Now one of your pudding.

I got a string going on here, something just cause my dog.

Something killed your dog, my dog.

We're flying through the air over the tree.

I don't know how it did it, Okay, Damn, I'm really confused.

All I saw was my dog coming over the fence and he was dead.

And once you hit the ground like, I didn't see any cars.

All I saw was my dog coming over the fence.

Sat, what are you putting?

We got some wonder or something crawling around out here?

Did you see what it was or was it was?

Standing enough?

I'm out here looking through the window now and I don't see anything.

I don't want to go outside.

Jesus Quice, you better hello, get the body out here when I'm out there.

I thought of a bitch about tex forty nine.

I don't know easy ann out there?

Yeah, I'm walking right.

Hey.

You know that feeling when you're alone in the woods and suddenly everything goes quiet.

That moment when every bird stops singing, every squirrel stops chattering, and even the wind seems to hold its breath.

That's when you know you're not alone, not really.

Tonight, I'm sharing six stories from people who experienced something in those silent moments, people who saw things they can't explain, heard sounds that shouldn't exist, and encountered something in the places where our world meets the wild.

These come from regular folks.

A wildlife biologist, a school bus driver, a teenager dealing with family troubles, a retired teacher, a lifelong hunter, and a solo camper.

Each of them went into the wilderness expecting one thing and found something else entirely, something that changed how they see the world.

What you're about to hear might challenge what you think you know about what's out there in the deep woods.

These people didn't go looking for mystery.

It found them, and once you've heard their stories, you might find yourself listening a little more carefully the next time you're out there away from the safety of city lights.

So settle in, get comfortable, and remember, just because we've mapped the world doesn't mean we know everything that lives in it.

Let's start with Ted, a wildlife biologist who thought he understood the forest better than most until the day he realized something in the forest understood him.

I'm a wildlife biologist.

I've been doing this for fifteen years.

I know what elk looked like.

I know what bears look like, I know what people look like when they're hiking.

What I saw up on that ridge last October, I still don't have a good explanation for it.

I was doing the annual elk survey up in the Cascades, same area I've been covering for six years running.

You get to know a place pretty well when you spend that much time there.

Every game trail, every clearing, every spot where the herds like to bed down.

The ridge I'm talking about runs along the north side of the valley, maybe eight hundred feet up from where I usually set up my observation post.

First time I noticed them was a Tuesday morning, real early sun was just hitting the tops of the trees.

I had my spotting scope trained on a bachelor group of bulls when something moved up on the ridge line, just a flash of dark against the lighter sky.

When I swung the scope up there, I saw what looked like three figures standing at the edge of the tree line, standing, not moving, just watching.

Now, hunters aren't supposed to be up there.

It's restricted land research area only, but people don't always follow the rules, right, So I made a note in my field journal possible trespassers on north Ridge and went back to counting elk.

Next morning, same thing, three figures, same spot, same time.

This time I got a better look.

They were tall, really tall, and dark like they were wearing all black or dark brown.

But here's the thing.

They never moved like people move.

You know how hikers shift their weight, adjust their packs, that kind of thing.

These figures just stood there, perfectly still for the entire forty minutes I watched them.

Then when I looked away to write something down and looked back, they were gone.

Third day, I brought my good camera with the telephoto lens.

Sure enough, right on schedule, there they were.

I started snapping photos, but even zoomed all the way in, I couldn't make out details.

The autofocus kept hunting like it couldn't lock onto them properly.

The pictures came out blurry, just dark shapes against the trees.

By the end of the week, I was getting frustrated and honestly a little unnerved.

These things people whatever were there every single morning, always in the same spot, always watching down into the valley where I was working.

I mentioned it to my supervisor over the radio, and he said, if I was really concerned about trespassers, I should go check it out.

But here's the thing about that ridge.

There's no easy way up.

It's a brutal climb through thick undergrowth and fallen trees.

Would take me half a day to get up there and back, and I had work to do.

That's when I remembered i'd brought my drone.

I'd been using it to survey areas I couldn't easily reach on foot.

Good little unit, about two thousand dollars worth of equipment, HD camera, thirty minute battery life, GPS tracking.

I figured i'd fly it up to the ridge, get some clear footage of whoever was up there, and that would be that.

The next morning they were there again.

I got the drone ready, did all my pre flight checks.

Weather was perfect, no wind, clear skies.

I sent it up, keeping an eye on the video feed on my phone.

The drone climbed smooth and steady.

I could see the valley dropping away below my truck, getting smaller and smaller.

At about four hundred feet, still well below the ridge, the video feed started getting choppy static lines across the screen.

I figured maybe I was pushing the range, so I stopped the ascent and just tried to hold position.

That's when things got weird.

The drone started drifting, not with the wind, there wasn't any wind.

It was moving sideways toward the ridge, like something was pulling it.

I tried to bring it back, but the controls weren't responding properly.

The video feed was cutting in and out.

In one of the clear moments, I swear I saw something moving fast through the frame, large and dark than nothing, complete signal loss.

The controller showed an error message aircraft disconnected.

I never saw that drone again.

I spent three hours hiking around the base of the ridge, hoping it had crashed somewhere I could retrieve it.

Nothing gone.

Two thousand dollars of equipment just vanished.

That afternoon, I was pissed, I mean really angry.

I decided to check my trail cameras, thinking maybe they'd caught something.

Maybe whoever was up on that ridge had come down into the valley at some point.

