Camp Monsters - Not-Deer

Episode Date: October 15, 2026

While driving home through a stormy afternoon in suburban Maryland, Tonya and her daughter Millie hit what appears to be a deer... but something isn't right.Listen 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 Your backyard isn't the wilderness, is it? Sure, it's the same night out there, same darkness, same moon and stars. But it's not like the woods, not really. I mean, you can hear the highway over there, hear those big trucks roaring by like distant ocean waves. And the other night sounds are different too, more familiar. There are fewer rustlings and strange calls than you hear when you're way out there away from anything.

And there are lights around your backyard, too, street lights over the far fence there, and this back porch light that you're standing under. Although sometimes, somehow, those lights do seem to make the little swathes of darkness that much deeper. You're just being silly. You've been out here at night lots of times. Why do you do this to yourself? Get all freaked out over nothing. Look, there's nothing out here.

It's your own backyard. There's nothing to be scared of. So, you step off the porch and you start across the lawn. The orange pool of light from the bulb on the house casts your shadow longer and longer, fainter and fainter as you get further from it. the darkness closes in. But that's all right, though. There's nothing out there anyway.

And besides, you won't be out here long. You just... You put the trash in the trash, and then you turn back to the house, and you... And you're not going to run back. No. You're going to walk back, nice and steady.

Because you know there's nothing out here. Okay, okay, okay. Yeah. You jumped a little at that wrestling noise, didn't you? And you turned pretty fast. And yeah, there was a shadow that ran along the fence and out of sight. But you see, that just proves it. It just was some familiar little night creature, a raccoon or something.

More scared of you than you are... I mean, you're not scared anyway. So you keep walking back across the yard, going maybe just a little bit faster now. You keep your eyes on the porch light, and you ignore the tricks the night tries to play, the dance of little particles at the edge of your vision, that try to suggest that there's something moving over there

by that big, dark mass, that you know it's just a bush, it's just a bush, that there's nothing moving. There's nothing really moving. There's nothing there. There's nothing over there. You keep walking, and maybe you pick up the pace even more, but you aren't running yet. You're not even, but barely just just, just, just,

jogging. But your eyes keep their tricks up more persistently, more urgently, more convincingly. There's something over there, they try to tell you, something coming out from behind those bushes. There's something big, coming this way, moving fast, silent, right toward you. So you finally break down and you give in, and you glance that way into the darkness, just to remind yourself that there's nothing really there but your overactive imagination. And when you look right at the spot, you can't see anything at first. But then the darkness starts to form into something, something that is big, too big, and moving fast, too fast. No time for thought now.

You turn your eyes back to the porch light and you run. Run as fast as you can. You hear it coming now. hear the thud of heavy footfalls on the turf closing in. You didn't get a good look at it, but you know what impossible thing it must be, and now you wonder if... You wonder if you're about to be another gruesome part of the rumors you've been hearing. The rumors of something strange and aggressive that's been seen out here in the safe-seeming suburban night.

Something without a name, except what the kids have started calling it. What do they call it? What do they call it? The knot deer? The night pale deer? No, no. You remember now. They call it the Camp Monsters podcast.

Isn't this nice? We've been able to have campfires at every one of our locations this year. I think that's a record. I mean, I don't think we've ever been able to do that before. Well, lucky us. Well, of course, the first fire was more about survival than anything else, but we'll take what we can get. And tonight, again, we get stars in a clear sky,

sparks and gentle wood smoke swirling up and friendly faces, flickering orange in a ring around the warmth, casting shadows high up on the trunks of the trees around us. One more time. One more time this season. Thank you for coming. Thank you for joining us. You know, around a fire like this. In the middle of a night like this, we could be anywhere.

We could be high in the mountains or deep in some primeval forest. And we've been places like that before. Yeah, we've done some shows way out in the wild. But the truth tonight is that we're only 20 minutes away from civilization. Just a 20-minute drive through some woods and fields and we'd hit houses. stations, and then stores, strip malls, restaurants, bookstores, coffee shops, you get it. You see, we're just past the edge of the suburbs here, out where the last big, riding mower lawn gives away to a little bit of wilderness that the state is preserved for hikes and campfires,

roasting marshmallows, and, well, maybe a scary story. We're out here in suburban Maryland tonight because this has been a recent hotspot for sightings of a creature that's best known for haunting the edges of suburbia, stalking those stretches where the city lights begin to be snuffed out in the quiet dark of the countryside. Those lights are new, relatively speaking, just a hundred years or so that we've been able to hold the darkness back like that. And the darkness now, that's much older. Even here, even where the roads are being widened and the new development of the world, are displacing the forests and fields.

