises
(04:32):
the hair on the arms of those who read it.
He wrote, and I'm paraphrasing here for clarity, that as
he passed the old cemetery near the church, his horse
stopped dead and refused to move forward. The animal trembled
so violently that the reverend feared it might collapse. When
he looked toward the cemetery, he saw what he described
(04:52):
as a hound of impossible size, black as the pit itself,
with eyes that burned red as hell fire. The creature
stood motionless among the gravestones watching him. The reverend claimed
he began to pray aloud, and after what felt like
an eternity, the beast simply faded into the darkness, as
if it had never been there at all. His horse
(05:13):
bolted the moment the creature vanished, and the reverend did
not stop riding until he reached the homestead, nearly three
miles away. From that point forward, sightings became sporadic but consistent.
Every decade or so, someone would come forward with a story,
a farmer returning home late from market, a young couple
who had snuck away to the cemetery for some privacy,
(05:36):
hunters tracking game through the bottom lands near the creeks.
The details always matched, massive size, black fur that seemed
to absorb light rather than reflect it, and those eyes,
always those terrible glowing red eyes. But here's where the
legend takes a darker turn. The sightings were frightening enough
(05:57):
on their own, but it was the deaths that truly
cemented the demon Dog's reputation. Over the decades, an unusual
number of hunting dogs met violent ends in and around
Volley Crusus, coon dogs, bear dogs, rabbit hounds, dogs that
were found torn apart in ways that made no biological sense,
(06:17):
dogs whose bodies showed wounds that did not match any
predator known to the region, and in almost every case,
the dog's owners reported that their animals had been tracking
something toward the old cemetery when they heard the screaming. Yes, screaming,
not yelping or howling, but screaming, the sound a dog
makes when it encounters something so terrifying, so unnatural, that
(06:41):
its very mind breaks from the side of it. The
locals developed a saying, you do not hunt near the
Valley of the Cross, not after dark. Not Ever. By
the nineteen seventies, the legend had faded somewhat from everyday conversation.
The world was changing. People were leaving the mountains for
cities and jobs. Television brought the outside world into living rooms,
(07:06):
and the old stories seemed quaint, even embarrassing to some.
The demon dog became something parents mentioned to scare children
into behaving. A boogeyman with no more substance than the
Sandman or the easter Bunny. But the thing about legends
is this, just because people stop believing in them does
not mean they stop being true, which brings me to
(07:28):
the story I am about to share with you. A
few weeks back, I received an email from a listener
named Dale. He had been following the podcast for a while,
and something about our approach to these stories, the way
we treat the witnesses with respect and let them tell
their truth, had convinced him it was finally time to
share something he had been carrying for over forty years.
(07:50):
What you are about to hear is Dale's account, written
in his own words, edited only slightly for clarity and flow.
Dale is now fifty nine years old. He works as
a retired lineman for the power company and lives just
a few miles from where the events of this story
took place. He never left the mountains. He says, he
could not leave even if he wanted to. Something about
(08:13):
that night bonded him to this land in a way
he still does not fully understand. There's a rawness to
Dale's account that you'll notice immediately. He does not try
to explain what he saw. He does not offer theories
or speculation. He simply tells you what happened and lets
you draw your own conclusions. That kind of restraint, that
(08:34):
refusal to embellish, is something I have learned to recognize
over my years of collecting these stories. It is the
mark of someone telling the truth. I should warn you
before we begin. This story involves the death of an
animal in graphic detail. It involves fear of the kind
that marks a person for life, and it involves a
(08:54):
mystery that has never been solved and probably never will be.
With Dale's permission, here is his story in his own words.
My name's Dale, and I was fourteen years old in
the autumn of nineteen seventy five. I need you to
understand what that meant. Being fourteen in the mountains of
North Carolina in the mid seventies, it was a different world,
(09:15):
a different planet. Really. We didn't have video games, cell phones,
or the Internet. What we had was the land, the woods,
the creeks, and ridges and hollows. Our families had hunted
and farmed for generations. That was our entertainment, That was
our life. My best friend in the world was a
boy named Curtis. We'd grown up together, born just three
(09:37):
weeks apart in the same little clinic down in Boone.
Our daddy's hunted together, our mamas went to the same church.
We'd been inseparable since before either of us could walk,
and by the time we were fourteen, we knew each
other better than we knew ourselves. Curtis was the brave one.
That's something you need to get right from the start.
If there was trouble to get into, Curtis found it first,
(10:00):
and I followed along because I couldn't imagine not following
him wherever he went. He was the one who climbed
the highest trees, the one who swam in the deep
holes where copperheads liked to sun themselves, And he was
the one who decided that October of seventy five that
we were old enough to go coon hunting on our own. Now,
coon hunting was serious business in those mountains. It wasn't
(10:23):
just recreation. Raccoon pelts brought good money at the fur buyers,
and for families like ours, who didn't have much, that
income made a real difference. Come winter. Most boys our
age were already learning the trade, going out with their
daddies and uncles, learning to read the dogs and the terrain,
learning when to push forward and when to hold back.
(10:44):
Curtis and I had been on dozens of hunts with
our fathers. We knew what we were doing or at
least we thought we did. And Curtis had convinced me
it was time to prove ourselves, to go out alone
and come back with pelts of our own. His daddy
had three coon dogs, two walkers named Bo and Duke,
and a blue tick named Jesse. Jesse was something special.
(11:07):
She was maybe seven then, right in her prime, and
she had a nose on her that flat out defied explanation.
That dog could pick up a trail twelve hours cold
and run it true as a surveyor's line straight to
the tree. Curtis's daddy had turned down offers of five
hundred dollars or more for her, and in nineteen seventy
five that was real money. That was used truck money,
(11:30):
That was quit your job for six months money. He
always said, no, Jesse was family. The plan was simple.
Saturday night, while our folks thought we were camping in
the barn at Curtis's place, we'd slip out with the
dogs and hunt the ridges to the east. We'd be
back before dawn, Nobody would ever know we'd been gone,
and we'd come home with enough pelts to prove we
(11:51):
were men. Lord, I can still feel the excitement that
built in my chest. All week, every class at school
felt like torture. Every chore at home was something to
rush through so I could get to Saturday faster. I
could barely eat, barely sleep. Curtis and I whispered every
chance we got, planning our route, talking about how many
(12:12):
coons we'd tree, picturing the looks on our daddy's faces
when they saw what we'd done. We were so young,
so stupid, We had no idea what was waiting for
us out there in the dark. Saturday came cold and clear,
with that sharp autumn bite that makes your lungs ache
when you breathe too deep. The leaves had mostly turned,
(12:33):
and the mountains were painted in reds and golds and
browns that looked almost too beautiful to be real. One
of those perfect Appalachian fall days that makes you understand
why people never leave these hills. I rode my bicycle
over to Curtis's place around four that afternoon, telling my
mama I'd be spending the night in the barn with
my friend. She didn't question it. That was normal, That's
(12:54):
what boys did. She just reminded me to take my
jacket and stay warm, then went back to canning the
last of the green beans from the garden. Curtis's parents
were going to a church social that evening and wouldn't
be back till late. His older sister was supposed to
keep an eye on us, but she was seventeen and
had her own plans that didn't include babysitting two fourteen
(13:15):
year old boys. She barely looked up when we told
her we'd be in the barn, just nodded and went
back to talking on the phone with her boyfriend. The
timing was perfect. We ate dinner early, wolfing down beans
and corn bread at the kitchen table. Curtis's mama fussed
over us before she left, making sure we had blankets
in a lantern and enough snacks to last the night.
(13:37):
She kissed us both on the forehead, something that embarrassed
me then, but I'd give anything to feel again. Then
his parents climbed into their truck and drove away, tail
lights fading down the gravel drive. We waited until full dark.
That was the plan. Coons don't start moving till the
sun's down, and we needed time to get into position
(13:57):
on the ridges before the hunting really got going. We
used that waiting time to gather our gear. Two flashlights
with fresh batteries, Curtis's twenty two rifle, a length of
rope for climbing trees, a burlap sack for the pelts,
and most importantly, the dogs. Bow and Duke were good dogs,
but they weren't Jesse. We knew that. Everybody knew that.
