The Great Smokey Mountains Massacre
I have went back and fourth a couple of times on whether or not to post this...Partially because I know most wont believe it, and partially because I don't really want to relive it in my head. Throwaway because no amount of karma is worth getting labeled a wack job should someone I know in real life find this or something...
My uncle (we will call him..bob.) and his daughter, my cousin (we will call her sue), used to live a good distance out in the woods. I'm not going to say what state, but suffice it to say its a very rural area of a south-eastern US state. The closest main road was a couple of miles away, and it was one gravel road onto another to get to their house. The only house within walking distance (a long walk at that, about an 1/8th of a mile), was a second uncle of mine (John), and the two of them had lived in that house in the middle of those woods all of their lives up until Bob decided to buy a mobile home and set it up a little farther still into the woods.
Yeah, it probably sounds nutso to want to live out in the middle of no-frickin-where, the town's TV cable service didn't even offer service to his house, and you could barely get a cell signal there half the time, but my uncle loved it. He was an outdoorsy type, and honestly a bit of a gun nut. He fancied himself a cowboy I guess, always wearing a cowboy hat and watching old gunslinger TV shows on VHS (like I said, no cable). My cousin Sue never knew anything different, so she liked living out in the woods just fine too..up until they moved into the trailor...but more on that later.
So, being a young boy, I thought my uncle Bob was just the coolest guy in the world. I always enjoyed shooting and plinking as a kid. My parents bought me a .22, taught me how to use it and how to safely handle firearms really young, so of course I loved visiting uncle Bob out in the woods and going hunting with him and checking out his cool guns.
That is, until both of my parents got switched to 2nd shift at their jobs, and I had to start going to Bob's house after school every day. At first it wasn't so bad, the lack of cable really bummed me out, but we had VHS's....But what really started to get to me was the walk back to my parents car at 11:30 when they got off and came to pick me up.
The gravel road that led from my uncle Johns house to Bob's was barely passable as a road, and lit by a single street light. My parents, convinced that a 12 year old boy had nothing to worry about walking down a gravel road at midnight in the middle of no-where (I mean, who was going to bother me, right?), would usually park at Johns house and call down for Bob to send me walking up the road.
It honestly wasn't that big of a deal. Bob would stand at his door and watch me walk up the road to make sure I was alright, and I'd no sooner be out of his sight than the hi-beams of my parents car would be greeting me back to safety...but it sure felt like I was walking through hell...
Other than the TV situation and the long dark walk, Bob, Sue, and I would sit around and talk about hunting or watch video taped hunting shows. Bob loved hunting. Like, hunted every single day. Both of my uncles had been hunting in those woods since they were little, and knew damn near everything about the area.
Bob had some pretty spooky stories he would tell from his hunting experiences. Mostly just weird sounds in the woods, occasionally seeing some weird things once or twice. It always tripped me out when he would tell Sue and me those stories about the woods around the trailor we were sitting in at that very moment.
Of course John would never back Bob up on any of those stories. If you asked him about any of them, or if he had ever seen anything, he'd just say something kinda dodgy about how you can't explain everything, and just because he didn't know what something was didn't mean it was anything weird.
I don't remember a single time John confirmed anything Bob told me, at least not with any kind of conviction. But that is probably partially because Bob was a natural born story teller. He could make scary stories up off the top of his head that would give Stephen King nightmares. That was something else we did to pass the time, sit around and listen to these...horror stories..that my uncle would come up with.
Now don't get me wrong, he never mixed up his 'real life this happened to me' eerie type stories with his obviously made up supernatural type stories, but knowing how John kinda shrugged Bob's true stories off and knowing how good of a story teller Bob was, I always took his tales with a shaker of salt.
So anyway, like I said, I really liked hanging out with uncle Bob and cousin Sue, and going hunting with Bob, and everything was pretty 'normal' at their trailor for a good while after they moved in. They even got an indoor dog that I loved to death and loved to play with named Muffin.
I had maybe been staying with them after school for probably a month when it all went to shit.
