Backwoods Horror Stories

Tonight's episode is something different. Over the past several months, Brian's inbox has been filling up with emails from listeners and first-time visitors to the show, people who've been holding onto experiences they've never fully shared with anyone. This episode brings six of those accounts together in one sitting, read in the witnesses' own words, spanning six decades and six different regions of the country.The collection opens with Danny, a lifelong hunter on Washington's Olympic Peninsula, who in 1978 came face to face with something standing motionless in the old growth timber during a solo elk hunt. From there we move to the swamps and spring runs of central Florida, where Rachel and her boyfriend encountered something massive outside their tent during an overnight canoe trip through the Ocala National Forest in 1996, and then saw it again on the river as they tried to escape.Marcus takes us to the coal country of Mingo County, West Virginia, where a nineteen year old walking home from the mines on a frozen February night in 1983 realized that something on the hillside above him wasn't just following him but was flanking him in the dark. Linda's account pulls us north to Minnesota's Boundary Waters in 2004, where a veteran wilderness guide and her co-guide watched something wade across open water in the moonlight and come ashore on the small island where their clients were sleeping.Travis writes from the Piney Woods of East Texas, where something took up residence on his forty acre property in 2017 and made its presence known through broken trees, massive tracks in creek mud, disturbing vocalizations, and two visual encounters that changed the way he and his wife think about the land they live on.The episode closes with Gene, now eighty four years old, finally putting into writing what happened to him and his logging crew in the remote mountains of Siskiyou County, California in the summer of 1962, an experience he's carried in silence for over six decades.

The documentary aired on a Tuesday night in October, and nothing was ever the same. Within hours it was trending worldwide. Scientists came forward. Former government employees reached out. And across the country, people started paying closer attention to the forests around them.This episode brings the first volume of Born Wild to a close — but not before we hear from some of the most compelling voices in the archives. Russell Crawford, a Tennessee hunter with over fifty years in the Cherokee National Forest, describes the morning he had a clear shot at something massive and chose not to take it. Not because he couldn't — but because pulling that trigger would have felt like murder.Margaret White spent thirty years teaching biology in rural Washington and debunking every Sasquatch story her students brought to class. Then she came face to face with one on a trail in Olympic National Park, and every rational explanation she ever had turned to dust.James Whitehorse carried his story for fifty-four years. He was eight years old, herding sheep near the Chuska Mountains on the Navajo reservation, when a towering figure stepped out of the junipers and raised its hand in greeting. His grandfather told him the white world would never understand. James kept quiet — until now. Maria Santos worked the graveyard shift at a gas station on the edge of the Gila Wilderness. One night at two in the morning, something eight feet tall walked up to the pumps and started examining them like a curious child discovering something new.Thomas Erikson came from four generations of Oregon loggers. They called them the Wood Apes, and every logger in the Pacific Northwest knew about them. Thomas shares three encounters spanning decades — including the day one of them spoke to him and pointed at the trees, at him, and at itself. Like it was saying they were all part of the same thing. Thomas passed away six months after this interview.We hear from Eddie McGraw, a long-haul trucker who watched a creature stroll across a Montana rest area at two in the morning like it owned the place. From David Baker, a National Geographic photographer who captured three frames of the clearest Sasquatch image ever taken — then locked them in a safe for fifteen years. From Patricia Morgan, a Yellowstone ranger who reveals a secret file of sightings passed down from ranger to ranger since the 1950s. And from Dr. Michael Brooks, a primatologist who spent fifteen years hiding evidence that would have validated everything. Then comes the revelation no one expected. Brian's own mother, Jean Patterson, finally shares a secret she kept for decades — she saw one of the creatures on the Lyerly property a full year before Brian ever did. She stayed silent to protect him. To give him the choice to walk away.He couldn't walk away. He never could. The episode closes on the eve of the final expedition. The witnesses gather at the mountain house. The sun sets over the Appalachians. And deep in the forest, the creatures begin to sing.Tomorrow, everything changes.This is the end of Book One. The odyssey continues.

Part Nine brings Bigfoot Country to its climax, and it does so by circling back to where every great investigation begins — with the people who lived it.After years of building this platform, the floodgates finally opened. Witnesses who had been listening from the shadows for months, sometimes years, started stepping forward. People like Patricia Ann Holloway, a seventy-one-year-old retired librarian from Pennsylvania who had carried a secret since 1973 — the summer she was nineteen years old and working at a Baptist church camp in the Allegheny National Forest.What she saw standing at the tree line that night, seven feet tall with eyes reflecting her flashlight beam, changed her forever. She kept quiet for nearly fifty years. When the only other witness — a twelve-year-old camper named Susan — passed away from cancer, Patricia decided she wasn't going to take that secret to her grave too.Her story opened the door for dozens more. A ninety-year-old former logger from Vermont who remembered the creatures the old timers simply called the Wild Men. A woman from Mississippi passing down her grandmother's encounter from the nineteen twenties. A retired park ranger from California who had spent forty years documenting things he could never put in an official report.But the witnesses were only half the story. Researchers started coming forward too — scientists and academics who had sacrificed careers and reputations to study something the mainstream refused to acknowledge. A primatologist who recognized authentic dermal ridges on a footprint cast. A geneticist with hair samples that matched no known species. An anthropologist who had collected indigenous oral histories from around the world and found an undeniable pattern running through all of them.Then came the most dangerous interview of all.A former military intelligence officer, speaking through an encrypted line, revealed the existence of government programs spanning six decades. Programs designed not just to suppress evidence, but to study these creatures — and exploit them. He couldn't say everything. He said enough.The tension ratcheted up from there. Physical confrontations on mountain roads.Men in dark suits offering deals and making threats. And a manila folder full of classified documents that blew the lid off everything — project names like Titan Watch, Forest Shadow, and Mind Bridge, detailing decades of monitoring, containment, and experimentation on captured creatures.Through all of it, Brian wrestled with the personal weight of the mission. Late night conversations with his mother, who carried her own encounters with the unexplainable. Quiet moments on the porch with Daniel.A faith that had evolved far beyond the Baptist church of his childhood into something broader and harder to name — a belief that the universe held mysteries worth chasing, no matter the cost.The final expedition into the Pisgah wilderness brought everything full circle. Days of waiting. Thermal signatures circling in the dark. Vocalizations echoing through old-growth timber. And on the last night, alone at the edge of camp under a full moon, a moment of silent recognition between two species that have shared this land far longer than anyone wants to admit.Part Nine is about what happens when the dam finally cracks. When the witnesses refuse to stay silent. When the researchers stop protecting their careers and start protecting the truth. And when one man, standing on a dark porch in the Appalachian Mountains, hears a chorus of howls rising from the forest and knows the world is about to change.

A veteran park ranger with over two decades of service reaches out after years of listening to the show in silence. He's heard me share my own encounter and talk about experiences from other law enforcement and first responders, and he finally decided it was time to tell his story. He's never told anyone. Not his wife. Not his coworkers. No one. Kevin was assigned to a week-long solo backcountry bear survey deep in the Pacific Northwest. Six miles from the nearest road, surrounded by old growth timber and some of the most remote wilderness in the lower forty-eight. He was experienced. He was prepared. He had no idea what was waiting for him.It started on day one with a cluster of trees twisted and broken at eight feet. By day two he'd found a massive bare footprint next to a structure that had no business being there. That night, sounds he couldn't identify echoed across the ridgeline and something started working its way toward his camp.By day three, rocks from the creek were being placed near his tent while he was away. And then on night four, everything escalated to a point where Kevin had to make a split-second decision that's haunted him for almost nine years. This is one of the most detailed and credible accounts I've ever received. Kevin asked me to keep his full identity and exact location confidential, and I'm honoring that. What I'm not keeping confidential is what happened to him out there, because this story needs to be heard.If you're in law enforcement, park service, military, or any first responder role and you've been carrying something like this, my inbox is open. You're not alone.

The odyssey reaches new heights as Brian Patterson shares some of the strangest and most profound encounters ever documented on the show. From a North Carolina camper who experienced unexplainable visions of an ancient forest to an Oregon mother whose lost daughter was safely returned by a gentle, hair-covered giant, these accounts push beyond simple sightings into territory that challenges everything we think we know about these creatures. The podcast also faces its greatest crisis when a retired biology professor's elaborate hoax nearly destroys everything Brian has built.The fallout is devastating, but with Daniel's unwavering support, Brian rebuilds stronger than ever with rigorous new verification procedures that earn the community's trust back.The story goes global as witnesses from Tibet, the Congo Basin, Papua New Guinea, and Siberia share encounters that mirror North American reports in stunning detail. A Lakota elder speaks of the Big Man as ancient guardians of the wild places. A Stanford primatologist risks her career to validate the evidence.And the Sasquatch Odyssey community grows into a worldwide network of researchers, witnesses, and believers united by shared experience.As the show hits its five hundredth episode, Brian finally tells his own story in full for the first time. But there's no time to rest. New thermal evidence and a late-night expedition deep into the backcountry deliver the most compelling footage yet captured. The men in black are watching again, the truth is spreading faster than anyone can contain it, and the odyssey is far from over.

A former Marine infantry sergeant breaks twenty years of silence about what happened to him in the Trinity Alps Wilderness of Northern California in October 2003. He didn't want to write in. He's not a Bigfoot guy. But his teenage daughter listens to the show and finally wore him down.Mike and two lifelong hunting buddies were on a five-day backcountry elk hunt deep in the Trinity Wilderness, roughly fourteen miles from the nearest trailhead.On the third day, he picked up on something most people would've missed — the gut-level feeling of being watched and paced. Instead of panicking, he ran deliberate route changes and counter-surveillance techniques to confirm what his instincts were telling him. Something large and bipedal was tracking them from two to three hundred yards back, using terrain and timber for concealment with a discipline he'd later associate with trained military scouts.On the fourth night, it closed the distance to forty yards and stood at the edge of their camp. His buddy nearly fired. Mike stopped him — not out of compassion, but out of a cold tactical calculation that still resonates twenty years later. They packed out at first light and covered fourteen miles in a single push.Mike went on to enlist in the Marines, served two combat tours in Iraq including Fallujah, and earned a Purple Heart. He says what he experienced in the Trinity Alps scared him worse than anything he faced overseas.This episode explores why, and what his story tells us about the intelligence, patience, and capabilities of whatever's living in those mountains.This is one of the most detailed and tactically sophisticated encounter reports we've ever received on this show. You don't want to miss it.

In this episode, the journey takes a dramatic turn as Brian's podcasting career reaches new heights and dangerous new lows. What begins as a powerful collection of witness encounters from across the country — a conservation officer in Minnesota's Boundary Waters, a Mississippi fisherman on the Big Black River, a West Virginia coal miner who found something living deep underground, and a Cajun folk healer who speaks of the loup-garou with reverence rather than fear — quickly evolves into something far more consequential.A television producer named Amanda from Meridian Productions returns with an offer to bring Sasquatch Odyssey to the screen as a legitimate documentary series. Brian agrees, but only on his terms: editorial control, no sensationalism, and absolute respect for the witnesses. The production takes the team from the Olympic Peninsula to the Ozarks and back to the Pisgah National Forest, where the mystery of Austin Reeves still lingers in every shadow and hollow.But the closer Brian gets to the truth, the harder certain forces push back. A devastating act of arson destroys his home, his studio, and nearly everything he and Daniel have built together. The local investigation is a sham, but an ATF agent named Sarah Brown finds evidence of professional-grade incendiary devices and a cover-up that reaches far above her pay grade.Rather than retreat, Brian and Daniel rebuild — bigger, stronger, and more determined than ever.The episode also explores the emotional toll of this work through quieter moments: the frustration of sorting genuine encounters from fabrications, the patience required to find voices like eighty-two-year-old Lucille Marsh from rural Georgia, and the steady, grounding presence of Daniel through it all.From Wisconsin dairy farms to Nebraska sandhills, witnesses from the American heartland reveal that these creatures aren't just hiding in remote wilderness — they've adapted to live alongside us in the margins, watching from the edges of our everyday world.The documentary airs, reaches millions, and ignites a national conversation. The community grows. The threats continue. And the odyssey pushes forward, one story at a time.

For twenty-six years, Dale wore the badge—and kept a secret he couldn't afford to share.Now retired after nearly three decades as a deputy sheriff in a rural southeastern county bordering a vast national forest, Dale finally breaks his silence. During his career, he experienced six separate Sasquatch encounters—stories he kept buried until turning in his badge in late 2025.His experiences span decades and defy easy explanation.In 1994, Dale witnessed a massive, upright creature cross a two-lane highway directly in front of his patrol car. Years later, a night spent at a remote campground left him shaken after hearing unmistakable wood knocks and a distant, haunting howl—one he now recognizes as identical to the infamous Ohio Howl recording.But Dale's story doesn't end with his own encounters.As a trusted figure in his community, people came to him when they had nowhere else to turn. An elderly cattle farmer who carried the memory of a face-to-face encounter for more than forty years. The sister of a logger who finally revealed her brother's terrifying experience on a remote timber road in the 1980s. And two chilling accounts from one of Dale's closest friends—a Forest Service law enforcement ranger who discovered massive footprints and complex tree structures deep in the backcountry, and who later endured a harrowing night as something circled his tent for twenty minutes before sitting down forty feet away, silently watching him in the darkness.

