Camp Monsters - Mogollon Monster

Episode Date: September 23, 2020

If you’re looking for a beautiful sunset, go to the Mogollon Rim in Arizona.  They call it the Rim because that’s what it is: the rim of the giant Colorado plateau, where it drops off into the pine forest lowlands below.  Most of the Rim is National Forest, so you can drive or hike or bike or even ride horseback to countless viewpoints where you can watch the descending sun turn everything a glowing red. But you know this episode isn’t about beautiful sunsets.  It’s about what has sometimes been seen along the Mogollon Rim after sunset. When it gets dark out. When the shadows start to lengthen and take on shapes ...People call it the Mogollon Monster, a Bigfoot like creature sneaking around in the wilderness out there.  But those who have seen it, they don’t like to describe it at all.  Because describing it takes them back out into the dark desert night, into an all-surrounding darkness ... a darkness that suddenly reaches out to grab them.Season sponsor:YetiSeries artwork by Tyler Grobowsky. 

So, we asked our podcast sponsor, Yeti, for a script to read for their ad. What we got back was the following letter. Dear REI Camp Monster Podcast Host, We could give you a script outlining all the reasons our coolers, bottles, and bags are the most durable, longest-lasting outdoor gear on the market. But as the saying goes, seeing is believing. So, we'd like to send a few of our Tundra hard coolers to your office, along with a big old grizzly bear, so you can properly put the coolers to the ultimate test.

Please keep this testing project secret. As you can imagine, lawyers get nervous when a hungry bear is let loose on a cooler full of meat. Just shoot us your shipping address and we'll get everything delivered to you in Washington. Signed, your friends at Yeti. This is an REI Co-op Studios production. If you're looking for a beautiful sunset, go to the Mugion Rim in Arizona. It runs from Flagstaff, 200 miles southeast, all the way down to Show Low in Springerville. They call it the Rim because that's what it is,

the rim of the giant Colorado Plateau, where it drops off spectacularly into the pine forest lowlands below. Most of the rim is national forest, so you can drive or hike or bike or even ride horseback to countless beautiful viewpoints, where you can stop and watch the dying sun spill its blood down the sky, lighting the rocks and mesas and everything a glowing red. But, you know this episode isn't about beautiful sunsets. It's about what has sometimes been seen along the Mogollon Rim after sunset. After sunset the shadows start to lengthen, take on shapes. The light fades quickly out in the desert. The night gets so dark up here that the stars cast shadows.

Cast shadows that sometimes start to move. People call it the Mugion monster, and those who have not seen it describe it like Bigfoot, like it's just another hairy ape man sneaking around in the wilderness out there. But those who have seen it, they don't like to describe it at all. Because describing it takes them back there, in a way. Back out into the dark, desert night. Into an all-surrounding darkness. A darkness that suddenly reaches out to grab them.

This is the Camp Monsters Podcast. The wild places of this country are haunted by mysterious creatures. Creatures you might only have heard whispers of. Every week we gather and repeat those whispers. The old tales, the recent encounters, all the strange stories you ought to know about the things that lurk in the wilderness you love to visit. These are just stories, of course. They're based on things people claim to have seen and heard and felt, but, well, witnesses can be mistaken. Listen to these stories and decide for yourself. They couldn't possibly be true, could they? We're in luck, you know, to have this fire. Normally this time of year the area is parched.

There'd be a fire ban on. Don't let the pine trees fool you. This is a desert, after all. Luckily we got some unseasonable rain out here the other day. You can still smell it on the air, that sharp, sudden green of the desert after a rain. So we can have this little fire. And a little fire is a good thing to have out here. We're in the middle of one of the largest dark sky areas in America. Without this fire, when the sun goes down, the stars are the only light there is.

No big cities glowing on the horizon, bouncing their lights off the atmosphere. If you keep your eyes on the sky, it's great. The whole sweep of the universe laid out above you. But on a really dark, moonless night out here, without a fire, I think you'll find you can only gaze up at the sky for so long before you feel the need to glance into the darkness around you. It's silly, of course. You can't really see anything down here.

The darkness is too complete. But if you stare into it long enough, you convince yourself that you can see just a little bit by the starlight. Most of what you see is in your own eyes. You know, those little floating, moving spots. Grainy, jumpy patterns of green and red that aren't really there at all. But somewhere close by, in the shadows that the starlight doesn't reach... Didn't you see something move?