Even here, some of the old darkness lingers, just past the edge of the lights. That's not to say that the creature we're talking about tonight is strictly nocturnal. No, that's one of the strange things about it. It seems to prefer the night, but it has been spotted even in the afternoon. Like, say, about the time that first Christmas,

are getting out of school. Mommy, what's that? It was a question that Toria was very used to. And she only heard it from her little daughter, Tilly, about three times a day. No wait. Three thousand times a day. Votoria was driving now. She was focused on driving through heavy rain that gray afternoon.

So she let her mouth answer while her mind drove. Well, what's what, Tilly? What's that? I can't see it, honey. I'm driving right now. I can't see it anymore, too. There was a silence for a few seconds, and Toria thought you might have gotten off easy this time. It won't hurt me, Tilly followed up in the kind of statement that kids use when they want reassurance. Yeah, yeah, we're safe in here, Toria's mouth answered,

as her mind focused on keeping that true during a tricky merge onto the turn. pike. It won't follow us, Tilly said in that same half-asking tone. Well, they were tucked snugly into traffic now, and Toria's mind had enough spare bandwidth to get curious. What was it, hon? What won't follow us? There was another pause as Tilly searched for a description. Toria glanced in a rearview mirror and saw her daughter staring out the window. The deer? Tilly finally said. Now, as a parent, that's a tough one, because, of course, there were going to be more deer in Tilly's future.

They aren't rare in suburban Maryland. A little family of them made a hobby of wrecking Toria's garden plans. Well, there are lots of deer around Tilly, but no, I'm sure that deer won't follow us. Was there something scary about it? I don't know. Yes? Tilly admitted. Well, what was scary?

I don't know. Silence returned, and Toria wondered whether she should stop by the store now or just get home first and then go back out later. It's eyes. Tilly spoke back up. Toria had to think a moment to get back into the conversation. Oh, yeah. Yeah, dear, do have great big eyes, huh?

No. These were different, Tilly said, still staring out the window. But we're safe. in here she decided finally yeah we're safe in here Toria responded driving through the rain she'd just take them home now the store could wait until later it was still raining maybe even harder later that night when Toria loaded Tilly in the back seat pulled out of the garage headed for the store Ech going later had made so much sense when she'd made the decision but now that

later it arrived Tori She wished she'd gone before. These kind of nights were the worst for driving, the rain and the glare, and the streetlights disappeared when she was out of her development until she reached the commercial area near the store. Her wipers always seem to streak the windshield either too fast or too slow to cope with the rain. The high beams of oncoming cars blinded her, but these were few and far between, luckily, on the road she was taking.

She'd be glad to turn into the brightness of the store as parking, lot and even more glad when they got back home. That's what Toria was thinking. Actually, of course, she should have been thinking if, as in if they got back home, not when. She was about to find out why. They were almost to the streetlights that sprang up near the store. Just a turn and a straightaway and two more quick turns and they'd be there. Toria could see the rest of the route in her mind and she was driving automatically while thinking about dinner and work and that thing coming up at Tilly's school. Tilly was quiet in the back seat. They were just coming around that turn, the darkest one on the route. When right in the middle of it, the headlights flashed onto

something big standing in the road. Toria hit the brakes without thinking, but she didn't swerve out of control. And that thing in the road, the huge thing, moved quickly. And it was almost out of the way when Toria's front wheel hit the gravel verge, and she couldn't tell if that slamming thump was just from a pothole, or she clipped the thing, the poor creature, the deer. That's what it had been. That's what it must have been. Next thing Toria knew, she was stopped on the side of the road,

headlights shining vacantly on tree trunks and brushed, falling rain, heart racing, hands tight on the wheel, vision and memory just catching up. Mommy? Tilly began from the back. It's all right, it's all right, Tilly. It's okay. We're okay.

Mommy? Mommy, let's go. It didn't strike Toria until afterwards that this was an unusual thing for Tilly to say in that moment. Normally her concern would have been with the animal, or if she hadn't seen what happened, her curiosity would have led to immediate questions, not a desire to get away.

