BWBS Ep:158 Bigfoot In The LBL

People say there's no way Sasquatch could exist in the Land Between the Lakes. They say it's too populated. Too well-traveled. Too thoroughly explored by hunters and hikers and campers over the decades.I disagree.  

And after you hear this encounter story, I'm confident you'll agree with me. In November of nineteen eighty-four, a father took his fourteen-year-old son into the backcountry of the Land Between the Lakes for a deer hunting trip. 

It was supposed to be a bonding experience. A chance for the boy to take his first buck. A weekend of camping and hunting in a remote stretch of wilderness that most visitors never see. What they encountered out there changed both of them forever. It started with strange sounds. Heavy footsteps in the darkness. Rocks thrown from unseen hands. Then came the screaming. Inhuman vocalizations that echoed through the forest from multiple directions at once. 

Wood knocks that circled their camp throughout the night. The unmistakable signs of something intelligent, something powerful, something that wanted them to know they weren't alone.On the final morning, the boy made a clean shot on a beautiful ten-point buck. But before he could reach his kill, something emerged from the undergrowth. Something massive. Something that walked on two legs and stood over eight feet tall. Something that looked at him with eyes that held unmistakable intelligence.And then it took his deer.

The father passed away in March of twenty twenty-four. Now his son is the only living witness to what happened during that terrifying weekend forty years ago. He made a promise to his father in that hospital room. A promise to finally tell the full story.

This is that story. One hundred and seventy thousand acres of uninterrupted forest. Two hunters who ventured too deep into the backcountry. And the creatures that let them leave alive.

Some places in this world belong to something other than us. The Land Between the Lakes might be one of them.

Episode Transcript

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

(00:22):
dog man, UFOs, and creatures that defy explanation. Some make
it out, others aren't so lucky. Are you ready, because
once you hear these stories, you'll never walk in the
woods alone again. So grab your flashlight, stay close, and
remember some things in the woods don't want to be found.
Hit that follow or subscribe button, turn on auto downloads,

(00:46):
and let's head off into the woods if you dare.
I want to address something before we get into this story.
Something I've heard repeated so many times over the years

(01:08):
that it almost sounds.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Like gospel truth.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
People say there's no way sasquatch could exist in the
land between the lakes. They say it's too populated, too
well traveled, too thoroughly explored by hunters and hikers and
campers over the decades. They say, if something that large
and that elusive lived in those woods, we'd have found
definitive proof. By now I disagree, and after you hear

(01:32):
what I'm about to tell you, I'm confident you'll agree
with me. The land between the Lakes is one hundred
and seventy thousand acres of uninterrupted forest, wetlands, and rugged
terrain sandwiched between Kentucky Lake and Lake Barkley. That's two
hundred and sixty five square miles of dense wilderness. Most
visitors stick to the main roads, the designated campgrounds, the

(01:54):
established trails. They see a fraction of what that place
actually contains, they drive through on their way to somewhere else,
and never venture into the true backcountry. But there are
places in the land between the lakes where no trails exist,
where the undergrowth is so thick you'd need a machete
to make any progress, Where the hollows twist and turn

(02:16):
and fold back on themselves until you lose all sense
of direction, Where the canopy blocks out so much sunlight
that even at midday, the forest floor exists in perpetual twilight.
I've been to those places, and I've spent forty years
trying to make sense of what happened to me and
my father on a cold November weekend in nineteen eighty four.

(02:36):
My dad passed away in March of twenty twenty four.
Cancer took him slowly over the course of about eighteen months.
In those final weeks, when he was still lucid enough
to have real conversations, we talked about that weekend more
than we ever had before. For decades, neither of us
brought it up much. We'd made an unspoken agreement to

(02:56):
leave it in the past, but with the end approaching,
wanted to revisit it. He wanted to make sure I
understood that what we experienced was real, that neither of
us had imagined it or exaggerated it in our memories
over time. He looked at me from his hospital bed,
his eyes still sharp even as his body failed him,
and he said something I'll never forget. He told me

(03:19):
that weekend was the most terrifying experience of.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
His entire life.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
This from a man who'd served two tours in Vietnam,
a man who'd seen combat, a man who'd watched friends
die in the jungle on the other side of the world.
That weekend in the Land between the Lakes scared him
more than any of it, he told me. He'd replayed
those nights in his mind thousands of times over the years,
lying awake at three in the morning, driving alone on

(03:44):
long stretches of highway, sitting in his deer stand during
quiet November mornings, the memories would surface, uninvited, as vivid
as the day they were made. He said he'd never
been able to shake the feeling that something in those
woods had recognized him. I've just seen him, but recognized him,
understood what he was, decided what to do with him.

(04:06):
That recognition haunted him until the day he died. Now
he's gone, and I'm the only living person who knows
the full truth about what happened out there.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
I've carried this story for four.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
Decades, and I think it's finally time to tell it properly.
Not the sanitized version I've occasionally shared at deer camp
over the years, Not the edited account I gave to
my wife when she asked why I refused to ever.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Go back to that place. The real story, all of it.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
My name is an important What matters is that this happened,
every word of it. So let's go back to November
of nineteen eighty four. Let's go back to the land
between the lakes, and let's talk about what my father
and I encountered in those ancient woods. I was fourteen
years old in the fall of eighty four. That's an
important age for a boy in rural Kentucky, old enough

(04:58):
to be trusted with real responsibility, but young enough to
still feel like you have everything to prove. I'd been
hunting small games since I was ten, squirrels, mostly, some rabbits.
I'd tagged along on deer hunts with my father and
his buddies, watching from a distance, learning the rhythms and
rituals of the pursuit, but I'd never taken a deer myself.

(05:20):
My father decided that November would change that. He'd been
planning this trip for months, just the two of us,
a father son deer hunting expedition into the back country
of the land between the lakes. No bodies along to
distract us, no time pressure from work or obligations, just
him and me in the woods and whatever we might
find there. Dad was a quiet man by nature, but

(05:43):
he'd been talking about this trip since August, showing me
maps at the kitchen table, explaining wind patterns and deer behavior,
teaching me to read topographical lines and predict where animals
would move based on terrain features. He wanted me prepared.
He wanted this to be perfect. Looking back, I think
the trip meant more to him than just hunting. My

(06:04):
father and I hadn't been as close as we once were.
Adolescence had put distance between us the way it does
between most fathers and sons. I was becoming my own person,
pushing back against his authority, testing boundaries the way teenagers do.
Our relationship had grown strained and weighs. Neither of us
quite knew how to fix. This trip was his attempt

(06:26):
to bridge that gap, to recapture something we'd had when
I was younger, to give us time together away from
the tensions of daily life. I understood that even then,
even at fourteen, and despite my teenage inclination to resist
anything my parents suggested, I was genuinely excited. I wanted
to kill my first buck, but I also wanted to

(06:47):
reconnect with my father. I wanted things to feel easy
between us again. He had a spot picked out that
he'd found years earlier while scouting with his hunting buddies.
According to Dad, it was a pocket of wilderness that
most hunters never bothered to access because of how difficult
it was to reach. You had to park at a
small pull off along one of the forest service roads,

