My name is Josiah Parker and I am a cornoel in the 5th Massachusetts. I attest that the following is a true account of the events of August 18, 1864. I will not venture a guess as to whether what I saw was a hitherto unknown creation of God or an agent of evil. Furthermore, I will not hazard any speculation beyond what I heard firsthand and witnessed for myself.
I was dispatched to the Shenendoah region of western Virginia in early August of 1864 to command the operations of a union hospital near Harrisonburg. The former administrator, Col. O’Mallery of the 2nd New York had been recalled for alleged abuses against the local population, them being unrepentant rebels, and I the journey by train to take over his post. I arrived in our nation’s capital on August 13 and made the rest of the journey by horse along with my unit. By that stage of the war, our forces held the entire western half of the state and we were unmolested on our way.
The landscape of western Virginia is comprised of steep hills crowded with thick trees and wide, open vallies that put one in mind of Irish glens. The people are poor and superstitious, and all along our route, they greeted us with open hostility. Were were on the lookout for rebel raiding parties, but arrived at our destination without having met one, though we were certainly interested in seeing some excitement. The hospital was housed in a stately plantation house on a high hill overlooking the road. From its front parlor, you could look out over miles of unspoiled forests, rushing rivers, and low mountain tops decked in smoke-like fog.
Owing to the then recent battle of Cold Harbor, the hospital was fully stocked with our wounded boys. My first act was to make myself known and to meet with them. My second was to meet with Col. Davis, who had held command in my stead. Lastly, I met with the owners of the grounds, W.R. Pruitt, a pudgy little man with mutton chops and graying hair. The Pruitt family had been allowed to remain in residence and consisted of W.R., his wife Millicent, and their adult daughter Mary. I did not know of the home’s other resident until I was shown to my room and met an ancient crone sitting in a rocking chair and staring out the window. The woman’s face was pinched and wrinkled, and her faded eyes sent a shiver down my spine. In the flickering light of an oil lamp, she possessed a ghostly quality that somehow unnerved me. “Pardon me, ma’am,” i said. “I was told this was quarters.”
She turned to look at me, and the malice I saw in those decayed eyes sent my blood cold. “Your room is next door, bluebelly.” Her voice was like brittle parchment/
I nodded graciously. “I apologize.”
The old woman, i learned, was W.R. Pruitt’s mother Martha. Her date of birth in the family bible was given as Feb. 10, 1754, but I hardly trust it.
After settling in, I left the house and mounted my horse. It was a rainy, foggy afternoon, and the smoke of a dozen campfires lent the air a woody tang. Col. Davis and I rode around the grounds for a spell and he showed me the outbuildings. The property backed up against thick forest, and Col Davis led me down a pathway to a small family cemetery in a pine grove. The defining feature of the burial ground was a stone mausoleum covered in moss. Col. Davis nodded to it and told me, “Watch that rotten thing. It’ll be your downfall.”
I was taken aback by his odd statement and asked him to explain himself. He responded with a strange tale that I immediately and thoroughly disbelieved. Beginning in June, he explained, the men posted to night watch had been harassed by strange sights and sounds emanating from the forest. There were no wolves in the area, yet phantom-like howls drifted through the valley each night at exactly 3am. In early July, two men were found dead in a hollow near the cemetery, their throats and stomachs ripped out. Prints in the soft earth pointed to a wolf of exceptionally large size, and a search party was sent into the thicket to find it. A man went missing and another was found curled upon the ground and babbling madly. His hair had gone completely white and a permanent expression of terror twisted his features. He stammered out a story of escaping from a wolf-man, and promptly died.
Rebels were suspected and extra watches were posted. Some of the men reported seeing glowing red eyes watching them from the woods and hearing what sounded like a man moving in the brush. An atmosphere of terror had settled over the camp, and that, coupled with stress and paranoia, had led Col. O’Mallery and some of his men to persecute and abuse the locals.
Col. Davis related this story to me with a sobriety that precluded my disregarding the tale out of hand. I did not, however, believe it to be the work of a wolf-man, but a clever ruse by Confederate irregulars. I thanked him for warning me, and he shortly took his leave back to New York.
