Thanksgiving Dinner Was Out Of This World

A feast can feel like a blessing until the plate starts asking questions back. We take you to the Smoky Mountains in late 1966, where a magazine assignment turns into an unforgettable Thanksgiving with the Dipweed family: a sprawling, off‑grid clan led by Bubba, a patriarch whose word lands harder than a gavel and whose campfire stories keep kids quiet and eyes wide. The meals are legendary, the system disciplined, and the rules simple—eat what the land offers, waste nothing, and keep the family close.

As the holiday nears, Bubba hints at a secret entrée that will make the day “out of this world.” The spread arrives like a small-town fair: wild turkey, roasted vegetables, pies, music, skits, and one mysterious smoked slice that no one can name but everyone devours. That night, sleep turns strange. Our crew wakes in cycles, pinned to their beds, minds alert and bodies heavy, trading theories by morning about moonshine, mushrooms, or something inside that unknown cut of meat. When we press Bubba, the answer is simple and deeply unsettling: it wasn’t hunted; it was found.

We follow the trail to a scorched hill by a creek, where the ground caves into a clean impact and a silver fabric shimmers like foil woven into silk. The “pet outfit” story collapses under the weight of what looks like a crash site. Was the secret course a pig in a costume or a passenger in a suit? Between Bigfoot threats used for discipline and a shrug that turns the impossible into dinner, the line between folklore and evidence narrows to a knife’s edge. This is a story about survival, hierarchy, and the lengths a family will go to keep a table full—plus the eerie possibility that the main dish didn’t start on Earth.

If you love eerie true tales, frontier survival, UFO lore, and the unsettling humor of making do with what you find, press play now. Then subscribe, share with a friend who loves the weird, and leave a review with your best theory about the mystery meat.

Transcript

Welcome To Creep Radio

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the most unsettling place on the internet. The Creep Radio. I'm your host, the Master of Creep. Buckle up for another exciting ride.