(07:09):
then hike about two miles through increasingly dense terrain to
reach a series of ridges that overlooked several natural clearings.
Dad swore the deer population back in those clearings was
unlike anything he'd seen anywhere else in Kentucky. He said
the bucks were bigger, wilder, less pressured by hunters because
so few people made the trick. He'd taken two nice

(07:30):
eight pointers from that spot over the previous five years,
and he was determined that I would get my first
buck there too. We left our house outside of Hopkinsville
on a Friday afternoon in mid November. School had let
out early that day for some reason I can't remember,
and we were on the road by two o'clock. The
weather forecast called for clear skies and temperatures in the

(07:51):
low thirties overnight, perfect conditions for deer movement. Dad had
packed the truck the night before with military precision sleeping bags,
cook stove, food, water, hunting gear, first aid kit, extra ammunition, flashlights,
a hatchet, rope, everything we might need for a three

(08:11):
nights stay in the back country. I remember sitting in
the passenger seat of his old Ford pickup as we
drove west toward the land between the lakes. The truck
was a nineteen seventy eight model, dark green, with rough
spots around the wheel wells and a crack in the
windshield that had been there as long as I could remember.
It smelled like motor oil and old coffee and the

(08:31):
pine scented air freshener that dangled from the rear view mirror.
That smell still takes me back whenever I encounter it
forty years later, and the scent of pine air freshener
still makes me think of that drive. The sun was
already getting low in the sky, painting everything in shades
of orange and gold. The leaves had mostly fallen by

(08:51):
that point in the season, and the bear trees looked
like skeletal hands reaching up toward the heavens. I had
my window cracked just enough to smell the cold air,
and there was that particular autumn scent that's hard to
describe unless you've experienced it. Wood smoke and dead leaves
and frost. We passed through small towns I'd never heard
of cat Is, Canton, Eddyville, each one smaller than the last.

(09:18):
The country grew more rural as we drove, the houses
farther apart, the fields larger and emptier. By the time
we crossed onto the land between the lakes proper, we'd
left behind any real signs of civilization. Dad was quiet
during most of the drive, which wasn't unusual. He was
a man of few words under normal circumstances. He'd come

(09:39):
back from Vietnam different than when he'd left, or so
my mother told me. Quieter, more comfortable with silence, more watchful.
He had a habit of scanning his surroundings constantly, even
in situations where there was obviously nothing to worry about.
I didn't understand it as a kid. Later, after I
grew up and learned more about combat trauma, I realized

(10:02):
he was always on alert, always ready for something bad
to happen. That vigilance would serve us well in the
days to come. But during that drive, for a few
hours at least, he seemed at peace. He turned to
look at me occasionally, and something would soften in his face. Pride,
maybe love, certainly the hope that this weekend would deliver

(10:24):
everything he'd planned for. He told me stories as we drove,
stories I'd never heard before, about his own first deer
hunt with his father, my grandfather, who died before I
was born, About a massive buck he'd missed when he
was sixteen, a shot he'd replayed in his mind for
years afterward. About the way the woods had felt like

(10:44):
home to him ever since he was young. He said,
there was something about being in the wilderness that made
everything else fade away, all the noise and stress and complication.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Of normal life.

Speaker 1 (10:56):
In the woods, things were simple, you and the land
and whatever.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Each shared it with you.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
I listened without saying much, just absorbing his words, feeling
closer to him than I had in months. We arrived
at the pull off just before sunset. The forest service
road was unpaved, just packed dirt and gravel, and the
truck bounced and rattled as we covered the last few miles.
There were no other vehicles in sight when we pulled over,

(11:23):
which pleased my father. He wanted this stretch of woods
to ourselves. We sat in the truck for a moment
after he killed the engine, just looking at the wall
of trees in front of us. The forest seemed to
darken as we watched shadows pooling between the trunks, the
last light of day fading fast. Dad took a deep breath,

(11:43):
let it out slow. Then he grabbed his pack from
the truck bed and told me we had about an
hour of hiking ahead of us. Best get moving. We
grabbed our packs and rifles and started the long hike in.
The packs were heavy. Mine must have weighed forty pounds,
and Dad's was heavier still, But I was young and
strong and determined to keep pace without complaining. Dad set

(12:05):
a steady rhythm, not fast, but not slow either. He
moved through the woods with a confidence that came from
years of experience. He knew where he was going. Every
few minutes he'd paused to check his compass and scan
the terrain ahead. This was before the days of handheld
GPS units. Navigation meant map and compass and the ability

(12:26):
to read the land itself. The terrain changed as we walked.
For the first half mile or so, the forest was
relatively open, second growth hard woods with enough space between
them to see a good distance in any direction. Oake
and hickory mostly their bare branches forming intricate patterns against
the darkening sky. Dead leaves carpeted the ground, and our

(12:48):
boots made soft crunching sounds with every step. But gradually
the character of the woods shifted. The trees grew closer together,
the undergrowth thickened. Tangles of greenbriar and dead fall blocked
our path and forced us to navigate around them. The
light faded faster than I expected, filtered as it was
through the increasingly dense canopy overhead. There's something about deep

(13:11):
woods at twilight that triggers ancient instincts, something that makes
you hyper aware of your surroundings in a way that
feels almost primal. I found myself scanning the shadows more carefully,
listening more intently. My body was responding to stimuli my
conscious mind couldn't identify. Dad noticed too, I could tell

(13:32):
by the way his pace slowed slightly, by the way
his head turned more frequently, checking our flanks. He didn't
say anything about it, but he felt it. We crossed
a small creek about a mile in hopping from rock
to rock to keep our boots dry. The water was
clear and cold, barely a few inches deep, but moving
with purpose. On the far side, the terrain rose sharply.

(13:56):
We climbed a ridge that left both of us breathing hard,
then descended in to a hollow so thick with vegetation
that we had to push through it like wading through water.
By the time we reached Dad's camping spot, it was
nearly full dark. He chose in a small flat area
at the base of a ridge, sheltered on three sides
by natural rock formations that would block the wind. A

(14:17):
tiny spring trickled out of the hillside nearby, providing fresh water.
The rocks formed a kind of natural amphitheater, maybe thirty
feet across, with just enough level ground for our tent
and a fire pit. It was a good spot, protected
hidden from view from almost every angle. You could walk
within fifty yards of this place and never know it

(14:38):
existed unless you stumbled directly onto it. We set up
camp quickly, working by flashlight. The tent went up first,
a canvas two man model that Dad had used for years.
Then he got a small fire going while I gathered
enough wood to last us through the night. The work
felt good, physical, real. Stay tuned for more Backwoods big

(15:00):
Foot stories. We'll be back after these messages. Something to
focus on besides the darkness pressing in from all sides.
We ate a simple dinner of canned stew heated over
the flames, not talking much, both of us tired from
the hike and eager to get some sleep before the
morning hunt. The fire crackled and popped, sending sparks swirling

(15:22):
up toward the stars. Beyond the ring of light, the
forest was absolutely black. No moon that night, just darkness.
Dad told me about the layout of the area as
we ate. He drew a rough map in the dirt
with a stick, showing me where the clearings were, where
deer were likely to move, where he wanted to position
us the next morning. His voice was calm and assured.

