Episode 70 – Terror of the Batsquatch – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 70 Show Notes

Source: First People’s Mythology

This week on MYTH, we’ll head into the old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest for some encounters with terrifying monsters. You’ll learn that you should never let kids play near a lake, that monsters are not your friend, and that body horror isn’t new. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll meet a silent terror in the Dead Zone. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 70, “Terror of the Batsquatch”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
This week’s story comes from the traditions of the Native American tribes of Oregon (specifically from the Modoc people of Southwest Oregon), as retold by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. The original tale appears to have been collected in 1877 by Albert S. Gatschet as he was talking with the Tualati Atfalati or Wapatu tribes of the Kalapuya family in the Grande Ronde Reservation (according to the 1891 Journal of American Folklore). It’s a very cool, very unique story unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere. Once, long ago, the Huluk (also known as the Amhuluk) used to live in Lake Tualatin, which is now known as Lake Wapato (south of modern day Seattle). It was, and is, a beautiful, relatively shallow lake with a truly stunning forest running right up to the very shore of the lake itself. The Huluk does not live there anymore, as it long ago grew too large for the lake and left to find itself a better home, but in the old days, it was seen frequently in and around the lake.
The Huluk was a massive creature, and was as slow and clumsy on land as anything that size tends to be. Being an aquatic creature, it was much more comfortable and dangerous in the water. Whenever it would crawl up onto shore, it would waddle with the exaggerated sway of a porcupine (massive spiked quills and all), dragging a broad, flat beaver’s tail behind it. Continuing it’s odd mishmash of features, the Huluk had a single long, slender horn centered between big clamshell ears like a moose. To round out its bizarre appearance, it had large, wet, protruding eyes that never seemed to blink (think a chihuahua the size of a car). It’s fur was smooth and oily, like an otter’s and its horn was covered in dull red and white spots along its full, dull length.
One day, back when the Huluk still roamed the lake, three children were out digging edible roots for dinner (think wild onions or potatoes): a little girl, a slightly older boy, and an even older boy. The boys were dressed in warm coats of striped deer skins decorated with bright red beads while the girl was dressed in a sleeveless dress of seal skin woven with braided mountain sheep wool and had a cute cap of bobcat fur on her head. All three were diligently working on getting the roots they had been sent out to find, so none of them noticed the Huluk when it emerged from the water. As it slowly waded towards them from the lake, the younger boy, the middle child, spotted it. He had never seen anything like it before, so he decided that it must be a beaver the size of a bear (and honestly, it’s not the worst guess I can think of for a unique monster that seems like a Frankenstein’s monster of different animal parts).
He was young enough that he still basically thought of himself as immortal, which made him bold and fearless. The sight of such a big, awkward creature gallumphing towards them made him laugh out loud. It was such an absurd sight that he just couldn’t help himself. His sister looked up at him, puzzled at this sudden, unexpected outburst. “What’s so funny? What are you laughing at? Do you see something?” The boy pointed towards the Huluk.
“How could you miss that big bastard? It’s such a silly-looking thing, isn’t it? That horn is pretty cool, though. I kind of want it. Like, to keep.” His sister looked out at the strange creature and had to agree that it was indeed a very silly thing, but the horn was also very, very cool. She laughed along with her brother, but her eyes never left the red and white horn. She too wanted to have it. Without actually discussing it, the two bolted almost in unison for the creature, racing each other towards the Huluk.
Their eldest brother initially ignored their bullshit in the time-honored tradition of eldest siblings everywhere. Those two little assholes were always up to some nonsense or other, and he’d long ago learned to just tune them out. When they took off running towards the lake however, he looked up from his chores to see the strange, massive beast waddling towards them. He had a much better idea of just how dangerous huge, strange animals could be, and he was not entranced by it like his younger siblings. “Get your asses back here, you two! I mean it! That thing looks dangerous!” Naturally, they both ignored him completely because of course they did. In the time-honored tradition of younger siblings everywhere, they had long ago learned to ignore his complaints and do whatever the hell they wanted before he could stop them.
Seeing that they were pretending not to hear him, the eldest brother rushed after the younger two…only he didn’t. He tried, but his feet wouldn’t budge. It felt like they were sunk knee-deep in thick mud, or maybe like they were trapped by twisted, grasping roots. Struggle as he might (and he struggled as only a panicked kid who’s younger siblings are about to do something dangerous and knows it’ll be his fault can), he couldn’t move a single inch. He watched helplessly from where he stood rooted to the earth, calling after the younger boy and girl to come back, pleading for them to come back, but they ignored him. They did not come back.
