WEBVTT

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In late August of nineteen eighty five, my parents, my sister and wife,

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and I spent time vacationing in Florida
on the Gulf Coast. My wife

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and my older sister and I had
driven down while my parents flew down together.

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My wife and I wanted to spend
some time with my in laws,

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and my sister didn't want to fly
back home to Chicago with my parents.

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Our vacation time was ending and we
headed back to Chicago. I was driving

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a nineteen eighty five Chrysler New Yorker
with four thousand miles on it, and

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the drive home was comfortable and relaxing. It was three am, and my

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sister was asleep in the front passenger
seat while my wife slept in the back.

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I was driving on I sixty five. It's a four lane highway north

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of Indianapolis. I was in the
right lane and there was little traffic,

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most of which were big rigs.
A big rig pass asked me on the

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left, doing over eighty five miles
an hour, and as it passed,

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I could feel the air pushing my
car to the right. I was doing

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about seventy watching the truck passing over
the slope in the roadway ahead. The

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rear tail lights disappeared, and I
reached the top of the slope and I

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could see the truck in the distance, but it was pulling away from me.

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I noticed the brake lights go on
for a few seconds and then back

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off, and again the brake lights
came on. They remained on for fifteen

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seconds, as if it was slowing
down for some reason, and after that

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the truck continued down the highway.
I came down the other side of the

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slope where the truck had put its
brakes on, and I noticed the shadow

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of something on the right shoulder of
the road. My thought was that it

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may be an abandoned vehicle that had
mechanical problems. The night was calm and

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lit only by the moonlight, which
did eliminate the darkness. Getting clear,

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I realized that the shadow was not
that of a small car. I put

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my foot on the brake and I
disengaged the cruise control, causing my car

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to slow. I put on my
high beams and I still wasn't sure what

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I was seeing now. I reached
the cross to give my sister a rough

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shake to wake her, and at
this point I was yelling profanities. What

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the f is that? My sister
woke up and she looked at where I

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was pointing, and immediately she was
overcome with fear. When we got closer,

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we saw a big buck on the
right shoulder of the road. It

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was facing away from us, but
I could see its rack on the right

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side of some big dark object.
Between us and the deer was something huge

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and dark in color. My car
had probably decelerated thirty miles an hour.

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My foot was still on the break. Now yelled back at my wife to

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wake up, but she never did. My sister was frantic and grasping at

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the con so in the middle of
the car. She was laying, let's

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get the hell out of here.
I was thirty five yards from this thing,

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and I could make out the shape
of it. Its large torso was

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V shaped like that of a bodybuilder, with a smaller waist and huge shoulders.

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It was facing away from us,
and I could now see that it

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was covered in dark hair. It
was so dark that I would say it

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was black, and it reminded me
of an ape in the zoo, but

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its coat appeared shiny. That could
have been because of my high beams being

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on it, though we didn't see
its face because it was turned away from

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us, and it looked as if
it was squatting down, and it had

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its long arms on the under side
of the deer, and it appeared to

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be busy eating. When we were
almost beside it, I started to change

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lanes to the left, not because
of my sister yelling at me, but

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the fear that had welled up in
me. We slowly started past this thing,

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and it turned its head to the
left. It didn't turn its whole

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body, only its head. It
didn't seem to have a neck. But

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the face of this creature looked wet. It wasn't a gorilla staring at us,

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and it wasn't a man, and
neither one of us knew what to

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call it, and from its expression, it was not happy that we were

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there. My sister screamed at me, and I firmly pressed the accelerator to

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the floor because I was busy looking
back out of the right side rear passenger

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window. I nearly lost control of
the car. I put it into the

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grassy area between the northbound and southbound
lanes, and after I got back onto

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the highway, I looked in the
rear view mirror, and I swear this

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thing was watching us. I tried
catching up to that trucker that was ahead

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of us, since no other vehicles
were heading north at the time. However,

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even with me driving over ninety five
miles an hour for twenty minutes,

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we never saw that rig Again.
My wife woke when we stopped for gas

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in northern Indiana. We told her
our horrific encounter, but she didn't believe

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us. I must admit that I'm
not sure I would have believed such a

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tale either. Who would That morning, I was so unnerved by the incident

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that I got a speeding ticket in
Chicago for going thirty miles an hour over

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the speed limit on the Dan Ryan
Expressway, just trying to get home.

