The Lets Read Podcast - 313: THIS SWAMP HAS A DARK SECRET | 6 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 298

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about swamps & fire lookout encounters HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ♫ Music & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt

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In ancient times, the peed-rich forests that surround the swamp were the favorite hunting grounds of the native Chesapean and Nanzaman tribes, who stalked deer, wild turkey, and feral hogs through black gum trees that turned a bright orange pink in the fall. While more recently, the swamp served as a refuge for those escaping a life of slavery in the antebellum south. These days, the great dismal swamp has been designated a national wildlife refuge, with contemporary conservation efforts ensuring a boom in the populations of black bears, bobcats, and otters, along with its 70 species of reptiles and amphibians,

and its 213 varieties of birds. The swamp is even home to a few alligators, vagrants who swim up the Pasquotank River from the wetlands of North Carolina. But in the late 1980s, it played host to one of the most chilling criminal events of the decade. Thomas Lee Bonney was born and raised in Chesapeake, Virginia, and as a young man, he established an auto-salvage yard,

which he grew into a very successful business. He married a woman named Dorothy May in the late 1960s. Then, in August of 1968, they welcomed the first of six children into the world, a girl named Kathy Carol Bonnie. Thomas loved his daughter dearly, but Dorothy May soon noticed a certain overprotectiveness in her husband. He was both a religious and reasonable man, meaning his wife felt perfectly comfortable in confronting such behavior. But when she raised the issue, Thomas made him.

a heart-rending confession. Although he didn't go into too much detail, Thomas explained that he'd grown up in the shadow of a deeply abusive father. He was neglected for long periods of time, and whenever his father was around, he'd subject his young son to severe physical abuse for even the most minor of infractions. Thomas told Dorothy May that he loved and despised his father with equal measure, and that he was terrified of making the same terrible mistakes. His wife assured him that, together, they'd ensure that didn't happen, but Thomas never quite rid himself of his overprotective instincts. Despite Thomas Bonnie's overbearing supervision, or perhaps as a result of it, his daughter's

teenage years were characterized by a growing spirit of rebelliousness. When he emphasized the importance of her education, she responded by dropping out of high school. Then after he tried to enforce a so-called no-dating rule, a night. A 19-year-old Kathy began an illicit affair with a married man more than 20 years her senior. Concerned by his daughter's behavior, Thomas searched her bedroom for signs of anything troubling, and in a desk drawer, he found a letter written by her much older paramour. It's believed this letter contained extremely graphic descriptions of illicit acts,

and upon reading it, Thomas became incensed. He explained to Kathy that dating such a venally deranged individual was, wasn't safe, and that extramarital affairs either ended with heartbreak at best or violence at worst, yet to his horror, his daughter refused to listen. Thomas was faced with every father's worst nightmare. He loved his daughter dearly, but her increasingly reckless behavior was putting her at risk in ways that was impossible for him to explain. Then in late fall of In 1987, Thomas Bonnie's deepest and most primal fears became reality. On the morning of November 22nd, Thomas contacted the Chesapeake Police Department to file a missing person's report.

He told them that the previous evening he'd driven his daughter to a nearby 7-11 to meet a man named John. According to Kathy, John wanted to sell his old Chevy Blazer, which, due to its age and heavy mileage, was being offered at a very recent. reasonable price. Naturally, she wanted to give the SUV a test drive before handing over the cash and had agreed to meet its owner at the 7-11 parking lot at around 9 p.m. Thomas agreed to give Kathy a ride, but only if he could observe the meeting to ensure that it wasn't dating-related. His daughters seemed only too happy to let him witness the exchange, so off they went. Thomas then recalled how upon arriving at the 7-11 parking lot, he witnessed his daughter's meeting with the Chevy's owner, John.

Kathy climbed into the SUV's driver's seat, took it for a spin around the parking lot, then handed over the cash once she was happy with its performance. Thomas said that he congratulated his daughter on the successful purchase of her first car. Then, in her excitement, she asked if she could take it for a spin before meeting him back home.

Realizing that stifling one of his daughter's first major milestones would be stupid, the usually overprotective Thomas agreed to the proposal, but not without a warning to be home before midnight. Kathy agreed and climbed into the driver's seat of her brand new Chevy, and then drove off with a toot of her horn. But upon waking up the following morning, Thomas discovered that neither his daughter nor her new car were anywhere to be found.

Police told Thomas' fatherly concern was understandable, but in the eyes of the law, Kathy was an adult who was free to do as she pleased. Under the circumstances, a missing person's report could be filed after 24 hours without contact. Thomas tried waiting until the 9 p.m. deadline but was so gripped with terror over his daughter's well-being that he called back just prior to seven to express his anxiety. Then, and only then, was an officer dispatched the Bonnie family home. Upon the arrival of law enforcement, Thomas repeated his account. of giving Kathy a ride to purchase the SUV.

He believed that John, the vehicle's apparent owner, might somehow be involved in his daughter's disappearance. But given her newfound mobility, she could have driven just about anywhere before getting herself into trouble. Thomas also mentioned the extramarital affair Kathy had been conducting and how he believed the man in question

was a dangerous deviant. Then after sharing as much pertinent information as possible, the officer thanked Thomas for his time and then departed his residence. For Kathy's friend and family, the night of November 21st, was a sleepless one. While many feared that driving a night on deserted Virginia highways had resulted in some kind of road accident, others suspected Kathy's recklessness had finally bore a terrible fruit. Yet the reality was much more horrifying.

The following afternoon, a local hunter named James Sawyer was trudging along a heavily wooded area near the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, when he made a deeply alarming discovery. A pair of blood-stained underwear was sitting near the water's edge, and just a few feet away, the naked body of an adult female was lying in a disturbingly unnatural position. Her torso was riddled with gunshot wounds, and she'd been so badly beaten that she could only be identified via fingerprints. Then and only then, did police realize that the victim in question, was the missing 19-year-old Kathy Bonnie. A subsequent search of the teenager's bedroom revealed a half-finished letter to her married paramour,

the contents of which had never been made public, along with some adult magazines and a pair of handcuffs. Thomas was devastated. He had long suspected that his daughter's older lover was priming her for deviancy, and the discovery of the handcuffs seemed only to confirm his worst fears. In light of that, his cooperation with detectives was enthusiastic, to say the least, with Thomas giving hours upon hours of recorded interviews in the hopes that some minor detail would force a break in the case. Yet the more he talked, the more certain inconsistencies in his story became apparent. The first thing that aroused the detective's suspicion was the casual change of detail in Thomas's story.

For weeks, he claimed to have driven his daughter to the test drive, his wrecker. Then one day, he suddenly claimed to have used a Chevrolet. Thomas also told detectives that in the weeks before his daughter's murder, he'd sold his nine-shot 22 revolver for a hundred bucks. But when police asked the name of the person he'd sold it to, Thomas claimed that he couldn't remember. Detectives then spoke to Thomas' business partner, whom he operated the salvage yard with. In his experience, Thomas was an honest, hardworking, and deeply conscientious person, a man who made doing business with him a pleasure. But over the previous few weeks, he'd started noticing something strange. One day, Tom's partner approached him with a solution

to an ongoing problem they'd been experiencing. He explained the situation, then laid out the proposed solution in as simple a manner as possible. Yet to his surprise, Thomas Bonney, didn't seem to know what he was talking about. He remained quiet. maintained a confused, almost bewildered look about him, then when his partner asked if he understood, Thomas replied with a nervous-sounding, yes, sir. Firstly, Thomas never, ever called his partner, sir. The two weren't exactly close friends, but they've been working together long enough to have developed a casual but trusting relationship.

The most formal Thomas ever got was calling his partner by his first name. So where had the sir suddenly come from? Later that day, Thomas's business partner re-approached him regarding his potential solution just to make sure all had been understood. Thomas seemed to have returned to his composed and confident self, but to his partner's confusion, he claimed to have no recollection of the discussion regarding their problem. Assuming Thomas had been preoccupied and had not fully listened, his partner re-explained his proposal. Thomas understood perfectly, gave him the go-ahead, then concluded the discussion amicably.

His partner was pleased, yet remained so unsettled regarding Thomas's apparent memory loss, that it was one of the first things he mentioned when questioned by police. Detective soon turned to Kathy's siblings for answers, and in December of 87, they spoke to her younger sister. Susan Bonnie claimed that despite his wholesome veneer, her paranoid control freak of a father was feared by all his children, but none nor so than she. You see, it was her that had seen bloodstains in her father's Chevy

on the same night Kathy was thought to have disappeared. It was her that pretended not to see them, and it was her that prayed her father remained ignorant of her discovery. Not wishing to raise suspicion, detectives found a way of casually asking about the Chevy's whereabouts, when Thomas told them he'd sold it in the days following his daughter's disappearance. They rushed to track it down, and in doing so, a terrible truth began to emerge. After seizing Thomas Bonney's Chevy from its new owner, forensic investigators conducted a thorough

analysis of the suspect vehicle. They located the bloodstained Susan had referred to, along with long strands of hair in the vehicle's trunk, and then quickly determined both belonged to Kathy. It's not clear how Thomas Bonnie got wind of the investigation's sudden shift, but on December 11th of 1987, he fled Chesapeake in the middle of the night. Dorothy May was so alarmed by some of the things her husband said and did as he packed up his car that she reported herself to the police that same day, claiming she couldn't protect herself or her children from a man she no longer recognized. The manhunt lasted two months, then on January 31st of 1988, Thomas Bonney was arrested in Indiana.

