Camp Monsters - Hopkinsville Goblins: Part 1

Episode Date: September 25, 2025

Hopkinsville, Kentucky police officers Rile and Aarons encounter glowing, goblin-like creatures in a cabin in the woods. Was it aliens— or something stranger?This episode is sponsored by Asics. Shop Asics' amazing products in store or at REI.com. Listen to REI’s Wild Ideas Worth Living podcast! 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 ARII Co-op Studios A strange house will make strange noises strange noises sometimes even loud enough to wake you up in the middle of the night especially way out here in this cabin in the woods all by yourself and that creaking noise just now well that could have been anything but it really couldn't have been what it sounded like because it sounded like the front door slowly swinging open It couldn't have been that You locked that front door Locked, deadbolted it

You're sure of it Out of long city living habit You're sure you locked that front door Didn't you? Then again You could have sworn that you'd close the bedroom door too But there it is now, gaping, wide open over there, staring back at you, perfect blackness in the deep, dark room. Well, there isn't any reason for you to keep staring at it, though.

Those little sounds from out there are not careful footsteps across the other room. No. No, they're just the sounds of the house settled. or mice chewing on something in these old cabin walls. But you should get up and shut that bedroom door. That's what you should do. That's what you're going to do. That's what you're going to do.

What's that? A light suddenly shines across your bed from the window just behind you. A bright light, cold, pale, unearthly. Fear flashes like a current through your whole body and your head spins in that direction and you and you shiver a moment in the light of that cold old moon.

That's all it is. Full moonlight. The wind must have moved a branch shifted something over so that the moon might suddenly streamed in through the window. But then you don't see any branches and the trees moving like the wind would make them do. And you don't hear any wind. Could something...

Could someone have been standing just outside that window? Blocking the light? Watching you? Why? and if they were where have they gone now and as you stare out the window

the bright moonlight throws a reflection of the room behind you onto the glass as you look out and in that reflection over your shoulder you see a figure step into the open bedroom doorway

a figure standing bright In the moonlight, you see it, but you can't believe it. You can't believe it until it begins to move. No, no, not that, not that. It can't be, it can't be! It can't be the Camp Monsters podcast. Wood smoke, fallen leaves, warm, warm days at end in the first crisp kiss of fall.

It's time for the first campfire of the season. It's time for another series of camp monsters. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for listening. Thanks for spreading the word. As we always say, you're the reason we keep rekindling these little campfires every year, just at this time.

And we sure picked a great place to start our seventh season. Around a backyard fire pit behind this secluded little vacation rental camp. cabin outside of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, nothing but stars above us, nothing but dark forest leaning in on every side, and listen to that campfire crackle. Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, we got a great deal on this vacation rental cabin, too. Well, partly that might be because of the stories they tell about this particular cabin, but it also might be because Hopkinsville, Kentucky, is a little bit off the beaten path, unless you're on your way from Bowling Green to Paduca

and you feel like taking the back roads. Hopkinsville is just that kind of place. A sleepy little slice of Americana. About as close to smack dab in the center of the country as you can get. It isn't that nothing ever happens here. It's just that all the things that do happen, all the triumphs and tragedies of people's lives, they all fit into familiar patterns.

At least, that's what Hopkinsville police officers Ryle and Arons thought as they drove through the heart of that hot August night back in 1955. That's officers Leroy Ryle and Bobby Arons, but everybody called them by their last names. They even called each other that, Ryle and Arons. They both been on the force for a few years, and they were both convinced. Everything that happened in Hopkinsville fit a familiar pattern. Oh, sure.

That particular night had threatened to go off track a while earlier. And those two beat-up old cars had come racing into town, slamming on their bald old brakes to come to a skidding stop, halfway up the curb, right in front of the little Hopkinsville police station. And that crowd of people had come boiling out of them, dashing up the steps to the desk where Ryle and Aaron stood, chatting with a desk sergeant. It sure was a motley crowd to come out of those cars. Men, women, kids, maybe a dozen or more of them, wearing bits and pieces of stale pajamas or wrinkled under

things, or pants with no shirts with no pants, like they'd all fallen out of bed and grabbed the nearest scrap of fabric they could find and thrown it on themselves. All of them were shouting and scuffling, talking, crying all at once. It took a piece to get them calm down enough to hear what they had to say. And that's when it all started to fit the pattern. Oh, not the hysterical story those people told. No, no, that was a fresh one. They all tried to tell it, all talking at once, interrupting, shouting over one another. Something about how they were all new to the area, carnival workers and their families and hangers on, just passing through. And they were renting or squatting, or anyway, staying in this old cabin, just outside of town.

