Bigfoot Country: Part Seven

stories kept coming. From northern Minnesota, I interviewed a conservation officer named Margaret Lynfist, who'd spent thirty years patrolling the boundary waters. I've seen things up there that I can't explain, Margaret said, her Scandinavian accent softened by decades in the American Midwest. Things that don't fit in any guidebook or

training manual. Can you give me an example? The winter of two thousand and eight, I was on a solo patrol near the Canadian border, checking ice conditions on some of the larger lakes. It was January, maybe twenty below zero, wind chill even worse, not a day when anything should be moving around.

step and the next. I finished my patrol as fast as I could and didn't go back to that lake for two years. Have you had other encounters since? Nothing visual but sounds. Yes, how's in the night wood?

who'd spent his life on the water. This was back in ninety six. I'd been fishing that stretch of river for twenty year years, knew every bend and sandbar. But that night something was different, different, how quiet?

It had a fish in its hands, a big channel cat must have been thirty pounds, and it was eating it raw, just tearing into it like a dog with a bone. What happened when it saw you? It froze, looked at me with these yellow eyes. I'll never forget those eyes, reflecting my lantern light like mirrors. We stared at each other for what felt like forever, and then it made this sound, low and rumbling, like a warning. I took the hint, turned my boat around, and paddled

like hell back to the landing. Did you ever return to that spot every season? Still fish there to this day. Never saw that creature again, but I feel it sometimes watching from the banks, keeping tabs on me. Samuel laughed, a deep, genuine sound. I leave an extra catfish for it now, just in case. Call it rent for fishing in its territory. From the mountains of West Virginia, I interviewed a coal miner named Thomas Adkins, whose encounter had

happened deep underground. You heard me right, Thomas said, when I asked him to repeat himself. Underground in the mines, tell me about it. This was back in eighty nine. I was working the night shift at a deep mine near Beckley. We were opening a new section following a seam that went back into the mountain for miles and we hit something. What do you mean, hit something? A void, a cave natural formed right in the middle of the scene.

The cutting machine broke through the wall and suddenly there was this opening, maybe ten feet wide, going back into darkness. What did you find at first?

human shaped, but way too big. We followed them deeper, and that's when we started hearing it, hearing what breathing, heavy breathing echoing off the walls, and movement, something shuffling around in the dark, just beyond the reach of our lights. We could smell it too, that smell everyone talks about, like a wet dog and a garbage dump.

I spoke with a woman named Celestine Thibodeaux, who was a practicing trader, a folk healer in the Cajun tradition. The lou garoo is what we call them, Celestine said. Her voice was thick with the accent of the Aischafalaya words, rolling together like the slow rivers of her homeland. The werewolf, the outsiders say, But that's not quite right. They're older than werewolves, older than any story we brought from France. Tell me about your experiences with them. I've seen them

all my life. My grandmother saw them, Her grandmother saw them. They've always been here in the deep Bayous, where the water is black and the cypress grows thick. We don't fear them, We respect them. Have they ever harmed anyone? Only those who deserve it? Poachers sometimes men who take more than they need from the swamp. The loogaroo doesn't like waste, doesn't like greed. But if you live right, if you take only what you need and give back

what you can, they leave you alone. Sometimes they even help help how My grandmother told a story about a child who got lost in the swamp three years old, wandered away from home during a flood. Search parties looked for days found nothing, and then on the fourth morning, the child appeared at the edge of the bayou, safe and sound. Said a big hairy man had carried her through the water, kept her warm at night, brought her back when the flood receded.

The picture that was emerging was more complex than I'd ever imagined. Creatures not just hiding in the wilderness, but woven into the fabric of human culture, present in our stories, our legends, our deepest memories. They'd been with us all along, and now finally we were beginning to see them. Chapter thirty one, The storm gathers. The television offer came back around in the spring. Amanda, the producer from Meridian productions reached out again after a year of sar The industry,

she explained, had changed. Streaming platforms were hungrier than ever for content. The success of certain paranormal and unexplained phenomena series had created an opening that hadn't existed before. We can do this right, she said, during a video call that lasted two hours. I've watched every episode of your podcast. I've read the transcripts. I understand what you're trying to do, and I want to help you do it on a

bigger scale. I've seen what television does to stories like these, I said, the sensationalism, the manipulation, the focus on drama over truth. That's not what I'm proposing. Think of this as a documentary series, long form, substantive, respectful. We let the witnesses tell their stories. We present the evidence without editorializing. We treat the subject with the seriousness it deserves.

