Camp Monsters - The Chicago Wolfman

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

Back in 2014 in the midnight alleys in Chicago, people began to encounter something larger than the raccoons and coyote that are sometimes seen around the area. Something like a dog—or a wolf—but larger. Something that should walk on four legs but was seen walking...sprinting... on two. After an initial flurry of sightings the reports died down, but there are recent indications that whatever it is may be back.Thanks to this season’s sponsor, YETI for supporting the podcast.Artwork by Tyler Grobowsky (@g_r_o_b_o)  

This is an REI Co-op Studios production. No matter how dark the night, no matter how fast you run, no matter what is chasing you, 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. And tonight we're camping in an area that some people call Forgotonia.

That's the western part of Illinois. The part that bumps out in between Iowa and Missouri. The part you've never been to before. The part you've probably never even thought of. That's why they call it Forgotonia. We're out here because... well, mostly because we're approaching the end of camping season. The next week we're heading to a place that still has a burn ban on, so I thought we'd better enjoy one last night gathered around a campfire.

True, there have recently been sightings out here of a creature, like the one we're about to talk about. Every few years a rash of these sightings crop up somewhere in this area of the country. Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana. And not just in rural areas. Sometimes people see creatures like this in the most unlikely places. Like the sighting that took place back in 2014 in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of northwest Chicago. This story begins on a Friday night. Well, it was early Saturday morning

by the time Camilla was walking home from the restaurant where she'd been hanging out with her work buddies. Walking home and wondering what to do. You see, that afternoon, for the first time in the five years that she'd been running heavy equipment and construction projects all over Chicagoland, for the first time, Camilla had found something interesting. It was on a job which happened to be just blocks from her apartment. Clearing debris and grading paths around a pond in the unused northwest corner of the old Rose Hill Cemetery to turn it into what would become the West Ridge Nature Park. Jumping off her dozer at quitting time, Camilla had noticed an unusual shape outlined in the ground she'd just scraped. Kicking at what she thought was a clod

of dirt, she knocked the lid off an old tin and revealed a small mass of silver coins, all minted in the 1850s, and nothing bigger than a dollar. But still, Camilla knew old coins like this were worth something, and the place she'd found them had been a wild wasteland for a hundred years or more. Finders keepers, Camilla figured. Most of her co-workers had agreed with her that night at the restaurant across Western Avenue when she'd showed them a few of the coins and told them where she'd found them. Most of them were jealous they hadn't been sharp-eyed enough to spot the little box.

But when old Andre came back from the bathroom and was told the story of Camilla's find, he looked concerned, a little frightened almost, and he asked to see the tin. He dumped its contents out right there on the table, dirt and all, spread the coins out with his fingers, and then picked up a little silver cross that Camilla hadn't noticed was in there. He examined it for just a moment, then swept everything carefully back into the tin and stood up.

We have to put it back, he said, and moved toward the door like he was going to cross the street and head out into the dark construction zone right that minute. Everybody hollered. Somebody grabbed old Andre by the shoulders and steered him back. And after a bit of convincing, he told them a story that had been passed down in his family for generations. It seems that one of Andre's distant ancestors was named Peter Kolevic. And back in 1862, Peter was the foreman of the small army that was employed to, well, they were employed to establish and maintain the new Rose Hill Cemetery, but most of the time it felt to Peter likeirie sod into a beautiful park of eternal rest. But at the same time, the city of Chicago had decided to begin the process of exhuming

thousands of people from the old city cemetery on the lakefront to make room for new development, and reinter them in Rose Hill Cemetery. So all day, every day, trains were arriving at the little railroad platform beside the cemetery and unloading rotten pine boxes for Peter's overworked crews to bury. That is, until one day in early winter, when a worker came into Peter's little clapboard office to report that there was one box that they would not bury, that none of the workers would touch. Peter questioned the man, but he got more evasions than answers. So he stumped down to the muddy little railroad station himself, through the small knot of workers who were standing well away from a lone pine box that lay on the other end of the platform. There was nothing remarkable about the box, as far as Peter could see, except that it had an exceptionally large silver cross, blackened with age, on its lid. And below that, the rascal who had done the exhumation had scrawled the word Vukudlak in dark lead.

Now, a Vukudlak was a sort of werewolf that rose from the dead, half man and half wolf, to terrorize the living. Peter's grandmother had told him stories of it when he was a little boy in the old country. But the idea was preposterous, superstition, a fairy tale for little children. Before Peter could turn on the group of workers and tell them exactly how foolish they were being, one of them sidled up to him, keeping his distance from the box on the ground, and pointed Peter's attention to the side of the old coffin. Hair, the man said. Peter looked closer

Then scraped his boot along the side of the planks Sure enough Something like long, dirty grey hair Was growing out of the seams of the box Probably some kind of strange mould or fungus Peter told himself Disgusting, no doubt, but such was the life of a gravedigger. Peter stalked back to the little group of workers, pointed at a few of them, and ordered them to carry the box. When they refused, he offered a sizable bonus to anyone who would.

