August 6, 2025 • 41 mins
This epiosde is all about the chilling deathbed confession of Clyde, an 82-year-old West Virginia mountain man who, after forty years of silence, reveals the night he crossed paths with something ancient—and deadly. In 1983, deep on Beartown Ridge, Clyde’s life became entangled with a wounded Sasquatch whose rage and desperation had turned it from a hidden legend into a relentless predator.
Told through the lens of a lengthy, almost desperate email to a stranger, Clyde’s story weaves generations of Appalachian folklore with a harrowing first-hand account of survival. It begins with eerie tales passed down from his grandfather—stories of glowing-eyed creatures prowling the ridgelines since 1902—and builds to a terrifying truth: a bear hunter’s shot in 1981 didn’t just wound a Sasquatch, it unleashed a predator that stalked the hollows, perhaps even claiming the lives of missing children.
Clyde’s account avoids the usual Bigfoot clichés. Instead, it paints a disturbing portrait of intelligence and intent—a creature limping from an old wound, calculating every move, and watching with an almost human hunger in its eyes. His final confrontation, where he was forced to fire again and again just to survive, left more than scars. It left a lifetime of guilt.
But this is more than a survival tale. Clyde believes his actions shattered an unspoken balance between the Sasquatch and the mountain folk, triggering a wave of encounters and disappearances that still haunt the region.
His confession is not just a warning but a reckoning—one that suggests the mountains remember every trespass, and that some wounds, once inflicted, can never truly heal.
Get Our FREE Newsletter
Get Brian's Books
Leave Us A Voicemail
Visit Our Website
Support Our Sponsors
Visit Untold Radio AM
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.
Told through the lens of a lengthy, almost desperate email to a stranger, Clyde’s story weaves generations of Appalachian folklore with a harrowing first-hand account of survival. It begins with eerie tales passed down from his grandfather—stories of glowing-eyed creatures prowling the ridgelines since 1902—and builds to a terrifying truth: a bear hunter’s shot in 1981 didn’t just wound a Sasquatch, it unleashed a predator that stalked the hollows, perhaps even claiming the lives of missing children.
Clyde’s account avoids the usual Bigfoot clichés. Instead, it paints a disturbing portrait of intelligence and intent—a creature limping from an old wound, calculating every move, and watching with an almost human hunger in its eyes. His final confrontation, where he was forced to fire again and again just to survive, left more than scars. It left a lifetime of guilt.
But this is more than a survival tale. Clyde believes his actions shattered an unspoken balance between the Sasquatch and the mountain folk, triggering a wave of encounters and disappearances that still haunt the region.
His confession is not just a warning but a reckoning—one that suggests the mountains remember every trespass, and that some wounds, once inflicted, can never truly heal.
Get Our FREE Newsletter
Get Brian's Books
Leave Us A Voicemail
Visit Our Website
Support Our Sponsors
Visit Untold Radio AM
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/sasquatch-odyssey--4839697/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
on here, something just because my dog. Something killed your dog.
My dog.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
We're flying through the air over the tree. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
How it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm really confused. All
I saw was my dog coming over the fence and
he was dead.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
And once you hit the ground like, I didn't see
any cars.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
All I saw was my dog coming over the fence.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Sat, what are you putting?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
We got some wonder or something crawling around out here?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Did you see what it was?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Or was it was?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Standing up?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I'm out here looking through the window now and I
don't see anything. I don't want to go outside.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Jesus Quice, you better.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Hello, get Theboddy out here when I'm out there. I
thought of a menus about tex forty nine.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I don't know easy out there, Yeah, I'm walking right heady.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I don't know why I'm writing this to you. Maybe
because you're a stranger and that makes it easier. Maybe
because the doctors say I've got three months at best,
and carrying this for forty some years feels heavier than
the cancer eating away at my lungs. My name is Clyde.
I'm eighty two years old, born and raised in McDowell County,
West Virginia. I've been digging Jen Saying since I was
(01:34):
knee high to a grasshopper, learned from my daddy, who
learned from his But there's more to these mountains than
Jen Saying. And that's what I need to tell you
about before I take this knowledge to my grave. You
grow up in these hollows, You hear things, stories that
get passed down like family recipes, each generation adding their
own flavor but keeping the meat of it the same.
(01:58):
My grandpa used to tell me stories when I was young,
sitting on his porch with a jar of moonshine, watching
the sun disappear behind the ridges. He'd wait until the
shadows got long and the lightning bug started their dance
before he'd begin. Boy, he'd say, his voice rough as bark,
these mountains got secrets older than coal, things that was
(02:18):
here before the Cherokee, before anybody with sense enough to
write it down. The first story he ever told me,
I was maybe seven years old. This would have been
nineteen forty nine, back when half the roads in the
county were still dirt and you could walk for days
without seeing another soul back. In nineteen o two, Grandpa began.
(02:38):
My uncle Harland was running a trap line up on
black Fork Ridge. He was a hard man. Harland was
fought in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt, came back missing two
fingers and afraid of nothing. But something happened up on
that ridge that changed him. He'd been checking his traps
for three days, working his way deeper into the mountains.
On the third night, he made camp near a grove
(03:01):
of hemlocks, big old trees that had probably been there
since before the Revolution, built himself a good fire, cooked
some rabbit he'd snared, and settled in for the night.
Round about midnight, something woken. Wasn't a sound exactly, more
like the absence of sound. You know how the woods
are at night, always something rustling or calling. But this
(03:22):
was dead quiet, like the whole mountain was holding its breath.
Harlan sat up, reached for his rifle. That's when he
saw the eyes, not reflecting the firelight like a normal
animal's wood, but glowing on their own, pale green like foxfire.
They were high up, maybe eight feet off the ground,
just watching him from the edge of the firelight. He
(03:45):
called out, thinking maybe it was another trapper playing games.
The eyes didn't move, just kept staring. Then another pair
appeared next to the first, Then another three sets of eyes,
all at the same height, all that sickly green color.
Harlan fired a shot over their heads, trying to scare
them off. The eyes vanished, but not like they'd run away,
(04:08):
more like someone had blown out candles all at once.
He kept that fire burning high all night, feeding at
every stick he could find. Come morning, he packed up
and came down off the mountain. He never ran another
trap line, took up farming in the valley. Wouldn't even
hunt deer if it meant going above the first ridge.
When people asked him what he'd seen, he'd just shake
(04:30):
his head and say, some things ain't meant to be trapped.
Grandpa took a long pull from his jar, let the
story sink in. Even at seven, I knew better than
to ask if it was true. In the mountains, truth
and story blend together like morning fog, and trying to
separate them only makes you lose both. The second story
(04:51):
came a few years later, when I was old enough
to help Grandpa work his still we were up in
a hidden holler, tending the mash when he told me
about the widow Thompson's encounter. This was nineteen twenty three,
he said, stirring the mash with a long wooden paddle.
The Thompson place sat way back in Laurel Holler, about
as far back as folks dared to live. She'd lost
(05:13):
her husband and a mind collapse, but she was a
tough woman. Stayed on with her three young'uns rather than
move to town. One October evening, just as the leaves
were turning, her oldest boy, James, didn't come home. He
was twelve, old enough to roam, but young enough to
know better than to stay out past dark. The widow
(05:33):
waited until full dark, then lit a pine not torch
and went looking. She found him about a half mile
from the house, standing in a clearing, still as a statue.
The boy was staring up at something in the trees,
his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide as dinner plates.
The widow called his name, but he didn't respond. She
had to grab him by the shoulders and shake him
(05:55):
before he seemed to see her. Mama, he whispered, the
tall man in the trees, he's been talking to me.
The widow looked up but saw nothing except branches and shadows.
