Spooked - The Woods Have Eyes

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

Nate and Keith love to explore the forests in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, hunting for stones and crystals to add to their collection. But something out there is also on the hunt… for them. Thank you Nate for sharing your story with Spooked! Original score by Doug Stuart, produced by Erick Yáñez, artwork by Teo Ducot HAPPY HALLOWEEN SPOOKSTERS!!! We appreciate each and every one of you so so much. Cheers to you and yours this spooky season

This old man, he's all done, because he played knick, knack and drank rum, got kickback, paddywack, never drink alone. This old man won't make it home. Listen to spook. Stay. One of my favorite places is near the California coast, an old Redwood Grove forest. If you've never been, it's kind of hard to describe. Damn, misty, lush, vert. the last remnants of an Eden.

And redwoods, these giant ancient trees, they often grow next to each other in a protective circle around the remains, around the altar of a fallen mother tree. You call this configuration a fairy ring. You step into the middle of this circle, and you look up, it feels sacred, wild. This cathedral.

own to protect the sacrifice of the mother. We should all be so lucky to step into the circle. So circles, there are many different types of wild. And I want you to meet Nate. Nate, he grew up hearing stories from his grandfather. A member of the Ojibuay Chippewa Nation, his grandfather taught him to love and respect nature. And that's why when Nate was 16, he explored the forest

Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but some places, some things might be better left alone. It was around May in 1988. I called my friend Keith and said, what are you up to today? And he said, not too much. We're talking about a plan for the day and we should get together. And we said, well, we could go back to Diamond Hill and maybe see if we can't dig up more quartz crystals. quartz crystals, garnets, tormalines. When you unearth something like that

and realize that you're the first person to ever lay eyes on this thing since it started forming thousands of years ago, it's just a really fun thing to do. So we made a plan to get together and said, yeah, we'll spend the day down there, and if it gets to be evening, maybe we'll camp out and spend the night in the forest. I packed a screwdriver for digging, a little hand-trowel for digging, some snacks, a sandwich, a couple bottles of water.

No sleeping bag, no gear, no nothing. We kind of let life take its course, and that was the whole point of the adventure. So I hitchhiked from Walpole, Massachusetts to meet Keith in Norfolk. We hitchhiked together. We were kind of hippies. We both had long hair and were. diehard fans of a band called The Grateful Dead. We traveled all over the country,

seeing them all over the United States and a few times in Canada. So hitchhiking was just no big deal in a way to get from point A to point B. So midday, we arrived at the state park. Diamond Hill used to have a ski hill there and a chairlift, and all those items had been defunned for many years, but the hill was still there. and it was a very steep slope. This was a copper or a silver mine,

back in the 1800s, I believe. It was a nice sunny day, late spring. There's pine trees and deciduous trees. There were birds of prey circling over there. It was just a peaceful place. We get to the top of the hill, get out a diggin' spade, and we start to poke and prod down into the earth,

carefully hunt for crystals. We're finding the usual milky quartz, like not super clear, they're young, like somewhat undeveloped crystals, but that's what you find at Diamond Hill. And that was good enough for us. We're happy, having a nice time, talking, and we were there until the sun started to set. We said, okay, well, let's wrap up the crystal.

and find a nice place where we're going to camp for the night. There were these roads that led between these two hills, creating a nice enclosed spot. We gathered firewood. There was a larger rock close to the fire pit. Keith sat down with his back to one side of that big stone, and I sat on the other side of it with my back to it. We were eating sandwiches and drinking sandwiches,

and drinking our water. And even though we were wild kids, we weren't like drinking alcohol or taking any kind of substance or drugs. We had a pack of cigarettes and smoked some cigarettes, but that was literally it. It's totally dark out now.

We've got a small fire started. We were just enjoying the quiet, enjoying the sound of the wind in the trees, enjoying the sounds of the animals making their calls. Suddenly we hear the fluttering of wings overhead. Like something in flight,

maybe 12 to 18 feet overhead in the branches of the trees. And I'm thinking to myself, what is this noise? So I look up into the trees to try to get a glimpse of whatever's wings I'm hearing beating up there. And as soon as I look up,

the noise goes silent and the movement stops. Suddenly right behind me, I hear yet another creature or something making the same fluttering a wing sign. I didn't see feathers. I didn't see a beak or eyes. I just saw that something was moving up there in the trees.