(15:45):
This was his element, out here in the woods, away
from everything else. He seemed more himself than he ever
did at home. I asked him if he'd ever had
anything strange happen while hunting out here. I'm not sure why.
I asked, Maybe something about the darkness, maybe something in
the air that night that I couldn't quite identify. He
thought about it for a moment, then he said that

(16:07):
years ago, during one of his scouting trips, he'd heard
something he couldn't explain a sound like a woman screaming,
but not quite more like what a woman might sound
like if her voice was twice as deep and twice
as loud. He'd assumed it was a bobcat. They can
make sounds almost like human screams, but it had bothered him.

(16:27):
Stuck with him, he said he'd never heard it again.
That first night was mostly uneventful. I fell asleep listening
to the familiar sounds of the forest, owls calling in
the distance, small animals rustling through the leaves, the occasional
crack of a branch as something moved through the darkness
beyond our campfire's light. But I woke once deep in

(16:49):
the night, with the absolute certainty that something was wrong.
I lay there in my sleeping bag, heart pounding, straining
to hear whatever had woken me. The fire had burned
down to coals, giving off almost no light. The darkness
inside the tent was complete. I couldn't see my hand
in front of my face. Something was moving out there.

(17:09):
I could hear it. Footsteps in the leaves, slow, deliberate, heavy.
I held my breath listening. The footsteps circled the camp
once twice, then they faded into the distance and disappeared.
I convinced myself it was a deer, just a deer
moving through the area, nothing to worry about, nothing unusual.

(17:33):
But sleep was a long time coming. After that, Dad
woke me well before dawn. The air inside the tent
was cold enough that I could see my breath, and
I didn't want to leave my sleeping bag, but the
excitement of the hunt overcame my reluctance. I got dressed quickly,
layering up against the November chill, and followed my father
out into the darkness. We ate a cold breakfast granola

(17:56):
bars and jerky. Dad didn't want to start a fire
that my spook any deer in the area. He explained
the plan in whispered tones while we ate. There were
two natural clearings within reasonable distance of our camp. One
lay about four hundred yards to the northeast, the other
maybe three hundred yards to the northwest. Dad would take

(18:17):
the northeastern clearing. I would take the northwestern one. We'd
both be in position before first light, and we'd stay
on stand until mid morning at least. This would be
the first time I'd hunted completely alone. Previous seasons, Dad
had always been within eyesight or at least within earshot.
But he decided I was ready, old enough, skilled enough,

(18:39):
He trusted me to make good decisions. He led me
to my spot, using a tiny pin light that barely
illuminated the ground at our feet. The northwestern clearing was
smaller than i'd expected, maybe sixty yards across at its
widest point, shaped roughly like an oval, surrounded on all
sides by thick timber. A fallen oak on the near

(18:59):
side provided no natural cover, and that's where Dad positioned me.
He showed me where to sit, where to rest my rifle,
where to expect deer to enter the clearing.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
If they came at all.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Then he squeezed my shoulder once, gave me a nod
I could barely see in the darkness, and disappeared back
into the woods toward his own stand.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
I was alone.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
The silence was absolute, not even wind in the bare
branches overhead, just darkness and cold and the sound of
my own breathing. I settled in against the fallen oak,
arranged my rifle across my lap, and waited for dawn.
Time moves differently when you're sitting motionless in the dark.
Minutes feel like hours. Your mind wanders, you start to

(19:44):
notice things you'd normally filter out. The distant call of
a barred owl, the skidder of something small moving through
dry leaves somewhere behind you, the gradual lightning of the
sky as the sun approaches the horizon. Even though you
can't see the sun itself. The forest smelled like decay
and cold earth and something else. I couldn't identify something

(20:05):
musky and wild that seemed to hang in the still air.
I told myself it was normal, just the smell of
the woods in late autumn, nothing unusual. First light came slowly,
the blackness faded to gray. Shapes emerged from the darkness,
trees brush, the clearing in front of me revealing itself

(20:25):
inch by inch. I could see well enough to shoot
by the time the sky turned from gray to pale blue,
and I felt my excitement building. Any moment now a
deer might step out of that tree line, any moment
I might get my chance. An hour passed, nothing moved
except a few squirrels in the canopy above. The forest

(20:47):
woke up. Around me, birds began calling. The temperature rose
a few degrees as the sun climbed higher. I shifted
my weight carefully, trying not to make any noise, stretching
muscles that had stiffened in the cold. Then I heard it,
a sound I couldn't identify at first. It came from
somewhere behind me and to my left, maybe one hundred

(21:08):
yards away. A heavy impact, like something substantial hitting the ground.
Then another and another thump, thump, thump, rhythmic but irregular,
not quite mechanical, not quite natural. I turned my head slowly,
scanning the woods in the direction of the sound. I

(21:29):
couldn't see anything. The undergrowth was too thick, but I
could hear it clearly. Now something heavy was hitting the
ground over there, something big. Then the sound stopped. I waited,
barely breathing, my heart rate elevated. Nothing whatever had been
making that noise had gone silent. I convinced myself it

(21:50):
was nothing, a tree shedding dead limbs, maybe ice breaking
loose from branches higher up. Something with a rational explanation
that my nervous imaginationation had transformed into something sinister. I
turned my attention back to the clearing. That's when a
rock hit the fallen oak about three feet from my head.
I flinched so hard I nearly dropped my rifle. The

(22:12):
rock was roughly the size of a baseball, smooth and
river worn, and it struck the dead fall with enough
force to send up a spray of rotten wood fragments.
I spun around, bringing my rifle up, instinctively searching for
whoever had thrown it. Nobody there, just empty woods, just
bare trees and brown leaves and morning shadows. I sat

(22:34):
frozen for a long moment, my pulse pounding in my ears.
Another rock landed nearby, this one hitting the ground behind
me with a solid thud, Then another off to my right,
Then two more in quick succession, both of them striking
trees with sharp cracks that echoed through the silent forest.
Someone was throwing rocks at me, multiple rocks, from multiple angles.

