S20 Ep24: The Best of 2025 Special Part 2 (Sn. 20 Ep. 24)

Summary

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Monsters Among Us

S20 Ep24: The Best of 2025 Special Part 2

Host: Derek Hayes | Date: January 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this "Best of 2025 Special Part 2," Derek Hayes curates and revisits the most chilling, memorable, and fan-favorite stories submitted by listeners over the past year. With calls covering everything from dark bargains and classic cryptids to poltergeists, skinwalkers, and modern pterodactyl sightings, the episode creates a spooky, nostalgic tapestry of supernatural encounters. Throughout, Derek maintains a conversational, empathetic tone—reacting to each story, inviting listener reflection, and sharing personal thoughts and research.

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Key Segments & Stories

1. A Deal with the ‘Dark Side’: Tyler’s Financial Luck

[01:37–08:53]

• Story: Tyler from California recounts a series of uncanny financial windfalls after half-jokingly asking the "dark side" for help during a rough patch—finding cash in a restaurant, a $50 bill pinned at a bus stop, and an unexpected $1,700 financial aid payout.
• Self-reflection: Tyler, a skeptic, ends the experiment feeling there may be unseen costs to seeking supernatural aid. After “calling it off,” the luck ends.
• Notable Quote:
  • "There's no free lunch, so to speak, right? I just kinda get the feeling at some point I'm gonna owe somebody or something." – Tyler [07:32]
• Host Reaction:
  • "How many of you asked the dark side for help after hearing this call?... What a way to kick off the second half of this year's best of special." – Derek Hayes [08:53]

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2. Werewolf at the Window: Joe’s Roubidoux Sighting

[12:22–16:35]

• Story: Joe, recalling an experience from age 7, sees a tall, hunched, wolf-like creature—resembling a “werewolf” or “Dogman”—peering in his California window. Decades later, he still struggles for closure, unsure if it was supernatural or a trick of light and stress.
• Notable Quote:
  • "I've never really had closure about it and I think that's kind of the big thing that's a draw for a lot of us with stories—there’s really no closure to these things." – Joe [16:19]
• Host Reaction:
  • Shares excitement about werewolf/Dogman tales, notes nearby location, and mentions research into local pranksters wearing werewolf masks. [16:35]

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3. Nightwolf’s Bigfoot Family Encounter

[18:29–25:17]

• Story: "Nightwolf" and his brother, driving in the Colorado mountains at dusk in 1999, spot what they think is a bear—until it stands up and is joined by two others, including a juvenile. Nightwolf throws pears to the creatures, one of which reacts with a deep, chest-rattling grunt and a powerful stench.
• Details: Describes physical features (dark brown/grey fur, dog-like nose, “greasy”), Navajo background, and humorous note that Bigfoot’s face resembled his dad’s.
• Notable Quote:
  • "It grabbed the pear... then it fully erected and stood straight up and looked like a man... there’s a whole family of them.” – Nightwolf [20:32]
  • "Bigfoot's face looked just like my dad's." – Nightwolf [23:58]
• Host Reaction:
  • "Chucking pears at Bigfoot. That’s a bold choice." – Derek Hayes [25:17]

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4. The Gentle Poltergeist: Kelly’s British Haunting

[26:52–38:30]

• Story: Kelly and Dan, after the death of their elderly friend Clarence, endure escalating poltergeist activity in a new flat—loud clanging, shadowy reflections, slamming doors, and even being jabbed and pulled. A spiritualist medium reveals Clarence’s spirit is behind the chaos, desperate to communicate urgent messages about family heirlooms and gratitude.
• Resolution: Following the medium's visit and retrieval of meaningful objects, the haunting stops—except for the occasional appearance of 20 pence coins, believed to be Clarence’s sign.
• Notable Quote:
  • "I kind of feel like Clarence confirmed that there is something after death." – Kelly [37:12]
• Host Reaction:
  • Appreciates the story’s warmth and the community’s engagement, highlighting the human side of the paranormal. [38:30]

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5. Flying Reptile: Russell’s Pterodactyl Sighting

[39:52–42:16]

• Story: Russell from Cincinnati sees an enormous, featherless, blue-gray pterodactyl in Kentucky—wingspan 75–100 feet—soaring toward Mammoth Cave. He reports seeing Bigfoot there, too. Despite initial skepticism from others, Russell is confident in what he saw.
• Notable Quote:
  • “I looked up again and it was a pterodactyl... wingspan probably 75 to 100 ft wide... I know what I saw.” – Russell [40:16]
• Host Reaction:
  • Reveals multiple similar sightings submitted by listeners, promises a future deep dive. [42:16]

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6. Shadowed by Giants: Annette’s Night in the Cascades

[44:57–49:42]

• Story: Annette, camping in Oregon, wakes to hear “elk” but quickly realizes three massive, heavy, bipedal beings are circling their tent, synchronizing footsteps. After a period of lost time, they're gone. Annette notes odd effects on her bladder—possibly due to fear or something stranger.
• Notable Quote:
  • "Every time they stepped it felt like the earth was moving. So whatever it was was incredibly heavy." – Annette [47:02]
• Host Reaction:
  • Derek muses on possible Sasquatch or alien explanations. [49:42]

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7. The Trilobite Demon Bug: Texas Anonymous

[50:43–57:18]

• Story: As a child left home alone, this anonymous Texan sees a bizarre, 8-inch, domed, trilobite-like black bug with teeth and multiple legs emerge from behind a bedsheet window covering. It seems aware of her, climbs the wall, and screams telepathically.
• Notable Quote:
  • "It opened its mouth, and that thing happened where you hear something roar... but you only hear it in your head." – Anonymous [54:41]
• Host Reaction:
  • Reads out listeners’ theories (beetle, Dobsonfly, demon bug), emphasizes how unsettling the story is. [57:18]

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8. Shape-shifting Owls: Justin & Peter’s Encounters

[58:42–73:26]

• Justin (Montana): In Moab, Utah, he witnesses a 3-foot-tall white owl transform into a naked Native American man, witnessed by a friend. Local lore leans toward skinwalker or lechuza interpretations.
• Peter (British Columbia): During childhood, experienced repeated dreams (or abductions) involving a 4-foot owl dragging him out of bed into another world, with consistent, conscious details—later protected by crows.
• Notable Quotes:
  • "All of a sudden, this huge white owl appears at the base of the tree... then all of a sudden, it disappears and turns into... this naked Native American looking man." – Justin [60:08]
  • "It swooped down the hallway to my bed and grabbed me by the legs. I don't know if it used its talons... started dragging me off the bed." – Peter [67:54]
• Host Reflection:
  • Draws parallels to alien abduction themes, notes personal resonance with both motifs. [73:26]

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9. Ghostly Tragedy: Roy’s Phantom Collision

[74:17–82:49]

• Story: At 16, Roy, on his way to church in Louisiana, believes he strikes a little girl standing in the road. He feels the impact, hears the metal—yet there’s no body, no damage, no evidence. Others, including police, investigate and find nothing, leaving Roy traumatized and ostracized.
• Notable Quote:
  • "She hit the front of my truck. She bounced underneath the truck. I felt it in my feet. I felt it in my hands..." – Roy [75:38]
• Host Reaction:
  • "That one still gives me the chills... I'm so glad that you didn't find anything, Roy. Heavy, heavy stuff.” – Derek Hayes [82:49]

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10. The Prankster Leprechaun: Sebastian’s Kansas Memory

[84:16–86:15]

• Story: Sebastian reflects on a childhood incident where his sister, while washing dishes, claims a “leprechaun” spray-painted her hands and ran off laughing. Both he and their mother hear the laughter; the terror seems genuine.
• Notable Quote:
  • "Her hands were spray painted white... the terror on my sister’s face was quite genuine.” – Sebastian [85:53]
• Host Reaction:
  • Shares show’s affinity for leprechaun tales and teases the upcoming 10-year anniversary. [86:15]

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11. Pale Crawler in Nova Scotia: Chad's Story

[87:58–91:45]

• Story: As a teen, Chad and friends, with corroboration from his parents, spot a tall, skinny, white/grey, bipedal figure sprinting and leaping tremendous distances around their house at night, before it drops to all fours and vanishes.
• Notable Quote:
  • "It was like a 7 to 8 foot tall, bipedal, skinny, skinny white, really dark, like a deep white kind of gray color creature... The skin was really tight over his body." – Chad [90:04]
• Host Discussion:
  • Categorizes it as a "pale crawler/humanoid," noting increased frequency of similar reports. [91:45]

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12. The Pender County 911 “Pale Humanoid” Call

[92:59–95:50]

• Highlights:
  • Portion of a real 911 call where a distressed driver in North Carolina, after seeing a bleeding figure on the roadside, finds something non-human in the bed of his truck. Caller is frightened and confused, unable to rationally explain what happened.
• Notable Quote:
  • "Sir? That's not human. That's not human." – 911 Caller [94:13]
• Host Recommendation:
  • Urges listeners to check the deep dive episode (S19 Ep50) for more on this eerie case. [95:50]

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Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• “There's no free lunch, so to speak, right? I just kinda get the feeling at some point I'm gonna owe somebody or something.” – Tyler [07:32]
• "I've never really had closure about it and I think that's kind of the big thing that’s a draw for a lot of us…" – Joe [16:19]
• "Bigfoot's face looked just like my dad's." – Nightwolf [23:58]
• "Every time they stepped it felt like the earth was moving. So whatever it was was incredibly heavy." – Annette [47:02]
• "It opened its mouth, and that thing happened where you hear something roar... but you only hear it in your head." – Texas Anonymous [54:41]
• "Her hands were spray painted white... the terror on my sister’s face was quite genuine.” – Sebastian [85:53]
• "It was like a 7 to 8 foot tall, bipedal, skinny, skinny white, really dark, like a deep white kind of gray color creature..." – Chad [90:04]
• "Sir? That's not human. That's not human." – 911 Caller [94:13]

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Episode Themes & Takeaways

• Paranormal variety: Listeners share a wide range of claims—ghosts, cryptids (Bigfoot, werewolves, Dogmen), shape-shifters (owls/skinwalkers), time slips, poltergeists, pale humanoids, and even mysterious prehistoric creatures.
• Emotional realism: Most stories are colored by the long-term impact on the witness—uncertainty, trauma, humor, gratitude, or the relentless search for closure.
• Community: Derek’s curation and commentary foster a sense of shared experience and open discussion; listeners are invited to submit, reflect, and interact.
• No simple answers: Many stories end with ambiguity—honoring the genuine mystery at the heart of the paranormal.

