I Caught Bigfoot Visiting My Farm, But He Was Only Trying To Protect Me 
THE WOODS THAT LISTEN
Ethan Crowley never believed the woods could watch him. He’d spent years hiking, camping, and tracking wildlife across the Olympic Peninsula, wandering through thousands of acres without ever feeling a pair of unseen eyes settle on his back. The forest was his refuge—quiet, predictable, safe.
All of that changed on the night he heard the scream.
It was early autumn, the air chilled and wet with mist, the moon a pale smudge hovering behind thin clouds. Ethan had returned to his family cabin after a long work week, desperate to clear his mind with solitude and firelight. He was halfway through splitting a stack of damp cedar when the sound tore across the treeline—a long, guttural wail that began low, climbed into a chest-shaking roar, and then snapped off so abruptly the silence felt violent.
Not an elk.
Not a bear.
Not anything he had ever heard in twenty years of wandering these woods.
Ethan froze, axe mid-swing, fingers tightening around the handle until his knuckles whitened. The scream hadn’t come from far away. Maybe three hundred yards. Four, at most.
The woods, dense and dark, seemed to lean inward.
Another scream followed. Higher. Agonizing.
Human.
Ethan dropped the axe.
His cabin sat twelve miles from the nearest paved road. Nobody should have been out there—not hikers, not hunters, not lost tourists. That cry didn’t belong. But something about it—its desperation, its raw terror—hooked into him and dragged his feet forward.
He grabbed a flashlight and his father’s old .30-30 rifle from above the door, not because he expected to use it, but because instinct begged him to. Then he stepped into the trees, letting the rhythm of his breath guide him through the damp soil and tangled ferns.
The deeper he moved, the more wrong the forest felt.
No insects hummed.
No owls hooted.
The night had gone hollow.
Twenty minutes in, he reached the dried-out riverbed. Moonlight spilled faintly across the stones, revealing something dark and large sprawled in the center. Ethan crouched behind a fallen log, raised his light, and flicked it on.
A man.
No—what remained of one.
The body was twisted, one arm bent backward at an impossible angle. The chest had collapsed inward, ribs snapped like broken spokes. His eyes, wide and frozen in horror, stared at the sky. Blood soaked the stones beneath him, thick and black in the moonlight.
Ethan swallowed hard. He’d seen hunting accidents, animal attacks, even a mountain lion kill once. This wasn’t like any of those.
The man hadn’t been mauled.
He had been crushed.
A heavy branch lay beside him, but it was intact. No storm had blown through. No tree had fallen. Nothing explained the force that had done… this.
As Ethan leaned in, something moved at the edge of his vision.
A shape.
Tall.
Massive.
Unmistakably upright.
He swung the flashlight toward it. The beam quivered, catching glimpses through the trees—dark fur, a broad shoulder, something huge slipping silently between the trunks.
His pulse hammered.
His breath hitched.
Not a bear.
The shape stopped moving. Ethan heard it exhale—a deep, rumbling huff that vibrated in his ribs. Then the smell hit him: wet earth, musk, and something metallic, like old blood.
He backed away, rifle raised though his hands shook uncontrollably.
Branches cracked. Leaves shifted. And then the creature stepped partly into the moonlight.
Eight feet tall. Thick chest. Arms longer than they had any right to be. A face neither ape nor human, with deep-set eyes that reflected the light like amber glass.
Ethan froze.
Every instinct screamed at him to run, but one wrong move felt like an invitation to die. The creature sniffed the air, eyes flicking between Ethan and the body. Its expression wasn’t rage. It wasn’t hunger. It was something worse.
Calculation.
Ethan took one step back. Another.
The creature growled—low and warning.
He bolted.
Tree limbs whipped his arms, ferns slapped his legs, the beam of his flashlight bounced wildly as he sprinted through the underbrush. Behind him, the footsteps began—heavy, earth-shaking thuds closing the distance far too quickly.
He didn’t look back. Looking back would slow him down, and slowing down meant dying on the cold forest floor beside a stranger whose terror had been etched permanently into his dead eyes.
The cabin lights appeared through the trees—a warm glow pushing back the dark. Ethan lunged toward them, legs burning, lungs searing. He threw himself onto the porch, slammed the door shut, locked it, then braced his shoulder against the wood.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Then a shadow eclipsed the window.
The creature stood outside, breath fogging the glass, head tilted as if studying him. Ethan lifted the rifle with trembling hands, pointing the barrel toward the window though he doubted a single bullet would matter.
The creature slowly raised one enormous hand and pressed its palm to the glass. The window bowed inward slightly, the wood groaning in protest.
Ethan held his breath, finger tightening on the trigger.
But after several agonizing seconds, the creature withdrew its hand. It stared at the cabin a moment longer, then stepped back, retreating into the dark without a sound. The forest swallowed it whole.
Ethan didn’t move until dawn.
When the sun finally seeped through the trees, he left the cabin, returned to the riverbed, and found the body gone. Not a drop of blood remained. Not a single footprint, not a broken branch—nothing but smooth stones washed by morning dew.
As though the night before had never happened.
But Ethan knew better.
He returned to his cabin, packed his belongings, and locked the place behind him. He drove away without looking back, the weight of the creature’s amber eyes still burning in his mind.
Some things in the woods didn’t want to be found.
Some things protected their territory with ruthless precision.
And some things listened—closely, silently, patiently.
Ethan never set foot in those woods again.
But he never forgot the scream that broke the silence, or the thing that answered it.
