transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:04] Fee Fi Fo Fum, I know exactly why he runs. He thinks he stole from me and mine, but he will pay a thousand times. Listen to Spooked, stay tuned. I have this goofy, three-legged mutt, Georgie. Now, he's a happy little guy. If there's a choice between a scratch right between the ears or a Scooby snack, he's gonna choose love instead of food every single time. Always wants to sit in your lap, even if you have other things you wanna do. And the other day, when he wanted me to stop fooling with my phone and just keep stroking the top of his head, I thought back to my first dog. His name was Lucky, but he was anything but Lucky. I got him as a puppy, a collie mix, beautiful. I begged and pleaded with my parents to let him be a house dog. Let me take care of him inside. But they didn't believe in such a thing. Dogs don't belong in the house, they said. Instead, we kept him chained to a tree in the back. Which was bad enough by itself. He bark and bark and squeal and scream for his freedom from that chain, for his terror of the dark. I didn't know how to beg for him. He got quiet then. Stopped pulling against his chain. I'd give him warm oatmeal to eat. He looked at me like I was his jailer. Then the snow fell. His coat dirty, gray, his eyes blazing hot. He became mean. Vicious even. When he bit me, I didn't tell anyone. Just tried to stop the bleeding as best I could with rags and towels because I knew full well I deserved it. We began on a winding mountain road in Appalachia. It's a beautiful drive during the day, but at night, you don't want to be caught out there. Unless, of course, you enjoy being chased. Chuck's going to tell you what I'm talking about. Spooked.

