THE SHADOW OF APPALACHIA: My 7-Foot Guardian From The Deep Woods
The Appalachian Mountains are not just a range of ancient, rolling peaks; they are a sprawling, emerald cathedral that swallows the sunlight and whispers in a language only the lonely understand. Back in late October 2019, deep in the rugged heart of Western North Carolina, I was sixty-seven years old, a man whose skin had become as weathered as the hemlock bark surrounding my home. I lived in a cabin I’d spent thirty years building with my own two calloused hands, a sanctuary perched two miles up a treacherous gravel road that the mountain tried to reclaim every spring with mud and fury. The white oaks were so thick here that you could live your whole life and never see the smoke from a neighbor’s chimney, a solitude I had cherished ever since my wife passed away in 1989. I had my two dogs, an old ’67 Mustang I’d restored over fifteen years of painstaking weekends, and a thermal camera I’d bought on a whim—a piece of technology that was about to shatter my understanding of the natural world forever.
The Night the Screen Blew My Mind
The weather had turned cruel and cold early that year, with frost creeping over the ridge in September, and I remember the rhythmic pattering of rain on my tin roof the night the impossible happened. I was sitting in my worn leather chair by the wood stove, the cabin filled with the comforting scent of cedar and woodsmoke, when a flash of movement on my thermal monitor caught my eye. The camera, mounted on the porch rail, was designed to spot coyotes, but what appeared on the screen made my heart hammer against my ribs like a trapped bird. It was a heat signature, bright orange and pulsating yellow against the cold purple of the forest, shaped unmistakably like a man—but it was far too tall, far too broad, and standing with a stillness that felt predatory. For eleven agonizing minutes, I watched this giant shadow linger just beyond the treeline, sixty yards out, before it stepped back into the darkness with a grace that defied its massive bulk.
My routine had always been simple: wake at dawn, feed the dogs, check the perimeter, and lose myself in the guts of small engines or the pages of a book. But after that night, the simplicity was gone, replaced by a haunting awareness of the thousands of acres of national forest land that backed up against my property—territory where a man could walk for days and never see another soul. I had bought the thermal camera because the coyotes were getting bolder, their yips and howls drawing closer to my porch, but the footage I now held on an old SD card was no canine. I thought the hardest part of this ordeal would be deciding whether to keep that secret, but I quickly realized that the secret didn’t want to stay hidden; it wanted to be heard.
Heavy Footsteps in the Cold Mud
The dogs wouldn’t settle the following morning, their ears perpetually pinned back and their whines low and vibrating in their chests. We walked the treeline together, my hand gripping the cold steel of my rifle, searching for any physical proof that my mind hadn’t played a trick on me in the rainy gloom. Near a fallen hemlock, I found them: prints so massive they looked like a joke, sunk deep into the cold, sticky mud. They were fifteen inches long and seven inches wide, with five distinct, terrifyingly human-like toe impressions that had pressed into the earth with the weight of something far exceeding three hundred pounds. The stride length between the prints was nearly five feet, a distance no human could cover without a literal leap, and as I traced the edge of the cold mud with my finger, a chill that had nothing to do with the October air settled into my marrow.
“Folks talked about things in the woods—things that knocked on trees, left tracks, and took livestock. My grandfather used to tell stories about hunters who’d come back from the deep forest talking about a smell like rotting meat and wet fur, but I’d never believed it. Not until now.”
I covered the prints with plywood and weighed it down with rocks, a desperate attempt to preserve the evidence while I wrestled with the implications. I called the ranger station that afternoon, speaking to a woman named Carla, asking about trespassers or illegal campers, but she reported nothing but silence. It seemed the mountain was only talking to me. That night, the silence of the forest was shattered by three deliberate knocks—knock, knock, knock—echoing from the south side of the cabin, spaced exactly five seconds apart. It wasn’t the sound of a falling branch; it was rhythmic, intentional, and carried a weight that made the very walls of my home vibrate.
The Scent of Decay and the Glowing Eyes
When the knocks returned three nights later, they moved with a terrifying intelligence, coming from the west, then the south, and then from directly behind the cabin, so close I could feel the thud in my teeth. I stepped out onto the porch once, the motion sensor light flooding the yard with a harsh, artificial glare, and that was when the smell hit me—an overwhelming wave of wet fur and organic decay, like a carcass left to rot under a summer sun. The air was thirty-five degrees, and my breath hitched as the stench rolled over me, forcing me back inside where I wedged a chair under the door handle. I was no longer just a spectator; I was being signaled, marked by a creature that seemed to be claiming the very ground I had built my life upon.
