Dark Outdoors

Imagine walking through the woods beside a quiet lake when your phone rings. You answer, and the voice on the other end says, "Hello, Chester? This is Betsy Palmer."

That's exactly what happened to Dark Outdoors host Chester Moore when the actress who portrayed Pamela Voorhees in the original Friday the 13th called him unexpectedly.

In this special episode of Dark Outdoors Week, Chester shares the remarkable story of how the woman who terrified generations of horror fans became a collaborator with his band Freak13® and eventually a personal friend.

He also explores the summer camp horror movies that made the woods frightening to an entire generation, including Friday the 13th, The Burning, Madman and Sleepaway Camp, along with the chilling real-life Oklahoma Girl Scout murders and the disturbing Cropsey legend.

It's a journey through childhood fears, real-world tragedy, horror history and an unforgettable friendship with one of the genre's most iconic actresses.

Sometimes the most unforgettable stories from the dark outdoors aren't fiction.

An isolated road in Southeast Texas. Mysterious bloodstains that supposedly appear at night. A terrifying hooded figure. And disturbing reports of ritual activity in the nearby woods.

In this episode of Dark Outdoors, host Chester Moore revisits a frightening experience from his high school years on the infamous Blood Road in Orange, Texas.

What began as an October evening drive to get a scare took a disturbing turn when his cousin reported seeing a Grim Reaper-like figure near a wooded marsh. On the return trip, his girlfriend Jenny became terrified at the exact same location.

Moore investigates the decades-old legends surrounding Blood Road, including historical accounts documented by Southeast Texas journalist Margaret Toal, theories about mysterious red stains on the pavement and information he received firsthand from a law enforcement officer about evidence of apparent ritual activity discovered in the area during the 1990s.

The episode also reveals how the experience inspired a song by Moore's first heavy metal band, Relentless Aggression.

Was something truly lurking along Blood Road, or could darkness, isolation and decades of frightening folklore explain what happened?

A firsthand encounter, a legendary Texas road and a mystery that has endured for generations.

What if an artificial egg could help bring a giant bird back from extinction?

For centuries, creatures like New Zealand's towering giant moa have existed only in museums, scientific records and the human imagination. But groundbreaking work at Colossal Biosciences is opening new possibilities for the future of extinct wildlife.

In this special episode of Dark Outdoors, host Chester Moore welcomes renowned Australian geneticist Dr. Andrew Pask, chief biology officer at Colossal Biosciences, to discuss the development of artificial egg technology that could help overcome one of the greatest obstacles to bringing extinct birds back to life.

How does an artificial egg work? Why is this technology so important to the science of de-extinction? And could it eventually help scientists recreate birds that vanished centuries ago?

Pask also takes listeners into the fascinating world of de-extinction research involving woolly mammoths, the legendary Tasmanian tiger and other lost species.

Beyond the extraordinary science lies an even greater purpose: developing new technologies that could help conserve endangered wildlife and protect biodiversity for future generations.

It's a fascinating journey into a world where science fiction is moving closer to reality

What happens when Jaws meets Faces of Death? You get Great White Death, a bizarre 1981 documentary featuring real shark attacks, actual survivors and shocking footage.

Narrated by Hollywood legend Glenn Ford, Great White Death took the terror of Jaws and combined it with the disturbing, exploitation-style presentation of Faces of Death. But unlike Hollywood's fictional shark thrillers, this film drew on real encounters with some of the ocean's most feared predators.

In this episode of Dark Outdoors, Chester Moore revisits this obscure and unsettling documentary, explores the real-life horror behind its most disturbing sequences and examines its surprising conservation message.

How much was authentic, how much was sensationalized and why did this strange film leave such a lasting impression?

Discover one of the most bizarre chapters in shark documentary history.

What happens when it becomes increasingly difficult to tell a real wildlife image from a fake one?

In this episode of Dark Outdoors®, award-winning wildlife journalist Chester Moore examines how artificial intelligence, manipulated imagery, viral misinformation and sensationalism are changing the way the public views reports of unusual and unidentified animals.

Cryptozoology has always existed outside the scientific mainstream, but some of its traditional foundations—eyewitness reports, photographs, video and field investigation—now face an entirely new challenge. Convincing images can be created in seconds, fabricated stories can reach huge audiences, and legitimate wildlife information can become mixed with material created purely for clicks.

Moore also examines the importance of applying the same standards of evidence to claims on both sides of controversial wildlife questions and discusses a forthcoming film that raises some interesting questions of its own.

This isn't an argument for or against the existence of mysterious animals. It's a look at evidence, credibility and what happens to genuine inquiry when separating fact from fiction becomes harder than ever.

