🌑 Part I: The Chamber of the Sleeper

I haven’t slept right in three years. Not since that October weekend in the Appalachian Mountains when my best friend and I went into a cave we should have stayed out of. He never came back out. I did, but nobody believes what really happened down there.

We were the kind of people who lived for the thrill of finding places nobody else dared to go. We’d been caving together for seven years, starting with easy tourist caves and gradually working our way up to the dangerous, unmapped stuff. We had a pact: Always go together. Never leave the other behind. A pact we never broke—until that last, terrible day.

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🧗 The Descent into the Unknown

It was late October, the perfect time for caving. We had heard rumors of an entrance most people didn’t know existed, hidden deep in a remote section of the Appalachians. We found the entrance hidden behind a rockfall, barely wide enough to squeeze through.

The passage was claustrophobic from the start, maybe two feet high, forcing us to army crawl for what felt like twenty minutes. Most people would panic; we loved it—the rush of adrenaline, the satisfaction of pushing through the primal fear.

The passage eventually opened up, and we followed the cave deeper, repelling down a vertical shaft into a larger passage where a small stream ran. We chose the passage that angled further down into the mountain, always wanting to go deeper, pushing the boundaries.

As we descended, the air felt different—heavier, somehow, with a musty, organic smell we couldn’t quite place. Not the usual cave smell. Then we started noticing vertical scratch marks on the limestone walls—deep, deliberate gouges that didn’t follow water patterns. They were too high, too deep to be any animal we knew.

Ignoring the warning, we pressed on. The temperature felt strangely warm, and the sounds began: faint, rhythmic, almost subsonic breathing, echoing from deeper in the system.

😴 The Hibernating Giant

The passage opened abruptly into a massive chamber. Our helmet lights couldn’t reach the ceiling or the far walls; it was enormous. The floor was covered in fine dust, and in that dust, we saw footprints: large, bipedal, massive prints that were clearly not human.

We were looking at fresh tracks made by something that walked upright as its normal method of locomotion. We saw large scratch marks covering the walls and animal bones scattered around a massive nest made of leaves and branches carried down from the surface. Whatever lived down here was hunting, and it was active.

But the breathing sound was closer now—deep, slow, and steady, echoing from a side section of the chamber.

We moved toward the sound, dimming our lights. We rounded a large boulder and stopped dead in our tracks.

Lying on the cave floor, curled up like something in deep slumber, was a massive form, at least eight feet tall, covered in thick, dark reddish-brown hair. Its immense chest rose and fell with slow, rhythmic breaths.

A Bigfoot. A real, living Bigfoot, sleeping twenty feet away from us in a cave in the Appalachian Mountains.

My friend’s eyes lit up with excitement instead of fear. “We have to see it,” he whispered, pulling out his phone. “This might be the discovery of a lifetime. We have to document it.”

He moved to get a better angle, placing the tripod on loose rocks. The rocks shifted under his weight. The sound echoed through the chamber.

The breathing pattern instantly changed—it stuttered, paused, and stopped.

Then, the creature stirred.

🏃 The Broken Pact

My friend made the second, fatal mistake. He aimed his helmet light—full brightness—directly at its face.

The Bigfoot’s eyes snapped open. They were huge, yellowish, and glowing slightly in the sudden light. It went from deeply asleep to instantly alert.

It roared—a sound that shook dust from the ceiling—and began to sit up. Its face was fully visible: confused at first, then locked in the cold, primal anger of a predator disturbed in its den.

“RUN!” my friend screamed.

We both turned and ran blindly, our lights bouncing wildly. We split up as we hit a large rock formation. He went right, drawing the creature’s immediate attention.

I dove behind a cluster of stalagmites and plunged myself into absolute darkness, clamping my hand over my mouth. I heard the sounds of pursuit move away from me: the heavy footfalls, the strange breathing, and my friend running for his life, his light bobbing in the distance.

Then, I heard a terrible, high-pitched scream that cut off abruptly, followed by a sickening sound I won’t allow myself to remember. And then, silence.

I waited in the darkness, too terrified to move. When I finally turned my light back on, I called for my friend. No response. I called again, louder. Nothing.

I crept back toward the entrance passage. I heard the creature moving in the main chamber, but it wasn’t pursuing me. It was guarding the chamber, guarding the body of my friend.

I ran, climbing up the rope in the vertical shaft. I crawled through the narrow passage as fast as I could, hearing a frustrated roar and the sound of claws on stone behind me. The cave was too narrow for it to follow.

I pushed through the entrance and tumbled out onto the hillside. The sun was setting. My friend never came out.

I broke our pact. I ran and left him behind. I saved myself and let him die. And now, every night, I know he is still down there in the darkness with that thing.