In Louisiana there are tales of a nightmare that lives under the water. A nightmare called the Letiche.
You’re out swimming when you feel a pinch on your leg. Is it a harmless fish or something a bit more sinister? Meet this week’s Camp Monster… The Letiche. A creature that lurks in the swamps and bayous of Louisiana.
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Season artwork by Tyler Grobowsky.
The swamps and bayous of Louisiana are a difficult place for humans-- a natural wilderness, thick with vegetation and legends. And somewhere out there, amongst the live oak and cypress and spanish moss; the ponds and lagoons and slow winding creeks... there are tales of a nightmare under the water. A nightmare called the Letiche.
You’ve probably met a harmless relative of the Letiche, when you’re out for a swim in your favorite lake or pond-- at least, you’ve probably felt it. That little pinch down in the murk, that nip you feel on your legs or back and when you look down there’s nothing there. It must be some kind of fish-- right?-- they’re just curious, they won’t hurt you. When you’re swimming with a bunch of friends you can all have a laugh about it.
But if you take a quiet dip in the evening… have you ever let a doubt creep into your mind? It’s a funny feeling, those little pinches down under the water-- and isn’t it strange that you can never quite catch sight of the fish that does it? And sometimes, doesn’t it feel like the pinches are coming quicker… getting sharper… becoming more and more aggressive?
Well… once you let a little fear in there’s no telling how your mind will magnify things. And that could be an explanation for tonight’s story. Parts of it, anyway. But as the light fades and the water grows darker… things begin to happen that aren’t so easy to explain.
This is the Camp Monsters podcast.
The wild places of this country are haunted by mysterious creatures-- creatures you might only have heard whispers of. Every week we amplify those whispers: tell the old tales, relate the recent encounters-- and share all the strange stories about the wilderness you love to visit.
These are just stories, of course. They’re based on things people claim to have seen and heard and felt, but… witnesses can be mistaken. This episode is a perfect example of that. So listen to this story and decide what you believe. I’m sure you’ll agree that the reasonable explanation must be the right one. Because the other explanation… the blood-chilling one... that couldn’t possibly be true… could it?
On a night like this I guess I wouldn’t mind having my blood chilled a little bit. This Louisiana bayou is hot, no matter the season or the time of night. No kind of weather for a fire, that’s for sure. We’ll just sit here in this cozy little house boat and listen to the bugs buzz around the light outside.
A boat is the best way to get to see the bayou country. The only way, really. Water runs through this place like the spine of a book, with a million little streams and swamps and inlets branching off like the lines of a story. A million separate stories, in fact. Every little spot here has a story of its own, if only we knew what it was.
I do know one of the stories. It starts beside a murky pond on the edge of a bayou a few miles from here, with a young person named Cam staring at something small and pale down there deep in the water. Something he thought he just saw move--
I guess that’s not where it starts, exactly. It starts with a story they tell around here, a story about an old man living in a little shack by a pond in the bayou a long time ago. They say he was a bad man but they don’t say what he’d done… just that he’d lost himself out here running from his past. He’d been out on the bayou a long time-- he knew it, and all the places to hide in it, and he felt himself safe.
But you’re never really safe from a guilty past. And one night… it found him out. He was gigging-- torch-fishing some people call it-- standing in the middle of his pirogue, his flat-bottomed old bayou canoe, with a torch beside him in a bracket and a fishing-spear in his hand, waiting for whatever would loom out of the murky water at his feet.
It’s patient work, torch-fishing. Long minutes spent in rigid stillness, your arm and shoulder aching under the poised spear, sweat dripping, the dark water swirling. Stare into it long enough and you begin to... see things. Things that aren’t really there. The waters’ shifting depths dredge images out of your mind. Just imaginary fish, usually-- you learn not to strike at them and scare the real ones away. You learn to wait until the real fish is right at the surface before you plunge the spear in.
On this particular night, the old man saw one of these impossible things rising faintly, slowly toward him through the muddy water. And though he thought he was immune to all the terrible imaginings that could flit out of the depths-- he squinted at this, and real fear awakened in his chest. And he wondered what nightmare from the back of his past had brought this awful hallucination into his mind.
