Episode 103

You're listening to a Tenderfoot TV podcast. They told us that the people who are not going to be able Just a glitch. It was a drone. Now it's just AI, I guess. The stories don't go away. My name is Payne Lindsay, and this is High Strange, an investigative podcast about real encounters. Images of that road We have clear. Military witnesses, pilots, and people who saw something they can't unsee. There is no other explanation for what we saw that day. I remember those faces and they were not.

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Mm, the King of Cups upside down. Now, hey, that's interesting because typically that symbolizes a compromised emotional status, you know, like instability or manipulation. But when I see this card, usually it's on somebody that's very moody, which does not seem like you at all, Vince. M did you shuffle the deck? Yeah, maybe you didn't shuffle em good enough. I I I don't know. Don't worry about it. We're gonna keep going.

Uh let me let me just welcome our visitors here. Hey everybody, welcome back to Radio Rental. Long time no see. I'm Ricky Lee Bagley. And I've been manning the counter here at Radio Rental, which is, as you know, a video rental shop. collection of scary stories told by real breathing people. And this here is Vince, the junior associate clerk. We've had a bit of a slow day, I'll admit that today. It's been kind of slow, so I've been doing a tarot reading for old young Vince. Here. Hey.

Anyway, I know what you want. You've been very patient while the shop was closed. You want one of our exclusive scary stories. One of the tapes that we keep in the secret box in the back behind the cart. I love that curtain, dude. I swear. Anyway, let's uh let's see what we got in here. This one. This one right here. Vince, pop this one in while I draw your next tarot card, okay, bud?

Oh geez Louise Vince, you got the devil card. That represents destructive behaviors, inner demons. Does that resonate with you? Uh no, definitely not. Thank you.

This story happened about sixteen years ago in the summer of 2010. I was just coming out of my freshman year of college The neighborhood that I lived in in high school was a really nice golf course community. It bordered the rivers and estuaries that bled out into the Atlantic Ocean, so it was a really beautiful place to grow up. I remember one day my mom brought out these blueprints of the house and the surrounding property. And I asked her, I saw these all these exes in the forest.

And I was like, Oh, what are those? And she's like, Well that's what I wanted to show you. I think you might find this interesting. These are unmarked graves. And apparently they go all the way back. We kind of took it upon ourselves, my brother and I,'cause we had watched those ghost adventure shows on Travel Channel and I think everyone's familiar with these types of shows. You go out with a recording device and you start asking questions, who are you?

And my brother and I were like, oh that'd be really cool. We should get some friends and go out there and just ask some questions and see if we can capture something. Yeah. Ten thirty at night, maybe eleven o'clock. We basically went to the backyard and then just kind of went into this forested area. I had a new MacBook at the time, so we were like, oh, this would be a great way to record what's going on back here, if there is anything.

I opened Garage Band and I just hit record and we just started asking questions, a bunch of us. You know, the typical: who are you? What are you doing? As we're out there, we start seeing like these unmarked graves. Some of them look unmarked, they're like covered with moss and mud, and they're kind of just jutting out of the forest everywhere. And there's dozens of them just scattered about this patch of forest. It's already kind of an eerie vibe.

You know, we're just asking these questions not only myself but friends of mine as well. I asked the question, is there anyone you'd like us to contact for you? But if you are here and if you have any loved ones that you'd like us to contact Come up and say something now into the device I'm holding. And I can send your message to them. Do you wanna say that into the computer too? This device.

As we're asking questions, I see this grave only a few feet away from us that says Eliza H9 1892 and it's jutted out of the ground and there's moss covered all over it. We're out there for about fifteen to twenty minutes. As we're going back inside, I notice that my laptop is really drained of battery. Which I thought was really odd because I just purchased this laptop a few weeks prior. It was, you know, at the time, the best MacBook you could get.

And I was like, oh my god, this thing's already drained a battery. There must be something wrong with it. And so we go into the kitchen and all eight of us are kind of around this laptop. And as we start playing back the audio, we start hearing voices that don't belong to any of us. talking under us as we're asking these questions and that we're talking amongst ourselves.

kind of like layered beneath when we were talking and asking questions. It's really hard to make out. It's definitely female. It sounds distant, almost with a reverb on it. And you hear my brother on the recording go Man, I'm scared of fucking snakes right now because you know, he's worried. You know, what could be in the forest? And as he's saying that, you hear what sounds like a female voice, very different. It sounded like it was saying Mama. I'm scared fucking snakes right now.