No misleading edits, no manufactured drama, no sensationalism. Those are steep terms. Those are my terms. Take them or leave them. Amanda was quiet for a moment, then she smiled, I'll make it work. This is too important to let network politics get in the way. We shook hands virtually at least, and the deal was set. Sasquatch Odyssey was going to television. The first season would feature ten episodes, each one focused

on a different region and its encounters. We'd start in the Pacific Northwest, the heartland of Sasquatch legend, and work our way across the country. I'd conduct the interviews, provide the narration, serve as the guide for audiences who were new to this world. The production was bigger than anything

I'd experienced. Camera crews, sound technicians, editors, producers, a budget that dwarfed what I'd spent in three years of podcasting resources to investigate cases I'd never been able to pursue before. But the core of the show remained the same, the witnesses, their stories, their truth. We filmed the first episode in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State, dense rainforest, ancient trees,

a landscape that seemed to belong to another age. The witnesses we interviewed there had stories that went back generations. Families who'd lived alongside the creatures for one hundred years, who knew their territories and their habits the way you might know a neighbor. They're not animals, one elderly woman told us, sitting on the porch of a cabin her great grandfather had built. They're people different from us, but people, and they've been here longer than we have. We're the newcomers.

We're the ones who don't belong. The second episode took us to the Ozarks, where Bobby Dean Carver served as our local guide. He'd become something of a celebrity since his podcast Interview, fielding inquiries from researchers and media outlets around the world, but he turned everyone else down. You're the only one I trust, he told me as we hiked into the hollers where he'd had his encounter. You don't make us look like fools. You don't twist our words,

You just let us tell our stories. We filmed interviews with a dozen witnesses from the region, hunters, farmers, hikers, children who'd grown up seeing things their parents couldn't explain. The consistency of their accounts was remarkable. The same creatures, the same behaviors, the same sense of being watched by something that didn't want to be seen. By the time we finished filming in Arkansas, I knew we had something special, something that would reach people in ways the podcast never could.

The third episode brought us back to the Pizga National Forest. It was strange returning to these mountains as a television host rather than a sheriff. The trails I'd walked, the clearings, I'd searched, the cave where Austin had vanished without a trace. All of it was familiar, but seen through new eyes. We filmed near some of the locations connected to his disappearance.

The Austin Reeves case remained officially unsolved, another mystery in these ancient mountains, But the evidence we'd gathered, the mount Saint Helen's documents, the witness testimonies, the pattern of government cover ups all pointed to creatures that had been here far longer than any of us. Austin had gone looking for them, whether he'd found them, whether he was still alive somewhere in.

to know what's out there. But the truth is coming out anyway. It can't be stopped. We were filming the fourth episode in the Pacific Northwest when everything changed. It started with a phone call from Daniel. You need to come home. Now, what's wrong? They came back, the men in black. But this time his voice broke. This time they didn't just threaten, They did something.

collapsed walls, ash where our life had been. The studio where I'd recorded hundreds of interviews, the office where i'd built the community, the bedroom where Daniel and I had dreamed of the future, all of it reduced to rubble. Daniel was standing at the edge of the debris, staring at what remained. I wrapped my arms around him and held on. I'm sorry, he whispered, I'm so sorry. I should have been here. I should have This isn't your fault, this is them. This is what they do when they

can't control the narrative. What are we going to do? I looked at the ruins of our home, at the ashes of everything we'd built, and I felt something rising in me, not despair, but determination, a fire that matched the one they'd set. We rebuild, I said, and we keep going. They want us to give up, to be scared, to crawl away and hide, but that's not who we are, That's not who I am. The podcast is backed up, the interviews, the research, the community. It's all in the cloud.

They burned down our house, but they didn't destroy our work. They didn't destroy us. Daniel looked at me, tears streaming down his face. You're not going to stop. I'm never going to stop, not until the truth is out, not until everyone knows what's been hidden, not until they can't silence us anymore. I turned away from the ruins and pulled out my phone. Called Amanda. We need to talk. I said, something's happened and the world needs to see it. The television series was about to get a lot more

complicated and a lot more dangerous. Chapter thirty two, Ashes and Embers. The fire investigation was a farce. The county sheriff, my replacement. A man named Harold Weston, who'd run unopposed after I declined to seek re election, showed up with his deputies, took some photographs, asked a few questions, and declared the fire accidental faulty wiring. He said, these old mountain houses were fire traps. Sheriff Weston, I said, keeping my voice leveled, despite the race building in my chest.