(14:20):
But Curtis insisted we needed all three. More dogs meant
more ground, and more ground meant more coons. His daddy
wouldn't know the difference. He said. We'd be back before sunrise,
dogs back in their pen where they belonged, and nobody
any wiser. I remember the way Jesse looked at me
when we opened the kennel gate, big amber eyes that
(14:42):
seemed to hold something close to human understanding. She knew
we weren't supposed to be taking her out, She knew
it was against the rules, but she was a hunting dog,
born and bred, and the pull of a trail was
too strong. She came with us willingly, tail wagging low
and slow, nose, all ready working the air. Stay tuned
for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
(15:08):
It was just past eight when we left the property,
heading east through the pasture toward the tree line. The
moon was rising almost full, casting silver across the frost
touched grass. Our breath came out in little white clouds.
The dogs ran ahead, circling back, excited as we were.
Everything felt right perfect. I should have known that was
(15:30):
when things started going wrong. The first hour was everything
we'd hoped for. We cut through the woods on trails
we'd walked a hundred times, trails our daddies and granddaddies
had walked before us. The dogs worked the ground with
focused intensity, snuffling through leaf litter, pausing at since, communicating
in that wordless way only hunting dogs understand. Bo and
(15:53):
Duke ranged wide, covering the flanks, while Jesse worked steady
down the middle nose, near the ground. The forest at
night is a different place than the forest by day.
You've got to know that the familiar turns unfamiliar. Trees
you'd recognize in daylight become looming shadows, branches reaching like
skeletal fingers. Sounds you never notice in the daytime get
(16:16):
sharp and loud. Footsteps and leaves, the creak of limbs,
the distant call of an owl. Your other sense is
sharpened to make up for what your eyes can't see.
You become an animal yourself in a way, primitive, alert, alive.
Curtis and I didn't talk much. We didn't need to.
(16:38):
We'd hunted those woods together so many times. We moved
like one organism, anticipating each other, covering blind spots. When
he paused, I paused. When I pointed my flashlight, his
beam followed. We were in sync. Around nine point thirty,
Jesse picked up a trail. I knew it. The second
had happened. A good coon dog changes when she hit scent.
(17:01):
Body tightens, movement sharpens. Jesse's head came up, ears forward,
and she let out this low, rumbling howl that got
the other two moving. They converged on her noses working
the same spot. Then they were off. Curtis and I
ran after them, crashing through brush, our flashlight beams bouncing.
It's hard to keep up with dogs on a hot
(17:23):
trail and rough terrain, and we fell behind fast. But
that was normal. You follow the sound, the baying, and
when it changes to treeing barks, you know you've got them.
The chase went maybe twenty minutes. The dogs pulled ahead,
voices echoing off the ridges, that beautiful music every coon
hunter knows. Then the pitch changed. Long running howls turned
(17:46):
into short, sharp barks. They'd treed. We found them at
the base of a massive red oak, all three circling
paws scratching bark, eyes fixed high in the canopy. Curtis
shined his light up and there it was a big
boar coon, probably twenty five pounds, eyes glowing green in
the beam. It hissed down, teeth bared, but it wasn't
(18:10):
going anywhere. Curtis handed me the rifle. That was our deal.
I was the better shot, so I'd take the first one,
he'd take the next. Fair was fair. I sighted in,
exhaled slow, like my daddy taught me, and squeezed the trigger.
The crack echoed through the woods, and the coon dropped,
landing heavy among the dogs. They were on it right away,
(18:33):
but it was already dead, clean shot through the head,
no suffering. We pulled the dogs off and stuffed the
coon into our bur lap sack, our first pelt. Curtis
clapped me on the back so hard it hurt, grinning
like a fool. We were hunters, now, we were men.
That should have been enough in a sane world, we'd
(18:54):
have taken that coon and headed home satisfied. But we
were fourteen, drunk on a rentaline and pride, and the
dogs were already working another trail, so we kept going.
The second coon came quick, treed within fifteen minutes, smaller,
maybe fifteen pounds, a young female. Curtis took the shot
(19:14):
and made it clean, two for two. By now it
was close to eleven, The moon was higher, flooding the
forest with pale light. The temperature had dropped, and I
could see ice crystals forming on dead leaves. We should
have been cold, should have been tired. We weren't. The
hunt had us in its grip. It was after the
second coon that Jesse started acting strange. I noticed first,
(19:38):
because I'd been watching her more than the others. She
stopped working the ground and kept lifting her head, staring
off west toward the valley floor. Ears up and swiveling tail,
which had wagged steady all night, went stiff and still.
Curtis saw it too. He called her, but she didn't
even look his way, just kept staring into the dark alone,
(20:00):
wine building in her throat. Bo and Duke picked up
on it. They moved closer hackles rising, the playful energy evaporated.
Something had shifted. I swept my flashlight where she was looking,
but I didn't see a thing, just trees shadows, the
normal darkness of a mountain night. But the dogs were
(20:20):
seeing something, or smelling something, or sensing something past my
human limits. Curtis tried to get them moving, clapping his
hands using his daddy's commands, but they wouldn't hunt. They
huddled together, pressed against our legs like they needed protection.
I'd never seen coon dogs act like that. These were
animals that would tree bears fight anything they cornered, and
(20:44):
there they were, trembling against us like whipped pups. That
should have been our sign to go home, but we
were young and stupid and proud, and Curtis wouldn't let
two coons be the end of the night. He talked
himself into thinking they'd caught wind of a bear or wildcat.
Nothing to worry about. We just swing wide, loop south,
pick up fresh trails. So we did. Turned away from
(21:07):
whatever had spooked them and started south along a game
trail that hugged the ridge, and that trail, God help us,
led straight toward valet Crusis. I didn't realize where we
were headed till we broke out of thick timber and
hit the edge of a clearing. The moon was bright
enough I didn't need my flashlight. The clearing was two acres, maybe,
(21:27):
bounded by old oaks on three sides and a low
stone wall on the fourth. Beyond that wall, in silver
lit grass were gravestones, dozens maybe one hundred, white marble,
gray granite, weathered limestone, standing crooked like teeth of some
giant sleeping thing, the Valet Crucis Cemetery. Even then, even
(21:49):
at fourteen, I knew the stories everybody did. The black
dog with glowing eyes, the thing that haunted, the crossing
of the waters, the reason you didn't hunt near the
valley of the cross. But knowing stories and believing them
are two different things. I was a modern boy. I
went to school, watched TV. I knew ghosts and monsters
(22:12):
weren't real, just old folks tales to scare kids. Standing there,
I got a chill that wasn't from the cold, but
I told myself it was just the place getting in
my head, suggestion, imagination. Curtis felt it too, I could
see it, but he wasn't about to admit he was scared,
not to me, not to anybody. He forced a laugh
(22:34):
that sounded hollow, and said, we ought to check it out,
see if the ghost dog wanted to come play. The
dogs wouldn't move, All three stopped dead at the tree line,
wouldn't cross into the clearing. Jesse pressed so hard against
my leg I could feel her shaking through my genes.
Bo and Duke had heads low, tails tucked, lips curled
(22:54):
back in silent snarls. Whatever they were sensing it was
coming from that cemetery. Curtis tried to drag Duke by
the collar, but Duke dug in. Curtis pulled so hard
Duke's collar slipped right off, and the dog just sat there,
looking up at him, like, please, don't make me. I
wanted to leave. Every instinct I had was screaming to
(23:16):
turn around and run, but Curtis was my best friend,
and he was walking toward that wall, and I couldn't
let him go alone. I told the dogs to stay.
I don't know if they understood, but they didn't follow,
just huddled in the shadows, watching us go. Curtis climbed
the stone wall. I climbed after, and we walked into
the cemetery. Most of the stones were old. Dates near
(23:40):
the wall went back to the eighteen hundreds. Names I recognized,
family names from around the community, Folks who'd lived and
died in these mountains for generations. Folks who'd heard the
same stories we'd heard, maybe seen the same things I
was about to see. I tried reading some inscriptions, but
time had worn the letters smooth. What I could make
(24:01):
out was the usual beloved husband, loving mother, safe in
the arms of Jesus. Words meant to comfort, and in
that moonlit silence, they felt thin. Curtis walked ahead, beam
sweeping grave to grave. He'd gotten quieter since we climbed
the wall. The bravado was draining out. I think the
(24:22):
reality of where we were finally hit him too. We
drifted toward the center, stepping around sunken spots where the
ground had settled over old graves. Mists that was light
at the tree line got thicker here, pooling low, curling
around markers like smoke. It muffled our steps, muffled everything.
All I could really hear was our breathing, fast and shallow,
(24:45):
and the blood thumping in my ears. That's when I
heard Jesse scream. Scream is the only word for it.
It wasn't a bark, wasn't a howl. It was a
sound I'd never heard a dog make before, and haven't
heard since, A greek of pure, primal terror that cut
through the night and froze me cold. I spun and ran.