Driven by a mix of fear and an old man’s stubborn curiosity, I mounted a motion-activated trail camera thirty yards out, hoping for a clear image to validate my sanity. By Sunday night, the camera had captured forty-three clips of mundane forest life, but clip number forty-four, timestamped at 2:47 a.m., was different. The infrared flash revealed two eyes glowing with a haunting, internal light, positioned seven feet off the ground, staring directly into the lens with a piercing intelligence. The shape then moved out of the frame with a speed that was physically impossible for a creature of that size, leaving me with nothing but a blurry image and a growing sense of dread.
The Uninvited Guests and the Forest’s Fury
Things took a dangerous turn when two men appeared in my driveway, their flashlights cutting through the dark like serrated blades. They claimed to be interested in my ’67 Mustang, but their eyes wandered too much, sizing up the cabin and the distance to the nearest neighbor. I sent them away at gunpoint, but I knew they’d be back; the mountain road was a lonely place for a man with a forty-thousand-dollar car and no one to hear him scream. Sure enough, around midnight, I heard their whispers in the trees and the flicker of their lights, but before they could reach my porch, the forest itself seemed to intervene.
The same three knocks I had feared now sounded like a war drum, and then, a massive shape emerged from the shadows at the edge of the porch light. It stood seven and a half feet tall, shoulders broader than any man’s, covered in dark hair that seemed to swallow the light around it. The two would-be thieves froze, one letting out a strangled gasp, before they turned and sprinted back toward the road, crashing through the underbrush in a blind, sobbing panic. The creature didn’t chase them; it simply stood there, watching them go, and then turned its massive head toward me, emitting a low, resonating hum that felt like a vibration in my own chest—a sound of acknowledgement, a sentinel’s salute.
An Unlikely Alliance: The Gift of the Stone
The fear that had gripped me for weeks began to evaporate, replaced by a profound sense of gratitude; the monster of the woods had become my protector. To show my thanks, I began leaving offerings on a stump near my wood pile—apples, jerky, and bread—and every morning, the food was gone, replaced by neat pyramids of river stones or woven circles of grapevine. This was a silent commerce, a treaty signed in the shadow of the hemlocks between a man who had lost everything and a creature that the world insisted didn’t exist. I saw him clearly in the full light of day after a massive ice storm, a titan of brown fur helping me clear a fallen oak from my path, moving logs with a casual strength that left me breathless.
As winter deepened and the snow buried the Appalachian trails, the bond only strengthened. I stopped using the cameras; I didn’t need “proof” for a world that wouldn’t believe me anyway. I had a neighbor now, one who watched over my cabin while the wind howled through the pines, and who left small gifts of feathers and carved wood to let me know I wasn’t alone. When Ranger Carla returned in the spring, asking if I’d seen anything unusual, I looked her in the eye and lied, protecting the secret of the mountain with a fierce, quiet loyalty. I still have that SD card in my desk drawer, but I know now that the footage isn’t the real treasure; the real treasure is the hum in the dark and the knowledge that even in the deepest isolation, something is watching out for us.
The Language of the Unseen
As the weeks turned into months, the communication between the cabin and the treeline evolved from simple knocks into a complex, silent language. I began to notice that the stone pyramids—cairns, as I called them—were not placed randomly. Each one had a specific orientation. If the apex stone pointed toward the creek, it meant a heavy storm was rolling in from the valley. If the stones were spread in a circle, it was a warning of a predator nearby, likely a cougar or a particularly aggressive black bear. This wasn’t just a beast; this was a cartographer of the wild, a being that understood the rhythm of the earth far better than any GPS or weather satellite. I spent my evenings studying these markers, realized that I had spent thirty years in these woods as a stranger, while he had been the true master all along.
One evening, the temperature plummeted so fast the windows groaned in their frames. I left a bowl of warm beef stew on the stump—a luxury compared to the raw apples I usually offered. The next morning, the bowl was not only empty but washed clean with melted snow, placed precisely back on my porch steps. Beside it lay a heavy, translucent piece of raw quartz, the size of a grapefruit. It was a stone that didn’t belong in this strata of the mountain; it must have been carried from miles away, from the deep veins of the earth where only the ancient things dwell. It was a payment. A trade. I realized then that “He” (I had started thinking of him as The Elder) had a sense of honor that put most men to shame.
