SO EP:664 The Huntsman and the Watchers

Blackwood Gorge looks like paradise on a postcard—towering firs, crystal streams, and endless trails. But beneath the beauty lies something older than legend, something that’s been watching the woods for longer than humans have walked them. For years, hikers have vanished here, leaving behind only impossible clues: backpacks hanging twenty feet up in the trees, footprints far too large to belong to any man, and wood knocks that echo like warnings in the dark.

This is the story of The Huntsman—a serial killer who believed the wilderness would hide his crimes. But Blackwood Gorge was already claimed by another predator, one that knows the difference between the innocent and the guilty. As the body count grows and desperation sets in, the hunter becomes the hunted, and the forest delivers justice in the only way it knows how: primal, ancient, and merciless.


⚠️ Listener Warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence, murder, psychological terror, and death. It deals with predatory behavior and with forms of justice that exist outside human law. There are scenes of intense fear, bodily harm, and primal horror that may be deeply disturbing to some listeners. This content is absolutely not suitable for younger listeners. If you have children nearby, please use headphones or save this for another time. If you’re sensitive to descriptions of violence or death—or if you’re listening alone in an isolated place—you may want to consider whether this is the right story for you tonight. Listener discretion is strongly advised.


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Episode Transcript

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. We're flying through the air 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 he was dead. And once you hit
the ground like, I didn't see any cars. All I
saw was my dog coming over the fence. Sat, what

(00:38):
are you putting? We got some wonder or something crawling
around out here? Did you see what it was? Or
was it was? Standing enough? I'm out here looking through
the window now and I don't see anything. I don't
want to go outside. Jesus, Quice, you better hello, get

(01:03):
the body out here? What quen? I'm out there? I
thought of a bitch about tex forty nine. I don't know.
Easy an out there? Yeah, I'm walking right head.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
October is almost here, and you know what that means.
The veil between our world and others grows thin. The
leaves are turning blood red and burnished gold. There's a
chill in the air that wasn't there last week. And
something about the way darkness falls earlier each day makes
us remember that We're not always as safe as we'd

(01:32):
like to believe. I'm a collector of stories, you see,
not the nice ones, not the ones with happy endings
and lessons learned. No, I collect the dark ones, the
ones people whisper about but never want to fully tell,
the ones that make you check your locks twice before
bed and avoid looking too long into the shadows between trees.

(01:54):
As we head into this spooky season, I've decided to
share some of these tales with you. Over the coming months,
I'll be releasing a series of stories that I've gathered
from various sources, some from old newspaper archives, some from
retired rangers who only talk after their third whiskey, some
from sources that, well, let's just say they prefer to

(02:15):
remain anonymous. Tonight's story is special. It's the first in
our series, and I've chosen it carefully. You see, most
scary stories are safe because they happened long ago or
far away. This one is neither. This happened recently, in
a place you could drive to right now if you wanted,
though after hearing this I doubt you will. Before we begin,

(02:38):
let me ask you something, What do you think is
more terrifying the monster that hides in the dark or
the monster that hides in plain sight.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
What if I.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Told you that sometimes, just sometimes, one monster is the
only thing standing between us and another. Listen carefully to
what I'm about to tell you. This isn't one of
those stories that ends with every everyone safe around a campfire,
laughing about how scared they were. This is about what
happened when two different kinds of predators met in a

(03:08):
place called Blackwood Gorge. One was human, all too human.
The other, well, that's where our story gets interesting. You
might want to turn on another light, maybe check that
your doors are locked. Not because anything in this story
can reach you here, probably, but because once you know
that things like this are possible, that knowledge changes you.

(03:31):
It makes you see the darkness differently, makes you understand
that sometimes the woods are quiet for a reason, makes
you realize that we're not alone, and we're definitely not
always in charge. So settle in, but maybe don't get
too comfortable. And now I'm going to tell you why
before we dive into Tonight's tale, I need to share

(03:52):
something important with you. The story you're about to hear
walks the line between fact and fiction. Between documented events
and whispered legends, between what we know to be true
and what we fear might be true. Some of you
will listen and recognize real places, real disappearances, real police
reports that can be found if you know where to look.

(04:14):
Others will hear only a campfire story expertly crafted to
send shivers down your spine on a dark October night.
The truth is, it doesn't really matter which camp you
fall into. Not all stories need to be entirely true
to teach us valuable lessons about the world we live
in and the darkness that sometimes walks beside us. What

(04:34):
matters is that you listen with an open mind, let
the story take you where it needs to go. Don't
worry about sorting fact from fiction, evidence from imagination. Sometimes
the most important truths come wrapped in uncertainty, and sometimes
the stories that might be true are the ones that
change how we see the world. Now, I must give

(04:55):
you a strong warning before we proceed. This story contains
graphic description of violence, murder, psychological terror, and death. It
deals with the hunting and killing of innocent people with
predatory behavior and with forms of justice that exist outside
human law. There are scenes of intense fear, bodily harm,

(05:16):
and primal horror that may be deeply disturbing to some listeners.
This content is absolutely not suitable for younger listeners. If
you have children nearby, please use headphones or save this
for another time. If you're sensitive to descriptions of violence
or death, or if you're alone in an isolated place
and prone to anxiety, you might want to consider whether

(05:38):
this is the right story for you tonight. Listener discretion
is strongly advised. That said, if you choose to continue,
remember that whether this story is true or not, whether
the watchers of Blackwood Gorge are real or imagined, the
lesson remains the same. Evil exists in our world, walking
on two legs and wearing human faces, and sometimes the

(06:00):
only thing standing between that evil and the innocent is
something we don't fully understand and might not want to
believe in. So make your choice. Turn back now if
you need to, But if you're ready, if you're prepared
to question what's possible, if you can handle staring into
the darkness to see what stares back, then settle in.

(06:21):
Our journey into Blackwood Gorge is about to begin. Blackwood
Gorge sprawls across seventeen thousand acres of the Pacific Northwest,
where the Cascade Mountains break into a series of deep
valleys and roaring rivers. It's the kind of wilderness that
looks pristine on postcards but feels entirely different when you're
alone on its trails. The trees Douglas firs, western red cedars,

(06:45):
hemlocks grow so thick and tall that even at noon,
the forest floor exists in perpetual twilight. Moss covers everything
in a green so deep it looks black in the shadows,
and the mist that rises from the valleys has a
way of muffling sound that makes you feel like you're
walking through a dream or a nightmare. Sarah had been

(07:06):
missing for three days when ranger Patricia Morris found her backpack.
Not Sarah, just her backpack. It hung from a pine
branch twenty feet above the trail at mile mark or
seven point two, swaying slightly in a breeze that didn't
reach the forest floor. The purple north Face pack that
Sarah had saved three months to buy was perfectly intact, zipped,

(07:28):
closed water bottles, full energy bars still sealed in their wrappers.
Trail mix untouched. Patricia stood below it for a long time,
her neck craned upward, trying to make sense of what
she was seeing.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
In fifteen years as.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
A ranger in Blackwood Gorge, she'd seen a lot of
strange things. Bodies found in places they shouldn't be able
to reach, camps destroyed by something that wasn't wind or wildlife,
experienced hikers who simply vanished between one trail marker and
the next. But this, this deliberate placement, this impossible height,

(08:05):
this was new. She radioed for backup and a ladder.
While she waited, she did what she always did it
scenes like this, looked for the signs others missed. That's
when she found them. The tracks, pressed deep into the
soft earth beside a moss covered log were prints that
made her stomach tighten with a familiar dread. Eighteen inches long,

