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JAN'S TALES

Creature of the Night

(NOTE: If this story doesn't make you very nervous when alone at night, then you're just not...human...) (UPDATED - see below)

One Christmas Eve night, about 17 years ago, an event occurred that would leave me in such utter terror that I refused to drive alone at night along any deserted roads from then on. Although paranormal events had been a constant in my life, this one such evening left me with a raw realization of a new type. This wasn't an apparition, a ghostly image, strange voices or unexplained poltergeist activity. There were no pre-warned feelings of something watching from the shadows, no omens, no mystic dreams, no psychic sensations. All that happened that evening, short as an encounter as it was, became very real, unquestionably genuine and profoundly solid. It left me with an unfamiliar type of fear, one that particularly still surfaces when I find myself alone, outside, at night, even at my own home.

This new tale I shall tell you now will leave most in disbelief, skeptical, maybe even laughing at the impossibility of it, but you will remember it. You will recall the image that was written out for you in this story, when you're alone one evening, driving down some dark country road and you'll wonder. Your eyes will scan the road before you, peering into the shadows along the way beside the edges of the pavement. Wondering...

It was snowing that evening on my journey from Indiana, where I worked at the time, back to Kentucky to see my family for the Holidays. Although it was very late, close to midnight in fact, the roads were pretty well traveled with traffic. Not congested, but enough of a line that it got on my nerves. The cars ahead of me evidently were not sure of the surface of the road as it snowed, so their vehicles were kept at an extremely safe speed, almost 30 miles below the limit. I could not see the beginning of the line as it stretched along into the darkness ahead nor see the end that drew out behind me. Just a steady flow of cars going about 25 miles per hour. On a normal evening with dry weather conditions, all these cars would have been stretched far enough apart along the two lane highway that we would not have known how many there actually were, but tonight, we were clustered together. Going along at the leaders pace, where ever they may be up ahead, and how far where they going to travel, I thought to myself.

I was anxious to get home, and confident that I could travel at a higher speed, so I decided to take an old country road that I knew would cut around this parade about 15 miles down. Even though the country road, in mileage was longer than the distance between where I would turn off and where I would wind up back at the highway up ahead, I calculated a speed increase would compensate for the journey, and should leave me ahead of the pack. The old back road I chose ran past some of the abandoned Peabody Coal Mines, which drew out a spooky picture. The new fallen snow hid most of the shadowy figures in the distance as a partial moon peeked from between darkened clouds on occasions and threw some light on the landscape.

Although the road was covered with snow, it was powdery enough that it scattered in whirlwinds as I drove through it, revealing a relatively dry pavement underneath. This allowed me to do at least 35 to 40 miles per hour, taking it slower around the curves. The thicker snowfall must have stayed north of this road as the highway I just left was much more slippery and slushy. All in all, the snow did make for a nice holiday cheer. A few miles down the road I turned up the radio to catch some Christmas songs being played by a lonely DJ no doubt. The digital readout on the dash at that time read 12:17, AM. Merry Christmas, I thought to myself, then caught something out of the peripheral vision of my left eye.

Something was moving in the field to the left of the road, running actually, leaping up at times as if to avoid a clump of bushes. My first instinct was that it was a deer, and being familiar with the road I was on, knew that up ahead was a very sharp curve to the right. I would have to slow down in case the 'deer' decided to cross the road in front of me. Letting up on the accelerator and lightly touching the brakes, to avoid skidding into one of the surrounding ditches, I slowed my vehicle down to at what first was about 20 miles per hour. The 'deer' was still running, remaining a darkened object moving closer to the side of the road, until it reached the wide spread beam from my headlights. This was not a deer. This was not a 4 legged animal in fact, nor did it possess any fur. It ran on 2 legs. Noticing it's deliberate movement towards the road, I feared a collision with this thing. I hit the brakes, the car slowed with a few light skids then stopped a few yards in front of what had jumped onto the road and was now standing still in the beam of my lights.