Toria had never hit a deer before. It wasn't even sure she'd hit one now. She didn't know what the procedure was supposed to be, but instinct per her hand on the door latch, with a desire to check for the wounded animal in her heart. Don't go! Tilly wailed from the back seat. It's all right, Tilly.

I just want to check back there and make sure that we... It was it! Tilly shouted. Toria opened her door, but... looked in the back seat at her little daughter before she slid out. It was what? It was it! The thing from before.

By the school. Toria sighed out some of the shakes she was feeling. That's right, honey, it was a deer, like you saw before. No! It's not a deer! Don't go, Mommy! I'll be right back, Toria said firmly. Over the top of Tilly's continued, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Toria got out and shut the door and walked her out in the front of the car to look for damage. Oh, shh. Yeah? She got in a piece of it, she'd clipped something. When headlight was out and the front panel was dented in, some pieces shattered out of it. Well, what now?

Toria stood up and squinted back into the night. back down the road toward where she must have been when she collided with the thing. She couldn't see anything in the dark. She pulled her phone out of her pocket, tried the flashlight, but night and the rain gobbled up the light. So she sighed and started walking back there. Tilly was in a real state inside the car, strapped in her seat. Her cries muffled by the closed doors, but starting to steam the... windows and back. Toria pressed a reassuring hand to the wet glass as she walked by, her

eyes still peering fixedly into the darkness behind the car. How far back it been? The rear lights of the still-running car lent a faint red glow to everything that was outside the cold little beam of her flashlight. The drops of rain around her flashed blood red as they fell. It was the crunch beneath her feet that told her when she'd finally reached the spot. where the strike had occurred. She shone her light down, saw the little bits of shattered plastic that matched the color of her car.

Then she shined the light into the ditch and up the bank beside it, running across the blank, gray trunks of the few trees that her light could reach, hoping for... For what? Hoping for nothing, hoping she didn't see anything,

didn't see something maimed and wet, pitiful, dragging itself away into the woods. Nothing there. She swung her light across the road, though it barely reached the verge on the other side, and for an instant she thought she saw something. A reflection, the eyes of some large animal, flashing red for an instant.

But they were gone so quickly that she couldn't be sure. No way she was going over there to find out. What exactly was she doing out here anyway? I mean, what good would she be able to do if she found some poor wounded... Every parent can hear when their child's cry changes. Tilly's muffled protests had gone on this whole time, but now suddenly increased so much and pitch and urgency to Tory a whirl around and saw there, back at the car, right at Tilly's window, the outline of someone...

Oh, no, of some... thing? Like a tangle of branches, maybe a fallen tree limb, maybe? No. Toria's light shook as she sprinted back toward the car, and as it flashed away and then back, Toreas saw that it was deer standing there just outside Tilly's window. An enormous deer with a huge, spreading, tangled rack on either side of a face with big eyes that glow red. Redder than it seemed there reflection of her weak little light should create. Hey! Hey! Toria shouted, running even faster. What she'd do when she reached the car, face to face with hundreds of pounds of wild,

wounded animals she didn't know, and her mother's instinct didn't care. One sudden twist of those antlers would shatter little Tilly's window. But Toria was almost there. Almost there. It was just one stride before Toria would reach the car. and the creature. Her light beam bounced away and then it swept back across the place where the giant deer was standing, and it wasn't there anymore. It hadn't turned, it hadn't fled. She didn't see its tail retreating in the darkness. There was no clattering slip of hooves on the wet pavement of the road. It was just gone, vanished.

I mean, obviously it must have run away suddenly. Tory's mind. corrected what her senses told her. I mean, deer so fast, it must have turned and flashed away, just like that. She swept the darkness with her light, but the thing was gone.

Nothing but falling rain to see. She opened Tilly's door to check on her, comfort her. But when she did, through her gears, Tilly was repeating a very sensible suggestion. Let's go. Let's go. Let's leave.