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Episode Flow

Each call is introduced by Derek, who provides context (season, original episode), then the witness audio is played. Afterward, Derek offers thoughts—sometimes personal, sometimes referencing further research or upcoming features. The show’s tone is warm, inclusive, and steeped in spooky curiosity.

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For Further Listening

• MAU Junior: Kid-friendly stories on MAU Junior (new episodes every other Wednesday).
• Pender County Deep Dive: Season 19, Episode 50.
• Skinwalker/Owl connections, cryptid roundups, pterodactyl feature (future episodes teased).

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Final Note from Derek

“One last time, I’d like to thank you all for another stellar year of spooky stories. Let’s hope the next year is even better. Now go enjoy yourselves, be safe, keep it spooky, and by all means have yourselves a good night and a happy new year.” [98:00]

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Keep it spooky!

Transcript

[Derek Hayes]

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[Producer/Assistant]

Sam.

[Derek Hayes]

Foreign.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Good evening and welcome to Monsters Among Us. I'm your guide, Derek Hayes. Welcome back to part two of this year's Best of Years in Special and it's a pleasure to have you with us here tonight. And just as I did on Tuesday, I have an amazing program slated for tonight, the best of the best, or at least our most favorite calls of the year. And just like I did with Tuesday's effort, I have a lot to get through here this evening. So let's just jump right back into it and why not start on an unsettling note, please welcome Tyler from season 19, episode 46 in the Golden State of California.

[Tyler (Caller)]

Hey Derek, it's me, Tai again from la, longtime listener and frequent caller. So this would be around 2018, and this involves a person at that time who I'd known for about 10 years. We met back in 2008. We worked at an office building in Beverly Hills since I met him and we were having a conversation one day and I know much about his past and his childhood. You know, he told me he had a very difficult childhood. Parents weren't around much. Long story short, he would tell me that he relied, he just called it the dark side. Didn't give it a name or anything, but he would just tell me that he relied on or called on the dark side from his late teen years all the way until now or currently at the time for things that he needed. And just to preface this for a second with myself, I'm not religious. I don't belong to religion. I don't judge anybody who does. I've just never been that way myself. Sort of a skeptic. And just like I say, I do believe in good and bad, but beyond that, I really don't give it much thought so we're having a talk like we normally do about this. And again, I don't usually interject much. I just listen. But when we get off the phone, I thought, well, you know, for the heck of it, I mean, at this point I was kind of needing some financial help and I thought, you know, for the heck of it, I'm just going to kind of humor myself. I was kind of laughing to myself. I'm going to humor myself and I'm going to call up this dark side and ask if I can get some assistance, money wise, right? So I just kind of, I wouldn't really even call it a prayer. I just kind of said, look, you know, whoever you are, whatever you are is the dark side, you know, I need some financial help. If you could help me, I would much appreciate that. If you could manifest that, you know, thank you. That was basically it didn't give it much thought. Fast forward about three days later, I'm at my favorite restaurant in the Valley in la. And let me kind of set up the layout of this restaurant. So the way this restaurant is is that you open the front door and you probably walk about 20ft straight ahead and there's a counter where you place your order. I'm saying this for a reason, because as I'm walking in here, first of all, this is about 2 o' clock in the afternoon on a weekday. So this is that lull period after lunch. So there's literally only one other customer in the restaurant and he's on a completely different side of the restaurant. So nobody else in the restaurant. So again, as they open the door and as I'm walking up this 20ft, nothing, just basically tables on both sides of this aisle. So I'm walking up to the counter and they all know me there. So when the woman comes up, we kind of chatted for about a minute or two. And then I was starting to place my order and she interrupts me and she says, hey, is that your money? And I said, huh? And she's pointing behind me, she goes, is that your money? I turn around and there's a bunch of dollar bills on the floor probably about 10ft in back of me. Again, this is the very aisle that I just walked up, but there was nothing there. I don't carry much cash on me. I carry maybe five or ten bucks on me and the rest I just use, you know, credit or debit cards. And that was still in the wallet. So I know it wasn't for me. So I'm kind of shocked. So I said, Excuse me for a second. And I go over there and I scoop up all these bills, and it was about a hundred and probably called about 113 or 14 bucks in cash. I said, oh, my God. So I scoop it up, put it in my wallet again, because there was nobody in that section of the restaurant, so it could not have been anybody else's. So I grabbed it, place my order, and, you know, finished out my day. Didn't think much about it. About three days later, I was on a bus to Glendale. And as often happens sometimes, you know, I doze off. I missed my stop. When I woke up, I realized that. So I got off the bus, and it meant that I would now have to cross the street and catch the opposite bus going back the other way. So as I'm walking to this bus stop, and this is Glendale, so it's kind of a fancy bus stop, or actually a bus shelter. As I walk into the bus stop, it's got one of these, like. I guess I would almost call it like a bulletin board where people can pin things up, things like that, put up notices or whatever. And there's just a little note there. The note just simply said, because you are you. And somebody had pinned a 50 bill to this note to this bulletin board. And my guess is probably just for, I suppose, you know, first come, first serve, I suppose, just for whoever came along first. So that was me. So I took down the $50 bill, took the note and put it in my pocket. And so this is great. Again, waited for my bus and, you know, went on. Didn't give it much thought. About four days later. @ the time, I was taking management classes at Pasadena City College in la. And as such, I was getting financial aid. And the way this usually works is this is like a semester school, so they break it up in two parts. So generally what will happen is the first, about a month before the semester starts, you'll get half of it, and then about a month or two in, you get the other half. Well, these classes I was taking, I was already about halfway in. So I had already gotten both of my allotments for financial aid, so I was not owed anymore. So one day I'm at school, and there's an app that we use to kind of manage your, you know, financial aid account. And on this app, I got notification that I had some more money available. And I thought, well, that's kind of strange. I thought, there's no way I should have any money available. But anyway, I. Since the office is on campus, I went to the office. And I inquired about it and the woman looked me up and did some checking. And she says, no, no. She says, it looks like they did some accounting errors and you're owed some money. And I said, well, how much is it? She said, it's almost seventeen hundred dollars. And I almost fell off my chair. I was like, oh, good lord. So she says, you want to accept? I said, yeah, yeah, I definitely accept. Thank you. Thank you. So as you can imagine, I was beyond shocked that it never happens. And so I remember as I left the office, though, you know, the gears in my head started turning and I kept thinking, you know, this is great. And I thought, you know, I have a feeling the amounts of money are going to increase. I said, but just the way I am as a skeptic, there's no free lunch, so to speak, right? I just kind of get the feeling at some point I'm going to owe somebody or something. Something or some things eventually that this isn't just for free. So basically I went and found a little quiet place on the campus and just kind of said, look, I reached out to this dark side or whatever it was, just kind of said, look, hey, listen, thank you. I appreciate all that you've done. This has been a great help. I said, but I think at this point I'm going to have to call up this little experiment and just kind of end it here. I do. Thank you. Hope I didn't waste your time. Thanks a lot. Basically. Bye. And that was kind of what I said. And I noticed after that, you know, the excess money cut off, I mean, whatever that was, wherever that was from, I don't know. But I do know that after that, that was 2018, this is now 2025, and I have not gotten any more surprises like that. So whatever it's worth, I just thought I would pass it on. As always, great show. Keep it up.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Thanks. Thank you, Ty. Now, this was a fun one and it kind of skeeved me out a bit too, if I'm honest. And speaking of being honest, how many of you asked the dark side for help after hearing this call? And better yet, how many of you received it? What a way to kick off the second half of this year's best off special. Now, gang, let's get this first AD break out of the way. But when I come back, werewolves, Night Wolves, and even Sasquatch, don't move a muscle. This is why I have life.

[Derek Hayes]

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[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

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[Commercial Announcer]

Notes. We do it in 10.

[Tyler (Caller)]

Minutes. It works like a.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Blanket. It covers them all. Now as promised, here is one of my favorites from the year. Please welcome Joe from Season 20 Episode.