(22:58):
But I couldn't see anyone, couldn't hear footsteps or voices,
or any indication of who was responsible, just rocks flying
out of the empty woods. I didn't know what to do.
Running seemed dangerous. Staying put felt equally unwise. I pressed
myself against the fallen oak and made myself as small
as possible. My rifle pointed vaguely in the direction the

(23:19):
rocks seemed to be coming. From the barrage continued for
maybe two more minutes, rocks of various sizes landing all
around me, never quite hitting me directly, but always close
enough to make me flinch. It felt deliberate, targeted, like
whatever was throwing them was aiming to intimidate rather than injure.
Then it stopped, as suddenly as it had begun. The

(23:42):
forest went quiet again, that absolute silence I'd noticed before dawn,
only now it felt different, heavier, watchful, like something out
there was waiting to see what I would do next.
I don't know how long I stayed frozen like that,
ten minutes, maybe possibly longer. Eventually, my racing heart slowed,

(24:04):
my breathing returned to something close to normal. The terror
that had gripped me loosened its hole just enough that
I could think clearly again. I told myself it had
been a prank, some other hunter messing with me, local
kids who knew these woods and had spotted an unfamiliar face,
A rational explanation that made sense, even if it didn't
quite fit the facts. Because I'd been looking in the

(24:26):
direction those rocks came from. I'd been scanning those woods intently,
and I hadn't seen a single human being. The morning
dragged on after that, no more rocks fell, no deer
appeared in the clearing. The sun rose higher, burning off
the last of the night's chill. Somewhere in the distance,
a woodpecker hammered at a dead tree. The forest returned

(24:48):
to normal, or what passed for normal, but I couldn't
shake the feeling.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
That I was being watched.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
By mid morning, I was cold and shaken and ready
to get back to camp. I gathered my gear and
headed back the way Dad had led me, moving as
quietly as I could, stopping every few yards to listen
and look behind me. Dad was already at camp when
I arrived. He had the fire going again, in a
pot of coffee heating over the flames. His expression changed

(25:16):
when he saw my face. He could tell something had happened.
I told him about the rocks, all of it, the
sounds i'd heard first, the heavy impacts in the distance,
then the barrage that came from multiple directions at once.
He listened without interrupting, his eyes growing more serious with
each word. When I finished, he didn't say anything right away.

(25:38):
He just stared into the fire, his jaw tight processing
what I'd described. Then he told me about his morning.
He'd heard something too, not rocks, but something else, a vocalization.
He called it, a sound like nothing he'd ever encountered
in all his years of hunting and all his time
in the Vietnamese jungle. He said it started low, almost sonic,

(26:01):
a rumble he felt more than heard. Then it rose
in pitch and volume until it became a howl, unlike
any animal he could name, not a coyote, not a bobcat,
not anything he recognized. He said the hair on the
back of his neck stood straight up when he heard it.
He said he'd felt suddenly and completely certain that he
was being watched by something he couldn't see, something intelligent,

(26:25):
something that wanted him to know it was there.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
We sat by that fire for a.

Speaker 1 (26:29):
Long time, neither of us sure what to make of
these experiences. Dad eventually suggested we hunt a different spot
that afternoon, somewhere closer to camp, somewhere we could keep
each other in sight. I agreed without hesitation. That afternoon
passed without incident. We saw a few doze, but no bucks.
The forest felt normal again, or close enough to normal

(26:52):
that I started to relax. We hunted within sight of
each other, never more than fifty yards apart, and the
companionship helped settle my nerves. But as we made our
way back to camp in the fading light, we found
something that brought all my anxiety flooding back. Footprints. Not
our footprints, something else. They were pressed into a muddy

(27:13):
section of trail about one hundred yards from our camp,
fresh prints made since we'd walked this path that morning.
Human shaped, but wrong in ways that made my stomach tighten.
They were huge, at least fifteen inches long, maybe sixteen.
The width was proportional. Dad knelt beside one and placed
his own boot inside it for comparison. His boot didn't

(27:36):
even fill two thirds of the print. These weren't fake.
These weren't costume pieces or carved wooden shoes. The depth
of the impressions in the soft mud proved that whatever
made them weighed several hundred pounds at minimum. The toe
spread was what struck me. Most human toes stay relatively
close together, constrained by years of wearing shoes. These toes

(27:58):
were splayed wide. They'd never been confined by footwear, like
they belonged to a creature that had walked barefoot its
entire existence. Dad followed the tracks as far as he could.
They led away from the trail in a generally northeastern direction,
back toward the clearing where he'd hunted that morning. After
about thirty yards, the ground grew too rocky to hold impressions,

(28:20):
and the trail disappeared. We stood there in the gathering darkness,
neither of us speaking. The implications of those footprints were unavoidable.
Something large and bipedal was moving through these woods, something
that had passed within one hundred yards of our camp
while we were out hunting. Something that walked on two
legs like a man, but wasn't a man. Dad's face

(28:43):
was unreadable as we walked the final stretch back to camp.
He built the fire up high that night, feeding it
extra wood until the flames rose several feet into the air.
I understood why light meant safety. Light meant we could
see what might be coming. We ate dinner in near silence,
listening to the forest transition from day sounds to night sounds,

(29:06):
owls replacing songbirds rustling in the undergrowth as nocturnal creatures
began their activities, the temperature dropping as the last warmth
of the sun disappeared. I asked Dad if we should leave.
He thought about it for a long moment, staring into
the flames, weighing our options. Then he said no, not yet.

(29:27):
We'd come here for a purpose, and he wasn't ready
to abandon that purpose based on footprints and strange sounds. Tomorrow,
we'd hunt again. If things escalated, we'd reassess. He must
have seen the fear in my face, because he added
something else. He said that whatever was out there, it
hadn't actually threatened us. The rocks hadn't hit me, the

(29:48):
sounds hadn't been accompanied by any aggressive action. Maybe this creature,
whatever it was, was just curious. Maybe it was watching
us the way we might watch an unusual animal that
wandered into our yard, interested but not hostile. I wanted
to believe him. I really did. Stay tuned for more
Backwoods big Foot stories. We'll be back after these messages.

(30:12):
But something in his voice told me he didn't fully
believe it himself. We turned in early that night, both
of us tired from the tension of the day and
the early wake up that morning. Dad zipped the tent
closed and we settled into our sleeping bags by the
light of a small battery powered lantern. He told me
we'd hunt the same general area tomorrow morning, different specific spots,

(30:34):
maybe try that game trail he'd notice south of camp.
Sleep came quickly, despite my lingering unease. I don't know
what time I woke up, but it was deep into
the night. The lantern had been switched off, and the
inside of the tent was pitch black. I lay still
for a moment, trying to figure out what had pulled
me from sleep.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Then I heard it.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Footsteps, heavy footsteps outside the tent. Not human footsteps. These
were too weighty, too deliberate, too spaced out. Whatever was
making them was bipedal. That much was clear from the
rhythm left right, left, right. But the creature making those
footsteps was enormous, I could tell from the way the

(31:17):
ground seemed to shudder slightly with each step. The footsteps
circled the tent slowly. I reached out in the darkness
and found my father's arm. His muscles were rigid, tensed.
He was already awake, already listening. He put his hand
over mine and squeezed once, a signal to stay quiet,
stay still, don't make a sound. The footsteps continued around

(31:42):
and around the tent, sometimes closer, sometimes farther away, but
never stopping. Whatever was out there was examining us, circling
us like a predator studying its prey. Then came the smell.
It hit me like a physical force, a stinch so
overwhelming that I had to fight not to gag. Rotting meat,

(32:04):
body odor magnified a thousand times, musk and decay and
something else I can't describe, something fundamentally wrong, an odor
that spoke of wildness and power and ancient animal presence.
The smell grew stronger as whatever was making those footsteps
drew closer to the tent wall. I could hear breathing,
now deep ragged inhales, followed by long exhales. The creature

(32:29):
was smelling us, just as we were smelling it. My
father's grip on my hand tightened. Neither of us moved,
neither of us breathed. The footsteps stopped directly outside the tent,
maybe three feet from where we lay. I could see
the fabric wall of the tent dimming slightly as something
massive blocked out the faint moonlight, filtering through the material,

(32:50):
A shadow, a presence, something standing right there on the
other side of that thin nylon barrier. The tent wall moved,
not much, just a slight indentation, like something was pressing
against it, gently testing its strength, seeing what it would
take to push through. I watched that indentation form in

(33:10):
the darkness, watched it push inward an inch or two,
then recede. Then the creature made a sound. I don't
have words for that sound, not really. It was somewhere
between a grunt and a growl, but deeper than any
sound i'd heard an animal make, A sound that seemed
to vibrate in my chest more than my ears, A

(33:31):
sound that communicated intelligence and curiosity, and something that might
have been warning. It lasted maybe two seconds. Then the
footsteps resumed, moving away from the tent, now fading into
the forest, growing quieter with distance, until finally they were
gone altogether. We stayed frozen for about twenty or thirty minutes.