Let's leave. Please, let's go. Let's go. So without another word, Toria jumped in the driver's seat, slammed the door and put it in drive. By instinct, she glanced in the rearview mirror as her foot moved from the brake to the gas pedal. She was glad that Tilly couldn't see what was standing there, right at the back of the car. Bathe in hellish brake light, staring like it was getting ready to leap up and thrust hooves through the back window into the car. are. Hooves, or, yes, yes, hooves, front hooves. As she mashed on the gas and sped away from there, Toria shook her head a little, and she assured herself that deer had hooves, that never,

ever, ever been a deer that stood on two hind legs with long-fingered hands dangling down in front. no matter what she imagined that she'd just seen. Tilly wanted to go home. Toria did too, frankly, but the only convenient road for getting home was the one that would take them back past that place. So instead, Toria sped on toward the store and the lights, and she parked as close as she could, and then she sat in the car and spent a long time talking to Tilly about what had just happened, and trying to convince her that it was scary, yes, but that deer was just a regular old deer and they'd hit it a little with their car and hurt animals don't always act like they normally would.

That's why they'd come back to her window. No, no, honey, deer don't have hands to open doors. No matter what you thought you saw. We were both just scared, okay, and maybe the deer was just trying to say hi. Maybe it was just being friendly. Well, that last bit was going too far. Tilly wouldn't buy that at all. Toria doubted that Tilly was buying any of it.

Toria couldn't blame her. But after all, it must be something like the truth. It must be. Deer didn't act with malice. They ran, and they didn't disappear and reappear at will. And they did not have hands. They did not have hands or eyes that, glowed red of their own accord.

But the main thing, and the thing that was true, beyond a doubt, was that they were here now in the bright lights of a fairly busy parking lot, and they were together, and they were safe. They were safe. Tilly did accept that, eventually, and once they'd both calmed down, they got out of the car and went in and got their groceries. But Torea's calmness only lasted until they got.

to the checkout line, because that's when she saw it again. The creature, the deer thing. No, no, no, not the animal there in the store. That would have, well, in a way, that would have been easier, actually, because then Tori would have been sure that she was losing it, and all the other things that didn't make sense could have been explained away. But no, there it was. Spreading antlers, red eyes.

dangling front hands and all, staring at her from the cover of one of those tabloid magazines, those outrageous scandal sheets that usually had phony pictures of aliens or Bigfoot on the cover. Not dear terror! This cover shouted, and luckily Tilly was distracted with a toy that Toria had agreed to buy her, and she hadn't seen it yet. Quick as a mom, Toria grabbed a copy of the tabloid and folded back the front page, and then cover the next one on the rack with a different magazine. And as they waited in line and then walked slowly back to the car,

Toria read. She read all about the thing that people call the not deer, or the night pale deer, or half a dozen other names. She read about a recent spade of sightings and even attacks, centered right here in her own suburban Maryland. She read a quick history of the creature, encounters up and down the East Coast at different times and places stretching back to at least the 1950s. And then there were the usual wild speculations about the creature's origins. Government experiments, industrial pollution, alien parasites, etc.

The only thing the article didn't cover was what Toria had hoped that it would. Any sort of solution or protection or possible resolution. In fact, it did the opposite, offering testimony from several witnesses who claimed that their sightings had been repeated and seemed threatening. That they'd felt haunted or stalked by this not dear. That's ridiculous. By the time she finished the article, she was sitting in her car, where the groceries loaded in the trunk and Tilly strapped in her seat and playing with her new toy.

What was she doing? sitting in a grocery store parking lot, feeling frightened by a cheap tabloid. Mommy, can we go home now? Tilly asked. Yes, it was time to go home. No more sitting here, no more scaring herself with silly nightmares. But Toria still found an excuse to drive a different way home, even though it took a full 15 minutes long. longer. Now one of the nice things about the suburbs, especially the way out suburbs like

Toria and Tilly lived in, is the size of the lots. You get a nice big lot with your house. Lawn, plantings, bushes, trees. Maybe your yard even ends in a little green belt, a forest like Torias did. Oh, a nice green belt. A pretty stretch of woods right there at the end of your lawn. Pretty and pretty dark at night too. After the rain had stopped, with the wind gusting, making strange sounds through the waving branches and the rattling rustle of falls last dead leaves.

When she pulled in that night, Toria wished that the detached garage wasn't quite so detached. She wished the walk between the garage and the house were a bit better lit. Tillie saw it too And at first she didn't even want to get out of the car at all And then she didn't want to make the walk across from the garage to the house So Toria had to carry her

For a heavy task these days Tilly had grown so much in the last few months But they got to the back door without incident Except for a nervy moment or two The darkest part of the way But the black wind-whispering woods at the end of the yard felt closer than the house did. But they got inside.

