I grew up in Northern California and my family would often go camping in the Tahoe area, Shasta area and in the San Juan islands in Washington. We weren’t avid campers but we would often spend a week or two in the woods in campgrounds or on BLM land. Once I was a teenager I would bring friends along with us and we would set up a separate campsite a few hundred feet away for some privacy.
This particular incident happened in the Mt. Shasta area when I was around 14 years old. We were on state or blm land I’m not sure which but it was not a proper campsite by any means. My parents decided to rent a small RV with enough space for them to sleep in knowing we would set up our own camp anyways. After setting up camp and sharing dinner with the family, they turned in and my two buddies and I walked back to our area and started up the campfire. One of my friends had smuggled a few cigarettes which we choked on and pretended to get high from. Around 12:30 or so we decided to go to our large 6+ person tent and settle in for the night. We were in an open field with no trees around us for around 75 yards. There was a dry riverbed on one end of the field and my parents had their rv parked in the woods on the other side.
We laid in our sleeping bags unable to fall asleep, talking about the hot girls at our school and making jokes. Around 2am we were quieting down and basically asleep, watching some family guy on one of our phones when we heard a rattling sound outside the tent. It sounded like a very sick person with a really bad cough trying to breathe. I looked at my friends who bolted awake in their sleeping bags. One of them reached for a flashlight but froze when he heard the rattling breathing sound right behind him. The rattling started to circle the tent rapidly only making a slight sound as it ran through the grass. It was moving far too fast to be a human and didn’t have the weight to its footsteps that a bear or larger canine would have. Eventually the rattling turned to panting and the creature walked a bit away from the tent and seemed to settle in not far off. My most courageous friend decided to get up and check it out so he carefully opened the tent to pop his head out. As soon as his head was completely out of the flap, the panting and rattling sound stopped completely leaving an uncanny silence you could almost taste. I whispered to my friend asking What is it? But he waved his hand in a “shut up” motion. After a minute or two we heard a DEEP growl and hissing sound and my friend jumped back and instantly zipped up the tent. He dove into his sleeping bag and covered his head, and my friend and I came closer to quietly ask what he saw. The growling stopped but we could tell the animal was still nearby.
My friend refused to speak to us other than saying “it’s eyes…” while never removing his head from his bag. We must have fallen asleep at some point and when we woke up around 7am the friend who had poked his head out of the tent was gone. We went outside to find him staring at the coals of the fire with a glazed expression on his face. He only responded to us with one word answers for the rest of the trip and I’m not sure if he slept at all. A few weeks after the trip he came over to my house, hugged me and just sobbed. He was uncontrollably crying and shaking and speaking unintelligibly. I sat him down and brought him a Gatorade, he pulled himself together and I asked what was going on. What he told me stuck with me, but the way he told me I will never forget. With an almost trance like way of speaking he said “I haven’t slept more than one hour a night since I saw that thing. He won’t leave me alone and I think he’s going to kill me” he started crying again and I asked him “what did you see? Who is he?” He told me with a shaky voice “It was a dog twice as tall as me, standing on its hind legs. It had a grin on its face and red eyes that almost looked like they glowed in the moonlight. He growled at me while looking me dead in the eyes and then sat down like you and I would on a chair. He wasn’t growling though, he was laughing.”
I didn’t really believe him but because of how shaken up he was I just sat there and told him nothing was coming for him. When my mom got home she thought my friend was physically Ill because of the look on his face, and called his parents at home. They picked him up and told us he had not slept through the night since they got back and that they were going to the doctors in the morning.
He stayed home from the first few days of our summer camp but finally came, but he was sedated because of the medication he was on. He seemed like he was only half with us during the day, and right after dinner he would take 3 or 4 pills and pass out. We stayed friends and he eventually got off the pills but I never spoke with him about that night again.
He works as an army ranger now and I only see him once a year around the holidays. He was always the funny, loud one growing up but now he had become a somewhat reclusive and mysterious person when he was home. He doesn’t have a wife or kids and I don’t think he wants to. I hope that creature doesn’t bother him any more.