This email is from Lily. I think that's how you spell her name l I. I spell it differently, but it looks like Lily. But here's what she writes. There Once was a line from a play written by poet William Concreve in sixteen ninety seven that states music hath charms to soothe a savage beast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oh. The phrase ended up in the movie King Calm, and roughly translated, it means music has
the power to calm even the angriest of beasts, including Bigfoot. I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California, and I've acquired what some would describe as a lifetime of unusual encounters. Some stories involve wild animal they're easy to identify, while others are chilling and difficult to put into words. I often joked that I could write a fiction story and it would not be as crazy as my actual life experiences. My family camped a light when I was
a small child, although very rarely in campgrounds. We packed in and packed out, hopeful to eat fish and otherwise forage for our meals, but we also came prepared with rice and other staples. If necessary, We hiked into places that had fresh water sources clean enough to drink. I was curious about the tibetanetti from a very young age, even before I could read. My father told me about sasquatch and suggested to me that they are likely the same
species. When I was fourteen, my mother and I went to a week end bigfoot seminar hosted by a well known indigenous elder. In addition, I happened to be seated next to another their popular researcher in the field of cryptid studies, and I found out that both men had a longstanding working relationship. Their stories fascinated me and kind of colored the way I see cryptids in general. Years later, I was in Sedona, Arizona, enjoying my youngest child's
first camping trip. We were at a place that was really an RV resort with a tent camping area that was beautiful and wild. I surveyed our surroundings. There was a fence that was mostly overgrown with scrub oak. The meadow on the other side was a vibrant and seemingly untouched green, flourishing and impressive.
I could see a huge living cottonwood about two hundred yards away, and there was a thick and wild forested area to the east, rich with remnants of cave dwellings that remained from a First Nations tribe that disappeared without a trace centuries ago. But we carried on until about ten pm. My dog, a Sharpie codey mix that I named Aggie, had run off from the area. As we were the only tent campers in the place. I could hear the jingle from her tags, and I decided to pull out my didjuradue?
I think that's how you pronounced that that I had required on one of my many adventures. Now, did you adu? Did you adue? Did you adu? That's how you said? Did you adu? Is a flute like musical instrument that produces a long, single note drone. The sound can be high or low in tone, depending on the length of the instrument. It
was developed by the Aboriginal people in Northern Australia a thousand years ago. If you're really good at it, you can add vocal textures to it, similar to an animal sound, and it takes a lot of oxygen through the mouth and knows. They refer to the technique as circular breathing. I play eat and suddenly her to Augie, running into the campsite at full tilt. She curled up in a tight ball at my feet as close as she could get
to the fire. This was abnormal. Something definitely had spooked her, and she expected me to protect her. I went back to playing my music. After fifteen minutes, I smelled something that resembled a skunk, and usually a skunk scent does not bother me, but this was offensive, and it was faint on the wind. The odor became stronger, and playing the Digiadu requires one to breathe in deeply through the nose. Close to midnight, I heard
some snapping in the scrub oak about fifty feet away. Perhaps my music was being appreciated by whatever was keeping watch on my camp site. Now obliged heartily, but after a while decided fifty feet was close enough. I moved my kiddo into the tent and went to extinguish the fire, and a chill and through me, so I decided to allow the fire to burn down, and I went back inside the tent and I zemped only the mosquito netting so I
could keep an eye on the flames. I lie down and close my eyes, and at that moment I became aware of a distant drum beat with a rhythm resembling the steady pulse of a heartbeat. It was emanating from across the meadow, and the drum beat did not waver or stop until sunrise, when it ended. I have never known a human to keep a simple beat for four or five hours without a pause or a break, and I felt like
it was in response to the music that I had offered earlier. It didn't occur to me what I had experienced that night until I documented it many weeks later in my journal writing it was like a skunk but predatory. I looked at my sentence and then drew an arrow down to the bottom of the page and wrote, in big letters, skunk ape. Oh, that's very cool, She lay a, did you redu? Did you redu? I've heard
that word many times before. I just never paid attention how to say it, but I actually phonetically sounded it out and got it right as I was reading this email, So you kind of get to see my system on how I pronounce words. It's not very sophisticated, but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But she was playing this thing and she attracted what she thinks might be a skunk ache or a bigfoot. So I thought that was really cool. A great story, Lily, thanks for sending it. Howdy Howdy,
Welcome to the Dixie Crypted What If It's True? Podcast. If you're listening on YouTube, I want you to know you can also find us out on the podcast app world, like on Apple, Google, Stitcher, Spotify. iHeart any podcast app that you enjoy using. Do a search for what If It's True. We'll be right up there at the top, So if you want to listen that way, there's an option. If you like good stories. You found your people, so welcome. All right, let's get
