Episode 7 - Monster in the forest and a medical mystery

Speaker A: 00:00:03

Imagine a world teetering on the edge of the familiar, a place where the fabric of the everyday begins to unravel, revealing glimpses of the extraordinary lurking beneath.

You're about to embark on a journey into the enigmatic, where the peculiar and the perplexing intertwine, where every tale twists the mind and tugs at the spirit. It's a descent into the strange, the mysterious, and and the unexplained. This is when reality frays.

New episodes are published every Monday and Thursday, and when Reality Phrase is available everywhere, fine podcasts are found. Before we move on, please hit that Follow or Subscribe button and turn on all reminders so you are alerted when new episodes are released.

Today's episode contains two stories. First up is the Watcher in the Pines, a story about what's hiding in an Arizona forest.

And the second story of the day is the Toxic Lady, a strange tale about a woman who was too dangerous for an emergency room. Now let's get to the stories. This is the Watcher in the Pines. Jake Hensley wasn't built for cities.

At 32, he was a lanky, sun creased loner who had spent his life chasing edges edges of storms, edges of canyons, edges of light. Growing up in Flagstaff, Arizona, he'd been the kid with scabby knees and a thrift store Kodak, snapping aspens in snow or ravens on power lines.

His mother, a diner waitress, had called him her hawk, always watching, never still. His dad, a long gone logger, left him a battered topographical map of Arizona, creased and coffee stained.

That map inspired Jake to photography, then freelance gigs for Arizona highways and outdoor blogs that barely covered his rent and ramen.

The Mogollon Rim was his holy ground, a massive geological feature that sharply divides Arizona between high country to the north and lowland deserts to the south. It's not just a ridge.

It's a dramatic escarpment stretching over 200 miles from west to east, with elevation ranges from 4,000 to over 8,000ft above the desert. He had camped it more times than he could remember, chasing shots of elk against its cliffs or the way dawn split its canyons. The monster stories.

He'd heard them all, which he dismissed as Bartok and Payson or X threads from tinfoil hat types, red eyes, big feet, screams, bears and drunks. He'd scoff. Still, he always packed a knife and bear spray, a habit from years alone in the wild.

,: 2023

He had picked Horton Creek for this trip, two hours from home off Forest Road 289, a quiet bend where the ponderosas thickened and the creek whispered through limestone. Three nights solo, a chance to reset his Nikon hung around his neck, a journal and pencil in his pack.

He was determined to get a shot good enough to catch the attention of National Geographic. Day one was perfect.

He pitched his tent in a quiring ringed by pines, their needles a soft rust underfoot snapped a mule deer buck at dusk, antlers velvet black against the orange glow, then cooked beans over a fire that spat sparks into the night. The crickets sang him to sleep, a steady hum blending with the creek's murmur. Day two started crisp.

He brewed coffee on a camp stove, chewed a granola bar, and hiked a mile up the Horton Trail, camera ready. After a long day of exploration and picks that he hoped would come out better than expected, he began the trek back to camp.

Along the way he spied a red tailed hawk soaring high above, hunting for dinner. Raising the camera, he was framing a photo of the hawk as its wings flared and talons glinted. When the world stopped, the breeze quit mid gust.

The hawk banked hard and vanished. No bird calls, no pine needle rustle, just a suffocating stillness that pressed down on him. Jake lowered the camera, his breath shallow.

Then the smell hit a gut twist of rotting fish, wet metal, and something acrid like a battery leaking acid. It clawed his nose, stung his eyes. He turned, scanning the trees. Shadows stretched long, the light bleeding out fast, but nothing moved.

Bear, he muttered, though his gut said no. Bear. Stink was rank, musky. This was sharper, different in a way he couldn't put to words.

He turned back for camp, boots crunching louder in the silence, a prickle crawling up his spine. When he arrived, he paused in surprise. The fire pit was a mess.

Rocks, fist sized chunks he had hauled from the creek way scattered like a bomb had gone off. Ashes dusted the ground. His tent stood untouched, pack still zipped, but the scene gnawed at him. Wind, he said aloud, voiced flat in the dead air.

Shrugging it off, he rebuilt the fire layer, lowered himself onto a camp stool and focused his lens on the tree line. The smell faded, then surged, teasing. Dusk fell heavy, the pines black against a bruised sky.

