Camp Monsters - Crackle Hands: Part 2

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Claira wakes in a forest clearing, disoriented and alone. She must have been sleepwalking… right? But before she can make sense of where she is—or how she got there—a crashing sound erupts from the brush. Something is coming. Fast. Something wild. And it’s headed straight for her...Listen to Crackle Hands: Part 1Listen to REI’s Wild Ideas Worth Living podcast.This episode is sponsored by Merrell. Shop amazing products by Merrell in stores or at REI.com.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

REI Co-op Studios One sound. That's all it'll take. One sound. And it'll find you. One breath. One move. the snap of one twig, and it'll turn, dash at you, faster than you can ever hope to run.

It's out there. You can see it, through the little gaps in the branches. With wide eyes and clenched breath, you watch it, swinging its head from side to side, looking for you, listening. tasting the air even sensing you sensing you somehow something is giving you away no time to wonder what you hold your breath you wish you could still your heart pound so loudly in your ears if only if only that horrible thing that nightmare would veer off in some other direction just a little bit No, no. Each slow step it takes is right towards you. It's closer now. Closer. Coming closer. Any second. Any second it's going to see you.

And then, without moving enough to be seen, you try to crouch even deeper in the bushes. You try to crouch deeper down in these bushes so thick that you can feel all the little sticks. around you bending bending and straining under your weight so close so close to snapping and then the creature pounces a mock pounce actually an old predator's trick it doesn't quite know where you are but it jumps just like it does and the sudden movement startles you just enough just enough to lose your balance As you fight the lean that's about to send you crashing over into the brush, you hear it. That first high, whining creak of a stick under your hand as it bends and bends and bends. And as it creaks, it almost seems to say something.

Like there are lyrics to that high melody of your own doom. Just as the creature turns toward the sound, just as it begins its final lunge, at you. You could swear you hear those shifting sticks beneath you say, time around our very last campfire of the season. Thanks for bringing friends. Thanks for listening, sharing us on social, leaving reviews, updating old reviews, all of it. You're the reason that we've been lucky enough to tell these tales for seven long seasons. And as long as Arii keeps these campfires burning, it'll be because of you. So thank you.

Tonight we're back here on Hatteras Island. and the outer banks of North Carolina huddled around our little campfire as the temperature drops and the wind picks up. It's funny the sounds the wind makes through this thick forest, isn't it? Almost like there are dark forms all around us, swaying huge through the brush. If we were on the beach on the Atlantic side of the island tonight, we'd see the last red light of the setting sun, glowing off a wall of clouds out there over the ocean. That'd be the first fall storm building up, gaining strength, deciding where to go, which coast to lash with winds and waves and rain.

It's still early yet to form into a full nor'easter, as they call the big winter storms, but it'll be plenty strong enough. Let's hope it doesn't decide to run straight in here. but if the raindrops start to fall we race for the tents all right until then what a perfect setting this weather is for our last story of the season because it was a dark and stormy night well not that stormy yet a bit of wind through the woods but it was dark well except for the moon shining patchily through the branches Anyway, it was plenty dark and stormy enough for Clara, who had just woken up from a terrible nightmare about that creature of the thickest woods that the legends call cracklehands.

But instead of waking up in a sleeping bag in her tent, she found herself out in the very thickest heart of the forest. Now, if none of that sounds familiar, I'd highly recommend you go back and listen to the first episode again, episode one of the Cracklehands story. But if all that does sound familiar, let's rejoin Clara now, lying in a small clearing with her arms propping her up in the damp leaf mold of the forest floor where she'd stumbled and fallen. The fall had woke at her. She must have been sleepwalking, but before she had time to wonder at that, before she had time,

to fully wake up or orient herself before she had time for anything, she heard a crashing in the brush, a crashing like some animal running in a wild panic. And the sounds are coming closer quickly, coming right toward her. As the sounds in the brush closed in on her, she hung her, lower and lower toward the ground, staring in the direction from what I saw. Until a movement, movement in the far corner of her eye became so strange that she had to turn her head that way. You see, the wind was working in the treetops that night, just as it is now. The trees were bowing and waving, throwing their shifting latticework shadows across the mist-hased moonlight. When Clara saw something forming in the shadows,

and the patterns of the waving branches made. It was there. It was gone. There again. Gone. No, there. It was breaking apart, coming together, and breaking apart again,

in and out of focus, but staying in focus longer and longer each time. Until Clara couldn't deny it anymore, couldn't dismiss it as her shock and terror playing tricks on her. It was a person. No. It was the silhouette of a person. No, it was a shape like a person, but too tall, too lean, too sharp and angular. It moved awkwardly in the wind. It moved like thick branches breaking, but there wasn't any sound of breaking branches. No. But above the rustle of the wind through the trees and the bushes, there was another.