When no one stepped forward, Peter cursed a lot of them, loudly and flamboyantly, in a mix of English and the language of the old country. They were all lazy, superstitious peasants to refuse to do the simple tasks assigned to them. And if they thought for one moment that he was going to let them get their way in this matter, then he, Peter Kulovec, was there to set them straight. But no amount of yelling could move the crowd, and the box lay forsaken at one end of the station platform for two days and nights before Peter could arrange a party of Confederate prisoners to be sent from Camp Douglas to do the work. These sick, starving Southerners did as they were told in exhausted silence, and as they lowered the box into the ground, Peter noted that one of them had managed to pry off and steal the silver cross that had once adorned the lid.

Ah, well, perhaps they could trade it for food, Peter thought. But it was that very night when Peter first saw the wolf. Walking from his rough little office, back to his house in the line of cabins where he lived beside his workers, Peter glimpsed the creature as he passed the deserted little train station. Of course, at that time, wolves were still fairly common in this rural area northwest of the city of Chicago. The prairies just a little further out still

teemed with them, but it struck Peter that the wolf was standing in the very spot where the cursed coffin had lain before Peter had managed to have it buried. After that one quick glance, Peter ignored the animal. There was nothing to fear in a wolf, Peter knew. It was probably just skulking around the camp like the stray dogs did, looking for kitchen scraps. But when Peter reached his door that night and turned for one last look across the bleak, muddy prairie. There was the wolf again, some paces behind him, watching him with its yellow eyes.

Peter went inside and shut the door. And the next week was like the beginning of a nightmare, when ominous things begin to happen which you know are leading to some terrible crisis but you're powerless to stop it. First came snow and hard frost freezing the wet ground like stone and making the work of digging twice as hard

and four times as slow. Then disease began stalking through the cemetery cabins, thinning Peter's crews and causing more than one grave to be filled by a person who had helped to dig it. The workers blamed the supposed Vukudlak, of course, and Peter had to spend precious time every day refusing their requests to have the coffin dug up, moved further from the cabins, and reburied with elaborate rites that were supposed to trap the Vukudluk in the grave.

Peter scoffed at such fearful superstition, and he told them that if this Vukudluk found it so easy to dig his way out of the frozen ground every night and back in every morning, then he hoped they would catch him, so that Peter could offer the Vukudluk a job. Clearly, it would be the best grave digger of them all. Peter enjoyed his little joke, but he was finding it harder and harder to laugh off the wolf. Every evening he saw it, every evening he ignored it, and every evening it followed him home, coming a few steps closer than the evening before. Peter began to walk more briskly So did the wolf

Peter tried speeding his pace to a jog If anything, the wolf followed him even more closely The workers were on fire with Vukodlik rumors But no one else complained to him of seeing a real wolf And Peter dared not mention it to anyone, for fear of increasing the panic. He must be firm. He must be firm. And he was, until that last night. It was the night of the full moon,

the first full moon since that wretched coffin had been buried. That was the night that Peter ceased to be afraid of the wolf, and began to fear for his own sanity. Because it had been the wolf again that night the same as every night which had set off after Peter as he passed the empty railroad station but a little further on when Peter turned to make sure the animal was keeping its distance

there was no wolf in sight and the thing that Peter saw dashing toward him in the moonlight ran on two legs. Peter turned to run, crying out at the top of his voice, but the thing caught him, leapt on him, and dragged him to the ground. Peter rolled over to face it, struggled to push it off of him, ripped at the hair that covered the beast. And he knew, by the cold, wet, stringy feel of that hair exactly where it had come from, and exactly where he'd seen it last, pouring from between the seams of that accursed coffin.

And Peter got lucky that night. His cries were heard, people came running, and the beast crept off at their approach. But he was in bad shape, and the wise men among the workers knew up the Vukodlok's coffin and dragged it on a sledge to a hole dug near the pond in the far northwest corner of the cemetery's grounds. You see, Vukodloks hate water and must always be buried near it to weaken and trap them. A cross made from the boughs of a silver poplar tree and a little box of silver coins buried near the surface of the grave,

both things chosen because of the creature's fear of silver, completed the seal that would keep the Vukodlak at rest. And once all that was done, Peter Kulovic recovered from his wounds, and the epidemic that had ravaged his workforce subsided. Well, Peter remained the caretaker of Rose Hill Cemetery for another thirty years, and he made sure that the northwest corner, by the pond, was never disturbed by any other burials. And this must be that box of coins, old Andre said as he finished his tale. Even the dates match. I'm not a superstitious man, but I think we should put them back. Well, Andre's opinion sparked a lot of debate.