(08:27):
five toes, spread wide like a human foot, but wrong
in every proportion. The arch too high, the heel too deep,
as if whatever made them weigh three times what a
human should, and the stride length nearly six feet between prints.
Whatever made these tracks had walked upright on two legs,
moving with purpose along the trail before veering off into

(08:49):
the underbrush, exactly where Sarah's backpack hung above. Patricia had
seen these prints before, at every unexplained disappearance, always at
the periphery of the scene, always dismissed by her superiors
when she tried to include them in reports. Bear tracks,
they said, distorted by rain, bare human footprints enlarged by

(09:12):
snow melt, hoaxes planted by bigfoot enthusiasts. But Patricia knew better.
Bears didn't walk upright for fifty yards, humans didn't have
feet eighteen inches long, and hoaxeres didn't appear at scenes
before anyone knew there was a scene to appear at.
As she waited for backup, the forest around her was
utterly unnaturally quiet. No birds, no squirrels, not even the

(09:37):
ever present buzz of insects, the kind of silence that
pressed against her ear drums like being underwater. Then from
the ridge above came a sound that made every hair
on her arms stand up. Wood knocks, hollow, deliberate percussions,
three strikes, a pause, then two more. The pattern repeated
from another ridge, this one to the west, then another

(10:00):
from the north. Communication Coordination Intelligence. Patricia had heard these
sounds before too, always at disappearance, sits always dismissed as
falling branches or woodpeckers, But woodpeckers didn't work in synchronized
patterns across miles of wilderness. Falling branches didn't answer each

(10:21):
other with matching rhythms. The mists that gave the gorge
its name began to roll in, thick and white, turning
the trees into gray shadows, and in that mist, just
for a moment, Patricia saw a shape on the ridgeline, massive, upright,
still as the trees around it, but somehow more solid,

(10:41):
more real. She blinked, and it was gone, But the
feeling remained of being observed, evaluated, measured by something that
had been watching long before she arrived and would be
watching long after she left. When backup finally arrived, two
junior rangers with the latter and skeptical expressions, Patricia showed

(11:03):
them only what they expected to see, the backpack, which
they retrieved with difficulty, the obvious signs of Sarah's passage,
the place where her tracks simply stopped. She didn't show them.
The other Prince didn't mention the wood knox or the
shape in the mist. Some knowledge was too dangerous to share.

(11:23):
Some truths had to be discovered personally or not at all.
Forty miles away in the town of Cedar Falls, the
man everyone knew as Tom Bradley was restocking shelves at
Hartman's Hardware. He was the kind of employee every small
business loved, reliable, friendly, knowledgeable about everything from PVC pipe
to power tools. Customers liked him, his coworkers considered him

(11:47):
a friend, though none could claim to really know him.
He lived alone in a rental house on the edge
of town, kept to himself, and always volunteered for the
Monday through Wednesday shifts that everyone else tried to avoid.
What they didn't know was that Tom Bradley didn't exist.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
The social Security.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Number was stolen from a child who died in infancy
thirty years ago. The references on his job application led
to disconnected phone numbers and businesses that had closed years
before anyone thought to check. Even the name was carefully chosen,
common enough to be forgettable, bland enough to avoid attention.
In the privacy of his rental house, behind a locked

(12:26):
door in a basement that his landlord didn't know existed,
Tom Bradley became who he really was, the huntsman. The
basement was his sanctuary. One wall covered in topographical maps
of Blackwood Gorge marked with colored pins, red for successful hunts,
yellow for potential sits, green for supply caches, black for

(12:49):
what he called anomaly zones, places where strange things happened,
where the normal rules didn't seem to apply. There had
been more black pins lately. Another wall held trophies, driver's licenses, jewelry, phones,
small personal items that victims always carried, things that held
their essence. Somehow, he had forty three trophies, nine from

(13:12):
Blackwood Gorge, the rest from other hunting grounds across the country,
each one carefully labeled with a date, location, and a
single word that captured the essence of that particular hunt. Fighter, Runner, Beggar, Surprise.
Sarah Jones's driver's license should have been number forty four.

(13:32):
The label was already prepared aware because she had been aware,
had sensed him following her for two miles along the trail,
had kept checking over her shoulder with increasing frequency. He
loved the aware ones. They made it more interesting. But
something had gone wrong. At mile seven point two, the
huntsmen sat in his basement, staring at the empty spot

(13:54):
where Sarah's license should have been, Replaying those moments in
his mind for the hundredth time. He'd been perfect, patient, invisible.
He'd watched her growing fear with the satisfaction of a connoisseur,
had savored the way her hiking pace increased, the way
her hand kept moving to her dead phone. Then the
forest had gone silent, not the normal quiet that often

(14:18):
preceded violence in nature, but a complete absence of sound
that felt like the world had stopped breathing. He'd felt
it in his chest, a pressure, a weight, as if
the air itself had become dense. The growl that followed
hadn't come from any animal, he knew. It had seemed
to rise from the earth itself, a vibration that traveled

(14:39):
through the ground, up through his boots, into his bones.
It was the sound of something immense, expressing displeasure, something
that shouldn't exist. Sarah had frozen on the trail, her
head whipping around, searching for the source. The huntsman had
pressed himself against a tree, knife in hand, his predator's
instincts screw dreaming warnings his rational mind couldn't process, and

(15:04):
stay tuned for more sasquatch otta see, We'll be right back.
After these messages, then the crashing had started. Not the
chaotic noise of an animal fleeing or attacking, but deliberate movement,
branches snapping in a rhythm that suggested enormous weight being
placed with careful precision. It was circling him, not Sarah him.

(15:29):
He could track its movement by sound alone, thirty feet
to his left, then twenty feet, then back to thirty
but on his right. Now it was studying him, learning him.
When it spoke, and it had spoken, he was sure
of that. No matter how impossible it seemed, the meaning
had been crystal clear, despite the absence of words. The

(15:52):
vocalizations were complex, layered, almost like a tonal language, but
the message was simple, This one is mine. The huntsman
had backed away slowly, every instinct screaming at him to run,
but his experience keeping him controlled. Running triggered pursuit in predators.
But as he retreated, he'd heard it following, not pursuing, following,

(16:15):
maintaining the same distance, the same pace, hurting him away
from Sarah like a sheep dog hurting wolves from the flock.
He'd never seen Sarah again. The news report said she
was missing, but the huntsman knew better. Whatever had been
in those woods had taken her. But why and why
had it warned him off first? The black pins on

(16:36):
his map were starting to form a pattern. Each marked
a place where something unusual had happened during his hunts,
a place where tracks appeared that shouldn't exist, where wood
knocks echoed without explanation, where he'd felt watched by something
more than human eyes. The huntsman traced the pattern with
his finger. The black pins formed a rough circle around

(16:59):
the deepest, oldest part of Blackwood Gorge, the part even
the rangers rarely patrolled, the part the local tribes had
considered sacred or cursed long before white settlers arrived. Something
lived there, something that had claimed Sarah Jones. The rational
part of his mind, the part that had kept him
free for three years and forty three kills, told him

(17:22):
to leave find new hunting grounds. There were plenty of
wilderness areas in the country where people disappeared without raising questions,
but the predator in him, the part that made him
what he was, couldn't let it go. This was his territory.
He'd claimed it with blood and fear. He'd learned every trail,
every hiding spot, every place where screams wouldn't carry. Whatever

(17:46):
was out there was challenging his claim, competing with him
in nature. When two apex predators occupied the same territory,
only one survived. The huntsman made his decision. He would
return to Blackwood Gorge. He would hunt again, and if
the thing in the woods tried to interfere.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
He would be ready.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
He spent the next three days preparing new equipment, new plans,
new tactics. Based on the assumption that he himself was
being hunted. He studied every reported bigfoot sighting in the area,
going back fifty years, looking for patterns. Most were obvious
hoaxes or misidentifications, but some some had details that matched

(18:26):
what he'd experienced. The silence that preceded its appearance, the
way it moved with deliberate intelligence, the vocalizations that seemed
to carry meaning. If it was real, and the huntsman
was increasingly convinced it was, then it was flesh and blood,
and anything made of flesh and blood could be killed.

