There be Monsters in These Woods

well known and full of cypress trees. If you don't know the area, it's easy to get lost in there forever. The two of them sent off in my husband's old truck with tackle boxes and rides packed in the bed, and his aluminum John boat and tot. The motor was a hand me down from my dad, who was a semi commercial fisherman. It was well used but well maintained.

When they got to the water, they launched the boat and headed into the cypress trees toward a spot my husband guaranteed would fill the boat with fish, and all afternoon they cast and caught, and cast and caught and fish after fish, not realizing how fast the light was fading in the sky. It gets dark in those cypress trees quicker than you realize, as most fishermen do. They both said, one more cast, again and again until nightfall.

My husband had fished that lake for years, but with the darkness surrounding them, he realized he may have waited one cast too many. Now it'd be difficult to see the boat lanes leading to the area where they launched. My husband didn't want his partner to know they were in a bit of a fix, so he started heading toward the open where he thought led to the lawn, and he was slowly trolling through the trees looking for the boat lane. The lack of night noise was unsettling,

to say the least. There were no frogs, no owls. There was no sound at all, and it was making my husband's young partner a little worried. You do know how to get out of here, don't you? He asked? Well, of course I do. I've been fishing and hunting this lake for years, my husband said, as he nervously searched for a way out of the lake, intent on not

going deeper into the cypress trees. No one went into the deep center of the lake at night, and very few would admit why there were things back in there you didn't want to meet in the daytime, much less at night. As the moon started to shed a little light through the trees, they heard the sound of tree branches cracking and splashing, like someone was walking in the water. Where is that damn boat lane, my husband thought to himself,

as the sounds got louder and close. Finally, in the weak glow of the moonlight, there was an opening in the trees. They had found the boat lane. The trolling motor was raised and the hand me down out board cranked up, and the boat launched across the dark water, away from the sounds of the tree breaks and splashing. But that's when the real noise started. Not far behind them came a scream like a woman being tortured. Did you hear that? The young man asked, shouldn't we go

back and help that lady? That ain't old lady? My husband loudly informed him over the sound of the motor. We ain't going nowhere but the hell out of here. No, you better hang on because if you fall out, I ain't coming back. To get you. The kid's face went white as a sheet, and my husband's hair flew behind him as he raced toward the boat launch. The way it flew up onto the bank, you would have thought

that that John boat had wings. My husband loaded the boat on the trailer and bowled out of the launch so fast he may as well have been racing in a dragstrip. After my husband slowed down a while later, the kid finally found his voice again. What was making that noise and what was that god awful scream? He asked. My husband stared into the dark road ahead of him, knowing he was about to shatter the kid's naive perspective of the world. I'm going to say this one time,

and one time only. There are things in this world that people will tell you do not exist, But you just heard one that does. It's real, and if you're close enough to see it, it's close enough to get to you. And if it gets you, you'll never get out alive. Now, don't ever talk about it to me again, and don't ever go back in there. They drove the rest of the ride home in silence. They passed a man walking down the road in the dark and decided to give him the fish they had caught. My husband

and the young neighbor never went fishing together again. A friendly wave or a quick hello was all that ever passed between them until they moved back to their hometown. It was a long time before my husband told me about the events of that fishing trip. Once, when I was a little girl, my daddy told me about the strange things that came out of the center of that big Cypress lake at night. He believed my daddy then,

and I believed my husband too. I never did ask him what he thought the thing was in the Cypress Lake. I guess I didn't want to know. Hey want to take a little break between stories, and I want to give you a big thank you. This weekend, I threw up a picture of myself with a little girl named Chloe. Some of you know her story. It is basically, she's a little girl. She lives in Arkansas. She is my daughter in law's niece. She's my daughter in law's sister's daughter.

Chloe and her sister, Riley, lost their father a couple of years ago. During the COVID outbreak. I asked on the post for you guys to say hi, to Chloe, and I told her, I said, I'm going to put your picture on YouTube and Facebook, and she was so excited. She just was giddy about it. And she has read every one of your comments, every single one of your comments, and you absolutely, without a doubt, made this little girl's day. And I want to thank you, and I'm trying to

keep from choking up. I want to thank you for being the the absolute best people in the world to reach out and make that little girl's day. It's not that big of a deal to us, you know, it's really not that big of a deal. But to her, you absolutely made her day. She has been pouring over these comments, reading every one of them, and it's it just absolutely rocks my world that you guys are so nice and so generous to do something like that. So thank you. I don't think I can talk anymore because

it really moved me. Every time I open those up to read the comments and thank you for the comments and and and all that stuff. It just I can't believe how nice you all are. In a world where the internet is a mean place to be, we have this little group of people that follow along with this channel, and you're just so good you're just good, good people. All right, I'm gonna stop. I just love you so much and I appreciate you, and uh, okay, we're back

