He had left the military and taken a job as a state ranger. During the daylight hours he patrolled the national parks and government lands fighting poachers and all manner of wilderness highwaymen.
The day was just turning into dusk as he was navigating his 1972 Pontiac Grand Prix down a lonely road that wound through the heavy deciduous forests between Savanna, IL and St. Louis, MO. He was about halfway between the two cities, near the Mighty Mississippi river enjoying a cigarette, when he accidentally fumble-fingered it and it dropped on the plush carpet of his car. He kept driving while he tried to reach down and capture the burning butt - but try as he might, he couldn't rescue the plush carpet from the wrath of that tiny burning ember. He could smell the burning nylon and he knew he had to pull off the road so that he could finally get a grip on the smoke.
He got hold of
what was left of the cigarette and just as his eyeball was
clearing the dashboard he saw it: It was about 12 feet
tall and 20 feet directly in front of his car.
It had a bloated, dead animal that
looked like a possum tucked under its arm and it reached
down with its free hand, picked up a dead raccoon from
the side of the road and proceeded to take a large, ravenous
bite out of the side of the dead animal, it's large fangs
quickly devouring the large piece of meat.
It was then that
it spotted Darrell who was looking at it from his car with
wide eyes frozen in shock and terror. Immediately after
spotting Darrell it took a few gigantic steps and was upon him
in an instant. It stood in front of his Pontiac and
reached out its clawed hand to the back of the car's hood - (
that space between the hood and the windshield) in such a
manner that Darrell though that it was going to rip off the
hood of the car as if it could gain entrance that way.
It put its horrid, hairy face right up to the windshield and
peered in at Darrell, still frozen in shock and horror.
It was covered with hair, had the nose and mouth of a human,
but a nose and mouth that stuck out several inches like that
of a coyote or wolf. Its eyes were a burning, jaundiced
yellow with black spiraling pupils that looked like one of
those hypnotic wheels that you see in old cartoons. And
it was making a desperate hungry noise, which was not the
vocalizations of an animal but the sound of a large, hungry
retarded child. It was breathing in and out very fast as
it made this noise and it was depositing a layer of breath fog
on the outside of the windshield.
Darrell could sense very strongly by the
way the thing looked at him that the monster wanted very
badly to eat him alive.
It was at that
moment that Darrell broke from his frozen terror and made his
move.
Even though he was a seasoned military
man and an officer of the law, the gun sitting near his
right hand didn't even enter his mind. His sole focus
was the gas pedal under his right foot. He slammed the
gas pedal straight to the floor and the monster rolled up
half way on the hood of the car. Darrell swerved the
car from left to right and shook the thing off the car in
the time period of about 3 seconds and the space of about
100 feet.
Glancing in the rear view mirror he saw
the hairy beast run into the forest. It moved at super
human speed like a skilled cat; about 3 times faster than a
human can move.
There was a man
that worked at a lab that tested soil, animal hair, blood and
other things related to government land managing. He
worked directly with the rangers whenever he was needed for
reports and other investigations relating to the outdoors.
After being laughed at by by his boss
and fellow rangers, Darrell sought the help of the lab
man. He showed the man the claw marks on the hood of
his Pontiac and upon further investigation, they found a
sharp part of the headlight rim that had caught the monster
as Darrell was fleeing the scene. On this sharp area
they found some hair and blood, enough for the man to take a
sample back to the lab for testing.
Several days
later, the laughs stopped. Partly because of three
separate reports of the same monster from other people in the
area and partly from the strange lab results.
The lab could not find a match for any
known animal. It was not the hair of a human, it was
confirmed to be the hair of some type of animal but not any
known animal.
Not only did the laughing and ridicule stop, but many of his fellow rangers including his boss began to believe his story and as a result, Darrell was given several weeks of sabbatical leave to recover from the incident. However, it proved to be not nearly enough to ease his fears and Darrell walked away from his wilderness job vowing never to return.
He suffered for several years trying to live down the incident. It was years before he could sleep without his guns next to him.
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This was sent in by Darian: I have reason to believe that the thing reported was a were-wolf. I'm a freelance were-wolf researcher currently attending BSCC in Alabama. Dispite the distance, I am very interested in the story as I have collected many stories along the same lines. I believe that werewolfism is a real... how shall we say... affliction. I in fact have a close friend with a similar... disorder... She is a werefeline. I have observed transformations multiple times yet she retains little concious memory of the change. Any more information you can provide would be a great help. You might ask your readers if they know of any such things. This, from Calonis Shadowpaw I hope I didn't scare the man
too badly. I hope you will apologize to him for |
If you know anything about this creature, please send and email to: webmaster@thestrangedotcom.com
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