About this episode
Tonight we will be speaking to Seth and Seth writes "I grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia, and went to college there too. That's where this story took place. It's not a Bigfoot encounter at least I don't think it is. Honestly, I'm not sure what kind of encounter it was. All I know is that it happened to me. I've often wished someone could explain it, tell me what it was or what it meant. It happened on October 31, 2001, under a full blue moon, along one of the quietest stretches of the Blue Ridge Parkway. At the time, I was driving a 1970 Chevy Bel Air an old steel boat of a car and I had pulled into the James River overlook near Goff Mountain Road. It was close to midnight. The moon was so bright it almost felt like daytime. *]:pointer-events-auto scroll-mt-[calc(var(--header-height)+min(200px,max(70px,20svh)))]" dir="auto" tabindex="-1" data-turn-id= "request-WEB:42ff6ed2-a3bd-4a8a-8c35-2553e0dc54fb-0" data-testid= "conversation-turn-2" data-scroll-anchor="true" data-turn= "assistant"> I shut the engine off and decided to stretch my legs. There's a small trail there that leads down toward a bench maybe a hundred yards from the parking area. I'd spent a lot of time in the woods so being out in the forest at night didn't bother me. I knew what normal nighttime woods felt like. And I also knew when something felt off. As I walked down the trail, the stillness felt unnatural. No breeze. No insects. No rustling. Nothing. I sat on the bench and looked through the bare branches while the moonlight spilled across the slope below. It was beautiful, but something about it felt wrong. Like I was being watched. Then I heard a Snap. A single limb breaking somewhere downslope, maybe fifty to a hundred yards away toward the Bellamy Creek drainage. At first I didn't think much of it deer snap branches all the time. Then it happened again. And again. What caught my attention wasn't just the sound it was the pattern. The breaks started coming from different directions. Not like one animal moving through the woods. I counted five, maybe ten distinct snaps, each spaced about four or five seconds apart. Then the timing changed. The snaps started coming faster… one every second or two… and they seemed to be moving in a circle around me. That was enough. Instinct kicked in, and I stood up and headed back to the car. When I got inside the car, I didn't start the engine right away. I just sat there with the keys in the ignition, ready to leave if I needed to. At first, nothing happened. Then something hit the hood. It sounded exactly like a Douglas fir cone hitting steel hard, solid, unmistakable. The problem was that there were no