(25:06):
Curtis was right behind me. We cleared that cemetery in seconds,
vaulted the wall, sprinted for the tree line we'd left.
The dogs at my flashlight, bounced wild, throwing flashes of
trees and grass and tombstones. Curtis's boots pounded beside me.
Over it all was that awful screaming. We burst through
the trees and stopped dead. Bo and Duke were gone,
(25:29):
just gone, no sign, no sound, nothing but empty darkness
where they'd been. But Jesse was still there. She was
on her back in the leaves, legs kicking, weak, mouth
open in that terrible scream, and standing over her with
its teeth sunk into her throat. Was something that shouldn't
have existed. I've spent over forty years trying to find
(25:53):
words for what I saw, turned it over a thousand times,
tried to compare it to movies, or books, anything that
makes it makes sense. There isn't anything what I saw
was outside normal life. It was a dog or It
had the shape of one, four legs, a tail, long
snout full of teeth, But everything about it was wrong.
(26:15):
It was too big, way too big. When it lifted
its head from Jesse's throat and looked at us, its
shoulders were level with my chest. I was five to
eight back, then tall for fourteen, and that thing could
have looked me in the eye without stretching. Massive, heavily muscled,
like a nightmare version of a mastiff or great Dane,
(26:36):
and still lean, lean and hungry. Its fur was black,
not just dark black, the kind of black that seems
to swallow light, like it's an absence more than a color.
Even in moonlight, I couldn't make out detail. It was
just a void, shaped like an animal, a hole in
the world. But the eyes they glowed reflected light like
(27:00):
a normal animal caught in a beam. They made their
own light, deep, sullen red, like embers in a dying fire,
like metal cooling after it's been forged. They burned in
that black face, like windows into hell itself for a
moment that lasted forever. Nobody moved. Curtis and I stood frozen.
(27:22):
The thing stood over Jesse's still kicking body. Those eyes
locked on us with an intelligence that wasn't animal. It
was studying us, measuring us, deciding. Then Jesse gave one
last weak cry, and whatever spell we were under snapped.
Curtis screamed. He raised the twenty two and fired once, twice,
(27:43):
three times. I saw the muzzle flashes, heard the sharp cracks.
But the creature didn't react, didn't flinch, didn't run, just
watched us. If anything, there was amusement in those burning eyes.
The rifle clicked empty. Curtis hadn't brought extra shells. We
hadn't planned on needing them. The creature stepped over Jesse
(28:04):
and started toward us, slow, deliberate. I don't remember choosing
to run. I just remember running. Trees blurred, branches whipped
my face. Curtis crashed through brush beside me and behind us,
not running, not chasing, just following at that same slow
pace where heavy footfalls in the leaves. It was playing
(28:27):
with us. I knew it even then. It could have
caught us anytime it wanted, could have run us down
in seconds. But it didn't it. Let us run, let
us feel what it was like to be hunted. We
ran till my heart felt like it had burst, ran
till my legs burned and my lungs screamed, Ran till
I couldn't anymore, and collapsed against an oak, gasping, crying,
(28:51):
sure I was about to die. Curtis yanked my arm
and hauled me upright. His face was white in the moonlight,
eyes wild. He didn't say a word, just pointed through
a gap in the trees, maybe one hundred yards off.
I saw farmhouse lights. We ran for those lights like
they were heaven. That farmhouse belonged to an old man
(29:11):
named Harlan. I knew him vaguely from church, one of
those mountain men who looked carved out of the same
stone as the ridges, weathered, tough, not friendly, lived alone
since his wife passed, didn't like visitors. But in that
moment he was our only shot. We hit his porch
at a dead run and started pounding on the door, screaming, crying,
(29:34):
begging to be let in. The door flew open. There
was Harlan in his long johns, shot gun in hand,
scowl on his face. He took one look at us,
saw the terror, and his expression changed. He grabbed us
by the collars, hauled us inside, slammed the door, and
threw the bolt. For a long beat, nobody spoke. Curtis
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and I huddled on the floor, shaking so hard our
teeth chattered. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll
be back after these messages. Harlan stood by the window,
shotgun ready, peering into the darkness. Only sounds were a
grandfather clock ticking and our ragged breathing. Finally, Harlan spoke, calm,
(30:18):
as if he were asking the weather. He asked if
we'd seen it. Curtis nodded. Harlan nodded too, like it
confirmed what he already knew. He told us to stay
away from the windows, not to go outside for any reason.
Then he sat by the fire, laid the shotgun across
his knees, and waited. We stayed there till dawn. Harlan
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didn't ask much, didn't demand explanations, just kept watch. Fed
wood to the fire now and then once around three am,
something scratched at the back door. Three slow, deliberate scrapes
like claws on wood, Harlan's grip tightened, but he didn't move,
didn't open the door, just wait. After a while, the
(31:02):
scratching stopped. When gray morning finally came, Harlan relaxed, told
us it was safe now, said we could go home.
But before we left, he stopped us at the door,
looked at us with tired, old eyes, and said something
I've never forgotten. He said, some things in this world
are older than mankind, older than religion, older than memory.
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He said. A smart man learns where those things live
and learns to stay away. Said we'd been lucky. Said
most people who see what we'd seen don't live to
talk about it. Then he told us never to speak
of it, not to our parents, not to friends, not
to anybody, because some stories are better left untold. We
promised we wouldn't, and for forty years I kept that promise.
(31:49):
Walking back to Curtis's farm in the early morning was
the longest walk of my life. We didn't talk. What
could we say. Everything we thought we knew had shattered
in one night. Every certainty, every assumption, every comfy belief
about reality ripped away. We were different people than we'd
been twelve hours earlier. Older, changed broken in ways we'd
(32:12):
take years to understand. Bo and Duke were waiting at
the edge of Curtis's property. They came running when they
saw us, tails wagging like nothing happened. Where they'd run,
How they found their way home. We never figured out
they were unharmed physically anyway. Jesse wasn't with them. Curtis
wanted to go back, wanted to bring her body home,
(32:35):
bury her right, have something to show his daddy. I
wouldn't let him. I couldn't. The thought of that clearing
that cemetery made me sick with terror. In the end,
Curtis agreed. He knew as well as I did that
whatever was left of Jesse, we didn't want to see it.
We made up a story, told his daddy the dog's
(32:56):
treat a bear. Jesse got too close. The bear killed
her before where we could stop it. Said we were
too scared to recover her body. Said we ran to
Old Harlan's and stayed there through the night. Curtis's daddy
whipped him with a belt for losing Jesse twelve strokes
while I stood there watching. He didn't hit hard enough
to leave marks, but it was the worst whipping Curtis
(33:17):
ever got after his daddy hugged him and said he
was disappointed, and that hurt him way worse than the belt.
My parents never found out. I told him the camping
trip was uneventful. They had no reason to doubt me.
I'd never lied to them about anything big before. For
weeks afterward, I had nightmares, woke up screaming, drenched in sweat,
(33:39):
seeing those red eyes in the dark of my bedroom.
Mama took me to a doctor in Boone, worried I
had a fever or infection. Nothing was wrong physically. He
called it night terrors and said I'd grow out of it. Eventually.
I did. The nightmares faded, but never fully left. Even now,
forty five years later, I still dream about that night sometimes,
(34:01):
still see those eyes. Curtis and I stayed friends, but
something changed between us. We'd shared something that set us
apart from everyone else, something we could never talk about,
never process, never understand. It bonded us, but it also
put distance there. We knew something about each other we
couldn't share, and it was heavy, maybe too heavy for
(34:24):
a friendship to carry. He moved away after high school,
got a job in Charlotte, married a woman from Tennessee.
We lost touch, like friends do when life pulls you
different directions. I heard he passed about ten years ago
heart attack, only forty eight. I like to think he
found peace before he went, like those memories stopped haunting him,
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But I don't know. We never talked about that night again,
not once. We kept our promise to Harlan until now.
Why am I telling it now after all these years.
I've asked myself that one hundred times since I started
writing this email. Part of it is age. When you
get to my age, you start thinking about what you'll
leave behind, what stories get told at your funeral, what
(35:10):
memories survive you. And I realized this story, the most
important and terrifying thing that ever happened to me, was
going to die with me if I didn't tell somebody.
Part of it is Harlan. He passed back in ninety two.
