Kate Pentecost
Appearances
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And we explain everything that we've seen to my mother. And my mother could have said, this is a stupid attempt. Y'all are just trying to cover up for doing something stupid. But she didn't. She absolutely believed us. Not only did she believe us, but the following day, she wrote down our story and she sent it in to BFRO, which was the Bigfoot Field Research Organization. She sends our story in.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And the following day, she got a response. And one of the things they responded to was the fact that I had described it having a beard. They said that the detail about the beard was one of the things that they left out frequently from the stories that they posted online in order to kind of tell the real stories from the false ones, I guess.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
So they were very, very interested in what I had seen and wanted to know if they could come and do an expedition, which is what they call it, the following week. And my mother, who is always down for an adventure, said, of course, come on, we'd be happy to have you. The week goes by. We're sitting there waiting, and these two trucks arrive.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
In one of them, there is this guy who's a little shorter. He's got mirrored sunglasses. He's got a little mustache going on. And in the other truck, there is... big guy and his daughter, who's this 14-year-old girl who's just kind of there for some reason. And so they come up and they introduce themselves.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I do not remember the big guy's name because at this point it's been like 16 years, but I remember Troy very vividly. The one that ended up doing most of the talking, his name was Troy. And my mother just happily invites them in. We sit them down at the kitchen table. My mother, of course, has prepared dinner, which was in this case, baked spaghetti.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
So it's like spaghetti, but you put more sauce and then cheese on the top of it and then you bake it again for some reason.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Yeah, but they were excited to have it. They were like, oh yeah. And so they question us, me and Ramsey, about our experience. So we retell the story. And then my mother starts asking them all the different questions about Bigfoot. So Troy happily launches into an explanation of everything we've ever wanted to know.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
So he starts talking about his experiences in BFRO, which is at this time, this was a while back, so I don't know if it's still the same. But at this point, he described it as like a volunteer organization.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
where you would go and get together, you would do expeditions, which is what they call it, where you go to different places where there's been a sighting, you document it, and you try to get footage, you try to get some kind of evidence to prove the existence of Bigfoot. I also asked him, what if there's more than one? Do you call them Bigfoots, Bigfeet? And he said, Squatches.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
My mother asked them, well, do you have any evidence after all this? And he said, yeah, we have hair, we have scat. But whenever you test it, like it shows up as like either unknown carnivore or like unknown primate. He told us that they thought that they buried their dead, and that's why they haven't found a dead one.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
He told us that there are differences in the Bigfoot's phenotypes, kind of, depending on where they are in the United States. So the ones in Washington, for example, tend to be really, really big. They tend to be 12 feet tall and up. And the ones down in the South tend to be... smaller, like eight, nine, 10 feet.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
He talked about going on expeditions to Washington and having like rocks thrown at him while he was in a tent and stuff like that. Like he talked about some really wild experiences and it was really cool. And we all just like sat and wrapped attention. He also described that the ones in the South, they tend to have fewer toes than the ones in the North.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Like they tend to have like three toes or four toes instead of five. And I can't remember why he said that was, but, you know. He also said that they tended to have a smell, like a really, really bad smell. So for that reason, they're called skunk apes in some places, that kind of thing. He was just full of information. And it was, my mother was just taking it all in. She was having the best time.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
So then he started asking us about our land, since... It was right on the edge of it that we had had this experience. And he was like, have you guys ever heard any weird sounds out here? And we were like, well, it's the country. You're going to have to be more specific than that. And he was like, okay, have you ever heard anything that sounds like this?
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And he just like throws back his head in the middle of the kitchen and goes, whoop. And we were like, whoop. But we had, we had heard that sound several times. And we'd always just kind of, we'd never really known what it was, but we'd heard like, you know, just weird sounds in the woods. And I remember like commenting to my mom, like that kind of sounds like a howler monkey in the zoo.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And she's like, yeah, it kind of does. And then we just never said anything else about it. So we'd been hearing these weird sounds for like ever and just never really tied them to anything. And then we're like, yeah, yeah, we have heard these weird sounds. And then Troy said, okay, well, have you ever seen trees that are bent into an arch shaped form?