(33:52):
Dad finally released my hand and I heard him moving
in the darkness. A click, and the lantern came on.
His face was pale, his eyes were wide, his hands
were shaking slightly as he reached for his rifle. We
didn't go back to sleep that night. Instead, we sat
facing each other across the small tent, rifles across our laps,

(34:13):
waiting for dawn. We didn't talk much. What was there
to say. Both of us knew what we'd heard. Both
of us knew that whatever had circled our tent wasn't
any animal we could explain. It had walked on two legs,
It had shown intelligent curiosity about our presence. It had
made a vocalization that suggested communication rather than simple animal noise.

(34:36):
Neither of us wanted to name it. Naming it would
have made it real. The hours crept by with agonizing slowness.
Silence would stretch for long periods, broken only by our
breathing and the occasional pop of cooling embers from the
fire outside. Then sounds would come from the forest, a
branch cracking, something heavy moving through the underbrush, the calls

(34:59):
of owls that my might have been owls and might
have been something else Entirely. Around three in the morning,
the screaming started, Not human screaming, something else, something that
sounded like a woman being murdered, but also like nothing
human at all. A piercing, oullulating shriek that rose and
fell in waves, echoing through the forest from somewhere disturbingly

(35:20):
close by. I sat bolt upright, heart slamming against my ribs.
Dad was already moving, unzipping the tent fly, rifle in hand.
He positioned himself at the tense entrance, scanning the darkness
beyond our dead fire. The scream came again. This time
I could tell it was coming from the northeast, maybe

(35:40):
a quarter mile away, maybe less. It lasted several seconds,
building to an impossible crescendo before cutting off abruptly. Then silence.
Not normal for a silence, This was different, total, complete,
Like every creature in those woods had frozen at the
sound of that. No owls, no rustling, no night birds, nothing.

(36:06):
Dad didn't lower his rifle. I grabbed my own gun
and knelt beside him, trying to see into the darkness.
The fire had burned down to cold ash, no moon,
no stars visible through the cloud cover that had rolled in,
just blackness in every direction. We waited one minute, two five.

(36:26):
The silence stretched on, unbearable in its totality. Then the
response came, a second scream, answering the first, but from
a completely different direction. This one came from the southwest
behind us, and it was closer, much closer. I could
hear the raw power in that voice. The sheer volume

(36:48):
of it vibrated in my chest. Whatever was making that
sound had lungs like bellows, and vocal cords capable of
producing tones no human could match. The sound contained rage
and aggression and something else, something almost mournful, like a lament,
mixed with a war cry. The first voice answered again, northeast,

(37:10):
slightly closer than before. Then a third voice joined the chorus.
This one came from directly to our north, maybe one
hundred yards away, loud enough that I could hear the
breathing between screams. Whatever made it was right there, right there,
in the darkness, just beyond our camp, Three of them,
at least three surrounding us, calling to each other, communicating

(37:35):
in a language of screams and howls that we couldn't understand.
Dad moved quickly, feeding kindling onto the dead fire, striking
matches with shaking hands until the flames caught. The fire
rose slowly, pushing the darkness back a few feet. But
I knew it wouldn't help if these things wanted to
reach us. A fire wouldn't stop them. The screaming continued

(37:58):
back and forth between the three voices, sometimes overlapping, creating
harmonies of terror that seemed to press against my skull,
sometimes falling silent for long stretches that were somehow worse
than the noise. Then came the wood knocks. You've probably
heard about wood knocks if you've spent any time researching
sasquatch encounters. It's one of the most commonly reported sounds

(38:20):
associated with these creatures, a sharp crack like a heavy
stick being slammed against a tree trunk. Bigfoot researchers believe
it's a form of communication away for the creatures to
signal each other across distance. I'm here to tell you
the researchers are right. The first knock came from the northeast,
a single sharp crack that echoed through the still night air.

(38:43):
Then an answering knock from the southwest, then one from
the north. Back and forth they went, a percussion conversation
happening all around us, the knocks coming faster and faster
until they overlapped and created an almost rhythmic pattern. Then
they started moving. I could track the knox as they
circled our camp northeast to north north to northwest, northwest

(39:07):
to west west to southwest, around and around, always maintaining distance,
but always present, always reminding us that we were surrounded.
This went on for thirty or forty minutes. The knox
would intensify, then slow down, then stop entirely for long
stretches of terrible silence, before resuming again. The creatures were

(39:30):
toying with us, testing our reactions, studying us the way
a cat studies a mouse before deciding whether to pounce.
At some point during this ordeal, new sounds joined the chorus.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Chatter.

Speaker 1 (39:43):
That's the only word I can think of to describe it.
A rapid series of vocalizations that sounded almost like language,
like words in a tongue no human had ever spoken.
The chattering moved between the creatures, passing from one to another,
as if they were discussing some thing, discussing us. I
realized they were talking about us. My father never lowered

(40:06):
his rifle. I watched him rotating, slowly, tracking each sound,
trying to keep his barrel pointed toward the most recent threat.
His face was a mask of concentration. Whatever fear he felt,
he wasn't showing it. I wish I could say the same.
I was shaking so badly I could barely hold my
rifle steady. My legs felt weak. My vision kept narrowing

(40:29):
and expanding as adrenaline surged through my system. If one
of those things had rushed us right then, I don't
know if I would have been able to shoot straight. Eventually,
the knox faded, The screams didn't return. The chattering stopped. Slowly, Gradually,
normal forest sounds began filtering back in. An owl called

(40:50):
in the distance. Something small rustled through the leaves. The
crickets resumed their chirping. Dawn found us still standing by
the fire. We hadn't moved, we hadn't spoken. We just
endured the night and waited for morning. When the sun
finally rose, painting the sky pink and gold through the
bare branches overhead, I felt a wave of relief so

(41:12):
powerful that my knees nearly buckled. We'd made it, We'd
survived another night. But I knew even then that we
couldn't do this again. The first thing we did, when
the light was strong enough was searched the perimeter of
our camp. We moved carefully rifles ready, stopping every few
feet to listen and look. The tracks were everywhere, not

(41:33):
just the single set we'd found the day before. Dozens
of prints pressed into the dirt around our camp, different sizes,
suggesting multiple individuals. The largest were at least seventeen or
eighteen inches long, the smallest were maybe fourteen. All of
them showed that same wide toe spread, that same inhuman proportion.

