JAN'S TALES
From
the Woods
The summer of '78 will
always be a turn about in my beliefs of 'real monsters' versus the demonic or
paranormal type. Ghosts and spirits had become a common event during my life
growing up, until that particular summer when a new avenue of fear introduced
itself and made a permanent pathway inside my mind. A path made of concrete
that wanders thru the forests of my memories. A trail that will not be
covered with weeds, or fade with time. A place where my daily thinking
bypasses to avoid the beckoning desire of fear that calls from down
that menacing road of remembrance. For this moment though, for the benefit
of you, the reader, I will travel down that route once more and try to
recapture the scene so that you too will lay awake wondering and asking the
Universe, "Is there something else out there somewhere that is above us
humans on the food chain?"
It was on one of those
hot July summer evenings in Grand Rivers, Kentucky, back in 1978, when this
took place. (Grand Rivers is at the beginning of Land Between the Lakes
entrance.) The sun was not completely down and the skies were streaked with
violet-pinkish Posy colored clouds that outlined the curtain of darkness that
was pushing the turquoise blue away. I was staying at my Aunts house with my
cousins for a few weeks during summer vacation, a very welcome home at the end
of a dead end road. Hundreds of acres of woods surrounded the home that that
had been built down a hill and into the side of a large hill of dirt. There
were several homemade trails through out the woods that led to several places;
an old abandoned rail road track that went on for miles, another abandoned
place- the old sawmill, and other paths led to parts of the shore line of the
Kentucky lake. They all started out as walking trails, but with the new
addition of a dirt bike that my cousin Joe had the trails became well outlined
and defined. As with almost every day that I was visiting, Joe was out
riding his bike through the woods, exploring, and just being with his
own thoughts of a 13 year old. His younger sister, Ronda, was with me
outside on the porch swing. She was 10, and I was 17 at the time. My uncle
was working and my aunt was at the local IGA store down in town. Beside the
driveway was a huge dog pen where their pet basset hounds lodged and was at
the moment quite relaxed in the shade. The woods had been filled with only
the sounds of birds and the chatter of squirrels for a few hours. Joe must
have been way far off on a trail somewhere to not have heard that
distinct sound of the dirt bike screaming through it's gears echoing around
the trees. I knew he must be on his way home, because his dad forbid him to
be out in the woods at dark, so Ronda and I was waiting to hear that familiar
putt putting of the bike slowly coming down the drive as he reluctantly came
home to park it for another night.
As we swung back and
forth, singing silly songs, we heard something a bit strange in the distance,
it was Joe's dirt bike screaming at almost a soprano type of gear, long,
steady, and fast, with no shifting sounds, just a straight stream of one gear
in motion with a full throttle, going at top speed. The sound accelerated as
he drew closer at such a fast pace, and we watched from the swing up to the
top of the driveway where he would appear from the other side out of the
woods. I couldn't help but think that he had better slow down or he would
come flying up over the top of the hill and downwards missing a wide stretch
of pavement by being airborne. The noise didn't softened or slow. Steady and
fixed was his speed. And just as I had thought, he emerged from the woods in
such a tenacious movement, that he did indeed go airborne a few feet before
pounding down the front tire on the driveway, continuing his descent now with
a struggle of keeping the bike upright and straight. Ronda and I jumped from
the porch swing and got out of the way as we didn't know where he was going to
stop or in what position. The brakes hit hard and the bike slid sideways and
as it came down to the edge and end of the drive, Joe tilted his body and let
the bike slide out from under him before he went down the rest of the hill
with it. Instead of the bike continuing to slide to the edge it was caught in
a spin that variably died down as the engine sputtered, and then quit
altogether. Everyone was wide eyed and full of adrenaline, all our
mouths open in shock. But Joe's mouth was open in a strange fearful grimace,
he was sweating profusely and his breaths were coming and going in great
heaves. Tears were coming down his cheeks, mixing with the dusty dirt that
the trail had left him powdered with. His eyes were at the top of the hill,
at the top of the drive, unblinking, searching, waiting. We followed his gaze
not understanding what this escapade was all about. In silence we watched
with him for a about 30 seconds and then the dogs started barking. Growling.
And then whining, trying to get out of the pen in a frantic panic of digging
and gnawing at the fencing.