In this installment, Daniel finds something he never expected: normalcy. A job at a local pizza place, the simple rhythm of work and home, the blessed absence of danger. After everything they've survived, boring feels like a gift.Meanwhile, Brian's podcast has exploded beyond anything he imagined. Five million downloads.Tens of thousands of community members. Emails pouring in from witnesses who've carried their secrets for decades, finally finding a place where someone believes them. A seventy-eight-year-old woman writes to share an encounter she's hidden since 1952, and Brian remembers exactly why he does this work.But success brings complications. For every credible witness, there are a dozen others whose stories fall apart under scrutiny. A construction worker from British Columbia claims an intimate encounter with a female Sasquatch, and Brian is forced to draw hard lines about what belongs on the show.Then a retired nurse from New Mexico shares something different entirely: a story of a young Navajo man brought to her hospital in 1992, speaking of being taken by "the big people," and the federal agents who confiscated every piece of evidence before intimidating him into silence. The wheat and the chaff. Sorting one from the other becomes Brian's constant burden. Then the men in black return. Different faces, same cold authority. They come with an offer: classified documents revealing decades of suppressed research, interdimensional hypotheses, everything Brian has been searching for. The price? Stop pushing for official disclosure. Become a partner in managing the truth rather than forcing it into the light. Brian refuses.Eighteen months later, they burn his studio to the ground. But fire has a way of spreading what it's meant to destroy. The attack makes national news. Donations flood in. A major network offers a television deal with full editorial control. And soon Brian finds himself leading an expedition into the Pisgah with a full production crew, thermal cameras, and night vision equipment.On the eighth night, in a hollow near where Austin Mercer vanished, the forest comes alive with wood knocks and howls. The creatures stay just beyond the cameras, too smart to be caught clearly, but their presence is undeniable.It isn't definitive proof.But it's evidence the world will have to reckon with.And at a simple wooden cross marking where Austin was last seen, Brian says a quiet prayer for all those who've disappeared into these ancient mountains, and for the truth still waiting to be found.

In the spring of nineteen seventy-nine, a quiet cattle farmer in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Tennessee followed a strange sound into the timber beyond his fence line. What he found in a ravine that morning would change the course of his family's life for the next four decades and beyond.A young creature was caught in an illegal bear trap. Hurt. Terrified. Looking up at him with eyes that didn't belong to any animal he'd ever encountered.The farmer made a choice. He knelt down and set it free. No cameras. No witnesses. Just a simple act of kindness from a man who believed you help what's hurting, no matter what it is.What happened next is one of the most remarkable long-term sasquatch encounter accounts we've ever received on this show. The creature came back. Then others appeared. And when the farmer's young grandson arrived for his first summer on the property, a friendship began between the boy and that young sasquatch that would span decades.He watched them. They watched him. Trust was built in inches over years. And what started with one grandfather's mercy in a wooded ravine eventually came full circle in a way that none of us saw coming. This is a story about patience, trust, and the kind of quiet coexistence that most people would say is impossible. Thomas Pritchard says otherwise. And after you hear what he has to say, you might just agree with him.

Sheriff Brian Patterson steps away from the badge and into the microphone full time as Sasquatch Odyssey explodes beyond anything he ever imagined. Part Five picks up with the podcast in full swing, and the witnesses are lining up from every corner of the South and beyond to finally tell the stories they have been carrying in silence for decades.It starts in the mountains of northeast Georgia with a seventy-three-year-old retired logger named Earl Hutchins, a man who kept his mouth shut for forty-five years about what stepped out of the timber near Clayton in the fall of nineteen seventy-eight. His story breaks something open.The emails start flooding in from across the region, and Patterson finds himself recording encounter after encounter from witnesses who never had anyone willing to listen. A retired schoolteacher from Ellijay describes the thing that came screaming out of the Chattahoochee National Forest and changed the way she felt about the woods forever. A fishing guide from Everglades City recounts the night a pair of glowing eyes tracked him across the water in the Ten Thousand Islands. A teenage girl in Oconee County, South Carolina watched something unfold from a rhododendron thicket while her daddy's bluetick hound shook itself half to death against her leg.The stories stretch across state lines and keep coming. Arkansas. Tennessee. Virginia. A coon hunter and his cousin tree something in the Ouachitas that no lantern light should ever have revealed. A family of four flees a Cherokee National Forest campsite at three in the morning. A state trooper on Skyline Drive watches something cross a two-lane highway in three strides and never tells a soul.Then the podcast goes national and the picture gets bigger. A Lummi Nation elder speaks of the Ts'emekwes his people have known for thousands of years. A woman in the Hocking Hills of Ohio locks eyes with something standing between the trees in broad daylight and never hikes again. From Louisiana to Alaska to Hawaii, the encounters pile up, and Patterson starts to understand that this is not a regional phenomenon. It is everywhere. When the show crosses international borders, the scope becomes staggering. A First Nations man from British Columbia reminds the world that his people gave us the word Sasquatch in the first place. A Russian researcher describes a shape moving through snow in the Pamir Mountains. An Australian prospector watches something vanish from a waterhole in the outback. Sherpas in Nepal, scientists in China, guides in the Amazon — every culture, every continent, every corner of the wild world has a name for what lives in the places humans do not go. But it is the deep encounters that change everything. A hospice nurse in rural Kentucky describes the night something appeared at her dying husband's window and hummed him into his final moment of peace. A lost hiker in the Gila Wilderness receives images in her mind that lead her back to safety. A former Army Ranger wakes paralyzed in the Big Thicket while something rifles through his thoughts like pages in a book. These are the stories that keep Patterson up at night and force him to ask whether these creatures are something far stranger and far more profound than anyone has been willing to consider. By the end of Part Five, Patterson is two years into full-time podcasting with over three hundred interviews behind him and patterns emerging from the noise. The creatures follow corridors. They move with the seasons.They choose when to be seen. And a small but undeniable percentage of encounters suggest something beyond biology, beyond what any scientific framework can currently explain. The podcast has crossed a million downloads. The community is growing. The world is slowly waking up. And somewhere out in the deep woods, something is watching back.

What does it take to break a forty-year silence, and what does it cost to tell the truth when powerful forces have worked for decades to keep it buried?In Part Four of The Sheriff of Bigfoot Country, everything changes.An anonymous envelope left in the dead of night opens the door to a classified government operation tied to the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens. What was recovered in the chaos wasn't human, and the documents reveal a truth far more disturbing than folklore ever suggested. Autopsies, survivor reports, and firsthand medical testimony point to intelligent beings hidden from the public under the cover of disaster response.As witnesses finally come forward—law enforcement, military pilots, medical professionals, and federal employees—the silence fractures.A documentary meant to expose the truth is shut down just weeks before release, confirming the reach of those determined to keep these secrets hidden. But the internet changes the rules, and once the story escapes, it can't be contained. As the world begins to listen, new voices emerge, decades of fear dissolve, and a movement is born. What began as an investigation becomes a reckoning, and the path forward leads to something bigger than one man, one mountain, or one secret.This is the moment the dam breaks, the truth finds its voice, and the journey that becomes Sasquatch Odyssey truly begins.

Tonight we're going back to basics. Six encounter stories from six different states, told the way they were meant to be told. Around the fire. In the dark. The way witnesses have been sharing these experiences for generations.You'll hear from Daryl, a long haul trucker who watched something cross Interstate Ninety in Montana back in nineteen ninety-seven. Something that stepped over a guardrail like it was nothing and looked back at him with eyes that held more intelligence than any animal he'd ever seen.Wade was a deputy in rural Arkansas when he responded to a call about something stealing corn from an old farmer's field. What he saw standing at the tree line that September night in two thousand and twelve changed everything he thought he knew about the woods behind those farms.Colleen spent eleven years as a park ranger in the North Cascades before she got a frantic call from a family trapped in a rental cabin. Something was circling their cabin at night. Pounding on the walls. Screaming in the darkness. She thought it was a bear until she pressed her flashlight to that back window.Hank hunted the same Michigan property for thirty years. Opening day of rifle season in nineteen eighty-nine, something walked into his clearing. He had it in his scope. Finger on the trigger. And he couldn't pull it. He told me why, and his answer has stayed with me ever since.Terry was hiking solo on the Oregon coast when she realized something was following her through the old growth. For twenty minutes it kept pace with her through the trees before it finally let her see it. What happened next surprised even her. And Earl, an eighty-one-year-old Kentucky farmer who wrote me a series of letters in nineteen ninety-six about something that came around his hollow back in seventy-three.Something the old timers in those mountains had always known about but never talked about.Six witnesses. Six encounters. Six lives changed forever.

After the midnight visit from the men in black, Brian is left with a choice—back down, or push forward and risk everything. There's no middle ground anymore. Daniel, uneasy but resolute, agrees to stand with him no matter what comes next. Every document is copied. Multiple backups are created and hidden in separate locations. If the evidence disappears, the truth won't disappear with it. As the pressure mounts, Zach makes contact with an underground network of researchers who have been operating in the shadows for decades—people with their own stories of intimidation, silencing, and government interference. They know the rules of this world. They know how to survive it.Then an opportunity arrives they never anticipated. Documentary filmmaker Amanda steps forward, determined to tell the story. She's meticulous, credible, and unafraid of the implications. Once she's in, there's no turning back. The crew arrives in November. Interviews begin. Physical evidence is examined and verified by independent experts. But it quickly becomes clear they're not alone. A break-in at the rental house leaves one thing missing—documents. Nothing else is disturbed. Days later, a tracking device is discovered beneath a crew member's car. The message is unmistakable: we see you, and we can reach you whenever we want.They keep filming anyway. Two weeks before Christmas, the phone rings. The same calm, practiced voice from that first encounter delivers a final warning. But this time, something slips—something unintended.“The creatures are just one piece of a much larger puzzle. ”Brian refuses to back down. On the other end of the line, the voice sounds almost regretful.“Then I'm sorry for what's going to happen. ”As tensions rise, Zach uncovers the existence of Project Threshold—a classified Department of Defense operation launched in 1962. The revelation is staggering. The government hasn't merely covered up the existence of these creatures. They've been managing them. Containing them. Controlling them. For decades—possibly since the 1940s. And buried even deeper is something else. Something far more dangerous. Something they fear more than the creatures themselves.Then, just before dawn, there's a knock at the door. No one is there. Only a manila envelope resting on the doormat, stamped with a single word: TRUTH. Inside is a file marked Project Vulcan. Dated May 18, 1980—the day Mount St. Helens erupted.In the chaos following the eruption, military recovery teams entered the blast zone. What they retrieved was never meant to be known: seventeen dead specimens. Three critically injured. One survivor. The photographs are impossible to deny. A massive, seven-foot-tall creature lies strapped to a stretcher, its body scorched, its hair burned away, surrounded by men in hazmat suits. The conclusion is unavoidable. The United States government didn't just know these beings existed.They've been studying them—for over forty years. Next episode: The truth comes out—and the consequences begin.

Tonight we bring you six terrifying Sasquatch encounters from across America, spanning six decades and six different states. These are the stories that witnesses carried in silence for years, sometimes decades, before finally sharing what they experienced in the wilderness.We begin in the redwood forests of Northern California in nineteen sixty-three, where a young logger named Harold Vance comes face to face with something that will haunt him for the rest of his life. From there we travel to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State in nineteen seventy-seven, where a family vacation turns into a nightmare that three children will never forget.The hills of eastern Kentucky provide the backdrop for our third encounter in nineteen eighty-four, when a veteran hunter with forty years of woods experience meets something that proves just how little he actually knew.We then head south to the swamps of central Florida in nineteen ninety-two, where a commercial fisherman discovers that alligators aren't the apex predators he thought they were.Our fifth story takes us to the farmland of southern Ohio in two thousand and five, where a third-generation farmer learns the truth behind his grandfather's warnings about the woodland at the edge of his property.And finally, we venture into the San Juan Mountains of Colorado in two thousand and sixteen, where a group of experienced hikers encounters not only a massive creature circling their camp in the darkness, but mysterious lights in the sky that seem somehow connected to what stalks them below.Six witnesses. Six encounters. Six lives changed forever. The wilderness keeps secrets, and tonight we're sharing some of them with you.

The years that followed Brian's childhood encounter in Lyerly weren't easy, but they were transformative. His mother beat cancer, earned her degree, and rebuilt their lives piece by piece. Brian found his footing too—working his way up from fast food to restaurant management, discovering he had a gift for handling people and solving problems.But something else was happening beneath the surface.In rural Georgia during the early nineties, Brian came to terms with a truth he'd been running from—he was gay. A relationship with a coworker named Marcus brought clarity, but also consequences. Friends disappeared. Family members stopped calling. The people who stayed proved who really mattered. A career in juvenile corrections followed—seven years working with teenagers society had written off. Then came the badge he'd always wanted, a posting in the remote mountain town of Suches Georgia, and a chance meeting with a sheriff's deputy named Daniel that would change everything. Together, they bought forty acres in the North Carolina mountains backing up to the Pisgah National Forest.And almost immediately, the strangeness began. Howls in the night. Rocks appearing in impossible places. Lights with no source. Something was out there, watching their new home. Brian's unexpected run for Caldwell County Sheriff opened doors he never anticipated—including a partnership with a forest ranger named Zach who'd been quietly documenting the truth for years. Dozens of people had vanished in the Pisgah. The evidence pointed to something the government was desperate to hide. Then a college student named Austin Mercer disappeared, and the trail camera footage he left behind changed everything.Now Brian faces an impossible choice. Men in black suits have delivered a clear message—back off or lose everything. But walking away means more people die in the darkness of those ancient woods.Part Two of Bigfoot Country is the story of a man finding his identity, his purpose, and his courage—and discovering that sometimes the monsters in the forest are easier to face than the ones who want to keep them secret.

