Latest / Sasquatch & Sourdough / Ep. 58 | The Midnight Line | Ghost Trains, Bigfoot, UFOs & Strange America

Transcript

Ep. 58 | The Midnight Line | Ghost Trains, Bigfoot, UFOs & Strange America · Sasquatch & Sourdough

0:13
SPEAKER_00: There are places that only exist for a moment.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: A late-night diner at 2 a.m., a gas station glowing beside an empty highway, a train crossing in the distance while everyone else sleeps, and sometimes an old cassette tape.
0:29
SPEAKER_00: And for a few minutes, it feels like time travel.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: Not because you're going back, because part of you wants to.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: A song comes on and suddenly you're somewhere else.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: A different road, a different season, a different version of yourself.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's the strange thing about memory.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: The places disappear, the people move away, the roads change, the diners close, the woods get cut down.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: And yet something inside us keeps returning, keeps searching, keeps looking over our shoulder toward places we can't go back to.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why America is full of strange stories.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: Not because the country is haunted, because memory is.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: Old railroad towns, desert highways, mountain roads, forgotten stations.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: Stories cling to them.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Ghost lights, phantom trains, things seen in the woods, strange lights crossing lonely skies.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: The stories survive because something inside us recognizes them.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: Like echoes and dreams, like a song you've heard before, but can't quite remember the place.
1:52
SPEAKER_00: Ecclesiastes 3.11.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: He has made everything beautiful in its time.
1:57
SPEAKER_00: And he has also set eternity in the human heart.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's it.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's the thing we spend our lives feeling.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: The ache, the longing, the sense that there has to be something more beyond the next ridge, beyond the next town, beyond the next horizon.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: Maybe eternity is what makes wanderers out of all of us.
2:23
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to Sasquatch and Sourdough! It's almost pool season, and we finally made it past Memorial Day, and it's actually finally sunny here.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: But that's Maryland weather for you.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, welcome.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: I'm really excited about this episode.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: I found a guy on Instagram, and he's his handle is just the cassette guy, and it's amazing.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Like he literally, he doesn't have a lot of content, but it's basically he like takes an old cassette out of his um out of his car, and like it's total like the sound design, it's just so it sounds so crisp and like it just makes you feel like you're right there.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: But like he plays the cassette in his old car and then just like drives down like a random road, and then you're listening to the music and like traveling with him, and it just reminded me of like driving around the reservoir in the late 1900s in high school, like listening to music.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: It's just so like nostalgic, and so it got me thinking about you know, nostalgia and some of the classic American strange stories, and so I wanted to do a little episode about that because why not?
4:10
SPEAKER_00: It's summertime.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: Almost.
4:14
SPEAKER_00: But before we dive into the episode, I wanted to give a shout out to the lovely ladies at the Cryptid Women's Society.
4:22
SPEAKER_00: Um, I love those gals.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: We did an episode together last summer, I think.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: And they are actually currently collaborating with Cult of Conspiracy podcast, and they're re-releasing that episode on there.
4:35
SPEAKER_00: I think this weekend it's supposed to drop.
4:37
SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much, ladies, for thinking of me.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: And um, I'm so glad that their uh their website and everything that they're doing over there is doing so well.
4:47
SPEAKER_00: So please go check them out.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: They're awesome, and they have incredible stories.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: Like we really got into like crazy dog man like super soldiers on trains.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: It was wild.
4:59
SPEAKER_00: It was a wild episode.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll link that or like re-release it myself because it's really it was a good episode.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: So, a couple housekeeping things before we get into this.
5:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, I did want to mention that if you've noticed, I currently do not have any sort of like pre-made intro or outro anymore.
5:18
SPEAKER_00: Because of the RAM shortage, I had to like go through a bunch of drives for work because we're recording so much awesome content um at church that I had to like just delete a lot of stuff.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: And I think some of my stuff actually got deleted.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: So until I figure that out, it's just gonna be like whatever kind of cool sound design goes with the episode.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: So that's why you're not hearing an actual like intro outro anymore, but that's okay.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to welcome anybody new that's out there listening.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: Again, thank you so much for tuning in.
5:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's just been it's been slowly growing, and it's really exciting to see that the new direction of the show is something that you want to listen to.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: And I'm really excited about it.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: So if you're new here, the best way you can get in touch is to follow us on Instagram.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: That's where I do most of my sharing and content uh creation outside of the website and outside of the um actual podcast.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: I try to get as much um episodes created as I can, but like I've said before, life is busy and these episodes deserve time.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to just rush through and you know create just to create.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: I want it to be something meaningful uh that you guys will enjoy.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: So you can follow us on Instagram.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: You can send an email to the show at sasquatchandsourdough at gmail.com, or you can check out the encounter map at sasquatchandsourdough.com.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: So that's all the housekeeping that I have.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to just take us on a little midnight journey here uh and just kind of pretend we're taking some sort of haunted train through the country and maybe listening to Runaway Train by Soul Asylum.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: Let's jump into it.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: The midnight line leaves the station.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Cities fade into darkness, streetlights become distant stars, the world grows quiet.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: There's something about the night sky that makes people stop asking practical questions.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: Bills don't matter much beneath a sky full of stars.
7:30
SPEAKER_00: Neither do deadlines or schedules, or all the little things we spend our days worrying about.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why people have always looked up.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: Not because they expect answers, but because they hope there are answers in the stars.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: And somewhere beneath the sky like that, someone sees a light or something they can't explain.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so way back in January of 2025, I did an episode um with the gal.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's called uh Beyond Belief with Paranormal Pops.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: You can find her on Instagram.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: She makes amazing candies and she's just a super lady.
8:15
SPEAKER_00: We had the best time um talking about her friend Angela Shear, uh, who wrote a book called UFO Encounters.
8:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's a really sweet episode, but in this book, there are an amazing amount of um encounters that Angela herself actually uh didn't witness, but she actually went and kind of uh talked to the witnesses of some really crazy encounters.
8:41
SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to share one that is so perfect for this episode.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this one is actually it's her chapter for Missing Time.
8:48
SPEAKER_00: It's a MUFON case.
8:50
SPEAKER_00: So she worked for um MUFON, she was an investigator there, and this one actually takes place in uh Chattanooga, Tennessee, January 8th, 1969.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: And the witness, her name is Susie, and we're just gonna say that it's an assumed name.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: So it goes on.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: Her report says, On this particular night, my mom, myself, and two others were traveling to a basketball tournament across town.
9:16
SPEAKER_00: We left at 7 30 p.m.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: The trip should have lasted 15 to 20 minutes, tops, but we arrived at 10.45 p.m.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: I first noticed the craft and thought it was a large harvest moon, but I noticed it was traveling the same speed and distance we were.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: I told everyone to look.
9:36
SPEAKER_00: The next thing we knew, we were parked on the railroad tracks, car not running, with the craft hovering right in front of the car.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: I was excited, nervous, confused, shaking, and wanted a photo.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: The two in the back seat were screaming to get the camera.
9:53
SPEAKER_00: I retrieved the camera from the glove compartment and after a couple of shots realized there was no film.
9:59
SPEAKER_00: The craft, while stationary in front of us, was glowing and changing from blue with an orange color around it to an orange color with a blue ring around it.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: When it changed colors, there would be several large puffs of smoke.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: Then all at once the smoke disappeared, then the craft changed colors.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: At this point, a train was approaching our car on the tracks and started blowing its whistle.
10:25
SPEAKER_00: Everyone was terrified.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: And we started screaming for mom to start the car.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: The first couple of times she tried, it did not start.
10:34
SPEAKER_00: And she told us if we didn't, if it didn't this time, we should all get out of the car and run.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: Thank God the car finally started.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: And mom drove as fast as she could off the tracks and on toward the gym.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: Mom let us out at the tournament at about 10 45.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: When we first arrived, I clearly remember my friend untying shoes on the bleachers as we walked in.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: I was confused and asked her, What was going on?
10:59
SPEAKER_00: She told us the tournament was already over and everyone was leaving.
11:03
SPEAKER_00: I said, quit playing with us.
11:05
SPEAKER_00: I guess because of the disbelief we expressed, she took us or she told us to look at the clock.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: Upon checking, we were shocked to see that it was already 10 45 p.m.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: At this point, I think we were all still in shock as we still could not really understand how so much time had elapsed since we left home.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: Several people wanted to know why we arrived so late.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: And I told them what had happened.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: I was made fun of that I was so made fun of that I just stopped talking about it.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: And we went to call my mom to come pick us back up.
11:37
SPEAKER_00: When mom came and picked us up, we all talked excitedly about what had happened all the way home.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: The next day, a short paragraph in our local newspaper stated hundreds of people saw a strange object in the sky.