The Night the Mountain Screamed
In late January, the “peace” of our arrangement was tested by something far more sinister than two-bit thieves. A pack of “coywolves”—huge, aggressive hybrids—had moved into the national forest. They weren’t like the local coyotes that would scurry at the sight of a rifle. These were starving, desperate, and hunting in a coordinated pack of twelve. They began circling the cabin at 3:00 AM, their howls sounding like distorted human screams. My dogs, usually brave, were huddled under my bed, vibrating with a primal terror I had never seen before. I stood by the window, my Winchester loaded, watching dozens of yellow eyes reflecting the moonlight from the darkness of the oaks.
Just as the alpha lunged toward my porch, a sound erupted from the woods that I can only describe as a “sonic boom” of organic origin. It was a roar, but it started so low it was a vibration in the ground before it became a sound in the air. The very glass in my windows rattled. From the shadow of the giant hemlock, a massive bipedal shape launched itself with the speed of a freight train. I didn’t see a fight; I saw a displacement of nature. The Elder didn’t use tools; he used pure, terrifying physics. I saw coywolves being tossed twenty feet into the air like ragdolls. There were no yips or barks—only the sound of snapping branches and the heavy, rhythmic thud of something massive moving through the brush. Within seconds, the pack was gone, the survivors fleeing so fast they left trails of fur in the briars. The Elder stood in the center of my yard, his chest heaving, his silhouette blocking out the stars. He didn’t look at the cabin. He simply turned and vanished back into the gloom, leaving me with a debt I knew I could never repay.
The Anatomy of a Ghost
Curiosity eventually got the better of my fear. I am a man of mechanics, a man who restored a ’67 Mustang bolt by bolt, and I needed to understand what I was seeing. I began taking the hairs I found caught on the bark of the “knocking trees” and examining them under a basic microscope I’d kept from my days as an engineer. The results were chilling. The hairs weren’t like bear fur, which is coarse and hollow. These were more like human hair but with a much thicker medulla, designed for extreme insulation. They were a deep, burnt amber color, fading to a frosty grey at the tips.
But it was the prints that told the real story. I began taking plaster casts under the cover of night. When you look at a footprint that is 15 inches long, you notice things the cameras miss. The “mid-tarsal break”—a flexibility in the middle of the foot that humans lost millions of years ago. This allowed the creature to move silently over uneven terrain, wrapping its foot around logs and rocks like a giant primate. I realized I wasn’t looking at a “missing link.” I was looking at the ultimate version of a primate—one that had evolved to be the perfect ghost of the forest. I kept these casts in a hidden compartment beneath the floorboards of the garage, right next to the Mustang. Two secrets, one of steel and one of bone.
The Secret of the USB Drive: A Moral Dilemma
As 2020 approached, the world outside was descending into chaos with the pandemic, but up on the mountain, life was more real than ever. I spent hours reviewing the 11-minute thermal footage. If I leaked this, I knew what would happen. The gravel road would be paved. Reality TV crews would descend with their bright lights and loud voices. Scientists would come with tranquilizer darts and cages. They would turn my sanctuary into a circus and my friend into a specimen. I watched the screen—the way the creature shifted its weight, the way it seemed to tilt its head as if listening to the very heartbeat of the mountain.
I felt a heavy burden of history. How many others had seen him? How many had died carrying the secret, or worse, had been laughed into insanity? I realized that the footage on that SD card was a weapon. If it fell into the wrong hands, it would be the end of The Elder. I took the USB drive and encased it in a waterproof pelican case. I didn’t destroy it, but I didn’t keep it in the cabin anymore. I hiked to a specific rock outcropping—the one where the prints always disappeared—and tucked it into a deep crevice, sealing it with natural resin. If I died, the mountain would keep the secret until someone was “worthy” enough to find it.
The Final Winter: A Silent Goodbye
By the winter of 2021, my health began to fail. The damp mountain air that I had loved for decades was now a weight on my lungs. My joints ached, and splitting wood became a Herculean task. One morning, I collapsed in the snow while trying to haul a log. I lay there for what felt like hours, the cold seeping into my core, the sky turning a dull, bruised purple. I thought, This is it. This is how the mountain takes me back.
