Camp Monsters - Sasquatch - Part Four

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

Our third full season of Camp Monsters will start in September, thanks to our sponsors at YETI. In the meantime, we figured we'd give you a short bonus series to tide you over. And while you think you might know everything there is to know about Sasquatch, this is a personal account. A story that'll have you crawling under the covers questioning whether or not you really believe in monsters. Follow along every month and chime in with what you would do in the narrator's shoes. Drop your thoughts in the comments section wherever you listen to podcasts or email your suggestion to [e-mail]. Season sponsor: YETIArtwork by: Tyler Grobowsky, @g_r_o_b_o

This is an REI Co-op Studios production. You'll be safe, if only you can make it to the campfire. There it is, up ahead, through the trees. We're waiting for you, but... Will you make it? This is the Camp Monsters Podcast. Welcome to the fourth and final chapter of our encounter with Sasquatch. But don't worry, when we finish with this, we're going to start our full season, which begins in September with episodes every week until the end of October, so be sure to tune in. In anticipation of our new season, we've spent the last few months telling you this story about Sasquatch, Bigfoot, the wild man of the woods.

For those of you just joining us, those who don't want to go back and listen to the first three frightening episodes of this tale, there's just one important introduction we need to make. Meet Roger. He's a mild-mannered guy in the later stages of middle age who I made a nodding acquaintance with some years ago in a used bookshop in San Francisco. There wasn't much remarkable about Roger except the odd reaction he had when I mentioned the word Sasquatch. I noticed that reaction and he ended up telling me about an encounter he'd had with the creature back in the 70s when he'd been living in the foothills of Northern California. And then he hesitantly revealed that he still sometimes felt

the presence of Sasquatch close by, even here in the middle of the city. Roger told me about the possibility that Sasquatch was a real creature that only certain people could see. He was afraid that the ability to see it was contagious,

and that he caught that vision up in the hills all those years ago. Well, the whole thing was ridiculous, obviously. So when he asked me to go with him out into the San Francisco night to the garden outside his apartment to look at some sign he thought he'd found of the creature, I agreed.

He hoped that I wouldn't be able to see it. Because if I couldn't see anything, then he'd know that his fears weren't real. He'd know that it was all in his mind. There was just one problem with that plan. Roger's apartment lay at the end of a path which wound through a dark garden with tall buildings on either side.

Partway down that path, Roger stopped and showed me a patch of dirt where he thought he'd seen a huge footprint. And I saw it too. At least, I think I saw it. Before I could take a close look, there was a sound in the bushes just beside us. A sound like something large tearing through the branches toward us. Roger bolted, knocking the flashlight from my hand and urging me fiercely to run. So I ran. But which way? Roger was running further into the leafy darkness of the garden, which every instinct in my body cried out against.

Light and safety beckoned back in the street, but that seemed so far away. Last month I asked you, what would you have done? Which way would you have run? According to the responses we received in reviews and emails, the majority of you would have... followed Roger down the garden path. Whew! You're much braver than I felt in that moment. But it's funny.

In a real crisis, courage or cowardice doesn't seem to play much part. Before you have time to think or feel anything, you find yourself doing something, seemingly at random, sometimes against your better judgment. And that night, I found myself doing what I most feared. Running after Roger, deeper into the garden. It was blind running down a winding path in absolute darkness, arms outstretched, crashing into branches,

clawing at my face, and rebounding onto the old, uneven bricks that shifted underfoot. Tripping and falling at a sprint, and rolling up again in the same motion, torn, bleeding, unheeding. The night echoed back the chaotic sounds of the chase, snapping undergrowth, pounding footsteps, gasping breaths. I couldn't tell which sounds came from me and which came from

Roger and which came from somewhere behind. And then I heard Roger cry out once, a short, inarticulate, strangled sound. And I couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. The bushes and the buildings bounced it all around, but I had the feeling A desperate feeling that something had happened to him And there was nothing I could do to help I I couldn't see him. I couldn't see anything I didn't know where I was going. I wasn't going fast enough And when the short stillness after the cry Was broken by a rapid crashing in the bushes coming in my direction,

I knew that whatever had happened to Roger was about to happen to me. I kept running through rising panic. The sounds in the bushes were right behind me now. At any instant I knew I'd feel something. Something would happen. And just as I was about to turn to face whatever was there, I saw a light

up ahead through the branches. It was just a single low watt bulb hanging over a red door like the one we'd passed on our way in through the branches. It was just a single low-watt bulb hanging over a red door, like the one we'd passed on our way in through the garden. In that terrifying darkness, the little bulb seemed as bright as the rising

sun. I fought my way toward it, regardless of the path, ripping through thick branches and stumbling over roots, tearing my feet away from grasping creepers and slamming my shins on low-lying limbs. And then something caught. Something seemed to grab my coat from behind, not at the collar or the sleeves or any edge that would catch on a branch,

but in the middle of my back. Something like strong, implacable fingers, like a stony fist, suddenly balling up the fabric in the middle of my back and freezing me, stopping me mid-stride, twisting the coat tight around my shoulders and beginning to pull me backward. I fought, and the harder I fought, the tighter the fabric pulled around me, pinning my arms back in sleeves that squeezed so taut I could feel the pulse pounding in my shoulders. But with one last desperate twist that felt like it dislocated all the joints in my arms, I tore off the coat and lunged into the night. My momentum carried me, stumbling across a tiny patio of bare bricks, and I slammed into the little red door with all my weight. It was cool, smooth, and very solid. When I hit the door, it didn't budge, it didn't

rattle, but it rattled me. The impact heaved the wind out of my lungs, and I opened my mouth wide to try to gasp in air, but all I managed was a pitiful, painful little rasp as my bruised ribs refused to function. My hands pawed weakly at the thick, wooden door, trying to pound on it, trying to find a latch, but all my strength had left with my breath. And then I heard the sound of something breaking the last fringe of the bushes. And I heard a single pounding footstep on the bricks just behind me.