to monster stories. Let's get back to the podcast as what you're here for, and if you like, if you like creepy, be weird kind of bigfoot, dog man, were wolf, ghost UFO type stories, you found your people, and if you like being associated with a nice bunch of people, you really have found your people. So let's get back to the stories. All right, here we go. I live

in central Mississippi, near a town called Bay Springs. My cousin, who lives down the road from me, has cattle, and he and I often sit out at night on his property to hunt coyotes that frequently kill his newborn cows. We had met in his field one spring night after a rainstorm to watch him listen for coyotes. We were trying to start a fire in the catchpin to make coffee and settle in for a night of hunting. When we decided to get some sawmill slats to add to

the fire. We walk behind the catchpin to get the wood, and we heard the scream and it was unlike anything we'd ever heard before in these woods. My cousin and I are both hunters and outdoorsmen, and we and we excuse me, we are familiar with all the sounds made by creatures who live in the woods. But what we heard made the hair stand up all over our bodies, and in my misplaced wisdom, I decided to check it out.

I walked down through the pasture toward a small stream that ran through the hayfield, and thanks to the bright moon in the sky, I didn't need to use my flashlight to see my way, and when I got to the stream, I saw something standing next to the woodline. At first, I thought it was just one of the trees, but as I got closer, I remembered that I had raked the hay in that area of the previous summer,

and there was no tree in that area. I turned on my flashlight to get a better look, and as I did, this shadow we figure moved toward the trees and I saw its back in its right hand, which was much too large to be a human, and from where I stood, I could see that it was at least eight feet tall and it was covered in dark hair. I retreated to the cattle pen and I told my cousin what I had seen, and since then we have

had other encounters on his property. To add to our excitement and apprehension, we learned that our neighbors have had unsettling experiences with strange creatures in the area as well. That experience was so eye opening for me that it started me on a path to discover encryptids, and I've been a cryptid researcher now for fifteen years, mostly here in Mississippi. In the nineteen eighties, I spent my teenage years in a small town in southern Indiana. By small,

I mean around one hundred people. We did have a gas in, two churches, and there was a tiny post office, all of which were surrounded by thousands of acres of national and state forest land. My friends and I spent a lot of time riding dirt bikes and camping out and fishing and hunting and doing things that we probably shouldn't have done. I spent a lot of time in the woods alone because I've always been drawn to it

more than any of my friends. And in all the time I spent out there, I never once felt scared of anything until this one incident happened. The biggest animal in the woods around here is the deer, and the biggest predators or coyotes, or so I thought. One day after school, I decided to walk through the cow pasture behind the house to a wooded area and go squirrel hunting. I didn't really want to shoot anything. I was just

using it as an excuse to be out. I wasn't deep in the woods at all, sitting on a stump watching squirrels and birds, when all of a sudden I heard something come crashing through the trees. It ran through there like a freight train, and it was knocking down trees and just tearing the area up. There was no way this was a deer or a coyote, I thought, well. I sat there for a couple of minutes waiting to see what it was. But the closer it got, the louder it got, and the more scared I became. Now,

I've never felt such fear in my life. It was an unexplainable, unnatural fear, and the single shot four ten I was caring didn't give me any comfort at all. I tried to be brave, but I just couldn't make myself sit there and wait for it. I never saw what it was, and I still kicked myself for being a chicken and running back to the cow pasture and back home. It never crossed my mind to go back

there to look for clues. And this may not sound like a great encounter, but it sounded much bigger than any person or animal that was supposed to be there, And for a sixteen year old kid who knew nothing about bigfoot or cryptids at the time, it was an epic experience. Hell yes, man, oh, I love that last sentence. It was epic. I think that's the way I would feel about an experience like that. As long as I

got away unhurt. That's the deal breaker right there. If I get away, don't get hurt, it's going to be epic. Thanks for the story, sir. I grew up in Kentucky hunting and fishing, and I've seen strange things happen since I was a kid, and I have more stories than I can count, but I'll start with my two sasquatch encounters. In high school. My friends and I would sneak out

and fish these four pins at night. We knew our way around in the dark, but we would try to go when there was a big moon out anyway, so that we didn't need to use flashlights and risk getting caught. Well. That night it was me and Kenny and Newton and Newton and I stopped at the first big pond while Kenny went through the woods to the other ponds. I knew a big long point that I could wait out on and get a better cast, and Newton followed standing

on my left. We were about knee deep catching bass on every cast, and we threw them straight back in the water, so there was a lot of splashing going on, and then out of nowhere, the most wicked lightning storm came up. It was a really impressive thing to watch, and I told Newton that I was going to find Kenny so we could get out of here before it