I felt a shadow fall over me. It wasn’t the cold shadow of death, but something warm. Massive, calloused hands—hands that could crush a bowling ball—reached under my arms and lifted me as if I were a child. I didn’t look up. I didn’t need to. I smelled the familiar scent of rain, pine resin, and that old, musky musk. He carried me to the porch and set me down gently in my chair. When I finally found the strength to open my eyes, he was gone, but a pile of split wood—perfectly sized for my stove—was stacked neatly by the door. He didn’t just protect my property; he was keeping me alive.
Epilogue: The Legacy of the Gray Man
I’m seventy-two now. The Mustang is under a tarp, and the dogs have grown old and grey. I don’t hear the knocks as often anymore, but every now and then, on a night when the moon is thin and the wind is high, I’ll hear a single thud on the back wall. I’ll walk to the window and see a single, large stone sitting on the porch rail.
People ask me if I’m lonely out here. I just smile and look toward the thickets of white oak and hemlock. The world thinks it has mapped every corner of the earth, that there are no mysteries left. They are wrong. There is a king in these woods, a silent guardian who asks for nothing but respect and the occasional apple. I am the keeper of his story, and though I will take the location of that USB drive to my grave, I sleep soundly knowing that the Shadow of Appalachia is still out there, walking the ridges, watching the stars, and making sure the mountain stays wild.
The Cathedral of Bones: Finding the Unspeakable
By the summer of 2022, a strange, obsessive pull began to tug at the corners of my mind. I had been a guest in these mountains for thirty years, and a neighbor to The Elder for three, but I had never dared to cross the invisible threshold into his world. I knew where his tracks vanished—at the great limestone shelf three miles south—but I had never followed the “hush” that seemed to fall over the forest beyond that point. One Tuesday, fueled by a mixture of late-stage curiosity and the reckless courage that comes with a failing heart, I packed a bag with extra water, a compass, and a peace offering of wild honey and honeycomb. I wasn’t going as a hunter; I was going as a pilgrim.
The trek was grueling. The terrain changed as I moved deeper into the unmapped heart of the national forest. The trees here were different—older, gnarled, their branches interlocking like the vaulted ceiling of a gothic cathedral. The birds stopped singing. Even the insects seemed to hold their breath. Then, I saw it: a “structure” that no human architect would ever conceive. It was a massive archway made of three uprooted saplings, their tops twisted together and woven with thick ropes of grapevine. It wasn’t a shelter; it was a boundary. As I stepped beneath it, the air grew ten degrees cooler, and the scent of the forest changed from pine to something deep, loamy, and ancient.
The Secret Library of the Woods
Beyond the archway lay a hidden box canyon, shielded by a waterfall that whispered against the rocks. And there, tucked into the dry earth beneath a massive overhang, was the “Library.” I call it that because I don’t know what else to call a collection of objects that were clearly curated with intent. There were rows of bleached animal skulls—deer, elk, cougar—all arranged by size. There were piles of “pretty” things: pieces of blue sea glass, a rusted hubcap from a 1940s truck, and a collection of feathers from every bird that flew over the ridge. This was his history. This was his museum of the world above.
In the center of this display sat something that made me drop to my knees. It was an old, rusted pocket watch, the glass shattered, the brass tarnished green. I recognized it instantly. It was the watch my grandfather had lost forty years ago when he was hunting in these very same ridges. I remembered him crying about it—a gift from his own father. To see it here, polished and placed in a position of honor, was a shock that transcended logic. This creature hadn’t just been watching me; his lineage had been watching mine for generations. We were two families, bound by the same soil, living in parallel dimensions that occasionally bled into one another.
The Breath on My Neck
I spent an hour in that sanctuary, careful not to touch anything, just absorbing the reality of a culture that didn’t need fire, wheel, or steel. I left the honeycomb on a flat altar-stone near the skulls and turned to leave. That’s when the “hush” intensified. The wind died completely. I felt a presence so massive, so physically heavy, that the air felt thick enough to swim in. I didn’t turn around. I knew he was there, standing just inside the mouth of the cave, watching me discover his heart.
I felt a huff of air against the back of my neck—a breath that smelled of wild ramps and earth. It wasn’t a threat. It was a sigh. I stood perfectly still for three minutes, my eyes fixed on the distant treeline. I spoke into the silence, my voice cracking with emotion: “I won’t tell them. Your home is safe with me.” A low, vibrating trill—almost like the purr of a mountain lion but deeper, more melodic—echoed through the canyon. When I finally dared to turn, the cave was empty. Only the honeycomb remained, and beside it, a single, perfect hawk feather.
