Bigfoot - There Was No Escape
What if it's True Podcast
Cameron Buckner
4.8 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 29 November 2025
⏱️ 12 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 1964, the narrator's grandfather and uncle, experienced campers in the Appalachian Mountains, took a risky shortcut through the eerie, lifeless Devil's Bowl to beat nightfall. What began as suspicious noises—snapping branches, rustling leaves, and clacking rocks—escalated into a terrifying ambush by multiple eight-foot-tall, hairy, ape-like creatures with piercing eyes and guttural roars, resembling Bigfoot. Pelted with increasingly large stones, the men spotted shadowy figures circling them. The grandfather, mistaking them initially for moonshiners, drew his pistol and tried to de-escalate, but a massive beast charged, knocking them down. Desperate, the uncle emptied his revolver into one creature, killing it and unleashing a horde of enraged others that swarmed, slashing and battering the pair. With broken ribs and severe wounds, the grandfather fought back fiercely, shooting several beasts in the head to defend his unconscious uncle, fearing he'd wiped out the entire group. Dragging his kin to safety, they escaped to their home for care, but the trauma lingered: the uncle bore lifelong scars and battled addiction until his death at 51; the grandfather, a Korean War vet and coal miner, carried deep regret and sorrow, dying when the narrator was 18, haunted by the unatoned violence in the creatures' "front yard."
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | In 1964, my grandfather and my uncle went on a camping trip in the Appalachian Mountains, |
| 0:15.9 | which they had done countless times before. |
| 0:19.4 | They hiked for about half a day until they reached a place we |
| 0:22.4 | called the devil's bowl. In the devil's bowl, regardless of the time or day or night, |
| 0:28.6 | it is darker than any part of the forest. No matter what season you pass through, there is no |
| 0:35.0 | wildlife and no sound. It's a dead section of the woods, and when |
| 0:39.9 | possible, they tried to avoid it. But they were losing daylight quickly. To make it to their |
| 0:46.8 | destination before nightfall, they took a shortcut through the devil's bowl, a decision they would |
| 0:53.4 | regret. |
| 0:58.0 | They began to hear noises almost immediately, |
| 1:04.0 | a branch breaking here or rustling in the leaves there and a clacking of rocks. |
| 1:07.0 | By the time they reached the devil's bowl, |
| 1:12.1 | surrounded by the dark forest that enveloped them like a blanket, they heard something pacing them step for step. |
| 1:15.1 | My grandfather thought it was an old holler boy pretending to be a woodbigger, trying to |
| 1:20.5 | divert them away from their moonshine or marijuana grow, and he didn't pay it much mine. |
| 1:27.6 | But the further they got, the louder and closer the noises became. |
| 1:32.9 | First, little pebbles started bouncing off their rucksacks, and then the pebbles turned into |
| 1:38.1 | larger rocks, big enough to hurt if they got you in the right spot. |
| 1:42.9 | At that point, they could see the outlines of something moving all around them. |
| 1:48.9 | My grandfather pulled his pistol and chambered around, counting at least five of what he thought were people. |
| 1:56.6 | As he watched them circling, he saw a big rock flying through the air, heading for my uncle's |
| 2:01.9 | head. He pushed him out of the way and raised his pistol, and he shouted, we're just passing |
... |
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