When this encounter occurred, I was eighteen years old. The year was nineteen
seventy eight. It was the strangest and most exciting thing that has ever happened
to me. After the event, I told everyone I knew. I was
excited to tell everyone what happened to me. I spent two days looking up
anyone and everyone I knew to tell them the story. And I actually thought
that they would believe me. How could I have been so wrong and so
stupid to think anyone would believe the story. I was laughed at and ridiculed
by my friends, and I was put off by family. It was humiliating.
My parents even tried to get me to see a psychiatrist. I'm now
fifty eight years old. My wife knows about the encounter, and so do
my four children, who are now grown. But it was not I who
told them. They found out by hearing it from others in my family so
they could get a laugh at me. It has been a joke since I
was eighteen. I just smile and act like it's an everyday thing. They
ask me about it now, but I will not say a word. I
just tell my kids and my wife that it's an old joke, and it's
not really that funny. Within three days of trying my best to tell this
story, I stopped and have never mentioned it again until now. Why now,
Because I like the way you run this website, Cam. It's the
way you treat people. No one in my family or circle of friends then
and now will ever hear this. They don't follow this topic on the internet.
I have to follow these encounter stories in secret, by the way,
in a way, it's my shameful, adulterous affair with the unknown. I'm
telling it again now also that the world knows that these creatures are very much
real and alive in our world. Every word I write here is real.
It all happened exactly as I'm about to tell it. A friend invited me
to deer hunt on his property his family owned in Chester County and West Tennessee.
At the time, I had a Chrysler built Jeep CJ five with all
the cool lift kits and upgrades available to off roaders. At the time,
I had the meanest tires you could buy mounted on that jeep. They were
Buckshot Q seventy eight's. I thought I could go anywhere in this vehicle.
I had run the jeep mostly in muddy terrain, and had never gotten stuck
other than the one time down at the old Allen steam plant on the Mississippi
River close to Memphis. The caked, dry looking gumbo mud of the low
river bottom had fooled me and I actually almost lost the whole jeep. If
I had not been lucky to get it pulled out, it would have been
swallowed in the gumbo forever, like Quickstand was portrayed in the old Tarzan movies.
I'm spending a little time describing my jeep because my overconfidence in this jeep
is what put me in the most harrowing experience of my life. I was
young and dumb, and I thought I could do anything and go anywhere in
that vehicle. Maybe some of the men who hear this will remember how we
were pretty much a bulletproof if you can remember back that far. We met
at the gate on the farm early that cold December morning, and we made
a plan. There were three of us in the fellow whose family who owned
the property, showed us on a scribbled map onto a sheet of notebook paper
where the stands were that we could use off. We went into the darkness
of the winter morning. I got to my stand just as the sun was
like the eastern sky. I climbed in and settled down with great anticipation of
killing a good buck. I'd never killed a buck at this point in my
young life, so I was ready and I was in the right place to
kill one. The morning creeped by, and soon it was close to noon.
I had not even seen a doe, and it was a bit discouraging.
There were not as many deer then as there are now, so that
was not unexpected. This was the time we had all agreed that we would
meet back at the vehicles and have some lunch. I climbed down and walked
a mile or so back, and I met with my buddies. We ate
and drank and talked about the morning, and I was ready to get back
out in the woods. The other two guys with me were bored. It
was easy to see. They acted like they wanted to get back home to
watch a bowl game, but I knew they just wanted to go home.
I asked if I could hang around and hunt the afternoon. Killing a good
was on my mind. They both said that was fine, and they gave
me directions on how to get back out to the highway, which was different
than the way that we had come in. They told me it would cut
fifteen or twenty minutes off my time back home. No big deal. I
memorized the route. We said goodbye, and I marched back to the stand
I had occupied earlier. I distinctly remember the sound of their truck fading away
in the distance in the woods getting quiet. It was perfect. I had
this whole place to myself, and being somewhat of an introvert, I loved
the feeling of being alone, especially in the woods. I climbed back into
the stand with the same anticipation that I had had earlier. Even if I
didn't kill I was just happy to be there. The afternoon crept by.