She dragged James home, and he came down with a
fever that lasted three days. When it broke, he couldn't
remember anything about that night, but he was never the
(06:15):
same after. Would wake up screaming about the tall man
who walked bent over, dragging something behind him. Said the
tall man wanted to take him to a special place
where the bones piled high. The widow moved her family
to town before the first snow. The house still stands,
or what's left of it. Nobody's lived there since. My
(06:36):
Daddy had his own stories, though he was less inclined
to tell them than Grandpa. Daddy was a practical man,
believed in what he could see and touch, but even
he couldn't explain everything that happened in these mountains. I
remember one story he told me when I was sixteen,
the night before my first solo, jen saying Hunt. We
(06:56):
were sitting at the kitchen table, him nursing a cup
of coffee that it had gone cold hours ago. This
was nineteen fifty four. He began his voice low so
as not to wake Mama. I was working timber with
a crew up near Panther Creek. Six of us, all
mountain boys who knew our way around, an axe and
a crosscut saw. We'd been cutting virgin timber trees so
(07:18):
big it took two men with arms outstretched to reach
around them. We had a camp set up near the
cutting site, just canvas tents and a cook shelter. One night,
our cook, an old fellow named Earl, went to the
creek to fill the water buckets. Full moon that night,
brightest day almost He was gone maybe ten minutes when
we heard him scream, not a yell like he'd heard himself,
(07:42):
but a real scream, like a woman or a child
in mortal terror. We all grabbed lanterns and rifles and
ran toward the creek. Found Earl standing knee deep in
the water, the buckets floating away downstream. He was pointing
at the far bank, shaking so hard he couldn't speak.
We looked where he was pointing, but didn't see nothing
at first. Then one of the boys held his lantern
(08:04):
higher and we saw the tracks. They came out of
the woods to the creek edge, then followed the bank
up stream. But these weren't bear tracks or human tracks.
They were wrong too big for one thing, But it
was the shape that bothered me, like a man's foot,
but stretched out with toes that were too long, too
spread apart, and every other track was dragged like whatever
(08:27):
made them couldn't lift its left foot proper. We got
Earl back to camp, gave him some whiskey to calm
his nerves. When he could talk, he said he'd seen it,
said it had been crouching by the water when he
came up, drinking like an animal. When it hurt him,
it stood up and up and up, eight nine feet tall,
(08:47):
covered in dark hair, with arms that hung down past
its knees. But it was the face that got him.
Almost human, he said, but with eyes that reflected the
moonlight like a cat's. And when it looked at him,
it smiled, not a friendly smile, but the way a
fox smiles at a rabbit. It walked away, he said,
dragging that left leg, following the creek upstream toward the
(09:10):
high country. We broke camp the next morning. The timber
company sent another crew, but they only lasted three days
before they pulled out too. Said tools went missing, said
they heard things at night, said they found more tracks.
Daddy paused stared into his cold coffee. I never told
your mama this part, but I went back up there
(09:32):
alone a week later. Don't know why. Maybe I didn't
believe what I'd seen. Maybe I needed to prove to
myself there was an explanation. I found our old camp site,
found the creek where Earl had his scare, and I
found something else. About one hundred yards upstream from where
we'd seen the tracks, there was a pile of bones,
deer mostly, but some bear too, all cracked open, the
(09:56):
marrow sucked out, and in the middle of the pile
a timber crew ruiser's compass. One had gone missing from
our equipment the night before Earl's encounter. I got out
of there fast and never went back, never told the
other boys what I'd found. Some knowledge is too heavy
to share. These stories were just the background music of
(10:16):
growing up in the mountains. Every family had them, every
holler had its history. But it wasn't until I had
my own encounter that I started paying real attention to
the patterns. After what happened to me in nineteen eighty three,
I became something of a collector of these stories. Not officially,
mind you, but I'd listened closer when the old timers talked,
(10:37):
buy a few extra drinks at the VFW to loosen tongues.
What I learned painted a picture I wish i'd never seen.
Take Luther for instance. Luther was a bear hunter, one
of the best in three counties, ran hounds that could
track a ghost through a thunderstorm. In November of nineteen
eighty one, two years before my encounter, he was running
(10:59):
a bear that his dog's jump near Elcorn Creek. The
dogs were on a hot trail, their voices echoing through
the hollows like a church choir. Luther was following on foot,
his rifle ready, when the dog's voices changed, went from
that eager hunting cry to something else fear, pure primal fear.
(11:20):
Then they went silent, all six of them at once.
Luther found them huddled together in a laurel thicket, shaking
like leaves, their tails tucked so far under they were
touching their bellies. These were dogs that would face down
a five hundred pound baar without blinking, and here they
were terrified of something. He was trying to coax them
(11:41):
out when he heard the breathing, slow, deep rhythmic coming
from somewhere above him. He looked up and saw it
perched in a massive oak, like some nightmare bird. It
was huge, covered in dark hair, with arms wrapped around
the trunk, but it was looking down at him with
eyes that caught the light like copper pennies. Luther raised
(12:02):
his rifle and fired, without thinking. Hit it square in
the left thigh. Saw the blood spray, heard it roar,
not like a bear or a big cat, but something
almost human. It dropped from the tree, landing hard, and
took off through the laurel. But that left leg wasn't
working right. It dragged behind, leaving a blood trail in
(12:24):
those strange wrong tracks. Luther's dogs wouldn't track it, wouldn't
even leave the thicket until he physically carried them out
one by one. He never hunted that section again, and
his dogs were never quite the same. Would start whimpering
for no reason, refused to cross certain creeks. I know
I hit it good, Luther told me one night, drunk
(12:45):
on my whiskey and his own memories. That leg was ruined.
If it was a normal animal, it would have died
from blood loss or infection. But maybe it wasn't normal.
Maybe it was something else, something that don't die easy.
Was the thing I couldn't stop thinking about. The creature
I shot in nineteen eighty three, had a bad left leg,
(13:06):
dragged it just like the one Luther shot in nineteen
eighty one, same area too, just different ridges of the
same mountain system. Could it have been the same one?
Living with that injury for two years, getting hungrier, more desperate.
And then there were the missing kids. The first was
in nineteen seventy nine, before Luther's encounter, the poly twins
(13:28):
Bobby and Brian, age nine. They'd gone out to pick
blackberries on a July morning, just up the slope from
their family's trailer. Their mama could see the berry patch
from the kitchen window, but when she looked up from
her dishes, the boys were gone. The whole community searched
for three days. Found one bucket, still half full of berries,
(13:48):
sitting neat as you please on a log. No sign
of struggle, no blood, no tracks except the boy's own.
It was like they'd just vanished into the air. Most
folks figured they'd gotten around, died of exposure somewhere, but
a few of the searchers mentioned finding other tracks, big
ones that the Sheriff's department dismissed his bear sign. Then,
(14:10):
in spring of nineteen eighty two, six months after Luther
shot whatever he shot, little Sarah Morrison went missing. She
was seven, playing in her backyard while her daddy worked
on his truck. He heard her laughing talking to someone.
When he looked up, she was walking into the woods,
looking up at something tall, like she was following a
grown up. He called out, but she didn't turn around.
(14:34):
By the time he reached the woodline, she was gone.
They found her shoe three miles away, up near the
ridge line, just one shoe, sitting on a rock like
it had been placed there, nothing else. Her daddy swore
until his dying day that she'd been talking to someone.
That he'd seen a shadow moving between the trees, too
tall and wrong shape to be human. But the worst
(14:56):
came after my encounter, which makes me wonder if I
only wounded it made it meaner. Stay tuned for more
sasquatch ott to see We'll be right back. After these messages.
In the summer of nineteen eighty four, not even a
year after I'd shot it, the Stapleton Boy vanished. Tommy Stapleton,
(15:19):
age eleven experienced in the woods. He'd gone squirrel hunting
early on a Saturday morning, taking the trail up toward
Beartown Ridge. Yes, the same ridge where I'd had my encounter.
His daddy found his twenty two rifle at the base
of a cliff. The barrel bent nearly in half. There
were tracks in the soft earth, Tommy's boots and something else.
(15:41):
Those wrong, dragging tracks, one foot normal, one sliding through
the leaves. They led up to the cliff edge and
just stopped. They never found Tommy, but hikers reported finding
strange things over the years. A child's torn shirt hung
high in a tree, small bones arranged in patterned toys
left on stumps like offerings. Old Mary, who lived at
(16:04):
the mouth of the holler and knew things about these
mountains that nobody else remembered. She told me something that
chilled me worse than any winter wind. This was in
nineteen eighty five, when I finally got the courage to
ask her about what I'd seen. There's always been something
up there, she said, her voice, like dry leaves. My grannies.