sound. It went with this fitful shape forming in the trees. It was a soft strange sound like a million tiny twigs snapping right beside Claire's ears. It was a

crackling sound. And then the crashing in the bushes reached a crescendo and a shadow burst from the forest right into the clearing, right there beside Claire. The shadow. That's

The only way Clara can ever describe it, a shadow barely made solid, but Clara knows it was the shadow of a person, the shadow, the remnant of a person, a young person, a young woman. Claire knows. She feels it. She felt it that night. She felt a young woman there, a stranger, running by just for an instant, though all she saw was that shadow. What happened next was a gust of wind. Just a gust of wind. That's what Clara tried to tell herself. A gust of wind and two branches leaned out of that wind. Leaned out of the dark figure that she'd seen in the bushes. Two branches leaned out just like long, spindly arms. reaching, reaching for that little running shadow, and the wind, well, the wind might explain

the leaning branches, but it couldn't explain why the end of those branches were thick, with long, thin, crackling twigs, moving, and pulsing like the legs of a millipede. The wind can't explain the shape like a, like a long, evil, inhuman, huge. human face that Clara saw for an instant, up above the arms, grinning madly in the moonlight. It can't explain the brief glow of red that Clara knows she saw flashing in those huge, vicious, greedy eyes. And the wind has never screamed like that little shadowed down. Never screamed like the shadow did when those long arms reached out, caught it.

Never screamed that long and sharp, that sad, desperate. A scream to scar the soul, a scream to lose the mind. Never. Never. That was the last thing Claire could stand. That scream snapped her out of her shocked staring and into shocked flight. And suddenly she was running. Suddenly, she was running.

She was running away from there, crashing blindly through the brush. And the wind-blown branches of the forest formed shapes all around the edges of her eyes. Shapes like wicked and laughing faces, like long, lunging arms. Arms that were tipped in those thousand pulsing, crackling twigs, grasping, grasping for her, she felt tangled, snapping in her hair, jabbing at her eyes, leading long scratches on her arms and cheeks, catching at her throat. It didn't even stop when she saw the first dim light of the campground. Well, if anything, the brush grew thicker, more grasping, more insistent.

Clara fought, she fought through it. she only got free when she tore herself through the last screen of bushes and burst into the campground itself but even then even then she could still hear that sound that terrible soft crackling sound skirting the edges of the brush chasing her i would have hurled myself at the nearest RV or camper or ran screaming and shouting from one end of the campground to the other but clara's made of sterner stuff than me, I guess. She ran, sure. She ran like a blur through that camp, but she wasn't shouting. She ran all the way back to her own campsite and came to a skidding stop, listening. The wind in the woods made a roar of rubbing limbs and tree tops. The usual insect

and animal symphony shivered under the sound of the coming storm, seeking burrows and sturdy branches, clicking warnings from behind ruffled feathers, but there were no other sounds, no crackling anymore, no crashing in the brush. Clara stood there, breathing hard, listening, as the first big dollops of rain began to fall. And then? Then Clara went quietly into her tent. She didn't Sleep. No, no, that would have been asking too much, but she didn't wake her family up either. She just lay there and listened to the storm and wondered. Now, Clara is a brave, brave person, and here's more proof. Over and over again, as we tell these tales of unknown creatures, we encounter people who've had strange experiences, but then our two

confused and fearful and embarrassed to tell their stories, at least for a very long time. But not Clara. That very next morning, she told her parents. The scratches on her arms and face and neck testified that something had happened. They look so red, her mother noted. More like cat scratches than bushes and sticks. Must be some kind of allergic reaction. Well, of course, her parents were.

shocked and worried and concerned, but more about her sleepwalking. Without saying so, they dismissed her description of the creature and the running shadow and the screaming as all part of her sleepwalking nightmare. Her parents didn't really want her to tell her brother and sister, for fear the story would scare them. But of course, her siblings just rolled their eyes and plugged their ears, told Clara that they didn't believe her scary stories anyway. Clara did find someone who believed her, though. Someone who believed her and even had an explanation for what had happened to her. And Clara found her in the most unlikely place. From outside, it looked just like any other tourist-trapped little gift shop that you

might find on the outer banks. It looked that way on the inside, too. Clara's parents had taken the family into town the day after Claire's experience. The storm was still blowing outside, and maybe they thought a change of scene would help her take her mind off the night before. Anyway, Clara was wandering disinterestedly through the aisles and paused at one place where an old woman was on her knee, stalking shelves, and she just happened to be stalking replica coins, like the one Clara had found in the forest the day before.

