Nightfall With a Dogman

much time in the woods as I could. It was a rare year when it snowed here in our area, and I wanted to bag a deer. I slept out into the woods at two PM and started walking to a big flat that I knew of where I thought some deer and hogs might be. And when I got there, the woods were dead silent. I didn't think much of it, so I just sat down and I waited. Fifteen minutes later, maybe one hundred yards away, on the other side of the flat, I caught movement and I READI my Mossberg

Model five hundred. I assumed I was looking at a hog because it was low to the ground and dark reddish brown. All of a sudden, this thing stood up on two legs. It was at least eight feet tall, and I was petrified. I had always believed in bigfoot and had listened to your podcast, but I couldn't believe one was standing right in front of me, only one hundred yards away. Just when I thought the creature was about to leave, I heard a loud whoop to my right.

Then I watched the creature in front of me lean his head back, cup his mouth and whooped back. This scared the crap out of me, and I started running. I'm a state qualifier in the one mile run on the track and in the three point two mile run across country, but I haven't ever run as fast as I did in those woods that day. I made it to my four wheeler and I left, and I have never been back since. Thanks for listening to my story. I'm a huge fan. Thank you man. Thank you for

being a fan and sending the letter in. This is a teenage boy who sent this in. I thought this was a good story. Thank you very much, sir. All right, all right, welcome to the podcast. I appreciate you clicking on the video. I really do appreciate it. Got a couple of things to say here. First, my brother works with a man. I was in my brother's office not too long ago, and this guy said are you Are

you Cam Buckner And I said yeah. He said, you tell those stories on YouTube and a podcast, don't you. I said yeah. He said, my grandfather listens to your podcast as much as he can, really likes it. And I said, well, what's his name? He told so I wanted to say hi to Lynn Cornelius. Lynn is a champion archer. He's about my age, and he's had to put down shooting a bow because he's got back problems. And I hear he's gonna have to have his knee

replaced pretty soon. I don't do this hardly ever. I don't say hi to people like you know, there's I don't know, I just don't think of it or whatever. But this man lives right here in my town. I want to say hi to Lynn. I haven't met Lynn, but I hope to meet him someday. Anyway, Lynn, thanks for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate you. Okay. The other thing I wanted to tell y'all is or ask you have y'all tried the new hamburger at McDonald's

called the Big Arch. I'm not a big McDonald's fan. I kind of like their fish sandwiches. I like their French fries. My wife likes the frape's, the caramel frape. She's a freak for those things. She loves them. But she's like me, she doesn't really care for the food. But I had to try that Big Arch not too long ago, and it just didn't do anything for me. I mean, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't that great. I'm a Burger King guy. I love a double whopper

with cheese. Also like a Wendy's triple Man. That is a delicious burger. I like five guys. I like hardyseburgers. I like the Sonic double cheeseburger. But my favorite is the Burger King Whopper. About once every two years, i'm real hungry and I get a triple whopper. Oh man, the more meat the better. Anyway, I was just thinking the other day while I was eating that Big Arch and not being very impressed. I wonder what you guys in the audience like to eat in fast foods. Let

me know in the comments section. What's your favorite fast food is. I don't eat it much. I usually pick up something maybe once every two weeks or so. Sometimes once a week. I'll get something small, the double fishful. I like to get the fish file at at McDonald's and get them to put two pieces of fish it. It's pretty good. Anyway, I'm just rambling. I was just wondering what y'all thought if y'all tried the big Arch, if y'all tried the new Whopper, you know, the new Whopper.

The Whopper is new and improved. It's got real mayonnaise on it now. And they changed their bun, and I was worried the bun would be dusty, you know, dry and dusty and fall apart. But it's not. It holds together pretty good. Probably full of preservatives and things unhealthy for us, but it was really good. It's better than it was two months ago. Anyway, let me know what y'all like in the fast food realm. All right, let's get on with this podcast. Thanks for indulging my tangent.