Our house was built in twenty nineteen. The wiring was inspected six months ago, and there were accelerant marks on the foundation that your investigators seem to have missed. Weston's face tightened. You're not a law enforcement officer anymore, Brian. Leave the investigating to the professionals. The professionals who concluded a two year old house caught fire from faulty wiring, The professionals who have jurisdiction here. He stepped closer, lowering

his voice. I know what you've been doing, the podcast, the TV show, all that bigfoot nonsense. You've made some powerful enemies. Maybe this is a sign you should reconsider your priorities. Is that a threat? It's advice, take it or leave it. He walked away, his deputies trailing behind him. I watched them go. My hands clenched into fists. Daniel touched my arm. Let it go, Brian, fighting him won't change anything I know with this, I gestured at the ruins.

This can't stand. They can't just burn down our home and walk away. Then make them pay, not with fists, with truth. Amanda flew in from Los Angeles the next day. She surveyed the damage, interviewed Daniel and me on camera, documented everything the Sheriff's department had conveniently overlooked. Her crew found the accelerant marks I'd mentioned. They found footprints that didn't match any of ours, boot prints military style, leading

away from the house toward the road. This is going to be part of the series, Amanda said, the whole story, the investigation, the threats, the cover up, and now this. People need to see what they're doing to silence you. You're not afraid it'll make the network nervous. The network is already nervous. They've been getting pressure, vague calls from unnamed government sources, questions about our editorial standards, hints that our broadcast license might face screw. But they're standing firm.

This story is too big to walk away from.

around us. Donations poured in from podcast listeners and forum members, enough to replace the equipment we'd lost, enough to start rebuilding. Messages of support flooded my inbox, people who'd been inspired by the podcast, who'd found validation in the stories I'd shared, who wanted us to know we weren't alone. And the interviews continued. I refused to let the fire stop me. If anything had strengthened my resolve. They'd tried to silence me,

and they'd failed. Every episode I recorded, every witness I interviewed, every story I shared, was a victory against the forces that wanted the truth to stay hidden. A week after the fire, the investigation took an unexpected turn. The ATF Bureau of Alcohol tobacco, firearms and explosives reached out to us. A young agent named Sarah Brown had been assigned to

review the case. Unlike Sheriff Weston, she actually did her job, mister Patterson, The accelerant patterns at your property are consistent with professional grade and scendiary devices, she said during our first meeting. This wasn't some amateur with a gas can. Whoever did this had training. Will you be able to

find them? I'm going to try, but I have to warn you there are forces pushing back on this investigation, people above my pay grade, asking questions about why federal resources are being used on a simple house fire.

but my gut says she's genuine. Someone who joined law enforcement to actually pursue justice, not cover it up. Daniel was quiet for a moment, like you were, Yeah, like I was. I looked out the window at the mountains. We keep going, the documentary, the podcast, all of it. They burned down our house, but they didn't destroy us, and the mount Saint Helen's documents are already out there, backed up in a dozen places, shared with journalists and researchers around the world.

The production resumed a month later. Amanda had fought to keep the project alive after the fire. The network had gotten cold feet, the arson, the government pressure, the sense that this story was becoming dangerous in ways they hadn't anticipated. But Amanda convinced them that walking away would be worse, that the public would see it as cowardice, as complicity in the cover up. This is the biggest story any of us will ever work on, she told them, and

we're going to tell it right. We filmed the remaining episodes with a renewed sense of purpose. The fire became part of the narrative, evidence of how far certain forces would go to keep the truth hidden. The witnesses we interviewed spoke with more urgency, now understanding that their stories might be the only protection any of us had. The community continued to grow, two million downloads per episode, three million.

The foreign membership passed fifty thousand, then one hundred thousand, People from every walk of life, united by their experiences, their questions, their refusal to accept the official denials, and the evidence kept accumulating. The Mount Saint Helen's documents, the thermal footage from the PISGA, the audio recordings, the footprint casts, the witness testimonies that formed a pattern too consistent to dismiss.