Has modern technology killed cryptozoology—or simply exposed its biggest problem?

Because the outdoors has a dark side.

For decades, Chester Moore has investigated reports of mysterious cats roaming the American wilds. Some can probably be explained as mountain lions. Others aren't nearly so easy.

In this episode of Dark Outdoors®, Chester digs into some of the strangest big-cat encounters people have personally brought to him—including the astonishing account of a Texas man who said he walked outside and discovered what appeared to be an African lion in his chicken coop.

Then there are the tracks.

Chester recounts his own investigation of enormous cat tracks that seemed far too large for what should have been walking through that country, along with other reports involving unusually large and possibly exotic cats.

Could escaped exotic cats explain some of the strangest predator sightings reported across Texas and the South? How many unusual animals have disappeared into the woods without anyone ever knowing they were there?

Some sightings are mistakes. Some have ordinary explanations.

But every once in a while, somebody sees something that isn't supposed to be there.

Sometimes the strangest thing you encounter in the woods isn't an animal.

Over the years, Dark Outdoors® host Chester Moore has collected some truly bizarre stories from hunters, anglers and other people who spend serious time in wild places. In this episode, he digs into some of the strangest—encounters involving people who seemingly shouldn't have been where they were, doing things that made absolutely no sense.

It starts with a man who says he encountered someone in the woods dressed head to toe like a ninja, complete with swords.

Then there's Chester's friend sitting alone in a hunting blind in the middle of nowhere when he suddenly heard a voice. It sounded almost like a whisper, yet somehow carried with incredible volume.

“Feels good.”

He never saw who—or what—said it.

From there, Chester shares more strange accounts of unexpected people, unexplained voices and unsettling encounters in remote places.

We spend a lot of time worrying about predators, dangerous wildlife and things that go bump in the night. But sometimes the weirdest thing waiting beyond the trail is another human being.

And all you can ask afterward is...

Who in the green hill was that?

Some wildlife crimes are difficult to comprehend.

Years ago, Chester Moore traveled to a location where someone had illegally killed a buffalo, removed its head with a chainsaw and abandoned the rest of the animal to rot. What he encountered there opened a window into a side of the outdoors most people never see.

In this episode of Dark Outdoors, Chester explores some of the most disturbing and bizarre poaching cases he has encountered and investigated over the years.

There are poachers willing to kill wildlife simply for trophies. Criminals willing to threaten the very people charged with protecting wildlife—including a shocking case involving shots fired into a game warden's home on Christmas Eve. And then there is the international black market, where wildlife trafficking can become almost unimaginable, including a case in which U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials discovered a coat smuggled into America that had been made using the skins of five jaguars.

These aren't hunting stories.

They're stories about greed, cruelty and the people who operate outside the laws designed to protect wildlife—and the wildlife officers who sometimes put themselves in danger trying to stop them.

Because the outdoors has a dark side.

Deep along the Brazos River, something attacked a calf in the darkness.

The people who witnessed the event couldn't see exactly what was happening—but they could hear it.

They heard the struggle. They heard multiple animals involved. And, most disturbingly, they described hearing bones being broken and the calf seemingly being pulled apart with astonishing speed.

In this episode of Dark Outdoors®, Chester Moore examines this chilling eyewitness account from the Brazos River country and asks what kind of predators—and what kind of circumstances—could produce an attack like the one described.

The episode also ventures deeper into the strange world of predator-prey relationships, exploring unusual observations from the outdoors that don't always fit neatly into what we expect from coyotes, wild canines and other predators.

Nature isn't a horror movie. Predators kill because that's how they survive.

But every once in a while, someone witnesses—or simply hears—something in the darkness that reminds us just how wild the outdoors really is.

And sometimes hearing it is worse than seeing it.

ne night in the Texas darkness, Chester Moore found himself looking through the sights of a rifle at an animal he had every opportunity to shoot.

He didn't pull the trigger.

What Chester believes stood in front of him that night was a red wolf—an animal officially declared extinct in the wild across its historic Texas range decades ago.

In this episode of Dark Outdoors®, Chester tells the story of that encounter and others he has had with mysterious wild canines over the years. Some looked remarkably like the red wolves that once roamed Texas and Louisiana. Others were harder to explain.

The official story of the red wolf is complicated by hybridization with coyotes, disappearing populations and decades of debate over what exactly constitutes a red wolf. But what happens when animals resembling those supposedly lost wolves continue turning up in unexpected places?

This is a journey into the swamps, forests and backroads of the Gulf Coast in search of one of America's most mysterious predators—and an exploration of the possibility that what people are seeing in the darkness isn't always what we've been told should be there.

Sometimes extinction leaves behind ghosts.

And sometimes those ghosts have four legs.