Whatever promise I made doesn't feel quite as binding now
that he's gone, And honestly, I'm not sure his advice
(35:30):
was right in the first place. Silence didn't help me
process it. Silence didn't help me heal. Maybe talking about
it sooner would have been better, Maybe the weight wouldn't
have been so heavy for so long. But mostly I'm
telling it because I need people to know what I
saw was real, not imagination, not a trick of light,
not some explainable thing I was too young to understand.
(35:54):
I saw something that night, something ancient, something evil, something
that was haunting that vasty long before missionaries came, long
before settlers came, maybe long before humans ever walked to
these mountains. I don't know what it was. I've read
stories about black dogs and British folklore. I've read theories
about hauntings and tulpas in a dozen other ways people
(36:16):
try to make sense of the supernatural. None of them
feel right, none of them capture what it was like
standing there in moonlight, with those burning eyes looking into
my soul. What I know is this something lives in
vale Crusis Something guards that cemetery, something that's been there
as long as anyone can remember, and will probably be
(36:37):
there long after I'm gone. Call it a demon, a spirit,
whatever helps you sleep at night. Just don't make the
mistake of thinking it isn't real. I still live in
these mountains, couldn't leave if I wanted to. Something about
that night tied me to this land in a way
I don't fully understand. Maybe that creature marked me, maybe
(36:58):
surviving connected me to this place past normal attachment. I
don't know. I just know these mountains are home for
better or worse. But I stay away from Volley Crusis.
I haven't been back to that cemetery since that night
in seventy five. I never will. I've driven past it
a few times on roads that skirt the valley edge,
(37:19):
and every time I do, I feel it watching me.
Even after forty five years, even in daylight, I feel
those eyes. Sometimes I wonder if it's still there, waiting,
waiting for the next stupid kid who wanders too close,
waiting for the next hunter who ignores warnings, waiting with
the patience of something that's got all the time in
(37:40):
the world. I guess what I'm trying to say is
the old stories aren't just stories. The warnings our grandparents
gave us weren't superstition. There are things in this world
we don't understand, things that play by rules, we can't comprehend,
things with no more regard for human life than we
have for insects. And one of those things makes its
(38:01):
home in a little valley in the North Carolina Mountains,
where three creeks cross, where missionaries called it sacred, but
the Cherokee knew better. If you ever find yourself in
Vale Crusis and you feel that urge to visit that
cemetery on a moonlit night, do yourself a favor. Turn around,
go home, forget you ever heard this story, because trust me,
(38:25):
you don't want to see those eyes. In the years
since I did my research couldn't help it. I needed
to know if it had happened to anybody else, needed
some kind of confirmation I wasn't crazy. What I found
comforted me and terrified me at the same time. Black
dog legends are everywhere, not just North Carolina, not just Appalachia.
(38:47):
They spanned continents and centuries, from the British Isles to
Germany to Scandinavia to Latin America. Cultures that never even
touched each other somehow ended up with almost identical stories
about huge black hounds with glowing eyes, haunting crossroads, graveyards,
all those in between places. Details change, but the core
(39:07):
stays the same. They show up at boundaries between life
and death, between this world and the next, between what
we know and what we don't. Watchers at the gate
where reality thins. Some traditions say they're protective guardians of
the dead. Others say they're malevolent demons, fallen angels. Some
(39:29):
say they're neutral, just ancient beings doing an old job.
I don't know what's right, maybe none of it, maybe
all of it. What I do know is the thing
I saw didn't feel protective, didn't feel neutral. When it
looked at me. I felt hatred. Not hot human hatred,
something colder, older, the hatred of something that sees humanity
(39:52):
as intrusion, irritation, a pest. It can tolerate or erase,
depending on its mood. Over the years, I've talked to
a few folks who swear they've seen similar things. Not many.
Most people don't want to talk about this stuff. The
social cost is too high. Nobody wants to be called
crazy or attention seeking. But I found a handful. An
(40:14):
old woman in Tennessee who saw a black dog on
a mountain road as a girl. A truck driver from
Virginia who swore he hit something massive on a foggy
night and watched it walk away like nothing happened. A
retired Smokey's Park ranger who told me about tracks near
a cemetery that didn't match anything he'd ever seen. Different places,
different times, same story. We're not alone in this world,
(40:38):
That's what I've come to believe. We share this planet
with things we can't explain, can't categorize things older than us.
They were here before we showed up, They'll be here
after we're gone, and the best we can do is
learn where they live and stay away. Harlan was right
about that much. Smart folks pay attention. Smart folks listen
(40:59):
to warnings. Smart folks don't go hunting near the Valley
of the Cross on a moonlit autumn night. I wasn't smart,
not then. I was young and proud and full of
that invincible feeling you get at fourteen. I thought I
knew better than old stories, thought the world was safe
and sensible. I learned different, learned the hard way, but
(41:21):
I survived. At least I lived long enough to tell it.
Jesse didn't. I want to end by talking about her.
She deserves to be remembered, not just as a footnote
in a horror story. She was a living creature with
a personality, a life, and she died trying to protect us.
I've thought about it for decades. Why didn't Jesse run
(41:42):
like Bow and Duke? Why did she stand her ground
against something every instinct had to tell her she couldn't beat.
I think she was buying us time. I think she
knew the way dogs know that it was coming for us,
and I think she threw herself at it to get
us those few seconds we needed to get away. She
sacrificed herself for two stupid boys who should have known better.
(42:04):
That's haunted me more than the creature itself, the image
of that brave, beautiful dog giving her life for mine.
I didn't deserve it, Curtis didn't deserve it. We should
have listened, We should have stayed home. Jesse should have
lived to be old, dying warm and safe in front
of a fire. Instead, she died in the dark, in
(42:24):
the cold, in the jaws of something monstrous, because we
were too proud to believe the warnings. I've never owned
a dog since I can't. Every time I look at
a dog, I see Jesse, those amber eyes that scream.
The guilt's too heavy, the memory's too sharp. So this
story is for her, for Jesse, for a good dog
(42:47):
who died in a bad place because two bad boys
made bad decisions without knowing better. I'm sorry, girl, I've
been sorry for forty five years, and I'll be sorry
till my last day. That's Dale's story. I'll admit it
hit me harder than most accounts I get. There's something
about the rawness of it, the guilt that still bleeds
(43:09):
through after all these decades, that feels painfully real. I
did some follow up research after reading Dale's account. The
Volley Crucis Cemetery is real. The black dog legend shows
up in regional folklore collections going back to the nineteenth century,
and the way Dale describes it lines up almost exactly
with those older accounts. There have been several confirmed sightings
(43:32):
of the black dog for decades. The most recent one
I could verify was in twenty nineteen, when a jogger
reported seeing a massive black animal watching her from the
cemetery edge at dusk. She said its eyes were red.
She said the dread hit her so hard she couldn't
make herself look back as she ran. So whatever Dale
ran into that night in seventy five, if his story
(43:54):
is accurate, it's still there, still watching, still waiting. I
want to thank Dale. For trusting us with this. I
know it wasn't easy, and I know those memories still hurt,
but I believe his story deserves to be heard. Experiences
like this, hard as they are to explain, are part
of the strange, rich tapestry that makes Appalachia what it is,
(44:17):
And if you live in or near Vale Crusis, I'd
take Dale's warning seriously. Maybe the black Dog is just
a legend. Maybe it's a misidentified animal, a trick of light,
a story that grew over time. Or maybe there really
is something out there in the Valley of the Cross
that doesn't fit inside rational explanation. Either way, I wouldn't
(44:39):
go near that cemetery after dark. Some mysteries are left unsolved,
some places are better left alone, and some stories, once
you hear them, don't ever let go. Thanks for listening,
and remember old stories exist for a reason. Pay attention
to the warnings, because you never know what might be
watching from the dark.
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
deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, where
the mist clings to the hollows like a burial shroud,
(01:08):
and the ridge lines cut jagged silhouettes against the evening sky,
there exists a small community that time seems to have forgotten.
The name itself carries weight, spoken in hush tones by
those who know the old stories. Valle crusis the Valley
of the Cross. The origins of that name stretch back
to the eighteen forties, when Episcopal missionaries first ventured into
(01:32):
these remote highlands and noticed something peculiar about the landscape.
Three creeks converge in this valley, their waters meeting at
angles that form what appears to be a natural cross
when viewed from the surrounding peaks. To the missionaries, this
seemed like a sign from God himself, a holy marking
upon the land that beckoned them to establish their mission. There.