I had twelve cameras set up throughout my study area, all in metal security boxes, all locked with heavy duty padlocks.

Every single one was gone, not broken, not vandalized gone.

The trees where they'd been strapped showed marks like someone had used bolt cutters on the security cables.

But here's what really got me.

Some of those cameras were fifteen feet up in the trees.

I used climbing sticks to install them that high, specifically so bears and people can't mess with them.

Whoever took them didn't leave any ladder marks on the trees, no rope marks, nothing.

I radioed my supervisor immediately.

This was way beyond un trespassing, now, this was theft of government property.

He told me to pack up and come back to the station, said we'd send a team up there in a few days to investigate.

I started packing my gear, trying to shake this feeling that I was being watched.

The sun was getting low, maybe an hour of daylight left.

As I was loading my truck, I heard this sound from up on the ridge.

Not a call exactly, more like have you ever heard a tree fall in the forest, that deep groaning crack.

It was like that, but rhythmic, three long groans, then silence.

I looked up with my binoculars.

The three figures were there, but now they were moving, walking along the ridge.

Line, staying just inside the tree line.

They moved so smoothly, like they were gliding.

No up and down motion you get with a normal walk, just this fluid movement.

They covered what must have been a quarter mile in less than a minute, then disappeared into the thicker forest.

I got in my truck and left.

Didn't even finish packing my gear properly, just threw it in the back and drove the whole way down the mountain.

I kept checking my mirrors, half expecting to see something following me.

The team that went up there the next week didn't find much.

Some broken branches up on the ridge, a few partial prints that were too degraded to cast.

They said it was probably just hunters messing with me, maybe some anti government types who don't like researchers on public land.

But hunters don't move like that, Hunters don't take secured trail cameras from fifteen feet up without leaving a trace, and hunters sure as hell don't make a drone just disappear out of the sky.

I put in for a transfer to a different study area after that.

My supervisor approved it without asking too many questions.

I think he could see something had shaken me up pretty bad.

I still do Elk surveys, just in a different part of the state now, nice open meadows, good sight lines, no high ridges overlooking my work.

Sometimes other biologists ask me about that area in the Cascades, whether I have any tips for working up there.

I tell them to stay out of the valley below the north Ridge.

When they ask why, I just say the terrain is difficult and leave it at that.

Most of them take the hint, but every now and then someone will come back from that area with a strange look on their face.

They'll pull me aside and ask if I ever noticed anything unusual up there.

I tell them, no, I never saw anything unusual, just shadows on a ridge, probably nothing.

It's easier than trying to explain what those shadows actually did.

Ted never returned to that valley.

He continues his research in a different part of the state, where the ridges are lower and the sight lines are clear.

But sometimes when he's analyzing data late at night, he thinks about that drone footage that never came back.

What did it capture in those final moments before the signal cut out?

What did those figures on the ridge not want him to see.

Our next story takes us to the Pacific Northwest, where morning fog is as common as rain.

Sarah drove the same school bus route for twenty three years, knew every turn, every stop, every kid, But in her final months behind the wheel, the fog started carrying something more than just moisture, something that would make her quit the only job she'd ever loved twenty three years.

I drove that route twenty three years, same kids, same families, same houses.

You get to know every pothole, every turn, every dog that likes to bark at the bus.

Route forty seven out past Salmon Creek, through those thick woods before you hit the Turner Farm.

I retired two years ago, but I still think about those last few months.

Still wake up sometimes thinking I hear those whispers.

It started in early November.

We get these thick fogs out here in the Pacific Northwest, especially in the valleys.

Visibility drops to maybe fifteen feet.

You crawl along at ten miles an hour, hoping nobody stupid enough to pass you.

That morning, the fog was the worst I'd seen in years.

Couldn't even see the yellow line.

I was running late because of the weather had already picked up the Martinez kids and the Johnson's.

We were heading into that stretch of woods before the Turner Farm when I heard it.

Voices, but not really voices, more like you know when you're almost asleep and you think you hear someone calling your name like that, but outside the bus.

I stopped, thinking maybe some kid was out there lost in the fog, opened the door, called out nothing.

The Martinez boy Diego.

He was sitting right behind me.

Kid was always chatty, but that morning he was dead quiet.

I asked him if he heard anything.

He just shook his head, but his eyes were huge.

Started driving again.

The whispers came back, seemed like they were moving alongside the bus.

Not words I could make out, just this constant murmuring, like several people having a conversation just out of earshot.

The kids were all silent.

That never happens usually I'm telling them to keep it down every five minutes.

This went on for three mornings, always in the same spot, always in thick fog.

The fourth morning, I was ready for it, had my phone recording windows cracked so it could pick up outside sounds.

But when I played it back later, all you could hear was the engine in this weird static.

Then came the morning we hit something.

I was going maybe fifteen miles an hour, super careful, like always in the fog.

We were right at that same spot when there was this thud, not hard but solid, like hitting a hay bale or something.

The whole bus shuddered.

I slammed the brakes, heart pounding.

My first thought was a deer, but it hadn't felt like a deer, too soft, but also too big.

I put on my hazards, grabbed my flashlight, told the kids to stay put.

When I got out, the fog was so thick I could barely see the front of the bus.

No damage to the bumper, no blood, no fur, nothing.

I walked back along the road checking for whatever we'd hit.

Nothing, not even skid marks from my brakes.