There's a man alive today who will tell you that he did. Stanley is his first name. People call him Stan. He's an old man now, but back in 1973, he was a young soldier. Driving with his buddy Jim, late at night, on their way back to Navajo Army Depot in Flagstaff after a fishing trip in the Superstition Mountains. It's back roads all the way between those two places, little two-lane highways through nothing in the middle of nowhere, blacktop humming along under the tires, centerline flashing by in the headlights, and beyond that, darkness.

Pine trees. Desert. The road had been climbing for some time, up the Mugion Rim, when Stan pulled over and Jim got out to answer nature's call. It's the same on any road trip. The further you get from the nearest bathroom, the worse you need one. So Jim went out into the night somewhere,

and Stan was sitting in the dim glow of the dashboard lights, looking out at the little patch of dust and rocks and yellow grass that the headlights lit up. After a little while, I was taking so long. Stan switched on the radio and worked the dial back and forth trying to pick up the last of the Phoenix stations or maybe something out of Prescott. All he got was static and the eerie blips and whoops and wails of two distant broadcasts. One little spike of interference sounded like a scream. So much like a scream that Stan switched the radio off and tried to listen to the night outside. The passenger door on Jim's side was standing open.

Stan could smell the cool pine and sage desert night, but the blackness out there was impenetrable. He turned off the dash and headlights to try to let his eyes adjust, but eyes can't really adjust to darkness that complete. Human eyes can't, anyway. Come on, what's the holdup? Stan shouted into the darkness. He didn't really expect a response, and he didn't get one. Maybe he'd misunderstood the nature of Jim's need.

Maybe it was the sort of thing that takes a little longer to complete Stan sat staring and listening into the dark Which only seemed to get darker The night air continued to float cool through the open passenger door. Now that the lights were off, that breath of air was the only way Stan knew that the door on that side was open. Couldn't even see that far. Another stretch of time passed. A minute? A few minutes?

Stan began to feel uneasy but it wasn't just the time passing that made him feel that way there was something else he should call out to Jim again ask him just for a shout that he was okay

he should slide across the front bench seat and out the passenger door get the flashlight from the glove box and shine it around out there. But suddenly he didn't want to do either of those things.

Some instinct made him want to keep very quiet, very still. And Stan realized that the smell of the night had changed. Maybe the wind had shifted, but now the air from the passenger door tasted warm and very dusty and... And something else. Stan couldn't quite place it. Something slightly metallic. Like hot metal. Like copper. Like that taste you get when you've been hit hard in the mouth. And just when uneasiness was starting to turn into real fear, Stan felt the tremble and heard the vinyl seat sigh as Jim got back into the car. How he'd found his way back through that pitch dark was more than Stan could figure out.

Of course, he never should have turned all the car's lights out. Come on, what had he been thinking? Stan smiled and tried to think up some combination of joke and apology that would cover the situation. He started the car and the lights sprang on. He turned to Jim and he said, No. No. No, he didn't say anything. He sat and stared, frozen, at two huge, black, glassy eyes reflecting the lights of the dashboard, lights that seemed tremendously bright after that darkness.

Two huge, glassy eyes surrounded by a fringe of black fur, and the bottom of the fringe were teeth. Small, sharp, bright, and the fur around them was wet and shiny. And Stan started back so quickly that his head slammed at the driver's side window, hard enough to crack the glass. And when his mind returned to his body, he was being dragged across the seat and into the blackness of the night by a strong, hard hand. He kicked at it. He kicked and kicked, over and over and over. He kicked and pulled and twisted until suddenly he was free, scrambling across the driver's side door again, smacking into it again,

and scrabbling desperately for the latch. Just as he opened it, he felt long, narrow fingers, hot on the back of his neck. And as he started to fall out the door, they closed and pulled him back. He turned and twisted and fought and felt skin and bones and iron sinews under a hot mat of hair, and he couldn't see anything, just the color of the night. He finally fell free, whether because of his struggles or because of the dazzling headlights of an approaching truck, he didn't care. He crawled and scrambled around the open door of the car, and then he was up, sprinting, sprinting up the road, straight

