SO EP:631 What Lives in the Deep Woods

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today, I want to tell you about a journey that
I've been on for most of my life. Ever since
I was a kid, I've heard tales of bigfoot and
wild men while spending time with my friends and family.
As I grew older and read more about the paranormal,
my interest in encryptids and other things strange only deepened.
That's why I'm so excited to share with you what
I've personally become involved with the Untold Radio Network. The

(00:21):
Untold Radio Network is a live streaming podcast network that
airs a new show every day across all podcast platforms, YouTube,
and more. They have eight different shows on all sorts
of exciting topics such as bigfoot, cryptids, UFOs, aliens, and
much more. I even have my own show called Weird Encounters,
where I talk about all things strange. This is more

(00:42):
than just a podcast network. It's a community that allows
me to meet so many amazing people who share their
stories and experiences with strange. If you're interested in hearing
more of these stories and learning more about the paranormal
and encryptids, make sure you check out the Untold Radio
Network for all kinds of exciting shows. It's free to subscribe.
So what are you waiting for visit www dot untold

(01:04):
radionetwork dot com today.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Now, what are your reporting? I got a screen going
on here. Something just kid with my dog, something to
kill your dog? My dog. We're flying through there over
the tree. I don't know how it did it? Okay, Damn,
I'm really confused. All I saw was my dog coming
over the fence, and name was dead once you hit
the grill. I didn't see any cars. All I saw
was my dog coming over the fence. Sat, what are

(01:45):
you reporting? We got some wonder or something crawling around
out here? Did you see what it was? It was
enough out here looking him. Knew the one down now
and I don't need anything. I don't want to go outside. Hello,

(02:10):
hit the boddy out here?

Speaker 3 (02:11):
What quin?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
I'm out there? I thought of a venus about te nine.
I don't know easy ann out there? Yeah, I'm walking
right heady.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
You know that feeling when someone's about to tell you
something that's going to change how you see the world,
That moment right before they open their mouth, when you
can still pretend that everything you think you know about
reality is actually true.

Speaker 4 (02:32):
This is that moment.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
The email arrived on a Monday, morning, buried in my
inbox between a spam message about miracle weight loss and
a reminder about my car's extended warranty. The subject line
was simple, you wanted the truth about the strange stuff
here it is. It came from someone calling himself Jeremiah,
though I suspect that's not his real name. I'd never

(02:56):
heard from him before, but somehow he knew about the show,
knew about the books I'd written, knew that I was
someone who took these stories seriously, someone who wouldn't laugh
or dismiss what.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
He had to say.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
The message was long, longer than most people have the
patience to write these days, and it started with what
seemed like a pretty ordinary story about a middle aged
guy going through a divorce, losing his job, escaping to
the mountains to build a cabin and start over, the
kind of midlife crisis story we've all heard a hundred
times before. I almost deleted it, but something in the tone,

(03:31):
in the careful way he laid out the details, made
me keep reading. And I'm glad I did, because what
starts as a simple tale of a man seeking solitude
in the Georgia Mountains becomes something else. Entirely, something that
will make you think twice about those dark spaces between
the trees, about what might be watching from the shadows
when you're alone in the wilderness. Jeremiah takes his time

(03:54):
getting to the scary parts. He wants you to understand
who he was before, what drove him to seek isolation
in the remote mountains of North Georgia. He wants you
to know about the cabin he built with his own hands,
about the peace he found in that clearing by the creek,
About the simple life he thought he was creating for himself.
Because context matters when someone's about to tell you that

(04:17):
everything you think you know about the natural world is wrong.
The story he's about to share doesn't start with monsters.
It starts with divorce papers and panic attacks and the
soul crushing realization that the American dream had become a nightmare.
It starts with a man so desperate for peace that
he was willing to disappear into the wilderness to cut

(04:38):
himself off from civilization Entirely, it starts normal, human, relatable,
but it doesn't stay that way. What Jeremiah encountered in
those remote mountains challenges everything we think we know about
what lurks in the deep woods, about intelligence and intention,
and the things that go bump in the night, about

(05:00):
preachers that understand psychology, that can wage systematic campaigns of terror,
that can drive a rational man to the edge of
sanity and beyond. He's careful to give you all the details,
all the context you need to understand what happened. But
fair warning, once you hear this story, you can't unhear it.

(05:20):
Once you know what he knows, the wilderness will never
look the same. So settle in, get comfortable, and prepare
to learn why some places in this world are better
left unexplored, why some secrets are better left buried in
the darkness between the trees. This is Jeremiah's story, told
in his own words. He sent it to me with

(05:41):
the understanding that I would share it, that people needed
to know what's really out there. But he also made
it clear that this is the only time he's ever
going to talk about what happened to him in those mountains.
After you hear it, you'll understand why. The story begins
with a man running away from his old life, but
what he found waiting for him in the wilderness was

(06:02):
worse than anything he'd left behind much worse. I've been
a listener for years and I've read both your books.

Speaker 4 (06:09):
One thing I've.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Always respected is how you talk about the strange stuff
straight up, no hype, just honest.

Speaker 4 (06:16):
That's why I'm writing.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
I'm not trying to get attention, and I'm not looking
for anyone to feel sorry for me. I just think
people need to know this kind of thing is real.
It happened to me, and if telling my story helps
someone stay safe, then it's worth it.

Speaker 4 (06:31):
So here it is, all of it.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
Just know, once you hear this, you can't unhear it,
and I won't be talking about it again. I guess
I should start with why I went up there in
the first place. The divorce had just gone through after
two years of legal hell. Sarah took pretty much everything,
the house we'd bought when we were still stupid enough
to believe in forever, the kids half the time, which

(06:55):
meant I got to be a weekend dad to my
own children, and most of our savings, which had taken
me fifteen years to build up. I was working sixty
hour weeks at the caterpillar plant, coming home to an
empty apartment that smelled like takeout containers and regret. The
place had beige walls and beige carpet and beige everything,
like they designed it specifically to suck the life out

(07:17):
of whoever was unlucky enough to live there. My blood
pressure was through the roof one forty over ninety on
a good day. I was popping antacids like they were candy,
going through a bottle of thumbs every week. My doctor
kept telling me I needed to reduce stress. But how
do you reduce stress when everything in your life is stress?
I couldn't sleep more than three hours at a time

(07:39):
without waking up in a cold sweat, thinking about bills
and court dates and how I'd somehow become this hollow
shell of a man who didn't recognize himself.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
In the mirror anymore.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
The thing that really broke me was sitting in traffic
one morning on I two eighty five, watching all these
people in their cars, looking as miserable as I felt.
Thousands of us, all stuck in the same metal boxes,
breathing the same exhaust fumes, all heading to jobs we
hated to make money for things we didn't really want.
All of us just rats in a maze, running the

(08:11):
same path every day getting nowhere, I realized I'd been
doing it for twenty three years. The same commute, the
same cubicle under fluorescent lights that gave me headaches, the
same meetings about meetings where nothing ever got decided for what,
A pension that might not even exist when I retired,
assuming the company didn't move all the jobs to Mexico. First,

(08:34):
a four to oh one k that lost half its
value every time the market hiccuped. A gold watch after
forty years of service, if I was lucky enough to
live that long. I started having panic attacks at work,
real ones, not just feeling stressed. My heart would start
racing for no reason. My hands would shake, and I'd
feel like I couldn't breathe. I'd have to lock myself

(08:57):
in the bathroom until it passed, splashing cold water on
my face and trying to remember how to breathe normally.
My supervisor started making comments about my performance, about maybe
I wasn't cut out for the increased responsibilities they'd been
piling on me since the last round of layoffs. That's
when I started looking at land, not vacation property like

(09:17):
some rich guy's hunting cabin, I mean real land. Somewhere
I could disappear completely, Somewhere I could build something with
my own hands and not have to answer to anybody
ever again. The idea started as just a fantasy, something
to think about during those endless meetings, but it grew
into an obsession. I'd always been handy with tools, learned

(09:38):
carpentry from my dad when I was young, back before
he started drinking heavy and we stopped talking. He taught
me to measure twice and cut once, to respect the
wood and let it tell you what it wanted to be.
Those were some of the few good memories I had
of him, standing in his garage workshop, watching him turn
rough lumber into something beautiful and useful. The idea of

(10:00):
cutting my own timber and building my own place from
scratch started eating at me in a good way. For
the first time in years. I'd lie awake at night
planning it out. Where I'd put the cabin, how big
it would be, what kind of roof would shed snow best.
I started buying carpentry magazines and reading books about off
grid living, about people who'd walked away from civilization and