And then, of course, Tilly didn't want Toria to leave her alone there to go back out and bring in the groceries. And Toria... Toria almost let herself be talked into it. Standing there, looking out the lattice of little window panes that made up the top of the back door, looking out at that black, blustering night. Oh, but come on. This was ridiculous. Victoria wasn't going to let herself be intimidated by some myth story, some tabloid trash,

right here in her own home. You'll be fine, Tilly, I'll be right back, she said. But she closed the door firmly behind her, which she normally would have left cracked so she could push it open with her hands full of groceries. Then she stood for a moment in the blustery night, listening and squinting out at the backyard, trying to see past where the feeble porch light. petered out. Well, no time for that now. There's no time to waste. Anyway, there's nothing back there. Toria crossed along the path to the garage a little quicker than she normally would have,

but she didn't let herself jog, just in case Tilly was watching from the back door or the side window. She gathered up the groceries from the trunk. Almost too many for one trip, but she was determined to do it that way. It was silly. Toria knew that, but She didn't want to make this walk again tonight. She got all the groceries gathered up. She pressed the button and the big garage door started closing. Then all it was left was that space, that crossing, that little patch of darkness between her and the light

that was hanging above the back door. Toria started out, striding toward the light, the heavy bags wrestling, knocking against her. her legs. There was nothing there. Nothing there. There was nothing back there in the woods. That rustle. That rustle was just the wind. It was just the wind, after all. That cry was just some, it was just some night animal, okay? There was nothing back there. There was nothing moving. Now she was at the point. The darkest point, when the woods seemed close and the house still seemed very far away.

She could see Tilly's head silhouetted in the side window, watching her. She could count the number of steps remaining until she hit the back door. She was almost there. She was almost into the light. For an animal of their size, deer are incredibly quiet when they move, even through thick woods. Even through an overgrown green belt, for example. Quiet as they are, though, they aren't silent. especially when at a full sprint, especially when breaking from heavy cover.

Like the cover of an overgrown greenbelt, for example. There's a crackle of underbrush, snapping of the smaller limbs, and even across a wide open space, like a soft suburban lawn, for example. At a dead run, you can hear a big deer's hooves hitting the turf with a solid, rapid, hollow, drumming sound. Victoria broke into a run so quickly she forgot to do that. dropped the groceries. She slammed into the back door, trying to burst through, forgetting she closed it, hearing the pounding those hooves on the lawn, almost on top of her now. She grabbed the knobs, threw the door over. She tried to press into the kitchen, but she hung up in the doorway,

crammed and hemmed by the bags of bread and apples and milk and mustard and dangled from her arms. And behind her came a sound like hooves on concrete, the patio that just one long, bound away. Toria twisted and she forced her way through the grocery jam and she fell, flew through the doorway, landing on the kitchen floor with the groceries scattered all around her. She rolled to face the blackness beyond the back door. She had to get up and close it. She had to get up and close it. She had to get up and close it.

She had to get up and close it. But before she could, before Toria could even get up off the food-covered kitchen floor, there was a movement in the doorway. It began to... The doorway began to narrow, blocked out by the... By the...

It was... It was... It was closing. The door was closing. It slammed, shut. And then Tilly was there. Twisting the deadbolt, and whirling to face her mother

with her back pressed against the knob, and the door closed and look of fear and triumph on her face. It was out. there wasn't it till he asked you it was it was Tori began but it was one of those moments because was it out there had it been Tori hadn't seen anything and the sound of hooves if they'd even been real well it was just the sound of hooves her own own fear might have cooked them up. Or if it hadn't, probably it had just been a normal everyday deer,

startled out of the woods by the storm. So Toria made her choice, the good parental choice of what to tell Tilly. It was just a normal everyday... Tilly screamed as a huge antler slammed through the careful glass and wooden frames at the top of the back door just beside her. She ran toward her mother. Tripping, slipping on the scattered grocers, falling into Toria, who held tight onto her, as the thing made a mauling mess at the shattering door and thrust its whole head inside, tearing its hairy hide in places on the broken glass so the little drops of blood trickled down the inside of the door, and fell spattering on the floor. Toria was up, by this point, up, hauling Tilly to her feet, up, running to the basement door,

half dragging tilly dashing, jumping, pulling through the narrow doorway, stumbling down the first few steps to turn and pull the door closed behind them, and then... Then... Oh, no, no. This was a bad place to hide. This was a... There was no way out. Down the stairs was an unfinished old basement with high little slit windows, too narrow for them to wriggle through.

