Camp Monsters - The Rougarou

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

Lucie’s visit to her friend Elodie’s hometown in Louisiana has been filled with vivid experiences: bold new flavors, lively conversations around the table, and day trips through the bayou behind Elodie’s family home. It’s been a great trip, but as her time there draws to an end, Lucie finds herself increasingly restless, as if something is lingering beneath the surface—a secret she can’t quite grasp...This episode is sponsored by Obermeyer. Shop Obermeyer’s amazing products in store or at REI.com. Take the Camp Monsters Listeners Survey.Listen to REI's Wild Ideas Worth Living podcast!

Are you looking for some serious inspiration? Check out REI's award-winning podcast, Wild Ideas Worth Living. Each week, journalist and adventurer Shelby Stanger dives into high-impact conversations with explorers, athletes, scientists, and entrepreneurs who have turned their wildest ideas into reality. From cycling around the world to micro adventuring in your own neighborhood and even baking cakes on glaciers, these stories are sure to ignite your next outdoor adventure. Listen to wild ideas worth living

wherever you get your podcasts. REI Co-op Studios Change is constant. Change is unavoidable. Change can be a good thing. It can be a good thing. You keep telling yourself that as you stare into the bathroom mirror and you try to figure out what's changed. You reach up to touch your cheek and then you look at your fingers. Stretch them out in front of you. Longer and bonier than you remember. The joints seem rounder, swollen almost, but they don't hurt.

You run the pad of your thumb along the edge of a fingernail that you'd swear is getting thicker and narrower every day. And then there's your eyes. You stand there and you force yourself to stare into your own eyes in the mirror. You've caught yourself avoiding your reflection lately because of that shine, that flash that you catch in your eyes, like a hunger, Like a desperation. The eyes of a caged animal crouching, waiting for a chance to break out. They're flashing now, brighter and more savage than you've ever seen them. You try smiling at yourself, but the sight of your bare teeth shocks you, sends you stepping quickly back from the mirror out of the line of reflection,

tripping on the tub and then grabbing the wall to catch yourself. Your smile struck you like a vicious snarl. You must be getting sick, starting to dream, seeing unhealthy things. Surely your teeth haven't grown longer and sharper. A glow through the little bathroom window draws your gaze and holds it. Did you just see something flash across the full moon out there? No. A curtain covers the lower half of the little window, and the moon shines bright through the upper pane. For a while, seconds, minutes, you stand leaning with a hand on the wall, breathing heavily in dilated pants of... of what? Fear? Apprehension? Like in a dream when you sense something horrible

coming, just before it does. You're staring at the moon, watching for a repeat of the movement you thought you saw. You're on the ground floor. There could be something out there. Just outside the window. Did you just hear a rustle beyond the little curtain? You stare at the moon, but nothing comes. Except a deep, twisting pang of sudden illness. Your mouth floods with saliva. You're about to be sick. You stagger toward the toilet just beside the little window. But as you reach it, the curtain over the lower part of the

window, surely you don't touch it. Or do you? But the curtain twitches open and what you see behind it fills you with mad fear. Complete, lost, howling fear. Fear made much, much, much worse because you can't decide whether you're looking at something just outside the window or just inside it at your own reflection. What you see is the Camp Monsters Podcast. I guess if we should learn anything from our adventures on the Camp Monsters podcast is that things aren't always what they seem. But you can't always or even often trust appearances. Like the nighttime weather out here on the bios of Louisiana. It was so sultry today it seemed sure to be

too hot for us to have a campfire tonight. We're gonna have to tell our last story of the season on a screen porch somewhere, with nothing but the scream of the cicadas in the background. Nice as they are, there are times when these warm Louisiana nights make me wish I was someplace with seasons. Where fall is just giving way to winter. And I can wear my Obermeyer jacket. You know Obermeyer, the pioneering producer of Alpine Outerwear? They've been designing and testing their top of the line products in Aspen, Colorado