Speaker 2:
[04:41] Valley Crucis is right outside of Boone, North Carolina. It stands for the Valley of the Cross, and it is named for an intersection of a few bodies of water that come into a cross right there in the center of town. It's very, very small. There's not a lot of residents there full time. A great vacation spot. We went there as a family, like my dad's extended side, grandma, aunts, uncles. They would all throw in once a year and rent the same property. It was just this kind of secluded, gigantic Appalachian style lodge. It had all these different rooms and bunk rooms. Me and my cousins loved it. So we would go up there mainly for the seclusion, just to get away from everything for a while and be together as a family. We had just got into the house. We played around, did some hide-and-seek and then went out and did some sledding. Did that for a good two days, just running around the house, having a good time, and then the snow was expected to come. So the next thing you got to do is go to the store, make sure you got all your provisions. So my uncle, my favorite uncle, his name is Whit, Uncle Whit. He's a joker. He's a prankster. He would go get your shoes from under the coffee table in my grandma's living room. And take them to the back room and wrap them up and give them to you as a Christmas present, like right there while we're opening gifts. Like really funny guy. He's like, hey, you want to go into town with me, get some groceries? I'm like, yeah, absolutely. So hop in with him in his truck, and we start making our way down toward Boone. So we go down the gravel road and get onto the main highway. Already starting to snow pretty hard at this point, and it was already dark. It was at that point that I kind of noticed like he was speeding up. He was going pretty quick for the mountain road that we were on. I didn't really think anything of it at first until we started like, kind of, like I could hear the tires at a couple of points going through some of these hairpins, and so I kind of looked over toward him, like glanced over at him, and that was the first time in my life I ever saw like true fear on a grown man's face. I mean, he was pale white, and his eyes were just wide, just fully wide, and he like was staring at his rear view mirror more than he was staring out the front window of the truck. I'm also trying to decide, is he messing with me, or is he actually freaking out about something? The overwhelming sense that I got was that he was not playing with me. They're like red, like embers. Initially, they are a good bit behind us, but as we progress through this drive down the road, they essentially are in the bed of the truck, and I can see them directly in the rear view mirror. That was pretty freaked out. And then from there, they kind of just like faded out. Like two coals just kind of burning out. Whatever it was just disappeared. It's silent in the car. And then I hear a tap on my window. Not like a knuckle, but more like a fingernail. Like a sharper sound. It's a continuous rap just one after another. Tap, tap, tap, tap. It just continued to go on. I'm looking left over my uncle who's driving for some sort of guidance. I saw it in his face. The tapping felt like it went on for about five minutes. Once we passed the general store, it stopped. Just went to a dead stop. Didn't happen again. Up to this point has been silence about what we've just witnessed. We went straight on in to town and got our groceries. And driving back up to the cabin, we didn't have anything happen to us at all. But it was a very quiet drive, quiet trip. I could tell he was too upset to even ask about it. So we just kind of let it go. We get back and I go into the house and go and talk to my cousins and I told them, hey, we just got chased by something. They kind of ask a few questions, but I can tell that they think I'm just, I'm telling a story. And I'm trying to express to them that this is not made up. This just happened to us. I can tell they don't believe me. And so I'm a little frustrated with that. One of my cousins, Emily, who is my uncle Witt's daughter, went and asked him and he just laughed it off and made a joke about it and went about his married way. He was not ready to talk about it with anybody. I figured it was best to leave it alone at that point and, you know, just let it lie. It was about four years later. We're going back to the mountain house, as we do annually. My sister brought her friend, and I brought my friend Stephen. We are super hyped. There's a big hill in the back of this cabin. We're big snowboarders, so we are gonna set up this ramp in the back of the backyard, and it's gonna be awesome. We've been at the cabin for like two or three days. On the third night, we decided to take the whole crew, was gonna go into town, into Boone, and eat at the Daniel Boone Inn. Now, the Daniel Boone Inn is a really old restaurant in Boone. It's very, very popular, so the line is always really long. We go in and we do our time in line, sit down and eat. By the time we leave, it's nearly 9 o'clock at night. So we're driving back in the dark. My grandma had a touring van. It's like not like an RV, but it's not a minivan either. So it's just me and Stephen. Then we were in the back, like not the back seats, but the back cargo area. So we're looking out the back window. And then my mom and dad were both in there. And then my uncle was driving, same one. And so we're coming back in and we're on 194. We had just passed the church and we were like working our way toward the turnoff for our gravel road. We had not been too far past the church and the van broke down. Like it just stopped running. Everything kind of went dead. All the track lights, everything just went dead. And initially, like, I was like, oh, like, I've seen this before. My uncle loves to do this. So I'm telling Stephen silently, like, hey, like, check this out, because my sister and her friend are in the seats in front of us. So we're going to watch them now get scared the way I used to when I was a kid, and he would pull this stuff. Some of the adults are getting out of the van. My dad, my uncle are up around the front of the van looking under the