Ryle and Erins knew the old place that had been empty for a few years at that point. Well, that night, all these people have been woken up in the middle of the night by strange noises just outside the house, and cold, bright beams of light were shining through the trees out there. And before they knew what was happening, there was this terrible, screeching roar. And all these pale creatures with bright, blood-red eyes came jumping up,

scrabbling against the windows and the screen doors, trying to claw their way in. Well, there's pandemonium. Men, screaming, women hollering, children, weeping and tear. Bottles and pans and chairs, dishes, and what all. all thrown around at the creatures, somebody fired a gun, or was it one of those red-eyed creatures shooting at them? Everybody, running wild, shouting and scrambling for their cars and then peeling out for town to tell the local law about it.

The fools. Officers Ryle and Aaron's news just pure blind luck that hadn't shot one of their own selves or drove over somebody or wrecked both their cars on the wild way. in. And that's when it all fit back into the old familiar pattern. It didn't matter what story they told. Didn't matter how strange their story was. Didn't matter what the story was at all. The officers had heard plenty like it before. And these types of tales always, always began and ended in a bottle. A whole bunch of bottles by the sound of this story in the size of the crowd. but probably plenty of cans and some harsh old mason jars, too. You didn't have to actually smell the alcohol on their breath to know.

If you've been in the law for any length of time, you just knew it. You knew what the root of this was. When the first telling of this story was finished, and the various storytellers had started back into repeating the wild parts of it, the desk sergeant had managed to shout over them, to ask if they're absolutely sure that everyone who, who'd been in the house that night was now there in the police station. While the crowd paused, chewed on that one for some moments,

glancing dumbly around while their pointing fingers counted in their lips shaped silent names and numbers. And then they all agreed, in loud, conflicting chorus, that they absolutely could not agree whether or not everyone had made it out. And as they fell to arguing about that, the desk sergeant gave Ryle and errands the sign. So here they were, rolling their patrol car through the hot Kentucky night toward the cabin past the edge of town. There's no telling what they'd find out there, but they spent the drive speculating. Probably just an awful mess of broken bottles and broken windows and bullet holes.

Maybe some poor curious nighttime creatures like raccoons or possums or even a horned owl that peered in through a window and got shot dead by that crowd of jumpy drunks. Now the worst would be one of the drunks themselves, killed accidentally by the others, or some silly country kids with a fool idea of a prank gone terribly wrong. Officers Ryle and errands went quiet and serious on that last thought. Ryle drove a little faster. They stayed quiet, too, all the way out to the old cabin. And when they turned off the engine and got out of the patrol car, well, they both felt it. They felt that something that gets into your senses after a few years of patrol

and more than a few midnight visits to seemingly quiet places like this. Ryle and errands opened the car doors and stood up into the night, not listening exactly or looking, not using any of their senses so directly, but just is feeling things, feeling the strange warning that the night air held. They looked across the top of the car at each other, and they both saw their instincts confirmed. There was more here than an old empty house full of bottles and trash. there was something here for them to find if only those same instincts could tell them what it was

the house was completely dark not a light in or outside of it except for the whirling red of the patrol car's emergency dome errands on the side of the car closest to the house reached in and switched on one of the big adjustable spotlights and aimed it up toward the house it didn't help much just lit up the warped siding

and the faded peeling paint while leaving the windows in empty black darkness no telling what was waiting inside police Hawkinsville police the spotlight

danced in Aaron's hand as he jumped at the sound of Ryle's shouted announcement it was the right thing to do of course Aaron should have done it before he switched on the floodlight now ryle and errands both stood there by the car listening to the sound of the woods around them familiar sounds insects and night creatures sounds that seemed a little muted somehow distant like the sounds they were hearing came from deeper in the woods while all the creatures in the forest near them were silent still waiting hiding police

ryle tried again but he couldn't help being quieter now than he was the first time something in the night demanded stillness it was an effort to defy it ryle and aaron stared at the flood-lit house and the black blank windows of the old house stared back at them aaron's heard ryle clear his throat Well, Ryle murmured after a time. Well, nothing for it but to check it out.