The road was too wet from the fog.

When I got back on the bus, every single kid was staring out the windows.

On the right side.

Emily, sweet little first grader.

She looked at me and said, the tall man went into the trees.

I asked her what tall man.

She just pointed into the fog and went quiet.

That afternoon, kids started bringing me pictures.

You know how kids draw stick figures, crayon houses, that kind of thing.

But these pictures, they all showed the same thing.

A tall, dark figure standing in gray scribbles that I guess was supposed to be fog, way taller than the trees they'd drawn.

Some kids gave it red eyes, some didn't give it a face at all, but it was always the same proportions, impossibly tall, long arms standing just at the edge of visibility.

And stay tuned for more sasquatch ott to see.

We'll be right back.

After these messages, I took the pictures to the principal, doctor Jones.

She looked through them, got this concerned look.

Asked if maybe the kids had watched something scary on TV, or if someone had been telling ghost stories on the bus.

I told her no, but I didn't mention the whispers or what we'd hit.

Didn't want to sound crazy.

The next few days were clear, no fog, The kids went back to being loud and normal.

I started to relax, figured maybe it had just been a weird week.

Then the following Monday, another thick fog rolled in.

This time I was determined to take a different route, told dispatch I was detouring around some flooding that didn't exist.

I had twenty minutes to the morning run, but I didn't care.

The kids complained, especially the older ones who were worried about being late, but I noticed Diego and Emily and some of the others who drawn those pictures they looked relieved.

Took the long way for three days, no whispers, no weird feelings, nothing.

Started to feel silly about the whole thing.

Then Thursday morning, Despatch called me out, said a parent had complained about the extended root time told me there was no flooding reported and I needed to stick to my assigned route.

Friday morning, thick fog again, had no choice but to take the regular road.

As soon as we entered that stretch of woods, the bus went quiet, like the kids knew.

The whispers started up right away, but this time they were louder, and I swear some of them were saying names, not clearly, but like when someone calls you from another room and you can't quite make it out, but you know they're calling you.

Almost through the woods, when the engine died, just cut out completely, no warning, no sputtering, just silence.

In twenty three years of driving, I'd never had that bus die on me.

I tried the ignition nothing radio was dead too.

Even my cell phone was showing no signal, which was weird because we usually had at least two bars there.

The whispers got louder.

The kids started crying, not all of them, but the young ones.

Diego was gripping the seat in front of him so hard his knuckles were white.

That's when we all saw it.

A shape in the fog off to the right side of the bus, tall, so tall that even sitting in the bus, we were looking up at where its head should be.

It wasn't moving, just standing there.

The fog was swirling around it in this unnatural way, like it was giving off heat or something.

Nobody screamed.

It was like we were all frozen.

The thing took a step toward the bus, just one step, but it covered so much ground it was maybe ten feet away.

Now I could see texture through the fog, not fur exactly, but not smooth either, like rough bark or thick hair matted with mud.

Then the engine turned over by itself.

I hadn't touched the key.

The radio burst back on static at full volume.

The kids all jumped.

When I looked back to the window the thing was gone, just fog.

I drove out of there so fast I probably should have gotten fired.

Didn't stop at the Turner farm, didn't stop at any of the regular stops, went straight to the school and told the kids to call their parents for rides home.

That afternoon, I went to doctor Jones' office and quit on the spot.

She tried to talk me out of it, asked what had happened.

I just told her I was done.

That twenty three years was enough.

She could see I was shaken up.

Didn't push too hard.

The district found a replacement driver pretty quick, young guy, military veteran, very professional.

I heard he lasted three weeks quit after reporting mechanical issues on that same stretch of road.

The driver after him made it two months before requesting a different route.

Last I heard, they changed the route entirely, added another bus to split up the stops so nobody had to go through those woods.

Official reason was optimization of resources or something like that.

Sometimes I run into those kids around town, well they're teenagers now.

Diego's in high school.

When he sees me, he always nods this serious adult nod, like we share something, which I guess we do.

Emily still draws, her, mom told me, but she doesn't draw tall figures anymore.

Doesn't draw fog either.

I still dream about it sometimes, that shape in the fog, how it moved, How the whispers sounded almost like language, but not quite.

I've lived here my whole life, and I know these woods have stories.

Native folks have worries about things in the forest that go way back.

I never used to believe them.

I believe them now.

Sarah's story reminds us that these encounters don't just happen to people alone in remote wilderness.

Sometimes they occur right along our daily routines, in places we think we know.

The kids on that bus drew what they saw, processing their experience the only way they knew how.

But what about a young person facing their own struggles.

How do they process something impossible when their world is already falling apart.

Our next account comes from someone who is just fifteen when it happened.

They've asked to remain anonymous, but their story about finding an unexpected connection during the worst summer of their life might be the most unusual one you'll hear tonight.

I was fifteen when this happened.

Mom and dad were going through their divorce that year, and it was ugly.

Every night, was screaming matches about money, about custody, about who cheated first.

I'd put on my headphones.

You could still feel it through the walls, you know, that tension that makes your stomach hurt.

Our house backed up to woods, not like a little patch of trees, but real woods that went on for miles.

My bedroom window looked right out into them.

I'd spent years playing in those woods, building forts, catching frogs in the creek.

But that summer I started noticing something different.

It was late July when I first saw it.

I was lying in bed around midnight, parents going at it downstairs, when movement outside caught my eye.