11:50
SPEAKER_00: They stated it was a weather balloon, according to the airport and weather service.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: We all laughed and then got mad that the government would think we are that stupid.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: My mom is now deceased, and the two other people that were in the car are so afraid of ridicule they deny it ever happened.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: And she kind of goes on to a little bit more of her history and stuff like that.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: Um and then Angela's uh phone interview, uh February 27th, 2019.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: She says, When I called Susie, she was at once very grateful to finally have someone to share her story with.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: It's very hard for the general public to understand the burden of carrying these events alone, sometimes over 40 to 50 years.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: The witness was honest, emotionally open, and credible in telling of her event.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: Over the next few months of my investigation, she was completely cooperative and helped immensely in tracking down sources of information such as names of roads, nearby airports, and local newspapers.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: She worked diligently in creating drawings of the craft, taking pictures of the area where the event transpired, and searching the local library for articles that may have been written about the event.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: Even with her poor health, upcoming surgeries, and doctor visits, Susie never let me down in her help with the investigation.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: The witness began her story by describing her mom driving her and two other passengers to the gym in their 1966 Plymouth Fury 3.
13:21
SPEAKER_00: The witness, 16 years old at the time, was riding in the front passenger seat, and at one point she noticed a large yellow-orange object with a blue outline around it below the tops of the trees.
13:33
SPEAKER_00: The object was round, like the moon in shape, and was following the car low in the sky as it was visible in its movement through the trees.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: At first she thought it might be the moon, so she asked her mom if it was a harvest moon, and her mom said no.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: Though she thought it was too late, that she thought it was too late for a harvest moon.
13:53
SPEAKER_00: She told her mom that the object was following them, and she was sure her mom looked out over to see the object.
14:00
SPEAKER_00: At this point, the witness and the passengers evidently lost consciousness because the next thing she describes is waking up with the car stalled on the railroad tracks and the object hovering directly in front of the car.
14:13
SPEAKER_00: She has no conscious memory of how they came to be on the railroad tracks or the object moving into that position.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
14:21
SPEAKER_00: And she does have um some original drawings in the book.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Uh so it kind of just keeps going on exactly how uh the witness, how Susie described it.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: And she kind of ends with um the way this went on to convey seeing people standing in the parking lot of an old country store, seemingly frozen in place.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Other cases have described seeing huge low-flying craft while experiencing unusual fogs that enveloped the car, time distortions, frozen people, as indicated above, and feelings of some kind of surreal event that surrounded them for a period of time.
15:00
SPEAKER_00: One witness said she was driving on the interstate and there was a huge craft just hanging over the road for all to see, but everyone just kept driving by like nothing, like they saw nothing.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: These are important markers in case investigations, and we will be discussing the implications of these bizarre but common reports in later chapters and how they play into the overall scheme of the UFO phenomenon.
15:23
SPEAKER_00: So I highly recommend this book.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: It's amazing.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: It's called UFO Encounters, How High Strange Events Transform Human Perception, and it's by Angela Schear.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: And it's just really well um, really well documented, but also really just she just investigates and really cares about the people uh that she investigated.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: So definitely check that one out.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: What a wild encounter.
15:52
SPEAKER_00: It kind of reminds me of um, I mean, I've heard different accounts like that, but it reminds me of when I was a little girl and we would travel in the car, and you know, like when you're a little kid, you don't you have no idea.
16:04
SPEAKER_00: Like it could be literally two miles down the road and it feels like a half an hour.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: But I remember I used to love driving at night because it it always looked like the moon.
16:13
SPEAKER_00: Like I would watch the moon and then it would just like appear to be following us in the car.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: It was kind of like this little neat neat moment.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: That was a really good account.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: Some stories belong to places, others belong to roads.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: And maybe nowhere carries stories quite like the railroad.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Tracks connect towns, cities, families, lives.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: For generations, trains carried people toward futures they couldn't yet imagine.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's why railroad stories seem to linger.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: Because trains are built around a question: what happens next?
17:03
SPEAKER_00: As this midnight line rolls deeper into the dark, another whistle sounds somewhere ahead.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: A whistle that perhaps shouldn't exist anymore.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so as I was kind of doing some research on this episode, um, I wanted to look, I wanted to find one really good, like, ghost train encounter.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, because it's just something quintessential, like American high strangeness, you know, haunted highway, something or other.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh, nothing beats a haunted ghost train or a phantom train.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: Account that I found is the haunting of the LN line, the legend of the ghost train.
17:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so it says, uh, for decades, train enthusiasts and locals alike have shared eerie tales of ghostly apparitions along the tracks of the Louisville and Nashville LN Railroad.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: One of the most spine-chilling legends is that of the ghost train's mysterious locomotive said to haunt the rails long after the final journey.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: Whether okay.
18:11
SPEAKER_00: Um, and so here's the origin story.
18:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, established in 1850, became one of the most important rail lines in the United States, transporting goods and passengers across the South.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: However, when the heavy industrialization and constant flow of trains, accidents were unfortunately common.
18:33
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't long before stories of haunted tracks began to emerge.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: One such story dates back to the early 1900s, when a tragic derailment occurred just outside of Bowling Green, Kentucky.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: According to local lore, a passenger train was speeding along the tracks late one foggy night when it derailed on a sharp curve, killing several passengers and crew members.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: Though the wreckage was cleared and the tracks repaired, witnesses soon reported seeing a spectral train speeding through the night along the same route.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: Since the tragic accident, many have claimed to see or hear the phantom train along the old LN line, particularly near the site of the original crash.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: Witnesses describe hearing the distant sound of steam engine whistles, the clanking of metal, and the screech of brakes, all despite there being no visible train.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: Others have reported seeing the outline of a fully lit passenger train barreling down the tracks only to vanish into thin air as it approaches.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: Railroad workers, locals, and even passers by have shared similar stories.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: Some claim the train appears only on the foggiest of nights, while others say it can be seen on the anniversary of the derailment.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: One chilling account describes a man who witnessed the ghostly train passing through a crossing only for it to disappear right before his eyes, leaving nothing but the smell of burning coal in the air.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and that actually was from um that history was from historical railpark.com.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: And so another um phantom train is of course the lore around um President Lincoln's funeral train.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna dive deep into that because I think that would actually be a really cool separate episode.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: But I did want to um, so there's a really cool website called Brombonesbooks.com, and uh they go into a really detailed account of the departure of the funeral train and then like as it kind of goes like from start to finish, and it's really, really interesting.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and so I'm just gonna kind of skip ahead, skip ahead.
20:51
SPEAKER_00: And it says, uh, according to Adam Seltzer, March 23rd was the day an article titled Waiting for the Train appeared in the Albany Evening Times.
21:01
SPEAKER_00: Through the rest of the of that year and into the next, the pieces ghost or the pieces ghost train segment was reprinted in newspapers from Connecticut, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Nevada, Oregon, and other states.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: It showed up in a British newspaper or two.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: This is the key source, one that clearly spread the story about the Lincoln funeral ghost train for far and wide.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: Here's the segment that was frequently reprinted.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: And it goes on uh quote, a writer in the Albany Evening Times relates a conversation with superstitious watchmen on the New York Central Railroad.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Said the watchman, quote, I believe in spirits and ghosts.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: I know such things exist, and if you will ever come up in April, I will convince you, end quote.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: He then told of the phantom train that every year comes up the road with the body of Abraham Lincoln, regularly in the month.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: April, about midnight, the air on the track becomes very keen and cutting.
22:05
SPEAKER_00: On either side, it is warm and still.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: Every watch, every watchman, when he feels this air, steps off the track and sits down to watch.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: Soon after, the pilot engine will long with long black streams and a band with black instruments playing dirges and grinning skeletons sitting all about will pass up noiselessly, and the very air grows black.
22:32
SPEAKER_00: If it is moonlight, clouds always cover the moon, and the music seems to linger as if frozen with horror.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: A few moments after the phantom train glides by, flags and streamers hang about.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: The track ahead seems covered with a black carpet, and the wheels are draped with the same.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: The coffin of the murdered Lincoln is seen laying on the center of a car and all about it in the air, and on the train behind are vast numbers of blue-coated men, some with coffins on their backs, others leaning upon them.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: It seems that all the vast armies of men who died during the war are escorting the phantom train of the president.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: The wind, if blowing, dies away at once, and over all the air are solemn hush, almost stifling, prevails.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: If a train were passing, its noise would be drowned in this silence, and the phantom train would rise over it.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: Clocks and watches always stop, and when looked at, are found to be from five to eight minutes behind.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Everywhere on the road, about the 20th of April, the time of watches and trains, if found, suddenly behind.
