December 3, 2025 • 43 mins
Heads up, everyone — over the coming weeks I’ll be releasing a special Wednesday series centered on the South Mountain region of North Carolina. Jerry will be sharing some truly incredible encounter stories from in and around that area, and each one adds a new layer to the mystery that seems to live in those woods. In this first installment, we’re taken into the South Mountains through a terrifying family experience that began as an ordinary camping trip and turned into something they’ll never forget.
As night settled in, strange wood knocks started echoing through the trees, followed by unsettling “whoops” and other sounds that didn’t match anything familiar. The atmosphere shifted fast from quiet wilderness to a feeling of being surrounded, watched, and pushed to the edge of panic. What happened out there left them shaken, confused, and certain that something unknown had moved in close. Jerry also shares additional encounters from across different generations, showing that whatever people are running into in the South Mountains isn’t tied to one era or one family.
A mid-century story follows a farm boy confronted by a hulking presence with glowing red eyes, an early-1900s account recalls a grandfather being chased through the woods by multiple creatures, and a modern encounter describes two men hearing disturbing sounds and briefly seeing something near their home that they still can’t explain. Together, these stories paint a chilling picture of a region where the unexplained has never really stopped happening — and where the line between legend and reality feels uncomfortably thin.
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As night settled in, strange wood knocks started echoing through the trees, followed by unsettling “whoops” and other sounds that didn’t match anything familiar. The atmosphere shifted fast from quiet wilderness to a feeling of being surrounded, watched, and pushed to the edge of panic. What happened out there left them shaken, confused, and certain that something unknown had moved in close. Jerry also shares additional encounters from across different generations, showing that whatever people are running into in the South Mountains isn’t tied to one era or one family.
A mid-century story follows a farm boy confronted by a hulking presence with glowing red eyes, an early-1900s account recalls a grandfather being chased through the woods by multiple creatures, and a modern encounter describes two men hearing disturbing sounds and briefly seeing something near their home that they still can’t explain. Together, these stories paint a chilling picture of a region where the unexplained has never really stopped happening — and where the line between legend and reality feels uncomfortably thin.
Check Out Jerry's Tik Tok
Get Our FREE Newsletter
Get Brian's Books
Leave Us A Voicemail
Visit Our Website
Support Our Sponsors
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.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
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?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Or was it was?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
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.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Quice, you better.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hello, hit thebody out here?
Speaker 4 (01:05):
What quin?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I'm out there?
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I thought of a.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Bench about tick forty nine.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Easy an out there?
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yeah, I'm walking right.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Hey.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
If you caught my recent interview with Jerry on the
episode titled The Booger's on South Mountain, you already know
this man has been collecting encounter stories from that area
for years, and let me tell you, we barely scratch
the surface during that conversation. Jerry's got more stories than
we could possibly cover in a single sit down, and
every one of them comes straight from folks who've lived
(01:33):
and hunted and wandered through those mountains their whole lives.
So here's what's happening. Jerry was kind enough to give
me permission to share stories from his TikTok channel JR. Millwood,
which I'll link for you down in the show notes.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Every Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
For the next several weeks, I'll be bringing you in
counter accounts from in and around the South Mountain area
of North Carolina. These are the stories the locals tell,
the ones passed down through families, the kind of accounts
that make you think twice before heading into those woods
after dark. And here's the part I'm really excited about.
Jerry's invited me out to his research area in early December,
(02:11):
So with any luck, I'll be boots on the ground
out there soon and maybe, just maybe I'll get to
experience these boogers for myself. We'll see what happens. All right,
let's get into it. Here's the first installment of Encounter
Stories from the South Mountains.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
All A, welcome everybody to the first episode of my
series The Strange and Unexplained Phenomena of the South Mountains,
North Carolina. I'm your host, researcher, and investigator and content creator.
I appreciate all of you for joining us. Let's jump
right into this episode that I have titled A Family's
Night of Terror. Quick word about the South Mountains. The
(02:48):
South Mountains is a mountain range and it covers roughly
one hundred thousand acres. It is in the counties of
North Carolina Cleveland County, Burke County, Rutherford County, and McDowell County.
The surrounding areas of wilderness around the South Mountains in
the periphery of the South Mountains easily encompasses another one
(03:08):
hundred thousand acres of wilderness and rural farmland, creek bottoms,
deep river bottoms. The terrain is beautiful, but in places
it's unforgiving and very steep. It's Appalachian forest, and we
are the first step to the Smoky Mountains. It's a
paradise for a wilderness lovers, hikers, campers, hunters. The account
(03:30):
shared to me by this family that I'm about to
describe proofs that around here the paradise can be turned
into a nightmare after the sun goes down. The story
begins on the afternoon of July the twenty sixth of
this year. A family who, by the way, that I
know very well and I'm friends with them. They arrived
(03:51):
here to camp in an undisclosed location. I will not
disclose the exact location, although it is very near to
where I sit right now as I share this account
with you. Send in a creek bottom of a small
stream that feeds one of the major creeks here in
northwest Cleveland County, very isolated area, and I'm not going
to reveal the family's identity either. I will respect their
(04:14):
request for anonymity. But they arrived that beautiful July day.
They began to set up camp in the secluded spot,
and I joined them, and the sound of their children
laughing and playing the forest. They were just having a
great time. Mom, dad, twenty two year old son, nineteen
year old son, nine year old son, and seven year
(04:34):
old daughter. They got camp set up, just a wonderful day.
As nighttime started approaching, they lit a campfire, and I
bid them adieu and left them. I wanted them to
enjoy their family time, and as they reported, they just
sat relaxing and talking about whatever subject came up. The
kids were playing. They had no idea the terror that
(04:56):
they were on experience that night. As the fire died
down and the conversation died down to a more hushed voice,
they begin to hear sounds. Now, it's important to note
that they were not unaware of the reputation of this area.
They were very educated on things. The dad experienced outdoorsman
(05:18):
and hunter, and he has hunted this area and he
has heard sounds like I'm about to describe, So they
were unexpected. But first they begin to hear the sound
of a distant wood knock. Now, that is a well
known sound in the world of cryptid investigation, and it's
simply where something or somebody picks up a piece of
(05:40):
wood and that strikes a tree very distinct soil. They
heard that, and then from another location in the distance,
they heard more wood knock and it stopped. And as
they listen, then they begin to hear whoops. I will
try to mimic that sound for you. It's a well
known sound again in the area of crypt investigation, but
(06:02):
it sounds something like this. I don't do it justice.
It's far creepier in real life. And they begin to
hear that and They report to me that they were
put on guard, but they were excited that they got
to hear this. They had to anticipated not getting to
(06:23):
hear it because I told them the chances of it
happening was probably pretty slim. So they were excited and
they began to drift off to sleep. The fire had
died down even more. Dad went out first and soon
was sleeping. Mom was drifting off to sleep, but she
was suddenly awakened by her children and they alerted her
(06:44):
with some very ominous words, and they said, Mom, there's
something in the woods. And so she came out of
her tent to investigate, and suddenly there was a voice.
This is very close to them, very close to their
camp inside the woods, across the crew, but very close.
And she reports to me that this language that she
(07:05):
was hearing was not quote. It was not a human language.
And Mom is a very educated and very intelligent person,
and I believe her when she says that. But she
said it was not a human language. She said she
responded in a strange way with only things she thought
of at the time, and said she said that she
(07:29):
out loud, stated, I am sorry if we disturbed you,
and we were making too much voice. And in reply
to that, from a second direction, a different source, she
heard a voice speaking this same strange language and it
sounded angry. And then the first voice from the first
location said something else in this strange language, and then
(07:52):
that was it. They heard no more of the language anymore.
They were up and they were all duard and alert,
and they begin to hear walking near their camp in
the woods. Now, the husband being an experienced outdoorsman at hunter,
he reported to me that it was something walking on
two feet. And then from a second direction they heard
(08:14):
the same thing of something walking on two feet in
the woods, not far from their camp at all. And
then from a third direction behind them, and it became
very obvious that they were surrounded. And they huddled and
they were terrified. It's happened to me, and it is
a terrifying feeling being in the dark woods being surrounded
(08:34):
by something and you don't know what that something is.
And they debated on what to do, so Dad decided
that they would just stay in place, huddle together. They
were armed, but he said that being armed didn't do
anything to help alleviate the fear. And I understand that
the walking from the three different directions continued for what
(08:55):
seemed like an eternity, and they endured it. They wrote
it tonight. They were afraid to try to leave. They
were afraid to do anything other than sit there and watch.
