Original subtitles

♪♪

[ crow caws ]

♪♪

[ distant scream ]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[ wings flutter ]

[ dog growls ]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

James: I think the ghosts probably wanted us out of there.

I don't stay in old cabins anymore.

[ squeaks ]

I think it was grandma

Trying to get us out of her house.

All the noises were angry, angry noises intended to scare us.

She lived there her whole life.

She had died in that house

And that she didn't want strangers staying there.

♪♪

♪♪

My friend weste and I were with our friend rob.

Our friend rob was going to be shipping out to afghanistan.

He was getting married before he was leaving.

He was marrying a girl from forks, washington,

And they were going to have the wedding in forks.

It's about a 50-mile drive along kind of a long,

Winding, you know,

Highway 101, two-lane highway.

As we were driving out there, my left tire blew,

Which meant that we had to change the tire on the road,

So I had a spare on,

So we could only drive about 20 miles an hour.

And we figured it was too dangerous to drive back,

So I was going to have to wait until the morning,

So I could get a replacement tire for the car.

Weste: It was cold. We weren't ready for that at all.

We thought we were going to drive out,

Go to the wedding, go home.

We didn't have sleeping bags, no change of clothes,

Really didn't think things through at all.

We made it on time, and they had a nice little ceremony,

And then they had the reception.

We'd asked if we could stay the night

At the bride's family's house,

And they had said that we couldn't.

And we didn't have enough money to rent a hotel room

For the night,

So we didn't have anywhere to stay.

There ain't no spare beds anywhere.

Not even a couch?

No.

The bride offered to take us to her grandma's cabin,

Which was out towards la push,

And that grandma had died about 6 months beforehand,

So it was sitting there empty with nobody there.

Rob's wife said her uncle had been using that house

As a hunting lodge.

Weste: And she warns us that the uncle

Doesn't know the wedding is happening,

Doesn't know we were staying there,

And he didn't take his mom's death very well.

If he shows up, he might be really mad that we're there.

[ gravel crunches ]

James: My friend weste and I got in a car with rob and his wife,

And they drove us out to the house in la push.

Weste: So we're out there with no vehicle.

We don't think anything of that,

And it's several miles from town.

♪♪

James: It was already dark by the time that we had arrived.

♪♪

The house was in the middle of nowhere.

♪♪

The place was completely surrounded by forest,

And the forest was pitch-black.

♪♪

I was relieved that we had a place to stay that night,

But being out in the middle of the woods in a cabin

That somebody had died in just a few months

Before was a little weird.

[ static ]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Aaah!

♪♪

♪♪

Things don't feel right.

There's something wrong.

♪♪

[ door creaks ]

♪♪

James: Rob's wife opened the porch door,

And we walked into the kitchen.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

And there was a card table, and there were some metal chairs.

There was a refrigerator.

There was an old phone on the counter.

♪♪

She showed us the fridge and told us

That we could help ourselves.

[ groans, coughing ] [ flies buzzing ]

And then, we went and explored the rest of the house.

She took us into the bedroom.

♪♪

[ cans clatter ] [ screams ]

[ steadying breath ]

♪♪

What?

There was a nest made out of old women's clothing

In the middle of the floor,

And there's a man-sized hole in the nest.

So she notices that we're looking at the nest of clothes,

And she explains,

"well, my uncle hasn't really gotten over his mother's death."

♪♪

He had been sleeping in a pile of his dead mother's clothes.

Which isn't normal, people don't normally do that.

I look at the nest, and even though I feel sympathy

For someone who's disturbed, he's really disturbed,

It just fills me with dread,

And even though I joke with james about, "ree, ree,"

Norman bates, you know, it doesn't go away.

There's just this nagging dread in the back of my head.

All right. Well, good night.

Good night.

James: I didn't have anywhere to go.

We were in the middle of the woods.

It was the middle of the night,

And it was below freezing outside.

We didn't have any choice but to stay.

When they left, we felt pretty nervous.

We had just found out about her uncle.

We didn't know that this was going to be a problem

When we went out to the cabin that night.

I think her uncle is out of her mind and that we're in trouble

If he shows up that night.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

James: We decide to keep all the lights in the house off.

Just in case the uncle were to show up,

We don't want him to suspect

That there's anybody in the house.

♪♪

Weste and I started talking about trying to find

A place to sleep

But also some place to hide in case the uncle showed up

And some place that we could defend if we had to.

♪♪

And that's when we found that there was a retractable stairway

In the ceiling of the living room.

♪♪

I'll be right back.

Wait.

Where...

♪♪

Weste: Rob's wife did say that he doesn't know we're out there,

And he would probably be upset if he came to the cabin

And saw us there.