(01:54):
They built their church, they ministered to the mountain people,
and they believed they had found sacred ground. But the Cherokee,
who had walked these valleys for countless generations before the
missionaries arrived, they knew different. They knew that certain places
carry energy that predates any religion brought by settlers. They
(02:15):
knew that some ground holds memory, holds power, holds things
that should not be disturbed. And they knew that the
valley where those three creeks crossed was one such place.
The Cherokee called this region by another name, a name
that roughly translates to the place where the shadow walks.
Their stories spoke of something that guarded the crossing of waters,
(02:38):
something ancient and territorial, something that took the form of
a great black beast with eyes like burning coals. The
elders warned their young hunters to avoid that valley after dark,
to never camp near where the waters met, and above all,
to never bring dogs into that territory, because whatever lurked there,
it had a particular hatred for dogs. When European settlers
(03:02):
moved into the region in the late seventeen hundreds and
early eighteen hundreds, they brought their own folklore with them.
The Scots Irish immigrants who populated these Appalachian highlands carried
tales of black dogs from the old country, spectral hounds
that haunted crossroads and graveyards, harbingers of death that appeared
to those whose time was running short. They called these
(03:24):
creatures by many names, church grims, bar guests, black shuck.
The stories varied from village to village, but the core
remained the same. A massive black dog with glowing eyes
that appeared at places of death, that guarded the boundary
between this world and the next. When these settlers encountered
(03:46):
the Cherokee warnings about the Valley of the Crossing Waters,
something clicked into place. The old stories they had carried
across the ocean suddenly felt less like superstition and more
like confirmation. Whatever haunted the moor and churchyards of their
ancestral homeland, it had a cousin here in these ancient mountains.
The first documented sighting of what locals would eventually call
(04:09):
the demon dog of vale Crusis came in eighteen fifty three.
A Methodist circuit rider named Reverend Thomas was traveling through
the valley after sundown, making his way to a homestead
where a family had requested prayer for their dying patriarch.
The reverend's journal, preserved to this day in the archives
of Appalachian State University, contains an entry that still raises
(04:32):
the hair on the arms of those who read it.
He wrote, and I'm paraphrasing here for clarity, that as
he passed the old cemetery near the church, his horse
stopped dead and refused to move forward. The animal trembled
so violently that the reverend feared it might collapse. When
he looked toward the cemetery, he saw what he described
(04:52):
as a hound of impossible size, black as the pit itself,
with eyes that burned red as hell fire. The creature
stood motionless among the gravestones watching him. The reverend claimed
he began to pray aloud, and after what felt like
an eternity, the beast simply faded into the darkness, as
if it had never been there at all. His horse
(05:13):
bolted the moment the creature vanished, and the reverend did
not stop riding until he reached the homestead, nearly three
miles away. From that point forward, sightings became sporadic but consistent.
Every decade or so, someone would come forward with a story,
a farmer returning home late from market, a young couple
who had snuck away to the cemetery for some privacy,
(05:36):
hunters tracking game through the bottom lands near the creeks.
The details always matched, massive size, black fur that seemed
to absorb light rather than reflect it, and those eyes,
always those terrible glowing red eyes. But here's where the
legend takes a darker turn. The sightings were frightening enough
(05:57):
on their own, but it was the deaths that truly
cemented the demon Dog's reputation. Over the decades, an unusual
number of hunting dogs met violent ends in and around
Volley Crusus, coon dogs, bear dogs, rabbit hounds, dogs that
were found torn apart in ways that made no biological sense,
(06:17):
dogs whose bodies showed wounds that did not match any
predator known to the region, and in almost every case,
the dog's owners reported that their animals had been tracking
something toward the old cemetery when they heard the screaming. Yes, screaming,
not yelping or howling, but screaming, the sound a dog
makes when it encounters something so terrifying, so unnatural, that
(06:41):
its very mind breaks from the side of it. The
locals developed a saying, you do not hunt near the
Valley of the Cross, not after dark. Not Ever. By
the nineteen seventies, the legend had faded somewhat from everyday conversation.
The world was changing. People were leaving the mountains for
cities and jobs. Television brought the outside world into living rooms,
(07:06):
and the old stories seemed quaint, even embarrassing to some.
The demon dog became something parents mentioned to scare children
into behaving. A boogeyman with no more substance than the
Sandman or the easter Bunny. But the thing about legends
is this, just because people stop believing in them does
not mean they stop being true, which brings me to
(07:28):
the story I am about to share with you. A
few weeks back, I received an email from a listener
named Dale. He had been following the podcast for a while,
and something about our approach to these stories, the way
we treat the witnesses with respect and let them tell
their truth, had convinced him it was finally time to
share something he had been carrying for over forty years.
(07:50):
What you are about to hear is Dale's account, written
in his own words, edited only slightly for clarity and flow.
Dale is now fifty nine years old. He works as
a retired lineman for the power company and lives just
a few miles from where the events of this story
took place. He never left the mountains. He says, he
could not leave even if he wanted to. Something about
(08:13):
that night bonded him to this land in a way
he still does not fully understand. There's a rawness to
Dale's account that you'll notice immediately. He does not try
to explain what he saw. He does not offer theories
or speculation. He simply tells you what happened and lets
you draw your own conclusions. That kind of restraint, that
(08:34):
refusal to embellish, is something I have learned to recognize
over my years of collecting these stories. It is the
mark of someone telling the truth. I should warn you
before we begin. This story involves the death of an
animal in graphic detail. It involves fear of the kind
that marks a person for life, and it involves a
(08:54):
mystery that has never been solved and probably never will be.
With Dale's permission, here is his story in his own words.
My name's Dale, and I was fourteen years old in
the autumn of nineteen seventy five. I need you to
understand what that meant. Being fourteen in the mountains of
North Carolina in the mid seventies, it was a different world,
(09:15):
a different planet. Really. We didn't have video games, cell phones,
or the Internet. What we had was the land, the woods,
the creeks, and ridges and hollows. Our families had hunted
and farmed for generations. That was our entertainment, That was
our life. My best friend in the world was a
boy named Curtis. We'd grown up together, born just three
(09:37):
weeks apart in the same little clinic down in Boone.
Our daddy's hunted together, our mamas went to the same church.
We'd been inseparable since before either of us could walk,
and by the time we were fourteen, we knew each
other better than we knew ourselves. Curtis was the brave one.
That's something you need to get right from the start.
If there was trouble to get into, Curtis found it first,
(10:00):
and I followed along because I couldn't imagine not following
him wherever he went. He was the one who climbed
the highest trees, the one who swam in the deep
holes where copperheads liked to sun themselves, And he was
the one who decided that October of seventy five that
we were old enough to go coon hunting on our own. Now,
coon hunting was serious business in those mountains. It wasn't
(10:23):
just recreation. Raccoon pelts brought good money at the fur buyers,
and for families like ours, who didn't have much, that
income made a real difference. Come winter. Most boys our
age were already learning the trade, going out with their
daddies and uncles, learning to read the dogs and the terrain,
learning when to push forward and when to hold back.
(10:44):
Curtis and I had been on dozens of hunts with
our fathers. We knew what we were doing or at
least we thought we did. And Curtis had convinced me
it was time to prove ourselves, to go out alone
and come back with pelts of our own. His daddy
had three coon dogs, two walkers named Bo and Duke,
and a blue tick named Jesse. Jesse was something special.
(11:07):
She was maybe seven then, right in her prime, and
she had a nose on her that flat out defied explanation.
That dog could pick up a trail twelve hours cold
and run it true as a surveyor's line straight to
the tree. Curtis's daddy had turned down offers of five
hundred dollars or more for her, and in nineteen seventy
five that was real money. That was used truck money,
(11:30):
That was quit your job for six months money. He
always said, no, Jesse was family. The plan was simple.
Saturday night, while our folks thought we were camping in
the barn at Curtis's place, we'd slip out with the
dogs and hunt the ridges to the east. We'd be
back before dawn, Nobody would ever know we'd been gone,
and we'd come home with enough pelts to prove we
(11:51):
were men. Lord, I can still feel the excitement that
built in my chest. All week, every class at school
felt like torture. Every chore at home was something to
rush through so I could get to Saturday faster. I
could barely eat, barely sleep. Curtis and I whispered every
chance we got, planning our route, talking about how many
(12:12):
coons we'd tree, picturing the looks on our daddy's faces
when they saw what we'd done. We were so young,
so stupid, We had no idea what was waiting for
us out there in the dark. Saturday came cold and clear,
with that sharp autumn bite that makes your lungs ache
when you breathe too deep. The leaves had mostly turned,
(12:33):
and the mountains were painted in reds and golds and
browns that looked almost too beautiful to be real. One
of those perfect Appalachian fall days that makes you understand
why people never leave these hills. I rode my bicycle
over to Curtis's place around four that afternoon, telling my
mama I'd be spending the night in the barn with
my friend. She didn't question it. That was normal, That's
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what boys did. She just reminded me to take my
jacket and stay warm, then went back to canning the
last of the green beans from the garden. Curtis's parents
were going to a church social that evening and wouldn't
be back till late. His older sister was supposed to
keep an eye on us, but she was seventeen and
had her own plans that didn't include babysitting two fourteen
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year old boys. She barely looked up when we told
her we'd be in the barn, just nodded and went
back to talking on the phone with her boyfriend. The
timing was perfect. We ate dinner early, wolfing down beans
and corn bread at the kitchen table. Curtis's mama fussed
over us before she left, making sure we had blankets
in a lantern and enough snacks to last the night.