Once back in Virginia and having been detained on suspicion of his daughter's disappearance, Thomas was interviewed extensively by psychologist Dr. Paul Dell. Using hypnotherapy, Dr. Dell was able to identify ten separate personalities contained within Bonnie's mind, leading the doctor to conclude that Thomas was one of the most profoundly deranged individuals he'd ever come across. Along with Tom, the so-called host personality, Dell identified persona's name, Satan, Mammy, Damien, Viking, Tommy, Hitman, Preacher, Dad, and finally, Kathy. These personas have been created by Thomas's psyche, with each serving as a conduit by which he could process the horrific abuses of his childhood, which were apparently far, far worse than anyone

had been led to believe. Dr. Dell conducted extensive interviews with many of Thomas's split personalities, including one in which he claimed Kathy was still alive and visited him in his cell every night once the guards turned out the lights. Dr. Dell conducted extensive interviews with many of Thomas's split personalities, including one in which he claimed Kathy was still alive and visited him in his cell every night once the guards turned out the lights. And Dr. Dell's opinion, such prolonged interactions left him in no doubt whatsoever that Thomas was suffering from an acutely severe case of disassociative identity disorder, along with post-traumatic stress disorder and mixed personality disorder.

Dr. Dell also claimed Thomas had extensively expanded on his childhood traumas, how his father had subjected him to unthinkable levels of emotional and physical torture, and that his issues surrounding control stemmed from the sudden and unexpected death of his grandmother when he was just 10 years old. However, at Thomas' trial, a prosecutor, Appointed Psychiatrists contested Dell's diagnosis. Dr. Philip Coons had not interviewed Thomas personally, nor did he posit any official diagnoses.

But after reviewing a whopping 13 hours of Dell's footage, he realized the doctor had almost completely failed to maintain proper standards of care. Not only was Dr. Dell's line of questioning unbefitting of a psychiatric interview, but he had allowed Bonnie to ramble, asked him suggestive and leading questions and had improperly suggested to Bonnie that he might have other personalities while the patient was under hypnosis. What's more, Dr. Coons argued that the death of a family member was insufficient to induce a disassociative identity disorder, then made the shocking claim that Thomas's symptoms

might have actually been created by Dr. Dell's hypnosis. Dr. Coon's testimony was somewhat backed up by a physician who, interacted with Thomas Bonney during treatment in October of 1988. This physician argued Thomas was indeed displaying symptoms consistent with Dr. Dell's diagnosis, but disagreed with the idea that Thomas had somehow blacked out while murdering Kathy or was otherwise unaware of the severity of his acts. In summation, the prosecution's argument was as follows. On the night of Kathy's murder, it had in fact been Thomas Bonnie's idea to go check out

an SUV that was for sale, but the entire story had been nothing but a fabrication. It's clear the pair stopped by the 7-Eleven that Thomas spoke of as Susan Bonney actually witnessed her father's vehicle pulling out of the lot. However, instead of taking Kathy to view a car, he drove her south towards the North Carolina state line where a violent argument ensued. Thomas confronted his daughter regarding the extramarital affair that she was conducting. Then when he was told to mind his own business, he pulled over, dragged her out of the car, then shot her to death at the side of the road. Then, to make it look as if she'd been killed by a lover,

Thomas Bonnie stripped Kathy of her bloodied clothes, made sure to leave her underwear clearly visible to anyone who might discover her, then beat his own daughter's face to a bloody pulp to give the impression her murder was a crime of passion. Bonnie's defense team announced that they agreed with almost half the prosecution's version of events. However, in their opinion, it had been Kathy, who, in the heat of the moment, had reached for the firearm she knew her father kept in his glove compartment. The defense then argued that during the ensuing struggle for Thomas's firearm, it accidentally discharged, and this is when the persona known as Demian took hold. To Demian, Kathy was not his child. merely a threat to be eliminated. Demion had been created protect Thomas Bonney.

It was the persona's one and only purpose and protect him. It did. Two hours after murdering his own daughter, Tom returned home and possibly owing to the condition diagnosed by Dr. Bell, he was able to look his wife dead in the eyes and ask with all sincerity, where's Kathy? Bonnie's defense team made a compelling, argument, but the jury disagreed, and following a seven-week trial, they pronounced him guilty

on November 25th of 1988. Bonnie appealed his life sentence, but the North Carolina Supreme Court upheld his conviction in June of 1991. On July 29th of 1994, at around 8.30 in the morning, Bonnie and a fellow inmate escaped from central prison through a trash-compacting shoot and hid in a garbage truck. While it was initially speculated that both have been crushed to death in a trash compactor during their escape attempt, the two men had stolen a car and driven to Hampton Beach. Thankfully, Bonnie was captured by police four days later and offered no resistance. He explained the escape had been a spontaneous idea, and that his main motivation had been to visit the grave of his late mother, whose funeral he was unable to attend. He also said

he wished to visit the grave of his daughter, Kathy, in order to offer an apology for his ultimate and unforgivable failure, to protect her from himself. Way back in 2003, after many years of hard work and study, I passed the California Bar exam at the age of 26. The exam was incredibly tough, a grueling months-long marathon of stress, self-doubt, and all-night study sessions that sometimes felt more like a test of endurance and willpower than my accumulated legal knowledge. I barely maintained a social life, spending countless late nights pouring over case law, statutes, and practice questions. And I put everything into those study sessions, so when I found out that I passed,

it was a moment of pure, unadulterated joy. And the next several days felt like one big party. I still had to apply to join the California Bar Association, but compared to passing the exam, that would be a relatively simple process. And after all my hard work had paid off, I figured that I deserved a little celebration. I organized get-togethers with family and friends, drank a lot of fancy champagne in some very fancy restaurants, and caught up on about nine months of backed up sleep deprivation. It was one of the highest points of my entire life, but it was quickly followed by one of the lowest. Just over a week after passing the bar, I was due to meet my mom for lunch.

We'd been a single-parent household ever since my dad passed away when I was in my teens, and my younger brother, who still lived with her at her place, was set to join. us for lunch that day. It wasn't like either of them to be late without good reasons, so I tried calling each of their cell phones. And then, as calls to each of them went unanswered, I got this creeping feeling that something was wrong. I remember apologizing to the waitress before leaving the restaurant, then just as I got to my car, my brother called with the single worst piece of news I've ever received. They've been getting ready to come meet me when, Mom, had suddenly collapsed. My brother had called 911, the ambulance had arrived within minutes,

and she was rushed into surgery when they arrived at the hospital. But sadly, and I heard my brother's heartbreak as he forced himself to tell me, Mom hadn't made it. We later found out it was a catastrophic brain aneurysm, one of the worst the doctors had ever seen, and the only comfort being that she died very suddenly and didn't suffer too much. and that news destroyed us. My brother and I could barely keep ourselves together

with our grandpa and a paternal aunt having to step in to organize mom's funeral in a state. I went from sipping champagne in celebration to downing cheap vodka to keep lucidity at bay and when I finally put down the bottle, sobriety awakened a kind of existential crisis in me. One moment I'd been basking in achievement, feeling like I'd conquered the world.

Then, life went ahead and reminded me just how little control I really had. I'd spent years chasing the bar. It had come to define me. But what was the point of all that hard work if life could just pull the rug out from under you? It seemed really ironic. I'd worked my butt off to pass that bar and then when I finally did it, I didn't know if I even wanted it anymore.

I didn't know how to reconcile the triumph with the crushing reality that the person that I most wanted to share it with. was gone. One thing which made that period of time particularly difficult was how no one in my legal circles got word of mom's passing. I was enduring the most heartbreak of my entire life and I was getting congratulative texts and emails from friends and mentors who sometimes asked if I wanted to meet up to celebrate. I didn't even want to get out of bed, let alone celebrate and I felt horribly ungrateful saying this, but at the time, their praise and compliments felt almost meaningless. I was obviously in a very dark place, but I was also self-aware enough to recognize

that if I didn't do something about it, if I didn't get away from the city with all its unhealthy methods of grief management, I was headed for disaster. I needed to get away, to be alone with my thoughts someplace that I could process things in my own time. And then, after a little soul searching and a brief look online, I found what I believed was the solution. And a lot of America's national parks way out in the middle of nowhere, there are these big old structures named fire towers. They're not all towers. Some of them are just strategically placed single-story cabins, but they're all located on ground, high enough to survey the surrounding area, and they're occupied seasonally by long-term Forest Service employees called Fire Lookouts.

A Fire Lookouts job is to watch for wildfires, lightning strikes, and other fire risks from their vantage point, and they spend long hours scanning the landscape for smoke or flames, using binoculars and maps to pinpoint locations. When they spot something, they reported to dispatchers with details like coordinates and weather, conditions who in turn guide firefighters towards the smoke and flames and from what i read it was solitary work requiring a lot of focus and a lot of patience the living quarters seemed pretty spartan too if you know what i mean but those heads strong enough to volunteer themselves provided a valuable service to both the environment and their fellow citizens and from that moment on that i first

read about it i was captivated i couldn't think of a more perfect way to spend the summer than in some solitary perch out in the great American wilderness, surrounded by nothing but green leaves, blue skies, and the untamed tranquility of nature. I imagined myself in one of those remote towers, watching for smoke on the horizon, with my only masters being a notebook and a radio. It felt like a way to escape, a way to maybe find some peace amid the chaos of my grief. But getting the job wasn't as simple as packing a bag and heading out into the woods. Fire lookout positions, especially in a place like Oregon with its vast forests and history of wildfires, proved surprisingly tough to secure.

First, I had to research where to apply, and then after digging through listings that had already been closed, I found a posting for a summer gig in the Umatilla National Forest in northeastern Oregon. And the process was pretty straightforward, but the Forest Service demanded a high standard from its applicants. I had to submit a resume and a cover letter, each tailored to demonstrate that I could handle both the isolation and the responsibility. My law background didn't directly apply, but I leaned on my ability to work independently, highlighted my attention to detail honed by my legal research, and assured them that I wasn't nuts.