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And we were like, yeah, there's like one huge tree out there that like just naturally grew that way. And we never really knew why. Like it was a hundred something year old tree that grows into like this arch shape tree. And he was like, yeah, that's something that we think the squashes do is some kind of a signal to each other, probably to signify the borders of human property.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And he described like how they would make structures in the woods where it looks like a bunch of limbs kind of fell down together and like. just ended up creating like almost a little shelter type thing. And I was like, oh, whoa, I used to play in those when I was a kid.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Because like, it just it really does look like a bunch of limbs just kind of fell in just such a way that it makes like kind of a little roof. And often I had seen the imprint where bodies had lain like under this thing, like in the pine straw. And And I had thought, you know, cows probably laid in there, you know, because we have cows. He was like, nope, that's a squatch sign.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And I was like, oh, great, cool. So I've been out there playing in the woods all my life being watched by squatches. And he was like, well, yeah, don't worry about it. They tend to be very curious about women and children. They don't really harm women and children from what we can tell. They might... like get one of your animals every now and then, but they generally leave people alone.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Men, they tend to see as more of a threat. And you know if they're feeling threatened by you and they want you to leave, if you hear what sounds like a, he described it as a home run, like a crack of a bat. And he said, if you hear that, you know that means they want you to go. And I was like, oh, good to know. I don't think I've heard that, but okay.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I was like, well, how could they be so stealthy? How are they not seen? He said there were a lot of different theories about that, but basically that they kind of have always been there and know the forest better than we do.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
It was a strange experience hearing all of this. Because on one hand, you kind of don't want to believe it. Like, as soon as this had happened, immediately I started trying to rationalize it. I tried to say, like, no, like, I totally didn't see it. It was just, like, late at night. I just hallucinated it. Okay, well, Ramsey hallucinated it, too. It's like, maybe we both hallucinated it.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Maybe this is all just a big mistake. And so then the investigators come out here and start telling us all this stuff, and... On one hand, it's almost funny because it seems so crazy. It seems like something that we never would have expected to experience. But on the other hand, it really is making a lot of sense. Like, how did he know that we've been seeing these, like, arches in the forest?
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
How did he know that we hear these weird sounds? And then when he was able to actually get out and walk on our property, he was able to show us things about land that he'd never set foot on before. And it eventually got to the point where I just had to be like, no, I actually did see the thing. It does exist. And there's probably several of them that I've been living next to for my entire life.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
So it was a very jarring, very strange experience. Slightly terrifying and completely unbelievable situation all at once. Then Troy asked us, me and Ramsey, to take them out to where we saw the Squatch. So we do. And so he kind of looks at the tree line on either side and he kind of squints into it. And my mother had said, like, that our land pretty much borders that area.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And he was like, is there any chance that we could go back into the very back of your land? So we go back and we drive through all of our land. We have 365 acres of land. So it's quite a lot. And so we drive back through the first pasture, back through the second pasture, back through the third to, like, this area. very, very far back area where my uncle would go to hunt deer.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
So we go into the forest that borders our property. So he starts immediately seeing all these weird little signs everywhere. He sees all these bent twigs that are bent at right angles and hanging. And he takes one in his hand and he looks in the direction where it is and he follows it. Then he finds an arch. like we've been talking about. And then he starts finding all this stuff.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Like he sees like this place where one tree has like kind of like fallen in an odd way. And another tree has fallen across it, like forming an X. And he says, oh, oh, here we go. We got an X. And the other guy writes it down. I'm like, what does an X mean? And he was like, we think this means like when they say not to go further than this.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
But you see, you can tell they put it there because this piece of wood that's crossing this piece of wood was clearly brought here. It hasn't fallen from anywhere. It's been placed. And when we looked at it, we were like, whoa, yeah, this didn't, this wasn't a tree that fell. This did have to be moved from somewhere else. That's really weird. So we're walking and he's following all these signs.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
A lot of them are like, a lot of them are these bent twigs that he keeps finding. And he's like, if we follow these, I'm sure we'll find a path. And I was like, okay. And so we're following him through the woods. And sure enough... There is a path. There's a path through the woods that he led us to in this land that he's never set foot in in his life. And we start following it.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And so he's talking to us about the path. And he says, see, you can tell it's one of their paths because the animals in this pasture, they're cows, right? They have hooves. So the ground here isn't disturbed. This path is clearly one that is traveled on by something with pads for feet. I was like, okay.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
So we follow this path and we get to like the border of our property, which is this barbed wire fence. And the fence has been damaged. The strings of barbed wire have been bent, like all of the string, all of the strands of barbed wire have been bent down into U shape and a bunch of soil has been placed above it or has been placed like, like over it to where you can just walk over it.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And this is concerning. Since this is our property, I was like, oh, I got to tell my mom about this. We have to fix this fence. But it's very clear that something has been using this path to go in these weird back paths through different properties that different families own in that area, like through the woods, which is very, very disconcerting because it's so far out.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
There's no lights out there. There's no reason for anybody to be back there. We see that. And then they're like, oh yeah, we got a lot of good information. Pretty excited about this. So they start writing it down, making their notes. They're very excited about all of it. And then they say, do you think your mom would let us come out here at midnight to do a night expedition?
