First, let me start by providing some backstory to the area.
My name is Devin, and I have lived in Arizona for a total of only about two years, and in that time, I have found myself enamored by the myths and legends surrounding the area. Arizona is no stranger to the mysterious and I often found myself passing the nights away reading stories of the Navajo Skinwalkers, the Mogollon Monster, El Chupacabra, and even some accounts of La Llorona.
Me and my group of buddies loved Arizona, and often found ourselves taking week long camping trips up to Snowflake, Payson, or Heber. Throughout all of those trips, we had never seen or experienced anything too out of the ordinary. The only notable occurrence we had ever encountered were some strange noises that could be heard at night around the campsites, but that was usually chalked up to nerves from being so far away from the city or a prank pulled by one of the other guys.
We would regularly gather around the fire and tell stories of the various cryptids and legends around the area, looking to creep each other out as we had a drink in order to add a sense of excitement to our usual trips.
We had never expected to witness any strange events ourselves.
This trip, the outing where it all happened, started just like the rest. Just four months ago, one September morning, our little ragtag group of six, Luke, Bobby, John, Derick, Jack, and myself worked to gather the necessary supplies for our next adventure.
Luke and Bobby were in charge of general supplies, gathering tents, flashlights, and the like. They grabbed three two person tents, a few lanterns to set around the area as well as some handheld flashlights, some extra supplies that we would need to start a fire and cook food, and loaded the truck bed with some extra wood pallets to break down for the fire.
John was on food duty, and arranged a plethora of canned and freeze-dried food, water bottles, and the most important camping staple, supplies for s’mores.
We had put Derrick and Jack on a beer run, and packed up a few cases of Coors, pack of corona, some seltzers, and even a small Dos Equis keg that one of them had grabbed because it looked cool.
While everyone else was gathering supplies, I made arrangements and got any permits we would need. This time, we were heading to the San Tan Mountain Regional Park, which stood only about eight miles away from where we lived, which was a small trip compared to our usual outings.
The area was just south of the town of Queen Creek, where most of us lived, and a ways east from the Indian Reservation. The Park was a very popular camping spot and was usually booked out for most of the year and was quite hard to get an official reservation. Instead of going the traditional route, we decided it would be best to delve further into the territory than the set up camping grounds, as we wouldn’t have to deal with other campers, and could party through the night without disturbing others.
That afternoon, we loaded up the truck to carry all of our supplies, and piled in to be on our way. We each brought with us a rifle as it would be our method of defense. We did not bring them expecting to have to use them, but it had just become a common practice to be prepared for the worst, so they usually just sat in the truck nearby or in the tents bagged up.
After our trucks were loaded up, we drove the relatively short distance to the grounds and delved deep into the territory until we found a suitable spot.
The entire park was covered in brush, cacti, and rocky cliffs which was a change from the usual forests we camped out in. We decided on a spot that was bordered by some small rock formations and had already been somewhat cleared of large brush.
When we stepped out of the trucks, it was obvious that the spot had been used before as there sat a circle of rocks that was obviously for a fire and the site was littered with abandoned camping supplies. There was trash and empty beer bottles strewn about and even a tent that lied flat on the ground. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the tent was torn to shreds and covered with what looked like large marks made by claws. We thought that this was strange but just chalked it up to a wild animal nesting in it at one point or some crazy campers riding a high and freaking out.
“Who would just leave all of this out here?” I said, bewildered at the lack of consideration from the previous campers.
“Some people.” Derick said back generally, shaking his head side to side.
We grabbed some bags from the truck and proceeded to clean up the site a bit before we began to set up our tents, a process that only took about an hour. Around this time, the sun had begun to set so we began breaking down a pallet and setting up a fire.
That night was uneventful and was just a small diner of canned stews and a few beers afterward before we settled down to bed.
Our three tents were split between John and Derrick, Luke and Jack, and finally Bobby and myself. We were already pretty tired from our earlier preparations and found ourselves dozing off pretty quickly.
Sometime in the early morning, it couldn’t have been earlier than 3:00am, I suddenly woke up in a cold sweat. I sat up in my sleeping bag and looked around to see Bobby passed out to my right. I was still groggy but I could just barely hear the sound of footsteps from nearby my tent over Bobby’s snores. I would usually just pass it off as someone getting up to take a piss, but something about the sound of the steps unsettled me. There was no rhythm or reason to them like a normal humans footsteps would. It was like something large was limping or just learning how to walk. That is when I noticed the smell. It smelled like a mixture of rotting meat and mildew, like what wet clothes smell like when they have sat in a pile for a few days.