I appreciate you. I think I've got three or four stories in this podcast. All right, here we go. My first encounter with sasquatch happened in the nineteen seventies when my family lived in southern Oregon, south of Grant's Pass, in a heavily wooded area. Our house set on a little dirt road in the woods at the base of a large mountain, with some cleared land for hay and sheep grazing. One evening, my brother and his friend volunteered to prepare dinner while my mom and I were in

the living room watching TV. Down the short hallway, I could hear my older brother and his friend talking and laughing and having a good time. Suddenly they went silent. My mother called out to them, but got no response. We exchanged worried looks and quickly went down the hall to the kitchen to find my brother and his friend frozen like statues, paralyzed by fear, and staring at the kitchen window. I turned my head to see what they were looking at, and in an instant, my life changed.

Looking into the kitchen was a ssquatch. It was tall enough to look into the window that was eight feet off the ground, and wide enough that its shoulder extended past either side of the frame. Its face was twice the size of a human's and so close to the window that it fogged the glass with each breath. Its skin was pale and its hair was gray and white. Its eyes shifted upward to my mom, who was standing

directly behind me. Its curious stare turned hostile, and it began to snarl like a dog, its lips thinning and head lowering and a threatening posture. Its anger was clearly visible, and what I didn't know at the time was that my mom had been involved in witchcraft, the bad kind of witchcraft, the kind that summons dark things into your house. Somehow, the sysquatch sensed it about her, and it reacted. My

mother was too scared to move. I turned to look at her, and when I looked back, it had disappeared. I stepped over to my brother and his friend to shake their arms, but their muscles were so tense they barely moved. I looked at my mother again and she was still frozen. I called out to her, but she wouldn't respond, so at that point I got a little scared. The three of them stayed that way for a couple

more minutes before finally snapping out of it. For months after that event, I had to walk down that little dirt road alone to catch the school bus every morning. I was terrified of what I couldn't see, of what was watching me from the woods. But sometimes I could hear something else out there keeping pace with me, and I knew it was that sisquatch. Occasionally I could even see him out there, his grayish white outline clearly visible

against the darkness of the forest. I saw him many times afterward, and eventually I grew comfortable with his quiet, distant presence. I got the impression that he was considerably older, a loner of sorts, and had taken a liking to me for some reason. After years of other sightings, I

had the chance to interact with them. I bought a Native American finger flute at the old trading post in a nearby town, and one evening just over a month ago, I visited a spot where they've been coming regularly for the last few years, right before dark. I was given a small tour of the area and shown many signs of their visits. I left the flute lying on the picnic table on the hilltop and the woods and I sat in the vista area down below to wait for

the Sasquatches to come and they did. At least four or five of them showed up that evening. We could hear their heavy footfalls crunching through the woods, each step muffled, sometimes breaking branches, along with the unusual knocks, whoops, and whistles and chirps and grunts and growls as they communicated with each other. Forty five minutes after after sunset, I heard the sound of a flute from atop the hill

two hundred yards away. It was faint at first, and then suddenly loud as one of them started wailing on it. It was an incredible special thing to witness. I've been studying and researching them for forty three years now. I've been blessed to see sixty different sidequatches, and I've been blessed to hear them dozens of times more than that. Okay, here's a short little dog story that I got a few weeks ago. I thought it was really good. When the van door opened, my four great nephews and nieces

rushed out like a tumbling waterfall. Excitedly, they ran into the house and yelled in unison, Mom, there's a dog in the front yard. Can we keep it? Please? Please? Can we keep it? Before their mom could answer, they were already petting the most pitiful looking dog you could imagine. This poor thing was dirty as a mud pie, and its hair was matted and knotted for months of neglect, and it smelled like last week's garbage. On closer inspection by their mom, it was determined that it was a female.