I think I fell asleep once or twice. Later in the day, two
small doughes stepped into the clearing that I was overlooking, but I didn't kill
one. It was late, I didn't really know where I was, and
dragging an eighty pound deer back to my jeep would take two hours. I
wanted to get out of there before the sun went out completely, so I
passed on the dos and I just watched them munch on some grass. The
day was a bust, and I figured I had thirty minutes to get started
home before it was completely dark. When I got to the jeep, it
was dark, no matter. I had directions to get out of there a
faster way. I cranked the jeep and headed in that direction. My friend,
who had hunted this place since he was a kid, acted like he
knew these roads well. I made all the turns that he described to me,
and things were going good. I felt like I would hit the main
two lane highway anytime. The last rite I was to take looked fine as
I started down the last gravel road, but soon it became hard to drive
on. It narrowed down to just the width of my tread and I could
see banks on each side of the road coming up. Some people call them
sunken roads. What they are is old logging roads that are sometimes abandoned after
the timber is extracted. These roads are not maintained by the counties. In
heavy rains, they wash out even deeper, and I was navigating deep ruts
and my jeep was tilting over more than I was comfortable with, but still
I was moving forward. It was not a big deal. Just fall this
road five or six miles and I would hit the blacktop. Of course,
I hit a stretch in the road that I knew I could not get past.
The ruts and washed out sections were too deep. I stopped, and
I thought I would just turn around and go back, but I was between
two banks on each side of the road, and there was no way to
turn the jeep around. I could have tried to back out the road,
but it was hot hard enough to get where I now sat going forward.
No place to go now but straight ahead. I squeezed out of the door,
with barely enough room between my jeep and the red clay bank to get
to the front hubs, and I locked them in. I dropped the transfer
case into low gear and I started creeping along. Within one hundred yards,
there was a washed out spot that I knew that I could not make,
but I had no choice, so I creeped into the dry gullies, hoping
for the best. One spot was so washed out that the jeep was almost
at a forty five degree angle, and I felt the vehicle tump over onto
my side and then it stopped. Had the bank not been there to catch
the roll bar, I would have tipped over on the side I was stuck.
It was now around eight pm. It was dark and cold, and
I was stuck in the middle of where I don't know. I had no
idea where I was, but I did know that the highway was ahead.
I climbed out of the passenger side with my heavy maglight and I started walking.
At this point, I had no idea how I was going to get
my jeep out of there, but I would worry about that later. I
just needed to get to the highway, catch a ride, and get to
a phone and call for some help. The night was cold and clear,
the moon was full, and if I had been up above these sunken banks,
I could have seen for several yards in the woods with no light.
The moon was to my left like a torch in the sky. The bank
and the trees on the right side of the road were lit well, and
on the left side and ahead of me was shadowed by the deep bank on
the left. I'm glad I had that big mag light. I would not
have known where I was stepping, and I could have broken a leg or
something. High up on the left, all the trees were silhouettes, the
moon behind them to my left. I heard something walking in the leaves.
It was loud. It scared the hell out of me, because who expects
to hear that on a cold, frosty night in the woods. I stopped
and listened to the footfalls. They were heavy and deliberate, so I shouted
out, Hey, Hey, my truck is stuck back there. Can you
help me? I assumed it was a man walking in the woods. The
footsteps stopped, and I could hear something breathing like a horse just above the
bank. It was right there. My rifle was strapped to my back and
I fumbled with the flashlight and I dropped it trying to get my rifle in
my hands. The flashlight tumbled down the hill that I was descending at the
time and landed in a position so that the beam of the light was pointing
straight at me. I was illuminated in the darkness, and just my luck,
whoever was up there would it at least see that I had a rifle
pointed in his direction. But then nothing happened. All went quiet. My
mind went to the movie Deliverance, and I wondered if some locals were messing
with me, or maybe they had other plans for me. My fear went
sky high. I have a big imagination and it was getting the best of
me. A minute or two passed with no noise, so I walked down
the hill a few steps and I picked up my maglight and I started walking
again, with my light scanning the top of the banks on both sides.
I heard the leaves rustling again to my left and behind me, swinging my
light in that direction, quickly, I caught the outline of a figure of
a man peering over the top. But as my light swung, shaking to
lock onto that spot, I saw it withdraw and vanish. There was more
activity above and it was moving ahead of me. Now they were going to
wait on me to walk and kill me, or so I thought. I
was terrified, and so far this had been the scariest thing that I had
gone through. I know it scary because I was there. But what I'm
about to tell you creeps into the unbelievable. I heard and I felt a
strange hum come from above me, like a hum from an electrical transformer at
your house, but it was much deeper. And then my light went out,
and I swear I felt the hairs on my head get static, and
the pores on my face began to open, and I began to sweat.
I cannot remember ever having this sensation before or since. I stopped and just
stood still in the middle of that narrow road. In a minute, my
eyes had adjusted to the darkness and my surroundings began to clear up. I
could see what the moonlight. By now, the moon had crested the left
bank, and it was shining right in my face. Standing ten feet above
me on that bank and a little to my forward, was the silhouette of
the biggest monster I have ever seen. No details were clear with the moon
at its back, but I could clearly see and hear its heavy breathing and
its size and shape. I started walking. What else could I do?