But then… the horrible vision did not fade, didn’t flicker back into the mud and currents. It kept rising, drawing closer, slowly solidifying under the flickering light of his torch. The old man caught his breath... and the hot bayou night turned icy cold within him. It was impossible. A small, pale figure-- a body? What else could it be?-- a tiny human body floated face-down in the water in front of him. What could-- Who could it be? Where had it come from? What would he do? He would have to tell someone... or--? What would they think? How could he explain--?
His whole dark past came crashing down on him-- threatened to crush the life out of him. He saw himself sweating, stammering out some explanation of this impossible thing-- not being believed, then being found out-- having everything he’d been running from brought to bear on him at once. These thoughts filled his mind in an instant, almost froze him up-- and then he laughed at himself in a grunting chuckle.
He must be getting jumpy in his old age. It was a doll-- an old doll down there in the water. It had to be. The size and color and proportions were all wrong for it to be a real body-- now that it was right at the surface he could see that the thing was barely more than two feet long from its feet from its too-large head. Who knows how a doll had gotten thrown into this pond-- but then the bayous are filled with little mysteries like that.
He laughed at himself again and reached to wipe some of the sweat from his brow. The pirogue trembled under him as he did-- and as the ripples of movement spread through the water the pale little figure at his feet rolled slowly over so he could see its horrible, misshapen face: its missing nose, its jagged brown teeth, its wide, pale, staring eyes. And then it blinked.
That blink destroyed the old man. Horror and panic erased his mind. And left to its own devices, his body did what it had always done when torch-fishing, what it had done thousands of times before-- it dashed the fishing spear down into the water, then raised it up so the old man could examine what had been caught.
Only for an instant-- but an instant was long enough. Long enough for the old man to see the spiteful rage on the thing’s face as it hissed and struggled between the tines of the fishing spear-- long enough for him to feel its inhuman strength trembling through the shaft he held before the creature split it-- split the wooden spear up its entire length so that it came apart in his hand. As the spear crumbled, the thing dropped back into the water and was gone. But now the old man knew what it was, what it had to be: The Letiche, the underwater demon of the bayou. He’d heard the old stories. And he knew he’d rather face anything than stay and wait to be dragged down to his doom by the Letiche.
So the break of the next dawn found him in the police station of the nearest town, confessing his old crimes to anyone who would listen. But justice can wind like a bayou river. And that morning the old man couldn’t find anyone to believe his admissions, or anyone who cared to prosecute such ancient history even if they did. So the punishment he’d feared so long wasn’t there to save him in the end. And the last time anyone ever saw the old man, he was wandering the roads on the outskirts of town, on the edge of the bayou, weeping... and waiting for night to fall.
At least, that was the way that Cam told the story to his campers. Remember Cam? We started this story with Cam, staring down into a pond-- the pond that the campers could just catch a glimpse of through the rusted old chain-link fence on the edge of camp, the pond that Cam told them was the very same one where the old man had caught the Letiche. That was the way Cam had heard the story, a couple years ago when he was a camper. And now that he was a counselor he felt he ought to pass it on-- even if some of the campers looked a little too scared when he told it to them. He wondered if his face had looked like that when he’d first heard it. It was a scary old story.
And now that he was actually out here-- out past the old wire fence, out beside the pond where they said the whole thing happened, peering down into the water-- Cam wondered if his face looked like that again. Because as he stared down into the water, with the story playing back so vividly in his head, he could swear he saw-- what? Down deep, almost beyond the light… what was that? Just… just an old bleached branch, probably. Sure. But… did it move?
And the fun thrill of fear that had been growing since he first saw the pond and started re-living the story of the old man suddenly darkened, and began to turn into a different feeling entirely. A feeling he couldn’t control, that made him stand up straight and start backing away from the water, that made him wonder why he’d ever come out to this place.
A dare, that was why. A silly dare from one of the other counsellors. Lilah. She’d heard him tell the scary story, and asked him if he’d ever snuck out here, out-of-bounds, and seen the pond where they said it happened. He’d pretended like he had, but then she’d called his bluff by sneaking through a hole in the fence and daring him to come along. And as he struggled through she’d taken off, ditched him-- she was probably back at camp now having a good laugh and waiting for him to get caught by the head counsellor.
