This is an REI co-op studios production.

Welcome back to our Mini Monster series.

We here at Camp Monsters know that mysterious creatures are a year-round interest.

So we're making sure that you have a new monster in your feed every month until our full season launches this September.

This month we're traveling to Europe to tell the story of a creature that is terrorized that continent for centuries.

Nowadays it's the stuff of legend, the kind of thing you see on old coats of arms or hear about in the colorful tales of local folklore.

But the further you get into the more remote forgotten corners of the European countryside,

the darker and more forceful the folklore gets, the harshest stories, the starker the warnings,

until the history of this most deadly of creatures begins to seem more immediate than history should be.

We begin to wonder whether there's some fatal truth to the old tales, some hidden secret, surviving from times long past.

This is the Camp Monsters podcast.

The Camp Monsters.

Europe is a continent of famous cities, and a trip to Europe is usually a very urban one.

The countryside is that thing you see flashing past as you take the train from one grand ancient town to the next.

It's a matter of time. There's so much to see in Europe that when you visit you feel you have to go, go, go until the museums and market squares, castles and cathedrals all blend into a blurred but beautiful memory.

And then you're on the plane back home.

It doesn't have to be that way though.

And our story today comes to us from someone who delights in seeking out and spending time in the forgotten old corners of the continent.

Places so sleepy they're just a short step away from dreaming.

As we're about to be reminded, on all dreams are pleasant.

It started out nice enough. In a quaint cottage that Tracy, that was her name, had discovered online, tucked out in the country in one of the quietest counties in England.

A lovely old couple ran the place and she was the only guest they had at the time. It was the perfect base for Tracy's rambles through the surrounding countryside.

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