Every step I took towards that highway got me closer to safety. I wish
I had known how close I really was. I think it would have given
me a bit of hope. As things stood now, In my mind,
I was a walking dead man. Whatever this thing was, it would soon
descend into the hole and it would kill me. But it didn't do that.
It walked with me, stride for stride. My eyes were locked onto
this thing. As I moved down the road, so much so that I
fell once walking over one of the ruts in the road, dropping my useless
life. I could not find it, and so I just kept walking.
My rifle was back in his position on my back, and I never reached
for it. I don't know why, maybe because this thing was so big
that I doubted my little thirty thirty lever action would do the thing any damage.
If that wasn't enough, a second creature the same size stepped on the
bank to my right, and it watched as I passed, and then it
started tracking with me, but in the rear. Then another in front of
me on my right, then another to my left, and soon there were
six creatures that I could see clearly in the moonlit night. They never made
a sound, sands their footsteps in the leaves, and their heavy, horse
tight breathing. At one point on the left, I could see steam coming
off the largest monsters back and shoulders. Again, I could not see details
of their appearance, only outlines for the ones on the left, and a
little more detail of the escorts on my right. They were covered in thick
hair. My neck was strained. I kept looking back and forth, then
rear to front, trying my best to keep an eye on all six.
The road ahead appeared to get more shallow. The banks were receding, and
soon I would be level with the forest floor and one way. It was
a relief. It gave me options on a way to escape, but on
the other hand, I didn't feel like I was going to get out of
this. So elated with feelings of this thing being over one way or another,
I hurried my steps towards the place where the road was not sunken.
As we all approached this spot in the road, the creature started fanning out
and moving away from the edge of the banks that would soon be gone.
When I could see into the woods on both sides, they had moved a
distance away from me, I could still see them surrounding me. They just
stood there, watching what was next. I looked at every one of them
over about a minute, maybe to make sure that one was not rushing me.
I don't really know, but I looked at every one of them.
My fear was subsiding, and my fascination was beginning to grow. I felt
strangely calm in that place. In that time. It was a calmness I
had never felt the thirty degree weather wasn't on my mind. I felt a
warmth that was not physical, but rather it was emotional. It was really
strange. I should have been running like a maniac, screaming for help,
but I didn't. I just stood there in their presence, and I took
it all in while I could. From behind one of the creatures walked a
small one. It walked up to and stood at the road's edge, and
it looked at me. It began to fidget with its own fingers like it
was nervous, like it was doing something mischievous. Soon, an adult walked
in behind this smaller one and gave a shallow grunt, at which time it
leaned over slightly, and the small one climbed onto the back of the mother.
It had to be at some mother. I don't know why I think
it was, but it makes the most sense. They slowly walked back and
crunched through the leaves into the woods, leaving me with the other five creatures.
The only other sounds I heard them make was when a strange howl that
I will never be able to replicate came from way back where my jeep laid
on its side. The others responded by moving from their statue type poses and
making slow and almost gentle grunting noises to each other, before they all at
the same time started moving back from whence we had all just walked, and
I never saw them again. I walked another mile and I heard a car
on the road ahead, then another, and then another, and I knew
I was home free. I stashed my rifle in some weeds while off the
highway, and I flagged down a car that stopped and gave me a ride
to a gas station only a short distance down the road. I made the
necessary phone calls, and I was home in bed by one am. Apparently
my father knew some people in the area, and we drove to meet them
so that I could guide a man with a tractor up the sunken road to
my jeep. I just needed it, tilted back on all four tires and
pulled one hundred yards or so. I gathered my rifle up, threw it
in my dad's car, and then I jumped onto the grater. The man
had hitched behind his tractor, and he and I began the ride up the
narrow logging road to my jeep. I figured that it was at least three
or four miles before we would see it. As we came around a slight
corner in the road, I asked the man to stop. I saw my
mag light laying in the road, and I retrieved it. As I walked
back to jump on the grater, I looked up the road and there was
my gray jeep setting on all four tires on the level stretch of the road
where the banks had receded. It was the spot where the bank leveled out,
at least a mile maybe more from where I had tumped over. I
could see drag marks as if the jeep had not been rolled, but dragged
with the transmission engage to this spot. I know those creatures did that for
me, or maybe they did it for themselves so that we would not come
back. I think I was the last thing on their mind. I cranked
it and we drove home that afternoon, at which point I began telling everyone
what happened to me. But you already know how that turned out.