Granny knew about it. Said the Cherokee wouldn't hunt those ridges,
(16:28):
said something walked there. That wasn't man nor beast, but
something caught between. Said it had been there since before
the tribes, since the world was young and different. They
live a long time, these things, maybe forever if nothing
kills them. But they get hurt like anything else, and
hurt makes them dangerous, makes them forget the old agreements,
(16:50):
the boundaries. A hurt one is a rogue one, and
a rogue one needs to eat. She looked at me
with eyes clouded by cataracts, but somehow still sharp. You
shot it, didn't you? Up on Beartown Ridge. I can
see it on you, like mud on your shoes. I
couldn't answer, but she nodded like I had. It's still
(17:11):
up there, hurt, worse now, hungrier. Those children, it's trying
to heal, trying to get strong again, young blood, young bones,
the old ways, the bad ways. You opened a door
that should have stayed closed. I wanted to tell her
she was crazy, but the words wouldn't come, because deep
(17:31):
down I knew she was right. The thing I'd shot
wasn't dead. It was up there, dragging that ruined leg
through the hollows, taking children to some hidden place where
bones piled high, just like the tall man in Young
James Thompson's nightmares. Let me tell you about my encounter now,
the one that connects all these threads. It was September
(17:53):
of nineteen eighty three. I remember because Reagan was president
and my youngest boy had just started high school. I
was up on Beartown Ridge, way back in the hollows
where even the old timers don't venture much. That was
my secret spot. You understand. Five generations of my family
had worked those slopes, and I'd found patches there that
make your eyes water, roots thick as a man's thumb,
(18:17):
some older than the Civil War. I'd been up there
three days, camping rough like I always did, had my
tent pitched near a little spring, maybe four miles from
where I'd left my truck. The weather had been perfect
for digging, cool mornings, warm afternoons, the kind of September
that makes you forget winters. Coming on the third evening,
(18:38):
something changed. I can't say exactly what. At first, you
spend enough time in the woods, you develop a sense
for things. The jays had gone quiet, the squirrels weren't chattering.
Even the creek seemed to run softer. I was cleaning
roots by my tent when I noticed it, and the
hair on my neck stood up like I'd touched a
live wire. I kept but my eyes were moving scanning
(19:02):
the tree line. Nothing, just shadows getting longer as the
sun dropped behind the ridge. I had my thirty thirty
leaning against a log nearby, always did when I was
that far back. Bears, mostly though I'd never had to
use it. That's when I saw it move, maybe seventy
yards up the slope between two big oaks, just to
(19:24):
shape at first dark against the darker woods. Too big
for a bear, wrong shape for a man. It stepped
out from behind one of the trees and I got
my first clear look. Lord help me. I wish I hadn't.
It was massive, eight feet tall, maybe more, covered in
dark hair that looked almost black in the fading light.
(19:47):
But it was the way it moved that stuck out.
It dragged its left leg, pulling it along like dead weight.
Each step was deliberate, calculated, and it was watching me.
Even at that distance, I could I feel its eyes
on me the left thigh. Even through the hair, I
could see it was wrong, twisted, scarred Luther's shot from
(20:09):
two years before had to be. This thing had been
living with that injury, and now it was here, watching
me with eyes that held too much intelligence for an animal.
I reached for my rifle, slow as molasses, never taking
my eyes off the thing. My hands were shaking so
bad I could barely work the lever. The creature took
another step down the slope, then another. That dragging leg
(20:33):
made a sound like somebody pulling a sack of feed
through dry leaves. It stopped, maybe forty yards out, partially
hidden behind a maple. I could see its chest rising
and falling, see the way its head tilted as it
studied me. The light was almost gone, but I could
make out the shape of its face, almost human, but
wrong in every way that mattered. The eyes were too
(20:56):
deep set, the jaw too heavy, and there was something
in its expression not curiosity, not fear, hunger, the kind
of desperate hunger that makes animals do things they normally wouldn't.
I stood up, real slow, rifle in my hands. Get
on out of here, I said, Surprise, my voice worked
at all. Go on now. It made a sound then,
(21:20):
not a roar or a howl like you'd expect, more
like a long, low moan. That seemed to come from
somewhere deep in its chest. The sound to hurt animal makes,
but there was something else in it too, something that
made me take a step back toward my tent. Pain, yes,
but also rage, old rage, the kind that ferments over time.
(21:43):
That's when I remembered the stories, the missing kids, the
strange tracks, Luther's shot. This wasn't just some animal protecting
its territory. This was something that had been hurt, had
been hungry for two years, had maybe taken children to
sustain itself, and now it was looking at me like
I was the next meal. It shifted its weight and
(22:04):
I saw its hands clearly for the first time too long,
the fingers like pale spiders against its dark fur. One
hand gripped the maple trunk, and I watched the bark
crumble under its grasp. The other hand hung at its side,
clenching and unclenching. I know what you are, I heard
myself say, I know what you've done. Something changed in
(22:26):
its face. Then the lips pulled back, showing teeth that
were almost human but too large, too sharp. Not a smile,
not a snarl, but something between an acknowledgment, maybe like
it understood me, and wanted me to know it understood.
It came at me, not charging wild like a bear,
(22:47):
but purposeful, deliberate. Even with that ruined leg, it moved
with terrible grace. It used the trees, swinging from trunk
to trunk with its long arms, the bad leg dragging,
but not slow it as much as I'd hoped. I
fired when it was thirty yards out. The rifle kicked
against my shoulder, the shot echoing off the ridges. I
(23:08):
saw the impact, saw it stagger, but it kept coming.
I worked the lever, fired again. This time it roared
a sound that was almost words, almost human, screaming twenty yards.
I could see its eyes clearly now that copper reflection,
the intelligence and hunger and pain all mixed together. I
(23:29):
fired a third time, backing up my foot, catching on
a root. I went down hard, the rifle flying from
my hands. When I looked up, it was right there,
ten feet away, reaching for me with those spider fingers.
Blood was running from its shoulder, where one of my
shots had hit, more blood from its side. The wounds
would have dropped a bear, but this thing was still coming.
(23:53):
I scrambled backward, my hand finding a broken branch, not
much of a weapon, but I held it out anyway.
The creature stopped, tilted its head like a dog, hearing
a strange sound. Then it made that moaning sound again,
lower this time, and I realized it was trying to speak,
trying to form words with a throat and mouth not
(24:14):
quite made for human speech. Hurt, it said, or something
like it hurt long time. My hand found the rifle
I'd landed almost on top of it. As I brought
it up, the creature lunged. I fired point blank, saw
the impact knock it backward. It fell hard, that broken
(24:34):
leg twisting under it at an angle that made me
sick to see. But it wasn't done. It tried to rise,
pushing itself up with those long arms. Blood was pooling
beneath it, more running from its mouth. It looked at me,
and for just a moment, I saw something in its
eyes that wasn't hunger or rage, understanding maybe, or just
(24:56):
the recognition that one of us was about to die.
I fired one more time. The sound echoed forever, bouncing
from ridge to ridge until it faded into the coming darkness.
The creature fell back and was still. I waited rifle ready.
When it didn't move, I grabbed my pack, left everything
else and ran. I ran through the dark woods like
(25:18):
hell itself was chasing me. Branches tore at my clothes,
roots tried to trip me, but I kept running behind me.
I thought I heard sounds, not footsteps, but voices calling,
like the woods themselves were mourning. I made it to
my truck just as the moon was rising, started it
on the third try, and drove out of there without
(25:40):
looking back. When I got home, my wife took one
look at me and knew something had happened, but she
never asked, and I never told. But that wasn't the
end of it. Three days later I drove back to
the trailhead. Don't ask me why. Maybe I needed to
know if it was real. Maybe I needed to know
if it was dead. I didn't go up to my campsite,
(26:02):
just walked a little way up the trail, listening. The
woods were normal, birds singing, squirrels chattering. But there was
something else too, A smell on the wind, like copper
and old leaves, and tracks in the mud, not the
dragging tracks I'd learned to fear, but others, similar but different, smaller,
(26:23):
some of them like juveniles, larger others, massive prints that
sank deep in the soft earth. They'd come for their dead,
or they're wounded, because when I asked around, casual like,
nobody had found any strange bodies up on Beartown Ridge.
No bones, no blood except what the rain hadn't washed away.
(26:45):
Whatever I'd shot, Others of its kind had taken it away.
That's when I understood what Old Mary had meant about
opening doors. I'd hurt one of them, maybe killed it,
and they knew. They all knew. The disappearances can tinued,
but different now. Not just children, hikers who ventured too
far from the trails, hunters who stayed out past dark,
(27:08):
a whole family, the Washburns, who went camping up near
the ridge in nineteen eighty seven and never came back,
found their tent shredded, their car still parked at the trailhead.
