I lived in West Virginia for the past three years. The growing healthcare sector made it the ideal place to be transferred, as it had not only the best places to work but also a decent chemical manufacturing sector as well. A penny saved is a penny earned - as if the healthcare system here in the US wasn’t making enough money already.
That being said, my work in healthcare has nothing to do with what happened on the night of January 16th, 2023, to March 16th. I’ve made many notes on what happened when it happened, a habit I picked up from my work, but only in late 2023 did I start to obsess over it.
January 16th.
I left work late in the evening. Nothing out of the ordinary, many people work late into the night at my workplace. If anything, I left early compared to the other cars in the parking lot. The drive was short but beautiful. I will say that about the mountain state, you also have the best night sky I’ve ever seen.
It was because my eyes were glued to the stars whenever I came to a stop that I saw it. A shadow blocking out the stars, moving fast enough for me to notice, and slow enough for me to understand the shape. It was like a snake. It had a head, rectangular in shape, with strange interruptions in the shadows, but the body thinned out towards the tail. It was snake-like not only in shape but in the way it moved - serpentine.
It was like seeing one of those water snakes, but instead of wriggling along the surface of a still lake or slow-moving river, it was making its way across the stars.
I followed its movement path, ignoring the car behind me honking its horn. My car roof got in the way at some point, but I stuck my head out the driver’s side window to get a good look at it. A screech of tires and a sudden rush sent me back into the car. The driver behind me got too frustrated waiting for me to move, so they decided to drive around me at the same time I stuck my head out.
Thankfully, he didn’t drive so close.
I lost sight of the snake-like creature. I don’t think it moved so fast at that moment, I just think it went beyond the dark shapes of the mountains and trees, leaving me searching for it. It wasn’t so dark that I would have trouble spotting it again if it was in sight. With a disappointed sigh, I drove on.
When I got home, I turned to a clean page on my notepad. I wrote the date and description of what I saw on that page, with some possible theories. I blamed my eyes at first, but then I made suggestions like a plane banner, a lost kite, and a unique weather balloon. All of them were perfectly logical and believable - it was enough to make me forget about it and go to sleep.
February 6th
Same deal. I was on a night drive, but not from work. I had a few days off for personal leave. I was driving to my girlfriend’s, planning on surprising her, but I got distracted by another sliver of movement in the sky.
Not the same creature. It was larger, closer to the mountains, it seemed to be circling them. The creature seemed more anthropomorphic, with legs and arms, but also wings. The legs and arms were way too long for the gigantic body, dwarfing the tiny frame and the wings even more so. The limps dangled and flowed with the movements of the flying creature, which were sometimes slow and sometimes so fast I would occasionally lose sight of it.
I tried taking a picture with my phone, but it was a ten-year-old Blackberry. Whatever miraculous night photo I thought I took was only a dark, grainy blur that wouldn’t show anything, no matter how much editing went into it.
The creature flew behind the mountain and I didn’t see it return. I waited. I completely forgot my plan to visit my girlfriend.
Instead, whenever I had a free night, I would spend hours watching the sky. Sometimes with someone with me, but mostly I was alone. Nobody knew what I was searching for, they just thought I took up a new hobby of stargazing and appreciated that idea enough to not ask too many questions.
My main focus was the part of the sky above the forest and near the mountain. Night after night, I watched, but it was only weeks later that I saw anything.
February 27th
A pattern. Three weeks between each sighting. I glimpsed the snakelike creature. With a cheap telescope at hand. I was able to observe it a lot better and thankfully, it was a clear night.
The interruptions in the snakelike creature were due to its several limbs. It had so many legs, like that of a centipede. They might have been wings, but if they were, they didn’t seem to be moving that fast…or maybe they were moving so fast that they looked like they were moving a little slow, I don’t know for sure.
More importantly, its pathing reminded me of the second sighting. Circling the mountains, stopped, moving, sometimes jolting to the next spot before stopping again. Ten minutes later, the creature disappeared behind the mountain, and I waited a little longer, but at some point, I knew it wouldn’t come out again.
The most important finding was the three-week gap between the appearances. It might have been a stretch to believe that they operated on clockwork, but too many factors lined up to say this was some random occurrence.
March 20th - The Last Sighting
Now, this is where I finally opted to learn something. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t sit back and watch it appear from a distance. I didn’t have a good sense of their scale or their movement. Something as wondrous as this cannot be excused as…nothing important.
I decided to venture as close to the area they flew as I could. That meant taking dirt roads in my city car, passing by overgrown and abandoned hiking trails as well as encountering the odd stag that wanted to play “deer in the headlights.” When I finally reached a point where the car could go no further, not without damaging it, I left it behind.
I’m not an idiot either. I placed GPS tags for my phone to pick up on, a new phone too. I could find my way back in the dark if I had to, but I also brought a powerful flashlight. Finally, a camera with a 64Gb card. Enough to get tons of high-quality shots, maybe even video too. I didn’t need much more than that. I didn’t plan on staying the whole night.
