This is my first time publicly telling this story. It almost sounds like the generic “monster in the woods story”, but I’ve held onto it for a few years now and I’m ready to tell it.
I live in the Hill Country of Texas and this event happened back in August of 2018. Pinky promise it’s true.
As anyone in Texas can tell you, August is usually miserably hot. The summer is what I like to call “Diet August”, and for good reason. I worked as a maintenance tech for a school district so heat and manual labor were my best friends. One of my buddies called me one day around lunch time and he told me there was a problem at his family’s ranch. Apparently one of the horses had gotten loose and ran off the evening before and hadn’t returned, so he asked if I would be able to help look for it. It was Friday and I didn’t have any plans, so a trip to the ranch sounded like a great way to spend the weekend. A few hours later I got another call, this time I was told they found the horse, dead, and that we would be going on a predator hunt.
For those that may not know, there aren’t exactly many large predators around here. Plenty of coyotes and wild pigs, and very rarely a mountain lion, but that’s about it unless someone has some exotic stuff on their land which isn’t too uncommon. One time I saw a zebra chilling under an oak tree while driving down some winding backroad.
When I got off work, I went home and immediately got changed into some hunting clothes and prepped my gear. At the time I had an SKS, which usually worked just fine. Ammo was cheap and plentiful. Figuring we would probably need some quick follow-up shots, it would do the job. With a big sharp bowie knife to hang on my belt, I felt ready for whatever would happen. My friend picked me up and we drove for about 2 hours before we finally arrived at his family’s ranch.
The ranch was beautiful. Thick forest, rolling hills, tons of wildlife. I often joked that I could strip naked and wander off like a bedouin in the desert and be totally content. The basic layout was the main house situated down a dirt road that took several minutes to navigate, so it was set pretty far from any roads. About 100 yards from the house was the barn where most of the equipment was kept. A couple ATVs and a cool little side-by-side that was always a blast to drive. There was a pasture where the horses were generally kept, but aside from that, the area was just wild land. Trails had been cut or ridden on so many times that they formed very reliable means of exploring.
When we got out of the car and got my stuff unloaded, I was told we were waiting on a couple more people to show up. Fine by me. The more the merrier, I thought. In the meantime I was told to go to the barn and see what was left of the horse that had been retrieved from the forest. That scene was not something I expected, although I really didn’t know what I would expect to see. It was torn to ribbons. Deep slash marks covered the body. The stomach was torn open and I could see toothmarks where something had taken bites, but it didn’t seem like it had been fed on. More like demolished in a fit of rage. That ruled out coyotes instantly. Even if a pack was strong enough to take this horse down, they would’ve done their best to pick it clean. It also couldn’t have been pigs. There were no signs of injury on the lower legs that might indicate tusks. That either left some maniac roaming the woods, or a mountain lion. The lion, rare as they might be, looked like the culprit. It broke my heart to think we’d have to kill it. I’d have rather found a way to remove it and take it somewhere safe, but if it’s taking down horses, it would have no problem taking down a human.
The sun was slowly getting lower in the sky when the other guys showed up. I won’t use their names of course, but there were 4 of us. We discussed options for searching and decided that a grid search using maps of the ranch would be our best bet. However, with so much land to cover, we would each take an area to sweep. Every 10 minutes we would have a radio check to make sure we were safe. One of my favorite things about coming here was that there was some pretty awesome stuff we could use during our shenanigans. Chief among them tonight would be sets of night vision goggles. I chose the monocular with the head mount so I could have one eye available to see regularly. One thing about using night vision is the lack of depth perception, and I’m not keen on tripping over every bump on the ground. We chose our grid to search, checked our gear, tested the radioes, and we were off.
By our 3rd radio check, I was finally in place to start searching. I took out the map, used my compass to situate myself, and picked a direction to walk. The sun was real low by now and was already near pitch black under the canopy of oak and cedar and other various trees. With the night vision over my eye, I slowly crept through the brush, trying my best to make as little noise as possible. From the sound of it, I was the only creature being quiet. The forest was teeming with all the nocturnal critters beginning their nightly activities. Raccoons, opossums, cottontail and jackrabbits. Of course you can’t forget about the bugs. The constant chattering of cicadas mixed with crickets and whatever else makes noise gave the area an almost deafening feeling. Slowly I scanned the area with the night vision, rifle in the low ready position, and my breathing as calm and quiet as one can manage. 2 radio checks went by when I suddenly realized that the woods had gone quiet.
Standing alone at night in a forest that should be full of noise that no longer has noise is a frightening thing. Generally, animals will go quiet when danger is nearby. The problem was, nothing seemed to care about my presence, and now there was dead silence. I made my way to a clearing and found a tall hill. It looked like a good vantage point to get my bearings, so I climbed the fairly steep slope. At the top, I had as close to a commanding view as one could hope when surrounded by tall trees. In any direction, I was maybe 20 to 25 yards from the treeline. The sun was down, with the last glimmer of purple and red sinking below the horizon. Navigating was about to get a bit more difficult. Using the night vision, I tried to pick out any landmark I could see to figure out where I was on the map. Swinging my head around, I could a reflection of eyes in the trees from the infrared emitter of the goggles. They were big and bright and unblinking. I stared for a moment, deciding what I should do. I could see pretty well in the clearing thanks to the moonlight and the IR, but in the treeline was an impenetrable blackness.
