Backwoods Bigfoot Stories

• BWBS Ep:159 The Brown Mountain Lights

  In the mountains of western North Carolina, something ancient waits in the darkness. For over eight hundred years, mysterious lights have appeared above a low ridge called Brown Mountain, dancing across the sky in ways that science cannot explain and folklore cannot forget. Tonight, we journey into the heart of Appalachia's most enduring supernatural mystery.This episode begins with the Cherokee legend of a great battle fought in 1200 A.D. between the Cherokee and Catawba Nations. When the fighting ended and hundreds of warriors lay dead across the mountain, the women from both tribes came searching with torches held high, calling out for husbands and sons who would never answer. According to the legend, some of those women never stopped searching.Eight centuries later, their torches still burn on the ridgeline.We explore the first documented white witness to the phenomenon, a German cartographer named John William Gerard de Brahm who observed the lights in seventeen seventy one and tried to explain them as nitrous vapors catching fire. We follow the story of Fate Wiseman, whose family legend about a faithful servant searching for his lost master became the famous bluegrass song that made the Brown Mountain Lights a household name across America.The episode delves into darker territory with the murder of Belinda, a young healer whose abusive husband killed her and her newborn child sometime before the Civil War. According to local legend, the mysterious lights led searchers to her hidden grave, and they still appear above that ravine to this day.We examine the government investigations of nineteen thirteen and nineteen twenty two, when scientists declared the mystery solved by attributing the lights to train headlights and automobiles. We reveal how the devastating flood of nineteen sixteen destroyed that explanation entirely when the lights continued appearing even after all the trains stopped running and the roads washed away. The narrative takes us through the strange case of Ralph Lael, a furniture salesman who claimed to have followed one of the lights into a cave where he made contact with beings from Venus. We hear about Tommie Hunter, who actually touched one of the lights in nineteen eighty two and felt an electric shock surge through his body while six witnesses watched. We follow TV journalist John Carter into the woods after midnight, where he watched a glowing orb approach his group in a zig-zag pattern before making a dramatic turn and vanishing into nothing. Modern investigations receive thorough coverage, including the work of Dr. Daniel Caton at Appalachian State University, whose team accumulated over six thousand hours of camera footage and still couldn't explain everything they recorded. We explore the theories of paranormal researcher Joshua Warren, who believes the unique geology of Brown Mountain creates conditions for ball lightning and who successfully recreated similar phenomena in his laboratory. Throughout the episode, we encounter the many legends that have accumulated over the centuries. The lover's light, where a young woman still holds her torch waiting for a groom who never arrived on their wedding night. The Civil War ghosts, soldiers in blue and gray still searching for fallen comrades. The Revolutionary War patriots, still carrying the flame of liberty through the eternal darkness.This is a story about mystery and meaning. About the places where our certainty breaks down and the universe reminds us that it still contains secrets. About love so powerful it became visible, and grief so profound it became eternal. Whether you believe the lights are spirits of the dead, ball lightning generated by geological forces, or something we haven't discovered yet, one thing is certain. The Brown Mountain Lights are real. They've been appearing for eight hundred years. And somewhere in the darkness of Linville Gorge, the search continues.

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• BWBS Ep:158 Bigfoot In The LBL

  People say there's no way Sasquatch could exist in the Land Between the Lakes. They say it's too populated. Too well-traveled. Too thoroughly explored by hunters and hikers and campers over the decades.I disagree.  And after you hear this encounter story, I'm confident you'll agree with me. In November of nineteen eighty-four, a father took his fourteen-year-old son into the backcountry of the Land Between the Lakes for a deer hunting trip. It was supposed to be a bonding experience. A chance for the boy to take his first buck. A weekend of camping and hunting in a remote stretch of wilderness that most visitors never see. What they encountered out there changed both of them forever. It started with strange sounds. Heavy footsteps in the darkness. Rocks thrown from unseen hands. Then came the screaming. Inhuman vocalizations that echoed through the forest from multiple directions at once. Wood knocks that circled their camp throughout the night. The unmistakable signs of something intelligent, something powerful, something that wanted them to know they weren't alone.On the final morning, the boy made a clean shot on a beautiful ten-point buck. But before he could reach his kill, something emerged from the undergrowth. Something massive. Something that walked on two legs and stood over eight feet tall. Something that looked at him with eyes that held unmistakable intelligence.And then it took his deer.The father passed away in March of twenty twenty-four. Now his son is the only living witness to what happened during that terrifying weekend forty years ago. He made a promise to his father in that hospital room. A promise to finally tell the full story.This is that story. One hundred and seventy thousand acres of uninterrupted forest. Two hunters who ventured too deep into the backcountry. And the creatures that let them leave alive.Some places in this world belong to something other than us. The Land Between the Lakes might be one of them.