The Thanksgiving Setup

Life With The Dipweed Family

Bubba’s Laws And Legends

The Secret Thanksgiving Plan

A Feast And Strange Night

Searching For The Mystery Meat

The Crash Site Revelation

Aftermath And Creepy Sign-Off

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Well, hello, my little creepies. It is I, the Master of Creave. I'm recording this episode on November the twenty second, twenty twenty two, and it's just two days before Thanksgiving. I thought this would be the perfect time to tell you about tonight's episode, and it's called Thanksgiving Dinner was Out of This World. It was in the late nineteen sixties and my father was a photographer for a popular magazine which will remain nameless, but trust me you've heard of it. Anyway, he was on assignment in Tennessee working on documenting the simple people of America, sometimes known as hillbillies. As part of his job, he was asked to follow a particular family for several months so he could photograph and document exactly how these mountain people survived off the land. Why I was only fourteen years old and I was allowed to visit my dad on location at his assigned family. This is the story of the dipweed family of Tennessee, and the head of the dipweed family was Bubba. Everybody just called him Crazy Bubba. My name is Jason and this is my story. It was the third week in November nineteen sixty six. We were getting ready to celebrate Thanksgiving with the Dipweeds. My father, Jay, was the photographer for this assignment. His colleague Marty was chief editor who was writing the article which was scheduled to be released the following February of 1967. We were living with the Dipweed family who owned land in the Smoky Mountains just south of Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The Dipweed family had lived completely off the land, eating only what they could catch, kill, or grow in their garden. Their only source of income was from moonshine and the sort of extra vegetables they produced off the land. They built their own house on a clearing. This was a true mountain family, very simple. I wouldn't call them stupid, but let's just say they do things differently. The Dipweed family really knew how to cook. Why they could rival any Manhattan restaurant in the heart of New York City. Their meals were exceptional with flavor of secret family recipes handed down throughout the generations of past Dipweed family members. These people would eat anything that could walk, crawl, swim or fly. Bubba Dipweed had eleven kids ranging from age fourteen up to fifty two. Bubba was seventy years old and he was the king of the castle. Most of his kids made their home nearby. It was like their own little town on the side of a mountain. Each family member was assigned a different task and Bubba would make sure that things got done. When it was dinner time, everyone would meet outside around the fire pit, where there were more than two dozen wooden picnic tables. Every meal was like a big family reunion. The meals were enormous. No one ever went hungry. An average meal would consist of fresh meat and garden vegetables. There were never leftovers, because whatever didn't get consumed at their mealtime was thrown into a wild animal pit and would be eaten before the sun came up the next day, usually by possums and raccoons, rats, birds, foxes, coyotes, things of that nature. As Bubba would say, the eaters become the eaten. By feeding wild animals, they never had to go very far for tomorrow's dinner. Many times wild animals would just be waiting for the after dinner feast. Bubba was a big believer in Bigfoot. He would often tease his grandkids around dinner time. He would say things like If you don't do what I say, I'm gonna feed you to Bigfoot. And the grandkids would take his threat seriously because when Bubba spoke, you better pay attention. And often he would guide the conversation to Bigfoot sightings and stories at night. After dinner Bubba would sit down with all the children and tell them spooky stories, while the women folk cleaned up the after dinner mess, washed the dishes and the pots and pans. Bubba's stories were extra creepy, and he claims that they are true. It was usually about a past family member who was caught and eaten alive by Bigfoot. When Bubba was in the middle of one of his Bigfoot stories, you better keep your mouth shut and just listen. If anyone were ever to interrupt his story, he would give them his evil Bubba stare that could paralyze them in terror. If you crossed Bubba, you better be in the next county for your own safety. After dinner each night, Bubba would pass out the next day's assignments. His older adult kids would gather around for the nightly family meeting, and it usually sounded something like this. Jared, go to the creek and catch us some catfish tomorrow. Also try to get some crawheads too. Billy, I want you to gather enough firewood for the next three days. Go up to the mountains where the wood is drier and take your boy with you. Michael, I want you to repair the roof of our houses. Some of them are leaking and they need attention. Use the tar we have left over from the parking lot job. Now this would go on for about fifteen minutes, and at the end of the meeting everyone knew what was expected of them. You see, Bubba really was the boss. Thanksgiving was going to be epic. Bubba had everything planned out, what they were going to eat and what they were going to do. He even arranged for some family members to put on a Thanksgiving show to entertain everyone. This usually consisted of playing music and acting out comedy skits. For Thanksgiving dinner, Bubba was planning a secret meal that he promised would be memorable. He talked about a special hunt that he had planned and the meal was going to be a big surprise. Of course there were other items such as pies and cakes, chicken, roasted vegetables and a wild turkey with stuffing. Some of the grandkids asked Bubba, What's the surprise? And Bubba said, Well, if I told you it wouldn't be a surprise now, would it? Maybe it will be a McHenry meal. The McHenries were another family that lived over the next mountain, and Bubba often had a feud going on with them about something. And the kids would squeal, No, grandpa, you can't be eating people. Of course, Bubba was just kidding. Maybe it will be a Bigfoot meal. You'll just have to wait and see. Finally it was Thanksgiving, and the meal was the meal of the century. I have never seen a spread in my life like this. This banquet took up three complete picnic tables. There were different kinds of meats and pies, bread and vegetables with all the fixings. We ate and ate and ate until we were completely full. Half the time I had no idea what I was eating, but it all tasted really good. The meal, along with the family entertainment, lasted for several hours, and when it was all done, everyone was exhausted. We all went to sleep about the time the sun started setting. I remember it was a night of very strange dreams. I fell asleep about seven PM, but I kept waking up all night long. Just about every couple of hours. I would wake up staring at the ceiling, but I was unable to move. It seemed that I was paralyzed, laying in my bed, and I would just drift off to sleep again. Was this a dream or was this actually happening? The next morning I finally woke up and I was able to move again. Wow, what a night. I wondered if I ate some sort of psychedelic mushrooms or something. What caused those crazy dreams and why did I wake up so much? I asked my father, who seemed to suffer the same symptoms, and so did Marty, the chief editor of the project. I started comparing notes and it seems that we all ate the same thing, and all of us kept waking up paralyzed every couple of hours throughout the night. Well it had to be something that we ate. What else could it have been? We compared our meals, and the only thing that really stood out was a slice of smoked meat. What was this meat? Was it a goat? Maybe a small animal that we were not used to eating, or maybe maybe a squirrel, I don't know. We asked Bubba about it. He said it was a complete surprise and that's what I was talking about before. It was a special meat it had found a month ago, and it was smoked in the meat locker for the past month. My dad asked him, What do you mean you found it? You mean you shot and killed an animal? Baba said no, this is a meat that Jared found. What do you mean found? Is it something that he shot and killed? Baba said no, I don't think so. I think it was already dead when he found it. Uh that sounds disgusting. What the hell was it? Well, it seems that hillbillies will try anything if it looks good, even if it's already dead. Bubba went on to say that Jared had found this and that it was already just a carcass without any limbs. Probably a wolf or a mountain lion had already separated the limbs, so it could have been a goat, or it might have been a wild pig, who knows? But he thought it was somebody's pet maybe. Oh my gosh, you mean like a pet dog? Now as gross as that sounds, it didn't taste bad, but then again if you smoke a pair of tennis shoes for a month, they would probably taste pretty good. Just the thought of this made me sick to my stomach. I told my dad, Okay, I'm done. I'm ready to go back home now. And my dad asked Bubba, why did you think this was somebody's pet? And Bubba said because it had on a little outfit, you know, the kind of thing that people dress their pets in. And Bubba said, I'm thinking it's maybe someone's pet pig. We discovered the origin of the mystery meat. Bubba asked Jared, Where did you find this meat? And Jared said it's on the other side of the creek. Bubba said, Well take us there, I want to see this myself. So we put on our hikey boots and we started following Jared to the spot where he found the pet pig carcass. He pointed to a little hill and it seemed to be burnt like an area like someone had started a fire. We looked around and we found the outfit that the pig was wearing, and it was a silvered colored material that looked a little bit like aluminum foil, but it had the consistency of expensive silk. What the hell is this stuff? I've never seen material like this before. We saw a burnt out hole in the ground. Look at this. What what the hell is this? It looks like it fell out of the sky and buried itself about four feet into the ground. Why, this looks like some kind of spaceship, a UFO crash site. Are you telling me that we just ate an alien? And Bubba said, Well, don't worry, it won't hurt you. It was smoked for about a month. My dad asked, so Bubba, let me get this straight. A space alien traveled from a planet hundreds of light years away, and we ate him. And then Bubba just wiped off his chin and said, Yep. And it was rat good too.

SPEAKER_00 15:56

Well now. It seems that you've made it through another creep radio episode. Oh, and don't forget, never listen alone.