Shadows In Motion

a deep thoughts & spiritual musings Blog

An unseen prescence chases three of us out of the woods.  Was it a strange creature or a wild animal?

If you’ve read the recount of “The Howl” then you’ve already read a brief mention of this area.

For some years I was friends with a fellow who lived in a trailer on some of his own land. It wasn’t out in the boonies, but trees came down to the back of his yard and extended several miles.

It was not uncommon for us all to go out into the woods (what we referred to as “romping”) and spend the day exploring. Due to some previous strange finds, as well as for general safety against encounters with wild animals, we always took weapons with is. They were never guns, but rather large knives and thick sticks and one of us usually carried a machete. If nothing else it helped with the thick growth.

As I mentioned, there were some strange findings back there. One will always haunt me: We found what appeared to be a human hip bone buried in one of the trenches where water used to run. We never found any other parts, and simply dropped the bone back onto the ground and continued walking. This was very irresponsible of us, and I’ll always wish that we had brought it back and reported it ‘just in case’.

In addition to that potentially gruesome discovery we also found two slaughtered goats. One of the animals was in such a bad condition that it seemed at first to be two separate goats. Its fur had been completely removed and dumped onto the road. The carcass itself was tossed over the quaint little bridge and into the water. The carcass was missing its legs, head, tail, and a hole was cut into its side. One could easily see it since it was winter and the body had frozen near the top of the water. The second goat was completely intact except for the fact that it was missing its eyes. The eyeless goat was tucked neatly into some underbrush on the side of the road. We only found it by following snowy tracks that lead into the lifeless underbrush.

These hip bone and goat findings were years apart, and with the incident with the goats we did break off a horn and brought it to the police station. We were chuckled at, and that’s as far as it went. That summer we came back and found the skeletal remains of the eyeless goat, broken horn and all, and the fellow that I was friends with at the time took the skull home and kept it in his living room. It was quite the macabre decoration.

Now that you have some background as to why we carried at least two weapons with us when we went back, we can get back to the current story at hand.

The previous night we had decided to spend the entire day going as far back as we could. No one had to work that day and we rarely had the opportunity, so we set our sights on an early start and a long romp through the woods.

The early start didn’t happen. If I recall correctly we didn’t get out of there until 10:00 A.M. Oops, oh well, better luck next time.

We did, however, spend the entire day back there and it was a beautiful day. The morning was a bit chilly, but the day itself was great and it was beautiful back in the trees with running streams and various flora. Most of the day was spent laughing, goofing off, getting muddy, and muttering occasionally at being stuck by thorns. In all, we couldn’t have asked for a better day.

Eventually it began to get dark. We found ourselves quite a ways back and after a few moments, we decided to head part of the way back, then cut off across to come out on some side roads. We figured that it would be dark by then, but we would still get in some romping before the day was out.

If you’ve ever been in the woods as it begins to get dark, you know that it’s a beautiful sight with the sun’s golden rays shining through the patches of leaves above you, and of course it begins to get dark in the woods sooner than it does out in the open.

It was in a setting like that, with the woods becoming golden and with just enough light to see everything but dark enough to look enchanting, that things began to turn a bit weird.

As we had been most of the day, we were laughing and “joshing” each other. Calling names, being loud, laughing; being stupid and having fun. Our lead guy, we’ll call him “Phill”, lived there so he knew the area best. As such, he was leading us back.

He also had an impressive set of ears, as myself and the other guy didn’t hear a thing but he suddenly stopped and listened. Myself and the other guy were still being goofs, and we didn’t shut up and hold still fast enough for “Phill” to get a bearing on whatever it was that he had heard. He shrugged it off, we teased him a bit about it, and we all decided that if there was anything it was probably just some random animal. There was nothing to be too concerned about since the amount of noise that we were making would have kept away anything short of a bear, which we don’t have in this area.

Several minutes gone by and by now the light was noticeably diminishing. We had returned to our ruckus only to be stopped a second time by “Phill”. This time he held up his hand, and we all stopped and went as quiet as we could. All three of us stood there for two, maybe three minutes being as quiet as possible. Again, nothing, and we continued on - albeit a bit more alert.

A few minutes later “Phill” again stops us by holding up a hand. Now we’re each more than a little concerned. It is respectfully dark in the woods, but what was the most unsettling was how quiet it was. This, as any of you outdoors types know, is not a good sign when you’re hearing no birds, no bugs, nor any other wildlife.

