Branch Manager: Deep Woods Horror Story & Supernatural Folklore

Three friends escape their soul crushing telemarketing jobs for a camping trip in Algonquin Park, But when screams tear through the night and their tent is shredded, one survivor discovers the forest isn't just alive, it's hunting, listening and ready to collect on an ancient debt. What's that You want to be scared? Come with me. You will experience tales over our roam, ghosts and death. It is not recommended for the week at art Listeners in the dark. It's more fun at that way way. This is Weekly Speaking. Hello, my spookies, It's Wednesday, and you know what that means.

It's time for a little spooky in your weekly. I'm your host and narrator, Henrique Couto, and tonight we're heading to the Great White North. Well maybe not that far north, but we're heading to Canada for a story about friends gathering in the woods, and well, as you guessed, it doesn't go exactly as planned. But before we get to all that, I want to say thank you all so much for joining us. It really means a lot to share my Halloween all year long with all you spookies. The true believers craving their scary and chilling tales in the middle of the summer.

So if you're new here, make sure you subscribe on your podcast app, because we'll have something scary for you every single day of the week, and of course, on Wednesdays, a brand new scary story for you to enjoy. And if you want to show us even more support, just head to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join, where for as little as one dollar a month you get two bonus episodes every month and over five years of exclusive audiobooks and creepypasta readings. That's Weeklyspooky dot Com slash Join. But now, as for tonight, our tale begins with three exhausted friends, a peaceful campsite and the kind of dark Canadian forest that seems perfect for getting away from the world.

No phones, no bosses, no rude customers hanging up in their ears, just cold beer, foggy woods, and the comfort of knowing trees are standing still. Except these trees aren't. Something out there has roots that drag through the dirt, branches that reach like claws, and a hunger that wakes up at the first sound of fear. So keep your voice low, watch where you step and remember sometimes the forest simply doesn't want any visitors. Branch Manager by Gary Dee up in Ontario, Canada. Some would say that its bark is much worse than its bite, but they'd be wrong, Oh so dead fucking wrong.

Trust me, I should know. My name's Kenny. So pull up a chair, kick up your feet, relax, and let me take you on a disturbing little journey off the beaten path and deep into the belly of a dark and insidious forest. So I can tell you about the gnarly, crazy ass shit that once happened to me. About twenty five years ago, me and a couple of my buddies decided to go camping in a heavily wooded stretch of forest in Algonquin Park, located up here in Ontario, Canada, a place where you'll find nothing but tall trees, five pound mosquitoes, slightly larger wolves, big antlered moose, and then circling back around again, very dense forest for as far as the eye can see, the perfect place to escape to and get away from our shitty, high stress, big city jobs, or at least so we thought.

Anyway. You see, Dave, Carl and I all work together in the same dumpy hole in the wall call center in the hustle and bustle of downtown Toronto. We were, to be quite honest, those annoying pain in the ass late night telemarketers that everyone loves to hate. We'd often start our telephone conversations all friendly like by saying, corny, stupid shit, you know, and how are you this fine evening, mister Walters, I hope you've had a wonderful day, or hello there, don't worry. I'm not a salesman and I won't be trying to sell you anything, but I really would appreciate it if you would give me just a few minutes of your time.

Ninety five percent or so of the time, we'd hear an immediate click followed by a constant dial tone either that or maybe no thanks, followed quickly thereafter by the same damn click and dial tone. No respect at all, I tell you no respect. But to be honest, I do exactly the same thing whenever I get these stupid, annoying phone calls. The thing is, we're all just trying to make a buck. We do this crappy lay mass job simply to pay the rent, put food on the table and of course keep beer in our bellies. So there's that.

So you see, given our pathetic day to day situation, and in order to stay sane, we just need to get away from it all every now and then to recharge, relax and regroup. And the copious amounts of beer that we ingest in the process, well that just helps us to refuel our depleted batteries. Now back to the story. Somehow we all managed to book off the same week at work. But then again, there is a rather large school of US sales schmucks swimming around in this telemarketer cesspool to choose from who all do our particular, highly annoying line of work.