hood. And I'm like, man, they're really going pretty elaborate with this one. This is a bit more than I'm used to. This goes on and on to the point where I'm starting to get a little bit concerned. Like maybe it is broken down. I looked over to Steven and noticed that he was not paying any attention to me at all. He's looking directly out the back window. I look out the back window behind him, and what I see is this creature that is standing very tall, like over seven feet. What I'm looking at has the face of this, like it's like a wolf. But then just a weird humanoidish body. Like a man with a wolf's head. And it was way too long. Like the arms were too long, and the legs were just really weird looking. And it had these really long claws. I mean, like the good, you know, six or seven inches, almost like fingers. It had these yellow eyes, just glowing yellow eyes, like a deep kind of golden yellow. Steven and I are both hypnotized, looking out the back window. And this thing is standing just off the side of a tree. As soon as he and I are starting to really focus in on this thing, that's when my mother saw it. The next thing I saw was her freaking out and opening the door and saying, Let's go, let's go, we gotta go right now. My uncle and my dad are still around the front of the vehicle. They're still under the hood. They hear her screaming. And so they slam the hood, jump into the driver and passenger. The van started back, no problem. And then we start moving. That's when it starts to follow us. It dropped down on to all fours, but it wasn't running like a wolf or a dog run. It had this just discombobulated kind of jerky, weird running movement where like there were parts of it that looked like they shouldn't exist as joints. But it had a lot of grace at the same time. The air in the vehicle is different. All of the adults in the car, all four of them, they're freaked out about something. Me and Stephen in the back, we're looking at this thing as it's chasing the van down the road. But everybody is dead silent. And it looked like this thing was, it was keeping up with us. I mean, we were booking, but it's keeping up with us. And it was very disturbing to look at. To the point where it overwhelmed me. It says we blacked out. I wake up the next morning in bed in one of the twin rooms. Stephen's in the bed next to me. I look over at Stephen, he was sitting upright on his bed. Had already been up, obviously, for a while, and he had this far off kind of dazed look in his eyes. The only way I can describe that look is what they call the 10,000-yard stare. It's a look of trauma, and that was kind of look he had on his face, and it was similar to what my uncle had. He and I kind of had a silent agreement that he and I weren't going to really discuss what had happened. We go out into the main lodge room, have our breakfast, and it's an awkward silent day. Everybody is fairly quiet. Nobody's talking about any of what had happened. So I was like, well, I'll bring it up with Stephen in a week or so. And then in those few days, I started to doubt myself a little bit. I'm like, did that happen? Like, was I falling asleep in the car? Was I dreaming? And so I never actually brought it up with him until years later. I did finally bring it up after we had been hanging out. We had some drinks. I brought it up and he kind of laughs it off. He is still to this day, won't talk about it. Same with my mom, like she says it was just a wolf. It was definitely not a wolf. I mean, I have been out in the woods a lot. I was seeing a big black wolf, like an actual big black gray timber wolf, kind of running down the highway in Minnesota and it was nothing like this. So I ended up going to college at Appalachian State in Boone. I started thinking about all this again. That's when I started putting things together. I was like, wait, I was like, we're probably not the only people that have had this experience right there. And so I just looked it up. I searched Valley Crucis ghost stories, you know, all that kind of just on Google. And the first thing that came up was the Demon Dog of Valley Crucis. In the legend, these two young men, they cross over the boundary basically of the St. Episcopal Church. And they report that the red eyes came and chased them from the graveyard behind the church. And that church is the line where exactly we began getting chased by whatever this was. They called it a giant dog, big dog with red eyes, chasing them at like high speed and was keeping up with them until they crossed the river. Once you pass that, it turns around and goes back to wherever it came from, the depths of hell, I don't know. Sunday night, we're hanging out at my grandmother's house after dinner, sitting basically in a big circle between the couches and the chairs and the fireplace. I initially present this information to my family in terms of, hey, like I found this legend from Valley Crucis that talks about this entity that chases cars. A lot of them were like, oh, that's a neat story. But then I could see my uncle's face change. It was very visceral. I mean, my uncle is a very, very stoic, strong man. He got real kind of stone quiet. And then he finally said that what he saw out of the window that night was the face of pure evil. I was like, what did it look like? Describe it to me. He described this exaggerated wolf thing. He actually referred to the old team mascot logo for NC State, for the Wolf Pack. They had this just exaggerated snout and big tongue and these huge teeth. And that's what he actually referred to. And that is not far off. Either we're both crazy or we both saw the same thing. Valley Cruises is definitely, as much as it's a special place for me, I have a lot of good memories there. Like anytime I'm in Boone and driving up to like Blowing Rock, you have to go right past the turn off to Valley Cruises. I'm like, I'll get chills down my spine even being near Valley Cruises. And honestly, I don't like it to even go past the cross stream. Because I feel like once you're past there, you're kind of in. It's stomping ground, so I don't recommend driving through Valley Cruises at night unless you're looking for a, looking for a heart attack.

