The Confessionals - 780: Stalked in the Swamp

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

How do you defend against something you can’t even see? Twenty-five years after a night that changed their lives, David and Derek reunite to finally share the terrifying truth. What began as a late-night coyote hunt in the Mississippi swamps spiraled into a desperate escape from a massive, unseen predator, one that crashed through trees, scaled embankments in seconds, and stalked them for miles... without ever being seen. This isn’t just a story. It’s a warning.Please pray for Tony's wife, Lindsay, as she battles breast cancer. Your prayers make a difference!If you’re able, consider helping the Merkel family with medical expenses by donating to Lindsay’s GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/b8f76890Become a member for ad-free listening, extra shows, and exclusive access to our social media app: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinThe Confessionals Social Network App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZTony's Recommended Reads: slingshotlibrary.comMy New YouTube ChannelMerkel IRL: @merkelIRLMy First Sermon: Unseen BattlesSasquatch and The Missing Man: merkelfilms.comMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comSPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsGHOSTBED: GhostBed.com/tonyCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducerOUTRO MUSICJoel Thomas - ImposterYouTube | Apple Music | Spotify

Hey, everyone, before we get to this week's show, this is just your weekly reminder to please continue to pray for my wife, Lindsay. She is battling breast cancer right now, and we're praying for complete healing in Jesus' name. Thank you. Merkel. Media's here. This was all circulating around the base that a giant had been killed, but no one was supposed to talk about it. I saw three long, bony fingers, reach up underneath the door, curl up to grab it, and then disappear. When he came over to me, dude, he slithered over to me.

And this giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen. And he starts running and firing at this giant. With a giant moves, he's got a spear in one hand and he's running really fast. And spears Dan holds him up like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face. They basically decapitated. Purson, got closer, got closer, got closer when he got about 50. He'll come.

pulling at my leg. And I look over and there are two small, and they're literally, I'm getting pulled off the bed. I reached my hand into this bush and I touch air. Couldn't breathe and I couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster. Welcome to the show, everybody, listening to The Confessionals Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Merkle. Thanks for being here.

If you have a crazy, wild experience, you want to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is contact at theconfessionalspodcast.com. That's Contact at the Confessionals. or go to the website, the confessionalspodcast.com, hit the contact section and you can reach me that way as well. Either it works for me, just get a hold of me. Friends, if you're interested in extra shows every week on an exclusive app that is also built to be a social media platform for people like you, consider becoming a member to the confessionalspodcast.com. Just go to the website, hit the join button,

and choose the plan that fits you best. An annual plan or a monthly plan will get you access to the Confessionals Members app where we house all the membership content on a social media platform exclusively available to members to the confessionalspodcast.com. All right, friends, listen, today is a fantastic conversation. This conversation was so good, it was hard to title because I didn't want to undersell it by giving it a title that just didn't do it justice. Derek and David came to the studio. This is the first time they've been together in 25 years, and they came together for this

event to talk about what they experienced in the swamps of Mississippi, where one night they went out coyote hunting and ended up being stocked for five hours by something in the woods that they called in. What they saw and what they experienced that night will leave your jaw on the floor. Let's get to Derek and David right now. Law enforcement, I don't mind saying that. I'm law enforcement. You want to identify yourself because that gives your adversary reason to to say, well, I didn't know that it was a cop. As it starts, you know, following that zigzag, David actually yelled out, identify or be fired upon or whatever it was.

It was, you know, we're here. We're, you know, it did not, you know, it didn't answer back. It didn't call back. And I'm expecting, you know, someone to say, hey, hey, hey, you know, don't fire. It's me. Or what are you boys doing down here, you know? It didn't. and he said it at least twice, and it did not alarm it.

It stops at that washout, and you could almost see the vegetation kind of parted, but you couldn't see it. There was no outline, and again, the moon, it was a pretty clear night. And even without looking through the starlight scope, we could see each other clearly, We could see in front of us clearly. But we didn't see this, this, what was causing this noise. That was when we hear it rush towards us at the water's edge. I was, I was convinced that I was going to die that night.

When we moved to Mississippi, I'm from this area originally. Okay. And in high school, we got an exchange student from Germany. And when the exchange students came to our area, you know, when they were, you know, because it's like a project. So they try to keep all the, all the students together. They, our student wasn't there. And they said, oh, he's been delayed by three weeks. And we're like, why are we getting like a, you know, an escapee or, you know, a con man?

What's going on? And they said, no, he has to go to a special class. special class. What do we get a broken, you know, exchange to it? And they said, no, he's got to learn East Tennessee when we read your, when we read your background and said that you were from, I was born in Newport. So when it said East Tennessee, book English, spoken English, you know, we have so many dialects that our guy who, you remember, I forget the guy's name now. But anyway, he had to learn East Tennessee so he could communicate with us.

Wow. And, you know, he got out of the car. Ah, y'all. And we're like, whoa. A little force, man. We got to polish that up a little bit. We're recording, right? All right, just let this roll.

We'll just roll. So I forgot that he had mentioned that you're originally from this area. Yes. So when I brought up Mount Nebo, you were. Because you acted like you knew what I was talking about. So, okay. The amount of locals who brought that up to me when I first moved here was my sign that I was in a different place. Because up north, if you said that there's an area that the police don't go, I would think, okay, so the police go there.

But it's like the hood and, like, you know, it's just a rough area. here they said don't go to Mount Nebo and I was like I picked up that it's like oh they like nobody goes there like you don't go there unless you have real business which is usually not lawful and the the law doesn't go there unless they absolutely have to and they go in teams well it's a plausible deniability on some of that but then the other is there is no way to be safe on a call um this is This was, you know, a million years ago. But when I was younger, my dad took our family to go visit some cousins, second, third cousins kind of deal. This was in the Newport area. And so we're driving up a, you know, a windy road and whatnot. And so when you got off the hardball onto the mountain road,

when we finally made it to our relatives' house, they came out and, you know, made contact with us. Hey, hey, hey, you're doing all blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Of course, this is before cell phones and stuff like this. This would have been, you know, the early 80s, I guess. One of the family members then went to the phone and called, you know, immediately because their phone had been blowing up, because, there was a strange car.

It was a strange. Even though this was like miles away, hey, this is a car that we don't recognize. This is somebody that is not used to being up here. So let's find out who they are. And so it was almost like they had to vent us, you know, who in order to have permission to be up there. Wow.

Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. That's wild. It's just, it's interesting. As somebody who, like, is not from this culture. Yeah.

It was really interesting to learn the different culture. And I mean, I know when we moved here, it was during the height of people bailing on different states and coming to places like this. And so there's a lot of people. I mean, you've seen it. Like, this area has grown so much since you were a kid, right? Yeah. And we heard a lot of people say, you know, just leave your politics where it's at or whatever. And one, I told people, I was like, I'm more conservative than you.

I can guarantee you that. So, you know, but I came here with the understanding that I was going. into a new culture, didn't understand how new and different, but I was ready to adapt and become part of that culture. And I'll tell you, the biggest and hardest thing for me to change moving here was not anything you're thinking. I love everything about living here. The only thing that I didn't like is that when I first moved here where we bought our house, there's not a gas station within 15 minutes of my house. And that was, I was like, yeah, I was so used to, having, in Pennsylvania where I lived, I had three gas stations within a half mile, at least

three gas stations. And I could just say, hey, I'm going to go down to the Wawa, which is like the gas station. And like, you know, but here it's, it's like, you know, sometimes I'll see I need gas. And I was like, I was waiting until I'm passing by a gas station again. He would love the Natchez-Tresin, wouldn't he? Yeah, he would. Yeah. At the time, there were like only two gas stations on from about outside Nashville, way past Caziosco. From Natchez to Nashville, the only station on the trace was Little Mountain. Yeah, yeah. And it's closed now.

Yeah. Yeah. So if you don't recognize a rest area, you better have a camel bladder. What is, 144 miles? Something like that. From Natchez to Nashville is 444. 444, okay. I mean, I'm a former trucker.

So, you know, I'm used to multitasking and paying in a bottle while you're driving down the highway. And you got to, you got to all the trees. If you notice, there are dump sites, too, where that are frequent places where, like, you'll go down a road where there's a business or something and trucks are going in and out all the time. And you'll hit, like, a certain curve and you'll look over. And there's just all these yellow bottles in the grass. And, like, truck is just, throw the bottle. It's just like, whatever. I never did that.

No. Another one is truckers will take it and then they'll just dump it out the window and it splashes on the truck and it stains. So you'll know that if a trucker did that because the battery box underneath the steps is like stained like almost like, oh, there's a lot of oil on it. That's dried pee. But anyways, we got David and Derek in studio. I want to do a proper introduction before we get too carried away of conversation. We were talking for, what, an hour over in the other room? And I was just like, we just need a text to the table.

So, David, you were on the show probably about 200 episodes ago or something like that. I mean, it was a while ago. It's been a while. It was a while ago. I know I recorded that episode with you. I believe I recorded it in my house. It was before we were doing video with YouTube. And we didn't, I didn't care about that.

video at all. And we had just moved here. And I didn't have this place up and running. So it's got be at least like two years ago now. But I remember sitting in my house recording with you. And we called it the Mississippi Swamp Stocker. And since then, you have and I talked here and there and you've shared notes with a lot of investigations that you have gone into and uncovering different stories that have stemmed back to the 50s, 1950s. Yeah. And of this area of Bayouye. By-Wi.

Is that the town or I saw Bay-Wai Canal on the notes? It's a community. Okay. It's not an incorporated town. As a matter of fact, it has maybe one gas station. My nightmare. Years ago, it had a school. It had a school?

I mean, it's very rule, extremely rural. I brought a map. Okay, cool. I'll show you a little bit here in a little while maybe. But, yeah, it's extremely rule. I mean, the state of Mississippi's rule in general, the deer outnumber the people probably two to one. Wow. Wow.

In the state of Mississippi. In the entire state. Yeah. Jeez. Okay. So that's actually, that actually draws a really clear picture as the population. So with this, though, for what I understand, the way the logistics are, that's not the right word, I guess the way the landscape is laid out, the bywai canal goes through an area that has a lot of swamps and forest. Is that right?

Originally, it was just an old creek run and swampy area, and they dredged that canal to drain the land for farming. Okay. But it's still left in some of the areas where the old slew run was, a lot of standing water and swampy area, you know. Like I said before, I think Louisiana felt it because it's crazy for calling it a swamp. Yeah. To us, it's a swamp. But definitely a creepy place to be after dark.

That's what I hear. And it makes sense. I was trying to look at it because I saw the list. list of people's experiences that you had sent over, right? And if I remember correctly, you actually mailed me a handwritten list at one point. I may have. I think it was on yellow legal paper. I have it somewhere.