into the approaching headlights. Beautiful, beautiful light. I hope you never hear the sound of a fully loaded fuel tanker locking up its brakes and starting to jackknife. The roar and grind and hiss of the brakes, the scream and shudder of the tires starting to slew sideways, the oaths of the driver, fighting to keep the rig from rolling. The truck did finally stop, stalled sideways across the highway, and the driver managed to peel his fingers from where they had fused with the steering wheel. He climbed out of the cab, and then he had to deal with the bleeding, hysterical soldier that he'd almost run over. He couldn't really make sense of the guy's story, so he got on the CB radio and summoned the state patrol. By the time the state troopers arrived, Stan had calmed down enough to communicate that Jim was missing and never returned to the car.

He kept his encounter with the thing to himself. Who would believe it anyway? He said he tripped and hit his head looking for Jim in the night. The troopers were calm, having had lots of experience with soldiers on leave. With their big flashlights blazing, they set off for a slow stroll through the

brush on the roadside, confident they'd find Jim hiding from his buddy as a prank or maybe curled up sleeping under a sagebrush. What they found instead was something quite different, something much more alarming. One of them almost stumbled into it. A hole. A shaft just large enough for a man that plunged straight down into the earth. A ventilation shaft

for an old abandoned mine. There were boot prints leading from the car toward it and the confused marks around it of someone sliding or being dragged, Stan thought to himself, into the hole. Arizona has always been a heavily mined state, and unmapped, abandoned mines dot the landscape. No one knows how many. Estimates range from at least 100,000 on up. So the discovery of

an open mine shaft set off a sadly familiar flurry of activity, and by dawn the road was crowded with police rescue trucks, and a special team had been flown in from Phoenix by helicopter. After some preparation, they lowered a man

slowly down the hole on a rope. Any miner will tell you. Your eyes play tricks on you underground. Broken rock looks the same whether it's on the floor or ceiling or on a wall or just in front of your face. It's hard to judge depth, to tell shadows from shafts. And the far edge of a bottomless pit can look just like the rest of the ground in front of you in the strong light of a headlamp. That's why there are so many recorded instances of people in abandoned mines walking right into open shafts.

And why it's so often reported that they don't make a sound as they fall. By the time their minds have processed the meaning of the rock suddenly flashing past them, they've reached their final destination. For the first 100 feet or more, this shaft pressed

close around the rescuer. Even when he didn't bump it with his back or elbows, this shaft pressed close around the rescuer. Even when he didn't bump it with his back or elbows, he could feel the rock there, tight all around him. When he reached the first level, the first place where a horizontal tunnel met the shaft, it was directly behind him. He or I would probably have missed it, lowered right past but the rescuer had years of experience he was an old miner himself he'd learned to feel a mine with all his senses and trust those feelings

so when the air changed behind him he gave the signal for the lowering to stop and using his hands on the rock he turned himself around to face the void. Like I said, your eyes play tricks on you underground. Shadows jump around as your headlamp moves, and your mind seeks patterns in the shadows, creates fleeting faces and figures that aren't really there.

You or I would have jumped a bit, gasped maybe, recoiled at the sight of a strange, dark silhouette turning and loping off down the tunnel in front of us. And after that, when the reflection of our headlamp kept glinting back at us from down the tunnel, at the very end of our light, glinting like the reflection off a pair of huge black eyes, we probably would have given the signal to be raised up, and the whole way to the surface we would have feared the feel of something dark and unseen grabbing at our dangling feet. But the rescuer was experienced. He saw that strange dark shape retreat down the tunnel and dismissed it instantly as one of those things you think you see underground.

One of those shadow tricks that isn't real because it can't be real. He didn't give it a second thought. And the glinting he kept seeing off away down there, well that didn't bother him either. Things glint underground. Minerals that have been hidden from light for millions of years sparkle in glory when the glow of a lamp touches them. Oh, the thing that did bother the rescuer were the marks in the dust on the edge where the tunnel met the shaft. Blood and a mixed up scrabbling

like someone had struggled there. Struggled to hang on to the ledge, presumably. That would have been a good sign, a sign that Jim might have managed to slow his fall by bracing against the walls of the narrow shaft, then grabbed this ledge and hung on. But what bothered the rescuer was that the marks were only on the ledge. The further end was nothing but the indeterminate prints made by animals, bats and other cave dwellers.