It was overpowering, I could barely even think, my eyes began to water and I think I even gagged a few times. I unzipped my tent and stepped outside quickly to throw up. I emptied the contents of my stomach on the rocks a couple of feet away from the tent and proceeded to dry heave for the next minute or two. The smell had gotten worse when I exited the tent, and as I sat there, trying to pass this feeling of dread that had begun to build up in the pit of my stomach, I felt as if I was being watched from somewhere behind me.
I whipped around frantically and looked past the other two tents, fumbling for my little battery powered flashlight in my pocket, quickly clicking it on, and pointing in the direction I felt I was being watched from and saw nothing. absolutely nothing. I shined the light left and right, scanning the open clearing and the nearby cliffs, and just as quickly as it had come, the horrendous stench which had plagued the campsite quickly subsided.
I clicked my flashlight back off, and sat down on a big rock next to my tent and tried for the next few minutes to slow my breathing and calm my nerves. After what must have been thirty minutes, I had calmed down just a little, and crawled back into my tent and finally dozed off again.
That morning, I proceeded to tell the group what I had experienced that night and was quickly met with laughter by the others.
“Its unusual to see you so freaked out by nothing Devin.” Jack said to me jokingly.
“If you get scared at night Devin you can crawl into my tent and cuddle with me.” Derrick said with a grin.
“Very funny.” I said back.
“Are you sure you didn’t have too much to drink last night?” Bobby, my tent mate, asked as he finally crawled out from the tent, putting his hands in the air in a stretch and letting out a yawn.
I thought about it. Could that smell and feeling really have been a fallacy created by my drunk mind?
It had felt so real, and there is no way I could mistake that smell. Even now, hours later, I still felt my stomach rumble when I thought of it. Not to mention the footsteps.
“I don’t know.” I finally said, trying to move on.
The day went by without any occurrence and I forgot about the events of last night and just tried to have fun. That night we all sat around the campfire again, drinking a beer and telling scary stories, just a normal night. Sometime later, John was telling a story and Derick stood up to walk away.
“Where are you going?” I called out to him.
“I just gotta piss.” he called back as he faded into the darkness of the night
John continued telling his story, and about five minutes in to it, we heard the yelling and running footsteps of Derick as he basically tumbled into one of the tents.
We leapt to our feet and quickly asked him what was wrong, running over to where he had fallen.
He pointed a finger back to where he had just came from and began to babble nonsense, and that’s when I noticed he was shaking uncontrollably. Luke knelt down next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Calm down buddy, tell me what you saw.” he said soothingly, trying to get him to calm down.
“There’s something out there!” Derick cried. “It looked like some kind of person or something, but it was fucked up, and it smelt so fucking bad.”
We proceeded to look around at each other. Derick was usually the most level headed out of all of us, widely considered as the mother of the group, and he rarely ever drank or got drunk, so we took it seriously when he told us what he saw, but we had not entirely pieced it together yet.
“What could it be?” Luke said to the group.
“I’m not sure, maybe some kind of wild animal?” John said back.
“I think we should pull out the guns, just to be safe.” I said.
“Good idea.” Luke agreed.
We honestly should have realized then that it was time to leave, but we were stubborn. We thought that we were invincible, that nothing could happen to us, that anything strange could be explained rationally. Sure we liked to tell stories of mysterious creatures and occurrences but those were just that, stories, right?
We each pulled out our hunting rifles and sat back around the fire once again, trying to stay calm in light of what just happened. That’s when we started to hear the sounds.
It sounded like screaming, all around us. It sounded like it was coming from one source but it was coming from multiple places and directions, like whatever was making the noise was travelling around us impossibly fast. John pointed out that it sounded like Derick’s scream. I realized that he was right. It sounded exactly like how Derick had yelled earlier when he ran back to camp. Like his scream had been recorded and was played over a speaker over and over again. It sounded artificial, like an animal was trying to mimic a human scream.
That’s when I noticed the smell. That ungodly stench had returned, and this time, everyone else could smell it.
We were all standing up at this point, backs pointed towards the fire, aiming our rifles out into the darkness, trying our best to cover our noses to block out that mind numbing stench. Then suddenly, the sounds just stopped, and the smell subsided.
We had a hard time falling asleep that night, yet despite what we had just experienced, we weren’t quite ready to leave yet. To this day, ill never know why we didn’t just leave.