Speaker 1:
[21:37] Thank you, Chuck. This is the second story Chuck has graciously shared with Spooked. If you want to hear Chuck tell another spine-chilling story set in the mountains, listen to the Spooked Dismal Falls episode. The ritual score includes pieces by Yari Bundy. It was produced by Greta Weber and Chris Hambrick. Now, we're going back, back to the year 1988, just a couple of weeks before Christmas, and Shirley is a truck driver. In California, she's headed out on a job, hauling some gear up to an Air Force base in Whitley Island, Washington, just outside of Seattle. Before she leaves, Shirley's boss tells her that she needs to be back in California in four days. Now, Shirley is no rookie. She knows that in the winter, trying to make a quick deadline is foolish, even dangerous. But Shirley can't tell her boss that. She's worried that if she doesn't make her deadline, she will lose her job, and she's the only woman at her company. In fact, she's the only female truck driver she knows. Spooked.

Speaker 3:
[23:47] When I first started driving, the men really, really made it hard on me. I think a lot of it was fear of losing their jobs because women work hard. My mom always supported me. She says, Shirley, you can do anything you want to. Don't let anybody stop you ever. That's what really drove me.

Speaker 4:
[24:16] On the morning of her trip, Shirley packs up her truck. She brings enough food and clothes to last her a whole week, just in case. Shirley likes to be prepared.

Speaker 3:
[24:28] I start up my truck, check all my gauges, my tires, my brakes. I have all my chains, all my bungee cords. Everything's safely attached. I start my logbook, time that I'm leaving, mileage, and then I just drive her out the gate.

Speaker 4:
[24:52] Shirley's first stop is at the Naval Air Station in Alameda, a city just south of Oakland.

Speaker 3:
[24:58] I pulled in, turned my truck around, and the guys just line up, and they start working and putting all the weight to the front of the trailer. The pilots, they were going to fly their planes back to the Air Force Base in Whidbey Island, and I was going to take all the gear. This one pilot came up to me. His name was Derrick, and he asked me how long it would take me to get to Whidbey Island, and I told him with decent weather, I could make it in two days. He says, well good, if you can get there in two days, we get to go home early. I wanted these guys to be able to get home for Christmas, and I said, well, I'll tell you what, if I can, I'll be there. He smiled and gave me a little wave and went on. I left Alameda and head for Oregon.

Speaker 4:
[25:57] For the first few hours of Shirley's journey, the weather is pretty good, and she feels optimistic about her progress. But as she crosses into Oregon and starts driving towards Mount Ashland.

Speaker 3:
[26:08] I noticed the clouds were getting heavier and thicker and darker, and I knew I was going to be getting some snow soon. I stepped out of the truck, I started to slide. The roads are so icy. After I got back in the truck, I had to get my hands warm. They were so icy cold. And then I just put her in gear and started up the mountain.

Speaker 4:
[26:47] As she trudges up the incline, Shirley listens closely for updates on the CB radio. At this point, she expects someone to break the news that the pass is closed and her trip will be delayed. But then...

Speaker 3:
[27:00] The southbound drivers were telling everybody, You get to take your chains off at Weed. There's no snow on Ashland. Everybody was happy about that, I'll tell you. You heard some whooping. I got a big smile on my face and I'm going, I'm gonna get their gear there before the two days are up.

Speaker 4:
[27:26] After she crosses the mountain pass, Shirley stops to spend the night at a truck stop called Fat Harvey's.

Speaker 3:
[27:33] I really liked Fat Harvey's. Her bed is really nice. Worst coffee, at least 35 states, but they had really good food, really. I got up the next morning, and I set out for Washington with BIA. I've been driving a couple hours. As I started going up to the mountains, the fog was coming in, in and out and in and out. And it was cold and the roads were icy. Oh, bad, very dangerous roads. And I came up on this small grade and I'm looking ahead because it's foggy. I see these amber lights. There's three amber lights on the left side of the road and three blue ones on the right. They were hazy and they're like floating on the top of the road. It was so strange. I'm thinking, what in the world is that? I thought that might have been something that the police had put up. And I slowed way down and creeped up to the top of the grade. And as I came to the crest of the hill, they weren't there. The lights were gone. It's like I was seeing things. And then I looked down and I forgot about the amber and blue lights. I saw all these vehicles down at the bottom of the grade, all scattered everywhere from a wreck. There was a container truck laying on the side. I'm just thinking, oh my god, you know, I got to get down this hill and not get in a wreck. I'm trying to be so careful going down through there and making my way between the cars. I saw this one car had Christmas packages in the back window. I wanted to stop and help, but I didn't dare. Because if I parked my truck and then another truck came bailing over the hill and hit me, then we've just got more wrecks. I got on the CB radio, started warning everybody about the wreck at the bottom of the grade. Everybody slow down, be careful. Just as I got through the mess, here came the red lights and sirens around the bend. Once I saw the state police and the fire engines coming, I remember those lights at the top of the hill and I just got this kind of rushed tingle from my elbows up to my shoulders and my neck and my face. I realized the lights on the hill weren't the police. So where did they come from?