since 1947. And have you seen their Axle jackets for kids and teens? They look great and have all the handy detailed features you've come to expect from Obermeyer. Interior electronics pocket, EWS extended wear system, pit zip control zone ventilation, powder skirt, ski pass pocket, the works. And you'll never guess what they're made out of plastic bottles that's right the revolutionary two-way stretch reprieve fabric is made from recycled plastic bottles you'll never look this good wearing anything else you

once drank out of check out the axle and all of Obermeyer's excellent outerwear by visiting your local REI or going to REI.com today. Obermeyer, mountain approved. Lucky for us tonight the wind changed and it cooled off enough, just enough to justify this tea fire, this little fire. Sure, sure it's right on the borderline. We could be perfectly comfortable without it but then, a fire provides more than just heat. It provides light, too, and a sense of protection from the things that might be circling outside it. You take that howl now. That lone howl, not too far off. A little close for comfort even. What made it?

It couldn't be a coyote. It was too heavy sounding. Besides coyotes talk as a pack. It couldn't be a red wolf. Red wolves were hunted out of here a hundred years ago and more. So it must just be a stray dog, yeah? But it must be a mighty big dog to make a howl like that. And even a big dog couldn't survive these Louisiana swamps for very long by itself.

by itself. You can look out there all you want. You won't see anything but maybe a set of eyes glowing the firelight back at you. Whatever it is, it'll stay back from the fire for now. But if you do see those eyes, try not to let yourself wonder. Aren't they shining a few feet higher than a stray dog should? Lucy saw eyes like that one October evening not long ago, not too far from here as the crow flies. But the only way out to where Lucy saw them is a winding water trail through the moss-draped trees that grow out of this bio.

Lucy didn't see the eyes by firelight, though. The beam of her sweeping flashlight caught them for an instant, and they were gone when she shone the light back toward them. She didn't think much of them, just that they looked a little bigger and redder than the others she'd seen. That night had been full of flashing eyes and sounds strange to her. So this was the bio, and her first night out on it. She'd asked for this, after all.

Visiting the Louisiana hometown of her good friend Elodie, Ella for short, had been very interesting and vivid so far. Bright new flavors on the plate, bright lively tongues across the table, the green mystery of drifting day trips through the bio that backed up on Ella's family's house. It had been a great trip. But as the visit drew toward its end, Lucy was feeling increasingly restless. Like there was something she was missing. Some secret that she couldn't put her finger on. The smiles from the old folks far outweigh the occasional strange glances and the whispers in French that reminded Lucy she was a stranger here.

Once or twice Ella had snapped quick quiet responses back at the old people, seemingly trying to contradict them. Fast patois phrases that Lucy couldn't catch or make sense of. Lucy was a stranger here and she found herself longing to find some way to get closer to this world and these people that Ella came from. One night, in the darkness of the back screen porch, Lucy sat listening to Ella's quiet stories of growing up around here, told over the cacophony of sounds floating in from the bayou just beyond.

And when Ella mentioned a family cabin, out on the swamp itself, on an island, amid the winding, narrow waterways, Lucy had latched onto it, pressed Ella about it, kept after her, craved the adventure of a night or two, spent out in that cabin. Ella seemed hesitant, even dismissive that night. She made all kinds of excuses, but when Lucy mentioned it to Ella's family at breakfast the next morning, they all looked at each other and came out overwhelmingly in favor of the idea. Well, maybe it was their native hospitality, but they rather harshly overruled all of Ella's protests.

That evening, they had the little motored flatboat all packed and ready for the two of them to go on their adventure. And an adventure it certainly was. The night fell quickly and completely. And the bio at night is a different world than it is in the day. The sounds are different and the colors, the shapes passing out of the strong light of the LED beam back into the darkness. The whole feels different. Not threatening necessarily, but it can't seem that way. Like when you round a bend and eyes flash ahead and then disappear and you never see

what they belong to. Like how you see things moving. No, you imagine you see things moving in the black shadows cast behind the straggling curtains of moss. Like why you jump almost out of the boat when the big white-brown form of a swamp owl flashes close silent and sudden through the beam of light and gone. And then of course coming up on any empty dark house in the middle of a black night is never a welcoming sight.