Well, not exactly like hers, Clara thought, as she looked the coin selection over, but similar. Well, there were ones that looked like old Spanish pieces of eight, and old English coins, and... It's because of the pirates. The old woman at Clara's feet said that suddenly, giving Clara a quick smile as she worked. The pirates that used to hide in these islands, and the lost Roanoke Collins. of course. That old legend. That's why people buy these coins. Do you want one? Clara shook her head shyly no, and she shoved her hands in her pockets. And when she felt in there the coin that she'd found, she mumbled that she already had one, and she pulled it out to show the old woman. The woman

began to nod her head, but then stopped and cocked it to one side, squinting at Clara's coin. "'May I see that?' she asked. Then the woman turned the coin carefully over on her fingers a few times and handed it back to Clara with the cheerful declaration that it was no replica. You could tell those by the clumsy casting marks, among other things. What Clara had was the real thing. The old woman grabbed a shelf to help ease herself back up onto her feet, and then I asked Clara where she'd been lucky.

enough to find a coin like that. There were plenty of reasons for Clara to be cautious about that question. Was she going to get in trouble for, I don't know, disturbing an archaeological site or something? But something about the old woman, her eyes. Before Clara knew it, right there in the aisle of the little gift shop, she was telling the woman everything. Not just about finding the coin, but also the dream and the first.

forest and the screaming, those crackling hands chasing her, everything. It didn't take long. It all happened so fast, and Clara was still trying to recover from it and separate what had happened in the dream from what happened when she woke up in the woods. And anyway, she couldn't make all her feelings about it fit into words. She couldn't convey how the dream had fit with the shadow she'd awoken to, how she knew the two were. connected, how scared, how she shared the terror of that scream that she'd heard, how she felt like there was more to what she'd seen, more that she was supposed to tell, but she, she didn't know how.

The old woman stood there patiently, and when Clara was finished, she looked up and saw the old woman's eyes shining, with a strange, questioning look. huh the woman said i hadn't thought of that in a long long time and then she began to tell clara a story you see the woman's grandparents have been immigrants from the basque country northern spain fisherfolk for centuries from some forgotten little village on the Bay of Biscay. Having to steal a living from the changeful, unfeeling sea breeds wild, courageous people. That's how the woman's grandparents had been.

So many adventures, so many stories. Her grandmother, especially, told a lot of stories. And one of them, one of them had been about this very island, had her silent of all places. Well, it seems that a long, long time ago, so far back that her grandmother never bothered to guess a date for it, but it must have been around the year 1600. A group of Basque fishers had been shipwrecked here.

A ship-killing gale drove them over a reef. They were just able to beach their boat before the damage could sink them. They found they could repair the torn hole, luckily, but it was too late in the season to attempt to return home across the stormy Atlantic. They had to spend the winter on this very island. Four hundred years ago. The fishers got lucky, though. The people who lived on this island then, the Native Americans,

history calls them the Croatones, so we will too, though we don't know what they called themselves. But they were wary of the shipwrecked strangers. at first as anyone would be, but when each side showed a willingness to trade and neither tried any tricks, and the Basque fishers spent a much more pleasant winter than they had expected to. Even communication was much easier than it should have been, as some of the Basque sailors spoke a little English, and they were surprised to find that many of the Croatoans spoke some English too. One of them had even journeyed all the way to England and back, and knew that language very well.

The islanders also showed the fisher's iron swords and tools and English coins, just like the one that Clara had found. And they told this story. There had been a group of English years before. Today we know it was in the 1580s, who tried to settle a little north of here on Roanoke Island. The Croatones understood that Roanoke was a fine place to visit at certain times of the year for fish and game and such, but it was not a place to live permanently or try to farm, as the English did. Well, soon the English were hungry. Then they began to starve.

They kept speaking of more ships coming to help them. But when none arrived, the Croatowans took pity on them and invited them to come to this island, where, with Croatowan help, they might hope to survive. Well, many of the colonists accepted their new dependence on the Croatolls. Croatowans and were grateful, but there were some too proud to adjust themselves, and these few spread fear and mistrust among their fellow English, until they succeeded in convincing many that the seemingly friendly Croatolans were, in fact, planning their annihilation and enslavement. So in secret midnight meetings, the English decided that they must have a refuge, some defensible stronghold to flee to. when the attack they expected finally came.

And there was a place on the island, deep in the forest, where the Croatones did not venture. They said no one went there because of the evil that lurked in that particular place. What the Croatoans called that evil is lost at time, but the Basque storytellers translated the name as a squawakrakak. A wonderful, improvised compound word that might be translated as cracklehands. The English chose that forbidden area in the forest is their rally point, the place where they would make their stand if they were attacked. They didn't believe the local superstitions, and they saw the Croatowans' avoidance of the area as a distinct advantage.