And he came around the car toward errands. The crunch and scuff of gravel and sandy dirt under his shoes seemed unnaturally loud. And they both walked slowly toward the house. Toward the vacant darkness behind the rusted old screen door. They were almost there. Aaron's was about to step up onto the first low step of the sagging front porch when things started to happen very quickly. Aaron's thought he saw movement back in the gloom of the house, behind the rusty front door screen,

sudden pale, dim movement way back in the shadows. Aaron's turned to glance at Ryle and confirm that he'd seen it too, but suddenly Ryle wasn't there he was running swiftly without a word running away from the porch toward the woods beyond the corner of the house toward lights strange lights back there in the forest moving around in the trees floating darting Aaron stared for a moment about to call out about to follow Ryle, when there was an unearthly shriek just in front of him. Aaron's wheeled to face it, and he saw the screen door wide, like it had just been shoved open by someone inside.

Someone who is now just a shape retreating back into the house, that pale figure again, inside. Then the old spring on the screen door screamed again. The door began to close, and Aaron's made his decision. He stuck out his hand to catch the door, and he glanced back toward the woods as he stepped into the house. But he could no longer see his partner Ryle. He couldn't see any of those beams of light anymore, either. Inside the house, it was stuffy, dark.

The smells wrestled with each other, the smells of people living sloppy and close. sweaty sheets spilled drinks stale greasy food left out too long in summer heat a faucet was dripping into a full pan somewhere when he thought his eyes had adjusted to the darkness errands took two swift strides forward but he stumbled hard over something started to fall reached down his hand to catch himself but pulled it back as it gashed against a jagged sharpness on the floor he landed heavily and he fumbled for the bulky flashlight clipped to his belt. As he searched for it, he struggled to scramble back up and something clung around his feet like fabric. And then there was a ripping sound. But not just from whatever had entangled Aaron's feet, something much, much larger. The house, the world,

the sky was being torn apart. It started at some distance and it built in an instant. until it seemed to be right on top of them. And then the movement of the sound stopped. And the sound itself changed. It grew even louder, though that seemed impossible. And beneath the ripping came a chorus of treaks that one moment sounded mechanical, like cold, thick steel, twisting and grinding.

And the next moment sounded like a crowded choir of people in torment. Ayrns could feel the sound, like a force, shaking his whole body from his insides out. Without thinking, he sat up on his knees and he mashed his hands against his ears, opened his mouth and squinched his eyes, tight shut, as if that would help relieve the pressure on his eardrums. The sound became so overwhelming that Arons threw himself back down and ground his face against the floor,

trying to burrow away from this terrible noise. When the silence finally came, it was sudden and total. It took errands a moment to decide whether his ear drums had burst or the sound had really stopped. He still felt a low, rumbling vibration in his chest that seemed to suggest that his hearing had gone. But then he heard the sound of his shocked, ragged breath as he drew it in. His first breath, and he didn't know how long. Hands still pressed against his ears. Aaron splinked his eyes open.

There he was, on the floor of the darkened house. He raised his head, looked around, but he couldn't really see anything. Shapes and shades of darkness stood for furniture and walls and doorways and window ledges. if only he could figure out the patterns. He knew he had to do something. He should jump up, maybe. Call for his partner, Ryle, try to find him. But this total silence

and this strange feeling of tense vibration that hovered in the air. Whatever it made those horrible sounds was still here. It was still nearby. It was still close. Ayrns could feel it. So he cautiously took his hands away from his ears. He lay there on the dirty, sticky floor listening.

But there was nothing else to hear. There were no night sounds, no birds, no insects. The water had stopped dripping into the pan. How was that possible? The only thing, the only thing that Arons could hear was the sound of his own rapid post-panic breathing. But after a while, a little, little while, just a few moments, Aaron's began to wonder, was it really only his own breathing that he heard?