We prepped all our camping gear, including a spacious six man tent, sleeping bags, fishing rods, food, water and beer. This wasn't our first rodeo, so we knew exactly what essentials to bring. All that we really wanted and needed was to just have some time away from work, some fresh air, and the camaraderie of good buddies being able to just hang out. I picked up the boys in my badly rusted but fortunately still drivable Range Rover and we all headed out cranked up the tunes, made really good time, and managed to get the tent set up all well before it even started to get dark, stacked the logs in the fire pit, lit her up, unpacked the sandwiches and beer, and we were all set let the games begin.

We all laid back in our brand new, super comfortable camping chairs that we just bought, stretched out our weary bones, and got ready to completely unwind. Finally, we shot the shit for a while about this and that, taking long swigs of our cold beer and occasionally clinking the bottles together to toast our good friendship and the beginning of our long awaited trip together. Dave started it off by saying, shit's about to get real. Boys, toss me another cold one and let's get this party started. Dave and I both immediately responded with cheers to that, brother.

We all clink our bottles together and take a long drink from the well. Someone lets out an earth shattering belch and we all laugh. I chime in with great to be out here with you guys. I know work's been a bitch for all of us lately, so I we really needed this. Dave continues, I hear you, man, it's like people have suddenly gotten a lot ruder and crazier lately. One guy actually threatened to find out who I am and then hunt me down to punish me for bothering him late at night. Like come on, dude, Carl, not to be outdone, comes back with that's nothing I had.

What I thought was just a sweet little old lady on the line who patiently listen to my whole spiel. But then at the very end, in her quiet, timid little old lady voice, told me to get a life, a real job, and to fuck the hell off. We all kill ourselves laughing at this story. I then add, hell, and that's probably somebody's dear old grandma who always make sure to give all her grandchildren a crisp five dollars bill inside their birthday cards. Everyone chuckles. Carl then says, in a proud voice, Now let's not forget who of us just got promoted to branch manager last week.

No need for applause. Just keep feeding me compliments and beer in either order. We all laugh. Carl continues, Yeah, being branch manager is cool and all, but I'm going to go out on a limb here by saying I really prefer just hanging hanging out with you guys, that is. Dave and I applaud and whistle wildly as we all clink our bottles together again. At this point, it's pretty much pitch darkout and we can all feel that it's starting to cool off. A kind of hazy fog rolls in makes everything around the fire and our tent look all spooky and shit, so we throw on jackets and another log for the fire.

Eventually we all find ourselves just staring blankly and mindlessly into the flames of the crackling fire, completely oblivious to the world and just happy to finally be free of all our daily stress and responsibility. Carl hits the sack first, justifying it by explaining how he's been sleeping like crap lately, and shortly thereafter Dave follows suit. I decide to stay by the fire, partly because of the extra large coffee I sucked back during the drive up here, and partly because I wanted to mull over some pressing issues that were gnawing away at my mind. This rather sinister forest that we were all now sitting in sinister because of the bizarre, long stretch of random dead animals aka roadkill, that we saw all along the roadside.

Ever since, entering these woods was starting to give me the creeps. Not only were there the usual smushed raccoons, skunks, and squirrels, but surprisingly we also came across a few dead deer, a fox or two, and a full grown moose. I suddenly hear a rustling of leaves and what sounds like tree branches breaking underfoot, followed by a kind of dragging sound. Weird, Yeah, but hell, We're sitting deep in a wild forest, so many of its critters are bound to come out late at night to hunt in forage. Probably just a deer or maybe a fox or raccoon.

I figure nothing to get my panties in a twist about, or to start screaming hysterically like some excited schoolgirl. Nah, don't think that would go over too well with Dave or Carl. After about an hour, I finally head into the tent. Dave's loud snoring doesn't really bother me, so I fall asleep right away and then quickly enter the subconscious. Horrors of my regular nighttime routine are for the course. Unfortunately, at some point during the night, I remember waking up, unzipping the tent and heading off to take a whiz outside of our campsites perimeter. We all agreed long ago never to piss, shit, or vomit anywhere even remotely close to where we all eat, drink and sleep.

Common sense, really, And while I'm in the middle of doing my thing, relieving the pressure on my fully engorged and now painfully throbbing, excessively beer filled bladder, I hear it the terrified voices of both kral And screaming at the top of their lungs, as if they'd just seen their latest paycheck, or worse yet, walked in on their grandparents in the middle of the act of doing it. I hurry the hell up and head straight back over to the tent to see what's going on. What the fuck? I blurred out as I arrive. I immediately see that the tent has been completely demolished, torn apart, shredded, and scattered all over like yesterday's raccoon ravish trash.