I remember that. You're so hot tech. Yeah. The stuff I have now is actually, you know, sent to me digitally, which is good job. You've been changing. I have some bargaining. I'm looking up for me. That's why we got kids.

But so it just became kind of. something that I started looking at, I was thinking, I wonder if the amount of sightings, especially given what the population is that you're saying, has to do with that canal and the specific route of traffic that happens through there, but the creatures never left kind of thing? I don't know. There's not as many sightings, it seems like, as recently, but there's still some things that happen.

But people don't get out and hunt. People are not in those areas as much as they used to be just because it's so out of the way. Probably, I'd say less than 10% of Mississippi population hunt now. So there's just not that much traffic in there either. And you'll see on that map that there's another creek that tributary that comes up. And then you've got the big black river. it's not much bigger than the canal where it's at, but it's the headwaters of the big black river.

Between those two bodies of water and between the by-wide and what they call the middle bi-wai, which is just another little short canal they dug to drain that land for farming, is where, what would you say, Derek, be two and a half, maybe. Two-and-a-half mile radius of, of probably 25 out of the 33, I think it's 33 sightings or encounters that we have there, is within a two and a half mile radius.

And that's our focus for the day. Holy cow. So what I want to do right now is I know we did this story with you remotely, but I just think the conversations are better when they're in person. And the opportunity to have both you guys in studio who both went and through the situation together. I think it offers a new perspective for the listening audience and the viewing audience to hear this story. And some of them, many of them may never heard it before because it's so long ago and there's a new audience.

So I think it'd be good for them to hear the story. And then we can dive into the other things that have been uncovered since this initial experience. And I will preface it with, I don't remember exactly. how I felt recording with you, but I get the sense that the jury's still out on if it was a dog man. Because I remember talking to you, and I feel like I was trying at the time, if I felt like I was forcing a square peg into a round hole. And that's why I didn't want to do anything dog man in the title, because I was like, I don't know exactly what it was, but I got the sense that you weren't totally willing to say that yeah you believe it was a dog man versus anything else that might be

my interpretation though considering the fact that we that we know of actually laid eyes on it you know to as a determining visual um I don't know what to make of it I can tell you and there has talked about this I can tell you what it wasn't up to 100% you know, certainty, but I can't tell you what it was. Okay.

I know for a fact it was not a human being at all. And we laid on a beaver hut in the middle of a swamp discussing that that night, you know, side by side, I'm pointing one way he's pointing the other. And we're trying to go through the, we're eliminating things while we're waiting for whatever this thing is

to make its move. But let's actually just start from the beginning. Yeah. Because I don't want to grab details from that night out of order. So I don't care how this unfolds. I don't care who talks first and who talks when and all that stuff. But let's start off with laying the groundwork. What were you doing?

What time of day it was? And how did it all kind of start unfolding for you guys? Sure. statute of limitations probably run out a long time ago on this. So everything we were doing was not within public policy, I would say. So we were out of high school. What was it? It was 1994, 95.

95 because I was two months out of the Marine Corps. So in our rural area, there's not a lot to do. Like you said, one gas station, you know, in that area. So if you don't want to go to bed at 9 o'clock,

it's right around and, you know, shoot snakes in the canal and, you know, things like that. And we're talking about it at night. And I know that that's not a safe thing. I'm not...

Who cares? It's fine. Okay. All right, good. Well, you know, you know, um, so one of the things.

things that dink, David, that's his nickname. Dink. Dink. I have a chance outgrown that nickname. Okay. No, he has. Noted. Dink and I would, we called a coyote hunting, but we were not good at it.

We just, it was an excuse to go and do something that would, well, to sum it up whenever we would leave the house, all my other friends when we would go to go do whatever. Mom and dad would say, okay, have a good time. But when a dink's little white truck would pull in the driveway, mom would say be careful because she knew that it was a different level. It was a different tier of activity. You didn't tell me that was that friend going. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

No, he was, you stayed probably as much time at my house as you did, your house. Just about. So we were coyote hunting. I won't do the little quotations in the air. But that's, and so. So let me just get straight. You go coyote hunting with the agenda of let's let the night evolve into whatever we. That is correct.

Got you. You know, if we killed coyotes along the way. So the mission is coyotes, if you see it, but we're going to find other things to do as well. We're going to be very demonstrative in it to camouflage our face. you know, camouflage are, you know, we're wearing camouflage.

And we have, um, more artillery than what you're going to see on, you know, the Honey Channel. It's not going to be a bold action rival. Yeah. Yeah.

In fact, that was, I had your, uh, Mossburg. I think I had a shotgun. You had my 590. Yeah.

And you had a, had an AR 15. You had an AR 15. Uh, I had your Brett of nine. trapped to me and you had your trusty, rusty, coat 45. That's right. And a knife.

We always carry a knife with us. And before we, going further, this is a normal routine of ours. Okay. So this wasn't like we were amateurs at being this silly. We were professionally silly. We snake hunt like that, where we would, In fact, I would say our favorite pastime was to get about waist deep in these canals and these stiller waters. And we would shoot the cotton mouths that are hanging out on limbs, you know.

And that's what we did for fun. And we made 10, 12 snakes, you know, poisonous snakes. And people didn't mind that at all. No, they appreciate that. Yeah. A lot. So this was something we did often, and it's something we did very well, I would say, wouldn't you? It was pretty successful with it.

So this was just another flavor of the same thing. So we were, and we'd gone county hunting before, like over the landfills and stuff like that. But there was an area out by your house that had. somewhat recently been roll cut, right? Roll cut, which is clear cut. And with the, that whole area, one of the, one of the major money makers, I guess, is planting trees and whatnot planting pine trees. So when you clear cut, you prep it and come back and replant. They go through and they just, they turn into like a, like a moon landing, you know, I mean, it's just barren.

But before it gets to that, where you're able to plant the trees, they go in and they cut everything. And the only thing that is left standing as briars and stuff like that. And timber companies go in and get, you know, get the trees of choice and take them out. But they leave what we call trash trees. And the tree tops, you know, because that's not going to go to a lumberyard. you know, so. So David had told me about a particular place not far from his house. And we had, we thought that we had covered all of our logistical avenues.

He said that he would contact the game warden and let him know that we were going to be out at night. So if he if you hear a bunch of shots, it's not somebody out doing something. you know, horrible or, you know, poaching deer. Yeah, that was their biggest concern was people poaching deer. How does the game warden know if it's you or somebody else then? Well, that's what I would usually do. And I had a, I had a cousin that was a game wardens. I'd call him up.

I said, hey, me and Derek, we're going to go out, coy hunting that, say, crow crossing. He says, I'm using an AR-15. He's going to have a 12-gauge. So if anybody comes along hears us shooting. Or seats us walking down the road looking like we just stepped out of Vietnam. It's the boys again. They're used to seeing us like that.

If they called says, you know, there's some shooting down at Crow Cross and they know it's us. Okay. But the problem was they didn't want, you could hunt coates at night legally, but you had to use a rim fire or bird shot. Okay. We were packing the heavy heat, so that's why we always wanted to let them know ahead of time and say, look, we're not out there poaching deer.

We're not, you know, because, you know, if you're out there poaching deer with a 30-0-06 or buckshot, Game Warden rolls up, oh, we're just a Cody hunt. Yeah, sure you are. Right, right. But that's, that was the whole thing there. Okay. Plus, you knew everybody around there. And so, you know, you didn't, you didn't want to make, you know, enemies of your neighbors and whatnot.

So, um, so he was going to, he was going to call and, and give us our umbrella. of protection. That didn't happen. I dropped the ball. You did drop the ball. And we had in this, I guess it started, we, I think it was in Columbus, woods and waters, I think, which I don't even things in business anymore. I don't think so. That's where we bought the coyote call because this was going to up our game.

Up until then, we had just hoped to see one. Yeah. But we purchased a mouth call, now that diaphragm call. And I went on to work that day. The ink was at the house, and he was practicing with this call. And he would call me periodically throughout the day and tell me how good he was getting with this call. and you got a little taxing, you know, hearing a coyote call through the phone, you know, but he's like, has this sound?

It's piercing my ear, you know, and I'm like, yeah, that's good. They'll be able to hear that, you know, 100 miles away. So, so David had been working on that. And I got off work, I don't know, it was dark. It was February. It was late. You were working like a split shift. Yeah.

So it was like 10 o'clock. And so I was working at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center for adolescents. And the reason I put that out there is because that'll come – I'll give us some intel later on when we start trying to figure out what this was. But anyway, so we get to – so I drive out to his place. And I'm Camoed up. He's Camoed up. We're excited.

We're ready to rock. And it's February. It is, it's not quite a full moon, but it's, it's a heavy moon. It's bright. There's not a cloud in the sky. You had a starlight scope on your, on your, on your AR. And I don't even think we took a flashlight because, you know, you don't want to illuminate anything to scare away.

It was so bright. We had the starlight scoot. There was really no need. You have to be on your A game in order to even see a coyote unless you see it by chance. They're, you know, they're heightened senses. Very skittish. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So we parked the truck a mile or so. At least a mile. Yeah. And so we go walking down the road just to find a good spot to hold up in and give David a a chance to get on that coyote call and produce the magic. And man, I could just envision we were going to slay them. I mean, it was going to, they were just going to come out from everywhere. And we were just going to go back with no ammo left.

That was my envision because he had worked so hard on getting this, this call down. And I've been looking forward to it all day. And so we're walking down a gravel road, pea gravel road. and we start walking towards the by-wide bottom, crows crossing, right? And there is a bridge that is at the bottom of this road. And we're coming in. So there's a, it's not a steep grade at all. It's a low grade.

But as we're walking down, we start thinking, you know, we need to try to get an advantage point. You need to try to get high ground so that we can see the code. And our best route would be if they're coming through this cutover. Right. So we found an embankment that led to a rise, what, maybe 12 feet, counting the ditch. Probably, yeah. Yeah. So these are unapproved roads and whatnot.

So when we decided that that was going to be our position of advantage, it was steep enough and tall enough to where we had to help each other up the hill to get to the point. Plus the red clay and whatnot that make up the hillside, you know, it was given way. you know, as you step in there, you know, you lose your footing and whatnot. So we were constantly having to, one would hold the long guns and then we'd assist each other by hand to get up there. It's kind of a struggle to get up there. And we get in position and we set or, you know, pretty good while not making any noise at all, trying to let the woods quieten down. And okay, Dave, it's time.