But no bodies, no blood, just those tracks everywhere, like
a gathering, like a council of war. My cousin Derek
had his own encounter in nineteen ninety one. He was
(27:30):
deer hunting, had a stand up in a white oak
about two miles from where I'd shot the creature, just
as the light was fading, he heard something big moving
through the laurel below his stand. Figured it was the
ten point buck he'd been after. But what emerged from
the laurel wasn't a deer. It was one of them,
a female, he thought, smaller than what I'd described, but
(27:52):
still massive. She was carrying something, cradling it like a baby.
As she passed under his tree. She looked up right
at him, like she'd known he was there all along.
Her eyes, Derek told me later, whiskey, brave but still shaking.
They were almost human, sad like she was grieving. And
what she was carrying christ Clyde. It was wrapped in
(28:15):
what looked like a burial shroud, but I could see
a hand sticking out, a hand with those long, wrong fingers,
but smaller like a child. She didn't threaten him, just
looked at him for a long moment before continuing up
the ridge. Derek waited until full dark before climbing down
and getting out of there. He never hunted that area again,
(28:37):
never told anyone but me what he'd seen. You started something,
he said, when you shot that one. They're different now, bolder, angrier.
It's like you broke a treaty nobody knew existed. He
was right. The patterns changed after nineteen eighty three. Before
encounters were rare, separated by years or decades. After, they
(28:59):
became almost common. Not that anyone talked about them openly,
but if you knew how to listen, the stories were there,
Like the group of college kids who went camping in
nineteen ninety four came back missing one of their friends
and refusing to say what happened. Or the Forest service
crew that quit en Mass in nineteen ninety seven, leaving
thousands of dollars of equipment behind. Or the developer who
(29:22):
tried to build vacation homes up there in two thousand
and one found his bulldozers flipped over and his survey
stakes arranged in patterns that hurt to look at. My
own son, though he don't know, I know, had a
run in in two thousand and five. He'd taken his boy,
my grandson, fishing up at beaver Dam Creek. They were
packing up to leave when my grandson pointed at the
(29:44):
woods and said, Papa, why is that tall man watching us?
My son looked and saw nothing, but he knew the
stories had grown up, hearing whispers of them. He grabbed
the boy and their gear and left quick. On the
drive out, my grandson kept looking back, waving at something
only he could see. And stay tuned for more sasquatch
(30:06):
out to see. We'll be right back after these messages.
The tall man is sad. The boy said he walks
funny because his leg hurts. He wanted to show me
where the special bones are hidden, but I told him
we had to go home. My son never took him
fishing there again. The boy, he's grown now, doesn't remember
(30:28):
any of it. But sometimes I catch him staring at
the tree line, head tilted, like he's listening to something
the rest of us can't hear. I think about that
creature I shot, more than I should. Dream about it.
Sometimes in my dreams, it's still alive, still up there,
dragging that ruined leg through the hollows, still hungry, still hunting.
(30:50):
And sometimes in those dreams it speaks clear, tells me
about the pain that never stops, about the hunger that
can't be filled, about the children it took trying to
heal itself. You did this, it says in my dreams,
You and the other one, the hunter broke the old ways,
made us desperate made us dangerous. The children we needed,
(31:13):
the children, young blood for old wounds, young bones for
ancient hunger. I wake from those dreams, gasping, reaching for
a rifle. I don't keep by the bed anymore. My wife,
God rest her soul. She knew something was wrong all
those years, but never pushed. Maybe she had her own suspicions.
(31:33):
Mountain women know to leave some questions unasked. But now
she's gone, and I'm dying, and I can't take this
to my grave alone. Someone needs to know. Someone needs
to understand that there are boundaries in this world, lines
that shouldn't be crossed, treaties written in shadow and silence
that we break at our peril. I killed something on
(31:54):
Beartown Ridge in September of nineteen eighty three, or maybe
I only wounded it worse. Either way, I change things.
The old balance was broken. The things that walk those
high ridges, that have walked them since before memory, they're different, now, hungrier, bolder,
less willing to keep to their ancient places. If you're
(32:17):
ever in the deep mountains past, where the cell phones
work and the trails peter out, be careful. Watch for
tracks that drag. Listen for voices that almost form words.
And if you see eyes watching from the trees, eyes
too high and too intelligent to be animal, don't shoot,
don't break the treaties you don't understand, because they remember
(32:39):
every wound, every broken promise, every bullet fired in fear.
They remember, and they hunger and they wait, And sometimes,
when the moon is dark and the mist rises from
the hollows, they come down from the high places, looking
for what was taken from them, looking for healing, looking
for revenge. The children who vanish, the hikers who don't
(33:03):
come home, the hunters who leave their rifles and swear
off the woods forever. They're all part of a price
being paid for wounds that won't heal, for a balance
that can't be restored. I'm the one who pulled the trigger,
who drew blood on Beartown Ridge, But Luther started it
with his shot in nineteen eighty one, turned a creature
that might have been content to remain hidden into something
(33:25):
desperate and dangerous. And I finished it, or tried to.
Sometimes I think I can feel it still, not just
in dreams but in waking moments, a presence at the
edge of consciousness, a weight on my chest that isn't
just the cancer. It's waiting for me, maybe waiting on
the other side of whatever comes next. The tall man
(33:46):
with the ruined leg, still hungry, still hunting. My grandson,
the one who saw it that day, fishing. He's got
children of his own now. Sometimes I want to warn him,
tell him to keep them away from the deep woods,
away from the ridges where the mist hangs too long.
But what would I say? How do you explain a
treaty written in fear and blood? How do you describe
(34:09):
the hunger of something ancient and wounded? You can't. All
you can do is hope the boundaries hold, Hope the
old agreements still means something. Hope that what Luther and
I broke can somehow be mended by time and distance
and silence. But I don't think it can. The disappearances continue,
not often, not enough to make the news, but enough.
(34:31):
A child here, a hiker there, always near the old places,
always leaving those dragging tracks that the Sheriff's department won't acknowledge.
Last month, my nephew called, said he'd been squirrel hunting
up near Panther Creek, same area where Daddy saw the
tracks back in fifty four said he'd found something I
should know about. He'd followed what he thought was a
(34:54):
game trail, ended up in a hollow he'd never seen before.
There was a cave there, behind a fall of rocks,
the entrance almost invisible unless you knew where to look.
The smell coming from it was wrong, he said, like
copper and old death and something else, something alive but ancient.
He didn't go in. Something about the darkness beyond that entrance,
(35:17):
the way it seemed to swallow light made him back away.
But as he left he saw them tracks in the
soft earth near the entrance, dozens of them, all different sizes,
some dragged, some didn't, like a family group like a clan,
and arranged on a flat rock near the cave, like
(35:38):
an offering or a warning. Were three things, a child's shoe,
faded and weather worn, a hunter's compass, the brass green
with age, and a piece of cloth that might have
been from a burial shroud stained with something dark. He
left them there, left the whole hollow, and hasn't been back.
But he told me because he knew I'd understand, knew
(36:00):
I'd recognize the message in those objects. The shoe from
one of the taking children, the compass, maybe from Daddy's
crew or some other vanished hunter, the burial cloth from
whatever ceremony they'd held for the one I shot. They're
still there, still waiting, still remembering. That's all I wanted
to say. You can believe it or not, doesn't matter
(36:22):
to me anymore. But if you ever find yourself in
the deep hollows of the Appalachians, past where the trails
end and the old folks won't go, you be careful.
There are things in those mountains that don't belong in
this world, and they're hungry, hungry and hurt, and holding
grudges that span generations. I wouldn't go up there if
I was you. Some places are better left alone. The
(36:45):
cancer will take me soon, three months, the doctors say,
maybe less. Sometimes I think that's mercy. I won't have
to dream about those copper eyes anymore, won't have to
wonder if the next missing child is somehow my fault,
won't have to feel the weight of that creature's dying gaze,
the almost human recognition in its face as my bullet
(37:06):
found its mark. But sometimes on nights, when the moon
is dark and the wind moves through the trees outside
my window. I think I can hear them calling to
each other across the ridges, and voices that almost make
words mourning. They're dead, planning their revenge, waiting for the
right moment to come down from the high places and
(37:26):
collect what's owed. I pray I'm gone before that happens.