Over the next few weeks, I'm gonna be sharing my new book with you—start to finish. The whole thing. It's called Bigfoot Country. All told, it's around eight hours of narration. So, I'll be putting it out in multiple episodes. And honestly... I've been sitting on this for a long time. I'm excited—and a little nervous—to finally put it out there. But before we jump in, I wanna take a minute. Just you and me.What you're about to hear is loosely based on my life. Some of it happened exactly the way I tell it. No embellishment, no polish. Other parts are rooted in real experiences—real people, real moments, real emotions—but maybe stretched a bit, or reimagined, to help the story breathe. And then there are parts where… well, you get to decide what you believe.I also wanna be upfront about something. Early on, you might find yourself wondering where this is all headed. There's a lot of groundwork—family, childhood, personal history. Just know this: it's going somewhere. This book is about Bigfoot. That's the destination. I promise. Just trust me long enough to get there. At its heart, this is a story about my earliest experiences with the strange and unexplained. It starts with something that happened to me when I was twelve years old—an encounter with what I believe was a Sasquatch. That moment stayed with me. It shaped a lot of who I became. And for years, I struggled with how—or even if—I should ever tell that story. Because how do you talk about something the world insists isn't real? How do you open yourself up like that, knowing people are gonna judge you, doubt you, or dismiss you entirely?But these stories have always mattered to me. This book has always mattered. And at some point, I realized I was done keeping it all tucked away. Here's the thing, though—I didn't just write about Bigfoot. I wrote about me. All of me. My childhood. My parents. My failures. My struggles. And yeah… Dani.I know that part isn't gonna sit well with everyone. I get that. Some folks are gonna have opinions, and that's their right. But for me, leaving any of that out would've been dishonest. I can't ask you to trust me with these experiences and then hide pieces of who I am. I can't tell my story without including the person who stood beside me through the hardest parts of it. That's just not how I live, and it's not how this book was written.Believe me, I thought about sanding down the rough edges. Making it cleaner. Safer. Easier to swallow. Cutting out the parts that might make people uncomfortable. But I couldn't do it. I've spent too much of my life holding back, and I'm done with that.So this is me. This is my story. All of it. Some of what you'll hear happened exactly as I describe it. Some of it is how I imagine things might have gone—if the timing had been different, if I'd pushed harder, if the world worked the way I think it sometimes should.And one last thing before we start—this is Book One. There's more coming. A lot more. This is just the beginning. I hope you enjoy Bigfoot Country... as much as I did writing it. Part One is called The Hollow, and it begins in September of 1984. I was eleven years old, just a few months shy of twelve, and my family had just moved to a place called Lyerly, Georgia. Population next to nothing. No stoplight. One gas station. The kind of town where everybody knew everybody's business before you even finished doing it. We moved into an old house at the end of a dirt road—a house that looked like something had crawled there to die. White paint gone gray. Porch sagging in the middle. Eighty acres of woods stretching out behind it like a wall. My father, Jerry Patterson, was a drinker. A man whose silence usually meant a storm was building. My mother, Jean, was small but fierce in the ways that mattered—even if she couldn't fix the things that were broken in our family. She stayed. She always stayed. The woods became my escape. I spent those early weeks mapping the land, building forts out of fallen branches and rotting tarps, disappearing into the trees whenever the tension at home got too thick. I learned every trail, every landmark, every corner of that property. All except one. There was a section way back at the far edge, where our land butted up against the national forest, that I couldn't bring myself to enter. Every time I got close, something pushed me back. A wrongness I couldn't name. A feeling like walking into a cold spot in a warm room.One day in late October, I decided I'd had enough of being scared. I was almost twelve years old. Too old for this. So I grabbed my BB gun and headed out to prove to myself there was nothing back there worth fearing. I was wrong. What I found was a clearing with a depression in the ground where something big had been bedding down. The smell hit me first—wet dog mixed with a dumpster behind a butcher shop. And then the sounds. Heavy footsteps. Bipedal. Something walking on two legs that weighed more than any man. Huffing. Growling. Sounds that rose and fell in patterns that almost seemed like language. It charged at me through the underbrush, stopped maybe twenty feet away, and just... breathed. Watched. Decided. It let me go.I ran home faster than I'd ever run in my life. And I never told a soul.But that wasn't the only strangeness that followed us to that house. At night, I started hearing voices in the walls—whispery, indistinct, speaking in languages I couldn't understand. A dark figure began appearing at the foot of my bed, a void shaped like a man, watching me while I lay frozen and unable to scream. Scratching moved through the walls like something was circling me. Three heavy knocks shook my bedroom door one night, and when I opened it, no one was there—but downstairs, a fire was burning in a fireplace we never used, in a chimney my father said was blocked.Something was in that house. Something that had been there before us and didn't want us there. And then, in January, everything changed. My mother got sick. Skin Cancer. The doctors gave her six months, maybe a year. And my father—the man who was supposed to hold us together—disappeared. Shacked up with some woman in another town, drowning himself in pills and booze while his wife was dying and his son was alone. I ended up staying with my best friend Brad Henderson's family. They took me in without question, gave me a bed and a place at their table. And every weekend, someone drove me to Atlanta so I could watch my mother fade away in a hospital room. She lost her hair. Lost her weight. Lost everything except her will to fight.Against all odds, she won. Almost a year to the day after her diagnosis, the doctors told us her cancer was in remission. She came home for Christmas, weighing maybe eighty pounds, wrapped in a scarf my friend's mother had knitted for her. And the first thing she did was look at my father's empty chair and say the words I'd been waiting to hear my whole life. We're leaving. But leaving wasn't simple. My father showed up one last time, took my mother's pain medication right out of the medicine cabinet, and vanished. He started selling those pills around town—the same town that had taken up a collection to help us, the same community that had rallied around my dying mother while he was nowhere to be found People got angry. The wrong kind of people. One night in January, I woke up to the sound of voices and vehicles in the yard. I looked out my window and saw twenty figures in white robes standing around a burning cross. The Klan had come to our house. Not because of us—because of him. Because of the shame he'd brought on his family in a place that took such things seriously.We left Lyerly two weeks later. My mother divorced my father, took back her maiden name, and we started over in a tiny apartment in Summerville. Two bedrooms. Thin walls. Stained carpet. But it was ours. And it was safe. I got a job at Dairy Queen. Went to school. Helped my mother however I could. The nightmares followed me—the dark figure, the dreams of something chasing me through endless woods—but I buried it all. Pushed it down. Told myself it didn't matter anymore.But I never forgot what I heard in those woods. Never forgot that huffing, that growling, those footsteps too heavy to be human. I knew it was real. I knew it was out there. And someday, I was going to find it again.But first, I had to grow up. First, I had to survive. That's Part One of Bigfoot Country.

Every once in a while, a story comes across my desk that stops me cold. Not because it's sensational, but because it's precise, deeply personal, and impossible to dismiss. The account you're about to hear is one of those. It arrived as a letter from a man I'm calling Tom, a seventeen-year park ranger in the Great Smoky Mountains who has spent his life dealing in facts, emergencies, and hard reality—not Bigfoot stories.Tom was called to a remote homestead owned by an eighty-two-year-old woman named Mabel. Something had been raiding her property, tearing apart her barn, stealing dog food and chickens, and—most unsettling of all—unlatching doors and closing them behind itself. Bears don't do that. What Tom found near the coop were sixteen-inch footprints with five toes, unmistakably primate, and impossible by any known standard.What followed changed everything he thought he knew about those mountains. Mabel told him she had lived alongside these creatures her entire life. Her mother, her grandmother, and even her great-grandmother had known about them since settling that hollow in the 1840s. There had always been rules, boundaries, and even communication. But a new presence had arrived—larger, gray-furred, aggressive—and for the first time in eighty years, Mabel was afraid. Tom chose to stay. Over the next two weeks, he documented wood knocks, vocalizations unlike any known animal, tree breaks forming deliberate perimeters, rocks thrown with intent, and images from trail cameras that still haunt him. With help from a trusted wildlife officer, he gathered casts, recordings, and photographs that defy easy explanation. And on the eleventh night, he had an encounter that permanently altered his understanding of reality. This story doesn't end with proof or confrontation. It ends with something far rarer: understanding.Tom wrestled with whether to share this, knowing the cost of speaking out. But he thought of Mabel, of his friend who'd carried his own encounter in silence, and of everyone who's seen something in these woods and been told they imagined it. I believe him.What you're about to hear is exactly as Tom wrote it, in his own words. It's long. It's detailed. And it's one of the most moving accounts I've ever received.So settle in. From an eighty-acre homestead at the edge of the Smoky Mountains, this is the letter from Ranger Tom.

Tonight, we conclude The Bigfoot Journals. Seven men walked out of the hidden valley in November of seventeen ninety-nine. They carried knowledge that would haunt them for the rest of their lives... and a secret they swore never to reveal.In this final installment, we follow the Stone Expedition on their three-month winter journey home. We witness the debate that consumed them... publish or protect? We hear the oath sworn at Thornton's Tavern in Richmond, where seven survivors bound themselves to silence. And we learn what became of them all.Thomas Mercer, the scientist who died bitter in eighteen twenty-six, still regretting the discovery he could never publish. Sam Walker, who returned to the mountains he loved and passed peacefully in eighteen twenty-three. Josiah Whitfield, who found peace somewhere beyond the Mississippi. Solomon Reed, who carried his grandmother's wisdom north. Jim Sutton, whose last words were about the creatures.Young Zeke Stone, forever changed by his connection with the juvenile, gone by eighteen twenty. And Elijah Stone himself... who built a cabin in the Virginia mountains and watched the forest every night for twenty-seven years. We'll read his final journal entry, written on July fourth, eighteen twenty-six. The fiftieth anniversary of American independence. The day he passed the burden to his son. The chain of keepers had begun.Then we jump forward. Two centuries forward. To Marcus Stone, a history professor who inherits his estranged father's cabin... and discovers a trunk in the cellar that changes everything. The journals. The pendant. The truth.And finally, we witness what happens when Marcus leads a small expedition into the mountains. When the creatures reveal themselves once more. When the gesture of peace is given... and returned.This is the story of secrets that span generations. Of truths too dangerous to share. Of a family that watched and waited, keeper after keeper, century after century. And somewhere in those mountains... the creatures are still watching.They've always been watching. They always will be.

On the evening of November fifth, nineteen seventy five, seven loggers were driving home through the Apache Sitgreaves National Forest in Arizona when they witnessed something that would change their lives forever. A glowing disc hovered silently above a clearing, pulsing with an eerie golden light.When twenty two year old Travis Walton approached the craft, a beam of blue green light shot out and struck him, lifting him off the ground before hurling him through the air. His terrified coworkers fled the scene, and when they returned minutes later, both the craft and Travis had vanished without a trace. For five days, search parties combed hundreds of square miles of rugged wilderness. Helicopters scanned from above. Tracking dogs followed trails that led nowhere. The six witnesses found themselves suspected of murder as Sheriff Marlin Gillespie struggled to believe their impossible story. Then, just hours after the men passed polygraph examinations confirming they had not harmed their friend, Travis Walton reappeared on a highway outside Heber, Arizona, disoriented, terrified, and carrying memories of an experience that defied all rational explanation.In this episode, we explore every detail of what has become one of the most thoroughly investigated and hotly debated alien abduction cases in history.We travel to the small Mormon community of Snowflake, Arizona, where Travis and his stepbrother Mike Rogers grew up, and we examine the bonds of friendship and family that would be tested by the events of that November night. We follow the massive search operation that turned up nothing, and we sit with the witnesses as suspicion fell upon them and their community began to turn against them. Most importantly, we go inside the craft itself, following Travis through his fragmented memories of waking on an examination table surrounded by creatures with enormous black eyes and pale, hairless skin. We walk with him through curved corridors that seemed to defy normal architecture, into a room where the walls came alive with stars and a single chair offered control over what appeared to be a planetarium display of the cosmos. We meet the tall, human looking beings in blue uniforms who led him through a hangar filled with disc shaped craft before sedating him and returning him to Earth.We also examine the aftermath that followed Travis home. The media circus that descended on Snowflake. The National Enquirer's controversial involvement. The first polygraph test that Travis failed while still traumatized, and the multiple subsequent tests he passed over the following decades. The relentless attacks from skeptics like Philip Klass, who devoted years to proving the case was an elaborate hoax. And the personal toll on the witnesses, from Mike Rogers' crushing guilt over leaving his best friend behind to Travis's years of nightmares, failed relationships, and the struggle to rebuild a normal life after experiencing something so profoundly abnormal. We trace the cultural legacy of the case, from Travis's nineteen seventy eight book The Walton Experience to the nineteen ninety three Paramount film Fire in the Sky, which introduced his story to millions while taking dramatic liberties with what actually happened aboard the craft. We explore how the case influenced UFO research and established a template for evaluating abduction claims, and we consider how the recent shift in government attitudes toward unidentified aerial phenomena has given cases like Travis Walton's new significance in the ongoing search for answers about what else might be sharing our universe. This is a story about the unknown, but it is also a story about very human things. Friendship and loyalty. Fear and courage. The weight of telling a truth that nobody wants to believe. Nearly fifty years after that night in the Arizona forest, every surviving witness has maintained that they saw what they say they saw. The mystery remains unsolved. The questions remain unanswered. And somewhere in the vast darkness between the stars, something may still be watching.