And it stayed out of sight. And I said to my friend, I'm like, Keith, do you hear that? He's like, yeah, up in the trees. And I said, yes, it sounds like wings beating. It sounds like there's a bird landing up there or something. He said, it might be an owl. I don't know. I'm turning my head back and forth looking up into the trees when suddenly from behind me,

I hear what sounds like the rustling of feet in the leaves on the forest floor. And it sounds like it's charging us. And I look over in that direction, and the rustling sound stops. At this point, I'm starting to say this is not normal animal behavior. They seem to overly loud. Animals are quiet. Animals know how to be so quiet. If they want to sneak up on you, you'll never know they're there.

This was intentional, deliberate. Something was making a presence of itself and making it known. And I'm starting to feel a little uncomfortable. All of a sudden, I realize there's something standing about 25 feet away. It was a silhouette of what looked like a human being, a human-shaped head. it's hiding behind a tree, its head is leaned out from behind the tree, and its eyes have a light in them

that does not look like it's reflecting the light of our fire. These eyes literally appear to be glowing red. When I see this, a whole new level of fear takes over, and I don't know what I'm looking at. I said, Keith, there's somebody over here. I'm like, Keith, and he's not responding. I'm like, Keith,

I reached behind me without taking my eyes off what I was looking at, and I grabbed his shoulder and shook him. And when he didn't respond to that, I turned around and looked, and his eyes are plastered wide open. His head is pointed up into the trees where this whole commotion had started. His mouth is a gap just like jaw wide open. And I'm like Keith, and he's not responding.

And I really was scared now. I turn around to where this person had been standing. I can't see it anymore. But I could see the silhouette of something kind of hidden there behind that tree. Suddenly, this weird, weird sensation came over me. My eyelids started to get unnaturally heavy. And it felt like somebody was putting a blanket over me, like a real heavy, cold, wet blanket made a concrete.

I'm fighting. I'm fighting to stay awake. And it's just like there's something outside of me, pulling my eyes closed. It was bizarre. And then I hear this strange sound. It sounded like if you could hear the tectonic plates down in the earth rubbing against each other as they move.

Just really crazy, deep sound deeper than any human voice could ever make. It's in my head, like hearing yourself think. And it started off all low and grumbly like that, but then it started to gain in volume and gain in pitch. Until the pitch got so high that it was like, I opened my eyes. I'm right in the same spot. my back is against that stone.

This thing, the silhouette, was out from behind the tree, and it looked like it had come down the hill, maybe two feet. And it instantly backed up and got behind the tree again, as if it didn't want me to really see it. Its head was sticking out from behind the tree. And it looked to me like it squinted, that glowing circular look of its eyes.

got narrower as if it was either making angry eyes or concentrating on me. I feel terrified like I'm going to die out here tonight. Like there was no doubt in my mind that thing meant to do harm to me. I don't know what, but the feeling I got was it was going to take a piece of me. As soon as it squinted like that, I felt that sensation of being pushed into a sleep again. I'm trying to keep my eyes open, but I'm losing the fire. I start to hear that grumbling sound again. It got so high in pitch this time that it felt like if I didn't open my eyes, my head would have popped.

It was like the worst thing that could ever happen is about to happen. And there's nothing you can do about it except try to stay awake. When I opened my eyes, the sound stops. I see the silhouette. This thing is 10 feet down the hill. It flinched like somebody does when they're surprised. Like it seemed really, really surprised that I woke up. And it stared at me for a split second,

and then it started to back up the hill. It stayed facing me, and that's when I noticed that something was very wrong about this creature. Its knees were bending backwards, like the legs of a llama or a horse. It didn't bend in the direction of humans' knees bent. What am I looking at right now? What is this thing?

Creeped backwards like it was trying to be quiet. It got behind the tree in a hurry and then squinted its eyes and I feel that heaviness come back over my eyelids. I reached back and tried to shake Keith's shoulder, but he was unconscious. His eyes are wide open, his mouth is hung open. That's what I was like. I'm on my own here. But now suddenly I hear a noise from another direction.

And it sounds like footsteps walking through the forest floor. The creature took its eyes off of me and looked over in that direction too. I'm looking and I'm wondering who's coming outside the light of the fire. I saw what looked like human footprints on the ground glowing. With each footfall, there were footprints illuminated on the ground, but there's no form making them. And as I'm hearing a step in the leaves, I see the illuminated footprint come forward.

And as I hear the next step, the other foot came forward. Until it stepped into the area that was lit up by our fire. Now the footprints cast a shadow on the ground. And I'm watching these shadowy little footprints walk right up to me At this point, I don't know what I'm feeling. My whole take on reality is just disintegrating before my eyes. So I'm seeing these footprints walk up towards me, and then it felt like it walked right inside of me.