He ate cold jerky, skipping the stove, and crawled into his tent, unease coiling in his gut. Sleep wouldn't come, and the crickets stayed silent. At 2:14am A twig snapped sharp and close, maybe 20 yards north. Then another, slower, deliberate.

Jake grabbed his flashlight, unzipped the flap with a shaky rasp, and swept the beam. Two red pinpricks flared back, high, too high, 8 or 9ft off the ground, bright as brake lights, then gone. His chest locked. Who's there?

He yelled, voice splintering into the dark. Silence swallowed his call. The flashlight beam trembled, catching pine trunks and underbrush, but no shape and no sound.

He clutched his knife blade out and waited, ears straining. Exhaustion finally dragged him down. He zipped up, curled tight and dozed, dreaming of red eyes boring through the nylon.

Dawn broke, gray mist curling off the creek. Jake stumbled out, bleary and froze. Footprints circled his tent. Big, bare, humanlike but warped.

He knelt by 119 inches, heel to toe, wider than his size 11, boot by half, toes splayed like a starfish, deep an inch into the dirt, heavier than he could press. No claws, just that eerie oversized shape.

His breath fogged as he grabbed the Nikon, snapped 20 shots, zooming on the edges, the texture, the way they looped his camp. Then he saw the nest, 50ft off, under a pine's overhang, a crude bowl of twigs, pinecones and deer hair matted with mud.

Something white gleamed, a rib bone, maybe an elk. The smell hung thick, sour and metallic, choking him. He snapped blurry picks, gagging, and backed away, eyes darting. Coffee didn't happen.

He packed in a frenzy, tent down, bag, stuffed, stove clattering, slung it over his shoulder and hit the trail. The two mile hike to his truck felt endless, pines crowding tighter, their shadows clawing his path.

Halfway down, a rock clattered behind a small fist sized stone bouncing off a trunk. He spun, breath hitching, but there was nothing there. Another rock, bigger, sailed from a thicket and thudded at his feet, rolling to a stop.

Leave me alone. He shouted, voice bouncing off the canyon. A third rock, baseball sized, whistled past his ear, cracking a branch.

Then a scream erupted, a high, warbling wail starting, human dropping to a guttural snarl that shook the air. It echoed through the forest, silencing the world. Jake ran, boots slamming, pack jouncing, lungs burning till he hit the trailhead.

He fumbled his keys, dove into his truck and floored it, dust choking the rear view. Home felt too small that night. Jake dumped the photos onto his laptop, hands still shaky. The prints were stark, too perfect, some would say.

He posted them to X with no caption, just shots. The date and Horton Creek. The thread blew up. Plaster hoax. One guy sniped beartrax. Idiot. Another, a cryptonut dmed him. Muggy on Monster.

You're marked now. But the locals had a different take. A Payson hunter posted that. He saw it in 89 near bear flat. 8ft. Red eyes. Threw a log at my truck. You got off easy.

A retired forest ranger found nests like that in 96 near Blue Ridge. Bones and feathers. Said he never told the brass because it was too weird. An old Payson Roundup scan landed in his inbox.

1973, a hiker claiming a hairy giant impaled a deer skull 10ft up a pine. Same smell, same scream. Sleep became his enemy. He kept the knife on his nightstand, bare spray by the door. Windows locked.

A week later he drove to Payson's Rim Country Tavern, where he showed the pics to an old timer with a Coors and a cough. Monster's real, the guy rasped, eyes cloudy. Watched my camp in 82. Stink like death. Never hurt you. Just want you gone. Best leave it be.

Jake nodded, bought him a beer, and left the man's words looping in his head. The photos he had posted spread. He sold one to weird Arizona for $200, but the cash felt dirty. His journal sat open, half scrawled.

I don't know what it was. Smelled me. Saw me. Circled me. It knew I was there and let me go.

Winter buried the Rim in snow, and Jake stayed home, editing shots in his dim apartment. But the smell crept back. Faint, sour, metallic. Late at night, unbidden, he'd check the locks, scan the dark, and see nothing.

Friends noticed he'd gone quiet, jumpy, his hawkeyes darting too fast. Spring came and he got a call. A ranger buddy, Tom, working Tonto National Forest, found something near Horton. Tom said, voice low.

Nest bigger than yours. Fresh tracks, at least 22 inches. Thought you'd want to know. Jake's stomach sank. Burned it, tom added. Didn't do a report, and keep it quiet.