[Derek Hayes]

2 hey Derek and Monster Fam. I'm Joe from Michigan, but my story is coming from Lubido, California. I'd say something around 1997. I was seven. I think it was quite a while back. Now I'm 35. But this one would have been at night. You know, I was getting ready for bed and sitting on my bed in my room and had to get up to go brush my teeth. But as I was going to do that I looked over and through my window I saw what I can only really describe as A kind of typical werewolf looking figure. The light from my room was just enough to show the mostly black and kind of dark brownish hair on it. I can picture this thing like perfectly even to this day. I can remember the eyes and the ears at the top of the head and the snout going forward. The closest depiction I can think of is either the werewolves from Skyrim, the Game, or from the Underworld series. Maybe it's pretty close, but it's not exact. And all I remember is that I was really scared at the time and I, you know, ran out. Of course, when I told my parents, they thought it was just, you know, kid imagination kind of thing and, you know, it could have been. And I was under a lot of stress during that time and that was around the time my insomnia started kicking up. But I think the biggest two things that I think about that is that just out beyond my window, maybe three feet, something away from it is the fence. And the fence was pretty tall. And this thing that I could see out the window had to be taller than the fence at least. It was obviously hunched over. And it was just the oddest thing because it wasn't just stationary, it was moving. And I could picture just how it kind of like, it was like a little bit of a shake motion that it did. But I think the thing that confuses me the most about it is that Roubidoux, California, it's pretty big city type area and right where we were at, we were maybe about a mile or so from the bridge heading toward Roubidoux Mountain. So it's not like I was near any big wilderness areas really. When I was younger, I thought it had to have been some sort of shape shifting creature. Now that I'm older, you never really know. But I kind of feel like I might have just hallucinated it or something. But I've never seen anything like it before. And I've never seen anything exactly like it in movies or anything like that. But man, if I could draw, I could probably draw that sucker up right good. But pretty recently actually did have the idea that it could have been just a dog that had gotten into our yard or was on the other side of the fence. And maybe it was just light enough that it made it look closer and was like standing, leaning on it, just sniffing around or something. But I'm not sure that it really matches up with it all. But it's something that's kind of bothered me throughout my life. I've never really had closure about it and I think that's kind of the big thing that's a draw for a lot of us with stories is that there's really no closure to these things. Thanks very much and I love you guys and have a good.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

One. Thanks again, Joe for calling. I love this call for a number of reasons. First, I can't get enough werewolf or Dogman stories, by far my favorite Cryptid and my favorite type of story to receive here on the program. And secondly, the story took place not too far from where I currently live, which gives me a bit of hope that I might get to see one of these creatures myself some dark evening. And lastly, when we were doing our research for this call, I found a related story about some dude in a werewolf Halloween mask that was speaking at Windows in a nearby community. Three amazing reasons to include Joe's call and tonight's Best of Now, folks, if you have a story you would like to share, give the hotline a call at 888608. That's 888608, Nig HT. Or you can shoot us a voice memo at monsters among us podcast gmail.com now. Don't forget to call from a quiet place. One story per call only. Submit a story once. Call back if you need more time. And most importantly, true stories only. And don't forget about Monsters Among Us Junior as well. 833-maukids. Or email us at Monsters Among Us Jrmail.com now. Gang, this next entry was a popular one. I guess that's why our editor Connor put it on his list of this year's best entries. And that's probably why it was on my list as well. Please welcome nightwolf back from season 19 episode.

[Derek Hayes]

40. Yeah, my name is Nightwolf. I live in Pueblo, Colorado. It's been some years. I never told anybody but me and my brother. This happened in 1999. Had to be around fall and we were traveling. We got done coming from a farmer's market and we grabbed some pears and apples and we were going to go up to Bertha's pass on West 40. Just go, you know, drive up there because, you know, it's a cool drive in the mountains. So we go driving up there and the road's windy, it's in the mountains and we come across this bend in the road. We're just cruising along, you know, just sightseeing, me and my brother, chatting and laughing and talking. The time, it had to be around 6 o' clock because the sun barely started going down. I look in my rearview mirror and I told my brother There's a bear, you know, it's coming over the side of the road. It's on the side of a mountain, so it goes straight down and then goes straight up the other side of the mountain. So we slam on the brakes, and I said, hey, give me one of those pairs. And he gives me one, and I get out, and I used to pitch, so I maybe about a good 50ft from it. And I told him, I said, I'm gonna just throw this pair at this bear and hit him, and, you know, he'll probably just eat it. So my brother gets out and he goes, it don't look like a bear. And I said, no, it's a bear. So I grabbed a bear and I throw it as hard as I could, and I hit it in the side where the shoulder would be on the bear. And it just, like, started sitting up. And I was like, okay. And by the crazy thing is, it grabbed the pair, and my brother started freaking out. And then I was like, just calm down. I said, you know, just be cool. I said, we don't even know what it is. And then it fully erected and stood straight up and looked like a man. And I was like, dude, ain't no bear, dude. And, you know, we started thinking about it, and we were standing near the trunk of the car, just staring at this thing, you know, and it's massive. I'd say a good eight, eight and a half feet. This thing is big. And, you know, we're close enough to see details. And I told my brother, I said, you know what? I said, I see all these documentaries, dude, about, you know, Bigfoot and, you know, Yetis, but everybody always runs. I told my brother, I said, just get on your cell phone and get ready to call 91 1. And he goes, what are you gonna do? And I said, well, give me the whole bag of pears. And then I seen two other little heads popping up on the side of the road. And it was weird because we didn't smell nothing. You didn't smell anything at all. And then all of a sudden, you seen this, another big one coming up. And it was like kind of on all fours, but kind of like hunched over, walking, and then you seen a little one. And I was like, oh, man, there's a whole family of them. And I said, give me the bag. And I took the bag from my brother because he was so scared. I started walking over there, and he goes, dude, don't do that. You know, he'll rip you in half. I said, no, man. You know, I'M gonna go look at this thing. I said, I don't care. I'm gonna get close as possible to it. Well, I started getting probably within, like, another. About 15ft of it. And I threw another pair, and I hit him in the chest with the. And all of a sudden, he must have took it as an aggressive act or something, because we didn't smell nothing. But he right away stretched his arms completely out, which, I mean, they were long. And he, like, let out this girdling, Like, I don't want to say a roar, but had a lot of bass to it. You could feel it in your chest. I don't know. It was just, like, bass, Like a hardcore grunt. So when he did that, Then it started to stink. As soon as he did that, it started smelling and stinking. As soon as he spread his arms out and felt threatened. So it was kind of weird. His fur was, like, a darkish brown. You could see, like. I don't know if he was old or not, because you can see, like, gray in it. So I don't know if he was, like, an elder or something. Being navajo, we are always taught to respect them and stuff. So I had grabbed that whole bag of pears. And I threw it as hard as I can. So, you know, he could give it to his family. Or just take the whole bag or whatever he's gonna do with it. But they all look the same. But they were, like, a dark brown. But it was weird, though, because the little one, his face was like. You could see skin, but it was, like, covered in hair. But it was real, like, perfectly round. Like, it didn't get its shape yet. Not like the dad and the mom, you know, with the crest on their head. It was insanely crazy. And after that, we had jumped back in the car. And we were all scared, and we went down to the nearest store. And we had told him, know, we saw bigfoot on Bertha's past. And they go, oh, yeah. You know, we get that around here quite often. You know, we hear stories. And I said, no, it just happened. And me and my brother actually sat down and started talking. And it was funny because his bigfoot's face Looked just like my dad's. And we just started cracking up. We were like, oh, bigfoot's face look just like dad's. And the way my dad grew his beard and mustache. And his hair being long and everything. And the way he looks, it just the same thing, you know. It was, like, odd and weird. And one thing that got me was, like, his nose, the Bigfoot's nose was like. It looked like it had almost like the same texture as a dog's nose. It was strange, weird, but he looked like kind of greasy too. But yeah, that's my story, man. My son keeps telling me to call you and stuff. We love your show and yeah, we appreciate you being out there and doing this for people to be able to call, you know. All right, thank you.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Bye. Thank you. Nightwolf chucking pears at Bigfoot. That's a bold choice. And I'm guessing Night Wolf hasn't seen those messing with Sasquatch beef jerky commercials. Those things are not only advertisements, but they're cautionary tales as well. The quality of the games is better with precision and without.

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[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Deeper. Now, here's a call that garnered a ton of attention when it was first played back on season 18, episode 32. Please welcome Kelly, all the way from.