So he gets that mouth calling. You know, he loosens up. He loosens up. And he's ready. And so I think you did it from a standing position just so that you could, you know, call out. And his majesty. And Dink gets on this call. Remember, he'd been practicing all day.

And he had been keeping me informed of how great he was over the phone. And the time that it counted, it sounded like a violated duck. It came out. And, of course, you know, it was supposed to sound like a wounded animal anyway. But this was not at all what he intended. Either his lips were cold or he didn't have a good seal or I don't. I didn't have enough air in my long, I guess. I don't know.

That's his story. Let him stick to it. It came out of that. I mean, it was, it was so bad that, you know, I stopped and I look at him and I'm like, what the heck? David's got a temper. So he's like, I can't believe. I just, you know.

And so we have to wait for it. You know, the woods to quiet and back down. I'm, I'm giggling because I'm like, man, there's no animal that we're going to see now, ever, you know, to hunt. So this is, this hunt's pretty much over. but we're out and it's uh we're dressed in a bunch of uh you know long johns and stuff like that to stay warm and so

I might as well just stay out here and enjoy the night air and and uh you know just talk about about life because the hunt I know is over but we wait for a little bit uh with us being quiet and then then think says okay I'm going to try it again and the story you want to go with is not enough air in your lung again. You want to go with that on the record?

That is my story. Okay. So once again, not enough air in his lungs. He lets out an identical call that he did the first time, which I don't think we could ever purposely mimic the mistake, okay? Which was what was so funny was it was not at all the intent. And so looking back, I think it was a defective goal. Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah.

Totally. It only had a certain number of uses in it before it started becoming defective. So he used it all up earlier in the day. Yeah, maybe wore it out during the day. I don't know. But when he made the second call, it was louder, but the same unidentifiable sound. And I'm just like, oh my gosh, yeah, that's it. It was pretty bad.

It was. It was. And that's important because as he's mad and ready to throw this call, and you may have thrown it away. Because like I said, he's got a bad temper. I love him, but he's got a bad temper. And so he's mad. And now he's getting mader because I'm laughing at him. And here we are out in the middle of it.

of, you know, the dark. It's probably midnight. And in his mind, he's ruined the entire hunt. And within a few seconds, it's not quite a minute, I would say, of him making that second strange sound, a strange call, we hear the, to my memory, the exact same. the exact same call, call him back to it. And it, but it was, it sounded like it was really far off. But the fact that David didn't sound like anything in Mississippi Woods and for that to call back and him already mad and already ready to whip my tail for laughing at him. it startled us, you know.

We're like, what the heck? And so our first thought was somebody else is out here, maybe a coon hunter or something, and, you know, far off in the woods. And is he mocking us? Is this guy making fun of the fact that we screwed up the hunt? And so now David's really getting mad. And so David says, you know what?

I hope he comes up here. I hope he comes up here. And I'm like, oh, man, we're going to have to explain this one. And, you know, I'm going to talk your way out of this one. And so it makes that callback. And I don't remember it making another call. Maybe it did. I don't think it made another call, but we immediately, it started like walking.

what sounded like walking straight for us. And we're talking about probably more than 300 meters away. It was pretty good. It was about 300. Yeah. It was across the road, across the cutover on that side of the road, and into the tree line. So if we're facing, we're on the right-hand side. Yeah.

We're on the right-hand side of the road and we're on top of the hill. And so this is across the road and into the woods past that cutover. And after it made that crazy sound back to us, we hear it walking, which is one of the reasons David's like, I hope he comes up here. Because I'm going to show him that anybody can make a mistake. He's not ever going to be able to make a call again. And if this was, yeah. Are you regretting bringing him? Yeah.

Full disclosure. Full disclosure. I love it. I love it personally. So as as this starts walking, it walks straight out to the road. And because this has been rolled cut and there are tree tops, there are trees that are down. There's a lot of debris on the ground. As it's walking, it does not. And I say it because, you know, unknown what it is. It did not care what it was stepping on or stepping through.

And we heard, if you were driving a Jeep through that, it would not have made, you know, minus the engine sound, it would not have sounded any louder. Then as this thing is walking, it is breaking limbs. trees. It did not stop. It did not vary off of its path. It took a may be line straight to that road. And

it's making up a territory quickly, which was without the use of a light. Yeah, no line. So it's able, I peedly, to walk this terrain, which is very uneven because we're getting from the from the high ground down into the bottom land there where it's a flat and where it's swampy it's able to negotiate the terrain the down trees the tree tops the vines everything straight shot no light whatsoever never missed a step being that we go out in the woods

a lot and at night periodically you stop and choose the path of least resistance you You come up to a thicket of briars. You come up to a treetop and you avoid those. This was not the case for this thing. It walked straight in it. There was no deterrence of it walking in a straight line. And it is making a lot of noise as it walks. And it is covering a lot of ground very quickly, which was, you know,

Shortly into it moving, we sort of realized that this was not another hunter that was coming to make fun of us. But at the same time, we also realized, you know, it's bipedal. So what else could it be? You know, it was a very strange time in our thought process at this moment. Yeah, because there was no, I didn't have any prior instances in this area to think it would be anything other than the game warden that didn't get called. Thanks again for that. Or another hunter. I was convinced that it was a human because of the distinctive foot sound.

as opposed to the multiple sounds of hooves or, you know, any type of animal. And it walks across that cutover. And David takes a starlight scope. Now, this is, this is 1995. And so we didn't have the technology that we have today. And so a starlight scope, if you're, are you familiar with them? I'm not. this is an old

this is an older model probably a third generation ANPVS 4 Starlight scope it's it's a government issue but it was liberated

from the Saudi Arabian government deliberated for because they didn't need it they wouldn't fight in the war you know Americans needed it so that's where we come come across you know

it was It was acquired through those means. But it was a military-grade starlight scope. You've seen the scopes that it kind of turns the night today, but it has a green tent to it. It's grainy. It's grainy. It's grainy. It was old technology.

But it would just amplify ambient light, whether you had moonlight, starlight, or whatever. That's why it's called starlight scope. but it would amplify that, but it made the picture kind of 2D, so it was still hard to, if something was in a shadow, it was still hard to see, you know,

stuff like it. But it gives you somewhat of an advantage, and it had crosshairs in it, you know, I had my R-15 sided with it. So, you know, I thought we had an advantage with that,

Coyote hunting, so that's why I took it. Yeah, and too, we wouldn't be using a light you know, for the coyotes to see. And full disclosure, we have shot with that before, and it's, it was pretty, it was pretty on, you know, so we're, we're used to the, what we had, we were familiar with.

Yeah. And so, so David, uh, shoulders his weapon and looks through the scope and he goes, because, Waley, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't see it. I don't, whoever it is, they're staying in the shadow or, or whatever. Right? I don't see it. And that says it's walking through the cutover because it was making so much noise. You could pinpoint exactly where it was, but we just couldn't see it. And even with that starlight scope. Okay, let's take a second and talk about our sponsor today, which is simply safe. Friends, listen, you might be out in the swamp. You might be getting stocked by something that's invisible. You can't lay your eyes on it. Run home. Lock the door because you got Simply Safe on the house. And then when that thing comes to the house, breaks down the front door and you can't see it, at least the AI powered cameras will pick it up.

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confessionals to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free. That's simplysafe.com slash confessionals. There's no safe like Simplysafe. But again, you know, it's, you could kind of convince yourself, well, it's, you know, if it's walking through tree tops, there's going to be shadows produced by the ambient light that is amplified through the scope. So, it's there. We just can't see it yet. But it was making so much noise that it sounded like if it, if it was a human, there would be multiple people, you know, or, you know, it's, you know, it. It's making so much noise that it would have to be big or something. Yeah.

Big human. Very big. Yeah. Or, you know, somebody's stepping in sync with somebody else, you know, or whatnot. If it was a coon hunter, he's got dogs and so on and so forth. Were you guys at this point concerned about concealing yourselves? Like, were you worried that you had to hide? No, he still wanted to work somebody.

You're still ready to fight somebody. Yeah. we're still thinking somebody and we're trying to, to be honest, what was going through my mind was game ward. And I think that's when I revealed that I dropped the ball. I said, Derek, I bet that's a game ward. And dude, I did not call. Because back then, different counties would come and assist other counties. So even, you know, chances are, even if it was.

a game warden, it would be somebody I knew if they were from our county. Yeah. Still not a huge deal for us and them. But if it was game warden from another county, didn't know us, they were just overhelping, you know, trying to, trying to help, you know, cut down on poaching because deer season just ended and maybe folks didn't quite get their freezer full, you know. So I'm thinking, you know, I don't want my guns taken away. We need to evade these guys.

They're not going to be happy when they find us because we're, you know, if he didn't call, which he didn't, we weren't supposed to be there. Sure. Or at least not with those weapons. With those weapons. And so we knew it was not going to be a friendly encounter with Game Warner or law enforcement. And so we weren't looking forward to an encounter with another. the human, right? No. At this point, I was thinking it was the best thing would be to avoid anybody altogether.

So we weren't making any noise, and we were not calling back to it or anything. So, you know, plus we're thinking if it's a human, they're going to have to find us because we're completely camouflaged, included, you know, face painted. We'll just dip down in this Johnson grass and the briars and stuff that are around us. and we're not going to be, if we do get caught by the game warden or law enforcement, they're going to have to catch us, you know. So we're not making our presence aware, I'd say. Okay.

Is that a good prediction? Yeah. So as it walks through the cutover, even though we had no visual on it, you could tell that it got to the road because the sound of. of pea gravel rolling under a foot. It makes total different sound. And so we heard it get to the road, and then we can tell that it's walking in our direction,

based on that it's getting louder. It's no longer breaking things, but you hear the steps in the road. David again, looks through his... Starlight scope. And he says, you don't want to, you don't want to hear this, but I can see all the way to the bridge or the bridge sign.

He says, well, there's, there's nobody in the road. And I said, who, of course there is. No, I'm telling you, there's nobody. So I let him put his rifle on my shoulder like I I'm a bipod so he can hold it completely still. And he says, I'm telling you, I can see all the way down to the bridge. And there's nobody in the road, although we're hearing the constant steps as is walking towards us. And I'm like, what do you mean you don't see anybody?

He's almost here, you know? And so he gives me the rifle. I look through it. And, you know, see. or non-seen is believing because I'm like, what in the blank is this? And so that, I think that was the first moment that I became almost numb because I am, we should see somebody. It's virtually a straight shot and there would be nothing around it if it's walking

in the road for. you know, to cause a shadow or to be in front of it to, you know, mess up its outline. And it is steadily walking up the, you know, what sounds like the middle of this peak gravel road. And it walks up the road. And we still realize that, you know, if it is a, if it is game ward and if it is law enforcement, we don't want to get caught. So we strategically move back, but try to do so without making any noise, further into the area that we're on that hill.