(41:54):
They'd been circling us all night, right there, just beyond
the firelight, close enough to touch if we'd extended our
arms past the tent walls. Dad knelt beside one particularly
clear print and just stared at it. I watched his
face cycle through emotions, disbelief, fear, anger, resignation. He'd been

(42:15):
in Vietnam, he'd seen things that would give most people
nightmares for life. But this was different. This was something
outside his experience, something he had no training to handle.
We found other evidence, too, broken branches at heights that
no human could reach, snapped off and hanging from the
trees like flags marking territory. Scratch marks on the bark

(42:38):
of several large oaks, deep gouges that could only have
been made by something with enormous strength and long fingernails
or claws, I couldn't tell which, And we found a
structure about fifty yards from our camp, in a dense
thicket of young trees. We found a formation of branches
and saplings that had been woven together into a kind

(42:58):
of dome. It was maybe six feet tall at its
peak and about eight feet in diameter. Not a natural formation,
deliberate constructed with purpose a shelter or a blind or
something else. Dad studied it for a long time without speaking.
Then he turned and walked back toward camp. I followed

(43:20):
without asking questions. He told me we were leaving that afternoon.
One more morning hunt, then we'd pack up and hike out,
get back to the truck before dark, put this place
behind us. I wanted to argue for leaving immediately right then,
No more hunting, no more waiting, just go. But I
saw something in my father's face that stopped me. Determination pride,

(43:46):
that same stubborn refusal to be driven off that had
kept us here this long. He'd promised me my first buck.
He wasn't ready to give up on that promise, so
we hunted one more time. Dad had found that game
trail the day before, the one crossing the small drainage
south of camp. That's where he decided to position me
that final morning. Good cover, clear shooting lanes, heavy deer traffic.

(44:09):
Based on the sign. If any spot on this trip
was going to produce a buck for me, this was it.
He walked me there in the pre dawn darkness, moving
more carefully than before, stopping frequently to listen. The forest
felt different after what we'd experienced. Every shadow could be
hiding something, every sound could be the beginning of another nightmare.

(44:31):
We reached the spot without incident. Dad showed me where
to set up a natural blind formed by two fallen
trees that had crossed each other years ago. Perfect concealment
with a clear view of the trail crossing maybe forty
yards in front of me. He held my shoulder longer
than usual before he left, looked into my eyes with
an intensity I'd rarely seen from him. Then he melted

(44:54):
back into the darkness, heading toward his own stand a
few hundred yards away. I settled in to wait. I
stay tuned for more Backwoods Bigfoot stories. We'll be back
after these messages. The morning unfolded slowly. First light came,
revealing the contours of the drainage and the trail I
was watching. I could see where deer had worn a

(45:15):
path through the dead leaves, a bare strip of earth
cutting through the forest floor, tracks everywhere, fresh sign indicating
this trail was used regularly. My heart rate was elevated,
but not from fear this time. This felt like a
real opportunity, a legitimate chance to finally take my first deer.
Despite everything that had happened, I found myself focused on

(45:38):
the hunt, scanning the trail, watching for movement, ready to
raise my rifle at the first sign of antlers. The
woods were quiet that morning, almost too quiet. None of
the normal bird chatter i'd expect at dawn, no squirrels
barking in the canopy, just silence and stillness and the
gradual brightening of the sky. About an hour where after sunrise,

(46:01):
I heard movement in the brush to my left, heavy movement,
not a squirrel or a rabbit, something bigger. My pulse quickened.
I shifted my rifle slightly, orienting toward the sound. A
deer emerged from the brush about sixty yards away. A buck,
a beautiful ten point buck with a thick neck, and
a heavy body moving carefully along the edge of the drainage,

(46:25):
heading toward the trail crossing. He was perfect, mature, cautious,
everything I'd been hoping to see. His rack was wide
and tall, the antlers gleaming in the early morning light.
I raised my rifle, slowly, pressing my cheek against the stock,
finding the buck in my scope. He was quartering toward me,

(46:45):
now presenting a slightly angled shot, but still within my capabilities.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
I controlled my.

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Breathing the way Dad had taught me, found the crease
behind his front shoulder, centered my crosshairs. The buck stopped,
raised his head looked directly toward me. I squeezed the trigger.
The rifle kicked against my shoulder. The shot echoed through
the silent forest. The buck lurched sideways, stumbled two steps,

(47:10):
and went down in a heap of brown fur and
white antlers. I'd done it, my first deer, a clean
shot through the vitals. I sat there for a moment,
heart pounding, trying to process what had just happened. Elation
and pride and a strange kind of sadness that all
hunters know, the mix of emotions that comes with taking

(47:31):
a life, even when that's exactly what you came here
to do. Then I stood up and started walking toward
my kill. The buck had fallen maybe fifty yards from
my position. I could see him clearly, now, not moving.
The shot had been lethal. I walked quickly, eager to
reach him, eager to examine the antlers up close, eager

(47:52):
to tell my father what I'd accomplished. I was maybe
thirty yards away when the smell hit me, that same
terrible musk from the night before, decay in wildness, and
something fundamentally wrong. It seemed to roll out of the
forest ahead of me, like an invisible wave. I slowed
my pace, raised my rifle, scanned the tree line. I

(48:14):
was maybe twenty yards away when it happened. Something exploded
out of the brush to my right. I didn't see
it clearly at first, just a blur of movement, something
huge and dark, emerging from the undergrowth at impossible speed,
covering ground faster than anything that large should be able
to move. It was on my deer in seconds, moving

(48:35):
on two legs upright like a man, but massive. It
reached the buck Before I could even process what I
was seeing. I stopped walking, stopped breathing, stood frozen in
place as the creature bent down and grabbed my deer
with both hands. Now I saw it. Now I understood.
It was massive, eight feet tall at least maybe more,

(48:57):
covered head to toe in dark reddish brown hair that
looked matted and thick, varying in length across its body,
shorter on the face, longer on the shoulders and back.
Its body was built like a professional strong man's, all
thick muscle and raw power, but proportioned differently than any human.
The shoulders were impossibly broad, maybe four feet across. The

(49:21):
chest was deep and barrel shaped. The arms were long,
much longer than they should have been, hanging almost to
its knees even when it stood upright. Its hands were enormous.
The fingers wrapped completely around the deer's neck as it
lifted the carcass like it weighed nothing, a two hundred
pound buck raised with no more effort than I would
use to pick up a housecat. The creature stood there

(49:44):
for a moment holding my deer and turned its head
to look at me. I saw its face. I will
never forget that face. It was almost human. That was
the worst part. The eyes were deep set and intelligent,
dark brown or black, studying me with an awareness that
went far beyond animal instinct. I could see thought behind

(50:04):
those eyes, calculation, assessment. The nose was flat and wide,
almost ape like, but not quite. The mouth was a
thin line that might have been capable of expressions I
couldn't read. The brow ridge was pronounced, shadowing those terrible,
knowing eyes. The face was framed by that same reddish
brown hair, but the features beneath were unmistakable. This was

(50:29):
not an ape, This was not a bear standing on
its hind legs. This was something else, entirely, something that
existed somewhere between human and animal, something that shouldn't exist
at all. The creature looked at me for maybe five seconds,
the longest five seconds.