Tonight we're venturing into territory that goes beyond our usual encounters with large, hairy, bipedal creatures. After nearly forty years of research in the deep woods, I've come to understand that not everything strange out there can be explained by Sasquatch. Sometimes the things people encounter are even more terrifying. More strange. More impossible.This episode brings you four accounts that have haunted me since the day I first heard them.These stories came from witnesses who trusted me with experiences they'd kept buried for years, sometimes decades. Some made me promise not to share their accounts until after they'd passed on. Others simply needed to unburden themselves of secrets too heavy to carry alone. Our journey begins with a Vietnam veteran named David Hollister who ventured into the Cherokee National Forest in the summer of nineteen seventy-one and found himself trapped in an impossible loop. No matter which direction he walked, no matter how carefully he tracked his course with map and compass, he kept arriving at the same abandoned cabin. Inside that cabin was a journal filled with entries in his own handwriting, describing events that hadn't happened yet. David's account of escaping that gray, fog-shrouded nightmare raises questions about time and place that I still can't answer.From there we move to the mountains of western North Carolina where a competitive ultra-marathoner I'm calling Michelle had an encounter that ended her trail running career forever. During a routine training run, she noticed a shadow keeping pace with her through the trees. A human-shaped shadow with no source. Nothing casting it. Just darkness given form, matching her speed mile after mile through the forest. What happened during those ten miles of terror left a permanent mark on Michelle, one that's still visible today in the white hair at her temples.The third account takes us to Colorado and a story that defies everything we think we know about physics. A retired electrical engineer named Harold Price was scanning old radio frequencies late one night when he picked up an emergency transmission from a forest ranger named William Morrison. The ranger was terrified, describing something circling his remote station in the darkness. The problem was that Morrison was broadcasting from nineteen sixty-three, more than fifty years in the past. Harold spent seven hours on the radio with a man from another era, listening helplessly as something found its way inside that station.What Harold discovered when he researched the incident afterward confirmed his worst fears about what he'd witnessed.Our final story comes from a father named Robert who took his family camping in the Allegheny National Forest in the summer of eighty-nine. What began as a perfect evening around the campfire turned into a night of primal terror when the family woke to discover that every sound in the forest had stopped. No crickets. No owls. No wind. Just absolute, suffocating silence. And something was circling their tent. Something they could feel but not hear. Something that carried the silence with it like an aura. These four accounts share something in common. They all involve encounters with things that shouldn't exist. Things that operate outside the rules we think govern our world. Time loops. Sourceless shadows. Transmissions across decades. Silence that walks like a creature.I believe these witnesses. I've heard the recordings. I've seen the evidence. I've looked into the eyes of people forever changed by what they experienced in the deep woods. Whether you believe them is up to you. But I'd encourage you to listen with an open mind. Because our forests hold secrets we're only beginning to understand. And some of those secrets are darker and stranger than anything we've imagined. The woods have secrets. And some secrets don't want to be found.

There's something out there in the most remote corners of the Appalachian Mountains. Not a creature from folklore, not a cryptid or ghost story. Something much closer to us—and somehow, much more terrifying because of it. In this episode, we go deep into the hills to explore the legend of the feral people of Appalachia—humans who turned their backs on civilization so long ago, they may have forgotten what it means to be part of it at all. It all starts near Whitetop Mountain, where a dying man named Mercer calls a few people together to share stories passed down through mountain families for nearly two centuries. These aren't the kind of tales you'll read in a book or hear from a park ranger. These are the stories folks only tell in quiet voices, far away from outsiders.We follow one of those stories back to 1978 in Mullins Hollow, Kentucky. A little boy named Thomas vanished from his yard in the middle of the day—his mother just a few steps away. Three days later, his father says a woman stepped out of the woods, filthy and wild-eyed, holding something small in her arms. She smiled, put a finger to her lips, and disappeared into the trees.Then there's Ronald Clayton, a game warden who thought he'd seen everything—until a search for a missing boy in 2013 led him to a hidden settlement deep in the forest. He found the child, painted with strange symbols, surrounded by makeshift shelters and a smoldering fire. When he tried to escape, he realized they weren't just following him—they were herding him. Letting him wear himself out before they made their move. He got lucky that day. Most people wouldn't. Back in 1963, a geology professor and his team stumbled onto something sealed deep underground. A hidden chamber the size of a football field—stone shelters, fire pits, carved beds, and bones. So many bones. In one corner, seventeen pairs of children's shoes. Different sizes. Different decades. He never put any of it in his official report.And in 1972, the Hensley family in Virginia lived through something they still won't talk about without a shake in their voice. It started with missing tools, then livestock, then faces at the windows. One foggy morning, a gray-haired woman came out of the woods and said, “Give us the girl child, and we'll leave you in peace.” The farmer opened fire. A week later, every animal on their farm was dead. One word was written in blood on the side of their barn: OWED.Throughout the episode, we talk about the signs—the silence in the woods when the birds stop singing, the strange stick figures and markings left at the edge of the forest, the voices that call your name in the dark. These people don't attack groups. They prefer the ones who are alone. They prefer children.This isn't a story about monsters. It's about what happens when people cut all ties to the world and build their own. A world where different rules apply. A world where survival is everything. They've been here for generations. And they're very good at staying hidden. Unless, of course, they want to be found.

There's a corner of America where people vanish at a startling rate, where massive searches can turn up nothing, no trail, no remains, no answers. That place is Alaska. In this episode of Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, we head into the shadowed heart of the Alaska Triangle, the vast wilderness between Anchorage, Juneau, and Utqiagvik, to explore why so many disappear and why indigenous stories have warned about forest-dwelling abductors for generations.In the summer of twenty twenty-two, sixty-nine-year-old Mary Dawn Wilson drove her Ford Focus nearly seven miles down the Stampede Trail near Healy, Alaska, a rugged route tied to the Into the Wild legend and notorious for swallowing travelers. With a two-year-old child in the back seat, Wilson pushed her vehicle far beyond where it reasonably could go.When the car became stuck in mud, she made a decision no one can explain. She locked the toddler inside the vehicle and walked deeper into the wilderness, away from the highway and toward the interior.Search teams deployed helicopters, thermal imaging, drones, ATVs, and trained dogs. They located Wilson's personal belongings about a mile beyond the stuck car, proof she kept going. After that, the trail went cold. No footprints. No sign. Nothing. After three days, the active search was suspended. Mary Dawn Wilson has never been found.We zoom out to examine the bigger pattern, thousands of disappearances across Alaska over the decades, many ending in complete erasure. We revisit chilling cases tied to the Alaska Triangle, including the nineteen seventy-two disappearance of House Majority Leader Hale Boggs and Alaska Congressman Nick Begich, whose plane was never recovered despite one of the largest search operations in American history. We examine the case of Gary Frank Sotherden, whose skull was found years later with bear tooth marks but little else, no clothing, no gear, no explanation for how he ended up so far from where he was supposed to be.We consider Thomas Anthony Nuzzi, the traveling nurse last seen with an unidentified woman who has never been located, both of them vanishing into the Alaskan night without a trace. And we look at Michael LeMaitre, a marathon runner who vanished during a major, heavily monitored event on a mountainside crowded with other competitors and spectators, disappearing in broad daylight despite sophisticated search technology that should have been able to locate any warm body on that mountain. Alaska Native traditions carry their own explanations for these disappearances, stories of entities that mimic, lure, and take. The Tlingit speak of the Kushtaka, the land otter man, a shapeshifter said to imitate voices and faces to draw victims away from safety. The Yup'ik tell of the Hairy Man they call Miluquyuliq, a powerful forest presence that watches travelers from the treeline with an intensity that goes beyond mere animal curiosity. And the descendants of Portlock speak of the Nantinaq, a predatory figure so feared that locals ultimately abandoned their entire town rather than remain in its territory. By nineteen fifty, every resident had fled, leaving behind homes and livelihoods, choosing displacement over whatever stalked them from the surrounding forest. We also touch on modern reports, including sightings documented by the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization across Alaska, encounters with massive bipedal creatures covered in dark fur that emit strange vocalizations and watch humans with unsettling intelligence. These accounts span decades and come from experienced outdoorsmen, truckers, hunters, and others who know the difference between known wildlife and something else entirely.At the center of this episode lies an unsettling question that may never be answered. What made Mary Dawn Wilson walk the wrong way, into the deep, after leaving a child behind? She was no naive tourist. She knew the Alaskan wilderness, had lived in remote areas, understood the dangers. Yet something compelled her to drive down that haunted trail, to keep going when any sensible person would turn back, and finally to walk away from her stuck vehicle in the opposite direction of safety. Did she experience a medical crisis that impaired her judgment? Did the wilderness itself disorient her?Or did she see something, hear something, follow something that called to her from the trees?The Tlingit have always warned their children about the Kushtaka's ability to mimic familiar voices, to appear as loved ones, to promise help while leading victims to their doom. The people of Portlock knew something was hunting them long before they abandoned their homes. And Mary Dawn Wilson, walking deeper into the Alaskan interior on that July afternoon, may have encountered whatever it is that has been taking people from this land for longer than anyone can remember.Mary Dawn Wilson was four feet ten inches tall, weighed one hundred sixty pounds, and had gray hair and blue eyes with a small scar on her left ear. She was wearing a floral dress and a cream-colored kuspuk with green flowers when she disappeared. Her case remains open. Tips can be submitted to the Alaska State Troopers at nine oh seven, four five one, five one oh oh, or anonymously through the AK Tips smartphone app. If you know anything about what happened on the Stampede Trail in July of twenty twenty-two, please reach out. Somewhere in that vast and silent wilderness, the answers are waiting to be found.Thank you for joining us on Backwoods Bigfoot Stories. The forest is always watching. And sometimes, it takes.

In early September of 1799, the Stone Expedition reunited deep in the unmapped wilderness beyond the Ohio River. Nine men gathered at the designated rendezvous, carrying fresh provisions and renewed hope. They could not have known that within weeks, two of them would be dead, and the survivors would carry secrets that would haunt their bloodlines for generations.This episode chronicles the expedition's darkest chapter as they pressed deeper into forbidden territory than any Europeans had ventured before. The creatures that had watched them for months began gathering in unprecedented numbers, converging from all directions toward something none of the men could see but all could feel drawing them forward. When the expedition crossed into hostile territory without realizing it, the fragile peace they had built shattered in a single night of violence that left Henri Beaumont scattered across a forest clearing in pieces too small to bury. But the horror of that night was only the beginning. Guided by creatures whose motives remained unknowable, the surviving members discovered a hidden valley—a vast sanctuary concealed between mountain walls where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these beings had lived in complete isolation since before human civilization began.What they found in the caves of that valley would challenge everything they believed about the natural world and reveal a relationship between humans and these ancient creatures far more terrible than any of them had imagined. The bones told the story. Scattered. Broken. Some fossilized with the weight of millennia, others bearing traces of recent flesh. Teeth marks near the joints. Evidence of breaking for marrow. The native warnings had not been exaggeration. They had been truth. This episode also documents the final descent of Will Harper, the expedition's artist, whose mind had been unraveling since his first encounter with the creatures months before. His death in a forest clearing—surrounded by silent witnesses, his heart simply stopped, his face frozen in an expression of terrible transcendence—remains one of the most haunting passages in the Stone journals.Two men entered that valley who would never leave it. The seven who survived would carry the weight of what they witnessed for the rest of their lives, bound by an oath of secrecy that would echo through their descendants for two hundred years.Some knowledge demands a price. Some truths are paid for in blood.

One shot in the darkness. One moment of fear-fueled panic. And everything the expedition had built with the creatures comes crashing down.In Episode Three, we witness the consequences of Jim McAllister's breakdown. Haunted by war, drowning his demons in homemade whiskey, Jim opens fire on a creature standing at the edge of the firelight—and triggers a siege that will test every man's sanity. What follows is a night of absolute terror. Rocks and branches hurled from the darkness. Horses screaming as they break free and scatter. The knocking—not the measured rhythm they'd grown accustomed to, but rapid, frantic, like a thousand hammers striking in unison. And underneath it all, a sound that cuts deeper than any threat: the unmistakable cry of grief.But the creatures don't attack. They could have. They demonstrate exactly what they're capable of—and then they wait.Sam insists there's only one path forward: atonement. Each man must sacrifice something precious. Something that matters. What unfolds is a ritual of exchange that will determine whether the expedition lives or dies.The episode follows the group as they split—some returning east with the journals, others pressing deeper into territory no white man has ever seen.Ancient forests where the trees are older than memory. Creatures walking openly beside them now, no longer hiding. And a meeting with the Wyandot tribe's keeper of history—She-Who-Remembers—who delivers a warning that chills to the bone: "No one who has entered that place has returned. Not because they kill everyone who enters. But because those who enter... change."

Tonight we're doing something a little different here on Backwoods Bigfoot Stories. We're setting aside the witness encounters, and instead we're gathering around the fire to tell a story the old fashioned way. This is a Christmas tale about a young Sasquatch named Thorn who has spent the autumn watching a human family from the treeline above their mountain cabin.He's fascinated by their laughter, their warmth, their strange rituals of carving pumpkins and roasting marshmallows and dragging trees inside their homes to cover them with lights. His kind has always kept their distance from humans, but something about this family calls to him in ways he doesn't quite understand. On Christmas Eve, when the teenage daughter Emma leaves a plate of cookies on the porch railing and looks up toward the treeline with a knowing smile, everything changes. Thorn makes a decision that will alter the course of his life and theirs. What follows is a journey through a blizzard, an impossible winter rose, a lost little boy named Jacob who followed what he thought were Santa's footprints into the storm, and a rescue that bridges the vast distance between two worlds that were never supposed to meet. Pour yourself something warm, dim the lights, and let the snow fall as we journey deep into the ancient Appalachian hills for a Christmas Eve you won't soon forget. It' s suitable for listeners of all ages and makes for perfect holiday listening with the whole family gathered close. From all of us here at Paranormnal World Productions, we wish you a Christmas filled with magic, kindness, and the reminder that you are never truly alone. Keep your eyes on the treeline, friends. And maybe leave a little something on the porch tonight, just in case.