But the head counsellor was the least of Cam’s worries, now that he was alone beside this strange quiet pond in the fading light of evening. Cam was worried about the water in front of him-- about what he thought he’d seen in it. The pool was so still it looked like solid glass, so dark it seemed it couldn’t have a bottom. His eyes were stuck, staring down deep under the black water at that place where he was sure he’d seen something move. Where he felt sure something pale and thin and terrible would move again. Suddenly. Toward him.
An enormous sound filled his left ear as a wayward mosquito flew into it, making Cam twitch his head so that the corner of his right eye just barely caught sight of something pale moving toward him at the same instant that he heard a little splash in that direction. His heart sank and his teeth clenched-- he leapt and spun to face the thing so quickly that he lost all control; his knees gave out and he ended up falling backward. He seemed to fall for a long time, and he had all of that time to gape at what had made the little splash, with his mouth open and his eyes staring wide. So that by the time he crashed down into the reeds and mud and water at the edge of the pool, all the fear that had been darkening into total panic inside of him was suddenly... replaced by a mixed up, indecipherable surge of every other kind of feeling possible. Cam looked away and felt an embarrassed smile spread across his face.
“Scared?” Lilah asked, standing there in the shallows of the pool, smiling down at him. Cam didn’t say anything-- what could he say? She’d just watched him jump three feet in the air and collapse into the mud, terrified. Lilah stood there another moment with Cam looking sheepishly away from her. Then she ran a few steps and plunged into the dark water. And the pool that had been so still a moment before now filled with her ripples and laughter.
She swam for the far shore of the little pool while Cam just sat there in the mud, looking sideways with that silly grin stuck on his face and every emotion under the sun shining through his racing heart. Then he made his choice, and plunged in after her.
And they had a great time. The setting sun cast the whole scene in a golden glow, shot through with gems of orange where beams of light broke through the trees and fell on Cam and Lilah laughing and splashing and swimming around the little pool. Even the old shack seemed to soften and mellow, like an elderly face smiling at the memory of innocent pleasures.
And then they were beside the bank, looking at each other, holding onto a big cypress root that dangled in the water there. Neither said anything until Cam suddenly jerked and said, “Ouch!,” kicking his legs and looking down into the murky water below.
Lilah laughed and told him that the little bluegills pinch you if you stay still. She said she guessed he’d better get out. He smiled back at her and said that maybe she was the one who ought to get out and-- OUCH! Lilah laughed again as he kicked his legs harder and grabbed down at his calf, invisible under the dark water. Some bluegill-- how big were these little pinching fish?
When she finally stopped laughing at him, Lilah agreed to swim across the pond one more time while Cam got out. And before he could respond she’d pushed off of the big root they’d been holding onto and disappeared under the black water, her head bobbing up a moment later further out, heading for the far shore. She never made it, though.
Cam had scrambled out of the pool and was contemplating the unpleasant prospect of cramming his wet skin back into his muddy shirt when he heard a splashing in the water close behind him. He turned, and-- there was Lilah, grinning mischievously up at him from the water, as close as she could get to him without coming out herself. But in that moment, Cam was neither angry nor embarrassed. In that moment, Cam barely registered that Lilah was there at all. His eyes were filled with the thing just behind her. The thing that has filled his nightmares ever since.
In the water over Lilah’s shoulder, appearing just beside her laughing face there… was another face. A face just like he’d imagined from the story: a small, leering, pale face-- white as mottled soap, white as death, the size of a small child’s, plastered here and there with the faintest sickly traces of slimy brown hair hanging down from its scalp and seeming to drip from its chin like algae. It had electric blue eyes staring from wide, wild, lidless sockets, and where lips and cheeks should have been there were just… blunt, yellow, crooked teeth that seemed frozen into an evil grin.
As Cam stared in naked horror at the thing its teeth slowly parted and Cam thought that blood began to pour out of its mouth before realizing it was the creature’s tongue, livid red in shocking contrast to its pale and hideous face.
As he watched, frozen, the thing reached above the water with two pale hands-- humanlike but long, long and narrow, with sickly-looking brown fingernails at their ends like something soaked too long in filthy water.
Only an instant had passed since he’d first seen the thing; less than a single heartbeat… if Cam’s heart had been able to beat. And just as Lilah’s smile faltered in reaction to his face, just as the first hint of alarm began to flicker in her eyes, the Thing flung its long, clammy fingers onto her shoulders and with impossible speed and strength twitched poor Lilah under the dark, muddy water. Twitched her under without a sound, with barely a ripple. And she was gone. And all that was left for Cam to see was that terrible small white face, grinning its huge rotten teeth at him and quivering, shaking. Then in an instant, with a splash like the tiniest fish jumping, it was gone.