♪♪

James: She said that it was a hunting lodge,

And so we thought her uncle might be armed with a gun.

We decided that we needed to have a weapon

To defend ourselves with,

And I had seen an axe when we walked in.

♪♪

♪♪

[ distant clatter ]

[ creaking ]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[ strains ]

[ grunts ]

James!

Come on, man! What are you doing?

[ grunts, panting ]

[ breathes heavily ]

[ exclaims, breathes rapidly ]

[ frightened grunt ]

[ breathes heavily ]

♪♪

♪♪

I grabbed the axe, and I brought it up the stairs.

♪♪

Now, when we got to the top of the stairs,

We found an old, dusty attic.

The attic was an unfinished attic.

There was exposed wood everywhere.

We could see the rafters.

[ wood creaking ]

♪♪

And then, we retracted the stairway,

So maybe, the uncle wouldn't know that we were there.

[ stairway creaks ]

♪♪

On one side of the attic, there were a couple of dirty

Mattresses lying on the floor with some dusty quilts nearby.

There was a window right there, facing out over the driveway.

We can watch the driveway to see if her uncle is coming.

♪♪

We went, and we sat on the mattresses

And opened up a bottle of booze

That we brought with us and starting drinking

And talking about old times.

Weste: We're drinking and joking.

He was at college.

I was out of state, so we're catching up

And joking at rob's expense about just getting married.

James: Even as we're talking to each other,

We never forgot that the uncle might be showing up at any time.

♪♪

Weste: Trying to focus on something other than,

"we're stuck out in this cabin.

There's a nest where a man has been sleeping

In his mother's clothes."

[ sighs ]

We had been talking to each other for quite some time,

And all of the sudden, we heard something.

[ rattles ]

Dude, did you hear that?

[ rattles ]

We heard the doorknob on the door being shaken violently,

Like somebody was trying to get in.

[ rattling continues ]

I just sit really still, and, you know,

James and I look at each other, and we're like,

"oh, crap. Somebody is here."

[ rattles ]

We were terrified.

[ squeaking ]

Weste: I, like, tense up, and it's like my heart is in my stomach.

It sounded like whoever was trying to get in was upset.

They were angry.

And the door opens.

[ creaking ]

♪♪

♪♪

And when I looked at weste, I saw that he was

As scared as I was.

We were sitting there in the dark,

Staring right at each other, holding our breath.

We thought it was the uncle coming in,

And so we were terrified.

So we're sitting quietly for a few more minutes,

And then we hear something else.

We hear the sound of the card table and metal folding chairs

Downstairs being dragged across the floor.

We were just full-on freaked out.

♪♪

It was just terrifying.

I'm pretty scared.

My heart is pounding.

We just sit there quietly, listening and hoping

That he doesn't find out that we're upstairs.

We're hoping that whatever it is down there goes away.

Well, what now?

James: I'm just trying to calm down.

I'm making a decision as to whether I can really

Stay the night in that cabin or if I have any other options.

We didn't have cell-phone reception.

We didn't have any choice but to stay.

[ distant scream ]

[ distant scream ]

[ distant scream ]

So weste and I hadn't heard anything downstairs

For about a half an hour,

And so we started talking to each other again,

Whispering.

[ phone ringing ]

We heard the phone in the kitchen

Downstairs begin to ring.

[ ringing continues ]

♪♪

[ ringing continues ]

And we waited for a while to see

If anybody was going to answer it.

It probably rang about 30 times before we decided

That if the uncle was downstairs,

He would have picked it up already.

People don't let the phone ring that long

Unless it's really important.

I decided to go downstairs and answer the phone.

I picked up the axe, and I climbed down the stairs.

[ ringing continues ]

♪♪

[ phone ringing distantly ]

[ ringing continues ]

♪♪

I can't see anything at the bottom of the stairs.

[ ringing continues ]

♪♪

♪♪

[ ringing continues ]

♪♪

I'm afraid that the uncle is still there,

And he's awake and that he might attack me.

[ ringing continues ]

♪♪

The living room is completely dark,

But I can see inside the kitchen.

I started feeling like there was somebody

Watching me from the dark,

And all of the hair on my body stood on end.

[ ringing continues ]

The phone was sitting on the counter and ringing.

♪♪

♪♪

[ shakily ] hello?

The phone is dead.

There's nothing. There's no dial tone.

There's nobody on the other line.

There's no sound at all.

♪♪

I check the plug-in for the phone to the wall,

And I see that the phone isn't plugged into the wall.

It had been ringing by itself.

Instantly, this feeling of dread washed over me.

[ ringing resumes ]

[ shrieking ]

And then, the phone began to ring again.

I had to get out of the kitchen as fast as I could.

