"Footprints in Blood":
My name is Alex Johnson. I’ve been a park ranger at Olympic National Park in Washington for five years now. It’s a job I took out of love for the wilderness—the towering evergreens, the icy rivers, the quiet. You learn a rhythm out here, a language made of rustling leaves, snapped twigs, and distant echoes. I thought I knew everything this forest could throw at me—lost hikers, black bears looking for snacks, kids lighting fires where they shouldn’t. But last summer shattered that illusion.
It started with a missing woman. Ended with something I still struggle to understand. Not Bigfoot—no matter what the headlines screamed—but a man who twisted that legend into a mask to cover up something far more terrifying. Something human.
It was early June when Sarah Miller disappeared. Twenty-eight, seasoned backpacker, trail-smart and cautious—the kind who’d double-knot her boots and always leave a trip plan with a friend. She set out alone on the Hoh River Trail, a lush corridor lined with towering Sitka spruces and moss-draped maples. It’s not exactly remote—there are signs every mile, bridges over creeks, and plenty of traffic. So when her family called two days later saying she hadn’t come back, we all raised our eyebrows.
I remember standing at the ranger station, holding the printed photo: Sarah smiling, red backpack over her shoulders, a sunset behind her. Mike, my closest friend on the job, leaned back in his chair, twiddling a pen between his fingers.
“Probably just lost track of time,” he said casually. “People do that. Get off-grid and forget they’ve got worried moms.”
But I couldn’t shake the feeling. Something about her eyes in that photo—they weren’t careless eyes. She wasn’t the type to “forget.”
We started the search at first light. The air was heavy with last night’s rain, the ground slick with mud and pine needles. The deeper we hiked, the quieter the forest seemed—like it was holding its breath. I kept my eyes on the trail, looking for any sign she’d passed through. That’s when I saw them—just off the main path, down by a narrow creek. Prints.
Huge ones.
They were shaped like human feet but far too big—easily sixteen inches long, five toes perfectly defined in the soft mud. My gut twisted.
“Mike,” I called, kneeling beside them.
He joined me, squinting. “What the hell... is that a joke?”
“Look at the depth. These are real.” I ran a hand just above the print, not quite touching. “Someone big walked through here. Barefoot.”
Mike let out a shaky laugh. “Don’t tell me you’re buying into the Bigfoot crap.”
I didn’t answer. The thing was, I’d heard the stories. Everyone around here has. Campers whispering about howls at night, locals who swore they saw something tall and hairy vanish into the trees. I never believed it. But these tracks—they didn’t feel like myth. They felt intentional.
We pushed deeper into the trail and found Sarah’s last known camp a mile in. The scene stopped us cold. Her tent was shredded—slashed down the side like someone had gone at it with a blade. Her gear was scattered: overturned cookware, torn food wrappers, the faint smell of blood hanging in the air. And the worst part—near the fire pit, a dark smear on the earth.
Blood. Dried, but unmistakable.
My throat tightened. I radioed in. “Base, this is Alex. We’ve got a confirmed incident at the Miller campsite. Signs of struggle. Possible blood. Requesting immediate assistance.”
That night, the story hit the news cycle. Fast. “Bigfoot Strikes in Olympic?” one headline blared. Every news anchor wanted their piece of the legend. Tourists started showing up with cameras and night-vision goggles. Cryptid hunters combed the woods like they were on safari. What they didn’t understand—this wasn’t folklore. This was real. And people were vanishing.
Within the next week, two more went missing: David Lee, forty-two, and Emily Carter, twenty-five. Same pattern. Solo hikers. Last seen on or near different trails. Both cases ended in chaos—shredded campsites, signs of blood, and those same oversized footprints nearby.
It didn’t add up.
I knew the forest. Animals don’t leave behind patterns. They don’t mimic human shapes with that kind of precision. And something else bothered me—those prints were too clean. The spacing was perfect. The impressions too symmetrical. I’d seen real tracks from bears, cougars, elk, you name it—and real tracks are messy. These felt crafted.
That was when I started thinking this wasn’t a creature at all.
It was a person.
Late one evening, I was alone at the station, maps and photos spread across the desk. I was tracing the location of each incident, looking for overlap, anything that made sense. That’s when the door creaked open and in shuffled Mrs. Jenkins. Widowed, white-haired, always walking her old terrier down the trails near the park’s edge.
“Ranger Johnson,” she said, voice trembling. “I saw something strange today.”
I sat up straight. “What kind of strange?”
“Out by the old logging road. A man. Or... I think it was a man. Tall. Wearing fur. Not just a jacket, but like... head to toe. And he was dragging something. Big, wrapped up, like a rug. His eyes…” She shivered. “Wild. Like a coyote that got into something bad.”
