This Couple Raised a Baby Bigfoot in Secret, Then Hunters… |
THE BOY WE BURIED IN THE WOODS
I have not slept through the night since the day that boy died.
And I call him a boy, not an animal. I don’t care if that ruins this for you. I don’t care what you believe when I’m done. You can turn this off. You can call me crazy. Makes no difference to me.
I just need this on record before I go.
Because we raised him.
My wife and I, our kids—we raised him for six years and four months in secret, right under everybody’s nose. And the only reason you’re hearing this now is because he’s gone. And the men who killed him are gone. And I am running out of time to say his name out loud, even if I never say it the way humans name their own.
So I’ll start at the beginning.
Not with monsters.
Not with lights in the sky.
Not with folklore or TV nonsense.
It started with gunshots.
And a sound like a baby screaming in the trees.
1. Before Anything Broke
My name is Thomas. I’m seventy-one years old. I taught high school biology for most of my life. Nothing exotic. Cell division. Ecology. Frog dissections. The same curriculum everyone else teaches. I wasn’t a believer. I wasn’t out hunting legends. I didn’t own a trail cam. I didn’t drink. I didn’t chase mystery.
When I retired, my wife Evelyn and I moved out to our acreage about twenty minutes past the last gas station, across the river, right where private land meets state forest. If you’ve never been out here in late October, it’s hard to explain the air. It doesn’t blow cold—it sits cold. Damp. Heavy. Pine pitch and mud and wet leaves rotting underwater.
By four in the afternoon, it already looks like evening.
That’s hunting season. Elk. Blacktail deer. You hear gunshots every few days, more on weekends. Nobody flinches. It’s normal.
We had a house, a barn, a shop, and a little market attached to the shop. We sold eggs, jerky, baked goods. My wife made ammo sometimes, grain, dog food. A little produce in the summer. Chickens. Goats. A couple beef calves. Nothing fancy. We weren’t rich.
We worked. That’s it.
Evelyn was sixty-seven when I’m telling this. Back then she was just past sixty. We’d been married over forty years. We couldn’t have kids of our own. She carried twice and lost twice. That nearly broke her in her thirties. She doesn’t talk about it, so I won’t dwell on it.
We adopted instead.
They don’t give you babies when you’re older and you live in the sticks. They give you the kids nobody else wants.
We got Caleb first. He was fifteen when he came to us. He’s our son. Period. He’s twenty-nine now. Runs the place. Keeps the old tractor alive with duct tape and prayer.
Later, we adopted Hannah. She was nine when she came home. She’s twenty-three now. She runs the register, works animals, drives into town at five in the morning to buy cheap bread for resale. She’s mean if you try to talk crazy to her and she’ll give you the coat off her back if you’re cold.
We were not special people.
This matters.
You need to understand we were normal.
2. The Shots
It was a Sunday in late October. Cold. Wet. Typical.
I was behind the shop sharpening splitter blades. Soup was on the stove. Evelyn was on the porch. One of those quiet afternoons where you’re thinking about firewood and whether the goats need worming.
Then we heard three shots.
Not .22s. Not warning shots. Three fast, heavy hits.
Evelyn looked at me and said, “That’s close.”
Too close.
Our north line backed up to state land. Posted bright. Everybody local knew you didn’t shoot inside our fence. You stepped over the line first. That’s how it worked.
Those shots were on our side.
Then we heard the sound.
People want me to say scream. It wasn’t that.
It sounded like something trying to scream while drowning. Low at first. Then breaking. Hurt.
That sound went through Evelyn like a knife. She grabbed my sleeve.
“Tom.”
Just my name. But everything was inside it.
I told her to stay. Grabbed the pump shotgun we kept for coyotes and headed toward the trees behind the pasture.
I wasn’t thinking monsters.
I was thinking trespassers.
3. The Mother
I crossed the fence and hit the smell before I saw anything. Wet dirt. Gunpowder. Hot metal. Freshly fired barrel.
Bootprints in the mud. Two men. Big boots. Drag marks through pine needles and moss.
They’d tried to pull something.
Then they stopped.
The drag marks ended. The bootprints turned back toward the easement road.
They were coming back.
I followed the drag trail into a mossy bowl I’d walked past a hundred times without noticing. And that’s where my life split into before and after.
At first, my brain tried to say bear. That’s what your mind does when it wants to protect you.