Speaker 4:
[30:39] Eventually, Shirley reaches the Puget Sound and makes her way up to the Deception Pass Bridge. As she drives over, the sun is starting to break through the clouds and glint off the water below. She has a clear view of Woodby Island's forested coast.

Speaker 3:
[30:56] God, it was so gorgeous. For the first time that day, I wasn't thinking about the amber and blue lights. It was so beautiful, it just took my mind to another place.

Speaker 4:
[31:13] Finally, Shirley crosses Deception Pass and reaches the Naval Air Station on Woodby Island.

Speaker 3:
[31:20] I pulled up, backed up to the dock, and the fellas came out and unloaded the trailer. Derek came out, the fella that had talked to me in Alameda, and asked me if I was going to start back. He said, we're going to go over to this place for dinner, and the guys want to know if you want to go with us. And I said, oh, gee, I'd love to. Oh, they had good food, and the guys were happy, and they were fun, and we laughed. My jaw was tired from laughing and smiling. My cheeks hurt, you know? We just had such a good time.

Speaker 4:
[32:03] After dinner, Shirley is beat. As she climbs into her sleeper cabin, she's sure she'll be out as soon as her head hits the pillow. But she couldn't stop thinking about those lights.

Speaker 3:
[32:16] Somebody put them there, and I don't know who. If I hadn't seen those lights, I knew I wouldn't have slowed down, and I probably would have been in the wreck myself. I think it saved me.

Speaker 4:
[32:35] The next morning, Shirley is eager to get back on the road. She still has a deadline to make. She needs to get her truck back in two days. She starts getting ready, checking that everything is working properly, and that she has enough fuel to get back to Fat Harvey's. She wants to wait until then to gas up, so her truck will be as heavy as possible when she goes back over the Mount Ashland Pass.

Speaker 3:
[33:00] I got some coffee and some powdered donuts that I'm heading south for home.

Speaker 4:
[33:09] Everything is going smoothly, Shirley makes it into Oregon. But things change as night falls.

Speaker 3:
[33:17] That night was the blackest, darkest night I ever had on the road. It was almost impossible to see. I started to turn right, and I felt the trailer just drift off to the left. Then I realized the road is ice. I have no weight in my trailer, and I'm getting low on fuel, so I'm just like a little butterfly out there, you know? I was driving along in the dark, and all of a sudden I hear this truck, and it's right next to me. There was no lights behind me. I never saw this truck coming behind me. I didn't even hear him until I saw him right next to me, and the trailer was black. He came so fast, it was right next to me one second, then he was ahead of me, and I got on the CB and said, hey, buddy, slow down, you're driving on ice. And I got no response. And then when he's about a truck and a half ahead of me, he turns on his left turn signal. The left blinker kept going on and off, and then he stepped on his brakes.

Speaker 4:
[34:35] Shirley has no idea what the other driver is doing. So with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the CB radio, she calls over to the driver again, urging them to slow down.

Speaker 3:
[34:48] What the heck are you doing? You're going to kill yourself. But he never responded to me. He just kept on going. It was weird.

Speaker 4:
[34:59] There's a curve up ahead in the road. And as Shirley starts to turn her wheel, the other driver keeps flashing their left blinker and pumping their brakes.

Speaker 3:
[35:09] He was trying to tell me something. And I slowed way down. And as I came around the curve, all of a sudden my headlights hit the back of this trailer.

Speaker 4:
[35:20] It's the trailer of another truck, broken down in Shirley's lane, about 60 feet away.

