Camp Monsters - Hopkinsville Goblins: Part 2

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Police officers Rile and Aarons’ encounter with the goblin-like creatures in Hopkinsville raised more questions than answers. Now, a new listener tip has surfaced—strange, undeniable details that shift the story in an unexpected direction...Listen to Hopkinsville Goblins: Part 1Listen to REI’s Wild Ideas Worth Living podcast.This episode is sponsored by The North Face. Shop amazing products by The North Face 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.

R.E.I. Co-op Studios Hello. This is the part of the Cat Monsters podcast where we normally do a scary intro to help set the tone. But this week we're doing things a little differently because, frankly, we're in a rush. We had a great second episode. episode about the Hopkinsville Goblins all ready to go, but some of the feedback we received after last week's episode was just, well, it rendered it obsolete. These listener contributions are just too good, too strange, too important not to share with you right away. So here it is Tuesday night, and we're recording this now and giving Nick all of Wednesday to rush and get the

episode ready to drop by Thursday, call it just in time podcasting. You'll polish it up nice, Nick, right? Make it sound good? Of course. Oh, and if you didn't catch the previous show, the first Hopkinsville Goblins episode, I'd highly recommend that you stop here and listen to that one first. In fact, even if you did hear that episode last week, you might want to give it another listen now for reasons that will become clear as we get into this. Anyway, this all started for us last Saturday, just two days after the first Goblins episode dropped. We already had another episode about the Hopkinsville Goblins

all recorded and ready to go, but then we got an email in our podcast at rei.com mailbox from one Lucinda, who's from where else, but Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Lucinda writes, Dear Camp Monsters, thank you for doing your wonderful show. I listen to the episodes regularly. Thank you, Lucinda. She goes on.

I happen to be the niece of the officer Leroy Ryle that you wrote about in your last show in the Hopkinsville Goblins. And I'd like to tell you that after the incident in 1955 that you made the episode about, Uncle Ryle made a full recovery. He was hospitalized for several months and was disturbed in his mind for some time and was always a quiet man after that. that. But he found his calling, as they say, and went on to have a very successful career in the early days of the electronics and computer industries. Okay, well, that's nice background to last week's story, but hardly worth interrupting our episode release schedule to bring to you. Lucinda continues, however. You mentioned on your program the night skies around Hopkinsville, but I hope you'll also mention how dangerous it can be to get too wrapped up in those

kinds of stories. I'm thinking of my nephew Hayden. He's the spitten image of his great-great-uncle Leroy, Ryle, the one from your episode. Hayden was very interested in family genealogy and in Uncle Ryle's story in particular. In fact, he got a little too interested in that particular story. This summer, Hayden came out to visit us in Hopkinsville, and when the chance came up, he rented that old cabin where his great Uncle Leroy's strange experience took place back in 1955. I thought that wasn't a good idea, and I told him so, but Hayden went right ahead with it. And I don't know what exactly happened out there, but he ended up with some sort of breakdown, just like his great-uncle did. He's recovering now, and I know there's

nothing you can do about how seriously people take these stories. But I thought an extra word of warning would be nice if you think you can take the time to give your audience one. well audience consider yourselves warned the stories we tell here on the camp monsters podcast are just stories imaginatively assembled from bits and scraps of tall tales and unconfirmed sightings they should certainly not be pursued to unhealthy lengths but keeping that in mind maybe you can help us explain this next part Because from a completely separate source that we'll discuss later, we've been given a very strange and very compelling account of the night. The night last summer when Lucinda's nephew Hayden had the experience that affected him so intensely. Well, I've adapted it just a little bit to make it read better, but the substance of it is unchanged.