When it first started, I really kinda wondered if they were playing a joke on me, or setting up some tall tell for a story. It never seemed to happen when I was there. Only on the weekends, or after midnight when I had gone home.
Someone was trying to screw with Sue's head. Bob would be gone during the day hunting or gone to town, and someone would fuck with their trailor. Knocking on doors, knocking on walls, throwing sticks / rocks at it.
Now, Sue was no southern bell, she knew her way around a 12 gauge pump action shotgun better than most people, but one can only sit in a trailor the middle of the woods alone and listen to windows in other rooms getting knocked on before you start to wonder who the hell is coming all the way out in rural bum fucking egypt to mess with you.
Not to mention the stuff happening at 2-3 o'clock in the morning.
Sue and Bob had bedrooms at opposite ends of the trailor, and at either end, looking outside their window, was a clearing maybe 40-50ft wide, and then the tree line. At night in the early hours of the morning, Sue could hear someone walking rather heavily around the woodline, and occasionally screaming a hi-pitched scream.
My dad and uncle John suggested it was a panther, and not to worry about it, but Sue took to sleeping with the 12 gauge next to her bed anyway.
Like I said, I honestly didn't believe it at first. I could barely muster the courage to walk from one end of the gravel road to the other at night with a fully grown man with a gun watching over me, who the fuck would have the balls to be wondering around the woods at 3 AM screwing with an obviously armed woman?
And the fact that it only happened when I wasn't there seemed a little too convenient. I would have thought maybe they were setting me up for some kinda grand story, or even that Sue (she was a bit of a drama queen..) was just making it up for attention, except that.. they were kinda keeping it hush hush, at least from me.
The little bit's of info I got were mostly hearing 'other room' conversations between Sue and Bob, or Bob and John. I had to piece together what was going on, and question Sue about it later.
At first she just kinda said it was nothing for me to worry about and everything was fine. That is, until one day after school.
I got to their house and Bob and Sue were waiting for me at Johns house to walk me down to theirs. This was unusual, it was a perfectly bright sunny day, no murderers, rapists, or home intruders in sight. But there was something really strange in the air that day, some weird glances between Bob and Sue..something had them on edge. If the awkward looks and edgy acting hadn't tipped me off, the firepower should have..Bob had a 6 shooter strapped to his leg, and a 30-30 lever action rifle in his hand, and Sue had the shotgun at her side. It wasn't until Bob was making us dinner in the kitchen later that I found out why.
Someone had tried to break in on Sue that day. Bob had gotten up that morning and went squirrel hunting, and someone had tried to rip the door off of their trailor.
Bob hadn't went out for a few days given the strange occurrences of the past few days, but everything had seemingly died down. So, this day he had decided he'd go out for just a little while, stick close to the trailor, and see how things went.
No more than 45 minutes after he had left, Sue had been sitting on the couch and heard the handle of the door (which she had triple locked) start to rustle back and fourth. Gently at first, and then harder, and finally a full fledged attempt to pull the door off the hinges.
Sue had somehow composed herself long enough to call Bob's cell phone and scream for help before grabbing the shotgun and falling into a crying mess on the floor waiting on God knows what to come through the door after her. IT HAD BEEN WATCHING AND WAITING ON BOB TO LEAVE.
It gave up a few minutes before Bob got back, either deterred by the door lock, Sue's dog Muffin attacking the inside of the door trying to get out to it, or at the sound of a shotguns pump action racking a round into the chamber.
I hadn't noticed walking in (I seem to remember one of them opening the door for me), but later that day I checked and the doorknob was..decimated. I'm not sure how it was hanging on, much less working. And I could tell this wasn't usual Sue drama when she told me... She was nearly in tears. Muffin would NOT leave her side that entire night, no matter how much I tried to play with her. She had the look in her eye of someone who had been through an emotional hell that day.
After dinner, just after sundown, we tried to regain some sense of normalcy. We played a few games of 'Sorry', a few games of cards, and were sitting down about to listen to Bob continue one of his stories - "The Great Smokey Mountain Massacre" (from which this story borrows it's title).