And there was no lock on this door back into the kitchen. This thick door that Toria stood at now, hands still tight on the knob, listening, listening. From out there in the kitchen came the tinkle of small pieces of broken glass, and the faint, bending crackle of the thin wooden lattice that the thing had smashed its head through. But it couldn't get any further than that, could it? It couldn't fit through that smashed upper panel. It couldn't get inside. But then there was that creaking moan.

That creaking moan that Toria and Tilly both knew so well. Toria had always intended to grease the hinges at the back door hung on. It creaked just so whenever it opened. Toria forgot how to breathe as she listened to the sound of slow, heavy hoofsteps, crunch, across the broken glass and groceries on the kitchen tile floor. Toria forgot how to breathe, but she could. could hear, hear heavy breaths out there, inhuman breaths. The deep, heavy blowing of an animal, pulling in hugely and tasting the air, pushing it out with a rough, deep sound again and again

as it slowly crossed the kitchen coming their way. There was no lock on this door, but the door was thick and it was heavy, and it opened outward. I mean, the thing couldn't batter its way through this door, no matter how big it was, and no deer alive could open, could turn a doorknob unless, and that image forced its way back into her mind, then that still picture from Toria's memory, a picture from the rearview mirror of her car. The rearview mirror filled with a figure standing, bathed an evil red brake light, with huge eyes glowing even redder, an enormous figure with spreading, twisted amplers,

rearing up on the two hooved legs with... Yes, huge, rough, long, knobby-fingered hands dangling down in front. And if it didn't have hands, how had it got the back door open? That grunting, deep breath was just... on the other side of the basement door now. Toria could feel the thing out there, feel it through the inches of the wooden door. She'd know now, any instant now.

She'd know if this nightmare was real. And something brushed against the other side of the door now. Toria felt it like an electric shock through her hand that gripped the inside knob so tight it felt like she was compressing the steel of it. Something out there, rushed against the knob, again, again, roughly, clumsily, finding it, clasping it, testing it, rattling it now, rattling it against all of Toria's strength. And then, then, try as Toria might, the knob clutched in her hand, began slowly, inexorably. to turn.

When the door sprang, Opetoria was nearly pulled with it out into the kitchen, and only just, just had time and sense to catch one hand against the door jam to keep herself from falling out into a...

into... ...heavy, matted, wet, tick-ridden brown fur on a body that towered above her and ended in a thick neck and a massive deer's head with huge black eyes that, as she stood there,

frozen and terror, Those eyes began to pulse red and redder with every wild beat of the thing's savage heart. She could smell it, too. Smell the strange, heavy stench of wet, untended fur and hide and mud and filth and hot breath and hot blood. Torio felt like she stood there for a century, staring into those reddening eyes. though could only have been a tiny fraction of a second. She heard Tilly cry out softly from the bottom of the stairs and she felt her own arm on the door jam, tense,

and began to push herself backward. Backward. Never mind the fall downstairs, anything, anything, to get away from this horror. In slow motion, she felt the muscles of her arm, tightening, heaving it. And just as she began to move backward, Something else did, too. And Toria looked down as she turned and fell,

looked away from that horrible antlered animal head, and saw a long-fingered thing, half-hand and half-massive, clawed paw, hairy, muddy, knobbly jointed. Reaching swiftly out to grab her. Time sped up again, and Toria had pushed away and turned and was trying so hard to hurled herself down the stairs, but the thing had caught her, just caught her by the very back of the coat that she still wore, and now it was pulling her towards itself.

Toria heard and felt its breaths as it pulled, snorting hot, ranted on the back of her neck. At that very moment she found the top step with both of her dangling feet, and Toria pushed off as hard as she could, and she tore away. She tumbled down and down to the very bottom of the stairs. She landed awkwardly, and she hit her head, but she didn't lose consciousness. She felt Tilly wrap her little arms around her and deck, but Toria was staring up the stairs, staring up there at the thing that filled the doorway. And she was trying to think, trying to think of something else, trying to think of some other way out,

some other place to hide, any, any other way to protect them. But failing, failing, empty, and knowing. Finally, that this, this was how it ended. Terrible, horrible, unsolved, unexplainable. A mystery to splash on a tabloid cover. The thing up there at the top of the stairs, the thing stretched a hoof awkwardly down. On it the first stair coming toward them.