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I was like, I don't know. I mean, you can ask her, I guess. So We go back to the house and he asks my mother if they can go on a night expedition at the very, very back of the property. And she says, yeah, absolutely, go for it. Then he asks me and Ramsey if we want to go. And we're like, yeah. Because, I mean, it's scary, but it's also the coolest thing we've ever done.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
We're like, yeah, absolutely, we want to go. But we decide to bring some of our male friends for, I don't know, protection, I guess. So I get my boyfriend at the time, Jonathan, and our friend Larkin. And they decide to meet us there at my place at night. In the meantime, we go into town. It's crawfish season at this time.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And they are, the BFRO guys are very excited about picking up some crawfish and beer. And they had set up a campsite in the back pasture. And so when midnight rolled around, we went out there and met them in the back pasture. And you know, in retrospect, I kind of wonder, what was my mom thinking? Like, we have just met these grown men from somewhere far away. And she's like, yeah, absolutely.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Take my daughter and her friend out in the middle of the back pasture at midnight. Totally fine. I trust you completely. Fortunately, they were trustworthy. But what a strange thing, you know? I still give her a little bit of grief about that. But immediately she trusted them completely. So we're out there. And... I think we're going to have, you know, flashlights, some kind of equipment.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I think people might be armed with some kind of self-defense type things. Absolutely not. It is going to be completely, completely dark. Troy does not have a gun or any other sort of self-defense weapon, but they do have walkie talkies so they can communicate with each other. So We get to the very, very back pasture, and the plan is to walk the perimeter of it.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
It's a big rectangle surrounded on three sides with forest, very, very thick pine forest, and a barbed wire fence separating the pasture from the forest. So we get out there to the corner of the pasture. And then we split off into two groups. So Ramsey and I go with Troy and Jonathan and Larkin and the 14-year-old girl whose name I don't remember go with her dad. And we've got the walkie-talkies.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And the plan is to make whoops and scream howls and other sounds into the woods and record what we get. And just see if there are any squashes out there. So we start walking along the tree line. And it is pitch black. It is super dark outside. I don't remember if there was a moon. There must not have been much of one. And it's dark. and there are mosquitoes and just insects all around.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
You can hear all of the night sounds. And Ramsey and I are just kind of looking at each other in the dark, like, what the hell have we gotten ourselves into? And then Troy, as we're walking along, he pulls out his walkie-talkie and he goes, I'm going to do a call. And the other guy, we can hear him go, 10-4. And so then he goes, whoop! And we're like, we just kind of watch. We hold our breaths.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And nothing answers. And so we're like, okay, oh, thank God. Because I don't know what we would have done if something had answered. We keep walking a little ways. And we hear the guy across. We hear him also do a couple whoops into the trees. Nothing answers him either. And then we get a little bit further. And Troy goes... I'm going to do a scream howl. And the guy goes, all right.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And then Ramsey and I are looking at each other like, what's a scream howl? And then Troy just like.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
does this thing with his body that looks like he's about to turn into a werewolf or something he just like rears back and he makes this sound that is it is exactly somewhere between a scream and a howl and it's so loud and we were not expecting it and we were terrified and then something answered and it was the scariest thing i have ever heard in my whole life it was
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Something like roared out of the forest, like maybe a hundred feet away, but it was this giant inhuman resonating roar that we could feel in our chests. And that made me like stop and grab Ramsey. And it just like rose up in the night and was terrifying. And then at the end of it, like as it died off, all these coyotes started yipping just like all around it.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And then we turned to look at Troy because we're terrified. And Troy looks at us and goes, coyotes like to follow squatches on their hunts. They like to feast on their kills.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
such an out-of-pocket thing to say at the time because we were terrified and we keep walking after we've just heard that sound we decide to keep walking along the perimeter of the forest to meet up with uh the other the other group so we start walking and we're right there like we're right next to the barbed wire fence and in an arm's reach away is like Thick pine trees. It's pitch black.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
We're walking. We've just heard that terrifying sound. And then we hear something walking next to us in the woods. It was clearly footsteps of something that walked on two legs. Like it wasn't like a cow or a deer or anything like that. It was clearly something that walked like people walk. but was somehow able to move in a more graceful way, in a less obtrusive way.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I'm not really sure because they're so big. At least the one that I saw was so big. So I don't know how they could move as quietly as they did. But I could still hear it. It was still recognizable as footsteps. We hear footsteps on the other side of the fence in the forest where we can't see. And... Troy at this time goes, we got one tail in us.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And then the guy over there goes, we got one over here too. And so we're walking and we can hear it. We can hear its footsteps beside us in the forest. And we decided to do a little experiment. And when we stop, it also stops. And when we start walking again, it walks again. And we kind of do this for a little while. And I'm like, are they going to like jump out and kill us?
