In the harsh winter of 1958, a year before Alaska officially achieved statehood, a seventeen-year-old Native named George was hired to be the solitary caretaker of a remote trading post in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. To pass the isolated winter months, George spent his time building dog sleds and tending to his eight-dog team. The quiet solitude shifted in late November when his normally boisterous sled dogs suddenly became terrified, cowering in their wooden doghouses and refusing to make a sound. After spotting a dark figure watching him from the nearby creek line and enduring days of an oppressive, heavy feeling of being watched, George strapped on his snowshoes to investigate. He found no tracks—only a putrid, overwhelming stench of rotted meat, body odor, and urine.
George returned to the cabin to find a horrifying scene. In complete silence, three of his sled dogs had been snatched away, their thick leather leads snapped and harnesses torn to shreds. His lead dog, Annabelle, had been crippled by an unseen force attempting to drag her away. Pulling the four surviving dogs inside the cabin, George prepared for a siege. As darkness fell, a violently frozen dog carcass was hurled onto the cabin roof, sticking upright in the deep snow. The psychological warfare escalated as the creature methodically circled the cabin, ripped his heavy freight sled to pieces, and attempted to plug the woodstove pipe from the outside.
Following an ear-splitting, multi-octave scream that sounded like an air raid siren, George heard heavy, deep breathing directly outside his window. Armed with a .38 revolver and a lantern, he ripped back the drapes to find a massive, caveman-like face staring back at him. The creature had deeply weathered, rusty-brown leathery skin, small ears, and highly intelligent, vibrant golden-brown eyes. The towering entity vanished into the dark, leaving George to huddle under his bunk with his surviving dogs until dawn. At first light, he loaded the crippled dogs into his newly built lightweight sled and fled down the frozen river, catching glimpses of the massive creature silently tracking him through the timber as he made his desperate escape. Fred closes the episode with a heartfelt message urging listeners to check in on their loved ones.
