A listener writes “This was about 3-4 in the morning. We had planned to camp on Navarro beach (about 10 miles south of the village of Mendocino). A wind blew in and sleeping was impossible. although we had sleeping bags, the Pacific winds chilled us to the bone.
My girlfriend (now wife of over 30 years) said she wanted to drive home. We lived in Ukiah, California. This is about a one hour drive.
We were just kids and owned a VW Fastback 72 I think. At any rate, I was a skater punk and I installed a Stinger exhaust pipe. The thing was as loud as the night was long!
Well at about mile 6 or so (we know the exact spot but now live on the big island so I guesstimate) on hwy 128 our crappy VW started running poorly. The stinger is an important part of this story.
The VW started to sputter (not uncommon) So I pushed the clutch in and full on gunned the gas. This is an important tidbit….
From about 100 feet in front us, (the highway turns in this area are 25 mph recommended) out steps a monster.
I lost it. My foot had the clutch fully engaged and the other foot was on the gas. The “Stinger” exhaust sounded like five million firecrackers were exploding!
Time stopped…
It was mad. Wes… I can see it right now. This thing walked out in front of us. It glared at us. I was so frozen. We basically missed this thing by about 12 inches.
My wife was in the passenger seat. For the past 30 years I thought the thing disappeared into the redwood forest. But she told me a couple months ago that, no it didn’t vanish, as it passed within a few feet of her door, it fell to all fours and crawled into the redwood thicket.”
Charles R
Ah ha. This is a fantastic clue, maybe for so many cases where a witness claims it just disappeared. Just gets down into that spider crawl or something similar and probably does it so fast it seems like it vanishes. And once again walking out in front of a vehicle, even though this one was very loud.
Josephine L
Oh my…another mysterious encounter…looking forward to hearing more!
April B
geez how scary