, old forums, grainy scans. A: 1910

By summer he was back, only in a different spot. Fossil Creek, 10 miles west. One night. No monster, just shots of waterfalls. Proof he could face the rim again.

But driving home, a rock pinged off his windshield. Small, precise from a roadside thicket. He didn't stop. The pickup's cab stayed locked that night, the knife close.

Whatever watched him at Horton hadn't forgotten his intrusion into its world. Globally, Bigfoot sightings share recurring elements remote locations, large footprints up to 24 inches long, and a foul smell or eerie cries.

Witnesses range from hunters and hikers to police officers. Yet skepticism abounds. Many scientists attribute sightings to misidentified animals.

Black bears in North America, for instance, which can stand upright right and match some descriptions or hoaxes.

A: 2024

Whether a real creature, a cultural phenom, or a product of imagination, Bigfoot's global presence in human storytelling remains undeniable.

Probably the most telling fact that supports something being out there is that global reports of a Bigfoot like creature began long before the advent of global communication, seemingly eliminating the possibility of someone in a distant country responding to a report sighting with a fake one of their own. The legend has persisted throughout much of the world. In North America, the Sasquatch. In Asia, the Yeti. In Europe, the Wildman.

Australia has the Yowie, and Africa has the Kikomba. Do you spot the notable absence in this list? South America.

While they certainly have their share of strange sightings, there's nothing that fits the Bigfoot model. So what are people seeing and how has it stayed in the shadows for so long? Have you ever had an encounter you can't explain?

If so, let me know in the comments below.

If you're enjoying the stories, please consider donating to support the research and production that go into bringing them to you by buying me a coffee. The link to send support is in the episode's show notes. I would greatly appreciate it. Now on to today's second story, which is the Toxic Lady.

emarkable evening in February: 1994

But what begins as a routine call for help spirals into a nightmare no one could foresee. A night where the air turns poison, where science stumbles, and where reality frays. This is the story of the Toxic Lady.

,: 1994

Cervical cancer had ravaged her body for months, its late stage grip tightening with every passing day. She'd been a cashier once, once, a woman with dark hair and a quiet resilience, raising her kids in a modest home with her boyfriend, Johnny Estrada.

But now she was a shadow of herself, pale, frail, her strength sapped by pain and sickness. That evening, around 8pm Goria's condition cratered.

Nausea twisted her stomach, vomiting drained what little energy she had left, and her chest heaved with shallow, uneven breaths. Johnny watched her deteriorate, his hands shaking as he dialed 911 from their cluttered living room. She's not breathing right.

Her heart's going crazy, he told the operator, his voice cracking. Please hurry, the dispatcher promised. Help was on the way, and within minutes the wail of sirens pierced the quiet street.

Paramedics burst through the door, finding Gloria slumped on the couch, her skin clammy and slick with an odd oily sheen. They worked fast, strapping an oxygen mask to her face and sliding an IV into her arm. Her pulse raced.

Tachycardia, they noted, and her breathing followed a haunting Shane Stokes respiration, a gasping cycle that signaled her body was shutting down.

She mumbled responses, her eyes glassy as they loaded her onto a stretcher and sped toward Riverside General Hospital, a squat beige building just a few miles away. Johnny trailed in his car, gripping the wheel, praying she'd hold on. Inside the er, the trauma team snapped into gear.

It was a busy night with car accidents, fevers, and the usual parade of Saturday emergencies, but Gloria's case demanded focus. She rolled into Trauma Room 1 at 8:15pm her stretcher clattering on the tiled floor.

Nurses Susan Kane and Deborah McNally flanked her, hooking up monitors that beeped in frantic rhythm with her heart. Dr.

Julie Gorkinski, a second year resident with sharp eyes and a steady hand, took charge while respiratory therapist Maureen Welch adjusted the oxygen flow. Dr. Umberto Ochoa, the grizzled ER chief, hovered nearby, barking orders over the den.

Goria's cancer explained her decline, but her symptoms felt off, too acute, too strange. The team pumped sedatives into her IV Diazepam, mitazolam, lorazepam, hoping to calm her thrashing and slow her heart.

Maureen leaned in, wiping sweat from Gloria's brow, and frowned at the oily sheen, now more pronounced under the fluorescent lights. She looks slippery, maureen muttered to Susan, who nodded but kept working. They tried several more drugs, desperate to stabilize her arrhythmia.