We were building something, something that couldn't be burned down, or silenced or covered up something bigger than any of us. I didn't know how it would end, didn't know if we'd ever get the definitive proof we were searching for, but I knew we wouldn't stop, couldn't stop, not until the world understood what we'd learned. The creatures were real, the cover up was real, and the truth was coming out,

one story at a time. Chapter thirty three, The Expedition, the final episode of season one, would be filmed in the Pisca. It was Amanda's idea. She wanted to bring everything full circle, to return to the mountains where Austin Reeves had disappeared, where my own journey as a researcher had intensified, where the evidence was most compelling. This is where your story really began, she said during our planning meeting, the case that changed everything. We need to show the

audience that place. I knew she was right, and I knew it would be the hardest episode to film. We assembled a small team, Amanda and her most trusted cameraman, Marcus Zach of course, serving as our guide and technical expert Daniel, who had been with me through all of it, and wasn't about to miss this final chapter, and doctor Rebecca Hartwell, the surgeon from the Mount Saint Helen's documents, who had agreed to appear on camera for the first time.

We left before dawn on a Tuesday in October. The morning was cold and clear, the mountains painted in autumn colors, reds and golds against the dark green of the evergreens. The Pizga and Fall was one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and I felt a familiar ache watching the familiar ridgelines emerge from the morning mist. You okay, Daniel asked quietly, as our caravan wound up the forest service road.

network of local contacts. Multiple witnesses have reported activity here over the past six months, he explained to the camera, wood knocks, vocalizations, glimpses of large figures moving through the trees. This is as active as any location I've documented. The first day was spent exploring the terrain and setting up monitoring equipment, trail cameras, audio recorders, thermal imaging stations. We created a web of technology across twenty square acres designed

to capture anything that moved through the area. Doctor Hartwell examined some unusual structures. We found broken branches arranged in deliberate patterns, stripped bark at heights no bear or human would reach, a strange circular formation of stones that Zack believed was an intentional marker. The patterns are consistent with

what we documented at Mount Saint Helen's. She said, her scientific caution evident, even in this moment, I can't definitively say what created them, but I can say they don't match any known animal behavior. The second night we heard them. It started around midnight, a distant vocalization that sounded almost like a woman screaming, but sustained in a way no human could manage. Then another call answered from a different direction.

Then another three individuals. Zack whispered minimum they're communicating. We caught glimpses on the thermal cameras heat signatures moving through the trees at the edge of our detection range, large bipedal, too fast and too deliberate to be bears. Stay tuned for more Sasquatch ott to see.

as we watched them. At one point, a wood knock came from less than one hundred yards away, a sharp crack that made everyone jump. I walked to the edge of our camp and spoke into the darkness. We're not here to hurt you. We're here to share your story with the world, to help people understand silence. Then, from somewhere in the trees, a low run, umbling vocalization, not threatening, almost acknowledging. I felt it then, that same sense I'd had as a child in liarly, a presence, an awareness,

a connection to something old and powerful and patient. They know, I said quietly, they know what we're trying to do. On the third day, we found the footprints, a line of them crossing a muddy creek bed about a mile from our camp. Clear distinct, unmistakable, eighteen inches long, with visible tow impressions and dermal ridges. Zach cast them in plaster while doctor Hartwell documented every detail. These are the best prints I've ever collected, Zach said. The detail is extraordinary.

You can see the flexion of the toes, the weight distribution. These weren't faked. No hoaxer could create something this anatomically correct. Doctor Hartwell was more measured, as always, The prints are consistent with a large bipedal primate. The dermal ridge patterns are unlike anything in the scientific literature. Whatever made these is unprecedented, real, Amanda said, capturing everything on camera, that's the word you're looking for, Doctor Hartwell, They're real. I'm

a scientist. I don't use that word until the evidence is irrefutable, but she was smiling slightly. However, I will say that after what I saw at Mount Saint Helen's, after what I experienced on that operating table in nineteen eighty, I don't need to believe anymore.

where the trail had gone cold. We'll find him, Daniel said, reading my thoughts as he always did. Will We maybe not the way you want, but you'll find answers you always do. I stared at those distant peaks, wondering what secrets they still held, wondering if Austin was alive somewhere in that vast wilderness, living among the creatures he'd gone to find, or if he died there another victim of the mystery that had consumed so many lives. I'm not done,

I said, this isn't the end. I know it's never the end with you, I smiled, despite the ache in my chest. That's why you love me, one of the reasons. We walked back to the vehicles together, leaving the mountains behind for now. Chapter thirty four. The broadcast the documentary aired on a Tuesday night in October, exactly one year after the fire that had destroyed our home. I watched from the new house we'd built on the same property, bigger than the one they'd burned, stronger, designed to last.

