I’m no runner. Let’s just get that straight right off the bat. I have asthma and at the time, I wasn’t in shape and honestly quite a bit chubby. 2004, it was Mardi Gras. I was 14 years old and way too young to have the ‘right’ kind of fun on Mardi Gras. Myself and a few classmates were invited to my friend Christy’s house for the night and my mom came along to have a few drinks with the other parents. The house was a good 30 minutes away from my own home and the neighborhood was huge; large enough that it even had a stable with horses about a mile down the windy forested road.
About an hour in, Christy got bored with the party. Granted, we were all preteens and Mardi Gras wasn’t an important holiday for us. Christy suggested we go see the horses that night at the stables. We told our parents where we were headed and started the trek to the stables down the road. Once we were past the first few houses, the neighborhood became a lot more desolate. Massive, 100ft oak trees loomed above our heads, and even though I should have felt safe in the presence of 8 other kids my age, I couldn’t help the feeling that we were being watched and kept my eyes on the dark trees. The entire way to the stables was downhill, and already I was dreading the long walk back to Christy’s house.
The other girls were laughing and gossiping about the boys in our grade, I for one didn’t care. I was too focused on the canopies of the huge oak trees on either side of the dark asphalt road as it winded through the large neighborhood. The further we got from the house, the more paranoid I became. I pulled one of my other friends aside and told her I felt like something was watching us. She just laughed and brushed it off. A few minutes later, she started to sense something too, maybe it was just my own paranoia rubbing off on her, when we started to hear the crunching of leaves behind us. We told ourselves it was just a raccoon or some deer, afterall, the woods were dense beyond the road. It took another 20 minutes until we finally reached a wall of bushes at a leveled part of the road. Christy said we were here and just outside the horse pasture, but that we could get a good look if we went through the bushes.
I was hesitant, but didn’t want to seem like more of a loser than I already was in this crowd, so I sucked it up and crawled through the bushes with the other girls. My legs were scraped by thorns in the brush and I just wanted to get out of there. Hell, I had seen horses before, we even owned a few, why was this so special? I pushed through the rest of the bushes and we were right at the edge of the fencing, looking into the dark pasture. I kid you not, the pasture looked like a scene straight out of the Forbidden Forest. There was mist on the ground and you could hardly see 50 feet in the distance and there was a godawful smell. Like the kind that attaches itself to several day old roadkill. My heart started to race, I felt sick, and then I saw something.
This ‘something’ was huge, way bigger than a horse would have been from this point of view. I almost thought it was a bush or a large bale of hay, except it started to move. The hairs on my arm stood on end as I watched it. It was on all fours, and lumbered with each movement. The head was large and triangular, but I couldn’t see any ears. If I had to describe what it looked like most, it was a giant wolf. The other girls had become completely silent, too. They had seen it as well as the figure moved across the pasture. I could make out large forelimbs, each as thick as a small tree trunk. One of the girls remarked they thought it was a bear. Our state was only home to the occasional black bear and we were nowhere near the mountains where they resided. This…. thing… was as large as an SUV, perhaps even larger. I could sense the danger, I could hardly breathe and backed out of the bushes.
That caught its attention as it whipped a massive head our way. I didn’t see any eyes, and honestly, I would have felt slightly more comforted if I did.
I ran.
I didn’t even warn the other girls, I just ran. They quickly followed after spitting out a few curse words and ran after me. I didn’t slow down. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins and I kept running, up the windy hills back to Christy’s house. I had never run so fast in my life nor had I ever ran that far without stopping for breath. If it was a race, I would have won by a milestone.
I didn’t stop until I saw my mom’s car parked on the street and finally slowed. I ran a straight mile uphill, almost puking from the adrenaline rush. I was even in shock that I could run that far. My heart was still racing in fear. It took the other girls a full five minutes before they caught up to me and they all looked as scared as I did, all except Christy. We talked for a few minutes, trying to figure out what it is we saw. Christy said it was just one of the horses. The other girls then agreed and laughed it off and I definitely lost major cool points the next day at school. It’s been many many years since that night, and I never told anyone else about it until today. I know what I saw, and I still think about that night every now and then, trying to figure out what the hell that thing was. The one thing I do know, though: that was no fucking horse.
Edit - someone asked what I thought it could have been, and unfortunately I’m unable to see the comment for some reason to respond. Now that I think about it, it could have been a giant wild boar, but even that is a stretch due to the area we were in. This occurred in Georgia, USA and while we have boars and black bears, this was nowhere near the mountains or country backwoods where they typically reside.