And we take a knee, and we're down below the Johnson grass and the briars and whatnot. And we hear the footsteps stop virtually where we had to assist each other up the hill. up the embankment and it clears that heel in like two or three steps. And obviously there were no trees or anything to hold on to to pull itself up. It just you hear the do to do to do. And this is something you guys had to help each other up, right? Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

So it's, you know, there's a there's a road and then there's the ditch and then there's counting the depth of the of the ditch probably 12 feet I won't say at least 10 if not 12 and it's pretty steep that's why we chose that area because you don't you don't have to worry about anything sneaking up on that side of you

outflank you on that side and it was able to scale that hillside so quickly that David immediately said, and I think you actually said it loud enough because at that point we realized that this is not, you know, human or it's something, it's something not to mess with.

It's definitely a situation to get out of. You, you, I think you yelled it actually, fall back, fall back. And so we zigzag further into the briars and whatnot. And so now we're on the down slope of the hill we were on. This would have had to crest. Are we doing? You're good. You're good.

We get on. So we would have seen something crest. We did not. But we could hear that it was making the same, the same zigzag pattern that we took as it's walking towards us. I think we fell back or repositioned maybe twice, three times, something. like that? At least twice. I know. I think the third time when we went all the way to the water's edge. So we make it to the soft sand and clay that leads into the swamp and the water. And it's February, so we don't want to get wet either. So we stop there. And now there's

kind of a clearing, right? There's a little buffer there that. but there's not a whole lot. Yeah. You know, so. I think it was to the left where we came in from. It was kind of open. Yeah. So if it was still following us, we'd be able to see it.

We had the water to the back of us. The only thing, the only blind spot we had was kind of to the right and in front of us. And it was just, you know, like sweet gum bushes, vines, briars, just a hodge, pod of vegetation. It's pretty near impenetrable. So we're thinking this avenue of approach is really our only main problem. And just to be clear, as this is unfolding, you're falling back and it's still coming towards you? Yes, correct. And as you're falling back, are you making a lot of noise doing this?

Or you trying to do it as silent as possible? We didn't on that first one, but on the second one, we needed distance more than we needed, you know, to be. quiet. Gotcha. And the last time we found a Wadi, which is just a washed out area. Okay. So there's no leaves, vegetation in. It's just soft sand.

We ran that thing all the way down. That's where we took it to the water's edge. And we ran that, I mean, almost perfectly silent. I don't think we had any sound from gear movement or anything. Nothing. We moved very stealthily in that last movement down to the water's edge. So we've got our hills next to the water. And as it approaches, it's in front of us.

And so we're also, you know, looking back at it, that was a very smart thing to do because if it is law enforcement, they could see how many we are. They could see that we're armed. And, you know, as law enforcement, I don't mind saying that, that I'm law enforcement. you want to identify yourself because that gives, you know, your, your adversary reason to say, well, I didn't know that it was a cop, you know, kind of deal. So, so as it gets, as it starts, you know, following that zigzag, David actually yelled out, identify or be fired upon or whatever it was. He gave it a Marine Corps challenge and password type of deal. But he let him know that it was, it was, you know, we're here. We're, you know, we're fixing to open up.

And it did not, you know, it didn't answer back. It didn't call back. And I'm expecting, you know, someone to say, hey, hey, hey, you know, don't fire. It's me. Or what are you boys doing down here, you know? But it didn't. And he said it at least twice, and it did not alarm it. And it stops at that washout.

And you could almost see the vegetation kind of parted, but you couldn't see it. There was no outline. And again, the moon, it was a pretty clear night. And even without looking through the starlight scope, we could see each other clearly. We could see in front of us clearly. But we didn't see this, what was causing this noise. And it stood there, felt like for a couple of seconds. And then it stepped or jumped or whatever within a couple of feet of us.

Jeez. Yeah. Well, it comes through that doggone what we thought. was impenetrable wall of vines and vegetation and stuff like that, that we really wasn't concerned at because we're focused on this direction because it's right here. And all of a sudden, that just starts coming alive almost.

Yeah. And that clear you're talking about kind of made a checkpoint or a choke point. the wall of vegetation that we're talking about, but it didn't care. It walked right up to the edge. You could see the things moving around it, but could not make, you couldn't, couldn't make out a shape to shoot at it or anything. And when it stepped into that soft sand, dirt, mud that we were standing in, my memory, of course, again, that maybe it did, maybe it didn't. I felt the shaking of the ground when it got on the same level with us.

And I think you did too because you didn't waste any time. You yelled fall back. Yeah, it startled both of us right then, right there. You said you yelled fall back. I mean, we didn't have a target. There was nothing to shoot at. There was no, there was no outline. There was no blur.

There was no. There was nothing. Nothing. Nothing visual. So we hit the water because that was, unfortunately, good or bad, that's what we had put behind us was the water. And so we rush into the water. We're about knee deep. And he's about four steps ahead of me.

and I center a limb that submerged in the water and had a fork in it and it caught my knee and I go, you know, face first into the swamp. I go completely underwater. Where it's about 30 degrees. Yeah, exactly. He hears the big splash. He turns around. He thinks that I've been gotten. He thinks that I am, you know, be, you know, that they're dragging.

me out. And so, and I'm moving so quickly and, you know, our clothes are absorbing all the water and whatnot. And so when I, when I go face first underwater, he grasped me by the, by the, by the, by the, you know, the collar of my shirt. And he starts dragging me, right? And so that kind of made us pause because, you know, I had, you know, hit a trip wire, so to speak. So that was when we hear it rush towards us at the water's edge, splashing. We see the splashes. We hear the splashes. Hear the stepping in the moist mud and even here.

And the suction. The suction when it pulls its foot back up. Still nobody. But you see nothing. See absolutely nothing. nothing. And we're turned around and, you know, of course, adrenaline. We're not even feeling any, any cold at that point, but we've got our, we've got our,

our weapons drawn in that direction. And you could make out, I mean, distinctively that it hit the water and then retreated out of the water. Right. No. And. So you saw the splash and go both directions in and out. Yeah.

Okay. And hearing it more than actually seeing the splashes. But, you know, we're standing still and we have, it's still water. It's a swamp. So there's some ripples that we had caused, but then there's also waves and whatnot of where it rushed into the water and is causing, you know, the disturbance of the water from its position. Sure. And then as it retreats out of the water. And so we start moving down the water a little bit.

Well, we move deeper into it. Yes, right. Because it was a wide, it was a wide open area that was flooded. And it was probably, most of it was knee-deep, maybe a little of it up to thigh-deep. But out in the middle of this wide-open area, because all the trees had died and fell. So it was just out in the middle of it was a beaver house. Yeah, yeah. I said, let's go to the beaver house.

Well, before we get to the beaver house, it was, as we're, as we get deeper, it walks the bank. Yeah. And there were, there, there, there were a couple of times that it tried to, you know, get into the water. And each time you could hear it step in the water and then retreat out of the water. And David actually said it doesn't like the water. And so we knew then the water's our friend. Yeah, that's the safest place for us. So unfortunately in February, we're like, well, I guess we've got to stay in the water.

Wow. So as we move down the canal, this thing gets highly irritated at the fact that it can't get to us. and that it does not want to get wet for whatever reason, did not want to get, you know, for whatever reason it was not willing to walk into the water. And that's when it got extremely irritated. And limbs on trees start breaking. We hear small trees getting uprooted,

or at least that's what it sounded like, things being chunked into the water, rocks, limbs. You could hear it pacing back and forth at the edge. Sometimes it would run. Sometimes it would walk. Like you see animals at the zoo, you know, when they get impatient, you know, and get curious. And it kept trying to probe into the water but wouldn't commit into the water. But it is breaking a lot of, I'm not talking about.

twigs. I'm talking about what sounded like limbs the size of your arm. Substantial size limbs just being broken and then chunked into the water. I don't remember any

I don't remember any any weird noises that have made other than like a nasally um I described it at the time as almost like two metal poles that were rusty being, like, stacked. It was, I'm not even going to try to mimic it, but it wasn't a growl. It was kind of thing there.

I just said, I was going to try to make an idea. Yeah, like a moan, but not, not ghostly or anything like that. A real low growl, moan type thing. And so I thought it was a bear at that point. There are some bear in that area. They're very rare, but. Very small honey bears, what we call them. 250 pounds, 300 maybe.

And, you know, it almost sounded like it was snorting and moaning at the same time. So I'm thinking a bear, hog, something. But they didn't really explain limbs being broken off and thrown. own, you know, and. Being able to see it. Yeah, or not being able to see it. And bears and hogs don't care if they get wet. That's their living room. They're used to walking through crap like that. Um, and as we're walking down that canal, when we, when, when we have come to the realization that the water is the only thing that's keeping us alive at that point or not, not allowing us to be gotten. Right. As we walk, every day. and then there would be, you know, a tree that had been blown over, and it's making like a bridge, a natural bridge over the canal. One of us would stop and hold our, hold our weapons up towards the tree while the other one ducked under it.

And then the one that would go under it, we'd turn around and, you know, giving each other cover. Because right now you guys are very aware that there's something. happening, there's something there that is that you're not able to see with your eyes. Absolutely. So that's why you felt the need to provide cover going underneath that branch because you don't know if it's actually standing on it. Exactly. And the fact that it wouldn't get in the water, I remember thinking how easy it would be to walk out on the trees and just pick us out. like, you know, apples, you know, out of a barrel.

And I could just, I could just envision being grabbed, you know, by my head or where David getting grabbed by his head and being pulled up. And, you know, I don't want to shoot my friend. And I don't, I haven't seen it. But at least that would give me something to shoot at, something that's pulling him up. And so we're, you know, we're, we're poised on, on that, on that threat. And I don't know why it never used that unless maybe it was too far into the mud to get to that. Maybe we were too far into the water?

Yeah. I mean, were these big trees? I mean, yeah, it's big enough that you could walk across. But something as big as what it sounded like it was, do you think it would have thought maybe it would break through? Yeah, maybe.

If it was scared of the water, you know, like, I mean, I'm just trying to put myself in, well, I probably didn't have shoes, but it's shoes. And just the idea that, like, I don't want to be in the water for whatever reason. The idea of going out on this limb and hopefully it holding me, it's not even a part of the equation. Well, that's a good point. I'm still hoping that it's a human. I'm still hoping that it's something that is normal. As a matter of fact, at one point, we paused enough to stop and have the conversation.

