BIGFOOT - Staying at This Cabin Was a Big Mistake

definitely struggled and had some very lean times. It felt really good to tell people that we were going to the cabin. However, it wasn't the quaint, rustic lakeside log cabin or alpine chalet that one might have envisioned. After what seemed like a really long drive of some over rutted dirt roads up through a small canyon, we reached a tiny, ramshackle framed house. This pitiful thing looked a very out of place, and there wasn't another structure anywhere

that we could see. I was momentarily disenchanted. The cabin consisted of only one room. At one side, there was a big iron stove, possibly a few cabinets. It had no running water or electricity. It had at least one window on each side and two doors front and back. The ladder opened onto a short path that led to a small creek surrounded by shade trees. Because of the property slope, they had leveled the cabin using pallets and

shims on the downhill side. This made the front left side stand off the ground a couple of feet, making the windows on the sides fairly high up to anyone walking along. There wasn't much in the way of furnishings. A couple of old metal bed frames that someone had placed sheets of plywood on, and those served as couches

and beds. Using sawhorses and wood slats, we made a tiny table by removing the plywood sheet, setting a sawhorse in the middle, and adding a one by six slant to each end for seating, and replacing the plywood crossways on the sawhorse for a table. Out there. We never encountered people. We never even saw another car. A badger would always pop up out of its burrow by the road to race our car as we neared the cabin, and as soon as he gave up the chase, he

would duck back down in another hole. Our friend the badger, was one of the highlights of our visit. Mom watched out for him and would call out to us when she spotted him so we didn't miss out. She would slow down for a bit for him to keep up for as long as he could. Inside the cabin at night, mice would skid her back and forth over the floor, and in the daylight you could see their tiny prints in the dust. It was a little unnerving to hear

them scurrying about at night. We really didn't mind the isolation so much, though. My three sisters and I love being out in the wilderness and roughing it. As far as my parents were concerned, the more remote the better. They hated sharing the great outdoors, and with few exceptions, camping and hiking were pretty much the only kind of

vacation our family ever took. One day, we realized that we could dam up the creek with rocks to create a little pool for us to sit in, kind of like a hot tub, only filled with the icy mountain runoff on a hot day. It was divine. Overspill allowed the creek to still float within hiking distance. There was an abandoned garnet mine that reportedly had belonged to Alfred Hitchcock. We climbed huge dunes of garnets, where we had hoped

to see shiny rids. We found heaps of dusky maroon pebbles, smaller than BB's in rough in texture, and if you tried to polish one, I think there might not be anything left. Possibly the larger stones had been extracted, leaving these which were likely industrial grade, if of any value. We had many happy stays at the cabin through the years, even when some of us were entering our teens, we

still look forward to going. In the spring or summer of nineteen seventy one, after the four of us had been staying with our grandparents, we were excited and waiting for our mom to pick us up because she had promised we'd go straight to the cabin. When mom arrived, we virtually pounced on her, our excitement running over. She seemed oddly reticent. I got the impression that she was hoping we'd forgotten. Before leaving, we had lunch where the

subject of bigfoot came up. Our grandmother had started buying the National Inquirer. We had never seen a more Outrageous magazine, and the issue that we were most fascinated with was the one about the notorious Bigfoot creature. There were stills from the Patterson Gimlin film, artist depictions and eyewitness accounts, and photos of tracks that had been cast in maps that showed the locations of sightings. Our mother seemed a little bothered by the topic, and she kept trying to

steer the conversation away from Bigfoot. Most of the drive to the cabin was unremarkable, but because I was kind of a pest and I realized the topic of Bigfoot made Mom uneasy, I continued to talk about it. My sisters picked up on my cues and joined in on the ruse. In our minds, we were just having some harmless fun and Mom listened, tight lipped, but finally retorted, Oh, that's just out there in California. It's not here. Oh no, oh, Mom, I said, they say they're seeing them all over now,

even in Nevada. Of course I hadn't read or heard any such thing, but she went quiet again, so we decided to stop torturing her, and we soon forgot about it all For the rest of the drive. We took it in turns arguing and singing annoying road trip songs, or napping. We all perked up. However, when our faithful friend the Badger popped out of his burrow beside the road for a race he had never disappointed us. Everything seemed right for the moment. Our spirits dampened. However, when

we saw the sorry state of our favorite getaway. The back door had been completely torn off and tossed down the hill, and the hinges were bent and twisted from the violent removal. There was no way we could set it back in, even if we had the tools, which we did not. The interior was full of leaves and dirt that had blown in. Sweeping the floor, we could see dried mud that had been tracked in. Mom was dismissive and said that she heard that hunters had been

using the cabin. I wonder why they tore the back door off, because it was never locked. Even if it had been, they could have just broken the lock. Also, deer season was pretty cold, you'd think hunters would appreciate a door. Anyway, We shrugged it off and cleaned it up and went out to our pool for a dip. Our dam had been broken up in the preceding year