If Jim had struggled on this ledge, he hadn't struggled for long. And the shaft below kept dropping vertically away into endless darkness. The rescuer peered one last time down the tunnel, as far as his light would reach. He saw that trick of movement down there again and called, Hello? Even though he knew it was nothing. Then he shook his head, gave the signal to keep lowering.

A rope that you're suspended from, a rope that your life depends on, is a living extension of your body. You feel every strain and stretch and tremor in it. Another hundred feet down or so, the rescuer felt something. Strange. Then he felt it again. Like his rope was catching, scraping violently against something, twanging against a ledge or a rock.

He looked upward at the tiny fleck of light from the world so far above him. He didn't remember any projections, any place where the slope of the shaft would bring his rope into contact with the walls. There it was again, even rougher, even more dangerously insistent. He gave the signal to stop lowering, and that feeling of scraping pressure against the rope stopped for a moment. But then it happened again, and it didn't feel quite like anything he was used to. He was hanging almost still, but he could feel a grinding tremor in the rope, like something was rubbing or catching against it.

Was someone topside, fiddling with the rope in an unnecessary attempt to guide it? Or something mechanical? Something rubbing inside the winch? That last possibility shook him. And rather than have them start to attempt repairs while he was dangling from the lifeline, he gave the signal to hoist him back up. As he rose, he tried shifting his position, pushing with his hands and knees against the close

rock walls to get the rope to a place where it would stop rubbing. But it just seemed to get more insistent, till he passed that pitch dark level with the bloody ledge. Somehow that ledge must have been the culprit, although it didn't seem possible, because once he was past it, his rope rose clean and easily. And a good thing, too, as his team told him when he regained the surface. Because some of the rope,

as they'd reeled it in, had been torn down to a strand or two thick. Whatever was down there was sharp as a razor. They never did find the bottom of that hole. They tossed down food

and survival supplies. They lowered a camera which didn't see anything but rocks and shadows. Water a couple hundred feet down. There was never any response to shouts and shadows. Water a couple hundred feet down. There was never any response to shouts and whistles. No sound of life at all

down there except except for the tricks the shadows played. After a few days they reluctantly called off the search. A week or two later a crew came, sealed up

the shaft for safety's sake. Stan put in for a transfer to a unit based at Fort Bragg and got it. It's been a lot of years since then, and Stan is an old man now, but last I heard, he had no plans to retire to Arizona. It's been a lot of years since then, but down through all that time, every once in a while, a strange report will trickle down off of the muggy on rim. Some campers in a remote patch of pine forest or a stargazer out on the plateau will think they see something more in the shadows than what ought to be there. And of course, like any wilderness area, the Mugion Rim has its annual share of disappearances. Seems like our fire has just about disappeared

Let's leave it like that Let the stars take over And we've got a little sliver of moon too Funny how much light it seems to give When there isn't any other light around Funny how deep the shadows are In moonlight Like you could slip and fall right into one Funny how deep the shadows are in moonlight.

Like you could slip and fall right into one. Or be dragged in, I suppose. Camp Monsters is part of the REI Podcast Network. If you've been warmed by our little campfire, please subscribe if you haven't already, and take a moment to rate, review, and share. It's you spreading the word about this podcast that keeps us recording. Thank you.

Next week, someone will stumble out of the dark and into the dim glow of our campfire. Someone with a warning about an ancient creature that lurks just beyond where the firelight reaches. It's been given many names over the centuries, but the one that's stuck translates as carries away dogs. Prepare to be carried away. Camp Monsters is recorded around a cozy digital campfire in the overcast room of Cloud Studios in Seattle, Washington. The campfire was lit and is guarded by our very own legendary creature, our producer, Chelsea Davis. The sparks of audio magic are stirred up by our engineer, Nick Patry. Any growls that you hear out beyond the firelight probably come from our executive producers, Paolo Motula and Joe Crosby.

These stories are written and told by yours truly, Weston Davis. Thanks for stopping by the campfire. See you next week. This season of Camp Monsters is brought to you by Yeti. It just so happens that the Yeti Tundra 65 hard cooler is just big enough for the Mugion monster to hide in.

So, how bad do you want that ice cold drink after all?