(10:23):
built their own little piece of paradise. I found the
property online in March of twenty twenty, right when everything
was shutting down because of COVID. The listing was on
some backwoods real estate site that specialized in raw land
and hunting properties. Forty seven acres way up in the
mountains near the Tennessee border. The pictures showed thick forest,

(10:44):
a creek running through the middle, and terrain that rolled
from gentle slopes to steep ridges. The listing said it
was remote and secluded, which was exactly what I wanted.
No neighbors for miles, no cell service, no internet, no
power lines, just me in the woods and the silence
I'd been craving for so long I'd forgotten what it

(11:06):
sounded like. The land was cheap because nobody else wanted it.
Too far from civilization for most people's taste, twelve miles
from the nearest paved road, accessible only by a logging
road that turned into barely more than a deer path
for the last few miles, too steepened places for conventional building,
too wild, the realtor admitted when I called him, perfect

(11:28):
for what I had in mind. I drove up to
see it on a Saturday in late March. Took me
four hours from Atlanta the last hour on increasingly rough
roads that made my truck groan and complain. When I
finally reached the property, I sat in the cab for
a long time, just listening to the silence. Real silence,
not the kind you get in the suburbs, where there's

(11:49):
always some background hum of traffic or air conditioners or lawnmowers.
This was the kind of quiet that makes your ears
ring at first, until you adjust to it. I hiked
the property for three hours that day, following the creek
up through stands of oak and pine and rhododendron. There
were deer trails everywhere, and I saw fresh bear scat
near the water. The creek was clear and cold, running

(12:12):
fast with snow melt. From higher up the mountain. I
found a natural clearing about two acres in size, perfect
for a cabin site, with good drainage and southern exposure
for solar panels. Standing in that clearing, I felt something
I hadn't felt in years. Peace, Real peace, not the
exhausted numbness i'd been calling peace. For the first time

(12:35):
since the divorce started, I could breathe all the way
down to the bottom of my lungs. The stress that
had been living in my shoulders for months just melted away.
I used what was left of my savings for the
down payment and signed the papers the following week. Forty
seven acres of Georgia Mountain forest for less than what
most people spend on a car. The loan payments were

(12:56):
manageable even on my reduced income. I'd taken a pay
cut when the plant downsized, but up there it wouldn't matter.
I'd be living on almost nothing. I gave my two
weeks notice at Caterpillar on April first. My supervisor acted
like I was having a nervous breakdown, kept asking if
I'd thought this through, if I understood what I was
giving up, pension, health, insurance, steady income, the respective working

(13:22):
for a major corporation. I told him I understood perfectly,
and that's exactly why I was leaving. My coworkers threw
me a going away party at a sports bar near
the plant. Everyone got drunk and told me how much
they envied me, how they wished they had the guts
to do what I was doing. But I could see
in their eyes that they thought I was crazy, walking

(13:43):
away from a secure job in uncertain times, going off
to live in the woods like some kind of hermit.
Maybe they were right, maybe I was crazy, but I
was also done pretending that the life I'd been living
was worth living. I sold everything I couldn't fit in
my truck, an tools I wouldn't need, books i'd never
read again, kept the essentials, and donated the rest to goodwill.

(14:08):
Sarah got mad when she found out. Said I was
having a midlife crisis and abandoning my responsibilities. But my
child's support was automatically deducted from my bank account, and
I'd be making enough from some freelance carpentry work to
cover my few expenses. The kids could visit during school
breaks if they wanted, though I suspected Sarah would find

(14:28):
reasons why that wasn't practical. By the middle of April,
I was living in a tent on my own land.
I'd never been so happy to wake up in my life.
Those first few months were like being reborn. I'd wake
up with the sun, no alarm clock, just natural light
filtering through the tent fabric. The air was clean and
cold and tasted like pine needles and running water. I'd

(14:51):
make coffee on a camp stove and sit by the creek,
listening to the water flow over the rocks, watching mist
rise from the surface as the sun warmed it. I
spent the first month just learning the land. I walked
every acre, following deer trails and old logging roads, mapping
it all in my head. I found the best spots
for a garden, identified which trees i'd harvest for lumber,

(15:13):
located natural springs that bubbled up from underground and flowed
into the creek. There were wild BlackBerry patches and stands
of young chestnut trees, apple trees gone wild from some
long abandoned homestead, still bearing fruit. The work was hard,
but satisfying in a way i'd forgotten work could be.
I cleared the cabin site by hand, cutting and removing

(15:36):
trees with a chainsaw, pulling stumps with a come.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
Along and a lot of sweat.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
I leveled the ground with a mattock and shovel, building
up the low spots with rocks from the creek. Every
muscle in my body ached at the end of each day,
but it was good pain, honest pain from honest work.
I lost thirty pounds that first summer without even trying.
The combination of physical labor and simple food, mostly canned goods,

(16:02):
and what I could catch or forage, stripped away the
soft layer of middle aged fat i'd been carrying. My
hands got calloused again, the way they'd been when I
was young and still believed that working with your hands
was something to be proud of. Stay tuned for more
sasquatch ot to see.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
After these messages, I built the cabin slow and careful,
the way my dad had taught me. Started with the
foundation concrete piers set deep enough to get below the
frost line, level and square and built to last. Then
the floor joists and subflooring, checking and rechecking every measurement.

(16:42):
I was in no hurry. This wasn't a weekend project
or something I was doing to save money. This was
my life. I was building board by board. The lumber
came from my own land. I hired a guy with
a portable sawmill to come up and cut the trees
i'd marked, mostly oak and pine, with some poplar for
interior work.

Speaker 4 (17:02):
The mill operator was.

Speaker 1 (17:03):
A mountain guy named Earl who'd been doing this for
thirty years. He looked at my plans and nodded approvingly,
said it looked like a house that would stand long
after we were both dead. Eighteen by twenty four feet
with a steep metal roof and a stone chimney, I
planned to lay myself big enough for one person to
live comfortably, small enough to heat with a single wood stove.

(17:26):
The design was simple and functional, no wasted space, no
unnecessary decoration, just a solid, well built cabin that would
shelter me from whatever the mountains could throw at it.
I framed the walls with two by eights on sixteen
inch centers, using traditional joinery where I could mortise, and
tenin joints for the major connections. Everything fitted together like

(17:49):
a puzzle. I'd work from first light until my hands
were too tired to hold a hammer safely, then sit
by the campfire, eating beans from a can and planning
the next day's work. The chimney was the hardest part.
I'd never laid stone before, but I found an old
timer named claud who lived about ten miles down the mountain.

(18:09):
He came up on weekends and taught me how to
read the stone, how to find the face that wanted
to show and the side that wanted to carry weight.
We built that chimney one rock at a time, mixing
mortar by hand and checking every course with a level.
Claud was probably seventy years old, but he could work
circles around me. He'd grown up in these mountains when

(18:30):
people still built their own houses and grew their own
food and fixed their own trucks. He told me stories
while we worked, about the old days, when every hollow
had a family in it, when people knew how to
live off the land and take care of themselves. He
also told me other stories about things he'd seen in
the deep woods when he was hunting or cutting timber.

(18:51):
Tracks that didn't match any animal. He knew, sounds that
came from no creature in any book. Trees broken off
eight feet above the ground, snapped clean like toothpicks. He'd
tell these stories in a matter of fact way, like
he was talking about the weather, but something in his
eyes suggested he wasn't joking. I didn't pay much attention

(19:11):
to those stories at the time. Claude was old, and
old mountain people were known for their tall tails. Besides,
I was too busy and too happy to worry about
whatever might be lurking in the forest. I was building
my dream, and nothing was going to interfere with that.
By October I had the walls up and the roof on,
the chimney was drawing clean, and the wood stove was

(19:33):
keeping the place warm. I'd put in a hand pumped
well using a kit i'd ordered online, and after three
days of hard digging, I hit water at thirty five feet,
sweet cold water that tasted better than anything I'd ever
gotten from a tap. I built an outhouse using plans
from a nineteen forties homesteading guide, positioning it downhill from

(19:54):
the well in the cabin. It wasn't glamorous, but with
lime and proper ventilation, it didn't smell too bad. I
was prouder of that simple toilet than i'd ever been
of the marble bathroom and the house Sarah got in
the divorce. The solar system was more complicated than I'd expected,
but I figured it out through trial and error. Four
panels on the south facing roof connected to a charge

(20:17):
controller and a bank of deep cycle batteries, enough power
for LED lights and a radio, maybe a laptop computer
if I ever decided I needed one.

