What Got Me Here (my first paranormal encounter)

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved anything spooky. The idea that ghosts and monsters were real was something I was always drawn to, but truthfully, I have always been a bit skeptical. Don’t get me wrong, I want to believe. The idea that something beyond this world is out there, that idea is what gets me out of bed in the morning. 

While I always had the faint hope I would maybe see a UFO, or even Bigfoot, I had mostly given up on that dream until the middle of February in 2022. 

It’s important to know that while I love the unexplained, my mother does not. She is very much a nonbeliever in Cryptids and folk magic, which makes it even stranger that she believes in this story more than I do. 

There was snow on the ground, and my mom and I were driving home after visiting a family friend. When you live in the middle-of-nowhere Missouri, there are very few streetlights on gravel roads, especially the one where I live. Just one at the top of a hill. So picture this, undisturbed snow across acres of cowfields, with few houses lining the road in between. Our family car crested the edge of the hill with the streetlight, and not three feet in front of us, we saw a huge, hairy mass.

My mom slammed on the breaks, and in the second we turned to look at each other and look back, the thing was nowhere to be seen.

She was the first one to say anything.

“Did you see that dog?”

I did, it was huge. The size of a horse. And it was clearly a dog. It wasn’t a bear, it wasn’t a coyote, and there have never been any wolves in the area I live. This thing was covered in dark fur, likely a black or deep grey. It had pointed ears that were obvious in the outline of the moon, and humped shoulders or a back arched like a Halloween cat. It stood facing the car, but neither of us saw any eye-shine, which you would expect from any sort of nocturnal creature. But the strangest thing of all, was how fast it disappeared.

In the time it took for us to look at each other, the dog vanished into thin air. It left absolutely no footprints in the fresh snow, which would be absolutely impossible.

When we got home, not even a minute later, my mom and I hadn’t really discussed what we had saw. But we each drew it, to make sure our story was reliable. We went into separate rooms, I drew on my laptop, my mom took my notebook. We each dated the encounter, and I have attached those drawings below. With the three-year anniversary of seeing this thing coming up, I thought I should share.

I’ve got a couple theories on what it might have been, but I’ll save those for another post. Thanks for letting me yap, stay weird.