At least that's what it it seemed to me. Mind you, we weren't hearing any of this in real time. Because we're recording garage band, we don't have headphones on, and it's just a bunch of us friends out in the forest just asking random questions. If it was you who spoke earlier, would you like to speak again? Would like to make herself known. They're audible but you can't hear exactly what they're saying, which just makes it A level creepier.

We're startled, we're like, oh my god, like what do we have? What the heck just happened? It was a really strange experience. At that time we really didn't think much of it. We were just like, oh god, that's spooky. But we just kind of forgot about the whole thing, saved the audio file and then just went and partied, you know, that night, I think, and just kind of forgot about the whole thing.

A few days later, my brother and I were like, hey, let's do one more test. And we walked out with the laptop again and we started playing old music from the Civil War era. I was standing out there with a laptop on the edge of the forest. My brother was on the porch and he was kind of coaxing me. He was like, Okay man, let's you we can come back in now. I remember again this floodlight coming from the hotel. Very clearly just piercing through the trees a at nighttime.

I played some music, I was messing around with my laptop, and I looked back up and the hotel floodlights completely Blacked out. Down down. And it looks like this really large black mass kind of in front of it. And it kinda took me a second to gauge what's happening because obviously it's dark. I'm looking at an L C D screen or just a computer screen and back.

But something was clearly blocking it and it was very tall and it was just really weird. So I just kinda like stepped back, went inside the house, and just kinda forgot about it. archived the the audio and just was like, oh that's an interesting experience. Two years go by and My friend Craig, who just so happened to be out there the first time we were doing those recordings,

called me and said, Hey man, I got an even creepier place that you should check out. And it's literally a mile and a half down the road in the same stretch of forest. He said I met a guy up here and he went out there with some friends. Apparently they just saw some really creepy stuff. Mm. way more revved up. And again we kinda have that adventurous spirit and we're like, okay, let's go out and check this out. I mean we did it before. We should see what's up.

The oddest part about it was I remember Craig showing me a Google Earth image of this dome structure in the middle of the forest. And it essentially looks like a flying saucer just sitting in the middle of the forest. And I was like, oh my God, what's that? And he's like, that's Apparently the hub of this activity was

So my brother and I, we got some flashlights. We go out to where this place supposedly is, and we're kind of standing outside this thing. We didn't really want to break in or anything. We were just kind of trying to get an idea of what's going on and what what this place is. We see this old fence and it says something along the lines of biohazard area, keep out. Something about that just initially read like BS. We saw a part of the fence that was already peeled open.

So my brother and I were like, well, let's just walk through.

It's around 1030 at night at this point. Really humid, it's really dark. There's almost like steam coming off the ground. My brother's on the left and I'm on the right. I had a backpack with my laptop. With the hope of hey, let's go to this place and do recording like I had done two years prior. As we're walking Trying to follow this map. All of a sudden I heard what sounded like a female voice press up against my ear.

Directly in your ear, it's almost like you'd feel someone's lips touching the little tiny hair follicles on your ear, it was that close. I couldn't discern what it was saying. And I got so scared, I just stopped, got shivers down my spine, like Trev, did you fucking hear that? Do that, you that, you that

I look to my left and he's already pointing at something in the forest. And he's like, No, but do you hear that? I'm not hearing anything at this point. And I'm starting to get kind of freaked out. My initial gut reaction was go like, hey, who's there? Into the forest. My brother turns to me again, he's like, you didn't hear that either? And at this point I'm like, what what am I not hearing? I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about, but I just heard a woman's voice whisper in my ear.

He said, I heard bipedal footsteps run up to us. Pause and then when you yelled, it I heard it step back a few paces and then run back in the forest. Like just someone barefoot running through the forest. So you didn't hear that woman's voice just now? No. We're both having these subjective auditory experiences. We're already creaked out at this point. I think most people would be like, F this, I'm going back. Maybe it's just the adrenaline we're just like, let's keep going forward.

