I’ve always refrained from telling this story because I know how it sounds. I know people think its a myth.
Since I’ve been meeting more and more people like me… who have experienced the same thing, I’ve decided to talk about my encounter with ‘The Rake.’
I was in my 20s when it happened. My girlfriend Lara and I wanted to get out of town after midterms. We found a great cottage in Hood River county. Somehow her sister Ally and her boyfriend Tyler slithered their way into our plans and my weekend alone with Lara was hijacked.
What made it feel ruined was I’d been planning to propose to Lara that weekend. But with Ally and Tyler there it kinda cut the heart out of the vision I had planned and I decided to hold off. Ally was nice enough, but I never really got along with Tyler. He was a football player who took too many drugs and was always in everyone’s face.
The cabin was deep in the woods and I thought we were lost a few times on the drive up. We arrived at dusk and made dinner right away. Ally and Tyler started to drink and slowly hooked Lara and I into joining.
By 10pm, we were all hammered. I was bonding with Tyler and even let him talk me into smoking weed with him outside. Which was a bad idea. Weed and me do not mix well.
Tyler kept talking about wanting to go on a nature hike. He’d taken a few grams of shrooms and said he wanted to talk to the stars. The weed was messing with my head and my stomach, as it always did, and I ended up going inside and laying down on the couch.
I heard Lara and Ally join Tyler outside. Their voices slowly drifted away. I couldn’t tell if that was because I was falling asleep, or the three were no longer on the porch.
Eventually I did fall asleep.
I had strange dreams. They were all about the cottage. The four of us. And a darkness that was encroaching from the woods.
Parts of my childhood began to fill the cabin. Old bikes. Posters of cartoons and TV shows. I saw full outfits from my childhood walking through the room without anyone in them. It was just the clothes moving freely but in the way a person would.
An eerie sound took over my dreams. It was coming from outside. And it was getting closer.
The front door of the cottage opened and a deep, red light poured in. The eerie sound became clearer and something small shuffled through the door.
It was my old dog, Baxter. He walked right up to me and sat down, staring upward. Then a strange sound came out of his mouth. It sounded like he was trying to laugh, but couldn’t.
I wanted to help him at first but Baxter started changing. His hair began to fall out. Then his limbs elongated. Stretching to lengths longer than my own. His skin was pale and his face looked smooth, like it didn’t have a mouth.
But it did. Because when it finished changing and laid its eyes back on me… a slit opened up on its face that revealed jagged teeth from a previously hidden jaw that unhinged and opened up. Its eyes held mine like I was being hypnotized, reflecting back in a strange cat-like way.
The creature’s long, spindly arms reached for me as its mouth opened up.
The laughing sound grew louder and pumped out of the creature’s throat.
That’s when I woke up. I was still on the couch. The room was dark and I seemed to be alone.
Only that strange, attempted laugh was still going. It carried over from my dream and continued.
My eyes tracked through the room, trying to find the origin of the sound.
I wished they hadn’t.
In the back corner, something was crouched down staring back at me. I could see the same cat-like reflection in its eyes as my dream.
Slowly, my vision adapted to the darkness and I saw the creature that Baxter turned into. The creature that many others have referred to as ‘The Rake.’
It received the monicker from its description given by the few survivors who have encountered The Rake and lived to talk about it. Its appearance was described as hairless and human-like, with limbs long and thin… and a mouth and teeth resembling that of a rusty rake.
The Rake was sitting cross-legged on the floor, making that disturbing, almost laughing sound. It reminded me of a child who was trying to play with an advanced toy.
Then I noticed what The Rake was holding.
A bloody football. Tyler’s.
The Rake was rubbing it between his hands, tossing it in the air and catching it and playing with it like a child would.
It was strange and terrifying to watch such a frightening creature with a toddler-like demeanour.
Then The Rake put the football on the ground, and rolled it towards me. It wobbled its way across the floor before coming to a stop at the foot of the couch.