during reconstruction, we silently cussed out those rude hunters. It wasn't the first time my favorite outdoor area had been spoiled by hunters, so we didn't think much more about it. It got dark and Mom's anxiety returned and intensified as the night wore on. We attacked a large sheet of heavy plastic she had found to cover the doorway. We hung it like a curtain. After dinner, we went to bed, everyone except Mom. She stayed up all night stoking the

fire and the old iron coal and wood stove. I was a light sleeper and kept waking up because I heard her pacing now and then she'd rush over and she'd ask, are you okay? Are you girls okay? It was a little annoying, but I'd assure her that we were finding the plywood mattress was comfortable, and surprisingly it was. It was at that point I began to feel guilty for filling her head with the Bigfoot stories. But I never thought she'd taken us seriously. Besides, she was the

bravest person I had ever known. Now I wish I had stayed awake with her or asked her to lie down with us, after all, she had driven nearly all day, but kids can be pretty self centered. During the night, it began to snow, with an average elevation of sixty eight hundred feet. It was the time of year that it could snow anytime, so it could have been as early as April or spring break, or between June through August.

Not sure when exactly we were there, though I thought the gentle snow flurries were beautiful and peaceful until a sudden, loud wind gust blew the plastic sheeting that hung over the door and sent it flapping up into the room. It's possible that Mom's anxiousness was getting to me, because at the moment the wind blasted that plastic sheet, I sat uprightfully, expecting to see bigfoot standing in the doorway

and roaring at us. But there was nothing but blackness that stared back at me, and only the wind howled. It was a frightening moment. Nonetheless, Mom scrambled to secure the plastic around the doorframe the edges, and we settled into an uneasy wait for daylight. We left the next day, never to return. For the most part, I thought it was just all a funny scare over nothing. Really. I don't recall any of us kids ever asking to go back in. Our parents never again suggested we go to

the cabin again for a trip. Sorry, little Badger friend, we sure miss you now. In twenty twenty, my mother was eighty four and I was sixty one. She was bedridden and she had dementia. The television kept her occupied. One show she liked was Unsolved Mysteries, which usually covered crimes or disappearances. But one time, while I was taking care of her, an episode about Bigfoot came on. A little ways into it. Mom said, Oh, that's just silly.

You don't think that's real, do you. I told her, I thought it was possible that they were real, that there were a lot of personal accounts, and I found many people who reported encounters quite credible. Mom's demeanor changed notably, so I paused the program. She told me something that had happened to her and dad at the cabin. It was the time they'd send us girl to stay at Grandma's that took advantage of being temporarily childless and went

to the cabin. I find it odd neither of them until now had ever mentioned that they'd gone there alone, not that it would have mattered to us kids, but it's odd that they never said anything about it. Mom said she woke up in the middle of the night when something jiggled a doorknob. What or whoever it was was very large and heavy, and it went around the cabin, trying each door and windows, circling around and around. She said that she was afraid to even look at the

windows for fear of what she might see. And she said that she felt kind of a terror that she'd never felt before. I could see how it still scared her to talk about it well. She woke my dad to tell him what was going on. They laid there listening, whispering only as necessary. They assumed it was a person, and Dad was concerned the person might be armed. He didn't want to force a confrontation in the dark with some one who obviously had an advantage on them, especially

since he himself was not armed. They decided to pack up quickly at first like and made a mad dash to the car to leave. I asked my mom if she saw anything of what was outside the cabin that night. She said that we really couldn't see anything. It was just a shadowy outline, but it was very tall. In the early morning light, they saw it run off, zigzagging

through the trees very fast. If it had been a person, there would have been no accommodations out there to run to, no nearby roads if they had come by a car. It was remote and mostly barren wilderness. After Mom and Dad's strange night, the next time she saw the cabin was alone with her daughters. She found it with the door ripped off in the mud tracked floors, and that must have been terrifying sight for her, especially knowing that we had no gun or any way to call for help.

She probably should have left thin. I asked her why we didn't leave, and why she chose to stay. She admitted that she didn't want to disappoint us or let fear get the better of her. I think she hadn't shared with anyone until she told me last year. When I said it was odd that none of us ever asked to go back, she said, it wouldn't have done

you any good anyway. I wasn't taking you back. We never really feared creatures of the wilderness, even though there are cougars and some black bears in the mountains and the high deserts of Nevada in Utah, where we spent a lot of time. On one camping trip up Wheeler Peak before there were any roads up there, when we were all pretty young, a mountain lion screamed at us all night long. Before we had set up camp. Dad had buried a deer carcass. He said, look like a mountain

lion had been feeding on it. But he thought that the big cat was finished. The big cat disagreed loudly. Still, I don't remember being very scared even then, even though we had just slept out on the ground, no tent ever. We just slept under the stars, but til the cabin. That's how we camped under the stars. I never said so, but I hated it. Mom told me that she and Dad many years later, did make one last trip up to the cabin just to see it. They found it

in even worse shape, and not just run down. The front door had also been ripped off like the back, and that heavy wrought iron stove had been ripped out. They found it busting up, lying in a ditch quite away from the house. I really can't imagine people doing that, even if they could have can you. It was a cold and moonlit night and my church group was meeting at Rocky Springs for a bonfire. After it got dark, the group came up with the idea to visit the

old church. I was a little nervous, but I went along with the crowd. We went into the church and hit a few keys on the old organ that had been there for years, and then the girls decided to stroll through the dark cemetery. It was a loud crowd, and I told them not to be noisy so as not to disturb the dead. After a few hours, everybody left me there by myself. I eased down the church driveway by myself and took out a small fluorescent light