It stepped the other hoof down and then shook its head. And its antlers rattled and ripped against the side of the narrow basement door frame. It backed awkwardly up, turned its head, and tried again. One more time, two more times, wood splintering from the jam, plaster flying and snowy explosions from the wall. But the thing's antlers were too wide to make it. One last time it thrust its head violently into a stuck stillness, and that opened its muzzle.

and let out a horrible, bloody foam-fleck bugle of a cry. An eerie, ancient, buckskin blood-running scream that sent Toria and Tilly, sliding back further across the basement floor. And then it ripped its huge antlered head free, turned, and was gone. When the police arrived, they took Tori's statement. They saw the damage to the back door in the top of the basement stairway, and they believed what Toria told them. Well, they believed most of it.

The animal control people assured them that a deer, panicked by something in the woods, disoriented, could certainly have crashed into the back door and driven it open, and then clattered toward the basement stairway in a herd animal's instinct to follow the flight of Toria and Tilly, which, of course, would have felt like pursuit to them. It was a good thing that the narrow doorway had stopped, It's no telling what damage and even injury might have resulted if it had ended up trapped in the basement with them.

But all's well, it ends well. There was one part of Toria's testimony that the authorities chalked up to pure shock, though. One part that they couldn't believe, even when Tilly told them the same thing. Well, of course, she'd say the same thing as her mother. It was all that about the deal. here having long-fingered hair-covered hands. I mean, that was impossible, obviously. As for Toria and Tilly?

Well, it just so happened that Toria got a big promotion the very next week, and the change in her roles and responsibilities required to move back into the city. Well, there are parts of that quiet suburban life that they both still miss. The wide lawns, the friendly people, the smell of cut grass and barbecues every summer weekend. But there are other parts that they won't ever miss. The nights out there could seem very long, very lonely, quiet, dark, empty. But Tori and Tilly know for a fact that the empty darkness of those suburban nights

isn't ever as empty as it seems. Well, it's time to put this fire out now and let these Maryland stars have the last say. Drive safe going home tonight and keep an eye out for deer along the road, especially for deer that don't look quite right. Yeah, make sure to avoid those ones. And just in case you're afraid that you're not,

nights will start to feel empty. Now that our little sessions around the campfire have come to an end for another year, don't worry. It's a perfect time to go back through the catalog and listen again to some of your old favorites. When's the last time you heard that episode about the traveler, or the one about the Charman? Remember the Stowaway? Or the good old creature at the Owl Creek Bridge? Or how about the Ozark Howler from way back in season one? Start in on some of those, and before you know it, we'll be back around the campfire again. Special thanks to the real-life Tilly from Maryland, whose experiences of the night pale deer inspired this story.

And thanks to her mom, Toria. And thanks to you for listening. Thank you all for coming back to the campfire all these years, all these seasons, and thanks for leading others to it. You are the light and the darkness. To go our separate ways for now, but keep the home fires burning. And when the leaves begin to fall again next year,

and the air turns crisp in the morning, just listen for us. With your support and your listens, I know we'll be back with even more stories for you, more tales, more legends of the mysterious creatures that lurk out there in the night in your favorite local wilderness, or sometimes, as we heard tonight,

sometimes in your own backyard. Camp Monsters remains part of the R.E.I. Podcast Network. Of course, the stories we tell here on Camp Monsters are just stories. Some of them are based on things that first graders have seen in suburban Maryland, but, after all, it's up to you to decide whether that deer you saw really did have hands? Steering our podcast safely along the quiet suburban backroads of the internet is our senior producer, Jenny Barber. Shh! Our executive producers, Paulo Motila and Joe Crosby, have fallen asleep back there in their car seats.

All worn out from another camp monster of season, those cute little tikes. Suddenly, an enormous antlered head looms in the headlights. But that's just our genius. Sound designer, stuntman, sushi chef, and all-around go-getter, Nick Patry, carrying all his possessions, including his grandpa's prized elk trophies to his new home in the Midwest. Happy trails, Nick. Nick thinks that moving halfway across the country is the only graceful way to avoid this guy that keeps showing up at parties and bugging Nick to do the sound for his scary stories podcast.

That's a nice try, Nick. But yours truly, Weston Davis, writer and host. to the Camp Monsters podcast, we'll find you anyway. And he'll see you next year, right back here, around the campfire.