Shadows In Motion

This haunting experience is one which spanned a large number of years through out my life, the experience itself occurring several years apart. This is not a visual experience but rather an audible one.

What was this other-wordly howl?

I can best describe the howl sound as if one took a wolf’s howl, elongated the neck, made the throat metallic-like, and put a much larger set of lungs behind it than that which your average wolf has. This is a sound which I have never heard elsewhere, including T.V. and movies. The sound occurred only once in each location.

The first time occurred when we lived in a small house on the freeway. You see them scattered and there as you travel about. It was winter, and in Iowa, winter used to really mean something. Snow could come down which was a few feet deep.

It was night time, and my half-brother and I were outside pretending that we were smoking to cars that went by. It was very cold, of course, and the porch light created ample light to really show our breath. It was quite a good kick when some one actually honked and hollered that we shouldn’t be doing that.

I believe that it was the howl which we heard that prompted us to run out and investigate. Leave it to little children to be invincible, right? We dashed out to the side of the house and found large prints in the snow which lead around to the back of the house. Being the invincible little people that we were, we talked about the prints for a moment - “What could make these?”, “I don’t know.” “They lead around back.” “Yeah, do you think that we should follow them?” - then decided to go around and investigate.

Probably to our luck our parents heard the sound as well and quickly came out. When they didn’t see us out front they ran around to the side of the house to find us hovering over the prints preparing to run around back. They of course did not like this idea and forbid us to go back there. There was a small argument, and an, “Ah, man! This sucks …” disappointed foot stomping scene, but we didn’t head around back.

My father, with a flash light, proceeded to follow the prints toward the back of the house. The back of the house, by the way, was right up against the tree line. As most houses out on the high way like that, there was a woods which stretched clear back and came right up next to the house. Anyway. Before he reached the back of the house, one of the trees shook violently and a window at the back of the house was smashed. Whatever had made the prints was in the tree, and my father coming around with the flash light apparently shooed it off into the woods. We assumed that the limb which it had jumped off of swung up and struck the window. The tree certainly shook hard enough.

The second time was - if I recall the name of the school correctly - “King’s High School” in Des Moinse, Iowa. I think that I have the right school. At the time there were apartment buildings directly against the field which the school was built on.

At any rate, at this particular time I had run across the large field, as I sometimes done, and was peering into the school. I was alone that night as I investigated “the big kid’s school” and it wasn’t the first time I’d gone alone.

The door had a window which was barely wide enough for my hand to fully fit against, being much more tall than it was wide, and the window had that “chicken wire” to help prevent breakage.

It’s a good thing that it did, too. I don’t recall if I had seen something inside. One’s imagination, as you know, can add things to a memory after several years. I do recall that I heard this strange howl and became so frightened that I backed away from the door, picked up a large rock, and chucked it against the window then promptly took off running. I suppose the fact that I threw the rock towards the window would argue towards me actually seeing something, but I’m not really sure.

Remember, this sound is something which is very unsettling. Strangely forlorn, yet “unearthly” enough that it makes the hairs on the back of one’s neck prickly. It is incredibly difficult to describe, beyond what I’ve mentioned.

I ran away from that school and I never went back to it alone at night. Even when we would run out into the field to catch lightening bugs I would still keep a fair distance from the building.

Thirdly, I heard it again in this small town which I currently live. To say the least, this was unexpected. It had been many years and I was sure that my last experience at the high school was to be my last.

On the contrary. I was awake at night - as I usually am - in my room fiddling with I forget what. The blinds on my windows were down as they are always are, and I do remember that I was sitting on the floor. My room’s two windows faced toward my neighbor’s house, and one was on the porch behind the porch swing.

This time, the howl was very close. I chilled as I heard it, thinking that I had lost it, the howl loud enough to be coming from just out front. That night, I was glad that my window blinds were down and closed. I sat for a long time after I heard it, listening as closely as I could for any sounds of anything moving on the porch. Very conscious that the porch was right there and a window is sparse protection against something which sounds like that.

The last time which I heard it I was not alone. As I often done I was over at a friend’s house (more stories around his place later) and, as usual, it was deep into the night as we (the three of us) talked about this and that. The howl came from out of the woods behind his trailer, and it stopped all of us in mid sentence.

That next day we followed the dirt road back into the trees and found prints in the snow and mud. The prints were from something on two legs, with large cat-like paws and a single protruding “claw” a few inches behind its pads. They were traveling from left to right across the dirt road, and we counted at least five feet between each print.

On the left side of the road its prints were deeper, and at the edge on the right hand side they dug in again and were slightly smeared. To our best guess, whatever it was, it had landed on the left, bound across, and jumped back into the trees on the right.

I have not since heard the howl again.

~Mysk