She had crushed all over her eyes and ambled as if it were her last steps on earth, and with pleading eyes, all four kids begged their mother to keep her to them. It wasn't a dirty, stinking dog, it was a living creature who needed love. They named her Mercy. She got a good bath and a flee shampoo, and her hair was blow dried as if she were a queen. They made a bed for her with blankets, and she fell asleep. Mercy had had a rough life. Mom took her to the vet the next day and the news

was not good. She was thirteen years old, probably blind, and had arthritis in her hips and legs. She also had an embedded chip she had belonged to someone. The chip information revealed the family's name and address. They were called, and after a brief conversation, they asked that the dog not be returned. They did not want her back. Their son had been in a terrible car accident and needed long term care, and caring for Mercy was too much for them. The poor dog had traveled fifteen miles from

where her owners lived. She had suffered through cold nights and hunger and thirst, and somehow had stopped at the right house. Mercy lived two more years. Sophia, the youngest of the family, would wrap her up and carry her like a baby. She would sing to her too. The song went like this, I'm not gonna sing it, Mercy, Mercy. She likes to go to work, work, work, tork twork. I wish I could put a tune to that, but

I can't sing. Mercy would be let out in the backyard to do her business, and as soon as the door was open, she would run out like a puppy with new legs. When she was ready, she would walk back in slower now, as the aches in her legs reminded her of her advanced years. For those fleeting moments, however, she remembered her puppy life. Eventually, she could not walk well and would stumble and lose her balance, and then she stopped eating, and it was decided to put her

to sleep. There wasn't a dry eye in the house as she was taken to the vet for the last time. She was cremated, and her ashes are still with the family. That old dog couldn't have stumbled upon a more loving family that day. It's hard to say who was luckier, though, Mercy or the family who had the joy of loving her for the final years of her life. Oh what a good story. I just love these dog stories. Please, if you have a dog story, send me more. I know I've got probably a half a dozen left to do.

And you know this isn't really a dog story channel, but I like throwing them in, so this is good for me. I don't know. I have a lot of thoughts on dogs, and I could go on and on about it, but they really are special animals. They're domesticated animals, and they absolutely need humans to survive. They need pack leaders. They're not like coodies or wolves or they are pack animals, but they need a human to lead them anyway. That's all I'm gonna say. I love this dog story, and

I'm so glad this family took that dog in. And it doesn't matter if a dog's old or young. You can give that dog a good home and a good life anytime you want so. Great story, great dog story, Thank you very much. My current position is a federal swat officer on a specialized response team. It requires intentional omissions for personal safety and to maintain professional confidentiality. After fifteen years as a patrol officer and a SWAT operator,

I thought I'd seen it all. I've tracked murderers deep into the woods. I've searched dope houses where the walls sweated rot, where mattresses crawled with bed bugs, and the air tasted like burnt chemicals and mold. I've locked eyes with men whose souls had already fled, pupils stretched wide, glassed over, staring straight through me. The physical scars, they're real, they're etched into my skin, But it's the memories that stay loud. It was October twenty eight, just after twenty

three hundred hours. The world outside my cruiser was a mailstrom of wind and rain, the kind that feels like ice needles on your exposed skin, ord like it always does with that voice from dispatch, calm, professional reading from a glowing terminal, like she wasn't about to walk me into something I'll never forget. Sera nine oh four, respond to nine to one one, call possible livestock mauling, frantic

elderly male, came the voice from dispatch. Normally I would chalk it up to a mountain lion, maybe a rogue black bear. That standard fair in the sticks within My cell rang and dispatch patched the original nine to one one audio recording to my phone. And I'll never forget that voice crackling through the rain. In the static, the old man was sobbing. He wasn't just afraid, he was broken.

His breath hitched with every word. A sound that drilled into my bones, that was, he stammered, his voice thin and ready, like a wire about to snap.

The wind screamed across the highway, a high pitched moan through the skeletal branches of the trees, like a living thing in agony. It took fifteen minutes to reach the turnoff. The old ranch road was little more than a muddy scar through the woods, winding deeper into the blackness. My tires slipped more than once, growing in protest, and I nearly got stuck for good at the final treacherous ben.

When I finally pulled into the property, I turned off the lights, I killed the engine, and I stepped out. That's when I felt it static, that deep down, narrow level alertness. It's one they don't teach you at the academy. Not the edge of your seat adrenaline of a foot pursuit, not the sharp fear before a breach. No, this was different.