Sue and I sat on the couch with Muffin laying in between us, Bob sat in a chair perpendicular to us. I was honestly not in the mood to hear a scary story from Bob 'the master of terror himself' after hearing what had went down that day, but Sue wanted to, so I was okay with it. I suppose maybe looking back, she wanted to put her fear back into something that couldn't really hurt her. Who knows what was outside the door, but at least in there right then, no story was breaking down her door to get at her.
5 minutes in, Bob had us enthralled as usual, and I was just leaning my head back to take a sip of soda when BAM, something hit the metal trailor wall directly behind my head so hard I fell out of my seat.
Literally, I jumped into the floor, hit the deck, and took cover, Sue in the floor beside me, Muffin barking at the top of her lungs, Bob grabbing a rifle and a spotlight, slamming the backdoor open and flying out of it trying to kick Muffin back to keep her inside.
I could hear very heavy footsteps hitting the ground to the tree line just behind their house. Five minutes passed, then ten, then an eternity. I remember it like it were yesterday. Finally, what seemed like hours later, but was probably 15 minutes at most, I heard Bob yell to Sue that he was coming back in, which was a good thing as Sue by now had a firearm in hand.
He walked back in with disbelief in his eyes. He hadn't made it around the house in time to see what had hit the wall, but the area where the bang was heard, the area just behind my head....was about 10 feet off the ground. There was a dent in the metal the size of an abnormally large mans fist, no more than a foot behind where my head had just been only minutes ago, and my uncle Bob, who until that point in my life had been the great white hunter to me, had no explanation. Bob and Sue walked me to my parents car that night.
Of course my parents, being rational human beings, and knowing Bob's story telling and Sue's flare for the dramatic didn't believe it was anything other than perhaps a peeping tom or some backwards neighbor (who had no fear of death via acute lead poisoning, and nothing to do but walk several miles in the middle of the night to bang on a trailor and run) trying to scare us.
It didn't matter if they believed me though. Just as quickly as the terrorizing had started, it stopped. A month or so passed and there were no more incident's to speak of, or at least nothing that couldn't be blamed on over active imaginations or jumpy nerves. No more window taps, no more Muffin barking fits, no more replaced doorknobs.
Still, the occurrence made Bob decide that maybe they should cut back a few tree's and extend the woodline away from their house a bit, if for nothing else than to extend the site lines just in case.... So they hired a couple of guys to come in during the days with chainsaws and cut some of the tree's around the edge's of the clearing down.
They were friends of the family, so they worked slow, but it gave Bob some time to get some hunting in, trusting that no sane (or even insane) individual would try breaking in on Sue mid-day while guys with chainsaws running full blast were walking around. And he was right, no weird activity at all to speak of.
Until... One Sunday night, a few weekends later. I wasn't there for this part, but it is what I am able to recall piecing together the next day from my 12 year old brain, now over a decade and a half later.
Muffin, being an indoor dog, and needing to go outside as indoor dogs often do, was sitting next to the front door with her leash sometime just after dark. Bob, not having me to send out to walk her, and still a bit anxious from the strange happenings the month before, grabbed his rifle & flashlight, put Muffin's leash on her, and plunged out into the warm, dark night.
Sue was inside washing dishes from dinner and looking out into the yard / newly cleared area, and was just able to faintly see Bob and Muffin from the little bit of glow the gravel road's streetlight provided.
Almost no sooner than her paws had hit the dirt, Muffin flipped her shit. She was a small dog, maybe 20 pounds, but she was hitting above her weight barking and pulling Bob toward the tree line with everything she had. Bob was no small man by any means, but trying to balance a flashlight in one hand with a dog leash tied around it, and a rifle in the other, I guess it is fair to say that Muffin was winning the fight.
After getting Muffin to stop yanking his arm out of socket, Bob tried to shine his flashlight at the treeline to see what Muffin was barking at, but the beam wouldn't quite reach.
All he could see at the distance was what looked like a very thick tree stump the yard clearing had left.
And then, the tree stump STOOD UP.
Sue, inside at the kitchen window and being a lot closer than Bob to the end of the house / yard the former tree stump was now standing at, said the figure was tall and very bulky. Tall meaning over 8 foot in height, and bulky as in...as wide around as a large tree stump.