But it was not. A cooking fire started the tragedy one night. A spark from the fire set an English house alight, which spread to another building or two. Awoken by the commotion, the English poured out of all their houses, and with the help of those nearby, the fire was soon contained. But fear spreads faster than fire and is much, much more deadly. Rumors raced among those further away from the fire that they, This, this was it.

The islanders, the misnamed Croatowans, were attacking. Fanned by the wagging of every English tongue, the fear leapt and shouts and running panic from house to house, until by the time it had doubled back to the English who knew the true origins of the flames that had put them out. The fire had been forgotten completely, and the fear had taken on a furious life of its own, burning with uncontrollable urgency.

Hunt, attack, massacre, massacre, now. Run, run, run! The Croatollans, roused by the noise, observed the panic cautiously, and then they followed the fleeing English at a careful distance, which, of course, alarmed the English even more. It was only when the Croitoans understood, where the English were going that they tried to stop them. Indeed, there was violence in several places running battles as locals tried to restrain some of the English, who all fought like wild animals to free themselves and continue their flight. An old Croatian man spoke with tears

in his eyes of a young woman, one of the English, a friendly person, he said. She was one of the last enter the thicket. She seemed to be hanging back, unsure. He'd started to run toward her, calling her by her name. She had looked toward him, startled, began running. And he'd watched helplessly as that creature of the woods engulfed her. The squawkarkark, the crackle hands. The old man could still hear her screams in his mind, he said. as his voice faltered and failed. In the morning, not a single one of the English was left, so the Croatowans said.

The creature of that place had gotten them all. They had allowed themselves to be driven by their fears like a school of fish into a net. There was no need for it to have happened that way. Like all panic fears, that of the English was born of prejudice and ignorance. You see, the locals respected that place in the forest, and they feared the strange power that resided in it, but they would never allow that fear to cross over into the curse of panic. The Basque fisherfolk listening to the story all nodded their agreement.

And in the spring, when they took their mended boat and braved the ocean once again, that ocean which they both feared and respected, They took that strange story home with them. And they thought enough of its lesson to pass it on to their children and their grandchildren, and it lived all through the centuries, until the old woman told this version to Clara, which is last year, in a little gift shop beside the highway not two miles from where the story had first taken place. Four hundred years before.

Clara told the story to me, and now I'm telling it to you. Well, the forest is still pretty thick around here, after all. And as we mentioned, tales of cracklehands and creatures like it aren't confined to Hatteras Island. They crop up wherever the woods get deep, and the twigs start to stretch across the trail. So, wherever you are tonight, if you're listening to this, then the lonely, camp in a forest somewhere and you're lying in your tent and you start to hear something moving out there in the dark trees something that sounds like it's coming toward you crackling softly through the twigs as it moves well i'm sure it's just the wind

And speaking of the wind through the trees, I'd like to give a special thank you to our producer, Jenny Barber, and executive producers Paolo Motila and Joe Crosby, for yet another season, battling the storms for us. Leaning into the headwinds of bureaucratic inertia, gathering the flying leaves of corporate sponsorship, et cetera, et cetera. They make it all happen. And I'm convinced that without our sound designer Nick Patry, there wouldn't be any wind at all. At least there might be, but we'd never be able to hear it. Thanks for another great season of turning my mumbled ramblings into this ascendant oral experience, Nick.

And credit is due to the Davis Boys for these two episodes in particular. They've been Cracklehands' biggest fans for a while now. As always, I remain yours truly, writer and host. Weston Davis. And if you're hearing this message, it's because we haven't yet sold out of our merch, and it really, really helps if we sell out. So, re-gift that old kitten mug that Aunt Noree gave you, or recycle that old water bottle that smells kind of suspect,

and replace them with amazing Camp Monsters gear. Check out the link in the show notes, or just go to rei.com and search Camp Monsters, and our merch should be the first thing. up. Cat Monsters is part of the REI podcast network. For the last time this season, we'll remind you that the stories we tell here are just that.

Stories. Sure, some of them are based on tales that a friend's Basque grandmother once told us, but it's up to you to decide what's really crackling in the bushes. Is that just the wind? Now it's time to... to douse this fire for the season. Thank you again for joining us. Thank you for listening.

Thanks for the good reviews, for mentioning us on social, buying merch, telling friends about us. Those are the things that bring new listeners here around the campfire. And the more listeners we have, the longer we get to keep telling these stories.

You have made cat monsters what it is. Thank you. And we hope to see you again next year, back here, around the campfire. Good night.