The young boy and girl reached the Huluk, who scooped them both up onto its horn, first the girl and then the boy. In one smooth motion, much quicker than it’s bulk had indicated, the beast snatched the both up and whirled back towards the water. From where he was standing, immobilized and helpless, it looked to the elder boy like the creature might have impaled them both on its horn, but that didn’t make any sense – they were both clearly still alive and in no pain, since they both laughed all the way into the lake. As the beast slipped beneath the waves, the boy felt his legs come free, and he was finally able to rush after his siblings. He raced to the lakeside, but could see no sign of his brother and sister, so he fled back to the village in terror.
He found his mother and father, and he told them what had happened – that his brother and sister had been taken by the monster of the lake and had either been drowned or impaled, though he wasn’t sure which it was. Almost immediately after, the eldest boy came down with a sudden, mysterious illness and collapsed. He was taken to the longhouse to rest, but he only got worse. He began to sweat and moan in agony, and his mother brought him a tanned cougar-skin blanket to cover her son and ward off a chill. As she covered her sick child, she saw that his skin was covered in strange red and purple spots.
The boy’s father, Chief Wawinxpa, after seeing what had become of his son, went to a bench in the longhouse. From beneath it, he drew out a carved wooden box. From inside, he took out his best clothes, dressing himself in a shirt of tanned elkskin his wife had decorated with beads and quills, fine leggings and a breechcloth of tanned leather, and new deer hide moccasins trimmed in fur. Around his waist, he tied a marmoset fur knife belt decorated in white swan feathers. Around his neck, he draped a necklace of bear claws to symbolize the strength of the warrior and rare shells to symbolize the power of the shaman. He darkened his cheeks with soot to make himself seem more fierce. Last of all, he donned a magnificent headdress of white swan feathers interspersed with the red and black feathers of the woodpecker.
Once he was garbed in the symbols of his strength and authority, the chief went to the place on the lake shore where his children had been taken by the monster. He followed the tracks of the great beast to the lake and found a cave. Cautiously, the chief headed inside after his missing children. Inside the cave was a long tunnel. His feet moved silently as he went along, ears perked for any sound of the creature or of his kids, but all was still and silent. Something churned in his guts as he moved, and the chief sensed that something strange was happening.
He soon came to the end of the tunnel and emerged once more into the open air, but he wasn’t exactly in Kansas anymore (or Washington, as the case may be). In this strange place, the sky was made of a strange, shimmering earth, and the trees grew down from the roof of the sky. He peered out into the mist and, off in the distance, he could see the waddling bulk of the Huluk trudging off with his children clinging to its strange speckled horn. Its wide tail dragged behind it as it plodded away, and its quills dragged into the soft earth, leaving a trail that was child’s play to follow.
The chief pursued them through this strange topsy-turvy world, and every so often he again spied the creature in the distance, but he never seemed to be able to gain any ground on the thing. Even as slowly as it seemed to be waddling, each time the chief was able to spot it, the beast was no closer and no farther than it had been the last time. Time was strange in this odd place, so the chief wasn’t sure how long he had been pursuing the beast, but he suspected it had been hours. Up and down a series of endless gullies he went, pausing at the top of each to spot the monster. Finally, as he crested another in an endless series, he stopped, put his hands to his mouth and called to his son and daughter to let go of the horn and come to him. To his dismay, the children clung even tighter. “Father, we are different, different, different!”
The chief’s pursuit continued down into another gulley. He thought he had been chasing them for an entire day now, so he made camp in the base of the gulley he was in. The next day, as soon as he had rested, he set out again. He crested the next gulley and again saw the two clinging to the Huluk’s horn and again called to them to let go and come back. Again, they called back that they were different, different, different. The Huluk continued on at its inexorable pace and, even though it never seemed to exert itself, it continued to stay exactly the same distance away, like something out of a nightmare.
For five days, the chief followed the Huluk. Five times, he climbed into and out of another seemingly identical gulley. Five times, he called out to his children from the ridge at the top to let go and come back. Five times, they called back that they were different, different, different. He could never catch up to them, and they never let go.
