4 friends are driving along an old road at night near Bay Minette in Baldwin County, Alabama when they encounter a large pale quadruped humanoid standing in the middle of the road.
A reader referred me to the following account. I contacted the witness to confirm the incident:
"This incident took place in lower Alabama near Bay Minette when I was in high school, almost 8 years ago, but I still remember every detail like it happened moments ago. 3 friends and I were making the trip to our other friend's house, way out in the boondocks, probably 30 minutes outside of any nearby city or town. There's only one road that takes you to his house and it's just a long strip of old concrete that's in dire need of repair, but considering only a handful of people live out there, why would the state waste their time and money. On both sides of the road, it's just dense forest that creeps to the edge of the road sometimes (hardly no where to pull off) and absolutely no street lights.
We were in my friend's brand new red Mustang that he got for his birthday and he was proud to drive us all around wherever we wanted to go. Jamie was driving, my friend Dave in the passenger seat, and myself and my other friend Mary crammed in the backseat among his giant sound system (no seatbelts, just half standing, half sitting in the floorboards). It was very uncomfortable and the rattling of the music shook my entire body but I was just happy one of us had a vehicle to take us to our buddy's house.
We turned onto the long strip of road that would take us there, and was very disappointed that there was another car not too far ahead of us, which meant Jamie couldn't show off how fast his new car could go. Although there's no crazy turns/curves in the road, it's solid white line the whole way because of the endless hills, making it impossible to pass anyone. We accepted that we'd have to go the speed limit and Jamie finally turned the music down so he could talk sh*t about the tiny red Toyota that we'd be staring at the back of for awhile.
It's about 9 PM and there was no moon visible through the dense clouds, so it was pitch black besides our headlights and the car in front of us with its own lights, which were their brights because I'm sure they were aware of the tons of deer that live out there. No other vehicles came from the other direction and no one was behind us. We drove for only about 10 minutes, cutting up and hardly paying attention to the road since we knew where we were going.
Suddenly, the car in front of us slams on its brakes, skidding their tires, stopping in the middle of the road. Jamie wasn't following too closely so we didn't have to do the same, but we came to a slow stop maybe 15 feet behind them. There was a brief pause before we heard a woman's blood-curdling scream coming from the Toyota (we had the windows down because some of us had been smoking cigarettes) and that's when we saw it. We had stopped on a declining hill so we could see in front of the Toyota, and what we saw, I'll never be able to forget. It was some kind of humanoid-looking creature, standing on all fours, but the arch of its back was taller than the little toyota. The only thing that made it "humanoid" was its hairless skin, but it was very pale, almost grey, very wrinkly, and its limbs were impossibly long (its forearm was longer than any humans entire arm). The legs, fingers, arms, neck, everything looked like stretched taffy and we could see all of its bones through its skin, especially the backbones that were almost spike-like because they jutted out so much. It wasn't facing us, just stopped mid-stride in the middle of the road, facing the right side of the forest. It had backward-facing knees like a bird's legs, no tail, but still had the posture of some kind of animal. I hoped to God it was an animal, but there's no animal in Alabama that would be taller than a car on all fours, and like I said, it had human-like skin, hands, feet, and it's head was like a humans skull.
No one in our car said a word and Jamie instinctively hit the lock button for the doors, though our windows were still down, and the woman in the Toyota was still screaming bloody murder. For a moment, I remember telling myself it was just some kind of prank / a weird art sculpture or something because it wasn't moving at all. But then those thoughts quickly dissipated when the thing cocked its head in our direction. Its face was just as terrible as the rest of its body, pale and wrinkly, just an indention for a nose, tiny black holes for eyes, no ears, and an impossibly large red-stained mouth that formed into a wicked smile, showing its multiple rows of pointed teeth. The woman's scream grew terribly louder at that moment and the thing seemed to finally be almost startled by it, turning its head back towards the forest, taking only about 2 giant, fluid, animals-like steps, and disappearing into the woods on our right without any sound.
As soon as it was out of sight, Jamie slowly crept the Mustang forward, around the still-stopped Toyota and we saw a man and woman frantically arguing and crying in the front seats. When we got in front of them, the man puts the Toyota in reverse, and goes a bit off-road to turn around, and floors it in the direction we came from. Apparently where they were headed wasn't important enough. I almost thought we should do the same but I couldn't get myself to make a sound, let alone a word or sentence. Jamie went only about 5 miles over the speed limit as he rolled the windows up and no one said a word for the rest of the 20 minute drive.
When we finally got to our friend's house, he was waiting outside for us, waiving as we pulled in the little dirt driveway. All four of us scrambled out, pushing past him to get inside the house. I remember him saying something like "Woah, looks like you guys saw a ghost or something!" Dave turns to him with the most serious face and says "or something...yeah."
We got inside and part of me was still thinking it was some sort of hallucination, even though we hadn't drank or smoked that day at all, so being the artist of the group, I asked our friend for paper and pencils. Without question, he retrieved them, and while sitting in his living room, I suggested that we all should try to draw exactly what we saw before we tried to discuss anything. Sure enough, each of us drew the exact same creature and showed it to our friend before explaining the full story. He was horrified and took the drawings out back to his small fire pit, and lit them ablaze. None of us protested because we never wanted a visual of that thing again. He asked us things like had we been drugged or were we pulling a fast one on him, but considering there were two other people that saw the same thing and most of us were to the point of tears, he knew we weren't lying. He led us back inside, locked his doors and windows, and put on a movie to distract us, but we kept bringing it up, trying to make any sense out of it, and got hardly any sleep at all.
Jamie took us all home the next day and we saw the Toyota's black skid marks in the road where it happened, confirming it wasn't all an elaborate shared dream. Before we dropped off Mary, she told us she didn't want to hang out with us anymore, simply because being around us would remind her of it. We sort of just nodded, and I honestly haven't spoken to her since. I rarely speak to the other 2 friends anymore, for other reasons, but a few times I've tried to bring it up to them, and they refuse to want to talk about it. I know they know it happened, it's just too painful for them to discuss, which is understandable. I hate talking about it to this day and have only told 2 of my closest friends and my now boyfriend who's very opposed to any "supernatural" things. So you can understand why I didn't get any relief by talking to him about it.
I never really believed in those sorts of things either before that incident, but it's definitely changed my perspective a bit. Please let me know if any of you have seen something similar, I've tried researching it and people keep saying its a skinwalker, a rake, or wendigo, but the descriptions never fully match up. I guess I'd just like to put a name to whatever that terrible thing that prowls lower Alabama woods was." TD
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