started to rain. So I got out of the water and I ran into the darkness, and I ran down the logging road, cut through a cedar thicket, and then the lightning flashed and I saw something go around the corner to the left. It's about thirty yards away. I stopped at my tracks. I never heard it make any noise, and it never looked back at me, but it was

clearly trying to get away. This thing was eight feet tall, and it had a small head sitting right on top of its four foot wide shoulders, and it moved with that bigfoot smoothness you hear about. I ran right back to Newton, and when he saw the look on my face, he didn't ask a single question and we both ran flat out on the paved road to our car, which we had parked a quarter a mile away. Well, Kenny shows up about forty five minutes later. He didn't have a clue about any of it. And it never did

rain that night. Well, that side squatch was watching us catch those fish. People ought to start splashing instead of tree knocking. It worked for us. Another story, my dad had some property around Lake Cumberland, and behind his house were hundreds of acres of pasture land and scattered woods. It was a postcard beautiful land for turkey and deer honey. And that was a place on the fence line where the deer always came out. And one night I told my dad that I was going to take my climbing

stand over there and hunt that deer trail. I went in twenty yards and I set up right on the trail, which I didn't like doing. I hadn't cut any shooting lanes, so there was some undergrowth. I was about twelve feet up a white oak, hunting with my recurved bow, and I had four arrows with me. The evening was dead quiet and with no birds, annoying chipmunks or bugs, and nothing except the sound of a dog gapping on the

next farm. Over the whole evening, I remember wishing that dog would shut up, and right at dark I decided to get down while I could still see. I had ropes untied and such, and I was making some noise, but nothing too loud, and I realized that the dog had finally stopped barking. That's when I heard something growl, low and deep. I stopped and looked around. When I didn't see anything, I kept doing what I was doing.

But then I heard it again, and it was low and a deep rumbling that sounded like it came right out of a monster. For the life of me, I couldn't see anything through the thick darkness, and I craned my neck and stretched out as far as I could see something without falling, but I had no luck seeing anything. And there I was thinking, what in the world am I gonna do? I have to climb down, run twenty yards, climb a fence, and after that there's a three hundred

yard run uphill through the house. Oh brother, I'm screwed. I decided that when my feet hit the ground, I would leave my stand and throw my bow over the fence and run for my life. The fear only intensified when I got out in that big pasture. I had nowhere to go but uphill, and it reminded me of a werewolf movie where the good guy runs for his life, all the while knowing he's gonna die. The thing never showed itself, but I heard it behind me, and I knew it could have caught up to me if it

had the slightest interest. When Kenny's grandmother heard us talking about what happened to me, she told us that she had heard stories about the old nuns who used to see white creatures in that area. The next day, when I went back to get my stand, I went back prepared with my Remington eight seventy in a pocket full of slugs. That event has given me nightmares until this day.

I crossed the road from my dad's place is thirty nine thousand acres of lake Cumberland Land in Russell County, Kentucky. I loved chasing turkeys out in that open land, and I did it all on foot, the way it should be done. Well. There was one turkey that gobbled his head off every morning, and one day I told my dad I was going to go after It took me an hour or so to creep my way over and up there. The only thing I could find to hide

end was a giant wild rose bush with white flowers. Man, it smelt good and the bees were buzzing all around me. It was almost magical, and it hid me well except for my shotgun, which was poking out and only the barrel was showing. And after a while, all the sounds in the forest, including the gobbling, went completely quiet. Even the bees flying around me, had flown off. So I crept up to the edge of where that bird had been strutting moments before, and he was gone. It was

like he just vanished. And I stood up from the camouflage of the roses, and I walked right over there, looking around like a big joke had been played on me. And then on the ground at my feet I found the perfect fan from that bird, as if someone yanked it right out and left it there for me. There were no other feathers or fluff or any hint of a struggle at all, like you would normally expect from a fox or a big cat. The whole bird was

just gone. It was just the fan left. It might have been a big foot that got my turkey, and it makes just as much sense as a turkey disappearing into thin air, if you ask me. My father grew fruit trees, peaches and pears and apples and apricots. He'd always complained that something was stealing his fruit, but now looking back, it all kind of makes sense now. My dad never did say anything about it while he was alive, but we all knew something was lurking around in that land,

and it was something that did not belong. Thanks for listening. I appreciate you all so much. Hope you were having a great Labor Day day. Today is Labor Day. I got to go to my granddaughter's birthday party in Arkansas this weekend and we had a great time. A bunch of screaming girls at a swimming party, and luckily there was plenty of beer around, so me and the other guys just kind of sat around, drank beers and laughed and watched the kids and had a great time. And

I'm back now recording podcast. I appreciate you so much for listening to this one, and we'll see you on the next one. Thank you.