[Kelly]

England. Hello. Hello. I just wanted to share with you a poltergeist experience that I had back in 2014. So just to explain a little bit of the Backstory, back in 2012, I used to rent a couple of acres from a local guy. His name was Clarence. And instead of charging me field rent for that grazing from horses, Clarence asked me instead if I would go in in the evening and change the coals in his aga in the kitchen. Now, Clarence had a business on the same property and he had a guy who would go in at sort of 7 o' clock every morning and do that job for him. His name was Dan, and Clarence was kind of old and frail and he'd never had his aga serviced and it used to leak fumes into the house. And so he had respiratory issues that related to the fumes from the Aga. But anyway, so he was quite tight with money and he would never pay to have it serviced or have the chimney swept. It was more than 50 years old. He lived downstairs in his house and the upstairs was kind of derelict, so we never went upstairs in the house. There were like vines growing through the windows and your feet were at risk of going through the floorboards. He lived a very basic, simple life sort of thing, and Dan and I were probably the closest people to him in life. He never had children, he was never married. I think his brother had moved to Canada. So he had nephews alive in Canada that he'd never met. Yeah, so Dan and I were basically the only people in his life. We spent a lot of time with Clarence. So you go in and do the Coles, obviously every day, even on Sundays. But we would sit and have a cup of tea with him and talk about, you know, the news, and he would talk to me about investing and his family history, which was with steamrollers. His dad ran a business that rolled new road surfaces. So a few years down the line, 2014, Clarence passed away and his death was related to the fumes from the Aga. So Dan and I had just moved in together. I think it was probably a couple of weeks before that. And when we'd moved into this apartment, it was like an upstairs downstairs flat in the top of a multi storey, though we had no neighbors next to us, just underneath. And when we moved in, the place that we'd moved into, I think the previous tenant had been a heavy smoker and she hadn't decorated for decades. So it was like 1960s retro wallpaper and it was all smoke stained and the whole place stank of cigarettes and it was kind of creepy. So when we moved in, we acknowledged, you know, this place is creepy, let's do it up. So I had stripped all the wallpaper, painted the skirting boards, started to hang fresh wallpaper, aired the whole place out and it was kind of a little bit higgledy piggledy because furniture wasn't in the right place until we'd finished. It wasn't the tidiest place, the tidiest place to live, purely because we were decorating and things were still in boxes. So the first experience that we had, Dan and I were in bed, middle of the night, both fast asleep, and we woke up to pans. It sounded like somebody was throwing pots and pans around our kitchen. So I phoned the police. Dan grabbed a hockey stick, went downstairs to confront the burglar and there Was no burglar. As soon as he opened the door into the kitchen, all the noise stopped, and everything was as it should be, which really freaked us out, but. But we just kind of scratched our heads and moved on. So we also found that if we were sat on the sofa and eating dinner in the evening, we didn't have a dining table at that point. So we'd both be sat on the sofa with a tray on our laps, and we would see a head bobbin in the reflection of the window on the wall opposite. So we would come home, and the first thing we would do would be just shut the curtains because it freaked us both out. Following that, I think Dan started to experience the bathroom door slamming in his face. So he would kind of walk up the stairs, go to walk through the bathroom door, and it would just slam in his face. And he kind of got so used to that happening, he would expect it and stop before he walked through the bathroom door, Knowing that it was going to slam in his face, which was also really weird because that would happen even when all the windows and the doors were shut. It wasn't a drafty place. There was no extractor fan or air conditioning on. We couldn't figure out why that was happening. The final straw for me, what kind of made me really realize this is a poltergeist, and it's not just, you know, an old building that's. That's drafty. I was sat, eating my dinner one night and had a tray on my lap, Meatballs and pasta, whatever. And it felt to me like somebody had used two or three fingers to jab me in the throat, and it was with force enough to move my body backwards. And that was it. That was the final straw for me. And I said to Dan, I'm gonna phone the local spiritualist church. This is not okay. The lady that used to live here before us doesn't like what we've done with the place, and she wants us out. And Dan's not spiritual in any way, shape, or form. He doesn't believe in that kind of thing. And I think he actually said to me at the time, kelly, it's just asbestos in the walls. Like, that's like asbestos causes that kind of thing to happen. So I phoned the spiritualist church, and I said to her, we've got this stuff that's happening in the house. I don't like it. Can you please come and help? And she said, don't tell me anything. I don't want to know. Don't put ideas in my Head. I'm going to go through all of this when I get there. And she came out the same day. So after I had phoned her, I was up a ladder hanging wallpaper, 10 o' clock in the morning. And I thought Dan had grabbed me by the back of the shirt to pull me off the ladder. You know, like, just joking around. So I dropped the wallpaper, the sheet that I was holding, grabbed a hold of the ladder, and I turned around to say to him, what the hell were you doing? Like, that's not cool. And I realized Dan was at work and I was in the flat on my own completely. And I left the house that day, actually went to my parents, came back to meet Marie. Dan wasn't around. He said, oh, that's rubbish. I'm not going to be a part of that. So when Marie came around from the church, the first thing that she said to me was, you think that this is the previous tenant? And it's not. She isn't here, she's moved on. This is a guy who you used to care for, who has passed recently from respiratory issues. And I was kind of gobsmacked because I couldn't get my head around the suggestion that somebody I was so close to, who would always been nothing but kind to me, would be so violent in what he was doing. It didn't make any sense to me. And she said, what you need to understand is that he's got some really urgent messages that he needs to get across to you. And he's tried to talk to you in your dreams. You've just moved house, you're grieving for him, you've got so much going on in your life that you're not open to what he has to say. So she said the message that he has first and foremost is, is that the house and the land and everything had been left in his world to his only remaining relative, which was the nephew over in Canada. And he said that the nephew is basically just gonna get a house clearance company in. They'll throw away all the. All the stuff that isn't valuable, sell the furniture and sell the house and the land. So he's just got the money, which is kind of a normal thing to do. I think I probably would do that if I had a relative I'd never met who died overseas. But she said there are things in that house that, now that his line has ended, are just going to be thrown away. And he urgently would like for you to go and get those things. So the first thing that he had asked for was his bathroom upstairs, which hadn't been used for decades. He'd kind of used it as a storage cupboard. So she said, if you go in there, you're going to find his parents wedding photos, the family pictures. So he would like for those to not be thrown away. And later we did find those exactly where she told us we would find them. The other thing was that there was a letter that he had written which was in the hallway and he had died. I think he'd written the letter and been taken into hospital and hadn't had the opportunity to say, can one of you guys post this for me? And we found the letter as well. So that was posted. And then she said, in the third drawer down in the hallway some. So there's kind of a cupboard that's built under the stairs. She said, go in the third drawer down and you're going to find the horses from his family vehicle. When we looked, what we found was the brass. It's like a rearing horse, which would have been the badge on the front of the steamrollers. So she said, he knows you love horses, you've got your own horses, he wants you to have those. There were a couple of other things that she gave us for verification. So she told me that I'd had the vet out to my horse the day before, which was true. She had an abscess in her foot. She told me that he had loved donkeys and that was true. And she'd telling me about the pet goat that he'd had before I ever met him. And the pet goat used to terrorize the guys who worked for Clarence. And he used to get into the neighbour's gardens and eat their flowers and all that kind of thing. So the most important message that Clarence had was for Dan. And that message was that he never got to thank him for. For looking after him for all those years because Dan knew him for 10 years before I did. And he just wanted to say thank you. He wanted Dan to know that he loved him and that he would always watch over him. Yeah. So that was his message. And she said, he's not going to disturb you anymore now that he said what he needed to say. And you'll know when he's around because he will leave you 20 pence coins. Now, Clarence, as I've already explained, he was kind of. He was really tight with money. Really tight. When his bed frame rotted, he asked Dan to go and get a 5 bar gate from in the garden to put under his mattress because he wasn't Willing to buy a new bed. He was. He was just that kind of guy. And she said, he's gonna look after you. He's always gonna watch over you guys. But you'll know when he's around because of the 20 pence coins. And since then, every now and then, a 20 pence coin will just drop out of nowhere. And that usually happens if I'm spending money that I don't need to. For example, if you're on Amazon and you think, I really like that puffer jacket that I don't need because I've already got.

[Commercial Announcer]

One.

[Kelly]

One. But I like the look of that and I'm gonna buy it. A 20 pence coin will just drop out of nowhere, you know, and you just close Amazon and don't buy the jacket. Because Clarence said, not a good plan. But apart from that, I don't feel him around anymore. We don't live in that flat anymore. We've since moved out, but I've never felt his presence. I've never seen reflections in the windows. He's certainly never pulled me off a ladder or poked me in the throat or anything like that. But, yeah, it's just really nice to know that he's still watching over us. So all of those things that we took from his house, the photos and the steamroller badges, that's all in a little bag in our spare bedroom. And they'll always be with us. We'll never, ever let that stuff go. So, yeah, that's my poltergeist story. It's not always a bad story, it turns out, but that experience has certainly changed my life, and it's changed me from somebody who believes to somebody who. Who knows. I kind of feel like Clarence confirmed that there is something after death. Yeah. Anyway, I'm rambling, so that was my story. Love your podcast so much. And don't ever stop doing what you're doing, because it's great. Thank you so much.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Bye. Thank you, Kelly, and thanks for all your interaction over on Patreon and the ghost double for everyone else out there, that helps make our social media discord and Patreon more fun. Your involvement allows for yet another layer to the show, and for that, we're grateful. Now, folks, after today, the holidays are over. Back to normal life, at least for most of us. And if the January blues have got you down or you didn't get the MAU merch you wanted from Santa Claus, head on over to our merch shop and pick up something nice for yourself. We have tons of merch just waiting to cheer you up this winter. So visit monsters among us podcast.com and click that shop tab to peruse the selection. Operators are standing by. Another category of call that I simply can't get enough of is Weird creatures. Chimeras, Cryptids, out of place Animals. So I couldn't help but include one of my favorites from that category for this next entry from season 19, episode 28 in the state of Ohio. Please welcome Russell to tonight's.