There was this shape at the edge of our backyard where the grass meets the tree line, huge, like impossibly huge, just standing there watching the house.

At first I thought it was a bear.

We got black bears sometimes raiding garbage cans, but bears don't stand that long on two legs, and bears don't just watch.

This thing stood there for an hour, perfectly still, before melting back into the woods so smoothly I almost thought I'd imagined it.

Next night, same thing, and the next, always around midnight, always in the same spot.

After a week, I started leaving my window open, trying to hear if it made any noise.

Nothing, silent as fog.

Here's the weird part.

I wasn't scared.

I should have been terrified, right, But there was something about the way it just stood there, patient and still while chaos was exploding in my house.

It felt like it understood somehow, like it knew what it was like to not belong.

Two weeks in I did something stupid.

Mom had made this big dinner, trying to pretend everything was normal, but Dad didn't show up again, so there was all this extra food, roast chicken, mashed potatoes, the works.

Mom locked herself in her room crying, and I couldn't stand being in that house.

So I grabbed a plate of food and walked out to the backyard.

It was there, of course, watching from the tree line.

I set the plate down at the edge of our property, maybe thirty feet from where it stood.

Then I backed up to the porch and waited.

It didn't move for the longest time, then so slowly I almost missed it.

It came forward, not walking exactly, more like flowing, smooth, and silent.

When it reached the plate, it crouched down, and even crouched it was taller than me.

I couldn't see details in the dark, just the bulk of it.

The plate disappeared somewhere in that mass of darkness, and then it flowed back to the trees.

The next morning, the plate was back on our porch, clean, not washed clean, but licked clean, every tiny scrap of food gone.

So I started feeding it.

Every night.

I'd sneak out whatever I could leftover, sandwiches, fruit, anything.

Sometimes I'd buy extra food with my allowance and hide it in my room.

The thing would wait at the tree line until I left the food and backed away.

Then it would come forward, take it, and fade back into the darkness.

After two weeks of this, it started coming closer, not to me, but to the house.

It would take the food, then, instead of leaving immediately, it would stand there watching my window, and I'd watch back.

Two creatures in the dark, neither one belonging where they were.

Mom and Dad's fights were getting worse.

Lawyers were involved.

Now.

Dad had moved into a motel, but kept coming back to get things, and every visit turned into a screaming match.

One night, they were in the driveway, really going at it when I saw the thing move closer than ever before.

It stood just inside the tree line, maybe fifteen feet from them, invisible in the darkness.

They never noticed two wrapped up in their anger, but I saw it, and I swear it was agitated, swaying slightly, like it was upset by the yelling.

That's when I started talking to it, expecting answers, just talking.

I'd sit on the porch while it ate, telling it about school, about the divorce, about how I couldn't wait to be old enough to leave.

It never responded, obviously, but sometimes it would tilt its head like it was listening.

The night everything changed was in late August.

Mom and Dad had their worst fight yet.

Dad shoved Mom, she threw a glass at him.

Neighbors called the cops.

It was after one in the morning when things finally calmed down.

Dad was gone, Mom was passed out on the couch, and I was exhausted but too wired to sleep.

I went out with food, like always, but the thing wasn't at the tree line.

I waited, confused.

Then I heard it a soft tap on glass my bedroom window.

I nearly had a heart attack.

I crept back inside, up to my room.

There it was, face pressed against my second story window.

I say face, but it wasn't really a face, more like a suggestion of features.

Dark eyes that reflected light like an animal's, no clear nose or mouth, just shadows where they should be.

The glass fogged around where it breathed.

It tapped again, so gentle for something so large.

I don't know what possessed me, but I opened the window.

The smell hit me first, not bad, but wild, like wet earth and pine needles and something musky.

It didn't try to come in, just stayed there, filling my entire window frame.

Then it made a sound, the first sound I'd ever heard from it, this low thrumbing vibration, almost below hearing, like a cat purring, but deeper, comforting.

Somehow I reached out, god knows why, and touched it.

The hair or fur or whatever.

It was felt coarse but warm.

The thrumbing got stronger.

We stayed like that for maybe a minute, me with my hand on this impossible thing, both of us just existing in the quiet.

Then it left, climbed down or jumped down, I don't know, Silent as always, but it left something on my windowsill, a river rock, smooth and round, still wet from the creek.

After that night, it stopped coming for food.

I'd wait at the usual time, but nothing.

I left plates out that went untouched.

After a week, I was convinced I'd scared it off somehow, or maybe it had gotten what it needed and moved on.

But then about two weeks later, I was walking home from school through the woods.

There was a short cut I sometimes took.

I was on the trail when I heard branches breaking off to my left, heavy footsteps keeping pace with me, but staying hidden.

I knew it was the thing, somehow, I just knew.

I stopped and said, hey, it's okay, I know you're there.

The footsteps stopped too, for a long moment, nothing, then that thrumbing sound, just for a second and acknowledgment.

Then the footsteps moved away, fading into the deeper woods.

I saw it maybe three more times that fall, always at a distance, always watching.

When winter came, the sighting stopped.

Mom and I moved to an apartment in town after the divorce was finalized, never saw it again.

I'm thirty two now, and I still think about that summer.

I've read all the Bigfoot stuff online, watched the documentaries, but none of it captures what I experienced.

The intelligence of it, the loneliness, the way it seemed drawn to human pain, like it recognized something familiar.