Later in the night, I was once again awoken suddenly, only to realize that smell had returned. At this point I was done, I was tired of being afraid of whatever was out here in the wilderness, just outside of my home.
I grabbed my rifle that was sitting next to my sleeping bag, quietly unzipped the tent, and poked my head out to see what was outside.
What I saw will haunt me for the rest of my life.
Standing upright, just past the dying embers of the camp fire, hunched over the one of the tents, was an abomination of which I had no name for.
It was tall, at least seven feet tall, and was covered head to toe in sickly pale skin that seemed to almost reflect in the moonlight. In different spots, its body seemed to be almost rotting, with different patches of flesh hanging loosely off of its body and limbs.
As I took a closer look at it, I noticed its gangly arms held down by its sides were different lengths. One arm was longer than the other, and not just slightly, but by a few inches. Its arms were skinny and bony, seemed impossible long, and had joints turning in all the wrong areas. At the end of its hands it had what looked to be long fingerlike claws.
I was not able to get a good look at its face yet as it was turned away from me, standing over one of the tents across from me.
I felt this rising sense of indescribable dread as I watched it. I thought of all the possibilities in my head, thinking back to the torn up tent that we had noticed when we first arrived, I imagined that at any moment, this creature could rip through the tent and my friends with its claws before they could even react.
With a burst of adrenaline, I open my tent the rest of the way slowly, walk quietly outside, and aim my rifle at the head of this creature.
Just before I am about to shoot this thing, I hear Bobby’s fearful yell behind me.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!” He yells.
The creature in front of me whips around at an impossible speed. That’s when I saw its face for the first time. It had deep hollow sockets where its eyes were and its eyes glowed a menacing yellow. Its mouth stood agape with a fear inducing set of jagged sharp teeth, and it let out a mind numbing screech that sounded like a mix of a high pitch screech and low growl.
I tried to shoot it, but I either missed, or the bullet did no damage to it, as it pounced on top of me, knocking me down, and dug its claws into the sides or my torso.
I screamed in pain, feeling the creatures claws digging into my flesh looking into the eyes of this thing on top of me, smelling its rancid breath almost causing me to pass out.
at this point everyone else had already woken up, and the other five men jumped out of their tents in a flurry, aiming their rifles at this thing and unloaded into it, trying their best not to hit me in the process.
The barrage of gunfire most have at least injured it because in recoiled in some kind of pain and got off me, releasing me from its clawed death grip and stumbled a few yards away.
In that moment, Derick and Luke grabbed me as John, Jack, and Bobby reloaded and continue to fire in the direction it stumbled off into. I winced with pain as Derick and Luke lift me up. That dreadful screech fills our ears once again as we book it to the trucks.
We pile in quickly, leaving behind all of our tents and supplies, and start to speed away.
This thing must have been chasing us, because that scream seemed to follow us.
“How is it this fast? Were going like 80 miles an hour!” Said Bobby in the driver seat as he pressed the pedal to the floor, trying his best to maneuver the pitch black landscape to get back to the trails.
“I- I don’t know” Derick was stammering as he begun to put pressure on the deep wounds on my side as I groaned in pain.
The road was bumpy and it felt like we were being pushed and pulled in different directions as we drove. The sound of the creatures shrieks and creaking metal filled our ears.
Eventually, we couldn’t hear the sounds of the creature anymore, but we never once slowed down, speeding past the checkpoint to enter the park and speeding trough the lit town streets.
I must have passed out along the way because the next thing I remember is waking up two days later in a hospital bed. apparently, after I was stable, my friends went to the police and the park rangers, telling them what we had experienced. They left out some of the more unbelievable details but recounted details of the creature, the sound it made, and the smell.
The authorities seemed skeptical at first but were more inclined to believe that something was out there after seeing the state that I was in and seeing the damage done to the trucks.
What I had not yet seen or noticed was that the trucks were covered in large deep claw marks on the sides and the back bumper was torn off. That’s when I realized that we had just barely escaped with our lives.
What was this thing? How could it be fast enough to chase a high speed truck? How could it have the strength to rip through a metal frame like paper? Why didn’t bullets seem to hurt it?
I was filled with so many questions that I did not particularly want the answers to.
When I was finally released from the hospital, and reunited with my friends, we never spoke about the events that happened on that trip.
I don’t even know why I am typing this out. Maybe just to get it off my chest so I can finally move on, but I must warn everyone reading this.
Be careful when camping deep in the San Tan Mountains.