[Derek Hayes]

Program. Hi, my name's Russell Morris. I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. I was down about 40 miles, I guess, straight east of Bowling Green, Kentucky, visiting relatives in a town called Scottsville. And I was carrying my luggage out to come home Sunday morning about 6:30, and I just happened to glance up and the sky was nice, pretty clear day. And I thought it was a glider going over my head. And I looked up again and it was a pterodactyl. And I thought, oh my God, I don't believe when I'm looking at here. Its wingspan was probably 75 to 100ft wide. It was about 150ft in the air right over top of the treetops. And this thing was like a blue gray leather looking like skin, no feathers on, had the typical short legs with the claws on it, the long face, bat like wings. It was a typical pterodactyl that you would see in pictures. And it was flying up in the direction of Mammoth Cave. And I figured that must be where this thing lives because there's nothing down there. It's so flat and this thing was so big. And I just stood and I watched and I watched and I was singing, please turn around, turn back around like a bird will circle. But it just kept going and kind of coasting and flapping its wings once in a while until it went out of sight, which was I guess maybe 5, 6, 7 miles by the time I couldn't see it anymore. Yeah, I just wanted to call in to let everybody know that I seen this thing flying over me. And I just. I absolutely couldn't believe it. I didn't have my phone with me. It was in the house and I didn't think of running in to grab it because I wanted to see if this thing would turn back around. And I have encountered other things like Bigfoot up in Mammoth Cave, the same area. So that kind of. It led me to leave. Well, you know, I'm looking into this thing for sure. And I came back and I started telling people and they said, oh, you're crazy, you never seen that. But hey, I don't care what they think. You know, I know what I saw and I just want to call in and tell everybody about it. Right? Thank.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

You. Thank you, Russell. I like this story so much I put a call out to listeners to share their similar experiences with pterodactyl like creatures. And perhaps a little bit to my surprise, you guys delivered. I'm currently sitting on at least five different near identical stories that were submitted as a response to Russell's entry. And Delaney and I are currently working on packaging all those calls together for an upcoming episode. So this isn't the last you've heard of whatever these things are, and I'm really looking forward to that deep dive. But for now let's do another quick break and pay a couple of bills. But when I return, I have another call from the infamous MAU Campout episode that you won't want to.

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College basketball was illegal now it mentioned it on Tuesday. But back in the summer we put together an episode full of outdoor stories. Camping, hiking, fishing, the great outdoors. And we called it the MAU Campout. And you can bet your bedroll that we'll be doing it again. So if you have one of those stories, you know what to do. Give us a call at 888-6089. But in the meantime, I enjoyed that episode so much that I decided to pull a second call from it for this best of series. So here with what might have been a Bigfoot story, or if you're imaginative enough, perhaps an alien abduction. Either way, here is a net out of.

[Producer/Assistant]

Oregon. Hello, this is Annette. I wanted to make a submission to maybe a camping story. I live in Oregon and I used to go camping up in the wilderness in the Cascades. And when I was younger, I would go up and just stay the night in the Cascades and then we would travel over to eastern Oregon where it's really fun and kind of neat stuff over there. But this one time, my ex husband and I and my dog had decided to go up and camp in the wilderness in the Cascade Mountains. And we went way, way up on these logging roads that went up to this big lake. But we never really quite made it to the lake. It was getting dark and we were on a logging road. And there was this, I don't know, about 60 to 70% incline in the mountains on one side. And then on the other side of the logging road was this little small lake, almost pond like, with several camp spots around it. And we got out of our car, but I was really nervous inside because I thought, oh my God, what if a bear comes down? Because there was a whole bunch of ripe huckleberries that were just perfect. I mean, normally I'd be pretty excited about eating those myself, but we were just there to go to bed and get up early and get out to eastern Oregon. So it was getting dark and we just thought, well, we're just going to have to risk it because there's nothing else to go to. So we went ahead and set up our tent and we went straight to bed. Well, I woke up at about 1:40 in the morning and I looked at my watch and I had to go to the bathroom. But then I heard what sounded like elk coming off that incline on the other side of the logging road, which our tent was just on the other side next to this little lake. So I hear what sounds like elk and I'm like, well, they'll just go around the tent and go into the woods, you know, on the other side of the lake. But when whatever this was got to the logging road, there was just a moment's hesitation and then it was quiet. And then all of a sudden, three large bipedal beings come walking. One walked on one side of my tent, one walked on the other side of the tent, and then one walked on kind of over to the curvature of this lake that, you know, would go out into the woods. They just stood there and then they started stepping from one foot to. To the other foot. And I'm just sitting there freaked out, like I don't know what's happening in my head. I'm thinking, this is elk. Elk doesn't walk on two feet. And anyways, so what was weird was they were stepping from one foot to another foot and they started getting in unison like in their footsteps. And every time they stepped it felt like the earth was moving. So whatever it was was incredibly heavy. And I was terrified. I had to go to the bathroom, but I didn't want to look out my tent. And part of me was trying to still think, oh, this is an elk. I don't want to get kicked in the head. If there's an elk next to my tent that could be dangerous. And so I tried to wake up my ex husband. He normally had insomnia but he wouldn't wake up. And anyways, all of a sudden I kind of, I realized, wait, I don't hear them anymore. And I look at my watch and it's now 2:20 in the morning. So 40 minutes had gone by. I'm feeling mesmerized by the footsteps and then I never hear these things walk off or the elk walk off or whatever it was. So I still had to go to the bathroom. So what I did was I just prayed to God and said please, you know, let me sleep till morning and daylight and then I can go to the bathroom and I'm not going to get out of my tent because I'm too scared. And anyways, I fell instantly asleep. I Woke up at 5 in the morning. I think it was like 5:15 and I went out and I didn't even have to go to the bathroom. It was the weirdest thing. And I never even had to use the bathroom until 4 o' clock when we were in eastern Oregon in the afternoon. I mean it was the weirdest thing. Like that's not normal. Anyways, I'm grateful for everything you guys do. I love the.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Show. Thank you, Annette. Well folks, what do you think Annette encountered that evening? And do you think whatever it was, it had an effect on Annette's bladder? What a super weird story. But as someone that camps out a lot, I love it and I can relate. Now gang, if you're looking for even more monsters among us content, I was lucky enough to be a guest on a number of programs this year and I highly recommend checking out those guest spots on Haunted af, A Psychic Story and Talking Strange. Any big thanks to each of those programs for having me on. So this next story was also talked about quite a bit. Apparently this one struck a nerve with many of you. So here from the state of Texas is tonight's only anonymous.

[Commercial Announcer]

Caller. Hey Derek, this is Anonymous from Texas. I just wanted to call and give you one of my fun scary stories from my childhood. So when I was about 12 years old. I was staying at home alone for the weekend. I was actually supposed to be staying with a friend, but I sort of lied to my parents and told them I was staying there, but then just went home after school and stayed there alone for the weekend. So, of course, as a 12 year old, that feels pretty cool to be on your own for a whole weekend with the house to yourself, no parents, no siblings, all of that. So it was pretty fun during the day. But at night I had to be really careful not to let any light escape through my window because we did have a neighbor across the street who always sort of just looked out for the house when we were out of town. So I wanted to make sure they didn't find me out or didn't think that we were being broken into and call the police or anything like that. So I had to kind of keep a low profile. It was, I guess, that Saturday night and I had. This is sort of janky, but I had just a sheet pinned over my window, which faced the front yard and the street out front. Not that that really matters, but the way our windows were, the windowsill was basically just almost like you cut a shallow rectangle out of the wall and you recessed the window back a little bit, maybe like six inches. And then there was no molding around it. There was no window treatments or anything like that. It was almost like if you pinned a huge poster over it, you wouldn't know that anything was there, if that makes sense. So my sheet was hanging completely flush against the wall and I had been watching tv, but I decided it was time to go to sleep. So I turned off my TV and I was laying there and there was still some, you know, I could kind of see a little bit in the room from just ambient light. And I just couldn't sleep. Couldn't sleep. And the way my bed was positioned was it was up against the wall to my left, and then maybe four feet straight ahead past the foot of my bed was this window. So I'm laying there, I'm kind of looking around, I'm sort of freaking myself out thinking, you know, if someone broke in, I'm the only one here. So every little sound I was sort of like jumping at and, you know, constructing all sorts of scary things in my head because there's nobody else there but me. So while all of this is going on, I'm nowhere near sleep. I have my left shoulder up against the wall in bed and I have the sheets kind of up to my chin and I'M just kind of looking around the room, trying to calm down, and I look up at my window that's covered by that flat sheet and I see something crawl out from underneath the sheet. So it was like it came from my window essentially. It was probably about 8 inches long, 6 inches wide and domed. I came out from under the sheet, from the window pretty close to, to the ceiling. It came out, it moved like a bug. So it kind of like skittered out on the wall, stopped, skittered up onto the ceiling in the corner, stopped, skittered down onto the top corner of the wall that I was pressed up against. So at this point it was like kind of facing me. And then it's like at that moment it's like it noticed that I could see it and it skittered really fast up to my face on the wall. It was probably about a foot from my face when I pulled the covers over my head. But what it looked like was, like I said it was kind of a bug shape, almost like if you think of a trilobite, it was sort of like that shape, roughly, like it was rounded in the front and it kind of went down to a point in the back. And it was all like glossy beetle black. Every part of it was like glossy, kind of dull, shiny, like beetle black. And it had a lot of legs and it had a lot of teeth. Its teeth actually went kind of all across the front of its. What didn't really have a head. It was just like one, I don't know, one lump of a creature. It didn't really have a head or a neck or the different parts like insects do. It was just kind of like one weird little trilobite shaped thing with a lot of legs and a lot of teeth. And it had eyes, sort of like flies eyes, like those complex eyes that look like, you know, they have like a grid or a honeycomb pattern on them. So it had these two huge eyes, it had all of these sharp teeth, like sharp curved, crazy looking teeth. All of it was that, like dull, shiny, beetle black. And right as it had gotten to my face, it opened its mouth and that thing happened where you hear something roar or scream at you, but you only hear it in your head. Like, I could tell, I didn't, my ears didn't physically hear it. It's like it roared in my head at me. Like I said, I'd pulled the blankets up over my head when that happened. And I was so freaked out. I didn't want to move, I didn't want to breathe because I was so scared and so I couldn't tell you how long I laid there. It was probably like 30 seconds, but it felt like forever until I finally, in one motion, like threw off the blankets, ran to across the room to my door, flipped on the lights. I kind of at this point didn't really care if anybody saw lights coming from the house. I looked around and there was nothing there. Like absolutely nothing there. So I ended up sleeping with at least the TV on for the rest of the night. I think I eventually did go to sleep a couple hours later, crazily enough. But that was the scariest thing I've ever seen. I had felt other things in that house, heard things, seen things out of the corner of my eye, but that was the only thing I'd ever looked directly at and seen in its entirety. So that was pretty scary. So I do have some other stories that happened to me when I lived in that house. Some creepy things happened to my sister quite a bit as well. So we just think there was something a little bit weird with that particular house that we lived in when we were kids. But I'll call back with some more stories and thank you so much for taking the time to listen.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Bye. Thank you. Anonymous now this story was Featured on Season 18, Episode 41, and like I said, this one got a lot of attention when it first aired and many listeners wrote in to suggest that it was possibly a toe biter bug, a type of beetle found down south. Others mentioned that it could be a Dobson fly. Those things do look pretty prehistoric, while others suggested demon bugs and insects from another dimension, but most people simply just wanted to kill it with fire. Now folks, I'll be right back with more Best off right after.