23:45
SPEAKER_00: This said the leading watchman was from the passage of the Phantom Train.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's kind of cool.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, um uh below he refers to this the source simply as the 1872 article.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: So that is an amazing uh again, it's Brombonesbooks.com, and it's an amazing account of the Lincoln uh funeral ghost train.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: The next encounter comes from Appalachia, a glimpse of something impossible, a figure in the woods, a presence that refuses to be ordinary.
24:28
SPEAKER_00: The details of the encounter matter.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: But what fascinates me is the setting, the edge of the woods, that place where certainty ends, human beings have always been drawn to the edges.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: The edges of forests, of oceans, of maps, and every time we stand there, we are reminded that mystery still exists.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: Not everything has been explained, not everything has been conquered, and some places still feel wild.
25:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I wanted to mention this book.
25:06
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's called Appalachian Cryptids and Creatures by David J.
25:10
SPEAKER_00: Hardy.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: And actually, I found this guy.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think it was on an episode of the bump podcast.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Bo Kennedy was talking about him, and they I think they ended up like meeting up at the West Virginia Bigfoot Festival, which I have not at all planned to go to.
25:28
SPEAKER_00: I should really go.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: I feel like maybe we'll do that in the fall.
25:31
SPEAKER_00: I think it's in the fall this year, which is really exciting.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: So I don't know.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: I keep thinking about going, but I just, I don't know.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: I guess I'm lazy.
25:40
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, um, he suggested this book, and this guy, he had um, he had David Hardy Hardy on his um an episode of The Bump, and it was just such a great episode.
25:54
SPEAKER_00: And they were talking about their time at the festival.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: But this book is amazing.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: He's an illustrator, and he has a really, you know, just really solid like man of God.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: And he made this book about Appalachian cryptids and creatures, and it's really well done, and it's really like the illustrations are amazing.
26:12
SPEAKER_00: So definitely check that out.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: Hopkinsville Goblins.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: And it says on August 21st, 1955, a family on a small farm in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, experienced a night of otherworldly terror when their home was accosted by vicious green skinned creatures.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Around 7 p.m., Billy Ray Taylor, a family friend, had gone outside to fetch water from the well when he noticed a silver circular object descending from the sky coming to rest in a gully near the farm.
26:46
SPEAKER_00: Taylor was incredibly alarmed and ran to the house to grab a shotgun.
26:51
SPEAKER_00: When he stepped back outside, he was greeted by a three-foot-tall goblin with huge eyes, disproportionately large hands, and long claws, and pointed ears.
27:04
SPEAKER_00: The entity was menacing and seemed to be wearing a metallic plate on its chest, or armor of some kind.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: Another man, Lucky Sutton, joined Taylor, and seeing the creature opened fire.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: The goblin was unfazed by the bullets, either dodging or absorbing them, showing no fear, it charged the men.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: And the men turned to run um uh once they saw a goblin in a tree and another on the roof of a nearby house.
27:33
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, this reminds me of signs.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the farm was infested with goblins, crawling and clawing at everything.
27:41
SPEAKER_00: Despite being shot multiple times, the goblins appeared unharmed, merely disappearing into the darkness to regroup and attack again.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: Barricading themselves inside the house, the family waited for an opportunity to escape, eventually making a desperate run to their vehicle and speeding to the police station.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: When the police reluctantly investigated, they found no trace of the goblins, just the farm damaged by gunfire.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: A sighting occurred in 2017 when a group of hikers in West Virginia reported seeing small, bright-eyed beings following them at a distance.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: The hikers described a feeling of apprehension and distant anxiety as they claimed the entities moved through the underbrush, mimicking their movements and emanating nasty sounds.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Another report from 2021 involved a family in rural Tennessee who claimed to have seen goblins near their property at dusk.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: In both cases, the descriptions bore a remarkable similarity to the Hopkinsville goblins.
28:44
SPEAKER_00: Ooh.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, that's disgusting.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that just totally reminds me of signs.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so yeah, that encounter was from the Avalanche Encryptids um and creatures book, so definitely check that one out.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: That's a good one.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: The next map isn't a town.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: It's a campsite, a small circle of firelight in a sea of darkness.