But it wasn’t a bear.
She lay on her side, curled like she was trying to shield something behind her. Her hair was dark brown, soaked, clumped with rain and blood. Not fur like a bear. Hair—long, thick, human-like.
Her skin underneath was grayish. Thick. Not hide. Not skin like ours either.
Two holes high in her ribs. Close together. Big caliber.
One arm was out.
Not a leg.
An arm.
Shoulder. Bicep. Forearm. Wrist. Hand.
That hand lay relaxed in the moss like any person’s hand would fall.
And then I heard it.
A small sound behind her.
A broken, hiccuping sob.
4. The Boy
He was pressed against her stomach, curled into her like he’d tried to crawl inside and hide.
His face was buried in her.
His body shook so hard I could see it under the wet hair.
When he turned and looked at me, my heart stopped.
He didn’t look like a monster.
He didn’t look like a mask or a cartoon.
He looked like a scared kid.
Big eyes. Dark brown. Too big for his face the way little kids’ eyes are. A flatter nose. A wider mouth. Hair across his cheeks and forehead, thinner around the eyes so you could see skin with pores and lines.
Not animal muzzle skin.
Closer to ours than anything else.
His hands were too big for his body. Long fingers. Thick nails.
He made a sound.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Fast. Panicked.
My hands came up without thinking.
“It’s okay,” I said softly.
He stared. Clicking slowed.
Behind me, something cracked in the brush.
Evelyn stepped out beside me.
She took it in with one glance and said, steady as stone:
“That’s a baby.”
Not what is that.
Just that’s a baby.
She moved forward, crouched low, angled her body so he could still see his mother. She put her hand on the mother’s shoulder first. Respect.
She knew.
She opened her arms.
That’s all it took.
He crawled into her like a toddler crossing a couch. Arms around her neck. Face buried in her collar. Shaking so hard her shoulders bounced.
She wrapped her coat around him and held him like she’d waited her whole life to do exactly that.
I put my hand on his back.
He leaned into it.
He was burning with stress. His whole body vibrating.
“It’s okay,” I told him.
He hummed.
That hum wasn’t sound.
It was vibration.
It meant safe.
And he believed us.
5. The Promise
We didn’t call the sheriff.
Because the men who shot her were coming back.
And if they found him alive, they would take him.
If we called authorities, he’d be sedated, tagged, locked in a room with a drain in the floor.
So Evelyn whispered to the mother’s body, “I’ll take care of him. I swear.”
And she carried him home.
I stayed.
We buried his mother before the hunters returned.
That was the first line I crossed.
We kept that promise for six years and four months.
6. Raising Him
We hid him.
The cellar under the shop became his room. Hay bales. Quilts. Old couch cushions. A stock tank for water.
He slept hard. Woke panicked. Clicked fast until Evelyn touched his face and said, “Mommy’s here.”
He imprinted to her immediately.
He learned Hannah next. Wrapped his arms around her shoulders from behind like a weighted blanket.
With Caleb, he watched. Studied hands. Copied movements.
One night, he brought me food first.
That’s social behavior.
That’s family.
He understood words. Tone. Good.
He loved good.
He learned quiet game. Cover mouth. No sound.
Quiet game was survival.
He grew fast. Too fast.
In six months, he went from toddler-sized to chest-high on Evelyn.
He needed trees.
We took him out at night.
He pressed his palms to bark like he was listening.
He built teepee branch markers everywhere.
Then one night, he slipped us.
7. The Trap
Fog. Cold. Fifteen seconds.
Gone.
Then the panic clicking.
Flashlights.
Men whispering.
He was running upright, limping, a metal trap clamped on his ankle, chain dragging.
They shot him.
He fell.
We ran.
He clicked once when he heard me.
Soft.
I put my hand on his chest.
Evelyn held his face.
He hummed once.
Then he let go.
He died with our hands on him.
They blamed us before his body cooled.
We buried him next to his mother.
8. After
The sheriff came. Smiled. Rewrote it.
The town rewrote it.
We became the problem.
That’s gaslighting.
Here’s the truth.
He was real.
He was a kid.
He trusted us.
And he died scared, calling for us.
If you go into the woods with a rifle and a camera looking for monsters—
You are not a hero.
You are not doing science.
You are killing someone’s child.
And if you can live with that, then the monster in those woods was never him.
It was you.