And they began packing up thirty minutes after they stopped
hearing the sounds of these things walking around them, And
(09:16):
that was well before son. By sun up, they were
packed up and leaving the area. So he texted me
and asked me to call him, and they told me
the story over the phone that morning, and I heard
the terror and the fright and their voices. I asked,
did dis language sound like gibberish? And they said no.
The mom said no, it sounded like some form of communication.
(09:37):
It just wasn't human. So I sent them a link
to what is called the Sierra Sounds. It was some
tapes made in the nineteen seventies in the Sierra Nevada
Mountains of California, and you can easily find that on
TikTok or whatever platform. You can google it and you'll
find these tapes and you'll get to hear them for
their cell. The family still talks about it. They bring
it up often, and I can tell that they are
(09:58):
deeply impacted. But oddly enough, they have asked if they
could come in camp again at a later date, and
they've asked if I would come camp with him and
maybe bring somebody else. But that's what happens when you
have your own experience, you kind of get bit by
the bug, so to speak, and you be in the
wann Itchers. So that's their story, and I believe every
(10:21):
word of it. This is a Dark Roads and red Eyes.
In the summer of twenty twenty one, I was approached
by an elderly gentleman who said that he had an
encounter many years earlier that he wanted to tell me about,
as a matter of fact, the words he uses to
get off his chest. He said that he had not
spoken of it since the night it happened, the night
that he described to his father what happened. So we
sat down and talked, and I listened to the man's stories.
(10:44):
I saw his eyes glaze over as he went back
in time. I would say that almost immediately that you
could see a fear in his face. He said November
nineteen fifty two, he was fourteen years old and was
living on a small family farm northeastern Rotherford County, which
was budded right up against the South Mountains. That at
that particular night, he was getting ready to go to bed,
(11:06):
and his father came to him and said that he
needed him to go down to the shed and check
the gas valve on the tractor, and said that it
was about a quarter mile from the house down a
little narrow dirt road, So that immediately he was frightened
to do that. He was scared to do that because
the local guidelines was you simply didn't go outside at
(11:28):
night far away from the house unless you absolutely had to.
But also the encounters and the stories that his grandfather
had shared with and regarding a wampus, which was just
an old fashioned word for a booger or a monster.
The grandpa's stories will be included in a future episode.
But he was also raised that if an elder asked
you to do something, that you did it. So he
(11:50):
pulled his overalls on and he grabbed a lantern, and
he lit the lantern and he went out. He said,
immediately upon going out of the house into the darkness
that he felt just a sense of uneasiness that was
very uncomfortable, just a bad feeling in general, and that
he chalked it up to his mind trying to play
games with him. That he was determined not to be
a scaredy cat. He said, as he walked down that
(12:12):
dirt road and he started this journey down to the
shed in the barn area, that feeling increased, the bad feeling,
a feeling that he was being watched by somebody. That
it just got worse with every step that he took.
He said, as he approached the gate to this area,
that he heard off to his right an animal sound,
(12:33):
and I asked him to describe it. He said it
was an animal sound he had never heard before, that
it sounded like a sick owl, only with a really
deep voice. And I further pressed him, and he made
the sound of it, and he continued his story. As
he was trying to get the gate unfastened. He said
he was already nearly to a state of panic and
his hands were shaken as he was trying to get
(12:55):
that chain unhooked. That he heard something the walk just
behind the sh shed this barn area. He got through
the gate and he got to the shed where the
tractor was, and that he was immediately overcome by this
foul stench. He said that he had smelled it a
few times in the past, only it was very faint.
But he said that night it was so strong that
(13:16):
it was nauseating. And I asked him to describe the
odor to me, and he said that it was smell
like a pig that had been watering in a pig
pen that was full of rotten bodies. That's pretty characteristic
of that smell in terms of correlating it with what
other people have reported. But that as he got to
the tractor, he said, his lantern down and he looked
(13:38):
under there for where that valve was, and as he
began to move the valve with his hands were shaken.
That he heard the walking again close to him, and
that stench was even stronger. He managed to get that
valve turned off. He said, it seemed like an eternity
getting that valve to shut off, but he got it,
he said, picked his lantern up, and he hurried back
to the gate and he was trying to close the
(13:59):
gate and heads shaken and he was fumbling that chain around.
He finally got it latched, and he again heard the footsteps,
only they seemed to be paralleling him. That it was
just out of the reach of his lantern, out into
the pasture beside that shed. He said that he turned
around in before he knew that he was running, but
the problem was he was carrying that lantern, and you
(14:21):
can't see very far ahead of you carrying a lanner
five six feet something like that. He forced himself to
slow down. He said, the oddist thought popped in his mind.
His daddy had this old plow setting beside the dirt road,
and that he pictured running into that thing in the dark,
and nobody wants to run into an iron plow with
their shin. He said it forced himself to stop running
(14:43):
and was at a quick pace, and that as he
went up the dirt road, that plow came into view
and one more step revealed that someone. He said he
thought someone was standing behind the plow, but another step
revealed in his words that it was not somebody, that
it was something.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Stay tuned for morseasquatch Oat to see.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
We'll be right back after these messages. And I asked
him to describe it. He said it was very big,
seven eight foot tall or even taller, and that it
looked to be covered in a dark colored hair. He
said except for the face. He said he could see
(15:26):
the mouth, he could see the eyes, and he said
it was the eyes that to this day, all these
years later, he was fourteen years old in nineteen fifty two.
Here it is the early two thousands, and he said
that it still to this day makes him have lightmares
to think about those eyes looking at him. I asked
him to describe it. He said, as he held that
lantern up, that those eyes shined a red and that
(15:49):
it was just staring at him, and that it would
blink and turn its head off to one side, turn
it cock its head to the other side, and he
said that in his words, he said he couldn't go anywhere.
He felt paralyzed, And his exact words was that he
said he felt like he was standing in two deep postholes.
Said he couldn't yell, that he couldn't move a muscle,
(16:10):
and that thing was just staring at him and moving
its head a little bit. He said that it grunted,
and I asked him to describe the grunt. He said
it was a very deep version of something like you
would hear out of a boarhog. But he said, finally
he was opening his mouth. Nothing was coming out, and
finally something came out. He was yelling for his father,
and he finally was able to vocalize it. He said,
(16:30):
by then he was shaking so bad that his heart
was going to beat out of his chest, and that
when he yelled that, the thing moved its head and
grunted again and stared at him for another couple of seconds,
and then just calmly turned and walked away. He said
that had approached the fence just beside the dirt road.
He said it stepped over the fence. He said, it
(16:53):
didn't jump the fence. It didn't have to have any
effort getting over the fence. He just stepped over the
four foot fence, walked into the darkness, and as soon
as he lost sight of it, he started running. He said,
if I ran into something, I was just going to
run into it. But he ran all the way back
to the house, screaming for his father. His father come
out the back door onto the back porch and met
him at the steps and said, what's wrong. What's going on?
(17:17):
He started telling me. The father said, lower your voice,
and he began to tell his father what happened. His
father said, I don't want you to ever forget this.
He said, if you ever go back out at night again,
you take my pistol. If I can't go with you,
you take somebody. If somebody can't go with you, you
have that pistol on you. But never forget this night.
And he said that his father told him never speak
(17:39):
of this again to anybody, and that his father also
said that they would talk more about it later, and
they did. I'll share that part of this in a
future episode. But he said that this day that he
has an nyightmares about those red eyes real quick. An
elderly couple came to me in the winter of two
thousand and in twenty two and said that they had
(18:02):
an encounter that night before. This was a November of
twenty twenty two, and that they was riding up a
road here in this area north of kaser and as
they went up a hill off to the right, he
said he noticed this large person. He said, as he
got closer, he said, it was way too large to
be a man, and he said, I seen that it
was covered in the hair. He thought have slowed down
(18:24):
because I was afraid it was going to step out
in front of him. As they approached it, it turned
its head and looked at him, and when the lights
hid its eyes that they shone red, and him and
his wife were both shaken and said we'll never go
out after dark again. Now, I want to take your
attention back to an elderly friend of mine a couple
of years ago related to me the story of when
he was a kid in the late fifties, late one night,
(18:45):
he got sent down to the barn slash tractor shed
area by his father. He had a horrifying experience. I
also explained that he said his grandfather and his father
had told him later of some incidents in the experiences
that they had. Tonight's is about experience that his grandfather
and his great uncle, his grandfather's brother, an experience that
they had. Matter of fact, it was the first experience
(19:08):
that his grandfather ever spoke of to my friend. The
year was late nineteen sixteen early nineteen seventeen. He said
his grandfather was able to confidently mark that as the
time frame for this incident because he said it was
the winter prior to the United States being involved in
World War One, so that would make it winter of
nineteen sixteen or early in nineteen seventeen. Now, they lived
(19:32):
on the same farm that my friend grew up on.