Could it be these guys? We pretty much ruled out game wardens. Yeah. But, you know, we've ruled out other hunters because I don't think they would have taken it that far. But I don't know if it was I mentioned it or you mentioned it, but we said, you know, could it be, you know, weed growers, you know, checking their crop. Sure. And whichever one said that, the other one said in February, it's like, okay, let's rule that out. And the fact that if they saw our arsenal on us.

Yeah. Yeah. It's all fun of game still. Somebody gets shot, right? Right. So we kind of figured that, but you know, we're trying to process it with some type of reality. And yeah, right, trying to make sense of it if we can. And you take it for that.

Do I know. I know I'm hogging this mic because my anxiety gets high on this. I've told the story once. We're going to hear yours. It's fine. I think this is going great because I was sitting here. And as you're telling the story, I was like, I feel like this is the first. time ever hearing this story. Because it's a different person telling the story. And it's just

it's like almost like a whole different perspective. But you know, I don't tell this story often. And my kids will hear it now because I'll tell them to, you know, to listen in. But I've, I've never told my kids this because both my boys were in Boy Scouts and I didn't want them to grow up with the, the horror of there is something out there even though, you know, you got the grownups and the scoutmaster's going, there's nothing out in the woods. out here that's going to hurt you. No, unless. Right.

So. Unless you try that. So, so anyway, so as we, as we are navigating through, through the canal and it, you know, it's not a constant sound of limbs being broken,

but as, as we continue on, you could hear it, kind of keeping pace with us or or and every now and then we because we were being very quiet and whispering and trying to and of course you know the canal is it's not a straight line right the creek is not a you're calling the old slew run yeah it wasn't the canal itself but that old slew run a 10 for yeah was the deeper part of that swamp we were in you know some of it you you'd get up chest deep if you stepped off into the slew in February in February and

And so it seemed like when it would realize that we had gotten further away from it, you could hear it running or moving faster. And it would get, you know, ticked off that we were getting away from it. And then you'd hear the limbs again. You'd hear things being thrown. You'd hear that nasally, that sound again. So it wasn't a constant breaking of things. And so that kind of gave us a problem because a lot of times we didn't know exactly where it was.

And we hope that it didn't know exactly where we were. We were just in the water. And so, you know, we're trying to slip through. And, you know, it did. So we finally get to. Unless you have something to add on the, as we make it through the, the slew now towards the beaver hut. Yeah, yeah, when we climbed up on the beaver hut, that's when we, that's when we had a conversation about trying to figure out what it was. But we were, we were just laying there, you know, scanning the water.

Because the water, once we get out of the water and we're up on the hut, all the way around us, it's like a sheet of glass. once the ripples go away and I tell Derek I say you know what if this joker does come in the water and we we can see the ripples and two there's nothing between so we'll be able to see the ripples

we'll be able to see the splash and we'll be able to see a direction and maybe you know figure something out here are you thinking fire if we see it if we have a confirmed target in your mind would have a confirmed target B, the ripples in the water then?

At this point, yes, I think so. Because we, even though we hadn't maybe had the conversation or made the remarks, neither one of us had seen anything to shoot at. There was nothing to even, I mean, you could shoot in this direction. What have you done? Now you're depleting your supply, right? You've wasted ammunition and you've given your position. You're giving away your position.

So when we got on top of that Beaverhood, And we're whispering in order for anything to get to us, it's going to have to leave evidence. Yeah, exposed itself. You know, through that water, we're going to see, we're either going to see a wake. We're going to see a V in the water. We're going to see splash as something. And we had, I guess we'd agreed, even though you don't see it, this is it. And I don't think we actually said the words, but I was convinced that I was going to die that night.

And I had said, you know, to myself, you know, I'm praying. We're both Christians. We're both devout Christians. And so we did. We prayed both to ourselves and to each other. and we knew that that was it. I had come to the realization I wasn't getting out of there alive. It was, that was it.

That was the alimaux. We were to the point where, you know, we was checking magazines, how many mags we got. Yeah, we pulled it out and set them in front of us. Yeah. So he has this many rounds, we do a speed reload. 12-gauge, you know. Pulled her knives out, stuck it in there. So if, you know, we're kind of back to back, you know, this is it.

You know, this is where it's going to go down. Yep. Mark the Beaver Hut. In the middle of a swamp. Wow. And I guess that's when the coyotes started coming in. Well, it had gotten quiet. It had gotten quiet.

Okay, which was, you know, not a good thing because now we don't know if it's, you know, changing its direction. what's going on. And far off in the distance, we hear a coyote, how. And I said over my shoulder to Dink, I said, great, now the coyotes are here. Because, you know, if we had just seen them earlier in the night, we would have shot, we would have had a great hunt. We'd be back at his house, you know, kicked back warm. but now, after all this, the irony of the coyote howling.

And so we hear, we hear a Cody how off in the distance. And then we heard what sounded like another pack answering the coyote that was howling. So is one coyote howling and then a pack responded? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then I think I'm right. right on this, we heard yet another pack.

From a different direction. Which was unusual because now we're talking about or sounded like three different packs. Of course, you know, they can disperse and whatnot. It might have been a huge pack. And two coyotes can sound like six or eight. Oh, yeah. You know, just all their yipping. Because it's a change in the pitch.

Yeah, different pitch, everything. But it's coming from like three different areas, like it's triangulating on our position. and they go to yippin and they're getting closer. So they're coming into where we are. They're coming into the swamp, you know. And we're like, what the crap is this? Yeah, what is going on now? Like, can it get any worse?

Yeah. And we actually have visual on cows. Every now and again, we'll see a cow. Yeah, darting across. Yeah. Or catch some water splashing. We're seeing them little. devils, but this massive thing that's after us, we can't see.

And it's just further confounding everything we're trying to figure out here. And so you can hear the steps of the coyotes, and they're so close to us that you can hear running and then the, when they go airborne over a down tree or they're clearing something, you hear that where they land and whatnot, we're like, oh, crap, you know, they're right up on us. Were you concerned about the coyotes at this point as far as like a danger? I don't remember being as scared of the coyotes as the whatever this was that was chasing. I mean, I don't want a coyote, you know, in my lap, but typically they've killed them before. about coyotes doing that, right?

Because it's hoard you. We've dispatched Menae Coyote in our day. What I find interesting about this scene right now is that they're coming in, you're seeing them. Yeah. They're used to being out there. I imagine they probably might even know you're there.

That's what we were thinking. Why would they be there that's keeping them close to you? Right. And we noticed that. that was weird because on our hunts, you know, we would have loved for code to come in. That's what we were trying to run. If you'd only had that call down. Yeah.

That would have happened. But anyway, so as they start moving in on our position and getting close enough that we, you know, we see them out of the corner of our eye or we see them dart in between things. And, you know, our guns are off safety and we're about to pull the trigger. but that's not our biggest concern. Our biggest concern is something that can break limbs and throw at us in the water. And so we're spanning and we then start to hear growls. And it's coyote grouse. But one and then another and then another.

And so multiple coyotes have. found something to attack, kill, eat, fight, something. My first thought was that the packs now had overlapped and they were going to fight each other. That's what I thought, right? But when the, when the CODIs are growling, they're not yipping. They're no longer doing the yip. They're doing the defensive, aggressive growling. and then you hear what sounded like them kind of charging in on whatever they were growling at, right?

And we have marveled over the fact that it sounded like you had a recording of the coyotes growling, and then you flipped the power switch because it was like, There was no like, there was no, tailing off. Tailing off. Yeah, that's a good. There was no digression of the volume. It was a sudden stop of the sound of this first cody.

And then we hear another one growl and run in and same thing. And we hear, go ahead, take a. from there. Well, at the same time, when you hear the growling stop, you could get the final like, you know, which tells me that Cody's dead. You know, it's going from attack mode to dead mood. Yeah. And then whatever it was attacking, let loose a, tell me if I'm explaining this right,

but it sounded like a, it started like a moaning growl, but it was very, very deep, like a very large lung capacity. And it went into a almost a roar. I don't even know if I can try it, but it was like a roe. Yeah. Yeah. And this isn't a coyote. No. No.

But it was like, you know, turning the lights off. You didn't hear another coyote after that. It's like they went in silent mood. And you could hear them running away. And got to heck out of dodge. We think at least two died that was killed, maybe more. Yeah, yeah. I know I had a dumbfounded look on my face.

Derek was looking at me like, you know, what is going on here? and I don't know, I guess it just finally clicked in our head. You had a great idea. This may be our chance to get out of here. Because it's distracted, right? It's distracted. So we, I said, let's bust right through the middle. You know, we've been taking it around the edge, kind of staying along the edge,

letting it follow us to the backside. I said, let's cut straight through the middle. I know where the deep holes are. We can avoid that. We'll get out on that other side and we'll get out of here while this thing's dealing with the coats, maybe. Well, we do that. We actually get out of the water on the other side. We make it up.

We're heading up the hill out of the cutover kind of from where we came. And I don't know what made me think of this. I really don't know. We probably should have went back to the truck. But something told me. I think we were cut off from the truck. We may have been cut off. The angle was closer to the house.

The angle, but something, something just said, you know, let's walk home. We were, what, two miles, two and a half miles from Mom and Ditties. I said, let's get out here. We get up out of the cutover. There's a small stretch of woods. Then we got up onto the road. And once we were on the road, was we on the road yet or maybe when we was going up, maybe to the edge of the tree line before you get to the road, we hear.

the same sound again, except this time, it went from a grunny growl, howl into a scream. Maybe it was a long, drawn-out thing, and it takes something and starts whooping on something else. And it wasn't high pitch. It wasn't like a cougar or a panther. Because we've seen those before. Yeah, it was nothing like that. It was really, it had some serious lung capacity, and it was deep.

when I say a scream, it's not like you'd think a woman scream or like you said, a Panther scream or Cougar. It was, it was just a really drawn out. I guess we'd call it a holler. Yeah. You know, you get a hollered.

Yeah. And, uh, I looked at, I looked at Derek and I said, I think he knows we're going. Yeah. Just figured out that we're not longer there.

But it's, it gets, I don't know if it gets a. a stick or something and it starts beating on something else. And to me, it sounded like if you were whooping on a inverted fiberglass canoe. Cano, yeah. Or something like it. It was that kind of sound.

It almost had a hollow sound to it. But, you know, there's a lot of cypress that go down out there in the swamp that holler out, that get rotten out. and it could have been that. I don't know, but it was beating on something and making this crazy screaming. I say, you know, let's double time. Let's double time. So we start jogging down the road back toward mom and dads. And there's a lady that lived in a hard corner.