That night, I changed out of my uniform into a nightshirt and knelt beside my bed to pray. The only light came from an oil lamp on the nightstand, and the only sound was the soft rustle of my clothing. I bowed my head and began to pray, but stopped short when a high, lonely howl rose somewhere in the night. I looked up at the window, and caught a glimpse of the moon’s brightly shining face. I got up and walked to it on bare feet. I lifted the sash and stuck my head out, listening carefully. It came again, a haunting moan more befitting a ghost than a beast, and my heartbeat sped up. I returned to Col. Davis’s fantastic tale and admit that I was shaken. I forced myself to life and closed the window again. Out of caution, however, I sat my Colt on the nightstand and made sure it was within easy reach.
In the morning, I dressed in my uniform and boots, clasped my belt around my waist, and pulled on my gloves. I had breakfast with the Pruitt family in the grand dining hall. It was a quiet and morbid affair devoid of warmth and familiarity. The old woman was the only lively creature about, and several times, i caught her watching me with smug satisfaction. Finally, she broke her silence. “I believe i heard a wolf in the night.”
I chuckled. “I’ve been told that there are none in these parts.” I buttered a piece of bread with jam.
“There aren’t,” Mr. Pruitt said quickly.
He sounded unnerved.
I had barely begun to eat when one of my men rushed up. “Sir, you’re needed outside.”
Setting my bread aside, I grabbed my hat and stood. “I’ll take my leave of you folks then.” I shot an adversarial look at the old witch. “Take care.”
Her toothless mouth pulled into a baleful grin.
“What is it?” I asked my man as we made our way outside.
“Two of the men are missing.”
We searched the grounds high and low that morning before finding our boys dead in the forest, their throats and stomachs both slashed. Their insides were piled next to their bodies, and the stench of death hung in the air. I knelt beside one of them and touched his face. The wounds across his neck were clearly the work of a large animal. My blood ran cold, and I looked up at my aide-de-camp. “Get the doctor.”
The bodies were carried back to camp and laid out in a tent in the front yard. The doctor, an old man with his shirtsleeves rolled up and a blood spackled leather apron over his chest, examined the corpses while I looked on. “What do you think did this?” I asked.
“No question about it,” the doctor wheezed, “a wolf.”
“A wolf?” I asked uneasily.
He nodded. “A big one at that.”
When I emerged from the tent, I suddenly had the feeling of being watched. I looked up and there, in one of the second story windows, was the old woman. She stared down at me with cold contempt, and as I watched, she turned away and disappeared in a stir of curtains.
I chewed the inside of my bottom lip in thought. Whatever was happening here, she knew something about it.
That thought had to wait, as a few of the men had found wolf tracks in the forest behind the house. I went out there and we followed them back to the cemetery. They went right up to the mausoleum before disappearing. There were none anywhere else, and I was forced to conclude that the creature had entered the tomb.
I examined it and found that that wasn’t possible. The seal had not been broken; there was no way anything had gone in, or come out. I brushed aside a layer of moss and read the inscription. WILLIAM PRUITT 1712-1794. If the old woman’s birthday in the family bible was correct, this would likely be her father.
These thoughts, and more, I kept to myself over the course of the day. That night, a muggy and cricket-filled one, I found her in the sitting room, rocking back and forth in a rocking chair and staring into the darkened hearth like an ancient seer. I tread lightly, but she heard me anyway, for she froze mid-rock. “I beg your pardon, ma’am,” I started. “But I was hoping to speak with you.”
“Speak then, Yankee,” she said in that raspy voice of hers.
“As I’m sure you’ve heard, some of our boys were killed last night.”
The old woman tilted her head back as if to bask in the glow of the empty hearth. “Isn’t it nice? Nothing warms my heart like dead federals.”
“I wish I could share your enthusiasm,” i said dryly. I sat on the sofa flanking her chair and packed my pipe with tobacco. “But the truth is, I can’t. Those boys are my responsibility -”
“And this homestead is His.”
I struck a match and lit the pipe. “His?” I asked.
“My Daddy,” she said.
“William?”
“One in the same,” she confirmed. “He built this house with his own hands and loves the Confederacy with all of his heart.”
I puffed, making little smoke clouds in the still air. “He died long before there was a Confederacy.”
“So says you,” the old witch sniffed.
Sitting back and crossing my legs, I said, “I’ve been to his tomb. What I can’t understand is the tracks in the soil. You know something about the wolf, I take it.”
“Mayhap I do,” she said.
“And?”
She turned to me then and fixed me with the evilest eye I hope to ever see. “You and your boys are in for it.”
I forced an icy smile. “Mrs. Pruitt, the fact of the matter is, you and your family are guests here -”
“This is our home.”
“- and if you would like the privilege of remaining my guest, you’ll abstain from making threats.”