(18:47):
Brett and Sienna Morrison had been married for seven years.
The first five had been good. The last two had
been a slow slide towards separate lives in the same house.
This trip to Blackwood Gorge was supposed to fix things.
A week in the wilderness, no phones, no work, no distractions,
just them and nature and the chance to remember why

(19:09):
they'd fallen in love. They'd made camp at Cedar Lake,
a crystalline bowl of water surrounded by granite peaks and
dense forest. The site was perfect, secluded but not too remote,
beautiful but accessible. They'd had to hike three miles from
the nearest trail junction to reach it, and they hadn't
seen another soul in two days. It's so peaceful, Sienna

(19:32):
said on their third night, sitting by their small campfire,
her head on Brett's shoulder. I'd forgotten what real quiet
sounds like. Brett murmured agreement. Though something about the quiet
had been bothering him all day, it took him a
while to figure out what it was. Too quiet. Even
in the wilderness, there should be sounds, birds, insects, the

(19:54):
rustle of small animals, but Cedar Lake was silent, except
for the occasional lap of water against the shore. The
huntsmen watched them from his position in the rocks above
their camp. He'd been there for eighteen hours, still as
the stones around him, patient as death itself. He'd watch
them wake that morning, their tender kiss over instant coffee,

(20:16):
their hike around the lake, their gradual relaxation as they
believed themselves alone and safe. The woman was the aware one.
She kept looking over her shoulder, kept pausing to listen,
kept telling her husband something felt off. The husband dismissed
her concerns with the casual condescension of someone who'd never
experienced true danger. They're always afraid of the wrong things,

(20:40):
the huntsmen thought, bears getting lost, running out of water,
never the real threat, never the human predator who'd been
watching them since they'd arrived. His plan was simple. Tonight,
after they'd gone to sleep, he would approach from the lakeside,
the direction they wouldn't expect. The woman first. She was

(21:00):
the dangerous one, the one whose instincts were firing warnings
quick and quiet before she could scream. Then the husband,
waking to find his wife gone, stumbling into the darkness
to look for her, finding instead the huntsman's knife. He
would take his time with the husband, the ones who
dismissed danger, who thought themselves safe. They needed to learn

(21:22):
how wrong they were. It was part of the education,
part of the art. But as darkness fell and the
couple retreated to their tent, the huntsman became aware of
something else in the woods, A presence, massive patient watching,
not watching the couple, watching him. He could feel its

(21:43):
eyes like a physical weight could, since its bulk shifting
in the darkness beyond the reach of the dying firelight.
It had been there for hours, he realized, Waiting to
see what he would do. The huntsmen shifted position slightly,
testing A branch snapped in response, not under foot, but
gripped and deliberately broken, a warning, clear as spoken words,

(22:07):
I see you. Pride and pragmatism ward in the huntsman's mind.
He could retreat, find easier prey, or he could proceed
with his plan and deal with whatever was out there.
He was armed, he was skilled, He was human with
human intelligence and tools. He waited until midnight, then began
his approach, moving through darkness like oil through water. No headlamp,

(22:31):
no flashlight, just starlight and muscle memory and years of practice.
He'd done this forty three times. He knew exactly how
to move, where to place his feet, how to control
his breathing. Three steps from the tent, he froze. It
was there, standing on the opposite side of the tent.
He could see it, silhouette against the stars, massive, upright, motionless.

(22:57):
The couple inside remained oblivious. They had breathing audible through
the thin nylon walls. But the huntsmen and the thing
regarded each other across that small dome of fabric and
human vulnerability. For a long moment.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
Neither moved.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
The huntsman's hand found his knife, drew it slowly. The
blade caught a sliver of moonlight. The thing shifted just slightly,
just enough to show it had seen the weapon and
was unimpressed. Then it did something that chilled the huntsman
to his core. It mimicked him. Every movement he'd made
approaching the tent. It now repeated exactly the same careful

(23:35):
foot placements, the same pauses, the same slight adjustment of
weight to avoid a creaking branch. It was showing him
that it had been watching all along, learning his patterns,
studying his technique. The message was clear, I know what
you are. I know what you're doing, and I can
do it better. The huntsman backed away, not in fear,

(23:57):
he told himself, but intactic reassessment. The thing didn't follow,
not immediately. He made it twenty yards before he heard
it moving, maintaining the same distance, hurting him away from
the tent. He tried to circle back, approaching from the lakeside,
but it was already there, as if it had teleported,

(24:18):
always between him and his prey, always watching with those
eyes that reflected light like a wolf's but held intelligence
deeper than any animal. Frustration turned to rage. These were
his kills, his territory, his hunt. He charged toward the tent,
knife raised, no longer caring about stealth. The growl that

(24:39):
erupted from the thing's throat stopped him midstride. It was
impossibly deep, seeming to come from everywhere at once. The
tent fabric rippled from the vibration inside. Sienna sat up
with a gasp. Brett, did you hear that?

Speaker 3 (24:55):
What? What is it?

Speaker 2 (24:57):
Something's outside? Something big? The huntsmen retreated into the woods,
but not far.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
He would wait.

Speaker 2 (25:04):
The thing couldn't guard them forever, but it could, and
it did for the rest of the night, it walked
to circles around the couple's tent, the same path the
huntsmen had walked while scouting the same pace, even the
same slight limp he developed from an old injury so
subtle most people never noticed. But the thing had seen, it, learned,

(25:25):
it reproduced it perfectly. It was mocking him, showing him
how thoroughly it had studied him, how completely it understood
his methods. At dawn, as the first light painted the
peaks pink and gold, the couple emerged from their tent.
Siena was pale, clutching Brett's arm. We're leaving, she said. Now,

(25:46):
something was out here all night, walking around our tent.
It was probably just a bear, Brett said, but his
voice lacked conviction. Bears didn't walk on two legs for hours.
Bears didn't move with such delight, liberate intelligence as they
packed with frantic efficiency. Sienna looked toward the tree line
and gasped, there, do you see it. Brett turned, but

(26:10):
saw only shadows between the trees. It was huge, like
a grizzly, But standing up walking away on two legs,
that's impossible. We don't have grizzlies here, But Sienna knew
what she'd seen, and in a strange way, she knew
it had saved them. Whatever had been walking around their

(26:31):
tent in the human like pattern hadn't been the same
thing she'd glimpsed in the trees. That thing had been
protecting them, guarding them from what. She would never know,
But she would never camp in Blackwood Gorge again. After
Cedar Lake, the huntsman found his first cash disturbed, not ransacked,
disturbed deliberately, precisely with intelligence. The cash was one of

(26:56):
five he maintained throughout Blackwood Gorge, hidden in locations only
he knew. This one was buried beneath a fallen tree
two miles off any trail, marked by a rock formation
that looked natural but wasn't. Inside spare equipment, preserved food, water,
purification tablets, weapons, everything needed to survive in the wilderness indefinitely.

