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My grandmother on my dad's side lived
in a holler in West Virginia. My

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family and I live in Ohio,
but we would go visit her from time

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to time over the years. It
was like an adventure. Every time we

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visited. Grandma was fun of telling
us a story of a time when she

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saw a face in the window.
She described it as a large, hairy

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man she called Burper. Since my
grandmother's house sat up on a hill,

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in the window she was referring to
easily sat eight feet off the ground,

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we always laughed it off with a
sure Grandma. She was always telling us

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story, so we figured this was
another one for our entertainment. That was

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part of what was wonderful about my
grandmother. She was always telling tales and

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spinning yarns for us, even if
they were oft in the kind my mother

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would have preferred. My sister and
I not here. That's why we assume

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Burper was another one of Grandma's special
stories. Years later, when I was

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an older teen, I went to
visit my grandmother by myself, and by

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the time I struggled to get my
bags up the hill to her house and

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got settled in, it had gotten
late. I noticed that my grandmother seemed

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nervous, which was highly unusual for
her. It got my attention, so

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I asked her what was wrong.
She was reluctant to talk at first,

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but after some coaxing, she said
that she'd been hearing noises in the woods

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at night, and then she added
that she would rather I didn't go out

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there alone. Well, I did
my best to assure her that it was

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nothing to worry about. It's probably
animals in the woods, Grandma, I

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said. Ignoring my explanations, she
said, if you wake up in the

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night and you have to go outside
to use the outhouse, and you wake

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me up and I'll go with you. Then she pointed to the big,

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heavy silver flashlight she kept by the
door and added, and we'll take the

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flashlight out with us. There was
no doubt in my mind that I was

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going to have to go out to
the outhouse at some point. My only

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other option was to use the bucket
that she kept for nighttime emergencies, and

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I didn't think I could bring myself
to do that. But I could see

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that she was serious, so I
promised that I would wake her if I

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needed to go out. A week
passed, during which I spent my time

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riding quads up and down the haller
with the neighbors, waiting the creek,

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and generally having a good time.
I forgot all about my promise to my

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grandmother. It was a typical hot
and sticky summer night. I was tossing

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and turning in the heat with no
air conditioning when I realized I had to

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go to the bathroom. The bucket
was in Grandma's room, and I didn't

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want to wake her. Besides,
I didn't really like using that bucket anyway.

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I slipt on my shoes and grabbed
my flashlight, and I shut the

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door as quietly as I could behind
me, and walking down that dark wooded

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path at two o'clock in the morning
was creepy, but I had the flashlight,

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so I shined it up and down
the path to make sure nothing was

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going to jump out at me.
I wasn't actually scared until I heard a

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twig snap behind me. I stopped
and I turned around to shine the light

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back down the path, but there
was nothing there. Hearing noises in the

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woods set me on edge. And
until that night I had been using the

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bucket, so I felt a bit
like I was in unfamiliar territory. I

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shined the light along the trees once
more for reassurance, and then continued on

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my way to the outhouse. And
by the time I reached the door,

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I had to go so bad I
didn't even latch it. The unpleasant odors

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had me holding back my breath,
but all outhouses smell, and the relief

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was worth it. Once I finished
my business, I stood up to leave,

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but as I reached for the door, something slapped the side of the

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outhouse so hard that it shook.
I froze in fear for a second before

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reaching up and locking the door,
and then I held onto the handle as

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if my life depended on it,
and at that moment I was pretty sure

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it did depend on it. Another
slap shook the little building again, as

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I clutched the handle tighter, and
I screamed at the top of my lungs.

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I was more terrified than I had
ever been in my life. I

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was sobbing hysterically now as another slap, this time at the top of the

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door where the screen was, and
it rattled the door terribly. I looked

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up in time to see a big
hairy arm tear through it. I grabbed

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the flashlight and began hitting the arm
over and over with all my strength,

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screaming as loud as I could the
whole time. There was a howl of

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pain and heavy breathing, and then
the thing must have run back into the

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woods. I slid down onto the
floor, terrified and stunned, but too

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afraid to leave. I sat there
on the outhouse floor the whole night,

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with my shirt sleeve through the handle
and the flashlight cradled in my arm.