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Like, but, you know, fortunately, Troy was there because he he seems very confident. Like this is kind of an everyday thing for him. And, you know, he's he's very interested in all this. And we keep walking. And at one point. I remember hearing the footsteps stop and I was like, oh, thank God they've stopped following us. But then I heard it running to catch up with us.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And then it stopped where we were again, like right there on the other side of the forest. Like I felt like if I reached out like my whole arm into the woods, either it would pull me into the forest and eat me or I would touch it. But I couldn't see it because it was so dark. So we get to the final corner over here and we meet up with the other group.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And at this point, all of the footsteps in the forest stop. And then we start hearing another sound, which to me was far more terrifying. They start going like making a little like click sound almost. And it's, what was scary to me that it was, it was clearly the sound of something that had a human like mouth. It wasn't something that had like a beak. It wasn't like, it wasn't a bird.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
It wasn't an insect or something like that. It was like, like a, that kind of sound. And one would do it over here. And then something a little further back would go and something over here would answer it and go. And it was clear that they were signaling to each other. say, what are we doing with these people out here? What happens now? And I was like, this is it. I'm going to die today.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
This is absolutely horrifying. This is the worst idea I've ever had in my life. But Troy and the other guy are just looking into the woods. Troy's got his hands on his hips and he's just staring into the woods. Like he's excited. Like this is like Super Bowl night or something. And he does a couple more whoops. He's like, whoop. and they don't answer.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And he's like, oh, you've got some shy ones out here. I was like, okay. And he was like, yeah, I think you've probably got a family of about seven, probably parents and few kids. I was like, okay. He never explained to me how he knew that, but okay. And he's like, all right, I think we've got all we need. Let's go have some crawfish. So we just go back.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
We cut, like, instead of going along the fence row, we just cut off through the field. And we go back to the campsite. And, you know, they're starting to get the crawfish going. And at that point, my friend Ramsey had been listening to this musician called Vitas, who is a Russian pop star. At that point, Vitas had a song called Opera No. 2.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And he hits this like really high note that has this like weird crescendo that reminded Ramsey of the way the whoops sounded. And she was like, hold on. Like, I want to see if they respond to this. And so she put opera number two on in her Jeep and turned it up really loud once it got to the crescendo part. And one of them did answer.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
We did get a whoop in response to Vetus's opera number two, but only once. And then they were quiet for the rest of the night. So at that point, Troy and the other guy made crawfish and drank some beer and kind of had a good time. Ramsey and Larkin and Jonathan and I all slept in Ramsey's Jeep.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And in the morning, we went back to my parents' house, and my mother had made blueberry pancakes for everybody and was very excited to hear what happened in the night. What kind of makes me a little sad, though, is that I'm afraid that our expedition might have failed. kind of sullied the vibe between my family and the squatches.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
My mom wanted to see the part where the barbed wire had been like bent. And so I wanted to show her some of the stuff that Troy showed us. And so I took her out there just by myself. And so we went out into the woods, went the same route that we had gone the day before. And I started showing her some of the signs. We got like, I'd say about 50 feet into the woods.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And then we heard the unmistakable sound of the crack of a bat. And we looked at each other and we were like, ooh, we got to get the hell out of here. And so my mom and I immediately got out of there. And because my mom is just a sweet Southern lady who would never dream of being an imposition on anyone, she made them a gift basket.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And she put a bunch of fruit in it and like unwrapped some granola bars and stuff. And she was like, do you think we should put a note? I was like, they can't read. And so, you know, we take this like picnic basket, our olive branch of peas. out to the back pasture. We put it up on this pole so the raccoons can't get it. And we just kind of leave it out there. And my mom goes, well, I'm sorry.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
We're so sorry. And then we just leave it there. And the following day, everything was gone. So we hope they accepted it. But ever since that point, we just kind of leave them alone. We don't go out there and bother them. They don't bother us. And it's an uneasy peace that we have. with the seven or so squatches that apparently live on our property.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
We've heard them since, yeah. I know my sister-in-law has heard them. She has a bakery out there and sometimes she'll stay up really late at night decorating cookies. And she's heard some stuff that she described as something sounding like howling that sounded kind of like a person, but not quite like somewhere between an animal and a man.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And one of our neighbors says that he has seen one on two separate occasions, just like walking through the pasture. But in that area, again, it's super rural, trees everywhere, nothing but forest. So a lot of people out in the area have had experiences or seen things. And people generally keep pretty quiet about it.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
But sometimes if I'm walking the dogs, like in the kind of twilight hour, I will hear like a whoop. And then I'll just kind of head back to the house. At this point, we know they're out there. We kind of listen for them. And if we hear like the bat crack sound or we hear a whoop or anything else, then we're like, we're just going to give them some space.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I never thought that I would be someone with a Bigfoot story, but here we are. And honestly, I wouldn't trade it for anything. It was such a unique and interesting experience. And even though it was terrifying at times, It was just, looking back on it, it was just so fun and so weird and so unique. Nobody I know, aside from the people involved in this story, have a story like that.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And honestly, it's kind of a highlight. Looking back, it's something that I really enjoy. Do we...