(27:19):
But when he arrived to resupply, the fallen tree had
been moved, not blown aside by wind, moved, lifted and
set down three feet to the left, exposing his cash.
The waterproof container was open, its contents laid out in
a perfect grid on the forest floor. Nothing taken, nothing damaged,

(27:39):
just displayed his sleeping bag, unrolled and spread flat, his
spare knives arranged by size. His journal, the one where
he recorded his kills and coated language, opened to the
page describing his first hunt in Blackwood Gorge, and around
it all a circle of stones, each stone larger than
a man could easily carry, each placed with deliberate precision.

(28:03):
The message was clear, I know where you hide, I
know what you are. I can reach you anywhere. The
huntsman stood in that circle for a long time, rage
and fear warring in his chest. He was being hunted, studied,
toyed with. The predator had become prey, but not victim,
never victim. He was too smart, too skilled, too experienced

(28:27):
to be taken down by some forest anomaly. If it
was real, and the evidence was becoming impossible to deny,
then it was an animal, a primate of some kind,
larger than any known species, more intelligent than any except humans,
but still an animal. Animals could be trapped, killed, defeated.

(28:48):
He began to adapt his tactics. If it was watching him,
he would watch it back. He set up trail cameras
at his other cash sites. He studied the tracks more carefully,
learning the unique characteristics a scar across the left heel,
a slightly curved middle toe on the right foot. He
mapped the woodnock patterns, finding communication nodes where the sounds

(29:10):
most often originated, and he continued to hunt. David Park
was a day hiker out for what should have been
a simple eight mile loop on the Cascade Trail, thirty
two years old, recently divorced, trying to find himself in nature.
Like so many others who came to Blackwood Gorge, he
was alone, vulnerable, and so focused on taking selfies at

(29:31):
scenic viewpoints that he never noticed the huntsmen following fifty
yards behind. The kill should have been simple, wait until
David reached the most isolated part of the trail, a
series of switchbacks through dense forest where the path narrowed
to barely two feet wide. Strike fast, drag the body
into the ravine below, let the wilderness hide the evidence.

(29:54):
But at the critical moment, just as the huntsman was
moving in, the wood knock started, not from in one direction,
from all around. Dozens of impacts, rhythmic, coordinated, deafening, and
stay tuned for more Sasquatch ott to see.

Speaker 3 (30:10):
We'll be right back.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
After these messages, David stopped, looking around in confusion. The
huntsman pressed himself against a tree, knife, ready scanning the forest.
Then he saw them, not one creature, three positioned triangularly
around him, watching, waiting. The largest stood perhaps forty feet away,

(30:36):
partially hidden behind a massive cedar, eight feet tall, at
least covered in dark hair that seemed to absorb light.
Its eyes reflected the filtered sunlight like mirrors. The second
was smaller, more slender, positioned on the slope above the trail. Female,
the huntsman thought, though he couldn't say why, he knew
that the third was young, no more than six feet tall,

(31:00):
but built like the others, broad, powerful, wrong in its proportions,
it stood in plain sight, studying him with open curiosity.
A family, a clan, a tribe. David Park, oblivious to
both the human and inhuman predators surrounding him, continued down
the trail, stopping to photograph a butterfly. The huntsmen didn't follow,

(31:23):
couldn't follow. The message was clear, not this one, not today,
We're watching. He retreated, slowly, maintaining eye contact with the
largest creature. It didn't follow, none of them did. They
simply melted back into the forest, vanishing as completely as
if they'd never existed. But they left signs deliberately, branches

(31:47):
woven into impossible knots, stone stacked in spirals that defied gravity.
The Huntsmen didn't sleep for three days after the encounter
on the Cascade trail. Every time he closed his eyes,
he saw those three figures positioned around him, watching, judging,
waiting for him to make a move they disapproved of.

(32:07):
He'd returned to Cedar Falls, to his job at the
hardware store, trying to pretend everything was normal, but his
hand shook as he mixed paint. His smile felt like
a mask that might crack at any moment. Customers noticed
asked if he was feeling well. He blamed it on
a summer cold and powered through his shifts. But at night,

(32:27):
in his basement sanctuary, he studied everything he'd gathered about
the creatures, the tracks, the photographs from his trail cameras,
all mysteriously blurred or showing nothing but forest, The patterns
of their appearances, the rules they seemed to follow, Because
there were rules. He was sure of it now they

(32:48):
hadn't attacked him at Cedar Lake, even though they could have.
They'd let him retreat from the Cascade Trail unharmed. They
disturbed his cash but taken nothing. They were trying to
communicate to a stablished boundaries to set terms, but the
huntsmen didn't negotiate with competitors. He eliminated them. He spent
a week preparing new weapons, a high powered rifle with

(33:11):
thermal scope bear traps modified for something larger, military grade
motion sensors. He would turn a section of Blackwood Gorge
into a killing field, draw them in in this territorial
dispute once and for all. The site he chose was perfect,
a narrow canyon with only two entrances, steep walls that
would funnel movement, clear fields of fire from elevated positions.

(33:36):
He spent three nights setting it up, working in darkness,
placing each piece of equipment with tactical precision. On the
fourth night, he set the bait. Monica Webb. She was
a solo backpacker twenty six years old, traveling the Pacific
Crest Trail connection through Blackwood Gorge. He'd been tracking her
for two days, waiting for the perfect moment when she

(33:59):
made camp near his prepared canyon, he made his move,
not to kill her, not yet, but to herd her,
to drive her into the canyon, where the creatures would
have to follow if they wanted to protect her, and
he was certain they would come. They always seemed to
know when he was hunting, always appeared at the critical moment.
He started with small things, sounds in the darkness around

(34:22):
her tent, rocks thrown from the tree line, her own
name whispered from different directions, classic psychological warfare, designed to
create panic to make her run in the direction he wanted.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
It worked.

Speaker 2 (34:37):
Monica burst from her tent at three am, headlamp blazing, backpack,
hastily thrown on, running down the trail toward the canyon.
The huntsman followed, keeping pace, maintaining pressure, but as they
neared the canyon entrance, he heard it breathing deep, rhythmic patient,
not behind him, ahead between him and Monica, it stepped

(35:01):
out of the shadows, directly into Monica's path. She screamed,
the sound echoing off the canyon walls. The creature, the
large one from the cascade trail, stood there, arms spread wide,
blocking her path, but not threatening her, protecting her. It
made a sound, low and rumbling, and Monica's scream cut off.

(35:23):
She stood frozen, headlamp beam playing across the impossible figure
before her. Then, amazingly, she began to calm. Later she
would tell rangers that she felt safe, protected, like the
thing was there to help her. The creature gently, so
gently for something so large, guided Monica to the side
of the trail. She sat down on a rock, dazed,

(35:46):
no longer afraid. Then the creature turned to face the huntsman.
In the light of Monica's headlamp. He saw it clearly
for the first time. The face was almost human, but not,
the brow too heavy, the jaw to pronounced, the eyes
too deep. But there was intelligence there, ancient intelligence and anger.