And she always kept three or four, at least three, if not four, very large dogs. And this was a widow woman, extremely nice lady. But she always kept those very large dogs. I thought, you know, maybe she's just didn't want anybody coming up. She lived out there by herself. In hindsight, you know, maybe she had them for something else. But I said, Derek, these dogs, we're coming up in the dark,

we may have to negotiate with these rascals, you know. We come running by her house. We never see them. As a matter of fact, we heard them. They were cowering under her house. So they heard the yell too. Yeah. And they did not come out to.

No, sir. And you know, that might have been why we had parked at another place because we didn't want to walk by that house and disturb the dogs in the first place. So the dogs were known to be like, parking dogs. Yeah, they were very aggressive. I mean, they didn't attack people, but they would protect her. Yeah. You never know when they decide tonight's the night. I'm going to go ahead and bite you.

Yeah. And I mean, I've had a dog get wandered off down there and they took care of him. Really? Okay. But those dogs did not, they were not doing their job that night. They were not having any of that. And I wonder, we got back, we got, you know, it was another, probably another mile, mile and a quarter from there on to the mom and dad's house.

But we got back. We got in some dry clothes. He took a hot shower. He had to be back at work, what, 12? You worked 12 to 10? I don't remember, yeah. Anyway, but you needed a couple hours of sleep at least. So we just, we piled up in the floor.

We piled up on the edge floor and got some sleep, got up the next morning. And Derek said, man, I had the worst dream last night. The dude, if you dreamed that we'd just been chased through a swamp or it was It was literally five hours. We got back to my mom and dad's house at 5.30, didn't we? Yeah. Yeah. So we had been being pursued for at least five, five and a half hour.

Yeah. And I said, if you, if you dreamed that, I had the same dream. He's like, crap. I was hoping that it was not real. But, you know, we've talked about this a lot since. We, we have spent hours that the Internet was new back then. AOL, you know, B.

Bing, yeah. Yeah. Now, at the time, we didn't know, you know, we had no idea what that was. We had no idea. And so back to the fact that my job at the time was a substance abuse treatment center. And so one of my responsibilities was interviewing new clients when they would come in. And there was an adolescent from the Choctaw Indian Reservation.

And so part of our intake was asked some questions like, what was your drug of choice? When did you use? What were your triggers? What did, you know, so that you could kind of personalize a treatment. for them. And so, and it was just a generic question, but that we would ask, you know, everybody. And like I said, I had a sheet that I read down. And one of the questions was, do you ever see things that other people don't? Do you ever talk to spirits and stuff like that? And we didn't have a whole lot of Native Americans that came to the Treatment Center. unless they were court ordered and that was the case here.

And so that's a little different take because of their culture versus, you know, just, you know, somebody from, you know, a regular neighborhood. And so when I when I asked that question, the kid said, well, yeah, that's what we do. We're Indians. And I kind of felt, you know, stupid about that. And I said, well, can you, can you elaborate on that? So, you know, I'm going to write these things down. He talked about some of the spirits of his ancestors and whatnot. I guess that's to be expected for him at that stage in his culture.

And I said, have you experienced anything else? And that's when he said, well, except for, and I know I'm going to butcher this attempt at translation, but he said, a few times I've seen Nalosaceta. And I said, wait, what is that? And he says, well, no, lozaceta is big, hairy, black man. And I said, huh. And he goes, it's kind of like you're bigfoot, but that's not what we call it. And I said, well, what is that?

And he goes, well, I guess it's kind of like the spirit of the woods. And I said, well, where were you when you saw it? Again, I'm going down the checklist. So where do you see that? How did you see it? Kind of deal. And he said, well, a couple of times when he was younger and hunting with his father or his grandfather, they came across this large thing. And his father and grandfather said, turn your back to it.

Don't be scared. If you're scared, it will attack. Don't be scared. turn away from it and let it walk away. That's like the exact opposite of what I want to do. Turn my back to it and don't be scared. Absolutely. And I'm going to leave a scent trail to you.

But and so when he was saying that, I said, so how often have you seen that thing? And what does it do? And they started talking about that, you know, it tears, you know, it breaks off limbs. It'll try to scare you and whatnot. And it only comes after you when, you know, when he thinks that you know. And it sounded like it was a tale of, you know, the boogeyman, you know, to keep kids in line and whatnot. But I said, now, Losaceta, that is interesting. And I immediately called David.

And I said, hey, this is something that we need to consider. But this was, what, a couple of months afterwards? Yeah. I mean, it wasn't immediately after, but it was close enough to where, you know, maybe there's something to that. And that's when we started thinking, well, maybe it's something that. we could research. Right. Yeah.

That's when we figured out that. When he went back to work, he took me back to get my pickup. So I rearmed. I got something bigger and better. I picked up an M1A, which is basically a 308, 20 round mags. And, you know, I really don't like being. chased out of where, you know, I've spent most of my childhood. Yeah.

We've been down there a lot of times. A lot of times. And never anything strange. I mean, yeah, sometimes strange, but nothing is this, you know. Strange things you don't let bother you be, because, you know, you. We finished down there a bunch of times too. We've camped down there. Yeah, sure have.

You experience things you can't understand, but there's a certain level that you just accept, you know. I don't know what that is. You know, I'm not supposed to know. It's not hurting me. We're all good. But when I went back, I wanted to, we had both at this point realized it wasn't a man. So I wanted to try to find some tracks.

I walked back down there to where it was, broad daylight. I had my rifle with me. And I'm walking around. I'm walking all around where we were. I see our tracks. I see coyote tracks. I see deer tracks, coon tracks,

everything you would expect to see around a watering hole, you know, where animals will come and drink or look for food. But that's it. And I'm getting kind of puzzled because I know we heard it walking back,

I heard it stepping in the mud and pulling its feet out. Couldn't find anything. And I come up upon this dog track, and this is, This never crossed my mind until I started listening to other things. You know, I thought a werewolf or dogman or whatever was Hollywood or at least European folk tale. I mean, for full transparency when I started this show, that's the way I leaned.

I heard about dogman. I was like, I don't know what I think about that. We didn't even hear about dog man. The only thing we knew was Lon Cheney, you know, skipping across the screen in fur. But, you know, I look down at this huge dog track and he still ain't registering. I'm just, I'm curious at this point because I hadn't found anything else. I'm like, that has got to be the biggest dagon dog I've ever seen. And I squat down.

I squat down. My knees are not on the ground because it's still a little muddy there. There's water in the track. Still muddy. You know, the mud hadn't settled out of the track yet. And I squat down, I lay my rifle across my lap, and I'm putting my hand down there to it. And it's about that big around track. So it's like covering like up to your knuckles?

Yeah, probably up to my fingernails. Wow. It's probably five and a half, six inches across. That's huge. Or a dog. And, you know, I'm telling myself, well, it's mud. You know, he may have kind of got in it and it slid a little. little, his feet spread out further because he's trying to keep from sinking in the mud so much.

That's what I'm telling myself. And for a long time, it's all it was. But at that moment, you get that feeling. I mean, it hits you like, like, you know, a brick falling out of the sky. All of a sudden, I know something's watching me. Because this has been less than six, seven hours since we was down there. in the swamp. Something's watching me, and I got that feeling.

The hair that I used to have, started standing up on the back of my neck, and I just got that sick feeling. One, because I knew it was watching me, and two, because I knew it had me. You know, I'd let my guard down, and I could feel it. It had to be behind me, because while I'm sitting there, I'm scanning everything in front of them. I'm scanning left or right. There's nothing there. And I'm trying to work out a plan here to get myself out of this.

And about six or seven or eight feet in front of me is a pine tree. It's about 10 or 12 inches around or across, you know. Pretty good size pine tree. And I think to myself, all right, I'm going to just kind of stand up like nothing's happening, just like I've been doing. But as I stand up, I click the weapon off safe, you know, So I was making other noise to know if it's somebody or whatever. If it's intelligent, it maybe didn't hear me getting ready to fire because it could, you know, trigger it.

No pun intended. And I just start walking around casually, nonchalantly again. And I'm really worried because I don't know how close it is behind me, but I walk past that pine tree. And when I get past it, there's an obstacle. I've got something between me and it. So if it gets me, it's got to come through that tree. Just get closer to microphone. Oh, I'm sorry.

You got to get closer. You know, it's got to come closer to that or come through that tree. And what I did is at that time, I used the tree. I turned and I threw up using the tree for a brace and I'm scanning behind me. Again, nothing. I don't see it. I can feel it. I can feel something there.

I don't know how close at this point because it wasn't right behind me like I thought. But it was there. And that feeling did not leave until I got up that heel. Got out of there, got my truck, and got most of the way back to Mom and Dad's house again. Jeez. But going back to the research when we, and again, at that point, the big dog track left my, mind again because I'm not associating that with this and it may not have nothing to do with it. I don't know. I just remember that being out of place, it seemed like.

I mean, yeah. I mean, here in this part of East Tennessee, I know, you grew up around here. That's right. Derek, do you remember hearing anything about a dog man creature around here because it's becoming something that's often discussed now? My family has a lot of strange stories, but I don't remember a dog man in particular. Okay. You finding the print you found, we found similar prints around here. And the world will get to see at some point is part of a documentary that we did.

It was down in, well, I don't want to say exactly where it was at, but there was fresh rain. it would go down in like valley and there's this mud track and it was fresh that day it stepped across it and i didn't i didn't come across and find it my friend did earlier the day knowing we're going to be there he was kind of scouting the area for us and uh he pulled out a skull can to put next to it and a skull can looked like a like a quarter next to me you know like a half dollar piece it was it was very large um and uh we had some interesting things happened that night there. I'll probably get into that here in a few minutes, but I don't want to deter away from your experience because you guys go through that experience. And you mentioned about the guy you were checking in saying it was Lenosa Cheta. Yeah, no Losa Cheta. That's what it sounded like. And again, I'm sure I'm not pronouncing it correctly.

But I tried looking at it myself. And the word Linoza means woolly in Spanish, which is a nico, which is a nico. name for a furry creature. And so I don't know about Cheta because they didn't come up with it. But like the idea that Linosa, I mean, that that's something that like fits the Bigfoot description. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, prior to this, and you had asked us before we got in front of the microphones that there was not even a, there was not even a belief of anything like that.

in that area. We thought that if it was a Sasquatch, Nalosach, Chet, Bigfoot, whatever, that's not our neighborhood. That's Washington, Oregon, Northern California. That'd be cool. In fact, I probably said, man, that'd be cool to go up there and try to find it. But that's not something you find in, you know, north-central Mississippi. Right.