"IT GRABBED ME!! LOOK AT
MY LEG!!", Joe screamed, making us jump with alarm at the sound of his voice.
We looked down at his Levi's and saw scratch marks going across his right
thigh, scratches that tore through the tough denim and left small bloody
marks on his skin. The marks were like a bears-claw-rake, not those caused
by branches or sticky bushes, but a definite wide pattern of a paw print.
"IT WALKED ON TWO
LEGS!", his voice startled us again, as he was trying to tell his story in
between huge gulps of air. He was frightened beyond belief, and the bits and
pieces of what he was striving with extreme effort to tell us was coming out
in loud syllables that filled us both with the same dread. "It was following
me through the woods....along the path....from the old sawmill....hairy...it
was so hairy...and it's snout was so long...and it walked on two legs....it
ran on two legs...", his voice was sputtering, slowing, his eyes were still
wide, and I could see the pulse of his heartbeat throbbing under the skin of
his temples.
A howling began. From
the woods, not from the dog pen where now the dogs suddenly stopped their own
complaining, standing deathly still, staring up at the top of the hill, the
nape of the hair on their back standing up, ruffled, their noses up in the air
breathing in a strange scent. A wolfs howl. It was close. It seemed it was
just a few yards from the road up above. Just as the idiot in a horror movie
stands and stares at something to appear, that was what I was doing then, with
a mixture of anticipation and confusion. What the hell was he talking about?
I thought to myself, mulling over the brief descriptions; torn blue jeans,
walks and runs on two legs, stalking him, hairy with a long nose and calling
the mysterious hunter an "IT".
Joe's tears came quicker
and he started to push us towards the front door of the house demanding that
we go inside and lock the doors. He had a hand on each of our backs and was
urging us onward when IT came out of the woods above. At first it appeared to
be a very large wolf emerging from the dark outline of the trees, but as it
approached the one lane road that connected to the driveway, it's height grew
to a towering shadow that stood on two legs. Much taller then a man's height,
maybe by a foot, and with the sun gone down behind the clouds, it only cast
a silhouette of blackness, hairy blackness. My mouth dropped wide as well as
my eyes. This was not happening, this was not what I was seeing. My mind was
going back and forth from rationality to reality. 'I was from St. Louis, the
most frightening thing back home in Missouri was MO MO the Monster, the Show
Me States version of Big Foot. This was no Big Foot!'
It raised it's long
snout up in the air and let out a gurgling, slow, deliberate howl, while
stretching it's long arms to it's sides and upwards, like it was praising the
coming of the night, praying to the unseen moon and stars. At that moment
the security light that was at the top of the hill by the beginning of their
driveway popped on. Slowly at first it began to glow and gathered it's energy
to shine more brightly over the next few seconds. One of the creatures arms
bent and shaded it's eyes from the glare. It wasn't an 'It' any longer, nor
was it a big foot, this was a wolf like creature that, like Joe said, stood on
two legs, was taller then a man, and was staring at the three of us down the
hill. Those huge, black eyes, I will never get out of my mind. They were
like two sockets of ebony oil shining under magnifying glass lenses.
We ran into the house,
tearing the screen door in the process, slamming the main door, locking it,
pushing things, anything we could reach against the inside of the door. The
kitchen was right behind us and so was the knife drawer which we raided and
took several with us as we tried to decide where to hide. There was a house
dog inside, another basset hound, Stubby, and he met us in the kitchen
wondering what the racket was. Another howl from outside, coming from the
driveway. Stubby's hair raised and he started backing up at first, then he
went to the front door and was smelling around the edges. The three of us ran
to my aunts room and was about to slam the door and lock it when the dog
tucked tail and ran after us, beating us under the bed. All of us squeezed
under the four poster, knives clutched in our hands, scared half to death. We
could hear the dogs in the pen outside going absolutely crazy with barking,
and we could also hear other things being knocked around on the porch, then on
the side of the house, then at the side door. We heard glass break. We could
tell it was from one of the bedrooms, the windows were up high and they were
very narrow so we knew that it would take some effort for anything to get thru
them, but still we shivered from fright.
