this isn’t my story it’s one of my dads. for context, Dad grew up on a farm in Saskatchewan in the 1940s. it was a typical farm family 10 brothers and sisters mom and dad. my grampa was off working as an engineer for the military as WW2 was in full swing. my dad was the 3rd oldest of the kids so shared in a fair amount of the farm work to keep the family going. they also went and hunted things like rabbit and deer etc. it was on one of these hunting trips that he and his 2 older brothers encountered what came next.
if you’re familiar with farming you know the woods are usually a ways off so they packed up the truck with their rifles and snares and lunches and headed off. they drove for a while until they got to their usual stomping grounds to check the snares they’d laid previously some of them had been sprung and had blood drops around or on them but rabbits/foxes raccoons etc are known to gnaw off a leg to escape, NBD.
as they laid the new traps and reset the sprung ones they started to hear some odd noises far off almost like something crashing through the bush. again they think nothing of it it’s probably a deer maybe a moose, and carry on through the woods to where they’d built a blind and settled in for the hunt. A few hours go by and my uncle c decides he’s got to hit the head and steps out of the blind and away far enough that the smell of piss won’t spook the deer away from the blind as one does. As he was walking quickly away he noticed that crashing sound in the bush far off again, but the thing that really creeped him out was the lack of other noise. no crickets, no birds. nothing but the crashing sound off in the distance.
now these guys have been hunting and farming their whole lives they are aware that silence from prey usually means a predator. he finishes his piss and heads back to the blind as fast and quietly as he can manage. noticing the crashing seems to be getting closer he assumes it’s a bear as it’d be the only predator that size in the area.
apparently, when he gets back in the blind he was winded and pale bears are nothing new but getting caught by one alone and without your gun is a bad day. a while goes by and Uncle C is fine again. at about mid-afternoon, they hadn’t caught shit and were starting to think they should pack it in obviously the bear was scaring off the deer and this was a wasted day. As they pack up and start heading back towards their snares to check again if anythings has been caught the crashing stops like one second it’s the background noise of the forest and then absolute silence. the instant quiet put them all on edge, as they get to the snares they realize again some of them are sprung but nothing but blood remains. this is odd for 2 reasons firstly most small prey would make a noise when caught in a snare, rabbits scream etc. and the blind was not that far from the snare maybe half a mile with the quiet they were sure they had heard it. and second, if the animal had gnawed off a limb to escape there would be a limb laying by the snare.
why wasn’t there a limb in the snare? they all shared a bit of a goosebump moment realizing something had eaten the animal from the snare and it seemed like it had done it immediately after the animal was caught.
they picked up the pace at this point they didn’t reset the blown snares they just booked it back to the truck. now this is where it gets really odd. they got back to the farm and did the evening chores. one of my aunts was helping she was little at the time so her job was basically to feed the chickens and stay out of the way. so as little kids do she sorta half-asses the chicken feed and just starts hassling her bigger siblings.
as she’s running around and being a pest my dad and my uncles hear a running sound coming from the cornfield a heavy running sound. As they look over they see the corn shifting back and forth and being trampled by something a big something big running on all fours. my dad and uncles are just done at this point they all assume the bear followed them home why and how wasn’t really a question at the time.
My dad’s oldest brother D grabs my aunty and sorta chucks her over his shoulder and they book it to the house now here’s the thing. my aunt swears up and down the thing that came out of the field wasn’t a bear.
in her words “It was a massive black dog like a giant mastiff but its eyes glowed yellow like a wolfs and its teeth were too big to fit in its mouth, its long shaggy fur was matted and dirty” and it stopped at the edge of the field as if it realized she could see it and stopped its pursuit she swears it looked visibly confused like a person as though it had never been seen before. of courses my gran heard them thundering toward the house like a herd of scared cows. she opened the door and they rushed past her and when they looked back the boys and my gran couldn’t see anything in the field.
apparently, it just walked back into the field without a sound at all none of the crashing sound or heavy thudding feet it just went back to where it’d come from.
IDK what it was or if my aunt’s memory is flawed but I do know this particular aunt has always had sort of a sixth sense her intuition is off the charts if she says don’t take that trip or don’t date that guy he is a creep no matter how good he seems she’s never wrong.
I think she really must have some level of extra perception i believe the thing that chased my dad and his brothers was a hellhound or a black dog in Celtic myth and I think it stopped because she could see it, and it knew it wasn’t meant to be seen I truly believe if my little wee aunty hadn’t been goofing off outside my dad and uncles would have disappeared that night without a trace except maybe a few drops of blood on the ground.