Pray my children and grandchildren have sense enough to stay
away from the deep woods. Pray the old boundaries hold
a little longer. But I don't think they will. I
think Luther and I broke something that can't be fixed,
opened a door that can't be closed, change the rules
(37:47):
of a game we didn't even know we were playing. God,
forgive me, And if you're smart, you'll delete this email
and forget you ever read it. Some knowledge is too
heavy to carry. Some truths are better left in the
shape where they belong. But I had to tell someone,
had to pass this burden on before it drags me
down into whatever darkness waits beyond. Maybe that makes me selfish,
(38:11):
Maybe that makes me weak, But I'm old and dying
and tired of carrying this alone. Be careful out there,
watch the tree line, Listen to the silence, and whatever
you do, whatever you see, don't shoot. The mountains have
a long memory, and they're still counting the cost of
what we've done. PS. If you do go up there,
(38:34):
despite everything I've said, leave an offering at the cave,
food maybe, or something shiny. They like shiny things always have.
Maybe it'll buy you safe passage. Maybe it'll just make
you easier to track. I don't know anymore. I don't
know anything except that I should have listened to the
old stories, should have respected the boundaries, should have left
(38:56):
that wounded thing alone to heal or die in peace.
But I didn't. And now the debt keeps growing, paint
in blood and sorrow, and children who never come home.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
And I don't want to be alone. World out it Chid,
(39:44):
this chip, that chart, everything right back. Joy for me, Joy,
stay right there, Come in right away, baby, Sissie still
(40:07):
states side still starts said, sass side still stay still.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Suss games still stay
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Us astis and pens in fast uss f insis
Now one of your pudding. I got a string going
on here, something just because my dog. Something killed your dog.
My dog.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
We're flying through the air over the tree. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
How it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm really confused. All
I saw was my dog coming over the fence and
he was dead.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
And once you hit the ground like, I didn't see
any cars.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
All I saw was my dog coming over the fence.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Sat, what are you putting?
Speaker 2 (00:39):
We got some wonder or something crawling around out here?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Did you see what it was?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Or was it was?
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Standing up?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I'm out here looking through the window now and I
don't see anything. I don't want to go outside.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Jesus Quice, you better.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Hello, get Theboddy out here when I'm out there. I
thought of a menus about tex forty nine.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
I don't know easy out there, Yeah, I'm walking right heady.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
I don't know why I'm writing this to you. Maybe
because you're a stranger and that makes it easier. Maybe
because the doctors say I've got three months at best,
and carrying this for forty some years feels heavier than
the cancer eating away at my lungs. My name is Clyde.
I'm eighty two years old, born and raised in McDowell County,
West Virginia. I've been digging Jen Saying since I was
(01:34):
knee high to a grasshopper, learned from my daddy, who
learned from his But there's more to these mountains than
Jen Saying. And that's what I need to tell you
about before I take this knowledge to my grave. You
grow up in these hollows, You hear things, stories that
get passed down like family recipes, each generation adding their
own flavor but keeping the meat of it the same.
(01:58):
My grandpa used to tell me stories when I was young,
sitting on his porch with a jar of moonshine, watching
the sun disappear behind the ridges. He'd wait until the
shadows got long and the lightning bug started their dance
before he'd begin. Boy, he'd say, his voice rough as bark,
these mountains got secrets older than coal, things that was
(02:18):
here before the Cherokee, before anybody with sense enough to
write it down. The first story he ever told me,
I was maybe seven years old. This would have been
nineteen forty nine, back when half the roads in the
county were still dirt and you could walk for days
without seeing another soul back. In nineteen o two, Grandpa began.
(02:38):
My uncle Harland was running a trap line up on
black Fork Ridge. He was a hard man. Harland was
fought in Cuba with Teddy Roosevelt, came back missing two
fingers and afraid of nothing. But something happened up on
that ridge that changed him. He'd been checking his traps
for three days, working his way deeper into the mountains.
On the third night, he made camp near a grove
(03:01):
of hemlocks, big old trees that had probably been there
since before the Revolution, built himself a good fire, cooked
some rabbit he'd snared, and settled in for the night.
Round about midnight, something woken. Wasn't a sound exactly, more
like the absence of sound. You know how the woods
are at night, always something rustling or calling. But this
(03:22):
was dead quiet, like the whole mountain was holding its breath.
Harlan sat up, reached for his rifle. That's when he
saw the eyes, not reflecting the firelight like a normal
animal's wood, but glowing on their own, pale green like foxfire.
They were high up, maybe eight feet off the ground,
just watching him from the edge of the firelight. He
(03:45):
called out, thinking maybe it was another trapper playing games.
The eyes didn't move, just kept staring. Then another pair
appeared next to the first, Then another three sets of eyes,
all at the same height, all that sickly green color.
Harlan fired a shot over their heads, trying to scare
them off. The eyes vanished, but not like they'd run away,
(04:08):
more like someone had blown out candles all at once.
He kept that fire burning high all night, feeding at
every stick he could find. Come morning, he packed up
and came down off the mountain. He never ran another
trap line, took up farming in the valley. Wouldn't even
hunt deer if it meant going above the first ridge.
When people asked him what he'd seen, he'd just shake
(04:30):
his head and say, some things ain't meant to be trapped.
Grandpa took a long pull from his jar, let the
story sink in. Even at seven, I knew better than
to ask if it was true. In the mountains, truth
and story blend together like morning fog, and trying to
separate them only makes you lose both. The second story
(04:51):
came a few years later, when I was old enough
to help Grandpa work his still we were up in
a hidden holler, tending the mash when he told me
about the widow Thompson's encounter. This was nineteen twenty three,
he said, stirring the mash with a long wooden paddle.
The Thompson place sat way back in Laurel Holler, about
as far back as folks dared to live. She'd lost
(05:13):
her husband and a mind collapse, but she was a
tough woman. Stayed on with her three young'uns rather than
move to town. One October evening, just as the leaves
were turning, her oldest boy, James, didn't come home. He
was twelve, old enough to roam, but young enough to
know better than to stay out past dark. The widow
(05:33):
waited until full dark, then lit a pine not torch
and went looking. She found him about a half mile
from the house, standing in a clearing, still as a statue.
The boy was staring up at something in the trees,
his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide as dinner plates.
The widow called his name, but he didn't respond. She
had to grab him by the shoulders and shake him
(05:55):
before he seemed to see her. Mama, he whispered, the
tall man in the trees, he's been talking to me.
The widow looked up but saw nothing except branches and shadows.
She dragged James home, and he came down with a
fever that lasted three days. When it broke, he couldn't
remember anything about that night, but he was never the
(06:15):
same after. Would wake up screaming about the tall man
who walked bent over, dragging something behind him. Said the
tall man wanted to take him to a special place
where the bones piled high. The widow moved her family
to town before the first snow. The house still stands,
or what's left of it. Nobody's lived there since. My
(06:36):
Daddy had his own stories, though he was less inclined
to tell them than Grandpa. Daddy was a practical man,
believed in what he could see and touch, but even
he couldn't explain everything that happened in these mountains. I
remember one story he told me when I was sixteen,
the night before my first solo, jen saying Hunt. We
(06:56):
were sitting at the kitchen table, him nursing a cup
of coffee that it had gone cold hours ago. This
was nineteen fifty four. He began his voice low so
as not to wake Mama. I was working timber with
a crew up near Panther Creek. Six of us, all
mountain boys who knew our way around, an axe and
a crosscut saw. We'd been cutting virgin timber trees so
(07:18):
big it took two men with arms outstretched to reach
around them. We had a camp set up near the
cutting site, just canvas tents and a cook shelter. One night,
our cook, an old fellow named Earl, went to the
creek to fill the water buckets. Full moon that night,
brightest day almost He was gone maybe ten minutes when
we heard him scream, not a yell like he'd heard himself,
(07:42):
but a real scream, like a woman or a child
in mortal terror. We all grabbed lanterns and rifles and
ran toward the creek. Found Earl standing knee deep in
the water, the buckets floating away downstream. He was pointing
at the far bank, shaking so hard he couldn't speak.
We looked where he was pointing, but didn't see nothing
at first. Then one of the boys held his lantern
(08:04):
higher and we saw the tracks. They came out of
the woods to the creek edge, then followed the bank
up stream. But these weren't bear tracks or human tracks.
They were wrong too big for one thing, But it
was the shape that bothered me, like a man's foot,
but stretched out with toes that were too long, too
spread apart, and every other track was dragged like whatever
(08:27):
made them couldn't lift its left foot proper. We got
Earl back to camp, gave him some whiskey to calm
his nerves. When he could talk, he said he'd seen it,
said it had been crouching by the water when he
came up, drinking like an animal. When it hurt him,
it stood up and up and up, eight nine feet tall,
(08:47):
covered in dark hair, with arms that hung down past
its knees. But it was the face that got him.
