A northeastern Pennsylvania man recalls his encounter, as a young teen, with an upright canine while exploring with friends. Somewhat dramatic, but the witness assured me it really did occur.
I recently received the following account:
"I live in a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania that is surrounded by farms and endless forests. As a kid I spent most of my time fishing for trout or building stick forts, now I have bonfires and hunt deer. So as you can imagine I'm outside most of the time. At this point, I know almost every paw print or call of the local animals and I can identify it almost immediately.
At the age of 13, I went over to one of my friend's houses for his birthday party, mid-June, alongside another 2 guys. We used to hang out a lot but after this incident, things happened and we broke apart and when our own ways. Anyways we were crazy and imaging exploring abandoned places and finding paranormal spirits as all the YouTubers did at the time.
About 3 miles into the forest there was an abandoned quarry, all of us were excited to explore it so we got the birthday boy, his name is Aiden, to lie to his dad and say we're going for a walk through the woods. Aiden's dad said yes but to not wander off too far and to pay attention to the trees due to the number of Mountain Lion sightings in the area recently. Many say they don't live here in Pennsylvania, said to be a boogeyman of sorts, but I've seen one with my own eyes and I can tell you there here, along with wolves. We geared up and grabbed our phones and knives. Well at the time I didn't have a knife but I borrowed one from one of the bigger guys. His name was Clayton and he is a little out of shape putting it nicely. He usually brought up to 10 knives to our parties like some sort of serial killer. Sometimes he made me worry. He also gave one to our 4th guy, named Marcellus, more ghetto than a country boy but it's ok, we got along at the time.
As we packed our bags and got ready we poked fun at each other. I insulted Aiden's choice of footwear, wearing a pair of black and white vans, while the rest of us wore boots. Clayton poked fun at me for being the smallest guy in the group. And Marcellus backing up Claytons insults. As we headed out the door excited for what we were going to find in the amazing abandoned quarry, imagining old mineshafts deep in the ground where coal was mined or copper, the air seemed to change. Change as in heavier, like when a kid in class threatens to kill everyone in the room. Yeah, that kind of heavy. Almost a primitive fear. As I eerily looked around curious about what installed this primitive fear into my system the others talked about what we were going to find.
As we were walking into the woods after going through a long field. The feeling of dread was getting stronger and I almost wanted to run. I knew I was being watched, I always know, when someone stares at me in class I usually look directly at them when I notice the feeling. I started to scan my surroundings. Maple trees, rocks, cliffs, bones, birds, beehives... Wait... Bones? I backtracked to where I saw bones and looked a little closer. About 60 yards away at the bottom of a cliff was a dead deer, fresh, blood still on its bones, flesh hanging from its skull. I imagined the thing that could have mutilated it so badly.
Nothing exactly exciting happened as we climbed a large hill. I felt the air get heavier and my primal fear clawing its way up my spine as if it's about to dig itself out. Once we reached the top of the hill there was a level part, still filled with maple and birch trees and some decent-sized rocks. There was a barb wire fence that led to a clearing, freshly mowed like a field. Aiden commented saying that was his property and his neighbor probably was trespassing again.
As we got to the fence I noticed something, something red hanging from the fence. A rag, or piece of clothing, covered in dried blood. And underneath it was a rusted, old knife. With a saw blade on one side and a sharp edge on other. I and Marcellus argued for a minute about who got the knife and I gave in and let him have it. We crawled under the fence and walked through the field. Right now we were only about half a mile away from the quarry. I zoned out again as we walked. No one was talking about anything exciting anyway and I scanned my surroundings when my fear jumped, almost right out of me. I couldn't place it as I frantically looked around, something bad, no something evil was nearby and I could sense it. I was at the back of the line so no one noticed my panic. I went tree to tree scanning for something out of place. And when I got to a birch tree roughly 25 yards away, I saw it.
There was a large, lengthy, grey hand wrapped around the tree. I could almost make out claws. I looked up above the hand and I could just barely see the edge of a head. I looked at my friends who got a little bit ahead of me, looked back at the tree, and the grey thing was gone. I ran to catch up with my friends, deciding to keep what I just saw quiet so I'm not made fun of for the rest of the weekend. We finally started to see a clearing up ahead, with another barbed wire fence. We walked through a patch of thorn bushes about as tall as me and it shredded our bare torso's as we took off our shirts and hung them from our shoulders. We crouched under the fence and made it to the quarry.
We all spun around towards the woods hearing his dad, but it was off, almost mechanical. Startled by how quiet it was. Almost a whisper but the woods was 100 yards away. My fear crawled its way into me and I wanted to go home knowing something was wrong.
"Guys we need to go," I stated, walking towards the treeline, the others followed. My fear grew stronger and stronger. I scanned the field, then the cliff, then the trees. As I was walking we were at the tree line scrambling under the fence.
Snap!
A branch cracked not too far from us. We all looked, Marcellus still under the fence, and we saw it. 20 yards away was this 9ft human-like animal, no not animal. It stood on 2 legs like a human, its grey skinny arms ended at its knees, and its claws were as big as its hands. It was partially crouched, perching its elbows on its knees. Staring at us with its hot, red eyes. Teeth stuck out of its mouth like a piranha with large canines like a dog. Its teeth were an ugly yellow and blackish color, with some bloodstains on its top row. We all stood, frozen and staring at this beast. Then its eyes snapped to mine. It made eye contact and twitched. In fear I let out a gasp, its eyes perked up as it heard this as if in pleasure, it slowly stood up, breaking my trance and I jumped into flight mode.
"RUN!!!" I screamed making a dash for home, the field only 50 yards away, the creature let out an almost metallic, human, bear-like roar. Its scream filled me with fear and I could sense the hate in its veins. This monster was primal fear. We ran like hell as it chased after us, dodging left and right changing direction tripping it up so it can't catch us. We dove under the barb wire fence and kept running, I looked back to see it hurdle the fence like it was nothing, hot on our heels running on all fours. I tripped over a branch and rolled, catching myself, and kept running, but this put me at the back of the line. It let out another scream and I jumped off the nearby cliff to my right, my friends did the same. It was only a 15-foot drop onto some dead leaves and grass so we landed somewhat nicely, except I rolled my ankle in the process and Aiden landed his knee on a rock. I looked back and saw that I almost landed on the deer corpse from earlier and that gave me a spark of renewed energy. The tree line was only 300 yards away and we ran like hell. We heard it screeching and scrambling down the hill at full speed. We vaulted over rocks and slid under fallen trees and this thing was right on us the whole time, teeth bared and roaring in hatred. I knew the only goal this abomination had was to mutilate us like the dear. We ran and ran. Then it roared again, this time, sounding almost in defeat. We cleared the treeline and ran to the road. We turned back around to see where it was and it stood in the treeline. Almost out of view. But still visible enough to see it.
"Evan" it croaked, in a voice so unnatural and satanic. Almost like the demons in movies but more metallic. I didn't mention this before but my name is Evan. My friends always call each other mean things so we rarely said our real names. Instead of primal fear, this time I felt primal rage.
I turned and yelled at it. This thing simply smiled, turned around, and walked away. We all looked at each other and went back to the house. Aiden's dad didn't hear the screams so we had to explain nothing. We went and hid in his room in silence. None of us really talked about it much except for me. If I was to ask them now about it they would probably say it was just a bear and that we overreacted." AO
NOTE: I'd say that the dramatics are a bit over the top. When talking to the witness, he agreed with me. But he insists that the incident actually occurred. Northeast Pennsylvania has a history of upright canine sightings, in particular, in Lackawanna and other counties within the bounds of the Poconos. Lon
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