The recording studio was in a separate building, now fire proofed and backed up to servers in three different states. They could burn it down again, it wouldn't matter. The work would survive. Daniel sat beside me, his hand in mine, as the credits rolled in the first episode began. Across America, there are those who have seen things they cannot explain.

Amanda's voice, rich and measured, filled the living room. Images of wilderness filled the screen, the Olympic Peninsula, the Ozarks, the Pizgah, all the places we'd visited over the past year. Then the faces of witnesses, one after another, sharing their stories. Earl Hutchins, Bobby Dean Carver, Margaret lynkevist Samuel Jackson, doctor Rebecca Hartwell, dozens of others whose encounters we documented, whose

voices deserved to be heard. The fire was included, the ruins of our home, the accelerant patterns, the evidence of arson that law enforcement had ignored. Amanda had framed it as what it was, an attempt to silence the truth,

an attempt that had failed. The Mount Saint Helen's documents featured prominently in the third episode, the Classified Project Vulcan files, the witness testimonies about recovered bodies, doctor Hartwell's account of treating a dying specimen in a military hospital, evidence of a cover up that stretched back decades, and the final episode showed our expedition to the Pisca. The vocalizations in the night, the thermal signatures moving through the trees, the

footprints with their dermal ridges and anatomical precision. No definitive footage of a creature, no face to face contact captured on camera, but something more valuable in its way, a pattern, a weight of evidence that added up to some undeniable after one hundred and fifty years of sightings. Amanda's voice concluded, after thousands of witnesses and countless attempts at documentation, one question remains, what is hiding in the forests of North America.

The evidence we've gathered cannot answer that question definitively, but it can tell us this something. Is there, something real, something that has shared this continent with us for longer than we know, and perhaps it's time we started listening. The response was overwhelming. Within the first hour, social media exploded. Within the first week, the documentary had been viewed over

twenty million times. Within the first month, it had sparked a national conversation about what was hiding in our wilderness. Not everyone believed. The skeptics were as vocal as ever, dismissing the evidence, attacking the witnesses, explaining away every data point that was fine, that was how it had to be. Science didn't advance through blind acceptance. It advanced through rigorous debate, through challenge, through the slow accumulation of evidence that eventually

became undeniable. But for every skeptic, there were others who reached out, Scientists who'd been afraid to pursue the subject now emboldened by the documentary's success. Witnesses who'd kept their stories secret for decades, finally finding the courage to speak, Researchers who'd worked in isolation, now discovering a community of others who shared their conviction. The podcast grew ten million

downloads per episode than twenty million. The FORIM membership exploded, becoming a hub for researchers and witnesses around the world, and the threats continued. More visits from the men in black, more pressure from unnamed government sources, more attempts to discredit, to silence, to suppress. We weathered it all. We'd learned to expect it by now. Every attack was a sign that we were doing something right, that we were getting

close to something they didn't want revealed. Six months after the broadcast, I received a visit from agent Sarah Brown. She came to the house on a Sunday morning, looking exhausted, but determined the investigation into the fire had been officially closed inconclusive. They'd called it despite the evidence she'd gathered. I'm sorry, she said, I tried, but there are walls I can't get pasted. People with more power than I have, who want this to go away. I know.

don't stop, She smiled tiredly. I can't fight them from inside the system, but you can fight them from outside. Take this. Tell the stories they don't want told. After she left, I sat for a long time looking at the thumb drive, another piece of the puzzle, another thread in the vast web of secrecy and cover up that I'd been unraveling for years. The work was never done, the truth was never fully revealed, but piece by piece, story by story, we were getting closer. The podcast continues.