That farm's been in that family for a number of generations.
Back then, in nineteen sixteen early nineteen seventeen, the grandfather
and his brother had scouted an area into the interior
of the South Mountains that they determined will be a
good area for rabbit hunting and trapping. It was a
creek bottom area, but up on high ground there was
(19:52):
an open field and there was an old homestead there
and it was a small, little, small subsistence farm apparently,
but it was a band, a cabin, a small barn,
spring house, chicken coop, covered pig pen. But they had
to secure permission. Now there's the ethos to this day
in areas like this, especially in the mountains, in the fields,
(20:14):
if you're gonna be on a man's property, you need
to talk, or a woman's property, you need to talk
with them in secure permission. Trouble was, the man did
not live in the immediate area. He lived in town,
and back then town that might as well be on
the other side of the country. They had to wait
until their dad had business in that town to go
with him to find the men. And the families knew
each other, and the man knew them, but they had
(20:35):
to get his permission. So they came when the father
had to go into town, and they went with them,
and they found them in and explained what they were
wanting to do. The grandfather said that the man was
hesitant at first. He said, I know you boys, I
know your trustworthy, I know your families, and you can
do this. You can hunt and trap the area. But
there's some rules you're gonna have to abide by. First
and foremost, he said, do not sleep in any of
(20:57):
the structures located on that old home. Now stop. My friend,
when he was telling me this, I said, do you
know why he said that? And sure enough, the man
explained to him. He said that homestead now belongs to
the dark Ones. Now, come to find out, the dark
Ones is just another term for bigfoot nobby sasquatch booger,
(21:19):
certainly one of the more ominous sounding terms I've ever
heard for a cryptid. But he said the area belonged
to the dark Ones. Now. Secondly, he said, if you
kill any rabbit in the area, leave some rabbit on
the porch of the old cabin. They didn't ask any questions.
They agreed and then begin to plan their two or
three night trip into the interior. They asked their father
(21:42):
about it. They were teenagers, early teenagers. The father said
that interestingly enough, that they couldn't take any of the
hunting dogs, and they couldn't take a mule or donkey
as a pack animal, because he said, they will get
away from you and you will lose them. Too many
animals that has been lost in there. We'll elaborate on
that more in a future episode. And he said, you
boys are absolutely at no point to be split up,
(22:06):
and you're not ever to be without your shotgun, and
you're to take pistols with you. And they agreed. So
the morning came and they left it sun up for
the roughly half day's journey into the interior to get
to this area. They arrived in the early afternoon and
they first set up camp in the woods down below
(22:29):
this open field. They had enough daylight left that they
decided to go out and do some squirrel hunting and
along the way set some traps and they did so.
They had some pretty successful hunting. They got back to camp,
had a bite to eat, son went down and they
called it a night. But at some point in the night.
(22:49):
The grandfather report that they were awakened by the sound
of what he thought sounded like the sound of a
heavy door slamming repeated, and that went on for a while,
and to be followed by, in his words, according to
my friend, it's an all manner of squaling broke out.
Now squaling is just a Southern word for hollering and
yelling in Norway's And that went on into the early
(23:11):
hours of the morning and cost them the better part
of a good night's sleep, but it finally stopped sun up.
The next morning, they built a fire, and they went
out and did some squirrel hunting, and they came back
ate some breakfast, and they started checking their traps, and
they were found that they were very successful, that they
had done very well into trapping. They reset some of
(23:33):
the traps, but also they decided to relocate some of
the traps on the higher ground in the periphery around
that open field where the old homestead was. They took
the traps up there, and along the way they did
some rabbit hunting and was fairly successful of that too.
They had plenty of daylight left, so they decided to
investigate the buildings the old structures there at the old homestead,
(23:59):
and a grandfather of arch that the cabin door was open,
and that there appeared to be some kind of a
nest in there, that there were small branches, pine boughs,
leaves and that type of thing shoved up over into
the corner of the cabin, and that there was a
bit of an odd smell my friends, that he didn't
elaborate best of his memory. They never went past the
(24:21):
threshold of the cabin. I don't expect I would have either.
But as they turned around, was getting ready to start
heading back to camp from the woodline, from the woods
on the periphery of this open field, the grandfather said,
and this is the oddest vocalization I've ever heard described.
He said that it sounds like something in the woods
(24:42):
in a deep, gravelly voice was saying hob hob and
would grunt, hobb and would grunt, And that it stopped.
They had it on back to camp, I'm sure, discussing
what in the world could that noise have been. They
got back to camp and ate some supper, and before
(25:02):
the sun was eating down, it all started more of
this slamming sound. I wonder if that was WOODKNOCKX. I
don't know, I hypothesized, but the howling he described, howling
and whooping, it was closer and closer, it seemed finally
to the point that in the near distance they could
(25:23):
hear from multiple directions the sound of things were running
in the woods. The grandfather said, it just sounded like
somebody was running through the woods, but in several places
around him, and that they would stop and more of
the yelling would continue, and that they even heard more
of this weird sounding hub hub with the grunts, and
(25:45):
it was getting closer and closer to them. The sun
was almost down. They didn't know what to do. We're
gonna pick up from here in part two. Part one
ended on a cliff finger. These two young teenage boys
were in the deep wilderness. They were in the woods,
and they were downhill from high ground and high ground
(26:05):
there was an open field, and in that open field
was an old homestead. They had secured permission from the
property owner to hunt in trap around this abandoned homestead.
The property owner had told him that his request were
that they were not to sleep in any of the
structures because the homestead belonged to the dark ones. You know,
(26:27):
that is a term, just another term for a knobby
or sasquatch or bigfoot or booger. And his second request
was that if they killed any rabbits, that they were
to leave some of the rabbits on the porch of
the old cabin. The boys were in their camp. Something
they visited the camp earlier in the day at rummage
through some things, and they had lost all the traps
(26:48):
they had previously set, but there was one trap that
was brought back by someone or something. It was mangled
and bent, and it was put in their camp. But
they were being approached from up on high ground from
the direction of this old homestead that was yelling, as
the grandfather said, there was time than his account, squalling,
which is just an old word for hollering and screaming
and yelling. But also this strange and always the grandfather
(27:12):
he kept coming up in his account over and over
this strange voice, very deep voice, and this strange sound
of hob hob hobb over and over throughout the night.
And also the strange sound of what he said sounded
like a door slamming, which occurred several times during their encounter.
(27:32):
But they were in their camp. They were being approach
from up on high ground. To make matters worse, on
both their left and the right, they could hear someone
or some things running through the woods closing in on them,
and they had to think quickly. It wasn't an attractive
option to stay in camp and try to fight it out.
They didn't know what they were up against, but they
knew that whatever it was intended them horror. But at
(27:56):
the same time, it was late in the day and
then how much daylight left in the fallt of plunging
headlong into a deep, dark creek bottom because they had
hours and hours to go to get back home. Remember
it was a half a day's height to get there
during the daytime. But at some point, I spect the
moment of decision came, probably spurred on by fear and
sheer necessity and not being overrun, not being attacked. They
(28:19):
grabbed a couple of sacks. They had the shotguns that
they were on with pistols. They left home armed in
such a manner at the request of their father, and
they fled downhill in the direction whilce they originally came
when they came into the area to camp, the direction
going back home. The grandfather said, they got down into
the creek bottom, and interestingly enough, he added that during
(28:40):
all of this, while they were running, he only turned
around and looked back one time, and it was about
the time they reached the creek bottom and they were
running along the creek, he stopped to turn around and look,
and then when he turned back around to start running
in they're standing in front of them, and his words,
was a big booger. Now. He described it as being large,
(29:03):
very large. Harry looked kind of like a man in
the face, but had a mortal pointed head covered in
the hair, and that its hair was gray. That it
just stood there looking at him. The brothers had stopped,
I'm sure out of bewilderment, and shot, but also they
couldn't go back the way they came without wanting the brother.
His brother fired a shotgun blast into the air. The
grandfather said that this creature didn't so much as flinch.
(29:25):
That his brother fired another blast into the air, and
as his brother was reloading, and his brother would later
telling the next two shotgun blasts was going to be
at the creature, but that the creature made a face
at him, in the grandfather's word, made a face at
him and turned around and walked off. Now, during all
of this encounter, which I'm sure lasted seconds thirty seconds,
(29:46):
of men had at the most all of the noise
behind him had stopped the sound of their pursuers, had stopped.