It crawled under the skin like ice water. It was a sensation without a source, like the world had gone just one degree too quiet, effecating vacuum, Like the shadows were pressing closer than they should, not just dimming the light, but consuming it whole, like I wasn't alone, And if you felt it, you know exactly what I mean. Some officers get stuck with drunks. Others are magnets for DV calls.

a badge of honor, it's a weight. The old ranch house was dark, a weather beaten shell of timber and rusted metal that looked like it had been abandoned decades ago. There was no porch lie, there was no movement. The only sign of life was the faintest flicker from a single window. Then the front door creaked open, groaning on rusted hinges. There stood the old man. He was a wraith, wrapped in a threadbare wool blanket that clung to him

like wet paper, barely concealing his trembling. His eyes were white. They were dilated, darting frantically from side to side, like prey that knew the predator wasn't far off, that it was still lurking just beyond the periphery of his vision. They held a haunted, vacant look, as if he'd seen things no human was meant to see. Come this way, he said, his voice barely audible over the howl of the storm. He didn't speak again as he led me, stumbling rather than past the main barn and through a

thicket of broken fencing and trample brush. It looked like a herd of stampeding elk hauld pass through the chicken coop looked like it had been hit by a bomb. Wooden slats were splintered outward, and jagged edges pointing accusingly at the stormy sky, as if something enormous had ripped its way in with a grotesque, unimaginable strength. Feathers bloodied and matted. It covered the ground in a wide, macabre art, and inside was carnage. There were dead chickens everywhere, their

small bodies mangled beyond recognition, half eaten. Not the clean punctures of a bobcat or a blunt trauma of a bear. These birds had been shredded, torn apart, with deliberate, sadistic cruelty. I turned to question the old man, but he was already stumbling, his gaunt frame swaying toward the lamb pin. That's when the smell hit me. It was a suffocating wave of rot. It was musty, wet fur, and something else, something utterly alien and foul. It was sour, like spoiled meat.

My stomach turned, and a burning acid rose in my throat, and I fought down the urge to vomit. The lamb pin was worse, far, far worse. The bodies of six young lambs lay strewn like broken dolls, their tiny limbs twisted at impossible angles. The air here was even heavier thicker with that awful, putrid stench. I dropped to one knee, the cold mud soaking through my uniform pants, to inspect the ground. There were no signs of a bear or a cat. The rain had softened the mud, making tracks

easier to read. But what I saw chilled me to my core, a deep, bone aching dread that bypassed all my training. There were massive footprints, bipedal undeniably, but with long clawed toes like a monstrous canine. Some had an extra unsettling indentation at the heel, like a distorted human print, overlapping a wolf's, or perhaps a second digit. One track I estimated was nearly seventeen inches long. It sunk deep, suggesting an impossible weight over it, a crushing pressure no

animal I knew could exert. Whatever it was, it walked on two legs, and it was immensely powerful. My heart hammered against my ribs. The old man, still trembling, pointed a skeletal finger toward the dense black tree line. It went that way, he whispered, It went into those pines. I told him to return to the house and lock the doors to barricade himself in. He hesitated, his eyes wide and vacant, staring pain asked me into the impenetrable darkness it watches, he said, his voice was cracking. It

was a dry rasp. I see it in the tree sometimes, just the eyes, like fire, like hate. It knows when you're looking, it knows when you're not. He turned, then, slow and shuffling, a man utterly defeated, leaving me alone with storm and the black, silent pines that stretched into infinite, suffocating voids. I drew my glock nineteen, the familiar weight of small comfort, and turned on the flashlight. The powerful beam cut through the oppressive darkness and jagged arcs as

I moved toward the woods, each step deliberate. My boots sucked into the thick, half frozen mud and moss. Rain flew sideways, hitting me in the ear and drumming a frantic, disorienting rhythm on the brim of my hat. The temperature dropped ten degrees in the span of twenty feet, an unnatural coal that seeped into my bones. Branches creaked above me, groaning under the weight of the wind, and pine needles fell relentlessly like icy rain. The underbrush clawed at my legs,

like unseen hands tangling in my boots. And then I heard it. It was a growl. It was a low, resonant growl, not like a dog or a wolf, but deeper. And it rumbled in my chest, vibrating my ribs like a sub wolfer, a sound that seemed to come from the very earth itself, close yet diffused everywhere and nowhere at once. I pivoted toward the sore, sweeping the flashlight beam through the trees. There was nothing. Then a flash of motion to my right, so fast it was almost imperceptible.