Time slowed down between that footstep and what happened next. Time stretched painfully out and I was trapped in it. Unable to do more than round my shoulders and pull my head down, clench my teeth and wait for whatever was to come. Then it came. I did not feel arms or hands or claws grabbing or wrapping around me. Instead, a sudden and tremendous pressure slammed into me, crushing me into the door and holding me there. Then in my left ear, I heard a strangled whisper that I could just recognize as Roger's.

The door, it said. And in my right ear, I began to hear a long, slow, deep sound, like a dog's growl, slowed down and played with such percussive force that I felt the vibration in my body almost louder than I heard it. I pulled at the air with my poor, crushed lungs, trying to get enough to reply to Roger or to scream or both. I failed, but on the little air I did take in was a scent so heavy I could taste it. A strong, sweet, rotten smell, like fur and hot dust. Sweat and old meat. It was a smell that awakened something primal. Fears large

and dark. Memories from our ancestors of things. Things that could hunt you. Then came another blow. Another impact. Another violent pressure and then came another blow another impact another violent pressure against me this one exponentially greater than the last it bent my bones to the breaking point

it pressed me so hard my heart barely had room to pound I heard Roger cry out and then the door frame splintered in a scream of shattering wood and as we tumbled through I twisted

trying to catch a glimpse of what was behind us and then it was daytime and I was sitting on the floor in a room I'd never seen before filled with people I didn't know asking me questions I couldn't answer

they shined bright lights into my eyes and manipulated my head with cold rubbery hands I wanted to pull away but I was too tired, and then they wouldn't let me lay back down. So I just sat on the floor, and I stared at a word that was floating vertically in the air somewhere in front of me, a word that I knew a word that I knew had something to do with what had happened to me

and slowly as the nasty gash in the side of my head where I'd struck it on a table began to throb and the pain began to kick my mind back to the nauseated rim of consciousness I realized I was staring at the spine of a book. A book on a tall bookshelf, surrounded by other books, old and new, all on the same topic. You already know the word I was staring at.

Sasquatch, it said. Well, that's my story. I'd been found that morning, alone, unconscious, sprawled in the shattered doorway of Roger's apartment. His little place was filled with books and articles about Sasquatch I was taken from there to the hospital and Later the police spoke with me several times Especially after it became clear that Roger had disappeared I told them the same story I told you Except Except I admit I left out the part about Sasquatch.

It seemed kind of silly in the light of day. I told the police we'd gone to Roger's apartment to retrieve a book that he wanted to show me, and that someone had jumped us from the bushes. I could see the detectives weren't satisfied with that explanation,

and they probably would have suspected me of something sinister if it hadn't been for the footprints. The third set of footprints that they'd found in the garden. Bare feet, one officer told me, and then later another said, no, no, not bare feet. They were working on the assumption it was some kind of novelty costume shoe, like might come with a cheap gorilla suit. And had I noticed anything unusual about the attacker?

Well, I told them the truth. I hadn't really seen the attacker at all. And they never showed me any casts or photographs of the prints they were talking about. But I didn't need to see them because... Because ever since then, every once in a while, even in the city where I live, far from San Francisco, I'll glance behind me on a lonely night and swear I see a tall shadow step back into an alley. Or I'll walk down a street I think is familiar and suddenly find myself passing a tall wooden door in a high brick wall between two buildings.

And as I pass the door, I swear it begins to creak open just behind me. And sometimes, on a crisp fall morning, I'll come out of my house and find, in the dusty garden below my window, shapes, marks, indistinct signs that, at first glance at least, look like footprints. Just like the ones the San Francisco police described, just like the one that Roger showed me in the garden. But then when I look again, I... I can't be sure. And now that I've told you this story,

I hope... I hope I haven't made a mistake. I hope that Roger's theory was wrong. I hope such sightings aren't... aren't contagious. But just be careful the next time you're out alone in the woods or a park

or walking down your own block at night. Listen. Watch. And if you start to think you see or hear anything, tell yourself, over and over again, the same thing I try and fail to believe. Tell yourself, it isn't real. It isn't real. It can't be real. full-length episodes every week is about to begin in September, and we're very excited to share it with you. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't already, leave a review, and spread the word.

It's your downloads and listens that keep Camp Monsters going. Well, that and our sponsors at Yeti. Whenever I come home from a three-day camping trip and I see all the ice that's still frozen in my Yeti cooler, my reaction is exactly the same as a Sasquatch sighting. It can't be real, I tell myself. It can't be real. But it is real. Go to your local RAI or to Yeti.com and check it out. Our engineer Nick Patry provided the amazing audio ambiance for this Sasquatch series. That crashing we heard in the bushes may just have

been our executive producers, Paolo Motala and Joe Crosby, and the grunts and unearthly howls were probably our producer, Chelsea Davis. New to the team this season is our podcast production intern, Kirsa Berg, who totally believes me when I say I saw Sasquatch. This series of episodes was written and performed by yours truly, Weston Davis. We can't wait to join you around the campfire every week this September and October. We have a great season in store for you. See you then.