His heart was racing so fast his muscles corded with tension. It was hard to control his breath, hard to stop it. He tried to hold it in. He thought he was holding it. Yet, the sound of that horse, rapid breathing, so close, so close, continued in his ear. It was all he could hear, but he was sure. now that it was not his own. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, the familiar terror response, but Aaron's had

the strangest feeling, the strangest conviction, the conviction that the shiver playing like a cold breath on the back of his neck actually was a cold breath. breath on the back of his neck. That something horrible was crouching down just above him, about to. A sudden roll with a heavy flashlight already in his hand and all his momentum behind it. Half sure he was flailing and empty air, but then the solid, sickening, thick, soft crunch of the flashlight striking, feeling cold wetness on his hand and cold terror in his heart. scrambling to his feet and standing still to hear

a strange, inhuman, gabbling sound and scurrying movement and small, hard things dropping to the floor. And then that breathing again. Louder now, but further away. Then the sound of movement behind Erins, in the direction opposite where the breathing had scuttled to, Aaron spun and swung viciously with the flashlight he still held,

then staggered, almost toppling over when it met nothing but empty air. Aaron's fumbled for the flashlight switch and he found it, sick with the certainty that the first rolling blow on the floor had broken the bowl, but when he flipped it on, the light shone strong on a pale figure stumbling across the room toward him, shielding its face from the light. Aaron shouted and stepped back. The figure lowered its hand and... And Aaron's felt relief out of all proportion surged through his body

at the sight of his partner Ryle's face squinting at him. Ryle! Aaron shouted. Arryle's only reaction was to move his head uncertainly and squint harder into the light. Something must have happened to him, Aaron's thought. He looked disoriented, confused. there was something wrong with his uniform. Then came another sound, different from the terrible one before.

This was a buzzing hum, loud but not overpowering, and suddenly, suddenly Aaron's flashlight became quite unnecessary because someone had switched the lights on. It switched many, many lights on. The lights cold and harsh, the same lights that he'd glimpsed out there in the woods. The ones that Ryle had turned to chase, but they weren't moving anymore. Now they blazed in through every window and door in the house, so bright that they bathed everything inside in a watery blue glow.

In the strange blue light, Arryn saw Ryle staring at something. something behind him, something over Aaron's shoulder. And then Aaron's watched Ryle's eyes as incomprehension soured into repulsion, then blossomed into an unbelievable terror that twisted Ryle's mouth and churned his face, making him almost unrecognizable in the moment before he turned and bolted down the hallway just behind him. errands did not turn around to see what ryle had been looking at he called ryle's name and he ran after him and as he ran he thought he saw figures standing in the windows and the doorways to his right and left strange squat figures with arms too long and heads too large and and but erins didn't turn his head to look directly at them

Something told him not to turn his head. Something told him just to keep running. All the windows and doors were blazing with that bright cold light except the door at the very end of the hall, the one that must be the back doorway. That was still black, as if the night outside were still complete, as if there was a darkness out there that they could hide in.

Ryle was a few sprinting steps ahead of Arons, and he plunged through the back screen door first. Arons heard the scream of the old spring on the door, heard it slap hard against the outside of the house as the force of Ryle's flight threw it open. But as Arons reached the doorway, there was a flash of that blue light again, and in that flash of light,

Aaron saw something that he would never forget something that he spent decades trying to explain to himself something he'd never tell anyone about until he was a very old old man in the instant of that very first flash of light Aaron saw Aaron's thought he saw well

Ryle but Ryle hovering, floating, suspended in mid-air, seeming to drift slowly upward toward a bright, bright blue light that hovered there in the sky, in the sky just above the cabin. And the figure of Ryle disappeared into that light. and the light went out, and then something happened like someone flicking the sun on and off rapidly so that the world and the woods were illuminated with a jaggedy, jangling, shadowy light. A light that held every color in the world, green and yellow, red, black, blue as the noon sky,

purple as the last of the sunset, and everything, the yard, the woods, the house, everything seemed to waver and move and writhe under that light, like every living thing was animated by it. Shadows raced back and forth across the yard, almost too rapid to see. And then suddenly all was darkness except for a few shapes in the sky, faintly outlined in a dim blue color of great intensity. Arons raised his foot to take another step out into the yard when when the blue lights all winked out at once and there was a huge explosive sound and errands felt his body lifted by a pressure wave so intense it was as if the air had been compressed into a solid that slammed into him lifting him up throwing him back into the house

carrying him all the way down the hall back into the little living room where he hit something even more solid than the air and he stopped remembering anything for a while Back in the tired all-night interior of the Hopkinsville police station, the phone calls came in one after another. Folks who couldn't get through to the police asked to be connected to the fire station, or the state troopers, or the military police over at Fort Campbell. There had been some kind of explosion on the edge of town or a plane crash followed by an explosion, something like that. So all the local authorities converged. on the spot.