The Warning: The Coming of the Storm
That autumn, the mountain didn’t just whisper; it screamed. A hurricane had turned inland, losing its wind but carrying a catastrophic amount of rain toward the Appalachians. The weather reports said we’d be fine, but the stone cairns on my porch told a different story. The Elder had built a pyramid of five stones, all pointed toward the high ridge, and for the first time, he had left a branch of snapped laurel across my doorway. In mountain lore, laurel means “death by water.” He was telling me to leave.
I looked at my cabin, the house I’d built with my wife, the garage where my Mustang slept. I didn’t want to go. But at midnight, the knocks came—not three, but a frantic, continuous pounding on the side of the house. I opened the door to a wall of rain and saw a dark shape pointing toward the road. He wasn’t hiding anymore. He was urgent. I grabbed my dogs, my rifle, and the keys to the truck, leaving the Mustang behind. As I drove down the gravel road, I looked in the rearview mirror. In a flash of lightning, I saw him standing on the roof of my cabin, his massive arms raised as if trying to hold back the very sky.
The Aftermath: Beauty in the Ruins
The floods of 2024 were the worst in a century. My road washed out entirely, and the creek became a river that carved a new path through the valley. When I finally made it back a week later, hiking in through the mud and debris, I expected to find my life in ruins. The lower half of my property was gone—trees uprooted, the garden buried in silt. But the cabin… the cabin was untouched. The water had reached the very edge of the porch and then, miraculously, had been diverted.
A massive levee of boulders and fallen logs had been constructed overnight, just upstream of the house. It was a feat of engineering that would have required a bulldozer and a crew of ten. But there were no tire tracks. There were only the massive, deep indentations of feet in the mud, and the scent of wet fur that still hung in the air. He had saved my home. He had fought the mountain itself to protect the old man who brought him apples. I walked into my garage, and there was the Mustang, dry and safe, its chrome reflecting the morning sun.
The Eternal Watchman
I am writing this now by the light of a kerosene lamp, as the power hasn’t been restored yet. My hands shake as I type, but my heart is full. I know my time is short—the doctors in town gave me a year, maybe less. But I am not afraid of the dark anymore. I am not afraid of the silence. I know that when my breath finally leaves me, and the dogs bark their final alarm, there will be someone there to catch me.
The USB drive is still in the rock. The footprints are still in the mud. And out there, just beyond the reach of my porch light, the Shadow of Appalachia is waiting. He is the guardian of the secrets we aren’t ready to know, the bridge between the world we built and the world that was here before us. If you ever find yourself in the deep woods of North Carolina, and you hear three knocks in the night, don’t run. Don’t reach for your camera. Just listen. He’s not a monster. He’s just a neighbor you haven’t met yet.
The Cathedral of Bones: Finding the Unspeakable
By the summer of 2022, a strange, obsessive pull began to tug at the corners of my mind. I had been a guest in these mountains for thirty years, and a neighbor to The Elder for three, but I had never dared to cross the invisible threshold into his world. I knew where his tracks vanished—at the great limestone shelf three miles south—but I had never followed the “hush” that seemed to fall over the forest beyond that point. One Tuesday, fueled by a mixture of late-stage curiosity and the reckless courage that comes with a failing heart, I packed a bag with extra water, a compass, and a peace offering of wild honey and honeycomb. I wasn’t going as a hunter; I was going as a pilgrim.
The trek was grueling. The terrain changed as I moved deeper into the unmapped heart of the national forest. The trees here were different—older, gnarled, their branches interlocking like the vaulted ceiling of a gothic cathedral. The birds stopped singing. Even the insects seemed to hold their breath. Then, I saw it: a “structure” that no human architect would ever conceive. It was a massive archway made of three uprooted saplings, their tops twisted together and woven with thick ropes of grapevine. It wasn’t a shelter; it was a boundary. As I stepped beneath it, the air grew ten degrees cooler, and the scent of the forest changed from pine to something deep, loamy, and ancient.
The Secret Library of the Woods
Beyond the archway lay a hidden box canyon, shielded by a waterfall that whispered against the rocks. And there, tucked into the dry earth beneath a massive overhang, was the “Library.” I call it that because I don’t know what else to call a collection of objects that were clearly curated with intent. There were rows of bleached animal skulls—deer, elk, cougar—all arranged by size. There were piles of “pretty” things: pieces of blue sea glass, a rusted hubcap from a 1940s truck, and a collection of feathers from every bird that flew over the ridge. This was his history. This was his museum of the world above.