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She kissed us both on the forehead, something that embarrassed
me then, but I'd give anything to feel again. Then
his parents climbed into their truck and drove away, tail
lights fading down the gravel drive. We waited until full dark.
That was the plan. Coons don't start moving till the
sun's down, and we needed time to get into position
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on the ridges before the hunting really got going. We
used that waiting time to gather our gear. Two flashlights
with fresh batteries, Curtis's twenty two rifle, a length of
rope for climbing trees, a burlap sack for the pelts,
and most importantly, the dogs. Bow and Duke were good dogs,
but they weren't Jesse. We knew that. Everybody knew that.
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But Curtis insisted we needed all three. More dogs meant
more ground, and more ground meant more coons. His daddy
wouldn't know the difference. He said. We'd be back before sunrise,
dogs back in their pen where they belonged, and nobody
any wiser. I remember the way Jesse looked at me
when we opened the kennel gate, big amber eyes that
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seemed to hold something close to human understanding. She knew
we weren't supposed to be taking her out, She knew
it was against the rules, but she was a hunting dog,
born and bred, and the pull of a trail was
too strong. She came with us willingly, tail wagging low
and slow, nose, all ready working the air. Stay tuned
for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages.
(15:08):
It was just past eight when we left the property,
heading east through the pasture toward the tree line. The
moon was rising almost full, casting silver across the frost
touched grass. Our breath came out in little white clouds.
The dogs ran ahead, circling back, excited as we were.
Everything felt right perfect. I should have known that was
(15:30):
when things started going wrong. The first hour was everything
we'd hoped for. We cut through the woods on trails
we'd walked a hundred times, trails our daddies and granddaddies
had walked before us. The dogs worked the ground with
focused intensity, snuffling through leaf litter, pausing at since, communicating
in that wordless way only hunting dogs understand. Bo and
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Duke ranged wide, covering the flanks, while Jesse worked steady
down the middle nose, near the ground. The forest at
night is a different place than the forest by day.
You've got to know that the familiar turns unfamiliar. Trees
you'd recognize in daylight become looming shadows, branches reaching like
skeletal fingers. Sounds you never notice in the daytime get
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sharp and loud. Footsteps and leaves, the creak of limbs,
the distant call of an owl. Your other sense is
sharpened to make up for what your eyes can't see.
You become an animal yourself in a way, primitive, alert, alive.
Curtis and I didn't talk much. We didn't need to.
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We'd hunted those woods together so many times. We moved
like one organism, anticipating each other, covering blind spots. When
he paused, I paused. When I pointed my flashlight, his
beam followed. We were in sync. Around nine point thirty,
Jesse picked up a trail. I knew it. The second
had happened. A good coon dog changes when she hit scent.
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Body tightens, movement sharpens. Jesse's head came up, ears forward,
and she let out this low, rumbling howl that got
the other two moving. They converged on her noses working
the same spot. Then they were off. Curtis and I
ran after them, crashing through brush, our flashlight beams bouncing.
It's hard to keep up with dogs on a hot
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trail and rough terrain, and we fell behind fast. But
that was normal. You follow the sound, the baying, and
when it changes to treeing barks, you know you've got them.
The chase went maybe twenty minutes. The dogs pulled ahead,
voices echoing off the ridges, that beautiful music every coon
hunter knows. Then the pitch changed. Long running howls turned
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into short, sharp barks. They'd treed. We found them at
the base of a massive red oak, all three circling
paws scratching bark, eyes fixed high in the canopy. Curtis
shined his light up and there it was a big
boar coon, probably twenty five pounds, eyes glowing green in
the beam. It hissed down, teeth bared, but it wasn't
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going anywhere. Curtis handed me the rifle. That was our deal.
I was the better shot, so I'd take the first one,
he'd take the next. Fair was fair. I sighted in,
exhaled slow, like my daddy taught me, and squeezed the trigger.
The crack echoed through the woods, and the coon dropped,
landing heavy among the dogs. They were on it right away,
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but it was already dead, clean shot through the head,
no suffering. We pulled the dogs off and stuffed the
coon into our bur lap sack, our first pelt. Curtis
clapped me on the back so hard it hurt, grinning
like a fool. We were hunters, now, we were men.
That should have been enough in a sane world, we'd
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have taken that coon and headed home satisfied. But we
were fourteen, drunk on a rentaline and pride, and the
dogs were already working another trail, so we kept going.
The second coon came quick, treed within fifteen minutes, smaller,
maybe fifteen pounds, a young female. Curtis took the shot
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and made it clean, two for two. By now it
was close to eleven, The moon was higher, flooding the
forest with pale light. The temperature had dropped, and I
could see ice crystals forming on dead leaves. We should
have been cold, should have been tired. We weren't. The
hunt had us in its grip. It was after the
second coon that Jesse started acting strange. I noticed first,
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because I'd been watching her more than the others. She
stopped working the ground and kept lifting her head, staring
off west toward the valley floor. Ears up and swiveling tail,
which had wagged steady all night, went stiff and still.
Curtis saw it too. He called her, but she didn't
even look his way, just kept staring into the dark alone,
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wine building in her throat. Bo and Duke picked up
on it. They moved closer hackles rising, the playful energy evaporated.
Something had shifted. I swept my flashlight where she was looking,
but I didn't see a thing, just trees shadows, the
normal darkness of a mountain night. But the dogs were
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seeing something, or smelling something, or sensing something past my
human limits. Curtis tried to get them moving, clapping his
hands using his daddy's commands, but they wouldn't hunt. They
huddled together, pressed against our legs like they needed protection.
I'd never seen coon dogs act like that. These were
animals that would tree bears fight anything they cornered, and
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there they were, trembling against us like whipped pups. That
should have been our sign to go home, but we
were young and stupid and proud, and Curtis wouldn't let
two coons be the end of the night. He talked
himself into thinking they'd caught wind of a bear or wildcat.
Nothing to worry about. We just swing wide, loop south,
pick up fresh trails. So we did. Turned away from
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whatever had spooked them and started south along a game
trail that hugged the ridge, and that trail, God help us,
led straight toward valet Crusis. I didn't realize where we
were headed till we broke out of thick timber and
hit the edge of a clearing. The moon was bright
enough I didn't need my flashlight. The clearing was two acres, maybe,
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bounded by old oaks on three sides and a low
stone wall on the fourth. Beyond that wall, in silver
lit grass were gravestones, dozens maybe one hundred, white marble,
gray granite, weathered limestone, standing crooked like teeth of some
giant sleeping thing, the Valet Crucis Cemetery. Even then, even
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at fourteen, I knew the stories everybody did. The black
dog with glowing eyes, the thing that haunted, the crossing
of the waters, the reason you didn't hunt near the
valley of the cross. But knowing stories and believing them
are two different things. I was a modern boy. I
went to school, watched TV. I knew ghosts and monsters
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weren't real, just old folks tales to scare kids. Standing there,
I got a chill that wasn't from the cold, but
I told myself it was just the place getting in
my head, suggestion, imagination. Curtis felt it too, I could
see it, but he wasn't about to admit he was scared,
not to me, not to anybody. He forced a laugh
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that sounded hollow, and said, we ought to check it out,
see if the ghost dog wanted to come play. The
dogs wouldn't move, All three stopped dead at the tree line,
wouldn't cross into the clearing. Jesse pressed so hard against
my leg I could feel her shaking through my genes.
Bo and Duke had heads low, tails tucked, lips curled
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back in silent snarls. Whatever they were sensing it was
coming from that cemetery. Curtis tried to drag Duke by
the collar, but Duke dug in. Curtis pulled so hard
Duke's collar slipped right off, and the dog just sat there,
looking up at him, like, please, don't make me. I
wanted to leave. Every instinct I had was screaming to
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turn around and run, but Curtis was my best friend,
and he was walking toward that wall, and I couldn't
let him go alone. I told the dogs to stay.