(36:08):
The huntsman raised his rifle. The thermal scope showed the
creature as a blazing white figure against the cool blue
of the forest. Center mass. An easy shot, he pulled
the trigger, the rifle fired. The sound cracked across the
canyon like thunder. The creature didn't fall, It had moved
impossibly fast for something so large. The bullet struck the

(36:31):
tree where it had been standing a fraction of a
second before. Wood exploded in splinters. Then it charged, not
toward the huntsman, past him so close he could smell
it wet, dog and earth and something wilder. The wind
of its passage spun him around. By the time he'd
recovered and chambered another round, it was gone, vanished into

(36:53):
the forest. But the message had been delivered, the charge,
the near miss. It could have killed it easily, it
had chosen not to. Monica Webb stumbled out of the canyon,
found the trail, and hiked through the night to reach
the ranger station. She reported a stalker in the woods,
someone who tried to herd her into a trap, but

(37:15):
also something else, something that had saved her, something impossible.
The rangers found the huntsman's killing field the next day,
the traps, the censers, the sniper's nest. They also found
his tracks and the others, the big ones, following his
overlapping them, erasing them in places The investigation would go nowhere,

(37:39):
no fingerprints, no DNA, no evidence linking the equipment to anyone.
But Patricia Morse knew she'd seen this pattern before. Someone
had been hunting in her forest, and something else had
been hunting the hunter. The failed trap in the canyon
changed everything for the huntsman. He'd shown his hand, revealed
his capabilities, and learned a terrible truth. Conventional weapons were

(38:03):
useless against something that could move like that, something that fast,
that aware, that intelligent. He retreated to his basement, mind
racing through possibilities. If bullets wouldn't work, what would poison
fire explosives? Each option presented problems. How do you poison

(38:24):
something that might not eat what humans eat? How do
you burn something in a forest without starting a wildfire
that would bring every ranger in the state. How do
you use explosives without leaving evidence that would lead straight
back to you. But more than the tactical problems, there
was a deeper issue. The creatures weren't just interfering with
his hunts now, they were actively protecting potential victims. They

(38:48):
knew what he was, what he intended, sometimes before he'd
even chosen his target. How the answer came to him, slowly, terribly.
They'd been watching him far longer than he'd realized, not
just since Sarah Jones, maybe since his first kill in
Blackwood Gorge, maybe before learning his patterns, his preferences, his tails.

(39:11):
They could predict him because they understood him. The thought
sent ice through his veins. No one had ever understood him.
He'd been too careful, too smart, too adaptive. But these things,
these impossible things that shouldn't exist, they saw through his
camouflage to the predator beneath. He decided to test a theory.

(39:32):
He would go to Blackwood Gorge, but not hunt, just
hike camp, act like a normal outdoor enthusiast. See if
they still watched him when he wasn't actively stalking prey.
The first day was normal. He hiked ten miles, set
up camp by a stream, cooked freeze, dried meals, read
a paperback novel by the fire. Nothing unusual, no wood knocks,

(39:54):
no massive tracks, no sense of being watched. The second day,
same thing. He began to relax. Maybe they only responded
to active threats. Maybe if he laid low for a while,
they would lose interest, move on, forget about him. The
third night, he woke to find his entire camp rearranged.
His tent had been moved ten feet and rotated to

(40:16):
face the opposite direction. His backpack hung from a tree
branch fifteen feet up. His boots were placed neatly side
by side, pointing back toward the trailhead and his book.
The paperback novel was open to a specific page. Held
down by a stone, he read the highlighted passage by flashlight,
hands trembling. The mask of sanity is paper thin. Beneath it,

(40:41):
the monster always shows through for those who know how
to look. They hadn't lost interest. They'd been there all along,
watching him pretend to be normal, seeing through his act
just as clearly as they'd seen through his hunting persona.
The message was clear. We know you're pretending, We know
what you really are. You can't hide from us. The

(41:02):
huntsman packed up and hiked out that morning, but he
wasn't retreating. He was regrouping. If they could see through
his masks, he would stop wearing them. If they wanted
to face the real hymn, the true predator, then that's
what they would get. No more hiding, no more pretending,
no more rules. Three hikers vanished in one week. James

(41:24):
Morrison on Monday, taken from the Ridgeview Trail in broad daylight.
His girlfriend waiting at the parking area, said he'd gone
back to retrieve a dropped water bottle and never returned.
Kelly Jones, no relation to Sarah. On Wednesday, disappeared somewhere
between mile three and mile four of the River Loop,
the easiest and most popular trail in Blackwood Gorge. Dozens

(41:47):
of other hikers on the trail that day, but no
one saw anything. Marcus Webb on Friday, an experienced outdoorsman
who'd been camping solo at Cascade Lake. His tent was
found shredded, his supplies, scattered blood on the pine needles,
but no body. The Huntsman worked with desperate efficiency, like
a wolf gorging before winter. He knew his time was

(42:09):
running out, could feel it in the weight of every shadow,
the paws, in every breeze. The creatures were done, warning him,
done trying to establish boundaries. The game had changed. But
they didn't stop him, not immediately. They let him work,
let him reveal the full extent of his monstrosity. He
realized later too late, that they were letting him damn himself,

(42:34):
letting him cross every line, break every taboo, demonstrate beyond
doubt that he was beyond redemption. With Morrison, he'd been quick, professional.
The man had died without knowing what hit him, but
the Huntsman had felt nothing no satisfaction, no thrill, just emptiness.
With Kelly Jones, he'd tried to recapture the feeling, taking

(42:56):
more time, being more creative, but it was mechanical, hollow.
The creatures had robbed him of his purpose, turned his
art into mere butchery. By the time he took Marcus Webb,
he was unraveling, completely, sloppy, violent, leaving evidence everywhere. Part
of him wanted to be caught, wanted it to end,

(43:18):
but not by human hands. He wanted them to come
the creatures, wanted to face them one last time. After Webb,
he returned to his main cash to find it destroyed,
not just disturbed, obliterated. His tent hadn't just been cut,
It had been shredded into ribbons no wider than a finger,
each strip exactly the same width. His supplies hadn't just

(43:41):
been scattered, they'd been ground into the earth with such
force that recovery was impossible. His journal, his detailed record
of forty six kills, had been torn apart, pages scattered
across a quarter mile of forest, except for one page,
entry nineteen. His first kill in Blackwood got a young
woman named Lisa Park who'd been camping alone, trying to

(44:04):
get over a bad breakup. He'd written about her in detail,
savoring the memory. The page sat centered on a flat rock,
held down by a stone no human could lift. Beside it,
arranged with terrible precision, were items he recognized. A necklace,
a watch, a pocket knife, Lisa Park's belongings that he'd

(44:26):
hidden two years ago in a place only he knew.
They'd found them, found all of them, all his hunting grounds,
every state, every park, every kill site, marked with an
X forty six exes, his entire bloody history, laid out
for anyone to see. The huntsmen stood in that circle

(44:46):
of accusation, finally understanding he wasn't the first serial killer
to hunt in Blackwood Gorge. Others had come before, nine others,
and the creatures had dealt with each of them. He
was number ten, the last in this cycle. And stay
tuned for mar Sasquatchy otta see. We'll be right back
after these messages, and his judgment was coming. The huntsmen

(45:14):
knew they would come for him. During the storm. He
could feel it building all day, the pressure dropping, the
clouds massing like an army on the horizon, the birds falling,
silent hours before the first drops fell. By nightfall, Blackwood
Gorge was in the grip of a tempest that seemed
personal in its fury. Lightning turned the forest into a

(45:34):
strobing nightmare. Thunder shook the mountains to their foundations, rain
fell in sheets so thick that visibility dropped to mere feet.
He chose in his position carefully, the abandoned Ranger way
station from the nineteen forties, forgotten in a grove of
ancient cedars, three miles from any marked trail, one entrance,

(45:55):
stone walls, a defensible position where he could make his stand.
Prepared everything, weapons arranged within easy reach, bear traps at
the entrance, flares to illuminate whatever came through the door.
If they wanted him, they would have to take him
on his terms. The waiting was the worst part. Hours
of rain, drumming on the roof, wind screaming through the

(46:17):
broken windows, his own heart beat loud in his ears.
Every flash of lightning showed him empty forest. Every roll
of thunder masked potential footsteps. Then between thunderclaps he heard it.
Footsteps on the cabin's porch. Slow measured, the boards creaking
under tremendous weight, come on he screamed at the door,

(46:40):
I know you're there. Let's finish this. The footsteps stopped,
silence except for the storm. Then they resumed circling the cabin,
round and round, the same pattern he'd used at Cedar Lake,
with the couple, the same pace, even the same slight
hesitation at the corner where he'd paused to adjust his pack.