Speaker 4 (20:26):
I didn't.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
The whole point was to get away from screens and
constant connectivity. I had running water gravity fed from a
tank I'd installed in the loft, filled by the hand pump,
a propane refrigerator in stove i'd bought used from a
dealer who specialized in off grid appliances, enough firewood stacked
under a lean to to last through the winter, everything

(20:48):
I needed and nothing I didn't. Winter was hard but good.
I'd stockpiled food and supplies, but i still had to
work for everything. Water froze in the line sometimes, and
I'd have to thaw them out with a hair dryer powered.

Speaker 4 (21:02):
By the solar batteries.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
The woodstove needed feeding every few hours day and night
to keep the cabin warm. Snow made the access road
impassable for weeks at a time, which meant hiking out
to my truck when I needed supplies.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
But I loved it.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Loved the simplicity of it, the way every task had
a clear purpose. Loved the silence of snow falling in
the forest, the way it muffled every sound until the
whole world seemed wrapped in cotton. I read books I'd
been meaning to get to for years, The Row and
Abby and Annie Dillard, writers who understood what I was
trying to do. I wrote in a journal, recording the

(21:39):
small details of each day, what I saw, what I built,
how I felt. I was sleeping eight hours a night
for the first time since college, waking up refreshed instead
of groggy. My blood pressure dropped to normal levels. The
constant anxiety that had been my companion for so many.

Speaker 4 (21:57):
Years just evaporated.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
Felt like I'd found myself again, like I'd remembered who
I was before life ground me down into something I
didn't recognize. The kids came to visit over Christmas break.
It was awkward at first. They were used to central
heating and flush toilets and high speed internet, but after
a day or two they started to get it. We
hiked the property and I showed them how to split

(22:21):
wood and tend the fire. Emma, who was fourteen, said
it was like living in a story book. Jake, who
was twelve, wanted to know if he could come live
with me permanently. I had to explain that it wasn't
that simple, that their mother would never agree to it,
that they needed to finish school and think about college.
But part of me wondered what it would be like

(22:42):
to raise them here, away from the constant pressure and
competition and digital noise, to teach them how to work
with their hands and think for themselves and find peace
in simple things. Sarah came to pick them up after
a week, driving as far as the main road and
making me hike out to meet her.

Speaker 4 (22:59):
She took one look at.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Me, tanned and lean and healthier than I'd been in years,
and I could see something like regret in her eyes,
but she covered it with irritation, complained about the inconvenience
of the drive and how the kids were behind on
their homework. The kids hugged me goodbye and promised to
come back for spring break. I watched their headlights disappear

(23:20):
down the mountain and felt a loneliness I hadn't experienced
since moving up here.

Speaker 4 (23:25):
But it passed quickly.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
The silence and the stars and the knowledge that I
was exactly where I belonged filled the empty spaces. Spring
came early that year, and with it a sense that
something was changing, not just the season, something deeper. I
noticed it first in the behavior of the wildlife. The
deer that had been coming to drink from the creek
every morning stopped showing up. The birds that had been

(23:50):
regular visitors to the clearing. Cardinals and blue jays and
woodpeckers seemed to have moved on to other territories. I
told myself it was just the natural cycle of things.
Animals move around following food sources and seasonal patterns. But
the absence felt different, deliberate, like something had worn them away.

(24:11):
The first sign that something was actively wrong came in
late February. I was splitting wood behind the cabin, working
through a pile of oak rounds I'd cut the previous fall.
The wood was well seasoned and splitting clean, the satisfying
thunk of the mall, connecting just right to open each
piece along its grain. That's when I heard the sound,
not quite a scream, not quite a roar. It was

(24:34):
deep and loud and seemed to come from everywhere at once,
echoing off the ridges and rolling through the valley like thunder,
But there were no clouds in the sky, and thunder
doesn't have that quality of voice behind it. This was
something alive making that sound, something with lungs and vocal
cords and intention. It made the hair on my arms

(24:55):
stand up and sent a chill down my spine that
had nothing.

Speaker 4 (24:58):
To do with the February cold.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Every instinct I had screamed that this was a sound
no human should ever have to hear a sound from
some primal nightmare our ancestors had learned to fear. I
stopped splitting and listened, gripping the mall handle so tight
my knuckles went white. The sound came again, closer this time,
and I realized it was moving. Whatever was making it

(25:23):
was traveling through the forest, calling as it went. Then
everything went quiet, not just quiet, dead silent, the kind
of silence that presses against your ear drums and makes
you question whether you've gone death. No birds, no squirrels
chattering in the trees, no wind rustling the leaves. Even
the creek seemed to be flowing more quietly, like the

(25:45):
water itself was afraid to make noise. I'd been in
the woods long enough to know that kind of silence
meant predator. When every small creature in the forest suddenly
stops making noise, it's because something dangerous is nearby, something
they do I don't want to attract the attention of
I grabbed the split wood i'd already stacked, and carried
it inside, making three trips and trying to look casual

(26:08):
about it. But my eyes were constantly scanning the tree line,
looking for movement, for any sign of what had made
that sound.

Speaker 4 (26:16):
I saw nothing, but the.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Feeling of being watched was so strong I could almost
feel eyes on me. I went inside and locked the
door behind me, which I'd never done during the day.
I told myself I was being paranoid, that it was
probably just a bear waking up early from hibernation. Bears
can make loud noises when they're agitated or marking territory,

(26:38):
but I'd heard bears before and this wasn't that. I
spent the rest of the day inside, jumping at every
small sound. When evening came, I didn't go out to
get more firewood like I usually did. I just fed
the stove with what I had inside and went to
bed early, though sleep was a long time coming. That night,
I heard it again around two in the morning. It

(27:00):
woke me from restless dreams I couldn't quite remember. This time,
the sound was much closer, maybe fifty yards from the cabin,
close enough that I could hear the depth and power
behind it, the way it seemed to vibrate through the
ground and into the cabin walls. I got up and
looked out the window, but the moon was dark and
I couldn't see anything beyond the immediate clearing, just black

(27:23):
trees against a black sky, shadows that could hide anything.
But I knew something was out there. I could feel
it the way you feel a storm coming, some primitive
part of my brain that evolution had programmed to recognize danger.
I had a thirty out six rifle that I'd brought
for deer hunting, though I hadn't had much luck with it.
Deer seemed to sense my presence long before I saw them,

(27:45):
and by the time I got a shot lined up,
they were already bounding away through the trees. I checked
to make sure the rifle was loaded and kept it
within reach. I sat in a chair by the window
for the rest of the night, watching and listening. The
sounds didn't come again, but I could feel something moving
out there in the darkness. Not see it, not hear it,

(28:06):
just feel it, like a pressure in the air, a
disturbance in the natural rhythm of the forest. Around dawn,
I heard something moving through the brush behind the cabin.
Footsteps but not quite right, too slow and deliberate to
be a bear, too heavy to be a deer, something
walking on two legs, but with a gait that wasn't

(28:27):
quite human. The steps were spaced too far apart, like
whatever was making them had longer legs than any person.
I waited until there was enough light to see clearly
before going outside. I wanted to find tracks, some kind
of evidence of what had been prowling around my home.
There were footprints by the creek, about thirty yards from
my cabin. But these weren't bear tracks, or deer tracks,

(28:50):
or anything else I'd ever seen in my forty six
years of life. They were shaped like human feet, but enormous,
at least eighteen to nineteen inches long and maybe seven
inches wide at the ball of the foot. The toes
were clearly defined, five of them, arranged like a human's,
but thicker and longer. The heel had pressed deep into

(29:10):
the mud, deeper than my own tracks, even when I
was carrying a heavy load. Whatever had made these prints
was massive, much heavier than any human, but the shape
was unmistakably that of a foot, not a paw or
hoof something that walked upright on two legs like a person.
I knelt down beside the clearest print and tried to

(29:32):
process what I was seeing. The track was so fresh
that water was still seeping into the depression from the
saturated ground. Whatever had made it had been here while
I was sitting by the window, watching and listening. It
had been close enough to throw a rock and hit me.
I followed the tracks as far as I could, but
they led up onto rocky ground, where the trail disappeared.