I wasn’t too eager to walk through the forest at night either. I knew the dangers, every sane human understands the threats that await us in the dark, especially away from civilization. That being said, I am a firm believer in statistics and the risk-to-reward ratio was acceptable.
I just wanted that one good look. Who knows where that, and maybe a few photos, would take me?
I stuck to the parts of the forest where the trees were the thinnest, making my way closer to the mountain as I knew that would give me the most open shot of the creature. It was a good plan, I was making good progress, but something was already wrong. An irritation in my inner ear, a buzzing that made me unsteady.
It felt like the world was shifting around me, or more accurately, it felt like I was drunk without the buzz, just the lack of coordination. The buzzing grew louder, and more painful, like a tiny bug was nestled in my brain. It helped to cover my ears, which I did as tightly as I could. I stepped out of the forest, ending up at the foot of the mountain, with gritted teeth.
When it began to fade, the sense of relief was intense. I didn’t know I could tense so many muscles without actually pain. I opened my eyes and noticed a familiar shadow across the mountain. Turning around, I saw the second creature, the humanoid with long limbs and massive wings.
I thought I might see it again. The Angel and the Dragon, I called them. The Angel drifted, then jolted, then flew in its usual pattern. I got my camera ready as it did, the moonlight being enough to find it and the appropriate buttons to set things up. I was smiling, listening to the air part as the Angel moved. I wondered if the breeze I felt was the gust of wind created by the beating of its wings.
The camera was ready, it had moved behind the mountain, but I could see it turning. I raised my camera, taking a few shots in sports mode to capture the motion. A quick check of the display screen presented me with better photos, but there was still too much blur - as to be expected.
Excitement was bubbling inside my heart.
The creature hovered above the forest again, continuing its search for whatever it was looking for. I started twisting the dial for the automatic camera presets, there wasn’t a moment to waste. I raised the camera and took the shot. There was a thunk and then a flash.
A burst of light as the camera’s flash went off.
I lowered the camera and the Angel’s oblong head turned to face me. I couldn’t see a feature in the silhouette, not a hair, not an ear. It was an inky thumb for all I knew, but it had definitely noticed me. Being seen killed any excitement. The buzzing returned, the inner ear pain, but I didn’t raise my hands to cover my ears. I took off into the forest.
The ground trembled around me, the trees cracked as they were parted. The shadow of the angel was cast over me and I found myself more than lost in the darkness. I didn’t try making it back to the car, I needed to find a place to hide. Afraid the noise of my panting, or the movement of my running, would catch the Angel’s eye, I stopped when I thought I found a good spot to hunker down.
It was near a tree, a thick one. I placed my body flat against it, focusing on the sounds.
Ahead of me, a hand dipped between the trees. The fingers were as large as trees themselves, also out of proportion compared to the elongated hand. It was looking for me, but when I looked up, all I saw was branches. Since I couldn’t see its face, I prayed that it couldn’t see me either. That’s when the tree started to bend.
A tree is terrifyingly loud. I could feel the earth being pulled as the tree was knocked over. I think it was thanks to those roots that I was able to move out of the way of the trunk but stick close enough to the tree to still be out of sight. When the tree had fallen, I stayed in the shadow of its upturned base, eyes shut and body shaking.
Even with my eyelids closed, I could see the area brighten as the shadow withdrew.
When I opened my eyes, the Angel was gone. The damage to the trees was minor, aside from the fallen one which I huddled by. It clearly had the strength to destroy the whole forest in its search for me - but it didn’t. I peeked out from my hiding spot to look back towards the mountains, just seeing the Angel slip behind it.
And it didn’t return.
I lingered a moment longer, the combined relief of my escape and the fading of that buzzing noise helped me calm down. When I could move again, I marched back to my car, taking it slow on my drive back, only picking up the pace when I was on a real road again and could see other cars. I kept telling myself that I escaped, but there were moments when it felt like I had never left.
Still, when I made it home, I turned on my computer and transferred the photos, all I saw was image burns. The kind of delayed light that one would see when capturing a moving light source with a slow shutter speed. A fun effect if you wanted to write your name with a glowstick, but not when you wanted something to justify risking your life. The blurred image looked like scattered sparklers, whereas the picture of it hovering ahead of me left a bright white glow. Like I had taken a picture of the sun, some fantastically iridescent object.
Maybe it came down to the camera settings I chose, but I doubt it.
Three weeks later, I didn’t see anything. I stayed up many nights after that, but still nothing. Whatever the Angel and the Dragon were, they didn’t stick around. I would like to believe I am not the only one who has seen them. I guess if you’re not looking for them, it’s possible to miss them, but I saw them by chance…why not someone else? I need some kind of confirmation that this isn’t the end. These things don’t just vanish, not without being seen…I don’t think.
Giants such as these have been seen before. There are carvings, paintings, and stories. Yet, I don’t need ancient history or additional sightings. I am living proof that they exist, no matter what anyone says. My experience was enough. I am convinced that I saw ancient giants in West Virginia.