“Well speaking of cryptids. I’m not sure if this story belongs in that category. I was around 11 and I liked to fish and catch critters at the pond that was located at a very nice townhouse and condo neighborhood. The pond was behind my apartment complex in Alexandria, Virginia just a few miles away from George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate.
It was a beautiful sunny summer day and I was alone at the pond. I was unable to find any of my friends that day to join me as I hunted for something to take home to join my menagerie. I was looking for turtles and frogs so I was turning over the big rocks that lined the pond. As I sat there turning over rock after rock something caught my attention out the corner of my eye. I lifted my head and focused towards the middle of the pond. There I saw what looked like an elephant trunk breaking the surface of the water. Then as if the trunk had eyes it turned toward me and broke through the water making a beeline straight for me. Me being a young 11 year old child was terrified. I dropped whatever tools I had and ran. I ran like the wind. I ran from the pond through the path that snakes through a small patch of woods that let out beside my apartment building. I broke through the woods and I ran. I ran from the woods to the apartment building. I ran upstairs. I ran to my door and almost took it off the hinges. I don’t know why I had this overwhelming urge to flee. I mean I was safe when I got to the woods. I was very far from the pond at that point, but this creature invoked a fear that I can’t explain. There was no visible sign of danger. I mean all that I saw was what looked like an elephant trunk. I didn’t see a head, a body or teeth.
What this creature was I couldn’t tell you. I was too scared to stay around for its complete reveal. The only animals I know with a trunk is an elephant or maybe an anteater. Elephants aren’t indigenous to Virginia and I hadn’t heard of any that escaped in our area at the time. Besides I had been at the pond for maybe 30 minutes at the time. There is no way an elephant could have been underwater all that time. The pond is maybe 5 feet deep, way to shallow to hide an elephant. The other thing is, the trunk acted as if it could see me. When it breached the water it turned around like it was looking for something and when it turned to my direction it stopped like it could see me and sort of tilted to the side as if it was checking me out. Then it rose a bit and through itself in my direction. It saw me and it wanted me. Why I don’t know. An attack or a hello; I can only guess because as you already know I didn’t stick around to find out.
After I entered my apartment door and realized I could run no more, I asked myself 'why am I running?' I gathered myself and regained my composure and talked myself into returning to the pond. For one I had to retrieve the tools I dropped and two I had to find out just what exactly I just witnessed. So with my curiosity pulling me back to the pond I returned a little horrified and a lot curious. But whatever it was that sent me running home was nowhere to be found. I fished that pond for what was left of my childhood and never saw anything like that again. What gets me the most about that day was the irrational sense of fear. I mean when I finally stopped running and thought about it, the fear had subsided. I think whatever it was in the water that day was something I was never supposed to see, and my body knew it and responded.”
Source: Youtube comments, Donald Baldwin
Beyond Creepy
NOTE: Possibly a time-slip or temporality into a primordial period, ex. a glimpse of an early American Mastodon? Very interesting account. Lon
The Philip K. Dick Collection
Time Slips: Real Stories of Time Travel
Time Slips: Queer Temporalities, Contemporary Performance, and the Hole of History (Performance Works)
Time Travel - Fact Not Fiction: Time Slips, Real Time Machines, And How-To Experiments To Go Forwards Or Backwards Through Time