I also had to prove that I was physically fit enough for the jobs, since some towers require hiking and with supplies or dealing with basic maintenance. I had to get certified in basic first aid, which I squeezed into a weekend course, and I was subjected to a background check, and I even had to complete online modules on wildfire detection and radio communication protocols. And the Forest Service wanted people who could spot a plume of smoke from miles away, reported accurately and stay calm under pressure. And so I studied maps of the region, learned the basics of topography,

and brushed up on how to use a firefinder, which is a, a topography. tool lookouts used to pinpoint a fire's location. There was a phone interview, too, where they grilled me on how I'd handle my weeks of solitude, spotty cell service, and the occasional bear sighting, and I told them that I needed the solitude as much as they needed someone reliable. And then, after a couple of anxious weeks of waiting, I got the call that I'd been accepted. They assigned me to a tower for the summer, starting in June, and sent me a packet with information on how to get there, what to bring, and a very stern warning about the lack of running water or

electricity. It was rough, but I guess that was kind of the point. I wanted to strip everything down to the basics, to sit with my thoughts and my loss, and maybe find a way to make peace with it all. Driving out to the Table Rock Lookout was an adventure in itself as I drove out into the wild heart of northeastern Oregon. From Dayton, I took the north to-shee Road, the road climbing steadily with green rolling hills in either side as I cut through the blue mountains, and the air cooled as the elevation ticked up and the landscape opens into the sweeping view that stretched toward the horizon. And when I arrived, I parked at the base of the lookout. It was kind of a boxy structure perched on a 10-foot concrete base that had first been constructed in 1949, before it was a

being upgraded with metal shutters and weatherproof siding in the late 80s. I saw the Forest Ranger that I was set to meet as I rolled in. It was an older guy in a green uniform with this very sun-weathered face who had driven up to give me the rundown. He walked me around the site while pointing out all the essentials. There was the outhouse, sort of modernized version with a chemical toilet, the propane stove, the radio for reporting smoke, and most importantly, the Osborne Firefinder. As we climbed the steps into the cab, a snug 14 by 14 living space with windows on all sides, the ranger took me through the daily log. He told me that I'd either get used to the quiet, or it'd drive me crazy. Then with a smile and the handshake, he handed me the

keys, wish me luck, and then took off the road in his truck. Daily life as a fire lookout settled into a quiet but steady rhythm, with mornings starting with coffee brewed on the propane stove. Then I'd step outside onto the catwalk, binoculars in hand, and scan the 360-degree panorama. West to the Columbia Basin, south to the snow-capped Walla-us, and on clearer days I could even see all the way into Idaho, to the seven devils about 80 miles east. As the morning progressed into the afternoon, I'd occupy myself by performing my duties and ensuring the cab and equipment were in good working order.

But aside from that, it was a whole lot of nothing with just me, myself, and I. There were a lot of good upsides, the solitude, the sunsets, the ceiling of stars at night. But after a while, the challenges started to reveal themselves in earnest. The isolation proved as much a burden as it was. a good. Going days without hearing another voice made my thoughts just loop endlessly, which sometimes made it feel like I was compounding my grief by depriving myself of those who actually understood. No running water meant hauling jugs up from my car, and the lack of electricity left me reliant on a battery-powered lantern during what proved to be some very spooky nights. The weather

was a constant wildcard, too. Lightning storms sometimes rolled through with this terrifying fury, with one threatening to spark fire just over the ridge. And on top of all of that, the monotony of scanning the same vistas hour after hour started to wear down my focus. But still, the job's simplicity kept me grounded and brought a great deal of peace. At least until one day when I experienced

what I can only describe as the most bizarre and terrifying experience of my entire life. It was mid-afternoon on a very dry and hazy day. I was on the catwalk, binoculars pressed to my eyes, sweeping the forested slopes below for any tell-tale wisps of smoke. My routine scans had become second nature by that point, but as I panned across to clearing about two miles downhill, something caught my eye. A lone, upright figure moving steadily through the trees. At first I just thought it was a trick of the light, maybe a deer standing upright. It is a thing, look it up.

But as I continued to track that shape through the binoculars, I realized the style of walking was unmistakably human. A lone hiker or camper wasn't unheard of out there, even at 6,250 feet. People venture into the backcountry all the time for all sorts of different reasons. But even so, I lowered the binoculars, rub my eyes, and raised them again to confirm. The figure was still there, maybe a mile and a half out now, heading south. A dark silhouette, threading between the pines, and their walk was very unhurried, but deliberate. Usually speaking, a lone hiker wouldn't be anything for me to worry about, but in that moment,

something just kept nagging me. I walked back into the cabin, grab my radio, then after informing Ranger H.Q. of the hiker's sighting, I asked them to confirm the status of the area. and the response crackled back after a brief pause, and this is really my best recollection of what was said. Base to Table Rock, copy that. Be advised your sector is under evacuation orders as of 0800 this morning. Fire weather spiking, red flag warnings in effect,

and we've got active burns, 20 miles southeast, and moving with the wind. If you can make contact, instruct them to evac immediately. Nearest road access as Forest Road 64, about three miles from their position, over. I told the ranger that I understood, but as I did so, I felt my stomach drop. Wildfires had been a looming threat all week, with dry lightning and gusty winds keeping firefighting crews on edge, but that was the first time it felt real, and the idea of someone hiking out there, oblivious to the danger, dragged me from my usual detachment.

I had to warn them, but how? I swung the binoculars back towards that figure, and he was just a speck by then, but still visible weaving through a stand of pines. Yelling wouldn't really carry a mile and a half through the wind. I had no megaphone, and even if they were carrying a radio, I had no idea what frequency to reach them on. I grabbed the firefinder, aligned it with his position, and jotted the coordinates. I then bolted down the tower's steps to my car.

I kept a whistle and an air horn in the glove box for emergencies, so once I was back on the catwalk, I blasted the air horn in three sharp bursts and then followed with a piercing blast for my whistle. Through the binoculars, I saw them pass. They'd heard it, and I started waving my arms wildly, uselessly shouting, evacuate into the wind, and then fired off another trio of sharp bursts from that horn. The hiker hesitated, then shifted course slithes. angling westward, what I'd hoped would be Forest Road 64. I radioed H.Q. again informed them that I'd made some noise contact and updated them on the hikers' change and direction. But then, in order to ascertain if the hiker had safely made

their way out of the area, I asked HQ if they could send a patrol to intercept them. This was standard practice and eumatilla, as fire lookouts can't exactly go abandoning their post every time they see something unusual. I'd been specifically instructed to request a patrol should an event like that arise, but HQ's response left me stunned. They told me, Negative table rock, cannot dispatch to F.R. 64. Can you make it out to his position? Over.

It was easily one of the most loaded questions I'd ever been asked, because it was either a case of, I make it out to the hiker's position to make sure that they were evacuating or potentially condemn an oblivious hiker to a very slow and agonizing death. The fires were still around 20 miles off, but with a red flag warning, I could change very quickly. It was down to me to make sure that the hiker was evacuating, or I could potentially have their death on my conscience for the rest of my life. When I thought of it like that, it was an easy decision to make.

I grabbed my pack from the cabin, which was already stocked with water, a first aid kit and a map and a radio, and then threw in the air horn and whistle for good measure. I clipped my binoculars to my belt, put on my hiking boots, and then jotted down a quick entry that said, 1530, leaving post to locate individual southeast a position, we'll report back. I'll lock the cab, took one last scan to the horizon, and started down the steps, bypassing my car when I reached the bottom. The first half mile was drivable, but beyond that I'd be on foot anyway. way, and time in that situation mattered.

I set off southeast on foot, following the bearing that I'd locked in with the firefighter. The descent was steep at first, with a plateau dropping into a slope of loose rock that crunched and shifted precariously under my feet. Where I could, I stuck to game trails that I'd explored previously, weaving through clumps of brush as the wind carried a faint heat that made my skin prickle. I brought the binoculars up to my eyes every so often, scanning ahead for movement, but the forest was very dense out there, and without my vantage point, visibility was patchy at best. And after about 15 to 20 minutes of speed hiking, I hit a shallow draw, the terrain leveling off

into a mix of open meadows and dense timber. I figured that he might still be a mile out, maybe less if he kept his pace. so I blew these three sharp blasts with my whistle but got nothing in response. And I pushed on, following the draw southeast by hiking along the dry creek bed littered with rocks. My boots sank into pine needles as sweat beated down my forehead and every few hundred yards. I stopped to scan with the binoculars, glassing the ridge lines and gaps in the trees. And at one point, a mule deer bolted from a thicket, which scared me a lot more than I'd care to admit. And almost as a way of steadying myself, I radioed HQ to let them know that I was on

route, but hadn't made contact yet. They acknowledged and urged me to stay safe, and then I went. After maybe 30 minutes of relentlessly powering through the woods, I crested a low rise and caught a flicker of motion through a stand of lodgepole pines, maybe 300 yards out. It was the hiker. It had to be. This lanky figure in what looked like like a camouflaged hunting shirt, trudging along with his head down like he had no clue that he was headed toward disaster. I cut my hands and shouted, Hey, evacuation order, you got to get out of here. The wind dampened my voice, but he heard me, and although he stopped and turned for a second

or two, he simply turned around and just carried on walking through the woods. I just cursed under my breath and then started to close the gap, jogging where they where the ground allowed me to until I was certain that I was within earshot. Hey! I called again breathlessly. Is areas being evacuated? Wildfires! You gotta head west for Forest Road 64 now!

I was about 50 yards away from him by then, and once again he stopped but didn't turn. I expected a hiker, a camper, someone ordinary. But what I saw clawed at the edges of my sanity, and even now, I honestly don't know if it was real or if the combination of grief and isolation had finally caused something inside of me to snap. The man didn't look like a hiker. In fact, he looked very, very sick. As my jaw dropped and my eyes widened into what must have been huge horrified circles, I realized the man was. bare-chested. The reason it looked like he was wearing camouflage was because his skin was a mess

of thick, dark scabs and bulging, glistening boils that seeped green yellow pus. And his torso heaved with each breath, these sores pulsing as his chest rose and fell, and as I looked at him, all I could do was freeze, dead in my tracks. Was my mind playing tricks on me? Had that grief and solitude in the endless hours staring off into the unchanging horizon worn down my mind, or was that nightmare sight standing before me actually real? I remember asking if he needed medical attention and mentioned that I had a first aid kit with me, but my overarching memory of that exchange was hearing my own voice just cracking with fear. I was on the verge of being overwhelmed with shock and confusion, but the

man didn't flinch. He just stood there with his back to me, head slightly cocked like he was listening to me. And as he stayed quiet, I felt a cold sweat forming on my neck and I remember muttering, is this real? To myself. But the details were too sharp, too vivid for my mind. If it was a hallucination, then I had no idea that they could feel that lucid. And I remember being grip by this combination of terror and confusion as the man turned. The skin on his face, chest and bald head was identical to that on his back. All these boils and scabs that looked incredibly painful. And then he just looks at me and kind of smiles. And his smile wasn't threatening, but it was deeply disturbing all the same and even from 15 to 20 feet away,

I could see that his teeth were missing. And yet despite the terror clawing up my spine and this revulsion in my gut, despite being completely convinced that I was suffering some kind of sudden and severe mental illness, all I sort of felt was peace. It was like an odd, out-of-body experience or something. I knew what was happening was all wrong. I knew that I should be terrified. But all I could feel rising up in my chest was the sensation of bright, bubbling joy.