I love a good Christmas story.The kind where something strange and wonderful happens out in the wilderness. Where the magic of the season reaches places most people never go. Where even the darkest corners of the forest feel touched by something warm and old and meaningful.Over the years, I've told you stories like that.Stories of Sasquatch sightings on snowy December mornings.Of mysterious gifts left on remote cabin doorsteps.Of unexplained tracks leading to and from places where no tracks should exist at all.But tonight, friends, I'm not here to warm your heart.Tonight, I'm here to freeze your blood.South Carolina. 1985.A young insurance adjuster named Gerald Hutchins inherits a remote cabin deep in the forest from his great-uncle Amos. The old man had lived alone out there for more than twenty years, and the family whispered that he came back from the war… changed. Haunted. Given to muttering in languages no one recognized. Drawing strange symbols he would immediately burn in the fireplace.Gerald decides the cabin would be the perfect place to spend Christmas with his wife, Ellen, and their thirteen-year-old son, Marcus.A real holiday, he tells them. The kind they used to have before television and convenience took over. Just a family, a fire, and the quiet peace of the winter woods.What Gerald doesn't tell them is what he found when he first visited the cabin alone.The chains hanging above the fireplace.The birch switches stained dark with something he didn't want to examine too closely.And the mask. A horrible wooden mask with hollow eyes and a grin carved with far too many teeth.He doesn't tell them about the sound he heard coming from the second floor.The sound of hooves on hardwood. As Christmas Eve settles in, the temperature drops and the snow begins to fall. And the Hutchins family will learn that some traditions are older than Christianity. Some punishments are older than coal in a stocking. And some things that were meant to stay in the old country followed our ancestors across the ocean—hiding in the shadows of their ships, waiting patiently for the right moment to remind us that the old ways never truly died.They just learned how to wait.Long before Santa Claus became the jolly gift-giver we know today, the winter solstice was a time of fear as much as celebration in the Alpine regions of Europe. While Saint Nicholas rewarded good children, his dark companion dealt with the rest.Krampus. Half-goat. Half-demon. All nightmare. A creature with curved horns, a serpentine tongue, chains forged in hellfire, and birch switches for the wicked. A basket on its back to carry its prizes away—down to whatever hell it called home.Krampusnacht, celebrated on December fifth, saw young men dress as the creature and roam the streets, terrorizing towns. But the oldest stories—the ones whispered long before costumes—spoke of something far older than men in masks. A being that existed before Christianity tried to tame it. A being that still walks the winter forests when nights grow long and the barriers between worlds wear thin.A being that always comes back.Content Warning:This episode contains intense horror imagery, supernatural violence, and themes involving harm to a family, including a child. Listener discretion is strongly advised.  This one is not for the faint of heart—and absolutely not for little ones. I've spent a long time telling stories about strange things in the woods. Bigfoot encounters. Unexplained phenomena. Creatures that linger just beyond the firelight. Even the scariest of those stories often carry a strange warmth—a sense that whatever's out there might be mysterious, might be frightening, but isn't necessarily evil.This story is different. This story is about something very evil.Something that has been doing terrible things to humanity for a very long time.Something that doesn't care about your Christmas spirit, your good intentions, or your prayers.I wanted to tell this story because I think we've sanitized our holidays. We've forgotten that our ancestors celebrated the winter solstice not just with feasts and gifts—but with rituals meant to protect them from the darkness. They understood something we've chosen to forget.The longest night of the year is the longest for a reason.So as you listen, maybe keep a candle burning.Maybe check the locks on your doors.And if you hear something on the roof that sounds a little too heavy to be reindeer…Well. You know what to do..Until next time…Sweet dreams.And Merry Christmas.

In this deeply unsettling episode, we bring you the testimony of Dale Raymond Sturgill, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who encountered the impossible not once, but twice in his lifetime. His story begins in the humid jungles of the Central Highlands in 1968, where a routine reconnaissance mission turned into a firefight against creatures that should not exist.Dale and his squad came face to face with the legendary Nguoi Rung, known to American soldiers as the Rock Apes, and what followed was a brutal battle for survival that left one man dead and the survivors sworn to secrecy by military intelligence. Dale believed he had seen the worst the world had to offer. He thought the horrors of Vietnam would remain the darkest chapter of his life. He was wrong.Nearly twenty years later, in the remote mountains of Breathitt County, Kentucky, Dale went hunting for deer and found something else entirely. What began as a peaceful week in the wilderness quickly devolved into a waking nightmare when he discovered mutilated animal carcasses, enormous footprints circling his campsite, and heard howls in the night that belonged to no known animal. On his fourth night in the mountains, two creatures emerged from the darkness—beings that walked upright like men but bore the heads and features of monstrous canines. They were hunting him. They were coordinating their attack. And Dale was completely alone.This episode contains Dale's complete account of both encounters, told in his own words as he approaches the end of his life and finally breaks decades of silence. He describes in vivid detail the appearance of the Rock Apes, their almost human eyes, and their terrifying aggression. He recounts the moment he first saw a Dogman step into his firelight—the intelligence and malice burning in its yellow eyes—and the brutal fight that followed when the creatures attacked. His escape through the pitch-black forest, wounded and weaponless, is a harrowing tale of survival against predators that seemed almost supernatural in their abilities. Dale's story forces us to confront uncomfortable questions about what may be lurking in the wild places of our world. From the jungles of Southeast Asia to the hollows of Appalachia, his experiences suggest that humanity shares this planet with creatures we have never classified, never studied, and barely survived encountering. His testimony joins a growing body of accounts from hunters, hikers, and rural residents who have seen things in the woods that defy explanation. This is not a story for the faint of heart. Dale  carried these memories for more than forty years, and now, at the end of his journey, he has chosen to share them with the world. Listen with the lights on, and remember his warning the next time you venture into the deep wilderness. Out there, in the dark places, we are not the apex predators we believe ourselves to be. We are prey.

He wasn't inexperienced.He wasn't impressionable.And he wasn't looking for monsters.A t thirty-two years old, this machinist from Lufkin had spent nearly his entire life in the woods. Twenty-five years of hunting experience. Countless nights alone in East Texas backcountry. He'd tracked deer through tangled briar and swamp, crossed paths with black bears, mountain lions, and javelinas, and faced every known predator the region could throw at him.None of that prepared him for the Big Thicket.In November of 1994, a solo five-day deer hunt into one of the most remote and biologically diverse wilderness regions in North America became something else entirely. What began as a routine trip for solitude and game turned into three nights of escalating fear—an encounter that permanently altered his understanding of what the wild is capable of hiding. It began with a footprint.Sixteen inches long. Five clearly defined toes. Pressed deep into creek mud by something far heavier than any known animal in the region.Then came the sounds.Deep, resonant vocalizations that didn't just echo through the trees—they vibrated through his chest. Low, rolling howls. Multiple voices calling back and forth in the darkness. Communicating. Coordinating. That first night, something circled his camp. By morning, tracks were everywhere. Whatever it was had walked within twenty feet of his tent while he sat by the fire, rifle across his lap, convinced he was prepared for anything. He wasn't. When he killed an eight-point buck and hung it two hundred yards from camp, he thought he'd salvaged the trip. He was wrong. Whatever watched him from the tree line wanted that deer. The rope—rated for four hundred pounds—was snapped clean, as if it were thread.The final night brought rocks. Not random. Not accidental. Thrown with intent. Accurate. A clear warning delivered in stone.Then came the whispering. Multiple voices. Just below comprehension. Talking about him. Deciding something. And finally… he saw it. Eight feet tall. Possibly taller. Covered head to toe in reddish-brown hair. Shoulders nearly four feet wide. Arms hanging past its knees. Built like something out of a nightmare—thick through the chest, narrow at the waist, legs like tree trunks.But it was the eyes that stayed with him.Intelligent. Calculating. Eyes that were weighing a decision.It let him leave. But not before destroying his tent.Not before making the message unmistakably clear. This is our land.You don't belong here.Don't come back. He understood. He's never returned to the Big Thicket.

After weeks of strange encounters and mounting dread, the group finds themselves surrounded by Lenape hunters deep in the wilderness. Rather than the violence they expect, they're taken to meet Gray Owl, an elder so ancient his face has become a map of wrinkles and his eyes have clouded with cataracts. Yet somehow, he sees everything. What he tells them about the Mesingw challenges everything they thought they knew. These creatures are not spirits or demons. They are simply old. Older than humanity itself. And they have been waiting.Gray Owl gives Elijah a stone pendant carved with symbols that shift in firelight, telling him it may buy time when the creatures finally decide what to do with them. The warning is clear. They have been marked. For good or ill, there is no turning back now. What follows is two weeks of psychological warfare that tests every man to his breaking point. The knocking escalates into something like war drums. Howls split the night, reaching into frequencies that touch something primal in the human mind. Equipment is moved while they sleep. Enormous footprints appear inches from where their heads rested. And then one of their horses is torn apart in a display of raw power that defies comprehension. The expedition pushes on into Shawnee territory, where Cornstalk's Son shares his own people's history with the Old Enemies. A war that lasted generations. Warriors who went into the mountains and came back broken, wearing the shapes of men but no longer truly human. An uneasy agreement that has held for longer than memory.Now that boundary has been crossed. And the creatures have followed.Part Two builds toward a reckoning that has been centuries in the making. The tests are not over. The judgment has not been rendered. And somewhere in the darkness, ancient eyes are still watching.

What would you do if everything you thought you knew about your father turned out to be wrong? What if his silence, his distance, his strange obsession with the mountains wasn't coldness at all, but something else entirely? What if he'd been guarding a secret so profound, so impossible, that it had consumed his entire life? That's the question facing Marcus Stone as he pulls up to a cabin he hasn't entered in twenty-three years. His father is dead. The funeral has already happened, and Marcus wasn't there. Twenty-three years of silence between them, hardened into something neither could break. And now it's too late.Or is it? Because Robert Stone left something behind. A trunk in the cellar. A note in his father's handwriting that speaks of burdens and secrets and an ancestor named Captain Elijah Stone.A note that hints at something that's been passed down through generations, waiting for someone brave enough to finally bring it into the light. What Marcus finds in that cellar will change everything he thinks he knows about his family, about history, and about what really walks in the deep places of the American wilderness. Seven leather-bound journals. Letters tied with twine that's gone black with age. A stone pendant carved with symbols that don't match any language Marcus has ever seen. And the words of a man who died two hundred years ago, preserved in ink that has faded from black to brown but remains perfectly legible.March fifteenth, seventeen ninety-nine.Captain Elijah Stone. Revolutionary War veteran. A man haunted by stories he heard during the brutal winter at Valley Forge. Stories told by Oneida scouts around dying fires. Stories of the elder brothers. The ones who were here before us. The ones who watch from the shadows of ancient forests.This is the beginning of an expedition into the unknown. Nine men riding west from Richmond, following legends and whispers toward something that might not exist. A hot-tempered Scottish soldier carrying grief like a loaded weapon. A Kentucky frontiersman who's been waiting twenty years for someone to go looking. A Philadelphia naturalist convinced that science can explain anything. A former minister searching for proof of God in a world that suddenly seems random and cruel.And leading them all, a captain who knows, somehow, that not all of them will return.The signs begin almost immediately. Footprints eighteen inches long, pressed deep into mud by something that weighs five hundred pounds. Wood knocking in the darkness, three sharp strikes echoing through the trees. Food stolen from bundles hung fifteen feet in the air. Structures built with purpose and intention, a language in the landscape that speaks of intelligence, of planning, of something that thinks. They know we're here, the frontiersman says. They've known since we crossed into the mountains. And then comes the story that changes everything. A blizzard twenty years ago. A young trapper who thought he was going to die. And something that carried him through the storm, examined him in a dark cave, and made a decision. They were deciding what to do with me.What walks in those mountains? What has been watching humanity since before we learned to walk upright? And what did Robert Stone spend his entire life guarding? The answers are waiting in the pages of those journals. And Marcus Stone is about to discover that some inheritances come with a price.This is The Bigfoot Journals, Part One.The expedition has begun.