The documentary has been renewed for a second season. The community grows larger every day, united by shared experiences and a common purpose. I still don't have all the answers. I still don't know what happened to Austin Reeves. I still don't know the full extent of the government's knowledge, or why they've worked so hard to keep these creatures hidden. But I know more than I did when I was twelve years old, standing in a moonlit hollow in Georgia

seeing something that would change my life forever. I know they're real. I know they've been here longer than we have. I know they're intelligent, perhaps more intelligent than we give

them credit for. And I know that someday, somehow the truth will come out completely, not through me alone, through all of us who have seen, who have believed, who have refused to be silenced, through the witnesses who share their stories, and the researchers who collect the evidence, and the ordinary people who simply refuse to accept that the official denials can be the whole truth. We're building something, a record, a testament, a foundation for the day when

the questions will finally be answered. That day may not come in my lifetime, but it will come. I believe that now more than I've ever believed anything. Daniel is calling me for dinner. The smell of his cooking drifts through the house, something with garlic and herbs. He's gotten good at this over the years, finding ways to ground me. When I get too lost in the work, too consumed by the questions that never fully resolve, I'll close my

laptop and go join him. We'll eat together, talk about nothing and everything, fall asleep in each other's arms like we have for the past decade. And tomorrow I'll start again. Another interview, another story, another small piece of the truth added to the vast tapestry we're weaving. The odyssey continues, it always will. Part six deeper into the Mystery, Chapter thirty five. The weight of stories. The frustration didn't end with Derek Fontaine. As the podcast grew, so did the

volume of questionable accounts. For every genuine witness who reached out, there seemed to be three or four others whose stories fell apart under even basic scrutiny. Some were obvious fabrications, people who'd clearly read, searched existing cases, and cobbled together elements to create their own encounters. Others were more troubling, sincere individuals whose memories had been shaped by expectation, by media consumption, by the powerful human need to be part

of something larger than themselves. Learning to distinguish between these categories became an essential skill. I developed a mental checklist. Did the details remain consistent across multiple tellings. Did the witness seem more interested in the experience itself or in the attention it might bring. Were there specific verifiable elements a date, a location, a corroborating witness, or was everything conveniently vague? Most importantly, did the story ring true? After

hundreds of interviews, I developed an instinct for authenticity. It wasn't fool proof, but it helped me navigate the endless stream of accounts that flooded my inbox. One week, in particular, tested my patience to its life limits. On Monday, I interviewed a woman from Oregon who claimed she'd been communicating telepathically with a family of sasquatch for the past fifteen years. The creatures, she said, had taught her their language and

shared with her the secrets of the universe. When I asked for any verifiable detail, a location, a physical description, something that could be confirmed, she became evasive, insisting that the creatures had forbidden her from sharing such information. With non believers. On Tuesday, it was a teenager from Texas

who'd clearly watched too many horror movies. His encounter featured elements lifted directly from three different films I recognized, complete with dialogue that sounded like it had been written by a screenwriter with a loose grip on reality. On Wednesday, a retired professor from Michigan spent two hours explaining his theory that Sasquatch were actually time travelers from the future,

sent back to observe humanity's final centuries before extinction. He had charged arts, he had equations, He had absolutely no evidence whatsoever.

buried under a mountain of garbage. Daniel pulled up a chair and sat down beside me. Remember why you started this, to give witnesses a voice, to document the truth, and you're doing that every episode. You're doing exactly that. But the noise, the noise is the price of admission. You can't reach the real witnesses without wading through the fakes. It's frustrating, but it's necessary. He put his hand on my shoulder, and stay tuned for mar sasquatch Oat to see.

She'd never told anyone. She said she was eighty two years old and wanted to share her story before it was too late. I deleted the cancelation and wrote a different message, looking forward to our conversation tomorrow. Lucille Marsh turned out to be one of the most memorable interviews I ever conducted.

sun up to sundown, and us children helped. However we could tell me about the encounter. Well, it was late August, I remember that much. The cotton was coming in good that year, and Daddy had hired some extra hands to help with the harvest. I'd been sent to fetch water from the spring. We had a natural spring about a quarter mile from the house, back in a little hollow where the trees grew thick. What happened at the spring, I was filling my bucket when I heard something moving

in the brush. At first I thought it was a deer. We had plenty of them around, so I stayed still and quiet to see it. But what stepped out of those trees wasn't any deer. Can you describe it? It was tall, taller than any man I'd ever seen, even taller than mister Henderson, who ran the general store in town and stood six foot five if he was an inch. But this thing was broader too, massive shoulders, long arms covered head to toe, and dark brown hair, and the

face she paused. The face was almost human, almost, But there was something different about it, something old, something that looked at me like at new things. I couldn't even imagine.

carried with me for seventy years. Lucille's interview it reminded me why I did this work, not for the dramatic encounters or the sensational stories, for the quiet moments, for the people like Lucille who'd carried these experiences in silence for decades, waiting for someone to believe them, For the truth that existed beneath all the noise, patient and persistent, waiting to be heard. I asked Lucille if she'd be willing to share a photograph of the stone, and she agreed.

