When most people think of Virginia Beach, they think of the beach itself, the boardwalk, and the restaurants and surrounding tourist areas. I grew up in a lesser-known area of Virginia Beach called Pungo which, at the time, consisted of large swaths of farmland and undeveloped woodland. I always thought of it as a last frontier, of sorts, of the city as a whole.
Homes in that area sat on larger plots of land that could stretch for acres, so life was generally nice and quiet and people kept to themselves more or less. That doesn’t mean we didn’t have friends, mind you. In fact, one of my friends lived right next door to me! The only catch was that “next door” meant across a big field and through some woods. So, to go over to his house meant crossing the field which could be an easy trek after harvest or a slow, maze-like one prior to it. Once past that, I would cross through the woods which could take about 30 minutes of walking and then I’d end up on our neighbor’s property.
Honestly, it made for a peaceful walk. My friend and I eventually cleared a path that made traveling from my place to his much easier. So much so that, if I kept to the path, I could make my way back home in the dark with little issue. It wasn’t quite a straight shot, though, for one big reason. We found out on day one of trying to clear it that there was this ramshackle cabin about 25 yards off to the left of what would have been a straight shot to my friend’s house. We learned early on that this cabin was to be avoided…
The first time we saw it, we weren’t sure if anyone lived there. It looked run down, but there were no broken windows and, while there wasn’t a lawn in the traditional sense (we were fairly deep into the woods after all), there were some planters where someone had evidently been trying to grow some rather sickly-looking tomatoes and a few other vegetables. I think it was our second time cutting through the woods that we realized someone did live in that cabin and that we were not welcome anywhere near it.
As we walked by the front of the cabin, we heard a muffled bark from what sounded like a huge dog. Neither one of us could identify what breed it was and it sounded sort of ‘off’ somehow. It startled us enough that we ran back to my friend’s house. As we sprinted away from the cabin, we heard a window open and a deep, booming, man’s voice yell something that we couldn’t quite make out above the noise of our hasty retreat.
That experience was at the forefront of our minds when we finally cleared the trail connecting our properties and that is why we had to curve it enough that it avoided that cabin altogether. This tacked on another 5-10 minutes to our walks, but as far as we were concerned, this was unavoidable. We stuck to the trail religiously every time we cut through those woods from that point onwards. I only deviated from it once and it only took that one time to keep me from ever doing it again.
That one time was on a day that I spent playing at my friend’s house. It was late Fall, so the days had gotten shorter and before I knew it, I noticed it was getting dark outside. Seeing this, I decided to head back home as quickly as I could in an effort to avoid a lecture from my parents for coming home after dark. In my haste, it occurred to me that I might be able to venture off the trail and take a straight shot back to my house without the owner of the cabin seeing me in the low, dusk light.
This worked until I got just past the cabin where I suddenly heard the muffled barking from inside. This time it was accompanied by the sound of the door opening and slamming shut! I have never run so fast in my life. I didn’t turn to look back, but I could hear the sound of an enormous dog chasing after me. I could also hear its bark more clearly now and it sounded way more ‘off’ than before, but I still couldn’t decide what it was about it that unnerved me so much. My legs were starting to feel like Jell-O and I could hear the dog getting closer. That was all the motivation I needed to put every last ounce of energy I had into my sprint.
I burst through the trees and into the corn field where I ran blindly by instinct alone in my attempt to escape the dog. About halfway through the field, I noticed that I didn’t hear it chasing me anymore, so I slowed my pace a little and made it back to my house in one piece. In hindsight, my parents could probably see that I’d been scared by something, but all I told them was that it was getting dark and the woods were creepy at night. I never cut through those woods again and, from that point onwards, I simply asked my mom to drive me to my friend’s place.
Now, hindsight is a funny thing. When you look back as an adult at the things that happened to you as a kid, the extra life experience and, in my case additional context from parents, makes you realize just how skewed your perception of events from your childhood was. However, in my defense, I don’t think I ever would have realized just how skewed they were regarding the incident I just talked about without my parents explaining it to me.
Years later, when I left for college, I made a point of carving out some time to visit them between semesters. During my break leading up to my final semester, I was staying with my parents, and we were reminiscing about the past. They always knew about the path I used to cut through, but I had never told them about my experience with the cabin or being chased by that dog. On a whim, I decided to go ahead and tell my parents about it since I thought it would seem funny to them so many years later.
The laughter died on their lips immediately and there was silence for a moment. My dad was the one that broke it. He said that he’d meant to tell me this when he and my mom found out, but between semester breaks, it had slipped their minds. They found out about the existence of that cabin the year I went away to college because of a local girl who had gone missing in the area. It turned out that the search led straight to it.
Both my parents and my friend’s parents were in utter disbelief because, unbeknownst to my friend and me at the time, that was part of my friend’s family’s property. You don’t think about those kinds of things as kids, but it made sense why both our parents felt comfortable allowing us to traverse the woods alone – they owned the land, so in theory, it should have been safe. According to my dad, the cabin existed there prior to my friend’s family buying the property and no one was supposed to be living there. So, when the search for this missing girl led police there, they were surprised to find this old, but huge, bear of a man had been squatting there for years.
There was another pause in the conversation, and I asked what happened to the girl and what became of the squatter’s dog. I regret asking that to this day… My dad gave me a confused look and responded, “They never found a dog; the man was living alone, but he wasn’t right in the head. Will, the Sheriff’s Deputy told me they knew there was something wrong with him the second they walked into that cabin. In fact, I’m not even sure the word ‘man’ would still apply in this case. Apparently, they walked in, and he was crab walking -QUICKLY -up to the officers and barking like a dog. They did find the remains of the girl in the cabin, but it was mostly gnawed-on bones at that point. Forensics showed human teeth marks all over them…” He gave me a grim look and added, “Some of the locals have now dubbed the man, ‘The Hound of Pungo.’”