The eyes shown fiery red, with no white around the pupils, just solid red, glowing in the light like a captured animal in the dark. Wild, very long brown hair fell from it's head in thick tangles along it's white skin, down it's back, over it's shoulder. It appeared to be a man, and it was naked, it's flesh as milky as the snow around it's bare feet that were raised up on the toes, as if preparing to pounce, it's back hunched over slightly. It's muscles were tight, solid outlines resembling finely chiseled Italian marble, no doubt they would have been hard to the touch, as well as cold. One of the upper leg muscles trembled like a horse's does after a hard race. It stood staring at me, through the windshield, I could see the exhales of breath, large clouds of warm air, coming from it's mouth in fast rhythms as it rested from running through the fields.

While the engine idled, and the music from the radio played some jingly tune, I realized that between it's thick exhales, that were slowing a bit, there was some color to it after all, on it's mouth, chin, down the neck and dribbling on the chest. Red. Shiny red. Wet red. The large snowflakes that fell around us, clung to it's hair, and melted when it touched the red liquid that stained it's skin. My mind was racing with a thousand thoughts a second, with probabilities, questions, answers, suggestions, "What in the Hell was a man doing out here on a partially populated lonely country road, stark naked in the snow and apparently bleeding from the mouth? Was he hurt? Had someone attacked him? Robbed him? Left him for dead? He must be freezing, he's so damn white! Look at him, he's a mess, his hair is tangled, matted, his ribs showing with each heave of his breath. Look at his hands and fingers, muddy, dirty, red, and his fingernails, long, pointed, filthy..."

My eyes went back up to the face. His breathing slowed to a slight pant, the clouds of white exhales smaller, more managed. The red mouth, that now grinned in a hideous widespread show of teeth, pink with the mixture of blood and saliva. His eyes seemed to pulse, glowing in a demonic trance, sunken inside the cheekbones, unblinking, while his tongue lightly ran across his bottom teeth as if pondering an idea. Two large canines emerged from the corner of his upper lips, wide, thick and long, longer then the rest of his pink, slick smile. And pointed, like his claws. All of this in a few seconds of viewing, but remembered throughout the years from nightmares and frequent recollections. As quick as he leaped onto the road, he jumped away onto the other side, barely touching the ditch and running through the opposite field.

I sat there in my car for a few more minuets, looking at the tracks it had left in the snow in front of me. Looking at the tracks from both sides of the road, from where it had come from and where it was headed. Going over and over in my mind the details of this event. Wanting to convince myself that it was just a prank. Some group of kids, having fun on Christmas Eve. A late Halloween trick. Thinking of anything besides the obvious, besides the impossible, besides the facts.

The rest of my travels that evening where rushed, and maybe a bit too fast for the road conditions, but I made it to my family's house in one piece. I actually couldn't sleep for a few nights, and when it was time for me to return to Indiana, I opted to leave early in the afternoon instead of driving at night.

During the first week back to work, most of the crew would gather in the break room before it was time to start our jobs and have coffee, read the newspaper and talk about various things. One certain conversation stuck in my mind between a few of the men. They were discussing a series of cattle mutilations, some left dead, others survived, that ran through out the farmland of Southern Indian and down through Kentucky. Their guess was that it was coyotes or wolves. My guess, one of which I kept to myself, was that it was something other then an animal or human. Something that could live without clothes or shelter in the winter, and live off what ever it found to eat on it's nightly journey's. Some 'thing' that ran from field to farm to forest. A creature that still may be lurking on the darkened sides of old country roads here in Kentucky. Where I now live.

-Jan Thompson-

(NOTE: A few days later, Jan sent me the following update...)

I came across an image on the internet that took me aback, concerning the 'Creature of the Night' story. After staring at it for a very long time, and reliving that night long ago once again, I decided to download it, make some necessary changes and submit for you to try and grasp the appearance of this thing.

(By law, I'm told, you may use any graphics as long as you change them by at least 5%. In this case, I've changed it by over 50%, so I feel safe in submitting it in to you. I apologize to the artist of the original graphic for changing his design, for it truly remains a work of art in its' own entirety.)

There will be skeptics, of course; that is expected, concerning such a description, and ridicule will no doubt follow. In respect I bow to those people with their own personal beliefs and opinions. To those of us who have seen the paranormal, felt it, heard it; we are alone in what we have experienced. As alone as the entities themselves we've encountered are. Separate. Single. Hidden in the shadows, that only those with eyes to see and ears to hear can believe in...

-Jan Thompson.
(NOTE: Jan recently had a friend help her re-create the image of what she saw that night - the below sketch is the result.)

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