The yelling and the squalling and the whooping, and all
of that had stopped.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see women
right back after these messages.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
But the moment that this thing got out of sight,
grandfather said that it all started back up again. They
could hear the hollering and the yelling and that strange
noise during this whole ordeal, he would hear it ob
and they began running almost completely out of daylight, and
soon they were out of daylight in complete darkness. The
(30:26):
foliage in the creek bottoms of the Appalachian Mountains and
the hills is thick even in the wintertime, bouncing off
of trees and sheer panic. And for hours and hours
these two young boys ran for their lives. And the
grandfather said that it was strange, but sometimes it would
sound like the pursuers were back and off. They could
(30:46):
still hear them. They were still carrying on, but they
would back off, and the moment that him and his
brother would stop and maybe stop running just a walk
to catch their breath, that their pursuers would gain the
grounds on real quickly. Maybe they were playing cat and
mouse with the boys. I don't know. That this went
on into the night, and they finally got out of
(31:09):
that particular creek bottom had crossed through some woods, and
finally they came to the field, and that was the
field was the last thing between them and their home.
They ran into and got about halfway into the field,
and all the sound behind them stopped, and that all
was quiet, and then they both just stopped and looked around,
and they collapsed onto the ground and laid there for
(31:31):
an indeterminate period of time. I was here catching their breath,
just scratched up their clothes, torn exhausted mentally and physically
shaken up. And they finally got themselves together and got
up and made the walk the last stretch to get
to their house. They stopped, and grandfather said they sat
down from in and on the stone steps of the porch,
(31:52):
and then his brother simply said, we shouldn't tell anybody
about this except for Daddy. And that's the way that
it would remain for you years and years until this man,
the one I keep referring to as the grandfather, told
my friend, the elderly man that I met a couple
of years ago, told him later in life about this encounter,
(32:12):
as well as some others. They got up to go
in the house, and just as they were about to
open the door, all of it erupted again, way back
at that wood larn. Grandfather said that it reached the
pitch they had previously reached with the hooping in the highland.
Did it reminded him of the sound a pack of
dogs or pack of wolves would make after they had
(32:35):
made a kill, and they were celebrating. They went into
the house and closed the door, and that that went
on for a number of minutes and finally stopped. They
went to bed and got up the next morning, and
there were questions. Grandfather said, Daddy took him outside and
(32:57):
talked to him, and that they told their dad the
whole story. When the dead said you'll not go back
into that area, None of us will, the grandfather remarked.
He said, all of these years, I keep wondering were
they celebrating that they had chased us out of the
woods or was that their final warning that we wasn't
welcome to come back there? And I only maybe a
little of both. So I've got a couple of other
(33:20):
accounts that this grandfather had shared with my friends about
years ago, and I also have one account that my
friend's father had shared with him, and I'll cover those
in later episodes. But this particular area in question is
apparently a hot spot. I'm going to share with you
the experience of two men dealt with something on a
cold November night that changed their outlook on a number
(33:42):
of things. A uncle and nephew duo. I'm not using
the real names here, but we'll start off with uncle Jeff.
Uncle Jeff lives in this area here south of the
South Mountains mountain chain, just a few miles from the
southern border of the state park. The country boy outdoorsman, hunter, fisher,
(34:02):
camp or hiker, that kind of thing. And then his
nephew Jake, who lives about an hour east of here. Now,
there was a certain period of time that young Jake
would travel up here on Thursdays to spend time with
his uncle, and on those Thursdays they would attend the
local bluegrass church, which is a regular church. They just
do bluegrass music. They don't have a piano. They got
(34:23):
a banger. They got to get to our doghouse base
a man on a fiddle, a doughbro. But Jeff and
his nephew, Jake, had that in common. They were both
bluegrass musicians. Jeff's a bluegrass vocalists. They were both heavily
in the bluegrass so they had that link and they
had a really good relationship for an uncle and a nephew.
(34:44):
And then after each service, Jake would follow his uncle
home Indians stay another couple hours, sometimes on up into
the night, just hanging around, maybe picking cutting up, talking
that kind of thing. But on one particular cold November
night in tw twenty eighteen, things happened as I described.
They went to the service, Jake followed his uncle back
(35:06):
to the house and they spent some time together and
a little after eleven o'clock Jake said, I'm going to
have to go. Uncle Jeff walked him to the door.
They said their goodbyes, and Jeff started the process of
getting ready for bed. He went to plug his phone
up to charge it in at ranked it was his
nephew who in a very frightened and anxious voice simply said,
(35:27):
I need you to get out here right now, and
he hung up. Jeff had fortunately not shed his boots yet.
He grabbed a coat and he got outside, not having
a clue what to expect, and he found his nephew
to simply be standing over in the yard, which is
on high ground. And he walked up to him and said,
what's going on? And his nephew said, pointed across the way,
(35:48):
and he said, listen, something is over there. Sure enough,
in a few seconds, Jeff heard the distinct sound of
something walking in those woods across the way from them.
Now they were on high ground, and then that went
down to a little country road that's a dead end road,
and then a fence, and then about ten yards past
(36:09):
that fence was the woodline. And this woodline was the
starting area of a higher or what in other parts
of the country you might call it a drawl or
a valley, but it was the starting point of a
hollow that was very deep and run all the way
to a major creek here in northern Cleveland County called
Wards Creek. So they listened, and they kept hearing the
(36:30):
sound of something moving, and it was clear to Jeff
that it was something walking on two feet. He made
a mental note at the time that it was heavy footed,
that it seemed to be walking slow and deliberately, and
all the while getting closer and closer to them, And
he told Jake, he said, I've got to run inside
and get my spotlight. And he left Jake there for
(36:51):
just a couple of minutes, and he run in and
found a spotlight, came back outside, and the sound of
the footfalls continued, and he began to spotlight those woods. Now,
keep in mind, though this is November when this happened,
and the leaves were off the trees, it's still so
thick in some of these parts of these woods, with
the big trees, medium trees, saplings, the undergrowth, you can't
(37:12):
see far into them at night, even with the flashlight.
So he just continued to scan with spotlight, trying to
hone in on the source of the sound. It had
stopped getting closer, but it had not stopped. It sounded
as though it was pacing back and forth just inside
the woodline. And as he spotlighted, he stopped because he
(37:34):
thought he saw movement, and he concentrated any focus and
was trying to figure out what, if anything, he was
looking at, and then without warning, there was this angry
sounding guttural, low based yell or shout, followed by what
was described as an ape like sound. And rather than
describe it, I'll just try to mimic it the way
(37:56):
that they mimicked it to me, and it sounded something
like this, oh oh, oh oh. They stopped. He didn't
see anything. He didn't see any movement. Now, we all
face points in life when we have the fight or
flight reaction, and young Jake had the flight reaction, and
(38:17):
he broke out and ran toward the house. Now Jeff,
being an old country boy, he knows if you're out
in the woods in some situation like that and your
buddy runs, the best thing to do is follow him
and ask questions later, and that's what he did. So
they got into the house and they were talking to
each other with what was that? Now they were both
well aware of the Lord. Jeff had actually had some
experiences in the past, and curiosity got the best of them.
(38:41):
If you haven't experienced, that curiosity bug is gonna buite you.
Trust me, it will change things, and that curiosity bug
will get you. They elected to come back outside. Jake said,
let me grab my piece out of my vehicle. He
grabbed a handgun. So at that point in time they
did house some protection. Jeff resumed spotlighting and they could
hear this, the source of this continuing to walk, pacing
(39:05):
back and forth, and it stopped, and after a few
minutes they decided to go downhill, cross that road and
go to that fence, and they still had the relative
safety of about ten yards of clear area between that
fence and the woods. And they got down to the fence.
The walking resumed, except now it was walking away from them,
and it was clear to them that it was descending
(39:27):
back down into the depths of that holler, and it
continued to get more distant. But then they could tell
that it was not moving away from them anymore, and
it was pacing back and forth and back and forth.
They would hear some more of the sounds, and then
it all stopped. Jeff and Jake, after a few minutes,
decided to go back up into the yard on high ground,
(39:49):
and they did, and they heard the steps coming back
up out of the holler toward them closer and closer,
and they knew at that point that it was as
clear as it had been yet. Jeff was faithfully spotlighting
those woods, trying to hone in to see anything that
he could see, and finally it happened. He testifies that
(40:10):
he clearly saw a mouth in an upper chest, and
that the only thing that wasn't covered by hair was
the mouth, and to the best of his knowledge, it
was a reddish brown colored hair. And he was mesmerized
by and caught up in a moment again and looking,
and suddenly the shout, these guttural yells started again with
(40:33):
those ape like noises, and they clearly heard stomping and
the yelling and the stomping, and then he saw what
the spotlight that one of the trees was shaking violently
back and forth. And they felt relatively safe, they had protection,
they had a lot of distance, but both were very uneasy,
and both were very frightened. And that continued for several minutes,
(40:56):
and then finally it stopped. They heard the footsteps. They
heard the footsteps getting more distant and more distant, until
finally they didn't hear them anymore. So they were just
standing there wondering what just happened, Whatever this was, what
was it doing? Was it toying with them. Was it
sending out a clear message this is my area, you
(41:17):
need to leave. But to this day both men are
deeply affected. As a matter of fact, that night Jake said,
I'm not sure if I want to drive out of here.