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• BWBS Ep:157 Demon Dog of Valle Crucis

  Deep in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, there’s a quiet little valley where three creeks meet and cross like a natural X. Long before settlers built homes there, the Cherokee knew the place well—and they didn’t trust it after dark. They warned their people to stay away, calling it a place where something shadowy moved through the night.Later, missionaries arrived, saw the crossing waters as a holy sign, and named the area Valle Crucis: the Valley of the Cross. They built St. John’s Episcopal Church beside that old meeting of waters, never realizing what the land had already been known for.In this special episode of Backwoods Bigfoot Stories, we step outside Sasquatch territory for something darker, older, and harder to shake. What you’re about to hear isn’t a Bigfoot encounter.It’s a story that’s been whispered around western North Carolina for generations—one that comes with a body count and a warning baked into the ground itself. The legend of the Demon Dog of Valle Crucis goes back at least to the mid-1800s, when a Methodist circuit rider claimed he saw a massive black hound standing among the cemetery stones. He wrote about its size, its unnatural stillness, and those eyes—glowing red like coals. Since then, the sightings have never really stopped. They just surface every so often, always describing the same impossible thing: a dog too big to be real, fur black enough to swallow moonlight, and a stare that feels human in the worst way. But it’s not the sightings that made this creature infamous. It’s what followed them. Hunting dogs found torn apart with wounds that didn’t match any known predator. Livestock killed in ways locals couldn’t explain. And nearly every time, the trail led back to the old cemetery—back to the crossing waters—back to the place people were told not to go.At the center of this episode is a listener account from Dale, now in his late fifties, who has carried what happened to him for more than forty years.In the fall of 1975, Dale and his best friend Curtis were fourteen—two mountain kids determined to prove they were grown enough to coon hunt on their own. They headed into the woods with three dogs, including Dale’s prized Bluetick, Jessie. They didn’t realize they were drifting toward Valle Crucis. They didn’t know what the old stories were really warning about.What happened that night near the cemetery changed Dale for good. He describes something huge stepping out of the darkness. Sounds no normal dog could make. A chase that didn’t feel like a chase—more like something playing with them. And a split-second sacrifice he still hasn’t forgiven himself for. Dale doesn’t try to sell you a theory. He doesn’t dress it up. He just tells you what he saw, what he heard, and what he lost. And the grief in his voice makes it clear: this isn’t a campfire tale.This is a scar. We’re honored that Dale trusted us with it. Some stories don’t fade with time—they just get heavier. And this one comes with a warning that’s echoed through generations: there are places in these mountains you don’t push your luck in. Not because you’re superstitious. Because sometimes the old folks were right.So settle in, keep your senses sharp, and walk with us into the Valley of the Cross—where the creek waters meet, the graveyard waits, and something out there still doesn’t want company after dark.

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• BWBS Ep:156 Wood Boogers

  In this episode, we head deep into the Appalachian spine to uncover one of America’s most enduring mountain mysteries: the Wood Booger. Known across Southwest Virginia and neighboring highland communities, this legend reaches back long before European settlers ever set foot on these ridges.Indigenous nations carried generations of warnings about wild men in the forest—the Monacan and Mannahoac spoke of untamed beings in the woods, and Cherokee stories told of Tsul ‘Kalu, the slant-eyed giant who watched from the highest places. These accounts weren’t bedtime tales. They were cautionary history.We open with a startling story tied to the final chapter of Daniel Boone’s life. In his last year, Boone reportedly confided a secret he’d kept for decades: an encounter with a ten-foot-tall, hair-covered creature he called a “Yahoo.” We dig into the historical trail behind this claim, drawing from John Mack Faragher’s landmark Boone biography and Theodore Roosevelt’s writings on Boone’s Kentucky expeditions to weigh what’s legend, what’s record, and what still refuses to fit neatly into either. From there, we travel to Norton, Virginia—modern ground zero for Wood Booger research. This tiny mountain city, the smallest independent city in the state, has built a surprising identity around the creature. We explore the region’s coal-mining roots and the eerie stories miners carried out of the tunnels beneath these ancient mountains. We also visit nearby Saltville, where humans have mined salt for thousands of years—and where reports of something unexplainable have echoed just as long. The investigation then turns to one of the most talked-about pieces of evidence in recent memory: the 2009 Beast of Gum Hill video. When Chuck Newton captured footage of a massive biped stepping out of the Washington County treeline, the clip drew national attention—and eventually brought the Finding Bigfoot television crew to Southwest Virginia. We revisit the town hall they hosted at the Palmer Grist Mill in Saltville, where the turnout stunned everyone: hunters, hikers, families, and a teenager who described being struck by a rock moments after locking eyes with a dark figure on a hillside. We break down decades of witness descriptions to build a composite profile of the Wood Booger—its reported height and muscular build, the powerful odor so often mentioned in sightings, and the vocalizations that roll through hollows at night.You’ll hear accounts from hunters encountering something impossibly close in tree stands, truck drivers watching a hulking form cross Route 23 at three in the morning, and a woman outside Bristol who met the creature in her headlights on a quiet back road near Mendota. The scientific discussion brings us to the work of the late Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, who examined hundreds of footprint casts and argued that certain evidence was extraordinarily difficult to dismiss. We look at reported dermal ridges, the mid-tarsal break that doesn’t match human foot anatomy, and hair samples that have resisted definitive identification while showing traits consistent with primates.We also ask the bigger question: why Appalachia? With landscapes over 400 million years old, heavily forested terrain (West Virginia alone is nearly 80% woodland), and massive networks of caves and underground passages, this region offers remoteness in plain sight.Add abundant food sources, low population density, and a deep culture of silence, and you get a place where encounters could remain unreported for generations.Some of the most powerful moments come from childhood witnesses—people who saw something before they had words for fear or disbelief. One woman recounts being eight years old when she locked eyes with a creature across a creek behind her grandparents’ home. Instead of dismissing her, her grandmother sat her down and told her about the hairy man who had lived in these mountains longer than anyone could remember.We close in Norton, where the city has openly embraced its Wood Booger heritage: a council resolution declaring Norton a Wood Booger sanctuary, a seven-foot statue at Flag Rock Recreation Area, the Wood Booger Grill on Park Avenue, and an annual festival that brings visitors from across the country. What was once a struggling coal town has reinvented itself around a legend many locals never doubted was real.This episode is dedicated to the witnesses who carried their encounters in silence—afraid of ridicule, isolation, or being labeled crazy. The hunters who came home shaken and quiet. The hikers who saw something on the trail they could never unsee. The kids who weren’t believed when they tried to tell the truth. You’re not alone. You’re not imagining things. And your story matters.

