30 Years of Secrets – You Won’t Believe What Was Living in His Shed Until the Police Came

My name is Dale Mercer. I’m 59 now, slower in the knees, hands like knotty pine. I live in Forks, Washington. Late October 2019 is when everything changed, but my mind always drifts back to October 1989—the first frost, cedar smoke, and three knocks from the treeline. Not a woodpecker, not wind. Hollow, deliberate. There was a smell I can’t forget: wet fur and crushed salal, like the woods themselves were breathing.

I told myself it was elk, a prank, anything but what I feared. But the knocks kept coming, and I still have the old flip phone with a recording. I hear them in my sleep.

September 1989. Drizzle on the windows. I was making lunch for my son—peanut butter, white bread—while the local radio debated “the thing up by Ho River.” Bigfoot, some caller said. I laughed it off. At the mill, Arie called it tourist bait. I agreed, easier than thinking too hard. We stacked cedar, rain ticking on the tin roof. Ordinary.

That night, I fixed the sag on the back steps. The forest sat black beyond the alder line. I told myself I didn’t believe in Bigfoot. City people’s shadows and boredom. I checked the locks twice. Felt foolish. Slept light.

At two a.m., I woke to silence, heavy as wool. My boy didn’t stir. I lay listening—clock ticking, fridge humming. Then: three knocks, spaced and deliberate, near the shed. I told myself it was a branch, settling wood. I didn’t get up.

October. Gulls crying, smell of salt and wet bark. Leona at the Chevron mentioned campers hearing low whoops near South Fork Ho. “You and your Bigfoot stories,” she teased. I bought coffee and nails. Fog thinned near my turnoff; I saw the old shed, tin roof, warped door. Meant to fix it, never did.

At dinner, my boy, ten, asked if bears knock on things. I said no, maybe neighbor kids, though the nearest was a mile away. He frowned, pushed his peas around. We were quiet, listening to the heater cool, rain starting again.

After lights out, the low whoop came. Two notes, rising and falling, then hush. From the treeline, closer than before. My boy called out, “Dad?” “Just an owl,” I lied. “It wasn’t an owl.” I lay awake, counting my heartbeat.

Mid-October. Cold rain slapped the windows. I wove a berry basket, hands busy to keep grief quiet. My boy was at a friend’s house. The room was stove-warm, wood popping. On the radio, a logger claimed he saw Bigfoot cross the highway. “Ten feet, walked like a man, but wrong.” The host laughed. I turned it off.

Around midnight, the smell came—wet fur, sap, thicker, warmer. Porch light hummed. I checked the deadbolt and window latch. Whispered excuses. When it passed, I stood at the window, watching the shed door sway, tapped by nothing I could see. The fridge clicked off. The silence felt patient.

I left the hallway light on for the first time since my wife died.

Late October. First frost. Out by the shed at dawn, breath fogging, crows loud in the alder, I found prints—wide, long, clean edges in the white rime, stepping from the treeline to the shed door. Eighteen inches, five toes. “Bigfoot,” I said out loud. The word felt too small.

A smell hung low—wet dog, crushed fern. My chest tightened. I looked for tricks, boot treads. Nothing. The door frame showed a fresh split, like something big had leaned in. Testing.

I set a basket of apples by the old stump near the shed. Told myself I was feeding deer. When the sun slid behind clouds, I heard two low whoops from the alder. That night, my boy asked why I kept looking out the window. “Raccoon,” I lied. “You look scared, Dad.” I laughed too loud.

Early November. Drizzle, soft and constant. Three hens gone from the coop behind the shed. No blood, no feathers. The door had been lifted, not torn. I crouched, knees popping, smelled that same wet fur. Coyotes tear, raccoons leave evidence. This was different.

My boy asked about bobcats opening latches. “Maybe,” I said, though I knew better. He watched me, knowing I was lying.

I added an extra lock to the shed. Heavy sliding bolt, new screws. Stood inside for a while, breathing. The place felt watched.