Like I'd found out that no matter what was going to happen in my life, everything was going to be okay. I felt myself begin to smile. And as I did, the man's smile widened and let out a short but unmistakable chuckle. I suddenly felt as if I wanted to laugh to double-up. over and cackle, even as my mind screamed at me not to. It was like I'd lost control of myself. I couldn't move. I couldn't speak.

All I could do was feel while staring back into the man's small black eyes. I was convinced I'd lost my mind. The internal monologue that went through my head in those moments were the last sane thoughts I'd ever have. And then just when things seemed like they couldn't get any stranger, they did the boiled-covered man opened his mouth and a whisper slipped out it was too faint to catch little more than a hiss beneath the wind but then somehow his words came out of my mouth go home we said together the words weren't mine i hadn't thought them hadn't meant them but i said them Yet before I could really think about what had just happened, I was turning around and walking

away, back in the direction of that lookout tower without ever once turning around to look back at that man. I didn't want to leave him there. I didn't want to stop staring at this impossibility. But at the same time, I couldn't stop myself from walking away, and nor did I want to. And my head was spinning the whole way back. hallucination or not what I'd seen felt way too real and since I'd never experienced anything like it I was terrified it's difficult to describe but it was like the strange sense of involuntary joy that I felt

still lingered and I only felt truly in control of myself again when I climbed the tower's steps hands shaking as I locked myself in the cabin through the windows I scanned the forest half expecting to see the boil-covered man lumbering up the stairs after me, but there was nothing but trees. I grabbed the radio, thumb hovering as I began wondering if the man had been there at all, or if I'd whispered, go home to no one but myself. Following my encounter, or whatever the hell it was, I couldn't shake the feeling of unease that settled over me. And for almost two months, the cab had been my refuge, my home. But after the events of that day, I felt trapped.

I spent the night awake, jumping at every creek of the cab, peering out the windows into the dark, half convinced that I'd see that boil-covered man climbing the steps. And by morning, the forest was still, but I couldn't trust what I saw anymore. And if I couldn't trust myself, I knew I had to get out of there. I grabbed the radio, steadying myself as I thumb the transmit button. and then I just told them the truth. I told them that on mental health grounds, I was no longer fit to continue the season. Then when they asked for more specifics,

I told them that I thought I'd been seeing things. There was a pause, long enough that I wondered at the signal it dropped, then the ranger's supervisor got on the line and asked what I meant by seeing things. And again, I was just 100% honest with them. I told them exactly what it had. happened with a boil-covered man, that the experience had left me extremely shaken, and that I believed that I needed to seek treatment as soon as possible. There was another pause, and then I heard

the supervisor's voice softened through the static, and he told me they took that kind of thing very seriously. The only issue was they were stretched too thin to get me a replacement immediately. The supervisor asked if I could last another 24 hours while they found another lookout, and when I said yes, he told me to hang in there and then ended the transmission. I tried to stick to the routine for one last day, scanning the horizon, logging weather, sipping water to stay sharp, but every shadow in those trees made my pulse spike. Headquarters checked in on me every so often so I kept the radio close, but that night I avoided the catwalk, afraid of what I might see below. sleep came in spurts and I was jolted awake by strange dreams and then first thing in the morning

the call came table rock this is ranger hq we got a replacement they'll be over this morning you're good to clear out after hand over over and relief hit me like a wave though it was tinged with this sharp sense of unease if what i'd experienced was indeed a hallucination suffering offering another while on the drive home could probably be fatal, see something in the middle of the freeway, swerve to avoid something that's not even there, and that might be the end of me. The thought was still in my mind a few hours later when I spotted a forest service truck in the distance kicking up dust as it rumbled down the forest road. My replacement was a ranger in her 40s, all business with a clipboard and a nod. I walked her through the cab, then as I handed over the keys,

I felt my hands shaking. The Ranger asked if I was okay and I just told her that it had been a rough stretch, and she chose not to press any further. After the handover, I grabbed my pack, took one last look at the tower and then climbed into the car. I didn't glance in the rear view as I drove away. I just wanted to be gone. And about a week later, I was sat in a psychiatrist's office, staring at the beige carpet with hands clenched in my lap, mentally rehearsing what I was

even going to say. And then when it was time, I told the doctor everything, from my mom's death to what I'd seen in the woods. She listened and jotted notes on a pad. And then after confirming that I'd been clean and sober during my time as a lookout, she told me what I'd experienced sounded a lot like a stress-induced hallucination, which apparently are surprisingly common following a sudden loss like that. She said my brain was misfiring, turning guilt and sadness into something I could see. And she then asked if I blame myself for my mom's death. I didn't answer right away. I hadn't been there when it happened and that ate at me. Towards the end of the appointment, the doctor suggested a brief course of medication,

something for anxiety and sleep and therapy to process the grief. Then over the next few weeks, I started to feel a little better. But I only felt much better about mom's sudden passing, and somehow, despite all the pills and therapy sessions, what I'd seen out in those woods didn't feel any less real. I told the psychiatrist about it at the follow-up, and he said it was my mind holding on to the trauma. I hadn't been to many therapy sessions, so he continued to push for that, claiming that talking might help me let it go. I nodded, but mentally I didn't commit. Logically, I guessed it made sense. Grief plus stress equals brain glitch, but part of me wasn't convinced.

My memories of the man and how I felt in his presence didn't feel hazy, scattered, or out of sync. And even all these years later, I can still remember him like it was yesterday. Way back in the early 30s, my grandpa used to hunt gators in the Louisiana bayou. Grandpa and my four great aunts and uncles grew up hand to mouth in a little town called Rose near the Achafalaya River, and the bayous it flowed into. Times were tough even before the Great Depression, but after Wall Street crashed, money became even harder to come by. You could try your hand at shrimping or fishing, but since most folks couldn't afford luxuries anymore, the seafood market took a huge hit. Store-covered staples

like canned fish or oysters still move, but the canneries only needed so many workers. And the same could be said for the logging crews, too. Construction jobs dropped off almost entirely once the depression hit, and so did the demand for wood, which left good, honest folks like my grandpa with fewer and fewer options. There was good money to be made selling moonshine, but with prohibition in effect till 33, it was still a risky business around the time Grandpa needed work. If the revenue men didn't get you, your rival moonshiner surely would, because there was no sure thing as a friendly competition when it came to selling moonshine. However, if you were

desperate or crazy enough, there was another method of making money back then, one that would make you an awful lot, too, while putting food on the table at the very same time. Alligator hunting. The bay outside of Rosedale is a tangle of cypress trees and tupelo gums, with narrow waterways running between small strips of land that folks call hammocks or house islands. There are much more open stretches of water here and there, but the gators thrive in those mosquito-infested mazes that are sometimes so dense that barely any sunlight reaches the mud and murky waters below it. And there, and if they get enough food,

gators can grow from three-foot juveniles to 12-foot monsters in just over five to six years. Then the bigger and more powerful they get, the more dangerous and deadly they become. Gator trappers had to know the terrain inside and out if they wanted to safely navigate in and out of the swamps, and a lot of folks made money that way, guiding hunters or trappers into the deepest parts of the bayou where all the oldest and biggest gators lived. You had to know where they nested, where they basked, and where they'd relocate to whenever the rains or tides came in. But if you got it right, you can make a head. hell of a lot of money in those days. An experienced party of hunters and trappers working dawn till

dusk might bring back two or three or maybe even four gators. Then with good quality gator hides selling for three or four bucks a piece, a party of five could each expect to take home money and food to last their families a week and all from just a single day's work. It wasn't just the hides that were in demand either. If you salted the gator meat, you can make it last even longer, or sell it while keeping the fresh stuff for yourself. Grandpa also said that there was a mombo, a voodoo priestess out near Mayette Point, who'd pay good money for the gator's teeth and claws for use in her black magic rituals. Given how lucrative it was, it's easy to see why gator hunting attracted so many amateurs,

especially once the economy really went into freefall. But it was also very dangerous work, obviously. And that first year or so after the crash, dozens of enterprising but inexperienced young men waded off into the deepest, darkest depths of the bayou, hoping to secure a living but finding nothing but death. Arguably, the safest way to bag yourself a gator back then was to trap one. A trapper would bait a heavy hook of iron or steel with a hunk of meat,

the more rancid the better, and then simply hang it over a tree branch with a rope like they, they were fishing. Grandpa said that it could be a horribly effective method, but only when it worked. The gators were just as likely to lunge out of the water, then tear the meat from the hook without getting impaled, and like the steelhold leg traps that some trappers used, not everyone could afford them. Instead, most of the greener boys simply waded out into the swamps with a rifle or a shotgun and hoped for the best, but few ever returned. The same could be said for the whole crews of boys who patted out in their pea rogues in the middle of the night.