And so, and during our, during our encounter, I wasn't thinking Bigfoot. I was thinking something, you know, physical and then maybe something spiritual. And, you know, but, you know, I didn't have, I didn't have a preconception of there being something out there that would do that. us to, you know, form into a, into a hypothesis or whatnot. Oh, that was probably a X, Y, or Z. No, I didn't. No, we, even after we ruled out a human, we still didn't have a box to put it in. Yeah.

Because it was just, like Derek said, that don't happen. That's not around here. Yeah. In our investigations later, you know, we hit the internet. We found some very rudimentary things. I think you even looked up, Nalusacita. Yeah. There's also another creature that is in Choctaw legend called a Nalosophila.

There's also, but it's more of a spiritual type creature and not a physical thing. and maybe Nalosa Chita is spiritual to them as well. I don't know. But, you know, we went through all this. We went through that. We looked up. And we started looking at Bigfoot and we're like. And this is by amateurs, you know, we're looking for any type of explanation or has anyone experienced something like us.

Because except for our mom and dad, I mean, I told my mom and dad and, And, of course, my mom and dad are like, so you're not going to go back there again. Nope, we're going back tomorrow night. And we did. We went back several times. It never, we, we, we, we, we never had another encounter like that. Or I didn't when I was down there. And I never got that, that sick feeling that, that I had like that night.

But some of the research that we found was something similar, but. and back to the previous conversation was, you know, is a Bigfoot or the box, like you said, is that a convenient explanation for it? Because there are some similar things. But then at the same token, you say, well, it didn't have some of the same characteristics. It didn't have some of the same characteristics as this other story that you hear somebody else say. But then at the same time, like we were talking about, East Tennessee versus other parts of the United States.

If you were watching a family, you might have a good idea of what that family does, but they may only have some similarities as a family that lives in New York or California or wherever. So you can't really say, oh, that I cross it off the list because it did this and we know that it wouldn't do that. Yeah, there's not enough information out there. But we saw that there were similar stories in Ohio, Kentucky, obviously here in Tennessee, North Carolina. And then, you know, we also cross-reference things like swamp ape and stink ape and so on and so forth. Maybe that's what it was.

Who knows? And we kind of, you know, kind of noticed that there was. it could be like a like a nomadic type of travel. Like migrating? Yeah, right. Yeah. Based on weather or based on you know, whatever. Yeah.

So before we get into all the research stuff, I I got some things I got to just share with you guys because please while you were telling the story it's funny because what I'm about to share happened after you and I talked initially, David. But there are some similarities going on here. One, I did my first documentary Exhibition Dogman, and we went to Kentucky, and the story is basically this guy, Kyle, he went out in the woods one night when he was 15 with his grandfather.

They were coon hunting. His grandfather couldn't really go through the woods like he used to, so he stayed behind the truck. They had radios. dogs took off they got a scent he's going through the woods trying to track and he hears the dogs they treat a coon and

then he hears these coyotes coming in and this is where the similarity I feel is there's a connection between these things and coyotes almost like we were talking about earlier that people talk about Bigfoot and Dogman not getting along there's something to do with the coyote

in that vein as well yeah these coyotes come in and he has his two hunting dogs. One was a younger one being trained by the older one. The older one was a legendary hunting dog in the area. Everybody knew his dog. The coyotes come in one at a time

and he hears the younger dog run off, scared, leaving the other one by himself. And the other one is handling his business. He was fighting the coyotes. He goes to tree and the next one comes in, he fights it, whatever. His grandfather gets on the radio and says, you need to get in

there before the coyotes kind of really give it to the dog. So he's booking it. And then here's the coyotes actually come in together as a pack. And they start really laying it in on his dog. And he's trying to get there. And all of a sudden he hears his dog, his other dog come in and the fight changes. Like there's these two dogs fighting these coyotes. And he gets there. And once the fight's over, he doesn't get there until the fights over. When he arrives, his dog is back to treeing the raccoon. There's no coyotes. are found and he goes over, he pats his dog on the head. Dog's name was Jake.

And he hears the other dog, Bo, the younger one on the other side of the tree, chomping down on a coyote. And so he's like, man, this dog's learning real good, you know, good job. And so it's a big tree. It was a real big tree. He walks around the back of the tree. And it was not his dog, Boe, that came back to fight those coyotes. He said the dog that he saw on the other side of that tree was

so big that it was holding a coyote by the rib cage in its mouth. Holy crap. And he comes around, he hits it with the light, and it stands up. So he said he hits it with the light and looks at him, it drops the coyote, and it stands up on its hind legs. And his mind, he's like trying to rationalize like this dog is leaning against a tree, you know, and then it takes a step towards him. And the story, he tells it in much more detail, just like, you know,

you guys shared your, if I told your story, I'd tell it in like probably 20 minutes because I wouldn't live the details of it. So he tells the details of this whole story of how this thing took chase on him. And the only way he survived is because his dog Jake intervened, I think two or three times. And the last time he got away and he hears this thing just tearing his dog to pieces. And long story. It's episode 335. I called a dog versus dog man. And long story short, Jake survived that attack. And he found Jake and Bo was found by somebody at a corner store somewhere. And they went and got their dog.

But there's this mirror image in my head of these two different accounts. Now, I know in your story, we don't know exactly what it was, but it has a similarity of these creatures not getting along with coyotes. and coyotes not getting along with these creatures. And then on a more intimate note, I just kind of alluded to it a few minutes back, but we were shooting a documentary in Kentucky. And it went sideways,

and we wound up finding ourselves going from western Kentucky through the state to eastern Kentucky down here in East Tennessee. And we spontaneously found ourselves in an area investigating and it was pretty dead that night. And I had an upper respiratory infection at the time I didn't know it. I just knew I was really sick. My wife told me that like once I was done with this, she's like, you're going to die.

Like, you're just, you're going to collapse. And she was right. I did. But that night, it was pretty silent. And it was probably about 2 o'clock in the morning. and I went over my friend Joel and I just said to him and say, hey man, like, you want to go out, you know, on foot and just see what we turn up one more time because it's pretty dead. And so we decided to go down to that area where my friend earlier that day found that track. And we went down there, we found the area.

And we see right there that there's a trail on both ends of this. It was like a cut out. It was a pipeline, actually. And so it was a wide area that was cut out. But there was a trail going into the woods on both sides of that, right where that is. And I just said them logically, whatever created this giant print that we're looking at here might have just crossed right here on the path. So we go and we walk this path all the way down to the river and nothing.

So we come back. And we try to go on the other side to the trail, but it was so thick that I was thinking, nothing that size came through here. Nothing has walked this for a while. So we're kind of deflated and we're walking back towards headquarters where the one cameraman and my brother Jack was there. And kind of call it a night. And then there's this other trail that kind of popped up that we didn't really see before. And let's go down the trail.

And so as soon as we walked in there, we started getting this smell. And him and I both described the smell differently. But for me, it's smelled very musty. And I know he always looks at me sideways when I say this, but it smelled like, to me, it smelled like an old, like wet, musty man that just got out of the shower and just has like this like old, like must smell, like really, really strong. Reminded me my grandfather, be honest.

But it would come in and then we would go. Come in and it would go. and as we proceeded down, it would do that. And at one point, I had gotten pretty sick. And I know there's, like, there's part of you that's like, yep, that's what happens in these encounters. People get sick. But I did have a respiratory infection. And I was swalling tons of, like, like, like, spit and like, you know, the mucus.

And that's the where I'm like, yeah. It's just, it was bad. So I do want to say that there's a There's a strong medical likelihood that I was just getting sick to my son from doing that Sure But it got to the point where I had like kind of stop and I leaned over my knees and I was and the only camera we had was like a handheld night vision camera that we went out with like we have good cameras But like this way we were doing that particular on foot session was meant to be more like a night vision vlog kind of thing And so it's on a it.

It's on this handheld tripod that if I were to set up, it's only about that high off the table, you know? And so I said, let's just stop here and just give me a second. So I set up the tripod and turned the screen. It flips so I could see me on the screen so I knew I was in frame. And unfortunately, there was a blade of grass going in front of the lens. So it focused in on that and I was blurry. I was like, darn it.

But I'm in frame, squatted down. completely dark, and we start hearing walking behind the camera in the woods. And the camera is facing me and it has a shotgun microphone, so it's meant to pick up the audio that it's facing, but the things behind it, it's not picking up much because it's not designed to do that. And so we both acknowledge we hear walking behind the camera, and I stand up, and now you're seeing from about my chest down, because now I'm out of frame. and we hear the walking and I can't remember the detail as to when we hit the lights, but I feel like we heard the walking.

I stand up in about 20 seconds later, we hear something charging us, and it was bipedal. And it's like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and he's coming right at us. And, I mean, it scared the crap out of us. and I had a 10-millimeter Smith & Wesson on my side, and I pull out and I point because it is, it's coming from directly behind the camera, and it's running right at us. And there's no running.

It's coming. Yeah. And we can relate to that. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like, I draw and I point, like right over the camera, and it stops right there behind the camera. We hit the lights,

and we see absolutely nothing. It ran. Physically, you hear it charging, and you hear it coming, and it's right there, and it stops. And we see nothing. And I holster, and probably about seconds later,

I don't know how long, we hear a yell. And it wasn't like a high-pitched scream. It was this, like, from the diaphragm, like yell of just like from behind us not in front of us from behind us

from a distance behind us it sounded like from distance and then after that some silence and then all of a sudden and this is where it kind of gets weird too in person

it sounded like a bunch of monkeys going off around us and you even see on there's an exchange where base camp radio's in thinking we're clowning around. They heard it. Jack heard it. And they thought we were goofing around. And we're like, no, we're not goofing around. And I think you hear it was Joel

is like, there's a bunch of monkeys going off around us. That's what it sounded like. When we review that night, that charge was so loud that the shotgun microphone picked it up. And you literally see me draw as a result of this charge coming up to the camera. You get the screen that happened behind us. We pick up the cameras and we start leaving. And the audio that we have up to that point is everything's accurate, except for those monkeys. In person, it sounded like monkeys.

On the audio for the video, to me, it sounds like owls. hooting. Owls, hooting. Yeah. But in person, it didn't sound like that. To me, it sounded like monkeys. You hear Joel acknowledge we have monkeys going off around us, but on camera, it sounds like owls.