I don't know if they understood, but they didn't follow,
just huddled in the shadows, watching us go. Curtis climbed
the stone wall. I climbed after, and we walked into
the cemetery. Most of the stones were old. Dates near
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the wall went back to the eighteen hundreds. Names I recognized,
family names from around the community, Folks who'd lived and
died in these mountains for generations. Folks who'd heard the
same stories we'd heard, maybe seen the same things I
was about to see. I tried reading some inscriptions, but
time had worn the letters smooth. What I could make
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out was the usual beloved husband, loving mother, safe in
the arms of Jesus. Words meant to comfort, and in
that moonlit silence, they felt thin. Curtis walked ahead, beam
sweeping grave to grave. He'd gotten quieter since we climbed
the wall. The bravado was draining out. I think the
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reality of where we were finally hit him too. We
drifted toward the center, stepping around sunken spots where the
ground had settled over old graves. Mists that was light
at the tree line got thicker here, pooling low, curling
around markers like smoke. It muffled our steps, muffled everything.
All I could really hear was our breathing, fast and shallow,
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and the blood thumping in my ears. That's when I
heard Jesse scream. Scream is the only word for it.
It wasn't a bark, wasn't a howl. It was a
sound I'd never heard a dog make before, and haven't
heard since, A greek of pure, primal terror that cut
through the night and froze me cold. I spun and ran.
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Curtis was right behind me. We cleared that cemetery in seconds,
vaulted the wall, sprinted for the tree line we'd left.
The dogs at my flashlight, bounced wild, throwing flashes of
trees and grass and tombstones. Curtis's boots pounded beside me.
Over it all was that awful screaming. We burst through
the trees and stopped dead. Bo and Duke were gone,
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just gone, no sign, no sound, nothing but empty darkness
where they'd been. But Jesse was still there. She was
on her back in the leaves, legs kicking, weak, mouth
open in that terrible scream, and standing over her with
its teeth sunk into her throat. Was something that shouldn't
have existed. I've spent over forty years trying to find
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words for what I saw, turned it over a thousand times,
tried to compare it to movies, or books, anything that
makes it makes sense. There isn't anything what I saw
was outside normal life. It was a dog or It
had the shape of one, four legs, a tail, long
snout full of teeth, But everything about it was wrong.
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It was too big, way too big. When it lifted
its head from Jesse's throat and looked at us, its
shoulders were level with my chest. I was five to
eight back, then tall for fourteen, and that thing could
have looked me in the eye without stretching. Massive, heavily muscled,
like a nightmare version of a mastiff or great Dane,
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and still lean, lean and hungry. Its fur was black,
not just dark black, the kind of black that seems
to swallow light, like it's an absence more than a color.
Even in moonlight, I couldn't make out detail. It was
just a void, shaped like an animal, a hole in
the world. But the eyes they glowed reflected light like
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a normal animal caught in a beam. They made their
own light, deep, sullen red, like embers in a dying fire,
like metal cooling after it's been forged. They burned in
that black face, like windows into hell itself for a
moment that lasted forever. Nobody moved. Curtis and I stood frozen.
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The thing stood over Jesse's still kicking body. Those eyes
locked on us with an intelligence that wasn't animal. It
was studying us, measuring us, deciding. Then Jesse gave one
last weak cry, and whatever spell we were under snapped.
Curtis screamed. He raised the twenty two and fired once, twice,
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three times. I saw the muzzle flashes, heard the sharp cracks.
But the creature didn't react, didn't flinch, didn't run, just
watched us. If anything, there was amusement in those burning eyes.
The rifle clicked empty. Curtis hadn't brought extra shells. We
hadn't planned on needing them. The creature stepped over Jesse
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and started toward us, slow, deliberate. I don't remember choosing
to run. I just remember running. Trees blurred, branches whipped
my face. Curtis crashed through brush beside me and behind us,
not running, not chasing, just following at that same slow
pace where heavy footfalls in the leaves. It was playing
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with us. I knew it even then. It could have
caught us anytime it wanted, could have run us down
in seconds. But it didn't it. Let us run, let
us feel what it was like to be hunted. We
ran till my heart felt like it had burst, ran
till my legs burned and my lungs screamed, Ran till
I couldn't anymore, and collapsed against an oak, gasping, crying,
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sure I was about to die. Curtis yanked my arm
and hauled me upright. His face was white in the moonlight,
eyes wild. He didn't say a word, just pointed through
a gap in the trees, maybe one hundred yards off.
I saw farmhouse lights. We ran for those lights like
they were heaven. That farmhouse belonged to an old man
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named Harlan. I knew him vaguely from church, one of
those mountain men who looked carved out of the same
stone as the ridges, weathered, tough, not friendly, lived alone
since his wife passed, didn't like visitors. But in that
moment he was our only shot. We hit his porch
at a dead run and started pounding on the door, screaming, crying,
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begging to be let in. The door flew open. There
was Harlan in his long johns, shot gun in hand,
scowl on his face. He took one look at us,
saw the terror, and his expression changed. He grabbed us
by the collars, hauled us inside, slammed the door, and
threw the bolt. For a long beat, nobody spoke. Curtis
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and I huddled on the floor, shaking so hard our
teeth chattered. Stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll
be back after these messages. Harlan stood by the window,
shotgun ready, peering into the darkness. Only sounds were a
grandfather clock ticking and our ragged breathing. Finally, Harlan spoke, calm,
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as if he were asking the weather. He asked if
we'd seen it. Curtis nodded. Harlan nodded too, like it
confirmed what he already knew. He told us to stay
away from the windows, not to go outside for any reason.
Then he sat by the fire, laid the shotgun across
his knees, and waited. We stayed there till dawn. Harlan
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didn't ask much, didn't demand explanations, just kept watch. Fed
wood to the fire now and then once around three am,
something scratched at the back door. Three slow, deliberate scrapes
like claws on wood, Harlan's grip tightened, but he didn't move,
didn't open the door, just wait. After a while, the
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scratching stopped. When gray morning finally came, Harlan relaxed, told
us it was safe now, said we could go home.
But before we left, he stopped us at the door,
looked at us with tired, old eyes, and said something
I've never forgotten. He said, some things in this world
are older than mankind, older than religion, older than memory.
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He said. A smart man learns where those things live
and learns to stay away. Said we'd been lucky. Said
most people who see what we'd seen don't live to
talk about it. Then he told us never to speak
of it, not to our parents, not to friends, not
to anybody, because some stories are better left untold. We
promised we wouldn't, and for forty years I kept that promise.
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Walking back to Curtis's farm in the early morning was
the longest walk of my life. We didn't talk. What
could we say. Everything we thought we knew had shattered
in one night. Every certainty, every assumption, every comfy belief
about reality ripped away. We were different people than we'd
been twelve hours earlier. Older, changed broken in ways we'd
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take years to understand. Bo and Duke were waiting at
the edge of Curtis's property. They came running when they
saw us, tails wagging like nothing happened. Where they'd run,
How they found their way home. We never figured out
they were unharmed physically anyway. Jesse wasn't with them. Curtis
wanted to go back, wanted to bring her body home,
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bury her right, have something to show his daddy. I
wouldn't let him. I couldn't. The thought of that clearing
that cemetery made me sick with terror. In the end,
Curtis agreed. He knew as well as I did that
whatever was left of Jesse, we didn't want to see it.
We made up a story, told his daddy the dog's
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treat a bear. Jesse got too close. The bear killed
her before where we could stop it. Said we were
too scared to recover her body. Said we ran to
Old Harlan's and stayed there through the night. Curtis's daddy
whipped him with a belt for losing Jesse twelve strokes
while I stood there watching. He didn't hit hard enough
to leave marks, but it was the worst whipping Curtis
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ever got after his daddy hugged him and said he
was disappointed, and that hurt him way worse than the belt.
My parents never found out. I told him the camping
trip was uneventful. They had no reason to doubt me.
I'd never lied to them about anything big before. For
weeks afterward, I had nightmares, woke up screaming, drenched in sweat,
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seeing those red eyes in the dark of my bedroom.
Mama took me to a doctor in Boone, worried I
had a fever or infection. Nothing was wrong physically. He
called it night terrors and said I'd grow out of it. Eventually.