In the mountains of western North Carolina, something ancient waits in the darkness. For over eight hundred years, mysterious lights have appeared above a low ridge called Brown Mountain, dancing across the sky in ways that science cannot explain and folklore cannot forget. Tonight, we journey into the heart of Appalachia's most enduring supernatural mystery.This episode begins with the Cherokee legend of a great battle fought in 1200 A.D. between the Cherokee and Catawba Nations. When the fighting ended and hundreds of warriors lay dead across the mountain, the women from both tribes came searching with torches held high, calling out for husbands and sons who would never answer. According to the legend, some of those women never stopped searching.Eight centuries later, their torches still burn on the ridgeline.We explore the first documented white witness to the phenomenon, a German cartographer named John William Gerard de Brahm who observed the lights in seventeen seventy one and tried to explain them as nitrous vapors catching fire. We follow the story of Fate Wiseman, whose family legend about a faithful servant searching for his lost master became the famous bluegrass song that made the Brown Mountain Lights a household name across America.The episode delves into darker territory with the murder of Belinda, a young healer whose abusive husband killed her and her newborn child sometime before the Civil War. According to local legend, the mysterious lights led searchers to her hidden grave, and they still appear above that ravine to this day.We examine the government investigations of nineteen thirteen and nineteen twenty two, when scientists declared the mystery solved by attributing the lights to train headlights and automobiles. We reveal how the devastating flood of nineteen sixteen destroyed that explanation entirely when the lights continued appearing even after all the trains stopped running and the roads washed away. The narrative takes us through the strange case of Ralph Lael, a furniture salesman who claimed to have followed one of the lights into a cave where he made contact with beings from Venus. We hear about Tommie Hunter, who actually touched one of the lights in nineteen eighty two and felt an electric shock surge through his body while six witnesses watched. We follow TV journalist John Carter into the woods after midnight, where he watched a glowing orb approach his group in a zig-zag pattern before making a dramatic turn and vanishing into nothing. Modern investigations receive thorough coverage, including the work of Dr. Daniel Caton at Appalachian State University, whose team accumulated over six thousand hours of camera footage and still couldn't explain everything they recorded. We explore the theories of paranormal researcher Joshua Warren, who believes the unique geology of Brown Mountain creates conditions for ball lightning and who successfully recreated similar phenomena in his laboratory. Throughout the episode, we encounter the many legends that have accumulated over the centuries. The lover's light, where a young woman still holds her torch waiting for a groom who never arrived on their wedding night. The Civil War ghosts, soldiers in blue and gray still searching for fallen comrades. The Revolutionary War patriots, still carrying the flame of liberty through the eternal darkness.This is a story about mystery and meaning. About the places where our certainty breaks down and the universe reminds us that it still contains secrets. About love so powerful it became visible, and grief so profound it became eternal. Whether you believe the lights are spirits of the dead, ball lightning generated by geological forces, or something we haven't discovered yet, one thing is certain. The Brown Mountain Lights are real. They've been appearing for eight hundred years. And somewhere in the darkness of Linville Gorge, the search continues.

People say there's no way Sasquatch could exist in the Land Between the Lakes. They say it's too populated. Too well-traveled. Too thoroughly explored by hunters and hikers and campers over the decades.I disagree.  And after you hear this encounter story, I'm confident you'll agree with me. In November of nineteen eighty-four, a father took his fourteen-year-old son into the backcountry of the Land Between the Lakes for a deer hunting trip. It was supposed to be a bonding experience. A chance for the boy to take his first buck. A weekend of camping and hunting in a remote stretch of wilderness that most visitors never see. What they encountered out there changed both of them forever. It started with strange sounds. Heavy footsteps in the darkness. Rocks thrown from unseen hands. Then came the screaming. Inhuman vocalizations that echoed through the forest from multiple directions at once. Wood knocks that circled their camp throughout the night. The unmistakable signs of something intelligent, something powerful, something that wanted them to know they weren't alone.On the final morning, the boy made a clean shot on a beautiful ten-point buck. But before he could reach his kill, something emerged from the undergrowth. Something massive. Something that walked on two legs and stood over eight feet tall. Something that looked at him with eyes that held unmistakable intelligence.And then it took his deer.The father passed away in March of twenty twenty-four. Now his son is the only living witness to what happened during that terrifying weekend forty years ago. He made a promise to his father in that hospital room. A promise to finally tell the full story.This is that story. One hundred and seventy thousand acres of uninterrupted forest. Two hunters who ventured too deep into the backcountry. And the creatures that let them leave alive.Some places in this world belong to something other than us. The Land Between the Lakes might be one of them.

Deep in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, there's a quiet little valley where three creeks meet and cross like a natural X. Long before settlers built homes there, the Cherokee knew the place well—and they didn't trust it after dark. They warned their people to stay away, calling it a place where something shadowy moved through the night.Later, missionaries arrived, saw the crossing waters as a holy sign, and named the area Valle Crucis: the Valley of the Cross. They built St. John's Episcopal Church beside that old meeting of waters, never realizing what the land had already been known for.In this special episode of Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, we step outside Sasquatch territory for something darker, older, and harder to shake. What you're about to hear isn't a Bigfoot encounter.It's a story that's been whispered around western North Carolina for generations—one that comes with a body count and a warning baked into the ground itself. The legend of the Demon Dog of Valle Crucis goes back at least to the mid-1800s, when a Methodist circuit rider claimed he saw a massive black hound standing among the cemetery stones. He wrote about its size, its unnatural stillness, and those eyes—glowing red like coals. Since then, the sightings have never really stopped. They just surface every so often, always describing the same impossible thing: a dog too big to be real, fur black enough to swallow moonlight, and a stare that feels human in the worst way. But it's not the sightings that made this creature infamous. It's what followed them. Hunting dogs found torn apart with wounds that didn't match any known predator. Livestock killed in ways locals couldn't explain. And nearly every time, the trail led back to the old cemetery—back to the crossing waters—back to the place people were told not to go.At the center of this episode is a listener account from Dale, now in his late fifties, who has carried what happened to him for more than forty years.In the fall of 1975, Dale and his best friend Curtis were fourteen—two mountain kids determined to prove they were grown enough to coon hunt on their own. They headed into the woods with three dogs, including Dale's prized Bluetick, Jessie. They didn't realize they were drifting toward Valle Crucis. They didn't know what the old stories were really warning about.What happened that night near the cemetery changed Dale for good. He describes something huge stepping out of the darkness. Sounds no normal dog could make. A chase that didn't feel like a chase—more like something playing with them. And a split-second sacrifice he still hasn't forgiven himself for. Dale doesn't try to sell you a theory. He doesn't dress it up. He just tells you what he saw, what he heard, and what he lost. And the grief in his voice makes it clear: this isn't a campfire tale.This is a scar. We're honored that Dale trusted us with it. Some stories don't fade with time—they just get heavier. And this one comes with a warning that's echoed through generations: there are places in these mountains you don't push your luck in. Not because you're superstitious. Because sometimes the old folks were right.So settle in, keep your senses sharp, and walk with us into the Valley of the Cross—where the creek waters meet, the graveyard waits, and something out there still doesn't want company after dark.

In this episode, we head deep into the Appalachian spine to uncover one of America's most enduring mountain mysteries: the Wood Booger. Known across Southwest Virginia and neighboring highland communities, this legend reaches back long before European settlers ever set foot on these ridges.Indigenous nations carried generations of warnings about wild men in the forest—the Monacan and Mannahoac spoke of untamed beings in the woods, and Cherokee stories told of Tsul ‘Kalu, the slant-eyed giant who watched from the highest places. These accounts weren't bedtime tales. They were cautionary history.We open with a startling story tied to the final chapter of Daniel Boone's life. In his last year, Boone reportedly confided a secret he'd kept for decades: an encounter with a ten-foot-tall, hair-covered creature he called a “Yahoo.” We dig into the historical trail behind this claim, drawing from John Mack Faragher's landmark Boone biography and Theodore Roosevelt's writings on Boone's Kentucky expeditions to weigh what's legend, what's record, and what still refuses to fit neatly into either. From there, we travel to Norton, Virginia—modern ground zero for Wood Booger research. This tiny mountain city, the smallest independent city in the state, has built a surprising identity around the creature. We explore the region's coal-mining roots and the eerie stories miners carried out of the tunnels beneath these ancient mountains. We also visit nearby Saltville, where humans have mined salt for thousands of years—and where reports of something unexplainable have echoed just as long. The investigation then turns to one of the most talked-about pieces of evidence in recent memory: the 2009 Beast of Gum Hill video. When Chuck Newton captured footage of a massive biped stepping out of the Washington County treeline, the clip drew national attention—and eventually brought the Finding Bigfoot television crew to Southwest Virginia. We revisit the town hall they hosted at the Palmer Grist Mill in Saltville, where the turnout stunned everyone: hunters, hikers, families, and a teenager who described being struck by a rock moments after locking eyes with a dark figure on a hillside. We break down decades of witness descriptions to build a composite profile of the Wood Booger—its reported height and muscular build, the powerful odor so often mentioned in sightings, and the vocalizations that roll through hollows at night.You'll hear accounts from hunters encountering something impossibly close in tree stands, truck drivers watching a hulking form cross Route 23 at three in the morning, and a woman outside Bristol who met the creature in her headlights on a quiet back road near Mendota. The scientific discussion brings us to the work of the late Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, who examined hundreds of footprint casts and argued that certain evidence was extraordinarily difficult to dismiss. We look at reported dermal ridges, the mid-tarsal break that doesn't match human foot anatomy, and hair samples that have resisted definitive identification while showing traits consistent with primates.We also ask the bigger question: why Appalachia? With landscapes over 400 million years old, heavily forested terrain (West Virginia alone is nearly 80% woodland), and massive networks of caves and underground passages, this region offers remoteness in plain sight.Add abundant food sources, low population density, and a deep culture of silence, and you get a place where encounters could remain unreported for generations.Some of the most powerful moments come from childhood witnesses—people who saw something before they had words for fear or disbelief. One woman recounts being eight years old when she locked eyes with a creature across a creek behind her grandparents' home. Instead of dismissing her, her grandmother sat her down and told her about the hairy man who had lived in these mountains longer than anyone could remember.We close in Norton, where the city has openly embraced its Wood Booger heritage: a council resolution declaring Norton a Wood Booger sanctuary, a seven-foot statue at Flag Rock Recreation Area, the Wood Booger Grill on Park Avenue, and an annual festival that brings visitors from across the country. What was once a struggling coal town has reinvented itself around a legend many locals never doubted was real.This episode is dedicated to the witnesses who carried their encounters in silence—afraid of ridicule, isolation, or being labeled crazy. The hunters who came home shaken and quiet. The hikers who saw something on the trail they could never unsee. The kids who weren't believed when they tried to tell the truth. You're not alone. You're not imagining things. And your story matters.

In this episode, we travel to the remote Uintah Basin of northeastern Utah to investigate one of the most intensively studied paranormal locations on Earth: Skinwalker Ranch. This 512-acre property has been the site of documented UFO encounters, cattle mutilations, shapeshifting creatures, and phenomena so bizarre that even the United States government spent $22 million trying to understand it.Our story begins with the ancient warnings of the Ute tribe, who have forbidden their people from setting foot on this land for generations. We explore the legend of the Navajo skinwalkers—malevolent witches said to be capable of transforming into animals—and the territorial conflict that allegedly led to a curse being placed on this remote stretch of Utah high desert.At the heart of the narrative is the Sherman family, who purchased the ranch in 1994 expecting to build a quiet life raising cattle. What they found instead was eighteen months of relentless terror. We detail their first encounter with an enormous wolf that couldn't be killed despite being shot multiple times at point-blank range. We examine the systematic mutilation of their cattle, animals discovered with surgical-precision wounds and not a single drop of blood. We recount the night their three dogs were incinerated by a glowing blue orb, reduced to greasy black lumps in seconds.The investigation deepens when billionaire Robert Bigelow buys the property in 1996 and deploys PhD-level scientists through the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS). A disturbing pattern emerges: the phenomena seem to anticipate the researchers' movements and deliberately evade documentation. We describe the March 1997 encounter in which investigators witnessed a massive creature with glowing yellow eyes perched in a tree, and a dog-headed beast on the ground below—both vanishing after being fired upon. We revisit the August 1997 portal sighting, where a ring of orange light opened in midair and a dark humanoid figure stepped through before the doorway snapped shut.Perhaps most disturbing is our exploration of the Hitchhiker Effect, a phenomenon in which the horrors of Skinwalker Ranch appear to follow visitors home.Researchers, their family members, and even their neighbors reported identical paranormal events hundreds of miles from the property. We examine the physical toll linked to these experiences, including chronic blood diseases, neurological symptoms, and radiation exposure that left some investigators permanently harmed.From there, we move into the halls of government. Defense Intelligence Agency scientist James Lacatski's visit to the ranch helped spark a $22 million Pentagon program known as AAWSAP.We reveal how U.S. Senator Harry Reid secured funding to study the unexplained, and how the 2017 New York Times exposé pushed UFOs into mainstream discourse.We conclude with the modern era under owner Brandon Fugal, whose History Channel series has documented six seasons of anomalies including UAP sightings, radiation spikes, GPS interference, and the discovery of a massive metallic anomaly buried deep beneath the ranch. We examine what investigators have found in the area known as the Triangle, where rockets are deflected by invisible forces and LIDAR imaging suggests structures that don't appear in visible light.Throughout this episode, we stay committed to factual accuracy while delivering the high-strangeness our listeners expect. Every incident described has been reported by credible witnesses, and many were investigated by government-linked teams.We present skeptical perspectives alongside extraordinary claims, letting you decide what may be happening in that remote corner of Utah.This episode runs approximately one hour and draws from the original Deseret News reporting (1996), Hunt for the Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon by Kelleher, Knapp, and James Lacatski, interviews with Brandon Fugal and Dr. Travis Taylor, and documentation from the NIDS and AAWSAP investigations.Content Warning: This episode includes descriptions of animal deaths and mutilations, psychological distress, and unexplained medical phenomena. Listener discretion is advised.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps us keep bringing you the strange, the unexplained, and the terrifying stories that live just beyond the edge of what we think we know about our world.For more content from Paranormal World Productions, visit our website and follow us on social media. And remember: some places on this Earth are not meant for us. Some doors are not meant to be opened. And some lands watch back.