I kept in my shirt pocket. I turned my light on in the darkness of night, feeling a little uneasy and nervous. It was at the foot of a drive by a cedar tree that was on my left side, which is still there today. All of a sudden, a piece of brick came flying from the cemetery. It hit the cedar tree branches and it nearly hit me. I looked around, but I couldn't see what through it. I jumped out and ran like a scared rabbit. Running as fast as I could, I got up in my truck

and turned it on and got out of there. I don't know what threw that rock, but someone once told me that bigfoot guard cemeteries at night. Well. I went back there twenty years later, but this time I packed a pistol, not taking any chances. All those years later, I still felt uneasy around the old church. Had we disturbed the dead? Or was it a sasquatch. Here's another little fact. The whole town of Rocky Springs died from a rare disease, so don't drink the water if you

go there to visit. I moved away from home as soon as I turned eighteen, and I found a place to rent thirty miles from where I worked. It was an old double wide trailer set back in the woods where I didn't have any neighbors to deal with, and I could do pretty much anything an eighteen year old farm kid could ever want. After living there for a week, I started noticing strange stuff, small things. At first, lights

would be on that I knew were turned off. Stuff would go missing, only to turn up in places that didn't make any sense. Tools would disappear from whatever car I happened to be attempting to restore. At the time, I'd find them scattered around too far out to have been thrown even in a fit of rage, as anyone familiar with working on a car can relate to. Once, I was in the middle of replacing a radiator hose and I stopped to make a run to the convenience

store for cigarettes. Before I left, I put a wrench that I was using on top of my toolbox, figured I'd only be gone for an hour at the most. When I got back, there was no sign of the wrench. Eventually I found it in the corner of an old lean to that later became my furs shd. After a few months, things got more weird. Doors would slam in the middle of the night, Dishes would break. Another time, I came home and all my silverware had been dumped

out on the floor. A bottle of Scots that was given to me by a coworker exploded in the cupboard. And then things got worse, and eventually I started making plans to get out of there. But about that time I started hearing something walking around the house and yelling my name and telling me to come outside. Two weeks of that, I finally left and moved to Lebanon, Missouri. A lot way back to that house a few times, but it sat empty since I left. No one wants

to live out there. It's too far from everything and there's no jobs close by. Now, let me tell you a story about my girlfriend at the time. The house she lived in was close to the site of a Union camp that was attacked by Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. Or one night she was out closing the chicken coop. While she was inside, she heard two men whispering what sounded like battle plans, something to the effect of, we'll bring the cavalry in from the west. They won't

be able to head south because of the river. The artillery will hit them from the north, and they'll be dead before sunrise. And then I have one more story that took place two miles from my girlfriend's house. We were walking around in abandoned property, and by the look of things, the owner had gotten up in the middle of dinner, loaded everything into their sixties rambler and crashed it into a tree. There were still boxes and trunks containing clothes and other belongings on the way out, we

started to feel like we were being followed. We noticed a strong odor, like rotting fish in a full outhouse in the heat of July. Close to the end of the driveway, I saw a pile of small animal bones, probably a cat a raccoon from the size. When we got back to the house, we talked it over and decided to go back and check it out some more. This time I had the sense to go more prepared, so I grabbed a handgun and an extra mag and I grabbed a machette and a headlamp and a shovel

and a hatchet. When we returned, the smell was even stronger. We searched the old shop and the storm shelter, and after a while we decided to take a closer look at those bones. I noticed a cut on the inside of the animal spine. It looked like the throat had been cut. A little further away, my girlfriend found another

pile and another one further along. Over the next few days we found three hundred and sixty five complete skeletons belonging to cats and small dogs, and they were placed in a circle around the house and the surrounding buildings. The whole time we were there, it felt like something was standing right behind us. I don't know what was going on or what was there with us, but I

know I'll never visit that house again. For the greater part of my life, I never believed in things like sisquatch, But when I overheard my dad listening to your channel, I was converted. I live in western Washington State, and I have for most of my life. My parents have taken us fishing and hiking for years, and we're used to the forests of the Pacific Northwest. We live way down a dirt road that borders some old logging land,

where my family and I often walk back there. We could hike out to the lakes and sometimes for a birthday get to go shooting at the old quarry well. One night a couple of years ago, a huge thunderstorm rolled into our area. The clouds were so thick that the sky had become a black abyss. There was thunder and lightning and rain in hell, and it was one hell of a tempest. That night, my family and I were watching a movie when my sister exclaimed that she