Almost human, he said, but with eyes that reflected the
moonlight like a cat's. And when it looked at him,
it smiled, not a friendly smile, but the way a
fox smiles at a rabbit. It walked away, he said,
dragging that left leg, following the creek upstream toward the
(09:10):
high country. We broke camp the next morning. The timber
company sent another crew, but they only lasted three days
before they pulled out too. Said tools went missing, said
they heard things at night, said they found more tracks.
Daddy paused stared into his cold coffee. I never told
your mama this part, but I went back up there
(09:32):
alone a week later. Don't know why. Maybe I didn't
believe what I'd seen. Maybe I needed to prove to
myself there was an explanation. I found our old camp site,
found the creek where Earl had his scare, and I
found something else. About one hundred yards upstream from where
we'd seen the tracks, there was a pile of bones,
deer mostly, but some bear too, all cracked open, the
(09:56):
marrow sucked out, and in the middle of the pile
a timber crew ruiser's compass. One had gone missing from
our equipment the night before Earl's encounter. I got out
of there fast and never went back, never told the
other boys what I'd found. Some knowledge is too heavy
to share. These stories were just the background music of
(10:16):
growing up in the mountains. Every family had them, every
holler had its history. But it wasn't until I had
my own encounter that I started paying real attention to
the patterns. After what happened to me in nineteen eighty three,
I became something of a collector of these stories. Not officially,
mind you, but I'd listened closer when the old timers talked,
(10:37):
buy a few extra drinks at the VFW to loosen tongues.
What I learned painted a picture I wish i'd never seen.
Take Luther for instance. Luther was a bear hunter, one
of the best in three counties, ran hounds that could
track a ghost through a thunderstorm. In November of nineteen
eighty one, two years before my encounter, he was running
(10:59):
a bear that his dog's jump near Elcorn Creek. The
dogs were on a hot trail, their voices echoing through
the hollows like a church choir. Luther was following on foot,
his rifle ready, when the dog's voices changed, went from
that eager hunting cry to something else fear, pure primal fear.
(11:20):
Then they went silent, all six of them at once.
Luther found them huddled together in a laurel thicket, shaking
like leaves, their tails tucked so far under they were
touching their bellies. These were dogs that would face down
a five hundred pound baar without blinking, and here they
were terrified of something. He was trying to coax them
(11:41):
out when he heard the breathing, slow, deep rhythmic coming
from somewhere above him. He looked up and saw it
perched in a massive oak, like some nightmare bird. It
was huge, covered in dark hair, with arms wrapped around
the trunk, but it was looking down at him with
eyes that caught the light like copper pennies. Luther raised
(12:02):
his rifle and fired, without thinking. Hit it square in
the left thigh. Saw the blood spray, heard it roar,
not like a bear or a big cat, but something
almost human. It dropped from the tree, landing hard, and
took off through the laurel. But that left leg wasn't
working right. It dragged behind, leaving a blood trail in
(12:24):
those strange wrong tracks. Luther's dogs wouldn't track it, wouldn't
even leave the thicket until he physically carried them out
one by one. He never hunted that section again, and
his dogs were never quite the same. Would start whimpering
for no reason, refused to cross certain creeks. I know
I hit it good, Luther told me one night, drunk
(12:45):
on my whiskey and his own memories. That leg was ruined.
If it was a normal animal, it would have died
from blood loss or infection. But maybe it wasn't normal.
Maybe it was something else, something that don't die easy.
Was the thing I couldn't stop thinking about. The creature
I shot in nineteen eighty three, had a bad left leg,
(13:06):
dragged it just like the one Luther shot in nineteen
eighty one, same area too, just different ridges of the
same mountain system. Could it have been the same one?
Living with that injury for two years, getting hungrier, more desperate.
And then there were the missing kids. The first was
in nineteen seventy nine, before Luther's encounter, the poly twins
(13:28):
Bobby and Brian, age nine. They'd gone out to pick
blackberries on a July morning, just up the slope from
their family's trailer. Their mama could see the berry patch
from the kitchen window, but when she looked up from
her dishes, the boys were gone. The whole community searched
for three days. Found one bucket, still half full of berries,
(13:48):
sitting neat as you please on a log. No sign
of struggle, no blood, no tracks except the boy's own.
It was like they'd just vanished into the air. Most
folks figured they'd gotten around, died of exposure somewhere, but
a few of the searchers mentioned finding other tracks, big
ones that the Sheriff's department dismissed his bear sign. Then,
(14:10):
in spring of nineteen eighty two, six months after Luther
shot whatever he shot, little Sarah Morrison went missing. She
was seven, playing in her backyard while her daddy worked
on his truck. He heard her laughing talking to someone.
When he looked up, she was walking into the woods,
looking up at something tall, like she was following a
grown up. He called out, but she didn't turn around.
(14:34):
By the time he reached the woodline, she was gone.
They found her shoe three miles away, up near the
ridge line, just one shoe, sitting on a rock like
it had been placed there, nothing else. Her daddy swore
until his dying day that she'd been talking to someone.
That he'd seen a shadow moving between the trees, too
tall and wrong shape to be human. But the worst
(14:56):
came after my encounter, which makes me wonder if I
only wounded it made it meaner. Stay tuned for more
sasquatch ott to see We'll be right back. After these messages.
In the summer of nineteen eighty four, not even a
year after I'd shot it, the Stapleton Boy vanished. Tommy Stapleton,
(15:19):
age eleven experienced in the woods. He'd gone squirrel hunting
early on a Saturday morning, taking the trail up toward
Beartown Ridge. Yes, the same ridge where I'd had my encounter.
His daddy found his twenty two rifle at the base
of a cliff. The barrel bent nearly in half. There
were tracks in the soft earth, Tommy's boots and something else.
(15:41):
Those wrong, dragging tracks, one foot normal, one sliding through
the leaves. They led up to the cliff edge and
just stopped. They never found Tommy, but hikers reported finding
strange things over the years. A child's torn shirt hung
high in a tree, small bones arranged in patterned toys
left on stumps like offerings. Old Mary, who lived at
(16:04):
the mouth of the holler and knew things about these
mountains that nobody else remembered. She told me something that
chilled me worse than any winter wind. This was in
nineteen eighty five, when I finally got the courage to
ask her about what I'd seen. There's always been something
up there, she said, her voice, like dry leaves. My grannies.
Granny knew about it. Said the Cherokee wouldn't hunt those ridges,
(16:28):
said something walked there. That wasn't man nor beast, but
something caught between. Said it had been there since before
the tribes, since the world was young and different. They
live a long time, these things, maybe forever if nothing
kills them. But they get hurt like anything else, and
hurt makes them dangerous, makes them forget the old agreements,
(16:50):
the boundaries. A hurt one is a rogue one, and
a rogue one needs to eat. She looked at me
with eyes clouded by cataracts, but somehow still sharp. You
shot it, didn't you? Up on Beartown Ridge. I can
see it on you, like mud on your shoes. I
couldn't answer, but she nodded like I had. It's still
(17:11):
up there, hurt, worse now, hungrier. Those children, it's trying
to heal, trying to get strong again, young blood, young bones,
the old ways, the bad ways. You opened a door
that should have stayed closed. I wanted to tell her
she was crazy, but the words wouldn't come, because deep
(17:31):
down I knew she was right. The thing I'd shot
wasn't dead. It was up there, dragging that ruined leg
through the hollows, taking children to some hidden place where
bones piled high, just like the tall man in Young
James Thompson's nightmares. Let me tell you about my encounter now,
the one that connects all these threads. It was September
(17:53):
of nineteen eighty three. I remember because Reagan was president
and my youngest boy had just started high school. I
was up on Beartown Ridge, way back in the hollows
where even the old timers don't venture much. That was
my secret spot. You understand. Five generations of my family
had worked those slopes, and I'd found patches there that
make your eyes water, roots thick as a man's thumb,
(18:17):
some older than the Civil War. I'd been up there
three days, camping rough like I always did, had my
tent pitched near a little spring, maybe four miles from
where I'd left my truck. The weather had been perfect
for digging, cool mornings, warm afternoons, the kind of September
that makes you forget winters. Coming on the third evening,
(18:38):
something changed. I can't say exactly what. At first, you
spend enough time in the woods, you develop a sense
for things. The jays had gone quiet, the squirrels weren't chattering.