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I used to have his number, but my phone was like stolen or something like in college.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I'm pretty sure. I remember the little mustache. He looks older, but I think this is the same person. That's what he looked like.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
So my name is Kate Pentecost. I am a young adult author. Growing up, I was very much a tomboy. I was always out helping my dad with the cows or exploring the woods or reading a lot of books with dragons in them. I decided that I wanted to be an author when I was about 12 years old. I had an idea for a fantasy book and I started writing one.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And I would send out copies of my completely finished book to Scholastic and stuff like that through the snail mail route back when you still had to submit stuff that way. And I would go and I would look at my mailbox every day to see if I had gotten an acceptance letter from a publisher. I never did. But all in all, I was a really weird little kid.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I had beautiful, long red hair, and then one day I decided to cut it all off because I saw The Mask of Zorro, and I really liked Anthony Hopkins' old man character, and I liked his hair, which was cut right off at his shoulders. I looked past everybody in that movie, and I was like, I want to be like Anthony Hopkins. So for a long time, my hair was like a triangle.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
It was really a horrible experience for a 12-year-old. But yeah, after all this, I had a very strong sense of who I was and what I wanted out of life. I wanted to have an interesting life. During the day, I work as a copywriter. But while I live in Houston, I am from the woods between Texas and Louisiana. So, like, where Shreveport, Louisiana is, just on the Texas side.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Growing up in East Texas is... Kind of an odd experience because everything is so far away from everything else. And Texas is so big that each part of it kind of has its own culture in a way. And so the place that I am from is called the Arklatex. That's the region that it is known because it's Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana culture all blended together.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I live on land that my family has owned for decades. hundreds of years. We have the deed from Mexico. And so I was fortunate enough to be able to grow up in like very attached to the land, always exploring, always being outside. And that is where the story that I'm going to tell you takes place. It all started with me and my best friend, Ramsey. Ramsey is a few years younger than me.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I was originally friends with her older sister. When Ramsey came to high school with me, we just became really good friends. And we've stayed friends ever since. We had this sort of ritual that every Friday, we would go and get in Ramsey's Jeep and drive somewhere and do something. You had to drive somewhere because in East Texas, everything is at least 20 minutes away from everything else.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
We were, quote, good kids, meaning that we didn't do any underage drinking or partying or any of that. But what we did do was we would explore abandoned buildings and film weird horror movies with our friends. Several times we inadvertently committed burglary.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Because it turns out in Texas, if you just stick your arm inside an abandoned building, even if you don't take anything, that counts as burglary and it is a felony. Which a police officer told us when he rolled up on us attempting to film a short film with our friend Larkin, who is also part of the story.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Fortunately, the person who owned the building was on vacation and the police officer just kind of gave us a talking to, told us that it was a felony and was like, don't do this again. But we were scared straight in that moment, relatively straight, because we still went to abandoned buildings and old cemeteries and things like that.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And on this particular night, my friend and I had decided to go and film something. Do like a little photo shoot and a little emo style photo shoot because it was 2007 in this old cemetery that we had found one day. And it's beautiful. It has all these wonderful like weeping angel sculptures and things like that. It's one of my favorite places in the world. It's so beautiful.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And not very many people know about it. So we had decided to have a photo shoot. dressed in our finest emo gear, which we would not normally wear. We were not emo kids. We were just kind of like, we were theater kids who wanted to like dress up for the day, take some really good MySpace pictures. So we were out there. We draped ourselves across all the different headstones and sculptures.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And some of the pictures were actually pretty good. Well, I remember them being pretty good. I'm sure if I went back and actually looked at them, I'd be very embarrassed. So we, I remember us going to Applebee's.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