Speaker 3:
[35:27] My heart dropped down to the floor. Oh, my hands on the steering wheel. I was holding that wheel so tight. I don't know how I'm going to get in that left lane fast enough without using my brakes. I knew I was going to crash. I really thought that was the end of it. I went, thank you God for my time on Earth. And I just moved my truck to the left. I couldn't believe I didn't hit it. I couldn't have missed it maybe a foot. It was probably less than that. I slowed down, pulled over, set the brakes. I was looking for the black truck. It's just been a few seconds, and he was gone. I couldn't believe that that truck was gone out of my sight in that tiny amount of time. It was really impossible. I sat there, I don't know, probably five minutes or more, just trying to get myself pulled together so I could get out of the truck. I was so shaky that I don't think I could have walked when I first got the truck stop. It scared me so bad that I kind of lost all my strength.

Speaker 4:
[36:53] When Shirley is finally steady enough, she grabs a flashlight and gets out of her truck to check on her trailer. That's when she notices something.

Speaker 3:
[37:03] The dirt was all dug up and there was broken taillights and headlights and debris all scattered everywhere. I realized that this is where the wreck was when I was northbound on my trip up to Whidbey Island.

Speaker 4:
[37:21] It's the same spot and this is the wreckage of what could have, should have been her fate the first time. And now here she is, back again.

Speaker 3:
[37:33] I was in such a state of shock at that moment. And then I thought about those amber and blue lights. And I'm just going, this is the same place. Twice I've been saved in the same place. How could two things so weird happen in the same place? I got back in the truck and put her in gear. I started back on the highway. I was very grateful. I couldn't believe that I wasn't being sent to the hospital. If it had been for that black and silver truck, I would have hit that trader full force. I got on the CD and thanked him for, you know, warning me. But I never got an answer.

Speaker 4:
[38:30] Shirley makes it to Fat Harvey's, and the next day, she makes it home on time. Then she goes on to drive a truck for another 20 years.

Speaker 3:
[38:40] I love driving truck. It's the best job I ever had. I drove that road many times after that, and every time I went through there, I got thinking, who saved me out there? How did that happen? And then I thought of my mom. She always worried about me driving, you know, because I was by myself. My mom passed away in 1979. She must have been up there watching over me. She sent that truck and trailer. She knew I'd pay attention to that truck and trailer. It probably was her that saved my life that day, I have no doubt.

Speaker 1:
[39:37] Thank you, Shirley, for sharing your stories, Spooked. Original score for this piece is by Doug Stuart. It was produced by Zoë Ferrigno. Now, there are people that claim to be able to move objects with nothing beside the power of their minds, perhaps. I say, strap them up in the laboratory, put them through their paces. And there are other people who intimate, they have a far greater power. They can move far more than rocks and balls and plates, that they can move people. That if they concentrate hard enough on a suggestion, folk will somehow feel compelled to do their bidding. It's a scary stuff and I could see why someone might want to keep that secret. But if you know of someone trying to hide such a talent away from prying eyes, let me know. I promise, I won't tell a single soul that doesn't listen to the Spooked podcast because there is nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener, Spooked at snapjudgment.org. If you like your storytelling, under the bright light of day, our amazing, stupendous sister podcast, it's called Snap Judgment. It is storytelling with a beat. Spooked was created by the team that thinks it's a deep and horrible violation to open another person's mail. Except of course, for Mark Ristich. He wants to know what your Aunt Josephine is up to before you do. There's Davy Kim, Chris Hambrick, Leon Norimoto, Teo Ducot, Marissa Dodge, Zoë Ferrigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yanez, Tessa Paoli, Cody Harjo, Lola Abreira, Miles Lassie, Yari Bundy, Greta Weber, and Doug Stuart. The Spooked theme song is by Pat McSeedy Miller. My name is from Washington. People often ask me why things work the way they do. See, my space is here in the dirt, the water, the warmth, the everyday. Believe me, I can't tell you why anything works, nothing. All I can do is assure you that sometimes it does work. There are still rules that are helpful in keeping the madness at bay. Remains of a leftover sorcery, no understanding necessary. And first amongst these age-old secrets is a very simple adage. Never ever never ever never never ever.