A shape. It was tall and broad, slipping between the ancient pines with horroring speed. I barely caught more than a blur. I saw long limbs and possibly black fur hunt shoulders that dwarfed the surrounding trees. It moved with a fluid, predatory grace that defies its massive size, a silent apparition in the raging storm. And I swung the light back and there was nothing. The spot where it had been was empty. The darkness had swallowed it whole.

Sheriff's office, I called out. My voice sounded small and absurd, A feeble challenge thrown against something ancient and terrifying. And then the eyes. They were red and glowing, reflective like an animal's, but they were wrong, intensely intelligent and focused, a burning, malevolent gaze that pierced through the rain and

the thick canopy, boring directly into my soul. They hovered seven maybe eight feet off the ground, twin embers of pure, unadulterated hate, no blinking, no shifting, just watching, a silent, unwavering stare that held me rooted to the spot, my breath catching in my throat. I could feel the heat radiating from them, an unnatural feeling that made the hair stand up on my arms and neck. I raised my clock. My hand was surprisingly steady, despite the tremor in my chest.

The tritium sights glowed faintly green against the impossible red. And then a shriek, not a howl, not a roar, something been between something inhuman. It was sharp and filled with ancient, primal rage. It tore through the woods, vibrating through the trees, setting off distant coat He is in a chain reaction of terrified yelps and then silence. This sound was designed to instill terror, and it worked. Then

it was gone. No sign of retreat, no crashing through the underbreath, just to absence, a sudden, complete void where the eyes had been. I stood there for what felt like an eternity, rain soaking through my vest and my uniform, and my weapon aimed at a ghost. My muscles ached from the tension, my eyes strained against the blackness. Every rational thought I had fled, replaced by a desperate, animalistic

instinct to survive. I backed out, never turning my back, step by step, my flashlight high its beam, my frail shield against the dark. Back at my cruiser, I radioed it in. My voice was tight, trying to sound professional, but the words felt hollow. Back Up arrived in two younger deputies, their faces grim with sheared unease, and we searched the property for hours, but the rain had washed away what remained. The livestock bodies were still there, horrifyingly real,

but no fresh signs of whatever had done it. It had simply melted back into the shadows from which it came back. At the Sheriff's office, we wrote it all down. We logged in the evidence, sterile, clinical document that could never convey the true horror. Of that night. I included everything, knowing it wouldn't matter, knowing it wouldn't change the label suspicious circumstance, possible livestock mauling. That's all it will ever be allowed to be.

digging at the ground. And sometimes when I'm alone, when the wind house just right and the darkness presses in, I think about those eyes, and I wonder if they're still out there. Okay, thank you guys for listening to this podcast. I actually had it ready to go yesterday and it was much shorter, but I got up this morning and added a couple of stories to it to make it a little longer. I didn't upload it because our internet was out. Some truck hit a pole we're

on fiber optic internet. The whole city was out and they got it fixed pretty quick. This morning, I woke up, it was good, so I came out and recorded these two stories or this, yeah, the two stories I added. Thank you for listening. The next few podcasts will be just as frequent, but they might be a little shorter because I'm working on Steve Lilly number twenty, trying to kind of pour myself into that and get you a good podcast, a good Steve Lily story out. It's going

pretty good and I think you're gonna enjoy it. I'm trying to get it out by the end of March, so hang with me shorter podcast for a week or so, but after that we'll get right back into the longer podcast. I guess I never know what I'm gonna do. I just let the loose ends drag, know what I mean. How y'all get all right? You guys have a good week, and we'll see on the next week. Thanks