We're getting closer to where this apparent building is. And I see this small Yeah. Almost like a military bunker made of concrete, no windows, no doors, several yards in front of us. I knew it was a part of it because it just had the creepy vibe. It kind of looked like the same texture of the building from the satellite view, but I knew it was like a smaller outpost.

I couldn't tell if this was military associated. How old this building was, I was really wasn't quite sure. I'd never really quite seen anything like it. We just see this little blown out bomb shelter looking thing, and there's nothing in it. We were about to walk forward again And all of a sudden it felt like It felt like Both of us at the same time felt it. All of a sudden it just felt like the forest lit up.

as if all the fauna in the forest just woke up at the same time, as if it's feeling the same energy my brother and I are feeling. All these animals just like screeching and making noises. Birds, frogs, bugs, whatever else was in the forest at the time. It just felt like the symphony of animals reacting almost to the same atmospheric shift my brother and I were feeling. Because it was almost instantaneous.

Something just felt unsettling and just not right about the situation. Like as if we stepped one step closer and then we'd see something that maybe we would never want to see or remember. Something that might like kind of scar us. That's at least what it felt like. I turned to my brother and I'm like, Are you feeling that? He's like, Yep, we gotta get the fuck out of here And we just booked it out of there as fast as we could.

We didn't have time to like whip out with the laptop and start doing another recording. It was it was already getting too weird at this point. I ain't lying, I I ain't gonna be able to unhear that. Anyway, let's take a break for ads and uh let's take a little break for ourselves. It's the family and friends event at Shoppers Drug Mart. Get 20% off almost all regular priced merchandise. Two days only. Tuesday, April 28th, and Wednesday, April 29th. Open your PC Optimum app to get your coupon.

All righty, we're back and let's just dive right into another tape. Hey Vince, shuffle that deck again, boy. I uh I'm gonna start a new reading. I didn't feel good about the last one.

I was working as a research biologist for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. That job that I was taking entails flying out to the Cuscaquim Yukon River Delta sometime in early June and then living in a remote tent camp all of June, all of July, all of August, September and into early October.

What I'm doing there is I'm there to look at uh uh fecundity or or native success of different species of salmon that are coming up into a particular river system. And there's biologists all the way up and down the Cuscoquim River system. So all of our research projects were up way up in the middle of the year. in the headwaters of these mountains and first of all you're very far from a native village. You're probably three to five hours from a native village.

In addition to that, you're an additional three to five hours by boat from any sort of town. When you're in these areas, especially the first time, and that's what this was, this is my first time up in that area. You get all your gear ready, you're you're starting to prep your mind. And even when you're applying for these jobs, it's quite interesting because when

when you're interviewing for these positions, at least this is what I thought. I thought there was gonna be a lot of questions around science and around genetics and around fish, and how I answered those questions was how I was gonna get the job. But really what the biologist wanted to know is

How comfortable are you by yourself? How comfortable are you for many, many months dealing with wildlife and weather and isolation and living in a space that is so quiet that you're just listening to the wind or your own footsteps? If you spent any time outdoors by yourself in any great length, it's a natural essence to look over your shoulder. Especially when it's quiet, quiet, quiet.

Going up here I was I was thrilled. I wanted to be outside, I wanted to fish, I wanted to see the mountains and the wildlife and and of course do my job. I wanted to to study salmon and and contribute to science and help this region uh manage their fish population. But when I got there and you see the expanse of this area.

picture an alder choked river and by alder choked I mean this is a species of tree that grows kind of if you picture the head of Medusa, the trunks grow in all sorts of kind of tangled configurations. They get big green leaves on them in the summer. They turn dark brown at the end of September, October, and then they fall to the ground. But during the summer, the essences it feels like they're impenetrable.

The edges of the rivers are lined in in this species of tree and it's very, very thick, very dense, and then outside of that there are a lot of spruce trees and a very dense forest, a difficult forest to navigate, and then on the side where I had my camp was tundra. You can see for miles and miles and miles where where I was camping, all the way up to these big, huge, gorgeous Kilbuck Mountains.

You start to understand who you are in a hurry. The quiet at night, the quiet during the day. Like I said, you're not really speaking to another person that frequently.