(29:54):
There were maybe a dozen clear prints, all heading in
the same direction, toward the densest part of the forest,
where the trees grew so thick that daylight barely penetrated
even at noon. I spent the rest of the morning
trying to convince myself there was a logical explanation. Maybe
it was a bear walking on its hind legs. I'd
heard they could do that sometimes. Maybe it was someone

(30:16):
playing an elaborate prank, though I couldn't imagine who would
hike five miles through rough terrain just to mess with me.
Maybe I was losing my mind from too much isolation,
hallucinating things that weren't there. But deep down in the
part of my brain that remembers when humans were prey
animals hiding from things in the dark, I knew what
I'd seen, and I knew it wasn't anything that should

(30:38):
exist in the modern world. I took pictures of the
tracks with a digital camera i'd brought but rarely used.
The photos didn't do them justice. The scale was hard
to judge without something for reference, and the subtle details
that made them so unsettling didn't show up clearly. But
I had them evidence that I wasn't completely losing my mind.

(31:00):
The next few days were quiet, and I started to relax.
I told myself i'd imagined the whole thing, that living
alone in the woods was making me jumpy and paranoid.
Stay tuned for more Sasquatch ott to see. We'll be
right back after these messages. The human mind is capable

(31:21):
of creating all kinds of illusions when it's under stress
or isolation. Maybe I'd misidentified some perfectly normal animal tracks.
Let my imagination run wild with stories Claude had told
me about mysterious creatures in the forest. I went back
to my routine, chopping wood, maintaining the cabin, reading by
the fire in the evenings, but I kept the rifle

(31:43):
closer than before, and I found myself checking the windows
more often than I like to admit. Every sound from
outside got my full attention. Every shadow seemed to move
when I wasn't looking directly at it. Then Rex went missing.
I'd gotten Rex from the animal shelter in Gainesville before
I moved up to the mountains. He was a good dog,

(32:03):
part German shepherd and part something else, maybe Rottweiler or lab.
It was hard to tell. Big and solid about eighty pounds,
with intelligent brown eyes and a protective instinct that made
him perfect for life in the wilderness. He'd been with
me through the whole build, always staying close, always alert
to sounds and movements in the forest. He wasn't the

(32:26):
kind of dog that would chase after every squirrel or rabbit.
He was too well trained for that, too focused on
his job of watching over me in the cabin, and
he never ever wandered off at night. Rex slept by
the wood stove every night, positioned where he could see
both the door and the windows. If anything approached the
cabin after dark, he'd know about it long before I would.

(32:49):
His hearing was sharp enough to pick up sounds I
couldn't detect, and his nose could identify sins from hundreds
of yards away. That's why I knew something was wrong
when I woke up one morning and he wasn't there.
I called for him as soon as I realized he
was gone, stepping outside into the gray pre dawn light
and whistling the way I always did when I wanted
him to come. Rex always responded to that whistle, even

(33:13):
if he was investigating something interesting in the woods. But
this time there was nothing. No bark, no sound of
paws running through the underbrush, no sign that he'd heard
me at all. I spent the whole day looking for him,
following every trail and checking every hollow within a mile
of the cabin. I called his name until my voice
was hoarse, listening for any response, any sign that he

(33:37):
was hurt or trapped somewhere. I found old deer tracks
and rabbit droppings, and the scattered feathers where a hawk
had killed something, but no trace of Rex. The thing
that really worried me was the lack of tracks. Rex
was a big dog with big paws, and he usually
left clear prints in the soft earth around the cabin,
But I couldn't find a single track leading away from

(33:58):
the clearing, as if he'd simply vanished into thin air.
I told myself he'd probably picked up the scent of
a female dog in heat somewhere and would come back
when he got hungry. Dogs do that sometimes, even well
trained ones. Their instincts override their training and they followed
their nose wherever it leads them. But Rex had been neutered,

(34:18):
and besides, there weren't any other dogs for miles around.
As the sun started to set and Rex still hadn't returned,
I had to accept that something had happened to him,
something bad. Dogs don't just disappear without a trace, especially
not dogs like Rex, who were bonded to their owners.

Speaker 4 (34:36):
And knew their territory.

Speaker 1 (34:38):
That night, I heard the sound again, the same deep,
echoing call that had first alerted me that something was
wrong in my peaceful mountain world, But this time it
was answered from the other side of the valley. Another
voice called back, similar but not identical, like a conversation
in a language I couldn't understand. Then another voice joined

(35:00):
and in from a different direction entirely, and another. They
were communicating, these things, calling to each other across the darkness,
coordinating something. The calls went on for maybe an hour,
sometimes close, sometimes far away. It sounded like they were moving,
circling the valley, taking positions around my cabin. I sat

(35:22):
by the window with my rifle, watching and listening and
trying not to panic. The logical part of my mind
was still trying to find rational explanations. Wolves maybe, though
there weren't supposed to be wolves in Georgia. Coyotes though
they didn't usually make sounds like that. Bears though bears
don't coordinate their activities like pack animals. But the primitive

(35:45):
part of my brain, the part that remembered when humans
lived in caves and feared the things that hunted in
the dark, knew exactly what I was hearing. Predators, intelligent predators,
and they were planning something. The last call came from
directly behind the cabin, so close it seemed to shake
the walls, so close that whatever made it had to

(36:06):
be standing just yards from where I sat. The sound
was deeper than the others, more authoritative, like the leader
of the pack giving orders to his subordinates, than silence,
complete absolute silence that pressed against my ear drums and
made me strain to hear anything at all. I didn't
sleep that night, couldn't sleep. Every shadow looked like movement.

(36:30):
Every sound made my heart race. I kept thinking about Rex,
wondering what had happened to him, wondering if the same
thing was going to happen to me. The harassment started
the next week, and it was clear from the beginning
that it was deliberate. These things, whatever they were, wanted
me gone, and they were smart enough to understand that
psychological pressure might be more effective than direct confrontation.

Speaker 4 (36:54):
At first, it was subtle.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
I'd hear something walking around the cabin at night, but
when I looked out the windows, I never saw anything.
The footsteps were heavy and deliberate, circling the building, like
someone conducting an inspection. They'd stop directly outside whatever window
I was looking through, as if they knew I was watching.
Sometimes I'd find my firewood scattered in the morning, like

(37:17):
something had been digging through the pile. My trash can
was knocked over more than once, the contents strewn across
the clearing and patterns that looked almost intentional. Tools I'd
left outside would be moved, not stolen, just relocated to
places where I'd be sure to notice they weren't where
I'd left them. I tried to tell myself.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
It was bears.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Black bears are common in North Georgia, and they're notorious
for getting into garbage and making messes. They're also smart
enough to learn patterns and return to places where they
found food before. But bears don't stack firewood into neat
piles twenty feet from where they found it. Bears don't
move tools. Bears don't move things around just to prove
they can. What I was finding every morning were signs

(38:01):
that something with intelligence and purpose had been there, something
that understood cause and effect, that knew its actions would
be noticed and interpreted. It wasn't just scavenging or exploring.
It was sending a message. The message was clear, you
don't belong here. I started keeping a journal of the incidents,
thinking maybe I could find a pattern or figure out

(38:23):
what was triggering them. But the more I wrote down,
the more disturbed I became. The activities were escalating, becoming
bolder and more frequent. Whatever was out there was getting
comfortable being close to my home. One morning I found
handprints on the outside of my cabin windows. Not human handprints.
These were huge, with fingers that seemed too long and

(38:45):
too thick. The palms were at least twice the size
of mine, and the fingerspan was wider than I could
stretch my own hand. They were pressed into the glass,
like something had been peering inside, watching me while I slept.
There was a strain, sticky white substance on the prints.
I think it's the sebum stuff I've heard you talk
to people about on your show. The thought of those

(39:07):
eyes studying me in the darkness made my skin crawl.
I tried to imagine what kind of creature could leave
prints that size, but my mind shied away from the possibilities.
I cleaned the windows with glass cleaner and paper towels,
trying to remove the evidence of the intrusion. But the
next morning there were more prints, this time on the door.

(39:28):
Something had been standing right outside, maybe just inches from
where I slept, close enough to hear me breathing. I
could see the perfect impression of a palm and five fingers,
each one bigger than my whole hand. The thumb print
was positioned where a human thumb would be, but it
was massive, nearly four inches long and two inches wide.

(39:49):
I cleaned those prints, too, but they kept appearing on
the windows, on the door, even on the walls.