And especially out here, way out here, where it seems no such thing as a house could possibly stand. But after a long, long trip, there it was. Black blind windows kicking Lucy's flashlight back at her. Black, blind windows kicking Lucy's flashlight back at her. Deep shadows on the porch and under the eaves. Ella cut the motor to drift in and they could hear something scurrying, noisily away. Too fast for the beam of Lucy's light to catch, but she thought she saw a tail of some sort slipping through a gap underneath the cabin. The cabin was an old, old place indeed. Made out of rough cut cypress planks weathered gray that gave the whole place a crooked, leaning, twisted look.

As Lucy shone her strong light across the cabin's empty face, Elodie deftly drifted them through the last few feet of dark water. The sounds of the swamp filled the night as the boat's flat bottom whispered to a stop on the shallow mud. And Lucy whispered too. She didn't know why. They were miles from no place now. She could shout as loud as she wanted, never hope to disturb anyone else, anything, anything human.

But her first impression of Little Island gave Lucy the feeling, the silly feeling, that the dark cabin itself was alive somehow. Alive, but slumbering fitfully. And whatever she did, she didn't want to wake it up. Is this the place? Lucy whispered. It was the sort of question that didn't need an answer. Why else would Ella have brought them ashore here? Had they seen any other cabins on the long ride out? But Ella was her friend, so she made a little affirmative noise as she moved past Lucy in the dark and waded through the shallow water to pull the nose of the boat ashore and tie

it up to an old tree root. As we mentioned at the very beginning of this episode, first impressions can be deceiving, sometimes. Where Ella got a lantern or two burning inside the cabin and suddenly the place seemed so warm and welcoming as they shuttled their supplies inside. It was actually quite a cozy spot, strongly built, filled with the comfortable wear of generations of simple use by a family that had always cared enough to maintain it well, and never quite enough to destroy its charms with too many conveniences.

Fishing and hunting and simple honeymoons, those were its main uses, Ella explained. And swamp logging, back in the old, old days, when it was first built. That's all that Ella said about the cabin's history, but Lucy knew her well enough to see that she was holding something back. So late that night, once they were all settled in and had turned the lanterns low, Lucy pressed her and pressed her until Ella reluctantly told her the family legend about the cabin's origin. Now just a silly superstition, Ella insisted, but some of the old people still clung to it. They said that Ella's great-grandpa, or great-great-grandpa, she could never remember which, they said he was a swamp-locker, back in this bayou in the 19-teens and 20s. Tian was his name.

Long, hot, hard work it was back then, felling the big trees by hand in the heat of the day. Tian and his partner standing balanced in their pirogues, little flat-bottomed bayou canoes, chopping and sawing and sweating, pushing away from the stump when the tree started to fall, hoping it wouldn't kick back and crush one or the other of them, then having to limit and trim it while it floated in the water. Far better, the nighttime part of the job. Standing on the log with his pirogue pegged to the back of it. Pulling and paddling and guiding the trunk down the long run, the cool of the full moon. Out to the big water where the gas boat would

pick it up with the others in the morning. A log this size meant another few dollars in the jar on the shelf at home. Another few dollars between Tian's family and the stalking specter of hunger. Of course there were and are other things that stalk these bayous at night. Other dangers. But they didn't bother Tian too much. Wasn't it true that there were dangers everywhere? Out here at least, he knew the signs of them, and what to do. Tian knew the signs, like the subtle tremble of the log under his feet, the faint scrabbling

sound of claws against tree bark behind him. Tian knew these signs so well that when he heard them that night, he didn't even bother to turn around right away. This was the darkest, narrowest part of the run. Tian used his paddle to ward off the roots of a tree too close on one side, and he shifted his weight on the log and gave the paddle a quick pull through the dark water to center himself down the narrow channel. The open water here wasn't much wider than the log itself

and the trees and brush were so thick that even Tian's eyes, so used to by on nights to a full moon like this was almost like sun at noon. Even Tian's eyes failed him here. So when he was finally satisfied with his course and he turned lightly around, paddle in hand, to face the sound of claws sneaking closer behind him. At first he couldn't see anything there. But he knew it had to be a turtle or a gator.