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• BWBS Ep:155 Skin Walker Ranch

  In this episode, we travel to the remote Uintah Basin of northeastern Utah to investigate one of the most intensively studied paranormal locations on Earth: Skinwalker Ranch. This 512-acre property has been the site of documented UFO encounters, cattle mutilations, shapeshifting creatures, and phenomena so bizarre that even the United States government spent $22 million trying to understand it.Our story begins with the ancient warnings of the Ute tribe, who have forbidden their people from setting foot on this land for generations. We explore the legend of the Navajo skinwalkers—malevolent witches said to be capable of transforming into animals—and the territorial conflict that allegedly led to a curse being placed on this remote stretch of Utah high desert.At the heart of the narrative is the Sherman family, who purchased the ranch in 1994 expecting to build a quiet life raising cattle. What they found instead was eighteen months of relentless terror. We detail their first encounter with an enormous wolf that couldn’t be killed despite being shot multiple times at point-blank range. We examine the systematic mutilation of their cattle, animals discovered with surgical-precision wounds and not a single drop of blood. We recount the night their three dogs were incinerated by a glowing blue orb, reduced to greasy black lumps in seconds.The investigation deepens when billionaire Robert Bigelow buys the property in 1996 and deploys PhD-level scientists through the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS). A disturbing pattern emerges: the phenomena seem to anticipate the researchers’ movements and deliberately evade documentation. We describe the March 1997 encounter in which investigators witnessed a massive creature with glowing yellow eyes perched in a tree, and a dog-headed beast on the ground below—both vanishing after being fired upon. We revisit the August 1997 portal sighting, where a ring of orange light opened in midair and a dark humanoid figure stepped through before the doorway snapped shut.Perhaps most disturbing is our exploration of the Hitchhiker Effect, a phenomenon in which the horrors of Skinwalker Ranch appear to follow visitors home.Researchers, their family members, and even their neighbors reported identical paranormal events hundreds of miles from the property. We examine the physical toll linked to these experiences, including chronic blood diseases, neurological symptoms, and radiation exposure that left some investigators permanently harmed.From there, we move into the halls of government. Defense Intelligence Agency scientist James Lacatski’s visit to the ranch helped spark a $22 million Pentagon program known as AAWSAP.We reveal how U.S. Senator Harry Reid secured funding to study the unexplained, and how the 2017 New York Times exposé pushed UFOs into mainstream discourse.We conclude with the modern era under owner Brandon Fugal, whose History Channel series has documented six seasons of anomalies including UAP sightings, radiation spikes, GPS interference, and the discovery of a massive metallic anomaly buried deep beneath the ranch. We examine what investigators have found in the area known as the Triangle, where rockets are deflected by invisible forces and LIDAR imaging suggests structures that don’t appear in visible light.Throughout this episode, we stay committed to factual accuracy while delivering the high-strangeness our listeners expect. Every incident described has been reported by credible witnesses, and many were investigated by government-linked teams.We present skeptical perspectives alongside extraordinary claims, letting you decide what may be happening in that remote corner of Utah.This episode runs approximately one hour and draws from the original Deseret News reporting (1996), Hunt for the Skinwalker by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon by Kelleher, Knapp, and James Lacatski, interviews with Brandon Fugal and Dr. Travis Taylor, and documentation from the NIDS and AAWSAP investigations.Content Warning: This episode includes descriptions of animal deaths and mutilations, psychological distress, and unexplained medical phenomena. Listener discretion is advised.If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps us keep bringing you the strange, the unexplained, and the terrifying stories that live just beyond the edge of what we think we know about our world.For more content from Paranormal World Productions, visit our website and follow us on social media. And remember: some places on this Earth are not meant for us. Some doors are not meant to be opened. And some lands watch back.

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