had just seen lightning at once. My mom and dad and three youngest siblings and our dog Boaz, jumped up and went to the back door to watch the storm. My brother and I stayed behind to finish what we were doing, but within a few minutes, urged by the many oohs and ahs of the rest of our family, we ran to the back door to see what was

going on. Well. The storm was spectacular. Lightning streaked across the dark backdrop of the clouds in a brilliant flash of white and purple, and thunder boomed the seconds after, as if celebrating the joys of lightning's intricate dance. Droplets of rain as large as marbles plummeted down to the earth and exploded into even or orbs of water as they hit the ground. It was a joyous and standing there watching the power and strength of nature as it

displayed its awesome might to us. But we stood there watching the storm for a while until the lightning started to die down. Everyone went back inside to enjoy the rest of their evening except my brother and our dog and me. We were hoping to catch a few more glimpses of plasma in the sky from outside the back door. We waited outside for the next bolt of lightning, when bos started acting funny. It was walking around us and acting skittish. My brother let him back inside in exchange

to confused. Look with me, that was weird, I said. A boez is a big dog, about thirty inches wide at the shoulder, and he's protective and he would usually throw himself at anything he deemed as dangerous before he let it get anywhere near us, so his behavior was very unusual. A few minutes later, a scream came roaring out of the edge of the woods. It was one of the most terrifying things I have ever experienced. To describe it, it would not be true to its nature.

It was like an owl screech, but louder, fiercer, and fused with a wild man's howl, and it was coming from the edge of our woods, only one hundred feet from our back door. My brother and I locked eyes wide with fear, knowing it was no ordinary creature. It was something unknown and alien. We didn't wait to see if it would make its horrible call again. We bolted inside, scared to death of the unknown menace lurking in the

walls of our forest. Our family oblivious to the sheer terror that we had just experienced was sitting down relaxing, having a grand old time watching their movie, and my dad asked us if we had seen any more lightning, and we told him that a creature was screaming from the woods. When we were done with our story. Our dad thought for a bit and then said it was probably just a cougar and that we had nothing to worry about. I argued back with him, it wasn't a cougar.

I said, I'd heard what cougar screams sound like, and it was completely different. My dad still blew it off his children's over excited imaginations and he left it at that. We never talked about it since, but my brother and I will never forget that night. I had a good friend who drove a log truck until he passed away in two thousand and seven. Like a lot of old truck drivers, Jeffrey had his share of tall tales. There is a place about thirty miles from where I live

in Georgia called Raytown. Jeffrey was born in there. Raytown is a very remote place. It's a hunter's paradise and also an area full of big timber. Over the years, we have done some logging in that area quite a bit. Jeffrey always claimed that Bigfoot roam the woods there, but I never really believed him until late one night in January of twenty and ten. My crew and I were working far back down along dirt road. At the time.

I was driving the truck, but on this particular track we were hauling pulp wood, but we also had chippers set up to grind the smaller debris and hauled chips to bio mass plants about one hundred miles away. My sister had called me earlier in the day and asked if we could meet up and let my young nephew ride with me in the big truck. We met at a local restaurant around six pm, and my little buddy Cody hopped in with me, and we took off and

headed for Raytown time a year. It was already dark when I picked up my nephew, and as we drove along, I told him that we were headed to a dark, spooky place. Well, Cody didn't mind. He was just happy to be in the truck with me. I even had to hit the jake brakes for him every few miles because he loved the sound of it. As we neared the dirt road. I told him not to worry, always have a ruger with me. We were five miles in on a dirt road when all of a sudden, something

hit the hood of the truck. It sounded like a baseball. What the hell was that, I mumble to myself. On a dirt road, gravel wool, ping the fuel tanks and quarter fenders, and even ping against the headache rack. Those are familiar sounds, but this was different. It was intentional. Someone threw a big rock at the hood of my Peter Bilt. I knew no person would be out in those woods, fourteen miles from the nearest town on a

twenty five degree night throwing rocks. Cody was pondering what could have thrown something at the truck, and I immediately thought about Jeffrey's bigfoot tales. I've always heard they throw rocks anyway. I couldn't speak for a few minutes, but I wasn't scared one bit. I finally believed Jeffrey, and it's a pity that he wasn't around for me to tell him my story. Twelve years ago, I was having a campfire at my house with my brother in law.

