A listener writes “I’m a long-time listener and thought you might be interested in an encounter my younger brother and I experienced in Ceredo, West Virginia, during the summer of 1976.
At the time, my brother Ron and I lived in a single-wide trailer that sat right next to a wooded hillside. This was in Ceredo, not far from where the Marshall University football team’s plane crashed near the Tri-State Airport.
One afternoon, Ron and I were playing in the woods with about six other neighborhood boys. We came up with a stupid but fun way to get down the hill fast (and it’s not something I’m proud of). We’d grab onto thin saplings and “ride” them downhill like Tarzan, letting go near the bottom so the trees would snap back upright. We probably did this eight or nine times.
That night, things changed.
We woke up to an incredibly loud bird call, something like a massive owl hoot but it wasn’t quite right. It sounded like something trying to yell “HOOOOT!” without fully getting the sound right. Even worse, it happened every single night for an entire week. The call would start far away, then slowly move closer until it felt like it was right outside our window, so loud it vibrated in our chests.
That weekend, we went back up the hill where we’d been playing and saw something that still freaks me out. It wasn’t just the saplings we had ridden there were fifty or sixty trees all over the hillside that had been snapped or bent over. Whatever did it was far heavier than a group of kids. That’s when it hit us, something had been watching us play and then spent the week copying what we’d done.
During the second week, the nightly calls continued. One night, we heard rocks and brush sliding down the hill right behind my brother’s room. The scream sounded like it was directly outside the window. Our neighbor’s dog started barking wildly and wouldn’t stop. Then I saw a large shadow pass across the window, completely blocking it out. Immediately afterward, the dog went silent. We never saw that dog again.
Those two weeks were intense and terrifying, and we learned firsthand that some things in the woods don’t like being disturbed.
I hope you find this account interesting, and I’d be glad to go into more detail if you’d like.”
Charles R
I totally agree that your brother and you with the Tarzan imitations had been watched. And the watcher(s) thought this would be a fun game, probably younger ones, but still more powerful than an adult human.
That was such a tragic accident with the Marshall Football team in 1970, and I remember it well being a football player and teenager at that time. I have watched the movie “We Are Marshall” several times.
I for one would like more details.