A teen girl and her friend encounter, what she describes as, a black-haired, red-eyed 'werewolf' in her yard on a moonlight night at her summer home on Shelter Island, NY
"I’m a born and raised Long Islander. So are my parents. They met out east, which in 'Islander talk' means the east end of the Island. To any NYC-rich kids, that means the Hamptons. But for the rest of us who are coincidentally not millionaires, it means the North Fork.
Not to get too geographically confusing, but Long Island is an (accurately named) long island that forks off about a 3/4 of the way down the 90 miles it stretches. It kind of looks like a fish with its mouth open, with the North Fork being where the eyes are and the Hamptons are the jaw. Shelter Island is somewhere in the middle. Like, a smaller fish about to be eaten.
My mom’s family had a summer house on the North Fork. My dad had a house on Shelter Island. My parents met working at a summer job, and the rest is (clearly) history. But super long explanation short, I grew up getting to pretend to be boujee, because I had not one, but TWO summer houses. I know, right?
Shelter Island is my favorite place. In a lot of ways, just the island itself feels magical. The only access is by ferry, and while traveling there you feel like you are being transported into a different world. But the picture of Shelter Island in the summer is very other than the winter. In the summer, the population rises to around 20,000 people. But in the winter? Not more than 2,000.
So, I was around 13 or 14. I had invited my best friend to come out with my family that weekend. I was so excited, as it was one of the first times she was able to. I remember our bathroom was being renovated, and so the only other bathroom we could use was in the dank, dark basement, and the only connection to the house was by going outside and down the stairs and then down another set of stairs into the basement.
So, it had to have been around 10 o'clock, and we went together to the bathroom to brush our teeth. The moon was almost full, so bright it provided some lights on an island that street lamps were few and far between. If it wasn’t for the light of the moon, we probably would have passed the creature altogether without realizing it because out there you can hardly see two feet in front of you when it’s dark.
As we were coming back up the stairs, laughing about something menial, was when we saw it. It was about 10 feet away, with its back to us, lurking near my shed. We both froze and did that thing where you take a quick breath and hold it, involuntarily. That made the creature notice us. Its head whipped around, and his eyes were glowing, a kind of blood red. It didn’t look angry, but rather like a feral dog, not knowing how to react to these two teen girls observing it. Almost as if not to scare us, it slowly rose up to full size, which I would guess was around 7 feet. The whole time, it never broke eye contact. I felt I could fall into the pits of blood that its eyes were. It was covered in long shaggy black hair and had thick human-like legs. After standing there, frozen in horror, for at least a full minute, all the while still in this staring contest, we both regained control of our feet and ran up the stairs screaming for my parents. “We saw a werewolf, we saw a werewolf!” My dad went out first, and we followed. My dad quickly dismissed it and went back inside, a bit disgruntled. I could have sworn I saw a bush where it was near move.
Over the years, I’ve had many theories. One of which is that the Native People who lived on the Island before the white man are responsible, as shapeshifting legends are prevalent in Indigenous people's cultures. Maybe, it’s the descendants of the people who stole this land, cursed to turn under the full moon, choosing isolation to protect their secret. For nine months out of the twelve, anyway." GU
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