We had a couple of beers so that we could unwind after a long day of coaching our travel soccer team in a tournament. It was a nice, clear summer night and I was looking up into the sky, watching the smoke from our campfire drift into the atmosphere. You can see the lights from some planes, and we were enjoying the evening. I glanced over at my brother in law. He was staring at the sky too, and he had a puzzled look on his face. What are you looking at,

I asked him. I don't know what it is, he said. I looked up and saw six or so different colored flashing lights in a circular pattern. They didn't look like any plane or anything else that I had ever seen in the night sky before. It was motionless, high up in the sky, with no discernible sound coming from it that we could hear. We watched the lights for several minutes, and then all of a sudden, they shot across the sky and they disappeared at a speed that was way

too fast for any aircraft. I checked the news the next day and even reached out to a local UFO website to see if anyone had reported seeing it, but there was nothing. Now I'd like to tell you a story about once I went squatching. My extended family owns one hundred and fifty acres of farmland in woods in rural western Pennsylvania. My cousin owns a huge A frame house on the property. Going away with this family and

had just gotten a new puppy. He asked if I wanted to dog sit for the weekend and he would pay me for my time. Well, I jumped at the opportunity to hang out in this huge house all weekend and not be cramped at my parents' house. I've been interested in cryptozoology and aliens since I was a kid. Now. I remember watching In Search of with Leonard Nimoy and being interested in the mystery of it all at an

early age. One night at the A frame I decided to go out with my flashlight and try to do some whoops and howls and tree knocking and listen for some kind of a response. The next thing I knew, fear swept over me like a light switch, and my thoughts turned panicked. What if I got a response, would that be a good thing, I thought to myself. And what if the creature was aggressive? I thought? Even Further, I grew up camping, boating, hunting, fishing, and I'm no

stranger to the outdoors. I even wrote for a Pennsylvania outdoor magazine for several years as a fishing columnist. I don't scare easily in the woods, but that night was different. Headed back to the house as quickly as I could, and I locked the door behind me, and I grabbed a handgun and I sat on the couch. If I decided to go back out, I think I will find a partner to go with me for my own peace of mind. Okay, I hope you guys enjoyed those new stories.

I think that was five or six new stories. Now I'm going to drop an archive story behind this, so if you begin to listen, you've already heard it. Just click away. But some people haven't heard all these, and I thought I would include some in videos going forward, but I'll always warn you. Thanks for joining me on the podcast, and we'll see you guys on the next one. Here comes an archive to podcast. Thanks. I can't remember

when I got this story. It's been not too terribly long, but it's one of the craziest stories I've ever read, and I've never I've never thought about this theory. What you're going to learn about now. For the first five minutes or so, she's going to give some background on where she's from, what she does. Hang on because this is a long story and it really gets good. I mean it gets really creepy. Here's what Jenna writes. How

the past year has changed my life. I cannot begin to express, but I will give it my best shot. My name is Jenna and I'm a twenty nine year old female geologist spieleeologist, and I was working for the government within the Department of Geological Survey up until recently. We were responsible to explore and map out old mind

chefs and cave systems in the Eastern United States. There are several of these teams working throughout the country in places like the Rockies, Texas, the Midwest, and in Washington State. I've heard that there are also teams in Canada and Mexico as well. I have been spilunking since I was five years old with my father and older brothers, so it became who I was and not just what I did. My experience through the years made me useful to this project.

I was recruited in my last year of graduate school at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire by Joseph who had become my supervisor and mentor. My eight teammates were all roughly the same age, and we had various degrees of interest of study, including engineering, archaeology, biology, herpetology and volcanology, as well as other fields. We were a mixture of seven men and two women, and all have a love for the world below the surface, resulting in our pale

skin in very thin frames. Because we spent most of the days in the dark out of the sunlight, it wasn't all that bad for me being a pale skinned ginger and ten minutes in the sun I would turn into a lobster. The meals that we take are mostly small protein bars and water. It's easier to carry with us, especially when we stayed in the cave system overnight. During the expeditions there were sometimes ten miles deeper more. We have done many of these over the past four years.

We have made some remarkable discoveries and we've mapped out miles of cave systems in West Virginia and Kentucky using a combination of GPR or ground penetration radar and light ar from the surface, as well as some new technology that will make for some amazing new discoveries in the future. Our average expedition would start when we entered a cave or a small hole in a mountainside and started to

evaluate if it was safe. Understand that we we have left more caves than we explored due to what appeared to be unsafe, or when our equipment detected gas. Once we determine that it is safe, we begin to move deeper into the cave and into the twilight zone. There is no presence of light in the dark zone, and we see nothing if we turn out the lights. Often we find chambers and passages off to the sides, or

even drop offs in sinkholes. We can use special drones with lights and cameras to fly over the drop offs or down the sinkholes, or on top of shelves or ledges above our reach to see if there are any points of interest below or above us that we need

to explore. Using those drones have given us access to new passages and chambers that no human has ever seen, some of which have led to miles of passages and enormous chambers, one of which was over one hundred feet tall and three football feels long fifty yards wide, and we nicknamed that one the ballroom. We have discovered entrances to cave systems that were not noticeable from the top

side or outside the cave. Some of the entrances have been behind waterfalls, crevices, and cliffs, and under roots of large trees, and even behind some dead falls that appear to have been pushed up against it to conceal the entrance. We have mapped some systems that will travel miles into another exit or entrance, with the longest one being twenty seven miles in southeast Kentucky and it goes into Tennessee, and that required us to stay in the cave for

over two weeks. We have scanner units mounted onto our helmets that capture three D imagery of the cave as we travel, and we also use GPS signals that rarely are detected above the surface, but we still have them and occasionally get closer enough to the surface to get our data to the base camp to be collected. We have other tools that we have used in the past.