I couldn’t move. I was frozen stiff on the couch.
The Rake looked like it was waiting for me and grew increasingly annoyed that I wasn’t playing. It stood up and ambled walked to me. It lowered its frightening claw down and I thought it was going to wrap around my face, but it picked up the football instead.
The Rake shuffled back to the corner and sat back down in its place. It laid the football on the ground again and rolled it over to me.
The bloody football sat in front of me and I still didn’t want to move. A growl emitted from The Rake. I didn’t want to upset it any further, so I reached down, picked up the football and rolled it back to the creature.
The Rake bounced on the spot excitedly. Its attempted laughter got heavier. More strained and forced. The Rake picked up the ball joyously and rolled the ball back.
I went to grab the ball again, and saw my hand which was covered in the blood from the football also had strands of long blonde hair in it.
Just like Lara’s.
I tensed my stomach so I didn’t throw up right there. I didn’t know what happened to the others, but it was clear they’d made violent contact with this thing and at least one of them was badly injured.
I had to get away from that thing.
Seeing that the creature was enjoying the passing back and forth, I decided that my next throw would bounce around the corner and into the kitchen. If the creature followed it, I’d have a few seconds to run down the hall and put a door between me and that thing.
The Rake rolled the football back.
I picked up the bloody ball, and threw it underhand to the left, sending it right through the kitchen doorway and bouncing around inside.
The Rake took off, quickly following the ball into the kitchen.
I shot up off the couch and ran down the hallway towards my bedroom.
Then I heard footsteps behind me and saw The Rake was chasing after me, gaining quickly.
I turned into the first room I could, which was the bathroom. It was also one of the sturdier doors in the cottage and had a lock on it.
It had a mirror hanging from the back of the door. When I closed it, The Rake punched its way through, sending shards of mirror all over the bathroom. I grabbed the two largest pieces I could find and started swinging downward at The Rake.
I felt the sharp glass cutting into my palms and fingers as I gripped and stabbed. With each connection, the cuts on my hands grew deeper.
But so did the cuts on The Rake. And because of how it was partly stuck in the splintered door, it had difficulty defending itself.
It caught me several times with its claws causing some heavy bleeding, but I managed to drive it back.
The Rake pulled itself out of the broken door and ran back through the cottage. I heard the front door break off its hinges as the creature disappeared into the night.
I stayed in the bathroom until morning, waiting for the creature to show back up.
But it never did.
The police did though. I called them and explained that I’d been attacked by something and that my friend’s were still missing. A few hours later, Lara, Ally and Tyler’s bodies were discovered.
Or… parts of them were.
It was clear they’d been attacked and partially eaten by some kind of animal. But the investigators couldn’t tell what animal it was. They kept saying maybe it was a bear. Maybe it was a wolf or two. Maybe this. Maybe that.
I tried to convince myself for years that that’s what had happened. That some animal had killed Lara, Ally and Tyler and I’d just been messed up from the weed and been half dreaming everything else.
I had friends, family, investigators and even doctors convincing me there was a very logical explanation that didn’t involve some urban legend about a humanoid that lived in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. The same hairless, humanoid-like entity that ‘conspiracy theorists’ claimed haunted the woods where Lara and the others were killed.
Sometimes acting like a playful child… other times acting like a rabid, carnivorous beast, The Rake was said to have a strange, telepathic effect and could even influence dreams.
It was also said to leave very few survivors.
The survivors that are still alive today, I’ve met. We share near-identical stories. But that can only take you so far after all the therapy and reprogramming.
The thing that made me come around to believing that The Rake is real and what I experienced that night actually happened, is that last year I saw the crime scene photos from the cabin.
Amongst them were photos from the living room where I’d been sleeping and woken up to the creature.
In the photos, it was clear that there were two lines of blood smears on the ground. One was from me rolling the football to the far corner of the room, and the other trail was from something rolling it back to me.