[Kelly]

This.

[Commercial Announcer]

Well year. People were.

[Derek Hayes]

Looking. It is so baffling to me. And let me just remind.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

You now folks, it feels like we shared quite a lot of stories involving owls this year, and one of the most memorable came to us all the way back at the beginning of the year. Please welcome Justin from season 18, episode 33, and from the state of.

[Derek Hayes]

Montana. Hi, this is Justin out in Montana. I've been listening to the podcast nights here at work and I've been putting off calling in and telling this thing that happened to me. Decided it was a good time to do it anyway. So I was going down to visit a friend down in Utah, a guy from high school. So I'm driving down from Montana and going down there and I get down there. It's the first night that I get there. I get there kind of like towards afternoon. So me, him and his son go up to the reservoir, do some fishing and we catch some fish and wrap up the afternoon and go back to the house. And at the time, I really don't know the layout of how everything is this house and where it is in relation to. I mean, but it's kind of out there and it's all desert. This is down in Moab, Utah. Anyway, so nighttime, as you say, we're out back and we got a fire going and we've cooked the trout over the fire. And you know, we're just kind of sitting there kind of quiet. We're just watching the embers, you know, and the fire. And so it's quiet. And all of a sudden his dog starts. I hear this zing on the leash. Like I didn't even realize he had a dog back there. It was quiet. The zing on the leash as it takes off barking in this direction. He's at the end of his leash, he's barking. I'm looking over and it's kind of at the edge of the house. And he's got a motion light on the side of the house. And boom, the motion light comes on. So this all happens like, you know, five, six seconds. Of course the dog gets our attention and then the light pops on. But I'm looking and there's nothing, you know, going on. And all of a sudden he's got a tree. And there's one single tree. And it's at the edge of the house. But like where the light is hitting, you can see around the tree. You know, it's kind of like life's hidden on both sides of tree. Anyway, all of a sudden, like at the base of the tree, it just like steps out from behind the tree or just appears there. But this huge white owl appears at the base of the tree. Must have been three foot high owl. It was huge. And it turns its head, looks over at us. I can see the like black eyes on the white body. Looks at us, turns its head back and the wings go out. Like I can see and then I can hear the, like the air from under the wings of this owl. And like must have taken two like flaps. And then all of a sudden it disappears and turns into. And I don't know if it disappeared and turned into this person or how it all happened. It just happened in a blink of an eye. All of a sudden from the tree, there's this naked native American looking man walking determinedly. Like he didn't look at us or anything. And just like into the black of a desert. And there's no way he came from the other side of the tree where the light from the house was going. It was just. It was crazy. And the way it all happened, it was like, almost like this owl, like, turned into this man. And the man was moving fast. He didn't look at us. He just moved. And I looked over my friend, and I was like, did you see that? It was like, a man. And it was the. Ow. Like. And he was just like, well, that kind of stuff happens a little bit around here. He's like, you're not really supposed to talk about it. It's kind of a native thing. I was like, what the heck? So, like, the night kind of went on. I was real sketched out. Just from the way it was, the way that it all happened, the way the owl, like, looked at us and, like, met eyes with us. It was weird. Then it just, in the blink of an eye, turning into this. I mean, that guy must have been six and a half feet tall, Tan skin, you know, completely nude. And, like, we weren't even there, just walking. But he didn't walk from. He, like, just appeared from when the owl flew up. It was just crazy. So anyway, that the next morning when I woke up and I go out, you know, I'm out back drinking some coffee, and I'm just, like, looking to where this man was walking, and it's death. It's just desert. There's nothing there. You know, so he was coming from wherever, and he didn't have any neighbors. So it's not like this guy was just walking. Unless there's just some naked man with a pet owl walking through, you know, the desert at nighttime. I don't know, but apparently it happens down there. And the way my friend said it, it's like things that must have happened, you know, before. But the next day, after the morning, and I was looking in the back and, like, where could this guy come from? You know? I felt really weird about it, the whole thing. I had a bad feeling. So I was. Later on that evening, when the sun's going down, I'm in the back of my truck messing around with some stuff. And I hear, like, laughing, like kids laughing almost. When I, like, look down, like, look over the. Down the road. Nothing there. It's just desert. I'm starting messing around again, and then I'm hearing it almost like, hey, hey. And I look over again. There's like, something disappears, A shadow. Like, I don't know, it was like something that was there. And it dipped down into the shadow of these. These little thickets. And I don't know, there was just really some weird stuff going on there. And later on, I. You know, after I left, I, like, looked into what it might have been, and now I'm thinking maybe it could be a skinwalker or something. But I know after that incident, you know, a lot of bad stuff happened in my life, and I was talking to some natives and they said, they can curse you. So I don't know. I don't know what it was or what it all meant, but that's what that was a weird thing that happened to me down in Utah, in Moab. But that's my story. I just wanted to call and contribute to the. To the show. All right.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Thanks. Thank you, Justin. Creepy stuff. Lechuza, perhaps? A skinwalker, maybe? Or is it possible that it was just your run of the mill brua? Of course, we've already established that aliens and owls seem to have some sort of connection as well. So keep that fact in mind as I share with you yet another strange owl story from this year, one that I still think of frequently. Please welcome Peter from the beyond portion of Season 18, Episode.

[Peter]