And Cam was gone, too. Maybe he should have jumped in the water. He should have tried to save Lilah, of course. He was always ashamed that he didn’t. But what he did or didn’t do at that point was far, far beyond his control.
He snatched up his shirt and things and charged back through the reeds and leaves and grass and trees, and the woods seemed full of shapes that ran with him and grabbed after him. He tripped on rotten old limbs and logs hiding in the long grass, tripped and fell hard and sprang up again, battered and bruised and terrified. And all around him, following him, was a sound like a mosquito hovering right in his ear. It wasn’t until long after that he realized the sound must have been his own screaming.
He tore his flesh in a dozen places struggling back through the hole in the rusted old chain-link fence, with a thousand formless horrors grabbing at his legs as he kicked and forced his way through. Everyone who’d heard the screaming was already heading toward the woods when Cam suddenly emerged from the bushes: wild, bleeding, running toward them. He was sobbing, incomprehensible, gesturing and grabbing people by the arm and trying to pull them toward the hole in the fence, faster, faster. If they’d been able to understand anything he was saying, they would have heard the word “Letiche!… Letiche!…”
They had just reached the hole in the fence, and Cam was trying to get someone to go through first, before him, when… something… appeared and began to creep through the bushes on the other side of the rusted wire. Began to crawl quickly toward the hole in the fence. Something pale, something white. And Cam screamed again.
But it was Lilah, in her bright white camp uniform again now, carrying her shoes in one hand and trying to wring her hair out with the other. And she was angry. Very, very angry. Because Cam had been looking right at her when she’d slipped, as she thought-- lost her footing under water and then somehow gotten caught under those submerged roots or something. Anyway, she’d felt long, thin branches entangling her, holding her under. She’d been really scared, and when she finally managed to fight her way back to the air, where was Cam? Skipped out, lost his head, just left her there drowning to fend for herself.
She gave him a piece of her mind, dressed him up and down in front of the whole camp, and didn’t mind a bit when they both caught it from the head counsellor, who had plenty to say about the risk they’d taken and the terrible example they’d set for the campers.
To this day, Lilah is a frequent and natural swimmer. Lakes, rivers, bayous, ponds, pools-- she’ll jump in anywhere and swim like a fish. Cam, on the other hand… you might be able to talk him into wading in the shallow end of the local pool, if the water is crystal clear. But for all that, he still ends up swimming more often than Lilah, believe it or not. Every night, at some point in his dreams, he find himself moving through moss-covered trees to the edge of a dark pool… And try as he might, every night he can’t help but wade down into that muddy water until he’s treading it-- even though he knows what’s in there. Even though he knows what’s about to happen. What he’s about to see.
Well. I know what I’m about to see: the wall, on the inside of my bunk. Sure glad we’re in this cozy boat, rather than out there with the mosquitos and critters. Oh, and switch off that outside light when you turn in. I hate to think of the poor bugs and fish spending all night circling it, trying to get closer. The bugs and fish and… any other things.
Camp Monsters is part of the REI podcast network. Stick around for a minute and we’ll listen to a little bit of next week’s story-- you’ll want to hear a little bit now, to prepare yourself. And if you’ve been warmed by our campfire, please subscribe if you haven’t already, and take a moment to rate, review, and share. It’s you spreading the word about this podcast that keeps us recording. Thank you.
Next week we’ll be going to an unlikely, forgotten wilderness in New York. No, not upstate: underground. If we go down deep enough we’re sure to find a lot of forgotten things. Maybe even some things that are better off forgotten...
Camp Monsters is recorded around a cozy digital campfire in the Overcast Room of Cloud Studios in Seattle, Washington. Visit them at CloudStudiosSeattle dot com. The campfire was lit and is guarded by our very own legendary creature, our producer Chelsea Davis. The sparks of audio magic are stirred up by our engineer, Nick Patri. Any growls you hear out beyond the firelight probably come from our executive producers, Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. These stories are written and told by yours truly, Weston Davis. Thanks for stopping by the fire… well, the houseboat this time. Au re'oir, as they say in Louisiana. See you next week.