As a rock gonna come out of the woods. It's
something going to step out in the road. And Uncle
said I'll provide over watch with the spotlight. And Jake
was able to safely leave. But to this day they
are both deeply affected by that. And so would you.
You guys, take care. I'll see you next time.
Speaker 4 (41:40):
They say you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Inside step stepside, Joy this child that chart, everything came
right back, right back Joy for me. Enjoy staying right.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
You come it right away and still still stay. Say
(43:02):
things things, don't doss stass things usss
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.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
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?
Speaker 3 (00:51):
Or was it was?
Speaker 1 (00:52):
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.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Quice, you better.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Hello, hit thebody out here?
Speaker 4 (01:05):
What quin?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
I'm out there?
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I thought of a.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Bench about tick forty nine.
Speaker 4 (01:08):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Easy an out there?
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yeah, I'm walking right.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Hey.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
If you caught my recent interview with Jerry on the
episode titled The Booger's on South Mountain, you already know
this man has been collecting encounter stories from that area
for years, and let me tell you, we barely scratch
the surface during that conversation. Jerry's got more stories than
we could possibly cover in a single sit down, and
every one of them comes straight from folks who've lived
(01:33):
and hunted and wandered through those mountains their whole lives.
So here's what's happening. Jerry was kind enough to give
me permission to share stories from his TikTok channel JR. Millwood,
which I'll link for you down in the show notes.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Every Wednesday.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
For the next several weeks, I'll be bringing you in
counter accounts from in and around the South Mountain area
of North Carolina. These are the stories the locals tell,
the ones passed down through families, the kind of accounts
that make you think twice before heading into those woods
after dark. And here's the part I'm really excited about.
Jerry's invited me out to his research area in early December,
(02:11):
So with any luck, I'll be boots on the ground
out there soon and maybe, just maybe I'll get to
experience these boogers for myself. We'll see what happens. All right,
let's get into it. Here's the first installment of Encounter
Stories from the South Mountains.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
All A, welcome everybody to the first episode of my
series The Strange and Unexplained Phenomena of the South Mountains,
North Carolina. I'm your host, researcher, and investigator and content creator.
I appreciate all of you for joining us. Let's jump
right into this episode that I have titled A Family's
Night of Terror. Quick word about the South Mountains. The
(02:48):
South Mountains is a mountain range and it covers roughly
one hundred thousand acres. It is in the counties of
North Carolina Cleveland County, Burke County, Rutherford County, and McDowell County.
The surrounding areas of wilderness around the South Mountains in
the periphery of the South Mountains easily encompasses another one
(03:08):
hundred thousand acres of wilderness and rural farmland, creek bottoms,
deep river bottoms. The terrain is beautiful, but in places
it's unforgiving and very steep. It's Appalachian forest, and we
are the first step to the Smoky Mountains. It's a
paradise for a wilderness lovers, hikers, campers, hunters. The account
(03:30):
shared to me by this family that I'm about to
describe proofs that around here the paradise can be turned
into a nightmare after the sun goes down. The story
begins on the afternoon of July the twenty sixth of
this year. A family who, by the way, that I
know very well and I'm friends with them. They arrived
(03:51):
here to camp in an undisclosed location. I will not
disclose the exact location, although it is very near to
where I sit right now as I share this account
with you. Send in a creek bottom of a small
stream that feeds one of the major creeks here in
northwest Cleveland County, very isolated area, and I'm not going
to reveal the family's identity either. I will respect their
(04:14):
request for anonymity. But they arrived that beautiful July day.
They began to set up camp in the secluded spot,
and I joined them, and the sound of their children
laughing and playing the forest. They were just having a
great time. Mom, dad, twenty two year old son, nineteen
year old son, nine year old son, and seven year
(04:34):
old daughter. They got camp set up, just a wonderful day.
As nighttime started approaching, they lit a campfire, and I
bid them adieu and left them. I wanted them to
enjoy their family time, and as they reported, they just
sat relaxing and talking about whatever subject came up. The
kids were playing. They had no idea the terror that
(04:56):
they were on experience that night. As the fire died
down and the conversation died down to a more hushed voice,
they begin to hear sounds. Now, it's important to note
that they were not unaware of the reputation of this area.
They were very educated on things. The dad experienced outdoorsman
(05:18):
and hunter, and he has hunted this area and he
has heard sounds like I'm about to describe, So they
were unexpected. But first they begin to hear the sound
of a distant wood knock. Now, that is a well
known sound in the world of cryptid investigation, and it's
simply where something or somebody picks up a piece of
(05:40):
wood and that strikes a tree very distinct soil. They
heard that, and then from another location in the distance,
they heard more wood knock and it stopped. And as
they listen, then they begin to hear whoops. I will
try to mimic that sound for you. It's a well
known sound again in the area of crypt investigation, but
(06:02):
it sounds something like this. I don't do it justice.
It's far creepier in real life. And they begin to
hear that and They report to me that they were
put on guard, but they were excited that they got
to hear this. They had to anticipated not getting to
(06:23):
hear it because I told them the chances of it
happening was probably pretty slim. So they were excited and
they began to drift off to sleep. The fire had
died down even more. Dad went out first and soon
was sleeping. Mom was drifting off to sleep, but she
was suddenly awakened by her children and they alerted her
(06:44):
with some very ominous words, and they said, Mom, there's
something in the woods. And so she came out of
her tent to investigate, and suddenly there was a voice.
This is very close to them, very close to their
camp inside the woods, across the crew, but very close.
And she reports to me that this language that she
(07:05):
was hearing was not quote. It was not a human language.
And Mom is a very educated and very intelligent person,
and I believe her when she says that. But she
said it was not a human language. She said she
responded in a strange way with only things she thought
of at the time, and said she said that she
(07:29):
out loud, stated, I am sorry if we disturbed you,
and we were making too much voice. And in reply
to that, from a second direction, a different source, she
heard a voice speaking this same strange language and it
sounded angry. And then the first voice from the first
location said something else in this strange language, and then
(07:52):
that was it. They heard no more of the language anymore.
They were up and they were all duard and alert,
and they begin to hear walking near their camp in
the woods. Now, the husband being an experienced outdoorsman at hunter,
he reported to me that it was something walking on
two feet. And then from a second direction they heard
(08:14):
the same thing of something walking on two feet in
the woods, not far from their camp at all. And
then from a third direction behind them, and it became
very obvious that they were surrounded. And they huddled and
they were terrified. It's happened to me, and it is
a terrifying feeling being in the dark woods being surrounded
(08:34):
by something and you don't know what that something is.
And they debated on what to do, so Dad decided
that they would just stay in place, huddle together. They
were armed, but he said that being armed didn't do
anything to help alleviate the fear. And I understand that
the walking from the three different directions continued for what
(08:55):
seemed like an eternity, and they endured it. They wrote
it tonight. They were afraid to try to leave. They
were afraid to do anything other than sit there and watch.
And they began packing up thirty minutes after they stopped
hearing the sounds of these things walking around them, And
(09:16):
that was well before son. By sun up, they were
packed up and leaving the area. So he texted me
and asked me to call him, and they told me
the story over the phone that morning, and I heard
the terror and the fright and their voices. I asked,
did dis language sound like gibberish? And they said no.
The mom said no, it sounded like some form of communication.
(09:37):
It just wasn't human. So I sent them a link
to what is called the Sierra Sounds. It was some
tapes made in the nineteen seventies in the Sierra Nevada
Mountains of California, and you can easily find that on
TikTok or whatever platform. You can google it and you'll
find these tapes and you'll get to hear them for
their cell. The family still talks about it. They bring
it up often, and I can tell that they are
(09:58):
deeply impacted. But oddly enough, they have asked if they
could come in camp again at a later date, and
they've asked if I would come camp with him and
maybe bring somebody else. But that's what happens when you
have your own experience, you kind of get bit by
the bug, so to speak, and you be in the
wann Itchers. So that's their story, and I believe every
(10:21):
word of it. This is a Dark Roads and red Eyes.