47. Hi, this is Peter from British Columbia. This takes place during my childhood when we lived at this house on a river in Southwest Washington state in probably late 1960s. This house was rather strange. Always had a very oppressive and dark feeling around it. There were places around the house that I just didn't like to go. Had a really evil sort of feeling around this house for some reason, no backstory, had no idea what might have happened there. It was very remote, very isolated house. We're quite a ways from town anyway, so I was a child. I was probably about 6 years old when this started happening. I would go to bed at night. I'd be laying in my bed and the hallway light was always on because I did have kind of a fear of being in the dark. And like I say, there are just always felt kind of scared, especially in the dark in that house. So the hallway light was on, and I was laying looking down the hallway, and suddenly I saw what to me was this large owl at the end of the hallway, probably about 4ft tall, maybe up in the corner, kind of just suspended there on its own. It wasn't really sitting on anything, just suspended there. I was looking at this thing in just petrified terror. Obviously had no idea what it was. And then it swooped down the hallway to my bed and it grabbed me by the legs. I don't know how. I don't know if it used its talons or whatever. I remember it grabbing me by my legs and started dragging me off the bed. And this is one of the details of the story that really kind of haunts me and that I remember grabbing the bed posts. I remember specifically the bed posts in that bed. They were kind of gold with wooden posts. I remember grabbing onto them and fighting to try and not be dragged from the bed. In these occurrences, which were the same every time and happened night after night, occasionally I would somehow be able to hold on and I remember just like holding on as hard as I possibly could and just being pulled. Occasionally I would be able to stop this owl thing from dragging me off the bed. But many times it would succeed. I don't really remember the process of this happening, but I would be brought to a different world. It was always the same, exactly the same. I remember the house specifically. It was like a house out in the open. There was really not any trees around it. And I remember I would just be left there. I was like, where in the heck am I? What am I doing here? And of course I obviously after this happened a few times I thought, oh, I'm in this place again. People would see me and they wouldn't know who I was. And they kept asking me. They were kind of bothered by the fact that there was this six year old child just sort of dropped out of nowhere. They would always be like, what are you doing here? Usually they wouldn't even interact that much with me. They'd just sort of look at me annoyingly and it was extremely, extremely frightening because I mean, here I was, my parents weren't there, nobody knew me. It was just terrifying. I would be obviously transferred somehow back to my bed at some point. Oftentimes I remembered a dark haired woman who would come and protect me. She would tell me that she was my actual mother. I have no reason to believe that my physical mother wasn't my actual mother. But she would tell me that, look, I am your actual mother, I'm here to protect you. And she was very protective. But this happened continually for probably something like six months to a year. I was so terrified, it was just like traumatizing beyond what you could imagine. And at a certain point I asked my parents like, can I have a knife or something that I can fight this thing with? Why? I didn't say, well, why don't you just come to my bedroom and watch, you know, and see where this thing is? But I didn't. I was six years Old. I don't know. I just kind of thought this was my war to fight or whatever. I don't know what they thought. I don't know if they thought. I was just having recurring nightmares. And then one night, I remember crows outside my window in my bedroom during this thing happening. And they were, like, crying. And I remember just, like, my ears almost ringing from them crying. I got this weird intuition that they were there to protect me as well. They were protective spirits from that day on. I never had another experience of this. Now, what was this? I don't know. I lived in an extremely stressful household. My father, he had gone through the war, and he was extremely depressed and angry. I was very stressed out by this. It actually impacted my health. I don't know if that had something to do with this. I don't know if it was actually a nightmare in as much as these things would seem very conscious to me. Like I say, the feeling of being pulled off the bed was very conscious to me. Another thing that I remember was I had seen the wizard of Oz, and I'd really been traumatized by those monkeys grabbing Dorothy, whatever, and taking her off to the witch's castle. I don't know if I somehow mixed that up with the owl that they saw, too, in the woods. I don't know if this became kind of a part of this, if it was a recurring nightmare. It's almost as though maybe I created in my mind because of the reality of these dreams. It was almost like maybe a tulpa or something that actually did have some kind of physical presence and that did have some kind of consistent, real form over this time. I mean, there were elements to it that just seemed so real and so consistent that it's hard to explain, even from the point of view of an older man who knows that there's such things as nightmares and children have recurring nightmares and things like that. It certainly could have been that. But like I say, there were some very odd characteristics about it. So just wanted to share that. Thank you very.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Much. Thank you, Peter. Now, this is exactly the sort of thing I would have had nightmares about when I was 11 years old. Those days, I thought for sure aliens were out to abduct me. I really enjoyed this story and its parallels to many alien abduction tropes that I've heard in the past. Talk about nightmare.

[Derek Hayes]

Fuel. And now, introducing the hero.

[Tyler (Caller)]

Cop.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Final. Two days of the year and.

[Derek Hayes]

Four out of five.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Employers. All right, gang, we're down to the home stretch. And to kick us off, we begin with Roy from Season 18 Episode.

[Roy]

48 hey, how's it going? My name is Roy. I live in Louisiana. I don't want to go into too many details because other people got involved with this and other people had found out about it. I had been dogged for a long time about it. I've had a really hard time with this just because of the way it affected me and at what age I was just under the circumstances, it really messed me up. So I had just gotten my driving permit. I was 16 years old. You know, my parents didn't give me a vehicle or anything like that. I had to buy it, go get it myself. Got a friend that ended up selling a 1984 Ford F150 truck. It was old, it was steel, it was a tank. It had a straight six motor in it. I loved it. I still love it to this day. So I. I got it rebuilt, the engine, got it running, started driving. And on a Sunday morning about 6:37, I was on my way to church by myself. And I drive this highway all the time. Even to this day, I drive this highway. So I'm on my way. I take my left onto the highway going down the road and it comes into like a triple S turn. When it comes out, it starts to go to the left and then it goes to the right and to the left and then the right again. Just a really windy part of the highway. So I made it through, you know, the three turns and I'm coming up to the last one to where it goes into a straightaway. And you know, cell phones weren't really that big of a deal. My radio was already on, whatever station it was on. And so I had just glanced away for a moment. And when I looked back up, there was this little girl dead center my lane in the highway. And she wasn't but 30, 40ft in front of the truck. I hit my brakes so hard, locked up the tires, but it wasn't nowhere near when I should have done it. She had just disappeared under the hood when I hit my brake pedal. And it wasn't just like an apparition that dematerialized into the air. I felt this. I heard it. And she hit the front of my truck. She bounced underneath the truck. I felt it in my feet. I felt it in my hands when I hit her. It was like hitting a deer. I felt and heard the impact. I heard the metal bend. I heard the glass break. So I locked my brakes up. And I don't know how long I sat in the truck. I really don't But I eventually started to move again, and I opened up my door. I'm freaking out, I'm crying, I'm hyperventilating. I mean, that's like one of my worst fears is hitting someone's child. I'm gonna have to live with that for the rest of my life. So I get out. I get out of the truck. I start to walk to the front of the truck. I don't think I ever shut my driver door. I walked around it and slowly crept to the front of the truck. And when I finally got parallel with the front of the truck and peeked around to look, there was nothing there. There was nothing. It was perfectly fine. Now, in my head, I'd never hit a deer or anything like that before. When I looked in the front of the truck, you know, there was no damages or anything. And so in my head, I'm thinking that, well, I heard it bounce up underneath the undercarriage. I heard those noises all the way until I got through underneath the truck. So maybe the front wasn't hurt. Maybe the front of the truck wasn't damaged. Maybe she just laid over. And I turned around, and it's an empty highway, and all I can see are my tire marks. So I start to walk to the back of the truck. I get back there, I thought it was weird because when I looked back, there was nothing in the road. So I go all the way to the back of the truck. I look, and nothing's there. And so I get on my hands and knees, and I look under the truck. And that was so terrifying to me because if she wasn't in the front, if she wasn't in the back, she was still underneath the truck. The images that were going through my head of what I was about to see petrified me. But eventually I looked, and there wasn't anything there either. So I get up and I kind of lean over my truck, trying, freaking out, trying to grasp reality at the moment. And I hear a car. And it's this old man and his wife coming up the highway in my lane. And so they get up behind me and they stop. The old man, he gets out almost right away to ask me if everything's okay. And when I lifted my head up, I don't know what I looked like. But judging by the look on his face, I probably looked pretty rough. And so he had asked me, you know, what was wrong, what's going on. And I couldn't really vocalize all that well, maybe two or three minutes he was asking me what was wrong. He had his hand on my shoulder and had told him. I said, I hit a little girl. And I mean, as soon as I said that, he recoiled. It was like he found out I had some horrible disease or something. And his first question was, why did you do that? Said, I don't know, she wasn't there. I looked up and there she was. We're in the middle of nowhere. It's nothing but woods. What is a little girl in a sundress doing out standing in the highway? I told him that the front of the truck was okay. There was nothing under the truck, she wasn't behind the truck. So he said that she probably bounced into a ditch. And so here come the fear again. Because if she wasn't in the front, behind or underneath, she's in a ditch. We looked at those ditches. I guess at some point he had gone back to his car and told his wife to call the police. And so this was in a small town and small town cops, you know, if something happens, everyone's gonna know about it. The cop showed up. The old guy had told him what had happened and so on and so forth. Cop took me aside and he was telling me about manslaughter charges and everything else. And asking what kind of drugs I was on or if I had been drinking. It's 6:37 in the morning. I'm 15 and a half, 16 years old. And my world is falling apart. Well, it turns out that they couldn't find anything. They had a few more units show up. They had an ambulance come out there and they couldn't find anything. My head was swirling. I don't know, I couldn't think. I couldn't think straight at all. Somehow, you know, when everything calmed down, I ended up getting back in my truck and ended up going home. But I do not remember the ride from the incident to my house. Thank you for listening. Keep up the good work, man. You're a good.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Outlet. Thanks again, Roy. That one still gives me the chills. And as much as I'd love some sort of conclusion to this story, I'm so glad that you didn't find anything, Roy. Heavy, heavy stuff. Any of kind call that we won't be forgetting anytime soon. Now gang, before we move on here this evening, I have a couple more MAU benchmarks to share with you all. According to Spotify, Monsters Among Us was a marathon show, meaning fans listened to us longer than 99% of all other shows. And MAU was also one of the most talked about program programs. We received more comments than 99% of all other shows. And Monsters Among Us received more shares than 99% of all the other shows, making it one of the most shared shows of 2025. And all of that is thanks to you, listener. So whatever you're doing, please keep it. Now let's move on from numbers and what we can only assume to be ghosts and venture into the world of legendary creatures. Please welcome Sebastian from Season 18, Episode.

[Derek Hayes]

45 Good Morning, My name is Sebastian. I was just listening to your Christmas.

[Roy]

Special. Listening to the story about the stay folk or the gnomes roaming Kansas brought up a.

[Derek Hayes]

Memory. This one is quite specific to the.

[Roy]

Area. I live in, Caves, Kansas, which was a very small town right in the smack dab middle of Kansas. I was about 8 or 9 years old. My sister was a teenager. This happened to her and I was there and I heard certain things. It was a spring day. It was warm outside and my sister was downstairs washing.

[Derek Hayes]

Dishes. Myself and my mother were upstairs doing.

[Roy]

Something. It was just us three that lived in the.

[Derek Hayes]

House. My sister was washing dishes and.

[Roy]

All of a sudden we heard her scream. Now, as we're hearing her scream, we heard a small giggle, a small laugh, which was. We didn't know how to explain it. She ran upstairs from washing dishes and this thing, she said it was a leprechaun is what she called it, had came in through the back door of our kitchen, which the back door.