Sure enough, this time around we each did hear something. Whatever was making the noise was being very quiet. Barely moving the underbrush, which there was a lot of…. mostly golden leaves and the like.

We each looked at each other, concerned. Have you ever heard something so quiet you were barely sure that you had even heard it in the first place?

This time when we moved out, we began walking at a much brisker pace. Most animals should have left three very noisy people alone; but whatever this was it had been following us just out of sight for quite some time.

It was dark, very dark. Visibility was about five to ten feet. As a result we didn’t see whatever it was, but suddenly everything went flying. The leaves on the ground, the bushes… everything.

Weapons forgotten, we took off at full speed into the woods. You would be surprised at what you can do when you’re suddenly flooded with adrenalin. I ran into a small tree just a bit too large to get my hand around and sent the thing over. There was no slowing us down. Thorns, bushes, brush, slippery leaves; we went through it all.

Here we are running madly through the woods, into old dried out river beds and up the other side, yelling like maniacs.. and apparently for nothing.

There was nothing behind us. Nothing to our sides. We finally ran out of breath and looked around us. Us three were completely alone. Besides our own trail, from what we could see there were no signs of anything following. At this moment we went into a protective formation and placed our backs against each other, too tired and way too out of breath to keep running, as we peered into the woods around us.

The beating of our hearts was the only thing that we could hear. That’s not an exaggeration. After the adrenalin surge and the hard running our hearts were like drums. It took several minutes just for our hearts to calm down so we could hear our surroundings.

Eventually it became obvious that nothing else was going to happen, and nervous laughter, excuses, and chiding commenced. Unfortunately in our mad dash we had forgotten of our plan to head to the side roads and had gone straight back the way we had come. Thankfully, our mad dash covered twice as much ground as our relaxed waltz through the woods had. We were quite close to the exit and the aforementioned dirt road.

That was pretty much it, or so we thought. We reached the tree line and exited out onto the road, and were by this time laughing loudly at ourselves for being so foolish. We walked down the dirt road in darkness - nightfall had completely fallen by this time even outside of the trees. We were once again thinking of the snacks awaiting back at his place.

We reached the area of road where, on our left, the tree line stopped and his yard began. We turned to walk into his yard when the trees to our right seemed to explode. The other two took off like rockets, but I actually stopped to turn and see what it was. This was really dumb, as we’ve all seen the horror movies where that guy gets munched and the other monster chases after the rest of the group, right?

I don’t recall seeing anything, but I do recall the “explosion” of bushes and tree. It was like something had taken two huge hands, wrapped them around the tree, and violently shook the entire thing so hard that it shook the bushes around it. This was more than enough to make me decide that I didn’t want to see the source of this violence. I promptly turned and ran full tilt into the yard, jumped over a metal beam with stubs in it (property marker), and we all pretty much hit the door to his trailer at the same time.

We rolled inside, slammed the door shut, locked it, and propped a chair up under the door knob. We huddled in the trailer and stayed away from the windows for awhile.

Nothing else happened.

What I find most interesting about this experience is actually a couple of things. For one, whatever it was had actually stalked us through the woods for a good 20 or 30 minutes, quite possibly longer than that without us knowing it. It deliberately remained as quiet as could possibly be. Only once everything else in the woods had gone quiet were we just barely able to hear its movements. In addition to its silence, it waited until it was nearly completely dark in the woods before it made a move.

Second, besides stalking us, when it finally did make its move it didn’t just charge at us and attempt to take one of us down as, I assume, would a bobcat or some other wild animal. On the contrary, it made a great commotion which - much like hunting rabbits - scared us off into a mad dash. It seemed to disappear, but in truth, it did not; it actually went ahead of us, went down to our exit point where our backs would be to the trees, and waited in an ambush.

The only animal which I know of that would do something like that is a human, but I don’t know of any human who can shake a full grown tree and the bushes growing at its base with such ferocity.

These points are what makes this experience stick out in my mind, and why I place it into the “paranormal” category. Else wise I would simply label it as some random animal and share it as a fun tale. Other than human, what kind of hunter stalks, herds, and arranges an ambush?

I stayed away from the windows and door for the rest of the night, and the chair was kept against the door. I didn’t exactly get to sleep too soon, either.

-end-

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