Speaker 2 (50:46):
Of my life.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
I saw its nostrils flare as it took in my scent.
I saw its eyes move, tracking from my face to
my rifle and back again. I saw something that might
have been a smile curl the corners of its thin mouth,
though that could have been my terrified imagination filling in
details that weren't really there. Then it turned and walked
away into the thick forest, carrying my deer over its

(51:10):
shoulder like a sack of feed. It moved with surprising
grace for something so large, stepping over fallen logs and
pushing through brush that would have stopped me cold. Within moments,
it had disappeared into the undergrowth, swallowed by the forest.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Gone.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
I heard my own voice then, calling out a wordless
cry of shock and fear and something else, loss, maybe confusion.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Certainly.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
My body started moving before my mind caught up, following
the creature's path, stumbling through the forest trying to keep pace.
I didn't get far. The undergrowth was too thick, the
creature was too fast. Within a minute, I'd lost all
trace of it, just empty woods, just silence, just the
still morning air and my own ragged breathing and the

(51:58):
impossible memory of what I had just witnessed. I stood there, shaking,
rifle hanging useless at my side, trying to understand. That's
when my father found me. He came crashing through the
brush from the direction of his stand, moving faster than
I'd ever seen him move, his face a mask of
concern that shifted to alarm when he saw my expression.

(52:20):
He grabbed my shoulders and looked into my eyes, asking
without words, what had happened. I pointed toward the spot
where the creature had disappeared. Then I told him all
of it. The blur of movement, the creature emerging from nowhere,
the size and the hair, and the impossible strength, the face,
that terrible, intelligent face looking at me like it was

(52:42):
deciding whether I was worth killing. Dad listened in silence
when I finished. He didn't question my account, didn't suggest
I'd imagined it or misidentified some ordinary animal. He just
nodded slowly, like everything I'd described confirmed something he'd already suspected.
He told me what he'd heard. The shot had reached

(53:02):
him clearly from his position a few hundred yards away.
He'd started moving toward me, immediately, knowing I'd need help
processing the deer if I'd made a kill. But before
he'd taken ten steps, he'd heard something else, something moving
through the forest between us at high speed, something big,
the crashing of undergrowth, the heavy thudding of massive feet

(53:24):
hitting the ground, moving toward my position, not away from it.
He'd started running, then abandoned his stand, abandoned caution, just
ran toward me as fast as the terrain would allow.
He'd heard me call out that wordless cry I'd made
when the creature took off with my deer, and he'd
run even faster. Now he understood what he'd been racing

(53:45):
to reach, what had been running toward me through those woods.
We stood there together for a long moment, father and son,
processing the impossible thing that had just happened. The forest
around us seemed to watch, seemed to wait. Then Dad
made a decision. We were leaving right now, not this afternoon,

(54:06):
right now. Forget the camp, forget the gear, forget everything
except getting out of these woods while we still could.
I didn't argue. We started moving, not toward camp, but
toward the parking area where we'd left the truck two
days earlier, a direct route through unfamiliar terrain, because Dad
judged the fastest path out was better than the known

(54:27):
path that took us deeper into this nightmare before letting
us escape. The hike out was terrifying in its own way.
Every sound made us freeze, Every movement in the brush
had us raising our rifles. I kept expecting to see
that massive shape emerge from the trees ahead, blocking our escape.
I kept expecting to hear those screams again, surrounding us,

(54:49):
cutting off our retreat. Twice we heard something large moving
through the forest parallel to our path, something keeping pace
with us, staying just out of sight but making enough
noise that we knew it was there, following us, watching
us leave. But nothing came. The creatures, if they were
still there, stayed hidden. Maybe they decided we weren't worth

(55:11):
the trouble. Maybe they'd accomplished what they wanted by driving
us from their territory. Maybe they just wanted to make
sure we were really leaving. We reached the truck in
just under two hours, moving fast, pushing through obstacles that
would have slowed us down normally. Dad had the keys
out before we cleared the last stand of trees. We
threw ourselves into the cab, slammed the doors, and he

(55:34):
had the engine running within seconds. Gravel sprayed as we
pulled out of the parking area. The forest road seemed
impossibly narrow, branches scraping against the truck on both sides.
I kept looking in the mirrors, expecting to see something
following us, some massive shape keeping pace with the vehicle,
refusing to let us leave. We made it to the

(55:55):
paved road, then to the highway, then We were driving east,
away from the l between the lakes, away from whatever
lived in those woods, away from the weekend that had
changed everything.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
Neither of us.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Spoke for a long time. Finally, somewhere near the Tennessee border,
Dad pulled into a gas station. He filled the tank
while I sat in the cab, still shaking, still processing.
When he got back in, he sat behind the wheel
without starting the engine, and stared straight ahead. Then he said,
we needed to talk about what we were going to
tell people. I understood what he meant. How do you

(56:31):
explain something like this? Who would believe us? Our families,
our friends, everyone we knew would think we'd lost our minds,
seen a bear and let our imaginations run wild. Made
up stories to explain why we came home early without
a deer. We decided together we would tell a simplified
version the truth, but not all of it. We'd say

(56:54):
the hunting had been poor, the weather had turned. We'd
packed up early because there was no point staying. The
deer had all gone nocturnal. The usual excuses hunters give
when a trip doesn't work out. The creatures, the footprints,
the screams, and the wood knocks. The thing that had
stolen my buck right in front of me. We would

(57:15):
keep that between us. It wasn't a decision we made lightly.
Part of me wanted to tell everyone, wanted to shout
it from the rooftops, validate my experience by sharing it,
find others who might have seen similar things. But Dad
talked me through the consequences, the ridicule, the questioning of
our sanity, the way a story like this could follow

(57:37):
us for the rest of our lives, marking us as
crazy or liars, or both. Better to stay quiet, better
to carry this burden alone. Together, we shook on it,
father and son, a pack sealed in the cab of
that old Ford pickup, at a gas station whose name
I can't remember, somewhere between the Land of Nightmares and home.