Speaker 4 (39:55):
Of the cabin.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Something was touching my home, investigating it, learning about it,
and it was doing so while I was inside, unaware
and vulnerable. I started sleeping with the rifle across my
chest and a flashlight within easy reach, but sleep was
becoming impossible anyway. Every sound from outside got my full attention.

(40:17):
Every shadow seemed to move when I wasn't looking directly
at it. I'd lie awake listening to the silence, knowing
that the absence of normal forest sounds meant something was wrong.
The worst part was the feeling of being hunted. I
couldn't shake the sense that I was being studied, evaluated,
stalked like prey. When I went outside to chop wood

(40:38):
or tend to the solar panels, I felt exposed and vulnerable.
I was certain that eyes were watching me from the forest,
calculating my movements, learning my routines. I'd catch myself constantly
looking over my shoulder, scanning the tree line for movement.
Sometimes I thought I saw shapes between the trees, dark

(40:58):
forms that were too tall and too broad to be
anything I could identify. But when I looked directly at them,
they'd be gone, leaving me to wonder if I'd imagine them.
I found more tracks, always in different places near the
well where I pumped water, around the outhouse, where I
was most vulnerable, leading right up to the cabin walls,
and then back into the forest. Whatever was making them

(41:21):
was getting comfortable being close to my home, maybe even
comfortable enough to approach while I was inside. The tracks
showed variations in size and depth, suggesting more than one individual.
Some were smaller, maybe sixteen inches long, others were massive
twenty inches or more. I was dealing with a group
of something that lived in the deep woods and had

(41:43):
decided I was a problem that needed to be solved.
I measured the tracks carefully and tried to estimate the
weight of whatever was making them based on how deeply
they pressed into the soil. My best guess was somewhere
between four and six hundred pounds for the largest ones.
For compare Garrison, a large black bear might weigh three
hundred pounds. These things were substantially bigger than any bear

(42:06):
I'd ever heard of. The smell started around the third
week of March. It was unlike anything I'd ever encountered
in my life. A mix of wet animal fur, rotting meat,
and something else I couldn't identify, something wild and alien
and wrong on a level that made my stomach turn.
It would drift through the clearing on still nights, so

(42:27):
strong it made my eyes water and my throat close up.
The smell was worse on humid nights, when the air
was heavy and still. It would seep through every crack
and gap in the cabin walls. No matter how well
I tried to seal them. I'd wake up gagging, rushing
outside to breathe clean air, only to find that the
source of the stench was somewhere nearby in the darkness.

(42:49):
I tried to identify what could produce such an odor.
Dead animals smell bad, but this was different, more complex,
like the scent of something that was alive but wrong,
something that didn't fit into the natural order of things.
It reminded me of the zoo, but worse, like the
smell of the big cat house, mixed with a morgue

(43:09):
and something else that made my primitive brain scream warnings.
I'd smell it and know they were close. The odor
was a warning, a sign that something was watching me
from just beyond the circle of light cast by my windows.
On nights when the smell was strongest, I'd see shapes
moving at the edge of the clearing dark forms that

(43:30):
were too tall to be bears, too broad to be deer,
too purposeful in their movements to be anything I wanted
to identify. One night in late March, I woke up
to the sound of my metal roof being pounded from above.
Something heavy was walking on the roof, and I could
hear its footsteps moving from one end of the cabin
to the other. The sound was rhythmic and deliberate, like

(43:52):
it was testing the structure, looking for weak points. The
metal roofing amplified every footstep, turning my cabin into a
drum that whatever was up there was beating with its feet.
The sound was deafening inside the small space, and it
went on for what felt like hours, step by step,
methodically covering every square foot of the roof surface. I

(44:13):
grabbed my rifle and went outside, but as soon as
I opened the door, the pounding stopped. I shined my
flashlight up at the roof, scanning the entire surface, but
there was nothing there, no sign that anything had been
walking on it, no indication that I hadn't imagined the
whole thing, but I knew what I'd heard. The sound
had been too real, too immediate, to be a hallucination.

(44:37):
Something had been up there, something heavy enough to make
the metal ring with each step, Something that had disappeared
the instant I came outside to investigate. I went back
inside and sat by the window, watching the roofline and
waiting for it to start again. After about an hour,
I saw something moving along the edge of the roof,
a shadow darker than the night sky, too big to

(44:59):
be a rack, coon or possum. It moved with purpose,
like it was examining the construction, checking the attachment points
where the metal sheets were screwed to the roof decking.
I raised the rifle and aimed at the shadow, but
before I could fire, it was gone, just melted back
into the darkness like it had never been there. I
sat there for the rest of the night, rifle ready,

(45:22):
but nothing else happened. Whatever had been on my roof
had learned what it wanted to know. The next morning
I found deep gouges in the metal roofing. Four parallel scratches,
each about three inches long, cut right through the metal
like it was aluminum foil. Something with claws had been
up there, and it had left its mark to make
sure I knew it. The gouges were positioned over my bedroom,

(45:45):
directly above where I slept. Whatever had made them could
have easily torn through the roof and gotten to me
if it had wanted to. The scratches were a message,
a demonstration of power, a reminder of how vulnerable I was.
That's when I knew I was in real trouble. This
wasn't random animal behavior or a series of unfortunate coincidences.

(46:07):
I was being systematically intimidated by something that understood psychology,
something that knew exactly how to apply pressure to break
down my defenses. Stay tuned for more sasquatch oat to see.

Speaker 4 (46:19):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
After these messages, I started thinking seriously about leaving. The
rationale part of my mind was screaming that I should
pack up and get out while I still could. I'd
built something beautiful here, created the life I'd always dreamed of.
But it wasn't worth dying for. No piece of land

(46:41):
was worth that. But the stubborn part of me, the
part that had walked away from everything I'd known to
build this place with my own hands.

Speaker 4 (46:49):
Refused to be driven away.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
I'd put two years of my life into this cabin
and this land. I'd invested everything I had financially, emotionally, spiritually.
I wasn't going to let some unknown creature scare me
off my own property. I decided to fight back, to
take some kind of action instead of just hiding in
my cabin and waiting for whatever was going to happen. Next,

(47:13):
I drove to town and bought motion activated trail cameras,
the kind hunters used to monitor game trails. I also
picked up some early warning systems, basically tin cans filled
with rocks, hung from fishing line and positioned around the clearing.
If something big moved through the area, the cans would
rattle and wake me up. The cameras were a waste

(47:34):
of money. I set them up in strategic locations around
the cabin, positioning them to cover all the approaches and
hoping to get photographic evidence of what was harassing me.
But every morning I'd checked them and they'd either be
missing or destroyed. The first camera I found torn from
its tree and smashed against a rock about fifty yards away.

(47:55):
The case was cracked open and the internal electronics were
scattered across the ground, like someone had taken it apart
to see how it worked. The second camera simply disappeared,
along with the steel cable i'd.

Speaker 4 (48:06):
Use to secure it to the tree.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
The third camera I found the next morning, but it
had been repositioned. Instead of pointing at the trail, it
was aimed directly at my cabin, specifically at the window
of my bedroom. Something had not only found the camera,
but had turned it around to watch me instead of
being watched by me. I checked the memory card, hoping
maybe it had captured images of whatever had moved it,

(48:31):
but the card had been removed taken. Whatever was out
there understood technology well enough to know that the cameras
were recording them, and they knew how to disable the
devices or remove the evidence. The warning system worked better,
but not in the way i'd hoped. Instead of alerting
me to intruders, it told me just how often I
was being watched. Those cans rattled constantly, not just at night,

(48:56):
but during the day too, sometimes for hours at a time,
like something was deliberately triggering them to keep me on edge.
I'd hear the rattle and grab my rifle, but by
the time I got outside to investigate. There would be
nothing to see, just the cans swaying gently in the breeze,
and that feeling of being watched from the safety of
the forest shadows. The pattern was always the same. The

(49:20):
cans would rattle, I'd go outside to check, and everything
would be quiet, but I could feel eyes on me,
studying my response, learning my behavior. It was like being
a lab rat in an experiment with something intelligent monitoring
my reactions to stimuli. I stopped going outside after dark
unless absolutely necessary. I'd learned that was when they were

(49:43):
most active, when they felt bold enough to come close
to the cabin. During the day, I'd do my chores
as quickly as possible, always staying alert, always ready to
run back inside if something went wrong. But they were
adapting to my habits, learning my routines, and adjusting the
their own behavior Accordingly. They started showing up during daylight hours,

(50:04):
becoming bolder and more aggressive in their harassment. I was
splitting wood one afternoon in early April when I heard
a branch break in the forest behind me. I turned
around and saw something watching me from the tree line.
It was standing between two large pines, maybe sixty yards away,
but I could see it clearly enough to know that
my worst fears were real. It was enormous, at least

(50:28):
eight feet tall, maybe closer than nine. Its body was
covered in dark hair that looked coarse and thick, like
a bear's.