So, Lucinda, Hayden, if you're a little bit, listening right now, please turn this episode off. It's likely to upset you, and it might bring back confusing, frightening memories and unhelpful speculations. For the rest of us, now we're going to take a moment to relive that night, to imagine ourselves as Hayden earlier this summer. Let's imagine, let's dream that you're sleeping fitfully on a hot night. And then other dreams, troubled dreams are chasing you. That they chase you panting all the way over the edge of wakefulness so that you jerk your eyes open with a tumbling start and for a moment you can't remember where you are.

even in the darkness you can tell that this isn't home it isn't any familiar place where are you where should you be the long fingers of the last dream you just woke from trip your mind for another instant as you you wrestle off the sweat-damp sheets then you remember the cabin that's right that's that's where you are the old cabin outside of hopkinsville kentucky something must have happened to the air conditioning it's gone off while you slept the room is stifling hot now close and still it must have been that heat that drove you awake some other memory from the ragged ending edge of your last dream tries to creep back into your mind. Some memory of noise you dreamed you'd heard. But then the thought

scuttles back again. It was the heat that woke you up. The cabin is quiet and still. You try to roll into a more comfortable position, but you're much closer to the edge of the bed than you thought. Suddenly you're teetering, about to crash to the floor, and with an instinctive snatch of your arms, you just managed to catch a hold of to the nightstand. It rocks crazily and the lamp on it tries to dive off, but you grab that and you steady it back down. You take a deep breath and recover and you give up trying to go back to sleep right away. You feel for the knob on the lamp. Give it a twist to click it on. No luck. The electricity must have failed. Sure. Sure, that would explain the air conditioning turning on.

as well you roll to the other side of the bed and you try the lamp over there just to be sure and on that last click you freeze listening because didn't you no no it's a it's a quiet night it's very quiet in the cabin you listen and confirm just how quiet it is yes very silent even not a sound from the house not a peep from the woods so close outside these windows must be really soundproof you reach out until you feel the edge of the window blind then lift it up and glance at the night outside you don't know what you expect to see, moonlight, maybe woods, but out there, out in the forest are lights, beams of light like flashlight beams, but it's hard to understand how some of the lights

could be up so high, shining down like they were just above the treetops. And those lights are moving, aren't they? What could they? In one sudden, electric moment you come fully awake and you remember the whole reason that you're out here in this little cabin outside of Hopkinsville. Your family history, your great-uncle Leroy, the strange, cold lights that played a part in his story. This couldn't really be happening.

it. This must just be another one of those strange dreams you've been having recently. But you feel so awake now, and you look and look, and still, the lights remain. Drifting weirdly, silently, coldly, above those trees. You jump up, and you feel frantically on the bedside table for your phone to snap some pictures. But, of course, it must have dropped on the floor when you almost tip the table over, falling out of bed. You slide your feet around, hoping to feel it, but no luck. So then you have to decide. You can't just stay in here, crawling around, feeling for your phone, while the lights,

and maybe the explanation to the whole Hopkinsville mystery and your uncle Leroy's part in it. fade and disappear. This is it. This is what you came here for, and this is beyond your wildest expectations. Phone or no phone, you have to find out more now. In the hallway you make your first mistake. You turn to plunge out the back door, but you get turned around in the unfamiliar house. and the first hint you have that you've gone the wrong way down the hall is when you pull up short in the living room staring at the outline of the front door screen now you know you are absolutely and completely sure that you closed and locked and bolted the big solid front door when you went to bed you're absolutely sure but now it's wide open And you stand there and stare past it at the outline of the screen.

The screen door outlined in a strange light from outside, not bright, bluish-white, like the lights you saw in the woods, but a faint, flickering, pulsing red. And there isn't any way you'd be able to see that screen at all if the front door were still closed and locked. Your heart rate. Rockets and you stand very still and become aware of every little thing your senses are telling you. The heat has raised an odor in the house, has whicked it out of the old walls and floorboards.

It's faint but unpleasant, something stale and sticky. You hear a faucet dripping into a full pan in the sink. the only thing you can see in that dark dark room is the outline of the windows in the old front door screen pulsing in that faint red light that light like a like that room in the old haunted mansion ride at the fair the room lit only by a couple of those old red dome lights rotating around and around something very very strong strange is going on here, but how you've come this far, so you step slowly across the room, toward the flickering red door, cringing a little, as your feet crackle over grit and lumps and sticky patches on the floor that your eyes can't see in the darkness and your memory can't explain. The place was pristine when you went to bed, you're sure of it.

strange. And when you reach the door, it's strange how thick the screen on it is. It must be very old. It feels stiff against your fingers, and it dims and distorts the view outside so that as you move your head back and forth, the night beyond seems to shimmer and fade in and out, pulsing in that faint red light. Is there... Is there someone out there? There. The wrinkles on the screen cast shadows across your view, shadows that almost seem to be walking up onto the porch. You push the screen door open to clear your view, and the spring on it makes a terrible screeching

sound. And as it opens, suddenly there's something standing right there on the porch outside, revealed as if you had opened a solid door instead of the screen that you've just been peering through. The thing out there is tall and dark and twisted, hunched, and staring over its shoulder at something you can't see, something over toward the woods. You gather all this in an instant as you stumble, scramble madly back across the room toward the hall.