My pulse jumped. “You sure it was a man?”
“He looked like he was trying not to be. But yeah. You could see the skin around his eyes. He wasn’t right.”
I grabbed my coat and called Mike. “Meet me by the truck. We’re checking out the old logging road.”
The drive was slow. The headlights carved tunnels through the trees, shadows jumping on either side. That road hadn’t been used in years—not since the timber companies left. But we found fresh tire tracks. And beside them, boot prints. Not bare feet. Size 12, probably work boots.
In a clearing, we found it. A crude camp. A circle of stones for a fire. Empty cans, tattered blankets. And piled near a log—a heap of mangy fur. I crouched and picked up a scrap.
“Costume,” I said quietly.
Mike looked pale. “Someone’s faking it.”
“Someone’s using the legend. Hiding behind it.”
We stood in silence for a second too long. Then a twig snapped.
Behind us.
The breathing hit first—loud, ragged. Then I turned and saw him. He was massive, wrapped in filthy fur, face half-hidden behind a makeshift mask, but his eyes—those wild, bloodshot eyes—were all too human.
He lunged.
Knife flashing in the moonlight.
“Run!” I shouted, shoving Mike hard. We tore through the brush, branches slapping our faces. I could hear him behind us, panting like an animal. When we reached the truck, I barely had time to slam the door before he hit it, denting the side panel with a sickening thud. Mike peeled out, gravel spraying behind us.
Back at the station, I radioed everything in. “Armed suspect. Camouflaged. Near the old logging road. Not a myth. Not a bear. A man.”
The next morning, we assembled a full team—rangers, sheriff’s deputies, state police. We combed the area and found what we hadn’t dared imagine: a shack, buried deep under a thicket of brambles. Inside was a nightmare. Photos of Sarah, David, and Emily—some from far away, others terrifyingly close. Bloody clothes. Bones. A notebook filled with scribbles, names, dates, and on the last page, in all caps:
THEY’LL NEVER CATCH ME. I AM THE BEAST.
His name was Tom Harris. Local. Loner. Worked in logging until he got injured and dropped off the radar. No fixed address. Long history of outbursts, threats, and animal cruelty. We pieced together the rest—he’d been stalking hikers, killing them, and planting fake tracks using homemade wooden molds. He used the Bigfoot myth like camouflage, hoping fear and folklore would keep the truth buried.
But it wasn’t over.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept the radio near my bed. Just after 2 a.m., a scream shattered the silence, echoing through the campground.
I bolted out the door, gun in hand.
There he was—Tom, still wearing that grotesque suit, dragging a woman out of her tent. She was fighting hard, kicking, screaming. He grunted, swinging wildly.
“Stop!” I shouted, raising the pistol.
He turned, eyes gleaming in the dark, and rushed me without hesitation.
I fired.
The shot cracked through the night. He staggered, clutched his shoulder, and dropped to his knees. The woman scrambled to me, sobbing.
We arrested Tom Harris as backup swarmed in. The news labeled him the “Bigfoot Hoax Killer.” He’ll spend the rest of his life behind bars. But even now, the forest feels different. He took something from it. From me.
I still patrol these trails. I still smile at campers and guide lost tourists. But something inside me’s changed. Every snapped twig puts me on edge. Every rustle in the underbrush feels like a warning. And some nights, when the wind is just right, I swear I hear footsteps outside my cabin.
I tell myself it’s nothing.
I pray I’m right.
"The Wild Watched Back":
It was the summer of 1924, the kind of summer that hangs heavy in the air, thick with pine and silence. I was out prospecting for gold near Mount St. Helens in Washington, along with my buddies—Hank, John, Marion, and Roy. We were rough men, used to the wilderness, used to the quiet grind of the pick and the long, aching hours of digging in rocky soil. We built ourselves a log cabin about two miles east of the mountain, a tight little place nestled in thick timber, away from any kind of road or town. No neighbors. No travelers. Just forest, mountain, and the kind of deep silence that hums in your ears.
It was lonely country. The sort of place where the wind moves like a whisper through the evergreens and every snapping twig sounds louder than it should. The birds chirped during the day, and at night, the breeze rustled through the high branches like a voice trying to speak but never quite forming the words. The first week or so, it felt peaceful—pure, even. We’d wake at dawn, spend the daylight hours digging and panning in the stream beds, always hoping to find that glitter in the pan. Evenings were for sitting around the fire, sipping coffee or cheap whiskey, sharing tall tales and quietly praying the next day would bring gold.
But peace is a fragile thing in the wild. It didn’t last.