Have you ever wondered about the true story behind the first Thanksgiving?Happy Thanksgiving from the Backwoods Bigfoot Stories Family.  For this special holiday episode, the show steps away from its usual encounter reports and witness interviews to share something different: an original work of fiction that reimagines one of America's most iconic moments.What if the first Thanksgiving wasn't just a meeting between two peoples, but three? What if the Wampanoag arrived at the 1621 harvest celebration with a guest the colonists agreed to protect and keep hidden—an agreement passed quietly through generations for more than four hundred years? This episode tells the story of Yahyel, a Sasquatch elder who reveals himself to William Bradford and the Plymouth colonists, offering ancient wisdom, urgent warnings, and a promise that stretches across centuries.The narrative follows the descendants of that first feast as they safeguard the secret through revolution, expansion, war, and cultural change—carrying it from the earliest days of the colonies into the modern age of DNA databases, thermal drones, and digital discovery.Along the way, the story blends real historical touchstones with cryptid folklore, exploring themes of cooperation, respect for the land, and the responsibility to protect wild places that cannot protect themselves.To be clear: this is fiction. A holiday campfire story created to spark imagination, not to rewrite history. The episode makes no claim that these events occurred, and it is not presented as a factual account. But it invites a simple question: what if something like this could have been true?What if ancient promises still mattered, mysteries still lived in the deep forests, and beings older than human memory were quietly watching—waiting for the moment humanity was ready to meet them with respect instead of fear? Whether you're a true believer or a friendly skeptic, this Thanksgiving episode is meant to bring a little wonder to your holiday. May your plates be full, your company be warm, and your sense of mystery never fade.Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our Sponsors

Tonight's episode takes us deep into the backwoods of northern Alabama, into a summer that officially never happened. In 1983, something came out of the forests around Piney Creek that permanently scarred a rural community and left behind a story still spoken only in whispers. It began with routine livestock killings that didn't stay routine for long. A prize bull was found torn apart in ways that made no sense, surrounded by tracks that seemed to shift between animal and human. Within weeks, farms across miles of countryside were hit, and the sightings followed. Locals described a towering figure that moved upright like a man, covered in thick fur, with a wolfish head and eyes that looked disturbingly human. Fear spread fast, especially after the creature was seen at a nursery window, staring in at an eighteen-month-old child.That moment sparked a hunt that would become one of the most controversial in Alabama history.Dozens of armed men flooded the woods at dawn, determined to stop whatever was stalking their families and livestock. What they discovered in an abandoned storm cellar wasn't the simple monster they expected. The creature they cornered was wounded, terrified, and shockingly aware. It spoke. It pleaded. And beneath the blood and matted fur, a silver cross hung around its neck. When the truth finally surfaced, it wasn't a beast at all, but a missing college student who had been investigating local legends and never made it home. The government arrived within hours. Evidence vanished, threats were made, and everyone involved was forced into silence. The official explanation blamed wild dogs and mass hysteria, but years later a different account emerged from someone who claimed to have seen the real file. According to that testimony, the military had been running biological enhancement experiments in underground facilities throughout rural Alabama since the early 1970s. Deep in limestone caves, they discovered a parasitic organism capable of rewriting human DNA and triggering violent, rapid transformations. A containment breach released infected subjects into the woods, and the organism kept spreading.The most horrifying detail is that victims were said to remain conscious during the change, trapped inside bodies they couldn't control, forced to witness the violence their transformed selves carried out. The missing student was one of those victims, infected during his research and turned into something caught between man and beast.And the story doesn't end there. Similar incidents reportedly surfaced later in nearby counties, and patterns like this have been whispered about across the country under different names. Even now, the abandoned farm where it ended remains sealed, the storm cellar periodically covered in fresh concrete by unknown hands. Locals still report strange howls, impossible tracks, and the kind of disappearances nobody wants to talk about too loudly. This episode pieces together a chain of witnesses who risked everything to break decades of silence, revealing a picture far darker than folklore. The suggestion is simple and terrifying: this wasn't supernatural at all, but human experimentation gone catastrophically wrong, a Cold War nightmare walking loose in the woods.As you listen, remember that officially none of this happened. No documents exist, no agency acknowledges it, and the story is buried under denial. But in backwoods communities across the South, doors still get locked at sundown, livestock still vanish to something that tears through fencing like paper, and on quiet nights near Piney Creek, people still swear they hear the howls. Not quite wolf, not quite human, but something terrible living in the space between.

Welcome to this special collection episode of Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, a journey across sixty years of encounters from the deep woods of the Southeastern United States. In this episode, I share six of the most compelling accounts I've documented over the past five years—stories that take us from the riverbanks of Alabama to the swamps of South Carolina and reveal just how many secrets the South still keeps hidden.Our journey begins in Alabama in 1967, where a power company lineman discovered enormous handprints embedded in a utility pole along the Cahaba River. His face-to-face encounter with a towering creature challenged everything he believed about the world and set the tone for the stories that followed: intelligent beings that choose their moments carefully and always remain in control. From there, we move into the mountains of North Georgia in 1973, where four seasoned hunters found themselves under siege near Blue Ridge. A night of rock throwing, violent tree shaking, and dozens of stick figures arranged in a perfect warning circle around their camp left them shattered and unwilling to ever return to the woods.In Tennessee's Great Smoky Mountains in 1985, a park ranger and wildlife biologist had her scientific worldview upended when a massive creature climbed her fire tower and examined her equipment with deliberate intelligence. Her experience led her to discover that the Park Service had quietly documented similar incidents for decades.The most tragic encounter comes from the Ozark Mountains in 1991, where a family camping trip spiraled into terror. A young girl watched as towering beings demonstrated their strength by crushing rocks with their bare hands. The emotional and psychological fallout broke her family apart, leaving scars that never healed. In 2002, the forests of North Carolina's Pisgah National Forest became the setting for an encounter unlike any before it. An experienced hiker spent three days in what he described as captivity with a family group of these beings, observing their social dynamics, tool use, and an unmistakable curiosity about human objects—suggesting a species far more complex than previously imagined.Our final story takes us to South Carolina in 2014, where two college biology students captured over forty minutes of high-definition footage showing a creature examining their research equipment with clear understanding of its purpose. The immediate government intervention and enforced silence that followed hinted at a much larger effort to conceal the truth. Across all six encounters, the patterns are unmistakable: the heavy musky odor that announces their presence, the massive handprints, the intelligent eyes studying and evaluating, and the sense that these beings could harm us—but choose not to. Together, these stories paint the American South as a hidden refuge for an undiscovered species, or perhaps a separate branch of human evolution that has mastered the art of staying unseen. This episode serves as both a warning and an invitation. The woods are not empty. Something ancient and intelligent is out there, watching from the edges of our world. As you listen, consider how these beings' behavior has evolved over the decades, how closely they seem to be studying us, and what it means that evidence is so quickly suppressed. These are not campfire tales—they are the testimonies of people whose lives were forever changed by what they saw. And sometimes, in the quiet space between dusk and dawn, the South's best-kept secrets step out of the darkness and make themselves known.

In this powerful and haunting episode, we share the life-changing testimony of Mary, a ninety-two-year-old Yup'ik woman who survived one of the most frightening Sasquatch encounters ever recorded. This isn't a tale of footprints or shadows in the trees—this is the story of what happened when an Alaskan village along the Copper River faced something ancient, intelligent, and deadly during the summer of 1962.Mary was only eight when her peaceful village became a hunting ground.What began with one trapper disappearing quickly turned into a terrifying ordeal that claimed several lives, including two of Mary's closest childhood friends. Through her memories, we experience the fear that grew as massive footprints appeared around homes, red eyes watched from the twilight, and the villagers realized this was no bear.Her account connects deeply to Yup'ik traditions and the old stories of the kushta'ka—the hairymen who walked the land long before outsiders arrived.Mary's grandmother recognized the danger immediately, explaining that sometimes one of these beings “goes bad,” much like a rabid wolf, and develops a deadly hunger for humans. As children vanished and attacks intensified, twelve villages came together in a desperate attempt to fight back. Forty-three hunters formed a war party armed with everything from WWII rifles to a centuries-old Russian bear spear blessed by a shaman. Their battle in the deep forest was brutal, courageous, and left lasting scars on everyone involved.But Mary's story goes far beyond violence. Sixty years later, she revealed a secret second encounter—this time with a female Sasquatch who returned something precious to Mary. Whether it was grief, remorse, or understanding, the moment changed how Mary saw these beings forever. Throughout her life, Mary witnessed other encounters that suggested a fragile, uneasy coexistence.Children returned unharmed, travelers rescued from storms, strange shelters appearing when needed, and tracks that came and went without harm. It painted a picture of two species living side by side, connected by an ancient boundary neither fully understood. Mary never called this a victory. She saw it as a tragedy where both sides lost something irreplaceable. The creature that attacked may have been sick—poisoned near a mining camp and driven mad. The female that fought so fiercely was defending her mate, just as the villagers were defending their families. As Mary reached ninety-three, she shared her final thoughts about the visits she believed she still received from the surviving creature—now old, quiet, and watchful. She spoke of dreams where she saw the story through the creature's eyes and understood that what happened wasn't evil—it was two worlds colliding in a place both called home.Her final message is a warning: as the wilderness shrinks, the fragile peace between humans and these ancient beings may not hold. She shares this story not to encourage people to seek Sasquatch, but to remind us of the respect and boundaries forged at such a terrible cost.

In the summer of 1987, sixteen-year-old Theresa Ann Bier vanished in the remote Sierra Nevada mountains—one of the strangest and most unsettling disappearances in California history. She had gone camping near Shuteye Peak with forty-three-year-old Russell “Skip” Welch, a man who claimed to be a Bigfoot "exper"t and promised to show her proof of the creatures he insisted were real.When Welch returned alone, the explanation he offered investigators became infamous: he said Bigfoot had taken her. This episode examines the real facts behind Theresa's disappearance, cutting through decades of rumor, folklore, and speculation. We explore who Theresa was, the troubled circumstances that made her vulnerable, and Welch's disturbing behavior leading up to the trip. His story shifted repeatedly—wild tales that obscured the truth and frustrated investigators—but nothing he said ever led to a single piece of evidence.Search teams combed hundreds of square miles with helicopters, dogs, and volunteers. Two separate campsite locations, drug paraphernalia, and threatening phone calls to Theresa's family painted a picture far darker than anything involving legendary creatures. Yet without a body or physical evidence, prosecutors dropped the case just days before trial, fearing they would lose their only chance to seek justice.Decades later, Theresa remains missing. Welch died in 1998, never revealing more, never abandoning his story. The mountains around Shuteye Peak have kept their secrets, and the truth about what happened to Theresa remains hidden somewhere in that vast wilderness.This episode confronts the real events behind a case where myth became a shield, where a vulnerable teenager slipped through every system meant to protect her, and where the most terrifying part of the story has nothing to do with Bigfoot.It's a journey into the Sierra Nevada, into the shadowed intersection of human deception and wilderness mystery, and into a tragedy that still echoes nearly forty years later.

Tonight's episode shares one of the most detailed and disturbing alien abduction accounts ever recorded — the story of Marcus, a man forever changed by a childhood encounter in rural Minnesota in 1994. What began as a single night of terror evolved into decades of systematic visitation and transformation, revealing an agenda that challenges everything we know about the UFO phenomenon.Marcus's experiences defy explanation. From paralysis and levitation into a silent craft hovering above the pines to his eventual role as an “interface” between human and post-human consciousness, his testimony offers unprecedented insight into the purpose behind abductions.A trained electrical engineer, Marcus spent years trying to rationalize his encounters, documenting physical evidence including an unexplained implant and altered biological markers.He describes a vast hybrid program, introducing beings engineered to bridge humanity and something beyond — entities that may already walk among us, preparing for what they call The Convergence. His accounts of knowledge downloads, advanced mathematics, and shared memories suggest a disturbing truth: these visitors may not be extraterrestrials at all, but evolved humans ensuring their own survival through time. Whether you believe his story or not, Marcus's account forces us to confront profound questions about consciousness, evolution, and the future of our species.Listener discretion is advised. This is not just an abduction story — it's a revelation that blurs the line between horror, prophecy, and human destiny.

Tonight's episode takes us deep into the heart of Appalachia, where ancient mountains remember everything—and some doors, once opened, can never be closed again. This is the chilling account of Michael, a man forever marked by his family's terrifying encounter with beings that shouldn't exist, but do. In the summer of 1995, fourteen-year-old Michael and his family left suburban Cleveland for a decaying farmhouse in rural West Virginia, hoping for a fresh start. What they found at Black Hollow Farm defied reason. The forest seemed alive with intent, and pale figures with glowing eyes watched from the shadows. What began as strange sounds and footprints soon spiraled into a nightmare of ancestral debt and otherworldly bargaining. Michael's first encounter with the Little People—the beings known to the Cherokee as the Yunwi Tsunsdi and to early settlers as the Moon-Eyed People—set in motion a chain of events that would unravel his family. These ancient, subterranean entities fed not on flesh but on human potential, their hunger stretching back thousands of years. As Michael uncovered his family's dark history—tied to a century-old massacre—he realized the debt could only be paid through sacrifice. His search for answers led to an isolated library, an old librarian guarding forbidden knowledge, and a final descent into the caverns beneath the mountains. There, Michael made a desperate bargain: seven years of his life, scattered across his remaining decades, in exchange for his family's safety. The cost bought their freedom—but bound him forever to the watchers in the dark. Today, Black Hollow Farm still stands, waiting for its next tenants, its next chapter.Michael's story is more than a haunting; it's a warning about the thin places in our world where realities blur, and ancient intelligences wait for us to forget the old protections.Because once you know the Little People are real—once you've seen their glowing eyes peering from the forest—you'll never walk through the Appalachians the same way again.