(47:02):
They were showing him again, showing him they'd learned everything
about him, absorbed his methods, made them their own. Something
hit the wall. The entire structure shook, dust rained from
the ceiling. Another hit, another, testing the walls playing with him.
The door exploded inward. The thing that entered had to

(47:24):
duck to fit through the doorframe, eight and a half
feet of muscle and dark fur that gleamed wet in
the lightning flashes.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
The face caught in the flarelight.

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Was almost human. There was intelligence there, ancient intelligence, and
something that might have been pity. The huntsman raised his
rifle and fired. The creature moved, but not quite fast enough.
This time, the bullet grazed its shoulder, sending up a
spray of blood and hair. It roared, a sound that

(47:53):
bypassed the ears and spoke directly to primal terror centers
in the brain, but it didn't charge. Instead, it spoke
not in words, but in complex vocalizations that somehow conveyed
meaning perfectly. You had your chance to leave, you chose this.
The huntsman chambered another round, but the creature was already moving,

(48:15):
not toward him, around him, circling, studying, waiting. What are you,
the huntsman screamed. It stopped, tilted its massive head. When
it spoke again. The vocalizations were different, structured, almost like language,
and somehow impossibly he understood. We are the first, We

(48:38):
are the watchers. We are the balance, your killers, just
like me. Something that might have been laughter or contempt
rumbled from its chest, then more vocalizations. You kill for pleasure,
we kill for justice. You are the disease, We are
the cure. The huntsman fired again. This time the creature

(48:59):
didn't even tried to dodge. The bullet struck its chest
and stopped as if it had hit armor beneath the fur.
The creature looked down at the impact point, then back
at him, disappointed. Then it moved faster than anything that
large should be able to move. The rifle was torn
from the huntsman's hands and bent in half like a

(49:20):
plastic toy. His knife appeared and disappeared, just as quickly.
Flung through the window into the storm, the creature grabbed
his arm and squeezed. The bones snapped like dry twigs,
compound fracture, white hot agony. The huntsman screamed and dropped
to his knees, but it wasn't done. It dragged him
to his feet by his broken arm, sending fresh waves

(49:43):
of pain.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
Through his body.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Then it pulled him close, so close he could see
into its eyes. They were brown flecked with gold, almost human.
Almost It spoke again, and this time the meaning was
crystal clear. The others are way reading. It dragged him
out into the storm. Through the driving rain, illuminated by lightning,
He saw them, dozens of them, all sizes, all ages,

(50:10):
standing in a circle around the cabin, watching, waiting, witnessing
a tribunal, a judgment, a family dealing with a threat
to their territory. The large one, the elder, the huntsman realized,
dragged him to the center of the circle, forced him
to his knees in the mud. The rain was so

(50:31):
heavy he could barely breathe. Lightning struck a tree nearby,
showering them with sparks and splinters. The elder spoke to
the others in their language of tones and gestures. The
huntsmen couldn't understand the words, but he understood the meaning.
It was telling them about him, about what he'd done,
about the forty six lives he'd taken. One by one,

(50:53):
the others approached, each looked at him, into him, through him,
seeing every kill, every cruelty, every moment of suffering he'd inflicted.
Some turned away in disgust. Others growled low in their throats.
The young ones were held back by their parents, protected
from getting too close to such corruption. Finally, the elder

(51:15):
dragged him to the edge of the circle, to where
the forest opened onto a cliff.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
Devils pour over. He realized a.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Sixty foot waterfall plunging into a churning pool. The storm
had turned it into a monster of white water and violence.
The elder held him at the edge, letting him look
down into that boiling chaos. Then it spoke, one last time,
you showed them no mercy, We show you the same. Wait,
the huntsman gasped, Please, I'll leave I'll never come back,

(51:47):
I'll never kill again. The elder pulled him back.

Speaker 3 (51:50):
From the edge.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
For a moment, hope flared in the huntsman's chest. Then
the elder vocalized again, Did they beg the huntsmen closed
his eyes. He knew the answer. They had all begged,
every one of the forty six, and he had savored
their pleas, collected them like treasures. Yes, did you listen? No,

(52:13):
then neither do we. But it didn't throw him over. Instead,
it dragged him back into the forest through the rain
and mud and darkness. His broken arm screamed with every movement.
His mind was fracturing under the weight of terror and pain.
They brought him to a grove of ancient cedars, where
the canopy was so thick that even the storm's fury

(52:34):
was muted. There, carved into the largest tree were marks,
crude but deliberate, Nine vertical lines each crossed through. Below them,
a tenth line, still fresh, sap, still weeping from the bark.
The elder pressed the huntsman's face close to the marks,
making sure he understood nine before him. He was the tenth,

(52:58):
the last of this cycle. Then it began. What happened
in that grove is not something that should be described
in detail. Some horrors are better left to imagination. What
matters is that it was justice, not cruelty, punishment not torture.
The Huntsman experienced what his victims had experienced, the fear,

(53:18):
the pain, the terrible knowledge that no help was coming.
When it was over, when the storm had passed and
dawn light was creeping through the canopy, they scattered his
remains across a mile of riverbank, not hidden, displayed a
message to any who might follow in his footsteps. The
official report, filed by ranger Patricia Morse, blamed the storm

(53:42):
flash flood. It said body caught in debris flow, traumatic
disarticulation from being battered against rocks, natural causes, tragic accident.
She derived at the scene first, having been mysteriously directed
there by an anonymous tip. She'd seen the truth of
what happened. The tracks, dozens of them, all sizes, forming

(54:04):
a clear trail from the abandoned cabin to the grove
to the riverbank. The marks on the largest cedar, the
deliberate placement of the remains. She had also found the
Huntsman's journal, wrapped in plastic and placed where she would
find it. Forty six confessions, forty six families who would
finally have closure, forty six cases that could be closed.

(54:26):
But she burned the journal after memorizing the important details.
She erased the tracks. She crafted a story that the
world would believe because the truth was too large, too strange,
too threatening to the comfortable lie that humans were alone
at the top of the food chain. Before she left,
she added her own mark to the cedar not carved.

(54:46):
She wouldn't dare to face their memorial, but placed at
the base her ranger badge, a promise.