They used to bring oil lanterns along with them, and when they raised them up high, they'd be able to see the taill-tale glow of an alligator's eyes. It must have made for an easy method of finding them, but with all that splashing around and with all that blood in the water, it was often the case that the hunter became the hunted. Stray into the wrong waters and an angry gator could snap a boat in half, or drag a man under the water and drown him before his friends even realized what was happening. Just getting bitten out there could prove fatal, too, like in the case of one hunter, who ended up being the lone survivor of his party. Gators tore up his boat and ate his friends, and although he managed to escape, the trapper had to wade through

stinking swamp water all night long in order to make it back to his hometown. Folks over there were heartbroken that they'd lost loved ones, but took solace and the lone survivor having made it home. But he didn't last a week. All that nasty swamp water had soaked into the bite wound to his leg, and he quickly came down with some kind of infection. His family called him a doctor all the way from Baton Rouge, but in the days before antibiotics, there was nothing it could do. And that blight took him down in just a couple of days, and when he was buried, they lowered three empty coffins into the dirt right next to him, one for each of his missing friends. Now news of any deaths out in the swamps always swept through the parish like wildfire, but not one of them stopped people

heading out there to hunt gaiters. And it got so bad that people started making money returning the personal effects of the missing, should they happen across washed-up paroches or abandoned camps. It was about then that the parish sheriff decided to call time on the whole situation, so he and his boys started cracking down on anyone hunting or trapping without a license. But since licenses cost five bucks and could take weeks. to obtain, the crackdown didn't stem the steady trickle of the desperate and the doomed. My grandpa was lucky enough to have a license, as did a handful of other Rosedale residents, and although there were sometimes fierce competition between parties, their rivals were,

for the most part, friendly. They'd all meet up to drink, smoke, and swab stories at a place they called the Blind Tiger. And that wasn't even the name of the joint, either. A lot of illegal drinking spots were named Blind Tigers back then, and all because of of some joke about paying a man to see a blind tiger when, really, you were spending your money on booze. Anyway, a lot of the Rosedale trappers and hunters would meet up at this one blind tiger on the woods off of hunters' run, and they needed no incentive to get drunk and barbecue

gator meat, but the real benefits of hanging around that place were the tricks and tips and lessons that you learn from other hunters. Grandpa's hunting buddies, Charlie and Witt, used to stop by the blind tiger. every evening, sometimes just to get the scoop on where the good hunting was that week. He said he used to hear some fine and fanciful rumors around that bar. But then, in the summer of 1931, Grandpa heard one which absolutely stole the show. There was a guy little John Guidry, this gator hunter who headed up a group of four, and he was busy telling everyone in attendance about a recent trip into the deepest recesses of the Bayou Sheen. They were out looking for the biggest

gaiters they could find when suddenly they saw this huge alabaster white gator basking on a narrow house island. Their parrogues were all full up with kills for that morning, so they'd have no room for any additional quarry. But even if they had, it would have taken a heck of a lot of wrangling to get that monster into a boat. Gidri said that from teeth to tail, that albino gator had to be at least 20 feet long, meaning the beast had to be carrying around 2,000 pounds of meat and hide on its carcass. But almost as soon as he and his boys laid eyes on it, it slipped into the water and disappeared. All three of Gidre's hunting buddies attested to his claim, and while Grandpa might have gotten away with just calling little John a liar, accusing his whole party would have been

downright foolish. But even so, Gidri and his boys could see the disbelief on the faces of those who listened. The doubt of their fellow hunters didn't seem to bother them, though, because Gidri and his boys claimed their doubters would be laughing on the other sides of their faces once they'd hauled that albino beast back home. And because a hide that size, and in such a rare color, they'd be able to afford a whole week of easy living for the sale of it. And so off they went, night after night looking for old red eyes, as they'd taken to call in it at that point. Then one morning, Little John Gidre's wife woke up to find her husband hadn't returned home. It wasn't entirely unusual for hunters to camp out overnight with their kills, especially if the tides changed or the rains came.

But when the sun started to set and Little John's party still hadn't emerged from the swamps, people started to worry. Grandpa said Little John's wife barged into the bar that night and demanded to know why the other hunters and trappers weren't out there looking for her husband. The sheriff and his deputies were out there searching for him, but they didn't know the swamps even half as well as the likes of Grandpa and his buddies. Little John could be out there somewhere, gravely wounded, sheltering in the wreck of his paroch, his hungry gaiters, circled him, and the only people in any position to help him were my Grandpa and his fellow hunters. Grandpa told me that the more he thought about them, the more Mrs. Gidri's words made sense. He imagined being stuck out there, bleeding to death while the gaiters closed in, and how he'd be praying someone from town came looking for him. It wouldn't feel right going back into the swamps without a mind to look for little John and his boys,

even if it was just to bring home what was left of them. And so one day, Grandpa met with Charlie and Witt at the Blind Tiger and put a proposition to them. They traveled deeper into the swamps than they ever had before, to bring home some gator and maybe, just maybe, little John Gidre along with them. Now, Grandpa and his buddies were faced with two very big challenges here. First off, heading out into the deeper parts of the swamp would require an overnight stay someplace, and it was in darkness that the hunters had the most of fear. Then secondly, they'd need the help of one or two extra hunting parties to cover all the ground they needed covering.

grandpa told Charlie and Witt to go get the supplies that they needed for this long trip into the bayou while he went around trying to enlist the other hunting parties into joining them on the search but just about everyone he spoke to thought he was crazy while it was heartbreaking that little john giedry had gone missing and while everyone felt sorry for his wife and kids it was his own damn fault for heading too deep into the bayou and all the while searching for a giant white alligator that may or may not have been something he made up. If a dozen more hunters went out there looking for him in places that human beings did not belong, the most likely outcome was that more families would just end up wearing black.

And just like Icarus, as they say, little John flew a little too close to the sun and got his ass burned, nobody's fault but his own. grandpa said that he couldn't blame people for feeling that way he even agreed with them to an extent but there was still that voice in his head telling him he had to do something he told me that he thought that voice was actually jesus because he knew damned well how crazy of an idea it was but he wanted to do it anyway yet his luck would have it so did just one other hunting party Gaston Dupree, or Gator to his friends, was one of the best hunters and trappers in the entire parish, but it was no secret that he was sweet on little John's sister-in-law,

a girl named Yulali Badruh. Grandpa said that he took some convincing, but in the end he agreed. Then after they'd all gathered up their men and materials, the seven strong hunting parties set off in their peer-rogues towards Bayou Sheen. Grandpa said that that first day was slow going. They had to keep their eyes peeled for any trace of little John and his boys, and they had a 14-mile stretch of river to cover before they reached Bayou Sheen. He said it was very eerie out there that morning,

the only sound being the putter of their P-Rogues, small engines as they glided through the water. And I know what he means, too, because it all looks exactly the same today as it did back then. The water was black as oil, cypress-ström. trees stabbing up through the surface and these wailing birds sounding like wandering spirits, you might spot a half-submerged log, floating just a little too still until you realize it's no log at all, just another gator waiting patiently for its next meal. It can give very creepy out there when it's quiet and still like that, yet there was grandpa, heading out into the bayou's deepest, darkest depths. The two hunting-turned search parties arrived at Bayou Sheen in the early afternoon.

It was around there that Little John claimed to have seen his prize gaiters, so both parties figured it was a good place as any to start looking. They agreed to meet back up on the main body of the Chafalaya River in the morning. But until then, they were to split up and drive the paroches up and down the narrow channels looking for any sign of Little John, his boys, or the remains of any other poor soul who had disappeared in the previous few months. To safely navigate the much narrower waterways, Grandpa and his buddies, Charlie and Witt, switched from their engine to their oars, paddling up and down Bayou Sheen until their arms ached from it.

They saw plenty of gaiters, swamp rats, and the occasional snapping turtle, but no sign of Little John Orr's hunting party. They searched all afternoon and well into the evening. Then when the light started getting low, Grandpa and his two friends began looking for a house island dry enough to camp on. They continued up and down the channels with the bayou getting darker and darker with each passing minute until finally they were forced to navigate by the light of nothing but their oil lanterns in the moon. Grandpa said that that sort of navigation was very dangerous, mostly because the chances of wrecking your peer rogue were much higher. And if you wrecked your p-rogue way out in the deep swamps, you were in major trouble,

even if you were a strong swimmer. And with that in mind, they power. battled very slowly with Charlie at the head of the boat, lantern in hand, guiding them through the darkness. He couldn't hold it too far over the front, though, not unless he wanted his arm bitten off by a gator, and they knew that they were surrounded by them because they could see all of those eyes reflecting the orange glow of their lanterns. Grandpa always said that that was the worst part of paddling through the swamps at night, seeing everything that was looking back at you. And although I've never seen the sight myself, just thinking about it sends a

chill down my spine. After a while of searching for a place to camp, Grandpa said that he and his buddies started seeing lamplights in the distance. They figured that they might have happened across the camp of Gator Dupri and his boys, but as they got close, they realized someone had built some kind of structure way out there in the swamps. They paddled closer and closer, unsure of what to expect. And then suddenly, Grandpa said he spotted a big black cross painted against a white background. It was a church. It's rear on a house island. It's front right up against the water, and it was deathly quiet. Grandpa and his boys pulled up to the landing, calling out to see if anyone was home. And a few seconds later, some old half-blind deacon emerged to welcome them.

When they mentioned that they were looking for a place to stay, this deacon said that they were more than welcome to spend a few hours sleeping among the pews. Grandpa on his buddies thanked him, tied up their paroch and then piled into the tiny church to find a total of four pews lit by candlelight and an old rugged cross to the front. When the deacon asked them what they were doing out in the swamp so late at night, Grandpa shared the tale of Little John in their hopes of bringing him home alive. The deacon said he'd pray for the man's safe return, but when Grandpa mentioned the great white alligator little John claimed to have seen, the deacon's expression, he says, turned cold. He told Grandpa he'd seen old red eyes himself, up close too, and not only was it real, but it was the biggest damn gator he'd ever laid eyes on. He said he'd been out in his peerog, sharing the good word with some of the swamp folk who lived out near Catahoula. and then while on his way back he was paddling on a stretch of water when something huge and pale slipped out of the undergrowth to his rear and into the swamp he said it was no use of thing that size trying to hide and the almighty splash that it made as it slid into the water had him clutching at the crucifix that hung around his neck and he started paddling like a madman trying to get away from it but every time he looked over his shoulder the bubbles on the surface got closer and closer and closer.

