A listener writes “My encounter happened in Davidson County, Tennessee during the day where we lived. I was around 7yrs old, it happened in the fall and I was with my cousin.
He came to play one day so we decided to go play in the woods behind my house. These woods were vast and it had a large cave on the left side of the ridge and several smaller caves on the right side of the ridge. The area on top of the ridge had several strange piles of rocks on top of the ground that looked like the length of a person was buried there like a really old graveyard. We use to call these strange rocks Indian graves but we never really knew what they actually were.
One day we hiked back to this site and explored the smaller caves on the right side of the ridge.
We brought a flashlight and found a small cave we could explore. The cave entrance was like a hallway that you had to crawl through in order to explore. I was leading my cousin who was directly behind me.
When after a while we reached the end of this corridor because a large rock blocked us going any further. There was an area around 6 to 8inches at the ceiling that was open so I shined my flashlight into this area and you could see a room on the other side of the rock, about that time a dog looking animal popped up and looked straight into my flashlight. The eyes were red and it had pointed ears. I screamed bumped my head on the ceiling of the cave and told my cousin to back up and get out. We ran back home and we never went back to those caves exploring.
In Maury County, Tennessee several years later as an adult. I was visiting my son and granddaughter and returned home around 930pm.
I was never usually out past night time so I hurried to get home and into the house. I parked my vehicle underneath the carport and had a little walk to get to my back door.
I got out of my vehicle and quickly headed towards the back door, no lights were turned on outside.
Suddenly behind me and above me I heard a deep guttural growl that instantly froze me. The growl was super deep, and lasted awhile, it sounded like a tiger growl. I remember thinking the animal must be really big and had to have an enormous set of lungs. Instantly I couldn’t move an inch and I felt like I was going to be eaten by whatever this was. A primal fear came over me and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I wanted to turn around to see what it was but a voice inside my head instantly said don’t turn and don’t run but instead walk quickly to the back door. That’s when I snapped out of my frozen state of mind and did just that. I got inside and locked the door behind me quickly and from that moment on I experienced PTSD for months afterwards.
I didn’t want to go hiking or biking something I did with my son regularly. I told my son what happened and he kept bugging me to go with him hiking and biking, so I did. At first it was so hard to get back hiking and riding bikes but looking back it helped me to face my fear which helped me to overcome a lot of the PTSD.
My head is still on a swivel constantly checking out my surroundings but nothing else like this has happened again.”