About three weeks in, I woke up early—before the others—and went to fetch water from the stream. It was just after sunrise. The air was still cool, the forest painted in long shadows and gold light. I remember how quiet it was. Not just calm—quiet. No birds, no rustle, just the sound of my boots in the pine needles and the slow trickle of water ahead. Then I saw them.
Footprints. Huge, unmistakable prints in the soft mud by the bank.
They were massive—at least 19 inches long and wide as a skillet, with five thick toes. They looked human, but off. The shape was wrong—too wide at the ball of the foot, and the stride… the stride was inhuman. Whoever—or whatever—had made those tracks had a longer gait than any man I’d ever seen. My stomach twisted into a knot. I squatted down to study them, and my skin prickled with that cold, crawling feeling you get when you realize you’re not alone.
“Hey! Guys! Come look at this!”
They came stumbling out of the cabin, still bleary-eyed. John got there first, then Roy, Marion, and Hank. We all stood there, squinting down at the prints in the mud.
“What made these?” John asked, his voice tight.
“Maybe a bear,” Marion offered, but he didn’t sound convinced.
I shook my head. “Bears don’t leave prints like this. Look at the toes. Look at the arch.”
We all fell silent, just staring. Something wasn’t right. The woods felt different after that. Like something had shifted, tilted out of place. The unease clung to us, followed us back to the cabin, sat with us as we dug through the dirt. We tried to ignore it. Told ourselves it was nothing. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching us. And whatever it was, it was big.
That night, after the fire burned low and the forest settled into darkness, a sound cut through the trees—a high, sharp whistle. It didn’t sound like any bird or animal we knew. It echoed through the trees like a warning, shrill and unnatural. We all sat up in our bunks.
“What the hell is that?” Roy whispered.
“No idea,” Hank muttered, clutching his blanket tighter. “But it’s close.”
The whistle came again, bouncing between the trees, then just—stopped. Silence fell, heavier than before. We lay there in the dark, breathing slow, ears straining for any other sound. None of us slept much that night.
The next few days, things got worse. More of those tracks showed up—closer to the cabin each time. Once we found them circling the place entirely, as if whatever made them had walked a slow, deliberate loop around us while we slept. Another time, we found claw marks on a tree—deep gouges, way too high up for a bear or cougar.
At night, we started hearing strange thumps in the distance. Not falling branches or echoing logs—thuds, like something heavy landing on solid ground. They didn’t come from one direction, either. Sometimes from the south, then from the west, then from behind the cabin. They were testing us. Playing with us.
One evening, we were sitting around the fire, the last light bleeding from the sky, when John froze. He stood up fast and pointed into the darkness beyond the tree line.
“Did you see that?”
“See what?” I asked, already standing, my rifle halfway to my shoulder.
“Something moved. Something big.”
We all stared into the trees. Nothing. Just shadows and stillness. But the air had changed again—turned cold and wrong. My palms were slick with sweat, my breath caught in my throat. The woods had gone silent. Not quiet—dead. No chirps, no rustling leaves. Just that thick, pressing silence.
Then came the day Hank and I went hunting.
We headed out just after dawn, rifles slung over our shoulders, hoping to bag a deer. We followed an old game trail, narrow and winding, overgrown in places. The forest around us was dense, the trees packed tight together. About an hour in, Hank stopped dead in his tracks and grabbed my arm hard.
“Look,” he whispered.
Ahead of us, maybe a hundred yards away, something stood between two trees. It was enormous—easily over seven feet tall, maybe closer to eight. Its body was broad and covered in thick, dark hair. Its arms were long, unnaturally so, hanging down past its knees. And the face—it still haunts me. Almost human. Not like a gorilla or bear. It had deep-set eyes, wide apart, a flat nose, a heavy brow. Its ears were pointed and stuck out slightly from the sides of its head. And those eyes—they locked onto us. Intelligent, unblinking. Assessing.
“Is that… a Bigfoot?” Hank breathed.
I couldn’t even speak. My chest felt tight, like I’d forgotten how to breathe.
The creature didn’t charge. It didn’t growl or roar. It just stood there, watching. Then it turned and walked off into the trees with slow, deliberate steps. Calm. Like it wasn’t afraid of us at all.
We ran. We didn’t speak until we got back to the cabin, out of breath and wide-eyed. We told the others everything.
“You’re full of it,” Marion said, but he didn’t meet our eyes.
“I saw it too,” Hank snapped. “It’s real.”
That night, we locked the door tight. Loaded our guns. We didn’t light a fire. We didn’t want to be seen.
It didn’t matter.