But on camera, leading up to that, you definitely hear the charge, you definitely hear the scream coming from behind us. And so you guys are telling this story. And I'm like, this has a lot of similarities to what we experienced probably about two years ago locally here. And so with that on the table and what you guys have experienced, like in your gut, forget your research that you've done to this point at that moment. Yeah, forget even my story that I shared with you maybe.

but like in your gut what do you think you encountered that night? I mean, like it sounds like whatever you encountered is some kind of supernatural creature. And the way I would describe it, something that's translucent that's invisible but yet physically there at the same time. I mean, it sounds like the predator almost. We've talked about that over the phone. What do we think? And sometimes we, sometimes we end up going to. and, you know, well, maybe it wasn't that after all,

because I'm not, I'm not convinced that it was a Bigfoot. I think Big, big, foot idea is, is cool, and I've got a couple of T-shirts and hats and whatnot. And I love, I love the thought of there being something like that out there, but I don't think that, based on not being able to see it, and the no evidence afterwards, I tend to think there was something spiritual. I agree.

I agree. There is absolutely no reason why we should not be able to pick up a visual on that. I mean, bright moon. We could see each other fine. We negotiated that cut over ourselves without a flashlight. You know, it was bright. Plus, I had the starlight. You could hear it coming.

You knew exactly where it was by the sound. Nothing. Never got anything through the, through the, you know, some people say, well, what you can see with your naked eye, don't pick up on a video, maybe, maybe because of the electronics and stuff. Either or we couldn't see it with our eyes. We couldn't see it with the starlight. We should have been able to see it. Yeah. You know, you talked about the difference in the sound versus. what you remember hearing and what was picked up on the audio.

And, you know, I give a lot of thought to what we encountered a lot. And sometimes I lean towards, well, fear will make you see things. Fear will make you hear things, especially when you try to put it all together. The human mind is great at filling in the blank. with what we already know to be factual. And so, oh, that was an owl or that was, you know, whatever. But then also based on both my inner faith and then other things that I hear on podcast and whatnot about how if something was supernatural, if something was spiritual, then why is it? it far-fetched to think that it can't personalize what you perceive. We know that we have

personal feelings with and personal relationships with the God of our choice or the God of our understanding. And if something is on the other side of the aisle, so to speak, of that demonic or what have you, can it not played to those same symptoms? Can it not? It not? have you see something or hear something, and even though David is experiencing it in real time with you, he might see or hear something differently because it brings about a different connection or a different response. Or a different attack. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. You know, so, I mean, it would be fantastic if I could say, oh, this was an alien and this is, you know, something from outer space. and therefore it's able to do things that I can't explain because that technology, we don't have anything to base it on. To me, that seems like a convenient explanation. Yeah. I kind of like, you know, there's those people wink, wink, that say, oh, it's government. Oh, it's the government.

Well, when you put it under the term of something, then that has the ability to do anything unexplainable to it. explain what you experienced. But I don't think it was, I mean, personally, I don't think it was from outer space. I think it was, I think it was something spiritual. And if spiritual means another realm, that I think it has the ability to, to both make physical contact with things in the physical world, like breaking the limbs and throwing the limbs, other than a primate, like you said, it sounded like monkeys. I can't think of an animal that has the strength to break limbs and then also the dexterity to throw things like we had. Is it that we can't mimic the sounds because what we heard was something that's not familiar and therefore we can't mimic something that we haven't had enough exposure.

to remember the sound or is it something that it has the ability to affect something like electronics, digital, technical, because we know that those things operate at a different frequency than humans do. And so, I mean, if it has the ability to be invisible or not want to be seen but can still physically touch something, it could. do anything. I agree. Really?

Didn't you, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you were talking to the kid at the CDU where you were, when he called and Lusachita big hairy black man, black was not a description of color. It was a description of you can't see it unless it was to be seen. Yeah. Interesting. At first I thought he meant because, you know, it's dark and I'm thinking, you know, a Sasquatch thing.

Yeah. But it may be because it was, you know, late at night and you can't see it. It's, you know, pitch black or the abyss, you know? Wow. Yeah. People will talk about, you brought up aliens and stuff, and I'm not saying what you guys experienced an alien. Definitely, you say spiritual.

I'm in the same line of thinking. I mean, anytime you're talking about something that's there, showing physical proof that's there, but you can't see it. To me, I'm like, okay, we're talking about a supernatural experience right now, act accordingly. So there are people who will have alien experiences, and they'll go through it together. Like you said, you two had an experience where you're in your pickup truck, you're driving down the road, and there's an alien standing in the middle of the road looking at you. And you, Derek, recalling the next day to your family members, you're all together talking about it,

you're like, yeah, there was this gray or green, skinny-looking alien, big eyes, no-nose, little mouth, you know, classic depiction. And at the same time, David is telling a story. And he's like, yeah, we were driving down the road. This thing was standing in the middle of the road. It was this giant owl just standing in the middle of the road. And it's just like that is something that happens a lot where people will have a super. natural experience and they walk away with a very different description. And that can even go to like perspectives. Now, I don't think that it's all about the perspective in some of these cases.

But when it comes to like your classic haunting type experience that people would have, I mean, it really does depend on what the person's worldview is going into that experience on how they describe that experience. So like if, you know, a priest and an atheist go into the same room that's known to be haunted and they experience something together, they will describe it very differently because one, you know what I'm saying? So I feel like there's a lot of different mental gymnastics to go through when people go through experiences, especially together. What I find very interesting, I don't want to say cool, but it's kind of cool. It is cool. It's cool that you guys are able to share the experience together and have the same story and recall,

which isn't always the case. Sometimes people go through dramatic experiences and they're like, no, that's not how it went down. In fact, I'm pretty sure the story I just share with you, there's details that me and Joel don't have squared up as the same experience. Thankfully, we have it on camera. But there are little details that we just, I think, and I can't remember what they are, but I just know that there's been little details that we don't come to agree on on exactly how it all kind of went down. So, yeah, I just think it's, I think it's fascinating. And this experience launching you guys into, now I know he sent me all the notes, but I'm assuming you do research too or you looked into it and do your kids know this?

No. No. Okay. So this is you coming out of your cryptic closet. it. Yeah. Okay. I have had employment that was out of state, and so there were long stretches of time that my kids and my wife were at the house.

And I did, you know, just frankly, I did not. Kids are already scared of what's out there. And totally, totally, you know, off topic. but my son, my oldest son, has a great imagination. And one time we watched the Lion King, you know, when he was little. And so he calls me up one night and or she allows him to call, you know. And I said, what's wrong, son? Because he's crying.

He's got the voice, you know. And I said, what's wrong, son? He goes, hyenas. And I'm like, okay, he's watched Lion King again. And they are. They're pretty terrifying to a little guy. And I said, you know, heinous they don't live in. And at the time we live in Georgia.

So I said, how do you and coyotes, I mean, hyenas aren't in Georgia. Don't worry about those that are not going to get you. But he couldn't get that out of his head, right? So the next, so when I came home that weekend, we went to Home Depot. And on my honey-do list was get. some ant killer, you know, for the fire ants in the, in the yard. And so I'd already printed off a picture of a hyena and with the circle and the line through it, you know, and I put it on contact paper.

So I went up and I grabbed a big jug of a fire ant killer, but I put that sticker on the front of a coyote. And I turned it where he could see it. And as I walked back up to him because he's playing on the lawnmores, right? You know, all of them look like race cars to a little guy, you know, and I walked by and he's like, what's that daddy? And I said, oh, we'll sprinkle this in the yard. Make sure that no hyenas get in the yard, right?

So he was pretty happy about that, right? I was going to sprinkle the yard and keep the hyenas away. He calls me back in a couple of days. You know, I'm back off at work. And I said, what's wrong, son? You were with me when we sprinkled the hyena killer out there. You know that they can't come through the yard. And he goes, what about the hayana?

A lot of janeas with jet packs. And I say, God, dang. I got nothing for that. I got nothing for that. But what I'm saying is... I've got a missile system. Yeah, exactly. If my kid could come up with that to still be afraid of hyenas,

there's no way I'm going to say, yeah, hyenas, they're not here. But let me tell you what is here. There is something that you can't see that almost got your daddy and his best friend and we were armed. You can't recover from that. And so, you know, I did. I tried to shelter. How old are your kids now? The oldest one's 19. I got 19.

One fixed in turn 16. And my little rattlesnake of a daughter is going to be turning 12 soon. Okay. Yeah. And so this was way before they were born. But I have made sure that I did not tell them that because we, we hike, we camp, we are outdoor enthusiasts. We hunt, we fish. and I just did not want them to be looking over their shoulder like I did for a long time.

Now, now, you know, I'm kind of, I guess, older because I'm going to be 55 soon and you're, what, 80? You're 80. Yeah, at least. 85. Yeah, now I'm kind of the mindset. And after living through that, if it's going to get you, it's going to get you. Yeah. You know, and we were in a per, almost, as nearly.

perfect situation as we could have been armed up and, you know, another person there that's that was trained. We could, that's as good as of a defense as I could make at that point. So if it, if it sneaks up on me now, it's going to get me. Yeah. You know. So, and I just didn't want to, I just didn't want to share that with them until now. Our only defense now is, uh, high fat content and cholesterol.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. If it eats us now, it... It's toast. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Oh, man.

Well, I think what I want to do is I want to shift into the research side of things. But I think this is also a good time to break up this conversation in the two parts. Okay. Because I have to go to a bathroom really bad. Yeah. Good call. Yeah. Great call.

I think what we'll do is this will be a show that we put out and then this next conversation we'll put up for members for the overtime. Awesome. But yeah, I think people really, I mean, I'm so glad you guys came to tell this story because it's a different dynamic than when you and I talked. I couldn't even see you. It's just audio because I didn't care about video back then. Right.

To now you guys are in studio telling the story. It's just like, holy cow. I mean, the detail that was shared today is wild. I don't like telling the story to tell you the truth. I really don't. Clearly. I mean, you've never told your kids about it. Yeah.

I just, first of all, because you tell a number. another, you know, grown man, they're like, hmm, hmm. And our friends, the people that we know are hunters. I was in the military. He was in the military. You're not going to get that support group, you know, they're going to think that you're crazy. And so I would just rather not, I mean, I think about it a lot, but I just don't share

it until I call him. Yeah. So, now, when you ask to share the story, you know, that's when my anxiety gets high, and whatnot. Yeah. He said, didn't he have to, you called him to see if he would be willing to even tell the story, right? I did. Yeah, that's right.

I had to kind of talk him into it. Yeah, I didn't want to. But I think it's going to be therapy in the long run. See, I haven't even, I've seen him once in what, loved 22 years. Really? Yeah. Last time you saw me, I was a sear instructor for the military. Down in South Alabama.

Yeah, down Fort Rucker. And you fed me beaver. liver. That's right. Sure do. Yeah. So this is like you guys getting back together over this story. It's kind of wild.

That's just a reunion for. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Well, bathroom break. Yeah, let's do that bathroom break. Don't come back for the overtime. Dan, fool. Yeah, I'm just a rude. It's like it's a sick.