In the summer of twenty twenty one, I was approached
by an elderly gentleman who said that he had an
encounter many years earlier that he wanted to tell me about,
as a matter of fact, the words he uses to
get off his chest. He said that he had not
spoken of it since the night it happened, the night
that he described to his father what happened. So we
sat down and talked, and I listened to the man's stories.
(10:44):
I saw his eyes glaze over as he went back
in time. I would say that almost immediately that you
could see a fear in his face. He said November
nineteen fifty two, he was fourteen years old and was
living on a small family farm northeastern Rotherford County, which
was budded right up against the South Mountains. That at
that particular night, he was getting ready to go to bed,
(11:06):
and his father came to him and said that he
needed him to go down to the shed and check
the gas valve on the tractor, and said that it
was about a quarter mile from the house down a
little narrow dirt road, So that immediately he was frightened
to do that. He was scared to do that because
the local guidelines was you simply didn't go outside at
(11:28):
night far away from the house unless you absolutely had to.
But also the encounters and the stories that his grandfather
had shared with and regarding a wampus, which was just
an old fashioned word for a booger or a monster.
The grandpa's stories will be included in a future episode.
But he was also raised that if an elder asked
you to do something, that you did it. So he
(11:50):
pulled his overalls on and he grabbed a lantern, and
he lit the lantern and he went out. He said,
immediately upon going out of the house into the darkness
that he felt just a sense of uneasiness that was
very uncomfortable, just a bad feeling in general, and that
he chalked it up to his mind trying to play
games with him. That he was determined not to be
a scaredy cat. He said, as he walked down that
(12:12):
dirt road and he started this journey down to the
shed in the barn area, that feeling increased, the bad feeling,
a feeling that he was being watched by somebody. That
it just got worse with every step that he took.
He said, as he approached the gate to this area,
that he heard off to his right an animal sound,
(12:33):
and I asked him to describe it. He said it
was an animal sound he had never heard before, that
it sounded like a sick owl, only with a really
deep voice. And I further pressed him, and he made
the sound of it, and he continued his story. As
he was trying to get the gate unfastened. He said
he was already nearly to a state of panic and
his hands were shaken as he was trying to get
(12:55):
that chain unhooked. That he heard something the walk just
behind the sh shed this barn area. He got through
the gate and he got to the shed where the
tractor was, and that he was immediately overcome by this
foul stench. He said that he had smelled it a
few times in the past, only it was very faint.
But he said that night it was so strong that
(13:16):
it was nauseating. And I asked him to describe the
odor to me, and he said that it was smell
like a pig that had been watering in a pig
pen that was full of rotten bodies. That's pretty characteristic
of that smell in terms of correlating it with what
other people have reported. But that as he got to
the tractor, he said, his lantern down and he looked
(13:38):
under there for where that valve was, and as he
began to move the valve with his hands were shaken.
That he heard the walking again close to him, and
that stench was even stronger. He managed to get that
valve turned off. He said, it seemed like an eternity
getting that valve to shut off, but he got it,
he said, picked his lantern up, and he hurried back
to the gate and he was trying to close the
(13:59):
gate and heads shaken and he was fumbling that chain around.
He finally got it latched, and he again heard the footsteps,
only they seemed to be paralleling him. That it was
just out of the reach of his lantern, out into
the pasture beside that shed. He said that he turned
around in before he knew that he was running, but
the problem was he was carrying that lantern, and you
(14:21):
can't see very far ahead of you carrying a lanner
five six feet something like that. He forced himself to
slow down. He said, the oddist thought popped in his mind.
His daddy had this old plow setting beside the dirt road,
and that he pictured running into that thing in the dark,
and nobody wants to run into an iron plow with
their shin. He said it forced himself to stop running
(14:43):
and was at a quick pace, and that as he
went up the dirt road, that plow came into view
and one more step revealed that someone. He said he
thought someone was standing behind the plow, but another step
revealed in his words that it was not somebody, that
it was something.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Stay tuned for morseasquatch Oat to see.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
We'll be right back after these messages. And I asked
him to describe it. He said it was very big,
seven eight foot tall or even taller, and that it
looked to be covered in a dark colored hair. He
said except for the face. He said he could see
(15:26):
the mouth, he could see the eyes, and he said
it was the eyes that to this day, all these
years later, he was fourteen years old in nineteen fifty two.
Here it is the early two thousands, and he said
that it still to this day makes him have lightmares
to think about those eyes looking at him. I asked
him to describe it. He said, as he held that
lantern up, that those eyes shined a red and that
(15:49):
it was just staring at him, and that it would
blink and turn its head off to one side, turn
it cock its head to the other side, and he
said that in his words, he said he couldn't go anywhere.
He felt paralyzed, And his exact words was that he
said he felt like he was standing in two deep postholes.
Said he couldn't yell, that he couldn't move a muscle,
(16:10):
and that thing was just staring at him and moving
its head a little bit. He said that it grunted,
and I asked him to describe the grunt. He said
it was a very deep version of something like you
would hear out of a boarhog. But he said, finally
he was opening his mouth. Nothing was coming out, and
finally something came out. He was yelling for his father,
and he finally was able to vocalize it. He said,
(16:30):
by then he was shaking so bad that his heart
was going to beat out of his chest, and that
when he yelled that, the thing moved its head and
grunted again and stared at him for another couple of seconds,
and then just calmly turned and walked away. He said
that had approached the fence just beside the dirt road.
He said it stepped over the fence. He said, it
(16:53):
didn't jump the fence. It didn't have to have any
effort getting over the fence. He just stepped over the
four foot fence, walked into the darkness, and as soon
as he lost sight of it, he started running. He said,
if I ran into something, I was just going to
run into it. But he ran all the way back
to the house, screaming for his father. His father come
out the back door onto the back porch and met
him at the steps and said, what's wrong. What's going on?
(17:17):
He started telling me. The father said, lower your voice,
and he began to tell his father what happened. His
father said, I don't want you to ever forget this.
He said, if you ever go back out at night again,
you take my pistol. If I can't go with you,
you take somebody. If somebody can't go with you, you
have that pistol on you. But never forget this night.
And he said that his father told him never speak
(17:39):
of this again to anybody, and that his father also
said that they would talk more about it later, and
they did. I'll share that part of this in a
future episode. But he said that this day that he
has an nyightmares about those red eyes real quick. An
elderly couple came to me in the winter of two
thousand and in twenty two and said that they had
(18:02):
an encounter that night before. This was a November of
twenty twenty two, and that they was riding up a
road here in this area north of kaser and as
they went up a hill off to the right, he
said he noticed this large person. He said, as he
got closer, he said, it was way too large to
be a man, and he said, I seen that it
was covered in the hair. He thought have slowed down
(18:24):
because I was afraid it was going to step out
in front of him. As they approached it, it turned
its head and looked at him, and when the lights
hid its eyes that they shone red, and him and
his wife were both shaken and said we'll never go
out after dark again. Now, I want to take your
attention back to an elderly friend of mine a couple
of years ago related to me the story of when
he was a kid in the late fifties, late one night,
(18:45):
he got sent down to the barn slash tractor shed
area by his father. He had a horrifying experience. I
also explained that he said his grandfather and his father
had told him later of some incidents in the experiences
that they had. Tonight's is about experience that his grandfather
and his great uncle, his grandfather's brother, an experience that
they had. Matter of fact, it was the first experience
(19:08):
that his grandfather ever spoke of to my friend. The
year was late nineteen sixteen early nineteen seventeen. He said
his grandfather was able to confidently mark that as the
time frame for this incident because he said it was
the winter prior to the United States being involved in
World War One, so that would make it winter of
nineteen sixteen or early in nineteen seventeen. Now, they lived
(19:32):
on the same farm that my friend grew up on.
That farm's been in that family for a number of generations.
Back then, in nineteen sixteen early nineteen seventeen, the grandfather
and his brother had scouted an area into the interior
of the South Mountains that they determined will be a
good area for rabbit hunting and trapping. It was a
creek bottom area, but up on high ground there was
(19:52):
an open field and there was an old homestead there
and it was a small, little, small subsistence farm apparently,
but it was a band, a cabin, a small barn,
spring house, chicken coop, covered pig pen. But they had
to secure permission. Now there's the ethos to this day
in areas like this, especially in the mountains, in the fields,
(20:14):
if you're gonna be on a man's property, you need
to talk, or a woman's property, you need to talk
with them in secure permission. Trouble was, the man did
not live in the immediate area. He lived in town,
and back then town that might as well be on
the other side of the country. They had to wait
until their dad had business in that town to go
with him to find the men. And the families knew
each other, and the man knew them, but they had
(20:35):
to get his permission. So they came when the father
had to go into town, and they went with them,
and they found them in and explained what they were
wanting to do. The grandfather said that the man was
hesitant at first. He said, I know you boys, I
know your trustworthy, I know your families, and you can
do this. You can hunt and trap the area. But
there's some rules you're gonna have to abide by. First
and foremost, he said, do not sleep in any of
(20:57):
the structures located on that old home. Now stop. My friend,
when he was telling me this, I said, do you
know why he said that? And sure enough, the man
explained to him. He said that homestead now belongs to
the dark Ones. Now, come to find out, the dark
Ones is just another term for bigfoot nobby sasquatch booger,
(21:19):
certainly one of the more ominous sounding terms I've ever
heard for a cryptid. But he said the area belonged
to the dark Ones. Now. Secondly, he said, if you
kill any rabbit in the area, leave some rabbit on
the porch of the old cabin. They didn't ask any questions.