In the center of this display sat something that made me drop to my knees. It was an old, rusted pocket watch, the glass shattered, the brass tarnished green. I recognized it instantly. It was the watch my grandfather had lost forty years ago when he was hunting in these very same ridges. I remembered him crying about it—a gift from his own father. To see it here, polished and placed in a position of honor, was a shock that transcended logic. This creature hadn’t just been watching me; his lineage had been watching mine for generations. We were two families, bound by the same soil, living in parallel dimensions that occasionally bled into one another.
The Breath on My Neck
I spent an hour in that sanctuary, careful not to touch anything, just absorbing the reality of a culture that didn’t need fire, wheel, or steel. I left the honeycomb on a flat altar-stone near the skulls and turned to leave. That’s when the “hush” intensified. The wind died completely. I felt a presence so massive, so physically heavy, that the air felt thick enough to swim in. I didn’t turn around. I knew he was there, standing just inside the mouth of the cave, watching me discover his heart.
I felt a huff of air against the back of my neck—a breath that smelled of wild ramps and earth. It wasn’t a threat. It was a sigh. I stood perfectly still for three minutes, my eyes fixed on the distant treeline. I spoke into the silence, my voice cracking with emotion: “I won’t tell them. Your home is safe with me.” A low, vibrating trill—almost like the purr of a mountain lion but deeper, more melodic—echoed through the canyon. When I finally dared to turn, the cave was empty. Only the honeycomb remained, and beside it, a single, perfect hawk feather.
The Warning: The Coming of the Storm
That autumn, the mountain didn’t just whisper; it screamed. A hurricane had turned inland, losing its wind but carrying a catastrophic amount of rain toward the Appalachians. The weather reports said we’d be fine, but the stone cairns on my porch told a different story. The Elder had built a pyramid of five stones, all pointed toward the high ridge, and for the first time, he had left a branch of snapped laurel across my doorway. In mountain lore, laurel means “death by water.” He was telling me to leave.
I looked at my cabin, the house I’d built with my wife, the garage where my Mustang slept. I didn’t want to go. But at midnight, the knocks came—not three, but a frantic, continuous pounding on the side of the house. I opened the door to a wall of rain and saw a dark shape pointing toward the road. He wasn’t hiding anymore. He was urgent. I grabbed my dogs, my rifle, and the keys to the truck, leaving the Mustang behind. As I drove down the gravel road, I looked in the rearview mirror. In a flash of lightning, I saw him standing on the roof of my cabin, his massive arms raised as if trying to hold back the very sky.
The Aftermath: Beauty in the Ruins
The floods of 2024 were the worst in a century. My road washed out entirely, and the creek became a river that carved a new path through the valley. When I finally made it back a week later, hiking in through the mud and debris, I expected to find my life in ruins. The lower half of my property was gone—trees uprooted, the garden buried in silt. But the cabin… the cabin was untouched. The water had reached the very edge of the porch and then, miraculously, had been diverted.
A massive levee of boulders and fallen logs had been constructed overnight, just upstream of the house. It was a feat of engineering that would have required a bulldozer and a crew of ten. But there were no tire tracks. There were only the massive, deep indentations of feet in the mud, and the scent of wet fur that still hung in the air. He had saved my home. He had fought the mountain itself to protect the old man who brought him apples. I walked into my garage, and there was the Mustang, dry and safe, its chrome reflecting the morning sun.
The Eternal Watchman
I am writing this now by the light of a kerosene lamp, as the power hasn’t been restored yet. My hands shake as I type, but my heart is full. I know my time is short—the doctors in town gave me a year, maybe less. But I am not afraid of the dark anymore. I am not afraid of the silence. I know that when my breath finally leaves me, and the dogs bark their final alarm, there will be someone there to catch me.
The USB drive is still in the rock. The footprints are still in the mud. And out there, just beyond the reach of my porch light, the Shadow of Appalachia is waiting. He is the guardian of the secrets we aren’t ready to know, the bridge between the world we built and the world that was here before us. If you ever find yourself in the deep woods of North Carolina, and you hear three knocks in the night, don’t run. Don’t reach for your camera. Just listen. He’s not a monster. He’s just a neighbor you haven’t met yet.