Even the creek seemed to run softer. I was cleaning
roots by my tent when I noticed it, and the
hair on my neck stood up like I'd touched a
live wire. I kept but my eyes were moving scanning
(19:02):
the tree line. Nothing, just shadows getting longer as the
sun dropped behind the ridge. I had my thirty thirty
leaning against a log nearby, always did when I was
that far back. Bears, mostly though I'd never had to
use it. That's when I saw it move, maybe seventy
yards up the slope between two big oaks, just to
(19:24):
shape at first dark against the darker woods. Too big
for a bear, wrong shape for a man. It stepped
out from behind one of the trees and I got
my first clear look. Lord help me. I wish I hadn't.
It was massive, eight feet tall, maybe more, covered in
dark hair that looked almost black in the fading light.
(19:47):
But it was the way it moved that stuck out.
It dragged its left leg, pulling it along like dead weight.
Each step was deliberate, calculated, and it was watching me.
Even at that distance, I could I feel its eyes
on me the left thigh. Even through the hair, I
could see it was wrong, twisted, scarred Luther's shot from
(20:09):
two years before had to be. This thing had been
living with that injury, and now it was here, watching
me with eyes that held too much intelligence for an animal.
I reached for my rifle, slow as molasses, never taking
my eyes off the thing. My hands were shaking so
bad I could barely work the lever. The creature took
another step down the slope, then another. That dragging leg
(20:33):
made a sound like somebody pulling a sack of feed
through dry leaves. It stopped, maybe forty yards out, partially
hidden behind a maple. I could see its chest rising
and falling, see the way its head tilted as it
studied me. The light was almost gone, but I could
make out the shape of its face, almost human, but
wrong in every way that mattered. The eyes were too
(20:56):
deep set, the jaw too heavy, and there was something
in its expression not curiosity, not fear, hunger, the kind
of desperate hunger that makes animals do things they normally wouldn't.
I stood up, real slow, rifle in my hands. Get
on out of here, I said, Surprise, my voice worked
at all. Go on now. It made a sound then,
(21:20):
not a roar or a howl like you'd expect, more
like a long, low moan. That seemed to come from
somewhere deep in its chest. The sound to hurt animal makes,
but there was something else in it too, something that
made me take a step back toward my tent. Pain, yes,
but also rage, old rage, the kind that ferments over time.
(21:43):
That's when I remembered the stories, the missing kids, the
strange tracks, Luther's shot. This wasn't just some animal protecting
its territory. This was something that had been hurt, had
been hungry for two years, had maybe taken children to
sustain itself, and now it was looking at me like
I was the next meal. It shifted its weight and
(22:04):
I saw its hands clearly for the first time too long,
the fingers like pale spiders against its dark fur. One
hand gripped the maple trunk, and I watched the bark
crumble under its grasp. The other hand hung at its side,
clenching and unclenching. I know what you are, I heard
myself say, I know what you've done. Something changed in
(22:26):
its face. Then the lips pulled back, showing teeth that
were almost human but too large, too sharp. Not a smile,
not a snarl, but something between an acknowledgment, maybe like
it understood me, and wanted me to know it understood.
It came at me, not charging wild like a bear,
(22:47):
but purposeful, deliberate. Even with that ruined leg, it moved
with terrible grace. It used the trees, swinging from trunk
to trunk with its long arms, the bad leg dragging,
but not slow it as much as I'd hoped. I
fired when it was thirty yards out. The rifle kicked
against my shoulder, the shot echoing off the ridges. I
(23:08):
saw the impact, saw it stagger, but it kept coming.
I worked the lever, fired again. This time it roared
a sound that was almost words, almost human, screaming twenty yards.
I could see its eyes clearly now that copper reflection,
the intelligence and hunger and pain all mixed together. I
(23:29):
fired a third time, backing up my foot, catching on
a root. I went down hard, the rifle flying from
my hands. When I looked up, it was right there,
ten feet away, reaching for me with those spider fingers.
Blood was running from its shoulder, where one of my
shots had hit, more blood from its side. The wounds
would have dropped a bear, but this thing was still coming.
(23:53):
I scrambled backward, my hand finding a broken branch, not
much of a weapon, but I held it out anyway.
The creature stopped, tilted its head like a dog, hearing
a strange sound. Then it made that moaning sound again,
lower this time, and I realized it was trying to speak,
trying to form words with a throat and mouth not
(24:14):
quite made for human speech. Hurt, it said, or something
like it hurt long time. My hand found the rifle
I'd landed almost on top of it. As I brought
it up, the creature lunged. I fired point blank, saw
the impact knock it backward. It fell hard, that broken
(24:34):
leg twisting under it at an angle that made me
sick to see. But it wasn't done. It tried to rise,
pushing itself up with those long arms. Blood was pooling
beneath it, more running from its mouth. It looked at me,
and for just a moment, I saw something in its
eyes that wasn't hunger or rage, understanding maybe, or just
(24:56):
the recognition that one of us was about to die.
I fired one more time. The sound echoed forever, bouncing
from ridge to ridge until it faded into the coming darkness.
The creature fell back and was still. I waited rifle ready.
When it didn't move, I grabbed my pack, left everything
else and ran. I ran through the dark woods like
(25:18):
hell itself was chasing me. Branches tore at my clothes,
roots tried to trip me, but I kept running behind me.
I thought I heard sounds, not footsteps, but voices calling,
like the woods themselves were mourning. I made it to
my truck just as the moon was rising, started it
on the third try, and drove out of there without
(25:40):
looking back. When I got home, my wife took one
look at me and knew something had happened, but she
never asked, and I never told. But that wasn't the
end of it. Three days later I drove back to
the trailhead. Don't ask me why. Maybe I needed to
know if it was real. Maybe I needed to know
if it was dead. I didn't go up to my campsite,
(26:02):
just walked a little way up the trail, listening. The
woods were normal, birds singing, squirrels chattering. But there was
something else too, A smell on the wind, like copper
and old leaves, and tracks in the mud, not the
dragging tracks I'd learned to fear, but others, similar but different, smaller,
(26:23):
some of them like juveniles, larger others, massive prints that
sank deep in the soft earth. They'd come for their dead,
or they're wounded, because when I asked around, casual like,
nobody had found any strange bodies up on Beartown Ridge.
No bones, no blood except what the rain hadn't washed away.
(26:45):
Whatever I'd shot, Others of its kind had taken it away.
That's when I understood what Old Mary had meant about
opening doors. I'd hurt one of them, maybe killed it,
and they knew. They all knew. The disappearances can tinued,
but different now. Not just children, hikers who ventured too
far from the trails, hunters who stayed out past dark,
(27:08):
a whole family, the Washburns, who went camping up near
the ridge in nineteen eighty seven and never came back,
found their tent shredded, their car still parked at the trailhead.
But no bodies, no blood, just those tracks everywhere, like
a gathering, like a council of war. My cousin Derek
had his own encounter in nineteen ninety one. He was
(27:30):
deer hunting, had a stand up in a white oak
about two miles from where I'd shot the creature, just
as the light was fading, he heard something big moving
through the laurel below his stand. Figured it was the
ten point buck he'd been after. But what emerged from
the laurel wasn't a deer. It was one of them,
a female, he thought, smaller than what I'd described, but
(27:52):
still massive. She was carrying something, cradling it like a baby.
As she passed under his tree. She looked up right
at him, like she'd known he was there all along.
Her eyes, Derek told me later, whiskey, brave but still shaking.
They were almost human, sad like she was grieving. And
what she was carrying christ Clyde. It was wrapped in
(28:15):
what looked like a burial shroud, but I could see
a hand sticking out, a hand with those long, wrong fingers,
but smaller like a child. She didn't threaten him, just
looked at him for a long moment before continuing up
the ridge. Derek waited until full dark before climbing down
and getting out of there. He never hunted that area again,
(28:37):
never told anyone but me what he'd seen. You started something,
he said, when you shot that one. They're different now, bolder, angrier.