“It’s no threat,” she said. “You’ve angered him and he’s come back to liberate us.”
I had had enough. I got to my feet and glared down at her. “Whoever is responsible will be hanged,” I said coldly. “And if you and your family wish to escape the same fate, you’ll cooperate.”
The old woman laughed and laughed.
I left her there and went to my room. I sat in a straight-back chair by the window and stared off into the night. I had ordered the watch closer to the house and sent a message to General Grant, who was nearby, requesting more troops. Toward midnight, a single howl rose into the night. I imagined the ghost of William Pruitt walking in the woods, all aglow and dripping blood from animal-like talons, and I shivered.
The next day. We received a fresh batch of wounded from the Petersburg Campaign, some 100 men in various states of injury. We were busy from 10am to early evening; I personally oversaw the amputation of a dozen limbs and the deaths of five boys scarcely old enough to shave. The recent troubles aside, it was a dark day, and I was in a dark mood by dinner time. I rode my horse around the back of the property, wanting to be by myself, and finally gave thought to the recent rash of attacks. I decided to further question the Pruitt family and to drag the truth from their lips under pain of imprisonment. I did not wish to treat them harshly, but I saw no other way to go about it.
My aid rode up just as I was starting back. I saw at once that he was in a state of great agitation, and knew even before he spoke that something had happened. “What is it?” I asked, dread filling my belly.
Earlier that day, he told me, the detachment that General Grant had sent from Winchester was attacked by a snarling dog-creature near Mount Clinton. The thing loped out from a stand of trees on all fours and charged at the group’s commander, knocking him from his horse and savagely mauling him. The men fired at it, but their shots seemed to have no effect, as the monster ran down every single one of them. The only survivor of the massacre described it as a massive creature with glowing red eyes, jagged fangs, and patches of missing fur where flesh festered and rotted. He didn’t get a very detailed look at it as he had put his back to it, but he swore that there was something unnaturally human about it.
My hands tightened on the reigns as my aide finished his story. Dark, purple dush lay over the land and the last rays of the sun spread over the distant ridges. Fire swept through my chest as I listened to his account, and finally, I could take no more. I kicked my horse and rode back to the house, grimly set in my determination. I jumped off at the house, grabbed two men, and went inside. I was more angry than I had ever been and it was only by the grace of God that I kept my composure. I had all four Pruitts rounded up and brought into the parlor. The old woman rocked back and forth and her son and his wife seemed to shrink beneath my stern gaze. Their daughter, for her part, looked confused and afraid.
“I want to know what’s going on,” I said, fighting to keep my voice calm.
“I don’t -” Mr. Pruitt started.
I cut him off. “You’re a liar. You’re goddamn liars. There’s something out there killing my men and I want to know what it is.”
The old woman snorted, her chair creaking like old bones. “I told you, Yankee. He’s come back to avenge us.”
Mr. Pruitt shot her a warning look. “Grandmother,” he admonished.
“He has,” the old woman said. “He’s back with the blessing of the Infernal One and shortly, these intruders will be driven out. I hope your sake, Col., that he kills you quickly.”
Rage filled me and I came close to grabbing her by the throat. Instead, I looked at Mr. Pruitt. “What’s the meaning of this?”
The fat man couldn’t meet my eyes. ‘It’s…a family legend. Nothing more.”
“What is it?” I demanded.
Taking a deep breath, he told me. His great-grandfather, William Pruitt, was said to be a practitioner of the dark arts, learned in the ways of Gaelic and European witchcraft. Legend had it that he regularly spoke to and consorted with demons, including Lucifer himself. William Pruitt kept black dogs his entire life, and it was believed that they were actually demonic spirits that served his evil whims. A man whom William had quarreled with was found with his throat ripped out one cold winter’s night, and the locals all said it was the work of William’s familiars. None, however, had the courage to confront him.
Before he died, he vowed to smite from beyond the grave anyone who debased his beloved land. In the years since, several brutal killings had lent credence to the legend. In 1841, Mr. Pruitt’s brother, who had inherited the estate, was found ripped to shreds right here in the parlor. Mr. Pruitt claimed that his brother was a gambler and was in the process of gambling away the family holdings; he did not, however, believe that his great-grandfather, the feared Dog-Man, was responsible.
Either way, he implied that the occupation of Pruitt Manor had awakened the spirit of his ancestor. “Or so Grandmother believes.”