They agreed and then begin to plan their two or
three night trip into the interior. They asked their father
(21:42):
about it. They were teenagers, early teenagers. The father said
that interestingly enough, that they couldn't take any of the
hunting dogs, and they couldn't take a mule or donkey
as a pack animal, because he said, they will get
away from you and you will lose them. Too many
animals that has been lost in there. We'll elaborate on
that more in a future episode. And he said, you
boys are absolutely at no point to be split up,
(22:06):
and you're not ever to be without your shotgun, and
you're to take pistols with you. And they agreed. So
the morning came and they left it sun up for
the roughly half day's journey into the interior to get
to this area. They arrived in the early afternoon and
they first set up camp in the woods down below
(22:29):
this open field. They had enough daylight left that they
decided to go out and do some squirrel hunting and
along the way set some traps and they did so.
They had some pretty successful hunting. They got back to camp,
had a bite to eat, son went down and they
called it a night. But at some point in the night.
(22:49):
The grandfather report that they were awakened by the sound
of what he thought sounded like the sound of a
heavy door slamming repeated, and that went on for a while,
and to be followed by, in his words, according to
my friend, it's an all manner of squaling broke out.
Now squaling is just a Southern word for hollering and
yelling in Norway's And that went on into the early
(23:11):
hours of the morning and cost them the better part
of a good night's sleep, but it finally stopped sun up.
The next morning, they built a fire, and they went
out and did some squirrel hunting, and they came back
ate some breakfast, and they started checking their traps, and
they were found that they were very successful, that they
had done very well into trapping. They reset some of
(23:33):
the traps, but also they decided to relocate some of
the traps on the higher ground in the periphery around
that open field where the old homestead was. They took
the traps up there, and along the way they did
some rabbit hunting and was fairly successful of that too.
They had plenty of daylight left, so they decided to
investigate the buildings the old structures there at the old homestead,
(23:59):
and a grandfather of arch that the cabin door was open,
and that there appeared to be some kind of a
nest in there, that there were small branches, pine boughs,
leaves and that type of thing shoved up over into
the corner of the cabin, and that there was a
bit of an odd smell my friends, that he didn't
elaborate best of his memory. They never went past the
(24:21):
threshold of the cabin. I don't expect I would have either.
But as they turned around, was getting ready to start
heading back to camp from the woodline, from the woods
on the periphery of this open field, the grandfather said,
and this is the oddest vocalization I've ever heard described.
He said that it sounds like something in the woods
(24:42):
in a deep, gravelly voice was saying hob hob and
would grunt, hobb and would grunt, And that it stopped.
They had it on back to camp, I'm sure, discussing
what in the world could that noise have been. They
got back to camp and ate some supper, and before
(25:02):
the sun was eating down, it all started more of
this slamming sound. I wonder if that was WOODKNOCKX. I
don't know, I hypothesized, but the howling he described, howling
and whooping, it was closer and closer, it seemed finally
to the point that in the near distance they could
(25:23):
hear from multiple directions the sound of things were running
in the woods. The grandfather said, it just sounded like
somebody was running through the woods, but in several places
around him, and that they would stop and more of
the yelling would continue, and that they even heard more
of this weird sounding hub hub with the grunts, and
(25:45):
it was getting closer and closer to them. The sun
was almost down. They didn't know what to do. We're
gonna pick up from here in part two. Part one
ended on a cliff finger. These two young teenage boys
were in the deep wilderness. They were in the woods,
and they were downhill from high ground and high ground
(26:05):
there was an open field, and in that open field
was an old homestead. They had secured permission from the
property owner to hunt in trap around this abandoned homestead.
The property owner had told him that his request were
that they were not to sleep in any of the
structures because the homestead belonged to the dark ones. You know,
(26:27):
that is a term, just another term for a knobby
or sasquatch or bigfoot or booger. And his second request
was that if they killed any rabbits, that they were
to leave some of the rabbits on the porch of
the old cabin. The boys were in their camp. Something
they visited the camp earlier in the day at rummage
through some things, and they had lost all the traps
(26:48):
they had previously set, but there was one trap that
was brought back by someone or something. It was mangled
and bent, and it was put in their camp. But
they were being approached from up on high ground from
the direction of this old homestead that was yelling, as
the grandfather said, there was time than his account, squalling,
which is just an old word for hollering and screaming
and yelling. But also this strange and always the grandfather
(27:12):
he kept coming up in his account over and over
this strange voice, very deep voice, and this strange sound
of hob hob hobb over and over throughout the night.
And also the strange sound of what he said sounded
like a door slamming, which occurred several times during their encounter.
(27:32):
But they were in their camp. They were being approach
from up on high ground. To make matters worse, on
both their left and the right, they could hear someone
or some things running through the woods closing in on them,
and they had to think quickly. It wasn't an attractive
option to stay in camp and try to fight it out.
They didn't know what they were up against, but they
knew that whatever it was intended them horror. But at
(27:56):
the same time, it was late in the day and
then how much daylight left in the fallt of plunging
headlong into a deep, dark creek bottom because they had
hours and hours to go to get back home. Remember
it was a half a day's height to get there
during the daytime. But at some point, I spect the
moment of decision came, probably spurred on by fear and
sheer necessity and not being overrun, not being attacked. They
(28:19):
grabbed a couple of sacks. They had the shotguns that
they were on with pistols. They left home armed in
such a manner at the request of their father, and
they fled downhill in the direction whilce they originally came
when they came into the area to camp, the direction
going back home. The grandfather said, they got down into
the creek bottom, and interestingly enough, he added that during
(28:40):
all of this, while they were running, he only turned
around and looked back one time, and it was about
the time they reached the creek bottom and they were
running along the creek, he stopped to turn around and look,
and then when he turned back around to start running
in they're standing in front of them, and his words,
was a big booger. Now. He described it as being large,
(29:03):
very large. Harry looked kind of like a man in
the face, but had a mortal pointed head covered in
the hair, and that its hair was gray. That it
just stood there looking at him. The brothers had stopped,
I'm sure out of bewilderment, and shot, but also they
couldn't go back the way they came without wanting the brother.
His brother fired a shotgun blast into the air. The
grandfather said that this creature didn't so much as flinch.
(29:25):
That his brother fired another blast into the air, and
as his brother was reloading, and his brother would later
telling the next two shotgun blasts was going to be
at the creature, but that the creature made a face
at him, in the grandfather's word, made a face at
him and turned around and walked off. Now, during all
of this encounter, which I'm sure lasted seconds thirty seconds,
(29:46):
of men had at the most all of the noise
behind him had stopped the sound of their pursuers, had stopped.
The yelling and the squalling and the whooping, and all
of that had stopped.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
And stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see women
right back after these messages.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
But the moment that this thing got out of sight,
grandfather said that it all started back up again. They
could hear the hollering and the yelling and that strange
noise during this whole ordeal, he would hear it ob
and they began running almost completely out of daylight, and
soon they were out of daylight in complete darkness. The
(30:26):
foliage in the creek bottoms of the Appalachian Mountains and
the hills is thick even in the wintertime, bouncing off
of trees and sheer panic. And for hours and hours
these two young boys ran for their lives. And the
grandfather said that it was strange, but sometimes it would
sound like the pursuers were back and off. They could
(30:46):
still hear them. They were still carrying on, but they
would back off, and the moment that him and his
brother would stop and maybe stop running just a walk
to catch their breath, that their pursuers would gain the
grounds on real quickly. Maybe they were playing cat and
mouse with the boys. I don't know. That this went
on into the night, and they finally got out of
(31:09):
that particular creek bottom had crossed through some woods, and
finally they came to the field, and that was the
field was the last thing between them and their home.