On the sixth day, the Huluk’s trail vanished. The chief followed it to an old lava bed, but the trail didn’t pick up beyond it. He searched and searched, but could find no trace of the creature or of his children. He called out for them until he was hoarse, but he never heard a reply, not even their despondent call that they were different, different, different. Eventually, he gave up and went home. He hadn’t brought supplies for an extended expedition, and there was nothing to eat here in the upside down, so he was forced to return back to the normal world alone.
He went home and told his wife that the monster of Lake Tualatin had taken their children, and he had failed to bring them back. They would live under the mountain with the creature now, in the upside down where the trees grew out of the earthen sky. They had clung to the monster’s horn and though he had begged them to, they had not let go and he hadn’t been able to move fast enough to catch them. They were lost. The couple hugged each other in despair and wept.
The elder son lay sick in the longhouse still, burning up with fever. He slept only fitfully, tossing and turning in his illness. His mother brewed medicinal teas of herbs, crab apple bark, and spruce sap, but in vain. Each time the boy managed to swallow even a little of the medicine, he would vomit it right back up, shivering and moaning. The chief stayed with his son through the long night, unable to sleep for fear that he would awaken to find his son dead.
Despite himself, in the wee hours of the morning, the chief’s exhaustion caught up to him and he fell asleep beside his ailing son. As soon as his eyes were closed, he began to dream. The chief had been trained in the ways of the shaman, so he knew how to dreamwalk. He drew power to himself as he slept and set out into the dreamscape. In the morning, his wife found him slumped next to their son and, try though she might, she couldn’t wake him. She knew the signs and realized that he was doing important work, so she went back to ministering to the sick boy, fighting to keep him alive. Even so, she cast fretful glances at her sleeping husband from time to time, knowing full-well how dangerous the dream world could be.
Around noon, the chief’s eyes shot open. “I have seen them. I have seen our children in the dream. They are still alive. I must go and try once more to save them, to bring them home.” As before, he dressed in his finest garments and arrayed himself for the chase. This time though, he covered his forehead with black pitch and spotted the rest of his face with red paint, white clay, and gray coal. Then, he went out into the forest and twisted together a long, sturdy rope from the fibrous bark of hazel trees. The chief tied one end to his waist and fastened the other end to a stout tree near the lakeshore. He tested the knots and, finding them strong, swam out to the middle of Lake Tualatin and peered down.
The water was crystal clear, allowing the chief to see all the way to the lake’s shallow bottom. There, he could see the Huluk crouched with his children still clinging to its horn. He called out to them through the water, and somehow, his voice carried as clearly as if he had been speaking into the open air. Just as clearly came their reply: “father, we are different, different, different!”
He swam in circles around the center of the lake, calling out to them. He knew the bottom, shallow though it might be, was still far too deep for him to dive down to it. He stayed until he was exhausted, and only the feathers of his headdress still poked above the surface of the lake. In his heart, the chief called out to the good spirits for aid: he cried out to the clouds, to the mountain, to the lake, to the trees, and most importantly, to the kindly spirit he had met in the forest when he had become a man and who was always with him as a guide and friend.
He swam until his arms felt like lead, and he began to sink. He would have drowned then and there had not his wife been on the shore to haul him in by the rope tied to his waist. Dressed in a cedar-bark dress and a robe of seal, racoon, and bobcat fur, she pulled on the rope, hand over hand, until her husband was safely on the shore, gasping for air. She pulled him close to her, wrapping them both in the warmth of the robe until he stopped shivering.
The next day, he went back out onto the lake to repeat the entire thing, and was again pulled out of the lake and warmed by his wife. For five days, they did this. Each day, he called down to his children, and each day, they called back that they were different, different, different. On the fifth day, something was different. His children had lost their hair, and their eyes had grown huge and black and lidless. Their bodies had melted together into one strange, twisted form with two heads, mottled in red and white spots. Still he called to them to come and swim up to him, and both heads called back that they were different, different, different.
The spirits did not ignore the fervent prayers of the brave chief, however. They could not bring his stolen children back, but they were able to spare the life of the eldest child. On the fifth day, he made his way to the lake shore to stand beside his mother as his father searched in vain for the two lost kids. White spotted scars marked where the Huluk had seen him and laid claim to him, but had been freed. When they hauled him out of the lake one final time, the chief’s headdress fell off and landed in the mud. He held his wife and son to him and wept. “The children belong forever to the Huluk. I could not save them. Weep my wife; weep my only son. Weep, for they are different, different, different.”