The monitors blared on, unyielding, then came the turning point. Susan, a veteran nurse with a no nonsense air, drew blood from Gloria's arm for tests.

As she pulled back the plunger, a pungent, ammonia like stench stung her nostrils. She recoiled, holding the syringe up to the light. What the hell is that? She said, her voice tight.

Julie stepped closer, peering at the manila colored flakes dancing in Goria's blood like sediment in a storm. Before she could speak, Susan's face went slack. She staggered, her knees buckling, and crashed to the floor in a heap.

Julie's stomach lurched, a wave of dizziness hitting her hard. She stumbled out of the room, collapsing at the nurse's station, her vision blurring to black.

Maureen, still by Gloria's side, felt her own chest tighten, her legs wobble. She hit the ground next. Chaos erupted. A fruity, garlic like odor seeped from Goria's mouth, mixing with a chemical reek coming from her blood.

Nurses and techs staggered, clutching their heads and throats. 23 people would fall ill that night, struck by dizziness, nausea and muscle spasms. Five had to be hospitalized.

One, a young aide, spent weeks in ICU with breathing issues. Dr. Ochoa shouted to get everyone out, his voice cutting through the haze.

Patients were herded to the parking lot, wheelchairs and gurneys bumping over asphalt under the sodium glow of street lights.

A skeleton crew stayed with Goria, two doctors, a nurse and a tech pounding her chest, shocking her with a defibrillator at 8:50pm After 35 grueling minutes, her heart flatlined. Kidney failure from cancer, they'd later say. But the room told a different story. The hospital locked down.

Staff whispered in corners, their scrubs stained with sweat and fear. Hazmat teams in yellow suits stormed in, sweeping for toxins, sewer gas or maybe a rope pesticide from the fields nearby.

Air vents were checked and floors were tested. Nothing.

Gloria's body, now classified as a biohazard, was sealed in a bag and carted to a refrigerated trailer, her autopsy delayed as officials scrambled for answers. Her family, Johnny, her sister, Maggie Ramirez, Garcia, and her kids were left in the dark, reeling from loss and confusion.

Weeks later, on April 12, the coroner's team finally began an autopsy. But the body was a wreck, decomposed beyond recognition, organs mushy and cross contaminated, and her heart was mysteriously gone.

Natural causes, they ruled, depending on her cancer. Maggie didn't buy it. At a press conference, her voice trembled with fury. Ten weeks to tell us this. She was fine until she got there.

They did something to her. Johnny quieter Just stared at the ground, clutching a photo of Gloria smiling with her kids. Theories exploded.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory pitched a wild one. Gloria might have used dimethyl sulfoxide, a garage sale painkiller popular among the desperate.

In her failing kidneys, it could have turned to dimethyl sulphone, those crystals in her blood. Add oxygen from the paramedics and a jolt from the defibrillator, and it might have become dimethyl sulfate, a deadly gas that vanishes fast.

It fit the symptoms. Burning lungs and fainting. But Johnny claimed she had never used dmso, and none was found on her or in her home. Skeptics scoffed.

Others pointed fingers. A hospital cover up, a botched treatment, even mass hysteria fueled by panic.

,: 1994

Her family's grief anything but. The Toxic lady became a legend. Tabloids ate it up. Scientists debated it. Riverside whispered about it for years.

Nurses like Susan and Julie recovered but never forgot. The night they fell, Maureen, scarred by respiratory damage, quit the field.

The hospital plodded on its walls, holding secrets no one could pry loose. Was Goria the victim of a chemical fluke? A toxic phantom born of desperation?

Or did she stumble into a truth too slippery for us to grasp, a truth that felled those who tried to save her? In the end, the doctors recovered, the hospital endured, and. And the world moved on. But the scent of that night.

Ammonia, garlic, and fear lingers in the memory of Riverside, a reminder that sometimes the answers we seek evaporate like mist, leaving only the echo of what might have been. For Gloria Ramirez, and for us, this is the final chart. Note When Reality Frays. The stories presented are inspired by true events.

Names may have been changed for privacy reasons. New episodes of When Reality Freys are uploaded every Monday and Thursday.

If you're enjoying the journey into the strange, the mysterious, and the unexplained, be sure to press that Follow or Subscribe button and turn on all reminders so you're alerted whenever an episode drops. Until next time, thank you for listening to When Reality Frays.