My aunts horn on her
Cadillac sounded several times as she drove down the road and approached the
house. That meant for us to meet her outside and help with the groceries. We
didn't budge. We couldn't move. We didn't answer her yells from outside for
us to come unload the bags, we didn't crawl out and unlock the door for her,
nor answer her knocking. She finally had to use her keys and then give some
hefty push's against the pile of items we had up against the door;the trash
can, 25 pound bags of dog food, water jugs, and a variety of other stuff. We
stayed put. She discovered us only after all the groceries had been brought
in and she noticed that her bedroom door was closed and locked.
It was amazing that we
hadn't cut each other in some way or another with the immature use of the
knives in our haste to hide, and we were chastised in more ways then one when
it came down to my aunt observing us slowly emerging from her bedroom with the
kitchen weapons in hand. We all started talking at once in a fervor, then we
finally let Joe tell his story first, then we finished with it breaking a
window just before we heard her horn on the car. She must have startled it.
She didn't laugh, she didn't respond at all at first, in fact she never said a
word until she came back from inspecting the windows in the bedrooms. My
aunt said indeed there was a broken window, broken from the outside in. She
made us clean up our barricade and put up all the groceries. Later that
night, after we were all in bed and my uncle came home, she related that
evenings events to him.
The next morning, their
dad warned us, "Stay out of the woods."
No problem.
He went on to say that
he himself had went down in the woods earlier that morning and found several
pits dug and filled with animal bones and parts of carcasses along the path
that led to the old sawmill that couldn't be explained. There were also holes
dug in the sides of the bluff along the hills that over-looked the old mill
that looked like deep caves, big enough for a man to hide in. Then he told us
that years before when the old boy scout camp use to be on the other side of
Grand Rivers, that an unexplained creature with wolf features was seen along
the waters edge close to the camp sites. He and his older son has witnessed
it themselves one evening.
I went back home a few
weeks after this happened. And since then it has never ceased to be a moment
of complete terror lodged inside my mind, along with the horror experienced at
the Oakwood Home. It would only be a couple of years later, after moving
from the city down to Kentucky that once more I would come into the legend of
the wolf creature by means of some old timers that use to live in Land Between
the Lakes (LBL for short.). Their tales told to me while sitting on an old
bench in front of the IGA down in Grand Rivers would help me draw a bigger
picture of what this thing actually was. Then, a few more years in passing,
in the early '80's, two police officers would tell me their own tale of the
events of a tragic scenario discovered in one of the campgrounds down in LBL.
Events that were never published in the media.
Just about ten years
ago, in the early '90's, Joe and my dad who had come down from St. Louis to
visit, decided to venture into those same woods in front of my aunts house.
They took a couple of pistols and two rifles and were gone for several hours.
These were two brave men, the bravest I know of, both of whom served in the
military and fought in two separate wars, wars of their own time. These two
men came back ashen faced and bewildered. They had walked all the way back to
the old saw mill. The pits, fresh ones, were still around, filled with the
bones of forest animals. The holes in the bluff still there also. They both
experienced the feeling of being watched and felt an uneasiness that
'something' just wasn't right. The area where the sawmill was had no life
stirring around it. No birds, no squirrels, no crickets, no bugs, even the
small pond was still and lifeless. The birds that did fly made their way
around the area and refused to fly over head. They couldn't shake the feeling
of being observed by a secret watcher and both swore they saw a large black
shadow lurking in the shade of one of the mysteriously dug caves. That had
been the first time Joe had been down that far on that side of the woods since
he was thirteen, and both of them agreed that it was to be the last. My dad
said there are some things you just can't explain, that science doesn't know
about it, and these things should be left alone, they are not a part of our
modern world. He felt that what ever it was that had scared the crap out of
us so many years ago, still existed in the same area. His intuition has never
been wrong so far.
Urban legend? Maybe
some of the stories passed along the years have been added too, stretched a
bit, like all local folk lore, and first hand stories are over time. My story
wasn't an urban tale though. It was a first hand account of something I really
and truly do not want to believe in, and wish I could forget; erase from my
memory, because the nightmares remain real even though the events are
still unexplainable by the laws of science as we know it.
-Jan
Thompson.
(N0TE: Jan stated in an email
that Joe saw the sketch below, and they both "agree on the animals' features,
except for the ears.") Joe remembers the creature with a bit shorter
ears than is depicted in the sketch.)
Go to
Part I -
The Beast of LBL