That night, the knocks came. One, two, three—spaced like questions. I didn’t open the door. Stood in the dark hallway, hand on the knob. After a long time, a low whoop came from farther off. I didn’t sleep.

Mid-November. Windless. I set one apple on the porch step. Maybe I wanted to trade with the unknown. The knocks came. “No closer,” I said through the door. A shape shifted beyond the alder—darker than dark. The smell was stronger.

In the morning, the apple was gone, and three small stones sat where it had been, stacked neat. Riverstones, smooth, damp. I kept them in my pocket.

That night, I left two apples. In the morning, six stones—the pattern held. Something was counting. Something was answering.

Late November. First snow. Blood, dark and old, on the shed threshold. Inside, the mower tarp had been pulled into a nest. I lifted the tarp edge. The air smelled like wet bark, sweat, winter. A shadow shifted deeper in the dark. A sound came—low, not a growl, not quite a moan. Hurt. I backed away, palms up, empty. I brought apples inside, then back out, hands shaking. I boiled water, grabbed towels, left the shed door unlatched. The knocks didn’t come that night. The silence did.

December. I went into the shed slow, speaking low. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m just leaving this.” I set down oatmeal and a bucket of clean water. My flashlight stayed low. The smell—wet fur, cedar, musk—filled the place.

A hand—broad, dark—came forward from under the tarp, not to grab, just to hover near the steam. My mouth said “Bigfoot” soft, and some of the fear left.

I started a notebook: day, weather, food, sounds, signs. Made rules: don’t touch, don’t photograph, don’t say Bigfoot where my boy can hear. Leave food just inside the shed door. Talk low, respectful.

In return, the hens came back, two of them, left in the coop like an apology. Stacked stones appeared on the porch rail—three flat ones, sometimes with a crow feather tucked under the top stone.

My boy said, “Dad, the shed smells like a wet dog.” “The roof leaks,” I lied. He rolled his eyes.

I started bringing bandages, gauze, antiseptic, tape, tossing them into the shed. In time, the tarp moved without the hurt noise.

1990 to 2019. I aged in that doorway. Apples, fish heads, blackberries in August. When my boy left for the Navy, the house went too quiet. I talked more at the shed door. “I’m here, still here.” Sometimes I found gifts—a line of stacked riverstones, a raven feather, my missing hammer cleaned and oiled. I kept a flip phone charged in the kitchen drawer with a couple short clips, never posted online.

Nights, I still woke at two or three, hand flat on the bedroom wall, counting in the dark. One, two, three.

October 2019. Morning fog, tires on wet gravel, police radio squawking. A woman with a yellow slicker and a black lab paused by the fence, dog sniffing hard toward the shed. “Something’s breathing in your shed,” she said. “Old chest freezer,” I lied.

A week later, two sheriff’s deputies rolled up. The younger one grinned, “People say you got a Bigfoot out here.” The older one’s eyes didn’t smile. He looked at the shed, then at me, then back at the shed. I stood between them and the door frame with the old split. Inside, I heard it—something exhaled, then went still. “Nothing here,” I said. They left.

The dog walker didn’t wave after that. I saw her take a different route. That night, the knocks were far away—one, two, three, distant, maybe a quarter mile into the trees, like a goodbye.

Now, late 2019, rain on the porch, clock ticking in the kitchen. I moved closer to town. The shed sits empty now. I keep the stones in a mason jar, the feather under glass, the woven basket on a hook by the door. The flip phone stays in the drawer.

I say Bigfoot softly now, like a name I borrowed and should return with care. I owe the woods a secret. I owe my boy the quiet I couldn’t keep for myself.

People ask what I saw. I won’t describe a shape or color. I’ll tell you about a voice like vowels, a hand that didn’t touch, a smell of wet cedar and rain, a rule kept for thirty years. Sometimes, when the rain is thin and the porch light hums, I tap the railing—one, two, three—and wait for the space after, for the answer that doesn’t come anymore.