Something's gone wrong here. Things don't make any sense. How did that thing appear on the porch so suddenly? What is it? Where'd it come from? As the shape on the porch untwists itself, you see it, it's a person, a man. But as he steps silently through the door, right into the house, toward you, an overwhelming feeling of threat jolts through your body. You're trapped out here, miles from town, alone.

You've got to call someone. You've got to call the police. You've got to lock yourself in the bedroom. If only you can find the hallway back to it. You turn to run, but the faint red light doesn't seem to penetrate this room at all. You feel along the far wall, going too fast, tripping on something, falling, falling. And then you... Well, you must lose consciousness for a moment.

Because the next thing you know, you're on your hands and knees, and there's an unbelievable roaring in your ears that builds and builds and builds to a skull-shattering crescendo. And you can't make sense of what's happening. You shake your head, but the unearthly noise only gets worse. Shake your head again, and again, a little harder.

And the roar cuts off abruptly into a silence so sudden and so complete that it's even more ominous, than the sound. This is silence like an assault, silence like something pressing against you, smothering you. You can't hear your own breathing. You can't hear the heart you feel racing inside of you. You try to moan, try to cry, but if any sound comes out of your mouth, you don't hear it.

You try to figure out how badly the fall hurt you. you try to gauge whether you have the strength to stand. And you find that strength quickly when the silence beside you explodes into shards of desperate struggle. Scrabbling, slamming, beastly gnashing, inhuman gabbling sounds, fill the darkness right there.

Right there next to you. Like animals fighting for life and death. You stagger up, your head, throbbing. You try to steer your backward reeling stumbles away from those horrible sounds. A moment's quiet. Then a bright light blinds you and you throw your arm up to block your eyes from it. There's a shout, human sounding. You lower your arm for an instant and the light hits you full in the face and someone, someone shout to. again but how can they shout your name your last name ral someone shouts your name

and what nothing makes sense now how can you freeze and you squint into the light as the rattled gears of your mind slip and grind trying to figure out trying to figure out who, how. And then there's a, there's a power surge or something, a grinding, humming sound, and the lights come back on in the whole room, but no, it's not the room lights, no, it's a cold, bright blue light that streams through every door and window so you can see everything. very clearly, but I'm afraid that sudden vision doesn't make things any better for you.

In fact, it makes everything much, much worse. A snapshot of that moment will live in your mind for the rest of your life. The small cabin room, With every door and window a glow and bright blue light. There's a policeman crouched near you, right in front of you. Blood dripping from his hand. His face, a rigid mask of adrenaline. His flashlight shining on you.

But you hardly see him. Because from where you're standing, you can see the whole room. You can see the figures that stand just outside every window, just outside the front door, just in front of that terrible blue light that's streaming in. Figures not at all the right shape. Too short, arms, too long, heads all wrong, skin too pale, too slimy, eyes too large, pure red, teeth too long too gray movements too jerky too jittery too sharp like a film skipping frames and you also see the other figure the one crouching so close behind the policeman

it's like the other ones in the window but bigger and ugly and with a few of those too long too sharp two gray teeth missing, and with black blood running from its mouth. You watch it gnash those horrible teeth. You watch it twist its head toward you in that herky, jerky way. And then you're running, running down the hallway, running blindly toward the outline of the screen door at the back. The only aperture in the house without a figure filling it. The only way out, it seems, it seems, it only seems, because you slam through that door, and you leap off the porch, and you make it four, five, six sprinting strides across

the blackness of the backyard. You hurl yourself into a seventh long, running stride, but your foot never land. there's that light again suddenly enormously like a great bright pale blue eye opening shining down on you from directly above and you have the strangest feeling the strangest feeling that your last long stride across the yard is actually going to land you up there up there in the middle of that terrible blue light. Time and memory fail you here. They slip and catch and stagger madly. Things stop and start again, race forward, crawl back.