In the spring of 1972, a man chasing gold and glory ventured deep into the Yukon wilderness, dreaming of striking it rich. But what began as a hopeful mining expedition soon unraveled into a two-month nightmare that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Fresh from Vietnam and toughened by work on the Alaska Pipeline, he believed no wilderness could break him. When he purchased the mineral rights to an abandoned 1950s claim—once owned by a prospector named Dutch Hanson who mysteriously vanished after a promising start—he ignored every red flag. Gold fever clouded his judgment, and soon he would realize the true cost of his ambition. After flying into a remote valley with a bush pilot, he built a cabin and began working his sluice box along a promising creek bend. The gold was there—steady and consistent, just as Hanson's notes promised. But something was wrong. The forest was unnaturally quiet. No birds. No bears. No life at all.Then came the night screams. Unnatural wails echoed through the valley, rising and falling with a haunting, almost human cadence. The sounds were answered from multiple directions, as though the darkness itself were alive. He tried to rationalize it—wolves, perhaps—but deep down he knew better. Soon, massive spruce trees began snapping eight feet above the ground, sheared off with tremendous force. Then came the knocks—sharp, rhythmic wood-on-wood impacts echoing through the valley, back and forth, as if some unknown intelligence were communicating.One afternoon, while working the creek, he heard a rapid series of popping sounds surrounding him—mouth clicks, moving in a circle, coordinated and deliberate. Something was out there. Watching. Stalking. Thinking. The proof came in the form of tracks—eighteen inches long, five toes, a five-foot stride. Too human to be a bear, too large to belong to any known species. And then, the unthinkable: he turned at the water's edge to find an eight-foot creature watching him from the treeline. Covered in dark, shaggy hair with a conical head and intelligent eyes, it showed no fear—only dominance. When it struck a nearby tree with a thunderous slap, others answered from the forest. He was surrounded. That night, the creatures attacked. Rocks rained down on his cabin for hours, splintering wood and shaking the structure. Multiple voices filled the night—the deep, resonant roar of the alpha male, the shrill screams of the female, and the higher-pitched cries of a juvenile.They circled his camp, making it clear he was not welcome. By dawn, his camp was destroyed. Tools twisted, the sluice box shattered, and every ounce of gold gone. The message was unmistakable: leave.He fled the valley, trailed by the creatures' heavy knocks and distant cries. At the final creek crossing, the massive male appeared once more—silent, watchful, ensuring he never returned.He never did.Because some places aren't meant for humans, some fortunes aren't worth the price, and some legends should remain undisturbed in the wild.This is the story of one man's hunt for Yukon gold… and the terrifying encounter that made him believe in something that shouldn't exist.

Everyone who knows about the Van Meter Visitor knows about the five nights of terror in October 1903 when a winged creature with a light-emitting horn terrorized the small Iowa town. Credible witnesses. Contemporary documentation. Physical evidence. The whole town saw it, shot at it, and eventually sealed it in an abandoned coal mine. The story became legend.But what almost nobody knows is that the Van Meter Visitor came back.Eighty years later, in October 1983, a fifteen year old boy and his father went coon hunting in the woods near Van Meter and had an encounter that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. An encounter they never reported. An encounter they swore to keep secret. An encounter that proved the creature was never really trapped at all. This is the story of that night, told in the words of the man who lived through it. Now fifty-five years old and finally breaking his silence after his father's death, he recounts in terrifying detail what happened when they encountered something in those dark Iowa woods that shouldn't exist. Something that matched every description from 1903. Something that took their dog Buck and nearly killed their other dog Belle.Something that couldn't be stopped with bullets or courage or anything else they had. This isn't a vague sighting or a distant glimpse. This is a close encounter with one of America's most documented cryptids, told by someone who was there, who saw it clearly, who watched it fly away with his dog clutched in its talons. It's a story about the things that hunt in the darkness. About the creatures that exist outside our understanding of the natural world.About the price of seeing something impossible and having to carry that knowledge for forty years.The Van Meter Visitor is real. It never left. And this is the encounter that proves it.

In September 1903, the quiet farming town of Van Meter, Iowa became the stage for one of the most credible and terrifying cryptid encounters in American history. For five consecutive nights, townspeople reported a winged creatureunlike anything they'd ever seen — an enormous being with leathery bat-like wings and a glowing horn on its headthat emitted a blinding beam of light powerful enough to pierce the darkness.This wasn't the tale of drunkards or overactive imaginations. The witnesses included the town doctor, the bank cashier who later became mayor, and multiple respected businessmen — credible, level-headed citizens with everything to lose and nothing to gain by reporting what they saw.The creature stood eight to nine feet tall, with smooth skin, a blunt horn, and glowing eyes, described consistently by multiple witnesses. Even more disturbing, it appeared immune to bullets. Dr. Alcott fired five shots at close range without effect. Clarence Dunn opened fire through a bank window. O.V. White shot at the creature while it perched atop a telephone pole. Nothing slowed it down. The confrontation reached its climax when an armed mob tracked the being to an abandoned coal mine at the edge of town. There, they discovered not one creature—but two.A larger and a smaller entity emerged from the shaft, seemingly impervious to the barrage of gunfire that followed. The townsfolk, terrified beyond reason, sealed the mine entrance with brick and mortar, entombing the unknown visitors deep underground.This episode examines every documented event from those five nights and explores the enduring mystery of the Van Meter Visitor — a creature that continues to defy explanation more than a century later. From pterosaurs and demonsto extraterrestrial beings and underground species, we dig into every theory — and why none can explain all the evidence.

In this Halloween special from Paranormal World Productions, we head deep into the frozen wilderness of Alaska for a story where myth and terror collide.After forty-five years of running from her murderous brother, Laurie Strode retreats to a remote cabin fifteen miles from her nearest neighbor—hoping the endless wilderness can finally offer peace. But this land holds secrets of its own.When rocks crash against her walls in the night and haunting vocalizations echo through the valley, Laurie realizes she's not alone. Something ancient watches from the treeline—a Sasquatch, massive and intelligent, drawn to her isolation.An uneasy coexistence forms between two survivors the world refuses to believe in… until Michael Myers finds her again. On Halloween night, Alaska becomes a battleground between human trauma, primal instinct, and unstoppable evil. This haunting episode explores survival, isolation, and the strange kinship between beings who exist outside the normal world. When pure evil meets primal fury, the result is brutal, tragic, and unforgettable.⚠️ This episode contains intense horror themes, violence, and adult content. Listener discretion is strongly advised.Join us where the cold is colder, the dark is deeper, and sometimes the monsters in the wild are the only ones who can save us from the monsters that follow us home.

In the summer of 1978, Minerva, Ohio became ground zero for one of the most credible Bigfoot encounters ever investigated — the now-legendary Minerva Monster case. The Cayton family's reports of a large, hair-covered creature on their property drew law enforcement, journalists, and national attention that forever changed their quiet lives.But what most people don't know is that the Caytons weren't the only ones seeing something extraordinary that summer. Just two miles away, another family on Byard Road was living through their own nightmare — a series of encounters they never reported, never shared, and never wanted to relive.This is their story — told through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl who watched the impossible unfold in the cornfield behind her home.While the world focused on the Caytons, this family locked their doors at sunset, fortified their windows, and prayed the shapes moving through the stalks wouldn't come any closer. She spent her nights at her bedroom window, notebook in hand, documenting what she saw — towering, upright figures that moved with intelligence, communicated in low tones, and showed both power and something that felt unsettlingly human. Night after night, she recorded their behavior, trying to understand what her family was living through while the rest of the town looked the other way.As the visits continued, fear became routine. Her brother's nightmares worsened, her parents grew more withdrawn, and the cornfield became a place no one dared to enter.When three of the creatures finally appeared together in the yard, everything changed — and silence was no longer enough to protect them.This is the story that was never told — the encounters that stayed off the record while the media swarmed the Cayton home. It's a haunting, deeply human look at what happens when legends step out of the woods and into ordinary lives, and when a family's quiet resilience is tested by something the world still struggles to explain.Get Our FREE NewsletterGet Brian's Books Leave Us A VoicemailVisit Our WebsiteSupport Our Sponsors

In the summer of 2005, six fourteen-year-old Boy Scouts from South Carolina set out to prove they were ready for anything. It was supposed to be their final challenge before aging out of the troop—a week-long wilderness survival test in the Francis Marion National Forest, just northeast of Charleston.Their scoutmaster dropped them at a remote trailhead with only the essentials: a map, a compass, and an emergency radio. No adults. No safety nets. Just a simple plan—hike eight miles into the backcountry, set up a primitive camp, and spend a week living off the skills they'd spent years developing. For the first day or so, everything went according to plan. The boys found a quiet clearing by a creek—secluded, serene, and perfect. They pitched their tents, made camp, and laughed about how easy this was going to be.Then came the second night. The woods fell silent—eerily silent. Then came the howls. Deep, resonant, impossible to place. What began as strange noises quickly escalated into something far more sinister. Over the next two nights, the scouts endured a terrifying series of events that shook their confidence and stripped away any sense of safety. Footsteps circled their tents after midnight—heavy, deliberate. Their food bag, strung high in a tree for bear safety, was ripped down like it was nothing. One tent was pushed in by something large enough to leave massive handprints in the fabric. Rocks the size of baseballs were hurled at them from the darkness with enough force to strip bark from nearby trees. A thick, musky odor hung in the air. And through it all, they saw them—huge, hair-covered figures moving just beyond the tree line.The breaking point came on the third night. Seven pairs of glowing eyes appeared around the campfire—eyes at least eight feet off the ground, unmoving, unblinking, and far too intelligent to be mistaken for animals. The message was clear: you don't belong here.At first light, the boys made the call to leave—three days early. But getting out wasn't simple. Whatever was out there followed them the entire hike back. One scout saw a massive figure standing in broad daylight in the middle of a creek—impossible to mistake or explain away. Later, their path was blocked entirely by the largest creature yet, forcing them to cut through dense brush to escape.This is a firsthand account from one of those scouts—now in his thirties—finally breaking the silence on an experience that's haunted all six of them for nearly two decades. Officially, it was just another uneventful primitive campout. But unofficially? It was three days of something stalking them. Watching them. Controlling whether they left… or didn't.They made a pact to keep it quiet, afraid of being laughed at or called liars. But now, for the first time, one of them is telling the truth about what really happened in those woods.This is the real story of what drove six confident Boy Scouts out of the forest—early, terrified, and forever changed.

Deep within the misty forests of the Olympic Peninsula, where the trees whisper and the shadows move with ancient purpose, a young Sasquatch named Koda takes his first breath — and his first steps into a world on the brink of change.In this special episode, Brian King-Sharp, host of Sasquatch Odyssey, Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, Disturbing, History, The Gulty Files, and author of Born Wild: Koda's Odyssey – Volume One, invites you to journey into the hidden realm of the Sasquatch like never before. Told through their eyes, this story brings to life the clans, families, and struggles of a people fighting to preserve their way of life against encroaching human threats — and darker forces rising from within their own kind. You'll meet unforgettable characters — from the wise leaders of the Hoh Clan to the fierce and loyal Kabota and Asha — as their lives intertwine in a saga of survival, family, and discovery. This is more than just a story about mysterious creatures in the forest. It's a story about us — about love, loss, belonging, and what it truly means to protect what we hold dear.In this exclusive preview, you'll hear the first seven chapters of the brand-new audiobook version of Born Wild: Koda's Odyssey, brought to life with over seven hours of powerful narration and emotional storytelling that will pull you deep into Koda's world.

Tonight on Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, we head deep into the haunted woods of rural Alabama — a place where family, legacy, and terror collide.In the summer of 1995, a struggling family inherited more than just forty acres of untouched woodland.After losing his job at the paper mill, a man packed up his wife, Sarah, and their twelve-year-old son, Tyler, and moved them into his late grandfather's abandoned cabin, hoping for a fresh start far from mounting debts and dwindling opportunities. But as they soon discovered, some inheritances come with a terrible price — and some places should have been left empty forever.What began as small disturbances — mysterious rocks hitting the roof in the dead of night — quickly escalated into something beyond comprehension.The family found themselves under siege by massive, intelligent beings that had claimed those ancient woods long before humans ever set foot there.For nearly three decades, the man who lived through it kept his story buried. But now, after twenty-seven years of silence, he's ready to tell what really happened during those horrifying weeks — when enormous hands slapped against the cabin walls, when red eyes watched from the darkness outside his son's window, and when voices that no human throat could form whispered threats through the trees.This isn't just another Bigfoot encounter. It's a story of survival, of territory violated, and of ancient rules broken. Drawing from newspaper reports dating back to the 1950s and scattered local testimonies, we uncover why certain areas in the deep Alabama backwoods remain untouched by development — and why locals still speak in whispers about the old Tillman place. In this chilling episode, you'll hear his testimony — a warning passed down through time to anyone who might inherit an old property in the woods. Because in those forgotten corners of Alabama's wilderness, the Old Ones still walk. They still watch. And they still play their terrible games with anyone foolish enough to enter their domain. Some gifts are curses in disguise. Some monsters are patient enough to let you go — knowing they can always come back for you later.So settle in and listen close. This is “The Inheritance.”After hearing it, you'll never look at the woods the same way again.