Speaker 4 (50:35):
But longer.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
The proportions were almost human, but wrong and subtle ways
that made my brain refuse to process what I was seeing.
The arms were too long, the shoulders were too broad,
the chest too barrel shaped. But it was the face
that really got to me. It was visible enough that
I could make out the basic features, and it was
like looking at humanity's worst nightmare, almost human, but twisted

(51:00):
into something that belonged in the uncanny valley between human
and animal. The huge eyes were deep set, reflecting the
afternoon sunlight, like an animal's. The nose was flat and wide,
like a gorilla's. The mouth was hidden behind hair, but
I could see the outline of something too large for
a human face. We stared at each other. I was

(51:21):
too shocked to move, too scared to breathe. This was
the first time I'd seen one of them clearly in
full daylight, and it was worse than i'd imagined. Every
detail confirmed that this wasn't some misidentified bear or elaborate hoax.
This was something that shouldn't exist, something that violated every
rule of biology and evolution I'd learned in school. The

(51:44):
creature wasn't moving, just standing there, watching me work, studying me,
learning about me. The intelligence I saw in those eyes
was unmistakable. This wasn't some mindless beast acting on instinct.
It was thinking, planning, evaluating. It looked at me like
I was a problem to be solved, an obstacle to

(52:05):
be removed. Then it stepped back into the trees and
was gone, just melted into the forest like it had
never been there. I stood there with the axe in
my hands, trembling like a leaf, wondering if I'd really
seen what I thought i'd seen. But the smell lingered
in the air, that same foul stench that had been
haunting my nights. I went inside and locked the door,

(52:29):
but I couldn't stop shaking. The thing had been watching
me work, studying my routines, learning my vulnerabilities. How long
had it been there? How many times had they observed
me without my knowledge?

Speaker 4 (52:41):
The thought of those.

Speaker 1 (52:42):
Intelligent eyes cataloging my every move made me sick with fear.
I tried calling my brother in Atlanta, thinking maybe I
needed to talk to someone about what was happening, but
my cell phone had no signal. It never did up here,
which had been one of the attractions of the place.
The isolation that had once felt like freedom now felt
like a trap. That night, they came closer than ever before.

(53:06):
I could hear them moving around the cabin, sometimes brushing
against the walls. The sound of their breathing was audible
through the thin cabin walls, deep rhythmic, controlled. They were
taking their time, investigating every inch of my home, looking
for weaknesses. I heard scratching at the door, like something
was testing the wood, seeing how strong it was, then

(53:29):
the same sound at the windows. They were probing my defenses,
figuring out how to get inside if they decided that's
what they wanted to do. I sat in the corner
with my rifle, watching the door and windows, waiting for
something to break through. But they didn't try to force.

Speaker 4 (53:45):
Their way in.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
They just wanted me to know they could if they
chose to. They wanted me to understand how helpless I was,
how completely at their mercy. The psychological warfare was worse
than any physical attack could have been. They were breaking
me down night by night, eroding my sanity and my confidence.
I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't think about anything except

(54:09):
the creatures that were slowly closing in on me. I
started finding what I can only describe as offerings around
the cabin. Dead animals arranged in neat piles, sometimes still
warm from recent kills. Rabbits, squirrels, a young fox once.
They were all killed the same way, neck snapped cleanly,

(54:30):
no blood, no signs of struggle, just perfect, clinical kills
that showed an understanding of anatomy and a precision that
was deeply disturbing. The animals were always placed where I'd
be sure to find them, by the door near the
well in the middle of the clearing where I split wood.
They were arranged carefully, almost ceremonially, like some kind of

(54:52):
primitive altar or offering to an unknown god. I didn't
know what to make of these grisly gifts. Maybe they
were trying to communicate with me in their own way.
Maybe the offerings were meant to be some kind of
peace gesture, an attempt to establish a relationship. But to me,
they looked like threats, evidence of what they could do
to any living thing that got in their way. I

(55:15):
found Rex in mid April. I was checking the solar
panels one morning when I smelled something putrid coming from
the direction of the creek. It was worse than the
usual stench that announced their presence. This was the smell
of death, of decomposition, of something that had been dead
for a long time. I followed the odor to a
pile of rocks about one hundred yards from the cabin,

(55:36):
near a bend in the creek where the water ran
deep and quiet. The rocks had been carefully arranged in
a mound about four feet high and six feet across.
It looked like a cairn, the kind of stone marker
that hikers build to mark trails or commemorate significant locations.
But this wasn't marking a trail. Rex was underneath. I

(55:57):
moved the rocks one by one, dreading what I was
going to find, but needing to know. Rex had been
dead for weeks, but the cold mountain air and the
protection of the rocks had preserved him enough that I
could see what had been done to him. His neck
was broken, just like all the other animals i'd been
finding a clean snap that would have killed him instantly,

(56:17):
without pain or struggle. But this felt different, more personal.
They'd taken my dog, my companion, my only friend, in
this isolated place, and they'd kept him, and then they'd
left him for me to find, arranged under a pile
of stones, like some kind of monument to their power.
I buried Rex properly, in a spot overlooking the creek

(56:39):
where he'd like to drink. I dug the grave by hand,
three feet deep in rocky soil, and said a few
words over him before filling it in. He'd been a
good dog, loyal and protective and trusting. He died because
I'd brought him to a place where he didn't belong,
where things lived that didn't want us there. The guilt
was almost as bad as the fear. Rex had depended

(57:02):
on me to keep him safe, and I'd failed him.
I'd let my own selfish desire for isolation put him
in danger, and now he was dead because of my choices.
That night, I heard them howling, not the deep calls
I'd grown accustomed to, but something that sounded almost like laughter,
cruel and mocking, and meant for me to hear multiple

(57:24):
voices joining in a chorus that echoed off the mountains
and filled the valley. They knew I'd found Rex, and
they were celebrating. They'd sent me a message, and they
wanted to make sure I understood it. This was what
happened to things that didn't belong in their territory. This
was what would happen to me if I didn't leave.
I realized then that this was never going to end peacefully.

(57:46):
They weren't going to get bored and move on to
other territory. They weren't going to accept my presence, no
matter how small and unobtrusive I tried to make myself.
They were going to keep escalating, keep applying pressure until
I was dead or go on. I should have left then,
should have packed up my truck and driven away and
never looked back. But I was stubborn and stupid, and

(58:08):
too proud to admit I'd been beaten. I'd put two
years of my life into this place, had built it
with my own hands, had found peace and purpose here.
I wasn't ready to give that up. I was going
to make a stand. I was going to fight for
what was mine. I was an idiot. I drove to
town and bought supplies for a siege, more ammunition for

(58:28):
the rifle, enough food to last a month, batteries from
my flashlights. I reinforced the cabin door with steel plates
and lag bolts, turning it into something that could withstand
considerable force. I added bars to the windows, steel rods
welded to frames, and bolted to the cabin walls. I
was turning my dream home into a fortress. But I

(58:50):
told myself it was temporary. Once I proved that I
couldn't be intimidated. Once I showed them that I was
going to stay, regardless of what they did, they'd move
on to easier tark targets. They'd find some other territory
to defend and leave me alone. I was wrong about everything.
The siege began three days later. On a Tuesday morning
in late April. I woke up to find the cabin surrounded.