The massive figure took a step toward Bob just as the first before the first shot rang out, and then the second and the third, and so on. The hulking shade, possibly startled by the noise of a 30-30 Winchester, or possibly hit with a round or several, turned and retreated back into the woods.
At first Bob and the fearless Muffin started toward the woods to give chase and find out just what the hell that tree stump had morphed into. However after a few steps, and realizing he had no idea how many rounds he had left in his rifle, Bob thought better of chasing an obviously physically superior, possibly wounded..animal? into the deep dark woods in the pitch black of night, regardless of how much courage Muffin possessed. Instead, after a quick reload, the night was spent at uncle John's house.
The next day John and Bob went to look at the scene of the carnage. Brush and small tree's were knocked down for yards leading deeper into the woods back over a creek and towards a bluff. But the trail went cold, and there were no obvious signs of blood.
So, just what was terrorizing my uncle and my cousin? I have no idea.
I do know I talked to John about it a little over a year later, after my uncle and cousin had moved out of that house and into a more populated, less rural part of town. I asked John what he thought it was, and if he thought the story was just Bob embellishing for the sake of a good tale, or Sue playing everything up for attention.
John's usual casual disregard for Bob's stories wasn't there this time...He just said he didn't know and he didn't think he ever would. John actually moved into the trailor after Bob and Sue moved out, never had any problems as far as I know. Not a peep.
You may be wondering what finally made my uncle and my cousin move out between the 'tree stump' night and the time I talked to John about everything.
What was it that finally made someone who had lived within an 1/8th mile radius from their childhood home their whole life, and who loved living in the middle of no where, finally pack up and move to a less rural area across town.
Well, unfortunately for me, that is where I come in.
It had been probably 6 or 7 months since my uncle Bob had shot at some towering behemoth of an unidentifiable human-ish shaped animal. They had speculated just what that shape in the darkness had been for months.
Maybe it was a really, really large human, maybe it was a bear (black bears are pretty common around here, and one standing on it's hind legs for a minute would appear like a stump getting huge, especially in the panic of the moment), nobody knew.
It didn't really matter though, either Bob had hit it with enough lead to poison a fishing village, or it had decided it wasn't fond of getting shot at. Either way, it hadn't been back to bother my cousin or my uncle.
Bob almost never left the first two months, especially without Sue. In the third month, he started cautiously going out, but staying close, and as things tend to do, they started to go back to normal. Finally, after over half a year, Bob was going out almost every day hunting again.
Summer had come and gone, and I had decided to spend a Saturday hunting with my uncle. Sue seemed perfectly fine staying alone again (I think she was sick of Bob being there all the time), so Bob and I decided to make a go of it and have at some squirrels.
My parents had just gotten me my first shotgun, a single shot break action 20 gauge. We walked for maybe a mile and a half (which takes a little while when you are trying to be quit in the woods), and we were just crossing a fence onto a neighboring property (my uncle was friends with the owner, and had permission to cross the property as a short cut) when my uncle's cell phone rang (which in and of itself was a miracle given the cell phone coverage of the day and how far we were in the woods). He quickly silenced it and handed my gun over the fence to me (I had crossed first, we had to climb over as it was a tall fence).
Just as he was about to hand his gun over, the phone began to ring again. Bob pulled the phone out of his jacket and looked at it, answered and was just about to say "Sue I can't talk right now" when....I could hear it over his speaker.
Loud banging on metal "BANG BANG BANG", Muffin barking her head off, Sue screaming for help.
Grabbing his gun and slamming his phone into his pocket, Bob took off running back in the direction of their house, leaving me on the wrong side of the fence, Bob yelled "ILL BE BACK STAY HERE".
At this point, I believe I was 12 or 13 years old. The exact details kind of blur with time, but the event I can still close my eyes and relive if I am not careful. Bob running as fast as he can through the woods rifle in hand, his brown jacket getting smaller and smaller into the distance, until I'm alone.
I'm alone in the woods, not old enough to drive, barely a teenager, not even in high school yet.