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My dad is a career law enforcement
officer, and when we met at my

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parents' house later that night, my
dad didn't believe us either. He asked

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if we'd been drinking, and then
he admonished me for getting a speeding ticket.

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To this day, my sister and
I don't talk about this to anyone

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outside of the immediate family. If
I bring it up in a conversation,

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that makes the hair stand up on
our arms in the back of our necks.

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I don't know what we saw that
night, but it was not a

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bear, a wolf, or anything
I've ever seen before, and hopefully I'll

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never see one again. At under
thirty feet in the distance, in the

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amber glow of the side marker and
opera light, it's an image we'll never

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forget. It has convinced me that
there are some things out in nature that

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we have no clue about. I
don't camp or hike or love the outdoors

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as I did my younger days,
and now that I'm turning sixty, I

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don't care what people think. I
know what we saw, and no one

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can ever take that away from us. My name is Robin and I was

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twelve years old when Durwood shared this
story with me. Durwood was my father's

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cousin. He and his wife,
Deny, and their two daughters used to

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visit us on the weekends. They
would bring boxes of doughnuts or burghers,

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and they would visit for a few
hours. I liked it because we got

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to stay up past our bedtime.
Our parents didn't mind, and I always

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look forward to their visits. All
gone now, so I decided to share

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this story with you and not let
it die. In the late nineteen sixties,

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Dirwood and his family bought a farm
in Calhoun, Kentucky, which is

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twenty miles south of Owensboro. They
were so excited to be living on a

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farm of their own. Derwood was
a truck driver who worked second shift.

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He felt good knowing while working at
night that his family was safe in the

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country, away from the dangers of
city life in Louisville. That's where we

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lived, and I must admit I
was a little jealous. I would have

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loved the farm life, but that
was until Durwood and Deany shared their experiences.

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It was approaching night on their third
day on the farm. Deani and

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the girls were still unboxing treasures and
settling in their new life. A window

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over the sink looked out into the
backyard. There was a four foot split

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rail fence that separated the backyard from
a large corn field. Deanie had finished

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unpacking a box when she decided to
heat up a frozen pizza for dinner.

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Derwood would be home soon. As
she glanced out the top kitchen window,

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she was met with a pair of
glowing red eyes. She screamed and motioned

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for the girls to head to their
bedroom quickly. The girls were both scared

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out of their wits, and they
begged for explanation. Deanie told them to

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draw the drapes and to sit quietly. Well, it wasn't long before they

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heard Dirwood pull into the driveway and
he came in the house. Deanie ran

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to him and told him what she
saw in the window. So Dirwood ran

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for a shotgun and headed out the
back door. He was a tall,

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lanky fella, and he was fearless
and brave. He immediately saw the creature

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and it ran away on its hind
legs, and it jumped the fence with

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little efforts. He shot at the
wolf like creature when it crested the fence,

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and it let out an ungodly scream
before disappearing into the cornfield. He

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had hit it. Damnedest thing I
ever saw, said Durwood when he told

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me the story. The next morning, he found the blood trail, and

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he began tracking the creature through the
cornfield until the field ended at the dark

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Woods. He wanted to go in
after this thing, if for nothing else,

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to see what it was. Maybe
it had died in the night,

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but maybe it hadn't, So he
elected to leave it b and he went

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back to the house. Later that
day, everything they had moved into their

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new home was loaded back into a
moving truck and they headed back to Louisville.

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Apparently the city wasn't that bad after
all.