I kind of love that this story never really explains what the Huluk is or what it has done to the children. We are never given a motivation, and we are never given an explanation for the fucked-up world beyond the tunnels. It is a terrifyingly inexplicable creature, which makes it so much scarier. Sometimes, it’s better not to know. Are the children going to become little baby Huluks? Are they going to become a new horn? Is this how the monster eats? That’s up to your imagination. And so, with the Huluk still lurking out there somewhere, waiting to make you different, different, different, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s Washington monster is the Batsquatch.
Sometimes known as Washington State’s official cryptid, Batsquash is the Jersey Devil of the Pacific Northwest. The first official sighting dates back to 1980 and a volcanic eruption. On May 18th, 1980, Mount St. Helens exploded, the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in US history. In the aftermath of ash and soot, vague references to a strange shape began to surface in the barren landscape of what came to be known as the Dead Zone. It always appeared at night and was always accompanied by a terrible, unnatural silence.
The theory is that the combination of earthquake and eruption (which loosed a destructive energy equivalent to 50 atomic bombs) awakened something that has roamed the eerie woods of the Pacific Northwest ever since. The explosion ripped the summit of the mountain apart and triggered an avalanche, felling thousands of acres of old growth forest. People were sent in to salvage the lumber, worth millions of dollars, and everyone who went into the Dead Zone was shaken by the eerie and nearly total silence. Think about it: every bird, every insect, every small woodland creature that used to live there had either fled or been killed. The trees had all been ripped down in a wave of earth and debris, leaving not even leaves to shiver in the chill wind. The landscape was covered in a layer of fine ash, creating clouds at every step that left the world vague and indistinct and further dampened any sounds (not to mention making it hard to breathe, which is its own kind of terrifying). The ash killed everything – it choked car engines, dulled saw blades, caked throats so badly that people could hardly croak. Everyone who went into that awful place found themselves listening, straining to hear a sound, any sound, in an utterly silent hellscape.
And that was while the sun was still shining merrily overhead. When darkness fell, the Dead Zone was as still and abandoned as the surface of the moon. No one dared to venture in after sunset. The earliest sightings of the creature that began to stalk this silent place are vague and largely lost to history. There were tales of pets taken by coyotes, even though no one ever seemed to see or hear them. The eruption was blamed for driving them from their normal hunting grounds, which made them more aggressive than usual. All that remains are stories of stories, second, third, and fourth-hand accounts that were largely ignored at the time. It wasn’t until 14 years later, in 1994 that someone would finally get a good look at this mysterious monster and provide the description that led to its name.
In April of that year, Brian Canfield was driving along the backroads of Pierce County in Washington State (home to Mount St Helens). He was all alone in his truck on a lonely stretch of road far from the nearest patch of civilization near the edge of the Dead Zone. In true horror movie fashion, his truck suddenly died, leaving him stranded in the middle of nowhere after dark. This being 1994, the 18 year old Canfield didn’t have a cell phone, so he was understandably anxious about this development. No one wants to take an unexpected hike through rough country in the dark. He got out of the truck with a flashlight to take a look under the hood and hopefully get the truck working enough to limp home.
As he stood there, hood up, he got that terrifying chill up his spine that said he wasn’t alone in the woods, that someone or something was watching him from the darkness. Brian straightened, and noticed that the woods had gone deathly silent. His breathing was loud in the eerie quiet as he turned around to find…nothing. The beam of his flashlight swept across empty forest. It seemed that he was, in fact, alone out there. He turned back to the engine to get to work, but the fear clawing at the base of his spine just wouldn’t go away. It gibbered and screamed at him that he wasn’t alone, that something dangerous was watching.
After a little tinkering, Brian thought the engine might work now. He let the hood slam shut, maybe with a little more force than was strictly necessary out of nervous tension, and something caught his eye in the wild swing of his flashlight. He played the beam back over the forest, only this time it wasn’t empty. Directly in front of him, no more than 30 feet away, was a huge mass of bluish fur. He raised the beam up. Then up some more.
The creature stood around 9 feet tall, thickly muscled, with a face that looked like some sort of cross between a bat and a wolf. It had small, black bat eyes set deep above a wolf-like muzzle, but squashed and broader than any wolf. The bared yellow teeth were decidedly canine and terrifying, though its tufted ears looked more like those of a bat, large enough to be able to hear any slight sound in the darkness. It’s feet were thin and bird-like, tipped with long, wickedly sharp talons. And its arms…its arms extended out hugely on either side of the creature with long, thin fingers into wide, leathery bat wings, strangely pale next to the blue fur.