I did not know how to take the man’s story at first. I eventually lowered my brows and fixed him with a forbidding look. No, I did not believe him. I was even more convinced now than before that there was some rebel plot afoot. “I haven’t got time to listen to such stories. I want to know what is happening right now, and I -”
A long, haunting howl rose in the night.
The old woman smiled. “There he is now.”
My men exchanged a worried look and I pinched the bridge of my nose. I went to the mantle, took up the decanter without invitation, and poured myself a drink. “I do not wish to be harsh with you,” I explained over my shoulder. “I have no quarrel with you or your people, save the obvious one. None of us want to be here anymore than you want us to be here. I just -”
A loud cry of terror sounded outside the front window, and suddenly, a great commotion broke out. I whipped my head around and my men froze in fear. Screams, snarling, and gunshots sounded. The color drained from Mr. Pruitt’s face and he ushered his wife and daughter away; the old woman refused to retreat but kept rocking in her chair and smiling to herself like a woman watching a particularly enjoyable performance. Screams, grunts, and howls rang out, the sounds of battle, and I caught flashes of movement through the window. Firelight flickered as shapes rushed before it, and loud thuds marked the falling of hapless bodies.
Just then, the window exploded in a shower of glass, and my men cowered. The thing, the creature, the infernal dog-man stood before me in all its hellish glory. It was roughly six feet high and clad in what appeared to be the tattered remains of a suit, its lank body covered in matted gray fur and its eyes glowing red. There were bald patches salted here and there, the flesh mottled and rotten beneath. A doggish snout protruded from its gaunt face, and yellow, saliva-coated fangs snapped in grizzly anticipation. The old woman clapped joyously, and the monster looked around. I fell back a step, shock and horror spreading through me, and one of them cried out.
The monster came alive and sprang at him, bringing one colossal paw down in a killing arc. The man’s head snapped to the side and he dropped to the floor, dead. The creature grabbed the other by his jacket, spun him around, and threw him across the room; he hit the wall and fell onto a table, breaking it beneath his weight.
Then, the monster fixed its gaze on me.
Pulling my Colt from its holster, I took aim and fired. Smoke filled the air and fire leapt from the barrel. I cocked the hammer and fired again, then again. The rounds had no effect on the beast; it took them without effect, and then advanced on me.
I fell back a step, my mind racing and my heart hammering. There was no escape; if I put my back to the thing, it would be on top of me in a second. I had no choice but to stay and fight. I drew my sword and the light glinted on its silvery edge like an omen. The woman’s wizened face flickered with fear, and she jumped to her feet with a shriek. She grabbed my arm and I elbowed her in the stomach, knocking her down. The beast rushed me, and crying out, I brought the sword up and then down. The blade struck it a glancing blow and sliced one of its pointed ears from its head. Blood spurted from the wound, and the oddest sound of sizzling,m like bacon in a pan, issued forth. The beast let out an unearthly scream and swung around, holding its wounded ear. I charged after it, and it hobbled away, leaping from the window and disappearing into the night.
I caught my breath and checked on the old woman. She lay dead on the floor, her knees drawn to her chest and her head lolling. I had no time to think of her, however’ the fog-man was still out there, wounded but alive.
Already knowing where it would go, I gathered a group of men, and with torches, we followed a trail of prints and blood drops to the tomb. They disappeared at its base, as I had expected. “Open it,” I said.
Someone procured a pry bar and the three men heaved open the slab covering the door. Their faces strained in the firelight and I realized then that there were none of the normal night sounds. No crickets, no small game moving in the brush, not even a breath of wind. It was as if the world were holding its breath.
The slab fell to the ground with a thump, and ducking my head, i went into the tomb, the torch aloft. Thick cobwebs barred my path, and I was forced to brush them aside.
In the center of the room was a coffin on a pedestal. I and another man pushed the lid off. Inside lay the body of a man, his flesh gray and mottled but largely preserved. His eyes were closed and his hands folded upon his chest. Fresh blood stained his lips and more oozed from the ruined hole where his ear had been, One of my men gasped and a ripple of excitement went through the rest.
I thrust my sword into its chest, and a groan escaped its lungs, Next, I severed its head from its body and ordered its remains burned.
As promised, I will offer no commentary on the nature of this encounter, nor will I speculate on its character. I will leave that up to you. I know that it happened and I know that I no longer feel that I know the world as well I believed I did.
There are things, I believe, that simply cannot be explained.
And for the benefit of our sanity - and our souls - it is probably better that they aren’t explained.
- Col. Josiah Parker, 5th Massachusetts.