He knew the bayou well enough to know that a gator had taken a deadly disliking to him, and if it snapped his p-rog in half, he was going to have to swim like the devil to safely reach solid ground. But then, Rez the thing was about to reach him. He started up with, The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, and he leadeth me besides still waters. The deacon said it seemed like the moment the words still waters left his lips, the bubble stopped moving.

He kept on paddling like his life depended on it, but the great white gaiters submerged beneath those waters, the one that had once seemed intent on making him dinner, had stopped dead in its tracks. Grandpa said his buddy, Whit Watson, told the deacon that, with all due respect, it was going to take more than prayers to bring in an animal of that size. and once again the deacon turned white. Grandpa said the deacon lowered his voice and then told him to listen and listen good. He then said that, sure, they were living and breathing. The devil moved among the bayou, and that he'd seen him with his own eyes

and that he moved through the beasts and the birds just the same as he did through people. He didn't know where old red eyes was, nor did he know exactly what he was, but he had more chance of dragging us all down to hell than we did dragging him out of that swamp. His words didn't come off at all that kind, but the deacon meant them as a good-natured warning. An alligator that size and temperament wouldn't be brought down easy, and Grandpa was putting his life at risk just moving through its territory. But they hadn't paddled all that way just to turn around and head home, not when they were so close to the heart of the swamps.

So, at dawn, once there was enough light to get going again, Grandpa and his buddies climbed back into their boat and then set off deeper into the bayou. Grandpa said it was still early in the morning, and they were paddling slow while eating still bread and molasses for breakfast when they suddenly heard a distant sound that chilled their blood. One minute, there was nothing but the low buzzing of bullfrog, cicadas, and crickets coming from the underbrush, and then out of nowhere, there was the distant boom of a gunshot. It was just one at first, the kind of single large-caliber gunshot you hear when a trapped gaiter gets dispatched with a rifle. But then they heard four or five more pops way off in the distance,

these smaller guns going off, only these sounded way more frantic, like something wasn't going to plan. Grandpa said he and his buddies started paddling like crazy in the direction of the gunshots, but soon they started to see some. some really big gaiters floating in the waters around their boat. Unlike the smaller juveniles and young adults in the outer swamps,

these fully grown gaiters didn't much feel like moving out of the way. So rather than risk making them mad by bumping them with their boat, Grandpa and his buddies started taking things much slower, while having to pick their jaws up from the bottom of the boat at the sheer size of some of these things. He said there were some real monsters out there. the kind they'd usually have stopped and hunted before retreating out of danger. But on that occasion, they just kept paddling by, trying not to bother them, as they continued into the heart of the bayou.

Grandpa said that they carried on paddling for about an hour, getting more and more nervous as they did, because if they strayed into any of the gator's spawning grounds, some overprotective mamas could cause them some real hassle. They're taking things real slow, keeping their eyes peeled in their mouth, shut. Then at one point, they paddled around a wall of bald cypress trees and spotted something that almost turned their stomachs. Through a jagged clearing on the bank, they could see a campsite strewn with the blood-splattered remnants of Gator-Dupree's hunting party. Grandpa said it was one of the most horrific sites that he'd ever seen. Guns and gear were scattered everywhere, an empty

John boat still listed in the shadows, while half-eaten bodies. lay among the sawgrass as flies buzzed over the carnage. There were limbs missing. Bodies had been ripped open with one man's boots sitting upright still laced like it had been yanked clean off, and it was the kind of mess no knife or gunshots leave behind. But if it was a gator that had made that mess, it must have been unusually big and very fast for an animal its size. Grandpa said that after seeing all those bodies, he and his boys started to discuss turning back. Because if he, Charlie, and Witt went any deeper into the swamps, it might be their half-eaten bodies some horrified group of hunters would end up happening

across in the future. Gator Dupree and his boys were much more experienced hunters than they were, and had traveled in larger numbers, too. If they hadn't been able to best whatever had attacked them, what chance did Grandpa and his buddies have? Grandpa said that on the journey back, the weight of all that loss hung over them. They felt ashamed and defeated, but if they didn't return home, then who would provide for their families? Witt was up front paddling steadily when he suddenly pointed out a huge gator, easily 12 foot long that was basking on a house island. Witt said that he thought it was the gator that killed Dupri in his crew. Charlie was skeptical and said just about any gator that size or bigger could have done it. Grandpa said he was about

halfway through a green with Charlie, when the murky waters in front of the 12-foot alligator suddenly exploded. Out of nowhere, the monstrous 20-foot albino gaiters surged up from the depths of the swamp. Pale as death, its reddish pink eyes flashed as its jaw clamped down on the basking gator's head with this disgusting crunch. The smaller gator thrashed wildly, whipping its tail and flailing its stunted limbs, but it was no match for this humongous beast that had somehow managed to take it completely by surprise. The albino gator then dragged it back into the swamp and a swirl of foam and blood, then swam off submerged before it was all still again.

Whith's jaw was dropped as Charlie froze with the paddle mid-stroke. Grandpa said he was the same, still as a statue in the rocking boat. just staring at the ripples that that thing left in its wake. Grandpa said there were a few moments of stunned silence, the boat rocking gently as the ripples slowly faded. But then suddenly, the water down the channel started to churn. And the next thing they knew, a huge blur of silt and pale hide was slicing through the swamp

coming at them so fast they barely had time to react. Grandpa paddled like the devil, while Witt fumbled with a shotgun, slamming shells into the breach, and he said he turned just as the beast erupted from the murky water, streaming off of its ghostly hide, teeth bared for the kill. As old red eyes surged upward, jaws gaping like an open grave, Witt fired twice. The blast echoed across the swamp as shotgun pellets tore into the albino's snout. Fresh, bright red blood streaked at scales, but the shots were only enough to daze it, and it sank beneath the surface with a hiss. Grandpa said the boat suddenly lurched forward as the beast splashed down, and for a moment,

he thought that they might be in the clear. But maybe a second or two later, he heard the same thrashing sound in the water behind them, as old red eyes once again prepared to charge. Grandpa said his arms were burning by the time the water exploded again. But still he and Charlie rode like the devil, willing each other to push harder while at the rear of the boat, Witt held the shotgun with trembling hands and began praying out loud. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He yelled as he reloaded. He maketh me lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restores my soul. He leads me in the path of righteousness. and though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for he. Grandpa said Witt's final words were drowned out by another explosion of water. That albino beast lunged, jaws snapping inches from the boat's edge, but Witt's timing was right, and his aim was true. Grandpa said he heard a deafening roar as Witt unleashed another two shots, only this time the pellets ripped through old red-eye's flesh, causing dark red blood to gush into the foam. The beast thrashed, a guttural bellow escaping its maw, and then it slumped, wounded and broken, before slinking off back into the depths. Witt rushed to reload the shotgun as Grandpa and

Charlie kept paddling, but except for the creek of the boat, the splashing of the oars in their ragged breaths, the bayou soon fell silent again. The boat glided through the swamp. Their paddle strokes slow and heavy as they reached the next bayou, which would take them home again. Grandpa said he remembered how Witt sat up front, shotgun still across his lap, with a look of exhaustion and guilt across his face. He said that expression captured the mood. No bodies recovered, no closure to carry home, and they'd been lucky to escape with their lives. That sense of defeat made the journey back feel endless.

They spoke little, their silence louder than words, dreading the shame of returning empty-handed to families who hoped for miracles. And the sun was setting by the time they reached the dock near where Rama stands today. And Grandpa and his buddies climbed out, legs very unsteady, and then they left their boat tied up as they walked on into town. First came the reunion, with parents, siblings, and kin of all kinds rushing forward. Wood's Ma threw her arms around him not caring that her boy smelled like sweat and swamp rot while Charlie's baby sister clung to his leg and his paw praising Jesus for a safe return.

And Grandpa remembered all of this, as well as his mother telling him how proud she was. It didn't matter that they'd return empty-handed. They tried, and that's what counted. Second came the bad news, delivered personally to the families of Gator Dupri and his boys. Gator's mama collapsed with a whale when Grandpa broke the news that her boy wasn't coming home and that she would have taken a nasty tumble if she wasn't caught by Gator's two sisters. The same went for the families of his hunting party. The kin had gone out to rescue Little John and save his kinfolk from the agony of his loss.

But in a horrible twist of fate, they too were now condemned to wear black. To Grandpa, it all seemed like some kind of sick, cosmic joke, and he couldn't help but feel like he was the punchline. Why shouldn't he survive when so many hadn't? And how could he live with himself, knowing that he'd turned tail and run at the first sign of trouble? He said he struggled with thoughts like that for a long time, until the day of Little John's funeral when his grieving widow told Grandpa how much she appreciated his efforts to recover her husband's body. Grandpa said that helped him deal with most of the guilty felt, but not all of it. And he ended his gator hunting days for good after the encounter with old red eyes.

He traded the bayou for a cornfield, ended up catching the eye of that Boudreau girl that I mentioned earlier. Then after a long courtship, they were married under the cypress trees during the spring of 41. And sadly, the draft snatched him up in 42 and after storming through the liberation of France and helping free villages from Normandy to the Rhine, he returned to his beloved home and started a family. And years later, Grandpa would sit us by the fire in a low voice and tell us this exact story of his encounter with old red eyes. But whenever he did, he'd swear to us kids that no battle ever chilled his blood, like the day he and his boys stared into the crimson glare of the monstrous albino alligator who almost dragged them all to hell. I've been a forest ranger for about six years when everything with Ted happened.