James, you there?

[ clatter ] aah!

I climbed back up into the attic.

I feel like there's something in the dark

Watching me the whole time.

[ ringing continues ]

So he gets up, and he just pulls the stairs up as fast as he can.

He's weirded out, and I'm like, "well, who was it?"

He goes, "dude, there was nobody on the line.

There's no dial tone, nothing." [ ringing stops ]

I told weste he could go down and look at it himself,

But he decided he didn't want to go downstairs.

Oh, I'm still freaked out.

I'm on going to volunteer to go down there at all.

James: I think he could see that I was really scared.

Dude, there's no one there.

I mean...

Weste: Well, at that point, things are lining up,

And it's kind of like, "okay. This place is fricking haunted."

♪♪

I didn't really feel like talking after that.

♪♪

And then, the phone began to ring again.

[ phone rings ]

It just didn't stop.

So I just started to count.

"one, two, three, four.

[ ringing continues ]

♪♪

"97, 98, 99, 100."

♪♪

Ninety-nine.

I count to well over 100 rings

Before I decide there's no point in counting anymore.

The last thing I remember before I fell asleep was just thinking,

"what am I doing here?"

[ ringing continues ]

[ birds chirping ]

♪♪

When I woke up, I still had that same feeling of dread

That I had when I was downstairs and answered the phone.

The type of person that I am,

I wanted to find a rational explanation

To help me deal with my fear,

And so I decided I wanted to go downstairs and investigate.

I had hoped to find evidence that the uncle had been there

And that he had left and that it had all been a dream,

That the phone was plugged in, and I had imagined it all.

♪♪

So weste and I dropped the stairs,

And we climbed down into the living room.

♪♪

We found it exactly the way that we had left it the night before.

♪♪

♪♪

I let weste examine the phone.

I didn't want to go near it again.

Weste went and picked up the phone.

I go down and check on the phone,

And I find out that it wasn't plugged in.

Part of me felt vindicated that I hadn't made it up,

That what I had experienced was real.

The other part of me was pretty creeped out.

We looked all over for another phone.

That was the only phone in the house.

Come on, now. Let's get out of here.

-Aaah! -Hey. What's going on?

♪♪

[ birds chirp ]

-Did you try to call us? -No, we didn't call.

Because...

We chewed them out for leaving us there overnight

And told them what had happened.

I'm telling you, that house is haunted

Oh, come on.

We asked them if they had tried to call us

In the middle of the night, and lacy said that they hadn't.

♪♪

Weste: I think the ghost probably wanted us out of there.

I think that all the noises were angry, angry noises

Intended to scare us.

♪♪

James: I think it was grandma trying to get us out of her house.

I don't think that she...

She had lived there her whole life.

She had died in that house

And that she didn't want strangers staying there.

♪♪

Sitting there in the dark in that attic,

Listening to the phone ring, it was terror in the woods.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Eric: My name is eric sterwerf.

In 2013, I was doing what was called the hikers challenge.

♪♪

I arrived at the trailhead the second week of August, 2013,

And the weather was pleasant.

It was probably in the 80s.

Hardly a cloud in the sky.

I like to walk alone because it's kind of meditative to me.

It's great for thinking and hashing things out in your mind.

The section I'm hiking is on the border

Of rockcastle and laurel county in kentucky.

The day was only about 15 miles,

And I wanted to go a whole lot longer

Just so I didn't have to hike as much the next day.

The trail was well maintained,

But it was thick, nonetheless.

There were parts of it that weren't really blazed well,

So you could easily get lost.

It was exactly what I was looking for.

It was dense. It was hilly.

It was a challenge.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

By the time I got into the thick of the woods,

It was probably about 10:00 or 11:00 in the morning,

So I decided to sit down

And take a quick snack and get a drink.

♪♪

[ soft growling in distance ]

[ growling continues ]

That day I carried with me a small pocketknife

That has, like, a corkscrew on it

And a pair of scissors, and that's it.

♪♪

♪♪

I got up, and I went right back to hiking.

[ soft growling in distance ]

♪♪

I was feeling really excited.

You know, I was roughly halfway finished with the trail.

♪♪

It started getting dark, so I decided to stop there.

♪♪

♪♪

It's pretty much an "a"-frame tent,

So you could see out of it either end.

But on the sides, you're covered.

Usually in the forest,

You take your food and you put it in a dry sack

And you throw it up over a tree

To keep it away from bears.

But that night, I decided to just take my food

And sleep with it, because I was way too tired.

I just took it in the tarp with me.

I know a lot of people are screaming at me right now,

Saying that's a bad thing to do,

But I've spent months out in the woods by myself

And never really had a problem.

