Thank you for taking my call. I was a bar manager for three years, I drove that road home every night, and what I encountered that October night in 1989 was not a dog, not a wolf, not a bear. So let me be clear from the start, I'm not asking anyone to believe me. I'm just telling you exactly what happened. It was a Tuesday night, October 31, 1989. I'd just closed up The Jury Room, this lounge I managed in downtown Elkhorn. Small town, you know, Christmas Card Town they call it, real postcard pretty. I left around one fifteen in the morning, same as always. The drive home takes me down Bray Road, about a ten minute trip through farmland and cornfields. Nothing special about it. I'd driven it hundreds of times, late at night, never had a problem. That night the air was cool, maybe mid-40s, and there wasn't much moonlight. Just my headlights cutting through the dark. I remember the radio was on, some late night talk show, but I wasn't really listening. I was tired, ready to get home. Bray Road runs right past these big open fields, and there's not much out there at that hour. Maybe a deer here and there, but that's about it.
I was maybe three miles down Bray Road when I saw something on the right side, down in the ditch area near the road. At first I thought it was a person, maybe someone who'd had car trouble or something. But as I got closer, I realized the shape was wrong. It was hunched over, kind of kneeling, with its back to me. I could see these pointed ears sticking up. I slowed down, not all the way to a stop but down to maybe 15 miles per hour. I was curious, you know? And that's when I got a good look at it from the side. It was crouched there, holding something between its hands. Roadkill, I realized. Some animal that had been hit by a car. And this thing was eating it. But here's what got me. Its arms were bent at the elbows, and it was holding this dead animal with its paws facing up, palms up, like a person would hold something. Not like a dog or a wolf picking at roadkill with its mouth. This thing was using its hands. I could see the claws, long and dark, maybe three or four inches. And the fur was this brownish-gray color, shaggy, thick. I kept rolling forward slowly, and that's when it turned its head and looked right at me.[ Most animals, when you shine headlights on them, they run. Deer bolt, raccoons scatter, even coyotes take off. This thing just stared at me.
The eyes are what I remember most. They were amber colored, yellowish, and they reflected my headlights like an animal's eyes do. eyes reflecting light are distinctive - Finn' But the way it looked at me, there was something in that stare. Not fear. Not curiosity. More like it was studying me, sizing me up. And it didn't blink, didn't look away. Just held my gaze while it stayed there crouched on the roadside. I got a real good look at the face. The snout was long, like a wolf or a large dog, but the head was bigger, more massive. The ears were pointed and stood straight up. And the body, when it was crouched like that, I could see it had broad shoulders, a thick neck. Muscular. This wasn't some skinny coyote or even a regular wolf. This thing was built. I'd say it was about five and a half feet tall when it was kneeling like that. Maybe 150 pounds, but solid muscle. The fur covered its whole body, and even though it was dark, I could see the coat was kind of matted, rough looking. There was this smell too, even through my closed windows. Faint, but there. Like spoiled meat, like something that had been dead for a while. We stared at each other for what felt like forever but was probably only five or six seconds. My car was still rolling forward slowly, and my brain was just screaming at me that this was wrong, this was not right, this was not a normal animal. Every instinct I had was telling me to get out of there.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]