It's like you broke a treaty nobody knew existed. He
was right. The patterns changed after nineteen eighty three. Before
encounters were rare, separated by years or decades. After, they
(28:59):
became almost common. Not that anyone talked about them openly,
but if you knew how to listen, the stories were there,
Like the group of college kids who went camping in
nineteen ninety four came back missing one of their friends
and refusing to say what happened. Or the Forest service
crew that quit en Mass in nineteen ninety seven, leaving
thousands of dollars of equipment behind. Or the developer who
(29:22):
tried to build vacation homes up there in two thousand
and one found his bulldozers flipped over and his survey
stakes arranged in patterns that hurt to look at. My
own son, though he don't know, I know, had a
run in in two thousand and five. He'd taken his boy,
my grandson, fishing up at beaver Dam Creek. They were
packing up to leave when my grandson pointed at the
(29:44):
woods and said, Papa, why is that tall man watching us?
My son looked and saw nothing, but he knew the
stories had grown up, hearing whispers of them. He grabbed
the boy and their gear and left quick. On the
drive out, my grandson kept looking back, waving at something
only he could see. And stay tuned for more sasquatch
(30:06):
out to see. We'll be right back after these messages.
The tall man is sad. The boy said he walks
funny because his leg hurts. He wanted to show me
where the special bones are hidden, but I told him
we had to go home. My son never took him
fishing there again. The boy, he's grown now, doesn't remember
(30:28):
any of it. But sometimes I catch him staring at
the tree line, head tilted, like he's listening to something
the rest of us can't hear. I think about that
creature I shot, more than I should. Dream about it.
Sometimes in my dreams, it's still alive, still up there,
dragging that ruined leg through the hollows, still hungry, still hunting.
(30:50):
And sometimes in those dreams it speaks clear, tells me
about the pain that never stops, about the hunger that
can't be filled, about the children it took trying to
heal itself. You did this, it says in my dreams,
You and the other one, the hunter broke the old ways,
made us desperate made us dangerous. The children we needed,
(31:13):
the children, young blood for old wounds, young bones for
ancient hunger. I wake from those dreams, gasping, reaching for
a rifle. I don't keep by the bed anymore. My wife,
God rest her soul. She knew something was wrong all
those years, but never pushed. Maybe she had her own suspicions.
(31:33):
Mountain women know to leave some questions unasked. But now
she's gone, and I'm dying, and I can't take this
to my grave alone. Someone needs to know. Someone needs
to understand that there are boundaries in this world, lines
that shouldn't be crossed, treaties written in shadow and silence
that we break at our peril. I killed something on
(31:54):
Beartown Ridge in September of nineteen eighty three, or maybe
I only wounded it worse. Either way, I change things.
The old balance was broken. The things that walk those
high ridges, that have walked them since before memory, they're different, now, hungrier, bolder,
less willing to keep to their ancient places. If you're
(32:17):
ever in the deep mountains past, where the cell phones
work and the trails peter out, be careful. Watch for
tracks that drag. Listen for voices that almost form words.
And if you see eyes watching from the trees, eyes
too high and too intelligent to be animal, don't shoot,
don't break the treaties you don't understand, because they remember
(32:39):
every wound, every broken promise, every bullet fired in fear.
They remember, and they hunger and they wait, And sometimes,
when the moon is dark and the mist rises from
the hollows, they come down from the high places, looking
for what was taken from them, looking for healing, looking
for revenge. The children who vanish, the hikers who don't
(33:03):
come home, the hunters who leave their rifles and swear
off the woods forever. They're all part of a price
being paid for wounds that won't heal, for a balance
that can't be restored. I'm the one who pulled the trigger,
who drew blood on Beartown Ridge, But Luther started it
with his shot in nineteen eighty one, turned a creature
that might have been content to remain hidden into something
(33:25):
desperate and dangerous. And I finished it, or tried to.
Sometimes I think I can feel it still, not just
in dreams but in waking moments, a presence at the
edge of consciousness, a weight on my chest that isn't
just the cancer. It's waiting for me, maybe waiting on
the other side of whatever comes next. The tall man
(33:46):
with the ruined leg, still hungry, still hunting. My grandson,
the one who saw it that day, fishing. He's got
children of his own now. Sometimes I want to warn him,
tell him to keep them away from the deep woods,
away from the ridges where the mist hangs too long.
But what would I say? How do you explain a
treaty written in fear and blood? How do you describe
(34:09):
the hunger of something ancient and wounded? You can't. All
you can do is hope the boundaries hold, Hope the
old agreements still means something. Hope that what Luther and
I broke can somehow be mended by time and distance
and silence. But I don't think it can. The disappearances continue,
not often, not enough to make the news, but enough.
(34:31):
A child here, a hiker there, always near the old places,
always leaving those dragging tracks that the Sheriff's department won't acknowledge.
Last month, my nephew called, said he'd been squirrel hunting
up near Panther Creek, same area where Daddy saw the
tracks back in fifty four said he'd found something I
should know about. He'd followed what he thought was a
(34:54):
game trail, ended up in a hollow he'd never seen before.
There was a cave there, behind a fall of rocks,
the entrance almost invisible unless you knew where to look.
The smell coming from it was wrong, he said, like
copper and old death and something else, something alive but ancient.
He didn't go in. Something about the darkness beyond that entrance,
(35:17):
the way it seemed to swallow light made him back away.
But as he left he saw them tracks in the
soft earth near the entrance, dozens of them, all different sizes,
some dragged, some didn't, like a family group like a clan,
and arranged on a flat rock near the cave, like
(35:38):
an offering or a warning. Were three things, a child's shoe,
faded and weather worn, a hunter's compass, the brass green
with age, and a piece of cloth that might have
been from a burial shroud stained with something dark. He
left them there, left the whole hollow, and hasn't been back.
But he told me because he knew I'd understand, knew
(36:00):
I'd recognize the message in those objects. The shoe from
one of the taking children, the compass, maybe from Daddy's
crew or some other vanished hunter, the burial cloth from
whatever ceremony they'd held for the one I shot. They're
still there, still waiting, still remembering. That's all I wanted
to say. You can believe it or not, doesn't matter
(36:22):
to me anymore. But if you ever find yourself in
the deep hollows of the Appalachians, past where the trails
end and the old folks won't go, you be careful.
There are things in those mountains that don't belong in
this world, and they're hungry, hungry and hurt, and holding
grudges that span generations. I wouldn't go up there if
I was you. Some places are better left alone. The
(36:45):
cancer will take me soon, three months, the doctors say,
maybe less. Sometimes I think that's mercy. I won't have
to dream about those copper eyes anymore, won't have to
wonder if the next missing child is somehow my fault,
won't have to feel the weight of that creature's dying gaze,
the almost human recognition in its face as my bullet
(37:06):
found its mark. But sometimes on nights, when the moon
is dark and the wind moves through the trees outside
my window. I think I can hear them calling to
each other across the ridges, and voices that almost make
words mourning. They're dead, planning their revenge, waiting for the
right moment to come down from the high places and
(37:26):
collect what's owed. I pray I'm gone before that happens.
Pray my children and grandchildren have sense enough to stay
away from the deep woods. Pray the old boundaries hold
a little longer. But I don't think they will. I
think Luther and I broke something that can't be fixed,
opened a door that can't be closed, change the rules
(37:47):
of a game we didn't even know we were playing. God,
forgive me, And if you're smart, you'll delete this email
and forget you ever read it. Some knowledge is too
heavy to carry. Some truths are better left in the
shape where they belong. But I had to tell someone,
had to pass this burden on before it drags me
down into whatever darkness waits beyond. Maybe that makes me selfish,
(38:11):
Maybe that makes me weak, But I'm old and dying
and tired of carrying this alone. Be careful out there,
watch the tree line, Listen to the silence, and whatever
you do, whatever you see, don't shoot. The mountains have
a long memory, and they're still counting the cost of
what we've done. PS. If you do go up there,
(38:34):
despite everything I've said, leave an offering at the cave,
food maybe, or something shiny. They like shiny things always have.
Maybe it'll buy you safe passage. Maybe it'll just make
you easier to track. I don't know anymore. I don't
know anything except that I should have listened to the
old stories, should have respected the boundaries, should have left
(38:56):
that wounded thing alone to heal or die in peace.
But I didn't. And now the debt keeps growing, paint
in blood and sorrow, and children who never come home.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
They say, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
And I don't want to be alone. World out it Chid,
(39:44):
this chip, that chart, everything right back. Joy for me, Joy,
stay right there, Come in right away, baby, Sissie still
(40:07):
states side still starts said, sass side still stay still.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Suss games still stay
Speaker 2 (41:01):
Us astis and pens in fast uss f insis
Popular Podcasts
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!