Sometimes I dream about it in the dreams.

It's still out there in those woods, watching houses from the tree line, looking for another broken kid who needs to know they're not alone in the dark.

And sometimes when I'm going through my own rough patches, I find myself wishing I could leave out a plate of food and have something understand without words that life is hard and strange and full of things that don't quite fit.

I know how crazy this all sounds, but I also know what I experienced.

That thing was real, and for one month, when everything else in my life was falling apart, it was there, watching, waiting, being whatever it was I needed it to be.

I still have that river rock, keep it on my desk.

Sometimes when I hold it, I swear I can still smell pine needles and wet earth.

That story always gets to me, the loneliness on both sides of that encounter, a troubled kid and something else finding comfort in each other's presence.

But not all encounters are so benign.

Sometimes what's out there doesn't want connection.

Sometimes it just wants us gone.

Martha was a retired high school teacher who thought she'd found her perfect piece of paradise in West Virginia, forty acres of mountain solitude for her golden years.

But something else had already claimed that land, and it wasn't interested in sharing.

And stay tuned for more sasquatch ot to see.

We'll be right back after these messages.

I bought that property in West Virginia, sight unseen, forty acres of mountain land for thirty thousand dollars.

The realtor said it was priced low because of the access road four miles of rough dirt track that would need work.

I didn't care.

I was sixty three years old, newly retired from forty years of teaching high school, and I wanted quiet.

Lord knows I got more than I bargained for.

The first week was paradise.

Little two bedroom cabin needed work, but had good bones, solar panels already installed by the previous owner.

The water from the well tested clean.

I'd sit on the porch with my coffee and watch the sun come up over the ridge, thinking I'd finally found my place.

The knocking started on day eight, middle of the night, three loud knocks on the east wall of the cabin, not the door, the wall itself.

Bang bang, bang, hard enough to shake the pictures i'd hung.

I grabbed my flashlight, went outside, circled the whole cabin.

Nothing, no footprints, no marks on the wall.

Nothing.

Next night, same thing, this time on the north wall.

Three knocks, evenly spaced.

I was ready with my shotgun this time, burst out the door, ready to confront whoever was messing with me.

The motion light i'd installed lit up the whole area empty, but the woods were dead silent.

You know that's not natural.

Should always be some noise, crickets, owls, something, But it was like everything was holding its breath.

Third night, I stayed inside.

The knocks came from the roof.

I could hear whatever it was walking up there.

Heavy footsteps that made the rafters creak.

Then three massive strikes that scent dust drifting down from the ceiling.

I called the Sheriff's department on my satellite phone.

They said they'd send someone in the morning.

The access road was too rough for night driving.

Deputy showed up around noon, looked around, took some notes, suggested maybe it was a bear or mountain cats.

I taught biology for twenty years before switching to general science.

I know what wildlife sounds like.

This wasn't wildlife, but I could see in his eyes he thought I was just some city woman spooked by country noises.

After he left, I found the first gift.

That's what I called them, though gift isn't really right.

A pyramid of stones, perfectly balanced, right in the middle of my garden, not there that morning when I'd watered the tomatoes.

Each stone was bigger than my head, and they were stacked five high.

Would have taken equipment to move them, or something very very strong.

That night, no knocks, but the screaming started from the woods, maybe two hundred yards out.

Not human screaming, but not any animal I knew either, long ascending whales that went on for minutes at a time.

My nearest neighbor was six miles away, but I called him anyway.

Chuck lived there all his life.

When I described the sounds, he got quiet.

Then he said, Martha, you might want to consider staying in town for a few days.

I asked him what he meant.

He hemmed and hawed, then finally said, that land you bought.

There's a reason it was so cheap.

Things up there don't like company, things plural.

I'm stubborn, always have been told myself.

I wasn't going to be run off by some local nonsense, probably just people trying to scare me into selling.

But that night changed my mind.

Started with rocks hitting the roof, not thrown, dropped from height.

I could hear them rolling off and hitting the ground.

Then the walls, stones the size of base falls, hammering the cabin from all sides.

The windows didn't break miraculously, but they rattled in their frames.

This went on for an hour.

When it stopped, I heard breathing, heavy rhythmic breathing right outside my bedroom window.

The curtains were drawn, but I could see the shadow of something massive blocking the moonlight.

It stood there, breathing for maybe five minutes.

Then it spoke, not words exactly, but vocalizations that had the cadence of speech, like it was trying to talk but didn't have the right equipment for it.

Guttural, deep, but with inflection, almost poleting.

I grabbed my phone to record it, but the screen wouldn't turn on, not dead.

It would flash for a second then go dark.

My flashlight did the same thing.

Even the led clock on my nightstand was flickering.

The breathing thing outside made more of those speech like sounds, then moved away.

As soon as it was gone, all my electronics came back to normal.

I didn't sleep the rest of the night.

Next morning I found tracks all around the cabin and the soft dirt I've been preparing for a flower bed.

Not quite human, not quite animal.

Five toes, but two spread out and huge, maybe eighteen inches long.

The stride length suggested something over eight feet tall.

I took pictures sent them to a friend who worked at the university.

He said they looked like the fake bigfoot prints people make for hoaxes, But these weren't fake.

The depth, the way the dirt was compressed, the dermal ridge is visible in some of them.

These were real prints from something heavy and alive.

That day, I drove to town and bought trail cameras, six of them, best ones.