You're in a strange place. Things are happening around you. Things are happening to you. There are more of those figures, those strange, terrible figures that you saw in the house. Moving around, gabbling in a mucusy, bubbling language, if it is a language. Time slips its gears again, and you can't, you, you, maybe you don't want to remember much more. Just little snippets of things. impossible things terrible impossible things and then you're back suddenly you're back in the yard behind the

little cabin and it's night the lights are gone and there are people around real people normal people police firemen, they're talking to you, touching you, shaking your shoulders. They lift you on to something. They take you somewhere and feed you and give you clothes to replace the old ones that got singed and shredded somehow. All the people want to talk to you, they do talk to you, and you talk to them. And the longer you talk and try to tell them, the less they seemed to believe. Well, that's it. That's Hayden Ryle's story.

That's what happened to him one night last summer. It's so similar to the story we heard last week, don't you think? About what happened to Hayden's great-uncle Leroy, Ryle, way back in 1955. It was a very strange coincidence, isn't it? that two related people should have similarly inexplicable experiences in the same little cabin

separated by exactly 70 years. I agree with you, it is quite a coincidence. But I'm afraid that things are actually much stranger than they seem. Because now we have to reveal where we heard this account of Hayden's night last summer in that lonely little cabin outside of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Well, Hayden didn't tell us about it, not directly anyway. We didn't hear it from Aunt Lucinda. We, well, the fact is that just days ago, the podcast department at RAI received an express mail envelope, postmarked from Hopkinsville, no return address on it, and no letter or explanation inside the envelope.

just a little box labeled L. Ryle, Sept 55. As in L. Roy Ryle, September, 1955, I assume. Inside the box was a small reel of old, old acetate tape, the kind used for audio recording decades ago. Luckily, our sound designer Nick Patriot is an all-around audio file. And he owns an antique real-to-reel recorder, so we were able to listen to the tape almost immediately. And, well, why don't we all listen to that tape now from the beginning? If you just start the tape here, Nick.

This is the Ryle interview to transcribe for the conference. Start around the minute 30 mark if you could. This is interview number 1919 with the patient Ryle, Leroy. September 26th, 1955, case file reference CRM-114. Do you mind starting with your name? The real one? Why don't you start with that? Okay.

My name is Leroy Rowe. And Leroy, what do you do for a living? They tell me I'm a police officer. A police officer. Where? Here in Hopkinsville. I guess so. Now, tell me again about what's been happening to you lately.

What's been... Tell me about this delusion that you've been having. This? the delusion I mean sort of a waking dream I know what delusion means well

I guess I've been I've been feeling like I'm not really Leroyle Mm-hmm Who are you then Well I guess I've been I've been dreaming that I'm

somebody else. I'm, uh, Leroy's great nephew, a guy named Hayden Rao. Hmm. And what year do you think it is? It should be 2025? I see. You say it should be that year. Do you believe that it is that year?

Well, uh, I, I don't know. I don't know. You were convinced of it when we first talked, when you were first brought in here. Well, it's, I guess, I mean, everything here seems so in 1950s. Clothes, the cars. I don't know, but I'm starting to believe it. I have to. I have to.

I know I have to. I have to believe I'm actually. actually back in 1955. Now you say you're back in 1955, so you feel like you've been here before. You remember all of this, a deja vu, relived experience. No, no, I wasn't even born until 1998. I've just read about the 50s, seen the movies. Yes, yes, all right.

We've been over all that in our previous interviews, haven't we? But don't worry. You're making progress, Leroy. You're making great progress and we're going to get you through this. We're going to snap you out of it. Now, Leroy. Leroy? Yes. Now we're going to try something.

But medicine I gave you earlier should be taking effect now and we're going to try something. How do you feel? Good. Relaxed? Yeah, I feel good. Good. Now I've got something in my hand. Do you see what it is?

It's just a pen. It's a writing pen. That's correct. Now I'm going to hold this pen up here, right in front of you. And I want you to look at the very point of this pen. I want you to concentrate on the point of this pen. Concentrate. Good. Good. Now you're becoming, as you concentrate, you're becoming very relaxed. Very relaxed now.