One includes a buoy with a GPS unit. We dropped one in a fast moving underground River near the West Virginia Kentucky state line to see where or if it would ever surface. To our amazement, it reappeared five weeks later, almost three hundred miles away in the Clinch River near Kingston, Tennessee. We were astonished it must have traveled under another river

system to arrive to the Clinch River. We are now developing equipment that we can capture imagery of the underground river system without our team having to dive into those underground rivers, with the hopes of capturing the constant location of the device and the depth under the sea level as well that will be able to explain how these

rivers are crossing. Other findings are also worth mentioning. We've found several species of animals or insects that were unknown or thought to not inhabit this region, as well as numerous cave drawings that date back over ten thousand years, along with artifacts such as pottery from the early fourteen hundreds, spears and arrowheads, muskets or black powder rifles, a couple of swords. We found knives, shells, some gold and silver coins from seventeen hundred Europe, along with bones and I

mean a lot of bones. These discoveries found miles underground, far from known entry points. We report our findings before moving further, and it slows down the exploration process because we have to wait for another team to go in and gather the artifacts. Without us, we would contaminate the scene. The real question was how did someone get this far into the cave system with torches, as they would have to have burnt out well before they got that deep.

They would have had to carry extra torches with them, and why would they have traveled this deep while the other team was in our cave. We would go to another cave for several weeks until we were given the go ahead to continue our explanation of the original cave.

Rarely were we given any information on what the other team's findings revealed, especially when it was about bones or modern day items like a shiny new shotgun we had found, or the backpack with a West Virginia Park map that was printed in twenty eighteen and it was over seven thousand feet into the cave system. We would write it off to people going beyond their limits and getting lost in the cave and losing their belongings as they roamed

about in the darkness. And as for the other team, they were a dull bunch of people with no personality yet trying to talk to them, they were tight, left about their business. They were almost what we would think of as a stiff government or maybe a CIA personality type. There were occasions where we would pass them coming or going and they wouldn't take the time to speak to anyone. They wouldn't drop any clues or share any findings, absolutely nothing.

Using our newest technology that we had developed was the sphere, which was a mobile GPR light hoar sphere that set up on a tripod in the middle of chambers, which we would leave overnight to scan. The results were beyond belief. We have found new tunnels that are blocked by large rocks or boulders. The stones are so heavy that several men working together could not move them for us to

explore further. But we knew the boulders had been placed there because the scars remained on the floors and walls they had been rolled into position. We had a heavy hydraulic jack design to lift rocks off of us should we become trapped, and we found that this jack could move the boulders enough to gain entrance into hidden chambers

or caverns. And now that I've given you a brief description of what we do and how we do it, I want to tell you of my account that began on Friday, August the thirteenth of all days in twenty twenty one. We had been mapping out a cave system south of Grayson, Kentucky, and we were five miles deep into the system when we dropped off of a shelf about twenty feet using our climbing gear to discover a

new passage. It led back east to half a mile to an oval shaped chamber, and at the far end of the chamber was a large boulder blocking another passage that we found by setting up our sphere overnight. The following Monday was August the sixteenth, and we analyzed the data and we determined it was worth exploring. After moving the rock, we followed the passage for another half mile and then we decided to back out and call it

a day. We returned on the seventeenth to the oval chamber and we found the rock had rolled back to block the entrance. We jacked it back open again and placed smaller rocks under it to keep it from rolling back while we were in there exploring. We then entered the passage and began to map out the system where we left off. Through the day, we discovered a labyrinth of passages going in all directions. Some were dead ends, and some were working their way back to the main cavern.

The areas that didn't reconnect, we would follow those for five hundred feet and then turned back. There were so many that we wanted to see, but this system could be thoroughly explored. Later. We were getting our bearings and taking notes, and we were excited about this discovery. We started noticing different items, such as fresh leaves and small twigs on the cave floor. They were green, they weren't dead, but they shouldn't have been there in the first place.

In the largest passage, we found a shallow stream with a mud and a swet bottom and bank, and in that mud we found tracks of all sizes. They were human looking tracks. Some were smaller than my feet and others were twenty four inches long and ten inches wide. Laurie, my female teammate, carefully examined the toes to see if there were claw marks, because that would lead us to believe that it was a bear. But she found none. Well.

The day was late and we pulled out again, marking our route with illuminated paint of different colors, as we always did when exploring new systems. The footprints gave us all concern, but it also was exciting. The passage was nine feet high and we could not imagine a giant of a man walking around in there. But this raised questions beyond belief, so we all decided to keep this

finding to ourselves for the time being. On Wednesday, the eighteenth, we found that the rock had again been rolled back over the entrance and we had to move it with Jacks. Rodney, the archaeologist, said that he was going to bust it into pieces if it happened again, and we proceeded to the stream where we had left off the previous day to find more tracks. We slowly moved along the stream, following the direction of the footprints as it flowed down

the center of the cavern. A quarter of a mile through the passage and into the chamber, we discovered some of the most disturbing items we had ever found. There were numerous shoes of different sizes, including boots and children's sneakers, some clothing that appeared to be torn, and some looked like it had dried blood on it, and they were all in piles like someone had been sleeping on them.