(57:58):
We never went back to the Land between the lakes,
neither of us, not once. In the forty years since
that weekend. Dad hunted other places. I hunted other places,
but that particular stretch of Kentucky wilderness became forbidden territory,
a place we avoided without ever explicitly discussing why. The
nightmares lasted for months, I'd wake up in my childhood bedroom, sweating,

(58:23):
certain that something huge and terrible. Was standing outside my window,
certain that I could smell that awful musk, feel those
heavy footsteps vibrating through the floor. My mother worried about me.
My grades suffered, my social life evaporated. As I withdrew
into myself, trying to make sense of an experience that
defied explanation. I became obsessed with research. This was the

(58:47):
mid eighties before the Internet, so information was harder to find.
But I spent countless hours at libraries, digging through newspaper
archives looking for similar accounts. I found more than I expected,
reports of strange creatures in the woods of Kentucky and Tennessee,
going back decades, footprints, sidings, screams in the night. I

(59:10):
wasn't alone. Others had encountered something out there too. That
knowledge helped a little. Knowing that I wasn't crazy, that
other people had experienced similar things made it easier to
accept what had happened. But it didn't make the memories
any less vivid. It didn't stop me from jerking awake
at three in the morning, heart pounding. The image of

(59:32):
that face burned into my brain. Eventually, the nightmares faded,
the raw terror dulled into something more manageable, but it
never disappeared entirely. Even now, forty years later, I sometimes
dream about that face, those intelligent eyes studying me from
a body that shouldn't exist. I got married in my

(59:52):
late twenties, had kids, built a life that looked normal
from the outside. But my wife knows there's something I've
never fully shared with her. Stay tuned for more Backwoods
Bigfoot stories. We'll be back after these messages. A darkness
I carry that I've never been able to explain. She's
asked over the years since that something happened to me

(01:00:14):
that I can't or won't talk about. I've told her pieces,
the outlines, but never the full story. This is the
first time I've told anyone the full story. Dad and
I talked about it occasionally over the years, never in detail,
never for long, just brief acknowledgments that what we'd experienced
was real, that neither of us had imagined it, that

(01:00:36):
something truly unexplained lives in the deep woods of western Kentucky.
We'd be sitting on his porch on a summer evening
watching fireflies, and he turned to me with that knowing look.
I'd nod, He'd nod, and we'd go back to watching
the fireflies, the weight of our shared secret hanging between
us like something physical. The last time we discussed it

(01:00:58):
at length was in that hospital room, two weeks before
he passed. He was tired and weak, but his mind
was clear. The cancer had taken everything else, but it
hadn't touched his memories. If anything, they seemed sharper than ever,
like his brain was clinging to the most significant moments
of his life as everything else faded away. He told

(01:01:18):
me he'd spent a lot of time thinking about that
weekend over the decades, trying to understand what we'd encountered,
trying to fit it into some framework that made sense.
He'd read books, watched documentaries, followed the stories of researchers
and witnesses who'd had similar experiences. He never succeeded in
explaining it, but he did reach some conclusions. Whatever those

(01:01:40):
creatures were, they weren't mindless animals. They communicated with each other,
They coordinated their movements, They made deliberate choices about how
to interact with us. The rock throwing, the screams, the
wood knocks, the circling of our camp, all of it
felt purposeful, like they were testing us, our defenses, deciding

(01:02:01):
whether we posed a threat. And when one of them
took my deer, it wasn't just opportunistic scavenging. It had
been watching, waiting. It knew I'd made that kill. It
knew I was coming to claim it, and it decided
to take what I thought was mine. A demonstration of power,
a message we couldn't misinterpret that suggests intelligence, planning, intention.

(01:02:25):
That's what scared my father more than anything else. Not
the size of the creatures, not their strength, their minds,
the awareness behind those eyes. He told me something else
in that hospital room, something he'd never shared before. He
said that on the second night, during those endless hours
of screaming in wood Knocks, he'd felt something he hadn't

(01:02:45):
experienced since Vietnam, the certainty that he was going to die,
the absolute conviction that this was the end, that whatever
was circling our camp was going to break through and
kill us both. He said he'd made peace with his
own debath in that moment. He was a soldier. He'd
been prepared to die before. What he couldn't accept was

(01:03:06):
the thought of me dying, his son, his boy, killed
by something that shouldn't exist in woods.

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
That should have been safe.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
He told me that when we made it out, when
we reached the truck and drove away, he felt like
he'd been given a second chance at life, like he'd
been spared for a reason. And the reason, he decided,
was me. He'd been spared so he could watch me
grow up, graduate high school, go to college, get married,
have kids of my own. He cried when he told

(01:03:36):
me that. My father, who never cried, who'd survived two
tours in Vietnam without shedding a tear, wept openly in
that hospital bed as he talked about how close we'd
come to dying in those woods. He asked me to
tell this story someday, to put it out there for
others who might have had similar experiences, to let people
know they're not crazy if they've encountered something in the

(01:03:58):
wilderness that shouldn't exist. I promised him I would. He
died three days later, peacefully in his sleep. My mother
was with him. I was on my way to the
hospital when he passed, stuck in traffic on the Interstate.
I didn't make it in time to say goodbye, but
we'd already said goodbye in that hospital room two weeks earlier,

(01:04:20):
when he shared the truth about what that weekend had
meant to him.

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
That was our real Farewell.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
I don't know what we encountered in the Land between
the Lakes in November of nineteen eighty four. I have
my theories, same as anyone who spent time researching this phenomenon.
But theories aren't proof. Theories don't capture the visceral terror
of standing twenty yards from something that resembles a nightmare
given physical form. What I know is this something lives

(01:04:48):
in those woods that we haven't classified, something intelligent and
powerful and capable of evading human detection. Despite forty years
of increased settlement and development in the region, that watched
two hunters invade its territory and chose intimidation over violence,
something that could have killed us both, but instead seemed

(01:05:08):
content to drive us away. I think about that sometimes,
the restraint those creatures showed. They could have rushed our
camp any night, They could have attacked us in the
pre dawn darkness when we were isolated and vulnerable. Instead,
they scared us. They demonstrated their presence and their power
without actually harming us. Was that mercy communication? A warning

(01:05:31):
to stay out of territory they considered their own.

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
I'll never know.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
What I do know is that the land between the
lakes contained secrets that most people will never encounter. Stick
to the main roads and the developed campgrounds, and you'll
probably be fine.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
You'll see beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Scenery and abundant wildlife and everything you'd expect from a
national recreation area. But venture into the back country. Go
where the trails end and the undergrowth closes in. Spend
a night in those deep where the canopy blocks out
the stars. You might find something looking back at you.
People say there's no way sasquatch could exist in the

(01:06:08):
land between the lakes. They say the area is too
well traveled, too thoroughly explored. I was there. I saw
what I saw. I heard what I heard. I watched
a creature that shouldn't exist carry off a deer i'd
shot fair and square, moving through terrain that would stop
most humans cold. Tell me again how that's impossible. My

(01:06:29):
father took this story to his grave. Now I'm the
only one left to experience that weekend firsthand, the only
living witness to something extraordinary and terrifying. I'm not asking
you to believe me. Belief is personal. All I can
do is tell you what happened and let you draw
your own conclusions. But if you ever find yourself in
the back country of western Kentucky, if you ever hear

(01:06:52):
something screaming in the night that sounds like no animal
you've ever encountered, if you ever feel like something intelligent
and ancient and powerful is watching you from the darkness,
trust that feeling. Turn around, and don't look back. Some
places in this world belong to something other than us.
The Land between the Lakes might be one of them.

(01:07:14):
I'm not eager to find out if I'm right. My
name doesn't matter. What matters is that this happened, every
word of it. That's my story. That's what my father
and I experienced in November of nineteen eighty four. Now
it's yours to do with as you will. DI never