When the image arrived in my email the next day, I stared at it for a long time. An ordinary riverstone, smooth and gray, unremarkable in every way except for what it represented, a moment of contact, a gift offered and eventually accepted, a connection across species, across decades, across the vast gulf that separated humans from the creatures we were only beginning to understand. I saved the image and added

it to the episode. And when the response came in hundreds of messages from people who'd been moved by Lucille's story, who'd been inspired by her courage and finally speaking up, I knew that the frustration was worth it. Every time Chapter thirty six, Encounters in the Heartland the Midwest interviews

brought a different flavor to the podcast. The Southeast had its swamps and hollows, the Pacific Northwest had its ancient forests, but the American Heartland had something unique, farmland that butted up against remnant woodlands, small towns surrounded by fields that stretched to the horizon, and people whose matter of fact approach to life extended even to the impossible. I'm not the type to make things up, said Harold Gustafson, a

seventy three year old dairy farmer from Wisconsin. Ask anyone who knows me, thirty years on the county board, forty years running this farm. I don't have time for nonsense. But you saw something? I saw something. October of two thousand and three. I was out in the barn around four in the morning, starting the milking. The cows were agitated, wouldn't settle down, kept looking toward the back of the barn, where the doors were opened, to the paddock.

Didn't run, just walked, and it stepped right over the fence, a four foot fence, and it didn't even break stride, just stepped over it like it was nothing. Did you report the sighting to who the sheriff would have laughed me out of his office. My wife thought I was seeing things. My kids still think I made it up to get attention. Harold's voice hardened. But I know what I saw. Sixty years of farming, and I've never seen anything like it. Bears don't walk upright, Deer don't clear

four foot fences without jumping. Whatever that thing was, it wasn't from around here. Have you seen it since? Not seen? But I found things. Tracks in the mud by the creek, way too big for any person. Deer carcasses in the woods with the bones cracked open for marrow, and I mean cracked like someone hit them with a hammer. Something's been living in those woods for years, maybe decades, And

until you called, I never had anyone to tell. From Iowa, I interviewed a woman named Constance Meyer who'd had an encounter while driving home from a late shift at the hospital where she worked as a nurse. It was December twenty eleven. Constance said, snowing, hard, visibility, maybe one hundred feet. I was on County Road fourteen, about five miles from my house. That stretch goes through a river bottom, lots of timber, not many houses, what happened? Something ran across

the road in front of me. I had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting it. At first I thought it was a deer, but then I realized it was running on two legs and it was huge. When it reached the other side of the road, it had to duck under a branch that I know was at least seven feet off the ground. Did you get a good look at it? Only for a second. My headlights caught it as it crossed brown hair, massive build arms that hung down past its knees, and fast, God, it

was fast. It covered that two lane highway and maybe three strides.

hell out of me. On that road from Nebraska, I spoke with a rancher named Bill Thornton, whose family had been reporting encounters for three generations. My grandfather saw them back in the thirties. Bill said, my father saw them in the sixties, and I've seen them twice, once in nineteen eighty seven, once in twenty nineteen. Whatever these things are, they've been on this land longer than my family has. Tell me about your encounters. The first one, I was

sixteen working cattle in the sand Hills north Pasture. It was evening getting dark. I was on horseback pushing some strays back toward the main herd when my horse spooked, just stopped dead and wouldn't go forward no matter what I did.

existed between the fields. They'd learned to coexist with human activity, staying hidden, watching from the edges, making themselves known only when circumstances forced their hand. It was a testament to their intelligence, their adaptability, their determination to survive in a world that was increasingly hostile to anything wild. And it made me wonder how many other places had they colonized without anyone noticing, how many encounters had happened and been dismissed, forgotten,

buried under the weight of rational denial. The answer, I was beginning to realize was more than anyone could count.