*Warning: Photographs and information in this ongoing series might be upsetting to some readers. Discretion advised.*
This will be an ongoing series chronicling a couple years' worth of encounters with bizarre, horrific, and taunting interplay between one innocent citizen and a stalker that defies description (at least in our known world).
This was an exceptionally well-documented series of events that may at times be too graphic or horrifying for some readers, but it is our hope that by sharing this experience, someone out there might recognize a set of circumstances that are similar.
Prior Installments -
Installment #1 "Walking Dead"
Installment #2 "Dem Bones"
Installment #3 "Too Close To Home"
Installment 4: "Encounter"
Installment #5: "Roadside Horror"
Installment #6: "Baffling Kills"
Installment #7: "Not By a Long Shot"
Installment #8: "There Is No End"
Installment #9: "Chaos Theory"
Installment #10: "Claiming Territory in the Weird Vortex"
Installment #11 "Get Out!"
Late Winter 2016
It had been relatively quiet in his neck of the woods and the Walker had gotten used to his routine being uninterrupted by much more than thoughts of his family and some work that had been piling up on his desk. The winter had been fairly mild, but seemed to drag on and he was ready for spring when he woke up one day and went out to get in his jeep.
The passenger door was open and the Walker looked around, wondering if his wife had gone to get something and left it open. It wasn't like her to do that.
He approached the car, studying the empty interior as he came around to the passenger side open door, a sinking feeling took over. He remembered the last time the Stalker had been in his jeep, trying to fit into the driver's side and knocking the visor and mat around on the floor.
He gave his vehicle a cursory looking over, with nothing out of place. He lifted his head and looked over at the other car in the driveway and noticed its passenger door looked open.
The Walker came around and checked the car and, yup, the door was ajar. Nothing was messed up or missing inside from what he could tell.
The Walker stood up and looked around and pondered the Stalker. At least IT had learned it couldn't fit into the driver's side. The Walker tried to find some humor in a situation that was truly frightening. This thing had way too much focus on him and getting much too close to home. Considering IT had every opportunity to pick up a rock and break a window but had not, was his only comfort.
Living in the country, locking one's car doors seemed hardly relevant and now it felt like a priority. With a set of his jaw, the Walker thought to go over to the shed, the other place the Stalker was known to root around.
The door was open.
He eagerly studied all the tools on his bench and solvents, items that he was working on. Nope, nothing was gone.
He eagerly studied all the tools on his bench and solvents, items that he was working on. Nope, nothing was gone.
His eyes trailed along to the tool bench and he plugged in the grinder which startled him by starting up immediately. One thing the Walker never did was unplug a running machine. Someone had hit the switch, but didn't know to plug it in?
Rattled, but determined, the Walker went about his day, pushing it aside, but feeling a gnawing desire to secure his home from...who?...what?
*
The Walker and his wife went out for supper and came back one day soon after. They approached the back door where they parked the cars and went to grab the doorknob to find it was dislodged somehow. The Walker went to try the knob, but if fell to the ground, showing obvious signs of having been snapped almost completely off.
What kind of force could do that?
He had another to-do on the list to put on a new knob, but as he held the broken knob in his hand, the Walker studied the darkness outside of the circle of light provided by motion detector floods at the back door. Someone not only messed with the cars nearby, but tried to break into the house while the floodlights were blazing. That was rather brave. Although with a car missing from the driveway and perhaps the Stalker studying his comings and goings, IT likely knew they were gone for the evening.
That realization produced a shudder of fear.
*
There was only one way to see what was going on at his property and the Walker felt confident that a game cam aimed at the back door might show the culprit if he decided to come back.
The Walker took to the roadway on his daily hike, pleased by the sun and the early springtime feel to the air. He kept up a brisk pace until he reached the area where the dogs had been displayed long ago.
He came to a halt in front of a body.
Leaning over it, the Walker distinguished it was a beaver. A very large dead beaver. And it was rotting well. It wasn't there the day before. He would have stepped right on it. So, someone dropped it off in the rotted state.
Hmmm....
The Walker snapped his head back up and looked down the roadway, recalling the baby boar offerings across the road from this spot. They were almost to the day, the same time of the year. Springtime offerings?
He turned, sped away down the country road, mind buzzing, thoughts far ahead at his home, but he wasn't about to act like this upset him or that he was going to rush back home. He would finish the circuit and when he got home - he'd check the game cam!