Speaker 3 (54:53):
She would watch too.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
She would know the signs, she would turn away when
justice older than law did its necessary work. As she
hiked out, she heard wood knocks echoing across the valley,
not warnings, this time acknowledgment, approval, partnership. The Watchers had
found an ally in the human world, someone who understood
that some predators couldn't be stopped by human justice, someone

(55:19):
who knew that monsters required monsters to stop them. Six
months have passed since the storm that killed the man
everyone knew, as Tom Bradley, Blackwood Gorge is peaceful. Families
hike the trails without fear. Children splash in streams and
chase butterflies. Couples camp under the stars and make memories
that will last lifetimes. The Park Service reports that disappearances

(55:43):
have dropped to zero. They credit increased patrols and better
safety education. The tourists nod and follow the mark trails,
and never venture into the deep woods, where the shadows
move wrong and the silence has weight. Patricia Morse continues
her work, but with new purpose. She's become an expert
at reading the signs others miss, the fresh scratches on

(56:05):
trees that mark territorial boundaries, the arrangement of stones that
indicate approval or warning, the wood knocks that tell her
when something dark has entered her forest. Three times in
six months, she's had conversations with hikers who made her
instinct scream, people whose eyes held that particular emptiness, whose
questions were a little too specific about isolated trails and

(56:27):
emergency response times. Each time, she's told them about the
storm that killed Tom Bradley, about the bodies that are
sometimes found scattered along the river bank, about the things
in the deep woods that don't appear in any field guide.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
Two of them.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Laughed it off and left anyway, never to be seen
again in Blackwood Gorge. Their cars were found in parking
areas fifty miles away, at different parks in different states.
They'd heard her real message and chosen safer hunting grounds.
One didn't listen. His name was Richard Van, though that
was almost certainly an alias. He'd come to Blackwood Gorge

(57:04):
in October, asking all the wrong questions, showing all the
wrong interests. Patricia had warned him, but he'd smiled that
empty smile and headed up the trail anyway. The wood
knock started before he'd gone a mile. By mile two,
he was being herded back toward the trailhead. By mile three,
he was running. He reached his car, covered in sweat

(57:25):
and shaking with terror, started the engine and drove away
without looking back. Patricia found the message the next morning,
Stones arranged in a spiral at the trailhead. In the
center a driver's license, not Richard Vance's. That identity was fake.
The license belonged to Amy Patterson, a college student who

(57:46):
disappeared in Montana three years ago, one of his victims.
The watchers had known what he was the moment he'd
entered their territory. They'd smelled the death on him, seen
through whatever mask he wore. They'd let him run, not
out of mercy, but as a message, we know who
you are, we know what you've done. Come back and

(58:06):
join the others. Patricia added Amy Patterson's information to her
private files and made sure her family received an anonymous
tip about where to search for their daughter's remains. The
Watchers couldn't bring back the dead, but they could provide closure, justice, balance. Sometimes,
late at night, Patricia wonders about them, the Watchers. How

(58:28):
long have they been here? How many are there? Do
they exist in other wilderness areas? Or is Blackwood Gorge
special Somehow? She's done research, careful and discreet. Native legends
speak of them, though never directly, always in whispers and warnings.
The first People, the old ones, the keepers of the balance,

(58:50):
different names for the same truth that humans have never
been alone in the wilderness, never been unmatched, never been unwatched.
She's found patterns and missing persons cases going back decades,
Clusters of disappearances that suddenly stop, serial killers who vanish
without a trace, Predators who simply cease to exist, Always

(59:12):
in wilderness areas, always in places where the forest is
old and deep and full of shadows. The FBI has
noticed the patterns too. They have a term for it,
spontaneous predator cessation events. They have theories about vigilante groups
or territorial serial killers who target other killers. They have
no idea how close and how far from the truth

(59:34):
they are.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
The truth is.

Speaker 2 (59:36):
This Blackwood Gorge belongs to them, the watchers, the first people,
the ones who were here before humans gave names to
the mountains, and will be here long after humans have
forgotten those names. They're not bigfoot or Sasquatch or any
of the names we've tried to pin on them. Those
are just labels for something we don't understand, attempts to

(59:56):
categorize the uncategorizable. They're not animals, though they're not human either.
There's something else, something that exists in the space between
what we know and.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
What we fear.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
They have their own language, their own culture, their own laws,
laws older than human civilization, laws written in the movement
of seasons and the growth of trees, and the bones
of those who violated the natural order. They don't hate humans.
If they did, the trails of Blackwood Gorge would be
littered with bodies. They coexist with us. Mostly, they watch

(01:00:30):
us with the patience of stone and the wisdom of
ancient things. They judge us by standards we barely comprehend.
But when we bring our darkness into their domain, when
we hunt our own kind for sport or pleasure, or
whatever sick need drives human predators, then they act not
with cruelty, but with finality, not with hatred, but with purpose.

(01:00:53):
They are the balance, the natural correction to human evil,
the reminder that we are not gods in the world wilderness,
just another species that can be judged and found wanting
and stay tuned for more sasquatchy otta see, We'll be
right back after these messages. The Huntsmen learned this truth

(01:01:15):
in his final moments. Nine others learned it before him,
and someday when the count begins again, and eleventh will
learn it too, because there will always be predators among humans,
always those who see isolation as opportunity and wilderness as
a hunting ground. But in Blackwood Gorge they'll find something else,

(01:01:36):
something that's been waiting patiently in the shadows between the trees,
something that knows the difference between a lost hiker and
a stalking killer, something that has been judging humanity since
before we had words for justice. The tourists come and go,
taking photos and memories. The rangers patrol their roots and
file their reports. The town of Cedar Falls prospers from

(01:01:58):
outdoor recreation. Red life goes on as it always has.
But in the deep woods, where cell phones don't work
and helicopters can't land, where the trees are so thick
that noon looks like twilight, they're watching, always watching, generation
after generation, century after century, keeping their vigil. They know

(01:02:19):
every trail, every camp, every visitor. They can smell fear
and guilt and intention. They can read the human heart
like we read weather signs. They know who belongs and
who doesn't, who comes seeking beauty and who comes seeking blood.
And when someone crosses that invisible line. When a human
predator enters their domain with darkness in their heart, the

(01:02:43):
ancient justice of Blackwood Gorge awakens. The wood knocks echo
across the valleys, the massive prints appear in soft earth.
The stalker becomes the stalked, and the balance is maintained.
I told you at the beginning that this may be
a true story. Maybe you belie leave me Maybe you didn't.
Maybe you're telling yourself right now that it's just a

(01:03:04):
campfire tale, a story designed to give you chills on
an October night. That's fine. Skepticism is healthy, probably safer.
But if you ever find yourself in the Pacific Northwest,
driving through those endless forests and you see a sign
for Blackwood Gorge, remember this story. Remember what I've told
you about what watches from the shadows. Remember that some

(01:03:27):
places have their own law, their own justice, their own
way of dealing with those who bring darkness into the wild.
If you go there, and many do, it's beautiful country.
Go with respect, go with wonder, Go with the intention
to leave only footprints and take only pictures. The watchers
have no quarrel with innocent visitors. You might hike for

(01:03:50):
days and never know they're there, never see anything more
unusual than a deer or a hawk. But if you
go with other intentions, if you look at those isolated
trails and see opportunity, if you notice how far you
are from help and feel excitement rather than caution, If
you carry darkness in your heart and think the wilderness
will hide your crimes, then know this, You're not alone

(01:04:14):
out there. You're never alone. Something ancient and patient and
terrible is watching from the spaces between the trees, something
that has judged nine of your kind before and found
them guilty. Something that's ready to make you number ten
or number eleven, or whatever number we're on now. I
don't keep track anymore. The count is theirs to keep.

