Hey, thanks for taking my call. I've been meaning to do this for years now, and I finally just, I don't know, worked up the nerve I guess. This happened back in '93, fall of '93, in Grand Haven, Michigan. Ottawa County. I was fourteen at the time, just a dumb kid who thought he knew everything. My buddies and I, we used to spend a lot of time in this nature preserve near my parents' place. Hofma Nature Preserve. You could hike the trails, mess around by the creek, that kind of thing. Here's the thing though, we'd been going there for years. Never saw anything weird. Never even heard anything weird. It was just woods. I remember my mom had been on my case all week about my grades. Had a D in algebra and she was not happy about it. So I was in kind of a mood when my friends wanted to go hiking that night. There were four of us, I think. Maybe five. It was after dark, which, looking back, was pretty stupid. But we were teenagers. We thought we were invincible. The preserve has this float bridge near the center, goes over a marshy area. We were passing by it, just goofing around, when we heard something off to our right. Up on this ridge, maybe seventy feet away. At first I thought it was a dog. Just some dog walking through the trees. I could see its shape behind one of the bigger oaks up there.
I stopped walking. Told my friends to shut up for a second. The shape was just standing there, kind of hunched over. Dark fur, hard to tell the exact color in the moonlight. Could've been brown, could've been gray. And I'm watching it, trying to figure out whose dog got loose, when it stood up. sightings near Manistee in 87 show this is a regional pattern - Tom' On its hind legs. Like a person would stand up. Except it wasn't a person. Tall. Close to seven feet. Broad shoulders, thick chest. And the head, it was wrong. Too long. Like a wolf's head, but bigger. One of its feet, I swear to God, one of its feet was gripping a branch on the tree. Like it had hands for feet or something. I don't know how else to describe it. We locked eyes. Me and this thing. And we just stared at each other. I couldn't move. My friends were asking me what was wrong, what was I looking at, but I couldn't answer them. I don't know how long we stood there. Felt like five minutes. Could've been thirty seconds. Time does weird things when you're terrified. Then it dropped back down to all fours and took off into the woods. Didn't make a sound. Something that big, moving that fast, you'd think you'd hear branches breaking, leaves crunching. Nothing. Just gone.
My friends finally saw my face and they knew something was seriously wrong. We ran out of there. Didn't stop until we hit the parking lot. I tried to tell them what I saw, but even as the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew how crazy it sounded. A giant dog that walked like a man? They thought I was messing with them. Trying to scare them. I let them think that. It was easier than the truth. That should've been the end of it. One weird night, one thing I couldn't explain. But it wasn't the end. Not even close. A few weeks later, December I think, I was at my parents' house. They lived on Lakewood Drive, nice quiet neighborhood. My mom asked me to go out and start her car, let it warm up. It was cold that night, the kind of cold that hurts your lungs. I walked out to the driveway, keys in my hand. The car was parked near the end, close to where our property met the woods. I hit the unlock button on the key fob and the headlights flashed. Here's the thing though, when the lights flashed, I saw something standing behind the car. Just standing there. On two legs. Massive. Covered in dark fur. Staring right at me.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]