Around midnight, the world exploded. A crash—so loud the walls shook—something huge slammed onto the roof. Then another. And another. The sound of boulders crashing down. Big rocks, hurled with force. The roof groaned, splintering in places. Dust fell from the ceiling. We scrambled up, shouting.
“They’re outside!” Roy cried.
I looked through a narrow crack in the logs. My blood went cold. In the moonlight, I saw them. Not one—several. Towering, hairy, broad-shouldered shapes, moving just beyond the trees. Their eyes gleamed. They were grabbing rocks—huge rocks—and hurling them with impossible strength.
“They’re attacking!” I shouted.
We fired through the cracks, through the roof, the door, any opening we could find. The creatures roared, deep and guttural. One charged up and slammed its whole weight against the wall. The entire cabin groaned and shook like it might collapse.
“Hold the door!” Hank barked.
We jammed a thick beam against it and braced with our bodies. Then an arm—a thick, shaggy arm—forced its way between the logs, fingers groping. It found an axe we kept leaning nearby and yanked it out.
“Shoot it!” John screamed.
I aimed and fired point-blank. The creature howled—a horrible, deep, pained sound—and jerked back. Blood spattered the floor.
But they didn’t stop. Rocks kept raining down. One crashed through the roof and slammed into the floor near Roy, missing him by inches. We kept shooting, shouting, praying. Hank, half-mad, started singing.
“If you leave us alone, we’ll leave you alone, and we’ll all go home in the morning…”
His voice cracked on every note, but he kept singing. It didn’t matter.
The siege went on for hours. My arms ached, my ears rang from the gunshots, my hands trembled. We were running out of bullets. I thought we were going to die there.
Then—just before dawn—it stopped.
The rocks stopped falling. The sounds faded. The forest held its breath.
We didn’t move for a long time. We just sat there, eyes wide, waiting for the next crash, the next scream. But it never came.
When the first gray light filtered through the trees, we crept outside. The ground was littered with rocks—some as big as a man’s torso. The trees were gouged, the cabin damaged, one wall cracked clean through. The air stank of sweat and something else—musky, wild, animalistic.
Then I saw it.
One of the creatures, far off, standing at the edge of a gorge, watching us. Its chest heaved. Its eyes were fixed on me.
I raised my rifle and fired. It staggered, let out a cry, and fell into the ravine.
“We’re getting out of here,” I said, barely able to speak.
We packed in minutes. Left behind tools, food, even gold—nearly $200 worth. Didn’t matter. We ran down that mountain, not stopping until we saw smoke from a town chimney.
When we told the ranger, he stared at us like we were mad. But then word spread. Reporters came. They called it The Great Hairy Ape Hunt of 1924. Some laughed. Others took it seriously. But for us, it wasn’t a story. It was a war.
Those things didn’t just want to scare us. They wanted us gone—or worse. Even now, after all these years, I still wake up in the dark, sweating, listening for that whistle. I still see those eyes, still feel the cabin shake beneath their fists. We made it out alive.
But I left something behind in those woods. A part of me stayed there—trapped in that long, terrible night.
And I don’t think I’ll ever get it back.
"The Thing":
My name is Bobby Ford, and in May of 1971, my wife Elizabeth and I left behind the constant hum of city life in search of peace and simplicity. We settled in Fouke, Arkansas—a quiet, unassuming town nestled in the thick, tangled greenery of the Sulphur River bottoms. It was the kind of place where the nights were silent but for the occasional hoot of an owl, and the air hung heavy with the scent of pine, damp earth, and mystery.
We’d bought a modest wooden house at the edge of the forest, where the trees grew so close together they swallowed the sunlight even in midday. The locals were friendly enough, but there was something about their smiles—a kind of forced politeness—that made me feel like an outsider. They spoke in hushed tones about “strange things” that happened out in the woods, warnings laced with sideways glances and muttered references to an old legend. The Fouke Monster, they called it. A creature taller than any man, covered in thick, matted hair, with glowing red eyes and a scream that could split the night wide open.
I laughed it off, of course. I’d grown up hearing tales like that—boogeymen and backwoods beasts that always turned out to be drunks, bears, or some overactive imagination. But Elizabeth… she didn’t take it so lightly. From the moment we moved in, she was uneasy. She kept the curtains drawn at night, jumped at every creak and rustle. “There’s something not right out here,” she said one evening, standing on the porch, staring into the wall of trees. “It feels… watched.”
The first few days passed without incident. We unpacked, met the neighbors, and tried to adjust to the slower rhythm of country life. But on the third night, something changed.