Both would climb onto the logs sometimes for their own reptilian reasons to catch sun in the day or a free ride at night. They probably wouldn't do him any harm, though Tien never liked to trust a gator's curiosity too far, so as policy, Tien always knocked them off his logs. When he turned, Tien couldn't see anything, but he couldn't afford to stay looking the wrong way for too long in this tricky stretch of water, so he took a chance, swung the paddle through the air strong and low enough to smack anything close and

send it sliding off into the water. Tien expected to either hit something and solve his problem, or swing through the empty air and have to take a few steps forward before his next swing. What he didn't expect was to feel the other end of his paddle caught in mid-swing and gripped in something strong and pulled violently from his hands and thrown splashing away into the bio-night. Some gator. Tan stood very still, listening to the blackness. He was afraid, of course, but it wasn't until he heard the growl that fear took all control.

Now a gator will growl at you. A low, rumbling, rumbling sound it is, hard and cold. A big lizard sound. That wasn't what T Tian heard that night. This growl was a hot-blooded one. Deep, intense, terrifying. Tian had never heard anything like it before, but he knew there was only one thing out on this bio that could make that sound. So Tian knew what he must be about to see. And he could tell that he was about to see it. Knew that a patch of moonlight was drifting closer behind him. Because he could see a watery glow reflected

in a pair of huge eyes creeping down the log toward him. Eyes that could only belong to a Rougarou, a wolfman, the werewolf that can't have been told about his whole childhood growing up on these bios. A story he'd only ever half disbelieved. He'd always hoped it was just a fairy tale, something to frighten the Petit, the children. So many strange old legends swirled around the Rougarou. How you could catch the curse all kinds of ways, and then you had to transform into the hideous Rougarou every night for 101 nights before the curse would lift. Or how outsiders could catch the curse just by coming down to the bayou.

The old folks said they could see the Rougarou in their eyes even before they first transformed. Or how a Rougarou could only count up to 12 and it could be outsmarted that way. You could confuse it by trying to make it count to 13. All the strange legends he'd ever heard flashed through Tian's mind in that single instant. And none of them prepared him for what he saw when the log drifted out into the moonlight. Because there it was. A Rougarou. Crouched, about to spring, it had the body of a skinny man covered in patchy, mangy, matted fur.

The head wasn't as much like a dog or a wolf as Tien thought it would be. It was something worse. Long and looping. Slobbering, blood-spit, wild-eyed, monstrous. Unnatural. The Rougarou didn't come from nature, after all. It was compounded of man's evil demand, cursed to howl through the swamps for a hundred and one nights, thirsty for the blood of other humans.

And then there wasn't time for any other thoughts. The creature sprang, and Tian always swore that if the log hadn't grounded at that very moment, the Rue Daru would have had it. But the jolt unbalanced and delayed the creature's leap just enough that Tian was able to get his arm up. Then he felt himself thrown backward, his arm in the creature's hot teeth, half on the log and half in the water being shaken and ripped from side to side by the overwhelming strength and violence of the Rougarou.

One of these swings sent Tian's free hand smashing into something with such force that it broke two fingers even as he gripped it. You could tell by feel what it was. The loose end of the log chain that Tian had already driven into one end of the fallen tree, ready to secure it to the boom down in the big water. It seemed impossible to get enough leverage behind his swing to make it mean anything, but Seasons' felling trees had given Tian as much strength as a man his size could have, and luck did the rest.