They had set them up all around the property that afternoon.

If something was going to harass me, I was going to get proof.

The cameras lasted exactly one night.

I found them the next morning in a neat lie line on my porch, all six removed from their mounting straps without breaking anything, arranged from smallest to largest.

The memory cards were missing.

Message received.

The harassment escalated wood knocks from multiple directions, sometimes seeming to communicate with each other.

Calls and screams at all hours.

More rock throwing, more stone pyramids appearing in impossible places, balanced on my truck hood, blocking the access road, once even inside my locked shed.

Two weeks into this, I was exhausted, hadn't slept more than an hour or two at a time.

I was making coffee one morning when I saw them, three figures at the edge of the clearing, tall covered in dark hair, built like linebackers, but the proportions were off.

They just stood there, watching the cabin.

I walked out onto the porch.

We stared at each other for maybe thirty seconds.

Then the middle one, the tallest, raised its arm and pointed, not at me, pass me down the access road.

The message was clear.

Leave.

I went inside, packed what I could fit in my truck and left.

Spent a week in a motel trying to figure out what to do.

Called a real estate lawyer.

Explained I needed to sell the property immediately.

He found a buyer.

Within a month, some hunting club from out of state sold it for twenty thousand, ten thousand less than I paid.

Didn't care.

The closing was weird.

The buyer's representative asked strange questions.

Had I noticed any unusual wildlife, any areas that seemed active?

I said no, just wanted to be done with it.

I found out later that hunting club only owned the land for three months before selling it to a conservation group.

The conservation group then sold it to the state.

It's now part of a wildlife management area that's closed to the public.

No camping, no hunting, no hiking.

Closed.

I'm in Arizona now, little condo in a retirement community, swimming pool, book club, bingo on Wednesdays.

Everything I thought I didn't want.

But I sleep through the night.

No knocks, no screams, no shadows at the windows.

Sometimes I google that area in West Virginia.

There are forums discussions about the high number of missing hikers in that region, about sounds people here, about things people see but can't quite describe.

I never contribute to these discussions.

What would be the point?

But I know what's up there, and I know it doesn't want us around.

Forty acres in a cabin seemed like such a good deal.

But some land isn't meant to be owned.

Some places belong to older things that were there first and will be there long after we're gone.

They ran me off, plain and simple, and looking back, I think they showed remarkable restraint.

They could have done worse, much worse.

They just wanted me gone.

They made that abundantly clear.

I was the trespasser.

Took me losing ten thousand dollars in my dream retirement to understand that, But I understand it now.

Some lessons are more expensive than others.

But at least I left alive.

Martha learned something fundamental about boundaries, that some of them aren't marked on any map.

But what about those who've spent their whole lives in these forests, those who think they know every tree, every trail, every sound.

Sometimes the most unsettling encounters happened to people who thought they understood the wilderness completely.

Tom comes from five generations of hunters in eastern Tennessee.

His family has walked those mountains for over a century, but three years ago he met someone who knew those woods in ways that defied explanation, and learned that some valleys are off limits for reasons older than memory.

I've been hunting since I was eight years old.

My dad taught me, his dad taught him, and so on back five generations.

I know these mountains in eastern Tennessee like most people know their neighborhood.

Every holler, every ridge, every game trail.

So when I met someone up there who knew them better, it stuck with me.

This was three years ago, early November.

I was bow hunting, setting up in a valley i'd hunted for twenty years, good spot where two ridges funneled the deer down to a creek crossing.

I'd been there since before dawn, hadn't seen anything worth taking a shot.

At around noon, I was thinking about moving to a different stand when this guy walks right up the trail.

No hunter, orange, no pack, no weapon.

I could see, just walking through the woods in old jeans and a flannel shirt, like he was taking a stroll through a park, moving quiet though I barely heard him coming, and I've got good ears.

He stopped about twenty yards from my tree stand, looked right up at me.

Older guy, maybe sixty, gray beard, weathered face, Native American features, but I couldn't place the specific heritage.

After noon, he said, voice quiet but carrying clear.

I nodded back, a little irritated.

You don't walk up on someone's hunt like that.

But something about him made me hold my tongue.

You're wasting your time here, he said, Deer haven't used this crossing for three days now.

I'd seen fresh tracks that morning, clear prints in the mud, but when I look down to point them out, they seemed different, somehow older than i'd thought.

Storm coming in change their pattern, he continued.

They're using the northern Pass now, about a mile that way.

He pointed up the ridge.

There was no storm in the forecast.

I'd checked that morning, clear skies for a week, But the way he said it, so matter of fact, made me look at the sky still blue.

But there was something in the air, a feeling.

You hunt this area, I asked.

Climbing down from my stand, he made this sound, not quite a laugh.

I don't.

I just walk and watch watch what He studied me for a long moment.

You've been coming here twenty years right, ever, wonder why you never see anyone else hunting this valley?

I had, Actually it was odd, perfect habitat, easy access from the logging road, but I'd never encountered another hunter here.

Just figured I was lucky.

The others protect it, he said, this valley and three others nearby.

They don't like the killing here.

Others.

The way he said it made my skin prickle.

Bear cougars, I asked, though I knew that wasn't what he meant.

He smiled.

Slightly older than bears, smarter than cougars.

They were here before the Cherokee, before the people, before the Cherokee.

They'll be here after we're all gone.

I wanted to laugh it off, but something in his eyes stopped me.