There were backpacks and coats. There was a hatchet and some knives, a couple of firearms, and children's toys such as dolls and barbies and action figures. There were balls and toy cars lying all about the chamber, and then we found a pile of human bones of all sizes, including children's, all piled up against the wall at the

far end of the chamber. Laurie screamed at the top of her lungs and began crying uncontrollably, and as the others tried to comfort her, out of the darkness of a passage at the far end of the chamber near the pile of bones, came a scream or a roar of a monstrous volume that shook my insides. It lasted long time and was immediately answered by another roar from a different cavern, and then several more. The team instantly began to run toward the exit, with me bringing up

the rear. I had a feeling that something was behind me, and I quickly looked back over my shoulder with my high intensity led light, and I illuminated the face of a beast that was the size of a refrigerator, only ten feet behind me. In that brief instant, I could see the beast's lips were curled back, bearing large teeth which were like ours except for the canines, which were larger in proportion than a human. It had large, round, black evil eyes and a flat nose, and everything around

the face was covered with hair. The animal covered its eyes from the light with its hands and screamed in pain as if the light heard it, and it shrank away from me and my light. It curled up into a ball onto the floor of the cave, wailing in pain. I was now backing out of the chamber, trying to keep the light on the beast, when I must have passed the exit and tumbled into a sinkhole. I got lucky it was only five feet below the chamber floor. It could have been deeper and I would have never

gotten out of there. I am only five foot four to start with, and I weigh less than one hundred and ten pounds fully clothed, and I knew if I couldn't do something quick, I would end up in that bone pile. In front of me, I saw a small crevice that looked to me about my size, so I dove into it headfirst, and I began to crawl on

my belly back into the darkness. I was ten feet into the crevice when I heard the monster scream into the mouth of the crevice behind me, and I could feel it reaching into the hole as it started to claw at the walls. The creature was so cloth I could smell its foul breath, and this gave me a surge of strength to move ahead faster. I crawled ahead without thinking. I was in survival mode and I wanted

to get as far from this thing as possible. The roars began to fade the further into the passage I went, and after an hour, I dropped into a room. Stalactites hung from the low ceiling and I had to walk hunched over, but at least I could stand. I tried to reach my team on the radio, but I got nothing in response. If I was going to get out of there, I had to move upward while avoiding these creatures. I had to get to the surface. That's all I

could think of. I turned down the intensity of my light to get more life from my batteries, and I continued walking and crawling. I wandered the uncharted passages and caverns alone for hours, not knowing where I was or if I was moving to freedom. I lost all sense of time, and I didn't know if it was day or night. And to make matters worse, not long after that, I was down to my last spare battery pack. The only light I would have after those batteries died was

my cell phone. I had turned it off long ago to save it as a last resort for light. And the exhaustion set in, and I clicked off my light and I sat in the blackness, and I fell asleep. I woke to the distant sounds of clicking and some sort of gibberish that I didn't understand. The sounds weren't close,

thank goodness, but they were looking for me. Once. It sounded so human that I thought it might be in my team members calling for me, and I almost shouted to them, but I waited to make sure, and I'm glad I did, because minutes later another roar came from the same direction. I drank the last of my water and I ate the final protein bar. I then turned my light off and I curled into a fetal position,

hoping the sounds would stop so I could move again. Strangely, I felt an evil presence near me, and I knew the creatures were near, but still I waited. Hours later, the noises stopped, and I assumed they had given up their search for me. So I got moving, always trying to move upward. Freedom was above me, and I had to get there. Two maybe three days later, I felt hope slipping away. I had lost all sense of time, and I was weakened now from hydration, and I was

starving to death. I only used my headlamp briefly. I would click it on, look ahead as far as I could see, and then turn it off, and then I would feel my way to something until I needed light again. While alone in a place this silent, your sense of hearing heightens. There or no other noises to interfere with what you were hearing. While taking a break, and without the noise of my movements, I heard the hum of traffic. I moved toward the sound until I saw a faint

rays of light penetrating the passage wall. I was overjoyed, and I was filled with a surge of energy. There was a small crevice that would be tight even for my small body to escape through, but I pushed through it anyway into the sunlight. I was standing at the base of a cliff that I would later find out was next to Kentucky State Route seven. Cars were speeding pass below me. I had made it out alive. My phone still had a charge, and I called my supervisor. Well.

She was ecstatic to hear from me. She said, they picked up my GPS tracker twenty minutes ago. My tracker must have started broadcasting when I got near the crevice, and state troopers were on their way, she said. The police took me back to my hotel room, and I felt like I drank a gallon of water while we drove. Now, I wanted to get a shower in something to eat, but as I got out of the car, four men approached and ushered me into a small hotel conference room.