Tian tensed his whole body against the creature and he swung the chain. There was a crunch of steel on his skull and a splash and the tearing pressure on Tian's arm was gone. The familiar night sounds returned to his ears. Frogs and cicadas, night birds and the whining clouds of big mosquitoes. Tian crawled down the length of the grounded log, into his barogue. He used the wounded remains of his only working hand to cut the line that kept the little boat attached to the log.

He tried to remain conscious long enough to guide himself down the rest of the run and out to the big water. That's where the other workers found Tian the next day, drifting beside the log boom. They bound up his torn arm as best they could and they were about to take him downriver to a doctor when Tian broke through his fevered haze enough to tell them what had happened and exactly how he'd been hurt. If a stranger had been there that day, Tien said, he would have died for sure. One of the bosses who wasn't from around there would have insisted on taking him to a hospital where he would have perished in fevered agony.

They would have called it hydrophobia, rabies from the animal bite. But they were all local men who found Tien that morning, hydrophobia, rabies from the animal bite. But they were all local men who found Tian that morning, and after hearing what he had to say they held a whispered conference, and they came to a decision. And then they brought Tian back out into the bayou, way, way out to this place, to the very island where the cabin stands today. It was in the middle of one of the deepest, most remote parts of the swamp, where few ever went and those few who did were assumed to deserve whatever happened to them. It was the thirteenth island from the nearest shore, you see. And though a Ruga-Ru can swim, the locals all knew that it can't count above the number 12.

So for the 101 days of his curse, Tian was safely isolated. If he tried to swim to the mainland, once he made it to the Twelfth Island, he'd become confused, and rather than cross the last channel to terrify the nearest town, he would swim back to count the Twelve Islands over and over again until the night had passed. He lived on the wild creatures that his beast self was so adept at catching by night. By day he slept in the filthy hollow of a log and dreamed fitfully. On the 102nd day, Tian's friends made the long journey out to this remote island again, more than a little afraid of what they'd find. But all they did find was Tian, But all they did find was Tian, looking thinner than when they left him, confused and sheepish. His bad arm healed a little crooked but otherwise unharmed.

He had a hard time believing them when they told him how many days had really passed since they'd left him. It might have been natural for Tian to have shunned this island and never returned, but instead he built this little cabin on it and offered it to his family for general use. He joked that the next time one of them turned into a Rougarou, he wanted them to have a more comfortable place to sleep than in a hollow log. And ever since then, there were little family legends, you might call them.

Half jokes. Times that you couldn't use this cabin. If you asked why, the old folks would say that so-and-so was already out there getting the old Rougarou out. Ella gave a nervous sort of laugh as she finished telling the story and she assured Lucy that no matter what the old folks said there was no one turning Rougarou on the island just then. Funny the way she added that part no matter what the old folks said.

Lucy was a little confused by that but but she laughed, too, even though she was sure that the story and the unfamiliar surroundings would combine to cost her a mostly sleepless night. She was dead wrong about that, though. Lucy slept deeply, more deeply than she could remember sleeping in a very long time. It must have been the sounds of the bayou night. Those sounds seemed to fill Lucy's head and filter into her dreams. A long, strange dream she had that night. Something where Ella was shouting at her to get away from her. And then another long dream where Lucy was running, alone and

confused in an unfamiliar place, desperate for something she couldn't catch, always getting close but just missing it. All those kind of dreams can hunt your nights. They never leave you feeling very rested the next day. Indeed, Lucy woke up so late the next morning that it was already fully light, and Ella had been up long enough to have taken a little run around in the boat. Lucy heard the motor returning as she blinked her groggy eyes open. She must have looked as ragged as she felt, too, because Ella didn't even ask her if she wanted to spend another night. She just wished her good morning and asked if she was ready to head back home. Lucy nodded sleepily and they started packing things up in relative silence. It was much

colder that morning than it had been the night before and when they had finished packing and settled into the boat for the long ride home, Lucy pulled the coat that Ella had given her a little tighter around her shoulders. She hadn't even seen Ella pack coats, but she was glad that she had. Lucy pulled the coat a little tighter around her shoulders and she commented to Ella about how cold it was. Yeah, Ella said, her eyes fixed on the narrow channel through the trees ahead. Yeah, they get sharp these early February mornings. Now don't worry if it takes you a minute. In her groggy state it took Lucy a minute too.