He wasn't trying to scare me or impress me.

He was just stating facts.

You've seen them, he continued.

It wasn't a question.

Glimpses movement that wasn't quite right, felt them watching when you were field dressing a kill.

He was right.

There had been times, moments when the woods felt too quiet, when I'd had the overwhelming urge to leave a kill and get out fast.

Times I'd felt eyes on me, but could never spot the watcher.

They tolerate some hunting, he said, those who respect the land take only what they need.

But this valley and the others, these are sanctuary, safe places where nothing hunts and nothing is hunted.

You're telling me to leave.

I'm telling you what is.

What you do with that information is your choice.

He turned to go, then stopped.

But if you're smart, you'll pack up now.

Storm will be here in three hours, and after the storm they'll be checking their territories.

You don't want to be here for that.

I watched him walk away, moving through the un to growth without disturbing a branch.

When I looked at the sky again, clouds were forming on the western horizon, dark ones.

I should have left.

Every rational part of my brain said to pack up and go, but I'm stubborn and I don't like being told what to do.

So I moved to a different part of the valley, set up near an oak stand I knew the deer liked.

The storm hit exactly three hours later, came out of nowhere, violent and sudden lightning, thunder rain, coming sideways.

I took shelter under a rock overhang, watched the creek turn into a torrent.

The storm passed as quickly as it came, leaving everything dripping and fresh.

That's when I heard them moving through the valley, multiple somethings, big, deliberate.

I could hear branches breaking, not like something pushing through carelessly, but like they were being moved aside purposefully.

I pressed myself deeper under the overhang, stay tuned for more sasquatch out to see.

We'll be right back.

After these messages.

Through the rain misted air, I saw shapes, three maybe four tall, bipedal covered in dark hair that looked almost black when wet.

They moved along the creek, stopping occasionally.

One bent down examined something in the mud.

Another stood perfectly still, head tilted like it was listening.

They knew I was there, had to, but they didn't approach, just went about whatever they were doing, checking their territory, like the man had said.

One of them, the largest, turned in my direction.

Even from one hundred yards away, I could feel its attention on me.

It made a sound, low and rumbling that I felt in my chest more than heard a warning.

I stayed frozen until they moved on upstream and out of sight.

Then I grabbed my gear and got out of there.

Ran honestly didn't stop until I reached my truck.

When I got home, my wife asked if I'd had any luck.

I told her no, the weather turned bad.

She looked at me strange and said the weather had been perfect all day in town, just ten miles away.

I went back to those woods a week later, not to hunt, just to look.

My tree stand was gone, not damaged, not knocked down, gone, no sign it had ever been there.

The trail I'd used for twenty years was blocked by falling trees, big ones that would have taken a crew to move.

The message was clear.

I found other places to hunt, good places, successful hunts.

But sometimes I think about that man walking those protected valleys, watching, and I think about the others maintaining their sanctuaries, keeping some small part of the world wild and untouchable.

Last month I ran into another old time the sporting goods store.

He was buying ammunition, mentioned he was heading up to hunt that area.

I told him about the storm patterns up there, how they made hunting unpredictable, suggested some other valleys better access more dear, he thanked me.

Took my advice.

Later, I wondered if that's how it works, if there are those of us who've been warned, who pass along just enough information to keep others away without sounding crazy, protecting the protectors in a way.

I still hunt, still love it, but I'm more careful now about where I go.

I pay attention to the signs, the two quiet forests, the valleys that seem empty of human sign despite being perfect habitat.

I leave those places alone.

Some boundaries aren't marked on maps, some no trespassing signs aren't written in words, And some hunters carry no guns because they're not hunting animals, they're watching us.

Tom's encounter speaks to something ancient, a negotiated coexistence that most of us never know about, secret agreements, unspoken boundaries, protected places.

But our final story tonight is perhaps the most disturbing because it suggests something else entirely, not coexistence, not protection, but mimicry learning practice.

Jake was an experienced solo camper who thought an isolated island in Minnesota's boundary waters would give him the perfect peaceful getaway.

Instead, he discovered that something out there is paying very close attention to how we live too close.

I need to tell someone about this, even though I know how it sounds.

This happened last September in the Boundary Waters northern Minnesota.

I was doing a solo trip, something I'd done dozens of times before.

Five days, four nights, just me in the wilderness.

Third night, I was camped on a small island in the middle of a lake, maybe one hundred yards of shoreline total of pine trees, some rocks.

I picked it specifically because I wanted isolation.

No bears to worry about on an island, no other campers stumbling into my sight, just peace.

I'd gone to bed around nine, clear night, no wind, so quiet you could hear fish jumping half a mile away.

I was in that almost asleep state when I heard it, the sound of my tent zipper, slow deliberate.

Someone was unzipping my tent from the outside.

I froze, heart hammering.

The zipper kept moving tooth by tooth like whoever was doing it was trying to be quiet but wasn't quite managing it.

I grabbed my knife and flashlight, ready to confront whoever this was.

The zipper stopped about halfway down.

I waited five seconds ten twenty nothing.

I flicked on my flashlight, yanked the zipper the rest of the way down, myself, burst out of the tent ready for a fight.

Nobody there.

The island was tying.

I could see every inch of it in the moonlight.

I was completely alone.

Checked the zipper.

It was definitely half undone, not something that could happen by accident.

Walked the entire shoreline looking for another boat, someone swimming anything.