It was summer of 1997 and I was still pretty green compared to him. Ted was the guy everyone looked up to, 30 years on the job, steady as a rock, the kind of man who could stare down a grizzly and not even blink. He was in his late 50s then. He was wiry but strong, with a graying beard and a voice that seemed to demand people's attention. We all respected him, not just because he's been around forever, but because he had this way of making you feel like he had everything under control. Ted was like an uncle to us, gruff but warm. warm, always ready with a story or a piece of advice, and boy did he love the fire lookouts. Every summer, he'd volunteer to man one of the towers, spending weeks alone with nothing but

the forest and a radio for company, and he said it was the only place that he could really think. That year, he'd gone out to the tower in the northwest corner of our national forest, a spot called Hatcher's Point. It was remote, about a two-hour drive from the ranger station with most of the journey being on winding dirt roads that turned to mud when it rained. The tower itself was a squat, as they say, this wooden thing perched on a rocky outcrop. I've been up there once or twice myself, and it was so peaceful that, in a way, it made you forget the rest of the world even existed.

Ted had been out there for maybe three weeks by mid-July, checking in daily with a station like clockwork. His voice would come in over the radio every morning, saying stuff like Hatcher's Point, all clear, weather's holding, and that was Ted's style of speech in a nutshell, short, to the point, and reliable. But then, on July 21st, everything changed. It was late afternoon when his call came in. I was at the station with a couple of other rangers sorting through maps and drinking terrible coffee when the radio suddenly burst into life. And a split second later, Ted's voice came through the static, very sharp and panicked in a way that I'd never heard before.

This is Hatchard's Point, he said. I got a fire that's coming in fast from the southwest. Winds are picking up, might have to evak. There was a pause. Then, quieter. It's moving too quick, I got to move. And after that, the transmission went dead. We scrambled into action.

A fire that close to Hatcher's point wasn't something we'd seen coming. There had been no lightning strikes reported and no signs of smoke on the horizon that morning. but Ted didn't panic over nothing. Within an hour, we had a crew mobilized and I was part of the team sent to scout the area from the ground while helicopters flew overhead, and by nightfall we could see the glow of flames chewing through the forest. It was a nasty one, dry conditions and a stiff wind had turned into a real monster. The fire tore through the ridge near Hatcher's Point, swallowing trees and spitting out

plumes of smoke that blotted out the sky. We assumed Ted had made it out. He knew those woods better than anyone, and in all likelihood, he'd taken the access road and headed back toward the station. The fire burned for two days before we got it under control. Then when it finally died down, the area around Hatcher's Point was this charred, smoking mess. There were acres of blackened stumps and ash with the ground still warm, but the area of the ground still warm, but the The tower itself was gone, reduced to a complete pile of beams. Ted's truck was still parked at the trailhead, which didn't sit right with us. He should have driven out, or at least left a note.

But there was no sign of him. We figured that he'd hiked out on foot, maybe gotten turned around in the chaos. He was due back to the station hours after he called in, but when a full day passed with no sign of him, the head ranger called for a search and rescue effort. I was on the team that went looking for him. There were eight of us, plus a couple of dogs, fanning out from the trailhead as we kicked up clouds of ash that stuck onto our boots and pant legs. We called out Ted's name, our voice echoing around that dead valley, but apart from the

occasional creek of a branch giving way under its own weight, the forest just stayed silent. I remember thinking how creepy it all looked. Nothing but miles of devastation, no birds or wind, just this overwhelming sense of death, pushing down on us. We found him late that afternoon, almost by accident. One of the dogs started barking, pulling its handler toward a narrow ravine about a mile from where the tower had stood. I was close enough to hear the guy shout, and I remember running over with my heart pounding,

praying for the best possible outcome. Ted was down there, sprawled at the bottom among the rocks and fallen trees. He was alive. but barely both his legs were bent at wrong angles and the bones snapped clean through his face was smeared with soot and his eyes were wide darting around like he was still scanning for danger he didn't seem to recognize us at first he just kept muttering under his breath but i couldn't make out exactly what he was saying we got a stretcher down to him and hauled him up but that's when he started vomiting. It came up in thick black spurts, splattering the ground like motor oil, and the

smell was sharp and bitter like burned meat mixed with some chemical, and was so bad that I had to turn away. We radioed for a medevac, and by the time the chopper landed, Ted was slipping in and out of consciousness as his breath became more and more shallow. They flew him to the nearest hospital and I didn't see him again until a few days later when the head ranger asked me to come along while he talked to him. Ted was propped up in a bed in the ICU, hooked up to an iv and looking ten years older than he had a week ago. His legs were in casts and his skin was still this grayish, like the life hadn't quite come back to him yet. Our head ranger sat down beside him and after some small talk, he asked what happened. Ted's voice,

was weak but he didn't hesitate and although this probably isn't exactly what he said it's definitely the gist of it i saw something out there he said and he was staring at the ceiling as he said this after the fire passed i went back to check the tower to see what was left the ground was still smoking and there was ash everywhere and then i saw it it was big but thin like a star of disease bear. His skin was all black, burned looking, hanging off of it like had been cooked. It was eating the ash, scooping up with its paws and shoving it into its mouth. Our head ranger Bill was shifted in his chair and I felt like the hair on my neck was standing up, but Ted kept going. He said, I couldn't move at first. I just stood there watching. Then it turned its head and I

swear, looked right at me. No eyes, just holes, but I felt it see me, and I ran, didn't think, didn't look back, and the next thing I know I'm falling, my legs are gone under me, and I don't remember much after that. Bill didn't say much, he just nodded and told Ted to rest, but I could tell he was rattled. Ted wasn't the kind of guy to make up stories. He didn't drink, didn't mess with drugs and didn't even like telling tall tales around the campfire, and then there was the black stuff he'd thrown up. The doctor had pumped his stomach when he got to the hospital and they found something strange. Chunks of burned bark and partially digested mixed with a near toxic amount of tree ash. They said it was like he'd been eating it, though they couldn't figure out

why. Ted didn't offer an explanation either. He just shook his head when they asked like he couldn't find the words. And he was in the hospital for weeks, long enough for his legs to start healing, and when he got out, he told Bill that he was done. Thirty years in the service and he was retiring, effective immediately. We threw him a party at the station that fall. Nothing fancy, just some burgers and beer, a cake with happy trails Ted written in blue icing, I remember. He showed up in a flannel shirt and jeans, leaning on crutches, and he smiled and laughed. with everyone like it was old times. He even made a little speech, thanking us for all the good times and saying that he was looking forward to fishing and fixing up his old log cabin. But there was something

off. I noticed it when I caught him staring out the window at the trees beyond the parking lot. His smile didn't reach his eyes and his hands gripped the crutches so tight his knuckles went white. It was like he was waiting for something to come out of those woods. I asked him once, a few months later, when I ran into him in town if he was okay. And he said he was fine, but his voice was flat, and he didn't look at me when he said it. Ted moved out to that cabin of his, about an hour from the forest boundary, and kept to himself. I heard he still fish sometimes, but he never came back to visit the station. The last time I saw him was in 99 at the grocery store.

He was thinner, his beard gone white, and he moved slowly. slowly, like every step hurt more than just his legs. We talked for a minute, and he seemed cheerful enough. He asked about the crew, told me that he'd cut a big trout the week before, but when I mentioned Hatcher's point in an offhand comment, his face changed. His jaw tightened and he looked past me, out the store window toward the mountains. Then, quiet enough that I almost missed it, he told me. Don't go up there.

Then he turned and sort of hobbled off down the aisle. I never found out what he really saw that day. Maybe it was fire, the smoke, the pain messing with his head, and maybe he ate the ash out of delirium, some kind of survival instinct gone wrong. The doctor's never had a good answer for that part, but I know Ted, or I knew him. And I've never shaken the feeling that whatever he ran into out there

wasn't just his mind. Something followed him back from that ravine, something he couldn't leave behind no matter how far he got from the forest. And I think it stayed with him until the day he died. In January of 1999, two brothers from South Florida, James and David Adams ventured into the Big Cyprus swamp for what they expected to be a routine hunting trip.

The Big Cyprus, a sprawling wilderness of cypress strands, sawgrass marshes, and pine flatwoods, was familiar territory for the pair, so armed with rifles, riding in ATV, they drove out deep into the swamps to hunt deer and small game. But what began as a simple day trip spiraled into a six-day nightmare that tested the limits of both their endurance and their sanity. Things started to go wrong when their ATV broke down deep in the swamp miles from any dirt road or highway. To their horror, the usually reliable vehicle's engine suddenly sputtered out, leaving them stranded amid a labyrinth network of muddy waterways and dense vegetation. Back in the late 90s, cell phone reception in such remote areas

was spotty at best, meaning it was impossible for the brothers to summon assistance. So instead of waiting around and hoping someone stumbled across them by chance, the Adams brothers decided to abandon the ATV and trek back on foot. They later said they assumed they could navigate using the sun, as well as their hard-worn instincts as seasoned outdoorsmen, but the swamp had other plans. In the days prior, heavy rains had swollen the swamp's waterways, rising water levels erased familiar landmarks and turned even the driest patches of ground into quagmires of knee-deep sludge. The brothers tried their best to maintain both course and composure, but each soon realized that they were hopelessly lost.