A minute to piece out what was wrong with what Ella had just said. A minute to remember that she and Ella had left for the cabin on an evening in late October. Exactly one hundred and two days before, as it turned out. There! Did you see? Oh my there was... Did anyone else... just just out there, just behind you, I could have sworn it. Well, no, maybe the story was getting to me. That howl though, gives me the frizzles every time. You know, the goose bumps. I wish I had my trusty Obermeyer jacket to warm me up.

Mine's a classic. I've had it for years and it's still going strong. That's one of the many great things about Obermeyer. Their outerwear sets styles today with quality that will last a lot of tomorrows. A good example is the iGrow extended wear system that Obermeyer builds into a lot of their kids products. I Grow gives you extra inches of fabric in both pant legs and sleeves so that just when you thought someone had outgrown their favorite Obermeier Quinn one piece suit, BAM! You get a whole extra skeezies out of it. Obermeier helps you keep up with your kids growth, but it's up to you to keep up with

them on the slopes. Sarah, please, I don't want to do that double diamond again. Check out the Quinn one-piece suit along with all the other fantastic outerwear that Obermeyer makes by going to REI.com or stopping by your local REI. Obermeyer, stay warm. I guess as for us, all that's left to do is extinguish this last little campfire of the season and then get back to our tents or to our cars. But if you dream strange dreams tonight, and the next time you wake up you're in a little

cabin in the middle of the bio, and it's February. Well, hey, look at the bright side. At least you're that much closer to the next camp monster season. Howling in grief that this is the last episode of this Camp Monster season and plunging wildly through the bayou night, thirsting for more adventures, are our executive producers, Paolo Motila and Joe Crosby. Our sound designer Nick Petry isn't worried though because he always sleeps with 13 microphones around his bed so that any marauding Ruger who will spend the night counting them in confusion and so that in the morning he'll have all the footage he needs for yet another episode of his somewhat less successful

independent podcast called Nick Sleeps in Stereo. Our producer Jenny Barber and senior producer Hannah Boyd tell Nick that they listen, but really they're too busy tearing around the bayou in a fanboat trying to find yours truly writer and host Weston Davis, who they know is sleeping in a hollow log out here somewhere. He swore that when he finally finished recording this season of Camp Monsters, he was going to sleep till February. But we better not wait until then to mention that the stories we tell here on the Camp Monsters podcast are just that, stories. Sure, some of them are based on old field recordings made for the Library of Congress back in the 1930s, but it's up to you to decide if that was really a Rougarou howling in the background or just distortion on the old magnetic wire recorder. This is the part of the show

where we'd usually tell you about next week's episode, except that this is the last show of the Camp Monsters season. I can't thank you enough for listening and for spreading the word about Camp Monsters. Word of mouth has brought us so many listeners through the years, so please keep it up. If you haven't already, please subscribe, leave a positive review, update a great review that you left seasons and seasons ago, or email podcasts at rei.com to tell the powers that be how much you enjoy what we do here on Camp Monsters. Before we sign off for this season, I have a quick favor to ask.

We created a Camp Monsters Listener Survey that will take just five minutes to complete. The survey will help us get to know you, the loyal Camp Monsters Listener, and give us insight into how you'd like to experience the show in the future. Like maybe some more live shows around the country? Tell us what you want. Head to the link in the show notes to take the quick 5 minute survey today. It would mean the world to me and the Camp Monsters team. Thanks for your help.

Oh, and if you have a hard time finding the link in the notes, just email podcast at rei.com and they'll point you in the right direction. We love putting on this show for you. We hope to keep making it for many years to come. Thank you for joining our campfire tonight. We hope to see you again around another one next year. Good night for now.