A young man recalls his experiences growing up in rural Erie County, Pennsylvania. These events include a screaming human-shaped being, bizarre groups of bats and owls and uncanny intuition.
I recently dug up the following account:
"All of these events happened in Erie County in western Pennsylvania where my family has land and where I grew up. I spent a lot of time in the woods and spent nearly all of it there digging bunkers or building bridges or whatever my boyish adventures got me into. Bottom line is, I knew my way around the woods and most of the animals it contained. That feeling you guys say you get where there is something 'wrong' is for sure something I am quite familiar with. On some levels I think my senses are heightened in certain areas and I can 'feel' every movement and sound, even if I am not looking around. I cannot explain it, but I can literally map out areas in my mind and see them and see where sounds are coming from. It is probably just insanity mixed with my photographic memory, who knows. But it is useful.
So my brother, his friend and I are out in front of my dad's house, at night, in this giant grassy field. I was a young teenager and smoking cigarettes while we all crouched in this tall grass. We were talking about nothing overly important when we heard this god awful shrieking/screaming type sound. We all went quiet and I immediately stood up and shined my light towards the direction of the sound. We were all dead still, peering over the grass level and me standing up with my spotlight trained on where the sound came from. We stood there for what seemed like an eternity with nothing further happening. I turned off the light and got down to peer with them over the grass level.
After only moments of looking, we all saw this human shape with glowing eyes. I was immediately up and shining my light right on the thing and it was just out of the light beam range. I tried to move towards it a bit to get it into the spotlight beam when it suddenly turned and ran through the woods like nothing I have ever heard. It honestly sounded like a 2-legged animal running as fast as it could through an area I knew to be dense jagged bushes and small trees. That thing crashed through the woods and snorted/screamed the entire way. Craziest thing I have ever seen in my entire life and I still have no idea what it was. We all saw the same thing, and that just makes it make less sense. Listening to it stomp through the woods and hit that creek full speed was terrifying to say the least.
My second account was around the same time, give or take a year or two. I was home alone and it was 11PM or so. My dad was playing pool at a bar a few towns away and would be home in a couple of hours. I was sitting around listening to some music when I heard a terrifying noise. I turned the music off and listened to it for a few seconds before running for my dad's shotgun. I am not going to lie, it sounded like hell had opened up and everything below was escaping right around the house.
I scrambled to the back of the house which was the easiest to defend if need be. The noise got louder and louder as I got to the back door. There was nothing outside the windows that I could see although my visibility was limited due to the giant garage 10 feet outside the back door. I stood there forever trying to decide what to do and finally just opened the door and started looking outside. I could not specifically pinpoint the sounds location because it was EVERYWHERE around me. I looked around the sides of the house and garage and saw nothing. I turned on my flashlight and as I was putting it on the end of the shotgun, the beam happened to shine above me. There were hundreds of winged animals in the sky! They were everywhere. I want to say they were bats, but I think it was bats and/or owls. I do not know if they were migrating or something, but man that was absolutely terrifying! It literally sounded like all the demons in hell were yelling as they ran past my house!
This little gem occurred on the Edinboro University of Pennsylvania campus. When I lived there, I hung out with a pretty large and diverse group of kids that all liked to party together. We were all separated into smaller groups that hung out daily and we all met every week or more to party or hang out. We had our usual place to party which was a firepit in the middle of the woods on the ROTC training grounds right off of campus. It was an awesome little place really as it was the most dense woods in the area and the middle of it was rather open as it was all pines and other tall trees with their middle branches removed. The outer edge of this couple hundred foot wide patch of woods was a natural wall of brushes and trees so it was awesome open while still secluded!
Anyways, we had all decided to go party up there one night. So my small group of friends decided to go up and clean the pit, rebuild it and remove all of the trash. While we did this, the other groups were letting everyone know we were going up there to have a small fire to hang out. After everything was all set and we were in the apartment getting ready, I started to realize that something was wrong. There were a lot more people with us than normal and some of them were already drunk. Me being underage, I decided that it was probably a good idea to go up with nothing but smokes on me.
When we got up there, we all started drinking and talking. I kept looking past everyone on the other side of the fire because it just felt like someone was watching me. I sat there for 10-15 minutes trying to decide what I was going to do. I knew that something was watching me and I knew that if I left it was going to be on my own and it was a long cold walk back by myself. I waited for a break in the conversation and told everyone that I did not feel comfortable there that night and that it felt like someone was watching me. They all gave me a considerable amount of shit for it, females included, but I stuck to my guns and left.
As I was leaving I felt that I was being followed, as well as watched, as soon as I got away from the group. I could no longer see the fire but I could still hear laughing and occasional yelling but couldn't make anything out. As I got to a place in the path that was a little more open I started to feel more and more uneasy. I decided to avoid the original path and follow a nearby wood line that opens to a large farm field with the road on the alternate side making a big 3-sided box with the path, road and tree line. I stayed in the tree line for a few hundred yards until it was very open and I could see better due to the moon. I broke into a crouched run across the field straight towards the road and stopped once in the middle of the field to see if anything followed me. Nothing. I ran all the way back to the apartment and told my girlfriend about it. She told ME about the half dozen cop cars parked in a sneaky place no more than half an hour right near the entrance of the path we all walked up before they got there.
I immediately called my friends at the fire. They never had a chance. They later said as I called them, the police all stepped out of the woods surrounding them and yelled not to move. Apparently, I forced the cops hand by leaving and they WERE following me. They told my friends that they had been watching us from the shadows for awhile and that they had followed me after I left so they could detain me so I couldn't warn the others when I saw the cop cars at the end of the path. Getting off the beaten path saved me some hassle." PW
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