The creature crouched in the unexpected light, dazzled and hunched with its wings pulled around it for protection. It adjusted quickly, and its wings stretched out on either side in a 30 foot wingspan, chest rippling with powerful muscles. Brian took a step back, hands shaking as he desperately clutched the flashlight, terrified of dropping the only light. He wanted to run, to flee, but this was the desolate forest and only a fool tries to run through the woods in the dark. You won’t get far without running into something or tripping over something, maybe breaking your foot in the process. Maybe he could hide. He took another step, certain that turning his back on this beast would be his last mistake. Maybe he could hide in the truck…
Almost as though the creature had heard Brian’s panicked thoughts, it leapt into the air with a giant slap of its leathery wings. It’s jaws dropped open to reveal more yellow teeth and a thick, pink and black speckled tongue as it screamed out a high-pitched cry. The creature covered most of the 30 feet between them in a single leap, coming to rest on top of the truck in a screech of tortured metal. So much for hiding in the truck.
Brian screamed in terror and leapt for the truck at the same time, scrambling in the dust to crawl underneath. He didn’t think about the decision until after he was already lying there under the truck, listening to the shocks squeal in protest as the beast shifted its weight. He did his best to stifle his panicked breathing through the long, cold, terrifying night. He huddled in the darkness beneath his truck, hoping against hope that the creature wouldn’t be able to get to him. Most of the night passed in tense, unearthly quiet; Brian strained his ears desperately for any sound in the silence. Twice, he heard the distinct and horrifying sound of the thing’s talons shuffling in the dirt around the truck as it walked awkwardly around, searching for the hiding Brian.
After what felt like days but was really hours, dawn finally broke over the foothills. No bird song accompanied the light – this was still the edge of the Dead Zone after all. No sound broke the tension, and eventually, Brian nerved himself up enough to inch towards the edge of the truck. After an agonizing time, he reached the driver-side door and peeked out from underneath. Terror made every shadow a wing and every reflection glowing eyes, but after a long moment, Brian was sure that the thing was really gone. He hadn’t heard it leave. He jumped into the cab and turned the key. The engine sparked to life with a reassuring roar, and Brian flew down the roads to safety.
When he got to town, he tried to tell everyone what had happened, but no one believed him. Some thought he was pulling their legs, others thought he had gotten scared and made a monster out of shadows and moonlight. The scratches on his roof were obviously from branches as he raced his car through the woods. The tears in his shirt from where the thing had reached for him as he dove under the truck were clearly just from where he caught his shirt on something while hiding under the truck from a figment of his imagination. They dubbed the creature Batsquatch and Brian became known as Batsquatch Brian.
The people laughed at Brian, but they laughed less when the coyotes had another bad year, stealing cats and dogs and sheep in the night and in utter silence. Some of the mangled corpses were later found high in the trees. No coyote could have done that. The story was picked up by a local reporter, who interviewed Brian and believed him enough to publish the story on April 24.
From there, the story began to take on a life of its own, becoming a summer camp game that year. None of the Batsquatch hunts ever found anything of course, but more and more lone campers came back with stories of a creature that carried silence with it (or, more frequently, vague stories of something half-glimpsed in the trees). There were even stories of campers in a cabin waking up to a high-pitched shriek to find a bat-faced monster looking in the window before either fleeing into the woods or flying into the night sky on pale wings.
As the years went on, there were more and more sightings of Batsquatch, spreading farther and farther away from its original home near Mount St Helens and as far away as Ohio and Pennsylvania. Most recently, I spotted the creature at my local liquor store on a can of Rogue Brewery’s Batsquatch Beer (I love me some bizarre beer names, and have bought more than one just because I liked the label). So the next time you’re in Washington State, why not head out into the forest near the sleeping volcano and crack open a cold one at the edge of the Dead Zone. Surely nothing bad will happen, right?
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, we’re off to Dynastic Era China for a different version of a familiar story. You’ll see that Disney really nerfed Mulan, that civil wars are not short, and that it’s a bad idea to have a dagger in your mouth when you meet the emperor. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll discover why a mystical bird hates the ocean. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.