And it was still raging when Camilla paid her bill and slipped out the side door, heading home. Andre's story was silly, right? She wanted to keep the coins But then again, they didn't really belong to her Maybe the best thing to do would be to put them back Camilla was still going back and forth between these two possibilities When she turned the corner onto her street And she saw a movement

and the orange light at the far end of her block at this time of the morning Camilla often saw raccoons and possums that took advantage of the temporary emptiness that the late hours lent to the busy city she turned to see what was down there. It wasn't a raccoon this time. It was too big to be a possum. It was a dog. A big dog. Long and lean and sharp with a pointed muzzle.

Or was it? You know, for all the world, for all the world, it looked more like a wolf. Just like the ones you'd seen in the zoo. Camilla stopped for a moment in dumbfounded amazement. A wolf? Here, in Chicago? It felt impossible, but there it was. Camilla remembered that a mountain lion had been found down in the Roscoe Village neighborhood just

south of her a few years before, and she'd read about other supposed wolf sightings happening in nearby suburbs. But to think of a wolf making its way down into the city itself, and be standing there at the end of her block? Camilla just stood there and stared. And after a moment, the wolf turned and stared back at her. And then it began to trot down the middle of the street in her direction. Only then did Camilla think of the story Andre had told that night. But she pushed the thought away. It was fun to hear a scary story like that, but it was silly to let it shake you up in real life. Anyway, the block was long and her building was close.

The wolf had a long way to go to reach her. Camilla would beat it to her building just by walking there. Provided the wolf didn't increase its speed. So Camilla started walking, slowly, calmly at first. But the wolf did increase its speed, from a trot to a rocking lope. So Camilla started to walk faster.

Then she broke into a jog. And as she did, the bobbing trot of the wolf smoothed out into a sleek, fast sprint. And Camilla became very afraid. There must be something wrong with the animal. The thought of rabies flashed through her mind. Andre's story flashed through her mind too. Camilla was running flat out now, just as the wolf was doing. And in spite of her fear, she felt sure that she'd reached the tall metal fence that enclosed the open courtyard of her building before the wolf did. Camilla could see that someone had left the self-locking gate open just a little bit. Normally that drove her crazy.

What was the point of having a high fence if people just left the gate open? But she was thankful for it that night. Camilla reached the gate and flung herself through it and then looked back toward the wolf. It was still a good twenty yards away and as she watched, the animal streaked through the darkness that lay between the two nearest streetlights. And somewhere in that darkness, its two front paws left the ground, and what came running into the next pool of light, sprinting toward Camilla, was no longer an animal galloping on all fours, but was a creature running on just its hind legs.

The shock, the horror of that image, this huge, hairy thing no longer bounding but running, sprinting toward her on two legs. The vision froze Camilla's mind for an instant and when she moved to slam the gate shut she was just an instant too late. With one last desperate lunge the thing sprang at her. All teeth and foaming, slick-shining spit, and she felt a hot, rough paw that was... It was more like a clawed hand than a paw. Slash at her arm through the gate. The thing would have slid right through after Camilla if the force of its own body slamming into the fence hadn't forced the gate closed, just as Camilla drew her hand inside. Camilla turned and dashed across the courtyard toward the door.

She had her keys in her hand. She always kept her keys in her hand when she was walking at night. She had the key to the front door, the big thick one, pinched tightly between her fingers, ready to twist it in a lock. If only she could get that far. She heard the clang of metal behind her, like paws kicking the backside of a scaled fence. And the last few feet to the doorway seemed to take forever to cross. But she made it to the door, and she ground her teeth at the terrifying milliseconds it took her to find the lock with her key, and then she twisted the knob, and she was in, and leaning against the edge of the door frame as the pneumatic

door closer resisted her attempts to slam the door shut behind her. She threw her shoulder against the door, willing it, begging it, forcing it to close. And finally, it did. It slammed shut, just as... Just as nothing at all happened. The door was a wooden framed one with a big glass panel from top to bottom, backed by a hefty set of bars screwed into the frame, a relic from when the neighborhood was tougher. Camilla stood, staring out through the glass between the bars, searching the night beyond.

Her breath came in quick, shallow pants, but nothing appeared in the courtyard outside. She must have been wrong about the sound of something scaling the fence. It must still be stuck out on the sidewalk. She leaned her head closer to the door to see if she could get an angle that would let her glimpse beyond the front gate. And then the courtyard, and the fence, and the street beyond, and the whole world exploded in Camilla's face.

