The Whistle in the Hollow: A Scary Bigfoot Story

An Everything Bigfoot™ Campfire Tale: an original work of fiction. The people, places and events in this story are invented. It is inspired by the kinds of sounds people commonly describe in Bigfoot reports, not by any real case.

My brother Wade says I tell this story wrong. He says I make it scarier than it was.

He's wrong. If anything, I leave things out.

It was the second week of October, the year I turned sixteen and Wade turned nineteen. Our granddad had left us a piece of land, forty acres of nothing at the end of a gravel road that stopped being gravel about a mile before you got there. The family always called it "the hollow," like there was only one in the whole state.

A hollow, if you didn't grow up with them, is a narrow valley tucked between two ridges. The sun gets in late and leaves early. There was a creek down the middle, a stand of rhododendron so thick you could lose a dog in it, and a falling-down tobacco barn that had been falling down since before our father was born.

We drove out on a Friday after school with a two-man tent, a cooler, a box of hot dogs and Granddad's old lantern. Wade wanted to see if the barn roof would last another winter. I wanted to not be at home. Those were our reasons, and neither of them had anything to do with what happened.

We got the fire going just as the light went orange. The ridges on both sides turned black first, then the trees along the creek, then everything except the fire.

Wade was poking hot dogs with a stick when we heard it.

It was a whistle. One long, clean note that rose at the end, like someone calling a dog across a field. It came from up the hollow, the direction of the barn.

Wade looked at me. I looked at him.

"Somebody's out here," he said.

That was the sensible answer. Hunters cut through the hollow sometimes. Kids from the next ridge over rode four-wheelers on the logging road. A whistle is a person sound. That's what I told myself.

Wade put two fingers in his mouth and whistled back. He was always good at that; he could make a whistle crack off the ridges like a rifle shot.

For a while there was nothing. The fire popped. The creek talked to itself.

Then the whistle came again. Same note, same rise at the end.

But it was closer.

People ask me what else it could have been, and I've had years to think about it, so here's the list.

It wasn't an owl. I know owls. Barred owls do that "who-cooks-for-you" call, and screech owls make a little horse whinny. This wasn't either one.

It wasn't a bird at all, I don't think. It was too big. You can tell the size of a sound sometimes, the way it fills up a space. This one filled up the whole hollow.

It wasn't a hunter, because a hunter would have said something. You don't walk up on somebody's fire in the dark and just whistle. Not where we're from. Not if you want to keep walking.

And it wasn't an echo of Wade, because the second whistle didn't sound like his. His went up sharp and quick. This one went up slow, like it was thinking about it.

Wade didn't whistle a third time. He went quiet in a way I'd never seen, and I'd seen him get thrown off a horse and pretend it didn't hurt.

We sat there with the fire between us and the dark all around. After maybe ten minutes, I started to feel silly. I was reaching for a hot dog when we heard the knock.

Tok.

Wood on wood. Hard, like somebody swung a baseball bat into a tree trunk. It came from the ridge on our left, high up.

Then, from the ridge on our right, lower down:

Tok.

Wade stood up. He took the lantern off the cooler and turned it up as high as it would go, and the light pushed out about thirty feet before the trees ate it.

"Hey!" he yelled. "We're on our own land! We got a right to be here!"

Nothing answered. Not a whistle, not a knock. The creek even seemed quieter.

That was almost worse.

We should have left then. We didn't, because Wade's truck was parked a mile back where the road gave out, and a mile in the dark felt a lot longer than a night in a tent.

So we let the fire burn down low and crawled into the tent with our boots on. Wade kept the lantern on, set low, and his granddad's old pocketknife open in his hand like it would do anything.

I don't know how long I lay there. Long enough for my heart to slow down. Long enough to almost fall asleep.

Then the smell came.

I've tried to describe it. The closest I've gotten is: wet dog, rotten leaves and the inside of an old barn, all at once, so strong it was like a taste. It came through the tent walls like they weren't there.

Wade's hand found my arm in the dark and squeezed.

Something was walking around the tent.

It wasn't loud. That's what I remember most. I expected crashing, branches breaking, the kind of noise a bear makes going through brush. This was slow. Careful. A step, and then a long wait, and then another step, the leaves pressing down under something heavy and then sighing back up.

It went all the way around us. Once.

Then it stopped, right by my head, on the other side of a sheet of nylon thinner than a T-shirt.

I could hear it breathing.

I will tell you exactly what I heard, and you can decide for yourself.

It breathed in, long and slow, like it was smelling us the way we were smelling it.

Then, so close I felt it in my teeth, it whistled. The same note. The same slow rise at the end.

But softer this time. Almost gentle. Like it was answering a question we hadn't known we'd asked.

Then the footsteps went away up the hollow, toward the barn, unhurried, and the smell went with them, and the creek started talking again.

We didn't sleep. When the sky went gray, we packed the tent in about four minutes and walked out to the truck without saying a word.

On the way we passed the barn. Wade stopped. One of the big oak boards on the side, a board that had hung loose for twenty years, was lying in the grass. It wasn't broken. It looked like it had been set down.

Near it, in the soft mud along the creek, was a mark. I'm not going to tell you it was a footprint. I didn't measure it. I didn't take a picture. I was sixteen and scared and all I wanted was the truck.

But I'll tell you it was big. And I'll tell you there was only one.

Wade says it was kids from the next ridge playing a joke. Maybe. He also never went back to the hollow, not once, and he sold his half of the land to me three years later for a price that made our mother cry.

I go back every October. I build a fire in the same spot. I don't bring hot dogs.

And sometimes, about the time the ridges turn black, I put two fingers in my mouth and whistle one long note, rising at the end.

I've never gotten an answer.

I'm still not sure if I want one.

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This is a work of fiction written for the Everything Bigfoot™ Campfire Tales series. Wade, the narrator and the hollow are invented. The details are drawn from the kinds of things people often describe in Bigfoot reports: whistles, wood knocks, a strong smell and slow, careful footsteps. Many of those sounds have ordinary explanations, and our upcoming guide to Bigfoot sounds vs. animal sounds walks through owls, foxes, coyotes and more.

If you ever hear something in the woods that you can't explain, write it down while it's fresh. Our guide on how to report a Bigfoot sighting shows you what to record. For the real folklore behind the hills, read our Appalachian Bigfoot guide.