It was early in the summer that year and I would work all day and then at night because I enjoy angling, I would go down on the river and I would fly fish. And the river that I was on was pretty small and pretty choked with these alders. And so I would go down and I would wait across the river and I'd go on this sandbar that was on the other side of the river from my camp. As the river's rushing by, that's what consumes your hearing.

It's not deafening, but it's so overpowering to your ears that you can't hear anything else. And you're not even hearing birds, you're not hearing the rustling of the leaves, you're hearing the water. And so I'm fishing and I don't know if it's that I had a sixth sense. morning, morning, morning. I didn't hear anything. That I was being watched. And I turned around. But I was staring at the alders.

looking at this wall of vegetation, I can see grass is matted down I can see where Sam is a little bit more. Yeah. The backs of the heads are bitten off the salmon. And you can just see their carcasses all around. And I was looking at all the leaves and I was kind of trying to pick up movement behind there or just If why I was feeling a bit more spooky this night than than otherwise. My mind is or imagination you're gonna go back to fishing.

Yeah. My eyes just truncated down on In this whole thing She was very close to me, just a few feet away. It was as though I was watching a a horror movie where you see, you know, the face of a ghost or the face of a man looking through a window as the camera pans by And she was just looking at me, I was looking at her. Of course I got my hackles up. So I watched her

I spoke to her in a calm voice and I called her mama. I was like, hey mama, what's going on? I'm just down here fishing. So I was casting my fly rod, and that wasn't out of being a tough guy. That wasn't out of my fishing is super important. I didn't want to change. because I didn't want to elicit a different response. And I just kept looking over my shoulder and one of the times when I looked over my shoulder She was gone. And then I looked to the right and she was right there.

right next to me, very, very close. The wind was blowing up river that night, and I can specifically remember that'cause of how I was casting. Stream. and trying to g smell me and understand I think what I was as well. She was half the distance or even maybe even a third of the distance of what she was before. Clearly getting my scent, and she was smelling it more I just went back to fishing and just kept my eyes off of hers, but I was keeping an eye on her a little bit.

And she came all the way up behind me. I could see her in my peripheral, and when I wasn't looking, she would be leaning way into me. She was nervous. She had trepidation as well. So she had her feet kind of backed off and she was leaning as far in as she could without taking a physical step to get closer to me. When I turned around, when I would make eye contact with her. She would snarl. She would start to lift her.

I'm sure my pupils were dilating and you know obviously my heart's beating even more and You know, you're just like, oh man, this is a little bit more than a little bit. Good to bad or bad to bad. When I turn away and I'm looking at her in my peripheral vision, I can see that she is no longer posturing, you know, then then I'm starting to understand I'm scaring her as much as she is in an essence scaring me.

It was the next night. I was preparing some gear. Again it was in the evening time. I wasn't gonna fish this night. And I heard a distant howl. Close but a distant howl. Few moments later I heard a very large haunting howl, a howl, an an empty kind of howl upriver. Hollow and significant. So I walked to the edge of the river and I howl back, back. Lo and behold, she came walking out on the sandbar right where I had been standing the night before.

And she sat down like like a dog. She sat down as though it was a a domesticated dog. She didn't howl back at me, but she sat on the She was sitting already, but then she sat up and paid attention, like, oh, he just howled to me and we can now see each other. I started communicating with her in other different vocalizations like you might hear a coyote do or I started making those noises to her And she lay down and she's facing me laying down now with her head flat on her paws.

And then I made a little half howl. She picked her head up and looked at me. And then I howled again. She sat up all the way up, but sitting on her butt. This was for a few minutes, but And she went back in the brush one time and she came back out and she went back in again. That was the last time that I saw her that night. Sleep in my tent and a big howl was right outside my tent. Three, four, five feet out. Woke me from a dead sleep.

That sounded significantly different. I sat up, I had a 12 gauge Remington stainless steel, 12 gauge pump shotgun. grabbed my gun and I shucked one in the chamber and I just sat there kind of panting, if you will. I was startled. I'm sure my pupils were dilating and I was just trying to make sense of it,'cause now I couldn't hear the howl, right? I just knew something woke me up. Here. Outside of my tent, there's a a little plywood call it a front porch if you will.