Sleepy. You're very sleepy. You're getting very sleepy now. Your eyes are heavy, completely relaxed. Completely relaxed. Now, Leroy, we're going to go back to the night that all of this started. We're going to go back to that night in the cabin. We're going to go back to the cabin, and it's nighttime.

It's that night. Your eyes are closed. You're going back there. You're back there now. Can you see it? Do you remember the cabin in Hopkinsville, Leroy? Leroy. Leroy. Hayden? Yes. Yes.

What's that? Who am I talking to? Hayden. Hayden Rao. All right, well, fine then. Where are you, Hayden? Are you in the cabin? Yes.

What's happening? What can you see? In bed. You're in bed, and what's happening? I had a nightmare. Sit up. Can't remember where I am. But you're in the cabin.

Yeah, then I remember the cabin in Hopkinsville, where Uncle Leroy had this. Oh, so hot, so hot in here, the lamp. Try to switch the ramp on, it won't go. Roll over, try the other one, but click, click, click, you know. What happens then? Noise. You gotta hear something, maybe not. I lift a shade on the window and

there are out there. What is out there? What do you see? Lights. Lights out there. Moving to the trees. these beams of light.

Move. You've heard the rest of that story. We told it at the top of this episode. But now you know where we got it. From a recording made in September, 1955, of the man who had learned to live, the rest of his life as Leroy Ryle. I don't know what it all means.

Could two relatives, Leroy and Hayden Ryle, so closely resembling one another, could they somehow have been switched across the decades? Could one night really begin in 2025 and end in 1955 and the other way around? Of course not. Of course not. It's a coincidence. It has to be. Just a coincidence that the name Hayden that Leroy Ryle dreamed up for his alter ego back in 1955 was the same name given decades later to his great nephew. Coincidence that when I reached out to Lucinda, you remember, Aunt Lucinda,

the one who sent us the email that started all this, when I reached out to her, she filled in the details that Hayden had been found one dawn last month behind that same old cabin outside Hopkinsville, kneeling in the very center of a circle of grass, flattened outward, with his clothes hanging and singed tatters around him, staring up at the sky, and insisting calmly to the neighbors who found him that he was Officer Leroy Ryle of the Hopkinsville Police, circa 1955. Lucinda added that Hayden is making a good recovery

or a good adjustment, depending on what you believe. He's accepting that the year is 2025 and he's learning, or re-learning, to respond to the name Hayden instead of Leroy. His biggest struggle is remembering how to use modern technology.

You'd think he'd never seen a smartphone, before. Well, that's it. That's the whole story. Worth interrupting our regularly scheduled programming, wouldn't you say? Like I mentioned, I don't have any answers to all the questions this raises. Is there some kind of experiment being conducted by time-traveling aliens outside Little Hopkinsville, Kentucky? Or is it a misunderstanding? A coincidence? A hoax? You'll have to decide for yourself. Nick Patry is our genius sound designer, and the Goblins will never get him

because I won't let them. Do you hear that, Space Goblins? You'll never get our Nick! I would say the same about our senior producer, Jenny Barber, but she wants to go with them. She loves travel so much, and she says time travel is the only kind she hasn't done. She's already booked her trip to Hopkinsville. Meanwhile, those same alien goblins accidentally swapped our executive producers,

Paolo Motila, and Joe Crosby when they returned them to Earth. But no one noticed. Not even Joe and Paolo. My old friend Bridget Melton was kind enough to lend her voice to Aunt Lucinda's letters, and her husband Byron Melton helped out as a special consultant who also happens to sound a lot like Hayden Ryle. Pure coincidence, of course. Next week, well, next week we'll be camping by a remote, idyllic lake up in the mountains, way up there in the pines. When the moon is full, it sure makes a pretty reflection on the water. Maybe to see it better, you

go on down a little closer to the lake maybe you go right down there by the shore where the water ripples and sparkles at your feet and maybe that's when you see something in the lake other than the moonlight something that really grabs you thanks for listening thanks for spreading the word

camp monsters exists because you keep bringing new listeners to the fireside. Why not bring some more when we see you next week, right here, around the campfire. See you then.