on with this second story. I hope you enjoyed the first one. I thought it was pretty cool. Let's do the second one. This rider doesn't say whether to use their name or not, so I won't. Here's what they write. I can still remember the exact date of my first encounter. It was January twenty eight, twenty nineteen. It was ten thirty at night, and I was taking my son's friend home. The two of us crammed into my cheap little Toyota. Outside, it was drizzling and cold, and
we were cruising along a slick clay dirt road. We pulled up behind a truck that was moving much slower than we were. The truck eventually turned left, and I was following right behind, creeping along as not to end up in one of the six foot deep ditches that ran parallel with both sides of the road. I was barely gaining traction in the mud. Through the dark and the rain and the glare of the headlight. Something appeared to be standing
on the left side of the road. What happened so fast? But it cleared the ditch in one stride and stepped in the path of my car before going down on all fours, where it then sprang over the ditch on the opposite side before it vanished into the night. It was so close that I could see the red clay in its auburn colored hair. Had my little four cylinder Toyota been traveling any faster, I would have hit it. It wasn't
big and broad at all. I remembered it as more tall and lanky, like a teenager who's growing too fast and hasn't filled out or mastered the movement of its own body. Its arms were unusually long, and they hung way down, almost to its knees. I think my brain took a good thirty seconds to process what had just happened. I didn't hit the brakes or pull over for fear of getting stuck in the mud, or more likely, I
was putting a safe distance between us and whatever that thing was. And when I finally did stop, I looked over at the fifteen year old with me. Did he see something too? Could he corroborate my story? I'm never walking into these woods again at night, he muttered. I needed to hear his assessment to prove I wasn't seeing things. I just saw something seven feet tall across the road in front of us, and it was covered in hair and walking like a man. Well, that just about covers it, I
reaffirmed. We lived fifteen miles out of town. I've been in tree stands at five am filming deer on grass patches since I was ten years old. Now, I loved nature in the outdoors, and my son's buddies had grown up in these same woods that I was raised to be a survivalist, and we're both very familiar with all the wildlife in our area. When we pulled up at the house, he looked at me and he said, when you get home, run inside, but call to let me know that you made
it. I knew he meant well, but I was really thinking, dude, I've got to dry five miles of slick dirt roads with no shoulders back to my house in the middle of the night, and I basically just saw the freakin' boogey man. Of course I made it, or I wouldn't be telling the story now. I ran inside and locked my door for the first time in a long while, and for three days I was afraid to leave my house at night. I assumed that whatever I saw was stalking the woods,
and then it probably prefers the area because it isn't highly populated. I figured that after living in this close proximity to humans, they don't appear to mean any harm because I have meat on my bones and would make a nice snack if it wanted to eat me. Now, I've done tons of research since then, and I've had one other encounter. Each incident made me fear the woods when I formerly used to consider it a safe haven. I believe every size watch legend, myth or fable is built on a kernel of truth.
I used to think they lived in California, far away from northwest Florida, where I live, not too far from Panama City. Honestly, don't care one away or the other, if people believe me or not. I saw what I saw with my own baby brown eyes. We did go back the next morning once the weather broke, and of course there were no tracks
at all. I think the only reason it came into view that night is because the truck ahead of me was loud, and once it passed by, the creature stepped out, not realizing my quiet little Toyota was lagging right behind. A few seconds either way and we would have never seen it, And that in itself is unnerving to me. I believe the government is aware of their existence and for the most part, know where the colonies are located.
They've dedicated so many thousands of acres across America to our national forest where the highest concentration of these animals reside. Are they a critically endangered species? And would the government dare shut down all logging and mining in the name of not destroying their natural habitat Meanwhile, thousands of people continue to go missing without a trace every year in parks and forests, while the government continues to deny,
deny, deny. That's a very good story. And the way he figures this thing stepped out in front of his truck makes perfect sense to me. Allowed truck goes by, he's creeping up behind it in a smaller, more quiet vehicle. I guess that's how something would cross the road by thinking it's going to cross the road behind a big allowed truck. Boom, there's a
little toyota with headlights shining right on you. It makes perfect sense. I don't know about the government knowing or not knowing, and I don't know about the forests being created to protect these creatures. I don't know. A lot of people say they understand, like they act like they fully understand, and what the federal and state governments are doing in regards to Sasquatch, I don't really know if they ever think about Sasquatch at all, or if it's real
high up on their priority list. Maybe someday the truth will come out. Either way, this was a good story, and I appreciate the writer. Thank you for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate you and we will see you guys on the next one. Thank you.