Amen. Well I could hear th this wolf's pads on the wood of my platform. And so I kinda unzipped my tent a little bit and I peeked out. I'm assuming it was the alpha male or one of the dominant males, but he was very, very large. And he howled right there, right there, right there, right there. So I zipped my tent back up, unloaded my gun, got it field ready again, hung it back up.

And went back to sleep. But starting that next morning, almost every day when I walked out of my tent, within a few feet, I would have a wolf next to me. Within a few moments, they might be fifty yards away, they might be a hundred yards away, they might be ten feet away. But they were in my area. Yeah.

And I would walk to the genetics tent and I would turn on and say, Hey and I'd talk to them all the time. I tell them good morning and and I tell'em this is the these are the things that you do in your bike. These are the things that you do when you're in the wilderness. I would have conversations with them and with myself and I'd walk to the genetics tent, do my work. But every time I came out of the tent, I was eyeballing them because it became such a consistent engagement.

And a few days after this, I went for a long hike, a really long hike, probably 10 miles. Thank you. And lo and behold, while I was hiking, he was Three wolves went with me. The female that I had originally been howling to, and then he's too young is is my anticipation. I didn't see the big male. And I went on this big, huge walkabout. And there were times where I was on that walkabout that I just had this idea of you.

Again my imagination would get a hold of me as you know, now I'm away from my camp, I'm away from my weapon, I didn't bring my weapon with me. And I just have a backpack on. It's essentially my fake day off, which really didn't exist, but I just had an opportunity here to go for a long walk. I wouldn't say that they're necessarily walking with me, but they're always within a hundred to two hundred yards.

If you know the salmon life cycle, they're born in fresh water as a little tiny fry, what you would consider a minnow. And they travel all the way down their natal river, all the way down the major system, the Cuscoquim, for hundreds and thousands of miles out to the ocean. They live in the ocean for three to five.

five years. And then they return all the way up and they follow. Um, scientists believe by scent. They come all the way up the Cusquim and they go all the way up their Natal River, go all the way up to these very clear, shallow water of the headwaters, and they go and spawn for the next generation of salmon. And then they die. And as their carcasses, they either start slowly swimming downstream or they just outright die and their carcasses are fleeing. That's really why the wolves were.

fish they were there because my research gear would stop the carcasses from floating down just so happens where my research camp was was a very good area for them to pick up these dead. That was my summer of living with the pack of wolves and that's essentially how it ended. It ended just as um Spooky as kind of it started, and it was that just one day they were gone, she was gone. The wall's just up and left, up and left, up and left, up and left.

That right there is now seared into my brain. Alright, we're gonna take a quick break for some ads, but don't go away. We be right back. Okay, Flights on Air Canada. Where do you want to go? The Azores? For its hot springs and volcanoes? Hmm. Speaking of volcanoes, what about Japan? Hmm, you know I love sushi. Not as much as I love tappas. Maybe Majorca. We could hit the beach, then go hiking. Speaking. Or how about a seaside stroll in Sicily? Ooh, I do love cannolis. Wait, what? Nice travels.

Okay, well let's see here. It looks like the card is The death card. Word Vince. I don't know what's happening, but this deck is picking up on an energy from you that I personally do not see. And don't you worry, but the death card that don't mean you gonna die. I mean, look, we're all gonna die. And then of course be reincarnated into butterflies, but we all die before that happens. Uh yeah. Anyway, the death card signifies an ending, if you would. Do you feel an ending up coming?

Uh no. Hmm. Okay, well I feel an ending coming. An ending to this episode. Damn. Ricky Lee Bagley, you sharp boy. Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV. Showrunner is Meredith Steadman. Lead producers are Eric Quintana and Stephen Perez. Executive producers are Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. This episode is a product of the product. is hosted by Jeff Foxworthy and features Tony Cavallero. Writing. Stedman. Score by makeup.

With additional score by Jay Ragsdale. Sound design Sean Mernie, Stephen Perez, Merida Stella. Our production manager is Jordan Foxworthy. Cover artwork by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan. Radio Rental Merchant. By Byron McCoy. To shop Radio Rental Merch,

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