I call out, Dave Carl, are you guys all right? What the hell happened? No answer again, guys, this isn't funny. Where the fuck are you? Nothing? Now, I'm starting to freak out. Given the degree of devastation to our tent, I'm now thinking that maybe a hungry black bear could have mosied on in looking for a bite to eat. The guys probably woke up to the sound of it growling and rummaging through our stuff, and then got the hell out of dodge. The weird thing is I could see these wide, jagged scratch marks, like about a foot deep, running all along the forest floor, right through our campsite.

Like, what the actual fuck did this bear arrive in a monster truck and then just shred the whole area with its wide, heavy treaded tires. I go back to screaming, Dave, Carl, where are you? Call out if you can hear me. Once again no reply. Then I decide to follow the deep scrape marks out of the campsite and down towards the river. After walking about a quarter mile, I suddenly hear Dave in Carl's whimpers of pain. Then all at once I see them, fully expecting to see the two of them being savagely mauled by a giant bear.

My eyes widen and my mouth drops when I see exactly what's really going on there. Elevated about twenty feet or so above the forest floor. I see them hanging upside down and inside a kind of huge tree branch cage, with long, spindly branches seemingly intertwined tightly all around them, like some gargantuan sized tree spider had tediously wrapped them up in its woodsy silk. I call out, what the fuck's going on? Why the fuck are you guys up there? They suddenly realize that I'm there and both glare at me with these wild, crazy eyes, looking just like those fancy Asian designer goldfish with the huge, bulging googly eyes that you see in a pet store, and then both scream back at me at the same time.

Run, And just before I start to, Carl yells back in a frenzied, shaky voice, hang on, wait, actually, don't move, stay absolutely fucking still. I think this thing feeds off of sound or vibration because it attack Day first, probably because he was snoring like a fucking chainsaw. And just as this last word left Carl's lips, several tree branches or actually they may have been tree roots, suddenly came shooting toward him from every direction. As they coiled tightly around them and began to pierce both Carl and Dave's bodies. Their horrific screams and cries of agony and pain filled my ears.

I figured it must have heard the sound or vibration of him yelling over to me, and then immediately zeroed in on him and attacked. I could barely watch as branches and roots violently penetrated every available orifice, and then soon thereafter, the screen came to an abrupt stop. All I could see was a massive cluster of constantly twisting and writhing, long, skinny wooden appendages, viciously stabbing, thrusting and pulsating. And worst of all, there was that god awful dripping, or rather more like profuse hemorrhaging, of a seemingly continuous and almost honey like flow of crimson red blood cloths.

I was frozen in fear, instinctively wanting like crazy to just run the hell out of there and not look back, but at the same time, thinking about what Karl had just said and what I had just witnessed, I decided to stand absolutely still and not move a single muscle. I could clearly see its frustration based on the frantic movement of both its gyrating branches and roots, as they almost seemed to dance about and sniff the air. Desperately trying to figure out where the hell I was. I picked up a small but heavy chunk of wood that was lying near me and threw it with all my might in the opposite direction of where I planned to make my as quiet as possible escape.

I then saw dozens of agitated tree roots stick their heads up, or what I imagine their version of heads would look like. Anyway, A considerably larger tree branch suddenly shot straight up, and I immediately let out a muffled, combined scream of disgust, horror, and sadness all at the same time when I realized what I was looking at. It was Carl's severed head, which had been skewered clean through and was just kind of dangling there, slowly, swaying from side to side from the end of a tree branch, resembling a meat and bone covered pendulum like you'd see swinging back and forth at the base of a grandfather clock.

And the pierres de resistance were all the small bloody twigs protruding out of his neck, mouth, nose, and eye sockets. The bright red blood dripped sporadically but continuously, like some defective thrift shop shower head. Suddenly Carl went from just being our buddy the new branch manager, to becoming a bloody skeward and swinging from a branch manager. He really had a head for it. But this dark and twisted forest that we'd all naively entered for some badly needed rest and relaxation had taken out two of my best friends and had now set its sights on me.