I was asleep when I heard it—this slow, deliberate crunching of gravel just outside our bedroom window. Heavy, calculated steps, like whatever it was knew exactly where it was going. I sat up, heart pounding, and peered through the blinds. The moon was high, its pale light slicing through the mist that clung to the ground. But I didn’t see anything—no person, no animal. Just the porch swing swaying gently, as if something had brushed past it. I chalked it up to nerves and the unfamiliar sounds of rural life and went back to bed.
The next night, Elizabeth woke me, her voice trembling. “Bobby… someone’s on the porch.”
I threw on a flannel shirt, grabbed my flashlight, and crept out into the sticky, silent night. The beam of the flashlight flickered across the porch boards—empty. But in the dirt just beyond the steps, I found them: massive footprints. Three distinct toes, each as wide as a soda can, sunk deep into the earth. They weren’t bear tracks. Too symmetrical. Too clean. I crouched down, brushed the dirt with my fingers, and felt that chill—that primal, ancestral chill—crawl up my spine like ice. I didn’t tell Elizabeth what I found. She was already frightened, and I didn’t want to fan the flames.
But from that moment on, I couldn’t shake the feeling. Every time I stepped outside, I felt eyes on me. Every whisper of wind through the trees sounded like something breathing just out of sight.
The following evening, my brother Don came by. He was a no-nonsense kind of guy—former military, sharp with a rifle, and not one to buy into ghost stories. I told him what I’d heard and found, and though he chuckled, he agreed to walk the property with me. We had some hunting traps out by the creek, so we figured we’d check on them together. Elizabeth was exhausted, curled up on the couch with a blanket pulled up to her chin. I told her we’d be back in an hour.
It was near midnight when we returned. We were maybe fifty yards from the house when we heard it: a scream, shrill and raw, tearing through the stillness. Elizabeth.
We dropped everything and ran, our boots slamming against the ground, rifles in hand. I’ve never known fear like that—not the kind that knots your gut, but the kind that seizes your whole body, fills your ears with your own heartbeat.
When we burst through the front door, Elizabeth was standing in the living room, pointing at the shattered window. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with terror. “It was here,” she whispered. “It reached in… it tried to grab me.”
The screen was torn to ribbons. Long, ragged claw marks raked across the window frame—deep enough to splinter the wood. I didn’t know what to say. I just held her while Don peered out the broken glass.
Then we saw it.
At the tree line, where the yard dissolved into forest, stood a figure—enormous, hulking. It was easily over seven feet tall, its body thick and covered in tangled dark hair. The moonlight caught its eyes, and they gleamed red, like dying coals in a fire.
“There it is!” Don shouted. We both raised our rifles and fired. The creature let out a sound I’ll never forget—a deep, guttural roar that vibrated in my bones. Then it turned and slipped into the woods with unnatural speed, vanishing into the dark like smoke.
Elizabeth was hysterical. I told Don to stay with her while I made a sweep of the property. I needed to know it hadn’t doubled back. My hands shook as I held the flashlight, its narrow beam barely piercing the thick night. The crickets had gone silent. The frogs too. It was like the whole world had paused, waiting.
Then I heard it. A low, wet growl. I spun around.
There it stood—not twenty feet from me. Closer than before. Its breath was ragged, steaming in the cold night air. The smell hit me first—rotting meat and damp fur. It lunged before I could raise my gun.
I don’t remember thinking, only feeling—the crushing pressure of its arms around me, claws scraping into my back, the hot stink of its breath against my face. I fought like hell, kicking, clawing, twisting. Somehow, by sheer panic or adrenaline, I broke free and ran.
I didn’t bother with the door—I hit it at full speed, crashing through the wood and landing hard on the living room floor. Don grabbed me, helping me up, and together we stared out into the darkness. But the creature was gone.
We called the sheriff. When he arrived, along with a couple deputies, they found the footprints. The damage to the window. The blood on the porch from where it had clawed me. But no creature. Nothing that could explain what we’d seen.
The next morning, the house was surrounded by news vans. Reporters, curiosity-seekers, and self-declared monster hunters all flooded into Fouke, looking for a story. Some folks believed us—others said we were drunk or crazy. But I knew. I knew what I saw. What I felt.
Elizabeth and I packed our things and left that same week. We couldn’t stay—not in that house, not in that town. Every creak of the floorboards, every shadow in the corner, would have been a reminder. We tried to move on, start fresh somewhere else. But the memory… it never left.
Sometimes, late at night, when the world is still and the wind brushes against the windows just right, I swear I hear it again—that low growl, just outside the glass. I see those red eyes burning in the dark, waiting. And I wonder… what if it followed us?
Because some things, once they’ve touched your life, never let go.
And the Fouke Monster... it never forgets.