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At some point I fell asleep.
The next morning, I was awakened to

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the feeling of someone trying to open
the door and the sound of my name

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being called. It was my grandmother, and when I opened the door,

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she kneeled down and she hugged me
while I cried. I'll never forget that

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comforting hug as long as I live. Grandma is no longer with us,

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but she was the kind of person
you never forget, and now I know

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that her stories about the burper were
true. I had my first encounter when

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I was fourteen. I've always been
a prolific reader, and I love to

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write stories too. I've started fifty
stories or more over the years, but

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I finished maybe two of them.
I was reading in bed late one night

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when I began to hear a noise
coming from the lower end of the cattle

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pasture. Now, I'm a kid
who's raised in the country, who's been

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hunting since I was six years old. I'm familiar with all the sounds of

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all the animals in Alabama, but
I couldn't place this sound into any category

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that I've ever heard. It would
start with a low howl or moan,

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and then building volume and pitch until
it ended in something that reminded me of

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a guttural growl. It was so
loud that it seemed to vibrate the windows

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in the house as it passed through
the pine thicket fifty yards away. Why

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got out of bed and took out
my leaver Action thirty thirty and started up

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the hallway toward the front door.
As I passed my parents' room, my

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father said, let it go on
by and stay in the house. Son.

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I asked him what it was,
but he said he'd never heard anything

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like it before. Well, that
scared me more than the noise that I

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was hearing. My father fought in
World War II, and he was afraid

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of any man or animal, so
when he didn't want to go outside to

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investigate, and he didn't want me
to go outside. Well, that struck

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more terror in my heart than anything. The next morning, I searched the

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thicket for any tracks or signs from
the night before, but I didn't find

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anything in the pine needle carpet.
I found it hard to hunt the land

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down past the cattle pasture for a
while after that. The sheer determination not

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to let whatever that thing was push
me out of my favorite pastime that kept

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me going. It didn't register that
those loud knocks I would sometimes hear while

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I was out hunting might have been
anything other than someone hammering into a tree

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stand. That was nineteen eighty two, and only now, after all these

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years of reading encounter stories, has
it finally dawned on me that I might

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have been encountering boogers and they were
keeping tabs on me. One night in

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nineteen eighty four, my brother,
his brother in law, and I decided

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to go spotlighting some deer. Well. Spotlighting was legal back then, as

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long as you didn't shoot. My
brother lived way out in the county on

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a one lane dirt road that led
to nothing but large tracts of land that

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we hunted, and that night we
stopped on the road overlooking an open area

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where the timber had been cut three
years earlier. A lot of new green

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underbrush attracted the deer there to feed. But to our right the land fell

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into a holler and then rose up
a hillside where we would always see deer.

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To our left was a twenty foot
embankment and standing timber that went on

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for miles. We were checking out
the deer and they were ignoring us.

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Then all of a sudden, the
deer snapped their heads up in our direction,

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and the loudest, most awful,
snarling roar came from the top of

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the embankment, and it rattled in
our chest. That was followed by the

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sound of tree breaking. We barely
had time to register this when tree limbs

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and dirt started raining down on our
car. My brother stomped on the gas

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pedal and we sped out of there, never knowing what was making all that

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racket. And I thought it sounded
like a mix between an Alaskan brown bear

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and an African lion, but we
didn't have those animals, or any animals

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big enough to make that noise.
In Alabama, several years after I got

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married, my wife's cousin and I
were fishing in old watershed in Delta,

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Alabama. We got there close to
sunset and had access to water by way

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of an old boat ramp. We
walked the fifty yards down to the water

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and threw our lines in. We'd
been there about an hour when I heard

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a loud thump and the broom straw
thirty feet behind us. I ignored it,

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but a couple of minutes later I
heard something flying through the tree branches

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and it landed with a big thud
between us. Now I was curious,

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so I picked up my flashlight and
I turned it on. Lying in the

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grass between us was a rock the
size of a soft ball. I pulled

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out my pistol and I fired around
into the air while shouting that we were

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armed and to get the hell out
of there or they get shot. Well,

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that got several more rocks pelted at
us, so we decided to get

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out of there in a hurry.
Out of curiosity. I drove back up

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there later to check it out in
the daylight, and I found the boat

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ramp and figured out the directions the
rocks were coming from. It was from

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across a slew that we were fishing
on, which was one hundred yards away,

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and I found one of the rocks
and I picked it up. That

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must have weighed twelve pounds. It
sent tremors up my spine as I realized

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it wasn't a man who was throwing
rocks at us that night. In another

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incident, it happened when I was
ten. I was outside playing under a

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huge cedar tree in our front yard
with my dog, a Newfoundland Shepherd cross,

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and for no, he's in Duke. My dog began looking out toward

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the tree line seventy five yards away, and he started growling. He put

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himself between me and those woods,
as if to protect me. The honeysuckle

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began to thrash around, and something
inside the woodline started snarling and growling.

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My mother, who was outside hanging
up laundry that day, came running over

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and herded me inside, and I
watched Duke through the front window. Only

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after he knew that we were inside
did he run and hide under the house.

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I'm fifty four years old now and
i'm reaching retirement age. I'm looking

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forward to finishing some of those stories
I started. My wife and I purchased

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eleven acres of undeveloped land for our
retirement homestead. I'm gonna name it Boger Holler