As dusk fell, the temperature plummeted and in a rare cold snap for the usually balmy South Florida, that night's temperatures dipped into the 40s. Wearing only light hunting gear, James and David had no jackets or blankets to keep themselves warm, and instead huddled together under a cypress tree, shivering as the damp air seemed to seep into their bones. When darkness arrived, the swamp came alive with unsettling sounds. The brothers heard the gutter old bellows of, Alligators, the rustle of skittering swamp rats, and the constant drip of the ever-rising water. James later recalled hearing a loud splash nearby. Convinced it was a gator sizing them up,

he grabbed his rifle and tried to remain calm. But every snap of a twig sent spasms of fear through the brother's guts as their minds raced with thoughts of what lurked in the dark. On the second day, hunger and thirst set in. The two brothers, the two brothers, quickly ran out of what little food and water they brought along, and, in desperation, resorted to sipping from pools of stagnant brown swamp water. They gagged at the taste of rotten decay, but knowing dehydration would kill them far quicker than any germ or parasite, they drank it all the same. As they walked, their boots grew heavy with mud and their legs ached from wading through

the mire. Mosquitoes swarmed relentlessly, leaving welts on their exposed skin as they tried and failed to swat them away. At one point, David, the younger of the two brothers, started to exhibit signs of severe fatigue. James urged him on, but he too was beginning to falter. They needed a route out of the swamp and they needed it soon. And on the third day, James and David stumbled across an old hunter's camp. It was little more than a rotting wooden platform half submerged in the water and there were no supplies to be scavenged.

but since it offered a brief respite from the endless sea of mud and slime, the two brothers decided to rest a while. They tried to start a fire with soggy twigs and a lighter James carried with them, but the damp wood refused to catch. They endured, but as darkness fell, so did the rains. That night a storm rolled in, soaking them to the core and flooding their makeshift shelter. The rising water forced them back into the swamp where they clung to tree roots to avoid being swept away. James later said that he thought they'd drown right there, swallowed by the

swamp, and begin doubting if they'd ever get out alive. On day four, exhaustion and hypothermia began taking a brutal toll. The brother's pace slowed to a crawl, with each step becoming a battle against both the sucking mud and their own failing bodies. David's lips turned blue, and he began mumbling incoherently as signs of delirium set in. His brother, terrified. of losing him in the vastness of the swamp, tied their belts together in order to keep him close. They'd stopped talking about rescue. Survival was now about enduring from one hour to the next. And that night, they heard a helicopter in the distance. It was part of a search effort launched by their family after they failed to return. But to the brother's horror and frustration,

the swamp's canopy was too thick for the chopper to see them and the sound faded away. Day 5 brought a dim flicker of hope. The brothers found a patch of higher and thus drier ground, then with trembling hands they managed to spark a small fire using some grass and the last of James's lighter fluid. The smoke was thin, but they took turns feeding the fire, praying that it would be enough to draw the attention of search and rescue teams because their time was running out.

The brothers' bodies were breaking down, James' feet were. raw from trench foot and David was so weak it could barely stand. Both were gaunt. Their faces hollowed out by hunger and as the swamp began to sense their weakness, its wildlife grew bolder. James said at one point he spotted the eyes of what he could only assume was an alligator reflecting the glow of their firelight. He aimed his rifle, readying himself for the beast to attack. But fortunately it did not approach. On the morning of the sixth day, January 14th, of 1999, a rescue helicopter finally spotted the brother's faint smoke signal. The pilot, part of a coordinated search involving swamp buggies, airboats, and dozens

of volunteers, hovered over the clearing as James waved weakly with tears of joy and relief streaming down his face. Ropes were dropped before medics hoisted the brothers aboard. There was skeletal, dehydrated and hypothermic, their core temperatures having dropped dangerously low. Paramedics wrapped them in blankets, using IVs to pump fluids into their veins as they were rushed to a hospital in nearby Naples. It was there that doctors marveled at their tale of survival. Six days with no food, with only tainted water to drink, not to mention exposure to the elements in a swamp teeming with predators. All in all, it was nothing short of a miracle that the Adams brothers were still alive. James and David recovered physically, though the

mental scars lingered. James later told reporters, I thought we were gator food. Every night I heard them out there waiting. Their story became a local legend, a testament to human resilience and a stark reminder of the big cypress swamp's unforgiving nature. And for those six days, it wasn't just a landscape. It was a living, breathing adversary that almost claimed their lives. I've been a forest ranger for eight years now, and for the past five summers, I've been stationed at a fire lookout in the Pacific Northwest West. Most folks at H.Q. just call me the loner, with a good-nature chuckle. You see, I'm a single man, always have been, and I reckon I always will be. There's a certain freedom in that,

a kind of simplicity that I've learned to enjoy. Summers up in my lookout tower are where I feel most at peace, surrounded by nothing but the endless sweep of pines and fur stretching out beneath me. And the tower is my weathered wooden perch, perched high on a rocky ridge, with a wrapper around deck and windows that give me a complete view of the surrounding forest. It's just me up there, with nothing but my stack of dog-eared paperbacks, some beat-up coffee pot, and the soft crackle of my radio that I used to communicate. I really don't mind the solitude. In many ways, I like it. You just can't find peace like that anywhere else. The way the wind whispers through the trees and the way the sun paints the sky with orange and purple as it sets, it's tranquil, almost sacred to me.

and out there I'm not just an observer. I'm a part of nature. And it really does make you a poet out there with only your mind to think. But there was one summer a few years back when something really shook me to my core, an incident that I'll carry with me until the day that I die. It started like any other season. In early June, I hauled my gear up in the winding trail to the tower. Can goods, a few fresh shirts, my rifle, and a journal that I sometimes scribble in

when the mood strikes me. The forest was alive with chickadees, jumping between branches, along with the shatter of squirrels and the occasional thud of a pine cone hitting the ground. I settled into my routine, spending mornings at the desk, scanning the horizon for smoke, while just logging wind speeds and temperatures for the daily report. And for the first few weeks, it was paradise, same as always. Then, about a month in, something changed. I couldn't pinpoint it at first.

it was more a feeling than anything concrete. I'd be out in the deck, sipping my coffee, and then suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck would start prickling. The woods got quiet, too, almost unnaturally. No bird song, no rustling of leaves, just this sort of eerie stillness. I've been around long enough to know that the forest has its moods, but this felt way different, and I started to think that there might be a mountain lion in the area, possibly. They're ghosts out there, silent, solitary, and damn near and visible until they want you to see them. I'd found signs of one not too far from the tower a week earlier, a pile of scat and some claw marks gouged into a cedar trunk. So any time I left the tower, whether to check the rain gauge or haul water from the creek, I slung my old Winchester bold action over my shoulder.

Nothing fancy, but she was reliable. That uneasy feeling, though, dragged on for weeks. I'd wake up in the middle of the night, convinced that I'd heard something. It might be a twig snapping or a low growl. But when I grab my flashlight and sweep the beam across the clearing below, there'd be nothing. I started double-checking the lock on the tower door, something I'd never bothered with before, and during the day I'd just scour the ridge lines with my binocs and look for any hint of movement.

But again, there was nothing, just trees swaying in the breeze with the occasional hawk circling overhead. My nerves felt frayed, but I told myself that it was just the isolation getting to me. You spend enough time alone out there and you mind can start to play tricks on you, believe me. Still, I couldn't shake that sense that something was out there watching me. Then, just as mysteriously as it started, it stopped. The birds came back, their songs were filling the air again, and a family of deer wandered through the clearing one morning, nibbling at the grass, while acting completely unafraid.

The forest felt alive again, and for the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to relax. I've even laughed at myself a little, jumping at shadows, spooked by my own imagination. I still carried the rifle, but it felt more like habit than necessity.

And things seemed back to normal again. Then one afternoon in late August, I hiked down to a creek about a half mile from the tower to check the water level. It's a peaceful spot, where the water winds, through mossy rocks under the shade of nearby pines, and I was crouched by the bank,

scribbling a note in my logbook when I noticed my boot lace had come untied. The last thing I wanted was a trip hazard during my return journey, so I set my rifle against a rock and bent down to retie it. I was still fumbling with a lace when I heard it. A sharp, sudden, thwack. A something struck the tree behind me with a massive amount of force. I turned around, and there it was. An arrow buried deep in the bark.

It had missed my head by inches. Panic hit me like a runaway freight train. I didn't stop to think. I acted entirely on instinct. I grabbed my rifle and ran, boots pounding the dirt, branches, clawing at my arms as I tore through the brush as fast as my legs could carry me. my lungs were burning my pulse thundered in my ears but i didn't even think about slowing down until i was safely back at the tower i remember bolting up the stairs two at a time then slamming the door behind me before i turned the lock

my hands were still trembling as i took up a position by the west window peering out at the tree line with my rifle at the ready the forest looked still and calm but i wasn't fooled someone had just tried to kill me me. I fumbled for the radio, almost dropping it, and keyed the mic. HQ, this is Lookout 7, I said, alarmed at the terror in my own voice. Someone just tried to shoot me with an arrow and they're still out there. I need backup now. I remember how a Ranger's voice came back in moments, sounding calm but very urgent. Copy that, Lookout 7, he said. Sit tight. We're sending a team your way. I stayed by the window, my rifle at the ready, eyes darting between the trees,

and every shadow seemed like hidden danger, while every dull noise sounded like a footstep. I took an hour for backup to arrive, but when it did, three arm rangers piled out of a dusty jeep scanning their surroundings as they did so. I met them at the base of the tower and led them back to the creek. My legs were still shaky from my run back to that tower, and I can safely say that the walk back down to the creek was one of the most terrifying and unnerving experiences of my entire life. Someone had hunted me, and it almost killed me in the process.

But during that walk back to the creek, it was us that were hunting them, not an animal, but a person. When we arrived at the creek, the arrow was still there, lodged in that tree. Everyone went quiet, and we fanned out to search the area for tracks of broken branches, anything to tell us who had been there or where the shot had come from. but we found nothing. The ground was a carpet of pine needles, too soft to hold a footprint, and the shooter had not left a trace.

One of the rangers yanked the arrow-free and studied it. It looked handmade, but the question of who made it was anyone's guess. Someone suggested that it might have been a poacher, maybe someone who hated the federal government for whatever reason, but even so, his tone lacked any conviction. And they stayed with me for two days, taking shifts on the deck, rifles ready, but nothing happened. No more arrows, no signs of life beyond the usual forest critters, and whoever shot that arrow at me had just melded away, leaving us with more questions than answers.

The rest of the summer just dragged on, uneventful but tense. I'd sit up most nights staring out into the dark, the rifle across my lap, waiting for something that just never came. The forest I love felt different now, like it was hiding secrets I'd never get to the bottom of. I finished the season, packed up my gear, and hiked out just as the first rain started to fall. The whole thing doesn't haunt me or anything,

but even now, years later, I can still hear that arrow snapping into the tree, and I remember the cold dread that dripped over me in the seconds afterwards. I still work the towers, still love the wild, but there's a part of me that always is looking over my shoulder, wondering who was out there that summer, and why? They tried to end my life. Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m.

EST. And if you haven't already, check out Let's Read on YouTube, where you can catch all my new video releases every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you.