TW: Hanging, Death and Blood
I grew up in a small town called Evelanch, its located on the outskirts of Delaware, the population there was just over 1,000, I grew up there with my single mother and two brothers, I was the youngest so was the punching bag of the siblings but we all loved each other really. Its the type of town where everyone knew everyone, all the shops were owned by families that lived there and the bakeries always had fresh homemade goods… overall it was a great place to grow up in… apart from the fact the town was very superstitious about the surrounding woods. It was surrounded by these massive woods, miles and miles of woods, the kids and adults never went in them, the only people you ever saw in there was woodcutters. There was only one road that went through them, it was always referred to as the Lumberjacks Highway as all the wood cutters would use it to transport all the cuttings from the forest back to the town, They were the only people to really use it as not many people came to visit Evelanch. Growing up, all the kids were told never to go playing in them, all the adults of the town had these made up horror stories about giant bears and packs of hungry wolves to scare the kids into staying away from them, and were warned not to listen to the ‘animal’ noises we heard at night, the adults old us they were wailing, or it was their mating call and we believed them but as we grew up, we started to notice that the noises coming from the woods at night, weren’t noises of an animal, but none of us could ever identify what they actually were, well that was until the summer of 1997 and I wish with every bone in my body we hadn’t.
It was a hot summers day, me and my closest friends, Bruno, Stacy were all playing in my back yard, that night we had planned to sleep in the field just at the back of my house, a make-shift camping night, but since we were only 11 we didn’t want to go too far from home, the field at the back of my house has a barbed wire fence surrounding it, it keeps the field and the woods separate, it was around 7ft tall the barbed wire at the top adding around another foot onto it, so no-one in the town was capable of climbing it, many have tried and failed miserably ending up grounded or in hospital. We placed outdoor camping lanterns all around the tent lighting up the area around us meaning we could see just past the fence. To explain the set up, we had one of those tents with the clear back, it was like a window and it had the piece of fabric you could roll down like a crappy curtain on it, the window was facing the fence with the fabric rolled up at the top because it was tangled and we were all to young to know how to untie it so we decided to just leave it open, to make us feel better we all turned or sleeping bags to face the window so we didn’t have our backs to it. By the time we got settled in our sleeping bags it was around 11pm, we decided to tell stories and play some card games before heading to sleep, we eventually fell asleep around 12pm meaning the area that wasn’t lit up by our lamps was pitch black, making us all feel a bit un-easy.
The next thing I remember was being shook awake by Bruno, I half lifted the sleeping mask of my eyes and looked up to see him hovering over me, trembling, he was panicked and looked like he was about to cry, I was still half asleep and confused what was going on, I remember asking him what was the matter and he just raised his shaking hand and pointed into the treeline, I rubbed my eyes and looked out the tent window and thats when I saw them, figures, just standing in the treeline, staring at us, they were almost as tall as the fence, must of been around 6.5ft with out of proportion limbs, their arms were almost as long as their body, and their head was smaller than a humans, they had smiles painted onto their unmoving face and there was gaping holes where their eyes should have been, at the end of their arms were small slim hands that warped into talons where their fingers should have been, and they were all swaying, crying all in sync, that was what the wailing noise was…
I was frozen, I couldn’t move, I tried to scream for my mum, I tried to run but my body wouldn’t let me, after what felt like hours, Stacy woke up and in a sleepy daze followed our gaze and met the same horrific imagine we were seeing, she let out a shriek and that jump started my brain, I threw my sleeping bag off and tumbled out of the tent Stacy and Bruno followed behind me, Bruno still shaking and Stacy crying hysterically suddenly we all heard this scream, sounded like everyone in our town began crying and wailing together, I looked back to see they were now pressed up against the fence, Pointing at us and screaming and clawing at the holes where their eyes should have been, seeing this we all picked up the pace, jumping over my fence and tumbling into my backyard, we began banging on my back door begging for my mum to let us in
She swung the door open and pulled us all inside asking us what the hell we were doing at this hour, once we explained, her annoyed expression soon shifted to a look of terror, she stormed out of the room and got our house phone, she called someone and told them exactly what we have told her, she then hung up and lead us all into the basement, after around 10 minutes we heard someone enter from our front door, they came into the basement light and we could now see our local priest, he had holy water, a bible and a cross with him, he rushed in and imminently started chanting verses of the bible and splashing the the water in a circle around us, he soon looked panicked when the water around my two friends began drying up but the splashes around me were untouched, confused I asked what was going on but he ignored me and took my weeping mother outside to speak to her. After around 10 minutes my mom and my two friends parents came back into the basement, they were all crying and hugging each other, my mom was telling their parents how sorry she was and kept telling them it would be okay and to use what time they had left to enjoy it, we were all still terrified and confused…thats the last thing I remember.
A week later, Stacy and Bruno went missing, both on the same day, an hour apart, they were found a day later… hanging from a tree with their eyes cut out, and limbs shred and scratched to the point where the skin was hanging off the bone, the police didn’t investigate nor question anyone, the town knew why they were like this. For years I asked myself why I wasn’t taken too, I was there, I had seen the same thing they had, It wasn’t until my mother was on her deathbed that she told me, the sleeping mask I wore that night stopped them from seeing my full face, if it weren’t for that sleeping mask, I would of been hanging from a tree just like them. I moved out of that town shortly after, my brothers decided to stay. I now have a wife and son and have tried to move on, but I recently got a letter, telling me that my brothers son, had met the same fate as my two childhood befriends, thats why I’m writing this, don’t listen to the wailing from the trees, don’t go exploring the woods at night, and do not let them see your face. The things that hide in the woods are hiding for a reason.
May god be with you all.