I remember us like gathering our thoughts around like one of those skillet cookies and just kind of hanging out until it was time to go home, which was super late at night, like one or two in the morning. And so my friend had to drive kind of out of the way to drop me off. Because as I mentioned before, I live in a very rural area. You have to go about 15 miles outside of Carthage, Texas.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And you go into a community called Deadwood. The further you get outside of Carthage, the dimmer it becomes. The darker it becomes. The closer the trees are to the road. At any moment, you have to be watching for movement as you drive because there's always the threat that a deer or a pack of wild boar or a coyote or something could go out in front of you and ruin your car and your day.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And to get to my house, you have to cross the Sabine River and go through an area called the river bottom. So that's basically the area where the river, where the flood water goes when the river floods. So we cross this bridge, we're in the river bottom area and there's no illumination. It's completely dark on each side except for the glow of our high beams.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And we are getting closer to the place where you take the left turn to get to my family's house. And then Ramsey says something strange. She says, did you see that big naked guy step out of the woods? And I say, no, what are you talking about? And I'm very concerned because this is very close to where my family's land ends. It's also, there's nothing. There's absolutely nothing. There's no houses.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
It's just forest. So if somebody's out there, he's probably in a lot of trouble or doing something he shouldn't be doing. And for some reason... I said, turn around. So we turn around, pull a U-turn, and we go back the way we came. And at this point, I kind of thought, you know, it's really late at night. I know there is one tree that is closer to the road than the rest. It's this pine tree.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
It's dead. It's like... 12 feet tall or so and I was like it's a it's an odd color it's a it's like an orangey color because it's dead so maybe she just saw it in her high beams and thought that's a person because it's late so we're coming up on where the tree is and I'm ready to say like see it's just this tree that's all it was But then on the other side of the tree, we see this thing and it's,
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
About eight feet tall, we determined later. Not quite as tall as the tree, but still way taller than us, way taller than a person. And it was covered in, like, this reddish-brown hair, just fur all over its body. And it had, like, super, super broad shoulders. Like, I want to say, like, three feet. Like... three feet wide.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And it had like this long ZZ Top style beard that went down like past where I assume its navel would be. And I could tell that its nose, I couldn't see much of it, but I could see that the nose was not like flat. Like you would think of like a gorilla or like an orangutan or something like that had kind of a bridge to it. I couldn't see the end of it, so I couldn't super tell.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And it raised its arm, I guess, in the glare of our high beams to try and shield its eyes. And it seemed really disoriented. And in that moment, Ramsey stopped the car for some reason. And then we both screamed. I was like, drive, drive, drive, drive. And so she gasses it. And then we drive off past it and sort of leave it blinking in the wake of our headlights.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And we're going over it, trying to determine what we saw. Did you see what I saw? Yeah, I saw it. And we're describing it to each other to try to make sure that we're not crazy. This all happened in like seconds, but it seems like it sort of stretched out over time. And it's two in the morning and you're 19 years old, 18 years old, however old I was.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And it was just so much at that time that it was just instant adrenaline. You go from being like drowsy and almost falling asleep to suddenly every nerve in your body on fire. And it's not an experience I would recommend other people to have, honestly. And about this time, my mother calls and says, hey, where are you guys? I was like, I just saw fucking Bigfoot.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
And I would never, ever curse at my mom. But in this instance, I was absolutely terrified. So was Ramsey.
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
we didn't really know what to do because we were like oh my god we have to go back past it so we kind of idle at like the boat ramp of the sabine river for a second and we're just kind of trying to gather our gather our thoughts just kind of like breathe and so then we we go back past it and we're like trying to go quickly but in a sneaky way as though it's still gonna be there
Otherworld
Episode 107: The Expedition
Like, waiting for us. And so, fortunately for us, it was not there. Of course, it had crossed the road by this time. And so we pull into our driveway. We get out. We go inside. And mom says, I need y'all to tell me everything. And so we sit down at the kitchen table. And apparently, we are shaking and white and just... Clearly, we've just been scared out of our minds.