I felt something change in my body as if something had just like kind of entered me. And suddenly in a split second, I see all the bad things I'd ever done flashed before my eyes. From the first time I lied to my parents to acting up in school, just anything that I might have done that I knew wasn't right, I'm like seeing all this flash before my eyes. As soon as all that happened, suddenly the fear left. I suddenly felt so.

safe, as if something was with me that was going to protect me. Once I started to feel safe again, I looked back to where that creature had been. No sign of glowing eyes, no nothing. I looked back up in the trees where the fluttering a wing sound had come from. I looked around me on the ground. I don't know how I knew it, but I kind of knew the danger had passed. The sun was coming up. I was starting to hear the songs of birds singing in the forest.

I actually remember pinching myself and being like, am I really awake now? Was that all a dream? What happened? I looked around to see if Keith was all right. He was about four feet further away, totally laid 100% flat on the ground sleeping. I heard Keith stirring and moving around. I said, hey, Keith, you wake it up? And he was like, yeah, yeah. very calm, cool, and collected like, yeah.

I said, Keith, you have any idea what happened out here last night? Like, do you remember? Did you hear me when I was trying to shake you and say, hey, there's somebody over there? And he was like, no, no, what, who was here? He was asking me as if maybe somebody else that we knew came by that night or something. And I remember being a little hesitant to tell him

what I'd seen. We got up and we walked out of the forest and as we were walking out of the forest, I told him, he's just shaking his head like, you're crazy, you're crazy. You're sure you weren't dreaming, kind of scoffing at the whole thing. I tried to talk about it, but it was too far of a stretch of reality for him to really be able to accept. And I soon learned that there's no point in trying to talk about this. After the event happened, like for the first six months. Anytime I was in the woods, I was absolutely like hyper alert. I always found myself just saying, nope, that couldn't have been real. Nope, don't be so afraid because, come on, how can that be real? Then one day I was visiting my friends, a married couple up in New Hampshire.

This was a friend of mine and his wife. I was telling them the story. When I got to the part about saying that the creature's knees bent backwards and it appeared to have like the hind legs of a llama from the waist down. She let out a scream and said, oh my God, I can't even believe this. She says, my uncle saw the same thing in Athol, Massachusetts,

in 1968, in their backyard of their family home. This was at least 50 miles from where I saw this creature and 20 years prior. When he saw it, It was on the tree line peeking out through the trees, and when the thing saw him look at it, it sprang through the air back into the trees and was instantly just gone.

When I heard that this woman's uncle had seen something with a similar body, I felt like I got a piece of my sanity back, and I felt like vindicated. You know, like, yeah, I felt like, okay, now we're getting somewhere. I don't know what the footsteps were caused by, but I feel like if it wasn't for some other entity that was there protecting me that night, I don't think I would have woken up. I don't know if it was an ancestral spirit from way back in my family's history, or if it was actually the spirit of that land protecting me.

I don't know who or why. I just have a feeling that that's what keeps me. safe in certain situations I've been in. Some of the handyman work I do is within five miles of where this happened, and it's in a very hilly, wooded area. I'm not so sure I won't see it again one day, but I don't think I'll have to fear it when I do. You Nate, for sharing her story with Spooked.

The original score for that piece was by Doug Stewart. It was produced by Eric Youngest. There are some people who, by no fault of their own, things tend to happen around. It's like everyone around them has the experience. They see the creature, they hear the voices, but the person themselves, they're going about their lives. Oblivious to the wake of energy and mystery they leave in their wake. If you know one of these catalysts, or if you yourself are one of them, of these callas, please tell me all about it.

Spooked at snapjudgment.org because there is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener. And if you dig storytelling that is not afraid of the sun, please check out our sister podcast, Snap Judgment. It's storytelling with the beat. Spook is brought to you by the team that knows to leave well enough. alone except for Mark Ristich. Mark likes to take well enough and poke it with a stick. There's David Kim. Zoe Frickno, Ann Ford, Eric Yannius, Teo de Kott, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Paulina

Creeky, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Middiu Matu, and Lulu, a spook theme song. Used by Pat Massini Miller. My name is from Washington. and some say fate is just all the stuff that already happened. That there is no knowing which way the river will bend next. Perhaps as well the future is built of the past. And she leaves clues to what she will do next by what she has already done. This journey at its heart is an exploration of both what will come next

and what has already occurred because in truth we know neither. And the best way to discover that which we don't even know we're looking for.