(59:14):
I could see them through the barred windows, dark shapes,
moving between the trees, always staying just out of clear sight,
but close enough that their presence was unmistakable. There were
more of them than I'd thought. I counted at least
five distinct figures, maybe more. They ranged in size from
what might have been juveniles to massive adults that had

(59:35):
to duck to move under the lower tree branches. They
were coordinating their movements, taking positions around the cabin like
a military unit preparing for an assault, but they didn't
try to attack the cabin directly. That would have been
almost a relief, a straightforward confrontation that I could respond
to with my rifle. Instead, they began a campaign of

(59:56):
terror that lasted for six days and nearly drove me
completely insane. They started by cutting off my water. I
discovered this when I went to pump water from the
well and found that the handle had been broken off,
not rusted through or worn out, snapped off cleanly, like
someone with enormous strength had simply twisted it until the
metal gave way. Without the pump handle, I couldn't access

(01:00:19):
the well water. I had maybe two days worth of
water stored in the cabin, plus what was in the
elevated tank that fed my indoor plumbing. After that, I'd
have to venture outside to the creek, exposing myself to
whatever they had planned. Next came the psychological torture. They
would pound on the walls at random intervals, sometimes for

(01:00:39):
hours at a time. The sound was deafening inside the
small cabin, like being trapped inside a drum while someone
beat it with sledgehammers. It never followed a pattern I
could predict or prepare for. Just when I thought it
had stopped, when my nerves had started to settle, it
would start again from a different direction. The pounding came
from all sides, the walls, the roof, even what sounded

(01:01:03):
like impacts against the foundation. Sometimes it was rhythmic, like
multiple individuals taking turns. Sometimes it was chaotic, like a
whole group attacking at once. The metal roofing amplified every impact,
turning the cabin into a resonating chamber that made thought impossible.

Speaker 4 (01:01:21):
And stay tuned for.

Speaker 1 (01:01:22):
More sasquatch otta see, We'll be right back. After these messages,
they threw things at the roof constantly, rocks, branches, what
sounded like entire tree trunks. The metal would ring like
a bell with each impact, and I was sure they
were going to carve it in. The sound of something

(01:01:43):
heavy hitting the roof would be followed by the scraping
noise of whatever it was sliding off and hitting the ground.
But they never quite did enough damage to actually breach
the roof. The impacts were precisely calculated to be just
short of catastrophic. They could have torn through the metal
if they'd wanted to. The scratches I'd found earlier proved

(01:02:03):
they had the strength, but they were more interested in
psychological damage than physical destruction. The smell became constant, so
thick I could taste it. It seeped through every crack
and gap in the cabin walls, no matter how well
I tried to seal them with rags and tape. The
stench was nauseating, making me gag and rich until my

(01:02:24):
stomach was empty and I was dry heaving over the sink.
I tried breathing through my mouth, but that just made
it worse. I could taste the foulness on my tongue,
coating my throat and making me feel like I was
drowning in the smell of decay and wrongness. The odor
became part of the air I breathed, inescapable and overwhelming.
They screamed at night, not the deep calls I'd heard before,

(01:02:47):
but high pitched shrieks that sounded like agony or rage
or something else I didn't want to identify. The sound
would echo off the mountains and come back distorted, multiplied,
like the valley itself was screened. The screams would start
just after dark and continue for hours. Sometimes they seemed
to come from all directions at once, like I was

(01:03:08):
surrounded by a choir of the damned. Other times they
would move, traveling around the cabin in a circle, always
staying the same distance away. I'd cover my ears with pillows,
but the sound penetrated everything. It seemed to vibrate through
the ground and into the cabin structure, making the walls
themselves carry the noise. I could feel it in my bones,

(01:03:31):
in my teeth, in the base of my skull, where
primitive fear lives. The screams were meant to break me,
and they were working. I ran out of food on
the fourth day. I'd been too scared and too nauseated
to eat much, and stress had killed my appetite anyway.
But even hunger was better than the thought of going
outside to get more supplies from the truck. I was

(01:03:53):
sure they were waiting for me to expose myself, to
give them an opportunity to end this siege in the
most direct way possible. I drank water sparingly, knowing that
once it was gone, i'd have to venture.

Speaker 4 (01:04:04):
Outside to the creek.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
The elevated tank that fed my indoor plumbing was getting low,
and I could hear air entering the system when I
turned on the taps, maybe another day before it was
completely empty. I was getting weaker, both physically and mentally.
The constant noise and stress and lack of food were
taking their toll. I'd catch myself nodding off in the
chair by the window, only to jerk awake when something

(01:04:29):
hit the roof or walls.

Speaker 4 (01:04:31):
Sleep deprivation was.

Speaker 1 (01:04:32):
Making me paranoid and jumpy, seeing movement and shadows that
might or might not be there.

Speaker 4 (01:04:38):
On the fifth day, they.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Escalated to biological warfare. I woke up to find that
they'd been throwing feces at the cabin during the night.
Not just any feces, waste that looked almost human, but
was produced in quantities that no human could manage. Massive
amounts of it splattered against the windows and walls like
some kind of horrific painting. The smell was indescribable, worse

(01:05:02):
than anything I'd experienced in my life, including the time
I'd had to clean out a septic tank. That had
been backing up for months. This was concentrated disgust biological
warfare designed to make the cabin uninhabitable through sheer revulsion.
They targeted the windows, specifically coating them with a thick
layer of waste that blocked out most of the light.

(01:05:23):
I was trapped in a dim, stinking tomb, unable to
see outside, clearly, breathing air that made me vomit repeatedly
until my stomach was empty and my throat was raw.
I realized they were trying to make the cabin uninhabitable
to force me out through sheer, disgust and biological necessity.
They understood that humans have limits to what they can tolerate,

(01:05:45):
and they were systematically pushing me past those limits. The
water ran out that evening. I turned on the tap
and got a few drops than nothing. The elevated tank
was empty and I was down to maybe half a
bottle of drinking water. I was going to have to
go outside, and they knew it. I waited until what
I hoped was the darkest part of the night, around

(01:06:06):
three in the morning. I grabbed my rifle and the
empty water containers and slowly opened the cabin door. The
smell hit me like a physical blow, not just the
waste they'd been throwing, but their natural odor amplified to
nauseating levels. I could see shapes moving in the darkness
beyond the clearing, waiting watching. They knew I'd have to

(01:06:28):
come out eventually, and they were ready for me. I
made it to the creek, moving as quietly as I
could rifle ready. The water was cold and clean and
tasted like salvation after the foulness i'd been breathing for days.
I filled the containers as quickly as possible, but I
could feel eyes on me the entire time. I made

(01:06:48):
it back to the cabin without incident, but I knew
they'd let me go. They could have taken me easily
while I was exposed at the creek, but they'd chosen
not to. They were still playing with me, still applying
cycle logical pressure. They wanted me to break mentally before
they finished me physically. On the sixth day, I saw
one of them clearly for the second time, and this

(01:07:09):
time I understood that I was never going to win
this fight. I was sitting by the window, trying to
see through the waistcovered glass, when something moved just at
the edge of the clearing, I found a tiny clean
spot in the glass and looked out to see one
of the creatures standing maybe thirty yards away. It was
the largest one i'd seen, probably close to nine feet

(01:07:30):
tall and built like a linebacker. But it was the
intelligence in its eyes that really terrified me. It wasn't
looking at the cabin. It was looking directly at me,
even though I was mostly hidden behind the window frame.
It tilted its head slightly like it was studying me,
evaluating my condition. It was telling me that it knew

(01:07:50):
exactly how close I was to breaking, and it was
enjoying my suffering. We stared at each other for maybe
a minute, predator in prey, hunter and hunt. Then it
turned and walked away, disappearing into the forest with movements
that were too fluid and controlled for something that large.
I knew then that I was going to die if

(01:08:10):
I stayed. These things weren't just animals defending territory. They
were intelligent, patient, and completely without mercy. They were going
to keep escalating until I was dead or insane, and
they were going to enjoy every minute of it. I
started packing immediately. I threw my essential belongings into a
duffel bag, clothes, important documents, the photos of my kids,

(01:08:34):
my grandfather's watch. I didn't bother with most of my possessions,
the furniture i'd built by hand, the books i'd collected,
the tools I'd used to construct my dream life. I
just wanted to get out alive. The creatures watched me
pack through the fouled windows. I could see their shapes
moving in the forest, observing my preparations, making sure I

(01:08:56):
was really leaving. When I started loading things into my truck,
I heard them calling to each other from different positions
around the clearing. It sounded like communication, like they were
coordinating something, maybe making sure I understood that this was permanent,
that I was never to come back, Maybe just confirming
among themselves that their campaign of terror had been successful.

(01:09:18):
I loaded the truck as quickly as possible, my hand
shaking with exhaustion and fear. Every instinct I had was
screaming at me to get out, to put as much
distance as possible between myself and this place where nightmares
lived in the deep woods. When I started the engine,
the calling stopped. The forest went completely silent. I put

(01:09:40):
the truck in gear and began the long drive down
the mountain, not looking back even once. I was afraid
that if I saw them watching me go, I might
lose my nerve and try to turn around, or worse,
I might see something in their faces that would haunt
me for the rest of my life. It took me
three hours to reach the main highway, driving slow on

(01:10:00):
the rough mountain roads with my headlights cutting through the darkness.
I didn't feel safe until I was surrounded by traffic
and street lights and the blessed normalcy of civilization. I
checked into a motel in Gainesville that night. I laid
there thinking that maybe I was having a nervous breakdown.
Maybe I was maybe isolation and stress had finally pushed

(01:10:21):
me over the edge, and I'd imagined the whole thing.
Maybe there was a perfectly rational explanation for everything that
had happened, and I'd just been too paranoid and sleep deprived.