Breathless and a bit sweatier than usual, the Walker approached the game cam. He had fixed it up on a high post facing the back door with vines all around it to keep it a bit less noticeable. One of the cars parked near the door was also in the field of vision, just in case IT tried to get into the cars again.
The vines had been moved, the camera wasn't just how he recalled it.
The Walker carried it inside and looked around a bit before entering the house. The car doors were closed. The back doorknob was fine. No footprints on the ground.
Good Lord, I'm getting paranoid!
The camera had taken shots. He took a breath before he clicked the mouse on the computer. He wanted to see, he didn't want to see, but he needed to see, but he didn't want to see....
The Walker leaned back in the chair for a moment and studied the ceiling. What if it was a neighbor? That would mean he lived near some kind of maniac. But, what if it was a Bigfoot or some other sort of cryptid being? How would he get rid of it now that it was fixated on his home and his walk? You couldn't just talk to one and reason with it.
He closed his eyes tightly and rubbed pinched the bridge of his nose, took a breath, and punched the mouse button, determined to just handle it one step at a time.
The first shots showed what looked like lens flare perhaps...
He didn't know what triggered the camera, but it seemed explainable. The sun was shining at an angle to create light refraction.
And, then, the Walker fell back in his seat and stared as he opened the next shots. There were four frames of something very tall triggering the camera. His hands trembled as he gathered them together into a single gif to animate the movement. His mind rushed with details about this thing.
The first shots showed what looked like lens flare perhaps...
He didn't know what triggered the camera, but it seemed explainable. The sun was shining at an angle to create light refraction.
And, then, the Walker fell back in his seat and stared as he opened the next shots. There were four frames of something very tall triggering the camera. His hands trembled as he gathered them together into a single gif to animate the movement. His mind rushed with details about this thing.
It was obvious this thing was in profile, facing the left side of the frame, its head turned toward the camera. Its neck and head were of equal width. It seemed as if there might be the hint of a beard on the left side as the head turned a bit. And, it appeared to be hair covered.
The Walker had seen shots of himself near a game cam and you could see clothing and details of a human shape.
He rushed outside to take note of the fact its head extended above the lens. It had to be in the upper part of 7 feet tall!
The Walker got a shot of himself in front of the camera for reference. He pulled out the shots of IT and shook his head. The Walker's head was so low in the lens and his head almost even looking with the rakes against the wall. IT, however, made the car and rakes look like dwarfs.
The Walker got a shot of himself in front of the camera for reference. He pulled out the shots of IT and shook his head. The Walker's head was so low in the lens and his head almost even looking with the rakes against the wall. IT, however, made the car and rakes look like dwarfs.
The Walker studied the height of the camera and if It had been standing near the camera, it was surely the upper side of 7 feet! If it had been standing some distance away, even taller!
*
The Walker was still reeling from what he found on the camera. It was one thing to consider all the possibilities, but another to see something so massive and tall wandering so close to his back door. He needed some space. He needed to think.
He took the dog for a walk and as he reached the quarry road, he heard a very distinct tree knock.
He stopped.
The dog looked up at him.
He looked back as if to say, "did you hear that?"
He stopped.
The dog looked up at him.
He looked back as if to say, "did you hear that?"
When he got home, the dog rushed back into the bedroom behind the bed and settled in a place that was not his usual spot.
*
The Walker went about the motions of things being normal, but he had found a opossum tail in the driveway near the cars. It had been ripped off. The body, thankfully, was nowhere in sight. But the tail reminded him of the baby boars' tails left in the roadway after they were tossed alongside the road, years ago, when all this began.
In fact, on the walk he couldn't help noticing the dead beaver that had been left days ago. The buzzards had crowded around it at first, but then flew away. And never came back. And never even took one peck out of it. That was decidedly not buzzard behavior.
There were so many weird variables at play that the Walker had to wonder if this Stalker had become a full-time player in his existence. He was taking up a lot of his head space. For that reason, the Walker decided a few days of leisure was called for. If he could just exhale and get a perspective, he could see it all in a new light and maybe one that wasn't so scary....
*
It wasn't a week later when a dead opossum showed up. The Walker's dog let its nose take it to a spot in the grass way off the roadway where an opossum lay, spread eagle face up, genitalia...bitten off! It didn't seem like enough injury to kill it, but there it lay, quite dead. He studied the body. The tail was still there, so it was no the tail he had seen in his driveway recently.
*
The Walker came home, thoughts of mutilation of a wide variety of animals running through his mind like one of those old time movie projectors, flipping image after image of snake spines, deer skulls, headless rabbits, disemboweled boars, a beaver, strangled dogs....
