In late August of nineteen eighty five, my parents, my sister and wife,
and I spent time vacationing in Florida on the Gulf Coast. My wife
and my older sister and I had driven down while my parents flew down together.
My wife and I wanted to spend some time with my in laws,
and my sister didn't want to fly back home to Chicago with my parents.
Our vacation time was ending and we headed back to Chicago. I was driving
a nineteen eighty five Chrysler New Yorker with four thousand miles on it, and
the drive home was comfortable and relaxing. It was three am, and my
sister was asleep in the front passenger seat while my wife slept in the back.
I was driving on I sixty five. It's a four lane highway north
of Indianapolis. I was in the right lane and there was little traffic,
most of which were big rigs. A big rig pass asked me on the
left, doing over eighty five miles an hour, and as it passed,
I could feel the air pushing my car to the right. I was doing
about seventy watching the truck passing over the slope in the roadway ahead. The
rear tail lights disappeared, and I reached the top of the slope and I
could see the truck in the distance, but it was pulling away from me.
I noticed the brake lights go on for a few seconds and then back
off, and again the brake lights came on. They remained on for fifteen
seconds, as if it was slowing down for some reason, and after that
the truck continued down the highway. I came down the other side of the
slope where the truck had put its brakes on, and I noticed the shadow
of something on the right shoulder of the road. My thought was that it
may be an abandoned vehicle that had mechanical problems. The night was calm and
lit only by the moonlight, which did eliminate the darkness. Getting clear,
I realized that the shadow was not that of a small car. I put
my foot on the brake and I disengaged the cruise control, causing my car
to slow. I put on my high beams and I still wasn't sure what
I was seeing now. I reached the cross to give my sister a rough
shake to wake her, and at this point I was yelling profanities. What
the f is that? My sister woke up and she looked at where I
was pointing, and immediately she was overcome with fear. When we got closer,
we saw a big buck on the right shoulder of the road. It
was facing away from us, but I could see its rack on the right
side of some big dark object. Between us and the deer was something huge
and dark in color. My car had probably decelerated thirty miles an hour.
My foot was still on the break. Now yelled back at my wife to
wake up, but she never did. My sister was frantic and grasping at
the con so in the middle of the car. She was laying, let's
get the hell out of here. I was thirty five yards from this thing,
and I could make out the shape of it. Its large torso was
V shaped like that of a bodybuilder, with a smaller waist and huge shoulders.
It was facing away from us, and I could now see that it
was covered in dark hair. It was so dark that I would say it
was black, and it reminded me of an ape in the zoo, but
its coat appeared shiny. That could have been because of my high beams being
on it, though we didn't see its face because it was turned away from
us, and it looked as if it was squatting down, and it had
its long arms on the under side of the deer, and it appeared to
be busy eating. When we were almost beside it, I started to change
lanes to the left, not because of my sister yelling at me, but
the fear that had welled up in me. We slowly started past this thing,
and it turned its head to the left. It didn't turn its whole
body, only its head. It didn't seem to have a neck. But
the face of this creature looked wet. It wasn't a gorilla staring at us,
and it wasn't a man, and neither one of us knew what to
call it, and from its expression, it was not happy that we were
there. My sister screamed at me, and I firmly pressed the accelerator to
the floor because I was busy looking back out of the right side rear passenger
window. I nearly lost control of the car. I put it into the
grassy area between the northbound and southbound lanes, and after I got back onto
the highway, I looked in the rear view mirror, and I swear this
thing was watching us. I tried catching up to that trucker that was ahead
of us, since no other vehicles were heading north at the time. However,
even with me driving over ninety five miles an hour for twenty minutes,
we never saw that rig Again. My wife woke when we stopped for gas
in northern Indiana. We told her our horrific encounter, but she didn't believe
us. I must admit that I'm not sure I would have believed such a
tale either. Who would That morning, I was so unnerved by the incident
that I got a speeding ticket in Chicago for going thirty miles an hour over
the speed limit on the Dan Ryan Expressway, just trying to get home.
My dad is a career law enforcement officer, and when we met at my
parents' house later that night, my dad didn't believe us either. He asked
if we'd been drinking, and then he admonished me for getting a speeding ticket.
To this day, my sister and I don't talk about this to anyone
outside of the immediate family. If I bring it up in a conversation,
that makes the hair stand up on our arms in the back of our necks.
I don't know what we saw that night, but it was not a
bear, a wolf, or anything I've ever seen before, and hopefully I'll
never see one again. At under thirty feet in the distance, in the
amber glow of the side marker and opera light, it's an image we'll never
forget. It has convinced me that there are some things out in nature that
we have no clue about. I don't camp or hike or love the outdoors
as I did my younger days, and now that I'm turning sixty, I
don't care what people think. I know what we saw, and no one
can ever take that away from us. My name is Robin and I was
twelve years old when Durwood shared this story with me. Durwood was my father's
cousin. He and his wife, Deny, and their two daughters used to
visit us on the weekends. They would bring boxes of doughnuts or burghers,
and they would visit for a few hours. I liked it because we got
to stay up past our bedtime. Our parents didn't mind, and I always
look forward to their visits. All gone now, so I decided to share
this story with you and not let it die. In the late nineteen sixties,
Dirwood and his family bought a farm in Calhoun, Kentucky, which is
twenty miles south of Owensboro. They were so excited to be living on a
farm of their own. Derwood was a truck driver who worked second shift.
He felt good knowing while working at night that his family was safe in the
country, away from the dangers of city life in Louisville. That's where we
lived, and I must admit I was a little jealous. I would have
loved the farm life, but that was until Durwood and Deany shared their experiences.
It was approaching night on their third day on the farm. Deani and
the girls were still unboxing treasures and settling in their new life. A window
over the sink looked out into the backyard. There was a four foot split
rail fence that separated the backyard from a large corn field. Deanie had finished
unpacking a box when she decided to heat up a frozen pizza for dinner.
Derwood would be home soon. As she glanced out the top kitchen window,
she was met with a pair of glowing red eyes. She screamed and motioned
for the girls to head to their bedroom quickly. The girls were both scared
out of their wits, and they begged for explanation. Deanie told them to
draw the drapes and to sit quietly. Well, it wasn't long before they
heard Dirwood pull into the driveway and he came in the house. Deanie ran
to him and told him what she saw in the window. So Dirwood ran
for a shotgun and headed out the back door. He was a tall,
lanky fella, and he was fearless and brave. He immediately saw the creature
and it ran away on its hind legs, and it jumped the fence with
little efforts. He shot at the wolf like creature when it crested the fence,
and it let out an ungodly scream before disappearing into the cornfield. He
had hit it. Damnedest thing I ever saw, said Durwood when he told
me the story. The next morning, he found the blood trail, and
he began tracking the creature through the cornfield until the field ended at the dark
Woods. He wanted to go in after this thing, if for nothing else,
to see what it was. Maybe it had died in the night,
but maybe it hadn't, So he elected to leave it b and he went
back to the house. Later that day, everything they had moved into their
new home was loaded back into a moving truck and they headed back to Louisville.
Apparently the city wasn't that bad after all.