[Derek Hayes]

Was right by where the sink was.

[Roy]

And apparently had a can of spray paint. And it spray painted her hands and was laughing and ran off and that was.

[Derek Hayes]

It. My sister was.

[Roy]

Terrified. Her hands were spray painted white, I believe. At first I thought, you know.

[Derek Hayes]

This could have been like a.

[Roy]

Prank. However, the terror on my sister's face was quite.

[Derek Hayes]

Genuine. Not only that, the audible laugh.

[Roy]

That myself and my mother heard was undeniable. Just a quick little something that popped in my head. Have a good one.

[Derek Hayes]

There. Keep up the good.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Work. Thank you, Sebastian. We have a special place in our hearts for leprechauns here at Monsters Among Us. Mostly because the show began on St Patrick's Day all the way back in 2016. There's no meaning behind that start date. Just a weird coincidence. But this upcoming St. Patrick's Day is a special one because it marks our 10 year anniversary. And you better bet we'll celebrate with another call just like Sebastian's. Well, maybe not just like it, because his was clearly one of a.

[Tyler (Caller)]

Kind. Music's most celebrated.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Voices, a great.

[Tyler (Caller)]

Adventure, and so much more. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube tick tock and.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Twitch. Now gang. Before we launch into the final call of the evening, I want to quickly mention that there will be no beyond this week as we celebrate the New year. But fret not, because the after show will be back next Thursday as scheduled. And I'll do my best to make it an extra long one to make up for this week's absence. Now if you would please join me in introducing tonight's final entry, a story out of Canada that was originally played all the way back on season 18, episode 31, almost a full year ago. Please welcome Chad to tonight's.

[Derek Hayes]

Program. Hey there, my name's Chad. I'm from Nova Scotia, Canada. I just have a story I want to tell you guys. There back. It must have been 14 years ago. I was just like 15 years old. I invited a couple friends over. We were outside playing in the woods all day. It started getting late. Me and the boys decided we're just going to have a sleepover. So at my parents place. So we were all just hanging out and there's four of us in total. So we decided to sleep in the living room. Just wasn't up bed anyways we were there, we were watching movies, eating snacks, not having a care in the world like 15 year olds do. Fell asleep and right around like 2:30, 3 o' clock in the morning there was a loud bang on the deck. My parents have a ranch style house. So it has a big jack and side and then a covered porch on the whole front of the house. And there's patio door on the side of the deck. So we were looking around. After a few seconds this white object whips her by the patio doors, makes the corner and runs in front of the windows of the living room. Man, this thing jumped clear 1012ft off the deck onto the porch of my parents house. And overlooking the porch is my parents bedroom. So I guess the bag last night woke my parents up. They're looking around wondering what the heck's going on. They yelled down to us saying like boys what are you doing? It's 3 o' clock in the morning. Like you guys quiet down. You shouldn't be outside, you should be in bed. Like all down here sleeping. Just woke us up. We don't know what that is. Right after that the object ran by their window and it kind of freaked them out. They didn't know what it was. So they run up to the window. As they got to the window we made it across the kitchen. We heard it running across the house. So we're looking at the kitchen window. And man, this thing jumped 25, 30ft out off the roof into the grass. Didn't even stumble or nothing. And it took off on two legs to the tree line. As it got to the tree line, the headlights and stuff wasn't really bright enough to cover that area. It kind of crouched down, it was on all fours. It just kind of disappeared into the darkness. Slowly though, it was eerie, man, it really freaked me out. It really freaked my bodies out, if it even freaked my parents out. They come downstairs, we were all solid, stand there, they kind of interrogated us. Like it wasn't you guys, right? Like made sure we weren't playing a prank or nothing. And no, it was. We were all 15 year old boys, knew we were in blankets laying around, didn't know what it was. But as it slowed down, I kind of got to look at it. So did my body and so did my moth. It was like a 7 to 8 foot tall, bipedal, skinny, skinny white, really dark, like a deep white kind of gray color creature. I didn't see a face or nothing. I just seen his back mostly, but like you could see like bones kind of like poking the skin and stuff. Like it was. The skin was really like tight over his body, but that was it, man. And it really freaked me out. I'm just happy there's other people there, see it and it wasn't just me. Just so I know I wasn't dreaming or anything. Anyways, man, like I say, I really like the podcast. It got me through a lot of night shifts and stuff. I've been listening for years now. Really appreciate it. Anyways, thanks buddy. Take care and keep up the good.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Work. Thank you, Chad, for calling in. That sounds like a pale crawler to me. And speaking of creatures that we've heard a lot about this year, the frequency at which these pale crawler reports are flooding in suggests that whatever these things are, they're being witnessed more and more often. Chad's entry is evidence of that. Now folks, before we cut out of here for the night and for the year, this call perfectly segues to what ended up being one of this year's most popular episodes and the episode so many of you referenced as your best of now, of course, I'm referring to The Pender County 911 call that seemed to report some sort of pale white humanoid. Now, for full coverage of that story, you'll have to visit season 19, episode 50, where we did a deep dive on that 911 call. And you know, what we found seemed to Suggest something strange is roaming that part of the country. Now, back by popular demand, here is a portion of that 911 call that had so many of you freaked out this.

[Producer/Assistant]

Year. Pender County, 91 1. What's the address of your.

[Derek Hayes]

Emergency? I'm driving on 210. I just crossed the black river, and I thought I saw a guy standing on the side of the road.

[Producer/Assistant]

Bleeding. Okay, where are you at.

[Derek Hayes]

Sir? I'm on 210. I just crossed the Black River. I'm heading towards 53 East. I just passed Patriots.

[Producer/Assistant]

Watch. Okay, so you're over near Morse.

[Derek Hayes]

Creek.

[Producer/Assistant]

Yes. Okay, and did.

[Derek Hayes]

You. You saw a man standing on the side of the road? Yes, ma', am, and it looked like he was bleeding, because when I drove by, I had my high beams on, and all I could see was just some streaks of road breath going down his body, starting at his head. Okay, hold.

[Producer/Assistant]

On. I'm trying to get exactly where you're.

[Derek Hayes]

At. Okay, I'm kind of in the middle of the woods at the.

[Producer/Assistant]

Moment. Yes, sir. I'm familiar with the.

[Derek Hayes]

Area. What the. What was that? Sir? That's not human. That's not human. Sir, are you okay, sir? There's something in the bed of my.

[Producer/Assistant]

Truck. Okay, what's in the.

[Derek Hayes]

Road? No, it's not in the road. It's in my truck. In the.

[Producer/Assistant]

Bed. There's something in the bed of your.

[Derek Hayes]

Truck? Yes, ma'. Am. I just turned on my bed light for my truck, and there's something in my.

[Producer/Assistant]

Bed. Okay, so when you say something, what do you.

[Derek Hayes]

Mean? I just knocked it off of the bed of my truck and went over my room. Okay, what was it? I don't know, like a. A.

[Producer/Assistant]

Turkey? A.

[Derek Hayes]

Deer? No, turkeys are pretty big. That wasn't a turkey, because I was driving 50 miles an.

[Producer/Assistant]

Hour.

[Derek Hayes]

Okay. And it was not covered in feathers at all.

[Producer/Assistant]

Okay. All right, sir, what do you think it.

[Derek Hayes]

Was? I have no idea what the hell that was. And this scared the absolute hell out of me. And I just knocked it off of my truck when I clammed on the.

[Producer/Assistant]

Brake. I'm sure you did, sir. I mean, I would be scared, too. I'm just trying to think, what. Is there any damage to your.

[Derek Hayes]

Vehicle? I don't know, but I'm waiting until I get further.

[Producer/Assistant]

Away. Okay.

[Derek Hayes (Host/Narrator)]

Sir, now Again, check season 19, episode 50 for more reports just like this and further interviews with this particular witness, as well as the Pender county sheriff's department. I highly, highly recommend you check it out. Now, gang, that does it for this year's Best of episode. A huge thanks to not only tonight's callers, but all the callers that took the time to share. Just because you didn't make the best of Cut doesn't mean your call wasn't downright amazing. There's just so many to choose from. Monsters Among Us Podcast is written and produced by me, Derek Hayes, Copyright Red Media. Additional support is provided by Sarah Carter Hayes, Delaney Bowers and Connor Ryan. All media used in this production has done so under the protection of fair use. Be sure to like and follow us on our social media accounts and Discord server. Give us a like and follow on YouTube and leave us a rate and review wherever that sort of thing is possible. Now don't forget you can catch the show every Saturday evening at 10pm Eastern on the unax digital network. Just visit onxnetwork.com to tune in. Our score is provided by Iron Cthulhu, Apocalypse Code at Music and Carl Casey and Whitepad Audio. Now don't Forget to visit borregotriangle.com to watch our film Shadows in the Desert. And be sure to check out out Monsters Among Us Junior, especially if you have a youngster in the home. New episodes drop every other Wednesday and all episodes are all ages Monsters Among Us Junior, wherever you get your podcasts. And lastly, join us in the beyond, visit monsters among us podcast.com and click the Patreon tab for all the deets one last time. I'd like to thank you all for another stellar year of spooky stories. Let's hope the next year is even better. Now go enjoy yourselves, be safe, keep it spooky, and by all means have yourselves a good night and a happy new.

[Derek Hayes]

Year. Sa. Sam.