I watched as this giant, scraggly leafless tree twisted and contorted and turned its mighty branches in every direction, almost appearing to be noisily crawling along the forest floor, laboriously dragging its heavy burden of a spindly jagged network of twisted roots, long and thereby carving deep, scraped out trenches into the hard soil below. As it moved away from me, loudly cracking and crunching its countless articulated branches and roots. I immediately and very stealthily headed off in the opposite direction, making damn sure not to step on any twigs, leaves, or anything else that could potentially make a noise or loud sound, And after having finally distanced myself far enough from this towering, demonic landlord of sap and leaves, I then began sprinting towards the entrance of the park, some two miles away, where I knew i'd find the park ranger sitting in the main office of the welcome see.

Once having reached the top of a very high ridge which overlooked the entire expanse of the valley and the forest from which I just fled, I looked down and my mouth immediately dropped open. There in the valley below crawled dozens of large trees, all moving together like a frenzied herd of gargantuan bark covered alien cattle, violently swaying and jerking their canopies of colossal leaf covered branches all about, and slowly dragging their massive exposed root clusters along the surface. I pulled out my trusty tiny pair of binoculars, quickly adjusted the focus, and then practically shit my pants at what I saw there.

Tangled within and in amongst the countless thousands of tree branches was from what I could best make out, a grisly collection of various human body parts, random bloody arms, legs, torsos, spinal cords, severed heads, clumps of glistening intestines and other bodily organs, and much much more. And also intertwined amidst this giant jumble of gyrating crimson red branches were various pieces of blood soaked clothing, backpacks, tent fabric, mountain bikes, camping chairs, and many many shoes. Some were empty, but others still contained their owners severed feet. The entire valley was filled and alive with a writhing, refusing to become furniture forest, comprised of slowly stampeding crimson covered hemorrhaging hemlocks, bleeder cedar, bloody birch, and of course, maroon colored coagulated clot maple.

When I finally reached the main entrance to the park and barged through the welcome center doors, I was surprised to see not only the park ranger, but also two police officers anxiously pacing around, and before I could even say a single word about what had just happened to me, the two policemen started showing me photographs and riddling me with question asking whether I'd seen or crossed paths with any of the numerous allegedly missing campers. They had received phone calls from countless spouses, family members, friends, and places of work, all inquiring about the whereabouts of the roughly one hundred and twenty seven individuals who'd been declared officially missing so far, and who'd not been seen nor heard from going back as far as eight weeks.

Alas, after many a millennia of mankind chopping down the countless billions, if not trillions, of trees and clear cutting much of our planet's majestic forests, the tide had finally turned. In an ironic twist of fate. It was now the mighty trees and all of its brethren within the forest's turn to start cutting down the ranks of a greedy, toxic, and overpopulated human species. Last, but not least, I leave you with this one question. If a tree crawls in the forest, does Kenny run in fear? And that was branch Manager by Gary Dee up in Ontario, Canada.

So next time your boss tells you they're promoting someone to branch manager, maybe ask a few follow up questions like is it a corner office, a pay bump? Does it have a nice new title or is it more of a rooted in place, screaming in the woods twigs where twigs shouldn't go kind of situation, because after tonight, I don't think any of us are going to hear branches scraping against the window quite the same. Ever, again, thank you Spooky so much for joining me here tonight. I had a great time sharing something scary with all of you.

Remember there's something spooky every single day of the week right here at Weekly Spooky. So make sure you subscribe on your favorite podcasting app, and while you're at it, leave us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really does help. And if you want to help us in an even more direct way, you can head to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join, where for as little as one dollar a month, you get two bonus episodes every single month, as well as my undying gratitude. And of course I want to say an extra special thank you to our Patreon podcast boosters, folks who pay just a little bit more to hear their names at the end of the show, and they are Johnny Nix, Kate and Lulu Jessica Fuller, Mike Skewey, Jenny Green, Karen we Met, Jack Kerr and Craig Cohen.

Thank you guys so much, and if you want to hear your name at the end of the program, just head to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join and sign up at the fifteen dollars a month or higher tier. Time for me to get back to work, because tomorrow we have a Thursday Thrills all about urban legend goodness, so don't miss it. For myself, for my executive producers Rob Fields and Bobbletopia dot Com, my producer Dan Wilder, and of course my creepy composer Ray Mattis. I'll see you all tomorrow right here. Until then, just mind the tree branches as best you can.

Thank you for listening me. Make sure to find your way back next week week. But for now you are safe, trust me.