I'm alone in the woods, no one around for miles, with a single shot shotgun and a pocket full of shells as my uncle speeds off to defend my cousin from God only knows what kind of monster my imagination was coming up with.
I had never even seen the silhouette that they had been so afraid of, only heard their descriptions and juxtapose them to the sound of the banging coming from behind my head that night, 10 feet off the ground.
I was alone in the woods, and Muffin, all 20 pounds of her, was trying every bit as hard to get out to tear the monster's throat out to protect my cousin, but I was here almost defenseless.
I was alone in the woods, and I was scared to death.
Put your 12 year old self there. Put your 12 year old self in the woods, alone, with the monsters and the demons, and every creature from under your bed, and stuck imagining what was going on a mile away.
Up until that moment, I had never been scared of the woods. But right then, I just wanted to get out.
At first I was able to stay pretty calm and collected. I carefully unloaded the single round in my shotgun (after taking a good 5 minute glare around the area to make sure I wouldn't need that single round immediately..), slid the gun under the fence, climb over the fence myself, and then reloaded.
I wanted to get out of there so badly. I knew roughly the way back, but honestly I wasn't sure I wanted to go back to my uncle's house given it's current situation either.
I figured it I followed the trail most of the way to his house, then veered off left to my uncle John's house, it would be at least moderately safe. At least a lot safer than waiting around here for Bob to scare off whatever was trying to break in on Sue again, just for it to come out here and find me wandering around. At least she had a house, a dog, and an arsenal of Bob's firearms to protect her, hell I only had 1 round at a time...
So, weighing the risk of getting in trouble for not staying put like Bob told me to versus the risk of getting eaten by bigfoot, I started down the trail back to Johns house. At best I run into Bob coming back for me, at worst I get to Johns and call bob's cell phone and let him know where I am...and at very worst I run headlong into Sasquatch and have to fight for my life with what would be the equivalent of a bb gun to it.
At first the "walk" was .. almost peaceful. Birds chirping, squirrels running about (they always know when you aren't going to shoot them for some reason and THATS when they'll run out in front of you...).
I say "walk" because it started out kind of a brisk speed-walk sorta thing. As fast as I could without crushing through the brush and announcing my presence to whatever was within ear shot. But then...something changed.
There were no bird sounds anymore. No little animal noises at all. Just a steady, heavy crunching of foliage underfoot..and it wasn't by me. Something coming toward me that was just out of sight. It couldn't be Bob, it is coming from the direction I'm coming from, but behind me.. walking with me toward Bob's house..
"Okay, fuck this, I'm out" I remember thinking under my breath as I broke into whatever I could manage for a sprint in the heavier underbrush.
A minute into my sprint I started thinking I was silly, there is no way anything is behind me, after all isn't this whole thing just Bob and Sue's imagination anyway?...Their imagination, now chasing me through the woods, and .. I still hear it following me.
Something is still crunching away just as fast as I am, keeping pace with me in these godforsaken woods.
By the time I hit the clearing to John's yard, I don't know if whatever it was was still keeping pace with me, or catching up, or gone completely. For all I knew, and in my imagination, the second I hit the clearing it's giant arm was going to grab me and snatch me back into the bleakness of the forest forever.
Propelled by that thought and gaining traction in the clearing, I didn't stop running until I was pounding on John's door with everything I had.
When he finally got me inside and calmed me down, he explained that whatever had been breaking in on Sue was gone when he and Bob got there (Sue had called John too), and that Bob had just went back into the woods a few minutes ago to find me (meaning there is no way it could have been him following me).
John called Bob and let him know I was safe and sound, and a few long months after that day, as soon as they could afford to get out, Sue and Bob moved away from that trailor in the middle of the woods.
As far as I know, after that day they never had any more problems. However, on their last day there, Bob told me he joked to Sue he was going to leave a forwarding address on the door so their 'visitor' would know where to find her.
Somehow, the humor of this was lost on her.
#Creature/Humanoid #Creature/Humanoid/Bigfoot #Area/Woods #Unexplained #Building/Trailer