And when they got to the little cabin, there was evidence of an explosion, but not of a kind that anyone could explain. Some of the World War and Korean vets in the crowd that gathered around the little cabin said it looked like an air burst, like the damage that an artillery shell makes when it's fused to explode in the air above the ground. But this was bigger and at the same time not as destructive. The trees were scorched, the windows on the cabin were shattered, some of the siding on the back was knocked loose, and all the long, untended grass in the backyard was pressed flat to the ground

in a circular pattern that radiated out from a central point, and it was there in the focal point of that strange circle that they found Hopkinsville's own officer Ryle, his uniform torn to scorch. unrecognizable shreds by the blast, but Ryle himself was miraculously unharmed, physically, at least, except for a little bump on the head. But he was pretty confused for a while, to say the least. He couldn't seem to remember much of anything for a bit, or, anyway, the things he claimed to remember were impossible. So they kept him over at the state hospital.

for a while, and when he'd recovered enough so that they could turn him loose, he left the area, and nobody around Hopkinsville heard much more about him. They found Officer Aaron's inside the cabin, just coming to his senses. He told them what had happened as best he could, and he tried hard to believe what some scientist decided the explanation was for what had occurred out there that night, that there must have been a highly localized thunderstorm with violent wind shear and maybe even a minor tornado culminating in a lightning strike just behind the cabin well that seemed plausible enough plausible enough for some of it but it never really satisfied errands and just recently another side of the story came to light

one that offers a very, very different interpretation of what really happened out here in the night outside Hopkinsville, Kentucky, way back in 1955, if you can bring yourself to believe it. We'll give you a week to wonder, and then tell that half of the story next time. So be sure to tune in. One last thing to consider before we close is that every single, so often since 1955. Late at night on these lonely country roads,

someone in a car will come rocketing into a gas station or a diner or some other all-night place. Eyes wide and wild. Mouth working so fast you can hardly tell what they're saying until they calm down, you just catch pieces. Something about lights in the sky and horrible

sounds and strange, short, misshapen figures. Those figures, those figures, that people around here have taken to calling the Hopkinsville Goblins I'm gonna shake myself out of that one what a story to start the season with

and it does make me wonder wonder if there was another reason we got such a good deal renting this little cabin I wonder if there was something behind the looks the locals gave me when I told them where we were staying. Hmm. Well, probably not. Well, I guess it's late enough now. We'd better head for the cabin and turn in.

But if you do wake up later and the light outside your cabin window looks a little too bright and cold to be moonlight? Well, maybe don't. go out and investigate. Camp Monsters is part of the R.E.I. Podcast Network. Sitting solid and skeptical, with their boots propped up on their big desks, are the deputy sheriffs of Camp Monster County. Our executive producers, Paolo Modela, and Joe Crosby. Spitting and shouting, gesticulating wildly and furtively.

of them is yours truly writer and host weston davis trying to tell them how i watched while our erstwhile senior producer hannah boyd got levitated up into a flying saucer it spirited away so long hannah if i can't make them believe me maybe they'll listen to our newly promoted senior producer jennie barbara because she saw the whole thing tell him jenny jenny Did she ever really exist? Meanwhile, hovering in the sky, manipulating strange controls while gabbling softly to himself and shining bright, cold lights into the eyes of the people beneath him, is our sound designer, Nick Petrie. Beam me up, Nick! And this is as good a time as any to remind you that the stories that we tell here on Camp Monsters are just that.

Stories. Sure. Some of them may be based on things people claim to have woken up to in the middle of a hot Kentucky night, but then, well, it's up to you to decide whether those lights on the horizon are really just heat lightning or not. Thanks for listening. Thanks for leaving nice reviews, sharing us on social and generally spreading the word. See you next time around the campfire. Thank you. Thank you.