Nothing.

I convinced myself it was some kind of weird equipment failure.

Maybe the zipper was defective.

Came apart on its own, zipped it back up, double checked it, went back to bed.

Took forever to fall asleep, but eventually I did woke up at maybe three in the morning to the sound again, but this time the zipper was moving up closing, But I was inside the tent and nobody was in there with me.

The zipper pool was on the outside.

It was impossible for it to be zipping closed from the outside, but that's what was happening.

I watched the zipper poll moving up the track by itself, tooth by tooth, until my tent was completely sealed.

I sat there until dawn knife in hand, trying to make sense of it.

When the sun came up, I packed my stuff and paddled to a different site on the mainland, big established campground with other people around.

Spent the fourth night there no issues.

But here's the part that really messes with me.

When I was packing up to leave on day five, I found something in my pack.

A tent, not my tent I was still using that, A different tent, same model as mine, same color, but older, worn, smelled like mildew, and something else, something musky.

It was stuffed in my pack under my food bag.

I know for a fact it wasn't there when I started the trip.

I'd packed everything myself checked it twice.

This tent appeared sometime during that night on the island.

I left it at the ranger station, told them I'd found it at a camp site.

They looked at it got quiet.

The older ranger asked exactly where I'd found it.

When I told him which island, he exchanged a look with the partner.

We've had some reports from that area, he said, carefully, unusual activity.

We're recommending people avoid that chain of lakes for now.

I asked what kind of activity he wouldn't elaborate, just said they were investigating.

But when I was leaving, the younger ranger followed me out that tent.

He said, We've had three other people turn in the exact same tent this summer, same model, same age, same smell, all founded in their gear after camping in that area.

What do you think it means, I asked.

He shook his head.

I don't know, but two of those people said something tried to get into their tent at night, heard zippers, breathing, footsteps, but never saw anything.

I did some research when I got home, found some old reports from that area going back decades.

Disappearance is sure that happens in wilderness areas, but also weird stories duplicate camp sites appearing overnight, people finding their exact setup, tent gear, everything replicated on a nearby island, always empty, always perfectly arranged, like someone was practicing being human.

There was one story from the eighties that really got to me.

A group of boy scouts camping in the area.

One kid woke up in the middle of the night to pee, saw another tent near theirs that hadn't been there when they went to sleep, looked inside and saw himself or something that looked like him, sleeping in the same position he'd just been in.

He screamed, woke everyone up, but when they looked, the extra tent was gone.

I haven't been back to the boundary water since, can't bring myself to do it.

I keep thinking about that zipper moving by itself, about someone or something trying to get into my tent.

But worse, I think about that other tent in my pack.

Why leave it there?

What was the point?

My theory?

And I know how insane this sounds, is that something up there is learning, watching us, copying us, trying to understand how we work the tents, the zippers, the mimicry.

It's like it's practicing.

I still have nightmares about waking up to find another tent next to mine, identical in every way, and looking inside to see something that's almost me but not quite, something that's learned to look like me, act like me, but doesn't understand the why of any of it.

The sound of a tent zipper used to mean safety to me, getting sealed in for the night, protected from the elements.

Now it makes my skin crawl because I know that sometimes the thing operating that Zipper isn't human, and it's trying to understand what we are by copying what we do.

That tent that appeared in my pack, I think about it a lot.

Wonder where it came from, Wonder who it belonged to originally.

Wonder if they ever made it home.

Wonder what happened to them if they didn't.

Six stories, six encounters people whose lives were changed by something they can't fully explain.

You might be wondering if these stories are connected somehow, If the watchers on the ridge are the same beings that protected those Tennessee valleys.

If the creature that young person fed is related to whatever ran Martha off her land, If the mimicry in the boundary waters is the same intelligence that creates those voices in the fog.

The truth is, we don't know, And maybe that's the point.

We live in an age where we think we've discovered everything, mapped everything, explained everything.

But these stories remind us that mystery still exists, that there are still things out there that don't fit into our neat categories of known animals, things that watch us from the edges of our world, sometimes curious, sometimes protective, sometimes hostile, but always other.

Each person who shared their story with us tonight had to make a choice about what to do with their experience.

Some, like Marcus and said Era, simply moved on, filing their encounters away as things they'll never fully understand.

Others like Tom became quiet guardians of dangerous knowledge, subtly steering people away from places they shouldn't go, And some like Martha and Jake were left with a fundamental shift in how they see the wilderness, no longer a place to escape to, but a place where we're merely tolerated guests.

If you take anything from these stories, let it be this respect the wild places.

Listen to that ancient instinct that tells you when you're not alone, pay attention when the forest goes silent.

And if you ever find yourself in a situation where every fiber of your being is telling you to leave, leave, because somewhere out there, in the spaces between what we know and what we don't, in the deep forests and remote mountains, something is watching, something is listening, Something remembers when the world was theirs alone, And sometimes in those rare moments and our world's overlap, we get a glimpse of something that reminds us we're not the only intelligence on this planet.

We're not even the oldest.

The next time you're out in nature and you get that feeling, that prickle on the back of your neck, that sense of being observed, remember these stories.

Remember that the unknown isn't always hostile, but it's always worthy of respect.

And maybe just maybe give a small nod to the shadows between the trees, an acknowledgment, a sign of respect, a recognition that we share this world with mysteries we may never fully understand.

After all, they're watching us, aren't they.

In