I called out to the eyes, trying to get whatever it was to move so I could see it better. I could tell it was taller than a deer or basically anything else that lived there, so I thought it was a person. Suddenly I was really wishing it was a mountain lion. Horse-mutilating psycho was not what I wanted on my hunting bingo card. I called out and said “hey this is private land, you need to leave right now”. Nothing happened for maybe 30 seconds when I heard the eyes speak. It said “leave right now” in a perfect impression of my voice as though it was a recording. Safe to say that was extremely unsettling. I raised my rifle and said “if you don’t leave right now, you’re going to die”. At this, the eyes lifted as though they had stood up. The height from my best guess was maybe 7 or 8 feet, depending on how tall the tree next to it was. Then it moved, stepping out of the darkness and into view of my night vision. It repeated my words again saying “you’re going to die”.
For a moment I was in shock. This thing looked sickly white, maybe gray. It had a long and slender frame. Without a second thought, I pulled the trigger and fired at it. How I could miss at that distance was a mystery to me, but I fired again and this time the bullet struck home. The creature let out a monstrously unnatural wail like a mountain lion scream mixed with a “wilhelm scream” from Star Wars and maybe an airhorn. I was stunned, nearly paralyzed with the most primal sense of fear I’ve ever experienced. Then it took a step toward me. I fired again and again and again, emptying my entire magazine of 20 rounds, but it still kept walking. If I hit it, I didn’t know because it hadn’t screamed again. Without taking my eye off of it with the night vision, I fumbled to eject the magazine and was reaching for another when it stopped walking maybe a yard from me.
The creature stood there, staring at me. It didn’t have any hair, and it’s skin looked as though it was merely wrapped tightly around bone with no muscle or definition. The eyes were small despite having a massive reflection in the IR. There was a line that I guessed was probably the mouth. I stood there, not knowing what to do. It raised a hand toward me and then I saw the fingers. There were 4 fingers, long and black, tapering down to something like an ice pick. That’s when the smell hit me. It was like hot vomit, pungent with the odor of decay and feces.
In my brain, I knew I had to get away from it, but I physically couldn’t move. Just before the fingers made contact with my shoulder, there was this moment of clarity and I was able to move. With a fluid motion I dropped my rifle from my hands, falling across my chest and being caught by the sling, and with my right hand I drew out the bowie knife. A few months before, I had gotten bored and decided to modify the knife a little. I had ground an edge from the tip to the serrations on the blunt side of the blade so that I could cut in either direction. I slashed upward from the creature’s right hip toward the left shoulder. It screamed and took a step back. This was my moment to run.
I stepped backwards and fell down the side of the hill, rolling and flailing as I tried to not drop the knife and keep my rifle from being too damaged. At the bottom, I rolled to my feet and took off in a flat sprint. Crashing through the brush like a freight train, I could hear heavy steps behind me. I knew if I looked back, I would probably die, so I just kept running and trying to avoid skewering myself on a random branch as they briefly came into view in the night vision which had miraculously stayed on my head. I’m not the strongest runner, but fear and adrenaline are excellent motivators. Eventually I came barreling out of the forest and directly into the other 3 guys as they were on their way to me. They started yelling and asking what happened and I bellowed “JUST SHOOT!!” as I tried to recover. They took my word for it and began shooting into the trees, emptying the mags on their 2 AR-15s and 1 AR-10. As their guns became empty, they helped pick me up off the ground and we started running down the trail and back toward the house.
After what felt like an eternity of running, we flew into the house, and locked the door. Catching our collective breaths for a minute, we kept shifting our eyes to each other and out the nearest window. Once we felt like we had the air to talk, I explained what had happened. They told me they had heard the shots and started heading in my direction, thinking I had found the mountain lion or was injured trying to signal for help. It was then that I realized I had likely dropped the radio when I fell down the hill, because they said they tried getting me on their radioes but I hadn’t answered. It was only after I finished talking that my friend, whose family owns the ranch, said that they’d heard odd things before but had never tried to investigate.
None of us got any sleep that night, keeping watch out the 4 sides of the house with rifles loaded and ready. Luckily, nothing happened, and we prepared to leave once the sun crested the horizon. The drive home was uneventful, and without much conversation. When I got home, I immediately undressed and just took a moment to stare in the bathroom mirror. I had a handful of scraped and scratches that I hadn’t even noticed. My back was sore and my right ankle felt a little sharp. That shower was one of the greatest feeling I’ve ever had, and when I was done I collapsed on my bed and was instantly asleep for the next 15 hours.
Coming face to face with that monstrosity was definitely the scariest moment of my life and I haven’t returned since then. It took over a year to finally get comfortable with being in the woods again, though I still get a sinking feeling when I see the sun setting. What was it? I don’t know, and quite frankly I’m not interested in finding out. If we meet again, I’ll be sure to have plenty of bullets and a sharp knife.