Episode Details

John writes "January of 2017 I moved to Pikeville, Eastern Kentucky. The apartment complex I moved into was an old abandoned coal mine holler that had been converted which had an old coal road that went up a mountain and then swing around it with acre's of woods.

Well, whenever Id sit in the picnic area to have a cigarette id notice around 10+ at night this howling out in the nearby hills which now i can say sounded almost identical to the Ohio Sounds. I'd hear one howl and then maybe 30 seconds later there'd be another one from another hill that was maybe a mile or so away, and then I'd hear another, and another, and you could listen to these call and responses for hours without end. Well by April I was trying to get back into shape and I love to hike so I decided I'd get up around 6 am and hike up that coal road and back. As I'm hiking up and it got darker and darker up that road I noticed this strange bird whistling at me. It was strange because of how loud it was, and I mean the pitch was just so loud and I thought to myself, "that's a big damn bird!" And I whistled back. Wes, my grandpa was a Green Beret in Vietnam who partly helped raise me, and I've been in the woods of Illinois and Wisconsin my whole life and never encountered much that was weird, although my Grandpa did and told me stories here and there, but I wasn't afraid of much. Well, I'm hiking up and not only is that whistling getting closer, and I mean close to where it was like ten feet from me in the treeline of woods. I turned on the flash light on my phone and couldn't see anything it was so dense. But then I noticed this "bird" was keeping pace with me.

Then small pebbles started landing in front of me as I walked down. At first I thought it was just loose rock sliding down, but then it became apparent that something was tossing them right at my feet. At this point I'm about 300 feet up this old road in the pitch dark. So, I gently tossed one back, and then a big one, maybe 1/2 pound rock flung right at my feet. I froze man! Now, I gently yelled out, "is someone out there?" And that bird whistling started up even louder than it had before! Idk what overcame me, but I started belting out the St. Michael prayer in Latin and then the Hail Mary pretty audibly, and not wanting to turn back continued up that road. All of this whistling, keeping pace, and Pebble tossing just amped up as I was coming to a bend in the road that turned with the mountain. Idk what it was, but as I reach it with rosary in hand I got this bad bad feeling like something is really wrong here, and I spoke aloud and said, "idk what ya are, but im just walking here…" And the Pebble tossing got more intense and I could now hear "things" trudging through the wood at paces that I knew werent people. So I turned around and calmly began to go home. I thought that this could be bear or well hell a damn bigfoot. How loud the trudging was, combined with the whistling, and Pebble tossing I wanted to run the hell outta there down back into that holler, but if ya think that there's an animal ya just don't do that. And idk why, but something told me do not turn your back to them. So I'm trying to make it down while keeping an eye on what's behind me, and the moments that I looked down the road towards the apartment complex something just leaped from the side of the mountain onto the road, and then down into a bunch of thicket. And I stopped and yelled, "what the fuck was that!" If it were a man he'd have fallen 400 feet down a vertical fall and broke his neck or something I mean it was steep! And covered in thicket and thorn bushes. And how loose the rocks were I mean if you did get a footing you'd just fall on your ass and slide and tumble down. Whatever this was got it's footing and slid and trudged down with great volume like stomping through a huge snow drift. So there I am feeling like a fool the sun is begging to make the horizon pink up just a little at this point.

I kep