I assumed they knew I was exhausted in Hungary and that this meeting would not take long, But I was wrong. Two of the men were from the Department of the Interior, one was a federal Game and Fish official, and the last was with the US Geological Survey. The date was August twenty second, and they wanted me to recount the last ninety six hours my scanner was still operating. From that data, we found that I had traveled eleven miles underground from the point at which I fell into the sinkhole.

They began asking me about the bear we had encountered. Well, I was a biology major, but I knew damn well that the creature was not a bear, and I said so. I described the creature in great detail, but still they continued calling it a bear. They questioned me for three hours. At some point I told them I had answered every question and that I was done, and after walking out, I headed to my room and I took a long shower.

Some food was brought to me, so I ate like I had never tasted food, and then I went to sleep. I was still a bit confused when I woke, but I felt rested and ready to find my teammates. I went to all their rooms, and the only one who remained there was Tony. He told me that Laurie was so upset after the event that she had to be sedated and was taken to a local hospital. She had been released and sent home. The other members of the

team had been put on leaving sent home. They had all been notified that I made it out, and Tony said they allowed him to stay because he was the only one who wasn't freaking out. I think that came from his military training. I later learned that a task force had come in and Tony guided them back into the cave. There were way too many people there to be looking for a bear, though their main mission, Tony later decided, was to gather the human remains in clothing.

Tony searched the area with those men, and he found no sign of a bear, and then they made castings of several tracks in the mud before they destroyed all the evidence they could find. They spent days in that cave system searching for that bear, they said, but they never found an animal. And then it occurred to me that I may have been the only one who had

seen this creature, because Tony never mentioned it. He kept saying they searched for a bear, and I think that is what he thought we were dealing with, and I had never told him about the creature. I had seen only the men in the conference room. I was going to leave the next day, but that evening we went to the bar, and there we found two members of the task force drinking. After several drinks, one of them

began to talk. This fellow told us that this team was a unit of special forces that were used to hunt down Bigfoot. I had yet to think of a bigfoot, and I was stuck on an unknown monster until then,

and bigfoot was a myth, wasn't it. He continued to tell us that this was only the second underground assignment they had been on, and that his unit hated the darkness of the cave systems, even though they were equipped with special equipment that allowed them to see in the dark zone, or the part of the cave where there

was a complete absence of light. He said, we were some of the luckiest people he had ever met, and my falling into that sinkhole gave all my friends an opportunity to escape because it had captured the interest of the bigfoot trying to catch me. He admitted that the government has proof that these animals are traveling underground as much as they are in the moonlight, and there is also evidence of them kidnapping people and eating them. That was obvious to me I had seen the chamber with

a pile of bones. He was about to continue with more information. I mean, this guy was a real bliber mouth. But one of the men who questioned me grabbed a hold of him by the shoulder and said that that was enough, soldier, and you should turn in. This fellow

then sat down and he asked us what we were told. Well, at first we were hesitant to tell him, but we did so anyway, to which he told us us that the soldier was drunk and he was telling tall tales to scare us, and we shouldn't put much faith in what he was saying. The next day, we were informed that our project had lost its funding and we were all terminated and were given a year's wages a severance pay. I've kept in touch with the others, and it seems that I'm the only one who has been able to

find work in this field. Currently, I do geological and soul analysis for a general contractor for building foundations. None of our group have returned to the darkness of the underworld and its secrets that we loved and cherished up until that August week. I have been left with more questions than I care to imagine, was that a Bigfoot we encountered in that cave? Are they using the cave systems to travel undetected? Do they really kidnap people in

eats them? What does the government know? What was the real purpose of the government funding of our expeditions and mapping out the cave systems in the first place. Why won't the government inform people of these animals and the dangers? And that's the end of her story. Have y'all ever heard a story like that. I've never heard anything like that. Now again, like I said in my last video, I don't know if any of these stories that I read are true, but this was a sure enough story email

to me. She has enough information on the job and the you know, the spielunking equipment and all that stuff that adds a little bit of credibility to the story. But you know, who knows either way, It was a real good story. And I tell you what, you couldn't pay me to go into one of those caves. And it's not because I think Bigfoot is in there. I am not terribly clost her, but I've read articles and I've seen videos where people get stuck in these caves.

They can send in twenty or thirty men and they cannot get them unstuck, and the people just have to lay there and die. What a horrible, horrible way to die. And I just I can't. And I've seen other videos with these guys. They squeak through these real tight rock formations, or they'll be flat on their stomach and the rock is just right down on them. I always think, man, if that rock formation shifted just a fraction of an inch, it would just squash you right there. I know everything

you know. I know that's probably not the way it works, but it could anyway. I don't want to get stuck in a dark cave somewhere and die in the dark. That's just me. But anyway, Jenna, thank you for sending this story. I really admire your profession. You're a pretty brave girl. All Right, that's gonna wind this podcast up. I hope you guys enjoyed it. We'll see you on the next Thank you really