(01:04:37):
Carved in bark and bone and the memory of mountains.
The locals have a saying in Cedar Falls. They tell
it to tourists heading up to the gorge, usually with
a smile that doesn't quite reach their eyes. Respect the
wilderness it's watching. Most people think it's about bears, or
weather or getting lost. Good let them think that the

(01:04:58):
truth is too large, too strange, too threatening to the
comfortable lie that humans are in charge. We're not in charge.
We never were. We're just another species sharing this planet
with things we don't understand. Things that were here first,
things that will be here last, things that maintain the
balance in ways we can barely comprehend. In most places,

(01:05:20):
we've driven them back or driven them extinct, made the
world safe for our particular brand of civilization. But in
places like Blackwood Gorge, they remain patient, eternal, necessary, because
without them, what would stop the Tom Bradley's of the world,
the huntsmen who walk among us, wearing masks of normality,

(01:05:42):
waiting for chances to reveal their true nature. Human justice
fails as often as it succeeds. But the justice of
the Gorge never fails, never hesitates, never shows mercy to
those who showed none. Some call them monsters, some call
them guardians, some call them miss I call them the
reason Blackwood Gorge is safe for families to camp and

(01:06:04):
children to explore, and couples to make memories under the stars.
They're the invisible line between civilization and savagery, the thing
that hunts the hunters, the balance between predator and prey.

Speaker 3 (01:06:18):
They're real.

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
They're out there right now, moving through mist and shadow,
checking their territory, maintaining their vigil. They know every trail,
every camp site, every visitor. They know the difference between
a photographer and a predator, between a hiker and a
hunter of humans. And if you're the wrong kind of visitor,
if you come to their forest with the wrong kind

(01:06:39):
of intentions, they'll know that too. The wood knocks will
start before you've gone a mile. The feeling of being
watched will grow with every step, and if you're smart,
if you have any instinct for survival, you'll turn around.
You'll walk back to your car, You'll drive away and
never return. Because the alternative is joining the huntsmen and

(01:07:00):
the nine who came before him, becoming a number carved
in bark, a lesson for the next fool who thinks
the wilderness will hide their crimes. This is the truth
of Blackwood Gorge. This is why it's safe. This is
why predators who enter those woods with dark intentions should know.
You're not the apex predator there. You never were. Something

(01:07:21):
older watches those trails, something that remembers when the mountains
were young and humans were just another prey species scrambling
for survival, Something that has decided in its ancient wisdom
to maintain the balance, to protect the innocent, to remove
the guilty. Some justice happens in courtrooms, some happens in prisons,

(01:07:42):
and some happens in the deep woods, where the trees
are thick and the shadows move wrong, where massive shapes
walk upright through the mist, where wood knocks echo across
valleys like drums of judgment. That's the justice of Blackwood Gorge, ancient, absolute, final.
The watchers are out there right now, moving through their territory,

(01:08:05):
checking the trails, reading the signs, waiting for the next
predator to reveal themselves, waiting for number eleven. Or maybe
they've already found them. Maybe somewhere in those seventeen thousand
acres of wilderness, another Tom Bradley is learning what it
feels like to be hunted.

Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
Maybe the wood.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
Knocks are echoing right now. Maybe justice is being served
in the old way, the permanent way, the way that
insures the innocent can walk those trails without fear.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
I hope so.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
Because as long as the watchers maintain their vigil, as
long as they patrol those ancient paths, as long as
they remember the names and faces of every predator who
thought the wilderness would hide their crimes, Blackwood Gorge remains
what it should be, a place of beauty, not horror,
a place where families make memories, not where killers make victims,

(01:08:57):
a place where justice wears no badge and needs no
court room. But is no less real for that, more real,
perhaps more final, more certain. The storm that killed Tom
Bradley was six months ago. The forest has reclaimed the
places where violence touched it. New growth covers old scars.
The trails are peaceful, the campgrounds are full of laughter.

(01:09:20):
But in the deep woods, if you know where to look,
you can still find the tree, the ancient cedar with
ten marks carved in its bark. Ten lines each cross
through ten predators who learn too late that in Blackwood
Gorge humans are not the apex predator. Below those marks,
fresh bark grows, unmarred, waiting because there will be an

(01:09:43):
eleventh somewhere out there. Another predator is developing their taste
for hunting humans. Another monster is practicing their craft. Another
Tom Bradley is perfecting their mask of normality, and eventually, inevitably,
they'll come to Blackwood Gorge. They'll see those isolated trails
and deep forests and think they found the perfect hunting ground.

Speaker 3 (01:10:05):
They'll be right. It is the perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Hunting ground, just not for them. The watchers are patient.
They've been patient for thousands of years. They can wait
a little longer, and when the next predator comes, When
number eleven enters their domain with darkness in their heart
and blood on their mind, the ancient justice of Blackwood
Gorge will wake once more. The wood Knox will echo,

(01:10:28):
the hunt will begin, and the balance will be maintained
forever and always. In the deep woods, in the mist shadows,
in the silence between heart beats, this is their forest.
These are their laws, and their justice is absolute. Remember that, friend,
as we head deeper into this spooky season. Remember it

(01:10:51):
when you're walking alone and feel eyes on your back.
Remember it when you hear sounds in the darkness that
don't belong to any animal you know. Most of all,
remember it if you ever find yourself in Blackwood Gorge
standing at a trailhead, reading the warning signs about bears
and weather and staying on marked paths. Those aren't the
real warnings. The real warning is older, simpler, carved in

(01:11:15):
the bark of ancient trees and written in the arrangement
of stones. We are watching. We know what you are,
we know what you intend. Come with respect, leave with memories,
come with darkness, never leave at all. That's the law
of Blackwood Gorge. That's the justice of the watchers. That's
the truth that keeps the trail safe and the innocent protected.

(01:11:37):
And that's the story I wanted to share with you
as we begin our journey into the dark months ahead.
Next time, I'll tell you about something different. But those
are stories for another night tonight. Remember Blackwood Gorge, Remember
the huntsmen, remember the watchers, And remember some monsters need
to exist to stop the other monsters, to keep the balance,

(01:12:01):
to ensure that evil, when it walks upright on two
legs into the wilderness, meets something stronger, older, and far
more terrible than itself, something that doesn't care about rights
or laws or second chances, something that only knows one truth.
Predators who hunt the innocent will themselves be hunted in
Blackwood Gorge. That's not a threat or a warning. It's

(01:12:24):
a promise, a promise kept for thousands of years, a
promise that will be kept for thousands more. Because the
watchers are eternal. The forest is patient, and justice, true,
justice never sleeps. It just waits in the shadows between
the trees, massive and silent, watching for the next fool

(01:12:44):
who thinks the wilderness is his hunting ground, Waiting for
number eleven. Or maybe they've already found them. Maybe right now,
as you listen to this, somewhere in those dark woods,
justice is being served. I hope so, for all our sakes.
I hope so, because as long as the Watchers keep
their vigil, the rest of us can sleep a little

(01:13:06):
easier knowing that somewhere out there, something stands between us
and the Tom Bradley's of the world, something with eight
foot strides and eighteen inch footprints, something that knows the
difference between human and monster, something that maintains the balance,
one predator at a time. This is the truth of
Blackwood Gorge. This is why the trails are safe. This

(01:13:30):
is the story that needed to be told. And now
you know, sweet dreams friend, and remember, if you ever
find yourself in the Pacific Northwest and you see that
sign for Blackwood Gorge and you feel that little thrill
of curiosity, go ahead, visit hike those beautiful trails, camp
under those ancient trees. Just make sure you go with

(01:13:53):
a pure heart and clean intentions, because something will be
watching from the shadows, something that knows exactly what you are,
and God help you if it doesn't like what it sees.
The Watchers are real. The gorge remembers everything, and justice,
ancient and terrible. Justice walks on two legs in the
deep woods of Blackwood Gorge forever and always watching, waiting.

Speaker 3 (01:14:19):
Ready bo