I did. The nightmares faded, but never fully left. Even now,
forty five years later, I still dream about that night sometimes,
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still see those eyes. Curtis and I stayed friends, but
something changed between us. We'd shared something that set us
apart from everyone else, something we could never talk about,
never process, never understand. It bonded us, but it also
put distance there. We knew something about each other we
couldn't share, and it was heavy, maybe too heavy for
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a friendship to carry. He moved away after high school,
got a job in Charlotte, married a woman from Tennessee.
We lost touch, like friends do when life pulls you
different directions. I heard he passed about ten years ago
heart attack, only forty eight. I like to think he
found peace before he went, like those memories stopped haunting him,
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But I don't know. We never talked about that night again,
not once. We kept our promise to Harlan until now.
Why am I telling it now after all these years.
I've asked myself that one hundred times since I started
writing this email. Part of it is age. When you
get to my age, you start thinking about what you'll
leave behind, what stories get told at your funeral, what
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memories survive you. And I realized this story, the most
important and terrifying thing that ever happened to me, was
going to die with me if I didn't tell somebody.
Part of it is Harlan. He passed back in ninety two.
Whatever promise I made doesn't feel quite as binding now
that he's gone, And honestly, I'm not sure his advice
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was right in the first place. Silence didn't help me
process it. Silence didn't help me heal. Maybe talking about
it sooner would have been better, Maybe the weight wouldn't
have been so heavy for so long. But mostly I'm
telling it because I need people to know what I
saw was real, not imagination, not a trick of light,
not some explainable thing I was too young to understand.
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I saw something that night, something ancient, something evil, something
that was haunting that vasty long before missionaries came, long
before settlers came, maybe long before humans ever walked to
these mountains. I don't know what it was. I've read
stories about black dogs and British folklore. I've read theories
about hauntings and tulpas in a dozen other ways people
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try to make sense of the supernatural. None of them
feel right, none of them capture what it was like
standing there in moonlight, with those burning eyes looking into
my soul. What I know is this something lives in
vale Crusis Something guards that cemetery, something that's been there
as long as anyone can remember, and will probably be
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there long after I'm gone. Call it a demon, a spirit,
whatever helps you sleep at night. Just don't make the
mistake of thinking it isn't real. I still live in
these mountains, couldn't leave if I wanted to. Something about
that night tied me to this land in a way
I don't fully understand. Maybe that creature marked me, maybe
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surviving connected me to this place past normal attachment. I
don't know. I just know these mountains are home for
better or worse. But I stay away from Volley Crusis.
I haven't been back to that cemetery since that night
in seventy five. I never will. I've driven past it
a few times on roads that skirt the valley edge,
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and every time I do, I feel it watching me.
Even after forty five years, even in daylight, I feel
those eyes. Sometimes I wonder if it's still there, waiting,
waiting for the next stupid kid who wanders too close,
waiting for the next hunter who ignores warnings, waiting with
the patience of something that's got all the time in
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the world. I guess what I'm trying to say is
the old stories aren't just stories. The warnings our grandparents
gave us weren't superstition. There are things in this world
we don't understand, things that play by rules, we can't comprehend,
things with no more regard for human life than we
have for insects. And one of those things makes its
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home in a little valley in the North Carolina Mountains,
where three creeks cross, where missionaries called it sacred, but
the Cherokee knew better. If you ever find yourself in
Vale Crusis and you feel that urge to visit that
cemetery on a moonlit night, do yourself a favor. Turn around,
go home, forget you ever heard this story, because trust me,
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you don't want to see those eyes. In the years
since I did my research couldn't help it. I needed
to know if it had happened to anybody else, needed
some kind of confirmation I wasn't crazy. What I found
comforted me and terrified me at the same time. Black
dog legends are everywhere, not just North Carolina, not just Appalachia.
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They spanned continents and centuries, from the British Isles to
Germany to Scandinavia to Latin America. Cultures that never even
touched each other somehow ended up with almost identical stories
about huge black hounds with glowing eyes, haunting crossroads, graveyards,
all those in between places. Details change, but the core
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stays the same. They show up at boundaries between life
and death, between this world and the next, between what
we know and what we don't. Watchers at the gate
where reality thins. Some traditions say they're protective guardians of
the dead. Others say they're malevolent demons, fallen angels. Some
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say they're neutral, just ancient beings doing an old job.
I don't know what's right, maybe none of it, maybe
all of it. What I do know is the thing
I saw didn't feel protective, didn't feel neutral. When it
looked at me. I felt hatred. Not hot human hatred,
something colder, older, the hatred of something that sees humanity
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as intrusion, irritation, a pest. It can tolerate or erase,
depending on its mood. Over the years, I've talked to
a few folks who swear they've seen similar things. Not many.
Most people don't want to talk about this stuff. The
social cost is too high. Nobody wants to be called
crazy or attention seeking. But I found a handful. An
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old woman in Tennessee who saw a black dog on
a mountain road as a girl. A truck driver from
Virginia who swore he hit something massive on a foggy
night and watched it walk away like nothing happened. A
retired Smokey's Park ranger who told me about tracks near
a cemetery that didn't match anything he'd ever seen. Different places,
different times, same story. We're not alone in this world,
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That's what I've come to believe. We share this planet
with things we can't explain, can't categorize things older than us.
They were here before we showed up, They'll be here
after we're gone, and the best we can do is
learn where they live and stay away. Harlan was right
about that much. Smart folks pay attention. Smart folks listen
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to warnings. Smart folks don't go hunting near the Valley
of the Cross on a moonlit autumn night. I wasn't smart,
not then. I was young and proud and full of
that invincible feeling you get at fourteen. I thought I
knew better than old stories, thought the world was safe
and sensible. I learned different, learned the hard way, but
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I survived. At least I lived long enough to tell it.
Jesse didn't. I want to end by talking about her.
She deserves to be remembered, not just as a footnote
in a horror story. She was a living creature with
a personality, a life, and she died trying to protect us.
I've thought about it for decades. Why didn't Jesse run
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like Bow and Duke? Why did she stand her ground
against something every instinct had to tell her she couldn't beat.
I think she was buying us time. I think she
knew the way dogs know that it was coming for us,
and I think she threw herself at it to get
us those few seconds we needed to get away. She
sacrificed herself for two stupid boys who should have known better.
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That's haunted me more than the creature itself, the image
of that brave, beautiful dog giving her life for mine.
I didn't deserve it, Curtis didn't deserve it. We should
have listened, We should have stayed home. Jesse should have
lived to be old, dying warm and safe in front
of a fire. Instead, she died in the dark, in
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the cold, in the jaws of something monstrous, because we
were too proud to believe the warnings. I've never owned
a dog since I can't. Every time I look at
a dog, I see Jesse, those amber eyes that scream.
The guilt's too heavy, the memory's too sharp. So this
story is for her, for Jesse, for a good dog
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who died in a bad place because two bad boys
made bad decisions without knowing better. I'm sorry, girl, I've
been sorry for forty five years, and I'll be sorry
till my last day. That's Dale's story. I'll admit it
hit me harder than most accounts I get. There's something
about the rawness of it, the guilt that still bleeds
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through after all these decades, that feels painfully real. I
did some follow up research after reading Dale's account. The
Volley Crucis Cemetery is real. The black dog legend shows
up in regional folklore collections going back to the nineteenth century,
and the way Dale describes it lines up almost exactly
with those older accounts. There have been several confirmed sightings
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of the black dog for decades. The most recent one
I could verify was in twenty nineteen, when a jogger
reported seeing a massive black animal watching her from the
cemetery edge at dusk. She said its eyes were red.
She said the dread hit her so hard she couldn't
make herself look back as she ran. So whatever Dale
ran into that night in seventy five, if his story
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is accurate, it's still there, still watching, still waiting. I
want to thank Dale. For trusting us with this. I
know it wasn't easy, and I know those memories still hurt,
but I believe his story deserves to be heard. Experiences
like this, hard as they are to explain, are part
of the strange, rich tapestry that makes Appalachia what it is,
(44:17):
And if you live in or near Vale Crusis, I'd
take Dale's warning seriously. Maybe the black Dog is just
a legend. Maybe it's a misidentified animal, a trick of light,
a story that grew over time. Or maybe there really
is something out there in the Valley of the Cross
that doesn't fit inside rational explanation. Either way, I wouldn't
(44:39):
go near that cemetery after dark. Some mysteries are left unsolved,
some places are better left alone, and some stories, once
you hear them, don't ever let go. Thanks for listening,
and remember old stories exist for a reason. Pay attention
to the warnings, because you never know what might be
watching from the dark.
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