Speaker 4 (01:10:31):
To see it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:32):
But I knew better, deep down, I knew exactly what
I'd encountered up there in the mountains. That was three
months ago. I've been living in a rented apartment in
Gainesville ever since, trying to put my life back together
piece by piece. I've been to doctors and therapists trying
to deal with the nightmares and the anxiety attacks that
still wake me up in a cold sweat. The nightmares

(01:10:55):
are always the same. I'm back in the cabin, trapped
and surrounded, listening to something pounding on the walls while
the smell of decay seeps through every crack. I wake
up checking the locks on my apartment door and windows,
even though I know the things that haunted me are
still up there in the mountains where I left them.
Some days are better than others. I found work doing

(01:11:18):
carpentry for a construction company, which helps keep my hands
busy and my mind occupied. The physical labor is familiar
and comforting, a reminder that I can still build things,
still create something useful with my own hands. But I'm
not the same person who went up into those mountains
looking for peace and solitude. The experience changed something fundamental

(01:11:40):
in me, broke something that I don't think will ever
fully heal. I used to believe that humans were the
apex predators, that intelligence and tools made us masters of
our environment. Now I know better. There are things in
the deep woods that are older, and stronger and smarter
than we are. Things that see us as intruders in
their domain, things that are perfectly willing to defend their

(01:12:03):
territory through methods that would drive a rational person insane.
I've thought about going back, just to see if the
cabin is still standing, maybe to retrieve some of the
belongings I left behind, the handbuilt furniture and tools that
represented years of work. But I know I never will.
Some nights I still wake up thinking I hear those

(01:12:23):
deep calls echoing through the darkness, and I have to
remind myself that I'm safe in town, surrounded by lights
and people and the comforting noise of civilization. The cabin
is still there, as far as I know, forty seven
acres of beautiful mountain land, with a hand built home
and a solar power system and a well that pumps
clean water. Everything I ever wanted, everything I'd worked and

(01:12:47):
saved and dreamed about for years, and I'll never set
foot on it again. I've wondered sometimes if I should
warn people about what's up there, post something online maybe,
or contact the state Wildlife Agency. But who would believe me?
And what would I tell them? That there are unknown
creatures living in the Georgia mountains, creatures that are intelligent

(01:13:08):
enough to wage psychological warfare against human intruders. They'd think
I was crazy. Hell, I think I'm crazy most days.
But the evidence is there for anyone who wants to
look for it. The tracks by the creek, the gouges
and the metal roofing, the carefully arranged cairn where Rex
is buried, and the smell. God, the smell. Sometimes I

(01:13:32):
catch a whiff of something in the wind that reminds
me of that fouled clearing, and I have to stop
whatever I'm doing and focus on breathing until the panic passes.
I hope whoever buys that land next is smarter than
I was. I hope they'll recognize the warning signs and
leave before it's too late. I hope they won't be
too proud or too stubborn to accept that they're not
welcome in that particular piece of the wilderness. Because those

(01:13:55):
things are still up there, waiting in the deep woods
where the sun doesn't reach and the normal rules don't apply.
They're patient and intelligent and completely without mercy, and they
don't like visitors. That's what happened up there, And this
is the last time I'm ever going to talk about it.
I've told you everything. The rest is going to stay buried,

(01:14:16):
along with all the dreams I had about living free
in the mountains. I'm back in the rat race, now,
back to the grind and the stress and the sleepless nights.
But at least the nightmares I have now are about
deadlines and performance reviews and office politics. Those are monsters
I understand, monsters with rules I can learn and weaknesses
I can exploit. The other kind, the kind that live

(01:14:40):
in the deep woods and hunt anything that doesn't belong.
Those are monsters I never want to face again. Don't
try to contact me about this email. Don't ask me
for more details or want to know the exact location
of the property. I've said all I'm going to say,
and I'm done thinking about it. Some things are better
left alone, and some places are better left unexplored. The

(01:15:01):
mountains keep their secrets for a reason. That's where Jeremiah's
story ends, with a man broken by something that shouldn't exist,
living in a rented apartment in Georgia, jumping at shadows
and checking locks that don't need checking. Part of me
wonders if he's still down there in Gainesville, doing carpentry
work and trying to forget what he saw. Part of

(01:15:22):
me wonders if he eventually found some measure of peace,
or if those creatures he encountered left wounds that never
fully healed. But mostly I think about that cabin, forty
seven acres of pristine Georgia mountain forest, with a hand
built home slowly being reclaimed by the wilderness, Solar panels
gathering dust, a well pumped with a broken handle, rooms

(01:15:45):
that echo with nothing but silence, and the memories of
what drove a good man away from his dream. The
land is probably still for sale. Maybe it's been sold
and resold, passed from one unsuspecting buyer to the next.
Maybe others have tried to build their own escapes up there,
seeking the same peace and solitude that drew Jeremiah to

(01:16:05):
those remote mountains. I hope they were smarter than he was.
I hope they recognized the warning signs and left before
it was too late, Because if Jeremiah's story is true,
and every instinct I have tells me it is, then
those things are still up there, still waiting in the
deep woods where the sun doesn't penetrate and the normal
rules don't apply, still defending their territory with methods that

(01:16:29):
blur the line between animal cunning and deliberate cruelty. But
they're patient, he said, intelligent and completely without mercy. The
skeptic in me wants to find rational explanations stress induced
hallucinations brought on by isolation and the trauma of divorce,
misidentified wild life behaving in unusual but ultimately explainable ways,

(01:16:53):
the human mind's tendency to see patterns and intentions where
none exist, especially when pushed to its breaking point. But
the believer in me, the part that spent years collecting
stories like this one, knows better. There are too many
details that ring true, too many elements that match other
accounts from other witnesses who never had contact with each other.

(01:17:15):
The intelligence behind the harassment, the systematic escalation, the way
these creatures seem to understand human psychology better than we
understand theirs. And then there's the silence. Jeremiah made it
clear he was never going to talk about this again.
He told his story once completely, and then he was done.

(01:17:35):
That's not the behavior of someone seeking attention or trying
to perpetuate a hoax. That's the behavior of someone who's
been broken by an experience so far outside normal human
understanding that simply talking about it requires enormous courage. He said,
the mountains keep their secrets.

Speaker 4 (01:17:52):
For a reason. Maybe he's right.

Speaker 1 (01:17:54):
Maybe some things are better left alone, some places left unexplored. Hee,
the smart thing is to stay in our cities and suburbs,
surrounded by lights and people and the comforting illusion that
we're the apex predators on this planet. But stories like
Jeremiah's serve a purpose beyond entertainment. They remind us that
the world is still full of mysteries, that there are

(01:18:17):
vast wildernesses where ancient things follow ancient rules we don't understand.
They remind us to be humble in the face of
the unknown, to respect the boundaries we can't see. Most importantly,
they remind us to listen when the forest goes quiet,
when the animals disappear, when every instinct we have screams
that something is wrong, Maybe we should pay attention. Maybe

(01:18:40):
we should remember that we're visitors and places that were
wild long before we existed and will be wild long
after we're gone. Jeremiah learned that lesson the hard way
he paid for his education, with his peace of mind,
his sense of safety, and his dreams of a simpler life.
He came back from those mountains a different man, changed, damaged,

(01:19:02):
but alive. Not everyone is so fortunate. So the next
time you're in the deep woods and you hear something
that doesn't belong, remember Jeremiah's story. When the silence presses
against your ears and makes you feel like you're being watched,
trust that feeling. When every primitive instinct you have tells
you to leave, don't ignore it. Thanks for listening, and

(01:19:24):
remember some places are better left unexplored. Some secrets are
better left in the darkness where they belong.

Speaker 3 (01:19:32):
They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
I don't want to be out step step child, this child,

(01:20:10):
that child everything. Can you ride back right back for joy,
for me, joy staying right? You come it right away?

Speaker 5 (01:20:27):
Still step step, steps down, knocking down doubts, still stassssst

(01:21:32):
used these

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