All the Walker knew was, at this point, he did not want to either attract this entity or piss it off, so continuing to pretend to ignore was the best method, as was maintaining the game cam in the hopes of a second glimpse to compare with the first.
*
The neighbor approached the Walker as he was out on his daily jaunt.
"Someone broke into my barn and took my ATV."
The Walker frowned, his mind settling back on the repeated break-ins on his cars in his driveway.
"Seen a stranger walking around here, someone real tall." The neighbor added as if in warning.
The Walker studied the woods, his mind going to the time long ago when he saw the unusually tall silhouetted human form in a driveway on his walk. It was the driveway of the long abandoned house in the center of all the strangeness.
The Walker had given the stranger an odd wave, arm tucked up to his body tightly and lower arm making an awkward arc. He had done this instinctively, but he wasn't sure what instinct told him to do that. The sunset silhouetted tall figure tucked his arm into his body and did the same wave back. Not a natural wave. An imitation. And it wasn't the only time the Walker had seen a tall figure there, darting in and out....
The Walker had given the stranger an odd wave, arm tucked up to his body tightly and lower arm making an awkward arc. He had done this instinctively, but he wasn't sure what instinct told him to do that. The sunset silhouetted tall figure tucked his arm into his body and did the same wave back. Not a natural wave. An imitation. And it wasn't the only time the Walker had seen a tall figure there, darting in and out....
*
The Walker appreciated the springtime walk. He marched right up to the opossum area and at the last moment, reflexively stopped, turned, and trudged over to see if it was there.
It was there, only something had taken it by the tail and tore the spine out. It looked like it took the tail in one hand and the body in another and just.... split!
It was there, only something had taken it by the tail and tore the spine out. It looked like it took the tail in one hand and the body in another and just.... split!
The Walker left the area at a fast pace, but then his wandering mind got the best of him and he had to investigate. He walked over to an old cistern, wondering about how many place the Stalker might be doing things that he never noticed because he never left his beaten path.
He peered into the cistern to find a 15-20 foot long stick in it (11 o'clock position), used to probe around, only it was pretty far down. The Walker knew he couldn't reach it himself, but then he was an average height.
The Walker studied the nearby woods, shook his head as he battled his sensible self, and plunged forward into the tree line. There, he saw a dirt circle on the ground and then an antique pot wedged between two trees, having obviously been moved from an upside down position and placed there. Animals did not move objects like this. Someone with hands did!
As the Walker made his way home, it became apparent that there were some things about the Stalker that he could only attribute to someone walking on two legs. And that a human either carried a folding chair with him or was exceedingly tall!
The Stalker had removed the industrial magnet that held open the shed door and sat on the wall 7 feet up. It had also lifted his windchimes and moved them to the hook where the hummingbird feeder sat at around 7 feet up, too high for even the Walker to reach without the porch chair. The neighbor mentioned seeing the very tall man walking around and the Walker, himself, had seen that figure. Then, there were the shots taken by the game cam....
The Walker let out a long breath as he prepared to enter his home, realizing he was back to square one - either this was a troubled human or a troubled Sasquatch. Any otherworldly explanations would have to be cast aside, as it was hard enough proving that he was being stalked, much less by something alien.
He fetched some water from the sink, but out of the corner of his eye saw a shadow outside from the windows on the back door. He looked out to realize the clouds were rolling in and he was being way too cautious.
He walked over and stared out. He used to see his property and the beauty of nature, changing weather, and the peace. Now, he just saw open access to an invader. And not a damn thing the Walker could do that wouldn't either encourage or anger it....
He would, however, keep the game cam in place. He wanted comparisons and one thing he knew about the Stalker, he'd be back in the yard. Again and again....
*
He didn't want to know, but he was compelled to look as he took his walk. The Walker went to check on the opossum only to find it had been ripped apart, limb by limb, each strewn in a different area. None of it was eaten, just torn and tossed about like an unwanted ragdoll.
He backed out of the area, pivoted on his heels, continued his circuit, wondering what feral being would kill so many animals and not eat them?
When he got back to his home, he checked to see the camera was in place and walked into his home, jaw set tightly as he imagined in his own way getting one up on this killer. He'd get another picture or several of it. He would compare them. And, soon he'd have a real sense of what IT was.
It wasn't a great consolation that he might sneak one up on the Stalker, but it did make the Walker feel a sense of pious justification inside his trembling gut.