The thick safety glass of the door shattered into pale blue opaqueness as something fast and heavy slammed into the outside of it. Camilla jumped back instinctively, and it's a good thing she did, because just at the level where her throat had been an instant before, a strong, slimy muzzle covered in gray hair and filled with yellow teeth was jutting between the bars, snapping and growling. And below that, long, knotted things, half paws and half hands, scaly dark like the bottom of a dog's foot but with long, black claws on the ends, had punched through the glass and were gripping the bars and pulling, with such strength that Camilla watched in horror as the metal flexed and bowed outward, threatening

to twist out of the doorframe entirely. But when something did give, it wasn't the bars. The paw hands gripping them suddenly let loose, and the yellow-toothed muzzle backed out and twisted feverishly from side to side. The whole shattered panel of glass ripped from the frame and was shaken off by the creature into the night of the courtyard. And there, between the bars, Camilla saw something that, forever afterward, she could never completely believe. It wasn't a stray dog, or a coyote, or even a wolf standing on its hind legs. It was something else entirely, something with yellow eyes

and a muzzle like a wolf, but the rest of it was unlike anything she'd ever seen. It had two arms and two legs like a human, but there the similarity ended. Its knees bent backward for one thing, making its every shifty, springy movement look grotesque to Camilla. Its torso was deep and narrow like a dog's body, covered in long strands of grey and black matted hair. And the arms. The arms may have been the worst part. They were short for the size of the creature, and they didn't seem to have any wrists.

So the strange, rough, hand-like things protruded stiffly from the ends of the arms, and its leathery, fingerish appendages flexed and pointed its claws at her spastically. The creature bunched its bleeding, glass-torn muzzle just like an angry dog would do, bearing dark yellow fangs that made Camilla gasp involuntarily. For though the rear teeth in the canines were of the long, flesh-ripping kind seen in dogs and wolves, the incisors in the front, on both top and bottom, looked human. The effect was disgusting and terrifying, seeing something so familiar hidden within a horrible, alien, impossible thing.

It made Camilla feel physically sick. And she turned and ran through another glass door, out of the vestibule and up the stairs. But she hadn't even made it to the first landing when she almost collided with the building's manager. A heavy man in a dingy ribbed tank top and boxer shorts, barreling down toward her with sleep in his eyes and a scowl on his face. When he saw Camilla, his scowl turned to surprise, then a look of concern as he saw her fear and the shattered wreck of the door behind her. She followed his gaze back that way, but the creature was gone.

The manager asked what had happened, if she was all right. She was trying to formulate an answer when more and more people began crowding into the hall. The people from upstairs came down, the people from across the courtyard came over. It seemed the sound of the exploding glass door had woken up the whole building. The manager, his name was Tefik, did the best to answer everyone's questions so that Camilla didn't have to. He jumped to the conclusion that someone had followed Camilla and tried to attack her. And that was the story Camilla stuck to while she struggled to process what she'd actually seen. She stuck to it with Tefik and her neighbors and the police when they came.

No, no, she couldn't describe who had followed her, just a figure in the darkness. All she wanted to do was get to her apartment and go to sleep. But light was in the morning sky before she finally did. Camilla didn't have to work that Saturday. In fact, they were breaking union rules when Camilla and Andre and a couple of the others came onto the job site that day. But there was something they needed to do. Something they needed to put back. And Camilla didn't want to wait another night to do it.

So somewhere, underneath the green meadows of the West Ridge Nature Park, not far from the banks of the pond, is a cross of silver poplar boughs that Camilla gathered, and a rusted old tin box containing some silver coins, plus a silver necklace that Camilla used to wear. And underneath all that rests something, well, something that we all hope will stay at rest. It's about time we all took our rest. And don't worry. Out here in Forgottonia, we're a long way from Chicago

and whatever the creature was that Camilla saw. As for the things that people have been seeing out here recently, things like wolves, but not quite. Well, I have no idea what those are. Shh. Listen. Listen. Just coyotes, I think.

Camp Monsters is part of the REI Podcast Network. The howling we heard in the distance was probably our senior producer, Chelsea Davis, reacting to a deadline I missed. Our engineer, Nick Patry, insists that his aversion to silver is strictly a fashion thing and shouldn't be taken as a sign that he's a werewolf. The same can't be said for our executive producers, Paolo Motilla and Joe Crosby, who have never been seen to drink water and have found their reputation as werewolves to be a real advantage in the corporate world.

This episode was written and performed by yours truly, Weston Davis, who's glad this show's become popular enough to allow him a hiatus from his previous employment. As a gravedigger. And a reminder that the stories we tell here are just that. Stories. Sure they're based on things people claim to have seen and experienced. But it's up to you to decide what you believe. And how to explain away what you don't.

Thanks to all of you for listening. Subscribing. Rating and spreading the word about this podcast. Next week, our last episode of the season, we won't be able to have a campfire. There's a burn ban, in effect, in the mountains north of Los Angeles, California. But you won't mind the ban, once we get a close look at the creature that a previous fire created. We'll see you next week.