29:17
SPEAKER_00: Miles from the nearest road, miles from home, a backpacker hikes deep into the forest of southern Indiana.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: The kind of trip people take when they need space.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Space to think, space to breathe, space to hear something besides the noise of everyday life.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: As evening settles over the woods, he begins hearing movement, branches, footsteps, something large, something that shouldn't be there.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: Then comes the moment he can't explain, a glimpse of a large hairy bipede moving through the darkness.
29:53
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly the woods feel much larger than they did a few minutes earlier.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: The witness later said he spent the entire night awake beside his campfire.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: Not because he knew what he'd seen, but because he didn't.
30:06
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes uncertainty is more unsettling than certainty.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: The creature disappeared.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: That's a stupid thing to say.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: The creature disappeared.
30:17
SPEAKER_00: The night passed, the fire eventually burned low, but the memory stayed.
30:22
SPEAKER_00: Because every once in a while, wilderness reminds us that we don't know everything.
30:28
SPEAKER_00: And maybe that's part of why we keep going back to it.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: Okay, yes, I would be remiss if I did not find a thread from the BFRO, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you are new here and you haven't checked out that website, it's an amazing resource for just encounters of everything Bigfoot.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and this encount is from September, April 11th, 1998.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: It's uh it says season winter, but I guess it was submitted in April.
31:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh, an evening encounter by a backpacker in Hosier National Forest.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: So this is in Brown County, Indiana, near Bedford south of Brown County in the Hosier National Forest.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: And this is what he observed.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: While backpacking near the horse trails, an access point in the county below Brown County, I experienced a confrontation with a bipedal primate.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: It was early March of 1998 and I was alone.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Around 7 o'clock in the evening, after hiking several miles, I set up camp in a wooded area about 100 yards from the horse trail.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: Darkness was descending quickly, so I was in a rush to set up camp and prepare my supper.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: After gathering firewood and getting my fire started for light and cooking, I suddenly began hearing leaves and brush rustling behind me and to the east along a ravine that I camped about.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: Or camped above.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: At the moment I thought to myself that it was a bit early for mushroom hunters and probably too dark for them to see anything.
32:09
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it was a deer.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I grabbed my knife for protection and grabbed the flashlight cautiously, approached the ravine where the noises were coming from.
32:18
SPEAKER_00: I yelled out in the direction of the sounds and aimed my flashlight, and to my astonishment, viewed a very tall, upright human-looking being hiding behind a clump of trees close to the stream.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: The creature stood about seven feet tall, as I could see his silhouette from the left side of the trees.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: He was leaning forward and exposing his head to view me.
32:41
SPEAKER_00: He or it was approximately forty feet from my position, and the light from my flashlights shined into its eyes.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: I could see that he had dark hair covering his conical-shaped head and dark eyes in the front of his skull.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: I knew immediately that this couldn't be a man.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: It was very frightened.
33:02
SPEAKER_00: I was very frightened and yelled out again in hopes of scaring him off.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: He ran into the stream and away from me about six feet before ducking behind another tree.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: I continued to follow him with my flashlight and screaming at him with threats.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: This went on for two or three minutes before he took off running down the creek out of sight.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: The rest of the night I s I stayed awake near my campfire, fearing a return visit and waiting for daylight to return to my truck.
33:30
SPEAKER_00: I would have packed out that night, only my truck was in the direction that the hairy bipede fled.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: And I was miles in.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: The entire situation was very frightening to me because I always thought that if Bigfoot existed, it would be in the Cascades or in the Canadian Rockies.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: Also noted, at first light I examined the site where the bipede was near.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh the stream, and besides some turnedover leaves, I saw no prints, and the stream appeared normal.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: He says, other witnesses cooking a pork steak on a stick over my campfire.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: And there's no follow-up.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: That's interesting.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: So there you go, there's a little encount from Indiana.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: These stories endure not because they're strange, but because they're familiar.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: Because somewhere inside all of them is the same longing, the same search.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: Scripture says he has also set eternity in the human heart.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why people keep searching lonely roads after midnight.
34:44
SPEAKER_00: Why they follow lights, why they stare into forests, why kids climb onto trains and head to nowhere in particular.
34:54
SPEAKER_00: Because eternity is a hard thing to silence.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: What is it that we're actually looking for?
35:01
SPEAKER_00: A place to belong, a place to rest, a place to call home.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: The psalmist wrote, Even the darkness is not dark to you.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's the miracle.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: Not that God waits at the end of the line.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: Maybe the miracle is that he was on the train the whole time.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember, the truth is out there, God is with you, and everyone always ends up in the kitchen.