For starters this is off the record. I wasn’t here. I will give a fake name. I will give fake locations. If anyone tries to contact me I will do what I have to to protect my family. This is a warning nothing more. Do not travel to rural Appalachia.
My name is Depu- well it’s Hoover. I’m a former sheriffs deputy. I’m 29 years old and I’m already retired with a full pension. It’s hush money really. I’m putting my family and livelihood at risk by posting this but I can’t stomach the thought of some dipshit city slicker going to those mountains and it happening to them.
I’m a- was a deputy for Unicoi County Tennessee. It’s a gorgeous place. Watching that sunrise over the mountains was an almost spiritual event. I never thought I would leave-until it happened.
It happened the fall of last year. Strange because I remember it was particularly crisp, beautiful Autumn. The leaves had changed and the entire valley was surrounded by an enchanting sea awash with reds and hues of orange.
I was at the station filling out some paperwork and drinking my evening coffee with Richards my partner. He was a good guy. New in town as he and his family had just moved from Montgomery and I took him under my wing. He was kind of deputy who who stick his neck out for you. He didn’t mind putting in the extra hours so you could leave early. He was my best friend.
Around 7 we got a call for a 130- code for a dead body up the mountain in a camp site. That’s not particularly surprising. Unicoi is well known for its population of bears and bobcats. It typically would happen once or twice a year that some hotshot yuppie would come in with 10 grand of worth of equipment and get mauled by a predator while cooking.
When we got to the campsite I’m pretty embarrassed to say my first thought was to give whoever it was a little bit of credit. They picked an amazing spot with a view over the entire valley. But.. then I saw them. There wasn’t one body there was five. One adult man and one female with three little girls. The man was leaned up against a tree next to their tent. His head was so slashed to hell I could see chunks of skull jutting out of the mound that was his face. The woman didn’t fare much better she was shredded. Her torso and head was about 3 feet from the tent with some jumbled mush I imagine was probably her legs laying a few yards away.
It was sickening and the hardest part of the job but I didn’t realize this was something else until we found the girls about a 100 yards a away. They were stacked, well what was left of them, neatly on a rock down the slope of the mountain. Their organs and dismembered body parts painted the boulder red with still drying blood.
Deputy Davis who made the call was nowhere to be found. It was getting dark. The kind of suffocating darkness that swallows you and doesn’t let you breath. What or Who ever did this was still out here. I told Richards we needed to get back to the truck and call in back up and a rescue team to look for Davis. As Richards and I started back up the slope I saw it.
Sitting on a branch of an old oak tree near him was a woman.. or what I thought was a woman. With grey cold skin and a sinister crooked smile. Before I could even speak she had already pounced savagely screaming and slashing with her demon like talon that forked unnaturally from her hand.
I drew my service pistol and fired 8 times in a tight cluster in her side. She didn’t even so much as pause her rampage.
I think it’s Richards screams that haunt me the most. His whimpered howls reminded me of a coyote caught in a trap-an animal who knows it’s about to die. I could see the tears streaming down his blood and sweat soaked face. His eyes were bloodshot and bulging.
I froze. I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t even process what I was seeing. Some sort of demon from hell itself who came to slaughter. Something unnatural.
She finally stopped and turned towards me. When I became a deputy I knew that I could die on duty but I couldn’t fathom it was be from something like this. I’m ashamed to admit at that moment I had accepted my death. I turned my service pistol at my head and was about to pull the trigger to avoid a fate like Richards when she was just..gone.
Like that. Like mist in the air.
Leaving me alone with the corpse of my closest friend on the slope of the mountain.
As I carried his bloodied carcass up of the mountain to the truck all I could see was that scene in my head. It’s seared into my mind.
When I called for backup instead of the sheriffs office several large black vans showed up filled with unidentified men in suits.
I was told to quit my job, move and to NEVER speak of what happened and I would recieve a hefty retirement package. I took the deal.
I don’t know why she didn’t kill me. It haunts me. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. All I see is her ripping apart Richards. The day before I left I spoke with some Cherokee elders and they told me it was something they call U’tlun’ta. A demon who stalks the Appalachian’s hunting her prey.
Whatever it was I’m begging whoever reads this don’t go visit the Appalachia mountains. It’s not worth it. Don’t let her get you too.