♪♪

When I got into the sleeping bag,

The sun was just setting over the horizon.

It was a long day.

It was a 26-mile day,

So as soon as my head hit the pillow, I was out.

♪♪

♪♪

[ scraping on ground ]

♪♪

[ soft growling ]

♪♪

[ growling continues ]

[ scraping on ground ]

♪♪

[ shrieking ]

♪♪

♪♪

[ scraping on ground ]

[ shrieking ]

Eric: A couple hours into sleep,

I wake up to something crawling on me.

Got up out of my tarp, started running around like a crazy man.

I must have set my tent up over an anthill.

The ants are crawling all over my body,

All over my arms, all over my face.

I swat them off me, and that just angers them,

And they start biting me all over.

[ animal vocalizes ]

I hear a sound down the ridge a little bit,

And it stops me in my tracks.

♪♪

Being out in the woods in the middle of the night,

You know, you hear any kind of noise,

And you immediately think, like, "oh, man. What's out there?"

♪♪

[ branch snaps ]

[ rustling ]

♪♪

It was moving around like it was startled.

[ animal breathes ]

[ rustling ]

Hey! Who's there?

♪♪

Who's there?

♪♪

[ animal vocalizes ]

♪♪

I figured it was a big animal

Because nothing in the woods is that clumsy

And makes that big of noise.

I've seen bears before, so I just, you know, head back,

Pick up my tarp, and move it away from the anthill.

♪♪

♪♪

I crawl back in my sleeping bag

And don't even worry about the sound

And fall right back asleep.

[ zips zipper ]

♪♪

[ clicks flashlight off ]

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[ rustling ]

I wake up again to something big on the side of my tent.

This thing, it definitely had mass to it.

It wasn't just like a deer's hoofs walking.

It was something with large feet.

I've came across pretty much every single animal

That is believed to be in the eastern united states,

And none of them really fit the description.

It sounded like it was inches away from my head.

The tarp itself was, like, swaying with every step it took.

♪♪

♪♪

Roof! Woof!

Many other hikers I've backpacked with told me that,

When they've had encounters with bears,

Barking like a dog would scare them off.

Woof! Roof!

[ animal growls softly ]

It started running away, like I startled it.

I hear the impact of the feet rustling

The leaves along the way.

♪♪

[ animal vocalizes ]

♪♪

The sound, like, seems, like, super aggressive,

And it seemed like it was coming from a creature

That was very, very big.

[ animal vocalizes ]

It didn't sound like any animal that I've ever heard of.

I know, like, deer make a wheezing noise,

But this sounded much deeper, much more guttural,

So it was either a mutant deer,

Or it was something entirely different.

[ animal vocalizes ]

♪♪

[ animal breathing ]

♪♪

Eric: I wanted to run, but I didn't know,

Like, where to run to.

A lot of times with, like, large predators, if you run,

They think that you are some sort of prey.

It terrified me.

♪♪

I knew it was probably afraid of me.

♪♪

But I was just as equally afraid of it.

[ rustling ]

♪♪

[ whoosh ]

When I didn't hear anything out there anymore,

I packed up my tarp,

Packed up my sleeping bag and my sleeping pad.

♪♪

[ branches crunch ]

♪♪

♪♪

And I made a pretty large fire.

Then, I took out my knife, and I made sure I had it,

You know, ready.

And I sat there with my little pocketknife.

I don't know what good it would have done.

I knew, whatever was out in the woods,

It probably wouldn't have done any good,

Fighting it with this knife.

♪♪

I was too worried that I if would leave

In the middle of the night,

I would either fall of a cliff or run into this creature.

I was actually too scared to do anything,

And I was kind of waiting for it to make the next move.

So I sat next to the fire for the rest of the night,

Jumping at shadows.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

[ animal vocalizes ]

[ animal vocalizes ]

♪♪

[ animal vocalizes distantly ]

♪♪

♪♪

[ birds chirping ]

I put out the fire,

And I hightail it out of there.

♪♪

♪♪

If a guy like me can have an experience like this,

There's definitely a possibility that some large

Unknown creature exists

That, you know, we don't even know about,

And I thought about it all the way until I got to my truck.

♪♪

I think a lot of people, like, have these very, like,

Valid experiences,

And a lot of times, people just discard them

Just because there's so much, like,

Stigma surrounding, you know, the legend of bigfoot.

After the experience,

I'm definitely more tolerant of people's stories.

I don't just, like, you know, like, "okay, yeah.

Whatever, buddy."

You know, I take time to listen to them.

[ animal grunts, shuffles ]

I never really, like, considered

I'd come across something of this nature.

You know, it wasn't even in my mind.

♪♪

[ animal vocalizes ]