They ran into and got about halfway into the field,
and all the sound behind them stopped, and that all
was quiet, and then they both just stopped and looked around,
and they collapsed onto the ground and laid there for
(31:31):
an indeterminate period of time. I was here catching their breath,
just scratched up their clothes, torn exhausted mentally and physically
shaken up. And they finally got themselves together and got
up and made the walk the last stretch to get
to their house. They stopped, and grandfather said they sat
down from in and on the stone steps of the porch,
(31:52):
and then his brother simply said, we shouldn't tell anybody
about this except for Daddy. And that's the way that
it would remain for you years and years until this man,
the one I keep referring to as the grandfather, told
my friend, the elderly man that I met a couple
of years ago, told him later in life about this encounter,
(32:12):
as well as some others. They got up to go
in the house, and just as they were about to
open the door, all of it erupted again, way back
at that wood larn. Grandfather said that it reached the
pitch they had previously reached with the hooping in the highland.
Did it reminded him of the sound a pack of
dogs or pack of wolves would make after they had
(32:35):
made a kill, and they were celebrating. They went into
the house and closed the door, and that that went
on for a number of minutes and finally stopped. They
went to bed and got up the next morning, and
there were questions. Grandfather said, Daddy took him outside and
(32:57):
talked to him, and that they told their dad the
whole story. When the dead said you'll not go back
into that area, None of us will, the grandfather remarked.
He said, all of these years, I keep wondering were
they celebrating that they had chased us out of the
woods or was that their final warning that we wasn't
welcome to come back there? And I only maybe a
little of both. So I've got a couple of other
(33:20):
accounts that this grandfather had shared with my friends about
years ago, and I also have one account that my
friend's father had shared with him, and I'll cover those
in later episodes. But this particular area in question is
apparently a hot spot. I'm going to share with you
the experience of two men dealt with something on a
cold November night that changed their outlook on a number
(33:42):
of things. A uncle and nephew duo. I'm not using
the real names here, but we'll start off with uncle Jeff.
Uncle Jeff lives in this area here south of the
South Mountains mountain chain, just a few miles from the
southern border of the state park. The country boy outdoorsman, hunter, fisher,
(34:02):
camp or hiker, that kind of thing. And then his
nephew Jake, who lives about an hour east of here. Now,
there was a certain period of time that young Jake
would travel up here on Thursdays to spend time with
his uncle, and on those Thursdays they would attend the
local bluegrass church, which is a regular church. They just
do bluegrass music. They don't have a piano. They got
(34:23):
a banger. They got to get to our doghouse base
a man on a fiddle, a doughbro. But Jeff and
his nephew, Jake, had that in common. They were both
bluegrass musicians. Jeff's a bluegrass vocalists. They were both heavily
in the bluegrass so they had that link and they
had a really good relationship for an uncle and a nephew.
(34:44):
And then after each service, Jake would follow his uncle
home Indians stay another couple hours, sometimes on up into
the night, just hanging around, maybe picking cutting up, talking
that kind of thing. But on one particular cold November
night in tw twenty eighteen, things happened as I described.
They went to the service, Jake followed his uncle back
(35:06):
to the house and they spent some time together and
a little after eleven o'clock Jake said, I'm going to
have to go. Uncle Jeff walked him to the door.
They said their goodbyes, and Jeff started the process of
getting ready for bed. He went to plug his phone
up to charge it in at ranked it was his
nephew who in a very frightened and anxious voice simply said,
(35:27):
I need you to get out here right now, and
he hung up. Jeff had fortunately not shed his boots yet.
He grabbed a coat and he got outside, not having
a clue what to expect, and he found his nephew
to simply be standing over in the yard, which is
on high ground. And he walked up to him and said,
what's going on? And his nephew said, pointed across the way,
(35:48):
and he said, listen, something is over there. Sure enough,
in a few seconds, Jeff heard the distinct sound of
something walking in those woods across the way from them.
Now they were on high ground, and then that went
down to a little country road that's a dead end road,
and then a fence, and then about ten yards past
(36:09):
that fence was the woodline. And this woodline was the
starting area of a higher or what in other parts
of the country you might call it a drawl or
a valley, but it was the starting point of a
hollow that was very deep and run all the way
to a major creek here in northern Cleveland County called
Wards Creek. So they listened, and they kept hearing the
(36:30):
sound of something moving, and it was clear to Jeff
that it was something walking on two feet. He made
a mental note at the time that it was heavy footed,
that it seemed to be walking slow and deliberately, and
all the while getting closer and closer to them, And
he told Jake, he said, I've got to run inside
and get my spotlight. And he left Jake there for
(36:51):
just a couple of minutes, and he run in and
found a spotlight, came back outside, and the sound of
the footfalls continued, and he began to spotlight those woods. Now,
keep in mind, though this is November when this happened,
and the leaves were off the trees, it's still so
thick in some of these parts of these woods, with
the big trees, medium trees, saplings, the undergrowth, you can't
(37:12):
see far into them at night, even with the flashlight.
So he just continued to scan with spotlight, trying to
hone in on the source of the sound. It had
stopped getting closer, but it had not stopped. It sounded
as though it was pacing back and forth just inside
the woodline. And as he spotlighted, he stopped because he
(37:34):
thought he saw movement, and he concentrated any focus and
was trying to figure out what, if anything, he was
looking at, and then without warning, there was this angry
sounding guttural, low based yell or shout, followed by what
was described as an ape like sound. And rather than
describe it, I'll just try to mimic it the way
(37:56):
that they mimicked it to me, and it sounded something
like this, oh oh, oh oh. They stopped. He didn't
see anything. He didn't see any movement. Now, we all
face points in life when we have the fight or
flight reaction, and young Jake had the flight reaction, and
(38:17):
he broke out and ran toward the house. Now Jeff,
being an old country boy, he knows if you're out
in the woods in some situation like that and your
buddy runs, the best thing to do is follow him
and ask questions later, and that's what he did. So
they got into the house and they were talking to
each other with what was that? Now they were both
well aware of the Lord. Jeff had actually had some
experiences in the past, and curiosity got the best of them.
(38:41):
If you haven't experienced, that curiosity bug is gonna buite you.
Trust me, it will change things, and that curiosity bug
will get you. They elected to come back outside. Jake said,
let me grab my piece out of my vehicle. He
grabbed a handgun. So at that point in time they
did house some protection. Jeff resumed spotlighting and they could
hear this, the source of this continuing to walk, pacing
(39:05):
back and forth, and it stopped, and after a few
minutes they decided to go downhill, cross that road and
go to that fence, and they still had the relative
safety of about ten yards of clear area between that
fence and the woods. And they got down to the fence.
The walking resumed, except now it was walking away from them,
and it was clear to them that it was descending
(39:27):
back down into the depths of that holler, and it
continued to get more distant. But then they could tell
that it was not moving away from them anymore, and
it was pacing back and forth and back and forth.
They would hear some more of the sounds, and then
it all stopped. Jeff and Jake, after a few minutes,
decided to go back up into the yard on high ground,
(39:49):
and they did, and they heard the steps coming back
up out of the holler toward them closer and closer,
and they knew at that point that it was as
clear as it had been yet. Jeff was faithfully spotlighting
those woods, trying to hone in to see anything that
he could see, and finally it happened. He testifies that
(40:10):
he clearly saw a mouth in an upper chest, and
that the only thing that wasn't covered by hair was
the mouth, and to the best of his knowledge, it
was a reddish brown colored hair. And he was mesmerized
by and caught up in a moment again and looking,
and suddenly the shout, these guttural yells started again with
(40:33):
those ape like noises, and they clearly heard stomping and
the yelling and the stomping, and then he saw what
the spotlight that one of the trees was shaking violently
back and forth. And they felt relatively safe, they had protection,
they had a lot of distance, but both were very uneasy,
and both were very frightened. And that continued for several minutes,
(40:56):
and then finally it stopped. They heard the footsteps. They
heard the footsteps getting more distant and more distant, until
finally they didn't hear them anymore. So they were just
standing there wondering what just happened, Whatever this was, what
was it doing? Was it toying with them. Was it
sending out a clear message this is my area, you
(41:17):
need to leave. But to this day both men are
deeply affected. As a matter of fact, that night Jake said,
I'm not sure if I want to drive out of here.
As a rock gonna come out of the woods. It's
something going to step out in the road. And Uncle
said I'll provide over watch with the spotlight. And Jake
was able to safely leave. But to this day they
are both deeply affected by that. And so would you.
You guys, take care. I'll see you next time.
Speaker 4 (41:40):
They say you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
Inside step stepside, Joy this child that chart, everything came
right back, right back Joy for me. Enjoy staying right.
Speaker 4 (42:29):
You come it right away and still still stay. Say
(43:02):
things things, don't doss stass things usss
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The Brothers Ortiz
The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions.